by J. J. Green
“Don’t be too impressed,” she replied. “Killing for a living isn’t as glamorous as you might think. Now, I want you to take the three rooms at the end of the passenger section near the elevator. Cadwallader will need some of the passenger rooms for the mercs if they’re going to sleep aboard this ship.”
“And you want to keep us separate from them,” said Castiel.
“Yes, I do. Go on. Do what I said.”
She watched the children depart and then noticed Bryce was looking stressed.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“I’m not sure it was a good idea enlisting these thugs to help us.”
“They aren’t thugs, they’re soldiers. I can’t deny there are a few similarities but the two aren’t the same. What are you worried about? I’m doing what I can to keep them away from the kids.”
“It isn’t only the kids coming into contact with them that bothers me, it’s the safety of our entire enterprise. What if that Cadwallader decides to empty the hold and transfer everything to his ship? We barely managed to contain Lomang’s crew, and we had the upper hand. We’re no match for trained mercs with a plan.”
“Cadwallader’s more honorable than you give him credit for,” said Carina. “And I’ve updated the hold security so that only you or I can get in. As to the other mercs…The ones who know me won’t turn on me, even if they don’t believe my threat about spacing them. I’m sure of that.”
“And the rest?”
“If they wanted to be pirates, they could be. But they’re mercs, soldiers. They want to do their job and then do the next one and so on. They like things simple and orderly, not messy and undisciplined. It’s hard to explain.”
“I don’t like that guy with the burn marks on his face,” said Bryce.
“Me neither,” Carina said. “But we won’t be using the Black Dogs forever. As soon as I find out how to get to Earth we’ll part ways and that’ll be it.”
Bryce appeared to remain unconvinced. “And what do we do with Lomang and his crew?”
“That I don’t have an answer for yet.”
The door to the meeting room opened and the mercs started to leave.
Atoi appeared and strode to Carina’s side. She wrapped an arm around Carina’s shoulders, looked Bryce up and down and said, “Is he spoken for?”
Carina laughed. She’d forgotten about Atoi’s predatory sexual habits. Bryce actually blushed.
“Um,” Carina replied, “yes”. Bryce looked relieved. Justifiably so, if he’d known what Carina knew about Atoi.
“Shame,” the other woman said. “By the way, I told Cadwallader about that huge guy in the hold. He said to put him in a cell of his own. What did you do with him in the end?”
“Shit!” said Carina. “I forgot about him. He’s still down there.”
Chapter Twenty-One
When Carina went to the bridge the following day, she found Stevenson sitting at the pilot’s controls. Her heart warmed as he looked over his shoulder and raised a hand in greeting.
“I didn’t get a chance to speak to you yesterday,” he said as she walked over to him. “Long time no see.”
“How have you been?” Carina asked, perching on the edge of console. “I wasn’t expecting to see you still running with the Dogs.”
“What can I say? A better offer hasn’t come along.”
“You must have been living under a rock if you never received a better offer than ferrying a bunch of mercs from one dangerous situation to another.”
“Maybe I thrive on danger,” said Stevenson, lifting an eyebrow.
She laughed out loud.
“After you abandoned us on Ithiya,” the pilot said, “I didn’t expect to see you again.”
“Abandoned you? I resigned, that’s all. I had something important to do. I ended up finding my family.” Carina sighed. “Maybe I was abandoning ship too. Speidel had advised me to leave, and it did seem like the ship was going down.”
“It was, until Cadwallader turned things around. We discovered that by not accepting suicidal missions, no matter how high the payment, and sticking to low-fee, easy work, we could make a decent living. Who knew?”
“Tarsalan always did have her eyes on the creds, not the brief,” Carina said. “Lucky for me she was pushed out. I wouldn’t have liked to deal with her. And lucky for me you were within hailing distance.”
“Must have been fate,” Stevenson said.
Carina smiled and cast a glance at the controls. “What are you doing?”
“Syncing up the ships’ drives. They have to be perfectly aligned or when we start to move…” He mimed ripping something in half.
“That wouldn’t be good.”
“No.” He held her gaze for a beat and then returned his attention to the console.
“Wait,” said Carina. “I thought the Duchess would be towing us?”
“It turns out the Zenobia is faster than I thought,” Stevenson replied without looking up. “Was it you who was flying her before we rendezvoused?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“The balances are all wrong. You were wasting a ton of fuel.”
“Oops. I only know what you taught me so a lot of guesswork was involved.”
“If you were flying this ship based on the few hours you messed around with the Duchess’s controls, you didn’t do badly at all.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m grateful for that little bit of tuition you gave me. Without it we would have been screwed, several times.”
Stevenson looked up at her.
“Figuratively speaking,” Carina said.
The bridge door opened and Bryce walked in. He paused a moment as he took in the scene before him. “Hey, can I speak to you?” he directed at Carina.
“Sure.” She slid off her perch on the flight console. “What about?”
“In private,” said Bryce, looking at Stevenson.
“Um, okay. See you later,” Carina said to Stevenson.
When the door closed behind her outside the bridge, she said, “What’s the big secret?”
“No secret,” said Bryce. “I just didn’t want to talk to you in front of a mercenary.”
“Stevenson isn’t really a merc. He just pilots for them.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure there’s a difference, and what I wanted to discuss with you concerns them. Let’s go and see the kids. We should talk about Ostillon too.”
As they walked to the elevator, Bryce said, “I agreed with what you said at the meeting yesterday, about your soldier friends watching their behavior around the children, but I’m not sure they’re taking you seriously.”
A heavy feeling settled in the pit of Carina’s stomach. This was what she feared from the soldiers, not them turning on her as Bryce had mentioned the previous day. “What have they been doing?”
“Nothing, yet,” he admitted. “But I’ve noticed some looks Parthenia’s received, and I’ve overheard comments made to her I didn’t like. I don’t think she should be alone around them. She’s only sixteen.”
Carina grimaced. “I was only sixteen too, when I joined up. But I hear you.”
Sixteen-year-old Carina and Parthenia at the same age were two very different people.
“I’ll say something to Cadwallader,” she added.
The elevator arrived and they stepped inside.
“I guess hooking up is a stress relief when you’re a mercenary,” said Bryce, staring ahead as the doors closed and they descended.
“It is, and they have their needs like everyone else, but that’s their problem, not Parthenia’s. She’s very young, and with the life she’s led, in many ways she’s naive. Vulnerable. I’ll tell Cadwallader to tell them she’s out of bounds.”
A silence followed. The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Carina stepped out but Bryce didn’t follow. When she turned, he had an odd look on his face.
“That guy…” Bryce said. “What did you say his name was? Stevenson?”
“That’s the pilot’s name, yeah. What about him?”
Bryce appeared to struggle to know what to say. “You two seem to have a history. Am I right?”
“I have a history with the Black Dogs. You know that.” Carina’s stomach muscles tightened as she wondered where the conversation was going.
“That isn’t what I meant,” said Bryce. “Don’t dodge the question.”
“Right,” Carina said. “So it isn’t only Parthenia you’re concerned about in that regard.”
“I don’t know if concerned is the right word.”
“So you aren’t concerned about me?”
“Stop twisting things. You’re being deliberately evasive.” Bryce took a step forward, his gaze on Carina intense. “Why can’t you just answer me? Was there something between you and the pilot?”
“Why can’t you stop being an asshole? What happened in my past is my business. You’re not entitled to a list of people I slept with.”
“So it’s a list, is it?! How many more of your old merc buddies are on it?”
“Get fucked, Bryce!”
A short distance along the corridor, a door opened and Oriana’s head poked out. Carina realized with remorse that she and Bryce were yelling.
“Go back inside,” Bryce said to Oriana, his tone lowered. “We’ll be there in a minute.”
The girl withdrew and closed the door.
Carina locked gazes with Bryce for several moments. Was he expecting some kind of apology or confession? She didn’t know but she was damned if she would give him either.
Eventually, he broke eye contact and said, “Sorry. I was out of line.”
Carina took a breath. “That’s okay,” she said, though anger still boiled inside her. Anger, and something like humiliation. She wasn’t exactly ashamed of anything she’d done during her days as a merc, but at the same time being reminded of who she’d been then made her uncomfortable. She hadn’t realized she’d changed so much—that events had changed her.
“Let’s forget about it,” she ground out.
They walked to Oriana’s cabin, tension stretching out between them. The arrival of the Black Dogs had solved a major problem but introduced a smaller, more personal one. Carina hadn’t taken Bryce to be the jealous type. She hoped he wouldn’t obsess about her ‘history’ and allow it to drive a wedge between them.
All of the children had gathered in the cabin Oriana was sharing with Ferne. Even Castiel was there, though he sat apart from the others. The other kids occupied the two beds in various ways; lying on their stomachs, propping themselves against pillows, or sitting cross-legged. Castiel sat alone in a corner, leaning over an interface. All were awkwardly silent after overhearing Carina and Bryce’s fight.
“We should put together a plan of what to do when we get to Ostillon,” Bryce began, “even if we don’t have a lot to go on. We can’t employ the mercenaries forever so we need to make the best use of them we can.”
“We should go back to that temple,” said Parthenia. “Or if not that one then another. There has to be more we can find out about mages from that religion.”
“I agree,” said Carina. “We should ask to see the most ancient artifacts and records. We might even find some things that are contemporary to the time of the conflict between the mages and the newcomers. It would make sense that the oldest artifacts are held in a special place, maybe a main temple. As soon as we’re within distance we’ll search their archives. I doubt the security will be tight. The information isn’t significant to the Ostillonians except in a spiritual sense.”
“Okay,” said Bryce. “Good. We have our first step.”
“The Duchess has a shuttle we can take down,” Carina continued. “If Darius Cloaks both ships the Dirksens won’t know we’re there.”
“I can do that easy!” the little boy exclaimed.
“Assuming they’re still on Ostillon,” said Oriana.
“They are,” Castiel said, smugly, from the corner.
“How do you know?” asked Ferne.
“Because I was with them when they talked about it, wasn’t I? Idiot.”
“Ha!” Ferne scoffed. “You were the one hanging out with the Dirksens but I’m the idiot.”
“Shuttup.” Castiel rose to his feet, clenching his fists.
“Stop it, both of you!” yelled Carina. The children froze, only their eyes moving as they glanced at each other. “Castiel, what makes you think the Dirksens haven’t abandoned Ostillon yet?” she asked in the silence.
“I overheard Sable Dirksen talking to her lapdog, Commander Kee, saying something about securing provisions for the troops now that supplies were running low.” He sat down and glared at Ferne.
“Huh,” Carina said, “so they’re keeping the food to themselves while the Ostillonians starve. Figures.”
“Where is the Dirksen headquarters, Castiel?” Parthenia asked. “It would be wise for us to avoid it if we can.”
“It’s in a mountain range a few hours’ flight from Langley Dirksen’s estate. I don’t know the coordinates but I know the way there from the city. It’s very well hidden. You can’t see it at all from the outside. There’s some kind of optical illusion that disguises the entrance. It looks like you’re flying into the mountainside but then you pass through it and find you’re in a docking bay.”
“The Dirksens do love their tech,” Carina said.
“No, the entrance isn’t Dirksen tech,” said Castiel. “Sable told me it was there when they arrived. One of the local dignitaries told her about this ancient, forgotten, mysterious mountain castle to try to gain favor. After he’d shown her the location she had him killed. She said there were a lot of superstitions surrounding the place. I don’t think she really liked it, though. It was always cold. It didn’t matter what the Dirksens did, they could never heat it.”
“I love the idea of Sable Dirksen freezing her behind off,” Oriana said. “What’s she like?”
“No, wait,” said Carina, throwing Bryce a glance. “Tell us more about the Dirksen headquarters.”
A mountain hideout with a secret entrance sounded like something mages would build, and Castiel had said it was very old too.
He went on to describe a large complex carved out from the interior of a mountain, a place of many floors yet, perversely, no elevators before the Dirksens moved in. Each bedroom of the original section of the mountain castle held a fireplace and a faucet—fire and water on hand for every inhabitant.
The more she heard, the more Carina became convinced the Dirksens had unwittingly taken over the dwelling of Ostillon’s first settlers, a fortress they had constructed as a hideaway when the newcomers turned on them.
If Ostillon held the key to finding Earth, it was there, in the heart of enemy territory.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lomang had requested a parley. Atoi thought this was hilarious. The large, muscly woman had been hanging out on the bridge when the request came through the ship’s comm to Carina, courtesy of one of the man’s guards.
“Parley?!” Atoi exclaimed. “Who the hell does he think he is? You’d think the weeks locked in his cabin would give him the clue he’s a prisoner, not an adversary.”
The scarred man, whose name Carina had learned was Chandu, was also present. He scoffed, saying, “Maybe he wants to discuss his method of execution. I don’t know why he’s still alive, to be frank.” His eyes were hard as he directed his gaze Carina.
“Got anything else you want to say?” she asked.
“Yeah, I do. Lomang and his crew are a liability. We should have spaced them all the minute we got them under control. Keeping them alive is dumb.”
“Well it was my decision not to murder them in cold blood,” Carina said. “So you’re saying I’m dumb?” She held Chandu’s gaze, unblinking.
“No, he didn’t mean it like that,” Atoi said, suddenly serious.
Chandu muttered something Carina didn’t catch.
“What was that?” she asked, mainta
ining eye contact with the man.
“Nothing,” Chandu said. He strode off the bridge.
“Don’t worry about him,” Atoi said. “He’s always got something to complain about but he’s all words and no action. He’s just blowing off steam.”
“I’m not worried about him,” said Carina, “but he should worry about me if carries on like that. The ones who mouth off all the time are the worst. They don’t do anything because at heart they’re cowards, but they ruin morale, which is worse. I’m going to talk to Cadwallader about him.”
“A coward who joined a merc band?” asked Atoi. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“He has big strong girls like you to hide behind, don’t forget,” said Carina.
“Now that, I understand. What are you going to do about Lomang?”
“Give him his parley, I guess.”
Carina still hadn’t come up with an answer to the problem of the smuggler and his men. She wasn’t a murderer, and by every measure she could think of, she was the one in the wrong. It didn’t matter how many crimes Lomang had committed, that didn’t make it okay for her to be a thief.
Though her grandmother was long dead, Carina could feel the old lady’s disapproval whenever she thought about stealing the Zenobia and its illegal cargo.
Sorry, Nai Nai.
She hoped that returning to the birthplace of mages would excuse her sins.
***
Carina invited Cadwallader along to the face-to-face with Lomang. He was more experienced at that kind of thing and she trusted his judgment.
Lomang had lost weight while he’d been in captivity. The folds of rich fabric that made up his expensive clothes hung loosely on his shrunken frame. Even his favorite blue hat, which he’d seemingly put on especially for the occasion, now looked a little too big for his round head.
“First,” he said, holding up a finger as he sat opposite Carina in his cabin, “you must promise not to do that thing you do.”
“What thing is that?” She asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.
“Don’t play with me.” Lomang waved his hands. “That thing.”
She chuckled. When she or any other mage Cast they didn’t wave their hands about, yet the allusion to a stage magician performing a trick seemed impossible to avoid.
