Steadron stutters out an incoherent reply.
Owens holds up a hand. “We’re waiting on one more.”
Andien walks in. She’s dressed in a core-world power blouse, looking like she just came from the Senate pavilion. I’ve never seen her like this before. Does she dress like this all the time? Whenever she’s not in the field?
Why do you care, Chhun?
His thumb pointed at Andien, Owens says, “I’m not going to tell you her name, because you don’t need to know it, and you’re not allowed to know it. I’m going to ask you questions. I want you to look at her when you answer. She’s the only one you’re looking to please, because, us?” Owens looks around at his fellow Dark Ops leejes. “Our vote is a unanimous ‘kill the traitor.’ But her vote wins all.”
“You’re with the Republic,” Steadron says, relief evident in his voice for the first time.
Exo leans in, apparently too caught up in things to remember the plan: shut up once Owens and Andien arrive. “We’re the part of the Republic you don’t want a visit from.”
Owens nods. “A while back you told someone, Steadron, about a naval supply officer who had MAROs for sale. Two of them.”
The color drains from Steadron’s face.
“I… he…” Steadron begins. He’s rattled and unable to control the tenor of his voice. “He was a naval officer. We’d been flirting. Talking. Just trading gossip.”
Owens stares at Steadron expressionlessly, his dark shades reflecting Steadron’s quivering lip like a black mirror.
The reporter looks to Andien. She’s ice cold. No emotion. She just stands there, waiting. He clears his throat. Several times. Like there’s just not enough moisture left in his mouth to do the job.
“Listen, I don’t, I don’t know what I did wrong. I spoke in a secured location in the green zone about rumors the zhee were selling for a pack of niks. If you want to know his name, or the name of the supply officer I—”
Owens stands up and hurls his chair across the room. He kicks the bottom rungs of the stool, sending it sliding backward, causing Steadron’s spine to crash into a prep table several feet away. Cap then walks toward Steadron like a Wroemian bull cougar stalking its prey. “Don’t play with me, reporter. You think we don’t have that? All of that?”
He holds out a hand, and Andien places a datapad in Owens’s big paw. Cap holds it up. Steadron recoils at the grisly holophoto. The dead eyes of a naval supply clerk, disemboweled with his throat slashed, stare from the screen.
“There’s your supplier,” Owens says. He brings up another image—an ugly, bug-eyed man with a snarling countenance. “And there’s the guy who killed him. Ex-legionnaire named Grufua Cartyney. And I mean ex, not former. Kicked out when he should have been shot.”
Steadron attempts to look away, but Exo is there to grab his head and hold it in place. “Don’t make me pin your eyelids open with my vibroknife,” he warns, adding a hissing epithet. “You helped kill our brothers.”
Comprehension dawns on the reporter’s face. The MAROs, the Chiasm, Camp Forge… It’s the only story that’s gotten any play since it happened. I see the moment when Steadron realizes that he’s the guy who told the guy who met the guy… all the way to that damned day on Kublar.
“No!” Steadron manages, “I had no idea—no idea!—when I spoke to Tom that he would—”
“Show him the last picture,” Andien says, her voice filled with malice. Maybe I’d forgotten that what happened on Kublar mattered to her, just like it matters to the entirety of this kill team. Just like it matters to the Legion.
Owens makes a gesture at the datapad, and it advances to the next holo. “There’s your buddy Tom,” he says. “Ex-navy with an axe to grind. Runs to the MCR, buys—thanks to you—ordnance he has no business having. He was there when the supply officer was killed. He’s probably on his way back here to kill you next. But Dark Ops, we’re smarter than the MCR. So you get to live… if.” Owens lets the caveat sink in. “You get to live if you answer this next question to my friend’s satisfaction.”
Cap lets silence fill the room. It just hangs there until it’s replaced by Steadron’s ragged, excited breaths. He’s going to talk.
“You’re a lousy reporter,” Owens says. “You make up half your stories, too busy chasing the bottom of bottles and the hot young men of Kublar to do anything important. You haven’t told a real story since you spent six months embedded with the zhee of Nidreem. So it stands to reason, a guy like you, yeah, that guy isn’t going to hear anything as big as two MAROs for sale from some zhee street junkie. But you did hear it from someone. And we think we know who. But you’re either going to confirm it… or the if doesn’t happen, and you don’t live to see another Ankalor morning.”
Exo slowly removes his service pistol. He’s careful to stand conspicuously in Steadron’s peripheral vision. The charge-pack primes, and the safety is clicked off.
Steadron looks around the room, searching for an ally. I get the sense he’s about to remind us of the rights that have been afforded him by the House of Reason. But he doesn’t. He slumps down in his seat, head bowed.
“Jarref Varuud,” he says.
Owens turns around to look at Andien. She nods back at him.
“Congratulations,” Cap says to the reporter. “You’re one of the lucky few to meet a kill team and not end up killed.” He looks to the others. “Men.”
Masters and Exo grab Steadron by the arms and begin dragging him toward a walk-in refrigerator held open by Kags. The legs of the stool groan and pop as they’re dragged along the kitchen floor.
“Wait!” protests Steadron as he’s left sitting in the middle of the refrigerator. “You said… you said…”
“Said I wouldn’t kill you,” Owens says. He makes a wide gesture that encompasses all of us. “Said we wouldn’t kill you. But I also told the zhee who worked here that we’d pay part cash and part meat. So they’re gonna do the honors tomorrow morning. Sleep tight!”
Twenties slams the door, cutting off Steadron’s screams and sealing him inside. I know that Andien said someone from the green zone would pick him up and remove him from Ankalor. I know that this is Cap’s way of making the guy suffer—even a little—for what he helped accomplish. It doesn’t matter if he didn’t know, because he should have known better.
I know all this, but as I leave, I’m hoping that maybe the zhee day shift will show up a little early. That maybe Owens was telling Steadron the truth after all.
***
We’re sitting in our squad room on board the Intrepid. It’s a regular destroyer, a lot smaller than the Mercutio, but it’s been designated as our base of operations in this sector of the galaxy. We’re in the zhee cluster, the area of space between the four zhee home worlds. It’s been about a week since we took a drop shuttle from Ankalor up to here.
Whatever kill team was on the Intrepid before us, they left us a pretty good pad. Enormous holodisplay, nice collection of games, adjacent weight room with cardio mills and oxygen controls. We’re settling in, enjoying life on the ship. Appreciating how things have slowed down.
We’ve made the place our own and settled on calling our kill team Victory Squad. It feels right. We’ve gathered up what memorabilia we could from the company. Holopics of Rook, Quigs, Maldorn…all of our buddies lost. Kags was able to swing a deal through some old basic pals of his to have one of the blaster cannons from Pappy’s combat sled recovered from Kublar—the Republic jumped in late to join the Kublaren side that seemed most likely to win—and shipped here. Its barrels are bent sharply in two opposite directions. We mounted it to the wall, with a holopic of Pappy below it. When we have visitors, we tell them how Pappy, probably with a tumbler bot still cutting through his body, hoisted himself out of our casualty collection point, climbed onto a sled to man the twins, and unleashed hell on the koobs until the flood pulled him under.
Ooah, what a leej.
I’m cleaning my NK-4 while Kags does pull-ups in a doorwa
y. Exo and Twenties are going on hour number two of an argument about whether the preponderance of species in the galaxy should be produced as evidence for, or against, the existence of a deity. I have no idea where Wraith is, and Masters is watching something on the holodisplay that his mom would definitely not approve of.
“So…” Kags says between grunts as he pulls his chin up to the bar, “why is the Intrepid sitting in zhee space? You hear anything?”
“I haven’t heard anything,” I reply. “You hear anything?”
“No.”
“I haven’t heard anything either,” Twenties says, leaving his argument with Exo to chime in. “You, Exo?”
“Nah, I ain’t heard quad stack.”
Masters is too engrossed in his… entertainment choice to say anything. But I doubt he’s got any idea why we’re here.
A chime sounds as our squad room door swishes open. In steps Captain Owens with Wraith.
“Turn that garbage off, Masters,” Owens orders. “My wife would drop a fragger down my shorts if she even thought I was viewing that kind of entertainment.”
“Holoscreen off,” Wraith says, not waiting for Masters to give the command. The screen goes black.
“Got something else for you to watch,” Owens says, holding up a beat-up holodrive. “This doesn’t leave this room, and it’s courtesy our friend in Nether Ops. Who is single-handedly changing my impression of that organization. They want to catch the bad guys as much as we do. Or at least she does.”
Owens syncs up the holodrive with the display, and we watch as an interrogation feed begins to play. A zhee, unrestrained, sits in a standard Republic navy interrogation room. He looks calm and unconcerned. A black bar in the lower right corner counts the seconds that go by.
Andien walks on screen. “Thank you, Kash Varuud, for agreeing to this meeting. It shows great trust in the Republic given our past history, and it’s our hope that we can build on that trust for the mutual benefit of the galaxy.”
The zhee gives its donkey-like equivalent of a smile. It speaks in heavily accented Standard. “The only benefit to the galaxy is to accept the four true gods and kneel before their first fruits, the Nidreem.”
Andien smiles as if to say, “cute.” She makes a show of scrolling through her datapad. “Be that as it may, we both know that’s not the reason you’re here.”
“It is not,” Varuud concurs.
“You have information about the MCR’s illegal acquisition of Republic ordnance.”
“A good day, was the destruction of the Chiasm.”
“Man!” Exo shouts at the screen. “Screw this guy!”
We don’t answer our brother’s outburst, but I know we’re all feeling the same thing.
In the holovid, Andien has said something I couldn’t quite catch because Exo was shouting. I pick up her questioning at the tail end. “Is that true?” she finishes.
Varuud nods. “It is.”
“And what’s that contact’s name?”
“Scarpia.”
“Pause relay,” Wraith says to the holoscreen. The image freezes at his command.
Scarpia. It’s a name known to the Legion. He’s an MCR arms dealer, a high-value target that no one has ever gotten close to catching, though more than a few Legion and Dark Ops missions have attempted. He’s a ghost. And he’s also the only reason the MCR even get close to making a dent in their planetary raids against local militias and police forces. They still can’t stand up to the Legion and Republic military machine.
Or at least… they couldn’t. Not until Kublar.
If Scarpia was behind what happened there, taking him down… it has to happen.
“From this point onward,” Owens announces to the room, “bringing in Scarpia is the primary mission of this kill team.”
Twenties is still staring at the holoscreen. “Do we have an idea where he is?”
“Yeah,” Masters says. “Is that why we’re not at Kublar?”
“Not exactly,” Owens says, scratching his cheek through his thick beard. “But this is the place where we’ll be in the best position to do it when the time comes. Ford, jump to the marked spot on the holovid.”
Wraith commands the holoscreen to queue up a specified time stamp. Andien is seated, seemingly hanging on every word spoken by the zhee.
“But why here,” she says, “if he’s located somewhere further in the edge?”
“The Chiasm—gods be blessed for its ruin—was, as you would say, the opening act. A greater destruction, a more glorious triumph, is being arranged by Scarpia. The fall of the Republic is destined to flow from the might of the zhee.”
“And what is this ‘more glorious triumph’?” Andien asks.
“This I do not know. But it will flow from the zhee.”
“Then why stop it?” Andien asks, giving voice to the thoughts of my own mind.
Varuud splays his hand, as though his reasoning is self-evident. “The destruction of the Republic must not be accomplished by the planet Ankalor. When the Republic is toppled, it will be by the hands of the Nidreem, so that all may know who the gods have given preeminence.”
22
You’re Tom. Safe on Scarpia’s ship. Safe.
Night on the Smuggler’s End is a quiet time. Quiet and still. Nothing like being stuck in an escape pod with Frogg for three days’ ship time. No, it’s not like that at all.
So you lie awake in the night and tell yourself that no matter what the situation is, you’re going to have a good night’s rest. Because three days in the escape pod with Frogg and all his melancholy horror stories—along with the knife he constantly sharpened—well, honestly that got to you.
Six months’ deep cover and your nerves are fried. It’s to be expected, dear boy, is something X might have said. But never did.
And yet you think it would be wonderful, at this moment, if he had said that. That simple absolution could justify so much. Because internally you’re coming apart at the seams after the rendezvous and the jump back to Smuggler’s End.
It’s to be expected, dear boy.
Blanket absolution would justify so many things.
Being Tom.
Disappearing.
Illuria.
Your heart stops cold when you think about her alone in bed. That’s not true. It doesn’t stop cold. It speeds and grows hot.
And so you get out of that bed in the wide cool stateroom that is the opposite of the cramped escape pod, and you pad quietly across the thick carpet to the balcony beyond. The night is cool, and the sea is covered in beaten silver. Some lonely island passes far off to port. There’s not another ship out here on the sea tonight, and somehow that feels like the very picture you have of yourself at this dire, can’t-sleep late hour. It is really you alone on the sea of the galaxy, and there is no known port on the map of your heart.
Is it midnight?
Isn’t it always, lately?
You light a cigarette and push thoughts of Illuria away as you try to solve your two biggest problems.
“We’re so glad you made it back, Tom,” she said that afternoon on the landing pad. You could feel all four of her graceful green arms embracing you. You were awash in her pheromones. Drugged to the gills by the scent of her. The possibility of her. The trajectory of her.
And how bodies in motion exert some kind of gravity, that thing no one can really explain beyond one law describing it.
You once read a short story in university. Some ancient spacefaring tale.
Gravity is love in the swimming pool of the universe.
“Easy does it, my darling,” Scarpia joked on the platform as the sea breeze tugged and pulled at your clothing and caught and tossed her hair.
Had he been joking?
“You’ll kill our boy, Tom. He’s been cooped up with Froggy. He’s probably a half-crazed killer right now, what with that sort of influence.”
Frogg smiled wanly at that comment as you were hustled below to the saunas near the pool deck. A place o
f privacy away from the crew. After all, things had to be discussed.
There were rubdowns. A medical checkup. Food, fruit and cold liquor as your body was steamed and the grit washed off. The carnage on Ootani Station, and the escape pod afterward, slipping down the drains.
“How’d that go?” Frogg asked Scarpia, who made a face. Because of course we botched the job and didn’t get away clean. In fact we left a ship and bot.
“Well… we got it half right, Froggy,” Scarpia replied like a dissatisfied schoolmaster. As in, you tried your best, but clearly the material is beyond your ability.
Clearly.
The silence after this was enough for everyone to know that the botch was squarely placed on Frogg’s shoulders even though you said nothing about what really happened. Of course, everybody—even Frogg—knew you’d saved the day. Knew that you made sure the two of you wouldn’t be interrogated in some Dark Ops black site, spilling all the beans. Because when the Legion goes after you hammer and tongs, you confess.
Everybody confesses.
That hadn’t happened.
“I’m so glad. Tom…” Illuria practically moaned as she watched you getting a rubdown. Everybody was there. Scarpia popping chilled pieces of gauki fruit in his mouth. Listening and talking. Illuria was going off planet for a shopping trip soon. She was very excited about the latest fashions. Scarpia smiled at her like an adoring father.
A rather informal debrief is what it really was. Down there in the sauna, once you looked past the pleasantries.
“I’m just so glad you weren’t tortured, Tom,” said Illuria again when the questions got a little tough.
At that moment it was crystal clear to you that even if Frogg didn’t gut you with that wicked little pigasaur sticker he kept on his fat little thigh, Scarpia was going to have you thrown from the top deck of Smuggler’s End into shark-infested waters for seducing his girl by just being you. Tom, that is. Even if he had to import the sharks.
Kill Team (Galaxy's Edge Book 3) Page 17