Although Lady Knight Jiafeier had shown a determination to pursue Yu Lian and that little ship to the ends of the earth, the edge of the galaxy, and even another universe without ever giving up, reality was still reality.
By the time her subordinates spotted the silhouette of Yu Lian and the others' Kettle Street, the silver-gray luxury speedboat had merely flashed its lights at the edge of the system, as if making a taunting face at them. Then it plunged into the gravity well. The ship, along with the titanium dragon beside it, seemed to stretch into a line in an instant, then vanished without a trace.
"What about the spatial tremor signals?" The knight turned to the captain.
"Signals from gravity wells 2 and 3."
"The speedboat had a spatial tremor jammer aboard?" Jiafeier was astonished.
Naierhana hurriedly lowered her voice. "It's perfectly normal for the borderland black markets to have something like that. The real question is, how did they get in touch with one? Black-market dealers are cautious and well-connected. You don't just run into them."
You sound pretty experienced with this. Jiafeier couldn't help looking at her close friend and colleague with a complicated gaze, edged with a hint of danger. The other woman could only twitch her lips in an apologetic smile, then say in a voice only the two of them could hear, "My fief is in the frontier, after all. My family manages it, but I did grow up there."
Lady Naierhana Mela's fief was a coastal star district on the Empire's border. It wasn't as impoverished as the Far Frontier, pressed up against the Abyss Nebula and the galactic core, but it was still a borderland. Underground trade flourished, and the criminal underworld was quite powerful. Outside the respectable neighborhoods where