by Tim Pratt
“You think they are headed to Jol-Nar, to steal this power source?” Severyne said.
Azad slouched deeper. “They must be. The Coalition won’t let them ride around in circles in space forever. Those pirates are going to want results, and that means they need the power source. So let’s go to Jol-Nar and wait for Duval and his crew to show up.” She tapped the side of her head. “Then I’ll get a ping off Phil’s tracker, we’ll swoop in, kill the pirates, recover our scientists, and go our separate ways. I can even use their ship to go home, once I hose off the bloodstains.”
“You make it all sound so simple and straightforward.”
“I always try to keep my plans simple. Do you know why?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.” Severyne sniffed.
“Because plans almost always fall apart, and if you keep them simple, at least you didn’t waste too much time on something that doesn’t work anyway. That’s OK though. The part where the plan fails – that’s where things get interesting.”
“My life has been entirely too interesting of late,” Severyne said. “I’ll set a course for Jol-Nar.”
“You might want to hold off on that.” Azad looked around at the cheerless bare bulkheads and low ceiling, designed to make subterranean control freaks feel slightly more comfortable in the vastness of outer space. “Before we go to squid city, we need to switch ships.”
“Switch. Ships. This is the Grim Countenance, a state-of-the-art Barony warship, the finest vessel in our system–”
“About that,” Azad interrupted. “Don’t you know it’s lousy operational security to have a ship this nice patrolling some strategically insignificant mining planet? A ship this nice makes people wonder what’s down there that’s worth protecting – or what’s on the supposed weather station in orbit. My analysts figured out where you were keeping Shelma because they got curious about this ship.”
“I raised the same objections!” Severyne said. “I was overridden by the station director.”
“Smart and tactically sound too. Be still my heart. So, yes, the Grim Countenance is a great ship, and I’m sure it could blow Duval’s Temerarious into radioactive dust, but that’s not our goal, so this ship is more gun than we need.”
“You want us to proceed with fewer armaments?”
“I’m just saying, something with fewer guns would still get the job done. The problem isn’t the armament, though. The problem is, this is a Letnev ship. It’s covered in spikes and shit, Severyne.”
“Our distinctive ship design strikes terror into the hearts of all our foes, and inspires respect in our allies–”
“You don’t need to read me the brochure, Severyne. I’m not insulting your culture’s aesthetics. I like big spikes as much as anybody. I’m saying, what happens if the Hylar see this ship slide into their system? They’re going to get curious, and when we don’t have a good explanation for our presence besides ‘We’re here to kidnap a human and a Hylar,’ the squids are going to get annoyed. If this were a less distinctive ship, the kind you see sold secondhand all over from the Federation or the Coalition, we could fake a transponder, maybe do a little creative welding to change the silhouette, dirty the place up a little, and no one would be able to tell the warship Grim Countenance from the long-range merchant freighter Sunny Smile or whatever. But… spikes and shit.”
Severyne groaned. “I requisitioned the best ship. My only thought was pursuing and destroying Duval’s vessel, not infiltration. If I’d realized–”
“It’s not your fault. You don’t do covert ops. Prison guards aren’t spies. Different skill set.” Azad scooted a little closer to Severyne on the bunk. “I can teach you some of what I know, if you like.”
Severyne scooted an exactly equivalent distance away. “First of all, I don’t intend to make a habit of activities like this, so your tutoring won’t be necessary. Second, why would you want to teach me anything?”
“For the time being, on this op, you’re my partner. I go out in the field and do dangerous things with dangerous people for a living. I often have to team up with people who might betray me at any moment – local assets with divided loyalties, or opportunists who don’t stay bought. You and I, amazingly, have a unified purpose: we both want the same thing, and we need each other’s help to get it. That provides us with a rare opportunity to build trust. Also, I’d like you to be good at ‘activities like this,’ since my survival could depend on you at some point.”
“I will consider what you say. What do we do about acquiring another ship? I cannot return home without the Grim Countenance, so selling it or trading it is out of the question.”
“I know a guy,” Azad said. “I think I can work something out.”
Severyne’s grim expression brightened infinitesimally.
Azad suppressed a sigh. She was almost certainly going to have to kill Severyne at some point. Her superiors wouldn’t like it if she missed the opportunity to take the Barony out of the wormhole competition. Conversely, there was no way an agent of the Barony would let a Federation operative take Thales, for the same reasons – Severyne would, inevitably, try to betray her, too. In a way, killing Severyne when the time came would be self-defense. Azad had already murdered one woman she liked this week, and she didn’t look forward to doing it again.
She was cute, though. Azad had never even kissed a Letnev. Not a good idea, with the whole having-to-kill-her thing, but there was no harm in looking and appreciating, right?
•••
Severyne was entirely too aware of the heat of Azad’s body, so close to hers on the bunk. Did humans have higher body temperatures than Letnev? Severyne had never spent much time around humans – certainly not this close to one who was wearing so little clothing. Azad seemed to think a thin tank top and loose pants were appropriate attire for everything. Severyne could see Azad’s shoulders, and her collarbone, and her biceps, and… Their species weren’t that different, physically, and Azad’s skin was dark and seemed somehow burnished, not like the bland paleness Severyne had observed in the other humans she’d met. Azad had a smell, too, a sharp mixture of sweat and something else, something uniquely her, that Severyne found strangely appealing.
Nothing mattered but the mission. Severyne focused her mind like the beam of a welding laser on the issue at hand. “You have ‘a guy.’ Is that meant to reassure me?”
“He’s Hacan. Runs a scrapyard out near Vega Major. Lots of ships pass through there, mining vessels and freighters and so on. He buys used ships, fixes them up, and sells them on. Now, I don’t want to shock your sensibilities, but he’s been known to make deals that aren’t strictly legal. Sometimes people bring him a ship for sale, and he doesn’t always check the provenance as carefully as he should.”
“He is a thief,” Severyne said. Thieves were despised in Letnev culture. Life in the caverns of their homeworld was hard, death just one bad harvest away, and those who chose selfishness and personal gain over the good of their society were shunned. Of course, stealing from other species didn’t count; if you weren’t Letnev, you weren’t exactly people, anyway.
“I don’t know, he drives a hard bargain, but by and large I’ve found him – oh. I see what you mean. In most places, receiving stolen goods is a different offense than stealing them in the first place, but sure, basically, say he’s a thief. More importantly, he has a great inventory of ships and he owes me a favor. He can get us a less distinctive vessel and hold onto the Grim Countenance without a lot of pesky hangar fees, or any records that we docked with him.”
“How expensive are these ships of his? I have to submit my expenditures for approval–”
“Don’t worry about that.” Azad waved it away breezily, as she waved away so many things. Severyne hated that she found Azad’s confidence appealing. The human wasn’t that much older, but Azad had spent her years acquiring practical experience, while Severyne had spe
nt most of hers in classrooms and lecture halls. Severyne’s grasp of textbook tactics was excellent, and in theory she knew how to suppress prison riots, secure a station, and protect VIPs, but the first time she’d needed to put any of that knowledge into practice, she’d lost her prisoner. Maybe she could learn something from Azad. There were many areas where Severyne had largely theoretical knowledge – areas that could benefit from further practical experience…
She realized her eyes were lingering on the hollow at the base of Azad’s throat, and slowly, deliberately, she turned her gaze away. Was it the transgression of finding a human attractive that made Azad so alluring? Severyne had long feared she had a streak of contrariness hidden inside herself, and Azad brought it out. “I hope this doesn’t take too long. Duval has a head start already.”
“Oh, I think we’ll be all right. Duval has to steal something from the starship propulsion laboratory of the Universities of Jol-Nar. That’s not something you just stroll in and do. He’ll have to do research, make plans, figure out some angles. He’ll probably have to source materiel, maybe even recruit more confederates – even if he’s a criminal genius and does most of his thinking on the way to the Hylar system, we’ve got a couple of days.”
“I desire a swift conclusion to this mission.”
“Aw, Sev. Here I was thinking how much I enjoy spending time with you.”
Severyne stood and stepped away. “Send me the coordinates for your guy.”
Azad sketched a lazy salute, lounging across the bunk and grinning.
As the door closed behind her, Severyne felt a pang of regret. Azad was an interesting person. Infuriating, but interesting. It was a shame she’d have to kill the woman. She couldn’t let the Federation of Sol get their hands on wormhole technology. If she did, her superiors would have her executed, so, in a sense, killing Azad would be self-defense. That didn’t make her any happier about it. Severyne decided, as a gesture of respect, to pull the trigger herself, rather than ordering one of her guards to do it.
Then again, with Azad dead and gone, Severyne wouldn’t be plagued by these increasingly intrusive thoughts…
Chapter 15
“Apparently we need to break into an experimental research and development laboratory in the Universities of Jol-Nar, steal a prototype power source, and get away without being arrested or killed. Does anyone have any suggestions for how we can accomplish that?” Felix looked from Tib to Calred. To think, he’d once found sitting on this bridge with his crew relaxing. Of course, back then his biggest problem had been fielding calls from colonists who wanted him to use the ship’s impressive sensor array to find a lost sheep. (He’d done so once, naturally, because he’d had nothing else particularly pressing to do.)
His crew was silent. Felix said, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t a rhetorical question. I am asking how we do the thing that I just said we need to do.”
“If Shelma hadn’t died, I’m sure she’d have useful information,” Tib said. “She used to run the shipyard, so she had connections in the experimental labs. She could have sketched us floor plans, maybe even told us about security measures. I wish Thales had brought up stage two of his plan before her unfortunate ‘accident.’”
“No use weeping over broken eggs,” Felix said. “Can we do the same thing we did on the Letnev station? Fake our credentials, pretend to be a delivery ship, get close, sneak in?”
Calred shook his head. “My cousin is very angry with me, so she won’t be offering us any more assistance along those lines. Her company lost their contract with the Barony, and it was a big contract. Speaking of which, I promised I’d make it up to her by securing them an equally lucrative arrangement with the Coalition. Didn’t you sleep with the chief supply clerk for the Lucanis system once, Felix?”
“There’s a reason it was only once,” he said.
“Ah, well. Until I make things right with her, we won’t be able to borrow any schedules, authorizations, or manifests, so we wouldn’t pass inspection. Sorry.”
Felix sighed. “It’s not your fault. Once we’re covered in glory and flush with success and the Table is handing out rewards for our exemplary accomplishments, we’ll see about setting up your cousin with a good contract.”
“What if we fail?”
“Oh. Failure would probably mean incarceration or execution by the Hylar, and in that case, you’ll be well beyond your cousin’s wrath.”
“I am comforted,” Calred rumbled.
Felix drummed his fingers on the arm of his captain’s chair. “I noticed one interesting thing in the dossier you compiled about the head of the research and development lab,” he said. “There was that little fluff piece that mentioned his collection of alien artifacts. He likes mysterious objects of mysterious provenance from mysterious places, so if we had such an artifact, and made an appointment, maybe we could get into his office, which is in his lab, so he could take a look?”
“It’s a shame we don’t have any mysterious artifacts handy,” Calred said.
“I bet we could come up with something,” Tib said. “Or at least a convincing facsimile.”
“We’d need to be convincing facsimiles ourselves,” Felix said. “The kind of adrenaline junkie deep-space explorers who stumble on unknown alien tech don’t travel in ships as respectable as the Temerarious. We’d need to show up for the meeting in a smaller long-range craft, something beat-up and pitted with micrometeoroid impacts, scarred by weird energy weapons wielded by uncontacted alien cultures, that sort of thing. Where can we get a plausible ship?”
“I know a guy,” Calred said.
“A cousin?” Felix said.
Calred shook his head. “He’s Hacan, but we’re not all related. I know him from some work I did for the Coalition. You know I spent time in the asset distribution arm of the pirate service?”
“You sold stolen goods to fences, you mean,” Felix said.
“I did. And our favorite fence when it came to converting stolen ships to currency was a gentleman named Sagasa the Disciplinarian.”
“That is not a very welcoming name.”
Calred grinned. “‘Disciplinarian’ is a title used by members of a certain Hacan religious order – specifically the monks in charge of making sure none of the initiates stumble into heresy, or shirk their duties. Sagasa is an apostate these days, though he was devout when he lived in the desert. The way I heard it, he was so devout and incorruptible that when an acolyte ran away from the order, they sent Sagasa to track the cub down, even though their order eschews exposure to worldly things. Once Sagasa got on his first starship, though, he realized he liked worldly things. The order sent a couple of people to bring him back, but that didn’t go well, and the order decided to let him go. Sagasa kept using the title in his new life, because it sounds scary – but it also sounds like he’ll only punish you if you give him a reason. That pretty much fits the way he does business. Sagasa and I are on good terms. He can get us a plausible ship, probably one some genuine adventurers died in, and he’ll let us dock the Temerarious in his shipyard until we’re back.”
“Perfect,” Felix said. “We can figure out the details of our plan on the way. Where’s Sagasa based?”
“Not too far out of our way,” Calred said. “His scrapyard is out by Vega Major.”
•••
“I have already given you a crucial element necessary to complete your plan,” Thales said. “Now you ask more of me? I am not a crafter of trumperies. Would you have me sew a monkey’s torso to a fish’s tail and claim it’s a mermaid? Glue antlers to a jackrabbit’s head and call it a jackalope? Put wings on a snake and display it as the mythical Aaalu? You are distracting me from my work, captain.”
The rooms Thales had taken for a lab no longer reflected even the relaxed military order that characterized Coalition ships. Now the walls were covered in printed pages and sketches from Shelma’s files and Th
ales’s own, and he’d gone even further, drawing on the actual bulkheads in places. The floor was dotted with cairns of stacked papers, and there were coils of wire, clumps of crystal, and assorted machine components on every surface. Felix recognized one of the ship’s repair drones, upside-down, its carapace open and half its parts removed. There was a pile of blankets and cushions in one corner – according to Calred, who monitored the security cameras, the scientist slept there, taking short naps every few hours in lieu of longer cycles before snapping awake and continuing to tinker with Shelma’s torpedoshaped device: the activation engine.
Felix felt a headache coming on. Talking to this man was bad for his mental and physical health. “Your work is opening wormholes, and you need this power source to do it. We can’t buy it, because it’s not for sale – officially, it doesn’t even exist – and if we’re going to steal it, we need your help.”
“I already helped.”
“We need more of your help,” Felix said.
“You’re pirates. I’m a scientist. I don’t need your help to calibrate a neutrino detection array. Why do you need my help to steal something?”
“This isn’t piracy. This is burglary, if we’re lucky, and robbery if we’re not.”