“Fought with her, Sir Knight? Like… on the same side?”
Asger hesitated, and Qin suspected he was trying to figure out how to say it had been Casmir’s side, and she’d happened to be there too. Surely, he feared some taint would linger on him like radioactive isotopes if he admitted they’d gone into battle together.
But in the end, he said, “Yes,” and made a shooing motion to them. “Guard the ship from out there, will you? We were attacked earlier by terrorists. I’d like some warning if they—or their stolen and reprogrammed crushers—show up again.”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
The men trotted down the ramp, and Qin found herself without any weapons pointed at her chest. She wondered what it would be like to command that kind of respect simply by showing up in a purple cloak. Not that Asger didn’t fight well. She’d seen that for herself and assumed all knights were similarly capable. But she fought just as well. And she was a freak.
A freak who wanted to walk freely outside and go find those trees and lie on her back in the grass, inhaling the scents and feeling the sun on her skin. But that wouldn’t likely happen here.
“The captain is being interrogated?” Asger asked.
“Yes, in the lounge.” Qin, no longer detained by surly strangers, headed toward the ladder.
When Asger followed her, Qin frowned over her shoulder at him.
“Casmir asked me to make sure she was all right,” Asger explained.
“Where is Casmir? I thought you were going to see the queen together.”
“He’s in the dungeon.”
Qin lurched to a stop at the base of the ladder. “What?”
“He hid something very important from the Kingdom fleet. The king, the military, Royal Intelligence, and everyone in between want to know where it is. He’ll be interrogated.”
“You just let them throw him in the dungeon?”
“I work for Royal Intelligence and His Highness’s knights. Casmir tranquilized me after I helped him not once but twice, first with getting off Ishii’s ship and then with taking down those robots and gaining control of the cargo ship.” Asger shook his head, looking both indignant and flustered, as if he felt he was making excuses and that he’d done something wrong.
Qin sure thought he had.
“You know we wouldn’t have won that fight if he hadn’t found a way to nullify those robots. And if you helped him off that other ship, it was only because you wanted something.” Qin pointed a finger at his chest. “You wanted that gate, and you thought he could get it in a way that the military couldn’t. And you were right.”
“That’s ridiculous. He’s just an engineer with no combat training. I couldn’t have known he would do anything but get us all killed.” Asger looked away from her, and she sensed his lie.
She wasn’t sure why he’d had faith in Casmir early on, but Asger had known Casmir had some unique talents that might prove helpful—and he’d bet on him. Qin wasn’t good at a lot of things when it came to people, but she’d learned long, long ago to detect when they were lying to her. Probably because it happened so often. She’d had a lot of practice.
“But he didn’t get us killed. And he kept Rache from making off with that gate. You owe him.”
“I do not owe him,” Asger snapped, his gaze jerking back to hers, his thick hair swinging about his shoulders with the movement.
Even though he’d tried to kill Qin when first they met, and even though he could never find her even vaguely appealing, she couldn’t help but notice that his hair, his face, and all of him was handsome. Very handsome. For a moment, she wondered what it would be like if she were some beautiful and fully human princess here on Odin, and she could have a man like him. Any man at all. She liked to think she’d only choose someone as kind and noble as he was handsome, but for her whole life, she hadn’t gotten to choose. She’d always been someone’s property with no freedom whatsoever.
These last few months, working for Bonita, she’d had a semblance of freedom, even if she’d agreed to follow her captain’s orders. Now, she was in danger of losing that, of being dragged back to the Druckers. Of never getting to choose anything—or anyone—for herself.
“I don’t owe him,” Asger repeated, staring past her shoulder, the words seemingly more for himself than for her. “It’s my duty as a knight to obey the king and my superiors. They wanted him for questioning, and I had to let them take him.”
Qin wrenched her attention back to the moment, to Casmir’s problem. It felt less selfish to focus on that than on her own concerns. “We should break him out before they torture him to death.”
Asger’s gaze locked back onto hers. “They’re not going to torture him. This is the modern era, and the Kingdom is not, whatever you people in other systems think, some tyrannical regime where life is treated cavalierly.”
“I’ve been elevated from freak to you people? I suppose that’s an improvement.” Qin, not sure why she was debating this with him, climbed up to the ship’s middle deck. She needed to make sure Bonita wasn’t being treated cavalierly right now and get her opinion on Casmir’s imprisonment.
Qin doubted Bonita would suggest a rescue, but maybe she would be willing to help Casmir rescue himself again. If that was possible.
Asger muttered something about difficult women under his breath and followed her up. With her keen ears, Qin would have caught it if he’d said more, but she didn’t think he had.
The hatch to the lounge was open, with two uniformed men, the man with the medical kit, and the lieutenant inside. The lieutenant stood facing Bonita, who sat at the table. Her blowtorch wasn’t anywhere in sight. Her palms lay flat on the table, and her face vacillated between tense and relaxed. Had they already given her a drug?
The lieutenant frowned at the hatchway and held up her hand.
Qin stepped inside but didn’t try to go farther. She leaned against the bulkhead. All she wanted was to make sure Bonita wasn’t hurt.
“So you thought to sell the bioweapon to Rache?” the lieutenant asked, turning back to Bonita.
“No,” Bonita said. “I was looking for a way to get rid of the thing, but not like that. I didn’t want it to be used on anyone.”
Asger stepped inside and stood against the wall beside Qin, not close enough to touch. Never close enough to touch.
As the lieutenant continued to question Bonita, a part of Qin wanted to tell Asger to go away, that he’d only been invited onto the ship when he’d been Casmir’s guest, and now that he’d abandoned Casmir to who knew what fate, he wasn’t welcome. But she grudgingly admitted that he might be useful. Especially if he’d told Casmir he would keep an eye out for Bonita. If he felt some guilt about abandoning Casmir to his colleagues, he might do even more than that. Maybe it was Qin’s imagination that she sensed that, but she didn’t think so.
“Very well, Captain,” the lieutenant said, stepping back from the table. “I’ll take this report to my superiors.”
Bonita, still under the influence of the drug, smiled blearily.
The smile was so out of place on her face that it made Qin uncomfortable. Bonita wasn’t cranky or grumpy all the time, but she always looked weary and beaten down, like life had struck her too many blows for her to ever recover fully. Qin always wished she could help ease the way, but Bonita was stubborn and independent, and even when she said she would rely more on Qin, she never did.
“Uhm, Lieutenant?” Qin said as the woman headed for the hatchway. “Are we—is she allowed to leave the ship now?” Qin pointed at Bonita, knowing she wanted to arrange that meeting.
“The ship may not leave. Not until we’ve finished our scans and analyzed the data. As for the captain…” The lieutenant pursed her lips. “Her status is undetermined at this point. She is not a Kingdom citizen, but she has committed crimes in our system. If she leaves, she will do so under surveillance.”
Qin started to object, but realized the words if she leaves did not forbid her to do so. She closed her mouth
.
The lieutenant continued toward the hatchway but paused again before leaving the lounge. “Are you coming, Sir Knight? There’s no need for you to remain here.” She pursed her lips again, oozing disapproval as she glanced at Qin.
“Soon,” was all Asger said.
“Of course.” The lieutenant bowed to him and walked out.
Bonita’s eyes were focused—no, unfocused—on the ceiling. It would take a while for the drug to wear off. Until then, Qin would watch over her. She didn’t think she should presume to contact the person who might be interested in buying Casmir’s patent. She knew nothing about the situation and didn’t want to risk messing up.
Assuming Asger would leave, Qin pushed away from the bulkhead, swinging her arms and flexing her muscles, wishing for an outlet for her tension. It had been some time since she’d had a worthy opponent to spar with. More than once, she’d thought about asking Casmir if Zee would be able to do that without escalating to violence. Now, she feared she’d lost her opportunity. Zee had accompanied Kim when she left the ship. What if she never saw either of them again?
“Everything all right, Captain?” Qin rested a gentle hand on Bonita’s shoulder. She’d learned at a young age that she had to be gentle when interacting with humans—and to always make sure her claws were retracted when touching them.
“My knees never stop aching, I don’t trust the Kingdom, and the digits in my bank account are negligible.” Bonita shook her head sadly, looking through Qin rather than at her.
Bonita was usually blunt, but the honesty startled Qin, until she remembered the drug.
“I’m sorry,” Qin said quietly. “If we’re able to secure money for that patent, you should keep it for yourself—for resupplying the ship and—”
One of Viggo’s vacuums skittered into the lounge, looking more like it was fleeing a predator than navigating one of its usual cleaning circuits. It zipped up one of the walls and sucked microscopic debris off the ceiling. Maybe one of the men inspecting the ship had kicked it.
“You should just take care of yourself,” Qin finished. “I’ll worry about the bounty on my own. It’s not your responsibility to bail me out of my own problems.”
Bonita smiled blearily at her.
“Bounty?” Asger asked from the bulkhead.
Qin grimaced. She hadn’t forgotten he was there, not exactly, but she hadn’t thought he would care enough to pry.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m going to make sure your people aren’t molesting Viggo’s vacuums.”
She headed for the corridor, and Asger lifted a hand, as if he might stop her, but she gave him a cool look, and he lowered it, deciding against impeding her. Qin walked out, wishing Asger were in the castle, getting Casmir out of the dungeon instead of lurking on the Dragon.
5
Yas was back in the familiar sickbay of the Fedallah and feeling much better, but he couldn’t say it was like coming home. He was a little bolstered that Rache had agreed to look into President Bakas’s assassination—and Yas being framed for the murder—but Rache wanted to find that gate first. Yas told himself he would have to be patient. In the meantime, he would be a good doctor to the mercenaries, whether they appreciated it or not, and do the job he’d promised to do. And try to help Chief Jess Khonsari.
Assuming she deigned to see him again. She had agreed to an exam, so he could get a fresh look at everything and come up with some alternatives to the powerful and addictive trylochanix she took for pain, but she was ten minutes late. When they had made the appointment, he had only mentioned making sure she was recovering fully from the pseudo radiation, but maybe she had sensed that he wanted to talk about more than that.
The sickbay door opened, and he spun toward it, his heart speeding up. He snorted at himself, admitting that maybe he wanted to see Jess again for more reasons than the purely medical.
But it was Captain Rache who strode in, followed by a gangly dark-skinned mercenary who had to duck to pass through the doorway. A cybernetic headset had been surgically attached to his skull and covered half of his face, leaving lenses in front of his eyes—or perhaps in place of his eyes. Yas hadn’t spoken often to him but recognized him and remembered skimming his record. A former cattle farmer turned astroshaman turned mercenary, Lieutenant Amergin ran security, hacked into networks far and wide, and sang a cappella with two other officers whenever there was a drunken gathering in the mess hall. Since Yas avoided those gatherings, he didn’t know if the man was good at it.
“Dr. Peshlakai,” Rache said. “Lieutenant Amergin is going to sift through the news, mainstream and not, in the various systems and help you figure out who killed your president.”
“Oh?” Yas leaned forward with new interest in the man. He hadn’t expected Rache to do anything this soon to try to solve that problem. “Thank you, Captain. And Lieutenant.”
Amergin grinned—despite the top half of his face being covered, his mouth was normal, full of white human teeth—and tipped the wide-brimmed hat he wore. It seemed out of place above the black galaxy suit that covered the rest of his body, but most of the mercenaries seemed to favor eclectic attire. “Shouldn’t be too hard. People always want to talk. You just have to know where to stick your ears to listen.”
“Wise words,” Yas murmured, noticing that one of Amergin’s ears had a gray-blue mechanical interior.
“I’m heading down to Odin,” Rache said. “To find Dabrowski and figure out where he hid the gate. Once we deal with that, if Amergin finds out where your responsible parties are, we’ll pay them a visit.”
His tone had that icy edge that it so often did, and Yas didn’t know if it was directed at Dabrowski or the people who had framed Yas. It was strange to imagine having the deadly mercenary on his side, like a trained attack dog prepared to spring for an enemy’s jugular.
“Then let me hope you find the roboticist and the gate swiftly,” Yas said before considering the implications of Rache’s words. It was unlikely Dabrowski wanted the mercenaries to know where the gate was, so Rache would have to forcibly retrieve the information from his brain.
Yas tried not to shudder. Maybe Rache was more like a rabid attack dog than a trained one, dangerous to anyone around him, anyone who irked him just a little.
“Will you go alone, Captain?” Lieutenant Amergin asked. “A lot of people on that planet want you dead. Might want to take a strike force in case things get hairy. You’ll take the blank-slate shuttle, I assume? Want me to help the chief spruce it up just for this planet? It’s still got L.S. Antiquarian Furniture Delivery on the side and for the ident marker.”
“Yes, let’s assign it to a Kingdom delivery company. But I’ll fly it down alone. Stealthily. There’s nothing to be gained from fighting Kingdom Guards and knights on their own turf.”
“No? Thought you enjoyed killing them for sport, sir.”
“Not on their home soil where I’m outnumbered five billion to one,” Rache said. “I’ve occasionally considered sneaking into the castle to assassinate Jager myself, but his eldest son is only thirty and as much of a manipulative ass as he is. If a less subtle one. I don’t know that I’d be doing anyone a favor. I’ll reconsider that if the money is ever high enough to make the risk worth it.” Rache spread a hand toward the ceiling.
Yas said nothing. He didn’t want to encourage talk of assassinations.
“What happens if King Jager is behind President Bakas’s death?” Amergin asked. “We still going to help Yas get his revenge? You said his job is pro bono, didn’t you?”
Yas raised a finger. “I’m not looking for revenge so much as to exonerate myself. I was wrongfully accused, and it’s… inconvenient.”
Rache snorted. “Yes, it often is. I don’t actually think Jager is behind that, but we’ll sail through that gate when we come to it.”
“Who else would have done it?” Yas asked. “President Bakas had just quashed a movement to make an alliance with the Kingdom. There were people on our own statio
n full of dissent over that, but it’s hard to believe someone who lived there would, ah, drop a bomb in their own outhouse, as Corporal Chains would say.”
Yas couldn’t believe he was quoting one of the mercenaries. What had his life become?
“That’ll be for me to find out.” Lieutenant Amergin poked his thumb against his chest. “With whatever clues you can give me as a near-eyewitness, Doctor. Could be lots of people there that wanted someone lenient to the Kingdom to be put in charge, and it sounds like your vice president qualified. Times have been changing a lot lately.”
“An Old Earth poet once said, ‘Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.’” Rache inclined his head and left sickbay.
Amergin shrugged at Yas. “I don’t know what to say when he gets philosophical.”
Yas was encouraged whenever he was reminded that Rache read books now and then. Though maybe it would have been safer for the galaxy if he’d been more of a thug and less of a thinker. Yas thought of Dabrowski and how this might end for him, then shook his head. He had his own life to think about—and helping people more directly in it.
“You said you and Chief Khonsari will be working on a shuttle later?” Yas asked casually.
“Yup, I’ll wrangle her up. I do all the programming, but she’s a whiz with the paint droids and can change up the hull in minutes.”
“Good. Thank you.”
If Jess wouldn’t come to sickbay, Yas would go to her.
Kim felt conspicuous walking down the street toward Royal Intelligence Headquarters with a looming crusher a couple of steps behind her. But after the attack, she couldn’t fault Casmir for being cautious, and she felt lucky to have a friend who wanted to keep her safe. She just wished he’d focus more of his brain power on keeping himself safe.
Even though robots, androids, and automated vehicles were common in Zamek, Zee drew more than a few curious—or were those concerned?—looks from passersby. Fortunately, Kim didn’t need to go far. She stopped at the driveway leading up to the Intelligence offices and braced herself. The headquarters building was almost as intimidating as the castle itself, with an ancient stone exterior, guard towers at the corners, and a crenellated walkway along the edge of the gray-blue metal roof.
Hero Code Page 8