by Tim Pratt
Azad twisted the captain’s head around savagely, snapping her neck, her augmented muscles turning the head nearly a hundred-and-eighty degrees around. Ad Itroc didn’t even have time to be surprised before she died and slithered off the bunk to sprawl on the floor.
Azad knew from past experience that she usually regretted sleeping with someone she’d have to kill later. Looking at someone in the throes of passion and imagining their corpse was a downer. She gazed at the captain’s body and sighed. Such a shame – she’d liked the woman – but the mission came first, always.
After Azad used the captain’s glazing-over eyes and cooling fingertips to unlock the biometric controls and take over the ship, she kissed ad Itroc on the forehead, then dragged her down to the airlock to jettison her into space. “The Federation of Sol thanks you for your assistance,” she said as she watched the body spin away. As good a prayer as any. Most people were no service to anyone but themselves, and even that was hit-or-miss.
Azad went to the cockpit and adjusted the trajectory to take her to Letnev space.
Chapter 7
“Have you ever been to the Barony?” Felix asked.
Thales made a face. “I went to one of their colonies, once, for a scientific conference. Beautiful place, full of lush jungles, towering trees, clear skies. Naturally, the Letnev had burrowed their settlements into the planet’s crust, living in subterranean tunnels that never saw the sun. They could have grown anything there – it was a classic garden world – but they brought their mushroom farms and cloned meat vats with them.”
“Ah, well, everyone enjoys a little taste of home.” Felix leaned back in his chair at the galley table. He had to admit, Thales had become less objectionable since they had their little talk. Most of the scientist’s conversation still consisted of insulting people (and entire peoples), but he was mostly insulting people Felix didn’t like much either, which was more tolerable.
“I don’t think the Letnev are allowed to enjoy things. Fascists and bureaucrats. One of them approached me at that conference, offered me a position at one of their scientific academies. From the look on his face, he learned some new Hylar swear words that day, ha.”
“Is that why they imprisoned your colleague?”
Thales waved his hand. “No, that was years ago, when I was just a promising young academic at the Universities of Jol-Nar.”
“I didn’t think there were humans at the Universities,” Felix said. Admittedly, most of his knowledge about the Hylar research worlds was based on their appearance in technothriller serials, where they were inevitably home to mad scientists crafting doomsday weapons.
“The Universities accept applications based on merit.” Thales grinned. “They mostly see merit in other Hylar, but there are exceptions.”
Felix would pass that tidbit of information on to Calred, and see if it helped him discover anything more about Thales. There couldn’t be that many humans of his age, description, and purported area of expertise who’d studied or been employed at the Universities, and it might help to figure out his real name and background. Assuming he wasn’t lying about any of those details, of course.
“Have you figured out how to break into the prison yet?” Thales asked.
“About that. Calred did some research, and the place you told us about isn’t one of the Barony’s penal facilities at all. Officially, it’s an orbital weather monitoring station above a colony planet. Mentak Coalition intelligence suspects it’s a secured research facility.”
Thales waved that away. “They can call it whatever they like – it’s still a prison. The Barony kidnapped Shelma, just like the Federation tried to kidnap me. She’s being held there against her will. We have to help her. Especially since I can’t easily complete my work without her – or vice versa, so be careful not to let the Barony get their hands on me, or they’ll be ruling the galaxy. Besides, this is good news, isn’t it? Surely it’s easier to break into a research facility than it is to break into a prison.”
“You might think so,” Felix said. But he did have the inklings of an idea.
“Listen,” Thales said. “When you rescue her, don’t tell her you’re working with me. I want to surprise her when she gets on board. She’ll be delighted.”
Felix tried to imagine someone being delighted to see Thales, especially when they weren’t expecting to see him, and he failed, but perhaps he simply lacked sufficient imagination.
•••
“You think all Hacan know one other?” Calred growled. He was lounging in the good chair in Felix’s quarters, sipping a glass of clear liquid that could have doubled as engine degreaser and would have probably killed a human. The liquor was distilled from a desert plant native to the Emirates, and Felix kept a bottle on hand for those occasions when he needed a favor from a Hacan. “You’re a human – you must know Juan Salvador Tao, right? Are you related?”
Felix sighed. “Don’t act so offended. I know your mother did that genealogy project a few years back, and connected up with a bunch of your fifteenth cousins or whatever back in the Emirates. Don’t you all share some glorious common ancestor?”
“We’re distantly related to the third Quieron, yes. My branch of the family tree is on the disreputable side of the trunk, though. My oldest known direct ancestor once sold a map of the legendary Temple of the Burning Sands to the Mowshir Emirate.”
“What’s disreputable about that?”
Calred took a sip of his murder fluid. “She also sold it to the Creena clan, and then the governor of Eilaran.” Another sip. “Also, the Temple of the Burning Sands doesn’t actually exist.”
“I begin to see the family resemblance.”
Calred snorted. “Yes, fine, it’s true. I talk to some of my cousins back in the ancestral homeland occasionally. They like to hear my tales of derring-do.”
“No one ever wants to hear the tales of derring-don’t,” Felix said. “Do you think any of your relatives might have useful contacts for this mission?” The Emirates of Hacan had tentacles – well, claws – in every aspect of galactic trade, including business in the Barony, and Felix was hoping for a crack he could exploit.
Calred stroked his tawny chin. “Hmm. I do have a cousin who works for a consortium in the specialty agricultural sector. She was telling me about something that might prove useful.”
“Agriculture? We’re trying to break into a space station, not a farm.”
“Specialty agriculture, I said.”
“Ohhhh,” Felix said. “You mean drugs.”
“In most cases, yes,” Calred admitted. “In this case, not quite. Let’s just say high-ranking Letnev officials stationed far from the center of the Barony will pay dearly for a taste of home. I’ll make some discreet calls, and I should be able to get some information, if you can pay for it.”
“Pay? Does family count for nothing?”
“Of course it does,” Calred said. “My cousin wouldn’t even take your call.”
•••
Once the Temerarious was stripped of its Coalition markings and transponder, and temporarily renamed the Swift Emergence, they cruised into Barony space and sent a message to the research station. The response came back immediately: “You’re a day early.”
“We made up time on Rigel III,” Calred said from the captain’s chair. Felix was in the first officer’s position, Thales was in his new lab, and Tib was… elsewhere. “We won’t even charge you extra for expedited delivery.”
The Letnev sneer was audible in the reply. “How considerate of you. Approach the cargo bay, and have your manifests ready for examination.”
“Don’t worry, we know how much you love proper documentation.” The channel closed, and Calred raised an eyebrow at Felix. “I’m a natural. I should be captain full-time.”
“Good. Then you can deal with Thales.”
“I withdraw my request f
or a promotion.”
The cruiser approached the station, an angular collection of dull metal modules connected by gantries and corridors and tethers, which resembled a child’s mobile if it were conceived by one of the twisted horrors of the L1Z1X. One of the larger modules was the cargo bay, and Calred guided the ship in to dock.
Once they were settled inside the belly of the station, Cal and Felix trooped down to the cargo bay. They’d rearranged some of the countless crates of supplies that filled the ship for maximum camouflage effect, complete with fake bills of lading and inventory lists. Felix stood beside a stack of crates with a hand terminal and tried to look busy while Calred continued his merchant captain cosplay.
The ship’s ramp opened and slid down, revealing the “weather station’s” cargo bay. Felix took in the layout in a glance: a cavernous space big enough for five of his ship, with neat stacks of crates and barrels, mostly along the walls. A few robots trundled to and fro, moving cargo around, and there were several cranes, both small mobile ones and larger ones in fixed positions. Stairs on either side of the space led up to a series of catwalks with a guard holding a long rifle stationed where he could see everything below. There were two more guards with sidearms loitering near the doors that led deeper into the station. All three wore shiny black uniforms and full-face masks that resembled stylized skulls with bulging silver eyes. The lower halves of the masks were probably full of filter systems to protect against gas attacks, and those shining eyes would include fancy optics and maybe even automated threat assessment and targeting programs. That was a lucky break.
The doors opened, the guards snapped off salutes, and three Barony officials tromped into the bay, one greater bureaucrat and two lesser, all wearing black uniforms with silver accents, all stiff and pale and formal. They mounted the ramp, and the one in the lead looked around at the Swift Emergence’s hold and sniffed in disgust, at who knows what; just general disgust, probably. “Manifest.” He snapped his fingers, but, since he was wearing thick dark gloves, they didn’t actually make a snapping sound.
Calred tapped his tablet, sending information to the officer’s terminal, then turned and gestured to a stack of crates on a pallet. “Here they are. Do you want our help unloading? There’s a modest stevedore fee–”
“Wait.” The officer frowned, and the two other officers frowned too, though they couldn’t possibly know what they were frowning about. “This is wrong.”
“Oh?” Calred said.
“It says here you have ten crates of… sunscreen?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Sunscreen,” the official repeated.
“Protects you from the sun, as I understand it,” Calred said.
“We’re Letnev!” The homeworld of the Barony of Letnev, Arc Prime, famously drifted through the void without orbiting a star. It was a lightless place, and the natives lived in vast underground cities oxygenated by fungal growths and heated by the planet’s core.
Calred nodded agreeably. “I thought so. The Letnev are a rather pale people. Very prudent to order sunscreen in bulk.”
The lead bureaucrat grimaced. “The station is shielded from the light of the local star. We didn’t order any sunscreen. We’re expecting a shipment of fungal growth matrix.” According to Calred’s cousin, the botanist for an agricultural cartel, one of the most treasured delicacies in the Barony was a particular mushroom that grew in the caverns of their dank homeworld. Whenever a sufficient number of Letnev congregated in outer space, they brought that delicacy with them, if they could afford it. The mushrooms were difficult to grow, and thus rare and valuable, in their original environment, but when cultivated artificially in hydroponic gardens, using a proprietary growth medium created in the Hacan Emirates, the mushrooms thrived. (Of course, connoisseurs claimed they could smell and taste the difference between true cave mushrooms and those grown elsewhere, but that was connoisseurs for you; the results were certainly close enough to satisfy most Letnev, though.) There was indeed a shipment of the matrix headed to the station on the real cargo ship Swift Emergence, which would arrive right on schedule sometime tomorrow. The Temerarious didn’t have any such thing in its stores, so they’d had to improvise.
Calred peered at his tablet, peered at the officer, looked back at his tablet, looked back at the officer, and then brightened. “Perhaps it’s both! Sunscreen and fungal growth matrix. Think about it: sunscreen protects things from sunlight. Mushrooms hate sunlight. Go on, give it a try. I bet mushrooms grow all over the stuff.”
The Letnev took an aggressive step forward, but stopped at that, since he was, after all, being aggressive at a two-and-a-half-meter-tall bipedal lion. “This is unacceptable. We will not pay for this.”
“Listen,” Calred said. “Your procurement officer checked the box that says if your actual order is out of stock, we should substitute the closest available product. Looks like that’s what we did. It’s not my fault. If you weren’t willing to accept a substitution, you should have said so.”
The argument went on, around and around, with various appeals to various authorities. More bureaucrats appeared with more documentation, and Calred remained unfazed, meeting every outrage with a shrug. Eventually, as planned, he agreed to soften the blow of the lost matrix by providing them with a few extra items drawn from their store of emergency supplies, including food and medication; that mollified the outrage somewhat, but not completely, because Letnev were culturally resistant to being mollified. The crowd dwindled once the pallets were offloaded and moved into the Letnev cargo bay, and the officer in charge said, “All right. Be on your way.”
Calred put a huge hand to his broad chest. “Regretfully, I cannot leave yet. My trading company has strict regulations regarding rest for the crew, in order to avoid accidents, as stipulated in our contract.”
“What crew?” the office sputtered. “It’s just you, that useless human loitering by the crates, and a bunch of semi-autonomous machinery!”
“We are the ones who operate said machinery, and it’s imperative that we get our rest – especially my human. You know how disagreeable they can be when they don’t get enough sleep.”
“This is preposterous. First you bring us the wrong cargo, and now you want to take up space in our–”
“Peace, peace,” Calred said soothingly. “Understand, these regulations are as much for your protection as our own. Last year a cousin of mine – well, a cousin of a nephew, to be precise, for I know how the Letnev value precision – decided to ignore the safety regulations and leave in his ship without first taking his prescribed period of rest. He hoped to earn a bonus for swift delivery of his remaining cargo, you see. Well, he entered the wrong commands in his navigation system, and – because he’d also skimped on proper safety checks – his ship’s protective measures failed. His navigation system thought he was departing from orbit, not from within a space station, and do you know what happened?” Calred brought his hands together and said “boom” very softly. “His ship struck the edge of the launch bay while accelerating at unsafe speeds. The containment field on his engine breached, and the resulting explosion took out half the station. The devastation made the station’s orbit unstable, and it promptly decayed and began to plummet into the atmosphere. I heard they got almost half the survivors off the station before–”
“Enough.” The officer held up a hand, wincing. He had his terminal in his other hand, and scanned through it. “I understand, and yes, there’s a provision in the contract that requires us to honor any mandatory rest breaks, on page one-thousand-seventeen, in a footnote.”
“You find the most wonderful things in footnotes, don’t you?” Calred’s good cheer was as relentless as a desert sun. “Might my first mate and I avail ourselves of your shower facilities, perhaps enjoy your doubtless lavish guest quarters–”
“You are confined to your ship,” the officer snapped before turning on his polis
hed black heel and storming away. “Your eight hours start now!”
Calred crossed his arms and looked benignly on his departure as the ship’s cargo ramp slowly closed. Then he turned and grinned at Felix. “Eight hours. That should be plenty of time, even for you.”
“Do you think Tib made it out OK?” Felix said.
Calred made a great show of looking around the cargo hold. “I don’t see her here anywhere.”
“Ha, ha,” Felix said.
Chapter 8
“My human is resting,” Calred said, voice relayed to the comm in Felix’s ear. “He’s the one who needs the sleep. I, however, grow bored. I happen to have a set of void dice here, though, which could help pass the time.” Playing void dice was a Letnev national obsession.
“We’re supposed to keep an eye on you, not fraternize,” a menacing, machine-altered voice said.
“You could keep a closer eye on me if you were sitting in my cargo hold, at this table, playing void dice. I’ve never played against Letnev, and I’m curious to see how my abilities stand up against those who invented the game.”
“Well…” one of the guards said, but the other snapped, “Stop talking to the trader. Mind your duty.”
They’d never expected the guards to let their, well, their guard, down far enough to actually play a game, but the back-and-forth distracted them long enough for Felix to slip out undetected through an emergency access hatch. He began to make his way carefully across the cargo bay. They’d deliberately taken the landing spot closest to the interior wall, but Felix still had an intimidatingly large distance of bare floor to cover, especially with the sniper up above. The ship’s tactical systems had carefully plotted out a route that should keep Felix hidden from the overwatch guard’s view, but the back of Felix’s neck itched anyway; he fully expected a blob of molten metal or charged plasma to obliterate the back of his head as he hurried from one pile of crates to another. A normal guard back home, especially this far into a long and boring shift, would have hacked his helmet display to show entertainment vids or scroll the text of a book to pass the time, and could be relied upon to be distracted and inattentive, but the discipline of the Letnev was as legendary as their lack of humor.