by Debra Jess
For the first time since he assumed his captaincy, Silt took the time to notice his second. "If you're so concerned with evidence, then you can execute them wherever you want, but make sure your squad is on board the Silt before we leave, which will be in less than an hour."
His second looked relieved for a brief moment before returning to the squad. Hyeph walked in the other direction, toward the runabout that would return him to the Silt.
If he found Shade without attracting the attention of the Manitac bean-counters, then Manitac would no doubt promote him to fleet commander in short time. He would meditate on this image once he was in his office with a steaming cup of Koka roast from the mountains of Harakua in his hands.
From behind, he heard the begging from the doomed guards before the gunfire silenced them. The only voice missing from the cacophony was Shade's, but she would get a taste of his vengeance soon enough.
Chapter Eight
"I suspect she's been holding on to that information for a long time." Hart handed Cuff a drink as his friend sat on the leather chair next to the holo-viewer. Cuff had arrived knowing perfectly well when Hart had returned to his quarters after visiting Shade. "The haunted nebula doesn't appear on the Majesty's itinerary, even as a up plan should the R2305 supernova fail."
"Which it did." Cuff sipped his brandy, a drink Hart found too sophisticated for himself, but he always kept a full bottle for when Cuff dropped by to update him on whoever was in the sick bay. "Last I heard, the rate of neutrino interaction was under debate since the star still hasn't exploded. The Majesty's passengers paid a fortune for a once-in-a-lifetime event while on this cruise. Money like that also comes with no small amount of power, and power does not like to be shortchanged. Sort of like you, my friend."
"Anyone stupid enough to pay that sort of money for a glorified cruise through stars gets what they deserve." Hart plugged the bottle, slipping it back onto its shelf behind the bar. "I've seen the contracts. They were warned that the supernova might not occur on schedule. The supernova will explode when it's damn good and ready and not on some professor's timeline. And unlike a supernova, I can control my temper."
Of course, Cuff hadn't dropped by to discuss the mission. Most evenings, when they weren't in port picking up supplies and didn't have others warming their beds, he and Cuff would play autodam. Between them sat the long-running strategy scenario with all three levels active. Sometimes they played all the way through. Other times it would take months to finish one game.
"So you charmed Shade into giving you a taste of the information you need, and then she kissed you." Cuff touched the game's controls to move his piece to the second level, putting Hart on the defensive.
"She was drunk." Hart didn't ask how Cuff knew Shade had kissed him. Instead, he retreated one of his pieces from the second level back to the first. As he did so, he saw the look of disappointment on Cuff's face.
"You know she's not supposed to be drinking. Why didn't you stop her?" Redirecting his outrage, Cuff raised another piece to the upper tier, making it all the much harder for Hart to block him. "The alcohol will rip through her guts."
"If I had stopped her, we wouldn't have the information about the haunted nebula. I'd still be trying to coax it out of her." Cuff had him backed into a corner, but Hart followed the general rule of protecting the second tier until the last minute, gathering his remaining pieces. "At least now we have a range of space to begin our search."
Cuff eyed the holo-board. He knew what Hart was up to and needed to figure out how to attack his defense. "That's not like you. You know I signed on because you're not filling my sick bay with unnecessary victims. If you allow her to get drunk again for the sole purpose of gaining information, you and I are going to have a go-around."
The look Cuff gave him, challenging him to do something about his threat, forced Hart to lower his gaze back to the game.
"You have my word. I'll keep her safe for as long as she's on board this ship."
Cuff nodded, satisfied he'd gotten his point across. "At least now we have enough info to keep the crew focused on finding the Majesty of the Stars."
The game piece Cuff had manipulated jumped back a notch. Hart knew he had a problem, and it wasn't the holo-game.
"Targets have been slim for the past two years, mostly because of Shade. Once Manitac realizes she's on board the Queen of Hearts, their strategy will change to deny us any leverage. They might believe that we're after the Majesty of the Stars, but they'll think we don't know more than what Shade told them after her rescue, which was less than nothing."
"That makes sense." Cuff reached for his drink.
Hart, however, kept his eyes on the game. "Still, I'm not convinced that Manitac wouldn't have at least tried to find Majesty of the Stars, if only to get the booty for themselves."
"It's not so surprising." Cuff sipped his drink. "The wealth on board the Majesty of the Stars isn't cold, hard credit. It's in the jewelry, the artwork, the clothing, the weapons…things that need to be sold. To the board of directors, none of that is worth retrieving. They already have all that and more. Knowing Shade has lied about Majesty of the Stars all these years gives us the advantage. She doesn't trust Manitac any more than we do, so there's no incentive to lie to us."
Hart leaned back in his chair, ostensibly to study the game, but he needed to piece together his suspicions before he spoke. "I don't believe for a second that Manitac doesn't know where the Majesty of the Stars is. They had to have rescued Shade, the sole survivor of whatever happened to the Majesty of the Stars. The story about an unnamed ship finding her and bringing her to a Manitac station sounds too easy. Escape pods can't travel so far that Manitac couldn't figure out where Majesty of the Stars was even if the story were true."
Cuff paused, his hand poised over the game controls, not ready to make his next move. "Then what do you believe?"
Hart watched Cuff play the most dangerous of strategies, splitting his defense to bolster the second tier while attacking Hart's remaining pieces on the third. "I think the appearance of the Majesty of the Stars at the haunted nebula created a conundrum for Manitac. There's something in that nebula that they're protecting. I wouldn't be surprised if every rumor about the nebula being haunted wasn't started by Manitac themselves to scare away wayward ships.
"But they couldn't scare away the Majesty of the Stars. The top-of-the-line cruise liner shows up, desperate to find another 'first' to keep their passengers satisfied when the supernova failed."
Cuff frowned. "That means something happened inside the nebula. Manitac covered it up with the haunted rumors, making it sound as if other ships had also disappeared, scaring away even pirate ships like ours."
"Shade knew, even as a child, she wanted to find the Majesty of the Stars." Hart relinquished control of his territory on the second level. He knew when he'd been beat, again, but that didn't mean he had to make it easy. "She has her own agenda. The only mistake she made was believing that Manitac would want her to salvage Majesty of the Stars for them."
"A blind spot you were able to exploit. Congratulations, my friend."
"I still lost to you." Hart shut down his controller. "Shade and I exploited each other."
"How is it that the most brilliant tactician in the Unity Homeport can't beat a mere amateur at a game of autodam?" The game recorded Cuff's win with the scores displaying over the top of the third tier. "Either way, you got what you wanted. Now that you have her, and the information we needed, what do you plan to do with her?"
What he wanted to plan was not for Cuff's ears. It also had nothing to do with treasure, at least not for his crew. "Nothing has changed. The haunted nebula is eighty thousand light years in diameter. There are no slipstreams inside the nebula. If we fly in there with no coordinates, our fortieth generational descendants would be dead before we searched even a quarter of that territory."
"We'd become a real ghost ship of legend." Cuff sounded intrigued by the idea. "Some poor sod will find
our skeletons if someday someone does manage to map out that sector of space."
Without the game to distract him, Hart could picture the endgame on these plans. "Maybe, maybe not. There's always the chance that Manitac calls it the haunted nebula because it really is haunted."
"The name is just a Manitac construct." Cuff waved away the name as if swatting a buzzing dipteri. "They want to scare everyone away. We just don't know why.”
"Maybe, maybe not. If there's any truth to the rumors started by Manitac, then there's something inside that nebula eating ships."
Cuff laughed. "Eating ships. Listen to you. You sound like us when we were kids, sitting in our bunks with a lantern watching porn. And speaking of bedsheets…"
"Don't go there." He could already feel the tension ripping up his back and across his shoulders.
"Oh, c'mon. Her hair has grown out, and once we fatten her up, she'll be the sexiest ex-Manitac prisoner in the galaxy. As long as you don't get her drunk again…”
"I mean it…"
"By the Stars, those eyes of hers…"
Hart stood, pushed away from the holo-game, irritated that even hearing Cuff talking about Shade's fine features could get under his skin. "If you think she's that good-looking, you can bed her yourself."
That got Cuff laughing even harder, almost dropping his shot glass. "Not for all the treasure in the world. Just because I have no interest in women doesn't mean I can't appreciate a beautiful one."
Hart walked toward a workstation in the corner of the room. The image of Shade from before her imprisonment would keep him awake for the rest of the night, and he needed to be alert. She might claim to have the same goals as himself, but he couldn't dodge the feeling that even though she had gotten what she wanted—a berth on his ship—she was still manipulating the situation.
He would have to be extra cautious from here on out.
"We're missing a piece of Shade's puzzle."
"Okay, which piece?" Cuff joined him, standing to the side as he used his ear jack to pull up Shade's Manitac records.
"The piece that explains why Shade sacrificed everything to find Majesty of the Stars."
Cuff rubbed his stubble-covered chin, as he usually did when deep in thought. "Closure? Seeing her home for one last time, perhaps to find some personal effects that mean something to her? Has she hinted at what she wants out of this?"
"Not yet, but I'm going to guess you're close to the truth." The dots connected, but still didn't align in a way that made Hart comfortable with the final analysis. "I can't see her giving up her career for whatever artifacts are still on board the ship. Manitac pays its fleet officers better than it pays most of its employees. Shade could have lived and traveled and shopped to her heart's content, even if she retired early. There's something else on board that she wants."
"Shade isn't a simple person," Cuff said. "Not if she managed to get a captaincy at such an early age and attract the likes of you."
Hart let Cuff talk over his death glare. "I don't believe she's the shopping and luxury resort type. But what would draw her back to a ghost ship that for all we know is nothing more than a tomb for the dead?"
Images flashed in midair from the projector. The Shades' cruises gained notoriety due to their unique itineraries. All the while, the ship's staff saw to their passengers' every whim.
Young Shade often appeared in their advertisements, showcasing the day care, schooling, and activities that would keep younger children out of their parents’ hair during the day-cycle.
Hart watched Shade's life story as it was documented in the news from birth to age six, then nothing until she graduated high school. No news announcing of the loss of the Majesty of the Stars, or that Shade was the only passenger to return.
Manitac, or Unity, had paid off or disappeared anyone who knew anything about the ship. The only thing left for a pirate to study was rumors, because not even all the wealth in Andromeda could stop folks from speculating in the cold, dark corners of their homes.
Hart returned to one of the oldest news reports he could find, a local report announcing the retirement of the Shades' original cruise liners, the Sonata of the Stars. All the passengers dressed in costumes for one final party before disembarking after a six-month cruise. The Shades had dressed as pirates, as of the olden days, with fake aves on their shoulders and transparacil swords attached to their belts, all of them smiling and waving to the crowd that had gathered to watch the ship float into its slip one final time. The image had caught Shade midjump as she hopped up and down in her excitement, her bright-red coat snug against the cold winter air.
Majesty of the Stars would replace Sonata as the flagship soon after.
Seeing young Shade's sheer joy broke off a tiny piece of Hart's armor. She had lost everything, just as he had. He could use that knowledge to press her about what she remembered of Majesty's location.
"What if she's not looking for the Majesty of the Stars?"
Cuff stopped reading the article. "What do you mean?"
"Think about it. To all appearances, Shade isn't motivated by money."
Cuff nodded, eyes narrowed, no doubt considering the psychology of Shade's situation. "She would have already had it by inheritance if nothing else, yet despite having money, she joined Manitac's private fleet.”
"Shade doesn't need the money, but still positions herself so she is promoted to captain of the fastest cruiser in Manitac's fleet. She doesn't balk at serving at the ass end of Calypso's arm and nearly drives pirates to extinction."
"What are you thinking?"
Good question. "I'm thinking the Majesty of the Stars didn't just enter the haunted nebula, get lost, and disappear. I think it was chased there by a pirate ship."
"I don't know." Cuff sipped from his glass. "You don't build a ship like that with no defenses. Manitac's shield might be crap, but the Shades were a private firm with enough influence to develop their own. As long as they didn't sell the shields separately, Manitac might not have even noticed. Better shields would have drained a pirate ship of ammunition, fuel, and supplies before it broke through."
"You're missing the point." Hart pulled up a full cutaway of the cruise liner. "Regardless of which pirate ship might have chased the Majesty of the Stars, the Majesty of the Stars might have entered the nebula hoping to hide until the pirate ship was forced to leave the area to pick up new supplies."
Cuff nodded, realizing where Hart was going with this theory. "But if the pirates planned for an extended campaign, they could have outlasted the Majesty of the Stars, or the Majesty of the Stars bowed the will of the passengers in hopes of placating them because of not being able to outrun the pirates."
"And when the Majesty of the Stars ran out of fuel and supplies…" Hart snapped his fingers. "The pirates ship plundered the ship and killed everyone on board."
"Except Shade."
"Yes. She grew up on these ships. Even as young as she was, she'd know how to jettison an escape pod on her own. She's rescued by another ship, brought back to the Unity Homeport, and grows up vowing to get revenge on the pirates who murdered her parents."
Cuff nodded. "Not you, though. I mean, not our families. Not the Iron Queen."
"No. Not the Iron Queen, but that might not matter to Shade. The way she's been hunting pirates…it's more than just orders from Manitac. She wants revenge on not just the pirates who killed her parents, but on all pirates."
"You know what that means, my friend?" Cuff took a final swig from his glass.
"We're in big trouble."
Chapter Nine
Breakfast mirrored dinner the night before, everyone still silent for the most part, but the tension ran higher. Out of the corner of her eye, Kelra watched Ezick picking at his food while he watched her, too, with his fake brown-colored eyes, trying to act like she was irrelevant. What had happened behind the scenes? Perhaps their discussion made him change his behavior, if not his mind? Maybe his protector knocked him around to remind him of all
that he had to lose by screwing up Hart's plan?
Mayla served the food with careful precision, but Kelra had no discreet way of finding out if her brother had talked to Hart about increasing the amount of food the puppets received. Mayla wouldn't say without prompting, and the last thing Kelra needed was another angry outburst from her brother.
The meal again had all the earmarks designed to seduce her—scrambled ave eggs, leftover karnbread with syrup, and a glass of billibloom juice. Each one a favorite of hers. Again, the urge to throttle the rattus who tattled to Hart burned, but she shoved it back into the box of repressed desires to play with on another day.
Trying not to make a big deal over her weakness, she popped a nutri-pack into her mouth and swallowed the foul stuff down with the billibloom juice. Her meal finished, she waited to see what happened next.
As two other puppets cleaned the table, Hart tapped his mug to bring everyone's attention to him.
"Last night, Kelra and I had a conversation."
It took all her willpower not to snort at him, reducing her drunken assault as a "conversation." Whatever Hart thought about it, he didn't let it show.
"We now know that the Majesty of the Stars is somewhere inside the haunted nebula."
Mirin leaned back in her chair, letting her army fatigue-colored vest fall open, exposing two sheaths strapped to her side, each one with a knife hilt poking out. "That's a hell of a lot of territory to cover. Why would a cruise liner enter an unmapped nebula without protection or even an escort?"
"A good question." Hart turned toward her with a look of expectation, putting her on the spot. Either she performed, or she would lose what little standing she already had with the crew. They wanted answers. She had them. If she failed, she could only hope that spark of attraction between her and Hart would be enough for him to protect her from his crew.
"As a child, I didn't understand the importance of this journey. My parents designed it to balance business with pleasure. As one of the few spacefaring businesses with no ties to Manitac, my folks knew they had to up the ante when it came to attracting customers. Otherwise, Manitac would crush their business, either through pouring money into a competitor's coffers or shutting down the slipstreams to the sectors of space they needed."
