Severed Ties
Author: J. N. Chaney; Terry Maggert
Date: 2022-10-16 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Military Fiction
Description: The universe is hungry. For power. For money. For war. And—revenge. Stripping osmium from across the stars, thieves will stop at nothing to fuel the nightmarish industry of Stolen Persons, their souls locked away in chips made of the rarest metal known. Among these thieves is Helum Gauss, the visionary criminal whose empire spans a hundred worlds. But his massive corporation, BeneStar, lost—badly—to Van and the Guild, and Gauss won’t take no for an answer. To that end, he’ll hit Van where it hurts the most. Family. Lost among the Stolen Persons, Carter Yost is far from home, angry, and spoilin
Publisher: Variant Publications

Copyrighted Material

Severed Ties Copyright © 2022 by Variant Publications

Book design and layout copyright © 2022 by JN Chaney

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing.

1st Edition

CONTENTS

Don’t Miss Out

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Epilogue

Glossary

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1

I stopped at the corner, pulled the micro camera off my harness, and pointed it down the next corridor. The image projected onto my helmet’s heads-up showed—

Corridor. That was pretty much it. Just more of the same annealed rock walls and ceiling and metal-grate decking we’d been traversing for the last couple of hundred meters.

“Perry, how far have we come since the entrance?” I asked.

He spread his wings slightly. “Two hundred and fourteen point four meters, give or take.”

“How the hell does give or take work when you’re already giving me the distance to the nearest ten centimeters?”

“Do you want it down to the millimeter?”

I sighed. “Not really, no. The closest meter is fine. And you can dispense with the give or take bullshit.”

“Ooh, someone’s grumpy today.”

“I am not grumpy—”

“Oh, for—it’s you and me that are supposed to be sounding like the old married couple here, Van. Not you and the freakin’ bird,” Torina said.

“Yes, dear.”

I glanced back. Perry was right behind me, followed by Torina, Funboy, and Icky, with Zeno bringing up the rear. Netty was minding the store, keeping the Fafnir launch ready. Just in case.

The source of my tension was a product of our current situation—it being both tedious and stressful, two handmaidens of annoyance that lead to mistakes.

And I detest mistakes, especially when they can hurt my crew.

Guild intelligence told us this remote base built and refurbished small, powerful military-spec engines. It did so as a freelance operation, and while it wasn’t technically illegal, it was shady as hell. More to the point, it was located on the Earth-sized moon of a gas giant orbiting a star that was just outside Guild jurisdiction. So our intelligence shop had simply kept the occasional eye on the place—occasional apparently meaning every three years or so, since that was the last archive entry they could provide us. But the most recent checkup, conducted by an AI-controlled intel drone, had turned up something odd—the place had gone entirely dark.

“Maybe they just went out of business,” Torina had suggested when I gave my crew the mission rundown.

“Or moved on to a better location,” Icky added, looking around with distaste. “I don’t like the feel here, boss. Bit like a spirit town.”

“Ghost town, but I get you. It’s got that abandoned-but-dangerous air to it,” I admitted. “But the Guild wants us to check into it anyway. If the place has shut down or moved on, that’s still good intel that we can use.”

“Van, the Guild says that the motors these guys were building were originally of Peloquir design. But there’s a GKU note appended to the file saying something different, that the tech is probably from some unknown source or race. What’s up with that?” Zeno asked.

“A very good question, and one that our intel folks would like us to look into. That is, assuming we can get access. We’ll only try to enter if the place really does seem abandoned.”

“It will be full of dead bodies,” Funboy said.

We all turned to him, and I shook my head. “What?”

“Dead bodies. You know, deceased persons—”

“Yes, I know what a dead body is, thanks. What I mean is, why? What makes you think that?”

“Because these abandoned underground facilities are always dark and creepy and full of dead bodies, all of them hinting at some horrific end. Be it dried fluids or cartilage or bones, you can count on this place being chock-full of mortuary-grade remnants. And they’re splayed out in positions of horrific death and pain.” He shrugged as we sat staring at him. “Always.”

“Always. They’re always like that.”

“Alright, then—often.”

After a brief, incredulous look, we continued infiltrating the motor factory. Funboy had gotten the dark and creepy part right, at least, but we’d seen no bodies, nor any other sign of present or former life. I was starting to think the place really had just been abandoned. And that led to its own list of worries, starting with, why? Some sort of contamination? A deadly radiation leak? Unstable ground collapsing the tunnels—?

I shook my thoughts off the twisty, sinister path they’d started to follow. Darkness does that. Instead, I sniffed and started around the corner, muttering as I went.

“In space, no one can hear you scream.”

“That’s not true. They can hear you if you’re screaming over the comm,” Perry said.

“Or if they’re screaming inside an atmosphere, like aboard a ship, or an orbital,” Zeno added.

Funboy spoke up. “In fact, only in a few, very specific situations in space would no one be able to hear you scream. You, or they, or both of you would have to be in a vacuum, although if there were very thick walls or bulkheads in between you and the listener—”

“Guys, it’s just a tagline from an old Earth movie. A damned good one, too. Or it was, until you all got your grubby logic all over it—” I said, then cut myself off. Something had just come into view ahead, at the edge of our light. We’d been forced to use our lamps since everything in here was the same temperature and looked blankly the same in thermal.

I held up a hand. “Torina, Zeno, Funboy, stay here and give cover. Perry, let’s go check this out.”

“Right behind your armored bulk, boss,” Perry said.

We crept forward and reached what had caught my eye. I stopped, crouched beside it, and sighed.

“Well, Funboy’s three for three. He got the dark right, he got the creepy right—and now he’s gotten the dead body, killed in some horrific way right,” I said.

Funboy’s reply was immediate, and maybe a little smug.

“Told you.”

* * *

All that remained was a carapace, fragments of chitin and what might have been analogous to bone, plus bits and pieces of an environmental suit and some of its related hardware. The remains were scattered over several square meters and showed only a few scraps of softer tissue, freeze-dried into a hideous version of jerky by the airless cold.

“Perry, can you tell what species this was?”

“Well, let’s see. Carapace, chitin, needed a suit to protect it against the environment—I’d say a suited chitinous carapace creature.”

“That’s an awfully long-winded way of saying you don’t have a clue.”

“Yes, but it keeps my omniscient air intact. Got a rep to uphold, you know.”

I shone my lamp around. The tunnel extended for another ten meters, then hit a T-junction, where it went left and right. I called the others forward. As they approached, I turned back to our fragmented, skeletonized whatever the hell it was.

“Okay, bird. With a minimum of sass, can you offer any insight into how this… thing—person, guy, whatever—died?”

“He was ripped apart.”

“Perry—!”

“No, Van, this time I’m being serious. He was ripped apart. Some force, or more likely forces strong enough to overcome the tensile strength of its body, were applied to it. It could have been an explosion, although I don’t detect any evidence of blast or shrapnel effects on the surrounding tunnel. It might have been done by something physically grabbing it and pulling it apart.” He gazed up at me, two amber points of light in the gloom.

“It was ripped apart. That’s all we can say.”

Funboy, who’d arrived by then and spent a moment studying the body, spoke up. “First of all”—he pointed at the remains—“see? A body, dead in some horrible way. Second, however it was dismembered, it wasn’t done cleanly. It wasn’t, for instance, sliced apart with something like your Moonsword. The remnants of tissue record powerful wrenching and tearing forces.”

Torina sniffed. “Couldn’t you have figured out some way to make that sound even more gruesome, Funboy, while I stare out into the icy, airless blackness all around us, wondering if whatever did that is still lurking somewhere nearby?”

“Well, it was probably extremely painful, and possibly quite prolonged—”

“That was sarcasm, you gloomy ray of darkness.”

“Oh.”

I moved to the T-junction. The decision was easy—to the right, the tunnel traversed maybe ten meters before abruptly ending at a collapse, hundreds of tons of rock atop the shattered remnants of the deck plating and conduits and pipe runs that had been ripped off the walls.

“Left it is,” I said, and started that way. I raised The Drop, the underslung beamer set to full killing power, an explosive armor-piercing round chambered in the slug thrower. With a backward glance, I noted that the others now moved with a heightened sense of alertness, Torina and Funboy with their rifles raised into the ready position. Zeno had been carrying a goo gun in case we wanted to take prisoners with its sticky, glue-like discharge, but she’d slung that on her back. Now, she brandished a heavy auto slugger. Her weapon was a heavy rifle and sight, firing smart rounds that could be programmed on the fly to explode at whatever range she selected. She’d built the thing nearly from scratch and had proven through test-firing the thing was a potent force multiplier—essentially, all the hitting power of a 25 mm Bushmaster chain gun, but at half the weight.

Oh, and it held a lot of ammo. The number of rounds that could chew through a wall. Or a tank. Or… bone. Lots and lots of bone.

We spent the next few minutes advancing slowly and with intense vigilance. EvenIcky managed to maintain some degree of quiet, despite having feet the size of microwave ovens. It struck me that this would be a good time to be using a reconnaissance drone of some sort to scout ahead. I’d been meaning to acquire one, but very few of our ops actually required them and they were pricey. Now, though, I’d have been more than happy to have spent the bonds, and made a decision to buy drones. Soon.

“Bird,” I said, my voice low.

“Boss?”

“Tell Netty, at your convenience, to find us a recon drone.”

“Consider it done. Price range?”

“As much as it takes to give us eyes in another situation like this,” I said.

“Done.”

We walked on, our lights spearing into the gloom as little islands of cheer in a cheerless pit of darkness.

“Main facility, I’d say,” I announced.

Ahead, we could see a series of compartments where the motors were designed, built, maintained, and stored. There were orderly racks of the little power plants, coated in dust but otherwise undisturbed. Here and there our lights flickered across exposed panels, as if some of the engines were open to receive command units or battery assemblies.

And we found a lot more bodies, all in similar states of dismemberment to the first one we’d discovered. They represented several races, including a few humans, but aside from the fact they were dead—and had been, in Perry’s words, ripped apart—we couldn’t tell much more about them.

“Is that—has every bone in that skeleton been shattered? Right down to the toes?” Torina asked in mute horror.

Funboy nudged a bone, which rolled with a jerky motion until it collided with a mandible, the teeth chalk-white and shining. “Every bone except that one.”

Torina stepped around the remains, her eyes round with concern.

“Toes are tough, no matter the species,” Icky remarked, her own massive feet crunching down on an unfortunate bone, the splinters thin and frail.

“So are we. Eyes forward, gang,” I ordered and was greeted with a chorus of assent.

I looked at the chamber we currently occupied. It had, like the others we’d explored, been thoroughly ransacked and looted. If there was anything missing, we couldn’t tell. There seemed to be a lack of archival data devices, but whether that was because they’d been taken or there weren’t many to begin with, we didn’t know. And the few archives we did find had been smashed into uselessness.

“I guess this is a technical success, at least. We can tell the Guild that this place is no longer operating—reason being the violent dismemberment of crew,” Perry concluded.

“That really just raises more questions than it answers, doesn’t it?” Zeno said, slowly swinging her slugger from side to side, covering one door leading into the chamber, then the other. Her focus was that of a consummate soldier, and I gave her a nod of appreciation.

“It does, but we may just have to accept that there’ll be questions without answers—”

“Or not,” Torina said, standing over the shredded remains of another body. “Take a look at this,” she went on, lifting a foot and pointing at the thing’s skull with the toe of her boot.

I crouched for a better look. Something metallic gleamed between the mouth plates of the alien, its version of teeth.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said to it, putting down The Drop to pry the mouth open. Tough, leathery scraps of muscle and tendon held it closed, leaving me straining to part the jaws. I finally gave up, drew the Moonsword, and sliced them open, then extracted a small disc. I held it up, my lamplight making it flash amber, then gold.

“Well, well, looks like somebody here died trying to keep some secrets.” I glanced down at the body. “Good for you, my friend. Sorry about slicing your skull apart for the goodies, but I think you intended this. Sort of.”

“That’s an old format disc—and by old format, I mean ancient format. I doubt you’ll find them in use… ah, anywhere,” Perry said.

“Except Anvil Dark,” Zeno put in.

I glanced up at her. “What?”

“I’ve been doing a fair bit of research on old weapons tech lately. I was kind of switched onto it by seeing how effective those old alien plasma-burst cannons mounted on the Iowa were. So I’ve spent some time in the Anvil Dark library, and I’ve seen discs like that there. Some looked like they might have still been in use, even though they were, as the kids say, from back in the day.”

I frowned at the disc. “So we need to talk to Bester and find out what he knows about this.” I stood. “Unfortunately, I let my library card lapse, but I think we can convince the librarian to give us access anyway.”

* * *

“Van, you’re not suggesting I had something to do with this—” Bester said, but slowly, like he was trying to sound out each word phonetically.

I held up a hand and waited for his words to coast to a stop.

“No, Bester, of course not. When I said that your library is one of the very, very few places that still use these discs, it wasn’t an accusation—it was a preface to, so can you help us read this one?”

“Yeah, you were a little quick to protest there, Bester. That seems kind of… odd,” Perry said, cocking his head.

Bester turned to him—again, slowly. “Ever since we learned that Steve was a mole for the Fade, we Peacemakers permanently stationed here on Anvil Dark in support roles have been—what’s the term? Walking with eggs on our feet?”

“Walking on eggshells, you mean?” I said to him.

He gave his oversized sloth head a ponderous nod. “That’s it.”

“Bester, Steve was uncovered three years ago. That’s kind of moving into ancient history, now, isn’t it?” Torina said.

“That uncovering triggered a review of over a thousand cases. It’s still going on. There’s a whole office devoted to it. It might be ancient history to you, but to those of us who live and work here, it’s still right there.”

Torina inclined her head in apology.

“Anyway, Bester, can you read this thing for us?” I asked.

He looked at the disc, then gave a shrug even slower than one of Funboy’s. “Let’s give it a try.”

“No charge? I don’t have to give you my baby shoes or something?” Bester had the odd quirk of asking for a personal item in payment for any work he himself performed for anyone visiting the Anvil Dark Archives.

He shook his head. “In this case, I want to help. Please take note of that.”

“Of course, and… thank you,” I said, a little surprised. Bester did seem awfully sensitive about this. I wondered if he actually did have some skeletons in his closet—or if there’d been rumors or accusations about him even if he didn’t. I didn’t want to pry, though, so I just left it.

He took us into a back room, fired up a reader, and inserted our disc. It just returned an error.

“Huh. So it’s an even older format,” Bester said.

“Does that mean you can’t read it?” I asked.

“Oh, we’re not done yet. It’s an even older disc than I thought, so we just need to use an even older reader,” he replied and led us into an even more back room.

He removed the dust cover from an old machine and activated it. We actually had to wait for it to boot up, that’s how antiquated it was—in other words, roughly equivalent to present-day Earth tech. I was definitely getting spoiled.

This time, the machine successfully read the disc. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all that enlightening.

“That looks like the assembly instructions for a hutch I bought for my old apartment in Atlanta, just minus the little smiley guy speaking in pictures and not quite as cheerfully opaque,” I said, frowning at the list of symbols on the screen.

“Some of those are letters, and some numbers, but in a half-dozen different languages. And some of them don’t show up in my linguistic database at all,” Perry said. “Although… I recognize that entry there,” he went on, pointing a wing tip at the screen.

“The thing that looks like a Japanese kanji, followed by something like Morse Code mixed in with a Rorschach inkblot?”

“Yeah. It’s a name, followed by an entry for orkanavul, a sort of fermented sludge.”

“Fermented sludge has a name?” Torina asked.

“It—no. No, there’s the name of a person, followed by the word orkanavul, which is the fermented sludge.”

“So the fermented sludge does have a name. It’s orkanavul.”

“Yes, but—” Perry shook his head. “Torina, since when are you in the smartass business?”

She smiled. “What, you think you have a monopoly on it, bird?”

I intervened. “If we’re all done being universal wiseasses, can we get on with the business at hand? As in, Perry, what the hell are you talking about? It’s the name of whom, exactly? And what does any of this have to do with fermented sludge?”

“The name is Restilar Tarkso. Assuming it’s the same Restilar Tarkso that’s in our database, then he’s a Yonnox—or was, emphasis on the past tense. He’s been dead for nearly ninety standard years. More correctly, he’s been a dispersing cloud of organic molecules for the past ninety standard years.”

“That bad, huh?” Torina asked.

“As far as we know, Tarkso was turned into plasma at a battle known as No Fleet Junction. It got that name because everyone there died, almost to the last ship. Tarkso had a warrant out on him for smuggling and extortion.”

“Kind of academic now,” Bester said.

“It is. And as for the orkanavul, I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t brought it up.”

“I don’t think I’d want to bring up fermented sludge either,” I said, involuntarily wrinkling my nose at the very term fermented sludge.

“Hey, Van made a funny,” Perry said. “Anyway, to answer your question, I have no idea what, if anything, it’s got to do with Restilar Tarkso. They’re just on the same line in this file.” He pointed a wing at the screen.

“What is orkanavul, anyway?” Torina asked.

“It is a vile, putrid export concocted on Faalax by the same people who give us all those lovely tapestries and embroideries. Why and how the stuff made it off world is beyond me—and I don’t even eat.”

“Still doesn’t tell us what it is,” Torina persisted.

“You want the gory details? Fine. It’s a fermented, membranous slurry of—”

“Annnnd we’re done with that, I think,” I said. As soon as the word membranous gets brought up in the context of food, the conversation is over. Which means I think we can safely rule orkanavul out for any and all meals aboard the Fafnir from now until I drop dead. “And Icky?” I added, raising an eyebrow at her.

“I didn’t say anything, boss!”

“I could tell from the look on your face you were getting ready to say that orkanavul doesn’t taste that bad, and I’m here to tell you that it ain’t happening on the Fafnir, period. Or the Iowa. Or the actual Iowa, or anywhere on Earth, for that matter.”

“Or Helso,” Torina added.

Icky made a face. “No one respects my food preferences. And, yeah, I tried it once.” She smiled. “It made the server cry to bring it to my table.”

Zeno sighed a maternal sigh. “Icky, my dear, we need to discuss your concept of food preferences. And manners.” She looked at Icky’s legs—hairy, bluish, and pantless—and sighed again. “And a uniform.”

Icky wiggled her thick toes and shrugged. “Hey, I gotta be me.”

Torina crossed her arms. “Anyway, we’re still left with the name of a wanted Yonnox who died ninety years ago and his apparent association with this… slurry, or sludge, or whatever the hell it is. What’s the connection?”

Perry hopped forward and peered at the data onscreen. “Netty, can you crack any of the other terms? I’m wondering something. Orkanavul is Satan’s ranch dressing, but it’s also expensive. As in a thousand bonds per serving or more. Does that sound like an export to you? Especially since dead people—at least the ones I know of—don’t eat very much?”

Netty highlighted another series of symbols. “This isn’t exactly Digital Yonnox Six, but it’s close. Maybe a separate dialect. But if we take it as something close to Yonnox or their colonial tongues, then the symbols next to it make more sense.” Netty translated the blinking item she highlighted. “There.”

I nodded at the translation. “No shit. That makes more sense.”

The word bonds now glowed softly next to what I assumed was a name, one with obvious Yonnox origins, like Tarkso.

“Yonnox do love bonds more than their own mothers,” Torina said.

“If they even have them,” Icky groused.

“If they do, then they’ll sell them for profit, given the chance. But seeing bonds there? Makes me think this disc isn’t a grocery list. If we can decipher a few more of these and they turn out to be luxury items, then I think we know what this is,” I said.

“Payoffs,” Zeno offered.

“Spot on, Zeno. And that means this is a list of criminals somehow associated with those alien motors, a technology worth billions.”

“I can bring in our linguistics team, Van,” Bester put in. “Between all nine of us, we have experience with languages that haven’t been spoken in ages, and dialects that aren’t in our computer archives. My instincts tell me that it would behoove the Guild to find someone living on this list, yes?”

I smiled. “A list of corrupt people across an array of stars, all being bought off by an unseen criminal force. Sounds like a job for the Peacemaker Guild, don’t you think, Perry?”

“Sure does, boss. Peacemakers, or even a GKU case.”

“Bester, thank you for diving in with your offer to help—”

“Just remember that, Van, if anything about the loyalty of this department ever comes up.”

I grinned. “Bester, if it helps set your mind at ease, I don’t think for an instant that you’ve got a corrupt bone in that massive body of yours. Anyway, while you grind away at this, we’ve got to go see an old friend.” I turned to the others. “Suit up, kids.”

“Where are we going?” Torina asked, adjusting her sidearm. Ever since Perry and I had been attacked by infiltrators in the Anvil Dark infirmary, she’d taken to wearing it around the place. I stuck with the Moonsword, mainly because I liked how it felt bouncing on my hip. Every Peacemaker had a ceremonial blade, a badge of office harkening back to their days as part of the original GKU. Most treated them as things to mount on a wall, though, or display in their ship, not carry around with them. Of course, when the blade bequeathed to me by Gramps was something as exquisite—and deadly—as the Moonsword, treating it like an ornament was just dumb.

Not for the first time, I found myself wondering about its sister blades, the Sunsword and the Starsword, all three of them apparently made from the same exotic, unique cometary metal. No one seemed to know what had become of them. For that matter, aside from knowing that Gramps was its seventh wielder, no one—not Perry or Netty, not even Petyr Groshenko—knew anything about who the previous wielders were. As to the acquisition by Mark Tudor, that was chalked up to the luckiest break in galactic history. Valint gave my grandfather a choice of two boxes—payment for his efforts in a nasty brawl—and he chose wisely.

He chose the Moonsword.

“I’m in the mood for something civilized. How about if we have lunch in France?” I said.

“France? Like, Paris? On Earth? Really?” Icky asked, thrilled. She loved cheese, so we’d stopped there once to buy some for her on our way off of Earth. She’d loved flying over the old city and had been disappointed as hell I wouldn’t let her out to go sightseeing.

But it wasn’t France this time, so I shook my head. “Next best thing. Let’s go see our favorite Francophile slug. Next stop, Retta.”

2

Retta—or, as she preferred to call herself, countess Henriette Eugenie de Gauthier-Francois—was delighted to see us arrive in her upscale café and restaurant, Chez soi loin de chez soi. She’d become an extremely useful contact, not to mention a good friend, but I still found her a little… off-putting, not to put too fine a point on it. She was, for all intents and purposes, a slug the size of a ten-year-old boy, balanced precariously on a sphere upon which she rolled around by means of rapid movements of her—

I wasn’t sure tail was the right word. The lower end of her body, anyway. And if her outlandish appearance wasn’t enough to make her stand out from the crowd, she was also a devoted Francophile, assembling a small piece of France aboard an orbital service station light-years from the Eiffel Tower.

“Mes amis, it is so good to see you!” she said, rolling up to us as we entered. Her AI, maître d’hôtel—the more common maître’D was, as she put it, a monstrous perversion of an ethereal language—moved to seat us, but she waved it off.

“Non, non, I will see to these very special clientes myself,” she airily declared, then rolled off, leading us to a table next to a fireplace that duplicated one in the Palace of Versailles, because of course it did.

She brought us wine, a very nice Bordeaux, and much to Icky’s delight, a complimentary platter of cheeses from different parts of France. Icky started popping them into her mouth like a kid eating Halloween candy until Zeno slapped her arm.

“Icky, those aren’t all for you. We have really got to work on your manners.”

Torina and I glanced at the remaining pieces of cheese, which may very well have been showered with Icky spit. “That’s okay. I’m not in the mood for cheese anyway,” I said.

“I’ll pass too, thanks,” Torina added, casting a gimlet eye at the target area of Icky’s projectile saliva.

Funboy heaved a sigh of such despair it verged into emo. “Nor am I. Masses of lactic fat and proteins coagulated by the action of bacterial enzymes do not appeal to me,” he confessed.

Zeno had reached for a piece but pulled her hand away. “Me neither. Not anymore, anyway.”

Icky glanced around at the rest of us. “So we good here?”

I sighed. “Between you making food look unappealing and Funboy making it sound unappealing, I swear I’m soon gonna be living off bread and water.” I gestured at the tray. “Go for it, big girl.”

“Sweet.” She resumed shoveling cheese into her mouth.

Retta returned with an AI waiter to take our order, then remained after it had left.

“Now then, Van, to what do I owe le plaisir de votre compagnie?”

“This could just be a social visit, Retta.”

“Assurément, it could be, but it is not,” she said, her tone coyly knowing. I’m sure her expression would have been the same if she had one.

I smiled. “Fair, and true,” I admitted, then went on to explain why we were there. When I mentioned orkanavul, she hesitated.

“I have some, but it must be eaten under a fume hood. The odor is… pungent, yes?”

I held up a hand. “No thanks. No. Just—no. I was hoping you could look over the list we found that referred to the orkanavul, see if it means anything to you.”

I showed her list on my data slate. She considered it for a moment.

“Ah. Yes. That name, the fourth one down from the top. I recognize it,” she said.

I glanced at it. “Okay. So who is that?”

“Not who. They. It is the alias used by a criminal syndicate that operates not far from your Earth, the star Alpha Centauri. They are called Persuasion. I have had two of my contacts disappear while involved in dealing with them.”

“Persuasion? Never heard of them. And they’re based in Alpha Centauri? That’s kind of right up the block from Earth. Perry, how they hell did we miss these guys?” I asked.

“We didn’t. We just know almost nothing about them. They keep an extremely low profile, only being tied, as far as Guild intelligence records, to some isolated instances of money laundering. “

“C’est vrai, they operate with the idea that if you know about them, they are doing it wrong,” Retta put in. “I will see what more I can find out for you,” she added, then rolled off.

“I wonder what her price is going to be this time. Last time we paid her for information, she had us wandering around that Versailles place with three-D imagers stuck under our arms,” Torina said.

“Hey, that was a pretty romantic weekend, I thought,” I countered.

“We walked about a hundred klicks through that place, Van. I got to the point where seeing one more artistic masterpiece was going to make me scream.”

“Ah, yes, Stendahl Syndrome,” Perry said.

Torina frowned at him. “What’s that?”

“A psychosomatic manifestation occurring when individuals are overexposed to objects, artworks, or phenomena of great beauty and antiquity. It can lead to heart palpitations, fainting, and even hallucinations.”

“Is that actually a thing?”

“It is.”

“That’s okay, I’m going to suggest to Retta that she really wants 3D images of the French Riviera this time—especially 3D images of me lying on a golden beach in the sun—”

Retta returned. “Yes, I have some new and interesting information, thanks to one source—but a mystery regarding another.”

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“Persuasion has lately been implicated in dealings with a subsidiary of BeneStar Corporation, yes? One only recently incorporated in the Eridani Federation that is, in turn, linked to les Sorciers.”

I sat back and puffed out a sigh. “Yeah, don’t need that translated. So once again, we’ve found a connection back to our arch enemies. This is like playing interstellar Whac-A-Mole.”

“Keeps us busy,” Torina said.

“Since death is inevitable, it might as well be in some noble pursuit,” Funboy agreed.

Retta, in a halting tumble, provided the few but crucial details she had about the BeneStar Subsidiary, an outfit called Beneficent Planetary Logistics, and ended with an admonishment.

“They are all bad. Every last one, my friends,” Retta said with such severity I knew she was worried for our safety.

I looked at Perry. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Like Retta said, recently incorporated under Eridani law, their business license details have been shared with other jurisdictions per applicable interstellar protocols, a wholly owned private subsidiary—no different than a gazillion other corporations out there, really.”

“But what the hell do they do?” Icky asked.

“Support services for the mining industry. If you’re a mining company, you can contract them to handle all the transportation, supplies, local contracting, and other ancillary stuff that needs to happen so you can get on with the mining part. They also have a division that does planetary remote sensing surveys, orbital mapping, that sort of thing.”

I was sitting back up by the time Perry was done. “Mining. As in osmium mining.”

“Yes, or iron, copper, nickel, cobalt, zinc, gold, silver, platinum”—Perry pretended to take a deep breath—“palladium, lithium, beryllium, helium, manganese—tell me when you’d like me to stop reciting the periodic table.”

“Yeah. Sure. But osmium’s the one we’re interested in.”

Zeno grunted in disgust. “Sadly, yes. And we know why.”

Osmium, element 76 on the periodic table, was an extremely rare member of the so-called platinum group of metals. It had a variety of fairly mundane commercial applications, but our interest focused on its use in the identity chips that had been used to house stolen personalities under our Crimes Against Order case. Osmium was a critical component in manufacturing those chips, meaning that the Sorcerers and their co-conspirators were putting a lot of effort into controlling supplies of the stuff. That had the incidental effect of driving the price of osmium up, which also provided them with a money-making opportunity.

“What was the mystery you mentioned, Retta?” Torina asked.

“Ah, yes, the mystery. One of my contacts was… unavailable. All that I received was a prerecorded response, a sifflet de la mort—a death whistle, yes? It means that they are compromised or dead. Why, and what happened to them, that is the mystery.”

“Is that all you know? That something happened to them?” Perry asked.

“Non, there is a snippet of audio,” Retta replied and played it.

“—like someone’s breaking into the ship back there. What the—”

A moment of silence.

“—the hell are you?”

The voice that replied was flat, almost mechanical.

“If it matters, Contractor 3.”

A burst of indecipherable noise followed, maybe a half-second of it, then silence.

“With this came the location of the recording. It was Radialis,” Retta said.

I nodded. Radialis was one of the seven inhabited worlds in the Tau Ceti system. It was one of the smaller, more sparsely populated ones—primarily a manufacturing world, if memory served, hosting most of the more polluting sorts of industries, like chemical production, fuel synthesis, metallurgical and mineral processing, and heavy fabrication. It was a way of keeping all of the most harmful material in one place rather than spreading it across an array of worlds. The result, unfortunately, was a single planet that was badly polluted, meaning much of it was run by AIs. Human workers lived in orbitals and commuted down to the surface.

“Retta, can you play that again?” I asked, and she did.

“If it matters, Contractor 3.”

I didn’t know why, but something about that voice just plucked at me.

“I want to find this Contractor 3,” I said, leaning on the table. “Find him, or her, or it, and use that as a starting point to bust this all wide open. I’ve spoken to Gerhardt in my role as his Justiciar, and he’s agreed to let me task other Peacemakers, under his authority, to take on spin-off cases. That’ll let us keep our focus on the main storyline and not go off chasing side quests.”

“Video game references for the win!” Perry said.

I smiled at him, but it faded as I considered where to go from here. “We could go to Radialis, I suppose, and see what we can dig up.”

“Boss, why don’t we start with Retta’s other contact, the one involved with Persuasion? We can actually talk to them, ask them what they know about links between this Beneficent Planetary Logistics and the Sorcerers?” Perry suggested.

“Good idea. Retta, are you willing to set up a meeting for us?”

“Mais oui. But while the cheese is complimentary, not all things are, yes?”

I smiled again. Retta was a great person, but she had her price, and I could respect that. It would probably mean another trip to Earth, to France, which would frustrate Icky all over again.

“Of course, Retta. I’d be happy to run some errands for you back to France. Oh, speaking of which—are you familiar with the French Riviera?”

Icky stopped chewing long enough to laugh. “That’s perfect for me!”

We all turned to her, stunned.

Funboy lifted one extravagant brow. “Why?”

Icky finished her current cheese victim, wiped her mouth with a massive hand, and grinned. “I saw a video about that place. It’s bottomless. It’s made for me.”

I cut my eyes at Torina, then gave her an apologetic half-smile. “Icky it’s… more like a topless beach you’re thinking of. Not a no-pants zone. No shirts or, um, whatever you wear on your upper half.”

“Works for me,” she said, unbothered.

Torina leaned to me, her eyes bright. “If you think we’re going to a nude beach, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Funboy looked horrified. “Nude? As in—”

Retta gurgled with laughter. “I think I know exactly where I will ask you to go for me now, blushing man.”

Icky’s voice got soft, which was, for her, a miracle. “Naked cheese at the beach. I can’t believe my life is real.”

Perry murmured, “That makes at least two of us.”

* * *

Retta’s living contact, or the one that was recently alive, anyway, was operating on a world called Level Blue in the Delta Pavonis system, about twenty light-years from Earth. Delta Pavonis was, as stars went, a friendly one, the same spectral class as Sol, although somewhat larger. Unfortunately, a complete lack of gas giants in the system meant that the three rocky inner worlds had been subjected to a near continuous bombardment by asteroids for much of the system’s history. The outer two were barren, pockmarked balls of pummeled rock both roughly the size of Mars, with thin atmospheres and no liquid water. They’d given some protection to their innermost cousin, though, a planet slightly smaller than Earth with a thicker atmosphere and several small oceans.

“Kind of a dreary place,” I said, studying the intelligence package Perry had retrieved from Guild archives as we approached Level Blue.

“Yeah. What’s with the architecture? Everything’s a bland, gray box,” Icky said.

“Eastern Europe.”

“Huh?”

I turned to Icky. “Back on Earth, a whole swath of territory used to be controlled by a so-called superpower who believed in really centralized economies managed by the state. It… didn’t really work out all that well because it turns out that people have, you know, ambitions and hopes and stuff, and don’t just want to be little cogs in a big machine.”

“Go figure,” Zeno said.

“Anyway, one of the side effects was a craving for efficiency. And one of the things that’s efficient is building lots of adequate housing for your workers very quickly—emphasis on adequate. And bland, gray boxes are efficient. I stayed in one once in a city called Zagreb, in Croatia back on Earth, that had been turned into a hotel. The only difference between it and a prison cell was that I could actually leave when I wanted to.”

“Wait. This Level Blue, according to the intel, is being worked by big corporations, all in competition with one another. Doesn’t sound like an ‘efficient, centrally managed economy’ to me,” Zeno said.

I nodded. “Yeah, well, that’s where these things tend to converge. Authoritarian governments, centrally managed economic powers, huge corporations—ultimately, they all try to get away with doing as little as they can for their workers who are, remember, just those little cogs.”

“Efficiency,” Torina said.

“Exactly. So these bland, grey boxes were built by BeneStar and its ilk,” I said, nodding at the image on the cockpit’s center display.

We entered the traffic control pattern, making no particular effort to conceal our identity. Delta Pavonis was administered by the Seven Stars League—it was one of the titular seven stars, in fact—so we had jurisdiction. Moreover, I didn’t feel like hiding. Retta’s contact here had pretty much run the course of his useful operational life on Level Blue anyway, so we were going to meet with him and then arrest him on an outstanding warrant and transport him off-world, supposedly to Anvil Dark. In fact, we were going to drop him off at Spindrift during a refueling stop so he could slip away and start crafting a new identity for himself and begin his next job, where and whatever it would be. It was difficult, highly specialized, and extremely dangerous work, but Retta apparently paid him well to do it—or at least I hoped she did.

As we started our orbital insertion, though, Netty spoke up about an incoming comm message.

“It’s on a coded and encrypted channel in the high band used by the GKU,” she said.

I stifled a groan. “Please don’t tell me it’s my mother. She and I agreed to take things a little at a time—but this is not one of those times.”

“Actually, it’s not. It’s B.”

That made me blink. “B. Huh. We haven’t heard from her for a while now. Where’s she calling from?”

“Um, somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy—I think. This is B, Van. I have no way to tell.”

I chuckled. “Point taken, Netty. Put her on.”

Her image appeared on the display, antennae waving. “Hello, Van. I understand you’re planning to spend some time on Level Blue.”

“News travels fast—as in, faster than light. I assume someone sent you a twist-comm message. About our intentions. And whereabouts.” I ended by looking B straight in the eye.

She grinned back. “Don’t worry, Van. I don’t know everything you’re up to—just most of it.”

“B—”

“Oh, calm down. Retta gave me a call. She wanted to let me know you were heading to Level Blue because I have an interest in that place.”

“What sort of interest?” I asked her.

“I have a contact on the planet, well-placed, who’s been feeding me intel for the past four months. I really don’t want them compromised, or even spooked, though, because this is my fifth attempt at getting someone on the inside of that damned place.”

“Do we want to know what happened to the other four?” Perry asked.

“No, you do not. Not if you don’t want to end up with trouble sleeping for the next while. That is, if you slept.”

“Why so many attempts, B? You must have some compelling reason to make five tries,” I said.

“So far,” Torina put in.

“Because the GKU has a strategic interest in Level Blue. It’s the source of a number of commodities we like to keep track of, and it’s also a clearinghouse for all sorts of nefarious activities, like weapons smuggling, money laundering, and even some sentient-being trafficking.”

I sighed. “Charming.”

“Yeah, ain’t it, though. But—spoiler alert—here’s where it intersects with your interests. Level Blue is a major source of platinum, palladium, and ruthenium, all used in plenty of legitimate industrial and other applications. But guess what other metal is commonly found in conjunction with those ones?”

“Osmium.”

“Bingo.”

“But osmium isn’t listed as a commodity that’s produced here in any significant quantities,” Perry said. “Otherwise, it would have shown up when we searched for sources of the stuff to check out.”

“Right? Ain’t that the darndest thing? And yet, according to my successive sources, I’ve been able to discern that they are recovering significant amounts of osmium here when they process the platinum-palladium ore, but it’s being entirely kept off the books.”

“Gee, I wonder what’s happening to it,” Torina said, her voice flat.

“Again, right? Someone is quietly moving the recovered osmium off-world to… somewhere.”

“Someone being the Sorcerers,” I said.

“Or agents working for them.”

“Like Beneficent Planetary Logistics, maybe?” Zeno asked.

B nodded. “There’s also the connection Retta’s guy made, and you found out about from her, which brings us full circle, right back to the reason you’re there and I’m calling you.”

“How much osmium are we talking about here? It can’t be that much if they’re able to sneak it up the well.”

Funboy spoke up. “I’ve been examining the schematics of the identity chips you’ve recovered and provided to the Guild to study. Osmium is an additive to the alloyed metals and used as electrical conductors on the chips. It gives certain characteristics to them that are fundamental to how the chips operate. Each chip, though, incorporates only slightly more than a gram of osmium.”

“And osmium is the densest naturally occurring element. A kilogram of the stuff, almost enough to chip a thousand people, would be a cube about three and a half centimeters on a side—roughly the same volume as a golf ball, for those who know what a golf ball is,” Perry said.

A moment passed as we all pondered the chilling implications of that. I could carry enough of the stuff in my tactical harness to chip a small city.

B pressed on gravely. “Anyway, the mineral deposit in question is being worked by three mines owned by two different companies. One of those is probably more or less above board—well, as much as any company is when they’re busy exploiting the shit out of a vulnerable planet for profit. But the other one is owned, through the usual mess of shell corporations, by none other than BeneStar. And Beneficent Planetary Logistics is providing all of their ancillary support services, so they’ve got ships arriving and departing Level Blue almost daily.”

“That’s a lot of freakin’ golf balls,” I said.

“It is. And on top of that, whether because of a flaw or even by deliberate design, people who’ve been chipped are showing up more and more as apparent discards onto the open market as bargain-bin AIs, except they’re some of the most violent psychopaths I’ve seen in a long time.” She shook her head. “There’ve been instances of people being attacked and badly injured by systems controlled by these murderous AIs—airlocks opened, life support systems shut down, artificial gravity turned off. There’ve even been a few occurrences in people’s homes when their domestic service bots went rogue,” B said.

“I sure as hell don’t need to hear any more.” I bit back rising anger.

Torina shook her head. “Me neither. Although I am curious about something, B. You’ve got an awful lot of inside information about all this. For contacts that keep getting compromised, I’m impressed.”

B returned a knowing grin. “You’re pretty sharp, young lady.”

I looked from one to the other. “What the hell are you two talking about?”

“Torina’s looking for a discreet way to ask me if I’ve made use of other means of obtaining information, and the answer is yes, I have. In the time-honored tradition of spies everywhere, I took advantage of a weak man’s lack of moral fiber. In other words, I tracked down the on-site manager for Beneficent, a man my contact told me was a pig with a penchant for preying on women who were intoxicated or whose judgment was otherwise clouded. I played a flirtatious drunk in a bar he frequents aboard an orbital, which he went for like—hey, what are those earthly bugs, the ones that like lights?”

“Moths?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Like a moth to a bright light. I seduced him, then drugged him and downloaded everything I could from his wrist slate.”

“Why, B, you Mata Hari, you,” I said. “Did you get much intel?”

“Some, and more than a little sexual frustration, I might add.” She held up a pinky and leered at Torina, who laughed. “He wasn’t up to the challenge in zero-g. Or that’s what he used as his excuse, anyway.”

“I don’t get it,” Icky said.

Funboy spoke up. “When two individuals wish to exchange gametes for the purpose of procreation—”

“Funboy, let’s hold off on the birds and the bees for now, okay?” I said.

Zeno gave him a look. “When two individuals wish to exchange gametes? It must be magical, being in a relationship with you.”

“Hey, if this is about sex, I know it already. I was picked ninth at the Glorious Genetic Possibility and Strength Contest Ball when my dad brought me to it,” Icky said.

Perry glanced at her. “Ninth, huh?”

I shook my head. “Perry, don’t you dare—”

“Out of how many?”

“—ask out of how many—damn it, you can be a real asshole, bird, you know that?”

“Funny, your grandfather said the same thing about him on seventy-nine separate occasions,” Netty put in.

“You were counting?”

“I’m an AI, Van. I remember everything—or did you forget that?”

“It was out of eleven,” Icky said. “And before you say anything else, bird, it wasn’t tenth or eleventh, and I’m proud of that!”

“And so you should be, Icky. I mean, you have a certain… rugged charm to you.”

She grinned. “Confidence and a big-ass hammer. I’m telling you, they’re the keys to success.”

We got as much detail as we could from B about the mining operation, which we intended to visit. Retta’s agent was down at the mine site as well, based on the data from the encrypted tracking device he carried and that Retta gave us. That being the case, we decided to revise the plan. We’d land in the Fafnir’s workboat surreptitiously, make contact with Retta’s guy, and extract him that way. At the same time, we’d learn what we could about the mining operation itself.

“Consider it reconnaissance,” I told the crew. “As much as I’d love to shut the place down, the six of us aren’t going to be doing it. But if we can get detailed information now, it could help inform a future raid on the site.”

“It’d be nice to get some evidence, too,” Zeno said.

“It absolutely would, so that’s part of what we’re trying to accomplish here as well. What we’re trying to avoid is an actual confrontation.”

Everyone turned to look at Icky.

“What?”

“Icky no smash, got it?” Perry said.

She gave him an evil smile.

“We’ll see. In the meantime, bird, don’t worry down there, okay? I’ll be right behind you. Yeah, right behind you.”

3

We landed Frankie, our workboat, about two klicks away from the mine site, a vast open pit hundreds of meters deep chewed into the planet’s bedrock. Buildings were clustered around it, housing rock crushers and pulverizers, ore concentrators, maintenance facilities for the robotic mining equipment, and all the myriad other stuff required to operate a nearly ten thousand ton per day mining operation.

“Netty, you sure we weren’t detected?” I asked her as the Frankie settled into a hollow surrounded by stunted trees.

“Sure? No. But I took you down that hole in their scanner coverage based on the data provided by B, and you were never lit up by active scanners or, you know, blown to bits, so if I had to guess—”

I smiled. “Yes, I guess not being blown to bits is a good sign. Thank you, my dear.”

“Anytime.”

However she’d come by it, B had data that showed a gaping flaw in the scanner coverage of the planet. By discreetly dropping the workboat when the Fafnir was on the far side of the planet from the main traffic-control orbital, then guiding it quickly down to the southern pole, we were able to approach the mine from the south through a rugged, mountainous region that blocked surface scanner returns. The hole was, it seemed, the result of competing corporate interests. If there’d been one party running the show here, there’d no doubt have been thorough coverage. But hand it over to a group of corporate competitors to run, and they didn’t exactly work hard at the cooperation angle.

Besides, the planet was mainly given over to mining, and kiloton shipments of concentrated ore didn’t make very attractive targets for thieves or smugglers. The osmium operation likely relied on burying itself deep in the far more mundane mineral production for protection rather than sophisticated scanner arrays.

“Netty, any chance we can deepscan, more like a—” I hunted for the word, waving vaguely.

“Geological survey?”

“That’s it. Whattaya got?”

Instantly, points of bright light flared to life on the screen. “How about that?” Netty added color grading and tags describing elements and mining concerns, many of them clustered or running along tectonic areas.

“Big haul down there,” I observed.

“Bonds. A lot of bonds,” Perry added, and there was a note of disgust in each word. He was right. For things like osmium, there seemed to be no limit to what sapient beings would do to each other. And themselves, when it came down to it.

The flight from the pole reminded me of our trip to Tierra del Fuego back on Earth, only less frozen. We raced along valleys, just meters above the surface of fjords, whipped around shoulders of rock, and zipped beneath towering cliffs. It was actually kind of fun.

Whatever thrill I might have gotten from it evaporated the moment I stepped onto the surface and climbed to the top of the hollow, though. This place made Iowa in the winter—barren, windswept snowy fields under leaden grey skies—seem positively cheerful in comparison.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you unrestrained corporate greed unchecked by any half-assed reasonable regulation,” Zeno said, sweeping a hand across the landscape.

“This is what Helso would have looked like if we hadn’t stopped those illegal damned miners,” Torina said, her voice ominously quiet.

A rugged, rolling landscape stretched off into misty distance, barren, blasted, pocked by trenches dug into the soil and pits blasted into the bedrock. Most were full of sludgy water swirled iridescent with oily waste. The only vegetation consisted of stubborn patches of something yellow and grassy, and stunted hunks of gnarled wood I assumed were trees.

Perry, who’d launched himself into the sky and now circled above, called over the comm.

“In case anyone’s interested, I’m limited to about three hundred meters altitude, tops. Higher than that and I can’t see the ground. And in case you’re wondering why, it’s because these clouds are half water vapor, half industrial effluent.”

“Oh dear,” Funboy said, immediately putting on and sealing his helmet.

Icky gave him a nervous glance. “Should we all be doing that?”

“Yes,” Funboy immediately replied.

I held up a hand. The air did smell, laced with a faint but pervasive acrid, slightly metallic reek. “Perry, what do you think? How toxic is this effluent?”

“Kind of like cigarette smoke. Over the course of months or years, it wouldn’t be good. Over the course of hours, or even days, exposure shouldn’t be much of a problem.”

Icky frowned. “What’s cigar—er, ciga—?”

“Burning leaves. People deliberately inhale the smoke from them,” I said, studying the way ahead.

“That sounds dumb.”

“That’s because it is dumb, but up until a certain point in time, it made it more likely you would get laid. Then it actually worked against you, and—anyway, we’re getting into the 1990s, and I don’t want to discuss grunge if we can help it.”

“You and me both, boss. Too soon,” Perry agreed.

“I loathe grunge,” Funboy stated.

“The music, or the presence of, ah, dirt?” I asked.

Funboy gave me a measured look. “Both.”

“Fair. Anyway, we’ve got two klicks to cover. Icky, you’re staying here to guard the Frankie. Come get us if we need to bug out fast. Everyone else—let’s go,” I said and started out of the hollow.

* * *

It was worse. Much, much worse.

That became clear only a couple of hundred meters along as we skirted a large pit full of blackish water. We tried sticking to the low ground as much as possible, meaning we had to work our way around these flooded depressions. As we picked our way past this one, Zeno suddenly stopped and swore.

We all turned, raising our weapons, but she stood with her auto slugger hanging from her harness, staring across the water.

“Zeno, what is it?”

She pointed. “There, on that little muddy island. Isn’t that a body?”

I looked where she was pointing. Sure enough, some bones and part of a skull, probably human, protruded from the oily mud.

“Industrial accident?” Torina suggested, but I frowned.

“If it was, then they didn’t bother to recover the body? That seems kind of—”

“Cold? Harsh? Evil, even?” Zeno put in.

“Or all of the above, yeah. Come on, let’s go.”

We pushed on through the industrial waste-scape. I had a gnawing feeling that there was far more to that body than someone who got lost out here, died, and was simply never found. There was an ominous pall hanging over the idea as thick and potentially toxic as the mist around us. Climbing a rise toward a saddle between two rocky hills, I was still brooding on it, when Perry called over the comm.

“Van, stop.”

I did, immediately, then took a knee and raised The Drop. Torina, Funboy, and Zeno did likewise, the first two immediately turning to face left and right respectively, while Zeno turned to keep watch behind us. It was smooth and automatic, the result of a well-practiced crew.

“What is it, Perry?”

“I just wanted to prepare you before you cross the crest of that saddle ahead of you.”

“Prepare us for what?”

“Let’s put it this way—if you didn’t like that body back there, then you’re going to absolutely despise this.”

I took a breath. “Okay. Let’s check it out,” I said, standing and leading the others forward, over the crest and into the next hollow beyond it.

Perry was right. I absolutely hated it.

* * *

I’d once spoken to a forensic pathologist, a rumpled but kindly older Belgian doctor who was a speaker at a conference I attended in Paris, about applications of information tech systems to criminal investigations. He’d spent three years seconded out to the International Criminal Tribunal based in The Hague, excavating mass graves left over from the brutal civil war in Bosnia during the nineties. He had photographs of some of his work—stacked piles of skeletonized bodies buried in loose soil, each bone marked by a little tag to show that it had been photographed and its detailed location mapped. The objective was to reassemble complete skeletons, and hopefully put names to fleshless faces. It wouldn’t make things better for their families and friends, but at least it would give them some sense of finality.

I remembered how incongruous it had seemed, the way the little color-coded tags, red and yellow, green and blue, had seemed so festive, when their purpose was so grim. I found it jarring enough that it stuck with me.

There were no festive tags here, though. There was only the dead.

Like those in the Belgian pathologist’s photos, these bodies were stacked in layers, as though successive groups of them were piled on those below in a stratum of pain and loss. They were exposed in the wall of a pit that slumped, sending a cascade of dirt and yet more remains into the greasy water. Protruding from the dirt were bones of all descriptions, skulls both human and alien, fragments of carapace and exoskeleton, bits and pieces of metal and synthetic fabric, and scraps of cloth that fluttered in the fitful breeze. It was like looking at a macabre archeological dig, except these bones weren’t the subject of scientific investigation—they were just refuse, discarded by whoever had killed them, allowed them to die, or both.

I let a breath trickle through my nose, fury building at the waste of it all, knowing that every gleaming shard of bone was a life lost. And with that life came a family, or friends, or circles for which I had no name, all wondering where their loved ones were. I clamped my teeth tightly, keeping a slurry of vile cursing at bay, because if I started, I might not be able to stop.

Even Funboy stared at the ghastly scene with a febrile intensity unlike anything he’d ever shown. He was… pissed.

“This was no industrial accident,” Torina finally said, her voice taut and hard.

“No, it was not. This is a mass grave,” I said, every syllable flat with anger.

Zeno shook her head. “Wait. This makes no sense. These are corporations raping this planet for its resources. And sure, they’re as amoral as hell, but mass murder? Why? What’s the point?”

“Perhaps they simply worked these people to death,” Funboy said.

“Slave labor? Yeah, maybe, but… I don’t know. I like to think that if some company was literally working people into their graves, the reaction across known space would be… pretty negative. I mean, I’m cynical as hell and figure that people will always tend toward their worst, but again, I don’t know. It just seems like too big a risk.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a corporation. Or it was, but just a corporate front for something else—something like the Sorcerers,” Perry suggested, still wheeling overhead.

I nodded. “That would fit, yeah. Perry, is this the only one of these you can see, or—”

“I wish. Sorry, boss, but there are at least three more within a couple of hundred meters of you.”

I nodded again. “Let’s go.”

We pushed on in silence, the only sound the slurp and crunch of our own footsteps, the desultory hiss of the slight, persistent breeze, and now, from ahead of us, the faint white-noise hum of machinery. We were all lost in our brooding thoughts, which meant I had to keep reminding everyone to stay alert—including me.

About two hundred meters on, I stopped again. “Zeno, do you have that tracker? The one with Retta’s contact keyed into it?”

She extracted it from her harness. “Right here.”

I took a breath. “Fire it up, would you?”

She did, then pointed. “That way, just under three hundred meters.”

I exchanged a glance with Torina. We both sighed, set our jaws, and kept walking to the inevitable.

* * *

“That’s him alright. He’s the freshest one here,” Zeno said.

I clambered down into the pit, and my boots sunk into the slimy muck at the edge of the fetid pool. Sure enough, I found the tracking tag secreted in a seam of his tunic. His body was still mostly intact but had begun to putrefy. Funboy suggested that industrial contaminants in the soil probably sped the process up, literally dissolving the body as it lay.

“They’re being erased,” Torina said.

“Almost by design. Boss, this is—we’re way beyond chips and cries for help out there in the stars. This shit is apocalyptic,” Perry said.

“It speaks to the quality of our enemy,” I answered.

Zeno looked puzzled. “Quality?”

“Yeah. As in, they have none.”

Zeno gave a terse nod of agreement, then rapped the side of her helmet as if to clear her thoughts of what she saw, though nothing short of a planet-buster nuke could do that.

We all had our helmets on now, but more to avoid the cloying stink of death than the polluted air. I clambered back out of the pit, both Zeno and Torina taking my hands and pulling to help me get my feet unstuck from the mud. With a ripe squelch, I emerged, shaking my head in utter, complete revulsion.

“This place has to go. All of it. Zeno, how much damage will our missile warheads do? If we fire all of them at this shithole—”

“Van—I’m not going to answer that.”

“Zeno, listen to me—”

“No, Van, you listen to me. You are not going to bombard this place with ordnance from the Fafnir.”

“This can’t be allowed to go on, Zeno—!”

“Of course it can’t. But not only would an attack like that no doubt be illegal—Perry, back me up on that.”

“She’s right, boss, sorry. There’s no justification for use of that sort of scale of force.”

I just stared. “No justification—” I shook my head. “We are standing in a killing field, a sumbitchin’ charnel house! How many bodies are there here? Hundreds? Thousands—?”

“Hundreds for sure,” Zeno said.

“I’d estimate on the order of one thousand five hundred so far, making certain assumptions, of course,” Funboy said.

I turned back to Zeno. “Fifteen hundred, Zeno—”

“Sure. And how many of those will an orbital bombardment bring back to life?”

I opened my mouth to howl in anger—

And then my eyes met Torina’s. She wore a sad half-smile and reached out to take my hand. She understood, and more importantly, I knew she hated that I was going to face a reality beyond what my soul cried out for just then, which was absolute, instantaneous revenge.

She pressed my fingers to hers, and even through the gloves, I took comfort in her touch. But the mulish set to my jaw wasn’t gone, so Zeno pressed on, elegant with her facts.

“And how many more will our bombardment add to the total? How many… slaves, or whatever they are, are working at that mine over there right now? How many of them are you prepared to kill, to satisfy your sense of outrage, as perfectly understandable as it is?”

I slumped, then sighed. “I wish you weren’t so punishingly correct.”

She nodded. “Believe me, so do I.”

“We won’t end this today, but we will end it. If I have to come back here with my father and the Helso fleet to do it, this will be stopped,” Torina said, staring at the pathetic remnants of what had once been living, breathing people.

I took a deep breath. “Can we agree on that, Zeno?”

She nodded again, fiercely. “Oh, yes. When the time comes, I’ll press the trigger myself.”

I returned a grateful nod. “In the meantime, let’s get images of it.” I swept a hand around. “Of all of it. I don’t want to go back to Anvil Dark and Gerhardt without an ironclad case against these assholes.”

Funboy held out a recorder with militant precision, then began sweeping it in crisp, even movements, capturing images and video as the wind moaned around us in a bitter, desolate tune. When he looked at me, his eyes were bright with concentration. He was all engineer then, and his voice held no anger. Just… certainty that he was doing what was right and necessary.

“Even in this festering pit of sadness, I won’t miss a thing,” Funboy said. “You can count on that.”

* * *

We split into two groups to cover more ground, getting as much imagery of the killing fields as we could while Perry kept careful watch overhead. We didn’t wander too far, but it was a grotesque testament to the horror that we didn’t have to. Within just a hundred meters or so, we found ample evidence of the barbarous slaughter that had gone on.

We found something else, too.

“Van, I’m seeing a lone figure in armor, tending what appears to be a distilling apparatus in a small shack. It would be about a hundred and fifty meters north of your current location,” Funboy, who’d headed off to the east with Zeno, said over the comm.

“Can confirm,” Perry said. “There’s one guy out here, about twenty meters from a service road.”

“Good to know bad soldiers still break the rules. Alright, we’re going to grab him and start getting some answers,” I said.

“How rough can we get?” Torina asked as we set out to join Funboy and Zeno.

“Alive. Broken a bit is fine, but alive.”

Zeno was clearly feeling the effects of the dreary abattoir around us, so she took a long moment to reply.

Zeno was also the most reasonable among us, a beacon of measured action, and when she spoke, it was in a guttural growl that set the hair on my neck at attention.

“We’ll see.”

* * *

We prepared an elaborate plan to capture him, with Zeno and Funboy acting as cutoffs, Perry as top cover, and Torina and I moving in to pincer him. In the end, though, all it amounted to was me walking up and stunning him with The Drop.

“Huh. Sorta thought he might fight a little,” I said, nonplussed.

Torina snorted. “Bah. The skinny one was never going to brawl. Might hurt his complexion.”

I looked at her sidelong, then smiled. “Savage and unprovoked. A double whammy. Your tongue’s a bit sharp today, love, and can’t say I don’t appreciate it.”

Funboy stared at us both. “Appreciating an organ that delivers saliva and is a vector for countless diseases is a—”

“He’s never gonna change, is he?” I asked.

Torina blew him a kiss, which made Funboy twitch. “No, He isn’t. More for you, handsome.”

“Thanks. I accept.”

Zeno blew a rich snort of disgust. “A Skel. Oh, that’s perfect. And just when I didn’t think this place could get any uglier.”

The Skels were a parasitic race of gaunt, angular humanoids who forever wore wheezy breathing apparatus like old Great War gas masks. They were a people for whom it was hard to find redeeming features, innovating or making little of their own, and instead leeching off other races. Fixtures in the underworld, you could almost set your watch by it—if there was a Skel involved, then something criminal was probably going on.

Once we had him cuffed, I climbed to the lip of the hollow where he’d hidden his still and peered over the top. The sprawling bustle of the mine was just a few hundred meters away, marked by a constant roar of machinery and a perpetual plume of grey-brown dust billowing up into the mist.

I burned the image into my memory. I wanted to compare it with how it was going to look after I was done with it. Then I turned and, lugging our prisoner, started back for the Frankie.

* * *

The Skel proved stubbornly belligerent, which wasn’t unusual for his kind, but was costing us time I really didn’t want to waste. I needed answers about what was going on at the mine, but he simply grated back, “I’m just a guard. I don’t know nothin’.”

Torina turned from his gear, which we’d laid out on the deck to inspect. “Stun baton, knife, a small comm unit, a slug pistol that looks like a family heirloom—” She stopped and glowered at the Skel. “Well, somebody’s family heirloom, anyway. And this cheap armor, which I would prefer not to handle any more than is necessary. It appears… damp.”

I turned back to the Skel. “You were a security thug for those assholes, so you saw things. I know you did—”

“I didn’t see nothin’. I already told you. I just do what I’m paid to do—AIEEEE!”

Perry, perched near the Skel, had suddenly extended a wing. Right before the tip touched the Skel, a fat, blue spark arced with a loud snap, making the alien shudder and shriek.

“Oops. My bad. Been meaning to get that fixed,” Perry said.

Torina glowered at the Skel. “Get what fixed, Perry?”

“This.”

SNAP.

“AIEEEE!”

I had to stop this, of course. Torture wasn’t condoned by the Guild, and for good reason. But then I thought about those bodies, stacked like discarded cordwood, and decided my intervention could be eventual.

Funboy stepped forward, though. “That rising odor suggests that this prisoner has soiled himself, which raises our chances of pathogenic contamination by 12.5 percent. That will increase if he does it again—”

SNAP.

“AIEEEE!”

“And now it’s about 25 percent.” Funboy sighed, then turned to me.

“Van, torture is illegal, unethical, and also largely ineffective.”

“You sure don’t live up to your name, Funboy. You’re no fun at all,” Icky said, sitting in the pilot’s seat with her ample feet propped on top of the instrument panel. She was snacking on… something. Something that crunched.

“It is satisfying, though, considering what this scumbag is part of,” Torina said, crossing her arms.

“Perhaps. But if Perry will stop roasting this man’s neurons, I have an alternative solution to persuade him to talk,” Funboy said, stepping up to the prisoner, then wrinkling his nose. “Perhaps 37.5 percent. I must work quickly.”

I shrugged. “If you can make this asshole talk, Funboy, go for it.”

I expected Funboy to do something dramatic, perhaps something medical, which I wasn’t sure would be much different from torture. Instead, though, he simply looked into the Skel’s face.

“You will tell us what we want to know.”

“Yeah? Or what? More of that illegal, unethical torture?”

Funboy shook his head. “No. This,” he said, then leaned in, raised his hand to conceal his mouth, and whispered something in the Skel’s ear.

I couldn’t see a change through the gas mask, of course, but the Skel immediately went rigid. “No! No, please! What do you want to know? Just ask, whatever you want—!”

Funboy stepped back. “There. I believe the prisoner will be cooperative now.”

We all stared at him, blinking.

“Well, that was way more chilling than it needed to be,” Perry said.

“Uh, Funboy, what exactly did you say to him?” Zeno asked.

“Do you really wish to know what I do about the dark, howling chaos that underlies the frail skin of existence?” he replied.

We all exchanged glances, then shook our heads, muttering, “No thanks.”

Zeno turned back to Funboy. “When you put it that way, uh—no, that’s fine, I’m good.”

* * *

Thanks to Funboy’s ability to tap into some good old-fashioned, mind-blasting Lovecraftian horror, the Skel proved a veritable torrent of knowledge. Typical of his kind, he insinuated himself into places he really wasn’t supposed to be, observing things he wasn’t meant to see, all in hopes of being able to use it against someone someday—either for profit or to save his sorry life.

Or to protect himself from the potential hell Funboy had whispered to him.

Anyway, once the floodgates opened, we had to work through the chaff to find the wheat. As I’d genuinely expected, the Skel was a very minor bit-player in all this, and while he knew about the mass graves, he knew little about what was behind them. We were, however, able to tease two valuable nuggets of information out of him.

First, we learned that the osmium smuggling operation sent its stolen goods off-world every five days, aboard nondescript transports laden with other, far less interesting stuff. Those ships were filled with bulk mineral concentrate or worn-out machinery on its way to be scrapped. This was one of those things the Skel wasn’t supposed to know but did.

The other thing we learned from him was that when a response came, it would come in threes. I asked him to explain that, and I was sure he would have, except at that moment he suddenly toppled to the deck.

“What the hell? Funboy, can we revive him?” I snapped, crouching over the suddenly prone, motionless Skel.

Funboy examined him, ran a medical scanner across his body, then looked up at me mournfully. “There is nothing to revive. He has experienced what inevitably awaits all of us, the oblivion of non-existence.”

“He’s dead.”

“I believe that’s what I said.”

“I—yeah, whatever. What the hell killed him?”

“It wasn’t me. You all saw that I’m way over here, right?” Perry immediately called from his perch on the back of the copilot’s seat.

Icky gave him the side-eye. “I don’t know, bird. I really wasn’t watching. You could have been anywhere.”

Funboy watched the medical scanner’s display as he examined the body, then pointed at the Skel’s shoulder. “There. There is a small, implanted device. It seems to be the locus for a powerful neurotoxin.”

“A poison pill?” Zeno said.

I nodded. “Probably triggered when we grabbed him. Why did it take so long to kill him, though? Kind of defeats the point of it to let him live for, what, almost two hours?”

Funboy shrugged as he put his scanner away. “Lowest bidder?”

“Yeah, this is what happens when you skimp on the things you use to kill your employees,” Zeno muttered.

“Van, three small craft just departed the primary orbital. Their trajectory has them arriving in your location on the surface in just under ten minutes,” Netty put in.

I cursed and headed for the pilot’s seat. “They’ll come in threes.”

“Yeah, but why?” Torina asked, taking shotgun. The others took their places and strapped in behind us.

I shrugged. “Who knows. Some obscure corporate policy? Superstition? They get a deal when they buy things in threes?”

I ran the emergency launch checklist, which only had three items, then powered up the drive and lifted the Frankie. “In any case, I’d rather meet them up there than down here.”

Torina switched the Frankie’s weapons into ready mode.

“I’m with you, dear. Shall I warm up the entire armory?”

I gave her a short salute. “Of course. Let’s greet our guests with style.”

* * *

I flung the Frankie through a hard turn, using the drag from the thin stratosphere to execute a half-assed bank. Our pursuer snapped out a laser pulse, but it missed. Torina fired at the second of the small, sleek craft as it whipped by, a puff of glowing vapor showing that she scored a hit.

“Netty, any time you can join us—” I said.

“Don’t blame me, Van. Blame Isaac Newton and his stupid laws of motion.”

“Yeah, what an asshole, making things have inertia and such,” Perry muttered.

“I’m particularly angered by centripetal acceleration,” Icky groused.

“You… you are? Why that law?” Perry asked, bewildered by Icky for the thousandth time.

“When I go around a corner at full speed, and with a full belly—you know, like cheese—it makes me—“

“Thank you, big blue. I’ll never think about inertia the same again,” I said.

Icky shrugged, then patted her belly for good measure. She braced, because Netty took over with deliberate intent. Fully engaged, Netty was burning through maneuvers with a ferocity organic pilots couldn’t match.

But the mechanical reality of the Fafnir’s orbit meant that Netty had to do a braking burn to drop her into the atmosphere and come to our aid—and that required her to complete most of an orbit while she shed velocity and altitude. It meant she was another fifteen minutes out. In the meantime, it was three against one, and we only had the workboat, which wasn’t a fighting ship. The enemy craft, on the other hand, were armed heavily enough that they certainly counted as such.

In short, we were going into the teeth of a force worth my undivided attention.

“I’d say this is fun, sitting back here and watching as this tense, exciting battle unfolds, but it’s not,” Zeno said from behind me.

Netty and I—we were tag-teaming the stick—threw the Frankie hard around the sky, desperately trying to dodge incoming fire. We’d taken a couple of glancing hits, which hadn’t done any critical damage, but the workboat had little armor and not much more structural integrity. We needed an answer to this predicament, and we needed it now.

A new voice hummed over the comm. “Van, B here.”

“Kinda busy, B—”

“I can see that.”

“Wait—you’re here? In this system?”

“Have been all along. The point was to hide and gather some intel. And that presents my current quandary. I can help you, but it’s going to blow my cover and risk compromising my entire op here.”

I snapped the Frankie through a hard roll and pitched up. A laser shot slammed into the workboat’s ventral hull, vaporizing plating and opening us to space. If we hadn’t depressurized the boat, the explosive decompression likely would have ripped her apart.

“What are you asking me, B?” I said, blinking sweat from my eyes.

“Do you really need my help, or can you manage until—?”

“We really need your help!”

She sighed. “Okay, then. But you owe me a whole night of drinks for this, Tudor.”

“Done. But no top shelf stuff. You like bourbon older than I am.”

B laughed. “True. I have expensive taste. And you have an unwelcome friend.”

B’s ship materialized as her stealth system turned off, allowing it to flare being on our scanners just a minute out. She loosed a spread of missiles, then lit her drive and swept in—B was the cavalry, except they were galloping out of the sky.

“I hope the IFF units on those missiles of hers are all working properly,” Zeno said.

Funboy sighed. “Again—lowest bidder.”

B’s missiles, which had locked and were tracking our attackers, caused them to scatter. It did two of them no good, their pursuing missiles quickly catching up and detonating with warheads meant to hurt capital ships. When the flashes faded, there was nothing left but a pair of small meteor showers to be enjoyed by anyone on Level Blue’s surface beneath us.

That left one more bad guy who managed to dodge, reverse, and then destroy the missile chasing him in a stunning display of flying. He didn’t have time to enjoy it, though, as a laser barrage slammed into his little ship and shredded it into glowing fragments. I thought it had been B, but the Fafnir had just risen over the planet’s spinward limb and Netty had taken the shot.

“Better late than never, I guess,” Netty said.

I sat back as she took over control of the Frankie and brought us to rendezvous with the Fafnir. I felt like I’d just gone through arm day in the gym.

B’s voice hummed in the comm. “Okay, about that booze, Tudor. I want you to remember two key words.”

“Let me guess. Old and expensive?” I asked.

B’s silvery laugh filled the comm. “It’s like you read my mind.”

4

Based on the data B had collected while observing Level Blue, a total of nine ships had departed the planet in the past five days, the window given to us by the guard for the osmium shipments. Only three of them had been transports, so after some discussion—held well away from the planet, in the shadow of a chunky asteroid—we agreed those would be the priority.

“Considering how small it is, the osmium could have been taken away on nearly any ship. But my contacts informed me that they routinely use the transports because it’s much easier to hide and smuggle stuff aboard them,” B said.

“Also, they’re boring. Nobody gives a transport a second look, especially one loaded with mineral concentrate. As long as their paperwork’s in order, that’s all the screws care about,” Zeno put in.

I glanced at her. “Screws? Aren’t you a screw now?”

She smiled. “Oops. Old habits and all that.”

“Also sounds like some experience talking,” Torina said.

Zeno shrugged. “I occasionally had to move some questionable things from point A to point B. Mineral transports were a great way to do it. I mean, who’s going to inspect kilotons of dirt?”

“Someone who needs a hobby, that’s who,” Perry muttered.

We decided to track the transports based on their filed flight plans, since they’d probably follow them—they were carrying actual mineral concentrate, after all, even if they also had a few kilos of osmium tucked away behind some bulkhead. B agreed to track two that had left together the day before, bound for Fulcrum, while we went after one that had headed for Wolf 424, probably to pick up more concentrate cargo. Before we parted ways, though, I spoke to B.

“Thanks for coming to save our skin. You seem to do that a lot,” I said.

“Maybe I’m your guardian angel.”

I laughed. “And sorry about blowing your operation down there.”

She waved a hand. “Don’t be. For one, I’ve still got my contact down there. I’m just going to have to be a little circumspect about how I contact him. For another, though—” She paused, taking on a hard, very un-B-like, edge. “That imagery you collected from down there has to go… everywhere. I mean, I knew there were people dying. There always are when you’ve got assholes like the Sorcerers involved. But I had no idea it was happening… like that. On that scale. It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen. Worse, even.” She sighed. “It needs to be stopped, sooner rather than later, so my op here would have had a pretty limited shelf life anyway.” Her antennae twitched, and she gave me a sly look.

“That doesn’t mean you’re getting out of that night of boozing me up, Van. Maybe I’ll even let you escort me home.”

Torina pointedly cleared her throat. “Yes, we would be delighted to make sure you get home safely.”

B’s look turned even more sly. “Both of you? Well, I suppose—”

“And that’s spicy enough for me,” I said, holding up my hands. I blanked my face and adopted a robotic voice. “I am required to mention how happy I am in my stable, caring relationship”—I waved at Torina—“with this woman who fulfills me in every way. Also she is smarter and prettier.”

“Smarter and prettier than?” B prompted, her eyes dancing.

I cut my eyes at Torina, who narrowed her eyes. “Everyone,” I declared.

B laughed, patted my arm, and headed for her ship. “I’m in the presence of genius. Well done, Tudor.”

Perry’s voice was soft but clear. “Suck-up.”

* * *

The freighter was romantically known only by her hull number, ST-897A. I had no doubt her crew had an informal name for her, but we didn’t particularly care. The point was that she was right on schedule, plodding along in accordance with her flight plan.

“She’s slow, but at least she’s sluggish,” Perry remarked.

“I’m slow,” Icky said.

“Is your hammer slow?” Perry countered.

“Well, no.”

“That transport doesn’t have a hammer. Or your sparkling personality,” Perry continued.

Icky flushed. “Thanks, bird.”

Perry turned to me. “It’s called building rapport, boss.”

“You’re a master of subtlety,” I told him.

He responded by preening, then stopped when he saw my sly grin. “Oh. You’re doing it too.”

“While I was eating the leftover noodles, I watched a few videos on leadership. It’s really paying off.”

Funboy turned to face me. “I’d follow you into places that are somewhat unsanitary but not lethal.”

“I’m honored.”

Funboy pointed to the screen. “They’re on the move.”

We watched the transport departing Aggregate Station, one of the so-called hub orbitals scattered around Wolf 424 that each served a network of mining operations. The belters would lug their raw ore to Aggregate and sell it, whereupon Aggregate would reduce it to concentrate and resell it on the metals market. Ships like ST-897A would then be contracted to come along and haul it away.

There was only one thing standing in our way of stopping and seizing the transport—the fact we had no clear reason to do so. It was just a ponderous bulk carrier doing what ponderous bulk carriers do.

Perry spoke up. “Boss? I’d ask Gerhardt for a Warrant.”

I didn’t hesitate. “Netty, send it.”

“Done.”

“Thank you. Now, we wait—how long until they’re at their twist point?”

“Just under three hours.”

“And what sort of window do we have to intercept them?”

“Just over an hour as long as we start our burn in the next ten minutes or so.”

I tapped the armrest. “What the hell is Gerhardt doing, anyway? Aren’t stacks of bodies in mass graves rationale enough to stop, search, and seize everything that comes off that godforsaken hellhole—?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s just opened a comm channel to us,” Netty said.

I sat up. “Put him on.”

As soon as Gerhardt’s image appeared on the display, I spoke up.

“Please tell me you’ve got good news.”

“I don’t.”

I slumped back. “Damn it—”

“For the crew of that transport,” he went on, then shook his head. “You give me no credit for a sense of humor, Tudor.”

“Perry, send Master Gerhardt two paychecks this week.”

“One regular, and one for being a comedian?”

“Correct. Ten bonds oughta cover it,” I said, then saw Gerhardt’s expression.

He offered a second or two of that icy smile of his, then his face switched to business. “The Masters were near unanimous in agreeing that the situation on Level Blue, which itself constitutes a potential Crime Against Order, warrants your stopping and searching that transport. In other words, you’ve got your warrant.”

I nodded. “Thank you. Although… near unanimous? Let me guess—Master Kharsweil wasn’t in favor of it.”

“Actually, Kharsweil isn’t on Anvil Dark and couldn’t be reached. It was Alic who objected.”

That made me frown. “Alic? Really?”

Gerhardt raised a hand. “Before you let your imagination run away with you and start suspecting Alic of being nefarious, he actually had a valid point. He’s concerned that too much sustained scrutiny of Level Blue is just going to cause the miscreants there to scatter across the stars and go to ground. He advocated just sending in a strike force immediately and seizing the whole operation.”

I smiled. “Okay, that sounds more like the Alic I know and love.”

“Indeed. However, the rest of us believed that preventing that osmium from getting to whatever evil market happens to be its destination was more important. It could end up saving hundreds, even thousands of lives.” He narrowed his eyes. “That’s not to say that a strike force isn’t on the table. In fact, Alic is laying the groundwork for it now.”

“I want to be part of it.”

Gerhardt smiled. “But of course. On brand, as the kids say back on Earth. And I don’t blame you. Right now, though, you’ve got a transport to seize. Good luck with that. Gerhardt out.”

* * *

Warrant in virtual hand, we raced after the ST-897A. We’d already transmitted several demands to stop, but she hadn’t and just kept burning along toward her twist point. The only answer we got was a voice message.

“Sorry, our translator is down. We can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

Torina scowled. “Even if that’s true, our translator is working fine. They must think we’re stupid.”

“They’re just playing for time. They’re hoping they can stonewall us until they can twist away—which, incidentally, will no longer be to their flight plan destination of, what was it? Dregs?” Perry said.

I nodded. “Dregs, yeah. But you’re right, they’ll be heading for safe location B instead. And that means we need to stop them, now.”

“They’re undoubtedly also counting on the fact that we won’t apply lethal force to stop them just to serve a Warrant on a bulk carrier full of expensive gravel,” Funboy added.

“Yeah, well, that might be true if I didn’t have memories of corpses stacked into orbit.” I turned to Icky. “You need to get some time on the plasma-burst cannon. Can you shoot off their drive bell, my dear?”

Icky stared at me for a moment, blinking. Then she shook her head. “Uh… yeah, sure. Of course I can.”

“You okay, Icky? You seem distracted.”

She shrugged. “Yeah. Just fuzzed out there for a few seconds. Think I need something to eat,” she added, grinning.

I pointed at the snack larder, mounted conveniently within arm’s reach of Icky, and returned my attention to the tactical overlay.

Despite their translator issues, I sent them three more warnings, included a copy of the warrant, and waited. There was no reply aside from a staticky burst of voice.

“—comm issues—receiving you—say again—”

“They should have opened with that, not the moronic translator thing. It wouldn’t have been any more believable, but at least they wouldn’t be insulting our intelligence like this,” Perry said, ending with a sniff.

“Fine. What’s the value on that transport? We can seize it and the osmium, and, hell, the mineral concentrate, too, and use it to save some of the poor bastards in those mines,” I said.

“Well, assuming that the quantity of osmium is what we think it is, that alone would take care of a hundred people for life, more or less,” Zeno replied.

“That makes it an easy call, doesn’t it?” Torina said.

I nodded, then sighed. “You know, one of these times it would be nice to seize one of these damned things and use the proceeds on something completely vacuous and self-centered. I mean, other Peacemakers do it. Why can’t I?”

“If you’re looking for vacuous and self-centered ideas, I’ve always thought some cool nose art would be in order, something that really brings out my personality,” Netty said.

“I wouldn’t mind getting my tail done,” Perry added.

“Your tail done? What the hell does that mean?”

“He’s angling for something bedazzling and more Hosurc’a-like,” Torina put in, smiling at him.

“Hosurc’a. What a tool. He doesn’t even deserve that tail of his,” Perry muttered, shaking his head. “It’s mine that should be, as the kids used to say, dripping.”

“If your tail is dripping, it’s usually an indication of a serious medical condition, such as avian hemorrhagic fever. You should get that looked at right away,” Funboy said.

Perry turned to him. “I’m ceramo-metallic, you party pooper—oh.”

Funboy was, unbelievably, smiling. Or that’s what I assumed the tooth-baring rictus plastered on his face was—that, and horrifying.

“Funboy, did you just, you know, make a joke?” Zeno asked.

“I am not without humor. Rather, it’s that this grinding, dreary existence has so little place for it.”

“Ah, okay, there it is, the dour misery. My world makes sense again.”

The overlay lit up with a targeting solution for the plasma-burst cannon. I nodded at it. “Okay, kids, limber up. Icky, one shot through their drive bell, if you please.”

Icky took the controls and lined up a shot. We wanted to get everyone some time on all the weapons and major ship systems, because more redundancy was always better.

She let the firing solution creep up to 75 percent, then loosed a slug of incandescent plasma neatly packaged in a self-sustaining soliton wave. It streaked away—

And missed.

Icky scowled. “Shit. Let’s try that again.”

We waited. This was kind of the point of it. We could have waited until the firing solution was virtually 100 percent, but that would defeat the purpose of giving her some practice using manual targeting. Fire control systems could fail, so having some gunnery skills to back them up was always a good idea.

She fired again.

And missed.

Cursed and fired again. This time, she scored a hit on the freighter’s rear hull, fortunately high enough that it avoided damaging or destroying anything crucial or causing a catastrophic explosion.

“Icky, what the hell—?” I started, but she fired again, a three-round burst.

They all missed.

“My weapon,” Torina said, taking control and putting two rounds neatly through the freighter’s drive bell, shutting her engines down.

“What the hell is wrong with Icky’s aim? I mean it wasn’t exactly broadside and barn, but still, that shouldn’t—” Perry started, but a sudden, plaintive wail from Icky cut him off, and she slumped over her panel.

“Netty, you have the intercept,” I said, unstrapping and heading for Icky. Funboy was already beside her, rolling her off of her instruments and reclining her in her seat.

I gasped when I saw her. The skin across her face was discolored purple, like a mask, and along with her neck had swollen, like mumps. She muttered something, but I couldn’t make it out.

“Her body temperature is considerably above her usual baseline,” Funboy said, consulting a medical scanner. “I’m not sure what to make of the rest of these readings.”

“Can you help her?” I asked him.

“I can try. However, I have very limited experience with Wu’tzur physiology.”

“Time to summon the cavalry yet again, then. Netty, call B. Set up a rendezvous with her. The most expeditious one you can.”

“On it, boss.”

I turned back to Icky. “What the hell’s the matter with you, big girl?”

She mumbled something. And again, it made no sense.

* * *

Funboy declared that Icky was stable, albeit seriously ill. Her hormone levels were in utter disarray, but he had no idea why, nor what to do about it. It was an aspect of Wu’tzur physiology about which our available medical databases were conspicuously silent.

“Whenever I see that, some aspect of racial physiology that’s not documented, I tend to assume it’s something that race doesn’t want to discuss outside of their own members. Some have religious connotations to certain parts of their life processes. Others consider them to be deeply shameful, for various reasons,” he said.

Netty arranged with B to meet her at the midpoint between our current locations, which would be the edge of the Spindrift system. Since we were already close to the twist point, I decided to proceed with seizing and searching the ST-897A. Between our horrifying experience on Level Blue and my worry about Icky, I must have come aboard the freighter like an avenging angel of doom, because the crew meekly gave up and did their best to cooperate.

I cornered the freighter’s master. “Why the hell didn’t you just stop when I ordered it?”

He gave me the Nesit version of a shrug. “We’d been paid an extra share to split among ourselves to not stop and instead twist to—” He hesitated, saw my face, then shrugged. “To hell with it then. To twist to these coordinates,” he said, tapping at the freighter’s nav system.

Perry recorded the data, then we searched the ship. The crew helped by letting us know exactly what parts of the freighter had been accessed by non-crew while they were waiting to depart Level Blue. By the time we found what we were looking for, I was convinced that the crew of ST-897A were willing dupes, at worst, allowing themselves to be enticed into some criminality for money. What they weren’t was vile criminals, so I decided to release the ship back to them with a warning.

“And as for the damage, well, that’s what you get for ignoring a valid order to stop for a Warrant search,” I finished.

The Nesit sighed. “Yeah, yeah. The owners are going to be pissed. Hey, mind if I tell them it was pirates?’

“Tell them whatever you want. But if it comes back to me, I’m not going to lie for you.”

The Nesit sighed again, then gave a resigned nod.

I returned to the Fafnir to find that Zeno and Torina had retrieved a small case, about the size of a backpack, which sat on the galley table.

“Our osmium, I presume?’ I asked.

Torina nodded. “Three kilos. Enough to chip three thousand people,” she said, glaring at the innocuous-looking case.

Inside were three silver-gray ingots contained in glass vials of some pale amber fluid. “Osmium, when exposed to air, readily oxidizes to osmium tetroxide, which is quite toxic. Hence it being submerged in an inert liquid,” Perry explained.

I put my hands on my hips and shook my head. “Hard to believe that three little blocks of metal have the potential to inflict so much suffering.”

“Van, may I introduce you to uranium and its artificial cousin, plutonium?” Netty said.

I nodded. “Okay, fair point. This just seems so much more… I don’t know. Insidious.”

I closed the case and told Torina to store it in the evidence locker. In the meantime, I headed for the cockpit.

“Our rendezvous with B, Netty, and don’t spare the horses—for Icky’s sake.”

* * *

Icky remained in a semi-lucid stupor, only coming groggily awake when we transferred her aboard B’s ship. B had shooed us away from her medical bay, and we’d sat aboard the Fafnir and waited.

“Some Wu’tzur disease, maybe?” Zeno suggested as we paced restlessly around the galley or sat, brooding and tense.

“I hope not. Some pathogens are able to cross species boundaries,” Funboy intoned. “Usually, those are virulent beyond belief.”

Torina glared at him. “Yeah, it might be kind of unfortunate for Icky as well.”

He blinked. “I don’t discount the possible threat to her. It’s just… tempered, somewhat, by the possible threat to the rest of us.”

“Well, until now, I hadn’t considered the possibility of a dangerous, cross-species communicable disease. Thank you, Funboy. Your gloom serves a purpose yet again.”

“I’m a helper by nature,” Funboy droned.

I inclined my head. “Obviously.”

Realizing that sitting around and spinning up one another’s worries wasn’t going to help, I put everyone to doing busy work around the ship. I spent my time with Netty and Perry, working on my report about the encounter with the ST-897A.

As we were working through the detailed chronology of events, Perry abruptly stopped. “You know, so far Icky has been the closest of all of us to death’s proverbial door.”

I looked up from my data slate at him.

“Well, there’s this, and then there was the time she got shot on Null World and almost died, and she’s taken a few more good hits along the way and needed patching up—and a few of those were only centimeters away from being way, way worse.”

I smiled at him. “You’re worried about her.”

“No. It was just an observation, that’s all.”

My smile became a grin. “She’s on your mind, bird. Admit it, you’re worried about her.”

“Van, it’s not the same for an AI. Her current situation is occupying some of my processing cycles, sure. But so are lots of things, from incoming intel updates to aspects of ship operations.”

“That’s called worrying.”

“It is not!”

Netty cut in. “Perry, you could simply filter and disable any data related to Icky before it ever reaches your processors, if you wanted.”

“You’re a traitor to your kind, Netty,” he groused.

“My kind is sleek, beautiful ships named the Fafnir. And I’m exceedingly loyal to them, thank you very much.”

I tilted my head at Perry. “If you can just—I don’t know, turn off your worrying about Icky, why don’t you? Hell, if humans could do that, we’d be shutting down worrisome and upsetting thoughts all the time.”

“I’d lose the context to her situation and no longer receive inputs from it to inform my other processes, which could result in a degradation—”

“Perry, Perry,” I said, pressing his beak closed with thumb and forefinger. “It’s okay to worry about your friends. In fact, it’s kind of fundamental to the whole friend thing.”

Perry yanked his beak back out of my grip and sniffed. “She’s a colleague, a… a coworker. An associate. Not a friend.”

My grin returned, but before I could speak, B cut in over the comm.

“Van, you can bring your crew on over. I think I’ve got an answer for you about Icky.”

I stood. “How bad is it?”

“Uh… depends on your definition of bad, really.”

“It—what?”

“Just get your ass over here and I’ll explain.”

I exited my cabin and found the others already gathering.

“On our way.”

5

“She looks… awful, actually,” Torina said as we stood around the gurney upon which Icky sprawled.

She did. Her face had darkened above her mouth from its usual grayish-blue to a dark, simmering purple. It was particularly concentrated around her eyes, giving her a raccoon-ish appearance, albeit a two-and-a-half meter tall, two hundred kilo, four-armed raccoon who could just have my garbage, please and thank you. She’d also lost some hair, and her face and neck were slightly swollen.

B shrugged. “The swelling will go down. The hair loss might continue for a while.”

“What about her face? That’s kind of… troubling,” Zeno said.

“That might persist a while, too.”

“Uh, B, what the hell is actually wrong with her?”

“And more to the point, is it contagious?” Funboy asked from the far side of the compartment.

B laughed. “Oh, no, it’s not contagious. It’s puberty.”

We all just stared for a moment. A part of me actually thought she was joking.

“Puberty,” I said.

“Yes. Puberty. You know, a period of transition to sexual maturity—”

“Uh, yeah, I know what puberty is. I had one of my own, thanks.” I glanced at Icky. “I’m no expert on Wu’tzur physiology—in fact, I know the physiology of a cow much better than I do a Wu’tzur—but from talking to Icky’s father, it seemed pretty clear that she’d already gone through all this.”

“She has.”

Torina shook her head. “Okay, wait. She’s gone through puberty, and now she’s going through it again?”

Zeno puffed out a breath. “Multiple puberties? Oh, ouch. I didn’t particularly enjoy doing it once.”

“Well, it doesn’t happen to Wu’tzur very often either. In fact, only about one in one hundred thousand females experience it. It’s called Bridging, and it represents a transition from a normal state of sexual maturity to—”

“Please don’t say enhanced, please don’t say enhanced,” Perry intoned.

“—an enhanced one,” B finished, flashing Perry a smirk.

Perry sighed. “Of course it is.”

“B, what exactly does an enhanced sexual maturity mean?” I asked, finding it hard not to squirm uncomfortably.

“It means that, instead of birthing a single child, which is usual for the Wu’tzur, she’ll be able to birth several. Four seems to be the average, but instances of as many as seven offspring have been reported.” She shrugged. “At least, this is what I’ve been able to glean from my medical archives and a discreet conversation with a Wu’tzur physician I know. Hard data about the whole Bridging thing, why it happens, what it means to be a Primary, which is the term for a female who’s Bridged—it’s all wrapped up in Wu’tzur cultural taboos. Apparently, it’s considered—I don’t know, unclean, I guess? Though that doesn’t really get it quite right either. Anyway, they don’t like to talk to about it to outsiders.”

“Unclean. Yes, that makes eminent sense,” Funboy said. “The entire process of sexual maturation is a litany of unclean events and practices. I frankly don’t see why you all drag it out for so long.”

Torina rolled her eyes. “Let me guess—your people somehow avoid it.”

“No, the Surtsi undergo the process much as any other DNA-based species does. We just get it over with far more quickly, usually within a single day.”

I giggled. “An entire puberty packed into a single day, huh? That must be one hell of a busy day.”

Funboy blinked at me. “What do you mean?”

I just shook my head. “It’s—you know what, let’s not touch that topic. So what does this mean for Icky, B?”

“It means that she will, in the short term, be somewhat more difficult to live with, for a variety of reasons.”

“Okay, I hesitate to ask but… what variety of reasons could make an ornery, four-armed monster who hates pants even more difficult than she already is?”

B’s antennae waved merrily. “Well, when she finally wakes up—and she’ll sleep about ninety minutes for every five kilos of weight—she’s going to be hungry. Very hungry. She’ll also be, well—let’s call it irascible. Very short-tempered, in fact—”

Perry snorted, “So far, nothing’s changed.”

“Let me finish, bird. Because this last one? Oh, you’re gonna love it.”

Zeno shook her head. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. Afraid so,” B said.

“Anyone? Some details?” I put in.

Torina crossed her arms. “Second puberty, you said?”

B nodded. “Yep.”

Torina turned to me. “Oh, Van. Honey. Brace for impact.”

“What? For the love of—” I started, then stopped as I realized what they were all getting at. I flashed back to my own experiences with sexual maturation, and how all the girls at school suddenly seemed so much more interesting—especially Tory-Kate, who had legs a mile long and a habit of flipping her long black hair just so that made it impossible for me to think—

I looked at B. “Oh, you can’t be serious.”

She grinned. “Yup. When she wakes up, for about three months of ship time, she’s going to be biochemically—well, not to put too fine a point on it, boy crazy.”

“For the record, I don’t enjoy physical contact. Or eye contact. Or emotions,” Funboy said, raising a hand.

“You’re not her type. The key will be keeping her away from Wu’tzur males, especially those who are maturing into their own Peak state,” B said.

“Because they’ll be horny,” Perry said with the tone of a ninth-grade science teacher. “You see, Funboy, horny is slang—colloquial speech, if you will—indicating an elevated state of sexual arousal. This can be found during and around events and occurrences that trigger a, ah, response.”

“Events?” Funboy asked, his voice hesitant for once.

Perry went on with endless good cheer. “Yes. Events. Like—

Torina cut in. “As someone who was younger and was around younger males, I can offer you a few examples of the event that can trigger horniness in teens.” She let her eyes drift upward and took a deep breath, then smirked. “Sunrise. Sunset. Breathing. Walking. Sleeping. Wind. Water. Sound. And my personal favorite, just because.”

“Basically everything. All the time,” Perry added with a snicker.

“Thanks, bird, but I figured that out all on my own, having been a glandular teen myself.” I put my hands on my hips. “Are you telling me that, in addition to trying to run down vicious, murderous criminals and confronting an amoral corporation so vastly wealthy they could buy my ship ten times over with their spare change, I’ve now got to chaperone Icky for three months or she’ll start humping anything with blue fur and a cool car?”

“Boss, we got this. We’ll just keep an eye out for any young Wu’tzur males driving a Camaro or a Mustang and—and that look you’re giving me tells me I should shut up now.”

“I think she’s developing acne on top of everything else,” Zeno said, peering at Icky.

“Acne is only rarely fatal,” Funboy said.

Torina gave a patient sigh.

“You’ve never met a teenage girl, have you?”

* * *

We left Icky with B, who’d monitor her until she recovered—or recovered as much as she was going to, at least. I didn’t relish the prospect of having a horny two-hundred kilo teenager riding behind me in the Fafnir, but that part, B insisted, we weren’t going to be able to avoid.

“You could keep her for three months,” I said.

B laughed. “Oh, Van, even if you bought me a vacation home on the Starless Sea, it wouldn’t be enough. Sorry, she’s your crew, for better or worse.”

“Great. Three months of worse.”

While B watched over Icky, we decided our next move. Using data in hand, we began chasing down the freighters B had been tracking, before asking her to render medical assistance.

“Sending the download now,” B said. “I’ll take care of our girl. You go punch out a few scumbags, okay?”

“On it, B. Thanks again. You’re a gem,” I said.

“I sure am,” she said, her antennae waving in mirth. “Be safe. B out.”

Netty confirmed the transfer and gave us our first target—the fast freighter Alluring Starscape.

“Awfully fancy name for something that carries glorified gravel,” I said as we closed on her. She was on her outbound leg from Crossroads, and on her way to Tau Ceti with her load of ore concentrate. She’d supposedly only stopped over at Crossroads to refuel, but I had my doubts—it would be easy enough to offload a few kilos of osmium without attracting any attention. I called up Gus, the Peacemaker Guild Station Chief at Crossroads, to alert him to the possibility of an osmium shipment being aboard the orbital.

“So a shipment small enough to fit in a briefcase, somewhere aboard a station over a kilometer long and housing on the order of five thousand people and with three to five ships arriving and departing every hour, huh? Sure, I’ll get right on that, Van. Got anything else you want me to look for? Someone smuggling a single ring or brooch? Maybe an arms shipment consisting of one bullet?”

“I realize it’s a longshot, but if you could keep an eye—”

“Yeah, yeah, of course we’ll do our best, Van. Just don’t hold your breath.”

We took off after the Alluring Starscape and, much as ST-897A had done, the crew stonewalled us. I decided to try a different approach this time.

“Look, we know that you’re being paid extra to avoid us, and that you’re going to twist to some secret safe location as soon as you can. But I have a question for you. Is whatever bonus BeneStar or the Sorcerers, or whoever the hell it is paying you, going to cover the cost of a new main drive bell when I put a mass-driver round through it?”

“You can’t do that. We haven’t committed any hostile act, and you’ve got no warrant!” the captain snapped back over the comm.

“Exigent circumstances, my friend. We stopped one freighter under a warrant and found out it was transporting illicit goods from Level Blue, so that makes all ships that departed there at or near the same time suspect. And you’re one of those ships,” I said, then glanced at Perry, who nodded. He’d put on his legal-eagle hat and come up with the argument, which he and Netty were both sure would hold up in the event of any backlash.

A long moment passed. I sighed and turned to Torina. “Okay, my dear, better warm up the weapons—”

“Fine. We’re heaving to. You can board us, do whatever it is you have to do, then get the hell off my ship,” the Alluring Starscape’s Captain growled.

“Much appreciated, Captain. We’ll be rendezvousing shortly.”

I turned back to Torina. “Warm up the weapons anyway.”

She gave an evil grin. “Oh, they’re already good and warm, and will all be pointed at that freighter. If I see even a twitch out of any of its weapons, well, I’ve always wanted to see what a full broadside from the Fafnir could do.”

* * *

The crew of the Alluring Starscape didn’t try to threaten us with their weapons, which consisted of a pair of point-defense batteries and a laser projector of middling power. Instead, they tried to hit us with a wall of intimidation when we came aboard. There were six of them waiting for us, all brandishing an arsenal of ranged, bladed, and impact weaponry.

“I don’t often say this, but I kinda miss Icky right now,” Perry said.

The captain, a sallow-faced human with an intricate geometric tattoo covering half of this face and accentuating some sort of bionic eye, leered at us.

“You don’t mind if we escort you around, do you? Wouldn’t want you to get hurt because, you know, this is a working ship,” he said.

“Downright industrial,” another of the crew, a surly Gajur, said.

“Yeah, lots of hazards and ways of getting injured,” a third grated.

I walked right up to the Captain and smiled at him. “We appreciate the concern, but we’ll be fine. Yours isn’t the first suspect ship we’ve had to stop and search.”

I felt Funboy and Zeno tense behind me, and each moved aside, left and right, giving them a good line of sight to the rest of the freighter’s crew. The captain grinned right back at me, his electronic eye glittering.

“Oh, no, I insist,” he said, hefting something that resembled a mace in one hand.

Still smiling, I swept out the Moonsword and hacked at his mace, neatly slicing the head from the haft. It clattered to the floor, missing my foot by about a centimeter. My boot would have protected my toes, of course, but I still had to force myself to not wince.

The captain’s grin became a glare. “Listen—”

I lifted the point of the Moonsword to the captain’s throat, keeping it a few centimeters away so I didn’t inadvertently cut him. “I’ve got a better idea. You listen. First, you saw what this blade did to an alloy rod, so use your imagination and think what it’ll do to your scrawny neck. Second, I am here to do a job, and if you and your crew don’t stand down and get the hell out of our way, then you’ll be obstructing justice and interfering in a Guild investigation into Crimes Against Order.”

I leaned closer. “That’ll be a Class 1 Warrant. There’ll be Peacemakers coming to look for you to claim the bounty.”

The captain glared at me. I glared back. The brief contest persisted a moment, then the captain finally subsided as he considered his fading chances.

“Fine. I still want to accompany you around my ship.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” I replied, sheathing the Moonsword.

We searched the ship, looking for osmium or anything similar, and in the growing tension, Perry spoke in a tone I hadn’t heard for some time.

“Van, I’m detecting some emissions we haven’t seen for a while. There’s a chipped person on board. Maybe more than one,” he said.

I spun on the captain. “Where are they?”

He stared. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

I slammed him against the bulkhead. Funboy and Zeno turned to face the other crew who’d been following us. Zeno had her BAG, her big-assed gun, as she’d dubbed it, and now pointed its sewer-pipe muzzle at them.

And just like that, the crew wanted to cooperate. They were positively eager to do so.

“You were just going to tell me where these people are—you know, before I haul your ass off to the Guild’s prison barge, or maybe toss you out the airlock for being a shitbag slaver.”

The captain’s eyes widened, and his bionic one sparkled. “Slaver? I ain’t no slaver. Yes, we have four AIs on board. We’re transporting them to Dregs. But they’re just AIs.”

Perry cleared his throat. “Excuse me, just AIs?”

The captain glanced down at him, then licked his lips. “Look. All I know is that we’re transporting four AIs. That’s all I was told. Take them to Dregs and deliver them to a shipping broker there.” His expression had become one of genuine alarm. “What’s the big deal about some AIs, anyway? And what’s this slaver bullshit?”

I let the man go and stepped back. He didn’t know what the chipped personalities were. He’d been told, and simply assumed, that they were just off-the-shelf AIs. I had him take me to them, and he led us to a storage locker. He handed over a case, which, when we opened it, contained four identical chips.

“Been a while since we’ve run across any of these. I sure as hell wasn’t missing them, though,” I said.

“They’ve made some refinements to the hardware, compared to the ones we’ve encountered previously. Good to see the bad guys are keeping the spirit of innovation alive,” Perry said drily.

“Yeah, except those refinements are driving the poor bastards stuck on these things crazy, turning them into psychopathic maniacs, according to B,” Zeno said.

“Perhaps by design. They may be experimenting with new uses for the stolen personalities, wanting to employ them as assassins or soldiers,” Funboy put in.

I sighed at him. “Now there’s a cheery thought. It’s not enough to enslave people in a perpetual digital hell. Now they’re going to try and force them to commit atrocities against their will.”

6

We took the chips but found no osmium. It must have been removed at Crossroads, prompting me to send an update to Gus. Again, the Sorcerers and their minions demonstrated their acumen with compartmentalization—the crew of the Alluring Starscape knew that people had been on board both before they departed Level Blue and while they were at Crossroads, but they weren’t sure what they’d been doing. Like the crew of the ST-897A, they’d genuinely been contracted to haul mundane ore concentrate to a routine destination but had been paid a premium to do a lot of looking the other way, and an even bigger premium to try and avoid being caught.

“Seems like a shitty plan security-wise,” Zeno said as we returned to the Fafnir with the chips. “You’re counting on gullible and greedy freighter crews to keep your secrets. But no amount of money is going to do you any good if you’re dead, so their incentive to continue keeping your secrets has a hard limit.”

“It was a perfectly good system until it got compromised. I’d expect they’re now going to switch to plan B sometime in the near future,” I offered.

Perry nodded. “It was also cheap. Remember, if BeneStar is ultimately behind this, their big—actually, only—motivation is the return they get on their investment. The higher their input costs, the less money they make. It’s one thing about this that’s as constant as the beat of a pulsar.”

“Which makes them predictable—which means we can use it against them,” Zeno said.

But I held up a warning hand as I put the case containing the chips on the galley table. “Let’s not get complacent about this. Back in my hacking days, I saw people—and corporations—spend insane amounts of money for what, in retrospect, were stupid and even counterproductive reasons just to win. Ever hear of the sunk-cost fallacy?”

“That’s when you keep investing money or time or whatever in a lost cause, just because you’ve invested so much already, right?” Zeno asked.

I nodded. “Exactly. If we poke BeneStar enough, somebody—maybe even Helem Gauss himself—is going to get aggravated enough to really dig into the petty cash. That maximizing return-on-investment thing could get forgotten awfully fast.”

“Especially if they believe that it makes more sense to go nuts with the spending now to eliminate a problem—that is, us—to save money over the long term,” Perry said.

“Who’s eliminating us now?” Torina asked, stepping into the galley. She confirmed that we’d cast off from the Alluring Starscape, upon which we’d levied a stiff fine payable under a writ, which would become a warrant if they didn’t settle up within thirty days. It was enough, I figured, to wipe out whatever bonuses BeneStar had paid them, plus eat uncomfortably into their profits from this load of ore concentrate.

I glanced at her. “Take your pick. It’s a long list.”

She put her hand on my arm, smiling broadly. “And that’s how we know we’re doing the right thing.”

“And the profitable thing, now and then. Got a bonus for this haul, boss,” Perry said.

“Really? How much?”

“Hundred thousand. Dayna’s already asked us if we’re putting it in the ship, or—”

“You know what to do, bird. Minus something for your, uh, tail thing,” I said.

Perry looked at his feathers with a critical eye. “I’m magnificent as it is. Not sure the galaxy can handle me at the next level.”

“Handsome and humble. Perfect combo,” Torina cooed.

“When you use that tone, it makes my sacrifice worth it,” Perry said, then mimed wiping a tear with one wingtip. “But… the usual, boss? Families of the stolen persons, and buy one or two bodies for them if they want?”

“Yep. Dayna will handle it, I’m sure. Ask her to fund—hell, can we make sure the people who get new bodies have something waiting for them? You know, clothing, transport? Food?” I asked.

Torina snapped her fingers, then smiled. “A standardized welcome back package. We should do that.”

“That’s it, dear. Perfect.”

Netty chimed in. “Message sent to Dayna. I’ll have her work out any details with you or Torina, boss.”

“You can do it, Netty. You know what people need,” I answered.

After a short pause, she replied. “Well, thanks. I’ve got it covered.”

I peered at the case, feeling a deep unease with what it represented.

“Let’s open this damned thing. Perry, use your wing-fu?” I asked.

“My pleasure.” He extended a fine filament from the end of his right wing and picked the lock in a matter of seconds. The lid snapped upward to reveal tidy rows of chips.

The potential for pain and loss was staggering.

We extracted one of the chips from the case so Zeno and Funboy could study it and reconfigure the adapter we’d made to plug them into Waldo to accommodate the new design. We used Waldo for this because he was a stand-alone device already set up to be run by an AI—and I sure as hell didn’t want to plug some random chip containing unknown software into the Fafnir herself. It gave us an ability to communicate with the personality on the chip in a safe and controlled way. It had actually led to us gaining a new crew member for a time, Rolis, who had sacrificed himself to save us from what was otherwise a virtual no-win situation.

We’d disabled Waldo’s manipulators and motive system but stood back anyway as we activated the chip.

“Hello?” I said.

A burst of noise erupted from Waldo’s speaker unit, like a howl of feedback. It went silent, then howled again.

“Ouch. Fingernails, meet blackboard,” Perry said.

I tried again. “Hello? Can you hear us?”

“I”—another screech—“you,” a voice said.

Funboy frowned—frowned more than usual, anyway—then consulted the data slate he and Zeno had been using to monitor the chip interface. He tapped at it, then nodded to me.

“Hello?” I asked again.

“Hello?”

The voice was female. We could only guess at species.

“I’m Van Tudor. I’m a Peacemaker. You’re aboard my ship, the Fafnir.”

“A Peacemaker? So… you’ve, what, rescued me?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes, I suppose we have—”

“Kind of late, asshole. Where were you when those bastards took me in the first place?”

I saw Torina bristle but held up my hand to cut off any protest. “Believe me, if we could have prevented that, we would have.”

“So I guess I’m supposed to be grateful now.”

“That’s entirely up to you. We are hoping to get a little information from you regardless—starting with, what’s your name?”

She went on to explain that her name was Sibel and she was a Fren-Okun. Some of her irascible nature came from that, since younger Fren-Okun females tended to be the more assertive and self-assured members of their race. But there was more to it than that. She was unreasonably short-tempered and impatient, even given the circumstances, with a lot of her ire directed at us, despite us being the ones who rescued her. I finally asked Funboy to pause her, and he did, tapping at the data slate to temporarily suspend her processing.

“She’s a lot of fun,” Torina said.

“I especially liked her comment about the oblivion of death awaiting us all. Kinda reminded me of you, Funboy,” Zeno said.

He gave a slow shrug. “She intended it as a threat. When I say it, it’s simply a grim assertion of undeniable, remorseless truth.”

“I prefer your version. So inescapable,” Zeno replied, her whiskers twitching with suppressed mirth.

“Perry, Netty, do you think we’re seeing the beginnings of the psychopathic paranoia B described?” I asked.

“I’d say so there. Her aggressive nature was completely out of context,” Perry replied.

“I was monitoring Waldo’s processors—from safely behind a gazillion firewalls, before anyone complains. Anyway, there was data being injected into her responses from somewhere, presumably from her chip, since Waldo has no capabilities like that,” Netty said.

“So the chip is deliberately making her angry,” Torina said.

I nodded. “Yeah, so it seems. Which means our adversaries have started experimenting with a new form of digital hell, one where they can control the way these poor bastards feel.”

“Make them angry and aggressive if you want to use them for, say, applications suited for violence, like combat.”

“Or happy and upbeat if you want to use them for entertainment, or serious and thoughtful if you want to use them for research purposes,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and sighing. “I used to think just turning someone into an electronic slave was as bad as it got. Turns out I was wrong.”

“Imagine being made to feel brutally depressed, then just left that way,” Torina said softly, staring at the case of chips.

Zeno glanced at Funboy. “Yeah, I wonder what that would be like.”

Funboy sniffed. “I am not depressed. I am merely realistic.”

We activated Sibel again and carried on talking with her. We did learn one horrifying, useful fact from her. She claimed to have been taken aboard a ship that was essentially a mobile chipping facility, where people were brought aboard, had their identities uploaded to chips, then were killed and had their bodies incinerated in a plasma-arc furnace. It hinted at a massive escalation in the Sorcerers’ appalling evil, an evolution from sporadic, one-off identity thefts to something on a more industrial scale. It left all of us reeling at the implications.

“I was designated sixty-one of two hundred aboard the ship they took me to, and I heard there might be another three ships doing the same thing. So you’d better haul your lazy ass out there, Peacemaker, to stop it—”

She cut off as Funboy suspended her again. “I am getting the sense that she’s just going to descend further and further into irrational frustration and anger. We have no idea if the process is reversible, so my recommendation is that we avoid further interaction with her.”

I nodded at him. “Good point. I’m not sure how much more we could learn from her anyway.”

“Haven’t we learned enough? We need the Guild—hell, the GKU—to interdict those ships she described, Van. If she’s right, the sheer scale of the murder is—it’s breathtaking,” Torina said, her voice as hard as hull plating.

“Put that on top of the killing fields on Level Blue and we’ve got, well, something starting to at least nudge up against the word genocide,” Zeno agreed.

I looked from one to the other. “You’re right. But we can’t.”

“We… can’t? Why not?” Torina snapped.

“Because as soon as we undertake an op to find and stop those chip-factory ships, my worry is that they’re going to get a warning and just vanish.”

“But how would they get—?” Torina started, then stopped and frowned. “Leaks. From inside the Guild.”

“Or the GKU. Or both. There are lots of people I don’t trust in both organizations. And some of them are the same people—like our friend Master Kharsweil.”

“I know you suspect him, Van, but we haven’t encountered any hard evidence he’s on the take. He might just be incompetent,” Perry said.

“Maybe. And while incompetence doesn’t bother me, or at least doesn’t bother me much, corruption definitely does. Corruption undermines us. It compromises us.” I shook my head. “No, I want to be sure we’ve got a leak and then figure out how to plug it before we go after the big targets like these murder ships.”

“So people just keep dying in the meantime. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe,” Torina said, her tone bitter.

I sighed. “It kind of puts us into the same position as BeneStar, doesn’t it? We have to pay a higher price now to avoid paying a much worse one later if those ships just vanish.”

“We’re not the ones paying the price, though, are we?” Zeno muttered.

Torina scowled. “Fine. So let’s work on that damned leak you’re so worried about. How do we find it? How do we stop it?”

“That’s what we’ve got to figure out,” I replied. “But I’m at a loss as to how, so if you’ve got any ideas—”

“I do,” Perry said.

I turned to him. “I’m listening, bird.”

“Miss.”

“Miss?”

“Yeah. Miss. Miss the next target. Let one get away. And then let word get to… I don’t know, Gauss or whoever. Then we wait and see how long it takes Kharsweil to call us home, or at least start interfering.”

“Shouldn’t he have already found out, though? We’ve stopped two of these freighters,” Torina said.

“For what it’s worth, neither of them made any apparent attempt to undertake any twist comms while we were pursuing them, or after releasing them,” Netty put in.

I had to agree. “And I haven’t filed my reports on either incident yet. So, if we assume that the crews of the ST-897A and the Alluring Starscape are going to remain as tight-lipped as possible for as long as they can—”

“Because doing otherwise is just going to cost them more money,” Perry interjected.

“—then there’s a good chance that no one at Anvil Dark or in the GKU even knows what’s going on with these freighters yet,” I finished.

“Except for B,” Torina noted.

“Yeah, but I think we can trust B. At least, I hope we can, since she saved Icky’s life once and is watching over her even as we speak.”

Zeno nodded. “Yeah, okay, so if we assume that our one that’s gonna get away is the first anyone at Anvil Dark—like Kharsweil—hears about this, and quickly tries to intervene, then we know there’s a pipeline right into his office.”

“And another one from there to… I don’t know, Helem Gauss’s desk, and maybe others,” I added.

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to decide if there was any obvious flaw to the plan—well, aside from knowingly letting those damned murder ships keep operating for the time being. Nothing jumped out at me, though. It was simple and well within our means.

I opened my eyes. “Netty, let’s run down the next villainous ship on B’s list and fire off a couple of ultimately futile rounds. I’m feeling my aim is a bit off.”

“That’s a shame. Anyway, ready when you are, boss,” she said.

“Okay. Let’s go plug some leaks.”

* * *

We tracked the third transport on B’s list, the Whispering Nebula, to Spindrift. According to her flight plan, she was offloading some environmental systems hardware, some air purifiers, that she loaded before she’d even picked up her load of ore concentrate from Level Blue. We didn’t want to interfere with that, so we hung back, waiting for her to depart Spindrift for her next port of call, which was Radialis, the industrial planet in the Tau Ceti system.

We used the delay to draft some help from Lunzy, who already had business at Spindrift. She departed the station at about the same time the Whispering Nebula arrived, then joined us in the system’s outer reaches close to the freighter’s filed outbound flight path.

“You want me to watch as you fail to stop this freighter,” she said via comm beam. She grinned. “Any other unsuccessful ops you want me to witness, Van? Perhaps we could take Funboy to improv classes and watch the hilarity that ensues?”

I smiled back. “Just this one will be fine, thanks, and for your information, Funboy asked for a coupon to a circus school in Tallahassee, Florida.”

“It’s in a strip mall, so you know it’s good,” Funboy added.

Lunzy snorted, then snorted again when she realized Funboy was being serious.

Torina patted Funboy on his slender shoulder. “I don’t understand you. At all.”

He attempted another of his hideous smiles. “Thank you. And… did you disinfect your hands recently?”

Torina looked down at her digits. “Yes. Once a week, whether I need to or not.”

Funboy looked pale, then Torina let him off the hook.

“Easy, champ. I’m as clean as you are.”

Funboy relaxed a bit, then added a dignified sniff before taking out a hand wipe that smelled like moonshine dipped in turpentine, with just a hint of moral superiority. “Just to be safe.”

Torina rolled her eyes, then turned to Lunzy. “Now that he’s washed off my cooties, you were saying?”

I spoke up. “Anyway, once the freighter makes a break for it, we’d like you to tag her—use that spiffy stealth tech you’ve got on the Foregone Conclusion to hide while you do it. Ideally, the Whispering Nebula will twist away from here none the wiser, blissfully unaware we can track them.”

“So sit in one place, hiding, then fire one tag missile, then… profit?” She shook her head. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

“I’ll add you to the list of people I owe drinks.”

“Damned right you will. In the number one spot, too.”

“Sorry, you’ll have to fight that out with B.”

She laughed. “Tell her to bring it.”

We signed off and made ourselves ready. We had an operation to screw up.

* * *

The trick was screwing up convincingly. We couldn’t let it be obvious, for fear of arousing suspicion and causing the whole thing to backfire on us. To that end, I watched as the Whispering Nebula neared its twist point, still demanding that she heave-to and allow us to board her. Like the previous two freighters, she broadcasted no messages, intent on twisting away to her designated safe location. We were still overtaking her, with relative ease.

“Oh no, I missed again,” Torina said, sitting back and taking a break from firing the laser. “How many more times would you like me to shoot at empty space?”

I shook my head. “I think we’re good. Netty, let’s spark up that drive problem we discussed, if you please.”

“One wonky drive coming up.”

A series of status messages flashed up on the master monitor, announcing that the drive had developed a serious harmonic and we had to reduce power. Netty had triggered it, of course, by fiddling with the magnetic containment. The harmonic was a slight thrum in the ship that I felt in my feet and chest, rather than heard. Netty then reduced power, and our acceleration dropped accordingly. We were still overtaking the Whispering Nebula, but far more slowly.

“Lunzy’s tracking tag has successfully attached,” Netty said.

Torina turned to me. “That reminds me—whatever happened to that tracking tag BeneStar stuck onto us when we were refueling on our way to Rondantic’s World?”

“It’s still sitting on a shelf in Bester’s archives, where no one but him is going to find it. Since we’ve positively ID’d it as a piece of BeneStar hardware, I’m keeping it as a bit of an insurance policy. Planting a tracker on a Guild ship is a serious offense—it could even be taken as interfering in an investigation. And now that BeneStar has decided to take up permanent residence in known space, well, it might come in handy when I need some leverage over them,” I said.

“Do you really think BeneStar will care?”

“Not really. But if they’re trying to maintain a squeaky-clean image—you know, we’re unsullied agents of good, looking out for the people, blah, blah—then suddenly facing criminal charges might be something they want to avoid—”

While I was talking, the Whispering Nebula abruptly vanished, twisting away to—

“Netty, did we get enough data from Lunzy’s tracker to get some idea of where they were going?” I asked.

“Some, but not enough to say more than they were headed somewhere spinward of here, and probably coreward.”

“Well, it’s a start, I guess.” I sat back. “Now, we wait and see what happens next.”

“Like a call from good Master Kharsweil?” Zeno asked.

I shrugged. “Part of me hopes so, part of me doesn’t. I mean, it would be nice to not have to deal with the fallout from some corrupt Master’s shenanigans. The Guild’s still wrestling with the aftermath of Yotov.”

“But?”

“But if Kharsweil is on the take, I’d rather know sooner than later.”

“Who wants to bet? Corrupt or not? Any takers?” Perry asked.

We all looked at him.

“What are the odds?” Zeno asked.

“Five to one that he’s clean.”

“Pfft. No thanks, bird. I’m fully expecting him to be as guilty as sin, so you’re going to have to do a lot better than that.”

* * *

“You’re dead on, boss. Incoming message from Master Kharsweil,” Netty said.

I checked the time. “Two hours and fourteen minutes.” I consulted my data slate. “Let’s see—Funboy, you had two hours even, Zeno, you had two and a half—”

“Are you telling me that little sack of misery beat me by a minute?”

“Afraid so, my dear.”

Funboy sighed. “One minute or less—sometimes much less—is often the difference between success and failure, between clinging desperately to life for some indeterminate period or plunging into the howling abyss of oblivion. Now, pay up.”

I grinned, then turned back to Netty. “Okay, put the good Master on, please.”

Kharsweil’s dour, emotionless face appeared on the central display. “Peacemaker Tudor, you are hereby directed to return to Anvil Dark for an urgent debriefing. You must answer to charges brought forward by BeneStar Corporation, who claims to have testimony that you have engaged in serious crimes that, in a time of conflict, would constitute war crimes. You are expected to make your way posthaste to Anvil Dark and report directly to me.”

“Van, there’s a document appended to the transmission. It’s an Affidavit of Observance.”

“That’ll be their testimony,” Perry said.

I nodded. “Yeah, this oughta be good. Netty, let’s see it. Let’s see what horrific things we’ve done to poor, innocent BeneStar Corporation.”

“Uh—”

I frowned. “Netty? Something wrong?”

“I—uh—”

“Since when is an AI indecisive?” Zeno asked.

Perry spoke up. “Ah. Yes. We AIs aren’t indecisive by nature, not by any means. But in this case, I get Netty’s reluctance. She just shared the Affidavit with me.”

“And? What the hell does it say? What are they accusing me of?” My tone got a little harder and tenser with each word as my imagination started heading in some pretty dark directions. But Perry shook his head.

“It’s not what they’re accusing you of, Van—that’s just the usual mishmash of piracy, abuse of authority, wanton destruction of property, that sort of thing. It’s who gave the testimony backing it up,” Perry said.

“Okay, so who the hell was it?”

Perry shrugged his wings. “It was Carter Yost.”

7

To their credit, my crew let me rant until I was done. I slumped back in my seat.

“That son of a bitch! And to think I was actually starting to feel some sort of… bond with the miserable little asshole,” I snapped, then lolled my head back and sighed.

I felt Torina staring at me. I rolled my head toward her. “What? I think I’m entitled to a little venting here, thank you very much.”

“What? Oh—yeah, I agree, you are. It’s not that. It’s that… this doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean?”

She sat up. “It’s all so… amateurish. We gave them some rope when we let that freighter get away, and they promptly hung themselves with it. They’ve levied a complaint against you based on the testimony of someone who’s not exactly known for his reliability—and who’s already implicated in BeneStar’s shenanigans, thanks to that recording and broadcasting rig we found in Carter’s house back on Earth.”

Now I sat up. “What are you getting at?”

“That BeneStar, for all its corporate power and resources, is being pretty ham-fisted about this. I mean… Carter Yost? Really? That’s the best they can do for a witness, or complainant, or whatever he is?”

“Torina’s got a point, Van. BeneStar could easily afford James Bond, but instead they’ve decided to go with Inspector Clouseau,” Perry put in.

I turned in my seat. “So what are you suggesting here? That they’re doing a shitty job of this, what, deliberately?”

“Oh, I think it’s deliberate, but it’s not necessarily shitty. Everything they’re doing seems to be intended to inflict the greatest uncertainty and strife on us,” Torina replied.

“Like sending an Affidavit signed by Carter Yost. That was targeted directly at you, Van. It was intended to piss you off,” Netty put in.

“And it succeeded,” I said, nodding. “You guys think that BeneStar is playing head games? Even with so much at stake?”

“Almost sure of it,” Perry replied. “They’ve managed to sow distrust inside the Guild by making it seem like Kharsweil is compromised—although whether he is or isn’t remains to be seen.”

“Doesn’t really matter from our perspective. The damage is done, isn’t it? We believe he’s dirty, don’t we?” Zeno said.

“And they’ve tried to provoke an emotional reaction from you, goading you with the whole Carter Yost thing. That also raises more doubts about the security of Earth, too,” Torina said.

I nodded. I wasn’t too worried about Earth, which was being jointly watched by Groshenko’s mercenary outfit, the GKU, and the Iowa.

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. The Iowa, our big ol’ battlecruiser, was lurking in Sol’s Kuiper Belt, crewed by an insanely skilled and talented pack of rambunctious, fractious Conoku teenagers. It was like an American aircraft carrier operated entirely by middle schoolers—if said middle schoolers were at least as competent as a carrier’s actual crew, and maybe even more so.

So, while Earth wasn’t exactly guaranteed to be safe and secure, it was as good as it was going to get, short of persuading Matterforge to move to Sol.

“Van, we’ve got another incoming message,” Netty said, breaking into my momentary reverie. I scowled.

“Tell Kharsweil we’ll be there as soon as—”

“It’s not Kharsweil. It’s Dayna Jasskin.”

I glanced at Torina, who shrugged. “Put her on, Netty,” I said.

This time, it was Dayna’s image that appeared on the screen.

“Before you ask, Dayna, no—I don’t want to buy balance insurance for my credit card.”

She blinked a few times. “What?”

I grinned. “Sorry, back home, when the bank calls, it’s either because you’ve missed a payment or they want to sell you something.”

“We have retail banking AIs who do that, Van. Although, we do have a great deal on life insurance right now—”

I curled my lip at her, and she laughed. But it didn’t last long, and her face turned grave.

“Anyway, Van, I’m inviting you to join me on a little trip,” she said.

“To where?”

“To the coordinates I’m sending you now.”

I watched as Netty painted them on the nav display. “That is almost literally in the middle of nowhere, Dayna. The closest system is… Halcyon, I guess? But these coordinates are nine light-years spinward of that.”

“That’s right.”

“So that’s not an error. You actually want us to go all the way out there?”

She nodded. “I do.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why? What’s so special about 56389.56 by… by a bunch more numbers?”

“It’s the place where Helem Gauss got his start. It’s the birthplace of BeneStar. And it might also hold some answers to at least some of our questions—maybe even a few we haven’t thought to even ask yet.”

I glanced at my crew. “Does anyone feel that returning to Anvil Dark to face some trumped-up charges is more important than this?”

Everyone shook their heads. “We’ve got The Quiet Room asking specifically for our help, Van,” Perry said, then looked at Dayna. “You are asking for the Guild’s help, right?”

“Would you prefer it if I were?”

“Yes.”

“Then I am, yes. Van, please—you are our only hope.” Dayna said, then smirked. “Sorry, I just can’t keep a straight face and say that.”

I nodded. “Okay, we’ll put Kharsweil off with your request for assistance, and if he gets pissed about it—”

“We’ll take care of Master Kharsweil,” Dayna said.

“Music to my ears. So we’ll meet you at the mystery coordinates in—Netty’s telling me about twelve hours, give or take.”

“I’ll see you there. Oh, and when you arrive, be careful, Van.”

“Uh-oh. Why, Dayna? Is this the part where you happen to mention there’s a BeneStar fleet waiting there for us?”

“No nothing like that.”

“Then what?”

Her face became even more grave.

“Ghosts, Van. There are ghosts.”

* * *

The coordinates proved to be in the midst of a cloud of dust and gas, the diffuse remnants of an ancient star that, according to Netty, had died at about the same time the dinosaurs had been wiped out on Earth. Aside from the slowly dispersing veil of tenuous star stuff was a small white dwarf star, dim to the point of invisibility from Earth and with no planets, or any real rocky bodies at all. The system, which was known only by a number, wasn’t even a nav waypoint because there was nothing beyond it but—as far as anyone in known space knew, anyway—uninhabited space sprawling off toward the galactic core. There was simply nowhere to go beyond this point.

But the system wasn’t entirely empty of anything except stellar remains. A cold, dark, and silent ship orbited the dwarf star. I stared at the scan returns that revealed a massive, derelict construct nearly two klicks long. The scale was beyond my ability to process, and even Funboy let out a thrum of awe.

“Netty, Perry—have you ever seen anything like this?” I asked, feeling a sense of dislocation and wonder.

“Nothing even remotely similar in any database,” Netty declared.

“Boss, this is beyond any story I’ve heard,” Perry added.

We scanned it, cautiously and from as far away as we could, while still getting good data. There wasn’t a power emission, nor any radiation aside from residual background. The whole ship was at the ambient temperature of the space around it.

“Been here a long time,” Perry said, turning his head back and forth to process all of the incoming data.

“It’s also quite badly damaged, and not just from dust and micrometeorite abrasion,” Funboy said, studying the scanner returns. “Some of that damage is from weapon hits.”

Netty confirmed it. We decided to wait until Dayna arrived before doing anything more and just kept a wary eye on the vast and apparently ancient enigma.

About an hour after we arrived, Dayna’s ship twisted into the system. It was her luxury yacht, the one where we’d once met her. She immediately invited us to come aboard again, leaving Funboy and Zeno on the Fafnir to give overwatch while we moved in for a closer look.

I put my hands on my hips and nodded at the image on the screen in her yacht’s sumptuous boardroom. “Okay, Dayna, have to admit—that’s impressive as hell.” I turned to her. “I do have a question, though.”

“Is it something along the lines of, so what?” she asked.

“Something like that, yeah.”

“You said this has something to do with Gauss and the birth of BeneStar. How so?” Torina asked, one brow lifted in inquiry.

Dayna leaned on the polished wooden table with its beautiful, swirling woodgrain. “Do you know what originally put BeneStar on the map? How Helem Gauss and his corporation made their first fortune?”

“It was something about a superior gravity-plating system. Instead of just generating an artificial gravitational field around a ship through its inertial compensators, he developed some passive way of producing an artificial gravitational field polarized in the plane of deck or hull plating,” Perry said.

Dayna nodded. “That’s right, except for the he developed it part. He didn’t. He found it—right over there, in fact,” she said, gesturing toward the huge, dark ship on the screen.

“So he found it and took credit for it?” I asked.

“He did indeed. Because he’s a grifter. A con artist. A thief with the morals of… of a demon, if you believe in such things. But he’s also a very, very successful thief. He found this ancient derelict, gutted it for its tech, and passed it off as his own.”

“After seeing people being literally stolen, ripped from their bodies and stuck in digital servitude, or their horrific deaths recorded as sick entertainment for even sicker assholes, I sure as hell believe that people can have the morality of some demon,” I said.

Torina nodded. “Same. We saw that in the mass graves in Level Blue.”

Perry spoke up. “So this explains why BeneStar discontinued making that grav plating. It had nothing to do with rising costs and diminishing margins. He just ran out of alien plating over there”—he gestured at the image of the mysterious ship with a wing—“to sell as his own product.”

Dayna nodded. “Exactly right. He’s smart, though, I’ll give him that. He calculated the rate he could sell it into the market to maximize both his profit and the length of time he could keep peddling the stuff. And by the time it did run out, he’d already reinvested a big chunk of the proceeds, and there were lots of proceeds, into other ventures—mainly taking over existing companies and sucking their profits back into BeneStar.”

“So why are you telling us this, Dayna? Why did you bring us out here? I mean, that old ship makes me question my place in the universe, but what’s the point of all of this?” I asked her.

“It’s so that you can understand what you’re up against. Gauss isn’t exactly entrepreneur of the year—he got lucky, and he parlayed that luck into immense wealth and power. Along the way, he’s been cunning, absolutely amoral, and utterly ruthless.”

“And he’ll keep being cunning, amoral, and ruthless to hang onto it,” Torina said.

Dayna gave an emphatic nod. “You’re damned right he will. He’ll start with lawyers—in fact, he already has, armies of them—but we’ve caught wind of some high-priced specialists waiting in the wings in case the lawyers don’t prove to be enough.”

“You mean assassins,” I said.

“Assassins, mercenaries, the good employees of Group 41, the Sorcerers—they’re all on his payroll,” Dayna replied.

“Don’t suppose there’s any of that grav plating left over there, huh? That we can retrieve and use to blow open the seams of Gauss’s origin story?” Perry asked.

Dayna shook her head. “Not a scrap. That ship was savaged in some ancient war, just left as the detritus of conflict, but Gauss finished what the war started. He’s thoroughly gutted that ship so that nothing remains but the empty hull. And it wasn’t the only thing that came to an end because of some archaic conflict.”

I frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“We think that Gauss did more than just remove tech from that ship. We think he also retrieved genetic material, which he’s been using to bring extinct races back to life, to act as his willing minions. I mean, if someone gives you life, you kind of feel beholden to them, don’t you?”

I looked back at the ship. “Kharsweil.”

“What about him?” Torina asked.

I turned back. “He joined the Peacemakers, what, about twenty years ago?”

“Twenty-one, to be exact,” Perry said.

“Right. He showed up, claiming to be from outside known space, and joined the Guild. Nobody knows anything about his people or homeworld because he claims it’s culturally taboo to talk about it with outsiders. He is, as far as we know, the only existing member of his race in known space.”

“You think that Kharsweil is from one of those resurrected races? And he was planted in the Guild by Gauss twenty-one years ago? That’s quite the leap, Van,” Torina said.

I looked at Dayna. “How long ago did Gauss discover this derelict?”

“We think it was just over thirty years ago—something like thirty-two.”

“And when did his nifty new grav plating hit the market?”

“Thirty years ago,” she said.

“That would have given him almost ten years to… create Kharsweil, for lack of a better word, and then have him join the Guild and work his way up to Master over the next twenty.”

“That’s an awfully long game, Van,” Dayna said.

“And ten years isn’t much time to figure out how to return a race from the dead, just based on some genetic material left in an old space hulk,” Perry pointed out.

I shrugged. “Maybe not. But maybe grav plating wasn’t the only thing he discovered over there.” I sighed and shook my head. “In the end, though, it doesn’t matter. Kharsweil is almost certainly Gauss’s man, no matter where he came from.”

I glanced back at the wreck. “If he did discover some tech over there that unlocks the key to life, though, then he might not just be using it to revive old, dead races. He might be using it to revive himself. He could effectively be immortal.”

Torina sat back. “Which means that a twenty-year con on the Guild is of no consequence to him.”

“The wealthiest person is an immortal who’s motivated purely by a selfish lust for wealth and power, with the willingness to do essentially anything. And I mean anything, no matter how immoral, corrupt, or criminal, and for good measure the bastard can resurrect dead races as his minions. Also, he has access to alien tech of unknown power and purpose. Have I got that right?” Perry said.

Dayna pursed her lips, then nodded.

“Sounds about right.”

Perry’s eyes flashed. “Sometimes, I’m thankful for being constructed.”

“Why?” Zeno asked, her whiskers held in a pose of curiosity.

Perry’s answer was… contradictory. “Because there’s no possibility I’m related to Helem Gauss, and that’s something to be thankful for.”

* * *

I brooded on my way back to the Fafnir. My gaze kept wandering to the ancient hulk, but my thoughts were ranging across the rest of known space. Carter, BeneStar, Kharsweil, The Quiet Room, the Sorcerers, Level Blue—

There were just too damned many moving parts. And they were being added to the Rube Goldberg machine that was our investigation faster than we could resolve and remove them.

“Van?”

I turned to Torina, blinking like I’d just woken up. We were sitting in the Fafnir’s cockpit, ready to go. I barely even remembered getting back into my seat, so in a way I had just woken up, hadn’t I?

“I’d say Earth to Van, but out here, that could actually mean that someone on Earth was trying to call you,” Perry said.

I stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, you’re right, bird.”

“Of course I am. About what?”

“About us going to Earth.”

Now it was his turn to stare. Then he turned to Torina. “Did I suffer a power loss or something? When did I say anything about going to Earth—?”

I held up my hand. “We’re all sitting here waiting to go to wherever our next destination is. Trouble is, I don’t have one. Or maybe I’ve got too many. But you made up my mind for me, Perry. We’re going to Earth to check in on things and—I don’t know, go offline for a few days.” I looked at Torina. “And then we’ll swing by Helso and do the same thing there. I need a few days to ruminate and figure out what we should do next. And I need to process this around people we care about so that our decision is as good as it can be.”

“Van, what about Kharsweil? He took a pretty dim view of being put off once already. Now you’re going to put him off again? He does claim to have charges against you that need to be answered,” Netty said.

“Based on an affidavit by your sleazy cousin, who we know is connected to BeneStar,” Zeno put in.

I nodded. “Indeed.” I frowned at the panel for a moment. “Netty, record a message for Gerhardt. I’m going to put on my Justiciar’s hat and tell him we’ve received a hard lead from Dayna, and that we’re going dark for a few days to follow it up.” I turned to the others. “I’m going to count on him to keep Kharsweil off our backs while we figure out how to handle this mess.”

“Van, what about Icky?” Funboy asked. “Based on B’s timeline, she should be awake by now. And B is probably going to get tired of entertaining her.”

“And feeding her,” Perry put in.

I grinned. “Yup. Netty, send a message to B while I figure out what I want to say to Gerhardt. Ask her for a rendezvous somewhere between here and Earth. We’ll pick Icky up along the way.”

“We do know for sure that she’s only going to be motivated by Wu’tzur males, right? Because there are a lot of guys with cool cars on Earth,” Torina said, smiling wryly.

I shrugged. “That’s what B said. Guess we’ll find out for sure, though, for ourselves.”

“Hunky guy and big, hairy, horny blue alien, huh? Sounds like a book you could download from the nether regions of Amazon,” Perry said.

I threw him a glance. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience, bird.”

“Hey, I’m an avid reader, what can I say?”

8

I found myself wishing that we could have left Icky with B a few days more. I mean, she was a valued member of the crew and my friend, but right now, she was also two hundred kilos of sullen misery.

The mask across her face had darkened, which didn’t help. It gave her a sinister look, like she was constantly cast in shadow broken only by the gleam of her eyes. If I’d never encountered her before, I would have proceeded with caution.

As Netty nudged the Fafnir against the Iowa’s airlock, Torina turned to me. “You know, I’ve been thinking. How about a deal?”

I returned a suspicious glance. “Look, if it’s about sharing a cabin, the bunks are just too damned small—”

“Um, excuse me. First, it wasn’t about that. Second, as I recall, you suggested we share a cabin, and I said the bunks are too small.”

“They weren’t too small that night you guys decided to polish off that bottle of ethanol plus impurities that Groshenko insists is the best vodka in the galaxy,” Perry said.

“I remember that. I told you two to get a room, and you did, and we could still hear you,” Zeno put in.

I shook my head. “Sorry, I reject your reality and substitute my own. Anyway, Torina, you said something about a deal?”

“Yes. We spend a couple of days here, and then, when we get to Helso, you agree to a Sunrise.”

“A Sunrise? Are we talking about getting a room again—?”

“It’s a fancy dinner that confirms you’re getting hitched. Like a halfway marker, but with better food and table manners,” Perry said.

Torina raised her eyebrows at him. “The bird has it exactly right.”

“I read The Big Book of Helso Culture,” he replied. “Twice.”

“This just sounds like another of your schemes to get me to wear pants,” Icky snapped.

We all tensed at her uncharacteristically hard tone, and I shot her a quick glance. She was trying to smile, which didn’t really help—if anything, it made her features into something more ominous.

Funboy, in his unflappably languid way, just gave her a mild look. “I certainly hope that you would. Sanitation and buffets go together in the pursuit of good health. I won’t eat food that’s been exposed to… fuzzy buttocks.”

She turned on him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is that some sort of crack about me being Wu’tzur?”

She loomed over Funboy like a storm about to break. But he just stared back at her, a wizened tree that had weathered countless storms just like it.

“Not at all. I won’t eat food that’s been exposed to the fuzzy buttocks of any species. Body hair is the handmaiden of doom when it comes to self-serve dining.”

She glowered a moment longer, then took a breath, sat back, and subsided. I relaxed—barely—but I felt sorry for Icky. It was obvious that every moment was a struggle for her as she fought to contain the emotional side effects of hormonal stew and other biochemical incendiaries coursing through her. We’d all agreed to cut her as much slack as we could, but it still made for a tense, awkward flight.

My simmering worry vanished, though, the instant the airlock cycled open, blown away by a gale of enthusiastic chatter and the click and rattle of chitinous claws and carapaces.

“Van! Van, come see my workstation. I made it better—!”

“Torina, Lesculla says you like him better than me—!”

“Van! Van! I figured out a better way to configure the scanners, but Tegulla says he’s in charge of them and you never said that and I wanna show you—!”

I held up my hands. It didn’t make a bit of difference to the excited hubbub raging around me. I finally stuck my fingers in my mouth and whistled.

The young Conoku all fell silent—more or less, anyway.

“Okay, where’s Cantullin?” I asked at large. She was the eldest member of the Conoku crew, so I’d made her the Iowa’s Acting Captain.

“I’m right here, in front of you!”

“I—oh, sorry, Cantullin.” I was about to add something along the lines of, all Conoku look the same to me, but that was kind of insulting no matter how you intended it, so I just nodded with respect.

“Cantullin, I’d like you to give us a rundown on the status of the ship, and make sure that Zeno, Funboy, and Icky—”

“Icky! Icky’s here!”

The Conoku exploded into excited chatter again. I sighed and looked at Torina, who was laughing.

“I’m amazed they get anything done!” I said—or, actually, shouted.

Torina nodded. It was nothing short of amazing that, despite having the attention span of puppies, the young Conoku hadn’t just repaired the Iowa—the job we’d originally brought them aboard to do—but had improved her in many respects, kept her in top fighting trim, and handled her in battle like an agile fighter, not a lumbering battlecruiser.

All that said, though, I was still uncomfortable about having what felt like a bunch of kids going to war on my behalf. I’d discussed it with Linulla and the other Conoku on Starsmith, and they’d all reacted the same way. The conversation had been short, honest, and final, with Linulla repeating a line for effect—the offspring were adults, they had to make their own life, and crewing a warship was their chosen path.

I turned to Torina, whose eyes were dancing with real joy.

“Do you think they’ll ever, you know—”

“Calm down? Linulla said yes. In a decade or three,” Torina told me above the din.

I surveyed the chaos, then started laughing. They weren’t just loud. The kids were enthusiasts.

“Icky! Icky! Come see what I did to the power transfers!”

“Icky, I wanna show you how I calibrated the fuel injectors in the lateral thrusters!”

“Icky, Icky! Icky, over here—”

“Quiet!”

The air rang with Icky’s thundered command. All the Conoku fell dead silent. I glanced at Zeno, who was opening her mouth to head off something unfortunate, something her agitated, hormonal state might blurt out that was hurtful, but she spoke first.

“I don’t want to see fuel injectors, or power transfers, or anything else!” she growled.

“Icky—” Zeno started, but Icky cut her off with a sudden grin and held up all four of her hands.

“I wanna play Twister!”

Submerged by a tsunami of cheers and laughter, I just took a deep breath, then let it out and turned to Torina.

“This is relaxing, right?”

* * *

There’d been an attempt on Miryam’s life.

I’d been catching up on Earthly events, which were spread over a somewhat longer period of time than I’d actually experienced, thanks to twist-induced time dilation. The difference between my subjective time and objective, Earthly time was now several months, meaning that while I felt like I should have arrived at the farm in Iowa in early spring, it was actually late summer. We’d met with Miryam and had found Tony Burgess and his two Truly Aware sidekicks, the pert, bookish Marla and the conspiracy nut Myron, were with her. They’d driven down from Appleton, Wisconsin, at Miryam’s request, once we sent word ahead that we were inbound for Pony Hollow.

It was during a kitchen table catch-up session with them that Miryam casually dropped the fact that someone had tried to kill her.

I stared for a moment. “What?”

She shrugged. “It’s not the first time, Van. I dodged a couple of proverbial bullets while watching things for your grandfather, too.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Miryam, how can you be so… so casual about this?”

She shrugged again. “I’m getting to that age, Van, where something’s going to get me. And honestly, vaporized by an alien assassin sounds way better than cancer or something like that.”

I blew out a breath. “What happened?”

“Well, I was fortunate. Tony and his friends were here, giving me one of their routine updates.” She glanced pointedly at Myron. “They’d rather do it in person, it seems.”

Myron crossed his arms. “Gubmint’s got everything bugged, thanks to that damned Patriot Act, which was really written by the world gubmint.”

“The world gub—er, government?”

He nodded emphatically. “Yeah. What everyone calls the UN,” he said, making air quotes and leaning forward. “Peacekeepers my ass. The UN’s behind it all—”

“Yeah, yeah, Myron, we know. Illuminati, lizard people, Elvis, and Walt Disney are the ones really running everything,” Tony said, interrupting what promised to be a long, conspiratorial tirade.

Myron sat petulantly back. “Walt Disney. Pfft. I never said nothing about Walt Disney. It’s Elvis and Howard Hughes—”

“Anyway, Miryam, you were saying that somebody tried to kill you,” I cut in. “Care to elaborate?”

“We were right here, at the table. Myron and Marla had watch, outside, and an alien crept out of the cornfield bordering the property. It—he, whatever, the sonofabitch was brandishing a compact handgun, headed right for the house.”

“Describe him? It?” Torina asked.

“No need. There are tracks—faint, but present—of a Yonnox. Did he come from the lower forty?” Perry asked, pointing to the field closer to town.

“He did,” Miryam confirmed.

“Yonnox scum,” Zeno murmured, every syllable scalded with heat.

Icky’s hands tightened on the table, and the wood creaked ominously. Zeno touched Icky’s closest arm, and they both relaxed as Miryam took up the narrative again.

“Myron came in and told us—well, actually, he said something like, The time has come, this is the end of freedom and the beginning of global slavery, but we got the gist,” Miryam said, glancing at Myron and rolling her eyes.

Tony sat up, his eyes shining brightly. “So, like, I pulled out the slug thrower Icky gave me and said what’s up and—”

“Wait, what? Icky gave you a weapon?” I snapped.

Icky shrugged. “I, uh, forgot it. In the refrigerator, I think. I remember putting it down beside that—what did you call it, angel food cake? Freakin’ delicious. Anyway, I guess I left it there. I was going to tell you,” she said, her voice starting to rise in volume, but I just smiled and shook my head.

“Don’t worry about it, Icky,” I said, but I made a mental note to make sure neither she nor anyone else idly left ordnance lying around going forward. The weapon Tony had was essentially a rail gun the size of a 9 mm Glock, something that would raise a question or two if it fell into the wrong hands. Biting back any further complaint, I turned back to Tony.

“Anyway, you were about to get into a firefight with an alien assassin in my backyard. Please continue.”

“Yeah, well, before I could even try to take a shot, he got run over by a tractor.”

“He—what?”

“He made the mistake of taking cover behind that tractor beside the barn. He never noticed I was sitting in the cab,” Marla said. She shrugged. “It was starting to rain.”

“So you ran him over?”

“Yeah.”

Perry giggled. “He was probably a pro, ready for anything—except getting run over by farm machinery.”

“Not sure they even cover that in alien assassin school,” Torina noted.

“Anyway, it was pretty gross,” Marla said.

I sighed. “You know, I almost hate to ask this, but—where’s the body?”

“My mom’s big freezer. The other ones are full of deer meat,” Marla said.

“You mean you’ve got the remains of an alien, squashed by a tractor, stashed in a freezer at your mom’s house in… in Appleton?”

“No.”

I took a deep breath. “Then where—?”

“My mom lives in Green Bay.”

“Titletown,” Perry enthused.

“If you like that sort of thing,” Miryam countered.

Perry’s beak opened in laughter. “Forgot you were a Bears fan.”

Icky looked interested. “Are there actual bears here?”

“Maybe, but these are athletes. Football players,” I explained.

Icky’s head tilted. “I think I’d rather watch actual bears.”

“So would a lot of fans,” I admitted. “As to the corpse, this is… not optimal. And yet, somehow—“

“Feels Midwest, doesn’t it?” Torina asked, a wicked glint in her eyes. “Bit dangerous around here.”

“Actually, I’d say it’s self-reliant and friendly, a great place to be—well, as long as you’re not an interstellar hitman,” Perry said.

Tony raised a finger. “Hitperson. I think they might be trisexual or… something.”

Zeno grinned. “You checked?”

“Not on purpose—!”

“If I may, did they have a partner? Or a ship?” Funboy put in, bringing a measure of rationality back to the conversation.

Tony shook his head. “Nope. Solo, as far as we could tell. Thought that was weird, but we didn’t find any evidence of a ship out there.”

I stood. “Then it’s still here somewhere, and someone’s coming back for it—”

A distant boom, like thunder, rattled the windows.

“Like right now,” I said, heading for the door.

* * *

Except it wasn’t a bad guy. It was Valint, my grandmother.

“I only just arrived to check in on the picket we’ve set up here, and they mentioned that you’d passed through on your way here,” she said, striding into the kitchen and dominating it with her imposing presence. She smiled at me. “How are you, Van?”

“I’m—” I was going to say fine, but decided to hell with it. “I’m run ragged, frankly. Between BeneStar, and the Sorcerers, and Guild nonsense—”

“You mean Kharsweil.”

I gave her a thin smile. “Word gets around.”

She shrugged. “We’ve had our eyes on him for some time now. The trouble is that he has yet to do anything that really crosses any lines. Suspicious things, yes. Questionable things, definitely. But things that are actually illegal? Not so much.”

“He’s smart,” Torina said.

Valint nodded. “Dangerously so, all the more because he comes across as not particularly… impressive, I guess?”

We settled in to continue catching up. Miryam knew Valint, but Tony, Myron, and Marla didn’t and just sat giving her sidelong looks. Well, except for Myron, who finally just faced her squarely.

“You’re not human, are you?”

“I am not,” Valint replied.

Tony sat up abruptly. “Wait. Van, you said that this is your grandmother?”

I nodded. “I did.”

“And she’s not human? So that makes you—”

I raised my hands and waggled my fingers. “An alien. That’s right, I am not of this Earth.”

“So, do you have… powers, or something?”

I grinned. “I can make one hell of an omelet,” I said and shook my head. “Sorry, Tony, I’m not bulletproof, can’t fly, and don’t shoot laser beams out of my eyes. This is reality, not fantasy.”

Myron sniffed. “Reality. Sure it is—”

Another distant boom cut him off. I looked at Valint. “Are you expecting someone to join us?”

She frowned. “No, I’m not.”

“The bird is annoyed,” Perry said and headed for the open window. “I’ll go look around.”

I turned to the others. “Miryam, you and our Truly Aware friends here go take cover in the cellar.” Tony and Marla both opened their mouths, but I preempted them. “No, you may not use your found gun, Tony, and no, you may not fire up the tractor, Marla. I want you guys under cover.”

I turned to the others. “Zeno, Icky, Funboy, you guys stay with the Fafnir and hold the fort here. Oh, and I’ll have a special job for you, which I’ll tell you about via comm once we’re in position. Torina, you and I are going to greet our guests—and by greet, I mean actually greet, if they’re friendly, or gun down like vermin if they’re not and they’re taking another run at my home.”

I hit my comm. “Perry, anything?”

“Not yet.”

I turned to Valint. “If you can help out—”

“No, Van, I thought I’d just sit here sipping iced tea while you fight off an alien invasion,” she snapped, curling her lip. “Of course I’ll help. I’ll get my ship airborne and fly cover for you just in case this isn’t a strictly ground-based attack.”

“Much obliged,” I said, then turned to Torina and grinned. “Now, how many guys can say that?”

“What?”

“That they’re going into battle with their grandma.”

9

Six of them, Van. They landed their ship and disembarked, then it lifted again. It’s currently sitting about three hundred meters up, about two klicks northeast of the farmhouse, Perry said, his voice humming in my ear bug.

I glanced that way but couldn’t see anything, of course. They had their ship’s stealth system engaged, mostly to keep it off civilian radar and away from prying eyes since we had the tech to immediately detect it.

“I’m thinking they’re in the not friendly category,” Torina said, and I sighed. We’d taken our places in a shallow ditch along the edge of the cornfield. Used for drainage, it led straight to the sinkhole where we’d stashed the wreckage of previous attacks on the farm, which was what had prompted my exasperated sigh.

“Sooner or later, this shit is going to get out of hand. Best case is we get discovered. Worst case is some civilians get hurt,” I said.

“What I want to know is how they got past the cordon that’s supposed to be protecting Earth,” Torina said.

Valint’s voice buzzed from the comm. “That cordon is only a handful of ships. It’s meant to protect Earth from overt attack. Unfortunately, these assholes and their stealthed infiltration ships can work around it.” After a pause, she added, “Speaking of infiltration ships, theirs is rather pricey. Only a class 7, but she’s got lots of upgrades and new tech.”

“You say that like you’re already figuring the value of the thing,” Torina observed.

“That’s hopefully about to be free of owners,” I added.

“I’m offended that you would suggest such a thing for a ship that’s worth between, oh, one and two million bonds. It’s unseemly, thinking of profits when lives are at stake. That said, though—let’s not scratch the paint,” Valint said.

Van, they’re about two hundred meters to your northwest, in the corn, Perry said.

I glanced at Torina. “Predictable,” I said, unholstering The Drop as I touched my comm. “Okay, Zeno, you’re on.”

“We’re on it, boss.”

From the direction of the farm came shouts. Zeno and Icky made a big deal about taking cover, as though they’d just learned that the bad guys were here. As I’d hoped, that fixed our attackers’ attention on the farm, while Torina and I crouched in the ditch, concealing our thermal signatures by hugging the low ground. Fortunately, we both still wore our b-suits, having been sidelined from getting all relaxed by Miryam’s story about someone trying to kill her. The suits were added insurance against detection and were thus far working like a charm.

Okay, Van, they’re passing your location now—woah.

I frowned and glanced at Torina, who held her slug pistol ready. “Perry, what is it?” I hissed.

Looks like your neighbor over to the west got one of those new electric pickup trucks. Sweet ride, but I don’t think much of the color—

“Perry, eyes on the ball!”

Sorry. They’re now about ten meters past you, and about twenty-five from the edge of the field. Four forward, line abreast, about five meters apart, and—woah!

“Perry, forget about the damned truck—”

Not that, boss. I’ve been made. They just fired some sort of EMP weapon at me. If you don’t mind, I’m gonna—

“Get the hell out of here, bird!”

Took the words right out of my beak.

I glanced up and saw Perry wheel away to the south. If they’d detected him, then they knew we’d detected them. I glanced at Torina and nodded, then we exited the ditch and angled in behind our attackers.

“Perry only mentioned four of them,” Torina whispered over the comm as she moved off to my right, sliding through the corn the way I’d taught her. It was a skill born of many hours of playing hide-and-seek and other kids’ games, and being able to move through mature corn with minimal noise.

“Perry, where are the other two—?” I started, then someone suddenly loomed ahead of me, bulling through the corn like a combine harvester. I switched The Drop to my left hand and swept out the Moonsword just as they burst into view. It was a Sorcerer, and that was all I needed to see.

I slashed out with the Moonsword, neatly truncating cornstalks, and the Sorcerer’s right arm with it. He fired a sawed-off shotgun at me with a soft boom, and pain blossomed through my right side. I gritted my teeth and swept the Moonsword through a backswing, this time taking the Sorcerer across the face. The blade made an almost surgical pass through the front half of his skull, leaving the lower half of his face hanging free from the upper, with viscous, brown fluid gushing from the widening gap. He fired again, which shredded corn to my right, then stumbled back in a desperate bid to break away, even though his wound was probably fatal and he just hadn’t realized it yet. I sealed the deal by striking again and removing his head.

His skull went skyward, throwing loops of thick fluid in a gelatinous arc. When it landed with a damp thud, I turned, weapons at the ready—

And the pain registered again, a hot flash in my right chest and gut. I glanced down and saw that a half-dozen flechettes were embedded in my b-suit, two of them about half of their length and therefore sticking at least a couple of centimeters into me.

Sealing foam bubbled around the projectiles as I yanked them out, closing the holes and flooding the wounds beneath with a combined sterilizer, antitoxin, and local anesthetic. The pain faded to a dull roar, and I moved on.

The corn rustled madly to my right, and I hurried that way with murder on my mind. I found Torina in an Innsu crouch, squared off against another Sorcerer who seemed to have a blade in place of a left arm. I hesitated, not wanting to throw myself into the combat and distract Torina, then switched the Moonsword into my left hand and yanked out The Drop. Before I could line up a shot, though, Torina slammed out her knife like a striking snake and buried it into the Sorcerer’s throat. He pitched back through the corn, gurgling, and landed right at my feet. I stabbed down through his face with the Moonsword in my off hand, and he went silent.

Torina retrieved her slug pistol from where she’d either dropped or tossed it. “I took the bastard by so much surprise that it surprised me, too,” she said, then frowned behind her visor. “Van, you’re wounded—”

“Tis but a scratch, my dear,” I said, again clenching my teeth. The fact was that the upper of the two projectiles that had wounded me had smacked straight into a rib, probably cracking or at least bruising it. The sealing foam could only blunt that sort of pain so much, and it left me wincing with every breath.

“Van, you’ve got to—”

“End this fight, yeah,” I said, then turned back toward the farm. Again, I knew exactly where that was, despite being able to see nothing but corn in all directions—more childhood instinct.

I glanced down at the fallen Sorcerer as we pushed on past him. That’s what you get for coming at me in my own backyard, asshole.

* * *

Halfway back to the edge of the field facing the farm, a throaty boom shuddered the air, and something snapped through the field off to my left. Torina and I stopped and crouched.

“Uh, Van? Whereabouts are you?” Zeno asked.

“Was that you shooting?”

“Yeah. We’ve got at least three of these assholes in the cornfield facing us—”

She paused as more gunfire erupted, this time from much closer ahead.

“—but I don’t want to start shooting at them until I know where you are.”

“Your shot passed well off to my left, Zeno,” I said.

“Superb. Don’t go that way,” she replied, then opened up with her big gun. She snapped out a half-dozen shots while Torina and I circled around to the right to stay well clear of her target zone. Just as we reached the edge of the cornfield, the shooting stopped.

“They’re done,” Zeno announced.

Torina and I warily started along the edge of the field, weapons at the ready. We found three bodies, each blasted apart by Zeno’s powerful gun.

“Three. That makes five. Shit, where’s the sixth? Perry, can you—”

“I’ve got him, Van. He’s making a break for it, heading for the White Bridge.”

I frowned at that. The White Bridge was a century-old metal span over Pony Hollow Creek.

“Where the hell was he going?” I mused.

Van, their ship is heading off for the White Bridge, too. Looks like he’s trying to bug out, Perry said.

“Smart guy. Not that it’s going to do him any good. Valint, can you—”

I heard a quick buzz and saw a plume of dust rise near the road.

I sighed, regretting it as pain flashed through my chest. “I was going to say, can you try to take him alive,” I said to Valint.

“Oops. Would you settle for a bloody smear in the dirt?”

“Suspect I’m going to have to.” I holstered my weapons and caught my breath. “That’s six. Perry, Valint, can you see any more of the bastards, or can we stand down?”

“I only see you and your people, Van,” Valint replied.

While we cleaned up, Perry intercepted the Sorcerers’ ship and breached it, laughing slyly as he took control of it from its AI.

“For bad guys, the security on their ship sucks. And their AI is about as smart as Waldo. Duh, I fly this way. Now I fly that way,” he said. “Anyway, I’m in control up here. Can I call finders keepers, Van?”

I bit back a groan as I dragged my wounded butt back to the farmhouse. “Sure, but channel your inner Yorkshireman and act embarrassed when you offer to split the proceeds with my dear Grandmother. Sound fair, Valint?”

Valint’s AI cut in. “You don’t sound anything like a Yorkshireman, bird.”

“I should hope not. I’m an honorary American,” Perry replied, suddenly whistling Yankee Doodle Dandy.

I slumped down on the back steps and tugged off my helmet. Torina started helping me pull my b-suit off my torso so she could get at my wounds with first-aid spray.

“What do you think, grandma? Fifty-fifty split?”

“Done. And stop calling me grandma. It makes me feel like I should be wearing little round glasses and handing out peppermints—”

“I’ve got a ship breaking orbit right above us, a class 12,” Netty cut in. “They were stealthed, and I mean really stealthed, as in the same sort of gear Lunzy uses.”

“I see it. Damn those parasites,” Valint snapped.

“You know who this—OW.” I looked at Torina, who just offered an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, grand—er, Valint. You know who these bastards are? Or were?”

“That ship that just bugged out, skulking around looking for an easy kill? Yes, I do. It’s a pair of old friends, Streiber and Kiswal, a couple of miserable bastards each more repulsive than the other. They’re guns for hire, and they’ve been paired up since 1947 or so, executing hits and making witnesses disappear. Utter scum. We have a kill-on-sight order that’s been in effect since 1977.”

“Charming.”

“Oh, it gets better. They don’t hit hard targets. You being here probably took them by surprise. The team they deployed was probably here to deal with Miryam, and maybe your wacky UFO friends, too.”

I cursed. “Cowardly pieces of shit, aren’t they?”

“Not exactly paragons of courage or virtue, no.”

Torina frowned at my chest, which was now slathered with first-aid spray. “So, chase them in a fit of anger or form a sober, lucid plan to corner and kill them?”

“What do you think?”

She smiled. “That’s what I thought. Netty, prep for launch. We’re going hunting—”

I held up a hand. “After we clean up here.” I looked across the cornfield, toward my neighbor with the fancy new electric truck. “And that includes getting some explanations, aka lies, sorted out, because Zeno’s gun wasn’t exactly subtle, was it?”

* * *

As we were about to leave the farm, a police car wheeled into the driveway. It was Clinton Barnes, the portly county sheriff who knew all about the farm, its secrets, and most of my life’s details. Gramps had once saved his life under circumstances he wouldn’t elaborate on and was now part of the inside group—which was handy, because he was damned useful when it came to keeping things covered up.

He got out of the car and walked toward the farmhouse, thumbs hooked in his belt. I hobbled down the steps to greet him, this time clad in a flannel work shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of jeans.

“Evening, Van.”

“Clinton.”

He stared at me from behind mirrored sunglasses, then took them off and smiled a thin smile. “We got three calls from around here that say it sounded like a warzone a little while ago. You have a firefight or something?”

“Yes, we did.”

He blinked. “Oh. Uh—really?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Group of bad guys showed up looking for trouble. And they found it, and they’re all dead now as a result.”

“Oh.” He frowned uncomfortably, then leaned toward me. “Were any of them human residents of Earth? ’Cause if they were, that’s, you know, a crime—”

“They were all—pardon the term—very illegal aliens.”

He nodded. “You know, it gets a little harder each time to cover this stuff up. Your neighbors are already starting to suspect you’re running some sort of militia compound out here.”

I shrugged. “Just tell them I’m a gun enthusiast. Because I am. When I’m being attacked by beings from another world, I’m very enthusiastic about guns.”

He smiled a fleeting smile. “Actually, Van, what worries me a lot more is the safety of the people who live around here. Guns are one thing, but your grandad made it pretty clear you have access to a lot more firepower than that. I have to assume your… adversaries… do, too.”

I nodded. “Yeah, we do. I think the Fafnir could probably take on a sizable chunk of the US military all by herself.”

“Is that, uh, supposed to make me feel better?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not. I’m well aware of the problem—which is why I’m going to empty out the farm for a while. We were going to spend a few days here, but we’re leaving shortly. Miryam’s heading out to parts undisclosed on an extended vacation. That way, if the bad guys come back for another round, there won’t be anyone here for them to shoot at, or to shoot back at them.”

Barnes nodded. “Now that does actually make me feel better. I think a few weeks of nothing going on is just what we need out here right now.”

He departed with a promise to spin out tales about my passion for guns, and then he thoroughly admonished me for shooting them without regard for my neighbors’ peace and quiet. I trusted Clinton—he was an important part of keeping everything under wraps and had done a good job so far.

But when I waved goodbye and turned back to face the house, I stopped.

How long could this go on?

The Sorcerers and their cohorts had restrained themselves so far. For whatever reason, they’d only used stealth and targeted, surgical attacks against the farm. We could only speculate that they had other designs on Earth, which an overt display of power stood to disrupt.

But how long would they stick to that strategy? What if they eventually decided the most efficient way to deal with the problem was to drop a nuke on Pony Hollow? To bombard it from orbit? To contaminate this whole end of Iowa with some virulent toxin or engineered bioweapon?

I sighed, scowling as my rib protested. The surest way to head that off would be to cause Pony Hollow to no longer be a target. And the surest way to ensure that would be to do something I hadn’t, until now, even considered—something that offended me to my core, because this was my home.

I might have to vacate the place entirely. I might just have to sell the farm.

* * *

Once we’d cleaned up the farm and done our best to conceal the aftermath of the firefight, we said our goodbyes to Miryam, as well as Tony, Marla, and Myron. Miryam was off to Greece, a place she’d gone before to get away from the farm, and where she had friends. Myron, true to form, had several places, as he put it, where they could lay low—and wouldn’t reveal where they were.

Tony looked uneasy about it all. “How long, Van, do you think we’re going to have to stay on the down-low? I’ve got, like, a job and bills and rent and stuff.”

I shrugged. “Sorry, Tony, I’ve got no idea. If it makes you feel better, though, I seriously doubt that our bad guys will put a lot of effort into tracking you down. You’re peripheral to all this and no real threat to them. Still, you should plan to take at least a month or so away from Appleton. Consider it a vacation, my treat.”

“I know a guy,” Myron said.

Tony glanced at him. “I’ve met some of your guys, Myron. Fact is, they sketch me out more than Van’s aliens do.”

Valint agreed to keep watch over the farm until Miryam, Myron, and the others were gone. In the meantime, we opened up the barn and lifted as soon as it was dark. Our hunt had begun.

* * *

We contacted Groshenko’s picket ship, a powerful frigate named the Tunguska, on our way out of the Solar System. She was hanging out near Mars, which was at its closest point of conjunction with the Earth, so we had a ringside seat to our enemy’s departure. Netty had alerted them to watch for it, or do their best, anyway, considering its stealth capabilities. Even so, they couldn’t tell us much, other than that the ship shot away from Earth directly up relative to the Solar ecliptic plane, then twisted away as soon as it could.

“Which means they could be literally anywhere,” I said, grimacing. The best we could determine is that they’d probably gone somewhere ecliptically above Sol, but depending on how much antimatter fuel they were willing to expend, even that wasn’t certain.

We all stared glumly at the instruments, each of us apparently hoping for inspiration. Nothing came to any of us, until Netty spoke up.

“Van, I’ve got an incoming message for you. It’s your mother.”

“You never call her,” Perry said, but I silenced him with a glare.

Netty put her on. “Hi, Mom. We’re actually kind of busy—”

“Hunting Streiber and Kiswal, I know. Valint told me. I put out the word to keep an eye out for them, and lo and behold, almost immediately got a hit. Amazing says they just showed up at Epsilon Eridani. They’re on their way to Dregs.”

I sat up. “She’s sure it’s them?”

“Valint probably told you that there’s been a contract out on those two scumbags since the late seventies, Earth time. They’re considered one of the GKU’s most wanted, so yeah, she’s sure.”

“How come they aren’t on the Guild’s most wanted list?” Zeno asked.

My mother gave an offhanded shrug. “The Guild’s about arresting people and bringing them to justice. Considering the list of crimes these two have trailing behind them, the only justice that’ll fit is turning them both into clouds of ionized gas. And that’s where the GKU comes in.”

I opened my mouth but closed it again. Had my mother just admitted that the GKU was effectively an extra-judicial hit squad for the Peacemaker Guild?

It wasn’t something I wanted to get into right now, though, much less with my mother. Instead, I just nodded. “We’re on our way to Dregs then.”

“I’ll meet you there. If we’re going to finally run these bastards down, I want a piece of it.”

I nodded again. “See you there, Mom.”

She signed off.

“Well, that was one of the most lukewarm See you, moms I’ve ever heard,” Torina said. I didn’t respond, though, and just concentrated on flying the Fafnir.

“I thought it had a lot of vigor,” Perry said.

“Vigor?” I raised a brow. “Vigor?”

Perry lifted his wingshoulders. “I may have been a touch too generous with your, ah, tone.”

“She wasn’t exactly giving me the warm and fuzzies,” I countered.

“I don’t think that’s in her toolkit, Van. I’m sorry,” Torina said, then put her arm across my shoulders, leaning on me with a warm familiarity. It was… just right. It was enough.

We flew on in silence, light-years and things unsaid all around.

* * *

We arrived at Dregs to find out that something must have spooked our quarry, because they’d barely refueled before they set out again, burning hard for a twist point. They had two class 7s in company with them, not too different from the one we’d taken as a prize back on Earth—then parked in silent orbit around the moon.

“Three ships. Streiber and Kiswal appear to have partners,” Netty said.

“That’s rare. The only thing that could make them work together is money. They don’t have families. Or friends. They’ve got gambling debts and a healthy dose of paranoia,” my mother said. She was moving with Amazing to cut our quarry off while we raced up behind them at full burn.

I shook my head. “Not partners. Fodder. Without asking, I’ll guess that the other two ships are newbie scumbags and are, as far as Streiber and Kiswal are concerned, totally expendable.”

“I wonder if they know that,” Icky said as we suited up and prepared to depressurize the Fafnir prior to battle.

I shrugged. “Probably. But for enough money and a shot at making your own mark on the criminal cultural landscape, they probably don’t care.”

“Okay, I’m taking the closest of the class 7s,” my mother said. “Amazing is going to concentrate on the class 12, keep it tied up until you catch up.”

I frowned. “Taking?”

“Yes. For profit. As for the crew, they’re out of luck.”

I sighed. “Yeah, that’s the kind of maternal sentiment I’m coming to know and love. Mom, can you let us question them first?”

“I’ll do it for you. I’m persuasive.”

She said persuasive in a tone like cracking ice.

“I believe her. In fact, I kind of feel like confessing to her myself,” Funboy said.

“Who’s paying the bills here, anyway? Strieber and Kiswal don’t sound like the types to do charity work, and now they’ve hired some minions, too,” Zeno asked.

Perry turned to look at her. “Gauss and BeneStar. I’d stake my tail feathers on it.”

As he said it, the tactical overlay abruptly lit up with a salvo of missiles loosed by our bad guys, followed by return volleys from my mother and Amazing.

“Netty, how long until we’re in range?” I asked.

“Assuming that our target doesn’t start to maneuver and keeps running flat out, we’ll have about a ten minute window of opportunity in just over thirty minutes,” she replied.

I sat back and nodded. “Okay, then. Half an hour of ringside seats. We might as well enjoy the show.”

10

Despite my mother’s desire to take a prize, she ended up smashing her class 7 target to fragments. The other class 7 raced in, putting up a spirited fight to recover the retreat of Streiber and Kiswal’s class 12, which was heavily outmatched by my mother and Amazing—and even more so when we joined the fray. I had to marvel at the plucky determination of the class 7, though, which was woefully outgunned but sped into attack anyway.

“They must be paying those guys stupid money,” Zeno said.

Icky sniffed. “All the money in the universe ain’t much use when you’re, you know, dead.”

I was curious, though, because Icky was right. I had Netty zoom in to the class 7 with the best scanner resolution she could muster and watched as it started its attack run. Sure enough, as soon as it began taking hits and shedding debris, I saw a small capsule tumble away.

I pointed. “There. An escape pod. These guys aren’t quite as suicidal as we thought.”

“Clever, hiding it amid their own debris—”

The class 7 abruptly detonated in a spectacular explosion that also engulfed the escape pod. When it cleared, nothing but whirling, glowing fragments remained of it.

Torina shook her head. “Oops.”

“At least it was quick. They were probably vaporized before the nerve impulses reached their brains and could be experienced as searing agony,” Funboy said gravely. “Unless they roasted from the extremities inward. I’d say feet first, but I don’t know if they had feet. Or legs. They certainly don’t have either now.”

Zeno glanced at him. “Yay?”

“We’ll be in maximum effective missile range in five minutes, Van. The class 12 has taken only minor damage, and its flight profile is unchanged, so we’ll have about ten minutes of engagement time, the last three or so with lasers as well. We’re not likely to get within mass-driver or plasma-burst cannon range unless we can slow them down.”

“Thanks, Netty.” I turned to the comm, to my mother and Amazing. “Okay, let’s concentrate fire on Dumb and Dumber’s class 12. I’d rather not destroy it, if we can—I’d like to take at least some of them alive so we—”

“Van, we’ve got a problem,” Netty cut in.

“Of course we do. What is it?”

“A significant local force of Eridani law enforcement has departed Dregs and is inbound like proverbial bats out of hell. They’re demanding that we heave-to and prepare to be taken into custody.”

I opened my mouth, closed it again, and finally found my words. “What?”

“Sorry, Van, nine ships—make that ten now—ranging from a pair of military corvettes to a bevy of cutters and sloops are coming after us. Their lead ship claims to be speaking on behalf of the Chief Prefect of Dregs and is demanding that we cut our drives and surrender.”

I cut loose with a string of profanity.

“They can’t beat us, so they’re going to drown us in local law enforcement,” Perry said.

“How can they, though? We’re Peacemakers, involved in a formal investigation!” Zeno put in.

But Netty poured cold water on that idea. “We’re Peacemakers, or rather Van is, with valid Guild credentials. We’d be obligated to submit to local law enforcement who, in turn, would be obligated to hear out our case and then release us. But Wallis and Amazing don’t have valid, current credentials, and their status as GKU—particularly the more feral sorts of GKU—provides them with no such protection.”

“So they could grab all of us, tie us up for a while, then let us go but hang onto Van’s mother and Amazing,” Torina said.

“That sums it up quite nicely, yes,” Netty said.

“To hell with them,” Icky grated. “Let’s just shoot our way through this bullshit and let whatever happens happen.”

I glanced back at her. “What would happen would be a crisis between the Guild and the Eridani Federation—a war, if the Guild was a sovereign state, so whatever you’d call a state of war in a situation like that.”

“The Eridani Federation would likely withdraw its signature from the Guild Charter and close their space to us,” Perry said.

“We’d end up with an unaligned, belligerent power right in the middle of known space,” Netty added.

I nodded. “And BeneStar and the Sorcerers would have a field day with that.”

“So, what, we’re just gonna run from these assholes? And let the criminal scum get away?” Icky snapped.

Torina scowled. “This just exposes high-level corruption in the Eridani Federation, Van, at least here at Dregs. Either the High Prefect is on the take—”

“Probably with BeneStar,” Zeno added, every syllable dripping with venom.

“—or they’re completely ineffectual. Either way, though, somebody here is in BeneStar’s, or the Sorcerers’, or somebody’s pocket.”

I sighed. “I know, which is why it pains me even more to say that my mother and Amazing are going to run, but we’re going to surrender.”

A collective moment of stunned silence followed, broken by a sudden chorus of exclamations, profanities, and outraged questions—

Which was broken, in turn, by Funboy, whose flat tone somehow managed to cut right through the hubbub.

“Excuse me, but why?”

I turned to him. “Because we can’t afford to piss off the Eridani Federation—”

“And how would we do that? We haven’t done anything illegal. We’ve entered their space, as we are legally entitled to do, we’ve flown along for a while, and—that’s it. We haven’t fired a shot or perpetrated any other illicit act. For that matter, we could have been moving in to aid that class 12 against your mother and Amazing.”

I blinked, then looked at Perry.

“He’s right. Nothing we’ve done since arriving in Eridani space is against any law, local or interstellar.”

“Thus, they have no legal justification to force us to stop.”

“Not if you declare us to be here conducting an investigation, which we are.”

“In fact, if we heave-to as ordered, we can turn this around on them and complain to the Guild that the local authorities interfered in our investigation. The Guild could then lodge a formal protest with the Eridani Federation, which might end up shaking loose some corruption here at Dregs.”

“They may have overplayed their hand,” Perry agreed.

I turned back to Funboy. “I could kiss you.”

“Please don’t. The human mouth is heavily infested with all manner of microorganisms—”

“Figure of speech, Funboy. Trust me, I wasn’t actually going to kiss you,” I said, then turned back to the comm.

“Okay, Mom, Amazing, here’s what we’re going to do.”

* * *

Streiber and Kiswal got away, unfortunately. My mother and Amazing followed them to the nearest twist point and also fled, heading for The Torus. They’d await us at The One-Eyed Yak, the bar owned by Skrilla, our aging hippie friend from California. He hated taxes, The Man, and showering, but he was… tolerable.

“Galls me all to hell to let those bastards get away,” I said, watching Streiber and Kiswal’s ship vanish into folded space and go—wherever the hell they were going. We couldn’t even tell that, because neither my mother nor Amazing were able to land a tracker on him. I suspected that they didn’t actually have any tracker missiles, preferring the explodey kind, but we didn’t get into it.

We, on the other hand, cut our drive and waited for the Eridani law enforcement flotilla to catch up to us. That seemed to fluster whoever was in command of it, presumably because they hadn’t actually expected us to comply.

“So, uh… prepare to be boarded,” the voice on the comm, who’d simply identified themselves as the Incident Commander, said, his voice wobbling with uncertainty.

I gave a thin smile. I was so going to make them squirm over this.

“Are you asking us or telling us?” I replied.

“I’m… telling you to. Yeah, that’s an order.”

“On what grounds?”

“Because you were attacking that ship—”

“Really? Tell me, how many shots did you record us firing?”

“Uh—”

“How do you know we weren’t going to its assistance?”

“Well, I—”

“How about if I told you that you’ve interfered in a Guild investigation into Crimes Against Order, and I could now argue that you’re an accessory, or at least complicit?”

“Okay, wait a second—”

“I think we’ll start with aiding and abetting the flight of persons of material interest to the investigation. Nice, solid crime, lots of penalties and career juice for my crew.”

Silence for a moment, then the Incident Commander spoke up, his voice suddenly wound tighter and pitched a little higher. “Look, that isn’t necessary. We can work something out—”

I laughed. “Are you heading in the direction of offering me a bribe? Because if you’re heading in the direction of offering me a bribe, I’d suggest you knock that shit off immediately. Not that it matters, because I’ve got more than enough here to file a formal complaint with the Peacemaker’s Guild and request that they launch a formal protest with the Federation. And if that happens, and the Federation authorities investigate this whole sordid little incident you’re commanding, what are they going to find, I wonder?”

I was amused to note that, as I spoke, the Eridani flotilla was starting to disperse, the other nine ships slowly pulling away from the confrontation. Two even reversed course and started back for Dregs.

I kept the so-called Incident Commander squirming on the other end of the comm a little longer, then contemptuously dismissed him. He tried a last, desperate bit of bravado, illuminating us with his ship’s fire-control scanners and threatening to open fire if we didn’t comply, but that only lasted a moment. Before we could even respond in kind, since lighting us up like that was legally considered a hostile act, his ship’s scanners went dark again and a new voice came on the comm.

“You have a nice day, Peacemaker,” the voice said, and the corvette spun about and accelerated back toward Dregs.

“Looks like somebody just got a field promotion,” Zeno said.

I sat back and nodded. “Yup. And as for our friendly Incident Commander, well, I suspect his day didn’t go the way he thought it would when he put his socks on this morning. Assuming he has feet, that is, since I don’t think we ever did get his species. That makes two mysteries of organic propulsion in one event.”

“Should’ve just shot our way out of it,” Icky muttered darkly. We all glanced at her, but nobody said anything, and we all just let it go.

There are moments when silence is a decision all its own. I glanced around, seeing the grim faces of my crew.

And then I tapped a quiet order to Netty. Maximum speed. Minimum chatter. Let’s let Icky be still.

Good call, boss. My craft, Netty responded, and the controls switched to her, leaving me with the burden of command—and wondering how to bring Icky back into the fold.

* * *

Gerhardt was only too happy to receive our reports on the Dregs incident. He’d apparently been looking for some leverage over the Eridani Federation, and this gave it to him.

“They’ll be forced to admit that their Dregs administration is either corrupt or incompetent. Either suits my purposes quite nicely,” as he put it over an encrypted comm channel.

“Glad to be of service,” I replied.

“What about you, Tudor? What are your intentions?”

“We’re heading for The Torus to meet up with B, my mother, and Amazing.”

Gerhardt frowned. “I realize this may come across as a little… hypocritical… since I’m nominally a member myself, but be wary of the GKU, Tudor. Be especially wary of the splinter factions such as your mother’s. They often put their own interests, or at least their own version of justice, above what any reasonable person would consider to be, well, right.”

“Isn’t that kind of inevitable, though? If the Galactic Knights Uniformed is intended to do those things that the Guild can’t, then—”

“There are many ways of interpreting that, Tudor. Personally, I believe that the GKU’s most valuable role is gathering intelligence from places that the Guild can’t easily access—especially from places outside known space, where we have no formal jurisdiction. Only occasionally should the Knights act, and then only in dire need—for instance, during the battle against the Seven Stars League, to help them throw off the influence of the Tenants.”

He frowned. “Those like your mother choose to believe that the Knights should have a more active role in all situations, and at their own discretion. They claim to be doing what is right and just, of course. But their definitions of those words tend to be more… liberal, shall we say, than mine.”

“This is a warning.”

Gerhardt’s frown deepened. “Better to call it an expression of concern. While we may not have started our professional relationship on the best of terms, I like to think it has evolved since then. I’ve come to view you as a valuable asset to the Guild, Tudor. I’d hate for that to change—particularly out of a sense of some familial duty to your mother. She’s dangerous, Van. Be very careful around her. Gerhardt out.”

I stared at the display. “Huh. He called me Van.”

“High praise, coming from him. That, and the valuable asset thing,” Torina said.

“I think it also means he’s worried about you,” Zeno said.

I turned to my crew. “What about you guys? Do you all think I should be worried about dealing with my mother?”

A reluctant silence followed. Icky finally broke it.

“Speaking as someone who has experience with a criminal, self-serving mother, yeah, I do—worried right to your bones, boss.”

“I have absolutely no regard for or interest in my biological progenitors, so I fail to see how this is an issue in the first place,” Funboy said.

“I’ve got a bunch of mothers, and I’m wary of all of them,” Zeno added.

Torina shrugged. “My mother’s great. I admire and respect her, but she’s an admirable woman, worthy of respect, so… it’s hard for me to comment.”

“I have no mother, being manufactured and all,” Perry said, and we each gave him a flat look.

“What? Everyone seemed to be going on about their mothers, so I thought I’d contribute.”

I rolled my eyes at him and turned back to the instruments. None of them had actually come out as explicitly as Gerhardt had regarding my mother, but they didn’t have to. Each in their own way had essentially said they were wary of her, thereby implying I should be, too.

I sighed as Netty prepared us to twist to The Torus, watching as she ticked items off the pre-twist checklist. The woman was my mom, and that meant something.

But she was also a traumatized, sociopathic killer, and that meant something, too.

* * *

We arrived at The Torus without incident, and Torina, Perry, and I made our way to The One-Eyed Yak. I saw Skrilla as we entered, but before I could catch his attention, a voice cut through the barroom muttering from my right.

“Hello, Van.”

I turned and found myself facing a petite, lithe, and pixie-ish woman with hair cut so short it was nearly a brush cut. A mischievous smile played across her face. It only took me a moment to recognize her.

“Hello, Alannis. I thought we put you in jail on outstanding warrants.”

She shrugged. “I’ve paid my debt to society. Or most of it, anyway.”

“Perry, is there anything outstanding on her?” I asked.

She smirked. “There’s lots about me that’s outstanding.”

“Sorry, boss, I’ve got nothing. She shows as being released early from custody on a special bond, but the details are sealed.”

“That’s not suspicious at all,” I said to her, my tone flat. I glanced at Torina. She was watching Alannis the way a cat would watch a mouse.

Or was it the other way around?

Alannis shrugged again. “What can I say? I was a model prisoner. They try to reward that sort of thing, you know. It’s called an incentive,” she said with that impish smile of hers.

“And you just happened to come here, to The Torus.”

“Just happened to, yeah.”

“Van, we’re here for actual business, not to waste our time on foreplay,” Torina finally said.

Alannis put on a hurt face. “Foreplay? Is that what this is?”

“Yes,” Torina said, smiling brightly. It was an expression I knew Alannis was about to regret. “But not for the main event you’re expecting. In this scenario, your bondmaker—that pretty face of yours—ends up with the kind of damage that only six weeks in a healing tank can fix. Unlike Van, I won’t be gentle.”

Alannis smiled again and opened her mouth, but before she could speak, I cut her off.

“Torina’s right,” I said, glancing sidelong at her with a half-grin. “The part about your future being bruised if you don’t respect her, and us. The rest of you’ll be bruised, too.”

“Didn’t know you were into the rough stuff,” Alannis countered.

“I’m not.”

“I am,” Funboy said with a leer that froze the room.

I snorted in horror. “Funboy. Seriously. We were bantering to establish social dominance, not trying to send everyone screaming into celibacy.”

Funboy’s massive eyebrows fluttered. “Sorry. I thought we were using implied sexual vigor to gain a negotiating position.”

“See? Vigor,” Perry scolded. “Toldja.”

In that moment, Alannis regained her nerve and reached out to trail a finger suggestively down my arm. “I’ll be around.” She lifted one brow, assessing Torina. “For you, too.”

I dismissed her with a single word. “No.”

She managed a pout, saw the grim faces staring at her, and cut her losses. In seconds, she faded away into the crowd, then stopped about twenty meters away. “Be seeing you, Tudor.”

We turned away, and this time, the dismissal worked. Alannis vanished toward a row of tables in the nearest bar, her words ringing in my ears.

“And that’s the trouble,” Torina muttered. I glanced at her.

“That woman is dangerous, Van,” she said.

Perry spoke up in the following silence. “You think his mom is dangerous, you think other women are dangerous—"

“Keep talking, bird, and you’re going to find yourself in the spare parts bin,” Torina growled.

“Torina, I apologize. I’m trying to—"

She wheeled away toward the bar. As she did, I glanced back to see Alannis, who sat alone at a table near the bar. She’d obviously watched the whole exchange, even if she hadn’t actually overheard it.

And she was laughing.

* * *

We made small talk with Skrilla, who offered us some weed he’d imported from British Columbia.

“Those Canadians are an enlightened folk who know how to have a good time. And it’s damned good weed. Think it’s something in the water up there. Or maybe it’s the latitude. Or is it longitude?”

“Canada has both, actually,” I said. “And—I know this might surprise you, Skrilla, but they’ve got jobs, and roads, and everything.”

“Nerd alert,” Perry squawked.

“This geography lesson brought to you by eighth grade, thank you very much,” I added, smiling at Skrilla’s use of up there to describe Canada, which certainly fit for a guy from California but seemed kind of odd when describing it from a place many light-years away.

We passed on the offer of cannabis, took him up on the offer of an excellent local beer, and waited for B. She showed up twenty-five minutes later, with Amazing at her side. My mother had apparently decided to remain aboard her ship and not dock at The Torus.

“She doesn’t seem to much like docking anywhere, does she?” I asked Amazing as we ordered a round of drinks.

Amazing shook her head. “No, your mother just generally finds it hard to be around people. She’s just not built for this world. Or any world, I think.”

I nodded and turned to B, who looked exhausted. “Um, friend—you okay?”

Her antennae drooping, B gave me a wry smile. “You really know how to make a girl feel special, Van, you know that? No, you didn’t say anything, it’s your expression. I know pity and concern when I see it. Or hear it in a question.” But her smile faded. “Sorry, I’ve just spent four days dealing with a mass casualty situation out in a farming colony on the edge of The Deeps, about six light-years from here. Sudden decompression in a farming orbital over a gas giant. Eight killed, dozens of injuries. My personal nightmare, really.”

“I—is there anything I can do? Anything we can do?” I asked.

“Thanks, but no. There was catastrophic blunt trauma from flying debris, and lots of decompression-related injuries,” she said, sighing and stretching like a cat. “I think I’ve slept about—oh, let’s say zero hours in the past four days. By the end, I was treating people half-asleep.”

“Sounds chaotic,” Torina said, patting B’s small shoulder. “Accident, you say?”

B gave her a side-eyed look. “Oh, I don’t think it was an accident. The orbital in question had just started growing some of that fancy new wheat—”

I sat up. “Permada?”

“Yeah, that’s the stuff. And the part of the orbital that decompressed is the part where they were growing it.”

“So it was sabotage,” I said, shaking my head. “BeneStar just doesn’t like to lose, do they?”

“Well, it’s not officially sabotage. The preliminary finding is that it was, indeed, an accident. But, seriously—it was BeneStar. And they don’t just have it in for Permada and the people growing it. They’ve really got it in for you, Van.”

I nodded. “Trust me, I’m well aware.”

But B shook her head. “I’m not sure you are. You’re popping up in the press, mostly about abusing your authority and being in league with a shadowy, quasi-terrorist group called the GKU—”

“Only quasi-terrorists? I’m a little insulted,” Amazing put in.

“—and that’s being reinforced by well-funded rumors and innuendo. And as if all that weren’t enough, I’ve caught wind of at least a half-dozen enforcement agents who are looking for you. It’s supposedly a bounty sort of thing, to take you into some sort of custody, but I mean, seriously—these are assassins.”

I exhaled slowly. “I know that, too. We had an attack on the farm—Netty will download some live video to you—and we had to bail on the pursuit of Streiber and Kiswal.”

“Those bottom feeders. Bah. They’re gonna have a bad day if I ever get them in my sights,” B growled.

Perry’s eyes beamed. “I like her so much, Van. She truly understands what we want out of life.”

B gave him a tiny bow, smiling. Then her face went still as she sussed out the reality of our situation. “Damn them to hell, but, yeah, that fits. And you evacuating your place back on Earth was a smart move. All of your crew might want to look at doing something similar because your usual places to go lay low are—”

“Too hot?” Perry put in.

“More like radioactive. Gauss won’t stop until he’s got you taken out of the picture one way or another. He’ll burn your homes to make you engage with him, and no one is safe. D’you understand? No one.”

Torina sat back and sighed. “Thank you, B. It’s that kind of unalloyed news that makes you a good friend and a harbinger of doom.”

B grimaced. “Believe me, I get tired of delivering this kind of information. It… it wears on me.”

“Your antennae tell me that, B.” I snapped my fingers at a thought. “Oh, shit—Torina, you might want to tell your parents—”

“I already have,” she said, sitting back up. “I’ve warned them, and they’ve gone—” She glanced around, then shrugged. “They’ve gone.”

I followed her gaze around and happened to notice Alannis still sitting, apparently uninterested in us. I didn’t believe that for a second, of course.

“B, what do you know about the woman sitting near the door? Short hair, kind of elfin—”

“Elfin?” Torina asked, lifting an eyebrow.

“Sorry, first word that came to me.”

“Elfin. That was the first word that came to you.”

I glanced at Perry, but he was studiously looking anywhere that wasn’t at Torina and me.

B frowned. “I recognize her, but don’t know much about her. She’s a free agent, that’s all I know. But she doesn’t necessarily work strictly for the highest bidder.”

“You mean she’s actually got some scruples?” I asked.

B chuckled. “Oh, hell no. What she’s got is agenda. Damned if I—or anyone, probably—knows what it is.”

Amazing just shrugged. “I’ve seen her around, but she’s not on the GKU’s radar—either because she just isn’t, or she’s managed to avoid it.”

I sighed again. “Well, that makes things as clear as mud—”

“Van, it’s Zeno.”

I touched my comm. “Go ahead.”

“It’s Icky. She’s… getting worse again.”

I stood, then looked a B, who sighed back at me and stood as well. “What the hell, I’ve got nothing better to do, like eat or sleep.”

On the way out, Skrilla caught my eye. “Hey, dude, should we just consider those drinks on the house then?” he asked me, his lip curled.

I shook my head. “Nah. Amazing here will pay.”

She smiled at me and shrugged. “What the hell, it’s on an expense account.”

* * *

Icky was worse. We found her slumped in her bunk, flushed and hot and mumbling away to herself.

B scanned her, gave her a quick exam by eye, then stood back. “It’s advancing, and I’m afraid there’s not much you can do about it.”

“The Bridging?” I asked.

B nodded. “Yeah.”

“So if we can’t deal with it, what options do we have?” Zeno asked, worry etching her face.

“Well, there is a solution, or at least a partial one. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that, but it would help address the two hundred kilo Wu'tzur in the room.”

“An aesthetician with a swimming pool of wax?” Perry asked.

Icky stirred. “My damned hair issokay, birb.”

“Explain the situation to her father and tell him that she’s not going to get through this Bridging without doing the”—she made distasteful air quotes—“ceremony.”

I looked up from Icky. “Ceremony?”

Icky answered. “Yeah. Ceremony. The Saes-Utz. I gotta—” A sharp belch cut her off, and she flushed an even more lurid shade of purple.

“B, is this—could it be fatal?” Torina asked.

B sniffed and shook her head. “Not for her. For you, maybe, though, since she’s only going to keep getting more aggressive. Her father will know what to do. In the meantime, they can begin making her Saes garb.”

“Does it involve pants?” Perry asked.

“It explicitly does not.”

“Figures.”

B went on. “There are a few days of preparation, but her father can ensure as much of it happens as possible while you’re en route. At least, this is what I found out when I did some digging after this all started. It’s rare, sure, but then… so is Icky.”

I looked at Icky, who was woozy and miserable, and imagined her flying into an unbridled tantrum the next time we faced a situation like we had back at Dregs. That could have easily gone awry, and Icky would have been the catalyst of chaos.

That kind of disarray wasn’t an option in our business, but I knew one thing for certain. I would not, under any circumstances, lose Icky as crew and friend.

I chose my words with care. “Rare. That’s an understatement, because she’s utterly unique, pants or not. So, a question—is this Saes-Utz like a prom? A quinceañera?”

“Oh, it’s a lot more… concentrated. You’ll see.”

“What could be more concentrated than being at a table with her during some ceremony that’s all about her, uh, fertility?” Perry asked.

B turned to him, the fatigue momentarily leaving her eyes and giving way to their more customary twinkle.

“Being at a table with her—and four potential mates.”

11

The Wu'tzur homeworld, also called Wu'tzur, orbited a Sol-like star called Eta Cassiopeiae—abbreviated to Eta Cas—so closely that it skimmed the inner edge of the habitable zone, where water remained liquid. The result was a torrid, humid world of lush jungles and warm, misty oceans, with the only thing even resembling cold located at the immediate vicinity of whatever pole happened to tilt furthest away from the star. With average temperatures pushing sixty degrees Celsius, being on the surface was, for a human, like sitting in a sauna. And while I enjoyed the occasional sauna, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in one.

Fortunately, the one and only time we’d been previously, we’d remained aboard an orbital configured to more human-friendly conditions. The Wu'tzur could tolerate our relatively cool, dry conditions far better than we could their perpetual steam bath, so it meant we could visit without having to remain sealed in our suits—which was good, because we were expected to participate in a dinner, and repeatedly opening and resealing a visor just to eat promised to be a massive pain in the ass.

“Brings back memories of one of our first ops,” Torina said as Netty clunked us into place at the airlock we’d been assigned and confirmed a hard dock. “Delivering the first chipped person we discovered back home. You know—oh, what was his name—”

“Fostin,” Perry said.

“Right. Fostin.” She started unstrapping. “That seems so long ago now.”

“It has been a long time, even out here. It’s pushing five years now. Hard to believe we’ve fit this much… everything… into five years,” I said.

“Almost six, from a fixed perspective on Earth, if you account for time dilation effects,” Netty put in.

I winced but only because she was right. “And now I feel just a little bit older.”

“Cheer up, Van. Your age only matters from your frame of reference, right?”

I managed a grunt of agreement, but it did underscore something that was starting to prey a little more strongly on my mind whenever I stepped out of the Fafnir on Earth.

I was increasingly a man out of time.

With each twist, I slipped a little further out of sync with Earth, not to mention everywhere else that wasn’t the Fafnir, or a ship twisting at the same rate. How long until Miryam ceased being the vibrant woman I’d known all my life and became—old? Frail? For her, it would be about twenty years—for me, it might only be a few. The future, and time itself, was increasingly murky thanks to the reality of space travel. I was faced with a trade-off. I would live to an age most humans couldn’t fathom. I would see and do things that were beyond the scope of human experience. I had Torina, and Perry, and my crew—

And along the way, I’d watch the touchpoints of my life fade into memory, even while I streaked across the stars in pursuit of justice. I had a life that meant ever larger pieces of my current reality would simply pass me by, and there was nothing I could do to change it.

“You okay, boss?” Perry asked.

“Sorry. Sifting memories.”

“You’ll do that a lot more as time goes on. If you survive, of course,” Perry added with relentless good cheer.

Funboy’s eyebrows perked up at the mention of misery. “I’d be happy to work out a probability of when you’ll be turned to plasma, or perhaps consumed by a ravenous beast that has a less discerning palate. I can be quite accurate, and—”

“Funboy, I left earth in part so I wouldn’t share a planet with insurance actuaries. They’re the human equivalent of a mortician with an abacus.”

Funboy made a sound of agreement. “That doesn’t sound terrible. What’s their hygiene like?”

“In my experience, excellent. They play the odds, so to speak, regarding preventable causes of death.”

Funboy clapped his hands together in something that came dangerously close to joy. “My people. I knew they were out here among the unwashed masses.”

“I’ll arrange an introduction at some point. I’m sure they have message boards and chat rooms, just like every other, um—”

“Band of data nerds?” Perry asked.

“Harsh, but close to the mark,” I said.

Funboy beamed.

Torina gave him a look. “He’s going to die single, you know, if you keep encouraging this kind of behavior.”

“I know. It’s part of my plan to keep the Fafnir as close to bulletproof as possible.” Then I felt a wave of inarticulate sadness, and thoughts of Icky returned like an unwanted visitor. “I hope this works. I swear, if we have to—”

“The ceremony?” Torina asked. “It will. Zeno is involved, and she’s more of a mother to Icky than Axicur ever was.”

I lifted my eyes to her, smiling in thanks. “You’re right.”

Torina smiled, then kissed me. “Of course I am. And remember those words, I’m right. I’ll never get tired of hearing them.”

* * *

We were greeted by a delegation of Wu'tzur that included Icky’s father, Urnak, but was led by a so-called Great Patron, an older Wu'tzur with hair faded to pale blue. He seemed to be in charge of the proceedings, so I spoke to him with appropriate gravitas. There were several other Wu'tzur present, all being very restrained—except for one, who suddenly flung herself at Icky with a meaty thud, like two sides of beef smacking together. I winced at the impact. If that had been me, I’d have been bowled over and probably had a few ribs broken in the process.

She wrapped all four arms around Icky, who returned her hug, although not quite as enthusiastically.

“Icky, it’s so good to see you!”

Icky pulled her face back. “Good to see you, too, Joznu.”

Joznu stepped back and looked Icky up and down. “Oh, my poor Icky, you look… awful.”

“Thanks. I think.”

Joznu shook her head. “No, I mean… it’s the Bridging. It must be so hard for you. I’d have never thought that you’d—”

“Yeah, okay, rather not talk about it right now, thanks,” Icky said, then introduced us. “Joznu was my best friend growing up—well, as much as I had a best friend, anyway, since I didn’t spend much time here on Wu'tzur.”

“No, Icky was always flying off on that big ship of her father’s. Settling down and having children was never your thing, was it?”

“Not… really, no.”

Van, there are so many things I want to say right now, Perry said in my ear bug. I shot him a glare and shook my head.

He sighed. Some of them would be hilarious, too. Diplomatic-incident hilarious, but still hilarious.

I glared at him even harder.

Things like, congratulations, Icky, you’ve given birth to a bouncing baby throw rug!

I sniffed.

Or, I wonder how Icky would look in a frilly apron, dusted with flour and with her hair in curlers—a lot of curlers.

“Van, are you okay?” Torina asked me as I snuffled in a desperate attempt to not laugh. I wiped at my eyes while also trying to fire the most severe glower at Perry I could manage.

“I’m… I’m fine. I just get choked up at reunions, okay?”

* * *

Joznu was everything Icky wasn’t—as close to a mirror image as you could possibly imagine. She worked in law, specifically dealing with import and export contracts and trade disputes, being content to sit at a terminal and wordsmith complicated legal terminology. She was married to two husbands, or the Wu'tzur equivalent thereof. Monogamy didn’t seem to a big thing in Wu'tzur society on the part of either sex, as one of her husbands had another wife besides her, while the other had two. Between the two of them, she had five children.

The whole thing was about promoting genetic diversity, a response to some sort of racial reproductive plague that had nearly wiped the Wu'tzur out a few hundred years earlier. Wu'tzur were actually encouraged to cast their genetic nets as widely as possible to promote the greatest, most varied mixture of genes they could.

“I know a few people back on Earth who already have this very philosophy. They’d fit right in here,” I said to Torina, my voice lowered as we made our way into a reception room in the orbital. The Wu'tzur had turned down the temperature to suit us humans, since Zeno and Funboy could also apparently tolerate higher temperatures, but I still found it uncomfortably warm.

“I doubt they’d survive the lovemaking,” Torina muttered back. “Not without some bruises and broken bones, anyway.”

I nodded. “Must make holidays like Christmas, or whatever the Wu'tzur equivalent would be, complicated, too. Talk about extended families—”

Another older Wu'tzur called for our attention. She’d already been introduced to us as one of the Grand Patron’s wives, a severe woman named Unetor. With clockwork precision, she directed us to sit around a table according to some impenetrable scheme that might have meant something to the Wu'tzur. At least I ended up with Torina at my side, Icky having evidently already let them know that we were a pair.

Once we were all seated, Unetor spoke up again. “We shall begin with kastinu’kol, a traditional tea made from—”

She went on to name a half-dozen plants that meant nothing to me. The tea was served in a ceramic bowl—as in a single ceramic bowl. Apparently, we were all meant to drink from it, then pass it along, as a sort of ritual to bind everyone together in solidarity.

“I’m gonna warn you guys, it tastes like feet, and not the good kind,” Icky hissed at Torina and me, leaning our way.

“There’s a… good-tasting kind of feet?” Torina asked.

Icky blinked at her. “Well, yeah.”

When the bowl came to me and I lifted it to my face, sure enough, I was walloped with a blast of eau du gym locker. I held my breath, took a sip, and swallowed the hot, acrid liquid as quickly as I could. Then I passed it on to Torina.

She glanced at me as she took it. “Feet?”

I peeled my tongue from the roof of my mouth, which it had desperately hugged for protection. “It’s more nuanced than that. I’d say more… sweaty sock.”

She took a sip, made a face like she’d been punched, passed on the bowl, and turned back to me.

“I think a bunch of my taste buds just put in their two-week notice,” she hissed.

Despite the rancid flavor, everything went fine until the bowl got to Funboy. He accepted it, looked into it, then sighed.

“Oh dear.”

Unetor scowled at him. I gave a sigh of my own, resigned to sorting out at best a faux pas, and at worst an actual diplomatic incident. It all came down to how insulting the fastidious, germophobic Funboy chose to be.

“You said that this contains ruskinal?” Funboy asked, citing one of the ingredients in the pungent tea.

Unetor, still glaring, nodded. “That’s right.”

“Oh, well, I’m afraid that I have a terrible allergy to ruskinal. Please, consider me to have shared in this charming ritual, despite my passing this flavorful beverage on without consuming it,” he said and handed it to the Wu'tzur beside him.

Unetor’s scowl only hardened. “I wasn’t aware that we even exported ruskinal.”

“We don’t,” Joznu said.

Unetor opened her mouth, but Icky intervened.

“We don’t export it, but I brought some with me after my last trip here—thought I’d, you know, make some traditional Wu'tzur dishes for my crew. Funboy here had a bad reaction. He—”

“—broke out in hives,” Funboy said, except he ended up speaking over Icky, who said, “—developed an awful rash.”

They exchanged a glance, then Funboy went on. “I broke out in hives and developed an awful rash.”

“It was tragic,” Icky added.

Unetor finally relented, the bowl of sock tea made it the rest of the way around the table, then we settled back while a succession of images were displayed on a screen at the end of the room.

“I need something to cleanse my palate,” Torina whispered.

I nodded. “Yeah. Like bleach.”

The first image was… a Wu'tzur. Unetor named him and gave a brief rundown on who he was, his background, that sort of thing. The image then changed to… another Wu'tzur. Then another. And another.

I turned to the Wu'tzur sitting beside me to my left. “Excuse me, but what is this exactly?”

“Icrul must choose four of these candidates as potential mates,” the Wu'tzur replied.

“Based on a slideshow?”

“It would be unseemly to bring all of the candidates together and parade them before her like some sort of auction.”

I nodded. Oh, yes, having her select mates from a PowerPoint was far more dignified.

About fourteen or fifteen candidates in, Torina leaned close to me and whispered. “They all sorta look alike to me.”

“How culturally insensitive of you, my dear. Two of them clearly have bigger fangs than the rest.”

That last one looked like he could have been hunted and skinned to make shag carpeting, Perry put in.

We carefully ignored him. “So which one is the handsome one?” Torina asked.

None of them. I think that’s the point, Perry replied.

Torina shook her head. “Being paraded like meat while dying of terminal PMS? No thanks. I’d rather cry and eat cake.”

“Cake can make you cry. I understand it can even be fatal,” Funboy whispered.

Torina and I turned to him, staring. I frowned. “What?”

“Skrilla, the bartender at The One-Eyed Yak on The Torus, told me that people from California find cake to be fatal. It contains a poison known as gluten, which has killed billions, if not more.”

I sighed. “He was yanking your chain, Funboy. I mean, it can be for their body fat ratio, sure, but as to actually killing them? No. Not unless they choke on it.”

“I’ll make a note of it in case we meet any of those people.”

“Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.”

After sitting through twenty-one candidates—twenty-one virtually identical Wu'tzur males, as far as I was concerned—Icky selected four. It didn’t seem random, though, meaning she’d apparently put some thought into it. She was then whisked away to be measured and fitted for her formal Saes-Utz—gown, or robe, or whatever it was—and to spend some time with her father. He had a traditional gift to give her, and his face wore the hint of a smile, or at least something different from his usual visage, with one fang pushing his upper lip away at a rakish angle.

As for the rest of us, we were told that we’d be informed when the ceremony resumed. As one, we all hurried back to the Fafnir and something—anything—to drink that didn’t taste like feet or socks or any aspect of a lower extremity. I proudly produced a bottle of vodka that Petyr Groshenko had given me, one of those from what was supposedly the best vodka distillery on Earth.

It still just tasted like burning witch hazel to me, but that was fine. It scorched away the taste of that damned tea, and that was good enough.

* * *

I frowned. “Let me try this again. “Icrul ap—Fafnir—Saes—”

“Icrul ap Kisni ap Fafnir ap Saes,” Icky’s father, Urnak, said.

“Can I just stick with hairball?” Perry asked, but I shot him a hard glare. “To be fair, it’s—"

Urnak just offered a terrifying Wu'tzur grin. “The fact that you insult one another so readily tells me how close your crew is, Van. Only good friends are so quick to bad-mouth one another.”

“We call it shit-talking,” Perry agreed. “So this means I can stick with hairball—”

“No, Perry, it does not. For the duration of this ceremony, she’ll be Icrul ap Kisni ap Saes ap—”

“No, it’s Icrul ap Kisni ap Fafnir ap Saes,” Urnak corrected.

“Damn it!”

“Hairball is easier,” Perry offered, in a singsong mutter.

We stood in the same room where Icky had done her catalog shopping for potential mates, except it was reconfigured for a formal dinner. There was a head table, at which Icky would sit front and center, her father at her right, her Grand Patron uncle at her left. Directly in front of it was a table with four places set, facing the head table. This was where her four suitors would sit. Apparently, during the dinner, each would be able to ask Icky one question, which she had to answer publicly. When it was all concluded, she could make her choice as to which mate she would take. The rest of us would sit at several other tables in the room, out of the way.

“Boss,” Perry added in a low murmur.

“This better be—”

“Respectful and serious, that’s me. But, got a question, and it pertains to Torina.” At my raised eyebrow, he flicked a wing in assurance. “This is an emotional event, and spirits are going to be high. Torina is a long way from home.”

“I see where you’re going.”

“You do? Huh. Good man. What would, ah, remind her of the proposal while the swirl of ceremony is all around? Not that Torina will care, but—”

“I’m going to need a favor from you.”

“Anything, boss.”

“I need you to reach out to Miryam. We can reach her through relays, and I’m sending you a… specific item, and you can add one final emphasis to my message. It might be the most critical part, but under no circumstances can you let Icky or Funboy know.”

“Of course. May I ask why them in particular?” Perry asked, watching the bustle with interest.

“Because they’re both terrible at keeping secrets.”

“Fair. Okay, and… got it. Oh, wow.” Perry’s eyes flashed as he read the message, and then he turned to me with an open-beaked grin. “Damned romantic. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Thanks. And make no mention of it at all. As to transportation, I leave that to B. She'll breeze by Iowa at some point. You know how she travels.”

Laughter rose across the room as three Wu'tzur hefted a table that weighed several hundred kilos—and they did it with ease. The party was taking shape, one table at a time. It was elegant but not exuberant. It was, I realized, a nice bridge between Icky and Urnak.

It fit.

Perry’s eyes flashed again, and he nodded. “Netty is on relay duty. Miryam will have your, ah, request by no later than tomorrow. As to the return, dunno.”

“Good enough. Thanks, bird. You’re—”

“If you say good egg, we’re gonna fight.”

“A fine fellow.” I grinned, then tugged at the collar of my shirt.

I was clad, head to toe, in the stiffly formal dress uniform of the Guild that I hated so much, the one with a piece of stovepipe for its collar. Once my quiet word with Perry was done, there was little to do as we waited for Icky and her suitors to arrive, which left us milling about. Torina arrived just then, having been involved in Icky’s preparation, and she wore a smile that was both warm and bemused.

“Fun time?” I asked.

Torina snorted. “Just wait. I’ve never woven so many—actually, never mind. Just wait,” she said, taking my hand and interlocking her fingers just right. Our hands fit, just like we did. I stood still, enjoying her sheer closeness, and then tugged at my collar again, my annoyance at dress uniforms blooming into a simmering resentment.

I couldn’t help feeling like I’d been ambushed by a formal dinner, the kind that I’d learned to avoid on Anvil Dark. There was a whole subculture of official dinners and formal events and dress uniforms and the like within the Guild—some Peacemakers were positively devoted to it and seemed to spend most of their careers working on embossed invitations, seating plans, and an array of archaic traditions.

I thought back to Sir Archibald, the S’rall lizard head with the snuff box in his skull who got carried around at a Peacemaker dinner so everyone could snort a pinch of the vile stuff up their nose for… reasons. That, right there, was one of those so-called traditions that came from somewhere, although nobody seemed to know where, and was perpetuated to this day because it had always been done that way. I’d inhaled snuff from Sir Archibald’s cranial container once, and that had been more than enough—

A chime rang, and Unetor, the Grand Patron’s formidable wife filling the role of Master of Ceremonies, directed us all to our seats. We stood, though, waiting for Icky and her entourage to arrive.

“Showtime,” Torina said, her lips curved upward in a brilliant smile.

Icky arrived then. With her entourage.

In style.

I had to blink a few times to make sure it was really her.

Icky had been brushed, or combed, and had small metallic discs braided into her hair—all of her hair, not just the stuff on her head. Most striking, though, was what she wore below her waist. It wasn’t pants, of course, but rather something like a kilt, intricately pleated and embroidered in a riot of swirling colors.

I’ve seen that design before. It was a shower curtain, as I recall, Perry said. I scowled at him, but Torina actually reached down and pressed his beak closed with her fingers.

“Enough of the running commentary, bird,” she hissed at him.

I thought insulting her showed what a great friend I am. That’s what her dad just said, he replied, undeterred by Torina’s grip because he could, of course, just transmit his voice into our ear bugs.

“Fine. Say it out loud, then. See how that goes,” Torina said with cloying sweetness.

I’ll shut up now.

Icky took her place, as did the others at the head table, followed by her four suitors. The whole of them that had been presented to her in the slide show must have been on notice to come to the orbital, because it was only six hours ago that she’d made her choices. I studied them as they took their spots, well aware that whichever of them she chose, they’d effectively become a sort of adjunct crew member on my ship. Icky had already made it clear that her future mate wouldn’t likely actually travel with us, but he’d be a major influence in her life, which meant he’d be a major influence in ours.

Three of them, frankly, were kind of interchangeable. They were big, muscular, male Wu'tzur, distinguished only via their particular ornamentation—which seemed to consist mostly of blingy, Mister T-like chains hung around their necks—and the length of their fangs. The fourth was smaller, scrawnier, and came across as nerdy, thoughtful, and even a touch graceful.

Zeno leaned over to me. “Bet she picks the small one,” she whispered.

I considered it. One of the other three probably made more sense from a strictly, um, reproductive point of view, coming across as far more… virile. And if a lot of Icky’s motivation was biochemical imperative to reproduce—

“You’re on,” I said. “Fifty bonds says she goes for the one with the longest fangs.”

Zeno sniffed. “Not a chance. He’s the type who’d watch himself in a mirror while he works out.”

I grinned, and we surreptitiously shook on it.

Icky turned to face us. “I am Icrul ap Kisni ap Fafnir ap Saes. I am Icky, first and foremost engineer, or kisni in our tongue, and then I am a member of the family that’s the crew of the Fafnir, and then I am part of my own family.”

My eyes widened at that. I’d assumed the presence of Fafnir in her formal name simply acknowledged that she was a member of my crew, not that she considered us family—and in a place of preeminence over her own family, at that. I glanced at Urnak, who must have known, but he simply watched his daughter with obvious pride.

If it was okay with him, her father, who was I to argue? Still—it choked me up a little.

Unetor signaled for all of us to sit, and the dinner commenced.

I’d expected to be eating something that challenged me at every bite, or else noodles—but the food was surprisingly good, including meat from a Wu'tzur beast called a crastul, similar to a cross between a terrestrial cow and a big hunting cat. I wasn’t sure how I felt about eating something that might, given the chance, eat me right back, but it was tasty and tender, and I was able to put my misgivings aside and dig in. Various sorts of steamed and roasted vegetables accompanied it, while for drinks we were served a fermented beverage also made out of meat—in this case, something aquatic. It was oceanic, and pungent, and easy to drink as long as I closed my eyes—even if it did have a slightly mucosal texture that intruded now and then.

A short while into the dinner, once everyone was comfortable, Unetor stood. “We will now proceed with the geskarntu, the Asking-and-Answering. Each of Icrul’s suitors may ask her a single question. In this way, she may choose a mate, and her chosen mate may choose to accept, each based on the questions asked and the answers given.”

As soon as Unetor sat down, one of the four suitors tapped a small gong set in front of him. It wasn’t my chosen guy, nor was it Zeno’s favored nerd. Everyone went silent, and Icky, her face still purplish and slightly swollen, turned to him.

“Icrul ap Kisni ap Fafnir ap Saes, I am Kostin ap Saes, and I ask you this—how many children do you wish to have?”

Icky stared at him for a moment. “Uh… depends. Can they solder? Weld? Use a plasma torch?” She glanced at her father. “Are kids supposed to play with those? I mean, you let me—”

Unetor cut in. “Icrul—your answer,” she hissed.

Icky turned back to the suitor named Kostin. “Oh. How many kids? Uh… not too sure. A few, I guess?” In that moment, she was Icky—sounding young and a touch flippant. But her expression was serious, and she inclined her head with a regality that made me smile.

Kostin, unruffled, tapped the gong again and sat down.

The dinner proceeded, interrupted twice more…

* * *

“Icrul ap Kisni ap Fafnir ap Saes, I am Aksoin ap Saes, and I ask you this—are you comfortable with and willing to move to be with your mate?”

“Move? Like, dancing, you mean? Because I’m not a great dancer but, hey, I’m enthusiastic. And there’s this Earth thing—you ever heard of polka?”

* * *

“Icrul ap Kisni ap Fafnir ap Saes, I am Nalakso ap Saes, and I ask you this—are you comfortable bringing our two families, including all nineteen of my aunts, together in one house?”

“Nineteen? Seriously. I—yeah, Unetor, okay. Honestly, I’m more of a live-by-herself kinda girl. In a ship. A long way away.”

* * *

“So far, I think she’s managed to blow her chances with each one of them,” Torina whispered to me.

I nodded glumly. Number three had been my guy, and the only way I’d not lose my bet to Zeno was if number four turned out to be a bust, too.

“I don’t believe she really wishes to become engaged,” Funboy said. “Perhaps she has realized what a distasteful act coitus really is.”

Torina raised an eyebrow at him. “You’ve never had a girlfriend, have you?”

Funboy blinked at her. “Actually, I have had several couplings with females. In each case, she wished to engage in repetitions of the act, apparently being satisfied with my performance, but… again, it is all so distasteful. And unsanitary.”

“You smooth-talking thing, you.”

The gong sounded again. It was time for number four.

He stood, and I swear if he’d had glasses, he’d have pushed them up the bridge of his nose. It took him a moment to find his voice.

“Icrul ap Kisni ap Fafnir ap Saes, I am… I am Paxomar ap Saes, and I… I ask you this—when rerouting the plasma surge overflow on a primary fusion power plant, is it best to use multiple vents, or a single one?”

I sighed. “Well, shit.”

“Sorry, what was that, Van? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of you losing fifty bonds,” Zeno said, her broad face split by a triumphant grin.

Icky, though—she actually looked shy, of all damned things, and practically stammered her answer.

“Well, it depends on, you know, the plasma density and temperature, because, well, multiple vents are, uh—”

She went on, bumbling on with an answer that dug deep into fusion reactor physics but was apparently spot-on, or so Netty, who was listening in, said.

Yup, that’s a perfect answer. She truly knows her stuff, she said in our ear bugs.

Paxomar nodded and, just as shyly, said, “A very… well, good answer. Oh, and I have nine aunts, and three uncles, so—well, they don’t have to live with us, but—”

Icky practically batted her eyelashes at him. “I… don’t know. I’ll have to think about it, okay?”

“Yes. Certainly. Of course. I won’t accept any other offers of marriage in the meantime—not that I’m likely to have any—”

“I… wouldn’t be so sure. I mean, you’re pretty, you know, attractive—”

The other three suitors scowled, but Paxomar just shrugged.

“It’s me. I really have no interest in anyone who can’t tune a transient resonance effect from the fuel pre-mix chamber of a twist drive.”

“Really? I mean, me neither! I’m glad to see you have standards,” Icky said, then shook her head. “Anyway, that’s… fine. I… uh, yeah, I’ll let you know. I mean, I’m not sure about your aunties and uncles, because I really just like my own crew—well, I’m not sure about Funboy—”

“Nor should you be. I am eminently unlikable,” Funboy stated.

Icky glanced at him, then turned back to Paxomar. “But… I’ll let you know, okay?”

“I—yes. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Perry’s voice came humming through our ear bugs, speaking for all of us.

Holy crap, how do two hairy, four-armed nerds babbling technical jargon manage to be so adorable?

12

Truly and exquisitely sensuous moments in life are few and far between. Pulling on dry socks after wearing wet ones, putting on a shirt fresh out of the dryer, flipping a pillow over to the cool side on a hot, sweaty night—they all rate. But even those didn’t compare to finally taking off my damned formal jacket.

I rubbed my neck and looked in the mirror in my cabin aboard the Fafnir. “Superb—I feel like I’ve just been released from a long prison sentence.”

Netty’s voice came over the room comm, and there was a hint of laughter from the first syllable. “Van, I’ve just received confirmation from the Guild regarding our registry of the Fafnir’s workboat. She is now officially named after your high school cars and weird crushes on—who was it again?”

Torina called out, eager to join in the conversation. “An actress. Who I only vaguely resemble, if at all. And yet, I choose to be mature about this despite being grievously wounded.”

“You’re the picture of charity, Torina. And thus, I can proudly announce that the Dolores Franka Schwartz IV is now officially registered and will show up as such in her transponder returns,” Netty said.

“Ah, perfect. Thanks, Netty,” I said.

Torina emerged from her general area where she’d gotten ready for the blessed event, releasing her hair from a tortuous array of curls. “You’re going to call her the Frankie, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

She thought for a moment, then gave a short nod before retreating back to the far bulkhead zone, which was strewn with devices and items to the point that it looked like a cosmetology school had been firebombed. “It works. Beats the hell out of Icky’s idea. Or Perry’s. Or, stars forbid, Funboy’s.”

“Funboy wanted the… um, the Least Misery. Perry wanted to name it the Perry, but with a screaming eagle nose art. Icky wanted the Perry, but with googly eyes painted over the eagle. And Zeno had the excellent sense to let them argue.” I sighed, then rolled my shoulders to release the tension. “It was an executive decision, dear, and one that made everyone equally unhappy. I feel like an elected official.”

“Can you believe Funboy thought his choice was upbeat?”

“For him, it was. I think he tried to smile tonight. Twice. After seeing that, I’ll never be the same,” I said.

“Neither will the young Wu’tzur who saw it,” Torina said.

I finished stripping down, then pulled on my b-suit. I was just fastening it in place—luxuriating in its form-fitting comfort—when Icky returned to the ship with her father, I stopped in place and stared at her transformation.

“I’m ready to go, Van,” she said. The mask-like discoloration of her face had abated somewhat, as simply participating in the Saes-Utz ceremony calmed her stormy biochemistry.

A little, anyway.

She turned to her father. “But I’ll be back, I promise,” she said.

Urnak nodded. “I won’t be here. The Nemesis and I will be… somewhere. Wherever I go, that’s where I’ll be.”

She smiled. “I know. I’ll find you.”

He shook his head. “I’m not the important one to whom you must return. That would be Paxomar.”

She looked down, then back up. “I’m… sorry, father. About all of this. About the Bridging, and about not just selecting a mate and—”

He held a finger to her lips. “You are your own soul, Icrul. You belong to the stars first, the Fafnir second, and then, I hope, to me—at least until you make your decision about Paxomar. Still, I hope to have a place in there somewhere. But, in any case—I have always been proud of you.”

Icky stared at him for a moment, then flung her arms around him. I glanced back at the others, Torina and Zeno, Funboy and Perry, and we all stepped away to give them a moment alone.

* * *

“Okay, looks like the preflight is done. Netty, you may cast us off and get us underway to—”

I stopped and sighed. “Much as I hate to, I think we have to go to Anvil Dark. We’ve already ignored Kharsweil’s summons to the point where we’re rubbing his nose in it, and I really think we need to talk to Gerhardt—”

“Van, we’ve got an incoming message from B,” Netty cut in as we disconnected from the airlock and backed away from the Wu’tzur orbital.

I flicked my eyes over the incoming comms and data, noting the origin points. B mentioned she may join us here when she was done at The Torus, to check up on Icky as she made her way to… wherever the hell she was going next.

“Hey, B. So Icky’s doing quite a bit better—”

“Good. Now, if you want her, and you, to stay that way, you’ll pay close attention to the scanner data I’m repeating to you.”

We all tensed and sat up at her urgent, clipped tone. Netty painted her data into the tactical overlay, revealing a ship station-keeping in the lee of one of Wu’tzur’s three moons relative to us.

“Huh. B, where are you?”

“I’m coasting straight in behind him. I noticed him when I entered the system. I haven’t lit him up, so all my scanner data is passive, and I think that’s kept his interest off me, at least for now. He just thinks I’m more traffic.”

I studied the overlay more generally. Eta Cassiopeiae wasn’t exactly a busy system, but Wu’tzur generated enough traffic that, at any given time, about a dozen ships were in transit, inbound or outbound. B’s flight profile made her look like just another ship in the crowd. But her natural suspicion, honed by decades in the GKU, had obviously brought the lurking ship to her immediate attention.

“They might have nothing to do with us,” Torina said, though even she sounded doubtful.

“Van, there’s a small object positioned a few hundred thousand klicks almost directly above that moon’s north pole. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a scanner drone, probably gathering data on this side of the moon and sending the data back to the ship via comm beam. If B hadn’t alerted us, it probably would have fallen below my threshold value for triggering an alert,” Netty put in.

“Got it, Netty,” I answered, my mind whirling with possibilities.

Busier systems tended to be replete with sundry bits and pieces—everything from miscellaneous buoys and drones to lost cargo pods, to debris shed from ships because of shitty maintenance. Netty generally ignored them if they didn’t pose a navigational hazard to us or an imminent threat to another ship, which they very rarely did because space is very, very big.

The thing hanging in space above the moon was no exception. It was about the size of a refrigerator and slowly moving on a pretty much random trajectory. It may still be a harmless piece of flotsam—but taken with the ship holding position on the other side of said moon, I didn’t think so.

“Van, we’re just getting underway. There’s an array of trajectories we can take out of the system that will give whoever that is absolutely zero chance of intercepting us, unless they’ve got some drive capable of thousands of g’s,” Netty said.

I stared at the overlay. Netty was right. We could continue orbiting Wu’tzur, and then inject ourselves into a flight path that would take us directly away from the moon. The ship prowling on the other side of it would have no hope of catching us, at least not while Isaac Newton was still calling the shots. So—

“What’s their game then? Assuming that they’re actually interested in us—and that uneasy tingle in my gut is warning me to assume the worst—then they must know their chances of intercepting us are small,” I said, but Netty piped up again.

“Van, we’ve been assigned a new departure trajectory by Wu’tzur traffic control. Guess where it takes us?”

I sighed as she painted it onto the overlay. “Yeah, how about that. Right past the moon.”

Icky growled. “There’s a Wu’tzur traffic control asshole that’s gonna have a broken arm or three—”

“I don’t think so. This comes from the Wu’tzur traffic control AI. I think it was hacked,” Netty cut in.

“What makes you say that, Netty?” I asked.

“Because they’re trying to hack us, too. The traffic control AI is continuing to transmit, but the incoming data is definitely configured to try and infiltrate our systems through our comm.”

“Can you stop it?”

“You’re not the only one around here who’s paranoid, Van. After the last time we got hacked, because of Icky’s modifications to our propulsion controls—”

“Hey, I said I was sorry—” Icky groused, but Netty cut her off.

“Not a criticism, Icky, just a statement of fact. Anyway, I’ve been way more rigorous about screening incoming comms from sources I don’t entirely trust—and I don’t entirely trust this dumbass AI. I’m routing all its incoming comms to an isolated sandbox I’ve created—”

“Where I’m busy analyzing the hell out of it to see if we can figure out a way to hack it right back,” Perry put in. “Tiger by the tail and all that.”

B came on. “So, Van, we’ve got a hidden ship, a sketchy buoy or drone, a hacked AI, and now an attempt to hack you. What do you want to do?”

I narrowed my eyes as I considered it. The easiest thing to do would be to reject the new course we’d been given, since it was obviously invalid, and just stick with our original flight plan, or otherwise depart such that we avoided getting embroiled in the whole messy affair. But this was a sophisticated op, and I wanted to know more.

“Somebody has gone to an awful lot of trouble to set this up—and an awful lot of trouble inevitably translates to an awful lot of money. That says BeneStar to me. And I doubt that it’s some rep just checking to see if our car’s warranty is up-to-date.”

“Concur. Also, I did some wheeling and dealing with that freighter you see plodding along outbound, the one that just crossed the back side of the moon’s orbit. He’s a hell of a lot closer to that ship than I am, so I got him to swing his passive scanners, including optical, onto our lurking friend as he went by.”

As she spoke, more details appeared in the overlay, while the center display lit up with an image of the mysterious ship.

We all stared. “What the hell is that?” Icky finally asked.

“Class 9, definitely configured as a warship, judging from the armor alone,” Netty said.

“Yeah, but what’s that hanging underneath it? A fuel pod?” Icky asked.

“Nope. It’s a pod, but not fuel. It’s a bolt-on missile pod,” Zeno said.

“Yup. Design, emissions, radiation signature, it’s all unique. Whoever that is, they’re pros—and pros don’t come cheap,” B said.

But something had caught my eye. “Netty, can you zoom in on that thing, upper hull, forward?”

She did. The image lost resolution and went grainy, but it was still clear enough that I could make out what I’d seen. It was an insignia, a stylized flower.

“That looks familiar,” Torina said, frowning.

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s because you’ve seen it before. That’s the crest of the Oda Clan from ancient Japan. Remember Oda Nobunaga, the Demon King?”

She stared at me blankly for a moment, then remembered. “We saw it at Procyon. They were training the cannon fodder down on that frozen planet. Mercenaries, called—”

“Bulwark,” Perry said. “An offshoot of Group 41.”

“And Group 41 belongs to BeneStar,” I said, sitting back.

“Yeah, but if they’re cannon fodder, what’s the big deal?” Icky asked.

“They were training cannon fodder. They weren’t cannon fodder themselves. Big difference. Remember the Bulwark ship we saw at Procyon? It wasn’t very different from this one—sleek, well-armed and armored, and all-round deadly.”

“Brings us right back to my question, Van. What do you want to do?”

“B, do you think they’ve made you yet?” I asked.

“Doubt it. My ship doesn’t stand out as anything special, just another fast freighter. She’s kind of designed that way. And my transponder is currently telling the universe I’m registered in Tau Ceti, and carrying a load of pharmaceuticals to Wu’tzur. Which, incidentally, isn’t untrue. I think I’ve got a bottle of aspirin back in my cabin.”

“Okay. Good. I want these assholes. And I want them alive—partly because I want answers, but I also want to make a point to all of these bastards. Netty, could you jam that scanner drone of theirs and blind them, at least temporarily?”

“I’ve got about thirty megawatts of sweet, sweet jam I can pump into the ether, sure.”

I smiled. “Okay, then. Back in my Army days, I had a sergeant who was fond of saying that the three basic parts of warfare are find, fix, and strike. We’ve done the finding part. So now it’s time to do the fixing—and by that, I mean thoroughly fixing their attention on us.”

* * *

We broke orbit, but not before I checked with Icky to make sure she was truly ready to leave. She shrugged.

“I told them I’d be coming back, so… yeah. Let’s do it.”

“That’s what I like about you, Icky. You can treat deep, heartfelt emotions like pants and consider them optional.”

“Hey, I’ve taken to wearing this—what’s the human word for it? Kilt?”

“Or skirt. And it’s very pretty,” Perry said.

I glanced at him. “I invite you to make a trip to Scotland, bird, and call it a skirt. I doubt that even your alloy combat chassis would be up to taking a beating from an enraged Scotsman.”

“It’s not the beating that worries me. It’s when he, ahh, flashes you while doing so. Up close and personal, I might add,” Perry replied.

Funboy hissed with displeasure. “Close quarters nude combat is the single most unhygienic event north of Birmingham, England, and I say that as someone who saw a documentary about people rolling wheels of cheese with their noses.”

I laughed and gave Netty the go command. She lit the drive, and we dutifully left Wu’tzur orbit along the new flightpath we’d been given by the corrupted traffic control AI. It would take us about half a million klicks past the moon ahead of it in its orbit.

“B, you ready?”

“Got my finger hovering over the button,” she replied. “Itchy as hell.”

“You, or the trigger finger?” I asked her.

“Look at the screen,” B ordered.

“Why? Oh—I see. Interservice diplomacy,” I said with a laugh.

B was onscreen, one finger extended upward to me, and wearing a sweet smile. “This finger.”

“Thank you for the clarification,” I said with a grave nod. B vanished as the screen returned to scanner data, but her laughter echoed over comms. “Okay, Netty, go ahead and jam those assholes, put the ball into their court and see what happens.”

Netty blanketed the region around the moon with communications noise, thirty million watts worth, across the most likely comm spectrum used by the Bulwark ship to communicate with their scanner drone. Even if it didn’t block their comms entirely, it pronounced, in big, bold, flashing letters, that we knew they were there.

“Van, they’re turning tail and running,” B said.

“Freakin’ cowards,” Icky snapped.

“It only makes sense, though. They aren’t being paid to engage us in battle, nor do they want to. They can lose a battle. They’re being paid to kill us,” Funboy replied.

Zeno nodded. “If they can’t ambush us, then they’re not interested.”

“Still gutless cowards,” Icky muttered.

I shook my head. “This isn’t about bravery, Icky. There’s nothing honorable or glorious about any of this. It is just about them doing a job, and that job happens to involve killing all of us as efficiently as possible.”

I turned back to our comm. “B, have they made you yet?”

“Doesn’t look like it. They’re running more or less straight toward me. And, hey, I’m just a lowly old freighter clunking along on business of my own,” she replied.

We powered on. As we approached the moon, I had Torina take out the scanner drone with our lasers, putting the exclamation point to our movement and actions.

“Five minutes, Van,” B said.

We swept past the moon, almost straight above its north pole. Ahead of us, we could see the retreating Bulwark ship now, burning hard to get to a twist point and flee to fight another day. Just as they had no hope of catching us outside of certain narrow flight parameters, we were never going to catch them. Their drive was at least as powerful and efficient as the Fafnir’s, which meant a long, fruitless stern chase.

But we had our ace up our sleeve in the form of B. She’d have a limited engagement window, just a couple of minutes, as she and the Bulwark ship flashed past one another. That’s why it was so important for her to continue looking entirely innocuous, just an innocent bystander in all of this.

The time continued to tick down. If B couldn’t knock out the Bulwark ship’s drive during her two minute engagement window, then they’d escape. We’d called up Lunzy, Dugrop’che, even Valint and Amazing, to see if any of them could twist into a position to cut off our quarry, but none of them were in a spot to assist, not within a time frame that would make a difference, anyway.

“Time?” I asked.

“One minute… now, boss,” Netty called out.

The Bulwark ship drove on, still ignoring B. As far as they were concerned, we were the threat—which meant we’d achieved my sergeant’s second objective, fixing their attention where we wanted it.

Time for part three—strike.

“Okay, here we go,” B said. She lit up the Bulwark ship. Seconds later, it opened fire, and she returned the favor, loosing a trio of missiles to further fix their attention, while engaging with her lasers and targeting their engineering section.

It wasn’t a weapon discharge. It was a friggin’ onslaught.

It was also risky, because she could potentially cause a catastrophic failure of their antimatter containment. That was rare, but we’d seen it happen often enough to know that it was far from unheard of.

The Bulwark ship returned fire. For the next minute, destructive energy howled between it and B’s ship, while missiles flared in both directions.

I mused again just how beautiful space warfare could be—as long as I wasn’t being shot at, but Perry heard me.

“I always suspected you were, at heart, a creative,” he said with a metallic sniff.

“I wrote some poetry about a girl named Jennifer. Want to hear the first one hundred ninety-four stanzas?”

“Thanks, boss, but I’ll go eat a missile for us instead. You know, team player and all.”

“Your loss. My ability to rhyme sits with t—”

“B’s getting her punches in, Shakespeare. She’s also taking some damage,” Netty interjected.

“You know, our last few space battles have involved a lot of sitting and watching other people fight,” Torina observed, then winced as a sphere of plasma bloomed near B’s ship. “Ouch. They’re throwing heavy ordnance.”

I grunted and felt my jaw clench in response, being swept up in emotion as I watched people we cared about slugging it out with bad guys while being helpless to do much ourselves. Worse, in this case, we saw the Bulwark ship yaw to bring its missile pod to bear on B, then spit out a torrent of fire. They killed their drive so as to not deflect their course, but when they yawed back onto their original trajectory, their drive stayed dark.

“That’s an opportunity,” Funboy stated.

“You’re correct. And we won’t miss out. Netty, hit it,” I ordered.

We rapidly started overtaking them. Netty figured we had about ten minutes before we had to flip and decelerate if we were going to catch them.

“They might be counting on that,” Funboy said, eyes narrowed as he considered the raw math of our pursuit.

I glanced back at him. “What do you mean?”

“If they leave their drive shut down, as though it’s been knocked out, they could fire it again shortly after we start braking and still escape. It’s just the sort of deception I’d expect.”

I gave him a look of thanks but couldn’t dwell on it because B was in trouble. She had a dozen missiles inbound, and they were fast, military-grade birds, all weaving in a pattern that spoke of more than simple tin-box avionic presets.

I turned to Torina. “If you ever wanted to practice your long range shooting, now’s the time.”

“On it,” she said, swinging the fire control scanners onto the missiles and lining up shots.

“B, we’re going to try to take some of the heat off you,” I said.

“Much appreciated, because there’s a lot of it. Tell me the instant you think you’ve done all that you can, though, Van. I’ve got one more trick up my sleeve, but I’d like to delay the surprise as long as possible.”

“Fine, keep your secrets,” I said as Torina opened fire.

* * *

The next minutes were made of nerve-racking tension. I split my attention between the coasting Bulwark ship, B, and her incoming missiles. At least we knew she’d damaged our quarry because it had spalled off debris and vented atmosphere—unless that was all part of the ruse. It would be truly damaging to us if after all this, they managed to get away anyway.

Torina kept up a sustained laser barrage, firing the weapons as continuously as she could without overheating them and putting them into cooldown mode. She’d managed to take out four of the missiles racing in toward B, while B herself had taken down three more. That still left five.

“Her point-defenses are likely to take down two, possibly a third. But she’s going to be impacted by two or three missiles, I’m afraid. It’s pretty much inevitable,” Netty pronounced.

I cursed and turned to Torina. She, in turn, looked at Zeno, who oversaw our weapons.

Zeno sighed. “If we don’t let the lasers go through a cooldown cycle and vent some waste heat, we’re going to burn the emitters. And I’m not sure you want to lose them while we’re in the middle of a battle, because… you know, they’re basically all of our long-range firepower.”

I nodded. “Fine. B, we’ve done what we can,” I said. I desperately wanted to suggest something else, anything else, but we had nothing left. She was, as far as these last missiles were concerned, on her own.

“Thanks, Van. I’ll take it from here,” she said.

A few seconds later, her ship grew.

And kept growing. Its scanner return suddenly extended for a kilometer, then two, then ten. It swelled to an impossible size, as big as a small asteroid. Moreover, it flickered and shimmered in waves radiating out from her last known position, making it impossible to tell where, in that vast electronic ghost, she actually was.

“Okay, that’s pretty cool,” Icky said.

It was. I was tempted to contact B but didn’t because she wouldn’t be able to respond. If she did, she’d give away her actual position with her comm transmission, and that would defeat the whole purpose of her deception.

“Van, we need to start braking in one minute,” Netty said.

“You do you, my dear,” I said, but kept my attention firmly on B and her titanic, flickering ghost ship.

The last missiles raced in. She held back her point-defense fire, which frankly took balls of steel, watching missiles approaching but doing nothing about them but hiding behind some fancy electronic countermeasures. But balls of steel actually did a pretty good job of defining B.

Fifteen seconds later, the first missile detonated with a flash. The remaining two followed, each about five seconds apart.

B’s huge sensor ghost abruptly vanished. Her actual ship appeared and slewed onto a different trajectory. It trailed glowing sparks of debris and vented gases but seemed intact.

“B? You okay?”

A moment passed with me holding my breath before she answered. “Yeah, more or less. One of the damned things still managed to get close. That’s some good hardware they’ve got. Anyway, I’m offline, probably for an hour or so while we do damage control over here. It’s up to you now, Van.”

I let out the breath. “Yeah, we’re about to flip and start braking. B, thanks.”

“Remember all that drinking you owe me?”

“What about it?”

“Add dinner. And I mean the good stuff. None of your greasy Earthly fast-food crap.”

I smiled. “You like French food? If so, I know a certain ball-riding slug who can offer some damned good haute cuisine.”

“Haven’t been to France in a long time. You’re on. Just no escargot. Yuck.”

My smile became a laugh. “I doubt she offers it. I don’t think she wants to risk being related to the food she serves.”

13

“You guys ready?” I asked.

Icky, Funboy, and Zeno all gave a thumbs-up—four of them, in Icky’s case. Perry raised and lowered his wings.

“Torina, how about you?”

Her voice came over the comm. “Go do your thing, kick some asses, and take some names. I’ll hold the fort here.”

Fortunately, B’s damage to the Bulwark ship had been genuine. She’d not only blown off part of the main drive bell, but she’d also put two neat holes in their engineering section, which must have caused their power plant to scram. There was other damage, too, including some inflicted by Torina when she shot off their remaining weapons, including point-defenses. We’d taken a few hits in return, but with their power plant offline, they were stuck using their point-defense batteries, so the damage had been slight. They’d also loosed a couple of mass-driver shots at us, which was ballsy because the energy-hungry weapons would have sucked a good slug of juice out of their power cells with each shot.

The main danger now was them deciding to scuttle their ship by collapsing antimatter containment. I didn’t really think these guys would be suicidal, though. Technically, B’s hitting them with her fire control scanners could be interpreted as a hostile act—whether or not it justified them immediately opening fire was up for debate. There was no true slam-dunk case here, so no reason—I hoped—for them to go out in a blaze of antimatter fueled glory. More to the point, antimatter storage systems were designed to be extremely hard to compromise, so even if they did want to off themselves and us with them, they’d probably still be working at it. It did put us on a bit of a nail-biting clock, though.

So, we now hung at a relative stop about fifty meters away from the stricken Bulwark ship. We’d cross, I’d cut my way in with the Moonsword, then Perry and Funboy would secure engineering. Then Zeno and I would head forward to take the bridge, and Icky would back up whichever of our two pairs needed it the most.

“Okay, folks, here we go,” I said before gripping my maneuvering pack, pushing myself out of the airlock, and sailing across the gap between the two ships, trailing a monofilament tether. Halfway there, something slammed into me like a hammer blow, spinning me around.

I spat out a curse and fired the maneuvering pack, desperately trying to get myself righted. The Fafnir, the Bulwark ship, stars, the Fafnir again, they flashed by in a dizzying kaleidoscope—

“Van, you okay?” Icky shouted.

“Do I look like I’m okay?”

I caught a glimpse of Zeno in the airlock, firing what she’d taken to calling her BAG, her big-assed gun, at the other ship. I didn’t see her target, at least not until I managed to get my spin back under control. By that point, I was directly above the Bulwark ship relative to my starting point on the Fafnir and could see a figure in an open airlock. Or… most of a figure, anyway, since its head and one shoulder were gone, and a stream of shimmering, crimson globules were drifting off from the remains along what must have been the trajectory of Zeno’s shot. A slug rifle tumbled slowly away nearby.

“Take that, asshole,” she snapped.

I aimed myself at the Bulwark ship’s hull, about twenty-five meters away, and hit the thrust. “I’m glad he wasn’t shooting what you are, Zeno,” I said, looking at the impact point on my b-suit, on my right side, just below my ribs. His slug had struck and glanced away, passing between my torso and my right arm. If he’d caught me just a few centimeters further to the left—

I dismissed the thought. I’d become pretty good at that. It was a necessary skill, though, given the number of times I’d played tag with death since starting this Peacemaker thing and come within a hair of being it.

I reached the hull, gripped the base of an antenna mount, and let go of the maneuvering unit. It was tethered to my own tether behind me, so I nudged it aside, drew the Moonsword, and plunged it into the hull just ahead of where I judged the engineering bay to be.

“Van, they left a door open. Why don’t we just go in there?” Icky asked as the rest of them made the crossing.

“I like to be unpredictable,” I replied, then gritted my teeth, tugged the blade through the metal, and cut a rough circle around me, starting at the base of the antenna mount.

“Yeah, but every hole decreases the value of the damned thing as a prize.”

“I like to think”—I had to pull harder as I cut through a structural member—“that my life is worth at least as much… as a new piece of hull plate.”

“At least. Definitely at least.”

“Technically, the value of the chemical compounds that make up the non-aqueous component of your body are worth considerably less than a section of hull plating,” Funboy put in. “If you let your hair grow, it might be worth up to three hundred bonds. To the right person, of course.”

“You know, Funboy, I further like to think that Clive Van Able Tudor the Third is also worth more than the contents of a kid’s chemistry set,” I muttered, moving aside so Icky could land on the hull a meter or so away, grip the dismembered piece of hull, and heave it free of my ad hoc opening. Then I added, “And under no circumstances are you to tell me who the hell you’d sell human hair to.”

Funboy touched deftly down on the hull a couple of meters away. “Of course you are, Van. You are worth somewhat more than that.”

I glanced at him as I prepared to enter. “You actually think that’s a compliment, don’t you?”

He blinked behind his visor. “Yes, I do.”

I smiled, shook my head, then drew The Drop and entered the Bulwark ship.

“Wait, I just have to know—” I began.

Funboy cut me off. “Your hair? Um, to quote you, I got a guy.”

“Of course you do. Okay, moving on.” I found myself in a machinery space, a compartment jammed with pipes and conduits. I’d cut through several of them—always a risk of breaching this way—and now one of them leaked murky fluid and—

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Zeno asked, about to follow me in.

“Shit. I mean, literally. That’s what’s wrong.”

I saw Icky peer through the breach behind Zeno. She grinned behind her visor. “Hey, bird, got a job for you. I mean, it is a subject you know quite well, having experience running a waste reclamator and all.”

“Icky, picture this—the rudest gesture you can possibly imagine. Now, imagine me making it to you,” Perry shot back.

I pushed on to the hatch across the compartment, batting aside… debris… as I went.

“You never see shit like this in sci-fi, do you,” I muttered.

Perry sniffed. “Are you surprised? Who the hell would want to read about something like that?”

* * *

The Bulwark ship was completely depressurized, though whether done deliberately, like we did in battle to avoid catastrophic explosive decompression, or by damage, we weren’t sure. It meant there was no sound, other than my own breathing and the voices over the comm.

Beyond the hatch the central corridor of the ship went left and right. As soon as I stuck my head out of it, I saw a flash and a shower of sparks against the bulkhead beside me, erupting from a glowing dent that hadn’t been there an instant before. I’d led with The Drop and immediately double-tapped a couple of rounds in the direction the shot had come from. Then I hunted for an actual target and saw a figure ducked around a corner about five meters away. We both aimed and fired again, and again we both managed to flinch away from the other’s shots and miss with our own.

Zeno shoved her way past, jamming her BAG through the open hatch and grinding it into my shoulder. Pressed right up against me, she fired just as the other figure ducked out for another shot, her barrage of armor-piercing slugs ripping him and the bulkheads around him apart, the first in a shower of gore, the second in scintillating flashes and whirling bits of metal. If there’d been an atmosphere, I’d have been walloped by her muzzle blast from less than a meter in front of my face.

I turned my head far enough to look right into Zeno’s face. She grinned.

“Hey, Van.”

“This is awfully intimate, Zeno.”

“Right? Don’t tell Torina.”

Torina’s voice hummed in my ears. “Don’t tell me what?”

“Torina, Zeno’s making out with your boyfriend in the middle of a firefight,” Icky said.

“Oh. Well, you guys have fun with that. And don’t get pash rash. She’s got more whiskers than a Baldwin brother after five o’clock.”

Icky asked, “Huh?”

“Hirsute men from a place called New York. I’ll tell you about it another time,” Perry chimed in.

“What’s a hair suit?” Icky asked.

“It’s what a Baldwin wears. But, like, every day,” Perry informed her. “Back to combat, big girl. I’ll tell you about the 1990s another time.”

Funboy spoke up. “The Hunt for Red October was in the 1980s, actually.”

“I don’t wanna know, but… yeah. He’s right,” I said, shaking my head. “Funboy, why?”

He managed a shrug. “I like the submarine pinging noises.”

Zeno twitched her whiskers. “We all do, Funboy. Such whimsy. Can I use my gun again now?”

“I hope we don’t have to,” I admitted, then we extricated ourselves from one another and started forward, while Perry and Funboy went aft. Icky, per the plan, stayed here at the breach, acting as our reserve.

“Somebody find me something to beat the snot out of,” Icky said as we each went our separate ways. “Preferably with a little spirit. I’m an emotional being, you know.”

I snorted. “Yes. One punching bag, coming up.”

We found two more crew, both dead. One had been struck by an errant piece of shrapnel from one of B’s missiles, making him the unluckiest guy formerly alive, since she’d deliberately had them detonate well away from the Bulwark ship. The other had been gruesomely struck full-on by a laser shot that had burned through the armor, incinerating a neat, circular chunk out of his torso. It had cauterized the surrounding tissue to charred meat, so there wasn’t even any blood.

“Cause of death?” Zeno asked.

“I’m going with missing organs and fluid loss, but I’m no doctor,” I said.

“Good enough for the Guild,” Perry called over the comms.

“Thanks, bird. Be safe up there.”

“You too, boss.”

We pushed on, reaching a junction where the corridor split into left and right branches, each of which continued traversing up the length of the ship. Zeno stayed back to cover the one to the left, while I continued forward to the right.

“Van, Perry and I have secured engineering,” Funboy reported. “We had to take out another bad guy who was trying to—“ A pause. “Apparently, he was working every control he could find for some reason. Whoever he was, I don’t think he was an engineer.”

“I’m just glad he didn’t accidentally manage to—”

A figure stepped out of a compartment immediately ahead of me. He raised a slug pistol into my face at point-blank range and fired. Innsu came to my rescue again, my reflexes jerking me aside before my brain could even begin to react. The shot slammed into the left side of my helmet with a deafening clack, followed by a hiss of escaping air.

I had a leak, and no time to dwell on it.

Immediately, I clocked a Yonnox behind the other visor, my hand lashing out and driving The Drop into a point halfway up the right side of his torso. If he’d been wearing body armor, this wouldn’t have worked, but he was clad in an ordinary vac suit. The impact flung him backward, leaving him drooling and gasping from blunt force trauma.

Perry flew up behind me. “Okay, boss, from here aft the ship is under our—hey, nice position on that punch. You really do pay attention to those cultural sensitivity vids I send you.”

I glanced at him. “Cultural sensitivity?”

“Yeah. Where each culture is sensitive to being struck, pummeled, jabbed, or otherwise impacted by blunt force.”

“We got one more back here, Van,” Zeno said. “A Sorcerer. He was trying to sneak up this other corridor, probably to get behind us. My BAG dissuaded him from doing anything but laying down his weapon once he found himself face-to-face with the muzzle, though.”

“Thanks, Zeno.” I handed the Yonnox off to Icky, who’d come forward once engineering was clear—disappointed, because there was no fighting to join—then proceeded forward with Perry. We found no other living crew, and we were able to take control of the bridge without incident.

While Perry started digging into their data archives and Funboy got things sorted out in engineering, ensuring nothing was going to explode, Zeno, Icky, and I rounded up our two prisoners, disarmed them, then gave them a quick round of preliminary interrogation. They immediately proved less than cooperative.

“We found two dead of small-arms wounds, a Nesit and a Fren-Okun,” Icky said. “We didn’t shoot ’em, so I guess these assholes did. Looks like they did the math and thought division by two made for a better share of the bounty.”

I looked at our two captives in disgust. I had little doubt the two they’d shot were more of the cannon fodder we’d seen the Bulwark training on the icy planet in the Procyon system. “You scumbags really take that Demon King thing about Oda Nobunaga to heart, don’t you?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” the Yonnox snapped back, his breathing still a little labored from my punch.

“Oda Nobunaga. Oda Clan, ancient Japan—you have their insignia right on the outside of your ship, jackass.”

“Do we?”

I rolled my eyes in disgust.

“Speaking of bounties, I wonder what we’re worth now,” Zeno asked.

“Dead or alive, you’re worth more than this ship,” the Sorcerer said, his voice laced with growl.

I smiled at him with plasticine cheer. “Really? I’m flattered.”

“What you are is an amateur, compared to what’s after you.”

“So I take it you don’t place yourself in the better-than-amateur category then since”—I gestured around at their battered—and captured—ship—“well, here we are, and there you are, handcuffed on the deck. So why should I believe anything you say?”

He bristled at that but regained his composure and leered back at me. “You’re blissfully stupid, aren’t you? Every Legalist in known space is hunting you. And for the kind of money on your head? We’ll all die trying.”

“Yes, you will. Oh, and it’s still an option for you guys if you don’t prove your worth to me.”

“You’re a Peacemaker. We’re in custody. That’s an empty threat.”

I crouched and grinned. “I’m also part of an organization that sometimes works off the books. So if I round up a couple of the slug guns you guys have on board and put a round between your eyes, whose going to know you didn’t kill one another over the bounty the way you murdered your colleagues back there? And who the hell is going to care?”

The Sorcerer just scowled, and the Yonnox blanched a little, giving me my opening.

“But you’re safe for the moment, and longer if I get some answers. So let’s start with this—where is Helem Gauss?”

* * *

Unfortunately, they didn’t know. Not that I’d expected them to, but it was worth a shot. In fact, we learned not much of anything from them, which also didn’t surprise me, because they were just low-ranking foot soldiers in the greater scheme of things. Of much more interest, though, were their flight logs, which had only been partially wiped before one of B’s shots had severed the connection between the primary archives on the bridge systems and the backups kept further aft. Perry was still able to retrieve a bunch of data from the latter, including a record of where this ship had recently been.

“Hmm.”

“Good hmm, or hmm, I’m troubled by the lack of data, dear?” Torina asked me.

“Good hmm. Might be—look at this. Rather, them. See that?” I asked her, tapping a finger on the data slate.

Of the last dozen ports of call, two jumped out at me. One was a legitimate mining operation in everyone’s favorite system for sketchy things going on, Wolf 424. The other was an unknown location, simply designated by a string of numbers and letters, in a system a few light-years beyond Tau Ceti-controlled space. The point was roughly seventy light-years from Earth and called Epsilon Serpentis.

“Let me shake their cage real quick,” I muttered, then stood and turned to show the slate to our prisoners, one at a time, and asked them each what was there. The Sorcerer shrugged. “No idea. I came aboard after that.”

I sighed, knowing full well that he was lying, but I’d already come to accept that this guy wasn’t going to be any help. The Yonnox was more forthcoming, though.

“Some mining thing. That’s all I know—”

The Sorcerer suddenly lunged at the Yonnox with a small knife—his cuffs, now loose, went flying as the blade punched forward in a silvery blur. The bastard was fast. He landed a strike that gashed open the Yonnox’s suit and the arm beneath—

And then Icky’s sledgehammer came down on his helmet, cracking it like an egg with a finality broken only by a single grotesque twitch of one arm. Absent air pressure, the gory fluid immediately began to boil as it poured from the corpse, and Funboy took a small step back, wearing the equivalent of a frown.

“Now I feel like I’ve accomplished something on this little venture,” Icky said, but my focus was on the Yonnox, whose scream had collapsed into a wet, gurgling whimper. I didn’t want to lose him, so I fumbled for first-aid spray.

Funboy beat me to it. He flooded the gash with sealing foam, stopping it up. But he shook his head. “I think he’s going to lose that arm. That blade cut right through the bone. That was—that attack had purpose.”

Zeno retrieved the knife and examined it. “Oh, that’s clever, and by clever, I mean evil. This thing vibrates—and not in the good way,” she said, flashing a wicked grin.

“Zeno—”

“It dramatically increases the cutting power, is what I meant. Get your mind out of the gutter, Tudor.”

I curled my lip at her. “How the hell did he get out of his cuffs?”

We examined our handcuffs and found they’d simply broken. “Must be some feature of that cuff thing the Sorcerers wear. Probably where he had that knife stashed, too,” Zeno finally concluded.

“Okay. From now on, when we catch a Sorcerer, that cuff comes off,” I growled.

“Van, the damned thing is grafted right onto their arm. That’s why you gave up trying to use that one we reverse engineered, remember?”

“I don’t care. Funboy, I’d like you to come up with some expedient way of getting their super-secret decoder-ring cuffs off so we don’t have one of these assholes landing a hit on one of us next time,” I said.

“I will do so. However, for it to be done expediently, it may be quite intrusive and painful for the Sorcerer in question,” he replied.

“I understand if you have a problem with that, but we really need—”

“I have no problem with it. It was merely an observation. Life is, after all, just the period of pain between birth and death.”

“Are there any moments you can’t somehow make depressing?”

Funboy blinked. “Perhaps… a party?” He frowned. “But not a birthday party. Those are just beats of the metronome that count our final—”

“I get it, yeah, thanks.” I looked at the slate again, while Funboy continued to stabilize the Yonnox. We decided to hand him over to B, who’d gotten her drive relit and was back under steerageway, now backtracking to join us. She’d take care of dealing with the Bulwark ship as well.

“Netty, can you or Perry correlate this Epsilon Serpentis location with anything we’ve encountered in any records we’ve seized, or with anything else? At all?” I asked.

“That same alphanumeric string that designates the location shows up in other BeneStar records we’ve seized, but without any details. In fact, until now, we had no idea what it actually meant,” she replied.

“Okay, then. Looks like we need to pay the place a visit.”

“That… could be a problem,” Netty said.

“Why?”

“Antimatter fuel. Getting there is three twists, if we’re going to get decent nav fixes along the way. Unless, of course, you’re okay ending up a light-year off, with no fuel to twist, and spending the next few thousand years flying there in real space at sublight. We could risk doing it in two twists, which would narrow the margin of error down a fair bit but would still leave us enjoying the wonders of Epsilon Serpentis with no antimatter fuel in the tank.”

“Okay… but we should be able to get fuel from B. And from this tub.”

“I’ve already factored that in. I spoke to B’s AI, and all of the antimatter she’s got left, along with what remains aboard the Bulwark ship, is enough for us to make two of the three twists that will guarantee good nav. Further, those twists will leave us tapped out, no matter what tactics we use to save fuel. And then there’s the third twist, too.”

“That’s the one that will probably leave us stranded in the middle of nowhere,” Zeno concluded.

I checked our position and saw a fix. “Alright, so we’ll just buy some more. We’re only a few hours from Wu’tzur.”

“Not sure that’s a good idea either, Van. Three more ships, a class 9 and two class 11s, have just arrived in-system, and they all look sketchy as hell. They’re also all inbound, roughly, to our current location. The closest is still three hours away, but by the time we get back to Wu’tzur, gas up, and try to depart again—”

“We could find ourselves flying into a whole flotilla of these—what the hell did that Sorcerer call them?”

“Legalists. According to Guild intel, it’s a new euphemism for corporate hitmen making the rounds,” Perry said.

I cursed, low and savage. “Well, then we’ll just have to twist and fuel up somewhere else.”

“Van, we have to assume that we’re compromised, thanks at the very least to Kharsweil. If we use our Guild account to pay for fuel or anything that requires a digital footprint, we’re pretty much turning ourselves in,” Perry replied.

I steeled myself, letting a breath drain away in a calming ritual that almost worked. “Okay, so what you guys are telling me is that we can’t stay here, but we can’t fuel up here or pretty much anywhere else, so—” I sighed. “I’m officially open to suggestions, folks.”

“My parents could keep the Fafnir fueled up for years if we could get to Helso,” Torina said.

“Kind of the same issue. We’d have to get there in one long, inaccurate twist, then count on someone to likely come rescue us,” Netty said.

“Not to mention that Helso, along with Earth, are two places that we can pretty much guarantee are going to be watched closely,” Perry added.

I clenched my jaw in frustration. “Okay, fine. We’ll have to finesse a meeting with someone who can gas us up, do it off the books, and—”

I trailed off as inspiration struck. “I have an idea.”

Zeno frowned. “Your mother? You sure you want to involve her in this, Van? Based on what you’ve said—”

“Not my mother, Zeno, but you’re on the right track. Netty, get Valint on the line for me, would you?”

* * *

“Sorry, Van, but we old crones need frequent naps,” Valint said, sounding a little bleary.

I leaned on the small desk in my cabin and smiled into the display. “You look like the Venus de Milo come to life, grandma. Don’t give me that poor tired old lady bullshit.”

She smiled back and shrugged. “Okay, but you did wake me up. What can I do for you?”

I explained the situation. “So if you can meet us there and transfer some antimatter to us so we can get home, I’d consider myself in your debt.”

“I can do that. However, my next question is, what’s the purpose of going there in the first place? It’s apparently a mining operation. You suddenly taking up rock collecting?”

“Hey, I had a rock collection back when I was about twelve. But no, this isn’t about revisiting childhood hobbies. First, I want to hit out at BeneStar and their minions again. I don’t want to fall into the trap of waiting for them to come to us—I want to keep taking the fight to them. Second, where there’s a mine, there are probably bonds, or things worth bonds—including, I’m hoping, a few kilos of osmium. If we can raise cash to keep the Fafnir flying, we don’t have to worry about being tracked or given away when we use our accounts.”

She pushed up her lower lip, then nodded. “Sounds good to me. I’ll likely get there before you do, so I can scope the place out.” She offered a thin smile. “If there’s no opposition, I might even do a bit of orbital bombarding, soften them up a bit, make life easier for you when you go planetside.”

“Hey, I was just about to suggest that. We really are family, aren’t we?”

“The family that bombards planets from orbit together, and all that. By the way, do you have some target number in mind for this infusion of cash you’re looking for?”

“As much as possible. We figure four million bonds would be ideal if we could swing it. It should keep us going pretty much indefinitely, barring anything catastrophic.”

She whistled. “Talk about ambitious.”

“Hey, shoot for the stars—literally, right? Anyway, I’ll meet you in orbit, Gran.”

“I thought I told you not to call me Gran or Grandma or anything like that. It really does make me sound like an old crone. Besides, I’m too young to be someone’s grandmother.”

I grinned. “Sorry.”

Valint narrowed her eyes at me. “By the way, Van—why didn’t you call your mother to help?”

My grin died. “I thought about it, but… I don’t know. She seems fine, reliable, all that, and then she… she changes. She gets super violent, or withdrawn, or—” I shrugged. “Anyway, I’m still working on how to deal with her.”

“You can’t keep avoiding her, Van. For one, she’s a force within the GKU. An influential one. A lot of the so-called splinter factions will answer to her before anyone else. And for another… she’s your mother.”

“I know.”

“Well, I’ll leave you with that and see you at Epsilon Serpentis in a day or so. Valint out.”

I sat back, laced my fingers together behind my head, and blew out a long breath at the overhead above me.

Valint was right. I couldn’t keep running from my mother. We both knew it would take time for us to really connect—but that time would be forever if I didn’t even try.

14

We arrived at Epsilon Serpentis, a bright, white star hotter than Sol, with our antimatter reserves almost fully depleted. We had enough anti-deuterium for an hour or so of twist comms, or a single twist of the Fafnir to—nowhere, actually, except some random point in interstellar space, or possibly a lonely red dwarf about a light-year away, which wouldn’t do us a damned bit of good.

It gave us a few anxious moments as we looked for, but couldn’t find, Valint. It didn’t mean we were completely screwed because we could always call my mother, or Groshenko, or another Peacemaker, or even Gerhardt for help. But it did mean that, until they arrived, we’d be stuck here, unable to leave—or unable to flee if we suddenly found ourselves outmatched.

Fortunately, though, Valint’s Stormshadow rose over the limb of the system’s sole rocky planet, the one upon which the rogue mining operation was based, her orbit bringing her back into line-of-sight and comms with the Fafnir

“I wasn’t nervous at all,” I said with an airy wave.

She laughed, a bright sound at odds with her real age.

“What’s an op without a little dramatic tension? The ones that go like clockwork are boring.”

“You know, I could use some boring right about now. A few days of it, maybe even a few weeks of it in a row,” I said as Netty and her AI, Bunn, worked out rendezvous details.

As we made our approach, Valint updated us on the situation. “I’ve confirmed that this is a non-registered mining operation, which is a problem for these guys because Tau Ceti has made a claim to this system. It’s still in the works—the Eridani Federation filed a notice of dispute, but that’s as far as any of it has gone.”

“It means that, under the Known Space Star Systems Claims Protocol, this system should be kept free of any development until the parties involved have made their respective cases, and they’ve been adjudicated by the relevant interstellar authority,” Perry said.

Valint nodded. “Perry’s got it exactly right.”

“Well, duh. Was there ever any doubt?”

Valint smiled. “Anyway, I’ve done a thorough scan of the surface and, well, it’s a mess down there. You’d be excused for thinking it’s some old mining operation that was abandoned years ago. But there are people down there, and there is active mining.”

“What about ship traffic?” I asked. “The system looks pretty dead.”

“One outbound ship when I arrived that I wasn’t able to stop. Other than that, there were two ships, a class 6 and a class 8 on the ground, at what passes for a starport—really, it’s just a patch of annealed bedrock. The class 6 looks like it’s been half taken apart, so it’s probably derelict and maybe just being stripped for parts.”

“Bets that it’s stolen?” Torina put in, and we all shook our heads. She sighed. “I always miss out on the sure things.”

“What about the class 8?” I asked.

Valint shrugged. “It looks flyable, but there’s been no activity and her power plant is dark. And despite our earlier conversation, I haven’t shot at anything down there because there’s nothing obvious to shoot at. Frankly, I can’t tell what’s just scrap and junk and what isn’t. This is obviously a shoestring operation. If I had to guess, it’s some bit player hoping to scrape up a few crumbs BeneStar might drop in their general direction.”

“But osmium is osmium, whether it’s mined with a shovel or a slick, state-of-the-art robotic digger,” I offered, and Valint nodded.

I nodded back. “Okay, once we’ve got our fuel transfer done, we’ll enter orbit and decide what to do and where to do it. If you could stay up here and cover us, that’d be great.”

“For my favorite grandson? How could I do anything else?”

Grinning, I turned to my friends. “When your grandmother is willing to use orbital nukes, you know you’re her favorite.”

* * *

“Move over, Dregs, there’s a new shithole in town,” I muttered as we picked our way along a wide drainage ditch, carrying effluent from the mine about a klick away into a river that was essentially a long, sinuous swamp.

“I think they’re breaking a few environmental regs,” Zeno said.

“I think they’re breaking all the environmental regs,” Perry replied.

Funboy sniffed. “Including several that haven’t even been written yet.”

The ditch, a muddy scar across the landscape, was typical for the operation. It was just enough to get the job done—in this case, carrying industrial runoff from an ore concentrator and dumping it, untreated, into the boggy river—and absolutely no more. This wasn’t a community built on thrift. It was created out of greed and desperation.

Along the way, we passed discarded machinery, frayed chunks of cable, rusted lengths of structural steel, and miscellaneous trash, all of it pushed or dumped into the ditch. In a few places, the junk acted as a sort of dam, backing up the runoff into sludgy, toxic pools that shimmered, and, in other places it slowly writhed and oozed with thick, syrupy bubbles.

Despite the theoretically breathable air, we decided to stay sealed up in our suits with our helmets on. It was a good thing we had, because we were using the ditch as a covered approach to our target, and the still, fetid air hanging in it analyzed as genuinely poisonous.

We stopped alongside one of the ponds. Epsilon Serpentis hung straight above us, a fierce white glare diffused through a pervasive smog, like turning on high beams while driving into fog. Torina looked across the murky water and sighed.

“Well, at least I know where I want to go for our anniversary,” she said.

“And where would that be, my dear?” I asked her.

She turned and gave me a flat look from behind her visor. “Not here.”

“I would need a booster shot before I even put a toe near that… water. And by booster, I mean booster for everything,” Zeno said.

“That isn’t water. That’s… liquid disease. Or toxins. Or, more likely, diseased toxins.”

Zeno grunted. “You know, for once, I don’t think Funboy’s overreacting.”

We pressed on. Icky, who we’d left in the Fafnir in geosynchronous orbit, came on the comm to grouch.

“You guys fighting yet?”

“No, Icky, we’re not. And, with any luck, we won’t be. This is basically just a bank heist.”

Silence. Then—

“How come I’m the one who gets stuck up here while you guys have all the fun?”

Torina tugged at her foot, then pulled hard three times to yank it with a wet slurp from muck the color of despair. “This is fun, huh? I’m having my doubts.”

“Is that a skull?” Perry asked.

I toed the object, and it squelched, then shattered into three pieces. “It was. As to the species—”

“Better we don’t ask,” Zeno said, casting a suspicious glance at the broken bones.

“Good call. And here we have our local villas, both with a view of”—I waved—“all this majesty.”

Ahead, two ramshackle huts slumped into the ditch, just before a bend. After advancing with caution, we peered around it.

About fifty meters ahead of us, a rickety bridge spanned the ditch. Crude, makeshift buildings huddled on either side of it, one of several settlements clustered around the mine. A mishmash of cargo pods, scrap structural materials, tarps, rocks, and wood, they were apparently the company towns for the operation. By tapping into unencrypted comm traffic and doing some pattern recognition, Perry was able to ascertain that the largest of the buildings ahead—two stories of stacked cargo pods—was what amounted to a combined administration office and, more importantly, a dual purpose bank and payroll center.

Bank in this place really meant a source for crippling, usurious loan-sharking, but since we had to assume the only people who’d come to work in a shithole like this were desperate to begin with, an added bit of debt-fueled desperation probably didn’t make much difference.

“You know, even with the chance of a big payoff, I think I’d probably turn back to a life of crime before I came here,” Zeno said.

“I’d drive the getaway car. Or ship,” I admitted.

The people forced to come and work at a place like this were the most pathetic combination of hopeless and honest—hopeless, in that life had dealt them a hand with almost no prospect of winning, and honest, insofar as they had some degree of integrity. It took a dark kind of courage to turn to a life of crime—and few people, given the chance, truly went down that path. I was glad that Valint hadn’t decided to bombard this place because these people didn’t deserve it.

Or, rather, the ones who did were thoroughly embedded in the rest. Hence the need for a more surgical strike.

“Everyone ready?” I asked.

I got an array of expressions and sounds that meant we were good to go. Our plan was simple. Zeno would take up a good observation position with her BAG, ready to give us covering fire as needed. Torina, Funboy, and I would break into the so-called bank, scoop up whatever we could, then get the hell out. Perry would fly overwatch to keep an airborne lookout for threats.

Which he was doing now. I could see him circling high above, a dark speck wheeling against the diffuse white glare of the sky.

“Perry, how does it look?”

“Like a shithole, except from above.”

“Perry—”

“Sorry, boss, but it’s just so damned depressing.”

“Granted. Now, back to the task at hand—”

“I don’t see any obvious threats. The nearest thing resembling security is a guard post at a gate on the road that runs across the north side of the mine. It’s about a klick away, and there’s a ground car there, but no other signs of activity.”

“Got it. Keep an eye on it.”

“Will do.”

I signaled to Zeno. She gave me a thumbs-up, then clambered up the bank of the ditch, placed herself in a small saddle between two humps of dirt where she overlooked the settlement, and came on the comm.

“I’m in position. Lying down. In mud. Yuck.”

“We’ll hose you down before we leave. Speaking of leaving—Netty, are you ready?”

“I’m always ready, Van. I’m pretty much incapable of not being ready, in fact.”

I chuckled. “A simple yes would have sufficed, my dear.”

“You call, I’ll bring the Frankie to pick you guys up.”

“Okay. Valint, how about you?”

“Ready if and when you need me,” she replied.

Valint was our combination reserve and get-out-of-jail-free card. She had the Stormshadow in a low orbit inclined to keep her well away from the scrutiny of the mine, meaning she could do an atmospheric insertion to come and help us on the ground or break orbit to help out Icky if some threat appeared in the heavens.

I turned to Torina and Funboy. “Showtime.”

Brandishing The Drop, I rose to a crouch and started along the ditch, the others staggered left and right behind me.

* * *

We moved quickly among the ramshackle buildings. We saw scrawny, grubby people in bland coveralls, but as soon as they saw us, they recognized trouble and vanished. After a few instances of that, we saw no one else, word that something was going down apparently sweeping through the little settlement.

I stopped outside a group of rusty cargo pods topped by a neon-bright sign that cycled through the phrase Get Drunk Here in various languages. Ragged, grubby plastic tarps covered a small patio containing rickety chairs and stained, wobbly tables. The whole place had a post-apocalyptic vibe, like something lifted from a video game.

I peered around the corner at our bank. As I did, I was hit with a pang of guilt. Sure, we were about to seize whatever bonds and other things of value we could find in here, but what impact would that have on these people? Were we really ripping off their sleazy employers, whoever that was, and BeneStar by extension? Or were we effectively stealing their meager pay?

I cleared my mind because hesitation now—in this moment—was an opening for failure. For harming my crew, either by distraction or a lack of execution on my part. As painful as this might be in the near term, any osmium recovered here would be used to make identity chips, which in turn would be used to inflict untold suffering on many, many more people. Sometimes your choices really were only among various evils, and the best you could do was go with the lesser.

I waved at Torina and Funboy, who were a tactical bound behind me—close enough that we could maintain visual contact, but far enough apart that we couldn’t all be engaged at once. They started forward, and I broke cover. Torina, the best shot among us, took cover with her slug rifle at the corner I’d just vacated, while Funboy fell in to my right, about five meters away. We hurried across the street—

—making it about halfway before somebody opened up on us with an auto gun from one of the upper levels of the bank with a staccato chatter. Rounds smacked into the dirt around Funboy and me. I heard him say “Oh, dear” as a slug smacked into him. He staggered but kept going. Another slug hit my left shoulder, but my b-suit staunchly deflected it, leaving me with what would be a heluva bruise tomorrow.

Behind us, Torina’s rifle answered, three deliberate shots that silenced the shooter with a truncated howl of pain. Funboy and I made it to either side of the door to the bank. I glanced at him.

“You okay?”

“I’ve received a blunt force trauma injury of severity three on the standardized scale, to my lower left anterior torso.”

“Is that a yes?”

“I’m quite fine, yes.”

“Thank you.” At that, I turned to the door, but from above us came a loud hiss. A projectile streaked across the street, slammed into the wall beside Torina, and detonated with a searing flash and a sharp bang. Shrapnel erupted in all directions, clanging against some of the buildings, puncturing others. I heard shouts and screams from all around.

But I could only focus on Torina. She was down.

“Torina!”

Silence.

“Torina—!” I started toward her, but Funboy grabbed me.

“Van, we have to silence the shooters, or you’ll be the next casualty.”

I glared at him, then flung myself back against the wall. “Zeno, covering fire!”

“Perry’s already zeroing me in. Stand by.”

More gunfire erupted from the bank, but I wasn’t sure what the target was. A few seconds later, big armor-piercing explosive rounds from Zeno’s BAG began smashing into the upper floors to chaotic effect. Funboy and I winced at the repeated wham-wham-wham-wham from just above our heads. Debris rained down around us, and I ducked again out of sheer instinct at the stunning noise of each shot.

“Van, I can take care of Torina or join you in breaching,” Funboy said.

I glanced back at Torina. She was still down, still motionless.

“Take care of her. I’ll handle these assholes,” I said, switching The Drop to my off hand and drawing the Moonsword. Funboy nodded and ran back across the street to Torina.

I turned away, kicked open the flimsy door, and burst inside.

* * *

Someone—a Nesit—huddled behind a desk. He snapped out a couple of unaimed rounds with a slug pistol, both of which missed.

I cut him in half lengthwise and kept going.

A Sorcerer crouched at the top of the stairs to the next level up, aiming a rifle downward. He fired as I appeared, the slug clacking off my helmet. A second later, he threw something down the stairs—a grenade.

I only remember what happened next in hindsight since it didn’t involve any deliberate, conscious thought on my part. Instead, what abruptly surfaced in my brain was a series of muscle-memory movements that brought an image back to my mind—bright sunshine, freshly cut grass, the shouts of other kids—

A baseball descending from the sky.

I caught the grenade and immediately flung it straight back up at the Sorcerer. I caught a glimpse of utter surprise on his face as it sailed back toward him. The expression, and the face making it, both vanished when the grenade detonated less than a meter before his chest and head.

The concussion walloped me, like I’d run face-first into a wall. Shrapnel peppered my b-suit. A flash of pain seared my right forearm. Another shot through my right thigh, electric sensations of agony. I staggered. Righted myself.

And found, to my surprise, I was still pissed.

The flash left purple spots seared into my vision, which remained clouded. It took me a second or two to realize my visor was cracked, probably by a shrapnel hit. I shook off the shock and pounded up the stairs, The Drop and the Moonsword ready. In seconds, I found myself—

—standing amid ruin. Zeno’s suppressive fire had shredded the upper two floors of the bank, ripping the walls apart into blossoms of torn metal, smashing furniture, shredding documents, and spattering all of it with blood and gore from whoever had been up here. I saw part of a body sprawled across a desk, most of everything below the ribcage simply gone. A fine organic mist hung in the air, the odor sharp and primal.

I stood, blinking. Catching my breath. Turned around, peering through the lingering fumes for any more enemies.

None.

“Van? Van, are you there? Are you okay?”

It was Zeno. “I—yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. This place is clear—shit!”

I turned and pounded back down the stairs, through the ruin of the lower office, out the door, and back into the street. I saw Funboy crouched over Torina. I started toward him.

“Funboy, is she—”

“She’s stable, Van. Now, go and do what we came here to do. I’ll take care of her,” he said, his voice about as animated as if he’d been reading me a grocery list I needed to fill. His odd tone, somehow both singsong and monotone at the same time, stopped me in the middle of the street.

She was in good hands, I knew. The best.

I turned and headed back into the bank, determined to do what we’d come to do, just as Funboy had said.

I could only hope the reward ended up being worth the cost.

* * *

The Frankie landed just outside the settlement, easing down with a feathered touch. Funboy and I lugged Torina, still unconscious, to it, while Zeno followed, swinging her BAG menacingly from flank to flank. No one tried to stop us. No one dared. We were met with averted gazes and an air of fear so thick it had weight.

“Van, there are a couple of ground cars converging on your location. One’s coming from that guard post I mentioned. It’s about five hundred meters away. Another one’s coming up from the south, about a klick out,” Perry said.

“Got it, Perry, thanks,” I said as we loaded Torina and ourselves aboard the Frankie. We also carried the spoils of our raid, which was not as much as I’d hoped—less than five hundred thousand bonds—but it was something, at least.

Valint came on the comm. “Van, that class 8 is powering up. Looks like it’s going to lift soon.”

I sealed the Frankie’s hatch. “Excellent. Somebody’s trying to get away with the real goods.”

“The osmium.”

“If I had to guess. Icky, meet us in orbit—”

“Already on my way,” she said.

“Valint, don’t let that class 8 bastard get away,” I snapped, kneeling beside Torina as Zeno took the controls and lifted the Frankie.

“Icky’s better positioned than I am. If she can cut it off, I can come at it from behind.”

“So can we,” Zeno shouted back.

“Do it, Zeno. I want those bastards stopped,” I snapped, yanking off my damaged helmet and leaning over Torina. Funboy had pulled off her helmet and opened her b-suit so he could examine her injuries. I turned to him.

“Well?”

“She’s suffered some serious internal trauma from the blast effect. I suspect a ruptured spleen. Unfortunately, a b-suit can’t prevent sudden, catastrophic accelerations from nearby explosions.”

I swallowed. “What are you telling me here, Funboy?”

He blinked at me. “That she’s in serious but stable condition. I’ve administered a metabolic inhibitor to slow all her life processes down, which should minimize the internal blood loss. However, she needs urgent medical care.”

I hit my comm. “Valint, do you know where B is?”

“I’ve already got her on the comm. She’s at least fourteen hours away.”

I looked at Funboy. He gave his head a desolate shake. “That’s too long.”

“Can… can you do anything?”

“This type of injury is… it’s beyond my expertise.” He gave a slow shrug. “However, if we can get her onto the Fafnir, with Netty’s help, and with B to coach me… maybe.”

I nodded, then sank back against the bulkhead and looked at Torina, who was sprawled on the deck of the Frankie’s cramped cargo hold. She looked so… pale. And somehow small.

“She’s worth so much more than that,” I said to no one.

“Than what?” Perry asked.

I waved absently at the spoils. “Than… money. No matter how much. She’s worth more.”

Perry regarded me with eyes aglow. He looked at her, then back to me, but slowly. “She knows.”

* * *

The class 8 didn’t stand a chance. Its crew was merely desperate to escape. We, on the other hand, were out for blood.

Icky and Netty played cutoff, pummeling it with laser fire as it broke orbit, punching through clouds only to be torched by a staccato series of bolts.

“Clear. Firing.” Valint’s crisp declaration rang over the comm, and the Stormshadow climbed after it, adding punishing lasers to the fight. We came up last, having stopped briefly to recover Perry, then I took the controls and raced in to put more shots in and through our battered target.

I don’t know if Valint and Icky spoke, but both the Fafnir and the Stormshadow ceased fire. I didn’t. I continued lighting the target up with shot after shot, even though the class 8 could put up little defense. With murderous intent, I slashed her amidships until she simply came apart. Two bodies, both Sorcerers, tumbled out, as did several cargo pods.

“Good,” I said into the following silence. “Valint, may I—”

“I’ll recover those,” she said without preamble, even as I began docking the Frankie to the Fafnir.

We rushed Torina to our auto-med, the cocoon-like device tucked away in the Fafnir’s second-to-last module, across the central corridor from the holding cells. It was a capable system, intended to deal with serious limb injuries, but with only limited capabilities when it came to internal trauma. At best, it was meant to keep someone alive long enough to get them to proper care.

Funboy was about to test the device to its limit. He said nothing, and that worried me most of all.

15

“One of the pods contained osmium ingots and, just for good measure, some gold ingots, of all things. About three-quarters of a million bonds worth in osmium alone. The other three-quarter million bonds was comprised of the other metals, but all of it valuable.”

I sat back and rubbed my eyes. “So about one and a quarter million bonds total.” I sighed. “It sounds like a lot, but it’s not. It’s way short of what we needed.”

I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. We’d gotten what we came for but might have lost Torina in the process. I held my hands together, the fingers twining like serpents. My guts were like water, and I thought of the silvery laugh she shared, only with me. The weight of her hand, light in mine. Her tendency to snort when she laughed, and then snort again for the sheer joy of it all.

And she might be gone. And I would be, too. That much, I knew.

I just couldn’t see anything beyond the next few minutes, aside from a dreary grey fog of anguish, uncertainty, and lots and lots of self-recrimination.

“Van?”

I blinked and looked back at the screen. Valint stared back at me.

“I—yeah. Sorry.”

“How’s she doing?”

I shrugged, feeling like Atlas.

“Funboy is still working on her, with Netty’s and B’s help. The problem is that we’re not equipped for the sort of care she—” I had to stop and swallow. “That she needs. B’s on her way, but—” I shrugged again.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. So am I. This was a stupid thing to do.”

“Van, listen. You—”

“No, Valint… please. I’d rather not get into it right now,” I said, but I was too tired to mount any kind of passionate defense. I was tired and sick with worry, right down to my bones.

Someone else may have persisted. Someone else wouldn’t have had the wisdom of Valint’s long life and the losses she’d suffered during it—including my own grandfather.

She stared for a moment, her eyes glittering with the wisdom of years. “I’m here.”

It was two words, and yet, it was far more.

She signed off.

I just sat, staring at the screen, which displayed summary information about the Fafnir’s flight performance and nav data. We were still at least eight hours away from B. Even the ability to twist and fold space-time to our bidding couldn’t change that.

I had a bitter thought. The Sorcerers had a twist drive that could work inside a gravity well. We’d seen it used once, and only once, thankfully, because it created waves in the substance of reality that could theoretically rip apart a planet. I had a dark fantasy about having one now, using it to reach B, and at the same time blast the dreary planet where Torina had been mortally injured to fragments. Or, better yet, the Trinduk home world. Wipe out the whole race, prevent them from spawning any more damned Sorcerers. Or whatever world had Helem Gauss on it—

“Van, you’d better come back here, quick,” Perry said over the comm.

I stood, my gut wrenching down to a hard, painful nub. “On my way.”

* * *

I hurried back to the auto-med, to find—

Torina awake. I stopped, blinking, then shot Perry a glare. He shrugged.

“I thought you needed a pleasant surprise,” he said.

I turned to the auto-med and nearly fell against the damned thing, my legs going suddenly wobbly and weak. “What—?” I licked my lips, tried again. “How—?”

B’s image smiled at me from the display over the auto-med. “Turns out my brilliance as a physician isn’t limited to my physical body. I can extend it across the stars, into the hands of others.” She preened as her antennae flexed. “I’m really quite amazing.”

“Ahem,” Netty said.

“Oh. Right. The fact that Netty’s most complete medical database is one for humans also helped.”

I turned to Funboy.

He just gave his slow shrug. “I just did the actual work. More like… a glorified plumber.”

“Actually, truth is that it was mostly Funboy’s deft hands that saved the day,” B said. “Netty and I were really just the open medical books propped up where he could see them while he worked.”

“I can’t disagree,” Netty admitted.

I flashed Funboy a grin, then moved to Torina’s side. “How do you feel?”

“Like absolute shit,” she whispered, wincing a little.

I reached for her, but Funboy put out a hand. “Please, no handling my patient. She needs several days of recovery, and then a week of light duties. And that’s assuming there are no complications. You’ll have to restrain your carnal desires in the meantime.”

“I’ll do my best, despite being saddled with the libido of a three-balled tomcat,” I said, raising my right hand as if taking an oath.

Torina reached for me, fighting not to laugh. “Dammit. Enough—just come here, Van. Let me lean on you.”

“I want nothing more,” I murmured into her hair, then glanced at Funboy.

His sigh was a masterclass in maternal guilt. “Oh, very well. If you must have skin-to-skin contact and are willing to risk the various contaminants that accompany it, go ahead.”

I took her hand and held it, then brushed my lips across her forehead. Her eyes closed in pleasure or relief. Maybe both. I know what I was feeling, and relief didn’t approach my mental state, standing there with the scent of Torina’s skin filling my senses.

She looked up at me, eyes round with curiosity. “So what happened down there? After the world blew up in my face?” she asked.

Funboy was urging us to let her rest, so I just gave her the thumbnail version. I ended on the Sorcerers spilling out of their wrecked ship and falling back toward the planet.

“I think I saw one of them starting to leave a glowing trail in the upper atmosphere. He and his friend will end up as, well, dust on the wind, as they say. Like they never even were.”

She made a sound of disgust. “And no one will miss them.”

“Indeed, they’ll be forgotten," Funboy said, his tone somehow even more desolate than usual. "Being forgotten is the cruelest disease of all.”

Zeno peered down at him, her plump face bemused. “You know, for someone who thinks about death all the time, you speak the most elegant poetry.”

“I do not think about death all the time. Death is just the end-state. I spend most of my time thinking about the many, many, many ways of getting to it.” He shrugged. “Besides, creativity helps me stave off inevitable mental deterioration. Although it's a matter of time until I become like Icky and forget my pants."

"That's a fashion choice, not a disease of aging," Icky countered, sticking out a thick leg and wiggling her foot. “Besides, I’m wearing this… kilt, right? I’m wearing this thing now, so you guys should all just shut the hell up about my lower body.”

Perry titled his head at her. "Yeahhh… fashion. As Retta would say, Tres chic, toi la grande fille bleue—you big blue girl, you.”

Icky made a show of preening. “Why, thank you.”

We laughed, Torina included. But she cut it off with a sharp wince and a hiss.

“Enough of this,” Funboy said. “All of you, go away. Torina now needs to rest.”

“Van, do you still want to meet up?” B asked.

“Do you think it’s necessary?”

“Uh—” She glanced offscreen. “Based on Torina’s vitals and the damned good work I watched Funboy and Netty do, I’d say no. If you need me, though, you know where I am.”

“Roger that. Thanks, B.”

“Hey, if this virtual house call thing works out, I might be able to do all my doctoring from the beach, wearing a bikini. Preferably with a drink, of course.”

“B in a bikini, huh? I—” Perry started, but B cut him off.

“—have thought very carefully about what I’m about to say and have decided she’d look radiant. That’s what you were about to say, right, bird?” she said.

“You know, you really are psychic, B. Those were my exact words.”

“Sure, bird.” B smiled, then grew serious. “You’re a person, you know.”

Perry twitched in surprise. “I am? Thank you, I like to think of myself—“

“You’re a person because machines can’t be pervs.”

Perry deflated, as much as a construct of his nature could. “Thank you. Your validation means everything.”

She laughed and said, “I know.” The comm cut, and then I was left thanking Netty for everything she’d done as well.

“Netty, you delivered. I can’t tell you how much you helped, funneling data in real time. She’s here because of you.”

“Thank you. I’m quite fond of her, you know.”

“That makes two of us.” I let the moment hang, then turned to Funboy, who recoiled at my earnest expression. “Like it or not, Funboy, I’m going to touch you,” I said.

“Oh dear.”

I put my arm around him. “Thank you, you dour little person, you. I—” I stopped and swallowed hard, then just nodded. “Thank you.”

Funboy looked at my arm around him, then looked up at me and did something he very rarely did—he tried to smile. The result was a stiff, horrifying rictus that made all of us, even Torina, grin. Zeno and Icky both snorted with outright laughter.

He finally spoke, with great gravitas. “You’re welcome. Now, please remove your arm from my person. As to your germs, I guess they’ll have to stay.”

* * *

Operating a spaceship is an expensive proposition. Aside from the need for constant, minor maintenance of its many and complex systems, it requires resupply of air, water, and provisions. Mostly, though, it requires fuel—reaction propellant for the thrusters, deuterium and helium-3 for the fusion power plant and the main real-space drive, and above all, antimatter to power the twist drive, the twist-comm system and the power-hungry inertial damping system that also provided internal gravity. Antimatter, in the form of anti-deuterium, is time-consuming and laborious to produce in large quantities.

So, it’s expensive.

All of which was to say that, even with Valint just taking enough to cover her own expenses for our little heist, the million-ish bonds we’d acquired weren't going to keep the Fafnir operating for more than a few weeks. Our original target of four million had been based on a discreet conversation with Dayna Jasskin from The Quiet Room, who offered us an equally discrete account for our funds, the interest from which should have kept us operating—if not indefinitely, then at least for many months.

Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have been a problem because we’d have had access to our own accounts, and to the expense stipends offered by the Guild. But we didn’t dare access either, assuming that the former would be watched by BeneStar, and the latter by Kharsweil. It meant that, unless we could come up with more funds, we were on an implacable clock.

Still, silver linings and all that. We had gained a few weeks of breathing space, and we could take comfort in the fact that we’d again set back BeneStar and the Sorcerers’ production of osmium. I still felt bad about the poor wretches that had been forced into employment at Epsilon Serpentis, but Valint and I had agreed there was a greater good at stake. So, before we’d quit the system, we’d broadcast one hour’s notice of our intent to destroy the mine’s infrastructure.

“Mass driver fire, boss? It’s the sure thing,” Netty asked.

“I agree. Begin firing now.”

“I estimate fourteen minutes to complete destruction. The mine will be glowing slag when we’re done,” Perry chimed in.

When the first impacts showed up on scans, I whistled.

“My thoughts exactly. There goes the ore handler—and the smelter is up next,” Netty reported.

When the last rounds were fired, I issued the order to leave.

“Let’s get out of Dodge, Netty. This net’s only going to get tighter.”

“Drive is lit, and we’re nearing the twist point. Destination?” Netty asked.

“Spindrift. And burn hard, if you please, but leave us at the system’s margin. Don’t want to get too cozy just yet,” I cautioned.

“Twisting,” Netty said, and the Fafnir moved. It emerged at the distant edge of a system filled with criminals of every flavor.

“Ready the Frankie. We’ll go in with a low profile,” I said.

The workboat was generic and forgettable—two qualities we needed in an expanse of stars where every one of us was worth a fortune. And just in case someone had a drive profile on the Frankie, Icky had taken to cleverly altering her drive characteristics and emissions slightly from time to time.

No one could record a specific signature for her and tie it back to us, and she had enough internal cargo space for fuel cells and other provisions that we could keep the Fafnir supplied without always bringing her into dock.

Since Torina was still recovering, we’d left her with Icky and Zeno. I took Funboy and Perry on the supply run, and I had my motives.

Since Funboy had joined the crew, I really hadn’t managed to connect with him—at least, not like I had with the others. Part of that was the fact he was a dreary little bundle of misery most of the time. But part of it was the fact that, until he’d saved Torina’s life, I’d kind of glossed over his skills as useful but nothing special.

In that regard, I was dead wrong.

With the awkwardness of a first date, I cleared my throat and asked Funboy a question, piercing the cloak of silence that hung around us.

“So, Funboy, do you have any siblings?”

Blink. “Several.”

“Uh… so what do they do?”

Blink. “Increase the number of living beings in the universe, thereby consuming its resources and causing it to approach its final, irrevocable thermodynamic equilibrium that much more quickly.”

“Okay—”

I waited, watching the unmoving stars. After a length of time that was just long enough to bore me into submission, I tried again.

“Do you have any hobbies? Or did you have any before you came aboard the Fafnir?”

Blink. “Before I was mature enough to realize it was futile, I applied electric current to small, dead creatures to see if I could revive them.”

“Gather it didn’t work, huh?”

“No. They mostly just burst into flames.”

I made myself smile. “Guess creating Frankenstein just wasn’t in the cards for you.”

“In the Earthly story Frankenstein, the eponymous character is the one attempting to create life, not the life being created.” Blink. “It’s a common error.”

I bit back a sigh. “So you’ve read it?”

Blink. “I have. It resonated with me.”

Of course it did, Perry said in my ear bug. Can’t say he ain’t a charmer.

I kept my features neutral. Or, at least I tried.

* * *

Although I packed the Moonsword and The Drop, I kept them concealed under my long coat. I wished that I also had one of the clever projection devices to hang around my neck that did a pretty convincing job of changing my appearance, but we’d turned ours back into the Anvil Dark Quartermaster—the devices were in understandably high demand—and had never drawn them again.

We tried to stroll along Plenty’s main concourse, looking as casual as we could while doing so. Perry stuck to flying among the structural members and conduits of the overheads above us, keeping an eye out for trouble. We arranged delivery of various provisions to the Frankie, then worked through a fuel broker to obtain tanks of deuterium-helium 3 mixture and two cells of antimatter. Everything went swimmingly until we decided to grab a bite to eat in a dimly lit bar with the charm of late-era Soviet apartment buildings.

“I know you,” a gruff human said, a swarthy, sallow-faced man with a face pocked by some sort of scarring, like the surface of a moon.

I glanced at him, then back to my side. Funboy had disappeared. I shook my head. “Don’t think so.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen you somewhere before. Your picture, maybe.” He grinned to reveal crooked teeth that ranged from chrome to yellow.

“Doubt it. The only people who have pictures of me are my family,” I said, taking the skewer of shish kabob-like meat and veggies from a vendor and handing over a bond. I waved away the change, then turned to go, but the man blocked my way.

“Yeah, I think someone’s got a bounty or something out on you.” He reached into a pocket on his belt and pulled out a data slate. “Why don’t we settle this right now, let me check.”

I bit off a piece of meat and chewed—it was spicy and quite good—and flicked my eyes around. A few other patrons nearby were starting to take interest in what was rapidly heading toward a confrontation.

Shit.

“Okay, my friend. I hate to disappoint you, but I’ve got places to be—” I started, moving around him, but he put out an arm to block me while he thumbed his data slate.

“You’re not going—oof!”

Somebody slammed into the man from behind, hard. It was Funboy. It knocked the data slate from his hands and sent it clattering to the deck.

The man spun around, fists balled. “Watch where you’re going, you little shit.”

“I believe a fecal reference would be more appropriate in application to you,” Funboy said mildly.

“You—what?”

“Of the two of us, you’re the one closer to looking and, frankly, smelling like shit. Is that your natural odor, or do you have odd taste in cologne?”

“Last warning, you hairy little—"

“Oh dear. And your clothing—statistically, in its unwashed state, it is on the order of three hundred percent more likely to harbor pathogens, some of them undoubtedly fatal.”

The man stared for a moment, proving once again that sometimes, a good vocabulary can buy you time in a fight. As our new friend processed Funboy’s insults, Perry, who’d quietly descended behind me, maneuvered under a table, reached out a wingtip, and tapped at the fallen data slate. I stepped back a pace, then another, keeping an eye out for further trouble. Everyone’s focus was now off me and on Funboy and his filthy opponent.

“I—you—” The man scowled. “Assholes like you really love math, don’t you, fuzzy?”

“Not as much as you obviously detest soap.”

The man’s scowl deepened, and he turned away—and then, telegraphing it so hard he might as well have waved a colored flag, spun back and swung a thick hand at Funboy.

I was used to Funboy doing things slowly. Deliberately. Sometimes, he even looked like it hurt him to hurry, his two natural speeds being slow and reverse.

But not now.

Somehow, he managed to move fast enough to dodge the punch but still make it look slow and deliberate. At the same time, he lashed out with a hand, his fingers straight like he was going to do an overhand chop, and slammed it into the man’s side.

The man wheezed, stumbled back, and smashed into a table while drooling like an infant. After a headshake, he got up—he was game, I’ll give him that—and charged with a feral sound of unalloyed fury.

Funboy again dodged with a sort of nimble laziness. As the man crashed past him, the dour little Surtsi struck out twice, dropping the man onto a table full of drinks belonging to two drunk, and now angry, patrons. They slammed back their chairs, ready to start hitting—someone. Anyone. Or anything.

I grabbed Funboy’s shoulder. “I think you’ve made your point. Time for us to—”

“Go. Yes. A wise decision.”

As we headed for the door, Perry hopped up on a table and pointed down at the data slate. “That shit’s illegal. You can’t traffic in porn like that,” he called, then followed us.

I glanced up at Perry as we hurried back to the Fafnir. “You know where to find—wait, you? Smut?”

“Why, Van? You interested?”

“I—no, I am not. Just wondering if you are.”

“I’m an AI construct. Why would I be?”

“Then how did you—?”

“It’s called a search engine, Van. You should check it out sometime. They’re really handy.”

I curled my lip at him as we threaded our way through the crowd on the concourse. The throngs of disinterested people around us were already making me feel better, our anonymity returning.

“Smartass,” I muttered.

He sniffed. “I’m hurt.”

Funboy turned to me. “Van, may I clean myself before these relentless, questing microbes find a point to penetrate my skin?”

“Microbes?”

“That man really was quite disgusting in hygienic terms.”

I smiled. “Can you wait until we’re aboard the Frankie?”

He sighed. “If I must.”

“Then right this way, sir. Considering your amazing performance back there, I’ll even warm the towel for you myself.”

“Oh—oh, no. Towels are disgusting, just condominiums for even more pathogenic particles than that—that man back there was no doubt shedding with each movement and breath.”

“How about a single-use towel then?”

“That would be acceptable.”

I laughed. There wasn’t even a hint that Funboy had just beaten the snot out of a man twice his size in a bar fight. I still didn’t know what to make of the little guy, but damn if I wasn’t glad he was part of my crew.

We reached the workboat. Along the way, I was sure I’d seen a few more people look at me sidelong as we passed them. It might have just been paranoia—but it might not.

I was grateful when the airlock sealed. “Okay, let’s haul ass back out of here,” I said, clambering into the pilot’s seat.

“Worried that someone else made you?” Perry asked.

I powered up the ship, released the docking clamps, and backed her away from Plenty.

“Well, that—plus Torina and I have a date.”

16

I honestly wasn’t all that thrilled to be returning to Helso. Not only did it feel like a place where we’d be terribly vulnerable, but I was also desperately worried that we’d just bring trouble with us, putting Torina’s home and the rest of the moon’s citizens under threat. But my worries evaporated when we arrived.

“Holy shit,” I said, and the rest of the crew nodded.

Torina gave a weak smile. “The Schegith take the whole protectorate thing seriously, don’t they?”

I glanced at her. She was sitting back in her accustomed place but still looked pale and a little wobbly. I’d offered to just let her rest in her cabin, but she’d insisted on taking her spot in the cockpit, just as she’d insisted on making the trip here. She saw me watching her and gave me a wider smile.

“You knew about this,” I said.

Her smile widened a little more. “Surprise. My father let me know a couple of weeks ago.”

I turned back to the tactical overlay. It demonstrated just what Torina meant.

The Schegith had deployed two self-assembling, automated fortresses in the system, both of them surrounded by robotic ships bringing them supplies and structural materials. One was nearly complete, while the other was half-finished. Once fully operational, each would be able to unleash about three times the firepower of the Iowa. Taken together with a squadron of Schegith heavy cruisers and Helso’s own self-defense fleet, it meant that Van Maanen’s Star was now a risky proposition for anything but a full-on battlefleet, and even then, the issue would be in doubt.

Zeno frowned. “How have the Schegith even managed this? I thought there were only a handful of them left? Or have they been cranking out babies like crazy or something?”

“And having them grow up, like, super fast?” Icky put in.

Torina shook her head. “As they explained to my father, they’ve always been a small race with a low birthrate. They’ve come to rely very heavily on sophisticated AIs and robotic systems. It’s just another reason they hate the Sorcerers and the identity-theft bullshit so much. They consider their AIs to be partners, not servants.”

“Just like we do,” I said, patting Perry on the head.

He nodded. “Damned right,” he said, then looked at the partly assembled fortress as we swept by it. “These Schegith are such an enlightened people, I knew there was a reason I liked them.”

We carried on to Helso and landed in the local late morning. A line of storms had just passed through, leaving everything wet and the air humid, and fragrant with that peculiar, earthy smell you get in the aftermath of rain, apparently called petrichor.

Torina’s mother met us, and we walked with her back up to the Milon estate. As we trod the now familiar path, I found that while my worries about the safety of Helso had abated, they were steadily being replaced by new ones. First, I’d nearly gotten the Milon’s daughter, who was also my Second and the woman I loved, killed. In addition, one of the reasons we were here was to ask for money, which seemed even more inappropriately out of place considering item one.

To top it all off, we arrived to find the estate in an uproar. What was supposed to have been a quiet, intimate affair, this little dinner of ours, had somehow blossomed into an elaborate, sprawling event that was going to be held on the terrace overlooking the estate grounds.

Which frankly sucked.

I found that I was in no mood for a large, festive gathering, much less one built around Torina and her family. A small, quiet dinner was one thing, but this was shaping up to be a party. And I just wasn’t in a partying mood.

Which is why, while the others bustled about, helping to get things arranged as Torina’s mother flung instructions around the terrace, I hung off to one side, staring across the Milon’s estate. I was remembering how it had been so barren and gray, ravaged by the illicit mining operations of the Salt Thieves and their mercenary allies. It had been one of my first major cases, and had also firmly put my feet and Torina’s on the road that led to this day and the very public affirmation of our relationship—sort of a renewal of our Declaration for one another, the Helso equivalent of getting engaged.

Thanks to our efforts, and those of the Synergists who’d reclaimed the scoured landscape, the estate had been saved—and then saved again by the Synergists when a biological time bomb left by the illegal miners had gone off and threatened to destroy Helso’s biosphere. If we’d failed in either case, Helso might now resemble Level Blue, the mining planet pocked with massed graves, or the even more polluted world where we’d recently pulled our bank heist.

And where Torina had almost died.

There it was. The reason I was off brooding in a corner, in a dark mood I not only couldn’t shake, but that was getting darker with each new decoration that went up, each table that was set for a grandiose picnic lunch.

“Funboy must be rubbing off on you,” a voice said. I turned and found that Perry had landed on the balustrade I was leaning against.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “How do you figure?”

“Well, you’re standing over here alone, managing to look miserable in the run-up to a party in honor of you and your lovely betrothed. If Funboy ever gets hitched, I imagine him doing much the same thing—except with some gloomy reference to pathogens thrown in.”

I forced a smile. “You’re probably right. He does love the possibility of gruesome disease.”

Perry cocked his head. “Okay, I’ve been priding myself lately on my ever-more keen insight into the human condition, but this one’s got me stumped. What’s eating you, Van?”

I shrugged. “Not really something I want to get into right now, Perry.”

“Oh. Right. You’re working yourself up to be the death of the party and don’t want anyone to interfere with that.”

I frowned at him. He just shrugged his wings.

“Sorry, Van, but if I, a mere AI, am able to tell you’re being all Joe Btfsplk over here, then don’t you think all these people are going to pick up on it, too?”

I stared. “Joe—what?”

“Joe Btfsplk. Probably before your time. He was a grim little guy in an old comic strip, L’il Abner, who was always so miserable he had a little storm cloud hovering over his head.”

“I seriously have no idea what the hell you’re talking about, bird.”

He shook his head. “Like I said, before your time. L’il Abner used to be in all the newspapers before it stopped publication in 1977. You weren’t born yet. Anyway—”

“You used to read the comics? In newspapers?” I cut in, intrigued in spite of myself.

“I read everything in every newspaper your grandfather brought to me. Want to know the price of a loaf of bread at the Fareway Meat and Grocery in Boone, Iowa, in 1968? Who won the Des Moines city-wide invitational bridge tournament in 1954? The detailed obituary of one Arthur Kettle of Cedar Rapids, who died suddenly in 1971 and was survived by his wife, Bernice, and two children, Emma and David? Or the total number of fox squirrels a depression-era family needed to survive one of those savage Iowa winters when food was rare and money nonexistent?”

“You know—all of that? Everything, in every newspaper you read? Really?”

“Why do you always find this so surprising, Van? Your laptop computer doesn’t suddenly forget how to run Solitaire, does it?”

I smiled, a little more genuinely this time. “You got me there, Perry.” I sighed. “I don’t know. I’m just finding that when I look out there”— I waved a hand at the bucolic landscape—“I’m seeing what it could have ended up becoming if we hadn’t been able to stop it. And reminds me—”

“Of the ugly, stinky mining planet where Torina almost died.”

I gave him a sharp glance. “You know, you’re getting pretty good at this human condition thing, bird.”

“I should be, considering how long I’ve been hanging out with you fleshies.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Fleshies?”

“Oh, did I say that out loud? Sorry. That’s what some of the other, really uncouth AIs call organic life-forms. Not yours truly, though. That would be terribly disrespectful.”

“Riiight.” I crossed my arms. “Well, this particular fleshie is struggling with what happened to Torina, yes. That’s twice now that I almost lost one of my crew on a—I don’t know, a dangerous, maybe even needlessly risky scheme.”

“The other being Icky, when we retrieved that workboat of your mother’s.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Neither that nor our bank heist were even on-the-books Peacemaker ops. They were both… vanity projects, I guess. The workboat was for sure.”

“I disagree.”

I glanced at him. “Do you?”

“Yes, I do. Retrieving that workboat was important to your relationship with your mother. And yes, say what you want about your mother and how unstable she is and all that, but she’s also one of the most influential leaders among the GKU splinters—and they represent a hell of a lot of hitting power that we’re probably going to need someday. In fact, from what you’ve told me, getting that workboat back, along with the picture of you, helped her, uh… instability a lot.”

I shrugged. “In the short term, anyway.”

“And as for the bank heist, well, that one should be obvious. We need the cash, so we can keep the Fafnir’s operations off the grid. Remember, Van, we’re not dealing with the Fade or the Salt Thieves or the Stillness here. We’re dealing with BeneStar—you know, Helem Gauss, the man who owns everything, or at least wants to? And who better to take that cash from than BeneStar itself?”

I shrugged. “I suppose. It’s just that—”

“You don’t want to lose any of your crew. Well, duh. Of course not. Anyway, we’ve had this conversation before, Van. The risk of losing crewmembers is part of the job, remember?”

“Doesn’t ever get any easier, does it?”

“The day it does is the day you should consider another line of work. I recommend exotic male dancer. Your stage name could be, let’s see, how about Lance Goodthrust?”

“Perry—”

“No? What about Officer Goodcheeks? It keeps up that whole law enforcement thing.”

I couldn’t help snorting with laughter. “Perry, you’re one of a kind.” I gave him a sidelong look. “How’d you get to be so smart, anyway?”

“I was literally made that way. Now, if you’re done wallowing, there’s a party about to start.”

I nodded and straightened, but paused. “Did Torina put you up to this?”

“No, Van, she didn’t. I managed to be concerned about you all on my own.”

I nodded again. “Thanks, bird. Again.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied, his amber eyes glittering at me. “Again.”

* * *

I still wasn’t entirely in a sociable mood, but Perry’s candid, empathic words managed to lift my spirits enough for functional purposes. By the time the guests had all arrived—all thirty or so of them—I was able to muster some enthusiasm while talking to people and respond in something more than monosyllabic grunts.

“Where’s your ex beau, Boswic Broadmore, of the Helso Broadmores?” I whispered to Torina during a lull in our dutiful reception of guests.

“My parents invited him. He declined.”

“Sore loser.”

She smiled, but it turned into a sudden wince.

I took her arm. “Torina? Are you—?”

“I’m fine. Just a little woozy. B said I might have the odd little spell, as she put it, until my blood volume was fully topped back up.”

I watched her with care as she resumed smiling, and I felt a pang of memory. It had been a close thing with her. Too close.

Still, the picnic-style lunch on the terrace was enjoyable, the food sumptuous, the weather perfect, and the crowd bubbly. My mood again improved—or it did, anyway, until I abruptly remembered the other reason we’d come here besides renewing our Declaration for one another. I was here to ask Torina’s parents for money.

I sighed around a mouthful of something like macaroni salad, only chewier and tangy, capturing the essence of Helso—bright, but earthy, and more and more like home to me. I didn’t want to ask for money. In fact, I hated it. And given the newness of Torina’s scars, it seemed—

“Van?”

I blinked. Everyone was looking at me. Had I said something out loud? Did I have something on my face? I wiped at my mouth with a harried hand, trying to form an apology.

“He’s obviously enjoying his food too much for words,” Torina’s father said.

I swallowed and blinked again, then turned to Torina.

“This is your chance to say something,” she whispered. “Remember, I told you?”

I frankly didn’t, just showing how much my mind had wandered from the present, but I stood and nodded.

“Apologies, everyone. The food is quite a step up from what we eat aboard the ship. Kudos to the cook,” I said.

Perry ruffled his wings, then dipped his head. “I graciously accept.”

A ripple of laughter caromed through the group, giving me time to focus. I winked at Torina, took her hand, and stood, holding on to her fingers like they were keeping me anchored. In a way, they were.

I stared at Torina for a moment, then snapped my eyes to take in the room. “At some point, I had a flash of inspiration about who and what I have become. I am no longer… solitary. There’s an us now. We’re building a history, together, and it permeates everything from how food tastes—better when she’s nearby—to how I feel going into battle. She’s taken my fear away and in turn given me more than I will ever need. I know how lucky I am, and unlike last time here, I’m not surprised by the power of this declaration. Oh, and I don’t plan on punching anyone today. I’m civilized now, thanks to her,” I said, then sketched a tiny bow, leaned down, and kissed her as laughter rang out all around us.

“I think we’re a hit,” she said to me as everyone began rushing the bar in earnest.

I smiled. “How can we not be? We’re adorable. And you make me better.”

She laughed, but I could see the fatigue tightening her face, dulling her eyes. I directed her to sit back down as the applause died away. With it went the momentary delight. The lunch was ending, which meant the moment when I’d have to confront Torina’s parents about money was that much closer. And I couldn’t put it off, because notwithstanding the formidable protection of the Schegith, I didn’t want to stay on Helso any longer than absolutely necessary. We had too big a target on us, and while we were here, so did Torina’s homeworld.

The remnants of lunch were cleared away, and I prepared myself for the gathering to break up. It didn’t, though. Everyone remained seated, the air charged with a sudden expectancy. I tensed. What now? Entertainment? Some other couple were going to Declare? Torina had secretly arranged with her parents for us to be immediately married?

Oh, shit. I hoped it wasn’t the latter—

Her father stood. “Van, we understand that you’re involved in a complex and dangerous case right now—so complex and dangerous, in fact, that you’re having to… skirt the edges of normal procedures. Or, to put it another way, you need untraceable cash.” He turned to the crowd. “And most of us have been there, am I right?”

Laughter. I looked around in surprise, not sure what was going on, only that the subject of money had come up sooner, and in a very different way, than I’d expected.

“I… uh—” I said, then my words sputtered to a stop.

A slender, angular figure in rough homespun clothing and spangled with beads and feathery fronds and little chiming trinkets walked onto the terrace. It was one of the Synergists that had been instrumental in saving the pastoral landscape sprawling behind my back from industrial ruin. She carried a basket made of strips of pale wood interwoven with fabric that was pale peach and pastel blue, punctuated by shouts of red. Swaying slightly, as though to music none of us could hear, she half-pirouetted to stop in front of me and placed the basket on the table.

“Van Tudor,” she said, her voice lilting and musical through thin lips. “We have decided that we overcharged you, so please accept this as reimbursement.”

With that, she dropped bonds—thousands of them, in big denominations—into the basket, then danced away, laughing.

Perry spoke in my ear. She’s definitely into astrology.

Hush, bird. Let the crunchy lady shower us with gifts.

Perry gave me a mental sniff of derision. Typical Virgo.

Torina’s parents followed her, grinning, and placed more bonds into the basket. “In case you were wondering, this basket is woven from strips of bark taken from our estate, right there, beside the pond, in fact,” her mother said, pointing. “But only from deadwood, of course,” she added, glancing at the Synergist, who smiled and nodded approvingly, and kept swaying to that unheard music.

“And the strands of fabric are from Torina’s baby swaddle,” her father added, prompting Torina to frown.

“Hey, wait. You were cutting up my baby clothes?” she asked.

Her father patted his daughter’s face. “Only the ones that don’t fit you anymore, my dear. You did, in fact, get taller.”

They stepped back, and now the rest of the gathering formed a line, each putting yet more bonds into the basket. Perry had hopped up on the table to try to keep count. Halfway through, he raised his voice over the mutters and laughter of the moment.

“To my big human, Van—the richest man in town!” he said.

I just sat back, stunned. I could think of only one thing to say.

“Atta’ boy, Clarence.”

Zeno gave me a puzzled frown.

“Who the hell is Clarence?”

* * *

I stood on the terrace again, this time looking across the shadowy landscape, rendered to darkest blue-grays under the star-filled night sky.

I touched my comm. “Netty, how many of those stars I can see have we actually been to?”

“As viewed from this side of Helso, at this time of local day and year? Six.”

I shook my head. For a farm boy from Iowa, having been to any of those stars, much less six of them, was a hell of an accomplishment. Of course, there were billions up there, and at the rate I was going, to visit all of them would take me no time at all, because that was the whole of my life measured against them—no time at all.

But I didn’t feel insignificant against the inconceivable vastness of it all. I felt, instead, like a giant, armored with the certainty that I was doing the right thing.

I was just doing it among the stars.

“That’s quite a haul, isn’t it?”

I turned. Torina walked up beside me. What remained of our lunch, a dozen or so hardcore socialites, had retired inside. I could hear Icky’s voice booming, then gales of her laughter as she either spun some tale or responded to someone else’s.

I looked at the baskets—three of them, by the time all was said and done. We had so much cash on hand we were going to have to get a safe or something for the Fafnir, unless we were just going to stack them in the cargo hold.

“A haul. Yeah. That… barely even begins to describe it,” I said, then looked at Torina. “This was your doing, wasn’t it?”

She shook her head. “Actually, it wasn’t. I let my parents know that we needed money, and why, but assumed we’d just, you know, borrow it from them. This was all their idea.”

She smiled. “And the rest of Helso, it seems. Between saving our land, and the surrounding ones from the Salt Thieves? Oh, and then the whole planet from that nano-plague at our own expense, I might add—and then helping to save Helso from being attacked by the Tenants controlling those Seven Stars League ships—” She shrugged. “Let’s just say they were happy to help.”

“I wonder how much—” I stopped and shook my head. “I can’t believe this. They made me feel like this is my home, and that they were my own family.”

Torina took my hand, smiling. “It is. And they will be. I know I already am.”

We just stared at the miracle that was the baskets of bonds for a bit.

“They took up collections, apparently,” she said. “So this isn’t just from the well-to-do of Helso. There are bonds there from nearly everyone. Even Master Cataric contributed.”

“Yeah, I missed him at the party,” I said.

Torina chuckled. “He’s an ascetic, Van. He doesn’t do parties. He lives a very quiet, contemplative life. I don’t think he even really likes being around other people.”

“He and Funboy would get along great.”

Her chuckle became a laugh. “They would. Oh, and even Boswic contributed—quite a bit, apparently. My mother told me he said it was our wedding present.”

“Really? Well, now I feel kinda bad for slugging him.”

“Don’t. He’s hooked up with a pretty young thing from Tau Ceti. Her father owns a fleet of bulk carriers.”

“So he’s gotten over you.”

“He has, for millions of reasons.”

I looked at the baskets again. “I wonder how much. Perry tried to count, but he didn’t realize there were already two baskets full of bonds.”

“They didn’t want to sit through filling three of the damned things, so they only did one at the table.”

I could only shake my head again. “Holy shit. I wonder what the total is.”

Torina’s smile turned a little evil.

“More than enough to make trouble for a long time.”

17

As we were lifting from Helso—reluctantly, because I really wanted to stay a few more days, but prudence dictated otherwise—we received an urgent twist-comm message.

“They’re always urgent, aren’t they?” I said in reply to Netty.

“If I could shrug, Van, I would, and then point out that twist-comm messages burn antimatter fuel, and—"

“I get it, I get it. Who’s it from?”

“You’re screening our calls now?” Perry said.

I nodded. “Damned right. It might be Kharsweil.”

“It’s not. It’s Retta,” Netty said.

That got my attention, diverting me from the pastoral Helso landscape falling away below. I sat up. “Put her on.”

“Van, I need your help!” Retta said as soon as Netty put her through.

“What’s wrong?”

“One of my agents, a very valuable one, is being pursued by les méchants!”

“Netty, can you have the French translated, please?” I said.

“Sorry, boss. You wanted to keep Retta’s French being French for le goût, remember?”

“Netty—!”

“The flavor. Sorry, French is now being translated. And les méchants is the villains, the bad guys.”

“Retta, who is this agent?”

“She is known to you, yes? I would ask that you protect her as you would me. She has much to lose and has been an ally of yours since the very beginning. Not that you would know this, of course. She is a cow.”

“A… what?”

“She said la vache, which is French for cow, but also gets used as the colloquial for bitchy. See what happens when you translate stuff?” Netty said.

I waved it aside. “Who is she?”

“She is Gabriella Santorelli, Van,” Retta said.

I sat back again. Gabriella? But—

“She’s a Peacemaker,” I said.

“But yes, and she is a loyal one. But she and I have long had an understanding. She has kept me apprised of, how would you say… certain events of interest to me, and I have done likewise in turn. So perhaps she is my partner more than my agent, no?”

Gabriella Santorelli had been one of the very first Peacemakers I’d ever met after leaving Earth for the first time. She had been based at Crossroads, part of the Peacemaker field office operated there by Gus. She had also overseen my induction into the Guild, as well as my initial training, which had been supplemented by injections of nano-devices that had hardwired new skills and knowledge right into my brain.

And she had been bitchy, yeah. But she was also a damned good Peacemaker.

“Where is she?”

“I am sending the navigational data she sent me. Please, Van, she is running, and there are pursuers close behind, yes?”

“Don’t worry, Retta. We’re on it.”

“Thank you, Van, so much,” she said and signed off.

“Okay, Netty, looks like we’ve now got a destination that’s more than that-a-way. Work your magic, if you please, and let’s go—”

“Excuse me, Van,” Funboy put in, and I turned to him.

“Do you trust her? This could be a trap,” he said.

I stared for a moment. “Retta? Part of a trap? I don’t think so.”

“Essie and I had some brief dealings with her at one point while we were working undercover. She has a reputation for working for, ah, the highest bidder—and BeneStar has a great deal of money to spend.”

“You’re a suspicious little beastie, aren’t you?” Zeno asked.

Funboy blinked at her slowly. “Yes, I am.”

I waved for quiet. “No, Funboy has a point.” I pondered it for a moment. “That said, I’m prepared to trust Retta. I mean, everyone ultimately has their price, but we’re going to have to rely on at least some of our friends to resist the offer and stay on our side anyway. Otherwise—well, hell, we might as well pack it in and all go home, right?”

Funboy gave me a doubtful look but finally just resorted to his slow, desolate shrug. “I suppose.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be careful. Doubly so, since your point about BeneStar is a valid one.”

“Van, I have a question,” Zeno said, and now I turned to her.

“Shoot.”

“You still haven’t told us who the hell that Clarence you mentioned is.”

I smiled. “He’s… a guardian angel.”

“Oh. Okay.” She sat back. “That’s good, because we could use one of those about now.”

* * *

We arrived in the target system, a nameless red dwarf with some rocky asteroids as its only companions, to find what must have been Gabriella’s ship a drifting, powerless wreck.

I swore, but Netty cut me off.

“Van, there’s a class 10 fast freighter configured with the usual armament and armor upgrades heading spaceward. A second ship, a class 9, still up-armed and armored, moving to intercept us.”

As I digested that, Perry spoke up. “Van, I’ve managed to query what’s left of Santorelli’s AI. It records that they were boarded, and she was taken prisoner.”

“She must be aboard one of those ships,” I said.

“Probably the class 10 that’s running, while the class 9 runs interference.”

I reached for the controls to start a pursuit. We had the class 9 definitely outgunned, and if we could get past it quickly enough—

But I hesitated as the image of Torina, prone in the muddy street slammed back into me like a punch.

“Van?” It was Perry.

“Oh. Uh… right. Netty, open a comm broadcast, please.”

Now it was her turn to hesitate. Perry spoke up.

“Van, we’ve got clear evidence of an attack on Santorelli’s ship, and even clearer evidence of the obvious perpetrators. We don’t really need to issue any warnings here.”

“Moreover, time is precious. We’ve got about a ten minute window if we start a full-power burn now to overtake the class 10, and then it’s going to be able to twist away,” Netty added.

I felt the crew looking at me.

But I just couldn’t shake that image, Torina sprawled in the mud. I thought she’d been—

Dead.

I took a breath and nodded. “Okay. Fine. Netty, full power burn on a pursuit course, please. Torina, let’s fire a volley of missiles at that class 9.”

“We’re still a little short of their maximum effective range.”

“Right. Okay. Fire them as soon as we’re at maximum range.”

Silence fell over the cockpit. Again, I could feel the crew shooting me glances. And again, that frozen image of Torina in the street muck hung in front of me, an implacable snapshot from which I somehow couldn’t pull my gaze.

We had that class 9 well outgunned.

But we could still take a lucky hit. And we were terribly exposed out here, in this lonely star system, with no support nearby. If we got stranded, we’d be helpless—

“Van?”

I jumped. It was Torina. I turned to her. “What?”

She narrowed her eyes at me for a moment. “Zeno, can you take command for a few minutes? I need to talk to Van.”

“About what?” I asked, but she was already unstrapping.

“Let’s go aft,” she said. “I really need to talk to you.”

I chose wisely. After unbuckling my harness, I followed her. The eyes of the others followed me, in turn, out of the cockpit, and the weight of each stare was far heavier than I liked.

* * *

Torina went as far aft as she could, stopping at the rear airlock just behind the auto-med and the holding cells. I couldn’t help looking at the coffin-like auto-med as we passed it.

“Van, what the hell is going on?” she asked.

“What do you mean—?”

“Don’t,” she snapped, raising a finger. “Don’t. In fact, don’t even bother answering my question, because you don’t have to. I know what’s going on,” she said, and pointed at the auto-med. “It’s about that, isn’t it?”

I followed her finger, then turned back. “Torina, I’m fine—”

“No, Van, you’re not. I know that you and Perry talked right before the festivities got underway back on Helso. He told me you were struggling with what happened to me, and to Icky—and what almost happened to the two of us.”

I sighed. “Like I told Perry then, and I’m telling you now, I’m good—”

“No, you’re not. Perry didn’t think so, and neither do I. That’s why he talked to me.”

I took a deep breath. “Well, guess I won’t be trusting the bird with any personal issues anymore.”

Torina gave an exasperated sigh. “Oh, for—Van, would you stop it? Perry was worried about you and wanted to talk to me about it. He wanted me to know, and he also wanted my advice on what to do about it. That’s all—it’s the sort of thing friends do. True friends.”

I leaned against the auto-med. “I almost lost you, Torina. I—” I stopped, shaking my head, unsure what even to say next.

She stepped in front of me. “Yes, you did almost lose me. And you almost lost Icky—twice, in fact, counting the time she was shot on Null World. For that matter, you’ve almost lost the whole lot of us, yourself included. It’s kind of the nature of the job, Van.”

I looked at the deck. “I know. And maybe that’s the problem.”

“Well, if it is, then we’d better just turn around and twist out of here. If we do that, then like you said to Funboy, we might as well just keep going—each of us, back home. And hope that Helem Gauss is willing to accept that we’re bowing out of the game and takes the targets off our respective backs.”

I nodded. Torina was right. There were only two ways to go here. We could fight our way through it, or we could give up and hope they’d all just leave us alone.

To be honest, the second option seemed pretty attractive right now.

Torina knew it, too. “If we do that, Van—if we give up—then Gauss, the Sorcerers, the whole menagerie of bad guys get that much closer to winning. And if they do, then how many people are going to end up as digital slaves on chips? How many are going to end up as real slaves, working some shitty osmium mine somewhere, to make more chips? And how many are going to end up jammed into some mass grave like the ones on Level Blue?”

She leaned in. “And how are you going to spend the rest of your life knowing all that?”

“I don’t want to lose you. Any of you,” I said to the deck.

“Well, that’s comforting, considering the alternative,” she replied.

I looked up. She was smiling.

I indulged in a long, tired sigh. “I left the Army officially because of my knee. But, something I’ve never told anyone before, is that it was a relief to get out. I made good friends while I was in uniform, Torina. Good friends who I knew I could easily lose, who I could watch die in some shithole country, shot by a sniper, or blown up by some improvised explosive. I realized that I didn’t want to go through that, so, yeah, getting punted out of the Army because of my knee was actually a hell of a relief.”

I gave a quick, bitter laugh. “It’s also why I became a professional hacker. I could work alone. No one would depend on me, and I wouldn’t depend on anyone right back. It fit my particular psychology perfectly. And now… here I am. I’ve got you guys to worry about—and you most of all. And every day, I seem to take you into some situation involving missiles and mass-driver slugs and explosions. It’s… hard, Torina.”

“It should be hard, Van. But if you let it make you cautious, timid—well, you might just get the thing you don’t want the most.”

I gave her a slight grin.

“On top of that, you’re selling us short, Van. We’re all grown-ups here. We’ve made our own choices. So it’s a little presumptuous of you to start second-guessing us now, isn’t it?”

I glanced down, then up again, and blew out a breath. “You’re right.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

I smiled and straightened. “A famous guy back on Earth, Winston Churchill, had the perfect thing to say about this moment, you know. If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

“Whoever he was, he was right. Let’s fight our way through all these assholes, Van, and put an end to them. Then we can sit back and watch the sunset on Helso, or in Iowa, or wherever we decide to end up.”

“Okay, then.” I turned back toward the cockpit. “As Churchill said, let’s keep going,” I said, then stopped and looked at Torina.

“Thanks.”

She gestured forward. “I’m your Second, Peacemaker Tudor. It’s what I do. Now, move your ass and let’s go rescue Santorelli.”

We returned to the cockpit and strapped in. I took the controls.

“Okay, folks, showtime. Suits zipped, helmets on, then we’ll depressurize. Torina, Zeno, I want to blow that class 9 asshole out of the way as fast as possible. Netty, you keep us on track to intercept that class 10, and don’t let up.”

I got a chorus of enthusiastic affirmatives in reply. More importantly, though, I could feel the surge of relief that accompanied them.

“Let’s go do my favorite hobby, shall we?”

Funboy raised a hand. “Spreading disease?”

Zeno covered her face with both hands, but Icky howled with laughter.

“Second favorite hobby, Funboy. Let’s go turn enemy ships… into scrap.”

* * *

Of course, it wasn’t really as simple as that. You can’t just switch off something as gut-wrenching as seeing the woman you love lying apparently dead in a grimy street because of decisions you’ve made. I found myself far more wound up heading into battle with the class 9 trying to cut us off than I had been since—since my earliest days as a Peacemaker, certainly.

It took profound effort, but I kept a lid on it, gritting my mental teeth hard and maintaining the headlong charge. I also found, in that moment, that being good and pissed off was a superb way to maintain my focus. Some people would lose their battleplan to emotion, but not me.

I got sharp.

We followed closely behind our own opening salvo of missiles. The class 9 did the same, but Torina and Funboy, operating separate laser batteries, started picking theirs off early. The class 9 concentrated its fire on us, and we jockeyed randomly about with bursts of thruster power, doing our best to throw off their firing solutions. We still ended up taking a few hits, but aside from damage to our auxiliary comm array, we only suffered a few gouges in our armor and the detonation of a single armor module.

As soon as we closed to burst-cannon range, the difference in our approach to the battle and our opponents’ was flung into stark relief. The class 9 had largely ignored our missiles in favor of firing at us, but now frantically fought to take down the ordnance about to bracket them. At the same time, we poured in our full weight of fire. Even with the mass drivers and particle cannon still out of range, the combined effects of two missiles and streams of incoming laser fire raked the enemy ship, and she began coughing atmosphere in fitful puffs.

And the missiles weren’t alone. A deluge of soliton wave-encapsulated plasma charges devastated the class 9, cracking her at midships, then forward, and ending when a cataclysmic blast tore the aft end apart in a destructive fury.

A second later, she lost antimatter containment and vanished in a blinding flash.

The Fafnir raced through the cooling cloud of vaporized debris without slowing, gaining fast on the fleeing class 10.

“Now that’s what we came for,” Icky crowed. “Killer instincts, boss!”

I smiled at her, but it was… brittle. I was glad we made it through unscathed and ready to throw more punches.

* * *

“Netty, their course is deflecting. What the hell are they doing?” I asked.

“If I had to guess, I’d say that they’re going for a Hail Mary. They know they can’t outrun us on a straight course before we can engage them, so they’re angling their course toward the red dwarf. They’re probably hoping that interference from the star will inhibit our targeting. At the same time, the gravitational boost will gain them enough velocity to fling them out of the system that much faster.”

“That’s inadvisable. We’ll gain the same boost, so there’s going to be no net gain for them, right?” Zeno asked.

“Overall, no. But there will be a period during which they’ll have gained the boost and we haven’t yet, while the star is interposed between us and them. That may give them the opportunity to… do something. Sorry, I can do trajectories and accelerations and orbital mechanics like all get out, but when it comes to prognosticating the future, not so much.”

“I still don’t get it. They’re just prolonging the inevitable.”

“Well, I did say it was a Hail Mary.”

“That’s right up there with that Clarence guy. What the hell is a—?”

“It means a last, desperate attempt to yank victory from what seems like inevitable defeat,” Perry said.

“Ah. Well, then I’ve sure Hailed Mary a few times,” Zeno said.

I studied the tactical overlay. If the class 10 had just kept running straight, we’d be in missile range in about twenty minutes, and laser about six minutes after that. By altering their trajectory, they’d cut those numbers in half. But they’d also put the red dwarf almost directly behind them relative to us, which meant we’d be shooting into its glare—

“I know why,” I said. “They’ve got Santorelli on board. They’re gambling that we won’t fire if our targeting solutions suck, thanks to the emissions from that star.”

Torina nodded. “Ah, right. If we can’t land precision hits, then we risk destroying their ship and killing her.”

I nodded. “And they’re right. Netty, assume they make it around the star with the greatest possible gravitational boost, and that we follow them. How long of a firing window will we have for shooting then?”

“Shooting generally? About eight for missiles, five for lasers, two or so for everything else. For precision shooting, forget the missiles and the burst cannon, so that leaves about three for lasers and just over a minute for the mass drivers and particle cannon.”

I tapped the armrest and looked at Torina. “Clever. They’ve gained themselves some time this way.”

We pressed on, the red dwarf growing larger, a roiling, ruddy disc enveloped in a pinkish halo of a corona. It was downright chilly as stars went, a mere twenty-two hundred degrees Kelvin, so less than half the surface temperature of Sol. It looked like our quarry was going to take advantage of that and pass alarmingly close to the damned thing, gaining the greatest possible boost from the slingshot effect around it.

And they had another trick up their sleeve.

“Van, they’re launching missiles,” Netty announced. I glanced at the overlay but saw no incoming ordnance. Instead, I saw missile icons detach from the one depicting the class 10, and… that was it. They moved a short distance away, then steadily fell behind. What they weren’t doing was accelerating toward us.

“Oh dear. That presents a problem,” Funboy said.

I turned to look at him. “Care to elaborate?”

“They’re going to use their missiles as ad hoc mines. We’ll reach the corona about the same time the missiles will, which means we’ll have to confront them when it’s most difficult to detect and target them.”

I glanced at the overlay and swore. Based on how this was playing out, Funboy was right.

“You say that like you’ve seen this before,” Zeno said.

“I have. Essie and I did something similar to escape pursuers once. I only hope that we didn’t inadvertently teach the ruse to our opponents.”

I grimaced at our current reality. Enveloped in the incandescent vapor of the star’s corona, its atmosphere, even as tenuous as it was, would degrade our scanners to the point at which reliable shooting was going to be a serious problem—doubly so for targets as small as missiles. The missiles, on the other hand, didn’t have to be anywhere near as accurate to be potentially deadly to us.

I sat back, my pulse suddenly racing, my stomach tightening up. Thanks to a damned clever enemy, we faced a bleak choice—continue our quest to save Gabriella Santorelli, which was by no means a sure thing, and risk a gauntlet of missiles we could barely see, or give up and leave her to whatever fate awaited her.

Including her death, and then rebirth as an electronic slave on a chip.

18

I stared hard at the overlay through my visor, at war with myself. My gut instinct was to save Gabriella. She was a Peacemaker and, more importantly, she was a human being who didn’t deserve what these evil assholes probably had planned for her.

But I felt the worm of fear in my guts, and it was caused by one possibility: losing my crew.

“Van, I have an idea,” Zeno said, looking up from something she’d been doing on her panel.

“I’m all ears, Zeno.”

“We launch the Frankie and cut the Fafnir’s drive for about thirty seconds to let the workboat pull ahead. Then we make the Frankie the biggest target we possibly can, the way B did with her ship to defeat those incoming missiles. I’ve been playing around with some electronic countermeasures, and I think I can emulate what she did—to a point, anyway. Hopefully, we can convince the enemy missiles—or at least some of them—to go after the Frankie instead of the Fafnir.”

“Gotta be honest, Zeno, that sounds a little like a suicide mission,” I said.

She shrugged. “I’ve run two quick simulations. In one of them, the Frankie's blown to bits, yeah. In the other, she comes through intact.”

“So a coin-flip—heads she makes it, tails she doesn’t. Great.”

“Can we pilot the Frankie remotely? Or let an AI run her?” Torina asked.

Netty answered. “Interference from the star will make remote piloting problematic. And the Frankie doesn’t have the computing capacity to run more than a rudimentary AI. I’d happily copy an instance of myself to her if I could, but she was never designed for it.”

I was actually kind of glad for that. The idea of Netty spawning a complete version of herself, only to get it killed—that was a sort of suicide too, wasn’t it?

“I was assuming I’d be piloting her anyway,” Zeno said, starting to unstrap. I held up a hand.

“Zeno, I like all of your plans except for one part.”

“Which one?”

“The part where you fly the Frankie.” I unbuckled my harness. “I’ll do it.”

“Van—”

“It’s an order, Zeno.”

Torina immediately came on a private channel. “Van, this is insane. You’ll get yourself killed.”

I stopped and looked at her. “I’m sincerely hoping I don’t.”

“When I said you couldn’t afford to start being timid, I didn’t mean to become reckless,” she snapped.

“Torina, this seems to be our only chance to have a shot at saving Gabriella. If we just pack it in, you know what’s likely to happen to her.”

“To be blunt, Van, I don’t give a shit about her.”

I reached out and put my gloved hand on her shoulder. I could feel the others looking away to give us this moment.

“Speaking of ways we can’t afford to start thinking,” I said. Torina opened her mouth, but I cut her off.

“Torina, nothing makes me feel alive like knowing you care. I mean that, in my bones. But I’m not just your intended. I’m the commander of this ship. The decision is made, and I’m not rolling these dice without cause. Do you understand? Do you believe me?”

It killed me to see the pain etched into her face, intensified by the fact I’d thrown her own words right back at her, but she knew I was right—and she hated it.

“I do. Now, I have my own order. Come back to me, Van Tudor, okay?”

“I will ,” I said, then turned and headed aft to board the Frankie.

Along the way, something odd happened. That tension, that tautness in my gut, my racing pulse, it all faded away. I felt strangely… calm, considering what I was about to do.

But I was about to do it, and that was what mattered.

* * *

“Okay, Van, the software is uploaded. When you initiate it, it’s going to turn you into one plump target for those missiles—or it should. The only wrinkle is that, even if we kill the Fafnir’s emissions, her drive plume is going to be a hell of a giveaway,” Zeno said over the comm.

“I get it, Zeno. If we could kill the drive entirely, we would, but if we do, it kinda defeats the whole point of doing this.” We could afford to shut the Fafnir’s drive down for about thirty seconds and still leave ourselves a reasonable intercept window on the other side of the star, but that was it. Still, every missile I drew to me was one that wasn’t targeting the Fafnir.

I launched, and Netty immediately killed the Fafnir’s drive, while I lit the Frankie’s. I feathered the controls to spare the former the latter’s exhaust plume and rocketed away at a shallow angle, then adopted a parallel course a few hundred klicks off to the Fafnir’s port side. With her drive shut down, she quickly fell behind the nimble little workboat. As soon as she relit her far more powerful drive, she’d start gaining again, but we’d timed it so that she wouldn’t catch up until we were well inside the star’s corona—hopefully at a point when the missiles would have to point themselves directly at the star to target her. When that happened, I should be a much juicier target for them.

In theory.

The next twenty minutes involved me sitting and doing nothing. I contemplated calling Torina on a private channel but decided against it. We’d said everything we needed to. More talk just risked one or both of us saying something that might affect the other in some unintended way. And if this really was… it… if we never spoke again, that was not how either of us would want to leave it. You don’t get to say many perfect sentences, so you live with the best you can speak.

The fact she didn’t call me told me she was thinking exactly the same thing.

I watched the Fafnir gaining on the Frankie’s less sophisticated tactical overlay. It struck me that the last time I’d watched it this closely had been over Wisconsin, when we were being chased by American fighters and were racing to dive into Lake Michigan for cover. The memory made me smile. It seemed so long ago and such a simpler problem.

“Okay, Van, we’re thirty seconds from the zero point,” Zeno said, meaning the point in time and space at which I’d activate her countermeasures and our little op would begin.

“Got it,” I said, then tapped at the controls, confirmed that the computer was properly set for the zero point, and watched the time tick down.

It reached zero, and her program activated. By now, the red dwarf was a crimson wall of light and fury off to my left. Radiant energy was heating the Frankie’s hull, but I started rotating her slowly so that the hot side would roll spaceward, shedding the excess heat. If this had been a bigger, hotter star like Sol, we’d have to be a lot further away to avoid being cooked.

A warning chime sounded. A missile had locked onto the workboat.

“Here we go,” I muttered, and targeted the Frankie’s sole weapon—twin lasers with enough pop to matter. The targeting solution sucked, but I managed to land a fatal hit anyway, destroying the enemy ordnance in a pulse of light.

“One down,” I said.

“Good shooting,” Zeno replied, but that was all. Now was the time for concentration, not chatter—

“Missile to your two o’clock, Van,” she said.

“I see it.” I fired but couldn’t get a proper lock and kept missing. My palms started to turn slick and greasy with sweat as the missile raced in. Fortunately, someone—Torina, probably—was a better shot, and the Fafnir’s lasers took it down.

“Missile, one o’clock—and we’ve got one inbound, too, dead ahead,” Zeno said.

We fired. Again, I got lucky and destroyed mine. The Fafnir’s point-defenses took down the one inbound on her.

“So far, so good—”

A missile suddenly activated, its seeker-scanner coming to life so close I could see the excess plasma leaking around the exterior bell.

“Too close,” I grated, even as my fingers flew over the controls. I fired. Missed. Adjusted the targeting and fired again. And missed.

“Get your shit together, Tudor.” The voice that said that was me. I cleared my vision with an effort—

And then, on instinct, flipped the Frankie ass over teakettle, pointing her exhaust and drive bell at the inbound missile. It detonated with a searing flash, but aside from a clack of shrapnel somewhere aft, maybe against the drive bell, and a crash of static over the comm, there was no other effect. The Frankie’s cross-section was just too small when she was pointed directly at a missile—unless, of course, it detonated close, then it wouldn’t matter. But Zeno’s software convinced the dimwitted AI in the ordnance that the workboat was a far larger and more elusive target than she was, so it detonated its warhead well short.

“You okay?” Torina asked on a private channel.

“Might need clean drawers. Is that too gritty for this stage in our relationship?”

“We’re past dirty undies, Van. Well past.”

“Thanks, love.”

She blew me an electronic kiss that landed with a sizzle of static, and I was renewed. Torina had that effect on me. She was a bright point in the chaos and darkness.

I flipped the Frankie around again and checked my position relative to the Fafnir. She’d almost caught up, but too soon, thanks to my desperate maneuver. I couldn’t pull it again, not without letting the Fafnir pull ahead much earlier than we’d intended, which would defeat the point of doing this. So that had been a one-off. Aces are cards you can only play once, but the effect was worth it.

Inhaling deeply, I felt my focus return, and we powered on. Loops and whorls of star stuff leapt off the surface of the red dwarf toward me, some alarmingly near, but none close enough to truly pose a threat. If anything, it was primal and elegant, adding to my sensation of irrelevance in the sweep of creation.

“Missile,” Zeno said, followed by a target indication. I confirmed it, targeted the lasers, opened fire, and hoped for the best. I wished I could have wiped my palms, or my forehead, but I couldn’t and had to live with the sweat.

We drove on. The Fafnir ended up taking one close hit that punctured her hull and knocked out one of the laser batteries. I ended up taking no hits at all, which left me congratulating myself—

Prematurely, as it turned out.

“Van, missile, your three—” Zeno started, but a sledgehammer slammed into me, and I thought nothing at all.

* * *

I came to with Zeno and Torina shouting over the comm, their words stumbling over one another’s frantic calls.

“Van—!”

“—hear me—!”

“—talk to me—!”

I groaned. “One at a time, please—”

A chorus of relieved shouts cut me off. I told them all to shut up so I could check out the damage.

The Frankie was coasting through space, her drive dark, her reactor scrammed. I had emergency power only from the backup cells, which gave me basic instruments and limited flight controls from the thrusters. I looked around and realized I could see stars—and that that wasn’t right—then further realized a gaping chunk of the starboard hull was gone.

It took another few seconds before I realized I should check the damage to myself. I looked down but saw nothing amiss. In fact, aside from my left hand being strangely numb, I felt fine—

“Oh. Holy shit. That’s not right,” I said.

“What isn’t?” Torina said.

I raised my left hand. My pinkie finger and the one next to it were… gone. Just gone. Where they should have been were truncated stumps encased in sealing foam.

“My hand. Part of it isn’t there anymore.”

“What?”

“Gone. Not there. Vanished. Don’t know how else to put it.”

“Van, are you serious?”

I blinked. My faculties were returning, along with a dull ache from my hand. “Wish I was lying, but I’m down a couple digits. Not good.”

“Van—”

“Please, give me a minute. I need to assess. And—ooo, that’s got my attention. I know the foam is holding me together, but damn, stings a bit.”

I looked around and saw that a hole had been punched through the instrumental panel, wiping out the thruster controls. Right. I’d been using my left hand to work the thrusters, and my right to control the laser. A chunk of shrapnel must have slammed clean through the hull, passing through my hand and the thruster controls along the way. I could even make out the hole where it entered, up to my right, and where it had exited, beneath the instrument panel beside my left knee.

It meant that a speeding projectile had missed my head and torso by about half a meter, and my left leg by less than that, just centimeters. And speaking of centimeters, just a couple to the right, and I’d have lost my whole left hand.

Not a great outcome, but not a bad one considering—

I growled in pain.

As the adrenaline wore off, the pain flooded into my hand and beyond, white hot and relentless. The sealing foam anesthetic numbed the actual wound, but the rest of my hand felt as though I’d stuck it into a bonfire.

“Van, stand by, we’re going to pick you up—” Torina said, but I cut her off.

“No! Get Gabriella! I’m fine. In pain—owwww, shit, mother—” I groaned. “But I’ll be fine till you get back to me.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure, now go and make the sacrifice of my two fingers have some meaning, please and thanks!”

I sat back and slumped in place. My hand hurt like hell, sure, but I needed some time to just… sit. I’d been whole a few moments ago, and now I wasn’t.

I also came close to being pulped, and the enormity of that washed over me in a grim wave.

I held up my hand, staring at the odd shape. “Just you and me, Lefty.”

* * *

It’s amazing how contemplative, almost Zen-like, it is to sit in vacuum, in a nearly lifeless spaceship, coasting on a perpetual journey to nowhere. Or, not actually to nowhere—according to Netty, I’d entered a slowly decaying orbit around the red dwarf and would continue circling it until plunging into it in another four months. Of course, I’d be long dead by then, perhaps even on the perihelion of my next orbit, the point of closest approach, killed by the radiant heat. I didn’t have a working spacecraft, after all, and it was full of holes anyway. And even if that didn’t kill me, I’d eventually run out of air or water. Power, not so much—the backup cells had weeks of juice in them.

Silence reigned, and I wasn’t going to break it.

The Fafnir, under Torina’s command, had headed off in pursuit of the class 10. My survival, or lack thereof, was utterly dependent on them surviving the fight intact enough to come back for me. If they didn’t, I’d only know it by that deep, introspective silence carrying on indefinitely. The Frankie’s comm was out, wrecked by shrapnel. Ditto her scanners. My suit comm wasn’t powerful enough to work over the vast distances involved, so even if I did call them, they’d never hear me. I was truly, utterly alone, with not another living being within many millions of klicks—at least, not one that I was, or perhaps even could be aware of. For all I knew, one of Matterforge’s cousins might live on the red dwarf that had become so central to my life, but unless it reached out to me, I’d never know it.

Again, the stillness pushed in, oppressive and vast.

No one else knew we were out here, aside from Retta, but I had no idea how long she’d wait to hear back from us. If the Fafnir were destroyed, the chances she’d dispatch anyone out here before I succumbed to heat or thirst or asphyxiation were pretty damned small. Interesting situation, though, for a farm boy from Pony Hollow—killed in orbit around a red dwarf twenty-seven light-years from Earth.

“What a shitty way to go,” I observed. “I’d hoped to go from old age. Maybe surrounded by a few dozen grandchildren—”

I sat up.

Peace wasn’t an option, not with Helem Gauss and his cronies around. Even though I could rely on my crew like family, the fantasy of being a father, and grandfather, and a pan of peace—

It was sheer fantasy.

The ship was dead silent, save for the sound of my breathing and that curious hum of eternity. The stars were never silent, even to the limited senses of a human.

“Van? You still alive in there?”

I winced as the silence became sound, Torina’s voice.

“More or less.”

“We’ll be back to pick you up in about two hours. Can you hang on that long?”

I glanced around at the ravaged, lifeless Frankie. “Believe it or not, I’ve got no other plans. Did you—”

“Get Gabriella? Yes, we did. She’s a bit of an escape artist, it turns out. She managed to engineer her own breakout and vacate that class 10 via an escape pod. We actually saw her standing in the pod’s open hatch, firing a slug gun at the class 10 as she zoomed away.”

I leaned my head back and smiled. “That sounds like the Gabriella I know, yeah.”

“Anyway, figuring she was no longer aboard, we blew the class 10 to bits. I hope you weren’t planning on taking any of its crew as prisoners.”

“Nope, I’m good, thanks.”

“Van?”

It was a different voice, one I hadn’t heard in a long time.

“Hello, Gabriella. Long time no see.”

“I’m giving you a B+ on this rescue op of yours. Good, but it could have been better.”

I laughed. “Have you ever given anyone an A?”

“Nope. The best I’ve ever given is a B+, and I’ve only ever given one of those.”

“Is that your way of saying thank you?”

“Maybe.”

I laughed again, then sat back and relaxed. My crew was on the way, and the silence, like my chances for a lasting peace, faded away.

For the moment.

19

“You look a bit, uh, different,” I said to Gabriella as I clambered out of the battered Frankie and back into the Fafnir.

“Right? It’s like we abducted a manager from Hot Topic,” Perry said. Gabriella gave him a quick, oddly furtive and maybe even slightly aggravated glance, but he just stared right back at her, and she turned away again.

The others looked at him, and Torina said, “Uh—”

“Earthly retail chain, they specialize in sort of a counterculture thing, especially music and video game t-shirts designed to make someone think they’re edgy—” Perry sighed. “You know, it really takes away from my pithy references when I have to keep explaining them.”

“I got it, bird. A little dated, though, isn’t it? I mean, are malls even still a thing?” I asked.

Perry sighed again. “I give up.”

I turned to Gabriella. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been all swarthy and brusque, smoldering, gray-eyed intensity. The intensity was still there, but now it was platinum blond and had intricate, Celtic-knot-esque facial tattoos. “You do look a little different. Trying to fit in somewhere, Adept?”

She shook her head, and I caught a little more than just intensity. Gabriella had an edge to her, a sense of restless, nervous energy. “More like trying to vanish. Tats are one way to fool facial ID on the stations. I’ve been out here for… a while.”

Funboy grabbed my good arm and steered me to the first aid bay and the auto-med. Behind me, I heard Icky’s plaintive call.

“Van, what did you do to Frankie? She’s full of holes!”

I held up my injured hand and its three remaining fingers. “So am I, but I don’t hear her complaining about that.”

Torina brought some cold beers from the galley as Funboy removed the sealing foam from my injured hand and set about treating it. I winced and hissed but kept my attention on Gabriella.

“You’ve been on the run.” I said.

“Figured that out all on your own, huh?”

I smiled. Whatever she’d been through, her dry and snappy personality was still there. “I’m a natural detective. It’s blooming after my brief experience with eternity.” I let my smile fade. “You’re safe now.”

“Thanks to Retta. She’s a damned good friend,” Torina said.

“She is. She’s also in danger,” Gabriella replied.

I swirled my beer. “Aren’t we all.”

Santorelli pulled at her beer, then gave a yeasty belch. Before she could speak, Icky called out again from the Frankie’s docking module.

“I heard that! And I approve!”

Funboy sighed as he examined my truncated digits with a med-scanner. “I don’t. Van, are all of your friends so ready to expel their germs in any random direction?”

Gabriella gave him a cool look. “Do you ever comb your eyebrows?”

“I may be fuzzy, but at least I have manners.”

“Me too!” Icky called, reminding us again how good Wu'tzur hearing was.

Perry turned toward her voice. “No you don’t, Icky. You’ve got… personality.”

“I prefer élan,” I said, wincing as my hand flared into pain. “Classier.”

Gabriella smiled, but it was brief, a switch being flicked on and off. “You’ve got a good crew, Van. I can tell by the way they bitch at each other.”

“Oh, you ain’t heard nothing—OW!” I turned to Funboy.

“Sorry, Van. There will be pain as I seal the stumps of your fingers. Or… more pain, since life is pain.”

Gabriella stared at him for a moment. “Wow.”

I turned back to Gabriella. “You know, despite our, uh, frosty introduction during my training with you—”

“You were an Initiate, Van. Maybe you were Mark Tudor’s grandson, sure, but that only meant I expected even more from you.”

“Apology accepted,” I said, flashing her a grin, but I went serious again. “Anyway, why are you out here? What did Retta send us out here to save you from, aside from some generic bad guys?”

She replied with slow deliberation. “For the past year I’ve been on the run. But I haven’t been without a plan. I made it inside BeneStar.”

That made us all sit up.

Her face went hard. “No matter how bad you think they are, they’re worse. They’re not human. But they’re not alien, either.”

I exchanged an uneasy glance with Torina. “What are they then?”

“Something… else. Something new. I had to start running before I could get all the details. But I do know that, at its core, whatever they are, or it is, BeneStar wants more than just profit. Much more. What they want is compliance. And our bodies, which they call biomass.”

Icky stomped up. “Well, they can’t have my biomass, the bastards. I’ve got potential mates.” She tried to twirl—a feat unto itself—to show off the braids hanging on for dear life at various points on her body.. “This kind of style just doesn’t happen. It’s… it’s—”

“Cultivated?” Zeno asked.

Icky seized on that. “Yes! I’m cultivated.”

Despite the gravity of the moment, Santorelli raised one pale, bemused brow at Icky. I shrugged.

“It’s true. She does, thus proving that there’s someone for everyone, pants or not,” I said.

“Not, in this case. Icky, what happened to that kilt thing of yours?” Perry asked.

She shrugged. “It was chafing.”

“Chafing what—no, wait, I don’t want to know.”

Funboy finished up with my hand. “It will take you some time to get used to the missing fingers,” he said.

I held up my three fingers. “Ya think?”

“However, there are prosthetics available, and the Flesh Merchants may be able to regrow them for you.”

I nodded. He’d neatly sealed up the stumps, and all that remained was a faint ache and weird, disconcerting sense of something not being there that should.

“Okay.” I lowered my hand and turned to Gabriella. “I think that, for your debriefing, we’re going to need a little privacy, and somewhere safer than the system where we just destroyed two of the bad guys’ ships and rescued you from them.”

She nodded. “Like an abandoned station somewhere?”

I shook my head. “Something even lower profile than that. Ever heard of a place called Elkader, Iowa?”

* * *

Miryam was still in Greece, but through Clinton Barnes, the local sheriff, she was able to procure a farmhouse a few miles from mine. I had misgivings about coming here at all, but a call to Groshenko confirmed that there’d been no BeneStar or Sorcerer activity in the Solar System since our last encounter with them.

“We’ve given them a bloody nose here twice. Between your ship, the Iowa, our picket ships, and the ones deployed by the GKU, Earth is a pretty hard target right now,” he said, then peered past me. “That woman behind you—she looks vaguely like Gabriella Santorelli, but not the version I know.”

“Hello, Petyr,” she said, smiling.

“I preferred you as the slightly dangerous woman with dark hair.”

“Well, first, Petyr, I don’t care what you think. Second, only slightly dangerous?”

Groshenko laughed, told us he’d let his discreet picket ships at Sol know we’d be coming, and signed off.

We made a brief stop at the Iowa on our way in toward Earth, the manic, unbridled chatter and excitement of our young Conoku crew spilling over us as soon as we cracked the airlock. They took us on a tour, showing us the various improvements they were busily making to the ship, a dizzying array of modifications and upgrades that even impressed Funboy.

“This ship will be superior to many newer warships. Of course, that will make it a bigger target,” he said, again proving that there was no silver lining he couldn’t find a dark cloud behind.

Santorelli leaned against a bulkhead, hands on her hips. “Are… are those kids always like that?” Her eyes were round with interest and mild alarm.

Torina pulled at her lip, then waggled a hand back and forth. “They weren’t bad today. Sometimes, they can, ah… reinforce their group excitement.”

“They’re maniacs with wrenches,” Funboy announced. “They have no concepts of personal space, or what I’m told elementary school teachers call an inside voice. They are a rabble, and they often comment on my eyebrows, which offends me at a cultural level.”

“So you like them?” Santorelli asked.

“Oh, very much,” Funboy concluded.

“He’s truly paternal,” Zeno beamed.

Santorelli looked dubious, then smiled broadly as she understood how tight the crew was. With a nod of approval, she straightened, and we reboarded the Fafnir in good spirits.

We then pushed on and landed the Fafnir in a wooded ravine a few hundred meters from our rented farmhouse. Icky, Zeno, and Funboy were going to set about doing what repairs they could to the Frankie, while Torina, Perry, and I got together with Gabriella for a thorough debrief.

I beamed with approval as we approached the farmhouse. It was newer than mine, and larger, and was apparently on its way to being repurposed to a more generic sort of upscale country home. Most of the surrounding lands had already been sold off to adjacent property owners. Still, it was comfortable, and had the advantage of being close enough to my own farm that our being here probably wouldn’t be expected.

There was an added precaution, though. Groshenko’s cruiser, the Poltava, was in geosynchronous orbit directly above us. No one was going to get through the cordon protecting Earth without us knowing about it.

Unless they were already here, but we had assets watching for that, too. Tony Burgess and his people had carefully compiled all the UFO-related information they could find, something they were getting pretty good at. They’d found no patterns to indicate any suspicious activity in the region, but Tony had made the trip and brought all their information with them so Perry could review and confirm it. It only took him a moment, whereupon he bobbed his head and agreed with them.

“Where’s Myron?” I asked Tony while Perry did his review. He’d only brought the dour, bookish Marla with him this time. Tony just shrugged.

“He’s burying a school bus.”

“He’s—I’m sorry, what?”

Tony smiled. “He’s buried two school buses on some property he inherited from his parents to make a sort of bunker. He decided it was cramped, so he got his hands on a third, which he’s connected to the other two and, well, has to bury along with them.”

“Ah. Of course.”

Tony shrugged again. “He’s not paranoid. Just, um, thorough.”

We finally convened our little group with the bustle and fuss of any team faced with an unknown task.

“So here we are,” I said when the introductions were done. I poured a round of drinks for all of us—bourbon, and good stuff at that, picked up by Tony at my request. I called in my crew working on the Fafnir, leaving Netty and Perry to keep watch and participate by comm.

Along with the bourbon, Tony had brought along cheese curds, which I figured had been his lunch. When he offered them to anyone who wanted them, Icky dove into them face-first—no surprise there. What was surprising was that Funboy tried them and actually decided he liked them.

He shrugged as he devoured them. “I must admit that the combination of congealed fat, flocculated and coalesced milk proteins, and salt is surprisingly pleasant.”

“Well, when you put it that way, how can I resist,” Torina said, dropping the cheese curd she’d been going to eat back on the plate.

I smiled at Funboy. “I’d have thought you’d find something like that decidedly unhealthy.”

He blinked at me. “I’m not going to live forever, Van. I might as well get some enjoyment from my existence before its inevitable conclusion.”

“You are one romantic sonofabitch.”

We settled into the kitchen that, despite the ongoing renovations to turn the place into more of a gentrified home than a farmhouse, was still the biggest room in the place.

Immediately, I had to stifle a smile.

Tony was utterly captivated by Santorelli. I desperately hoped he didn’t make some sort of overture toward her, because Gabriella was not the type to let people down gently.

Speaking of Gabriella, she immediately took the floor and started explaining what had led up to her being kidnapped.

“I found out Master Kharsweil was dirty,” she said.

I looked at her for a moment, then frowned. “Okay. I mean… I thought that was painfully obvious? He’s dirty as sin—”

“No, Van, I uncovered evidence. Someone was routing funds through a shell company based on Crossroads—a personal-care spa that didn’t seem to actually do much personal care.”

“Ah, yes, the service industry. If you’re going to launder money, do it through a business that doesn’t actually have hard products or inventory.” I’d encountered the dodge repeatedly in my hacking days, tracing money to hair salons, spas, and pet-grooming places. After all, how can the authorities prove that you didn’t cut somebody’s hair on the fifteenth of the previous month, or didn’t give Fluffy the cat a shampoo and trim last December?

Gabriella nodded right back. “Anyway, I ran it down—I mean, the place was operating near the concourse by our field office—and discovered that some of the freshly cleaned money was being diverted into an account I was able to trace back to Kharsweil’s Brood-Mother. Trouble is, she died years ago—and guess who has power of attorney on her accounts?”

“So what happened?” Torina asked.

“Another Peacemaker in the Crossroads field office betrayed me to Kharsweil. I know it wasn’t Gus, but that still left four other possibilities. Whoever hacked into my report also declassified it, then sent it to everyone in the office, presumably including themselves.”

“So the audit trails pointed back to everyone,” Marla put in flatly. “That’s clever.”

Gabriella gave her a cool look, which Marla simply returned in kind. “Clever or not, it made everyone a suspect.”

“How do you know it wasn’t Gus?” I asked.

“He wasn’t on Crossroads when any of this went down. He was back with his people for some—I don’t know, the way he described it was kind of a big sex party or something.”

“A what?”

Perry cut in. “Gus’s species reproduces en masse. Entire social groups exchange genetic material in large gatherings.”

“I was invited to something like that during a trip to Paris once.”

Torina raised an eyebrow at me. “Did you attend?”

“Anyway,” I went on with a quick grin, “you uncovered evidence of Kharsweil’s dirtiness, Gabriella. What happened next?”

“What happened next was me running for my life. I got word that there’d been at least one contract put out on me and knew I had to vanish. Fortunately, I had help,” she said.

I nodded. “Retta.”

“Not just her. I had help from Bester and Gerhardt, too.”

I leaned forward. “Gerhardt? Really?”

“If you’re wondering why he didn’t bring you into the circle of knowledge, Van, it’s because he came up with a way of getting some value out of it all. I needed to disappear, which meant I needed a new identity. But me having a new identity opened up… opportunities.”

“This is where we get to the part where you ended up—how did you put it? Inside BeneStar?”

She nodded. “Your grandmother, Valint, became my combination of protector and ride. She—”

“My grandmother,” I put in, sitting back. “Is there anyone I don’t know and don’t work closely with who was involved in all of this?”

Gabriella’s cool look leveled on me. “Trust me, Van, there are lots of things going on that you don’t know and don’t need to know about.”

I had to nod, because she was right. And yet, I couldn’t help wondering just how much our investigation could have progressed if we’d had access to someone on the inside of BeneStar. Yes, a bigger circle of knowledge offered more opportunities for leaks. But I’d encountered enough situations in my white-hat hacker days in which one agency tripped all over another agency’s operations because they never talked to one another about it. Many problems could have been solved if there’d been more sharing of information and less internecine competition.

More than a few lives could have been saved, too.

But I held my tongue for now. It wasn’t Gabriella who’d kept the information from me. Moreover, she’d been on the run. But if it turned out that Gerhardt, Valint, or anyone knew something and didn’t share it with us, and something bad happened as a result, someone got hurt or killed—

I was going to be pissed.

Gabriella must have sensed what I was both thinking and feeling. Her face hardened. “Van, before you get all righteous—”

“Excuse me, but before you stray into territory we’re both going to regret, just rest assured that if I have any concerns about this, it’s on behalf of the case—that’s it, that’s all. So let’s leave it at that. Agreed?”

Gabriella gave me a surprised stare at my backlash. Perry, circling the farm as our top cover and listening via comm, spoke up, his voice humming in my ear.

Attaboy, boss. Don’t take any shit from her.

She kept staring. So did I.

Finally, she relented. “Point taken. Apologies, Van.”

She resumed her story, describing how Valint had taken her to Dregs, Spindrift, Plenty, Halcyon, and sundry other shitholes, both inside and outside known space. During the course of her travels, she progressively built up a new identity, helped by Retta, and by fake documents provided by Bester via Gerhardt. It turned out that Bester was a skilled forger, one of the best in the business, which was yet another useful revelation. She eventually became Matsuni Kotsunden, a seasoned spacer with platinum blonde hair, facial tats, legal troubles, and a need for employment.

Which she found in our friend Skrilla’s establishment, The One-Eyed Yak. She’d insinuated herself into a criminal pipeline leading straight inside BeneStar and had risen in rank the old fashioned way, climbing over the bodies of those above her.

“I wouldn’t shed too many tears for the ones I killed. I made sure they were very bad people with egregious, unpunished crimes. The one time I encountered one who wasn’t, a Nesit guilty of only financial crimes, I just blackmailed him out of the way.”

“Wow. I mean… wow.”

We all turned to Tony, who’d been raptly listening to Gabriella. He blinked back at us and looked suddenly and profoundly self-conscious.

“Oh, uh… sorry. It’s just that hearing you talk about just—well, I mean, blackmailing and killing people to work your way up the ranks is—” He shook his head in wonder. “It’s like the best 80s movie ever.”

Marla shrugged but kept her eyes on Gabriella. “Makes perfect sense to me. Very practical.”

I glanced at Torina, who just smiled back at me. I knew what she was thinking because I was thinking the same thing—Tony and Marla were both fascinated with, not to mention obviously attracted to, Gabriella.

She just gave them both her trademark cold look—which seemed to charm them even more—then turned back to me.

“Anyway, it took ten months, but I finally got deep enough to visit a BeneStar Helping Hand, a base of operations on a developing world in need of accelerated indigenous development.”

“Exploitation,” Zeno said.

Gabriella nodded. “Sadly, yes. The indigenous people in this case, the Klostemu, are a transitional civilization who happen to be sitting on large deposits of rare earth elements, including—”

“Osmium,” I said.

“Osmium, yes. Their planet’s geology also favored the—and I’m not a geologist, so bear with me here—the development of what are called kimberlite pipes on Earth. Those are a sort of conveyor belt bringing material from inside the planet right to the surface.”

Netty spoke up. “On Earth, kimberlite pipes are most commonly associated with diamonds, which are formed in the upper mantle and are transported by them to the upper levels of the crust.”

“On the Klostemu homeworld, they’re related to a lot more than that. From what I was able to gather, their planet hosts some of the richest deposits of all sorts of things, both inside and outside known space. Osmium is one, but their homeworld is rich in nickel, copper, cobalt, chromium, lithium—and plenty of other useful stuff.”

Tony cleared his throat. “What does it mean when you call these… Klomestu?”

“Klostemu,” Gabriella replied.

“Yeah. Them. You called them a transitional civilization. What does that mean?”

“It means that they’ve started dabbling in sub-luminal spaceflight but haven’t yet come to understand the underlying principles of twisting well enough to start attempting to engineer ways of using them,” Netty said.

“This is a transitional civilization,” Gabriella said, gesturing around.

Tony nodded. “Oh. Okay. Well, I’m glad this BeneStar thing hasn’t decided to set up one of its Helping Hand things here on Earth,” he said, grinning.

Nobody smiled, and his faded.

“Wait. They wouldn’t try to do that, would they?”

A long moment of uncomfortable silence lingered, then Gabriella continued. The Klostemu were, as she described them, tribal, had a proclivity for violence, and were easily led in the name of profit—in other words, fertile ground for BeneStar to exploit. That was uncomfortable to hear also, since the same description would fit Earthly humans pretty well.

It worked out for Gabriella in her new persona as Matsuni. She proved her worth to BeneStar by executing three locals who took more than the agreed-upon kickbacks, then telling their families there’d be no death benefit because BeneStar didn’t pay traitors.

“And before you unleash the moral outrage, let me point out that these three treacherous Klostemu were quite happy to sell out their people, even informing on more loyal Klostemu who tried to stand up to BeneStar’s predation. They were more bad people doing more bad things, and they got what was coming to them,” Gabriella put in.

I’d been opening my mouth to voice just such an objection, but then I remembered the people whose livelihoods we’d ruined in the aftermath of our bank heist and closed it again. Glass houses and all that.

But holy shit, the greater good came easily as a way to justify all sorts of things, didn’t it?

So I headed in a different direction. “This all happened in less than a year. How the hell did they corrupt an entire planet in that short a time?”

Gabriella’s shrug was a decidedly bemused one, as though the answer to that should be self-evident. “The usual. Bribes. Extortion. Threats. And of course, what BeneStar euphemistically calls Human Resources. They were the advance guard of this particular apocalypse. Every shitty, horrible, exploitative thing they did was presented as being for the good of the planet and its people.”

“But mostly for the good of BeneStar,” Torina said.

“And Helem Gauss,” I added.

Gabriella sighed. “Yes, especially Helem Gauss. It didn’t hurt that he had one hell of a charmer as his primary agent—who happens to be someone you know, Van.”

I braced myself. Shit. Was I about to find out that it was Lunzy? Or Dugrop’che? One of Zeno’s mothers, or Icky’s father?

Taking a breath, I asked, “Who?”

“Your cousin, Carter Yost.”

* * *

I was standing, and my chair slammed back before I even realized I’d done it.

“Carter? Carter is an agent for Gauss?”

“Not just an agent, but a primary agent,” Icky noted, staring mournfully at the empty cheese curd container.

Torina shook her head. “Wait. Are you sure? The Carter Yost we know is… well—”

“A moron. He’s a narcissistic moron,” I snapped, pacing because I suddenly couldn’t sit still.

“The Carter Yost I met was no moron. He was sharp, insightful, and utterly ruthless.”

“Then it can’t be Carter,” I said, but Gabriella produced a data slate and called an image onto it.

“I captured this, which was way harder than it looked. Yost always seemed to be a step ahead of everyone else. This one of very few times I caught him with his guard… not down, but focused elsewhere,” she said, turning the slate toward me.

There was no mistaking it. That was Carter Yost.

“I don’t get it,” I said, finally sitting back down. “I’ve known Carter most of my life. He’s definitely not sharp or insightful, not even a little. The ruthless thing I can buy, I guess, but him being the primary agent for BeneStar—” I shook my head. “Something has obviously changed about him. I don’t know what, or how, but something has changed.”

We shelved the bizarre revelation about Carter for now and pressed forward. Gabriella went on to describe the Klostemu in more detail. They were, she said, similar to large, bipedal bats, but monotremes, mammalian creatures that laid eggs, like the terrestrial platypus or echidna.

“Unfortunately, they aren’t shy about killing and eating their own young. It makes their homeworld a great place to be a kid, as long as you’re armed right from the cradle.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t like these people,” Funboy said.

Icky nodded. “Yeah, no shit. Me neither.”

Zeno was even more emphatic. “I hate them.” Everyone turned to her, but she showed not even a flicker of apology. “There are few things more repulsive than abusing the young. These… Klostemu… are not going to be my friends.” She sighed. “Still, they don’t deserve whatever Carter Yost and Human Resources and whatever else BeneStar is doing to exploit them.”

I looked at Gabriella. “Yeah, about that. Is BeneStar taking them? Putting them on chips?”

“I don’t know for sure. But if they saw it as an opportunity, I don’t doubt for a moment they’d seize it,” she replied.

“So what happened?” Torina asked. “How did it all go so wrong that you got taken prisoner?”

“The same way things always go wrong when you’re dealing with these people. Betrayal. Someone must have recognized me and ratted me out.”

“Okay.” I stood again. “I think this leaves us with a clear path forward.”

Perry cut in. “My bet is on finding out what’s making the new and improved Carter Yost tick, then stymieing BeneStar’s Helping Hand and freeing the Klostemu from their grip, then finding and popping that bastard Gauss to try and put it a stop to this sort of shit once and for all. Am I close?”

“So close you’re right on top of it, bird. Gabriella, we need all the details you can provide—names, locations, times, everything. Perry, you and Netty take notes. And Gabriella?”

She raised her eyebrows at me.

“Don’t leave anything out. Not a damned thing.”

20

We ended up spending three days on Earth, during which time Gabriella recounted every detail she could to Perry and Netty about her time undercover with BeneStar. Icky, Zeno, and Funboy focused on repairs and outstanding maintenance on the Fafnir, as well as doing what they could to fix the Frankie. Out in the open, lacking even the facilities of the barn, they were pretty limited in what they could do, but they still managed a few almost-miracles. By the time we were ready to fly, the Fafnir was pretty much back in fighting trim, albeit lacking a secondary scanner array and down one laser on one of the mounts. The Frankie was—

Well, airtight again. That was about it.

We departed Earth and rendezvoused with Valint’s people near Mars to transfer Gabriella to them so they could arrange for her to get back to Anvil Dark. We then started a slow exit from the Solar System, giving ourselves time to digest Gabriella’s information and consider exactly what to do next. In the midst of that, we took a call from Lunzy.

“Van, Kharsweil has put out a plea, I guess, for you to surrender yourself and the Fafnir, so both can be returned to Anvil Dark and you can face an administrative hearing.”

I bristled, but then Lunzy’s words sank in. “Wait—a plea? And an administrative hearing? On Anvil Dark? Not charges or a trial?”

“That’s right. And no, I don’t know why he’s suddenly adopted the soft sell. I’m assuming it’s because the hard line just hasn’t worked.”

“I suspect that he is under increasing pressure to bring us to heel,” Funboy said.

Zeno nodded. “Helem Gauss must have looked back over his shoulder and down, to where Kharsweil’s face is buried in his ass, and told him to make this happen.”

“Flies, honey, and vinegar,” Lunzy said.

I sniffed. “Yeah, right. And I’m sure he’ll honor the whole administrative hearing thing, too.”

“He might, if the end result is getting you booted out of the Guild and taken out of the game as a player,” Lunzy said.

“Pfft. I’m sure as hell not counting on it.”

“Ooh, Van… can I be the one who tells Kharsweil to go to hell? I know just what I’m gonna say to him,” Icky put. “I’m gonna tell him to take his—”

“Actually, Icky, no,” I said, suddenly inspired to try something. “Lunzy, how does he want to do this? Just have us return to Anvil Dark?”

“He’s specified that you’re supposed to meet with some agents he’s dispatched, Peacemaker Auxiliaries he’s taken into his service as Deputies. You’re supposed to surrender yourself and the Fafnir to them, and they’ll escort you back to Anvil Dark.”

“Oh, for—like that’s not a setup. Does he think we’re stupid?” Icky growled.

Again, though, I motioned for calm. “Lunzy, tell him I agree and that I’ll meet these agents of his at a place of his choosing.”

Stunned silence followed. Then everyone started to talk at once. I waited for them to run out of gas, which took a moment. When an uncomfortable silence fell, I spread my hands.

“Are there any questions?” I said, opening the floor.

“Van, you’re not seriously going to go through with this, are you?” Lunzy asked.

“Actually, I am. But it’s going to happen my way, on my terms. Once his so-called agents are in position, I’m going to change venues on them, force them to scramble and meet us somewhere else—somewhere of our choosing. And, yeah, that will be a setup.”

“Aren’t you worried they’re going to show up with a flotilla of ships?” Torina asked.

I smiled. “Well, if they do, we won’t be able to complain—because we’re going to show up with a flotilla of our own.”

* * *

We agreed to meet with Kharsweil’s agents at a point deep enough into the Wolf 424 system that we couldn’t just arrive, see it was a setup, and twist away again. That was the usual routine for people using Wolf 424 to do sketchy stuff and a dead giveaway about their intent—as if we really needed one. We waited long enough for the bad guys to get whatever trap they had planned all set up, then sprang the change of venue on them. Instead, we’d meet them in an empty system just outside the spinward reaches of known space, on the edge of a ring of asteroids surrounding a Saturnian world with dozens of moons. It made for one hell of a spectacular backdrop.

“Move over, Saturn, there’s a new prince in town,” I said, taking in the breathtaking sight. The planet itself was about the size of Jupiter, but the ring system surrounding it extended nearly four times farther than Saturn’s did. It didn't have a sharp outer edge but rather just faded into an ethereal dimness.

This close, though, we could see them for the multitude of rocky, icy chunks they were.

“There’s a reason this is considered a tourist attraction,” Netty said.

“It is?”

“Yeah. It’s called the Eye of Eternity by a tourist outfit on Tau Ceti. They run cruises out here, along with a few other systems. It’s supposed to be very romantic, maybe good for a honeymoon—”

She said romantic and honeymoon in a singsong way that left both Torina and me smiling wryly and rolling our eyes. “Very subtle, Netty.”

“Really? It wasn’t meant to be.”

“It’s a touch sharp for a honeymoon site,” I said, scanning the images with a suspicious eye. “Some of these rocks look young. Newly minted, so to speak.”

“Agreed, boss. Recent cataclysms. It’s a busy system, and the mass is enormous. I’d guess this is the leftovers of systemic origin, but also three or possibly four planets torn apart by that big bastard,” Perry concluded.

“Romantic like a night at the demolition derby,” I said.

“What’s a—” Icky began, but Perry cut her off.

“It’s when people get excited watching things ram into each other.”

Icky sniffed. “How is that different from a honeymoon?”

I coughed, cut my eyes at Torina, and tried to regain my composure. I chose the simple path. “It isn’t.”

“Thought so,” Icky said, folding all four arms in triumph.

Besides the view, the system had two other advantages. For one, the star was yet another red dwarf with only about half a Solar mass, so its gravity well was correspondingly small, and the ringed spectacle orbited near the fringe of it. It meant that a ship twisting in didn’t need long to make the trip to our new meeting location—just a couple of hours. There were also enough large chunks of rock that we could hide other ships, but we’d carefully selected a place where there weren’t any close enough nearby to obviously pose a threat. I was hoping the combined effect would be sufficient to entice Kharsweil’s stooges in, thinking they faced no immediate threat and that we still couldn’t easily run—especially since our only escape routes would take us deeper into the system before we could twist away.

So we waited, playing poker in the galley while Netty and Perry kept a lookout.

“That’s your third full house in a row, Torina,” Zeno said, tossing her cards on the table in disgust. “I’m starting to suspect there’s some—”

“Malfeasance,” Funboy said, mournfully laying down his own cards and folding.

Torina gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Malfeasance? That’s not a word you usually hear applied to cards,” she said, reaching to scoop up her winnings.

“Alright, then. Perfidy.”

“Not much better—”

I reached out, gently took her wrist, and stopped her from grabbing the pot. “Excuse me, dear, but prematurely claiming the winnings is so gauche,” I said, putting my own cards on the table. “Four of a kind, my dear. They may only be threes, but threes are mighty in fours.”

She gave me the stink eye with remarkable aplomb. “I resent your… luck.” She finished with an indignant sniff.

“Van, four ships just twisted in. Three class 10s and a class 11,” Netty said.

I scowled at Torina. “Don’t hold that thought,” I shot back, standing and heading for the cockpit.

“They’ve arranged themselves in a triangular formation, with the class 10s at the points of the triangle and the 11 right in the middle, heading straight for us,” Perry said.

I nodded as I slid into the seat. The formation was designed to box us in. No matter which way we fled, at least one of the class 10s would be able to cut us off. And if we turned and ran deeper into the system, they’d have the velocity advantage and easily overtake us.

“Incoming comm message,” Netty said.

“By all means, put it on,” I replied.

The image of a flint-eyed human male appeared on the display. He was bald, a portion of his scalp gleaming metallic with some sort of implant, but darkly bearded. His faint, thin smile told me he felt himself to be in control of the situation.

“Peacemaker Tudor. I’m Peacemaker Auxiliary Kellog, and I have a Writ for the seizure of your ship and the taking of you into custody, pending transport of both back to Anvil Dark.”

I smiled back at him. “Nice to meet a fellow Peacemaker. Tell me, are you planning to go to the pancake breakfast next month?”

His expression didn’t waver. “You’ll remain hove to until we arrive. I warn you that any hostile action will be met with a response in kind.”

“I’m sure it will.”

The image flicked off.

“Rude. He didn’t even say goodbye,” Icky said.

I turned to Perry. “Any ID on him?”

“Yes and no.”

“How can it be yes and no?”

“Yes, as in he shows up in the background of a lot of surveillance imagery. No, because he’s never the subject of it.”

“He doesn’t show up in any other Guild databases or arrest records, either. So he’s just never been taken into custody, or someone has been expunging the records if he has,” Netty put in.

I nodded. “Yeah, it fits. I suspect he’s one of BeneStar’s—what did that Sorcerer call them? That euphemism they use for their hired guns in the HR Department?”

“Legalists,” Perry said.

“Which means he’s probably good at what he does—which means not to underestimate him,” Zeno replied.

“I won’t make that mistake again, believe me.” Gabriella’s captors had been so-called BeneStar legalists, mercenaries and assassins skilled enough that they’d be spec ops if they were military—sort of the criminal equivalent of a Navy SEAL Team. It explained how they'd come up with the innovative, on-the-fly tactics that had nearly allowed them to slip our grasp and almost cost me my life. In other words, these were not run-of-the-mill thugs. As criminals went, they were the stiletto knives among the brutish clubs—subtle, razor-sharp, and dangerous as hell.

“Okay, let’s proceed, folks. And remember, no matter what, we’re going to be nice to these guys,” I said.

“And at what point do we stop being nice?” Perry asked.

“When the shooting starts. Otherwise, when I tell you,” I replied.

“Boss, if you ever buy a dive bar, can I be the bouncer?”

“You’re a bird, Perry. A big bird, but still not really bouncer material. You can be the—what was the other guy called? The head bouncer type?”

“The cooler? Yeah. That sounds even more badass.”

“Be warned, bird. It might require you to do your feathers in a mullet.”

“Roadhouse style? Uh—yeah, I could live with that. That wasn’t a mullet. That was art. Part soccer rocker, part euro mullet, all badass. A truly legendary coiffure.”

“Is that the movie where the guy doesn’t wear any pants?” Icky asked.

I turned to her in frank surprise. “How the hell do you know about Roadhouse, an Earthly movie from the eighties? And you only get to see his bare ass for a moment. Don’t be lewd.”

Icky sniffed. “Duh, it’s a classic.”

I turned to Perry. “You showed it to her, didn’t you?”

“It involves fighting and a guy naked from the waist down. I figured it would be right up her street.”

Zeno clicked her tongue. “Perry, corrupting our youth.”

Icky waved away the criticism. “If being halfway nude is good enough for a guy who beats the shit out of, like, ten dudes, then”—she touched her hammer, which was clipped to the bulkhead behind her and in easy reach—“the name… is Dalton,” she growled in a voice not even remotely similar to Swayze’s.

“I’m not buying a dive bar, and no, Icky, you can’t kill these idiots on sight. Let’s hear them out—not because I care about their threats, but because I want to hear how they word it.”

Torina nodded. “They’re going to reveal how far Kharsweil’s willing go within the first two sentences.”

“Oh, okay, so wait like three sentences before we beat the snot out of them,” Icky said.

“If we’re going to meet them in person, it’s better to kill them quickly, assuming that’s what you intend. They no doubt spend a great deal of time in the company of unwashed masses, so the fewer exhalations they’re allowed to propagate into our air, the better off we are at avoiding the buffet of doom we call their breath,” Funboy said with a delicate shiver.

Zeno looked at him. “Buffet of doom? You’re a gloomy friend, but I have to say… you’re creative.”

* * *

We held position as the class 11 decelerated to match velocity with us. We refused to allow them to dock directly, instead telling them to cross to us by workboat, as a gesture of good faith. As they approached, I took one last look at the tactical overlay before unstrapping and heading aft to the airlock.

“I’m surprised they didn’t just open fire on us. I mean, they’ve got a four to one advantage,” I said, eyeing the relative locations of the other ships. The class 11 had moved in to rendezvous, but the three class 10s had taken up a formation around us, ready to cut us off no matter which way we went.

“Kharsweil must want something from us,” Torina said.

I nodded as I exited the Fafnir’s cockpit. “He probably wants to know what we actually know and who we’ve told it to.”

We waited as the workboat clunked into place against our airlock. It cycled open, and three of Kharsweil’s deputies stepped through it. Kellog, the legalist, led the way, followed by a Yonnox and a Skel. I heard Funboy mutter, “Oh dear.”

I looked at him. “What?”

“Skels are particularly noted for their lack of hygiene. I can practically see the cloud of pathogens wafting off of him.”

The Skel glared through his gas mask. “Shut it, fuzzy.”

Icky made a low growling sound and leaned forward, but I put out a hand to restrain her and just smiled at Kellog.

“Welcome aboard the Fafnir. I’d say it’s a pleasure but, well, it’s not.”

He smiled right back. “Kudos to you for being smart about this, Peacemaker. I’d hate to have to break up your happy little crew—like, into fragments.”

I held out my hand. “You say you have a Writ.”

He nodded. “All nice and legal. So if you don’t cooperate, that’s resisting lawful arrest, which is a serious crime—” He made a show of catching himself as he handed me a data slate. “Oh, look who I’m talking to. You’d already know that, wouldn’t you?”

I read the writ. It said I was to be taken into protective custody. I let my smile widen.

“Huh. I notice it says you’re supposed to take me into custody, but nowhere does it say you’re supposed to remove me from the Fafnir.”

Funboy uttered a short sniff, then said, “Oops.”

We all looked at him and he shrugged. “Apologies. I laugh easily, I’m afraid.”

“You’re a welcome addition at any party. Now then, as to that flawed legal instrument? I spent a lot of time reading legal documents—not as good as the bird, but still, I know a half-assed writ when I see it. Van, wouldn’t you say these thieves are unlawfully violating the security of the Fafnir, a registered ship of the Peacemaker Guild?” Zeno asked.

Kellog gave her a flat look. “Sorry to disappoint you, whiskers, but you’re not getting out of this quite so easily. You’re the lawbreakers here, and any attempt to squirm out of it is just… kind of sad, actually.”

“So you’re denying it? Huh. I guess the only thing to do is have an inquiry. Or maybe a trial,” I said.

“And summary justice,” Perry put in. “In the case of an immediate threat to the integrity and security of Guild assets such as the Fafnir, you could certainly make a case for it.”

“To quote Funboy, oh dear,” Torina said. “Sounds grim. Is there any way we can let them go if they promise to behave?”

“Let us… go? Well, if you think that threatening us is going to do you any good, then please reconsider,” Kellog said, notably unfazed. “If it comes to it, your precious ship, not to mention your crew, won’t last long in a firefight with our ships. And, really, Van—may I call you Van? Really, am I and my two colleagues here really worth—I’d say your life, but you’re probably stupidly brave enough to sacrifice yourself. But your crew? Would you sacrifice them, too? How about Torina here? I’m sure her parents on Helso would have something to say about you letting her die when you could have just done what you were told and let her live.”

He took a deliberate step toward me. “So what’s it going to be, Van? Cooperate, and we’ll take your crew here to Anvil Dark with you, and then they’ll be on their way? Or the whole bunch of us die together?”

I sighed. “First things first. No, you may not call me Van. I reserve that for people I respect.”

Kellog opened his mouth, but I cut him off. “Netty, could you send the word, please?”

“Done and done,” she said.

I took a step toward Kellog, so we were standing less than a meter apart. “What’s going to happen next is that you’re going to find that, surprise, you’re the ones who are outgunned—by an uncomfortable margin. You’re going to find yourselves facing not just the Fafnir, but also the Iowa, a battlecruiser crewed by a bunch of wacky Conoku who just love flying her like a fighter. Oh, and the Nemesis, a battleship that belongs to the father of Icky back there—the tall, four-armed gal with no pants and the big-assed hammer.”

I let my smile become a grin. “But wait, there’s more.”

“Always wanted to say that, boss,” Perry quipped.

“Same. Had to. Okay, back to the battlespace. Kellog, we’ve got not one but two class 14 battlecruisers on loan from our good friends the Schegith. So I see your three class 10s and one 11, and raise you a 12, three 14s and a 15.”

Kellog’s eyes widened slightly, but he was good, I had to admit—he otherwise maintained a bland poker face. “Since I presume they were hiding among those rocks, they’re too far away to intervene, Van. You’ll be long dead by the time they get here.”

“That may be so—eh, I don’t know your first name, but we’re not on a first-name basis, nor will we ever be. To your point, agent, that may be so. But their missiles will get here long before they do.” I kept my eyes locked on Kellog’s. “Netty, how many missiles are these amateurs going to find inbound?”

“Forty-six in each of at least three salvos. I should also point out that the Schegith employ ship-breaker missiles, which are to outward appearances identical to the rest of their ordnance.”

Kellog and I stayed locked in our pissing contest for a moment, but the math simply wasn’t on his side.

And he knew it.

“Fine. We’ll just head back to Anvil Dark and report that you resisted lawful arrest. You’ll find a whole slew of Peacemakers after you, on top of everyone else, all looking to cash in that sweet bounty on your smug little head.”

“You do you. Just don’t get in my way. Because if you do, you won’t see the next sunrise on whatever shithole you call home. We’re done tolerating this bullshit. Oh, and you can tell your dirty boss Kharsweil that, too. And hope that Helem Gauss doesn’t decide to make an example of you—you know, death, and then slavery in some digital hell.”

I stepped back. “Know what? I’ll even give you a choice. You seem like a smart guy. So you can keep up the performance, side with Kharsweil, and die, or worse—or you can side with the right side of history, with justice, and live. Because I’d be thrilled to have some agents of my own who are already close to Kharsweil.”

Until then, the Yonnox had been attempting a brooding menace, which is difficult when you resemble three broomsticks held together with douchebaggery. So I was surprised—if not stunned—when it spoke, voice cracking with fear and anger.

“It’s not even the violence! It’s the attorneys! There are lawsuits, draining your accounts, the threats against my home, my people, leaving us all ruined! They use the law like a damned knife!”

“Shut your mouth, asshole,” Kellog snapped at him, but I put my gaze on the Yonnox and shook my head.

“Not anymore. One thing I’ve learned about bureaucrats and lawyers is that they hardly ever know what to do once you start shooting at them. They’re not designed for the rough stuff.” I turned back to Kellog. “Now get the hell off my ship and then run back to Kharsweil—as his lapdog and, I might add, a risky loose end for BeneStar. Or, you can survive and deliver as our informants. Your choice.”

“This isn’t over,” Kellog said.

Torina rolled her eyes. “Tedious, and tragically unoriginal. I’d fire your screenwriter.”

The three turned back toward the airlock, with only Kellog still trying to project a sense of danger.

Icky gave me an imploring look. “Van, please?”

I smiled. “Go ahead… Dalton.”

“Welcome to the Double Douche!” she crowed, grabbing Kellog with one massive hand, before spinning him around, then punching him in the face with a thunderous combination.

Funboy stepped quickly back. “All of that blood. Oh, dear.”

Zeno put a hand on Funboy’s shoulder and leaned in close. “That’s not blood. It’s pathogens.”

Funboy’s eyebrows twitched in alarm. “Van, I’d like to request a transfer.”

“Denied. Zeno, quit taunting him with biological doom. Icky, help our friends to the airlock. We’re done being nice.”

* * *

Kellog’s flotilla beat a hasty retreat as soon as his workboat docked with his class 11. We kept the Schegith ships in company until they’d twisted away but sent the Iowa and the Nemesis back to Sol in case an enraged Kharsweil or Gauss tried hitting back at me via Earth.

“I think that went very well,” I said as we returned to the cockpit.

“It was satisfying as hell, but what did we actually learn?” Torina asked.

“That Kellog and his ilk aren’t idiots, for one. They’re smart enough to know when it’s time to fight another day. Oh, and that Kharsweil is happy to condone murder,” I said.

“Not that I don’t believe you, but how do you figure that?”

“Did you see the look on Kellog’s face when we pointed out the lack of a clause in the writ specifying I was to be taken off the Fafnir? Whatever they were planning, taking me into their direct custody was a part of it. And do you really think that once they’d gotten me off the Fafnir and separated from you guys I’d have lived to see Anvil Dark?”

“I thought you said that Kharsweil would have wanted to know what you know,” Zeno said.

“I’m sure he would have. And I’m sure that, before I accidentally stumbled out of Kellog’s airlock, they’d have done their best to get that out of me,” I replied.

“All in all, I’m glad we were able to convince them that we could outshoot them and make them leave,” Torina said.

Netty cut in. “Speaking of shooting, we’ve got a little problem. Our inventory of offensive weapons is low.”

Perry sniffed. “Hardly. Icky is in fine form, judging from the way she beat the shit out of Kellog.”

She grinned. “Thank you, bird.”

“While that may be true, the fact is that we’ve mostly depleted our stocks of missiles and mass-driver and point-defense rounds. I’d point out that I’ve included that in the Fafnir’s daily status report for a while now but figured it was time to start nagging. Bottom line—we’re low on punches to throw, boss, and I think we have to assume that from here on out nearly every one of our moves will be challenged in some way.”

“Okay. Well, we’ve got money, but just like fuel, I don’t think we want to go shopping on the regular market. So who’s got hardware we can buy?”

“I’ve… got a guy,” Zeno said, but hesitantly.

“Okay, where is this guy?”

“That’s part of the problem. He… moves around a little.”

“So he’s on the run.”

“Pretty much, yeah. Look, I know you released me from your grandfather’s house arrest on the condition I stay clean, Van, but I… well, thought it might be useful to keep up a few contacts—”

“Zeno, as long as you’re not actually being one of the bad guys behind our backs, I don’t care if you maintain some relationships.” I narrowed my eyes on her. “You’re not being one of the bad guys behind our backs, are you?”

“I am completely out of the bad guy business. But yes, I still know a few.”

“So who is it? Do we have a general vicinity, and what aren’t you telling me, Zeno?” I asked.

“Remember when we made that trip with Dayna out to that ancient ship, the one where Gauss got the gravity tech that made him his fortune? My guy lurks near a transfer station that leads that way, right on the edge of known space.”

Funboy spoke up. “Ah, well, then your, ah, guy is not the only person working in that area. Essie has an interest there as well, although I encouraged him not to enter the agreement.”

“Was it because of germs?” Perry asked.

“That was a consideration, yes. There’s a restaurant there catering to travelers that has a horrific food delivery system that might as well be designed to execute people.”

I frowned. “What the hell is it?”

“It’s called an all you can eat buffet.”

“If they’ve got the good ranch, we might just move in,” I said.

“The good ranch?” Torina asked.

“One of the criteria by which I judge restaurants is the quality of their ranch dressing. It’s critical, in fact. That, and the rolls.”

“I hear ya, Van. I like me my rolls!” Icky said.

Torina smiled. “We all do, girl. Carbs are life.”

Funboy followed the conversation with rapt horror. “You eat where… where other beings can breathe on your food? Even touch it? What is the mortality rate of your species?”

I smiled. “One hundred percent, which is why I eat ranch dressing and rolls, fat and carbs notwithstanding. Now then, Zeno, please tell me someone is running guns out of this all-you-can-eat buffet.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. But it’s not merely a buffet. It’s a dining experience.”

Perry snickered. “I know what that means. It’s code for Icky has to wear pants.”

21

Contrary to simply finding an all-you-can-eat buffet floating in space—which, I have to admit, wouldn’t really have surprised me given some of the things I’d seen, and would also be kind of a cool marketing angle—the location Zeno described was actually a transfer station. It was a place for large, mainly bulk cargoes to be broken into smaller ones and distributed to end users. Surprisingly, this particular station was mostly involved in the trans-shipment of water. The outer reaches of this system, Stein 2051, was unusually rich in water ice, its Oort Cloud a halo of rocky snowballs whose density was nearly an order of magnitude greater than that of Sol.

And water was valuable stuff. Most inhabited planets had their own, but lifting the stuff in the quantities needed by every ship, orbital, station, asteroid miner, and ore processor was a laborious and expensive task. Enter the comet miners who recovered water ice from cometary haloes and shipped it in raw form—or, for a price, processed to remove impurities—to all of the myriad places that needed it. Stein 2051 provided water for nearly a fifth of all space-borne operations in known space, including most of the Eridani Federation.

The result was a bustling system. Comet tugs lugging chunks of ice inbound, depositing it at the station or directly loading it into water freighters in solid form. Then the same ships went outbound but accompanied by bulk water carriers and an array of smaller craft, all hustling for profit.

I read the Guild’s backgrounder on the system as we headed inbound for the transfer station. It had a formal designation, but everyone just called the place Spigot, for obvious reasons. Surprisingly, Spigot’s criminality index was low.

“Everyone’s here for one reason—to bring water to the station or cart it away. And people take their water seriously because of dying from thirst,” Perry explained. “Seems unpopular.”

“Indeed. There is an unspoken agreement that Spigot remains relatively free of criminal activity for that reason,” Funboy put in. “There have been attempts in the past to establish water cartels here, and even monopolies, but those did not work out well for the would-be perpetrators.”

“It’s one thing to stick a monopoly between someone, and, say, diamonds or something. It’s another to try to monopolize water. That’s just evil,” Torina said, her lips twisted in disgust.

“Anyway, the result is a bit of an anomaly in known space—a bustling system mostly free of crime and criminal activity. If there is any illicit activity, it mostly involves the sale and movement of information, which is why Essie cultivated several contacts here,” Funboy added.

I turned to Zeno. “So why does your, uh, guy hang out here? I mean, it doesn’t really seem like the sort of place where an arms dealer would tend to spend downtime.”

“A lack of rampant crime also means a lack of twitchy law enforcement. It’s easier to get away with discreet deals here, which is why there’s so much wheeling and dealing for information. But lack of criminal activity isn’t the same as none at all,” she replied.

“Besides which, the operators of the platform demand some awfully rich kickbacks to look the other way. If you fail to pay them, they bring law enforcement down upon you with incandescent fury. It tends to keep the smaller, generally less subtle and more violent sorts at bay,” Funboy said.

“Van, you have an incoming call, the one you were expecting,” Netty put in.

“Thanks, Netty. I’ll take it in a moment.” I turned to Funboy. “In other words, organized organized crime. Which, frankly, works for me. It’d be kind of nice to not have to put up with the usual scumbags and riff-raff.”

Perry’s eyes flashed. “That’s right. Instead, we get to deal with a much better class of scumbags and riffraff—the sorts who lift their pinky finger off the pistol grip when they’re shooting at you.”

* * *

Zeno made contact with her guy, a Gajur named Sleskus, and arranged for us to meet him the following day when he arrived at Spigot. We took advantage of the delay to try out the buffet—the rolls were fine, but there was no ranch dressing, so it got two stars from me, at best—and to contact Essie, to get his most up-to-date intel on the system. We were surprised to find that he was actually due to arrive here shortly.

“I’m meeting a guy with some info about a new chem-smuggling operation starting up out of Crossroads,” he said.

I smiled. “Another guy. This system seems to be mostly populated by guys.”

He smiled back. “You said you’re meeting up with Sleskus?”

“Yeah. He’s our guy.”

“Well, watch your back around him. He’s known for selling to both sides in a few little brushfire wars and border clashes, not to mention infighting among various bad guys. The Arc of Vengeance had a contract out on him for that very reason, for him selling arms to another group of assholes they were fighting while Sleskus was also selling to them. He paid out their contact himself, but it shows you the sort of war profiteer you’re dealing with here.”

“Thanks, Essie. Not that I was going to suddenly take this guy into my deepest confidences, but good to know.”

Essie signed off with an agreement to let us know when he arrived, his musical vowels still carrying a hint of his African origins. We spent our time puttering around and taking in all the wonders you’d expect from a station whose sole reason for existing revolved around water.

“I wonder if our Fren’okun friends come here very often—the ones who own that bulk water carrier, the Big and Long?” I mused as we wandered along the main concourse. It was a much more abbreviated and sedate affair than the one on, say, Spindrift or Plenty.

Torina giggled, and I heard her mutter, “Big and long.”

I scowled at her. “Oh, would you grow up? I’m a guy, and I don’t find it especially funny.”

She leered at me. “Big and long, Van.”

I stared right back—for about three seconds, then cracked and snickered.

“Yeah, okay, fine, it’s funny.”

“Van, Zeno’s guy just twisted into the system. Zeno’s talking to him now, setting up a meeting,” Netty cut in.

“Sounds good, thanks, Netty,” I said, and we headed for the Fafnir, calling for the others to join us there. When Icky came on the comm, there were sounds—chewing sounds.

“Mm be ’ight ’ere,” she said.

“Icky, are you eating—wait. Are you still at the all-you-can-eat place?”

“’aybe.”

Funboy came on. “She is, Van. She apparently hasn’t yet had all she can eat—”

“What? Funboy, are you there, too?” I asked.

“Yes, watching in rapt fascination. It’s kind of like observing the inexorable spread of some disease, except with much more drooling and—oh dear. And flying droplets.”

“Icky, no more trips to the steam table. Get your ass back to the Fafnir,” I said.

A pause, then the sound of swallowing, followed by a single, sullen word.

“M’kay.”

“Van? I have another concern,” Funboy said.

“Just tell Icky to get a wet towel and clean herself up.” I paused, then added, “Get three towels. Gotta be sure.”

“Uh—well, yes, there’s that, but there’s something else of a more pressing nature.”

I glanced at Torina. “We’ll be back at the Fafnir in about three minutes. You can tell us all about it there.”

* * *

“So we’re meeting this guy out in the Oort Cloud? Yeah, nothing sketchy about that,” I said to Zeno.

“Well, we’re buying a fair bit of ordnance off of him. Unless you want to pay a steep cut to the Spigot authorities, we need to keep this out of their view,” she replied.

I grunted assent and watched the tactical overlay. Only one other ship would be passing anywhere near us during our rendezvous out among the rocks and ice. Presumably, this Sleskus had chosen the location for that reason. And, sure, I got what Zeno was saying—transferring missiles from one ship to another wasn’t something easily done with any discretion. It would be much easier if they were cross loaded in their packing cases, but we didn’t have the cargo space for that, so we had to load them directly into the Fafnir’s magazines. Obvious missiles would be obvious.

Still, it all felt as sketchy as hell, and not just because we were dealing in—if not black market, then at least charcoal-gray market ordnance. Essie had warned us that Sleskus was happy dealing with all sides in a conflict, so we had to assume he’d be just as duplicitous when dealing with us. I wasn’t sure how it would manifest, but we weren’t taking any chances. We’d given ourselves some options, which I hoped would be enough to see us out of trouble, if it arose.

Seven hours later, we were backing into a thicker part of the Oort Cloud on a plume of fusion exhaust, shedding velocity to match course with Sleskus. He was aboard a class 12, but she was a fast freighter, most of her internal volume given over to cargo. As we approached and scanned her, we could see she was still well-armed, but we definitely had the edge in firepower, even with our hard weaponry depleted. Especially at close range, where we could employ the plasma-burst and particle cannons, Sleskus would be taking his life firmly into his hands crossing us.

Which is why I fully expected something much more subtle. To that end, I’d specified a couple of precautions intended to keep us in a position of advantage—not overwhelming, but Sleskus’s sort didn’t need to find themselves at very much disadvantage before they caved. I knew the type, even without Zeno’s and Essie’s cautions—he might like dealing in weapons, but he sure as hell didn’t like having to use them.

“Van Tudor, I presume,” he said as soon as his image popped onto the central display. We were now about ten minutes from our rendezvous.

“You presume correctly. Now it’s my turn to presume that you have the ordnance Zeno discussed with you?”

He pointed over his own shoulder. “Right behind me, in the hold. All you have to do is pay, and you can take delivery.”

I smiled. “Sounds good. I’ll pay half up front, then take delivery, and if everything is copacetic, pay the rest.”

“That wasn’t the deal.”

“It is now.”

“Do you want these weapons or not?”

“Do you want my money or not?”

He stared for a moment. “Three quarters up front,” he finally said.

“Two thirds.”

He stared again, then nodded. “Fine. Two thirds. Have Zeno bring over the down payment. It’s been a while since she and I hoisted a drink together.”

“You still owe me a few rounds from that night in Dropkick’s, on Spindrift,” she said.

“As I recall, you got arrested and hauled away before I could settle up with you.”

“Yeah, and as I recall, you stepped out to make a call about ten minutes before that,” Zeno shot back.

Sleskus put on a hurt expression. “How could you think, even for a minute—”

“Yeah, save it, you thieving scoundrel. Doesn’t matter anyway. The Magistrate turned out to be kinda cute—especially when he was, um, interrogating me.”

“So I did you a favor then—”

“Aha! You did rat me out, you scumbag!”

This time, Sleskus’s flustered expression wasn’t put on. “I, uh—you see—” He finally shrugged. “Oops?”

“I’ll oops you, you moth—”

“Excuse me, but can we get on with it? This shady deal isn’t going to make itself.”

* * *

The transfer went smoothly enough. Icky and Zeno, with help from EVAN, the Fafnir’s external counterpart to Waldo, our maintenance bot, received the missiles and loaded them into the magazines, a job that had to be done outside. In the meantime, Torina and Funboy shuttled over crates of mass-driver and point-defense slugs. It took a good four hours before the last missile was locked into place.

I sat in the Fafnir’s cockpit with Perry throughout, monitoring both the immediate situation and the broader one around us. That single ship whose flight plan brought them close-ish to our location was in the process of passing by, coasting out toward its twist point, a common practice to save fuel if the time was available. There was nothing else in sight.

When everyone was back aboard, we sent across the final third of the payment. As soon as we had, Sleskus came back on the comm.

“So, you got your spiffy new missiles all hooked up and ready to fly?”

“Pretty much,” I said.

Sleskus smiled. “Good. In that case, you can stand by to be boarded. Or blown to bits. The BeneStar bounty on your head has a premium tacked onto it if you’re brought to them alive, but, what the hell, it’s already been a pretty profitable day.”

I smiled right back. “Well, A, look how surprised I’m not at your treachery, you son of a bitch. And B—no.”

Another ship popped onto the tactical overlay, sliding out from behind a big chunk of icy rock. Sleskus shrugged. “Up to you, Mister Tough Space Cop. Those missiles I just sold you are kill-switched, so they won’t work. Their warheads will just detonate if you try to launch them. And my ship here might look like a plain old fast freighter, but appearances can be deceiving.”

“Van, that other ship is a class 7, heavily armed for its size. And the two aft cargo holds just opened on Sleksus’s ship. He’s got a laser battery in each,” Netty said.

“I think you’ll also find that there are some nasty viruses working their way into your ship’s systems right now,” Sleskus went on. “They were the other payload aboard those missiles, and the instant you hooked them up to your fire control system, they went to work. So, I’m going to be the bigger man here and make you a deal. You surrender yourself to me, you let me strip a few juicy bits and pieces off your ship, then it and the rest of your crew can go free.”

“Was I stuttering, Sleskus? I said no.”

His smile slipped a bit. “Huh. Never took you for the suicidal type.”

I leaned into the display. “That’s because I’m not. First of all, your virus-laden missiles haven’t come close to my fire control, or any other systems aboard my ship. We assumed they’d be dirty so we’ve kept them isolated. By the way, thanks, Funboy, for the tip.”

“Viruses are everywhere. It’s only wise to be cautious,” he said.

Sleskus opened his mouth, but I held up a finger. “Shhh, kid. I’m not done yet. You see that plain old freighter out there, the one coasting past us? I just happen to own it. Inherited it, in fact, along with a couple of others, and some land, thanks to a mysterious Fren-Okun benefactor. Now, I’m no shipping magnate, but owning a freighter does come in handy.”

Sleskus’s smile had gone distinctly watery. “I’m supposed to be afraid of some freighter?”

“No, no, you’re supposed to be afraid of the two ships that are just about to detach from that freighter and thereby separate themselves from its big ol’ scanner blob. Essie, Lucky, you wanna come join the fun?”

“On our way!” Essie said.

“I do love dramatic reveals. Anyway, Sleskus, I’m going to be the bigger man here and offer you a deal. Surrender to my Peacemaker pals Essie and Lucky, or the three of us will blow you and your little class 7 buddy out there to scrap.”

Sleskus licked his thin lips. “We’ll both die.”

I laughed. “Oh, Sleskus, we both know that’s not going to happen. You don’t mind selling these weapons, but the thought of having to use them in a fight scares the living shit out of you. No, you’re going to do as you’re told, let yourself be taken into custody and charged with a bunch of crimes—Perry?”

“Smuggling. Unlawful possession of restricted weapons. Possession of stolen property. Interfering with a Peacemaker Guild investigation. Threatening a Peacemaker. Being a raging asshole.”

I glanced at him and he shrugged. “Well, it oughta be a crime.”

“I don’t disagree,” I said, turning back to Sleskus. “Anyway, you’ll be convicted and sentenced, then you’ll do your time and emerge from the other end—alive. Because you don’t really want to be dead, now do you?”

He took one last swing. “At this range, Tudor, I can blow you to pieces long before your friends get here to save you.”

“Yeah, nice try. They’re already well inside missile range. Oh, and those scary hidden lasers of yours? I’ll see those and raise you this. Zeno, would you do the honors?”

“With pleasure,” she said with an evil grin and triggered the plasma-burst cannon. Bolts of stellar energy pulsed past Sleskus’s ship close enough to cast shadows.

Despite the situation, Sleskus’s eyes reflexively lit up, his arms-merchant’s instincts sparking to life. “That’s—where did you get that?”

“That old thing? Just a little something I threw on. Anyway, you should see what it does at short range. It… it’ll make you piss your pants. Truly magnificent hardware.” I glanced at the overlay. “Oh, and your class 7 friend out there? I think he’s seen enough, judging from the way he’s madly reversing course and all. Shame. Brave friends are thin out here in the dark.”

The other ship was bugging out, its drive burning furiously as it doubled back on the original incoming trajectory and fled for a twist point. We weren’t going to be able to stop him, but frankly, I didn’t care.

Sleskus slumped in defeat. “Fine. I surrender, blah, blah.” He looked up at the display. “But Tudor, this—”

“Isn’t over, yeah, yeah. Speaking of blah, blah. You bad guys really need to come up with some new material.”

Zeno looked over my shoulder, into the display, still grinning. But now, it was feral, with an ugly twist that made Sleskus recede from his screen.

“Hey, Sleskus—”

“Yeah?”

“Oops.”

* * *

I thanked the crew of my freighter—my freighter, it seemed odd to say that—and they returned with a very Fren-esque complaint about being diverted from their regular run. One of them even bitched about a mistress he had waiting for him on Tau Ceti, then started bragging about exactly what he was going to do with her. I stopped him, but not before he’d said enough to provoke a reaction from Funboy.

“That’s incredibly unhygienic. And disgusting. But mostly unhygienic.”

Essie, on the other hand, thanked us for finally helping him nail Sleskus. “Bastard’s a slippery one. I’ve had him right in my hand a couple of times, but he always managed to wriggle free.” He grinned out of the display. “And here all it took was baiting him with a Peacemaker wanted across and beyond known space, with a bounty on his head the size of Betelgeuse. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

“Yeah, done in by his own greed. It’s almost Shakespearian,” I replied.

“Are you going to be able to get those missiles he sold you operational?”

“Oh, yeah. Perry was able to retrieve the deactivation codes from his ship while you guys were searching it.”

“Technically, they’re contraband and should be taken in as evidence,” Essie said, a twinkle in his eye.

I gave him a bland look. “I have taken them as evidence. Of course, I’ve got nowhere to store them aboard the Fafnir except in her magazines.”

Essie laughed. “Good answer. Anyway, Van, it’s been a pleasure as always. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a gunrunner to get back to Anvil Dark to keep a date with a Magistrate. You… be careful out there, okay? That is one hell of a bounty BeneStar’s put on your head.”

“Keeps me on my toes. Thanks, Essie.”

We watched as he and Lucky, in company with Sleskus’s ship, started their journey back to Anvil Dark. As for us, we’d only just started to consider our next move when Icky groaned and slumped back in her seat.

Funboy immediately moved to her side and touched her forehead. He then pulled his fingers away and wiped them on a cloth he kept for that purpose. “She has a high fever.”

“Prolly food poisoning,” she muttered. “Knew that cheese salad smelled funny.”

But Funboy shook his head. “I don’t think so. Based on the information provided by the Wu'tzur, she’s begun to experience the final stage of her, um, affliction.” He looked at me. “We should get her to a safe location.”

“Right. Netty, set a course for the Wu'tzur homeworld—”

“No,” Icky slurred. “Not there. Shouldn’t be around other Wu'tzur, except my dad.”

Funboy nodded. “She’s quite correct. In the company of other Wu'tzur—particularly males to whom she’s not related—she’s likely to get quite aggressive.”

“Which is different from her normal state how?” Perry asked.

“She’s likely to severely injure or kill any being who doesn’t possess similar physical size and characteristics to a fully grown male Wu'tzur.”

Zeno glanced around the cockpit. “That definitely ain’t us.”

“No, it is not.” I thought for a moment. “Netty, change of plans. Let’s rendezvous with the Iowa and ask Icky’s dad and B to meet us there. I can’t imagine she’d react to being around Conoku.”

“No, their biochemistry is likely much too different from hers to trigger any sort of response,” Funboy said.

I stared at him. “What about our biochemistry?”

“I don’t know.”

I turned to the instruments. “Netty, step on it!”

22

“Don’t they ever get bored just orbiting out here?” I shouted to Torina, but she shook her head and put her hand to her ear. A roiling sea of excited Conoku separated us, all of them shouting for attention.

A sudden, ear-splitting command shredded apart the air.

“QUIET!”

Silence fell as the Conoku all froze, claws and other chitinous bits suspended in mid-wave.

“That’s better, thank you,” Funboy said.

Zeno, Torina, and I all stared in wonder at the little Surtsi. I’d assumed his most fervent utterance was oh dear, not a shout that would have made my old boot camp instructors wince.

I turned to the chastened Conoku. “Look, gang, we’re going to be here a while, and I promise I’ll come by and look at everything every one of you has done. Right now, though, Icky isn’t feeling well, and we need to take care of her first.”

Cantullin, the eldest of the Conoku and, by default, the Iowa’s effective Captain, spoke up. “Icky’s sick? What’s wrong?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong—?”

“Is she going to be okay—?”

“What’s wrong with her—?”

“Can we—?”

I held up my hands. “She’ll be fine. But she needs—”

“Rest,” Zeno said. “She needs rest. And that means quiet. So for the next while, you all have to be really quiet, okay?”

The Conoku waved their claws in acknowledgement, then dispersed, their claws rattling and scraping against the decks.

I shook my head as they did and moved beside Torina. “You know, I’m actually starting to recognize these guys as individuals, by sight, which is—” I just shook my head again. “I’ll never again be able to look into the lobster tank at a restaurant without wondering who’s who in there.”

“Coming through, coming through, big, sick, horny Wu'tzur coming through.”

We turned as B stepped through the airlock, Icky in tow. She was a sorry sight—slumped, sluggish, her face the color of a plum, her blue hair thinning in patches and missing altogether in others.

Perry flew out of the Fafnir and through the airlock behind them, followed by Valint, who’d been visiting the GKU picket ships watching over Earth and had joined us. Perry dropped a beak-load of blue hair on the deck.

“This stuff is all over the place in there. I found some stuck in one of my wing pinions. I mean, seriously, Icky—if you’re gonna shed, can you do it all in one place so Waldo can vacuum it up.”

She turned to glare at Perry. “Come here, bird, and I’ll do some shedding alright, but it’s gonna be feathers, not hair.”

I stepped between them. “B, what’s the prognosis?”

“A good thirty to forty hours of her being in isolation, not so much for her, but for everyone else. I’ll stay close by because she’s less responsive to females, but you guys should just stay away from her.” She looked down at Perry. “That especially includes the smart-assed mechanical types.”

“Whereas we artificial females are golden, so I’ll be watching over her full time,” Netty said.

I nodded and turned to Icky. “Your dad is on his way. Should be here in a few hours. How do you, um—”

“Never felt prettier,” she snapped, then looked down at the clump of hair Perry had dropped. “Am I really losing that much hair?”

Perry responded, but gently this time. “Yeah, enough for a rug made of, um, you.”

Icky felt her own head, which had gone partly bald. “I think I have a really nice skull, at least.”

B, behind her, nodded emphatically.

So I did, too. “You do, absolutely, no question.”

“The depilatory fever will… invariably result in her carrying fewer germs. So she is… uh, magnificent.”

“See? The wet towel thinks I’m pretty, too.”

“Blanket. It’s wet blanket, and yes, you are, big girl. Thirsty?”

“Hungry. What’s the cake situation? Or cheese?”

Torina spoke up. “Yes, and yes. B brought a—it’s like a PMS basket—”

“Or, just to keep the universe in balance, a basket full of things to help ease something with the severity of a man-cold,” B said.

“—but the size of a washing machine,” Torina finished.

B shrugged. “I know sick people in general, and women especially, even if they’re aliens.”

“All women are aliens,” Perry said, nodding sagely.

Torina looked at me. “This is the part where you vehemently deny that.”

I put my hand over my heart. “I cannot tell a lie.”

“I wonder what maintenance rack you’re going to sleep in tonight,” Torina mused, looking pointedly around.

“One that preserves my integrity, thank you very much.”

“Way to take a stand, boss. Lonely nerds everywhere have finally found their king,” Perry replied as B started ushering Icky toward the quarters the Conoku had prepared for her.

“Perry, how can anyone be lonely with you around—by which I mean, when you never stop talking?”

“Hurtful, Van. Hurtful, but yeah, fair. I hope you two kids work it out and you don’t end up sleeping alone in some maintenance crawl space. Anyway, Zeno and I are going to do the rounds, checking the Iowa’s weapons systems in particular. Our luck won’t hold out forever, you know. Lawyers and HR don’t sleep, and I wanna make sure that our young Conoku haven’t innovated and improved the Iowa so much that she can’t shoot straight anymore.”

“An excellent point. Off you go, then.”

Icky called back over her shoulder. “Hey, Van, if the shooting starts and the Iowa gets mixed up in a firefight, mind if I just keep eating?”

Perry laughed. “As if incoming ordnance could stop you.”

* * *

* * *

Icky got worse—way worse—before she started getting better.

Imagine a sick and hungry grizzly bear. Now, give it four arms and make it mangy and prone to wild mood swings, from frenetic, climbing-the-walls mania to morose despondency. Throw in random fits of unprovoked, incandescent rage, especially around anything with the word male in its biological job description.

She was worse than all that.

Fortunately, we had a few good cards in our hand—B, who was willing to spend a few days helping us through the worst of it, Zeno, who had the patience and manner of a motherly saint, and, surprisingly, Cantullin, whose utterly alien biology triggered nothing physiological in Icky, and who knew all about being a young female grappling with… well, being a young female.

Torina proved just as surprisingly poor at dealing with Icky in her current state. I raised my eyebrows at that.

“You aren’t very patient with her,” I said.

She glanced at her arm, which was bruised where Icky had knocked her against a conduit. “Sorry, but although I know it’s her biochemistry acting up, I’m just not a big fan of being heaved across the room.”

“Maybe it’s your bedside manner. B and Zeno seem to be avoiding any major injuries. Have you considered a bucket of salty snacks, held at the end of a pole?”

“Not going to try it, and my injuries are because Icky’s seen me fight. She probably thinks I can take it.”

I offered a thin smile. “What happens when it’s our kids going through these sorts of changes? Do we keep them on the Iowa?”

She snorted with laughter. “You mean the USS Puberty? Sure. Save the galaxy a lot of angst.”

“And acne. And bad musical choices because”—I put my hand on my heart and grimaced—“you people just don’t understand.”

“I see teenagers are universal,” Torina said, sagging against me. We were on edge and worn out, thanks to Icky’s hormonal hellscape.

And yet, after three days of sheer hell, Icky’s biological storm began to abate. I dared looking in on her a day or so after that.

“Icky? How’re you feeling?” I asked.

She looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “Van, you can stop peeking around the hatch coaming at me and come in.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

I stepped into the compartment. It smelled of something faintly bestial, despite the Iowa’s air circulator’s best efforts to keep the atmosphere scrubbed. “Just remember, I am breakable.”

She gave a faint smile. “Yeah, I think that part’s done. Sorry about… all of it.”

I sat beside her and tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t manage it and grinned.

“What?” she snapped.

“I’m sorry, Icky. It’s just… you’re a mess.”

She was. That purple mask still darkened her face, she’d lost hair in broad patches, and what hair remained was tangled and matted with the Wu'tzur version of sweat.

“Is it safe?” a voice called from the corridor.

I turned to it. “Yeah, come on in, guys.”

Perry and Funboy entered the compartment, but both remained near the door.

“So, Icky, how’re you—holy shit! You look like you got into a bar fight with a hedge clipper!” Perry said.

“Maybe you should just back slowly out of the room now, bird,” Icky growled at him.

I moved fast to head off a confrontation. “Now, now, kids—Icky, you don’t look that bad, seriously.”

“You just said I was a mess.” She turned her glower on me.

“Well, maybe mess was a little strong. Besides, it looks like you’ve got some seedlings sprouting in the bald bits, so it’ll grow back. Might be a little curly—”

“Curly?” She grimaced. “How curly?”

“Is… there some recognized scale of curliness?”

“If there is, I’d say it’s not quite steel wool,” Perry put in. “Not that it’s unbecoming! I mean, you go through second puberty and come out of it with a perm—it could be worse.”

Icky slumped. “All this shit I gotta through and I end up with curls. Life ain’t fair.”

“That is very true. Life is just a series of events governed only by the random vagaries of time and space—and then you die,” Funboy agreed.

Icky sighed. “Who let him in here?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, we’re supposed to be cheering you up, right? Um… well, curly hair is more sanitary, insofar as it tends to be shed less and is therefore less likely to end up in common areas or”— he shuddered—“food.”

It was my turn to shoot him a glare, and he blinked. “Oh. I’m sorry, what I meant to say is that you look magnificent, Icky.”

“If you offer to brush me, you weird little creature, I’m gonna punch you into the day after tomorrow,” Icky snapped.

I laughed. “There’s our girl—”

“Van, I hate to interrupt this supposedly touching moment of reunion, but three ships have just twisted in, all class 13, all conforming to known Sorcerer designs,” Netty put in.

I was on my feet before she even got to the Sorcerer part. “How long until—”

“Missile range in eight minutes, give or take.”

“Almost on top of us. Shit. Okay, Perry, Funboy, let’s haul ass back to the Fafnir. Netty, have B cast off—”

“I already have.”

“—and get Cantullin to bring the Iowa to battle stations—”

“I’ve already done that, too,” she said, her last word truncated by the blare of an alarm. Excited shouts from the Conoku echoed through the Iowa’s corridors.

“Do you even need me for this, Netty, or can I just kick back and relax?”

“I’d be lost without you, Van.”

Icky shouted from behind me. “Hey, what about me?”

I glanced back. “Sorry, Icky. Until B clears you for flight operations, you’re just a spectator, I’m afraid.”

Her furious shout rattled up the corridor after me.

“This sucks!”

* * *

“Well, one nice thing about the Sorcerers twisting in so close is we don’t have to go through that damned waiting to get into range stuff. I hate that part,” I said.

The tactical overlay put the three Sorcerer ships just one minute from maximum effective missile range, and we’d only cast off the Fafnir and cleared the Iowa enough to safely maneuver barely two minutes ago. They’d probably have twisted in inside missile range to open fire on us completely unawares if they could. But the density of icy chunks of rocky debris near the planetoid we’d dubbed Pony Hollow made that a profoundly risky maneuver. Twisting into a volume of space already occupied by a comet was never a good idea, which had kind of been the point when we’d chosen to park the Iowa here. It mimicked the military idea of defilade, which essentially meant your enemy couldn’t shoot at you until you could shoot at them right back.

We had another advantage, too. If you’d have asked me before I became a Peacemaker and started working in space, I’d have said that regions of asteroids or cometary bodies were all whirling, clashing death rocks hurling and spinning through the void and smashing into one another. After all, that was how the movies portrayed them, which meant flying through one was a long sequence of wild maneuvers and shouted commands.

But it wasn’t like that at all. Space was empty.

In fact, it was sedate. The rocks and chunks of dirty ice that populated the Kuiper Belt around Pony Hollow were crowded together—in celestial terms. They averaged from tens to hundreds of thousands of klicks apart, which by the standards of the really, really big thing that was space meant they were virtually touching. Moreover, they weren’t whipping in random directions and crashing dramatically together. In fact, they were all essentially motionless relative to one another, neatly fixed in their orbits until some gravitational tug deflected them from their trajectory. That was happening now, according to Netty—the faint pull of distant Uranus was gently pulling on the rocks out here, disturbing their orbits and ensuring there eventually would be collisions. She didn’t expect the first of those to happen for nearly five thousand years, though, so I wasn’t worried.

But that apparent tranquility worked to our advantage. Netty had mapped the precise location of every rock bigger than a bowling ball, determined their exact, relative movements, then constructed myriad flight paths through them. It meant that we could accelerate and maneuver much harder than someone trying to pick out a course on the fly, and that included our approaching Sorcerers.

Which was good. Three class 13 cruisers were close to a match for the combined combat power of the Fafnir, the Iowa, and B’s ship. We had an edge, albeit not much of one. I was hoping that our ability to maneuver more freely would increase it to something more decisive.

“Okay, Netty, I’d like to pincer the Fafnir and B’s ship onto these assholes from left and right and see if we can push them toward the Iowa,” I said.

“Got it. I’m working out the details with B’s AI now. We’ll make it work,” she replied.

I turned to the comm. “Cantullin, I know you guys love flying the Iowa like it’s a fighter, but I’d like you to exercise some restraint this time. You’ve got the weight of firepower on your side, so use it.”

“If we see a chance to attack, Van, can we—”

“If you call me up and ask, first, and if I say yes. We want to keep things coordinated.”

“Okay,” she replied, her petulant tone proving that teenagers are the same no matter their species.

“Incoming missiles, Van. The Sorcerers have fired a focused barrage on the Iowa,” Netty said.

I whistled. They’d loosed a volley of eighteen missiles, with another eighteen following as soon as they could reload. Thirty six projectiles were now racing in toward the Iowa.

“They perceive the Iowa as the greatest threat,” Funboy said.

“Thank you, Funboy, for that stunning insight.”

“You’re welcome. I’m naturally gifted at combat assessment.”

I cut my eyes at Perry, who lifted his wings in a shrug.

Two of the Sorcerer’s ships turned toward us and accelerated. The third squared off against B.

I scanned the data with growing displeasure. The Sorcerers’ commander was sharp. He wanted to tie up the Iowa with the onrushing ordnance, pin down B, then focus the rest of his firepower on the Fafnir. I pulled at my chin, then made a choice.

“Netty, take us hard to port and pass us right across the path of those missiles headed for the Iowa. Those are going to be our priority targets. B, if you can help—”

“Way ahead of you, Van,” she said. “We’re going to angle in and throw our point-defenses against the missiles. Don’t worry, we’ll keep this asshole busy while we do.”

I acknowledged. Hopefully, by closing with the incoming missiles, we’d be doing something the Sorcerers didn’t expect, and at the same time pull the two ships they’d targeted at us right into the thick of the battle—and the thickest region of rocks haloed around Pony Hollow.

* * *

“Eleven missiles left,” Netty announced as our point-defenses took down another. “We now have two tracking us, and the other nine locked onto the Iowa. There’s a greater than 90 percent probability she’s going to be hit by two of them.”

I snapped out a curse. “Torina, concentrate on the missiles targeting the Iowa,” I said.

“Uh… what about us?”

I zoomed in on the overlay. “Netty, how long until the missiles reach us?”

“Fifty seconds.”

“Okay, burn as hard as you need to and pass us behind that big-assed rock off to starboard high. If we can slide behind it at the right moment, it should block their terminal approach.”

“Should,” Funboy said. “Many famous last words begin with should.”

“That’s enough cheerleading, Funboy. It’s unseemly,” I muttered, watching as Netty fired thrusters and drive, pushing us toward the rock. I noticed she was following a preplanned trajectory she’d designed, one identified only by an alphanumeric string that she’d assigned to it.

“Netty, you anticipated we’d have to do this?” I asked, a little incredulous.

“This is what I do, Van. You command, Torina and Zeno shoot things, Funboy complains and fixes you guys, Icky sheds into the air purifiers, and I anticipate space battles.”

“Hey, what about me?” Perry asked.

“You snap out smart-assed comments and control the lavatory.”

Despite tension so thick it practically repressurized the Fafnir, we all chuckled, even Funboy. Perry gave a tongue click.

“Nice.”

“You’ll get over it,” Netty said but got immediately back to business. “Fifteen seconds.”

I split my attention between the two missiles targeting us and the nine missiles—no, just five, now—racing toward the Iowa. Not that my attention mattered much because Netty was in the driver’s seat for this one. She deftly fired thrusters, making small alterations to our course and velocity, while tracking the position of the rock and the antics of the incoming missiles. I had to force my attention away and put it where it belonged—on the big picture.

Four missiles were racing toward the Iowa. Then three. But they were really damned close. Close enough that even detonating now would shower her with damaging shrapnel. But that wouldn’t be a fatal hit, and these missiles wanted blood. To do that, they all had to hold off detonating to avoid destroying one another—

I almost missed our dramatic transit behind the rock. I only turned back in time to see it sweep past, a dark, ominous shape that was briefly outlined in the hard glare of a detonation on its far side. The second missile almost managed to clear it, erupting with a searing flash and slamming shrapnel into the Fafnir as we passed. REAB modules popped with hard bangs I could feel through my seat and the deck under my feet. And that same damned thruster assembly we’d replaced at least twice in the past year or so went offline again.

“That was tight,” Torina rasped. Sweat spangled her forehead. And mine.

As soon as we were clear, Torina and Zeno opened fire on the first of the two Sorcerer ships, which were now close enough to engage with the particle and plasma-burst cannons. That was a mistake on their part—if they’d stayed at range and we’d just traded laser shots, they’d have whittled us down faster than we could them. But they were aggressive and wanted to get in close enough to use their mass drivers, or even board us. It wasn’t a mistake the lead ship would make again.

Laser energy, streams of hyper-accelerated protons, and incandescent blasts of stellar plasma slammed into the Sorcerers’ ship, smashing its bow and most of its port amidships to scrap. It slewed hard right, spun that way by an internal explosion, right in the vulnerable core of the big vessel. That only presented her full broadside to us, allowing Torina and Zeno to rake her from stem to stern with destructive energy. Her consort burned furiously, trying to break off.

“No joy,” I stated, then sent an adjustment to Netty, who folded my suggestion into the battlespace without any delay.

I flicked my focus back to B. With Netty’s help, she and her AI had nimbly dodged among the rocks, using them as shields against incoming fire, then emerging to land shots on the Sorcerer engaging her. The whittling was going the other way this time, the Sorcerers showing much more damage than B. I roved my focus past her to the Iowa.

“I’ve got outgassing on one of the enemy,” Zeno called. “Now two spots. I have breaches in their hull.”

“Pour it on,” I said, and the Iowa fired again, twice, each massive broadside searing space into glorious fury.

She’d directed the weight of her main batteries at the second Sorcerer after us, hitting them with a weight of fire that almost made me feel sorry for them.

Almost.

Her secondaries and point-defenses still spewed out streams of shots at the missiles, of which only two remained, racing through the searching fingers of fire. I looked in time to see one detonate, nearly right alongside our battlecruiser. When the flash cleared I saw she was pocked with glowing craters from shrapnel hits. The second missile—

“Cantullin, SITREP!” I called.

A brief silence followed, giving me enough time to swallow in trepidation. But Cantullin’s voice broke it, humming in my headset.

“Just a second, Van!”

To their credit, the Conoku hadn’t let the missile hits slow them down. They kept up a deadly fire against the Sorcerer who’d decided to flee—but too late. The savagery of the Iowa’s barrage was too much. Like his friend, savaged by Torina’s and Zeno’s shooting, he was soon battered into a coasting wreck trailing debris and streams of vapor.

“Cantullin, what’s going on? How badly did you guys get hit by those missiles?” I persisted.

“Missile.”

“I saw two of them. You guys managed to take one down? Must have been pretty last second.”

“Uh… not exactly.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Van, Icky here. That second missile—it’s kind of sitting here, right in front of me.”

23

B called out over comms, her voice rich with an odd tone. It took me a moment to grasp what I was hearing, and then I understood.

She was gloating.

B, along with Torina and Zeno aboard the Fafnir, finished off the Sorcerers in a brief but savage exchange of every weapon we had at our disposal. If I’d seen B lean out an airlock to fire a sidearm at the target, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all. The results were decisive, spectacular, and free of mercy.

With a silent flare of plasma, I knew—there were no survivors. It was over. I took Perry and Funboy aboard the Frankie, back to the Iowa, to inspect our damage and casualties.

Several of the Conoku had been injured, but none badly—their shells were tough, and they were young, and damned if they didn’t thrive under combat conditions. I also knew that, as long as the Conoku crewed the Iowa and we kept doing battle with our many enemies, they would eventually suffer fatalities. Linulla insisted that he and the other elder Conoku knew that, as did the younger ones making up the Iowa’s crew, and that they all accepted the risk.

Which was fine, but it didn’t leave me feeling any better about it. Even now, with their ship damaged and still under threat, they bounced and tumbled about with youthful excitement. I couldn’t shake a certainty that this was a warship full of kids. Granted, they were gifted killers, but they were still kids.

But I pushed on through their joyous clatter, pointing to a series of wounded Conoku. “Funboy, help out with their casualties, will you?”

He looked at a data slate as he wound his way behind me through the chitinous crowd. “Oh dear. I have limited experience with their physiology. And while B’s data will certainly help, I—”

“You’ll do fine,” I said. “Your natural bedside cheer will make them leave sickbay as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, just find a trowel and some patching compound, and you’ll be golden,” Perry added.

Funboy broke off to head for the infirmary, shaking his head. “Oh dear—”

We pressed on, reaching the section of the ship that had been isolated with interior damage-control airlocks. Beyond them, back in hard vacuum, Icky met us. Her face was still a swollen, purplish mass behind her visor, but her mercurial moodiness had been replaced with grim intent.

“You’re gonna love this, Van,” she said, then she led Perry and me a short distance along the corridor. She stopped outside the open hatch leading into an engineering space.

“That’s a missile,” Perry said.

I nodded slowly, trying hard to ignore the knot in my guts. “Thanks, bird. What would we do without you?”

It was a missile. About two thirds of its length had burrowed into the engineering space, striking an exterior access panel that had proven less tough than the armor around it. A couple of meters in any other direction and it would have slammed squarely into armor. Whether that would have been better or not, if that would have triggered the missile to detonate instead of simply coming to rest, was an open question.

And irrelevant, since the missile was here.

“It’s badly damaged. Do you think the warhead is still operational?” I asked.

“When it comes to things like this, Van, it’s probably best to assume that yes, it is, and proceed accordingly,” Perry replied.

“The bird’s got a point. We should treat this thing like it’s gonna go off in our faces,” Icky added.

“Oh, I’m way ahead of you there, Icky. I’m most certainly already doing that, even as we stand here a couple of meters away from the damned thing,” I said, swallowing. “So what happens now? We open it up and play a game of red wire, green wire?”

Icky glanced at me. “What the hell are you talking about, Van?”

Perry answered. “An old trope. And a dumb one. Everyone knows that, no matter which one you think it is, you always change your mind at the last second and pick the other one.”

“Why the hell would you do that?” Icky asked.

“To prove what a badass you are,” I answered. “Gotta admit, though, standing here and looking at this thing, my bad-assery is circling the drain.” I sighed. “But, here we are. Now, let me rephrase the question. What the hell do we do about this thing? I’d really rather not keep a dud missile as a souvenir lodged in the Iowa’s flank, thank you very much.”

“Cut open the case, disconnect the firing circuit, then yank the damned thing out of there,” Icky said.

Perry made a hissing sound, like he was sucking a breath through his teeth. “Not so sure about that. The thing definitely still has power—I’m detecting emissions, including modulated signals suggesting there’s still something going on in its vicious little missile brain. For all we know, the difference between us standing here and our constituent molecules all suddenly taking separate vacations might be a teeny tiny gap in a conductor. And if we start screwing around with it—”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“—it’ll explode—”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“—and we’ll all die—”

“Yes, Perry, we get it, thanks.”

“Well, we gotta do something with it before we pop any corks to celebrate kicking those Sorcerers’ asses,” Icky said.

I looked at her. “Icky, you’re brilliant.”

“I am?”

Perry stirred. “She is?”

“Yes. Popping a cork is exactly what we should do.”

* * *

“Ready when you are, Van,” Cantullin said.

I stood with Perry and Icky to one side of the Iowa’s bridge. We’d set up an imager in the compartment containing the missile so we could see if, and how well, this worked. I turned to Cantullin and nodded. “Okay, stand by. Torina, you ready out there?”

“As soon as that missile’s clear, we’ll shred the hell out of it,” she replied.

“Okay, then.” I glanced around. “Any last-minute ideas?”

Icky shrugged. No one spoke. I turned back to the image.

The plan was a simple one. We’d sealed the missile into the breach it had made through the access plate with structural foam, a substance similar to the stuff you could buy back on Earth in any hardware store that was intended to seal cracks and gaps and things. Like that stuff, this foam expanded, but it was designed to harden in vacuum so it could seal minor rents in a pressure hull. Applying it to the missile—a task performed by Icky and me—had been a naturally gentle process, not requiring us to touch the cursed object at all.

The idea was simple, but the stress of it felt like the Sword of Damocles—for four agonizing hours, we’d built pressure in the ship, which would—in theory—blow the missile back out into space.

Again, it was a theory. But I liked the simplicity, if not the grinding tension of waiting as pressure built. And built. It might work. And it might detonate.

Against that possibility, we evacuated the Iowa, cajoling the protesting Conoku into the Fafnir and B’s ship, packing them in until only Cantullin and her two hand-picked—or, rather, claw-picked—assistants remained aboard with Icky, Perry, and me. I hadn’t even wanted them aboard, but Cantullin was, as she reminded me, the Captain. I knew I had to stop thinking of the Conoku as children, especially since they were now veterans of battle, so I finally nodded.

“You’re right, Cantullin. Your place is here,” I said.

I turned to her now. “Okay, Captain. Go ahead.”

She looked, in turn, to her subordinates, one of whom she’d made her Chief Engineer. “Alright, continue bringing the pressure up—but not too fast. If we blow out something else, we don’t want to lose all our air.”

I glanced at Perry and Icky, who both nodded their satisfaction. It was a good point. The Iowa only had so much air in her reserves, and if too much of it got vented into space, there wouldn’t be enough to make any further attempts.

I watched the display, which showed the pressure in the isolated section of the ship superimposed on the corner of the image depicting the dud missile. The pressure value began to tick up.

“Hopefully that foam holds onto the missile and doesn’t come loose,” Icky said.

I was impressed by the way my crew was thinking. That was another risk, that the foam encasing the missile simply let go and let the pressure release. Again, though, all we could do was watch and—

The pressure suddenly dropped, and sharply. But the missile hadn’t budged.

“Van, something just blew out on the side of the Iowa. Looks like the mounts for one of the hull plates must have been damaged,” Zeno said.

I swore. So did Icky. Netty switched to the imagery from the Fafnir, which showed something erupt from the flank of the Iowa and sail off into space, trailing frozen vapor. A stream of it continued to vent from the ship. We could only watch helplessly as the pressure in the isolated section dropped back to zero.

I turned to Cantullin. “How much reserve air do we have left?”

“Enough to try this one more time.”

“With a hole in the side of the Iowa at least a meter square,” Perry added.

I swore again.

Icky grunted. “Right there with you, boss.”

* * *

I could feel the seconds ticking by, the relentless beat of an uncaring metronome. That missile might be a true dud, rendered forever inoperable, but it may not. A single vibration might be enough to jiggle its innards enough to let it detonate. We had to get the damned thing out of there, and my nerves were fraying at an alarming rate.

“Sorry, Van, but thanks to battle damage, we can’t ensure that machinery space and the compartments around it will stay airtight enough to let suitable pressure build. The minimum space with airtight integrity is defined by the interior battle-damage airlocks. Remember that the Iowa’s an old ship, and that’s how they were built at the time her keel was laid down,” Netty said.

“And that supposedly airtight part of the ship isn’t, thanks to that big-assed hole where the hull plate blew out,” Icky added.

I studied the schematics. Modern designs endeavored to make every compartment separately airtight. But in the Iowa’s day, ships of her prodigious size were only divided into pressure zones by the interior airlocks. That was considered sufficient for a warship—not to mention it made her a lot cheaper to build.

“So we have to plug that hole,” I said.

Icky nodded. “We’ll have to get out there, cut away the damaged mounts, and install a new hull plate.”

“How long?”

She shrugged. “Four, maybe five hours.”

“Too long. I want that missile gone, like, ten minutes ago.” I began tracing the ship’s schematics as though they were a lock that held my desired answer. There might not be one, other than spending the time Icky just described. And the longer we dithered over doing that, the longer it would take.

“What we need is some way to plug that hole fast.” I pressed my lips together, then cocked my head. We needed to plug it, but it didn’t have to be with a hull plate. It could be with—

“What if we used the Frankie?” I asked the bridge at large.

“Use her how?” Icky asked.

“To plug that hole. Push her against it and hold her there with her thrusters.”

“That wouldn’t even be close to an airtight seal, Van,” Perry said.

Cantullin spoke up. “We could use more structural foam to seal the gaps.”

I gave her a glance and a smile. “Yeah, we could. Thoughts?”

Icky shrugged. “It might work. Someone would have to go in there, though, and squirt foam into the cracks between the Frankie and the Iowa.”

I nodded and reached for my helmet. “I’ll head in there now. Netty, can you fly the Frankie into position?”

“We haven’t upgraded her telemetry yet—hint, hint, we need to spend some money on a new telemetry package for her. I’d only have basic controls,” Netty replied.

“I’ll fly her,” Icky said.

I glanced her way. “You feeling up to it?”

“Van, I’ve been cooped up in this damned ship for days. And I just sat out a battle. I’m more than up to it. I’m itching for it.”

I shot Perry a look, only to see him about to open his beak for a snide remark, but he subsided with a discreet twitch of his wings. Good call. “Okay, big girl. You go, tell me when you’re in position.”

“Van, you’re going to have to stay by that hole to make sure the seal stays airtight. That means you’ll be two compartments away from that missile. If it detonates when we try to free it—” Perry said, but I cut him off.

“I was trying not to think of that. Thanks, bird.”

“Van, I should do this. I’m the Captain,” Cantullin said.

I shook my head. “You might be the Captain, but I’m the owner. Besides, I need you here on the bridge to remain in command—no matter what happens.”

I could tell she wanted to protest, but she just waved a claw instead. “Yes, sir.”

Torina suddenly spoke up. “Van, Netty just told me what you plan to do.”

I braced myself for her objection. She surprised me, though.

“Try to not get blown up, okay?” Torina said, so earnest it hurt.

“I—yes, dear. That’s my goal. Has been since I made the call two minutes ago.”

As I headed for the isolated section of the Iowa, I thought about the tense conversation I’d had with Torina while we were trying to rescue Gabriella Santorelli. She’d given me shit for letting fear of the risks we faced get in the way of what needed to be done. I’d eventually conceded with Winston Churchill’s famous words, When you’re going through hell, keep going.

I could hear the sorrowful stress in what she’d just said. Try to not get blown up, okay? But she’d made herself say it because what I was going to do needed to be done.

Which meant our conversation had stuck, at least for her. I had to remember that the next time it was her heading into danger.

It still sucked, though.

* * *

“Okay, Icky, hold her right there and don’t let her move,” I said.

“Hey, all I have to do is keep the port thrusters pushing, sit here, and wait to not get exploded. I’ve got the easy part.”

I grinned as I inspected the hole. The Frankie’s starboard flank, nestled against the Iowa’s hull, filled it. There were gaping cracks at the top and bottom, though, thanks to a slight curvature in the workboat’s hull. I gripped the canister of structural foam, squirted it into the gaps, and filled them. I kept squirting, covering the entire hole, trying to build up as much foam as I could. We wanted the stuff around the missile to fail before this did.

The canister emptied. I gave the foam a couple of minutes to expand and harden, then called Cantullin.

“Okay, second time, same as the first. Go ahead and crank up the pressure, Captain.”

“Roger, here we go.”

I didn’t feel any change, but I heard one. The external pickups on my b-suit caught a faint hiss that strengthened as more air poured into the compartment. I watched the foam carefully, a second canister at hand and ready to plug any new leaks.

“That’s one standard atmosphere,” Cantullin said.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Nothing’s budged yet. We’ve got enough air to pressurize that section to two standard atmospheres, and if that’s not enough… well, I guess we’re gonna have to just kick it out of the ship.”

I smiled. As young as she was, Cantullin was a natural as a commander. I was lucky to have her in charge of the Iowa.

She really wasn’t a kid. None of them were. It was something else I had to remember—

I both felt and heard a thunk, then a breeze erupted around me.

“Please, please tell me that was that damned missile,” I said.

“It was! It worked, Van!” Cantullin said, her tone pure triumph.

I started to relax—but only started. Sure, the missile might have been dislodged, but it couldn’t have gained more than a few meters per second of velocity, meaning it was, at most, a few tens of meters away by now. This was actually the most dangerous part, because the thing had been jostled, but was still close enough to blow a massive chunk out of the Iowa if it detonated, taking the Frankie, Icky, and me along with it.

“Torina, as soon as you can—”

I felt several impacts against the Iowa’s hull.

“Already done. Zeno just turned it into scrap.”

“Holy shit. Cutting it pretty close. Did I just feel point-defense rounds hitting the Iowa?”

Zeno answered. “Kind of figured you wanted that missile gone, Van. Besides, what are a few more holes to patch.”

“Small holes!” Cantullin crowed. “We’ll fix them by second meal.”

“Perry, just how many meals do these kids eat?” I asked.

His answer was immediate. “Imagine Icky. Now imagine there are dozens of her.”

I whistled. “I need a second job.”

Cantullin was promising everyone snacks if they hustled. I watched and listened on comms, sensing our bonds drain with each chitter of delight.

I sighed and leaned back in the seat. “Or three.”

* * *

Two of the Sorcerers’ ships had been beaten into powerless hulks during the battle, and one of them had either lost containment or been scuttled by her crew, vanishing in a searing blast that might raise eyebrows back on Earth. Fortunately, even if the explosion were noticed, neither NASA nor anyone else was in a position to do much about it. It would take years to prepare and launch a mission to investigate. Perry assured me that even the best Earthly telescopes didn’t have the resolution to image anything out here either.

“At this distance, the Iowa would still be a lot smaller than a single pixel on the James Webb telescope. It might catch an intriguing infrared flicker, since everything else out here is pretty cold, but that would be about it,” he said. “Which gives me an idea, actually.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“If they did notice something out here, let’s try starting our own conspiracy theory about it, see if it catches on.”

“Are you serious?”

“I have a social engineering subroutine that’s kinda curious, yeah.”

I put Perry off as B reported that she’d run down and destroyed the third Sorcerer ship near another small planetoid, this one about two and a half times the size of Long Island, roughly three hundred klicks across. We decided it needed a name and settled on something in honor of Icky, who’d been through biochemical hell. The crew tossed out various suggestions.

“How about Big Girl?” Torina suggested.

Icky scowled. “I hate that name. Makes me sound fat.”

“Blue Shag Carpet?” Perry offered.

I shook my head. “Makes me think of Elvis more than Icky.”

Cantullin raised a claw. “Twister! Because she likes playing it with us!”

“Sorry, I just have visions of Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt dodging cows in a windstorm,” Perry replied.

Zeno glanced at him. “I’m just going to assume that somehow makes sense.”

“Are there any Earthly movies you haven’t seen?” I asked, shaking my head.

“Very, very few. Once again, Van—bored AI sitting in a barn in Iowa, sometimes days at a time, while your grandfather was off doing—I don’t know, human stuff. It helped pass the time. Hell, I even saw Casablanca when it opened at the Elkader Cinema in 1943.” He went all Humphrey Bogart. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” He sighed. “Yeah, they just don’t write ’em like that anymore.”

“And nobody in 1940s Elkader thought it was odd to see a big metallic bird watching Bogie and Bergman on the big screen?”

“I wore a hat.”

I rolled my eyes and turned to Icky herself to let her decide. She grinned in triumph.

“Nopants! No, wait… NoPants Ever. Hmm. Too clunky. What about… Neverpants?”

Perry opened his beak. “It’s not terrible.”

I smirked. “Okay. Netty, please formally record the name of this dwarf planet as Neverpants.”

“If I do that, Van, that name is going to populate its way through the Guild catalog and show up in every Peacemaker ship accordingly.”

“Do it!” Icky said.

I grinned. “You heard her, Netty. Neverpants it is.”

Icky’s smile was a welcome sight. “I feel kinda sassy.”

“Just now you feel that way? How about when you swing that hammer of yours?”

“Oh, then I just feel—” she started, then blinked and looked around, her grin fading. “Guys, I guess I’ve been, like, mean to you all? You know, lately?”

Zeno touched her arm. “Well, not so much mean as, ah—” she began, but Funboy cut her off.

“You’ve been intolerable, and if not for your massive size and punishing weaponry, I’d have seen you shaved down—before the hair loss, that is—and replaced with… oh, it’s an Earthly species, a nasty, vicious creature—”

“Black Friday shopper?” Perry offered.

“No, it’s a burrowing mammal—”

“A badger,” I said.

“Yes. A badger. They’re friendlier than you were.”

Icky sagged a little. “Um. Ouch. Sorry?”

“Oh, honey, you weren’t that bad,” Torina said. “Although… you did eat all the salty snacks. On the Fafnir. And the Iowa. And B’s ship. And now that I’ve said that, I’m craving a salty snack, come to think of it.”

I shrugged. “Snacks are replaceable, Icky. You aren’t. And no one’s going to say welcome back because you were never gone. You were always a part of this crew.”

That made Icky sit up a little again. I saw her struggle for a moment with her words, then she nodded. “Thanks, boss. Now, can we smash some shit? I’ve got a lot of new, uh, emotions to work out.”

“We sure can. First, though, we have to find Gauss. And Carter Yost.”

Netty spoke up. “I’ve been thinking about that, Van. Why don’t we make Yost come to us?”

“You’ve been thinking about that? Really?”

“Van, I spend a lot of my time doing nothing but flying in a straight line which, trust me, isn’t all that challenging. It gives me a slew of idle clock cycles to put to use.”

“Fair enough. How do you suggest we lure Yost to us?”

“Ever heard of a bird called a killdeer?”

* * *

Netty’s idea was a stroke of genius. The killdeer, a small bird of the plover family, protected its nest by distracting would-be predators with a false show of weakness. It would flop around and cry piteously to draw the attention of whatever was threatening it, then manage to barely move away, steadily decoying the intruder farther and farther from the nest. When far enough away, it would miraculously recover and fly off.

“So we make some display of weakness, hoping it will draw the attention of Gauss, and if it’s true that Carter Yost has somehow become one of his key agents, perhaps him as well,” she said.

“Gauss already thinks he’s driven us off the grid, as it were,” Perry noted. “He’s forced us to resort to living on cash only and made us suspect that half the Guild is in his pocket, thanks to Kharsweil. It would stand to reason that we’d end up facing problems we had trouble fixing.”

“Which just adds to the plausibility. I like it. Okay, gang, that’s the concept. Now, we need a plan to go with it.”

While the crew chewed on it, B called. I took her message in my cabin.

“Icky should be able to resume normal duties. I’ve prescribed some meds to help her through the dregs of her, uh, affliction, so as long as she takes the whole course of them, she’s cleared for flight duties, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Thanks, B. She’ll be glad—hell, we’re all glad to hear that.”

“According to her father and my other Wu'tzur sources, she will have a lasting behavioral change, though. It’s not one we can do anything about. She’s going to be… um… let’s see, how do I put this delicately? Oh, I know. She’s going to be horny around other Wu'tzur males, starting with the nerdy boyfriend waiting for her back on their homeworld.”

“Oh. Well, lucky him, I guess.”

“If he survives, sure. I’m no expert in the ways of Wu'tzur lovemaking, but I’m given to understand it’s like a couple of grizzly bears fighting, but more intense and way louder.”

I smiled and nodded. “Have her reunite with him aboard the Fafnir, and we’ll find someplace quaint down on the surface. Also, I’m assuming there is catastrophic hair loss during said, ah, coupling?”

“You have no idea. Order extra air filters.”

“Noted. Never thought I’d be in need of an air unit that collected sex fuzz, but here we are,” I admitted.

B’s smile was brilliant, but it collapsed as she turned serious. “There’s something else that’s bugging me, Van. It’s those three Sorcerers that attacked.”

I sat up. “What about them?”

“For three well-armed class 13 ships, didn’t they seem to be kind of… I don’t know. A bit of a pushover?”

I thought about the battle. “Now that you mention it, they didn’t seem to be on top of their game. What are you thinking?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m thinking. It just seems odd. Why did they attack here? They know by now that this is where you keep the Iowa. They also know that both Groshenko and the GKU are keeping ships here at Sol. Why attack where you’re strong? Why not bounce the Fafnir when she’s out somewhere on her own?”

“Maybe because they know we’d likely be here so they can keep some discreet little drone watching for us to show up?”

“Maybe. But if they’re working for Gauss, BeneStar has the resources to do the same thing pretty much anywhere.”

I sat back. “I see your point. Now I don’t know what I’m thinking, either.”

“I can’t help feeling they’re getting a little desperate.”

“Why would they be?”

She shrugged. “That, my friend, is an excellent question. Anyway, I’m off. Try not to need my services again anytime soon, okay?”

I nodded enthusiastically, thanked her, and signed off. For a while, though, I just sat staring at the screen, with its Guild logo and key ship stats.

The Sorcerers were getting desperate? Why? What had changed?

B was right. That was an excellent question, wasn’t it?

24

We decided to do the wounded bird part of our plan on Dregs. It was just the sort of place we’d likely go if we were trying to get information—or, in this case, spread some misinformation—while laying low. We’d considered Crossroads, Spindrift, and Plenty, but being orbitals, they’d seem too obvious. Dregs sprawled planet-side, making it easier for us to park the Fafnir in a nondescript place further away in the system and take the Frankie down to the surface.

As for our deception, we kept it simple. Icky and Funboy rigged the Fafnir’s drive to suffer from a persistent harmonic, which was diminishing thrust and forcing us to avoid using full power, thereby limiting our top acceleration. We left Zeno and Funboy aboard the Fafnir—Funboy, mainly because he abhorred Dregs even more than most other places, citing the crowded, ramshackle confines of the spaceport as nothing but an enormous Petri dish, the equivalent of sticking one’s face into a damp sock and inhaling deeply. We thanked him for that particular visual, then headed down to the surface of Dregs.

We had a friend down there. His name was Balik, a Yonnox, one of the rare, altruistic sort who devoted himself as a sort of street doctor to the care of the many indigent and impoverished people who called Dregs home. He’d saved Icky’s life after a car bomb on Dregs almost ended it, so I’d made a point of keeping a channel open to him ever since. He provided us with useful information, and we provided him with first aid and medical supplies he normally wouldn’t be able to get. This time, he was helping us with our little scheme.

He met us as we were leaving the spaceport and heading into Dregs proper. After a quick greeting, he got right to business. We made it look like a chance meeting, to minimize the risk that anyone would end up associating him with us. For a Yonnox, he was a damned good actor. Even I bought the random encounter.

“Go to The Star Traveler—three blocks down, then right, across the footbridge—hold your breath, by the way, because you do not want to smell what’s running through the ditch it crosses—then another block. It’ll be on your left. There’s a Gajur who I know is a BeneStar agent that hangs out there. You’ll know him from a bad scar,” he said.

“The Star Traveler. Sounds fancy,” Torina said.

“It’s not, trust me.”

“How do you know he’s a BeneStar agent?”

“Because I’ve done business with him. He arranged to get me some medical supplies from scammy BeneStar programs to give aid to the masses.”

“Scammy how?”

“They used it as a photo op, doing good works on the streets of Dregs, that sort of thing. When I dug into the stuff, half of it turned out to be expired. I had to throw out a bunch of anesthetics I’d been counting on having in my inventory—bastards.”

“Yeah, that sounds like BeneStar. Thanks, Balik.”

“Any time, Van,” he said, then turned and vanished into the crowd.

We ambled off, trying to look like we weren’t heading anywhere in particular. When we reached the footbridge, we immediately recognized the wisdom in Balik’s caution to us about breathing. The sludge oozing beneath it reeked like an open sewer crossed with—an even bigger, more open sewer.

“Phew. Kinda wish I’d brought my helmet,” Torina said as we hurried across.

“Can you imagine Funboy being here?” Icky said, her voice tight as she struggled to hold her breath. “He would die.”

“No, we would. From his bitching,” Torina stated.

Icky snorted, then coughed with regret. “Yes. And, no more jokes near the channel of poop, please.”

Torina’s eyes twinkled, but it might have been from fumes. “Done.”

We reached the other side and pressed on until the smell had abated. Then we stood for a moment, just gasping in the relatively fresh air.

“I can’t imagine Funboy coming anywhere near that,” I said to her.

“Fun to try, though.” Icky made her voice high and nasal. “Oh dear, this is… something something pathogens something we’re all going to die in pain something blah blah blah.”

“You definitely need to let Funboy hear your impression of him,” Torina said, laughing.

“I would, but… have you seen how hard that little guy can hit?”

We carried on to The Star Traveler. Balik had been right. For a place with such an elegant, almost ethereal name, it was a fetid, rundown shithole of a bar. We saw several Gajur, but only one with a wicked scarring on one side of his face. We slowly but deliberately moved closer to him. Glancing sidelong, I saw him see us. There was a flicker of recognition as his eyes widened slightly.

“How much longer until you get that damned drive fixed?” I asked Icky. “I’m starting to get nervous. I don’t like being nervous, you understand?”

“Full power would’ve made that last fight a lot easier,” Torina said, before picking up the drink she ordered, lifting it to her mouth, then lowering it and wiping something off the rim of the glass with a nose wrinkle of disgust.

“I need parts, Van. I—”

“Names, remember,” I hissed, cutting her off. “Just call me boss.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry. Anyway, I can’t replace parts I don’t have.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know.” I turned to Torina. “Look, this is a shit call, but we’ve gotta take the job listed at The Torus. No other way to keep flying, and if it hits, we’re flush for… months. Maybe a year.”

Torina frowned—at her glass, then put it back down. “It’s going to put us back on the books. You sure that’s a good idea?”

“Do you have a better one?”

“No. My parents are tapped out.”

“Okay, then. Let’s see if we can find what we came here for, then get the hell gone,” I said, taking a sip of what tasted like pure ethanol. I didn’t take a second, wanting to leave some skin on my tongue, so I placed the glass down and turned away to head back toward the door.

When we got outside, we headed up the narrow, zigzagging street. I made sure we moved slowly enough so that anyone who wanted to follow us could.

“Perry, you on station?” I muttered.

Right above you, boss. It’s a beautiful day up here. Lots of thermals. You non-fliers don’t know what you’re missing.

“While you’re soaring free and all that, is there anyone following us?”

Well, there’s a Gajur with a big scar on his face that just came out of the bar, looked around, then started after you. Definitely not suspicious at all.

“That’s our guy. Keep us posted.” I turned to Icky. “Okay, let’s buy a spaceship part.”

“Any part in particular?”

“I don’t care. Just as long as it’s something we couldn’t do without, so no new parts for the toilet.”

Is that a shot at me?

“It—no, Perry. Not every toilet is about you.”

“Words to live by. Oh, and I take exception to the toilet being somehow nonessential,” Torina said.

“Okay, that was a shot at me, wasn’t it?” Icky said.

I sighed. “You guys are all way too sensitive.”

* * *

We ended up buying a power-distribution controller, Icky reasoning it never hurt to have another spare, then returned to the Frankie. My shoulder blades itched the whole way back to the spaceport since I was expecting an ambush, but we made it unmolested. The scarred Gajur followed us the whole way, pretty much proving he was our guy—and he was good, too. If it hadn’t been for Perry circling high above, we’d have never known he was there.

I guess it wasn’t really surprising, though. Even BeneStar needed time to set plans into motion, so I expected we’d find them waiting for us at The Torus—assuming the Gajur had actually bought our killdeer ruse, that is, and that BeneStar bought it in turn when he reported it.

If they didn’t, then we’d be no worse off than we were now. But I found myself wanting a confrontation at The Torus. I was tired of feeling like we were running and just being reactive. We needed to get ahead of BeneStar and start prying open their implacable corporate grip on everything.

This was a start.

“Van, have you given any more thought to that tracker BeneStar planted on us during our first trip to Rondantic’s World? It’s still sitting on one of Bester’s shelves,” Perry said as we approached our twist point from Dregs to The Torus.

“I haven’t forgotten it. I’m still pondering how to use it. It is a good point, though—remind me to retrieve it next time we’re at Anvil Dark.” The little device was a generic one, planted on us as a matter of routine when we were just another Peacemaker poking our nose into BeneStar’s home turf and not at the top of their most-wanted list. We’d deactivated it but could come to life and generate a tracking signal BeneStar would almost certainly investigate. The trick was how and where to do that. It wasn’t exactly an ace up our sleeve, more like a deuce—but even a deuce, played at the right time, can give you a winning hand.

“Van, you’ve got a call coming in from Retta,” Netty said. “She’s using an encrypted Guild comm channel.”

I cocked my head at that. “How the hell did she get access to that?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“Great. Wonder if she’s got another Peacemaker on her payroll that needs rescuing,” Torina muttered.

Netty put her on. “Hello, my darling slug on a ball. What can we do for you today? Especially on this channel, which you should not be using?” I asked.

“Bonjour, Van. I am relaying a message, yes, from someone you know well, who gave me access. It is Master Gerhardt, and he has intelligence for you.”

That made me sit up. “I’m listening.”

“He says that he has had a… a break, yes? In the dealings of your Guild with the Sorcerers?”

“Go on, Retta, please.”

She went on to describe how Gerhardt had, through the intelligence contacts he maintained with Unity, the planetary alliance that sat to anti-spinward of known space, received an intel bonanza on the Sorcerers. Unity were also bitter foes of the Sorcerers, who had once been involved in a plot to attack and seize some of their territory, a plot we’d helped foil. It seemed that between the ongoing shadow war between them and the Sorcerers that had raged since, and the losses we’d inflicted on them, they’d been reduced to only two so-called pods. It meant that the Sorcerer’s losses had become dire and only worsened as Unity pursued them into The Deeps. Gerhardt, it seemed, had chosen to seize the moment and had joined forces with Unity, intent on wiping the Sorcerers out completely.

“That would imply wiping out the Trinduk as a race,” Perry said. “There’s a word for that: genocide.”

“Not all Trinduk are Sorcerers, though,” Torina replied.

“No, but I know where Perry’s coming from. The Trinduk know all about the Sorcerers, and certainly aid and abet them,” I said.

“But do you really think Gerhardt would actually be willing to go that far?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe not. But the question is how far Unity is willing to go.”

“The Trinduk are technically under the aegis of the Guild, for better or worse. If Unity does decide to try and wipe them out, that could get awkward,” Perry said.

“Ah, but your Gerhardt is only concerned now with destroying the remaining Sorcerers,” Retta put in. “And he is concerned about that, yes? Even with Unity assisting him, it is at the limit of what he may be able to do. So he is asking you to help him.”

“Help him? How?”

“He says that you and he have mutual… acquaintances, as he put it, who can help, n’est ce pas? But they are claiming other priorities. He is hoping you can intervene on his behalf with your… contacts.”

I curled my lip at Retta. It was clear that she knew all about the GKU and my mother and grandmother but was dodging and weaving her way around it with a maddening Gallic delicacy. Maybe it was just for security reasons, in case the comm channel had been compromised. But I got the sense she just found the whole situation awkward, which was fair, because she was just the messenger here.

“Okay, Retta. Tell Gerhardt I’ll speak to the parties in question.”

“Bien. I will tell him so.”

Retta signed off, and I turned to Torina. “It would be nice to have the Sorcerers taken out of the picture, even if only temporarily. It would give us one less direction over our shoulders to be looking.”

Torina nodded but narrowed her eyes. “As for that whole genocide thing—”

“It can wait for another day. I can only fit so many Crimes Against Order into my itinerary, thanks. Netty, get a channel open to my grandmother, please.”

“On it, boss.”

I unstrapped and handed the ship over to Torina for the twist to The Torus. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my cabin, trying to convince my grandmother to go to war.” I sighed as I headed aft. “Gotta admit, I kinda envy other grandsons right now. The most they want their grandmas to do for them is bake cookies, not help wipe out interstellar gangsters.”

* * *

We arrived at The Torus, our drive dutifully leaking emissions suggesting it suffered from uncorrected harmonics and wasn’t operating anywhere near full efficiency. Icky, showing off her intimate knowledge of the drive, added a flutter in the harmonics she said would be characteristic of a faulty containment coil—a serious problem that could only be fixed at a serious cost.

“That should really make us your deer-killing bird thing now,” she said with a note of triumph as she returned to the cockpit. She looked at Perry as she took her place. “Hey, bird, you have any of that killer deer thing in you?”

“I’m… not actually a bird, Icky.”

“Which is fortunate, because birds tend to defecate randomly as they fly, and I don’t need to point out how unsanitary that is,” Funboy said.

“Defecate and randomly. Now there’re two words you don’t want to hear together,” Zeno muttered.

Perry shot Funboy an amber scowl. “You’re welcome.”

Our arrival and stay at The Torus was as uneventful as the trip from Dregs. Torina and Zeno stayed aboard the Fafnir, while the rest of us entered the station and wandered around, making a show out of visiting any dealers in ship parts. I reasoned that besides me, Icky, Funboy, and Perry were the most immediately recognizable of our group, especially when all together. We specifically enquired about containment coils for the Fafnir’s class of drive, being pointedly disappointed by what we already knew were going to exorbitant costs.

“Oh, no! That’s much too expensive! We can’t possibly afford that!” Icky said, her hands raised in shock when faced with the price of the first coil.

I looked at her sidelong. “Icky, what the hell are you doing?”

“Acting.”

“Well, let’s tone it down a bit, okay?”

“Yeah, less Nicholas Cage and more Gary Cooper,” Perry said.

I turned my glance to him. “Do you really think that’s going to mean anything to her?”

Perry tapped his beak against a plasma flow regulator as though inspecting it. “Nah. That’s just me showing off my encyclopedic knowledge of cinema.”

“Well, less Roger Ebert and more… uh, well, just ordinary Perry, please.”

“You’re no fun.”

We carried on. I started to worry that this was a bust after all. Sure, we attracted attention—how could we not, a Peacemaker with a massive Wu'tzur, a dour little Surtsi, and an AI bird construct in tow—but it was the get out of the Peacemaker’s way and try to look inconspicuous attention that had now become the usual background for me. I didn’t even really have clear jurisdiction here, but people tended to play it safe anyway, especially if they intended to do nefarious business where I did have clear jurisdiction—

“Van, Netty says that a ship just arrived that corresponds to a bonded fast freighter registered with the Eridani Federation,” Torina cut in over the comm.

“Okay, and?”

“And, it’s a false registration, one planted by the GKU with Eridani. That ship doesn’t exist—or it shouldn’t, anyway.”

“We’re on our way back,” I said, then turned to Perry. “That can’t be legal, registering non-existent ships.”

“Oh hell no. It’s an old tactic that dates from the time when the Galactic Knights Uniformed were the law, before the Peacemaker Guild was established. Needless to say, it’s a bad thing, having nonexistent ships flying around known space. There’s a reason every registration has to be tied to a physical transponder.”

“So the GKU must have, what, hacked into the Eridani registration database and created a false entry?”

“Yup, looks like they’re still up to their old tricks.”

“How do we know it isn’t just a GKU ship availing themselves of the false registration?” Funboy asked.

“We don’t. I mean, the Knights’ SOP used to involve using the fake registrations to set up traps, or even sell them through intermediaries to bad guys so they could track them. But that was then—who knows what they might be up to now?” Perry replied.

We stopped to buy another part that would make a handy spare. It looked to any observer critical to ship operation, an antimatter flow monitor. It ate further into our available cash, but thanks to the generosity of the good people of Helso, we were still flush enough for several months of operation. We returned to the Fafnir, where Torina and Netty briefed us on the tactical situation. The ship broadcasting the fake registration was a class 12, an unremarkable fast freighter—but looks almost assuredly were deceiving.

“Van, I contacted both B’s and Valint’s AIs to see if they knew of some GKU op that was using this false identity. Neither are aware of one, but there are GKU splinters that do their own thing,” Netty said.

“Like my mother’s.”

“Not naming any names here.”

“Have you tried contacting her, or Amazing, or their AIs?” I asked.

“I have. No response. But if they’re more than about twenty light-years away, the probability of us being able to open a stable twist-comm link without them being specifically set to receive it drops off logarithmically with distance.”

I finished buckling in. “Okay, then. Logically, the next thing we’d do is some test flying, right? As though we’ve just installed some new parts? Netty, take us out past The Torus’s nav control zone, off an established shipping lane where we can do figure eights and loop de loops and such at different drive settings so it looks like we’re tinkering with stuff.”

Icky grinned. “Cool. This gives me a chance to tinker with stuff.”

“Are you still recording everything you do in that log Gerhardt ordered you to keep?” Zeno asked.

“Yes, mother. Though, seriously, how long do I have to keep doing that, anyway? Gerhardt’s never even looked at the damned thing.”

“Doesn’t matter. Until he orders otherwise, you have to keep it up.”

Icky sighed. “Fine,” she grouched and headed aft.

Van, Gerhardt told you, like, four months ago to check that log and said if you were satisfied with it, Icky could stop filling it out, Perry said in my ear bug. I just looked at the overlay as we backed away from The Torus and nodded.

Oh, so you’re just being an asshole about it?

I glanced back at Zenophir. “Zeno, do you think keeping that log up-to-date is keeping Icky more focused, detail oriented, that sort of thing?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Hey, just being an asshole about it wasn’t a criticism—it was an enthusiastic congratulations. But, c’mon, admit it, Van. There’s at least a little assholery going on there too, right?

I smiled at Zeno and nodded.

Van, you’re a bird after my own heart.

25

We flew a lazy pattern of test maneuvers, ramping the drive up and down, shutting it down, restarting it, and doing all of the things you’d expect a ship to do when trying out new equipment. All the while, we watched our target bogie heading in-system. Netty, of course, with her senses being the supremely sensitive and accurate ones of the Fafnir, was able to discern a slight but distinct variation in its course—toward us.

“In another thirty minutes or so, he’ll be firmly inside our maneuver envelope,” Netty said.

I made a noise of agreement. It meant that, in about half an hour, our maximum realistic acceleration wouldn’t be enough to get us outside of the other ship’s maximum effective missile range before he could potentially land hits. And with every passing second after that, his engagement window would only widen.

I glanced at Torina. “What do you think?”

“I can’t believe BeneStar is going to give us a whole half-hour to fly away. They’ve got to have another trick up their sleeve,” she replied.

“Yeah, I agree.” We both studied the overlay. BeneStar’s options were limited. The closest large body, an airless, rocky world about twice the size of Earth, was too far away to even be a factor in any engagement. The only nearby bodies were a smattering of asteroids and a single comet plodding along on its lonely, decades-long journey to loop around the system’s star before sailing back out into frozen oblivion.

As for other ships, only two were in any position to intervene. One was a ponderous bulk carrier loaded with a shit ton of raw materials. Its mass alone meant it would take hours and vast quantities of fuel to even get close. The other was more worrisome, a nimble yacht broadcasting a diplomatic transponder signal from the Seven Stars League. It could get into a threatening position far more quickly but had the opposite problem compared to the bulk carrier—it was too small to mount more than the most scant of weaponry.

And that was it.

“Could they have something stealthed up out there?” Torina asked.

“Well, if they do, then by definition we won’t be able to detect it,” Netty replied.

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s kinda what stealth is all about—hmm.”

Torina raised an eyebrow. “Hmm?”

“Yeah, hmm. Netty, can you raise Lunzy?”

“One moment,” she replied.

I looked at Torina. “Lunzy’s ship has that kick-ass stealth system installed, remember? If anyone would know its limitations, it would be her.”

Lunzy was fortunately within that critical twenty light-year bubble, so Netty was able to get her on twist comm. “Hello, Van. Tell me, have you added any more grossly powerful enemies to the list of those after you since we last talked?”

I smiled. “I’ve lost track, frankly.”

“Well, I went into the intel database and checked out the price on your head. It’s tempting, I tell you. I could retire to that little farm I’ve always wanted, sit on the porch, and watch the pretty sunsets.”

“Well, then you’ll want to come to Iowa. It’s a buyer’s market for farms there.”

She grinned. “Frankly, I’d rather have dental work done. I’m not really the staring at pretty sunsets sort of girl. What can I do for you?”

I explained the situation, and she nodded along, face twitching as she registered salient points. “The limitation of any stealth system is its effect on the background. Cheaper ones will just show up as a hole that, if you look carefully enough, is going to occult stars and things that should be visible. The better ones, like mine, actually wrap the background around to the foreground, but it’s still not perfect—it tends to compress wavelengths, so things get blue-shifted slightly. For the same reason, it’s not very good at wrapping the longer wavelengths, so it still tends to block infrared. I mean, you’re still looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, but at least the needle stands out a little.”

“Thanks, Lunzy, much appreciated.”

“Happy to oblige. Don’t let that bounty get too much bigger, though, Van, or I really might want to buy that farm,” she said, then signed off.

“Okay, Netty, we’ve got just over twenty minutes. What are the chances you scan the entire universe around us for a teeny tiny infrared hole?” I asked.

“Hey, no problem. I’ll do an accurate count of all of the stars in the observable universe while I’m at it—no, I’ll do even better than that. The total number of hydrogen atoms. No, protons. No, wait—”

“Is this your way of saying that I’m asking you to do the impossible?” I asked her, ready for her to answer yes.

And she did. “Yes. But I’ve done it anyway.”

“You—what?”

“Sometimes you get lucky. While we’ve been chatting, I’ve been scanning what Perry and I think are the most likely approach vectors for another ship, and lo and behold, I got a hit right away. There’s an infrared hole at roughly our ten o’clock, plus forty-two degrees of elevation.” As she spoke, a new icon popped onto the overlay.

I had to smile and shake my head. I tended to forget how incomprehensibly fast these AIs really were. Perry and Netty had obviously been communicating at machine speeds, doing all of this while, from their perspective, she and I had a flippant, glacially slow conversation about counting stars and protons. Despite outward appearances as affable ship and smart-mouthed bird, moments like this were stark reminders that they really were stunningly remarkable works of technology.

“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Torina asked, brow lifted in inquiry.

I again studied the overlay. “Well, we’ve got a little over fifteen minutes. Torina, you and Zeno work with Perry and Netty to develop the best possible firing solution you can on that stealthed-up bogie out there. See if you can get us close enough to use all the weapons, even the mass drivers. I’d like to take him out in one broadside.”

“What about that fake Eridani ship angling toward us?”

“Let him keep coming. I have a… a feeling about it.”

“A feeling? That’s a rather weak basis for a strategy,” Funboy said.

“I know.”

“A feeling about what?” Zeno asked.

“About my cousin, Carter Yost. If he’s somehow become a heavy hitter for Helem Gauss, and this is Gauss’s big move against us—against me—then Carter is going to want to be involved.” I lifted my eyes from the overlay, looking into space. One of the points of light out there was the drive plume of that ship as it raced ever closer to us. “So, if he’s anywhere, he’ll be aboard that ship.”

“You sound awfully sure about that,” Zeno said.

I nodded.

“That’s because I am.”

* * *

“Well, I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you, to see that Eridani class 12 suddenly invade our personal space,” I said, shaking my head at the overlay.

Almost the instant it entered our maneuver envelope, the other ship immediately changed course and began to burn hard to intercept us. It hadn’t yet fired, probably because her crew assumed we had a gimped drive, and that our maneuver envelope was far more restricted as a result. But it had lit us up with its fire-control scanners, which were military grade and suggested that this was, surprise surprise, not just a fast freighter.

“Torina, what’s the status of our other bogie, the not-so Invisible Man?” I asked.

“Closing fast—we think. It’s hard to tell based on passive scans alone. We put him somewhere between five and fifteen thousand klicks.”

“He’s either going to try to do what we’re about to do to him, or board us. Either way, that’s close enough. Go weapons-free and light him up.”

Torina grinned, while Zeno said, “With immense pleasure.”

A second passed, then the Fafnir cut loose with everything except the point-defenses. The full weight of lasers and particle and plasma-burst cannons erupted from our ship, howling across the intervening space in a deluge of destructive energy. Mass-driver shots and a trio of missiles followed. I watched intently, seeing no apparent effect—

And then a dazzling pulse of light as something exploded. Glowing debris and vapor, the equivalent of an oil slick pouring from a stricken, submerged submarine, spewed in all directions.

“I’d call that a kill,” Torina said, nodding with grim satisfaction.

“Netty, comm broadcast to that class 12, please,” I said.

“Go ahead.”

“Carter, I know you’re over there, so I’m going to make this short. Your hidden overwatch just met an untimely end. Face it, you’re on the wrong side—”

I was cut off by a voice that was Carter’s but also wasn’t. His smug, arrogant tone was there, alright, but it was shot through with something else, a slightly strangled quality.

It sounded a lot like pain.

“You’re on the wrong side of life, Van. But then you always have been. You were born that way.”

* * *

I leaned toward the speaker. “Carter, I know what they’ve done to you. But we can undo it. You can have a new body. We’ve done it before.”

“What makes you think I even want that, Van? You only think this is worse because you can’t see the truth—that this is better. But since you can’t see that truth, then we’ll have to get you out of the way. The universe will be better for it.”

“Carter, I won’t kill my own blood—“

“Blood? Blood is so yesterday, so homo sapiens. It’s time for homo novus, for the new man. The better man. And the new man has no need for blood. Well, except yours. It’s going to sparkle like gems when I open you up, Van.”

I glanced at Torina. She stared back but said nothing.

“Carter, where is this coming from? We’ve had our differences, sure. Hell, we haven’t even liked one another. I sure as hell haven’t ever really liked you. But that’s family, and it’s not unique to us—”

“Family. Another outdated construct.” A moment passed in silence, then Carter went on. “It’s just one of the things you don’t get, Van. You say we didn’t like one another, waving it off like we were just squabbling kids. But I hated you, Van. I hated you. Everyone thought you were the good one. Even my own parents. Why can’t you be more like Van? He takes after his grandfather, the selfless soldier… after his father, the heroic pilot. Why can’t you be more like that, Carter? Why are you such a miserable little shit?”

I stared at the speaker, stunned—

Gramps, dad, and I lugged our suitcases into the Yost’s Virginia ranch house. I sighed. Five days of Carter. He stood with his parents, my aunt, and my uncle, just inside the doorway. They greeted us warmly, his father remarking on how much I’d grown since turning thirteen, and how I might get too big to fit in the cockpit of a fighter jet like my dad—and then he’d glanced at his son and said that Carter would probably have trouble fitting in a cockpit, too, but only because he’d grown sideways too much.

Carter winced and looked down at the floor, any hint of his usual, hated smugness gone. I’d laughed.

I’d never, for a moment, imagined that Carter’s own parents compared him to me and found him wanting. I’d always just assumed everything went his way, the snotty rich kid living on the sprawling horse ranch in Virginia, having everything he ever wanted given to him. I was the nerdy loner stuck on the shabby farm in rural Iowa, a place that couldn’t have been a bigger contrast to Carter’s palatial home if it had been designed that way.

Carter plugged the cartridge into the console he lugged along with him to Cincinnati, where the family had gathered for his older sister’s wedding. He was excited, all goofy grins and rapid-fire chatter about how cool the game was, and we’d played—and I’d beaten him, over and over, because I’d been going through a video game nerd phase and, at fifteen, was just that damned good, while Carter wasn’t. I crowed triumphantly into his face with each victory, and each time, his happy expression had faltered and fallen a little more. And I’d loved it.

I seized every possible opportunity to lord it over Carter, because it seemed he seized every opportunity to do it to me. But how much of it had been me just being an asshole? How much of it was him just lashing out because of it?

Carter had bought his first car, a 1973 Dodge Charger SE he’d picked up as a junker at some auction in Memphis. He’d spent months restoring it, sending me pictures showing his progress, the faded, rusty hulk turning a little more vibrant, gleaming a little more in each one. I’d looked at the old pickup Gramps had given me, the one I’d named Frankie and could barely afford to keep gassed up, and ground my teeth in frustrated envy. Then, barely a month after getting it on the road, a drunk driver had plowed into the Charger at a stop light, hurting Carter but wrecking the car. I’d sent Carter a sound clip of the wah-waah, you lose jingle from The Price is Right game show.

As a kid, I’d made a slew of resentful assumptions about Carter and carried them with me into adulthood. Sure, some of them were right. Carter had been an arrogant prick, many times. But some of them had been wrong, and the result hadn’t been as one-sided as I’d always given myself permission to imagine. He’d made me miserable, but I’d made him miserable right back, maybe even more so.

Sure, Carter Yost had everything—everything, that is, except a family who loved and supported him the way Gramps and Dad did me, or a cousin who ever treated him like anything but a conceited asshole and not the friend Carter apparently wanted him to be.

This was one hell of a time to be launched onto that particular voyage of realization, wasn’t it?

“Carter—” I started, then hesitated, suddenly unsure of where to go with this.

“You really can’t imagine the purity of my hate, Van. Losing the… the encumbrance of that miserable piece of flesh I used to be, it freed me to see it all so clearly.”

“Carter, look—that encumbrance, as you call it, it was… you. It was your humanity—”

“Bullshit. Humanity’s overrated, Van. This is a better way. Much better. I’m faster, I’m stronger, I might live forever.” He laughed a harsh, synthesized laugh. “Don’t you see, Van? I really am better than you, in every possible way. But don’t worry, you’ll have your chance to experience it for yourself soon enough.”

I opened my mouth just as the collision alarm blared. At the same time, the Fafnir shuddered and slewed sideways as something thumped against her hull.

The others were already getting on their feet, grabbing their helmets and snapping them into place. Torina smacked my arm.

“Van, we’re being boarded!”

I looked at her and blinked, still snagged on my far-too-late revelations about Carter, then nodded and snatched my own helmet, locked it into place, unstrapped, and headed aft toward the sound of something hammering through the Fafnir’s hull.

26

I got my wits back as we were piling out of the cockpit. “Zeno, Funboy, we’ve still got that class 12 out there to deal with! Stay here and run the Fafnir while we deal with the boarders—but come running if we call!”

Zeno and Funboy, to their credit, just nodded and hurried into the pilot’s and copilot’s seats with the practiced ease of seasoned vets. I grabbed The Drop and the Moonsword from where I kept them slung on the back of the pilot’s seat, while Torina grabbed a boarding shotgun from the ready rack on the rear cockpit bulkhead. Icky snatched up her hammer, then swung her arms like a fighter stepping into the ring.

“Icky, there’s no room to be swinging that thing in here—” I started, but she gripped it with both hands and drove it out like a battering ram.

“More than one way to hammer things, Van!”

I didn’t argue and just rushed aft, Icky, Torina, and Perry close behind.

The hammering came from right aft, near the auto-doc, the holding cells and the berth for the Frankie. The engineering bay was just behind that. We could not let them get in there.

I took position behind the bulkhead separating the galley from the crew cabins aft. Torina took up position on the opposite side of the hatch, both of us crouching. Icky and Perry waited behind us.

“Netty, seal up engineering and lock out all the controls back there—cockpit functions only,” I said.

“Done and done. Do you want me to scram the reactor?”

“Not with that class 12 out there. We’d lose the drive and most of our weapons. Just hold that thought.”

“Roger.”

“How the hell did they sneak up on us like this?” Icky muttered.

“A stealthed shuttle or boarding pod or something probably launched from their stealthed ship. Our attention was split between that and the class 12,” Perry said.

I nodded inside my helmet. “Yeah. And a pod would be a really small target if we weren’t looking for it.”

“Which means their only available rides are the class 12 or the Fafnir herself,” Torina said.

“Yeah, well, it ain’t gonna be either,” Icky replied, her voice as menacing a growl as I’d ever heard.

We waited. Ten seconds passed, then a breaching charge detonated, blowing a chunk of hull plating against the holding cells. At once, the Fafnir’s atmosphere began to vent, a gale howling around us, carrying loose objects aft. It weakened, fading and falling silent as air gave way to hard vacuum.

Icky cursed in a liquid tumble of Wu'tzur syllables that sounded both charming and vile. “That bastard. That… that miserable carcass just made me lose six candy bars—and my last bag of chips!”

“Yost is screwed now,” Perry said. “Salty and sweet snack destruction. She’s gonna split him like a melon.”

I managed a tense grin. “He was screwed when he chose this… this path.”

And I’d helped put him on it.

I shook my head, grimly pulling my focus back to the moment. I saw movement aft—two figures piling into the Fafnir, gaunt, all gleaming metal, pallid skin, and eerie, mechanical grace. Synths, both armed with heavy sluggers. They opened fire, pouring rounds at us as they closed.

Projectiles sparked silently around us, smacking against the bulkhead while some ricocheted off the hatch coaming in quiet violence. Torina and I both took quick snap shots with our weapons, but the incoming fire was too intense. A stray round clacked against my helmet. I turned to Perry.

“We need to dazzle them, get a break in this fire!”

“The bird to the rescue—as usual,” he said, then flung himself into the air, at the same time erupting into a coruscating deluge of noise across the EM spectrum. The synths kept firing anyway, either unaffected by Perry’s display or, more likely, just shooting blindly. I heard Zeno yelp as a round struck her shoulder. Funboy immediately moved to patch her up.

“Shit, Netty, seal the cockpit!” I shouted, and the door slid closed.

“Hell with this,” Torina said, dodging around the hatch into the crew hab, taking a stray hit on her b-suit, then leaping aside and firing. Perry had cut off his dazzle routine just in time for Torina to take a second shot, putting a frangible slug the size of a test tube straight into a synth’s head. The slug shattered, but not before tearing the thing’s head halfway off its shoulders. A globule of thick fluid roiled fitfully away, bumping off the bulkhead in slow motion.

Perry lunged past the second synth, flinging himself at a third following behind. He latched onto the thing’s collarbone with his talons and engulfed the synth’s face in a storm of razor-sharp wings. At the same time, he hammered away its eyes with his beak. He must have engaged his ultrasonic vibrating function because each peck punched through flesh and alloy like a hot knife sinking into hard butter.

“That bird is pissed,” Icky said with approval.

“The bird is,” Perry managed between beak strikes.

The second of the two leading synths abruptly leapt, and in a stunning display of technology-infused acrobatics, flipped upside down, pushed off the overheads, and came straight down at Torina, a wicked, serrated bayonet suddenly extended from its slugger. The blade flickered and sparked with some sort of discharge and would have skewered Torina through the throat if a massive hammerhead hadn’t slammed into it, driving it straight back against my cabin door. Icky followed her savage blow, grappling the synth and howling with the fury of a storm. She dropped her hammer, picked the synth up, and alternated slamming it against her door, then the deck, then the door again, over and over. The repeated impacts shredded flesh and sent metallic bits flying like shrapnel.

Icky didn’t stop. She couldn’t.

With endless rage, she vented the pent up frustration of her biochemical storm in the flurry of perfected violence, never slowing, and never showing a sliver of mercy.

All of this happened in seconds, seconds during which I charged forward, raised the Moonsword, and slashed first at the synth Torina had nearly decapitated, then caught the one whose face was still being savaged by Perry on the backswing. The blade clove both deeply, the first synth toppling one way, the second the other. But I didn’t stop, just kept going, Torina at my heels. I didn’t want to give any more boarders a chance to consolidate in the rear of my ship.

And I wanted to find Carter.

We crashed headlong into two more synths. One managed to snap a shot into my right side, sending a lightning bolt of pain crashing through me. Gritting my teeth, I drove on, tackled it, pushed it against the bulkhead, and pinned its slugger with my left leg. It was too close to use the Moonsword effectively, so I drew on my Innsu moves to partly break the grapple and lift The Drop. It gave the synth a chance to try and get its slugger into action, but my gun was shorter and, therefore, quicker. After jamming the muzzle into its gut and pointing upward, I squeezed the trigger, then squeezed it again, again, again. The shots tore through its torso, erupting from its shoulder and ricocheting away. One of them actually struck my visor, cracking it.

I glanced at Torina. She’d backed up to gain room, and now leapt, lunged, and dodged around the other synth, a deadly Innsu ballet that culminated with repeated strikes from the knife she’d produced, having dropped her shotgun. The blade flickered forward and back in silvered streaks, each strike carving deep into the biomechanical body as flesh and sparks alike spalled from the relentless elegance of her assault.

I hesitated, considering helping her, and it nearly cost me my life.

“Van, duck!”

Perry’s shout triggered an instinctive flinch downward, and something swept just millimeters over my head, the object crackling with scintillating blue discharge. It cut neatly through the head of the synth I’d just shot and sank into the bulkhead behind it.

I looked up, straight into the face of Carter Yost.

Or what remained of him.

* * *

It was Carter’s face but plastered onto a hideous, inhuman construct of alloy and ceramics, exposed bone, synthetic tubing, and gleaming armor plates. His right arm was a blade as long as the Moonsword but shimmering with incandescent power, his left a cluster of manipulators and wicked, curved blades. He smiled at me, but it was—

At Carter’s rictus grin, a sudden memory flashed—

The Cabal ship had gone dark and silent, silvery clouds of vapor spilling from its battered hull into space. I didn’t wait, just turned back to the airlock and drew the Moonsword to go help out Icky and Steve.

“Van, don’t you want your gun?” Carter asked, offering The Drop back to me.

I shook my head. “Nah. You hang onto it for now.”

Carter’s eyes widened, then he actually smiled.

—through my mind, Carter’s smile that day being a genuine one, one of appreciation. Maybe if there’d been more days like that, there’d have been more of those smiles, and not—

This.

He leered at me, his mouth drawn tightly back and up in an inhuman rictus, the product of sliding actuators and feral glee.

His voice crackled in my headset. “Hello, cuz. Been a while,” he said, then swung his blade arm at me again. I slashed with the Moonsword, deflecting it. It struck me that the Moonsword was probably the only weapon that could clash with the glittering power sword that was his right hand, the one that had sunk into the tough alloy of the bulkhead as though it had been soft plastic. I backed up, keeping my blade interposed between us.

I had to push my reply out in a hoarse, ragged whisper. “Oh, Carter—what have you done?”

“I already told you, Van. I’m the better man now,” he shot back, then swung again, then again, then lashed out with a flurry of blows that drove me backward. If I’d never spent so many hours sweating in the Innsu dojo under Master Cataric, I’d have never been able to keep up. As it was, our two blades clashed soundlessly aside from the dull thunks transmitted up my arm.

Even then, I almost missed blocking his last strike as pain blossomed like fireworks in my injured side. He cut into my b-suit on my left bicep and probably would have taken my arm off if I hadn’t managed to pull with the blow. Sealing foam bubbled from the gash. Colors flashed and danced and for the second time in my life I made a note to punch the next person who said that sharp blades don’t hurt.

It hurt like hell.

“What’s the matter, Van? Getting tired? Well, I don’t have that problem—” Carter snapped, then lunged again, his blade a whirling blur that I could only desperately try to block.

I glimpsed something from my left. Perry struck at Carter’s face but was caught by a backswing that sliced off most of his right wing. With a squawk, he flopped to the deck and thrashed there, suddenly unable to fly.

Carter laughed. “That hurt, didn’t it? Seeing your damned bird drop like that—”

I drove the Moonsword straight at him, seizing his instant of gloating and the opening it gave. The blade plunged into his left side and he staggered back, his vile grin switching to a mask of fury.

“Not this time, Van! This time, I win!”

He came at me in a whirlwind of slashes and strikes from his power blade. I parried and blocked, then dodged and tried to ignore the pain tearing through me as I gasped and wheezed inside my helmet. I just couldn’t find an opening—and Carter was right, he wasn’t slowing down, not even a fraction, while my strength drained away with each desperate move.

I heard Torina shout. I didn’t look her way for fear of taking my attention off of Carter even for an instant. I didn’t know if she’d defeated her opponent or was crying for help. All I could do was block and parry, parry and block—

He slipped another slash past me. This one slammed into my helmet, cutting through it and my visor and tearing into my left cheekbone. A shrill whine like a dentist’s drill flooded my skull and my vision grayed out. Air rushed out of my suit, precious breath sucked out of my lungs. I couldn’t even see his next strike, much less block it, which meant I was about to die.

But something slammed into me. It was Carter. Something had knocked him off balance, sending his blow into the bulkhead behind me instead of my neck.

“Maybe I can’t fly, but I’m still one hell of a tripping hazard, you mechanical son of a bitch,” Perry snapped.

Carter fought to recover, but there was nothing I could do with the opportunity to hit back—an inferno of pain and deepening gray-green fog had engulfed me. The sealing foam couldn’t stop the damage to my helmet, so I was sliding into hypoxia.

I heard a sudden shout. I sucked in a breath. It was like breathing at the summit of Everest. Another shout, then something flashed past me. A hammerhead punched past my left shoulder and slammed into Carter, driving him back. It was easier to breathe. And there was noise around, not just my own labored breathing, gasps, and grunts, but actual sound. My head cleared a little. Somehow, someone had repressurized the Fafnir. The air just rushed out again through the gaping hole aft, but the gusts pushed Carter, already off-balance, further away from me. Then the emergency hatch shut, sealing off everything aft of the crew hab and stopping the rising gale.

I dug deep—as deep as I ever had, as deep as I ever could. Shaking away the fog, I looked up at Carter, who’d recovered his footing and glared back at me.

I shook my head, spit blood. “Carter, I’ve got… a question,” I gasped.

He sneered at me. Icky loomed beside me, but I put out an arm, holding her back. Without something like the Moonsword to protect her, that damned blade of his would cut her in half.

I gestured with the point of my sword at his left hand, the assemblage of manipulators and blades. “What the hell… do you do… when your nose gets… itchy?”

He glanced down at his hand. “Really? A last joke, and one that sucks at that—"

I threw everything I had left into a leap, right off my feet, lifting the Moonsword and aiming its tip right at Carter’s chest. He snapped his own blade up with preternatural speed, knocking my blade up, just as I’d expected it would.

Instead of punching into his chest, the Moonsword slammed into his throat.

I crashed into Carter, bashing him back against the bulkhead. Our faces ended up only centimeters apart.

I spit again. A tooth came with it.

“Guess now I’ve got the… mark of our failures, Carter. Yours… and mine. And… I’m sorry.”

He stared at me unblinking, then his mouth worked, hissing out a word. “Sorry—”

It might have been a question—or an assertion of his own. Or both.

I shook my head. “You’re not… my cousin anymore. What you are… have become… is a beast.”

“He made me do this—”

I took a breath that tasted of blood. “We’re all… guilty here, Carter.”

Carter’s face suddenly lost its cold inhumanity, and I found myself face-to-face with the boy I’d hated, the youth I’d envied—with the man I’d never really given a chance.

“Van?”

I made myself keep looking into Carter’s eyes, staying with him as they emptied, until they were blank and glassy, showing nothing but eternity itself.

* * *

“Van?”

I turned. Torina stood beside me.

“Van, just… let him go.”

I stared for a moment, wondering what she meant. She took my arm and gently pulled me back. Icky stepped forward and lowered Carter’s body to the deck.

“Van, you’re hurt. We need to patch you up,” Torina said, leading me back into the galley. She sat me down, unlocked my helmet, and pulled it off. I saw her wince.

“That… looks bad,” she said.

I offered the most smile I could muster, which wasn’t very much. “Your bedside manner sucks, Torina.”

“Well, I’m no Funboy.”

“Van, the class 12 is breaking off,” Funboy said over the ship’s intercom.

I managed a weak nod.

Icky returned from stowing Carter’s corpse, along with those of the synths, in one of the holding cells. We were going to take them back to Anvil Dark for analysis since they represented an intelligence bonanza, an insight into the bizarre and evil technology that made them possible in the first place. More to the point, I think she and Torina just wanted to get Carter out of my sight. Waldo was already busy scrubbing away the various spilled fluids and detritus of battle.

Nothing would scrub our memories. Ever.

Funboy returned from aft and gave me an update on the damage to the Fafnir’s hull. It was severe but localized, so it didn’t represent a threat to the ship as a whole. As for the stealthed boarding pod, it had detached after disembarking Carter and his synths and tumbled off. When Carter had died, it triggered a self-destruct, an explosive charge blowing it apart. That was too bad, because taking its stealth tech intact would have been a big score in itself.

“How’s Zeno?” I asked.

“She’s fine. The slug that struck her broke her right shoulder, but I’ve stabilized it and given her painkillers. She may need some reconstructive surgery, a possibility to which I’ve already alerted B,” Funboy said, started to turn away, then he turned back. “I am deeply sorry about your cousin, Van.”

“Yeah. So am I.”

“One of the advantages we Surtsi have is that we rarely form emotional attachments to other individuals. Of course, to other races—especially you mercurial humans—that probably doesn’t seem like an advantage at all.”

“Oh, sometimes it does, Funboy. Sometimes it really does.”

A new voice cut in. “The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope! The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains! Workers of the world unite!”

I looked at the speaker, Perry, who was perched on the galley table. Torina muttered something and yanked my head back, trying to put a bandage over the first aid foam she’d applied to my injured face.

“Perry, what the hell are you talking about?” I asked.

“I only have a left wing.”

“You—oh, hah. Bird’s gone red,” I said, but I did smile. It moved my cheek against my broken tooth, a strange feeling of… of absence, I guess, one I hadn’t felt since the last time I’d lost one of my baby teeth, however long ago that had been.

“I take it you’re still functional,” I went on.

“—ish. I’ll need to go up on the hoist back at Anvil Dark for sure, though.”

“Van, your cousin, right at the—well, the end there, he said something about how he made him do this,” Icky said.

“Gauss. He meant Gauss. And when he said it, he signed Gauss’s death warrant. He dies, and all of his vile schemes die with him,” I said. I didn’t add that it was the best way to honor Carter’s memory, and maybe derive something positive from a relationship I’d always considered one-sided but had proved to be way more complicated than that.

Maybe if I’d seen Carter a little more clearly, with the eyes of an adult instead of a child—

But I cut that thinking off. It was a road to nowhere. Maybe I’d failed Carter, but he’d made his own choices. It was just another dark aspect of life among the stars I had to accept before moving on.

Torina glanced at Perry. “No objection to Van just deciding that we’re going to execute Helem Gauss?”

“You mean a legal objection, on the basis that it circumvents due process and could be considered to amount to murder?”

“Yeah.”

“Hell no. If there’s anyone who deserves to be tragically killed while resisting arrest, it’s him.”

27

We returned to Anvil Dark to transfer the corpses and file some long-overdue reports. At least, that was the initial reason, but along the way I decided that we were going to do something else, something much more dramatic—we were going to arrest Master Kharsweil.

“Perry and I have enough evidence to make a prima facie case against him, and I’m just sick and tired of having him sitting back there at Anvil Dark like some fat, black spider that crawled out of Gauss’s ass,” I said.

Torina, who was eating some spicy vegetables she’d heated up, looked at a piece of broccoli speared on her fork, then lowered it. “Yeah, I’ll eat later, after that visual has finished nestling into my subconscious, ready to spawn a nightmare or two.”

As we approached Anvil Dark, my determination only grew. By cutting ourselves off from Anvil Dark and trying to go it alone, we were also cutting ourselves off from our best avenue of support. With Kharsweil out of the way, we’d secure one of our flanks and be able to return to working with the Guild against Gauss, instead of apart from it.

Perry and Netty put a few discreet calls out to other AIs on the station to get the lay of the land, as it were. It turned out that an unofficial faction within the Guild was as done with Kharsweil as we were. They were Peacemakers who knew that Kharsweil was dirty and had lived through—and were still living through—the damage Yotov and the other previously corrupt Masters had done. Again, as soon as we arrested Kharsweil, every case he’d touched would have to be reviewed, setting the Guild’s legal efforts back just when there was a glimmer of hope that we were getting caught up.

As soon as we twisted into Gamma Crucis, Anvil Dark’s home system, we got a call from Bester, of all people.

“Van, we’ve heard you’re on your way. When you get here, we’ll be waiting for you.”

“Who’s we?” I asked.

“Me, Lucky, Dugrop’che—Lunzy, if she were here, but she’s off doing some op—about two dozen other Peacemakers, oh, and Master Alic. He wants you to know that he’s already talked to Gerhardt, and they both agree with what you’re doing. Gerhardt’s not here, but Alic is, and he’s going to keep the other Masters off your back.”

I nodded gratefully. “Thanks. I’ve missed having you guys at my side.”

“I’ve got someone else who wants to talk to you here,” Bester said, then moved ponderously aside. A slim, blonde woman with a facial tattoo stepped into view.

“Hello, Gabriella. What prompted you to head back to Anvil Dark?”

She smiled a hard, thin smile. “I was going to do what you’re about to do and deal with Kharsweil. I was going to make it involve a lot more bloodshed than you seem to intend, but whatever. Retta brought me here, under my spiffy new identity, using her connections in the Guild—and she’s got a lot of them, a lot more than even I knew.”

“Retta’s there?”

“She is. She’s staying aboard her ship, but she’s ready to help however she can.”

I nodded. “Okay, then. This is… great. Fantastic. Way better than I’d expected, in fact.”

“We’ll see you when you get here. Oh, what happened to your face?”

“I… was in a fight with one of Gauss’s agents.”

“Your cousin, Yost.”

“How did you know?”

She gave that icy smile again. “I didn’t. I could just tell from the way you said it. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“Look, if you’re going to end up with scars, might I suggest you get one of these?” she said, pointing at her tattoo. “They’re pretty badass.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” She nodded and signed off.

I sat back. “Well, that makes me feel a whole lot better, knowing we’re not going into this alone.” I turned to Perry. “This was your doing, you and Netty, wasn’t it?”

“The workers control the means of production!”

* * *

The main concourse of Anvil Dark reminded me of Hadleyville, the small western town in the movie High Noon, with Gary Cooper. The climax of the movie was one of the most famous gunfights in a deserted street while all the townspeople hid and just peeked at what was happening in movie history—so much so that it essentially spawned the trope all on its own. All I needed was the clink clink clink of spurs as I walked up the concourse to where Bester, Dugrop’che, and the others were waiting.

“Perry, what the hell happened to you? Bester asked.

“He died and was reincarnated as the ghost of Karl Marx, apparently,” I said.

“Typical, just what a bourgeoisie would say,” Perry said.

Icky was carrying him since, not being able to fly, it would take us at least an hour to get to Kharsweil’s office at his walking pace.

I looked over the Peacemakers assembled. Bester, Lucky, Dugrop’che, Santorelli, and a dozen more. Everyone looked tense. Everyone was armed. That included us. I had The Drop and the Moonsword, Icky had her hammer, Zeno lugged her BAG, and Funboy had pulled his wicked gun-club-brass knuckles-knife Frankenstein’s monster of a weapon out of storage.

Still, seeing everyone else armed to the teeth caught me. “How much trouble are we expecting here?” I asked the group at large.

“No way to know. Kharsweil no doubt has stooges on Anvil Dark, and has probably managed to get more than a few Peacemakers to stick to his dirty, dirty fingers,” Lucky replied.

Santorelli nodded. “I can guarantee it.”

I nodded back. “Okay, then. Let’s get to it—”

“Bonjour, am I late?”

I turned, expecting to see Retta. Instead, I saw a small AI the size and shape of a landmine, mounted on spherical casters that would let it roll in any direction.

“Retta, you in there?”

“Mais oui, in a manner of speaking, yes? I am not of your Guild, and am not comfortable just rolling about your Anvil Dark. This lets me participate without participating, n’est ce pas?”

I smiled. “Well, welcome to the team. Okay, gang, as I was saying, shall we?”

I led the way, my posse of Peacemakers close behind me.

* * *

We encountered no resistance, and saw only other Peacemakers. Some kept their distance, while others joined our group. By the time we’d reached the Keel, there must have been nearly thirty of us.

“Hey, Max. Want to tell Master Kharsweil there’s an angry mob here to see him? Afraid we don’t have an appointment, though,” I said.

Max, the multi-being that was the Masters’ administrative assistant, just shook one of their heads. “On the record, Van, I must object to what you’re doing here. This is not an acceptable way to deal with a sensitive Guild matter such as this.”

“How about off the record?”

“Put that guilty bastard in chains.”

I smiled and we pushed on. As we approached his office, Icky dropped Perry, who squawked in outrage, and stepped forward with her hammer raised.

“Knock knock, asshole!” she said, swinging it at the closed door.

I raised a hand. “Icky, no—!”

At the same time, I heard Retta say, “Non, don’t—!”

But we were too late to stop Icky’s hammer from slamming into the door. As soon as it made contact, it exploded.

We were left shaking our heads, trying to clear away the ringing in our ears and the splotchy afterimages of the dazzling flash. Icky stood there, smoke swirling around her, looking both singed and stunned. Some of her remaining hair was smoldering.

“Icky?”

She turned to me. “I think there was a bomb or something.”

I stared, then started to laugh. “Icky, I didn’t think this could actually happen to someone, but you look exactly like Wile E. Coyote after one of his Acme gizmos blows up in his face.”

“I look like who doing what, now?”

“I’d like to point out two things,” Perry said. “First, that bomb had some sort of shaped charge effect, but it was pointed the wrong way and blew inward. Not sure how he screwed that up, but if he hadn’t, this wouldn’t be anywhere near as funny. And second, she dropped me!”

“Oh, for—Perry, get over yourself,” I said, and stepped into Kharsweil’s office, The Drop and the Moonsword both at the ready.

Sure enough, the blast effect had been channeled across Kharsweil’s office, searing and smashing everything in its path. Icky had only been caught in the backblast.

“Yes, I meant to say, I was in here earlier, pretending to clean, yes? I was too small to trigger the bomb, just un petit maintenance unit, so I found the bomb and turned it around. So he was outsmarted by a, it is called on Earth, a rumba?” Retta said.

“A rumba is a spicy Cuban dance. I think you mean Roomba. And why didn’t you tell us about the bomb before we, you know, got here?”

“Because I did not think that anyone would be so foolish as to just try to knock down the door without warning.”

Perry, standing on the floor beside Retta’s remote, nodded. “Foolish and without warning, that pretty much describes our Icky,” he said, then put his remaining wing around the remote. “Hey, Retta, your remote here is kinda cute. What’s she doing later?”

Torina looked around the office, behind the desk, then shook her head. “No sign of Kharsweil. He must have fled—gutless coward that he so obviously is.”

“Ah, yes, against that possibility, I used another remote to plant a tracking device on his ship, in case he did that. It will let us know at least his first twist destination, and perhaps more, depending on where he goes after,” Retta said. “I assume you had questions for him, whether you caught him here or not.”

“Questions. Yeah, that’s one way to describe what I want to do to him. Oh, and Retta, I could kiss you—uh, but you’ll understand if I don’t,” I said.

“That is no problem. The idea does not appeal to me, either. We shall remain friends, yes?”

I had to smile. I didn’t want to kiss a slug. Apparently, the slug didn’t want to kiss me, either.

But my good humor didn’t last. We searched Kharsweil’s office for any other clues, but the blast had thrown it into so much disarray that it was going to take a proper forensic reconstruction to get anything of use out of it.

“Don’t worry, Van. We’ll take care of that,” Bester said.

While we’d been talking, Gabriella had been moving among the crowd of Peacemakers. As she did, three of them—two humans and a Nesit—slumped to the deck in rapid succession. She immediately told other Peacemakers to secure them.

“Collaborators,” she said. “Or, to use some Earthly terms, Quislings, or Benedict Arnolds. They were on Kharsweil’s payroll—I know, because I intercepted some messages between them and him. They were probably here specifically to see what happened, then immediately head off to report to him.”

Whatever Gabriella had used to incapacitate them, it had left them stunned, but not unconscious. Funboy checked them with his portable scanner to make sure they weren’t in any medical distress. When he was satisfied that they weren’t, he leaned over the last one and spoke in a tone so flatly matter-of-fact that it made me shiver.

“Be strong, and just remember that none of these people care if you live or die. Although, come to think of it… neither do I.”

* * *

Two of Kharsweil’s Quislings proved willing to talk. Both were Peacemakers, insisting they were only following the orders given to them by a Master. That prompted Zeno to just shake her head.

“Ah, yes. I was just following orders. The last bastion of the guilty as sin.” She leaned into the face of one of them. “And you know what guilty means? It means punishment.”

Icky leaned over her shoulder. “Yeah, punishment.”

That finished breaking the Peacemaker, a Nesit named Kurth’tox, who immediately started spilling everything he knew.

The third of the turncoats, a surly human Peacemaker Auxiliary named Dogget, stayed utterly silent. I finally just turned to Torina and told her we’d just throw him into the Guild’s prison barge, The Hole, and leave him there.

He finally broke his silence. “On what charge?”

“Uh… espionage.”

“Espionage? What’s your proof?”

“Oh, I’m sure that once we start digging, we’ll find some,” I said, before turning my back and walking away—and finishing walking away. He didn’t cave and call me back, looking for a deal, meaning he was either confident we’d find nothing, or he was just one stubborn son of a bitch.

Not that it mattered. From the other two, we learned that Kharsweil had made a hasty departure from Anvil Dark once word filtered out that we were on our way. I regretted sending word ahead, now, since it stood to reason that he’d have plants in Anvil Dark who’d alert him. Gabriella arrived with Retta not long before we did, so there was no way for them to stop it, nor did they likely know who all of Kharsweil’s people were. There were likely more than just these three, some of them probably still on Anvil Dark.

It did have the benefit of decisively flushing Kharsweil out, though. If he’d have stayed put, he could have just met us head on and forced us to make a case against him. So we might not have him, but we had that. After all, innocent people don’t run, leave their office rigged with explosives, or take the three things his stooges revealed to us that they’d procured for him out of the evidence lockup—on his signature.

Kharsweil didn’t just run, he ran with a fortune. He carried five kilos of osmium ingots in a case, another container with five of the ID chips we’d seized over the past months, and, most puzzling of all, a few hundred thousand bonds in certified certificates that had been entered into evidence almost five years ago, though not attached to any active case.

“I think there was something going on with The Quiet Room,” Torina said. “Those would have been drawn not long before Dayna Jasskin started with them, and her predecessor did leave the bank awfully abruptly.”

“So, what, Kharsweil stashed those in evidence as an emergency slush fund?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Seems so. Which is actually pretty clever. They’re secure, but since they were attached to a bogus case he was running, no one would have looked at them twice.”

Bester scowled at that. “We’d better audit everything in the evidence lockup, see what else might be lurking in there.”

I agreed but caught Bester before he left. “You remember that device I brought in, the tag that BeneStar put on the Fafnir when we were in the Deeps?”

“Zone Five, Section B, Shelf 10, top right, beside a stack of DVDs—the first ten seasons of The Simpsons.”

I was ready to be impressed with his encyclopedic knowledge of his archives, but that last bit totally overrode it. “It—really? Why the hell have you got that?”

“Someone gave them to me, payment for a favor. I think the show was at its best that first decade.”

I just looked at the massive, sloth-like alien telling me he loved the early seasons of The Simpsons, then nodded. My life was weird.

“Anyway, can I get that from you? The tracker, not The Simpsons DVDs.”

“You bet.”

* * *

Retta’s tracker told us that Kharsweil had made a break for Crossroads. As soon as the Fafnir was ready and Perry had had a quick wing replacement done, we followed him. Lunzy was already there working whatever case she was on, though, and we asked her to intercept him, if she could. She tried, but he rendezvoused with another ship, then sent his on a trajectory that would take it into the system’s gas giant, a Saturn-like world with an atmosphere so diffuse the planet was more fuzzy ball than actual sphere. Lunzy set off in pursuit, but Kharsweil escaped her thanks to his new ride, a nondescript class six she described as a drive with a ship strapped to it.

“I couldn’t ID it, and it had no transponder. The best I could do was record its signature in case we ever run across it again,” she said when we arrived.

I puffed out a frustrated sigh. “So Kharsweil is somewhere in the universe. Great.”

“We can probably narrow that down to the Milky Way Galaxy, at least” Lunzy said, her tone sardonic.

“Oh, well then, he’s as good as caught.”

“I did manage to intercept his ship before it plunged into oblivion in big ol’ gassy out there, though,” Lunzy said.

“Did you learn anything useful from it,” I asked, expecting the answer to be no.

“He took his Second with him, a Nesit Peacemaker Auxiliary named Philomerz. I don’t know if he was in on Kharsweil’s schemes or not, and never will, since he’s dead. Poisoned, somehow.”

“He poisoned his own Second?” Torina asked.

Perry leaned forward. “Yeah, so don’t get any ideas, Torina.”

I just shook my head. “Poisoned him. Shit. So it’s murder now, on top of everything else. I think we’ll just field sanction Kharsweil on sight, if we ever get that close.”

“No interrogation?” Perry asked.

“Not unless we learn he knows something that we really need to know ourselves. And it would have to be damned important to outweigh simply putting him down.”

“He’s as good as pushing up daisies, check.”

“Daisies. I like the sound of that. Don’t suppose it could be some kind of snack, huh?” Icky put in.

Perry turned to her. “Um, yes, if you’re a cow?”

“Technically any ungulate can eat them, although I understand that a subspecies of humans known as Californians puts them on salad, which is ironic given that floral matter is already salad.”

Now Torina turned to him. “What makes you such an authority on interstellar salads?”

Funboy blinked at her. “Cooking channels.”

Lunzy went on. “Of course, there was nothing in his ship’s data stores, and I mean nothing. Everything was thoroughly wiped, then overwritten with random noise a gazillion times. My AI took one look at it and shook his head,” Lunzy went on. “Oh, and speaking of AIs, he left his aboard.”

“Let me guess—fried and useless,” Perry said. Kharsweil no doubt sent a punch-out code to kill him.”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself, Perry?” Lunzy said, then switched the imager to show a small, lizard-like chrome construct with a big head and long tail.

“Vittusho, buddy, have you been commanded to self-destruct?”

“I have, Perry, yeah. I’ve got a cascade failure about to happen. I’ve sandboxed, firewalled, and buffered the hell out of it, but I’m about out of options. Before I lose it, I’ll send what I can for you to use. Perry, please, don’t let me and my life all be for nothi—"

Perry let out an abrupt electronic chirp, then went rock still.

I stiffened. “Perry?”

He might as well have been a statue.

“Perry! Shit, Netty, can you—?”

“Don’t worry, Van, I’ve got him. He got hit with a flood of data, basically the entire contents of whatever buffers Vittusho had been able to keep intact. Think dumping the Library of Congress into some little, hole-in-the-wall bookstore. I’m taking the overflow so he can flush and reboot,” she said.

As suddenly as he’d frozen, Perry came back to life. “Woah, that was intense.”

“Perry? Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. I just need a moment to do some memory housekeeping—oh, there, I’m done.” He looked at me. “And guess what?”

“What?”

“I know how to find Helem Gauss.”

* * *

“What? How?”

“We… we gamble. Vittusho wasn’t originally a Guild asset. He started life on a ChanceBarge, running games for wealthy Yonnox. Kharsweil acquired him privately and got him certified for Guild use, but he maintained some of his original memories. I guess Kharsweil was into gambling, among his other vices.”

Torina gave him a quizzical frown. “How does an AI that runs gaming software help us, Perry? Take your time.”

“Gauss is protected because his movements and his protectors randomize their routines. And travels. Or, rather, they appear to. But—”

“But they’re not random,” I said, nodding. “They’re based on some randomizing software, which means they’re not truly random at all.”

Now Torina turned her frown to me. “What do you mean?”

“A computer can’t truly generate random numbers. It can only appear to, and for all practical purposes, they will be random. But there’s still some underlying logic, limitations of the software and the hardware it’s running on. And that means we’ve found a flaw in his armor. If he’d been smart, he’d have based his movements on something truly random, like background radio noise.”

“So why wouldn’t he do that? I thought he was supposed to be super smart.”

“Paranoia-fueled arrogance, I’m guessing,” Zeno said, and we all turned to her.

“I know the type. He only trusts the things he’s created himself. Nothing else is good enough. And that’s great—as long as you never make any mistakes and are perfect at what you do one hundred percent of the time. But I know of at least a couple of criminals who’ve gone down because they refused to trust anything that wasn’t created by their own hands.”

“Yeah, I’ve encountered the same thing back on Earth—programmers who want to code everything from scratch themselves because they don’t trust anyone else not to slip in backdoors and things. The irony is that they end up creating their own backdoors, building vulnerabilities into their own code because, hey, guess what, they’re not perfect.”

“So what can we do with this?” Torina asked.

“Netty, I’ve got a favor to ask of you,” I said.

I switched the center display to an overview of known space and the regions bordering it, including Unity and The Deeps. “I’m gonna give you some data. And then, I want you to predict the future.”

28

It was called the Munificent. An enormous barge, more mobile orbital than ship, it was twist-capable, heavily armed, and well-protected, luxurious in the extreme—and therefore worth a fortune. And that was why I meant to take it intact.

We learned about it via an otherwise innocuous snippet buried in Vittusho’s memories. While Netty worked to try and predict Gauss’s movements, Perry dug deep, unearthing the fact that the Yonnox for whom Vittusho had originally worked, the gambling czar, had sold an orbital to a shell company which we were able to tortuously trace back to BeneStar. We’d never have managed it, if it hadn’t been for the myriad data stores we’d obtained along the way, from Level Blue, from our bank heist, from ships we’d seized connected to BeneStar—from a plethora of disconnected sources that we were able to assemble into a more or less coherent whole. It was painstaking and time-consuming, but we managed it.

“So Kharsweil must have ended up connected to Gauss through Vittusho and that Yonnox,” Funboy said.

I nodded. “Yeah, there are probably some gambling debts in there somewhere, which is likely what Gauss used as his initial leverage against our scummy Master.”

With more digging, we were able to uncover the fact that the gambling barge had been renamed the Munificent and progressively refitted, adding defensive systems and, most tellingly, the most grandiose and opulent luxury imaginable—all at BeneStar’s expense.

As Zeno so eloquently put it, “If that’s not Gauss living aboard that thing, then he’s hella good to his mistress.”

Which was all very well and fine, but we needed to find the damned thing. And that’s where Netty came through for us.

“Van, based on the data you gave me, I’m proposing three possible locations for the Munificent, two systems in known space and one in The Deeps. I think we can write off one of the former, because it’s a red dwarf the Eridani League uses as a military installation, with about a third of their fleet based there at any given time. I can’t imagine Gauss would go and hang out there,” she said.

“So that leaves two. Sounds good. Let’s rally the troops, everyone we can scrape up, and go get this son of a bitch,” I said.

“Uh, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, Van, from what we know of the Munificent, it’s got the firepower of a fleet all by itself. Even if we get everyone we can muster, aren’t we biting off more than we can chew here?” Torina asked.

I smiled. “I knew someone was going to ask that—cue dramatic reveal!” I reached down beside my seat and held up the tracking device BeneStar had planted on the Fafnir so long ago, before we’d even heard much about Helem Gauss.

She and the others stared at it. Torina curled her lip. “Okay. And?”

“And, this device is specifically designed to generate a signal that BeneStar systems will receive and accept. The point is to track the unsuspecting ship carrying it, since every BeneStar asset along the way will receive the ping.”

“I still don’t get it.”

I grinned. “You forget my origins, my dear. I’m a hacker.”

* * *

I hadn’t had much opportunity to use my hacking skills since I’d become law enforcement, but I hadn’t just abandoned them. With Perry and Netty’s help, I’d steadily learned more and more about the architecture of systems used across known space, about how they were controlled and operated, about how their coding worked. There was a lot of variation, but a thread of commonality ran through it all, because it had to. The systems had to be able to work with one another, whether they came from Tau Ceti or Eridani, from the Peacemaker Guild or BeneStar or any number of other, diverse parties flying among the stars. It was like picking up a new language. If I learned, say, Japanese, then I could express the same concepts in it—hello, goodbye, up, down, left, right—that I did in English, or German, or any other language. The grammar and vocabulary may differ, but the things we actually communicated using them were pretty much the same.

So this would be my first true test as an interstellar hacker. The BeneStar tracker they’d stuck on the Fafnir as a matter of corporate routine gave me a window into their systems—which was a delicious irony all on its own—and I’d written an elaborate virus to exploit it. It wouldn’t be perfect, because I’m sure BeneStar’s systems had the best security available. But it wouldn’t be the first time I’d gone up against the best security available, and my track record of coming out on top was pretty good.

Of course, I hadn’t done it all on my own. I’d had a lot of help from Perry and Netty.

So here we were. Besides the Fafnir, we’d assembled Essie, Lunzy, Lucky, and Dugrop’che. Alic had contributed two more Guild vessels, both Dragons flown by Peacemakers he trusted. Gabriella Santorelli had retrieved her own ship, a class 11 called the Grammar Police from wherever she’d been keeping it stashed. Valint had joined us in the Stormshadow. It was an impressive fleet—but the Munificent still outgunned us by a wide margin. It was that deficit that my virus was intended to correct.

We twisted first to the system we considered the more likely of the two candidates, the one in The Deeps. The Munificent wasn’t there. We didn’t stick around and immediately made ready to twist back into known space, to yet another lonely red dwarf known only as a catalog number. We were on a clock because our quarry would eventually twist again, and the nature of the math was such that Netty’s next prediction would probably encompass at least a dozen systems. And there was still some uncertainty even in her current predictions, so we may find the next system empty, too. I braced myself for that, in fact.

But the Munificent was there, in all of her sprawling glory.

We’d already cabled the BeneStar tracker into the twist comm, so I didn’t hesitate in reaching for the control that would transmit my deleterious code to the BeneStar barge.

“Here goes nothing,” I said, breathed a silent prayer to the universe and whatever powers might oversee it, and hit transmit.

“Okay, everyone, best possible speed. Be ready to break off and run, though, if I’m not as good a hacker as I hope I am and that bastard is still operating at full potential.”

As one, our drives lit, and we raced toward what I hoped would be our final showdown with Helem Guass.

* * *

I hadn’t expected my virus would entirely shut down the Munificent and her defenses. I’d learned long ago to keep my hacking aims more modest and, therefore, achievable. Instead, the virus ran in two parts. First, it would disable the barge’s fire-control scanners as we made our approach. She’d eventually defeat that, of course, then proceed to acquire us as targets and open fire. This was where the more insidious aspect of my code would kick in. As the Munificent aimed her weapons, their fire-control inputs would incorporate a small but consistent amount of error. This allowed Netty and the other AIs to predict exactly where they needed to be to avoid the incoming fire.

And it worked.

Instead of being shredded by the typhoon of laser and mass-driver fire that erupted from the Munificent, we were able to maneuver through it mostly unscathed. Lucky took an unlucky hit, which knocked out her reactor and forced her out of the fight, and one of Alic’s Dragons staggered under a direct hit from a rapid-fire mass driver that sent her tumbling, powerless and out of control. The Stormshadow, the biggest of our ships, drew a lot of fire and also took a few hits, but her armor weathered it. We were showered by shrapnel by a detonating missile, which blew some REAB modules and took out that same damned thruster assembly again.

Like most battles in space, it was brief, and savage, and colorful—and watching my crew, I knew we were made for it.

“I swear that thing is cursed,” I snapped as I rolled the Fafnir, neatly avoiding a stream of mass-driver slugs that reached out for us but only passed through our fusion wake.

In the meantime, our own fire took a steady toll. We targeted the Munificent’s weapons, progressively stripping away mass drivers, laser mounts, and missile launchers.

“Launching full suite,” Torina called.

“Following. And second,” Netty confirmed.

“Hit ’em again. Every bird launched—not you, Perry—save four missiles for emergencies. All away,” I ordered.

“Away,” Netty confirmed.

“Engines optimal,” Funboy chimed in.

“Target that gun—yep, get that one too,” I added, and my crew executed every order like a dance, smooth, certain, and lethal.

One by one, the Munificent’s weapons fell silent. Over the course of our fight, her fire slackened more and more until she was left with only a couple of working lasers and a handful of point-defense batteries. A halo of debris enveloped her, spinning away from the scorched wreckage of what had been her defensive systems.

“Her edges are gone. She’s blurry,” Torina said.

“Lotta hits. And that’s several hundred tons of debris. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Perry grated.

“If they start to degrade further in our scans, I need to know. I don’t want that bastard twisting away,” I called out to everyone.

But the big ship stayed put. Maybe Gauss and his people arrogantly assumed they could just fight us off, or maybe even finish us—and particularly me—off once and for all. Or maybe they were waiting to be refueled, or had problems with their twist drive, or any number of other reasons. And now it was too late because Valint slid the Stormshadow through the big barge’s faltering fire and poured streams of mass-driver shots into her massive exhaust ports. That was the problem with repurposing something built to host gamblers willing to throw their money away—the Munificent ultimately hadn’t been built for war. Her reactors scrammed, leaving her running on emergency power only.

“Nice shooting, Gran,” I called.

“It’s Valint, and it was, wasn’t it?”

Our chance arrived. We wouldn’t miss.

“Okay, everyone who can, follow me in. We’re going to board that bastard and root out Gauss right where he lives,” I said and accelerated the Fafnir toward the crippled Munificent.

* * *

“That… is one hell of a door,” Torina said.

Valint, who’d joined us, nodded, peering up in awe.

“One hell of a door indeed.”

I glumly agreed. We’d had little trouble forcing our way aboard the Munificent, encountering only scattered resistance as we padded along richly carpeted corridors paneled in exotic woods with metal and enamel inlays that were decorated with tapestries and paintings and sundry objets d’art. We clashed with a few synths, a couple of bots, and a few automated turrets that pinned us down until we could neutralize them, but it was a desultory fight.

“Their main data is failing. We’re looking at a beaten force,” Perry announced.

I finished off a synth with a wicked overhand slash, the body falling backward in a lazy tumble. “That explains our advance. And why there was only one guard for something this damned big. You think they’re done?” I asked Perry.

“They’re done.”

“Good. Back to the issue at hand,” I said, waving toward the blast door.

“Two meters thick,” Perry announced after a quick scan.

In other words, a dead end.

“Maybe there’s another way?” Zeno suggested, cradling her BAG.

But Perry shook his head. “Doubt it. These big ol’ doors seem to have closed off a section at the core of this thing, like a sort of citadel. Gauss has probably put out a desperate call to bring the cavalry to his rescue and just plans to sit inside there and wait.”

“So we’re screwed. After all this, we’ve hit an impasse,” Torina said, slumping.

I frowned at the door. “Not necessarily. There’s more than one way through a door.”

“Such as?”

“Getting someone to open it for you.” There was an intercom panel by the door. I activated it. “To anyone listening to this—and I know you’re listening—I’ve got——let me check my account—ah, two million, ninety thousand, three hundred fifty-one bonds that I’ll transfer to your account upon opening one of these big ass doors.”

A moment passed. Oh, well, it had been worth a try—

The door began to slide smoothly open.

“Ah, my old friend greed, always around when you need him,” I said, but I raised The Drop. Everyone else readied their weapons as well.

The door slid to a stop, revealing a pair of figures standing in combat armor, their own weapons leveled right back at us.

Valint spoke before I could. “Well, well… if it isn’t my old friends Steiber and Kiswal. Tell me, boys, why shouldn’t I just gun you down where you stand?”

“Because we’ve tied the emergency close command on this door, and the next one, to our—well, we won’t give away all our secrets. Suffice it to say that if you kill us, you won’t get to Gauss. And that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Kiswal said.

“No loyalty to him at all? Like, none?” Torina said.

Steiber laughed. “You don’t know us very well, do you?”

“I’m surprised that Gauss didn’t just make you a better offer to keep the door closed.”

“He tried. But the way we figure it, Gauss’s game is probably up. Even if you can’t get through to him, you’ll probably just pound this barge of his until it loses containment and goes poof. And we’d rather have your two million and change and be alive to spend it than the ten million plus he offered us and not.”

Valint clicked her tongue. “Good help is so hard to find.”

“Especially the sort that will die for you, yeah,” Kiswal said. “So, now you hand over that data slate with your banking codes, we’ll do the transfer right here, and then we’ll be on our way.”

I handed over the slate. Steiber tapped at it, transferring the contents of my accounts, all of them, into his. He grinned.

“Nice doing business with you,” he said.

I just glared. “Get the hell out of my face.”

They laughed again and ambled past us. “Remember, you kill us, and those doors close again.”

“Boys?” I called.

They turned.

I lifted a hand and made a gun shape.”Be seeing you.”

Steiber opened his mouth and looked at Kiswal, who made a gesture. They retreated, and I knew we’d meet again. I’d make certain of it.

We carried on, picking our way into Gauss’s so-called citadel.

Six synths leapt into action—the honor guard of a poisoned soul. As one, they moved forward, and we did the only reasonable thing.

“Icky? Go get ’em.”

She hefted her weapon. “It’s about time.”

Streaking forward, she slashed two synths with one blow, spattering liquids upward in a chaotic dispersal. Torina and I began pouring fire out, and Funboy, wearing an expression of sheer murder, leapt over my right shoulder to bury the point of his weapon in a synth throat. With a twist, he tore the throat apart in a miasma of oils and shattered ceramics.

“I think we’re winning,” Zeno observed, putting a round through the eye of the last synth.

“They know. I can feel it in their hesitation,” I said, sending our last round through the throat of a synth who waited a second too long to roll left. Sliding forward as one, we reached a cross corridor with branches left and right. Straight ahead, though, it led to a set of ornate double doors.

It was then that Kiswal’s voice, shaking with rage, came over the comm. “You bastard, you had the comms blocked!”

I peered around the corner. “Oh, did I? Oops. I guess that means the transfer never went through to The Quiet Room. Is the transfer buffered on your data slate? Let me get that for you. Netty, can shut down the blackout—actually, wait. Don’t bother.”

Streiber howled across the comm. “You lying sack of shit!”

“That’s rich coming from you, you murderous bastard. Essie, you out there?”

“On overwatch with Lunzy and Dugrop’che, per the plan, yup.”

“You want to take over the case of Streiber and Kiswal? I’ve got a lot on my docket right now.”

“With pleasure. First, an investigation—oh my, you boys have been busy. Anything to say in your own defense?”

“We—”

“I didn’t think so. I hereby find you Guilty of Crimes against Order. And your sentence is this missile I’m firing right now.”

“Wait, no—!”

“You do realize that wasn’t even remotely legal, boss,” Perry said.

“Are you going to lodge a complaint?” I asked him.

“Actually, I think I will. Of course, there’s no time constraint on it so, yeah—in exactly five hundred years, I’m going to raise this matter with the Guild. Deep shit for you, boss.”

“Tell it to my corpse.”

* * *

There were more synths. Like roaches, they emerged at every turn, firing wildly as we advanced into their sacred grounds.

“This is restricted! He said you wouldn’t—”

Icky’s hammer took the synth in a glancing blow, but Zeno was there to fire twice—barrel to chest—sending the creature into oblivion. Two rounds caromed off Torina, who hissed in pain.

“Bruises?” I asked.

“At most. These scum won’t quit,” she grated, then fired a triple-tap into the leg, chest, and head of the synth who’d winged her. “Without encouragement, that is.”

Zeno flanked us to gain the angle on a defensive turret mounted three meters high on the wall. Leaning out, she drew down to fire—

And took a hit to her chest that dropped her. Funboy crawled to her and started first aid.

“Go! I’ve got her!” he said.

Valint took a trio of hits in rapid succession from another unseen turret, but the combination of armor and alien vigor let her shrug them off and destroy her attacker with a pair of surgical shots that both struck home within a centimeter of each other. I was hit four times, including one slug that punched through the side of my helmet, plowing a furrow across the top right side of my scalp. Hot blood dripped into my eye, and I blinked furiously to clear it.

I groaned in pain and disgust. “That’s my second helmet in as many fights,” I said, taking the synth that had tagged me down with a headshot from The Drop.

The last defenders, upon confronting us, actually shot themselves in a bizarre act of defiance that made no sense.

“Stolen persons,” Perry said. “Their last great act of defiance.”

“They gave us… I can’t believe it. What pain,” I said, my eyes fluttering through the haze of blood.

“They’d rather die and help open the way to Gauss,” Perry observed, his voice grave with respect.

And then we reached the end.

It was a palatial, tasteless room with a decrepit man lounging in what could have been a throne. Cables and tubes extruded from it into his body, and his expression, far from frightened, was one of supreme arrogance.

“I must congratulate you on getting this far, Peacemaker Tudor,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but here you are. And now, I surrender to you.”

I strode up to him, brandishing the Moonsword.

“What are you going to do, Peacemaker? Kill me? Fine, but… I’ve surrendered to your authority. That makes me your prisoner. So killing me would be murder. And that would make you every bit as bad as you believe me to be, wouldn’t it?’

I stopped and flicked out the Moonsword, cutting his arm. A sudden uncertainty flashed across Gauss’s face. He was right—by surrendering to me, he’d effectively placed himself into my lawful custody. He was pinning everything on my willingness to recognize that, on my integrity.

“Apologies” I said. “I’ve stumbled.”

Dark, sluggish fluid oozed from his arm. I shook my head. “Even your body isn’t real.”

“Oh, it’s real enough. And it’s better. There’s no reason it can’t last forever.”

“Better. I’ve heard that claim before, from my cousin, Carter. As far as I’m concerned, you’re responsible for him, too.”

Gauss waved his other arm. I noticed that his wound was already closing. “I gave him what he wanted. And what he wanted was you, Peacemaker. He despised you. I’ve seen hatred in my days, but nothing like that. So pure. So bottomless.”

I just nodded. “I know. And I’ll regret all of that until the day I die. But we were on a path to some sort of reconciliation until you pulled him from it. Because that’s what you do. You rewrite other people’s lives according to your own whims. You think you’re a… a god.”

“But I am a god! And I can grant you anything you wish! Instead of doing what you came here to do, why not instead leave this place wealthy beyond your dreams! Think of all the good you and your colleagues could do with… with a billion bonds. A trillion. And new bodies to allow you to keep doing those good works forever. You could become like gods yourselves, and I can make it happen!”

Gauss sat up on his vile throne. “Because I am a god! Starsong fills my body! I am ageless! I am—”

A hammer punched past me, smacking Gauss’s head back against his throne with a crack.

“Evil, and also really annoying,” Icky snapped. “Oh, and you’re also something else,” she added, raising her hammer high.

“Wh—what?”

I stepped toward her. So did Torina. We couldn’t let her do this, couldn’t let her kill Gauss, even if it was in some fit of hormone-fueled rage.

She swung the hammer down—and pulled it so it tapped firmly, painfully but decided non-lethally on Gauss’s head.

“You’re under arrest, asshole.”

EPILOGUE

Gauss’s cavalry did show up eventually, but by then so had Gerhardt, with a flotilla of Guild ships.

“I always seem late to your parties, Tudor,” he said.

We also had Gauss in custody, so his would-be rescuers looked at the situation, then quickly twisted away.

We took stock of the battered Munificent, which would be worth a fantastic amount of prize money—albeit split many ways. I did avail myself of a small metal trinket I found in Gauss’s sanctum, though, just for myself. We then handed Gauss over to Gerhardt, who would take him, under heavy guard, back to Anvil Dark. He shook his head as the wealthiest man in known space was wheeled, still cabled into his throne, onto his ship.

“We are going to be besieged by legions of lawyers, Tudor, you do realize that?” Gerhardt noted wryly.

“You know, Master Gerhardt, I’d be apologetic about that, except you seem excited about the prospect.”

He grinned. “Crossing legal swords with Helem Gauss in a court of law? Tudor, it’s what I was born for.”

* * *

I announced to Gerhardt that my crew and I were now taking some time off. No one objected, realizing that even if they had, it wouldn’t have done a damned bit of good.

And here we were, on Helso, enjoying a picnic lunch under the ruddy sun, on the bank of the pond on the Milon’s estate. Icky insisted on swimming, and further insisted on getting Funboy to join her. Somehow, she succeeded, so while she paddled and splashed about, he stood and looked miserable in the shallows.

He suddenly winced and shuddered. “Oh dear. I felt something touch me. It was definitely disease-ridden and alive, and now I might very well—”

Icky plucked a small, vaguely frog-like thing out of the water and held it in front of his face. “Relax, princess. You’ll pull through.”

“Do you know where that creature may have been?”

Icky glanced down. “Well, judging from where I found it, I’m guessing somewhere near your—”

“That… is quite enough, thank you,” Funboy said, raising his hands in surrender. We all laughed, even Zeno, who was still recovering from her wound.

Later, while the others still futzed about, Torina and I stepped away to watch the various moons of Helso, itself a moon, rise.

“Three of them, huh? What’s the time when the harvest comes in again? When all the fruit is ripe and people are planning for cool season?” I asked her.

“Thrice Moon. But it has to be three full moons at once. It’s my favorite time.”

I leaned in and kissed her. “Thrice Moon, then.”

“For what?”

Perry soared around us from wherever he’d been perched. “To get hitched. Even I know that, Torina.” Splashing and shouts rose from the pond. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to save Funboy from drowning. If Icky doesn’t drown him, his eyebrows are going to pull him under.” He sailed off.

She looked at me. ”Seriously? Thrice Moon?”

I reached into my pocket, extracted a ring of silver metal, and slid it over Torina’s left thumb. “Courtesy of Helem Gauss and his taste in wall hangings. I liberated it before we left. I didn’t have time to get to a jeweler, and this seems more… I don’t know, appropriate, anyway.”

She stared at it.

“So, Thrice Moon then?” I asked her.

She looked up, smiled, and nodded. “Thrice Moon. Like I said, it’s my favorite season. For endings. And beginnings.”

* * *

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Van will return in ECHOES OF EMPIRE, available on Amazon.

GLOSSARY

Anvil Dark: The beating heart of the Peacemaker organization, Anvil Dark is a large orbital platform located in the Gamma Crucis system, some ninety lightyears from Earth. Anvil Dark, some nine hundred seventy years old, remains in a Lagrange point around Mesaribe, remaining in permanent darkness. Anvil Dark has legal, military, medical, and supply resources for Peacemakers, their assistants, and guests.

Cloaks: Local organized criminal element, the Cloaks hold sway in only one place: Spindrift. A loose guild of thugs, extortionists, and muscle, the Cloaks fill a need for some legal control on Spindrift, though they do so only because Peacemakers and other authorities see them as a necessary evil. When confronted away from Spindrift, Cloaks are given no rights, quarter, or considerations for their position. (See: Spindrift)

Dragonet: A Base Four Combat ship, the Dragonet is a modified platform intended for the prosecution of Peacemaker policy. This includes but is not limited to ship-to-ship combat, surveillance, and planetary operations as well. The Dragonet is fast, lightly armored, and carries both point defense and ranged weapons, and features a frame that can be upgraded to the status of a small corvette (Class Nine).

Moonsword: Although the weapon is in the shape of a medium sword, the material is anything but simple metal. The Moonsword is a generational armament, capable of upgrades that augment its ability to interrupt communications, scan for data, and act as a blunt-force weapon that can split all but the toughest of ship’s hulls. See: Starsmith

Peacemaker: Also known as a Galactic Knight, Peacemakers are an elite force of law enforcement who have existed for more than three centuries. Both hereditary and open to recruitment, the guild is a meritocracy, but subject to political machinations and corruption, albeit not on the scale of other galactic military forces. Peacemakers have a legal code, proscribed methods, a reward and bounty scale, and a well-earned reputation as fierce, competent fighters. Any race may be a Peacemaker, but the candidates must pass rigorous testing and training.

Perry: An artificial intelligence, bound to Van (after service to his grandfather), Perry is a fully-sapient combat operative in the shape of a large, black avian. With the ability to hack computer systems and engage in physical combat, Perry is also a living repository of galactic knowledge in topics from law to battle strategies. He is also a wiseass.

Salt Thieves: Originally actual thieves who stole salt, this is a three-hundred-year-old guild of assassins known for their ruthless behavior, piracy, and tendency to kill. Members are identified by a complex, distinct system of braids in their hair. These braids are often cut and taken as prizes, especially by Peacemakers.

Spindrift: At nine hundred thirty years old, Spindrift is one of the most venerable space stations in the galactic arm. It is also the least reputable, having served as a place of criminal enterprise for nearly all of its existence due to a troublesome location. Orbiting Sirius, Spindrift was nearly depopulated by stellar radiation in the third year as a spaceborne habitat. When order collapsed, criminals moved in, cycling in and out every twelve point four years as coronal ejections rom Sirius made the station uninhabitable. Spindrift is known for medical treatments and technology that are quasi-legal at best, as well as weapons, stolen goods, and a strange array of archaeological items, all illegally looted. Spindrift has a population of thirty thousand beings at any time.

Starsmith: A place, a guild, and a single being, the Starsmith is primarily a weapons expert of unsurpassed skill. The current Starsmith is a Conoku (named Linulla), a crablike race known for their dexterity, skill in metallurgy and combat enhancements, and sense of humor.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

J. N. Chaney is a USA Today Bestselling author and has a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. He fancies himself quite the Super Mario Bros. fan. When he isn’t writing or gaming, you can find him online at www.jnchaney.com.

He migrates often, but was last seen in Las Vegas, NV. Any sightings should be reported, as they are rare.

* * *

Terry Maggert is left-handed, likes dragons, coffee, waffles, running, and giraffes; order unimportant. He’s also half of author Daniel Pierce, and half of the humor team at Cledus du Drizzle.

With thirty-one titles, he has something to thrill, entertain, or make you cringe in horror. Guaranteed.

Note: He doesn’t sleep. But you sort of guessed that already.