“You said you wanted to be informed if something unusual happened on our way out from End,” Captain Tomi Blinnikka said, to Kiva. They were two days out from End, and another day out from the Flow shoal that would have them heading toward Hub. Kiva and Blinnikka were in the captain’s private room, off the bridge of the Yes, Sir, along with Chief of Security Nubt Pinton. The room could comfortably fit two people tops, and Pinton was exceedingly large. Kiva felt like she could actually taste his sweat particles.
“What is it?” she asked.
Blinnikka activated a tablet and showed it to Kiva. It featured a live feed of the Yes, Sir’s position in space, along with the logarithmically mapped position of other objects and ships within a light-minute of distance. “We’ve got a ship coming toward us.”
“Toward us? Or toward the shoal?”
“Us. We plotted its course and it’s going to intercept us in about fourteen hours. When we first saw it and saw its course, I made the assumption it was also running to the shoal and just wasn’t paying attention to our position. I boosted our velocity by half a percent, to get us clear of each other. They didn’t respond immediately, but over the last couple of hours they’ve boosted their own velocity to match ours. We’re definitely the targets.”
“So, pirates.”
“Yes.”
“Stupid pirates.” The best time to nab a ship was when it was exiting the Flow, not trying to get to it; inertia would send a target ship into the Flow shoal regardless. Pirate ships were usually relatively small, relatively fast, and almost always local—which is to say, with no equipment to shape a time-space bubble around their ships. If they entered the Flow, they’d die. A pirate attacking an outgoing ship would likely have only a very small window of time to attack successfully, board, unload cargo, and disengage.
“Stupid or they have a plan we don’t understand.”
“We can handle them, right?” The Yes, Sir came with a full complement of defensive weapons, and a small contingent of offensive weapons as well. The offensive weapons were technically illegal for a trade ship to have, but fuck that, when you’re in space, sometimes you have to shoot first and lie about it to a guild inquiry later.
“The ship is too far away to get a good look at its true capabilities, but if the thrust signature is correct, it’s a Winston-class freighter. It’s probably modified all to hell but no matter what they’re still small, which limits their offensive capabilities. We can probably handle them. If their intention is to pirate the ship.”
“What other intention would they have? They want to invite us to tea?”
“We don’t know. Right now our posture is to watch and monitor.”
“You can outrun them to the shoal. Power up now.”
Blinnikka shook his head. “The second we boost velocity more than trivially we give away that we know we’re being tracked. They’ll boost as well, probably to intercept earlier. If we plan to outrun them, we do it as late as possible, and when they’re close enough for us to target with those missiles we’re not supposed to have. But again, that’s if they are attempting the usual piracy.”
Kiva found herself getting irritated. “What the fuck would unusual piracy be in this case?”
“We don’t know, and that’s the point. They’re coming at us from the wrong direction and they wouldn’t have enough time to fully unload even if they didn’t have to burn time fighting us. But they should also know that we don’t have anything worth stealing right now. Pirates have spies at stations, who give them information about ships and their cargo manifests. It’s how they decide who to target. But they wouldn’t even have to be crafty to know that the only cargo we took on at End was people, since we didn’t make a secret of that. And unless they really want haverfruit concentrate, we have nothing of value.”
“They know we have nothing they want or can use and they’re coming at us anyway.”
“Yes. This is what worries me.”
Kiva nodded. “Fine. What’s the second thing?”
“One of our passengers is acting strangely,” Nubt Pinton said.
“All our passengers are rich assholes,” Kiva said. “Acting strangely is part of their so-called charm.”
Pinton smiled slightly at that. “I will take the lady’s word for that,” he said. “However, in this case, the problem is not the passenger being eccentric, but the passenger methodically casing the ship.” Pinton picked up his own tablet and sent video to the one Kiva was holding. In the video, a man was walking through the ship corridors, looking around.
“Oh my God, this man is walking, let’s kill him,” Kiva said.
“It’s not that he’s walking, it’s where he’s walking. He’s not wandering the ship randomly or generally. He’s going into areas relating to engineering, propulsion, and life support management.”
“So, only to those places?”
“No,” Pinton said. “He goes other places as well. But these are the places he’s come back to. He doesn’t come in far and he never stays long. But he comes back.”
“Why don’t you have the passengers on a fucking lockdown?” Kiva asked, setting down the tablet. “We don’t need these assholes wandering the ship anyway.”
“That was our original plan, and in fact our passengers have already been given a list of areas they are absolutely not allowed to go into.”
“Which this guy ignores.”
“No, but he’s come close. But he’s not focused, say, on Engineering directly. He’s focused on places on the ship where it might be easy to disrupt engineering systems.”
“Which brings me back to my first fucking question, Pinton.”
Pinton waggled the tablet he held in his hand. “We didn’t lock them down entirely because one of our crew recognizes this man, and we wanted to see what he might be up to.”
“Which rich asshole is he?”
“That’s just it. The crew person says he’s not a rich asshole. He’s someone who works for a rich asshole.”
“Which crew member said this?”
“A new purser named Kristian Jensen. I understand you know him.”
“And who does he say this dude worked for?”
“Ghreni Nohamapetan.”
“Get him in here now,” Kiva said.
* * *
“So, I used to work for the family of the Count of Claremont,” Jensen began.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Kiva said, exasperatedly. “Lord Marce, everyone in this room knows you’re you.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Marce said.
“Well, now you are, so get on with it.”
Marce nodded. “I didn’t have a lot of contact with Lord Ghreni, but I’d see him sometimes at court functions at the duke’s, and other events and parties where the presence of a noble was considered a plus. Ghreni was one of those nobles who would travel with an entourage of friends and employees.” He pointed at Pinton’s tablet. “This was one of the employees. Former military, working for Ghreni as a bodyguard.”
“You’re sure about that,” Blinnikka asked Marce.
“I’m sure,” Marce said. “Vrenna pointed him out to me once. He and she were in the same unit for a while. Said he was a competent solider but a shit human being and that at one point she nearly fed him his testicles because he kept propositioning her in the barracks. Every time I saw him since I imagined his own balls in his mouth.”
“That’s a lovely image,” Kiva said.
“When I saw him in the passenger ring section, I checked in with security.” Marce nodded to Pinton.
“I assume this asshole is traveling on fake documents,” Kiva said, to Pinton.
“Yes,” Pinton confirmed. “For our records he’s Tysu Gouko. Bear in mind we gave him that particular fake identity, so we can’t really hold it against him. But he presented himself as a franchisee of the House of Sykes, when he came to us. Name of Frinn Klimta.”
“Is there a real Frinn Klimta?”
“Maybe? We didn’t check. We didn’t believe you cared, ma’am, as long as their money was real, and it was.”
Kiva turned to Marce. “What’s this asshole’s real name?”
“His personal name is Chat. His family name I think is Ubdal. Or Uttal. One of the two.”
“Any idea why he’s here?”
“I have no idea,” Marce said. “But if he came to you with an already fake identity, I think that’s enough for you to be suspicious.”
“When did he book passage?” Kiva asked Pinton.
“Just before we left. He was one of the last people we booked. Magnut charged him a late fee of a quarter million marks.”
Kiva pointed at Marce. “So that would have been after you were kidnapped.”
Marce nodded. “Yes.”
“He one of the guys who grabbed you?”
“No. I definitely would have remembered that.”
“So he doesn’t know who you are right now.”
“I don’t know. Probably not. He hasn’t responded to me yet.”
“But he would recognize you out of this disguise.”
“Yes.”
Kiva reached over to Marce, grabbed his hair, and tugged. Marce yelped in pain and surprise. “Stop it! It doesn’t just come off. You have to dissolve the glue.”
“Where is this asshole now?” Kiva asked Pinton.
“He’s in the passenger ring section,” Pinton replied. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to find out what he’s up to.”
“The Yes, Sir is underway,” Blinnikka reminded Kiva. “Whatever you plan to do, I have to approve. I don’t want this asshole damaging the ship.”
“It’ll be fine,” Kiva promised. She turned back to Marce. “So this asshole is a marine.”
“Was a marine, yes. Is now a bodyguard.”
“You think you could take him?”
“What? No.”
“Does this asshole know that?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, good.”
* * *
They waited until Chat went on a walk and then positioned a couple of security crew at the end of a corridor they knew he was casing, giving every appearance of just having a conversation with each other. Chat saw them, decided to consult his tablet about something, and then headed back in the direction which he had come from, to find two other security crew there. He stopped and appeared to be calculating his odds when Marce stepped into the corridor, his Kristian Jansen disguise removed, and walked toward him.
“Hello, Chat,” Marce said, and that was as far as he got before Chat materialized a blade out of fucking nowhere and rushed directly for him.
And then was on the floor half a second later, twitching, three stun bolts in him.
“Did you pee yourself?” Kiva asked Marce ten seconds later, when the all clear had been given. She and Pinton had been waiting a bit down the corridor and had been watching through the corridor camera, feed piped into a tablet.
“Maybe a little,” Marce admitted, looking at the downed Chat, who was now being bundled up by security.
“There’s no shame in pissing yourself like a goddamned fire hydrant when a trained killer is about to knife you in the throat.”
“Can we change the subject?” Marce asked, plaintively.
“Why don’t you take the rest of your shift off and shiver in your bunk,” Kiva suggested. “In your shoes that’s what I’d do.”
Marce motioned toward Chat. “What are you going to do with him?”
“I’m going to encourage him to talk.”
“That’s not going to work.”
“You know nothing of my methods.”
“He’s trained not to talk.”
“He was also trained to kill, and look how he fucked that up.”
“I want to be there when you question him.”
“No you don’t.”
“I really do.”
“Let me put it another way, Lord Marce. Fuck you, go away.”
“He almost killed me. I think I deserve to know why.”
“And maybe I’ll tell you, later. But for now, if you don’t fuck off, right this second, I’m going to stab you myself. And none of these security guys are going to put a bolt into me, I guarantee you that.”
Marce looked like he was going to say something else, then shook his head and walked off.
“Your people skills are admirable,” Pinton said to Kiva.
“Fuck you, too,” Kiva said.
Pinton smiled at that and pointed at Chat, secured and ready for transport. “He’s right, you know. This one’s not going to talk. They’re trained to resist aggressive questioning.”
“‘Aggressive questioning’?”
“That’s the euphemism we used for torture in the imperial service, ma’am.”
“Just fucking call it torture, then.”
“My point is he’s been trained to deal with whatever humans can do to him.”
“We can do better than humans,” Kiva said.
* * *
“He’s coming to,” Pinton said, some time later.
“Turn on the speaker,” Kiva said. Pinton pressed the button to open a channel. “Good morning, fuckface,” she said, to Chat.
Chat looked at his surroundings. “Where am I?” he asked.
“You’re in a service airlock, in an EVA suit,” Kiva said. “Well, most of one, anyway. You might have noticed you’re missing a helmet.”
“I noticed,” Chat said.
“Good. So, this is the deal. You tell us everything we ask you questions about, and don’t give us any shit about it, and I don’t purge you out the airlock without that fucking helmet.”
Chat looked exasperated, confused, and tired. “Look, I don’t even know what’s going o—”
Kiva pressed the “Emergency Purge” command. The airlock door burst open and Chat was sucked out into space.
“Well, that was quick,” Pinton said.
“I told you I don’t fuck around,” Kiva replied. She pressed the “Emergency Retrieve” button. The winch that held the cord attached to the EVA suit slammed into overdrive, reeling the suit back in, triple-time. “Anyway. So how long can a human live in hard vacuum?”
“Maybe a minute, if he didn’t hold his breath.”
“He was talking,” Kiva said. “He didn’t have time to hold his breath.”
Less than a minute later Chat was back inside the airlock, which was fully pressurized with an oxygen-rich mixture. A minute after that Chat was awake, coughing and vomiting. He looked up at the airlock camera with hemorrhaged eyeballs. Pinton opened the communication circuit again.
“So, here’s the deal,” Kiva repeated. “You tell us everything we ask you questions about, and you don’t give us any shit about it, and I don’t purge you out of the airlock without that fucking helmet. I’m not going to repeat myself again. You fuck with me and you die. Got it?”
Chat croaked and nodded.
“Can you talk yet?”
Chat held up a gloved finger as if to say Give me a second.
“How about now?” Kiva asked, ten seconds later.
Chat looked up through bloodshot eyes with an expression that said You have to be fucking kidding me, but nodded.
“You’re Chat Ubdal.”
Nod.
“You came onto this ship under false pretenses.”
Nod.
“You work for Ghreni Nohamapetan.”
Nod.
“Who sent you out on this ship.”
Nod.
“To kill Marce Claremont.”
Chat held up a hand and made a wiggling motion. Sorta.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Chat tried to make words, stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “Not primary goal,” he managed to croak.
“What was your primary goal?”
“Take him alive.”
“How the fuck were you going to take him alive? You can’t leave the fucking ship!”
Chat looked at the airlock door and then back at the camera, as if to say, Oh, really.
“You can’t leave the ship alive, then, you enormous asshole.”
“Pirates,” Chat croaked.
“Oh, shit,” Kiva said, looking over at Pinton.
“The pirates aren’t coming for our cargo,” Pinton said. “They’re a shuttle service.”
“But we could get away from the pirates,” Kiva said, back to Chat. “Maybe.”
Chat shook his head. “Bomb,” he said.
“A bomb?” Kiva was incredulous. “You were going to put a fucking bomb on this ship?” Chat nodded. “How does blowing up the fucking ship serve your purpose?”
Chat shook his head and tried talking but he was trying to make too many words and choked to a stop.
“Let me try,” Pinton said, and leaned over so Chat could hear him. “You weren’t going to blow up the ship, were you? You were just going to disrupt the ship’s systems enough that it couldn’t get into the Flow.”
Chat nodded and pointed to the camera, as if to say, You got it.
“That’s why he was touring those particular corridors,” Pinton said, to Kiva. “He was looking for the right place to put the thing.”
“And he didn’t think we would notice? Blinnikka would space him the second he did that.”
“We’d have to deal with the explosion and damage first, and then there would be pirates and we’d be too busy to worry about him for a while. I suspect he intended to leave on the pirate ship, along with Claremont.”
“And how would he get a bomb on the fucking ship anyway? Don’t we fucking screen for that?”
“It’s probably not a big bomb,” Pinton said. “He could probably make it on the ship.” Pinton leaned back over. “If we go through your personal effects, we’re going to find bomb components disguised as toiletries and sundries, yes?”
Chat nodded.
“There you go,” Pinton said.
“This motherfucker,” Kiva said. “I want to space him just on principle.”
“Microphone,” Pinton said, pointing.
Kiva realized she was close enough to the open circuit that Chat heard that last comment. She looked at the screen to see him with a concerned expression on his face. She rolled her eyes and leaned in again. “I’m not going to kill you, you miserable shitfuck. Unless you stop talking. Or croaking. Or whatever the fuck it is you’re doing at the moment. Just keep doing it.” Chat nodded. Kiva turned to Pinton. “Turn that thing off for a second.”
Pinton slapped closed the communication circuit. “What is it?”
“Something’s not right about this,” Kiva said.
“None of it is right,” Pinton said. “This is all highly fucked up, ma’am.”
“No, I mean—” Kiva pointed at Chat, who was waiting, looking up at the camera. “He wants to bring Claremont back, and he’s willing to damage the ship to do it. Ghreni is willing to deal with fucking pirates to bring him back.”
“You said that Lord Ghreni tried holding him hostage to get those imperial funds released. Maybe he just really needs them.”
“Yeah, okay, but shithole here,” Kiva motioned again toward Chat, “tried to kill him once he realized he was trapped and found out. If he couldn’t bring him back, he needed to kill him. But if he killed him, then he couldn’t use him as a fucking hostage, now, could he? So what was the fucking point? Why did Ghreni go through all this effort? What’s the reason?”
“You got me,” Pinton said.
“Yeah. Open that circuit.” Pinton turned it back on. “Important question, Chat. If I don’t believe you, your lungs are coming out through your nose. You got it?”
Chat nodded.
“Why does your boss want Marce Claremont so fucking bad?”
“Don’t know,” Chat croaked.
“Your fucking lungs, Chat.”
“I. Don’t. Know,” Chat said again, so emphatically the last word came out as a wheeze. “I thought ransom. But makes no sense.”
“Because you were told to kill him if you couldn’t bring him back alive.”
Chat nodded.
“Well, can’t you fucking guess?” Kiva asked. “You work directly with Ghreni. You have to have heard something. You have to be able to speculate.”
Chat shook his head. “Doesn’t talk. Unless involved, nothing.”
“You’re involved, Chat.”
“To do. Not for why.”
Kiva nodded to Pinton again, and he closed the circuit. “Well?” she asked him.
“I think he’s telling the truth.”
“I know the fucker is telling the truth,” Kiva said. “I want to know what you think we do now.”
“Well, we don’t space him,” Pinton pointed at Chat. “He’s been cooperative.”
“Hard vacuum will do that.”
“So he’s not a problem anymore. But we still have the pirates on their way. And if Lord Ghreni was willing to go this far to get Claremont back, then you have to figure he has a plan for if Chat here failed.”
“You mean the pirates are going to either come away with their prize or make sure he’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“And if we all happen to die too, then that’s just the way it goes.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, shit, Pinton,” Kiva said. She looked back to Chat. “I guess we better give them what they want.”