by Natalie Grey
“I don’t think I am.” Barnabas flipped out his Jean Dukes and blew the thing to bits. Its tank had exploded, along with the Jotun body inside it, and as he watched, the whole apparatus went dark and thudded to its knees.
In the sudden silence, Barnabas looked around to find the rest of the group staring at him open-mouthed. He felt a pang of sadness for Jeltor—it was never good to see one of your species brutally killed—but otherwise, he could only feel satisfaction.
“I don’t like you,” he told the remaining four, including the disoriented one who had frozen at the sound of the gunshot. “I don’t like anyone who decides to use civilians as tools. If you have a problem with me, it’s because you’re doing things I will not abide. You could have cleared that up at any time.”
They didn’t answer, only swung into action once more. The pink Jotun whipped out one arm and loosed a stream of bullets at Barnabas—or at the place he’d been standing when its arm started moving.
He joined Gar in the center of the fight with the other two. If the pink one wanted to keep shooting, it was going to have to take the chance of shooting its compatriots. A moment later, the use of flamethrowers and knives let him know that it wasn’t willing to do so and it had returned to its fight with Jeltor.
These two had their needles out, apparently ready to do as much damage as possible to the biological bodies they were fighting. The needles were short, capped with what Barnabas guessed was a water-soluble plug that would dissolve and let the contents out as soon as it was in a creature’s bloodstream. The needle was too short for him to bend it, and he couldn’t tell if it would go through his armor. Jean Dukes would be deeply offended even by the suggestion, but Jellyfish Sector had a lot of technology the Etheric Empire had never run into before.
So, with no other options that he could think of, Barnabas settled for ripping the suit’s arm off.
It wasn’t exactly easy—the suits were made to be durable—but it was very satisfying. It came off with the clatter of screws and shattered bits of metal, and the pops of various tubes and wires shearing loose.
Barnabas and the Jotun stared at one another for a moment—the Jotun shocked and Barnabas very pleased with himself—before Barnabas started beating it with its own arm. Gar was almost laughing too hard to do the same to his opponent, but only almost. A similar set of screeches came soon after, followed by a pleased chortle from Gar and an unintelligible yell from one of the Jotuns.
“We still haven’t gotten them to talk!” he called to Barnabas.
“Oh, right.” Barnabas wound up and backhanded his Jotun with its own hand. “You know, I’m not sure I care anymore. They’re going to die, and we’ll figure out what we need to know from someone else. Like the other black ops team,” he added at the top of his lungs.
At the side of the room, the Jotun who’d been staggering back and forth betrayed a sudden interest.
That was probably the one he’d been talking to, then.
“I don’t suppose you’d have any guesses as to which government sent them,” Barnabas called.
What’s your plan here? Shinigami asked skeptically. There is no black ops team. They don’t exist.
Yeah, but think for a moment. If I stumbled on one of their fears, they probably have a good idea of who’d be angry—of who would send a team.
Ohhhh, you’re sneaky. This is the beer competition all over again—throw out false info and see who nibbles.
Great. Barnabas threw the arm away and punched his Jotun in the tank as hard as he could. The material of the tank creaked, and the Jotun fluttered around in distress. Now I want a beer.
Better than your juice obsession.
And now I want juice.
You’re very suggestible, you know that? It’s a good thing you never discovered infomercials.
I did. Barnabas swept the leg or tried to. I have seven Wonder Mops, he told Shinigami as he bent in one smooth motion, grabbed his opponent’s leg, and dragged it up sharply. The thing tipped over with a yell, the Jotun inside the tank struggling to right itself.
Laughter was his only answer.
What’s a Wonder Mop? Gar asked. And what’s an infomercial? I haven’t ever seen that word in the dictionary you gave me.
That’s because Bethany Anne had the good sense to ban them, Shinigami explained. I only know about them because Eric sometimes likes to pretend to do them for his guns. “But wait! There’s more! For just seven easy bullets—”
Barnabas was laughing as he ripped off one of the Jotun’s legs, then decided to finish the fight and punched down as hard as he could, sinking into the movement. The tank shattered and he pulled his knife out of its sheath and plunged it down, impaling the Jotun’s body.
It was a singularly unpleasant sensation to stab a jellyfish, especially when you knew that jellyfish was sentient, but Barnabas had no time to dwell on it. Jeltor was being overwhelmed.
Barnabas surged up and over the remnants of his opponent’s bodysuit and slammed the pink Jotun into the wall, narrowly missing a jet of flame from Jeltor’s arm.
“Sorry!” Jeltor called.
“No…problem…” Barnabas found a mechanical hand clamped around his neck as the Jotun hauled itself upright and dragged him with it. “So tell me…” He kicked, hit nothing, and leveled a punch at the thing’s armpit. “Why…pink?”
Behind them, there was a shout of satisfaction. Gar apparently won his battle.
The purple Jotun was formidable, but it couldn’t fight three of them. Jeltor was there with a chainsaw, cutting off the arm that held Barnabas’ throat, and Gar had a clear shot at its tank while it was distracted.
Barnabas staggered back, massaging his throat.
“What did you say?” Jeltor asked him.
“Why was it pink?”
“Oh. Some of us are, you know.” Jeltor gave a full-body ripple that looked a bit like a shrug.
As one, the group turned toward the last Jotun. It had frozen. It knew its comrades were dead, and Barnabas felt the faintest stirring of pity. What would it be like, to be blind and helpless against the people who had killed your team?
They did not deserve his pity. He reminded himself of that.
I’m jamming signals coming into the ship, Shinigami reported. Someone is trying to get it to do something—and it’s not that Jotun you’re looking at. I think they’re trying to destroy it remotely.
Can you keep blocking them? Barnabas put a hand out to stop Jeltor and Gar from advancing. If they needed to get off the ship…
For now. But deal with it quickly—or better yet, get him off the ship where I can better protect you three.
Good plan. Barnabas grabbed one of the Jotun’s arms. “Come on, friend, let’s have a chat.” At his nod, Gar took the other arm, and they dragged the Jotun along with them despite its attempts to stop them.
It was Jeltor’s exclamation that stopped them. Both Gar and Barnabas looked down to see the water in the tank foaming and the creature thrashing desperately, sticking to the wall as it tried to get out.
“Son of a—” Barnabas muttered.
It was already too late. The thing went limp a moment later and drifted amidst the foam as Barnabas let the biosuit drop to the ground with a thud. It was clear the Jotun was beyond the reach of any treatment they could summon, and Barnabas felt a stab of regret—not to mention anger. Over the years, he’d seen more than a few government agents choose death rather than capture, and it was always a damned waste. The governments they served were never worthy of that loyalty.
He sighed as he stared down at the biosuit, with the body floating limply in its tank. “Come on,” he told the other two. “Let’s get off this death trap and let Shinigami examine it.”
And then, he added silently, we’ll try to figure out just which government should be mad as hell at the Jotuns.
They had the ship, and Biset raged about that. The amount of technology they’d discover was unacceptable, and he could only hope they wouldn’t
put it to use before the committee’s plan was in its final stages.
But at least they didn’t have Norwun. Gods alone only knew what Norwun might have admitted to. Biset could only be glad that he'd thought to include a kill switch in all of the team’s suits.
Although, perhaps…perhaps he should not have killed Norwun so quickly. Now, with Norwun dead and no interrogation, there was no easy way for Biset to learn more about the alien ship Barnabas had apparently encountered. Norwun might have turned the tables on him and learned some useful detail.
Biset thought about this, his tentacles lashing. There were too many unanswered questions here, and none of the potential answers boded well for him. He had watched the battle, and he still could not believe his eyes. It was beyond belief that the human and his crew had managed to kill as many as they had, ripping the biosuits limb from limb. The Jotuns had fought Brakalons, after all. The suits were made strong enough that such things shouldn’t happen.
What was this human thing that was stalking him? And what was the thing that looked like a Luvendi? That species should have shattered its bones with every punch it threw. The recoil from its weapons should have nearly killed it. There was no way it should be alive.
The Jotun, though... Biset’s eyes narrowed. He knew who that was: Captain Jeltor, proving once again that he was a traitor.
And if Jeltor had joined Barnabas at Gerris Station after Barnabas had learned of another government’s black ops’ involvement, that could mean only one thing: Barnabas knew about the committee, as did Jeltor.
And the committee must, therefore, eliminate them before they could tell anyone else.
Had they already told the Navy? If they had, there was only one thing to do. Biset pondered. No, he decided. They had not told anyone else yet. There would be a flurry of activity amongst the top brass if they knew of the committee. No, Barnabas and Jeltor were trying to find proof so that they could expose everything.
That would be how he would lure them in, Biset decided. He looked at the biosuit in the corner, outfitted with the very latest technology.
He would fight them himself when they came. He’d seen the way they could fight, and he would not make the same mistakes Norwun had.
Chapter Nineteen
“The alloy that makes up the plating is very interesting,” Shinigami reported. “We were researching something similar but couldn’t get it to work. Hopefully, they’ll have some idea what to do with it in the labs. I couldn’t tell what had been done to it.”
She considered the stone chess board and slid a pawn forward.
Barnabas took a moment before answering to study the board. “What about the engines?” He didn’t choose a move yet.
“Not much of note there.” Shinigami sat back in her chair, mimicking his pose. It was surprisingly eerie, giving that she pulled it off down to the minutest detail. Barnabas sat up hastily. “You don’t want to put a huge engine in a ship that can’t handle it, so it’s more the fact that the ship could handle it—and the crew,” she added. “The speed at which that thing could take turns could easily knock all your artificial gravity out and burst you open on a wall.”
“How…vivid.”
She flashed him a smile, ignoring his dry tone. “I think the reason they could take it was something to do with their tanks. I scanned Fizzy McSudsalot but didn’t see anything special. Why are you laughing?”
“That foam killed him,” Barnabas explained. He had his head in one hand, and his shoulders were shaking with laughter. “Oh, I’m a bad, bad man for laughing at that.”
“You beat one half to death with its own arm. You were already not the purest angel there was.”
Barnabas sighed. “I knew that much, yes. I think that honor goes to one of the puppies—though they’re not puppies anymore, are they?”
“Not even a little bit. All big, shaggy death-monsters. Cuddly death-monsters.” Shinigami shrugged. “They were probably pretty pure once, though.”
“The world corrupts,” Barnabas said philosophically. He moved one of his knights and took a sip of coffee—the thick, tar-black mix he’d learned to enjoy in Italy.
“Anyway, there is a lot they’ll like, and I’ve left it for them to come get. They know about the attempted remote destruct, so they’ll be careful with it.”
“Good, good.” Barnabas watched her choosing her move. Shinigami had gotten better at using her body’s eyes to look at things. She even leaned a little closer to the board when she looked at it.
When she looked up, her face was grave. “It wasn’t suicide. The first one was—the ship that intercepted us near the Srisa. This one wasn’t.”
Barnabas grasped her meaning. “He would have played ball with us, then.”
“And so they had to kill him,” Shinigami agreed. “Which they didn’t do before, which means they were almost certainly watching the fight. They know I can block their signals—at least, I could when those signals went to the ship because it was plugged into the station—and they know how you fight.”
Barnabas, however, had thought of something else. “They know Jeltor is involved.”
“Yes.” Shinigami’s eyes strayed to the door as if she were worried he might be listening. “He was wise to bring his family.”
Barnabas sighed. He leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed his temples as he thought. “And he just thought this was about the Yennai mutiny,” he said quietly. “I got him involved. I didn’t have to.”
“That’s just stupid,” Shinigami snapped with her usual tact. “It was a Jotun Naval captain who died. Why would you not ask the one you knew for information about him? There would be no reason to hold back from doing that.”
Barnabas nodded contemplatively. “I suppose you’re right.” His eyes tracked her as she moved a bishop into the space vacated by her pawn, and he frowned. “It was your pawn on the other side that was out before. I remember because I chose my side for the knight.”
“Damn,” Shinigami muttered. She switched the pieces around.
“I had a serious moment where I regretted the mortal danger a friend was in, and you were cheating at chess.”
“To be fair,” Shinigami said, holding up a finger, “you suggested we play a game of chess, and I think we both knew what that meant.”
Barnabas grinned at her. Their games had abounded with cheating since they first began playing chess together, and it had been the subject of several good-natured “fights.” Gar still refused to be in the room with them while they played.
“In any case...” Barnabas moved his knight toward the center and forward. “It’s beginning to seem as if we all underestimated the lengths the Jotun Senate would go to—which, I have to say, I would not have seen coming. My opinion of them was extraordinarily low.”
“You and me both.” Shinigami’s eyes were wide as she shook her head. “What are they doing that’s worse than selling out their own people to someone like Koel Yennai?”
“Something that involves another government,” Barnabas said softly. “Apparently.” He looked up at her. “And what would that be, do you think? What would Huword have been involved in that touched another government like that?”
Shinigami curled one leg under her and pulled the other knee up under her chin as she thought. The movement reminded Barnabas of Tabitha’s more contemplative side—assuredly, not a side of her anyone saw often.
“What do we know?” Shinigami asked quietly. She wasn’t looking at Barnabas, or at anything. “Huword pretended to be everyone’s friend to get information about them.”
“It may not have started that way,” Barnabas said. “Some people seem to attract confidences. Over time, that familiarity breeds contempt.”
“Why?”
“Honest question?”
“Honest question.” Shinigami shrugged. “I hear a lot of confidences.”
“Ah, I suppose you would as an AI.” Barnabas considered. “I think it may be that over time, the secrets take a toll. One learns
terrible things and starts to believe that everyone they meet is venal, self-absorbed, cruel…” He shrugged. “I saw it often with the other monks and priests. Some had come to believe that there was nothing worth saving in humanity.”
“And you?” Shinigami asked curiously.
“I never inspired many confidences.” Barnabas seemed amused. “I was in the monastery, for one thing, but I was also still struggling to keep myself sane. I hardly seemed like the sort of person who would welcome confessions.”
“Hmm.” Shinigami considered this. “Wait. You don’t seem worried that I might have heard some of your confidences.”
“I don’t have any secrets,” Barnabas said, amusement growing. “I can’t think of anything that’s happened since we started working together that would I would want to be secretive about.”
“You need to live a little.”
“We’re getting off-topic,” he told her, although he was still smiling. “And that was due to baseless speculation on my part about Huword. We don’t know how it started, but we know that at the end he was feeding secrets to the Jotun Senate.”
“And doing something else.” Shinigami swayed from side to side contemplatively as she thought. “What if it has to do with his demotion? Someone found out about what he was doing and demoted him.”
“Why would they also bother killing him?” Barnabas asked quizzically.
“One of two reasons.” Shinigami held up two fingers at once. “First, because they thought demoting him would be enough of a punishment, then they realized they wanted to hurt him more. Second, because they wanted to get him out to the middle of nowhere to kill him.”
Barnabas shook his head, frustrated. Neither of those rang true for him. “What I don’t get is why they're so secretive. Jeltor is right; he should have been told. Whoever in the Navy figured out what Huword was up to you’d think they would have told the others. And this assassination seemed to be carefully planned. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, right?”
“I don’t know. By the way, are we just giving up on chess?”
