by Kate MacLeod
There was nothing of particular use in the rest of the apartment. Even the kitchen didn’t have a knife capable of slicing through anything tougher than bread.
Well, she had her slingshot. That had always been enough before.
“I guess we do this,” Scout said to Warrior. “Are you with me?”
“As much as I can be,” Warrior said. “I find the gaps in my access to the ship’s systems disturbing. I’m not sure if I can be relied on.”
“Noted,” Scout said, pushing the table away from the door. Then she whistled for the dogs to join her before slowly turning the handle.
She opened the door as soundlessly as she could, then peeked out into the hall.
Empty.
She stepped out, letting the dogs race out to either side of her and not bothering to close the door behind her. Warrior fell into step beside her. She might not be any help in a fight, but her presence was a comfort.
“I feel like we’re being watched,” Scout said softly to Warrior.
“That would be a logical surmise,” Warrior said. “What we don’t know is what they will do.”
Scout kept her hands in her pockets, but inside those pockets, one held her slingshot and the other grasped three stones. It had been a long time since she had practiced rapid loading and firing. She just hoped her skills hadn’t rusted too much.
The dogs reached the first cross corridor and immediately started barking a warning. They stayed in the hallway Scout was still walking down, but Gert was barking at something to the right, and Shadow was barking at something else to the left. Scout gripped her slingshot tighter but resisted the urge to hurry her steps.
Then she reached the cross corridor and saw an older student loitering in each hallway. They seemed unbothered by the dogs or by Scout, as if their casual sentry served some other unrelated purpose.
The way forward to the bridge was still clear. Scout whistled again, and the dogs followed her with much looking back and barking, especially as the two kids stepped out of their corridors to stand behind Scout and the dogs.
Just watching, not following. But the path behind her was closed now. She was being herded again.
She was being set up for something, but she had no idea what.
“Just a flip of a switch,” Warrior told her as if sensing her growing anxiety. “One flip and that message gets sent. It’s already queued up on your tablet; you don’t have to do another thing. Just flip the switch.”
“All right,” Scout said. “But I don’t think they’re going to make it easy.”
“There’s always the possibility they want you to do this,” Warrior said. “For some reason I can’t fathom. Not now that I’m not being allowed access to all the information.”
“Never mind,” Scout said. “Like you said, flip one switch and we’re both out of here. Right?”
The dogs were growling again, then barking and backing up in little hops. This time the kids didn’t wait for Scout to pass to step out into the hallway. They didn’t try to stop her, just folded their arms and leaned against the walls to watch her pass between them.
It was all Scout could do to walk between them, hands still in her pockets, her entire body one clenched mass of nervousness. They were close enough to touch her, to catch at her clothes or brush her cheek like before. But they only rolled to rest their backs against the wall as she passed, their eyes never leaving her.
Then they were behind her, and she felt like she had ants swarming over her back, so nervous was she that they would strike where she couldn’t see.
But they didn’t. They just fell into step behind her, walking shoulder to shoulder up the corridor, the other two from before falling into step behind them.
“The system still tells me she is in the hallway ahead,” Warrior said, and Scout nodded, pulling the slingshot from her pocket as well as her handful of stones. The dogs kept close at Scout’s sides, no longer wanting to venture ahead.
Scout’s breath caught as she turned the corner to the final hallway. She could see the top of the stairs leading down to the library off to her left and the lights from the bridge off to her right.
And no one in the hallway. The way was clear.
“Warrior?” Scout asked.
“I’m sorry, Scout,” Warrior said. “My systems are very sure she is still right here, standing before you, and yet clearly she is not.”
“So she can be anywhere,” Scout said. “And so can Bo.”
“Yes,” Warrior said. “My systems say he is still in the library.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Scout said. “We’re nearly there.”
She walked towards the bridge. She could see the lights from the equipment, hear the occasional beep or click, but there was no sign of anyone actually working in there.
Scout looked back over her shoulder. The four kids were behind her in the hallway now, walking slowly as she was walking slowly.
If she ran, would they also run?
Scout reached the doorway to the bridge and looked inside. Where she stood was a sort of balcony that had a single large chair overlooking a pit below filled with workstations. A steep, narrow staircase ran down each side of the balcony, curving around the sides of the room to end in the pit below.
No one was there. Did the ship fly itself?
“Where’s this switch?” Scout asked.
“Down the stairs and to the right,” Warrior said, pointing.
Scout started down the stairs but realized they were so steep they were more of a ladder. Too steep for the dogs to handle. She picked up Shadow. “Gert, stay here. Guard,” she said.
Miraculously, Gert seemed to understand what Scout was asking her to do. She sat down at the top of the stairs facing the doorway and the four kids just loitering outside. She didn’t sit in her customary sloppy roll-off-one-hip stance. Her body was rigid and ready to pounce, the hair on her back bristling up in that hellhound look as she kept up her low warning growl.
Shadow was keyed up as well. Scout set him down when she reached the bottom of the stairs, and he dashed about, poking his nose into every possible hidey hole but finding nothing.
Scout took a step closer to the workstation Warrior had pointed out to her, slingshot still in hand. She was usually cold every minute she was on board a spaceship, but in this moment she felt a prickling sweat break out over her body. The air felt electrified, like before a storm when you could smell the rain but couldn’t quite feel it yet.
“That’s probably close enough,” Shi Jian’s voice rang through the open space. “You can stop there.”
Scout looked around to find Shi Jian in the large chair on the balcony overlooking the bridge pit, the four kids from the hallway flanking her. They had weapons in their hands, knives and whips and clubs they fidgeted with as they glared down at Scout. They ignored Gert, whose growling was building in intensity.
“Maybe a little closer,” Scout said, keeping her eyes on Shi Jian and the others while taking another step closer to the workstation.
“Really not necessary,” Shi Jian said, and Scout heard rustling all around her like a sudden wind through the prairie grasses.
Then the bridge was full of kids in red training uniforms. They squatted on top of the workstations, spun in the swiveling chairs, leaned against the walls with exaggerated casualness.
“It was a trap,” Scout said, counting five kids between her and the workstation lever.
“Of course it was a trap,” Shi Jian said.
“Where’s Bo?” Scout asked.
“Right where he needs to be,” Shi Jian said, her tone turning a shade darker. “You’ll see him soon enough.”
“He lied to me,” Scout said.
“Did he?”
“He said there were no assassins here,” Scout said, looking around at the kids moving step by step closer to her on every side, each holding a weapon of some sort.
“Don’t be too angry with my Bo,” Shi Jian said. “He does think ours is a spy school. Bu
t he doesn’t need to know just what means are necessary to achieve his ends.”
“What are you achieving here?” Scout asked.
“You’re not going to signal the tribunal enforcers,” Shi Jian said, her voice a low purr. “You’re going back to your rooms now, and you’re going to wait until you’re called, and you’re going to say exactly what you’re told to say, and when all this is over, this endless court battle that ties up so much of my Bo’s time, if you’ve been a very good girl, I’ll let you go. You and your dogs.”
Scout clutched the slingshot tighter. “That can’t be what you want,” she said.
“Why do you say that?” Shi Jian sounded genuinely surprised.
“Because you would have had that far more easily if you had just kept out of my sight. I was going to do it anyway. But then you came looking for me. You wanted me to see you.”
Shi Jian shrugged. “You don’t need to understand everything. Just do as you’re told. You’re a pawn, just like everyone from your backwater little planet is a pawn. Be a pawn.”
Scout looked around at the other kids. “They are all pawns too?”
“Not anymore,” Shi Jian said with a wide smile. “When I move pawns like these, they become queens.”
“You have to get them across the board alive first,” Scout said. “How many make it?”
“Enough talk,” Shi Jian said. “I need you to try to touch something. Anything at all, it doesn’t need to be that lever. Try the workstation behind you. It controls the navigation systems. Maybe you could use it to blast through the barricade.”
“I don’t think so,” Scout said, stepping away from the workstation in question. “I don’t know what you’re trying to set me up to do, but I’m not cooperating.”
“Do you have another option?” Shi Jian asked.
Scout didn’t take a moment to think. She didn’t want even the momentary flash of an idea across her face to give her away. She just raised the slingshot and fired all three shots at Shi Jian, one after another.
Shi Jian may have been taken by surprise, but with her modded reflexes it wasn’t enough. She batted the first stone aside and rolled out of the way of the final two, launching herself over the balcony railing to the pit below.
Scout pulled three more stones out of her pocket and fired them at the kids ahead of her. She was fairly certain every one of them found its target, but it wasn’t enough. There were too many kids. Someone jumped down from their perch atop a workstation and tackled her to the ground.
Then real chaos broke out. She could hear Gert barking and growling somewhere above, and she could feel Shadow’s little body standing over her head, snarling and snapping at anyone who tried to touch her.
He was in danger. Gert probably was too.
Scout got her elbows under her, but the slingshot had fallen from her hand, and she didn’t know where it had disappeared to. She sat up and threw a stone at the closest kid, pulling herself back into the space under a workstation, behind the chair.
She put her hand back in her pocket and found the dog whistle. She didn’t know what good it would do with both dogs already fighting to protect her. Then a thought struck her, and she brought it to her lips and blew as hard as she could.
A few of the kids near her staggered back, clutching at their ears.
Their modded ears. Warrior’s had been so sensitive she could hear Scout speaking at a whisper from a different room. The whistle was pitched too high for Scout’s ears, but apparently not for theirs.
She blew another blast, then climbed out of the space under the workstation, pushing aside a couple of kids who were clutching their ears and finally reaching the lever.
She just had to pull it down.
A hand closed over her wrist, squeezing down with the force and inevitability of a machine press and grinding the bones together. Scout screamed and fell to her knees, trying to hold the swirling world around her together, to steady its rocking and make the black explosions stop.
She absolutely couldn’t faint now.
She heard a yelp as someone kicked a dog. She still couldn’t see, and she could feel her consciousness trying to slip away. But she held on to it and summoned up the breath for one last blow of the whistle.
She blew it right in the ear of Shi Jian, who still clutched her wrist in her talon-like fingers.
Shi Jian let her go and stepped back. Her eyes were closed but her jaw muscle was twitching, and Scout feared she was doing something, controlling her modifications somehow, making an adjustment to her ears to block out the whistle.
Scout’s time was up.
But she didn’t need any more time. The lever was right there.
She didn’t throw it down so much as collapse over it, dragging it down as she fell to the floor. She didn’t even know if it worked, if it was really the right lever, if the message had gone out. She just knew she was probably going to faint now.
Hands were turning her over until she was sitting with her back to the workstation, the lever pressed against her shoulder. Scout hissed in pain and pulled her injured arm into her lap, but the hands that turned her over weren’t friendly ones. These were tipped with the deadly talons of Shi Jian.
And one of those viselike hands closed over her throat and started to squeeze.
27
It was weird how those black explosions could keep happening before her eyes when her eyes were shut. Scout was fairly certain that wasn’t a good sign. Her uninjured hand reached up to close over Shi Jian’s wrist, but there was nothing she could do to stop the choking.
She just hoped her dogs would be okay. Bo said he liked dogs. Surely he would look out for them.
The explosions were starting to overlap, to become one tumultuous inky sea she was sinking down into.
Then the hand was gone, and Scout could finally draw a breath. Not much of one—the swollen flesh of her throat was squeezing almost as tightly as the hand had done and her windpipe felt contracted down to the size of a drinking straw—but it was better than nothing.
Hands closed on her shoulders again, and she batted at them, hurting her injured wrist but desperate not to be touched again.
“Scout!” Bo shouted, and Scout finally opened her eyes. He was looking at her with deep concern, then with relief as he saw her looking back at him. “What is going on here?”
“Your assassins tried to kill me,” Scout said. Her voice was a hoarse wheeze, and every word hurt.
“No,” Bo said, looking at the kids gathered around him. Some of them were still clutching at their ears, and it looked like they had tucked their weapons away along with their murderous intents, but Scout didn’t trust that would last for long. “Scout, these kids are training to be spies. They learn how to fight in case their lives are in danger, but they aren’t assassins.”
Scout couldn’t summon more words through her ravaged throat. She just looked at Bo steadily until he dropped his own eyes.
“Shi Jian?” Scout asked.
“In the brig,” Bo said. “I don’t understand what happened here. She must have had a reason to be choking you like that. But that doesn’t sound like you either. Why would she see you as a threat?”
“I unjammed the marshal channels,” Scout said.
Bo looked confused. Then he looked up at the workstation she was leaning against. He tapped at the screen and seemed to realize she was telling the truth.
“You summoned the tribunal enforcers,” he said. “Why didn’t you come to me first?”
“Tried that,” Scout croaked. “My AI was told you were in the library. You weren’t.”
“I don’t understand this at all,” Bo said. He stood up and pressed a button on the band around his wrist. “You kids stay where you are. You’re going to be confined to quarters until I get to the bottom of this.”
“Yes, sir,” a few of the oldest said. Not sounding at all like they had just tried to kill Scout. They also didn’t sound surprised to be potentially punished, or worried abo
ut their missing leader.
They were just biding their time and waiting for the next order. And they didn’t take orders from Bo. Scout had to get off this ship.
“Dogs?” Scout said suddenly, trying to get up from the ground. Bo put a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“They’re here,” he promised her. “Here’s Shadow. Someone bring down the other one. Easy, I don’t think she likes you.”
Scout closed her eyes, the long night of not sleeping catching up with her. Shadow curled up beside her and Gert clamored over both of them the minute she was set down on the pit floor.
Scout dozed as the security team arrived to move the kids to their quarters. She was vaguely aware of the sounds of them being led away but couldn’t muster much interest. Her throat was throbbing and she had to time her breathing around the throbs. It took all her concentration.
“Shi Jian has gone missing, sir,” one of the officers said, and Scout forced her eyes open.
“Missing? She was just here. I pushed her off Scout myself,” Bo said.
“We’ll sweep the ship,” the officer said and turned to give orders to his subordinates.
Scout doubted very much that they would find Shi Jian if she didn’t want to be found.
“Come, Scout,” Bo said, helping her to her feet. “I’ll go with you to sick bay. The tribunal enforcers are on their way. They will be docking shortly, but let’s get you fixed up first.”
“Okay,” Scout croaked, but she let her eyes slide back shut. She felt herself being lifted, placed on a floating cot with the dogs beside her.
She didn’t really snap awake until she heard a soft beep and realized she was lying in a medical pod, a blast of warm air blowing across her face just slowing to a halt. Then the lid opened and she sat up.
“How are you feeling?” Bo asked. An anxious-looking doctor in red scrubs stood behind him.
“Better,” Scout said, her voice as clear as ever. “Did you find Shi Jian?”
“Not yet,” Bo said, his face grim. “The tribunal enforcers have docked. They are setting up a virtual meeting with the Months. It will link up through my own audience chamber. Not a room I ever use,” he said with that little nose wrinkle.
