Thelma blinked. She hadn’t realized that Lon had linked the temporary captain of the Yardbird into the conversation. Then she queried the link history. It wasn’t Lon, but Patriarch Sodi, who’d added Captain Jones to the conversation.
But Lon had allowed it.
Thelma dug her fingernails into her thigh and stopped herself from looking a question at Max. Clearly, things were happening—the “fun” Lon had mentioned earlier—that she hadn’t grasped. So shut up, pay attention, and learn, she advised herself.
“A day for repairs. Perhaps two,” Elder Jakob said casually. “I believe it depends on whether we have replacement parts or if they have to be manufactured.”
Captain Jones slapped a hand down on the control desk of the Yardbird.
Thelma hoped someone had cleaned it since she was aboard.
Captain Jones was obviously a more seasoned spacer than her, or had a higher tolerance for the bad air and filth of the Yardbird. He was out of his lifesuit and dressed as she and Max were in a utility suit. “Devil take it. We want to get out of here. We’ll fly down in the Yardbird’s shuttle.
Max promptly vetoed the idea. “You will not. The shuttle, like the Yardbird itself, is impounded until the bandits have stood trial. Neither will be descending to Levanter.”
For Thelma, enlightenment dawned. If either the Yardbird or its shuttle landed on Levanter, the elder would claim them. Max wouldn’t be able to retrieve them. It wasn’t like he could fire on the leader of a planetary colony, especially if said leader had the spacecraft sabotaged and then, could claim in all truth, that they weren’t spaceworthy. And more than the spacecraft would be stuck on Levanter. So would its pilot.
Max wouldn’t allow anyone to sacrifice themselves to months on Levanter, especially if they were an unwitting sacrifice.
“But—”
“No,” Max cut across Captain Jones’s protest.
The captain folded his arms. “What about the shuttle from the Rapture? It’s spaceworthy.”
“Indeed it is,” Elder Jakob purred. “Unfortunately, none of the crew left aboard the Rapture are capable of piloting the shuttle.”
Thelma did her best to keep her face expressionless as her brain worked fast. So Jakob hadn’t expected to capture the Yardbird or its shuttle, but he could claim a hostage of whoever piloted the Rapture’s shuttle down. Captain Jones was falling in nicely, if unknowingly, with the elder’s scheme.
“Brainwashed idiots,” Captain Jones swore. “All right. I’ll send one of my pilots—”
“No,” Max said.
Captain Jones unfolded his arms and leaned forward, bracing himself against the control desk. “Listen, Sheriff. These are my people and I have a right to deploy them as I choose. If Elder Jakob permits them to pilot his shuttle, you have no place to object.”
“Except that for your pilot to reach the Rapture shuttle, they must fly there on the Yardbird’s shuttle, and I do have the right to control that. Moreover, I can state categorically, and my mech has orders to this effect, that only the shuttle that has previously taken on supplies from the Yardbird may dock with it and accept future loads. Elder Jakob, either your shuttle is repaired and in flight in the next twenty four hours, or the Yardbird departs with the stolen supplies aboard as evidence of the bandits’ activities.”
“I can live with that,” Captain Jones muttered. “As long as we leave soon. Never coming back here. Never again.”
Lon disconnected the captain’s link.
Onscreen, Elder Jakob no longer acted so smooth. “Those are our supplies.”
“The supplies are evidence in a criminal case. I was using my judgment to provide them to Levanter since the colony is struggling.” Max’s statement started a muscle pulsing at the right corner of Elder Jakob’s mouth. Max kept going. “My time here is limited, Elder Jakob. Don’t waste it.”
“The shuttle—”
“Is your problem,” Max said. “As is the out-of-service notice for the Rapture which Deputy Bach just served your man, Patriarch Sodi.”
As if mention of his name summoned the wretched man, Sodi was suddenly onscreen with Elder Jakob. But he didn’t address his cult leader. Instead, he snarled at Max and Thelma. “What have you done?”
Elder Jakob glanced sideways at Sodi, eyes widening as he took in the other man’s wild expression. “What’s happened?”
“Our satellites have ceased to function,” Sodi said. “Messages are streaming in direct from the relay station.”
For a count of three, Elder Jakob stared at him, then the elder’s hand flashed out and he hit a switch.
On the Lonesome, the communication screen went blank.
Thelma stared at the screens. With the transmission ended, they no longer showed Elder Jakob or Patriarch Sodi. Instead, she watched the image of the grounded shuttle. Would it experience a miraculous repair, as Max suggested?
And apparently, that was the least interesting issue.
Lon chortled. “Irrefutable proof. You were both here, onscreen, talking with him. The ex-Rapture crew plus Wild Blaster Bill were aboard the Yardbird. None of us could have been out and about, disabling Levanter’s satellites.”
“Harry,” Thelma said on a long breath of understanding. “That’s why he had video footage of himself in the Yardbird’s cargo hold. With no one going in or out of it because Elder Jakob himself said the shuttle couldn’t launch from Levanter, there wasn’t anyone to prove that Harry wasn’t there.”
“And who would suspect a mech of being capable of ultra-fast, stealth flight and hacking skills?” Lon asked rhetorically.
Max leaned back in his chair, and that tipped his hat off. He caught it absently and flung it sideways. A robotic arm extended from the ceiling and snagged it, vanishing again, presumably to put away the sheriff’s “official” headgear. “Lon picked up something interesting when he scanned communications on Levanter. The level of signal traffic coming in from the relay station was much higher than that reaching planetside. Tampering with a relay station is a Category 1 offense. Jakob Canute sees himself as the unchallenged leader of Levanter, but he’s not at insane dictator level, yet. He’s still playing careful with Federal laws and regulations. So he can’t sabotage the relay station, but he can order satellites put in orbit around Levanter to block the relay station’s signals. Only what his system has vetted and approved gets passed on to the Pilgrims.”
Thelma thought about that. “So they’re not getting independent news.”
“Likely they’re not getting messages from family back home, wherever home was, either,” Lon said. “That reinforces their sense of isolation, making the cult all that they have.”
“Thereby increasing Elder Jakob’s power.” Thelma rubbed her arms. The ruthless effectiveness of the simple information blackout was chilling.
Lon agreed. “Whoever controls the flow of information, holds power.”
Information was power. Thelma didn’t need the AI to remind her of that fact. It was why she’d decided to establish herself as an information broker in the Saloon Sector. And that was something she needed to focus on.
She’d allowed herself to become distracted. Max, Lon and Harry had included her in the everyday life of the Lonesome, and she’d allowed herself to ignore the inequality in their relationship with her. She’d allowed their kindness to blind her to the hard reality that being treated with kindness wasn’t the same as being accepted as an equal.
The trio worked together seamlessly; their abilities, skills and experience acknowledged and trusted.
If, by some miracle, she gained an ability that contributed to the trio’s effectiveness, she’d still answer to Max. He was her boss. Not a friend. She shouldn’t even think of him as her brother’s friend.
When Max had told her to smarten her appearance and dress as a deputy for communicating with Levanter, it had felt like a slap. He hadn’t meant it that way. He’d had a reason for wanting her in front of the audio and visual comms and presenting professio
nally. But the metaphorical slap was a wake-up alert for her.
She wanted to be more—she was more—than the dudette deputy whom he protected and guided through the dangerous Saloon Sector.
To prove to Galactic Justice that they’d made a huge mistake in dumping her out here, she needed to become one of the frontier’s dangerous players. Her methods mightn’t be the obvious ones to men like Max who had a different skillset, but she’d worked out her plan on the Lazy Days, and she had to stick to it. She could refine it in light of Lon’s assistance and tutoring on the operations of the Saloon Sector, but it was hers. Not Max’s. Not Harry and Lon’s. Hers.
She’d been independent for seven years of studies on Serene. A little kindness now oughtn’t to tempt her into anything less.
Her chin jerked up. She was mad at herself. She had to get her head in the game. Like now. When Lon spoke, jolting her out of her thoughts, she wasn’t sure how long she’d been woolgathering.
“Harry’s back aboard the Yardbird. And just in time. The shuttle on Levanter is launching. Amazing how fast the repairs were made,” Lon added sardonically.
“They just needed a little incentive.” Max’s gaze was on the screen that showed the shuttle lifting off.
Which meant that Thelma hadn’t been woolgathering that long.
The Pilgrims on Levanter weren’t bothering with the fiction of the shuttle’s repair. Elder Jakob wanted the Lonesome gone. The sudden failure of his satellites meant he’d be dealing with unrest planetside as people were flooded with news and messages that would make confusing reading after Elder Jakob’s secret censorship. He’d want Sheriff Smith, with his revolutionary notions of freedom and respect for all, gone. While Max remained in Levanter’s orbit, he was a threat to Jakob’s dictatorship.
It took the shuttle three more trips, but finally the last of the Rapture’s stolen supplies were unloaded from the Yardbird, and Wild Blaster Bill ferried Harry back to the Lonesome. From the video footage Thelma saw, old Bill was not unnaturally terrified of Harry’s presence in the shuttle. In his emotionless mech mode, the AI was the embodiment of menace.
“With your permission, we’re getting the heck out of here, Sheriff Smith,” Captain Jones transmitted.
“See you back at Zephyr,” Max responded. Lon could loop communications through Max’s personal comms unit, so the conversation occurred over lunch on the Lonesome.
Thelma finished her sandwich and carried her plate and empty juice glass into the kitchen. She felt Max’s gaze follow her and guessed his puzzlement. Usually, she lingered over her meal. There was no great urgency. The return trip to Zephyr to offload their prisoners would take at least three weeks. The challenge of space journeys was filling the time productively, not racing to fit everything in.
Except, she’d been treating her lessons with Lon and training with Harry as sort of extracurricular options. That had to stop. She’d been disciplined in studying at the Galactic Justice academy, and she could be disciplined, now.
For instance, she wouldn’t ask the questions she had about the Lonesome’s nonstandard design. Spaceships simply weren’t spherical, and if they were, why was this one all straight lines and angles inside? There wasn’t a curved bulkhead anywhere. It raised the question of where Max had acquired the Lonesome—with Lon embedded—and how a former Star Marine could afford it.
And the answers to those questions were none of her business.
So she concentrated on what was her concern. Her reinvention as an information broker.
Chapter 9
Max propped a shoulder against the door to the training ring and watched Thelma dance. She knew he was there. She’d seen him when she’d spun around in her Spintail Comet dance lesson. She hadn’t stalled in the complicated reach and clap sequence or the stamp of her left heel. Still, she was glad to turn back to the instruction video that played on the large screen in front of her as the music pumped. The training ring was soundproof—if Max would close the door.
The Spintail Comet session ended. The lesson for the Nebula Waltz began.
She switched off the instruction video. She could learn the Nebula Waltz alone, but it was a partnered dance. If she studied it now, Max might think he should offer to partner her. That would be awkward. She intended to corner Harry for some partner experience when she’d mastered the Nebula Waltz and the Badstars Jive. The AI wouldn’t need practice to be far better than her at the dance steps.
“Shaking up your exercise program?” Max asked. Now that she’d stopped, he entered the training ring, crossing to the weight machine.
“Something like that.” An advantage of her individual dance class was that she had no belongings to collect. She headed for the door.
“I didn’t mean to chase you off.” For the first time ever, Max sounded hesitant.
When she glanced over at him, he’d taken off his t-shirt and stretched out to bench-press weights. A robotic arm spotted him. He wasn’t looking at her.
She smiled anyway, pushing the smile into her voice. “You didn’t.” But she didn’t hang around.
She’d been busy in the last fortnight. For eight hours every day she devoted herself to her deputy duties and meticulously logged her hours. Owen, the receptionist in the Sheriff’s Office on Zephyr, now routinely forwarded to her, rather than to Max, the time-wasting communications: people who wanted to complain about their neighbors, even when said neighbors were millions of miles away in deep space; people who were contesting automated tickets issued by speed cameras on well-marked asteroids, stations and starlane buoys; and, people who had idiotic questions about basic laws, regulations and procedures of interstellar life that they could have found the answers to easily, except that they preferred to be spoon-fed the information.
Max had corrected her on that point, when she’d complained about the latter group. “Space gets lonely. It can be frightening. People reduce the role of interstellar sheriff to law and order, but that’s just one aspect of it. Life on the frontier isn’t safe. Whatever we can do to improve the situation, we do, and part of that is making people feel more secure. They have to feel that someone, somewhere cares about their pursuit of a better life, their need for justice, and the simple fact that they exist. They need to know that someone hears them, and that if they die alone, someone will notice their passing.”
Max’s view of the sheriff’s role was nothing like what she’d been taught at the Galactic Justice academy. It was also far more complicated and nuanced than she’d expected from him.
That it also made her feel selfish and ego-ridden to be worrying about establishing herself as an information broker was something she shook off. Or tried to. Unlike Max this wasn’t her vocation. She hadn’t chosen to come to the Saloon Sector or be trapped here by her Galactic Justice contract for the next seven years. She had a right to carve out her own life and achieve her own goals—just like everyone else on the frontier.
She showered off the sweat of dancing lessons. She was learning, among all the other lessons of the last few weeks, that space travel gave you too much time for introspection.
Time for a drink—for research purposes!
She assembled the ingredients in the kitchen. Lon had helped her create a signature cocktail. Thelma wanted something that could be pulled together from relatively common items, that was pretty, and low in alcohol. She didn’t drink much. She loathed the lack of self-control that went along with intoxication. However, at a party or bar, she needed something in her hand.
“One Delightful Deputy,” Lon said as Thelma poured her cocktail into a glass, then toasted him. She sipped the concoction and nodded approval. She’d tried it two days ago, but this was confirmation. They’d mixed orange juice with rose water, effervesced the liquid, then stirred in mint gin and sprinkled it with honey sparkles. The golden glimmer of the honey sparkles on the surface of the drink made it appear luxurious. If she found a sympathetic bartender, Thelma intended to skip the gin, even as she paid for it and a large tip.
The drink was about her image. She could and would play the role of a sophisticated woman, not just that of a hard-ass Galactic Justice academy graduate.
Max walked into the kitchen, skin gleaming from his workout.
Had Lon turned the oven on? It was hot in here. Thelma moved aside so that Max could grab a protein drink from the fridge.
“Max, you should try a Delightful Deputy,” Lon suggested helpfully.
She choked. “He means the cocktail.”
“What else would I mean?” Lon’s tone held way too much confused innocence to be believable.
“You bored, Lon?” Max asked, his gaze locked on Thelma. “Looking to stir trouble rather than cocktails?”
Lon snickered. But he also presented a peace offering. “Thelma, I’ve made the adjustments to your utility suits if you want to try one before tomorrow’s Open Office? They’re in your room.”
“Thanks, Lon.” She contemplated her cocktail.
Max held an unopened protein drink in one hand. “I’ll try a taste.”
“Pardon? Oh.” She passed him the glass with its peach-pink hue.
He took a sip, and licked his tongue over his lower lip as he returned the glass to her. “I wondered what the gold sparkles were. Honey.”
“Yeah. Uh, honey.” She shouldn’t stare at her boss’s mouth. She gulped the rest of her cocktail, heroically managed not to splutter, and fled to her cabin.
The Open Office Day was derailed before it could start.
“Hot damn!”
Lon was transmitting both audio and visual comms from Max’s office on the Lonesome. Thelma occupied a chair drawn up at the other end of his long desk, her comms unit sat open and ready for her to look up answers to any difficult questions.
“Whoo-diggety. Who’d ya have to kill to get assigned a deputy like her, Sheriff?”
Max sat there, his hat shading most of his face, but showing the slight quirk of an amused smile as he let the open channel explode with comments and questions regarding Thelma.
Space Deputy (Interstellar Sheriff Book 1) Page 9
