by Tim Pratt
“After your people killed all of mine, you mean?”
“That is the question that arose in my mind,” Felix admitted.
“My people were all willing to die for this mission. So am I, technically, but I’d rather keep it a hypothetical willingness. They were doing their job, and you were doing yours. Even if I didn’t need you alive to give your crew orders, I don’t operate based on revenge.” She rolled her head around on her shoulders. Probably had a cramp from being jammed in a locker that, while big enough for spacesuits, was not really made to hold spacesuits with the people still inside them. “If I did, I’d be more likely to go after the analyst who told us your patrol ship would be on the other side of the system yesterday.”
“Ah, that. We had to leave the system to pick up an emergency delivery of antivirals for one of the mining outposts a few days ago – they picked up some nasty bug in a mineshaft, makes the eyes swell shut and get all crusty, disgusting business. That altered the patrol schedule a bit, but it didn’t matter, because nothing ever happens out here.”
“I guess I’ll spare the analyst’s life after all then. Sorry to shatter your bucolic peace.”
“Oh, no, it’s been a welcome distraction. Until this part, anyway. You mentioned orders. What orders am I meant to be giving? Where are we taking the old man?”
“I’ll tell you when you need to know–”
The woman’s jaws snapped together, she twitched and spasmed, and then fell over.
“You took your time about it,” Felix said mildly.
Tib Pelta shimmered into view, putting her stun gun back in its holster. “I wanted to see if she’d say anything useful, but you are very bad at interrogating people.”
“I’m excellent at flirting, though.”
“You think so? She certainly wasn’t flirting back.”
“I was still getting warmed up.” He sighed. “You could have told us they’d stowed away on the shuttle, Tib, and saved us all a lot of time.” He untethered himself and tried to figure out how to remove the enemy’s armor.
“Don’t be stupid. She would have heard me if I called you on the comms. It’s not like there’s a quiet corner in this shuttle where I could go to make a call, and opening the doors to go out would have drawn attention. I’m sneaky – I don’t teleport.”
“You’re extremely insubordinate today.”
“Ah. I meant to say, ‘Don’t be stupid, captain’. Better?”
“Much. Forgive me. I’m just annoyed.” He thumped the armor. “How are we supposed to crack this shell?”
Tib crouched beside him, pressed a spot on the armor that looked like any other spot, and the plates separated with a hiss of escaping air. The enemy was wearing a plain white jumpsuit underneath. Still no identifying marks, not even a ship name. They wrestled her out of the armor and propped her in a corner. Felix put her weapons in a locked compartment while Tib opened a supply panel and brought out a roll of gray industrial tape. Perfect for binding wrists and ankles. “How’d all this happen, anyway?” he said. “I wondered where you’d gotten off to. I almost called you.”
“Don’t worry. I turned off my comms in case you tried.” She bound the prisoner’s wrists while Felix did the ankles. “I was creeping around the ship, being as invisible as possible, like you ordered.” She paused in her work long enough to give a little salute. “I followed along behind the boarding party, to see if anyone tried to slip away behind them. No luck. I did the same thing during the search, in case someone was moving around to hide in places they’d already checked, but still nothing. So I wandered back here. Just luck that I happened to be faded out, still. I was planning on jumping out at you later and making you wet yourself.”
“I would not have wet myself.”
“No? You know you’re supposed to stay hydrated, captain. Instead, I found her, tossing our spare environment suits into the corridor with the rest of the search detritus, and hiding in the locker. I spent a long time staring at the closed door, wondering if I could wrench it open and knock her out before she killed me, but I could just picture her, holding her gun in front of her, ready to fire at the slightest movement of the door.”
Felix could picture it too. “So you figured you’d wait for her to come out.”
“I knew she would eventually. A suit locker isn’t much of a long-term residence. If she’d stayed sealed in until we got back to the ship, I could have slipped out after you and then we could have cut the oxygen to the shuttle and knocked her out or something.”
Felix nodded. “You did well, Tib. On balance. With extra points for style.”
“Feel free to reward me with bonus money in addition to praise.” She inclined her head toward the woman. “What do we do with her? And with him?”
“Ask them various pointed questions, I would imagine.”
“Sounds important,” Tib said. “Very much captain-level work. You can do that part.”
•••
The prisoner stalked back and forth in the brig – which was halfway filled with cases of emergency rations, of course, so at least she wouldn’t go hungry – while Felix watched her on the screen from the bridge. Half the screen, anyway: the other half was filled with the dossier Calred had compiled on their prisoner, based on DNA and facial recognition results.
“Amina Azad,” Cal rumbled. “Citizen of the Federation of Sol. Ten years in their navy, the last three as a training officer specializing in close combat and incursion tactics. Most of her service record is redacted, even in the Federation databases our analysts aren’t supposed to be able to access. She was discharged two years ago, and set up shop as a freelance security consultant, with a confidential client list. So confidential I’d be willing to bet none of the clients actually exist.”
“You think she’s still working for the Federation of Sol as a deniable asset?” Felix was neither shocked nor appalled by the possibility. The Coalition had its share of unofficial state actors, after all – a whole raider fleet of them.
“Seems likely. The Federation doesn’t like to let valuable people go any more than we do.”
“She’s some kind of black ops super soldier, and we were still able to find out more about her than we were about Doctor Thales?”
“I know,” Cal said. “Makes you curious about what he does for a living, doesn’t it?”
“Is he awake yet?” Felix asked.
“In and out,” Tib said over the comms. She was in their infirmary, watching over Thales. His status was a bit fuzzy: he wasn’t a Coalition citizen, as far as they knew, but the Coalition was certainly interested in him, so he was somewhere between a guest and a prisoner. “Azad hit him with a massive dose of sedatives, and the safest approach is just to let them work their way out of his system. I could counteract the effects with more drugs, but he’s on the far side of middle age, has high blood pressure and some arterial clogging, and I don’t want to shock his system.”
“Let me know when he’s lucid. I suppose I’ll go chat with Azad in the meantime.”
•••
“Captain. Neat trick back on the shuttle. Our analysts said you had an Yssaril on your crew, but I didn’t realize she came to my ship with you. You fooled me once, which is one more than most people get.”
Felix sat outside the brig, on a crate full of cloned eel-meat canned in red jelly – the drones had moved several crates into the corridor to make room for Azad. He thumped the side of the box. “Cloned eels. Ever had them? I guess I’d eat them, if it was the aftermath of a disaster and the choice was cloned eels or nothing at all.”
“They’re better in yellow jelly,” Azad said. “Why are we talking about eels?”
“I’m attempting to establish a conversational rapport with my prisoner for purposes of interrogation.”
“Try harder,” she said. “How’s my prisoner?”
“You mean Th
ales? He’s not yours any more. He’ll be all right, though no thanks to you. That level of sedation? Pretty dangerous for someone his age.”
“One of my people is an expert at judging that sort of thing. Or was, before you killed him. I guess Thales hasn’t started talking yet, or you’d see why I wanted him unconscious and quiet.” She leaned against the bars, gazing at Felix with disconcerting directness. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Hand you over to the Table of Captains. Or, rather, their general staff. They’ll ask you various difficult questions, and then decide if keeping you alive has any strategic value. Or you could cooperate with me, tell me everything right now, and I’ll use my influence with the Table to intercede on your behalf.”
She snorted. “Ha. I’ll pass. My analyst said you’re competent, but reckless even by Coalition standards, which is why you’re stuck running a glorified transport ship in one of the most remote systems in Coalition space. Thales came way out here precisely because it’s the middle of nowhere. Scratch that – the deep dusty back corner of nowhere. I think I can live without your influence.”
“You can live for a little while, anyway, though it might not be very pleasant.”
“Going to make me walk the space-plank?” she said. “Keelhaul me?”
“Nobody ever really walked planks, and keelhauling someone on a spaceship isn’t very effective. It’s just not the same unless you’re being dragged underwater across a hull covered with barnacles.”
“There’s a sad shortage of barnacles in space, I’ve noticed. Just the usual interrogation techniques and methods of execution, then? That’s too bad. I was hoping for exposure to the local culture.”
“I’m sure you’ll find our little customs fascinating. We’re meeting up with Commander Meehves in a few hours and transferring you to her custody.”
“Is this commander taking custody of Thales too?” She tried to make the question sound casual, and didn’t do a very good job.
“I’m afraid not. The general consensus is that you and Thales shouldn’t be on the same ship, if that can be avoided, in case you’re tempted to do something reckless.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll do something reckless here?” She smiled. With a smile like that, she would have made a pretty good pirate.
“Desperately.” Felix took out his hand terminal, pushed an icon on the screen, and a clear sheet of unbreakable plexi slid out of the ceiling to cover the bars of the brig. “That’s what this gas is for.”
“You absolute piece of–” Azad crumpled to the floor before Felix could learn any new Federation of Sol insults.
•••
Qqmel came over to escort Azad back to The Bad Cat. She was unconscious and restrained on a floating stretcher. “Be careful with her,” Felix said. “Nobody’s that arrogant without at least a little to back it up.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Qqmel said, eyeing him with reptilian amusement, but his cannon clicked and whirred and shifted to fix on her face.
“When do I get rid of Thales?” Felix said.
They strolled from the brig toward the airlock, with one of Qqmel’s marines pushing the stretcher along. “Ah, the good doctor of nobody knows what. The commander says you should return to your usual patrol route and babysit him for the time being. You’ll receive further orders after a while.”
Felix frowned. “I’m not sensing a lot of urgency.”
“The Table hasn’t decided what to do with the man yet, Felix. We could return him to Cobbler’s Knob, deport him to wherever he’s originally from, make him disappear – all options are on the table, because we don’t know why he was abducted. We’re not sure any of this is Coalition business, honestly.”
“None of our business!” Felix pointed at Azad.
“Obviously, Azad fired on you, so she’s our business. She may have some useful intelligence from her time in the service, so we’ll get what we can from her before we lock her up, or shove her out an airlock, or someone in the clandestine branch tries to turn her. Thales, though, isn’t nearly as interesting to our superiors. We don’t know why she came for him. Maybe he’s just a wealthy recluse Azad wanted to ransom. Who knows? He’s the victim here, anyway.”
“Come on. He must be important. If the Federation sent a black ops team–”
“That’s just Calred’s theory,” Qqmel interrupted. “He’s a security officer, which means he’s professionally paranoid. We checked out the dead, and they’re all freelancers, just like Azad. Our working theory is that they were hired to do a snatch-and-grab that went disastrously wrong, and the Federation doesn’t have anything to do with this mess at all.”
Of course. “The Table doesn’t want to believe the Federation was involved,” he said. “Or at least they don’t want to admit to the possibility officially. Because that would mean the Federation of Sol sent an armed vessel secretly into Mentak Coalition space, which then proceeded to fire on one of our ships. That’s the kind of thing that endangers diplomatic relations and trade deals and all sorts of other things.”
“That kind of speculation is for higher ranks than me,” Qqmel said cheerfully. “I just break open ships and steal stuff. But I may have overheard the commander musing along similar lines. She always said you were smarter than you look. Look, we’re going to interrogate Azad, but she’s going to be tough. Why don’t you see if you can get Thales to talk, and if he says something interesting, pass it on? You can handle one old guy, right, Felix?”
“Right.” Felix saw his hope of glory receding. Even if he found out Thales had some big secret, and he told the Table, they might choose not to hear him, because of politics. He watched Qqmel load Azad onto his shuttle, and once they were away from his ship, took a nice deep breath. At least that woman was someone else’s problem now. Maybe he had time to grab a bite or a nap or both before –
“Captain.” Tib spoke in his comms, voice sharp. “Thales is awake. You’d better get down here.”
“I’m on my way.” Someone shouted in the background. “Are you all right? What’s going on down there?”
“He’s throwing things at me and calling me names,” Tib said. “I’ve heard worse, but I’d rather have you here than me.”
•••
“Get that slimy sneaking frog away from me,” Thales snarled, crouching behind the exam table in the infirmary. His gray hair stuck up in wild whorls, and he held his fists up like he was about to get into a brawl.
“OK, monkey.” Tib glanced at Felix. “May I be excused?”
“I think I can take it from here,” Felix said. “Doctor Thales, I’m Captain Felix Duval, of the Temerarious. I’d appreciate it if you’d stop hurling abuse at my first officer.”
“You know what those creatures are like,” Thales said. “They’re spies, you know, all of them, they sneak and steal and sell your secrets. I can’t believe you have one on your ship! Are you some uncommon variety of idiot?”
Tib shook her head and left, the door sliding shut behind her. Felix perched on the edge of a counter. “She’s a valuable member of the crew and my oldest friend, so I’m not the right audience for this little show. Let’s move on. How are you feeling? Do you have everything you need?”
“I don’t have anything I need. Where are my files? My equipment?”
“Everything we recovered is here in storage.” Meehves didn’t want Azad and the files on the same ship either, just to be safe, so Felix was babysitting those, too. “Could you answer a few questions for me, Doctor Thales?”
He scoffed, but lowered his fists and stood up. “Why should I?”
“Courtesy, since you’re a guest on my ship? No? Gratitude, because we saved you from a team of mercenaries who attempted to abduct you? No, not that, either? How about pragmatism, because I can make your life easy, or I can make your life difficult?”
“Hmph.” He sat on the
exam table. “Go ahead. Ask. I can’t promise you’ll understand any of the answers.”
“Where are you from?”
“Oh, all over.” He waved his hand vaguely.
Right. “Why did you choose to settle on Cobbler’s Knob?”
“I like peace and quiet and privacy. It’s good for my work. People are always trying to steal my work.”
“What is your work, exactly?”
Thales blinked. “You mean you don’t know? Ha. I’m a scientist, boy. My research is going to transform the galaxy.”
“Oh, is that all. What kind of research?”
Thales stuck his little finger in his ear, wiggled it around, looked at the tip for a moment, then wiped whatever he’d found off on the edge of the table. “The kind that’s going to make me very rich.” He looked down at the floor and spoke more quietly, as if to himself. “There’s no going back to Alope – they found me once, and they will again. I used the last of my funds getting settled out here, establishing a fresh identity, covering my tracks… I can’t afford to do all that over again. Hrmph. I need resources.” He looked up and met Felix’s eyes with his own bloodshot ones. “I suppose the Coalition is as good a partner as any. All right. If your government will help me complete my work, I’ll give them the privilege of buying the results.” He waved his hand. “Convey my offer to your superiors at the Table.”
“I’m going to need a lot more information before I bother the captains.”
He glared. “It’s not enough for you to know the Federation of Sol wants me? I thought you people were pirates.”
Felix pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just tell me why the Federation wanted you.”
“Because whoever controls my invention will rule the galaxy.”
Felix waited for a moment. Nothing more seemed to be forthcoming. “That was a good line, really, and well delivered, but, again, I’m going to need more context.”
Thales sniffed. “I’m not sure your clearances are high enough to hear this.”
“You’re not going to talk to anyone higher ranking anytime soon, Thales, and you don’t work for us, so nothing you have to say is classified in the Coalition.”