Cagebird

by Karin Lowachee

  I reach through the bars and grab hold of him to make him listen. “Finch, don’t believe a thing she says. Understand? Don’t trust it, any of it.” This isn’t your world.

  He locks his hands around my wrists as if to shove me off, but instead he just holds there.

  I stare into his face. “Has she touched you?”

  Now he wrenches away and steps back. “No. You think I’d let her?”

  “I think you can’t stop her.” She’s no bullying Army officer, for all of her faults. When it came to men she got what she wanted. And he’s marked because of me. “What happened.”

  He doesn’t answer.

  I push against the bars but don’t reach through them. “She wants to work you against me. She’ll give you things and let you go so far, then she’ll ask for a favor.”

  He wants to know how I know in such specifics, but I read it in his eyes—he answers that himself.

  “She won’t get anything from me,” he says, a low voice. “The optics, Yuri.”

  I feel my jaw tighten. That sinks into the cold like a bare hook.

  Hunger and fatigue, or maybe compassion, have made me stupid. If she wasn’t sure why he was with me, she’ll be positive now. But I had to warn him. I have to make him hide himself before she lulls him into a bit of safety. Even a bit. This ship isn’t safe in any way.

  “I’ll be all right,” he says, out loud maybe for his own benefit, not for mine.

  Because I know better.

  There’s a fork with the food. It isn’t as sharp as a knife, and they don’t care that I have it because whenever they come back to get the tray they can just make me toss it out before even stepping close to the bars. Guards with guns who’d begrudge me a fork.

  I use it. I think of all the things Taja might be doing to Finch, and like everything else he keeps most of it silent. Things that I did, because she’s one of us, and although she wasn’t a protégé, she still knows the common language. Exploitation for your own ends. Innocence, or ignorance, is a tool you can use.

  I sit on the bunk with my back to the wall and dig the tines of that fork into my arm. This is all the tool I’ve got in this brig.

  Blood.

  And then I breathe.

  She makes me sit another shift. It seems like a full additional shift by how hungry I get after that one meal, but I’m hungry all the time now, so maybe it’s shorter than that.

  Two guards I don’t recognize come to get me, cuff my wrists behind my back, and yank me out. They take me up the lev to the command deck, and I’m so blind with hunger and the borderline state of permanent nausea that I don’t notice anything except there are no crew here, maybe they’ve been told to stay inside quarters.

  The guards dump me inside the captain’s mess, which is laden on both sides of the main table with fruits and vegetables. They uncuff me and push me into the seat. Then they both leave though I’m sure at least one stays outside the hatch.

  On the far side of the table Taja sits. No Finch. But I don’t ask. I just stare at her, and we could be a married couple if she isn’t wearing a gun somewhere below my line of sight, like I know she is.

  “Feel free,” she says, gesturing to the food.

  “I’d rather talk.”

  She picks up a celery stick and bites the end. “So talk.”

  “If all you’re doing is pampering my cellmate and asking him about prison, then I think you know more than you give off.”

  “Isn’t that what you claim, Kirov?” Using my pirate name, of course. It’s been so long since I’ve heard it said aloud, when dirtsiders, officials, all insisted I was that other person. The one who owned Terisov. But this name falls from her lips and settles on me like a familiar arm. “You claim,” she says, “to know so much more to make my ship run better.”

  “And you would seem to agree since I’m still alive.” Unless. “Have you talked to Caligtiera?”

  I see in her face before she even answers. “Why? Do you want to? Maybe make a little alliance to get me out of the equation?”

  “Well, Cal would never put up with your lack of take, would he. He likes his people productive.” And you are below him, make no mistake, just like you were below Falcone.

  She sees that in my face because I let her. “Obnoxious even in cuffs.” She means figuratively, as she’s got the guns.

  “You mean I’m right. Let’s cut this off, okay. I know—” I stare at her, the way she leans back in her seat, rocking slightly, eating vegetables with a certain smugness in her eyes. Of course she should be smug, she thinks she’s holding all the cards—me under her whim. But it’s not only that. The fact I’m even free doesn’t surprise her in the least. The fact I was able to bring someone else out with me. Finch didn’t tell her about Lukacs, or she’d be spitting fury at me for hooking up with Black Ops. Like all pirates would, or at the very least she’d call me an idiot.

  So she doesn’t know about Ops.

  Or maybe she does. My encoded journals, last left in my private system, booby-trapped to delete on any detection of invasion—in the hands of Black Ops. And their fancy tech.

  And how would they get it?

  And how would they track this nanotag under my skin?

  I was thinking of a traitor, standing in the snow and cold of Earth. I’m looking at her now. I recognize it. Of course I do.

  And agents for Black Ops can double-deal in their sleep. Bring down the pirates? Maybe build a bridge instead. Maybe my cover isn’t a cover at all.

  “What do you know?” she says, with a mocking bite.

  I don’t move. “You’re in bed with that Ops agent.”

  She sniffs. Doesn’t even try to deny it. Why should she? I’m the one under her gun. “You know, Yuri, for someone whose job was to be in bed with any number of our clients…”

  “Black Ops, Taja! Falcone—”

  “Is dead.” Her eyes flare.

  “Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean he was stupid. He warned us about them for a reason, and here you go giving them my fucking files!”

  “Well you didn’t need them in jail.”

  “What deal did you make?”

  She smiles, false sweetness. “What deal did you make?”

  “Like you don’t know? What did he promise you if you let me back on the ship? To keep me in line or get rid of me once I served my purpose, so you can keep my captaincy?”

  “The captaincy’s mine to begin with.”

  “We can stop pissing in arcs, Taja. Lukacs wants me here because you’re messing up the operation, none of the other captains like you very much, and I’m your way back inside. Admit it, I’m the only one who’s got a chance with Cal, and Ops can give you a few perks if you cooperate. Because my ship’s been failing under your command. Hasn’t it.”

  “It didn’t start with me,” she says, leaning forward and pushing her forefinger onto the table veneer. “When you decided to take a vacation on Austro instead of taking out Azarcon’s son, we were well on our way. I came in to clean up your mess, Kirov! And while we’re at it, let’s take note of the fact that you couldn’t even do your job for Estienne.”

  I grab up the plate of food and throw it at her like a weapon, then rush around the table. But she’s fast, knocks the plate away with a crash. She’s on her feet and back toward the corner, her gun out and aimed.

  “Back!” she yells.

  The hatch opens. Her men are there.

  “Sit your ass down!” she says.

  I feel the snarl on my lips. I know she’s not above shooting me in the leg or arm, so I ignore her goons and walk back to my side of the table. Not an immediate move as I slowly retake my seat and look at her. “You’ve been eyeing this ship since Genghis Khan.”

  She walks back slowly but doesn’t sit, just leans her gun on the table and stares at me. And waits until the men leave. “If Ops offers a deal,” she says, ignoring that, “and the only dark spot is getting your ass back here, then I’ll take it, yeah. But don’t think just
because you’re out of those cuffs that you got any freedom here. You breathe wrong, and I’ll take it out on your little friend before I move on to you.”

  Of course this all works so well for Lukacs. I’m guessing his motivations, she’s convinced she knows, and we’re fighting among ourselves.

  I don’t say anything.

  Her eyes hunt. “This is the way it’s going to work. You make nice with Cal, you regain the trust of your contacts—any way you can. If they ask you to shoot Azarcon himself, you’ll walk all the way to stritside and put a gun to his head. Once that’s cemented you set Lukacs up with Cal, and whatever deal Black Ops makes with our network, Kublai Khan will get the lion’s share.” She picks up her glass and sips the concoction. Confident in her plan now that she’s got me at gunpoint. “You know you don’t want Cal running Falcone’s operation and directing our allies. That’ll leave no room for us except as his lapdogs. As far as I’m concerned, trading spit with Ops will give us an actual foothold in the government, and it’ll be a lot less tenuous than shadow puppetry with the Family of Humanity or second-tier Centralist fanatics.”

  “You’re a fool to trust Lukacs,” I tell her, because that’s what it comes down to, past the pretty ambitions.

  “I don’t trust him. Any more than I trust you. But Ops is none too pleased about the treaty, and if they want to encourage us to harass Azarcon and his allies, it’s pretty much what we want to do anyway.”

  “What treaty? Azarcon’s exiled, for all intents and purposes. There is no treaty that the Hub will recognize.”

  She smirks. And I could hit her for that face. “You’ve been too far insystem for far too long, Kirov. There’s no official treaty. But we all know who’s been supplying Macedon these past few months, and they aren’t human. Now why don’t you stop worrying and eat from the plate you haven’t broken. You’ll need it.”

  That’s all I’m going to get out of her for now. For all I know she’s bedded Lukacs already, in the literal sense, and thinks that makes her immune to his betrayal.

  She’s not geisha, and she never did get that part right.

  At least she doesn’t put me back in the brig. I get my own quarters. Not the captain’s quarters, since she’s in them, but quarters on the command crew deck with a guard outside my hatch who I don’t recognize. How much of my crew did she put off, kill, or otherwise alienate in order to bring her own allies on board?

  Something I can ask Rika if I ever see her again.

  Taja is all smiles as she locks me up. “Get some rest. You’ll want it next shift when you talk to Caligtiera.”

  “You’re setting it up?”

  She says, “He thinks I want to grovel, and he will probably think we’re playing him, but he doesn’t know my deal with Ops. And you’re not going to tell him if you want your boy alive. So you’d best get your geisha skills together.”

  She shuts me in.

  I go over those bare quarters millimeter by millimeter, looking for optics. I have nothing else to do. Surprisingly, I see none. It’s possible she’s adhered to that unspoken rule—you’ll never get loyalty from your crew if you spy on them unduly. Not even Falcone pushed that far with his people, at least not with optics. He tended to use the kind of optics that traveled on two legs, as they always saw and heard much more through interaction than pure observation.

  So I’m not surprised when Finch shows up, carrying Dexter in his black cage. She lets us talk, then she’ll talk to him, I can’t stop it. Finch doesn’t say anything as I take the cage from him. The little bird is losing feathers from the excitement of seeing me. The guard locks us in, and Finch stands out of the way as Dexter flutters, frantic. I immediately put the cage on the floor and crouch down to open the door.

  “You’re not going to let him out.” Finch comes alive, unfolding his crossed arms.

  “Of course I’m going to let him out, he’s been in here for months I bet.” I coo at the bird. His small eyes roll at me, and his screech echoes in the space. No curtains or soft cushions in here to dampen the sound. Lovebirds are loud.

  “Shit,” Finch says, putting a hand to his right ear.

  “He doesn’t like strangers.” I cast him a look, then I open the cage. Dexter darts out and flies straight at Finch.

  “Gah!” His hands go up.

  “Don’t hit him!”

  Finch covers his head with his arms. I call at Dexter and after a bit of bullying he flies back and lands on top of the cage, fluffing his wings, then sticking his beak into them.

  “That animal’s mad!” Finch says, brushing bits of green feather from his shoulders.

  “He’s a bird.” I turn my shoulder and stroke Dexter’s soft, feathered head. He bites me gently on the fingertip. He remembers me. That small contact makes my eyes suddenly water. I keep my back to Finch. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Is it safe to talk in here?”

  “Maybe not.”

  I hear him walk over to the bunk and sit on it. “She’s put me next door. And she invites me to meals and tries to get me to talk about you. About what it was like in the prison.”

  For smug, prurient reasons, maybe. Or maybe just as lead-up. She thinks she has all the time in the universe to slowly pull Finch in. I can’t hear much from his voice, so I turn and look at him finally. Clear-eyed now. “And you tell her…what?”

  He eyes Dexter on the cage then meets my stare. “That it was prison. Not a resort.”

  In this small quarters, it’s almost the same. Behind me Dexter squawks for no apparent reason. Fatigue presses behind my eyes, and I move to the bunk and drop down. Finch gets up like I have some sort of disease, but it gives me more room to stretch out.

  “You’re going to sleep,” he says.

  “Unlike you, I haven’t been given the five-star treatment.” I can’t look at him now, all the threat that he is for me without even trying. I’ve made him stand in that position like a mad general in a losing battle, and now both Lukacs and Taja don’t need to point a gun at me. They just point it at him. And I can’t think about it, or think about being here, or what I’ll have to do tomorrow to make Caligtiera not shoot me. How well I’ll have to lie. This ship is too familiar and my thoughts too muddled. I roll to my side, facing out, and stretch a hand to Dexter, who tilts his head at me. “Did you talk to Rika at all?”

  He watches the bird, and me. “No, I haven’t actually been able to move around without escort.”

  “If you can, try to get to her. She’ll help us.”

  “With what?”

  Now I look up at him as Dexter darts with his clipped wings across the short distance from his cage to my finger. I bring him close, roll over to my back, and let him perch on my chest. He hops forward and pecks my lips with his little beak. Bird kisses. “To retake the ship, of course. You wouldn’t happen to have any cigs on you?”

  The next goldshift Taja and three guards escort me from my quarters, past Finch’s silent one, and we take a shuttle across to Caligtiera’s ship, Iron Cross. His is an Orca-class modified merchant—heavily modified, larger than Kublai Khan and outfitted like a battleship. No scan could mistake his silhouette for some war-era Rim hauler, and that probably suits him fine since he prefers to deal in the shadows. His ports aren’t EarthHub-sanctioned, but pirate-maintained, deep-space sinkhole stopovers that are the nodes of the illegal network—where we refuel sometimes, store merchandise and maintain caches, execute repairs and just simply relax outside the purview of military interests.

  The empire Falcone built.

  Everyone wants control of it, so far nobody’s been able to dethrone Cal, who worked as Falcone’s second for most of Falcone’s illegal career. All of our contacts respect Cal, know Cal, and would definitely go to Cal first over any other captain with something to prove—like Taja. I was an exception, handpicked by Falcone, proven to follow in his footsteps, and our allies knew that. But Cal knew the operation just as much as I did as the protégé, and he never wanted me to forget it.

>   His ship, his rules. His superiority, as I walk off the shuttle under Taja’s guard. Of course the man himself isn’t there to meet me, but there are a couple of brawnies with guns and a woman in a tight gray suit who says, “Sorry, Taja, just Yuri alone.”

  Taja says, “What?”

  And now I smile.

  The gray-skirted woman says, “You set this up, but the captain wants to speak to Yuri alone. Meaning, without you butting in.”

  I continue to grin.

  Taja turns to me, takes my arm in a hard grip, and leans close to my ear. Whispers, “Don’t fuck with me, Kirov, or I’ll space your toy dog before you’re even back on my ship. Got it?” Her fingers dig.

  I let her threaten, wordless, ignoring. Which I know aggravates her even more. When she releases me I walk over to the unfamiliar woman. One of Cal’s men frisks me thoroughly, comes up with nothing of course. The woman says to Taja, “Wait here with your shuttle.”

  And I don’t need to see Taja’s face to feel her expression. There is nothing more humbling in this business than the knowledge that you are not the one in control.

  The woman doesn’t tell me her name, just leads me through the ship, one of the men trailing us with a gun aimed at my back. Iron Cross is a dark ship, not just in lighting but in steel surfaces and ambient noise. Kept full of shadows, its crew has no time or inclination to slack or dull their senses. If you aren’t always on the lookout here, chances are you won’t survive. Genghis Khan’s crew deck had the same feeling; but here it’s all over the ship as she takes me into a lev and up, then back out again on another deck that differs in no way I can discern from where we’ve been on flight. The schematics of this ship are different from mine, but I think we must be headed toward one of the conference rooms. Trust Caligtiera not to wine and dine a guest.

  And I’m right, as the hatch opens, and the woman steps in after me. And there Cal sits at a long discussion table, holding court in a room of one.

  “Captain Kirov,” the woman says, then leaves us.

  The man hasn’t aged. He doesn’t seem to age, in all the years I’ve known him. Maybe he’s got a bit of voodoo hidden in his quarters, or maybe he’s just that wily. Time itself can’t corner him.