Ghosts of Empire (Book 4 of The Empire of Bones Saga) by Terry Mixon Page B

wanted to huddle with the others again so soon. Even though he doubted their captors were monitoring them that closely, he wasn’t willing to risk it.
    When he went to get his midday meal, the server gestured for him to come around behind the counter. He did so without question and found Ross waiting for him in the kitchen.
    The man was dicing something. “Sean, good to see you. I hope you’re good with a peeler. We have a pile of fresh vegetables. You must’ve made some friends yesterday.”
    He snorted. “Hardly. If anything, the guy I spoke with would’ve been happy to cut off the food entirely. I can’t claim any part of this.”
    His experience with a peeler was strictly limited, but he grabbed it and pitched in. The noisy kitchen would make monitoring them almost impossible.
    “What happened last night?” Sean asked.
    “Nothing,” Ross said. “Too much chance of someone seeing them in the dark when normal people were asleep. They went right after breakfast. Some of the boys made a scene on the other side of camp and drew the guards’ attention. A romantic entanglement gone astray. One of my best girls played her role to the hilt and beat the snot out of her ‘wandering man’. It was quite entertaining, I’m told. Gina knows how to be very convincing.”
    Sean had heard something about it, but the brawl had ended by the time he’d gotten over there. “I’m sure the citation write up will be unusual. Did your people make it back safely?”
    “Just did. They slipped into the docks on the far side of the island. Whoever put up the fences to keep us in didn’t check the original buildings closely enough. There are service tunnels that go under them.
    “Several merchant companies receive goods on the docks and transship them into the city on big grav lifts. Our boys broke into one of the warehouses and found a few uniforms. Coveralls, really, in blue with one of the company logos. That let them blend in as they explored the place.
    “The bottom line is that we might be able to get our people over there and co-opt enough vehicles to get everyone into the city.”
    “Don’t the guards search the vehicles?”
    The noncom shook his head. “Nope. At least they didn’t on the one ride the boys took to move cargo.”
    “They went to the city? That was a little dangerous. What if someone challenged them?”
    Ross smiled. “They got caught by the company supervisor and yelled at for goofing off. They had no choice but to ‘get back to work.’ On the positive side, they made some friends and now a number of people think they work there. That kind of cover is useful. Useful enough for me to send them back. They’ll go off shift with the real crew and into the city. They’ll look for places we can hole up.”
    “That sounds good,” he told Ross. “I’m not sure we should make a break until we give Mertz a chance to get us loose. Knowing where the spaceport is and some things about its schedule would be good, though.”
    The older man nodded. “That’s on their list of things to inquire about. They’re good people. They’ll do what needs to be done and avoid sticking out.”
    Sean hoped so, because if they were caught, the outlines of the bold escape plan he’d come up with wouldn’t work. He wished Mertz could get some information to them. Knowing what was going on in the negotiations would make his job easier.
    And if they needed to get moving, he’d like to know sooner rather than later.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Kelsey took a shower and considered the dream. No, it wasn’t a dream. It was a recording of events seen by the man in the stasis chamber. Somehow, she’d accessed his files while she slept. That had to be it.
    Nothing like that had ever happened before and it scared her. Her implants were like a computer. They did what she told them to, with the exception of the combat protocols. They shouldn’t have been able to feed the recording into her sleeping mind like that.
    She rubbed her face