by Debra Jess
That pesky image of the two captains standing side by side came back to haunt him, along with his conversation with her at Vaynix. I could have done what Naz did and moved to Unity and gone to college if I had wanted to.
Over twenty years had passed since he'd left the Iron Heart to visit his friend. He knew the risks, but there was an element of excitement. Living the life of a pirate hadn't given him any opportunities to explore terrestrial life, and of course there was no way for Naz to contact him back on the Iron Heart.
For three months, he'd lived on the Unity Homeport and experienced what Naz’s life was like there. It showed him two things: how to live surrounded by strangers who might or might not want to be your friend, but more than likely didn't want to kill you, and how boring such a life was. More than once Naz had threatened to slip a tranq into his food to keep him from jumping out of his seat every time someone walked behind them.
He couldn't relax planetside. He knew it, Naz knew it, but Naz had the ability change and adapt, and he hadn't, and wouldn't even if he had wanted to.
Which he didn't. Right?
Kelra’s presence pressed at him from behind, hinting that he knew the answer to that question. But did he, really? The opening of the compression gate pushed any possible answer far away. Rusa strode onto the bridge, looking no better than Johza, pressing some torn cloth to the back of her head.
Before Darvik could demand an explanation, Ezick ran over to Rusa and took her arm, insisting she sit in his seat. Instead of fighting the kid, Rusa did as he asked, patiently waiting for him to retrieve an emergency medical kit and start performing a preliminary exam. Over the kid's head, Rusa gave him a look that said let him do this.
So Darvik waited until Ezick finished. "She has a concussion. I need to get her to Cuff so he can—"
"Hold on." Rusa placed a hand on the kid's upper arm. "I'm not dying, so let me just give my report. Then you can escort me to Cuff."
"But—"
"Priorities," Rusa said. "Remember what I told you about priorities and not getting caught up in the moment?"
Ezick nodded, his gaze on the floor.
Rusa took a deep breath, lowering her hand with the bloody cloth as she turned her attention to Hart. "It was nothing more than a stupid accident. Unsecured paneling fell on me and knocked me out. By the time I came to, I could see Manitac retreating, so I did the same. I assume you and Johza managed to get the supplies on the shuttle?"
"We did, along with a few guests."
"A few?"
"Our suppliers. One of them…or all of them…betrayed us to Manitac. They're still boxed up with the supplies. We'll take them to the black room after we're through the slipstream." He hesitated, only because he didn't like questioning the accuracy of Rusa's report, but the accident sounded a little too coincidental for his tastes. "Are you sure it was paneling that knocked you out?"
At this point, Ezick took the bloody rag from Rusa, offering her a fresh one.
"No one followed me, and I would have heard a forced-entry window opening."
From behind him, he heard Kelra shift in her seat, so he turned to her. "Do you have something to add?"
For a moment, he thought she wouldn't answer, but after a deep breath, she turned from him to speak to Rusa. "You wouldn't have seen my old security squads. They're trained not just for raids like the one in the bay, but also for stealth. In a half-built station, they would have a half dozen ways to follow you if they'd been tipped off. Slamming a loose panel over your head would've been easy if they were hiding behind the panels in the first place."
From his other side, Mirin swore to the Guardians while Rusa stood.
"I'll leave."
Even as she pushed past Ezick, who looked heartbroken, Darvik spoke up.
"No. It's too late. Silt knows you're here. Leaving you behind accomplishes nothing and will only make him more suspicious of this ship." Rusa stopped in her tracks, but Darvik waited an extra beat to let everything recover. "We still have the advantage of our shift. Silt will only see a cargo ship."
"He'll still suspect something," Rusa said. "He's investigating me right now."
"Which will take time and turn up nothing. We erased your records."
"As best we could. No one can erase all records from everywhere I've been."
"We'll deal with it."
"How?" Rusa winced and then lowered her voice. "How will we prevent Silt from following us when we leave the hub?"
"We remove your tracker and place it in one of our prisoners before letting them loose on the station." He turned to Ezick. "Get Rusa to medical and tell Cuff to get ready for a tracker removal and insertion. Kelra, Mirin, you're with me."
He left the bridge with both Kelra and Mirin following. He didn't need a mirror to see that Kelra fell back so Mirin could enter the window first, knowing that Mirin was on edge and wouldn't react well to following someone who was not her captain or even officially part of the crew. That she would do such a thing for one of his people softened the shell that suspicion had been building around his heart regarding her.
Next to the shuttle sat thirteen shipping containers, twelve of them stacked in fours on top of one another so they would fit in the bay, with their tethers detached from the back of the shuttle that had towed them onto the ship. The thirteenth was much smaller and sat to the side with no tethers. Shipping containers were supposed to be airtight, but Darvik needed to be sure his prisoners stayed alive during transit, so he had stuffed them into the smallest one available and loaded it on the shuttle.
“How many are in there?”
“Six.”
“Are you sure they’re alive?”
“We disarmed them and knocked them out. Stand back while I open this, just in case they woke up prematurely.”
Even before he unlocked the container, Sorinestro and the other prisoners shouted variations of cursing him to the Guardians. They were definitely awake and angry, but if they knew what was good for them, they would see Mirin with her autorepeater plasma rifle pointed in their direction and stop.
A snap of the lock breaking preceded the quiet hiss of musty air escaping, after which the prisoners tumbled onto the floor at his feet. Six hours inside a crate created quite a stench of sweat and bile. Sorinestro managed to stand, but the others rolled. Manitac hadn’t been gentle with them during the raid, but it was possible more than one had been hit by shrapnel when Kelra exploded the power packs.
Not that he cared one whit. He wanted to know which one of them, if not all of them, betrayed him. When the cursing stopped and the prisoners realized they were surrounded—again—and outgunned—again—they settled into a loose lineup, with Sorinestro closest to Darvik.
Using his height to this advantage, he loomed over the smaller, skinnier man. “One of you betrayed me.”
“I know.”
“Do you know what I do to people who betray me?”
Sorinestro would not meet his eyes. Instead, he edged closer to the man—barely—standing next to him. Looking closer, Hart saw that bruises covered the boy’s face, neck, and even one of his arms, judging by the black-and-blue skin exposed by a rip in his shirt. Compared to the rest of his men, this kid had gotten worked over, and not by Manitac. Hart had given Sorinestro’s crew a brief visual exam before forcing them into the crate. This kid acquire his bruises while inside.
Without having to lay a hand on any of Sorinestro’s people, he knew which one had betrayed him.
“I know what you do to people who betray you.” Only now did Sorinestro look Darvik in the eyes. “My son thought my impending defection from independent smuggler to Shadow lackey gave him an advantage of setting himself up in my place. Except he wouldn’t know a legitimate buyer from a Manitac snare if it chomped off his nose.”
Darvik listened, but his anger stayed at a high pitch. Whether the truth was told or not, the price of betrayal was death. As it always had been, long before pirates broke the bonds that tied them to the Unity Homeport.
Sorinestro saw exactly what Darvik wanted him to see through his silence.
"Look, if you spare my son, I'll make it worth your time."
"What do you know of my time?" He kept his voice low, but not so low Johza, who'd joined them, couldn’t hear him from where he leaned against the shuttle.
"This Silt guy is many things," Sorinestro said, "but he's not subtle. He doesn't want you. He wants a woman named—"
"I know what he wants, but my ship is a pirate ship, and that makes me a target regardless of any other orders Silt may or may not have."
Sorinestro nodded, running his fingers through his hair in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, to save his son's life. "Agreed, but even if you manage to leave the hub without getting caught, you’re going to run into him or some other 'Tac ship. You're going to need more supplies at some point, and with me out of business, you'll be hard pressed to find another supplier."
"Your point?"
Sorinestro licked his lips, using his eyes to indicate his left breast pocket. Darvik took the hint and pulled out two credit chips, one black and one gray.
"The first chip has the first half of your payment. Free munitions is worth more than all the gems in the galaxy. The second chip has what Manitac paid my son for his information. You can have that too, if you spare him."
No amount of money could make up for betrayal, not now, not ever. He was about to say so, when a crash jolted him away from his rage. Against the nearest wall, Kelra bent over to pick up a bucket and mop that had fallen over, the same bucket and mop that Ezick had used to sterilize the shuttle.
Not for one second did he believe that the mop and bucket just happened to accidentally fall over at that particular moment. Kelra had knocked them over on purpose. The look on her face as she returned to leaning against the wall said it all.
She drew his attention to the cleaning supplies to remind him of Ezick, a kid who made mistakes, a lot of them. He paid a price for those mistakes and was learning from them. In her own unique way, Kelra was telling him that Sorinestro's son was also young and made a mistake.
It wasn't the same, though. Ezick's mistakes had never put anyone's life in jeopardy. His punishments, while embarrassing, dirty, boring, and onerous, were also proportional to his offenses. What was he supposed to do about Sorinestro's son who almost got him, Johza, and Mirin killed, or worse, captured?
"What makes you think I'll spare him now that I have his blood money?"
"Because it's encrypted and there's no guarantee you can break it before you need more munitions."
He wasn't wrong. Ezick figured out how to crack encryptions to stay alive on Stratos, but as good as he was, there was no way he could keep up with the latest technology pouring out of Manitac while flying with pirates. At some point, his knowledge would run behind, and then his usefulness on the Queen of Hearts would depend on whatever other skills he learned.
Darvik was still thinking over his options when Sorinestro tried again.
"I'll offer one more thing: another shipment of munitions free of charge. I still have drop boxes extending out to the Callisto arm. You can use them to contact me, and no matter where I am, I'll get you whatever you need."
"And your Shadow overlords won't mind your split loyalty?" Sorinestro didn't respond, but that didn't matter. Darvik had already decided the kid's fate. "This is what will happen. We are going to remove the tracker Manitac planted inside one of my crew and inject it into your son. He will stay here at the hub and draw Manitac away from my ship. I don't care how he does it, it's what he will do, or by the Guardians, I will hunt him down and strip the skin from his back before I rip out his liver and eject him into space. Do I make myself clear?"
Though he spoke to Sorinestro, he could see the man’s son start to shake. Good. The kid had the fear of the Guardians shoved back into him.
"Clear." Sorinestro sent a glare in his son's direction, clearly hating to have to make such a bargain. "And thank you."
"Don't thank me yet." Darvik didn't relax his posture one bit. "You will be staying on board the Queen of Hearts until such time as we finish our next raid."
Sorinestro said nothing, knowing without words that Darvik would use him as a shield against his son betraying them again. If the son cared anything for his father after this, he'd keep his mouth shut. If not…well, Darvik had fought his way out of tighter situations than this.
"Mirin, take Sorinestro and his son to Cuff."
"With pleasure." Mirin squinted at her targets as she used the tip of her rifle to herd the two men out of the sick bay.
"As for the rest of you…" Darvik addressed the other four of Sorinestro's crew. "You have until the end of the operation to decide if you want to stay or leave to take your chances with Manitac. If you stay, you will work like you've never worked before, and you will not get a cut of the booty for the next three raids. If, after that, you decide to turn pirate, I’ll welcome you aboard. If you decide to leave, you will have that option when your boss fulfills his end of the bargain. Until then, you will remain in the quarters assigned to you. If I find you wandering where you shouldn’t be, I will shoot you and make your colleagues swallow your ashes.”
Sorinestro didn't waste a moment. “Deal.”
“Johza, get them away from me.”
He watched as Johza motioned them toward the compression gate. From behind, he could feel Kelra approach, not so close to touch him, but close enough to let him know she was there.
“Nicely done.”
“Cute move back there.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw her shrug. “The son was scared and sorry it happened.”
“Perhaps. It’s all moot if we’re trapped here. Shift or not, Silt will have eyes on all ships docking and disembarking. We can’t risk leaving, but we cannot stay. If we leave, we won’t be able to use the slipstream to the haunted nebula right now, not with security so tight.”
“I think I know a way to make it happen.”
“Really?”
“Really, but let’s wait until Sorinestro’s situation is handled. Then we’ll call a meeting to discuss my plan.”
Her plan. She always had a plan, just like himself. He loved that about her.
“This I cannot wait to hear.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kelra watched the holo of the scene outside the Queen of Hearts. Sorinestro stood there with his son—both of them fixed up fine, thanks to Cuff. Despite what had happened inside the container, Sorinestro talked to his boy, one hand on his shoulder, leaning in close. The unmistakable love and concern of a father was written all over his face. A tight string in Kelra’s heart squeezed tighter, and she clutched at the arms of her seat.
She was the only one on the bridge at the moment. Most of the other crew were either covering Sorinestro, or unpacking and storing munitions, or getting the ship ready for what was to come.
More than likely, Sorinestro would never see his son again, unless by some miracle they both found themselves working for the same Shadow cell. That wouldn’t happen unless his son managed to pull the Silt off their backs with his cover story and fake documentation.
The compression gate to the bridge opened, and Darvik stepped onto the bridge. She knew his light step anywhere, so she didn’t have to turn around until he was right behind her.
“Are you ready?” he asked, though it was only a formality. She’d been ready for the past two hours. It had taken her almost an hour to explain how they could pull off leaving the hub without drawing attention to themselves and still get through the slipstream. Convincing Darvik that her plan would work took another half an hour with him insisting on running a simulation to be sure.
Though she’d convinced him, they both knew that when it came to Manitac, nothing was a sure thing. Even she had to admit to herself that yes, while it would be safer to leave the hub through a conventional slipstream and wait until they knew for sure that the Silt had returned to the Calypso arm, the edginess inside he
r to move grew stronger by the minute. If she’d been Darvik, she’d have doubts too, and she didn’t want to be the one who delivered the Queen of Hearts into the hands of the enemy, but her patience was at an end. After twenty years of waiting, and planning, and trying to get to the Majesty of the Stars, this was her time and no one, not Manitac, and not Darvik, was going to get in her way.
“Ezick got the passcode to the slipstream?”
“Yes, he did.”
“All right, then. I’m ready. You just need to get Sorinestro and Mirin back on board.”
Darvik looked at the holo of the father and son saying their final good-byes. What was it she saw in his gaze?
“You made the right decision,” she told him.
He looked down at her, confused.
“Letting Sorinestro’s son live. Drawing him into the plan.”
He huffed at her opinion. “I always make use of all the resources available to me.”
“I know, but even if it weren’t necessary, letting him live and not forcing Sorinestro to face his death was a kindness that will pay you back.”
“It better. Most of the crew isn’t convinced. If this doesn’t work, or if the kid betrays us again to Manitac…”
“He won’t.” How could she be so sure, though? “Look at him. He’s miserable. Getting beaten so badly while trapped in a crate, in the dark, with no place to escape. He learned his lesson. He’s not going to screw up again. Even if he does hate his father for what happened, he’s got to realize that he has much more to learn from his father before he can strike out on his own. Chances of them seeing each other again is minimal as it is.”
Was she trying to convince him or herself? Maybe the Silt captain still lived inside her. She’d tried to be fair when it came to meting out punishment, but Manitac didn’t always make that easy.
