Poisoned Pawn

by Jaleta Clegg

  “Heading seven four three,” Jasyn said.

  I pushed the engines while Clark swung us around to point the right direction. Viya traffic control sent us a course away from the station. We spent the next hour following it, building up speed to the jump point. Clark, I was happy to see, was very competent and had obviously had experience flying small ships.

  We hit the jump point, going just fast enough for a smooth transition. The hyperdrive came on line, the ship settled into a gentle hum just on the edge of hearing. It was sweet. It had taken me four days of sweat and battered knuckles to get the drive balanced. I shut the sublight engines down and swung my seat around.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Jasyn.

  “Cargo delivery to Dru’Ott. We should be there in about three days. Going by the estimated speed we made from Tebros to Viya. Good work with those engines, Dace.”

  Clark looked over his shoulder at Jasyn. His eyes widened. He tried to swivel his neck farther. His chair moved and he bashed me with his knee. I stood, giving Jasyn a warning by raised eyebrow.

  “Jasyn, this is our new pilot, on temporary contract, Trevyn Clark.”

  “Hi,” he said.

  I left the two of them alone. I should have been used to anything male ignoring me as soon as they met Jasyn. It happened often enough. I went to the galley to find lunch. I was hours past due to eat. I pulled out a handful of Jasyn’s latest variety of cookies and turned to put them on the table. I was surprised to find Clark there, looking as if he wanted to talk to me. I glanced past him at Jasyn. She had turned her chair around to face into the lounge and frowned at Clark’s back. She saw my look and shook her head.

  “Do you stand watches?” Clark asked.

  “Are you volunteering for the off shift?” I wondered why he was talking to me and not Jasyn.

  “If you want me to,” he said.

  I put the cookies on the table, watching him.

  “You’re looking at me suspiciously again,” he said and sat down, helping himself to a cookie.

  “Why do you want the off shift? So you have access to the com unit without us listening? Or are you planning on breaking something? Or reprogramming the nav system?” The only one of those things he could do in hyperspace was break something. Coms didn’t work, you couldn’t send messages, you couldn’t track ships, and you couldn’t change the course once in hyperspace.

  He stopped with the cookie almost to his mouth. “Why would I want to do any of those things?”

  I took the cookie away from him. “First of all, I don’t trust you. And I won’t until… Well, until I feel like I can. And second, that was mine. Get your own.” I wasn’t sure why I didn’t quite trust him. Probably because he should have been drooling over Jasyn, not snitching my cookies.

  “You actually cook on the ship?”

  “Not me. Jasyn.” Another reason men liked her. My cooking skills were nonexistent, despite the ferocious efforts of the staff at the orphanage on Tivor. The director’s forte had been oral hygiene. I wasn’t a fanatic in that area, but her constant tirades about germs and bad breath had sunk in.

  Clark popped the lid off the tin of cookies, then settled at the table with them.

  Jasyn joined us. She sat across from me and stared pointedly at Clark. He munched cookies with a look of pure bliss on his face. I pulled the tin away from him, my own mouth full. He finished chewing and looked at me, at the tin, over at Jasyn, then back at me.

  “Forget the bonus,” he said. “Real food on a ship. I’ve died and gone to spacer heaven.”

  “You get to wash up.” I was trying hard not to like Clark and failing miserably. Which only made me more determined not to like him. “And we don’t bother with standing watch. The ship has full automatics.”

  “So what did the dragon captain make you promise in your contract?” Jasyn asked Clark.

  “A one way trip to wherever it is you’re going. Free of charge, except now she’s going to make me do the dishes.” He reached for another cookie.

  “She’s a slave driver,” Jasyn said.

  “What kind of contract are you under?” Clark asked her, although he was still looking mostly at me. And the remaining cookies.

  “I’m half owner.” She shot me a smug look. She was as proud of her name on the deed of ownership as I was of mine.

  “Nice ship,” Clark said, finishing his cookie. “Although some of the equipment is not exactly standard.” He waited for me to answer.

  I picked up a cookie and ate it, very slowly, deliberately not answering. Jasyn pulled out a nail file and worked on her nails. He waited, feeling the silence build.

  “Well, that seems to answer that,” he said after a very long few minutes. “Do you have a ship schedule?”

  “We keep whatever time we feel like,” I answered. “As long as you’re there when the reentry warning sounds, you can keep whatever time you like.”

  “Then I think I’ll go unpack,” he said and went into the third cabin. The door slid shut behind him; the lock light blinked red.

  “Interesting,” Jasyn said when he was gone. She looked across the table, the nail file dangling from her perfect fingers.

  “He didn’t even look at you, not after that first stare,” I said. “No offense, Jasyn, but men just don’t ignore you.”

  “Except Tayvis,” she said, and started on her nails again.

  “He at least looked, I saw him doing it,” I answered.

  She laughed. “So why didn’t Clark look? Maybe I should try wearing that red outfit.”

  “I still think you should burn it.” The dress had almost caused a riot when she wore it to a dance hall on Tebros.

  “You’re jealous, Dace. You should try it on, I bet it would look great on you.”

  “Only if I’m too dead to object. You aren’t going to win, Jasyn. Not on that one.” She had talked me into styling my hair. It didn’t look like an animal nesting on my head anymore. It didn’t look much like hers either. My hair was short and mousy brown, with just enough curl to have a mind of its own. It went where it wanted. I settled for combing it and pretending I wanted it to look that way.

  “You think he’ll work out?” Jasyn asked.

  “Do you?” I shifted, putting my feet on a chair. “What’s Dru’Ott like?”

  “You’ve never been there?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then we might have half a chance of not getting in trouble.” Her teasing tone took out any sting the words might have had.

  Chapter Four

  Clark settled into our routine as if he had been there from the start. We ate when Jasyn cooked, slept when we felt like it. I checked on the ship status every few hours, a nervous habit from flying ancient ships that were one step away from disintegrating. Clark cheerfully washed any and all dishes. He didn’t ask any more questions over our equipment, just accepted that I wasn’t going to tell him anything. He didn’t ask much about anything. He pulled a deck of cards from his belongings and taught us new variations of Comets.

  The only thing that kept bothering me was that he didn’t go gooey eyed over Jasyn. He treated her as just one of the crew. I was the one he kept watching, green eyes speculative whenever they met mine. It made me nervous.

  “I think he likes you,” Jasyn said to me the second night while I was sitting in the cockpit. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was trying to escape from Clark and his watching.

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Then why is he always watching you? He only plays cards if you join.” She sat in the copilot seat, dangling her legs over the armrest. Her feet were bare, the nails painted shocking blue this time.

  “He doesn’t like me, I don’t want him to.” I played with a switch, flipping the lights off and on.

  “You don’t want anyone to like you. You like being prickly. Jerimon liked you. He still does.”

  I didn’t want to hear about her brother. “I wish he wouldn’t write you so much.”

  “He writes
me because you never wrote back.”

  “I don’t care what Lady Rina says, I’m not his soulmate. Even if it’s supposed to be my destiny. He’s too much trouble.”

  Jasyn laughed. “Looks who’s talking.” She pulled out her nail file. “Did you get a message to Tayvis?”

  I didn’t want to talk about it. I’d tried, more times than I wanted to admit, to find a way to contact Tayvis. I’d sent him away and told him not to ever come back. Because he’d tried to recruit me to the Patrol. He worked for Lowell. I couldn’t trust him. I wished I could take back those words. I’d been quiet too long. It was almost as if Jasyn could read my mind.

  “No luck again, I take it.”

  “I was stupid, I know, you’ve said it often enough.” I watched her buff her fingernail. “Why do you do that? Your nails are always perfect.”

  “Because I do this. Your nails wouldn’t be such a mess if you…”

  “I don’t want another lecture, Jasyn.”

  “Dace.” She stopped polishing her nails.

  “What?”

  She watched me, her violet eyes clear as crystal. Her lips quirked in a half smile. She shook her head, long dark hair sliding across her shoulder. “Don’t make life harder than it has to be.” She stood, patting my shoulder. “I’m off to bed.” She glanced at the clock on the nav board. “Six hours. Plenty of time to sleep before we get there.”

  “You aren’t my mother, Jasyn.”

  “I don’t think I’d want to be,” she teased. “Being your partner is hard enough.”

  “Go away,” I said, failing to sound anything but affectionate.

  “Don’t brood too long,” she called over her shoulder as she left.

  I shifted my chair around, lounging back and resting my feet in the copilot’s chair. I watched lights streak across the viewscreen. I couldn’t figure Clark out. I liked him, he was comfortable to be around, but something was off. Maybe I was just being paranoid. Maybe he just didn’t like women.

  I drifted off to sleep. I saw jumbled images of the lizardlike Sessimoniss aliens chanting, their voices rising in a hissing wave. Jerimon was trying to kiss me, grabbing my shoulder; Tayvis was smiling, refusing to answer my questions. I had to know what he’d done with the papers. There was something important in them, something I had to know. I turned to find Leon, our lawyer friend who’d caused half the damage to Viya, waving a finger and warning me not to say anything. Or eat the furniture. Commander Lowell charged in, followed by a mob of Patrol carrying flaming torches. They were going to burn me. I tried to run but my feet were stuck in oil leaking from the engine. The alarms went off, the core was redlining. I couldn’t get it to eject. The ship was going to explode. Lowell chanted in the Sessimoniss language. The torches were coming closer. I had to know what the papers said but I couldn’t read them. And the alarms were shrieking.

  I jerked awake. The reentry warning beeped. Clark stood over me, looking concerned. I moved my feet off his chair.

  “Must have been some nightmare,” he said.

  “It was,” I said more sharply than I intended. I slapped the controls that let the ship know I was awake and there so the warning would shut up. My neck was kinked from sleeping in the chair. I rubbed it.

  Clark reached one hand over and gently pushed mine out of the way. His hands were warm and strong, but gentle as they worked out the knot. I closed my eyes, letting his touch chase away the last wisps of the nightmare. The ship beeped again. Clark moved his hand away.

  “Thank you, I think,” I said uncertainly, looking over at him.

  His green eyes were calm, no deep intense looks like Jerimon gave me.

  “You’re welcome. Feel better?” He turned to his controls.

  “Good morning.” Jasyn entered the cockpit behind us.

  I didn’t look at her. I swear she could see where Clark had rubbed my neck, like guilt written in big red letters on my skin.

  “Did she sleep in the chair again?” Jasyn asked Clark.

  “Does she do it often?”

  “Enough that I seriously thought about installing a bunk instead.” She typed on her own board and the beeping shut up.

  The ship slid into normal space, with barely a ripple of nausea. Those engines were good. Clark brought the sublights on line and slowed us down. I shut down the hyperdrive and called up Dru’Ott. Traffic was light, we had a straight course all the way in to the landing field.

  “Are you kicking me off when we land?” Clark asked once we had the course locked in.

  “I didn’t hear him snore,” Jasyn said.

  “That’s because you soundproofed the cabins.” I watched him adjust the engines. His hands moved competently over the controls, too square to be graceful like Jerimon’s.

  “Only if you quit trying to flirt with me,” I said and looked away as my face grew hot. Sometimes I wanted to tape my own mouth shut.

  “Was I trying to flirt with her?” Clark asked Jasyn.

  “Why else would you ignore me?” Jasyn answered. “Dace is paranoid about men.”

  “So are you,” I said.

  Clark lifted his hands in surrender. “I promise to only flirt with other women. Cross my heart.”

  “Nobody does cross my heart anymore. No wonder Dace suspects you.” Jasyn stared out the viewscreen. “What is this place? There are hundreds of pod things orbiting the planet.”

  “Dru’Ott are the people,” Clark said. “Non-human sentients. They build huge cities that no one else can make sense of. Big piles of mud. The orbiting pods are some kind of hibernation chamber.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “I landed here a few times. There are quite a few freight runs from Dru’Ott. They are very good at making machine parts. You suspect me of doing what?” He shot at glance at me as he adjusted our course.

  “This isn’t working,” Jasyn said.

  “The ship works fine,” I said, deliberately misinterpreting what she said.

  “Just hit him and get it over with,” Jasyn said.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Clark asked.

  “You haven’t looked at Jasyn once, the whole trip. Are you human?” I asked, knowing it was rude.

  He didn’t get offended. He started laughing.

  “You’re off course,” Jasyn said.

  “What’s funny?” I demanded.

  “Both of you,” he said as he nudged the ship back on course. “Who says I haven’t looked?”

  Jasyn sputtered something incomprehensible and swatted the back of his head.

  He laughed again. “So am I fired or not?”

  “You signed on, you stay and scrub decks and wash dishes,” Jasyn said. “Forever. Or at least until you pay for that comment.”

  “Agreed. Are you through suspecting me of everything or do I need to grovel some more?”

  “Groveling is nice,” Jasyn said.

  “I’ll have to do it later. Can’t grovel and land at the same time without crashing.”

  Dru’Ott was a very weird place. The main landing field was a bumpy spread of plascrete with strange mud lumps scattered at random across it. The port offices were plascrete boxes, the kind that new colonies throw up because they are fast and cheap. The landing field had a high fence around it. A few rubbery tree things grew near the office buildings. Beyond them were huge mounds of sculpted mud.

  All three of us headed out from the ship towards the offices. There were less than twenty ships on the field.

  “I thought you said they were busy,” I commented to Clark as we dodged an automated cargo hauler.

  “There are over fifty landing areas on the planet,” he said. “Or maybe more. I’m not sure. I don’t know if anyone is. Anyone not Dru’Ott is not welcome beyond the fences.”

  “So how do we know we landed in the right place?” Jasyn asked.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t do cargo when I was here before.”

  We found out when we reached the building.

  The Dru’Ott w
ere like insects. We dealt with their human gatekeepers. The Dru’Ott didn’t have technology, at least not the way most people defined it. I’m not even sure they were really sentient either. As far as I could tell from the scanty information we managed to get, the Dru’Ott took raw materials, such as the fleece we were hauling, and fed it to their grubs. The grubs extruded a variety of things, including tubing and machine parts. It all depended on what the grubs were fed and what kind of chemical scents they were exposed to.

  The lady manning the import desk was helpful, but not informative beyond those basic facts. She took the papers for the cargo and stamped them.

  “The return cargo for Viya Station will be loaded,” she informed me.

  “I”m not going back to Viya Station,” I said.

  She blinked. “The return cargo will be loaded,” she repeated.

  “But I’m not going to Viya Station.”

  “Cargo will be loaded for another destination. Please select.” She slid a handcomp across the desk.

  “What if I take the cargo and don’t deliver it?” I asked, more to see her reaction than anything else. If I didn’t deliver as promised, I risked losing membership in the Independent Traders Guild. I scrolled through the list of cargo destinations.

  “The cargo will be delivered,” she said, blinking again. “Please select a destination.”

  Clark leaned over my shoulder. “Shamustel is a nice place.”

  “As long as it isn’t Viya Station,” I said, giving in. I signed, noting that the agreement included refueling and an allowance for other services and goods, such as food. I doubted Dru’Ott would offer anything much besides freeze dried soup.

  The woman took her handcomp back, then slid the paperwork and an allowance chip across the desk.

  The three of us turned away.

  “This is the weirdest planet I have ever landed on.” I handed our allowance chip to Jasyn. “This is our payment for the fleece. Go buy whatever you want. It’s only good on Dru’Ott. We get paid for the return cargo when we get to Shamustel.” I turned to Clark. “Since we don’t have cash to pay you yet, buy yourself something.”