Ship of Ruin

by Lindsay Buroker

  Yes, she replied, making herself hold the censure for later—if Rache showed up, he wouldn’t have time to read a long diatribe. A magnetic field might do the trick.

  When she read his postscript, her eyes teared, and she grew more frustrated at him for willingly getting himself into this mess. She definitely needed to punch him.

  And you better survive, she added. Otherwise, I’m giving your automata toys to the squirrels out back.

  There. If that didn’t motivate him, nothing would.

  She shook her head, wishing she’d found an opportunity to shoot Rache. Or drug him. She might have been able to slip something to him when she’d taken his blood. If she’d known he would leave her only to go harass Casmir, she definitely would have tried something.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “Kim?” Dr. Sikou asked from the doorway. “Dr. Angelico and I have been studying the offerings in the cryonics lab, and it looks like there is equipment for reviving specimens. Hopefully, there’s no need to freeze yourself first.” She smiled slightly. “It does look like a complicated process, and we’ll have to see if there’s enough of the solution to do everyone here. Will you come take a look?”

  “Yes.”

  As Kim followed Sikou into the corridor, she almost mentioned her new strain of bacteria, but she was hesitant to speak about it before she had proof that it worked. There were no lab rats to inoculate with her bacteria, so she would have to be her own test subject.

  She told herself the bacteria shouldn’t be that different from the proven efficacious-and-safe strain that had been in use for years, but she couldn’t help thinking of the early days of medicine when scientists had tested things on themselves… to deleterious results.

  Casmir ran to the cargo hold, ordering all of the ship’s security robots to meet him there. He’d surfed the network and found a few more in storage compartments in lower decks, and he’d activated them. He wished there had been time to repair the ones that Qin and Asger had torn apart on the bridge, but he wasn’t even sure he had time for this diversion.

  It had been almost ten minutes since Rache’s shuttle docked. Casmir had made sure the airlock hatch was secured, but the mercenaries would have tools to force their way in. How long would that take? Not long, he was sure.

  He swung into the hold and did a quick count of the robots waiting for him there and the ones who’d followed him. Sixteen, the same as his network connection indicated. He would have felt better if they outnumbered the members of Rache’s strike team, but he doubted that would have mattered. Though the robots looked intimidating, with their shiny large bodies and cannon-like arms, Qin and Asger had been able to fight off superior numbers, and he had little doubt Rache’s men would be able to do the same. All he could hope was that he could perhaps surprise them or trick Rache somehow, but Rache didn’t seem easy to trick. Casmir reminded himself that he was dealing with his twin, his twin who’d spent the last however many years of his life in space, making war on people professionally.

  “Nothing to worry about, nope,” he muttered, waving to the robots to hide among the gate pieces, even as he sent the more precise and necessary commands across the network.

  Once they were out of sight—poised to strike, he told himself, not hiding—Casmir rushed back out. “Follow me, Zee.”

  “Are you going to put yourself in danger, Casmir Dabrowski?”

  Casmir almost laughed. The crusher never asked questions and usually only spoke if he was given an order or asked a question. Did this mean he worried he wasn’t going to be able to fulfill his mission?

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Casmir said, breathing heavily as he ran toward the shuttle bay. If Kim had been there, she would have berated him for not keeping up with the treadmill work. “But I’m going to try to talk to Rache first, so don’t open up with an attack. I’m hoping I can… Well, I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m hoping for inspiration, brilliance, and an opportunity that gives me an advantage. Is that too much to hope for?”

  “Yes,” Zee said in his typical monotone.

  “I see I should have programmed you with more optimism.”

  Casmir skidded to a stop at the shuttle-bay door, pausing to catch his breath and collect himself. Sweat ran down the side of his face. He peeked through the Glasnax window. The bay was empty, but he’d expected that. Rache was coming in through one of the three airlocks at the end. A blue light indicated which one had a shuttle hooked up to it.

  Casmir walked into the bay. Should he put his helmet up? Or was there even a point? With it, he wore a self-contained suit that could take more of a beating than simple flesh. But it wasn’t the equivalent of combat armor. If the mercs unloaded their weapons on him all at once, they would perforate his galaxy suit—and his organs—in seconds. Casmir didn’t even have a weapon that would be effective against them.

  He snorted at the stunner still holstered to his suit’s utility belt. Again, there seemed little point in having it. He removed it and stuffed it in his tool satchel.

  The less he looked like a threat, the less likely they would be to shoot him. He hoped. He still wasn’t sure how angry Rache was with him over the refinery incident. As far as Casmir had heard, Rache’s voice came in two tones: deadpan and icy. So far, he’d mostly been deadpan with Casmir, but Casmir had a feeling Rache could shoot people with his mood never escalating to ice.

  A warning bleated, informing him of a rupture in the outer hatch. Casmir hoped his seizure medication had kicked in. He was pleased he hadn’t collapsed on the bridge during the fight, but this almost seemed worse. There was too much time to think.

  Afraid he would think himself into a panic attack, Casmir strode to the airlock hatch and overrode the lock. It swung open, revealing a man in combat armor with a blow torch in the middle of cutting through the lock.

  “Greetings,” Casmir said cheerfully while spreading his open hands—the blow torch had already swung in his direction, along with the weapons of the five men crammed in the airlock chamber behind him. “Welcome to my newly acquired cargo vessel. Which one of you strapping fellows is Captain Rache? I’m ready to start negotiations for my cargo whenever he is.” He raised his eyebrows toward the man in the middle, the only person under six feet tall and precisely Casmir’s height. “Or do you want a tour first? The bridge is a little bunged up, and there are a bunch of creepy dead people strapped into pods, but other than that, it’s a pretty nice ship.”

  “Fan out,” Rache ordered.

  The men strode out, weapons at the ready, and Casmir stepped back lest he be trampled. One of the men pawed him over, grabbed his satchel, and opened it.

  “That’s a little rude,” Casmir said. “Do you do that with women’s purses too?”

  “Only if they’re on the ship we’re commandeering for ourselves,” Rache answered, striding out. His weapon—one of them—found Zee right away and pointed steadily at his chest. “Is this the same robot that we keep utterly destroying?” He glanced at Casmir.

  “Perhaps not utterly.”

  “I should have you make me some.”

  “Well, we can put that on the negotiations table, but I’ll warn you that I doubt this ship or yours would have the raw materials I need.”

  “Negotiations. Right. What are you even doing here, Dabrowski?”

  “That’s a long story.”

  One of the hulking men shut the hatch, and the airlock cycled behind him. More of Rache’s men coming in, no doubt.

  It occurred to Casmir that if he’d wanted to have a shot at overpowering Rache, he should have had his robots stationed in here, ready to spring into the airlock chamber and take the first group by surprise.

  “What course did you set this ship on?” Rache asked. “It started moving right after we latched on.”

  “Did it? Huh.”

  Casmir hadn’t set it on any particular course, just in the general direction of Skadi Moon. Mostly, he’d wanted to move it, now that the stealth technology was engaged
, so Rache’s warship wouldn’t easily find it again, just in case Casmir somehow managed to defeat the strike team and keep Rache from taking it over. An admittedly idealistic hope.

  Rache’s rifle swung toward Casmir’s chest. “Quit playing stupid with me, Dabrowski. I know what your IQ is.”

  “You do? That’s kind of odd, don’t you think? Unless you’re a fan of mine. Did you see my videos on the net? About some of my team’s recent projects? The one with the fire-breathing robot got a lot of play. Especially popular with visitors aged ten to fourteen. The university is thinking of adding it to their portal to help recruit students into their science and engineering program.” Casmir could hear how quickly he was talking—babbling—and feel sweat running down the back of his neck.

  Stop panicking, he told himself, and did his best to smile affably at the men fanned out around Rache. He doubted he had a shot at winning any of them over to his side, but he held the hope that they would hesitate to fire at someone who seemed harmless and goofy.

  The man who’d been searching his satchel handed it back sans the stunner. Casmir was somewhat bemused because at least three of the tools in there would be more dangerous to someone in combat armor. But it wasn’t as if the men would give him the ten minutes he would need to drill, burn, or pry his way into their tortoise shells.

  The hatch opened, and more mercenaries filed out. More weapons pointed at Casmir and Zee. The hatch cycled again, and Casmir grimaced inwardly. It seemed Rache had brought along the full passenger complement of men. All to deal with Casmir? He must have thought Casmir had some allies. Which he did have. Just not of the human variety.

  It irked him, on the mercenaries’ behalf, that Rache was willing to expose so many of his men to the gate’s deadly radiation. Did they know they were on a death mission?

  “Go secure the bridge, Sergeant, Lieutenant,” Rache told two of his men, then waved for four others to follow them. “Turn it toward the gate, but don’t get too close yet. Let the Fedallah deal with the Kingdom ships. It was convenient to find them already damaged.”

  Casmir refrained from commenting. He’d used the access he’d gained from the android to put a passcode on the navigation system, but since he’d only had seconds to do it, he wasn’t confident it would keep Rache’s men out for long. Or at all.

  “Dabrowski, you offered a tour. I’m eager to see the cargo hold.” Rache put a hand on Casmir’s upper back and pointed toward the door. “And for the record, I’m commandeering your salvaged ship and its cargo. There will be no negotiations.”

  Casmir knew that hand could go easily to the back of his neck and that with his cybernetic implants, Rache could break it without much effort. Why had he opted not to wear the helmet? So he’d look unthreatening? As if he’d needed a lack of a helmet to achieve that. He was a bump on the sidewalk to these men. For the most part. Zee strode up to Casmir’s other side.

  “Are you threatened, Casmir Dabrowski?” Zee’s vaguely human face turned toward Rache. “Shall I use force to remove this human?”

  Casmir couldn’t see Rache’s face through his helmet and the mask he wore, but he heard a faint snort.

  Rache wasn’t worried, not with his men marching behind him. The ten that remained after he’d sent that group to the bridge. Casmir wondered if his robots had any chance of defeating Rache in the cargo hold. And if he attempted to defeat him and lost, would Rache shift Casmir from the annoying-twerp category to the dastardly enemy category? Someone to be shot on sight the next time they met?

  Casmir still wasn’t sure Rache wouldn’t shoot him this time. Once he’d secured the gate and the ship, what need would he have for him? Casmir feared he might only be alive now because Rache wasn’t yet sure if there were any booby traps about that would require a robotics geek to deactivate. Unfortunately, Casmir hadn’t had time to lay booby traps.

  “No, Zee,” Casmir said. “Thank you, but Rache and I aren’t confirmed enemies at this point. There’s even the chance that we could become friends.” He tried his affable smile on Rache, but he felt stupid smiling at someone wearing a black mask. “Do come with us to the cargo hold, though, Zee. The mercenaries may need you to move heavy things.”

  “We can move our own heavy things,” the closest man behind them said.

  “Where are you going to take the gate?” Casmir asked Rache as they walked into the corridor. He was genuinely curious, but he also figured that the more he learned, the more opportunity he might find to escape his current predicament.

  “Out of this system,” Rache said.

  “And then? What will you do? Sell it? Keep it? Will you warn people that exposure to it can kill them within days?” Casmir pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “Did you warn your team that they were going to die?”

  “Quiet, Dabrowski.” As anticipated, Rache’s hand moved up to the back of his neck for a warning squeeze. Somehow, it was at once more intimate and more terrifying than a weapon simply poking him in the back. “Does your mouth get you in trouble as much as I suspect it does?”

  “It hasn’t been a completely innocuous body part in my past, but you do make me nervous, so I babble.” Casmir had hoped that Rache’s men would scream and run away when they learned about their fate. Unfortunately, they hadn’t reacted. They continued to march down the corridor after their leader. Maybe Casmir had been too subtle.

  “Uh huh.” Rache lowered his hand. “We don’t need to be enemies, you know.”

  “Are you sure? You’re commandeering my ship and my cargo. Being enemies seems right.”

  “Your ship and your cargo. How long have you even had it?”

  “I acquired it roughly ten minutes before you showed up.”

  “So it has deep and sentimental value for you.”

  “It’s more that I’m concerned about what you plan to do with it,” Casmir said, struggling to fight down rising panic as they turned down the corridor that led to the cargo hold. He hadn’t come up with a brilliant plan yet. Once they were inside, he would have to decide if he wanted to activate the robots and start a fight he couldn’t win… or let Rache have his way. “Or who you plan to sell it to,” he added.

  “Anyone but Jager,” Rache growled.

  “That’s unspecific enough to worry me.”

  “It’s not a weapon that could be used to destroy people.”

  Aside from the fact that everyone who came in contact with it was dying…

  “But it’s potentially access to the rest of the galaxy,” Casmir said. “Eventually. Once the scientists figure it out. That’s opportunity and power. If you didn’t agree, you wouldn’t care if the king got it.”

  Rache stopped and looked at him, and the ten men and Zee also stopped. The entrance to the cargo hold was less than twenty-five meters away.

  “Wait here,” Rache told his men, then waved for Casmir to continue on with him.

  At least he wasn’t guiding Casmir by the scruff of the neck this time. Zee followed close on their heels. Rache glanced back but must have decided the crusher would be indifferent to whatever tête-à-tête they had. Casmir let himself feel a smidgen of hope when Rache turned his back on his men. What was he about to tell Casmir that he didn’t want them to overhear?

  “I was serious earlier when I said I could use a squad of those robots.” Rache waved at Zee.

  Casmir bit back a sarcastic comment. If Rache was about to make a concession or an offer, he had better keep his mouth shut, lest he irritate the man.

  “I have a couple of good engineers, but I could always use more. I’m sure, even if it’s not your area of expertise now, you could pick up ship systems easily enough.”

  It slowly occurred to him where Rache was going.

  “Are you offering me a job?” Casmir asked.

  Rache spread his hand. “And answers to questions you may have. I don’t know everything, since I didn’t even know you existed a month ago, but I think I know more about you than you do.”

  Casmir rocked back. The
idea of a job working as a mercenary—a pirate and enemy of the Kingdom—was far more horrifying than it was appealing. But information. He craved that.

  A couple of months ago, he would have said he’d long ago come to terms with not knowing who his real parents were or how he had come to be in foster care, and he would have meant it, but now? Now that someone wanted to kill him, either for who he was or something he might do the in future? Now he wanted to know. He ached to know. And it sounded like Rache could tell him.

  But to say yes to him was to say goodbye to his job, his friends, his adoptive parents, and his life back home. If he sided with a criminal, an enemy to the king, he would never be able to walk freely on Odin again. And he would be choosing to act against a king he didn’t even know beyond the sound bites that went out to the media. The problem was that, as far as he believed, Jager wasn’t an ass. His government was stable, people had freedom to come and go as they wished. Only his stance on genetic engineering was restrictive to someone who loved science, but it wasn’t as if Jager had put those policies in place. They had existed for centuries, the Kingdom’s answer to some of the crazy and dangerous things that had happened elsewhere in the Twelve Systems.

  “Dabrowski,” Rache said, then softened his voice and switched to, “Casmir. I know it’s not a simple decision to make, but if you’re considering it, I need to know soon.” He gazed at the door. “And I need to know if any booby traps are going to go off when I walk into that cargo hold.”

  Casmir realized the offer might be in earnest, but it was prompted by concern. Did Rache believe he had something up his sleeve? More than he truly did? Casmir felt honored to be considered such a clever and dangerous adversary, even if it seemed wholly unwarranted. Maybe Rache was basing his assumptions on himself, believing he would have put together a booby trap. Unfortunately, Casmir hadn’t had time to do more than gather his robots.