“I—what?” Casmir stared at her, realizing he knew nothing of her background.
Qin shrugged and waved away the question, then hopped to her feet. “Do you want to see my candles? I was never allowed to buy anything on the pirate ship, so I bought all this stuff with my first pay from the captain.” She grinned, removed the dragon from its case, and showed it off. “You can burn it, but I never would want to melt the sculpture.”
“You bought this all with one pay deposit?” Casmir asked, bemused. The girl must love shopping. Though now that he surveyed the collection again, he could see that everything had likely come from a couple of shops in some space-station concourse.
“My room and board are covered, so I don’t have a lot of expenses. The captain even does my claws for free. See?” She lifted her hands, revealing blue paint dotted with white stars.
Casmir stepped back involuntarily at the sight of her long razor claws. He hadn’t realized they retracted and extended.
Qin noticed the response, and her face fell. She lowered her hands and hid them behind her back.
“Sorry,” Casmir blurted. “I’m on edge around deadly weapons lately. For no particular reason. The fingernail, uhm, claw paint is very nice.”
“Thank you.” Her smile returned. “You’re very chivalrous.”
Kim snorted.
“Like a knight,” Qin added. “Did you ever think of trying to become one? There’s an academy that you can apply to, isn’t there?”
“If your grades are good enough, if you can pass the athletic exams, and if you have noble blood. I only would have qualified in one of those areas.” His mind boggled at the notion of him walking around in knight’s armor with one of those purple cloaks flapping in the breeze. He would probably trip over the halberd every time he extended it.
“You have to have noble blood?” Qin wrinkled her nose. “That’s weird. That just means that some ancestor of yours kissed up to a king, right?”
Casmir almost laughed. “Typically, someone did a great deed, but since it had to be noticed by the king, I suppose ass-kissing might have been involved. Some people were simply so heroic and monumental in history that the populace demanded they be made knights and nobles, blood and education notwithstanding. Like Admiral Mikita, the great warrior-leader who helped King Dieter and Princess Sophie unite the Twelve Systems and create the original Star Kingdom.”
He didn’t know if someone from another system would be that familiar with Odin’s historical figures, even if Mikita had effected change throughout all the systems, but Qin nodded.
“Yeah, my makers made me read all about him. To learn military strategy.” She wrinkled her nose again, suggesting unicorns and dragons might have been of more interest to her, but then tapped a claw to her lips thoughtfully as she scrutinized his face. “You kind of look like him.”
This time, Casmir did laugh, and he heard another snort from Kim. She’d moved over to examine the titles on the bookshelf but clearly hadn’t stopped listening.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard that.” Casmir smiled gently, since Qin appeared puzzled. “There are a lot of pictures of Mikita in our textbooks. In all of them, he’s about eight feet tall with shoulders like mountains, a granite jaw, and the muscles to rip trees out by the roots. I am…” As he waved self-deprecatingly at his five foot seven inches, narrow shoulders, and scrawny build, his eye blinked a couple of times to further demonstrate his lack of heroic attributes. “Not those things,” he finished.
“Huh, those don’t sound like the same pictures I’ve seen. He’s in my boxed set of Great Leaders of Earth and Great Leaders of the Twelve Systems. Kim, do you like books? I have a lot of fairy tales. And the Confucian classics.”
Casmir arched his eyebrows. Maybe Qin knew more about the history and culture of her namesake than she’d let on.
“Oh, and some romances,” Qin added. “The romances are silly. As if sex is anything like they describe in those books, but the System Boar fairy tales especially are full of symbolism and some of them make you think.”
“I’ve read a number of these, yes.” Kim waved to the shelves.
“The fairy tales or the inaccurate-sex romances?” Casmir asked.
“You know my feelings on sex.” She sent a message along with the words. Please tell me we came here for something greater than this discussion.
“That it’s messy, unpleasant, and achieves nothing that a laboratory and an artificial womb can’t accomplish, I seem to recall,” Casmir said.
“Precisely. Should one even wish to procreate.”
“Kim is not eager to have children,” Casmir explained, since Qin’s forehead was crinkled. “I, on the other hand, think it would be delightful to have a little boy or girl to build robots with. Someday. If I survive. How much did you say the bounty on my head is?”
“Two hundred thousand Kingdom crowns.” Qin clapped a hand over her mouth as soon as the words came out.
“Were you not supposed to tell me?” Casmir kept his voice gentle and devoid of accusation, though it depressed him to verify that Kim had been right. Qin hadn’t admitted that yet, but she wouldn’t have reacted that way if they weren’t up to something. “Because the captain is planning to collect it? Do you get a reasonable cut? What will you buy? I’m sure you can only fit so many candles in this cabin.”
Qin turned her back to them.
“You tricked me,” she whispered.
“Did I? I just asked a question.” It was true, but her response made Casmir feel like a heel. He had meant to lower her guard so she would answer honestly. “I don’t blame you. We’ve been in a crazy situation, and sometimes when the adrenaline is coursing through people’s veins, unwise decisions are made.”
He doubted that had happened to Lopez, though, at least when it came to the decision to collect his bounty. She might have gotten in over her head with the bioweapon, but this had been a calculated choice. She’d had a lot of time to change her mind, all night on the station while Qin had been looking for him, and she hadn’t.
“I didn’t want to do it,” Qin said, her back still to them, “but the captain… she was divorced, and her husband took everything, and left her in debt. Don’t tell her I said this, but I know she’s desperate. It’s why we’re running on next to nothing. It’s why she’s taken risks she wouldn’t normally take. She’s had nothing but trouble since I joined her, and she’s not… I know she would prefer to do the right thing.”
“That’s good to know,” Casmir said, trying to keep his tone neutral. He wondered if there was a chance that he could lure Qin over to their side. “I don’t suppose you can tell me who is offering that bounty? I’ve been running for weeks now and had crushers try to kill me numerous times, but I still have no idea who is after me and why.”
Qin gazed at the wall without answering. Maybe that was all he would get from her. She probably saw it as a betrayal to speak to him, but he had a hard time giving up. Her silence seemed to mean that she knew. He stared at the back of her head, groping for something clever to say to entice the answer from her.
“Please, Qin,” was what came out, a soft pleading whisper.
Her chin drooped. “Pequod Holding Company.”
Kim looked sharply at her.
The name didn’t mean anything to Casmir, but he hoped Kim had some information.
“Viggo couldn’t find much about them,” Qin added. “It’s not a publicly traded company, and there weren’t any officers or board members listed. No home planet or habitat.”
“Thank you for that, Qin.”
She twitched one shoulder and continued to face the wall.
“Is there any chance you would help us turn things around?” Casmir asked.
Qin was shaking her head before he finished the sentence.
“I don’t want to hurt you or see you hurt, but I can’t go against her.” Qin turned around, her chin up, her eyes determined. “She’s my captain, and I agreed to follow her orders. A soldier
who can’t follow orders has no place in the unit. No place anywhere, because that means she can’t be trusted to do her job.”
“To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle,” Kim said, waving toward one of the books she was presumably quoting.
Qin’s eyes tightened at the corners. “Please leave now.”
Casmir frowned. Qin had already helped by sharing what he’d needed to know. He didn’t want to make her feel bad just because she wouldn’t betray her captain.
“Of course.” Casmir waved Kim toward the hatch. “I’m sorry we disturbed you, Qin. And that I tricked you. It’s just… It’s my life. I want to keep living it. I hope you’ll pardon my selfishness.”
She scowled and turned her back on them again.
As Casmir and Kim stepped into the corridor, she messaged him again.
Pequod is the name of Captain Ahab’s ship in Moby Dick.
The who in the what? He glanced back at her.
She frowned. Didn’t you read any books without schematics in them at the university?
I did my best to avoid classes that made use of such odious things.
Well, you may remember that I took as many classes as I could get away with on classical literature from Earth. In the novel, Captain Ahab loses his leg in an encounter with a whale and vows revenge on it. He spends the whole book trying to find it, and when they do, they fight a big battle and lose. Ahab and his ship, the Pequod, are destroyed. For the last three thousand years, the name Pequod has been associated with doom and failure.
For those who read the book.
Someone who wants you dead apparently did.
Maybe it’s a coincidence. That’s a pretty obscure reference, don’t you think?
Kim shrugged. Whether it’s a coincidence or not, I don’t want to meet the people trying to kill you.
No, I’m not eager to either. Not in person, at least. Perhaps over a video chat from three planets away where we can work out our differences without touching.
You’re not going to get that if we continue on our current trajectory. Kim spread her palm toward the ceiling. Are you ready to take over the ship yet?
We’d have to figure out a way to get Viggo on our side or a way to disable him, and then we’d still be in a logjam, because neither of us is a pilot. We’d need him to fly the ship. Or Lopez.
What if we hold Lopez and Qin hostage and force him to help us? Or at least not to impede us?
Please tell me you’re not thinking of getting out one of those vials, Casmir replied.
No. One of the first things I’d do if I had control of the ship is to throw those out the airlock, get some distance between them and the ship, and launch every weapon the Dragon has at them.
Good.
I was thinking of something that will scare Qin and Lopez but won’t be deadly.
Such as?
“I have a dreadful headache,” Kim said aloud, stopping in the corridor instead of heading back into the lounge. “I’m going to see if there are painkillers in the sickbay.”
Casmir assumed that was for Viggo’s sake. The ship’s computer might have already reported the conversation in Qin’s room.
Am I following? Casmir messaged her.
No. I’m enacting a plan. You go back to the lounge and finish building Viggo his robots. Maybe he’ll think more kindly of you then. And maybe he’ll pay more attention to what you’re doing than what I’m doing.
Let’s hope. Out loud, he said, “Grab me some more motion-sickness pills while you’re there, please,” as Kim headed down the corridor. “One can never have too many.”
“It’s possible to overdose on those, you know.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
As Casmir headed into the lounge, he wondered if he should be worried or optimistic about whatever Kim had in mind. Probably worried. After all, she’d told him to knock off his optimism.
18
Bonita gripped the console in navigation as another wave of nausea assaulted her. Sweat beaded on her forehead, her face was flushed, and no amount of water could quench her thirst.
The Stellar Dragon was finishing its deceleration, with Saga’s blue cloudy sphere filling the display ahead of them, so gravity was almost nonexistent, but she was used to zero-g. Zero-g didn’t give her a fever.
“Viggo?”
Speaking made her stomach worse, and she groaned and released herself from her pod, then half ran and half pushed herself off the walls to the lavatory. Space toilets were obnoxious under any circumstances, even for a seasoned traveler, but they weren’t designed for puke. She made a mess, then collapsed on the deck, her cheek pressed against the cool textured metal.
Two of Viggo’s cleaning robots roamed around, whirring softly. For once, she didn’t mind their constant presence. She wouldn’t want to clean up the mess she’d just made herself. And her stomach still wasn’t appeased. She sensed that if she tried to get up, she would puke again.
“Viggo?” she rasped, dragging her sleeve across her mouth.
“Yes, Captain. Are you allowing me to break your rule about contacting you in the lavatory?”
“Don’t get funny with me. I’m not in the mood.” Bonita closed her eyes. She ought to be in navigation to pilot them into the refinery and find a docking spot, but she feared she would have to let Viggo handle it.
“Yes, Captain. Your body temperature is elevated. It appears you are sick.”
She watched as one of the vacuums whirred past in front of her eyes, sucking up the proof of that. “Good guess. Tell Qin to head to navigation and check for other ships before we dock. If we need to dock at all. I’m sure whoever is picking up Casmir doesn’t live in the refinery.”
“Qin is also incapacitated by illness. She is in a similar state in the other lavatory.”
A bead of sweat trickled down Bonita’s jaw as she worried that over. It wasn’t that uncommon to catch a virus after visiting a station, habitat, or some other population center, but she wouldn’t have guessed that her genetically engineered assistant could be afflicted by something so simple. She could have sworn Qin had once mentioned having an enhanced immune system.
“There’s no chance one of those vials in the case broke, is there?” Her belly quivered with terror as she envisioned soon feeling much, much worse.
“I am unable to scan the contents, as you may recall, but the case is still secured behind the panel, and nobody has gone in to tamper with it.”
That didn’t mean it was impossible that something had happened. Could the contents of those vials leak out through the seams in that case? Kim had said something about acids that could help bioweapons eat through combat armor and space suits.
“Kim,” Bonita rasped, suspicion leaping to mind. “What about our passengers? Are they sick?”
“They appear to be fine. They have not left the lounge since yesterday.”
“Not even to sleep? Why, because they knew the air is contaminated? Or we were contaminated?” Bonita tried to lurch to a sitting position, wanting to rush down to strangle those two and see if they’d done something.
“The air on the Stellar Dragon is most certainly not contaminated,” Viggo said stiffly. “Even if it had briefly been so, all of the air on the ship cycles through the filters and CO2 scrubbers every hour. All particles larger than .01 microns are captured and incinerated.”
“Are any viruses smaller than that?”
“Few.”
“So some?” Bonita vomited again and flopped onto her back on the deck. “I feel like I’m going to die. You’re sure those two didn’t sneak into the lavatory and grab one of those vials?”
“I am positive. However, it’s possible that they did something else. I believe they know about the bounty and that I am capable of monitoring them. They are speaking approximately 74% less than they did on the first leg of our journey, so I assume they are communicating chip-to-chip.”
“Qin might have told them.” Bonita closed her
eyes again. She’d worried about that, that Qin might even turn on her and help them escape. Maybe she should have locked everyone in the brig three days ago. But Qin could probably break down the cell door. And then there was the matter of Casmir’s new pet. “I think I botched this, Viggo.”
“We are less than a half hour from the refinery. The scanners show several docking spots available. Two are in use by automated mining ships, but there are no manned vessels attached currently. It appears that we can dock without a passcode, though it is possible the refinery interior has defense systems to keep passersby from raiding its processed gases.”
As if Bonita could raid anything right now.
“Do you wish me to dock?” Viggo asked.
“Are there any other ships in range of your scanners? Besides those mining tankers? You’re positive nobody is inside those?”
“Correct. Neither the mining ships nor the refinery have air pressure or oxygen. You’ll need your suit and tank to visit.”
Bonita had assumed a ship would be here waiting and that she wouldn’t have to visit. Maybe someone was on the way.
“There is a large civilian vessel orbiting one of the moons on the far side of Saga’s orbit from us,” Viggo added. “It would take twelve hours to reach it. I see nothing else in the vicinity besides satellites.”
“Meaning we’re early or someone has stealth technology. Go ahead and dock. We’re going to need to get fuel one way or another eventually.” Bonita didn’t know how she would manage that while she was sick, but it would be better to have full tanks before Casmir’s buyer showed up. Just in case things went supernova.
“Yes, Captain. You have visitors coming.”
“Kim and Casmir?” She groaned again as she watched one of the vacuums traipse across the ceiling.
“Yes.”
“Are they armed?”
Bonita patted her side where her holster was usually attached to her suit, but it wasn’t there. It was hanging over the back of her pod in navigation where she’d draped it that morning. Damn it. She was supposed to be more competent than this.
“Kim has a stunner and Casmir is walking behind the crusher.”
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