by Natalie Grey
The Jotun officer’s roar of approval reverberated over all over the channels until Jeqwar’s whole body seemed to shake with it.
“Ma’am!” The communications officer projected his voice at his suit’s loudest setting. “Ma’am, the Yennai ships are beginning to leave the battle. They’re peeling off and heading out. Visual reports confirm.”
“Sonofabitch,” Shinigami cursed. “They’re fucking running.”
On every ship in the fleet, a broadwave message appeared showing Koel Yennai’s face. He was tight-lipped, but there was satisfaction in his eyes.
“Your betrayal has been noted,” he told them. “Your government allied with us, and now you stab us in the back. The Jotuns will pay, just as the humans will. We came here today to make a point—that your citizens would suffer if you continued this reckless course. Reports suggested that there were four thousand civilians on the colony—a colony we now know to be fictitious.
“Those lives will be collected from both species, at colonies of my choosing. Then we will discuss the terms of your surrender.”
The Avaris winked out of existence.
“It cloaked,” Jeqwar called.
“No, it’s gone.” Shinigami sounded surprisingly subdued. “It’s actually gone. It didn’t make a Gate, it’s just…gone.”
“Regroup,” the admiral ordered. “Begin scattering for rendezvous at Gamma Base, unscramble using the B protocol. We will decide on our next steps there.”
Jeqwar brought up the list of locations and ran Gamma through the specified decryption protocol. It provided her with a personalized route to get to the location—in reality not a base, simply a patch of empty space.
Before she accelerated to FTL, however, she scanned the patch of black where the Avaris had been once more.
Where had it gone? And if it could jump from one place to another, how could they stop it from killing any colony it wanted to?
17
The door to the bridge burst open, and Barnabas turned to smile at Tafa, Gar, and Jeltor.
“You’re safe! Thank God.”
Tafa took one look around the room and was promptly sick on the floor.
“Oh.” Barnabas scratched his head. “Right. The bodies. We should do something about that.”
“What did you… How did you…” Gar didn’t seem quite sure what to say. “What did you do to his head?” He pointed at the remains of the Torcellan.
“Brained him with the chess board,” Shinigami reported cheerfully. She flickered into being, sitting cross-legged on one of the desks. She smiled at Jeltor. “Good to have you back, old buddy. Don’t worry about the scorch marks. We’ll have those cleaned off in a jiffy.”
“Scorch marks?” Barnabas asked.
“Oh. Right. He crispified some of the soldiers.”
Tafa moaned and brought up another round of lunch.
“Maybe we should discuss details another time,” Barnabas suggested tactfully. “Tafa doesn’t need to know about all of this.”
“Oh, but she does.” Gar looked immensely proud. “She took out one of the soldiers. Didn’t you, Tafa?”
Tafa muttered something. One hand was still over her mouth.
“Let’s get you to the medical bay and get some hydration into you,” Barnabas suggested. He ushered everyone off the bridge and looked at Shinigami. “This is going to be a bitch to clean. It’ll smell like Torcellan blood for months, you mark my words.”
“Nah, we’ll just get Rachel on it.”
“Who the hell is Rachel?”
“She’s on the Reynolds. I swear, she’s a fucking wizard. Think of her as the Jean Dukes of cleaning supplies. If it stains, she can clean it.”
“Well, then.” Barnabas strolled with her down the hall. Gar and Jeltor spoke encouragingly to Tafa as they led her to the medical bay, and even with the bodies they had to step over in the halls, everything felt right with the universe.
Except for one thing. Barnabas slowed his pace to drop behind the other group.
“Are you all right?” he asked Shinigami. “What did they do to you?”
“They…well…” She considered her words carefully. “Remember, they’ve always been a surprise—the Yennai Corporation, and what they can do with their technology. They couldn’t have gotten into my mind the way they were doing it, but I had no idea if they might be able to some other way.”
Barnabas frowned.
“So I let them think what they were doing…was working. I gave them something, just a bit of data.” She stared straight ahead as she walked, feeling odd as though she couldn’t meet his eyes. She was ashamed, she realized. She felt weak.
Even pretending to weakness, giving something up in case she could be defeated—
It had been a good tactical decision, but it filled her with shame.
“Data? You mean you…” He paused and scratched his head. “Shinigami, what I don’t know about your mind is…well, everything. Do you mean they—”
“My thoughts,” Shinigami ground out. “I gave them some of my thoughts. False thoughts. And because of the way their systems work, I don’t know what they saw. I don’t know if I made it convincing at all. If it had been different, if I hadn’t been stuck there. If—” She shook her head. “I tried to throw them off,” she said finally, “but I don’t know how well I did. I never know when it comes to them.”
She expected Barnabas to crack a joke about the fact that computer minds didn’t have thoughts, just programs.
He didn’t. Instead, he reached for her hand before remembering that it wasn’t real.
“Sorry,” he said with a laugh.
“I think,” Shinigami said quietly, “that it was just about the best thing you could have done to make me feel better—forgetting what I am.”
“I joke, Shinigami, but I don’t mean those things.”
“Not anymore, anyway.” She knew he’d been suspicious of her at the start. Barnabas was unsure about new technologies.
“Not anymore,” he agreed. “I admit I found it disconcerting to be on a ship that could see my every move.”
“You had already been on the Meredith Reynolds.”
“There were a lot more people. There was no reason to believe that any of the various intelligences cared about me in particular. Being alone on a ship with you was… Well, like I said, disconcerting. But I no longer worry, except for how you’re doing now. What they did sounds to me like torture.”
“I hate that. Don’t say that again.” She didn’t want to think of it that way. The word ‘torture’ brought to mind people strapped down on tables, absolutely helpless while they were hurt until their minds broke.
She didn’t hate the idea because it was wrong, but because it was absolutely correct. She had been helpless, and they had started to break her very mind open. She still wasn’t sure what they had seen.
She just knew it made her feel weak. She knew she hated it.
Beside the avatar, Barnabas walked in silence. He understood not wanting to confront one’s own helplessness. His own encounter with that had nearly destroyed him.
Still, he had survived. He had found a measure of calm in his life after Catherine, enough to hold on until he found Bethany Anne and started the slow shift from detachment to purpose. It had taken him centuries, all told.
Though he hoped it wouldn’t take Shinigami that long, he’d hardly fault her if it did.
“I failed you,” Shinigami said. “All of you. He wants to destroy our colonies, and I gave him false data about them—but who knows if he believed it? The fact that they were even able to get onto the ship—”
“They were engineers who were trained and armed to do just that.”
“It doesn’t matter!” Her voice rose enough that the other group turned to look.
“If we could have a moment of privacy,” Barnabas said smoothly. “Gar, the Pod-doc will be able to deal with any symptoms Tafa is experiencing. You can use the interface well enough to get the process started.�
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“Of course.” Gar ushered the other two away with only one curious, quick glance over his shoulder.
“Shinigami,” Barnabas began.
She didn’t wait for his speech. “Yes. I know I did everything right. I know it was your plan. I know I threw them off, and I didn’t give them anything real. I know. None of that changes the fact that if they see through what I gave them, they could use it to destroy innocent lives. Because that’s how they would use it and we both know that.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” Barnabas corrected.
“Yes, you were. Don’t pretend. You like everything to be on your head. You beat yourself up whenever anything goes wrong. You’ll go off and blame yourself.” She knew she sounded resentful. “We’re allies, aren’t we? We’re equals. Right?”
“Of course we are,” he said, surprised.
“Then understand that maybe you did the best you could and someone else was the weak link. You want to save everyone. You want to feel guilty for everyone else’s fuck-ups.”
“That’s insane.”
“You’re telling me,” Shinigami shot back. “It’s terrifying to you not to operate alone.”
“I’ve been trying to let people in. To open up.”
“And you have been. I don’t mean…” Shinigami rubbed her forehead.
To her surprise, Barnabas burst out laughing.
“Do you mind?” She glared at him. “I’m trying to have a moment with you here.”
“It’s just…watching you learn mannerisms.” He shook his head a little. “I-I really don’t mean to make it seem like I’m mocking you. It’s quite the opposite. You’re so… Well, you’ve taken to it, that’s all. You’re so human. And before you remind me you’re modeled on a human, I’d like to remind you that you’re more than just that. You have a ship for a body.” He shrugged and leaned back against the wall with hands in his pockets. “Hell, you have a flamethrower.”
“Which you’ll never let me use.” Her mouth twitched.
“I did. That once.” He grinned, but she could see the fear behind his eyes. “I thought I’d lost you. D’you understand how terrifying that is?”
“Yes.” She smiled at him. “Because you got sucked out of that airlock and I thought you were gone. I couldn’t get to you. I thought you were going to die, and that’s what I’m upset about. The data, hell. You were dying out there. You humans are so…squishy. You’re not made to be in space like that.”
Barnabas heaved a sigh. “Yeah. Yeah, I can tell you from experience that you’re quite right about that.”
“I didn’t need anecdotal data to know that was true!”
“Well, now you have some anyway.” He cleared his throat. “Okay, let’s say this. We’re up against an enemy who’s a psychopath if ever I met one, and I’ve met psychopaths before. This guy is something special.”
“On a scale of one to David—”
“Two Davids. Easy.”
“Whoa, damn.”
“Right?” Barnabas jerked his head toward the medical bay and started walking again. “We like to talk about giving everything for the right cause, but maybe we’re finding it’s easier to do that for yourself than it is to watch someone you care about do the same.”
“Yes,” Shinigami agreed cautiously.
“So…” Barnabas took a deep breath. “We have to get better at making plans. We can’t just charge in headfirst. That’s how good people die. We have to go back to being the smarter, sneakier opponent. I know I’m a little bit, uh…impulsive.”
Shinigami laughed.
“But we can hold each other accountable,” Barnabas continued. “Right? I won’t do anything stupid that has a good chance of leaving me in space with no protective gear, and you’ll avoid doing anything that gets you captured. From now on, no heroics. No dashing off to save one another—because this time, we ended up splitting our strength and it nearly wound up with both of us being very dead. I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to die yet.”
“You said you were just a few days ago.”
“I may have lied,” Barnabas confessed. “I was trying not to worry you.”
“You sonofabitch, you just made me think you had a death wish so I’d have to protect you!”
“You see, this is exactly the sort of miscommunication we need to avoid.” Barnabas gave a brilliant smile. “So—I promise you I won’t go face down a psychopath on his own ship when I absolutely know he’s going to try to kill me.”
Shinigami grinned. “I promise I won’t go flying around inside his ships without a backup to come get me if something goes wrong.”
“Deal.” Barnabas went to shake her hand, then grimaced. “I keep forgetting you’re not real. I mean, corporeal.”
“You know what would help with that?”
“We are not giving you a body. It would be a nightmare. You’d be even worse than Gar. He left his hiding place to fight soldiers, didn’t he?”
“Of course he did. You trained him, and he was trying to protect Tafa and me.” Shinigami gave him a look. “Don’t even pretend you wouldn’t do the same thing.” She hesitated. “He’s been struggling with trying to determine a philosophical code.”
“Oof. Does he know that’s like trying to hit a moving target?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’ll try to find a way to mention it.” Barnabas shook his head. “All those years in the monastery, and you know what I learned? Trying to devote yourself to a narrow ideal is a good way to wind up way off-course. Your goals need to change as the universe changes. Everything is in flux. One day you have candles and parchment, the next, you’re living in a sentient ship among the stars.”
“Any regrets?” Shinigami looked at him.
“Not since I came here,” Barnabas said finally. “Catherine, the massacre, all of it—yes. Not intervening in the big wars on Earth—that as well. But coming out here? No. Even the failures, even what just happened. We’re needed out here. Koel is dangerous, but we’re making his life hell. I swear I’ll find a way to take him down.”
There was a pause. The sound of laughter filtered down the hall from the medical bay.
“I suggest nukes,” Shinigami said finally.
“You would.” Barnabas rolled his eyes. “Come on, let’s go check on Tafa.”
“Our newest little soldier!” Shinigami clapped her hands and followed him into the medical bay.
18
Zinqued’s new Brakalon recruit was named Dretkalor, and he exceeded all expectations. He arrived at the ship within an hour, his gear entirely packed and three additional guards in tow. Between Chofal and Tik’ta, they’d confirmed all four were, in fact, employed by a subsidiary of the Yennai Corporation and none of them had outstanding warrants or any other unsavory qualities.
Zinqued welcomed them onto the ship with a smile and showed them to their bunks. He was a bit nervous they would be upset at the accommodations, after having lived with all the luxuries of Virtue Station.
Dretkalor laughed. “D’you think we got the fancy food and the nice lodgings? Nah, we saw it, but it wasn’t ours.”
“And they’d threaten you if you even looked at it wrong,” another chimed in. He shook his huge head. “What would I do with a crystal chandelier? Sometimes you just look at things. But they always thought people were trying to steal everything they had.”
Zinqued let them talk. He had found over the years there was a lot more advantage in listening than talking. People liked you better, for one thing. They thought they’d really connected with you—which was absurd when they’d done most of the talking.
It worked, though. Plus, you learned a lot about people.
The guards had plenty of stories from the banks of Virtue Station. The male whose wife had found the bank statements for his mistress’s accounts. The rich man who liked to trade in currencies and always gave confusing instructions so he could cherry-pick the trades he wanted after they had all cleared and void the
rest. The rich clients who couldn’t hold their liquor.
The richer you were, the more free drinks the bank provided, apparently—and most of the clientele, despite having more money than many mid-sized planets, would take as many free drinks as they could, getting drunker and thereby less able to make good decisions.
Zinqued had to hand it to the owners of the banks—they were damnably clever.
When the guards finally stopped talking, Zinqued was prepared. He had a good idea of their sense of humor by now. Like many guards, they knew their clients tended to view them as blunt objects, barely sentient in their own right and really only useful for hitting things very hard.
The guards, by contrast, viewed their clients as rich fops unable to hold onto their power without guards who could hit things very hard. It gave them a sense of superiority, but most of them were still unhappy with the situation.
“So, here are the ship rules.” Zinqued heard the engines warming up, but they were still in port. The guards could get off the ship if they wanted to. “I get a quarter of the take, the rest of you split equally. There’ll probably be a few more crew members. In return, I handle food, lodging, fuel—whatever we need to keep this place running. Deal?”
The guards shrugged, but they looked pleased. It wasn’t an unusual deal, except for the fact that a captain usually took far more than 25 percent.
Zinqued normally did as well, but with the amount the Shinigami would bring in, he knew he would paint a target on his back if he took millions, while they only got a small amount.
“Our target is a human ship called the Shinigami,” Zinqued explained.
There was a pause, then the guards burst out laughing.
“Holy shit,” one of them said. “You got balls the size of small moons, Hieto.”
Zinqued hesitated, worried they were going to walk away from this job. “What have you heard?”
“Heard? We saw it. Mr. Jodu tried to have the human arrested when he went chasing after one of the Yennai bastards.” Dretkalor settled back in his bunk, hands behind his head. “Sent the guard captain after him, and you know what happened? He got beaten to death…by a Luvendi.”