The Kassa Gambit

by M. C. Planck

  Like all criminals, the monks had finally outsmarted themselves. They had gathered all the uncontrollable elements together and sent them into exile, where they could destroy them with one blow. But they had not expected Prudence.

  Stanton sent his last transmission. “Go and save my brothers, Captain Falling. Save Altair.”

  The Ulysses crossed the system in dreadful silence. They had no way of knowing if or when the enemy had come through the node. Or how many. Their sensors were not powerful enough to scan across the entire system. And the Launceston was in self-imposed comm blackout, so it could neither send them warning nor boast of victory. The life-and-death drama behind them would play out invisibly.

  Likely they would not even see their pursuers until seconds before they died.

  Prudence drove Jorgun and Kyle like a slaver, making them transfer every nonessential piece of equipment to the main cargo bay.

  “Don’t we need this?” Kyle asked, shoving on a squat, dense air recycler.

  “Not if there are only three of us.” Prudence was right next to him, so close they could not help but touch now and again. The sensations kept Kyle going, long after his muscles were ready to quit.

  Jorgun pulled from the other side, putting the dead weight back in motion.

  “Are we going to leave this at the spaceport?” The giant wasn’t entirely clear on this “flyby” concept.

  “I think she’s going to give us a break, Jor. She’s going to dump it in space. So we can just open the cargo doors and let it float out.” At least, he hoped that was the plan.

  “No,” she said. “I’m going to dump it while we’re in the next node.”

  Kyle stopped pushing. “Isn’t that kind of dangerous?”

  “Not as much as screwing with our mass during the entry.”

  Jorgun pouted. “We won’t be able to play volleyball with all this junk in the cargo bay.”

  “We’re going to seal off the cargo bay, Jor. And vent it. Air is mass.”

  That meant they would spend the rest of the trip confined to the living quarters. Kyle couldn’t really complain. It would mean more contact with Prudence. She wouldn’t be able to sneak off and brood like she was prone to do.

  “It’s not that much mass, is it?” Kyle asked. Not because he was objecting, but because he was trying to show he could learn about space travel.

  “I’m not just going to vent the cargo bay,” she admitted. “I’m going to take a torch and cut it off.”

  Kyle was stunned. “What?” She might as well cut off her own arm.

  “It’s mass. Every kilo we lose is three seconds less travel time to Kassa. I can accelerate faster, and decelerate from a faster velocity. It adds up.”

  “You’re going to cripple your ship?” He was surprised at the level of his own outrage.

  “It’s just a ship. It’s not worth dying for. I’m hoping Altair will buy me a new one,” she parroted at him.

  He’d been studying spacer manuals since he came on board. “Won’t dumping mass in the node fry us?” Things that didn’t go through the node with exactly the right velocity came out the other end as a spray of cosmic particles.

  “Stop pretending to be a pilot. The scrap won’t deviate from our velocity enough to matter. Once we leave the node we’ll accelerate away from it. And it won’t be making course corrections, so it will pass out of the system and be lost to space. So take a good look around. This is the last time you’ll see any of this junk.”

  She spoke like a surgeon about to remove diseased organs, but she could not disguise the way she gazed on the bits and pieces of her home.

  “It’s going to look kind of funny without a cargo bay.” Kyle tried to imagine it from the outside, and failed.

  “It will fly faster. That’s all that matters.”

  The physical labor kept them occupied. It was a surprise when the alarm sounded, warning that the next node was imminent. Kyle found himself grinning with anticipation. For the next sixty hours, they would be safe again. And wonderfully close.

  Prudence spent most of those hours in a space suit, in the cargo bay, with the doors locked. She wouldn’t let Kyle accompany her.

  “Somebody has to stay on the bridge in case of an emergency,” she said. “And it can’t be Jorgun.”

  So Kyle spent all his time on the bridge alone while she and Jorgun dismembered her ship. During the six-hour breaks she allowed herself for sleep, she locked herself in her stateroom. Mealtimes were monosyllabic.

  Kyle tried not to feel rejected. This had to be hurting her emotionally, in ways she wasn’t ready to share yet. After this system flyby they would have five days in the final hop to Kassa. The work would all be done, the danger would be past, and they would have time to talk. To make plans. To think about a future without spiders and clones.

  He was almost excited when the alarm turned yellow, and Prudence dragged herself wearily to the bridge. True, there was some risk that the enemy would catch up to them here, but they had changed the parameters of the game. They had a fighting chance.

  Watching through the screen as the real world came back into focus, the light reaching their sensors no longer distorted by the physics of the node, he marveled at the serene majesty of the starry sky.

  Then he frowned.

  “What was that?”

  A star had winked out. He was sure of it.

  Prudence looked up from her calculations.

  Another star blossomed, a tiny light in blackness, and died in a heartbeat.

  “A course correction,” Prudence said. “That was a course correction.”

  Another. Then two more, far apart.

  “We’re too late. Their fleet is in front of us.”

  There was nothing they could do. Kyle knew enough about piloting to see that for himself. The enemy was halfway across the system, heading for the only node the Ulysses could hope to enter. Prudence could not change her mind now. Her course had been calculated and set days ago. Even with the ship stripped to the bone she had too much mass to turn around.

  They could not hope to remain undetected. Prudence had to run her gravitics at full power or accept certain death at the hands of a null-vector. They could not hope to evade. The enemy had fusion boats. They were not ruled by the distant whims of planets and stars.

  Out of the majestic black sky came the ugly voice of their defeat. “Prepare to be boarded. Any resistance will be met with lethal force. Instantly.”

  That the enemy had sent a ship to capture them, instead of simply sending death, was not particularly comforting.

  “Let me do the talking,” Kyle begged. “I can try to make a deal. I still have contacts in the League.”

  Prudence said nothing, small and still on her useless command chair.

  “I’m scared,” Jorgun said.

  She went to the giant and put her arms around him.

  The ship lurched, clanging with contact. The enemy was not gentle. They would never be.

  The sound of the air lock cycling. Boots tramped in the passageway. Kyle stood on the bridge, between the entrance and Prudence and Jorgun, trying to shield them with his body.

  Men in uniforms came in. Men with guns. Ugly men, without masks. Not clones, but refuse, bits of trash recruited from the cesspits of many worlds, selling out their own kind for a paycheck and a chance to hurt somebody.

  “Get down! Get down on your knees and put your hands in the air!”

  There was no need to make Kyle kneel. He presented no danger to them, and they knew it. They did it because they could. Because they enjoyed it.

  Kyle knelt. “I am a League officer. Do you understand? These people are working for me, on League business.”

  The lead soldier struck Kyle in the face with the butt of his rifle, knocking him to the deck. He could taste blood in his mouth. The negotiations had not started well.

  The men swarmed past him, pulled Prudence and Jorgun apart. They beat Jorgun to his knees.

  They stared at Prud
ence.

  “This was worth the trip,” one of them said.

  The leader grinned. “Let’s have a better look.” He stepped forward and grabbed Prudence’s shirt, tearing it open.

  “League officer!” Kyle tried to scream, but the soldier guarding him kicked him in the gut.

  Prudence stood like a statue. Beautiful. Immobile. She looked past the men, to some distant, invisible place.

  Then Jorgun, simple Jorgun, stupid Jorgun, had to see the last puzzle piece.

  “These are the people that took Jelly away, aren’t they?” he asked Prudence.

  “Shut the fuck up!” screamed the guard standing over him, beating down on the giant with his rifle.

  Prudence turned away from him, tears in her eyes. Kyle tried to lie for her, to tell Jorgun to shut up and be still, but he was still gasping for breath.

  “Stop that,” Jorgun said to the man beating him.

  The man shrieked in outrage, and beat harder.

  “Earth, just shoot him already,” said their leader.

  “You hurt Jelly,” Jorgun said.

  The man beating him stopped and turned his rifle around, bringing the barrel to face Jorgun.

  Jorgun stood up.

  The man unconsciously paused, disoriented by the giant’s height.

  Jorgun picked him up by the head and shook him like a rag doll. Kyle could hear bones snapping like toothpicks.

  “Do something!” screamed the leader.

  Two men leapt on Jorgun. One bounced off like he’d hit a wall. The other one stuck, trapped in Jorgun’s arms.

  Screaming a mindless, blubbery wail, Jorgun ran across the deck with the man in his grasp, charging the knot of soldiers. The leader dodged out of the way, and Jorgun and his passenger collided with the wall, bouncing off of it and into a heap on the floor.

  The man he had been carrying flopped in unnatural ways, emitting a strange quiet keening sound.

  The leader started kicking at Jorgun. The rest of the soldiers piled on Jorgun like wolves on a deer, trying to separate him from his impromptu battering ram. Only two men remained, one by Prudence and one looming over Kyle.

  Prudence stood perfectly still. Immobile. The man guarding her could not help himself. Inexorably his attention slipped away from her, to the battle raging on the deck. Kyle kept coughing, even though he didn’t have to anymore. He very carefully did not look at Prudence, but looked away, at the fight.

  And then she moved. One quick step. She reached out and touched the guard’s head, and the man fell silently, a marionette with its strings cut.

  Kyle’s guard noticed. As he swung his rifle around, Kyle scrambled over the ground to his feet. He hit the man below the knees with his shoulders, sending him crashing to the deck. Two heartbeats and he had climbed on top. While the thug was still getting his bearings, Kyle struck. One punch and the man’s head bounced off the floor. Disappointed that he did not have time to hurt the man more, Kyle sprang to his feet.

  A burst of gunfire peppered the wall above the knot of fighting men. A warning shot from the rifle in Prudence’s hands. But the tangle of men was inseparable. She could not shoot without killing them all. They ignored her.

  The tramp of feet, too many feet. Through the entrance stomped a spider, huge and hairy and grotesque. Where its mouth should be were twin barrels. Grimly, mechanically, it sprayed the wrestling men with needle-fire, reducing them to hamburger.

  Prudence unleashed her fury on the monster with deadly aim. The needles ricocheted futilely off, cutting only rubber and cloth, revealing gleaming metal underneath.

  Kyle wrestled the gun out of Prudence’s hands and threw it to the deck.

  “We’re unarmed! Don’t shoot!”

  He hugged her, covering her. Waited for the storm of needles.

  Someone else came into the room.

  “What made you think the spider would show mercy?” he said, in Veram Dejae’s voice.

  “I knew you were controlling it remotely.” Kyle’s answers were all that could save them. He forced himself to let go of Prudence, to turn around and face the clone.

  The Dejae wore a mask, a glittering affair of gems and gold, but it could not hide his annoyance. “How did you deduce this?”

  “I saw a spider, on Baharain. When you let the machine drive, it walks smoothly and quickly. When you have to make it do something intelligent, it moves like a robot.”

  “Intriguing. Stand away from her.”

  Kyle obeyed, instantly.

  More men came into the room, looking shocked.

  “Strip them. Bind them. Put them on the ship. Can you handle that?” The Dejae’s voice was dangerously casual.

  “Yes, sir.” The new leader leapt to obey. But as he and his men approached Kyle, they were careful not to block the spider’s line of fire.

  “I wanted to do it all with robots,” the Dejae explained to Kyle, while two men tore his clothes off and a third glared at him from behind a rifle barrel. “I was outvoted. I was told that human judgment was still invaluable. When I find servants who can successfully carry out a simple task like killing two unarmed men and a girl, I’ll consider changing my opinion.”

  “Good help is hard to find,” Kyle agreed. He realized he was trying to keep the Dejae talking, so it would think of him as human. A wasted effort. The clone already thought of Kyle as human. That was the problem.

  The men wrapped his wrists in sticky tape. Like the idiots they were, they bound his hands in front of him, not behind his back. But he wasn’t going to do anything. Being naked was a kind of binding on its own.

  The men moved to Prudence, ripped the clothes from her body. Kyle tried not to look. He could not bear to see how beautiful she was.

  Kyle offered more from his dwindling supply of facts. “We’re wanted on Monterey, for questioning.” When he had nothing left to give, they would kill him.

  “You do get around. But you can relax for a few days. We have some business to deal with before we return home.”

  They marched them past the bodies, his feet squishing in the blood. They dragged them through the blasted air lock, threw them to the floor of their fusion transport. He caught Prudence awkwardly as she fell. She lay in his arms like a sack of potatoes.

  Men stood around them, glaring. The Dejae ignored them, his spider marching at his side. At least the Dejae was not going to let them rape her.

  Yet.

  Kyle wondered if the Dejae would keep her for himself. Kyle began to hope he would. It would be better for her.

  The ship moved underneath them.

  “Target is cleared for attack,” the Dejae said from the bridge. A wall-sized screen showed the Ulysses drifting in space as they accelerated away from it. The freighter did not look as ungainly as Kyle had feared. With the cargo hold shorn off, it looked like a dragonfly, lumpy and angular but rendered delicate.

  Lights sparkled around the Ulysses, and then steam as its air was vented from a thousand holes. At the same time a dark, tubular shape streaked through the screen’s vision. A fighter, making a close pass.

  In its wake the Ulysses came apart in pieces, like shredded lettuce. The main generator exploded, a ball of flaming gas welling up from the remains. When it cleared, there was nothing left. The corpse of the Ulysses had been dismembered and cast upon the void.

  With Jorgun’s body. And Kyle’s dreams of home and family. And maybe Prudence’s soul.

  She still had not spoken, not a gasp, not a whisper.

  Ridiculously, he feared for her state of mind.

  NINETEEN

  Shattered

  She took comfort in the feel of his body against hers. Insanity, yes, but it was the only comfort left. She could not speak to him. Even if she trusted her voice, even if she could talk without revealing the medallion hidden in her mouth, there was nothing to say.

  Like a rabbit caught in headlights, she remained perfectly still, staring at nothing. The men leered and whispered terrible things, but acknowledging t
hem would only make it worse.

  It would be bad enough as it was. They had already taken almost everything from her. Her ship. Her crew. Her family, past and present. Soon they would take her dignity, and then they would take Kyle away and kill him.

  Of all of these losses, Kyle seemed the greatest. She had not had time to be with him. Their life, the hopes and dreams it promised, was not just cut short. It had never begun.

  She had never even kissed him.

  All the sacrifices she had made had been in vain. All the time she had spent dismantling her defenses to let Kyle in had been wasted. All her efforts had been futile. Jandi had been right. But to think on that was to surrender to self-recrimination. And there was no room for that. Grief squeezed out all other emotion, and spilled over her body, coating every sensation with a glaze of unreality.

  With nothing else to do, she watched the main vid screen. They were approaching another ship. She could judge its immense scale by the tiny fighters buzzing around it. An opening appeared in the squat, tubular behemoth. A carrier, then: a ship that bore other ships as cargo, like a chinchilla fish carries its babies in its mouth. The fusion boat that had captured them did not seem equipped for node travel, nor could those little fighters manage a node on their own. They lacked the mass necessary to create a stable bubble in the node.

  Before they had captured her ship, the gravitics display had told her of the existence of this one massive vessel, and of dozens of other smaller ships, probably a screen of destroyers. In a fair fight, Altair might stand a chance.

  But of course they had their secret weapon. The carrier would paralyze her prey and release the swarm to feed. Altair Fleet would be rendered helpless for hours, while the spiders bled them with sprays of steel needles at near-relativistic speeds. Even the idiotic robotic fighter pilots would be capable of total victory in such a one-sided battle.