Forged (Star Breed #10) - Elin Wyn Page 0,56

find out what’s taking up space on all those hidden floors,” I said.

Maybe it was petty of me to be quite so happy to see Alcyon freeze in his tracks, but it had been a crappy day.

He whirled back towards me. “You did crack that data,” he said accusingly. “I haven’t been able to recreate everything, but during the attack, I got the alert those files had been accessed.”

“Not by me,” I laughed, then stood a little straighter, balancing my weight gingerly as I tested moving my shoulder around. “I never was in your files in the first place.”

“Then how did you know?” He didn’t sound like it was going to be easy to convince him I’d had nothing to do with those files.

Suspicious people were a pain in the ass.

“Lucky guess, backed up with a good sense of spatial measurements,” I answered, not really caring anymore if he believed me, but willing to make the effort in the hope that he’d volunteer some much-needed information in return. “You had way too much space in this thing for the number of people and labs you were running.” I waved him on and he reluctantly continued down the sloping walkway.

“A station with too much space, an exploratory ship on a nearby moon that never came back, and rumors of secrets interesting enough that the heir to your rival corporation decided you needed to be infiltrated.” Alcyon muttered something, but I didn’t catch it. “It didn’t even need the attack by Denau on your supposedly lowly little fabrication station to give me a clue that there was something else going on here.”

Finally, he stopped and entered a long series of digits into a recessed panel, then slid his hand into the slot that opened up.

“And here we thought we’d been clever, requesting the Imperial ambassador meet us here rather than at Dysek headquarters,” he said. “We thought it would keep ExaTek out of our business.”

Another door slid open and finally we stepped into the real Station 112.

Thalcorr stepped forward, still annoyingly regal in his rags. He took in the vast engineering complex with one sweeping gaze. “I see that the Emperor should’ve sent a team of engineers with us.”

“I’m not exactly a team, but I can probably follow along,” I said.

I shook my head at his look of mild surprise. “I’m not just a pretty face, you know. I’m pretty good at this stuff.”

Not that I was entirely certain what this stuff was, in this case.

But I’d figure it out.

The back of the room was filled with gigantic canisters, filled with swirling colors. Something about the shifting patterns reminded me of something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Alcyon walked to the central console and pulled up a display. “I had a feeling when you ran your little test on our fabrication design team that you had an engineering background,” he said. “Tell me what you think about this.”

He flipped out a 3D holographic model of… something and sent it across the room to me.

I looked at the schematics, pulled apart everything I could.

Studied it again, and thought about how it could be used.

“You don’t need an engineer for this, Thalcorr. You need a physicist. Maybe a chemist. Or both.” I pulled open the diagram for one of the canisters, looking for more clues. “I don’t know how they’re doing it, but I can tell you what they’re ending up with. Whatever they’re compressing, they’re putting it into high-density fuel cells.” I tapped one and sent it spinning through the air back toward Alcyon. “And that’s all well and good, but it doesn’t get me closer to getting Yasmin out of this snake pit.”

“You’re quite correct,” Alcyon nodded. “Using a proprietary formula that we acquired a number of years ago, we’ve been able to convert the atmosphere of the gas giant below us into high-powered fuel. The process is unique.”

That would explain why the swirl of colors looked familiar.

Normally, it would be fascinating. Normally, I’d want to take the whole thing apart, put it back together, see how it could all be improved.

Now, there were other things on my mind.

“Don’t care. Where’s Yasmin?”

“You don’t want to know more about what she was willing to risk so much to discover?” he answered. “Our company is willing to offer our process to the Empire at a discount in exchange for trading considerations.” Alcyon tilted his head slightly. “Of course, given the current set of complications, if the Empire could see its way to