by Tim Pratt
Severyne’s comms buzzed with a message from the squad leader on the garbage scow. “We engaged the enemy, assistant director,” he said, and his tone was so stiff she couldn’t tell whether he’d succeeded or failed. “They disabled our ship and escaped.”
“How did they disable your ship?” she demanded. “They were in a long-distance exploration vessel, not a gunship!”
“They utilized a weapon of unknown provenance.”
“What? Did they steal some kind experimental weapon while they were on Jol-Nar too?”
“I lack necessary data to draw a conclusion–”
“Never mind. Can you repair the ship?”
“We are attempting repairs, and expect to have partial function restored to the engines within seventy-two hours, which should allow us to return to the scrapyard. Unless you would prefer to rendezvous with us in the Grim Countenance – if you can bring repair parts, we would not have to fabricate them here, and that would greatly reduce our–”
“You’ll have to make your own way. I’m going to be busy succeeding at the mission where you failed.”
“Yes, assistant director. I will send status updates–”
She cut the connection, squeezing the armrests of the captain’s chair tight. “Duval apparently has some kind of super-weapon now.”
Azad, standing at the tactical board, shook her head. “I bet they just plugged the ship’s shitty little cannons into the power source they stole. That’s what I would have done.”
Severyne blinked. “That would work?”
“Your basic energy cannon is just a conduit for and focuser of power. How strong the cannons are depends on the energy source. That thing they went to steal is supposed to be like a hundred fusion reactors, only so small you can carry it around in a backpack.”
“Then the power source, in itself, has great value,” Severyne mused.
“If you brought that back to the Barony, you might not get executed, it’s true,” Azad said. “Unfortunately, I can’t let you have it, since Thales needs it to power his prototype. Sorry about that. Maybe we can get you the schematics or something, and your people can reverse engineer the thing, if you want to give that a shot.”
“How very generous.”
Azad shrugged but didn’t look up from the panel. “I like you, Severyne. I’ll help you as much as I can without hurting myself. But that’s as far as I can go. Would you respect me if I did anything else?”
“This is a miserable situation,” Severyne said. “I am miserable.”
“Ah, but there’s an upside. Duval is on his way back here. And if your crew played your video like they were supposed to–”
“Of course they did. They follow orders to the letter, without deviation. The Letnev are not as prone to improvisation as humans are.” Though Severyne herself had done some improvising lately, hadn’t she? Azad was corrupting her.
“Then Duval thinks we’re floating in a dead ship in the void,” Azad said. “He’s going to walk in here with supreme and misplaced confidence. Even more than usual.”
“And then I can kill him?” Severyne said.
“And then you can kill him.”
“I feel slightly less miserable now.”
•••
“Aw, hell,” Azad said.
Severyne hurried over to the security station. “What is it?”
“Two people just stepped into the airlock. Only two.” She pulled up the camera feed and saw Thales carrying a rucksack, and the Hacan security officer, Calred, holding a file box. He was awkwardly juggling the box in an attempt to hold it one-handed while unlocking the ship with his fingertip.
“Where is Duval?” Severyne demanded.
“Maybe he had to take a piss.”
“Then where is the Yssaril?”
“Could be lurking invisibly, I guess, though it’s bad etiquette to sneak around on Sagasa’s station, and they’ve got no reason to expect an attack, so she’s probably with Duval. Yssaril have to piss sometimes too.”
“They’ll be on board any moment!”
“They’ll try to get on board any moment. They’ll be unconscious a moment after that. Let’s get down there and collect them.”
Sev grabbed her arm. “We have to wait for Duval.”
“Sev, it’s Thales, and his stuff. What I need is Thales, and his stuff. I’d like to see Duval dead, too, but that part isn’t mission critical.”
She tightened her grip, nails digging in. “It is critical for my mission. My only mission is revenge.”
Your only mission is killing me and taking Thales for yourself, Azad thought. But… Sev really did want to kill Duval, and waiting for him would put off her inevitable betrayal for a while longer. Azad did enjoy having the Letnev woman alive. She calculated risk and came up with an acceptable number. “All right. But only because you’re so cute when you’re homicidal. Let’s secure the owl and the pussycat, and then we’ll wait for the others to show up.”
They went down to the airlock, weapons ready.
Chapter 25
Azad was listening to the feed from the airlock on her comms, so she heard the Hacan swearing about how the inner door wasn’t working. She learned a few new Hacan blasphemies in the process. She took up her position in the corridor, facing the airlock doors, and checked that Severyne was in her spot. “Ready?”
“I wish I was about to shoot Duval, but yes.”
“Keep it non-lethal,” Azad reminded her. “We can’t risk a stray shot hitting Thales.”
“I know.” Severyne’s voice was even more grim than usual.
Azad triggered the inner door to open. As soon as the doors slid apart enough to give her a sliver of a sightline on the people on the other side, she aimed at Thales and hit him with a shock-pulse, carefully calibrated to lock up his nervous system without doing any permanent damage.
She was aware of the Hacan, and of Severyne firing at him, but she was focused on her own target, and when she shifted her attention, it was too late.
Calred’s right arm hung loose at the shoulder where Severyne’s pulse had hit him, off-center and thus ineffective. Maybe Azad should have taken point on disabling the Hacan, but Thales was the more important target, and she’d made a judgment call. Now a few hundred pounds of enraged humanoid lion came barreling toward them, bellowing. If Calred had stopped to fight them, she could have subdued him, but instead he just straight-armed Severyne out of the way and rushed deeper into the ship.
Azad fired after him, but he was around a corner and gone. Azad heard him shout, “Felix! We have a problem!”
“That could have gone better.” Azad put the ship into lockdown, then checked on Severyne, who was leaning against a wall, rubbing her chest where the Hacan had struck her, face stoic. “But it’s not a total disaster.”
“There is an angry Hacan weapons expert loose on this vessel.”
“Sure, but I just locked everything down – he’s stuck in a corridor, banging on a door. He’s no danger to us. I shielded comms too.”
“Not before he warned Duval,” Severyne said. “We can’t surprise him now.”
“That’s true. I’m sorry, Severyne. Revenge will have to wait. I promise, we’ll get Duval, OK? I want him too. But for now, we’ve got Thales, and we’ve got his data, his prototype, the power source–”
A dry laugh crackled from the floor of the airlock. They both turned to look at the scientist, who was still mostly paralyzed, but conscious. “You’ve got three out of four. Which isn’t enough. This is an all-or-nothing situation. Duval still has the power cell. Idiots. I’m surrounded by idiots.”
“That is a complication,” Azad said.
•••
“Hello, Duval,” Azad said. She was calling him from the Temerarious, which made him vibrate with rage.
“Get the fuck off my ship.�
�� He paced up and down in the corridor as he spoke, while Tib stood against the wall, seemingly lost in thought. Felix hoped she was figuring out some angle. He was too angry to figure out anything other than a direct attack, personally.
“Your people are pirates, Duval. You know how this works. I’m in control of the ship. That makes it my ship. That’s not the only thing of yours I’ve taken, either. I’ve got your lion in a cage here.”
“If you hurt Calred–”
“Then Calred will be hurt very badly indeed. Stop blustering, Duval. It’s unbecoming. I don’t want to hurt anyone, oddly enough. I’m a pragmatist, not a sadist. I just have a problem you can help me solve. You have a power source. I need a power source. I have one of your crew. You need one of your crew. That means we can make a deal. Straight trade. The battery for your boy. Oh, and I’m going to need your ship, too. Fortunately, you can pick up another one at the scrapyard.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“It’s not only serious, it’s a limited-time offer. Think it over. Don’t make me wait too long, or I’ll start cutting off non-essential parts of your security officer. Then you’ll have to pay the same amount to get less and less in return. It’s a brutal negotiating tactic, I know. I learned it from the Disciplinarian. I’ll give you a few minutes. I know it takes time for that ‘I’m totally fucked’ feeling to really sink in.”
She clicked off. Felix stared at Tib. “What can we do?”
“Lots of things.”
“What can we do that will get Thales back and won’t kill Calred in the process?”
“Many fewer things. I can think of… zero things.”
“Maybe there’s nothing we can do on our own, but…” Felix opened another channel. A bored voice said, “Sagasa Scrap and–”
“Let me talk to Sagasa!”
“Captain Duval. Perhaps I can be of–”
“I don’t want to talk to you!” Felix bellowed. “Get me Sagasa, now!”
It wasn’t “now,” but after a long interval, Sagasa rumbled into Felix’s comms. “How may I be of further service, captain?”
“You let those assholes get on my ship!”
“Which assholes are those?”
“Severyne and Azad!”
“Ah. Those assholes. I thought they were adrift in a disabled ship many parsecs away?”
“Yeah, well, so did I. But it turns out they sent their crew to harass us while they stayed here, in your scrapyard, and broke into my ship. What are you going to do about that?”
“You paid me to dock the ship here, captain.” The Hacan’s voice was mild and untroubled. “If you wanted me to guard it, you should have said so. I offer very reasonable rates for security services. What’s the problem? I won’t let them leave with your property – that much is covered by our agreement. Would you like to employ some of my personnel to help you take the ship back?”
“I can’t go in hot. They have Calred.”
“Ah ha. A hostage situation. I see. What do they want in return for his freedom?”
Felix hesitated. Sagasa was honorable, in very specific ways, but the power cell would be a morality-warping temptation for even a less shady businessperson. “They’re demanding a certain item in my possession.”
“Then you should decide whether to give it to them, or not. I’m still not clear about why you’re calling me. Did you want to secure my services as a negotiator on your behalf?”
“Doesn’t breaking into my ship and kidnapping my security officer count as an act of aggression on your station?” Felix said. “Shouldn’t you discipline them?”
“Arguably. But such things bother me less when they don’t happen right outside my office. If someone starts shooting in the corridors, I will be moved to intervene, but it sounds, at this point, more like an aggressive business negotiation than anything else. I don’t meddle in such affairs. Besides, you said you don’t want to go in hot. It’s not as if I have options for retaking the ship other than the use of force, captain.”
Felix was getting desperate. “What if they kill Calred?”
“I would mourn the loss of a brother Hacan. Then I would offer my security forces for hire again, since the impediment against violent intervention would be removed. I might even carry a weapon myself.”
“None of this is very helpful, Sagasa.”
“Alas, being helpful to Duval’s Devils is not one of my duties. I wish you luck.” He paused. “I will remind you, though, that if you start shooting in my corridors, I’ll consider you the aggressor instead, and subject to my discipline.”
“Unless I hire you to help.”
“Of course. In that situation, you wouldn’t be the one shooting – I would.”
“Right. I guess that’s all, then.”
“Until next time. Thank you for using Sagasa’s Scrap and Salvage. We tear down the past to build a better future.” The comms went dead.
Felix slumped against the wall. The clock was counting down, and he didn’t doubt that Azad would carry through on her threat. He glanced at his first officer. “You look like you’re thinking, Tib. What are you thinking?”
Tib shrugged. “I was just thinking back to the propulsion laboratory. I took the real power cell and switched it with the fake Thales made. I don’t know why I bothered. The whole point of swapping it was to make it look like no crime had even occurred, and at that point, there was already a murder victim in the next room. But that was the plan, and I executed the plan. If I hadn’t, we’d still have the fake power cell, and we could trade that for Calred. Azad and Severyne would still have Thales, but they wouldn’t be able to use his device. We’d still have some hope of winning.”
Felix nodded. “That would have been nice. Elegant. Roguish.” He sighed. “But we don’t have a fake power cell, and I don’t have the skills to build a new one. You?”
“I skipped constructing-fake-technology class at the academy.”
“So.”
“So.”
“I guess we lose.”
“It’s the second time today we thought we’d lost,” Tib said. “Last time, we thought we’d lost, and were about to die.”
“True. But last time we didn’t think anyone else was going to win, either. I am really not happy letting Azad win.”
“I’d say there’s a good chance that she and the Dampierre woman will end up murdering each other,” Tib said. “They have mutually incompatible goals, when it comes down to it.”
“That’s a comfort,” Felix said. “How mad do you think Jhuri will be that we lost Thales?”
“He hasn’t invented anything yet,” Tib said. “So only roughly the same amount of mad as he will be about you losing the Temerarious.”
Felix groaned.
•••
There was no way the parties involved were going to trust one another to make the exchange without some attempts at murderous treachery, so they enlisted Sagasa’s help after all. He, his Naalu, his N’orr, and two armored guards went with Felix and Tib to their dock. The airlock doors opened, and Azad stood there with Calred, who was clearly sedated and shackled.
“Where’s Severyne?” Felix called across the airlock. “Did you kill her already?”
“Nah, she’s watching our pet scientist,” Azad said. “Hey, Sagasa. Thanks for stepping in to facilitate matters.”
“It is sad when two parties cannot trust one another to deal fairly,” the Hacan said. “But such mistrust enriches me, so I cannot bring myself to hate it entirely.” He gestured. “Captain Duval? The object in question?”
Felix opened his bag and handed over the sphere. Sagasa could hold it in one huge paw. “This little bauble is the cause of so much strife?”
“Only about a quarter of the cause,” Azad said. “But we’ve got the other threequarters already.”
“Intrigues buzz abo
ut me like flies around a carcass,” Sagasa said. “It is fortunate that I am fundamentally an incurious man.” He strode into the airlock. “Release Calred, please.”
Azad gave him a nudge, and Cal stumbled forward. Tib hissed in frustration at Felix’s side. “I know,” Felix murmured.
Sagasa snapped his fingers, and the Naalu slithered forward, undulating across the deck, and helped Calred out of the airlock. Sagasa handed the power cell to Azad. “Does this conclude your business?”
“Once Captain Duval gives you permission to release the docking clamps and let us go on our way.”
Sagasa turned to him. “You’ll allow her to take your ship, captain?”
“That’s… the deal.” Hard to speak, through gritted teeth.
“I assume we’ll be discussing the purchase of a new vessel, then? Or another rental?”
“Probably,” Felix said.
“Just don’t use your new ship to chase after us, OK?” Azad said.
“If you were me, would you give up?” Felix said.
“Of course not. There’s no fun in giving up. But I figured I’d give you fair warning. I’ve got a ship with big guns, and a power source that will make them even bigger.”
Felix winced. They’d talked to their goons on the other ship, then, and deduced the nature of the secret weapon. “Your advice is noted.”
“All right, then. See you in the void.”
“Not if I target lock you first.”
The airlock slid closed. Calred slumped against the wall, blinking. “Sorry, captain.” His voice was slurred. “They sealed me in a corridor and gassed me. I couldn’t do anything about it.”
“We’re just glad you’re OK, Cal.” Felix turned to Sagasa. “Hey. You sold them that cruiser we disabled.”
“I don’t comment on my business affairs. Confidentiality is key.”
“I already know you sold it to them – Severyne said so. What I want to ask is, where’s the ship they came here in? They didn’t swim to your station.”