Silent Flyght – Chapter 19

Mat’s chest rises and falls in a slow, steady rhythm. I lie on my side and watch him, replaying our evening of sex together. It was… breathtaking. My breathing halts as my whole body clenches from the memories, and I stop myself from waking him to go again. I didn’t think I had hours of sex in me, but it appears I have that and more. Mmmm.

I sigh and blow out a long breath. We’re good together, that’s for sure. Marcelo deserves a raise.

I flip over in the bed to test if Mat is awake at all. He had quite a lot to drink, but his tolerance may be pretty high. It certainly didn’t stop him from the two hours of sex. He doesn’t stir, and his breathing remains steady.

Okay, good. The next test is a bathroom break.

I roll off the bed, grab my clothes, and head for the bathroom. While I’m there, I run the sink, pee, and flush the toilet. Make some noise. When I’m dressed and done, I turn out the light and return to the room.

Mat hasn’t moved.

I turn my wristlet and access my messages. I send him, “I had such a great evening, but I’m a crappy sleeper, and I need sleep because our ship leaves tomorrow for Palo Alto. Join me for breakfast on the Amagi? I want to show you my home.”

There. That should explain that I’m happy, and I want to see him more, to continue our relationship.

Glancing around the room for my exit options, I leave straight out of the bedroom to the veranda. A set of stairs leads down to the vineyard, and I can go hunting without being caught by someone in the house.

As soon as the door is closed behind me, I message Jinzo. “I’m out of Mat’s room, and I’m going to snoop. Meet me at the horse stables in 15?”

I slink along the outer wall of the house and down the stairs, through the gate, and into the rows of vines. Once I’m under the cover of the vineyard, I call up my messages again and find the report from Ai. Crouched here under the vines, I don’t want to sit and read a whole report, though.

I dial up Ai, instead.

“Good evening, Captain. What can I do for you?”

“I could use some help if you have the time.” My breath fogs lightly in the air. It gets chilly at night on Sonoma.

“I have been compiling a list of sexual positions and charts with multi-step simulations for you and your network, but I can set this task aside.”

“I… I…” Closing my eyes, I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Never mind. Drop them in my inbox when you’re done.”

“Happy to, Captain.”

Sticking to the edge of this row, I sneak towards the main warehouse. “I need to know the conclusions to your report about Peter. I don’t have time to read it.”

A notification pops up from Jinzo that he’s on his way. I dismiss it.

“After doing a lot of digging, I determined that Peter is smuggling one of two things. He is either smuggling recreational drugs and technology into markets at Neve and Penha and selling them for a giant profit —”

“There are markets on Penha?”

“Not technically on Penha, Captain. It is a gas giant incapable of supporting life.”

I roll my eyes. Duh. Every third grader learns this.

“But Penha has two large moons with military bases on them — Gravata and Itajaí. They were both built in the last five years and aren’t common knowledge to the public. But they both do business with contractors and allow those contractors to come and go with goods and services. Aravena Industries, a subset of Casa Aravena Estates, is on the list of approved contractors. They have offices on Sonoma and Palo Alto. My further investigations show that Aravena Industries runs several microcircuit facilities on Palo Alto.”

I pause as I come to the end of the row and see a section of the vineyard ahead lit up like it’s daytime. Hushing my breathing, I strain my ears to hear what’s going on. The shouts of men over heavy machinery roll over the tops of the vines. Shit. What’s happening? Something sinister I should run from?

Cutting across several rows, I keep a low profile and peek around a corner.

Nope. Nothing sinister. It’s harvest time.

The row is lit up with industrial lights, and workers handpick bunches of grapes, throwing them into hovercarts that tag along beside them. Down the row, a truck waits for the full crates. Once the whole truck bed is loaded, it zips off to the distant warehouse.

I back off the row until I know I’m in the dark, and they can’t see me. Then I climb up on a fence post, so I can see the warehouse. The warehouse doors are open, and all the lights are on. At least a dozen workers are in there, unloading crates of grapes into the destemmers.

Huh. I didn’t realize they always harvest at night, but that makes sense. It’s cooler at night, and then they can begin the wine-making process the next day with fresh grapes. That’s what we did when I was here the other day.

“Captain, are you there?” Ai asks in my ear.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here. Just got distracted. So, what else could they be smuggling? Or transporting?”

“I believe they are returning with raw materials from Neve and Penha for their own micro-computing business. It makes the most sense. Neve and the moons of Penha have rich supplies of heavy metals that are mined by the military. They sell these metals at a profit to help fund their continued military advancements.”

This makes sense and brings some relief. Mat and Peter are just conducting business, like any other business would do.

“But…,” she says, and my body tenses, holding in one place.

“Yes?”

“After further digging into Peter’s life, I suspect he is hiding something from Mat.”

Okay, now I’m worried. I close my eyes and curse. I left Mat back in his room, sleeping peacefully after I gave him my heart for the evening. He held me close after sex and signed to me, “Let’s spend more days and nights together.” I slap my hand over my mouth at the memory of his expressive brown eyes and his hands on my waist.

“What’s he hiding?”

“I don’t believe he is Peter Banderas. He is someone else entirely. I will bring up that part of the report for you now, Captain.”

My head rings with anxiety and hypertension. I need to get farther away from this harvest crew, and with the warehouse now off-limits for snooping, the horse stable and the cold storage facilities are the only places left to check. Maybe I should give up this snooping session and return to the hotel room Jinzo rented for the night in town so he could be close.

I scan the report Ai put together for me, and all I see in front of me is a problem I don’t want to deal with. Two different identities, birth certificates, and aliases. Peter Banderas has had a busy life, but I’m most attracted to one bit of evidence. Peter has the Vir gene.

You know what happens to Sonoman boys with the Vir gene? They end up in the most basic of schools and go on to work service jobs on Palo Alto and Laguna. They do not become the head of staff for a high-class vineyard.

So, either Mat and Peter stuck together from a young age because they both had conditions that would otherwise ostracize them, or Mat doesn’t know.

Which is more probable?

A voice call pops up on my screen from Jinzo. “I’m at the stables. Where are you?”

“Not far. I’ll be right there.”

Fuck. I’m really beginning to hate mysteries. There’s always something going on that I know nothing about, and I’m tired of it. People are sealing their lips and staying silent, and they keep putting me in danger. Like I’m the expendable one.

I run down the last row of the vineyard, duck under the fence, and book it to the stables.

“Jin!” I call out, trying to keep my voice low. He pokes his head out from the corner of the stable. I run up to him, and he zips out to catch me in a hug.

“I was worried when I showed up, and you weren’t here yet.”

I drag him into the horse stables and close the door behind us. “I didn’t realize they would harvest the grapes at night. There was a crew between the house and here I had to avoid.”

We both turn around to look at the six stalls of horses. Only Mat’s horse, Morango, is poking her head out to see who’s visiting in the middle of the night. Jinzo’s mouth drops open.

“I’ve never seen a horse in the flesh.” He’s drawn to the animal like a magnet and pulls me by the hand forward to look at her. “It’s so big.” He gazes up at her. “I thought they were smaller.”

“This is Mat’s horse, Morango. She’s friendly.” I raise my hand, and she nuzzles her nose against it. The connection brings a smile to my face.

Jinzo also raises his hand and smiles when Morango sniffs him. He scratches up her broad face to the spot between her eyes before dropping his hand.

“I don’t think we came out here to pet horses all night.” He turns to me, and in the dimmed light of the barn, his dark eyes search my face. “How did everything go with Mat? Is he… interested in continuing?”

I throw my arms around his neck and squeeze him. His arms hesitate for a moment before he squeezes me too.

“This is hard, Jin. Harder than I thought it would be. I’m so happy I found all of you, but I’m sad too, you know?” I rest my lips down on his neck.

“I know.” He rubs my back. “The instinct to remain with just one person is strong. But I promise you that this is what we all want. It’s what’s best for everyone.” He leans away from me. “And it makes me happy to see you get the love you deserve… from many people.”

I sigh, knowing he’s right, and that someday, this will all be second nature and part of my life. But right now, it just feels awkward.

“Now, why are we in a horse stable?” Jinzo prompts me with a smile.

“I, uh… I don’t know.” I amble the length of the barn. “I thought searching the outer warehouses would be the best idea, to find out what Mat and Peter are hiding here. But…” I shrug. “Now that I’ve read Ai’s report, I don’t think we’ll discover anything here, much less on Sonoma. Most of their shipments for the micro-computing business go to Palo Alto.”

Jinzo shakes his head. “I read the full report from Ai. They often come back here first before hopping to Palo Alto. Satellite images show them delivering goods here to the stables and the far warehouse.”

I shrug as we make it to the door to the backroom. “They buy horse feed from off-planet and store it in the back.”

“Show me,” he says, pushing the door open.

The room is how we left it the other day. The mop is propped against the wall where Mat left it, and the desk still has horse supplies and tackle on it. My guess is that when it’s harvest time, the support staff for the horses are too busy to do much in here.

“Watch out. There were cats in here the other day, causing mischief.” I crouch down at the desk, and sure enough, a ginger cat is hunched down there. He hisses, darts past me, and out the door. Jinzo hops to the side, just missing a flash of claws. I laugh at his graceful leap. “I think maybe you were a cat in a previous life.”

His hand is on his chest. “Me? Pretty sure I was a dog.” He winks at me.

“They keep the feed in the back room,” I say, waving to the closed door.

Jinzo crosses the room and opens the door, stepping inside. Everything is, again, how I saw it last. The feed buckets are full. The brooms and tackle are hanging up on the walls. The wooden boxes are where they were the other day.

“Do you know what’s in these boxes?” Jinzo places his hand on them for a moment before stepping away and frowning at them. “There’s something powered on in these.”

“What do you mean?” I approach to stand at his side. “Powered on?”

“Yeah.” He places his hand on the box, so I do, too. He’s right. There’s a barely perceptible hum here, a slight vibration. “Wait a sec.” He runs his hand along the top of the box, then down the side. Stepping away, he gauges the box, tilting his head to the side.

“No,” he breathes out. His skin is ashen white, and it sends me into a panic.

“What’s wrong?”

Jinzo crosses the room, finds a toolbox on the floor near the horse tackle, and grabs a giant screwdriver.

“Vivi, I have a bad feeling about this.” He slams the screwdriver into a side seam on the wooden box, and I stand still in shock. What the hell is he doing? Loud cracks echo off the walls, and I panic even more.

“Shhh! They’re going to hear us!” I wave my hands at Jinzo. Stop! We’re too loud!

The front panel comes off, and Jinzo backs away. He drops the screwdriver to the floor. It lands with a thud and rolls away.

“We’ve gotta go, Vivi. We have to go and not come back.”

It’s a cryocontainer.

“No.” My universe narrows to this one moment.

No. This can’t be.

“It’s a mistake,” I whisper.

“I’ll save you the trouble,” says a voice from the door. I squeal and jump, stumbling into Jinzo. “It’s not a mistake. All the boxes are like that. Please leave them alone.”

My heart sinks as Peter walks into the room.