by Rich Horton
She says, “You going to talk to him?”
“It won’t be much of a conversation.”
“What are you waiting for, a good dirty joke to break the ice? I have one about a Bursteeni afflicted with premature ejaculation.”
“I’ve heard it.”
“Then tell him. It’s exactly the sort of thing to win the undying trust of a knife man.”
“I don’t think so. When I first heard it, I wanted to kill the guy who told it. After that performance in the corridor, I don’t think Jathyx needs much more in the way of motivation.”
“No, I guess not. But you have to admit he won’t be able to walk out on you.”
He chuckles, considers continuing to monitor the security response on Piithkarath, realizes that the only real value in doing that will be to continue putting off the inevitable, and with deep resignation cedes the monitors to Stang.
• • •
Their transport, a little freight carrier Draiken and Stang have modified to meet their special needs, was designed on the theory that a crew of between four and six people would spend long periods using it as their home, while working intra-system runs.
Not all transports of the kind are built for comfort, and so there are any number where, in order to pack in more cargo, the sleeping facilities consist of patches of retractable netting that can be stretched across the cramped common space and affixed to hooks on the opposite wall to form hammocks. Either that, or padded nooks, crammed under one piece of infrastructure or another, which are homey only to the extent that they’re just large enough to fit a human body. It’s not a fun way to live.
Draiken, who’d spent many a long journey in similar conditions, would have been just fine with that, but sheer consideration had dictated more for Stang, who might have collapsed most hammocks and wouldn’t have fit most padded nooks. So they’d gotten their hands on a vehicle with actual, separate crew quarters: including the chamber that now belongs to Stang, a plus-sized, even if still cramped in context, double-sized room originally intended as master bedroom for a married couple.
He shares the bed occasionally, but mostly uses the adjoining quarters, originally intended as the home of a lower-ranked crew-member, or child. He’s a man who spent decades sleeping on a one-man fishing boat. This is luxury.
Nobody lives in the quarters next to that, an empty room they use as auxiliary pantry.
The room past that is the one they’ve repurposed as a brig. It locks from the outside and has a door with sliding panel for the periodic deliveries of food on a tray. Inside is just a narrow bed and a toilet, a handheld sonic shower, and a sink with faucet calibrated to measure the voyage’s comfortable daily ration of water. There’s a voice-activated hytex and neurec system, incoming only, designed to provide the occupant with enough entertainment to get an occupant through the tedium of incarceration: drama, music, novels, even moving landscapes for use as wallpaper, though Draiken has spent enough time in prison himself to not mistake this for any illusion of freedom.
Jathyx lies flat on his back on a slick cover Draiken’s placed there to protect the bed from any seepage from his wounds. The ship’s miniature first-aid drone, not as advanced as a state of the AIsource Medical kiosk but certainly sufficient to treat his injuries, hovers above him, stitching his various injuries with nano-surgery.
His expression remains what it has always been: furious.
This is a man Draiken’s intel holds responsible for at least fourteen murders, some surgically precise and some impressive shows of enthusiasm for the work. He is reputed to possess an explosive temper and to be considered a dangerous associate, even for his allies in the local cartel. There are few people he cannot get away with killing and even fewer he wouldn’t want to. But Draiken doesn’t need the dossier to see all that in Jathyx’s eyes. On the stage of Jathyx’s imagination, Draiken is being sliced to the bone, opened to the elements like the pressurized bag of blood that all human beings are—and those eyes are direct viewports to that stage, where the spectacle is being scripted and rehearsed and played out, all in preparation for the moment, not long from now, when it may be rendered reality.
Draiken clicks the hytex link on his throat. “I’ve shut down your vocal paralysis. You may ask questions if you want.”
“I don’t need your answers. I will break free, and I will kill you.”
“I’m not surprised you would say so.”
“If you know anything of me, you know I will kill you.”
Draiken sighs. “I didn’t pick you at random. I know all about you. Both the rumors and the reality. They say you’ve been killing since you were fourteen.”
“Twelve, actually.”
“Then let’s put aside the threats as redundant. The thing is, I’ve been on the other side of this conversation more than once, and I know how it goes. Certain things must be said, just to retain your own sense of dignity. Next thing, you’ll posit some particularly unpleasant way of killing me, some method that will sound like it hurts a lot. That will oblige me to point out how helpless you are now, and that will oblige you to snap that you don’t care, that you’ve just made a vow. Can we just take all that as given and skip ahead to the parts more enlightening to both of us?”
To Jathyx’s stew of emotion, now comes frustration, as he finds all his instinctive retorts cut off. “Who sent you?”
This was a question of substance. “Nobody. This is our own project. We have no intention of handing you over to anyone, not the law and not any of your enemies.”
“Revenge, then.”
“Sorry, no. You’ve spilled a lot of innocent blood in your life, but I’m not exactly entitled to any sense of false superiority. I’ve left a considerable amount of collateral damage. If I went after you the way I did, it’s only because you’re a damned dangerous person to approach. I’m not suicidal. I needed you neutralized before we could even have this conversation.”
Jathyx is silent for a while. “That won’t save you.”
“I’m not counting on it.”
“You won’t always enjoy the advantage of surprise.”
Draiken resists the temptation to roll his eyes; he wants to get off this treadmill of a topic, but knows that there is no way past his prisoner’s bravado but enduring it. “Sooner or later, if you’re right, you’ll have your freedom and we’ll fight to the death, yours or mine or both of ours, together. Sooner or later, if I’m right, we won’t. Believe me when I assure you I find this a boring subject. I’m prepared to explore it with you until you see the sense of moving on to the reason we came after you, the reason I believe you’ll eventually see we have common cause.”
“You want to recruit me for something?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“You’re a fool. I already have employers who pay me well. You can’t force me to work for you.”
“I’ve been a fool a few times in my life. But I don’t think I can force you into anything. I’m sorry enough that I had to do all this just to arrange for you to listen.”
“I may very well listen and decide to kill you anyway.”
“As you’ve more than adequately pointed out, you’ve already decided to kill me. Deciding that again would be redundant. I’m betting that once you listen, you’ll either change your mind or delay any action against me until our mutual business is concluded.”
“I will blind you before I kill you.”
“Possibly,” Draiken says. “But you’re repeating yourself, and I’ve had more than enough of indulging you in this. Are you ready to listen a little?”
The eyes still bore hate. They are still gateways to a universe of imagined murder, some of which echoes prior killings, remembered with whatever a man like this feels, that might be capable of approximating fondness. But his lids descend a fraction, a change in demeanor easiest to interpret as surrender to hearing Draiken out.
Then Jathyx says, “I am your prisoner. I will listen, but as a man, not as an invalid.”
> Draiken considers that, a sober and experienced risk to benefit analysis that includes full assessment of how he would feel himself, in this killer’s place. They are, neither of them, men who respond well to helplessness. After a moment he says, “Fair enough. There’ll be a delay of a couple of hours, while I make arrangements.”
He leaves the brig, locking Jathyx in with his ambitions of blood.
• • •
Delia Stang calls him crazy.
It is not the first time she has called him crazy. A disproportionate percentage of their partnership has consisted of her questioning his sanity in various colorful ways. During one recent confrontation of the kind, she said that if he could ever contrive to wear his skull inside out, the sharp spikes normally pointing inward would be cutting slices out of everybody around him. He actually agreed then, and he is forced to agree now. This is crazy. But sometimes, to get to the other side, one must cross the torrent. Gaining Jathyx’s trust, even for the length of an explanation, requires risk.
“He’ll kill you,” she says.
“Likely so,” he says.
“I don’t want you dead.”
“I don’t want me dead either.”
“You’re his jailer, now. You can force his cooperation.”
He almost laughs out loud. “Is that how it works, Delia? My jailers were unable to force my cooperation. It’s the central fact of my life.”
“You didn’t kill people as easily as he does.”
“Not as capriciously,” he allows. “But certainly as easily.”
“This is a bad idea.”
“Granted. And if we limited ourselves to good ideas, nothing of any worth would ever be accomplished.”
He tells her how it’s going to be, and then he returns to his own quarters, where for the next hour he sits still while another nano-system sets about knitting his own wounds. It’s a rush job, and it doesn’t return him to his peak condition, but it heals him at least to the point where he and Jathyx will be facing each other on a more-or-less equal playing field. He disposes of his clothing, uses the handheld sonic to bathe, dresses in a new skintight black suit with additional padding over the throat and abdomen.
All this feels absurdly like getting spiffed up for a job interview, in hopes of making a good impression. And the point is, he does want to make a good impression.
He does not admire this Jathyx—no man who respects life even provisionally could—but he does respect him.
He returns to Stang, with whom he has another brief and contentious conversation. It includes the fresh intelligence that Piithkarath has declared the blowout an act of terrorism and has alerted security forces system-wide. The station itself has been placed on lockdown, calling an entire halt on all arrivals and departures. They have not yet discovered that there has been a departure; or at least, they have not yet heard from any eyewitness who might have been peering out into space, who will react to this misapprehension by saying, “What are you talking about? I saw one leave myself!” All in all, encouraging, even if Draiken is incapable of adding up positives and being encouraged. There’s always another shoe ready to fall.
He gives Stang her orders and then heads back to the brig, with her following close behind.
Jathyx is of course where Draiken has left him, though the nanites have done their work and are no longer forming cloudy gray fog around his wounds. He watches Draiken without apprehension, his only visible emotion an eye-rolling contempt.
Draiken says, “Just so you know, this cell is now locked from the outside. No power at your possession, or mine, can open it. My partner is under strict orders not to intervene in anything that transpires here. If we fight, it will be up to me to defend myself. If you take me hostage, she will do nothing to bargain with you. And if you kill me . . ”
“. . . she will kill me. I understand.”
“No, you do not. She will not kill you. She will not cut off your air or your water. That would be outright murder. Nor will she ever open the door again, not even to feed you. She will just leave this vessel somewhere we are confident that it will never be found, pick up another we have waiting, and go on with her life. You will be left aboard to spend what remains of yours locked in this room, waiting for death to claim you.”
The anger in Jathyx’s eyes somehow finds a way to burn brighter. “You are the son of a whore.”
“Quite possibly. I don’t know what my mother did for a living. I also don’t consider the word an insult. A whore was one of the best women I’ve ever known, and I still suspect that leaving her might have been the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. Both considerations are irrelevant. Either way, my partner is under orders not to spill her own blood for what would have become a lost cause. With me dead, you will live for however long it takes you to resort to consuming my rotting corpse, and up to three to four weeks more, depending on how well you conserve your energy. And how long it takes you to decide it’s faster to just use this.”
Draiken produces Jathyx’s knife, places it on the bed within what will be easy reach, once the man is able to move again. Then he moves to a certain place on the wall equipped with a flip-down panel meant to function as a shelf, which happens to be strong enough to function as a seat. Here he parks himself, gets comfortable, addresses his easy gaze to his prisoner’s volcanic one, and after a few heartbeats of measuring the moment taps his hytex link and murmurs the code that inactivates the neural block.
Jathyx doesn’t just rise. He doesn’t just leap to his feet.
What he does feels more like teleportation than movement. In an eyeblink he has the cutting edge of his blade at the soft place where Draiken’s jaw meets Draiken’s neck, the pressure he exerts just past the threshold of pain.
He whispers, “And what if I arrange for you to be a long time in dying?”
“I’m not sure I understand the question.”
Jathyx presses his blade tighter against Draiken’s throat. “I can kill a man where he stands. But when it suits me, I can also devote days to the same task. I can dedicate my first cuts just to rendering you my plaything, then take my time reducing your body to its component parts, in the manner that hurts the most. I know how to preserve your life for weeks while still leaving you the strength for screaming. How much of that will the freakish bitch be able to take, before she can take no more? Do you truly believe that she cares so little for you that she’ll be able to refrain from intervening?”
Draiken must crane his neck as much as he can in order to minimize that painful pressure against his throat. He takes what breath is possible without helping that cutting edge in its designated purpose, and says, “You’re . . . right. That’s one contingency plan I . . . failed to mention.”
“Eh, pig? What stops me from reducing you to whimpering animal, and obligating her to take action out of sheer pity?”
“I never said we didn’t have a contingency for that. I only said that I neglected to mention it.”
“You think you can play games with a man who has a knife to your throat.”
“It’s not a game. This room has been equipped with a sound-dampening field. When it’s on, nothing that happens in here can be heard anywhere else in the transport. If I ever start screaming in agony, she’s to cope with the problem by activating it and rendering herself unable to listen. Oh, she’ll check the monitors every few hours, just to confirm that I haven’t turned things around somehow, but in the meantime, she’ll leave us alone, as instructed. And if she ever returns to discover that I’m too far gone . . . well, she’ll just seal the room, permanently. I promise you that any impulse she might have to avenge me will be more than satisfied by that.”
Jathyx wears the expression of a man whose desire to kill, at this moment, is so overpowering that he might well consider slow starvation a fair price. But there’s still a rational mind somewhere behind that, doing the math.
Draiken can almost follow along with those calculations and see how they conflict with the burning need for
immediate satisfaction.
He is aware of the moment when Jathyx makes his decision.
Draiken feels a loosening of the pressure against his throat.
And that’s when he moves.
There has been no telltale tension in his limbs, no flickering glances to give away his plans. There is just action. With his left hand he seizes Jathyx’s wrist and yanks that arm to one side, taking the knife out of play. With his right he drives four iron knuckles into Jathyx’s Adam’s apple. Without even leaving his seated position he drives a knee into the other man’s crotch, and in the same breath shoves him back.
Jathyx falls back on the bed, but rises at once, the knife flashing.
Draiken is already extending both hands, palms outward, in a show of peace. “I just needed to remind you that I’m a dangerous man, too. I’m under no obligation to tolerate a knife to my throat.”
“If it came to that,” Jathyx wheezes, “your willingness to tolerate it would not be an issue.”
“Possibly. I honestly don’t know how another fight between us would end. I just know that it would be stupid of you to try, and stupider of me to make you. Kill me and you lose. Force me to kill you and you lose. Anything in between, except for listening to me, and you lose. Honestly, you’re a murderous son of a bitch, and you might not even be sane, but you must see our mutual situation. A little patience on both sides, and we might both come out of this.”
More furious calculation. Followed by a grunt and a sudden downward stab that ends with the hilt protruding from the bed, ready to be claimed again at any moment.