Had the bounty been for Casmir to be delivered alive? He’d never seen it, so he didn’t know. But maybe that was why Lopez had been willing to hand him over so readily. She’d claimed she hadn’t thought he would be killed. Neither she nor Qin had known who ran Pequod Holding Company.
“So on a whim, you decided to drop two hundred thousand crowns?” Casmir asked.
“I have plenty of money.”
“Terrorizing Kingdom troops pays well, does it?” Casmir couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his words. He couldn’t forget that this man, this man who looked exactly like him, had killed thousands and destroyed countless ships, bases, and refineries.
“A lot of people don’t want to see the Kingdom rise again.” Rache’s voice iced over. “You don’t support Jager, do you?”
“I don’t know him at all, other than what the media reports. I don’t have a lot of opportunities to interact with royalty.”
“No? Who raised you?”
Who had raised him? Who had raised Rache? Did he know his biological parents?
“My adoptive parents were—”
The doors slid open, and Rache raised a finger.
The doctor floated back in, coming to a stop against the table. Casmir’s neck throbbed in memory of the needle.
The doctor waited for the doors to automatically shut before speaking. “I can say with a high degree of probability that your DNA started out as identical.”
“Started out?” Casmir glanced at the other doors, wishing Kim had returned, but maybe Rache was making sure she couldn’t until they were done talking.
Rache merely watched the doctor, waiting.
“This isn’t my field, so I had to consult the computer, but here’s what I’ve got.” The doctor looked nervously at Rache before continuing on.
Casmir hoped this wasn’t some awful secret that Rache would kill him over once he’d revealed it. Something about the doctor’s face made Casmir think he was worrying about that very thing. But why? Did it truly matter to anyone else if he and Rache—as bizarre and mind boggling as it was—ended up being twins who had, thirty-two years ago, been sent off to different homes to be raised?
“Yours—” the doctor pointed at Casmir, “—has a lot more mutations, mutations that could have been fixed at birth if you’d been born in another system.”
Casmir nodded, hardly surprised by that.
“Yours—” the doctor pointed at Rache, “—and I wouldn’t know this if I wasn’t comparing it to his, had mutations that were fixed at birth, which is odd, considering your Kingdom accent.”
“Don’t think too hard about my origins, Doctor,” Rache said softly. “You’ve been useful these past few months, and I’d like to see you survive your five-year enlistment.”
The doctor’s bronze face paled a few shades. Casmir scowled, not appreciating the threat, or the idea that Rache might kill someone simply for knowing about him. Did that warning go for him as well? If Casmir figured out what Rache’s real name was, would the mercenary shoot him, DNA match or not?
“Enlistment, right,” the doctor muttered, the words barely audible.
“Anything else?” Rache asked.
“Just that you’ve received more radiation over your life than he has and have more damaged mitochondria. You might want to make friends with your female prisoner.” The doctor looked around. “Uh, where is your female prisoner?”
“My quarters.”
A hint of indignation flashed in the doctor’s eyes, but he squelched it. “Then I see you’re taking my advice preemptively. She’s been studying—crafting, I gather from the article I read—radiation-eating bacteria that will happily live inside a human host and protect him from even cosmic rays. Apparently, they simply increase in numbers if there’s more radiation available to consume.”
“Interesting. She does that work on Odin? Where genetic engineering is strictly forbidden?” Rache looked at Casmir.
“From what I read, her corporation reports that they’re not tinkering with the DNA of the bacteria,” the doctor said. “They say they are simply creating new strains in much the same way that farmers create new varieties of plants by cross-pollinating existing ones. And the government agrees with this because they want radiation-eating bacteria for their space-faring troops. I understand cancer rates plummeted among the crews that initially volunteered for inoculation a few years ago.”
“Interesting,” Rache repeated and looked toward the door to his quarters.
Casmir preferred it when the men hadn’t been discussing Kim. Just because Rache hadn’t done anything untoward to her yet didn’t meant he wouldn’t. The idea of someone who shared Casmir’s genes being some psychopathic killer and molester of prisoners floored him. How was that even possible? Casmir didn’t even like damaging robots.
“You find anything else remarkable, Doctor?” Rache faced him again, and there was an odd intentness to the question.
“Just what you’d expect, that you’ve led different lives and triggered different epigenetic changes to your genome.”
Rache kept looking at the man, the mask hiding his thoughts, but his scrutiny had to be uncomfortable. Casmir knew it was. The doctor prodded the edge of the table with his fingers.
“I didn’t find anything else,” the doctor said into the silence.
“Good,” Rache said softly. “Good. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” The doctor turned and pushed toward the double doors, his momentum almost crashing him into them.
“Say nothing of this,” Rache called after him. “And delete the files.”
“Yes, sir. Understood.”
The doors closed.
Casmir scratched his jaw. “What else did you expect him to find? Or would you have to kill me if you told me?” He smiled, but it wasn’t much of a joke. He was almost positive that had been Rache’s underlying threat to the doctor.
“I am skeptical that I can trust you, loyal Kingdom subject,” Rache said. “I’m guessing someone has already figured out your unique ancestry and that’s why you’re being targeted. I have enough trouble dealing with Jager’s assassins. I don’t need anyone sending your crushers after me. Though if my guess is correct, they’re more likely to recruit me than try to kill me. Time will tell.”
If Casmir hadn’t been chained to the deck, he would have flung himself over to grab Rache by the neck and shake him. It sounded like the man knew who was after him and why.
“Time’s not telling me anything. If you have answers…” Casmir flexed a pleading hand in the air. He wouldn’t have begged a criminal for his own life, but to satiate his burning curiosity? That was another matter. He had to know what was going on.
Rache held up a finger and cocked his head. “Understood,” he muttered in response to some subvocal communication. “Don’t let her on the ship. We’ll meet in the refinery and check the case there.”
The case. The case full of horrific bacteria and a rocket to launch them? Lopez was giving them to this man? This Kingdom-hating man? No, no, no.
Casmir jerked at his shackled ankle. He couldn’t let mercenaries that hated the Kingdom have a weapon that could end countless human lives on Odin.
Rache pushed himself to the rear doors and knocked. Kim must have been standing right there, waiting to be released, because she pulled herself out of the room, her expression closed, hard to read.
“Kim?” Casmir asked. “Are you all right?”
Before she could answer, Rache gripped her arm. “You’ve seen the bioweapon before? I assume you’re the one who identified it.”
Kim blinked a few times and didn’t seem to follow him, but then she nodded.
Casmir squinted at her. Whatever she’d seen on that recording, it must not have related to this.
“You’re going to come look at it again,” Rache said. “Make sure Lopez hasn’t tampered with it.”
Kim took a breath and recovered some of her normal equanimity. She glanced down at the hand gripping her arm.
“Let go of me,” she said steadily, looking him in the face—in the mask—without fear.
He stared back at her, seconds tumbling past, without moving or releasing his grip.
“If you want my help,” Kim said, “let go of me. I’m not handling those vials with some asshole pirate looming behind me with a hand around my throat.”
Casmir had always admired her willingness to stand up for herself, but he winced, afraid this was a better time to go along with the flow and wait for an opportunity to escape. Unless she’d found some weapon in his quarters that she could use against him? He hadn’t put his torso armor back on yet. How much did the thin fabric he wore underneath it protect him?
“I am not a pirate, Ms. Sato,” Rache said coolly, “and if my hand were around your throat, you would be significantly more uncomfortable.”
He released her, propelling her across the room toward the other door. It wasn’t a violent move but a calculating one that sent her over the table and precisely to the target. Casmir had a feeling all of the man’s moves were calculating. Because most of his were. And they were apparently the same, or had started out that way. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Casmir was screaming. Not because he had a twin but because this man’s reputation proved he was the epitome of evil. How could someone with his genes be like that?
“Wait,” Casmir blurted when Rache pushed himself across the room after Kim. “Are you leaving me here?”
The double doors had slid open when Kim reached them, but she hadn’t gone out. She looked at Casmir and then at Rache.
“He’s the one who knows how to unlock the case,” she said. “If you don’t want to force it.”
“That’s true,” Casmir said, “but I’d need my toolkit.”
Rache looked back and forth between them. Wondering if they were plotting something sneaky?
Not yet, but Casmir certainly hoped to do so. He needed to get away from Rache and his ship full of Kingdom-loathing mercenaries and think. And figure out… he didn’t even know what. But he doubted this was a safe place for him. Curiosity might have prompted Rache to bring him here, but he might soon decide that Casmir knew too much about him.
“Very well,” Rache said. “You’ll both come.”
As he came over to unlock Casmir’s shackle, Casmir said, “We’ll need our oxygen tanks back if we’re going out to the refinery.”
“No, I think you’ll go as you are. To keep you from being tempted to run off.”
“I have to breathe to open locks.”
“You’ll have about twenty minutes’ worth of air stored in the niches of your suit, and there are CO2 absorbers in the helmet.”
“Twenty minutes. Gee.”
“Better hope your friends don’t screw around.”
Rache gripped Casmir by the back of the neck and pushed him toward the door where Kim waited. He didn’t squeeze hard, but Casmir couldn’t help but think how easily someone with cybernetic enhancements could snap his spine.
“They’re not my friends,” Casmir said. “Lopez sold me to you.”
“We’ll see.”
As Rache pushed Kim and Casmir into the hands of armored mercenaries who led them back toward the airlock, Casmir was reminded that if everything was true, if he and Rache shared the same DNA, Rache was every bit as smart as he was.
All he could hope was that Rache was also every bit as fallible as he was.
21
Casmir took several deep breaths in the airlock chamber before sliding his helmet over his head. He struggled not to panic at the idea of leaving the ship when he only had twenty minutes of air. An estimated twenty minutes of air.
What if he hyperventilated and sucked it up faster? What if he had another seizure? He had no idea where his medication was. Would Rache drag him back to his ship and save him if he passed out? Or had his curiosity about Casmir been satisfied now? No need to keep him around?
A big mercenary accidentally kicked him in the ankle bone. His suit, so much thinner than their combat armor, didn’t do much to protect him, but at least the lack of gravity kept his foot from being stomped on. He was packed into the airlock chamber with Kim, Rache—back in full armor now—and three men and a woman who had orders to “Keep an eye on Dabrowski.” He didn’t know if that was because she was an assassin or someone who would know if he was fiddling with electronics in an inappropriate way. Another batch of mercenaries waited in the corridor to follow them out. The doctor hadn’t been among them. Too bad. He’d been the only one Casmir had spotted who’d seemed sympathetic and might have been talked into helping.
The ship’s outer hatch opened, and his helmet display reported a lack of oxygen in the atmosphere. Casmir had the urge to shove the mercenaries out of the way—or try—in an attempt to get out there for the exchange as quickly as possible. He resisted it. Exerting himself would use up his limited air faster.
The men strode down their airlock tube and fanned out in the refinery, their magnetic boots keeping them attached to the floor. They didn’t have to look far for their new cargo. A tall broad-shouldered figure in a galaxy suit faced the airlock tube, the case floating in the air before her. It was either Qin or Lopez, there being no other options. Casmir thought Qin. She was taller and broader of shoulder. But the suit and helmet made it hard to tell. The dim lighting of the pipe- and tank-filled bay, along with the reflection of her helmet light on the faceplate, obscured her features.
A rifle was slung over Qin’s shoulder on a strap, but her hands were up in the air and empty. She gestured for the mercenaries to take the case into their ship, but Rache stepped past Casmir and pointed deeper into the refinery. Qin looked but didn’t move. She gestured toward their ship again and stepped back, lifting her hands. The case floated without a guardian.
Rache must have spoken to her on a comm link, because she returned to the case, steered it around, and strode in the direction he’d pointed.
What’s he doing? Kim texted Casmir, the message popping up on his contact.
Either because Rache hadn’t thought of it or there hadn’t been time, he hadn’t ordered their contacts removed or their chips torn out. That would have been devastating, but Casmir knew from the news that it was a typical torture tactic among criminals and vigilantes. It kept the subject from accessing networks and calling for help, and ripping a chip out instead of having a surgeon remove it tended to have some nasty neural side effects.
I don’t know, Casmir replied. He didn’t tell me.
What did you talk about for so long?
I’ll tell you later. Casmir wouldn’t be surprised if the mercenaries could monitor their communications. What was in his room that he wanted you to see?
A mercenary shoved Casmir from behind. Apparently, he was to follow Qin and the case. Rache was already heading in that direction.
Long story, she replied. I’ll tell you later.
I hope for both our sakes that there is a later.
Me too.
Every time Qin glanced back, Rache waved for her to continue. Casmir didn’t like that they were traveling deeper into the refinery while his and Kim’s air wound down.
They left the bay and the airlocks and passed through more cavernous rooms made claustrophobic by huge holding tanks and pipes. Here and there, robots flitted past on tracks that ran high over their heads.
Rache finally stopped Qin. They were in another big bay with tanks and more computer equipment than had been in the others. A processing room? It was likely where the different types of gases were separated from each other.
“You two,” Rache’s voice sounded over Casmir’s helmet speaker. “Come check this. Make sure Lopez didn’t take anything out and isn’t trying to screw us.”
Normally, Casmir might have said something flippant, but he hurried to the case, aware that he was already almost halfway through his twenty minutes of air.
Rache thrust something toward Casmir—his tool satchel.
“Thank you,” Casmir said,
startled.
For a moment, he was grateful to have all his belongings back, but then he realized Rache simply wanted him to have what he needed to open the case. Logical, but Casmir was afraid to open the satchel here. Everything was piled inside, not neatly secured for use in zero gravity.
“Go back to your ship,” Rache said. “Don’t get lost.”
At first, Casmir thought the message for him, but Rache was speaking on a broad channel.
Qin hesitated, then turned around and walked away.
Casmir felt a fresh twinge of betrayal, stung that Lopez and Qin would truly leave him and Kim here with these people, these hardened and remorseless killers.
“Make sure she doesn’t get distracted along the way,” Rache told one of his mercs, pointing after Qin.
Aware of time ticking, Casmir focused on the case. He remembered the code from before and tried tapping it in, but it had either changed on its own, or Lopez had changed it. If the latter, that seemed odd. Especially since Lopez had attached the device he’d created to thwart the lock. It floated, tied to an eyelet on the case with a piece of wire. She must have intended for him to get inside. Eventually.
“What’s that?” the mercenary woman asked, attractive brown-skinned features behind her faceplate.
Somehow, Casmir had expected all mercenaries to look like brutes. The batch on the bridge had more closely fit his imagination.
“Lock pick?” He picked up the device, secured it to the code pad on the case, and turned it on, hoping Lopez hadn’t done something awful, like breaking some of the vials. He doubted a lack of air or gravity would save them all from contamination.
“Are you asking me or telling me?” the woman asked.
“I’d rather not talk at all, if you don’t mind. Your boss didn’t give me an oxygen tank.”
“No? I guess he decided he didn’t like you. Or that you’re working for Jager.”
“I’ve never even met King Jager.”
“He’s an ass.”
Casmir couldn’t identify her accent, but he was positive she wasn’t from a Kingdom population center. Not that he cared. He waited impatiently for the device to run. Had it taken this long to crack the code last time?
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