by Jaleta Clegg
Harris glared at me. "How would you know that, captain? Who let you into the cockpit?" He turned to glare suspiciously at Jerimon, who was lounging on the steps up to the small cargo bay.
"I can hear it, Harris," I said. "It’s my ship. I rebuilt it with my own hands. I know every sound it should make."
Harris looked back at me and smiled. "It bothers you that much?" He turned to the men he’d brought to crew the ship. "No maintenance, unless it’s absolutely essential to fly. I want this ship to slowly fall apart. Push it as hard as you want."
There was a loud crash from the cabin where the others were locked up. Harris glared irritably at the locked door.
"And give that brute something to fix." He transferred his glare to me.
"Broken hand scanners," I suggested, "readers, com units, anything mechanical. He’ll stay quiet as long as he has something to fix."
Harris glared at his thugs. They took the hint and started searching through the storage lockers. Jerimon got up and pulled a box from a locker.
"Try these," he said and handed the box to the thug named Bud.
The ship was quiet again after Bud delivered the box. I sat on the bench and twisted my wrists in the force cuffs, watching Harris as he sat at the table scribbling madly. There were papers strewn everywhere over and around the table.
The pilot got himself a cup of something to drink and went back into the cockpit.
Ghost showed up from nowhere and settled herself in my lap. She kept her tail tucked away from the force cuffs, rubbing it across my nose instead. It tickled. I stifled a sneeze. She curled up on my chest and went to sleep.
Harris muttered to himself. He was currently in a dark mood. An hour or two from now, he would start to pace, building up to a manic frenzy. Then he’d crash and sleep for a while. He repeated the same pattern over and over.
The pilot bumped something and started swearing. I risked a glance into the cockpit. He was trying to mop up whatever he’d spilled from his mug. It spread over the scanning equipment. He swore and pushed hard at one corner of the false panel that hid the Patrol scanning equipment. Sparks fizzed briefly from the standard unit. The pilot mopped harder. He hit the hidden switch. The false panel slid down, exposing the other equipment. The swearing stopped in mid curse.
"Harris, sir?" he said. "I think you’d better see this."
Harris looked up from his papers. He stalked past me. He went still as he caught sight of what was in the cockpit. Jerimon and the navigator crowded in behind him. Even Tom sent an interested look after them.
I cursed Lowell under my breath. Why hadn’t I removed that equipment? I’d kept it because I couldn’t resist having it. And Lowell knew it, which was why he’d installed it and forgotten to take it with him. The Patrol logo gleamed accusingly from the panels of the equipment.
Harris grabbed my arm and yanked me off the bench. He pulled me up into his face. "Patrol?" He threw me back onto the bench. "What do you know about this?" Harris demanded of Jerimon.
Jerimon watched me. "I had no idea it was there."
"Does she work for the Patrol?" Harris worked himself into a frenzy. "You said she hated the Patrol. You convinced me she wasn’t an agent. Was I stupid to trust you?" That was a dangerous question.
Jerimon looked like he’d bitten into an unripe kumsha. His face twisted as he glared at me. "If she does, I don’t know anything about it. She convinced me she hated the Patrol. I had no idea that equipment was there."
Harris studied Jerimon closely and finally nodded, satisfied. He turned back to me. "Well, captain? Tell me you don’t work for the Patrol and make me believe it. Explain why you have scanning equipment that only Patrol hunters have. Tell me and make me believe it." He grabbed my arm and jerked me off the bench. His force blade glittered in his hand.
"They commandeered my ship a while back and installed the equipment. They left it as payment."
"I don’t believe you." Harris shifted his grip, trying to grab my hair. There wasn’t enough left to grab. He grabbed my ear instead. The force blade sizzled next to my cheek.
"Would I still be here like this if I worked for the Patrol?" I said, reaching for any straw that might convince Harris. I could see madness in his eyes. Nothing was going to convince him.
He snarled wordlessly and slashed my face. Blood ran down my cheek. I stifled a yelp of pain. "Beat her," he said and threw me at the thugs.
They did, until I passed out from the pain.
I woke up to find my face caked with dried blood. I coughed and tasted more blood. My lip was split. One tooth was loose. Nothing was permanently damaged, but I ached ferociously. I swallowed and managed to turn my head. Tom watched me, imperturbable as always. I needed a drink. I needed a pain patch. I needed to use the bathroom. My throat was raw. It hurt to try to talk. My lip cracked open again. A thin trickle of fresh blood ran over the dried mess on my chin. I closed my eyes. Tears trickled over my face, hot and painful. There wasn’t any escape in sleep, I gave up and opened my eyes again.
Harris ignored me. He was feverishly writing, standing over the table and shuffling papers like crazy. He stopped to scribble on one then shoved it to one side. A whole stack toppled off onto the floor. Harris didn’t notice.
Jerimon was on the steps to the small cargo hold, a reader lighting his face. He glanced at me and quickly looked away.
"Ha!" Harris announced. He punched his fist in the air, an empty gesture of triumph. He wandered into my cabin, muttering to himself. He didn’t look my direction once.
Time passed. My stomach growled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d choked down a ration cube. I couldn’t do it now. My throat was dry and raw. The ship’s lights dimmed. Everyone but Tom and Jerimon were asleep somewhere.
Jerimon put the reader aside and quietly crossed the lounge. Tom looked up from his constant study of my face. Jerimon ignored him. He leaned over me.
"Do you need help?"
"You’ve helped me enough." My voice was harsh, cracked and raw.
He watched me for a long moment. I closed my eyes, shutting him away. I couldn’t deal with his betrayal now. I didn’t know which hurt worse, the beatings or his selling me out.
Something cool and wet touched my cheek. I opened my eyes. Jerimon knelt next to me, a dripping cloth in his hand. Tom studiously ignored him. I closed my eyes again. Whatever Jerimon did, it wasn’t going to change the fact that he’d betrayed me. And his sister. He’d betrayed his family. What had I ever seen in him?
He cleaned my face. His touch was gentle. It still hurt. I flinched away from his hand on my cheek.
"Hold still," he whispered. "Let me see how bad it is." His finger prodded at the slice across my cheek. "You’re going to have a scar."
I finally looked back at him. He looked tired, his blue eyes were shadowed and dark. "Isn’t Harris going to beat you, too? For helping me?"
"Harris won’t even notice."
"Here," Tom said, behind Jerimon. He held a cup. Steam rose slowly from it, spiralling lazily up to the vents.
Jerimon took the cup without comment. Tom went back to his chair and pretended Jerimon wasn’t there. Jerimon slid one arm under me and helped me sit. I took the cup in my cuffed hands and sipped gingerly. Whatever it was, it was hot and thick and helped.
"Trust me," Jerimon breathed in my ear as he took the cup away.
Trust him? Not even as far as I could throw him, which wasn’t far. I sat back on the cushion, trying to avoid the most painful bruises.
Ghost appeared. She sniffed me before turning to Tom. She chirruped at him and butted her head against his leg. He reached down and stroked her. She purred.
"Stupid cat," I muttered. I turned away. I’d been betrayed and rejected by my own cat. That hurt almost more than Jerimon’s betrayal.
We shifted into normal space sometime the next day. Harris was back to muttering, ignoring me as if I didn’t exist. I was happy to hunch on my bench and pretend I didn’t exist. Time crawled by. Tom
took me to the bathroom twice. He didn’t bring me any food. I drank out of the sink.
I heard when they activated the shields. There were intermittent pings and sizzles against the hull. Wherever we were, it was a messy system. We slowed to a crawl. The sounds became less frequent.
"It’s clear, sir," the navigator spoke to Harris.
Harris looked up from his latest scribbling and smiled. "Good," he announced as he put his stylus down. He came over and squinted down at me. His smile made my skin crawl. "Get up, captain." The force blade glittered in his hand.
I got up, mostly by sheer willpower. I hurt so bad I could barely move. He grabbed my arm and yanked me in front of him. He marched me into the cockpit. "Is the message relay ready?" he asked the navigator.
"We found a capsule and a spare beacon," the navigator answered. "It should work."
"And what of the others?" Harris asked.
"They’re on their way back out," the navigator said. "They swept the system. It’s deserted."
"Good," Harris said. "Give me a wide range on the camera."
I watched as the navigator pushed buttons. The red recording light blinked on the control panel. Harris dragged me around to face the camera. He pulled my head back, one hand gripping the back of my neck. His force blade hovered dangerously close to my neck. If I swallowed too hard, I’d slit my own throat.
"This is a recording," Harris said. "To the Patrol ships following us here. Your agent has only one chance to stay breathing. If you do everything I say, follow it to the letter, I just might let you buy her from me." He shook me and nudged the knife closer. "Any tricks or attempts to deceive me and I will kill her slowly and painfully.
"Condition one: you will bring the money in one ship, a courier with no weapons. No other ships. No hidden fleet.
"Condition two: you will send one person in an escape pod with the money. We will make the exchange then.
"Condition three: you have two days to reach these coordinates." He rattled off a string of numbers that meant nothing to me. "One ship. No more. You transmit those coordinates to anyone else, and she will die.
"If you aren’t convinced yet, failure to bring the money as agreed will result in massive casualties. There are bombs, nasty radiation bombs, planted in one hundred major cities throughout the Empire. They will begin to detonate within one week. Unless, of course, you pay." He laughed as he dragged me out of the cockpit. "Save it and put that in your capsule." He shoved me back on the bench. "We’ll see how much they think you’re worth," he tossed at me before moving back to his piles of papers.
"Set a course," he ordered. "I want to be there early. Just to be sure."
They loaded the capsule and shoved it out the airlock. One of them had to put on a vacuum suit to do it. I half hoped the suit would fail. We’d been too careful in our maintenance. The suit held. We headed back out of the system and jumped into hyperspace.
The trip was only a few hours. We made orbit around a small moon of a gas planet. And then we waited.
Hours passed. Harris went into his manic pacing, snarling whenever he caught sight of me. Ghost poked her nose out of an access hatch, watching the scene below before vanishing back into the ship’s systems.
Harris grew more agitated as the time crept past. He checked his watch, over and over. He finally went into my cabin. A few moments later, his snores were the only sound in the ship, other than the vibrations of the engine.
Tom took me to the bathroom in the end cabin. Jerimon was lying on a bunk, staring at the bottom of the bunk over his head. He slipped me a pain patch when Tom brought me out of the bathroom. Tom pretended he hadn’t seen anything.
I tried to sleep on the bench. No matter how I shifted I was uncomfortable. The cuffs on my wrists itched. The pain patch helped with the worst of the aches.
I slept a little. I had nightmares again, ones I didn’t want to remember afterwards.
I woke up when Harris came back out of my cabin. He went into the cockpit. "Any sign of them?"
"Not yet," the pilot answered. "Wait," he added, bending closer over the deep scan. "A ship just downshifted."
"Only one?" Harris asked. He looked back at me with a cold smile.
"Just one," the pilot confirmed.
"Good, keep tracking them. When they reach the planet, call me."
He walked past me, smiling the whole time. I saw the calculation in his eyes.
More time passed, one hour, then two. Three crept slowly by as the ship crawled deeper into the system.
"I have an id," the pilot announced. Harris looked up from his endless scribbling. "Patrol hunter class, the Avenger."
"Our messenger ship? Well, well. That puts a different spin on things." Harris sat back and chewed on his stylus. He studied me with cold eyes. That nagging sense that I knew him, that I’d met him before, bothered me. I still couldn’t place him.
"One other ship just downshifted," the pilot added. "From a different vector."
Harris’s smile faded, tightening at the corners of his mouth. "A trick, captain? For your sake, I hope so." His force blade shimmered in his hand. He held it in front of his eyes. "Sharper than any material, cuts through everything. So smooth as it slides through flesh." He laughed as I shuddered. "What ship?" he demanded of the pilot.
"No id beacon," the pilot said. "They’re moving in fast and calling us."
The com squawked. He reached over and cleared the static.
"Darien Harris," the voice on the com crackled. "Stand by. You are about to be boarded. You have a lot to answer for."
Darien’s good mood vanished. He snarled a wordless curse. The force blade snicked back away.
"That was tight beam, straight to us," the pilot said. "The other ship is calling now."
"Answer it." Harris grabbed my arm and jerked me to my feet.
The vidscreen switched from the planet and moon to the bridge of the Avenger. Captain Suweya stared at us, his face tight with disapproval. I saw his eyes widen slightly when he saw Harris holding me with a force blade at my throat.
"Do you have my money?" Harris demanded.
"We’re sending it now," Captain Suweya said. "One capsule, one person, to make the exchange. What of the other crew members?"
"I’ll shove them out the airlock and you can try to catch them." Harris pushed the force blade closer. I flinched. "How badly do you want your agent back, captain?"
"You offered us a deal," Suweya answered. "Five million for her and her crew and her ship."
"Five million for her and the bombs don’t explode."
"Don’t force my hand," Suweya said, a veiled threat.
"Don’t force mine." Harris pushed the force blade just a fraction. Blood trickled down my neck.
"The pod’s trying to dock," the pilot said in an undertone.
"Let it and we’ll see just how good the Patrol’s word is."
We stood like that for what felt like hours. Harris kept me hauled back against him, the force blade just barely clear of my throat. Captain Suweya watched us impassively. I heard the pod as it docked with our emergency hatch over the small cargo bay.
The hatch opened overhead. I heard someone drop down into the ship.
"Count the money," Harris ordered.
"Five million credits, in small denominations," Tayvis said.
I could have fainted with relief, except I would have slit my throat on Harris’ blade.
"Stand by, captain." Harris nodded at the pilot. He hit the cutoff button.
Harris turned me around and shoved me out of the cockpit. He pushed me to the bench as he went past. I caught myself on the cushion and turned to look.
Tayvis stood next to the table holding a large bag with the logo of one of the more prominent banks on the side. It looked heavy. He dumped it onto the table. Harris rubbed his hands greedily as one of his thugs opened it. Credit chips spilled onto the table. Tayvis looked past Harris, at me. I couldn’t meet his eyes. I’d give too much away if I did. I shifted so he
could see the force cuffs.
"The money’s there," Tayvis said. "Give me—"
"Shut up," Harris snapped.
"The other ship just fired on the Patrol ship," the pilot said. "The Patrol ship is returning fire."
Harris didn’t even appear to have heard. Tayvis shifted from foot to foot.
"There’s another ship headed this way," the pilot said. "One of ours, Harris."
"Good, fly us over to it." Harris bent over the table, stacking chips.
The ship began to move. Jerimon passed me into the cockpit.
"The Patrol ship is running," the pilot said. "They took a major hit to one engine."
Harris laughed. He didn’t pause in stacking chips.
The ship picked up speed then slowed again. An airlock tube clanked onto our hatch. The door cycled and opened.
A man stepped out. He looked much like Harris, the same slender build, the same cold face, but more elegant and tasteful clothing. He wrinkled his lip in distaste.
"Whatever you’re up to, cousin," he said coldly, "you’ve made a mess of it." He surveyed the lounge, finally settling his cold green eyes on me. "You were supposed to arrange to kidnap the woman and bring her. Not the entire Patrol. Or her ship. You will have to dispose of it."
"I don’t take your orders, Tolun," Harris said. He scooped chips into the bag as fast as he could.
Tolun had a gun in his hand faster than I could have spit. It was a neural scrambler, very illegal and extremely dangerous.
"You don’t realize the extent of your mistake, cousin," Tolun said coldly. "The Patrol is up in arms because of your bungling. I’ve been sent to salvage what I can from your mistake."
Harris straightened, awareness of his danger seeping into his face.
Tolun raised the scrambler. "I can’t say I’m sorry to do this. I should have done it years ago." He pulled the trigger.
There was no visible discharge. Harris froze for a second. His eyes bulged and rolled upwards. He began to gibber and drool. His arms and legs twitched. He tumbled to the floor. Tolun nudged him with one toe. Any semblance of awareness or intelligence in Harris’ face melted away. He stared sightlessly at nothing, his body twitching and jerking spastically.
