It was that statistic that had brought Athenia to him in the first place. The high-end Recovery Men (and all but a few in this profession were male, for reasons he never fully understood) had a failure rate of about 50 percent. Some of that wasn’t their fault. Sometimes they found themselves pursuing items that didn’t exist. Even with the legend factor taken out of the equation, though, the high-end Recovery Men failed 25 percent of the time.
Now, standing in this swamp, facing away from the flowering fidelia but still bathed in its light, he wondered why he had ever taken this case. It certainly wasn’t for the money. He had known from the start that he might not get paid.
It was the challenge, the near-impossibility of the idea.
The hunt.
At least one Recovery Man had failed before him. That made this particular hunt even more tempting.
Yu took a deep breath, tasting chemicals. He hadn’t failed yet. Even if he killed this flowering fidelia, he wouldn’t fail.
The very idea soothed him, calming his nerves.
Then, before he had a chance to think, he whirled toward the flowering fidelia, steel blades flashing. With one quick movement, he slashed a circle in the colesis tree—a big circle that cut through the vine as well as a large section of the tree’s interior.
With one hand, he tipped the container upside down, dumping the dried, straight colesis into the murky water. With the other hand, he pried the circular cut off the standing colesis. As the first colesis hit the water, he moved the container, catching the twisted colesis, its vine, and the precious flowering fidelia.
The light continued to pour from the flower.
So far, it seemed, the vine and the fidelia didn’t sense anything wrong.
He slammed the lid on the container and shoved it into his travel pouch. Then he scurried out of the copse of trees.
The Alliance might believe that the colesis weren’t sentient, but he wasn’t going to gamble his life on that fact. He ran through the swamp, hitting the summon button for the skimmer.
He stopped a few kilometers away to make sure the container was stowed properly. When he was certain it was, he took out his scanner, checking for other colesis trees. There were, he remembered, half a dozen that stood alone between here and the swamp’s entrance.
He was going to do everything he could to avoid them.
He was going to do everything he could to survive.
The skimmer reached him twelve Earth hours after he had found the flowering fidelia. He was never so happy to see a machine in his entire life.
The skimmer was long and flat—a costly rental that he never would have splurged for if it weren’t for the fact that Athenia paid for all expenses promptly. The interior formed only when a passenger was on board. As he stepped inside, the once-flat top of the skimmer became a dome made of clear black material. He gave the skimmer verbal orders to find the quickest way back to Bosak City, where his own ship was.
He went into the captain’s quarters—a fancy name for the skimmer’s only sleeping compartment—removed his clothes, and showered not once but five times, finally giving up when he realized the stench of the swamp probably wouldn’t leave his nostrils until he physically left the area.
Then, and only then, did he go back into the main cabin and open the travel pouch.
The container still glowed with that bluish-purple light. As long as he saw that, he knew that the flower was still alive.
He slumped in the pilot’s chair. Relief filled him, even though he knew the journey wasn’t done. He still had to get the flower to Athenia.
The question was, when did he notify her? If he waited too long, the flower might die of its own accord. If he did so too soon, he might lose his one chance at success.
What mattered most was timing.
If he could find out where Athenia was staying and how far it was from Bosak, then he would know if he had time to make certain the flower lived.
He couldn’t make that determination on the skimmer. He might not even be able to make it on his ship. The Nebel had a good computer system, one that could tap into the systems of most ports, but he wasn’t sure if it would work with Bosak’s port.
The place truly was as far away from the Earth Alliance as he liked to go.
Since he could do nothing except wait, he closed his eyes. He needed the rest.
He knew that leaving a planet with contraband material could be tricky. It could be even trickier when that contraband material was a living plant.
He needed to be alert when he faced Bosak’s version of space traffic control.
The last thing he needed was yet another arrest.
Hadad Yu had been arrested fifty-six times. Forty-nine of those arrests had been within the Earth Alliance and three of those forty-nine had been so serious he thought he was going to have to spend decades of his life in prison.
But he’d managed to slip away each time. Most of the lesser charges he could talk his way out of. The seven times he’d been arrested outside the Alliance, he had used his clients—or his clients’ lawyers—to free him.
But the three serious charges had taken a lot of smarts, a lot of bargaining, and in one instance, a case of bribery that was even more illegal than the crime he’d been charged with.
As a young man, he’d looked on the arrests as part of the game.
Now, though, he hated them—not just for the time they wasted, but for the luck he was using up. Some day, he knew, that luck would run out.
He thought of all of this as he sat on the bridge of the Nebel, waiting for permission to leave Bosak City. Each of the three ships ahead of him had received permission, only to be stopped just inside the dome. Inspectors boarded and hadn’t emerged for at least two Earth hours.
The Nebel was four times the size of those other ships. It was a cargo vessel that he had purchased five years ago with the proceeds of his last big job. It was a Gyonnese ship, which meant that it had a lot of wonderful equipment that was so unusual most Earth Alliance inspectors had never seen it, even though Gyonne was a long-time member of the Alliance.
Yu hadn’t followed all Alliance protocols either. The cargo bays probably weren’t as clean as they should have been. If a ship went through standard Alliance decontamination procedures, then it also got a thorough inspection. He didn’t want the interior of his ship on any port database.
One of the things that had saved him in the past was that his ship didn’t fit any known model. Inspectors didn’t realize that the interior of the ship was larger than it appeared. Nor did most know how many separate environmental systems it had.
So if an inspector tested the air for contaminants in, say, the bridge, he’d get a completely different reading than he would in one of the cargo bays.
Usually, though, Yu didn’t have such sensitive cargo. He had to keep the flowering fidelia near him. The plant needed all the atmosphere he could provide. He had it in a darkened room off the bridge itself, a room he kept as humid as possible, and he hoped that would be enough.
So far, the fidelia still glowed. He hoped it would for another day when he could finally—safely—contact Athenia.
Nebel, said an official voice. Prepare for interior scan.
Yu let out a breath. He had already protected this deck from the scan by creating a shadow deck, one that would look good on most equipment in most ports. He hoped it would work here.
Scans show you have living material near the bridge that is not on your manifest. Please explain.
Yu cursed silently. He could try to tough it out or he could pull his only bargaining chip. He didn’t have time to research Bosak law, so he didn’t know how closely it was bound to Alliance protocol.
If Bosak law followed Alliance protocol, he had no shot, not with the contaminants this ship had been exposed to.
He waved his hand over the console. His movement had switched on his side of the communications array.