Ragamuffin

by Tobias S. Buckell

  Once it shuddered rudely into place by docking collar, Etsudo pulled his feet free. Brandon floated first through the air lock and Etsudo closed his eyes. Through the Takara Bune’s lamina he accessed the scanning equipment built into the walls of the air lock.

  As the air pressure equalized, they both hung in place. And Etsudo scanned Brandon inch by inch. He found the man laced with machinery, no doubt to broadcast back to Jiang Deng everything they said. Brandon was feng, ready to be unleashed on Etsudo the moment Jiang Deng had an excuse.

  Etsudo looked up as the door into the Takara Bune rolled open. No one waited for them. The alpha crew remained on shift in the cockpit, magnetic and physical locks in place to slow down any forced entry as Etsudo had ordered before leaving the ship. Gamma and zeta crew remained locked in their quarters, waiting for the all clear.

  “I apologize. You know I’m related to the founders of the Hongguo.” Etsudo rolled his sleeve up and showed Brandon the dragon tattooed on his bicep. Much like the sigil the Jiang wore on their ceramic armor. “When you get settled in, come find me in the captain’s room. I want to show you something. A piece of their legacy. Maybe then you’ll understand my reluctance to give up all the years of history my family has within ships like the Takara Bune, and why I’m so testy right now.”

  Brandon nodded. Etsudo left him by the dull metal doors of the air lock. He needed to prepare for what came next. Burning through people’s minds, re-creating them into a new image, it took time, calibration, and special equipment.

  All of which Etsudo had in his cabin. All of which was completely illegal by decree of the Satrapy.

  But first, a hard burn out away from the ruins of this habitat and upstream toward more heavily populated systems. Up away from Deng and his heavily armed ship, the Shengfen Hao. Back to his own devices. Etsudo relaxed and accessed the ship’s lamina, sliding into the world of data sitting all around him. “Sabir?”

  “Listening,” the alpha crew’s pilot responded.

  “Upstream to Thule via Tsushima. Get updated traffic maps for Pawtucket, Gateshead, and Trinity.” At Thule he’d have the option to go to one of three forks. All three had enough human population density for him to justify a search for illegal technology.

  “Crew change is coming up in fifteen minutes,” Sabir’s voice whispered in Etsudo’s ear. “Should we remain in the cockpit?”

  “Yes. Stay put until Brandon enters my room. Then change shift. But remain locked down after shift change. This man could be dangerous. Now, get the ship moving.” The longer he remained near the elite of the Hongguo, the more nervous he got.

  “Of course.”

  Warning lights flipped on, turning the interior of the ship dark red. The Takara Bune accelerated as Etsudo fled his fellow Hongguo.

  The door to Etsudo’s cabin rolled aside. Etsudo brushed past a pair of tortured bamboo plants running along the room’s midrail, his fingers brushing green shoots as he pulled himself over to Brandon. The Takara Bune coasted now, not too far from Tsushima with the better part of a day already gone.

  “Come.” Etsudo waved the man in.

  Brandon took in the red-cushioned room, looking briefly at the comfortable half sphere of Etsudo’s couch, the tatami stapled to the walls, and several sparse paintings of Earth landscapes. Waterfalls, ponds.

  “You really want to talk about your family, or something else?”

  “My will won’t stand long against all the Jiang of the Hongguo. I have no choice but to let you into the ship, and to give your reports back, and to do what is asked of me. But, look, come closer and you’ll understand my own pridefulness.” Etsudo pointed out a small printed picture, framed by a brassy-looking wood. “Read the plaque.”

  Brandon floated two feet away from the picture. The fathers of the Hongguo: Hajiwara, Nakamoto, and Singh.

  “That was my great-grandfather.” Etsudo hung by Brandon’s elbow. As he continued, he closed his eyes, accessed his ship’s lamina, and gave a simple command to the machinery behind the picture’s façade. “The only reason Jiang like Deng haven’t made me disappear yet. There are those who would notice one of the sole family members of the founding fathers gone missing.”

  Brandon didn’t reply; he hung motionless in the air. A short pulse of energy had scrambled his synapses and knocked him out.

  “They’re such proud, fine men,” Etsudo said. “It’s a shame I was adopted and couldn’t really care less about blood.” He spun Brandon around. The man’s face hung slack.

  The Jiang would disapprove of this piece of illegal technology housed behind that frame. As well as all the other equipment Etsudo kept throughout the walls of his cabin. He was a good candidate for reconditioning, or execution.

  But this was his ship. The Jiang could go to hell. Etsudo moved Brandon to the couch and strapped him in. Then he folded his legs and hung before Brandon as he waited for the man to wake up.

  When he did, he struggled to free himself. Etsudo shook his head. “Don’t do that, I’d hate to see physical harm come into this equation.”

  Brandon’s green eyes pinned Etsudo in the air. “What do you think you’re doing? Deng will flay you for insubordination.”

  “That’s interesting. Because he’s technically not my superior, is he? The trade arm of the Hongguo is charged to eradicate illegal technologies through nonlethal methods. We’re a separate and equal arm.”

  “If your means are nonlethal, what is this about?”

  “Have I hurt you yet?” Etsudo asked. “Are you in pain?”

  “You threatened me with physical harm.” Brandon twisted, but there had been stronger, faster, more dangerous men in that chair before.

  “The silky cords wrapped around your arms have a monofilament wire in their center. Break the silk and you’ll slice your hands off. If you continue to struggle or get more agitated, you will be responsible for your own self-amputation.”

  Brandon stopped straining. He stared at Etsudo, who experienced a brief rush. The power of direct force. A heady drug, and addictive. “What do you want?”

  Etsudo leaned forward. “What are you doing aboard my ship, Brandon?”

  “Nothing. You’re entirely misguided. This is beyond inappropriate.”

  “Okay.” Etsudo held up his arm and clenched his fist. Brandon blinked and looked around, frowning. “Every time I do that, the machine around you, which I’ve disguised as a simple acceleration couch, will rip something of your mind free. A memory, a skill, a part of your personality. I will not harm you, Brandon, but you will cease to be a functioning person when I’m done if you aren’t forthcoming.”

  Brandon stared at him. “You can’t recondition my mind. Your ship doesn’t have the permission to keep that equipment. Only the Gulong has it.”

  “A special Satrapic allowance, that. Everyone aboard the Takara Bune has had a trip to this room, Brandon. Trust me, this is all very much real. I do really have these machines in this room.” Etsudo made a fist, sending the command through lamina to strip another memory out from the surface of Brandon’s mind.

  “What did you just do?”

  “Do you remember how you got aboard this ship?”

  Brandon blinked several times. He didn’t. It would be a hole in his mind, an odd interruption that eluded him as he tried to reach for it. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”

  “Yes, this is very real, Brandon. It’s happening. Again, why are you on my ship?”

  “Deng’s going to kill you, not just retire you.”

  “Stop worrying about things outside of your control, Brandon, and tell me what I want to know or I’ll turn you into a drooling idiot. Why are you on my ship?”

  “Giving them an excuse to get rid of you.” Brandon looked directly at him. “You’re the last of the pacifist arm. Your ‘balance’ and ‘yin/yang’ concepts aren’t policy anymore.”

  “They never were.” Etsudo shook his head. “The Hongguo began life as a company. Profit was king, Brandon, the trading arm wasn’t pacifi
st, just mercantile and nonlethal. And good at what it did.”

  “It’s not needed anymore, it’s been recalled.”

  Etsudo nodded. “Yes, but why?”

  Brandon looked up toward one of the paintings. The waterfall. Tears leaked out of his eyes and hung in front of him. “Deng told you, you’ll be supporting antipirate activity in the area.”

  “That’s such a shame you won’t tell me the real reason.” Etsudo didn’t want to rip Brandon’s mind down to almost nothing. Etsudo was an artist. He wanted a functioning human being. Destruction was for amateurs. And after watching thousands die earlier, he had no desire to see more death. But threats did not seem to work with Brandon, so Etsudo would try another use for his machine. “But I can help. In just a few hours, Brandon, you and I are going to be best friends, and you won’t even think twice about telling me everything I need to know.”

  Brandon groaned as Etsudo clenched his fist. Etsudo guided the machine as it probed the man’s mind with magnetic feelers, sifting through Brandon’s synapses and recording them, building up a ghostly image of Brandon’s mind that Etsudo could access, then model. And using that model as a guide, he could begin altering Brandon’s mind.

  It took the better of ten hours, even with all the heavy computing power at Etsudo’s disposal in the Takara Bune.

  When Etsudo was done, the reconditioning over, Brandon looked up. “I’m so sorry, Etsudo, I’m so sorry.”

  Etsudo nodded, grabbed Brandon’s shoulder, and stared the man eye to eye. Brandon’s mind had already been tampered with by Deng, he’d found traces of that. But had he gotten deep enough into Brandon’s head to undo that? Or would Brandon turn on him suddenly, subject to triggers buried deeper in the back of his cortex. “The things Deng has done to your mind are horrible. But I helped you. Everything is back the way it was, Brandon. You’re back to normal. And I’m glad you were able to get a transfer to my ship, where I can protect you.”

  “Thank you,” Brandon whispered. “Thank you.”

  “It’s been a few years, friend. But you’re okay now. You’re okay.”

  Brandon shook with tears as Etsudo unstrapped and pulled him free. “Come on. I’ll take you to your cabin. You’ll rest. We’ll have tea next shift. And then you’ll tell me everything.”

  And as conditioned to do, Brandon nodded. “Etsudo, we have to be careful. Very careful. Things are changing, we’re all in a lot of danger.”

  “You’ll tell me all about it.” Etsudo guided the dangerous man through the air.

  It was always dangerous to tackle gods in their own territories, Etsudo thought. And here aboard the Takara Bune that’s exactly what he was.

  What else could he be? If he ran away with his ship, the Satrapy would revoke his docking and fueling rights. If he left his ship and ran into hiding, his fellow Hongguo would hunt him down and wipe his mind down to blank, leaving him as another calculating machine for the Gulong.

  He had been doomed to this ever since being born among the Hongguo.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The machine had been a gift. An inheritance from Kenji Hajiwara, the man Etsudo thought of as father, a father whose bloodline included the original Hajiwara of the Hongguo.

  Etsudo grew up aboard the Takara Bune. It never bothered him that there weren’t any other children. Not even into his teens as Kenji taught him how to thread the Takara Bune through a wormhole. Not even into adulthood, when the Hongguo began to assist the Satrapy and its alien subjects control human technologies.

  “Do you remember your mother?” Kenji had asked him once.

  Etsudo remembered standing in the observation gallery by her casket, crying, watching it slide out from the habitat until it dwindled away on its long, decaying orbit toward the blue-tinged sun in the distance.

  “Of course I do. Always,” Etsudo replied.

  “Do you remember your mother?” Kenji had asked him again, just before Kenji died, riddled with an artificial form of infectious cancer.

  “Of course,” Etsudo had told him.

  But then an hour later a message came, a recording Kenji had left with a date stamp on it that was over ten years old. Kenji, younger but more tired, faced Etsudo one last time.

  “Do you remember your mother?” the recording asked. Kenji looked more incredibly sad than Etsudo had ever seen him. “Because I have a confession to make, my son. A hard one to make, which is why I’m recording this, and locking it to be released when I die. Though I guess that is easier than telling you this myself.”

  Kenji had always wanted a child, so he’d taken one from a small orbital research habitat. A five-year-old, whose parents where about to be reconditioned. Kenji created a new mother in his mind, and a new father.

  Did Etsudo remember his mother? He didn’t know. That face that had kissed him in the mornings, sung to him, that might have been the same face. Or one that Kenji stole from a database somewhere. Etsudo never bothered to find out. He destroyed the message and walked back to Kenji’s room in the hospital.

  Looking in at the body of the man, Etsudo crumpled to the floor to cry for the last time in his life. His father had died and his mother had never existed, and neither did he.

  And here was this loyalty to the Hongguo built into him by his father, and yet the knowledge that he was one of their victims. The love of his mother, who didn’t exist. The love of a father who did, and had betrayed him.

  A ship to run that was his. Kenji had worked hard to make sure Etsudo had full captainship of the Takara Bune.

  Etsudo heated a bulb of tea over the hot pad at the center of the round table in the cramped galley. Brandon gripped the edges of the table as if he would fall away from it if he let go. Vertigo was a small side effect from reconditioning. Etsudo had a sick bag in his back pocket. He handed the bulb to Brandon, who cradled the handcrafted glass in his two callused hands. The etched silver swans on the sides caught the glint of the cabin lighting as he rolled the bulb between his fingers.

  Brandon looked up from the tea, a brown drop of liquid hovering above the tiny lip. “Etsudo, I’ve been wired to send everything I see and hear back to Deng.”

  “You’re okay.” Etsudo shook his head. “Nothing leaks out of this ship unless I want it to. But Deng will be contacting us soon when you don’t report back to him.”

  Brandon shuddered.

  “I know.” Etsudo nodded. “But we will be okay.”

  “I’ll fall apart facing him right now.”

  A message pinged for Etsudo’s attention. He relaxed and settled into the lamina. The image of Jiang Deng appeared before him, standing on the table. “Etsudo,” Deng snapped. “Check in.” Then the Jiang folded his arms and disappeared.

  Etsudo subvocalized his response while looking at a tired Brandon sip tea. The man did not look up or even realize Etsudo was multitasking. “Brandon has yet to finish his tour of the Takara Bune. If you’ve been worried about him not checking in, it’s because the ship is shielded. His personal communications have to route through the Takara Bune’s lamina first. We keep a low profile.”

  The message would get bounced out to the nearest buoy, shot through the wormhole back downstream. Even with Hongguo priority codes on it, Etsudo had maybe ten minutes before Deng received it, though he wasn’t sure where Deng was. Then the message had a ten-minute return. Could be a long twenty minutes.

  Brandon looked up. “Our Jiang’s strategies have changed.”

  “How?”

  “Four days ago the three Consuls were asked to make a trip to a habitat with a Satrap in it. When they came out, everything was different. New orders, new thoughts. Like the new initiative against the pirates.”

  “The pirates? That was for real?” Etsudo asked. And Jiang Deng appeared again. Etsudo frowned and held up his hand, and Brandon waited. That had been, what, a minute? Two at the most. That mean only a handful of wormholes lay between him and the Shengfen Hao. Deng’s ship was a lot faster than Etsudo’s unless the Takara Bune ditched all
its cargo. So much for running away. Deng was catching up to him.

  Deng waved a hand. “I don’t care about Brandon. I need your direct assistance. “We have a problem.”

  Again, Etsudo wondered if he’d overreacted with Brandon. Maybe they’d genuinely thought he needed assistance running his ship. Maybe they were actually trying to eliminate the Ragamuffins.

  Maybe.

  Deng continued, “Jiang Wu and Jiang Li suffered damage to their ships while attacking pirates. They managed to destroy four ships, but a fifth escaped. I’m in pursuit, but I need your help.”

  Etsudo stared at the tiny figure of Deng. Attacks in space? In a hundred years maybe a few Hongguo ships had actually attacked others. Brandon was right, the Jiang’s strategies had changed.

  “What’s wrong?” Brandon had realized Etsudo was staring off into space. “Is it Jiang Deng?”

  “Don’t worry,” Etsudo whispered. “Just give me a second.”

  Jiang Deng’s message went on, “We didn’t get the identity of the fifth ship, but it leaves a recognizable gamma radiation trail our drones are following. Your message ping time indicates you are just upstream of us and close by. We’re jamming the ship to stop it from calling for help, but they may get ahead of us. We’re shutting communication buoys down. It begins at Thule and goes downstream from there. This whole downstream branch is being put under a blackout as we work to squeeze any pirate ships down towards their home base. We did not brief you because your ship isn’t involved.” And because Deng didn’t trust him. “But now I need you to run support for our mission. When the pirate ship overtakes you, blow your cargo and keep up with them, you have a faster ship than I do. Send confirmation you received this and are acting.”

  Etsudo gripped the table as hard as Brandon. Why attack them now?

  Spaceships cost immense sums, and the Hongguo had a lot invested in their fleet strung across the Satrapy. Some of the ships creaked along at almost a hundred years old, like the Takara Bune. Risking them in direct confrontation with other ships didn’t fly well with the captains. Better to hunt the pirates once they docked at a station somewhere.