by Kate MacLeod
If Scout and her new lawyer friends failed to convince the court to leave Amatheon in peace, life was really going to change for nearly everyone Scout had ever known.
The tribunal enforcer was smiling at her again, an expectant smile she knew meant she was supposed to be noticing something. Scout looked around, felt a rush of vertigo as her eyes swept over distant star fields before forcing her vision to focus closer. Gert was still looking up at her, tail thumping loudly as Scout returned her gaze. Beyond Gert, she could see figures moving through space around her. Their paths described lines, and she could infer where the main corridors were, but how did the tribunal enforcers know where they were?
And yet each one she looked at was walking unerringly around their invisible ship, turning at corners and negotiating doorways without so much as putting out a hand to run along the invisible walls.
Scout looked back at the waiting tribunal enforcer. Clearly, there was someplace that Scout was meant to go for the duration of the journey, and she doubted that place was lingering near the airlock. But the idea of walking in random directions until helpful tribunal enforcers or less helpful walls and bulkheads compelled her to change direction didn't seem like the best plan.
Then she remembered: she still had her AI teacher, the one she had named Warrior after the woman who had rescued Scout from her life on Amatheon only days before.
"Hello, teacher," Scout said.
"Hello, Scout," Warrior said, appearing next to the waiting tribunal enforcer. Although she looked almost exactly like the woman who had called herself Warrior, with the same long, thick, copper-colored hair and Amazonian build, she didn't look remotely like a warrior herself. Her braid was looser, her clothes softer and more comfortable, the muscles of her arms less prominent.
"Can you help me navigate this ship?" Scout asked.
"I could guide you anywhere you want to go," Warrior said. "The tribunal enforcers have allowed me access to their systems including all ship schematics. But it would perhaps be more convenient to just adjust your glasses."
"Adjust my glasses?" Scout repeated, touching one wire bow. The glasses had been a gift from Bo Tajaki, the captain of the ship she had just left behind. They were a necessary item for her to see her tutor, another of his gifts to her. She had sort of known the glasses had other functions, but with all of the fleeing from deadly assassins and storming the bridge to hack into the communications system to get her call to the tribunal enforcers out, she had never had a chance to discover just what else her glasses did.
"There will be an audio command function," Warrior told her. "Just tell it to make the walls opaque."
"Okay," Scout said, feeling intensely silly all of a sudden. She set Shadow down on the floor next to Gert, adjusted the glasses on her nose again, then loudly cleared her throat. "Glasses, make the walls opaque."
And just like that, she was encased inside a ship with actual walls, floors, and ceilings. But not metal or the illusion of warm wood tones.
No, this ship looked like it had formed out of crystal, a living crystal that grew as it chose, jutting out here, leaving a jagged gap there. Now that it was opaque it looked like it glowed a yellowish-white from within, never so opaque that she couldn't still make out the stars beyond or the forms of people moving about within.
It was still the strangest thing she had ever seen, but Scout was immensely relieved to no longer be facing the possibility of going mad when the ship started actually moving.
She could do this. With her dogs and her AI tutor, she could get through the next five days on this alien yet beautiful vessel.
She didn't know what waited for her on the other side, but it just had to be more familiar than this.
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Chapter 2
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Something changed. Not anything she could see or hear, but something in the air, like a change in the pressure.
Scout opened her eyes, not sure if she had dreamed it, or even quite what it was. But the dogs were awake too, Shadow's body stiffening as he sniffed at the air. Gert lifted her head from behind Scout's knee, tipping her big head to one side, both of her ears cocked off to the left as if she could turn them to hone in on sounds.
Scout moved Shadow away from her enough so that she could sit up and reach for her glasses. She pushed back the hair that had escaped from her braid as she slept then slipped on the lenses.
"Hello, teacher," she said.
"Good morning, Scout," Warrior said as she appeared sitting on the edge of Scout's crystallized bunk.
"Is it morning?" Scout asked.
"I'm merely calling it so because you are awake," Warrior said. "This ship has no time distinctions."
"Something just changed," Scout said. Shadow was still sniffing the air, Gert pawing to get around Scout's legs to help him find it. Scout got out from between them and dropped down to the floor. The dogs buried their faces in the tangle of blanket, but the artificial grassy smell from whatever soap the tribunal enforcers washed their clothes in was not new.
"Yes, the ship has come out of hyperspace," Warrior told her. "Most people don't sense that, but you seem unusually sensitive to the effects of the engine fields."
"Are we near the engine?" Scout asked, looking around. She could see through the crystalline walls, but it took a lot of concentration to make sense of the overlapping spaces around her.
"Not particularly," Warrior said. "And the effects were mild. You didn't ask about them, so I didn't mention. But the thing that changed which you sensed was the engine field collapsing when we returned to normal space. We should be in orbit around our destination in a few hours."
Scout nodded then started pulling her braid apart, finger-combing her hair before rebraiding it.
"You could tell I was feeling something even though I didn't say so?" Scout said.
"The symptoms were mild," Warrior said. "You've been more distractable, have shown less focus, and show signs of not getting enough restful sleep."
"I feel like all I've been doing is trying to sleep," Scout said.
"Yes, trying," Warrior agreed.
"So less focus and that, did it affect how you scored me on those aptitude tests?" Scout asked. That had been the only thing to do besides sleep and wander the crystalline halls: let her AI tutor evaluate her educational levels and decide where to place her for further study.
"It was taken into account," Warrior said. Scout would have to take her word on that. Whatever scoring system Warrior used, she wouldn't explain it to Scout in a way that made sense. Scout knew she had missed out on a lot, having stopped going to school after her family died when she was ten. But no matter how she pressed, the AI refused to compare her to either other 16-year-olds or other 10-year-olds or anything that would give Scout a picture of where she stood.
"You had enough of a sense of me before to make that adjustment?" Scout asked. She had, after all, only gotten the AI a few days before boarding the ship.
"Yes," Warrior said. "As I've told you many times, the point of my evaluating you was only to determine the path ahead, not to compare you to anyone else or any hypothetical version of you that stayed in school. My methods are not intended to measure anything, only to guide our future progress."
"I know," Scout sighed. She turned to say something more then saw one of the tribunal enforcers standing in her doorway.
She called it a doorway, but as there were no doors anywhere inside the ship, there was probably another word that described it better.
"Do you need me?" Scout asked. She knew they understood words perfectly well even though they never used them themselves. Still, it felt polite to make a stab at their own form of communication, and Scout put all of her polite inquiry and willingness to comply on her face. She might be exaggerating her facial expressions as she tried to be clear; she hoped that didn't come across as shouting.
The tribunal enforcer, seeing they had her attention, turned and led the way down the hall. The dogs had curled back up to
gether to go back to sleep, and Scout left them as they were. Without glasses like Scout's they had no way of seeing the walls and got lost inside of the ship. After a few episodes of lost doggy panic - one of which had ended with Gert running full tilt into a wall hard enough to stun herself despite her thick skull - they preferred to stay in the bunk unless Scout led them around on leashes.
Warrior, being an AI and therefore tied to Scout, fell into step beside her.
If the tribunal enforcers had optical implants or some other technology that allowed them to see the AI, they never let on that they knew she was there. On the other hand, they never found it odd when Scout talked to what would otherwise seem to be thin air either.
The tribunal enforcer took her down a long, spiraling hallway to a room deeper in the heart of the crystalline structure. The floor and ceiling were far from flat, more like water frozen in gentle waves, but also with innumerable stalagmites and stalactites.
The tribunal enforcer stopped at one such stalagmite, one that had been broken or sawed off at an angle, leaving an exposed oval that shone like glass. At first, it was like looking into a mirror that was tipped 45 degrees away from her.
Then a light danced over the surface, rippling like someone throwing a handful of sand over a pond on an intensely sunny day. Then it settled, and she was looking at Bo Tajaki.
"Hello, Scout," he said the moment he saw her. "I hope all is well?"
Scout looked at the young man she had only known for a few days but who had become almost like a big brother to her. There was concern in his brown eyes, and she knew he wanted an honest answer.
She thought of the mysterious effects of the engine field and how she had felt odd all the way through hyperspace. She thought of the pervasive cold that never left her bones, the tired sadness she was sure would pass if she could just feel the sun on her skin. She thought of the thick paste that was the tribunal enforcers only food. She assumed it was some sort of algae, but there was no way to know for sure. She had described the earthy, salty taste and grit-like texture to Warrior over and over, but she had no clue what Scout was eating.
But before Scout could find a way to put any of that into words that wouldn't sound like complaining, Bo spoke again.
"Are you wearing a tribunal enforcer robe?" he asked. "Is that allowed? I thought it was considered a badge of office."
"I think they made an exception for me when the clothes I was wearing all turned transparent when we went into hyperspace."
Bo looked confused, but only for a moment. Then his cheeks flushed ever so slightly pink. "Smart cloth. You went out of range. I'm sorry, Scout. You left in such a hurry, and I never even thought to return your own clothes to you."
"I have my galactic marshal belt and a scarf from the market on Amatheon Orbiter 1," Scout said. "Those are still normal. I'm sure I'll get something else when we land."
She did miss the smart clothes, though. Warrior had helped her create an outfit that suited her perfectly, warm and with lots of pockets. Now she had all of her things in her belt the pouches bulging with items that were impossible to retrieve in a hurry. Not that she was likely to need any of it on this ship where the tribunal enforcers knew what she needed even before she did, but Scout liked to be prepared.
Always being prepared for any sort of trouble had saved her life on more than one occasion.
"If money is ever an issue, please just ask," Bo said. "I can't fund the cause of these lawyer friends of yours, that would be a huge legal snarl for my lawyers, but I can make sure you have proper clothing, food, whatever you need."
"Thanks, but I'm sure I'll be fine," Scout said. "Any news?"
"I'm afraid not," Bo said. "We are about to go into hyperspace ourselves, which is why I wanted to call. My people have searched the entire ship, but there is still no sign of Shi Jian."
"I didn't think there would be," Scout said.
"I'll have the ship searched again when we reach galactic central, but by my father's people. Before we dock. Just to be sure."
Scout nodded. "What about the child assassins?"
Bo flinched at the word. She didn't see him bite his tongue to keep from correcting her with the word "spies," but she sensed how badly he wanted to.
"They are still confined to quarters and are cooperating fully with my security team," Bo told her.
"They're waiting," Scout said.
"I don't think so. They're just kids, Scout."
"I hope you're right," Scout said.
But she was sure he wasn't. Too many of those kids had tried to kill her.
"Listen, Scout," Bo said, leaning closer and lowering his voice. "If Shi Jian somehow found a way off this ship, she could be coming after you. I'm not sure those lawyer friends of yours are going to be able to protect you."
"The message they left for me said we'll be staying at Liam McGillicuddy's house," Scout said.
"I know he's a galactic marshal and your trusted friend, but I also know he's still in tribunal custody," Bo said. "He's not getting out any time soon. He can't protect you either."
"I'll be careful," Scout promised. "I'll keep my eyes open, and my dogs close."
"And you have me," the AI tutor told her.
"And I have Warrior," Scout said. Bo was wearing his little round glasses that would normally allow him to see the AI, but Scout didn't know if that worked over whatever communication system was letting her talk to him over such vast distances of space. It had taken five days to travel through hyperspace to get here; how did the communication system work?
Another question for Warrior when they had a free moment. She had spent most of the last five days just trying to get a grasp on the concept of hyperspace.
"I will contact you again when I reach galactic central," Bo told her. "Please stay safe."
"I will," Scout promised.
She hoped she sounded more sure than she felt.
"I should have sent guards with you," Bo said. "Not that the tribunal enforcers would have allowed it."
"I wouldn't have trusted them anyway," Scout said. "I'm not as sure as you are that your people are really your people."
Bo's eyes darted to either side as if making sure the room around him was clear. She couldn't see details on the crystal screen, but she could imagine the library around him. Rows of freestanding bookshelves, display cases of artifacts, dim lighting. It would be ridiculously easy to be close and yet not seen in such a place.
He leaned closer to whatever he was speaking into, probably his tablet, but Scout raised a hand.
"Don't say anything you don't want to be overheard," Scout said. "It's better to assume that someone is listening."
Bo nodded. "I've been looking into Shi Jian. Researching her background. I told you my father hired her after she saved me from a kidnapping attempt as a child. I'm sure his people did a thorough background check on her at the time, even though as a galactic marshal it would be easy to assume she was an upstanding citizen with nothing to hide. Everything looks good at a glance, but some things don't make sense when I really dig into them. Dates and locations in her background. I think the data might have been tampered with. I'll know more when I get to galactic central."
"If you want someone you can trust to dig further, contact Emilie Tonnelier," Scout said.
"I know she's your friend, but I couldn't convince her to choose me over my cousins. Why would she help me now?"
"Curiosity," Scout said with frank honesty. If it seemed even remotely like someone was trying to hide something Emilie wouldn't rest until she had uncovered everything. "Also, Shi Jian tried to kill Seeta Malani. We still don't know if Seeta will come out of her coma or ever fully recover. I doubt you'd find anyone more motivated to help you take her down."
"Noted," Bo said, and for a moment he looked pleased. But then the nervousness returned, and he glanced over his shoulders again. "Scout, whether she's spying on me or not, there is one thing Shi Jian knows for sure. Her future in the Tajaki trade dynasty is over,
and there's no way she's ever going to be a galactic marshal again. She's got nothing left to lose. She's capable of doing anything. Please, please be careful."
"I will," Scout said, and Bo's image flickered then faded away.
Scout tucked her hands inside the sleeves of her borrowed robe and headed back to her room, Warrior falling into step beside her but not interrupting the confused racing of Scout's thoughts.
Bo didn't have it quite right. He thought Shi Jian had made a mistake, that Scout had exposed her and ruined her career.
But that wasn't what had happened. Shi Jian had exposed herself. She had wanted Scout to see her and to warn the others. Scout had nearly lost her life in the fight to get that word out.
But she hadn't. And knowing Shi Jian and what she was capable of, she should have.
Somehow, in some way she couldn't see, Shi Jian was still using her as a pawn. Probably Bo as well. Without knowing what the game was, Scout didn't know how she was going to thwart any of Shi Jian's moves.
But Bo was right about the last thing. Shi Jian was capable of doing anything.
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About the Author
Photograph © 2016 Jonathan Conklin
Kate MacLeod lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband and two sons. Her short fiction has appeared in Analog, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Persistent Visions, Mythic Delirium and Abyss and Apex among others.
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