by Sara Creasy
She wandered into the annex and touched the dataport. The information she could immediately access was limited. She scanned the ship’s manifest, the crew roster, the flight plan. From these she learned that the captain of the ship was named Francis Rackham, a decorated war hero from the Reach Conflicts. Apparently, piracy suited him more than basking in that glory.
The “client” Haller had mentioned was a prospecting and mining company called Stichting Corp. It legitimately employed the crew of the freelance Hoi Polloi and then covertly organized and funded their illegal seeding activities to make the real profit under the table. It was a shell company and there was no way to trace its ownership, at least not with the information at Edie’s fingertips. The ship carried all the necessary survey equipment in its holds and had all the correct flight plans in its logs to support its cover story, in case it was ever inspected.
Ignoring the internal memos blinking for her attention, she considered how she might breach security. She was at the mercy of these rovers, and if things turned sour she needed all the information she could get. She was no infojack—her expertise was biocyph, not dry-teck—so the higher levels of security were out of reach. But she didn’t doubt that she could hack the lower levels. It would take time—that was a task for later.
She ran a scan of her quarters to make sure she wasn’t being spied on. The process took a couple of minutes. When that was done, she resisted the urge to poke further and withdrew to explore the physical environment instead.
Barefoot, Edie stepped into the corridor, searching the wall paneling for directions. From the length of the corridor and number of hatches leading to crew quarters, the ship seemed to be a mid-sized cruiser—as befitted its cover.
A tom darted into her path and inspected her with a glittering eye, decided she didn’t require cleaning or reporting, and trundled away. The little dome-shaped mecks, a ubiquitous feature of ship and station life, were programmed for cleaning, maintenance, medical monitoring and first aid, or as gophers to fetch and carry. Edie called after the tom with the intention of jacking in and getting to know it, but not surprisingly it ignored her. The toms would need to be primed before they responded to her voice. She could probably do that via one of the ship’s consoles, but she didn’t want Haller to know exactly what she could and couldn’t do. Not yet.
At the end of the corridor, a ladder cut through the deck in both directions. She climbed down the well to the lower deck and found herself in a shorter corridor with a faded striplight. She pressed it firmly and it flickered to full strength. In front of her, a hatch swung ajar on old-fashioned hinges. Someone approached from the other side. Not wanting to be found snooping around, Edie returned to the ladder.
“Hey, there.” It was Zeke, the op-teck. There was no reproach in his voice. “Glad you decided to join our merry little crew.”
Hardly an accurate statement, but she let it slide. “What’s down here?”
“Main engine, aft.” He waved a hand in the direction of a large double hatch behind her. “We have a couple of engineers, but I doubt you’ll see much of them.”
“I was…looking for the seeding equipment,” she bluffed.
“Ah, the rigs, my babies.” His white teeth flashed in the dim light. “Most of them are here belowdeck. I’ll show you later. The extractor rigs are stored in the landing skiffs. Saves having to move them around.”
“What about back there?”
Zeke glanced over his shoulder at the room he’d exited. “Come on, you may as well get reacquainted.”
“What…?”
But Zeke was already heading back in. Edie followed him, and noticed a heavy bolt running the full width of the outside of the hatch.
“Primitive but effective,” Zeke commented.
Through the hatch, she found herself in a narrow room lit by the sickly green glow of a bank of monitors near the door. At first all she could see were pale striplights marking a regular pattern down each side of the room. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she realized the strips were attached to grilles, and the grilles formed two rows of cubical cells.
“Serfs,” she breathed.
“Sure. We use them to work the rigs. Cells are empty now, but we’ll be loading them up at the first stop.”
Zeke disappeared into the gloom, striding past the empty cells. Edie hung back, a sinking feeling rolling over her. The Crib claimed that renting out serfs—convicts and POWs—for labor gave them a more useful and interesting life than rigid incarceration, but that didn’t mean she wanted to travel and work with them. The seeding team from Talas had never used them.
At the last cell, Zeke stopped. The cell was slashed in red light, indicating it was locked.
“Come on.” His matter-of-fact tone contrasted with the cold despair of the place.
Edie approached the grille with caution. A bunk clung to one wall of the cell and a water drain ran the length of the floor at the back. The occupant was a silent shadow in the corner.
“Edie Sha’nim, meet your new bodyguard.”
She drew in her breath. A serf for a bodyguard? How could that possibly work?
Zeke noted her reaction and gave his characteristic grin. “You didn’t think we’d set you loose in the Reach without protection, did you?” He cooed into the cell. “Don’t be shy.”
Edie moved closer, feeling the soft heat of the striplight on her face. The man inside the cell shifted almost imperceptibly, as though he was reacting to the sight of her and deciding what to do next. Then he moved forward in three smooth strides, coming to stand against the grille directly in front of her. Despite the instinct to back away, she forced herself to hold her ground.
“Say hello to an old friend,” Zeke said.
She stared at Finn. He still wore his Crib coveralls, sleeves rolled up to reveal strong forearms, voice snag fitted at his throat. His eyes bore a hard expression that had been missing the first time she’d met him. What had they done to him?
“I—I don’t understand,” she stammered, gripping the grille. Finn had been cooperative when she was deactivating his boundary chip, when his life was at stake, but she sensed a tension in this caged man, like a coiled spring—restrained, calculating, and frighteningly unpredictable. She shook her head and dragged her eyes away from him. “I don’t want a bodyguard—not a serf, not him.”
“Don’t think you got the choice, kid.” Zeke shrugged, renouncing all responsibility. “The client thinks you need one. Captain Rackham agrees. When they found out he was a Saeth…it was a done deal.”
“A what?”
“The Saeth were hotshot fighters in the Reach Conflicts.” At her bewildered expression, he added, “You’ll have to ask Cat about it. Or maybe not—she fought on the other side.”
“How am I supposed to…” Control him, she almost said. She wished she was having this conversation somewhere else, out of Finn’s presence. She wished someone had warned her.
Zeke took her elbow and drew her away from the grille, but though he lowered his voice she suspected Finn could still hear. “They rigged his chip. He’s got a boundary chip, like all of them, understand?”
“So he has to stay within a perimeter, I know. How does that motivate him to protect me?”
“The chip keeps him motivated,” Zeke hissed, tapping her skull with his forefinger.
Edie flinched and put her hand where he’d touched her as realization dawned. “They did something to my splinter, at the medfac.”
“Your what? Is that what you call it?”
She nodded. That was how she’d always thought of it. A splinter driven into her brain.
“They linked his chip to the wet-teck in your head,” Zeke continued. “You’re his perimeter now, see? His chip picks up brainwave signals from your chip. A leash, they called it. So he stays alive as long as he keeps within a couple of klicks of you.”
She guessed the next part. “Or as long as I stay alive.”
She couldn’t believe what they’
d done to her. To him. Finn was forced to keep her alive, forced to stay by her side, or he’d end up with his brains scrambled and bloody like Ademo.
A surge of anger flooded out her shock and confusion. “Why didn’t Haller tell me he planned to do this? He must have known I’d never agree to it.”
“Well, that would be why he didn’t tell you.” Zeke was unmoved. “Believe me, I’d sooner pay for trained security but we’re on a budget.”
“Did he agree to it?”
“We hauled his criminal ass off that labor gang on Talas Prime and put him on babysitting duty. I’m sure he’s very grateful.”
“Grateful? Why don’t you take off the snag and ask him? No sane person would sign up for this.”
Then again, she had no proof Finn was sane.
“Well, he should be grateful. He’s a lag who got a lucky break. He doesn’t get to choose his work conditions. I’ll take off the snag after I finish processing him. I’ve still got to run a—”
“No, stop it. This has to stop,” Edie said raggedly. “You can’t do this to him. I want out. The mission, the creds, the whole deal.”
Zeke opened his hands in a helpless gesture. “It’s done, Edie. Too late. The leash can’t be cut.”
“Never?”
“That’s what they told me. It’s not like he ever had a long life expectancy anyway.”
Edie pressed her temples between her palms, digesting the implications, but nothing made sense.
She walked away. She had to get out of this dismal place so she could think straight.
Zeke caught up, grabbed her arm. “You made a big mistake letting him see you react like that,” he said under his breath, before raising his voice as if addressing the cells. “You have to show them who’s in charge, understand? They’re lags. They do what they’re told or what the zap of a drub tells them.”
Edie yanked her arm free and left the hold. Thankful that Zeke hung back, she climbed the ladder, grabbing at the rungs. They dug painfully into the arches of her bare feet. She ran down the corridor, snapped the hatch to her quarters and locked it behind her. Pacing the tiny room, she tried to think.
These rovers had tempted her with the creds and a way out of the Ardra project, and she’d fallen for it. She’d even get to see what her files said about Lukas, assuming Haller came through on that promise. Participating in their dubiously honorable work, at least until she had the chance to escape, had seemed like a fair enough trade for freedom from the Crib bureaucracy, which had manipulated her since she was ten.
But now someone else’s life was involved. Finn’s alternative was a labor gang—maybe he’d rather be here, leash or not. And what options did she have? For now she’d play their game, learn what she could, let them think she was cooperating. But she had to find a way out, for her own sake and Finn’s. Hunger finally forced Edie out of her quarters again in search of the mess hall. The ship was in nodespace now, judging from the engine sounds. She had no idea which spacedock they’d just left, and that meant she couldn’t trace the hired infojack who had created the leash. He or she would be able to cut it, regardless of what Zeke had been told. Infojacks always left themselves a back door.
Ascending this time, she went up the ladder two decks to the top. She’d seen no one on decks three and two, and deck one was deserted as well. At the end of a short corridor was a common room with a large oval viewport, its window shuttered. Most spacefarers did not enjoy the sight of nodespace—it tended to induce nausea or even neurosis—so external ports were usually set to darken during node travel. Couches and tables littered the floor, and a huge holoviz blinked silently to itself. Sensing Edie’s approach, it flared to life and ran through a default display of alien vistas—places humankind had visited or scanned but left untouched. Terraforming was legal only on planets with primitive ecosystems, not these lush worlds.
A row of consoles lined one wall and she ran a finger across them as she passed by. Her wired fingers brushed over dataports, sending frissons up her arm.
At the far end of the common room were two hatches to the left and right, with a ramp to the bridge between them. The bridge hatch was resolutely shut. Edie chose the hatch on the right, which was open, and almost ran into a woman hurrying in the other direction. They both pulled back and appraised one another. The woman was small and wiry, with the worn-out look that comes from decades of hard work.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Can I help you?”
Edie wasn’t used to such deference. Perhaps the woman was a serf. In any case, the blue apron and simple tunic identified her as the cook.
“I’m looking for food.”
“Supper’s not served for an hour, ma’am. You can raid the galley, if you like.” The cook pointed vaguely toward one side of the mess, and Edie nodded her thanks.
“I’ll do that.”
The woman scurried off. Edie had never been addressed as “ma’am” in her life and it didn’t sit well. Somehow she didn’t think Finn would call her that.
In the galley, a small room in the corner, the remains of lunch had been left warming. Edie poured a flask of water and picked at pieces of soft, meat-filled dumplings. The dough was spongy and slightly sweet—a good deal better than her usual fare on Talas Prime.
Near the warming pan was a serving window covered with shutters. She cracked open the shutters and peered into what must be the captain’s dining room. A wooden table surrounded by eight upholstered chairs stood in the center of a lavishly appointed room. Paneled walls displayed a range of original paintings, not a holo among them. An impractical rug covered most of the deck. Twisting up the bulkhead in one corner was a grotesque sculpture that must pass for art on some benighted world, and a coffin-sized decorated crystal box—possibly a musical instrument—occupied another corner. A large glass-fronted wine cabinet displayed dozens of bottles in its softly lit interior. As her first glimpse of Captain Rackham’s tastes, this was certainly intriguing.
Voices approached from behind, and she quickly closed the shutters. She’d rather not be discovered yet, especially when she recognized one of the voices as Haller’s. But the cook must have told him where to find her, because within seconds he was in the galley looking at her with amusement.
“We may be pirates, but we do use plates and spoons around here.”
She glanced at her fistful of dumplings and felt her face coloring. Haller handed her a plate from an overhead locker. He gave her bare feet a pointed look.
“We wear boots, too.”
“They were too big.”
Haller sighed dramatically, as if she was going to be more trouble than she was worth. With the crook of his finger, he beckoned her out of the galley. She set her jaw and suffered the patronizing gesture. Zeke waited in the mess with Finn. They made for an ominous pair—of equal height, the younger with toned muscles where the older was turning to bulky middle-aged fat. To her dismay, Finn still wore the voice snag.
Edie slid onto the nearest bench with her food, hunger pangs mingling with the faint nausea of panic.
“This is Finn,” Haller said.
“We met.” Edie couldn’t bring herself to look at the serf, even though she sensed he was looking at her.
“We’ve finished up his psych and med tests. I’m putting him in your charge.”
His turn of phrase annoyed her, and she couldn’t resist a sweet smile at the executive officer. “Why, thank you.”
Haller folded his arms and exchanged an amused look with Zeke. “He’s in the curious position of being both serf and crew. Stichting Corp wants him clinging to you like a bad smell, so he’ll be sleeping in your quarters. I understand Zeke has explained about the boundary chip. There’s a couple more things we need to discuss.”
While Edie digested the startling information that she was to share her quarters with a stranger who looked like he could crush her windpipe with his little finger if he wanted to, Haller signaled to Zeke. The op-teck threw a belt onto the table with enough momentum to send
it slithering across the top. It came to rest against the back of Edie’s hand.
“Standard tool belt, courtesy of the Hoi Polloi. You got your basic swissarmy tools, a commclip, datacaps, diagnostic rod, and a couple of spare hardlinks for your fancy biocyph tricks.” Zeke seemed inordinately pleased with himself for having put together such a gift for her. “Oh, and a big fat drub there in the recharge bracket”—he patted the drub in his own belt where it rested against his thigh—“just in case.”
He gave Finn a brief but meaningful glare. The serf hadn’t stopped looking at Edie, with the same stony expression she’d seen earlier in the cellblock.
Turning the belt over with one hand, Edie flicked the bracket open to extract the drub. It gave a beep to signal its readiness for action. She’d seen the handlers use them on Talas Prime Station—mostly as a simple cudgel, but it could also deliver a shock. The idea of her using it on Finn was comical. In a mirror image of Zeke’s action, she tossed the drub back across the table and he slapped down his hand to catch it.