Confidence Game

by Britt Ringel

  “As you wish, my lady.” Lochlain began to peck at his datapad.

  Brooke waited a beat before asking without a trace of emotion, “Who was that earlier?” Her smile widened as she saw his fingers trip over the surface of his datapad.

  “Uh...”

  Brooke raised a delicate finger skyward to silence him. “Let me guess. That was your long-lost sister, right? She’s also your half-sister and terribly inappropriate, which is why she doesn’t show up in any of your personal records and likes to play grab-ass with you in public.”

  “Uh…”

  Brown eyebrows knitted together and her voice sobered significantly. “Listen, Reece. I may not have gotten to choose who I fell in love with but that doesn’t mean I’ve jettisoned my brain out an airlock.” She smiled despite her stern tone. “I’m an Appiation infiltration expert for Customs and Borders. I declined a SWEEP team position two years ago.” She leaned across the booth and stared him in the eyes. “I know who you are. I know who and what I’ve fallen in love with and I’ve made these choices on my own. I’m fine with both of us having our secrets but that doesn’t mean we get to lie to each other. Got it?”

  “I didn’t know that,” Lochlain confessed.

  “What?”

  “That you were invited onto a SWEEP team. I thought that stuff was all classified and you weren’t supposed to talk about it.”

  Brooke dipped a narrow shoulder. “Just one of my many crimes now.”

  A waiter appeared at the booth to present a mug of amber, frothy ale. Lochlain eagerly accepted the bounty and drained his first beer since his incarceration. “Oh, that hit the spot,” he said breathlessly.

  Hazel eyes tracked the mug to the thin, metallic strip running down the center of the table. She watched as Lochlain adjusted the tabletop controls to lower the beverage strip’s temperature nearly ten degrees. She looked at him pointedly and said, “I’m hoping my crime spree is finished now that you’re safe from the wheels of justice.” She gauged his reaction and sighed. “You can always go legit, Reece.”

  “Mercer, I’m practically legit now!” he insisted a little too loudly. “All I’ve run is stuff that’s legal in over half the galaxy. I can’t help it that Appiation is so strict that it makes Volkmancht-Kaufmännisch look loose.”

  “It’s a strict but fair system,” Brooke offered defensively.

  “It’s corporate feudalism,” Lochlain snapped back. He folded his arms and gathered his bearing. “They don’t even pretend otherwise. Hell, I was called a commoner in court this morning.”

  Brooke frowned at him. “You’re such a demagogue. Why can’t you see the value of working within the system?”

  “To what end?” Lochlain asked with exasperation.

  The emotion in the man’s voice was as raw as it was refreshing to Brooke. She leaned back, comfortable that the man she had grown to love months ago still remained even if behind a curtain of indiscretion.

  “What’s working within the system gotten you, Mercer?” Lochlain fulminated. “Over ten years of thankless, dangerous work and you’re still what, a vassal?” He tapped his chest as he taunted, “That’s only one step higher on the social ladder than this common criminal.”

  “You’re no longer a criminal, Reece. You’ve paid your debt and you’re a free man… if you want to be.”

  “Not really,” he said dejectedly. “My ties with Larsson have been severed and not politely. She has some anger issues and is more than a little unhappy about my cooperation with CBP.” Lochlain shook his head and stared glumly at the tabletop. “Neither of us will ever be free inside Appiation. If you aren’t born with it, you can never obtain it.” Fingers tightened around his mug and his voice roughened. “I don’t want to serve the central banks. I’m not a peasant and I never, once in my life, swore fealty to Appiation Unlimited Transactions.”

  Brooke stared in fascination as the man’s knuckles whitened around the mug’s handle. In the six, short months she had known Lochlain, he had kept an iron-tight grip over his emotions.

  “I just want to live my life without a yoke on my back.” He swallowed several times and breathed out unsteadily. Brooke was captivated by the amount of willpower it took for Lochlain to release the stranglehold on his glass. “Don’t you want to live free, Mercer? Live without the dread of where your next assignment may order you to go and what it might force you to do?”

  The question sent a chill down Brooke’s spine.

  Her inauguration into the rolls of “blooded” agents had occurred only two years out of the IAS Academy. A confidential informant had attempted to trade her life for his during a late night meeting, ending in a protracted gunfight through most of a shipping warehouse. That long ago night, she had desperately fired thirty-six, terrifying shots. Only the final round had found its mark, less than a meter from her gun barrel. The bullet did not immediately drop her attacker. Instead, he had continued stubbornly toward her, struck out at her, bled over her, collapsed upon her. The brutality had left her shaken and feeling dirty even if the agency hailed her as a hero. The CBP mandatory suspension during the shooting investigation lasted a mere half hour, less time than her stay at Capeland City’s primary care center.

  Brooke’s second kill had been far less personal. Pulled onto the bust for no other reason than she was in town, her role had been to provide tertiary overwatch on a rooftop several blocks from a suspected arms front. The bust was “over-successful,” ending in a large-scale firefight that included not only slug throwers but also heavy lasers and sonic weapons. Her kill had been remarkably clinical through her sniper’s scope. One moment, a woman had been running down a street for cover while unleashing automatic fire from her rifle. The next moment, she stopped behind what she believed was suitable cover to withdraw a device from under her body armor. Brooke’s scope, linked to several tasked CBP satellites, provided a virtual view through the quickcrete wall and one trigger press later, the digital scope image of the gunrunner collapsed noiselessly to the ground. The woman’s body was later recovered next to the trigger of a dutronium-36 explosive device that would have evaporated most of the sleepy neighborhood in Storastäder.

  Nightmares from both events still plagued Brooke. Worse than those recurring dreams was the fact that only one more kill made her eligible for Appiation’s REACT squad. Rumors about the elite team were legendary, even inside CBP, and having already declined a position in SWEEP, Brooke doubted that she would be allowed to beg off REACT. She knew her kill count as a REACT member would escalate dramatically. More dread washed over her.

  “CBP allowed me to take some leave after testifying at the trials,” Brooke answered softly upon realizing Lochlain’s question still hung in the air.

  “And then where will they send you? What will they ask you to do?” he pressed knowingly.

  Another shiver passed through her. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I really don’t want to know.”

  Lochlain’s hand snatched hers in an instant. “Mercer, come with me,” he pleaded quietly.

  Her career passed before her eyes. She had graduated with an advanced degree in starship engineering at Imdali before her unexpected recruitment into CBP. Each successive sidestep in her career felt as if some unstoppable force was pulling her to a preordained destiny. Her citation from Storastäder, heavily redacted, generically labelled her efforts “pivotal to the maintenance of corporate tranquility.” She was slated to receive yet another award for her most recent undercover work aboard On Margin. As the accolades piled up, so did the corporation’s expectations. It all felt as if she was being led by the hand, or by the leash, to an inevitable end. Doors were closing around her, leaving only a long tunnel to a deep darkness.

  “We can chart our own course,” Lochlain promised hopefully. “Go where we want and decide for ourselves what we do.”

  “No one controlling us,” she heard herself whisper. She shook her head to rouse herself from her reverie. Lochlain was still staring intently, trying t
o discern any hint of her thoughts with his penetrating gaze. She found immense comfort in his eyes. “That sounds nice, Reece. I want that,” she decided. She wondered if it could really be that simple. Brooke mirrored Lochlain’s devilish smile. “How?”

  Twice in one night, Lochlain’s tightly controlled reins went slack. His look of disbelief lingered as he scrutinized his partner’s face. “You’re serious?” he asked incredulously. A tentative, hopeful expression washed over him. “You’ll really come with me?”

  “I love you,” Brooke answered simply but then faltered. “That’s not fair…”

  Lochlain flinched slightly. “You don’t love me?”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Yes, I do, you rogue, but I’m doing this for me as much for you.” She lowered her eyes to her mug and exhaled slowly. “We can’t stay here. We’re going to need a ship and it’ll have to be something small, at least in the beginning. Then we’ll need a crew…” She glanced at him as her mind raced. “First of all, we’re going to need a lot of credits. How much do you have?”

  “You’re… you’re really just diving into this? No second thoughts at all? No ‘we have to be equal partners’ speech?” He made air quotes as he spoke.

  Brooke snickered lightly before answering, “It’s cute that you think I’m worried about being an equal partner. How many credits do you have saved up?”

  Lochlain winced. “Not much. Most of what I owned was seized when I was arrested on On Margin.”

  Her eyes widened and white teeth flashed in a smile. “Are you still the first mate on her?”

  He pursed his lips at an unwelcome thought of Judit Larsson before answering, “I should be. Those records got frozen the moment it was seized. Nobody but CBP can change them for now.”

  “So,” Brooke continued, “you technically have captain’s permissions now, right? Since Floyd Frazier is now a resident of Vosstäder Correctional, you’re next in the chain of command.”

  Lochlain gestured futilely toward the ceiling. “Of a frozen ship, I guess, but On Margin is impounded and in Appiation’s graveyard orbit. Her beacon’s red, the ship’s on lockout and her records all have impound watermarks.”

  Brooke raised an eyebrow knowingly as she set to work on her datapad. “Precisely, it’s the one asset we know that’s not going anywhere.” She opened the trade pages of the Svean Commerce Division and began to narrow her search. “Help me find a suitable ship, with as small a crew complement as possible.”

  “Something you can single-hand?” Lochlain asked as he began his own enthusiastic search.

  She shook her head. “Large enough to turn a profit but a cargo ship where I can handle Engineering by myself while you cover the bridge for an hour or two.”

  “A freighter? Mercer,” Lochlain explained gravely, “there are no cargo ships so small that you’re allowed to operate with only two people.”

  Brooke’s fingers flicked over her datapad screen rapidly. “I don’t care what the regulations say, I just want the two of us to be able to pull it out of a graveyard orbit and dock to an orbital without crashing. Once we’re attached, then you can bring on our crew.”

  “What crew?”

  “The one you’ll find us, naturally.” She bit her lip briefly. “Only, you won’t be able to pay them. The ship is going to cost us everything we have to take possession of immediately, provision it and sail out of Svea.”

  Lochlain cleared his throat to get her attention. “Where do you expect me to find a crew like that?”

  “The same place I’m going to have to pull a two hundred million credit cargo ship from.”

  “Where? Your ass?”

  “Not mine. Yours.”

  Chapter 4

  “Priced to sell.” That was how Brooke had started her ad on the ship exchange. On Margin, a 450,000-tonne Handy-sized Bärare-class freighter, was more than a steal at 299,000,000 credits. Additionally, if the buyer furnished proof that the freighter would homeport in Appiation-controlled space the price would be reduced by 10,000,000 credits.

  She had listed the ad less than an hour ago and then started the formwork that would show CBP’s intent to release the freighter from impound. Of course, all of the documents would be forged. As she signed the names of people she had heard of but never met, she kept track of the years of confinement her crimes would earn. It was a startling total but then she knew that the cover-up was always worse than the crime. Her datapad chimed for the third time in thirty minutes.

  “CBP Special Agent Brooke,” she answered mechanically while adding another document to her e-file.

  There was a pause at the other end of the connection. She had grown used to that reaction each time she identified herself as a corporate agent. “Uh, Agent Brooke, did I flash the wrong person?”

  “Probably not,” Brooke answered easily as she signed her field supervisor’s name to another document. “Are you inquiring about On Margin, the Bärare-class freighter?”

  “Well… yes,” came the uncertain answer. “Why is an agent of Customs and Border Protection managing the sale? If you don’t mind me asking…”

  “Mister…”

  “Lunde.”

  “Mr. Lunde, On Margin is presently an Appiation-seized asset, forfeited due to the commission of multiple, non-violent crimes earlier this year. The legal process has played out and the ship is returning to the possession of the former owner, who remains a citizen in good standing. She’s given the custodial captain the right to vend the ship since she is departing the system.”

  “Is there a stop on the ship right now?” The man’s voice had grown more wary.

  “Presently, though between you and me, it’s going to be lifted in the next few hours. The custodial captain, uh…,” she counted to five silently, “Captain Reece Lochlain, also a citizen in good standing, requested CBP’s support for proof of pending release. I’m sending you his contact information.”

  “Release from impound is not something easily obtained,” Lunde noted cautiously.

  “Indeed.” She let her voice fill with disdain. “CBP normally doesn’t get involved but Captain Lochlain was instrumental in our prosecutions and I’ve been tasked to provide this courtesy to the owner. So, do you want the ship or not?”

  The man barked out a short laugh. “Sounds a bit complicated to me...”

  “Great. Bye.” She made no move to disconnect.

  “Although the price is truly remarkable,” the man mused quickly. He paused once again. “Is the release really coming? I’ve heard horror stories about buying impounded equipment.”

  “Mr. Lunde,” Brooke stated with growing annoyance, “I already told you it’s going to clear today. I really don’t give a damn whether the ship sells or not but I think it will. There are already four interested parties and with the pending release and its low price, it’s going to go before the end of the week. Either way, I’m heading out-system soon. So, if you aren’t serious about this ship, you need to stop wasting CBP’s time.” She terminated the connection and immediately sent a comm request to Lochlain.

  “Hello?”

  The greeting sounded a bit odd to Brooke. “You’re going to get a call about the ship. He’s leery about the impound but I’m flashing you the authorization for release right now.” She enunciated her next sentences carefully. “Just show it to him. Don’t give him a copy, Reece.” She confirmed the e-file was dispatched. “And make sure he thinks he’s the only one with inside knowledge to her imminent change in status.”

  After too long a pause, Lochlain answered stiffly, “Received. I’ll call to confirm the appointment time.”

  “I’ll have to be present to get you two past the lockout,” Brooke noted irritably. “I have no desire to ever step aboard her again but I guess it can’t be helped. Be sure to let him ask for my credentials before you just offer them to him and don’t oversell the ship when you speak with him.”

  “Yes, I know,” Lochlain replied curtly. Annoyance wormed its way into his tone. “B
elieve it or not, I do have some experience with this sort of thing.”

  Brooke chuffed at the mild rebuke. “Speaking of, how’s our crew coming along?”

  “Trying my best right now,” he said pointedly before disconnecting.

  Brooke rolled her eyes and sighed. She dropped the datapad to the table and returned to her formwork.

  * * *

  “Who was that, honey?” Melissa asked as she clattered away at her keyboard. She sat behind an enormous wooden desk built in the Crucis star system. Svean timber was far too soft for the finest furniture and the imported desk was not only more durable but declared the status she enjoyed.

  “Job interview,” Lochlain responded with a smile. “I need to call back once they send the appointment time.” He frowned as he stared at the computer screen from behind Melissa’s shoulder. “It might wreck our dinner plans. I can always call him back and turn it down…”

  “No, no!” Melissa answered quickly. “Keep your appointment. You need a job now that you’ve given up long-haul trading.” The clicking of her keyboard stopped. “There. You’ve been approved for another six-month extension of your commercial captain’s license. Here is the list of classes you need to satisfy the continuing education requirement. Some start as early as next week. Normally you’d never get signed up in time but dating the Head of Registration has its perks.” She tapped her chest to emphasize her last point and smiled magnificently at him with perfectly glossed, red lips. “Let me send the information to your datapad. You’ll also need to put down a deposit.”

  “How much? I’m running a little short since I quit my job to stay in-system with you.” Lochlain’s eyes searched the course catalog. “Where are the hands-on classes?”

  “You don’t need those, Reece,” Melissa answered tersely. “I’ve already told you that. Don’t you ever listen? Those are for actual certification. You already have that. You just need the continuing classes that endorse your knowledge of recent changes in maritime law and spacegoing.” Her hands slid over the keys and a new page appeared. “Be happy you don’t need these cert courses. They’re really expensive.” She swiveled her head to look back at him. “How short are you?”