At Galactic Central

by Kate MacLeod

Tucker looked like he was about to speak, to offer some service like holding Scout’s dogs while she was occupied, but Scout caught his eye and gave a little shake of her head.

  He scowled at her, then tried a pleading look. She inclined her head towards Malcolm and shook it again, more firmly than before.

  If that didn’t work, he was on his own. He shouldn’t need her to remind him that he had been branded a traitor and should probably make himself scarce until they were out of this.

  They weren’t friends, but they were sort of allies. At least, she wasn’t anxious to see him dead at the bottom of a ravine. Not that she would tell him that.

  “OK, they’re putting us through,” Joelle said, sliding out of her seat and inviting Scout to take her place with a sweeping gesture. Scout unwound the leashes from her hand, flexing the blood flow back to her numb fingers. Joelle stepped closer to take the leashes from her.

  “Good work, whatever you did,” she said almost inaudibly.

  “We’re not out of this yet,” Scout said, sliding into the seat. She didn’t want to add that smashing that gun was easy compared to what she was about to attempt.

  “Scout Shannon,” Mai Tajaki said the moment she and her sister filled the screen.

  “Mai, Jun,” Scout said with a little nod.

  “Our scanners are showing that big gun down there as inactive. Could that possibly be your doing?” she asked with dripping sarcasm.

  “I hit it with a hammer,” Scout said.

  Jun smirked, and the corner of Scout’s mouth curled up just a bit as she caught the silent sister’s eye.

  “That sounds ridiculous,” Mai said dismissively, and her sister scowled at her.

  “It was a very big hammer,” Scout said and traded another grin with Jun.

  What was she doing? Her allies in the Months’ organization were Sparrow’s friends.

  But they were all out of reach now. They might be few, they might even be many, but they were no one Scout knew, and she had no way to get word to them.

  But this thing her gut was doing—telling her that Jun could be an ally—made no sense.

  And yet hadn’t even Mai told her that Jun was fond of her? And she had given Scout her dogs back. Was that for some other reason than kindness, and perhaps mutual respect?

  “I’m not sure why you called me,” Mai said, and Scout turned her attention back to the talking sister. “Destroying that gun didn’t save us from harm; we were never in its range. So we owe you no favors. And from the sounds of it, it will never fire again, so it’s not a threat. Not that it ever was. As I said, we were never in range.”

  “At least I took the possibility of maximum destruction of all parties off the table,” Scout said.

  “Did you?” Mai taunted. “Because I’m still in a position to see all of the satellites that maintain your protective shield go tumbling out of the sky and wipe out every population center on your dust ball of a world. We have so very many of them, we and can aim them so very precisely. Two people meet to shake hands; there’s a satellite ready to take them out.”

  “At your word,” Scout said.

  “At my word,” Mai agreed with a dark smile.

  “Lots of things happen at your say-so, don’t they, Mai?” Scout asked.

  “Don’t use my first name,” Mai said, her eyes suddenly cold and angry.

  “Bo Tajaki thought he was influencing the upper management in the space stations, swaying their decisions the way he thought they should go, but you always had your own agents up there, capable of undermining anything he did that you didn’t like.”

  “Normal Tajaki trade dynasty protocol,” Mai said with a dismissive wave.

  “You’ve bribed all of the governor’s council members,” Scout went on. “They work for you, not for Tony Smith and not for the people of Amatheon.”

  “I’m curious why you’ve called just to tell me things we both know,” Mai said. But she didn’t sound curious at all, let alone suspicious.

  “But it’s true,” Scout said.

  “More or less,” Mai said with a shrug.

  “And the rebels work for you as well,” Scout said. “You’ve been calling the shots for them too.”

  “Who can lead rebels?” Mai said, rolling her eyes. “They’re as biddable as cats.”

  “Normally,” Scout said, glancing over at Joelle, who was leaning with her back to the console just out of frame. Scout tipped her head back ever so slightly and made a questioning look.

  Joelle looked up, pointing with her chin at someone behind Scout but off to one side, also out of frame.

  “Are you alone, Scout?” Mai asked.

  “Of course not,” Scout said. “You know I don’t know the protocols to contact you. I needed help.”

  “You’re with them now,” Mai said, eyes scanning the room behind Scout. Scout doubted she could glean much from a couple of inactive workstations. But maybe she recognized the tech.

  “With the rebels, yes,” Scout said. “The rebels who are under your sway. Because their leader is under your sway.”

  Mai said nothing, just put one immaculate thumbnail against her lips as she waited for Scout to get to the point.

  But Jun was looking very interested indeed.

  “He almost got out of your sway, though, didn’t he?”

  Mai shrugged, still not deigning to speak.

  “You had to send two very reluctant agents down here to get him back on the program. The pharmaceutical program. What do you have him on, anyway?” Scout asked.

  Mai shrugged again. “We have to keep changing his cocktail. He gets to tolerance levels too fast.”

  “But they’re all mood-altering, right?”

  Mai broke out into a wide grin. “Has he been scaring you, Scout? I suppose he would be prone to violent rages. But the main purpose was always to jack up his paranoia. It’s easy to get him to believe anything if he’s paranoid enough.”

  Scout glanced over at Joelle, who had a deeply worried look on her face. Scout couldn’t help herself. She twisted in her seat to get a better look at Malcolm.

  He looked absolutely gobsmacked. Which made no sense to Scout. Had he really had no idea what was happening to him when he took all those drugs? Was he that much out of touch, in denial? Maybe it was a side effect of the drugs, to not notice the effects of the drugs.

  “So that’s probably going to stop now,” Scout said, turning to face the Months once more.

  “Whyever would it stop?” Mai asked with feigned innocence.

  “Now that he knows, he’s not going to keep letting you mess with his brain chemistry,” Scout said.

  A look of confusion washed over Mai’s face, but that quickly turned to rage.

  Jun, on the other hand, looked like she was working hard not to laugh out loud.

  “That changes nothing,” Mai said. “Or maybe it does. Because I’m very eager to drop those satellites now.”

  “But you won’t,” Scout said.

  “Who says I won’t?” Mai said, her voice colder than ever.

  “Shi Jian,” Scout said. “Shi Jian wants Daisy and me, and she wants us alive. And we’re both here, in the path of all those satellites. You can’t drop anything.”

  “You think you’re so hard to catch,” Mai said. “I’ve caught you twice before.”

  “You can try again,” Scout said with what she hoped looked like a carefree shrug. “Or we can do it the easy way.”

  “I don’t do anything the easy way,” Mai snapped. She leaned forward in her chair, fingertip poised over a button Scout was sure would cut the call. She bit her lip, resisting the urge to beg Mai to hear her out.

  If she ended the call, Scout would just have to try again. And again, and again. However many times it took.

  But Mai didn’t quite touch that button. Her sister had a hold of her wrist. Not tightly, not painfully, just a touch to remind her that Jun was there.

  She looked over at Jun, and the two of them shared a silent communion. Sco
ut studied their faces carefully, but she couldn’t glean the slightest microexpression. She had no clue what was passing between them.

  Then Mai sat back with a sigh, and Jun slumped back into her own chair with a satisfied smile.

  “Fine,” Mai said grumpily. “Tell me the easy way.”

  “You have Sparrow,” Scout said.

  “I have more than Sparrow,” Mai said with another evil grin. “I have all your friends. The Malini sisters and the Tonnelier girl, as well as their clever pilot.”

  Scout blinked but steeled herself not to react. “Five friends,” Scout said.

  “Yes, I guess that makes five,” Mai said, looking to Jun, who nodded. “Yes, five.”

  “Five hostages who frankly can’t be of that much value to you.”

  “They’re valuable to you,” Mai said.

  “Indeed,” Scout said and swallowed. She could really use a drink of water. Nervousness and so much talking were making her mouth beyond dry. “I offer an exchange,” Scout said.

  “Five to one isn’t quite equitable,” Mai said.

  “Five to two,” Scout clarified and looked up at Joelle. Joelle nodded and slipped away to open the closet door.

  Scout didn’t turn around in her seat to see Malcolm’s expression when Daisy emerged, but Joelle was throwing a lot of nervous looks his way.

  Daisy leaned over the back of Scout’s chair and waved at the screen.

  “Five to two,” Mai said.

  “Two that Shi Jian wants,” Scout said. “That means something, and you know it does.”

  “Perhaps it’s equitable,” Mai allowed.

  “But there is one more thing,” Scout said.

  “So many demands today,” Mai sighed. “Out with it.”

  “You talk with Malcolm Haley,” Scout said. “Sit down at a table and listen to what he has to say.”

  “And fulfill his every fondest dream?” Mai asked, rolling her eyes.

  “No,” Scout said. “Any of that is out of my hands. Apparently, the art of negotiation is beyond my skill set. All I ask is that you agree to sit down with him. The rest is up to him.”

  Mai sat back in her chair, arms crossed as she thought it over.

  Jun leaned over to speak close to her sister’s ear. The words were inaudible, but as Scout watched, she knew the sounds those lips were forming.

  Shi Jian.

  Mai scowled and glared at her sister, but she sat forward to lean into the screen as aggressively as she could.

  “Fine,” she said. “Noon tomorrow. That open patch of prairie where your galactic marshal friend Liam spirited you away from. Be packed and ready to go. The negotiations will be short.”

  Then the screen was blank.

  Scout turned to face the room. Malcolm had collapsed into a chair, hands pressed over his eyes. Joelle was standing behind him, hands on his shoulders, but lightly, as if she were afraid she’d have to jump away at any moment.

  Tucker was still lingering in the doorway, not quite out of sight.

  And Daisy was looking at Scout with deep sadness.

  “I had to,” Scout said.

  “I know,” Daisy said. “I’m not mad. I’m just afraid.”

  “Of Shi Jian?” Scout asked.

  “No,” Daisy said. “Well, maybe I will be later. But for now, I’m just afraid that Mai Tajaki is so angry at being outmaneuvered by you she’s planning to murder all your friends and exchange their corpses for the two of us.”

  “That won’t happen,” Scout said.

  “How can you be so sure?” Daisy asked.

  “Jun,” Scout said. “Jun would never let her.”

  Then she turned away, dropping down to her knees to let her dogs run to her. Because she wasn’t sure that her faith in Jun wasn’t terribly misplaced, and she didn’t want Daisy to read that on her face.

  But her gut kept telling her. Jun loved her sister because she was family. But she liked Scout on some other level.

  Scout just hoped it was a higher level. In fact, she was banking on it.

  24

  The shuttle they took out to the prairie had been designed for shipping things, not people. The back was all one open space with nowhere to sit but the floor, and even that was treacherous given the pilot’s penchant for sudden turns and the general choppiness of the air over the mountain range.

  Scout had put the dogs back in their crate but was sitting next to them with her fingers through the openings. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel Shadow licking her almost continuously. The calmer Gert would occasionally lick at one of her other fingers as if wondering what Shadow found so fascinating.

  Scout grabbed for the little notch in the floor next to her hip as the shuttle dropped like a rock for several seconds before emerging from the air pocket. The notch was designed to tie off cargo, but she could just get her fingers around it to hold herself still.

  “It would be smoother if we went straight up out of atmosphere and came down over the prairie,” Daisy said.

  “In my experience, none of our pilots are open to suggestions from the cargo,” Joelle told her. “And that’s what we are to them: cargo.” Her wrist communicator beeped. Not an incoming call; a reminder.

  Daisy reached into the bag she was wearing across her body and handed Joelle a syringe. They were both holding onto straps that hung from the ceiling, but Joelle had to let go of hers to make the walk to the cockpit.

  “Hey, Dad,” she said, leaning over her father in the copilot’s seat. “It’s time for your dose.”

  “I don’t need it,” Malcolm said grumpily.

  “Dad, we talked about this,” Joelle said. “It’s important to taper, not quit all at once. This is better for you in the long run, I promise.”

  Malcolm grumbled something unintelligible but rolled up his sleeve so that Joelle could inject the contents of the syringe into his biceps.

  Scout didn’t know exactly what had happened to Mitch and Kira. She just hoped they were in a cell somewhere and not at the bottom of Malcolm’s oft-mentioned ravine.

  But she was afraid to ask.

  The flight became smoother when the mountains gave way to hills. She could feel the pilot banking and slowing the vessel until they landed. The ramp behind Scout began to lower, and she spun around to see the familiar bright bands of color that marked this particular canyon as unique on her world.

  A dark silhouette of a man was waiting, a hand shading his eyes from the midday sun. The ramp settled onto the ground, sending sand and dust scurrying away in little whirlwinds. The man walked halfway up the ramp, then stopped.

  Scout looked over her shoulder at Malcolm, who had risen to his feet. He was twisting his hands together, but in the end, he spoke first.

  “Arvid.”

  “Malcolm,” Arvid said, taking another step closer until he was fully in the shade of the ship and Scout could see him clearly. Bente’s uncle, once Malcolm’s right-hand man.

  “I’m sorry,” Malcolm said, raising his chin as if expecting a blow. “You were right. I was wrong.”

  Arvid took a moment to digest this, then just nodded. “I have four ready to go.”

  “Good,” Malcolm said with a relieved smile. “Bring them aboard, and we’ll get going. It’s just a little hop away from here.”

  Arvid nodded again and leaned back out of the ship to wave for others to follow him.

  Scout had been wondering why Malcolm had insisted on only his daughter and the pilot accompanying him and Scout and Daisy to the meet point. She hadn’t known they were stopping to pick up Arvid.

  Malcolm must be worried that Mitch and Kira had turned people at the main compound against him. He wanted people he could trust.

  He was starting to make sensible decisions again. Even if his hands were always shaking when he wasn’t twisting them together, clenching them against each other tightly.

  Arvid came all the way up into the shuttle, two men and two women trailing up behind him. Scout had never seen them before
. Despite the guns they cradled in their arms, they didn’t look like mercenaries or soldiers. They looked like farmers about to hunt something down to put in the stewpot.

  Once they were on board, the ramp closed up, and the shuttle lifted back up into the air but set down again a few short minutes later.

  Scout tried not to dwell on how long it had taken her to walk the distance that first time, with Gert on her back and Shadow in her arms.

  It was just as well Tucker wasn’t there. She hadn’t yet taken him to task for thinking he knew the proper dosage to knock out her dogs. They had nearly died from what he had shot them with. Being back near where she had all but collapsed under the weight of her dogs brought all that anger back, but she swallowed it down. She had other things to focus on than Tucker.

  The shuttle settled down in the tall grass, and the ramp lowered once more. Arvid and his people went out first, forming a tight perimeter around the ship and working their way out, flattening the grass as they went.

  Scout opened up the crate and unclipped the leashes from the dogs’ collars.

  They were nervous at first. Gert came out, but only so far as to stand pressed up against Scout’s side. Shadow preferred the interior of the crate.

  Then a puff of breeze blew up the ramp, carrying with it the dusty smell of dried grass in desperate need of rain. Shadow followed the smell out of the crate, sniffing madly with each step. Then Gert started to sniff too.

  “Go on,” Scout said when they looked back at her from the bottom of the ramp. “Have a run.”

  Gert wagged her tail, but Shadow was already off like a shot, chasing something that had been hiding in the flattened grass. Gert tore off after him.

  “They remember home,” Daisy said.

  “Indeed they do,” Scout said, enjoying lungfuls of the familiar scents herself. “Not much rain lately, I take it.”

  Daisy smiled. “I might have enhanced senses, but I’m really still a city girl. I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Here they come,” Joelle said, pointing into the sky.

  There was a glimmer of light that started to streak like a shooting star, and Scout felt a momentary rush of fear. What if they had changed their minds? What if they had put Daisy and Scout in a specific location only to drop one of the satellites on them? They were much more likely to be killed out here on the prairie than under meters of bedrock in the mountain compound.