by Tim Pratt
“Weapons nerds,” Felix said. “How long before we intercept?”
“A couple of hours if I push it,” Calred said. “Longer if I try to creep up on them, hiding in the sensor-shadows of asteroids along the way. The problem is, they’re headed for wide-open nothingness, so if we go in slow, they’re definitely going to see us coming at the end, and they have horrible super lasers they can use to blow us up.”
“Fortunately, we don’t really care if they shoot holes in this ship. And we have our secret weapon.”
“Secret weapon nerd,” Tib said.
“Set the fastest intercept course you can,” Felix said. “We’ll– hold on.” A priority message lit up in his comms. It had been sent some hours ago, but to the Temerarious. Felix had only now gotten close enough for his ship to recognize his personal comm system and forward the message.
Undersecretary Jhuri gazed at him in his heads-up display. “I know I said you should act with autonomy, Felix, but you need to call me, right now, and explain why you just bought a Barony warship from the most notorious criminal in the vicinity of Vega Major.”
Connecting a call all the way back to Moll Primus from said Barony warship was tricky, but eventually Felix got through, using the right call signs and passwords to reach the undersecretary’s desk, since he lacked the proper encryption protocols on the Grim Countenance. The Barony ship’s ready room was all black metal and dim light, and Felix worried he’d get tetanus from sitting in the ornamentally spiky captain’s chair, but he settled himself as comfortably as he could.
Jhuri appeared, a figure drawn in light above the desk. “I refuse to believe you’ve defected to the Barony, Felix. They make their alcohol out of fungus.”
“I can explain. But only if you want me to explain. Explaining will involve telling you things that officially you should not know about.”
“I’m good at compartmentalization, Felix.”
“This is a secure channel?”
Jhuri barked a laugh. “It’s so secure we can barely talk to each other through the layers of encryption. You’re on a Barony ship, and I’m communicating with you like you’re a deep-cover double agent. Tell me your tale of woe.”
Felix filled him in on everything: the jailbreak, Shelma’s death, their run-in with Severyne and Azad at Sagasa’s station, the heist on Jol, the propulsion lab director’s death, their additional run-in with Severyne and Azad, and their current situation.
Jhuri blinked at him when it was done. “Have you had time to eat or sleep?”
“Not enough, sir.”
“Duval’s Devils, eh? So. What’s your plan?”
“Overtake, board, and recover the Temerarious, and bring back Thales–”
“I thought it would be something like that,” Jhuri said. “No. The chance of successfully reclaiming Thales and the device is minimal. Destroy them instead.”
Felix leaned back, and one of the spikes on the chair poked him in the side of the neck, so he leaned forward again. “Sir, this isn’t a lost cause – we can get Thales and his device back – I know we can. Boarding ships and taking their stuff is what we do.”
“This whole situation has become very messy, Felix. They don’t know you’re behind them. You can target them, all weapons hot, and annihilate them. We won’t get the wormhole tech, but neither will anybody else. Tipping the balance in our favor would be wonderful, but maintaining the status quo is a decent second option. If you try to board them and fail, and they get away… I don’t like to imagine the consequences, especially since Sol and the Barony have reasons to be annoyed with us after all this. If either or both of their governments gain the power to open a wormhole over the skies of Moll Primus…”
“If you order me to destroy them, sir, I will. But I’m asking you to have faith in me. What’s the motto written on the seal of the Table of Captains?”
Jhuri sighed. “It says, ‘Who Dares, Wins.’ It’s a nice sentiment, Felix, but the truth is: who wins, wins.”
“If we do it your way, sir, the best outcome is: we don’t lose. At least let me try to win.”
The undersecretary gazed at Felix – or, perhaps, off into space – for a long moment. “I’ll offer you a compromise,” Jhuri said.
“That’s great, sir.”
“The terms of the compromise might require you to die.”
“That is less great, sir,” Felix said, “but I’m still listening.”
•••
“I don’t get to board the ship and shoot people?” Calred said. “The only thing that’s been keeping me going is the thought of boarding the ship and shooting people! Specifically, Severyne. She shot me in the arm. It’s still tingly.”
Felix shook his head. “Someone has to stay here. It’s Jhuri’s compromise. Tib and I can try to board, and fight, and recover Thales, and seize control of the ship, but if we fail, you have to blow up the Temerarious.”
“With you two on board?”
“If we fail, we’ll probably be dead anyway,” Felix said.
“That is a terrible compromise,” Tib said. “Why aren’t we going with option one, and just blowing them up? That’s also the only plan where Thales dies, so that’s a plus.”
“Not you, too?” Felix said. “They stole Thales from a colony we were supposed to be protecting. They stole my ship, Tib. They stole Shelma’s research. They stole the power cell. They stole all that stuff that we stole in the first place! We’re the Coalition. We don’t get robbed. We rob.”
“I am very excited to blow up a spaceship,” Calred said. “I am significantly less excited to blow up a spaceship with my friends on board.”
“Consider it avenging our deaths,” Felix said. “You have your orders, Calred. Come on, Tib. Let’s go get in our secret weapon.”
•••
Azad woke up with a yawn, looked around, and saw Severyne was gone.
She checked in with the ship while she got dressed. There was nothing showing on their sensors except some distant asteroids. Nobody had messed around with the life-support functions or security controls. Everything seemed in order. Ostensibly, Azad had given Severyne full control of the ship, but of course, she’d kept her own backdoor access. She scanned through the ship’s cameras. Thales was still bustling around in his lab. There were some cleaning and repair drones doing their thing. No sign of Severyne at all.
The ship had a lower deck. That space was usually meant as crew cabins and support spaces, but on this ship it was all just cargo storage for relief supplies. There were, for reasons Azad had been unable to determine, no working security cameras down there. Maybe the Coalition hadn’t bothered to install any, figuring nobody would ever go down there anyway, or maybe Felix had disabled the cameras so he could have discreet sex with prostitutes, or he ran an illegal knife-fighting ring back in the colonies. Who knew? That deck was a surveillance dead zone, though. “Sev,” she said over the loudspeakers. “Where are you?”
“I’m on the lower deck,” she called back promptly. “There’s something down here I think you’ll want to see.”
Here we go, Azad thought. Time to play hide-and-seek.
“I’ll be right there,” she said, and went to the galley to pick out a knife.
•••
Severyne waited in the darkness. She’d shut off all the lights, even the emergency ones, and she wore a helmet with gas filters and a heads-up display featuring thermal imaging and night-vision overlays. She’d raided the armory and supplied herself with small arms, then disabled the armory door controls, locking the other weaponry inside. Even if Azad was suspicious, she would be relatively defenseless… though someone like Azad was never entirely so.
The lack of cameras down here left her as much in the dark as anyone, but she could monitor the rest of the ship and see Azad coming – until suddenly her feeds went dark. “What?” she said aloud. She t
ried to reboot, but her system said, “Authorization revoked.”
“Oh you’re clever,” she muttered. Azad had access to the ship’s core controls after all. “‘You’re the one sitting in the big chair’ indeed.” Her attempts to distract the human had failed, then. Azad knew exactly what was happening here.
“You know, it doesn’t have to be this way, Sev.” Azad’s voice over her personal comms was low and insinuating and right in Severyne’s ear, just like it had been earlier, but it was saying much less pleasant things now. “I really do like you. There’s zero incentive for me to kill you. Your death gains me nothing. Keeping you alive is good for me, even – my superiors will be excited to have a Barony defector. Let me keep you safe and happy.”
Severyne crouched behind a pallet of shrink-wrapped air purifiers. She wasn’t going to chat. She wasn’t going to roam around. She was going to wait for Azad to creep close, and then shoot her in the back of the head. Severyne wasn’t Azad’s equal as a hunter, but she could be a very capable spider, lying in wait for prey to stumble into her web.
“You have choices here, Sev. I know they’re shitty choices! I get that. But you’re betting you can beat me in a fight in the dark, and that’s just… Look. You know I think the world of you. You’ve got talent, and you’ve got potential. The dance you did with Duval back on Sagasa’s station, that was a thing of beauty, and you’ve got some real steel in you. I’ve seen that. I respect it. But, babe. You can’t win in a fight against me. Especially not a dirty fight. Come out, drop your weapons, and we’ll forget this ever happened. If Thales comes through, my superiors are going to be delighted, and I can negotiate a great deal for you. I’ll visit you. Conjugals, even. What do you say?”
Briefly, Severyne considered. She decided to speak. “Azad. If we could go on like this, you and I, traveling and fighting and winning, that would be a temptation. But you offer me a future locked in a secure Federation facility. I used to run a facility like that. I would be in the same position Shelma was in: something between a pet and a prisoner. I can’t take that. Could you endure such a thing, if our positions were reversed?”
“I guess not,” Azad said. “But now you’re tempting me. We could do it, huh? Just go our own way. Take this activation engine Thales made and sell it to some third party – the Naalu would love it, and I know people over there. We could get rich, buy a ship, do crimes, make out. Is that your proposal?”
“Amina,” Severyne said. “That sounds wonderful.” It really did. Severyne didn’t have to lie.
“Yeah, it does. It’s a shame you’d never actually do it. I’m not saying I would either – I’m fifty-fifty on the idea, I see pluses and minuses – but I know you wouldn’t. You’re Letnev, Sev. All the way through. Death before dishonor, and being with me, as much as it might turn you on, it’s still dishonor.”
“Then we do what we must,” Severyne said.
“That we do.”
There was a sound, a sort of thump, and Severyne’s heads-up display went dark. She cursed, tried to reboot it, but found the system entirely unresponsive. The faint glow of the charge gauge on her sidearm was dark, too, and that meant –
It had to be an electromagnetic pulse. Azad must have used an EMP grenade, and just having one of those on hand meant she’d planned for this scenario, or something like it.
Severyne no longer had the advantages she’d so carefully created. In fact, she had disadvantages, because when it came to fighting with nothing but your bare hands, Azad was much better.
“Hey, Sev!” The voice was not on comms, but echoing through the air. “I’m down here in the dark, and you’re down here in the dark. We used to have so much fun together in the dark, huh? I bet you have some guns that don’t work any more. I don’t have guns either, if that makes you feel better. I do have a knife. I’m guessing you probably don’t, though. Just remember, even a gun that won’t shoot is a pretty good club. I’m the sharp edge, and you’re the blunt object. So, let’s see who’s going to be dead, and who’s just going to be heartbroken.”
Carefully, silently, Severyne began to move.
Chapter 28
Down in the belly of the Grim Countenance rested the Endless Dark, burnt-out laser cannons and all. “This is not a boarding craft, Felix,” Tib said. “It is barely even a craft at this point.”
“Secret weapon,” Felix said stubbornly. “It’s so small, they might not even notice our approach, and if they do, we’ll be harder to hit, because we’re small and maneuverable. We’re going to creep up on them and cut our way in.” Sagasa had loaned them (for, of course, a price) a set of “salvage tools” – which were really the sort of drones raiders used to breach ships that didn’t want to open their doors voluntarily. The drones squatted in the Endless Dark, filling much of the limited space inside the small craft, their bodies round and matte black, their wicked little manipulator arms and cutting torches all tucked away.
“We are going to die,” Tib said.
“You always think that. If we do, Calred will make sure they die too.”
“That will be no comfort to me, because I will be dead.”
“Don’t the Yssaril have the concept of an afterlife?” Felix said. “I read about it once. Your heaven is some kind of jungle, full of endless game, prey too slow to run away, and there are miniature versions of the predators that used to eat your people, and instead, you eat them–”
“That is what one tribe, out of a very large number of tribes, believes, yes. It’s not the tribe my ancestors come from, but that doesn’t matter. I’m from the Coalition, Felix. All I believe in is drinking, pillaging, and having a good time before you die.”
“Are you telling me we haven’t been having a good time?”
“I’d like to have a good time for a longer time.”
Felix bowed his head. “Tib, if you want, you can stay here with Calred. I know I’m asking a lot of you, that it’s dangerous, that–”
“Oh, shut up, you stupid human,” Tib said. “I’m not going to let you die by yourself.” She clambered into the ship. “Let’s go. Time to put all that hide-and-seek training to use.”
Felix strapped into the cockpit and called up to Calred. “Ready when you are.”
The bay doors opened, and the Endless Dark dropped into space and began to accelerate toward the distant Temerarious. “Be safe, you two,” Calred said.
“I think we’ll be dangerous instead,” Felix said. “Hang back at the very edge of effective weapons range. You know what to do if we don’t call you from the bridge before time’s up.”
“Boom boom,” Calred said. “The most depressing boom boom in the history of all boom booms. I will never forgive you if you ruin boom boom for me, captain.”
•••
Felix sat in the pilot’s chair, with Tib right beside him. “I like having you in that chair much more than Thales.”
“I can’t believe we’re going to all this trouble to get that asshole back.”
“Mostly I want my ship. Thales is a side project.”
“They’re going to see us coming,” Tib said. “I know we’re small, I know we’re flying manual, but if they bother to look, they’ll see us. You know it.”
“Maybe Thales is keeping them busy.” The Temerarious grew in the viewport as they crept closer. “He is very distracting.”
“I should have given more thought to my last words,” Tib said.
“I heard a story once about Erwin Mentak’s last words.”
“The glorious founder of our glorious Coalition? What did he say?”
“According to this guy I met in a bar,” Felix said, “Erwin Mentak’s final words were, ‘Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.’”
Tib snorted laughter. “Thanks for amusing me as I wait to die.”
But they didn’t die – at least not yet. The Endless Dark reached t
he Temerarious, and sailed beneath its belly. “We’re here,” Felix said. “They can’t hurt us now unless they open up a window and lean out to shoot us with a sidearm. Their sensors can’t pick us up, either – we just look like part of the ship. See, Tib? Optimism.”
“I can’t understand how they didn’t notice us,” Tib said. “Is nobody monitoring their sensors? What are they doing in there?”
“Maybe they all killed each other.” Felix spun their ship upside down and activated the magnetic clamps, so the Endless Dark could cling, parasitically, to the belly of the Temerarious. He unstrapped and went to the back of the ship, activating the boarding drones. They scuttled out of the small airlock, crouched on the hull of the Temerarious, and started cutting.
Once the hull was breached, Felix and Tib planned to enter a service tunnel, then slip through an access panel onto the lower deck, where there were no security cameras, because that’s where they liked to play hide-and-seek. From down there, unseen, they should be able to sneak up and retake the ship.
Waiting was hard, and Felix checked and re-checked his weapons while the drones did their work. They finally beeped a completion tone to their comms, and Tib and Felix made their way out of the Endless Dark into the endless dark.
Felix took a moment, clinging to the skin of his ship, to look around. There was nothing out here. He couldn’t even see many stars. Which, he supposed, was the point: Thales wanted a big stretch of empty to punch a hole in, out where no one would see the triumph of the human mind over the physics of the cold and uncaring universe.
“Felix, we have pirating to do,” Tib said. “Stop striking a noble and thoughtful pose. There’s nobody here to appreciate it.”
The drones had deployed a temporary airlock, a sort of rounded tent made of “densely woven polymer” – which was to say, a plastic tarp. Felix unsealed the opening, and Tib slipped in. Felix clambered after and resealed the airlock. The hole the drones had cut in the hull was big enough for his body to fit through, but only just. He followed Tib up – or down – or through – the layers of armor and radiation shielding, on into the ship. The walls vibrated around him as the drones placed a more permanent seal over the hole they’d cut. They wouldn’t be getting out the way they got in.