Warden

by Natalie Grey

  “And so many more,” Barnabas said, and she remembered that he could see every thought in her head.

  He had made her incriminate herself. She glared at him.

  “I could have plucked the information from your mind, willing or not,” he told her. “I wanted you to remember them. I wanted their faces to be one of the last things you saw before death claimed you.”

  I hate you. She didn’t bother saying the words aloud. She knew he’d hear them.

  He only smiled. “Do you even know how much blood is on your hands, Ilia? These are only the faces you remember. Your father built this company, but you did what you could to aid him. You did a lot to aid him. You backed pirates and slavers; you bribed politicians and generals to turn on the citizens they were sworn to protect; you had whole colonies wiped out to make way for your mines and your factories. You never saw their faces.

  “And it was a choice. Never pretend you were forced. There is no force great enough to compel someone to do such things. There was no ulterior motive, no greater good. You did it for a pat on the head and a chance to have even more power. What more could you want, Ilia? You held lives in the palm of your hand and destroyed them at a whim. What more could you ever want?”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  “I don’t.” He shook his head. “But neither do you. That’s the worst part. You don’t even know what you wanted. You just killed and killed and killed. You were a force of evil and destruction without even having the decency to care why you did those things. The universe will be better off without you.”

  She screamed as his knife drove into her heart and twisted. With another scream, ripped deep from within her, she grabbed it and dragged it out. With only seconds remaining, she turned her face to the stone wall so that his face would not be the last thing she saw.

  Barnabas stood, looking down at her body.

  It’s not enough, is it? Shinigami asked.

  It’s never enough, Barnabas told her. I stopped believing in heaven and hell long ago—at least, as they’re spoken about in the religious texts. But I can see why the thought of them has endured. The idea that she could do so much wrong and just die, not living more than a moment of the terror and pain she inflicted, is an injustice I do not want to let go.

  Shinigami was silent.

  But they’re dead now, Barnabas said. There’s only one left, and he knows I’m coming for him, I’m sure. He made his children into monsters. I wonder if he’ll mourn them.

  From what I know of him, Shinigami said, from the stories I’ve heard, I’m not sure he has emotions. You thought Ilia was evil? She was nothing.

  Then I will be glad to rid the universe of him. Barnabas cleaned his knife and sheathed it. What now?

  I thought you’d never ask. Shinigami sounded like she was smiling. You should come back to the docking bay.

  Are you being attacked? I’ll be right there. Just try to hold out.

  I don’t need your help, Shinigami said, sounding offended. I need an audience. It’s flamethrower o’clock, and this shit is going to be epic.

  Despite himself, despite all he had just seen in Ilia’s thoughts, Barnabas managed to chuckle as he headed toward the landing bay. He knew that had been Shinigami’s intent, too.

  Thank you for keeping me from getting up in my own head, Shinigami. He was careful not to let her hear that.

  She would get insufferable if she heard it, after all.

  28

  Zinqued and his team waited as the Shinigami zipped into the landing bay. They watched the captain and his crew disembark and looked at each other in confusion.

  A Jotun, a Luvendi, and a human.

  It was like a joke. This was the crew everyone was so afraid of? They’d freed a whole mining town, fought their way through mercenary bases, and gotten Uleq and Ilia Yennai both so terrified that they approved the hire of hundreds of mercenaries?

  It wasn’t like a joke, it was a joke. It had to be a joke. How could any of this be serious? The Luvendi even wore armor.

  Zinqued wondered if they just waited for their opponents to start laughing, then shot them all. It was really the only possibility he could believe. Even Paun, world-weary and tedious in his “wisdom” stared at them like he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or not.

  They watched as the three disappeared down the hallway furthest to the left, and Zinqued nodded at Chofal to be ready. On his signal, she would begin the platform’s descent and they would take the ship. For now, they were on a platform painted to look like the rock above, and totally impervious to scanners. They would just wait until the second set of mercenaries moved, then go.

  Then the screaming started. Huge booms sounded from the leftmost hallway, almost like a pistol—but what kind of pistol was so loud?

  The mercenaries must have some good shit when it came to weapons, Zinqued decided. After all, it must be the mercenaries who were attacking. It didn’t occur to him that anything else might be the case.

  “See if you can get into the video feeds,” he whispered to Chofal.

  She nodded, and everyone inched across the platform as quietly as they could to watch. When it tipped precariously, they all shuffled into the center, hardly willing to look up even when they might fall hundreds of feet.

  The picture, when it came up, was horrifying. The three figures from the ship were, indeed, wreaking havoc.

  For starters, the Jotun was not just a blob of jelly in a glass jar. It was actually fighting, and it looked like it was fighting well. As they watched, it flipped a knife out of one of its arms, stabbed a Shrillexian that had charged it, then electrified the knife. He screamed and shot back into a group of fellow soldiers, all of whom jerked with some residual current; the knife was still embedded in his chest. As Zinqued’s crew all winced in sympathetic pain, the Jotun held out his arm and the knife dislodged itself from the Shrillexian’s chest and flew back into place.

  The human might look like a pile of nothing, but it ripped soldiers limb from limb. Zinqued even saw it sink its teeth into a soldier’s neck and throw the body away with blood streaming down its chest.

  “A mentivore,” Chofal whispered in a choked voice. There was still a special hatred for any species that ate its own kind, but worse, as far as most aliens were concerned, were mentivores—those who ate another sentient species.

  No one had known this about humans up until now, and it was more than a little frightening. What more might they do, after all?

  And to top it all off, the Luvendi fought like some sort of nightmare. Had Luvendi been lying to everyone for years? Were they really this strong?

  Or was this one…

  Everyone looked at one another, imagining strange experiments in laboratories. That would explain everything.

  It also meant that no one particularly wanted to mess with these people.

  “New plan,” Zinqued muttered, very quietly. “The fleet won’t attack the Shinigami, right?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “So if we can get on the Shinigami, we can get out of here before anyone realizes we’re gone.”

  There was a pause, while they all considered this. They looked wary.

  Paun said, “Ilia Yennai is going to have us killed once we’ve served her purpose.”

  “And that’s if she survives,” Zinqued added. For the first time, he was glad of Paun’s cautious demeanor. No one would disbelieve Paun, of all people. If Paun said something awful was going to happen, you could be sure it wasn’t an exaggeration.

  Everyone nodded, and Chofal began to lower the platform.

  They worked in concert. They knew they had to get the ship before the mercenaries figured out they were running away—because sooner or later, everyone would be running.

  And they had to get the ship before the crew got back, too.

  “This is really important,” Zinqued said, as the platform descended. “We need to pilot it out manually. No computers. As soon as that AI gets online…”
>
  “Hey.” One of the mercenaries had come out of the hallways and stared at them. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Follow my lead,” Zinqued said under his breath. Much more loudly, he said, “Our part of the plan. Hide, the human can’t know you’re here.”

  “I don’t think so.” The mercenary strolled closer. He had his hand on his weapon, and a few seconds later, the rest of his crew flowed out of the tunnels. “I think maybe you step away from that ship and leave it for us.”

  “But—” Zinqued began.

  Paun took over smoothly. He pretended to be confused. “Do you know how to steal ships? Because conventional methods have not worked with this one. That’s why we brought you in. With the sale from this ship—”

  “It’s us that put our lives on the line.” The mercenary jerked his head at the rest. “We’re the ones dying for this. It’s ours.”

  “I don’t think you know what you’re up against,” Paun cautioned. “If you just let us disable its systems, we can sell it, and all get rich.”

  “Maybe we cut you out, and we get richer,” the mercenary countered. “And if that doesn’t sound like a good plan to you, let me just tell you, in that plan—you get to live. You keep standing where you’re standing…and you don’t.”

  Zinqued opened his mouth to complain, and Paun grabbed him by the arm. “I see the wisdom of this plan,” he said, with a smile. He dragged Zinqued away and motioned for the crew to come with him.

  “Are you crazy?” Zinqued hissed. “We’re losing a shot at the biggest take we ever had!”

  “What are you going to use the money for when you’re dead?” Paun shot back. “We lost. The only thing to do now is walk away.”

  “But…but…” They were smirking, all those mercenaries. They looked at Zinqued’s crew mates like all of them were nothing.

  “I know,” Paun commiserated. “But sometimes, you just have to accept that the people who screw you over don’t ever pay for it. Sometimes—”

  There was a strange roaring sound, and then a scream that made everyone’s eyes go wide. The crew of Paun’s ship looked around…and their jaws dropped open.

  Fire sprayed from flamethrowers on the bottom of the Shinigami. The mercenaries, who had crowded close to the ship as they looked over their stolen haul, screamed, and ran for the exits. A moment later, bullets started spraying them.

  “This way!” Chofal yelled. She dragged Zinqued and Paun with her as the crew stumbled for the relative safety of the corridors.

  “Why aren’t they following us?” Zinqued yelled. Despite the direction of the bullets, all the mercenaries seemed to be trying to escape directly into the line of fire.

  It didn’t make any sense at all, until…

  Until they came around the corner and he realized they were in the hallway the human and his crew had taken.

  “Ruuuuuuun!” Zinqued yelled as they all turned around and prepared to run toward the death ship.

  “Too late!” Paun managed to choke out.

  Zinqued and the others stopped. They turned, as one, and met the eyes of the three aliens they hoped to never meet. The human was dripping blood, the Luvendi barely even looked winded, and there was a little pilot light going on the Jotun’s suit.

  Zinqued tried not to fall to his knees in sheer terror. He was a Shrillexian, he told himself. He needed to have some self-respect. If nothing else, he was not going to die on the ground, crying like a baby.

  At least the human seemed to kill quickly.

  The human crossed the space between them with long strides. “Why were you here?” His voice seemed to boom around the cavern. Those eyes, a strange blue color like Yofu skin, stared into Zinqued’s. “Ah,” the human said. “You wanted to steal my ship.”

  He could read minds. The room blurred, and the next thing Zinqued knew he was staring up at the ceiling. He had fainted.

  Barnabas stared down at him and tried not to laugh. When Shinigami had told him that she was letting the ship thieves escape briefly so she could have a go at the mercenaries, he’d promised to take care of the ship thieves, himself.

  Now they were practically shitting themselves. He’d made a Shrillexian faint.

  This was a good day.

  He peered into each of their minds in turn. Their captain was a sensible alien, someone who was determined to make as good a living as he could without doing anything too illegal. He’d never done anything like sell the crews of the ships he sold. He always let them off at nearby stations. Not great, considering he stole their ships, but not worth a death sentence.

  The Yofu mechanic was hardly above school age. She had a cheerful disposition and liked romance novels, and somehow, she’d managed to get this far on a crew of ship stealers without ever firing a gun.

  The rest of them were the same: petty criminals, but not murderers or slavers.

  “Listen to me,” Barnabas warned. “This is the last ship you will ever try to steal. You will take legitimate work. You will no longer take what is not yours. You will change your ways. You will tell everyone you meet that the Shinigami is not to be taken. You will tell them what you saw here today.” He pointed to where Shinigami was just finishing off the last of the mercenaries. “You will thank your gods that I am not a man who likes vengeance, but one who delivers Justice.”

  He leaned forward as they gaped at him, and let his eyes grow red.

  “And you will pray we never meet again,” he finished, letting his eyes glow and spreading the Fear around him.

  Zinqued fainted again. The Yofu mechanic shoved her hand in her mouth to keep from screaming. The captain staggered against the wall as Barnabas swept through the group and across the bay, littered with the bodies of mercenaries.

  He waited until they were on board the ship and the door had closed before collapsing into tears of laughter. Gar was also laughing hysterically, and Jeltor let out strange mechanical noises that sounded like a very small car backfiring.

  Tafa appeared in the hallway. “What happened? Why are you all laughing?”

  “They actually…they actually…” Barnabas pressed a hand over his stomach. “They actually shit themselves. Oh, God. I am a very, very bad man. This shouldn’t be funny.”

  “You all laugh,” Shinigami said serenely. “I’ll just pilot us out of here.”

  “That sounds good.” Barnabas straightened up and wiped at his eyes. “Ah. Ah, that was amazing.”

  “Mostly amazing,” Gar corrected. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. A truck filled with Brakalons. And rocks. If I’d known delivering Justice hurt this much on the back end, I’d have thought twice about it.”

  “I hate to tell you,” Barnabas said, “but tomorrow is going to hurt worse.”

  “Not possible.”

  “And the day after that is going to be the worst.”

  “You’re…” Gar pushed himself up and stared at Barnabas in horror. He looked at Jeltor, then at one of Shinigami’s sensors. “He’s kidding, right?”

  “Nope,” Shinigami said. “Anytime you want me to try to turn you into an AI, I’m happy to do so.”

  “That’s a hard no from me,” Barnabas said. To Gar, he added, “You’ll get used to it.”

  “How? I may die!”

  “You won’t die, you’ll just be very, very uncomfortable. We’ll have to lure you through the ship by tying pieces of food to strings and making you chase them.” Barnabas grinned at him. “Go take some painkillers. And Shinigami—back to High Tortuga. Quickly.”

  “Why?” Shinigami projected her avatar into the corridor to frown at him.

  “I need juice,” Barnabas declared. “We’re out.”

  29

  It was the end of the day, and Aebura’s was filled with patrons. The species mingled, from tall Luvendi—all trying to look more grumpy than they really were—to more than a few Brakalons, and Ubuara swinging from the rafters and munching on pieces of fruit from the platters Carter always had waiting for them ther
e.

  And, in the corner, there was one table full of humans.

  “See?” Tabitha demanded.

  “I don’t know.” Bethany Anne looked down at the sandwich. “It’s good. No, really, it’s good. I like it. But it’s…it’s just a sandwich.”

  “Oh, my God.” Tabitha flopped her head down in her hands

  “Kemosabe,” Hirotoshi said patiently. “Kemosabe, a bet is a bet.”

  Tabitha didn’t even pick her head up as she fished her wallet out of her pocket and threw him a bill. “Fine. You win. She doesn’t understand true genius in food form.”

  “Maybe you should have had her try the juice,” Barnabas suggested.

  Everyone looked at him. While he had said he might be back soon, they hadn’t heard from him since that message.

  “Hey!” Tabitha stood up threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. “Big B is back!”

  “Have a sandwich,” Bethany Anne suggested. “They’re very good. For sandwiches. And I hear this is a hundred-percent-Coke only establishment, so I don’t have to burn it to the ground or anything.”

  Carter, who was putting another tray of sandwiches on the table, gulped and slid away hastily with a brief, wide-eyed look of appeal at Barnabas.

  Barnabas snickered as he sat down between Bethany Anne and Tabitha. “Where’s Michael?”

  “He said he didn’t like sandwiches,” Tabitha said, in the tone of someone who had just found out that a close friend liked to kill puppies for fun. “Bethany Anne was going to persuade him that he should come next time. Then she let me down.”

  Bethany Anne laughed. “I’m a huge disappointment,” she said, from around a mouthful of sandwich. “It’s just good I’m not running an empire anymore, or the whole thing would go up in flames. Literal flames. Nukes everywhere.” She smiled at Barnabas.

  Barnabas pulled one of the plates toward himself and tucked in. Across the room, he could see Gar talking with some of the other Luvendi. They seemed glad to see him. Perhaps things were turning around here now that Lan and his ilk were gone.