Chapter Fourteen
Taly couldn’t keep the smile off her face as she headed for the lower deck. Ranvir had tried not to wake her when he’d gotten out of bed to relieve Ganesha on the bridge.
He’d encouraged her to sleep longer, but she couldn’t. It seemed she was already addicted to him holding her while she slept. After he left, she rose, showered, and dressed. Then she headed out to check on the colonists. They would be arriving on Yelmurn soon, and she wanted to do what she could for them.
The Troubadour was fully stocked for her and the support personnel who always traveled with her. It included food, hygiene supplies, and bedding. Things the colonists would need to start a new life. She and the guys could survive with what was stored on the upper deck.
She came to an abrupt halt, nearly running into the door to the stairwell that led to the lower deck when it didn’t open. It was supposed to do that automatically. Why hadn’t it?
Reaching to the side, she pressed the secondary release button, and the door remained closed. Frowning, she turned and headed for the bridge.
“Ranvir, do you know why…” she trailed off as she entered the bridge and took in the solemn faces and the tension in the room. “What’s happened?”
It took a moment for anyone to respond. Finally, Ranvir turned in the captain’s chair to look at her. “Reports are coming in that a group of cyborgs has been captured.”
“Who?” she whispered, a sick feeling growing in her stomach.
“We don’t know,” he said.
“Shui has ordered their execution be broadcast live,” Pike told her in an emotionless voice.
Seeing Taly pale, Ranvir immediately stood and went to her side, pulling her into his arms. He glared at Pike over her head as she burrowed into his chest. “We don’t know who they have,” he tried to reassure her. “Or even if it’s true.”
“When?” she asked, pulling back slightly to look up at Ranvir.
“Within the hour,” he told her.
“Do we know how they were captured?” she asked, looking to Pike.
“Bounty hunters,” Ganesha answered from the pilot’s seat, turned to face the rest of the room, having set the ship on autopilot.
“Buthow?” she demanded. “They’re cyborgs, for Gods sake. They should have been able to handle a few bounty hunters.”
“That’s unknown.” Ranvir ran a comforting hand up and down her back. “And there’s no way to find out. Not without giving away our location.”
She frowned up at him. “What do you mean? Vujcec told me he changed our transponder code.”
“He did, but we’ll draw undue attention if we start asking too many questions,” Ranvir told her. “We can’t have that. Especially when we’re arriving on Yelmurn in less than a day.”
“But if there was a way?” Taly asked. “To communicate with other cyborgs. One that couldn’t be traced.”
“That’s not possible,” Vujcec said from where he sat. “It would have to be routed through multiple comm satellites on previously established and encrypted channels. Only members of the Kirs High Command can do that, and even if you had all that, there still has to be someone on the other end who knows how to open it.”
“All true,” she readily agreed, “but if such a channel existed….”
It was Ranvir’s turn to frown. “Taly. Are you saying you have access to an encrypted channel?”
It wouldn’t surprise him if she did, not after everything else she’d been able to accomplish.
Sneaking onto a prison ship.
Freeing them.
Getting her hands on the most advanced ship ever produced and having it fully loaded with weapons.
Access to an encrypted channel was nothing compared to any of those things.
“Yes,” she told him. “Nas set it up so we could communicate freely, but it’s not a live channel. He said those were continually monitored.”