in the soles of my boots kept me anchored. It wasn’t enough to make it hard to pick up my feet or move around. It just kept me close to the ship and allowed me to do what I needed to do without having to constantly worry about floating off.
Looking out the wide-open door, the same combination of sensations as usual shivered through me: a chill, a thrill. Spacewalking was cool. It was also terrifying.
I’d already checked twice, and so had Jaxon before he’d sealed me out of the main part of the ship, but I gave the tether another hearty tug before I let myself drift out, keeping a hand on the hull to guide me.
Carefully, I started combing the Endeavor for bugs. We didn’t have the tech for anything other than a manual sweep with the electronic wand in my hand, and it didn’t immediately pick up anything of note. The device had a fifteen-foot radius, so I didn’t have to touch every single part of the ship, but it was slow going to be methodical and thorough.
“Jax, when are you going to squeeze us into that supply line?” I asked. I wanted us to get lost in the other ships around Flyhole as fast as possible.
“Don’t like moving when you’re out there,” he grumbled.
“I’m holding on tight,” I assured him.
Jax bullied his way into a line of ships waiting for water renewal, but instead of just cursing us and then shrugging and going with it like ninety-nine percent of people would have, the captain behind us started flashing what-the-fuck? lights from the midsize cruiser’s bridge.
Great—that would really help us blend in.
I turned and glared, wishing the asshole would knock it off. The point of cutting into a line had been to make it look like we’d been here for a while, instead of like we’d just arrived in a panic to sweep for bugs.
The other ship kept going berserk on the Endeavor’s rear end, so I told Jax about the flasher and asked him to try to communicate enough with the cruiser to make the aggravated captain shut the hell up.
We were in breach of unwritten rules, but as soon as I finished, they’d get their spot in line back, and all would be right in the world of Flyhole extortion.
Who in their right mind would buy water at Flyhole when Albion 5 was just a hop away? There were at least thirty ships in this line, and they’d all pay twice as much here as they would on any inhabited rock.
Whatever. Money wasn’t an issue for everyone, and their loss was our gain. If those hunters got here before I was done, at least we wouldn’t be sticking out like criminals on the run. We looked a lot like everyone else here. Out in deep space, with nothing else around, a tracked ship was impossible not to spot in an instant. Here at Flyhole, you had to weed through the crowd to be sure you had the right one.
My skin buzzed with nervous energy as I crawled along the hull, meticulously moving the wand back and forth. I reached the stickers on the starboard side without getting a single hit for bugs. Since eliminating possible trackers was the priority, I left the numbers up for now and moved to portside. Two minutes later, my wand beeped through the earpiece I had in my helmet, its little flashes and alarms getting more frantic and insistent as I moved left and down.
“There you are,” I murmured, finally spotting the tracking bug. It was the exact same dark gray as the Endeavor and blended in almost perfectly.
“I’ve got a live one,” I said, informing the crew of my find.
“Try to destroy it,” Jax said. “If that doesn’t work, toss it hard.”
I took hold of the device and detached the transmitting bug with a sharp twist. It was a discreet, sophisticated little thing. I never would have seen it if the wand hadn’t led me to the right place. It was probably Shade’s, considering how well it matched the ship.
Envisioning Shade’s deceitful face, I hauled off and smashed the bug against the side of the ship.
The result was thoroughly unsatisfactory. It didn’t get out any of my anger or hurt, and in space, with a big, bulky space suit on, I didn’t move well enough for a really hard hit. The intact tracker kept transmitting, and my wand kept up its frenzied beeps.