by Megan Derr
"When I left Fornar, it was with nothing," Einn said quietly. "I fell in with a bad group and couldn't find my way out. They were attacked one day, and this guy… He called himself 'Hood', and if he had another name, I never knew it. He—he was a pirate, but not the usual sort. He took me in, taught me the ropes, and it wasn't long before I actually became his second in command. We stole from all sorts of space junk, the sorts of men who make known criminals look like saints. We took everything we could and sold it off, gave the money to others."
He fell silent, and Cyan could only stare. "So—you're vigilantes?"
"A pirate is a pirate," Einn replied. "Anyway, one day, we got wind of this job, and it seemed too good to be true, and I tried to say that, but Hood wouldn't listen. It went wrong in the worst way, and four of the crew died before we could get away."
"Including Hood."
Einn nodded. "After that, I became captain. One term after that…" His fingers tightened on the bottle of brandy, and he drank down two swallows before he finally continued speaking. "We were led into a trap, and everyone was killed except me and Lark. Jade had sprung the whole thing; I still don't know why he chose us. He infected us with some sort of poison that needs regular doses of a special serum to keep it from becoming fatal. I don't think there's a permanent cure."
"There is," Cyan said grimly. "I know that poison; my mother's family was renowned in the field of toxins. Jade had been studying to follow in those footsteps when our parents were killed, and he switched to politics. There is a cure, but Jade is the only one who knows how to make it. So you have to kidnap people for him or die?"
"Yes. We thought about defying him, but he'd just find someone else if we were dead, and…well, we know all the people we've stolen and take notes of every drop off, every target. We make note of every last detail that we think of in the hopes someday it'll be useful—to us or someone else." Einn set the bottle aside and covered his face with his hands. "I'm sorry we dragged you into it. I wanted to tell you; Lark said 'no'. I was going to do it, anyway—"
Cyan just laughed bitterly. "Of all the ships, in all the stars."
"You could just run," Einn said quietly. "Lay me out cold, run for your fucking life. Jade can't do shit if you run away."
"Clearly you do not yet know my brother well," Cyan replied, stealing the bottle of brandy and downing a generous portion of it. "He has me right where he has always wanted: in his hold, unable to wriggle free. If I leave now, he will leave a pile of bodies before me wherever I hide. I'm stuck, and he knows it. He loves it."
"I'm sorry," Einn said softly. "We'd hoped to get you to Kreska before everything went wrong."
Cyan shook his head. "Forget it, just forget it." He drank more brandy, before letting Einn take the bottle back to drink himself, and they both ignored the comm station when it notified them of a waiting message.
Chapter Nine
Custom Class StarShip Z-28922942, the Brilliant
"Adalsteinn, known pirate. Beyond that, there isn't much actually known. He is twenty-nine years of age, Zero Standard Reckoning, about thirty-one by Fornar reckoning. He comes from the Broken Green caves, which is the southeastern portion of the planet. He was a top-ranked climber when he left Fornar at age seventeen, ZSR, and was logged on various planets before falling off the IG's grid one term later." Winter's in-lens flashed as he rifled through data. "However, he is well known in other circles, and I have men in the right places. He fell in with a pirate called Vermin roughly a term after he left Fornar. Intel says Vermin was slaughtered by the Hood gang, and Adalsteinn joined up with them."
Karmikel grunted. "Vermin—he was bad news. I wasn't at all upset to hear someone had killed him. Hood—that's one of the vigilante gangs. He was killed a couple terms ago, I heard."
"Correct," Winter replied. "Just over two terms ago, Hood was killed in an ugly clash with another pirate gang. Rumor has it that Adalsteinn took the Captain's reins. A term ago, his ship was found as nothing more than bits of space debris. Bodies of the crew could not be located, so no one knows if they are alive or dead. Adalsteinn has not been seen or heard of since, not by anyone who is talking, anyway."
Sean sighed. "So Adalsteinn is the guy we're looking for, I would say. It all lines up too neatly."
"He's a vigilante-type, though," Karmikel said, scowling at the data on the screen beside Winter. "It just doesn't make sense one of that ilk would resort to this."
"What's a vigilante-type?"
Karmikel flapped a hand impatiently. "I don't know what you would call them on Mars. They like to attack powerful, corrupt type persons, then they give the stolen goods away to the less fortunate."
Sean burst out laughing. "He's a Robin Hood: steals from the rich to give to the poor."
"I hadn't realized the job was in the name," Karmikel said, shaking his head. "Yeah, that's basically it. There's a handful of them. They think they're heroes of some sort."
On the screen, Winter smiled faintly with amusement. "Indeed, I have more than a few operatives who began as such. I wonder what would drive a vigilante to become a more standard sort of criminal. Kidnapping is dangerous work; either the kidnappers or the victims always die."
"Do we have any information on the rest of the crew?" Karmikel asked. "They're probably dead, but the more information we have, the better."
Winter nodded. "One moment." His in-lens flashed, and after a moment, the new information began to fill the right side of the screen. "Hood captained a merchant class vessel called The Nottingham. It was an M line, which means it could sustain a maximum crew of fifteen. His was rumored to be smaller than that, though no one could ever confirm it. We have information on only four: Hood, Adalsteinn, a Hellcat name unknown, and a Helioran believed to be named Lark Vallant—"
"I know him," Karmikel said, staring at the images that flashed on the screen. They weren't very good images: a standard dock worker employee photo, several years out of date and a security scan image that only caught a partial profile. He was handsome, with the dusky red skin common to most of the planet Helior. "I've seen him before the couple of times I crossed paths with Hood. Never spoke to him, obviously, but I definitely remember seeing him."
Nodding, Winter resumed, "He was a dock worker in the city of Skyrun, the IG capital of Helior. Excellent work records, but a long criminal history. Petty stuff, mostly: theft, prostitution, disturbing the peace. The usual assortment for that group."
Sean snorted in amusement. "There's a place that still outlaws prostitution?"
"Many, actually," Winter replied with equal amusement. "Vallant dropped off the grid several terms ago when he was sixteen, ZSR, about nineteen by Helior reckoning. He never reappeared anywhere except in sightings and rumors connecting him to Hood's crew. The Nottingham was completely obliterated when it was discovered. If anyone survived, it would be a certified miracle."
Mendel stirred from the back of the bridge where he had been sitting quietly the entire time. "How was the ship destroyed, exactly? It does not seem to me, reading all that you have sent to us, that Hood and his crew should have been so easily massacred. If even half these rumored attacks can be definitively attributed to them, they are no one to trifle with."
"Hood was hardcore," Karmikel said, before Winter could reply. "I never chased him, though I was offered good money to do so a few times. He really was what he claimed—he found the blackest bastards in the stars and left them naked. I'm sure one of his victims found a crew willing to take him on; there's always somebody willing to take money."
"Well, they never got to enjoy it because The Nottingham wasn't the only ship found in pieces. The other ship, we could find no registry."
Sean's brow shot up at that. "No registry? A ghost ship? That's not possible. Any ship caught without registration is halted, if not simply obliterated if found in the wrong place. They can't leave the shipyards where they're built without being registered."
Karmikel laughed and looked at him with amusement. "Rehab
bers. You're so cute in what you don't know about being a criminal."
"Fuck you," Sean said.
"Unregistered ships usually come from decommissioned ships. They use artificial protocols and IDs to get from port to port; the best way to nail a ship for having an artificial registry is to check its light jump history. Ports almost never care about how legal a ship is. I can't tell you how many ports a term receive violations for negligence in record keeping. We've had accounts of one ship docking six times in one day, because the port workers just log the numbers and never bother to cross check and validate. They're too short on manpower and too long on apathy. Of those six times, only one was the legally registered ship. The others are all ghost ships."
"So why do they get hung up on light jumps?"
"Because the light gates are IG maintained, and they do cross check and validate all IDs and protocols," Winter said. "Without the right numbers, no one is given permission to light jump. Faking those would take IG intervention or cracks of a very high caliber."
Sean nodded. "Fascinating, but I think we've wandered off point. If this Adalsteinn is the guy we're looking for, and he's supposed to be dead, then how in the stars are we supposed to find him? We can hop around all the planets where the kidnappings took place, or the planets closest when the kidnappings happened in space, but without knowing what ship to track, we're looking for 'a Fornarian', which is useful, but not useful enough."
"Well, only eleven ships left Bangkok at the relevant times, and only three went in the correct direction: the Huntress, the Argov, and the Dragonfly. So I would wager the Argov and the Dragonfly are the best places to start." Winter put up the data for both ships. "The Dragonfly is a custom class starship registered to an in-lens merchant on Mars. Registries and merchant logs all check out; they use light gates extensively." He pulled up more information but did not bother listing it all out. "The Argov, on the other hand, was docked twice in the same hour on Krawl."
"Unregistered ship," Sean said. "So that's the one we want. How do we track it now?"
Karmikel laughed and started typing furiously, in-lens flashing as he transmitted passwords, codes, and orders while he worked. "We track that registry and see where else it shows up. Ships like to use one for a few stints, since it makes it look more credible. If they were good, they could hack the system and alter any duplicates, but if they were that good, they would find other ways around the registry problem. So, it looks like it appeared right here two days ago. I say we start there; I know all the haunts in that area and who is best to ask."
"Do it, then," Winter said. "You have all you need to get there. Keep me apprised."
"Copy that," Karmikel said, and ended the call. Silence fell while he worked, plotting their course and looking the happiest Sean had seen him for days.
He shook his head, amused. "You never look happier than when you are doing this sort of thing. How did IA coax you away?"
Karmikel paused and looked at him in surprise, his usual terse demeanor absent. "I got tired of being a bad guy and being used. I worked for Three Moon Industries as a 'security consultant', which is just business speak for corporate mercenary. It became less and less about hunting pirates, and more about shady dealings and getting rid of the competition. I stumbled across IA agents looking to nail my boss. I helped them. I'm good at what I do, and IA had an opening." He turned back to his console and resumed typing.
Sean chuckled and left him to it. "I'll be in the engine room; call me when we get wherever we're going."
"Copy that," Karmikel said absently.
Leaving the bridge, Sean paused in the mess to fix something to drink, and then carried his steaming mug down to the engine room. They had something to work with, he thought with cautious relief. They would find Cyan, damn it. Sean would kill every last one of the damned pirates involved in the kidnapping.
He took a sip of his tea, grimacing at the staleness of it, but grateful that there was tea at all. Stars, he could not wait to spend time on land again. Of course, thinking that reminded him that his chances on land were going to be infinitesimal.
It was something he preferred not to think about. Eventually, the matter of the Draconis would be decided. No matter what the outcome, though, he and Mendel would not live. He winced, thinking about it. Mendel never should have matched on Rehab. He should have been serving his life sentence. It was no kind of life, but it wasn't dead.
Now, because Mendel was matched to him, the IG had every reason in the world to execute them. Sean's hands tightened around the warm metallic mug. As much as he hated the way Mendel treated him, could he really blame him? It was not as though matching to Sean had ever done Mendel any real favors.
He frowned at his tea, wishing it would provide answers, even if he didn't quite know the questions. The sound of familiar footsteps drew his attention, and he looked up slowly. "Mendel. Did you need something?" Mendel opened his mouth but closed it again and hovered in the doorway. Sean sighed and looked at his tea again. "What?" he asked more curtly.
"I feel like, no matter what I say, it is going to be the wrong thing," Mendel said. "You've said more to me now than you have in days."
Sean felt that was a slight exaggeration, but he was pleased in a stupid, petty, lonely way that Mendel was so acutely aware of how little Sean spoke to him. It was more attention than Mendel had ever seemed to pay before. "I never had a problem with what you said; my issue was that you never said much of anything. We've been together for over a term, yet I feel like we barely know each other."
Mendel didn't say anything, but Sean heard him move further into the room and looked up to see Mendel standing right in front of him. "I just want this to work," Mendel said. "If we don't make a big enough difference, the IG will kill us."
"We're going to die, anyway," Sean said, and set his tea aside, tangling his fingers together and letting them dangle between his knees. "It doesn't matter what we do, who we save, or what difference we make. I'm too much of a risk to be allowed to live, and you are a runaway murderer. That will make getting an execution approved easy."
"It was self-defense," Mendel said quietly. "We were fighting, and it got out of hand, but he was the one who tried to kill me first. You've never asked. In all this time, you've never even brought it up."
Sean looked up in surprise. "Why would I?"
"You're chained to a killer. I would think you'd want a few points of the matter clarified."
"I don't give a damn," Sean said, annoyed. He stood up so hastily that Mendel was forced to take a couple of steps back. He looked up at Mendel, always stupidly pleased that Mendel was taller. Sean had never cared to be the one who towered. He was intimidating enough being Rehab; he didn't want to loom, too. "You're my partner—my match." Mendel could be his lover, too, but Sean was not going to beat his head against that wall at the moment. "It doesn't matter to me if you are or aren't a killer. We're a team, whether you like it or not."
Mendel frowned. "You should not be stuck—"
"I'm not stuck with you!" Sean bellowed, startling them both. He did not stop though, simply plunging on. "The moment you freed me, I could have killed you or knocked you out. I could have fixed my in-lens, said it was a mistake, and that you'd done something else to escape. I could have fled at every last fucking port we've stopped in and gone to ground. Stars, Mendel, I could teleport away whenever I fucking feel like it. But I haven't—I've stayed right here. With you. I am not in danger because I'm with you, Mendel, but they will use you as an excuse to kill me, because if I live, I'm a liability to the entire infrastructure of the IG."
Silence fell, and they just stared at each other. Finally, Mendel said, "Perhaps we are arguing semantics about who is actually stuck with whom."
Sean laughed. "You're such a fucking scientist."
"I'm sor—"
"If you say you're sorry, I will break your nose."
Mendel lifted his eyes to the ceiling, and Sean laughed at such an honest look of exasperation from some
one whose perpetual expression was 'stone-faced'. "Then what do you want me to say?"
"I'm not telling you what to say," Sean snapped, levity gone.
"That's not what I meant," Mendel sighed. "Forget it. I am sorry to disturb you. I wish people would just leave me to my lab work." He spun on his heel and strode out. Sean winced because that time was definitely his fault. He bolted after Mendel and snagged his wrist, jerking him about-face. "What?" Mendel asked.
Sean suddenly had a better idea exactly how Mendel must have felt walking into the engine room. "I'm sorry."
"Are we ever going to say anything else?"
"You are the one who is all work, all the time. I realize our work is important, but I meant what I said—breaks are necessary to maintain peak performance, even if that break is just goofing off for ten minutes. One term and we barely know each other, and sooner rather than later we will be dead. It's depressing to me that the one person who should most understand how I feel is a virtual stranger rather than a real friend."
Mendel stared at him in silence, and Sean could see that he'd never really thought about it that way before. "Even before I— I've always been too focused on work."
Sean shoved at him gently. "You're an idiot, but there is hope for you, I suppose. Try working on doing other things."
"Like—"
"If you ask me 'like what'—"
"Stop finishing my sentences!"
Sean laughed and shoved him gently again, then stepped closer, right up into Mendel's personal space, leaning up so they almost nose to nose. "If you honestly cannot think of a single thing to do with free time, your own bedroom, and a willing match, there's really no hope for you, Mendel."
He drew back and strode past Mendel before he could reply, leaving him to mull over that for a bit. Maybe, just maybe, Mendel would eventually act on it.
Chapter Ten