“Oh, well, start with what got your crime labeled as treason.”
“I stole a fleet of ships.”
She waited. He didn’t say anything else.
“More,” she demanded.
He let out a long breath. “Until I became a criminal, I was in the empire’s military with the rank of logistics general. It was becoming clear that we were close to winning the war with the Orloks. That’s when they decided to blanket bombard a massive swath of inhabited planets, stations, and outposts.”
“Blanket bombard?”
“That’s when a military sends out waves of bombs with the expectation of destroying everything to the point of even making planets uninhabitable. The empire didn’t have much time to respond and mostly had to pull our people back until the bombardment had exhausted itself. It was clear that was the last effort of the Orloks, but our military decided to do the same inside Orlok territory. I know they were our enemy at the time, but it felt like revenge instead of strategy. They were about to surrender, we all knew it. Sending the bombardment into their space would’ve ended billions of innocent lives.”
“You said would have. Does that mean you stopped it?”
“At the time I was the highest logistics officer in the area. It was my duty to get the bombardment ships into place so they could all fire a coordinated attack. Instead I sent them all to the same empty moon and had them land and secure to the moon's surface. I told all the crews they were being replaced and picked them up in a transport ship and unloaded them at a station then immediately left. I’ve been on the run ever since. I sold the transport ship and bought this one for much less. I’ve been surviving on the money I had left from the sale.”
“They didn’t find the ships?” she asked. “To do the bombardment thing?”
“I made sure to pick a noisy solar system,” he said. Noisy solar systems contained anomalies that made them uninteresting ordangerous to explore. Blackholes, condensing nebulas, unstable asteroid belts, or a star ready to become a super nova.
Not only were these places inhospitable for long-term habitation, but they also tended to create a lot of “noise” that confused long distance sensors. The perfect place to hide a bunch of stolen ships!
“I’m sure the ships are still there. To keep it all secret, I only gave the crew one leg of their journey at a time. Even someone with the best memory wouldn’t be able to retrace the journey because it was so many steps. I also shut down the UniBase on the transport so they couldn’t use their Ident’s to figure out where they’d been or were going.”
“You saved a lot of lives,” Han said. “I’m proud of you.”
“Even though an entire empire would like to see me punished and probably executed?"
“If I could, I’d slap your empire across the face,” she growled.
“That’s an interesting concept,” he murmured. “Anyway, to end the story, Sandar managed to get hold of me through a Leemron company that didn’t know about my crime. She didn’t know either; she was simply using them because nothing was coming back from trying to use the empire’s system. When I got the request for supplies, I thought that would be a good time to use the last of the wealth I’d gotten from selling the transport and say goodbye to my sister. You know the rest.”
Han made a happy sound. All her wildest dreams were about to come true. “That is a good story. No, that’s a great story. We’re going to write that down and sell it to an Ugarian soap opera and be rich. Well, richer.”
He sounded a rumble of amusement. “Richer?”
“Yes, richer, because we’re going to have so much wealth we could probably buy an entire planet.”
“Where is all this wealth going to come from?” he asked, obviously still amused with her.
“Those ships you stole,” she said. “We’re going to sell them!”
Chapter 19
Han
Han watched the planet below get closer as the luxury cruiser,Noble, descended toward Inneeko’s largest port. With a very small fraction of the wealth they’d gotten from selling all the stolen ships, they’d hired the luxury cruiser to take them to Inneeko.
Noblepicked them up from the shipyard where they’d successfully sold all the stolen ships, minus the bombs. Those had been disposed of in a convenient black hole.
Traveling onNoblewas the most extravagant travel experience any of them had ever had. It had been easy to distract herself during the trip. The cruiser had all kinds of game rooms and entertainment opportunities, not to mention the best distraction: Zeph.
Now they were landing and there was no more avoiding.
“Are you worried about your family being angry over you missing the holiday celebrations?” Tumoro asked. He wasstanding next to her at the viewing port. On her other side was Zeph.
“It’s not anger I’m worried about,” Han said. “It’s the hurt and disappointment that’s going to kill me. I missed last year and promised Mom repeatedly I’d be there this year.”
