The next few days we bounced from place to place like a pinball, detouring dramatically from our intended destination, and passing through as many traffic heavy areas as possible. The Cartel was powerful, but there was no way they could be having people watch everywhere. Besides anything else, they weren’t the only game in town, and if they really were interested in us, then it was in their best interests to make their rivals think they weren’t.

So we used the heavy interference from the other traffic to mask our trail as best we could. It was hard to counter that after all, especially if you occasionally caused varying minor errors in the engine, so our pursuers would get used to looking for one flaw only for it to vanish. I wish I could claim that the action was purely out of choice, but the fact is we couldn’t run full repairs on the local systems, so we were kinda more moving the faults around. There’s a limit to what you can pull off with duct tape.

Then it was time to head on, aiming for the boneyard. I really hoped it was still empty.

*************************************************************************

Jenel kept an eye on Eileen, there was something off about her. Eileen may have been the kind to pull the occasional risk, but this was more than that, and that was worrying. Sure, this was a potentially huge payday if they could find anything interesting in the boneyard.

Still, they were taking one hell of a risk for that score. Their repair systems were held together with spit and bubblegum, their engines were all out of gum. Seriously, she’d had to bodge a repair on some parts using tongue depressors. Like literal tongue depressors, and she was positive that proper containment procedure for a coolant leak didn’t involve putting a pan under it. But they didn’t have much of a choice here. They’d shot ZANE. Yeah, the prick had deserved it for years, but things were going to get messy.

Then just as she got her head around that particular catastrophe, there was a new one. A probability drive could really shake up the power structures around this place, or turn the entire sector into dust, and which would happen was even odds. (then again, technically the destruction of the entire sector in a cascade probability drive failure would definitely shake up local power structures, so it wasn’t really an either/or situation, which was not a reassuring thought.)

Still, if they hung in there, she could get the ponics bay. The thought of that lifted her heart all by itself. She couldn’t help wondering, though, how the hell had Eileen even gotten her hands on the ship in the first place? Regardless of condition, Dreadnoughts did not grow on threes, and last time she’d seen Eileen she’d been entering into the dubious “care” of the sisters. Which, while it had gotten her patched up from the accident (if it wasn’t going to do that Jenel never would have let her go, the sisters were bad news, and Jenel still had nightmares about her own run in with Mother Superior, even to this day.) It had hardly left her with much of an exit strategy. Once the orders got their hands on you, they kept hold, and kept providing “improvements.” It was rather hard to escape when they were the ones with access to the tools needed to repair you.

They didn’t share either, if this was a game of monopoly they would have the entire board, including get out of jail free.

Well, for now making sure they didn’t end up a debris field was priority one. She carefully rigged up another decoy, jettisoning it, directing it to make its way to another “safe” harbour. Of course, it would be shot down as soon as it got close, but that just meant less evidence.

Eileen had been right about one thing, the blast had ripped out their shiny new airlock. Damn thing hadn’t been cheap, either. For now, she was literally shooting the decoys out via the waste disposal, since the alternative was the water-slide of death. (Eileen insisted on calling the tube used for interstellar burials as that, and it had bloody well stuck too.) Apparently, when Eileen had first claimed the ship, she’d had to gain access that way. The hangar doors having been locked out and all. What had happened to that kid between her “adoption” into the sisterhood, and now, that was a mystery to her, and Eileen refused to speak about it. One of these days she’d get answers, but for now, she had an engine to hold together, decoy drones to send out, an airlock to somehow hold together, and false trails to lay. Honestly, it felt like her work was never done.

****************************************************************************

Nara was doing what she did best, which at this moment in time, was making sure everybody ate. She’d have begged off the job, but then The Captain would have taken over, and her tongue was still burning from the last time that had happened. (Where the hell had she even gotten her hands on a real Reticulan spice weasel anyway?)

Once that was done, she’d see what she could figure out with the water circulation systems. For some reason, right now, the water supply tasted like Vodka. Which definitely sounded way more fun than it actually was. (Vodka has many positive traits, a kick like a mule, getting you legless damn fast.) But the flavour was definitely not one of them. She’d tried boiling it, see if that worked, but the resultant inferno suggested that maybe it wasn’t compatible with heat sources. Still. The scanning systems (hey, at least they still worked,) Were telling her it was drinkable, and weren’t showing a particularly high level of alcohol, so theoretically it was safe to use. But just to be on the safe side, most of the crew were dipping into the Captain’s stash of Zzap energy drink. It wouldn’t be long anyway, and she could be sensible, right?