study it better.”
“Keep your pants on,” I growled. “You’re distracting enough as it is.”
Wrapping a short length of braided rope around her selected pieces, I slung them next to the scrap of metal she’d dubbed a spear, and together, we picked our way around the cave-in.
She glanced up at the ceiling. “Wonder how thick the rock is between us and the surface?”
“Not close enough to try to dig through unless that’s our only option,” I said firmly.
The tunnel kept winding, but now I was certain there was a slight uphill grade. Possibly promising, but I didn’t want to get her hopes up only to have them dashed again.
Without prompting, she continued, voice steadier now. “I had a hacker friend of mine get into Desyk’s books, show me their budgets. One thing I know about corps - the money will always tell you where the secrets are. For a minor fabrication station in the middle of nowhere, they’re pumping a lot of money into 112.”
She stopped to look at a cluster of mushrooms sprouted in a niche, prodding at them, but apparently decided against collecting more samples.
“I had two options, try to get into their headquarters, or try to pick up some clues on the other end. I’d never taken a contract before, so I wasn’t really in the databases. My friend was able to show me a few tricks, nothing fancy, but enough to get into their systems, start to find my way around when I was off shift.”
“What was the secret?” I asked. “What was worth all of this?”
She shook her head, face pinched into a scowl. “I don’t know. It’s been driving me crazy. Just before we escaped from the observation dome, I’d found a cache of hidden documents.” She patted the pocket on the leg of her coveralls absently. “I only had time to copy them, not to read them. But once I get them back to Uncle Ran, it’ll all be worth it.”
I thought about the old man and the young one on the deck of the ship leading the flotilla that had attacked Station 112. “That was your uncle and brother, wasn’t it?” I said
She looked up, cheeks coloring slightly as she bit her lip. “I should’ve told you sooner. I guess I got out of the habit of trusting anyone.”
I waved it away. “Maybe, but we both had secrets, and I’m worried about something else. If they knew you were on the station trying to get the data, why would they have opened fire like that without knowing you were safe first?”
She folded her arms around her waist tightly. “I don’t know. I’ve gone over it and over it, and it just doesn’t make any sense. Maybe they had bad intel, thought I was already off-station.”
“That’s possible,” I agreed. “Are you sure they knew you were there in the first place?”
“I sent them a message outlining my plan,” she said, her tone a bit defensive.
“You didn’t tell them in person? Messages—” I caught myself, thinking of the last time she’d received a message too late.
But she didn’t seem to have heard me.
“There’s no way they would’ve let me go,” she laughed shortly. “My uncle never had his own children and has always been very protective of us. If he had his way, he’d have his ‘negotiation specialists’ with me at all times, making sure nothing ever dared to bump into me.”
Her smile softened. “And my brother,” she shrugged. “I guess you and your brothers aren’t all exactly twins, but trust me, having a twin brother who is all of a minute older can make a girl’s life difficult.”
Silently, I took questioning her brother about his lack of concern for his sister’s welfare off my mental checklist.
For now.
“The only way I was going to get to Station 112 and find out what was going on was to go on my own. My brother couldn’t have done the mission. He looks too much like our father and Uncle Ran. Even though we’ve been out of the corporate news for years, it was too much of a risk that someone would flag him.” She chewed at her lower lip, fidgeted a bit with her moss necklace. “It’s just so odd that they’d have arrived now, just when I had a chance to get those files.”
“As it turns out, I’m pretty happy you took that chance,” I admitted. “As long as you don’t make a practice of pickpocketing. Do you? Do we need to have a talk about