by Blaze Ward
But one minute it was just stevedores, and the next Hall was standing right in front of him with a serious-looking smile on his face and a bag slung over his shoulder.
Valentinian decided to play it casual.
“About time,” he announced, treating the man like an old-time employee. “You take over here and make sure nobody causes any trouble. I’ll start the pre-flight.”
The wry smile on Hall’s face said a lot, but the man slipped the big bag from his shoulder and slid it off to one side.
Madame Cleray seemed much happier to have the big man handy, but Valentinian wasn’t offended. He felt the same way.
Valentinian had just keyed the new code to unlock the hatch between the cargo bay and engineering when Hall’s voice echoed around him like an apocalypse or something.
“Captain?” Hall yelled, almost formally.
Valentinian turned around to see a whole new crop of trouble standing just outside his ship. All the girls of Solaria Femina and their minders had huddled off to one side of the bay like frightened sheep, and the Dancemaster and Hall appeared to be blocking everything else.
Valentinian looked past them and swallowed the profanity before it escaped his mouth.
Trouble. Not just trouble. Serious trouble.
He had been expecting gendarmes to show up and question him. That was fine, since they were habitually unarmed, civilian soldiers. Bureaucrats, more than anything. And there were two gendarmes with this group.
The other five were White Hats. The Dominion’s internal security force. Burgundy bodysuits, while the gendarmes wore blue, with the bonus white berets that had the gold Dominion logo over the left ear.
And guns. Four had pulse carbines slung at their hips. The officer just had a pistol.
As if that made her any less dangerous.
He took a deep breath quietly and ambled back over to the volcano of ugly that threatened to erupt and spray mud and pain all over his cargo bay. Who the hell was Nash, that he could sick White Hats on them, and do it that quickly?
“Valentinian Tarasicodissa?” the woman asked as he got close. “Captain of Longshot Hypothesis?”
If you scaled Dave Hall down to someone average height for a woman, but kept the hard muscles and sure movement, and made her a woman, she’d be standing right in front of him. The pistol on her hip was a badge of authority, as was the burgundy jumpsuit that looked painted on. He focused on her eyes, rather than admiring her figure or her pretty face.
Thoughts of black widows kept racing across his mind.
“That’s right,” Valentinian replied breezily. “What seems to be the problem?”
This was already way past the point of paying a fine and getting a good talking to from a stationmaster. White Hats didn’t play around.
“No immediate problem,” she even smiled grimly at him. “We’re inspecting every vessel before it leaves port for stowaways.”
Valentinian cocked his head at her, and then shrugged. Huh?
“Any problems if we board your vessel, Captain?” she asked.
It even sounded polite.
If you didn’t know any better.
“None,” Valentinian said, fresh out of ideas.
Fortunately he wasn’t smuggling anything on this trip, either.
“Is there anybody aboard?” the woman stepped over the line in the deck and got close enough that he could smell the breath mint she had apparently eaten at some point this morning. She might have even smiled at him.
Rather than just step back, Valentinian also turned slightly, pivoting on his foot and keeping elbows in. Physical contact, even accidentally, probably got him thrown in a brig somewhere.
“Just myself and my First Mate,” Valentinian said, pointing to Dave. “My new passengers were in the process of loading equipment and supplies, but all of them are in immediate sight.”
The White Hat woman turned and stared up at Dave like she had just realized he was a human, and not a tree. The man was huge.
“Papers?” she demanded politely.
Valentinian watched Dave turn sideways carefully, so everyone could see him pull the card-reader out of his back pocket, rather than a knife or a gun. A man who had done this before. Dave keyed the front and typed in a quick code before handing it to the woman delicately.
“Hall?” she studied him for a moment.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dave replied.
“You remain here with the gendarmes,” she ordered, turning back to Valentinian with an unreadable smile. “You will accompany myself and my team.”
Well, so much for even the remote chance of leaving on time. Valentinian turned and took a step, glancing back to make sure the woman followed. Her four friends weren’t far behind that.
Man, somebody must be pissed.
But old Nash was in for a surprise if he went looking for trouble right now.
Through the first hatch, into the engineering spaces. The armory and workout room got inspected. Water storage tanks were physically opened from the top by one of the women with the officer. The machine shop next. Life support, which was Dominion standard instead of what the ship had been built with. Anuradhan tech had been at least a generation behind.
Valentinian hadn’t done the refurb that pulled out the hydroponics room and turned it into an armory, but he approved. He’d have just killed all the fish and plants anyway. And all of his weapons were legally registered somewhere, just not here.
The Overdrive generator was Dominion standard as well, replacing the older model when engineering got overhauled. All three Auxiliary Power Reactors were original equipment, as were the computer systems that handled the nav system, entertainment, and the full systems cores.
Forward, she followed him into the Primary quarters, down the two quick steps from the Engineering deck. The cockpit was in the center, with his cabin on the port side and what would become Dave’s to starboard, plus the head, a galley/rec room, and the forward airlock mostly used on planetary surfaces.
“Just two of you?” the woman demanded.
“That’s right,” he replied with the slightest bit of irk to his voice. “Passengers are largely self-contained upstairs.”
And so he had to show everyone the upper deck. He and the woman rode the elevator while the others climbed the stairs, presumably so some stowaway couldn’t double back on them.
Or something. Whatever floats your boat, paranoid lady.
The main kitchen was centerline, just over the bridge and aft a little. The laundry room and passenger consumables storage behind that were both empty and almost immaculate, but that would change tomorrow, assuming he had a small tribe of people living up here in a space comfortable for six.
The lounge was to port, with three cabins, a head, and access to the port engine. Starboard was identical, save for the lounge being a dining hall.
Valentinian leaned back against a bulkhead and waited as everybody sniffed everything.
The woman officer walked right up into his personal space and looked up at him.
If Valentinian stood up right now, he would brush against her chest, so he kept his hands behind him and kept his weight back.
“Everything appears to be in order, Captain,” she announced from close enough to breathe on him.
What the hell is your issue, lady?
But he didn’t say that. Didn’t even think it too loudly. Just smiled vaguely at her.
“I try to run a tight ship,” he replied.
She smiled. Maybe a smile. Maybe painful gas bubbling up from the depths of hell.
You never knew with White Hats.
“Tight can be good, Tarasicodissa,” she said in a warmer tone.
Are you kidding me? I’d rather take monastic vows than touch you, princess.
She wasn’t ugly. Was actually rather pleasant looking. Hard body from working out. Nice, regular features. Pretty, blue eyes.
But she wore a White Hat. The Dominion’s police sledgehammer. Even the Caelons feared those
people.
And she smiled expectantly at him.
Suddenly, Valentinian was fourteen again and taking a girl on a blind date, the kind that parents had arranged, to a social dance. The kind of girl his mother describe as having a great personality. You know the type.
He played it cool then, and cooler now, just arching an eyebrow at the officer as if to ask a multitude of questions.
Apparently, she was satisfied. At least as satisfied as those people can be without pulling wings off of flies for fun.
She stepped back out of his space with a prim, knowing smile and gathered up her team.
“We’ll talk again,” she promised in a voice that nearly convinced Valentinian to leave Dominion space forever and see what kinds of trade he might find out in Wildspace beyond Laurentia. It was that or maybe head all the way to Asherah.
Anything that didn’t involve a personal inspection by this woman.
Because he knew how that would turn out.
Valentinian let her lead and lagged well behind them going down the stairs, partly to make sure nobody left anything or anybody behind. Not much he could do about any bugs or trackers somebody had stashed in one of the chambers when he wasn’t looking, but that wasn’t going to stop him from looking for them.
After they left station.
Downstairs and aft, Valentinian joined Dave and watched as Madam Cleray and her entire team got personally inspected, along with a random assortment of their boxes. No, strike that, the bigger boxes only. None of the small ones.
What the hell was going on?
Valentinian glanced at Dave in that universal language of gender that transcends language, but the big guy just shrugged back at him.
Finally, the woman cop seemed mollified. She and her people walked back across the line until they were legally on the station again, and not on Longshot Hypothesis. The woman in the white beret smiled at him and departed. Madame Cleray and her troupe got everything inside the ship as fast as they could move, and Valentinian closed up the airlock.
They could sort it all out from warp. He wanted gone.
“Now what?” Madame Cleray appeared in his face, but she was a pale imitation of trouble at this point, and after a moment, she realized it, relaxing and taking a half step back at the sudden, thunderous scowl on Valentinian’s face.
He nodded to Dave and drew the man into his wake as he moved forward and crossed the hatch into the primary spaces. He still needed to code Dave into the system, and the best way to do that was from the bridge.
“Get your girls into their cabins,” Valentinian decided. “We’re leaving.”
4
Valentinian
“Any idea what the hell that was all about?” Valentinian heard his new First Mate ask as they got into the ship’s cockpit.
Technically, the deck plans called it a bridge, but it was two seats, side by side with a small console between them for the overdrive systems, and matching flight controls. The view out the front window was constrained by the two arms extending overhead, but Longshot Hypothesis wasn’t a combat gunship. Wasn’t even armed.
He could fly it fine from here, and would end up backing up to most stations with cameras anyway. The only times he generally needed the viewports in front of him involved landing on a planet.
“None,” Valentinian answered after a second spent typing a password into the system between the two seats. “You sit here and type a password in.”
Valentinian took the port seat and let Dave climb into the starboard one, after the big guy rocked the seat back three clicks to make leg room for himself. Artaxerxes had been shorter than Valentinian.
“So White Hats don’t normally board your ship and personally inspect it?” Dave continued.
“That’s the first time anybody has wanted to go beyond eyeballing the cargo bay since I’ve owned it,” Valentinian said. “I thought maybe Nash had the jets to cause us trouble, but apparently that was unrelated.”
“So now what?” Dave turned to look at him.
“So now you’re employed,” Valentinian said. “I’ll send you a copy of the contract I had with Artaxerxes and we’ll go from there. If you don’t like it or don’t fit in, we’re going to Aestrolathia and you can depart there and I’ll pay you for time served. Otherwise, we’re leaving here as soon as I can get clearance from the station, and hitting warp as soon as I clear the buoys so that we won’t get fined later.”
“We coming back to Dominion Prime or even Cronus Prime anytime soon?” Dave seemed nervous on that thought.
The station was bad news. Valentinian could only imagine the capital world below them. The one that had spawned Dominion culture and loosed it on an unsuspecting galaxy five or six centuries ago.
“Between you and me, that White Hat babe has almost convinced me to leave Dominion space forever,” Valentinian admitted. “Maybe even spend the rest of my life out in Wildspace. Know what I mean?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m with you there,” Dave said. “Wouldn’t hurt my feelings, either.”
“Which reminds me,” Valentinian said. “We need to talk about your past soon, so line up whatever lies you plan to spin and make them sound good, okay? Until then, I’m getting us away from the scene of whatever crime happened while I still can.”
He liked the way Dave’s face went still at those words. Like he had maybe been expecting Valentinian to be a simple innocent who would accept any story, hook, line, AND sinker.
Valentinian smiled up at the big man and turned his attention to the communications board.
“Dominion Prime Flight Control, this is Longshot Hypothesis,” he said as the radio came live. “Docked in Eleven-Three-Three. Requesting departure window and lane assignment.”
“Stand by, Eleven-Three-Three,” a lazy-sounding man replied a second later.
Valentinian sucked air all the way to his toes and tried to pretend that it was just another day at the office. Bar fights, White Hats, stowaways, and virgins were normal things in the life of a tramp captain, right?
Valentinian had expected Hall to stir uncomfortably as the time stretched but the big, warrior monk just sat perfectly still, like a statue someone had snuck into the cockpit when nobody was looking.
“Eleven-Three-Three, this is Flight Control,” a different voice, a sultry, female voice came back. “You are clear to unlock and depart. Lane assignment and flight path from terminal area have been transmitted. Safe journeys.”
Safe journeys? What the hell was going one? Nobody ever said something like that.
Then he recognized the second voice.
Death ran a chilly hand across his neck and down his back.
“Was that…?” Dave hesitated.
“Yeah,” Valentinian nodded.
The woman in the white beret.
Left his deck and went right down to flight control, maybe so she could say goodbye? Or know what planet he was visiting next?
Valentinian keyed the internal speakers.
“All hands, brace for departure,” he said, pressing the lock controls. “Now.”
Aft, the bolts holding the ship to the station retracted with a hollow thump that echoed through the skin of the ship. Compressed air jets separated the ship from the station, and Valentinian brought the big engines forward live enough to provide a purring stroll into the darkness.
Much as he wanted to slam them to the stops, the fines weren’t worth the satisfaction. Not today, at least.
Paranoia made him activate a rear camera on one of his screens and then toggle to the view in both airlocks, on the off-chance that that White Hat had decided to stow herself away and follow him.
Valentinian knew girls dug his look. He worked hard at casually dressing and appearing just rugged enough to trigger the right hormones in the women he dealt with. Black pants with a green stripe down the outer seam. Collarless egg-cream shirt in a soft linen, covered over with a light, black jacket with the same green at certain seams.
Dangerous, but approachab
le. Bad boy, but not all that bad. Redeemable, if you wanted to work at it, honey.
But, oh shit did he not want a White Hat responding to those cues. Gods only knew what she might do. Or where she might stalk him.
But there was nothing back there. Just a growing gap separating Longshot Hypothesis from the station. Him from her. And Nash. And whatever other trouble was brewing back there.
Quickly, Valentinian programmed the lane into the system and turned on the autopilot. It would take them half an hour just to get to the first buoy. Another ten minutes or so after that and he could light the overdrive system, spin up a warp bubble, and shift to FTL.
He turned his attention back to Dave and studied the man. Bad-ass, warrior monk. Probably has a sword in that bag. Crazed berserkers that hadn’t conquered the entire galaxy already because they spent as much time fussing with each other as they did on their campaigns.
“I’m going to skip the first few questions I would have normally asked you,” Valentinian said, making sure that the hatch to the cockpit was closed before he spoke. “That way, I can be just a fool later, and not a willing accomplice. Good enough?”
“Good enough,” Dave turned towards him. “I had it all. Power. Glory. Success. Lived a really good life for a very long time. Woke up on the wrong side of the bed one morning.”
“When was this?” Valentinian asked, setting timelines in his head.
“About a year ago,” Dave said. “I wanted out, but that wasn’t a job you could just chuck out the airlock and walk away from. Plus I thought it was just a phase.”
“Mid-life crisis?” Valentinian nodded.
“Turned out to be one, in retrospect, yeah,” Dave agreed. “Plus I have a wife, however estranged the woman is. Was. Two kids, about your age or a little older. And friends, allies, and enemies. So getting out took a lot of planning and other things.”
“Did you have to kill someone?” Valentinian asked automatically.
Dave grimaced and waggled his head back and forth.
“You know what?” Valentinian raced ahead before the big man could say anything. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know the truth, do I?”
