by J. S. Morin
Kubu nodded. “You say funny words. Thank you for letting Kubu out.”
“Well, it’s Bryce’s turn to get locked in a room, at least until we’re done with this job,” Mort said.
Kubu cocked his head. “Who is Bryce? Does someone else have two names, like Mommy?”
Mort laughed through his nose. “No. You remember Bryce. He was here before we landed. You scared him, so Tanny made you stay in the room.”
Kubu’s eyes went wide. “The bad man is back?”
Mort rubbed a rough hand on Kubu’s head. “Oh, he’s harmless.”
“No,” Kubu replied. “He wants to put us in cages. Mommy’s friend in the wall said so.”
“That’s actually Tanny talking over the ship’s comm,” Mort said. “You get used to it.”
“No, not now,” Kubu said. “Before. Mommy’s friend was talking from the wall, and the bad man is playing a trick to put us in cages.”
Mort grabbed Kubu under the chin and looked him right in the eyes. The mustard on his breath made Kubu’s tummy jealous and grumbly. “Esper called you?”
Kubu nodded. “Esper is Mommy’s friend. She made the wall talk, just like Mommy does.”
“Gadzooks! Esper sent us a warning,” Mort said. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”
Kubu hung his head. It seemed he hadn’t been such a good boy after all. “Bad man was gone.”
Mort jumped up from the couch and ran to Mommy’s flying room.
# # #
Mort burst into the cockpit. “We’ve got a problem!”
Seated at the controls, Tanny would have leapt out of her seat if she wasn’t buckled in. “God dammit, Mort! Get out of here!”
Mort waved away her concerns. “No time for that,” Mort said. “That Bryce fellow is a plant.”
“This is not time to get metaphysical,” Tanny said. “Keep it together.”
“You’re not listening clearly,” Mort replied. “Bryce isn’t flora, he’s a double agent. Think The Three-Sided Coin or The Julian Affair, except this time it’s not on the holo and it’s our keesters in the cross-hairs.”
Tanny lifted her arms to an uncaring universe. “You just came to this revelation… how?”
“Kubu—”
“Good Lord, Mort! He’s got the intelligence of an infant. You can’t be taking him seriously.”
“Esper left a message,” Mort said. “Must have been while we were over at the resort. ‘Bad man tricking us, wants to put us in cages.’ Sound like something Esper might try to simplify to Kubuian comprehension.”
“Shit.” Mort was right. If any of them were going to trust a barely sentient dog with their lives, it would be Esper—though she wouldn’t put it past Carl, either.
“Shit, indeed,” Mort agreed.
Tanny keyed the comm to the engine room. “Roddy, get up here and fly this thing.”
Mort furrowed his brow. “Doesn’t Mriy usually take care of that?”
It was true, Mriy was their backup pilot, but that was almost by default. Roddy was needed elsewhere, whereas Mriy was dead weight in the Black Ocean if she didn’t help mind the cockpit. But this time, it was Roddy whose skills could be spared. Tanny’s thoughts were a blur, but there was one thing that was certain: they needed help, and it wasn’t help they were going to find on board.
“Not this time,” Tanny said.
# # #
As the door to her quarters slammed shut, Tanny allowed her frustration to show. She punched her mattress once, then again, then kept on punching it until her breath came in gasps. How could they have been so stupid? How could they have left the background check to Carl’s “keen” eye? They needed to find out who Bryce Brisson really was, who he worked for, and some way that they might get some leverage to pry themselves out of the jam he had put them in. Tanny needed that background check, and someone who could do it right.
The datapad was the heaviest hundred grams she could have imagined. It took an act of will to lift it from her bedside and key in a code she had known since childhood, one she had to memorize, one she was only supposed to use in an emergency.
A cheery little waiting indicator swirled on the screen, informing Tanny that though nothing appeared to be happening, the datapad was hard at work in the background. They were a long ways from the Sol System, and the deepest, fastest astral omni relays were the most likely to be tapped by intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Even at nearly the speed of light, signals took time to travel at just four astral units deep.
“Hello?” a deep, puzzled voice asked. It was as familiar as her old bedroom, a voice filled with bedtime stories and promises of ice cream and ponies. Tanny’s throat tightened. “Hello? Who is this? How’s you get this ID? This comm is over—”
“Daddy, wait!” Tanny blurted.
“Tania? Is that you?” her father asked.
“Daddy, I’ve got a problem,” Tanny said.
“You know you can—”
“I got caught up in something,” Tanny continued. “I trusted someone I shouldn’t have, and it looks like we’re going to end up getting caught up with Janice and her crew in a blue-hat trap. But my info might be wrong, and if it’s wrong, I could sour a huge job, and maybe get some poor slob killed over nothing. We just didn’t have the kind of resources to find out ahead of time whether—”
“Sweety, calm down,” her father said. “I musta told you a hundred times; I don’t care what you’ve done. I’ll always be there for you. What do you need?”
Tanny sniffed. She wiped her eyes. “We picked up a guy,” she said, clearing her throat. “Alias is Bryce Brisson. We did a background check, but nothing flagged as dangerous. Small-time data hustler; he did a little time. But we got a tip from someone being held by the Poet Fleet that this guy might be a mole. Can you dig him up good? Find out who he really is?”
“Sure, Tania,” her father said. “Gimme an hour—two tops.”
“Can you manage fifteen minutes?”
“You’re that pinched?” her father asked.
“I’d try for five if I thought it was even possible.”
“Hold on.” The datapad went silent for a moment. “I got a guy on it. He knows this is important to me.”
“Thank you, Daddy.”
“Just one thing,” her father said. “Can we put this on video comm? Just for a minute… please?”
Tanny closed her eyes and took a slow breath. She turned on the camera feed from her datapad. Don Rucker appeared on her screen, just as she would be appearing on his. He looked older. The last time she had seen him had been over a grudging invitation to her third wedding, but he’d been dressed to the nines and professionally styled. Now, his hair showed more gray than black, and the wrinkles around his mouth had deepened. But when he saw her, the familiar smile she had always remembered came back.
“There’s my little girl,” he said. A twinkle of mischief appeared in his eye. “You look like hell, though. Carl not taking good care of you?”
“I take care of myself, Daddy,” Tanny replied. “And I’m just getting older, same as you. You look a little like hell, yourself.”
“Maybe you oughtta finally quit that shit the marines got you hooked on,” her father said. “If it’s money, I can pay for the nicest place you’d ever want to dry out.”
“It’s not the money,” Tanny replied. “That shit costs more than detox would. It’s just who I am now. Even Carl accepts that now, more or less.”
“Well, maybe Carl just don’t love you like I do,” her father said. “My offer stands. You ever find yourself changing your mind, don’t let money stop you. There’s a place on the other side of Mars; they’d take good care of you.”
“Let me know as soon as your guy runs his check,” Tanny replied, shifting the topic back to the identity of Bryce Brisson.
“You got it, sweety,” her father said. “It was good to hear from you, whatever the reason.”
Tanny closed the comm. She wiped her eyes in earnest, and
they welled up again in an instant. Dammit, she needed Sepromax! If she were herself, she never would have called her father for help. She certainly wouldn’t have broken down crying like a five-year-old afterward. Thoughts of reporting back to the crew about the outcome of her call were abandoned, and Tanny let herself cry until the tears ran dry.
# # #
Bryce Brisson slammed into the wall, his toes just barely touching the floor. Mriy’s grip around his throat was just loose enough for him to breathe. He tried to push the azrin away, but her arms were a quarter meter longer; he couldn’t so much as reach her chest or face. Instead, he settled for grabbing onto the corded muscle of her forearm to support himself.
“It’s all clear,” Mriy called out. The rest of the crew filed into the converted conference room that Bryce had been given as quarters.
Tanny felt wrung out. Her eyes were still red in the mirror, but she was past the crying. When her father had called back, their brief exchange had been (almost) all business. Anger had prevented her from breaking down again, and her father’s demeanor had reminded her why they hadn’t patched things up between them. Don Rucker was one ruthless son-of-a-bitch, and it came across the omni loud and clear.
“Carl, Mort, one of you talk some sense into this crazy xeno,” Bryce said.
“Trust me,” Carl said, slipping inside and slouching against the wall by the door. He was still holding a hand to his sore jaw. “Mriy’s the reasonable one here. Tanny would have broken both your legs if it weren’t for Mriy handling you.”
Mriy extended a claw on her free hand with a flick, gesturing to the floor. A broken stun blaster lay amid shattered pieces of its outer casing. “I got blasted twice in my broken ribs.”
“If you’d let the doctors see you, they wouldn’t still be broken,” Carl replied.
Tanny approached within arm’s reach of Bryce. If the snake wanted to take a swing at her, she’d have been more than happy to rupture his spleen in return. “Let’s cut to the chase. “Your name is Martin David Morse, age thirty-eight, from Stockholm Prime. You are a captain in the Earth Interstellar Enhanced Investigative Org.”
“Someone set me up,” Bryce insisted, struggling for air.
Tanny shook her head. “No, they didn’t. You set us up. Someone put a lot of effort into burying the link between Martin Morse and Bryce Brisson. But not enough.”
Carl rubbed his forehead between thumb and forefinger. “Marty-boy, you’ve put us in a delicate situation. We vouched for you, and your bullshit backstory fooled everyone up until now. Janice still believes you. But we’re bait in a trap now, thanks to you and your cronies. By all rights, we should dust you right now.”
“We kill a member of the constabulary, we can kiss that records purge goodbye,” Mort said, more or less just as they’d rehearsed in the common room minutes ago. “It’s clever, really. I bet if he doesn’t come back, those records mysteriously get put back the way they were.”
Bryce managed a spasmodic nod. “Guaranteed.”
“Of course,” Carl said, sounding philosophical. “There’s nothing that says they won’t get restored even after this is over. That is, even if we don’t get netted by lawmen before then. You’ve fucked us good.”
“Simplest solution,” said Mriy. “Kill him. Run.”
Carl wagged a finger. “Don’t be hasty. We still might come out of this with a clean rap sheet and our hides if we play this right. Everyone just give me a quiet minute to think this out.”
Tanny glared holes in Bryce. Martian authorities had been trying for generations to bring her family down. They’d had their victories here and there. Plenty of her family had done time for one crime or another, and they had spent a fortune on lawyers over the years. As much as she’d have enjoyed breaking Bryce’s neck herself, lawyers were the way to deal with EIEIO, and Carl was the closest they had on board.
Carl snapped his fingers. “I got it. Try this one on for size. You make a call, get your friends to drop their ambush, and we let you go once the hijacking is over.”
Bryce managed a quick shake of his head. “They’d know something was up. The Ruckers would get arrested as planned, and you’d end up killing me.”
“Jesus, Carl,” Tanny said. “Weaseling out of our fuck-ups is supposed to be your specialty. Roddy could have come up with that plan.”
Carl’s eyebrows leapt. “Ooh, I’ve got a better one. This solves our problem, too. We don’t jack the ships to sell them, Janice takes them and settles a new headquarters with that colony ship and gets herself a little fleet of cargo ships, maybe sells off some of the mining gear and cuts us in.”
“Uh, Carl,” Mort said, standing in the doorway. “That still leaves us walking into a trap.”
Carl began to pace. Tanny had seen him do it enough to know that it meant he was stumped. Carl didn’t like pacing—probably didn’t even realize he was doing it. “How are they going to intercept the fleet? Up until Janice orders the attack, it’s just freelance work.”
“We could just escort them to Platt, take their money, and worry how to get Esper free after,” Tanny suggested.
Mort shook his head. “The Poets aren’t the fools those Sol lawmen are. I’d rather deal with them and dupe Martin’s buddies.”
“You can call me Bryce, still.”
Mriy snarled in his face. “No one asked you.”
“I almost hate to bring this up,” Tanny said. “But he wasn’t lying when he told Janice he was a family man.”
Bryce’s eyes went wide, and he struggled in Mriy’s grasp. “You wouldn’t!”
Carl frowned. “I’m inclined to agree with him.”
“Let’s just put it this way,” Tanny said. “My father knows what’s going on out here. Half of Janice’s crew is blood relatives, even if a few are a couple generations sideways of the main family line. You think he’s going to just let this slide if Janice goes down? We won’t have to do shit.”
Carl folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “Don just seems like such a good guy, though…” A slow grin spread across his face.
Tanny gave a nod and Mriy dropped Bryce, who fell to his hands and knees. “Well, Bryce, looks like we’re all in the shit one way or another. Your cover is blown to hell. You’re as good as dusted, and I wouldn’t want to be Trisha, Benjamin, or Todd right now.” Naming his wife and boys seemed just enough to set Bryce into a full-on panic.
“You can’t let him do anything to them,” Bryce pleaded. “I’m doing my job out here, busting my ass to make the galaxy a little safer for them and everyone else. But they haven’t done anything. They don’t even know where I am for months on end. You’ve gotta explain that to your father.”
“We’ve never seen eye to eye on how to handle family business,” Tanny said. “Plus, why would I bail you out while we’re still caught up on the cliff’s edge?”
“Maybe we should kill him,” Mort suggested.
“Mort talks sense,” Mriy agreed.
“—same way we killed Esper.”
“Wait? What?” Bryce spluttered, from the floor.
“OK,” Tanny said. “This is going somewhere.”
“You killed Esper?” Bryce asked.
Carl walked around and stood over Bryce as the double-agent squirmed into a seated position on the floor. “We faked it. I suppose we could fake it for you, too.”
“How’s that help us, though?” Tanny asked. That might spare Bryce the complications that fell out of the plan, for better or worse, but she couldn’t see how it benefited any of them. If only she was balanced out; the right mix of brain chemicals would smooth out her jumbled thoughts until these connections made sense.
“He can help us,” Carl said. “No, I’ve got this worked out. He calls in a last-minute update for whoever the hell is coming after us. New coordinates. Operational security meant that we altered the convoy’s course so we couldn’t be intercepted. Martin here sends them the updated course.”
“But we go on the original course?�
�� Bryce asked, a note of hope in his voice.
“No!” Carl shouted with a grin. He held up a finger to the ceiling. “We do change the course, but not to the one we feed you.”
“Sounds like it could work,” Tanny said, impressed. “But how do we convince Janice?”
Carl cracked his knuckles. “That’ll be the easiest part. Leave it to me.”
# # #
Alone in the astral gray. Or at least, as alone as fifteen ships can be. Traveling 2.5 astral units deep would earn a captain a hefty fine from any patrol vessel, but it was unlikely that anyone was going to stumble across the ships of Operation RIBBIT. The non-standard depth was just another precaution against someone taking a casual interest in their passing, but if Commander Bilkken of the mining convoy knew anything about fringe space, he would have known that the half depths were the highways of the undesirables.
“Convoy, full stop,” Janice ordered over the comm. “Prepare to receive next-leg coordinates. Also, we have a maintenance issue on the Mobius. Please stand by to dock for a quick repair. We’ll be underway in twenty minutes.” This was it. Carl had been scant on the details, but his revised plan had the Mobius crew boarding the colony ship and spearheading the hijacking.
“Alley Cat,” Commander Bilkken replied. “Is this repair urgent? We’re only two days out from Platt.”
“Affirmative,” Janice replied. “It’s an engine mis-ajustment that’s going to leave a heavy ion trail if we don’t get it corrected. Anyone tries to track our course change, they’d be able to follow it.”
“Very well, Alley Cat,” Commander Bilkken replied. “Just be quick about it. I don’t like sitting idle in astral space.”
“Sissy,” Tanny muttered. “We do it all the time.”
Carl stood at the back of the cockpit, still nursing a sore jaw. “Yeah, but half the shit we do in the astral oughtta get us killed, so I don’t know that it’s bravery so much as desensitization. We’re just too stupid to be scared of off-the-standards depths. Mort ever keels while we’re down deep, we’re just fucked.”
Roddy slipped into the cockpit past Carl and stood on the co-pilot’s seat. He pointed at Tanny and hooked a thumb toward the back of the ship. “Beat it, knuckles. I’m flying us into their hangar.”