Page 8 of Trove’s Purpose

“Well, the thing is, the person who currently owns the cup has no intention of giving it up. So, he needs you to convince them to do so. He’s given me control of however much we need to offer her to do it, but right now, the cup isn’t actually for sale.”

Tanin shook his head. “No. We’re a delivery company only. We bring things from one place to another. That’s it. We don’t fetch them, we don’t hunt them down, we don’t go searching. Either the cup is ready for pick up or it’s not.”

“He’s willing to pay extra.”

“I don’t-”

“Seventy-five thousand credz.”

The number she dropped so casually made all three males freeze. It even surprised Trove, who was sure he was beyond surprise at this time.

That much? Just to deliver a cup and keep quiet about it? That wasn’t a good deal; it was a suspicious one.

Chee just stared at them. Waiting for them to recover. Tanin was the first one to do so.

“That’s absurd for a cup,” he said. “Even if he expects us to arrange to get it ourselves.”

She shrugged. “It must mean that much to him, I guess. The amount he’s willing to pay the current owner is completely separate from what he’s paying you. You will get your payment regardless of what he has to trade for it. Furthermore, if this job is done well, he says that he has other jobs for you already lined up that he’s also willing to pay handsomely for.”

Trove’s fingers twitched at the idea of getting his hands on that much money. Even once the operating costs were taken out and the profits were divided equally amongst all of them, that was still a lot for each person…

However, Tanin still hesitated. His reticence didn’t go unnoticed either, because Chee said-

“Hyde also said that he has a vital part for you that you’re going to need if you want to make a replacement ship out of this recycling facility.”

Again, the three of them froze. How did he know…

“And what part is that?” Tanin asked, his voice calm despite the surprise.

“I don’t really know what it is,” Chee admitted. “But he said to tell you that it’s called a core connection, and you’d know what that meant.”

Once again, for the third time in so many sentences, they were all left stunned.

It was one thing to track them down out here. That was highly unlikely, but not altogether impossible with enough credz, recourses, and connections. And it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that, being resourceful themselves, they’d try to make their own ship out of the broken down starships that were left to decay here when the facility was abandoned.

But to know about Alred…

Their ship AI was a fully technological being, just as real in his personhood as any of them. He was an undroitt recall, a member of an extinct species that existed only in data storage. He was once the AI that operated this facility, but that was decades ago now. Records of Alred didn’t exist anymore. There was no one aside from them who knew what happened to him after this facility was abandoned. No one, including Alred, knew exactly how he ended up on Rik-Vane, and absolutely no one knew that he was acting, illegally, as their ship’s AI.

Or he had been, when they still had a ship.

They were cannibalizing the old, broken down starships left in this abandoned facility to build a new ship to get off this planet. They had everything they needed to build a functioning ship, but what they didn’t have was the specialized cord needed to attach Alred into the ship. They were planning on getting one once they were out of here, probably by trying to find their old cord if it was still intact and functioning in the debris of their old ship, but if not, they’d have to try to buy one.

But that cord was extremely rare. It was only used for the cores of the undroitt recalls. Their old one had been the one they stole out of Rik-Vane from where Alred had been hooked up before. They didn’t even know where to start looking for one.

For this Hyde person to not only know about Alred, to know about the cord, and to have the ability to obtain one…

Who was this person? How did he know them so well? More than that, what exactly did he want from them? There was no way this was just about a cup.

“I’ll talk to my crew,” Tanin finally said, his voice remarkably even. Trove was glad he wasn’t the one speaking, because he didn’t think he’d be able to maintain his composure half as well. “You will wait here until I come to a decision.”

Chee nodded, like she expected as much and remained sitting as Tanin gestured with his head to Trove and Rok. The four armed giant followed their captain easily, but it was much harder for Trove to tear his eyes away from the lovely human.

Looking at her was so exquisitely painful. He hated the sight of her. He craved the sight of her. He never wanted to look away; he wished desperately that he’d never seen her at all.

“Trove,” Tanin called, the sharp bite of his voice reminding him of his place. That his captain had essentially given him an order.

Still, as much as it hurt to look at her, it hurt more to look away. Especially those stormy eyes of hers. She blinked and when her eyes opened, she was looking directly at him. Her gaze cut through his heart like a hot steel blade.