Shockwave

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Multiple times.”

  “Technically, I believe that was all part of one mission, the crushers being programmed to assassinate me. And keep coming after me until they succeeded.”

  “Lovely.”

  “I’m assuming at this point that it’s not the government. The king shouldn’t have any reason to hate me. He never came to our research lab. I doubt he even knows that I exist.”

  “There are numerous arms and factions within the government.”

  “True.”

  “And King Jager’s focus is reputed to be outward now, not inward.”

  Casmir nodded. Maybe he shouldn’t rule out anyone yet.

  Kim looked out the porthole to the black blanket filled with stars, the white dots far brighter and crisper than they were when filtered through Odin’s atmosphere. “Have you talked to the captain about our destination? We passed Odin’s moon and orbital stations the first day.”

  Casmir hated to admit that, until today, his stomach had kept him in his bunk and disinterested in caring what their destination was. He’d managed his net searches in between bouts of nausea and vertigo. Kim knew most of his weaknesses, so it wasn’t like it mattered, but he hated to remind her of them. He hated to remind himself.

  “I haven’t. I was just so glad to get away…” His eye blinked a few times of its own accord. “I’ll talk to her soon. She’s feeding us, or allowing us access to the boxed rations, so I don’t think she means to kill us, but we shouldn’t trust her blindly.”

  “Clearly, you haven’t tried the coffee bulbs.” Kim gave him a baleful look. Most of the time, her face was impassive, but substandard caffeine options brought out her vitriolic side.

  “My stomach hasn’t been requesting acidic beverages.”

  “There are twenty-seven ingredients in the coffee-and-cream bulb. The shelf-life is fifty years. I don’t think radiation is the reason why people get cancer out here.”

  “Maybe you can create a nice intestinal bacteria to help digest strange preservatives.”

  Kim lowered her sword and stepped closer to him. Fortunately, not to thwack him again. She glanced toward the ceiling. Had she spotted cameras up there?

  “Will you talk to her? You know I’m not any good at…” She spread her fingers and shrugged.

  “People?”

  Her eyelids drooped. “I was looking for a word that conveyed my inability to grasp when individuals are lying to me. And also that I struggle to persuade them to tell me things.”

  “I think I got the right word.” He grinned.

  “Fine, fine. But if she’s heading for the gate to take us to another system, I want to know about it. So we can figure out a way to stop her. If she doesn’t get rid of us soon, it’s going to be obvious she has some profit motive for keeping us. Otherwise, why wouldn’t she have dropped us off at the moon base?”

  “I don’t know, but if that’s not her destination, it would have taken her hours to land and take off again. And that ship was following us.” He realized he didn’t know if that was still true. He did need to talk to the captain.

  “Maybe, but, Casmir, I refuse to be kidnapped. I’m not going to just disappear from my work and my life for months.” Kim stabbed agitatedly at the air with her sword.

  The hatch opened, and Casmir whirled, worried Lopez had been listening in and wasn’t pleased about what she’d heard. Normally, he wouldn’t be that concerned about his safety on a ship run by two women, but he’d watched the footage of Qin wrestling with that crusher. No normal human being of either sex would have been able to hold out that long against the powerful robot.

  It was Qin, not Lopez, who stepped inside and looked curiously at them. Her face was mostly human, and elegantly human at that, but the pointed ears that perked out of her black hair were definitely not human.

  She didn’t come farther into the cabin, pausing with… uncertainty?

  Casmir, afraid he’d been staring, smiled and gave her a cheerful, “Hello, ma’am. Have you come to tell us where we’re going?”

  “Ma’am?” She appeared bemused at the address.

  Casmir wondered how old she was.

  “You can call me Liangyu. Or Qin. That seems easier for everyone.”

  “Qin is your surname, right?” Kim asked, then, when Qin nodded, asked a few words in one of the old Earth languages. Chinese?

  Qin shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know any other languages except System Trade. I was born in a lab and don’t have any parents, any culture, anything but my name to suggest what all was spliced together to create me. I think the geneticist mostly looked in the fridge and pulled out all of his leftovers.”

  Casmir stared at her. “That’s… a joke?”

  “Uhm, sort of.”

  “Sorry, I don’t know much about genetic engineering.”

  “I wish I didn’t,” Qin said softly.

  “You probably know it’s one of a handful of sciences that the Kingdom forbids. We’re supposed to be humanity’s seed bank. Tamper-free. They don’t even gene-clean newborns with issues.” His eye blinked, and he sighed at his body’s willingness to demonstrate his genetic eccentricities.

  Kim nudged him in the back. “If you do end up hiding out in another system, that might be a good time for you to see what can be done to you as an adult.”

  “Yeah,” Casmir said noncommittally.

  If he’d wanted that badly enough, he could have set aside the time and money to make a trip to an off-world hospital at some point, but he feared that any surgeries would come with side effects or that things would end up worse, that his brain wouldn’t be able to adjust its circuits after thirty-odd years of operating one way. And, as always, he feared hospitals, of something going horribly wrong, or of them finding some worse malady lurking in his blood.

  “Might be better for you than the brain surgery,” Kim murmured.

  “Yeah,” Casmir repeated, not without a shudder.

  His doctor had once suggested an operation to install a responsive neurostimulation device to stop his seizures, but that would have involved opening up his skull.

  Qin tilted her head, probably hearing every murmured word with those unique ears. “Would you be permitted to return to Odin if your genes were altered? We were scanned to ensure we did not bring produce with viable seeds to your world.” She smiled. “The captain was worried about the wea— about something else being discovered in the scan, but your customs officers only cared about seeds.”

  “People are permitted to leave and have medical issues addressed,” Casmir said, “so long as it’s not done in such a way that genetic changes will be passed on to your offspring.”

  “Because it would be horrible if you had children born without defects,” Kim said dryly.

  “You should be happy they let you do the work they do,” Casmir told her. “I’ve never quite understood why it’s acceptable to tinker with bacteria but not with food or human or animal embryos.”

  “Because the king wants those radiation-eating bacteria perfected for our cancer-prone, space-faring military officers.”

  “Do you know any knights?” Qin asked.

  Casmir tried to tie that into their previous conversation but decided there was no tie. Maybe she had grown bored of talk of genes.

  “I’ve met a few in passing.” Casmir tried not to think about Sir Friedrich.

  Kim shook her head.

  “That’s disappointing,” Qin said. “I was hoping—well, I thought they might be all over on Odin. We didn’t get much time to stay.”

  “They’re not all over. With few exceptions, you have to be of noble blood to become a knight, and even then, there’s an extensive training program that has a high dropout rate. The Kingdom Guard and municipal police handle most crime on the planet.”

  “Oh.” She seemed disappointed.

  “Qin, do you know where we’re going?” Casmir asked. “The captain didn’t tell me.”

  “You’ve been in your cabin the whole trip.�
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  “My horizontal position didn’t make me less curious about where we’re going.”

  “Forseti Station,” Qin said with a shrug, as if there was no reason to lie or for him not to know.

  Casmir found that reassuring. Kim’s talk of kidnapping and profit motives had made him uneasy.

  He hoped he would have better luck with his research on a big hub like Forseti. If he still couldn’t find anything on the net, maybe he could hire a private investigator. How much did that cost? Maybe Kim had researched it for one of her novels and knew.

  Lopez jumped through the open hatch. “Qin, we’re going to have company. Help me make sure everything vital is hidden. We’re going to push out some of our supplies in the hope that they’ll believe that’s all we’re carrying.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Qin said, as Casmir blurted, “Company? What kind of company?”

  “The kind that’s been following us since the launch loop on Odin.” Lopez pinned him with an accusing stare.

  Casmir gripped the bar of the fold-out treadmill.

  “You think they’re coming for your cargo?” he asked, though that stare suggested she thought he was the cause of the trouble again.

  Was he? If those two crushers had survived their drop into the ocean and made it to shore, they could have taken a ship. Or they could have uploaded the details of their chase to someone’s server. They’d seen which ship Casmir had gotten on, so if they knew where the Stellar Dragon was, they knew where he was. Now, he wished he had asked Lopez to drop them off after the skirmish, so he could have found passage on another ship, but his finances wouldn’t have allowed for that, even if she’d agreed. He’d given all the gold he had to her.

  “It’s possible,” Lopez said, “but I think it’s more possible they’re after you.”

  “Oh.” Casmir decided it would be unmanly to hide from her wrath behind one of the pods.

  “You can’t outrun them?” Kim asked.

  “No. Trust me, I’ve tried. Whatever’s driving that ship—it’s a new dolphin-class dreadnought out of Yug Daegu Shipyard—it’s got more power than we do. They matched our acceleration the first day, and they’ve been creeping closer ever since.”

  Kim looked at Casmir, maybe thinking what he was, that it would have been nice if Lopez had updated them earlier.

  “The Stellar Dragon has a railgun we can take potshots at them with, but in the end, we’re just a freighter. They have a lot more weapons. I’d rather not get blown to pieces over this.”

  Over him. She didn’t say it, but that cool stare was leveled Casmir’s way again.

  He dropped his gaze to the deck, not surprised that she was displeased. He had asked for passage without giving her any indication that someone was pursuing him. That had been rude and disingenuous. It hadn’t occurred to him at the time that he was being duplicitous; he’d just believed he had escaped the crushers and would be able to get away before they caught up again.

  “You two better finding a hiding spot,” Lopez said.

  Qin had already disappeared. Lopez ducked into the corridor and headed for the cargo hold.

  “At least it doesn’t sound like she intends to turn us over to that ship.” Casmir wondered if crushers were piloting it, or if he would finally get a chance to talk to human beings, human beings who might be schmoozed into explaining why they were after him.

  “I doubt she’d tell us if she did.” Kim pushed the exercise equipment back into the wall and closed the cabinet door.

  “I better talk to them.” Casmir headed for the hatch.

  “To who? Qin and the captain?”

  “No, whoever’s following us.”

  “That’s not how you hide, Casmir.”

  “I could interface my chip with the ship’s communications computer so I could talk to them from under my bunk, but I’m not sure that would be more effective.”

  Kim gave him a disgusted look, but she followed him to navigation.

  It was empty. Clangs and thumps echoed up from the bottom level of the ship as Qin and Lopez moved things around in the cargo hold. A rear camera showed a black pyramid-shaped cruiser coming up behind them, the tip ready to ram them in the backside. Or more likely, the ship would come alongside them for a forced boarding. Casmir’s mind boggled at the idea of doing that at the speed the ships were going, but he’d seen it in news vids before. The computer systems for coordinating airlock attachments had to be extremely sophisticated.

  He looked for the comm panel among equipment that hadn’t been built to Kingdom standards and was labeled in a language he didn’t recognize. No doubt, it belonged to whatever culture had thought building a sauna and a salt-crystal room in the ship’s lavatory was a normal thing.

  He poked a couple of buttons under the universal symbol for network-to-network contact.

  “Maybe you should ask the captain before comming them,” Kim said. “Or randomly pushing buttons on her console.”

  “Always a wise idea,” a bland voice said.

  Casmir whirled, thinking some new crew member had appeared behind them, but the words had come from a speaker.

  “As the operating system, automatic pilot, and resident wit for the Stellar Dragon,” the voice said, “I’m afraid I can’t let you tinker or comm other ships without Bonita’s permission.”

  “Bonita?” Casmir mouthed.

  “I like Laser better,” Kim said.

  “Thanks so much for sharing my name with strangers, Viggo,” Lopez said, stepping into navigation and frowning at Kim and Casmir. The pistol that usually hung in her holster was in her hand. “What are you two doing up here? I believe I said hide, not take over the ship.”

  Casmir lifted his hands. “That wasn’t our intent. We want to talk to the people on the other ship.”

  “We?” Kim also lifted her hands, but her frown was for him, not Lopez.

  “I,” Casmir corrected. “I, I, I. If it’s I—me that they want, I’m going to let them know they can have me. I don’t want you or Qin to get into any more trouble on my account, Captain.”

  “Noble,” Lopez said sarcastically. “But I’ve already tried comming them. I’ve tried numerous times in the last three days. They’re not answering.”

  “If they’re looking for me, maybe they would answer me.”

  Lopez waved her pistol at the comm panel. “If you want to see if you’re special, go right ahead.”

  She didn’t holster her weapon, but Casmir felt more comfortable when it was pointed at the deck instead of his chest.

  “Comm them, Viggo.”

  “Certainly, Captain.” After a few seconds, the computer added, “I’m attempting to get through now. If you wish to send a message, you may do so.”

  Lopez eyed Casmir, and he nodded and said, “This is Casmir Dabrowski. If you’re looking for me, I’m prepared to turn myself over without a fight if you leave this ship alone.”

  Silence stretched. Lopez yawned and used the tip of her pistol barrel to scratch the side of her head. A few more clangs drifted up from the levels below. How much illicit cargo was there for Qin to move around?

  “Are you sure they’re after me?” Casmir asked Lopez.

  “No, but they’ve had a long flight just to retrieve fifty thousand Union dollars in weapons if that’s what they want.”

  “You think I’m more valuable than fifty thousand Union dollars? I’m flattered. If I’m doing the exchange calculation correctly, it takes me almost a year to earn that much at home.”

  “I don’t know what you’re worth, kid. We might be about to find out.”

  Casmir, who hadn’t been called kid in years, eyed the hulking pyramid ship. He got more of a feel for its size as it came alongside the Dragon.

  It was easily ten times larger than the freighter, so he was surprised it had fit on the Odin launch loop. Four humongous thrusters jutted out of the back end. He would have guessed the ship could reach orbital escape velocity without the assistance of the loop, but maybe they’d wanted
to save their fuel. Or maybe they’d wanted to stay close to him.

  “They are preparing to extend docking clamps and an airlock tube, Captain,” Viggo said. “Do you wish to cooperate or shall I object to their familiarity?”

  “I’d love to object, but look at the guns on that thing. And those are missile launchers. They’ve probably got nukes nestled up in there.” Lopez shook her head. “I’m going to head to the airlock and greet them. Politely. You never know. They may be interested in buying some weapons and willing to pay more than Diego.”

  “Given their size and rude silence thus far,” Viggo said, “it seems unlikely that they would be willing to pay for anything that they can take.”

  “They can try.” Lopez stuffed her pistol in its holster and strode out of navigation.

  Casmir started after her, but Kim stopped him with a hand.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “With her. I’ll stand next to her and give myself up if I’m what they want. But you should hide up here somewhere. Nobody should want you.”

  “Thanks so much.”

  “You know what I mean.” Casmir looked at the massive ship on the display. “But do me a favor, will you? Look up the schematics for that ship. If we can get the layout, maybe we can do something.”

  “Like what?”

  Casmir picked up a cleaning robot that was circling the pods. Suction treads on the bottom of its frame accounted for its ability to climb walls and maneuver across the ceiling.

  “I’m not sure yet. But keep this for me, please.” He handed the robot to Kim and jogged after Lopez.

  “If you want souvenirs, I’m sure the Forseti Station gift shop has something less dented,” Kim called after him.

  “I’m not positive we’ll ever make it there.”

  “Wonderful.”

  8

  Bonita stood next to the airlock hatch, her arms folded over her chest and her pistol in a holster on her belt. Qin was hiding, the cargo was hiding, and if the two nuisances she’d picked up on Odin were smart, they were hiding too. Qin wouldn’t stay hidden if there was a fight, but Bonita would prefer to have her as a secret weapon rather than starting the game with that card face-up.