Journey Through the Marches Part III
"Gift with Purchase"
By Rango Mirshari

Erzuli and Dr. Betz inspected the areas where the mysterious heat signatures had appeared, and discovered trace amounts of Zhodani DNA.

Our first order of business, the captain said, was getting our people back. No arguments there, but no one could agree on how to get them back. The Zho ship was a warship with at least twenty crew - and if they had jumpers, they probably had a whole lot worse. (As if there's anything worse than a Zho stormtrooper!)

Several plans were conceived and discarded, but when we learned the Zho ship was planning to depart within the hour, we had to move fast.

Fred said he could re-engineer his robot to disable the Zho's jump drive, but that still left the problem of getting the damn thing aboard. Someone remembered Breck Hattendorf, and then the plan began to take shape. The Nev-R-Leak saleswoman would go to the Zhos to sell her vacc suit patches, and give the robot to them as a free gift - a gift with purchase. The Zhos don't expect people to lie, we reasoned, and they wouldn't expect it from Breck…

But what if they scanned her? They decided to hypnotize her, so that she wasn't even aware of what she was doing. It wouldn't have stood up to any sort of real scan, but it ought to be enough for this.

Dr. Betz is one of the smoothest operators I've ever met. He could give my father lessons, and considering how many half-brothers and sisters my poor mother has welcomed into the family - thirty-two, the last time she wrote -- that's saying something.

She agreed to participate, but only in exchange for high passage to Regina. And so with Erzuli's supervision - I think the good doctor may have wet his vacc suit when she grabbed him by the collar and said, "That's enough!" - the doctor went to work on Breck. While he was busy with his "patient," the captain went on a little trip of his own - to the portmaster's office. He had that woman - a redhead named Annike -- eating out of the palm of his hand, and two shakes of the Vargr's tail later, the Zho ship was delayed for hours by Imperial bureaucracy.

Fred managed to get his robot reprogrammed in the nick of time, and leaving Gram onboard, we snuck down to the Zho's slip and, after bypassing security, we introduced a little sedative into their atmosphere…and within minutes, they were down for the count. (You'd think the old Zhos would be a little more paranoid this deep in Imperial space, but I guess they didn't figure on this kind of audacity).

We went in through the cargo hold, and found a very creepy sight: twenty cold sleep berths filled with varying types of Humaniti. In one we found Druett - the doctor thawed him out quickly. Erzuli gave him her cloak to cover up in - which he promptly tied around his waist and strutted around in.

It was harder to find Al. He was deep in the ship, in a kind of makeshift operating room. Stranger still was that the two men in the room with him wore psionic shields! On a Zho ship! Very odd.

We didn't want to leave the people in coldsleep with the Zhos, so the captain made a snap decision: we would take as many as we could with us. It took us several trips, but we managed to get all twenty of the people in cold sleep out - and into our cargo dock. Fred got his bot back, which made him happy.

I never found out why Al was captured by the Zhos, or Druett, either. That was a crew-only meeting.

We jumped out of Lanth in a hurry.

You would not believe my surprise when I went into the passenger lounge after getting back and saw that Cleon Choorsi was aboard. I haven't seen her since she bailed me and her son out on Regina, back in 1110. Ah, but those were fun days. I need to look up Merit when we get to Regina. Cleon says he's practicing law - what a joke that is!

Strephon's ghost (heard that one on Lanth), but the ship's gotten crowded. In addition to the crew, we have twenty people in cold sleep, some pirate captain named Krimm, one mysterious passenger, and Cleon and her entourage (the historian Edmord Alotring and a secretary). If we could just get Druett to put his shirt back on, I'd be happy. It's a ship full of alpha-males -- no wonder Tara Troost decided to work here.

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