Polaris Rising (Consortium Rebellion, #1)(8)

“I don’t suppose you’d fill this with water?” he asked, holding out the bowl. His chains weren’t long enough to reach the sink. I carefully took it from him, rinsed out the residue, and handed it back full of water. He drained it. “Again?”

I saw the slack in the chain just before my hand moved into range. He was fast, but this time I was faster. I pulled back and he caught nothing but air. “I suppose that’s what I get for trying to be nice,” I muttered.

“Don’t be that way. You know you’d do the same if the situation was reversed.”

I finished my breakfast and set the tray aside. I sat cross-legged on the bed and closed my eyes. I needed to focus and plan. Meditation had never been about empty stillness for me; instead, it was when I did my best thinking.

I cleared my mind of everything except the problem: escape. This ship should have an escape vessel with a short-range FTL drive. New, modern warships with the fastest computers could jump several thousand light-years at a time. Ships like this Yamado frigate could jump several hundred, depending on how old the computers were. The escape ship could jump less than a hundred and probably closer to fifty. That plus the increased recharge time between jumps meant it could easily take a month to get back to a populated planet or station if you weren’t close to a gate.

Gates were essentially giant, specialized supercomputers. They could accurately plot safe jump endpoints millions of light-years away. Gates generally operated in sets of two or more, not because it was required, but because if you jumped a million light-years and didn’t have a gate to calculate your return trip, you were either stuck or you risked jumping with bad data. More than one ship had ended up in an asteroid in the early days of FTL drives.

To get a jump point, you entered the queue. Depending on the gate’s age and level of activity, it could take anywhere between hours and minutes to clear the queue, because the gate could only calculate a fixed number of jump points at once. Older gates were the slowest, but they were often in deserted sectors, so it balanced out.

Gates also worked as communication hubs, because they talked to each other via faster-than-light transmissions to calculate safe jump points around other ship traffic. FTL communication required vast amounts of energy and a very precise, very expensive setup, so most ’verse communication bounced through the gates rather than being sent directly with FTL transmissions.

We were several hundred light-years from the closest gate. The escape ship should have emergency supplies for fourteen people for four weeks, assuming they hadn’t been raided by the mercs. It was a glorified lifeboat, meant to hold the crew until their SOS reached a nearby ship. But for me, it was my ticket to freedom.

So, step one: verify the escape ship existed and was in working order.

Step two: convince Marcus Loch that we’d make better friends than enemies. It was hard to manipulate a manipulator, but I wasn’t the daughter of a High House for nothing. One thing I had to give my parents credit for: they raised all six of their children as if we were the direct heirs. We all had the same tutors, learned the same secrets, and honed our skills in the same Consortium ballrooms.

As the fifth child, I might be nothing more than a political pawn to be auctioned off to the man with the most to offer the House for my hand in marriage, but I’d learned everything required to be a von Hasenberg. Of course, my parents didn’t do it out of the kindness of their hearts—let’s not be crazy. They did it because I was expected to spy on my future husband’s business and personal life for them. After all, House von Hasenberg came first, even if I was sold to a man from a rival House or business.

And Father wondered why I fled.

I turned my thoughts back to escape. Step three: create a big enough distraction that Loch and I could make our way to the escape ship. My original thought was that Loch would be the distraction, but I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to condone killing ten people, even if I wasn’t the one pulling the trigger or holding the knife.

“You asleep, darling?”

“No,” I said without opening my eyes. “And my name is Ada.”

“You asleep, darling Ada?”

I cracked one eye open enough to scowl at him. “I’m rather busy plotting my escape. Did you need something?”

“You’re never going to escape just by sitting there,” he said.

“Of course not; I will escape through the ceiling. Or perhaps the wall, I haven’t quite decided because it depends on whether I decide to trust you.” I closed my eye and pretended to go back to my meditation.

“There is no way out through either of those.”

I made a noncommittal sound.

“I’ve spent more hours in these cells than you can imagine. There are no weak points, no way out except for the door.”

“If you say so,” I agreed easily. I waited.

It took longer than I expected, but finally he growled, “Where?”

I opened my eyes and met his stare. “I will tell you when I trust you.”

“Or you’re making shit up.”

I shrugged. “I could be. But I’m a von Hasenberg and this is a Yamado ship. We’re competitors, you know. I know as much about Yamado and Rockhurst ships as I do about our own. Maybe more.”

“How do I earn your trust?”

I smiled at the phrasing. He would’ve done well in a Consortium ballroom. So I gave him an honest answer in return. “Slowly,” I said. “But we may not have time for that. Captain Pearson sent our flight plan to my father before our first jump. Depending on how fast my father can free up ships and where they are, he’s likely to have an escort waiting for us at the gate. If he received the message extremely quickly, it’s possible he’ll scramble a ship to meet us here, but that’s less likely.”