Felix nodded to Tib, who opened the airtight carrying case she wore across her chest, removed their “artifact,” and placed it in on the table.
The Hylar picked up the crystal assemblage with delicate pseudopods, and some of the lenses on his face rearranged themselves. “Interesting. These crystals could be part of the original specification, but they’re more likely caused by chemical leakage, or the side effect of some process gone wrong. This glow looks like… huh. It appears to be a simple luminescent gloss, of the sort that fades over time. This paint isn’t nearly as old as the rest of this object appears to be – in fact, I recognize it as a variety produced here on Hylar. People paint it on their windows during the Festival of Luminous Depths.” He looked up at them, his eyes magnified by the lenses. “Gentlepersons, I hope you haven’t wasted my time with some amateurish attempt at a hoax–”
The device abruptly cracked open, breaking into two unequal halves, and a tightly rolled piece of paper slipped out. “What’s this? A message from the ancient aliens, written conveniently in a language I can read? Really, Heuvelt and Dob, this is disappointing.” He unrolled the paper and stared at it, lenses telescoping.
Felix looked at Tib. What the hell was going on?
“‘Courtesy of Phillip Caruthers,’” Woryela read. “What, that man who published those absurd papers about a theory of everything? What is the meaning of this –”
Gas began to hiss from the sundered device, and Felix instinctively held his breath. Thales had claimed the artifact wouldn’t hurt them, but he also hadn’t mentioned his plan to include a personal note for the director. Felix waited for Woryela to slump over and pass out, but instead the Hylar gasped and writhed, limbs spasming wildly, knocking the artifact off the table. Woryela fell off the stool and looked up at them, lenses askew, eyes somehow pleading. He tried to crawl to the door, then shuddered all over again, and slumped.
Tib knelt and looked the Hylar over. “He’s not unconscious, Felix. He’s dead.”
Of course he was. Felix clutched his helmet. “Thales. He used us, and we – Tib, we just assassinated a high-ranking official! We committed murder!”
“We were used as murder weapons, anyway.” Tib scooped up the artifact and put it away in the case. “Wrestle with the implications later, captain. We need to finish the mission and get out of here.”
Of course. Bad as this was, getting caught wouldn’t make it any better. Felix found the note from Thales and shoved it in a pouch on his suit. No reason to leave any evidence behind.
“You stay here,” Tib said. “I’ll go look for the power cell. We’ve come this far.” She opened the bag and removed a small spherical device, half matte black, half crystal. It was, Thales claimed, a perfect replica of the power source they were stealing – not functional, of course, but with a mess of fused wire inside that might fool the engineers into thinking the device had merely malfunctioned, at least for a while. The original plan was, Tib would take the real cell and replace it with the fake one, and when Woryela woke up in a confused daze, no one would even know a robbery had taken place.
Tib searched the director’s body until she found a badge and held it up. “Our key to victory. Let’s hope the plans Thales drew up are accurate. I don’t want to get lost down here.” She peered into different pools, finally settling on one in the far corner that should lead to the deeper labs, then put on her helmet and dropped out of sight.
That left Felix, sitting there with a cooling body, desperately hoping the receptionist wouldn’t decide now was the time to offer him a drink, that no emergency would occur that required the director’s urgent assistance, and that no Hylar heads would pop out of any of the pools of water all around him. He put on his helmet and listened to his own heavy breath in his ears.
Felix wondered what slight, real or imagined, the director had committed against Thales. Woryela had called the man a lunatic – an assessment that seemed more accurate the longer Felix knew him. That comment Woryela had made, about people who’d come to him over the years talking about wormhole technology – was that about Thales? Had he tried to get Woryela’s support and failed, been laughed out of the office, and nursed a grudge for all these years?
How long before Thales tried to kill Felix? Maybe never. Maybe he didn’t think Felix was important enough to kill. That thought should have been more comforting than it was.
Tib reappeared, from a different pool this time, and spoke on a private comm channel. “We’re all set. The layout was just like Thales described, and the power cell was in one of the first places he suggested I look.”
Felix was impressed. “That didn’t take you long.”
“I only saw one Hylar, and they didn’t see me. There were security doors to deal with, but this got me through all of them.” She held up Woryela’s badge.
“Maybe we should hold on to that, in case we have trouble getting out,” Felix said. He tried to focus on the logistics of getting safely away, so he wouldn’t focus instead on the coil of rage and hate he felt for Phillip Thales. Thales may have killed Shelma himself, albeit with Felix’s unwitting help, but this time, like Tib said, he’d actually used Felix as a murder weapon.
Felix and Tib stepped into the pool, adjusted their mobility units, and submerged. The receptionist glanced up, surprised, as they floated down. “Done already?”
Felix realized they hadn’t used up their hour. This had been both easier and far more horrifying than he’d anticipated. “Our ancient alien artifact is a hunk of useless junk,” Felix said. “At least the director broke the news to us gently. He said at least now he had a free half hour to catch up on his reading.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “He was so excited to meet you. Better luck next time.”
“We appreciate it.” Felix and Tib exited the room into the tunnel beyond, giving a little wave to the spiny guard, who ignored them. Their visitor badges gave them brief audible directions, leading them through the rounded tunnels back to their shuttle. The trip back seemed to take much longer than the trip in. If the receptionist popped her head into the conference room and found the director unresponsive, would the facility get locked down? Would Felix and Tib be tried for murder in the slow-but-inexorable court system of Jol-Nar? Would anyone believe them if they named Phillip Thales as the mastermind and claimed to be unwitting pawns? We’re not guilty, Headmaster, we’re just gullible fools?
They reached the shuttle without incident. Once they boarded and strapped in, Felix said, “I just realized: if the real Heuvelt and Dob ever come back from their trip, they’ll be wanted for murder.”
“Maybe Sagasa can sell them new identities,” Tib said. “I’m more troubled by the fact that we’re actual accessories to the crime. This can’t go on, Felix. We can’t just keep helping Thales fulfill his various vendettas. He’s going to send us to kill some editor who rejected one of his papers next at this rate, claiming he needs his kidneys to build a filtration system or something.”
“I’m going to… I don’t know what, Tib. Speak sharply to him, I guess. What can I do? Jhuri won’t let me summarily execute the man. I can’t even hit him in the head without risking damage to his valuable brain.”
“I’m just registering my displeasure, captain.”
“It’s noted. And shared.”
They were near the surface of the ocean – light beginning to faintly shine from above – when the shuttle stopped, paused, and began to descend again. “Crap,” Felix said. “Shuttle, why are we descending?”
“Destination changed,” the shuttle said blandly.
“Change it back,” Felix said.
“Authorization required.”
“I’m authorizing it!”
“Proper authorization required,” the shuttle clarified.
“They found his body,” Felix said.
“Yes. Let’s hope they haven’t canceled his privileges yet.” Tib pressed Woryela’s badge against one of the shuttle’s sensors. “Director-level override. Resume original course, and disable all exterior communications and tracking.”
“Complying with route request. Engaging confidential mode.”
“That’s all it takes?” Felix said.
Tib shrugged. “The person we killed is a director-level member of the Universities of Jol-Nar, captain. He reported directly to the Headmaster. Until someone down there remembers to disable his access, which isn’t something just anybody can do anyway, this shuttle thinks we’re him. Since we shut down the shuttle’s comms, they can’t seize control of the shuttle again anyway.”
“So once we get to orbit, we’re free and clear?”
“No. Once we get to orbit, we get chased by Jol-Nar forces.”
“Oh.”
“We’d better call Calred and have him pick us up someplace else.”
Felix opened his encrypted channel to the ship and explained the situation.
“I’m going to break his legs,” Calred said. “Thales can science without his legs.”
“We’re going to discuss that option, and others, but first we need to avoid getting captured by the proper authorities.”
“I’ll turn off the ship’s transponder and pick you up at these new coordinates, at an earlier point on the original intercept course. I’ll have to skim down into the atmosphere, but the Endless Dark can handle that. Then we’ll run away as fast as we can. And then, the legbreaking.”
•••
Once their shuttle rendezvoused with the Endless Dark, they set a thermal bomb on a timer inside the shuttle, so it would explode while still en route to its original destination in orbit. Maybe the people on the ground would think “Heuvelt” and “Dob” had exploded, too, and even if no one was fooled by that, at least the devastation would remove any skin flakes or other trace evidence they’d left behind – Felix didn’t want the Hylar sequencing his DNA and rifling through databases to find him.
Back on board the Endless Dark, Felix peeled off the thin laminate he’d worn over his fingers, which bore Heuvelt’s prints, and removed the skullcap and wig that had prevented him from dropping hair follicles that could be traced back to him – all part of the false identity package they’d paid so well for.
Overall, Felix felt good about their chances of getting away with murder, assuming no one caught them on their way out. That only made him angrier at Thales. Woryela had clearly been a nice, conscientious professional, and Thales had killed him just to salve his own ego.
“The shuttle just went boom,” Calred said. “Looks like there are security ships converging on that location, scanning the debris field. They haven’t noticed us. Our transponder is spoofing a fake name and identity” – that much was standard Mentak Coalition military protocol, often useful on piratical missions – “and I’m going to mingle with some of the trade route traffic, where at least no one will try to shoot us with large guns, for fear of hurting profitable innocents. From there, we’re off to the big empty, and maybe we can get away clean. Not that I feel very clean.”
“You’ve got the helm, then. I’m going to talk to Thales.” Felix stomped through the cramped corridors and found Thales taking one of his naps. He kicked the scientist in the side, and Thales rolled off his bunk onto the floor, then looked up, blinking.
“I take it something went wrong,” Thales said, “and you’ve decided, once again, to take out your own failings on me?”
“Woryela is dead!”
Thales made a face that Felix supposed was meant to be indicative of surprise. “What, since you made the appointment? You didn’t meet with him?”
“No, we met. We gave him your artifact, and he read your note, and then it gassed him, and then he died.”
Thales stood and ostentatiously brushed himself off. “The note, I confess, was a bit cheeky, but I knew you’d have the good sense to pick it up on the way out, and he wouldn’t remember it when he woke up anyway–”
“He isn’t going to wake up! He’s dead!”
“That is regrettable. I take full responsibility.”
“Is that a murder confession?”
Thales gave that exaggerated look of surprise again. “Murder? It was an accident, at worst. My degrees are in physics, captain. I consider myself a capable chemist, but xenobiology is hardly my area of expertise. I based the gas I created on a certain recreational drug that Hylar youth enjoy – I used to manufacture it and sell it during graduate school, to help fund my studies – and while I did intend to make it more powerful and fast-acting… oh, dear. I must have miscalculated, and made it too strong.” His expression and voice were both perfectly level. “Or else the director had some underlying health problems, unknown to me, that proved fatal in combination with the drug. Or perhaps he was on other medication that interacted badly with–”
“You killed him, Thales. I know it. You know it. Why are you pretending otherwise?”
“You insult me, captain. My work is meant to improve life in the galaxy, to usher in a new age, where even the most distant stars can be as close as our nearest neighbors. Think of the new sense of community and galactic harmony my invention will foster. I am a benefactor, not a killer.”
Felix couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “A while ago your big selling point was the way the Coalition could drop raider fleets on our enemies from anywhere without warning!”
Thales nodded. “I adjusted my sales pitch to suit my audience, but I assure you, my ultimate goals are altruistic. I will be remembered as a hero to the galaxy, captain. Murder accusations would only muddle my legacy. So even if I had deliberately engineered a Hylar-specific neurotoxin, one that would kill and then exit the victim’s system without leaving a trace, I’d hardly admit to it, would I? I have my reputation to consider. My legacy. They’ll name buildings after me in the Universities when this is done – they’ll clamor to claim they were the ones who recognized my genius and nurtured my mind.” He looked Felix up and down, like he was a machine too broken to bother fixing. “Why would you want to accuse me of such crimes, anyway? Any confession I made would implicate you alongside me.” To Felix’s absolute shock, Thales patted him on the cheek. “Now be a good boy and run along until I need you again.”
Felix punched Thales in the face, knocking him back into his bunk. It felt so good, he punched Thales again when he tried to stand up. Thales stayed down that time, holding his bleeding nose, squinting through an eye that would start to swell shut soon. Felix shook his hand, wincing – punching someone straight on like that was hell on your knuckles.
“You will regret that, captain.” Thales’s voice was low – even mild. “If you really think I’m a cunning and remorseless murderer, was it wise to strike me?”
“Who said I was wise? I’m just a useful idiot, aren’t I? But you’re on my ship, in my custody, and the bullshit is done, Thales. You will not use me any more. You can build your machine, and test it, and if it works, we’ll deliver it to my superiors, and I’ll never see you again. That’s it. If you do anything else, I will execute you.”
“Your superiors–”
“My superiors think you might be useful. You haven’t proven it yet. Until you do, you are vulnerable. If I tell them you choked to death on a protein nugget, do you really think Tib or Calred will contradict me? Do you think we can’t create footage to match the story, in the unlikely event there’s an official investigation into this very unofficial mission?” Felix grinned at him savagely. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from you, it’s how easy it is to get away with murder if you just plan a little. I have been pushed as far as I will be. Don’t push me any farther. Just be glad I’m the one who came in here to talk to you, or you’d have worse than a bloody nose and a black eye. Calred wanted to break both your legs, and I was tempted to let him.”
“Finally,” Thales said. “I thought you were as spineless as a Hylar – that the Coalition had saddled me with a jellyfish for a minder. It took you long enough, but you showed a little mettle in the end. I’m moderately impressed.”
“I hate you, Thales. You repulse me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I’m just starting to like you, captain.”
The contempt of simpletons is as good as the praise of geniuses. So what did receiving the praise of monsters mean? “What’s the next step, Thales? You have your power source. Where do we go from here?”
Thales kept smiling at him in a dishearteningly friendly way. “I’ll need a few days to complete the assembly, and then I have a few good test sites picked out–”
“Captain!” Calred called over Felix’s comms. “We’re being pursued by a ship!”
Felix cursed. “From Jol-Nar? How many?”
“Not from Jol-Nar,” Calred said. “I evaded those. I evaded us right into sensor range of another ship. It’s the Barony, captain.”