“And if I decline the job offer?” Casmir asked.
“You’re not even going to ask about salary and benefits?” Rache asked dryly.
“Do mercenaries get benefits? Paid vacation? A retirement plan?”
“Of course. We’re not heathens. Though few survive long enough to retire.”
“That shouldn’t be part of your recruitment pitch.”
“I’m an honest man.”
“Are you?” Casmir squinted at him, wishing he could see Rache’s face. All he had was his memory of what Rache looked like under the hood. He still didn’t know why his genetic twin bothered to wear it. As far as Casmir knew, he—they—didn’t look like anyone. “What were you going to do with the bioweapon?”
“Exactly what I did to it. Blow it up with the refinery. Admittedly, my ship wasn’t supposed to be attached to the refinery when that happened.” His tone grew a touch frosty.
“You paid fifty thousand crowns so you could blow it up and not get any use of it? You couldn’t know at the time that Captain Lopez would return that money.” Casmir realized he had only her word that she had done that. “She did, didn’t she?”
“Yes, and your bounty also. Look, I’m sure you believe I’m a heinous villain, but I have my reasons for acting against Jager. God knows someone has to keep his schemes for retaking the Twelve Systems from finding root. I’m not…” Rache brought his open hand to his face and closed his fist. Tightly. “I wouldn’t want to see a horrific weapon like that used on civilians. Kingdom or not. I have a hard time forgiving ignorance in people who ignore what’s going on beyond the neighborhood they live in, but I wouldn’t want them to die as pawns in some war.”
Casmir hated to admit that he’d barely paid attention to what happened off campus and out of his narrow field of passion and expertise. He still didn’t know much about what was going on in the systems beyond their gate, what truths were and weren’t being conveyed by the media.
“You know he’s using your crushers, right?” Rache asked.
Casmir gripped the wall. “What? Jager is?”
“In other systems, yes. I was offered a job by Stribog Station in System Augeas. To get rid of them and some Kingdom infiltrators.”
Casmir stared at him. Was he telling the truth? That Jager was using the crushers against people in other systems?
“I didn’t know, no.” Casmir decided he would search the news for himself rather than taking Rache’s word for it.
But what if Rache was telling the truth? He supposed, deep down, he’d always known it was a possibility that the military would use them for offense and not just defense, but he’d been told… He closed his eyes. Maybe he’d been naive to believe anything he’d been told.
“So you bought the bioweapon to get rid of it?” Casmir asked, turning the conversation back to that, not wanting to deal with his own mistakes, not until he’d researched Rache’s claims and knew for certain that self-flagellation was in order.
“I bought it to get rid of it,” Rache said. “Yes. And I put the bounty on your head so someone would bring you to my ship and get you away from whoever is trying to kill you.”
Was it true? Was any of this true?
Casmir would like to believe that Rache wasn’t pure evil, but he couldn’t help but feel Rache was playing him, trying to win him over just as he might try to win someone else over. Because he thought Casmir had set some booby trap that might endanger his men.
“I don’t suppose you know that information. Who’s trying to kill me.”
“Not that, no. What—” Rache lifted a finger and paused.
Receiving some communication from his ship? The thought reminded Casmir that Ishii and his colleagues were fighting Rache’s big warship right now. As soon as the outcome of that battle was determined, Rache would be done chatting and would force the issue. One way or another.
Rache lowered his hand. “I need you to make a decision. Whether you’re with me or against me. I can forgive the refinery—you were a prisoner doing your best to escape, and I would’ve done the same thing. But if you try to get me killed again, we’re done.”
Casmir closed his eyes. Logically, he knew it would be smart to play along with Rache, to save his ass today, even if he meant to escape at the first chance, but his sense of honor wouldn’t let him.
“I cannot forgive you,” he said slowly, his eyes focused on the wall past Rache’s shoulder, “for knowingly screwing over my best friend by exposing her to that radiation. And for doing it to all of them.” Casmir flung a hand toward the armored men waiting patiently—brainlessly—for their boss to finish. “You want to know what the end result is? Go up to the bridge and look at the people who died because they wanted to take this gate home. I’m sorry that King Jager did something to piss you off, and that maybe it ruined your life, but that doesn’t give you the right to throw other people’s lives away.”
Casmir lifted his chin and made himself look into Rache’s eyes—or where they would be if he could see them. He wished he could tear the mask off and force Rache to look back at him. But maybe this was better. Maybe it would be too eerie to have his own eyes looking back at him.
Several long seconds passed. Rache was still holding that rifle, and Casmir still didn’t have his helmet up. If the man wanted to shoot him… he was fast enough to do it before Casmir could don the protection.
Rache grabbed Casmir by the front of the suit and pushed him against the wall opposite the door. He waved for his men to come over.
“Check the cargo hold. Make sure there aren’t any booby traps and that the gate is in there.” Rache tilted his helmet. “Lieutenant, you have the bridge secured yet? Report.”
“Working on it, sir. Everything is locked down with passcodes. Dao Hu is trying to hack his way in.”
“Understood. I’ll be up shortly with someone who will tell you the passcodes.” Rache stared at Casmir, who couldn’t do much while he was pinned to the wall. He didn’t even have his borrowed stunner anymore, not that it would have done any good against the fully armored Rache.
Casmir watched helplessly as the mercenaries stalked into the cargo hold. His chip was still logged in to the robots’ network. Should he order them to attack? What would he be starting if he did? Or what would he be ending?
Rache was staring at him, not his men. Contemplating killing him? Or torturing him for the passcode to the ship’s navigation computer?
“Uh, sir?” came an uncertain query from the cargo hold.
“What?” Rache grabbed Casmir’s arm, his grip painful even through the protective layers of the galaxy suit, and pushed him into the cargo hold.
As they walked in, the door slid shut behind them, and the lights went out.
16
Yas woke groggy and confused to the sound of voices.
“…can’t just stay in here and die.”
“Breaking out of here isn’t going to keep that from happening.”
“At least we’d die on our feet.”
“No, you’d die collapsed in a corridor, marinating in your own piss.”
“I’m not going to piss myself as I die.”
“You sure? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the energy to pull my dick out of my pants right now.”
“If you don’t have your suit’s piss sucker hooked up, that’s your own fault.”
“They took our armor off, you idiot.”
“Oh, right. Shit. Where is it?”
Yas blinked slowly, gradually identifying the speakers as Corporals Gonzales and Chains. How fortunate that he was going to die in the company of such cultured and erudite individuals.
He touched his chest and found that he was indeed in nothing more than the wrinkled long-sleeved shirt and underwear he’d worn under his borrowed combat armor. The thin material lacked temperature-regulating capabilities, and the hard deck was cool under his back. He vaguely remembered people who hadn’t identified themselves promising treatment and then, as he lost con
sciousness, dragging him onto a hover gurney. And into this unremarkable room. Better than being shoved out an airlock, he supposed.
“Doc.” Corporal Chains shook his shoulder.
Yas groaned.
“If we can get out of here, can you fix us up? I feel like shit. I don’t wanna die like this. Why couldn’t Rache have taken us into battle somewhere if we had to die? This is godawful.”
Yas tried to focus on the speaker and what he was saying, but his brain wasn’t working at optimum.
“Doc?” Another shake.
“Sorry,” Yas rasped. “If I could do anything, I would have. I’m sick too. Trust me. I—”
A soft hiss sounded, and the door opened. Chains lurched to his feet and whirled toward it.
“Back up,” a woman said—Kim Sato. She still wore her galaxy suit, but without a helmet this time, and a dark braid of hair hung over her shoulder.
She stepped in, a rifle pointed at Chains’s chest. Another man, the one who’d helped the female doctor knock them out, eased in beside her, a rifle also in hand. He didn’t look like he knew how to use it. She did. Maybe she was simply better at faking it—Yas couldn’t imagine that a bacteriologist spent a lot of time at the shooting range.
“I’m in need of lab rats,” Kim said, “and you five are all I’ve got. Besides myself and my colleagues.”
“You got another cure?” Chains growled. “Your people knocked us out last time. That one did.” He thrust an accusing finger at her companion. He crouched, as if he might spring out the door.
Kim’s eyes narrowed as her finger tightened on the trigger. Chains wasn’t wearing any armor, and at that range, it wouldn’t take an expert in marksmanship to hit him in the chest.
“I told them to,” Kim said. “You killed Kingdom marines the last time you visited this ship, so we had to get you out of your armor and locked up. But here’s the deal: Rache said he’d get me some decent coffee if I managed to save your lives, so I’m extremely motivated.”
Her buddy glanced at her in surprise.
Yas thought it sounded like a joke, but it was hard to tell. She was deadpan.
“I’ve created a strain of bacteria that can eat the pseudo radiation swimming through your bloodstream right now. You need to get rid of it before your body can heal. Dr. Sikou is working on that part of the equation upstairs in the cryonics lab. This is Step One.”
Yas pushed himself into a sitting position. “You honestly found an answer?”
He would have been inclined to trust her without question, but he shared Chains’s feeling of betrayal from their interaction with the other doctors.
Kim nodded. “A way to slow down and maybe completely counteract the effects of the attack, yes.”
“Attack?”
“Defensive measures may be the more accurate term. I’m not sure yet. Our engineers are going to have to build a special meter to even be able to see and measure this new type of radiation. If any archaeologists truly want to study that gate, they’re going to have to do that first. Or find scientists who are the descendants of some centuries-old humans who were never inoculated against the Great Plague.”
“Er, I think I missed something.” Yas looked past Chains and Gonzalez to where Jess lay curled on her side, one of her legs twitching. She’d vomited while Yas had been out, and his fingers twitched in sympathy. The assassin, Chaplain, was behind her and either sleeping or unconscious. Hopefully not dead.
“I usually do,” Gonzalez muttered, sitting against the wall and looking less inclined than Chains to jump up and cause trouble.
Yas frowned at Jess. “Will you check her?” he asked Kim. “Or let me do it? Vomiting hasn’t typically been a symptom, has it?”
Kim shook her head. “Of typical acute radiation sickness, yes, but I haven’t observed it so far with this.”
Yas looked around, but he’d been too ill to worry about taking his medical kit off the shuttle, so he had nothing, not even a diagnostic scanner.
Chains shifted, maybe thinking of attacking again.
Kim jerked her rifle. “Go stand over there,” she told him. “If you try anything, I will shoot you. Rache didn’t stipulate that you all had to survive for me to get my coffee. He’d probably be happy even if all he got back was his doctor and engineer.”
“What, combat specialists are disposable?” Chains glowered, but he backed away, moving past Yas and folding his arms over his chest as he leaned against a wall in the corner of the room.
“Combat specialists who kill Kingdom marines are,” Kim said coolly.
He curled his lip but didn’t object further.
“There’s coffee in the mess hall two levels up,” the man with her murmured.
“Coffee or coffee bulbs?” Kim tilted her head for him to go check on Jess. “They are not synonymous.”
“Uh, coffee in little boxes that you can heat up.”
“That’s primitive. I can’t believe people willingly live in space.”
Jess groaned, and Yas willed them to stop the banter and help her. But the man also didn’t have a medical kit with him. Was he even a doctor?
“Dr. Peshlakai.” Kim slipped her hand into her pocket while keeping an eye on Chains. “I’ve already injected myself—about a half hour ago—so you would be lab rat Number Two. If you’re willing.” She withdrew a jet injector and five vials.
“That’s the new bacteria you made?” Yas held out his open hands, not trusting his legs to hold him if he attempted to stand.
“Yes. Inject yourself and any of your people who are willing. I think it’s the only way you’ll survive. We all got exposed to a lot more of the pseudo radiation down at the wreck site than the crew did here when the archaeology team brought back a piece of the gate. And none of them made it, except for those who had some warning and quarantined themselves before the gate piece arrived.”
“Everyone on the ship should have done that.”
“I agree.” Kim walked over and laid the injector and vials on Yas’s palm while continuing to keep the rifle pointed at Chains.
Yas held up a hand toward Chains, just in case he still had notions of escape in mind. They could escape after they were better.
“When will the Kingdom ships be here?” Gonzalez asked.
Kim looked at him, her brow creasing.
“Someone must be on the way by now,” he said. “It’s been, what, three days since we kidnapped you?”
“Maybe so,” Kim said, “but there’s a lot of craziness happening at the gate. Rache and all those warships headed that way.”
“Still, your Fleet isn’t going to forget about a ship full of scientists in trouble for long.” Gonzales exchanged a long look with Chains, who nodded slightly.
“The Fleet is busy right now.” Kim backed to the doorway, where she could easily keep both of them in sight. “You should rest your bodies. It’ll take time for the bacteria to multiply, and that’s only Step One, as I said. Dr. Sikou is working on a way to reverse the internal damage.”
“Cryonics treatment should work,” Yas said. “I know the anti-aging spas use something based off that technology. A lot of their stuff is hokum, but that obviously works to revive frozen corpses and turn back time for them. We’re not even frozen, so it should be easier.” Yas smiled, feeling encouraged. He hadn’t considered cryonics treatment, but it made sense now that she’d brought it up, especially if her bacteria scoured any lingering radiation out of the body.
“So I’m hoping,” Kim said.
Jess moaned again, her eyes squeezed tightly closed.
The healer in Yas wanted to go over and comfort her—to do something for her. If only he had the strength.
“Her pulse is fast,” the man said, “dilated pupils, tremor. These aren’t symptoms of the radiation.”
Yas almost slapped himself in the forehead as realization struck. “Damn it.”
The doctor looked toward him.
“I don’t suppose you have any trylochanix?” Yas asked.
“I suspect she has an addiction, and I want to help her switch to something else, but this isn’t the best time for her to have to deal with withdrawal symptoms. On top of everything else.”
“You give your patients trylochanix?” the man asked, frowning deeply, his eyes full of judgment.
Yas clenched his jaw. “Their previous doctor did, or she got it herself. I don’t know. I didn’t sign up for this damn job. I was coerced by threat of death.”
“Rache has an interesting method of recruiting people,” Kim told her colleague.
“Not everybody can be won over by coffee,” Yas said. “Will you find her something? Please?”
The male doctor shook his head, but Kim said, “I’ll see what’s in the sickbay cabinets.”
“Thank you,” Yas said.
Jess could wean herself off the drug later, when she wasn’t dealing with another health crisis.
They backed out of the room, and a thunk sounded as a heavy lock was thrown.
Yas injected himself, then inoculated Chains, Gonzalez, and Chaplain without asking if they agreed to being lab rats. If the alternative was death, what did it matter?
Lastly, he pulled himself to Jess’s side on his hands and knees. “I’m sorry, Chief.” He rested a hand on her shoulder, then touched her cheek, where sweat glistened on her dark skin. “I’m sure you’re miserable.”
“You’re not miserable?” Gonzalez asked.
“Probably not as miserable as Jess—Chief Khonsari.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Gonzalez muttered.
Yas used the last vial on Jess, hoping the bacteria wouldn’t make her feel any worse as they worked.
She groaned but didn’t open her eyes or otherwise respond. Yas leaned against the wall, hoping Kim would be able to find some of the medication. And wondering if he would be able to talk Jess into weaning herself off it after this.
If they survived and if they didn’t all end up in a Fleet prison somewhere. Yas assumed that would be his fate, the same as the other mercenaries, if the military showed up. His fate might even be worse. What if he was extradited back to Tiamat Station, where the authorities were still in the mood to kill him rather than give him a fair trial?
Ship of Ruin Page 23