Down in the belly of the Grim Countenance rested the Endless Dark, burnt-out laser cannons and all. “This is not a boarding craft, Felix,” Tib said. “It is barely even a craft at this point.”
“Secret weapon,” Felix said stubbornly. “It’s so small, they might not even notice our approach, and if they do, we’ll be harder to hit, because we’re small and maneuverable. We’re going to creep up on them and cut our way in.” Sagasa had loaned them (for, of course, a price) a set of “salvage tools” – which were really the sort of drones raiders used to breach ships that didn’t want to open their doors voluntarily. The drones squatted in the Endless Dark, filling much of the limited space inside the small craft, their bodies round and matte black, their wicked little manipulator arms and cutting torches all tucked away.
“We are going to die,” Tib said.
“You always think that. If we do, Calred will make sure they die too.”
“That will be no comfort to me, because I will be dead.”
“Don’t the Yssaril have the concept of an afterlife?” Felix said. “I read about it once. Your heaven is some kind of jungle, full of endless game, prey too slow to run away, and there are miniature versions of the predators that used to eat your people, and instead, you eat them–”
“That is what one tribe, out of a very large number of tribes, believes, yes. It’s not the tribe my ancestors come from, but that doesn’t matter. I’m from the Coalition, Felix. All I believe in is drinking, pillaging, and having a good time before you die.”
“Are you telling me we haven’t been having a good time?”
“I’d like to have a good time for a longer time.”
Felix bowed his head. “Tib, if you want, you can stay here with Calred. I know I’m asking a lot of you, that it’s dangerous, that–”
“Oh, shut up, you stupid human,” Tib said. “I’m not going to let you die by yourself.” She clambered into the ship. “Let’s go. Time to put all that hide-and-seek training to use.”
Felix strapped into the cockpit and called up to Calred. “Ready when you are.”
The bay doors opened, and the Endless Dark dropped into space and began to accelerate toward the distant Temerarious. “Be safe, you two,” Calred said.
“I think we’ll be dangerous instead,” Felix said. “Hang back at the very edge of effective weapons range. You know what to do if we don’t call you from the bridge before time’s up.”
“Boom boom,” Calred said. “The most depressing boom boom in the history of all boom booms. I will never forgive you if you ruin boom boom for me, captain.”
•••
Felix sat in the pilot’s chair, with Tib right beside him. “I like having you in that chair much more than Thales.”
“I can’t believe we’re going to all this trouble to get that asshole back.”
“Mostly I want my ship. Thales is a side project.”
“They’re going to see us coming,” Tib said. “I know we’re small, I know we’re flying manual, but if they bother to look, they’ll see us. You know it.”
“Maybe Thales is keeping them busy.” The Temerarious grew in the viewport as they crept closer. “He is very distracting.”
“I should have given more thought to my last words,” Tib said.
“I heard a story once about Erwin Mentak’s last words.”
“The glorious founder of our glorious Coalition? What did he say?”
“According to this guy I met in a bar,” Felix said, “Erwin Mentak’s final words were, ‘Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.’”
Tib snorted laughter. “Thanks for amusing me as I wait to die.”
But they didn’t die – at least not yet. The Endless Dark reached the Temerarious, and sailed beneath its belly. “We’re here,” Felix said. “They can’t hurt us now unless they open up a window and lean out to shoot us with a sidearm. Their sensors can’t pick us up, either – we just look like part of the ship. See, Tib? Optimism.”
“I can’t understand how they didn’t notice us,” Tib said. “Is nobody monitoring their sensors? What are they doing in there?”
“Maybe they all killed each other.” Felix spun their ship upside down and activated the magnetic clamps, so the Endless Dark could cling, parasitically, to the belly of the Temerarious. He unstrapped and went to the back of the ship, activating the boarding drones. They scuttled out of the small airlock, crouched on the hull of the Temerarious, and started cutting.
Once the hull was breached, Felix and Tib planned to enter a service tunnel, then slip through an access panel onto the lower deck, where there were no security cameras, because that’s where they liked to play hide-and-seek. From down there, unseen, they should be able to sneak up and retake the ship.
Waiting was hard, and Felix checked and re-checked his weapons while the drones did their work. They finally beeped a completion tone to their comms, and Tib and Felix made their way out of the Endless Dark into the endless dark.
Felix took a moment, clinging to the skin of his ship, to look around. There was nothing out here. He couldn’t even see many stars. Which, he supposed, was the point: Thales wanted a big stretch of empty to punch a hole in, out where no one would see the triumph of the human mind over the physics of the cold and uncaring universe.
“Felix, we have pirating to do,” Tib said. “Stop striking a noble and thoughtful pose. There’s nobody here to appreciate it.”
The drones had deployed a temporary airlock, a sort of rounded tent made of “densely woven polymer” – which was to say, a plastic tarp. Felix unsealed the opening, and Tib slipped in. Felix clambered after and resealed the airlock. The hole the drones had cut in the hull was big enough for his body to fit through, but only just. He followed Tib up – or down – or through – the layers of armor and radiation shielding, on into the ship. The walls vibrated around him as the drones placed a more permanent seal over the hole they’d cut. They wouldn’t be getting out the way they got in.
Felix wasn’t particularly claustrophobic, but tight spaces and darkness and a mission to retake a stolen ship and the low-level discomfort of wearing an environment suit all combined to make him sweaty and tense. He waited, vibrating himself with tension, while Tib unsealed the access hatch to the service tunnel. They moved on into that objectively cramped but relatively generous space. They were still in the dark, though. Hmm. That wasn’t right.
Once the hatch was closed behind them, they took off their helmets and shrugged out of their suits. “Why are the lights off?” Felix said. “There should at least be safety strips on in here. Did those assholes break my ship?”
“There’s still air and artificial gravity,” Tib said. “Maybe they just wanted mood lighting.”
“It is very romantic,” Felix said.
“Do you think everyone makes jokes before they walk into possible death, or is that just a Mentak Coalition thing?” Tib said.
“I’m not convinced the L1Z1X or the Nekro do it, being partly or wholly mechanical, but otherwise, I’d guess it’s a pretty universal urge.”
“I know a Nekro joke,” Tib said. “Want to hear it?”
“I might not be alive to hear it later.”
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Zero.”
“Zero who?”
“Zero one one zero zero one zero zero, zero one one zero one zero zero one, zero one one zero zero one zero one–”
“OK, I get it. We’ve had the laughter. Let’s move on to the tears. Stay quiet on comms until there’s something to report. I’ll get the bridge, and you secure the armory.”
Tib went dim, just a shimmer in the corner of Felix’s eye, and the access hatch opened seemingly by itself. Felix crawled out after he was sure she’d had time to get clear.
He was in a corridor, not far from the ladder that led up to the crew quarters, but he only knew that because he’d spent so much time down here playing hide-and-seek with Tib, and could navigate the space blindfolded if need be. The lower deck was totally dark. Had there been some electrical fault?
“Last chance, Sev!” a voice called. Felix went still. Was that Azad? “If I find you down here, I’m going to stab you, and that’s way down on the list of things I want to do with you.”
Oh, no. Or… oh, yes? Severyne and Azad were trying to kill each other now? That explained why they hadn’t noticed the approach of the Endless Dark. Felix considered. He could just climb up to the next deck, lock the hatches, and leave them trapped down here to kill each other in peace. He opened his comms to suggest that idea to Tib.
Then light glimmered – someone had opened a hatch on the deck above, letting illumination in. “Are you idiots down there?” Thales bellowed. “There are alarms going off up here, it’s distracting.”
“What alarms?” That was Severyne – and she was very close to Felix, it sounded like, right around the corner.
“Something about a hull breach, though it stopped saying that a minute ago, and now there’s a call to repel boarders – not that I’ve seen any boarders. I think your sensors are malfunctioning. This is not my job, ladies. I’m trying to work up here. You’d better not be having sex down there. Duval’s bed isn’t enough for you?”
“Sev!” Azad called. “Truce? Just while we make sure we aren’t being attacked? By someone other than each other, I mean?”
A long, long pause, and then, “Truce,” Severyne called. She walked right past Felix and into the shaft of light. Azad joined her. “It’s always something, isn’t it?” the human said.
Severyne ignored her and clambered up the ladder, bickering with Thales as she vanished from sight.
Azad started up the ladder, then paused and looked around in the dark. “I know you’re there,” she said. “You may as well come out.”
Felix twitched, but didn’t move.
Azad waited a moment longer, then snorted. “Worth a try.” She climbed up the ladder.
Tib let her get almost all the way to the top before shooting her with a stun charge, so Azad had farther to fall. Tib shimmered into sight next to her supine form, peering up the ladder. Severyne and Thales were gone, and hadn’t noticed Azad’s tumble.
Felix hurried out of concealment and began binding Azad’s arms and ankles with tape while Tib kept lookout. Azad groaned but didn’t wake up. “I got the drop on her twice,” Tib whispered. “She only got me once. I win.” Tib plucked a kitchen knife from Azad’s belt, frisked her, then held up the blade. “This is the only weapon she has on her. What were they doing down here?”
“Playing hide-and-seek,” Felix said. “Just like we used to. But for somewhat higher stakes.”
They dragged Azad to one of the store rooms and propped her between a pallet of chemical toilets and stacks of shelf-stable mayonnaise. “Did Thales say they were having sex?” Tib asked. “In your bed?”
“I haven’t even had sex in that bed. Now I have to set the whole thing on fire. I’ll be moving into your cabin. You can have Cal’s. Cal can sleep in the gym.”
Tib looked at Azad’s limp form. “I guess it wasn’t true love, if they were still trying to kill each other.”
“They were trying to kill each other over who got the privilege of keeping Thales,” Felix said. “Can you imagine?”
The electrical locks weren’t working down here for some reason, so they blocked the cabin door with about fifty bags of mulch, piling them up nearly to the ceiling. It probably wouldn’t hold Azad back for long, but for now, it was the best they could do.
“Now we go for Severyne,” Felix said.
•••
“Leave me alone, Thales, I’m trying to read this. I thought you had work to do.” Severyne stood at the security station in the bridge, though she hated having her back to the door. Where was Azad? Shouldn’t she be doing this? Was her “truce” just a trick to make Severyne let her guard down? The ship had detected a hull breach, but now it didn’t – which either meant it was a glitch in the system, or someone had breached the hull and covered their tracks. “Shipwide scan,” she said. “I want to know everyone who’s on board.”
“Two sapients onboard,” the ship replied.
“Just two?” That didn’t make any sense. “Does that include the lower deck?”
“Lower deck systems offline. System rebooting.”
So Azad was still down there. But why? Severyne was sure she’d been right behind her –
Something cold struck her back, and then her vision went white, and then dark. Some unknowable moment later she returned to herself, her face pressed into the smooth floor, her arms bound behind her. She wriggled and rolled over – and saw Duval sitting in the captain’s chair, his horrible Yssaril second-in-command leading Thales off the bridge. “Ambush,” she spat. “A cowardly strike from behind. The Coalition has no honor–”
“Probably true,” Duval said. “But I still won. You know the old saying, Severyne: Who wins, wins.”
“That is not an old saying. You are a very stupid person who is also annoying,” Severyne said. “And unattractive. And you need to shave. Your haircut is a disgrace. You–”
“The Letnev,” Felix said. “Magnanimous in victory, gracious in defeat.”