Page 7 of Shielded in the Shadows

I spread my arms, indicating the medbay. “You know where to find me.”

Ignoring the shrill alarms, he yanked the osteorepair devices off and tossed them onto the exam table. His arms weren’t fully healed, but clearly his pride and fury overrode his good sense. The bones would finish healing on their own eventually, or maybe he’d visit another medic elsewhere in the meantime.

“Report this to Sjer and I’ll sever your spine and rip off your wings,” Jonor hissed on his way out the door.

I listened to his boots stomping down the corridor in the opposite direction of the bridge. Likely he was headed to engineering to deliver Sjer’s message about the engines.

Despite his threat, Jonor knew I’d report his decision not to finish healing his arms. Sjer needed to know one of his people wasn’t at a hundred percent. If I didn’t report it and Sjer found out later, it would be my ass. The parting warning was more about saving face than an actual threat. At the very least, Jonor wouldn’t try to sever my spine until the job on Ghira Station was done. After that, though, all bets were off. Jonor was a vindictive scut liable to act on impulse rather than good sense. He’d proven that time and again.

I’d probably have to deal with him, then. Ghira Station would be a good place for an accident.

I sent the requisite message to Sjer, shut and locked the door, and activated a triage training module on the screens in the corner of the medbay I’d set up as my office.

I leaned back in my creaky chair and scrubbed my face.

According to my handler, a humorless Tivoran female code named Gitto, the GAIS wanted me serving aboard the Fancy because they needed intel on where Sjer was fencing his ill-gotten gains. They also wanted to know more of his contacts, such as whoever had passed along the information about the Raxia-bound cargo vessel going down on Puret IV.

But most of all, Gitto and her superiors believed Sjer was ambitious enough that he wouldn’t be satisfied with plundering smugglers’ ships and salvaging cargo from wrecks. Almost eleven standard months after I’d sworn my oath to serve Sjer as a medic and fighter, the scenario the GAIS had predicted was unfolding before my eyes.

If Sjer successfully claimed his favor for completing this bounty, this crew would likely become affiliated with a major criminal organization. And that meant as long as I didn’t jeopardize my position, I would go from a good undercover asset to an extremely valuable one.

The price—to start—would be this smuggler’s life. No doubt there would be more costs after this. There always were.

I left the triage training module running on one screen and called up the schematics of Ghira Station on another. It was an open secret that Sjer tracked all computer activity aboard the ship. He’d expect everyone assigned to the mission to be examining the station layout in preparation. I’d need to study as much as anyone else, even if my primary purpose was that of a medic, leaving most of the fighting to the others and focusing on getting the bounty aboard the Fancy alive.

But as I flicked through the station layout, memorizing the locations of security offices and other key places, as well as routes from the docking bays to the main promenade, the habitat rings, and so forth, I was composing an encoded message to Gitto on my wristcomm, using an extremely high-tech hidden set of functions not even Sjer’s security scanners had uncovered.

In a few terse sentences, I explained the situation and requested instructions. I had a feeling I knew what my handler’s reply would be, but I sent the message anyway.

An hour later, I was memorizing the layout of the station’s three-level promenade when my wristcomm signaled that I had a response from Gitto.

It was a single word: Proceed.

I’d been an operative for fifteen years, but my stomach felt like I’d swallowed rocks.

For my message to have reached Gitto via intersector relay and then a reply to have come back this quickly, the decision had to have been made within minutes, if not instantaneously. The smuggler’s life had been weighed and deemed expendable in those scant moments.

Not that I was surprised. This scenario was what the GAIS had wanted all along: a deep-cover operative embedded in an established privateer crew with a captain hungry to trade piracy and salvage for something more lucrative. I’d be in an ideal situation to feed prime intel from inside a crime syndicate back to the GAIS. It was an intelligence dream come true for my handler. They couldn’t have planned it better.