Free [01] Elite: Wanted by Gavin Deas Page A

very good chance the Syndicate had been behind the destruction of the
Pandora
. The Syndicate’s involvement brought its own problems. The smuggler she’d jumped with his Glen Halyconia six months ago had probably been working for the same Veil and she’d been to the
Black Mausoleum
before; but figuring out who was the Judas Veil in a thriving system like Beta Hydri would be like finding a needle in a haystack. The New Caledonia police already had an entire task force dedicated to nothing else. Which left her two courses: ask them, or find Newman and ask
him
instead.
    Graham didn’t want money or any sort of reward. When he was done and Ziva had finished pacing his flat, talking to the
Dragon Queen
and using his bandwidth to search the Federation systems archives for anything they might have on the Syndicate in Beta Hydri, she felt almost sorry for him. She took him to a bar as thanks – on the promise that he stopped acting as if she was some kind of celebrity. He was fun enough company for a while, drinking and quietly listening to her stories. It felt good telling someone else about what she did and how things had gone down and the scrapes and squeaks she’d been through. Nothing confidential, nothing the world didn’t already know if it had cared to read the news reports, but it felt good having someone listen,
really
listen and pay attention the way Enaya never did. She might have stayed with him longer if the drink hadn’t got him. He told her she had beautiful eyes and she pointed out they were top-range Fresnel Technology implants that had cost her a small fortune and so they’d damn well better be beautiful. She left not long after that. The Purge still in her system made being in a bar rather less fun than it ought to be.
    There was a message waiting for her back on the
Dragon Queen
. Darkwater had finally managed to reconstruct the outward jump trails of the two attacking ships. They’d followed one out into deep space and the other to the outskirts of 61 Cygni but after that, they were a dead end. No telling where the attacker ships had gone.
    61 Cygni. Another place to add to her list.
    Ziva left Pethes and Toad Hall, made the jump to Beta Hydri and docked in orbit over New Caledonia. Every civilised system had a few cracks and crevices that people like the Judas Syndicate could slip into, but Beta Hydri was special in that regard: Beta Hydri was home to the infamous Black Mausoleum, an old research station in its own weird elliptical orbit sharply offset from the ecliptic of the system. The Mausoleum had been built as the hub of an array of X-ray telescopes, but that had been almost a millennium ago and the station had been abandoned for centuries. With its odd orbit, it had been all but forgotten. No one remembered its original name any more. In the sketchy history that followed, it had been home to all sorts, largely ignored until it was taken over by a smuggling ring that had brought it all the wrong attention.
    And there things got interesting. The New Caledonia police had tracked the smugglers, seized the station and that had looked like being that – a nice clean bust. But when they went to trial, New Caledonia had their arses handed to them: in the back and forth of politics between the Federation and the Empire and the formal incorporation of New Caledonia into the Federation, the Black Mausoleum had never been included in the treaty papers. An oversight, no doubt, but technically the station was still an Imperial outpost. The smugglers counter-sued the New Caledonia government. The Empire, when it eventually realised it had been invaded, gleefully backed them up and shouted about illegal acts of war. The Mausoleum had reverted to being a hideout for smugglers and pirates for a while as the Federation and the Empire argued, until the Lupus Group had moved in with the grudging backing of both sides And now, as far as Ziva could tell, it was exactly what it had been before – a hideout for