Free gaian consortium 05 - the titan trap by Christine Pope

through the spacesuit.
    Then, since he didn’t have anything else he could do, he leaned his head back against the headrest and shut his eyes.
----
    By the time they were approaching Triton, Cassidy was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open. For a while, pure adrenaline had kept her going, but as the hours ticked by and she lost all sight of her pursuers, she could feel her body wanting to shut down, to lose itself in a few hours of oblivious sleep. If the faint snores she heard from time to time through the helmet speaker were any indication, Derek was doing that very thing.
    At first it had irritated her, that he was getting rest while she was sitting in the pilot’s chair, eyes glued to the readouts, scanning for any signs of hostile activity. But she told herself he really had nothing else he could be doing, and at least one of them might as well be alert and in control when they reached the outpost moon of Neptune. She supposed she should count herself lucky that, even in the heart of the Gaian Consortium, traffic in the outer reaches of the Solar System was not so heavy that they ran much risk of discovery.
    No, the hard part would be when they reached Triton.
    When they were approximately a hundred thousand kilometers out from Neptune, the fighter’s comm squawked to life. “GDF ship, this is Triton Control. You are approaching interdicted space. You are directed to turn around at once or be fired upon.”
    Go ahead , she thought. At least then I’d get some rest. But since that was her exhaustion talking, she ignored that inner voice, pushed the button on the comm to open a channel, and replied, “Triton Control, this is a GDF ship, but I am not a GDF pilot. Permission to stay on course.”
    If silence could be startled, that was what the ensuing pause sounded like. Then, “Uh…come again, GDF ship?”
    “Again, this ship is not under the control of GDF personnel. My name is Cassidy Evans, and I used to pilot a freighter called the Avalon .”
    Another silence. Cassidy guessed whoever was on the other end of the line was hurriedly looking up the Avalon in the Consortium’s ship registry. She waited, wondering if they had come all this way, only to be shot down.
    Then the voice said, “Welcome to Triton, Captain Evans. We’re not sure how you got your hands on that ship, but…kudos.”
    She let out a rusty chuckle. “Thanks, Triton Control. Let me know where I can land this thing…and also where a girl can find a place to lay her head.”
    “Rolling out the welcome mat, Captain Evans. We’re sending coordinates now.”
    Numbers danced across the screen, and she plugged them into the nav-computer, allowing herself a relieved sigh when she saw they were now less than a half hour away from landing on terra firma. It might be solid methane ice, rather than actual rock, but at this point she’d take what she could get.
    “Hey, sleeping beauty,” she said into her suit’s mic. “Wakey, wakey. We’re almost there.”
    “Almost…wha?” came Derek’s voice, so groggy she had to smile.
    “Almost to Triton. And it sounds like they’re going to send out the welcome wagon. I guess making off with a GDF starfighter earns you some points with the crew that calls Triton home.”
    “Well, that’s something.”
    She grinned. It wasn’t anything she would have believed if she hadn’t been here to see it for herself, but it seemed as if they might survive this place after all.
----
    They landed in a small hangar on the outskirts of the enormous complex of domes that made up the main settlement on Triton. Derek had never thought he’d see this place in person, so he had to force himself to keep from gawking like some rube who’d never left the surface of Gaia in his entire life. Maybe at one point this had been an orderly scientific outpost, but the less savory elements of Gaian society had taken it over more than a hundred years earlier, and now it was a hodgepodge of rundown housing, shops, bars,