Theodore Pembrooke smiled when the ramp to his ship finally closed. There were two reasons for his happy mood. The first was he could finally remove the ridiculous helmet and vac-suit. Despite the tailored fit, it was still annoying to move around in and it had served its purpose anyway. Now the Captains would think of him as some scared psider. A bit of simple misdire to throw them off ahem to uimate him. Theo was born and raised aboard a starship. He didn’t even step foot on a pary body until he was seventeen.

  The sed reason he was smiling, a real smile and not the fake one he used to sell his persona, was this assig would likely be over in as little as four months. He had po be out here for a year. And even with the travel time bad forth, he was going to be bae ihan six months.

  It was always nice when things went acc to pn. A little bit of ag, throw in some faux annoyance, and voilà. They agreed to arbitration instead of demanding he leave. People outside of OMNI might think the name granted him weight, but more often than not it simply ahose in charge. That didn’t mean it was all for show. Had they demanded he leave, well, it would have gotten ugly. Just probably not the way the captains might expect.

  The gunships were simply another set piece. They didn’t even have w turrets because they had been requisitioned before pletion, not that you could tell by looking at them. Theo wasn’t a fool. He had grifted ier fringes with his family for years. Pces like Petrov Station weren’t nearly as benign as they let on. The ss may have not picked up on the hidden ons mouo the massive structure, but he khey were there, hiding and waiting in case of an attack.

  But he didn’t o go down that route.

  Some might feel like ag this way was beh them. Theo just scoffed at that. This was hardly the lowest he had stooped to ensure a successful mission. He was many things for OMNI, but he much preferred the legitimate side of his personas. And it was always better to secure new discoveries than it was to destroy them. Not that he wouldn’t if he had to. It just got muessy in those cases.

  If he could, he would actually thank Alexander Kane for his fht tister his work. Doing that took most of his boss’ preferred methods of acquiring improvements to their designs off the table.

  Theo had looked this man up. A literal ghost with just this one iion to his name and a weak trail that ah half a brain could see was fake. That only intrigued him more though. There were very few geniuses running around in hiding. Because they khey could simply join one of the corporations and make money hand over fist.

  Ae everything else going on with this arbitration, Theo khis Alexander Kane was a genius. While the engine he had submitted the design improvement on wasn’t their fgship model, it was one of the workhorse designs that they sold a ton of. A two pert increase in effi an ehat was designed and built by Omni’s top engineers, along with input from AI, was nothing to s.

  When he had been hahis assig, Theo floated the topic of the man a position within the pany.

  The board shot down that request, g Kane’s unknown qualifications and sketchy history. That almost made Theo ugh. Having a sketchy history was fine for someone like him, but not fur employees.

  As he was rinsing off, there was a quiet kno his door. “e in,” he said, donning his persona again.

  “Mr. Pembrooke,” the crewman stated as he stood in the doorway. “We have received a hail.”

  Theo quirked an eyebrow. “From who?”

  “The STO Destroyer, Terra Bound, Sir.”

  Theo let a frown show on his face. He had expected something, but not this soon. This just proved he had chosen the correct approach here. Someone on this station had powerful es. Perhaps multiple people.

  “Did they hail us directly?”

  “Um… No, Sir. They hailed both O.. Huginn and O.. Muninn. The Captains of those ships passed on the message.”

  He really wao sigh. Couldn’t the young man just spit it out without him having to ask? “And what was that message?”

  “That they will be doing a fleet exercise in the system for the four months, and that both ships should lockdown aheir ons systems offline. Any as otherwise could be seen as hostile i.”

  This time he did let out a sigh. “Very well,” he answered adding a tinge of annoyao his words. “Tell them to follow the Navy’s orders. Better yet, have them dock. It seems we will be here for some time.”

  The crewman nodded before turning and leaving.

  Theo corrected his assessment, very powerful es. It wasn’t just ahat could get a task group of STO ships reassigned for ‘training maneuvers’.

  Ohe door was shut, Theo y on his bed and pulled up the station ws. He knew most of them already, but it never hurt to brush up. It wasn’t like anyone aboard the station was likely to work with an OMNI representative.

  He hummed tentedly as he scrolled through the legal red tape. Meanwhile, another man was looking into Alexander.

  ***

  Mingyu perused the dispyed information as he sat in a fortable chair in his aboard Destiny. They were making their way back to the belt to mine as much as they could before he was forced to return for the arbitration. There was no way he was wasting the four months staying docked iation.

  As he perused the data dump of this Alexander Kane, he began to see insistehey weren’t things most people would notice, but Mingyu had been ner to dealing with less-than-savory individuals over the years. That teo happen when you were the st stop for humanity.

  There was an unspoken agreemeween the criminals arov station. They kept their illicit activities outside Gliese 667, and when they came to the station, they were allowed to buy and sell instead of getting tossed out of an airlock. It was a very one-sided agreement, but it worked.

  He would have preferred not to deal with their kind at all, but Petrov Station didn’t have the luxury to turn any business away.

  Kane’s dots were fed. He would bet an asteroid stake on it. While there was nothing that screamed fake to a passing observer, Mingyu could see it. There was a ical quality about the man’s record. Not so much as a ticket or infra on any database. Until this issue with Omni, there wasn’t even a single pint filed against the man.

  No... that wasn’t quite true. A few months ago there was a pint filed by a man by the name of Maxim on the sed ring. The pint never mentioned a st name, but it did state that Alexander’s Repair Shop had defrauded him and stolen his ers. A quick look into the pint and resolution told Mingyu all he o know. Maxim was a shady piece of shit that had a undry list of pints, foreclosures, and other charges leveled against him.

  Mingyu made a o have station security arrest the man. Not for anything he did oation, although that did leave a bad taste in his mouth. No, the man was wanted for murder in another system. Turning him over to face charges would likely Mingyu a favor. The man’s crimes would have probably gone unnoticed if he hadn’t dug deep into all of Alexander’s known es.

  And that was another red fg. Kane had no known es until a little over six months ago. That started with the sale of a robot from the te Yuri Sokolov. All of the Captains knew of that ornery old goat. He had been here since before they were all born. You needed a part, he was the man you went to.

  The official statement was the Livera was lost with all hands on deck. But Pirates didn’t destroy ships uhey had a damn good reason to. Bad for business, and it caused their argets to either fight back or flee instead of surrendering. The fact that Yuri was aboard that ship couldn’t have been a ce. He made another o look into that case deeper. If a pirate that frequented Petrov had dohe deed, they were going to experience a cold walk. The pirate families were gettiirely too bold tely, they needed a reminder not to screw with Petrov's is.

  He flicked his fiurning to the page of the report. It cimed Kane was in some sort of medical pod for an incurable auto-immune disorder. Although it failed to list where that pod was stored. That was the biggest load of bio-waste Mingyu had ever read. The man might be in some medical pod, but there were plenty of treatments for all sorts of auto-immune disorders. Not cheap, certainly but they were there. No, if he had to guess, it was a cover to keep out of sight.

  That meant his face was reizable. Maybe an escaped engineer from the Haven? The pirates didn’t like their sves getting free. And losing one as valuable as Alexander would be a huge blow. That could also expin Yuri’s death. It retty clear the man had some e to Alexander. Maybe he even facilitated the fake identity and the use of the robot as a way for the man to keep out of sight.

  He leaned ba his chair and crossed his leg over his other. “Just who are you, Alexander Kane? And more importantly, are you an asset or a detriment to the station?”

  Mingyu o know more. He needed someorusted to take a measure of this man.

  After thinking it over, he pulled up his and scrolled through his tacts before stopping o didn’t take long to ect.

  “Mingyu, Dear, how are you?” Eva Wu’s voice was transmitted through the device. “I haven’t heard from you in some time. How’s the Destiny treating you?” He chuckled lightly at the older woman’s questions. She had been his father’s first mate until the maired and turned over the ship to him. She retired not long after.

  “It’s good, Eva. Are you busy?”

  She ughed. “Hun, I’m retired. I have nothing but time. You need something from this old woman, just ask instead of beating around the engine bay.”

  “Fair enough,” he smiled. “I was w if you could talk to someone for me?”

  “Oh? A new crewmember for the Destiny?”

  “ly.” He told Eva some of what was going on.

  “Hmm… So you just want to see if he’s a good man. You know I’ve never been one for subterfuge.”

  “I know, Eva. And I don’t expect you to be. Just take something broken down for him to fix and have a friendly chat with him. Then tell me what you think.”

  “Alright, Dear. I will do this for you, but I expect you and your lovely wife to e visit me when you return.”

  “How did you know I was off station?”

  “I may be old, Dear, but I still hear just fine. And I hear the hum of the Destiny in your . Although you may want to get that rattle in the air system fixed.”

  He looked up at the vent. There had been an itent rattle in it retly. How she had heard that over the was anyone's guess. “I’m putting it on the repair request as we speak. Thanks, Eva.”