I turned around and headed toward the doors. Isla was surprised by my sudden movement and followed.
“What’s wrong?” Isla asked.
“More Chel,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Around the engine room. They could be rigging this place to explode.”
It wasn’t likely. They could have done that earlier since the ship was still intact and they could have blown it to pieces with everyone on board within moments of gassing the rest of the crew. That was part of the reason why I was so angry about all this. Blowing themselves up to hide their efforts would have honorable.
This was simply murder.
“Or simply prepping their escape,” Isla suggested, our earlier closeness passing. “After all, we only have Ida’s word the Chel pirates were actually her soldiers. It’s entirely possible she’s the one who sent them to kill these people. Either that or they were never her people at all and she’s just trying to mislead us about how much influence she possesses.”
I closed my eyes, pondering her words. “No, I think she’s telling the truth. The Commonwealth is employing privateers to frame the Chel and there were actual Chel on board. Ones who decided to kill everyone here after forwarding and deleting their research data.”
“What research data, though?” Isla asked.
I paused. “I don’t know. I saw the labs in my mind.”
“Let me download it and take a look. I might be able to make heads or tails of it with Munin given enough time.”
“We don’t have any to waste.” I gestured to the sensors and gave her a look at the labs before going back to the doors.
Isla uploaded the records of the security cameras anyway onto her infopad, then walked over to hijack the belt-sized personal force-field generator off one of the Chel. Opening the door we’d come through, I saw the hallway was now pristine with only a couple of mechs remaining. One of them was buffing the floor and another was polishing the walls.
Several mechs marched out from the adjoining rooms and started removing the bodies of the dead Chel. Isla caught up with me and the two of us headed into the elevator and commanded it to head down to the engine room.
“We should contact the others,” Isla said. “We barely managed to survive fighting off the other Chel. You don’t need to get yourself into another fight with invisible enemies by yourself.” She paused. “And you will be by yourself because I’m not an idiot.”
I closed my eyes. “They won’t be invisible. Those stealth cloaks aren’t good enough to stand up to these ship’s sensors. I’m going to tie them to my infopad and keep a good idea of where they are. Second of all, I don’t necessarily want to get into a fight with these Chel. I’d rather talk to them.”
I needed answers.
“After you killed two of their comrades?” Isla pointed out.
I opened my eyes and started to speak. “Well—”
“After they murdered this entire crew of your countrymen?” Isla interrupted. “Including children.”
“Fine.” I took a deep breath and tapped the side of my uniform. The comms patched me through to the others on board. “Guys, we’ve got hostiles. The Chel are aboard this vessel and there’s four in the engine room. I’m investigating now. Be warned, they have cloaking technology and personal force fields.”
“Thank you,” Isla said, exhaling. “Clarice needs to be made aware.”
William responded first. “I copy. We’ll meet you down there. Don’t get killed.”
“Is Clarice all right?” I asked, remembering her extreme reaction to the Chel.
William paused. “No. Hold position until we arrive.”
I took a deep breath. “Copy.”
The doors to the engine room opened seconds later, revealing lights that were completely out and the occasional sparking of a loose wire from panels, which had been shot with fusion blasts. It made sense as the engine room personnel often worked with spacesuits. It was possible they, alone, had been able to survive the initial chlorine gas attacks.
“Great,” I muttered, closing the door and tapping the LOCKDOWN button. It was a feature in every Crius ship.
I then moved to the side, not trusting the door to stop fusion fire. Isla did the same, checking her personal scanner and running it through the ship’s sensors.
“Anything?” I asked.
“The ship’s sensors indicate they’re around the engine core.”
“Great.”
“Munin’s shut down the main drives so they can’t overload anything,” Isla reassured me. “Not that there’s not a hundred other things to do around here. There’s only four of them and we should be able to take them, though. We should ask for their surrender.”
“And what? Assure them they won’t be charged with the murder of four hundred crewmen? That’s how many the logs listed.”
“Pretty much, yeah. Then shoot them after we get everything we need.”
I blinked.
“We’re not lawmen, Cassius. We’re all here for our own reasons.”
I paused. “Perhaps you’re right. Habits like delusions of honor are hard to break, though.”
“Being a good person was the hardest desire of mine I had to let go of. It will only get you killed in this world. It’s why I’m here, I suppose.”
I paused, needing a few minutes to calm myself and ground my sanity. “What do you get out of this? Working for Ida, I mean. The Commonwealth treats your people like slaves.”
“Because we are slaves,” Isla corrected me. As a doctor she had to know I needed more than light conversation to keep me going, but I could tell she was willing to humor me. “But to answer your question, the same thing I’ve always wanted: a place in this galaxy to call home. A purpose. I’m not sure I want to be here anymore, though. Not if it means I’m going to be caught up in the latest pissing contest between the Commonwealth, the Chel, and Crius’ remnants. Why have you decided to stick around?”
“Peace…and money.”
Isla smiled. “How much money?”
“A lot of money.” I debated my next question before deciding to throw it out. “Want to go with me when I get my payday?”
“You have no idea how many men and women have made me that offer.”
Well, that wasn’t encouraging. “Perhaps I’ll ask again when I actually have my fortune back.”
Isla gave a half-smile. “Are you asking me to come with you as your friend, mistress, or doctor?”
“I’m happy with any but I’d prefer all three.”
But what about Judith?
No.
It wasn’t possible.
She was good.
People didn’t come back from the dead.
Not good ones.
Isla nodded. “As long as you understand I can’t be with just one person. I’m not, if you’ll pardon the expression, wired that way.”
“As long as you’re okay with the same.”
I wasn’t the monogamous type myself. I’d loved Judith more than anyone, but I’d found myself drawn to other women, just as she’d found herself drawn to other men. Perhaps I wasn’t so far from the free sexuality of the Commonwealth. I just preferred to express it with someone I cared about.
“So why does Clarice hate the Chel so much?” I asked, looking over Isla’s controller at her scanner. It showed the Chel were moving but not toward us. They were moving in search-like patterns. I hoped the others arrived soon as it wouldn’t take long for them to arrive at the elevator, and if they had scanners, which they almost certainly did, we were fucked.
“What has she told you?” Isla asked, as much to keep me calm as anything else. It wasn’t necessary. I’d been in worse situations.
I’d just thought I was over them.
“We just got to the ‘my family is a bunch of slavers’ portion of the conversation.” My tone was venomous, not for Clarice, but the Rin-O’Harra family.
“You speak with such contempt.”
“Shouldn’t I?”
Isla raised an eyebrow before looking back at her scanner. It was a reminder the Archduchy made use of bioroids.
“I’ve changed a lot of opinions since my Crius days,” I said. “I wish I’d changed them sooner.”
Isla seemed to accept that. Keeping her voice low, she said, “It’s not my story to tell but given she may start shooting up the place, you should know. Clarice became a mercenary after she was thrown out of Star Patrol. It wasn’t long, but she worked with Mason’s Raiders.”
“The privateer group?” I knew a little about Mason’s Raiders. It was one of the hundred or more upscale mercenary organizations employed by the Archduchy and Commonwealth during the tail end of the war. They’d switched their loyalties back and forth between the two sides, always contracting for one job or another. Both sides had allowed it as long as they were remarkably effective at getting the job done—a sign of just how desperate matters had gotten toward the end. I, personally, would have had them all shot.
“Yes,” Isla said. “Everyone was making a profit off the war in one form or another. All except the citizens. Clarice’s company were trying to rescue a damaged ship which had jumped into the wrong territory.”
“And she encountered the Chel.”
“Yes. They took her hostage after a ship they were trying to rescue wandered into the Chel’s territory. Their soldiers killed all of her associates and tried to extract whatever information they could from her. After they did, they tried to break her.”
“She was tortured.” It wasn’t a question.
There had been survivors of such encounters, especially from the war when prisoner exchanges were made, but they tended to be broken shells of their former selves. Some returned with a deep and passionate loyalty for their tormentors. A few had even gone on to become sleeper agents or obsessed with the Chel to the point of flying back to their space to rejoin them as slaves. The Chel Madness as it was called. Further fuel for their legend.
“I’m not sure torture is sufficient a name for it, but I suppose governments have diluted the power of the word. The Chel possess the ability to manipulate senses as part of their genetic modifications.”
“Manipulate senses?” I wanted to be clear on what she knew of their abilities. I’d never heard of this.
“They can induce fear, anger, pain, love, joy, and pleasure. Pain worse than being flayed alive and pleasure greater than the most sublime lovemaking.”
The implications were staggering. It would explain why Clarice was on the Melampus, far away from the rest of civilized space. “I see.”
“In the end, the Raiders managed to capture a few Chel and made a daring offer to trade them back for her, which was accepted. Clarice was imprisoned for two days and had scars left enough for a lifetime. Enough that Mason’s Raiders gave her walking papers when they realized she wanted to go back and kill them all.”
I took that all in and tried to contact Clarice. Tapping my communicator, I tried to reach her private feed. “Maybe she deserves her revenge, but we need to get her to—”
“The enemy is moving in front of us,” Isla interrupted. “There are mechs too.”
“What?” I asked.
“What I said,” Isla said. “We should move up a story.”
That was when the elevator’s lights flickered.
“Before they cut the power to it,” Isla muttered. “Hells.”
The red emergency lights flickered on but I knew there was no way either of us was going anywhere. The only thing we could do was open the doors, and that would just put us in direct contact with our pursuers.
That was when I heard a voice from the outside of the elevator. It was male with a Crius accent. Probably not a Chel. Though, honestly, I had no idea what they sounded like, so I was just guessing. “Colonel-Count Mass. So good to finally meet you, even under these circumstances. I admit to being surprised to find your DNA has been encoded into the system but I’m fairly sure the Commonwealth’s dogs aren’t replicating it. They don’t have the technology.”
Isla looked over at me. “Maybe you can command them to let us go.”
“It’s worth a try.”
The voice then said, “I, of course, know you’re not the one leading the Free Systems Alliance. That’s just a filthy bioroid.”
Isla narrowed her eyes.
“Bioroids don’t murder children, unlike you and your friends,” I called back. “I came here to investigate who was using my name and rank.”
“That’s your ship out there?” the voice called.
“Yes,” I said.
“What about the fighters?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “The Chel sold the information to me.”
“You’re lying.”
“Maybe you don’t know the Chel as well as you think,” I said. “Who do I have the honor of addressing?”
“Baronet Rudolph Zemov the Third.”
I knew the Zemovs. Distant relatives. Assholes. Like most of Crius’ nobility, now that I thought about it.
“What happened to our associates on the bridge?” Another voice, almost musical in nature and with an eerie reverb, said.
A Chel perhaps?
I looked at Isla, who shook her head.
“Dead!” I called back.
Isla glared at me.
I moved down beside the thickest metal part of the elevator, the panels directly to the side of the elevator, as Isla did the same. Seconds later, fusion blasts shot through the door and slammed against the back. Sparks flew out of the sides, filling the elevator like fireworks while both Isla and I activated our shields. Seconds later, the fusion blasts stopped, leaving dozens of holes in the door.
I looked over at Isla, who was breathing heavy just like me. Taking several deep breaths, I stared over at the LOCKDOWN button.
Isla looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
I mouthed, “Trust me.”
Isla’s look was less than trusting.
Still, she pushed it, multiple times.
The doors, thankfully still functional, opened. I, meanwhile, unclipped the grenade I’d retrieved from the dead Chel and hurled it out the door. The explosion ripped through the hallway, sending waves of flash-radiation through the air. It would fry electronics and disintegrate flesh with equal alacrity.
It would also leave hulls compromised.
Unfortunately, any elation at believing we’d eliminated our foes was lost in the next few seconds.
“Impressive, Count,” Zemov said. “You’ve managed to kill my two companions.”
“It was partially my doing as well, you bigoted misogynist fuck!” Isla shouted back.
“Ah, that must be the infamous Devil Doctor Hernandez. No wonder you both took so poorly to the bioroid comment.”
I did a double take at Isla.
Isla shrugged, looking as confused as I did.
“Come out here and let us make a deal,” Zemov said. “I don’t have the personnel to complete my mission anymore.”
“You have nothing I want,” I replied.
“I know your sister is on board this ship. The one who created the bioroid duplicates of you and your wife.”
I growled. “Who sent you?”
“Thomas.”