roomful of mercs in here’ keyword,” I muttered to myself.
“I promise there isn’t a roomful of mercs in here,” Loch called back. I could hear the grin in his voice.
I locked the back door and approached the room we’d used before. The door was open and the light was on. Loch sat on a barstool that hadn’t been in the room before. He clutched a bloody rag to his upper left arm.
“Holy hell, are you okay?”
“Energy bolt grazed me,” he said. “Just deep enough that it didn’t cauterize. It looks worse than it is.”
“That’s good because it looks terrible,” I said. “Why didn’t you get the first aid kit?”
“Didn’t know we had one,” Loch said. “I’ll be fine by tomorrow. Can’t say the same for the bastard who shot me.”
“What happened?” I asked. I pulled out my com and checked him for trackers and bugs. He was clean, as was the room, and our packs from the ship. The two trackers I’d attached to his cloak didn’t set off the alarm since they were mine now. Assuming neither of us had been tracked the old-fashioned way, we wouldn’t have to leave tonight.
I rummaged around in my pack from the ship until I dug out the first aid kit. Loch grimaced but didn’t object. He was right, the wound looked worse than it was. It was shallow, but as wide and long as my finger. I bet it stung like nobody’s business. I cleaned the wound and put a healing bandage on it.
“I went to look for heat only to realize the heater was missing. I’d been feeling twitchy, so I went outside to check the perimeter. Rockhurst’s men are sneaky fuckers, I’ll give them that. They moved in before I could warn you, so I did what I could to draw them away.” He shrugged his bad shoulder. “It worked a little too well.”
“If the crew is from the Santa Celestia—and I don’t know why they wouldn’t be—they are some of the most highly trained troops in House Rockhurst. I can’t believe they didn’t hit you worse than that if they had time to get a shot off.”
“He was preoccupied with the direction of my blade,” Loch said.
I’d seen Loch in action. I knew he had to have been military at one point because he was part of the team suppressing the Fornax Rebellion. But to know he’d gone toe-to-toe with one or more of Rockhurst’s elite soldiers and come out relatively unscathed . . . well, that was just plain scary.
“So who sold us out?” I asked. I shrugged off the extra cloak and untied the bag of clothes from around my waist. I should’ve grabbed some real food while I was out. Another energy bar held the appeal of eating dirt, but I needed the calories. And I needed to drink more water. I could feel the first signs of dehydration creeping in.
“The punk who tried to shake us down. I found his rat right before Rockhurst closed on us. Said he heard a new crew was looking for a big guy and thought he’d take care of the problem for his boss. He didn’t mention you to Rockhurst because he was afraid they wouldn’t come if there were two of us.”
“I got tagged on my way out. Managed to lose him in the central district. Did you know Richard is on-planet?”
Loch’s gaze sharpened and he sat straighter. “How do you know?”
That was a clever dodge of the question. “I nearly ran into him on the street. How did you know?”
“I doubled back on the soldiers. Heard them talking about how Richard was going to have their asses if they didn’t find me.”
Plausible, but not entirely true. I’d been reading people for a long time. Loch lied better than most, but I’d bet anything that he was lying now. So what did he gain by lying? Was he trying to work a double-cross with Richard?
“Did Rockhurst see you?” Loch asked. His own suspicion was obvious now. Clearly our road to trust was progressing not-at-all.
“I don’t think so. He didn’t stop me and no one followed me. But we’re going to need to move fast or they’ll catch us again. How many do you think are guarding the ship?”
“At least two. Even with the ship’s security they’ll leave a couple men behind. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a six-man team, to give them rotating shifts and backup.”
I sat on the bed and dug out an energy