A Traitor’s Heart
by Karina Sumner-Smith
AFTER MORE THAN two years of snow, rotten ice, and bitter, hardscrabble fights over a find barely worth the marker used to claim it, Triad Third Maja Anders had more than earned her vacation.
Her plan was simple: a few days on Plexis to shop and gather supplies, then a blessed tenday on Areill, a small moon close to Plexis’ planned path that happily catered to Humans. The brochure had shown everything she wanted. There were more swimming pools than she had fingers, filters on the resort domes to make the sunlight appear yellow, and—most importantly—no ice that wasn’t part of some fruity drink.
It had been, she reflected sourly, a good plan. But her transport ship was almost due to undock, and here she was some ten levels below, secreted in the corner of a less-than-reputable spacer bar and hoping to remain unnoticed.
Maja leaned back, using the flickering menu projection as cover as she scanned the room.
The bar was set to station night, the light pillars set between tables doing more to accentuate the shadows than illuminate the patrons and their drinks. It was a blessing. What little Maja could see over hunched shoulders and bowed heads—or, in one case, the shielding bulk of chitin plates—told her that the less she knew of the business negotiated across those scarred tables, the better.
The establishment’s reputation had nothing to do with the drinks or questionable selection of food on the menu; a reputation that should have been enough to make any respectable Triad member steer well clear, even on their free time. Yet here she was—and there, across the room, was ’Flix.
Triad Second ’Flix Pt’r X’ai sat with his back to her, crest low and feathers ruffled. The chair across from him was empty—conspicuously so. As she watched, the Tolian looked from that empty seat to the door and back again. Every few moments he’d whistle, a soft noise of distress that the device implanted in his neck didn’t need to translate.
’Flix didn’t want to be here. That makes two of us, Maja thought, and willed the Tolian to rise. Oblivious, the foolish pile of feathers remained, his hand straying to check the small package concealed in the satchel by his side.
He hadn’t done anything wrong—yet. Yes, ’Flix was meeting someone in a bar frequented by smugglers and pirates, and yes, he had brought something with him, but that didn’t mean anything. While Maja had her suspicions, those didn’t mean anything either. Not anything, at least, that she could bring before the First.
Of everyone Maja worked with, ’Flix would have been the last she’d peg to illegally sell Hoveny artifacts—if the broken shards and scraps they’d scraped from their site even deserved the name. But if he’d brought an artifact with him, however questionable—if he was waiting to meet one of the many dealers Maja was all too aware frequented this establishment—
Well. That would be something else entirely.
Maja glanced up as the server approached her table.
“Ready to order?” The being’s tone indicated that her response had better not be “no”—not unless she wanted to be unceremoniously removed from the premises.
It was her airtag, she knew, its golden shine a sharp contrast to the grubby coveralls she’d donned atop her vacationer’s clothes. A grandie’s airtag. A few days before, it had seemed a welcome luxury.
“I’d like to order, um—that.” She pointed randomly at the Human-safe section of the menu.
The server snorted, dismissed the flickering menu projection, and stomped away without another word. She probably wouldn’t be thrown out, not if she stayed quiet and spent her credits. But it was a near thing. If only they knew, she thought with a snort of her own. Missing the shielding protection of the menu, Maja turned back to ’Flix.
The Tolian was no longer alone.
Maja sucked in a shocked breath. Across the table from ’Flix sat a large Human male with more muscle than sense, his coveralls rolled down around his generous waist to reveal a stained shirt and forearms crisscrossed with scars. And his face—
Maja knew that face. His hair was grayer than she remembered, his cheeks broader, his expression more lined. But she would have recognized him anywhere—and run.
There was no running now; ’Flix and his companion sat squarely between Maja and the door. Even rising would draw attention. Instead, she bowed her head, letting shadow shield her expression and airtag alike.
The Human went by the name of Verrick, and he was identified in his warrants as a smuggler. Smugglers were generally offended by the comparison. In truth, Verrick was a pirate, and the strong arm of a captain even more callous than he was. From abduction to drug-running, there was little they would not do for the right price. Even murder and large-scale destruction could be bought.
As she knew all too well.
Maja had expected ’Flix to meet with some small-scale trader, perhaps an antique shop owner who didn’t mind dealing in black market items. There were enough of those to be found on Plexis. But pirates? If ’Flix had come to sell artifacts, or set up contacts for a future sale, he couldn’t have picked a worse one. Maja only had to scan the room to spot at least three beings who would have not only given him a better price, but were infinitely less likely to leave him with a sucking gut wound for his trouble.
“Get up, ’Flix,” Maja whispered. “You know this is a mistake.”
If he left now, he’d probably be robbed regardless—but that was nothing more than he deserved. At least he’d get out alive.
A drink slammed onto Maja’s table, its contents splashing across the tabletop, her coveralls, and folded hands with equal enthusiasm. Suppressing a gasp, Maja looked to the server. The being silently dared her to protest her treatment—or perhaps ask for a cloth to mop up the liquid. She did neither.
“Thank you,” she said instead, keeping her tone light. “I’m parched.”
The server closed one set of transparent eyelids as it glared; then, more slowly, a second. The air holes on its thick neck flared in apparent irritation.
“I expect a tip,” it said at last, before leaving her alone to drip on the table.
Maja shook the sticky beverage from her fingers. At least, she thought it was a beverage.
Thick, bile-yellow liquid pooled in the bottom of the glass, topped with a frothy green-brown layer that looked like dying algae. It smelled like pickles gone to rot—as, now, did she.
“Delightful,” she muttered and looked back to ’Flix’s table.
The conversation did not appear to be going well. Verrick’s expression had grown dark, and he had one callused hand outstretched in clear demand. ’Flix’s feathered bulk was increasing in agitation, while his shoulders heaved; he’d started to pant. Maja could hear the high whistles of his speech, but not the words of the translation. To her, he sounded as he always did: imperious and aloof, no matter his distress. Even negotiating an illegal sale with a known criminal, he sounded disapproving.
Briefly, hope flared as ’Flix stood and held his satchel to his chest as if it were an egg. But when Verrick heaved himself to his feet, tossed a credit chit on the table, and started for the door, ’Flix followed.
Maja swore—then nearly choked as she inhaled the fumes of her noxious beverage.
Now what?
She still had nothing that she could bring before the First—no true evidence, only suspicions and the strange coded messages on the coms that had brought her here in the first place. She hadn’t even managed to see what ’Flix had hidden in his satchel.
She could report that ’Flix had met with pirates on Plexis, but Triad Third Maja Anders had no reason to know criminals’ identities. She had no cause to suspect that she knew where ’Flix was being taken, nor the identity of the person with whom he would shortly meet. Maja Anders didn’t know the back routes that would get her there first, before any such meeting could begin, nor how to position a recorder to capture every spoken word.
But she had not always been Maja Anders.
Maja looked down at her hands. Just forget it, she told herself. There’s still time to catch the ship.
A tenday of sunshine and warmth, a landscape that wasn’t carved from frozen rock—not to mention drinks that weren’t noxious pickle sludge. Nothing to stir up old pain and frustration, all the sharp edges of a life she no longer lived. All she had to do was keep her head down and go.
Even if ’Flix was dealing artifacts from their find—
Even if there was little more waiting for him at that meeting than a blade to the back—
Even if she never saw ’Flix again—
Maja closed her eyes. She couldn’t even finish the thoughts.
“Damn it, ’Flix,” she muttered. She tossed payment for the drink onto her wet table and followed in the pair’s wake, a silent shadow that slipped into the crowd with the ease of long practice.
She didn’t even like the stupid bird.
Maja’s first time on Plexis Supermarket, she’d been six years old. Old enough, she’d thought, to know everything, to have seen everything. She’d been a jaded creature in pigtails—until she’d come to Plexis.
“There,” a crew member had told her. She couldn’t, now, remember which one; they’d been a rotating family for her, caring and fun and often interchangeable. Her only constant had been Manny; her guardian, she supposed, though he’d always felt like her father. He was the one who’d taken her in after she’d been found as a squalling infant, the only survivor of a pirate attack on the trader ship Dalton.
That’s what they’d called her, too, her birth name lost to cold space and ash. It was as good a name as any.
Dalton had shaken her head at the crew member. She didn’t care what was out the viewport window. It was all the same to her.
But they’d taken her hand and lifted her up, letting her see Plexis on their approach. Dalton had gasped, then plastered her face and hands to the window. She’d refused to leave, barely willing to blink. They’d had to bring her a chair so she could stand and watch when first one crew member’s arms, then a second, got weary from her weight.
She’d seen ships before; she’d seen stations. But never before had she seen something so massive, like a whole jigsaw world made by sentients’ hands. Even Plexis’ bright sign caught her eye, the glittering words turning in her vision as their ship moved toward the yawning maw, bristling with ship connections.
“It’s so beautiful,” she’d whispered.
“Hah! You have a strange eye for beauty, little one,” Manny had told her, chuckling, but he hadn’t disagreed.
If the outside had awed her, the interior of Plexis Supermarket had shocked Dalton silent. She’d walked with wide eyes and one hand pressed to the waxy tag on her cheek, trying to see everything at once. The shopping corridor arced in either direction, stores and restaurants vanishing into the distance. She’d seen glittering jewelry with beads like small worlds and a pet store with furry lumps that purred and chittered. There were stores with long scarves in gold and green, shoes and silver claw-caps, herbs and strange spices that made her sneeze, furniture for bodies large and small.
There’d been so many people: Gentek and Ordnex, Turrned and Carasians, Humans and creatures for which she knew no name, with tentacles or feathers, scales or knobbled hides or skin so slick with slime it shone mirror-bright in the station’s lights. She’d been all but lost in that crowd, clinging tightly to Manny’s ivory-tipped hand—and loving every moment.
At last, Manny had knelt before her, the Brill’s leathery bulk splitting the stream of shoppers like a stone in a stream. Though he’d worn only the lightest clothes, already he’d begun to sweat, rivulets running down his face and arms.
“Are you ready to see the next level?”
“There’s another level?” Dalton had asked, her voice small, as she looked toward the automated ramp. “Are there stores there, too?”
Manny had laughed so hard he’d near shook the floor. “Oh, little one, just you wait.”
Crowds, Maja had long ago learned, were like living creatures: each had its moods and had to be handled with care. The crowds in Plexis? Even now, she knew them as well as any beloved friend.
A friend, but an ill-tempered one. The crowd in the hall beyond the bar was far from jovial, but that was only to be expected on such a low level of the station. She spotted a few disagreements in the corridors, the usual posturing between members of rival shipping clans, even the parting of the crowd as off-duty members of a mercenary ship strolled by, but nothing that required her attention.
Good. It would make her job that much easier.
She trailed the pirate and her coworker for about a quarter turn, tracking the spire of ’Flix’s feathered crest. Just long enough for her to confirm their destination: the lower docking rings, where Verrick’s ship had always parked. Then she cut down a side corridor, sidestepped a servo, and made her way toward Plexis’ back halls.
Maja stuck out in the service corridors like a sore thumb, but she still knew the codes and signals. A hand gesture here, a quickly passed chit there, and those that traveled these ways looked aside as if she were no more than a passing shadow. Some things never changed.
As she made her way toward the docking ring, she tried to predict who ’Flix would meet. If this was a new deal, or there were concerns with the item ’Flix provided, Verrick might have orders for another crew member to validate the piece. On the other hand, if there was another issue—’Flix hadn’t brought the right number of items, say, or there was a debate over a previously agreed price—Verrick might escalate the issue directly to his captain.
If only she knew what ’Flix had taken from their find. There hadn’t been any artifacts worth selling—at least, not that she had seen. A scrap of worked metal. Three short links of shimmering chain. A narrow tube that could have been a machine rod, or a part of a stylo, or nothing at all.
Or had there been more discoveries—better ones, secret ones—that had been hidden from her entirely?
In the two years that she’d worked with her Triad, Maja had never felt that she’d made a deeper connection to either ’Flix or Arendenonail, despite her efforts. Their First was quiet and imposing, a titled scholar who thought he deserved to be in the mountains of Aeande XII, battling the glacier, rather than scratching through rock and permafrost on the backwater world of Rylan III for decayed Hoveny scraps. He’d argued loudly against Maja’s inclusion in the Triad—a fact he hadn’t tried to conceal—and sent a request every few months for her replacement, all denied.
There had been a thousand possible reasons for his dislike. She was new and unproven, and their find bore little fruit. Worse, she was Human. Perhaps, she’d thought no few times, he wanted her to bond with a dog to amplify her weak senses. No matter: she’d kept her head down, worked the coms, and kept digging, so to speak.
’Flix had been another matter. No disapproving silences from him: if anything, he had a comment for her every action, none of them good. There were times that he’d all but bodily pushed her aside from her console to complete some scan himself, his low whistles translating to a string of abuse made both harsher and more amusing by the monotone of his translating device.
Perhaps the Tolian had only been covering his tracks, hiding evidence of his dealings the only way he could. If only she had remote access to their site’s systems, perhaps she could have discovered more.
Maja shook her head; soon it wouldn’t matter. She had a recorder with her—months of hardscrabble work on the find meant she never left it behind, not even on vacation. So long as she reached the ship’s air lock in time, she could get the proof she needed to implicate ’Flix and then wash her hands of the whole situation.
If she could rid herself of one of the two members of her Triad, maybe daily life would get a little easier. Small mercies, she thought, and broke into a run.
“When you play a role,” Manny told her once, “be the role. You become that person, understand? But always keep a little part of yourself separate. That’s the part that watches.”
Dalton had nodded, wide-eyed, and committed the words to memory. She’d repeat them before she went to sleep, murmuring softly into her covers: “Be the person, have a part that watches.”
It was part of a game called Surveillance. When Manny or his crew went to meet a supplier or dealer, she’d be there. Rarely at Manny’s side—a Brill with a small Human child as a companion was memorable—but somewhere. She was the little Fem weeping and wailing that she couldn’t buy crystal cakes. She was the happy Hom pressed to the pet store window, his indulgent parents looking on. She was the sleepy little one held in her weary nanny’s arms, waiting at the docking gate.
Through it all, she watched. When they’d head back to the ship, Manny would quiz her: Where were the security guards stationed? Where were the cameras? Was anyone following? Was anyone watching?
Some were tests; Manny would pay people to watch or follow, give her someone to find. Others were trial runs, her answers corroborated by Manny’s crew, her mistakes and missed observations pointed out so that next time she could do better.
And sometimes, sometimes, it was real.
One afternoon on a small supermarket out on the fringe, Manny had been called to a meeting with a new ship trying to earn its place in one of the Facilitator’s smuggling rings. Conversations with Manny’s underlings had gone poorly; the captain would only believe the word of Manouya, the Facilitator himself.
“Can’t fault their vigilance,” Manny had said with a chuckle, despite the inconvenience, and made preparations.
Dalton had been playing the role of the studious child, her nose in a book, while her “mother”—Manny’s third-in-command, Alexis—scurried about, trying to find passage to take her little scholar to boarding school. Alexis drew the eye; Dalton watched quietly from her shadow.
Which perhaps is why she was the first to see a face pass by not once, but twice in the crowd, both times headed spinward. He’d doubled back unseen—how? Why?
She’d tugged on Alexis’ arm. “Mom, I need to go to the accommodation,” she’d said. Code for a problem. Dalton had whispered what she’d seen; and, as the Human bought himself a snack, Alexis got eyes on Dalton’s suspect.
“Enforcers,” she’d said into her hidden microphone. “All teams, abort.”
The meeting had been a trap. Thanks to Dalton, Manouya and his crew were gone from the supermarket within moments, vanished like breath into air. The enforcers had tried to follow, but there was little in the Trade Pact that could outsmart the Facilitator when he knew to run.
Much later, Dalton had learned that even as Manny trained her, there had been plans to send her away. Life aboard a smuggler’s ship, some Humans said, was no life for a child. She could go to a city or colony; somewhere that she could have a real family, real parents, and a life other than this one. But this was the only life she’d ever known.
There were very many ways to be a smuggler, and as the years slowly passed, Dalton learned them all. On the books, she had been a shop owner, a trader, an antiques dealer, a tour guide, an accountant, and a drug dealer—all legal, of course. She’d dealt in offworld artifacts and outlawed literature, restricted foodstuffs and rare alcohol, bottled oxygen, and even a particular highly regulated scent that smelled like turpentine to Humans and was irresistibly erotic to Nrophrae.
Off the books, she was Manouya’s favorite, his brightest pupil; some said even his heir. Not, she’d thought, that he was in any hurry to vacate the position. The Facilitator’s rule was uncontested—and why would any complain when all grew so profitable under his guidance?
Profitable enough that few of the Humans within the Facilitator’s sprawling organization thought to question why they rarely saw the elusive Manouya himself, if ever. Profitable enough that those few who’d heard rumors that Manouya wasn’t Human discounted such tales—or kept their thoughts behind closed lips. The rare souls who knew the truth? They were the top of Manouya’s many-faceted organization, keepers of the Facilitator’s most closely guarded secrets, and—as Dalton came to learn—the time always came when those secrets were best kept through a quiet, final end.
As the years rolled on, more days than not, Dalton sat at Manny’s right hand and learned. It was one thing to know the tricks and techniques of smuggling—the forgeries and hidden compartments, the methods of bribery and brute force and sleight of hand. It was another to know the strategy behind it all, the shifts in markets and governments and interstellar trade that would make interest in one item rise and another fall, affect regulations and profit margins, or create demand where none had existed before.
If asked if she were happy in this life, Dalton would have only been confused. What other life was there? She lived the whole of her ambition—what else was there to want?
But all it took was a single red-toothed sentence to make everything fall apart.
Smugglers had a hundred uses for a small Human child, from message runner to spy, but none quite so memorable as the ability to fit into small spaces.
Maja had grown considerably since the last time she’d tried to access the station-behind-the-station, the narrow maintenance walkways, service corridors, and ventilation shafts that made Plexis run. It was a tighter fit than she remembered. Even so, she squeezed in though a maintenance access port, adding a coating of grime to her pickle-smelling coveralls. She was going to burn this outfit when she was finished, and gladly.
Maja made her way through the maintenance tunnel on hands and knees, slithering to make it through some of the tighter turns. She didn’t want to think about how she’d get out again.
At last she found what she wanted: a ventilation duct in the corridor leading from air lock designation 405-B. A lock in an area with a cheaper docking fee, a permissive airtag check, and guards who were enthusiastic about payments to look the other way. An area, in other words, favored by pirates.
Verrick’s captain might have moved to another docking ring or bribed a different set of guards, but Maja didn’t think so. Still, her stomach fluttered with nerves she hadn’t felt in years as she set up her recorder and pointed it toward the air lock.
A moment passed.
Two.
Five.
Maja was about to back away, cursing, wondering where onstation the pirate could have taken her stupid coworker, when the pair entered the corridor below. She went still, listening.
’Flix was squawking about some perceived slight, much to Verrick’s obvious irritation—but even he fell silent as the air lock doors irised open.
A Human came through the air lock, two guards at her back. She was tall and thin like a rod of pure iron, her ash-gray hair shorn close to her skull. She dressed simply: spacer’s coveralls accented with thin red lines, heavy boots, and the concealed shape of a weapon on her right hip.
Captain Bennefeld of the pirate ship Dashing Boy.
Maja couldn’t count the nights that she’d lain awake these past years, considering what she’d do if she ever saw Bennefeld in the flesh. She’d imagined destroying the Dashing Boy and the business that rested upon its scarred hull; she’d imagined all manner of violence, little though her skills trended to the martial. She’d even tried to envision scenarios in which she stood tall, spoke a few cutting words, and walked away—though, even in dreams, she’d failed to imagine words that could carry the weight of everything she had to say.
Never had she thought she’d lie quiet and do nothing at all.
Bennefeld came forward, her steady walk that of a predator. She looked ’Flix up and down, clearly unimpressed.
“You’re not Arendenonail,” Bennefeld said softly, naming the First in Maja and ’Flix’s Triad.
Maja would have sworn if she could. As it was, she exhaled long and slow, pushing out her frustration with that breath.
She was the only one in their Triad that was clean? The irony of that was sharp enough to cut.
The Tolian stood up straighter, his feathers puffing in a dominance display as he whistled a shrill response. “No,” came the translation. “I’ve come in his stead.”
“I’ve had a long wait to speak to an underling.”
’Flix bristled. “I’m no underling, but a partner. And our find hit snags—the delay was unavoidable.” If a Tolian could sniff in disdain, ’Flix would have.
The captain’s lips raised in the bare curve of a smile. “Of course, Hom. But now you’ve come to keep your side of the bargain.”
A nod.
’Flix drew a lumpy bundle from his satchel, holding it to his chest before reluctantly drawing back the coverings. Maja expected artifacts; instead, she saw the glitter of a small fortune in currency gems. More, she calculated, than ’Flix and Arendenonail together could have earned in a year.
The captain gestured for one of her guards to take and count the currency. When the guard nodded at the total, Bennefeld brought forth a small package which she handed to ’Flix. Maja caught a glimpse of fine metal links woven into delicate mesh. A hat, perhaps?
Maja blinked in incredulity. ’Flix wasn’t selling, but buying.
More: he was clearly buying artifacts from a trove of so-called finds that had flooded the market some years earlier, each marked with a Triad’s seal—and condemned by Manouya as fakes. “Everyone wants to discover history,” he’d told her with a sigh after turning down yet another lot of the ridiculous so-called artifacts. “If they can’t discover it, they’ll invent it.”
Inventing history was exactly what her Triad was aiming for, Maja realized. A single great find could rewrite their futures. More to the point, if he played his cards right, it could transform Arendenonail from a backworld Triad Analyst to a top interstellar scholar.
’Flix seemed relieved as he rewrapped the artifact and stashed it in his satchel. He nodded to the captain, then turned to go. Verrick’s hulking shape blocked his departure.
Captain Bennefeld raised an eyebrow. “You will be back, right, Hom? For the next delivery.”
“Yes, of course,” intoned ’Flix’s translator. But one only needed to glance at his body language to know that he was lying.
Oh, Arendenonail, Maja thought as she briefly closed her eyes. You never should have let ’Flix speak for you. They were going to skip out on the deal—and the pirates knew it.
One find; that’s all Arendenonail wanted. Enough to give him status, funding—and the limelight that came with it. No need to continue dealing with pirates, no matter the terms of their agreement.
“That’s what I thought.” Captain Bennefeld spoke with the finality of a closing door. “It’s been pleasant doing business with you, Hom. Verrick, if you would?”
The pirate’s lackey nodded as the captain returned to the Dashing Boy, bringing her guards with her. ’Flix watched her go before turning to Verrick.
“Right this way,” Verrick said with a broad smile and a gesture toward the hall. “I’ll show you a faster way back to your transport.”
’Flix hesitated—as well he should—perhaps only just realizing what a dreadful situation he’d managed to get himself into, alone with a pirate in the rough backside of the station.
No witnesses but Maja, unseen.
If you value your life, ’Flix, she thought, do not go with him.
’Flix glanced around, whistling softly. There were at least two other ways out of this corridor—three, if one counted blasting through the wall into the storage rooms beyond—but ’Flix could see no escape. He nodded reluctantly and went in the direction Verrick pointed.
Verrick grinned wider behind the Tolian’s back. Anticipation, Maja thought, of what was to come. Even so, she could only wait, silent and unmoving in her hiding spot, as the pair disappeared from sight.
In her mind, she lived that day over and over again.
Dalton had been sent at Manouya’s express request to oversee the end of an interrogation of a Human male named Bax. A young Human, they’d found, who’d been selling information on one of the Facilitator’s most profitable rings to the Auord Port Authority, directly resulting in the seizure of three ships, the death of two crew, the loss of untold millions in goods, and the destruction of relationships that had taken decades to build.
The Jellies counted it as a significant victory. They’d tried to hide Bax, their informant; they’d failed. Bax had run from the Facilitator’s justice; he hadn’t run far enough.
Dalton remembered standing at the door to the ship’s starboard hold, which served as a crude interrogation room, and staring at the doors’ scratched metal. She took a deep breath. She’d never enjoyed this part of the job.
She pressed a button; the door slid open. Inside, a Human male hung in the center of the hold by his wrists, his bare feet dangling a hand’s span from the ground. Two of Manouya’s crew were with him; they had, she hoped, already gained some of the answers they sought.
Bax looked up as Dalton entered. There was fear in his swollen expression, yes—all knew what it meant to come before Manouya’s right hand—but something else, too.
Bax gathered the scraps of his courage. “Look at that,” he said, voice trembling despite himself. “Dalton herself here to punish my little rebellion. That’s a laugh.”
“Really?” Dalton let the door swish shut behind her. “And why’s that funny, Bax?”
“Don’t you know?” Bax looked to the beings on either side of him, Emerson standing guard, Aelian carefully cleaning the congealing blood from her hands. For a moment he looked as if they three shared some dark secret to which Dalton was not privy; then, as Aelian put down her rag, Bax flinched and looked away, shivering.
Don’t get distracted, Dalton told herself.
“I assume you’ve had a good conversation with our friends here?” She gestured to Emerson and Aelian. “Manouya has one last question for you, Bax: who else betrayed us to the Jellies?”
Bax shook his head. “I told you. It was just me.”
Dalton stepped forward, careful to avoid the splatters on the ground. She leaned closer until she could smell his breath, the tang of his blood and sweat.
“Bax,” she whispered. “I know you’re lying. You gave them information to which you have no access. We know everyone who had that information.” She pulled back. “Think of it this way. You’re not betraying a coconspirator. You’re saving anyone who’s actually innocent.”
He just shook his head, whispering something that might have been, “No, no, no.”
Dalton sighed and stepped back, then nodded to Emerson. She looked to her hands, waiting. She’d never liked this part, but could not deny that harsh methods of justice were sometimes necessary. Order must be kept, even here.
A few moments later the sounds of fist on flesh ceased. There was only the creak of the chains as Bax swung back and forth, and the rough, aching cough of his breathing.
“Last chance, Bax,” Dalton said quietly. “Come clean, and you’ll earn an easier end. Manouya is not without mercy.”
“Mercy.” Bax laughed a terrible, choking laugh; it was all but inaudible. “I think you’re the only one who’s ever known Manouya’s questionable mercy.” His sides heaved as he struggled to gain control, despite the pain. His head lolled, blood and sweat dripping as he spat on the cold metal floor. Something in the gesture seemed to give him strength—the splat of the bloody saliva, that moment of stark defiance.
Bax looked up. Met her eyes. Grinned with teeth stained dark.
“He never told you, did he?” He laughed again, then coughed on his own blood. Still he spoke through the red and salt. “He never told you what your name means. Dalton.”
There was more; his end was neither swift nor merciful, and knowing what he had done, Dalton thought it no less than he deserved. Yet to her, or of her name, Bax said nothing more—and no matter who she asked, or how, Dalton could find no one who’d explain.
Maja was stuck—in more ways than one.
Getting into the maintenance shaft had been one thing; getting out was another. The corners that she’d managed to wriggle around on her way in were all but impossible to navigate in reverse, and now she found herself well and truly wedged. Given the accumulated dust, it’d be years before some servo discovered her decaying body.
Even as she struggled to free herself, her mind spun: What’re you going to do with the recording, fool? If it weren’t for the tight quarters, she would have shaken her head at her own stupidity.
Bring the transgression before the First—that had been her first reaction, the whole of her plan. A Maja Anders plan, a habitual behavior engrained through years of careful practice. Now she had the recording in hand, she knew the last thing she could do was turn it over to the authorities.
Any Triad member dealing Hoveny artifacts was sure to meet swift justice, and Maja had evidence that implicated not one but two members of her Triad. That she herself was innocent didn’t matter, nor would the fact that she’d reported the transgression. Not in the end.
Any authority would have to confirm her innocence. Her identity would come under scrutiny, every detail poked and prodded for evidence of falsehood. It didn’t matter how carefully she’d constructed her past; under such examination, her lies would be discovered. And if they uncovered her true identity? She’d never see sunlight again.
No, if ’Flix and Arendenonail’s dealings came to light, she’d lose everything, one way or another. But if ’Flix came to harm, killed by pirates—or even if the ridiculous plan were successful, their claim on Rylan III exalted for its single, glorious find—the truth would be uncovered regardless. It was only a matter of when.
Her days as Maja Anders were numbered. The countdown sounded like her hammering heartbeat, the huff of her breath in the stale, dusty air.
Her only way out was to run. Run fast enough, far enough, that her trail would be cold before any investigation sought to follow. New job, new name, new home—certainly wouldn’t be the first for any of those. She could start again.
Abandoning ’Flix to his own foolish end.
She knew she should go, just leave it all behind. But if that were her path, she never would have followed ’Flix from the bar.
Her only leverage was the recording. Her thoughts spun. Maybe if she—
With a gasp, a rip of her grimy, pickle-scented coveralls, and the loss of no little bit of skin, Maja was free. She wriggled down the rest of the maintenance shaft and popped back into the service corridor beyond the range of the Dashing Boy’s scans. Without even shaking the dust from her hair, Maja ran.
Down the hall, into a back service room, and—
She skidded to a stop.
Too late.
Before her, Verrick had ’Flix in a hold, a knife to the Tolian’s already-bleeding torso. ’Flix flailed, a panicked writhing that neither freed him from that grasp nor helped him evade further damage from the blade.
Maja winced at the sight, even as some part of her heaved an irritated sigh. Verrick had always been too fond of knives. Yet, despite his “fun,” he’d at least done his job; Maja saw the edges of the wrapped artifact protruding from his back pocket. Payment and artifact both in the pirates’ possession. She could have told her Triad that it was the best outcome they could expect, especially if they were reneging on a deal.
“Hey.” Maja’s voice echoed in the corridor’s narrow confines. “Let him go.”
“You’re in the wrong hall, Fem,” Verrick said, sparing her a bare glance. “I think you’d better turn around and go, don’t you?”
’Flix shrilled in pain as the knife dug deeper. “Ow,” said the flat monotone of his translator.
But Maja hadn’t moved. “You’re making a mess, Verrick.” She hid a grin as the pirate twitched at her use of his name. She’d surprised him. Good. She’d surprised ’Flix, too, from the incredulous look on the being’s face—a look that was quickly erased by another jab of the knife.
Given the blood already staining his clothing and patterning the floor? She had to move quickly.
“Your deal’s gone wrong.”
“My deal’s gone exactly as planned. You’re just increasing the body count.”
“Nah,” she said, letting her carefully cultivated accent slip. “It’s all tits-up. You just didn’t know it until now.”
“That so?”
He thrust the knife in deeper. Then, as ’Flix shrieked, he tossed the Tolian onto the floor between them. ’Flix curled into a ball on the cold metal, shivering and panting, while Verrick calmly cleaned the blade.
“Look at me, Verrick.”
Nonchalantly, the pirate glanced toward her—then squinted, looking harder. “Wait. Don’t I know you?”
Maja shrugged, wishing she could calm her pounding heart. “You tell me.”
The pirate tilted his head, considering. He had always preferred force to negotiation, believing in physical power—whether in body, weapon, or ship—over cleverness, but he was still smart. And, unfortunately, good at his brutal job.
“No,” Verrick said slowly. “No, I recognize that face.”
As the pirate watched her, Maja knelt beside ’Flix. She ripped off part of his coveralls and pressed the fabric to the wound.
“What are you . . . how can you . . . ?” Even the translator had no words for the sound that followed.
“Just press down on the wound,” she murmured. “You have to stanch the bleeding.”
Verrick watched, a stream of cold calculations running behind his eyes. “What was your name again? You’re Manouya’s wonder child, aren’t you? The poor little orphan, all grown up.” He laughed an ugly laugh.
“What’s he saying?”’Flix panted.
“Doesn’t matter. Just keep quiet.”
“But he said—”
“’Flix,” she snapped. “Keep your stupid beak shut.”
The Tolian’s eyes went wide. Never in all the time they’d worked together had Maja so much as raised her voice to him.
Long overdue.
Still he made to speak—to argue, to complain, she didn’t know. Didn’t, at that point, care. Instead, she pressed harder on the wadded fabric, increasing the pressure on his wound; there was already so much blood. ’Flix’s eyes rolled back and he whistled, his hand scrabbling weakly at her arms.
Ignoring her one-time coworker, Maja looked back to the pirate. “The deal’s a bust,” she repeated. “The First suspected these two all along—and you know how they feel about messing with anything pertaining to the Hoveny Concentrix. Everything was tracked, monitored, and recorded. The vid’s already on its way to the authorities—including Plexis Security.”
’Flix’s low whistle from beneath her hands spoke as much of despair as it did of pain. Hang in there, she thought to him. It’ll all work out.
“Then why,” Verrick asked slowly, “are you talking to me? One scrawny Human alone in a Plexis back hall.” He lifted his cleaned knife, turning it to catch the light. “You don’t look much like security. Not much like an enforcer, either.”
“I have a copy of the recording with me, if you don’t believe.” She lifted her recorder in one bloody hand. “But I intercepted the feed. Put it on a time delay to give us a little moment to talk.”
“About what?”
“I think we could make a deal, you and I. Consider this: if you—”
Suddenly, ’Flix deflated under her hands. His muscles went slack as unconsciousness claimed him.
“’Flix?” Maja made to pat his face, only to realize how heavy the wadded fabric had become, saturated with blood. Verrick must have nicked an artery; ’Flix was bleeding out.
She swore. “Get me a spray bandage. We need to get him to a med unit—”
Verrick guffawed, incredulous. She took a breath, then another, trying to stem her rush of anger and disgust.
She’d been away from this work too long. Her request had been a Maja reaction, nothing more.
She looked back to the Tolian. Saw the color of his skin, the seeming thinness of his closed eyelids, the erratic twitch of the muscle movements beneath her hands. He had moments to live, if that, and there was nothing that she could do to save him. Even so, she pressed down, harder and harder, as if she could stop that end with hands and will alone.
Too late, she thought. Too thin a plan, too long getting here, too distant from her days as a smuggler. She could only watch as ’Flix died under her hands.
Verrick paid no attention as the Tolian breathed his last, that thin whistle of air somehow loud in the empty space. Instead, the pirate said, “What was this about a deal?”
Time to bluff her way out of this situation. But she could not look away from ’Flix’s body. Could not, in that moment, find the strength to rise.
“What, nothing else to say to me? Come on, I want to hear about this plan of yours.”
“Verrick,” she said slowly. “I need you to get Captain Bennefeld now.”
The pirate laughed and crossed his arms across his chest. “You want me to do your laundry, too? Fetch you some slippers?” He swore—using a particularly creative combination of names for her.
Her hands had become stone; her blood, ice. She felt each breath as it entered her, filled her; felt the metronome beat of her heart. She ran her hand down the side of ’Flix’s feathered head once, slowly—a gesture of affection she would not have wanted, nor felt, had the Tolian still lived.
She had not liked ’Flix. He’d been a smart being in some ways, as stupid as rocks in others, and he had not deserved to die. Certainly not like this.
One breath. Another.
“Verrick. If you know who I am, then you know my presence here is a threat.” Each word was a cold stone cast between them; and her eyes, when she looked up from ’Flix’s body to stare down the pirate, were colder still.
“Get your captain,” she said again. “Bring her here.”
This time, Verrick complied.
Nearly thirty hours after Bax’s interrogation, Dalton stumbled into Manny’s office. He was alone, bent over his work, humming a low prayer.
“They were yours,” she said in accusation.
Exhaustion should have slurred the words, but anger made everything clearer. Her voice. Her past. The look in Manny’s eyes as he lifted his head from the displays arrayed on the low tabletops that served as his desk. Manny’s office was frigid; it always was, by Human standards. But it was not the cold that made Dalton shiver, or tightened her jaw, or made her restless hands tremble by her sides.
She had not slept or showered since the interrogation; she’d barely paused in her research long enough to visit the accommodation and eat a package of crackers she’d found in a drawer. There had only been the work—the truth that she’d managed to dig out, sliver by sliver, from where it had been so carefully hidden.
Hidden, she knew now, only from her.
Manny shifted his bulk, leaning back on his ample haunches as he gave her his full attention.
“Yes,” he said. He did not need to ask who she meant.
Even so, she said their names: “Andreas and Lila, Mikael and Sanders—”
Manny lifted a hand to stop the flow of the names of her parents and brother, her aunts and uncles, and the many people they had hired. With that gesture of ivory-tipped fingers he asked for silence, but that—here, now—she could not give.
“There were forty people aboard the trader ship Dalton, and they all worked for you.”
There came a moment of silence as he looked at her. Dalton knew the real Manny: smiling, jovial, ever the optimist. In almost all of her memories, he was laughing. She’d seen this face before—his blank face, stripped of emotion—but never before had it been turned toward her.
The rare times she saw this expression, someone usually died. Even that thought was not enough to deter her.
“Yes,” Manouya said again.
“There really was a pirate attack. The Dashing Boy attacked and destroyed the Dalton—but not for anything in their holds. Not for information, or hostages, or anything else that they carried. They were attacked because you ordered it. You hired the ’Boy to kill them.”
“You’ve been doing your research, I see.”
“Surprised I’ve discovered your dirty secret?” Dalton all but spat the words.
Manny’s thick lips twisted, a gesture akin to a Human’s lift of an eyebrow. “Surprised, only, that it took you this long to look.”
“I trusted you!”
Manny laughed then, the rumbling sound full of genuine humor. “Grasis’ Glory, child. Why would you ever do that?”
She’d thought, she’d believed—
But no, that couldn’t matter now.
“In your research, did you find records of what the Dalton did? I don’t believe I left many intact.”
Despite her anger, the words came swift and smooth, just as he’d trained her: “It was a trader, clean record. Double holds, concealed compartments along the engine bay, dummy hold alongside the engine. It followed Plexis for six years, then worked the Deneb run for four.”
“And what did they do for their other employers?”
“Their other . . . ?” Dalton swallowed.
“They were freelancing,” Manny said. “Did you not find that part? Up to a third of the goods they transported were off the books they shared with me. They were stockpiling money. Establishing their own network of contacts.”
“For what?”
Manny smiled. “To overthrow me.”
As if that were possible. There had never been any question why Manouya was the mastermind behind every major smuggling ring in Human space—at least, in his opinion. “Smarter than the lot of you,” he often said with an emphatic fist to his own chest. Having watched his operation for as long as she could remember, Dalton couldn’t help but agree.
It was not just his leadership or techniques, his ability to see barriers not for their strengths but for the holes one might slip through. It was that he had a mind for patterns, one that was exemplary even for a Brill. He saw patterns in people and behavior as much as in money; he understood the tangled relationships between businesses and governments, information and power, in a blink of an eye.
She understood, then, what he was not saying. One trading vessel—a mere forty people, no matter how terrible that tally—was no threat to his shadow empire or his place at its head. Still she spoke the words: “One ship?”
“No. The captain and crew of the Dalton were but the ringleaders. They spread dissent like slow poison, drip by drip into an open vein. Into my networks, my contacts, my clients. Into my captains and ships.”
“And you let them?”
A low chuckle. “For a time. What better way to diagnose weakness in the flesh, while honing the knife to cut it out?”
“And the fate of the rest?”
“Of the whole of the Dalton rebellion,” Manny said with a twist of his thick lips, “there was only a single survivor. You.”
He had killed them, every one. Yet all she could think . . .
“Manny, why?” Dalton whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Why keep this from her for so long? Hadn’t she proven herself to him, time and again? Or did he think that she was like her parents and older brother, her aunts and uncles? Did he think that in her chest beat a traitor’s heart?
For a span of a breath she ached with that thought, before she at last understood the import of his last words: that she was the only survivor. What was it Bax had said? That she didn’t know what her own name meant. That she was the only one who had ever known Manouya’s questionable mercy.
Realization felt like a blow to her chest. “My name,” Dalton said. Her words came slow, each one a painful birth. “I wasn’t named for the ship, was I? I was named for the rebellion.”
Manny chuckled; he always liked when she proved herself clever. “The rebellion, and its failure.”
“My name is a warning. A reminder of what happens to those who dare cross you.”
Her parents’ rebellion hadn’t just been stopped. She knew Manny; she knew what he would have done. From root tip to unfurling leaf, he had destroyed them: every ship, every business, every record, every life. Every single drop of traitor’s blood was no more than dust and ruin scattered unceremoniously among the stars.
Every drop, but one. The sole survivor of the Dalton rebellion had been brought back into the fold and raised at the Facilitator’s knee, taught to cleave to him as a plant reaches for the sun.
The words were ash and blood in her mouth: “That’s all I am, isn’t it? I’m proof of your revenge—and the whole of your mercy.”
Deny it, Dalton dared him silently. Tell me I’m wrong.
Then, as the silence grew between them: Please.
Because perhaps revenge was why he’d kept and raised her—but as the years passed, hadn’t she become something more to him? If not his daughter or heir, then at least—something. She’d always thought that in his strange, alien way, Manny loved her. After all she’d done, after all she’d become, surely now she was more than a reminder to those who’d consider betrayal.
But Manouya, the Facilitator, the mastermind and uncontested ruler of every criminal smuggling ring in Human space, and the only father she’d ever known, simply looked at her, icy, impassive. A moment passed. A second.
“Was there anything else?” he asked. A quiet, final dismissal.
No denial. No excuse. No explanation. No apology.
He wasn’t going to say anything else, Dalton realized. Not now, not ever. She stared at him, heart thundering, throat thick with unshed tears. She wanted—
She needed—
She didn’t even know. But it was not this.
At last she took a breath, squared her shoulders, and met Manouya’s eyes. Nodded once. Then she turned and walked away without looking back.
She kept walking, leaving everything behind. Her training. Her friends. Her father. Her name.
She walked out of the ship. Out of this life. Forever.
Or so she had thought.
Because as she knelt with ’Flix’s blood soaking into her filthy coveralls, she did not feel like Maja Anders anymore. All she felt was a deep, aching silence that roared through her like a scream.
It had been a hard thing, starting again from nothing—but she had done it. She’d known how to navigate the complexities of worlds throughout the Trade Pact, the ins and outs of life on a starship, the immigration laws and legal complexities of some dozen potential homes. She’d crafted Maja Anders piece by careful piece, creating an alternate self so believable that no one would have cause to dig deeper.
She could have made a life for herself in any number of ways. She could have been a trader, an antiques dealer, an evaluator. But no, she’d wanted to do something real. If she dealt in history, let her carve it from rock and soil; if she paid in sweat and blood, let it be her own. She had no deep love of Hoveny artifacts or the secrets they might tell, but she knew enough from her years with the Facilitator to eventually earn a place for herself in a Triad.
And now . . . this. One way or another, she’d known she’d have to start again. But not like this.
Three pairs of footsteps approached. Two sets stayed back; she listened as that single set of sharp, precise steps drew closer. Stopped.
Maja would have been afraid; she knew it. She’d constructed this identity so carefully, and everything about Maja—from her sheltered, onworld upbringing to her years of scholarly study—should have made her crouch and cringe. Maja would have run, terrified.
No, more: Maja wouldn’t have been here in the first place.
Had she ever truly been Maja Anders?
“You seem to have wandered off the beaten path,” said a quiet voice.
She looked up to meet Captain Bennefeld’s eyes. Nodded once in acknowledgment.
“So it seems.” She turned back to ’Flix, limp and unmoving before her. The air smelled of blood and dust. “This has all gone terribly wrong.”
“Verrick told me of the recordings. That you proposed a deal.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter now.”
She’d never imagined seeing Bennefeld for the first time through a ventilation grate; she’d never truly believed that she’d speak to Bennefeld at all. Yet here she was.
“Tell me,” she asked, speaking words she’d never imagined. “Do you know who I am?”
Unspoken beneath: do you know what you did to me?
This person had killed her family in cold blood. Bennefeld had probably never had second thoughts about that job, never wondered about the lives she’d taken—or the life, singular, that had been left behind. The destruction of the Dalton had been just one unsavory task among the many that were Bennefeld’s bread and salt.
She should be angry, she knew. Angry for the deaths of her blood-kin and all that worked for them; angry for the loss of her true name and the life she could have had. And she was angry—but not, she realized, for those deaths. Not anymore. She had no memories to affix to those losses, only a few bare scraps of information that she’d been able to recover after the Facilitator’s purge. Now that the shock of discovery was years past, she could not maintain her blaze of righteous anger.
No, if she felt anger toward Bennefeld and her crew, it was only for what those long-ago actions had meant for Dalton at the very end. The loss of everything she’d ever wanted, the life she’d loved. The loss of Manny and his place in her heart.
And now, Bennefeld had ended Maja Anders.
This pirate had destroyed her life not once or twice, but three times over, all unknowing.
“Yes,” Bennefeld confirmed. “I know who you are.”
Do you? She looked down at her bloody hands and laughed, the sound a pale echo of Manouya’s deep chuckle. That makes one of us.
Because it was all falling apart now, everything she had built for herself, everything she had strived to achieve on her own. The last of Maja Anders was crumbling, patterns of thought and habit flaking like old paint—and as that sense of self fell away, piece by painful piece, she felt so very relieved.
Never had she lived a constructed identity for so long. Never had something she thought she wanted, something she thought she deserved, felt so false or constraining.
Which left . . . what?
Because if she no longer felt rage toward Bennefeld—was that what forgiveness was, a weary end to hate?—she could not say the same for Manouya. She understood why he had destroyed her family and the rebellion they’d nurtured; had something similar happened when she’d worked at Manny’s side, she would have had a hand in the distribution of such justice, too. What she could not comprehend was what he had made her become.
Why had he raised her, trained her, created her to be his small, Human-shaped shadow? She’d called herself the proof of his revenge, the whole of his mercy—and he had not denied it. Yet now, she realized, there had to be something more, something deeper. Not love, as she’d once believed; nothing like a Human heart beat within the Brill’s chest. Not kindness. But something.
She knew so many of his secrets—and he had let her walk away.
It was then that she realized: she was the only Human that Manouya had ever trusted. His right hand, they had called her; his daughter, his heir. Did it matter that none of those titles had been true? She alone had the power to speak in his name.
She breathed deep, smelling blood and dust, as something within her woke. The part of herself that she had kept separate, secret even from herself through all her years as Maja. The part of herself that had watched.
Since she was a child at Manny’s knee, she’d tracked the movements of the Trade Pact—the legal and illegal alike. Pirates and governments, stock markets and insurgencies, traders and royalty and refugees. All the crisscrossing webs of hope and greed, love and revenge, that reached across the known worlds.
Patterns, that watcher within her whispered. Patterns within patterns—just as Manouya had taught her.
What had he wanted her to see? What was it that Manouya feared?
Betrayal, that voice said. But no, it was deeper than that: a traitor in his midst. A threat in Human form that for all his cleverness, all his threats, all his power and cruelty, Manouya could not uncover or burn away.
Or was it bigger than just his smuggling empire? She let her mind range farther, wider, thinking about traitors in the Triads, the fears of the First; thinking about the chatter on the coms that she’d listened to long into the night. There was, she thought, something there—a pattern she could only begin to glimpse, unfurling in her head petal by slow petal.
One that spoke of a great power moving in secret within the Trade Pact.
Manouya had been waiting for her to see it, she realized. He had been testing her, the way he’d tested her with their game of Surveillance; the way he’d tested her with the burden of her name. It was a test she’d spent years failing. But not now. Not anymore.
Manouya had made Dalton because he needed her, one Human he could trust among the untold billions. One Human who would never betray him; a Human who, because of her own foolish heart, never could.
For one long moment, she stared at ’Flix’s cooling body, the patterns of his blood. Then Dalton stood, met the eyes of the one who had destroyed her life three times over, and smiled.
“I think it’s time we came to an agreement, you and I.”
Captain Bennefeld inclined her head. Dalton knew that Bennefeld’s ever-present bodyguards had their weapons trained on her, waiting for a false move—or a nod from their captain. They didn’t matter. There was only Bennefeld, and the path Dalton could already see waiting before her.
“The recordings, I presume?”
Dalton waved a bloody hand. “Irrelevant. Consider them destroyed. No, I’m carrying information of great value to the Facilitator. In return for your cooperation, he will reward you handsomely. In his name, I promise you that.”
Bennefeld raised a slow eyebrow, considering. At last she asked, “In exchange for what?”
Dalton smiled; it was a sad smile, one that spoke of loss and regret and all the possible lives she would not live. Then she said, “I need you to take me home.”
In the end, she was her father’s daughter.