Tyche's Deceit

by Richard Parry

  After, Hope had slept like she’d not slept in five years.

  There was the sound of voices from the small living area. Reiko, talking quiet and low, so as not to wake Hope. Hope smiled. That was Reiko, thinking of Hope. Hope pulled the blanket around her shoulders and pushed the curtain between the sleeping cube and the living space. She didn’t even notice the smell of mildew, Reiko’s scent all around her on the rough and worn fabric. There she was: Reiko, proud, strong Reiko. Leaning next to a small console against the wall. She turned as Hope entered, her face opening into a smile. That smile was like the sun coming around the edge of a planet, all brightness and warmth. A signal that the universe wasn’t just made up of the hard black. “Hey, you,” said Reiko.

  “Hey,” said Hope, enjoying this feeling. She didn’t deserve it, but she let it in anyway. “Who you talking to?”

  Reiko looked at the console for a second. “Oh, just breakfast,” she said. “Except it’s almost evening, so breakfast will be pizza.”

  “Best kind of breakfast,” said Hope. “Best kind ever. I’ve got coins.”

  “No need,” said Reiko. She stood, walking towards Hope, pulling her close. Tasting her lips.

  “But…” said Hope. She pulled away. She looked at the room, looking for a place to sit.

  “What’s wrong?” said Reiko. Looking where Hope was looking, at the tattered couch, the bare kitchenette, the old console against the wall. “What’s wrong, baby?”

  Hope felt her strength leaving, along with all the warmth. The hard black felt like it was everywhere. Outside, a gray sky faded into an ochre sunset, but it was all a lie. Behind it was black, an airless void that wanted to suck the life from everything it touched. Engineers could hold it back for a span, maybe two, their hard work keeping a hull between the souls aboard and the shoals outside. A well-maintained reactor was enough to stave off death for another haul between the stars. But Hope wasn’t an Engineer, not anymore: she’d lost that and more when she ran. She sank down to the floor. “I…” she said. Then she started to cry.

  Reiko squatted down next to her. “Hope, baby,” she said. “What is it?”

  “How can you ever forgive me?” Hope asked, tears tracing lines down her cheeks.

  Reiko’s face was soft in the evening light, a question hovering behind her eyes. “For what?”

  “Everything,” said Hope, an arm under the blanket pointing at the walls, the worn couch, the universe. It was all the same thing. “I left you. On Triton.”

  “It was that captain of yours,” said Reiko. “Hush. It wasn’t you.”

  That captain of yours. “Nate?”

  “It’s Nate now?” There was something hard in Reiko’s tone, like a wire inside its insulating sheath.

  “I mean,” said Hope. “He pulled me out of jail.”

  “That’s right,” said Reiko. Her Rei-Rei. “If we’d stayed—”

  “They’d have put us away for life,” said Hope.

  “This look like being put away?” said Reiko. She tipped her head at the window, the orange bloom of the fading sun. “There’s no cages here.”

  “You don’t…” said Hope, winding down. She rubbed her eyes, her nose, and tried again. “You must blame me.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Reiko. “This will all work out. I promise. I’ve made sure of it.”

  That pricked up Hope’s ears a little. “How, Rei-Rei?”

  “You’ll see,” said Reiko. “It’ll be fine. And that captain of yours won’t come between us again.”

  There was a knock at the door. They were both startled, and Hope laughed at the absurdity of it. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve … been running for a while.”

  “You won’t need to run anymore,” said Reiko. “Not after today. Let’s eat, yeah?” She stood, walking away from Hope. The thought of pizza — real dough, meat that might have come from a vat rather than a synthesizer, tomatoes that could have been grown in sunlight — made Hope’s stomach growl. She hadn’t eaten, not since leaving the Tyche, and it had been a long day. She’d found a trail here through people sometimes willing to help, sometimes not. There had been a barrier or two. But here she was, about to eat dinner with her wife. For the first time in five years. And Rei-Rei said it would be okay. That there was nothing to forgive. Reiko had a hand on the door, pulled it open. Said, “Hi…” and then her voice trailed off. “Who the hell are you?”

  Hope turned at her tone, that old adrenaline you’ve-got-to-run kicking in, until she saw who it was. “Oh, hey. El.” She frowned. “El? What are you doing here?”

  Elspeth Roussel stood in the doorway, looking pissed off. She had her pistol strapped to her waist and carried two boxes. One was a rectangle of a size and shape that might hold a bottle of wine. The other was also a rectangle, with the writing LITTLE LUIGI’S on the side. “Hey,” she said to Reiko. “Can I come in?”

  “Uh,” said Reiko.

  “I’ve got your pizza,” said El. “It smells good. I haven’t had actual flour in a long time.”

  “Sure,” said Reiko.

  El handed the pizza box to Reiko as she entered, Hope picking up something in her glance. Something that said, Oh, you. We’ll get to you in a second. But she said nothing, just navigating the short distance to Hope’s huddled form like she owned the place. El crouched down, handed Hope the other box. “I got you something.”

  “What is it?” said Hope, taking the box.

  “Something broken,” said El. “Also, what the fuck are you doing, Hope Baedeker? Do you know how hard it was to find you?”

  “Hey!” said Reiko.

  El stood up, fury snapping her frame straight like a rod ready to channel the lightning. “Was I fucking talking to you, Reiko?”

  Reiko bridled, summed, boiled over. “Who are you to come in here? Into my home, my family—”

  El laughed. Clear and loud, like it hurt to hold it in, the sound cascading out of her like champagne shaken, the cork popped. “You aren’t Hope’s family,” she said. “She’s got a family, Reiko. And you know what? Her real family didn’t lie, cheat, and get in debt. Her real family didn’t make it look like her gambling debts were mismanaged finances from a station job. We know how you did it, Reiko. Me and the cap. Called in a few favors. We found the trail. Because she’s our family.”

  “I—”

  “Did I fucking look like I was finished?” El shook her head. “Christ, it’s easier dealing with dock control. At least they’ve got reasons for trying to fuck you over. Why’d you do it, Reiko? Did you figure Hope would say, ‘Oh golly, I must have screwed up the project management on this job,’ and soak up the extra funds for you? That was a lot of coin, Reiko. A lot of good Republic coin they wanted accounting for.”

  “El!” said Hope. “This is my wife!”

  El ignored her, like she wasn’t even there. “Maybe you bribed the cartel. Maybe you convinced them that a family debt was easier to claim than your solo one. But you lied, and you hung a yoke around Hope’s neck. It’s been there for five years. She went to fucking jail. The best damn Engineer I’ve ever known — and I’ve known them all. I’ve known the drunk ones. I’ve known the ones with forty years of experience. I’ve known the high fliers, the politicos. The speakers, the shakers. The inventors. The ones that can make a broken drive run like it’s a newborn colt. Put ’em all together, and they still wouldn’t be as good.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” said Reiko, but her face was ashen, her shoulders crooked. “You don’t know … they said they would kill her. If I didn’t. Was it worse for her to live or die?”

  “Rei-Rei?” said Hope. She felt like she was teetering on the edge of a massive pit, darkness and spiders below her. “Reiko?”

  “I—”

  “Don’t say it,” said El. “Don’t tell her another lie. Not one more lie, Reiko. I don’t care that you broke her heart. That’s for kids. I care that you broke her insides. You made Hope one of the hopeless.” Hope watched El’s fin
gers twitch and tremble, her hand next to her sidearm.

  “What are you saying?” Hope wanted to understand what this meant. There had to be a reason. Circuits made sense. Fusion reactors made sense. The gravitational pull and yaw of planets made sense. None of the words in the last moments made any sense at all.

  El turned to Hope. “The cap’s a sucker,” she said. “Collects lost puppies, shit like that. He is the worst pirate I’ve ever met.”

  “Nate’s not a pirate,” said Hope. “Nate’s…”

  “Your precious captain,” Reiko snapped. “I get it. Well, it won’t matter. I’ve solved this problem for all of us.”

  El looked like she was thinking about that comment more than she should. “Reiko, I’ll ask a simple question. Deserves a simple answer. What did you do?”

  Reiko wore that lopsided snarl like a smile. “Enough,” she said. “We’ll be happy.”

  “Because,” said El, “if you called the Republic debt controllers, hoping to square things away, well. That will happen. But not how you think.”

  “They said—”

  “The thing about the Republic is that they say a thing, and often do another,” said El. “Hey. It’s just the way the system works. I flew against them before the Old Empire fell. Before it didn’t work out anymore. Then I paid my taxes. I ironed and folded up my uniform. I did what I was told, and everything’s worked out okay. Have you paid your taxes, Reiko?” El took a step forward. “Have you done any fucking ironing?” She gave a sound of disgust, turned back to Hope. Made the short journey back across the mottled carpet like it was easy, like reaching out to a friend was simple and painless. She reached a hand down to Hope. “Come on, Hope. Let’s get you out of here.”

  “I don’t want to go,” said Hope, her voice small in her own ears. Like it was coming from far away. She didn’t mean it, and she did, all at the same time.

  “That’s as may be,” said El, face still taught with anger or frustration or an amalgam of them both. “But—”

  There was a crash, a spray of glass showering out from behind El’s head, the shards forming a brief halo. El’s eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled to the ground. Behind her stood Reiko, the broken end of a bottle in her hand. “You listen,” she said to Hope. “You listen to me, Hope.”

  But Hope was scrambling across to El’s side. Hands on El’s face, fingers feeling the back of the skull. Humans are just complicated machines, nothing hard about this, nothing at all. Keep repeating that. Keep moving. Her fingers found the break in the skin at the back of El’s skull, the warm wet of her blood. Hope pulled red fingers back, held them up to the light. Looked at Reiko, her stance, her raised bottle, the jagged ends full of promise. “Rei-Rei,” she said. “What have you done?”

  “I’m going to fix this,” said Reiko. “You don’t need them.”

  The moment held, stretched, Hope looking at the jagged ends of that bottle, her Helm — the other side of the Tyche’s operations crew, more than just a friend, her partner — on the floor beside her. “But I do,” said Hope. “I need you all.”

  “It’s nice to want things,” said Reiko. “It’s nice to walk free with coin in your pocket and hope in your heart. I haven’t had my Hope for five years. Do you know what that’s like?”

  “I do,” said Hope. “It’s like being lost and alone and not having anyone to talk to about the things that matter.”

  Reiko’s arm lowered, the steam ebbing out of her pipes, the overload dropping below the redline. “They’ve all lied to you. You’re my Hope. Mine.” There was another knock at the door. Strong, almost a banging, but right on the verge of it. Reiko seemed to get smaller for a second. “It doesn’t matter. That’ll be them.” She turned to the door, seeming to forget about the jagged end of the bottle she held. As she turned away, Hope turned back to El. Her movements were on autopilot as she put her friend onto her side, checking her breathing. Shallow, but still there. Hadn’t thrown up. Hadn’t bled out. Good start. Hope looked up as the door clicked open, her heart giving a couple of kicks in anticipation, then stalling outright when she saw who it was.

  October Kohl stood in the doorway, his eyes going to El, then to Hope, eyes widening a little in appreciation at her partially naked body, then to Reiko, and to the broken bottle in Reiko’s hand. “Hey, Hope,” he said. “How you doin’?”

  “I’m not good,” said Hope. “I’m bad.”

  “Figures,” said Kohl. He seemed to reach a crossroads. “Here’s what’ll happen.”

  “Who the hell are you?” said Reiko.

  “First thing,” said Kohl, pulling his arm back, then forward like a logging train. His fist caught Reiko on the side of the head, her body tumbling back into the room, the jagged end of the bottle falling free. “First thing is, we do not glass our Helm.” He stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. Reiko tried to get to her feet, but her legs kept slipping out from under her.

  “Kohl!” said Hope, her voice returning at last. “Stop!”

  His gaze lingered on Reiko for a moment, as if he was seeing if she needed another interrupt or two. His eyes slid sideways to find Hope’s. “In another time and place, this would be a treat. What with you half-naked, and your wife here.” He shook himself. “Problem is there’s a whole squad of Republic assholes coming down this way. They’re a block back, wasting time and air talking to each other.” He looked at Reiko. “You got any idea why there’d be a squad of Republic officers on their way here, Reiko? You are Hope’s wife, right?” He looked doubtful for a second. “Did I hit the wrong person?”

  El groaned. “Kohl, you hit the right person.”

  “Figured,” said Kohl. “Get dressed, Hope. We’ve got to move. Cap’s coming.”

  “Cap’s here,” said Nate, from the doorway. There was another man beside him that Hope didn’t know, but he had a friendly face, like he’d listen to your problems over a beer. Nate looked at El. “I need to shoot someone?”

  “That problem’s been stowed for the moment, Cap,” said Kohl.

  Grace pushed into the room from behind Nate, and Hope’s heart lifted at the sight of her. Someone she could talk to about all this, someone who didn’t know what was going on either. Grace’s eyes were warm as she kneeled beside Hope. “Hope,” she said.

  “Hey,” said El, from beside them. “Why is Hope getting all the love?”

  Grace looked at El, took one of the Helm’s hands, gave it a squeeze. “You’re okay, El.”

  “I feel like three-day old shit,” said El. “Help me up. Someone I need to shoot.”

  Kohl grabbed a hold of Reiko, hauled her to her feet, and then tossed her onto the dusty couch. Reiko’s head knocked against the wall, the woman’s eyes rolling back into her head. “Present for you,” he said to El.

  “Hey!” said Hope. “That’s my wife!”

  Nate held his hands up, the gold of his metal fingers catching the last rays of the setting sun. “Everyone? Take a moment. What we have here is a volatile situation. You go to sea in a squall like this, you’ll be as like to lose someone overboard.” He paused, frowning. “Hope?”

  “Yes, Cap’n.” Hope shivered, with fear or pain, or just the overflow of adrenaline and fatigue, she didn’t know.

  “Put some clothes on,” said Nate. “A storm’s coming.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  PAIN/PAIN/PAIN/confusion/pain.

  It was coming off Hope like radiation off a blown reactor, cascading out around the room. Grace bit her lip, trying to push it to the side. Trying to not be Hope, but be with her. The young woman’s eyes were wide, stunned, like she’d been hit in the head with a bat. Or like she’d just had her world pulled inside out, the whole thing put through a mincer. All the ugly, hidden things inside a body were ground up, extruded, put in a familiar shape like a burger you were supposed to eat. And Hope didn’t look hungry. Not at all.

  Pain/pain/pain.

  It didn’t help that El was borderline for a coma call, her brain spark
ing in the air, pushing fingers of disrupted signal, incoherent noise that underlaid Hope’s cries for help. A hissing like arcing pylons, making the air bright and deadly. To be caught in the storm was to be drowned by it.

  Grace breathed in, out. In, and out again. One more time, she drew breath, holding this one, and then sighed it out.

  “Are you,” said Hope, “okay?”

  Grace almost laughed, the absurdity of the young woman’s question in the face of all she’d seen. “I’m fine, Hope.”

  “Everyone’s fine,” said Kohl, slinging Hope’s rig to the floor between them. “Suit up.”

  “Kohl,” warned Nate.

  “Cap, you know how I like to be gentle and kind when I’ve got the time. But we ain’t got the time.” said Kohl.

  “Kohl—” started Grace.

  “He’s right,” said Hope, reaching for the rig. Grace watched Hope press the power stud on the unit, and it gave a jerk of simulated life, the front and back flexing. As she held it in front of her, the arms reticulated from the back, flexed, and then the unit crawled up her arm like a metal insect, hugging her body, settling in. The clamps that held front and back armor together snicked out around Hope’s torso, locking into place. The visor slid over her face, the machine chiming its readiness, a synthesized voice saying Hope’s Alive! in cheery tones.

  “That is some creepy shit,” said Nate. “I have never seen one of those things do that.”

  “That’s because you haven’t seen one of mine,” said Hope. Her voice took on the hard tint of the external speaker, muting the pain of it. But Grace could still feel the pain/pain/pain/confusion/pain coming off her.

  “I don’t know, Cap,” said El, her voice the slur of someone trying to remember how words worked. “Looked like it wanted a hug. Like a big fluffy bear.”

  Kohl walked towards El, held her chin in one hand. She tried to push him away, but the movement was weak, like her heart wasn’t in it. Kohl stared into her eyes. “Can you fly?”