a former fence. Between the three of them, they could get me anything I needed, no matter how rare or illegal, and Rhys had the ships required to meet me anywhere in known space.
So where could I go that would be convenient for Ada but unlikely to be the first place Ian would look?
I pondered the question as I entered the flight deck. In the center of the room, the captain’s chair stood in front of a half-circle console made of sleek glass. The tactical and navigation stations flanked the captain’s chair on the left and right, respectively. I’d kept them more for tradition than need; I could control the entire ship from my console.
I slipped into my chair and logged in. The window shutters were closed for launch, but the video screens showed Earth falling away and the darkness of space opening up in front of the ship.
Thanks to its excellent computers, Aurora was capable of jumping nearly three thousand light-years at a time on its own, but getting far enough away that Ian couldn’t track me down in a matter of hours would require the help of a gate. Gates were giant supercomputers that could plot safe jump points millions of light-years away.
Gates usually operated in sets of two or more. The second gate wasn’t required, but if you jumped into deep space with no gate to calculate your return trip, then you’d have to risk jumping back using bad data. No one would voluntarily jump with bad data if it could be avoided.
I owned a small hotel in Atlantia, the fifth-largest city on the popular resort planet of Gamma Carinae Dwarf One. I’d purchased the property through a series of subsidiary and shell companies. The paper trail was so convoluted that it was highly unlikely anyone could ever link the building back to me. GCD One had a nearby gate and a constant stream of traffic—two more ships wouldn’t even register.
I plotted a course for Atlantia and routed it through two gates, just in case Ian managed to talk the RCDF into giving him my first jump coordinates. It added a six-hour cooldown for the FTL drive, but it would take Ada time to gather supplies anyway.
Earth’s gate was one of the fastest available, so although I was forty-ninth in the queue, my estimated wait time was only five minutes. I dashed off a quick message to Ada while I waited and encrypted it with our shared secret key: pegasaurus. We’d made up the creature as children then promptly forgotten about it until we had needed a secure, hard to guess but easy to remember key.
It was very early morning on APD Zero. I felt a little bad about flagging the message as an emergency because it would cause a ridiculous alarm on her end, but this was technically an emergency. Ada could catch up on her beauty sleep later.
Aurora chimed as the ship got a jump point from the gate. A few seconds later, the sound of the engine changed as the FTL drive engaged. The screen flickered as the ship switched to auxiliary power, then the engine noise reached a peak and fell silent.
The window shutters retracted. I’d chosen a gate outside a busy space station, but you’d never know it from looking. Even at just fifteen minutes away, the station was a faint light against the inky darkness of deep space. I’d like to visit but that was asking for trouble. If Ian followed me, he would assume the station was my final destination. It was safer for me to stay on Aurora and wait out the FTL cooldown, even if sitting on my hands for six hours felt like an eternity.
The main engine restarted and I directed the ship away from the pull of the lights. Aurora automatically tracked and avoided the dozens of ships around us. Without a nearby star, visual reconnaissance was worthless. There was, however, a neighboring asteroid field brimming with valuable resources for those brave enough to mine them—hence the station.
The proximity to the gate meant that communication was nearly as fast as on Earth. Ada’s message, when it arrived, came with a truly astonishing number of expletives. Ian wasn’t her favorite person to begin with and he wasn’t winning any more points with this latest stunt. Neither was Father.
She promised to get the supplies I needed and meet me on GCD One in a few hours. Now that I had more time, I sent her the coordinates and