Captain Feyodor would hate it. She ate alone in her room, working at the same time. Josune had lost count of the times one or another of the Hassim’s crew had brought a cold, congealed dinner back to the galley because Feyodor had forgotten to eat. But then, they hadn’t had anyone like Jacques to cook for them either.
Tonight, dinner was a white root vegetable in an exotic green cream sauce, with reconstituted rainbow chard on the side.
Josune closed her eyes and savored the smooth spices on her tongue. “This is so good, Jacques.” She would miss Jacques’s cooking.
“Of course it’s good. I cooked it.”
She wouldn’t miss the arrogant certainty that he was the best chef in the galaxy.
Pol and Qiang had their heads together, doing sums.
“Easy,” Pol said, “and we can still have a four-day layover at Atalante.” She looked up.
Captain Roystan shook his head. “We’ve been over this before, Pol. I’m not taking on extra work.”
“It’s not your decision. Shared profit, remember.”
Josune took a piece of spicy flatbread and stayed quiet. She was paid crew on this ship, not part of the profit share. This argument didn’t concern her.
“If you don’t like it, take your share and go. I have final say on what we carry, and where.”
“We spend a third of our time on rec leave. Spending credits we don’t have. We waste our ship capacity. We—”
The ship rocked. Proximity alarms blared.
A ship. Coming out of nullspace close by. Too close.
The emergency jets fired automatically, providing a counterforce to the oncoming ship, using the other ship’s speed to push their own ship back, so that the two ships traveled parallel.
Roystan and Guardian ran for the bridge.
The rest of them watched it on the screen.
“Why doesn’t the bastard slow down?” Jacques demanded, as The Road fired jets again. This time the burst was longer, more controlled. Josune could tell from the burn that Roystan was at the controls, not Guardian.
Josune had seen pilotless ships before. “There’s no one at the helm.”
Otherwise the pilot would be frantically firing his own jets to put as much distance as possible between the two ships. And answering his calls, for Roystan was hailing him.
“Dead ship,” Carlos said, softly beside her. Around the table, the crew sucked in breaths of anticipation.
“Don’t start counting your credits,” Josune said. “The pilot might have had a heart attack. The engines might have gone down. There’ll be people on there, for sure.”
“One can hope.” Carlos moved over to the screen feed and flicked through the external cameras to get a good image of the ship. “Let’s see what our treasure might be.”
Josune put a hand to her mouth as the view of the ship magnified. She recognized it.
Roystan must have identified the ship’s beacon then, for he changed his message. “Hassim, are you receiving us? Please respond.”
* * *
• • •
The Hassim still wasn’t talking to them half an hour later, when Guardian and Roystan finally had the two ships drifting together at the same speed and distance.
“Hassim.” Pol’s voice was hushed. “Do you know what that ship is?”
Roystan ignored her. “Four of us will go across.” He unlocked the weapons cupboard. “Me, Guardian, Qiang, and Josune. The Hassim crew won’t have deserted their ship, not without a fight.”
“Josune’s not in the profit share,” Pol said. “Why should she go across?”
“Because she’s an engineer,” Roystan said. “If they’re in trouble, that’s probably what they need.”
“Why not send Carlos, then?”
“Because Carlos is our engineer and we can’t afford to lose him.” Roystan handed out weapons. A blaster for Guardian, a stunner for himself. Qiang had a blaster. “Don’t forget, this could be a trap.”
He hesitated at Josune.
“Stunner.” She didn’t want to kill her own crew accidentally. Plus, she had a sparker strapped under her shirt. Not that she planned on telling him that. She certainly didn’t intend to use it, not unless her crewmates were alive and needed help.
“A trap?” Pol asked. “This far into the legal zone?”
“It will be a trap if we don’t get over there soon,” Guardian said. “Every second we delay means someone else might take our prize.”
Salvage law had come into being to keep the spaceways clean, for nothing was more dangerous than space debris colliding with a ship, or a ship hitting debris as it came out of nullspace. Salvage law gave the finders the right to sell the ship and everything on it—provided all the crew were dead. A ship like the Hassim would draw a lot of salvage hunters.
Josune shivered.
“Let’s go,” Roystan said. “Be wary.”
* * *
• • •
Josune expected trouble.
Captain Feyodor hadn’t yet contacted her. She’d had time. If there was anyone alive on that ship, they wouldn’t be Hassim crew. And they would be waiting for them.
As soon as the airlock opened, Josune fired.
Two men in business suits went down, one of them spraying blaster fire up and over their heads as he fell.
If she’d been any slower the boarding party would be dead.
Guardian, from behind her, yelped as the blaster of the third man caught him.
Roystan’s stunner hummed at her ear. Close enough to make the hair on her head crackle as the beam passed over her shoulder. The third man went down, his blaster also spraying the walls, thankfully wide of the airlock.
There were spare panels in cargo. They could repair the damage.
Josune stepped out cautiously, stunner ready.
“They’ll be watching from the bridge,” Roystan said. “They’ll send reinforcements.”
Not likely. The Hassim wasn’t an easy ship to hack the controls on. She’d helped make it that way. The chances of someone external getting the ship’s cameras to work were remote.
There’d been a fight at the airlock. Five people dead. Three strangers, all in business suits, plus Reba from cargo, and Deepak, Josune’s own second engineer. He’d been a good second.
The Hassim carried a crew of twenty. By necessity—and experience—they could all fight. Reba and Deepak were unlikely to have been downed by just three people. There’d be more. A lot more.
Roystan swallowed hard as he turned away. “Walk carefully, people.”
“Internal or external?” Qiang wondered.
Josune looked at her.
“This is the Hassim. Wouldn’t put it past the crew to mutiny.”
She had to bite down hard to stop the angry denial and knew her jaw showed white.
“External,” Roystan said. “That’s a company outfit.”
Company clothes were a uniform, of sorts. The attackers all wore suits. Different colors, to be sure, but they were still suits. Deepak’s casual coveralls were outlandish beside them. Cargo master Reba wore suits herself on occasion. She spent time with company representatives. Today she was in her nonsuit mode. Sweats, which had soaked up the rapidly drying blood beneath her. Bloodstains spattered the hallway behind her. She’d been stabbed elsewhere but had still run here to make a last stand with Deepak.
Josune silently picked up Reba’s sparker. Small, like her own. And one of the blasters from the dead company men. The charge was full. She put her stunner away and settled the blaster in its place.
“Could still be crewmates,” Qiang said.
Roystan pointed to the body Josune had taken the blaster from. “That is not one of the Hassim crew. The Hassim last took on new crew ten years ago.”
In the time between identifying the ship
and them getting here, Josune hadn’t seen Roystan check any records. How did he know how often the Hassim’s crew had changed? Had he recognized her? She hoped her modded body was good enough to fool him.
Roystan moved across to check Guardian’s injury. “You’ll be fine. We’ll dress it when we get home, which will be enough until we get you to a genemod machine.”
Josune made for the passageway that led toward the bridge. Roystan motioned her to wait.
Behind them, Qiang inspected the suits on the dead company people. “Nice suits. I’d work for a company that paid well enough to afford these.”
“You’d work for anyone who pays you,” Guardian said. “All of them at the same time.”
Roystan shushed them. He was listening, waiting to see if anyone was about to attack.
Josune had the codes. She could have logged in through her implant and seen what was happening on the whole ship. Except if she turned it on, the telltale brightness under her eyelid would give her away, and she hadn’t mentioned that particular mod before. It wasn’t something she’d have been able to afford on the Breadbasket.
She waited, the longest five minutes of her life, until Roystan waved them on.
They found another body halfway down the passageway. Indira Walken, one of the Hassim’s general hands. Kristopher Gunn, another general hand, outside the rec room. Josune was glad to see thrice that number in suits. The crew had made the invaders fight for their prize, at least.
There were ten bodies in the rec room. Tied together in a circle, facing inward. Someone had gone around the outside of the circle with a blaster, so their backs were charred but their faces untouched. All of them dead. All of them crew.
The bodies were starting to smell. They’d been dead a while. How many company people would it take to do that to the Hassim’s crew, who were prepared for boarders?
Someone would pay for this.
“Tied them together, then executed them,” Qiang said.
Roystan gulped, then bolted.
“He has such a weak stomach.” Guardian looked green himself. He clapped Josune on the back with his good hand. “You’re all right, Josune. You’re one of us. Stronger stomach.”
It was a nightmare Josune was never going to wake from.
They moved on cautiously.
Josune’s shoulders itched.
More than once she was tempted to access the system, because surely giving oneself away was smarter than allowing yourself to be killed.
They passed a link node.
She didn’t have to give herself away. “I’ll see if I can log in.”
“Won’t work,” Roystan said. “The Hassim codes are the best you can buy. You won’t crack it. It’s our only advantage. You can bet the company are trying to hack it, too.”
How did Roystan know so much about the Hassim?
“Why were they waiting for us at the airlock, then?” Qiang asked.
“They heard us coming. They’d have felt our shuttle locking onto the outside of a ship.”
“I still want to try,” Josune said. “I’m good.” But Roystan was right. There was no way a young engineer from an old rim ship could break into the Hassim’s system. A pity he knew that. Otherwise she could have pretended she had cracked the codes.
Did it matter now? She was on her own ship.
“Down,” Roystan yelled, and the heat of a blaster whooshed down the passage.
Josune used the cover of the blaster heat to blink on her implant as she dropped. Five blinks turned it on.
She checked the heat patterns. She didn’t need to know who they were fighting, just where the fighters were.
Two warm bodies at the junction of the passage. Another around the corner. Five more heat signatures on the bridge, and three at the airlock. They should have killed the ones at the airlock.
One of the warm bodies at the junction moved. Josune fired as he edged around the corner. She took out part of the passage as well, but she scored.
The other two heat signals started moving away from them. They moved fast.
Josune jumped to her feet. Took off after them. Pounded into the passageway as they turned the next corner. She kept running.
“Wait,” Roystan said, but he followed.
The company men were heading for the bridge. “Close Sector 3A doors,” Josune whispered, and hoped Roystan was far enough behind not to hear.
The sector doors closed smoothly in front of the company men.
Josune rounded that corner. She fired at the man on the left.
He went down. The other man went down seconds after, stunned by Roystan.
“Thanks.” She had to hold herself back from using the blaster to kill the man Roystan had stunned. These people had killed her crewmates. None of them warranted a stunner. They all deserved blasters, as painful and as deadly as those they had inflicted on the Hassim’s crew.
“You’re very good at this.”
“Breadbasket. Lots of practice.”
Roystan looked at her, but all he said was, “You might want to turn that thing in your eye off before the others get here.”
Busted. How much did he know? She touched her finger to her lid and applied the gentle pressure that was the signal to turn off.
“Five heat signals on the bridge. That’s all I can see.”
“Impressive bionics.” But Roystan didn’t say anything else.
Qiang and Guardian thundered up then.
“Crazy woman,” Qiang said. “You could have got us killed. If that’s how you fought on your ship, no wonder the cattle ships got her.”
* * *
• • •
Close to the bridge Roystan stepped up beside her. “Can you tell where they are?” he asked softly.
He was shielding her from the other two. She blinked fast, five times, and touched her finger to her eyelid as soon as she had the heat signals. “Two at the center console, one behind the secondary panel at the far left end, two either side of the door, waiting for us.” She kept it soft, for Roystan’s ears alone.
She rethought the signals she’d seen. Whoever was inside had locked the door. She blinked again and unlocked the doors. Touched off again. It would give them a few extra seconds, because the people inside would expect them to have to work at the lock. They’d know whoever entered would be enemy. No doubt they’d already tried unsuccessfully to contact their own people at the airlock. Josune knew it wasn’t her own crew, for they would have recognized her and said something. At least, she hoped they would. They’d only seen her new body once, the afternoon she’d left for The Road. They knew she’d shoot if they didn’t identify themselves. Any of them would have. It wasn’t the first time the Hassim had been attacked.
“Right.” Roystan looked at Qiang and Guardian. “We’ll sweep the room as we enter. Josune and I will fire close to the door. Josune left, me right. Qiang, you take the far end. Start from the left and sweep across to the right. Guardian? Do you have any aim with that left hand?”
Guardian shrugged.
“Aim for the center panel. There’ll be someone there. Keep moving. Don’t make yourselves an easy target. And don’t either of you shoot us by mistake.”
Roystan looked to be around Josune’s natural age. He’d spent at least fifteen years running a cargo route well inside the legal zone—Josune had checked before she’d come on board. Where had he got his fighting experience?
Roystan opened the door. They went in firing.
The two men at the door went down. A pity Roystan only had a stunner. They’d have to worry about the company men recovering. And they were all men. Which cut down the number of companies it might be, but that still left a lot it could be.
Guardian’s aim was short. Roystan pushed him out of the way. Josune left that fight to him and turned to the two men at the main console.
They’d been working at the panel and had to scramble for weapons. Qiang finished one, Josune the other. Satisfactorily dead, unlike the company man flat on the floor at the secondary panels. Another body to worry about when the stun wore off.
Josune looked around.
Bodies lay everywhere. The rest of the crew. Along with—she counted—eight dead company men. And two not-so-dead, whom they’d have to dispose of somehow.
“Underestimated the Hassim crew, at a guess.” Roystan sounded sad. “It wouldn’t be the first time a company has done that.”
It was certainly the first time a company had bested the crew, though.
Josune moved over to where Captain Feyodor sprawled, as ungainly in death as she had been in life. She’d fallen against the main console, her palm flat against the nullspacer button, her body twisted awkwardly over the top of it.
“May your Afterlife be as adventurous as this life.”
Roystan looked at her sharply.
“It’s a saying we have on my world.” It wasn’t; they’d said it on Feyodor’s world. “Don’t you say that for the dead?”
Captain Feyodor would have said it for all her crew. Josune would say it as well.
Roystan shook his head and looked down at the captain’s body. “Last thing she did was nullspace. I’m guessing she did it to escape whoever was attacking her. A random jump, to give her and her crew a chance. The company would have had a ship back there, waiting to board her.”
Except it hadn’t been a random jump. Tears blurred Josune’s view. She was glad Roystan pushed the body aside and hunched over the controls so he didn’t see her face. The jump had saved her ship, but it hadn’t saved her crew. She breathed in deeply and breathed out through her mouth to hide her shuddering sigh.
“Lucky she jumped into our space,” Qiang said.
Josune checked the boards, discreetly whispering the codes to her implant to open the cameras. “They got into the security system.” She pulled it up. Basic access, which was all the company would have managed.
Stars Uncharted Page 3