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“You know these links can work both ways, right?”
The voice echoed inside my skull, and I startled so badly I tipped over my chair.
Rohan snickered.
“Smart ass,” I said, and the little smirk that had accompanied the snicker turned into a grin.
“It’s almost lunch time,” he said, and I looked at the computer. “Do you think you got enough done?”
Great! Now, the kid was going to nag me.
It’s my lunch, too, he reminded me, and I realized four hours had passed since I’d sent him the footage of what had been ‘discussed’ this morning. It reminded me of something else, too.
“Was your implant secure?”
“Yup,” and he looked very pleased with himself, “and yours is, too.”
It was my turn to stare.
“How do you know that?”
“I poked it.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“I know, but the implant did. Tens has put some really good stuff in your head.”
“Nice to know,” I said, and we both jumped as someone knocked at the door.
The kid looked alarmed.
“You locked it?”
I nodded, and smirked, but then I decided not to keep whoever it was waiting.
“Open,” I said, and the boy rolled his eyes.
You could at least have checked the surveillance feeds to see who it was, he scolded, but I was really glad he hadn’t said that out loud.
The lieutenant hadn’t come alone, and, if there was anything these guys didn’t need to know, it was that our implants were compatible enough for communication.
You might be in the shit, Rohan observed through our link, and I had to agree.
The tanglers were being carried in plain sight.
“Didn’t I get enough done?” I asked, but the lieutenant didn’t give me the answer I was looking for.
“Tampering with ship’s systems will not be tolerated,” he said, and I stared at him.
What did you do? I asked, but Rohan’s mental shrug came through loud and clear.
The lieutenant looked at me, and was clearly waiting for an answer. I swallowed, because my throat had gone dry, and looked for a reply.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I said. “What’s been done?”
And they unloaded a twenty second burst into me.
“Still don’t know?” the lieutenant asked, when they stopped and I was quiet.
“No,” I retorted.
And they hit me again.
“Are you sure?”
And I wanted to weep, because I really, really didn’t know what they were on about. The voice lock was something that had already been done, so I was pretty sure they didn’t mean that, but I couldn’t think of anything else. And I didn’t want to answer, either, because that was only going to get me tangled once more. The lieutenant was not a patient man. After a five-second burst with his tangler, he spoke, again.
“Are you sure you didn’t tamper with the ship?”
I didn’t want to answer, and I knew I had to. Five seconds might become ten, or longer, and I couldn’t stand another burst.
“No...” It came out as a cross between a sob and a groan, and I waited for the next punishing hit.
It didn’t come. Instead, my answer was followed by silence. I didn’t bother looking up. I didn’t even bother getting up. I just stayed curled up on my knees on the floor, feeling the sweat dry on my skin. The lieutenant’s voice made me jump.
“What about you boy?”
“Like I’d know how,” Rohan snapped, and was rewarded with a very short tangle burst.
He screamed, but he didn’t fall off the bed. I didn’t see what happened next, but I heard the boy’s response.
“I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t. Please, I don’t know how...”
And more silence followed. I waited for the sound of the tangler being fired, but didn’t hear it. When the silence had grown long enough to be uncomfortable, I raised my head. The lieutenant was still standing in the doorway, but his head was tilted to one side, and he was clearly focused on the inside of it. Finally, he looked down at me, and then across at the boy.
“Captain says you’re both to come to lunch.”
I was both elated and terrified at the same time. Rohan scrambled off the bed and came to stand beside me, slipping his hand through mine, as the lieutenant turned away. I squeezed the boy’s hand and got to my feet, and we followed the lieutenant together. Whatever lay ahead of us, at least I’d know what was happening to him. If he stayed in the cabin, I’d never be sure.
Lunch, as it turned out, looked like it was going to be just lunch. We were served sandwiches, and we got to listen to the latest ship’s news, as Bendigo’s officers made their reports. I was guessing Bendigo had bought Mack and Tens’ little fiction about my implant being only short range, because they mentioned getting an update from their ‘spy’.
What got to me was the way they pretended to completely ignore Rohan, while they rubbed the fact of his mum’s betrayal, right in his face. I watched as he got redder and redder, and then nudged him as his eating slowed.
“Eat,” I whispered, and he looked up at me. “You never know when they’ll feed you next.”
This last bit drew amused glances from around the table, but Rohan did as he was told, albeit slowly.
“She says Mack’s shadowing us.”
Beside me, Rohan drew in a sharp breath, and I watched as everyone turned toward him. Bendigo managed a smile.
“Don’t worry, boy. It’s not like he can afford to catch up to us. He wants the files Cutter’s going to fetch for me.”
Rohan scowled, but looked down at his plate. He even managed to keep eating. I watched as Bendigo’s smile grew wider and then vanished, as he turned to me.
“You have three days to get those files into your head,” he said. “Comprond?”
I nodded.
“Way,” I managed, even though the language program had said it as ‘Wee’. After all, that wasn’t how Marl had said it.
Bendigo raised an eyebrow.
“Bon,” he said. “Apray dejernay, too dwa eytyudeeay.”
“Okaaaay,” I said, and hoped he’d take it that I’d understood, while I hoped even more that he hadn’t said anything too important, because the only word I’d gotten was ‘bon’.
I was also wondering why Odyssey wanted him so badly. People smugglers came and went. Why did they want this one enough that they had to waltz a full team into a trap? They were supposed to be a lot more careful than that. I stared at him, waiting for whatever was going to come next, because something was; I could tell from the suppressed tension running around the table.
Rohan picked up on it, too—and set his sandwich down on his plate. After that, he pushed back his chair.
Oh, lord, kid, I thought. What the hell have you done?
Because the kid had a point. Bendigo, the lieutenant, and the guys across the table from us? They weren’t focused on me; they were focused on him.
You need to get me out of here, Rohan said, and his voice sounded desperate in my head.
Uh huh, I said. Give me a minute.
And he waited, poised on the edge of his chair.
And try to look relaxed, or we won’t be going nowhere. I picked up my sandwich, and took a bite. At the same time, I sent him the blueprints of the ship, the ones showing the secret tunnels. I made sure to trace the route from our room to the hidden ship.
Beside me, Rohan turned his attention to the map, and went back to eating. I watched Bendigo over the top of my sandwich. It wasn’t comforting to see that he was watching me just as closely.
“Well,” he said, “that was interesting.”
I swallowed, trying to clear the sandwich before my mouth went completely dry. If nothing else, the exchange between Rohan and me had shifted their attention. I raised an eyebrow, trying to keep my unease off my face. Noting Bendigo’s expression, I put my sandwich back on my plate, and reached for my glass of water.
Bendigo continued to watch, letting me take several sips, before he pounced.
“What was Mack’s rule for discipline?” he asked, his voice going very soft.
“Three rounds on the mats,” I said, feeling my throat go tight.
At the same time, I shot a thought to Rohan, making sure to keep my eyes locked on Bendigo’s face.
“Don’t say a word,” I told him. “No matter what.”
“But...”
“I will keep us alive,” I said, but Bendigo was speaking again, and I couldn’t focus on the two conversations at once.
“...how we do it here,” Bendigo said, and I blinked.
“How we do what?” I asked, and his lips quirked in momentary amusement.
“Discipline.”
The word hit like a ton, and my heart sank. Shit was getting interesting, but not in a way I was gonna like. All I could hope was that I’d done enough to keep the boy out of it.
“So,” I said, and my voice was laced with caution. “How is discipline done here?”
Bendigo rocked back in his chair, and Rohan shifted uncomfortably beside me. I laid a hand on the kid’s knee, willing him not to do anything stupid before we could get ourselves out of the room, hoping to avoid anything stupid in the meantime. Bendigo stilled as a large screen opened up on the wall behind him. In it, I was being shoved into the airlock.
Rohan gasped, and Bendigo switched from me to him.
Damn.
“You want to know why she’s still here, boy?”
And Rohan nodded. Around us, all the others pushed back their chairs and stood. Rohan froze, and I pushed away from the table. Bendigo leaned forward, fixing Rohan in his gaze.
“Because I need her.”
Rohan shot me a panicked look, and I tightened my grip on his knee, willing him to stay put, thinking fast as I tried to find some way to keep Bendigo from hurting him. It was not a comfort when two of Bendigo’s officers came to stand behind me, and another two stood behind Rohan, while the last one went to lounge against the ward-room door.
I didn’t need to check the blueprints to know there was only one other way out of the room—and Bendigo had it covered. I knew Rohan took a moment to check, because he wasn’t concentrating on what was happening, when Bendigo dropped his next bombshell.
“I don’t need you,” he said, and Rohan jerked his head around to face him.
“But—” and Bendigo kept talking, rolling over the boy’s abortive protest.
“I could tell your mother you were still alive, and she’d never know you’d taken a trip out the airlock, until it was too late.”
Rohan closed his mouth, and I took a quick and silent breath.
“I’d know.” I dropped that in, as Bendigo opened his mouth to continue, as the two guys behind Rohan hauled the kid out of his seat. “I’d know, and it matters.”
Bendigo turned his head toward me, so I kept talking, and hoped he never called my bluff—because I didn’t want to die. If he called my bluff, I would, because I wasn’t bluffing. All I could hope was that he remembered what had happened when he’d put me in the airlock before, the thing that was happening, now, on the screen behind his head.
I made myself raise my head and look past him, watching as the outer lock started to open, and the wind began to blow. It was hard to keep watching through that, but I kept my eyes on the screen, willing him to remember that I hadn’t given in then—over a room—and hoping he’d work out just how much I wouldn’t give in, now there was something more important at stake.
He glanced back at the screen, and then turned a thunderous glare at me.
“You’d prefer a bulkhead and a set of tanglers?” he asked, and I shook my head, but he wouldn’t be deterred. “Then what?”
I resisted the urge to shrug, and searched for an answer, found one, and gave it my best shot.
“We’d take this as a warning,” I said, glancing at Rohan. I indicated the screen over Bendigo’s head, and spoke quickly. “You’ve delivered us a warning, and we don’t want to die.”
In the silence that followed, I waited, and tried to breathe. I also looked away from Rohan, and back to Bendigo, which was pretty hard. I didn’t want to beg, but I was thinking of giving it a try, when Bendigo spoke.
“I’ll consider it,” he said. “You’re both confined to quarters.”
He nodded to the officers standing behind us, and I got to my feet. I wanted to thank him, but I was afraid it might make him change his mind. I had a bad feeling we had only just escaped making a bunch of memories we didn’t want to have, but maybe we’d only delayed it. That feeling stuck with me, all the way to our quarters. It didn’t help that Bendigo followed Rohan and me, and our escorts, all the way back.
We got there without anything happening, but they didn’t leave us at the door. They followed us in, and shut the door behind us, releasing us with a hard shove in the direction of our beds. I stumbled forward, and turned, but that was as far as I got. The tangler blast hit me as Bendigo came into view, and the pain knocked all coherent thought from my head.
I dropped where I was, came to in a room with no sign of Bendigo and his thugs anywhere to be seen. Slowly, I uncurled, looking around for Rohan. I was not happy to see him collapsed in a pile at the foot of the bed.
“Bastards,” I said, but all I did was pull the blanket off the bed, and drape it over the boy’s still form... and then I figured I should check his pulse.
He took a breath as I knelt beside him, so I shuffled back to give him room. When he lifted his head, he saw me, and scrambled back away from me as far as he could. I stayed still, waiting for him to register who it was, and that I wouldn’t hurt him.
“You okay?” I asked, when he’d stopped, and some sort of understanding had returned to his eyes.
He stared at me, so I waited. When he hadn’t answered after what felt like a minute, I reached out to his implant.
You okay?
And he shook his head.
Well, you will be, I told him. Okay?
His mouth started to quiver, and tears welled up in his eyes. I resisted the urge to go and wrap my arms around him. I wasn’t his mother, and I didn’t know what to do. In the end, I decided to ask.
“You need a hug?” and that was all it took.
He crossed the space between us, and I hugged him. I couldn’t think of anything to say so I just wrapped my arms around him, and ignored it when he started to cry. When his sobs subsided, and his shoulders stopped shaking, I let him go, giving him a sense of privacy by looking around the room.
“We need to get changed,” I said. “We stink.”
It was true. The aftermath of a good tangler hit, wasn’t something to linger in. I pointed at the san unit.
“You go first. I’ll try and find you some clean clothes.”
He shook his head.
“How about you go first, and I’ll find the clothes.”
I shrugged.
“Sure, but don’t go anywhere, okay? We’re in enough trouble as it is.”
I pinged his implant, again.
“We’re out of here, as soon as we’re clean. Wait for me. Deal?”
He hesitated, but then replied.
“Deal,” and I breathed again, because I was pretty sure he’d been planning on making a break for it, the minute my back was turned.
I got clean fast, and then switched places with him. He’d found a pair of scissors in the medical kit, and cut one of the ship suits hanging in the closet down to size. It looked a bit ragged, but it fitted him fine... once he put on the belt dangling from his other hand. I had a narrow waist, but it wasn’t that narrow.
While he got clean, I hacked the surveillance feeds on the room. Sure, there were some pretty serious penalties for interfering with ship systems, but I didn’t intend for either of us to be there when Bendigo and his goons found out. It didn’t take me long to access the feed, and then take a sneak peek into the passage running past our room.
It was empty, so I tweaked the security system to ping the implant if anyone came within ten meters of the cabin, or entered through the two doors I found in between that marker and our cabin. I also took a look at where the escape craft was located, and noted the crates stacked around it, ready for loading.
Of course, Bendigo knew the ship was there. He’d worked with Marl, after all. How could I possibly have thought we’d get a free run at this?
I watched as three men loaded the crates onto the tiny drop-ship, and wondered what Bendigo could be planning. As far as I knew, Marl hadn’t known he was boarding. Why would Bendigo have a cargo for where we were going?
