Tyche's Deceit

by Richard Parry

  “What’s that?” said Kohl.

  “It’s a present,” she said. She looked at his carbine. “It’s just, I don’t think your laser gun will do what you think.”

  “Why’s that?” said Kohl. He patted the carbine. “This is the best gun I’ve ever owned. Practically fires itself. And I’ve been itching to use it on those big insects down there. Plasma they seem to tolerate in moderation, but lasers, now there’s a thing.”

  “Yes, coherent light, I know how it works,” said Hope. “Kohl?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know how we’re all good at some things? Like, you’re good at beating people up.”

  “I figure I’m one of the best that’s ever been, sure,” allowed Kohl.

  “And El’s good at flying starships in general and the Tyche in particular, because she loves this ship,” said Hope. At that moment, a jostle in the journey — El twisting the sticks or some damn thing to avoid the whole ship being turned into spare parts — caused her to stumble, grabbing at the wall for support. Kohl reached out a hand, snaring the back of her rig, and holding her upright. She brushed pink hair off her eyes. “Thanks. And me, well, I’m good at fixing things, most things anyway, and knowing how stuff works.”

  “With you,” said Kohl. He let her go, glancing out at the spectacular light show visible through the open airlock. The wind noise wasn’t as extreme, because El had slowed to allow the Republic to catch up. Which seemed crazy, but she was in charge while the cap had boots on dirt, so there it was.

  “Because I know how stuff works,” said Hope, “I don’t think your very shiny laser rifle will work.”

  “Why?”

  “Hunch.”

  “Okay. So, what’s that?” Kohl was fine with hunches; it’s how he navigated the stars of his life most days.

  She frowned, then realized she was still holding the thing. Hope held it out to him. “It’s a maser.”

  “That the same maser El gave you?”

  “Yes. Except it didn’t work. It wouldn’t ever have worked. I don’t know what Mr. Razor was thinking, but the power supply was all wrong, and the cavity magnetron wasn’t wired in the right—”

  “Hope.”

  “Yes, Kohl?”

  “Does it work now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” he said, and took it from her. He slid it into the back of his suit. Much as he loved his carbine — man, it was a good gun — it never hurt to go into a rough situation with extra weapons. There had never been a situation where he’d thought, You know what, October Kohl? You’ve got yourself too many guns right now. There had been a few situations where he found himself short of a gun, or a battery, and that had left him with a deep and personal understanding of the benefits of spares.

  “Don’t you want to know how it works?” she said.

  “I point it and pull the trigger,” he said.

  “Yes, but you need to hold the trigger down,” she said.

  “Superior force through target saturation?” said Kohl.

  “I don’t know what that means,” said Hope. “I don’t think you and I speak the same kinds of English.”

  “Cool,” said Kohl. The Tyche was slowing down now, the ship yawing around in a circle. Flashes of plasma lit the night as the Republic fired on them, the Tyche’s electronic countermeasures confounding a firm target acquisition. Kohl figured it was to do with what they’d borrowed from the Gladiator. They had all their old tricks, and all the new tricks too. He didn’t need to understand it.

  A bolt of plasma impacted the ground below them, showering the air with molten ceramicrete. That one was a little too close. The warehouse — their destination — came into view, and El opened up with a couple rounds from the PDCs, tearing the top off the building. Normally that was bad form, what with the captain being down there, and Gracie too, but the Tyche was a good guardian. She knew where everyone was, all her crew, and the cap and Gracie were underground.

  Which was where Kohl was going. As the ship slewed to an almost halt, he reached out, ruffled Hope’s hair — to which she responded with a horrified and sick expression — and then jumped.

  • • •

  Boots on the ground in the middle of an air battle was always a rough spot. Kohl had never served in the military — bunch of assholes — but he’d been in plenty of wars. The Tyche roared off above, doing a circuit of the warehouse as Republic military fighters zipped around. Kohl watched the show for a second — so many shots trying to pierce the Tyche’s skin, and none of them hitting. He had to admit, El was good at her job.

  How the captain found good people, Kohl would never know. Sure, he’d found Kohl, but Kohl had never had to advertise. Force of nature, and all that. But the cap, he’d been kicked out of the Empire. Or fallen out, or some damn thing. A mark like that, what with the Republic all around, was a thing that should stop good people signing on.

  Never seemed to, though.

  Back to the boots on the ground: his feet hit ceramicrete with a crunch. He absorbed the landing on his knees, wincing only a little bit, then looked back up at the open airlock in the Tyche. Hope was there, a swirl of pink hair around her face. She reached a tentative hand out, and he waved back. She was lost to view as the Tyche kicked hard, drives pushing for sky, Republic fighters in pursuit.

  El had said it was very important he get the cap outside, along with the Ezeroc. When Kohl had asked how in hell he was supposed to get a bunch of insects to follow him, she’d just told him to be himself. Whatever that meant.

  Outside the warehouse, there was that old friend of the cap’s — Harley? Harlem? He leaned forward. “Heywood.”

  “Harlow,” said Harlow. “It’s Harlow.”

  “Yeah,” said Kohl, “whatever. Look, I’m going in there, and I’m going to shoot a whole bunch of aliens. Anything comes out here that doesn’t look like a human, you want to stay clear, you get me?”

  “I get you,” said Harlow. He looked at the sky. “Is the ship coming back?”

  “I fucking hope so,” said Kohl. “It’s my ride. Yours too, if you want it.” That duty done, he stood up, taking in the objective.

  The side of the warehouse had been carved in with what looked like God’s own baseball bat, a nice straight line bored right through the middle. Plasma burn, looked like, or a couple of ’em. Roof was off, hole in the side: not much of a warehouse anymore. He jogged into it anyway, carbine held low and ready, taking in the sights. There, one of the guys that looked like Abel but with his arms cut off, which looked like Gracie had been through here and hadn’t been happy about the process. Next layer deep, there were … pods, or some such thing, people who looked like they were being sucked dry. Hell of a way to go, but not as bad as having an insect eat your brain. Or maybe it was? Difficult to know for sure.

  Kohl kept pushing forward, finding no one alive. Dust or smoke or an even mix of both was thick in the air. It swirled around him, covering his armor in a fine grit. It’d need a clean after this, that was for sure, but his armor usually did.

  He arrived at an empty room with four dead Ezeroc, or what looked like four. One was cut up the middle — Gracie, gotta be — and three lumps of char that were the cap’s work. And a doorway. Closed, but in a way that suggested a man was supposed to open it.

  Kohl figured on being that man. He kicked the door open, the damage to the warehouse meaning it flew off its hinges to land in the room itself. There, another Ezeroc cinder — which gave even odds of the cap still being alive — and a doorway into hell itself. Kohl had never been much for religion, invisible friends in the sky not being his jam, but he knew what hell was. He knew what it smelled and tasted like, and those damn tendrils going down into that pit of despair sure looked like hell to him. The dust and smoke weren’t helping any, but that’s what war zones were like. Nothing worth complaining about.

  Time to get to work.

  He was about to saunter over to the edge of the pit, except it sprouted a human head, and the
n a torso, and another head beside. People were running up out of the pit, and he grabbed a man in passing. “Hey. You seen the cap?”

  “Run!” said the man, and tore free, rushing away.

  “Fuck running,” said Kohl after him. “You die tired.” He snared a woman’s arm. “Cap?”

  “He’s dead, or as good as,” she said. “Save yourself if you’re smart.”

  “I promised myself I wouldn’t kill anyone else today,” said Kohl. “You’re making that difficult.”

  Her head jerked towards the hole. “In there. Fool.”

  “Much obliged,” said Kohl, executing the saunter he’d planned all along. The edge of the pit was slick with some kind of alien snot, which wasn’t pretty, but he didn’t get paid for the pretty jobs. He stepped down into the hole, and saw: yep, there was the cap. Gracie, too. A big, ugly insect was between them. The size of a snowplow, but a snowplow that had anger management issues.

  Just like me. He hefted the carbine. “Hey!” he shouted to Nate. “Don’t worry, Cap! I got just the thing for these assholes.” He squeezed the trigger. The weapon reached out, licking the Ezeroc — more like a crab than a snowplow, really, but about to be molten crab, we gone get ourselves some bibs and some dipping butter after this — making the familiar click-click-click sound.

  But no whine. He let go of the trigger, looked at the weapon, and tried again. Click-click-click. Then the weapon chimed, a synthetic voice saying, “No hostile targets identified.”

  Oh, come on. Kohl blinked, then held the weapon up like he was showing the Ezeroc to it. “Right there, ya dumb machine. It’s there.”

  “Kohl!” said Nate. “Get Grace!”

  “Hell with that,” said Grace. “Get us both.” She tried to circle the Ezeroc, to get towards the cap. Which was crazy, because the exit to life, hope, and freedom was behind Kohl. The things people did.

  There were always two approaches to a given task: the easy way, and the hard way. The carbine was playing dumb — no doubt what Hope was meaning with her cryptic talk before — and unable to see the Ezeroc as anything other than some form of modern art. What was it that Nate said? Always good to fly with Lady Luck. And here was October Kohl, luckiest man in the universe, because in his back pocket was a gift given to him by a slip of a girl. A maser, which didn’t look like a proper gun, but at this particular moment style wasn’t important.

  Kohl let the carbine fall on its sling and pulled out the maser. He pointed the business end towards the Ezeroc crab and squeezed the trigger. No light show. Nothing appeared to be going on at all aside from a humming. But Hope had said you needed to keep it on, so Kohl kept it on. Because Hope seemed to know what she was talking about more than she didn’t. Which was more than could be said for most people.

  The Ezeroc kept turning around, trying to look at Grace, then Nate, then Grace, and then it stopped, one of its back legs giving way. It stood back up, but that leg gave way again. It made a hissing noise, and that was when Kohl worked out it wasn’t speaking, or screaming. Nothing like that.

  It was steaming. Steam was escaping from the joints of its carapace. It became agitated, and confused — Kohl might be too if someone used a microwave on him — and then slumped to the ground. Kohl kept the maser on it. There was a cracking noise, and the side of its carapace ruptured outward in a spray of half-cooked crab meat and steam and other fluids.

  Kohl let go the trigger, looking at the maser closer. Handy weapon to have. He looked back at Grace and the cap, who were both staring at him with faces slack with astonishment. “What?” said Kohl. “You never seen a maser before?” Because he figured he was now the ship’s maser expert, and he best act like it.

  “No,” said Grace. “Not … no.”

  “On ships,” offered Nate. “I’ve seen them on ships.”

  “You coming or what?” said Kohl.

  “There’s a Queen,” said Nate. “We’ve got to take care of the Queen. Also, there are another three crabs.”

  “Tell you what,” said Kohl. “You come with me, and we’ll see if we can deal with your friends in a bit.”

  Nate looked at him, then grabbed Grace’s hand, or Gracie grabbed the cap, hard to tell, and then they were running for the steps. With a rumble, three giant crabs appeared out of the gloom behind them.

  Kohl sure hoped El’s plan would work out. Otherwise today would end ugly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  AFTER THE TYCHE tossed Kohl out the airlock and onto the ground, Hope watched as Kohl landed hard then stood tall like it didn’t mean anything — which it probably didn’t. But Hope liked to think hurting mattered less to Kohl than getting Nate and Grace back. She waved at him, and he waved back, and she thought, He is weird. He was weird because he did things for reasons she didn’t understand. Kohl had hated her right until about two minutes ago, and now it was like they were BFFs.

  Reiko.

  Bright flashes of plasma spat past the open airlock, which brought Hope back to the present. She slapped a hand against the door controls, the lock hissing shut — the noise lost against the grumble of the Tyche’s drives, the rattling of the substructure as El made the ship dance and weave. The problem with El was that she figured on being able to dance and weave; she had this big plan for how they’d get Kohl down there, an extra hand to do the heavy lifting. That part had worked out great. The bit that was missing — El had said we’ll work it out later — was how they would park the Tyche on the dirt long enough to scoop up Nate and Grace. Let alone long enough to rescue — what had the cap said? Strays.

  And, as luck would have it, later was now. And they had the whole extra problem of the Republic adding more ships, more little fighters to the mix, and someone would get wise to the fact that the Tyche was an ancient hulk kept in the air by prayers and fairy dust, scramble some serious hardware, and the show would be over. The show would be more than over, because Nate and Grace would be down on the ground, seeing their home blown into a thousand tiny pieces, and then they’d get eaten by aliens.

  Hope didn’t much like that.

  She tapped her comm. “El, how does Republic command talk to fighters?”

  “Busy, Hope.”

  “It’s important,” said Hope. But it didn’t matter; El had clicked the comm off.

  Well, that wasn’t good. Time to do the job the hard way. She set off towards Engineering — her rig was too damaged to be relied on, and besides, she needed a proper console for this. She had programs she could use up there, provided the Republic hadn’t broken too much while they were scouring the Tyche for clues. Hope made her way around the cargo bay, hands gripping for dear life because the ship was still flying around like a crazed thing. Her rig helped here, the two good arms working with Hope’s own good two arms. Four arms, not hand over hand, but hand over hand over hand over hand. She made the ladder leading up to the crew deck, banged her lip against it as the ship shook with something, swallowed blood, and climbed.

  Whether she was going to use her console or not, it seemed smart to be strapped into her acceleration couch for this. Smart, if she wanted to live.

  Reiko.

  She wasn’t sure about that. But she could think about it some more while she fixed the problems of the moment.

  She made it to Engineering, the airlock opening for her, then hissing shut behind her. The Ravana’s heart beat loud and bright, and the noise of the drives was so fierce here it was like a physical thing. She could feel it in her throat, in her stomach. The vibrations of it made her teeth itch. She was used to it. It was what Engineering was like.

  It felt like home.

  The last few steps to her acceleration couch were made in a rush, because El rolled the ship, then flattened it out, then dived to one side, and that dive shook Hope loose from the wall. She tumbled across Engineering, her own hands reaching out for something, anything. If she hit another surface like this, she might be knocked out or killed. Either of those wasn’t a good outcome, not because she was sure she wanted
to live, but because she wouldn’t be able to do the thing she needed to do. Unconscious — or dead — people couldn’t use a vocoder worth a damn.

  She needn’t have worried. The rig snared one strap of her acceleration couch as she sailed past, the programs she’d loaded into the unit doing what she needed when she didn’t have time to think about it. Hope knew her limitations. She wasn’t good at shooting people. She wasn’t good with people full stop—

  Reiko.

  —and she wasn’t good at doing action things with swords or words when people were shooting at her. But she was great at planning. With enough time and enough planning, you could almost look like you knew what you were doing when the chips were down. Mr. Razor had sold her a good rig, but Hope had made it better than the designers had ever dreamed. One of the rig’s two working arms grabbed that strap, holding on with a grip that could crush steel pipe. Hope’s tumble was arrested with a clang as the rig’s arm stretched straight, then held. The other arm reached up to grab the headrest of the couch. Hope’s own arms then pulled her into the chair, fingers shaking—

  Why are you scared? You want to die. To be with Reiko.

  —as she secured the straps around her and the rig. The big buckles clipped together, the chair pulling her back into its safe embrace. The rig’s arms folded away, her visor pulling back as she pulled up the Engineering console. Holos sprang to life around her, one of them flickering a little. She tapped it, and it came on good and strong. One more thing to fix later. Assuming she didn’t die in the next few minutes. Because it wouldn’t do to leave something broken for someone else to fix, even if she was going to be with Reiko. It wouldn’t sit right with her.

  The noise of Engineering became background comfort for her. It was loud, hella loud, but none of the sounds were wrong. Her ship was running great, in the best shape of her life. Hope being here would let her know better than remote diagnostics whether something was wrong. The noise let her get to work, to focus on the things she needed to get her head around.

  First: the comm net. The Republic had one, and they were using it a great deal. Those ships out there were talking to each other, and they were talking to a command center somewhere. The Tyche put up a graphic for her, the ship bang in the middle, and important details — the ground, for example, or buildings — in wireframe. The holo filled with more details, the fighters circling around like wasps, moving fast, stabbing with spears of light and energy. All it’d take is a lucky shot and all the countermeasures in the world wouldn’t help. Just a little luck. It was a wonder they hadn’t been hit yet. No, wait — they had, the Tyche reminding her that there and there she’d been touched by plasma. Nothing major, just her outside skin, a couple of burns, but she’d come out of this with new scars. Hope guessed it was luck that the plasma had only rippled past, that it hadn’t splashed full on, tearing the hull apart, coring the ship.