Calculated Risk

by Zen DiPietro

  Uh oh.

  Rigby’s breath grew louder and more labored. Nagali’s fingers tightened around Cabot’s.

  “Uhm,” Arpalo said. “Should we run?” His eyes were huge. He looked like he’d been stunned senseless. He’d have to be dumb and senseless to think there was anything that could save them.

  “Where would we run to?” Cabot asked. “If they hit the station, we’re done. There’s nowhere to hide.”

  “Right.” Arpalo took a subconscious step to the left anyway.

  As the huge ship approached, it was difficult to quell the urge to back away or block himself with his hands. A heaviness of dread grew in Cabot’s chest, mixed with the surreal amazement of such a sight.

  Nagali sidled closer. “This is exciting.”

  He put his arm around her and held her close, because there was nothing else to do. He thought sadly of all the things he’d meant to do, but hadn’t gotten around to yet.

  The ship loomed over them until it was all they could see, and still it moved far too fast. Then, the Nefarious rotated on its longitudinal axis, cutting power and rolling the nose of the ship up and away to burn off the excessive thrust.

  It seemed almost like magic when the aft of the ship coasted to the dock on inertia, in perfect alignment, resulting only in a mild bump that made the deck plates move less than the bombing below had.

  “No fucking way,” Arpalo gasped.

  “How are we not dead?” Nagali blinked, mystified and a little disappointed.

  “There is something seriously wrong with you.” Cabot stared at her, perplexed and exhilarated by their brush with death all at the same time.

  Arpalo was doing a strange dance, complete with even stranger sounds that reminded Cabot of a cross between a monkey and a hull breach klaxon. Rigby gingerly hugged a semi-conscious Omar in relief.

  Nagali smiled. “Would you love me if I sniveled and cried in the face of death, or got my feelings hurt whenever someone insulted me?”

  “No,” he agreed.

  Her eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “Hah!”

  He realized her trap too late. “That doesn’t mean I love you,” he insisted. “It just means I wouldn’t, even if you were a typical person.”

  “Uh huh. You keep telling yourself that.”

  But since they’d just escaped death, he leaned forward and kissed her laughing mouth before closing his helmet. Doing so hadn’t seemed to matter before, when it looked like they were about to get smashed to smithereens. He bent to secure Omar’s helmet while the others took care of their own.

  The airlock opened and Cabot straightened. They weren’t out of the woods yet. “Let’s go. Help me with Omar.”

  Nagali led in case Omar fell forward. Cabot and Arpalo shuffled him out, each of them under one of his arms, and Rigby brought up the rear, gasping for breath.

  As soon as they cleared the hatch, Cabot hit the release and hoped for the best.

  With a loud bang that indicated that this docking port on the Nefarious wouldn’t be used again until its docking mechanism received repairs, the station fell away from the ship. The airlock began to pressurize.

  Without commlinks inside the suits made to communicate with the ship, there was nothing they could do but wait until the pressure equalized and they could get out.

  Cabot hoped it wouldn’t be too late for Omar.

  Cabot tended to consider Omar a gentle brute, but Fallon’s partner Hawk made Omar look like a lightweight.

  Literally.

  Hawk carried Omar by himself, with great care, even around narrow turns through the ship’s corridors.

  Rigby appeared stunned by her current situation, and Nagali looked impressed to the point of being smitten.

  Cabot tried not to take it personally, and mostly, he didn’t.

  Fallon reached out to help Rigby, who dodged away, insisting between gasps of breath that she was fine. Fallon didn’t touch her, but stayed nearby, just in case.

  They arrived in the ship’s medbay, which was surprisingly well equipped. Hawk lay Omar on a techbed. Raptor, Fallon’s other male teammate, stood at the controls.

  Nagali’s attention shifted from her awed admiration of Hawk to apparent adoration of Raptor.

  So the guy was nearly half Cabot’s age and blessed with facial symmetry and a lean, muscular build. So what?

  “Administering trophezine to put him under and relax all his muscles. What happened to him?” Raptor spoke calmly, but with crisp authority.

  “A fight, then we rolled around in a van,” Cabot answered.

  “No reason to suspect foreign agents in his body? Poison, virus, projectiles?” Raptor asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Raptor nodded, frowning at the techbed controls. “Three broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a whole bunch of deep bruises. I’m going to have to make an incision to get that rib out of his lung and into place so I can repair the damage. If you’re squeamish, now’s the time to go outside or turn away.”

  Surprisingly, Hawk grimaced and shifted to look the other way. Hah. Cabot hoped Nagali had seen that.

  Nearby, Rigby sat on a chair while Fallon ran a scanner over her and gave her some kind of medicine with a dermal injector.

  Cabot had a hundred questions echoing in his head, but he watched silently as Raptor inserted a long, thin tube into Omar's chest, rotated it slightly, then taped it into place.

  “There. That’s the hard part. Now the techbed can knit the bone. Who’s next?”

  “Her.” Fallon indicated Rigby. “Two broken ribs, no puncture but her lungs have fluid. Shredded tendon in her lower right leg. She doesn’t want trophezine. I gave her something mild.”

  Raptor opened a storage locker and removed a folding cot. After snapping it together and locking into the floor, he gestured to it. “This is better done lying down, if you don’t mind.”

  Rigby glanced at Fallon and Raptor, then to Cabot.

  Cabot smiled. “If there’s anyone in this universe you can trust, it’s them.”

  Hawk stood to the side, keeping an eye on Omar but also looking the rest of them over, as if wondering about the specific density of their bones and how much force he’d need to apply to crack them.

  “Thanks for helping us out,” Cabot said in a low voice to Fallon as Raptor attended to Rigby. “I have a feeling we didn’t have much time left.”

  “You didn’t. The station’s already gone.” Fallon spoke to him while watching Raptor and Rigby. “Sorry we were late. We had a bit of a scuffle on the way.”

  “I noticed a couple scorch marks on your hull.”

  She glowered. “Those will have to be fixed.”

  He hadn’t realized she was so possessive of her ships. This put her extended loan to him of the Outlaw in a new light.

  “Nagali and Omar, I’m familiar with from Dragonfire,” she murmured. “Who are the other two?”

  “Rigby’s a Zankarti native, and a loyal dissident. I’d be surprised if she didn’t go back and stage a bit of a rebellion to change her government.”

  Fallon pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Interesting. Sounds like she might be a worthwhile contact.”

  “Are you thinking about helping her with a rebellion, perhaps to get Zankarti into the PAC?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said in a flat voice that belied her words. “A PAC officer would never interfere with the government of a non-allied planet.”

  “Right,” Cabot agreed. “What was I thinking?”

  “And the man?”

  “Adversary of Nagali’s. Just your average, middling trader. Not much use, but his employment on Zankarti turned out to be lucky for us. It was about the only luck we had, really, except for your being in proximity to get us off that station. Thanks for that, by the way. I owe you one.”

  “Consider it repayment for a debt I owed you. But I told you a while back that if you worked for me, I’d look out for you.”

  “You did,” he agreed. “Though technically I�
�m working for Ditnya, working for PAC command. Not you.”

  She met his eyes for the first time and said in a voice so low no one else could hear it, “When it comes to PAC intelligence and this war, the PAC and I are inseparable.”

  Was she telling him something about her rising status within command? She still retained the rank of commander, but maybe that had little to do with anything else. She was as far from a typical line officer as it got.

  “Good to know. How’s the fight going?”

  “We’ve got the upper hand. Mayani Minor is almost completely resurfaced at this point. Right now, Peregrine’s running evasive maneuvers to keep us out of the fray, but Hawk and I need to get back up to the bridge and reengage in the fight. I’d like to lock Arpalo and Nagali in quarters, if you don’t mind. Then, can you keep an eye on Rigby and Omar here? We’ll have automated security activated too, of course.”

  “Anything you need. I’ll be right here.”

  She nodded. “Good. Let’s get those two confined, because there’s a war out there waiting for me.”

  Cabot wasn’t a fan of riding out a firefight in a medbay, strapped into an auxiliary jump seat. Due to his location, he didn’t even have a view of what was going on outside the ship. Every lurch and roll made him wonder what was happening at that moment.

  Big, stupid Omar got to remain unconscious on the techbed, held into place with high-tech stability devices. Blissfully unaware of what went on around him.

  It was hardly fair.

  Rigby sat beside Cabot in a jump seat, slightly pale but breathing freely. She should really be resting in a techbed, sipping some biogel to rehydrate her body, but as fancy as this ship’s medbay was, it only had one techbed.

  They pitched left and did what felt like a tight barrel roll.

  Raptor, after administering some surprisingly capable healthcare, had joined the rest of his team on the bridge, and was firing laser cannons or whatever at Barony.

  Cabot wished he could be up there instead of babysitting the two patients, but sometimes, the role a person must play is a supporting one. It wasn’t exciting, but it was nonetheless necessary.

  A vicious shaking made him aware of the fact that he wasn’t as young as he used to be. “Shaker charge,” he explained to Rigby. “Do your people use them?”

  But she had somehow dozed off. She must have received a sedative at some point.

  Great. He was now riding out a firefight in a medbay, strapped to a jump seat with not one but two unconscious people.

  He imagined the scene on the bridge, with Fallon piloting and the others calculating vectors and firing weapons.

  Some people had all the luck.

  “Where’s Ditnya?”

  Fallon’s first question after wrapping up the Barony battle was exactly what Cabot had thought it would be. She paced his quarters like an animal stalking its prey.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t her prey.

  He should have more of a sense of completion, it seemed. Zankarti had been cleared of Barony presence. Its remaining ships had limped away. Cabot questioned the mercy in allowing ships to escape, but he suspected PAC command of wanting to play the PR angle of administering mercy.

  Though, perhaps there was some actual mercy involved, as well.

  “I don’t know. She ditched us. I’m trying to figure it out. It was her decision to stay here after you told us to get out. Her decision that we should strike against Barony and give you an opportunity to capitalize on their distraction.” Cabot had given it a great deal of thought, and had gotten nowhere in regard to Ditnya’s goals or motivations.

  “And you’ve had no messages?”

  “Nothing.” He’d slept little after the fight, knowing that they still patrolled the Zankarti system until other ships arrived to take over the job. Besides, he’d been too energized by the day’s activities. It wasn’t every day he participated in an insurrection.

  “Let me know if you do.” She seemed tense in an unsettled sort of way.

  “Likewise. Maybe she feels like she’s fulfilled her contract and headed home.”

  “I find that unlikely.” Fallon leaned against the bulkhead and peered out the porthole. “Barony isn’t going to let this battle go unanswered. We expect them to begin attacking our larger installations outright. This is far from over.”

  “You’ve dealt them a serious blow to their warships, though,” Cabot said.

  “Yes, and Briv is churning ships out at an unprecedented rate for us. It gives us the upper hand, but Barony isn’t done yet.”

  “So what’s next, then?” he asked. “Wait around for them to attack the PAC? Or go after them in their own space?”

  She turned her gaze from the porthole and her sudden scrutiny made him feel exposed. “If we were going to do that, I surely couldn’t tell you.”

  Was that an unofficial yes? It seemed like it.

  “I see. So what should I do next?”

  “Locating Ditnya is a priority.”

  “Do you think she’s switched sides?” he asked.

  “It’s not impossible,” she allowed. “But more likely, she’s decided to renege on assisting the PAC.”

  “You think she’s been feigning an interest in maintaining the current economy?” he guessed.

  “Either that, or knocking Barony back a peg is good enough for her. Maybe she thinks the PAC can take care of it now, and she needn’t bother.”

  Either seemed possible. “Why would she feign an interest in helping, if that’s the case? Her reasoning was sound—the economy is already deeply affected, and the damage will only get worse.”

  “What if she wants to establish a new economy? One with her at its head, and the PAC incapable of getting in her way?”

  “I don’t know,” Cabot said slowly. “It would take a prohibitive amount of work to create that, and the timespan it would require…” He paused, looking for a delicate way to reference Ditnya’s age.

  “She’d be dead before it got very far?” she prompted.

  “Well, yes.”

  “Then what’s your theory?"

  He smoothed his tunic, thinking. “I don’t have one. I need to dig into her recent activities outside of her agreement with the PAC.”

  A thought struck him like a matter-antimatter reaction. “What if she’s been distracting you from something else, and now that something else is done?”

  “That,” she said, “also seems likely.”

  “So what now?”

  Fallon’s expression hardened. “We offload our guests, let others handle Barony for now, and focus our attention on hunting down Ditnya Caine.”

  Cabot was glad she was on his side.

  9

  “I don’t wish to leave the ship.” Rigby’s calm statement surprised the heck out of Cabot.

  He’d intended to fill her in on any details she’d need to manage her brief stay on Blackthorn Station and her chartered journey back home, paid for courtesy of PAC command. Apparently, she had her own plans.

  Fallon’s face remained impassive. “Why is that?”

  Rigby paused, collecting her thoughts. “I’m a scholar by education and a businessperson by trade. When I return to my home, I want to enact tremendous change. I don’t currently have the skills to do that. I want to indenture myself to you, for the purpose of learning what I need to know.”

  “Which is?” Fallon asked.

  “Fighting. Battle. Power plays. The methodology of the PAC zone.”

  “I see. I guess your plan to change your world and its outlying planets does not involve peaceful political maneuvering.” Fallon gave no indication of what she thought of this.

  “That’s correct. The only way to enact real change is through a violent uprising.” Rigby said this so indifferently that she might have been lecturing about ancient events.

  A slow smile formed on Fallon’s lips. “You’re in luck. I have a certain familiarity with those tactics. Fine, then. Stay on with us. You’ll be expected to work, and put
your life on the line.”

  Rigby looked as surprised as Cabot felt.

  “You’re accepting me? Just like that?” she asked, blinking.

  Fallon nodded. “Yes. And it’s not charity. If you can enact change that keeps Zankarti from becoming a possible weapon against the PAC again, or even gets them to join the PAC, that’s more than worth whatever I can teach you.”

  “It’s an investment that might not pay off.” Cabot didn’t want to prevent Rigby from getting what she wanted, but he felt the need to be a voice of reason.

  “But if it does,” countered Fallon, “it will pay off huge dividends.”

  She held her hand out to Rigby. “Deal?”

  Rigby hesitated, then grasped it firmly, looking certain. “Deal.”

  Fallon and her team booted Arpalo off the ship at Blackthorn, with no money and no ticket anywhere. As far as Cabot was concerned, it was better than he deserved.

  Then he remembered that he had no reason to dislike the man except for that fact that Nagali disliked him.

  Never mind that. The man could access his accounts on Blackthorn and get to wherever he wanted to go. They’d saved his life by getting him off Mayani Minor, and that was payment enough for his services.

  Omar had recovered completely by the time they arrived at Blackthorn, and presumably, had enjoyed some sort of reunion with Peregrine. The two were too subtle to know what was happening between them.

  Cabot was disappointed by that, as he found their unusual relationship interesting.

  Fallon wanted everyone to take advantage of their visit to Blackthorn to reach out to colleagues. She’d instructed them to find out anything they could about either Barony or Ditnya.

  Cabot doubted he could uncover anything about Barony that PAC command couldn’t, but he was pretty sure he could get at least a hint or two about where Ditnya had been, or planned to go.

  It was good to have friends in low places.

  While Fallon and her team worked their connections, Cabot dug into his. His first stop was Jim Iwo’s shop.