“But First is—”
“Dead already! Close the doors!”
“No,” Hashin said.
Jrill looked at him in disbelief for a long, accusing moment, then back to the soon-to-be-masticated pulp that had been their newest recruit. The Gomeltic pup shredded more of the fabric of the command chair with its half dozen clawed feet with every step First took toward it, snarling and spitting as she advanced, hand outstretched.
“What’s it waiting for?” Jrill said, expecting the Gomeltic to pounce at any moment and shred the undersized human like a set of curtains.
First sort of stumble-lunged at the snarling beast and got a hand under its jawline. Jrill was far from her biggest fan, but she really didn’t want to watch their newest recruit lose her arm at the elbow, either. But then, something impossible happened. The Gomeltic tilted its head to the side and whimpered, then fell on its side while three of its legs twitched in the air.
“Who’s a gooood girl?” First scratched furiously at the Gomeltic’s belly. “You like scritches, huh, girl?”
“I thought you said it was going to eat her,” Hashin said.
“It was!”
“Did … did none of you ever think to try to pet one of them?”
“Why in Dar’s name would we? They’re killers!”
“Seems to like First enough. C’mon, we have a ship to steal.”
“Repossess,” Jrill corrected.
“With the docking clamps in lockdown, it’s kind of a semantic argument at this point.”
Hashin stepped out of the lifter into the command cave and placed Fenax’s container in the pilot’s alcove before taking up his station. Jrill swallowed hard. It wouldn’t do for her to show hesitation walking onto a Turemok command deck, after all. But as soon as she set a claw on the deck plates, the thrice-damned Gomeltic sprang back to its feet, put itself in front of First, and growled a warning.
“First, get that … thing on the far side of the cave and keep it there. We’re wasting time,” Jrill said, rubbing as much authority and indifference into her voice as she could manage, fearing it wasn’t enough.
“C’mon, girl. Never mind that mean ol’ Turemok.” First walked backward toward the other end of the command cave, beckoning the Gomeltic pup to follow her. Inexplicably, it followed her like a hatchling.
“I’m calling her Guinevere.”
“Oh, kark, she’s named it,” Fenax said from their tank.
“Fenax, Hashin, do I have any weapons on this tub?” Jrill asked.
“But,” First said, “Loritt said we don’t use weapons.”
“Loritt said we don’t bring weapons,” Jrill corrected. “He didn’t say anything about if they were just lying around.”
“We have a battery of four point-defense high-space portals,” Hashin announced triumphantly.
“Can we project them close enough to the hull to sweep over the docking clamps?”
“Easily.”
“Do it.”
“Kaper Station will sue us for damages,” Hashin said.
“Glot,” Jrill said. “Open a channel to Kaper Central Control. Got to cover our scales.”
“Link open.”
“Kaper Control, this is Jrill, recently appointed captain of the Pay to Prey. This vessel has been legally confiscated under Assembly Charter Statute 372.6, Section B. I’m transmitting the terms of our repossession contract now. We are now the rightful owners of this vessel and request immediate clearance for departure. Failure to comply with our legal request for free and unrestricted movement within Assembly space may, regrettably, result in damage to your station’s equipment, for which we, our employer, or contractor would not be responsible. Jrill out.”
“Not bad, boss,” Hashin said. “You almost made me believe you weren’t excited to cut those clamps off and stick them with the bill.”
“Almost?”
Hashin winced and wiggled a hand.
“Got to work on my bluff. Give them ten rakims to answer, then cut away those clamps like empty yolk sacs.”
“Warming up our point-defense portals now.”
Jrill leaned back in her chair and took a breath. They’d pushed and shoved their way out of a few sticky situations in the past, but using defensive weapons offensively to destroy private infrastructure, that was a new one. They were technically on the right side of the law, but only just inside it, and that wouldn’t make any difference unless they survived long enough to see the inside of a courtroom.
“Station Central is launching interceptors,” Hashin said.
“Well, we have their answer,” Jrill said. “Cut the clamps.”
Hashin nodded and brought up a new screen. “Five rakims to full charge. Four, three…”
Outside the Pay to Prey’s hull, two small holes opened in the universe. High-space portals only a few spans across, much too small for even a shuttle to pass through, but wide enough for a missile or a laser beam to disappear into. Turned sideways, they also had the advantage of being the sharpest scalpel in existence. Usually, the mechanics and scale of space combat and the projector’s extremely limited range rendered this quality irrelevant.
But when the target was latched directly onto one’s hull …
“Gently now,” Jrill said.
“Those interceptors will be on top of us in moments,” First said from the far side of the cave.
“It won’t matter if Hashin accidentally slices off one of our drive spikes. Slow is fast.”
The Lividite was busy manipulating a holographic rendering of the ship and its surroundings, guiding the point-defense portals by hand and eye. One of the perfectly flat, two-dimensional holes passed through one of the clamps like a chill.
“Well done, Hashin,” Jrill beamed. “Three left. Watch the—”
The portal passed through the ship’s aft collision avoidance radar antennae and sheered it off at the base.
“Sorry,” Hashin said. “That was my fault.”
“Repairs come out of your share.”
“You want to do this instead?” Hashin demanded.
“Just let him work!” First shouted as the first interceptor entered threat range and started broadcasting for them to stand down. Hashin passed the portal through a second clamp like a hot knife through chirpip fat, then turned it downward to snip the third. A warning shot from the lead interceptor flashed across their bow and lit off every alarm the command cave had.
“Hashin, give me a portal,” Jrill said.
“What are you doing with it?”
“Clipping some wings.”
“That’s coming out of your share.” Hashin circled one of his portal icons with a finger, then swiped it across the cave to Jrill’s station. She accepted control and turned her red, artificial eyes to the lead interceptor threatening her prize.
It was a secondhand, short-range zapper. Crew of two. The sort of cast-off patrol ship that prowled the low orbitals of hundreds of marginal systems that had to settle for less-than-frontline equipment. And if they couldn’t afford frontline equipment, they couldn’t afford first-rate personnel to crew them. Maybe the overpromoted military retiree sitting in the pilot’s chair of the lead interceptor had a crest on their head, maybe they didn’t. But what Jrill was absolutely sure of was the indoc washouts in the rest of the squadron were used to following along and didn’t have the claws for a real fight.
“Lead interceptor is ordering us to cease operations or be fired upon.”
Jrill’s bloodred eyes narrowed to points. “Then they are legally engaged in piracy.”
“Oh, lord,” Hashin bemoaned. “She’s gone self-righteous.”
“Just cut the last clamp and get me loose of the docking slip.” Jrill toggled the internal com to engineering. “Sheer? I need enough power to open a high-space portal in twenty rakims or we’re all rotisserie meats.”
“That’s cutting it close.”
“Snip, snip.” Jrill jammed the connection closed and returned attention to th
e lead interceptor. The small craft had several disadvantages over larger patrol ships. Their small power cores meant one had to make decisions between charging weapons or continued maneuvering. Which was why Jrill knew when the lead ship stopped accelerating, its commander had decided to fire on her in a meaningful way. It also meant its course for the next three or four rakims would be entirely ballistic and, therefore, entirely predictable.
“Don’t kill them,” Hashin said as he expertly slid his portal through the last clamp. “That costs extra.”
Jrill ignored him as she projected the course and momentum of the interceptor onto her display. The point-defense portal controls were very responsive but still had a slight delay that needed to be accounted for. Calling up skills that had sat dormant since her first deployment, Jrill grabbed the spare portal and turned it flat like a sword.
“Slow is fast,” Jrill repeated to herself. Careful to match her hand’s speed to the projector’s tracking speed, she dragged the little portal icon across the plot toward the interceptor, matching its movement down to the span. Any more and she could slice through the bulkheads of the crew cabin and kill both of the occupants. Any less and she might miss the diminutive craft entirely and leave herself exposed to an undefended shot that could pierce half the Pay to Prey’s superstructure and leave them all gasping for a breath that would never come.
Except Fenax, who would be fine for many larims until a recovery crew pulled them out of the wreckage.
Jrill buried the thought and focused on tugging the tiny portal icon along.
“Gotcha,” she said as the two lines intersected. In the space outside, an impossibly black silhouette passed effortlessly through the aft drive section of the lead zapper, efficiently slicing it in half sans any gratifying, theatrical explosion. Which meant that not only would the occupants live long enough to be recovered, but Jrill hadn’t just tacked a pair of wrongful death lawsuits onto the tab for this job.
Her prediction of the rest of the squadron’s bravery was confirmed when they all stopped dead. She could almost see them gawking at their commander’s bisected interceptor. Jrill pressed the advantage their surprise and fear presented and pointed the portal toward the next zapper in line and, with a flourish, leveled its edge at the vessel’s bow in an unambiguous threat display.
Deciding it was better to live to not fight another day, the next interceptor in line backed away, then flipped heading and pushed back toward their hangar. The rest of the squadron flattened their crests and retreated in quick succession.
“Nicely done, boss,” Hashin said.
“Sheer,” Jrill said into the com, “full power to the drive spikes, if you please. We’re leaving.”
“Okay,” the Ish engineer said a rakim later. “But as soon as we’re clear of the station, you’d better get down here. We have a problem.”
Jrill’s beak ground against itself. “What kind of ‘problem’?”
“Just come down here. It’s not pretty.”
* * *
The elevator ride down to engineering was even tenser than the ride up to the command cave had been before their escape. Partially this was due to Sheer’s dire and vague warning, but mostly it was because of the six-legged hell beast that in the span of a few minutes had imprinted on First and now refused to leave her side.
Guinevere looked back up at Jrill standing pressed up against the back wall and growled again.
“Aah!” First corrected. “Leave the Skeksis alone. She’s not bothering you,” First said. Before she’d left PCB, The Dark Crystal and other Jim Henson productions had come back into vogue once the Assembly archive had opened and mankind learned he’d actually been an alien refugee trapped on twentieth-century Earth after a navigation malfunction. He and David Bowie crash-landed on the same ship.
The Gomeltic cub grunted its opinion one more time, then sat down on all but its front two legs.
“You know those things eat a fifth of their own body weight every day and grow to ten spans long in less than two cycles, yes?” Jrill asked through a grinding beak.
“I know that now,” First said. “What’s that in meters?”
“Like, twenty,” Hashin said.
“Do they like arugula?” First asked. “I always pick mine off.”
“You can’t seriously be thinking about adopting it,” Jrill said. “It’ll chew you up as soon as it thinks you’ll fit in its mouth.”
First crouched down and hugged her new pet around the neck. “Guinevere wouldn’t hurt a hair on my head, would you, girl?” She scratched hard under the beast’s jawline, causing it to drool and involuntarily kick one of its hind legs. “Who’s a good girl?”
“You’ve known that monster for less than a larim and you’ve already pack-bonded with it?” Jrill said. “Is your entire species insane, or is this defect unique to you?”
“What, you don’t have pets on—what’s your home world again? Fan?”
“Faan. And yes, we have pets that fit in small terrariums on a shelf in our dens and can’t level a village if they’re in mating season.”
“Well, then, why is she here?”
“Juveniles are sometimes used by … unsavory Turemok as guards before being destroyed when they get too big to handle.”
“That’s so cruel!” Then, First’s eyes narrowed. “Wait, what kind of things are they ‘guarding’?”
“Hoards of contraband, mostly.”
“I was at Loritt’s party,” First said. “What exactly counts as contraband with you people?”
“Well, unlike with your people, weapons are forbidden to most Assembly civilians, but an underground arms market still exists among the criminal classes. Then there’s always counterfeit goods, expired pharmaceuticals tagged for incineration, and the most despicable of all, the flesh traffickers.”
“What, like prostitution?” First asked. “But that’s legal out here. There’s a brothel two streets from my apartment.”
“And it’s heavily taxed and regulated,” Hashin said. “And even inside its walls, not everything is legal.”
First was about to ask what he meant when the lift doors opened and she found herself staring into the dirty, despondent faces of two dozen answers huddled around Sheer’s pointy legs defensively. First didn’t know what species they were, other than they were humanoid with somewhat feline features and bushy tails, but the signs of immaturity were, if not strictly universal, then common enough to be reliable.
One of them spotted Guinevere and screamed, then scrambled to get underneath Sheer’s bulky protective shell.
“Guess I’m not the only one to imprint quickly,” First said.
Jrill waved her clawed hand at the elevator. “Get that thing back in the lifter. Look at the claw marks on their skin. It was used to torture them.”
First looked down at Guinevere, and her heart sank. The Gomeltic pup had stood straight up to stare intently at the children and not in a playful way.
First put her hands on her hips and put her elbows out. “Bad girl!” She pointed to the elevator car. “Sit! You wait in there!”
Much to everyone’s amazement, most of all First’s, the pint-sized monster shriveled and obeyed. The doors closed, leaving the stowaways, or whatever they were, free to come out again.
“One of the phased plasma inducers kept conking out,” Sheer said. “I tracked the problem to the breaker room and found them all pressed on top of each other like tide pool fingerlings. One of them kept tripping the breaker with their foot.”
“But what are they doing down here?” First pleaded, trying to understand.
“They’re Andrani females,” Hashin said. “They’re prized as companions among certain … connoisseurs. They’re being trafficked for the sex trade.”
“But they’re children!” First demanded. “That’s barbaric. We have to tell the police or whatever.”
Jrill snorted. “I don’t think the authorities on Kaper Station are in the mood to give us a sympathetic ear at the moment
.”
First set her feet as if projecting physical immovability would buttress her argument. “Well, when we get to Junktion, then. The law has to go after this creep.”
“We’ve already got his ship and his cargo,” Jrill said.
“He’ll just get another one and fill it up again. We have to stop him.”
“And then someone else will take his place. As long as there’s demand, someone will profit off the supply.”
First’s fists twisted up into bricks. “I thought Turemok were supposed to be the galactic cops of the Assembly. That was your job for what, a thousand years?”
First braced for the counterattack, but to her surprise, the barb had dug in deeper than she’d expected.
“That was my job,” Jrill said with a trace of wistfulness. “But I was let go. Now I take toys away from spoiled brats. It’s your job, too. Not saving the universe. Try to keep a little perspective.”
First pointed at the small, defenseless horde hiding under Sheer. “This is wrong. It can’t go unpunished.”
“That’s not our call. We’ll talk to the boss as soon as we dock.”
CHAPTER 9
“Absolutely not,” Loritt said with as much finality he could inject into his tone. First’s face, so bright and hopeful only a moment before, soured like gak milk left out in the sun.
“You can’t be serious,” she said.
“Deadly serious. If we tell the authorities here about Vel Jut’s…” Loritt saw Jrill’s disapproving glance. “Excuse me, Jut’s, ah, extracurricular activities”—Loritt pointed at the Pay to Prey floating just on the other side of the docking bay’s gangway plank—“that ship gets impounded as evidence in the investigation for who knows how long. That means our employer doesn’t get their asset back, can’t put it up for auction, doesn’t recoup any of their investment, and, most importantly, has no money in the ledger with which to pay our fee. And all that comes with the ancillary benefit that they’ll absolutely think twice about offering us another closed contract. Then, we all starve.”
“I’d rather,” First said.
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