said, holding up his hand to stop Laramie’s threats. He was surprised that Laramie had missed the important bit of Spence’s announcement.
But Marit hadn’t. “What rumors?” she asked. “What are people saying?”
“Are you saying there are other ships being watched?” Denver asked.
Spence eyed them all in surprise. “You’re kidding, right? You haven’t heard the buzz?”
When his answer was nothing but stunned silence, he shrugged and started to talk.
“Everybody’s talking about how some salvage ship out there found something big. Now, some people say they found one of Tucker’s pods, and a bit of a nav system with encrypted files leading right to the lost planet. But then that raid happened over at Gru Whittemore’s today, and so now folks are saying this crew, whoever they are, found a ship all stuffed full of biologicals and dead colonists, and they’re just looking to make a little profit before the shit’s all seized by station security. Can you believe that? People think they were trying to sell to Gru, but then the raid happened—”
“How do you know all this?” Denver asked.
Spence shrugged. “I don’t know. Rumors. Everybody’s talking about it. My roommate’s a bartender at one of the brothels in the red district, and you wouldn’t believe the shit he’s heard. Like, that this ship found a bunch of female colonists in cryosleep, and they’re being sold on the black market, and that they have actual video evidence of Li’Vin complicity in destroying Tucker’s rebellion, and that—”
“Wait,” Marit interrupted. “You said there are other ships being watched.”
“Well, yeah. At least four that I know of.”
“That you know of?” Laramie asked.
“Sure. I work the docks, you know? I deliver for the grower’s guild, and two of the ships I delivered to today were under guard. Those were bigger ships though. I think station security figures it’d have to be a bigger ship to find something that was once part of the Tucker Rebellion, but then when I got here and you had guards too, I figured they must be thinking it could have been smaller too. But man, those other ship captains are just stumped, you know? I mean, they’re really confused as to… uh… what the guards are looking for…” His words trailed away, and he slowly looked from Denver, to Laramie, to Marit, all of whom were standing stricken, their mouths hanging open. “Wait a minute,” he said, and Denver realized they’d made a possibly fatal mistake. “It’s you, isn’t it? Holy shit, it’s you! I had no idea, but—”
“No,” Laramie said, even as Marit tried to say, “Of course not!”
“—those other ship crews were sort of confused and couldn’t figure out why they were being guarded so closely. A couple of them already had sweeper bots crawl all over their cargo, and they’re still under guard, even after nothing was found. And like I said, they’re totally stumped. But not you! You’re not stumped at all, are you? You’re not wondering why they’re watching you. You know why they’re watching you, and—”
“No,” Denver said, holding up his hands, trying to stop the flow of words, “we’re surprised too, I promise. We have no idea—”
“—holy shit!” Spence was really going now, his eyes bright, his hands flying around in his excitement. “What the hell did you find? Oh my god. Your cargo bay was empty, so that means whatever you found, it’s small. Like, really small. Holy shit. Oh my god. Did you find a—a—what? The nav system, like they say? Or was it biologicals? Or—”
Laramie said in Denver’s head, his tone sardonic.
“Spence, wait!” Denver said, raising his voice. “Please. Just, stop!”
Spence complied, clamping slender fingers over his mouth, but Denver could see how hard it was for him to do it. He was practically bouncing on his toes in excitement. But despite his enthusiasm, there was an innocence about him that made Denver think he could trust him.
“We found a pod.”
Spence fell back a step, bumping into the doorframe behind him.
Denver ignored him.
“So…” Spence said quietly, “biologicals?” And to Denver’s surprise, he sounded disappointed. “Not a ship?”
“Not a ship,” Denver said, “but you’d be surprised how much of the rest is accurate.”
“Well,” Marit said, “not the part about the colonists, cryofrozen or otherwise.”
“But the rest?” Spence asked, his eyes locked on Denver’s.
Denver looked at Marit, who only