Free The Baba Yaga by Una McCormack

take up much of your time. But I am coming. It would be a shame if a number of our old acquaintances found out your new address.”
    “ An hour? ” he said. “ I think I can manage that. ”
    “I’m glad to hear that. I’ll reach Shard’s World by the end of the week, your time. Where can I find you?”
    He sent over contact details, and her expensive little handheld, still diligently working this far from Hennessy’s World, started assembling a little dossier on him.
    “All right, I’ll see you soon.”
    “ I’ll put the kettle on ,” he said, and cut the comm.
    She let her handheld go about its business for a while, and then began to read what it had found. Merriman Fredricks. Specialist Import Services. She found company accounts, saw exactly how successful he had been, but she couldn’t find any specific details as to the nature of his business. Importing what, exactly? What did one import to a mining world? Flowers? She was digging for more information when she heard a rattling cough behind her.
    Yershov was wide awake in his sling and staring at her glassily. She wondered how long he had been awake, and how much of that conversation he had heard. She would have preferred none at all—although it would do no harm, she thought, for Yershov to see that grown men were frightened of her.
    “Shard’s World,” he said.
    “That’s where we’re going. You set the course, remember?”
    “I know Shard’s World.”
    “You’ve been there?” She looked at him, irritated. “You didn’t mention it.”
    “Long time ago. Good money, mining. Then the law changed and the union-busters came. Brought a load of slaveys with them. That was the end of that.”
    He’d been lucky not to get indentured himself, Walker thought.
    “I said I’d never go back to Shard’s World, not for any money.”
    “We do a lot of things we said we’d never do.”
    “I know,” he said, and fell asleep again.
    And although she was glad of the peace, she supposed she was glad too that he’d woken up and spoken. Because now she thought she had an idea what business Fredricks was in, and how she needed to take care when visiting the world where a one-time petty thief could make a home and a fortune.
     
     
    D OCKING AT S HULOMA Station posed no problems: it was the kind of place where the fewer questions were asked, the happier everyone was. Still, Kit had told Maria that they needed to pack everything, and not assume that they were coming back to the ship.
    “It’s better,” he said, haltingly, “if we try to... Well, we should be discreet.”
    They should cover their tracks, he meant, Maria thought, but she did not press him. He had promised her they weren’t infected—and she couldn’t believe he would take any risks with Jenny’s welfare—so why would they be chased? Who would come after them? Surely his superiors had more to worry about, given the situation on Braun’s World, than one junior officer who had gone on the run? Or perhaps the fear of infection was so great now that they would pursue people beyond reason... That was a frightening thought, as was the sight of Kit constantly looking over his shoulder.
    But someone, at least, was looking after them, and Maria was glad of it, in this godforsaken place. All her preconceptions of the worlds beyond Expansion control were true: dirty, frightening, unkempt places, with an underlying sense of lawlessness. Maria was used to the brisk order of military bases: small but well-kept homes and gardens; friendly, generous people, who would help you if you were in distress. People who wouldn’t see you as an opportunity for self-advancement. She had known nothing like Shuloma Station.
    The station lay on the very edge of the Reach, at the point where the rule of law imposed by the Expansion gave out, and the overlapping and contradictory jurisdictions of the many independent worlds of the Reach began. It had been a scientific research station, once upon a time,