by Kate MacLeod
“We haven’t crossed the barricade yet,” Scout guessed, letting Bo help her out of the pod. The dogs had been sitting anxiously near the wall, and both charged forward at once to jump all over her.
“No, and I don’t understand why,” Bo said. “The lawyers can’t see any hang-up, and yet the tribunal enforcers still seem to be waiting for something to happen.” He shrugged. “They communicate amongst themselves handily enough, but when they try to talk to the rest of the human race, that’s where it all breaks down.”
Scout looked around, then found her glasses on the counter by the sink in the little examining room they were in. She slipped them on and said, “Hello, Teacher.”
“Hello, Scout,” Warrior said, appearing in one of the chairs. “Do you need me?”
“I just like having you around,” Scout said. She saw Bo pulling a pair of glasses of his own out of his sleeve. They were round with wire frames, but his lenses were clear. He wrapped the frames around his ears and then looked up at Warrior.
“Interesting,” he said. “Perhaps not surprising, given your history.”
“What do you mean?” Scout asked. Bo gave a little shake of his head, glancing at the doctor standing in the room with them.
“We should get to the audience chamber,” Bo said, putting a hand on her back to guide her out of the room. Despite Rona’s insistence, no one tried to put leashes on the dogs. They were scarcely necessary, as anxious as the dogs were to stay near Scout.
“You don’t know who to trust now,” Scout guessed.
“No, I don’t,” Bo admitted. “I always trusted Shi Jian—since I was half your age I’ve trusted her. But I don’t understand what just happened. And rather than explain, she chose to disappear. I don’t know what to think.”
“She’s the assassin I told you about,” Scout said. “And all those kids—”
“She was training them to be spies,” Bo said. “I didn’t even like that idea, but she insisted they would get more and better intel than a grown-up ever could. And I believed her. She has done a lot of studying on such matters. I’ve always relied on her.”
“Has she always worked for your family?” Scout asked.
“No,” he said, leading her out of the brightly lit medical area into the more familiar warm wood-paneled halls of his ship. “She was a galactic marshal when I met her. She saved me from a kidnapping attempt when I was eight. My father hired her to be my personal bodyguard after that. But she’s more than that. She took the place of my own AI tutor when I outgrew it. She’s shaped all my ways of seeing the world and what I can do in it. More, she’s my right hand. Everything I’ve accomplished, it’s because she knew how to take my ideas and shape them into reality. If I can’t trust her . . . I have to get you off this ship.”
Scout buried her hands deep in her pockets. Half of her stones were gone now, and she found herself a little bit sad about that. Those were Amatheon stones, little pieces of her home that she could carry with her even as she moved further and further across the galaxy. And now half of them were gone.
“Those kids are being trained to kill,” Scout said. “And many people were killed by your people on Amatheon Orbiter 1. If not by your order, then by Shi Jian’s.”
“There will be a thorough investigation,” Bo promised her.
“I don’t know how you’re going to do that,” Scout said. “For all you know, all of your people are really hers.”
Bo gave her a hard look. “You might be right about that. I’ll have my father’s people do it when we get to galactic central.”
“Maybe you should leave with me,” Scout said. “The tribunal enforcers may be the only people you can trust.”
“Tempting,” Bo said. “But no. I made this mess. I have to sort it out.”
The hallway they were walking down ended in a pair of double doors, much less imposing than what the Months had leading into their audience chamber. They opened at Bo’s touch, and Scout saw the ménage of tribunal enforcers assigned to Bo and Bo’s lawyers already gathered there.
“This is unprecedented,” the chief lawyer said the minute Bo stepped into the room. “They won’t even share the content of the message with us. How can we prepare a response?”
“There isn’t going to be a response,” Bo said. “We’re giving Scout everything she wants.”
The lawyer gaped, but before he could summon any words, there was a flicker of light from all around the room. First, the other ménage of tribunal enforcers appeared, hands folded and heads down. Then the Months and their lawyers appeared at the far end of the room.
Then, almost as if an afterthought, Geeta and Emilie appeared in the middle of the room. Scout ran to their holograms, the dogs close at her heels.
“What’s happening?” Emilie asked. She nearly had to shout to be heard over the lawyers converging on either side of them.
“Shut it!” Scout shouted. To her amazement, the lawyers fell silent, all turning to look at her. “There’s nothing to debate. I’ve appealed to the tribunal enforcers for amnesty and passage out of this restricted area. None of you can say a thing about that.”
“This planet and everything within its orbit is property of the Tajaki trade dynasty,” the Months’ lawyer said. “You have no voice in these discussions and no right to call for amnesty.”
“I do, actually,” Scout said. Emilie and Geeta looked as confused as any of the lawyers, but Scout’s eyes were on the young tribunal enforcer, who was once more looking at her with total concentration.
“Warrior,” Scout said. “What is that one saying, can you tell me?”
Emilie’s eyes tracked past Scout to Warrior standing beside her, but Geeta saw nothing.
Warrior watched the tribunal enforcer’s face for a long moment. “It’s a repeating message,” she said at last. “It’s a tricky language, but I believe they are saying this is a matter of justice.”
“A matter of justice?” Emilie repeated.
Geeta looked startled. “Is that the sign?” she asked.
Scout had just been wondering the same thing. Had this tribunal enforcer been waiting for one of them to speak the countersign this whole time?
“We can get off these ships,” Scout whispered to the other two. “We can leave with the tribunal enforcers. It’s safer.”
“I won’t leave my sister,” Geeta said. “The ménage assigned to the Months will keep Seeta and I safe enough.”
Emilie looked deeply torn, but in the end, she took a step closer to Geeta. “I’ll stick with Geeta. But Scout, you go with these tribunal enforcers. Get to the Torreses. We’ll all find each other again at galactic central.”
“Yes,” Scout agreed. “Oh, also, Bo seems like he’s okay, but the woman in black was working for him this whole time, only he didn’t know who she really was or what she was up to right under his nose. She’s disappeared again. Watch out for her; I think she wants to kill us.”
“That seems to be her thing,” Geeta said. “Stay safe.”
“You too,” Scout said, wishing she could give her friends one last hug, but at the moment they were just light and sound, their bodies too far away to be touched.
“If you girls are quite done?” Bo’s lawyer prompted, and Scout realized everyone was glaring at them as they whispered together. She straightened her back, throwing her braid back over her shoulder.
“Oh, and it’s a good look,” Emilie said, her eyes making an exaggerated sweep of Scout from head to toe. Just like Emilie to want to get one last whisper in.
“It suits you,” Geeta agreed. “We’ll see you soon.”
“I hope so,” Scout said. She looked around, made sure her dogs were still close beside her, and looked to the ménages of tribunal enforcers who had all stepped closer around her.
“I ask for amnesty and passage out of this restricted system,” Scout said, looking to the youngest tribunal enforcer. “It’s a matter of justice. But more, it’s a matter of sovereignty. The people of Amatheon do not recog
nize the Tajaki trade dynasty as their owners, employers, or masters, or as having any power over them.”
The young tribunal enforcer smiled. That expression was clear enough, and Scout returned it.
Jun Tajaki shrieked in rage, a sound abruptly cut off as the transmission ended and Scout was once more in a half-empty audience chamber with Bo and his people.
“I hope we’ll stay in contact,” Bo said as he walked with Scout and the tribunal enforcers back to the airlock. “I’m so very sorry. I did think you’d be safe here.”
“I believe you,” Scout said. “Contact me every day so I know you’re all right.”
“It’s going to be lonely for you, traveling with this crew,” Bo said. “They never speak out loud. Sometimes they get surprised into laughing. It’s . . . not pleasant.”
“I don’t have far to go,” Scout said. “People are waiting for me on the other side.”
She hoped that was true, that the Torreses had made it all the way to the barricade before being unable to continue. That they still waited for her. She wasn’t looking forward to flying in a transparent ship with a crew of people she couldn’t talk with. Hopefully it would be a short trip, followed by another trip across an airlock.
“Come, dogs,” Scout said, summoning her dogs close to her side. Then they stepped out together, into the long white hallway that appeared to open up onto space itself. It was disorienting to look at, and she wasn’t even in it yet. But she didn’t slow her steps, and she didn’t look back.
Time to face the next adventure.
* * *
The End
Special Excerpt
If you enjoyed this novel read on for an exclusive excerpt from the fifth book in the Travels of Scout Shannon:
* * *
Over Freezing Altitudes
* * *
Chapter 1
* * *
Scout Shannon felt her steps slowing as she reached the end of the long white hallway that connected one airlock to the other. She was getting to the end of what had become familiar to her, and as far as she could tell, nothing lay beyond it. Nothing but the black of space and the faint, distant twinkling of stars.
She knew the warm, close feeling of the Tajaki trade dynasty ship had been the work of an illusion, making the walls look like wood polished until it glowed like honey and the lights like flickering flames over brass fixtures. She didn't know what the ship looked like when it wasn't projecting that fabricated image, but even bare metal would be warmer than what lay ahead of her.
Which was nothing. Just the cold vacuum of space.
She knew that wasn't true. If it had been true, she'd already be out in it, sucked out the end of the hallway with her fluids boiling away and the cold frost creeping over her.
She had seen it happen to her friend, just days before. She had felt her friend's cold-stiffened limbs, and her mind could too readily imagine what the process must feel like.
But it wasn't happening, Scout reminded herself. She was walking normally through air she could breathe, and she was no colder than she normally was since she had left her warm prairies behind to travel through the corridors of space-bound ships.
Scout bent to pick up her white rat terrier Shadow, holding him tight and burying her face in the fur of his neck. He didn't need to be carried, his injury from a few days before had been slight and handily healed by the nanite the doctor had injected into his leg. But she needed the comfort of his warmth, the familiar smell of the dusty prairies of home that still lingered in his fur. Not exactly like home - it wasn't tongue-coating thick, capable of turning the saliva in her mouth into a gritty, metallic-tasting sludge - but enough to summon the image of days spent pedaling her bike down a narrow track in an endless expanse of red-gold grasses.
Her other dog, Gert, was too large to be carried. Normally she objected to Shadow getting more attention than she was getting, but the rapidly approaching end of the hallway was making her nervous as well, and she pressed close against Scout's knee as she walked at her side, looking up from time to time with her big brown eyes. Scout bent a little to pat the top of Gert's head and try to lend her a little comfort.
Scout didn't have much of it to spare.
The six tribunal enforcers walking with her were technically human, but not the sort of humans that lent anyone any sense of comfort. It wasn't just the air of formality that radiated from their long blue robes and tall, straight postures as they walked with their folded hands hidden inside their sleeves. All of that was little different than an officer in a uniform, and Scout had known many of those who still did what was needful to put others at ease.
And it wasn't their silence; Scout had grown used to that. And she was practicing paying attention to their little gestures and glances, the rapid microexpressions that were their chief form of communicating. Scout didn't know what they were saying, but at least she knew when they were "talking."
Yes, they were definitely odd, with their shaved heads and skin that no matter what color they had been born with was pasty, almost waxy now. They lived in deep space, far from the burning rays of sunlight Scout had spent her whole life protecting herself against. Perhaps that was why Scout felt like they were too emotionally distant to feel empathy for her. Their life experience was as opposite to hers as it was possible to get.
On the other hand, people had told her the tribunal enforcers had evolved under the influence of some sort of mind-altering organism no one had yet managed to identify. It might have been that making them seem to alien to her.
Scout's thoughts scattered away as the first of the tribunal enforcers finally reached the end of the hallway and stepped out into the beyond. The hallway connected airlocks, that was its function. Scout had crossed it before, from one conventional ship to another. The tribunal enforcers had to be simply stepping inside of their own airlock.
But to Scout's eyes, they seemed to be just stepping off into space, walking implacably forward until the dark swallowed them up.
She didn't realize she had stopped walking until she felt a soft touch at her elbow. The young tribunal enforcer, the one who had worked so hard to get her to crack the code of their unique form of communication, had deliberately brushed against her without removing their hands from their sleeves. The smile they gave Scout was not quite natural. Not spontaneous, Scout decided, a touch too formal.
But they were really trying to be friendly. Scout looked in their eyes and was sure she was right about that. They just didn't quite have the knack down. They were too used to expressions meaning so many specific things. Scout supposed trying for a friendly smile for them must be a bit like if she tried for a friendly burst of noise without making words.
So-called normal people were likely just as odd to the tribunal enforcers as the other way around. Scout smiled back and tried to mask her anxiety.
But then she ran out of hallway and found herself standing on nothing, with nothing around her except stars scattered over a black sky, and her stomach lurched horribly.
It was worse than she feared. And she was about to embark on a five-day journey on this ship.
She took a breath and then another step, further away from the edge of the hallway. She felt like she was falling forwards, tumbling through space, but her foot touched the floor just as her other had, and she was standing as solidly as ever.
The young tribunal enforcer smiled that forced smile again, indicating with a sweep of their hand that she should continue further in.
Scout was about to try another step when she realized Gert hadn't come with her. She turned back to see the big black dog lingering at the end of the hallway, looking not so much frightened as confused. Scout hugged Shadow tighter in her arms, knowing that wherever Shadow went Gert would follow.
Scout took three more steps, enough to get her to where the tribunal enforcer clearly wanted her to stand.
Gert hesitated, but only for a second. Then she bounded after, colliding with Scout's leg then falling into a sl
oppy sit on one hip. Her legs looked funny, sprawled across an invisible floor, her tail thumping loudly against nothing at all.
Then there was a sound, a clang and a whoosh, and Scout looked up to see the white hallway collapsing like a telescope, appearing to shrink as it zoomed away until it was flush with the side of the Tajaki trade dynasty ship.
Scout had never seen the outside of the ship. It was just as lovely outside as it was within, a long, delicate-looking vessel tapered on both ends like they used to make boats to cross the oceans of Old Earth back in the ancient days. Its hull had a sheen like grayish-white marble that flashed into a burst of light as the sun rose around the planet off to Scout's right.
Her homeworld, Amatheon. Would she ever see it again?
Scout buried her nose once more into Shadow's soft white fur. Life on Amatheon, already not remotely easy between the frequent coronal mass ejection events and trying to eke out crops from less than ideal soil, was about to get much harder if Scout failed in what she was trying to do.
And she was in so far over her head. The tribunal enforcers with their silent communions were easier for Scout to understand than the word barrages the lawyers kept dumping on her.
Hopefully, the lawyers waiting to meet her at the other end of her journey on the invisible ship would be better at talking to her. But even if they weren't, they were the only ones truly on the side of the people of Amatheon, the only ones who thought that the people on the planet's surface and those still living in orbit around it deserved the right to self-govern. Everyone else was just focused on which member of the family in charge of the vast Tajaki trade dynasty "owned" the planetary system and was in charge of all the people who were their "employees."
Scout had never even heard of the Tajaki trade dynasty before a few days ago. She doubted more than a handful of people on the surface even knew they were supposed to be employees of the company that had funded their ancestors' journey to Amatheon more than a century before.
