by Natalie Grey
“I’m not trying to keep her from making her own decisions,” Carter protested, but he let his head drop forward with a sigh when Barnabas raised an eyebrow in response. “Okay, maybe I’m trying to keep her from making more decisions like that one.”
“Why?” Barnabas asked him. The word was mild, but there was steel there.
“Because—look what happened! He took her ship! He left her stranded on some station somewhere—”
“Where she found a job,” Barnabas seemed to find that part amusing for some reason, “reached out to you, came to see you, and offered to help you take care of your children. Carter, she survived what happened to her. You need to let her stand on her own two feet. After losing someone you love…” He gave a distant smile, then turned his head as an alert sounded that Carter couldn’t quite hear. “I have to go. If she leaves before I’m back, tell her I look forward to meeting her again.”
“I’ll make sure she stays put,” Carter promised. He saw the look in Barnabas’ eyes and threw his hands up. “Okay, I’ll go… Ah, hell, you want me to tell her the truth, don’t you? Fine, I’ll go tell her the truth.”
“Good man,” Barnabas said with a smile. He cut the line, and Carter gave a sigh.
“I liked it better when my friends were cargo handlers,” he groused to no one in particular. “The dregs of society didn’t try to get me to be a better person.” He wandered out into the hallway. “Aliana? Are you in your room?” No answer came, and he went down into the bar. “Elisa—have you seen Aliana?”
“She took something to the spaceport, I think.” Elisa gave a shrug. “She said the kids were napping and she wouldn’t be back before they were up.”
A sense of foreboding settled over Carter. He turned without a word and took the stairs two at a time, running down the hallway to the little room they’d given to Aliana.
Her things were gone. She’d packed hastily, leaving behind a couple of shirts and a new pair of boots she’d bought since she came. Carter stared around, trying to make sense of her leaving—until he remembered the noise he’d heard in the hallway.
She’d heard everything, and he hadn’t even gotten a chance to say he was sorry.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Although he had made sure to be at the conference room a few minutes ahead of schedule, Barnabas was the last to arrive. He found Shinigami standing with Gilwar, her arms crossed on her chest, studying a series of blueprints projected on the screen. Tafa was looking at an aerial surveillance shot, and Gar was paying attention to both the blueprints and the surveillance photos by turns. They were all absorbed enough in their planning that no one even noticed him enter.
He smiled as he went to lean over Tafa’s and Gar’s shoulders and study the map. His crew was absorbed in their work; he liked that.
Tafa gave him a nod, then used the two thumbs on one hand to point out structures on the property. “These are their water filtration systems.”
Barnabas squinted at them.
“It won’t be useful this time,” Tafa said, “but for Jotuns, sabotage of the filtration systems would be both more vital to fix and have more of a psychological impact than it would for other species. We should keep it in mind.”
“While I’m disturbed that you think we’ll need to sabotage more Jotun complexes at some point, it is good to know.” Barnabas pulled a sheet of schematics out. “I take it this is the mechanism that regulates them?”
Tafa nodded. “I’m identifying everything I can about the layout of the compound so we can see what would be the best way to go in.”
Barnabas nodded and murmured his thanks before moving on to where Shinigami stood with Gilwar. There was now a schematic for a biosuit on their screen.
“These are the committee’s guards,” Shinigami explained to Barnabas. “Gilwar has indicated what sort of weapons they have, and where. It’s probably not a complete list, but it does at least tell us what to watch out for.”
Barnabas looked over the list. On the left arm of the guards’ biosuits, they would have a knife, a small pistol, and a needle with some unknown poison either in or on it.
“Are the knives poisoned?” he asked Gilwar.
“Probably,” Gilwar said, “but I couldn’t tell you for certain. If they are, it’s likely a nerve agent rather than a poison designed to kill.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Poisons react very differently in different species, and not all species are consistent in the best method of poison delivery, especially if death is the goal. Not only that, size varies considerably, so it will be difficult to have enough poison to take down a Brakalon in short order. If the guards knew they would be fighting a certain species they might choose differently, but as general protocol, my guess is that they would choose a nerve agent. Nerves respond much more predictably across species, and an incapacitated enemy is one you can easily kill.”
Barnabas nodded and studied the right arm. This one held a much larger gun, and the structure of the biosuit was slightly different on the opposing side to allow the biosuit to brace for recoil. Though there was no specific knife, each “finger” on the right side of the biosuit was tipped with razor-sharp serrated blades that could slide out one at a time or all at once to do damage to an opponent.
Both wrists, meanwhile, included recessed compartments with fixtures to plug the suit into various systems, presumably to hack them.
“How do Jotuns hack things?” Barnabas asked curiously.
Gilwar’s head swung from side to side. “I don’t…understand the question.”
“Hmm. How to say this. Does the suit include fragments of code that can easily be deployed, does one Jotun hack entirely on its own, or does the hookup allow another Jotun to access the system remotely?”
“Oh.” Gilwar looked intrigued. “Suits include fragments of code. I hadn’t considered that last option, however. That might be useful in some cases.”
“Mmm.” Barnabas wished he hadn’t just given Jotun Intelligence a new idea for hacking, but at least Gilwar seemed to be friendly…for now. “So, what are your recommendations for an assault?”
“It will depend slightly on what Tafa says.” Gilwar had apparently familiarized himself with the crew and their areas of expertise, and Barnabas reflected that he should have expected no less from an intelligence agent.
He wondered if Gilwar had figured out yet that Shinigami was the AI who operated the ship as well as the individual inside the body.
Tafa beckoned them all over to the table and held up two fingers. “Our first thing to decide is whether or not they believe we can get onto the planet.”
“They should assume we can,” Barnabas replied after a moment’s reflection. “They have to know the places we’ve gotten into already, don’t they? Let’s assume they’re planning on us being there.”
“Okay, so the next thing we have to guess is, are they going to place Jeltor somewhere we can get to him fairly easily and use him as bait, or do they actually want to protect him, in which case they’ll have him in some version of a panic room?” Tafa looked at the rest.
No one answered for a long moment.
“It depends if they know Admiral Jeqwar declared him dead,” Shinigami said finally.
“She what?” Gilwar demanded.
“She knows about the mind control,” Barnabas explained, “and did not want to tip her hand to the whole fleet, so she told select captains that Jeltor is dead and that anyone claiming to be him, or appearing to be him is an imposter who should be killed on sight.”
Gilwar nodded. “I would have expected no less from the admiral who led our fleets to victory at Jestorai.”
Barnabas resolved to look up that battle at some point, although he had a fairly good idea of what Gilwar was suggesting. Admiral Jeqwar, it seemed, was well-practiced at making cold, logical decisions.
You don’t want to know right now, Shinigami told him, having anticipated his desire to look it up. You won’t approve.
Good to know, thank you.
Clever, though.
No time for that now. Focus.
She gave a small smile, and he knew she was refraining from pointing out for the hundredth time that she could focus on multiple things at once.
Fine, he grumbled, his own smile showing despite his best efforts. Let me focus.
She shot him a grin and sighed as she looked at the map again. “My guess is that Jeltor will be bait for us. They’ve had him for a while now, so they have to assume that people might have noticed him missing. If he is not what they’d hoped in terms of being their agent, it might make sense to use him to take us out.”
“Then they’ll be in the main house,” Tafa predicted. “There’s an entertaining area, sunken, easy to flood if the guests are Jotuns, easy to keep dry if the guests are some other species. It’s very elegant, very…show-off-y?”
“Ostentatious?” Barnabas suggested.
“Sure.” Tafa shrugged.
You’re ostentatious, Shinigami accused. With your fancy words.
With my correct words?
She rolled her eyes.
“If he’s meant to be bait,” Gilwar said, “and Grisor wants to show off—which is, I think, what Tafa was suggesting, yes? Yes, then he will likely flood the area when we’re there. Most Jotuns believe their species is superior to others, and in someone like Grisor, that opinion is almost an obsession. He’ll want to do something to you that a Jotun could survive but you won’t be able to.”
“And he doesn’t know what we are,” Shinigami said smugly. “Gar, you can breathe underwater, right?”
“It’s not comfortable, and I can’t do it for a huge amount of time,” Gar said, “but for the length of a fight, yes. Enough to surprise them certainly, unless they’re very well versed in Luvendi physiology.”
“They’re not,” Gilwar said. “They haven’t bothered with the Luvendi so far.” He looked at them curiously. “So you actually think this is worth trying?”
“Yes,” Barnabas said at the same time as Shinigami, Gar, and Tafa.
If Gilwar had had eyebrows, Barnabas assumed they would have shot up in surprise. As it was, there was merely a pause before the mechanical head nodded.
“I say we go in pretending to bargain,” Shinigami said. “We can have the ship on standby in case we need it—”
“Is this a flamethrower plan?” Barnabas interrupted.
“You have to ask? Yes, obviously it is a flamethrower plan. They’re bringing the water, we’re bringing the fire. Meanwhile, we sneak Gilwar off the ship somehow to get into their systems and mess with them. Too bad he doesn’t have a suit like the assassin, huh?”
“Kantar?” Gilwar asked. When everyone looked at him, he gave a discreet mechanical cough. “I did not realize you did not know her name. I regret telling her not to explain things to you.”
“You hired her?” Barnabas asked. Somewhat annoyed, he added, “And, yes, it would have been helpful to have more knowledge about what was going on.”
“We had hoped not to involve other species,” Gilwar explained. It was impossible to tell from his tone whether he regretted his actions. “You’re very determined, however, even though this isn’t your sector.”
“My sector?” Barnabas gave him a look.
“Our sector,” Shinigami corrected helpfully. She gave him a bland smile when he rolled his eyes and laughed.
“I see no particular human interest in this,” Gilwar said. “Rather, I see no reason they would intervene in the particular way that they have.”
“I’m not a human emissary,” Barnabas explained. “I’m a Ranger.”
“A vigilante,” Shinigami said after a pause. “He goes wherever there is injustice and rights things for their own sake, not for human interests.”
“Ah.” Again, it was impossible to tell what Gilwar thought from his tone. Even his thoughts were very calm when Barnabas probed them lightly. “A justiciar.”
“As good a term as any, I suppose.” Barnabas nodded to the group. “Everyone get ready. Shinigami, you didn’t mention the satellites. Do you think you can get back through those?”
“I do.” She followed him out the door and along the corridor. “I’m basing my strategy on the Ubuara hive-mind thing they have going on. I started to come up with the idea when we were getting through the turrets on the way to the laboratory. I won’t be doing a hard hack of any of the systems, I’ll be having each satellite influence its neighbors to be focusing elsewhere using different amounts of force; all that.”
“I like that.” Barnabas grinned.
“I thought you might. It has your trademark sneakiness, and we do have a reputation to uphold, you know.” She followed him into his quarters.
“Can I help you?” Barnabas knew she was not human and that she could see into his room at all times if she wished to do so, but it still felt strange to consider changing in front of her when she was standing right here in a human-looking body.
She must have guessed what he was thinking because she snorted. “I’ll look the other way,” she offered, then turned around and studied the ceiling.
“Thank you.” Barnabas shook his head and began to change, laying his clothes neatly on the bed for him to hang up. The ship would do it for him if he wanted, of course, but he believed that habits of neatness were valuable.
This was the sort of sentiment that made Shinigami tell him he was boring at parties. The thought made him smile as he looked at her back. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Yes, actually.” She instinctively turned back toward him before checking herself and looking at the ceiling again. “Are you all right?”
Barnabas paused in the process of pulling his lightweight undershirt on. With reinforced fibers and the team’s trademark attention to detail, it was not only comfortable but also strong enough to repel most knives. It added a valuable layer between his skin and his armor.
He sat on the bed and considered. “I feel steadier.”
“You seem steadier. Can I turn around now?”
“Yes.” Barnabas smiled slightly and met her eyes. “Having you here, knowing that you wouldn’t let me go over the edge—I hadn’t even considered it, but I must have known on some level that it was a possibility. Your offer helped more than you know.” He considered. “And then I spoke to Carter, and I realized something else.”
Shinigami waited, head cocked to the side curiously.
“Catherine,” Barnabas said, by way of explanation. “I watched her slip away. I watched her turn into a different person. I couldn’t stop any of it. To see that happen to Jeltor, maybe to millions of others…it’s horrifying.”
Shinigami hesitated. “You know they won’t manage it, right?” she said finally. “We’ll stop them.”
Barnabas looked at her. They might already be too late, and he had to accept that. To his surprise, telling himself that seemed to make it better, rather than not quite thinking it or not letting himself think it. “Shinigami, what if they’ve turned Jeltor? What if he’s loyal to Grisor now above all else?”
“Then we kill Grisor.” Shinigami shrugged. “Problem solved.”
Barnabas gave a bark of laughter and dropped his face into his hands for a moment. His shoulders shook with mirth. “Oh, Shinigami, what would I do without you?”
“Solve problems the boring way,” Shinigami told him promptly. “Come on, let’s go. We’re almost on the surface.”
“What? You— What?”
“I didn’t want to bother you with the trivial bits. It turns out the Jotun systems are very strong against a hard hack but very, very weak against gentle persuasion.” She looked immensely pleased with herself. “I’m going to go get my weapons!”
Barnabas stared after her for a moment, then finished dressing, still chuckling. He was sure he’d do just fine without Shinigami and the rest of his crew.
But his life definitely wouldn’t be as much fun.
Chapter Tw
enty-Seven
It was quiet as the Shinigami made its way down to the surface. In fact, it was far too quiet. Barnabas, leaning against the wall next to the airlock, wondered if he should ask if the satellites had been turned off, but Shinigami anticipated the question.
“I really did fool them,” she told him. There was a note of wounded pride in her voice. “They’ll probably change those specific protocols in the future, but changing all of their systems won’t be so easy.”
Gar had joined them. “Maybe they don’t know we’re here—or they haven’t had as much warning as they expected. You know, like they thought they would see a certain number of explosions or missile launches or something, and that would be their cue to prepare.”
The ship gave a small shudder.
“Like that?” Barnabas asked.
“That,” Shinigami said with satisfaction, “was Gilwar being launched out of a missile tube.”
Barnabas froze, and Gar made a small worried noise.
“He asked me to,” Shinigami clarified. “You two are so suspicious. He knows what he’s doing. Well, he seems to. I didn’t see any signs that he was lying. I don’t think he knows that I can read Jotun emotions.”
“We’re still waiting for your master class on that, by the way,” Barnabas told her. “Time to hope he can get something useful done, I suppose.”
“Mmhmm.” She checked her weapons one last time. “Do you think I could get guns embedded in my arms?” she asked wistfully.
“Let’s say no.”
“Oh, come on, you didn’t think about that at all.”
“A biosuit is much bulkier than you are,” Barnabas said, scrambling for a plausible-sounding reason. “You couldn’t get those guns in there without it being obvious.”
“On the plus side, I could actually be talking about guns when I said ‘these guns.’”
“I…” Barnabas looked at the ceiling and tried to figure out where to go from here.
“I’ll talk to Jean about it.”
