The Lost Ship of the Tucker Rebellion - Marie Sexton Page 0,21
hard to get?”
Denver felt the lingering presence of his brother as Laramie essentially used their connection to eavesdrop on the conversation.
“Forget it,” Denver said, not wanting to needlessly antagonize his twin. “Let’s go see Poppy.”
Poppy’s service bay was a good twenty-minute walk away, taking them through the constant bustle of Titan X. There were the usual salvagers, smugglers, and pirates near the docks. Vendors and prostitutes alike hawked their wares. Farther in, toward the center of the station, were the more refined portions of station society—living quarters, schools, businesses and high-end clothing. But here, the baser instincts ruled.
The ground was gritty with space dust and human waste, this part of the docks too rural to get treated by the sweepers more than once every standard week. It stank, like oil and ozone and too many people, and there was no pretty false sky to illuminate the buildings and lend a sense of day and night. This part of the station was always open for business, no matter what kind of “business” that might be. Denver had been through here countless times before, but this was the first time he’d ever felt out of place. The sooner they worked out a way to offload some of their precious cargo, the better, before it made him paranoid.
Marit stopped every now and then to scan the wares offered by vendors, occasionally haggling with them, although she always decided the price was too high and moved on without buying. Denver waited for her, fidgeting nervously, impatient to keep moving, yet also aware of the fact that he still didn’t know how to approach Poppy without tipping their hand. He needed to find a buyer for biologicals, and a way to translate the nav file, but asking for both at once would surely put Poppy on alert that something big was going down. As much as they needed her, they couldn’t count on her to keep their secret safe.
But then, who could they trust to keep a secret apart from themselves? Maybe it was better to start by confiding in one person, someone they had a decent rapport with, instead of bringing different people in for different things. They’d already decided not to risk using Doc unless they had to. Why not see what Poppy could do for both their needs?
They finally reached Poppy’s repair bay. Technically, Poppy was a mechanic—probably the best on Titan X—but her real power was knowledge. Repairing ships meant talking to captains and engineers. It occasionally meant logging in to a ship’s computer system, and it was only a few keystrokes from there to figure out where the ship had been and what its crew had found. She had her fingertips on the pulse points of Titan X’s lucrative trade business. Denver thought of her as a rather benevolent spider, collecting intel as she spun an ever-widening web.
It was busy, as usual, and Denver chewed a cuticle as he and Marit waited their turn to meet with her. Denver still wasn’t sure which way to go. They could find a buyer for the biological first so they could outfit the Jiminy and be ready to run. But how to prepare for a trip if they didn’t know where they were going or how long it would take them to get there? So maybe they needed the file translated first. But they might have other ways of getting that done. Maybe OPAL could find something by simply digging through the station archives.
But what if she couldn’t?
Finally, Denver and Marit were ushered into Poppy’s office. And Denver still didn’t know what he was going to say.
Poppy sat behind a cluttered desk wearing overalls and steel-toed work boots. Her hair was more gray than brown, although she wasn’t much older than Denver. She had it tied tight behind her head. A streak of grease stained her forehead, and her fingers were strong and rough with callouses as she shook Denver’s hand.
“Denver, Marit, have a seat. I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon. How was the run to the Kuznetsov Debris Field?”
Such a simple question, yet impossible to answer, and Denver found himself stammering as they settled in across from her. “Fine. Good. Or, well, you know. About what you’d expect.”
Poppy’s eyebrows went up, her expression caught between confusion and amusement.
“We ran into Tonlet,” Marit cut in. “He claimed the governor was bargaining with him over salvage rights for that sector.”