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I saw Keevers a few times after that. The first time was when he came into the small cubicle that served as my room. I was quietly destroying another pillow, when the door to my quarters hissed open.
“I hear you’ve been causing trouble,” Keevers said, stepping through, and closing it behind him.
I didn’t care. I stared seconds longer, making sure he was real, and then dropped the partially dismembered pillow before launching myself across the room at him. I wrapped both arms around him, until I heard him gasp, which was when I let him go. When I looked up, his face was a comical mix of pain, consternation, and happiness, as he surveyed the mess I’d been making of my bedding.
“Didn’t they give you enough to do?” he asked, indicating the strips of cloth that used to be a perfectly serviceable set of sheets, and I blushed.
Truth was, they had given me stuff to do, but I’d trashed the first computer system with the keyboard, and that had been that. They hadn’t interrupted me in my destruction of the sheets. Not yet. I wondered at that, and then eyed Keevers suspiciously.
“Who are they?”
He moved slowly over to sit on the edge of my bed.
“They?” he asked, and I nodded. “You mean the people who came and got us off that smuggling vessel?”
I nodded again.
“They are my bosses,” he said, “and they’re asking me some very serious questions about why I bothered to save you.”
They were? My face heated as I blushed, even more.
I looked up at him.
“You were gone,” I said. “And I...”
I waved a hand around at the little box I’d been kept in.
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“You didn’t think they were helping you?”
“Captain kept some of the cargo in little rooms,” I said, referring to some of the people taken from the cargo hold and kept aside for what was termed ‘special’ training.
Keevers cursed.
“And you were waiting for when they came,” he said, and I nodded, tears sparking when I saw he truly understood.
He cursed again, and pushed himself off my bed. He was halfway to the door when it opened, and he stopped. I didn’t recognize the female agent, but Keevers did.
“You heard her,” he said. “She thought she was being ‘kept aside’.”
He glared at the woman, and she glared back. Finally, she answered.
“Our bad,” but she didn’t sound a bit repentant, and then she laid a hand on his arm. “You did good, John. We’ll take it from here.”
And that was when I got it.
Keevers was leaving—and he was leaving me behind. I crossed the room to him, reached out and took one of his hands.
“You’re not coming back?”
And he laughed, short and painful, as he turned and wrapped his arms around me.
“Give it a rest, kiddo. I got you out of a really bad place, and brought you to something a whole lot better. I like you, but I can’t keep you, okay? This is the next best thing.”
That hurt, but I got it. And it was true. He had got me out of a very bad place, and kept me out of a worse one. Whether it was anywhere near ‘a whole lot better’, was yet to be seen. I leant my head against him, and then let him go.
“Thanks,” I said, as my vision blurred, but I refused to cry.
I swallowed back the tears, and looked up at him—catching a sadder version of the almost smile I’d seen before.
He stepped back, and laid a hand on my shoulder.
“I gotta get back to the tank, kiddo. Before the medics come to find me. Apparently, I’m not done yet, but Agent Delight here said I had to come and see you, before she decided you needed putting down.”
I felt my insides freeze, and shot a quick glance at the agent waiting just inside the door. She met it, let me see just how close I’d come, and looked up at Keevers.
“Get going, John,” she said. “Medical will have my hide if I let you fall down before they can put you back in the tank.”
And he nodded, squeezing my shoulder once, before letting go and walking out the door. I waited until it had closed behind him, before looking at Agent Delight. To my surprise, she had the tiniest smile on her face as she looked at me.
“You,” she said, “are a barrel of trouble.”
Which was when I decided I’d see just how well I could live up to that assessment.
Pull me off a slave ship, and then force me to work for them, would they? Some might call that luck. Well, I had words for it that weren’t quite the same. I’d left home so that I had a choice—and I sure as shit wasn’t going to let these people take that choice away.
And I was very careful to keep all of that off my face, when I returned Agent Delight’s stare.
She made a show of looking me up and down, and then casting a critical eye around the room.
“And you owe us quite a few credits.”
Well, I have to admit, my mouth fell open at that. I what? Delight didn’t give me a chance to get a word in edgewise, however. She just kept right on.
“We’re not going to bill you for Keever’s first rescue,” she said, and I stared. I kept staring as she went on. “But we will bill you for retrieval off Lockyer’s Transport.”
And, now, I did have something to say.
“But—” I began, and she cut me off.
“And then there’s the computer, the sheets, the medical care...”
Medical care? Did she... Was she referring to them sedating me? But, again, she didn’t let me get a word in edgewise.
“...your accommodations and food for the last three days.” Finally she stopped. “What?”
And well she might ask. I had opened my mouth to say something, several somethings, actually, and she’d just rolled over me without so much as an invitation. I just said the last thing that came into my head.
“So, you’re not letting me go, then?”
Yeah, I know. So much for not saying anything about not wanting to be there.
“We could let you go,” Delight answered, “but with the contacts of those slavers looking for who took out the transport for their operations in this sector, that wouldn’t be very responsible of us—and Keevers says you have potential, that you just need somewhere safe to be allowed to reach it. We figured that might as well be us.”
“Oh, you did, huh?”
“Yeah, we did,” and Delight cocked her head to one side, “and I’m kinda sick of your attitude. You might try being a little bit grateful.”
Grateful, huh? Well, I didn’t feel particularly grateful. I was willing to go along with their little game, because I liked Keevers, and, if this was where he wanted me to be, then so be it. But grateful? She had got to be kidding!
Some of that must have leaked out onto my face, because the next thing I knew Delight was across the room, and I was up against a wall with her hand around my throat.
Gratitude was one thing, but there was no way I was putting up with shit like that. I lashed out, and she ducked, then she bounced me off the wall, so I grabbed hold of her wrists, and tried to pile-drive her chest through her spine with my feet. That connected, and she smiled—which had to be about the most frightening thing I had seen in a very long time.
I didn’t let it stop me, though. If I was going to get into trouble for this, or fined, or billed, or whatever, I was going to make it more than worth the price. I grinned back, and then she took a step away from the wall, let go of my throat and broke my hold on her wrists.
I hit the floor flat on my back, and she pounced while I was still trying to catch my breath and see past the stars. It felt like I’d been hit by a small truck, and the little breath I had left, vanished under her weight. For a few minutes, I couldn’t breathe at all, couldn’t find my arms and legs to coordinate them, couldn’t even think straight.
“Give,” she said, resting her forearm across the top of my chest, just a fraction off my throat.
“Give,” she repeated, when I didn’t answer, and her arm slid forward to just above my windpipe.
I nodded, before she could ask again, and she got off me.
“Get up!” she snapped, and I tried to get enough of myself together to obey.
She didn’t repeat the command, but watched, as I worked out everything was still attached and working. When I rolled to my feet, she headed for the door.
“This way,” she said. “There’s a cohort about a week into training. You can join them.”
They had cohorts? They forced more than one person at a time to join them?
It was an understandable mistake, but, as I soon learned, most of Odyssey’s recruits wanted to be there—even if I did not.
