Shockwave

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Daughter. Or so the net tells me. Huh.”

  “Is that… useful to you?” Yas felt lost, but he hoped the captain didn’t have anything inimical planned for the two refugees. They looked far more like scientists than criminal masterminds, and Yas would rather speak to such people than shoot them. The crew of this ship made him dearly miss intelligent discourse.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. The net says she’s a bacteriologist, so she may know nothing of her mother’s work.”

  “They seem like unlikely people to be caught up in—what are they caught up in?”

  “Nobody seems to know for sure yet. At least, it hasn’t been released to the media.” Rache flipped back to the photo of the roboticist, then gripped his chin again as he studied it or maybe the text—the man’s résumé and professional accolades. “Though I have a hypothesis about why this man may be a target.”

  “Are you going to tell me?” Yas asked.

  “No, Doctor. Let me know if you find out anything more about the body.”

  That would be hard since the captain had forced him to leave the bodies on the refinery, not even permitting him to bring a blood sample on board, but Yas said, “Yes, Captain,” and turned toward the door.

  “And, Doctor?” Rache said, making him pause.

  “Sir?”

  “Tell no one of this. If you made a copy of the chip—”

  “I didn’t.”

  “—destroy it.”

  Rache stared at him through his mask, and Yas had the urge to squirm, even though he truly hadn’t made a copy and knew very little about what was going on. He held up his hands defensively, resenting that he was so unsure of himself here and that he had to fear for his life, but he couldn’t help it. This wasn’t his world any longer, and he had no idea how to navigate it without acting like some mindless sycophant.

  “You’re dismissed,” Rache said.

  Yas hurried out, his mouth dry.

  13

  The comm panel in navigation beeped. Bonita stopped pacing in the tiny space behind the piloting pods, faced the display, and took a bracing breath. Diego’s scowling face popped up.

  “As I said in my message, Diego,” she said, hoping to head off a tirade, “my circumstances have changed, and I won’t be able to sell you those weapons. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “Inconvenience? ¿Qué chingados? We almost got hammered by a ship full of knights. What’d you do? Comm them to let them know we were coming?”

  “No, of course not. I—”

  “Because they were damn sure we were coming to pick up something from you, and they were willing to nuke us rather than let that happen. I thought those uptight bastards were supposed to be noble. Nuking people isn’t noble.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You’re lucky we had something to throw out to intercept their attack and then the slydar to slip into nothing on their scanners. If we’d been killed, my family would have made sure you died a horrible painful death. Don’t contact me again.”

  The screen went black.

  Bonita slumped into her pod. This week kept getting worse and worse, and that didn’t look like it would change soon. It wasn’t as if she could sell that case to anyone now, not unless she sold it to a psychopath who planned to use it on people. She wasn’t a saint, but she couldn’t live with that.

  She’d spent the majority of her life obeying the law, even working to put criminals in jail. It was only in the last year that she’d been forced to take some sketchy delivery jobs to make ends meet. But smuggling weapons, biotech, and drugs here and there wasn’t the same as helping someone set up mass genocide. She couldn’t do that.

  But damn it, she was tired of getting screwed out of money. Could she take the case back to Sayona Station and get her money back? Unfortunately, that was weeks of travel and a gate-jump away, and she had no idea if they would give even a partial refund. Sayona Station didn’t have a reputation for exemplary customer service. Few businesses in System Cerberus did.

  It was a moot point right now, since she didn’t have enough fuel to reach the gate. As much as she hated to admit it, she would have to accept the loss and turn over the bioweapon to the authorities here. She wagered those knights already knew what she had. It would be better to voluntarily give it to them than wait for them to take it forcefully.

  And then… Hell, she didn’t know what then. She needed to buy some helium-3 and deuterium to have more options. She wasn’t sure she had enough fuel to even make it back to Odin now. Not that she wanted to return to that benighted planet.

  Maybe she could find some minor bounty to collect here on Forseti Station. She could make a few Kingdom crowns and refuel.

  “Viggo, will you check the posted bounties for me? See if anything new has popped up this week. Ideally, someone who might be lurking on this very station and who we could capture and turn in quickly.”

  Her knee twinged at the idea of chasing down some criminal, reminding her of one of the reasons she was semi-retired from the demanding business, but she could take a few painkillers and do a job. She had Qin to help now too.

  “I will check.” One of Viggo’s vacuums rolled into navigation, humming happily as it slurped up nonexistent lint and dust.

  “And don’t order any deliveries until we get paid for something,” Bonita said. “You don’t need more vacuums.”

  “Really, Captain. My fleet has been decimated.”

  “Removing two from a fleet of thirty hardly qualifies as decimated.”

  “Actually, since one was already inoperable—you wouldn’t allow me to order parts last month, you may recall—it precisely qualifies under the historical definition of decimated, in which one in every group of ten soldiers was killed as punishment to the whole group.”

  “Your robot vacuums are not soldiers, Viggo.”

  “And yet, performance is suffering due to their inability to implement full coverage during every day cycle, as is recommended for maintaining an optimal environment for crew and passengers. I fear this ship is turning into a pigsty.”

  “Yeah, it looks like a helium-hogger exploded all over a refinery.” Bonita gestured to the as-always-immaculate navigation cabin, then reached for the comm to call the authorities. An incoming signal flashed first. “This station is a chatty area.”

  “Forseti is the largest and most populous station in System Lion. There are more than eighty levels, fifty hotels and resorts, two shipyards, and a vast industrial area responsible for the manufacture of seventy percent of the mining equipment produced in the system.”

  “Thanks for the encyclopedia entry.”

  “There is an excellent robotics shop in the concourse that has three aisles of self-propelling vacuums.”

  “You’re not getting more vacuums.”

  As she slapped the comm to answer, an alarm flashed on the far side of the control panel, and a faint clank reverberated through the ship. A man wearing a blue-and-gray Kingdom Guard uniform appeared on the display, and she didn’t have time to check the alert.

  “Captain Lopez here.”

  The man’s scowl announced his displeasure before he said a word. “Lopez, your ship is being held and a quarantine enforced until such time as it’s deemed safe for my men to come aboard and collect the highly illegal biological weapons you’re carrying.”

  “Ah, and your name is?” Damn, so much for her idea of preemptively contacting the law so she wouldn’t get in trouble.

  “Guard Chief Wu. If you cooperate fully with my people, your sentence may be more lenient.”

  “My sentence? I haven’t—”

  Wu cut the channel, and the blackness of space returned to the display.

  “That clank you heard was a dock-lock being secured to the ship,” Viggo said. “We won’t be able to leave until it’s released.”

  “I guessed.” Bonita slumped back into her chair. Sentence? Had anyone even proven she’d committed a crime yet? “Why, Viggo, why did you let me agree to c
arry this cargo without looking inside?”

  “You didn’t ask for my agreement.”

  “An error.”

  “Usually, yes. But I have good news. There have been new bounties issued since we came through a couple of weeks ago, and I can guarantee at least one of the subjects is on the station.”

  “Not much I can do about it now. We’re trapped.”

  “Technically, I’m trapped,” Viggo said. “You could walk off through the airlock.”

  “Where I’d be apprehended. Or shot.”

  “That is possible.”

  Bonita stared at the stars without seeing them. Was it possible she could sneak off, collect a bounty, and bribe someone in Lock Control to release her ship?

  Fleeing would make her look guilty, and she would end up with a warrant out for her arrest, but it would only be in the Kingdom. She would have absolutely no problem avoiding this system for the rest of her life. She didn’t know if that would be enough, that they would refrain from issuing a systems-wide bounty for her, but she had to hope they wouldn’t bother. Not for smuggling. Admittedly, she was smuggling the worst thing she could have possibly smuggled…

  “Show me the bounties,” Bonita said. “The one for the guy on this station.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Casmir’s face came up on the display, along with his full name, occupation, and last-known place of employment and residence.

  “Are you yanking my oxygen tank?” Bonita asked.

  “No, Captain. It’s extremely fresh. It appeared in the system three hours ago.”

  “We hadn’t been docked yet three hours ago.”

  “It was sent out system-wide, not specifically to this station. It’s possible that whoever’s looking for him doesn’t know where he is.”

  “This is making me wish I’d asked you to check on bounties two hours ago.” Before she’d booted Casmir off the ship. “But it would feel weird to…”

  “Collect a bounty on someone who assisted you numerous times on our voyage?” Viggo suggested.

  “No,” Bonita said, even though that was exactly what she was thinking. The kid was weird, but he had helped, and the idea of turning him over to some lowlife who might torture all the robotics secrets out of his brain didn’t sit well with her. “And it was only two times.”

  “It is possible those mercenaries would have left you dead and taken your cargo if he hadn’t damaged their ship.”

  “And how horrible it would have been if they’d taken that cargo.”

  “Would you not have found your death inconvenient?”

  “It would solve my current problems,” she grumbled, then ordered the display to scroll for the rest of the information on Casmir. Such as who wanted him and how much they were paying.

  If he had committed a Kingdom crime and all she had to do was turn him over to the Guard station, that wouldn’t be a betrayal, surely. If he was a criminal, he deserved their punishment.

  She snorted at the irony. She was hardly in a position to judge someone. But still, it wouldn’t be the same as handing him off to some pirate family or angry group of anarchists who wanted to shake classified information out of his innocent brain.

  Assuming he knew classified information. Did he? She had no idea.

  “Two hundred thousand Kingdom crowns?” Bonita gaped, forgetting to look at who had issued the bounty when her eyes locked onto that. “Holy stars, I’ve never gotten that much money for a bounty in my life. I’ve only seen a few for that much. I remember a shoot-out between bounty hunters where three of them killed each other in their eagerness to collect on a lucrative target like that.” She shook her head. “Shit, he’s probably already caught. I doubt he made it to the first elevator.”

  “The bounty is still active.”

  “That just means someone hasn’t turned him in. They probably have him.”

  Bonita closed her eyes. As impractical as it was, she couldn’t help but think of what she could do with that much money. Repair everything that needed repairing on the Stellar Dragon, pay off the loans she’d had to take out to keep the ship running after Pepper left, get caught up on the registration taxes, and still have money left to fund her retirement. Oh, maybe she would work a few jobs on the side, but nothing like this. She could rescue tourists kidnapped from Balneario del Mar on Tlaloc. Something low-key. Easy.

  “I will alert you if the bounty is removed, Captain.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured, then remembered she hadn’t looked at who had issued it. “Pequod Holding Company? Never heard of it. Viggo?”

  “It’s not publicly traded, and there’s little information on it. It makes investments on the stock and commodities exchanges. Nothing about profits or capitalization size.”

  “Nothing about what they’re worth then?”

  “Correct.”

  “So a business is looking for Casmir, huh?” That was unexpected, but Bonita could see it fitting in with her idea that someone wanted research secrets from him. It was hard to imagine him earning the ire of some torture-happy pirate family, but maybe his robotics work was cutting-edge stuff. “Of course, we have no idea what this business does or if it’s even real.”

  “That was my thought,” Viggo said. “Given the minimal information on the company, it looks like a front.”

  “Where do they want him delivered?” Bonita didn’t see that detail in the listing. If she could somehow make this work—and she had no idea how yet—she would have to be careful with the exchange, make sure to set up protection. She didn’t need to talk to any of her old bounty-hunter contacts to know that this company had never paid a bounty before. With no history, they couldn’t be trusted. They would have had to dump some money in an escrow account to make the listing on the hunter exchange, but… lawyers could figure out ways to take that money back without issuing a single crown.

  “There’s a network contact listed,” Viggo said. “That’s it. You would have to comm them and ask.”

  She stroked her chin. It wouldn’t hurt to ask, right? It wasn’t as if she could do anything about it even if Casmir was to be delivered to a corporate office three levels down.

  “There are armed men now stationed outside your airlock tube,” Viggo reported.

  “Are they staying on the station?”

  “For now. Shall I lock the hatch door? Qin did not do so before leaving.”

  “Leaving? Qin left?” Bonita hadn’t forbidden it, but Qin hadn’t told her she was going, so she was surprised. But this could be an opportunity. If Qin wasn’t stuck on the ship, she could look for Casmir.

  “Yes. She told me she wanted to see if there were any knights on the station, so she could see one in the flesh before leaving the system. In case we didn’t ever return.”

  Bonita almost laughed. Her nineteen-year-old super soldier seemed more like a nine-year-old girl at times.

  “Qin?” Bonita commed her.

  “Yes?”

  “Where are you now?”

  Qin hesitated before replying. “I’m looking for a knight, Captain. Just to see. I’m sure he won’t talk to me, but I’m wearing a hood, so people won’t stare. I won’t get in trouble. Are you mad that I left without asking for permission?”

  “No, you’re my crewman—woman—not my indentured servant. Look, I need you to find Casmir… and capture him.”

  Bonita wasn’t surprised at the long pause.

  “Capture?”

  “A bounty has been put out, and if someone hasn’t already gotten to him, we’re going to collect it. Once you have him, don’t bring him back to the ship. Wait for me to comm.”

  “But I like him, Captain.”

  “I don’t think it’s for his head. His death, that is. I think some business wants what’s in his head.”

  “Like what?”

  “How should I know? Robotics secrets. Just get him, Qin.” Bonita put an edge in her voice, not wanting to argue further, though she always felt bad snapping at Qin. She always had the sense
that Qin had already been snapped at—and worse—enough in her life.

  “Yes, Captain,” came the whispered reply before the channel closed.

  “Viggo, do some deeper research on that holding company, please. There must be some clues out there. I want to know who the CEO is. In the meantime…” Bonita called up the contact information on the bounty poster so she could find out where they wanted Casmir delivered.

  Casmir clenched his jaw as Constable Meat Paws dug through his satchel, tossing valuable tools and his prized robot bird to the floor without a thought. The man had already turned out Casmir’s pockets, his rough pat-down leaving numerous burgeoning bruises.

  Casmir’s cheeks flamed with heat such as he hadn’t felt since he’d been a scrawny kid in school, being humiliated and pushed around by bullies. He hadn’t had it as bad as some of his equally scrawny friends, because he’d always been quick to crack a joke and he’d had some success at making people want to laugh at him instead of punching him, but he’d endured a lot before finding his place at a university so competitive that nobody had time to pick on anybody else. There’d been too many assignments, too many tests to study for. Thank God.

  “Useless crap,” Meat Paws announced, tossing the satchel on the floor with the rest of his stuff.

  “Look out!” Casmir blurted, lunging to keep him from stepping on the bird.

  He bent to pick it up, but Meat Paws planted a hand on his chest and shoved him hard enough to send him tumbling into the table. His hip smacked hard against it.

  “Is that yours?” Meat Paws pointed down at the bird.

  “Yes. Just let me pick it up. Please. That took my team weeks to get working right, and it’s a prototype right now.”

  Casmir spotted Kim moving toward the man out of the corner of his eye. She looked like she would beat the snot out of the constable. Afraid that would get her in trouble, Casmir stepped forward and lifted placating hands, hoping to resolve the situation himself. Unfortunately, his mind was devoid of jokes or clever questions that might have distracted the man.