Jessica solar's Arc

Chapter 8 of 15

Jessica heard boots on the ramp. The diplomat would cross her hatch in under a minute. She had won a signature and a private audience, but she had not won silence. The crimson faction had known about her scavengers before she reported them. That meant a bug on her hull, or in her walls, or in something they had already delivered. If they listened while she bargained, every word she gave him would reach his masters before he did. She keyed the comm to the crawlspace. "Michael. Kill every signal leaving this ship. Now." His voice came back thin. "I draw pictures. I don't jam radios." "The fox," she said. "The clockwork one in the parts locker. Its tail core throws interference when the gears spin backward. My father used it to test shielded panels. Wind it the wrong way and set it on the deck plate above the receiving bay." She heard him scrambling. She had thirty seconds. She grabbed the copper crocodile shell from the salvage bin, the one with the crystal spines her father had gutted for its wiring harness. She pried the harness free and clipped it across the airlock's internal sensor line. Any transmitter tucked inside the diplomat's coat would find its uplink smothered by the harness's dead-band feedback. Crude. It would hold for one conversation. Michael's voice crackled. "Fox is spinning. Tail's glowing wrong." "Good. Keep it running until I say stop." She felt the deck hum as the interference field bit in. Her own comm went to static. She cut it and shoved the slate into her pocket. The outer seal clicked. The diplomat stepped through in his crimson coat, gloves folded over one wrist, eyes already counting the exits. "You're early," she said. "I am always early." He glanced at the crocodile harness taped along her wall. His mouth tightened. "You've blinded my escort." "I've blinded everyone. Including you. Your recorders won't leave with anything but noise." He studied her for a long moment. Then he inclined his head. "Then we speak plainly. That is rarer than you know." "Sit," she said. She pointed to the crate she had dragged in for a chair. "Tell me what your faction actually wants from a woman rebuilding a dead ship." He sat. The fox's tail throbbed overhead, drowning the room in silent static. Behind the bulkhead, Michael's pencil moved. Jessica pulled up her own crate and faced the diplomat across two feet of grease-stained deck. For the first time since the coils arrived, the crimson faction could not hear her. She had bought a private room inside her own ship. Whatever he said next, it would belong to her alone. "Talk," she said. And he did.