The Dark Between The Stars

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN
TOM ROM

She was out there. He knew it.

Tom Rom extended his ship’s sensors, scanned for lingering exhaust particles or, more likely, residue leaking from the damaged engines. He knew he had scored at least one solid hit during the chase.

The Proud Mary was limping along, and the desperate pilot maneuvered as best she could, making suicidal moves and surviving them. The woman on that plague ship must be an extraordinarily talented flyer—or maybe just desperate enough to have no inhibitions or limitations.

Tom Rom would have admired that if she wasn’t causing him so much trouble.

Under normal circumstances, she would never have been able to elude him, but during the pursuit, Tom Rom was startled when his superior ship failed to respond as expected. His engines were sluggish; several minor systems failed, while others lit up with alarm indicators.

Then he realized his disadvantage. He had made only stopgap fixes after the Roamer pirates damaged his ship on Vaconda. Ideally, he would have had all repairs completed back at Pergamus, the engines primed, power blocks recharged, hull integrity checked. But he hadn’t taken the time to restore his ship to full operational status.

After hearing the news of the Onthos space city and the fascinating plague, he had raced off too quickly. No, he thought, not too quickly, since he’d arrived just in time. Even an hour later, and the Proud Mary would have been long gone with the only remaining vestiges of the fascinating microorganism.

Even so, his ship wasn’t ready for this. His systems weren’t capable of the full power he needed, which was a disappointing setback.

Now his ship prowled among the asteroids. He doubted Orli Covitz had any plan; she was simply reacting, making random course changes, trying to hide. She was good at that. Tom Rom drifted along, his ship’s systems alert for any trace, and he also kept his eyes open. Over the years, he had found that his own senses were just as reliable as artificial sensors. He had good instincts.

During the first chase, the desperate woman had jettisoned and detonated an ekti canister to distract him. The maneuver, though expected, had been effective. The soup of gases and reflective bodies in the expanding cloud of debris gave her camouflage among the roiling energy signatures. The flash from her exploding fuel canister had blinded him just long enough to let her dive into that briarpatch, and she’d hidden there like a rabbit, waiting. A smart move.

But Tom Rom was smarter. Sooner or later she would have to come out.

While he had hung there in silence, waiting for her to venture out of hiding in the debris cloud, he scoured his databases to learn what he could about his quarry. According to records, the Proud Mary was a trading vessel piloted by a pinch-faced woman named Mary Coven who always traveled alone. That image didn’t match the younger woman he had seen on his screens. Digging deeper, he found a recent notice that the piloting registration had been transferred to someone named Orli Covitz, and this flight must have been one of her first missions. An extraordinary way to start…

Hiding in the debris cloud, Orli Covitz lasted six hours longer than he had estimated, but he eventually saw the Proud Mary reactivate and ease out of the field. Covitz would be cautious, watching for any sign of him, but he had to let her get far enough from the debris cloud that it was no longer a viable hiding place. Then he set off in pursuit.

He opened fire without warning, hoping to cripple her ship so he could force his way aboard. All he needed was a blood and tissue sample, easy and efficient, but in the event that Orli refused to cooperate, he could take his sample with a hatchet, if necessary.

He chased the Proud Mary into the asteroid field, trying to match her maneuvers. She slipped through a group of tumbling rocks, but Tom Rom’s ship was larger and less graceful. A rough chunk of rock caromed off his hull; the shields were sufficient to protect him, but the ship went into a spin.

By the time he reoriented himself, Orli Covitz had lost herself among the rubble. He continued his pursuit, picking what he thought was her most obvious route. He tried to think the way she would think, see the opportunities as she would see them.

Unfortunately, he guessed wrong.

Maybe the disease was affecting Orli Covitz’s brain, and she was becoming increasingly irrational. Her flight pattern was erratic. When he finally gave up and doubled back, he studied her path, trying to discern a pattern. He picked up his own trail, but it didn’t lead him back to the Proud Mary. Tom Rom felt himself growing angry, but that could not be allowed. Zoe was counting on him.

His greatest fear was that Orli would just let herself die, or that she would self-destruct the ship—before he could get a sample of the disease. Then Zoe would lose that valuable item for her library, perhaps a vital organism.

He realized he should not have been so aggressive initially. Even without being pressed, the woman had offered to give him the data she had compiled. He should have accepted her files so that at least he had something to bring back to Pergamus. Then he could have found a way to take her blood as well.

It did no good to second-guess what he should have done.

He continued to scour the asteroid field. The disease would be worsening. Orli Covitz was going to die soon, and Tom Rom had to find her.