Interim: On the run from the Galactic FTL Police

by P. K. Lentz

“I got restless. Do you have a minute?”

  Kearn went to the galley to pour himself a drink. Something strong. Now that the immediate danger was behind them, he really needed it.

  “That depends on what you want.” Even as he answered, Kearn didn’t much like the words that emerged from his mouth. Thanks to the stress of late, he realized, he was in danger of becoming a real asshole.

  Zerouali, on the other hand, seemed unusually sociable as he sat down across from her. Now that he thought of it, her whole attitude toward him seemed to have changed since the revelation of his true identity. She had called him a ‘legend.’ She didn’t seem the type for hero-worship, though, so why the sudden interest?

  “Coffee?” he offered absently. “My own blend.”

  She accepted, and Kearn poured.

  Zerouali took a sip and winced. “How do you make coffee taste like industrial solvent?”

  Kearn smiled cheerlessly and filled his own cup. “Three parts coffee, one part industrial solvent. It’s an acquired taste. So you’ve got your minute. What is it you want?”

  “The Halo logs,” Zerouali said, suddenly businesslike. Despite her initial reaction to the coffee, she continued to drink. “They end abruptly, obviously for your own protection. I want to know the rest.”

  Kearn heaved a deliberate sigh, bored and disappointed by the topic. “I keep a secret for half my life and suddenly I’m supposed to tell anyone who asks. Maybe you want a stake in Lady too, while I’m at it.”

  There he went being an asshole again. He knew that treating this woman brusquely was only a rather childish mode of retribution for her own real or imagined mistreatment of him.

  Zerouali smiled knowingly--though it turned out she hadn’t read Kearn’s thoughts quite correctly.

  “Do you still believe I might be an Interim plant?” she asked. Her tone made it clear enough that she knew his answer: the suggestion was nonsense.

  Kearn sipped from his coffee and made a conscious decision to behave more agreeably. The Interim had nearly succeeded in turning him into a killer; he wouldn’t let them make him antisocial, too.

  “I might have believed that for a minute or two,” he answered. “But it’s obvious enough you’re no undercover agent.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You would have done a better job ingratiating yourself.”

  She raised her brow over the rim of her mug. “I think I know what that means.”

  Kearn shrugged. “Not necessarily. But you certainly could have played a more sympathetic figure. As it is, you almost went out of your way to make sure no one liked you.”

  “Maybe I’m just a better mole than you think.”

  “A good mole would never say that. Besides, you might have noticed the score stands at Kearn two, Interim nothing, so if you are working for them then you haven’t done very well. No, you’re exactly what you said you were. A fugitive. That’s why you push people away like you do.”

  This last observation had dawned upon Kearn only as he spoke it, yet it made perfect sense.

  “You can’t have a home,” he went on. “The last thing you want is to get attached to anyone. I’m guessing you learned that a long time ago.”

  If his assessment struck home on any level, Zerouali hid it well. She gave Kearn the same tight-lipped, impenetrable look that he’d seen many times already. Maybe her dark eyes clouded ever so slightly, or maybe that was just steam from her coffee.

  “We’re getting off topic,” she said.

  “Off your topic,” Kearn corrected her.

  Now he was sure he’d scored a hit, but in accordance with his decision to play nice he was prepared to leave it alone.

  More at ease now that he sensed he had more of a handle on Zerouali’s character, he opted for his own change of subject.

  “You couldn’t have cared less about Will Gareth,” he observed, voicing the thought that had sprung to mind earlier. “Why such an interest in Kearn?”

  The smile that then crossed Zerouali’s lips conveyed a warmth that had been decidedly lacking in its infrequent predecessors.

  “The universe is full of boring people, Captain,” she said. “I thought I might have found someone a little less boring.”

  “I’ll ignore the past tense and take it as a compliment. But you’re wrong, the universe isn’t boring. Far from it. I think you’re just traveling in the wrong circles.”

  Her smile melted. “I’m traveling in circles alright,” she lamented. “I’d like to break out.”

  Without further word on that topic, the woman’s hand slid abruptly into a pocket of her clothing and withdrew a bio-specimen vial which she placed on the table between them.

  “I assume you know what that is,” she said.

  “Lisset’s blood,” Kearn answered factually, caught off guard by the unheralded change of topic. “What of it?”

  “Look closely. Notice anything?”

  Kearn eyed the vial without particular interest. “It’s fuller than I remember.”

  “It’s fuller than it was a few hours ago. And not only that.” She nudged it across the table toward him. “Take a closer look.”

  Kearn set down his coffee and reached for the tube. As he did so a glance at the ship’s clock made him realize he should probably get back to Serenity before too long, however much he might wish to postpone that encounter.

  What Kearn saw upon raising the vial to one eye was interesting enough to thrust Ren back out of mind. Suspended in the blood sample were what appeared to be tiny motes of solid matter.

  “Contamination?”

  “No,” Zerouali said with authority. “It’s changing.”

  Kearn set the vial down. “That’s crazy. This sample is hundreds of years old. Obviously it was contaminated in storage, and now it’s reacting to light or heat. Simple.”

  “I’d be happy to accept a simple explanation, too. But having just viewed the Halo logs, I’m already curious about Lisset. This makes me more curious still.” A pause seemed calculated to give her conclusion the maximum impact. “That’s human tissue in there.”

  Kearn sank back into his chair, leaving the sample on the table. “Nonsense,” he said. “Lisset was examined when we brought her aboard. That blood has been tested. Granted her behavior was strange, but she was still a normal, average human being.”

  Zerouali’s delivery grew softer, as if she were taking deliberate care not to sound pompous. “I didn’t suggest otherwise.”

  Kearn eyed his cup in sullen silence. Lisset was another of those things he didn’t much care to think about. Not because the memories were painful, but for the precise reason that Zerouali did want to discuss her. The girl made no sense.

  “What’s your point?” Kearn asked eventually.

  “I have none yet,” she said gently. “But I’d like to know Halo’s story ends, if you’re willing to tell me. That’s all.”

  Kearn smiled, not a little self-consciously. The last time she’d asked him this he’d told her to fuck off, and the timid phrasing of her new request said she hadn’t forgotten.

  “Alright,” Kearn conceded. He let his eyes issue an apology where words weren’t forthcoming. “You have a way of getting what you want, don’t you? Maybe you wouldn’t make a bad spy after all.”

  This yielded from Zerouali another genuine smile.

  “But I have things to do, so you’ll have to settle for the short version.”

  ***

  “Losing Lisset hit us all pretty hard. It hurt to think that she’d come so far only to die in our holds before ever setting foot groundside again. I hardly knew her, but I wished it could have been my capsule instead of hers.

  “There wasn’t much question in my mind about what to do with her body. We loaded it into a cargo module and launched it on course for Ganeille, the system that Beshaan should have taken her to.

  “Halo put into port at Reissa, where we planned to spend at least a few weeks groundside. It wasn’t home for any of us, but it
was solid ground and full of people, which was good enough. We knew that our cargo from the Artifact could put us in danger so we kept it quiet. I should say most of us kept quiet, because somehow, I still don’t know how, word got out. About a week after our arrival Halo was raided and seized by Reissan corporate police on a government warrant. They took us without a fight.

  “After a week of separate interrogations, they slammed us into hibe capsules. I was revived six months later for more questioning, but this time they were only interested in one thing: whether or not I had managed to withhold any alien tech from them.

  “Long before we ever reached Reissa I had made sure that Halo’s logs couldn’t be compromised, so they didn’t have those. I told the Reissan cops I’d stashed some alien parts away, but refused to reveal their location. They tried charm, then bribery, then persuasion, then drugs, finally brute force. Looking back I don’t know how I managed to hold out, but I did. In the end I convinced them to cut a deal. Let me and my crew go and we would fetch the missing cache for them.

  “Naturally there was a downside. They kept two hostages from my crew, and chose them well. Ren, who was pregnant, and Castro, who knew much more than they did about the alien drives. If we failed to return, or if the tech ever showed up in use anywhere, they would be killed.

  “So Lucifer’s Halo set sail, minus two. The Reissans sent probes and pursuit ships to track us, but we managed to lose those within a few decades. Eventually we ditched Halo, disbanded the crew and took new identities and a new ship.

  “We never went back to Reissa.”

  ***

  “No doubt you know the rest better than I do,” Kearn finished with a glance at the ship-time on the wall. Ninety minutes to onset of acceleration.

  “So you’re not Reissan,” observed Zerouali, his rapt audience of one.

  “Who said I was?”

  “The official story is that you voluntarily surrendered your cargo to authorities.” Her voice affected deliberate irony as she quoted or paraphrased: “‘It belonged to humanity, not to one man.’ I feel naive now for having believed all that.”

  “How could you know? No one did.”

  Kearn spoke halfheartedly now. Telling the story left him drained, although in a way that was perhaps not entirely bad.

  “Ganeille,” Zerouali announced abruptly.

  Kearn smiled a little, but feigned ignorance. “What of it?”

  “Your cache. Halo’s logs. You sent them to Ganeille with Lisset’s body.”

  To his surprise, Kearn found himself smiling. “We picked them up more than a century later,” he confessed.

  “And Lisset?”

  “Still very dead, if that’s what you’re getting at. A lot worse off for lack of proper shielding, in fact.”

  “I suppose you know what became of your engineer.”

  “Not officially, no.”

  “Juan Castro was one of the pioneers of the Demon Drive and void engine.”

  Kearn nodded unenthusiastically. “Good for him.”

  “You don’t see it as a betrayal?”

  “I left him to die. And anyway, he stayed loyal. He was the only one besides me who knew about Ganeille. He may have worked for Reissa, but he never betrayed me. He never gave them that.”

  Setting down the bitter dregs of his coffee, Kearn rose from his chair.

  “I’d better go,” he said with finality. “Good talking to you, but whatever it is you’re thinking about the girl, stop. It’s nonsense.”

  Zerouali rose, too. “Thanks for your time, Captain,” she said formally. “But think on this: Lisset appeared in the right time and place to lead you to the Artifact, then lived just long enough to see you there and back.”

  Kearn scoffed. “You think that hasn’t crossed my mind? Halo’s voyage reads like an old ghost story, I know that. But life is strange sometimes.”

  “Very,” Zerouali agreed, as Kearn made for the exit. “I may not believe in ghosts, Captain. But thanks to you I do join all of humanity in believing in aliens.”

  Kearn, frozen in the open doorway, turned back. Zerouali’s expression was quite serious.

  “An interesting theory,” he said. “But I’m not really one for theories. Report to the crew hibe vault in one hour.”

  With that he left. In the corridor he commed Fyat.

  “How will you be spending the next six months, assassin?”

  “Hibernation,” Fyat replied, offering nothing further.

  But that confirmation alone was enough for Kearn. Having Fyat on ice would make life that much easier.

  “Crew hibe vault, one hour,” he told the assassin, and signed off.

  Kearn found his mood was almost positive now. The simple act of confessing his secrets had brought more relief than he ever would have thought.

  As he approached his quarters, however, the months-long voyage ahead of Lady began to look brief compared to the coming hour with Ren.

  It might not be so bad, he told himself. A little awkward, maybe. So he’d abandoned her to her fate a few centuries ago, along with his own unborn child. It was a decision he’d questioned a thousand times since, but always with the same conclusion. It could not have been otherwise. He would do it all again.

  He entered to find his living area in total darkness. When the door slid shut behind him, the only visible light came from faint glowstrips outlining doorways and furniture.

  “Lights, dim,” he commanded, in a low voice in case Ren was sleeping.

  She wasn’t. The rising light revealed her huddled form in a corner of the floor, wrapped in his robe. Her hand came up to shield her eyes from the light.

  “Ren, what’s wrong? Are you alright?”

  Stupid question. Of course she wasn’t alright. He should never have expected her to be. Without awaiting response, which at any rate never came, he crossed urgently to her side. He knelt and laid a hand on her shoulder, finding robe and hair damp from bathing. Ren said nothing, just looked up to squint against the light, revealing bloodshot eyes and the dry tracks of tears on her cheeks.

  “Turn it off,” she begged, voice a bare whisper.

  At Kearn’s spoken command the room plunged back into darkness. He settled against the wall beside Ren and sat in silence listening to her ragged breathing.

  “Talk to me,” he ventured after some time. Rather selfishly, he feared her response.

  “I don’t belong anywhere,” she said blankly. “I have nothing, no one.”

  The sentiment was hardly surprising, yet it pained Kearn to hear it. Since leaving her, even the longtime belief that he could have done nothing differently had failed to rid him of guilt over Ren’s imprisonment. Now that she was alive and free--and miserable--such excuses offered even smaller comfort. Worse, she was absolutely right. She did have nothing, and nowhere to belong.

  But maybe this was just her weakness. It was that very desire for a home where she belonged that made her, as Kearn had told her once long ago, unfit for spacer life. Where a true spacer saw only the journey, Ren looked forward instead to an endpoint. Her life should have been lived out groundside, where she could have been happy in spite of a secret longing for the stars.

  Such an argument, though, only shifted Kearn’s own culpability further back than Reissa, to his erroneous decision to sign her onto Halo in the first place. There was no question now that that had been a mistake.

  Still, ultimately, nothing could clear Ren of responsibility for her own life. Likely she knew that, and it only made her pain more acute.

  She wept quietly beside Kearn in the pitch dark. Regardless of blame, regardless of her fitness for the life she’d chosen, Kearn was still technically her captain. Even her friend. He owed it to her not to abandon her again, especially now that the choice truly was his to make. No masterstroke of rationalization could prevent him feeling pity for her at this moment.

  With an arm around her damp shoulders, he drew Ren closer. Her head sank willingly into his chest and they passed a wordles
s hour thus.

  ***

  Later, Kearn hovered over Ren in her open hibe capsule, holding her hand as she drifted into a chemical-induced sleep. He had to admit that putting Ren under wraps brought him a sense of relief, as shallow as the admission made him seem. It was part of the spacer character to view a problem out of sight as a problem solved. But, alas, some problems dogged one more persistently than others. Kearn had a few of those, and Serenity counted topmost among them.

  With Serenity out of sight, if not quite forgotten, Kearn turned his attention next to a more immediate concern.

  “Fyat, you’re up,” he announced.

  The assassin drifted over and pulled himself into the waiting capsule. As Kearn secured the netting over him, he took care to meet the man’s stony gaze with an expression equally impenetrable. Undoubtedly Fyat’s dead and unexpressive eyes hid many secrets. Right now it was vital that Kearn hid one of his own.

  Thorien administered a hypo to Fyat’s neck. The assassin closed his eyes voluntarily, making it difficult to determine when he actually crossed the line into unconsciousness. It didn’t matter much, though, for Kearn immediately sealed the capsule and initiated the hibernation sequence anyway.

  If stowing Ren had eased Kearn’s mind, locking Fyat down brought positive exultation. He waited a few moments before speaking, in case the assassin had some unlikely means of eavesdropping from within his capsule.

  “Aprile, Ilias,” he said when he felt it was safe. “Slight change of plan. You two and I aren’t going into hibe yet. We’re going to purge Lady of Fyat’s presence, however long it takes. There’s no way he’d submit to hibe without some means of making sure we’ll have to pop him later. I’m betting he’s made himself ‘indispensable’ again--some six-month destruct sequence, or whatnot, that will require his intervention to abort. We’re going to find it and disable it. Then, once Lady is clean, we can keep this freak on permanent ice, or maybe even toss him into a passing star.”

  “Damn!” Aprile sang out with a grin. “I really do like you better, Kearn. Will Gareth was way too mellow.”

  “I intend to get mellow again as soon as humanly possible. Which is exactly why I have zero tolerance right now for bullshit. So let’s get everyone tucked away.”