Ian grinned before he turned serious. “It’s worse than I thought,” he said. “Rockhurst is all over the sector. I had hoped to jump far enough out that we’d be ready to jump again as soon as we landed on XAD Seven, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to. Phantom has an unmatched stealth system, but we can’t avoid ships that are right on top of us.”
“It looks like the usual jump coordinates are about an hour out. How long is the FTL cooldown?”
“Right at six hours,” Ian said.
“It’s better than eight, but there’s no way we can drag it out that long. We can jump farther out if we come up with a believable excuse. Bad coordinates? Garbled message?”
“Maybe,” Ian said. “It would help if we knew where Rockhurst was concentrating their forces, but so far our recon just shows them everywhere.” He sighed and met my eyes. “I wish you would consider staying behind.”
“I need to see this through,” I said quietly.
He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Did you find anything that could get us in?”
“I plan to claim a possible weaponized infection in one of the recent shipments of people. I’ll be a MineCorp lackey sent to assess the situation and you’ll be my mercenary guard. And of course MineCorp wants to keep it all hush-hush.”
Ian mulled it over for a few minutes. “That could work,” he finally said. “Let’s talk it through. What if they want you to consult with their doctor first?”
I pursed my lips. “I’ll have to do some research before we land. I’ll find an appropriately horrible hemorrhagic fever and learn enough that I can wing it. But I’ll attempt to talk my way out of the meeting if it comes to that.”
“Are you going to have them bring the subjects to you?”
“No. I considered it, but really I want them to leave us alone as much as possible. I’ll ask for access to their records and hopefully locate Ferdinand that way. It’ll mean more work for us because we’ll have to delve into the mine to grab him, but it’ll also mean that we might be able to slip out unseen.”
“And if they refuse to leave you alone?”
“We bring Ferdinand back for examination and then fight our way out. Did you find any intel on how big their base is?”
“Frustratingly little,” Ian said. “They are focusing their forces on XAD Six but they don’t want to give House von Hasenberg any chance to get a foothold in the solar system, so they’re patrolling everything. We can’t get drones close enough to do a ground survey.”
“So we have no chance of being able to stealth in?” I asked.
Ian shook his head. If we wanted to retrieve Ferdinand, we had to go in as MineCorp. Five lives would depend on my ability to play a convincing role. I swallowed the anxiety that wanted to devour me whole.
Ian scooted his chair closer. After a brief hesitation, he reached out and squeezed my hand. “What are you thinking?”
“There are so many things that could go wrong. I could be leading us all to our deaths. But if we don’t go, Ferdinand dies. It’s impossible.”
“You can do it,” Ian said quietly. “Impossible isn’t in your vocabulary. Look at what you’ve accomplished already. I would not be helping you if I thought you were going to fail.”
I laughed. “I didn’t give you much choice.”
“Where your safety is concerned, there is always a choice,” he disagreed. “And I chose to work with you.”
Now I just had to live up to that trust. “When do you want to go?”
“The days are short on XAD Seven—around fourteen hours,” Ian said. “Today, midnight local time falls around six Universal. If we jump by four then coast in for two hours, our time on the ground will be in the dark. That gives us a little less than two hours of prep. Is that enough?”
“The less time I have to freak out, the better,” I said. “Does the bathroom have cosmetics equipment? We both need to change our hair color. I have my handheld, but it’ll take forever.”
“This bathroom does,” he said with a wave at the far door. “You’re welcome to go first.”
I hopped up, too anxious to sit still. “Thanks.”
The attached bathroom was tiny but clean. I brought up the cosmetics settings and was happy to find the full suite of options. I watched the preview of the changes in the mirror as I swiped through the