Angle of Truth

by Lindsay Buroker

  I don’t think mercenaries are typically known for playing vid games, either, Thor said silently, taking the seat.

  His arm brushed hers, but she didn’t feel much through the sleeve of her robe. She wouldn’t have minded leaning against him, but she didn’t. It was a strange impulse. She didn’t need to lean on anyone—everything was going well so far, even if they’d had to leave Austin, Alfie, and the Snapper behind. Austin had seemed delighted at the chance to do his ghost testing in private without pesky living people tramping through NavCom and messing up his readings. He’d been less delighted when Jelena had informed him that he’d have to feed Alfie and clean up the faux grass latrine area in the back of the cargo hold. That latter, she judged, had been the sticking point.

  Realizing she hadn’t responded to Thor, Jelena screwed the cap back onto her canteen and replied. What are mercenaries known for? Picking their fingernails with daggers and coming up with alliterative nicknames for themselves?

  You’re thinking of gangsters. For the nicknames.

  But not the nail picking?

  No, playing with knives, including using them for grooming purposes, seems like a mercenary thing to do.

  Do you ever pick your nails with your sword?

  No. Thor arched an eyebrow at her. Silly question, apparently. But he smiled faintly and added, I have used it to scratch my back.

  I won’t let your secret out.

  Good.

  Jelena liked it when he smiled. He seemed like a normal person then, a person she could still be friends with, not someone intent on taking over the system, no matter who stood in the way.

  Thor pulled his netdisc out of a pocket, but he didn’t open it. He held it loosely in one hand, rested his forearms on his knees, and studied the deck.

  Jelena almost asked him if something was bothering him, but she didn’t want to pry. She appreciated that he’d chosen to sit back here next to her instead of by himself.

  After a few more thoughtful moments, Thor thumbed his netdisc on and brought up the holodisplay. At first, it filled with a map of the galaxy with notes scribbled all over it. Contacts? Plans? He squeezed his fingers together, minimizing the application before she got a good look. The one behind it was a game, or maybe that was a puzzle, and she wondered if he planned to challenge her to some two-person version of it.

  Do you like puzzles? Thor asked, his bemused smile suggesting that hadn’t been his original question. Indeed, he swiped the game away, finally revealing a third display.

  It depends on the picture in the puzzle. Jelena thought of the giant puzzle she’d discovered in his room back on Halite Moon, the one where the missing pieces in the system map had denoted locations of people he intended to assassinate, and she grimaced at the memory.

  His smile faded, that sadness he so often wore replacing it. She felt she should apologize for her thoughts, but he was the one who’d been killing people. And it was his choice as to whether he wanted to read her mind.

  I could probably find some of cute animals. Fuzzy kittens. He looked toward a porthole. Fish and octopuses.

  Cute fish? She wrinkled her nose.

  Hm, pretty ones, perhaps. Thor brought up the display that had been lurking on his device behind the others.

  Jelena recognized the picture she’d glimpsed in the Snapper’s mess hall a few days earlier, the one he’d hastily put away before she had a good look. This time, he enlarged it and let her see.

  “You and your family?” she asked, only realizing she’d spoken aloud when Erick looked over.

  He and Masika weren’t far away—nothing was far away in the sweat-sock submarine—and he frowned, as if noticing their closeness for the first time. Jelena knew Erick wasn’t interested in her romantically—his attempts to lure Masika into his game world would have assured that even if she hadn’t already known—but he seemed quite certain that Thor wasn’t an appropriate person for her romantically, either. Jelena had no doubt he was right, and she flicked her fingers, acknowledging the silent disapproval. There wasn’t any reason for it, regardless. Thor had made it clear that romance was about a billion light years away from his plans for the future, and she couldn’t be attracted to anyone who solved his problems by killing people. She could understand why he did it, perhaps, and she even understood his quest, but she could never love someone bent on destroying half the system—not to mention probably destroying himself in the process.

  “Yes,” Thor said, this time not letting on if he’d read her thoughts. “I was seven when this was taken.” He pointed to himself in the picture, a cute sandy-haired boy with a goofy grin.

  The grin surprised Jelena. No, it startled her. Of course a seven-year-old child was expected to laugh and smile, but the Thor she’d always known had been so solemn, so grim. She’d not known him before he lost his family. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have been a normal, playful kid then.

  “Eric was thirteen in the picture.” Thor pointed at the second boy, one nearly as tall as his father. He wasn’t grinning. He looked determined, like someone wanting to come across as an adult, as someone important. “He’d been groomed his whole life to take my father’s place when the time came,” Thor said. “He was oldest, so of course, he was the heir. I was to be an ally for him, it was assumed. I was taught Starseer mysticism and mind-focusing tricks from a young age, even before I had my darugula and developed my powers.”

  “Darugula?”

  “You don’t know the term? Few outsiders do, but I assumed Stanislav would have taught you. A days-long ritual where a child is put under duress so that his genes will express themselves rather than remaining dormant into adulthood.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know there was a ritual. I knew about the stress needed to turn one’s genes on.” Once again, she remembered the days after the bombing, seeing her home destroyed on the news vids, learning that her father had been killed. It had been after that, while she’d been staying with Aunt Sylvia, that she had started developing mental powers. Her mom, even though she carried the genes, had never developed powers and hadn’t even known about her bloodline until ten years ago.

  Thor nodded. “Yes. Few outside of the Starseer community know about the darugula or its importance in the development of powers, but sometimes, children with the right genes and of the right age undergo natural, accidental stressors that act as the needed epigenetic triggers.”

  Jelena willed the memories of her own stressors to exit her mind. Seeing the bombed cities had already brought back far too many uncomfortable memories, ones she’d thought had been forever buried in the recesses of her mind.

  She cleared her throat. “So, your brother was supposed to be in charge, and you’d be his supporter.”

  “Yes. His spy, his assassin, his military leader. Whatever the empire needed.” He gazed at the picture, perhaps unaware of her memories now, too lost in his own. “It was quite a blow to me when I lost Eric.”

  Jelena glanced at their Erick, realizing for the first time why Thor might prefer to call him Ostberg instead of by his first name.

  “Even though he was years older than me, so we’d never been playmates, we’d always had a good relationship,” Thor said. “He used to ruffle my hair every night whenever the family was able to eat dinner together, and we’d argue about which forceball player had the best chance to win the slam that year. He was the one to teach me how to shoot peas out of my nose.”

  “A skill you haven’t practiced nearly enough since you boarded my ship,” Jelena promptly said. By the suns, she’d pay in gold to see Thor do something that silly.

  “No peas on board.”

  “We’ll remedy that as soon as possible. Erick wants to get a crate of cactus pads. Maybe we could cut one up in the shape of peas.”

  Erick must have heard a few words because he looked over again, this time wearing the most puzzled expression on his face. Or maybe he was puzzled because Masika had turned her shoulder away from him and was reading something on a netdisc.
Jelena wondered if Masika had shared any of her story with Erick. It didn’t seem like it should be Jelena’s place to share it, but maybe he should know that his odds might not be good with her, even if gangly vid game players were her type.

  “He died before the war ended,” Thor said, touching a finger to the image of his brother.

  Jelena’s humor evaporated.

  “One of the first people I assassinated—” he did not shy away from the word, “—was responsible for his death. After my brother’s death, my father began grooming me to assume Eric’s position, but you could always sense…” He shrugged. “He was always sadder after we lost Eric. Father was a good man, and he didn’t do anything obvious to show that he favored Eric more than me, but by then, I could read people’s thoughts… so I knew. They’d been a lot alike, and he’d poured so much into molding Eric to be the next emperor. I knew he was disappointed at all that effort being lost. Of Eric being lost. He never felt it was fair that the war had taken his oldest son from him. He was still glad to have me, but…”

  Thor shrugged again, as if he was indifferent now. Jelena didn’t have to be able to read his mind to know that wasn’t true. Maybe that was part of why he was so determined to live up to his father’s expectations, to do all that the entire empire had ever expected from him. Maybe to do all that it—that his father—had expected of Eric too.

  “What was your mother like?” Jelena asked, in part to turn Thor’s mind from dark thoughts, and in part because she was curious. “She seems sad in the picture.”

  Thor had never opened up to her this much, even when they’d been kids. They’d stood together then, her having his back, and him having hers, but their wounds had been too fresh, too raw to talk about then. This moment seemed almost a gift, and she didn’t want to give it up too soon.

  “Does she?” Thor tilted his head. “I never noticed. Maybe you’re right, but I took that expression for serenity. She always seemed a peaceful woman, at least on the surface. Though when I became able to sense thoughts… That’s not as much of a boon as you’d think.”

  “I know. That’s why I rarely do it. Except with animals. They’re never saying or doing things that are different from what they’re thinking. People are…”

  “Disingenuous. Mother wasn’t that, not exactly. She’d married my father for true love—something rare among the arranged marriages in my family line—and she bore him children because she loved him, but she was always certain something bad would happen, that she was raising children who would be killed young by generals or assassins. She believed she’d have to watch us die before her eyes. With Eric, that was true. She died too young to see the rest of it come true, though she was probably right that I’ll die young too.”

  He sounded accepting rather than depressed over that thought, but Jelena found it morbid. She wasn’t sure whether to hug him or suggest they search the submarine’s stores for peas. In the end, she clasped her hands between her legs, not wanting to say anything that would push him away.

  Thor closed the netdisc and returned to silent speech. It’s not for the empire that I do what I do, he told her, but for them.

  I appreciate you taking some time out from your plans to help us.

  Actually, I’ve been debating ways I can use your plans to my advantage.

  Oh? Jelena didn’t know how to feel about that. One of the reasons she’d talked him into joining her crew had been to get him away from the violence, from the assassinations—and from the Alliance assassins now hunting him.

  When you were simply going to deliver freight, I didn’t imagine it could be of any use to me, but establishing a reputation as a mercenary might improve some people’s opinions of me. There are imperial loyalists who long to fight and bring back the empire but who don’t believe someone so young should be their general.

  Because they’re sane? she suggested.

  He snorted. If I can become known as a competent mercenary before I try to assemble an army, it might help my cause.

  Jelena didn’t want to imagine Thor as a mercenary general any more than she wanted him to lead armies against the Alliance, but she doubted her words would do anything to sway him, and it seemed premature to worry about the possibility, so she opted for a light response.

  You’ll have to learn how to pick your fingernails with your sword then.

  It does seem inevitable. He stood then, giving her that two-fingered salute, and walked back up to the cockpit.

  Jelena leaned back in her seat, wishing she could convince Thor to shoot peas out of his nose instead of bullets out of guns.

  Chapter 7

  Jelena woke with a start to utter blackness. Her narrow bunk rocked, then pitched her sideways. She landed on the cold metal deck, and before she could figure out what was happening, something—or someone—landed right next to her with a thud. And a curse. It was definitely a someone.

  “What’s happening?” Masika asked from another bunk.

  Someone groaned from the deck next to Jelena. It wasn’t exactly a response.

  “Erick?” Jelena asked, reaching out with her senses and her hand.

  “What—” he started, but a distant boom sounded, and they all fell quiet. Listening.

  Jelena sensed Thor standing on the deck a few feet away and one of the two pilots up front in the cockpit. Thor radiated calm. The pilot radiated fear. Not good.

  “Were we hit?” Erick asked. “By what? I don’t sense any ships around.”

  The other pilot scrambled out of his bunk and patted his way toward the back of the submarine, bumping Jelena and Erick as he passed.

  “Stay calm,” the cockpit pilot called back, his accent thick, barely understandable. “It’s all under control.” Jelena did not need to use her senses to know he was lying.

  “Land mines,” Thor said. “Or sea mines, I suppose.”

  “They’re all over the place,” the pilot said. “I was avoiding them, but then we passed too close to one above us. I wasn’t expecting—they weren’t here two weeks ago. Sokolov!” He switched languages and spat a rapid series of words over his shoulder.

  A curse and a clang came from the back.

  Jelena didn’t understand the men, but she hoped the one up front was asking—or demanding—that power get fixed soon. She found her bunk and rested her hand on the metal framework for support. The deck was still rocking, and the faint groans that came from the hull did not sound good. How deep were they? How close to land? Was it morning yet? They’d been due to land today.

  She drew a deep breath, forcing calm, and reached out into the ocean to get a sense for their plight—and how far under they were. Mostly, she sensed life. Fish and other sea creatures, some strange and alien to her mind, but all vibrant with life. Jelena guessed they were fifty or sixty meters below the surface. Not as deep as she’d thought they might be. She noticed a pod of sleek, finned creatures swimming near the submarine. They were large, as long as humans, and at first, she thought they might have some ill intent, but they had amenable minds, and she realized they were curious about the vessel. Surprisingly, they did not seem concerned about the mines. A couple of the creatures dove under the submarine and came up on the other side. She had the impression they wanted the submarine to play with them.

  “This is not the place, my friends,” Jelena murmured.

  “There’s another mine ahead of us,” Thor said, his voice ringing in the dark interior. It was calm but urgent too. “Do you have steering power?”

  “Yes, but I can’t see anything,” the pilot responded. “Sonar is down, as is our view—”

  “I can see,” Thor overrode him. “Veer to port. Now.”

  The craft almost lurched as the pilot obeyed. A clang, followed by more curses, came from the rear. The pilot barked something back at his colleague, which led to a heated exchange.

  “Did we get out of its way?” Jelena asked.

  “Yes, but I’m not sure it’s far enough,” Thor said, moving up to stand next to her an
d Erick.

  “Should we try to create a barrier around the submarine?” Jelena doubted she could extend hers around the whole vessel—or keep it up against explosive charges—but Thor was more powerful, and she could help him.

  “I don’t think the sub could work in an enclosed bubble. The currents the propeller created wouldn’t have anywhere to go, and we’d end up being tossed against the sides of the barrier.”

  “Yes,” Erick said, “but we definitely have a problem. I can see the mines out there too. They’re all over the place. We’re close to the coast, less than ten miles.”

  “They weren’t here last time,” the pilot repeated, as if they hadn’t believed him.

  A boom sounded, and the deck rocked again. Jelena lost her grip on the bunk and stumbled against someone. A protective arm went around her, helping to keep her upright.

  “Guess we didn’t veer far enough,” she muttered.

  A hiss-clank came from the rear of the craft, followed by an ominous trickle of water.

  “Is that a breach?” Masika asked, a panicked note in her voice.

  An emphatic, “No,” came from the pilot in the engine room.

  Jelena wished she believed him.

  “Maybe we should surface,” she suggested. “Also, whoever is holding me in a manly manner, I’m fine now. You can let go.” She patted the arm, using her senses to identify her helper.

  “Damn,” Erick said. “That wasn’t me. I wish more women recognized my manly manners.”

  Thor released Jelena without comment, at least not to her. He told the pilot, “The mines seem to be attached to buoys of a sort. That’s not quite the right word. They’re devices that are keeping the mines floating between thirty and one hundred meters below the surface. If we can descend below them or rise above them, we should be safe.” A bang, clank, and a trickle came from the engine room. “Relatively safe,” he amended.