by Blaze Ward
He grinned with anticipation. She had walked the ship in three-Dee, stains and all, so it wasn’t like this was new. If anything, it was cleaner than the three-Dee had been. Artaxerxes had cleaned up some before he left, what with all the nervous energy of going to meet his future spouse.
The outer door closed and the bolts set. The inner door began to beep and open onto the cargo deck of Longshot Hypothesis. Valentinian let himself breathe.
Safe.
Inside, the big cargo bay, with both cargo sleds currently docked to the side and plugged in to keep the batteries topped off. Two full decks of open space in here, since the volume was actually designed to slide in a pair of standard Anuradhan cargo pods, ten by ten by thirty meters, with clearance to walk around them on all sides and work.
The Dominion economy didn’t work anything like the planet Anuradha, which had built the original vessel that became Longshot Hypothesis. After the Dominion had conquered and finally subdued the place a few years ago, their ships were stupidly cheap, right at the moment when Valentinian had just enough winnings and hustle to buy something, as prices collapsed and everyone else upgraded their rides.
Valentinian had made his margins since hauling small, priority goods point to point, and supplementing with paying passengers who either wanted to rough it, or needed to go places that the big, luxury lines didn’t serve adequately.
There wasn’t a box in here bigger than a two meter cube right now, although that would change when Solaria Femina got here with all their crap.
He led Cleray forward, through the inner bulkhead that separated the cargo bay from the engineering spaces. The hallway here was three meters wide, but he had all the doors closed and locked. No reason a civilian should be getting into his life support, computers, or auxiliary power reactors. They might want access to the machine shop at some point, but she could ask politely.
“Here’s the elevator,” Valentinian pressed the button and opened the space.
“What’s through there?” she pointed forward at another bulkhead hatch, again locked next to the stairwell to the upper deck.
“My cabin and the crew’s space,” Valentinian replied tartly. “We’ll stay down here most of the time, except when we join you for meals.”
“Okay,” she decided, entering the elevator.
Valentinian joined her in the small space, staying as far away as he could while she pressed the button and they rode up a deck.
They came out in the passenger lounge, running out the port arm.
Longshot Hypothesis was built like a capital-Y, with the bridge at the fork below and the base backed up against the station for cargo. The upper deck here had a nice kitchen more or less above the bridge, with a lounge to port and a wardroom/dining hall to starboard. Three small cabins out each arm off a long hallway, with a small head and fresher unit at each end, and then storage and access to the oversized Anuradhan engines that hung from the ends of the spars.
Valentinian had no idea how twenty people would be crammed into a space that would crowd twelve, but again, she had presumably toured the ship and read the specs. He suspected that the nine dancers would end up in three cabins, with Madame Cleray having one to herself and everyone else crammed in wherever they would fit.
Her money was good and he could always lock hatches. The only time they would have to interact would be when the girls wanted to practice routines in the cleared-out cargo bay, and he, or Dave now, needed to do some maintenance in there.
He’d burn that bridge when they got there. Anybody who brought along a Chastitymaster wasn’t going to let the girls out of her sight for a moment, so interactions would probably be limited to dinners.
And feeding him and Dave was in the contract.
Now he just needed to get the girls aboard and settled.
And figure out who the hell this guy was that he had apparently just hired.
2
Dave
The man who had introduced himself as Dave slipped into a side corridor quietly. The last thing he needed right now was to be arrested by station security, but that had been the only way to keep Madame Cleray’s apparent ex-partner from causing more trouble with Dave’s planned escape from Dominion Prime.
There was no way in Creation that his documentation would stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny here. Later, when they got out to the fringes of the Dominion, absolutely. Even better if Tarasicodissa’s travels took him to other stellar nations.
Dave could happily disappear, never to be drug back to the Dominion. Assuming the people who might eventually find out who he really was would ever take him alive.
There was always that.
He had memorized the back corridors of the station months ago, planning this move, so it didn’t take that long to find the one he wanted. It felt odd, skulking like this, when previously he had marched right down the middle of most corridors with his pride.
Things were going to have to change, he could see that, but right now, his instincts for violence would probably serve him better.
Up a flight of harsh, metal stairs, probably painted a dingy white about the time he was born. Dave made no sound, and heard no others in this column of air.
He steeled himself to look like a casual spacer, a civilian who belonged here, if anyone happened along. He opened the door and quickly slipped out, closing it behind him and moving. The crowds in this hallway weren’t all that bad, so he had some social cover as he walked.
Few of the people in sight were anywhere close to his height, but there was nothing he could do about it, except to not wear his old boots that had the extra lifts in the heel that had been designed to make him look even taller. Likewise, the old armor he had worn everywhere in public had been padded internally to make his silhouette massive.
And he wasn’t wearing that damned mask.
He wondered why the Caelon troops never revolted, having to hide inside a full face helmet for their entire lives, but they were all volunteers, so he supposed they saw that armor as a badge of honor.
Good for them.
Some of the crowd he was with followed him into the transient housing block. The place was anonymous and cheap, which had been his first requirement when escaping. His estranged wife would never think to look here, nor would others, at least until all the usual ideas failed to pan out.
Hopefully, he’d be in deep space by then.
Dave pulled out his own card-reader and called up his identity papers on the screen as he approached the wall locker where he had stashed his gear earlier.
The picture was an ugly compromise. It had to look enough different from his old life that someone randomly scanning portals like this wouldn’t immediately recognize him, while at the same time looking enough like his current face to pass casual inspection.
If they got to looking at his fingerprints, he was doomed anyway.
With no way to rely on someone else to modify an old picture of himself, Dave had secretly and laboriously taught himself the necessary skills to do the work. Some of the rest he had been able to bribe or order the work done, in small enough batches that nobody should be able to assemble the whole picture until much, much later.
Or they would locate him. Whether his wife dragged him back to his old life or had him killed outright would probably hinge on her mood when they found him.
Best not to find out.
Dave listened to the locks accept the image and open themselves with a quiet thunk. Inside was a single bag, the sort of blue duffel that an off-duty Caelon might sling over a shoulder while on leave. At least that was the image he hoped to present.
He had wondered how much of his old life he could sneak along with him, but in the end decided that none of it would work. Too many clues to what he would prefer to be a shadowy past, if inspected.
He had brought along a brand new pair of blades, one for training and one with edged steel, but neither had ever seen the interior of a dojo and both were anonymous, beyond marking his class and
background.
The heavy flamer pistol, on the other hand, had seen hard use over the years. Contacts had smuggled it to him back when he first decided to change his life. Serial numbers had been removed with a pocket laser at some point long ago, making it untraceable, but doing nothing to the lethality of the hunk of black metal.
Dave expected to be wearing it regularly, if some of the stories of the fringe elements of the Dominion and neighboring nations were to be believed. At least he knew how to use the thing, most likely better than any of the people he encountered out there.
For the rest, a couple changes of clothes that would get him somewhere else, and enough credits on hand and in secret accounts that he could buy more specific things as he needed them.
At the last minute, he had broken his vow and kept one thing from his past. One thing that could possibly identify him, if someone really knew the man who had become Dave Hall. A book, given to him originally by his father. Of course, if they were that close to capturing him, all it would do was confirm the truth, to the six people who knew the story.
That was a risk he was willing to take.
Dave closed the locker and turned to study the space around him. Nobody seemed to be paying him any attention, and that was all he could hope for right now. There was no reason for anyone to be alert, unless they were already secretly informers for the White Hats, and in that case, he needed to outrun the memory of Dave Hall making its slow, laborious way through the Dominion bureaucracy.
Those people would eventually put it all together, he assumed. But Dave Hall hadn’t rented this bed and this locker, either. False trails and multiple identities were all that would get him aboard Longshot Hypothesis. From there, it was his native cunning, something that had served him well for fifty years.
Dave smiled to himself as he emerged back into the hallway. Around a corner, he pulled out his card-reader and stepped back into the service hallway he had used before.
Empty. Good.
Quickly, he pulled a small screwdriver from his bag and opened the back of the card-reader. As he put the screwdriver back, the door opened suddenly.
A woman emerged, apparently looking backwards over her shoulder. She plowed right into Dave and knocked the card-reader, chip, and back plate from his hands.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she stopped, hands to her mouth. “I didn’t see you there.”
Dave suppressed a growl,
“It’s fine,” he muttered, looking around for all the pieces.
“Here,” she said, dropping to her knees. “Let me help.”
Dave took a deep breath and remained silent. The faster she was gone, the better.
He knelt, trying not to smell her perfume, or notice the fact that she had turned away from him and all he could see of her right now was brown hair and a bottom outlined in pants a size too small. She was young, maybe five years older than his daughter at most.
Six months of celibacy didn’t help his state of mind. He moved around her quickly as she grabbed the card-reader and sat up into a kneeling position.
“Oh, crap, I broke it,” she held it out like a scared kitten.
Dave glanced at the open and empty back and then raced after the identity chip and the back plate, grabbing those before she got more involved.
“I can fix it,” he said quickly, taking it from her hand.
“I feel like I owe you,” she said, her voice changing, growing deeper and slower.
Seriously? Are you flirting with me, young lady? Do you have any idea who I am?
But of course she didn’t. She’d be screaming in fear or running for the authorities if she did.
“It’s fine,” he repeated, starting to stand so he could extricate himself from this encounter.
“No, seriously,” she pressed her case, resting a hand on his forearm as she rose with him. “Let me buy you dinner as an apology.”
Dave cut off all lines of thought and smiled grimly at her.
“Unfortunately, I’m late for departure already, and the captain’s holding the ship for me to get back to the ship,” Dave more or less told the truth. “Perhaps next time I’m on the station?”
It sounded like a good way to deflect her. There was no chance in hell Dave Hall was ever voluntarily stepping foot on Dominion Prime, so it was even a promise he could make without lying.
Voluntarily being the key. And she probably would lose interest in him, if he was being drug across the deck in chains.
“I’ll chirp you my contact information,” she said, pulling out her card-reader from an inside pocket of the light jacket she was wearing.
Dave hadn’t been paying that much attention to the rest of her, once he got distracted by her bottom.
Short woman that somehow still conveyed willowy strength. Brown hair in a pageboy cut that framed green eyes. Well-dressed in red pants and a gold top, with a black jacket over that. Stylish, and he had spent too much time around people for whom style was the only avenue of competition left to them.
Quickly, Dave palmed his old chip and slipped Dave Hall into the card-reader. Easier than arguing with her at this point and making the sort of scene where she might remember him all the more vividly.
The card-reader came alive as he clipped the back more or less in place, and Dave Hall suddenly existed somewhere besides his own imagination.
“I’m Amalathea,” she said, a touch breathily for his benefit as both machines chirped happily. “Amalathea Parsakoutenos. Looking forward to hearing from you.”
She left things dangling, but Dave wasn’t ready to chirp her back his information. No reason to get her executed by the White Hats, just for being friendly, helpful, and flirtatious.
“Dave Hall,” he replied, turning and attacking the staircase like an orbital drop with a ticking bomb somewhere behind him.
Now was really not the time to make new friends.
3
Valentinian
Something was wrong.
Valentinian had managed to escape trouble and jail as many times as he had over the last few years by listening to that little voice in his head that smelled danger. Most of the time it hadn’t led him astray, not counting bar fights, which were frequently random things he happened into, rather than starting.
The flavor of life out on the concourse had changed. No other way to describe it. And it wasn’t just that he had gone into the Armory on the main deck and grabbed himself a shock pistol and a holster. That was kinda standard, since most of the places Longshot Hypothesis docked or landed weren’t as polite and well-run as Dominion Prime. And he could do that as long as he was standing on his own deck and didn’t enter the station again.
There weren’t more gendarmes than normal moving around out there. Well, maybe a few more, but nothing out of the ordinary.
They were moving with more deliberation. That was it. More focus. Like they were looking for someone or something, but didn’t want to broadcast it over the speakers and alert the victim that the net was closing in on them.
Valentinian was still twitchy. The cargo airlock was open, and a team of station stevedores was about halfway through loading the several pallets of junk and stuff Madame Cleray had brought into the cargo bay.
Nash hadn’t made an appearance, but Valentinian was technically standing on his own deck, on this side of the airlock line. He couldn’t fire at Nash or one of his people if they stayed on the station part of the concourse, but they couldn’t do anything to him, either.
Not without someone coming onto his deck uninvited and being charged with piracy. Good way to walk out an open airlock into space, doing that. Especially on Dominion Prime. Doubly so when the gendarmes were acting twitchy.
Madame Cleray was standing immediately beside him, checking things off with a clipboard and a shrill, demanding voice. Valentinian figured that anyone trying to get past her would get a faceful of hurt in the bargain. She was even more nervous than he was.
Who the hell was Nash and what kind of po
wer did the man wield, anyway? No easy way to ask that right now. Maybe once they got detached from the station.
Valentinian had gotten introduced to everyone once, but didn’t bother with names right now. The nine dancers were almost impossible to tell apart, anyway, as each of them almost looked like younger clones of Madame Cleray with hair in different cuts and colors.
While that might lead to some interesting fantasies later, right now it was just plain spooky. Even worse than the everything else going on.
Only the Dancemaster was speaking at this point. She looked like a former close-combat instructor Cleray had maybe recruited away from the Caelons. Short graying hair, wiry muscles, hawklike visage, angry voice.
Valentinian had always thought that any woman could be attractive, if she wanted to be, regardless of the arrangement of her face. Meeting Kostantina Tarchaneiotes, the Dancemaster, just might disabuse him of that notion. That woman seemed angry at the entire galaxy, and willing to do something about it.
But between the two women watching the dock like hungry predators, nobody was going to be sneaking aboard. Just in case, Valentinian had locked everything anyway. Nobody but him could get into the rest of the ship right now.
Well, he supposed someone with enough energy might somehow try to hack the systems into the forward airlock, the one just off the bridge, but he had added manual alarms there, too. Those had become necessary, after the last time that had happened.
So he felt safe on his deck. Dave Hall couldn’t do any more than Cleray or her girls, at least until Valentinian programmed them all into the system. He could explain that as having redone security while Hall was gone.
That wouldn’t make the newest employee stand out. He hoped.
Speak of the devil.
It was eerie watching the man move. Valentinian had never seen someone so big move with such fluid grace. Made him jealous, but the girls frequently went for the bad-boy space captain, so that wouldn’t be a problem, next station they landed at.