Aberrant

Chapter 19

Hammering music. The thrash rock of E-district body-mod clubs clashing with dance-pit trance. A freak show of humanity lining walls covered with glowing obscenities.

The back corridors of C-Deck's entertainment district.

Kaplan psionically deflected attention and people from his path as he strode through the strobe-lit gloom, Jinsin Koel on his heels. He rallied his team, keeping his communications brief and encrypted. The CI's coms he vetted via the link he'd established with her tech, but true to form, the woman played things smart. She gave nothing away as she liaised with her colleagues. Nothing that would help bounty hunters track her. Nothing that would alert people to his team's presence at the port.

The last was possibly a moot point.

The lost air droid bothered him. If it had been hacked, someone could redeploy it, follow his team's tracks. And they were big tracks, those of the prospector droid they'd misappropriated. That droid currently sat among the dunes only a kilometre from the settlement, a giant red flag.

He blocked the rising pain in his skull and moved into the corridor leading to the lower docks. It was possible the Xykeree's interest in the crash site was benign. If they'd been attacked by the same hostile, they could be tracking its activities. A scenario that might explain the number of ships in local space.

But a troubling question kept circling his mind, made his pace quicken.

How had the Xykeree known about his ship?

The Phantom's cloaking tech had rebooted en route to Tirus 7. None of the civilian vessels holding in orbit had witnessed the scout ship's entry. Nor had anyone on the ground witnessed its rough landing, thanks to the planet's minimal population and suspiciously timed sat tech failure. And no one had reported seeing the crash site. Traffic wasn't being directed over that sector.

Only one ship had been in sensor range while the Phantom's cloak had been offline. Only one ship could have tracked his vessel—and had seemed to be able to even with the cloak engaged.

Matt black, almost spherical apart from its jutting engines. Nothing like the standard squid-shaped ships of the Xykeree.

Could the roaches have new cloaking and ship tech? Their technology hadn't changed in decades, if not longer. Hiring or conspiring with a third party was another possibility, but also seemed unlikely. The Xykeree were hardwired to see other species as enemy or prey. Hence, their poor track record with the treaty.

But they'd deviated from normal protocols. An armed Enforcement officer had made it onto their barge. They'd recognised a human CI as a separate entity from the port.

Kaplan thought of his dead crew. He wanted to stay, hunt down some answers, but Star Sector Defence needed to be made aware of the situation. The Xykeree's interest in his vessel, even if semi-innocent, had implications.

He headed for a side door to C-Deck's internal loading bay. The psionics beyond it, like those he'd endured on the main promenade, burned with petty frustrations. But malice and fear also churned in the atmosphere—consistent with Shio and Tripp's prior assessment. The young ensign and combat specialist had declared the deck "a viper pit" when they'd reconned it earlier. Illegal activity was rife. The CI's—Jinx's—warning about reloading his pistol had been on the mark.

Kaplan glanced back to her as he reached the side door. Her hood and the breather over her mouth and nose obscured her features, a disguise as much as a necessity. An environmental system malfunction on the top deck had seen good air pumped upward at the expense of the lower port. Most people wore breathers or, like him, took periodic hits from their resp units. But even with the disguise, Jinx was taking a risk coming to the lower docks. Port officers weren't popular on such decks, and someone had made her a specific target.