Roystan rotated through the cameras. “Can’t see the cabins. No one is in the passageways.”
There were cameras in the cabins, but they were coded to Feyodor and Josune alone. You needed cameras on a spaceship, because if anything went wrong—say an air breach—you needed to see inside every compartment, but that didn’t mean you should spy on people.
Roystan turned back to the crew on the floor. Counted them. “Five here, ten back there. Two at the airlock. Two on the way.” He looked around. “There’s one missing.”
How did Roystan know so much about the Hassim’s crew?
“Probably still in his bunk,” Qiang said. “Waiting for the fight to be over.”
Not on the Hassim.
Their communicators pinged. A group call.
“Is anyone alive over there?” Pol demanded. “Is it our salvage?”
“I’ll check the cabins.” Josune walked away numbly, blindly, hardly hearing Roystan’s “Wait. Go in pairs.”
To Pol and everyone here, this ship was money. Good money, for this was the Hassim. Josune’s friends were dead. Her home would be picked over by these scavengers. Unless Josune claimed the ship as her right.
She could do it. She had all the codes. The others would think she was stealing their salvage. Except, perhaps, Roystan.
Did she want the ship? She’d never be able to forget the dead everywhere.
Guardian caught up to her. “It’s all right. Nothing to be ashamed of. Dead people aren’t something you see every day.”
“And you do?” Josune didn’t look at him. She had probably seen more dead bodies than Roystan’s crew combined. But this was different. This was personal.
“A lot of us came from the rim,” he said, and she had to remind herself about the Breadbasket. “That doesn’t mean you get used to the bodies. Even if we pretend to.”
In the six weeks she’d been on The Road, she’d spoken to Guardian three times outside of their dinner conversations. Once to ask him where supply cupboard three was, and twice to say, “Excuse me,” as she came up behind him in one of the narrower passageways.
“Thank you, Guardian.”
His smile was a self-conscious twist of the mouth. “Just don’t show any weakness around Pol or Qiang. They’ll both use it.”
“Thank you,” she said again.
Their search of the cabins produced no one.
“I don’t like it. They’re a crew member down.” Roystan frowned at Josune as if he suspected something.
“Who cares?” Pol had joined them on the Hassim. “Can we get to the important part? Claiming this ship as our salvage.”
If Josune was ever going to claim the ship as hers, the time was now, but Pol had a blaster, and greed in her eyes. She’d use the weapon if she had to.
Josune stayed silent.
“Let’s not make the claim right away.”
“Roystan. You know what ship this is.”
“Precisely. As soon as anyone knows it’s here, and salvage, every fortune hunter in the galaxy will come. It will be a bloodbath.”
“This far inside the legal zone?”
“Even this far.” Roystan refused to be swayed by Pol’s entreaty. Or by any of the other crew siding with her. “Not until we have everything we want from the ship. Not until we’re ready to sell it.”
“The bodies need disposal,” Josune said. No one but her was going to send her friends off. “What do we do about these?” She indicated their prisoners. They’d bound them in quicktape from engineering and brought them to the bridge where they could keep an eye on them. The company men had since come around.
“Lifeboats,” Roystan said.
“This is our ship,” one of the prisoners snarled. “We’ll take you through the courts for theft.”
Josune thought he might be in charge.
Inside the legal zone, the companies had a formal agreement and a court they all contributed to and abided by—which was why it was called the legal zone in the first place.
Roystan laughed, and crawled under the panel. “If it truly were your ship we’d give it to you. But this is the Hassim. Everyone knows her crew. Josune?”
She jumped, thinking he knew who she was. Then she realized what he wanted. She unhooked the portable toolkit from her belt and handed it down to him. Roystan was after the ship’s memory. Everything that happened on ship went through that memory. Every keystroke, every spoken command, every change of course, every resource used. With that memory they’d have a full record of where the Hassim had been, and every interaction on ship. Even Josune’s. Somewhere in there they would hear Captain Feyodor ordering Josune to find Hammond Roystan. Would hear every ping from Josune’s marker.
It didn’t matter. By the time they hacked the memory, Josune would be gone.
The company man said, “We’ve already staked our claim.”
Roystan’s laugh echoed in the chamber he’d opened. “Was that before or after Captain Feyodor jumped through nullspace?”
“What if they did register the ship?” Pol asked.
Roystan grunted, and worked something loose. Josune watched. He’d pulled a memory out before.
“They didn’t.”
The company man smiled. “It’s our word against yours in the courts.”
Josune didn’t see Pol raise her blaster, but suddenly the room smelled of more burned bodies, and the company men were smoking.
Roystan bumped his head coming fast out from under the panel. It was the only sound.
“Now they won’t say anything,” Pol said.
A screw dropped behind Roystan. It made a tiny plink on the floor.
“You ever murder anyone in cold blood again, Pol, and you’re off my ship. This is your only warning.”
Roystan lay back to get at the panel again. Josune saw that his hands were shaking.
“I’ll start the disposal process,” Josune said, and walked out. She didn’t say a word to Pol.
* * *
• • •
Qiang and Guardian came to help her.
“I hate this part.” Qiang started to drag one of the company bodies across to where Josune was straightening Deepak.
“Don’t.” She knew she’d made it too sharp. “Let’s do two groups. Put the company people into a different pile.”
“But that’ll take another rocket.”
She didn’t care. “Separate piles.”
“I’m not wasting credits on extra rockets.”
“It’s not your credits or rockets to start with. You wouldn’t have them without this ship.”
Guardian put up his good hand to stop them. “We can put them together at the end.”
Not if Josune could prevent it.
When Reba and Deepak were straight and fastened together, Josune grabbed the trolley from the store and went to collect the others. It was only as she was loading Captain Feyodor onto the trolley that she thought they might ask how she had found it.
They didn’t.
When she was done, she touched each of them and whispered Captain Feyodor’s “May your Afterlife be as adventurous as this life” to each of them.
Guardian and Qiang moved aside so she could do the same thing to the company people. She didn’t want to, but they’d think that strange. She studied the bodies while she thought about how to get out of it.
Half the men wore black birds pinned to their collar. A bird of prey, wings wide, talons stretched out to attack. She knelt to study one more closely. A company pin, although she’d never seen this design before. As soon as she tracked down which company it belonged to, she’d know who she had to destroy.
“How long does it take to say a prayer?” Qiang demanded.
Josune pulled the pin off each man as she whispered, “May you get the Afterlife you deserve,” and di
dn’t think either of them noticed the change.
* * *
• • •
Roystan backed up Josune’s decision to split the two groups. “One rocket won’t make much difference to the profits,” he told Qiang. “This is the Hassim, after all.”
Or an extra four rockets in the end. Roystan sent each sorry human parcel swiftly and surely heading for the nearest sun. Josune was grateful for the mercy.
Reaction was starting to set in, and she wasn’t sure if she imagined Roystan’s bow and the quiet murmur of “You were an admirable foe, Taki Feyodor. May your Afterlife be more satisfying than this life.”
She didn’t imagine the avarice that set in after that—although she was almost too numb to think—with Qiang and Pol going through the cabins to see what valuables they could find. She wanted to scream at them, use the sparker under her jacket to keep them away from other people’s private belongings.
Maybe Roystan knew she was almost at the breaking point, for he looked at her. “Go back to the ship, Josune. You too, Guardian. Send Carlos over. He can claim what he wants for the engines. Send Jacques over, too. He can claim any cargo he wants.”
“Sure.” She didn’t look back. Her old life was dead.
* * *
• • •
Josune examined the pins as soon as she was back on The Road. No obvious electronics, but that could be hidden. The black metal was an enameled platinum-transuranic alloy. Very expensive, not something a company would hand out to every employee.
An elite group, then. She scanned one and sent it through the link to find out which company it was. No result. That was unusual.
She clutched the tiny pin in her hand. It was her only link with her past life.
This and the marker she’d secreted in engineering so the Hassim could track her.
The marker was useless now. Feyodor would never track her again, and it would be one more black mark against her if Roystan discovered it.
Josune retrieved the marker, tossed the tiny device into the recycler, and stood watching long after it had turned to ashes. Like her life. Nothing but ashes.
She spent the rest of the shift mindlessly working through the tasks on Carlos’s work-to-do list. Crossing each item off after she’d done it. Deliberately not thinking about the disaster that had happened.
She did as she was bid from her end as Roystan lashed the two ships together. Even admired his technique. He used a classic Endian truss. You couldn’t link two ships more securely than that.
The shuttle was loaded, and she heard the minor jets fire as the calibrator compensated for the extra weight.
She stayed in engineering as Guardian went down to greet the crew, and watched their return on the screen. It didn’t need the close-up to see what Pol was thinking.
She watched Jacques and Qiang unload.
“Empty.” Pol was loud and angry in the silence of the cessation of the shuttle engines.
“Doesn’t look empty to me,” Jacques said.
“What do you mean, empty?” Guardian demanded.
“There’s nothing,” Carlos said.
No treasure, he meant. The Hassim was an exploration ship, and people expected her to be stocked to the top of her holds with her discoveries. Down in engineering, Josune smiled grimly to herself. Why would it be? If you were exploring, you needed supplies. Food, spare parts, raw materials. And empty cargo holds.
Jacques was morose. “The food is useless. Most of it’s from Pisces III. What did they eat?”
The Hassim hadn’t been anywhere near Pisces III for months. Feyodor must have gone there after she’d left Josune and stocked up for a long trip. What had she found?
Roystan rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted. They all looked exhausted. “If you don’t like it, Jacques, we’ll sell it off.”
Pol stepped up to them. Josune couldn’t see what she did, but Jacques stepped back fast. “We’re not wasting good credits on food when there’s plenty to spare. It’s the only thing the damned ship did have. You’ll take it, and be grateful.”
Jacques turned away. “Roystan gets indigestion with food from Pisces III.”
“We don’t.”
“Enough,” Roystan said. “We’re all tired. We’re exhausted, and I’d kill for some of your spicy flatbread, Jacques. Let’s get this stuff unloaded so we can eat.”
Even Josune’s mouth watered.
Roystan looked around. “Where’s Josune?”
“Holed up in engineering,” Jacques said. “Can’t take the bodies.”
“There’s no bodies here,” Qiang said. “She’s trying to get out of helping.”
“Give her space.” Guardian scratched at his newly dressed arm. “She’s not used to bodies.”
“She was happy enough to create them,” Qiang said. “She killed more than the rest of us put together.”
Josune turned off the feed. She didn’t plan on staying on The Road. But first, she had to discover what Captain Feyodor had wanted Roystan for.
She was on her knees in front of the engine she was disassembling, staring at nothing, when Roystan stopped in front of her. She jumped. He’d moved so quietly she hadn’t seen him arrive.
Roystan squatted down beside her. She heard his knees creak, understood the wince that went with it. “You’re off this ship at the next port.”
She’d been expecting that. Hadn’t expected feeling like he’d stabbed her in the gut, or the tightening of her throat. She didn’t want to leave.
She was being stupid. She had nowhere to go, that was all.
She blinked twice, forced herself to stop. Nodded.
“I’ll pay you a month’s wages.” A pause. “It’s a pity. We could have . . . You were good crew. And your bioware saved our lives, but I can’t endanger my crew.”
“Thank you.” She went back to cleaning the part she’d been working on, not trusting herself to say more. She’d miss Roystan, with his crooked smile and his insistence on them eating together. The way you could sit and work beside him in a companionable silence.
She’d only known him six weeks.
The silence stretched. “Which company are you with?” Roystan asked eventually.
It was a natural assumption. Few people outside the companies could afford the bionics she had behind her eye.
“Not a company.” She owed him that honesty. “Private.” If you could call ship crew private.
“Mods like yours cost company-type credits.”
Josune shook her head. “I’m an explorer.”
“An explorer!” He sighed. “And here you are.”
“Here I am.” If he was kicking her off at the next stop, she had to use the time she had. “Why did Captain Feyodor want to talk to you?”
Roystan’s gaze locked on hers. He had hazel eyes. Gray, flecked with green and gold and brown. She couldn’t look away. “You know the problem with modern-day explorers?”
“What?”
“They’re too busy following others. Not prepared to do the work themselves. Don’t follow Taki Feyodor, Josune. Go make your own finds. Don’t take someone else’s seconds.”
Roystan hadn’t realized who she was, even with her question. Which was good, because he’d force her to claim the Hassim if he knew, and Pol would kill her if she tried. She could kill Pol first, but did she really want the Hassim now?
“Feyodor never found the big one.”
“There’s more than one big one, Josune. What we get out of the Hassim memory will make us all rich.”
There was only one big one for her. “Captain Feyodor had a dream.” So had she, and no matter what Roystan said, she would follow that dream.
Roystan shook his head.
Jacques’s voice came over the ship address system, and Josune was more glad than she expected to be for the interruptio
n. “This spicy flatbread is coming out of the oven in two minutes and fifteen seconds.”
Josune set a stass field over the parts and stood up. A stass field prevented parts moving when a ship jolted unexpectedly. But The Road wasn’t a ship that jolted unexpectedly. Not often. Not like the Hassim, which got attacked a lot.
Had been attacked a lot.
“We can’t let Jacques’s food go cold.” She knew her voice wasn’t steady.
Roystan stood up too, although he made more work of it. He needed time in a machine, but it wasn’t her business to tell him that.
3
NIKA RIK TERRI
When Nika came back into her own body—exactly twenty-four hours after she had left it—she found she was wedged between a drainpipe and the wall on the ledge above the second floor at the back of her studio. The ledge was wet. It had been raining.
Tamati had known about the twenty-four-hour limit. He wanted her dead—he’d been going to kill her anyway, and would be doubly determined after he found she’d locked him out—but he wouldn’t want to kill himself accidentally. Therefore, she’d be safe until she tried to move.
How had he even gotten up here?
The smell of frying glee-fish from the restaurant across the road and two doors down was strong in the air. Nika breathed in the familiar smell of it. Her smells, translated by a brain that recognized them. A door opened; sounds spilled out and were silenced as the door closed again. Kafismoke spiraled up.
Undercook Amarri often ducked out for a few puffs.
Nika peered down and almost lost her breath. How was she going to get down?
“Hey. Amarri.”
Amarri didn’t look up. A moment later the noise from the shop kitchen spilled out again, and Amarri was gone.
She lay back and waited for the queasiness to pass. Amarri would be out again later for another puff. Meantime, she could wait. She still had eleven days.
Provided she didn’t freeze to death first. Or it didn’t start to rain again.
The restaurant stayed open till 3:00 A.M. Plenty of time for Amarri to duck out another five times. Unless they’d had a quiet night, in which case they’d all be gone by one. Maybe they’d gone already.
Stars Uncharted Page 4