by Tim Pratt
Thales nodded, and turned to Calred. “I apologize for insulting your ancestors.”
Calred inclined his great head graciously.
Thales went on. “If you’re lurking around in here, First Officer Pelta, I’m sorry for all the shouting earlier. I had a bad experience with a spy from your tribe, but I’ll try to judge you on your personal merits, and leave old associations out of it.”
Tib shimmered into visibility. “Fine.” She sat next to Felix. “Now that we’re all happy and functional, what’s the first step toward our glorious shared future?”
Felix said, “Thales tells us everything he knows about his partner Shelma and the place she’s being held, and we make a plan to reunite them.”
•••
Hours later, Felix lay in his bunk, alone in his cabin, staring up at the ceiling, trying to get some sleep. They were making their way to the nearest Coalition-controlled wormhole gate, which would get them closer to the part of Letnev space where Thales believed his fellow scientist was being held. Life was likely to get very eventful soon, but, for now, things were quiet, and he needed to get some sleep while he could. Of course, his mind was spinning and uncooperative, with better things to do than dream.
His comm channel buzzed, and Felix groaned, rolled over, and squinted at the terminal on his bedside table. Then he sat upright. He had an encrypted message, highest urgency, from a command-level officer. He smoothed his hair down and answered.
Meehves appeared on the screen, face puffy from her own interrupted sleep. “We lost her,” Meehves said.
Chapter 6
“You lost who?” Felix said, and then realized. “The mercenary, Amina Azad? What do you mean you lost her?”
“I mean the guards in the brig didn’t check in as scheduled, so someone went down to see why not, and found both guards dead, and her cell empty. The security footage was erased, which I would have sworn wasn’t even possible. Our best guess is, Azad had hidden implants that didn’t show up on our scans, super-soldier black-ops enhancements that enabled her to escape and hack into our systems. There was no indication of any ships or pods leaving, no evidence of an airlock opening, so we scoured the ship for her, searching for hours. I finally sent the deck master to do a visual check of the launch bay, and that’s when we realized one of our fighters was missing – according to the computers, the fighter is still sitting in its launch tube. She manipulated the security footage, so there’s no record of the departure, or which way it went. Those fighters aren’t meant for long-range travel, but they’re fast, and there are inhabited systems in range on multiple trajectories, so we can’t mount a meaningful search.”
Felix whistled. “She’s just gone, then?”
“We sent out her name and description system-wide, claiming she’s wanted for murder, but if she can escape my brig, she can hide. It’s a big galaxy.”
“She’ll go back to her handlers in the Federation of Sol and tell them we have Thales,” Felix said.
Meehves shrugged. “If she was working for the Federation at all. We didn’t prove that. We didn’t prove anything. She just stared at us during our initial interview, didn’t say a word, and we were planning a more intense interrogation for tomorrow.”
“So, you don’t think I should worry about the full force and power of the Federation of Sol bearing down on me?”
“The Federation doesn’t want a war any more than we do. Even if Azad is an operative, and reports back, she doesn’t know where Thales is now. We could have put him in a bunker somewhere. The Federation won’t be able to do much about that.” Meehves sighed. “I’m sorry, Felix. I was hoping to get confirmation that Thales was telling the truth – or that he’s full of shit. I hear Jhuri made you his babysitter?”
“I thought that was super secret?”
“This is the best encryption we’ve got,” she said. “Anyway, Jhuri was pretty interested in what Azad might have to say, so we’ve been liaising. I’m sure now that I’m not helpful any more I’ll be left in the dark.”
“Do you know the undersecretary well?”
“A little by acquaintance, a lot by reputation.”
“Am I in good hands? Or, tentacles?”
“If you prove useful to Jhuri, the undersecretary will take very good care of you. If you prove less than useful, he’ll throw you away like a broken tool and reach for a new one.”
“I do not find that reassuring, commander.”
“Oh, cheer up. For someone in the murky upper echelons of the clandestine services, Jhuri is a pretty straight shooter. Didn’t he tell you basically the same thing himself?”
“He said if I succeed, I’ll be rewarded, and if I get caught committing crimes outside Coalition space, he’ll pretend he never heard of me.”
“See? You know exactly where you stand. I’ll let you know if we hear anything about our escapee. Good luck with your mission, captain.”
“I hate the idea of Azad running around loose out there.”
“It’s a big galaxy,” Meehves repeated. “I doubt you’ll ever run into her again.”
•••
Amina Azad sat in the deepest darkest corner of a cantina in Misna, the most cosmopolitan city on the planet Ryma, which was primarily a world of temperate oceans inhabited by immense but only marginally intelligent cetaceans. The areas of habitable land included a scattering of archipelagos and one island large enough call a continent, at least by local standards. The city of Misna hugged a bay on the western coast, and most of the nicer restaurants featured views of the water. The place where Azad waited didn’t have any windows at all.
She wore a wide-brimmed hat she’d stolen from a booth in the bazaar. Misna was big enough to have cameras capable of facial recognition, and she had to assume she was a wanted fugitive in Coalition space, so it was better to keep her features in shadow. She didn’t have any contacts here, but cities were cities, and a couple of discreet inquiries had brought her to this portside bar, and the Xxcha bartender had agreed to make the right introductions. He’d get a finder’s fee for his trouble if it worked out, and a knife in the neck from Azad if it didn’t. He only knew about the first option.
The woman who slid into the chair across from Azad was Letnev. The wild variety of species present in Coalition space always delighted Azad – back home in the Federation, nonhumans were rare, and most of the times Azad had interacted with other races she’d been shooting at them or getting shot at or both. Having other sorts of interactions was always interesting. A lot of her compatriots in the navy were xenophobic, but Azad had decided early on that she wanted to see the galaxy, and she reveled in the vastness of the universe.
“You have a ship to sell.” The stranger was young, wearing dark glasses; the Letnev were sensitive to bright light, but the bar was dim, so Azad figured she was probably just an asshole.
“I don’t have the title on me,” Azad said. “The ship is salvage. Did you take a look?” She’d passed along the coordinates for the ship to the prospective buyer earlier. That was a risk, but a calculated one. The fighter was locked up tight, the engine wouldn’t turn on without her permission, and as a military-grade vessel, it had countermeasures that would make it dangerous for anyone to scrap it for parts. The fighter was more valuable in one piece, anyway.
“We sent someone to take a look,” she said. “We don’t see a lot of Coalition fighters for sale, certainly not tucked away in the glass flats outside the city.”
“Couldn’t dock legally,” Azad said. “See above regarding the lack of title. Besides, the fighters are made to evade detection. Why not spare myself the port fees?”
“That’s just good financial planning,” the woman said. “We’re interested. You have the access fob?”
“If you have the money.”
The woman slid across a card, and Azad passed her hand over it, the implant in her palm reading th
e data. More than she’d expected, but less than she’d hoped. Enough to finance the next part of her mission, though. “Acceptable.” She slid a teardrop-shaped access fob across the table in return. The woman did her own authentication check, nodded, and left without a look back.
Azad wondered who she’d just sold the fighter to, or who would end up with it in the end. Gangsters, terrorists, revolutionaries? Oh well. It was unlikely to end up shooting at Federation ships, so she didn’t really care. Now she had sufficient funds to get off this ball of mud and whales and resume her mission. She paid her tab, left a tip, and went looking for a ship to hire.
As she walked through the narrow, winding streets of Misna, she did her best to focus on the future. Pondering past mistakes could be a valuable exercise, if it prompted you to avoid similar mistakes in the future, but there was no point in dwelling on misfortune. She’d done everything properly, but you couldn’t account for bad luck, and Duval and the Temerarious being in the wrong place at the wrong time was nothing else.
Azad could apportion some blame to her second-in-command for blowing their entire emergency fund on a pointless attempt to bribe Captain Duval, but she’d used her selfdestruct button – as the squad called their poison-filled hollow teeth – to avoid capture, so there was no point. The dead couldn’t learn from their mistakes.
Azad had a poison capsule too, but she couldn’t imagine using it. There was no scenario where she was more valuable dead than alive, and she preferred redemption over sacrifice. Better to stay alive and look for an opportunity to escape, and the sloppy discipline in the raider fleet and her own hidden enhancements had provided one. Now she could complete her mission: bring home the runaway Thales and put him back to work for the Federation of Sol. Thales wasn’t a Federation citizen – he’d grown up among the talking squid on a Hylar world – but he’d made certain commitments and then abandoned them. His only loyalty was to himself. Azad was going to show him the error of his ways.
Azad strolled through the spaceport, a series of landing areas and support buildings arrayed on the edge of the island, not far from the bristling cranes and docks of the deep-water port. If she only looked at the sky and the glittering reflections of sunlight on the sparkling water, or closed her eyes and smelled the salt and exhaust, she could imagine she was back home on Jord, in the fishing village where she’d grown up before joining the navy. The illusion broke when she looked around and saw the Xxcha dockworkers carrying heavy loads alongside humans in exo-suits, the Hacan ship owners supervising, and the occasional head of a Hylar popping out of the water as they went about their business.
Misna was refreshing, and a nice change from cramped ship life, but she’d been here too long already. The pirates would be looking for her. She needed a vessel built for speed, something that could be piloted solo if need be, and, fortunately, the Coalition was full of smuggler’s ships.
She settled on a newly arrived light cruiser, low-slung and shaped like a sleek aquatic predator, and approached the obvious captain, a dark-skinned human woman standing on top of a crate and yelling at people while wearing an alluring quantity of leather. (Stop that, Azad told herself. She was on a mission. There was time enough for pleasure later, if she lived.)
“I need a ride to Thibah.” Thibah was an arid place, almost the opposite of Misna, with small oceans that looked like mud puddles from orbit. Its only virtue was its location, making it an ideal staging point for deep-space exploration – it was the last place to get fuel and supplies before venturing out into contested and unknown lands. It was also the first stop for people returning from those depths with items for sale, usually ore or other plundered resources, but sometimes alien artifacts and stranger things.
Azad didn’t have any interest in going there, but it was a plausible destination from here.
The captain looked Azad up and down. “Nice hat. I’m not available for hire. I’ve got a load of mixed liquor I’m planning to unload on a mining planet.”
“Take it to Thibah instead. Explorers like to drink.”
“Yes, and I like to fill my cargo hold. I sell liquor, I get ore, I sell ore, I get liquor, and around and around I go. It’s a virtuous circle.”
Azad leaned back against a crate and gave her a lazy smile. “Sounds boring. You’re too young to be that boring. Besides, there are plenty of things to pick up on Thibah. Even if you don’t get a decent load there, that’s where me paying you comes in handy.”
The captain hopped down from the crate. “I’m sure you can find a ship going that way without bothering me.”
“I like the look of your boat. I want something small, fast, and private. Maybe we could crack open a bottle or two of your supply and enjoy the journey.”
She grunted. “What’s the offer?”
Amina plucked the card from her pocket and held it up. The captain scanned it, and she was young, because she couldn’t stop her eyes from widening. “You could almost buy a ship for that much.”
“Not one as fast as yours, and anyway, then I wouldn’t have any company. What do you say?”
“I say, are you on the run from anybody I should be worried about?”
Azad laughed, deep and throaty. “I never run from anything. I run toward things.” She held out her hand. “I’m Carmen Goodwin.” It wasn’t an alias she’d ever used before, and it wasn’t the name of her dead aunt or her hometown or any of the other stupid false identity choices amateurs made. She had a list in her head of the names of human women approximately her age who’d emigrated as children to remote parts of the galaxy and never shown up in public records since, and when she needed a new name, she picked one, after a cursory check to make sure they hadn’t reentered civilization. As she recalled, Carmen had grown up on a space station until her family went to seek their fortune on a colony world, where they’d probably been eaten by local predators or something. Azad had always possessed a good memory, and the navy had provided technological augmentation to make it even better.
“I’m Zayne ad Itroc,” the captain said. “I’ll need half up front, half on your safe delivery to Thibah.”
“I find your terms acceptable, captain. How soon can we leave?”
“I’m almost done with loading. I’ll tell the cargo handlers they aren’t needed, and pay the docking fees – no, wait, it’s cheaper to bribe the dockmaster here, I forgot – and then we can be on our way. Say two hours?”
“I can’t wait.”
•••
Azad got something to eat from a kiosk nearby – hot spiced meat wrapped in broad leaves, nowhere near as good as the seafood she could get back home; she had the sinking suspicion it was whale meat – and then hunkered down to wait. She had a tactical engine in her head, and she ran it through various scenarios, but the immediate problems were trivially easy to solve. The bigger issue – tracking down Thales – was harder. They’d planned to put a tracking device on him in case he tried to escape, but with all the chaos and pursuit, they hadn’t got round to it. She’d have to find him the old-fashioned way: deduction, investigation, and intelligence gathering. First, she considered what she knew about him: he was a genius, an egomaniac, a bigot, and a holder of grudges. He now probably had the resources of the pirate nation at his disposal. What would he do with those resources? Or rather, what would he do first?
Ah. She thought she had an idea. When their mission was being put together, there’d been two potential targets: Thales and the Hylar scientist he’d collaborated with before the whole thing fell apart and they both disappeared into the depths of the galaxy. Her superiors had settled on recovering Thales first because he was the softer target. But Thales would be interested in their other possibility, too – their research showed she was the builder, while he was the theoretician, and he probably needed her to continue his work. Now that he had the resources of the Coalition at his back, Thales might try to get her.
If Azad could
get there before he did, and lay in wait, she could recapture Thales. And if she was totally wrong, and he didn’t go there, she could break in and take the secondary target for herself. Going back to her superiors empty-handed wasn’t an option. If she came back with Thales, all her past transgressions would be wiped away. If she came back with Meletl Shelma, she’d at least get to keep breathing and drawing a paycheck. If she came back with both targets… ahh. Her handler would shout at her for excessive improvisation, but, in the end, she’d be covered in glory.
Azad always felt better when her mission parameters were clear. Now she could enjoy the trip with the intriguing captain ad Itroc. At least until the regrettable, inevitable, unenjoyable part.
•••
Once the course was laid in, they settled back in the captain’s small lounge with glasses of firewine. Azad made a point of keeping her glass full, trusting that the captain’s piratical pride would make her match her, sip for sip. Of course, the captain probably didn’t have metabolic enhancements like those Azad used to keep herself from getting tipsy, let alone drunk.
They talked for hours as they drank, swapping life stories – most of Azad’s were fictitious, and most of ad Itroc’s were hilarious – and flirting. The flirting grew ever more outrageous as ad Itroc got drunker, and soon she was sitting next to Azad on the bunk, nuzzling her neck, one hand sliding from her knee up her thigh.
Azad’s control of her own body was greater than normal, but not total, and it was impossible not to react. Her heartbeat sped up, her breath shortened, her face flushed. Azad had been through a long and lonely few months, and the captain was pretty and witty and willing.
Azad took ad Itroc’s face in both hands and gazed into her eyes, centimeters away. “You’re lovely,” she said, and ad Itroc smiled.