by Tim Pratt
As if she’d read his mind, Azad went on, saying, “We should go dancing sometime, Sev. I can only quibble with your choice of time and place to deploy your hidden skills–”
“Shut up,” Severyne said. “You, Sagasa. I will give you my Letnev warship and all the money in my discretionary account if you turn these criminals over to me.”
“Oh, babe,” Azad said.
“You mean us criminals?” Felix was sitting in a chair – a decent one, brought into the office for the occasion – beside Calred. Tib was also seated, pressing a medpack to the back of her head where Azad had punched her. “Us? Criminals? You – you criminals!”
The Disciplinarian slammed his hands down on the desk. “I will negotiate almost anything, but I will not negotiate that. Can you imagine what would happen to my business if word got out that I sold visitors to my yard to their enemies? No one would come here any more. That means you’d have to offer me more money than I would make in the rest of my career before I’d even consider it.” He paused, then lifted an eyebrow. “Are you? Offering me that much? Probably a few percent of the annual gross domestic product of the Barony would cover it, I think. I’d have to do some calculations.”
“That is beyond my current resources. But if you hand them over, we can reach an accommodation–”
Sagasa sat back down. “I don’t offer credit without collateral under the best of circumstances, and these aren’t those.” He swiveled his gaze. “You are in my bad books now, Amina. Why did you bring such a rude person to my place of business?”
“Call it a crime of passion, Sagasa. Duval’s Devils are the deadliest bunch of renegade pirates and slavers in the sector – they kidnapped Severyne’s mother and husband and baby and sold them to the Embers of Muaat as a discount fuel source–”
“Oh, come on,” Felix cried.
The Disciplinarian sighed. “Amina. You amuse me, as always. But I am not currently in a state in which I crave amusement. I abhor violence in my office, and my waiting room is next to my office. My secretary sees two fingers when I hold up one. Your associate cut down one of my plants. There will be consequences.” He turned to Felix and his crew. “I apologize for the inconvenience. As recompense, I will give you that extra two percent on the invoice at no charge.”
“That’s very generous,” Felix said.
Sagasa shrugged. “It’s fine. They’re going to pay for it.” He gestured to Azad and Severyne. “I think our business is concluded, or nearly so. You can be on your way.”
Felix cleared his throat. “The thing is, they’re going to immediately chase us and try to kill us again, so…”
Sagasa chuckled. “Not immediately. Believe it or not, this Letnev isn’t the first person to behave recklessly upon encountering someone they dislike on my station. We have a policy: we hold the aggressor in a secure room for a minimum of three hours. That gives those transgressed against time to get out of my system. If you want to fight after that, I don’t mind, because you’ll be doing it elsewhere. I suggest you make haste.”
“We, ah, have to do that thing, though, with the stuff, before we go–”
The Disciplinarian nodded. “Of course. An hour for that should be sufficient? I’ll hold these naughty sapients for four hours, then.”
“What thing with what stuff?” Azad said. “What are you even doing here, Duval?”
“We’re just leaving.” Felix sketched a salute to Severyne. “That was good spear-work. I hope we never meet again. And I am sorry about your people back on the station. We meant to leave more quietly than that.”
“Human scum.” Severyne looked like she wanted to spit, but she was better at containing herself now, with the Naalu’s hands pressing down on her shoulders.
Calred and Tib said their farewells to Sagasa, and they all filed out.
“Duval’s Devils,” Felix said as they passed through the waiting room. “Kind of has a nice ring to it.”
“I don’t know,” Tib said. “‘Human scum’ suits you pretty well too, don’t you think?”
Chapter 18
The Disciplinarian escorted them to his brig personally, with one of the heavily armored guards along, just in case they got squirrely. Azad was a little worried Severyne would do something rash – again – but the Letnev woman seemed lost in her own thoughts.
Azad had to try. “Sagasa. Be reasonable. Just give us an hour. We barely even broke anything.”
“You were the aggressors, Amina. We have rules here. You can leave in four hours. If you hurry, you can catch up with them… if you can figure out where they’re going.”
“Two hours. I’ll bring back their ship for you as a gift after we capture them. It’s a Mentak Coalition cruiser! Top of the line!”
“Maybe ten years ago it was.”
“Still. It’s a good trade, huh, for a couple of hours? You’ll have to give me another ship in exchange, I can’t walk out of here, but I’ll take one of those junkers you can’t offload.”
“Would you like to stay for eight hours?”
“You jump from four to eight? That’s a bit much. I thought you were a master negotiator.”
“When one negotiates from a position of strength, one can be a bit unreasonable.”
They reached the brig – not that it was really a brig, because this was a privately owned scrapyard, not a military ship or a local jail; those were the kind of places where Azad usually got locked up. There were just two cells here, the low-tech kind with metal bars, but the locks were too complicated to pick, especially with no tools except her teeth and fingernails. Low-tech was better than high-tech, in some cases. None of Azad’s implants would do her any good here.
The guard opened the first cell door, and Azad stepped inside. He had to shove Severyne, who didn’t stumble, but almost danced in as she caught her balance. That grace again. The cage door clanged shut, and the Hacan and his guard turned to leave.
Azad reached through the bars and snapped her fingers. “Hey, Sagasa, before you lock us up, can we at least talk business? We came here for a reason, and it wasn’t getting into a fight with Duval’s Devils.”
The Hacan turned. “Ah. In all the disarray, I forgot you had a proposal. I am willing to hear it, if you still wish to proceed, because business comes first, but I hope you’re prepared to be charged a penalty for making me get up from my chair.”
“Severyne is really sorry about that. You know how the Letnev are. Hot-blooded and impetuous.” Azad thought she could hear Sev grind her teeth behind her.
“That is indeed their reputation throughout the galaxy,” the Disciplinarian said solemnly, and then chuckled. “You do amuse me, Amina. What did you want to sell, and more importantly, what do you want in return?”
They haggled and argued, and the Hacan pointed out more than once that Azad was in no position to argue, given that she was locked in a cell on a space station that might as well be his own sovereign nation… but Azad would never let a little thing like having no leverage stop her from advocating for her own interests. Eventually they reached an agreement: they’d get a fast and unobtrusive ship, in exchange for a not-that-modest financial consideration, and the Grim Countenance as collateral.
Once he was gone, Azad turned to Severyne. Her feelings had grown rather more complicated. She’d enjoyed teasing Severyne, liked her company, and found her attractive, but all that was just mental amusement. Seeing Severyne fight like that, her grace, her absolute conviction in the face of impossible odds… now Azad liked her, thought she was attractive, and admired her. She began to reconsider her stance against sleeping with people she might have to kill. Maybe there was a way to keep Severyne alive, and, if not, she could at least die with a happy memory, right? She put her hand on the Letnev’s shoulder. “I know this seems bad, but really, we’re not any worse off than we were before.”
Severyne said nothing, staring at the wa
ll beyond the bars, her forehead creased. Azad had seen that little line there before; it could be annoyance, hate, or deep thought, but it was definitely cute.
Azad put her back against the rear wall of the cell and settled in. It wasn’t too disgusting a cell, as far as private dungeons went. She’d seen worse. “We made contact with the enemy and it didn’t go our way, but that’s just the way it is sometimes, and we’re both alive. We didn’t get eaten by Counselor An’Truk, we didn’t get our arms ripped off by the guys in the exo-suits, and in a couple of hours we’ll be on the trail again–”
“Your tracker didn’t beep.” Severyne’s voice was even more devoid of emotion than usual.
“What’s that?”
“This tracker in your head, that tells you when Thales is close. It didn’t beep.” Severyne stood up from the bench, her hands balled into fists. “We were docked on the other side of a space station from him, he was right there, and you didn’t know it!”
“They must have found the tracker and disabled it,” Azad said. “I didn’t think they would, but it wouldn’t be the first time I underestimated Duval and his crew.”
Severyne shook her head. “There was never any tracker at all, was there?”
“That is also a possible interpretation of the available information. Listen, Sev, don’t be mad. I couldn’t tell you the truth, because back then you didn’t know me, but now you can see the truth: I don’t need a tracking device, because I know Thales. I researched him thoroughly before my mission. Haven’t I anticipated where he’d be twice now?”
“Once!” she shouted. “You predicted he’d come to my facility, and then you predicted he’d go to the Universities of Jol-Nar, but you did not predict that he would come here!”
“I must have known it subconsciously though.” She tapped her forehead. “There’s a lot going on in here, all the time. I do wonder why they came here. Must be part of their plan to infiltrate the Universities.”
“I am leaving you here.” Severyne turned and stormed away, as far as you could storm in a cell that was only three meters square.
Azad cleared her throat. “Are you sure? The thing is, if you leave without the Grim Countenance, I’m going to have to take your ship for myself. I’ll have to, because I have a mission here too. If you leave with the Grim Countenance, you have the same problem you had before: sailing a heavily armed Letnev ship to the Universities, and getting all the wrong kinds of attention in the process.”
Severyne scowled. Oh, that line on her forehead. “I will simply warn the Hylar that they are the target of a gang of thieves.”
“OK, let’s game that out.” Azad crossed her legs and leaned back. “Let’s say they believe you. Let’s say they believe you so much they agree to arrest Duval and company before they even commit a crime, with no proof apart from your word. Then the Hylar will have Duval in custody, along with Thales and Shelma. The Hylar aren’t huge fans of the Barony. They aren’t going to hand their prisoners over to you. They’re big believers in due process, and their trials take forever, so even if you work out some kind of extradition agreement, which would be an impressive feat, it’ll take ages. Or do you see it differently?”
Severyne didn’t answer.
Azad made her voice softer. “Haven’t I been helpful, Sev? Let me continue to help.”
She could see the Letnev’s practical side warring with her anger. In a human, the balance could have shifted either way, but Letnev culture was about suppressing the emotional in favor of the practical. “No more lies,” Severyne said finally. She turned to look down at Azad. “Do not mislead me. Do not omit things. Be honest. I cannot make plans unless I am aware of all the factors.”
“No lies at all? That’s a pretty big tool you’re taking out of my toolbox, Sev, but all right. For you. I am sorry I wasn’t straight with you before. That thing about the tracker, it’s the same way I had to tell the Disciplinarian some bullshit to get him to meet with us. I had to tell you some bullshit to get you to take me with you.”
Severyne sat back down. “I understand your reasoning. We need speak of it no further.”
Apology accepted, then. Azad managed not to grin. “Hey, I was really impressed by your moves back there.” Severyne looked at her sharply, and Azad held up her hands. “Honestly! If Sagasa hadn’t stepped in, you would’ve had Duval’s heart on a stick.”
“I trained for more than just sitting behind a desk,” Severyne said. “I excelled at hand-to-hand combat training, and was invited to take advanced study. I noticed that you struck a blow of your own, against the hideous little creature who killed my sniper.”
“I really hate her. I hate Duval more, because his face is so smug, but yeah, Tib Pelta is up there on the hate list.”
Severyne seemed to struggle with something. Finally she said, “I must apologize. I behaved impetuously. If I had remained calm, we might have turned that chance meeting to our advantage. Or, at least, not suffered this delay. This is my fault.”
“You did fine,” Azad said. “In most circumstances, when you encounter your enemy at a moment when neither one of you expects contact, you absolutely move just the way you did – hit first and fast and hard. You can settle the whole situation right then, most of the time.”
“At first I wanted to capture him,” Severyne said. “To force him to give me Shelma. Then I thought, I could kill him and force his crew to give me Shelma. Insofar as I thought at all.”
“I admit, when we first met, I thought you were a basic bureaucrat, and that if your workstation so much as got messy, you’d melt down. But you showed real badass instincts back there, Sev. It just happened to be a situation where a good offense wasn’t the best idea, but that’s not your fault.”
“You have said this word, badass. I do not know it.”
“It’s the highest compliment I can offer, Sev. It means you’re a lot like me.”
“I am not at all like you,” Severyne replied, but Azad noted there was no little hateline on her forehead that time.
•••
Felix was babysitting Thales as he scrounged through the mysterious alien vessel, because Tib and Calred refused to spend any time with the man. When Felix tried to pull rank, Tib said, “I was injured in the line of duty,” and Calred just pretended he couldn’t hear Felix, making obviously fake static noises into his comms. That was gross insubordination, even by Mentak Coalition standards, but they’d all had a trying few days, so Felix let it go.
This ancient wrecked vessel didn’t have any life support, and it had probably never supported their kind of life anyway, so Felix and Thales were in environment suits. The ship was an unsettling place, full of twisting dark corridors with walls that must have been some kind of metal or plastic, but that had an organic, swirled texture, like fingerprints. The corridors changed size gradually, sometimes contracting so small they had to go on hands and knees, other times dilating to nine or ten meters high. What kind of creatures would be comfortable in such a vessel? “This place is creepy,” Felix said, shining his light into yet another empty corner of yet another empty and oddly proportioned room.
“Still afraid of ghosts?” Thales said in his comms. “I thought we went over that. Ah, here we are. An engine room. I bet there’s something suitable here.”
The new chamber was the biggest yet, and it was, at least, less bare – there were dangling cables and wires; things like gearwheels, except they were triangular; a huge crankshaft that floated, unconnected in the lack of gravity; and various smaller bits of machinery, variously sprouting blackened crystals, surrounded by transparent globes, or with overlapping loops of material that made Felix’s head hurt when he tried to trace all their intersections. “A completely unknown species built this thing, so long ago your ancestors weren’t even in jail yet,” Thales said. “Those creatures made this ship, they traveled in it, they abandoned it or wrecked it, and some wandering id
iots found it millennia later and towed it back here because they thought it might be worth a credit or two. It all makes you feel insignificant, doesn’t it?”
“I guess we are pretty small, measured against the vastness of everything,” Felix agreed.
“What?” Thales said. “No. I mean, it must make you feel insignificant. Which you are. I’m not insignificant. I’m the man who invented wormhole technology. No one in the galaxy will ever forget my name, unlike the pathetic fools who built this thing. I was musing on my own immortal greatness, captain. Do try to keep up.”
“Right. How foolish of me.”
“Even a fool has his uses.” Thales picked up one of the crystal-encrusted things, a device or component about the size of two fists put together. “This should do. It doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen before, and a matching scan through the available databases doesn’t turn up anything similar.”
“The Disciplinarian said it’s worthless, though.”
“Oh, probably – it certainly seems inert. But it is genuinely alien, and it’s unlike any other artifact that’s been publicly logged. Mere novelty is not enough, on its own, to interest Director Woryela, but that’s where the fakery comes in. I’ll use this as the basis to create something truly enigmatic and alluring.”
“Woryela?”
“The person you’re going to scam, captain. Head of the experimental research and development division, propulsion section. You should really read those dossiers Calred compiles for you.”
“I know his name,” Felix said. “I didn’t realize you did.”
“Oh, I used to work at the Universities. I’m not up on all the latest gossip, but I know the major players.” He turned toward Felix. “We should go. It’s disturbing to have this Azad woman so nearby, even if she is in a cell. She has a tendency to escape those, as I recall?”