Honor Bound

by Rachel Caine

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You sponsored us in good faith, but we’re not here to fight in the arena. We’re getting our upgrades and heading out again. What happened? I thought the Abyin Dommas dominated in the semifinals.”

  “Did,” Suncross confirmed. “Very stupid race, very stupid. Could have won easily, chose not to in last fight. Felt sorry for his opponent.” Suncross snorted salt out of his nostrils. The tabletop was already crusted with it. “Sobbing story of brood back on homeworld, opponent needed fita to buy passage out. Abyin Dommas conceded. Conceded! Who concedes without a death blow, I ask you? Or loss of limbs?”

  I acknowledged that truth with a nod. “Well, at least I can pay you back the fita you loaned us when we first arrived.”

  “Good news,” Suncross grunted. “Not good enough. We lost much on that accursed Abyin Dommas. Even with your reimbursement, there’s not enough left to pay docking expenses, settle our accounts on Tier Twelve, fuel up, and go.”

  Somehow I didn’t laugh. “Maybe if you didn’t blow so much money on booze and cheap thrills—”

  “Legitimate overhead! Do not sap our will to live, Zeerakull.” Suncross glared at me.

  As my lizard friend listed all their totally legit costs, I crunched some numbers on my H2. We had sufficient mynt and fita to pay for our needs. When I factored in the generous survivor’s bonus Bacia had paid out, I was flush as hell, and there was nothing I wanted here. I’d already bought some alien tech, such as the personal force field. I wouldn’t mind having a spare in case it broke, but since I was good at fixing stuff, even that wasn’t necessary, strictly speaking.

  When we’d first arrived on the Sliver, Suncross and his crew had sponsored us and provided good intel. In the Zone, such generosity was rare enough that it deserved a reward, and the same standard held out here on outlaw station. I started when Suncross slammed four clawed hands on the table, forcing me to look up.

  “The least you could do is pay attention when I’m complaining, Zeerakull!”

  “I heard you,” I snapped. “Keep your scales on, or you’ll be sorry.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Suncross hissed in my general direction.

  These damn lizards had no chill. Still, I owed them a good turn, so I’d pay up. “It looks like I can front the mynt you need . . . and I just checked. If I sign off, I can gift some of my fita to you. It’s enough for you to fuel up and get going.”

  Suncross’s jaws dropped open, revealing so many teeth, but he was just surprised, not thinking about eating me. His crew quieted, the entire table just staring at me. Ghostwalk put all four of his hands on the table and turned them palms up. His scales were gray-green, palms a soft ivory, and I had the feeling this gesture had deep cultural meaning.

  “What are your terms?” Suncross finally asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Interest. What percent?”

  Sighing, I said, “I’m not a loan shark.”

  Ghostwalk still hadn’t moved his hands. “What is a borrow fish?”

  That translation quirk made me laugh. “Look, this is a farewell gift. It’s highly unlikely that we’ll be back here, and you were good to us. I want to help you, no strings.”

  “Why would there be strings?” Suncross demanded. “Slave ship?”

  Why is it so hard to give gifts to lizards?

  “No. If you don’t want my help, just say so.”

  “Free help?” Ghostwalk clarified.

  “Yes, completely free.” Finally, it seemed like my message was getting through. Crims in the Zone weren’t this wary.

  “We cannot accept,” Suncross said. “Unless you offer an employment contract. It is dishonorable to take charity. Worthy to work off debt.”

  This was getting so complicated. I had no use for another ship and crew . . . or did I? Their mechanical ship might come in handy against the Phage. Tapping the table thoughtfully, I wished the others were here to weigh in.

  Is this a great idea or a terrible one? Only one way to find out.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s explore our options. Does your ship have weapons?”

  Suncross and Ghostwalk traded looks, like I’d asked something deeply stupid. “Of course.”

  “Since I don’t know how much it normally costs to hire you, I’ll have to trust your word. How long will you work for me in return for buying your crew out of Sliver hock?”

  The lizards turned off their translation matrix and talked among themselves, snarls and growls that meant nothing to me. After a few minutes, Suncross restored the tech and answered, “Half a rotation, we follow your orders. Loyal to the bone.”

  Since I was willing to give them the fita before anyway, I took the deal without hesitation. I had no way of knowing if that was a fair trade for what I was paying, but they seemed pretty concerned about worth and honor. Didn’t really think they’d cheat me. We wrote up the contract right there in Pinky’s and signed off with our biometrics, then I made the necessary mynt transfer and fita grant.

  One by one, the lizards—including Suncross—turned their palms up on the table. Sixteen palms, open.

  I added my own human hands, and Suncross nodded.

  “Our strength is yours, Zeerakull. Your honor is ours. Death before betrayal.”

  I didn’t know the proper response to that, so I nodded back, and then sixteen hands clenched into fists and pounded the table in a thunder. I followed suit, drumming until my still-healing skin winced from the abuse. At the end of it, Suncross and his boys threw back their heads and roared, a sound like a T. rex shaking the world, and I joined in with a war cry that felt like it tore my throat open. Seemed like the thing to do.

  Just wait until the rest of the team learns that I’ve hired mercs.

  Partying with Suncross was a loser’s game, so I tapped out after two drinks, fist-bumped the crew, and headed outside. Marko and Bea must still be shopping. Stretching, I reached for Nadim, and the mental threads wove together between us, and I took in a deep breath of recycled air, heavily spiced with alien body odor, food that smelled no better, and the sweat of thousands of desperate people, all rubbing crankily against each other in close quarters.

  Felt like home.

  “Nadim,” I said. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yusuf has made an extensive list of upgrades. I will be fitted with armor, several rail guns, internal defenses, an upgrade to the force shield you installed before.” He sounded like a kid getting the best birthday present ever. But then he chilled. “I wish I did not need them. But they will keep you and Beatriz safe.”

  “And you.”

  “Well, yes.” He said that as if it didn’t matter that much. I shook my head. I was going to have to work hard to train the martyr out of him.

  “Has the station crew sent a schedule yet?”

  “Yes, upgrades will begin as soon as the items are printed in the shop. Expected time is two station hours from now. Typhon’s work is mostly repairs, and the crew is already on the way to him now. They are reinforcing his armor considerably.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “That gives me time to take care of something.”

  Nadim must have caught the tone in my voice, or the surge in my emotions, because he said, in a newly cautious voice, “Zara? What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing dangerous,” I assured him. “I promise, I’m not looking for a fight.”

  “No arena battles?”

  “No.”

  That seemed to satisfy Nadim, at least a little, though I could tell he was on his guard now. Good. I wanted him to be. I’d be on the Hopper in an hour to be on site when the upgrades commenced; I wasn’t about to trust Nadim to Bacia’s people without being there to observe and shoot anybody who tried to hurt him. Yusuf was there, but it was unfair to ask him to do the job alone.

  I found Bea and Marko sitting at dinner in a pretty, shiny restaurant up on Tier Fourteen. Unlike Pinky’s, it wasn’t crowded; there was a respectful space between tables, an
d everything looked freshly sanitized. The air smelled fresh and clean in here, and periodically, a mister above the tables drifted down a scent that was pleasing for the race of whoever was occupying it. In Marko and Bea’s case, it seemed to be lavender. Relaxing.

  I stared. “Shut up—is that ice cream?”

  “Kind of,” Bea said. “I don’t think we want to ask where the milk came from. But it’s delicious. Sit down!”

  “This place is great,” Marko added. “Expensive.”

  “Yeah, well, I was drinking with Suncross. I kind of, uh, hired them.”

  “To do what?” Bea asked.

  “Well, not public relations,” I said. “They’re mercenaries. They’ll fight with us for half a rotation, measured in Sliver time. We might need them if we come up against the Phage again. Or other problems.”

  I expected them to object, but maybe the meal had chilled everybody out; Marko just nodded and took a bite of the ice cream. I decided I’d better try the stuff before it was gone, because at the rate they were going, it would vanish before I had the chance.

  I snagged a spoonful and put it in my mouth.

  The taste exploded in layers: sweet first, then a dark, vibrant, mysterious richness that lingered beneath. It finished on a sting that was almost spice, which felt like the most perfect thing ever. I put my spoon in the bowl with Marko’s and Bea’s, and the entire thing melted into the pristine table. Not a drop to show it had ever been there. No servers here, I gathered. Not even servo-bots. Just peace, quiet, and damn amazing food.

  “Would you mind coming with me somewhere?” I asked.

  Bea’s scarf turned a light blue. “What are you going to do, Zara?”

  “Nothing dangerous,” I said. “I need to buy something.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They paid the bill, and we left the restaurant. I backflipped into the transport and took the route down, plummeting in a dive all the way to Tier One. The other two kicked out without trouble, and stood with me on the central plaza, where we’d first been welcomed in.

  “Okay,” Marko said. “What are we doing here? Aren’t the shops on other tiers?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But that’s not what we’re buying.” I turned and walked toward a giant holographic display filled with names. “We’re putting someone on the memorial board.”

  Suncross had pointed the board out to me; it held the names mostly of arena combatants who hadn’t survived matches, which was a daunting list considering it wasn’t supposed to be mortal combat. But not all the names came from the arena. It cost to add one—a considerable sum of mynt and fita—and only those who had lots of friends and fans could afford to even be listed.

  I tapped the interface and added a name. Henri Demetrius Justineau. Citizen of Earth.

  “Oh,” Bea said quietly. “I understand.”

  I added a staggering amount of mynt and fita, the rest of our remaining balance, and Justineau’s name soared to the top of the memorial list and illuminated in gold. It would stay there until someone paid more for their monument. Unlikely.

  I wasn’t good at funerals, so I said, “Sorry, Justineau. You deserved better. We would have taken you out of here if we could have. Whatever faith you followed, I hope it welcomes you home.”

  Bea didn’t say anything, but when she stepped forward, she began to sing. It was opera, an aria that I recognized; it was the emotional, heart-shattering, beautiful song she’d first performed when we’d come aboard Nadim. I felt Nadim enfolding both of us as the music soared up through the Sliver, amplified by space and passion. Tier by tier, all business stopped. Everyone listened. A shimmering cloud of Jellies floated out over the space, like a curtain of colors that pulsed with the emotions of her song. Her scarf had turned ice white, framing her face in light like an angel’s, and her eyes were closed, tears tracking down her cheeks.

  It was the sweetest, loveliest thing I had ever seen, and for it to be here, in the grime and rust and stench of the Sliver . . . I knew everyone, on every tier, was for a moment somewhere else. Somewhere beautiful.

  She finished, and the silence that followed might have been unique to this place. Respect. Honor. No one seemed to breathe.

  I said, into that silence, “Good-bye, Henri Justineau.”

  Someone echoed it. Then someone else. Then everyone standing on the tiers was saying it.

  I didn’t know, but I thought he would have liked it, because for one precious moment, everyone on the Sliver knew who he was.

  Bea took a deep breath, wiped her face with her scarf, and said, “That was a good thing to do. Thank you, Zara.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t expect me to make it a habit, because nobody else I like is dying,” I said. “Marko? That includes you. Hell, it even includes Typhon. Clear?”

  “Very,” he said. “Although if I do fall, having Beatriz sing me to rest would be the best passing I can imagine.”

  She caught her breath and looked away.

  “Enough serious shit,” I said. “Come on. Let’s get our upgrades and blow this wreck.”

  Observing while aliens did things that hurt my Leviathan was not my jam. At all.

  I stood about two hot seconds of it before I stuffed my aching ass into my skinsuit, which had regrown itself good as new, rolled on the helmet, and spaced myself to go see what exactly these assholes were doing to Nadim.

  “Hey!” I addressed a creature hanging motionless in space, fixed to Nadim by a cord that looked too thin to do any good. The alien I was talking to was a big, hulking thing, made anonymous by the metallic suit. It had to be the boss of this gang, because it wasn’t doing anything useful. “What the hell are you doing that’s hurting him so much?” I could feel every sharp, stabbing pain, though Nadim was bearing it without complaint.

  The helmet slowly rotated—the body didn’t—in my direction. I couldn’t see a damn thing through the dark faceplate. “Installing Level Twelve armor isn’t a painless procedure on the Dark Travelers,” whatever was inside said. The voice came from my translator as a high-pitched, almost childlike tone. Horror vid scary. “If you wanted pain relief, that should have been ordered.”

  “Well, I’m ordering it now!”

  “Sure,” the boss said. “But it delays us by another two days while it takes effect.”

  Nadim said, “No, Zara. Let them work.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “I will heal. We should do this and go.”

  “Nadim—”

  “No,” he said, firmly. I knew that tone. I knew that feeling, unyielding as a steel wall. “You hurt yourself for our sake. I can do no less than bear my own pain. If you wish to help install the plating, then that is more useful.”

  Shit. He was right, of course; I had to treat Nadim like his own being. If he wanted to endure surgery without anesthetic, I might hate the hell out of it, but I didn’t get to say he couldn’t do it.

  I pulled in a breath, blew it out along with my anger, and said to the construction boss, “Okay, no pain relief. How can I help?”

  “Fasten yourself, take a crate, follow instructions,” the suit said. “Ask if you don’t understand. We’re short-staffed, working two ships at once.”

  Well, I liked a no-nonsense approach, at least. I tethered my suit back to the airlock, kicked off, and tumbled through the gravity-free space to land on the side of a floating platform full of stuff. A helpful spinning icon hung over one box, and I checked the instructions attached to it. They were all visual, not words, which was helpful. All I needed to do was drive the crate, which had its own jets, over to Nadim, position it until the crate told me it was in the right position, open it, and position the plating. The bolts were self-drilling. It was slick, all things considered.

  I was fine right up until the drills fired, bolting the plating deep into Nadim’s body; I knew it was necessary, but I felt every centimeter of the drill, and the sharp, red agony it caused, even when Nadim tamped it down.

 
; This is how he feels, watching me get hurt. It blows.

  The drills finished, and the crate flashed that it was finished. I drove it back to the pallet and picked up another. There were at least a hundred workers involved, but a Leviathan was, well, vast, even at Nadim’s size. This would take time.

  It took hours of exhausting work—not physically tough, but emotionally—before I went inside and took a food-and-water break. Bea was monitoring, and she made sure I sat down for a bit before I went back at it, but I couldn’t really rest. Not with the constant spike of drills entering Nadim’s flesh.

  The plating finally finished with the last drills cutting in and anchoring, the last silvery burst of blood from beneath leaking away into space. Nadim hung in the low light, and as I backed off and really looked, it was awe-inspiring what had been done in a Sliver day. Sleek, scaled armor overlapping like that of Earth fishes, in a black so deep that it would conceal him from most visual sensors even when he wasn’t running dark. The only way to see Nadim now would be as a shadow against stars. The two big bumps that had been added at his tail and head contained shield generators, and there were backups midway on his ventral and dorsal surfaces. Two rail guns sat in sleek pods, ready to emerge and fire at any moment.

  All he lacked now was the interior defenses, like Typhon had.

  “How does it look?” Nadim asked me, and I blended with him to show him what I saw.

  “Badass,” I told him. “You look badass.”

  “Then we match,” he said, and I laughed.

  It was shift change, and the workers had all untethered and were hanging on the huge pallet vessel for the ride back down. The construction boss stopped next to me to say, “You ever need a job, I’ll hire you, softskin.”

  I didn’t think that was a particularly cute nickname, but I thanked him anyway.

  I was watching the vessel and workers glide back into docking orbit with the Sliver when something caught my attention. I didn’t know what it was and kept looking. Typhon’s repair crew was finishing up too, and catching a ride home, was it that? No, the movement had come out of a different quadrant. The Sliver did draw in ships all the time, so I thought I’d glimpsed one of those coming or going . . .