Longshot Hypothesis

by Blaze Ward

  Give her a year like this, and she might consider retiring. Or at least selling the group to someone else and letting them handle the messiness for a while.

  She wasn’t ruthless. That suggested a complete lack of remorse. Lianearia had much to regret. Things she had done to get by. Favors offered. Mistakes made.

  At the least the girls would not be thrown to the wolves when they left. That much she could offer. Each had an investment account opened on day one, with a portion of their pay deposited into it immediately, and untouchable while they remained with the group. Not even Lianearia could access the money, except to instruct the broker to make changes rebalancing funds on an annual basis.

  No girl would walk out of here broke. Or lost.

  She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and saw the two men climbing the staircase on her right. Dave held a large toolbox easily in one hand as he walked.

  Neither man more than glanced at the girls dancing below. And after only a week in space.

  It was good. The Chastitymaster, Sümeyye, had been especially vigilant, going so far as to station herself at the top of the stairs at night to keep the girls from sneaking downstairs. What they did on their own, in their own cabins, was not her concern, as long as no men were involved.

  Valentinian approached. He started to say something over the noise of the song, and thought better of it. Instead, he gestured politely for her to move to her right.

  She did, splitting her attention between the careful movement below as the song built to its climax, and the two men approaching. Dave placed the box and Valentinian pulled out tool of some sort, quickly backing bolts out of the wall behind where she had been standing at the apex of the catwalk.

  A panel was removed, exposing pipes and such inside.

  The two men weren’t talking with voice so much as with hands. It seemed Valentinian was teaching Dave how to fix something.

  Was the man merely muscle? That was acceptable. She didn’t think Nash would take no for an answer. At least not immediately. Eventually, he would run out of goons he could hire, or do something so outrageous in his blind anger that she could press charges.

  Hopefully on a world where he didn’t own any prosecutors.

  The song ended.

  “Good,” she called, turning her attention back to the deck below. “Now, again. And focus on your hands. I want them moving like a school of fish this time.”

  Valentinian glanced up at her inscrutably. He was a nice-looking kid, if she wanted to pursue a cougar fantasy. Alternatively, Dave appeared to be almost as old as her father.

  But both kept a respectable distance. From her and everyone else. Lianearia supposed that the call girls at the next planet might get a workout, if the two men were pent up with celibacy.

  Or perhaps she might have a chat with the cook.

  Best to keep everyone happy.

  7

  Valentinian

  Valentinian didn’t bother stopping as they passed through the dining hall, on the way to the starboard engine nacelle. He glanced back when he felt Dave pause, but the big man caught up fast enough.

  Around them, all nine girls were heads down, writing on paper supplied by Cleray, silent and intent.

  “What was that?” Dave whispered as they got to the far end of the hallway, opened the engine nacelle, and crowded in.

  There was just enough space here for the two of them and a toolbox, as long as nobody moved suddenly. With the hatch closed, they could talk in low voices.

  “Accounting homework,” Valentinian replied, just as quietly.

  “What?” Dave reared back and bonked his head on an overhead pipe. “Ow.”

  “Yeah, don’t do that,” Valentinian grinned up at him. “I’m short enough to pass below the overhead stuff.”

  “Accounting?” Dave asked again, rubbing the crown of his skull.

  “I asked Hiranur,” Valentinian replied. “Apparently, on top of all the dancing and singing, Madame Cleray makes them take classes in languages, business, and accounting. Something about being prepared for a second career after Solaria Femina.”

  “Interesting,” Dave knelt this time, rather than squatting in the space. “So she’s not just another mogul exploiting innocents?”

  “Not just, would be my take,” Valentinian said. “They’ve any of them got like maybe five years, tops, for the youngest ones. Cleray was them, once. She’s rich now, and trying to sustain this, and apparently making sure she has a clean conscience.”

  “How’d she end up with you?” Dave teased.

  Valentinian had told the man enough of his background for Dave to be able to pretend to have been a crewmember longer than this trip, in case anybody asked. That included his time at Gymnasia Dominia, and the fallout and issues that left him here.

  Including the poker night he stumbled into that got him the stake to buy this ship.

  Valentinian grinned at the memory.

  Look around the poker table. If you can’t identify the mark, then it’s you.

  Fortunately, it had been someone else that time. And the wolves fleecing the sheep hadn’t even minded Valentinian raking off a nice pot towards the end. Right before they stripped that bastard of everything, including the shirt of his back.

  Valentinian had folded with a High Stack/Low Stack as the bidding climbed, knowing that the hammer was about to drop. The mark had been sitting on a Mixed Pyramid, and betting crazy amounts.

  Dumbass.

  Valentinian had happily, gratefully walked away when things had gotten heated as someone else beat the mark with only the second Perfect Arcade Valentinian had ever seen. Right before the mark tried to get ugly.

  As if men and women like that wouldn’t have planned for violence.

  Longshot Hypothesis had been the outcome.

  “The Creator watches out for angels and fools,” Valentinian smiled up at the big guy.

  “You’re supposed to be an angel, now?” Dave laughed.

  “Something like that,” Valentinian laughed back.

  He tried, anyways.

  Honest and ethical were two entirely different things, regardless of how close they were supposed to be. He didn’t scam or steal from anyone that couldn’t afford it. And didn’t take advantage of the ones that couldn’t.

  Close enough to an angel, he supposed.

  “So what happens when we get to Aestrolathia,” Dave asked. “I’ve never been there.”

  Valentinian shrugged, sobering. He pulled out the electric impact hammer and opened up a panel to expose the feed lines and filters inside.

  “It’s a boring kind of world, for the most part,” he said. “Heavy on farming and ranching. They ship grain and meat elsewhere at a profit, but the people are mostly farmers. The bankers are pretty restrained, since the High Street flash is back on Cronus Prime. But they’ll go in for pretty, teenage girls in tight, skimpy outfits, doing synchronized sex appeal.”

  “And if Nash shows up?” Dave got serious. “Do we know what he’s about?”

  “I’ll be wearing a shock pistol the entire time I’m on the ground,” Valentinian felt the growl start in his stomach. “You will as well. If they start something, we’ll finish it. I’m happy to go back and have someone review the tapes from Dominion Prime. They started it and threw the first punch.”

  “And if he’s got official friends here?” Dave growled back. “Gendarmes willing to look the other way, or prosecutors on the take?”

  “I’d happily send an anonymous tip to that White Hat that inspected us before we left,” Valentinian said. “It would be fun, watching her bounce Nash and his people off bulkheads when they got salty at her.”

  “Yeah,” Dave agreed. “But I’d rather we never saw White Hats again.”

  “With you there,” Valentinian said. “That one frightens me in ways no cop ever has. Not sure even Laurentia would be far enough away to escape her, if she got it in her mind to come after us.”

  Dave grew quiet. Valentinian poke
d his head into the gap and checked all the indicators.

  “Okay, look here, here, and here,” Valentinian continued, pointing. “This is what a normal feed line looks like. You’ll see the markers go yellow initially, when they need to be cleaned or replaced. After that, red or black indicates a blockage and probable failure that requires the engine be taken apart, so you’ll need to check these about every three days when we’re in warp, and weekly otherwise. Don’t try to fix anything for now. Just let me know and I’ll show you how to take it all apart. The Anuradhans did weird things with their sublight drives. Maybe more efficient than Dominion tech, but bigger too, and damned near backwards.”

  “Got it,” Dave said. “So would you really go beyond mapped space?”

  “Huh?” Valentinian turned to look at the man, sensing some restrained hope in the man. Like that would make Dave’s day. “Oh, White Hats. Maybe. Her chasing us? I’d hit Wildspace in a heartbeat. Nash doesn’t frighten me. He’s just a bully boy. Pretty sure he’ll try something stupid at Aestrolathia, but that’s only because he’ll hire muscle on site, and they won’t be told about what happened to the last batch of dumbasses.”

  “Should I carry a blade?” Dave asked in a tight, serious voice.

  Valentinian carried a blade with him everywhere. Well, a pocket multi-tool, but that wasn’t what Dave was asking. He meant a big one. A meter of steel with a killing edge, in the hands of someone who knew how to use it.

  The emblem of the crazy folks that joined the Dominion and served in the Caelons or other brigades.

  Valentinian had never had to deal with those armored goons that made up the Dominion’s Assault Cavalry, but everybody knew the plate mail they wore. The heavy blaster on a sling.

  The hand-and-a-half sword hanging over one shoulder.

  Yeah, Valentinian knew what he meant.

  On the one hand, nobody would mess with the man if Dave had a sword on a baldric. On the other hand, nobody would have the least doubts who Dave was, or had been.

  Someone would start asking questions, and Valentinian was pretty sure he didn’t want to know the answers.

  “No,” Valentinian decided. “That’s just asking for trouble. Especially if you end up having to cut someone in half to make a point. And you would. But I have an idea.”

  “Tell me,” Dave commanded in a voice that was suddenly less solicitous.

  That sounded more like the man Dave had been a month ago, Valentinian decided. An officer of some sort, probably. Wearing a mask, like all the rest of the Dominion’s elite troopers.

  “So we start with a metal tube, about three decimeters long,” Valentinian said. “Something light and tough, with a high ductile strength. Then we machine a second tube, just enough smaller that it will fit inside the first, and flare one end out with a ram or something. Same with a third piece, except we weld or screw a small ball of steel at the end, maybe with lead inside.”

  “A telescoping baton,” Dave snapped his fingers. His eyes lit up with excitement. “Yes, concealable, but still lets me fight like I held my…sword. And not kill people, but settle for breaking bones. I could make something like that with the equipment in the machine shop.”

  “You can?” Valentinian had been expecting to have to do the machine work himself.

  Of course a militant warrior berserker monk would know how to make weapons.

  And Valentinian had caught the pause. Every order, every discipline, every heritage called their sword by a different term. Had Dave used it here, Valentinian could have looked it up later and known where the man came from.

  And Dave grinned in a lopsided way at him as they both realized it.

  “As soon as we’re done here, I’ll start looking at piping,” Dave offered. “I’ve never made one, but I understand the theory. Shouldn’t take more than a day. And close combat with blades is so much more personal than just shooting someone with a shock pistol.”

  Valentinian grunted and let that one go. He’d only shot someone twice, and neither time had required more than a demonstration of willingness to shoot.

  Bar fights were a whole other thing, and shatterproof beer pitchers were still his weapon of choice there. Useful defensively as well, if you could get some drunk to punch a pitcher with an uncovered fist to break bones in his hand.

  “So now, let’s move on to the sensors in the engine, and how to test and adjust them…” Valentinian said.

  8

  Kyriaki

  Kyriaki had only been in the Ambassador’s office on two other occasions, one of which had been her first joining this team, and the second for a commendation awarded for hard work.

  Neither sounded to be on the schedule today.

  Three weeks had aged the Ambassador a decade, it seemed. The lines were carved deeper, as though by earth-shattering spring floods.

  She sat across from the desk from him carefully still and waiting.

  “There have been no new leads in the investigation of the Dominator’s death,” he said gravely. “His assassination. We know the event occurred on this station, and that no unaccounted for person was able to depart in the week following.”

  She nodded. They had stepped up the paranoia, going so far as to break small-time criminal enterprises that had been left alone previously. It was always better to watch and take names against later charges, rather than to immediately shatter an organization and perhaps miss the big fish swimming away in the confusion.

  But she had been ruthless. As had her fellows.

  “Either the assassin never left the station, which we doubt, or managed the perfect escape,” the Ambassador continued. “I have reviewed your files of the transport Longshot Hypothesis, and its captain, Valentinian Tarasicodissa. And I agree with you that it is a thin thread to pursue, perhaps even stochastically meaningless. We may see a pattern where there is none, merely because we wish to see one.”

  He paused and rubbed his bald head for a moment, showing the enormous strain.

  The Ambassador felt as if he had personally failed. She could see that in his face. As if the White Hats had failed, even though guarding the Dominator was not their responsibility. Catching his killer should be.

  “In addition,” the man continued in a harder, colder voice. “I have reviewed older files on Tarasicodissa that you have not been privy to. Three years ago, he was banished from the Gymnasia Dominia for ethical irregularities. The file has very carefully been sanitized, but I suspect he was made a scapegoat for others who escaped punishment. We cannot tell, without interviewing certain members of the elite who I do not wish to antagonize without a greater level of evidence.”

  He stopped there. Studied her face with eyes like a hungry owl emerging from the darkness.

  “With no other avenues, I am reduced to the worst. To grasping at straws, Inspector,” he confided in a quiet voice that frightened Kyriaki more than anything she had encountered in years.

  “Sir?” she asked, trying to keep her own nerves in check, lest they color her tone in an accusatory manner.

  “We have reached a dead end, Kyriaki,” he admitted. “There will be a new Dominator in far too short a time, once the Tournament of Domination concludes. I wish to present something other than failure to our new lord upon their ascension.”

  “How may I serve?” she suddenly felt like a small fish in a very deep and dark ocean, while ominous things swam by hungrily below.

  Kyriaki had always been intense and driven. It got her here. Put her in the white beret. Made her a respected officer.

  But now she might be brought to the attention of a new Dominator, and do so as a representative of their collective failure.

  Messengers had been killed for less.

  “I am assigning you to a new mission, Inspector,” the Ambassador rasped. “You will be on detached duty starting immediately. I would rather be a fool than a coward, Kyriaki, so you will investigate Tarasicodissa and his current mission. There are holes in his paperwork and records that suggest someone at
a very high level has been manipulating circumstances in subtle and effective ways. I do not like it, but we lack the evidence to challenge the Solar Party on this. At least so far.”

  “Pursue Longshot Hypothesis?” she pressed with the faintest hope in her eyes. “And then what?”

  Even she knew that trumped up charges would fall apart at the first hearing, unless she uncovered a serious plot against the Dominion. The kind that might never make it to an open hearing because the conspirators needed to be killed rather than being taken alive.

  “Dig, Kyriaki,” the man ordered harshly. “Find out why Solaria Femina suddenly broke with their previous transport and partners, right before all this happened, and came to hire Tarasicodissa instead. Determine where a family-less youth without legitimate employment acquired the funds to buy his ship less than three months after being thrown out of the Gymnasia. Identify his friends and backers, so that we might have further avenues to pursue. Give me something that we can show our new Dominator that we take their safety seriously. None of it adds up to treason, as far as I can tell, even with hindsight, but it also does not amount to nothing.”

  “And if I fail to uncover the plot we suspect?” she asked carefully.

  “There may have never been one, Inspector,” the Ambassador grew warmer. “Occasionally, chaos appears patterned, at least for an instant, before collapsing again. Like a soap bubble on a spring day. A conspiracy that big and sophisticated should have left more evidence behind, unless it was at the highest levels. You will not have failed, if you do, for lack of diligence. That is why I chose you over any of the other officers.”

  Kyriaki actually blushed at the left-handed compliment from her ultimate superior. She had years before she was eligible to be promoted to Inquisitor, unless she broke a major case open. Like this one might become.

  Perhaps she might even need to manufacture a little of the evidence she needed. Tarasicodissa was not clean. It would just be a matter of using the right leverage on the man. Or his compatriots.