I was assigned a chamber with a small Brethren family. I vaguely remembered eating with them at some point in our travels. They let me have a corner and didn’t seem inclined to bother me anytime soon.
I rolled out the sleeping pallet the Speaker had provided me and laid down, throwing an arm over my eyes and pretending to sleep. Once the others settled in for the night, I asked Angel if she’d made any progress.
“The encryption on this is a stone bitch, Muck. Dangerous too. I don’t want anything seeping out past me and infecting you.”
“You’re talking about it like a living virus. I thought it was just encrypted data.”
“It is . . . and it isn’t. This thing is . . . totally different from anything in my experience. You know how I hate admitting I need help?”
My answer was a broad grin, hidden beneath my arm.
“Well, I need help on this one. Or a lot of time.”
“We may have more of the latter than the former, given that we’re on the slow ride to . . . wherever.” I realized I had no idea where the Revenant Fleet was headed.
“I don’t know either . . . and there’s no infonet I can query.”
“Really? I thought you could interface with any such nets . . .”
“Dugra don’t use an equivalent system as far as I—or any of the researchers allowed aboard a Dugra ship since humanity encountered them—can tell.”
“Doesn’t seem possible, given all they accomplished.”
“Well, there’s that old saw about sufficiently advanced tech appearing as magic to the uninitiated.”
“True enough . . . but I find it hard to believe no one has ever taken something Dugra-made apart to see how it works.”
“The Mentors attempted it and lost an entire fleet. Revenant Fleets no longer call on planets that have a number of Mentors present.”
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“It’s not well-known.”
“I’ll ask Speaker Naomi tomorrow sometime. Tired right now.”
“We’ve had a busy few days, what with the killing, the maiming, and escaping that fate ourselves.”
I snorted, started to drift off to sleep.
“Well, isn’t that something . . .”
“What?”
“You are far more comfortable with violence than Siren ever was . . .”
The smell of burning corpses invaded my head, crushing my peace with memories of things best forgotten. I pushed them down with an effort. Long practice hadn’t made it any easier either. “Certain kinds, I suppose.”
I know Angel could feel the disquiet the memories caused, because she sent something swimming through my system to help me sleep.
* * *
I remained asleep for nearly thirty hours, missing our transport’s reintegration with the Revenant Fleet that had spawned it. I woke to an empty chamber feeling more fatigued than I had when I crashed, but that could as easily have been a result of a hungry belly trying to gnaw its way through my spine.
“Before you ask, I haven’t made much progress breaking the encryption.”
“It’s all right. How about something to eat?”
“Your roommates were summoned to a meal about twenty minutes ago. From what I could hear, they’re about five chambe—”
Angel stopped midsentence as another Dugra appeared at the chamber opening. I could tell it wasn’t the same one that had led us here, as the new arrival had the head of some long-beaked bird swaying on a metalline neck between its shoulders.
“You are correct,” she told me. “The heads are the single greatest indicators of individuality, according to the research I have read.”
“What does it want?” I asked as the thing floated into the room and approached me.
“I have no idea.”
It stopped before me, liquid mercury of its gaze boring into me. After a pause lengthy enough to again trigger my fight-or-flight response, the Dugra’s chest opened up to reveal a human-made communication handset, the kind usually slaved to a nearby quantum radio, or q-comm, for instantaneous and extremely long-range communication. Whisker-like brass tentacles brought it out of the cavity and presented the palm-sized device to me, a glowing amber telltale indicating an incoming call.
“Who the hell is calling me?” Q-comms were not cheap, and I didn’t know anyone, except perhaps Bellasanee, who would spend so much merely to talk to me.
“Good question.”
I took the handset, jumping when a blue spark leaped from one of the Dugra’s tiny tentacles into my hand.
“Shit,” I muttered, more out of fear than any real pain. “Can you track the call?”
“Once you answer the damn thing. Right now all I have is the q-comm several decks above us.”
“All right.” I thumbed the device active.
“You there, Muck?”
“Yes, who is this?”
A chuckle. “You don’t recognize the voice, Muck?”
“Captain Obron?”
“The very same. I would ask how you’ve been, but I know you haven’t been doing all that well since we kicked you out of the service.”
A violent sense of dislocation struck, leaving me lightheaded and speechless. Obron had been the one to bring me in for trial. A ruthless, pitiless bastard, Obron had run the Hounds, an elite team specializing in making arrests of heavily armed and well-trained warriors that were suspected of committing crimes against their fellow soldiers.
Hard cases.
People like me. He’d been my CO when I’d burned all those soldiers alive.
“These memories are not yours, Muck. Not. Yours. You don’t—can’t—know what happened,” Angel said.
Except I knew those soldiers were, in fact, dead. On my watch.
“I’m told you’ve been misbehaving again, Muck. I’d hate to have to put you down for good this time. Last time was hard on me and the troops. You were well liked. Nobody wanted to bring you in.” I could almost see him shrug. “This time, though, I doubt the new guys will have any such compunction.”
Angel sent something cool running through my veins. I took a deep, steadying breath, another.
“You still there, Muck?”
“I am. Just wondering when you sold out to the highest bidder, and how much they overpaid for your services, you cheap son of a bitch.”
“Ah, no need to be so prickly, Muck. I’m just trying to keep you alive. The people you pissed off this time, they don’t care how I get you to stop interfering with their operations, they just want you stopped. So I thought to myself, ‘Muck can be reasonable. Muck won’t paint himself into another corner if given half the chance.’ So here I am, giving you the courtesy of a call before I let the Hounds loose on your ass.”
“Fuck you and your Hounds, Obron.”
“That’s Captain Obron, civilian.”
“Fuck you, Captain Obron.”
A longer chuckle this time. “I’ll take that as a no, then . . .”
“You can take it any way you like, just be sure to send it on to your corporate masters the next time you’re on your knees polishing their knobs.”
“The transmitter he is using is in-system and moving very quickly to intercept the Revenant Fleet,” Angel said.
“Will they be allowed to dock?” I thought, looking at the Dugra still hovering before me.
“They must believe so,” she replied.
“Ah well. My Hounds will enjoy putting you down, this time for good,” Obron went on.
“I’m not going to sit idle this time and let you pin some ginned-up case on me.”
A pause the length of an indrawn breath told me I’d scored a hit, confirming Angel’s conjecture. “Any resistance will only ensure you die harder, Muck.”
It was my turn to pause. Something finally clicked over in my head, making it
clear that whatever had happened to me during the war, it wasn’t as I remembered it.
Anger followed the realization. Such anger! It was like nothing I’d ever known before: a thing apart from me, a beast that rattled the cage of my skull with every beat of its great heart.
I had given everything to them—and believed them when they said I was a criminal, unworthy of the uniform, honors, or the benefits of service.
I had taken on their lies and made them my own.
Molten anger made my tongue thick. “I won’t let you mess with my head either way. Not again. Never again.” I closed the circuit and tossed the device at the Dugra.
The not-dead’s tentacles caught the handset with alarming speed and a hissing of hidden mechanisms, placing it in the cavity even as the alien retreated from the room.
“Wait!” I called.
The thing paused, mercury gaze raising chills on my arms.
“Are there any human ships docked with the fleet at this time?”
A moment’s clicking of gears was followed by a slow but unmistakable shake of the head.
“Can you prevent the ship that’s approaching from docking?”
More clicking, a few sparks, then a slow nod.
“Will you?”
This time, the shake of the head was immediate.
“Damn. What would make you do so?”
It held out both spindly arms, bobbing them slowly up and down in counterpoint like an ancient balance, the bone digits of one claw pointing at me as it raised that arm above the other.
“I would need to pay?”
Another pause, another nod.
“Do I have anything you would accept in payment?”
My question gave rise to the longest pause yet, this one accompanied by a series of sparks as well as clicking gears.
Despite the long deliberation, the pause still ended in a shake of the head.
We could not rely on the Dugra, it seemed.
* * *
“Well, Angel, any bright ideas?” I had an idea, but she might have a better—or, at least, safer—plan. The need to figure things out had cooled my volcanic anger somewhat, leaving a thin crust of calm over the roiling hatred that would overcome me if I let it. I couldn’t let that happen. Angel—and Siren—were depending on me.
“Unfortunately, no.”
I chuckled, grabbing my pack and running through a supply check to distract myself while my subconscious worked the problem.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just a second . . .” I said, various steps of a possible plan clicking together behind my eyes as I left the chamber. I didn’t know where I was going, just that I had to keep myself distracted a little longer.
I made it to the end of the corridor before everything came together. Satisfied, I thought about it a moment, visualizing each step as clearly as I could, both for Angel’s benefit and my own.
“I see . . .” Angel said, thoughtful. “That’s . . . efficient. Dangerous as hell, even a little elegant . . . And my end will be a challenge.”
“But you can handle it?”
“Yes, civilian.”
I could sense her approval. “Anything to add?”
“Warn the Brethren?”
“Not sure I have to.”
Angel slammed images of previous actions through my optic nerve. “The Hounds are not known for their delicacy with bystanders.”
“I know, dammit.”
The images stopped.
“Speaker Naomi is only one chamber away, on the right,” she replied in a too-sweet tone.
I would have thanked her, but she’d already won the argument, and I didn’t figure her pride needed reinforcement.
Entering the chamber Angel had indicated, I found the Speaker deep in conversation with two of her people. I waited for her to finish. Angel was humming again, a clear indicator she was working on something, so I let her be and prepared what I wanted to say to the Speaker.
One of her people was kind enough to provide me some food, which I devoured with zero thought. I was still hungry when the Speaker’s people left and she turned her attention to me. “Ralston Muck. Are you quite rested?”
“I am, thank you. I have bad news, I’m afraid.”
“Oh?” she asked, unperturbed.
“The Hounds are coming.”
Her expression tightened fractionally. “They are, are they?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
“The only reason a military unit like the Hounds would have for coming after me is if they believe I learned something at the DPAPL facility.”
“You told me you didn’t learn anything.”
“And I didn’t, not yet, anyway.”
“What did you manage to steal?”
“Some encrypted data.”
She shook her head. “How are you going to break the encryption?”
“Don’t know for sure, and originally I thought I didn’t have anything of note, but the Hounds coming for me confirms it. Something I took was of value.”
“How did they know where to find you?”
“I assume because someone reported in after I escaped.”
She shook her head. “I mean: Why contact you?”
“I used to work alongside them. Their captain wanted to threaten me into submission. When that failed, he said he was coming for me.”
“Why not just give in? Give back whatever they want?”
“Because it won’t end there,” I said, knowing she was fully aware what my answer would be before I gave it.
“They’ll kill you?”
“Yes, but even that won’t be the end of it, not now. Whatever they’re doing, whatever the data we have points to, they’re willing to kill innocents who ain’t got nothing to do with it in order to retrieve it. That means whatever we have is so bad, the consequences of murdering innocent bystanders is less damaging than the consequences of releasing the data.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“I need to get off the ship, and to do that I’ll need some help from you.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“What?”
“You said ‘whatever we have.’ Who are the others?”
Shit.
“I can’t say.” Which was true, in a roundabout way.
“Some kind of resistance?”
“Something like that.” I hated lying to her. Some habits die harder than others, I suppose.
“All right. We will help. What do you need?”
* * *
As I sought access to the bay where Obron’s ship was to dock, it occurred to me that the Dugra must truly be alien in their outlook, as I could not see any logic to the structure of the ship. Even with Angel’s assistance I got turned around, wasting an hour and more before deciding I had to look for a Dugra to guide me.
Eventually I found one, a jackal-headed creature of slightly larger stature than the others I had encountered. I made my need known, and it set off.
Five minutes later the Dugra stopped in an angular chamber with a steeply sloping ceiling that disappeared into a strange gloom overhead. The interior walls were stepped, like a pyramid.
“This it?” I asked.
My guide did not answer, floating off on a cloud of blue-violet sparks and leaving the smell of ozone and a strange spice in the air.
“I told you we should have taken the right back at that first T juncture,” Angel said, spotlighting an otherwise unremarkable section of the flat outer wall.
I looked up, found another spot Angel was indicating.
“Angel?” I grunted, starting to climb into position. Thanks to my once-again fully functional mods, the pack and weapons the Brethren had given me weren’t overly heavy, but their bulk swung against me, knocking painfully into me as I
moved.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
“Really?”
“Of course not. Just . . . try not to rub my face in your proficiency.”
“Well, I didn’t insist, so our getting lost is on me too.” She even managed to sound a bit contrite.
“Thanks for that. How long till they dock?”
“Five minutes, now.”
“And the Dugra are fine with the Brethren using weapons inside their ship?” Frankly, the not-dead things scared the shit out of me. I did not like their ship, their decrepit bodies, or their ancient technology. But I did respect it, and knew that if I had some upstart aliens using weapons in my ship, I’d kick their teeth in and ensure they never had an opportunity to reoffend.
“Yes, I am certain. There have been numerous documented incidents of shoot-outs inside Dugra vessels. Not only have they never retaliated unless directly and unmistakably attacked, they don’t even seem to notice.”
“Just because the hawk don’t eat the mouse when the mouse walks in the open one time, don’t mean it’s safe for the mouse to walk in the open every day.”
“You’re just full of folksy wisdom, ain’t you?”
“Fuck you, Angel.” I said it without heat, the way one talks to a squad-mate, distracting myself from the plan, which was dangerous enough without letting the tension of a long wait build.
“You mean like this?” A flash of bodies straining against one another, writhing as passions found their completion. The images—and powerful sensations—were gone in an instant, leaving me twitching and without anything clever to say.
“Two minutes,” Angel supplied, too sweetly.
“That was—” I started, blood rushing in my head.
“Hard?”
I snorted, shaking my head as I made a final check of my borrowed kit. “You’re something else.”
“And you’re too easy.”
“Like all men, I suppose.”
“Maybe . . . One-minute warning.”
My hands began another check of my gear. Stopping them, I took a deep breath to settle my nerves. To my mild surprise, the little ritual wasn’t all that necessary. Sure, it helped, but Angel’s banter had proved sufficient distraction.
Again, I had to admit it: she was very good at her job.
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