Chapter 27

Jonesy, an embarrassed grin on his weathered face, noticed Bob smiling and scowled. "What the hell are you smiling about?"

Bob held both hand up in a gesture of surrender and shook his head, trying to wipe the smile off but failing.

"Oh!" Jonesy turned back to Kat again. "I almost forgot the other interesting thing. When the reports started flying back and forth about you guys, a ship appeared on my sensors. It had been lying doggo in orbit, probably pulling the same stunt I was and snugged up to a sensor. It was a lot bigger than mine, about cruiser size, and it left out of here like its tail was on fire. I recorded the sensor data and it is all on this chip, along with the message traffic." Jonesy pressed a data chip into her hand.

"You just earned yourself a bonus Jonesy." Kat told him, then paused before saying, "I need some privacy and a link to the FTL transmitter."

Jonesy let her to his cabin and pointed to the desk, then left and sealed the hatch behind him.

Kat sat for a minute, then left the cabin to retrieve her pack and the evidence it contained. It took her three hours to encode all of the data and transmit it to Minerva and was gratified when a return message came back almost immediately.

"You will be met."

Planetfall was as rough as the original takeoff had been, Jonesy wanting to maintain the illusion he had worked so hard to create. When the ship had settled on the pad and he opened the cargo door, a familiar face was waiting at the edge of the pad accompanied by a half dozen uniformed Peace Officers and a pair of men in suits.

Kat, the first off the ship, headed for Minerva but was intercepted by the Peace Officers. "Ma'am, the prisoners?" Kat gestured over her shoulder where Bob was prodding the two pirates with the point of his knife, walking them down the ramp. The Peace officers swarmed the two, cutting the ropes off and cuffing both their hands and their feet. Two of the officers were carrying heavy, reinforced blankets that looked like they were stuffed with armor, and draped them over the prisoners before they were hustled out to a waiting armored vehicle.

Kat looked quizzically at the officer who had stopped her, and he shrugged one shoulder. "We have only captured one man who was supposedly tied to the pirates. We were bringing him in to the station for questioning when a sniper took a shot. The prisoner was killed instantly and we want these two alive."

Kat nodded, and continued down the ramp to where Minerva was waiting. Minerva, without saying anything, directed Kat to a second vehicle parked behind the armored car. Kat paused, looked back, then held up a finger to Minerva, walking back to meet Bob on the ramp.

Kat gave Bob a hug, then a kiss on the cheek, and then held on to him at arm's length. "I owe you some money, and my life. I doubled the fee we discussed and I would appreciate it if you made sure that that Robert's and Deacon's families are taken care of." Kat handed him a credit wafer, then added a second. "The second one is for Jonesy, the bonus I promised." Kat paused, and then patted his shoulder. "Bob, I dropped an encrypted message to your home before we landed. It contains contact information for me. The decryption code for the message is 'Roberts.' If you ever need anything, call that code and tell the person who answers that Themis said 'Alex Vega'. They will make sure I get the message."

Bob laid a hand on her shoulder. "If you find you need a pair of hands, even old ones like mine, well ... things have gotten a little boring around here. You are like a fresh breath of air in these old lungs. You just call and I'll come running."

Once seated in the vehicle, Kat was unsure of what to expect. She had taken a lot on herself, made decisions she probably should have left to older and wiser heads; committed Agency resources and funds without prior approval. The more she thought about it, the more she worried about Minerva's reaction.

There was no discernible expression on Minerva's face. She was turned toward the window, watching the city slide by outside the car and obviously not disposed to talk in the car.

The car delivered them to an office building with a sign over the door reading "Urban Renewal Commission". It was a drab, industrial design, tucked away between a pair of slightly larger, but no less drab, buildings belonging to the city government. Once inside, they were met by a man who was obviously a technician of some kind who stood, waiting impatiently, his eyes locked on Kat's pack.

When Kat offered up the pack full of evidence, he clasped it to his chest and scuttled off, his head already buried in the bag and muttering to himself as he disappeared around a corner. Kat, bemused by his behavior, followed Minerva and her guards to an office tucked into a corner of the first floor.

Once in the office, the suited men pulled Comm units, identical to Kat's own, and swept the room for surveillance devices. When the room proved clean, they nodded to Minerva and left, closing the door behind them.

Minerva, a genuine smile on her face, gestured for Kat to take a seat. "Well my dear. You have certainly made a big splash on your first foray. I have a whole host of questions, and some reservations about decisions you have made, but I have some information to share first. Some things that you may find very interesting."

Minerva seated herself behind the desk and opened the attaché case she had been carrying since the port. She withdrew a data pad and activated it, setting it down on the desk and sliding it over to Kat.

"As you can see, the data you sent to us is very promising. We picked up the ex-InterSys agent, the one who turned your Alex Vega, just an hour or so before we left to meet you at the port. From your report, we are not convinced he was working with the pirates but we will know more after we get a chance to lean on him a bit."

Minerva looked pensive. "There may be another set of players in this system though we don't know if or how they are connected to the pirates. It would be a rather unusual coincidence that two plots were uncovered in the same system at the same time. If they are connected, this is much larger than we had anticipated. We sent Pan in here to investigate pirates, not some conspiracy involving mega-corps and planetary governments."