Planet Killer (Star Kingdom Book 6)

by Lindsay Buroker

  Kim sat at the table in Rache’s briefing room, her fingers intertwined on the surface. Casmir paced behind her. All twelve crushers were gazing blandly at him. Kim couldn’t tell which one was Zee. Maybe they could get him to wear a tie and a beanie again.

  Casmir snapped his fingers and stopped pacing long enough to remove his pack and dig into it. An armored guard stationed inside the door watched him suspiciously. The warship was flying away from Stardust Palace, but Rache hadn’t yet deigned to join them. A few announcements had been made about ongoing repairs. Kim had no idea how many shots the Fedallah had taken, but it must have been surprising to the crew to have it picked out of the stars.

  Casmir pulled out the gift box. Judging by the oddly textured exterior, Kim suspected the container was also made from some mycelium-concoction.

  “It’s not too late to change your gift.” Kim nodded at one of the crushers.

  He followed her gaze. “You want me to give him Zee?”

  “Is that your Zee? How can you tell?”

  “I am the original Zee,” the crusher stated, “programmed first to protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski. I am unique.”

  “Not in appearance,” Kim muttered. “I’m going to get you a tie.”

  “Casmir Dabrowski can pick me out,” Zee said.

  “How?” Kim looked at Casmir. “Did you give him a mole or something?”

  “I can just tell.” He opened his box, checked the contents, and must have found everything still in place and unbroken, for he sighed a relieved, “Good.”

  Kim shook her head, certain Rache would find the gift as bemusing as the underwear.

  “What did you get him?” Casmir asked. “I didn’t see you perusing the station gift shop.”

  “No, I was busy using my two advanced degrees to make knockout grenades.”

  She glanced at the guard, wondering what the man thought of this conversation. To his knowledge, had anyone ever given his boss a gift?

  “You can get knockout grenades in any ship’s armory,” Casmir said.

  “Mine are better. They don’t look like weapons.” She’d borrowed the containers from the mycology lab, selecting such gems as dehydrated horse manure, apparently an excellent substrate for mushroom growing. She doubted anyone searching her case would look inside or touch them at all.

  Kim switched to text to add, I do have a gift for him. I’m not sure what he’ll think of it.

  He’ll probably be disappointed by the lack of fungi in it.

  I doubt it.

  Casmir raised his eyebrows. What did you get?

  I made something.

  His face screwed up. Like a quilt?

  A quilt? Really, Casmir. Have you ever seen me knit anything?

  Quilts are sewn, not knitted. My mother does crafts, so I know these things. Oh, but you could knit an afghan.

  Why do I tell you anything?

  Because I’m your best friend, and this kind of deep intimate sharing is a requirement. He grinned, and then a light went on, and his expression turned to one of understanding. Oh! Did you write him a story?

  Yes. Even though Kim had planned to tell him, she found her cheeks warming, and she gazed down at her hands. He likes to read.

  I know. We’ve discussed his literary interests. Did you make the hero really neat so he’d want to rename his ship after him or her?

  The protagonist doesn’t have a sex. It’s kind of a literary experiment. Maybe Kim shouldn’t have brought it up. She’d been inspired to write the story during the long hours in the Osprey’s sickbay, waiting to see if Casmir would get better, and she feared it was overly maudlin and sentimental because that had been her mood at the time. She hadn’t intended to compose a story, feeling rusty after years of ignoring her pen name, but she’d written an essay on the novel Rache had asked her to read, and she’d been inspired to write more after that.

  But what if he didn’t like it? Or mocked it? When she’d written under a pen name for a vague audience she would never meet, it had all been much safer. There was too much potential for hurt feelings here, vulnerability. She hated vulnerability. She was still debating if she should admit to being the author of the trilogy Rache had read and liked.

  Did you make it really neat so he’d want to rename his ship after it? Casmir corrected.

  We’ll see. I’m not sure “The Protozoan” would excite the hearts of the mercenaries serving on it.

  You think their hearts are excited by the Fedallah?

  They probably don’t know what that is.

  You think they know what a protozoa is?

  Yas would.

  Yas is not your typical mercenary.

  True.

  The door opened, and Rache walked in. He dismissed his guard with a flick of his fingers.

  “Alone at last,” Rache said, somewhat sarcastically eyeing the crushers. Even with his mask on, Kim knew it was a sarcastic eyeing.

  “Do you want me to ask them to wait outside?” Casmir asked.

  “I am the original and superlative Zee. I must protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski from within the room.”

  “The original and superlative?” Rache asked.

  “Zee is experimenting with self-identifying appellations now that he has clones,” Casmir said. “I imagine you can understand.”

  “Indeed.” Rache walked up to the table, rested his hands on it, and gazed at Casmir. “I just received a comm from Sultan Shayban.”

  Kim hoped they hadn’t been corroborating stories. She also hoped Shayban hadn’t been showing off his new crushers to make Rache envious.

  “Is it common for enemies to chat with you after they’ve fired at your ship?” Casmir asked.

  “Only when they’re demanding my surrender.”

  “Is that what he was doing?”

  “No.” Rache sounded exasperated.

  “Are you irritated with me? Because I have a gift for you if that would help.” Casmir pushed the gray textured box across the table. “A thank you for coming out of your way to get us, especially since you probably thought you were only getting Kim, and not me and my entourage.”

  “That’s the truth,” Rache muttered.

  “And also a thank you for the expensive potion. I didn’t sneeze the whole time I was wandering back and forth under the date palms in Shayban’s manufacturing facilities.”

  Rache stared at him. Kim wanted to drop her face in her hand.

  “Potion?” Rache looked at her. “Don’t you educate him on proper medical terminology?”

  “I’ve tried many times to educate him,” Kim said. “He’s only interested in learning words suitable for describing super villains.”

  “It’s true. I also know a lot of interesting words about the things villains do. Are you familiar with tyrotoxism, Rache?”

  “No. I shoot people; I don’t poison them with dairy products.”

  Casmir cocked a brow at Kim. “I think that means he is familiar with it. The word, at least.”

  Kim swatted away the silly banter. “What did the sultan say?”

  “He threatened me.” Rache straightened. “If I kill Casmir and drop him on Dubashi’s doorstep, he promises to ruin me financially by forbidding anyone to let me bank with them. Given his influence in the Miners’ Union, that’s a more fearsome threat than if he sent his warships after me. We hold our account in System Cerberus, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he has sway there. There are two Miners’ Union lords milking the asteroids in the Cerberus belts, and he married one of his daughters to one.”

  Kim was beginning to understand why Rache was exasperated.

  “Do moon bases have doorsteps as such?” Casmir asked.

  Rache shook his head slowly, perhaps questioning his intelligence.

  Will you be serious? Kim messaged Casmir. I want as much information as he’ll share with us. And not to annoy him.

  Sorry. He still makes me nervous. You know I babble when I’m nervous.

  “I’m wondering,” Rache s
aid to Casmir, “if I should do exactly that. Maybe roll you up in a carpet, toss you into Dubashi’s compound, and stand back to see what happens.”

  “Unless he has a thing for sexy male roboticists, I don’t think much would happen.”

  “I’m surprised he got the reference,” Rache told Kim.

  “There’s a series of comic books based on Ancient Roman history,” Kim said.

  “That makes sense then.”

  Casmir propped a fist on his hip but didn’t deny the source of his knowledge.

  “I say that,” Rache told Kim, “because this is the third government leader in as many weeks that he’s won over to his side.”

  “That’s not true.” Casmir touched a thoughtful finger to his chin. “It’s taken more than three weeks.”

  “But fewer than three months. You’re doing what Mikita did three hundred years ago without a military or even a spaceship.” Rache sounded more exasperated than impressed.

  “Does a crazy high shaman count as a government leader?” Casmir asked.

  “She’s among the highest in the organization,” Rache said.

  “I wouldn’t say I’ve really won Kyla Moonrazor over. She just tried to recruit me to her organization and offered me an android body.”

  “She tried to shoot the rest of us.”

  “You did invade her base.”

  “You did too.” Rache chopped the air with his hand. “Never mind. Just tell me what you two want to do, now that I have you. I thought you wanted asylum, Kim, until Jorg left the system and stopped sending knights after you. Not to be dropped off to do who knows what in Dubashi’s base. With him.” Rache pointed at Casmir. “And them.” The pointing finger shifted to the crushers.

  Kim grimaced because he seemed to think she’d been disingenuous with him. That had never been her intent.

  “Did you even need my help?” Rache asked. “If you’d stood behind those crushers when that knight showed up, couldn’t they have kept you from being taken?”

  “They didn’t exist three days ago,” Casmir pointed out.

  “My hope,” Kim said, “was not to openly defy Jorg, and through him my whole government. That was the reason for the ruse. And I also thank you for helping me. When I asked, I thought I would be able to meet you without fanfare and that you and your crew wouldn’t be endangered. I didn’t think you’d be attacked for showing up at a non-Kingdom space station.”

  “I’m usually not,” Rache growled.

  “Oh.” Casmir snapped his fingers. “Did Sultan Shayban explain about the slydar detector?”

  “No.”

  “He said he has one.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “It’s new. He’s beta testing it.”

  Rache stared at him. “Are you messing with me?”

  “No. I’m trying to be helpful. Do you want to open my gift?” Casmir pointed at the thus-far ignored box. “There’s something in there that might make you feel better.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Casmir shrugged.

  “I’ll get Amergin on this supposed slydar detector.” Rache shook his head. “I can’t believe something like that could exist and we wouldn’t have heard of it yet.”

  Kim resisted the urge to point out that Rache had spent the last several weeks consumed by an unhealthy obsession with the gate and probably hadn’t been sifting through the latest intelligence.

  “Maybe it’s making its debut,” Casmir said.

  “If one Miners’ Union family has it, the others might,” Rache said. “I wasn’t planning to sneak up to Dubashi’s base, but losing the serious advantage that hull plating conveys will be annoying.”

  Kim wondered if it would be annoying enough that Rache would consider retirement. Would the hunted-by-many Fedallah be able to survive in space without camouflage? It wasn’t as if there were many places to hide in space itself. There was a whole lot of empty nothing out there between the stars and planets, and sensors had no trouble detecting things that weren’t camouflaged flying around in a system.

  “Kim wishes to go to the base because of a virologist named Scholar Serg Sunflyer,” Casmir explained, steering them back to the last topic. “He went missing three months ago. He has a history of creating bioweapons. Have you, by chance, heard if Dubashi has such a weapon that he plans to unleash on Odin or other Kingdom populations?”

  Rache had been considering the box, but his gaze shifted quickly back to Casmir. “I hadn’t, no, but I’ll get my people on it. We haven’t been in this system any longer than you have.”

  “If Dubashi is working on such a thing,” Kim said, “and Jorg heard about it, that may be why he wanted me. To try to develop something preemptively.”

  “Why would Dubashi want you though?” Rache asked. “If you’re suggesting he kidnapped this virologist, wouldn’t he already have someone working on a weapon?”

  Kim spread her hands. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we should send a comm and chat with him,” Casmir offered. “See if he will tell us anything.”

  Kim started to give him a withering glare, but hadn’t he started his relationships with Shayban, President Nguyen, and High Shaman Moonrazor by chatting with them?

  “I’ve been invited to his meeting,” Rache said. “I’ll chat with him there.”

  “Are you sure you should do the chatting?” Casmir asked. “You’re brusque.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to respond positively to rambles about comics and super villains.”

  “No? He seems to be vying for the position of super villain. He even has superhuman abilities. That’s always helpful.”

  Rache frowned. “Like what?”

  “Well, he’s a high astroshaman and has cybernetic bits. I know you have those, too, so maybe you don’t think they’re special.”

  “Who told you he was affiliated with the astroshamans?”

  “An astroshaman. Moonrazor.”

  “A reliable source, I’m sure.”

  Casmir shrugged.

  “As I was saying,” Rache said to Kim, waving dismissively at Casmir, “I’m invited to his meeting, and I intend to go and find out what exactly he’s offering. My guess would be he wants us to be cannon fodder in his war with the Kingdom, but it’s odd that he’s only putting that together now. You usually throw the cannon fodder in before the main forces arrive.”

  “Maybe the main forces haven’t arrived yet.” Kim shivered at the idea however many ships were blockading the wormhole gate might only be a partial commitment of the prince’s forces. How could one man have as much might as an entire government?

  “He’s still here, presumably,” Casmir said. “Maybe he plans to go in with or behind the mercenaries.”

  “To bring his theoretical bioweapon?” Rache asked.

  “I’m hoping we can snoop around his base and find out. I promised Sultan Shayban I would.” Casmir didn’t mention the kidnapping part of his plans. Because he knew Rache, who sought employment from Dubashi, would object?

  “You promised to gather intel for him?” Rache asked. “Is that why he likes you?”

  Casmir hesitated. “Very likely.”

  “He also found me charming,” Zee put in—Kim assumed it was Zee, mostly because the other ones didn’t seem to have developed a need to butt into conversations yet.

  “He found you formidable,” Casmir said.

  “Formidably charming.”

  “I don’t think I can argue with that.”

  “No,” Zee said.

  “Your crusher is getting weirder every time I encounter you, Casmir,” Rache said.

  “Will you take us to the base and help us get in?” Kim asked.

  “To look for the bioweapon?”

  “Yes.” Kim kept herself from exchanging looks with Casmir or doing anything that would hint that this was a partial truth. It was what she wanted, but Casmir had other plans, and she hated withholding that from Rache.

  She reminded hers
elf that they weren’t on the same side here. Given his past actions, he probably wouldn’t object to bioweapons being taken out of the picture, but he might object to his future employer disappearing.

  “We can’t let such a weapon be used on Odin,” Casmir added to back her up.

  Rache grunted. It wasn’t at all clear that he agreed.

  “I need to think about this.” Rache turned toward the door.

  “Don’t forget your gift box,” Casmir said.

  Kim expected Rache to keep walking, but he paused, gave Casmir a long look, then swept the box off the table and out the door without looking at it.

  “I hope he doesn’t feel he needs to take that to a bomb squad,” Casmir said. “It’s just soap and mushroom delicacies.”

  Kim shook her head. “Did he seem snippy to you?”

  “Maybe. His invisible ship is no longer invisible. That’s got to be on his mind.”

  Among other things. “I didn’t mean to thrust all of this extra work on him. Maybe you should have found your own ride to Dubashi’s base.”

  “I didn’t realize you wanted to be alone with him for a week.”

  “Is that how far the base is?”

  “From here, yes.”

  “With all his mercenaries on the ship, I doubt we’d be alone.”

  “More easily than on a submarine.”

  “Perhaps.” Kim wondered if she should send Rache her story. It existed only in digital form on her chip. She was a little sad she didn’t have a form printed in a hardbound book. It would have seemed a more thoughtful gift than digital text.

  Maybe it was silly to worry about that now. Rache would be wary of more gifts after opening Casmir’s soap and hallucinogenic mushrooms.

  21

  Bonita used every search trick she knew as she skimmed network articles, people’s public journals, and rumors on the bounty hunter boards she followed. It had been two days since the Dragon left Stardust Palace, and she hadn’t found anything about Scholar Sunflyer’s kidnapping, nor proof that he was in the system at all. How had someone gotten him off Stardust Palace Station without being caught by one of their security cameras?