Drifters' Alliance, Book 2 (6 page)

I wave my arm around at the mechanics that surround us. “You didn’t do this with your skeleton crew. There’s no way, no how, and nothing you say will have me believing that. I’ve lived in this stuff for years. I know what it takes to put it together, to design it, to keep it going… You’re great, but you’re not a god.” I take a deep breath in and out to try and calm myself. Her mutinous expression is not making self-control easy. “Listen, I get that you’ve been autonomous in here for a long time, and who knows what you were doing before? I have to assume much the same, since you’re so good at it. But that life is over. You’re not alone anymore. You’re part of my team, and being part of my team means you have to be honest.”

“Like you were honest with us?” she says in a bitchy tone, her chin going up. She’s still holding her cheek like I made it bleed or something.

“Yes, like I’ve been honest with you.”

“You didn’t tell us you were OSG until you had to. Until you were
exposed
.”

“I’m not OSG,” I say, my teeth grinding together. “There was nothing to tell. And right now, all you need to know is that this is
my
ship, I’m the
captain
of it, and I’m asking you who built this goddamn grid.”

I wish I knew how to reach her through that attitude. I could swear she’s on the brink of revealing something, but she’s battling with herself over it. Probably weighing the risks of revelation against being kept onboard as a prisoner. My internal radar is pinging like crazy. There’s something she doesn’t want me to know, and it directly relates to her and who she is, not just this biogrid. I can feel it in my bones.

“What’s your big secret, eh, Lucinda? What don’t you want me to know about you?”

Her hands drop away, her arms going stiff at her sides. She grabs the edges of her lab coat sleeves near her wrists and pulls on them in her frustration and nervousness, making her coat draw away from her neck on both sides, exposing the skin underneath. The hollow by her collarbone is now revealed when before it had always been covered in my presence.

“Nothing,” she insists. “There’s nothing about me that’s a secret.”

As the jacket moves even farther away from her neck, I grin. The harder she pulls that lab coat, the clearer it becomes for me. Talk about secrets … she’s got a whopper of one hiding just under her lab coat, and it’s almost as good as me being former OSG.
I’ll be damned…

Chapter Eight

SHE STOPS HER FIDGETING AND folds her arms across her chest, the material of her coat once again covering her markings. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”

I shrug. All the tension has seeped out of me and left me feeling nearly weightless.

“Quit it. It’s making me nervous.”

Rollo coughs. “Uhhh, can Rollo be excused?”

“No!” Lucinda and I say loudly and in tandem.

She blinks at me, refusing to be amused at our mutual annoyance at her helper.

“Lucinda,” I say, trying to bring her around with my friendly tone, “come on … are you going to tell me your big secret or am I going to lock you up?” I have to work really hard not to laugh, I’m so happy. This is such an unexpected bonus.
Who would’ve thought?

“On what charges?” she asks, tapping her toe.

She actually thinks she has a leg to stand on when she most definitely does not. Now that I know what she is —who she is— she’s completely and totally without a single defense for her actions. I thought she was in deep shitflakes before with this biogrid growing under her former captain’s nose, but now that I know
this
little secret about her, it makes her actions that much more duplicitous. She didn’t just build this thing and start growing crops; she had a damn army of people in here doing it.

The tiny green and purple marks I saw on her skin hidden below her coat tell me pretty much everything I need to know about her and how she managed to construct this majestic beast of a biogrid, but I don’t want to be the one to say that to her. It would be better for everyone involved if she’d just confess her personal mystery to me; otherwise, I risk not getting her on my side.

That’s the nature of the Romanii; they never break tradition and share the details of their activities unless it’s absolutely necessary for life or death, and even then sometimes they choose the latter over exposure. But when they do let you into their world, you’re in for life. Their bonds are beyond strong.

“Material falsehoods,” I say, quoting from a text I read and committed to memory during training at some point. I can’t remember whether it was Level 2 or 3. “When questioned by your captain as a member of his or her crew, you are required to answer truthfully, and failure to do so is punishable to the extent the captain determines.” I pause to let that sink in. Maybe she’s heard it before, but it’s difficult to tell from her stone-cold expression. “You and I both know you had others helping with this grid —a lot of others, and people not on this crew— and until you admit that, you are guilty of not being truthful with me, and of directly and purposefully countermanding my orders.”

She’s shaking all over. I’ve seen this before, during my training with the OSG. They regularly had us watch interrogations of various people in custody who’d been detained for violating OSG directives, and the Romanii were regular guests of the OSG’s facilities. It took a lot to break them, and they were never the same after when they did. Because they place honor of family over every other value, a violation is a denial of their basic humanity in their eyes. Of ten successful interrogations I’d seen, eight resulted in the eventual suicides of the prisoners, all of them Romanii, and I don’t want that for Lucinda. Not in a million years.

I turn my attention to Rollo. “Rollo, please leave the biogrid.”

He looks relieved. “Where should Rollo go?”

I sigh at his ridiculous habit of refusing to refer to himself in the first person. Obviously he has issues, and maybe one day I’ll get to the bottom of them, but not today. Right now, I just need him out of here so I can have a private conversation with this Romanii girl.

“
Rollo
has a choice,” I say. “He can either go back to his holding chamber, or he can help Jeffers with his inventory. Under no circumstances should Rollo go anywhere else.”

He nods. “Rollo will help with the inventory. Maybe that’ll earn him a fritter.”

“Or not.” I wait for him to acknowledge the fact that fritters don’t come to those who slack.

“Yes, Captain,” he says, giving me a sad salute before turning to go.

When I’m sure he’s left the area and the portal to the grid has closed behind him, I turn back to Lucinda. “Okay, listen. I’m sorry I was so harsh with you before, but I had no idea.” I’m backed up against a wall. She’s not going to answer me of her own free will because her customs and training forbid it, but without her on the grid, the entire thing will die along with all my plans. We just need to get this shit out in the open and deal with it. I’m nothing if not decisive when there are no other options, and we have to move forward
now
. Forget protocol and cultural sensitivities; it’s time for the big reveal.

“No idea about what?” She’s back to being suspicious. Her attitude makes complete sense to me now, though, so I don’t take offense.

“No idea you’re Romanii.”

Her jaw drops open and she goes into full glare mode. “Romanii? What?! Are you serious?!” Her outrage is as telling as her body art. It’s not that big an insult to be called one, unless you’re trying to hide who you really are or unless you have a big chip on your shoulder and think everyone in the universe is out to get your people.

I shrug. “Yes, of course I’m serious. And had I known that about you before, I might have given you a break earlier. Hiding things from me is only going to make your life more difficult. I’m a fair person, Lucinda. I know your people and their customs. All you had to do was tell me who you are, and it would have been fine. We could have avoided this whole mess.” I say this knowing no Romanii in the history of their people would ever do such a thing. They’ve been persecuted for too long, not to mention the fact that they’re super wily. They’re too sly to get sappy and trusting with a xeno.

She crosses her arms over her chest again. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her tone is too haughty to be genuine.

I lift a brow. “Are you sure that’s how you want to play it?”

“I’m not playing anything. You’re crazy.” She tries to laugh, but it comes out really shrill. She stops the lame attempt at humor as soon as she hears herself.

“Take your coat off.” I gesture at her white garb.

She looks down. “What?”

“Take it off. Show me you’re not Romanii.” That’s the one part about her people that’s never made sense to me. For a group trying so hard to operate under the radar, they sure do make it impossible to hide once they have any amount of skin showing. I guess pride in who you are sometimes overrules the survival instinct. I can relate. Hell, I probably should have stayed in my father’s household and just toed the line until I died; that would have been the smarter thing to do. But, of course, here I am…standing in a stinky hot biogrid ordering a girl to strip.

“No, I’m not going to take my clothes off for you. You’re insane.”

“I’m not asking you to take off your clothes. Just your coat.”

“My clothes, my coat … it’s the same thing.”

I’m starting to lose my patience. This is typical Romanii shit she’s pulling — they love to distract, annoy, and wear a person down with semantics and idiotic commentary. What she doesn’t realize is that I’ve been trained by some pretty ruthless people how to cut through that bullshit. But I don’t really want to use those methods on her. Not today, anyway. Instead of the OSG way, I’m going to use insults against her culture as my battle tactic, because sometimes, I fight dirty like that.

“If you want to convince me you’re not Romanii, you should probably stop acting so Romanii.”

Her arms jerk down to her sides. “I’m not even going to justify that with a response.”

I lift my chin toward her arms, stiff as boards with her hands in fists. “You already did respond, actually. Why are you so defensive? Is it because you think I’ll discriminate against you?” She has every right to fear that. Romanii aren’t exactly the most respected of people populating our universe. Something about them relieving people of their possessions without paying for them might be the reason for it.

The Romanii have this cultural attitude that no amount of imprisonment or redirection has been able to eliminate from their group-think; namely, that any asset not being used or guarded carefully is obviously a resource in need of redistribution by their people. The fact that Lucinda created this entire biogrid under Langlade’s nose is the perfect example of this theory in action: he wasn’t using the outer and upper chambers or these pipes and other parts? Fine. Lucinda found a use for them that was more than adequate. Some people call the Romanii scavengers; I call them resourceful. The trick is to get them on your side.

“No, I’m not being defensive at all,” she says, her chin once again up in the air. “I’m just not going to admit to being a thief.”

I hold out my hands. “Hey, no one here called the Romanii thieves.”

“You’ve done nothing but call me a thief since you stepped foot on this ship.” Her eyes go a little watery at that. Ironically, they are pretty sensitive about the stealing thing.

“So you’re admitting to being Romanii, then?”

“No!” she shouts. “I’m doing no such thing!”

“Fine. Let’s go, then.” I start walking toward the exit.

“Where?”

“To the brig. If you can’t be honest, I can’t trust you with this ship’s most valuable asset.”

She stands there with her jaw going out of joint, first left and then right, as she battles her inner demons. I wait for her to come to the inevitable conclusion that if she’s not here to take care of her green babies, all her hard work will go to waste when they die.

“Fine.” She grabs at the buttons on her jacket. “You want to see me without my coat on, go ahead. Get your cheap thrills.”

As the jacket slides from her shoulders, the edges of her all-over body tattoos are revealed, snaking out from under her collar and sleeves. Bits of concealing makeup near the bottom of her neck have smudged, telling me she’s gone to considerable effort to hide her roots from the people on this ship. I wonder if it’s just me she’s been keeping in the dark or if it includes the gingers and Jeffers too. I find it hard to believe they could all be that clueless. There had to be thirty people in here working on this grid.
Wily motherfuckers, every last one of them.

“Thank you, Lucinda. You can put your coat back on.”

She jerks the material into place, yanking it up over her shoulders and refusing to meet my gaze.

As clearly as she is rejecting me, it isn’t working to dissuade me from engaging with her. In fact, I’m anxious to help her understand my thought process. Normally, I’d just let someone in her position stew over it, but not when that person is a Romanii. Letting a Romanii get riled up about something and then giving them time to really simmer in that anger is never a good idea. They have long memories, and they pass them on to their kin. And those kin tend to pop up in the damnedest places.

“I respect your culture, Lucinda. I would never call any of your people thieves.”

She says nothing in response.

“I also agree with the basic premise that extra resources should be put to use.”

Her motions slow down. Now she’s brushing invisible lint or maybe imagined wrinkles from her sleeve.

“But I also believe that before anyone relieves me of
my
assets, they should discuss it with me first. I’m not an unreasonable person. If I can’t use something for the good of the crew, I’ll give it up. I don’t get attached to things.”

“People are not things,” she finally says.

“I never said they were.”

“You’re so quick to threaten to put someone in custody, to tell them what they should be doing and not doing.”

I shrug. “That’s the job of the captain, Lucinda. I’m sorry that the leadership before I got on this ship was lacking, but it won’t be anymore. Not with me at the helm.”