Tyche's Deceit

by Richard Parry

  Kohl let the remains of the man’s suit jacket fall to the ground to lie among the smoking flesh, and considered his carbine for a moment. When he’d been running errands earlier, what he’d meant was buying a better gun. After the run-in with those damn Ezeroc assholes, he’d seen some of them handled plasma fire pretty well. The smaller ones, sure, they burned like kindling, but the larger ones that looked like crabs, if crabs could be angry and twice as tall as a human, had big armor plates that coped fine with small arms fire. The laser carbine was a weapon designed to focus light, but it did it across an entire body at once, a tiny computer inside mapping the target, finding its shape, direction, and velocity. It then delivered microbursts of laser light to the target over the entire surface, like the world’s most violent laser lighting display. The fluid inside the body expanded fast — damn fast. Deliver enough energy into a body of water, you turned it into a rapidly expanding cloud of water vapor and, with a little luck, anything left behind would catch on fire. When Kohl had explained that he wanted things to pop to the arms merchant, the merchant had concluded Kohl was a professional and just directed him at a range of lasers and masers. Kohl wasn’t sure if a laser — or microwave — would work better or worse against Ezeroc chitin, but he’d figured a different approach couldn’t hurt.

  The carbine had won, because it looked like a gun. Its emitter looked down a barrel-like lens array. The masers had looked like toys; they might have worked fine, but first impressions were important in Kohl’s line of work. He eyed the patch of steaming remains where the soldier had been standing, and then considered the carbine again. Impressions were important, but results were king. He did not feel like he had buyer’s remorse on this one.

  Time to move.

  Kohl kept the carbine ready as he ran to the side of the street. Right side, because why not? He tried to hide his frame behind an abandoned holo cart promising the LATEST HOT REELZ. If he’d had a memory sliver he could have downloaded a couple new items for his collection, but he didn’t have one and now wasn’t the time. Kohl peeked around the edge of the cart, checking out the street. The soldier had come from up the street, because she hadn’t come from behind Kohl, or she’d have just rapped him on the back of the head, lights out — and, like nuns, they didn’t travel solo. Another one was coming out of a store that printed clothes on demand, moving at speed. No doubt because he’d been on comm with his partner before she tried to shoot Kohl.

  Think. He could start some shit, sure, and that might be fun for a while. But the smart play was to get out of here. No one was paying him to shoot people, and Kohl did nothing he was good at for free. Also, even Republic soldiers got lucky; Kohl didn’t have Ezeroc armor, and a stray blaster round could turn him into a street barbecue. Okay, so: time to move. Back the way he came, since all the resistance was up ahead. He turned back, poked his head out from the other side of the holo cart. Well, shit. Wouldn’t you know it, the Republic were sweeping from the rear too. Three soldiers, blasters high. Looking for something. Probably Kohl, although it could have been Gracie. Time to go.

  Thing was, he had nowhere to go. Back, front, both looked bad. He could blast his way out, but the numbers weren’t looking good. Or just sneak out, blend in with the crowd. He turned, and felt the hard snub nose of a blaster against his armored stomach, eyes level with the black helmet of a soldier. The moment stretched until it felt too thin.

  “Uh,” said Kohl. “Is this where you speak first, or I speak first?”

  “SHUT IT,” said the soldier.

  Kohl winced. “Can you … turn that down? It’s just, I don’t know. You’ve got the gun on me, and that means you should—”

  “I SAID SHUT IT.” The soldier emphasized this with a press of the blaster into Kohl’s armor.

  “Okay,” said Kohl, and then slapped the blaster aside with the hand not holding his carbine. The blaster went off, incinerating a wall of the holo stand, hot pieces of plastic and metal spraying through the air. Kohl used his free hand to grab the soldier’s wrist — control the weapon, don’t get cocky — and tried to bring his carbine up. There wasn’t enough room between him and the soldier, so Kohl let it fall. The soldier tried to wrestle his hand free to bring his blaster to bear on Kohl, but he wasn’t having much luck. Kohl might not have been smart, or pretty, but he was strong, and that helped. Keeping hold of the soldier’s wrist, he used his other hand to grab the side of the soldier’s body armor and — with a quick heave — slammed the other man into the holo cart. The blaster fired again, someone screaming from that direction. Kohl pulled him back off the cart, then slammed him into it a few more times, until the blaster tumbled from his wrist. Hard to knock a man out when they had a helmet on, but Kohl had learned that if you did enough damage to the body they’ll turn a little boneless. Kohl pulled the man towards him again, stepped to the side, and clotheslined him to the ceramicrete sidewalk. There was a crack as the solder’s helmet hit the ground, and that sound was loud enough to promise Kohl a little getaway time.

  He turned, meaning to run, but stopped short at the three soldiers facing him.

  “DROP THE RIFLE,” said one. Hard to tell which one, they all sounded pretty much the same.

  “Like I said to the other one, it’s not a rifle,” said Kohl. But this time — three on one? Not good odds — he unslung the carbine and let it clatter to the sidewalk, then raised his hands behind his head. Hell, he was a professional, he knew this music.

  One of the soldiers walked towards him, holding out a set of rigid solid bar handcuffs. Those things were bad news; once on, they weren’t coming off. Kohl waited for the man to get close; what he couldn’t work out was why they hadn’t just blown him into pieces, but he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He felt the cuffs go on one wrist, heard the click of the lock, and then jerked his arm down. The soldier cuffing him was pulled off balance, and Kohl grabbed the man, pushing him towards his comrades. One of them fired their blaster but the shot hit nothing but air, wild and wide. Kohl caught movement off to his side, turned to see a soldier coming at him with a stun rod. He let the soldier come, ducked under the swing, and heaved the man over a hip and down onto ceramicrete.

  Another one rushed at him, stun rod tip leading the way, and Kohl snaked in around it. Held the soldier close, almost like a lover, hands gripping the arm holding the stun rod. They pivoted together — although the soldier was by no means willing as Kohl twisted his arm — and Kohl stuck the tip of the stun rod into another soldier. There was a flash of blue light as the rod discharged, the faint smell of ozone, and the stunned soldier dropped like a sack of puppies into a river.

  Kohl’s entire world lit on fire, his teeth clenching together, his eyes frozen open. He would have screamed except his chest was locked tight, like it was in a vice, except it was the vice and lock all in one. He felt himself tipping sideways and crashed onto the sidewalk. A soldier’s visor — black, expressionless — looked down on him, the tip of a shock rod held in her hand still smoking. “GOT HIM,” she said.

  “Uur,” said Kohl, because that was about all he was good for after a big dose of volts. His eyes weren’t working right, and he was having trouble focusing, but one thing he could pick out was a set of black shoes. Black, underneath a black suit. Kohl tried to get up, but his arms didn’t move right, or his neck, or any other part of him. The best he managed was to roll from his sideways angle on to his back.

  A face — no visor, no helmet, an actual human face — looked down on him. The face was blurry, like he’d been drinking. The after-effects of the stun rod made Kohl feel like that, without alcohol’s funhouse ride to get there — and he blinked a couple times to clear his sight. Craning his neck forward, he tried to bring the face into focus.

  “October Kohl,” said a man’s voice. “We have a proposition for you. One, I think, you will appreciate.”

  The man crouched down, bringing his face closer — and into focus — for Kohl. “Im…possible,” Kohl managed to get out.
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br />   “There are a great many things possible in this world, and beyond it,” said the man in black. “Let’s go somewhere a little more private for our conversation, hmm?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HONOR AMONG THIEVES was bullshit.

  Nate knew it, these assholes knew it, and Harlow knew it. Thing with Harlow was he wasn’t just another thief, he was a friend. Or Nate had counted him as one, despite that little thing over the Tyche. She hadn’t been called the Tyche back then. Harlow hadn’t loved her like Nate did. Harlow? He hadn’t even seen the ship’s potential. Despite his lack of vision, he’d still asked an extortionate sum of money for the ship. Tried to explain that Old Empire ships like the Tyche were collector’s items, going to bidders well above typical rates.

  So Nate had cheated him at cards, and when Harlow hadn’t wanted to give over the transponder codes, Nate had taken them. But all that was ancient history.

  Ancient.

  Nate followed Grace down the sterile corridor, the lights more blue-shifted than was normal on a crust. Nate didn’t mind, because it reminded him of home — the artificial lighting inside the Tyche that pushed the dark away wasn’t warm like a yellow star, despite doing its job of keeping the dark at bay. The sooner they sorted out what appeared to be Republic G Men trying to capture or kill him and his associates — and put a collar on whomever was trying to sell humans up the line to a bunch of insects, he’d be back in space, shipping cargo of questionable origin to destinations of questionable providence.

  He frowned, pausing in the corridor for a second. The pale man who’d opened the door kept walking, but Grace slowed, looking back at him. “You good?” she said.

  “I’m good,” said Nate, hand on his blaster. “It’s just … never mind.”

  “You know you can’t lie to me,” said Grace. “Right? You’ve worked that out?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s just … I liked being a pirate, Grace.”

  She laughed, then sobered as she saw his expression. She stepped closer to him, putting a hand on the side of his face. “Oh, Nate,” she said. “You can’t lie to me, but you keep trying to lie to yourself.”

  He liked the feel of her hand on his skin. His metal fingers flexed, but he held himself still. “I’m not lying,” he said. “The life out there? It’s less complicated.”

  “There’s a long distance from pirate to privateer,” said Grace. “And a longer one from privateer to—”

  “Hey,” said the pale man. He’d come back to them. “No fucking around down here, you know? Go in the wrong doorway, you might never come back out.”

  Grace’s hand dropped from Nate’s face, and the set of her shoulders as she turned back to the pale man was all business. “Just comparing notes,” she said. “Not trying to go off the charts. There are dragons at the edge of the map.”

  “You know the life,” said the pale man. He eyed Nate. “Better than him, anyway.”

  “Uh,” said Nate. “This is what irony feels like.” But it was okay, having Grace here. Great, even, because she knew people. She knew how to push their buttons, and how to get them to react in certain ways. Nate figured he might have learned those talents too, even without the esper bit, if he’d had the full might of the Republic on his heels for ten years or more.

  “Harlow,” said the pale man, as he led them down a set of stairs, “is concerned about your loyalties.”

  Nate hadn’t been down the stairs in any of his previous visits. Hell, he hadn’t even known they were here. He hoped there wasn’t an illegal kidney harvesting operation at the bottom. “Harlow was about to sell me out to the Republic. I … liberated him.”

  “Liberated,” said the man. “Funny word for it. What’s the percentage in that?”

  The stairs didn’t go down that far, ending on a gray concrete floor — old tech, not new ceramicrete. The genuine original bones of the city. He scuffed his boot against it. “You guys are really going for the vintage look, aren’t you?”

  “Excavation,” said the pale man. “We always need to expand away from … curious eyes. You understand how these things are.”

  “I get you,” said Nate. “I haul for you.”

  “You used to,” said the man. “Whether you still do remains to be seen.”

  “This like a job interview?” said Nate. “Last job I had, I sucked at it.”

  The pale man paused before a vaulted door set in the wall of the corridor. He gave Nate an appraising glance. “That’s not what we heard.” He pushed the door open and walked through.

  Grace gave Nate a glance. He shrugged. No fucking clue. He walked ahead of her through the doorway, taking in the scene. First, there was Harlow, on a chair like before, but instead of being beaten bloody there was a medtech putting him back together. Harlow had his shirt open, which wasn’t a pretty sight, not just because his body was a reclamation case, but because the man in black’s thugs had done a number on him. The medtech had a shiny tray of equipment, analgeisic spray and skin weld being the popular choices of the moment. The room was a little bigger than the ready room on the Tyche, and — aside from the pale man, Harlow, and the medtech — had one other person in it: a woman, holding a blaster, pointed in no particular direction. She was chipped around the edges like old porcelain, handled poorly by time, as faded as the walls.

  Nate stopped in the doorway, Grace behind him. “Hi,” he said. He looked at the blaster the woman carried.

  “Nathan Chevell,” she said. “Do I kill you or do I help you?”

  “Nate,” said Grace, from behind him. “Something’s not right here.”

  “I’d prefer help, to be honest,” said Nate, not moving. He tried on a smile. “I’m not sure it’s such a binary decision though. I mean, we could have a few drinks upstairs.”

  She laughed, but didn’t holster her blaster. “I think it’s pretty … binary. You see, Harlow here has told me quite the story.”

  “Quite the short story,” said Nate. “Because he didn’t have that much of a lead on us.”

  “Nate,” said Grace, her voice clipped tight. “We need to go.”

  “Harlow has spun me a great tale. Adventure on the high seas,” said the woman. “A man, dressed in black, murder in his eyes and his heart. But lo! The dashing captain enters his bar, but instead of acting like a friend, offers to look the other way.”

  “It’s a little more nuanced than that,” said Nate. “Because if we’d said, ‘Hey, asshole, stop hitting my friend,’ then we’d all have got shot.”

  “Sometimes getting shot is what it takes to show you’re not a traitor,” said the woman.

  “She’s not there,” hissed Grace. “Nate? She’s not there.”

  “Traitor,” said Nate. He saw, with no particular surprise, that the pale man had produced a blaster. “What kind of traitor? A traitor against the Republic? Maybe. A sell-out? Hanging my friends out to dry? Not my usual play.”

  The woman’s eyes flicked to Harlow. Harlow coughed, wiped his mouth. “Kinda true,” he said. “But the ship? Always been that lying between us.”

  “Hey now, Harlow. I won that ship fair and square,” said Nate.

  “You cheated at cards,” said Harlow. “I know, because I was trying to cheat as well. And you double-cheated me!”

  “You shouldn’t have marked the aces,” said Nate. “It’s an easy tell.” He looked back at Grace. She was still there, fear in her eyes, hand on her sword. But she was still there. Hadn’t run. He had precious few people in his life who wouldn’t run, and that made him feel better. Not — hah — that they were about to get shot. But if they were going to get shot, it was standing beside someone who mattered. He looked back at Harlow. “That what this is about? You got some revenge kick going on because you think I took the Tyche from you?”

  “She’s not the Tyche,” said Harlow. “That’s not her name!”

  “Is now,” said Nate. He sighed, putting a hand on his blaster. The pale man tightened up at that, coiling like a spring, but no one
fired. The medtech looked at Nate, then back at Harlow, then kept doing his thing. Which boded well: if the medtech screamed and cowered in a corner, shit was about to get real. “You have no idea what a new transponder costs.”

  “I have some idea,” said Harlow, looking down. The medtech tipped his chin up so he could keep working the cuts on Harlow’s face. “I want my ship back.”

  “Not your ship,” said Nate. “Never play a player, never cheat a cheater, and never steal from a thief.”

  “Still,” grumbled Harlow. He looked disappointed, but like the expression was for show. Almost like he was trying to convince himself he still had a right to put his boots on the Tyche’s deck.

  “Look,” said Nate, turning to the woman. “You seem to be in charge here.”

  “How you figure that?” she asked.

  “Because you’re doing all the talking that doesn’t make sense,” said Nate. “Usual providence of cryptic overlords.”

  She blinked, then laughed again. “I think things’ll get a lot worse for you. Before they get better.”

  “That’s the typical path,” agreed Nate, keeping himself in the doorway. Between this woman and Grace. “So. How’s this play out?”

  “I can tell that you’re not with the Republic,” said the woman, “because they’re not stupid enough to come in here with just two people.”

  “I could have a whole backup plan going on,” said Nate.

  “You could,” she agreed, “but they wouldn’t have captured your crew mate in such a spectacular gun show.”

  “Which crew mate?” said Nate.

  “Big guy,” she said.

  “He’ll be fine,” said Nate.

  “Be as may,” said the woman, “the remains of that team will come down here and try and extract you, like an oyster from its shell. Do you want that, Nathan Chevell?”

  “Not especially,” he said.