STAR KINGDOM OMNIBUS

BOOKS 1-3

LINDSAY BUROKER

Copyright © 2019 by Lindsay Buroker

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Shockwave

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Ship of Ruin

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Hero Code

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

FOREWORD

Eight years ago, when I first started publishing my writing, it was all fantasy all the time. As someone with a degree in Culture, Literature, and Arts, I was leery about venturing into science fiction and “getting it wrong.” I still worry about that, to be honest, even though I’ve since written my Fallen Empire series and some shorter space-opera adventures.

But it’s a genre I’ve always loved, especially as a kid devouring Star Trek reruns and watching the original Star Wars trilogy over and over and over. (This delighted my parents, since we only had one TV in the house at the time, and it was front-and-center in the living room.)

I’m delighted to be back in outer space with this new series, Star Kingdom. I’ve been jokingly calling it Big Bang Theory meets Star Wars. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but it is a chance for some smart, geeky heroes to shine. (Because, as we all know, Mr. Spock was way cooler than Captain Kirk in the original Trek.) I hope you have fun with the new crew and enjoy their adventures.

Before you jump in, please let me thank those who’ve helped me put this book together: my first readers, Rue Silver, Sarah Engelke, and Cindy Wilkinson, and my editor, Shelley Holloway. Also, thank you to Jeff Brown for illustrating the covers for this series.

Now, let the adventure begin…

SHOCKWAVE

PROLOGUE

“When can I eat normal food again?”

“Normal?” Dr. Yas Peshlakai looked toward the vat lamb and rice dish on the bedside table. It was bland, as he’d ordered, but ought to pass for normal on Tiamat Station.

“Yes.” President Sophia Bakas smiled and folded her hands atop the blanket, the silver light of a faux moon streaming in the window and highlighting a surprisingly girlish expression on her timeworn face. “Deep-fried, ice-creamed, and alcohol-filled.”

“Ah. Normal food. Well, I’m not your regular doctor, Madam President, but I recommend you give your liver time to recover from the poison before consuming more. You do have two years left to serve, and the station inhabitants are quite fond of you.”

“Yes, and it is good to be liked. By most people.” Her long fingers curled into the blanket, tendons standing out under her papery skin.

“Star Kingdom zealots aren’t people.”

“My charming young intelligence officers tell me the poisoners were loyal station citizens, irritated that the vote went against them. It seems they hoped to rush along my passing so the more Kingdom-friendly Vice President Martinez would be in charge.” Bakas shuddered, her narrow shoulders hunching. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to live under that backward rule again. Under their draconian laws, half the people here wouldn’t be allowed to breathe the air there. They don’t allow genetic engineering on human beings, not even to cure diseases. They don’t even allow modifications to their plants or food. And their backward stances on marriage and relationships.” Bakas shuddered again, perhaps thinking of her two wives.

“I gather it’s the other half of the people who are a problem.”

“I’m glad you’re not one of those zealots. And that you were able to identify the poison.” President Bakas grasped his hand. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“It was a simple matter, as I knew it would be as soon as I heard the symptoms. During my years at the university, I took several toxicology classes, and for one, I wrote a paper on the ongoing alterations to the archexia family of plants to create potent hallucinogens as well as more deadly substances. It was published in Galactic Plantae, a prestigious peer-reviewed journal in the field. I understand professors at several universities throughout the system are now teaching from that article. It’s shameful that so few doctors are familiar with the less well-known uses for the plants. Your personal physician should have…” Yas made himself close his mouth and shrug. It wasn’t his place to denigrate others. Not everybody had been granted the educational opportunities he had, though it was difficult to fathom that anyone but the best would have been selected to work for the president.

“You’re a touch arrogant for someone so young, aren’t you?” Bakas smiled.

“I’m thirty-five, ma’am.”

He had been a surgeon as well as a toxicology consultant for nearly ten years. The latter was an interest he kept up with, not his main profession, but it pleased him that the station hospitals often sought his advice on tough cases.

“That makes you a mere child, good doctor.”

Since she was approaching a hundred and fifty, he couldn’t argue with her perspective on age. But the rest?

“I merely state the facts, Madam President. I do not, as arrogance would imply, exaggerate my own worth or importance.”

She arched her eyebrows.

“A former girlfriend called me lovably pompous,” he conceded.

“Former? Perhaps your pomposity wasn’t so lovable after all.” Her smile turned into a yawn.

“You should rest, Madam President.”

Yas drew her curtains, eyeing the bright full moon hanging in the starry sky, all of it a technological illusion to hide that the only thing above them was the other side of their habitat. If one hadn’t been to a real planet, one might believe the station was a natural place, with parks and cities and lakes, birds and insects and animals. One might forget that it was a giant cylinder spinning inside a hollowed-out asteroid in System Hydra’s Beta Belt, miles of stone protecting its inhabitants from the sun’s radiation.

“I’ll rest a bit,” Bakas said with another yawn.

Yas made sure she had water, then dimmed the lights as he stepped out of her bedroom. Two presidential bodyguards were posted to either side of the door, and he nodded to them as he passed.

“She’s fine,” he said.

They nodded back.

They had no reason to question him. Yas’s prominent family was known and trusted on the station, and his father had donated to the president’s election campaign. Yas had grown up here, leaving only for a few volunteer medical missions to other parts of the system where people dealt with the vagaries of living on planets and moons.

He passed unbothered through corridors and down lift tubes, his white jacket and white bag with its symbolic red blood droplet on the side identifying him as a doctor. He’d entered the presidential residence through the servants’ entrance and started to depart that way but paused to watch the huge screens in their break room showing the last few points of a zero-g squash game.

Superhumanly agile bodies contorted into impossible positions as the two contestants flung themselves around the enclosed court, ricocheting off the walls almost as fast as the ball. Yas knew the game well, and had played it all the way through school, but he had given up an opportunity to compete on the professional circuit to become a doctor. To become everything his parents had always expected him to be—which didn’t involve bouncing off the walls of a sports court. He didn’t regret channeling his energy into his career, but there were times when he missed the game, the sheer joy of unbridled athletic exertion.

The famous Donahue Dorg scored the final point, and the vid feed cut to a crowd cheering while imbibing beer and the potent sunflower-seed alcohol the station was known for.

Yas waved to the staff still watching—none of them noticed him taking his leave—and headed out the back door. As he stepped into the alley behind the residence, the street lights reflecting softly off the recycled carbon-fiber pavement, four uniformed figures strode out of the shadows to one side. Station Civil Security.

“There he is, right there.”

“Get him!”

Yas looked down the alley in the other direction, certain they meant someone else. But the big men stared right at him as they broke into a run.

“I’m Dr. Yas Peshlakai.” He raised his hands.

A sergeant grabbed his wrist, and meaty fingers bit into his shoulder. “We know who you are. What you just did.”

“You’re going to cuff him, Sergeant? He killed the president. He deserves…” A corporal pointed a DEW-Tek 900 pistol at Yas’s temple.

Yas almost dropped his medical kit.

“Killed?” He gaped at the glaring men now surrounding him. “I was just up in her room. She’s fine. She’s recovering well. She wants ice cream.”

“When Garon walked in, she was dead. You were the last one in there with her, the only one with a bag full of medical poison.” The sergeant with the death grip on his shoulder reached for the flex-cuffs on his utility belt.

“No trial for him, Sarge,” the corporal with the pistol said, his eyes full of rage. “Let’s say he ran, and we had to take care of him, of the Kingdom sympathizer. He’s a Kingdom assassin. He deserves death, not to weasel out of everything with some high-priced lawyer.”

“No lawyer for the assassin,” another corporal growled and slapped Yas’s medical kit away.

It clattered to the pavement, tipped open on its side, and spilled its contents everywhere. A jet injector bounced up and hissed as it struck the sergeant’s leg.

He yelped, his grip on Yas’s shoulder loosening.

Yas doubted anything had pierced the man’s skin, but he took advantage and broke free from his captor. He glimpsed the corporal’s grip tightening on the pistol and ducked. A red bolt of energy seared a chunk of hair from Yas’s scalp and slammed into the wall behind him.

He stumbled, bumped the other corporal, and shouted, “Watch out for the bag. The poison is gaseous.”

As the four men’s gazes lurched to the innocuous medical kit, Yas sprinted away from them. It was probably the worst thing he could have said, an implication that he was guilty, but it took them a few seconds to recover and give chase.

He lunged around a corner and down a main street away from the residence, sprinting past delivery robots and electric auto-trucks zipping along the center rail. There was nothing to hide behind alongside the thoroughfare, no crates or barrels, no parked vehicles.

Yas pumped his legs. Where could he go? Not home. They would be waiting. To the Civil Security station to talk to someone sane? Someone who grasped that suspects weren’t executed on Tiamat, especially not before they’d had a trial?

The security men burst onto the street behind him. Knowing he was in their sights, Yas sprinted for another alley. Something slammed into the back of his knee, and pain roared up his leg.

He grabbed a wall, just keeping from pitching to the ground. More weapons fired with soft buzzes as the energy bolts lanced down the street. Yas lunged into the alley, his leg almost buckling every time he tried to put weight on it. He kept running, but his gait was lopsided, agonized. They would catch him soon.

Or they would shoot him soon.

A drone whizzed past, its camera recording him. There was nowhere to go on the station, nowhere to hide. He was miles from the docks and a ship, even if he could somehow slip past port security and stow away on an outgoing vessel.

Gritting his teeth, Yas stumbled out of the alley next to a café, outdoor tables dotting the sidewalk. A scattering of people sat in the chairs, their faces turning curiously toward him. He meant to run past them and into the café to hide, but he twisted his injured knee and tumbled to the pavement. A fresh wave of pain shot up his leg, and tears sprang to his eyes.

“There he is!” one of his pursuers cried from the alley.

Yas rolled to the side an instant before a red energy bolt skimmed past, slamming into the side of a store across the street.

Panting, he rolled again, angling toward the tables and hoping to get out of the line of sight. He bumped into a chair and tried to rise, to scramble farther away, but his leg wouldn’t support him. It only sent more agony blasting through his body.

Yas raised his hands and flopped onto his back. If he appeared helpless and surrendered, maybe they wouldn’t kill him. Maybe they would follow proper procedure and arrest him for a trial. This was insane.

As soon as the shooting had started, most of the people sitting outside the café had lunged for the door or run off down the street. But a dark-skinned woman with short black hair peered calmly down from the table right above him, one of her eyes glinting unnaturally in the lights shining through the window. A coffee cup hung poised in her gloved hand.

“Is this because we didn’t tip?” She tilted her head toward Yas and quirked an eyebrow toward the man sitting opposite her at the table.

Yas assumed it was a man. He wore a cloak with a hood pulled up and some kind of mask on his face. A DEK-Tek pistol and a double-barreled SK-Ram hung in holsters from his belt.

Yas’s fingers twitched. He could have reached for the Ram. But it was a weapon of deadly force, and he couldn’t shoot to kill, not even to save himself.

But as footsteps thundered in the alley, a squeak of “Help?” escaped his lips before Yas could debate the wisdom of the request.

“Dr. Yas Peshlakai,” the man said dispassionately, as if he were reading the name off a report. He had probably already run a quick facial identification search, the results scrolling down his contact display or whatever networked implants existed behind that hood. “A renowned surgeon and toxicology expert. Huh.”

“And not a criminal.” Yas feared the news bots were already circulating the false story.

The speaker gazed down at him, his features, his thoughts, hidden behind that mask.

The security men jogged into view, slowing as they saw Yas so close to two other people. Yas prayed they were done flinging weapons fire wantonly around, but as they stalked closer, fury in their eyes, he knew they were only getting close enough to ensure they couldn’t miss. There were three of them. There was no sign of the one sane man, the sergeant who’d only wanted to arrest him.

“You’ll serve me for five years if I save your life,” the masked man said calmly, as if Yas wasn’t a second from being shot, as if his blood wasn’t staining the pavement under the table.

“Yes,” Yas blurted in agreement, even though it had been a statement, rather than a question.

“Excellent.”

The masked man sprang from the table and charged the security officers with the speed of a bullet. His opponents fired at him, but he somehow anticipated the shots in time to fling himself into an agile roll across the pavement, one that brought him up between the men. They tried to fan out, to find spots where they could shoot him without endangering their comrades, but he blurred around them, movements too fast to track without augmented eyes. Yas gaped as one man flew into a wall, his head striking hard enough to knock him senseless.

Someone fired wildly, and a red bolt burned through the base of a nearby table, hurling the top into the air. It landed with a resounding clatter on the pavement.

A hand grabbed Yas’s shoulder. The woman.

She pulled him to his feet with a grip hard enough to hurt. His leg threatened to give way again, but she supported him, tugging him away from the melee, from the pounding of fists and cries of pain. Yas pressed his back to the wall, gasping for air and for the strength to keep his legs under him.

“Who—” Yas started to ask, but three precise shots boomed, echoing from the walls of the now-empty street. The SK-Ram, firing bullets instead of directed energy bolts.

They had an alarming finality, and all sounds of the battle ended. The masked man walked around the corner, his cloak flapping around his ankles as he holstered the Ram.

“Come, Doctor.” He extended a hand toward the street. “I have a ship with a sickbay in need of a surgeon.”

“What ship?” Yas asked as the woman and the man gripped him by either arm, lifting him into the air as they walked at his side, his feet dangling an inch above the ground, his injured leg leaving a trail of blood. “Who are you?”

“The Fedallah,” the man said. “Tenebris Rache.”

If Yas had been walking, his legs would have given out again.

Captain Tenebris Rache was the most notorious pirate in the Twelve Systems. And Yas had just sworn to serve him.

1

“Fly, little birdie, fly,” Professor Casmir Dabrowski whispered.

He stepped back with his kludgy remote control, promising to build something better once his prototype proved successful. He tapped a button, and the robot bird sprang off his desk, delicate wings flapping furiously as it attempted to fly.

Casmir bit his lip. Would it work this time?

The bird dipped below the level of the desk, and he winced, certain it would crash. But its self-learning neuromorphic chip compensated quickly. The bird tilted slightly and adjusted its wingbeats, then slowly gained altitude.

Casmir’s wince turned into a grin as it sailed toward the ceiling of his lab, swooping left and right like a songbird seeking seeds. Its flight was so natural, it made his heart ache.

It—no, she, definitely she—was beautiful. He couldn’t wait to show her off. Maybe the media, not just the university presses, would write up the project. The news would travel through the gate network, and roboticists throughout the Twelve Systems would see his work and realize his home world of Odin wasn’t backward, at least not in this field. No government policies held back these scientific developments.

“That’s what you’re working on now?” a familiar voice asked from the hallway. A few passing university students peered through the door around the man. “You don’t find that underwhelming after three years at the Kingdom’s top military research and development lab?”

Hearing the disdain from one of his former instructors made Casmir want to snatch the bird out of the air and hide it in a desk drawer. He told himself there was nothing demeaning about his project, but he couldn’t keep his cheeks from warming.

“Actually, Professor Huang—” Casmir hoped his voice came out casual and self-confident, even while wondering what it would be like to actually feel self-confident, “—I find it morally refreshing after three years at the Kingdom’s top military research and development lab.” He tapped the remote to command the robot to find a perch. “I never entirely trusted King Jager’s promise that my work would only be used to defend Odin and not to mow down enemies in other systems.”

Technically untrue. It had taken a while for his trust to falter, for him to realize Jager wanted more than to avoid the assassination plot that had taken down his father. The king had ambitions.

“I’m sure he’s not going to do that with your combat robots.” Huang walked into the room, his cane clacking on the tile floor. He was known to twirl it like a pirate’s rapier, prodding students who fell asleep in class. “He’ll use them to make sure Odin, bless our beautiful world, is never conquered by foreigners.”

“So I was told when I started working there. But you hear the same news I do. You know the pushes Jager is making, the sympathizers his agents are cultivating in other systems.”

“I do my best to ignore the news, in truth. Better for the sanity.”

When the bird alighted on the desk again, Huang bent to peer at it through his glasses. He murmured something, and the light of a tiny display flashed in one of the lenses. Showing magnification? Or some more in-depth analysis?

At the same time as he’d had the childhood eye surgery that had failed to fix his strabismus, Casmir had received a neural-interactive chip and contacts with an interface. A lot of the older staff preferred the removable voice-activated lenses to newer technologies.

“This is just a hobby.” Casmir shrugged, as if the project didn’t mean as much as it did. “My team is working on self-aware medical androids to be deployed to remote habitats and scientific outposts where there aren’t human doctors. This girl—” Casmir gently touched the smooth head of his bird, “—Chaz, Simon, Asahi, and I are going to enter in a realistic-flight competition. Humans have been making drones for ages, but we’ve yet to create a robot that can truly emulate a bird’s flight.”

“Because there’s not much need, eh?” Huang straightened and adjusted his glasses.

“I suppose not the need that there is for military robots, but maybe that says something distressing about our society.”

“War and battling over differences has been the human norm since we first discovered fire back on Earth. Or so the history books tell us.” Huang smiled and wavered his hand in acknowledgment of how much information had been lost between the time the original colony ships had left Earth, arrived in the Twelve Systems, and clawed their way back to a spacefaring level. “I’ll admit it is impressive that you got Simon and Asahi to work together. I thought they were mortal enemies.”

“They are, but Simon is a stellar programmer, and Asahi is a wiring genius.”

“Some people pick teams based on compatibility of personalities rather than the brilliance of individuals.”

“That sounds like a recipe for mundanity.”

“But fewer explosions in the labs.”

Casmir was about to point out that he’d succeeded in getting his team to finish the project, but an alert pinged on the wall console. He habitually held up two fingers in the standard hold-please-while-I-answer-a-message-or-access-the-net gesture. The display identified the caller: Kim Sato.

“Hello, Kim,” Casmir answered, surprised she hadn’t opted for chip-to-chip messaging rather than the city comm system.

“Did you complete your bird project?” Kim asked, no visual coming up with the audio.

“I did. It’s working. For its preliminary flight around the lab, at least.”

“Congratulations. I will see you at home.”

“Wait,” Casmir blurted, surprised by the abrupt end of the conversation, though he should have been accustomed to her atypical approach to social conventions by now. “Is that all you wanted?”

She paused, and he imagined her puzzling out what an appropriate response would be. He waited patiently. He was used to all types of smart, eccentric people, including Kim.

“I am placing a grocery order to be delivered by dinnertime tonight,” she said. “I am considering whether to simply select our agreed-upon staples or add in a bottle of celebratory wine. There are seven varietals in stock with that adjective in the description. I assume one of them will be appropriate to honor career achievement.”

“Ah.” Casmir grinned, now reading her pause as a debate on whether celebratory wine should be a surprise or not.

“Do you have a preference of red or white?” she asked. “Or sparkling?”

“Red, please. Sparkles optional.”

“I see an appropriate bottle. Goodbye.”

Professor Huang arched his eyebrows after the comm ended.

“Girlfriend? Or android?” Huang smirked. “Or both?”

Casmir’s cheeks heated again at the suggestion that he couldn’t find a flesh-and-blood girlfriend if he wanted one, even if it had been over a year since he’d had a modicum of success in that department. His left eye blinked a few times of its own accord, and he grimaced, willing the obnoxious tic he’d had since childhood to stop. Contacts corrected his myopia, if not his monocular vision, and medication kept his seizures under control, but some symptoms of his flawed genes defied modern technology and pharmacology.

“Roommate,” Casmir said firmly. “And not an android. She’s a bacteriologist who has made many excellent contributions to the medical sciences. She’s good with microbes. Humans are more problematic for her.”

He shook his head, not sure why he was explaining someone Professor Huang was unlikely to ever meet. Mostly because he was still smirking. From his time as one of Huang’s students, Casmir remembered well that the man had a dirty streak, especially considering he was eighty or ninety. Which was old on Odin. It wasn’t like in some of the other systems where genetic tinkering had vastly extended the human lifespan—for those who could afford it.

“Roommate with benefits?” Huang winked.

“If you consider that she’s buying me wine a benefit, then yes. As for the rest, I don’t think she ever notices a man’s—or woman’s—anatomy unless she’s poking it with a sword.”

Huang’s mouth drooped open. “A sword?”

Casmir, realizing that could be misconstrued as an innuendo, rushed to clarify. “Her father and half-brothers run a kendo dojo. The swords are real swords. Well, no, they use wooden ones, mostly, I think. Uhm—”

“Professor Dabrowski?” an unfamiliar voice from the doorway said, mangling the pronunciation of the last name.

Casmir spun toward the stranger with relief, glad for an excuse to end the conversation.

“You can call me Casmir. My students all do. I…” Casmir trailed off when he got a good look at the person standing in the doorway.

The tall, broad-shouldered man wore dark silver liquid armor that covered him from boots to neck, leaving exposed only his strong, lean face and black hair long enough to flap in the wind. Or so Casmir assumed. The knights in the animated law-enforcement posters always had breeze-ruffled long hair and an equally breeze-ruffled dark purple cloak. This man had both, though the building’s ventilation system was not sufficient for ruffling.

He also wore an imposing weapon on his utility belt, what looked like an Old Earth medieval halberd on a short axe shaft. A pertundo, the legends called them, the traditional knight’s weapon and far more sophisticated than they appeared. With a telescoping shaft, it could be used like a spear, but the long, sharp tip fired energy blasts similar to bolts from DEW-Tek firearms, and the blade could carve into the best combat armor in existence. At least according to the war vids.

“Can I help you?” Casmir stepped forward, silently commanding his chip to search the network for a match on the knight’s face.

“I’m here to help you.” The knight glanced both ways down the hallway before stepping inside and palming the sliding door shut. “I’m Sir Friedrich of His Majesty’s royal knights.”

As he said his name, Casmir’s net search came back, displaying the man’s face, name, and address. Daniel Friedrich, knighted eight years earlier. Residence: Drachen Castle.

“Shit, Casmir,” Huang whispered. “What did you do?”

Casmir shook his head. All he could think was that this had something to do with his old job. He’d seen a couple of knights at the military research facility in his years there, but the elite defenders of the crown’s interests were spread across the system, and even some of the non-Kingdom systems. They didn’t stroll into the world of academia often.

The knight strode toward Casmir, his face hard and determined.

Casmir lifted his hands, fearing he was about to be arrested. But for what?

“I bring a message.” Friedrich halted in front of him and glanced at Huang.

Huang leaned his hip against the desk and folded his arms around his cane, not looking like he intended to leave.

“You must flee,” Friedrich said, focusing on Casmir again. “Get off the planet. Out of the entire system, if you can.”

“Uh. Any particular reason?” If anyone else had been making this suggestion, Casmir would have scoffed, but if this man truly was a knight who lived in the castle… “Are you entering the robotic flight simulation contest? You’re not my competition trying to get rid of me, are you?”

Friedrich gripped his arm, his lean face humorless. “This isn’t a joke, Dabrowski. Knights don’t get sent out for pranks.”

No, Casmir knew that. But cracking jokes was easier than accepting the fear starting to roil in his gut. Fear and confusion. He was shocked a knight would have been sent out for him under any circumstances. Even a squire would be an oddity.

“Who sent you?” Casmir asked.

“Your mother.”

Casmir would have fallen over backward if the knight hadn’t still gripped him. “My… you mean my adoptive mother? Irena Dabrowski?”

“No.”

Casmir opened his mouth, but he couldn’t find words. He didn’t know who his real mother was. His parents—his adoptive parents—hadn’t told him. They’d always said they didn’t know, and in the thirty-two years he’d been alive, he’d never found anything to suggest his real mother lived.

“Someone wants to ensure you do not see another sunrise,” Friedrich said. “She told me to tell you to get off-world. Don’t return to your house before you go. Just take what you have and find passage on a ship. Don’t use your banking chip. Take your ID chip offline.”

“My mother spoke to you? Today? I don’t even know—” Casmir gripped the knight’s arm back and shook it, as if he had the strength to affect the large fit man. “Who is she?”

“She—” Friedrich broke off and frowned, his eyes unfocused as he received some message. He cursed and stepped back, easily shaking off Casmir’s grip. “They’re coming. Two of them.” He opened a rectangular pouch on his utility belt and pulled out a folded disk. “I’ll do my best to delay them so you can escape.”

“Escape? This is where I work.”

“Not anymore.”

Friedrich strode not toward the door but toward one of the windows. It was an old-fashioned casement window with real glass, so he could open it and peer out onto the streets and walkways of the campus eight stories below. Without pausing, he hopped onto the windowsill.

“Sir Knight.” Casmir lifted a hand and started toward the man.

Friedrich looked over his shoulder, his eyes intent. “If you value your life and the lives of your friends, get off Odin now. Get out of the system altogether. Go.”

Friedrich sprang out the window.

For a second, Casmir could only gape in surprise as the knight disappeared from sight, the wind whipping his hair and his cloak. Casmir rushed to the window in time to see Friedrich flick his wrist and the disk unfold into a driftboard.

The knight maneuvered it under his feet as he fell, his cloak streaming above him. Scant feet from the pavement, the board’s thrusters fired, and he slowed. But not for long. Board and rider zipped across the street and mag-rails, barely missing an auto-cab delivering students. On the other side, he disappeared inside the four-story cement parking garage.

“Are you going to listen to him?” Huang asked.

“I… I don’t know.”

As Casmir gripped the windowsill, the salty breeze of the Arashi Sea tickling his nostrils, a boom erupted from the parking garage. Flames sprang through the windows on the bottom level, and smoke flooded out through the entrances.

“Did he do that?” Huang asked.

“I don’t know.”

Casmir ran to his desk and waved a hand to activate the built-in computer, wondering if his staff position would get him access to the parking-garage cameras. Already, sirens wailed outside, ambulances or police coming.

“Show me the parking garage, ground level,” Casmir ordered as the desktop display came to life.

“People are running out,” Huang said from the window, his gaze locked on the garage. “There’s smoke everywhere.”

The computer took an eternity to complete a retina scan on Casmir, then showed him the hazy bottom floor of the garage. Wreckage lay everywhere, including in the stall where he’d parked his scooter that morning. He groaned. It was gone, completely destroyed.

A breeze gusted through the garage, stirring the smoke and revealing Friedrich crouched amid the wreckage. He’d put away his driftboard and drawn the pertundo, the shaft extended to more than six feet, and gripped it in both hands. In the legends, knights were always slicing and perforating enemies into bloody pulps with them, usually while balancing on train trestles over rivers or some other ludicrous place for a fight. But Friedrich wielded it like a rifle and fired green bursts of energy into the smoke.

Screams sounded, not from the display but through the window. The knight hadn’t gone crazy and started shooting innocent students, had he?

Huang cursed at something outside. Casmir almost ran over to look, but on the display, the smoke cleared enough for him to see the knight’s opponent.

A faceless, tarry black humanoid figure strode toward Friedrich with deadly intent. It carried no weapons—it didn’t need them.

“No,” Casmir whispered in horrified recognition.

The figure sprang forty feet, more like a panther than a human. Friedrich fired bolts that would have killed a man into its torso, but they bounced off. He didn’t appear surprised. He shifted his grip on the weapon as his foe came into melee range.

“What is that?” Huang came to Casmir’s side and looked at his face. “You know.”

Casmir nodded mutely, unable to take his gaze from the scene playing out.

Friedrich lunged and thrust his pertundo into his attacker’s black torso, the point sinking in and branches of white lightning streaking out and wrapping around it. His foe did not slow at all, merely striding forward to deliver an attack of its own.

Friedrich dodged an impossibly fast punch, the knight displaying speed and agility that would have made him a match for any human, maybe even a genetically enhanced one from another system. But this was no human, and it caught Friedrich on his second attempt to dodge, hefting him into the air.

The knight shortened his pertundo and swung it like a one-handed axe, even as he dangled, his feet well above the pavement. His foe held him at arm’s reach, but one of the swipes landed, the blade cleaving deeply into its side, more lightning coursing around it.

Casmir held his breath, hoping the legendary weapon might be a match for the deadly construct. But a tarry black hand came down and yanked the blade out. The wound in its torso closed, melting together as if it were made from molten wax, and re-hardening into its original form.

Friedrich snarled and tried to land another blow, but his enemy hurled him through the smoke and into a cement wall. He struck with bone-crunching velocity.

“Casmir.” Huang gripped his shoulder. “There’s another one on the mag-rails outside, throwing people around as if they weigh nothing. What are they?”

Casmir swallowed. “Crushers.”

“The robots you helped develop?”

“Yes.”

Huang ran back to the window. “Shit, that one’s coming this way. Casmir, get out of here. If they really are after you…”

“I know,” he croaked numbly.

On the display, the crusher stalked toward Sir Friedrich, who was stirring, but not quickly. Casmir made himself tear his gaze away. For whatever reason, that man out there was buying him time.

He rushed around the lab in a panic, grabbing the bird robot and a bunch of tools and materials, anything that seemed like it might be useful. He stuffed them into his satchel with his lunchbox and a half-full bottle of fizzop, then laughed shortly. Almost hysterically. Was this what he was going to flee the planet with? He had to go home first. This was ludicrous.

“I’ll tell them you went out of town if they come up here,” Huang said. “Do they talk?”

“Yes, they can talk and interrogate you like a professional soldier. Professor, you need to get out of here too. Don’t put yourself in danger. Don’t talk to them. Nobody should talk to them. Try to evacuate the building.” Casmir paused, looking at his desk and the work benches and his satchel. He was throwing things in without rational thought. He’d just stuffed the stapler in his bag.

“Casmir…”

“Just do it, Huang.” Casmir flung his bag over his shoulder. “And be careful.”

He raced for the door, half-expecting to find a crusher looming in the hallway outside.

But the hallway was empty. The knight had come in time. Maybe. Crushers could outrun an auto-cab. If they spotted him…

“You be careful,” Huang called after him.

Casmir waved a curt acknowledgment as he ran down the hallway, already contemplating where to go to get a ride off the planet. Zamek Space Station? Would it be safe? Or would those crushers or whoever had programmed them be waiting there? Was there another place with ships that took passengers off the planet? He had no idea. He’d only been outside of the city twice—for camping trips as a boy. He got seasick and cabsick, so he’d always been certain space would be a miserable experience best left for those with iron constitutions.

He ran down the emergency stairs, accessing the net through his chip and searching for transportation options. But he halted and swore as a realization smacked him in the face like a sledgehammer.

Kim. She would be headed home from work soon if she wasn’t already. If the crushers knew to look for him at his workplace, they would know his home address.

What if they were already there?

2

Bonita “Laser” Lopez flexed her leg under the control panel in her freighter’s small navigation cabin and tried to ignore the ache in her knee. She didn’t have to walk to turn over the cargo and collect her pesos, just have her new assistant open the hatch and let Baum’s loyalists come in and get it. Except they would pay in Kingdom crowns, she reminded herself. She would have to exchange them before leaving the system.

Having money in need of exchange would be a good problem. One she hadn’t experienced in far too long.

Her other knee twinged.

“I’m afraid I have a lot of debt to pay off before considering surgeries,” Bonita muttered to her collection of aching joints, reluctant to admit that the decades of acrobatic chases and joint-wrenching skirmishes to collect bounties were catching up with her. It was work she wished she was still doing. More honorable work than this.

She drummed her fingers, frowning impatiently at the large display stretching across the front of the cabin. Currently, it showed the view from the Stellar Dragon’s forward camera, an abandoned beach two hundred miles north of Odin’s capital, moonlight shining on the waves crashing onto the sand. Farther inland, a few distant lights indicated cabins, but it was early spring and cold out. Campers strolling along the beach in the moonlight weren’t likely. It was an ideal place for an exchange. If only Baum would show up.

The hatch opened behind her, and a soft whir, whir, suck sound came from the deck. Without looking, Bonita lifted her boots and propped them on the control panel. One of the ship’s many, many cleaning robots whirred around her pod, vacuuming up nonexistent dirt and lint as she leaned back into the cushioned full-body seat.

The Ring of the Nibelung floated in from the corridor speakers. Bonita groaned and covered her ears as the robot swished and swept to the rise and fall of the music. She was positive that Viggo had no idea what the words meant in the two-thousand-year-old Earth opera. Unfortunately, that didn’t keep him from playing it over and over and over.

“This isn’t the time for housekeeping, Viggo,” she said.

“Oh, I disagree,” came the voice of the ship’s computer. “While we’re here on Odin, we must take advantage of the planet’s gravity. The dust settles. My filtration systems are without peer, as you know, but the fans can only do so much when it comes to directing the larger particles toward the ionizer. Thank you for finally replacing the filters, by the way.”

“It was the least I could do when they showed up at the cargo hatch, with a fresh charge to my bank account, a bank account that can barely afford food these days, much less air filters.”

“You’ll thank me later. I bet you already feel better in the mornings. I was growing concerned for your health. And Qin’s, though she’s admittedly sturdy in the constitution department. But if I were still flesh and blood, I’m sure I would have been coughing my way through the nights. There were mold spores on the B Deck filter. Mold spores, Captain Bonita.”

She almost snapped at him to call her Laser, since no self-respecting bounty hunter was named Bonita, even a semi-retired one, but she’d been trying to get him to do that for almost ten years, and it hadn’t stuck yet.

“Were you really a smuggler, Viggo?” she asked for what had to be the thousandth time.

“Certainly. I was an excellent smuggler.”

A throat cleared in the hatchway, and Qin Liangyu walked in, giving Bonita a curious look, as if it was odd to have a conversation with the ship’s computer.

Qin had only been Bonita’s co-pilot for a couple of months and didn’t seem to fully grasp yet that Viggo had been a human being once, before some of his enemies had caught up with him, and his doctor friend had fulfilled the then-captain’s last wishes, to upload his consciousness into the Stellar Dragon’s computer.

At least that was the story Viggo had told her. It had all happened nearly a hundred years ago, and she was the fourth owner of the ship since then, so she didn’t have a way to verify it.

“I have unsecured the cargo and stacked it by the hatch. Any sign of the buyers yet, Captain?” Qin clasped her hands behind her back as she faced Bonita, her skin bronze under a light layer of fur, her black hair pulled back into a clasp, revealing pointed ears. When she smiled, fangs were visible, but she didn’t smile often, not as often as a nineteen-year-old kid should.

“Still waiting.” Bonita waved to the empty beach, then to the second pod in navigation.

Qin considered it but didn’t sit down. She was armed, with the muzzle of a huge DEW-Tek Starhawk 5000 sticking up over her shoulder, a stunner and dagger hanging from her belt.

“Perhaps I should wait outside?” Qin asked. “Is it possible their ship already arrived and cooled down sufficiently so we’re unable to read the heat signature?”

“My scanners are too advanced to be fooled by that,” Viggo said with a sniff. “There are no ships or humans in the immediate vicinity. There are naknaks and numerous field mice in the grasses above the beach, an owl in a tree, and a pod of whales being trailed by two orchastas swimming parallel to the shore approximately one mile away.”

“Odin got Noah’s full ark, didn’t it?” Bonita asked.

“Some of those creatures are native to Odin, but yes, the planet was a near-match to Earth and therefore able to sustain most of the reptiles, animals, and endothermic vertebrates that were brought on the colony ships.”

“The endothermic what? Did you talk like that when you were human?”

“Naturally.”

“Did you get beat up often?”

“I fail to see how that’s relevant now.”

The cleaning robot zoomed out on its sweepers. Leaving in a huff? Fortunately, the music grew quieter with the vacuum’s departure.

Qin listened to the exchange impassively. Her genetically modified face would have been hard to read under any circumstances, but she had a knack for keeping it in a neutral expression, her yellow cat’s eyes with their slitted irises changing little. A survival mechanism, probably.

“I detect an aircraft approaching,” Viggo said.

“Finally.” Bonita faced the display again.

“It appears to be a hawk-class hover shuttle with the markings scrubbed off.”

“Not surprising. It’s not like the castle would openly send knights out to pick up weapons that aren’t legal yet in the Kingdom.”

“Too bad,” Qin said in a wistful tone. “I would like to see a knight.”

“I’m afraid a knight wouldn’t want to see you. They don’t even let their apples get modified on Odin.”

“I know. It’s just that they always sound so romantic in the stories.”

Bonita blinked, surprised to learn that her fierce new assistant had a romantic side or read anything but Guns and Grenades Monthly.

“When I was young and enduring all my training and… other things, I used to dream that one would come save me,” Qin added softly.

“You don’t need saving, kid. You saved yourself in the end, right?” Bonita thumped her on the shoulder. She didn’t know much about Qin’s history, since she’d been evasive about her past, but gathered that one of the pirate families had ordered her created and raised her to be a killer for them.

“I did escape on my own, but…”

“You don’t need romance, either. Trust me. I’ve been married three times, and the last bastard—that hijo de perra…” Bonita grimaced, thinking again of her deficient bank account and the fact that this ship was all she had left, a ship with the registration taxes overdue back in Cabrakan Habitat. “Men are decent company now and then, but don’t enter into a contract with any of them. You just end up screwed. Every time.”

“I am now detecting heat signatures in the grass a mile up the beach,” Viggo said, not commenting on her rant. It was one he’d heard countless times.

“That’s not the direction Baum’s shuttle is coming from, right?” Bonita asked.

“It is not.”

“Maybe someone set out mouse traps for the naknaks.” Bonita went back to drumming her fingers on the control panel, not liking that her deserted beach had grown busy.

“It is likely they are robots or some other type of machinery,” Viggo said. “I believe they are ambulatory.”

“Are they ambulating right now?”

“They are.”

“Heading this way?”

“Yes.”

Bonita rubbed her knee. “Wonderful.”

She had expected this handoff to be easy. Baum’s loyalists were supposed to be on the same side as the Kingdom, even if they had vigilante tendencies and used less than legal methods of fighting their battles. Would the Kingdom Guard or the knights truly care about them acquiring new weapons?

Lights appeared as Baum’s shuttle flew over them, its thrusters hurling sand against the Dragon’s hull. After it passed them, it rotated and lowered itself to the beach. Bonita wondered if its pilot had detected the heat signatures.

“We’ll let Baum’s men come to us. Qin, head back to the hold and prepare to let them in if I give the all-clear. Don’t let them know it’s just the two of us.” Bonita wiped her palm on the leg of her galaxy suit, caught herself, and stopped. She didn’t want Qin to see her nerves. She was the hardened professional, after all, a woman just shy of seventy years who’d been dealing with all types of unsavory people for more than fifty.

Normally, she wouldn’t feel uneasy about this setup, but having a modded assistant on a planet that forbade genetic tinkering already had her on edge—she’d casually lied about being alone to the customs android that had chatted her up. And Viggo’s ambulatory heat signatures weren’t helping her nerves. The quicker she handed off the cargo and got paid, the better.

“Yes, Captain.” Qin hopped through the hatchway and glided toward the ladder well, as graceful as the cat from which someone had sourced her genes.

Outside, the hatch on the side of Baum’s shuttle opened, and a squad of six men in combat armor filed out, rifles slung over their shoulders, hands on pistols at their belts. They looked around warily before heading toward the Dragon.

“Are you planning to deal fairly or not, Mr. Baum?” Bonita wondered to herself, watching the men advance.

It was a large team, but that didn’t necessarily mean Baum intended to use force. The cargo case that Bonita had pushed around by herself up in space weighed hundreds of pounds here in Odin’s heavy gravity.

The comm light flashed.

“Captain Laser,” Baum said, saying the name with the same sarcasm he’d used during their first contact.

Bonita gritted her teeth, reminding herself that she hadn’t spent much time in this system. The Kingdom people didn’t know her reputation well, the fact that she could shave a man’s balls with a laser or any other projectile weapon known to man.

“What?” she replied.

“My sergeant has the payment. Once he inspects the goods, he’ll give it to your people, and my crew will unload the cargo.”

“Agreed, but you know there’s a lock code on the box, right? Does your sergeant know it?”

“We know it. We ordered the weapons, after all.”

“That’s good, because I paid to pick them up, and Sayona Station wouldn’t give it to me.”

“You paid a balance due, a small percentage of the total, and will be compensated shortly. Baum, out.”

“Ass,” Bonita muttered, not caring that the channel was still open.

She closed it and switched to the ship’s internal comm. “Qin, put your helmet on when you open the hatch, and don’t show off your uniqueness. Baum doesn’t have the Kingdom accent I expected, but if his people are from here, they’re not going to like you.”

“Few do,” came the quiet, sad reply.

Bonita winced, wishing she’d chosen her words better. It had been a long time since she’d had to be circumspect with anyone.

“The heat signatures are close, Captain,” Viggo said.

Bonita reached for the comm, intending to warn Baum in case his scanners weren’t as good, but red flares of light burst out of the grass. An alarm went off as one of the attacks struck the Dragon’s hull. The deck lurched, and rattles came from all around her.

Bonita cursed. Her freighter was better armored than most private vessels, but whatever that was had been big.

The red energy bolts slammed into the shuttle, and pieces of the hull blew off. The team of armored men fired into the grasses as they turned and ran back to their ship.

“No!” Bonita blurted, alarmed that the deal might not go through.

Tanks rolled out of the grass, and attack drones zipped out of the dark sky, raining down crimson energy bolts. Two of Baum’s men were struck and flew sideways into the sand. The others grabbed them, dragging them toward their hatch. The hover shuttle fired its thrusters, preparing to depart.

Another blast struck the Dragon.

Bonita raised the ship’s shields, but they were designed to deflect space trash in flight, not directed-energy weapons.

“Bonita,” Viggo said. “We must abort. Those are—”

“I know, I know,” she snarled, flinging herself back into the pod and pulling the neural navigator over her eye. The cool kiss of the interface pressed against her temple where her chip was embedded under the skin.

As she ordered the thrusters to fire, more energy blasts struck the hull. Her ship lurched wildly, and her pod tightened protectively, cushioning her like glass in a shipping container.

“You betrayed us,” came Baum’s angry cry over the comm channel.

“It wasn’t me!” Bonita barked. “If you didn’t want to pay for the weapons, you should have just said so.”

“That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve—”

Baum’s shuttle exploded, and the channel went dead.

“Find a pod,” Bonita yelled over her shoulder to Qin, not bothering to use the comm system. “If those drones follow us, we’re going to be scragged.”

The Dragon cleared the beach and accelerated over the Arashi Sea, Bonita zigzagging to make a hard target. But not hard enough. A round from one of the tanks struck them, the solid projectile tearing through the ship’s hull. An alarm flashed on the engine panel. The round was lodged in the housing for the fusion drive. She prayed it wasn’t an explosive that would detonate.

“Fusion drive compromised,” Viggo said.

“I know that too.” Bonita tried to dash sweat from her eyes, but the pod held her tight as the craft whipped about, swooping and banking and accelerating unpredictably, the framework of the old freighter creaking and groaning under the g-forces. “This night is getting to be more and more delightful.”

They didn’t need to fire up the fusion drive until they were in space, but there was no way they would get to the gate at the outer edge of the system without it.

The drones did not follow her out over the sea. That was one good thing, but if that robotic menagerie down there had been sent by the local law—or even the damn Kingdom knights—the Dragon’s presence might already have been reported. And she couldn’t break orbit on this backward gravity well without using the very public and very monitored launch loop.

“Captain?” Qin asked from the hatchway, gripping the jamb with strong hands and bracing herself against the erratic accelerations of the ship. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Are we all right?” Qin’s gaze shifted toward the flashing engine alarm.

After confirming that the drones had fallen out of range, Bonita steadied the ship and freed her arm from the pod’s embrace so she could wipe sweat out of her eyes. “I don’t know. We have to find a place that will help us with repairs and that isn’t going to report us to the law.”

“Do you know where that is?”

“Not yet,” Bonita said grimly.

3

The honking, blaring, grinding, and whirring of rush hour in the city battered the university campus from all sides as dusk descended, but faculty housing was in a quieter interior nook. Stout oaks and prickly ciern trees lined the streets, spreading acorn-filled branches and thorny vines over the walkways. A few squirrels skittered from tree to tree, making final rounds before bedding down for the night.

Usually, Casmir found his neighborhood peaceful, but not tonight. He jumped at every student or professor riding past on a bicycle, scooter, or driftboard, and he peered into the shadows between every cottage, expecting a crusher to leap out at any second.

What was he doing coming home? This was the most obvious place for them to look.

But Kim hadn’t answered any of the fifty messages he’d left. She had a chip—she wasn’t one of those glasses-wearing holdouts who refused that technology—but she didn’t like distractions, so she spent more time with the network receiver switched off than on.

His insides twisted and writhed as he imagined her dead inside the house, a casual flick of a wrist from a crusher the cause. How many had already died because someone had sent those two after him? He’d had the news updating, text, photos, and videos scrolling through his contact display, and the campus explosion and attack were all over it.

“Casmir?” came a call from behind him.

Even though he recognized the voice, he jumped, half flinging himself behind a tree before his brain caught up to his hyper-stimulated reflexes.

“Just like a Kingdom knight,” he muttered, rolling his eyes at himself.

Kim peered around the tree, one of her braids of dark hair swinging over her shoulder. She carried her work bag in one hand and, slung over her shoulder, her exercise bag with two wooden practice swords strapped to it. That was where she’d been. The dojo. He’d forgotten it was her kendo night.

“Are you all right?” Kim asked. “I just checked my messages and was about to reply when I saw you walking up ahead. Where’s your scooter?”

“My scooter is the least of my problems,” Casmir said, though he grimaced, remembering the empty parking space with nothing but debris left in it. “Someone’s sicced two crushers on me.”

“I saw. Repeatedly.” She raised her eyebrows slightly.

“Your eyebrows are judging me.”

“Are they?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a good thing my other body parts are neutral on the matter, or we couldn’t be friends.”

Casmir shook his head, though he almost laughed, mostly because he could count on Kim to stay calm. He knew she wasn’t indifferent; she just didn’t react much outwardly unless someone managed to fray her nerves, at which point, she snapped.

“I’m a little concerned,” he said, also striving for under-reacting—or at least not hyperventilating.

“I would be too. From everything you’ve told me about them…” Kim looked down the street, their two-story rental cottage visible through the trees at the end of the cul-de-sac. “Was it wise to come home?”

“No. That’s why I told you not to. We have to assume they’ll check there, if they haven’t already. The crushers are smart. And whoever sent them—well, I don’t know yet if they’re smart. I have no idea who they are. Or why they’re picking on me.”

A wheeled auto-wagon whirred past them, heading straight for the house.

“That’s the grocery delivery,” Kim said. “We should—”

“Leave it. I have to get off-world—out of the system, I’m told. And you… Feh, I don’t know, but you can’t go back there, not now. They’ll question you about me, and depending on what megalomaniacal asshole programmed them, they could hurt you. A lot.”

Someone else wearing wooden swords who’d been training with her father and numerous skilled athletes since childhood might have said something cocky about taking care of herself. But Kim gazed thoughtfully at the delivery wagon whirring up the street, then nodded.

“I can stay at my mother’s place for a couple of days.”

“Is she in town?”

“No.” Kim smiled faintly. “That’s why I can stay.”

“Ah.” Casmir considered whether she would be safe there, or if the crushers could be expected to search down the friends and family of everyone who knew him. The fact that Kim’s mother was technically dead might throw them off, but every year there were more people who, when facing health problems that modern medicine couldn’t solve, uploaded their memories and consciousness into android bodies with computer brains. For all he knew, Mrs. Kelsey-Sato still had to pay her taxes. Presumably, she had to pay the rent and utilities for the apartment her belongings occupied on her long stints hunting for interesting ruins in the Twelve Systems.

The delivery wagon left its insulated grocery box on the front stoop, and Casmir eyed it wistfully, thinking how much a bottle of celebratory wine—or alcohol of any kind—would take the edge off. But he needed all of his edges right now.

As the wagon whirred away, the front door opened. The dark body of a crusher peered down at the package.

Casmir cursed, grabbed Kim, and pulled her around the oak tree, praying the trunk was stout enough to hide them.

“They’re creepy looking,” Kim whispered, hunkering beside him.

“Yeah.” Casmir gripped the rough bark of the tree, afraid to peek his head out to look but afraid not to. What if it was already sprinting toward them?

He peered around the trunk, and his breath caught. It stood on the stoop, looking around the neighborhood. Its featureless black head paused, pointing straight at him.

“We have to go.” Casmir spun, looking for someone in a car that they could jump in. Even a car might not be fast enough.

“It’s coming,” Kim said as he spotted a teenager on an air bike.

“Follow me.” Casmir sprinted straight at the kid, waving his arms wildly. “We need your bike.”

“What? No way, Prof. This is a—”

Kim sprang past him and grabbed the teenager. The kid grunted and tried to fight, but she blocked the wild flails and dragged him off the bike.

“Sorry—it’s an emergency.” Casmir snatched the hovering vehicle before it could shoot off down the street without its rider.

“Run!” Kim ordered the kid, flinging a hand in the direction of the nearest house.

The crusher was halfway to them and picking up speed. Casmir leaped onto the seat as Kim smashed herself on behind him, her work bag clunking him in the ribs.

He gripped the handlebars, relieved the bike was similar to his scooter, and started to turn them around, but the crusher was scant meters away. There wasn’t time.

“Hang on!” Casmir twisted the handlebars, and the bike hurtled toward a path between two houses.

Kim clamped onto him. Casmir swung the bike wide to avoid hitting trash bins and a dog kennel—much to the alarm of the dog, who barked uproariously at them. A lilac bush batted him in the face as they flew past far too fast.

Kim’s grip tightened around his waist, either because she was afraid she’d fall off, or she believed his torso deserved punishment for his crazy flying.

It would only get crazier. He almost tipped them on their side as he swung into the next street and raced up it at top speed.

“It’s following us,” Kim reported, little emotion in her voice, even though she shouted to be heard over the roar of the engine and the whistling of the wind.

“I have no doubt.” Casmir reached max speed on the bike and grimaced at the display. It wouldn’t be enough.

Staff and students walking home shouted from the sides of the streets. Casmir veered around an auto-cab driving in their direction. The computer driver didn’t honk, but the passenger leaned out the back window and flung a curse. Casmir whipped around a corner, only because he knew the street they were on ended up ahead, not because he had any idea where to go.

“It’s gaining on us,” Kim reported. “What’s its max speed?”

“More than ours.” Casmir could see the dark figure in the mirror, arms and legs pumping like those of a human runner, but with speed that no man, augmented or not, could ever achieve.

The wind tore at his face, threatening to rip out his contacts, and he squinted. He needed those contacts to see, not simply to display the news.

“I don’t suppose you have any grenade launchers in your gym bag,” he called over his shoulder.

“I have sweaty socks and a towel.”

“Those might kill a human but not a crusher.”

“Hilarious. Casmir, we need a plan.”

Another auto-cab appeared ahead, this one crossing an intersection. Casmir cursed and jerked the handlebars to steer around it. His hair whipped into his eyes, making him wish he hadn’t put off getting it cut. He dared not swipe it away. His shaking hands would never get a grip again. He’d never driven anything this fast and was amazed his poor depth perception and lackluster coordination hadn’t caused a crash. Yet.

“I’m open to suggestions.” Casmir was so focused on not crashing or running over anyone that he could barely process anything else. His work satchel was still slung across his body, but the tools inside were for fine motor work. There was nothing that could blow up a nearly impervious robot.

Behind them, the crusher closed the distance. It sprang at them, and he whipped the bike between two houses again. That bought them a couple of seconds as the crusher sailed past, not able to change directions until it landed. But it would catch up again quickly.

The next street over was a major artery with auto-trucks and cabs filling six busy lanes. They had come to the edge of the campus.

Casmir roared into the traffic without pausing. He was going twice the speed limit, and he weaved in and out of the larger vehicles, heading toward the heart of the city. Just where he wanted to bring a deadly killing machine.

Kim shifted behind him, keeping her vise-like grip with one arm and tugging one of her bags open with the other. Casmir couldn’t believe she still had all her belongings.

“Going to try the socks?” he glanced back, not seeing the crusher in the mirrors.

For a second, he believed they had lost it, but no, it was weaving between the lanes of traffic, the same as he was. And once again, it was gaining on them.

“I have a lighter and aerosol deodorant,” Kim said.

Casmir smiled. “A nice idea, but an explosion that small won’t do anything to stop it.”

“We’ll see.”

Casmir allowed himself a flicker of hope as he sped between two towering refrigerated trucks. There wasn’t much room between them, and he drove as straight as possible.

Horns blared and a siren wailed behind them. Lights flashed in his mirror. Two Kingdom Guard cars sped onto the road, also weaving through traffic. Gunshots fired.

“This is fercockt!” Casmir blurted.

Why were the Guard officers shooting? Speeders weren’t shot.

“They’re shooting at the crusher,” Kim yelled.

Of course. The officers would have seen the footage from campus by now.

“Maybe they have grenade launchers,” Casmir said.

“They hit it with bullets.” She looked back. “It didn’t do anything. Would DEW-Tek weapons be effective?”

Casmir shook his head. “Even if they melted the liquid metal alloy, the crusher would simply rearrange the damaged molecules until it could repair them. Honestly, even grenades wouldn’t destroy it, only buy us time while it fixed itself.”

By all the gods in the Twelve Systems, why had he helped invent such a thing? Was he now going to die because he’d foolishly been honored to work for the king?

“Faster, Casmir,” Kim urged, plastering herself against his back.

The crusher was so close, they could hear its pounding footsteps on the pavement over the roar of traffic.

Casmir swerved to drive in the middle of two lanes. More gunshots rang out, the Guard cars swerving and accelerating to keep up. A bullet glanced off the crusher’s shoulder and whizzed past close enough that Casmir heard it.

He shook his head, too terrified to feel anything but numbness. Or maybe that was shock. This couldn’t possibly end well.

Hoping vainly that he might throw the crusher off their path, he sped between a towering refrigerated truck and a hulking vehicle carrying tanks of something.

“Hydrogen,” he blurted, spotting an H on the side of one of the tanks. “If we could breach—”

A bullet slammed into the tank ahead of them, and clear liquid hydrogen shot out. Kim shifted behind him.

Casmir wanted to slow down, to give her time to do something with that lighter, but the crusher appeared in his mirror, running behind the two trucks. Its arms and legs pumped so fast they blurred.

“Go, go!” Kim shouted as they drew even with the liquid spurting out.

As they passed it and sped out from between the two trucks, she shifted, and her elbow whacked him on the shoulder as she threw something.

“Was that—”

An explosion roared, drowning out his words and everything around them. A shockwave hammered their backs, and the air bike wobbled riotously as fire lit the darkening night.

Casmir fought to stay upright, fought to steady it, to keep going. In the mirror, he saw orange flames scorching the night sky. Secondary explosions roared on the back of the first as the other tanks on the truck blew. The refrigerated truck was thrown onto its side, squealing thunderously as it skidded across the pavement, blocking the lanes. Blocking everything.

Casmir licked his lips, watching the road ahead but also watching the mirror, afraid the crusher would survive that, afraid it would keep running, keep chasing them forever. Or until it caught him.

But flames roared, spewing smoke into the sky, and the wrecked trucks filled the highway. The gunfire had stopped. Did that mean the Guard officers couldn’t see their target anymore?

Helicopters and Kingdom shuttles appeared in the sky, flying toward the wrecks.

Behind Casmir, Kim carefully tucked her lighter—more of a heating element, but clearly enough to produce flame—back into her work bag.

Casmir stayed on the highway for another ten miles so he could continue to fly at top speed and put distance between them and the crusher. It was possible that explosion had been enough to irreparably destroy it, especially if it had been right beside the tanks when they blew, but he wouldn’t count on it. The nanites integrated into the liquid metal molecules meant every part of it was smart enough to start the repair process, to collect fresh materials to integrate if necessary. And, unless the knight had somehow managed to destroy the one in the parking garage, there was at least one more crusher out there.

It grew harder to control the bike. Casmir feared some mechanical failure was imminent, but the problem was his shaking hands. His entire body was shaking. Gottenyu, what if he had a seizure? He’d taken his medication that morning, but even the potent rivogabine wasn’t always enough to keep his brain in equilibrium during stressful situations.

He took the next exit, terrified of what would happen to Kim if he had a seizure while he was flying, and found a park. He pulled into the vehicle lot, stopped the bike, and almost collapsed as he slid off. His stomach churned with the promise of vomit, and he stumbled toward the bushes. Maybe he would have a seizure and throw up at the same time. Wouldn’t that be fun for Kim to witness?

Leaving the lights of the parking lot, he slumped against a tree. His legs gave out, and he let them, sinking to the ground, cool damp grass pricking at his palms.

Kim walked over, carrying both of her bags, and sat down next to him. She must have realized that he needed a minute, or maybe she needed a minute too, because she didn’t speak right away. In the bushes, crickets chirped and czerwony bugs buzzed, the noises just audible over the roar of the highway a few blocks away. Casmir wondered if the wrecks had already been cleared.

“That ugly robot better not have bothered anything inside the house. Like my books. My real loved-and-touched physical books.” For the first time, Kim’s voice held emotion. Anguish. “Some of them are hundreds of years old.”

“Ugly?” Casmir’s voice came out far more normal than he felt it should. He wasn’t shaking quite as much now. It seemed safer to talk about the robots, because he would feel like a complete ass if Kim’s book collection had been destroyed. Or any of her belongings. He had no idea why this was happening, but he knew it was because of him. “I always thought the crushers were kind of elegant.”

“Your bird is a lot better looking.”

Reminded that he had it in his satchel, Casmir rushed to unlatch it and check on the contents. What if it had been smashed to bits in all that chaos? Ah, no. He found the robot bird intact and held it up to the parking lot lights to look for damage.

“It’s certainly a more amiable creation.” Casmir gently returned it to its home. “Thank you for your quick thinking back there.”

“Welcome.” Kim always accepted praise with a grudging mumble, as if it hurt to receive it, and she would rather shrug it off. “Thank you for not crashing. I was a little concerned when I remembered your eyes.”

Casmir’s left eye blinked. He sighed and rubbed it. “My vision doesn’t affect my driving.”

“I’ve seen the squash ball dangling on a string in the alley to keep you from hitting the trash bin with your scooter.”

He snorted. “It slightly affects my depth perception. My optometrist has advised me not to take up racket sports.” Not comfortable talking about his physical deficiencies, even with an old friend, he waved to Kim’s belongings and asked, “Why do you keep a lighter in your gym bag?”

“It was in my work bag.”

“Ah.” Casmir scratched his chin. “Why do you keep a lighter in your work bag?”

“For warming the agar plates,” she stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the system.

For a bacteriologist, maybe it was.

“Anything else of interest in there?” He poked her bag. “In case we need to come up with further brilliance?”

“I have several virus samples in a cold box that a colleague asked me to drop off at Mokku Park Lab tomorrow. Hisayo in immunology is working on some vaccines.”

“Those won’t be useful on the crushers, I fear. But I’m making a special note to keep my fingers out of your bag.”

“Always wise. Women don’t like men poking through their personal items.”

“Like lipstick, nail files, and virus specimens?”

“Precisely.” Kim gazed toward the parking lot. “How long is it going to be safe to stay here?”

“Probably not long.” Casmir sighed. “Someone came to see me at work today. A knight from the castle. He said my mother, not my adoptive mother, sent him to warn me to leave the planet. To leave the entire system, he said. He wouldn’t tell me who was after me.”

“You couldn’t wheedle the information out of him? You’re good at wheedling.”

“Thanks. I think. But two crushers showed up, and there wasn’t time for that. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.” Casmir’s stomach churned anew at the idea that the knight might have given his life to buy him time to get away. Why would someone do that? He wasn’t an important person, nobody who warranted a bodyguard. Outside of the university and the robotics circle, he was unknown. “Friedrich,” he added. “That was his name. Sir Friedrich.”

It seemed important never to forget that. Just in case.

“Are you going to leave?” Kim asked. “You’ve never been off-world, have you?”

“I’ve never even been off the continent. The one time I took the ferry over to Blume Island, I threw up.” Casmir patted his delicate stomach.

“I told you I could give you some bacteria for that.”

“And I told you you’re nuts.” Maybe because he’d always hated hospitals and feared doctors, Casmir shuddered at the idea of being one of Kim’s science experiments.

“A wholly inappropriate response. Early in my career, I made a very simple strain that eats excess histamine in the body, which has been linked with motion sickness. Many antihistamine drugs reduce motion sickness, but my bacteria are a far superior option, and they’ve been in use in the bodies of more than five thousand test subjects for years now with no negative side effects. I’m positive you would see good results, and it would help with your allergies too. Given your numerous medical conditions, it’s likely that you have impaired methylation and don’t effectively clear histamines from your body.”

“Another thing I’m not good at? No wonder I haven’t had a date in over a year.”

Kim punched him in the shoulder.

It was the correct response. Enough whining.

“Let’s talk about it later.” Casmir pushed himself to his feet, glad his legs supported him. “As much as I’m tempted to stay here in the city and try to get to the bottom of this, I’m terrified of those crushers taking out more people on the way to get to me, and I’m very confident in their ability to hunt me down. I’ve already commed my parents and sent messages to my colleagues and friends, anyone close enough that the crushers might think to question them about me. I’ve warned them to lie low, or get out of town for a few days, but I think it’s going to be safest for all if I do as the knight said and leave Odin for a while.”

Casmir had no idea where he would go, but if the crushers figured out he was gone—and he assumed they would—they shouldn’t have a reason to hurt anyone else here.

“I need to make a quick pharmacy stop—” he didn’t mention his seizure medication, even though Kim knew about it, “—and then we need to figure out how to get passage off-world without leaving an obvious trail.”

“We?” Kim lurched to her feet. “I have to be at work tomorrow. I plated my new experimental strains and put them on warmers to start the colonization process. They’ll be ready for me at nine in the morning.”

Casmir hesitated. This wasn’t her battle, but he feared that, as his friend and roommate for the last seven years, she would be in danger. More danger than she’d already been in.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Casmir imagined that crusher stepping out of the flames and walking down the highway looking for them.

“Call in sick, Kim. Please. Hopefully, I can get this sorted out quickly from… somewhere that’s not here. A spaceship on its way out of orbit.”

“A spaceship? Why would you go into space to hide? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s nothing to hide behind out there.”

“There are stations, habitats, the colonized moons… I just have to get somewhere else, ideally somewhere without as many tracking and security cameras as Odin.” Casmir glanced toward the parking lot, certain a traffic camera somewhere was monitoring it. If whoever was chasing him had access to the Kingdom Guard security system… “I don’t think we’ll have to leave the system.”

“The system? It takes weeks just to get to the gate. My bacteria will break out and take over the world by then.”

“I hope that’s a joke.” Casmir knew her private research laboratory had also worked with the military on a few projects that she’d never spoken much about.

“They’ll run out of food and die first.” A hint of sadness tinged her voice. “Look, I’ll help you find a ship and get out of here, but I’ve got a lot of work to do. And I don’t think they have decent coffee in space.”

Casmir smiled faintly, aware of the coffee and espresso makers she used on a daily basis.

“I can take some of my work home—to my mother’s flat—and nobody will think to look for me there. I’ll be fine.”

Casmir worried about her, but he couldn’t order her to disrupt her entire life because of a threat to him. He hoped she was right, that the crushers wouldn’t look too hard for her when she didn’t reappear at the house.

“All right. Thanks. Any thoughts on where to go to get transport off-world where I wouldn’t have to scan my chip and be on record?”

“You could probably find transport at the Shizukesa Shipyard. It’s known to cater to pirate families and wealthy eccentrics who object to being tracked. But the ship would have to use the launch loop, the same as everyone else, unless it has some wicked thrusters. There aren’t many ships that can break out of Odin’s atmosphere on their own.”

“The Shizukesa Shipyard? Is that in the city? I haven’t even heard of it.”

“East side, near the docks.”

“How does a bacteriologist know where the pirate families lurk?”

“You forgot about my hobby.”

He looked toward her wooden swords.

“My other hobby.” Kim grinned. “The one I do for myself, not out of a sense of obligation to participate in familial bonding with my father and half-brothers.”

“Oh, the novels. Are you still publishing them?”

“No, I haven’t had time since I was in grad school and had my summers off, but my crime thriller continues to sell. I wish my allegorical fantasy trilogy did, but what can you do? I don’t have time to learn marketing, and it’s not like my pen name is available to go to book signings and readings.”

“You can read to me on the way to Shizukesa Shipyard, if you like.”

“You fell asleep the last time I read some of my work to you.”

“It was bedtime, and I was sick,” Casmir said as they headed toward the parking lot. “I thought I was supposed to fall asleep.”

“You didn’t have to be so emphatic about it.”

“How does one fall asleep emphatically?”

“With moist, throaty snoring.”

“That’s gross.”

“I know. I was there.”

Maybe he didn’t need to worry about her witnessing a seizure. She’d already seen him at his worst.

4

Midnight approached in the Shizukesa Shipyard as Bonita walked around the Stellar Dragon, supervising as drones and workers with welding guns went over the hull. Nobody had asked what happened, and she was relieved.

Robots and human laborers worked on three other ships parked on the spacious landing pad next to a massive warehouse full of manufacturing equipment. She hoped that meant she and the Dragon were nothing special and would not be remembered. Viggo had been the one to suggest the shipyard, having visited with a previous captain. Apparently, that didn’t qualify Bonita for a discount.

“This is your total, Captain,” the supervisor said, holding out a tablet displaying her bill in several languages. A short brown-skinned man with a pointy white goatee, he didn’t look to weigh more than a hundred pounds. “I must apologize, but there will be a charge for after-hours service and a rush job.”

“That’s not a problem,” Bonita said, though inside, she quailed at the amount.

How was she supposed to pay? Until she unloaded the cargo, she wouldn’t have access to that kind of cash, and she definitely didn’t have any Kingdom crowns stashed in her cabin.

“Can you translate that to System Diomedes pesos, please?” Bonita added, buying time to think. “Or Union dollars?”

Was it possible she could pay the shipyard with some of the weapons inside the cargo case? She didn’t have the code to open it, but maybe she could force her way in. She’d paid for the honor to transport that cargo, after being promised she would receive quadruple her investment when she delivered it. It had been risky to sink so much of her own money into the venture, but she’d been certain she could sell off the weapons piecemeal if something went awry. She just hadn’t expected to have to do it in a desperate rush. No good business was ever done that way.

“Diomedes pesos?” The supervisor blinked several times. “Captain, you know which planet you landed on, do you not?”

“Not a civilized one,” she muttered.

“Odin is very civilized. If we were not, there would not be so many habitats and planets eager to return to the Kingdom now.”

“As I’ve heard the news, those planets and habs are rather divided on the matter.” Bonita handed the tablet back to the supervisor. “Let me scrounge inside. I’m sure I can find some crowns. I assume you take physical currency?”

“We are most pleased to accept hard crowns or gold.” He smiled and bowed. “I must warn you that we test gold before accepting it. Only pure coins and bars are sufficient for payment.”

“No problem.”

Bonita turned toward her open hatch and almost bumped into two hulking men. They had the same face as the old supervisor but were forty years younger and two-hundred pounds heavier.

Her hand dropped automatically to the DEW-Tek 900 holstered at her hip, but she thought better of drawing. Two more hulking men that appeared to be from the same family stood to the side, cradling rifles in their arms as they watched her intently.

“We have applied a magnetic security lock to your thrusters, Captain,” the supervisor said politely. “As a precautionary measure. It is not permitted to leave without paying.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Bonita pushed between the big men, not flinching when she bumped against their muscled arms.

Her knee gave a twinge, reminding her how much she did not want to get into a fight with the brutes. Fortunately, they did not stop her again.

Bonita cursed under her breath as she strode toward the hatch. Damn Jake Pepper for clearing out their joint bank account and sending digital divorce papers after he’d already disappeared. She hadn’t been foolish enough to commingle funds during her first two marriages, but those men hadn’t been her business partners as well as husbands. The bastard had taken the physical currency in the ship’s vault too. She was certain Jake would have taken the ship itself if he and Viggo hadn’t spent the five years of Bonita’s marriage sniping at each other.

When she reached the ramp, she paused. A man and a woman who didn’t look like they belonged in a cash-or-gold-only shipyard were talking to someone at the hatch of the next freighter over. Someone with six pistols jammed into holsters all over his body, a silver-plated metal arm, and teeth to match.

The woman, who looked like she was on the way to an athletic competition, stood back, bags gripped in both hands, and an impassive expression on her face. Her buddy, who, with robots dancing on his rumpled shirt, looked like he was on his way to play geeky games in someone’s basement, was gesticulating and smiling as he spoke to the thugly man. The thugly man did not smile back. He shook his head and waved for them to leave him alone.

Normally, Bonita wouldn’t want anything to do with strangers, especially after the night she’d had, but was it possible these two were looking for passage somewhere? They both had bags, albeit not with as much luggage as one would expect if they were heading off-planet.

The man noticed her looking at them and smiled and waved cheerfully. He had pale skin, a beard shadow, and shaggy brown hair that looked like it had been cut with a bowl—three months ago. The woman, her features far more reserved, had darker skin, a stockier build, and tidy black hair back in two braids. Oddly, a couple of sticks—were those practice swords?—were attached to one of her bags.

“A little late for sightseeing,” Bonita said as they approached.

“Yes,” the man said, the woman once again hanging back as he came close. “Yes, it is. I’m actually in need of transportation. Would you by chance be leaving Odin and heading… anywhere?”

“Anywhere? That’s a rather nonspecific destination.”

“I’m a nonspecific kind of guy. Just looking for an off-world adventure. I’ve never been to space, you see. But I’ve had the itch for a long time.” One of his eyes blinked a couple of times.

Was that his tell? Was he lying?

He smiled at Bonita, his eyebrows rising hopefully to go with the hopeful smile. His face wasn’t roguishly handsome, but it had a charm to it. An inoffensive you-can-trust-me-because-I’m-far-too-goofy-to-be-plotting-shenanigans charm.

“You want to know what’s in it for you, of course,” he went on when she didn’t speak. “I’m handy with tools, machines, robots, drones, and all manner of mechanical devices and objects. I can do wiring, programming, just about everything.” He waved to the drones working on a breach at the top of her ship. “If you have anything that needs tuning up or even building from parts, I might be your man.”

Bonita groaned. “Does that mean you can’t pay?”

“I can pay. I have money. A job.”

“Assuming your lab wasn’t blown up,” the woman muttered.

Bonita frowned—she’d barely caught that.

What kind of trouble were these two in? Or was it just him? He hadn’t asked for passage for his companion. The last thing Bonita needed was more trouble on her ship.

“I have money,” the man repeated, “but I’m trying to avoid using my banking chip right now.” He waved his index finger, the location most people were usually chipped, in the air. “I wouldn’t mind using it once we’re off-planet, though if there’s any possibility of barter for physical goods, that would be excellent. Have you ever seen a flying robot bird?”

Bonita stared at him, wondering if he’d escaped from some institution for the mentally unstable. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to be tracked down. The wardens would show up, grab him, and throw him back into his padded cell.

“The only physical thing I would barter for would be gold.” Bonita glanced at the supervisor, not surprised to see him still out on the floor and keeping an eye on her.

“I have small amounts of gold and tungsten,” the man said, patting his satchel. “How much do you need?”

His female friend looked at him. “You keep gold in your work bag?”

“Yes, for the same reason you keep a lighter.”

“So you can warm agar plates?”

“All right, almost the same reason. Gold is a highly efficient conductor of low voltage currents, and it doesn’t rust, so it’s ideal for electronic components. Since my current work has been interrupted, I would be willing to part with what I have.” He smiled brightly at Bonita.

“Show me the gold,” Bonita said. “And give me your names. Whatever names you’d like to use on this journey.”

His brow furrowed, but only for a moment before he caught on. “Go ahead and call me Casmir. If I gave you a sobriquet, you would figure it out as soon as you used it and I gave you a confused look.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m a mechanical engineer and specialize in robotics.”

She accepted the clasp. “I’m Captain Laser Lopez.”

“I see you’re making much better use of a sobriquet than I would.”

“Uh huh.” Bonita released his grip and pointed at the woman. “And you?”

“I’m Kim. I’m a bacteriologist, and I’m not coming.”

“A bacteria-what? Is that contagious?”

Kim didn’t react to the attempt at a joke other than to narrow her eyes slightly. Bonita glanced at her wooden sticks and wondered if she knew how to use more deadly weapons. She seemed like someone who might be good in a fight. Too bad he was the one who wanted a ticket. Sobriquet. Ugh.

“As for the gold.” Casmir poked into his bag. “Ah, here we go.”

He withdrew a minuscule bar in a plastic baggie and held it up.

“Uh. Is that even half an ounce?” Bonita looked at Kim’s bags, hoping she had the rest of their gold tucked away in one of them. A half an ounce wasn’t going to cover her repair bill.

“About that. I purchased it just last month. Or rather, Zamek’s higher-education institution did. It should be worth about five hundred crowns. Isn’t that enough to at least get me a ride to one of the moons? I know it would buy a ticket on a commercial passenger ship.”

“A commercial passenger ship full of passengers. You’re trying to charter a private flight. That costs more.”

“It doesn’t need to be private on my account.” Casmir laid a hand on his chest. “I’m very open to sharing. Kim and I have shared the same bathroom for years.” His hand shifted toward her. “It’s no problem at all, right?”

“You leave beard-removal gel and toothpaste all over the counter and the mirror, and at least once a month on the light fixture. It’s disgusting if I go in before the cleaning robot comes through.”

“See?” Casmir said to Bonita. “No problem at all.”

Kim gave him a flat look.

“Are you two married?” Bonita asked.

“No,” they said together.

“Because of the toothpaste?”

“No.” Casmir looked at Kim. “That’s not the reason, right?”

“Not the only reason.” For the first time, Kim’s dark eyes glinted with humor.

Casmir cleared his throat. “Really, Captain. Sharing is no problem, especially if it will reduce the fare. Uhm, perhaps those charming men over there would like to come.” He nodded toward the thugs with the rifles.

“They’re not invited,” Bonita said. “Look, you’re wasting my time. I need— Wait, did you say you were an engineer?”

“A mechanical engineer with a robotics specialization, yes. I teach classes and lead a research team over at the university. We’re working on—”

Bonita jerked her hand up. “I don’t care about that. How are you with fusion reactors?”

“Er, they rarely come into play in robotics.”

“I have a breach in my core containment chamber. The reactor is offline right now, but if we can’t use the fusion drive, we’re not even making it to the moon anytime soon.”

“Repairing the chamber sounds relatively simple,” Casmir said. “I can take a look.”

“If you can fix it, and you’re prepared to part with that gold, you’ve got a deal.” Bonita thought about asking if his tungsten was valuable, but she doubted the shipyard supervisor would take it, and she wasn’t going to visit the local pawnbrokers.

“Excellent.” Casmir planted his plastic baggie with its gold chip in Bonita’s hand and strode up the ramp leading into the open hatch. He paused as soon as he got to the top. “Which way is the fusion reactor?”

“In engineering,” Bonita said.

“Yes, of course.” Casmir looked left and right. “And which way is that?”

Bonita dropped her face into her hand, rethinking the wisdom of letting this guy touch her equipment.

“Right.” It came out as a groan. She would have Viggo run every diagnostic and analytical piece of software he had when Casmir was done. “You, Kim, was it? Does he have a clue what he’s doing, or is he likely to screw up my ship?”

Normally, Bonita wouldn’t ask a stranger for a reference, but after so many years in such a dangerous business, she was good at reading people. Kim struck her as someone who might be honest to a fault.

“Engines aren’t his area of expertise, but he’s smart. If you have a technical manual in your database, he’ll be fine.”

Bonita tried not to be horrified by the idea of someone using diagrams in a book as a guide to fix the most imperative part of her ship. But what other options did she have? She couldn’t afford to have the shipyard repair everything. She hoped Casmir would know if he was in over his head and be intelligent enough to tell her. After all, he was about to fly off in the ship too.

Bonita nodded to herself, encouraged by the thought.

Kim hadn’t moved. She was gazing at the hatchway at the top of the ramp. Casmir had disappeared, and she appeared faintly confused.

“You sure you don’t want to come?” Bonita asked.

“No, absolutely not. But he didn’t say goodbye, which is customary when a friend is going off into danger. I wasn’t sure if I should depart now or wait or…” She shrugged again.

“We’re not leaving yet. You can come inside and monitor him if you want.”

“Monitor? I have a medical background. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what he was doing.”

“You could make sure he doesn’t leave any lubricants or gels on my light fixtures.”

“I haven’t succeeded at that yet.”

Gunshots rang out, and Bonita jumped.

Kim whirled toward the noise, dropping her bags and landing in a fighting crouch. Bonita backed up the ramp, yanking out her pistol but wanting nothing to do with a fight. She hoped she had that option, that this didn’t have anything to do with her and her illicit cargo, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Get out of here,” someone yelled, firing again. “No trespassing robots.”

“Our bullets are bouncing off it!”

The lighting wasn’t bright near the periphery of the shipyard, and Bonita squinted, trying to see what the men were firing at.

Kim cursed. “Not again.”

Two dark humanoid figures strode out of the night, ignoring the workers—and the bullets ringing off their torsos. They didn’t wear clothing or have distinct facial features, but they seemed to be looking straight at the Stellar Dragon.

One of the guards, a hulking man with arms like pylons, gave up on shooting and ran forward, using his rifle like a club. He landed a blow with the butt that would have knocked the head off a man—and most robots.

“Androids?” Bonita paused and looked down at Kim.

“Worse,” she said grimly. “I have to warn Casmir.”

She snatched up her bags and ran up the ramp, slipping past Bonita without bumping her.

Bonita almost reached out to stop her from boarding, but boarding looked like a good idea right now.

“Yo, supervisor!” Bonita yelled, spotting the small man running out of his office to take a look at the commotion. “We need to leave now. Here’s payment for the services that were done.”

She threw the baggie, glad for the natural weight of gold. It sailed across the pavement and landed at his feet.

Unfortunately, he was gaping at the intruders and not paying attention to her. What was his name? It had been on his invoice.

“Nakajima!” she yelled, and this time he looked. “Take that gold and check us out. Remove whatever locks you’ve got on my ship.”

Bonita glanced back to see what the intruders were doing and nearly fell off the ramp. They’d broken into a run. They had passed two of the ships and would be at hers in seconds.

She sprinted inside and slammed her hands against the control panel to pull in the ramp and close the hatch.

“Viggo,” she shouted from the cargo hold, “fire yourself up!”

“I am aware of the danger, Captain,” the computer’s voice came calmly from the speakers. “Readying for take-off now.”

“Good. Are the mag-locks off?”

“Not yet.”

“Not good.” As Bonita raced across the hold toward the ladder leading up the two levels to navigation, a thud sounded, something striking the hull. A second thud immediately followed.

Casmir and Kim ran out of engineering.

“Crushers?” Casmir looked toward the closed hatch.

“Whatever they are, they’re trying to get in.” Bonita raised her voice to yell. “Qin, I need you and the biggest weapons you can find.”

“Yes, Captain,” came Qin’s muffled reply from wherever she was.

“Can we help?” Casmir called.

“Yeah,” Bonita said over her shoulder. “Stay out of the way.”

Bonita left her new passengers in the hold, scrambled up the ladder, and flung herself into her pod in navigation. The piloting interface swung over as she considered the display showing the view in front of the ship. Smaller cameras fed in exterior views from the sides and the back. She groaned when she saw the two dark figures—what had Casmir called them? Crushers?—attached to the rear of the ship like ticks.

She was about to comm the supervisor outside, but the mag-locks let go without notice. Maybe he was watching and hoping she would take this trouble far, far away from his shipyard.

“Happy to.” Bonita slapped the internal comm. “Everyone, hang on. We’re going to pull some g’s while I try to shake the sand out of our boots.”

“Sand, Captain?” Viggo asked as Bonita took them into the air, blasting away from the shipyard and up the coast. She spun the ship like a barrel hurled down a long bumpy hill. “In one’s boots? The very idea is making me cringe. Discomfort. Grime.”

“Is it hard to cringe when you’re a virtual being existing inside a computer’s circuits?”

“No, I cringe extremely well. You’d just have to be another virtual being existing in the circuits to see it.”

Bonita didn’t answer. She stuck her tongue between her teeth and concentrated on piloting. Her pod absorbed the force of their spin, but something broke free and rattled around in one of the lower levels, clanging and clunking. There was always some damn thing that didn’t get secured properly. She hoped Kim and Casmir were smart enough to find a pod and weren’t flying all over the cargo hold.

When she checked the exterior camera displays, Bonita groaned. Not only had she not succeeded in shaking off the crushers, but they had advanced up the dome-shaped body of the ship, ticks moving from the ass end of the dog toward the head. And toward a hatch right behind navigation. If they had the strength to force it open—if they were as strong as androids, they surely would—they could drop into the ship right behind her.

“Qin!” Bonita hollered. “I need you to pry some dangerous robots off the roof. Do you have your big gun yet?”

“I’m ready, Captain.” Qin sprang off the ladder and stood in the short corridor, gripping a safety hook with one hand and wearing a Brockinger anti-tank 350 on a sling across her torso, the gun so big it bumped the bulkhead on either side. She grinned, pulled an explosive canister out of her bandolier, and dropped her helmet over her head.

“You definitely don’t need a knight to save you,” Bonita said.

“No, Captain.”

“Use that closest hatch. They’re almost there. Be careful not to damage the hull.” Bonita grimaced, wondering if that was possible when the crushers were attached to it. “And hang on tight. I’m going to keep trying to buck them off. I don’t want to lose you in the ocean.”

“Understood,” was all Qin said, her face turning serious.

She sprinted up the ladder that led to the roof hatch. Bonita didn’t feel right sending a kid to fight her battles, but she had to fly, and Qin was far better at hand-to-hand combat than she.

A clang sounded, and Bonita could hear the rush of wind blasting past as the hatch opened. On one of the cameras, Qin appeared, rising halfway out and using her legs to brace herself on the ladder and the bulkhead as she used both hands to aim the big gun.

The crushers were closer to her than Bonita had realized—those things moved fast—and the first one rose to its feet. There was no way it should have been able to do that with the ship dipping and gyrating. It had to have powerful integrated magnets.

It lunged at Qin. For a split second, only one of its feet was attached to the hull. As Qin fired, Bonita spun the Dragon again.

Qin’s canister slammed into the crusher’s chest and blew.

“Down!” Bonita screamed, afraid the explosion would tear off Qin’s head.

But she’d dropped below the hatchway before Bonita’s warning. The explosion combined with the ship’s spin knocked the crusher free. Its buddy turned and lifted a hand, as if to grab it, but Qin popped back out of the hatchway, distracting it.

Bonita nodded with relief as the first crusher tumbled through the air, falling a thousand feet and landing in the ocean. She hoped it rusted quickly and never made it to shore.

She steadied the ship so Qin could more easily deal with the second one.

Qin fired as it drew closer, but this one had learned from its buddy’s mistakes. It flattened itself to the hull, and the canister sailed over it, exploding uselessly behind the ship.

Qin reloaded as quickly as any practiced military veteran, but it wasn’t quickly enough. The crusher surged across the intervening space and grabbed her. Qin released her gun and drove her palms into her foe’s chest. The blow would have sent a human being flying backward at neck-breaking speed, but she might as well have struck a six-foot-wide steel pylon.

The crusher tried to pull her through the hatchway, but Qin hooked her feet under a ladder rung. She cried out but managed to finish loading the Brockinger, the explosive canister clicking into place.

“Don’t shoot when you’re inside the ship!” Bonita called. “You’ll blow out half the hull.”

Before Qin could fire, the crusher knocked the weapon aside with so much force that the strap snapped. The Brockinger clattered down the ladder to land in the corridor.

Qin battered her enemy with a barrage of palm strikes, trying to keep it from climbing through the hatchway and getting inside. But the robotic creature did not feel pain, and it was too heavy or strong to budge. Bonita had the feeling it didn’t care one iota about Qin and simply wanted to throw her outside because she was in the way. It wanted to get inside and acquire its real target.

Was that Bonita? Or her new passengers? Or the cargo? Had the same people who had killed Baum sent these things?

Metal groaned as the rung Qin’s foot was hooked to threatened to give way.

“Keep us flying straight, Viggo.” Bonita lunged out of her pod and ran back to help.

Qin’s foot was still hooked, and she was fighting the crusher, keeping it from climbing in and getting a better grip on her. But her other leg flailed free, and the rung groaned again. The crusher would pull Qin out of the ship any second.

“Not happening,” Bonita growled and snatched up the big Brockinger.

She made sure it was properly loaded and found as good a spot as possible.

“Twist free and drop down, Qin,” she ordered, finger on the trigger. “I don’t have a clear shot.”

The ladder rung tore free. Qin did a somersault in the crusher’s grip, trying to pull free, but it was too strong. It yanked her through the hatchway and flung her outside.

“No!” Bonita cried and fired.

The canister struck the crusher in the torso. It bounced off, fortunately not back into the ship. Bonita groaned again as it exploded uselessly outside the hatchway, the ship shuddering from the shockwave, and scrambled to load another round. Yellow flames lit the night. Surprisingly, even though it hadn’t been a direct hit, the explosion was enough to make the crusher pause. Momentarily.

Bonita fired again.

This time, the canister struck the crusher in the head and exploded. It flew backward, out of sight of the hatchway.

Bonita charged up the ladder and stuck her head out to look around, in some vain hope that Qin hadn’t fallen off. Wind roared in her ears. Cold night air smothered the hull, only the Dragon’s running lights brightening patches here and there. As misty sea air battered Bonita’s face, trying to rip her ponytail off her head, she climbed out farther.

“Qin?” she yelled. “Are you… anywhere?”

“Here,” came a muffled call from behind her.

Qin crawled across the hull on hands and knees toward the hatch. She was following a seam, finding purchase where normal human fingers would never have been strong enough to do so.

Bonita reached out as soon as she was close enough, offering her hand. Qin grasped it, and they scrambled back inside together.

After the hatch was closed, the roar of the wind blocked out, Bonita slumped against the bulkhead in relief.

“Is my gun all right?” Qin looked back and forth, then spotted it where Bonita had dropped it.

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

“I was only able to get away from the pirates with three military-grade weapons. They’re quite valuable.” Qin methodically checked the function of the Brockinger.

Get away. A reminder that Qin had escaped and someone might come looking for her one day.

Qin hadn’t admitted that, instead trying to imply that the pirates had no interest in her any longer, but several times, a word slip here and there had suggested otherwise.

“Let me know if you have any injuries that need patching up.” Bonita patted her on the shoulder and headed back into navigation. “Someone had better fly this freighter.”

Qin, frowning at a small dent on the butt of her Brockinger, did not reply.

“Really, Bonita,” Viggo said. “I am perfectly capable of flying the ship. All you have to do is give me a destination. Anything short of Earth, and I can get us there.”

“Last I heard, nobody remembers where Earth is.” Bonita collapsed in the pilot’s pod and did a sweep to make sure there wasn’t anything else hostile attached to the hull.

“Precisely why I would have a difficult time flying you there.”

A few minutes later, Qin stepped into navigation. She’d put her big gun away but still wore her combat armor, her helmet folded back to reveal a contusion swelling at her temple. Her face was flushed, and her eyes gleamed, as if she’d enjoyed herself back there. Bonita couldn’t imagine.

“Thanks for getting rid of the freeloaders.” Bonita jerked her thumb toward the hull. “No gold, no passage, right?”

“Seems reasonable, though I didn’t bring you any gold when I came on.”

“You’ve earned your keep.” Bonita hoped her new passengers would too, especially since Kim hadn’t paid anything. And didn’t want to come. Bonita thought about offering to set her down somewhere, but after the night she’d had, she was too paranoid to land anywhere on Odin again.

“Thank you, Captain.” Qin pressed her hands together in front of her chest and bowed.

Not for the first time, Bonita wondered what kind of crazy upbringing she’d had. She’d tried to look up Qin when she’d taken the girl on board, but all she’d found were encyclopedia references to some Ancient Chinese heroine back on Earth that she must have been named for.

Did her pirate family have descendants from that region? Some people knew where on Earth their ancestors had come from. Many more did not. Much had been lost during the years after the twenty-four colony ships had arrived in the various systems.

“Our new passengers saw me,” Qin admitted quietly.

“They say anything to you?” Bonita’s hackles bristled as she prepared to protect her assistant if needed. Qin could take care of herself physically, but mental attacks were harder to deflect.

“They just stared in surprise.” Qin lowered her voice. “Like I was a freak.”

“Well, you’re not.”

One of Qin’s pointed ears rotated slightly.

“The Kingdom people are the only ones who bat an eye at modded humans. There are plenty of them roaming the rest of the systems. You’re perfectly normal.”

The way Qin smiled sadly suggested that hadn’t been her experience, but she changed the subject instead of arguing.

“Do you think those strange robots were after us?” Qin asked. “Because of the cargo?”

“I’m not sure, but Casmir knew what they were. He called them crushers. I haven’t heard of them before, but if they’re trendy on Odin, that’s another reason never to come back.”

“I guess I won’t get to see a knight.”

“Trust me, you’re better off this way. Go tell Casmir to fix my reactor, will you? I’m ready to leave this world.”

5

Casmir stepped back from the reactor shielding and considered his handiwork. All it had needed was a simple patch, and he’d had his own soldering tools with him, so it hadn’t taken long. The true test would come when they fired up the reactor, but he was confident it would be fine. The only problem had been a giant bullet of some kind lodged in it. A drone could have patched it up.

The bullet had been slightly alarming, suggesting that Captain Lopez had problems of her own in addition to his. Casmir appreciated that she’d given him a ride, but he would part ways from her as soon as possible.

All he wanted was to be left alone for a few hours on a station or moon base with network access so he could do some research and figure out who was after him and why. And who his mother was, and why she hadn’t told that knight to share her name as well as her warning.

Casmir hoped that leaving Odin would mean leaving his trouble behind, but he couldn’t disappear into the starry ether of space forever. Even if he did feel safe enough to use his banking chip elsewhere in the system, he only had a few months’ worth of savings in his account. A few months of paying for regular stuff, like rent and food. Not tickets on spaceships and rooms in fancy space-station hotels. Even when he’d worked for the military, he hadn’t made piles of money.

A cleaning robot whirred past on the deck, almost running over his boot as it vacuumed the area where he’d been working. Casmir didn’t think he’d made much of a mess, but it zipped all around.

“It’s working?” Kim asked from the hatchway.

Casmir jumped. He hadn’t realized she was still in engineering with him.

But where else would she be? The captain was busy flying and hadn’t given them cabins or a tour or even directions on where to sit. And the furry, uh, woman—Qin?—had disappeared right after the fight. The fight in which she’d almost singlehandedly kept the crushers from coming aboard. Casmir owed her thanks the next time he saw her. He vowed not to gape again. Belatedly, he’d realized that had been rude, but until now, genetically modified humans had been something he’d only read about. The Kingdom news feeds and dramas rarely showed videos of the universe outside of their carefully preserved system, and he couldn’t ever remember seeing a six-foot-tall cat woman with a giant gun.

“It should be fine.” Casmir put his tools away, shouldered his satchel, and walked over to join Kim.

The deck vibrated under his feet. His stomach had forced him to curl into a sick ball wedged in a corner of engineering during the wild gyrations Lopez had put the freighter through during the fight, but since then, the ride had been smooth, with cool air filtered in through a vent somewhere. That always helped. His airsickness was more likely to rear its head when he was hot and claustrophobic.

“I’m sorry you’re stuck here,” Casmir said.

“Me too.”

“Are you pissed? I’m never quite sure with you.”

“At the situation, yes, but not at you. I assume this isn’t your fault unless you got into a fight with someone rich and powerful and dared him or her to throw your own creations at you.”

“Yes, you know what a fighter I am.” Casmir flexed his nonexistent biceps.

Kim frowned and shook her head. “You hardly ruffle anyone’s feathers. What could this be about?”

“All I know so far is what the knight told me, that the mother I didn’t know existed told me to flee the planet.” He bit his lip. “I’m going to research assiduously as soon as…” He trailed off when Captain Lopez appeared in the hatchway.

She’d changed into a form-fitting black suit with a bulge just below the back of her neck. A galaxy suit with a Glasnax helmet that could unfold from that bulge. He only recognized it because people wore them in dramas about space pirates and invasion fleets. He grimaced at the realization that they were going somewhere where such a suit might be required.

“Progress?” Lopez jerked her chin toward the reactor.

“Yes. It’s repaired.”

“Already? Did you use a technical manual?”

“What?”

Kim snorted.

“Not to solder on a patch,” Casmir said.

“Right. We’re flying down the coast to the launch loop. Let me give you a quick tour and show you where to sit so you don’t get plastered against the bulkhead when we’re on the mag launcher. Or after that.” Lopez waved for them to follow her.

“I guess I’m not going to get an offer to be dropped off somewhere,” Kim murmured. “Do you think there’s decent coffee on this ship?”

She looked around dubiously at the dented and scratched bulkheads.

Casmir patted her on the shoulder on his way out of engineering, regretting that she’d been brought against her wishes, but another concern took up more prominent real estate in his mind.

“Captain? The, uh, launch loop we’re heading to—will there be an inspection there?”

“Sometimes they do a physical check, sometimes they don’t. It would be better if we were taking off at a busy time rather than during the middle of the night, but I’m not inclined to linger longer on this planet.” Lopez strode across the cargo hold and toward a ladder.

“I only ask,” Casmir said, hurrying to catch her, “because I’m trying not to be noticed by anyone right now.”

Anyone else, he thought, the crushers popping into mind.

“You and me both, kid.” Lopez led them up the ladder to the middle of the freighter’s three levels.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance this ship can make it into space without using the launch loop?”

“On some planets it can. You know, nice planets with no atmosphere and a tenth the gravity of Odin.”

“Ah.”

They entered a corridor, and she pushed open a couple of side hatches. “Guest quarters are here and there. You can stow your gear in those cabinets—make sure you don’t leave anything out. Nobody needs hairbrushes bobbing around and cracking them in the head when we’re in space. You can each have your own cabin, but I’ll have to ask for a fee for Kim, since she wasn’t part of the original arrangement. I’ve got plenty of rations, since I like to fly safe, but we don’t do any free rides here.”

“You could drop me off,” Kim said.

“There’s not much up this way except for the launch loop itself, and every time I land on this planet, I get jumped.” Lopez waved into the nearest cabin. “You can strap yourself into the bunks at night, but some people sleep in the chair pods. They’re designed to cushion you like an egg during extreme acceleration, but they’re comfortable anytime.”

Casmir rubbed a fresh bump on his head. If what they’d experienced already was an indicator of what space would be like, he would happily spend the whole trip in one of these pods.

“There are a couple of older galaxy suits in the cabinets that you can try on for further protection. They’re made from SmartWeave. Gives you some defense against weapons, keeps you cool in a hundred degrees C, and keeps you warm in space. Attach one of the air tanks—” she opened a cabinet in the corridor to reveal a rack of oxygen tanks secured so they wouldn’t bang around, “—to the back of the suit, double-check your helmet lock, and you’re good for up to twelve hours of poking around on the hull.”

“That won’t be required, I hope.” Casmir smiled.

“You did offer to fix things. Sometimes, the broken bits are on the outside.”

“Er, right.”

Casmir’s stomach gave a queasy lurch as he envisioned floating around outside a spaceship in zero-g. He didn’t consider himself unnaturally claustrophobic, but he’d always feared swimming because of his potential to have a seizure in the water. Having a seizure in space could be equally detrimental to his longevity. He’d picked up a two-month supply of his medicine before leaving Zamek, and it worked well in his day-to-day life, but he worried it wouldn’t be up to keeping his brain functioning optimally during periods of extreme stress. Which it looked like he was going to be having a lot more of.

Lopez took a few more steps up the corridor and pushed another hatch open, revealing what looked like a combination lounge, mess, and kitchen, with all the furnishings bolted to the deck and made from a gray molded material that didn’t appear comfortable. Casmir supposed pillows and cushions weren’t practical for space travel.

“A couple of pods over there by that porthole.” Lopez pointed. “You might as well sit for now. You can watch the launch if that excites you.”

She shrugged as if she couldn’t imagine it—and maybe she couldn’t after as many times as she’d been into space. Her long hair was all gray, her face pale despite an olive skin tone, and he would believe she didn’t spend much time in places where the sun warmed her cheeks.

“There’s some exercise equipment that folds out of those walls.” Lopez waved to rows of cabinets in a bulkhead behind the pods. “Not a bad idea to run and push the weight bars around if you’re going to be out in space a while. We only get g’s when we’re accelerating and decelerating, and muscles like to get lazy if they can.”

“Right.” Casmir had always imagined that if he had to go to space for any reason, it would be on a transport ship large enough to spin like the big habitats did, providing a reasonable amount of artificial gravity for the passengers. He supposed if something as small as this freighter spun for that purpose, it would have to rotate so fast that it would leave them all puking. “I know I wasn’t particular back at the shipyard, but do you have a destination in mind?”

The knight’s warning rang in Casmir’s mind, but he couldn’t truly see himself fleeing the entire system. Surely, one of the moon bases or habitats that orbited Odin would be beyond the reach of the crushers, at least long enough for him to do his research and figure out what was going on. Right now, his embedded chips were offline, so he couldn’t be traced, but he ached to check the news and start scouring the university and public networks.

Lopez hesitated before she said, “I haven’t decided yet. I need to make a few comms. My drop-off here didn’t go as planned.” She waved them toward the pods. “Have a seat. You’re welcome to anything in the lounge, and there’s a lavatory at the end of the corridor, but don’t wander around the ship and poke into things.” She leveled a warning look at them. “I like my privacy.”

“Naturally.” Casmir smiled, hoping it would make him seem agreeable and trustworthy.

He was surprised Lopez hadn’t interrogated him yet about the crushers. Was it possible she believed they had been sent because of whatever trouble she’d stirred up? Considering her ship had been damaged on the exterior and the interior, it seemed reasonable to believe there were also people chasing her.

“Is there a coffee maker?” Kim asked.

“There are some pre-made coffee bulbs in the mess. You can throw them in the zapbox to warm them up.”

Kim gave Casmir her first scathing look of the night.

“Pre-made coffee bulbs? That you heat up in a box?” She curled a lip. “Those can’t be drinkable.”

“I’m sure they’re not as good as what you’re used to, but think of this as an adventure. Like camping out under the stars. This will be even better. We’ll be among the stars.”

“Without drinkable coffee. Expect me to have headaches and be grumpy.”

“Will that be different from now?”

Her eyes narrowed, and her fingers twitched. She’d never throttled him before, but she appeared to be contemplating it.

“My apologies.” Casmir bowed like the knights in the vids, pretending to sweep a cloak wide. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have offered to build an espresso maker into the kitchen over there.”

“And acquire fresh-roasted coffee beans and a grinder for me.”

“Absolutely. I’ll add that all to my priority list. Above find-out-who-my-mother-is and just below find-out-who’s-trying-to-kill-me.” Casmir arched his eyebrows. “Is that ordering acceptable?”

Kim waved in agreement, or simply to end the conversation, and glanced at Lopez, who’d paused at the ladder leading up to navigation and was watching impassively. Casmir had forgotten she was still there and wished he’d kept his priority list to himself.

Kim walked to the porthole and looked out to where the base of the launch loop was visible, magnetic tracks leaving from the terminal and angling up into the sky and out over the ocean. A hulking gray power plant sat next to the terminal, providing power to keep the massive structure working and accelerate ships along the tracks. Casmir had seen plenty of vessels take off on the news, usually when there was a story about how expensive the infrastructure was to maintain or how it had been damaged during a storm, but he’d never been here in person.

“Captain?” Casmir asked as Lopez started up the ladder. “When will we know if customs wants to inspect the ship before we go?”

Lopez grimaced. “Soon.”

“Is there somewhere we can hide if they come aboard?”

“Hiding spots are already taken. You better find a mask if you’re worried about your identity being revealed.”

“I think masks only work for the pirate Tenebris Rache.” Casmir waved his index finger to indicate the chip that would identify him to anyone with a scanner.

“Pirate?” Lopez asked. “To most of the rest of the systems, he’s a mercenary.”

“He doesn’t prey fanatically on the rest of the systems’ ships, outposts, and refineries.”

“Guess you people did something to irk him, eh?” Lopez waved them to the pods again and disappeared into the ladder well.

The lounge wasn’t a brig, but Casmir couldn’t help but feel like a prisoner. How had his life turned so insane in less than twelve hours? And how had he managed to take his best friend down with him? He was glad he wasn’t here alone but felt like a total ass for getting Kim involved in this. He’d intended to protect her, not the other way around.

Kim sat in a pod and looked out the porthole, perhaps wishing she’d had time to buy a few cases of quality coffee to bring along. He sat in the pod across from hers. It was bolted to a short track, so he could push it around and also have a view of the launch loop. He wished he could listen in on the captain’s conversation with the customs agent. Were ships even allowed to take off in the middle of the night? He didn’t know.

“I’m fairly certain our captain is a smuggler,” Kim said.

“That’s what I gathered. We knew when we headed to that special shipyard that we weren’t likely to wind up with someone operating a legal business, right?”

“True. A legitimate transport wouldn’t have taken us on without asking for ID.”

Casmir leaned back in the pod, feeling claustrophobic as its insulated interior automatically tightened slightly to enrobe as much of his body as possible. Presumably, it got a lot tighter once they were hurtling along the tracks to build up speed to escape Odin’s gravitational pull.

“The net has a record on her.” Kim touched her temple to indicate she was accessing the network. “Bonita Laser Lopez from System Diomedes. She’s listed as a bounty hunter, no warrants out for her arrest anywhere.”

“That’s promising. That she’s not a known killer.”

“Known. I wager a lot of things go unknown in the dark between the planets.”

“I suppose so.”

Casmir risked taking his own chip back online to access the net, not to look up their captain but to see if his name came up in any news stories. Unfortunately, he didn’t know his birth mother’s name, so he couldn’t look her up. As a curious teenager, he’d tried to dig up information about his biological parents, but without knowing their names, it had been difficult. The agency that had placed him with his foster parents, who had eventually adopted him, had shut down a few years after the fact, leaving no contact information or records.

Casmir found his résumé and career highlights online, the papers he’d published over the years, even his grades from school. There wasn’t anything in the public record about his three years working for military research, but that wasn’t unexpected. That had all been classified work. The government hadn’t wanted to announce the creation of the crushers. Casmir wondered how many of them existed these days. And how many were after him.

When he didn’t find anything out of the ordinary on himself, he looked up the colleagues he’d worked with at the military research facility. A part of him dreaded what he would find. Had crushers also come to their doors and killed them all? He had been the team lead, but they had all contributed to the project. If he was being targeted, it seemed likely that they would be too. But by whom?

The Star Striders or Cosmic Hippies? Some group who resented mankind’s warlike tendencies and tried their best to put a halt to them? The zealots from those religions usually protested terraforming and the destruction of native planets and moons, not the creation of robots. There were several anti-artificial-intelligence movements, but wouldn’t it be hypocritical of them to use an AI to kill someone?

Nothing came up on the news about any of his old colleagues. Huh.

He risked sending a couple of messages to make sure they were all right. The part of him that had seen numerous spy dramas as a kid knew he should stay off the grid and not use his chip or a traceable comm system if he didn’t want to be found, but the government should be the only institution with access to his chip coordinates. If they were after him… Well, he doubted there was anywhere he could go that would be out of the Kingdom’s reach. Even if Odin and the habitats and stations in this system were the only entities under royal rule these days, King Jager had a long reach.

But one of the king’s knights had come to warn him. So it wouldn’t make sense for the government to be after him. Unless that knight had gone rogue for some reason.

He looked up Friedrich, but the first hit was an obituary. Casmir closed his eyes and dropped his face to his fist. He didn’t need to scan the news stories to know what had happened. That man had given his life so Casmir would have time to escape.

But why?

“Customs is waving us through,” came Lopez’s relieved voice over a speaker. “We’ll be on the loop in twenty minutes.”

“Definitely a smuggler,” Kim said, meeting Casmir’s gaze, her contacts also flickering faintly with images from news feeds. “Does it bother you that we don’t know where she’s taking us?”

“I don’t think she knows where she’s taking us.”

“Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

“Perhaps not. Would you like a hug?”

“You know my feelings on touching.”

Casmir smiled. “Do you perplex your father and brothers as much as I suspect?”

He’d met her family. Her father, Haruto Sato, was a friendly, garrulous man who taught kendo and maintained the Shinto shrine in his neighborhood, leading weekly worship sessions for the community. Her half-brothers were also chatty and full of easy smiles.

“My brothers, a bit. My father just smiles understandingly and says I’m like my mother.” Her mouth twisted with something bordering on distaste.

“You disagree?”

Kim shrugged. “I don’t know her that well. She’s always been gone on some archaeological exploration or another, trying to solve the mystery of the gate system and who built it. She’s been all over the Twelve Systems. When I was a kid, I thought it was exciting and romantic and wanted to go with her.” She looked out the porthole, but it was the middle of the night, and they were circling and waiting for their turn, so there wasn’t much to see. “When I got older, I mostly wondered why she was never home. Why she’d bothered to have a kid if she was never going to be there to do anything with me.”

“Was she flesh-and-blood when you were born?” In their previous chats regarding families, Casmir had always gotten the impression of a distant mother who hadn’t quite been human even when Kim was growing up.

She shook her head. “Apparently, I was conceived ten years before I was born, before my parents split up, but she was busy with her career, so she had the embryo removed and suspended for later. Then she contracted a rare bacterial infection while on some water world that turned out to have life native to the system under the ice. Humans hadn’t known about it prior to that and didn’t know how to kill it. It was fascinating.”

“Your suspended-embryo-self thought that?”

She shot him a dirty look. “I studied it later. When I was old enough to be interested in bacteria and the medical field.”

“So, like ten?”

“I was seven, actually, when I first started studying the bacteria that killed her. Her body. The bacteria didn’t pass the blood-brain barrier, so she was fully compos mentis when she uploaded her brain into her new… robot body. I guess you can’t call it an android when it’s only thirty pounds and has fur.”

“Ah.” Casmir had wondered if the woman might have been mentally compromised when she’d made that decision. “It’s a monkey body, isn’t it?”

“Don’t remind me. She’s weird.”

“And your father says you’re like her?”

“Kind of him, isn’t it?”

Casmir scratched his jaw. “Maybe he means it to be. He doesn’t seem like the type to insult people.”

“I suppose not. Like I said, I never got to know her well. She once admitted that when she was dying, she regretted not having had her baby. That’s why she rented an artificial womb and decided to have me even though she wasn’t human anymore. Kingdom law forbade it—and my father was stunned that she wanted that, since they’d broken up years before—so she had me on Zhizhu Station in System Hind. I lived there with her until I was three, but her colleagues interested her in some new find, and she brought me back to live with my father, so she could go off cavorting around the galaxy. She visits some but…” She shrugged again.

Casmir thought that was as much as she would reveal—it was more than she’d ever told him before—but she spoke again.

“I should be over it by now, shouldn’t I? I turned thirty-one last month, after all.”

“Yes, I remember the celebratory wine.” He smiled and waved a hand. “I guess, be glad that you’ve got your father and half-brothers, right?”

She spread her hand. “They are accepting, but you’re the only one who doesn’t think I’m odd.”

He grinned. “Have you seen some of the people I work with? Wickmayer makes you answer trivia questions about spaceships before he’ll talk to you. Chang only eats green foods. Simon writes love poems about prime numbers. Or maybe to prime numbers. You’re one of the most normal people I know.”

“I think that means you’re a magnet for odd people, not that I’m normal.”

“This is possible. But hey, other than the mother-in-a-monkey-body, I don’t know if your background would be considered that unusual in the rest of the systems. They say you can find everything from marriages between twenty people to humans engineered to have both sex parts to people giving genius brains to their dogs and marrying them.” Casmir didn’t think he was the typical conservative Kingdom subject, but he wasn’t quite open-minded enough not to find some of that strange. “And you know I can’t judge the circumstances of anyone’s birth when I don’t know my own.”

He was still floored by the idea that his true mother might be alive somewhere—and care enough to warn him about danger. Maybe. If she’d truly cared about him, why hadn’t she ever come and seen him?

“So your mother could also be a monkey, and you just don’t know it yet,” Kim said.

“Exactly. Perhaps we could set up a mathematical experiment later to calculate the probabilities.”

“Pod up, passengers,” Lopez said over the comm. “We’re up next.”

“Off to see the odd rest of the galaxy,” Casmir murmured as the ship shifted slightly and a ker-chunk emanated from somewhere below them. He could no longer see the launch loop from their porthole, so he assumed they were on it.

“What will the appropriate response be if we meet someone married to their dog?” Kim asked.

“I’m not worldly enough—galactic enough—to tell you.”

His pod tightened automatically, a shield coming down to protect his head and padding molding to and pressing against his face. A surge of claustrophobia rushed through him. He sucked in a big breath, fear of being suffocated rearing within him. But he found he could breathe through the padding. And even see somewhat.

He had the sense of the ship moving along the tracks, but it was some time before he felt what had to be their acceleration. There was nothing to see out the porthole, which was good because his view of it was poor now. They climbed into the sky, fifty miles and more, then leveled off and shot along the track stretching high above the ocean, picking up speed with each passing second.

A slight feeling of pressure touched his chest but nothing like the three times Odin’s gravity that he’d expected. He closed his eyes, waiting for the ship to escape the atmosphere and for his journey to truly begin.

“Another ship got onto the tracks right behind us,” came Lopez’s voice over the speaker, a little muffled by her own pod.

Casmir wanted to ask if that was typical or if they had something to worry about, but he simply closed his eyes and held on.

6

Dr. Yas Peshlakai paced next to the airlock, his medical bag in hand, his magnetic boots clanging faintly on the smooth metal deck of Captain Rache’s ship, the Fedallah.

Usually, the vessel’s spin gave it almost as much gravity as his home—his former home—on Tiamat Station, but it was stationary now, just outside the gravity well of the gas giant Saga and docked to Saga Kingdom Refinery Number 1. It was the first of two refineries the pirates—or respectable mercenaries, as the crew had often assured Yas they were during the last three months—had supposedly been hired to blow up.

He had no idea if any digital money would exchange bank accounts. From what he’d seen of Rache so far, the captain pillaged from Kingdom ships and stations at whim, leaving piles of dead bodies behind whenever he attacked. Military warships sent after him were either destroyed or simply never found him. Vessels from the rest of the systems did their best to avoid him.

At least the refineries were unmanned, automated robots and machinery the only possible recipients of the mercenaries’ DEW-Tek bolts and explosives.

Yas shook his head, trying not to think about how he’d promised to do his best to keep these people alive for five years. Four years, nine months, and three days, now. Numerous times, he’d been tempted to go back on his word, to escape at the first chance, even wondering if the pirate captain might have set everything up that eventful night in order to acquire Yas as a doctor. But at the few ports they’d visited, Rache hadn’t given Yas any chances to wander off on his own. Besides, Yas didn’t have anywhere to go. According to all the news articles written about President Bakas’s death, he had done it. He’d poisoned her and then run, proving his guilt. And now there was a bounty out for him, wanted alive or dead.

If Yas had remained on Tiamat Station, or even in the same system, maybe he could have hunted for the true murderer and tried to clear his name, but how could he do that from a hundred light years away? In five years, when his term with Rache was up, would anybody still care about President Bakas’s death? Would there be any clues left to follow then?

A yellow light on the airlock control panel flashed, and the hatch hissed as it opened.

“Out of the way, Doc,” one of the mercenary sergeants growled, stomping through the hatchway in full combat armor, a helmet shrouding his features.

He and the man behind him carried a pair of large cylindrical tanks that barely fit inside the airlock chamber. Yas stepped to the side to make room.

“Where’s the captain? I saw that he was injured.” Yas flicked a finger toward the display in the bulkhead. It showed Lieutenant Moon’s camera feed as he walked next to Rache and several other men.

“Don’t worry, Doc. If the captain dies, we’ll let you live. You’ve got uses, even if you won’t pick up a gun.” The sergeant patted him on the shoulder as he stepped into the corridor. Actually, it was more of a punch.

Yas braced himself, not fazed by the abuse from the mercenaries. He’d suffered worse on the various sport teams he’d played on in his youth. What fazed him was that his life had gone to shit, and he was stuck out here with these ignorant jackasses, working for a man who’d made a career of killing people. What had he done to deserve this?

“Here, Doc,” the corporal who stepped out behind the sergeant said. “Make yourself useful until we bring you someone to patch up.”

He and the sergeant thrust the tanks at him. Yas juggled his medical kit so he could catch them, glad for the non-existent gravity.

“What are these?” Yas asked.

“What do you think they are, Dr. Genius?” The sergeant laughed as he and the corporal headed back into the airlock.

“Helium? We’re stealing from the refinery?” Even as he objected, Yas realized how silly it sounded. Why not take some of the valuable gas before they blew it out of Saga’s orbit?

“We’re salvaging fuel from a wreck.”

“It’s not a wreck. It’s a—”

“Oh, it’ll be a wreck in about five minutes. What are you? One of King Jager’s knights? We don’t need any moral righteousness out here. Besides, we’re making it easy on everyone. Merc ships need gas, the same as anyone else, but people get a little nervous when we show up at their fuel station. We—” The sergeant’s helmet spun. “Shit. Cycle the lock, Varma.”

The hatch clanged shut in front of Yas, and the light on the control panel flashed again. Yas looked toward the display.

Before, still, dark rooms full of machinery and tanks had stretched ahead of the main force. Now, huge boxy security robots with thrusters jetted toward Rache’s team. Lieutenant Moon’s helmet cam had provided a stable feed, but now, it jerked dizzily as he and the others ran for cover, firing at their mechanical enemies. Mechanical enemies that fired back, defending the refinery.

A shot struck one of the men in the shoulder, and his boots came free of the deck. He started to float away in the zero-gravity environment, but one of the other mercenaries grabbed him and pulled him back down. He was the smallest of the group, and Yas recognized him even though they all wore the featureless helmets and black armor.

Captain Rache.

He fired a grenade launcher toward the charging robot defenders. It detonated when it clanged off, and light flashed, the effect underwhelming in zero gravity. Six androids jetted down from above, landing in the middle of the mercs.

The captain spun and leaped at one with cybernetically enhanced speed and strength. He punched, thrusting one android into a tank, but another lunged in and wrapped powerful arms around his torso. Rache drove an elbow into his foe’s chest, ducking and twisting free. A lightning-fast kick hurled the android toward the approaching robots. It bounced off, twisting to stop its momentum and jet back into the fray.

The lieutenant’s helmet jerked and jumped as an android grabbed him and shook him. Yas looked away from the display, the battle too confusing to follow like that.

He tapped the chest controls on his suit. His helmet unfolded from its slot between his shoulders, spread over his head, and snapped to the rest of his suit. That gave him access to the combat channel. And a lot of cursing.

“…weren’t supposed to be this many defenses!”

“We’re fucked.”

“The captain was shot!”

Yas bit his lip. Should he go over there and try to help? He started to push a hand through his hair, but his fingers bumped the thin, nearly impervious Glasnax of his helmet. He didn’t have any weapons, and nothing in his medkit would stop robots or androids.

“Look out, sir!” someone cried.

A tangle of curses came from several mouths.

Yas closed his eyes, waiting for the comm ordering him to come help Rache. Or maybe a comm saying it was too late to help Rache.

It was selfish, but Yas’s main concern was what these mercenaries would do to him if the captain died. He hadn’t won a lot of friends thus far, refusing to engage the thuggish brutes in conversation. Few of them had educations or followed the news, and their favorite topics were excrement, masturbation, and how many women they were going to bang during their next shore leave.

Rache was different, with a cultured way of speaking and a tendency to reference classic books and recent articles on science and technology, but he didn’t deign to converse with Yas or anyone else often. To call him a companion would be a grave presumption. He was the leader of the ship, and that was it. His presence ended arguments whenever he entered a room, and Yas had little doubt that he was the sole reason any order existed among the rough mercenaries.

Someone’s scream echoed through the helmet speaker, and the audio feed ended abruptly. The display on the wall went black.

Yas stared at the hatch, wondering if anyone would make it back.

“Bridge?” Yas asked, switching to the ship’s internal comm channel. “Are they still alive over there?”

“Shit, Doc, that you? Cowering in the corridor instead of over there helping them?”

“The captain told me to stay here.”

The comm officer grunted and didn’t respond. Or give an update.

Yas was on the verge of going up to the bridge when the airlock light flashed again. Still holding the tanks, if only to keep them from floating away, he stepped out of the way.

“Dodger,” the captain’s voice sounded over the channel, ridiculously calm. “We’re cycling in. Get ready to depart. Quickly. We’ve set timed charges.”

“Understood, Captain,” the ship’s pilot said.

The hatch swung open, and the first six men in the boarding party strode out.

“Doc, I got a hangnail,” one announced. “Need you to fix it.”

The man behind him punched him. “Moon’s dead. Shut your hole.”

“Mercs die. That’s how it is. Ought to kiss the captain’s ass that it doesn’t happen that often on this ship.”

The men strode past, ignoring Yas, nobody offering to take the tanks. The hatch shut automatically so the airlock could cycle for the second half of the team.

“If you need help,” Yas called after them, “head to sickbay. I’ll be there shortly.”

Nobody acknowledged him.

When the hatch opened again, the captain strode out with four more men. One less than had gone over. Skin and blood showed through a hole in the captain’s armor. Yas gaped, wondering what had struck him that could pierce the strong alloy.

“Pod up,” the captain ordered his men. “We’re not sticking around to watch the fireworks.”

Several curt renditions of “Yes, sir” sounded, and his men strode away.

“Chief,” Rache said over the ship channel, “got some fuel here for you to pick up.”

Chief Engineer Khonsari’s distracted, “Yes, sir,” came in response.

“Lieutenant Moon?” Yas asked when only he and the captain remained in the corridor.

“A round blew his head off,” Rache said matter-of-factly. “Even you couldn’t have saved him.”

“Was it worth it?” Yas looked at the captain’s injured shoulder and waved for him to head to sickbay.

Rache didn’t move. His voice turned uncharacteristically savage when he said, “It’s always worth it to strike against the Kingdom. I am noting for the future that Jager has drastically increased security in his unmanned refineries. He must have been expecting trouble. We shouldn’t have lost anyone on a job like this.” His jaw might have clenched inside the helmet. He definitely sounded pissed. Because he cared about losing a man? Or was he merely irked that he’d made a mistake and lost one of the pawns on his chess board?

“You know,” Yas said carefully, probing a little, “most of the Twelve Systems aren’t particularly worried about King Jager’s ambitions.”

“Then they’ll be all the easier for him to surprise and take advantage of when he makes his move. Do you not believe he had a hand in your president’s death?”

Yas almost mentioned that he’d wondered if Rache was the one whose hand had been involved in that, but he caught himself in time.

“It’s possible that Kingdom supporters were behind it,” Yas said, “but they’re naive if they think our station or any other station or world in our system would give up their independence and succumb to Kingdom rule again.”

Or was he the naive one to believe that? He thought of the short discussion he’d had with President Bakas the last time he’d seen her alive. Someone wanted back in the Kingdom badly enough to have ordered a good woman assassinated.

“Don’t be so certain, Doctor. The universe has become a strange place. Many people long for the old ways, for a time when the worlds around them made more sense, and what it meant to be human was more clear cut.” Rache started up the corridor, the helmet on his armor folding back, but not his mask. Never his mask.

Yas had never seen Rache’s face, nor did he have a medical record on him in sickbay.

A lot of the crew’s records didn’t contain detailed background information, but they at least listed blood types, drug usage, and biological and cybernetic implants. Yas knew nothing about the captain. As far as he’d heard, none of the crew did.

They reached the intersection where one could turn toward sickbay and engineering or toward the bridge. Rache strode toward the bridge.

“Sir?” Yas pointed toward sickbay. “There are droplets of blood floating away from your shoulder.”

Rache looked at the wound. “It’s not that bad. I’ll have the chief fix my suit.”

“Not that bad? It looks like a spear went clean through your shoulder.” He peered around to Rache’s back, but the suit hadn’t been pierced on that side. That didn’t mean his statement wasn’t correct.

“It will heal.”

“Not unless you come to sickbay and let me clean that and glue it shut. Punctures get infected easily.”

“I paid for regenerative wound-healing enhancements and the best immune system you can buy.”

“At least let me give you a painkiller.”

Rache hesitated. His injury had to hurt. Had he pulled whatever spike or lance had made it out on his own?

“I’ve got my own. A couple of the other men will be waiting for you.” Rache nodded toward sickbay, then strode toward the bridge.

“Your doctor advises against self-medication and treatment,” Yas called after him.

“Noted,” Rache said without looking back or slowing down.

Yas watched his back, wondering what secrets he was hiding. Why didn’t he want his new doctor to help him? Because he thought Yas would take a sample of his blood and identify him?

“Who are you, Captain Rache?” Yas murmured softly.

The ship accelerated away from the refinery, the force pushing him against a bulkhead. He would have to find a pod soon.

He glanced back at the bulkhead. The display showed a feed again, this time from one of the ship’s exterior cameras. It was focused on the blocky gray contours of the refinery as they flew away, the planet Saga’s huge, cloudy blue surface and pale rings visible beyond it.

Then the refinery blew up, not as impressively as it would have in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, but enough to leave no doubt that it had been utterly destroyed. Another strike against the Kingdom.

Bonita waited until they’d escaped Odin’s gravity and were sailing away from the planet before sending messages and trying to find someone who wanted to buy state-of-the-art weapons at a reasonable price. Delivery included, anywhere in the system.

Probably.

She glanced at the gauge showing her hydrogen reserves and grimaced. The fusion drive was working, which was good, but her tanks were low. She’d expected to get paid on Odin and be able to buy fuel before leaving the system again.

Qin stepped into the hatchway. “Captain?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think it’s all right if I talk to the passengers?”

Bonita frowned over her shoulder. “They’re not wandering around, are they?”

The Stellar Dragon had escaped Odin’s atmosphere, and their current acceleration gave them about a third of the planet’s gravity. If Kim and Casmir had spent as much of their lives on the planet as Bonita suspected, they would be marveling at the sensation of feeling significantly lighter than usual.

“They’re still in the lounge, I think. I just wanted to ask them about knights. I’ve been curious, and who better to know than someone from Odin?”

“About knights?” Bonita asked. “Why?”

The last thing Bonita wanted was to hear about the Kingdom’s uptight law enforcers. She glanced at her scanner display, aware of the ship that had come off the launch loop right after them. It made her uneasy that it was heading in the same direction as the Stellar Dragon, especially since Bonita hadn’t programmed in a course yet.

“Like I said, I’ve never seen a knight, except in vids. I was hoping I would get a chance while we were on Odin, but our visit was so short.” Qin’s feline face took on a fully human and wistful visage.

“I thought we discussed this.” Bonita made her voice gentle. “A Kingdom knight isn’t going to… approve of what you are. You’re better off avoiding them.”

“Maybe one would understand that this—” Qin gestured to her body, “—wasn’t my choice. And he would be nice about it. And noble. In the stories, knights are always noble and gentlemanly to women.” There was that wistful sigh again.

“I think you should stop reading romances. Try some thrillers. Or cozy mysteries. Have you heard of Debra Croon? She’s a hundred and eighty years old, or something close, and has written more than two hundred novels in her Moons of Pegasus series. The same sentient cats have been helping her heroine solve crimes for all that time.”

Qin wrinkled her nose. “Sounds kind of boring.”

“I like them.” Bonita waved toward the corridor. “I’d wait a few days to let our guests get settled in and used to… things, but go ahead and talk to them if you like. Just don’t mention our cargo.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t get too upset if they treat you like an oddity.”

“I won’t.” Qin skipped off down the corridor.

Skipped. Bonita’s hired killing machine skipped. Well, so long as she blew crushers off the ship when needed, that was fine.

Bonita returned to sending messages. Unfortunately, since this wasn’t a system she traveled through often, and this wasn’t her preferred kind of work, she didn’t have many contacts here. She envisioned herself standing at an intersection at one of the space stations, trying to sell the weapons one by one out of a trench coat. That would not be ideal.

After she sent her messages, she grabbed pictures of her new passengers from the ship’s internal cameras and fed them into a network search. She should have researched them before taking them on board, but that liftoff had been far hastier than expected.

“Casmir Dabrowski,” she read as his face and bio came up in a corner of the star-filled navigation display. “Professor and robotics team lead at Zamek University.”

As she skimmed through, she decided he was exactly what he’d claimed to be. A few news stories popped up after the initial entry, and she saw something about an explosion at his workplace and the fact that he hadn’t been seen since then.

“An explosion caused by crushers?” It didn’t say specifically, but Bonita’s jaw clenched as her suspicion grew. If those robots had been here for Casmir, and he hadn’t thought to mention it to her, she would be very irritated.

She didn’t know how ubiquitous the crushers were on Odin, but when she searched specifically for them, she didn’t find anything. She began to suspect they hadn’t had anything to do with the Stellar Dragon or its cargo.

There weren’t any interesting news stories about Kim Sato, other than one from a few months earlier that mentioned her along with a couple of other scientists in an article on advancements in creating human-implantable bacteria capable of consuming radiation. Trials were supposedly being conducted by the military now.

Bonita touched a hand to her stomach, uneasy at the mention of a human-implantable bacteria, but she knew a lot of spacers who’d died to some cancer or another over the years. Sometimes they were curable, and sometimes not. Sometimes, it was the seventh or eighth one that got a person. No matter how much shielding a ship got, it wasn’t as good at keeping out radiation as a planet with a magnetosphere. Or even a habitat buried in an asteroid under miles of rock.

“Perhaps it is fortunate that you have acquired these individuals,” Viggo said, no doubt monitoring her search.

“How so?”

“If we run into Kingdom law enforcers who are irked that you tried to sell a stockpile of weapons to revolutionaries on their planet—”

“Baum said he was a loyalist, not a revolutionary.” Which she no longer believed, since he’d been attacked by what had likely been Kingdom Guard robots and drones.

“—you could use the passengers to barter for passage out of the system,” Viggo finished, ignoring her interruption.

“Use them like hostages, you mean?” Bonita asked. “I’d like to think I’m more honorable than that.”

Though it was admittedly easier to be honorable when one’s bank account and fuel tanks weren’t running on fumes.

“One must take care of oneself out in the wide expanse of space.” As Viggo spoke, one of his cleaning robots zipped in, climbed the bulkhead to reach the control console, and started vacuuming between the switches.

“Especially when it comes to germs?”

“Precisely so. But I was thinking of other dangers today. Did you notice that ship is still following us?”

“I noticed that it hasn’t set a course yet, the same as we haven’t set a course.”

“From what I remember of being human, there’s not much appeal to ambling aimlessly through space. Courses are set, usually with great intention, to take advantage of the gravitational pull of other orbiting bodies in the system.”

“I know, Viggo. I’m watching it.”

A ping sounded, the first response to one of her messages. Diego from one of the system’s pirate families. Dealing with pirates wasn’t ideal, but at least he was originally from System Diomedes, the same as she, and they’d crossed paths before. Admittedly, she would sell to just about anyone now.

“Laser Lopez,” the mustachioed man who appeared on the display said, “you still between the stars?”

“Rarely these ones.”

She waited, expecting a delay. The comm said he was calling from Forseti Station, the system trade hub, shipyard, and fuel depot orbiting between the gas giants Freyja and Freyr. She suspected he was rerouting the comm to make it appear that it came from the station but that his family’s ships were lurking within the murky layers of clouds on one of those planets. Only the most elite and wealthiest of the pirate families could afford slydar stealth technology that hid their ships’ heat signatures. Others made do with what nature offered.

“I understand you have some cargo you’re looking to sell cheap,” Diego said.

“I don’t remember mentioning that it would be cheap. This is prime, top-of-the-line equipment, straight out of the pristine labs of Sayona Station. There’s not a speck of dust on any of it.” She ignored the cleaning robot now defying what modest gravity the ship currently had by vacuuming up the side of the bulkhead.

“But your original deal went south, no? And you need to hit the gate out of the Kingdom’s lovely system?”

“Odd, none of that was in my comm.”

“I can read between the words, señora. You send a full list of the contents of your cargo, and I’ll make you an offer. How long until you reach Forseti?”

“Viggo?” Bonita asked.

“Due to the current favorable alignment of Odin with the gas giants, only a week and a half.”

“You hear that, Diego?” Bonita didn’t like the idea of sending exactly what she had, especially since she hadn’t seen inside the big case to verify its contents, but she couldn’t expect Diego to make the trip without knowing what he was buying. She also knew the pirate families wouldn’t report to the Kingdom Guard or any other government agency. They might report to other pirates… but she had to take that risk. The weapons were cutting edge, but they weren’t so unique or proprietary that criminals should flock after her for them.

She assumed. A glance at that other ship on her scanner made her question that assumption.

“I heard. Some of my people will be there to make an offer.” Diego smiled. “If everything is as top-of-the-line and dust free as you say.”

The vacuum rolled across the ceiling above Bonita’s head. “It’s definitely dust free.”

“See you soon, señora.”

As soon as his face disappeared from the display, Bonita thumped her fist on the console. “Really, Viggo? Your little robots need to clean while I’m on the comm?”

“They clean all the time, just not always in the cabin you’re in. One must keep ahead of dirt and grime to ensure enough for an avalanche does not form.”

“How could an avalanche of grime possibly form on the ceiling over my head? Program in the best course for Forseti, please.”

“Yes, Captain. Do you believe your pirate contact intends to deal fairly?”

“Fairly? No. But predictably, I suspect so.”

Fortunately, she didn’t need a fair deal. Baum had paid for most of the merchandise. She only needed to cover what she’d paid to pick it up—the balance he’d owed—and what it had cost her to make the trip. It would be nice to make a profit, but at this point, she would be delighted to break even.

As Viggo altered the ship’s course, pointing them out toward the distant points of light that represented the gas giants, Bonita watched the other ship. It was going to be telling if it set a course to follow them.

7

Casmir grimaced when Kim thwacked him in the thigh with her wooden sword.

“Stop bouncing so much,” Kim ordered. “You’re making yourself an easy target. And putting yourself in danger of hitting your head on the ceiling. Again.”

“Sorry, the low gravity is weird.”

His stomach agreed. He’d been lying down for much of the last three days, wishing the motion-sickness tablets he’d consumed had helped more than they had.

This was the first day he’d felt reasonably normal. He’d made the mistake of coming to the lounge where he’d found Kim jogging on a treadmill with straps that pulled her down, simulating the higher gravity of Odin. An odd glee had entered her eyes when she spotted him, and she’d pounced, thrusting a sword at him and offering to teach him a few moves. Assuming she was bored without her work, Casmir had agreed. His battered thighs assured him that had been a mistake, but at least it had kept his mind off his problems for an hour. He was frustrated by his lack of progress in finding out who had sent the crushers.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” he asked.

“Some. I’m getting used to it. It’s better than the near-zero-g of Gjoll Station.”

“Oh, right. I’d forgotten you had to spend a couple of months at the orbital station.”

“For my early work on radiation-eating bacteria. Since it was designed to live inside space-faring humans, I had to make sure microgravity wouldn’t negatively affect it. I suggested to my advisor that I could simply send instructions and samples up to the research scientists already working up there, but Dr. Yamada always liked to torment me.” Kim lowered her sword and stared at the diamond gridding of the deck. “I haven’t sent any messages to my colleagues because I haven’t wanted to lead anyone to you, but I have a number of worried inquiries in my inbox. People are wondering what happened to me, and I feel bad letting them believe… I’m not sure what they believe. I am known for not responding to messages for a few days, but it’s not like me to miss work.”

“Kim, return your messages, please. Before we get so far out that the network is flaky.” Casmir didn’t know if that ever truly became a problem, as there were relay satellites throughout the system, but at the least, there would be a long time delay as they flew farther from Odin. “I appreciate you not wanting to help them—whoever they are—find me, but I don’t want your family and friends to think you got sucked into a robotic trash compacter on the way home from work.”

“You haven’t figured out who they are, yet?” Kim sounded surprised.

Because she assumed he was a decent researcher? He wasn’t horrible, but scouring the public and university networks hadn’t given him any clues, and it wasn’t as if he had access to government databases or could comm the king and ask to speak with friends of the late Sir Friedrich. The elusive knights were notorious for not publishing their personal contact information.

Casmir shrugged helplessly. “No. I keep checking the capital’s news and searching for mentions of myself. I have been reported missing, and the parking-garage fire and knight’s death were covered. None of the major networks spoke specifically of the crushers, but I found some footage on a conspiracy node. I’m guessing the government is squelching the stuff it has control over, since the crushers are supposed to be a secret weapon for the military.”

“No mention of our rental? I hope that means the house is still standing. With all my books unmolested.”

“Me too. The conspiracy node, which may or may not be a reliable resource, reported that a group of knights have been assigned to find out where the crushers came from and who’s responsible for them. Apparently, a few went missing from a military facility a couple of months ago, which implies… I’m not sure. Maybe that someone has been gunning for me for a while? I’ve been raking through the compost heap of my brain and trying to guess what I might know or have done that would have prompted someone to try to kill me.”

“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.”

“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.

She did not like that the other ship hadn’t communicated with them before presuming to lock up, and she had been tempted to raid her small armory for explosives that could hurt even armored soldiers. But the last thing she wanted was to fight a battle in her own cargo hold and have the intruders blow holes in the side of her ship. This trip would end for her extremely quickly if that happened.

As much as it galled her, it would be better to pretend to be helpless and let them have what they wished. Especially if that was Casmir. She didn’t owe him anything, and it would be a relief to get him off her ship before more of those crushers showed up. With luck, the intruders would leave her alone once they had him.

A faint clunk-ting emanated from the airlock chamber. They were coming.

Casmir jogged out of the corridor and across the hold to join her. He didn’t have any weapons, which wasn’t surprising since he hadn’t arrived with any. She was a little surprised he hadn’t asked to borrow something, but she was glad. A passenger on her own ship could blow holes in the hull as easily as an intruder.

“What are you doing?” Bonita asked.

“Preparing to give myself up to prevent you and your ship from being troubled further.”

She squinted at him. She wasn’t positive that was truly what he’d been planning when she’d caught him in navigation earlier. If he was smart enough to build robots, he was probably smart enough to make up a story on the fly. Was it possible he knew more about who was following them than he’d let on?

“How was my hand-raising earlier?” Casmir lifted his hands over his head, empty palms open. “Sufficient to appease criminals? I want to get it right.” He lowered them, then raised them again, as if she were some cartoon bank robber with a gun poked against his spine.

“Are you more dangerous than you seem?” Bonita asked him. “Or are you truly a doofus?”

“I don’t think anyone has ever called me dangerous, but a doofus? I’d like to keep looking for adjectives, if it’s all the same to you.”

A knock more like the bang of rifle fire came from the hatch. The mirrored faceplate of a helmet and the gray airlock tube extending toward the other ship were all she could see through the small round window. A gloved hand came up, showing a Tac-75 explosive, detonator ready to be set if she didn’t open the hatch.

Bonita released the lock and stepped back, not bothering to draw her pistol. She had no idea how many enemies were about to stomp onto her ship, but that first one was in heavy combat armor. Her galaxy suit was rated to take some damage, but that man could walk through a field of flying bullets and energy bolts while yawning and scratching his armpit, and he would feel nothing.

The hatch swung open, and six armored figures strode into the hold.

Casmir scurried back, lest his foot be stepped on, but he also peered into the airlock chamber and down the tube attaching them to the other ship. Bonita imagined some doofus-counterpart of his leaning out and waving from the other end. Though that was unlikely. Why would pirates, or whatever these people were, tote civilian engineers along on a mission?

“No, no,” Bonita said as the armored men spread out. “Come right in, I insist.”

She wouldn’t draw a weapon, but she doubted her situation would get any worse if she drew sarcasm.

“Captain Lopez,” one of the men said, his voice filtered through a speaker in his helmet. “You made a mistake.”

“How rare for me. And you are?” Bonita didn’t like that these people knew her name when she had no idea who they were. Nothing had come up when she’d searched for information on their ship. She’d found the layout and specs for the model but nothing about that specific vessel. It didn’t have an ident chip, so that lent credence to her notion of pirates. She wondered who they’d bribed to get on the Odin launch loop.

“People who will fight to keep advanced weapons out of the Kingdom’s hands. The rest of the galaxy is not going to suffer under their oppressive rule again.”

“I wasn’t taking any weapons to the Kingdom,” Bonita lied easily, though unease tapped a discouraging beat in her stomach. Maybe they weren’t here for Casmir, after all.

“Weapons?” Casmir tilted his head. “Does that mean you’re not here for…”

Bonita willed the kid to shut up. He should have hidden.

“Are you Casmir Dabrowski?” the speaker asked.

“Yes.”

“It was thoughtful of you to introduce yourself. I don’t know who you are yet, but I asked the lieutenant to look you up and see if there’s a reward.”

When Casmir arched his eyebrows, they disappeared under his shaggy bangs. “If there is, would you let me know? Because it’s been an extremely confusing week.”

The helmeted figure stared at him. Maybe he was also trying to decide if Casmir was dangerous or a doofus. Not that the two had to be mutually exclusive.

“Where are the weapons, Captain?” a second figure asked, a woman.

That surprised Bonita because the armored intruders were all well over six feet tall. Maybe she was augmented, which was a disturbing thought, because that meant these people might all be the equivalent of Qin.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken about weapons,” Bonita said. “There’s nothing like that here. I had a small cargo that I delivered in Odin—I never saw what was inside—but it’s long gone. I can give you the name of the buyer, if you wish.”

She wondered if her unwelcome visitors were responsible for the robots that had blown Baum’s shuttle out of the sky. She’d assumed the Kingdom Guard had sent those, but maybe not. If the people on this ship had been behind that, would they believe she’d had time since then to unload the cargo?

“Everything I have now is hooked to that bulkhead over there. You’re welcome to search the crates, but I’d appreciate it if you not take them, as they’re the ship’s necessities, not a cargo for delivery.” Bonita waved to a prominent crate labeled vacuum toilet parts. She’d put that one in front to discourage interest. “Like I said, I’ve nothing left from the other cargo.”

“Of course not,” the woman murmured. “Stavros, Taylor, search the ship. Thoroughly. These freighters are known to have secret compartments, but they never seem to be mentioned in the factory specs.”

“Because smugglers add them afterward.”

Stavros, Taylor. Bonita burned the names into her mind in case she had a chance to look them up later, to figure out who she was dealing with. Vigilantes? Mercenaries? Could these be some of Captain Tenebris Rache’s people? The last she’d heard, he was a one-ship operation, and that wasn’t his ship out there, but maybe things had changed. He was known to loathe the Kingdom, though stopping a shipment of weapons seemed like a small-time job for him.

“We questioning her?” the man asked. “Easier than having our men tear the paneling off all over the ship.”

“We should question that one.” The woman pointed at Casmir. “He looks like he’d crack like a Radkin melon left all summer to dry in the sun.”

“He also looks like he doesn’t know anything.”

“That would be true,” Casmir said.

“And if he’s valuable, whoever wants him might not want his pretty face mutilated.”

“We could just mutilate some fingers. Nobody minds fingers much, even if they’re missing altogether.”

Casmir lifted his arms but appeared torn between hiding his hands behind his back and raising them overhead, as he’d practiced. Bonita felt a little sorry for him, even if he had brought trouble with him. It wasn’t the current trouble, it seemed.

“Who are you?” she asked the thugs.

Information always had value. Maybe she would get lucky and they would chat.

“Somebody who doesn’t want to see the genophobic Kingdom government in charge of anything more than its own planet,” the man growled. “And maybe not even that.”

“Genophobic?” Casmir asked. “Afraid of sexual relations? I haven’t met the king, but he does have the three princes and a princess, so that seems unlikely. If you mean that we’re uncomfortable with genetic engineering, then yes, that has been the policy for centuries.”

“Shut up.” One of the other men reached for him, while two more stepped toward Bonita.

Bonita jumped back, her pistol finding its way into her hand by instinct. The armored men laughed when she pointed it at one of their chests.

“You will tell us where the weapons are,” the leader said. “Nobody cares if you get mutilated.”

She sprang back again when they advanced, her knee twinging even in low gravity, but the intruders were too quick. Even if they hadn’t been augmented humans, that armor gave them extra speed and strength. She fired, hoping to get lucky, that her energy bolt would find a seam, but it only clanged off a helmet. An armored hand blurred in and clamped down on hers, squeezing.

She cried out, unable to keep hold of her pistol.

It clattered to the deck, and she found herself hoisted into the air. She fought, more out of instinct and desperation than because she had a chance at escaping. A hand curled around her throat, and that cut through her panic. She grew very still.

“Where are the weapons?” the leader asked, his fingers tightening.

Pain flared at the pressure, and Bonita couldn’t keep tears from springing to her eyes. She hoped they looked like tears of defiance, not tears that suggested she was on the verge of giving in.

“Already… told you…” she spat out the best she could with her voice box being crushed. And her windpipe.

Why hadn’t she at least put the helmet up on her galaxy suit? That would have offered some protection from this. Already, her breaths were more difficult to draw up her windpipe from her lungs. Would they kill her if she didn’t talk? Or if she did?

Normally, she would have simply accepted the loss of the cargo as the cost of working in a risky business, but she couldn’t afford to dump it, not anymore. Damn Jake Pepper for being such an ass and leaving her in this desperate a situation, and damn her for not reading him better, for not seeing his betrayal coming.

The fingers tightened further. “You will tell us where the cargo is, or you will die. Nobody needs you. We’ve got pilots aplenty, pilots who can fly this ship for us. Which we just might claim for ourselves. After all, if we found a ship adrift, it would be within our right to claim it for the war effort.”

Nobody needs you. It was a strange time for the words to penetrate deeply and for Bonita to realize how accurate they were. Her parents were long gone, and she’d never had children. Who would even miss her if these thugs killed her?

“War? What war? Nobody’s at war yet.” That was Casmir.

He sounded like he was hanging upside down in someone’s grip, but Bonita couldn’t focus on anything other than her fear and the darkness encroaching on her vision. She grasped the single armored arm holding her up and tried to pry the fingers away, but they might as well have been made from graphene.

“If you believe that,” someone replied to Casmir, “then your news service is even more censored than we thought. Only the Kingdom wouldn’t tell its own people that they killed President Bakas, and now half of the systems are gunning for them.” The man laughed.

“Let’s make a deal,” Bonita rasped, clawing for a brilliant plan. “Maybe I can go back to Odin and retrieve the cargo for you.”

The man shook her by the neck. “We know you have it here.”

Desperate, she kicked out, her boot striking her assailant in the armored groin. It did nothing but hurt her toes.

“Last time I’m asking, Captain,” the man said. “Where are the weapons?”

She closed her eyes, aware of hot tears leaking down her cheeks, even as her body used the last of its air. If she passed out, she might not wake again. If she didn’t tell them…

“Kill her,” the woman ordered before Bonita had finished deciding.

“No!” Casmir shouted. “I can show you the weapons.”

The fingers loosened. Her captor didn’t release her, and her feet still dangled three inches off the deck, but she was able to suck in a deep breath through her bruised throat.

She turned her head as much as she could, intending to shoot Casmir a dirty look—she was positive he didn’t know where they’d hidden the cargo—but she glimpsed Qin crouching in the corridor, her Brockinger anti-tank 350 aimed at Bonita’s captor, as if she’d been about to fire.

The intruders hadn’t seen her yet. Should Bonita give her the go ahead? The problem was that even with that gun—which might or might not do anything against their armor—Qin was only one person to their six. Further, the explosive round might tear a giant hole in the hull.

“I mean, I can find them,” Casmir corrected as all the armored faceplates turned toward him. He was, indeed, dangling from one ankle, his hair brushing the deck as he twisted, looking up at people. “She didn’t confide their location to me, because I’m not a trusted member of her crew, or perhaps because I spent the last three days dealing with airsickness—technically, is it airsickness in space where there is no air? Make that space-sickness.”

The one holding him shook him. “You know where they are or not?”

“I can find them,” Casmir repeated. “I’m a robotics engineer. There are robots all over the ship for cleaning and various tasks. I can modify one with an infrared camera and have it zip around the ship, looking for spots in the paneling that are cooler than they should be, indicating a lack of insulation behind it.”

“How long would that take?”

“Oh, not long at all. The programming would be a breeze. An hour, perhaps, assuming I can get my tools. And be stood upright. A table and some space to work would be ideal, but the upright thing is paramount.”

In the corridor, Qin raised her eyebrows, seeming to ask if she should wait or start a firefight. If she did the latter, Bonita was highly aware that she and Casmir would end up in the crossfire. They wore their galaxy suits, but neither had their helmets on.

Not wanting to draw the intruders’ attention to Qin, Bonita only made a slight negative hand gesture. Better that Qin wait until she could leap from hiding and ambush the intruders, ideally one on one. And if Casmir was successful in buying time…

“He is a robotics engineer,” one of the men said. “The lieutenant said she didn’t see a bounty out for him, but there were a bunch of recent news stories from Odin about him being missing and his university’s parking garage blowing up.”

“Fine,” the leader sighed. “Throw him in a room where he can work, and round up any other crew members you find, but keep most of our guys looking for the weapons. Easier if we just get them ourselves. I don’t want to be hooked up to this garbage barge all day.”

“Garbage barge?” came Viggo’s indignant voice from a speaker.

Someone snorted. “There’s one crew member.”

“Actually, that’s the ship’s computer,” Bonita said.

“We’ll see.” The man waved for his team to spread out and search.

Good, they were splitting up. Maybe Qin would have a chance to set up ambushes.

The man holding Casmir turned him right side up and dropped his feet to the deck. His face was red, and one of his eyes kept blinking, but he managed a bleary smile for Bonita when their captors trooped them off toward the lounge.

“If you think I’ll thank you for this,” she growled at him, “you’re wrong.”

His smile grew sad. “I thought you might not.”

9

Casmir alternated between tinkering with the two cleaning robots open in front of him, their circuit boards and wiring exposed, and putting tools in and out of his satchel. He’d already reprogrammed the vacuums—that had been simple—but he lacked something important that he needed, and he didn’t know how to get it.

He sat in the lounge with a sullen Captain Lopez across the table from him and an armored man looming by the hatch, keeping an eye on them. Or so Casmir assumed. Thanks to those mirrored faceplates, their guard could have been sleeping or watching a porno vid and they wouldn’t have known it.

As far as Casmir knew, the intruders hadn’t yet found Qin or Kim. That was a little surprising. Maybe this freighter was better at hiding things—and people—than he would have guessed. The trick he’d promised he could pull off might not have worked even if that was what he’d truly programmed the robots to do.

He needed an explosive, and sadly, Kim hadn’t left her lighter and deodorant out on the table.

If he could hunt around in the mess cabinets, he might be able to find some chemicals that could work, though what would be perfect were some of the canisters from that anti-tank gun Qin carried around. Wherever she was.

“You’re wasting your time,” Lopez said, her voice harsh. “Everybody is. There’s nothing for you—or them—to find.” She glared at the impassive guard.

“Well, if you ever need to search the hidden holds of other ships, you might find it handy to have a robot for the purpose.” Casmir smiled and tapped one of the vacuums, though he wished he could convey that he’d only been trying to save her life. He hadn’t been convinced that thug had only been scaring her. Her face had been purple, and he swore he’d heard something snap in her neck. This scheme was the first thing he’d come up with, but as he’d selected robots from the impressive collection of cleaning devices in a closet in engineering, he’d come up with a better idea.

“I don’t invade other people’s ships and steal their hard-won goods.”

The hatch opened, and the guard swung toward it, his rifle pointing into what turned out to be an empty corridor. Lopez jumped to her feet.

The guard glanced back at her, but her weapons had been removed, and she couldn’t do anything but crouch, ready in case… what?

Casmir tried to see around the guard, who was now poking his head into the corridor. Something flew above his helmet and into the lounge. A canister.

Casmir lunged in the opposite direction. He’d wanted an explosive, but not like this.

The guard spun toward it as it started spewing smoke.

Was it some noxious knock-out gas? No, that wouldn’t affect someone in combat armor.

Casmir covered his mouth and backed farther from the table. It would affect him.

The soldier stomped out into the corridor, and the bzzzt of a DEW-Tek rifle firing sounded. Lopez ran out after him only to have him spin back toward her, pointing his weapon at her chest. She lifted her hands as Casmir had done earlier and backed into the lounge again.

Smoke swirled about her ankles. It stung Casmir’s eyes, but he couldn’t yet tell if it would do anything more inimical. He did his best not to inhale.

Something slammed into the armored guard from behind, hard enough to make him stumble forward. A hand appeared, tossing a weapon to Lopez, and a boom sounded as someone—Qin?—fired a weapon that could have blown a hole in the hull of the ship. But it struck the guard in the back, hurling him across the lounge. He crashed shoulder-first into the far wall. It left a dent. Both in his armor and in the wall.

Unfortunately, he found his feet and fired back. Qin and Lopez leaped into the corridor and used the jamb for cover.

“Qin!” Casmir called, torn between wanting to hide his unarmored body under the table and needing one of her explosives.

She glanced at him as she leaned around the jamb to return the guard’s fire. Perhaps realizing the threat to the hull of the ship, she’d switched to bullets, but they didn’t do anything to hurt the armored thug. And he realized that. He strode toward them.

“I need one of your things,” he yelled, deliberately vague, hoping the guard wouldn’t remember.

When she glanced again, he waved at her bandolier and pointed to the explosive shells. Would she see? That smoke kept spewing into the room, creating a thick green haze in the air.

The guard roared and charged, spraying his rifle fire and leaving scorch marks in the bulkhead opposite the hatchway. He disappeared into the corridor. Footsteps rang out. Qin and Lopez running from him? Or had more of the intruders heard the noise and come to help their man?

A few oddly quiet seconds passed before an armored man stuck his head into the lounge. Casmir didn’t know if it was the same guy as before or a new one. He thrust his hands into the air and tried to appear as innocent as he could.

The mirrored faceplate looked from him to the table full of parts and back to him. “Stay here. Keep working on that thing.”

The guard left, clanging the hatch shut behind him.

“If I don’t pass out first.” Casmir coughed at the smoke stinging his eyes and scouring his throat.

He ran to the source, grabbed it, and threw it into the garbage chute. He sanitized his gloved hands under the kitchen spritzer and wiped them vigorously on a towel. He flapped at the air with that towel, hunted until he found a vent fan for the ship’s small stove, and turned it on.

As the smoke curled toward it, he decided he didn’t have the urge to pass out. It seemed that Qin had only thrown a weapon designed to cloud the air. Maybe it did something to whatever scanners the men had built into their armor.

Casmir headed toward the table but noticed something just inside the hatch. One of Qin’s explosive shells lay on the deck nestled against the wall.

“Perfect,” he crooned, carefully picking it up with both hands.

A clank came from the back of the lounge, and he jumped, almost dropping his prize. He clutched it to his chest as if it were an egg.

One of the exercise cabinet doors opened, and Kim stuck her head out through a three-foot-high opening. She peered around the lounge and flinched when she saw Casmir. Her brow smoothed when she realized he was alone.

“You were in there the whole time?” he whispered. “Didn’t they search in here?”

“They searched. Someone opened my cabinet, and I thought they would spot me, with some technology if not their eyes, but I think the cabinet doors and interior walls are designed to scramble scanners. I was behind the exercise cycle and their equipment didn’t tell them.” She pointed her thumb into the depths of her cabinet. “Also, they were busy arguing while they looked. I gathered they were more interested in finding what they thought would be large crates of some illicit cargo rather than human beings.”

“That’s good. I’m not sure when they’ll be back, so you may want to stay in there.”

Kim couldn’t have made a more sour face if she were sucking a Devarian lemon.

“Or come out and risk getting caught.” Casmir slid into his seat so he could continue working. “You can hold my tools for me.”

“A cornucopia of delightful options.” Kim slithered out of her cabinet, gripped her back, and grimaced as she stretched. “I don’t suppose there’s a way to lock the hatch?” she asked as she walked to the table.

“They might get suspicious if I lock it.”

“Are you working on something for them? Who are they, anyway? Pirates?”

“They neglected to introduce themselves.”

“That’s rude.”

“I thought so. I haven’t seen any faces yet, so I can’t run a network search. I’m afraid you know as much as I do.” Casmir made a bracket to secure the explosive inside his chosen robot. Now to work on a detonator. A remote one would be ideal, rather than a simple timer. “Though I did learn that there’s not a bounty on my head or a warrant out for my arrest.”

“They checked?”

“Yes, because of the message I sent, they thought I might be worth kidnapping. I’m pleased to learn that I’m not. But still puzzled.”

“What are you making?” Kim asked.

“It’s a…” Casmir glanced toward the speakers, not sure if there were cameras in the walls and if the intruders were monitoring them. Or if they were busy playing hide, seek, and attack with Qin and Lopez. “Device to detect things hidden in the walls. They’re having trouble finding the captain’s contraband, and I’d like to live, so I offered to help.”

Kim raised her eyebrows. She might not be good at telling if strangers were lying, but he suspected she knew him well enough to decipher deceit. She didn’t call him on it.

“Can I help?” She made a grasping motion in the air, maybe indicating that she felt useless.

Casmir knew the feeling well. He was used to teaching and working with his team on projects every day. He’d never been good at taking days off. That was why he ended up making robotic birds in his spare time.

“Sure. Screw the lid back on that one. He’s going to be our decoy.”

Casmir secured a remote-control chip in the vacuum before pushing it toward Kim. Then he set one up inside of the second robot. If this worked, he would lose some of his spare parts forever, but if they survived and reached Forseti Station, he could buy new parts.

Assuming he deemed it safe enough to use his banking chip. He still needed to figure out who was after him, but he felt reassured that this mess was about something else. Maybe he’d left his pursuers back on Odin. Of course, if he got himself killed here, flying along in the middle of nowhere, it wouldn’t matter that he had successfully eluded those crushers.

“Let’s see if they’re ready.” Casmir grabbed the remote and set the two robots on the deck.

He succeeded at moving them left and right, forward and back, and he’d given them both tiny cameras on their fronts. He was able to toggle between the two on his remote’s tiny display, which offered him slightly different views of the closed hatch.

“I’d be impressed,” Kim said, “but they did all that before you started tinkering. I saw one vacuuming inside one of the kitchen cabinets this morning.”

“Not on orders from my remote. And not with cameras.”

“Because normal people don’t want a close-up of what’s being vacuumed.”

“I might find it entertaining.”

“That doesn’t negate my statement.”

Casmir grinned at her. “Did you get a chance to look up the layout of that ship?”

“Yes. The bridge and briefing rooms are at the top of the pyramid, cabins and lounges, a rifle range and a gym in the five middle decks, and then engineering, environmental controls, and cargo on the largest, bottom level. The airlock is extended from there.”

“Is there a lift going up to the bridge?”

“Ladders, I think.”

“Aren’t spaceships supposed to be accessible for people with injuries or disabilities?”

“I don’t imagine a lot of pirates roll around in wheelchairs.”

“Did you get a map downloaded?” Casmir asked.

“It’s just in my head.”

“All right. Stand next to me while I drive them, please.” Casmir opened the hatch, listened for a moment, and grimaced at the sounds of fighting. They came from the hold down below, not from the corridor outside, but that would still be problematic. He had to navigate the vacuums through the hold and to the airlock. Maybe he would get lucky, and everyone would be too busy to notice what he was doing.

“Drive them where?” Kim asked.

Casmir set the robots in the corridor, nudged the remote, and they rolled toward the ladder well. Fortunately, they had no trouble navigating vertical walls. “Let’s hope that the signal is strong enough to get them the whole way there.”

“Whole way where? The enemy ship?”

“You’ll see.” He grinned at her again.

“Has anyone told you that engineers are annoying?”

“Engineers? No. I’ve been told I’m annoying.”

“Good.”

Bonita crouched behind the crates in the cargo hold, exchanging fire with one of the intruders. Qin had raced to the armory and was supposed to get her a weapon that would have a chance against their armor. She’d meant to select something herself, but they had her pinned down. Four of them. She didn’t know where the other two had gone.

A crimson energy bolt slammed into one of the crates, hurling it backward. The lid flew open, and prepackaged meals flew about the cargo hold. Bonita ducked lower.

One of the men strode straight toward her meager cover. She leaned out and fired four times with her pistol. Her bolts ricocheted off his chest plate, not even leaving scorch marks.

“Qin,” Bonita shouted. “Now would be good.”

She appreciated that Qin had come to the lounge to rescue her but wished she’d had more of a plan than sprinting into the cargo hold and hiding. The guard had been too close behind, and another intruder had been waiting by the airlock. There’d been no chance to hide.

The man’s stride turned into a run, and he sprinted toward her crate. Bonita fired again, for all the good it did, and scrambled backward.

He would have slammed into her, but Qin sprang over Bonita’s head and landed in front of her. She lunged and crashed into the man, taking him to the deck despite his armor. She landed astride him and slammed her helmet into his.

For a second, he seemed stunned, and Qin used that pause to fire her Brockinger at a second man rushing toward them.

Bonita winced at the explosion in the middle of her cargo hold, but it took the man in the chest, knocking him backward and peeling his armor open like a sardine can.

The man under Qin recovered and slammed two armored fists into her chest. Though her galaxy suit insulated her somewhat, she gasped in pain. Only the grip she had on him with her legs kept her from flying up to the ceiling. She tried to load another round in her Brockinger, but he grabbed the big gun, attempting to wrest it from her.

Bonita realized Qin had brought a Starhawk 5000 out for her and dropped it on the deck when she attacked. She snatched it up and rushed toward the grappling combatants.

Even though the rifle had more power than her pistol, it was no Brockinger. Bonita didn’t bother to shoot but instead used the butt end, slamming it into the man’s faceplate over and over. That had to distract him, if nothing else.

He roared and bucked Qin into the air. She flew backward, her helmet slamming into a crate. Hard.

Bonita pointed the rifle at his chest but saw four determined intruders striding toward her. Only one was down, the one Qin had fired an explosive at. It had torn open his chest armor, but it had also blown a crater in her deck, revealing conduits and insulation underneath. Her cargo hold couldn’t take more abuse.

Four rifles pointed at Bonita’s chest. She had no delusions about her galaxy suit repelling them all.

The entire boarding party was down in the cargo hold again. That meant nobody was watching Casmir, but if all he was doing was building a robot to help her enemies, Bonita hardly cared. This escape had been pointless.

Qin groaned faintly. She lay on her back under the crate, the fingers of one hand twitching. She must have struck it like a pile driver.

“Qin,” Bonita whispered under her breath, trusting Qin’s enhanced hearing to catch it. She lowered her weapon to the deck and spread her arms. “Stop fighting. Pretend you’re knocked out. Until we get a better chance.”

From the way Qin’s twitching fingers stilled and her helmet did not move, Bonita feared she truly was knocked out. Or worse.

10

“This is remarkable workmanship,” Yas said, eyeing the brain scan of Chief Engineer Jessamine Khonsari, the woman who’d been having coffee with the captain when he first met Rache—by collapsing in an injured mess at the base of their table.

Now, she sat on one of the sickbay beds, rotating her shoulder and grimacing as she gripped one of the handholds to keep herself from floating away.

“I knew about your arm and eyes and synthetic joints from your record,” he added, “but I hadn’t seen the full body scan. I didn’t realize you had circuitry integrated seamlessly into your brain.”

“Yes, I’m a modern wonder. Drugs, Doctor. I’m here for some drugs.”

Yas arched his eyebrows, the magnetic boots of his suit keeping him attached to the deck. The ship had docked at a second refinery orbiting Saga, so they were without gravity again.

“You might have torn a ligament, Jessamine. Let me take a look.”

“Might as well call me Jess, Doc. Seeing as how we’re getting intimate.” She pushed a hand through her short, curly black hair, then maneuvered the top half of her suit down to her waist. She stopped moving her shoulder so he could examine it with his fingers and a quick Hexscan.

“Intimate? I suppose I’d be amenable to the offer…” Yas smiled, though he doubted she had anything sexual in mind. “But I’m only planning to scan your shoulder.”

“You looked at my brain circuits, Doc. I don’t let many people do that.”

“I hope that doesn’t mean you plan to kill me after I give you your medication. To keep me silent.”

“Nah. I only kill people who try to blow up my engines. I’m a lady.”

“Clearly.” He kept his tone dry and made a point of only examining her shoulder and none of her lady attributes. He hadn’t been here long enough to get desperate and horny and start hitting on the crew. Further, he was a professional, even if his world had been taken away from him. “Yes, a torn ligament. It shouldn’t need to be immobilized, but let me give you something to speed up the healing.”

“Sparring with these men is not healthy.” Jessamine eyed the injector he extracted from his kit.

“I imagine not. Two-thirds of the crewmen are enhanced with various legal and illegal implants. The ones that aren’t look to have been born hulking trolls.”

“It’s not a profession that attracts beauty-pageant winners.”

“With rare exceptions?” Yas raised his eyebrows.

Nobody would call Jessamine a troll, not with those arched cheekbones, full lips, and elegant facial features. Despite all of the surgery she’d had done, Yas could tell from her scans that it had all been for medical purposes, likely to repair her body after a brutal accident, rather than to enhance strength and speed.

She looked away from what he’d meant to be a compliment and said, “No. No exceptions.”

Maybe she was self-conscious about the prosthetics.

As the jet injector hissed, the captain’s voice sounded over the speakers. “Dr. Peshlakai, I need you on the refinery.”

Yas frowned. After the mess at the last refinery, he had no desire to visit this one.

“Is someone injured?” he asked.

“Someone is dead.”

“I can’t help you with that, Captain.”

“Get over here. Now.”

The ice in the captain’s tone chilled Yas, and he started packing his medical kit. He hadn’t seen Rache lose his temper yet, but he had witnessed him shoot one of his mercenaries in cold blood when the man had been discovered transmitting the ship’s coordinates to a Kingdom military outpost. Somehow, that frigid, remorseless calculation seemed worse than if he’d lost his temper and killed the man in a fit of rage.

“I’m on my way, sir.” Yas selected a few extra scanners, a scalpel, and syringes for taking blood samples.

All he could guess was that there was something strange about the dead man and Rache would want an autopsy and answers. He hadn’t mentioned which crew member it was.

“Have fun,” Jess said. “See the sights. Don’t forget my drugs when you get back. The last doc always gave me trylochanix.”

“For… injuries from sparring? That’s a very strong and addictive analgesic. And an antidepressant.” He arched his eyebrows. Jess, with her easygoing smiles, hardly seemed like someone in need of that aspect of the drug.

“Yeah, it’s what they gave me after my surgery. It was the only thing that helped with the pain and the neuropathy I got from my body getting jury-rigged back together. Doc Otero kept it in that cabinet right there.” Jess smiled and pointed at the main enclosure for the ship’s medications. It was out along the wall and without a lock on it, something Yas intended to change when he could requisition the help to move it somewhere more secure. He’d already walked in on one of the mercenaries helping himself.

“Do you still have neuropathy? Your record says the surgery was two years ago.”

“Yup, sometimes. Especially when other things get knocked out of alignment.” Jess waved at her shoulder. “Everything hurts like fire then too.”

She was casual as she spoke, but she also avoided looking him in the eye. That made him uneasy, as did the idea of simply handing her something so addictive without having done an examination or being more familiar with her history. But when he looked at Dr. Otero’s notes—nobody had yet explained to Yas what happened to his predecessor, and he was afraid to ask—Yas did see that he’d given her a legitimate prescription for trylochanix whenever she’d suffered injuries.

And there seemed to be numerous injuries. She got hurt sparring or at work often.

Simply a byproduct of being part of this crew and going on dangerous missions? Or was it possible she intentionally got hurt so she could get more trylochanix?

“Have you tried other medicines?” Yas asked.

“Yeah, but nothing works as well. It’s fine, Doc. I only take it when I need it. You know, when something short circuits.” She held up her prosthetic hand and her pinky twitched a few times.

He was fairly certain that was an intentional motion rather than a short circuit. He was also fairly certain trylochanix wouldn’t do anything to help with mechanical issues. Dulling neuropathic pain, however, was a legitimate use.

“I see. We should schedule a full examination when you have time—and when I have time.” Yas remembered that the captain was waiting for him. “Let’s discuss this further when I get back.”

“Gosh, Doc, if you want to go on a date, just ask.”

“That would be delightful, but we should probably keep things professional.”

“Sounds boring.”

“I’m going to give you a simple analgesic for now, and you let me know if it’s not enough.” Yas selected something strong but basic and non-addictive from the cabinet. “We can reevaluate after an exam.”

Jess frowned but didn’t object, merely accepting the tabs and hopping off the table with a, “Thanks, Doc,” before heading back to engineering.

Yas grabbed one of the oxygen tanks from a locker of emergency air, rations, and water in the corner. Sickbay was one of a handful of independently powered areas in the ship that could be isolated from the main environmental system and act as a safe haven if primary power or life support went out. He almost grabbed one of the DEW-Tek pistols in the cabinet but opted for a tranquilizer gun from a drawer instead.

“Do I get a guide, Captain?” Yas asked over the comm as he headed through the corridors of the ship to the airlock.

Nobody answered him.

He hadn’t been off the Fedallah since first stepping on—the captain had denied him the freedom to take leave, even with an escort—but he’d had the mandatory space-evacuation training on Tiamat Station and attended the yearly drills, so he felt comfortable heading out an airlock. Walking through a station full of robotic security sentries without a bodyguard was another matter.

When the airlock cycled and the hatch to the dark station opened, he shivered at the vast emptiness ahead of him. His helmet light came on automatically, a beam piercing an open bay and playing over dark tanks, pipes, and machinery. A single unnamed mining ship was also docked to the big bay, and robots worked with hoses and pipes to unload helium, methane, and the various other gases that would have been scooped out of Saga’s atmosphere.

None of the robots reacted to Yas’s presence, and he walked slowly into the bay, careful to keep at least one magnetic boot attached to the deck. Ahead of him, a figure appeared in the mouth of a corridor. Yas’s gloved hand twitched toward his tranquilizer gun. What he thought that would do against a robot or android, he didn’t know, but as soon as his flashlight beam shifted, he recognized the black combat armor of one of Rache’s men.

“This way, Doctor,” Rache himself said over the comm.

Yas hurried to join him, and they meandered through an eerie high-ceilinged maze of giant tanks and processing equipment, and pipes bigger around than he was. A mutilated security robot floated limply in the air a few feet above the floor.

“You’ve cleared the refinery of dangers?” Yas asked.

Rache’s faceplate turned toward him for a long moment. “You’re here to determine that, Doctor.”

“Oh, good.”

Eight of Rache’s mercenaries waited in a control room full of gauges and panels displaying numbers that meant nothing to Yas. Some of the men stood. Others sat cross-legged above the floor, tilted at odd angles and thinking nothing of it.

All manner of clothing and personal belongings floated among them. A toothbrush dangled near Yas’s eyes. To one side, a couple of camp beds were strung between pipes, the straps designed to keep people from floating away while they slept, but nobody was in the beds now. Two more were attached on the other side of the room, also empty.

“Someone has been living here?” Yas thought of the docking bay with only the automated mining ship attached. If someone had been camped here, wouldn’t there have been another ship? He spotted a few magnetic crates attached to the deck in a corner, the lids thrown open, and he realized the mercenaries must have been searching for valuables. “But they left the refinery and abandoned their belongings?” Yas guessed.

“They didn’t abandon anything.” Rache tilted his helmet back enough for his headlamp to shine on the ceiling.

Yas sucked in a startled breath. Four bodies floated up there, snugged into the corners by the walls.

Someone chuckled at his reaction, but most of the mercenaries were oddly quiet.

The four unmoving bodies were all in suits, helmets still in place, with oxygen tanks attached to their backs. Had they been stuck on the refinery and run out of air?

“Grab a corpse for the doctor, Chains,” Rache said.

“Yes, sir.” Corporal Chains pushed off the deck, maneuvering past dangling shirts and hairbrushes, and grabbed a leg. He rotated and pushed off the ceiling, dragging his load down to the floor with him.

“We haven’t taken them out of their suits, and I have no intention of bringing the bodies onto my ship.” Rache gripped a shoulder, pulling the corpse toward Yas. “But I want to know what killed them before we leave, and if there’s any danger to us. It doesn’t look like exposure to space, and none of their tanks are completely empty. Close, but they still had air when they died.” Rache waved at the floating belongings. “These were like this when we got here. At first, I assumed someone jumped their camp and killed them, but there aren’t signs of injuries on their faces, and there’s no damage to their suits.”

“Your people didn’t tear the stuff out of the crates?” Yas asked.

“Not us,” Chains said. “I walked right into those blue panties there when I came in.”

“On purpose,” another mercenary said and guffawed. “Closest he’s gotten to a woman in… ever.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Baker. I screwed your mom just last month.”

Ignoring the crude barbs, Yas peered through the dead man’s faceplate. Rache was right. There were no indications of petechial hemorrhaging from asphyxiation or contusions that might have hinted at brain damage, but the man did have a pained expression on his face, so Yas doubted he had died peacefully in his sleep.

“There are two men and two women,” Rache said. “These aren’t military spacesuits. It looks like a civilian team.”

“Captain, I found a couple more bodies,” someone said over the comm. “Two more men. Older.”

“Did they die the same way?”

“No. One pulled off his helmet and died of exposure. The other has a medical injector sticking out of his galaxy suit’s leg port. Looks like he stabbed himself with some drug. Dyoxynoran, it says on the side of the injector.”

Yas swallowed, about to describe the drug and that it was used in hospitals when a patient wanted a quick end, but Rache nodded, apparently already familiar with it.

“Want us to bring the bodies back, sir?”

“No,” Rache said. “We’re not taking them on board the ship.”

Yas stirred. “I need to be able to take them out of their suits to perform an autopsy, Captain. If that’s what you want.”

“We’re not taking them on board my ship,” Rache repeated coolly. “You can’t make any guesses? Narrow things down?”

Yas spread a helpless hand. What did the man want? These people could have died of a million things, and he couldn’t make educated guesses with them shut up inside their spacesuits. “There are no weals, so it’s not the Great Plague.”

“Helpful.”

It had been a joke, if a poor one, since a hereditary vaccine had been created and distributed to most of the Twelve Systems almost two hundred years ago. The Great Plague rarely made an appearance these days. The captain did not sound amused.

“I’m sorry, sir. I can instruct the men on how to set up a proper quarantine if you want me to examine these people here or on the ship, but I need to take at least one of the bodies out of its suit. Does your airlock chamber have a decontamination program in case we’re dealing with a disease?” Yas didn’t know of many biological organisms that could survive in the cold vacuum of space, but there were a few natural ones and more than a few manmade ones that could. Further, his helmet display told him it wasn’t as cold in the refinery as it was outside. Presumably, the machinery couldn’t operate at -250 Celsius. And he knew of plenty of organisms that didn’t need oxygen to live.

Rache gazed thoughtfully at the bodies. Deciding whether to examine them further or simply walk away from the mystery and blow up the station?

Yas admitted to curiosity and wanting to explore further. The mercenaries’ combat armor was as good as a biohazard suit when it came to protecting them from bacteria and viruses, and if the ship had a good decontamination system, the threat of bringing something deadly on board ought to be minimal. Even so, he wouldn’t blame the captain if he wanted to be safe and avoid further contact with whatever had caused this.

“It looks like everything valuable was taken, sir,” the sergeant searching the cases said, “but there are some broken scanners and archaeology equipment. I turned this one on, and the screen says it’s for cataloging and dating wrecks.”

“What wrecks would you find on a refinery?” Chains asked.

“Maybe they were down on one of the moons and came here because…” The sergeant shrugged and looked at Rache. “Someone was chasing them? Their ship was damaged and they needed someplace to wait for help?”

“Anything else in there?” Rache waved at the case without commenting on the speculation.

“Uhm, there are also some storage chips,” the sergeant said. “This one has a sleeve with—I’m not sure. Are these gate coordinates scribbled on it?” He held it up, showing clusters of constellations.

“Yes.” Rache held out his hand.

The sergeant handed over the chips and grinned. “Maybe they contain the long-lost secrets to who built the gates and what happened to Earth.”

Yas knew it was a joke, but it was the kind of thing archaeology teams researched. Time had fuzzed the details around the twelve gates that connected the systems, and how their Earth ancestors had originally discovered them and figured out how to send colony ships halfway across the galaxy to make use of them. No evidence of alien civilizations had ever been found by astronomers, but that didn’t keep those with imaginations from speculating about dead or hidden races that could be out there. Some also hypothesized that there was a thirteenth gate somewhere within reach, one that led back to Earth. It was just waiting to be discovered, so humanity could use it to visit their home world again and find out what had happened.

“Gather anything else that might be valuable or informative and prepare to bring it with us,” Rache said. “But not until after the doctor runs his autopsy. Set up a lab right here, Doctor. I want to know what killed these men and if it’s a threat to us.” He waved to indicate the refinery they’d all been walking around in.

“Yes, sir.”

Casmir bit his tongue as he guided the robots through the airlock tube extended from the other ship. Sweat dribbled down the side of his face. Given the firefight going on in the cargo hold, he could hardly believe he’d managed to get them across it without notice. The little robots were slow and methodical. Twice, he’d had to override their hardwired program to vacuum as they went.

The enemy ship’s airlock hatchway had a raised lip, but the robots handled it without trouble with their suction-cup treads. He guided them one after the other into the corridor beyond it, the tiny display on the remote showing the route ahead of them. The left side opened up to the cargo hold Kim had mentioned and also a shuttle bay. A bulkhead sealed off whatever lay to the right.

“Engineering should be to the right at the first door,” Kim said, leaning over his shoulder to better see the display.

“Good.”

Casmir watched for the crew as he guided the robots along. All it would take was one pirate spotting the small intruders and shooting them. Dust wasn’t likely expected to fight back, so the robot vacuums didn’t have any armor.

He rolled them into engineering, then tucked them against the wall inside the hatchway while he spun one slowly to pan the cavernous room. And cursed when he spotted a man standing in front of a console between their main engine and the huge fusion reactor. His back was to the robots, for the moment.

The grainy camera didn’t show a lot of detail, but Casmir thought a pair of heavy pistols hung from the man’s belt. He wasn’t wearing combat armor, but he also wasn’t wearing a uniform. Pirates seemed as good a guess as any for these guys, but would pirates care about who sold what weapons to whom in a war?

War. His mind still boggled at that notion.

He’d heard stirrings and seen news reports about colonies and governments in other systems fighting with each other, some eager to retain their freedom and others wanting to return to the old days when the Kingdom had ruled and set laws over all, but he hadn’t thought anything was far enough along to be considered a war. Odin was safe, and their system was stable and always had been, unless one counted the assassination of King Jager’s father more than thirty years earlier. But, Casmir realized, the Kingdom had always controlled System Lion, so of course it wouldn’t be in flux now. It was the only system that hadn’t broken up and pulled away after the century of Golden Rule, as the Kingdom referred to the brief era when it had controlled the entirety of the Twelve Systems.

“Are you going to just stare at that guy’s butt?” Kim waved at the small screen on the remote as she glanced toward the hatch in the lounge. “Or do you have a plan?”

“Butt-staring can’t be a plan?”

“Not when our lives are in danger.”

“But at other times?”

“Casmir.”

“I’m looking for a vulnerable spot to plant the one with the explosive. On the engine housing? Or their reactor? A reactor breach would be easy for them to repair, but if we got lucky with the engine, we might mangle something that requires spare parts. Spare parts that they don’t have.”

“Do people go into space without the ability to manufacture new parts?” Kim asked. “I know our military takes materials printers along even on short voyages.”

“Maybe pirates aren’t as prepared. At the least, it’ll take them time to make and install replacement parts. We can change course slightly and hope they don’t know where we’re heading.”

Casmir made sure the crewmember’s back was still turned, then navigated his robot toward the engine. He wished he knew more about spaceships. He accessed his chip, did his best to capture the view the robot was giving him, then ran a search for information on the particular engine.

They weren’t close to Odin anymore, but most of the planet’s encyclopedias and academic databases were on redundant servers on satellites throughout the system, so it only took a few seconds for a response to come back. The schematic of the engine appeared on his contact.

“Perfect,” he whispered, easing the robot up the side of the housing.

“What’s the other one going to do?”

“Be a distraction.”

After he placed the first robot, hopefully in a spot where the engineer wouldn’t notice it in the next five minutes, Casmir toggled to the second one. He guided it back into the corridor and located the ladder well Kim had mentioned. His robot couldn’t climb rungs, but it had no problem walking up the wall opposite them. Not quickly, unfortunately.

“A distraction on the bridge?” Kim guessed.

“Yes, I’m hoping to—”

Muffled voices came from the corridor outside the lounge.

Casmir cursed and lunged for the far side of the table. Numerous tools and robot parts were scattered across the top. He sat in the chair and tucked his arms under the table to hide the remote.

Kim ran toward the cabinets, but the hatch opened before she reached the latch. She spun, pressing her shoulder to them and crossing her arms over her chest, as if she’d meant to be found all along.

Two armored men strode in dragging Qin and Lopez. Lopez glowered in Casmir’s direction. Qin appeared to be unconscious.

Casmir stared bleakly at them. He’d hoped he could set off his distraction before he was caught, or that he wouldn’t be caught at all.

The men dumped the women on the deck and looked at Casmir.

“The sergeant said to get…” One man’s faceplate tilted toward the tool-littered table. “There was supposed to be a robot.”

“Yes.” Casmir smiled cheerfully and gestured with one hand toward the mess. “I’m working on it.”

Under the table, he manipulated the robot out of the ladder well and headed it toward the bridge.

“That’s just a bunch of junk.” The man looked at his colleague. “Can we shoot them? Shoot all of them?”

Fortunately, his buddy was too busy staring at Kim to answer. “Where did she come from?”

“It looks like you need all manner of assistance when it comes to searching for things,” Casmir said.

Qin groaned and shifted on the deck.

One of the men planted an armored boot on her back and pressed the muzzle of his rifle to her neck. “Don’t think about it, freak.”

“Freak?” his buddy asked. “She’s better looking than some of the modded things out there. Sometimes, I don’t think the Kingdom’s laws are all that draconian. I mean, they are, but some things shouldn’t exist.”

“Don’t forget whose side you’re working for.”

“The side that pays me best.”

While they were giving more attention to each other than Casmir or Kim, Casmir pushed the handle on the remote and navigated his distraction robot onto their ship’s bridge. It was six times the size of the Dragon’s navigation cabin, but only two men occupied stations inside. Casmir allowed himself to hope that meant there wasn’t a large crew on the enemy ship. Maybe if he made enough trouble over there, the six armored thugs would be called back to help with it.

“Tie up that woman.” One of the men pointed at Kim. “I don’t know where she came from, but we don’t need trouble roaming free. We’ll tie them all up and apply some pressure to help with finding the cargo. Especially if this idiot can’t patch those parts together into something useful.”

Casmir smiled. Under the table, he set the distraction robot to squeal like a hundred terrified pigs. Then he set it loose on turbo vacuum mode so that it darted all around the deck. He glimpsed the bridge crew whirling to look for it as it caromed around the stations, and fought back a grin. It wouldn’t do any damage or take them long to nullify—one of the brutes would likely shoot it—but maybe they would be slow to react to a problem in engineering because of it.

One of the armored men frowned at Casmir. “You doing something under the table?”

“Nothing I want you to know about.”

The man strode toward him.

Casmir toggled to the robot in engineering, but the system lagged, and he didn’t gain access quickly enough. Damn it. He needed more time.

“Playing with robots gets me excited,” Casmir blurted and tried to smirk, though he was too busy panicking to manage any acting flair.

The man had been reaching for his arm, but his hand halted in midair. “You telling me you’re yanking your stick?”

He jerked his hand back.

“That’s disgusting,” Kim said, either to help make them believe that or as an honest comment. A disapproving I-can’t-believe-you-said-that look accompanied it.

The video finally resolved so Casmir once again viewed engineering from the camera of the robot on the engine housing. Nobody had moved it. He hit the button, ordering it to detonate the explosive.

The display went black and so did his view of engineering. Had it worked? He’d thought they might hear something since the ships were connected through the airlock umbilical cord.

He checked on the robot on the bridge where he still had a connection. The two men must have heard the explosion in engineering, for they raced out, leaving the area empty of crew.

Maybe Casmir could take advantage and tinker further. For some reason, the grumpy intruder hadn’t reached for his arm again.

Casmir sent the bridge robot climbing up the side of the environmental-controls station.

The two men in the lounge with him spun to look toward the hatch. Casmir didn’t know if they had heard shouts or something over their helmet comm units.

“Stay here and watch them!” one man barked and ran out.

His buddy, whose boot was still on the back of Qin’s neck, scowled suspiciously at Casmir.

Shouts came from the cargo hold of the Dragon. Casmir couldn’t decipher them, but he hoped the men were being ordered back to deal with an attacker on their own ship.

The remaining guard abandoned Qin and strode toward him. “Let’s see what you’re really doing under the table.”

Casmir looked down at his lap—and the remote—and feigned innocence, but he also got a few more commands in. The robot didn’t have any kind of hand or grasper, but he managed to bump one of the vacuum nozzles against the control for the lights. The bridge went dim. Hopefully, the lights on their entire ship did.

The man grasped his arm and yanked it up with so much force he pulled Casmir from the seat—and the deck. Once again, he dangled in the air, a flash of agony in his shoulder as his captor almost twisted it out of the socket. The man tore the remote from his fingers and smashed it in a steel grip. Dozens of tiny pieces tinkled to the deck.

“What did you—”

An arm snaked around the man’s helmet and yanked him backward, halting his words.

Qin.

She leaped onto his back and wrapped her legs around his waist, one arm around his throat. That throat was armored, but the man still dropped Casmir and whirled to deal with her.

As Casmir rolled away, hoping to avoid the skirmish—and being crushed by giant combat boots—Qin slammed her free fist into the man’s faceplate. If a normal human had done that, nothing would have happened, but Casmir heard a faint crack. Was she strong enough to shatter Glasnax? He hadn’t thought that was even possible.

Lopez rose to her feet and rushed to the kitchen area. The man tried unsuccessfully to tear Qin off his back. Even though his armor enhanced his strength, she had much better leverage.

As Casmir joined Kim beyond the far side of the table, Lopez leaped up and ran to Qin’s side. Orange light flared—a blowtorch.

“Hold him still,” Lopez barked.

“Easier said than done,” Qin replied as the man ran to a bulkhead and spun to ram her against it.

Lopez followed and held the blowtorch to one of his thigh seams. He didn’t seem to feel the heat, but if she had time, it might melt through his armor.

After a few seconds, the man shrieked. He’d been too busy wrestling with Qin to pay attention to Lopez, but now he released Qin’s arms and lunged for the blowtorch.

Qin took advantage of his distraction and rearranged her grip to hook a leg over his shoulder and pin one of his arms. She was like a spider, immobilizing him from behind. A massive crack sounded.

Qin moved so quickly that Casmir didn’t see what happened until the man’s helmet was bouncing across the deck, the faceplate shattered. He cursed and bucked, flailing to try to get rid of her and the blowtorch burning its way into his thigh seam.

With his head exposed, Lopez shifted the blowtorch to his face, holding the flame an inch from his eyes. He froze.

“Strip,” she ordered.

A shudder went through the deck. Casmir grimaced. He hoped the damage he’d done to the other ship wouldn’t cause its course to shift. If it ricocheted off them at the speed they were going… the explosion would be the last thing any of them ever saw. Nothing but shrapnel would arrive at Forseti Station.

The man’s eyes bulged as he stared at the blowtorch.

“Strip!” Lopez said again. “Or we’ll do it for you.”

“Get your she-cat off my back,” he growled. “I’m not a damn scratching post.”

Lopez’s eyes were icier than a comet as she brushed the blowtorch flame across the man’s cheek.

He screamed and jerked his head back, clunking it against the bulkhead. “All right, all right, you bitch.”

“Tranq him,” Lopez told Qin.

Qin sprang off his back—neither of them appeared as wounded as Casmir had thought they were when they’d been dumped in here—and ran to a cabinet that he’d assumed was part of the pantry. She pulled out a first-aid kit with a jet injector, loaded a cartridge, and ran back and jammed it against the man’s neck. A soft hiss sounded. He was in the middle of removing his torso piece, per Lopez’s order to strip, but he swore and grabbed his neck.

“What the—” He only had time to glower at them before tipping to the deck, unconscious.

“In retrospect,” Lopez said, “we should have waited for him to get the rest of the armor off before tranqing him.”

Despite the words, the two women set upon the unconscious man and soon had him out of the rest of his gear.

As they patted him down, removing everything from grenades to daggers to malleable explosive material, Casmir asked, “Did you get them to dump you in here on purpose, knowing there was a blowtorch in the kitchen cabinet?”

“That was the idea.”

“And, uhm, why was there a blowtorch in the kitchen cabinet? Are there any weapons in the breadbox or refrigerator that we should know about?”

“It’s a tortilla keeper.”

“What?” Casmir asked.

“That’s not a breadbox; it’s a tortilla keeper. And no, there are no more weapons. The blowtorch is there because now and then, I take a break from my standbys of chocolate and orejas—and chocolate-dipped orejas—and make a crème brûlée.” Lopez grabbed twine from a drawer and started tying their prisoner’s hands behind his back.

Casmir, deciding he didn’t believe her, wondered if the twine was for trussing roasts, or for this precise purpose.

“What happened to get them all riled up?” Lopez asked when she was done. “Half their team ran back to their ship.”

“I believe a robot exploded in an inconvenient location in engineering,” Casmir said. “Perhaps you should take advantage of the chaos.”

“Right.” Lopez waved for Qin to follow, and they ran out, the hatch clanging shut behind them.

“You’re welcome,” Casmir called.

He looked sadly down at the shards on the deck, all that remained of his remote. By now, he wagered that was all that remained of the robots on the other ship too. The one in engineering must have blown into a million pieces. One of the crew—had they implied they were mercenaries?—might have blown the one on the bridge into a similar state.

“So…” Kim eyed the unconscious man. She was still leaning against the cabinets. “Are you worried we’ve gotten ourselves involved with people in even more trouble than you are?”

“I don’t know. Crushers were trying to kill me. What degree of trouble would be worse than that?”

“These people were talking about a war, which tends to involve mass killing and the annihilation of entire cities. Or planets.” Kim grimaced.

Casmir did find the talk of war alarming, but he was preoccupied with his own problem now, so he had no trouble staying focused on that. Kim’s eyes were troubled though—maybe she was thinking of her family back home.

“You’re not worried about your book collection again, are you?” He smiled, hoping to distract her from dark thoughts. He doubted Odin was in danger of an invasion anytime soon.

“I haven’t stopped worrying about that. If those crushers molested my shelves, I’m going to find whoever sent them and force them to replace every missing book.” Her eyes widened at some new thought. “What if we’re not back in time to pay next month’s rent? What if the landlord takes all our stuff and sells it? At some sidewalk sale? My first editions could be pawned off on teenagers for pennies.”

“That won’t happen.” Casmir winced. He’d meant to make her feel better, not worse. “The rent is taken out of my account automatically every month.”

“You think the university is going to keep depositing money in that account if you’re not at work?”

“One would hope I’d get a paid leave of absence, at least for a while.”

“You have to put in for that, don’t you? If you skip town—or the planet—it doesn’t just automatically come.”

“Have I mentioned how cheerful and inspiring it is to travel with you?” Now Casmir was worried about more than the crushers.

“No.”

11

A faint hum reverberated through the deck as the Stellar Dragon increased its acceleration. Taking advantage of the commotion, Bonita and Qin had captured the second mercenary that had been left behind to guard them. The rest had all charged back to their ship to deal with the problem over there. Bonita had forcefully removed their airlock docking tube and shut the Dragon’s hatch before rushing to navigation, her knees aching every step of the way. She prayed she was done with running and twisting and lunging for her life for a while.

She slung herself into the piloting pod, wanting to put distance between her freighter and their ship. With luck, whatever had happened over there would force the mercenaries to stop to fix it, but she couldn’t count on that.

“What did happen?” she asked aloud.

With her pod sealed around her, she couldn’t look at Qin but knew she had claimed the other seat.

“What made them run back to their ship?” Bonita added.

Casmir had said something as she and Qin ran off to deal with the other intruder, but she’d barely heard it.

Viggo was the one to answer her. Qin, who had been feigning unconsciousness alongside Bonita, probably didn’t know any more than she did.

“Two of my newer model cleaning robots were utterly destroyed,” Viggo said. “Do not be surprised to find a charge to your account when I order replacements on Forseti Station.”

“That didn’t answer my question as much as you seemed to think it would.”

Bonita remembered Casmir promising the mercenaries that he would modify a robot to help find the hidden cargo. Had that been a ruse? She’d been ready to knock his head off when he’d said that.

“At his request, I left one of my 350 rounds behind for Casmir,” Qin said.

“Which he installed in one of my cleaning robots along with a detonator,” Viggo said, “and remote-controlled it over to the other ship. I could not see where it went once it left, but, judging by the sudden surge of heat in their engineering section, it was somewhere crucial to the ship’s operation.”

Bonita grimaced. “Does that mean I owe him? I hate owing people.”

“You helped him escape the trouble that was following him on Odin,” Qin said. “Perhaps that means you’re now even and don’t owe him anything.”

“You helped him escape that. He probably owes you something.”

“I was going to ask him more about knights and if they’re as noble as the stories say, but we were interrupted.”

“Maybe he’ll kiss your hand later,” Bonita said. “Even the non-knights from Odin have notions of chivalry.”

“I’m not sure he’s… my type.”

“It’s the hair. Nobody could daydream about a man with such shaggy hair.” Bonita ordered her pod to release her. “I’m going to make sure the men we knocked out aren’t going to escape my makeshift brig and find their armor. Let me know if anything up here demands my attention.”

“I am already searching the catalog of a small-robots dealer on Forseti Station,” Viggo said. “I shall inform you promptly if I find robots suitable for insertion into my maligned cadre of troops.”

“That’s not the anything I imagined demanding my attention.” Bonita headed into the corridor. “You must have thirty of those things. Why worry about two?”

“Cleaning efficiency will go down.”

“There’s not so much as a speck of dust anywhere on this ship.”

“Now.”

Bonita dropped down the ladder to the next level and paused at the closed hatch to the lounge. She ought to thank Casmir, but maybe a nod of gratitude and a handshake when he departed would do.

She continued past the lounge and checked on her prisoners, as she’d said she would. They were both sedated, and she might leave them that way for the rest of the trip. She doubted it would kill them, and she didn’t want to risk having to deal with any heroic escape attempts from them.

After that, she swung into the mid-level lavatory. The Dragon could carry a crew of ten, plus passengers, so there were enough amenities to accommodate a few people at a time. The amenities weren’t what interested her now; rather the bulkhead behind the toilets held her attention. She found the secret sensor at the edge of the panel and leaned in for a retina scan.

After the beam verified her identity, the panel slid open. She tapped a button, and layers of insulation receded, revealing an eight-foot-long by four-foot-wide case. She carefully tugged it out. There was no way she could have hefted it on Odin or another high-gravity planet, but she managed to manhandle it to the deck where she considered the computerized lock thoughtfully.

The dealer on Sayona Station had given her the case without the code. At the time, she hadn’t thought much about it, since it was Baum’s merchandise, and he’d paid most of the purchase price. Most of it but not all of it. Now that he was gone and nobody from his organization had contacted her, she considered it hers to sell as she wished. There was just the problem of the code. And the fact that she was starting to wonder if state-of-the-art weapons were truly what lay nestled inside. The items on the list of contents she’d been given seemed like they would fit in this size case, but a lot of other things could be nestled in there too.

Until those thugs had boarded the ship, she’d assumed that list of merchandise accurate. But now…

“If you are wondering if the mercenaries found the cargo,” Viggo said, “you could have asked.”

Bonita jumped, clunking her elbow on one of the wash stations.

“Viggo. We’ve had this conversation before. You’re not to speak with me when I’m in the lav.”

“But you’re not doing the things people do in a lavatory. Things that I can’t say I miss having to be concerned with. I do miss food and eating. Do enjoy that whenever you get a chance.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

Bonita ran her hand over the lock pad panel. It lit up with a request for a code. The display formed into a keyboard with letters, symbols, and numbers, creating more combination possibilities than she could imagine. She pulled out a handheld scanner, but it couldn’t read anything through the case’s hard exterior.

“Any chance your big computer brain can open this, Viggo?”

“Perhaps if there were a means for me to interface with it and run a few code-breaking routines, I could, but I don’t see an access port, and it’s not responding to my wireless signal. It appears to be fully self-contained. Perhaps your new ally would have some ideas.”

Her first thought was that he meant Qin, since she’d only been aboard a couple of months. “You mean Dabrowski? He’s not an ally. He didn’t even pay a full enough fare for where we’re taking him. And his not-wife didn’t pay anything at all.”

Not that Kim had technically wanted to come.

“He was astute and swift at reprogramming my robots.” Viggo still sounded indignant about the loss. “Perhaps he’ll have ideas for opening this, if that is what you want to do. I note that it’s been on board for six weeks, and you haven’t attempted to gain access previously.”

“That’s because I previously thought it was a batch of high-end guns.”

“You no longer believe that?”

“Who sends a mercenary ship to collect guns? Yes, anything from Sayona Station is going to be cutting-edge technology and higher quality than you can find on Odin, but they’re supposed to be handguns and rifles, and that’s it. I only paid ten thousand Union dollars, and I think Baum paid fifty. That’s a lot to me, especially right now, but nobody sends ships full of mercs to mine such small asteroids.”

Bonita ran a hand along the fine seam between the top and bottom of the case. Was it possible her blowtorch would work? Maybe, but then she risked heating up whatever was inside. The last thing she needed to do was cause an explosion in her lavatory. She already had craters in the deck plating of her cargo hold, thanks to that skirmish.

The hatch opened, and Bonita whipped her pistol out and pointed it at the intruder.

Casmir ambled in before he saw her, the pistol, and the case. He halted, his jaw dropping halfway to the deck.

He whirled, lifting his hands in the air. “If that’s your illicit cargo, I didn’t see a thing.”

“I know you didn’t, because it’s still locked in its case. I haven’t seen it either.”

“Uhm, right. Is that a problem?”

“That I haven’t seen inside? It wasn’t, until those mercs showed up and shot up my ship.”

Bonita waited for him to leave. He kept standing there with his hands up.

“I apologize for coming in without knocking,” Casmir said. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here. I had to… you know.”

“By all means, use the facilities. Your half ounce of gold entitles you to all the toilet paper you need.”

Casmir didn’t move. Probably because he didn’t know if her sarcasm could be taken at face value.

She gave him an exasperated sigh. “Put your hands down. I’m not going to shoot you.” She realized she was still pointing her pistol at him and holstered it. “Especially if you really do need to use the lav. Shooting someone with a full bladder could result in a mess.”

“That is possible. I encourage you to aim lower if you ever need to shoot me. Legs seem relatively repairable and, even if not, are unlikely to affect my ability to do my job. I’d be even more willing to sacrifice a foot.” He lowered his hands and pointed to the corridor. “I’ll wait out there until you’re done.”

Bonita eyed the case and thought of Viggo’s suggestion. It wasn’t a bad one, but did she want some goofy stranger—and she did mean goofy—to know her secrets? Yes, he had helped them escape those mercs, but he was just looking out for his own life.

“Casmir,” Bonita said, stopping him before he closed the hatch. “Do you think you could open this?”

She hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. Both by enlisting his aid and by trying to look inside the sealed case. But if something that wasn’t on the packing list was hidden in there and she tried to pawn it off on Diego, she could make an enemy of the pirate family.

Shouldn’t she be old enough by now to stop making stupid mistakes? No, her last marriage was a testament to that.

Casmir stepped inside and crouched for a closer look, scrutinizing the seams as she’d done and also the keypad. He tapped the keyboard integrated into the display, eliciting a soft beep.

“What are you doing?” she snarled, her hand twitching toward her pistol again.

He noticed the gesture and leaned back in alarm, his eye blinking. “Seeing what I’m dealing with?”

Bonita forced herself to lower her hand. “Can’t you do that without touching it? What happens if you don’t finish entering the combination? It could shoot out flames or poison gas or who knows what.”

“Flames? That seems an extreme response to an incorrect code entry. And unlikely given the size of the object and the likelihood that people who purchase such safes want most of the interior space for storing goods. Still, I accede to your point. It is likely that we’d be locked out after a certain number of incorrect tries. I simply wanted to know if it required a physical touch or if an electronic signal might work for activating the keys, because I do know of software for cracking systems like this. I would have to build something to interface with it. Hm, I don’t see any kind of port.”

“Yes, Viggo mentioned that being a problem.”

“Perhaps electronic pulses…” Casmir tilted his head thoughtfully.

Thinking? Or waiting for input from the ship’s computer?

Bonita waved toward the ceiling. “Viggo?”

“You told me not to speak with you in the lavatory.”

She rolled her eyes.

“It is generally a relaxing sanctuary where one prefers not to be disturbed,” Casmir said. “Though I have noticed that the differences in the equipment on a spaceship are rather pronounced and require more concentration than relaxation.”

“Wait until you try it in zero-g.”

Casmir grimaced, his hand drifting toward his belt before he caught it. “I’ll see what I can build while I’m downloading a cracking program.”

“How does a robotics researcher know about cracking programs?” Bonita called after him.

“I am also a teacher of teenagers. All good teachers have to be aware of the various methods students use to breach secure files, virtual and physical, in an attempt to alter test scores.”

Qin appeared in the hatchway, looking over her shoulder as Casmir’s footsteps retreated. She turned her curious eyes toward the case.

“Problem?” Bonita doubted Qin would openly question her choice to include Casmir in her snooping, but she preemptively changed the subject just in case.

“The mercenary ship is falling farther behind.”

“Good.”

“But they sent a communication ahead to Forseti Station.”

“That’s less good. Were you able to intercept it?”

Qin shook her head. “No, it was on a tight beam.”

“So, if they have allies on the station, they could be waiting for us when we arrive.”

“Should we consider changing course?”

“I’m sure we should, but I already told Diego we’d meet him there. And sell him this.” Bonita eyed the case. “Whatever it is.”

Qin arched her eyebrows. “We could ask our captured mercenaries if they know what it is. One would assume they had some knowledge, so they wouldn’t be duped and accept a lesser prize.”

“I don’t have any eslevoamytal along,” Bonita said. “It’s an expensive drug, and I haven’t had a reason to do interrogations for a while.”

“I could question them without a drug.” Qin didn’t appear excited by the prospect, but something about the grim set of her eyes said she had done it before and could again.

For the first time, Bonita was tempted to ask for more details about Qin’s past. She had a policy of not prying—most people in her line of work didn’t appreciate nosy questions about their personal history—and she’d gotten the gist over the last couple of months.

“Here we go,” Casmir announced in the corridor.

Qin stepped aside, and he entered with a portable keyboard attached to a little black box with a wire and a magnet or sensor or who knew what dangling from the end.

“You made your thing for interfacing?” Bonita asked.

“And running a software-cracking program, yes.” Casmir knelt beside the case and attached the magnet to the keypad.

“It takes me longer than that to make a sandwich.”

“Oh? Do you make the pickles from scratch?” Casmir tapped a few commands on his keyboard—Bonita watched intently in case she ever needed to replicate the actions—then let it hang next to the case while he waited for the program to run. “One of my colleagues does that. He’s pickled everything from lemons to garlic to cauliflower to blueberries. Oh, and cured bacon. That was odd. His concoctions do make for an interesting aroma in the lunchroom when he brings them in. And he’s never happy unless everyone samples them.”

A beep came from Casmir’s device, saving Bonita from having to come up with a response to the question—there had been a question in there, hadn’t there?

“That’s a shorter code than I expected.” Casmir reached for the keypad on the case but paused. “Do you want to stand back? In case it’s wrong and you were right about the flames?”

“Just press it. I can yank you in front of me quickly if need be.”

“I see. You’re not willing to shoot a man with a full bladder, but you’ll push him in front of an inferno without hesitation.”

“To protect myself from incineration? Yes, I’ll risk wet boots.”

“Ew,” Qin said.

“I guess it’s a good thing I only needed two of your cleaning robots earlier. I’d hate to leave you with a mess.”

Qin’s ew turned into a giggle. It was a strange sound coming from someone who’d just been talking about interrogating prisoners. Maybe she was rethinking Casmir’s knightly potential.

He tapped in a code, using a mix of letters, symbols, and numbers, and settled back on his heels. A reassuring beep came from the case, and the lid popped.

Bonita eyed it warily, half-expecting a trap to be triggered. Casmir did not reach for the lid right away. She pulled out her scanner again. It still couldn’t read much with the case open only an inch, but it didn’t detect any heat or radiation.

Casmir extended a hand toward it. “It’s your illicit case.”

“Good. Thanks. Give me that.” She pointed to the contraption he’d used to open the lock. Whatever was in here, she wanted to be the person to have control over opening and closing it in the future.

His brows lifted, but he handed her the device. Then backed up to the hatch, but he didn’t leave the room. He had to be curious.

Should she make him go?

She shrugged and pulled the lid up, standing away from the opening, but no traps sprang. His code must have been deemed acceptable.

Bonita was disappointed but not surprised that the case wasn’t full of the various handheld weapons that had been on the list. It took her a moment to figure out what it was full of. A disassembled rocket in an insulated mold that would keep it from being jostled around in zero gravity. Several rows of vials lay next to it in insulated pockets. A slight vapor came off them, and she realized that section of the case was refrigerated. The vials had labels, but the print was too small to read without removing them.

When Bonita reached for one, Casmir said, “I wouldn’t.”

“Do you know what they are?”

“I think Kim might,” he said grimly.

“Oh, good. I wanted to have more people aware of the secret cargo stashed on my ship.”

“You know I was going to tell her about everything anyway, right?” Casmir smiled, but the gesture only drew attention to his one-eyed blink. Was he nervous about what they’d unearthed?

Bonita waved. “Go get her.”

He tripped over nothing as he hurried away. He was nervous. Considering he had remained relatively calm while being manhandled by mercenaries, Bonita worried she should be nervous too.

Kim appeared in the hatchway. She’d been wearing her borrowed galaxy suit all along, as Bonita had advised on the first day, but now she had the gloves on and the helmet in place.

That alone made Bonita take several large steps back from the case. What had Casmir told her?

As Kim gazed down at the case, she didn’t react with a gape or any of Casmir’s signs of nerves, but when she stepped inside and crouched in front of the vials, it was with slow and deliberate care. She picked up one of the vials, read the label, and examined the seal. She set it back in its pocket and picked up another one.

Bonita watched her eyes through her faceplate, but she might as well have been watching an android. Kim methodically examined several of the vials. She barely glanced at the rocket. Bonita had seen a few of those in her day and thought it looked state-of-the-art but unspectacular. It was simply a tool for delivering and dispersing the vials, she wagered.

But delivering and dispersing them where? A space station? A planet?

“There are four strains,” Kim said. “With extras for… redundancy, I suppose. They’re all lab-grown and extremely customized—nothing existing in nature—so I can only make guesses based on the scientific naming conventions. And the presence of a delivery mechanism,” she added dryly, waving toward the rocket.

“A bioweapon, I assume,” Casmir said from the doorway, his helmet also on now. “That’s an XR-7 Heavy Stinger—I know thanks to Professor Petrov’s fascination with model rockets. If it were detonated high enough in the atmosphere, it’s got the power to spread its payload over a continent.”

“That would result in too much dilution, even for something extremely potent,” Kim said. “These vials aren’t very large. But a city might be targeted.”

“A city with millions of people?” Casmir asked. “Like Zamek?”

“Yes. And if those bacteria are self-replicating once they find a host, far more than a city could end up affected.”

“Those are designed to kill people?” Bonita asked. “Is that what they would do?”

“That’s my guess from the names.” Kim eyed the vials. “I’d love to have a look at the strains in my lab under my microscope. Well, maybe not in my lab. In the Biosafety Level Four lab at the back of our campus.”

“You’re going to make me hyperventilate, Kim.” Casmir waved at the case. “I’ve been sleeping next door to that bulkhead. And taking a leak right under it.” His voice did have a hysterical edge to it, but he gulped and cleared his throat. “How about we close up Pandora’s box there, eh? Would that case be sufficient to keep the bacteria in if something happened to one of those vials? Like it broke?”

Kim snorted. “Doubtful. Shipping this is even more illegal than making it. There should have been all manner of biohazard warning and fragile stickers covering this case, and the vials should have a containment field around them, not some completely ineffective padding. But, if the proper precautions had been taken, I suppose someone couldn’t have been tricked into delivering it then.” Kim gazed at Bonita.

“I wasn’t tricked,” Bonita snapped, more out of reflex than because it was true.

“If you knowingly brought this on board your own ship, you’re even more of an idiot than I think you are right now.”

Bonita clenched her teeth, her fingers twitching toward her pistol.

“Easy, my friends,” Casmir said, lifting his hands, ambling non-threateningly into the room, and standing between them. “I think this is a time for us to come together in problem-solving camaraderie rather than in insult-throwing angst that could lead to unfortunate mishaps. Such as bullets being fired next to horrible biological weapons that might be able to melt us into piles of radioactive waste from the inside out.”

“Shit.” Bonita hadn’t truly intended to pull out her pistol—she just had that instinct when she was being threatened—but the idea that a little mistake could do what Casmir described… “Yeah, let’s close it up and put it away.”

“Put it away?” Kim asked. “If you’re not an idiot, you’ll space that. Now. While we’re out in the middle of nowhere, and it’s unlikely to ever be found again.”

Bonita carefully lowered the lid while considering her options. She could space the case. But she had Diego waiting to buy non-existent weapons, and crazy mercenaries that knew she had it—and whoever their employers were had to know too.

She could apologize to Diego and tell him the deal was off—she would have to, since she didn’t have what he’d agreed to buy. But what about the mercs? They knew where she’d come from, and they knew where she was heading. If she spaced it, they might be able to retrace her route and find it. Even if the case didn’t have any kind of heat signature, a metallic object would still be detectable on scanners.

She could space it and blow it up with the railgun, but if her pursuers caught up with her again, they might not believe she’d destroyed it, at least not at first, not until they’d tortured her to death for its location. That would be an unpleasant way to go.

Her life had been so much easier when she’d been a bounty hunter. She vowed to go back to that if she survived this hellish month. If she had to compete with young pups for bounties, so be it. She knew how to find people and take them down. This… This was too much.

“Would that truly work?” Casmir asked Kim. “Someone knows she has it and could simply retrace our route to find it. And then what? Some unscrupulous bad guys have this weapon in our system. Unscrupulous bad guys who could be gunning for Odin.”

Bonita nodded, glad he’d had similar thoughts, so she wouldn’t have to explain. Even if her concerns were more about her own life than the ramifications of the weapon being unleashed on a planet. She would worry about that after this was off her ship.

“Space it and destroy it, then. Does this freighter have guns? If not, maybe one of Qin’s explosives and a remote detonator?” Kim looked at Casmir.

“We’re not destroying it until we’re someplace with witnesses who will swear they saw me destroy it,” Bonita said. “Help me put this back in the cubby, Qin.”

Bonita had carefully and with painstaking thoroughness closed the lid, and she gently lifted one side of the case.

Qin hesitated before coming inside—it was the first time Bonita recalled her hesitating to follow an order. She ordered her helmet to affix itself before stepping close and gingerly picking up the other side.

“Are we safe if we keep our suits on, Kim?” Qin asked as she helped Bonita return the case to its hiding spot. “You can go out in space in them. They’re airtight.” Qin looked at Bonita, the grim young woman willing to torture men gone and a scared teenager peering out through those cat’s eyes. “Right?”

“They could protect us from a bacterial infection,” Kim said, “but I’d hazard a guess that any protection would only be temporary. A couple of those labels mentioned acids, and I’ve heard of plenty of bioweapons with the ability to eat through hazmat suits as well as flesh and muscle. The vile people who make these things don’t want them to be easily defeated.”

Casmir held up a gloved finger. “Easy, Kim. You’ve seen me hyperventilate before. You don’t want to deal with the consequences.”

Kim shook her head at the joke—or maybe it wasn’t a joke—and watched Bonita secure the panel, the case now tucked back into the hidden compartment.

“What are you going to do?” Kim asked.

“I don’t know yet.” Bonita rubbed her face. “I don’t know.”

12

Casmir willed his stomach to stay calm and enjoy the motion-sickness pill he’d taken as he gripped a handhold built into the wall near the porthole and looked at what he could see of Forseti Station—so far, only the asteroid exterior that protected it from radiation and space trash.

He’d had to remove his helmet for long enough to refill his suit’s water reservoir and pop the pill into his mouth, and his rush to affix it again had made Kim smile. He’d been careful to stay fully ensconced as much as possible since their little discovery. It had been days, but he hadn’t slept much since then. He’d been too busy imagining some horrible manmade disease eating him from the inside out before it ate everyone else on Odin from the inside out. He couldn’t keep from glancing uneasily in the direction of the lavatory ten times an hour.

“As far as we know, it’s still contained,” Kim said after one of his glances.

“Which should make me feel much better, I know, but I keep worrying about it. I can’t even go in to use the facilities on this level, because I’m afraid if I flush too hard and rattle the bulkhead, one of those vials will break, and we’ll all die horrifically.”

His boots lifted slightly from the deck, and his stomach lurched with queasiness at the strange sensation of almost floating. Two days earlier, the ship had flipped over, and they had been decelerating toward their destination since then. Now that they were almost there and barely moving, there wasn’t a force in play to keep their feet, or anything else, on the deck.

His toolkit was on the verge of floating off the table. He scrambled over to get it, half walking, half pushing off the wall and furniture bolted to the deck.

“Exactly what are you doing when you flush those toilets?” Kim asked. “It sounds like you have an oddly vigorous technique.”

“How can you be so calm? If anything happens to that stuff, we’ll die. If Lopez sells it to pirates who decide to unleash it on the station, we’ll die. If the people who originally ordered it show up and take it back to its original destination of Odin, where it was presumably to be used, everybody we know and love could die.”

Casmir thought of all his friends at work and of his parents. And of the mother he’d never met but who had cared enough to leave money sufficient to fund his education—and who’d sent a knight to warn him to get off-world. She probably hadn’t meant for him to get off-world in a ship carrying a genocidal bioweapon.

“I’m not pleased about the situation, I assure you,” Kim said. “Especially since I don’t trust the captain.”

“I think she’s decent—she hasn’t threatened to kidnap us and ransom us back to our families, so I can overlook that she’s a smuggler. She helped me out of an uncomfortable situation, whether she intended to or not. But she hasn’t said what she’s going to do now that she knows what she’s got.” Casmir, toolkit in hand, made his way back to the porthole where Kim also hung on to a handhold. “With that kind of threat, she could inadvertently cause something awful to happen. An accident could cause something awful to happen. And that’s making me nervous. I packed my meager belongings, under the assumption that she’ll ask us to get off here—and I think I should figure things out from somewhere with more resources before fleeing farther out of the system—but can we just walk off the ship knowing what we know? That a horrific weapon is stashed in here, possibly available to the highest bidder?”

“I was thinking of…” Kim glanced toward the speakers on the walls. She activated her chip and sent him a text message that scrolled through his vision. I considered sneaking in there and taking the vials to dispose of myself, but with the ship’s computer aware of everything that goes on, I assumed it—he—would alert her. And then she would shoot me. She has a twitchy gun hand.

I noticed, Casmir messaged back.

My current plan is to walk straight off the ship and find the Kingdom Guard station, or whoever handles law enforcement here. I have enough experience to advise, if necessary, but dealing with containment isn’t my area of expertise. With luck, they’ll have an expert trained to handle infectious diseases and threats like this since a fully enclosed station is a place where something could run rampant and kill the entire population.

I’m sure a space station has an amazing filtration and air-scrubbing system in place.

That might or might not be enough. Something designed to thrive in human hosts could hunker down and pass from person to person through contact. Kim shrugged. With luck, it’ll be a non-issue, because they’ll find the shipment and dispose of it properly.

I could use some luck.

The Stellar Dragon sailed closer to one of the asteroid’s poles, over banks and banks of solar panels attached to the rocky surface, and into a massive tunnel. Bright lights illuminated the manmade passage, and they flew past a couple of passenger transports on their way out. Their freighter navigated around a few turns, and one of the circular ends of the station came into view, reminding Casmir of the top of a fizzop can. A miles-wide, spinning fizzop can.

All along the rim of the can, numerous sets of hangar doors were set into the surface, as well as banks of airlocks and the massive open bays of repair facilities. Flashing signs promised the availability of various types of fuels, cheap hotel rooms, reasonably priced repair facilities, and all-you-can-eat buffets. Dozens of ships were docked at the airlocks, which were tiny compared to the mass of the station. They reminded Casmir of little barnacles attached to the side of a sea-going ship. He hoped the size and population of the station meant it would be easy to disappear inside and that few people would notice the arrival of the Stellar Dragon.

“Let’s hope we don’t run into any of your friends here,” Kim said, switching back to voice.

“I wonder if it’s better for us to leave right away or wait a few hours and depart in the middle of the night.” Casmir wondered how days worked on the station, if there was perpetual artificial light, or if there were day and night cycles.

A knock sounded before the hatch to the lounge opened. Qin stuck her helmeted head inside.

“Captain says it’s been nice knowing you and to grab your stuff and be ready to depart as soon as we lock up.”

“Thank you, Qin,” Casmir said.

Kim snorted. “Apparently, we’re leaving right away.”

Qin shut the hatch again without mentioning the case or what Lopez intended to do with it.

“So it seems,” Casmir said.

He hoped Kim’s plan to visit the Kingdom Guard office would be easy to implement. Maybe he could make inquiries about his own problem there. Would the local authorities have access to the Odin systems? Maybe by now, someone had figured out who sent the crushers.

A clang reverberated through the freighter as they docked. Casmir’s feet clunked down to the deck, and a wave of nausea came over him. They were piggybacking off the station’s spin gravity now that they were attached. He did his best not to think of them twirling around in space like kids on the playground pushing a merry-go-round to spin faster and faster. Horrific devices. Of course, he’d had a seizure and fallen off one once, so that hadn’t helped him fall in love with them. That had been the year before his doctor had found a more effective medication for him.

Now, if he could just find a more effective medication for motion sickness.

“Easy, stomach,” Casmir murmured, patting it. “Enjoy your drugs and ignore the craziness of our new reality.”

“Does talking to it make it less queasy?” Kim headed for the corridor.

“It hasn’t yet, but I’m an optimist.”

“I’ve noticed.”

After Casmir collected his gear, he headed up the ladder well instead of down.

“Where are you going?” Kim had already started down to the cargo hold, but she paused.

“To say goodbye and thank the captain for her hospitality.”

She squinted at him. “You’re trying to figure out what she’s going to do with the case, aren’t you?”

“Certainly.” He hadn’t considered it—the idea of letting the authorities handle it sounded stellar to him—but it sounded silly to admit that his parents had always insisted on good manners from him.

He gave Kim a knightly bow from the ladder, then climbed out and wobbled to navigation. The gravity was steady, but it was still different from what he’d grown accustomed to the last couple of days.

The hatch stood open, Lopez in her pod, the sides peeled back so he could see her profile.

“Captain?”

She looked warily over her shoulder.

Casmir repeated the bow, this time offering a more genuine version. “Thank you for bringing Kim and me along to the station. I know you hadn’t planned on us being here and sucking down your food, and I regret that I can’t offer you more money, but even when I dare access my banking chip, it’s not connected to a great deal of wealth.”

“Tell me about it.”

For a confused moment, he misinterpreted her sarcasm and thought she referred to his situation. But that wasn’t it.

“Funds are short for you as well?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t have gotten myself into this mess if they weren’t.” Lopez flung a hand in the direction of the lavatory. “Don’t get married, kid. Especially not to a conniving ass of a man who’s oh-so-good at making you believe his dreams are your dreams, and then disappears with everything in your savings account and all of your clients.”

The openness of the rant surprised Casmir, and he wondered if she had been drinking. Having an awful bioweapon on one’s ship probably warranted alcohol, but she had also been piloting her freighter into dock, so he hoped for soberness.

“I’ll keep that advice in mind, Captain. Though I don’t have plans to marry a man, so perhaps I’m saved on that front. That’s not allowed on Odin, you know.”

“It’s a backward little planet.”

“I’ve heard that often, but it works for the backward individuals on it. At least these days, there are other options for those who don’t fit in.” He spread a hand, thinking of how often he, as a kid, had dreamed of escaping to another system, one where hulking masculinity was considered a suggestion of simian ancestors rather than a desirable trait, and where beautiful women fantasized about smart scientists and engineers rather than knights and sports stars. But he’d never been positive such a place truly existed or that modifications and augmentations did anything to change human nature. “Regardless, I do hope that you find a solution for your financial woes. I’m sure it’s very difficult to start over. I fear I may be about to find that out personally, if I can’t get to the bottom of my own problems so I can go home again.”

All he received was an indifferent grunt.

Casmir thought about doing as Kim had suggested and asking what Lopez intended to do with the bioweapon, but he doubted Lopez would answer, and he might rouse her suspicions if he pried.

“Goodbye, Captain.”

She flicked her fingers in what was either a vague farewell wave or an attempt to remove a booger.

Kim was waiting for Casmir in the cargo hold, her bags over her shoulder, the wooden swords once again affixed to one. They found Qin waiting at the airlock hatch, her hands clasped behind her back.

Lopez’s voice floated down the ladder well from above. “Don’t let them forget to leave my suits.”

Casmir touched his helmet, reluctant to take it off, much less leave it behind. He could think of all manner of situations where a self-contained suit might be useful on a space station, and he wagered most of the residents had their own tucked away in emergency lockers.

He almost asked if they could borrow them and send them back, but Kim was already removing her suit and helmet.

“Right,” Casmir muttered and shed his own.

Even though they were older models, they were probably worth more than he’d paid for passage.

“It was interesting to meet you.” Qin stuck her hand out to exchange grips with them. “It was great how you disabled the merc ship, Casmir. You’re smart, and I wish you were staying on.”

“Thank you,” Casmir said, surprised but pleased by her words.

Now, he wished he’d gotten a chance to know the young woman better. Despite her fearsome looks, she was a far more amenable soul than the captain.

“Be very careful with that case,” Kim told Qin for her parting. “Very careful.”

“I understand. I’m sure we can get rid of it in a way that it won’t be put to horrible use on anyone.”

“Good.” Kim nodded.

Qin tapped a control panel, and the hatch swung open, revealing a short walk to the station’s also-open hatch.

Casmir crossed first, vowing to keep his eyes open for threats. He accessed the network and called up a map of the station as well as the location of the nearest Kingdom Guard office. The idea of sending uniformed men to the captain’s door as a thank-you for her help made him squirm with guilt, but they couldn’t ignore the threat on her ship.

All of the airlocks funneled their crews out into a tiered concourse bustling with people, exotic food smells, and thousands of noises from conversations to robot vendors hawking their wares to the rings and clangs of gambling machines. Booths and shops ranged from the practical—food and fuel stores—to the whimsical—robotic squirrels that rode on a person’s shoulder—to the salacious—hotel rooms with men, women, and androids for rent by the hour. Casmir had heard that such offerings were tame in System Lion and that one could find far more exotic sexual entertainment in the other systems.

He started into the concourse but noticed Kim hesitating in the airlock chamber. Hesitating and grimacing as if she were in pain.

“Are you all right?” Casmir asked.

“Yes.” Kim took a breath and visibly collected herself. “It’s just noisy.” She waved at the concourse. “Let’s hurry through, please, and find someplace less… less.”

“Right.” He remembered her once admitting that she got headaches and had a hard time focusing on conversations if there was a lot of other stimulation around. As someone whose seizures were sometimes triggered by flashing lights, he could empathize completely.

They strode into the concourse, and Casmir headed toward a Kingdom Guard office identified on his map, though his eye was drawn to the robot squirrels. He wondered how realistic their ambulatory range was in comparison to the flesh-and-fur creatures that had inspired them. As he drifted toward that shop, simply to ask the merchant for confirmation on how to get to the Guard station, of course, he was so busy looking at the robots and the tools along the back wall that he almost missed the tall figure striding purposefully toward them.

“Casmir.” Kim elbowed him.

A large blond man in dark silver liquid armor and a purple cloak veered out of the traffic to walk beside Casmir. His stomach knotted for reasons that had nothing to do with gravity. A knight.

Would he deliver another warning? Had the crushers beat Casmir to the station?

The knight kept facing ahead, not speaking at first. He showed them his pertundo, the telescoping halberd currently in a compact form that hung from his belt, as if to prove his identity. Or maybe he was simply showing he was ready in case he needed to put it to use.

Casmir thought of the knight who’d died for him, and the urge to apologize profusely to this man swarmed over him. He opened his mouth to ask if he had known Sir Friedrich, but the knight spoke first.

“The ship you stepped off is carrying something dangerous.” The knight looked at Casmir and Kim out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes!” Casmir blurted, relieved the authorities already knew. “Someone needs to—”

“Not here. Come with me.” The knight unclipped his pertundo, twitched it for emphasis, and pointed the sharp tip toward doors at the end of the open mall area.

Casmir realized the man wasn’t using the weapon to identify himself. It was a veiled threat. Comply or else.

Casmir was so startled he almost tripped. Why would a knight feel he had to even subtly threaten him? He looked at Kim. Her grave expression said she’d already figured out the threat.

We may be considered guilty by association, her text message floated through his vision.

Casmir held back a groan as the knight ushered them into a room.

Two uniformed Kingdom Guard officers stood behind a table inside, wearing the same blue-and-gray uniforms that the Guard wore on Odin. Their hands rested on stunners in holsters, and their faces were icy.

A sign on the back wall of the room read Customs Interrogation. Casmir doubted they were about to be searched for smuggled fruit.

“Hello, officers.” Casmir waved and did his best to sound cheery, not like a man with something to hide. “And Sir Knight, I didn’t get your name. I’m Casmir Dabrowski.”

He looked to Kim to see if she wanted to do her own introduction. Her mouth was sealed shut.

“This is my friend,” he offered, smiling. “Can we help you?”

“Sir Russo,” the knight said shortly.

Casmir bowed and said, “It’s been an extremely eventful week, and I’m hoping to get home as soon as possible, but I fear it’s not safe. Uh, how much do you know about that?”

“We know who you are and that good men died on the day you mysteriously disappeared from campus, Mr. Dabrowski.” The senior officer, an inspector, his badge said, leaned his fists on the table. “Tell us about the contents of that safe.”

You mysteriously disappeared? Casmir didn’t like the accusatory sound of that. In his absence, had he somehow gone from being a victim to being a suspect for something? Who could have possibly come to that conclusion?

“Safe? If you mean the case holding the rocket, it’s about this big by this long.” Casmir demonstrated with gestures. “And the other contents are—” he looked at Kim to see if she wanted to explain, but she had adopted a stay-silent-unless-questioned position, “—alarming.”

“There is a rocket.” The knight sucked in an alarmed breath. “And it was on Odin. Dear God.”

“It could end up back there if we’re not careful,” the inspector said. “Dabrowski, how many people are on that freighter? The official dossier says it’s just the captain, but we know there’s at least one other crew member, some modded freak the captain didn’t report when she came to Odin. But for all we know, there are twenty armored men in there. Too many for even a knight to handle.”

The inspector shot Sir Russo a firm look, and the knight’s lips pinched into an annoyed expression, suggesting they had argued about this earlier. Had Russo intended to charge straight onto the freighter?

“Well, there aren’t twenty people.” Casmir paused, feeling another twinge of guilt, this time because it seemed like it would be a betrayal to help these men storm the Stellar Dragon.

He wanted the authorities to know about and get rid of the bioweapon, the same as Kim, but what if Lopez and Qin were hurt or killed in the process? Lopez hadn’t been willing to give up the case to the mercenaries. Would she try to hide it from the Kingdom Guard? How much money did she have tied up in that cargo?

Casmir shifted uneasily, remembering her admission that her funds were low.

“For what capacity did the captain recruit you, Dabrowski?” Russo asked. “Advice on the rocket? We already know why Sato was there.” He frowned at Kim as he waved at her. “I trust you tested the samples and found them viable.”

Kim’s eyebrows flew up.

“I assume you were careful,” Russo added, “but is there any possibility of leakage? Do we need to quarantine the ship, or is it safe to retrieve the vials?”

“They were sealed when I saw them.” Kim looked at Casmir. Was she as bewildered by this line of questioning as he?

“Er, advice on the rocket?” Casmir asked, struggling to get his head above the quicksand burbling up around them. How could these people know so much but be so wrong about everything? “I happened to know the model and its capabilities, but my specialty is robotics. That must have come up in your research.”

“We know your specialties,” the investigator said coolly. “And we know you’ve published papers on rockets as well as robotics.”

“I haven’t published anything on rockets…”

He trailed off as the investigator flicked a tablet on and slid it across the table so he could see the article on the display.

“Oh, that was for a ballistics class that was required for graduation. There was an opportunity to earn extra credit and some leeway on the final exam if we wrote a couple of research papers and submitted them to periodicals. I was honored that mine was published, but I was mostly pleased to get full marks from crusty old Professora Langbottom. I was worried about my grade-point-average in those days, you understand.”

The investigator and the knight exchanged long looks.

Casmir wondered if they were messaging each other back and forth. The second Guard, an imposingly tall and broad constable with rolled-up sleeves displaying meaty arms, merely watched everything. He’d walked around the table to stand between Casmir and Kim and the exit.

As if Casmir would try to flee from a knight. Where could he even flee to on a space station?

“There are two people on the crew,” Kim said, “Captain Lopez and a modded woman with extra strength and likely other attributes we didn’t see demonstrated. Neither we nor they learned the truth about their cargo until we were en route. My understanding is that Lopez was trying to deliver what she believed were guns. Then we were attacked by a mercenary ship and barely got away. After that, she snooped and learned she’d been duped. As you deduced, I’m a bacteriologist, and I would be happy to advise your experts on how best to dispose of the bioweapon once you acquire it. Neither Casmir nor I went aboard that ship to help commit a crime. We were fleeing the crushers that were chasing and trying to kill him. Any chance you or one of your colleagues on Odin knows who’s trying to kill him?”

Casmir nodded, grateful to Kim for parsing it so clearly for the men. That should help.

But the constable snorted with disbelief, and the inspector and the knight exchanged another long look. Casmir kept himself from pointing out that typically only lovers gazed into each other’s eyes for such unwavering lengths of time.

Sir Russo jerked his head toward the door.

The inspector nodded and said, “We’re going to talk to our superiors. Constable Davis, search them for weapons and keep them here.”

“Gladly.” The constable cracked his knuckles and eyed Casmir like a tasty morsel.

Casmir couldn’t keep from grimacing—or maybe cringing. He’d dealt with enough bullies in his life to recognize the type, the eager gleam in the eye of someone who enjoyed having power over others. And putting that power to use.

“Let’s see those pockets, you treasonous deadbeats,” the constable said, striding forward as soon as his colleagues left, the door shutting behind them.

Kim scowled. “We haven’t betrayed anyone.”

“Don’t much care.” The constable cracked his knuckles again.

There was only one high window in the wall next to the door. Was the glass insulated so the people shopping in the concourse wouldn’t hear them scream? Casmir decided it would be a shame if his wails of agony interrupted the purchase of someone’s robot squirrel.

Yas walked past the bridge and toward the captain’s briefing room and quarters, glancing out a porthole that he passed. The ship had undocked from the refinery, but Rache hadn’t yet given the order to blow it up. Maybe he was waiting for the autopsy results. Yas wished he had found more.

He looked down at the small opaque capsule that he’d cleaned off assiduously before heading up here and hoped it contained something that would distract Rache from the fact that Yas had no idea what had killed those people.

The double doors opened as he approached, and he found Rache standing in the briefing room, his hands clasped behind his back as he gazed at news footage on a screen. When Yas walked in, Rache paused the playback, the display freezing on the face of a man with shaggy brown hair, a lazy eye, and a grin that didn’t seem appropriate for the headline flashing over his head.

Odin robotics professor chased by military robots, almost killed in explosion.

“What did you find?” Rache looked at Yas’s hand.

“As I told Corporal Chains before he would let me back on the ship, the body had no sign of a viral infection, no hint that the immune system had sensed a threat and responded, and nothing to suggest poisoning.” Yas had checked and rechecked for symptoms of toxic exposure, since poisoning would have explained deaths without outward signs of violence or illness. “There was a great deal of cellular damage throughout the body, and I believe that’s what killed them. Just looking at the cells, I would have assumed they belonged to very old individuals who died from the deteriorative diseases of age.”

“They didn’t look that old.”

“No. I believe this may have happened quickly. I might have thought acute radiation exposure, but I’ve seen plenty of that when dealing with space-faring peoples, and this wasn’t the same. Usually, acute radiation exposure causes outward signs such as bruising, bleeding from the orifices, hair loss, ulcers, etc. But you saw these bodies. They were unblemished. Further, we should have been able to detect radiation on their suits, and I tested the bodies and also the refinery for exposure. The refinery isn’t particularly well-insulated from cosmic radiation, which isn’t surprising since no humans work there, but that’s not what killed those people.” Yas spread his hands. “I’m sorry I don’t know what did.”

“I see.” Rache didn’t sound pleased.

Yas didn’t know if it was with him or with the situation. Even though Rache’s features were hidden behind that mask, Yas suspected the captain didn’t like excuses—and wasn’t hiding the fact.

“I did find something else that may be useful.” Yas held up the capsule between his thumb and forefinger. “It was strategically hidden inside the body of the man I autopsied. I almost missed it.”

“Strategically hidden? What does that mean? He shoved it up his ass?”

“Close. He swallowed it. It was on its way through his gastrointestinal system, the protective shell keeping it intact.”

Rache didn’t speak for several long moments. “It seems that these archaeologists found something someone thought was worth killing for.”

“We don’t know that someone else killed them yet, I’m afraid.” Yas shrugged apologetically for the vagueness of his findings.

“Actually, we do. I suppose we don’t know what exactly happened to the people on the refinery yet, but someone blew up their ship. I had Trotter do a scan of the area, and he found wreckage. We also found video footage from exterior cameras on the refinery and were able to access it. Three days ago, an unmarked cargo ship modified with dozens of extra weapons chased a shuttle from an Odinese research vessel in this direction. The shuttle was damaged. As it passed extremely close to the refinery, a team of six people with crates took a spacewalk out its hatch to one of the airlocks here.”

Rache waved toward a porthole and the refinery outside.

“Their shuttle continued past,” he went on, “accelerating toward the gate. It wasn’t a long-range craft, so they either hoped to gain assistance from the Kingdom warship that’s always stationed at the gate, or they wanted it to look like that’s what they were doing. It’s possible the entire crew went on that spacewalk, and it was on autopilot. The unmarked cargo ship continued after the shuttle without slowing down at the refinery. It’s likely they didn’t see the people depart. Both ships flew out of the refinery’s camera range shortly after, but the wreckage we found was in the direction they were heading. It was so pulverized as to be unidentifiable, but it’s likely it was the remains of the shuttle.”

“Where did the shuttle originally come from? A research vessel, you said?”

“Yes. Our scanners picked up the matching vessel in orbit around one of Saga’s moons—Skadi—which is currently on the far side of the planet from us. A Zamek newspaper article from a couple of months ago mentioned it and a large team of archaeologists and scientists heading out on a mission. It didn’t discuss what they were researching.” Rache pointed at the capsule. “How long ago would that have been ingested?”

“Ah, transit time would have varied depending on stress, hydration, and other factors, but perhaps a day before he died, and I gauge they died no more than a day before we found the bodies. We have to assume that if they spacewalked from their shuttle to the refinery, some time passed between when they arrived and when they died.”

“So, the archaeologist may have swallowed it before his team left their shuttle, assuming their attempt to hide wouldn’t work and they would be captured.”

“Yes,” Yas said. “He also could have swallowed it when they got to the refinery. If he knew he would die and believed whoever was chasing them would find their bodies and their belongings…”

“Destroying whatever is in there—” Rache pointed to the capsule, “—would have been a surer way to hide it.”

“Maybe he hoped someone friendly would find them, at which point, he would want to share the contents.”

“Did you look inside?” Rache’s tone grew cooler, and he held out his hand for the capsule.

Yas couldn’t tell from that tone if he would be in danger if he had. “I didn’t open the capsule, no. I scanned it to see what it contained—there’s a storage chip inside—but that’s it.”

Rache carefully broke open the capsule, then retreated into his quarters on the far side of the room. Yas didn’t know if he was hunting for something to read the chip—he didn’t recognize the connector or know what could interface with it—or if he meant to leave Yas in the dark while he examined it.

But Rache soon returned with a suitable transfer cable and plugged it into the display on the wall. The robotics professor’s face was replaced with shaky video footage. A recording made from a helmet cam?

Rache leaned his hip against the table and watched.

“That doesn’t look like the refinery,” Yas said, not sure if he should offer to leave or not. His curiosity kept his feet rooted.

“No.”

“It looks like the corridors of a very old ship. Or a station. Sort of. Is that daylight pouring in?”

Rache looked at him silently, then back to the footage.

Yas clamped his mouth shut. The back of someone’s spacesuit came into view for a moment. It looked like a civilian suit, not military or Kingdom Guard. And then it was gone. The operator of the camera passed under a gaping hole in the ceiling of the corridor, wan sunlight entering, shining on a mound of snow and ice that he had to climb over.

“They’re down on a moon or a planet,” Yas murmured. “With at least some gravity.”

The video stopped and restarted in what might have been an engine room. Yas didn’t recognize the design of the ship or even the style of architecture. Gray and black unpainted metal walls. Exposed circuits not covered by panels. Pale dust—or was that frost?—over everything.

A monkey bounded into view, and Yas almost pitched over, startled. The brown furry creature held a panel or maybe a circuit board in its hands, its tail whipping about as it bounced up and down.

If the sight of the creature surprised the person operating the helmet camera, no twitch or jerk of surprise showed up in the feed. Rache also didn’t react.

“A robot?” Yas guessed, able to think of no other explanation for a monkey on an archaeological mission.

“Or a loaded droid.”

“Oh, right.” Yas knew dying people occasionally uploaded their consciousness into androids, but he hadn’t met a monkey version. “Too bad there’s no sound.”

The camera came closer to the monkey and the frosty circuit board in its hands. Rache sucked in a surprised breath as the details on the surface sharpened.

Yas didn’t recognize anything on the board. It looked like something out of a computer, but what kind of computer, he couldn’t guess.

The video stopped and didn’t switch to anything else.

Rache looked at the date stamp. “Six Odin days ago. The farthest away they could be and have had time to come to the refinery and die—or be killed—is one of Saga’s thirteen moons. We can’t assume it was Skadi and that the research ship has been orbiting it the whole time, but Skadi is a frozen hunk of ice. I believe it’s the only one of Saga’s moons with a surface that you could walk around on, but I’ll double check.”

“Are you going to forgo your refinery-destroying mission to go exploring?” Yas was careful to keep judgment out of his voice. He didn’t know Rache well enough yet to be certain his life wouldn’t be in danger if he irked the man.

Rache gripped his chin, the mask malleable enough to allow it. It was more of a hood than a mask, Yas decided, and it covered his hair as well as his face. Whatever the black mesh-like fabric was made from, it didn’t keep Rache from seeing through it.

“Forgo? No. I’ve already been paid, and I will complete my mission. But if what I think those people found is still down on that moon, I would prefer it if Jager wasn’t the one to get it. That research ship is registered to a university on Odin, so it’s possible the Kingdom government sanctioned the mission. Jager might have sent them personally.” The ice had returned to Rache’s tone, as cold as the pile of snow they’d seen on the video. He looked at Yas. “Did you ID that body while you were poking through its cells?”

“Yes. His ident chip was still implanted. He was a spaceship-engineering professor named Kinyar Boehm from South Zamek University.”

“An engineer? That’s not what I expected. Though maybe they needed someone with mechanical expertise on their team.” Rache looked back to the display, perhaps thinking of the circuit board.

He held up a finger. While he ran a network inquiry?

“The only loaded monkey-droid working in the archaeology field in any of the systems is a Dr. Erin Kelsey-Sato,” Rache said. “She’s also from Odin.”

“Ah,” Yas said neutrally.

Even if it turned out that some Kingdom operative had been responsible for killing his president and framing him, Yas couldn’t manage the blanket hatred that Rache seemed to feel toward all of King Jager’s subjects.

Rache must have sent a command to the screen, for the display switched back to the roboticist.

Huge swaths of text accompanied the man’s photo. Rache flipped through a few more photos and more text. Yas couldn’t read the words from across the room, but the pictures all seemed to be about the roboticist. Casmir Dabrowski, as he was identified in one headline. On the run and currently missing. One photo showed a blown-up parking garage on Odin. Another looked to be from a traffic camera that had caught the man with a woman riding behind him on an airbike as a tanker blew up on a highway behind them.

Rache zoomed in on the woman. Two names flashed as the computer identified the faces. Dabrowski and Kim Sato.

“A still-living relative of the monkey?” Yas scratched his head, wondering how Rache had known to pull up this story before Yas had walked in with the camera footage. Had he found something in the crates his men had been searching?

“Daughter. Or so the net tells me. Huh.”

“Is that… useful to you?” Yas felt lost, but he hoped the captain didn’t have anything inimical planned for the two refugees. They looked far more like scientists than criminal masterminds, and Yas would rather speak to such people than shoot them. The crew of this ship made him dearly miss intelligent discourse.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. The net says she’s a bacteriologist, so she may know nothing of her mother’s work.”

“They seem like unlikely people to be caught up in—what are they caught up in?”

“Nobody seems to know for sure yet. At least, it hasn’t been released to the media.” Rache flipped back to the photo of the roboticist, then gripped his chin again as he studied it or maybe the text—the man’s résumé and professional accolades. “Though I have a hypothesis about why this man may be a target.”

“Are you going to tell me?” Yas asked.

“No, Doctor. Let me know if you find out anything more about the body.”

That would be hard since the captain had forced him to leave the bodies on the refinery, not even permitting him to bring a blood sample on board, but Yas said, “Yes, Captain,” and turned toward the door.

“And, Doctor?” Rache said, making him pause.

“Sir?”

“Tell no one of this. If you made a copy of the chip—”

“I didn’t.”

“—destroy it.”

Rache stared at him through his mask, and Yas had the urge to squirm, even though he truly hadn’t made a copy and knew very little about what was going on. He held up his hands defensively, resenting that he was so unsure of himself here and that he had to fear for his life, but he couldn’t help it. This wasn’t his world any longer, and he had no idea how to navigate it without acting like some mindless sycophant.

“You’re dismissed,” Rache said.

Yas hurried out, his mouth dry.

13

The comm panel in navigation beeped. Bonita stopped pacing in the tiny space behind the piloting pods, faced the display, and took a bracing breath. Diego’s scowling face popped up.

“As I said in my message, Diego,” she said, hoping to head off a tirade, “my circumstances have changed, and I won’t be able to sell you those weapons. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“Inconvenience? ¿Qué chingados? We almost got hammered by a ship full of knights. What’d you do? Comm them to let them know we were coming?”

“No, of course not. I—”

“Because they were damn sure we were coming to pick up something from you, and they were willing to nuke us rather than let that happen. I thought those uptight bastards were supposed to be noble. Nuking people isn’t noble.”

“I didn’t—”

“You’re lucky we had something to throw out to intercept their attack and then the slydar to slip into nothing on their scanners. If we’d been killed, my family would have made sure you died a horrible painful death. Don’t contact me again.”

The screen went black.

Bonita slumped into her pod. This week kept getting worse and worse, and that didn’t look like it would change soon. It wasn’t as if she could sell that case to anyone now, not unless she sold it to a psychopath who planned to use it on people. She wasn’t a saint, but she couldn’t live with that.

She’d spent the majority of her life obeying the law, even working to put criminals in jail. It was only in the last year that she’d been forced to take some sketchy delivery jobs to make ends meet. But smuggling weapons, biotech, and drugs here and there wasn’t the same as helping someone set up mass genocide. She couldn’t do that.

But damn it, she was tired of getting screwed out of money. Could she take the case back to Sayona Station and get her money back? Unfortunately, that was weeks of travel and a gate-jump away, and she had no idea if they would give even a partial refund. Sayona Station didn’t have a reputation for exemplary customer service. Few businesses in System Cerberus did.

It was a moot point right now, since she didn’t have enough fuel to reach the gate. As much as she hated to admit it, she would have to accept the loss and turn over the bioweapon to the authorities here. She wagered those knights already knew what she had. It would be better to voluntarily give it to them than wait for them to take it forcefully.

And then… Hell, she didn’t know what then. She needed to buy some helium-3 and deuterium to have more options. She wasn’t sure she had enough fuel to even make it back to Odin now. Not that she wanted to return to that benighted planet.

Maybe she could find some minor bounty to collect here on Forseti Station. She could make a few Kingdom crowns and refuel.

“Viggo, will you check the posted bounties for me? See if anything new has popped up this week. Ideally, someone who might be lurking on this very station and who we could capture and turn in quickly.”

Her knee twinged at the idea of chasing down some criminal, reminding her of one of the reasons she was semi-retired from the demanding business, but she could take a few painkillers and do a job. She had Qin to help now too.

“I will check.” One of Viggo’s vacuums rolled into navigation, humming happily as it slurped up nonexistent lint and dust.

“And don’t order any deliveries until we get paid for something,” Bonita said. “You don’t need more vacuums.”

“Really, Captain. My fleet has been decimated.”

“Removing two from a fleet of thirty hardly qualifies as decimated.”

“Actually, since one was already inoperable—you wouldn’t allow me to order parts last month, you may recall—it precisely qualifies under the historical definition of decimated, in which one in every group of ten soldiers was killed as punishment to the whole group.”

“Your robot vacuums are not soldiers, Viggo.”

“And yet, performance is suffering due to their inability to implement full coverage during every day cycle, as is recommended for maintaining an optimal environment for crew and passengers. I fear this ship is turning into a pigsty.”

“Yeah, it looks like a helium-hogger exploded all over a refinery.” Bonita gestured to the as-always-immaculate navigation cabin, then reached for the comm to call the authorities. An incoming signal flashed first. “This station is a chatty area.”

“Forseti is the largest and most populous station in System Lion. There are more than eighty levels, fifty hotels and resorts, two shipyards, and a vast industrial area responsible for the manufacture of seventy percent of the mining equipment produced in the system.”

“Thanks for the encyclopedia entry.”

“There is an excellent robotics shop in the concourse that has three aisles of self-propelling vacuums.”

“You’re not getting more vacuums.”

As she slapped the comm to answer, an alarm flashed on the far side of the control panel, and a faint clank reverberated through the ship. A man wearing a blue-and-gray Kingdom Guard uniform appeared on the display, and she didn’t have time to check the alert.

“Captain Lopez here.”

The man’s scowl announced his displeasure before he said a word. “Lopez, your ship is being held and a quarantine enforced until such time as it’s deemed safe for my men to come aboard and collect the highly illegal biological weapons you’re carrying.”

“Ah, and your name is?” Damn, so much for her idea of preemptively contacting the law so she wouldn’t get in trouble.

“Guard Chief Wu. If you cooperate fully with my people, your sentence may be more lenient.”

“My sentence? I haven’t—”

Wu cut the channel, and the blackness of space returned to the display.

“That clank you heard was a dock-lock being secured to the ship,” Viggo said. “We won’t be able to leave until it’s released.”

“I guessed.” Bonita slumped back into her chair. Sentence? Had anyone even proven she’d committed a crime yet? “Why, Viggo, why did you let me agree to carry this cargo without looking inside?”

“You didn’t ask for my agreement.”

“An error.”

“Usually, yes. But I have good news. There have been new bounties issued since we came through a couple of weeks ago, and I can guarantee at least one of the subjects is on the station.”

“Not much I can do about it now. We’re trapped.”

“Technically, I’m trapped,” Viggo said. “You could walk off through the airlock.”

“Where I’d be apprehended. Or shot.”

“That is possible.”

Bonita stared at the stars without seeing them. Was it possible she could sneak off, collect a bounty, and bribe someone in Lock Control to release her ship?

Fleeing would make her look guilty, and she would end up with a warrant out for her arrest, but it would only be in the Kingdom. She would have absolutely no problem avoiding this system for the rest of her life. She didn’t know if that would be enough, that they would refrain from issuing a systems-wide bounty for her, but she had to hope they wouldn’t bother. Not for smuggling. Admittedly, she was smuggling the worst thing she could have possibly smuggled…

“Show me the bounties,” Bonita said. “The one for the guy on this station.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Casmir’s face came up on the display, along with his full name, occupation, and last-known place of employment and residence.

“Are you yanking my oxygen tank?” Bonita asked.

“No, Captain. It’s extremely fresh. It appeared in the system three hours ago.”

“We hadn’t been docked yet three hours ago.”

“It was sent out system-wide, not specifically to this station. It’s possible that whoever’s looking for him doesn’t know where he is.”

“This is making me wish I’d asked you to check on bounties two hours ago.” Before she’d booted Casmir off the ship. “But it would feel weird to…”

“Collect a bounty on someone who assisted you numerous times on our voyage?” Viggo suggested.

“No,” Bonita said, even though that was exactly what she was thinking. The kid was weird, but he had helped, and the idea of turning him over to some lowlife who might torture all the robotics secrets out of his brain didn’t sit well with her. “And it was only two times.”

“It is possible those mercenaries would have left you dead and taken your cargo if he hadn’t damaged their ship.”

“And how horrible it would have been if they’d taken that cargo.”

“Would you not have found your death inconvenient?”

“It would solve my current problems,” she grumbled, then ordered the display to scroll for the rest of the information on Casmir. Such as who wanted him and how much they were paying.

If he had committed a Kingdom crime and all she had to do was turn him over to the Guard station, that wouldn’t be a betrayal, surely. If he was a criminal, he deserved their punishment.

She snorted at the irony. She was hardly in a position to judge someone. But still, it wouldn’t be the same as handing him off to some pirate family or angry group of anarchists who wanted to shake classified information out of his innocent brain.

Assuming he knew classified information. Did he? She had no idea.

“Two hundred thousand Kingdom crowns?” Bonita gaped, forgetting to look at who had issued the bounty when her eyes locked onto that. “Holy stars, I’ve never gotten that much money for a bounty in my life. I’ve only seen a few for that much. I remember a shoot-out between bounty hunters where three of them killed each other in their eagerness to collect on a lucrative target like that.” She shook her head. “Shit, he’s probably already caught. I doubt he made it to the first elevator.”

“The bounty is still active.”

“That just means someone hasn’t turned him in. They probably have him.”

Bonita closed her eyes. As impractical as it was, she couldn’t help but think of what she could do with that much money. Repair everything that needed repairing on the Stellar Dragon, pay off the loans she’d had to take out to keep the ship running after Pepper left, get caught up on the registration taxes, and still have money left to fund her retirement. Oh, maybe she would work a few jobs on the side, but nothing like this. She could rescue tourists kidnapped from Balneario del Mar on Tlaloc. Something low-key. Easy.

“I will alert you if the bounty is removed, Captain.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, then remembered she hadn’t looked at who had issued it. “Pequod Holding Company? Never heard of it. Viggo?”

“It’s not publicly traded, and there’s little information on it. It makes investments on the stock and commodities exchanges. Nothing about profits or capitalization size.”

“Nothing about what they’re worth then?”

“Correct.”

“So a business is looking for Casmir, huh?” That was unexpected, but Bonita could see it fitting in with her idea that someone wanted research secrets from him. It was hard to imagine him earning the ire of some torture-happy pirate family, but maybe his robotics work was cutting-edge stuff. “Of course, we have no idea what this business does or if it’s even real.”

“That was my thought,” Viggo said. “Given the minimal information on the company, it looks like a front.”

“Where do they want him delivered?” Bonita didn’t see that detail in the listing. If she could somehow make this work—and she had no idea how yet—she would have to be careful with the exchange, make sure to set up protection. She didn’t need to talk to any of her old bounty-hunter contacts to know that this company had never paid a bounty before. With no history, they couldn’t be trusted. They would have had to dump some money in an escrow account to make the listing on the hunter exchange, but… lawyers could figure out ways to take that money back without issuing a single crown.

“There’s a network contact listed,” Viggo said. “That’s it. You would have to comm them and ask.”

She stroked her chin. It wouldn’t hurt to ask, right? It wasn’t as if she could do anything about it even if Casmir was to be delivered to a corporate office three levels down.

“There are armed men now stationed outside your airlock tube,” Viggo reported.

“Are they staying on the station?”

“For now. Shall I lock the hatch door? Qin did not do so before leaving.”

“Leaving? Qin left?” Bonita hadn’t forbidden it, but Qin hadn’t told her she was going, so she was surprised. But this could be an opportunity. If Qin wasn’t stuck on the ship, she could look for Casmir.

“Yes. She told me she wanted to see if there were any knights on the station, so she could see one in the flesh before leaving the system. In case we didn’t ever return.”

Bonita almost laughed. Her nineteen-year-old super soldier seemed more like a nine-year-old girl at times.

“Qin?” Bonita commed her.

“Yes?”

“Where are you now?”

Qin hesitated before replying. “I’m looking for a knight, Captain. Just to see. I’m sure he won’t talk to me, but I’m wearing a hood, so people won’t stare. I won’t get in trouble. Are you mad that I left without asking for permission?”

“No, you’re my crewman—woman—not my indentured servant. Look, I need you to find Casmir… and capture him.”

Bonita wasn’t surprised at the long pause.

“Capture?”

“A bounty has been put out, and if someone hasn’t already gotten to him, we’re going to collect it. Once you have him, don’t bring him back to the ship. Wait for me to comm.”

“But I like him, Captain.”

“I don’t think it’s for his head. His death, that is. I think some business wants what’s in his head.”

“Like what?”

“How should I know? Robotics secrets. Just get him, Qin.” Bonita put an edge in her voice, not wanting to argue further, though she always felt bad snapping at Qin. She always had the sense that Qin had already been snapped at—and worse—enough in her life.

“Yes, Captain,” came the whispered reply before the channel closed.

“Viggo, do some deeper research on that holding company, please. There must be some clues out there. I want to know who the CEO is. In the meantime…” Bonita called up the contact information on the bounty poster so she could find out where they wanted Casmir delivered.

Casmir clenched his jaw as Constable Meat Paws dug through his satchel, tossing valuable tools and his prized robot bird to the floor without a thought. The man had already turned out Casmir’s pockets, his rough pat-down leaving numerous burgeoning bruises.

Casmir’s cheeks flamed with heat such as he hadn’t felt since he’d been a scrawny kid in school, being humiliated and pushed around by bullies. He hadn’t had it as bad as some of his equally scrawny friends, because he’d always been quick to crack a joke and he’d had some success at making people want to laugh at him instead of punching him, but he’d endured a lot before finding his place at a university so competitive that nobody had time to pick on anybody else. There’d been too many assignments, too many tests to study for. Thank God.

“Useless crap,” Meat Paws announced, tossing the satchel on the floor with the rest of his stuff.

“Look out!” Casmir blurted, lunging to keep him from stepping on the bird.

He bent to pick it up, but Meat Paws planted a hand on his chest and shoved him hard enough to send him tumbling into the table. His hip smacked hard against it.

“Is that yours?” Meat Paws pointed down at the bird.

“Yes. Just let me pick it up. Please. That took my team weeks to get working right, and it’s a prototype right now.”

Casmir spotted Kim moving toward the man out of the corner of his eye. She looked like she would beat the snot out of the constable. Afraid that would get her in trouble, Casmir stepped forward and lifted placating hands, hoping to resolve the situation himself. Unfortunately, his mind was devoid of jokes or clever questions that might have distracted the man.

“Please. It’s just a little—”

The constable stepped on it before Kim or Casmir reached him. Fragile components crunched under his heavy boot.

“Might have had a transmitter in it,” the constable drawled, grinning at Casmir’s distress.

“Asshole,” Kim said.

“What’ve you got in your bag, girlie?” He leered at Kim and turned toward her.

Casmir’s jaw clenched harder. He couldn’t believe the Kingdom Guard willingly employed this thug. Had nepotism been involved in the hire? Bribes? Blackmail?

Kim stood over her bags, her stance wide, her arms crossed over her chest, and she didn’t answer. She’d endured the same search that Casmir had, though the bully had been more inclined to grope her than punch her. Casmir doubted that was any better. He knew Kim well enough to be certain that his calm, unflappable friend was a split hair away from losing her temper and pummeling the guy.

“Those sticks—what are they? Swords?” Meat Paws grabbed her bag, the wooden swords strapped to the outside. “You have a permit to carry weapons on Forseti, girlie?”

A gunshot rang out in the concourse, and shouts and screams erupted.

The constable whipped his head up and sprang to the window.

Dread filled Casmir’s gut, and he met Kim’s eyes, finding a similar emotion there. After all the insanity of the last week, what were the odds that this had nothing to do with them?

The constable cursed. “What are they?”

They?

Casmir shook his head, hoping his creations hadn’t made another appearance.

“Maybe you should go check, Constable.” Wishing he were taller, Casmir rose on tiptoes to peer out the window, but the man blocked it, his nose pressed to the glass. More gunshots fired, and the squeal of some other weapon hurt Casmir’s ears. “It sounds like your friends need you.”

The constable whirled on him. “Are you responsible for that? Some diversion so you can escape?” He thrust his finger toward the door. “Innocent people are getting hurt.”

Casmir lifted his hands. “I don’t even know what’s going on out there.”

A scream of agony pierced the door.

The constable squinted, his fingers curling into fists, and strode toward Casmir.

Casmir skittered back, kicking one of his tools and sending it careening off a wall. Kim slipped behind the constable and pulled herself up so she could see out the high window. She dropped down immediately.

“Two crushers,” she said.

Casmir cursed violently, both at the crushers and at Meat Paws, who was determined to grab him and maybe throttle him to death. He ducked and only avoided being caught because the constable clipped his hip on the table. Casmir ran around it, trying to keep the man on the opposite side from him.

The constable whipped out a stunner and pointed it at Casmir’s eyes. “You tell me right now if you’re responsible for that. Because if you are…” His finger tightened on the trigger.

Casmir dropped to the floor. He couldn’t let himself be stunned. Those crushers had to be here looking for him.

Again.

A crack boomed in the room, and he thought the constable had fired a gun—a real gun.

“You bitch,” the man snarled.

Kim.

Casmir sprang to his feet in time to see her crack him again with one of her wooden swords. It rapped against his knuckles, and he dropped the stunner. She waded into him, the two practice blades a blur as she pounded them into his flesh. He blocked a few strikes with his arms, bellowing at the pain the blunt blows caused, then roared and charged at her.

She sidestepped him, and he thundered past and slammed into the wall. She pounced before he’d recovered, and she landed a solid blow on the back of his head. Rare fury burned in her eyes—or maybe that was desperation, for she glanced at the window.

“Stun him.” Casmir pointed at the constable’s fallen weapon, hoping they would get in less trouble if the man wasn’t seriously injured.

Casmir ran around the table to grab it, but Kim beat him to it and fired as the constable readied himself to charge again. He pitched to the floor, his cheek landing in the broken pieces of Casmir’s robot.

Kim tossed his weapon on top of him. “Don’t call me girlie.”

“I’m glad you’re on my side.” Casmir rose on tiptoes again so he could peer out the window, then yanked his head down. “You’re right. Two crushers. I can’t tell if it’s the same two. They all look the same. They’re striding down the concourse, hurling aside anyone who gets in their way.” He swallowed, his brief glimpse burned in his mind. “I saw some Guards that looked like—at least one couldn’t be alive. Not with his neck twisted like that.”

“We have to get out of this room without them seeing us.”

“And go where? We can’t lead this trouble back to the Dragon. Even if we could escape that way, I bet the Guard has Lopez’s ship locked down.”

“I don’t know, Casmir.” Kim moved around the room, snatching up their belongings and returning them to the correct bags with swift precision. “You made these things. How do we kill them? Or reprogram them? Because it’s clear they’re not going to stop hunting you.”

“You need a physical key to program them. I made sure they couldn’t be tampered with remotely. They don’t even have wifi receivers in their metal molecules. And you’ve seen how impervious they are. I mean, if we could get our hands on explosives or a rocket launcher, we might be able to destroy them. But we couldn’t fire such a thing on a space station without risking blowing a hole in the exterior. A thousand alarms probably go off if you even remove the safety on a weapon like that.”

Kim finished packing the bags and thrust his satchel at him, sans the robot bird that was beyond repair. He gave it a sad nod, whispered, “Zikhronah livrakha,” then pushed it out of his mind. There wasn’t time to be sentimental.

“There has to be a way to get them off your back,” Kim said. “We don’t let bullies run our lives, right? Human or robot. You’re smart, and this is your world. Come on, Casmir. Think of something.”

Her encouragement helped. He was smart, damn it. And this was his world. He’d made those crushers. Who better than he to defeat one? Except that he’d designed them to be difficult to defeat. What he truly needed was a crusher of his own to fend off the other ones.

He froze halfway through the motion of slinging his satchel over his shoulder, and it clunked him in the back. “Could that work?”

“Yes,” Kim said.

“You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

More gunshots fired, more screams. They were closer, louder. Farther up the concourse toward this room.

“I trust you,” Kim said, “and we’re out of time.”

Casmir ran to the fallen constable and snatched the stunner that Kim had dropped. It wouldn’t do a thing to the crushers, but he might need it to convince people to let him in someplace with tools and the materials he would need for the work. Work that would take hours and hours, even with the finest manufacturing equipment, and even if he could find the exact materials he needed. The schematics he’d designed and programs he’d written were stored in his chip, if not hardwired into his brain, but he feared that wouldn’t be enough.

But he had to try.

“All right. We’re going to build our own crusher,” Casmir said. “But we can’t do it here. Any thoughts about how we can get out of here without them seeing us? I know you read all those stories about ninjas as a kid.”

“Ninjas didn’t spend a lot of time skulking through space stations. Ancient Japan was purportedly full of forests.”

“There were some artificial plants next to the robot squirrel kiosk.”

Kim peered out the window. “We can go now.”

“What? They left the concourse?” Casmir sprang to the window to check for himself.

“No.”

Casmir groaned. They were walking into the airlock hatch that led to the Dragon.

He ran for the door. “We have to help Captain Lopez.”

“No.” Kim gripped his shoulder. Hard. “Lopez has Qin. She’s better than you or me for combat. You build your robot, and then maybe you’ll have a chance to play hero.”

Casmir knew she was right, but it stung his heart to run the other way when people he knew were in trouble. By the time he built a robot, it would be far too late to help Lopez and Qin if they weren’t able to handle the crushers themselves.

“My map—” Kim pointed to her contacts, “—shows several levels devoted to manufacturing ships and asteroid-mining equipment. Would they have the tools and materials you need?”

Casmir jerked out a nod. “They might. All right, let’s go.”

The crushers were gone when he opened the door and slipped out, but he stumbled at the sight of so much carnage, so many broken tables, plants, kiosks… people. There had to be more than a dozen men and women down on the deck, not moving. Others cried and groaned, grasping injuries.

The knight who’d been questioning them—Sir Russo—appeared, leading twenty men in combat armor. Casmir halted and tried to blend into the wall. Russo didn’t notice him. He ran toward the Dragon’s airlock tube with his pertundo extended in one hand and a rifle the size of a cannon in the other.

Casmir was tempted to shout a warning, a reminder about the bioweapon—they dared not blow open that bulkhead in the lavatory—but Kim squeezed his shoulder again.

He forced his legs to run away from the interrogation room and the concourse and deeper into the station. He couldn’t help until he had more than his puny hands to offer.

14

Bonita headed to the lavatory to retrieve the case, so she could walk it into the station and hand it to the authorities. She was surprised they hadn’t barged in yet. They had mentioned quarantining her ship, and she knew the airlock hatch on her end was closed, but she couldn’t believe they wouldn’t send in Guard officers in combat armor.

“We have a problem, Bonita,” Viggo said.

She froze with her hand halfway to the latch. “Another one? I’m maxed out. I refuse to accept any more.”

“Sorry. I’ve tied in to the public station feeds, and two of those crushers appeared in the concourse. They’re knocking everyone aside.”

“Shit. They’re after Casmir?”

“They actually just turned toward our airlock hatch.”

“Ours? Why?” That word came out as a plaintive whine. She couldn’t help it. Why was the universe flinging so much crap at her this month?

“Unknown. Perhaps the bioweapon was always what they wanted, and Casmir mistakenly believed they were after him.”

“They can have it. I’m not defending that death trap anymore, and I’m not risking them shooting up my ship to get it.” Bonita spun around, debating on hiding places. If she wasn’t in their way, would she be safe? If she hid, that might help ensure that. “What kind of scanners do those crushers have? Do you know? Do they find their targets by sensing heat?”

“I know nothing about them other than the name that Casmir supplied. There aren’t any public records on them.”

“Of course not.”

“They’ve reached our airlock hatch. A knight and several armored men are shooting at them and trying to stop them. Ineffectually.”

“Wonderful.” Bonita sprinted down to the cargo hold and flung up a floor panel that appeared identical to the hundred others.

It led to a freezer that was designed for carrying food for the crew and frozen cargo rather than smuggling anything, but it might be ideal for avoiding heat-sensing robots.

A horrific wrenching came from the airlock, followed by a clatter, and Bonita envisioned the crushers ripping her hatch off and flinging it across the concourse. She slipped down the textured metal steps, careful not to make a sound. Her galaxy suit adjusted immediately to the temperature, keeping her body warm, but without her helmet up, she felt the icy bite of cold air on her neck and face.

Bonita pulled the overhead panel into place, careful not to scrape it or make any noise. The frozen darkness of a coffin swallowed her, but she didn’t mind. It was better than what was coming.

She crouched, her back to a box of vat steaks, as ominous thuds reverberated through the deck above her. She touched her helmet controls, and it unfurled and snicked into place. That tiny noise seemed to boom in her ears, and she held her breath, hoping the crushers hadn’t heard it.

The helmet display gave her night vision, but there was little to see. Crates of frozen food boxed her in from all sides.

The footsteps came across the deck of the cargo hold, two sets, heavy.

Shouts drowned them out. Firearms roared, and bullets clanged off something in the hold. Bonita winced, imagining more damage to her ship. She and Viggo could handle simple repairs, but if those people blew holes in the hull, the Dragon wasn’t going anywhere, even if she could bribe someone to release the docking clamps.

A foot slammed down right above her. The thick metal warped, denting before her eyes.

She lurched back, trying to wedge herself into a gap between two crates. Not that their meager protection would help if the crushers tore open the panel. They were sure to see her.

More clumps and thumps sounded over her head, then a thunderous bang as something was hurled into a wall.

“Viggo?” she whispered, trusting her helmet to patch her through to the ship, even if there wasn’t a pickup in the freezer. “Do I want to ask what’s going on?”

“I believe not, Captain.” His voice came softly through the helmet speaker next to her ear.

“Who’s winning?”

“I would say a stalemate at this time. One crusher is keeping a knight and eight armored law enforcers from going deeper into the ship. Another one is searching the ship. I have put my cleaning robots in hibernation so they won’t be damaged.”

Gunshots fired in rapid succession, followed by a crash.

“I’m more worried about the ship being damaged,” Bonita said. “Has it been?”

“There are two punctures in the hull currently.”

Another crash sounded.

“And numerous dents,” Viggo added with disapproval.

Bonita clenched her fist with more than disapproval. Frustration coursed down her arm, and she squeezed so hard an alarm flashed on her helmet display.

A cacophonous boom pounded her ears, and the deck lurched. Now how many punctures were there? And was the case with the bioweapon still safe?

“The Kingdom Guard team has managed to down one of the crushers,” Viggo said. “The head was torn off. Mostly. It’s hanging on by a strand. Ah, never mind. The head is melting and reaffixing itself. I’m not certain melting is the correct term.”

Bonita groaned. “What are these things?”

“Now, they’ve grabbed the crusher.”

Footsteps thundered in sync, the panels vibrating.

“They’re running toward… oh, the forward hatch,” Viggo said. “It’s starting to fight back, but if they’re able to, yes, they’ve opened the hatch. I’ll have to burn a lot of the oxygen mix later to refill the ship with air. But the crusher was blown out into space. As was one of their people.”

“Someone in full armor with a tank, I hope.” Bonita didn’t care that much. She wanted them all off her ship, crushers, knights, and Kingdom Guard officers included.

“Armor with a limited oxygen supply likely. They’ve closed the hatch so nobody else will be blown out. My exterior cameras show the crusher tumbling away from the station. It doesn’t appear to have any means of propulsion to reverse its direction.”

“Good. Finally, a weakness.”

“The Kingdom Guard officer has jet boots. He’s angling toward a hatch on the side of the station.”

“What’s the other crusher doing? Is it damaged?”

“No. It’s methodically searching the ship. The Guard officers are looking for it now. It is not attempting to hide. Its mind appears to have but one track.”

“Fine with me. I don’t want to deal with killer robots that get philosophical.”

Gunshots fired from higher up in the ship, closer to navigation. Bonita grimaced as she imagined more damage being done to the hull and equipment.

Footfalls returned to the cargo hold, heavy and ringing as they struck the deck. She knew it was the remaining crusher before Viggo warned her.

“Don’t move,” he whispered.

She froze, not planning on it.

Shouts came from the corridor. A muffled, “There it is!” reached her ears.

Guns fired, and bullets clanged off something over her head. The crusher?

“Is it leaving?” she breathed.

“It didn’t get anything.”

“Not that we can see. It could have hidden something in its body. If it can reattach its head…”

“It couldn’t hide a whole rocket,” Viggo said.

More gunshots fired, the clangs coming from near the airlock now.

Bonita’s knees ached, and her thighs burned from crouching. She willed everyone to leave her ship.

“Inspector,” a man said as he paced above Bonita. “We dealt with one of the robot-things, but the other is heading back into the station. It’s looking for something, but we don’t think it found the bioweapon.”

Bonita didn’t hear the response.

“Right. We’ll keep searching the ship. If it’s here, we’ll find it.”

Another pause.

“Haven’t seen her. We’ll find her.”

Bonita grimaced again as the footsteps receded. She had no doubt who her was.

“What now, Viggo?” she whispered once the cargo hold fell silent.

“Unknown, Captain.”

“Are there still men standing guard in the concourse?” She hoped vainly that they had all taken off after the crusher and that she could walk off the ship while nobody was looking. But to what end? She didn’t want to be stranded on Forseti Station. She wanted to fix her ship, get rid of those vials, and get out of the system.

“Many left in pursuit of the crusher, but two remain. I believe they have orders to keep anyone from coming or going.”

Bonita leaned her helmeted head against a box of frozen cauliflower. “How do I get these people off my ship, Viggo?”

“Perhaps if you show yourself, explain the situation, and help them find the case, they will be lenient.”

“They’ve already condemned me. What kind of lenience can I expect? Twenty years in prison instead of a life sentence? And what would happen to my ship if they sent me off to some mining asteroid to serve my time. What would happen to you?”

“Twenty years is not as long to me as it is to you, but I believe I would find not having you aboard to be boring.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s also unlikely that someone else would order me new vacuums.”

“Figure out how to get me out of this situation, and I’ll buy you a cadre of vacuums.” Granted, she would have to collect Casmir’s bounty to be able to afford even a cadre of salt shakers, but if she could get off this station, there would be hope.

“A tempting offer, Captain. If I think of a solution, I will let you know.”

“Are they all wearing self-contained suits or armor?” Bonita asked, mulling over ideas.

“All except for the knight. I am uncertain whether a helmet folds out of his armor, but currently, his head is unprotected.”

“Is there air on all of the levels or was it vented?”

“There is sufficient air. The hatch was only open for a few seconds.”

“If he’s unprotected…” Bonita drummed her fingers on a crate of frozen juice bulbs. Did she have anything in small glass containers? Or what looked like glass containers? Breakable glass containers. “Minced garlic in a cube. You’ll have to do.” She tore into a box full of fresh-frozen herbs.

“What do you plan, Captain?” Viggo asked warily.

“I’m going to attempt to do what you suggested, but if they try to get me off the ship to arrest me, I’m going to bluff.”

“That may not go well.”

“That’s normal for me these days.”

Sneaking into the huge machine shop on Deck 17B was easier than Casmir had anticipated. Almost everything on the furnace and manufacturing levels was automated, so once they’d gotten past the keycard reader, they hadn’t been questioned by anyone. Even with the battered remains of his tool collection, he’d managed to make a card that fooled the simple system. Casmir gathered that theft wasn’t a big problem when it came to shipbuilding equipment that weighed tons.

Finding and collecting the sophisticated nanites he needed to program and integrate into the molecules of the liquid metal alloy he was about to make had been more difficult. He’d been about to give up and send Kim to sneak into the hospital, in the hope that their medical nanites would work in his matrix, but then he’d found a molecular manufacturing laboratory that supplied materials to a nearby zero-g semiconductor plant, and he’d been in heaven.

“Do you want me to do anything?” Kim asked as he set up the tools he would need to reprogram the nanites in the back of a shop.

An electric smelting furnace that he would use later blocked them from view from the main doorway, but that didn’t make Casmir feel safe. He was sure there were security cameras all over the station, documenting his trespassing and theft. He could only hope that once he had some protection, he could more easily get to the bottom of his problem and get his life back. His life where he went to work, was paid, and could in turn pay for the parts he was using today. Admittedly, he would have to work for a year to earn enough to pay for the expensive materials.

“Just watch the door, please,” Casmir said as he set to work.

He’d chosen a shop with a back door so they could run if they had to, but if the crushers were the ones to stomp in, hunting him down, it might not matter. There wasn’t an airbike here that he could steal.

“Already doing that.” Kim had stopped ten feet away in a spot where she could see the door, and stood ready to spring into action.

“I should have known. Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. Just build that robot. Or even better, build an army of them, so we can survive the day.”

“I won’t have the time or materials to build an army, but I’ll see what I can do with this one.”

After a few minutes, Kim glanced his way. “I’m sorry, Casmir.”

“For what? I’m the one who got us in trouble. And who should have thought of this back on Odin. Not that I had time there to build anything.” He glanced at a digital clock on the wall, though it wasn’t as if the crushers had given him a schedule of when they planned to find him next. Was it delusional to hope the ones that had appeared on the station hadn’t been looking for him? That someone had sent them after the bioweapons? Probably. He suspected they’d gone to the Stellar Dragon because it was the last location they knew he’d been.

“For snapping at you. And for being cranky.”

“If you’re cranky—and I’m not saying that you are, because my mother told me never to accuse a woman of being cranky or emotional, especially not that—it’s definitely not without reason.” He worked while he spoke, afraid to take the time to glance over at her. Fortunately, the nanites were fresh from the manufacturer and a blank slate, so he didn’t have to hack through any security measures to start uploading the code. The code the military didn’t realize he still had on his chip. “You shouldn’t be here, and it’s my fault that you are. And I can’t even wish that you weren’t here, because I’d probably be dead by now if I was alone.”

“I think you could have figured out a way to get the better of Constable Braindead on your own.”

“Is that what you were calling him? I’d decided on Constable Meat Paws. I’m afraid I’m better at being the distraction than the deliverer of death by a thousand blows of wooden sticks.”

“I stunned him. It’s hard to knock someone out with bokuto.”

“Is it?” Casmir asked. “You left him nicely purpled. Like a ripe eggplant.”

“Are you supposed to sound so approving when you talk about violence?”

“If the violence is being done to bullies, it’s acceptable.”

“He was doing his job.” Kim sounded like she regretted thumping the man. She didn’t lose her temper often, but it was like a switch flipping when she did.

Casmir thought Constable Whatever had deserved it. It was a lot less than the crushers would have done to the man if he’d been in their way.

“In a bullying way,” he said firmly, feeling a twinge of regret for his lost bird.

Kim snorted.

“You probably didn’t get bullied in school, so you don’t recognize their hateful kind. Sometimes, they’re chameleons, friendly and charming in front of authorities, and then utter assholes when there’s no chance of repercussions for their actions. Admittedly, that constable was more of a red-headed rock agama than a chameleon.”

“A what?”

“A red-headed rock agama. They’re lizards with brilliant red heads and electric-blue bodies, and they’re super territorial. They challenge intruding males by puffing out their throat pouches and bobbing their heads like they’re doing drunken pushups. Tell me that doesn’t remind you of our constable tormentor.”

“I didn’t notice a throat pouch.”

“He was probably hiding it. If you’ve never seen those lizards, they’re beautiful. You should visit the reptile museum in the capital, or go see them in nature on Karudera Continent. They thrive down there. It’s supposed to be like Africa on Old Earth. Did you know Odin supposedly has all the species that existed on Earth, even some that were extinct by the time the colony ships left? Apparently, we brought…” He caught himself rambling while he worked and glanced at Kim. “I believe I went on a tangent. What were we talking about?”

“Bullies,” she said dryly. “Why do you think they never bothered me?”

“Well, you have those sticks. And didn’t you once say that your brothers picked you up after school in the van for the dojo? With the logo on the side? The one with a slim, unassuming man breaking a log with his fist?”

“Yes, but girls don’t usually beat each other up. I wish they did. It’s easier to dodge a punch than gossip and insults.”

“For you maybe.” Casmir tossed her a lopsided smile.

“You are better at talking than punching. You would have made a good girl.” She said it as if she were stating a fact, not delivering a taunt. “Maybe we should have traded places in school.”

“Would I have learned how to break a log with my knuckles?”

“Of course not. Everybody knows you have to use a palm strike on a log.”

“Palms are still impressive.”

“I’ll let my father know. That’s him on the logo.”

“Lacking the knowledge to properly use my palms,” Casmir said, “I had to build my own robot bodyguard in school. Ralphie, I named him. He helped me survive the middle grades.”

“I’m surprised it took you this long to realize you should do the same thing here.”

“Me too. I guess I’ve gotten used to being moderately respected by my peers at work and being surrounded by people far more inclined to banter about academia than pick fights.”

They fell silent, and Casmir didn’t know how much time passed as he worked, finishing with the nanites, and then venturing out for the metals he needed. He felt the pressure of trying to replicate in hours something that had taken his team six months to make back in the military research lab. But that had included days and days of experimenting and testing, failing, going back to the drawing board, then building and testing again. Now, he could essentially work from a blueprint.

Sometime near the start of the station’s day cycle, Casmir yawned and rubbed his eyes, even though he knew he shouldn’t with his contacts in. They were gritty, watery, and likely bloodshot. He glanced at the clock again, worried that more people would come into the manufacturing area with the start of a new shift.

“I’m following the station news,” Kim said quietly. “Everything is on lockdown, and citizens and visitors are being ordered to stay in their homes and hotel rooms. From what footage I could find, two crushers walked onto the Stellar Dragon, followed by the knight who questioned us and many armored men. One crusher walked off about twenty minutes later.”

“Where did it go?”

“The station cameras lost track of it. News reporters are asking for updates from any citizen that sees it.”

“Why do I have a feeling it’s looking for me?” Casmir asked.

“Because it left the ship without the rocket?”

“It probably doesn’t care about the rocket. It just wants me.” He surveyed his work, wishing it was further along. “If you’re bored, you could spend some time trying to research who sent these after me.”

“I have been.”

“And you haven’t found anything either?”

“Not about you or the crushers. There’s a fresh report that terrorists broke into a military research lab on Odin this week but nothing about what they stole, if anything.” Kim shrugged. “It’s interesting, but there’s not anything definitive to link it to the previous break-in and the missing crushers.”

“Terrorists? What kind of terrorists?”

“The article was vague, and I can’t access the government databases to run searches there.”

“No, I can’t either anymore,” Casmir said. “I had limited access even when I worked for them. Since we’re at a dead-end with what’s available in the public records, all I can think to do is destroy the crushers the person or organization that’s after me obtained. Then they’ll have to come themselves to get me.”

“You think that’ll be an improvement?”

“Maybe I’ll learn why they want me dead.”

“Hopefully not the instant before they shoot you,” Kim said.

“Hopefully not.”

15

Bonita waited until it was quiet in the cargo hold before easing out of hiding.

“The knight is alone,” Viggo informed her. “He’s in the lavatory.”

She strode that way, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible. “Using it or searching?”

“He’s running his hands over the wall panels. He’s done that in several cabins, so it may simply be luck that he’s in there. The others are searching in engineering, navigation, and the environmental-control room, currently. The two mercenaries you had in the brig were removed and taken onto the station.”

“Thank you.”

Bonita looked at the two tiny cubes in her gloved hands, a thin gelatin layer keeping the contents together. One held crushed garlic, the other frozen basil. They looked nothing like the laboratory vials that Kim had lifted from the case to examine, but Bonita was hoping the knight didn’t know anything about horrific custom-made bacteria or what kinds of containers one used to transport them. She would do her best to keep him from getting a good look at her cubes.

The lavatory hatch was open when she reached it. The knight heard her approach and spun toward her before she stepped inside. His hand tightened on his telescoping halberd, the shaft extending to give him the long version of the weapon.

Probably because she hadn’t grown up in this system and consumed all those stories about knights and their amazing combat prowess as a kid, Bonita would have been more concerned about a DEW-Tek rifle pointing at her chest. Nonetheless, she stopped in the corridor outside the hatchway.

“Despite what you think, Sir Knight,” Bonita said, forcing herself to use the respectful title they preferred, “I am not your enemy. I didn’t know what I was getting when I agreed to transport that case, and I will happily give it to you now, presuming you plan to take the weapon out and destroy it.”

He gazed at her, studying her eyes. There were stories about knights having telepathy and a knack for reading minds, but as far as she knew, even the colonies that adored tinkering with the human genome hadn’t managed to create brains with such abilities.

She was aware of clunks and clangs from elsewhere in the ship as his men searched. She could also hear a faint hiss of air escaping from the Dragon. Viggo had his repair robots out, working on fixing the leaks, but they must not have had time to patch the hull everywhere yet. She hoped the exchange tubes were hooked up to the station, and they were getting free water and oxygen while they were stuck here.

“Show me the bioweapon,” the knight finally said, “and I will make sure it is destroyed. You have my word that I don’t want to see that used on any human beings. It is true that King Jager has ambitions to extend the reach of the Kingdom again, but not through killing innocent people. What point would there be in bringing a habitat or station under one’s rule when there’s nobody left alive inside?”

That was more information than she had expected—and she wasn’t warmed by the plain admission that his king wanted to expand—but she found she believed it, that the knight didn’t want to sell this to someone else or use it. She believed he would destroy it.

“I’ll show it to you, but I would like to negotiate for my release afterward. As I said, taking it was an accident. I don’t deserve to go to jail over it, especially if I help you get rid of it now.”

His chin came up. “You are a smuggler. It’s not my fault that you inadvertently smuggled something more dangerous than you believed. In the Kingdom, smuggling involves a sentence of no less than ten years.”

“I’m not a Kingdom citizen. Your laws—”

“Apply to anyone traveling through our space. We will find the case, whether you help us or not.”

“Why not let me make it easy? I fetch it for you right now, and you turn your back and let me go. If not, who knows when that crusher will be back?”

His eyes sharpened. “How do you know what they’re called?”

“It’s not my first time seeing one.”

“They haven’t been deployed in combat yet.”

Yet. Wouldn’t it be wondrous fun when the Kingdom sent out armies of them?

“Maybe not,” she said, “but you had a recent outbreak of them on Odin, and I’ve met two.”

As he opened his mouth to reply, someone farther up the corridor asked, “Uh, Sir Russo?”

Two of the armored men had climbed down the ladder from navigation and were staring at Bonita. Shit.

“Get her,” the knight said and strode toward her.

The armored men also stalked toward her.

“Don’t!” Bonita lifted her arms, one of the cubes between thumb and forefinger in each hand. “Look, I tried to be friendly, but you’re not hauling me off to some prison. I’ll die first, and I’ll take anyone on my ship down with me. From what the bacteria scientist said, this would be a particularly horrific way to die.”

Actually, Kim hadn’t said anything about what the gunk in the vials might do, but Bonita thought it was a safe guess.

The men stopped moving. The knight, the only one without a helmet on, squinted at the cubes.

“Stop,” he called to the others, then scrutinized Bonita, holding her gaze again. “Your sentence will go the other way now that you’ve threatened us. You’ll spend the rest of your life in a detention center.”

“I’d been wondering how I would finance my retirement. I guess that would make it a moot problem.” She smiled, trying to appear confident—and hide the tremor in her hands. Had she just sealed her fate? Gone from smuggler to terrorist? “Get off my ship, Sir Knight. You and all of your men, or I drop these. The green one can eat right through galaxy suits and combat armor, I understand. Before it eats through your flesh, muscle, and organs, leaving nothing but a steaming pile of brown goo on the deck. I’m not sure what the white one does. I guess we can find out together.”

She glanced at the armored men to make sure they weren’t moving and also to see if her words had any effect. It was hard to tell through their faceplates, but they exchanged looks with each other.

More guards stepped out of the environmental-control room at the other end of the corridor. Bonita tried not to panic. Nothing like being trapped.

Any of the men could have sprung and tackled her before she could get out of the way, but she would drop the cubes on the deck if they did. And then they would break open. The men had to be calculating the odds now, wondering if they could reach her and keep her from dropping the cubes?

“You expect me to believe you would subject yourself to that fate?” The knight spoke quietly and took a subtle step forward.

“Stop!” Bonita jerked her arms up higher, as if she meant to throw the cubes.

He stopped.

“Get off my ship.” She backed up to make room for him to leave the lav. Then, not wanting the ones in the corridor at her back, she eased across the way and into the lounge. “Now.”

“Do it,” the knight said.

“But, sir—” one of the men said.

“Don’t argue,” the knight snapped and strode into the corridor, his purple cape flapping around his armored calves.

He didn’t throw her a backward glance or a threat; he merely stalked to the ladder, his back rigid, and descended. The men exchanged more looks with each other before following him down to the cargo hold.

Bonita didn’t trail them. She would get an update from Viggo. If they were setting a trap, he would know.

A clang echoed up from the cargo hold. The hatch shutting.

“How many did they leave behind, prepared to ambush me, Viggo?”

“None, Captain. They all left. Well played.”

Bonita lowered the cubes, the gelatin tacky from handling. “I wish I could agree. I think I’m just compounding my mistakes. All I want now is to get out of this system as quickly as possible and never return.”

“That does seem advisable.”

A faint clink-clank reverberated through the ship.

She almost dropped the cubes in surprise. “Was that the airlock clamp?”

“Yes, they’ve released us. I need to repair the damage to the hull before we can depart. And I assume you’ll want to recall Qin.”

Bonita tossed the herb cubes into the sink and wiped the gunk off her gloves. “They’re not going to let us go.”

“They have let us go.”

“Maybe they’re letting us leave their airlock concourse because a crazy captain is waving around deadly biological weapons, but they’re not going to let us go far. How much do you want to bet that the plan is to let us get twenty miles away from the station and then launch nukes at us? Destroy us and obliterate the bioweapon while they’re at it. Does this station have nukes?”

“According to the description on the network, it’s fully capable of defending itself and also extending solar sails to fly to different parts of the system if necessary.”

“So they can move out of the neighborhood if some of the bacteria survive the nuke. Good for them.” Bonita gripped the edge of the counter, staring bleakly at the pulped garlic in the bottom of the sink and trying not to see it as a symbol for her life.

“Two armed men have been left to guard our airlock on the station,” Viggo reported.

“Meaning they’ll shoot me if I try to leave.” Bonita activated her comm. “Qin, what are you up to?”

A long pause followed, and Bonita worried Qin had already been captured. Or she’d run into that remaining crusher and hadn’t come out on top.

“Searching for Casmir, Captain,” Qin whispered, the channel finally opening. The rumble of machinery sounded in the background.

“You’re a good crew member. But I need you to—” Bonita stopped. She’d been about to abort her attempt to collect his bounty, but her underlying problem hadn’t changed, even if she’d piled new ones on top of it.

She still didn’t have money to buy enough fuel to get out of the system. In theory, she could snag what she needed from one of the gas giants on the way to the gate, but she didn’t have an efficient means of collecting helium-3 from a planet’s atmosphere. She envisioned leaning out the hatch, trying to scoop up gas in a jar. She wagered Casmir could jury-rig something more practical.

“Stick to your mission,” Bonita said. “Find Casmir, but don’t let him know we aim to collect the bounty. Let him believe we learned about the bounty and the crushers, and we were worried about him. We’re offering to take him out of the system, and all we ask is for him to help us collect fuel along the way.”

“You want me to lie to him?” Genuine chagrin accompanied Qin’s words.

“If it makes you feel better, you can tell him that’s what I said.” Maybe Bonita should have made up that story to tell Qin from the start. When her assistant didn’t respond right away, Bonita added, “We’re in a precarious situation, Qin. The local authorities have let the Dragon go, but I’m positive it’s because they plan to blow us out of the stars as soon as it’s safe enough for them to do so without damaging their station. If you can’t find Casmir…”

She swallowed as unexpected emotion thickened her throat. Regret for getting herself into this situation. Regret for risking her ship and endangering Qin.

“You better stay on the station,” Bonita finished. “They shouldn’t have a qualm with you. With your skills, you can find another captain to take you on, easy.”

“Not a Kingdom captain,” Qin whispered, the words almost inaudible over the background rumble of wherever she was. “I’ve already… My hood slipped a couple of times. The people acted like I was some mutant carrying a contagious disease. A mother hurried her kids out of the lift when I got on it.”

“I’m sorry, Qin.”

“But I wouldn’t leave you anyway. That’s not right. I’ll find Casmir. I bet he can help. Maybe he knows how to disable the station’s weapons long enough for us to escape.”

Bonita didn’t know if a robotics scientist would have that kind of knowledge, but she let a tendril of hope creep into her body. If Casmir could hack into the system, that would be easier than bribing someone with nonexistent money.

“Good plan,” Bonita said. “If he’s willing, do that.”

Unfortunately, she feared Casmir would balk. Even if he was being chased by those crazy robots, she doubted he had ever done anything criminal in his life.

“If he’s not willing,” Qin asked in a soft, uncertain voice, “do I force him to?”

“Just explain that we’re his only way out of the system. Anyone else who offers him a ride will only be looking to collect his bounty.”

Bonita waited for Qin to say that was what they were planning to do. “Understood, Captain. I’ll find him.”

As soon as the channel closed, Viggo spoke. “You have a comm message, Captain.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it. Threats from the Kingdom Guard office, I presume?”

“No. A response from Pequod Holding Company.”

For some reason, her blood chilled. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if her life could get any worse right now.

Dread and curiosity mingled in her gut as she raced to navigation to check the response. It was a simple text message, no video.

Refinery 2, Saga.

“That’s it?” Bonita tried to scroll for more, but there was no more.

“That is the entire message. There is no truncation, no data loss.”

“Saga is one of the gas giants on the way to the gate, isn’t it?” If her memory served, it was the last planet in the system and, at its current position in its century-plus-long orbit of the sun, not that far from the gate.

“It would be appropriate to classify it as an ice giant or a gas giant,” Viggo said. “Most of its mass is comprised of a dense icy fluid of materials over a small rocky core. It has thirteen moons, none of which are inhabited, even by robotic mining systems. Winds gust more than a thousand miles an hour, and the average temperature is just below -200 Celsius.”

“So, it’s a nice place to visit.”

“It has two refineries that deliver gas by the tankful from collectors traversing a huge orbital ring that lets them dip into the planet’s atmosphere to gather helium-3, molecular hydrogen, methane, and other useful gases.”

Bonita’s ears perked. “Helium-3, you say? Do we have enough fuel to get there?”

Viggo’s long pause wasn’t reassuring. Bonita assumed he was checking and rechecking calculations, since he wasn’t one for dramatic flair.

“If we have no mishaps along the way, we could just reach Saga,” Viggo said. “We would not have enough fuel to return to Forseti Station or anywhere else.”

Bonita’s palms broke into a sweat at the idea of being stupid enough to sail off without enough fuel for a return trip. Her gloves sensed the heat of her hands and cooled a few degrees. As if that would keep her from sweating.

She licked her lips, then almost laughed because she was more nervous about this idea than about being shot at by the station or having a warrant for a life sentence placed on her head. That was because she’d been stranded before, and she knew how terrifying it was to be without fuel to run the engines, engines that not only powered the propulsion but drove the life-support systems. She remembered lying on her bunk alone and watching the condensation of her breath accumulate on the metal frame of the bunk above hers as oxygen slowly depleted and carbon dioxide built in the air…

Bonita shook away the memory, surprised at how vivid it was after twenty years. She’d survived that situation, and she would survive this one.

“As long as we can make it, we’ll be fine,” she said firmly. “The meeting point is a refinery. That’s perfect. We’ll drop off Casmir and pick up a tank of helium at the gift shop on the way out.”

“The refinery is populated only by robots. I deem a gift shop unlikely.”

“What, robots don’t have birthdays and anniversaries?”

“Not that they celebrate.”

“I’m sure we’ll be able to find some fuel in a refinery.” Bonita slid into her pod to answer the message, to let them know she had Casmir, and that she was coming. If fate turned her into a liar, she would be dead, and it wouldn’t matter.

“What do you think?” Casmir asked.

“It looks unnervingly like the other ones.” Kim covered a yawn as she walked around his finished product, the metal alloy giving it the same tarry black hue as the other crushers.

It towered six-and-a-half feet tall, six inches larger than the military models. Casmir hadn’t dared divert much from the known-good pattern of the previous ones, but he had given his slightly more mass, in case it helped. He had only been able to scrounge enough materials to build one, and he was well aware that two had shown up every time they had come after him.

“You couldn’t have made it look a little friendlier?” Kim asked. “Or at least used a less villainous color?”

“A color can’t be villainous.”

“Of course it can. That’s why all villains throughout history have worn black. Tenebris Rache wears a black mask.”

“You can’t rely on a mercenary for insight into fashion trends.”

“You can when it comes to fashion trends for villains. King Jager has declared him a pirate, not a mercenary, and an especially heinous enemy of the crown.”

Casmir yawned and waved away the argument. There hadn’t been any metal dye in the shop, and the color of his crusher was the least of his concerns. There might come a time when it would be useful if it could blend in with the regular ones, at least at first glance.

“What do we call it?” Kim asked.

“I am a Z-6000, programmed to protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski,” the crusher announced in a flat monotone.

Kim jumped back. “They speak?”

“Yes, they’re similar to androids in intelligence and linguistics ability.”

“None of the other ones spoke.”

“You didn’t ask them any questions.”

“It must have slipped my mind while they were trying to kill us.”

Casmir yawned again. The day cycle had returned to the station, the rooms and corridors brightening to simulate morning light on Odin, but all he wanted to do was find a place to take out his contacts, put in some eye drops, and take a long nap. But first, they needed to figure out—

A clank rang out, and the machinery rumbling in the other work areas sounded louder as a door opened. It must have shut again because the noise grew muffled once again.

“People coming to work?” Kim whispered.

“Let’s hope that’s all it is.” Casmir stepped up beside her so he could see the doorway leading into their room.

Kim had been watching it all night, never dozing off or faltering in her guard duty. Nothing had come in. Yet. The doorway lacked an actual door, so they couldn’t simply lock out intruders.

Footsteps boomed in the hall. They were too loud, too heavy, to belong to a human.

Casmir glanced toward the back way out of their workroom and took a step in that direction, but then he halted. He had a weapon to use now.

“Go take care of it, please, Zee.” Casmir pointed.

Without a word, his new crusher strode toward the front doorway.

“You have to say please to it when you give orders?” Kim asked.

“I like to be polite to robots. You never know when another Verloren Moon situation will arise,” he said, naming the ice moon that a large portion of computers and robots had taken over after gaining intelligence and liberating themselves in the last century. All of humanity, at least all of humanity living in the Twelve Systems, was glad they hadn’t shown any interest in spreading out from there.

“True. But we’re—” A crusher appeared in the doorway, and Kim whispered, “Never mind.”

Zee sprang, slamming into it so hard they struck the far corridor wall and crashed through it.

Kim gaped. “Do we help or…”

“No.” Casmir grabbed her arm and jerked his head toward the back exit. “We get out of here. It’ll find me.”

“I’m not sure yet whether to be comforted by that.”

Casmir didn’t try to convince her. Only time would do that.

He led the way out the back door and into a labyrinth filled with huge molds and covered vats of molten ore—a foundry. Heat rolled off the machinery and blasted their faces. A few voices mingled with the clashes, thunks, whirs, and grinding noises emanating from large alcoves, and the sounds from the fight soon fell behind.

Doubt filled Casmir as they ran farther away. There was nothing he could do to help, but what if his creation wasn’t up to the very first task he’d given it? What if the military had made modifications to his original design in the last year and the crushers were better killers now? Or what if it ended up as a stalemate with both machines destroying each other?

He tried to tell himself that it only represented twelve hours of work this time, not the months and years he’d put into the original project, but he couldn’t help but feel distressed at the idea of losing his creation before he’d even gotten to know it. What if—

Kim grabbed his arm, pulling him to a hard stop.

She pointed in front of them, down the wide aisle they were following, then tugged him into the shadows between two giant empty crucibles. A hooded figure walked toward them, a huge gun in hand.

“I think that’s Qin,” Casmir whispered, though he wasn’t sure. The hood shadowed her face.

Kim pulled him farther back. “Are we sure we want her to find us?”

“I… don’t know. We didn’t part on bad terms.”

It took Kim’s words to make him wonder why Qin would be looking for them. He couldn’t imagine any other task would have brought her down to this level of the station.

A scream rang from the walls, from back the way they’d come. Casmir’s heart crumbled. His crusher wouldn’t be hurting people—he had programmed it to defend only. That had to mean that his crusher hadn’t made it.

“Shit,” Qin said, only a few feet from their hiding spot.

She lifted her big anti-tank weapon. Casmir stepped out, just in case he was wrong.

A crusher strode toward them. Which one was it? He squinted. It was hard to tell if this was the six-foot or the six-and-a-half-foot one without another beside it for comparison.

Qin fired.

Belatedly, Casmir lunged over and pushed her arm away. The crusher saw the shot coming in time to react, dropping into a fluid crouch. The shell blasted over its head and slammed into a machine at the end of the walkway. It exploded, hurling shrapnel everywhere.

“What are you doing?” Qin barked. “Run. Get out of here. I’ll delay it.”

The crusher leaped back up. It did not sprint toward them. It looked at Casmir.

“I am a Z-6000, programmed to protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski.”

Casmir grabbed his chest. Thank God.

Qin hadn’t lowered her gun. “What is going on?”

“That one’s mine.” Casmir stepped in front of her as the crusher approached. “Uhm, Zee. Someone screamed. You didn’t cause that, did you?”

“My appearance alarmed several workers. They ran away.”

“I told you everyone knows black is villainous.” Kim stepped out of the shadows. “You should have made him pink.”

“What happened to the other crusher, Zee?” Casmir asked.

“It will reassemble itself soon. I do not know how to permanently destroy it.”

“According to the captain, the Kingdom Guards threw one out a hatch,” Qin said, backing away as the crusher strode closer.

Casmir nodded. “That would work. They can’t morph into anything they don’t have the base materials for—no making jet boots and rocket fuel. Zee, if you get a chance, throw that crusher out an airlock, please.”

“I will attempt to do so.”

An ominous bang came from beyond the vats, followed by the jarring booms of a pneumatic hammer.

“Let’s go,” Qin said, gesturing for them to follow.

Kim hesitated.

“Come on.” Casmir jogged after Qin, waving for both of his allies to follow. They could question Qin once they’d put fifty levels of the station between them and the other crusher.

She led them past two banks of passenger lifts and to a larger maintenance elevator full of paint brushes, buckets, drop cloths, and brush drones. They stepped in and she hit the button for a floor several levels above the airlock concourse.

“Did the captain make it?” Casmir asked. “We saw… We were being questioned when the crushers showed up. We saw them head to the ship.”

“She lay low while the authorities fought it, so she’s fine for the moment.” Qin pointed at him. “But you are not.”

“This is not news.” Casmir felt better with the big crusher looming behind him, but Zee wasn’t a solution to all of his problems.

“How about the fact that there’s a bounty on your head?”

“Uh, are you sure? I recall those mercenaries looking me up and saying there wasn’t one.”

“That was five days ago. This popped up yesterday.”

“Are you sure you can’t make an army of these?” Kim poked the crusher’s arm and seemed surprised that it had no give.

“I could if I had time, access to that machine shop down there, and someone to deliver more materials. But I didn’t pay for the raw materials I used. Someone is going to figure that out eventually. And probably send a bill to the house.”

“The captain is still in trouble,” Qin said. “Casmir, we need you to figure out how to disable the station’s weapons. Just temporarily.”

Casmir gaped at her. “That’s illegal.”

“Not if they don’t figure out you did it.”

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s still illegal.”

“In exchange, the captain says she’ll take you out of the system. You’re not going to be able to stay here with a bounty on your head. And it looks like you can’t go back to your planet yet, right?”

“Unfortunately, that’s correct.”

Kim shook her head bleakly.

The lift came to a stop, but Qin pressed a button to hold it.

“Are you in?” Qin asked. “I’ve been wandering the station all night looking for you. I passed the airlock and shuttle bay traffic-control center, so I can show you how to get there. Before, I thought maybe you could remotely hack into their computer from a closet somewhere, but between me and your new friend, maybe you could simply barge in and deal with anyone who objects.”

“They’ll definitely be able to figure out who did it if we take that route.” Casmir pushed a hand through his hair. The idea that he could hack into a secure government traffic computer from a random closet was ludicrous. Everything about this was ludicrous. “Why does Lopez need the weapons turned off? She’s not—” He dropped his hand. “She still has the bioweapon, doesn’t she?”

“Not intentionally. I wasn’t there, but I gathered things got out of hand. Her only hope now is to flee to another system where the Kingdom doesn’t have any jurisdiction. And she’s offering to take you with her. It’ll take whoever is chasing you a lot longer to find you then. The gate can go to any of the eleven other systems without leaving any trace of a ship’s passage.”

“I know how the gate system works,” Casmir grumbled. “As much as most people know, anyway. Which is admittedly not much.”

He met Kim’s gaze, wondering what she thought about this. She’d been silent, watching the exchange through slitted eyes. She was always suspicious of strangers or anyone who seemed to want something. He was quick to trust, wishing to believe the best in people, and knowing from experience that people performed better when they knew they were valued and trusted. But Qin wasn’t one of the young engineers on his robotics team. She was a warrior loyal to Captain Lopez who was, as far as he knew, loyal only to herself.

“Isn’t your captain a bounty hunter?” Kim asked Qin.

Qin shrugged. “She used to be. She hasn’t collected a bounty in as long as I’ve been with her. I assume she retired because it got too dangerous.”

“Whereas smuggling is like an afternoon sunning yourself in Castle Park.”

Qin shrugged again. “If you want to stay here, we’ll figure something out. I can try to force the airlock-control officers into helping, or keep them distracted while my captain escapes.”

She nodded, as if she’d already decided to sacrifice herself.

If Casmir had to pick one of them to escape and one not, he would have chosen the other way around. Lopez was jaded and hard to like. Qin could probably break his neck by blowing fiercely, but she was a more amenable soul.

“Let me pull up a map,” he said with a sigh.

“I can take you to—”

“I want to find out where the weapons are physically located and fired from. It would be easier to tamper with them than hack into a secured system. From a closet.”

Qin beamed a smile at him, the gesture sincere if alarming, since it displayed her fangs. Maybe she knew that, because the smile faded quickly, and she gave him a more formal nod. “Good. Thank you.”

“Wait until we see what I can actually do,” Casmir said.

Kim had a finger to her lips, and when he met her gaze, she shook her head slowly.

Because she thought Qin was lying? Or because he was about to do something that would get him into more trouble with the law?

Judging by the graveness of her expression, probably both.

16

The heavy sliding door to the weapons room was locked, the control panel beside it requiring a retina scan for entry. An eyeball was a lot harder to forge than a keycard.

“This is the place?” Qin asked, watching the corridor in both directions with her hulking gun in her arms.

Casmir expected a squad of Kingdom Guards to rush in to apprehend them at any moment. Their odd little group hadn’t gone unnoticed. They had been forced to stun two guards who’d tried to stop them on the way out of the lift on this level. Even though they’d tied up the man and woman and stuffed them into a server closet, it was only a matter of time before someone raised an alarm.

“It’s one of two torpedo rooms, according to the station’s schematic.” Casmir waved toward his temple, where he was keeping his embedded chip offline most of the time, out of fear that security could use it to track him. “I dug up and downloaded that instead of the map for the general public. It’s proving accurate so far.”

“Smart.” Qin smiled at him.

Casmir made himself bob his head in thanks for the compliment, though he was skeptical that they were truly on the same side.

“Shall I blow it open?” Qin patted her big gun.

“That sounds noisy,” Kim said.

She hadn’t spoken much since Qin explained the plan in the lift, and Casmir ached to pull her aside for a private chat. But there hadn’t been a chance. Qin hadn’t threatened them, but her mere existence next to them with that gun and her enhanced muscles was a threat, if a silent one. Casmir could sic Zee at her if he needed to, and he and Kim could run, but then he might lose the only asset he had. Whoever had placed a bounty on his head—and he didn’t doubt Qin about that—and sent the crushers… it wasn’t Qin or Lopez.

“Zee?” Casmir waved at the door. “Could you open this, please? Ideally without making a lot of noise.”

“What would a human consider a lot of noise?” Zee asked.

“Uh, below seventy-five decibels would be good.”

“How do you know how loud that is?” Qin whispered.

“Kim’s coffee grinder has a warning label on the side that lists its output.”

“My coffee grinder,” Kim murmured. “How I miss it.”

Zee reshaped his arm from its human dimensions into something akin to a mattock, then slid the sharp wedge under the door and heaved upward. Metal crunched and snapped, and the door rose. Casmir winced at the noise, though it was far less than Qin would have created with an explosive round—and probably not any louder than Kim’s coffee grinder.

“Secure the area, please.” Casmir pointed inside. “No killing,” he added, though it shouldn’t have been necessary, as he’d instilled that in the crusher’s programming, to defend without killing if at all possible. He had wanted to program that into the original military crushers, but the knight-general overseeing the project had laughed and vehemently denied his request. That had been one of Casmir’s first inklings that he was building robots for more than defensive purposes.

Zee strode into the room. DEW bolts shot out of flush-mounted weapons in the wall, weapons they hadn’t been able to see from the door.

Casmir jumped and blurted a useless warning as red beams sliced into the crusher. Zee turned toward one of the weapons, sprang, and smashed a fist into the control panel. The bolts halted abruptly. He repeated the action with the panel on the other side of the door.

The energy bolts left holes in his torso, but they re-formed into a solid mass within seconds. Zee strode around the room, seeking more threats.

“Handy,” Kim remarked from the door. “Was the robot bodyguard you made as a kid like this?”

“No.” Casmir laughed at the idea. “My knowledge of robotics was a little more rudimentary then, and I only had access to the building materials I could scrounge around the apartment. Kitchen pans were involved.”

“I’m sure your mother was delighted.”

“Do delighted people usually scream at you and threaten to withhold dinner?”

“That hasn’t been my experience.”

“Then that may not be the correct adjective.”

“The threats have been eliminated,” Zee announced.

Casmir jogged in and found the four torpedo bays and a locker full of warheads. The station didn’t appear to house nuclear weapons, but the charges in the warheads could easily destroy a ship. It would take too long to sabotage the torpedoes themselves—and his eye twitched at the thought of handling explosives when he didn’t have experience working with them—so he headed straight for the launch tubes. He hoped it wouldn’t take much to disable them.

A weapon buzzed behind him, and he sucked in a startled breath.

“Just disabling the cameras,” Qin said, waving a pistol. “Keep working.”

“Yes, ma’am.” As Casmir removed an access panel, again thankful that he’d managed to retain his toolkit through all this, he wondered how much the cameras had caught before she zapped them. How many corridor cameras along the way had recorded their passing?

He thought about the way they had been walking, with Qin leading and Zee following behind them. To an outsider, might it look like Kim and Casmir had been hostages? Forced to go along with this scheme? Someone smart would probably figure out that Casmir was the only one of them who could have built a crusher, but he could have also been forced to do that. It sure would be nice if someone on the outside would decide that he was innocent and that all he’d been doing since fleeing his home was trying to stay alive.

But was that true at this point? Maybe up until this point. If he disabled the weapons and escaped on the Dragon with Lopez and Qin, he would be sealing his fate.

The station authorities already believed he was part of a crime revolving around the bioweapon, but wasn’t it possible that if he went to them and helped them, his name might be cleared?

Whereas if he followed his current trajectory, he would be digging himself deeper into the icy core of a comet from which he’d never escape.

He kept working as the bleak thoughts spun around in his mind, his hands slow and methodical and almost without input from his brain, but he couldn’t stop worrying. He considered again the cameras and how things might look to an observer. Even now, with Qin and Zee standing near the door, alternating between watching the corridor and watching him work, it might appear that they were his captors rather than his allies.

What if he left a message while he was tampering? A simple text note informing whoever found it that he hadn’t been acting of his own free will. Might that save him when the law eventually—and what seemed inevitably—caught up with them? Or was it already too late?

He wished he knew if Lopez actually intended to do what she’d relayed to Qin. Did she plan to help him get out of the system? Or was it a ruse so she could collect his bounty herself? And who had put a bounty on his head? Was it the same person who’d been sending the crushers?

A morbidly curious part of him wondered how much it was for. How much was his head worth?

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Kim crouched next to him, her back to Qin.

He almost said no but realized she might want to talk. Unfortunately, Qin probably wasn’t far enough away for them to speak privately. If she had normal ears, she would be, but Casmir remembered some childhood trivia about house cats being able to hear things four or five times farther away than humans.

He shook his head slightly but pointed to the tiny display that he’d tampered with while disabling the first torpedo launcher.

My apologies, station personnel, but I am being forced to temporarily disable your weapons. Full control will return in twelve hours, if you do not override the programming sooner. I have been chased and shot at since leaving Odin. Please see Sir Friedrich at the castle in the capital for details, as he knows far more than I do.

Kim’s brow furrowed—she hadn’t met Friedrich, but he had probably told her the man had died fighting the crusher in the parking garage—but all she did was nod slightly.

Casmir hoped the authorities had no way to know that he knew Friedrich was dead. He hoped that if he sent them sniffing around the knight’s death, they would find someone else close to Friedrich that knew the truth. Like his mother. Whoever and wherever she was.

As Casmir replaced the panel, hiding the condemning message from Qin’s eyes, he worried he was adding evidence to the list of crimes that had to be mounting against Captain Lopez. That made him feel guilty—no matter what Lopez planned in the next few days, she had let him and Kim onto her ship, and they might not have escaped the crushers if she hadn’t.

That guilt didn’t keep him from programming the same message into the rest of the torpedo launchers.

Yas finished cleaning and organizing every tool and piece of equipment in sickbay, and he completed a list of items he needed restocked to keep the mercenaries alive. He needed to send it to Rache, since the captain handled the outfit’s finances himself, but he was reluctant to disturb him.

The ship hadn’t left the refinery, and Rache had been scarce outside of his quarters. Was he buried in research? Whatever that archaeology team had found seemed significant, and Yas worried Rache would decide he didn’t like it that his new doctor had watched the video diary with him.

The sickbay door opened, and Yas spun toward it, thinking the captain might have come for a chat about that very thing. But Chief Jess Khonsari strolled in with an easy smile, her hands in the pockets of her greasy coveralls.

Yas glanced at the case that held sickbay’s various medications, wondering if she would try to angle for trylochanix again. And if she did, what would he do? Demand she have an examination first and that they try a number of less potent—and less addictive—medications before going back to that? Or simply assume that the previous doctor had done all that and had known his trade? Yas wasn’t a surgeon in a hospital with rules governing the distribution of prescription drugs, not anymore. He was a thug with a scalpel, a criminal among more criminals.

“How’s the shoulder?” he asked, deciding not to cast judgment yet.

“Oh, it’s doing fine, Doc.” Jess rotated it to demonstrate a full range of motion and gave him a radiant smile. “I came up because I lost the draw.”

“The what?”

“To see who in engineering would come talk to you. The grunts were in on it too. Oh, and Chaplain.”

“This ship has a chaplain?” He’d had no idea.

Jess wavered a hand in the air. “Sort of. He was studying in some monastery, went crazy, and killed everybody there, or so the stories say. He’s one of Rache’s assassins now. Good at it too.” She ambled over and leaned against the medicine case. “The crew calls him Chaplain. I’m not sure you want to confess any sins to him.” Her forehead screwed up. “Is that the right religion for that? I get so confused with all of the options these days.”

“I take it you’re not overly theistic.”

“Not overly, no. A friend suggested I become an astroshaman now—” she waved her prosthetic hand and gestured to her cybernetic eyes, “—but I’m not interested in meditating until I can spiritually fuse my human and cyborg bits.” Her mouth twisted in a dismissive expression.

“What did these various venerable people wish to speak with me about?” Yas asked, not wanting to get into a discussion of the merits of the new and old religions out there.

“We were all wondering if you knew why we’re still here. Seeing as you’re buddies with the captain now.”

“Buddies?” Yas hadn’t spoken to the captain in days—and infrequently before then.

“Sure. He saved your life. And he told the guys not to pummel you or he would pummel them.”

Yas blinked slowly. “When did he do that?”

“Right after you came aboard with your nose up in the air like you were better than everyone here.”

“I didn’t intend to convey that message.”

“Well, Ox and Chains and Chaplain thought they’d help you see the error of your ways. The captain said no, and nobody crosses him. He may not be as big as a lot of the men, but he’s dangerous.”

“Given his reputation, I would assume so.”

“Anyway. The refinery. We’re still here, and we haven’t blown it up like we did the other one. Usually, we’re in and out. Lingering in one spot for long isn’t a good idea, even with the slydar hull plating. An hour ago, our lookout spotted three Kingdom warships on course for Saga.”

“How far away are they?”

“Four days, but it’s possible they’ll realize we’re loitering in the area. If they get a hint that it’s actually possible to catch Rache this time, I bet they’ll divert forces from the gate. One of those ships could be here in just over a day.”

“Do you think they’re aware that the first refinery was destroyed? It was all automated. Maybe those ships are just making a supply run.”

“Oh, they’re aware. Odin is considered backward because of its stance on genetic engineering, but it has the same tech as the rest of the systems. Some knight with a telescope in Jager’s castle is probably counting the zits on your butt right now.”

Yas’s hand strayed to his backside. “I use an antibacterial soap that keeps those to a minimum.”

“I’ll let the guys know. Especially Moretti. He’s about given up on his fantasy of the captain jumping his wrench after a vigorous sparring session in the gym. Maybe he’ll shift his attention to you.” Jess winked.

Yas had no idea what to say. This conversation had taken an alarming turn.

“Whatever the men think, I’m not the captain’s confidant.”

Yas could have spoken of the autopsy and the footage he’d seen, but Rache had been clear that he didn’t want that information getting out into the wild. Though the idea of intentionally ingratiating himself to the captain turned his stomach, it occurred to him that if Rache did treat him differently than he did the rest of the crew, Yas shouldn’t snub that. If he could stomach it, maybe he should attempt to cultivate a friendship with the man. Rache had considerable resources for a criminal. Maybe it was possible he could one day help Yas clear his name.

“That’s disappointing,” Jess said. “You should offer him some of that special soap.”

The comm chimed.

“Doctor Peshlakai,” the captain said. “Is there a DNA sequencer in sickbay?”

“There is, actually. I just completed an inventory and was surprised at some of the equipment in the storage room here.” Specifically, Yas had wondered if the mercenaries had raided a medical laboratory somewhere and let their last doctor shop gleefully through the haul before selling off the remains.

“Good. Dust it off.”

Yas couldn’t imagine what on the refinery Rache had found that he wanted sequenced. They had already identified the bodies of those who had died.

“Yes, sir,” was all he said, certain Rache wouldn’t appreciate prying.

The comm clicked off.

“What are we sequencing?” Jess had moved to the door, but her eyes were bright with curiosity. Had it truly been some lost bet that had sent her up here to gather intel?

“I don’t know.”

“Will you tell me when you do?”

“Not unless the captain says I can.”

Her lips twisted. “You’re no fun, Doc. But I should have known that when you started talking about butt soap.”

She waved and left sickbay before he could find a decent response.

Yas headed toward the equipment storage room but paused, glancing toward the medicine case. He hadn’t been watching Jess when the captain had been speaking. A part of him didn’t want to look, to see if the number of foil trylochanix packets matched the number he’d just recorded on his inventory, but his feet took him over there, regardless. He opened the case and counted. Several packets were missing.

He rubbed the back of his head, pushing his fingers through hair that had grown shaggy in the last three months. What was the protocol for something like this? Did the mercenary ship have a rule book? Should he tell the captain? Or talk to Jess? For all he knew, half the mercs were jacked up on some drug or another. Was it within his purview to question these people’s life choices?

Yas pushed the quandary to the back of his mind to consider further later and went into the storage room to dig out the DNA sequencer he would never have expected to find on a mercenary ship. Or be asked to use.

17

When the Stellar Dragon released its docking clamps, Forseti’s airlock attachments seemed to give the freighter an extra push. Bonita imagined the station very much wanted to get rid of them.

Qin sat in the co-pilot’s seat, and Kim and Casmir stood just inside the hatchway to navigation, watching the display with tense faces. She wasn’t sure how they had made it back to the ship in one piece, especially when they weren’t wearing armor or galaxy suits, but she suspected Qin and the hulking crusher that had strode on board with them accounted for it.

Kim had acquired a stunner somewhere, and Bonita took note of it. Before they reached the refinery, she would have to take it and any other weapons they might have acquired. In the bounty-hunting business, it was bad form to hand over armed captives. She had no idea how she would take the crusher from them.

She’d almost wet herself when that had walked on board. Whether Casmir had reprogrammed one of the others or built one from scratch, she didn’t know, but it added a big complication. Handing over a captive with a killer robot at his back was even worse form.

“I hope we got them all,” Qin whispered, her eyes locked on the display.

Bonita nibbled on the inside of her cheek as they sailed away from the asteroid protecting the station. She didn’t know how long Forseti would wait to fire—or attempt to fire.

An incoming courier ship sailed past them on its way to the station. Bonita realized that even if the torpedoes were all disabled, if Forseti’s traffic-control officers acted quickly enough, they could send ships with working weapons after the Dragon.

“Everything that was on the builders’ schematic,” Casmir said.

“What’s the deal with your new friend?” Bonita asked casually, hoping Casmir would get chatty, as he tended to do, and explain it in great detail, especially whether it needed to plug itself in and take a nap at night.

“I got tired of being bullied,” was all he said.

He smiled but also peered into her eyes, as if to ask, Are you also a bully I need to protect myself from?

“I can believe that,” Bonita said and faced forward again, adjusting a couple of controls that didn’t need adjusting.

She doubted he would find any duplicity in her eyes, as she had plenty of experience at bluffing and keeping her thoughts masked, but there was no need to take the risk. Even if he was goofy, she reminded herself that he was also smart. She’d met engineers and programmers who were good with their tech and far less so with people, but she didn’t think he fell into that category. The fact that she felt guilty about what she was planning attested to that. She wouldn’t say he’d won her over, but she already regretted her choice. She just didn’t see any other options now.

An alarm beeped on the control panel, and she tensed. A warning about weapons firing?

No, it was the fuel indicator.

“We’re being warned that the ship doesn’t have enough fuel to get us back to Odin or to the gate and beyond,” Qin said.

Kim and Casmir exchanged alarmed looks.

“I know,” Bonita said. “Viggo and I already chatted about that. We’re going to stop at Saga on the way out and either collect some helium-3 ourselves or see if we can borrow a tank from one of the orbital refineries.”

“Borrow?” Kim asked.

“I’d say barter for one,” Bonita said, “but I don’t think there are any people stationed on those refineries, and I don’t know how to barter with robots.”

“They tend toward the practical,” Casmir said, “but I don’t believe there are any self-aware robots out there. Just automation. Most of the systems learned from the Verloren Moon incident that creating artificial intelligence comes with a lot of risks.”

“No kidding.” Bonita got the shivers every time she flew within a light year of the computer-run moon. She’d heard the whole thing had once been covered in ice. Now, it was covered in the gray of metal and circuit boards, an entire world turned into a giant computer, or at least it seemed that way from the outside. As far as she knew, no humans ever went there, other than the cyborg nuts who started to believe they were computers. “If you all are feeling bad about taking fuel without paying, maybe we can leave your crusher in trade.” She smirked at Casmir—that would be one way to get rid of it. “What do those go for on the open market?”

Casmir didn’t return the smirk. “They’re not on the open market. The Odin military holds all the patents since the work was done in their labs. I’m breaking another law by making one, since I no longer work there.” His shoulders slumped. “I no longer work anywhere.”

He looked so forlorn and dejected that Bonita had the urge to give him a pat and say that things would work out. But she didn’t. Thanks to her, things probably wouldn’t work out for him.

The comm panel chimed. The entire station was visible on the display now, meaning the Dragon was likely far enough away that it could be blown out of the stars without causing collateral damage.

“It’s station security,” Viggo said.

Bonita was tempted to accelerate into their course and ignore them, but curiosity made her take the comm. “Captain Lopez.”

“You are ordered by Knight-Colonel Dresdark to halt your ship and prepare to be boarded by a hazardous materials team that will deal with your quarantined cargo.”

Bonita muted the comm. “I’m guessing that means they tried to fire at us and found out they couldn’t.”

“If they had wanted to send a team over,” Viggo said, “they would have tried again while we were still attached.”

“How much do you want to bet that they want us to wait while they ready a ship with enough firepower to blow us up?” Bonita asked.

“I would not take that bet,” Viggo said.

Casmir shifted uneasily behind them. Kim merely watched with her typical flat expression.

The message repeated, followed by a terse, “Respond, Captain Lopez.”

Bonita unmuted the comm. “I think you want to blow up my ship, so I’m going to pass on your offer.”

She programmed in the course for Refinery 2 in Saga’s orbit.

“It was not an offer; it was an order.”

“Since I never served in the military,” she said, “I get those two mixed up.”

A new voice came over the comm, a man’s deep baritone. Was this Knight-Colonel Dresdark himself? “If you keep flying, Lopez, you’ll never be welcome in our system again.”

“Trust me—I’m not planning to come back.” Bonita ended the comm and faced Kim and Casmir. “You two better pod yourselves in.” She waved toward the lounge. “We’re about to accelerate out of here as fast as our engines can take us.”

Casmir hesitated but nodded. “Let me know if you need help building a helium-3 collector for Saga. I could make something to pick up and isolate enough for your needs, so we wouldn’t have to borrow anything.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Bonita waved them out of navigation, feeling a twinge of an emotion she couldn’t quite identify. He’d offered exactly what she’d thought he might. She wasn’t sure when she’d started wanting to hire him rather than collect his bounty, but it was inconvenient.

After Kim and Casmir disappeared down the ladder well, Qin whispered, “I don’t want to turn him in, Captain. He’s done everything we’ve asked. Cheerfully.”

“I know, but we can’t keep him, Qin. Someone is hunting him. Someone rich and powerful. We have problems enough without him on board.”

“That doesn’t mean we have to be the ones to turn him in.”

“Qin, we need the money.”

“If we gather free fuel…”

“We’ll still need money. I owe money on the ship, have nothing left to buy food and parts with, and after this fiasco, I’m not even sure I’m going to be able to keep flying. The Kingdom is known to hold grudges. Flying off to another system may not be enough to escape their reach. I’m probably going to have to fling bribes around left and right and maybe do a complete overhaul and ID change of the Dragon if I want to survive the year.”

“But—”

Bonita jerked up a hand. “I won’t drag you along with me. I’ll stop at the first station we come to and drop you off with your pay. You’ve been good enough not to point out that it’s been two months since I’ve been able to pay you. After this, I’ll be able to. And you can find another gig. With a captain who’s more…” More what? Smarter? Younger? Better connected? Bonita rubbed her eyes, irritated to find moisture there. “Just more.”

“I’d rather go on not being paid if that means not turning them over to someone who may kill them.”

“That’s not an option.”

“Captain—”

“It’s not an option, Qin,” Bonita growled, spearing her with a glare. “If you can’t drop it, get out of navigation.”

Qin’s face closed up, and she left her pod without another word, clanging the hatch shut behind her.

Bonita sighed and almost asked Viggo if she was doing the right thing. But she knew she wasn’t. She was doing the desperate thing, as she’d been doing all year. One desperate thing after another. What were the odds that she would survive her choices and live to see her next birthday?

“I can’t believe you’re fixing her things,” Kim said from the treadmill she had pushed out of the equipment cabinet.

They were alone in the lounge, three days into their flight to Saga, a horrifically inhospitable planet that had starred in no tourist brochure ever. Casmir was surprised there wasn’t a prison set up there, but it would cost a fortune to build something that could survive the railing winds that scoured the gas giant. As with most planets, it was easier to build a habitat in orbit than to combat the elements inside the atmosphere.

“I like to keep my hands busy.” Casmir sat cross-legged on the deck, spare parts and things never meant to be parts mounded to either side of his knees as he attempted to build a couple of cleaning robots to replace the ones he had sacrificed on the mercenary ship.

“Why don’t you busy your hands hacking into the comm system to see why Lopez is really taking us to Saga?” Kim pounded along on the treadmill, the steady thumps creating a rhythm.

“I don’t think that’s wise.” Casmir tapped his temple and glanced upward to remind her that the sentient ship could hear and see them from anywhere on board. He activated his chip in case she wanted to communicate silently.

Because they’ll retaliate? Kim messaged. Or because you’d rather keep your head in the sand like those giant ostriches in the zoo in the capital?

It’s not that. I just don’t see how we could change our fate right now.

We could take over the ship. Your big robot has been nothing but a dust collector for the last three days. Kim waved a hand to where Zee stood in a corner, watching the hatch.

I assure you, he’s not dusty. I saw one of the ship’s cleaning robots crawling up his leg earlier.

Why not put him to use? Kim asked. If we could take over the ship, we could control our fate.

What would change? At this point, we’re closer to Saga than we are to Forseti Station or anywhere else in the system. And it doesn’t sound like we could go many other places on the fuel the ship has. One of Saga’s moons, maybe, but none of them are inhabited. Nothing out this far is.

Kim shook her head. You’ve succumbed to this, Casmir. We’re not wearing shackles. We’re not helpless. Yet. That could change if we do nothing. I bet you a hundred crowns and a pound of my favorite dark roast that someone is waiting for us—for you—on that refinery.

Maybe, maybe not. Why are you so sure Lopez and Qin are lying to us?

Why are you so sure they’re not?

I’m not. I’m just optimistic.

Well, knock it off. At least hack into the ship’s comm and read up on your bounty. We don’t even truly know if there is one yet, do we? I checked, and it’s not on the public network. I assume there’s some private bounty-hunters-only club that you join to get job notifications, but wouldn’t you like the details? And to see if Lopez has been in communication with the person who posted it? Or anyone else?

Casmir exhaled slowly, pretending to be engrossed in his work, but he couldn’t argue against Kim’s logic. I wouldn’t be opposed to checking on that information, but I doubt I can hack into the comm system without Viggo knowing about it. He would tell Lopez, and she might stun or tranq us for the rest of the trip.

With your looming bodyguard watching?

She could gas us through the vents.

For an optimist, you sure know how to worry about all the negative possibilities. Look, if they act against us, we’ll take over the ship. You send your robot against Qin, and you and I will figure out a way to stun Lopez and deal with the ship.

I can’t threaten to kill anyone, Kim.

I’m irked enough that I can. I want to be in control, at least of myself, by the time we dock at that refinery. If we’re not, you could be shot the second you step out of the hatch.

Casmir held up a hand. All right, let’s find out first if there’s truly someone waiting for me.

You’ll hack into the comm system?

Let me try something less incendiary first. Casmir got up and headed for the hatch.

Kim slowed her run. Where are you going?

To visit Qin.

Kim unstrapped herself from the treadmill and caught up to him at the hatch to Qin’s cabin. Neither of them had been inside before.

When Casmir knocked, a polite “Come in” sounded.

Not sure what to expect from the room of a deadly killer who could hold her own in a fight with a crusher, he pulled the hatch open and stepped inside. Then blinked. Several times.

The cabin was pink, purple, and frilly. There were posters of famous knights, sports stars, and vid actors on the walls, and a glass case held shelves of books packed tightly so they wouldn’t shift around in zero gravity. Other cases held sculptures—or were those wax candles?—of mythological creatures such as griffons, dragons, unicorns, and minotaurs.

“Hello,” Qin said, the word half greeting, half question.

She lay on her stomach on her bunk, flipping through a physical magazine with glossy pictures of musicians. A song that reminded Casmir of a smithy’s hammer on a rampage in a room full of anvils played from the speakers.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” Casmir said, waving around the room.

“It’s all right. You can come in. I never get visitors, not nice visitors.” Qin sat up and crossed her legs. “The pirates used to come, but they only wanted sex.”

“I—what?” Casmir stared at her, realizing he knew nothing of her background.

Qin shrugged and waved away the question, then hopped to her feet. “Do you want to see my candles? I was never allowed to buy anything on the pirate ship, so I bought all this stuff with my first pay from the captain.” She grinned, removed the dragon from its case, and showed it off. “You can burn it, but I never would want to melt the sculpture.”

“You bought this all with one pay deposit?” Casmir asked, bemused. The girl must love shopping. Though now that he surveyed the collection again, he could see that everything had likely come from a couple of shops in some space-station concourse.

“My room and board are covered, so I don’t have a lot of expenses. The captain even does my claws for free. See?” She lifted her hands, revealing blue paint dotted with white stars.

Casmir stepped back involuntarily at the sight of her long razor claws. He hadn’t realized they retracted and extended.

Qin noticed the response, and her face fell. She lowered her hands and hid them behind her back.

“Sorry,” Casmir blurted. “I’m on edge around deadly weapons lately. For no particular reason. The fingernail, uhm, claw paint is very nice.”

“Thank you.” Her smile returned. “You’re very chivalrous.”

Kim snorted.

“Like a knight,” Qin added. “Did you ever think of trying to become one? There’s an academy that you can apply to, isn’t there?”

“If your grades are good enough, if you can pass the athletic exams, and if you have noble blood. I only would have qualified in one of those areas.” His mind boggled at the notion of him walking around in knight’s armor with one of those purple cloaks flapping in the breeze. He would probably trip over the halberd every time he extended it.

“You have to have noble blood?” Qin wrinkled her nose. “That’s weird. That just means that some ancestor of yours kissed up to a king, right?”

Casmir almost laughed. “Typically, someone did a great deed, but since it had to be noticed by the king, I suppose ass-kissing might have been involved. Some people were simply so heroic and monumental in history that the populace demanded they be made knights and nobles, blood and education notwithstanding. Like Admiral Mikita, the great warrior-leader who helped King Dieter and Princess Sophie unite the Twelve Systems and create the original Star Kingdom.”

He didn’t know if someone from another system would be that familiar with Odin’s historical figures, even if Mikita had effected change throughout all the systems, but Qin nodded.

“Yeah, my makers made me read all about him. To learn military strategy.” She wrinkled her nose again, suggesting unicorns and dragons might have been of more interest to her, but then tapped a claw to her lips thoughtfully as she scrutinized his face. “You kind of look like him.”

This time, Casmir did laugh, and he heard another snort from Kim. She’d moved over to examine the titles on the bookshelf but clearly hadn’t stopped listening.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard that.” Casmir smiled gently, since Qin appeared puzzled. “There are a lot of pictures of Mikita in our textbooks. In all of them, he’s about eight feet tall with shoulders like mountains, a granite jaw, and the muscles to rip trees out by the roots. I am…” As he waved self-deprecatingly at his five foot seven inches, narrow shoulders, and scrawny build, his eye blinked a couple of times to further demonstrate his lack of heroic attributes. “Not those things,” he finished.

“Huh, those don’t sound like the same pictures I’ve seen. He’s in my boxed set of Great Leaders of Earth and Great Leaders of the Twelve Systems. Kim, do you like books? I have a lot of fairy tales. And the Confucian classics.”

Casmir arched his eyebrows. Maybe Qin knew more about the history and culture of her namesake than she’d let on.

“Oh, and some romances,” Qin added. “The romances are silly. As if sex is anything like they describe in those books, but the System Boar fairy tales especially are full of symbolism and some of them make you think.”

“I’ve read a number of these, yes.” Kim waved to the shelves.

“The fairy tales or the inaccurate-sex romances?” Casmir asked.

“You know my feelings on sex.” She sent a message along with the words. Please tell me we came here for something greater than this discussion.

“That it’s messy, unpleasant, and achieves nothing that a laboratory and an artificial womb can’t accomplish, I seem to recall,” Casmir said.

“Precisely. Should one even wish to procreate.”

“Kim is not eager to have children,” Casmir explained, since Qin’s forehead was crinkled. “I, on the other hand, think it would be delightful to have a little boy or girl to build robots with. Someday. If I survive. How much did you say the bounty on my head is?”

“Two hundred thousand Kingdom crowns.” Qin clapped a hand over her mouth as soon as the words came out.

“Were you not supposed to tell me?” Casmir kept his voice gentle and devoid of accusation, though it depressed him to verify that Kim had been right. Qin hadn’t admitted that yet, but she wouldn’t have reacted that way if they weren’t up to something. “Because the captain is planning to collect it? Do you get a reasonable cut? What will you buy? I’m sure you can only fit so many candles in this cabin.”

Qin turned her back to them.

“You tricked me,” she whispered.

“Did I? I just asked a question.” It was true, but her response made Casmir feel like a heel. He had meant to lower her guard so she would answer honestly. “I don’t blame you. We’ve been in a crazy situation, and sometimes when the adrenaline is coursing through people’s veins, unwise decisions are made.”

He doubted that had happened to Lopez, though, at least when it came to the decision to collect his bounty. She might have gotten in over her head with the bioweapon, but this had been a calculated choice. She’d had a lot of time to change her mind, all night on the station while Qin had been looking for him, and she hadn’t.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Qin said, her back still to them, “but the captain… she was divorced, and her husband took everything, and left her in debt. Don’t tell her I said this, but I know she’s desperate. It’s why we’re running on next to nothing. It’s why she’s taken risks she wouldn’t normally take. She’s had nothing but trouble since I joined her, and she’s not… I know she would prefer to do the right thing.”

“That’s good to know,” Casmir said, trying to keep his tone neutral. He wondered if there was a chance that he could lure Qin over to their side. “I don’t suppose you can tell me who is offering that bounty? I’ve been running for weeks now and had crushers try to kill me numerous times, but I still have no idea who is after me and why.”

Qin gazed at the wall without answering. Maybe that was all he would get from her. She probably saw it as a betrayal to speak to him, but he had a hard time giving up. Her silence seemed to mean that she knew. He stared at the back of her head, groping for something clever to say to entice the answer from her.

“Please, Qin,” was what came out, a soft pleading whisper.

Her chin drooped. “Pequod Holding Company.”

Kim looked sharply at her.

The name didn’t mean anything to Casmir, but he hoped Kim had some information.

“Viggo couldn’t find much about them,” Qin added. “It’s not a publicly traded company, and there weren’t any officers or board members listed. No home planet or habitat.”

“Thank you for that, Qin.”

She twitched one shoulder and continued to face the wall.

“Is there any chance you would help us turn things around?” Casmir asked.

Qin was shaking her head before he finished the sentence.

“I don’t want to hurt you or see you hurt, but I can’t go against her.” Qin turned around, her chin up, her eyes determined. “She’s my captain, and I agreed to follow her orders. A soldier who can’t follow orders has no place in the unit. No place anywhere, because that means she can’t be trusted to do her job.”

“To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle,” Kim said, waving toward one of the books she was presumably quoting.

Qin’s eyes tightened at the corners. “Please leave now.”

Casmir frowned. Qin had already helped by sharing what he’d needed to know. He didn’t want to make her feel bad just because she wouldn’t betray her captain.

“Of course.” Casmir waved Kim toward the hatch. “I’m sorry we disturbed you, Qin. And that I tricked you. It’s just… It’s my life. I want to keep living it. I hope you’ll pardon my selfishness.”

She scowled and turned her back on them again.

As Casmir and Kim stepped into the corridor, she messaged him again.

Pequod is the name of Captain Ahab’s ship in Moby Dick.

The who in the what? He glanced back at her.

She frowned. Didn’t you read any books without schematics in them at the university?

I did my best to avoid classes that made use of such odious things.

Well, you may remember that I took as many classes as I could get away with on classical literature from Earth. In the novel, Captain Ahab loses his leg in an encounter with a whale and vows revenge on it. He spends the whole book trying to find it, and when they do, they fight a big battle and lose. Ahab and his ship, the Pequod, are destroyed. For the last three thousand years, the name Pequod has been associated with doom and failure.

For those who read the book.

Someone who wants you dead apparently did.

Maybe it’s a coincidence. That’s a pretty obscure reference, don’t you think?

Kim shrugged. Whether it’s a coincidence or not, I don’t want to meet the people trying to kill you.

No, I’m not eager to either. Not in person, at least. Perhaps over a video chat from three planets away where we can work out our differences without touching.

You’re not going to get that if we continue on our current trajectory. Kim spread her palm toward the ceiling. Are you ready to take over the ship yet?

We’d have to figure out a way to get Viggo on our side or a way to disable him, and then we’d still be in a logjam, because neither of us is a pilot. We’d need him to fly the ship. Or Lopez.

What if we hold Lopez and Qin hostage and force him to help us? Or at least not to impede us?

Please tell me you’re not thinking of getting out one of those vials, Casmir replied.

No. One of the first things I’d do if I had control of the ship is to throw those out the airlock, get some distance between them and the ship, and launch every weapon the Dragon has at them.

Good.

I was thinking of something that will scare Qin and Lopez but won’t be deadly.

Such as?

“I have a dreadful headache,” Kim said aloud, stopping in the corridor instead of heading back into the lounge. “I’m going to see if there are painkillers in the sickbay.”

Casmir assumed that was for Viggo’s sake. The ship’s computer might have already reported the conversation in Qin’s room.

Am I following? Casmir messaged her.

No. I’m enacting a plan. You go back to the lounge and finish building Viggo his robots. Maybe he’ll think more kindly of you then. And maybe he’ll pay more attention to what you’re doing than what I’m doing.

Let’s hope. Out loud, he said, “Grab me some more motion-sickness pills while you’re there, please,” as Kim headed down the corridor. “One can never have too many.”

“It’s possible to overdose on those, you know.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

As Casmir headed into the lounge, he wondered if he should be worried or optimistic about whatever Kim had in mind. Probably worried. After all, she’d told him to knock off his optimism.

18

Bonita gripped the console in navigation as another wave of nausea assaulted her. Sweat beaded on her forehead, her face was flushed, and no amount of water could quench her thirst.

The Stellar Dragon was finishing its deceleration, with Saga’s blue cloudy sphere filling the display ahead of them, so gravity was almost nonexistent, but she was used to zero-g. Zero-g didn’t give her a fever.

“Viggo?”

Speaking made her stomach worse, and she groaned and released herself from her pod, then half ran and half pushed herself off the walls to the lavatory. Space toilets were obnoxious under any circumstances, even for a seasoned traveler, but they weren’t designed for puke. She made a mess, then collapsed on the deck, her cheek pressed against the cool textured metal.

Two of Viggo’s cleaning robots roamed around, whirring softly. For once, she didn’t mind their constant presence. She wouldn’t want to clean up the mess she’d just made herself. And her stomach still wasn’t appeased. She sensed that if she tried to get up, she would puke again.

“Viggo?” she rasped, dragging her sleeve across her mouth.

“Yes, Captain. Are you allowing me to break your rule about contacting you in the lavatory?”

“Don’t get funny with me. I’m not in the mood.” Bonita closed her eyes. She ought to be in navigation to pilot them into the refinery and find a docking spot, but she feared she would have to let Viggo handle it.

“Yes, Captain. Your body temperature is elevated. It appears you are sick.”

She watched as one of the vacuums whirred past in front of her eyes, sucking up the proof of that. “Good guess. Tell Qin to head to navigation and check for other ships before we dock. If we need to dock at all. I’m sure whoever is picking up Casmir doesn’t live in the refinery.”

“Qin is also incapacitated by illness. She is in a similar state in the other lavatory.”

A bead of sweat trickled down Bonita’s jaw as she worried that over. It wasn’t that uncommon to catch a virus after visiting a station, habitat, or some other population center, but she wouldn’t have guessed that her genetically engineered assistant could be afflicted by something so simple. She could have sworn Qin had once mentioned having an enhanced immune system.

“There’s no chance one of those vials in the case broke, is there?” Her belly quivered with terror as she envisioned soon feeling much, much worse.

“I am unable to scan the contents, as you may recall, but the case is still secured behind the panel, and nobody has gone in to tamper with it.”

That didn’t mean it was impossible that something had happened. Could the contents of those vials leak out through the seams in that case? Kim had said something about acids that could help bioweapons eat through combat armor and space suits.

“Kim,” Bonita rasped, suspicion leaping to mind. “What about our passengers? Are they sick?”

“They appear to be fine. They have not left the lounge since yesterday.”

“Not even to sleep? Why, because they knew the air is contaminated? Or we were contaminated?” Bonita tried to lurch to a sitting position, wanting to rush down to strangle those two and see if they’d done something.

“The air on the Stellar Dragon is most certainly not contaminated,” Viggo said stiffly. “Even if it had briefly been so, all of the air on the ship cycles through the filters and CO2 scrubbers every hour. All particles larger than .01 microns are captured and incinerated.”

“Are any viruses smaller than that?”

“Few.”

“So some?” Bonita vomited again and flopped onto her back on the deck. “I feel like I’m going to die. You’re sure those two didn’t sneak into the lavatory and grab one of those vials?”

“I am positive. However, it’s possible that they did something else. I believe they know about the bounty and that I am capable of monitoring them. They are speaking approximately 74% less than they did on the first leg of our journey, so I assume they are communicating chip-to-chip.”

“Qin might have told them.” Bonita closed her eyes again. She’d worried about that, that Qin might even turn on her and help them escape. Maybe she should have locked everyone in the brig three days ago. But Qin could probably break down the cell door. And then there was the matter of Casmir’s new pet. “I think I botched this, Viggo.”

“We are less than a half hour from the refinery. The scanners show several docking spots available. Two are in use by automated mining ships, but there are no manned vessels attached currently. It appears that we can dock without a passcode, though it is possible the refinery interior has defense systems to keep passersby from raiding its processed gases.”

As if Bonita could raid anything right now.

“Do you wish me to dock?” Viggo asked.

“Are there any other ships in range of your scanners? Besides those mining tankers? You’re positive nobody is inside those?”

“Correct. Neither the mining ships nor the refinery have air pressure or oxygen. You’ll need your suit and tank to visit.”

Bonita had assumed a ship would be here waiting and that she wouldn’t have to visit. Maybe someone was on the way.

“There is a large civilian vessel orbiting one of the moons on the far side of Saga’s orbit from us,” Viggo added. “It would take twelve hours to reach it. I see nothing else in the vicinity besides satellites.”

“Meaning we’re early or someone has stealth technology. Go ahead and dock. We’re going to need to get fuel one way or another eventually.” Bonita didn’t know how she would manage that while she was sick, but it would be better to have full tanks before Casmir’s buyer showed up. Just in case things went supernova.

“Yes, Captain. You have visitors coming.”

“Kim and Casmir?” She groaned again as she watched one of the vacuums traipse across the ceiling.

“Yes.”

“Are they armed?”

Bonita patted her side where her holster was usually attached to her suit, but it wasn’t there. It was hanging over the back of her pod in navigation where she’d draped it that morning. Damn it. She was supposed to be more competent than this.

“Kim has a stunner and Casmir is walking behind the crusher.”

And Bonita and Qin were on their backs in separate lavatories. Fantastic.

A soft knock sounded at the hatch. Such polite mutineers.

Except they weren’t mutineers. They were prisoners. Escaped prisoners.

“From now on, all prisoners ride in the brig, Viggo.”

“Yes, a wise policy. Though Casmir did make two new cleaning robots for me out of spare parts.”

Was that why Viggo hadn’t paid that much attention to what those two had been concocting? Casmir, the only man in the system who knew how to win over computers.

The hatch opened. Bonita peeled one eyelid up, saw the crusher stride in, and lowered it again.

She’d often imagined bravely facing death with her eyes open. She’d failed to imagine herself lying in vomitus, too weak to lift a hand. How shortsighted.

“Hello, Captain Lopez,” Casmir said politely, his footsteps coming to a stop near her head.

She wanted to strangle his polite throat.

“I apologize for the little virus Kim coerced back to life in order to incapacitate you, but we were worried you would send us to this Pequod Holding Company in flex-cuffs, and we’d like to go with our hands free and more options available. We’d prefer not to go at all, but your actions have made it clear that we’re not safe staying with you. If circumstances somehow play out favorably, I’ll try to arrange for some helium-3 to find its way into your cargo hold, but I’ve recently been told I’m overly optimistic, so that may not be possible. However, Kim says you should recover from your illness in short order, and then you can retrieve it yourself.”

Bonita didn’t say anything. She didn’t even open her eyes.

“Again, I apologize for your discomfort,” Casmir said. “I just didn’t think you were open to reason. Ah, I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me when your Pequod contact is showing up? They aren’t in the refinery, are they? We didn’t see a ship…”

“Go to hell,” Bonita rasped, then rolled over and threw up again.

Casmir gripped a handhold in navigation as the Stellar Dragon eased toward a bank of airlocks on the side of the refinery. Saga’s massive blue body filled most of the view beyond the sprawling structure, swirling angry clouds streaking across its gaseous atmosphere at hundreds of miles an hour.

The long-range scanners showed a civilian research ship orbiting one of the planet’s thirteen moons, but when Casmir tried to comm it, the panel locked up. It seemed Viggo wasn’t going to let him send outgoing communications. The research ship was a twelve-hour flight away, so the crew probably wouldn’t have dropped what it was doing to come help him with his problem, but he wouldn’t have minded asking. Cajoling. Begging. Pleading…

Unfortunately, it looked like Casmir and Kim were alone in dealing with whoever was coming. Unless they could avoid dealing with them somehow.

He eyed a pair of automated mining ships that were docked at the refinery.

“Viggo is taking us all the way in, huh?” Kim pushed herself into navigation to stand beside Casmir. “Any chance we can change the course and not go where these people will be waiting?”

Zee was anchored in the corridor, watching their backs in case Qin or Lopez recovered enough to rush them.

“All the controls are locked down.” Casmir hadn’t even been able to sit down in the pilot’s pod. Its sides had tightened into a ball, denying him access.

He had some hacking knowledge, but he was skeptical about successfully getting around the security measures while the intelligent computer entity inside was watching everything he did.

Once again, he eyed the mining ships and then looked to the scanner display showing the distant research vessel.

He switched to chip-to-chip messaging to speak to Kim. There’s a research vessel orbiting Skadi Moon. I wonder what they’re studying. There’s not an atmosphere or much of value down there.

Why are you worried about what they’re studying right now? Kim frowned at him.

I thought they might be more inclined to accept us on board as temporary passengers if either of our expertise would be useful to them.

Kim’s frown turned to an expression of enlightenment. You want to take one of the mining ships over there?

If we can get to one and figure out a way to override its automated programming. Those ships should have plenty of fuel. What they might not have is oxygen, since there’s no human crew. But if we take a couple of air tanks for these suits… Casmir pointed his thumb toward the supply cabinet in the corridor. My concerns are that the captain of that ship will say no and, even if he or she says yes, that we might be endangering the crew. The Stellar Dragon’s scanner doesn’t show any weapons on their ship.

Maybe we could talk them into giving us a ride somewhere civilized before this Pequod Holding Company shows up.

That would be nice. Dare he be that hopeful?

“I believe I’m being quite lenient in letting you live when you infected my crew with a virus when I wasn’t paying attention,” Viggo said, belatedly replying to their conversation. Maybe he had been busy discussing something with Lopez. “It is only because you promised they would recover soon that I haven’t reacted in a vengeful manner. And because you repaired vacuums that I believed beyond repair.”

“Vengeful?” Kim murmured. “Do you think he could kill us?”

Maybe she realized she had taken more of a risk than she believed.

“All he would have to do is seal the rooms with Lopez and Qin, then open an exterior hatch and vent the ship’s atmosphere.”

She elbowed him in the ribs. “Don’t give him ideas.”

“I’m sure he has plenty of his own ideas already.”

“A great many,” Viggo said agreeably. “How long until Qin and Bonita recover?”

“I spoke truthfully to them,” Kim said. “They’ll be weak for a few days, but they should be feeling better in a matter of hours.”

Casmir was glad. Lopez had been so sweat-slathered and miserable. He hadn’t realized Kim’s virus collection would contain anything that virulent.

Viggo issued a noise akin to a harrumph.

Are we leaving the ship as soon as it docks? Kim asked silently as the Dragon glided closer to an empty slot.

Yes, the sooner we get to one of the mining ships, the better. It’ll take time to figure out how to override the autopilot.

Are you sure Viggo will let us leave?

No. Let’s find out.

Casmir left navigation, giving Zee a pat on the way by, and headed for the cabinet with the oxygen tanks. Kim was also in a galaxy suit, so it wouldn’t take them long to prepare to leave.

“The captain wants you to wait here until our contact arrives,” Viggo said as Casmir reached for the cabinet.

“She doesn’t want us to wait on the refinery for whoever’s coming?” Casmir slowly withdrew two oxygen tanks, wondering if Viggo would keep the hatch locked so they couldn’t walk off the ship. He thought of that blowtorch in the kitchen.

“No,” Viggo said.

“She wants to make sure she gets paid and we don’t just walk ourselves into a trap,” Kim muttered.

If Casmir and Kim were still on board when Lopez recovered, he didn’t know how she would respond. Maybe Lopez would shoot him herself and hand his dead body over to Pequod Holding Company. Casmir hadn’t thought to ask if his bounty specified he be alive or dead at delivery. Given his experience with all those crushers, he assumed these people wanted him dead.

“Is there any chance you can tell us when the Pequod ship arrives, Viggo?” Casmir handed one of the tanks to Kim and fastened another onto his own suit. He was tempted to take extras, but Viggo would guess their plan right away if they did. “Captain Lopez was disinclined to share that information.”

“The captain does not know. She was given this location but no date and time. She never spoke to anyone.”

“So we could be here for a month?” Kim attached the tank to her suit and pointed at two others nestled inside the locker.

Before Casmir could decide whether to grab them, Viggo said, “Another ship just appeared on my scanners. Oh dear.”

For a computer, he could convey dread in his words quite well.

Casmir ran back into navigation, checked the scanner display, and flinched at how close the new ship was. It had to have twenty layers of slydar on the hull because there was no way it should have been able to sneak up on them without Viggo detecting it.

“I am putting an image on the display,” Viggo said. “And informing the captain that we have company.”

The display, which had previously shown the side of the refinery, shifted to a camera on the other side of the ship. A black vessel approached like the shadow of death. Sleek and angular and bristling weapons like a porcupine bristled quills. It had no running lights, and its edges seemed to blur and blend in with the stars behind it. One could look right at it and miss seeing it. Just as the computer’s scanners had, until the last minute.

The longer Casmir looked at the approaching vessel, the more certain he became that he’d seen it before on news reports. It was possible there were many of that model and that this wasn’t the same ship that was always featured in those horrific news stories, but he doubted it.

“You’ve identified it, Viggo?” Casmir asked.

“It does not have an ID chip such as Kingdom ships are required to have,” Viggo said, “but I do recognize it. The Fedallah.”

“Let me guess,” Kim said. “The captain calls himself Ahab.”

Casmir looked curiously at her.

“Fedallah is the crazy prophetic harpooner in the book who foresees Captain Ahab’s death. Aren’t you excited to be captured by a fan of the classics, Casmir?”

“The captain of the Fedallah is Tenebris Rache,” Viggo said.

“The pirate who’s destroyed dozens of Kingdom ships, military outposts, and research laboratories in the last ten years,” Casmir said numbly, wishing he were back on Odin where the nefarious captain’s exploits had been disturbing but distant. A single ship didn’t have the might to bother Odin and its orbital defenses, but the rest of the system seemed to be fair game. “No, I can’t say that I’m excited by his reading hobby.”

Kim’s sarcasm faded, replaced by open-mouthed shock, her eyes widening with alarm. She recovered enough to mask her fear and say, “He probably just read the comic book.”

Casmir couldn’t manage a response. He pushed shaking hands through his hair. Tenebris Rache. Was this the man who’d wanted him dead all along? Why?

Because he’d made robots for the military, and Rache loathed the Kingdom and King Jager and all he stood for? How would such a man even have gotten hold of crushers to reprogram them and send them to hunt down Casmir? His ship never went anywhere near Odin; if it did, the military would hunt him down relentlessly. No, the pirate skulked about near the gate and the gas giants, striking and then leaving the system anytime the military got close. Nobody was sure how he got past the guard ships at the gate, but he did. Over and over. He’d even attacked and disabled them a few times.

The bristly black ship glided toward the airlock hatch adjacent to the Stellar Dragon.

“I have to get out of here.” Casmir checked to make sure the mining ships were still docked. “Viggo, you have to let me go. Please. I’m not asking for any help. Just open the hatch so I can leave.”

“Do it,” came a weak rasp from behind them.

Lopez hung in the air behind Zee, her gray braid floating free around her head, the crusher’s arm keeping her from advancing farther. Her shoulder slumped against the wall, her face was ashen, and her legs looked like they would have given out if they’d had to support her weight.

“Pardon, Captain?” Viggo said.

“Let them go.” Lopez met Casmir’s eyes. “I didn’t know who it was. I thought that company was some business that wanted you for your brain, to question you or make you work for them, not…”

“My brain isn’t that valuable, I’m afraid,” Casmir said bleakly.

Lopez’s gaze shifted toward the Fedallah on the display. “Nobody deserves that fate. To be tortured by a sadistic madman and killed.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I didn’t know.”

“As you wish, Captain,” Viggo said. “We are docked, and I am unlocking the airlock hatch.”

Casmir nodded to Lopez. “Thank you.”

He kept himself from pointing out that he wouldn’t be in this situation if she hadn’t tricked him, but there was no time for voicing grievances. The pirate ship would be docked within minutes. Casmir didn’t know what the inside of the refinery looked like, but he assumed it would only take the pirates a few seconds to walk from one airlock to the next.

He tapped the button on his chest plate to bring his helmet over his head and pulled himself past Lopez and Zee toward the ladder well using the handholds on the bulkhead.

“Come with me, please, Zee,” he said, though he needn’t have bothered. The crusher strode after him, its soles magnetized as effectively as Casmir’s boots.

Kim also came after him, but Casmir lifted a hand. “You better stay here.” He switched to chip-to-chip messaging to add, I’m still going to try to enact my plan, but it’s going to be an extreme long shot now to get to the mining ship and escape. “If he only wants me, you should be safe staying on the Dragon.”

“I’m from the Kingdom. If the news stories are even remotely accurate, he would shoot me simply because I was born on Odin.”

“Lopez can hide you.”

Kim looked over her shoulder. Lopez dangled limply in the corridor, her head lolled against a wall.

“Just stay here and promise me you’ll speak fondly of me when they hold my funeral back on Odin. And have a wonderful career, and find a new roommate who can get ready in the morning without making a mess. And who doesn’t leave pieces of projects all over the coffee table.”

“Casmir, I’m not—”

“Don’t worry. I’m not giving up. But I don’t want to get you killed.” He hugged her, his helmet clunking against hers. “Stay here and hide. Promise me!”

She did not.

Casmir rushed down the ladder and into the cargo hold while thinking about how he would get away now. Even if he made it to the mining ship, it was a Kingdom mining ship. Rache would have no problem blowing it into a million pieces.

An image of a news story from five years earlier popped into his head, video footage of Kingdom soldiers shot dead all over the cargo hold of their own ship, of two of the king’s most loyal knights strung up and staked to makeshift crosses where they’d been stripped and tortured and left to die.

Captain Rache was pure evil, and he wanted Casmir.

Willing his hands to remain steady, Casmir hit the button to open the airlock hatch. His helmet display had automatically synched with his chip, and his contact scrolled the environment outside, along with his medical stats. His blood pressure and heart rate competed for the position of most alarming stat, and he tried to remember if he had taken his seizure medication that morning or if he was thinking of the day before. Would Rache shoot him if he was in the middle of convulsing in midair? That would be a delightful way to go.

He stepped into the small airlock chamber with Zee and started to close the hatch behind him, but Kim stuck her arm out to halt him.

“What are you doing?” Casmir asked.

She pulled herself inside, a stunner and a borrowed Starhawk rifle in her hands, and closed the hatch. “Coming with you.”

“Kim, I’m trying to nobly sacrifice myself so you can get away. You’re making that difficult.”

“You said you had a plan, not that you were going to fling yourself at the guy’s feet.”

“My plan has a low probability of success.”

“Well, now it’s improved.” She stuck the stunner in his hand.

“You think your kendo skills will make a difference against a fleet of sadistic pirates?”

“No, but if we’re captured, I bet I can engage the captain in a literary discussion of Moby Dick while you think of a way to get out of trouble. I wrote a paper on it.”

“What was it about?”

“Penises.”

“Uhm, what?”

“To be specific, the social and homoerotic bonds between the male characters in the story.”

“Just the sort of discussion a psychopathic killer should find fascinating.”

“He might.”

The air finished draining out of the chamber, and a green light signaled the outer door ready to open.

Aware that Rache’s killers might already be in their own airlock chamber, Casmir fired his jet boots to hurry down the short connection tube to the refinery’s hatch. It was locked. He tried a few buttons, but it asked for a code. He should have known that any stranger with a ship wouldn’t be permitted to stroll onto a government refinery.

“Zee, can you open that?” Casmir realized they were in a vacuum now and that sound wouldn’t travel. He pointed at the hatch and mimicked forcing it, hoping he’d given the crusher enough intuitive reasoning to grasp what he wanted.

While he was demonstrating, Kim stepped forward with the rifle and blasted the hatch controls. Casmir cursed and scrambled out of the way, his boots firing him into the side of the tube.

“You’re going to get me killed before Rache even finds us,” he blurted over their shared comm.

“You and your robot were taking too much time.”

Kim stopped firing—she’d melted a hole around the latching mechanism—and yanked on the hatch. It opened easily. Fortunately, there wasn’t an inner hatch, and they flowed out into a bay full of pipes and lined with rows of hulking storage tanks. There wasn’t any light inside, other than a few flashing yellow and blue indicators on bulkheads, and a flashlight beam activated on Casmir’s helmet.

Kim only took three seconds to look around before hurrying toward the other airlocks, all visible farther down the outer wall of the bay. Casmir hurried after her, but he shone his light around as he and Zee navigated over the pipes. If he could find some inspiration here, he wasn’t too set in his plan to improvise.

He spotted the mangled remains of what appeared to have been robot sentries. Warped and charred, they’d been struck by DEW rifles, or maybe explosives.

He must have made a startled noise because Kim glanced back.

“What?” she asked.

“I think Rache was here before.” Casmir waved at the debris.

“Setting a trap?”

“I don’t know.”

With few other options, they continued toward the mining ships. In the shadows up ahead, undamaged robots moved about. They were unhooking equipment for draining the ships’ tanks. Did that mean they were almost done, and those ships would leave?

Casmir fired his jet boots to pick up his pace. None of the robots reacted as they passed.

A red light flashed behind them on the airlock panel where the mercenary ship was docked.

“Go,” Casmir said, panic gripping his heart. “They’re coming.”

He and Kim jetted past the last of the robots and to the closest mining ship.

“At least the door is open,” Kim said.

Yes, the hatch was open, an airlock tube in place, and drones zipped in and out of the ship. A porthole showed numerous hookups between the vessel and the refinery. Different gases being transferred inside? All Casmir knew was that it would take time to disconnect everything and launch the ship. Time they didn’t have.

As he was about to push himself into the tube, a hand gripped him from behind. Zee. His mouth moved as he said something, but Casmir couldn’t hear it. The mining ship and transfer tube were as devoid of air as the refinery.

Zee pushed him aside and maneuvered himself to go first, and Casmir got the gist.

“Your noble bodyguard,” Kim said.

“Everybody should have one.”

“I doubt the military would agree.”

As Casmir followed Zee through the airlock tube, he tapped into the network, grimacing at the lag, and called up a layout of the mining ship. He threw in a few searches to see if anything came up related to overriding automatic controls.

“Casmir,” a voice said over his helmet comm—Viggo.

“Yes?” Casmir magnetized his boots and set them down on the deck inside the ship’s hold. It was even more full of tanks than the refinery bay had been, and there was nowhere to go but straight down a long aisle toward a distant hatch.

“My scanners show heat signatures in the refinery now. A team of ten men in combat armor is in the bay.”

“Thank you,” Casmir whispered, even though there was no chance of his voice carrying anywhere. Unless the pirates had hacked into their comm system and were listening in. A depressing thought.

He strode down the aisle as quickly as he could while keeping at least one boot attached to the deck. He activated a rear helmet cam, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to see the pirates when they charged up behind them.

Interior hatches opened automatically as Casmir and Kim hurried into navigation at the front of the ship. Instead of a digital display, three large portholes showed Saga and part of the black bristly hull of the Fedallah.

The pilot’s seat wasn’t nearly as fancy as the pods in the Dragon, having merely a seat back and a seat belt for protection. Casmir worried that meant the ship had a ridiculously slow drive and it would take twelve days to reach that moon instead of twelve hours.

“They are not boarding the Stellar Dragon,” Viggo announced.

“I would say that was good news.” Casmir tugged himself into the seat, securing the belt clasp to keep from floating away. “But I’m afraid that means they’ve figured out where we are.”

“They have.” Kim stood in the hatchway, her rifle pointed rearward.

Casmir reached for the controls, hoping he could very quickly figure out how to override the automated system and fly them away. He should have brought Lopez along. A pilot would have had a better chance at this.

“They’re coming,” Kim barked.

She started to close the hatch to navigation, but Zee rushed out past her. She closed it after he left.

“That might buy us some time, but it looked like the whole group of ten back there, all in combat armor.” Kim looked at him. “Casmir, even if we get the ship going, they’re already on it.”

“I know, I know.” He tapped buttons furiously, hoping vainly… There, that looked like the override.

A message came up on a screen. Manual control activated.

“Hah!” It was something. Now if he could—

Light strobed outside the portholes, and Casmir jerked his head up in surprise before the back of his mind cried, No, don’t look!

It was his last thought before he lost control of his body and awareness of his brain.

19

“Captain?” Viggo asked.

“Yeah?” Bonita knew she was floating in the middle of the corridor beside navigation, but she couldn’t summon the energy to move. She had stopped throwing up, but she still felt like one of the mystery clumps clogging up the innards of one of Viggo’s vacuums.

“Neither the refinery nor the mercenary ship has cameras that I can access, but I was monitoring heat signatures on the station and the mining ship that Casmir and Kim attempted to commandeer.”

“Ah?”

Was that what they had been doing?

“It appears that they were captured and taken into the mercenary vessel,” Viggo said.

“The Fedallah.”

Bonita had never had a run-in with the infamous mercenary ship, but she knew its reputation well, and she knew to avoid it. Captain Rache might be known for hating the Kingdom and terrorizing its ships, but he’d partaken in plenty of deadly missions in other systems too. Anything, the rumors said, that would help his people hone their skills. Their skills at killing.

Unexpected tears pricked at her eyes. She would never have brought Casmir here if she’d known Rache was the one who’d placed that bounty. Nobody deserved that man’s wrath. She couldn’t even imagine what the kid had done to earn it. She feared he’d simply been born on the wrong planet and chosen the wrong profession. Maybe one of his crushers had been used on Rache’s ship and killed someone he cared about. Assuming the hardened mercenary cared about anyone.

“If you plan to contact them in regard to the bounty,” Viggo said, “you may wish to do so soon.”

Bonita snorted. “You think that bastard is going to pay me? I should have known better, should never have contemplated working for an unproven client. The money was too good, too tempting. It would have solved too many problems.” A tear floated away, and she wiped her eyes. “Even if Rache was going to pay, I can’t, Viggo. I can’t make this trade. Casmir doesn’t deserve this, no matter what he invented.”

“What do you propose?” Viggo didn’t object. Even though that much money would buy him all the robot vacuums and ship upgrades he could ever want, he didn’t object.

Because he also thought she’d done the wrong thing?

With the help of a handhold, Bonita pushed herself into a semblance of an upright position. “Where’s Qin? Still in the lav?”

“She crawled to her bunk a little while ago.”

“Where’s the merc ship? Still docked next to us?”

“Yes.”

“Qin?” Bonita said over the ship’s comm. “How would you like to plan a rescue?”

“Captain?” came the weak and uncertain response. But it also seemed to hold hope.

“We’re next door to Tenebris Rache, and he’s got Casmir and Kim. I’ve… realized I’ve made a mistake.” Why was it so hard to admit that? “I want to help them escape.”

“I’m coming up.”

“Captain,” Viggo said, “should I point out how outmatched we would be in either a battle between ships or a battle between crews?”

“No.”

“Should I point out that you’re in a weakened state?”

“Definitely no.”

Bonita pulled herself into navigation. She didn’t plan to get into a fight with the mercenaries—that would be pure suicide. But if she could provide a distraction, maybe Casmir and Kim could figure out a way to escape on their own. They’d proven their resourcefulness a number of times already—if Casmir actually wanted to hurt anyone, he could be extremely dangerous. That crusher. She shuddered. “Wait, where is his crusher? Did the mercs destroy it?”

“Unknown, Captain. It left with them, but it has no heat signature, so my scanners can’t find it.”

Bonita tugged herself into her pod, and it wrapped comfortingly around her, cushioning her and keeping her secure.

“Still coming, Captain,” came Qin’s weak call. “Almost there…”

Bonita grimaced in sympathy, knowing just how much effort it was to move right now. There was no way they could fight even one mercenary. Whatever distraction they planned, it would have to be something clever, something that used brainpower rather than brawn.

“You said they made it to that mining ship, Viggo?” Bonita pointed to the scanner display since the cameras couldn’t show them anything on the other side of the hulking mercenary ship.

“Yes.”

“So the crusher might be there and damaged. I wonder if it would be worth retrieving. I also wonder if there’s anything we could use on the refinery to cause a problem for Rache’s ship.”

Qin made it into navigation and grabbed the back of the co-pilot’s pod to sit down, but she froze. “We’re going to fight Tenebris Rache?”

Bonita had never heard fear in her young assistant’s voice. She heard it now.

“We’re going to distract him so Casmir and Kim can escape,” Bonita said. “I’m still working out the how. Either we or Casmir and Kim will have to disable his ship to give us long enough to fly out of here. And—shit. We still need fuel. All right, we’re going to have to take a field trip into that refinery anyway, so we might as well look for the crusher. And hope the mercs are too busy with Casmir to have men roaming around over there. If we can’t disable their ship, they’ll come after us and blow us out of the stars. Even if we can disable them, we’ll have to plot a course very carefully that keeps the refinery between them and us for as long as possible, or they’ll still be able to blow us out of the stars. Did you see all the weapons that thing has?”

Qin looked toward the ship looming at the edge of their display, but her haunted eyes didn’t seem to see much. It was as if they were locked on some past event.

“You haven’t met him before, have you?” Bonita asked.

“I saw him once, when I was twelve and being trained by my then-new pirate owners. We were at a gathering on one of the neutral moons in System Cerberus with some of the related pirate families. There was a nice lake and trees and little cabins and trails and ducks and qoypods. I’d never lived anywhere except a spaceship or space station, and I remember thinking how delightful it was. And then he strode up with some of his men. He wasn’t invited; none of them were. He argued with one of the pirate heads. I was too far away to hear what they were talking about, but later, it came out that one of the pirate families was on retainer for King Jager. They were infiltrating us, in a way, but we didn’t know that then. All Rache said was that he didn’t like Jager’s sycophants. They ended up drawing weapons, the pirate a pistol, him a long dagger.

“He should have lost, but he was fast. Enhanced. Cyborg, I think. But maybe he’s not human at all. Some say he isn’t. He wears that mask, so who knows? Rache sliced the leader’s head off. Others tried to jump him, but his men lunged in, and they were as ruthless as he was. What had been essentially a family picnic turned into a blood bath. Those who were smart stayed out of it. My captain pulled me back. A lot of people weren’t that smart. They should have had him and his men outnumbered, but they didn’t come out on top. All of the mercenaries walked away. Fifty, sixty pirates didn’t. I remember him looking around at the end, seeing if anyone else would come forward to challenge him, to try to stop him. His oily black mask looked right at me. Even though I couldn’t see his eyes, it scared me so much that I had nightmares for months afterward. I… never wanted to see the man again.”

Bonita was empathetic, but now she worried her only advantage would go into shock if she actually came face to face with Rache.

“I’ll go to the refinery alone then,” Bonita said. “See if I can figure something out while I’m collecting fuel.”

“No.” Qin drew a shaky breath. “I’ll do it. I can handle—”

The comm beeped. It was the Fedallah.

Bonita stared at the panel. Should she answer it when she planned mayhem? Yes, she had better answer it, because she planned mayhem.

“Captain Lopez,” she answered, striving for nonchalance.

“Captain,” a rich cultured voice said, “we generally expect prisoners to be handed over to us in flex-cuffs, not armed and dangerous with killer robot bodyguards.”

“I’m reasonably sure there was only one robot.”

Who was she talking to? Rache? Or some lackey? If it was Rache, he ought to sound far eviler, perhaps with a scratchy rasp from when someone had tried to garrote him once. She had no idea if that had ever happened, but that mask had to hide something.

“It was an inordinately difficult one to deal with.”

“Those prisoners were inordinately difficult to deal with.” Maybe she shouldn’t warn him of that, but it sounded like he’d figured it out by now. “You should have offered four hundred thousand for Dabrowski and Sato.”

“I didn’t ask for Sato. And—” his voice took on an icy edge, “—we are not renegotiating at this juncture.”

Bonita stared at the comm panel. There was no video, so she couldn’t attempt to read body language, but did that imply he actually meant to pay her? She’d assumed he wouldn’t. Where would a mercenary get that kind of money? Admittedly, he was an infamous mercenary and probably got paid well to blow up Kingdom assets.

“I am, however, interested in a cargo I’ve learned you carry,” the man added.

A chill went through her fevered body. Thanks to her preoccupation with her sickness, she’d forgotten about the bioweapon.

“I don’t have anything else that’s for sale. Shall I transmit my bank account information to your finance officer for the transfer of funds for Dabrowski?”

“Do so. I will transfer two hundred thousand, as agreed, for… Dabrowski.” Why the pause? That was odd. Almost making it sound like that wasn’t the kid’s real name? “And also the fifty thousand that a Mr. Baum agreed to pay you for that case. I understand that deal fell through and that it’s available.”

Shakes that had nothing to do with her fever racked her body. The man knew about the bioweapon, no doubt. And she was positive now that she was dealing with Rache personally, not some lackey.

There was no way she could give him the bioweapon. He’d take it to Odin and use it for exactly what it was designed for.

Bonita closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the console hard enough to hurt. “I’m afraid I can’t sell you that. When I learned what was inside, I jettisoned it into the nearest gas giant. The extreme temperatures there will have destroyed it.”

“You’re a poor liar for such an experienced bounty hunter.”

Asshole.

“What can I say? I’ve been sick. Make sure to search Sato for petri dishes full of viruses, or she’ll do in your crew too.”

“Interesting.”

Bonita rubbed her sweaty forehead. She needed time to think. She was probably making things worse for Kim and Casmir, not better. How could she end this conversation?

“I’m transmitting my account information now,” she said as cheerfully as she could and closed the channel.

Qin hadn’t said a word or even reacted during the conversation—her face had an eerie frozen stillness. But she looked over in surprise when the channel closed.

“You can’t hang up on him,” she squeaked.

“You recognized his voice? That was Rache, right?”

“Yeah. Are you… going to send your banking information?”

Bonita exhaled slowly. Was she?

If she accepted payment and then tried to rescue Casmir, she would truly piss off the mercenary. But she would piss him off, regardless, if she attempted a rescue. Except she wasn’t going to rescue anyone, right? She was only going to arrange a distraction and hope Casmir could get himself out of there on his own.

Not caring if it was cheeky, Bonita leaned forward and transmitted her banking details. She would see if the merc actually sent the money before worrying about moral implications and consequences.

“Wait a second.” Bonita thumped her hand on the console. “You said Rache is a cyborg, right? Enhanced muscles and the like?”

“Probably bones too, either reinforced or replaced to support the stress of what enhanced muscles can do.” Qin’s brow creased.

“But he’d likely still have a human immune system. Human organs. Skin. Brain. Things susceptible to…” She looked over her shoulder significantly.

“You want to send over those vials in such a way that they’ll blow open on the mercenary ship?” Qin stared at her.

“I wonder if there’s a reward for killing Rache. I’ve never had the audacity to look, but King Jager must have something out there. The problem is that we couldn’t unleash it while Casmir and Kim were on board.”

“And how would we escape if we broke open the vials on their ship?” Qin asked.

“I’ve got some Tac-75 in the armory. We could set a timed charge, give them long enough to—”

An alert scrolled down Bonita’s contact, letting her know that money had been transferred into her account. Two hundred and fifty thousand Kingdom crowns.

“Damn. I didn’t think he’d actually pay.”

Since Rache was bullying her into giving him the case, Bonita felt a little better about trying to screw him, but she still wondered if she was going to survive the day. Maybe she would go out in a fiery blaze. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about financing her retirement.

“How much did he pay?”

“Two-fifty.”

Qin looked gravely at her. “Then he’s going to send men over for the case.”

“Not if we offer to bring it to him.” Bonita tapped the comm to open the channel again. “Captain Rache? This is Captain Lopez.”

“Captain Rache is unavailable,” a woman said.

A woman? Somehow, Bonita had never imagined women on the fearsome mercenary’s ship. Maybe she was as cyborged-up as the men.

“I need to speak with him, please. About our deal.”

“He’s unavailable,” the woman said firmly.

Because he was interrogating Casmir?

“Fine,” Bonita said. “Let him know we’re getting the case out of the safe and that I’ll have someone bring it over.”

“I’ll tell him. Chen, out.”

Once the channel was closed, Bonita asked, “Will you do me a favor, Qin?”

“You’re my captain and commander. For however much longer you live.” Qin’s lips quirked into a smile, but it was a fleeting one.

“Find some drugs in sickbay to make you feel better, and go out there and get me some fuel, just in case we’re able to pull away from this refinery in one piece. Look for whatever remains of the crusher too. If there’s any chance it’s still ambulatory and I can convince it to take an order from me… we’ll send it to deliver the case.”

Casmir woke up groggy and confused and in a different place than he expected.

The wall beside him and ceiling above him were white. Everything on the mining ship had been gray and blue. His helmet was off, but his body was restrained, strapped to a bed. For what? Some mercenary’s medical experiments?

Panic surged through him, cortisol and adrenaline clearing his brain from the after effects of the seizure. Yes, the seizure. He recognized what it had been, even if it had been a couple of years since his last one. But seizures didn’t knock out his brain for more than a couple of minutes. Not long enough to be moved to another ship. At least they never had before.

“Are you awake?” Kim asked from somewhere underneath him.

Casmir turned his head, grimacing at the dizziness that washed over him. His hair floated around his face, in need of cutting. In need of gravity to stay put. Were they still docked to the refinery? They were somewhere with air and heat.

“Yes,” he rasped. “What happened?”

“You had a seizure.”

“I know about that part.” His words sounded a little off as they came out, not quite right to his ear, and he made himself focus on articulation. “What happened after that? Why was I out for so long? How did we get here?”

“They got through your robot in short order—I think a couple of them stayed back to fight it while the others stormed navigation. One of them ripped the hatch right off the hinges. From what I’ve seen, they’ve got some cyborgs here, so add superhuman strength to whatever their combat armor gives them. They ran in, and I didn’t get a chance to bring up the literary merits of Moby Dick before they stabbed a needle bigger than a katana through our suits and drugged us. My suit has patched itself back up, but my shoulder hasn’t. It stings like crazy.”

As he grew more aware of his body, Casmir realized he’d also taken a puncture in the shoulder. He was too numb to do more than acknowledge the pain. He felt lucky that whatever they had given him hadn’t started a cascade of seizures. But that was the only thing he felt lucky about.

He craned his neck to look around and spotted two empty bunks on the opposite wall. Thick silver-blue bars and a gate barred the exit from what he realized was a brig cell. He couldn’t see Kim. She had to be strapped to a bunk below him. His fear of medical experiments appeared to be groundless—as if mercenaries were into neuroscience research. They’d simply been strapped to the bunks because of the lack of gravity. How thoughtful of their captors to care that they stay in one place instead of floating up to the ceiling.

Casmir wondered why Rache hadn’t killed him outright. Was he the one who’d issued the bounty? Or was he some middleman? No, if Kim was right, Pequod Holding Company had to be linked to Rache’s ship, the Fedallah. But why would mercenaries want him?

“I have a headache,” Casmir announced.

“From the seizure?”

“Among other things.”

“Someone flashed those lights on purpose,” she said.

Casmir swallowed. “Yeah, they did, didn’t they?”

He hadn’t had time to consider what it was or why it was happening then, but it wasn’t as if a mining ship had a reason to flash bright lights before departing. He supposed it was a possible feature, like a truck on Odin buzzing before it backed up, but he’d never heard of such a thing. It was more like—

“Someone knows your weaknesses,” Kim said.

“You don’t think it was chance?” His voice came out small, and that was how he felt. Small and scared. He couldn’t imagine what he’d ever done to deserve some bloodthirsty mercenary’s attention. But it seemed this Captain Rache had decided to add him to his list of hated Kingdom subjects.

“No.”

He closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing, to calm his body. A therapist he’d had as a kid, before the doctors had found better medication to control his seizures, had suggested that he do that whenever he felt stressed, since stress and fatigue had been triggers for him. Little good that did when someone flashed lights in his eyes.

A clang sounded somewhere, and the distant thud of footfalls followed, magnetic boots clomping on the metal deck.

“I wish you’d stayed on the Dragon, Kim,” Casmir said.

“You’d be bored if you were stuck in a cell by yourself.”

“It doesn’t sound like I’m going to be here long enough to get bored.”

“They may just be coming to feed us. Or to unstrap us so we can pee.”

“Somehow, I doubt mercenaries care about the biological needs of their prisoners.”

“Whichever one is responsible for cleaning the cells does.”

Two armored figures stepped into view. Since Casmir could see their scarred and cruel faces, he assumed neither one was Captain Rache. The media had never managed to get a photograph of him, but they spoke often about the mask he wore. Like some tortured villain from one of Kim’s classics.

“Greetings, fellows,” Casmir said with as much cheer as he could muster. “We were just debating how to attend to our biological needs. Are you here to assist?”

“I’m also available to debate penises and symbolism in ancient Earth texts,” Kim said.

The men looked at each other.

“Why do we always get the failed comedy teams?” one asked.

“Lack of seniority.”

One of them slapped a control panel that Casmir couldn’t see, and the gate swung open. One guard stayed in the corridor, his rifle pointed loosely toward Casmir, and the other approached his bunk. Neither glanced at Kim. On the one hand, that might be a good thing—maybe they would decide they had no reason to bother her and would let her go—but on the other, she could be extremely useful if an escape opportunity presented itself. Maybe she could even win over Captain Psychopath by talking books with him. Or at least gain some lenience.

“Are we going somewhere?” Casmir asked as the guard unstrapped his legs.

“For a chat with the captain.”

“Will maiming and torture be involved?”

“Seeing as how you’ve got a Kingdom accent, that seems likely.”

The guard unstrapped his arms and tugged Casmir off the bunk. He still wore his galaxy suit, with the helmet retracted, but they had taken his belongings, including his borrowed oxygen tank. No chance of him stomping on a guard’s foot and escaping out an airlock. Not that foot-stomping was likely to work in zero-g.

The guard dragged him into the corridor and started to close the gate. He must have received a message on his chip because he paused, glancing back into the cell.

“Captain wants her too,” he said.

“Yeah? She’s kind of cute. Can we grope her on the way?”

Casmir clenched his jaw, wishing he had the strength to fight the armored brute. With only two of them, there might never be a better chance to escape.

“You can ask Rache that if you want.”

“That might not be healthy.”

“Irking him rarely is.”

The guard unstrapped Kim without groping her. One small mercy.

Casmir did his best to look around for inspiration as his captors strode up a corridor to a lift, up uncounted levels, and down another corridor. It was hard because the guard stuffed him under his armpit, limiting his view along with his feelings of masculinity. It was even more distressing to know the cybernetically enhanced brute could have managed the same maneuver in full gravity.

They passed an open area full of stations—the bridge—with men and women secured by pods like the ones on the Dragon. They all looked over, many of their faces scarred or modded with tattoos, piercings, and more exotic deformities. Casmir couldn’t tell if they’d paid for them or if they’d been inflicted during a torture session. A couple of the men didn’t even look human. One had a half-machine face with a red camera-lens eye. Another was covered in fur that made Qin’s fur accents seem like a light dusting.

Despite the harsh, almost inhuman features of many of the crew, curiosity shone through all of their eyes as they regarded Casmir’s passing. Did that mean Rache didn’t put out bounties for Kingdom roboticists that often?

“Why are they looking at us like we’re the freaks here?” Kim muttered when the guards paused to wait in front of a pair of sliding doors. Her face wasn’t far from Casmir’s.

“I don’t know, but I get that look more often than you’d think.”

The doors opened. The guards walked into an empty conference room. Another set of double doors was on the other side.

Casmir’s guard pulled out flex-cuffs and snapped one around his ankle, then clipped him to a bolt in the deck near a wall. Kim was clipped in a similar fashion.

As Casmir struggled to arrange himself in an upright position, the back doors slid open. The guards snapped to a rigid attention stance.

The figure that appeared in the doorway wore black combat armor with sidearms and daggers thrust into a utility belt of the same color. He did not have a helmet on, but a hood and mesh mask covered his hair and face. It was also black.

Casmir looked at Kim and rolled his eyes.

“I know,” she mouthed back.

“Sir,” the guards said in unison.

“We’ve secured the prisoners,” one added, rather obviously.

“Good. You’re dismissed.”

The guards snapped salutes—Kingdom military salutes—and walked out. Casmir gaped at that. Were salutes the same throughout the various systems’ armies? If so, that startled him, given all the cultural differences out there. But someone who hated the Kingdom wouldn’t adopt their methods, surely.

Their hands weren’t bound, and Kim swatted him. She mouthed something else, but he wasn’t sure what it was this time. Ascent? Accent?

Accent.

Yes, if that was Rache, he had a Kingdom accent. He sounded like everybody else Casmir knew from the capital.

“Let me know when you two are done trading whispers,” Rache said, hooking a foot under one of the conference table seats to stay in place while he faced them. “So we can talk. Actually, wait.” He tilted his head slightly. Sending a message? “My doctor is on the way.”

That sounded ominous. Maybe there would be medical experiments.

Casmir’s eye blinked.

“Are you not feeling well, Captain?” he asked in his best conscientious voice, willing his eye to knock it off. “Because we’d be happy to delay our torture session until you’re fully capable of enjoying it.”

The mask stared at him. How was he supposed to read the man through that?

The stare lasted so long that he found himself fighting not to squirm. No doubt, that was why Rache did it. For some reason, he was completely focused on Casmir. Kim, he remembered, had been an afterthought. What had prompted Rache to remove her from the cell at the last minute?

“I don’t think this guy is going to appreciate your wit, Casmir,” Kim muttered.

“You’re welcome to start discussing penises with him any time.”

If Rache’s eyebrows twitched under that mask, Casmir couldn’t tell.

“Uhm,” Kim said. “All right. I see you’re a Moby Dick fan, Captain Rache. Why did you pick Rache for your sobriquet, by the way? Surely, Ahab would have been more in theme. If a bit on the nose. I suppose that would have been an odd choice, given Ahab’s obsession leading him to a dreadful end. Rache conveys the desire for revenge without necessarily hinting of certain death.”

“What book is Rache from?” Casmir whispered.

Kim shook her head. “It’s an old German word that means revenge. It was also a type of hunting dog.”

“You think he’s furry under the mask? Like the guy on the bridge?”

“Should I be flattered that you’re that fascinated by my name choices?” Rache’s tone was dry.

Casmir tried to decide if that was better than furious. Maybe, maybe not. Rache probably killed people left and right without ever losing his temper. That was typical of psychopaths, wasn’t it?

“If you knew Kim, you would definitely be flattered,” Casmir said. “Usually, she’s not interested in anything with more than one cell.”

“Is that right.” Rache offered Kim a fluid bow. Impressively graceful for zero gravity. “As to my namesake, Ahab would have been fine, as far as his fate goes, but I disliked the biblical connotations. Any of my more well-read soldiers might have believed it indicated I am a poor leader.”

“You believe your actions will lead to your death then?” Kim asked, then glanced at Casmir. “If so, why travel down the path you’re on?”

Right, the plan was for Casmir to come up with something clever while Kim distracted the captain. Unfortunately, Casmir couldn’t reach the wall, the table, or anything else. The guards had removed his tool satchel and everything from his interior pockets, including his medications. He might end up having a lot more seizures soon if they didn’t return those. At least his allergies had been better in space. It wasn’t as if there was any pollen up here. Though the furry dog-man outside could be problematic.

“We all die eventually, Ms. Sato. Even the life-extension technologies only get you so far.” Rache faced her fully. “Unless one uploads her consciousness into a computer, though many argue that the essence of one’s humanity is lost without the ability to experience the senses or to have one’s thoughts and actions affected by hormonal changes. What do you think?”

Kim hesitated and glanced at Casmir.

Could Rache know about her mother?

“I’ve got a relative I can ask about that later, if you’re curious,” Kim said. “In fact, if you let us go, I’ll send her a note right away and get her opinion.”

“I don’t think she’s able to receive messages right now.”

Kim’s face lost all expression—and much of its color. Casmir frowned and clenched a fist. He didn’t know what this brute was implying, but he didn’t like it.

The outer door opened, and another mercenary floated in wearing a galaxy suit instead of combat armor. Maybe he wasn’t one of Rache’s men. His skin seemed too bronze for someone who spent his life in space, and he had a handsome, clean-shaven face lacking in tattoos, piercings, or other modifications. He carried a white medical kit.

“Yes, Captain?” he asked.

“Doctor, take a blood sample from the male.” Rache pointed.

“Casmir,” Casmir offered. “Casmir Dabrowski, if you wish, though that’s more syllables. Some find it a mouthful. I went by Caz for a while, but it prompted people to spell my first name incorrectly, with a Z rather than the S. And Cas has a different sound, so that’s not quite right. I like Casmir.”

Rache ignored him, and so did the doctor. Kim gave him a sympathetic look. She knew he babbled when he was nervous.

“Yes, sir.” The doctor opened one of the cases. All of the tools inside were secured so they wouldn’t float out.

Casmir glimpsed a needle and swallowed. He’d had blood drawn often enough that he wasn’t too alarmed by the sight, but he was alarmed that mercenaries wanted his blood. Why?

“What is it that you’re looking for?” Casmir asked Rache. “It’s clear you’re already familiar with my medical issues. I assume you ordered the lights flashed outside?”

“Yes,” Rache said, not explaining further.

The doctor approached with the needle. Casmir thought about flailing and trying to knock it out of his hand, but Rache watched intently. Rache who, according to legend, was part cyborg. Maybe his face was entirely metal underneath the mask, the skin seared off by some horrible plasma burn earlier in his life.

The galaxy suit defied the doctor’s attempt at taking his blood through his sleeve, and Casmir almost laughed.

“Are you as inexperienced in space as I am, Doctor?” He tried to sound friendly rather than mocking. Finding an ally here wouldn’t be a bad idea.

“I’ve been out here for three months. Usually, people take their clothes off for me. In sickbay, I mean. Not because I enjoy seeing these people naked.” The doctor glanced at Rache.

These people. That did seem to imply that the good doctor wasn’t a mercenary by choice. Casmir definitely wanted to chat with him, maybe without his looming captain watching. Not that Rache truly loomed. He wasn’t nearly as tall as Casmir had expected from his reputation.

“Just stab him in the neck.” Rache waved at Casmir’s throat.

“Right,” the doctor said as if that wasn’t a big deal.

Maybe it wasn’t—Kim didn’t look concerned, and she knew far more about medical stuff than Casmir. Still, Casmir couldn’t keep his eyes from going wide with concern as the needle approached his jugular.

Aware of Rache watching him, he strove for nonchalance. “This wasn’t how I imagined the torture going.”

“I can get you paper and a pen if you want to write a request list.”

Kim snorted.

“You’re not supposed to laugh at his wit,” Casmir said as the cold needle bit into his vein. “He’s the villain.”

“It wasn’t a laugh. It was a snort.”

“From you, that’s a riot of emotion.”

The doctor finished the blood draw, then pulled out a tube of Skinfill and dabbed a smear to Casmir’s throat. The conscientiousness almost made Casmir laugh. He wondered if Rache was rolling his eyes behind his mask.

“Done?” Rache asked after the doctor secured the vial in his case.

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, take mine.”

“What?” The doctor gawked. He might have fallen over if there had been any gravity to tip him in that direction.

“You heard me.” Rather than tugging up the hood that might have revealed his face, he removed the torso and arm pieces of his armor and pushed up the thin sleeve underneath.

His muscled arm was pale, the veins easily visible thanks to a body fat percentage akin to that of a marble statue. There were a few scars, but they appeared medically induced rather than a result of a lost fight. Spots where cyborg implants had been inserted?

“Today, Doctor,” Rache said.

His still-gaping doctor hadn’t moved.

“I expect that woman to try something,” Rache added, glancing at Casmir. “She didn’t want to give up her other cargo.”

A fresh new fear flushed Casmir’s veins. Rache could only be referring to Lopez and the bioweapon. How had the mercenary found out about that? For that matter, how had Rache found out about him?

Despite his surprise, the doctor’s hands were steady as he gripped the captain’s forearm and inserted a new needle. When he’d drawn the blood and tucked his vial away, Rache gripped his shoulder, his fingers digging in. Not enough to make the doctor wince, but Rache did have his undivided attention.

“Run a DNA test on both. Send me the results. Then delete them. Tell no one what you found.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rache released the man with a push that sent him toward the door. The doctor hurried out.

“Ms. Sato.” Rache unhooked his foot and pushed himself toward her.

Kim leaned back, wariness narrowing her eyes.

He stopped his gentle drift by gripping her shoulder and sticking his leg out, foot bumping the wall. “There’s something I’d like you to view in my quarters.”

“I’m not interested in your collection of sex toys,” Kim said.

“What about my collection of books?”

She hesitated. “Am I allowed to use them to psychoanalyze you?”

“Haven’t you already done that?”

Kim looked at Casmir.

He clenched his fists again, worried that Rache had something inimical in mind. He’d rarely seen Kim flummoxed, but she didn’t seem to know how to react to this man. That made two of them.

Why did Rache want a DNA test on him? What did this criminal know about Casmir that he didn’t? Something about the mother and father he’d never met? Would it turn out he had royal blood? That he was some relative of the king’s?

Despite all the old fairy tales about bastard heirs of thrones appearing to claim their birthrights, Casmir was positive he wasn’t Jager’s son, even by another woman. He had seen plenty of pictures of the king and the queen, who looked a lot more like Kim than Casmir, and their sons and daughter. The family was full of tall, beautiful people. Even if he was some distant relative, why would it matter to a mercenary who, by his every action for the last ten years, hated the king more than anything in the universe?

“There’s a vid player hooked to the wall next to the bunk,” Rache said, pulling himself down to the clip that held Kim’s cuff. “Inside of it, you will find a short recording on a chip that was in a capsule that my doctor withdrew from a dead man’s colon.”

“Ew.” Casmir loosened his fists as Rache released Kim without his hands straying anywhere personal. “You mercenaries lead interesting lives.”

“Yes.” Rache pushed Kim toward the door in the back of the room. “Play the recording. I want your opinion.”

“On a… medical research matter?” Kim reached the door and gripped the jamb when it slid open, pausing to look back at them.

“On an archeological matter.”

“You’ve got the wrong Sato then. You want my mother.”

“She’s busy. As you’ll see.” Rache extended a hand toward the door.

Kim’s eyebrows flew up. Casmir was just as puzzled. How could her mother be involved in something way out here? Something that would interest mercenaries?

Kim pushed herself through the doorway. Casmir glimpsed a bunk and a case of books on the wall, as Rache had promised, before the door closed.

The captain turned his attention, that featureless black mask, back on Casmir, and Casmir abruptly wondered if he should have been more worried about himself than Kim.

“Alone at last, eh?” Casmir managed to crack. “Will there be wine? A nice dinner? I’m not an easy man to woo, I should warn you.”

“That sounds incestuous.”

“Uhm, what?”

Rache stared at him for another long moment, then soft clicks sounded from each of the doors. Had he locked them? Casmir’s heartbeat thudded in his ears, far too fast for a resting state.

Rache reached up and tugged off his hood.

His face wasn’t metal. Casmir’s own eyes looked back at him.

20

“How do we get Casmir and Kim off their ship before this thing blows up, Viggo?” Bonita knelt on the deck in the cargo hold, the magnetic sole of one boot pressed flat to keep her in place as she worked on the case. She’d ratcheted it down so it couldn’t go anywhere, and now she carefully affixed some of the Tac-75 from the ship’s armory to the insulating molding, right under the rocket. She was doing her best not to let her hands shake. Casmir’s code-hacking device dangled in the air next to her. The same code had worked to open the case a second time, so she probably hadn’t needed it.

“We?” Viggo asked. “I have no legs, Captain. I can’t go anywhere.”

“Getting it over there should be easy enough.”

Qin had reported finding the crusher and was luring it back to the Stellar Dragon, promising she would aid it in defending Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski, as it insisted it needed to return to doing. Bonita hoped she could convince it to carry the case to the mercenary ship, so she and Qin wouldn’t have to risk exposure to the vials.

Would Rache allow that? Or would he suspect a trick?

She could only assume he was intelligent, since the entire Kingdom army had been trying to kill him for years and hadn’t managed it yet. Even if he did allow the crusher to deliver the case, how would they then get Casmir and Kim out of danger before it blew?

Bonita knew she’d wronged those two and felt a fierce determination to get them back, to make up for her mistake of allowing money to tempt her.

“Do you think Rache will know Kim’s background and make her open the case?” Bonita wondered. “Or will he have bothered to look her up? Casmir is the only one he listed on the bounty. They could simply have taken her because she’s female and still young enough to sell into the sex trade somewhere.”

“Rache is not known for trading in slaves.”

“Maybe he wanted her for himself.”

Not that Kim was the voluptuous beauty men usually went for. And she was about as warm as a comet’s trail. Still, maybe an ice woman would be perfect for the ice mercenary captain. Though Bonita hoped that wasn’t Rache’s intent. No woman deserved a man like that pawing her over.

“I would assume he knows the identities and occupations of his prisoners,” Viggo said.

“Then it would make sense for Rache to have Kim open the case, to check its contents. He may have a doctor, but I doubt it’ll be anyone as experienced with such things as she must be. And if we assume she’ll be asked to open it, then Casmir might be asked to help. Especially if I hand it over locked.” She tapped the code-hacking device. “Wait, what if I changed the combination? Do you think that would warn Casmir to be careful? That something was up? Because if I simply meant to cooperate, why would I change the combination?”

“I believe he will be careful, regardless.”

“Still… Let me see if I can figure it out.” Bonita grabbed the device and closed the lid, hoping she couldn’t hurt anything by tinkering with the lock. Casmir’s random prodding of a button the first time hadn’t resulted in an inferno.

The airlock chimed and a few thunks sounded as the chamber filled with air. Qin was returning.

“Hello, Captain,” came her call as soon as the hatch opened.

She looked much better than she had a couple of hours earlier. Bonita wished she could say the same for herself.

“Look what I found,” Qin added.

She walked in waving a portable gas tank and leading the crusher. The hulking construct looked remarkably fresh, with all of its limbs attached. But, having seen the other ones in action, Bonita assumed the mercenaries had blown it to pieces and it had simply reassembled itself over time.

“You will assist me in retrieving Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski,” the crusher announced.

“Yes. Yes, I will.” Bonita found it relatively easy to change the combination with Casmir’s device. She turned it into all letters: GET OUT. “I better attach his doohickey to the case. He may not have the parts or tools to build another one, especially with mercs breathing down his neck.”

She hoped he would think to open the case in such a way that Rache and his buddies wouldn’t be able to see the display over his shoulder. She also hoped she was right in assuming that Rache would make Casmir do it. What if he had some hacker extraordinaire in his crew that he would use instead?

“No more second-guessing,” she grumbled to herself.

When she finished, she stood and pulled the remote for the Tac-75 off her utility belt. She worried that the case, which had proven impossible to scan through, would block the wireless signal of the transmitter. When she checked the remote, the signal was weak, but it came through. She hoped that wouldn’t change with a little distance and a couple of spaceship hulls.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Qin asked. “If Rache survives, he’ll hunt you down, torture you, and kill you.”

“I’m hoping that he won’t survive. And that Kim and Casmir will. They’ll have to get that message and find a way to get out of there before I blow up the case. That’s why we’re arranging a distraction.” Bonita waved at Qin and the crusher.

“Oh?” Qin asked.

“The crusher is going to deliver the case to the merc ship. While that’s going on, I want you to take this—” Bonita handed another patch of Tac-75 to Qin, “—and plant it on one of the tanks in the refinery, ideally one filled with flammable gas. There’s a timer. Don’t stick around. Get back here as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Bonita pushed one of her floating braids away from her face. “I think that’s all the help we can give them. Casmir and Kim will have to take advantage and get out of there. Once you plant that and the crusher delivers the case, get back to the ship. I’m pulling out and crossing my fingers the mercs will have far too many problems to worry about us.”

“It’s a good plan, Captain.” Qin lifted the Tac-75 and nodded. “I’m glad we’re helping.”

Bonita didn’t point out that they wouldn’t need to help if she hadn’t tried to sacrifice Casmir in the first place. She nodded back and hoped this would work out and that she could redeem herself, at least in her own eyes.

She turned toward the looming crusher. “Robot, once you deliver the case—”

“I am a Z-6000, programmed to protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski.”

“Uh, right. Once you deliver the case, you can help Kim and Casmir get out, all right? But wait for an opportune moment.” Bonita had no idea how much free thinking the crusher was capable of, but two of them had tracked Casmir halfway across the system, so they had to have decent brains—or the robot equivalent. “Then do your best to bring them back here, and I’ll fly them someplace safe.”

Wherever that was. Bonita was mildly reassured that Rache only commanded one ship, but if he kept his bounty listed, Casmir would find it difficult to travel freely in any system.

“Understood.” The crusher lifted the case. “I am prepared to deliver it.”

“Viggo,” Bonita said. “Comm the mercenaries and tell them we’re delivering the case to their ship.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Go now, Qin.” Bonita waved at the airlock. “Be careful. If you can help Casmir and Kim, do it, but don’t get yourself killed.”

“I understand. I’ll do my best.”

“You’ve got plenty of oxygen in that tank, right?”

Qin reached over her shoulder to check while giving a puzzled nod. “Yes.”

“Good, because as soon as you two are on the refinery, I’m going to move the Dragon. Not far, but I don’t want to be linked in any way to that other ship when that bacteria gets unleashed, and right now, we’re both tubed to the refinery. When you escape, push off and angle for the airlock. I’ll run the decontamination cycle and hope that’s enough, that this doesn’t backfire on us.”

Qin’s expression grew bleak behind her faceplate. The crusher’s vaguely human face held no expression at all. Deadly bacteria wouldn’t affect it.

Bonita groped for something encouraging to say, but she couldn’t manage it. She waved Qin toward the airlock. “Better get out into the refinery now and plant that before the mercs think to look for people over there.”

“Yes, Captain,” Qin said.

“We have a small problem, Captain,” Viggo said, and Qin paused in the airlock hatchway.

“What?” Bonita asked.

“Rache’s people demand that you meet them on the refinery with the case. They’ll inspect it there and decide if it’s safe to take aboard their ship.”

Bonita bit her lip. If the mercs didn’t take it aboard, the explosion wouldn’t damage their ship, and the bacteria wouldn’t infect their people. Without pandemonium breaking out on the Fedallah, the Stellar Dragon would never escape Rache’s wrath.

“Tell them that’s fine. The case will be there in ten minutes.” Bonita looked at Qin and the crusher. “Slight adjustment to the plan. We might need someone who can think on their feet to do the handoff. Qin, plant the explosive quickly, hide the crusher somewhere where he can ambush the mercs, and then you show up with the case. Wait for them right outside their hatch. Don’t be too eager to get them to take it on board their ship, but if it’s possible to nudge them that way, do it. If Kim and Casmir are there, don’t try to speak with them. We sold them out, so they’re nothing to us now. At least as far as Rache’s people know. Got it?”

Qin took a deep breath, looking intimidated by everything on the list, but she nodded firmly. “Yes, Captain.”

She and the crusher lifted the case and disappeared into the airlock chamber.

Soon, Bonita was all alone on the ship. Alone with her thoughts. She wondered if she would survive the day. Or the hour.

Rache’s face wasn’t identical to Casmir’s, but it was damn close. Rache had a scar on his jaw and over one eyebrow, his hair was buzzed short, and his features were much leaner. Casmir couldn’t stop staring and trying to decide if they would have been identical if they’d led the same lives.

And then his eye blinked. He grimaced. Rache’s didn’t do that, at least not while Casmir was watching. He also didn’t have strabismus. Casmir had no idea yet what was happening, but the words That’s not fair distinctly floated through his mind.

“What’s wrong with your eye?” Rache asked bluntly.

He was regarding Casmir with just as much scrutiny.

“Nothing.” Casmir’s eye blinked again. He sighed. “A tic. And I have monocular vision. Both eyes are awful without correction. Yours?”

“Perfect.”

“Because you had them enhanced with cyborg bits?”

“No. Other things, yes. Not my eyes.” Rache tilted his head. “You’ve had seizures since birth?”

“More or less. You?”

“Never.”

“I guess we’re not twinsies then.” Casmir smiled, though he was bewildered. The resemblance was so close that it was hard to imagine them being anything else. Even brothers would never look so similar.

“We’ll see what the doctor says.” Rache reached for his hood and mask.

Casmir thought the reason the bridge crew had stared at him so curiously might have been because he looked like the captain, but… “Does your crew know what you look like?”

“No. Nobody does.”

“Your doctor must.”

“No. In fact, he didn’t have a sample of my blood until today. I don’t use sickbay.”

“Ever?” Casmir glanced at Rache’s forearm, the scars still visible.

“Not here. When I first started in this career, I had every enhancement to my immune system and cell-repair system that money could buy, so I heal quickly.”

“I’m guessing you don’t have allergies then either,” Casmir said dryly, but with genuine envy. “Every spring, I get hives walking under the pollinating oak and ciern trees along the street leading to my house.”

“Your house in the capital on Odin.” Rache pulled the mask and hood back over his head. “Right?”

“Yeah.” There was little point in lying since Rache seemed to know all about Casmir. “I suppose you looked up the address when you sent the crushers to kill me.”

“That wasn’t me.”

“No?”

“No. I had no idea you existed at all until I saw you on the Odin news feed. It sounded like someone was trying to kill you, and when I learned you were at Forseti Station…” Rache twitched a shoulder. “Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s see what the doctor says.”

“Wait, if you’re not trying to kill me, why did you put a bounty on my head?”

“To bring you here before someone else got to you. Mostly out of curiosity.” Rache shrugged again.

Had the bounty been for Casmir to be delivered alive? He’d never seen it, so he didn’t know. But maybe that was why Lopez had been willing to hand him over so readily. She’d claimed she hadn’t thought he would be killed. Neither she nor Qin had known who ran Pequod Holding Company.

“So on a whim, you decided to drop two hundred thousand crowns?” Casmir asked.

“I have plenty of money.”

“Terrorizing Kingdom troops pays well, does it?” Casmir couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his words. He couldn’t forget that this man, this man who looked exactly like him, had killed thousands and destroyed countless ships, bases, and refineries.

“A lot of people don’t want to see the Kingdom rise again.” Rache’s voice iced over. “You don’t support Jager, do you?”

“I don’t know him at all, other than what the media reports. I don’t have a lot of opportunities to interact with royalty.”

“No? Who raised you?”

Who had raised him? Who had raised Rache? Did he know his biological parents?

“My adoptive parents were—”

The doors slid open, and Rache raised a finger.

The doctor floated back in, coming to a stop against the table. Casmir’s neck throbbed in memory of the needle.

The doctor waited for the doors to automatically shut before speaking. “I can say with a high degree of probability that your DNA started out as identical.”

“Started out?” Casmir glanced at the other doors, wishing Kim had returned, but maybe Rache was making sure she couldn’t until they were done talking.

Rache merely watched the doctor, waiting.

“This isn’t my field, so I had to consult the computer, but here’s what I’ve got.” The doctor looked nervously at Rache before continuing on.

Casmir hoped this wasn’t some awful secret that Rache would kill him over once he’d revealed it. Something about the doctor’s face made Casmir think he was worrying about that very thing. But why? Did it truly matter to anyone else if he and Rache—as bizarre and mind boggling as it was—ended up being twins who had, thirty-two years ago, been sent off to different homes to be raised?

“Yours—” the doctor pointed at Casmir, “—has a lot more mutations, mutations that could have been fixed at birth if you’d been born in another system.”

Casmir nodded, hardly surprised by that.

“Yours—” the doctor pointed at Rache, “—and I wouldn’t know this if I wasn’t comparing it to his, had mutations that were fixed at birth, which is odd, considering your Kingdom accent.”

“Don’t think too hard about my origins, Doctor,” Rache said softly. “You’ve been useful these past few months, and I’d like to see you survive your five-year enlistment.”

The doctor’s bronze face paled a few shades. Casmir scowled, not appreciating the threat, or the idea that Rache might kill someone simply for knowing about him. Did that warning go for him as well? If Casmir figured out what Rache’s real name was, would the mercenary shoot him, DNA match or not?

“Enlistment, right,” the doctor muttered, the words barely audible.

“Anything else?” Rache asked.

“Just that you’ve received more radiation over your life than he has and have more damaged mitochondria. You might want to make friends with your female prisoner.” The doctor looked around. “Uh, where is your female prisoner?”

“My quarters.”

A hint of indignation flashed in the doctor’s eyes, but he squelched it. “Then I see you’re taking my advice preemptively. She’s been studying—crafting, I gather from the article I read—radiation-eating bacteria that will happily live inside a human host and protect him from even cosmic rays. Apparently, they simply increase in numbers if there’s more radiation available to consume.”

“Interesting. She does that work on Odin? Where genetic engineering is strictly forbidden?” Rache looked at Casmir.

“From what I read, her corporation reports that they’re not tinkering with the DNA of the bacteria,” the doctor said. “They say they are simply creating new strains in much the same way that farmers create new varieties of plants by cross-pollinating existing ones. And the government agrees with this because they want radiation-eating bacteria for their space-faring troops. I understand cancer rates plummeted among the crews that initially volunteered for inoculation a few years ago.”

“Interesting,” Rache repeated and looked toward the door to his quarters.

Casmir preferred it when the men hadn’t been discussing Kim. Just because Rache hadn’t done anything untoward to her yet didn’t meant he wouldn’t. The idea of someone who shared Casmir’s genes being some psychopathic killer and molester of prisoners floored him. How was that even possible? Casmir didn’t even like damaging robots.

“You find anything else remarkable, Doctor?” Rache faced him again, and there was an odd intentness to the question.

“Just what you’d expect, that you’ve led different lives and triggered different epigenetic changes to your genome.”

Rache kept looking at the man, the mask hiding his thoughts, but his scrutiny had to be uncomfortable. Casmir knew it was. The doctor prodded the edge of the table with his fingers.

“I didn’t find anything else,” the doctor said into the silence.

“Good,” Rache said softly. “Good. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.” The doctor turned and pushed toward the double doors, his momentum almost crashing him into them.

“Say nothing of this,” Rache called after him. “And delete the files.”

“Yes, sir. Understood.”

The doors closed.

Casmir scratched his jaw. “What else did you expect him to find? Or would you have to kill me if you told me?” He smiled, but it wasn’t much of a joke. He was almost positive that had been Rache’s underlying threat to the doctor.

“I am skeptical that I can trust you, loyal Kingdom subject,” Rache said. “I’m guessing someone has already figured out your unique ancestry and that’s why you’re being targeted. I have enough trouble dealing with Jager’s assassins. I don’t need anyone sending your crushers after me. Though if my guess is correct, they’re more likely to recruit me than try to kill me. Time will tell.”

If Casmir hadn’t been chained to the deck, he would have flung himself over to grab Rache by the neck and shake him. It sounded like the man knew who was after him and why.

“Time’s not telling me anything. If you have answers…” Casmir flexed a pleading hand in the air. He wouldn’t have begged a criminal for his own life, but to satiate his burning curiosity? That was another matter. He had to know what was going on.

Rache held up a finger and cocked his head. “Understood,” he muttered in response to some subvocal communication. “Don’t let her on the ship. We’ll meet in the refinery and check the case there.”

The case. The case full of horrific bacteria and a rocket to launch them? Lopez was giving them to this man? This Kingdom-hating man? No, no, no.

Casmir jerked at his shackled ankle. He couldn’t let mercenaries that hated the Kingdom have a weapon that could end countless human lives on Odin.

Rache pushed himself to the rear doors and knocked. Kim must have been standing right there, waiting to be released, because she pulled herself out of the room, her expression closed, hard to read.

“Kim?” Casmir asked. “Are you all right?”

Before she could answer, Rache gripped her arm. “You’ve seen the bioweapon before? I assume you’re the one who identified it.”

Kim blinked a few times and didn’t seem to follow him, but then she nodded.

Casmir squinted at her. Whatever she’d seen on that recording, it must not have related to this.

“You’re going to come look at it again,” Rache said. “Make sure Lopez hasn’t tampered with it.”

Kim took a breath and recovered some of her normal equanimity. She glanced down at the hand gripping her arm.

“Let go of me,” she said steadily, looking him in the face—in the mask—without fear.

He stared back at her, seconds tumbling past, without moving or releasing his grip.

“If you want my help,” Kim said, “let go of me. I’m not handling those vials with some asshole pirate looming behind me with a hand around my throat.”

Casmir had always admired her willingness to stand up for herself, but he winced, afraid this was a better time to go along with the flow and wait for an opportunity to escape. Unless she’d found some weapon in his quarters that she could use against him? He hadn’t put his torso armor back on yet. How much did the thin fabric he wore underneath it protect him?

“I am not a pirate, Ms. Sato,” Rache said coolly, “and if my hand were around your throat, you would be significantly more uncomfortable.”

He released her, propelling her across the room toward the other door. It wasn’t a violent move but a calculating one that sent her over the table and precisely to the target. Casmir had a feeling all of the man’s moves were calculating. Because most of his were. And they were apparently the same, or had started out that way. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Casmir was screaming. Not because he had a twin but because this man’s reputation proved he was the epitome of evil. How could someone with his genes be like that?

“Wait,” Casmir blurted when Rache pushed himself across the room after Kim. “Are you leaving me here?”

The double doors had slid open when Kim reached them, but she hadn’t gone out. She looked at Casmir and then at Rache.

“He’s the one who knows how to unlock the case,” she said. “If you don’t want to force it.”

“That’s true,” Casmir said, “but I’d need my toolkit.”

Rache looked back and forth between them. Wondering if they were plotting something sneaky?

Not yet, but Casmir certainly hoped to do so. He needed to get away from Rache and his ship full of Kingdom-loathing mercenaries and think. And figure out… he didn’t even know what. But he doubted this was a safe place for him. Curiosity might have prompted Rache to bring him here, but he might soon decide that Casmir knew too much about him.

“Very well,” Rache said. “You’ll both come.”

As he came over to unlock Casmir’s shackle, Casmir said, “We’ll need our oxygen tanks back if we’re going out to the refinery.”

“No, I think you’ll go as you are. To keep you from being tempted to run off.”

“I have to breathe to open locks.”

“You’ll have about twenty minutes’ worth of air stored in the niches of your suit, and there are CO2 absorbers in the helmet.”

“Twenty minutes. Gee.”

“Better hope your friends don’t screw around.”

Rache gripped Casmir by the back of the neck and pushed him toward the door where Kim waited. He didn’t squeeze hard, but Casmir couldn’t help but think how easily someone with cybernetic enhancements could snap his spine.

“They’re not my friends,” Casmir said. “Lopez sold me to you.”

“We’ll see.”

As Rache pushed Kim and Casmir into the hands of armored mercenaries who led them back toward the airlock, Casmir was reminded that if everything was true, if he and Rache shared the same DNA, Rache was every bit as smart as he was.

All he could hope was that Rache was also every bit as fallible as he was.

21

Casmir took several deep breaths in the airlock chamber before sliding his helmet over his head. He struggled not to panic at the idea of leaving the ship when he only had twenty minutes of air. An estimated twenty minutes of air.

What if he hyperventilated and sucked it up faster? What if he had another seizure? He had no idea where his medication was. Would Rache drag him back to his ship and save him if he passed out? Or had his curiosity about Casmir been satisfied now? No need to keep him around?

A big mercenary accidentally kicked him in the ankle bone. His suit, so much thinner than their combat armor, didn’t do much to protect him, but at least the lack of gravity kept his foot from being stomped on. He was packed into the airlock chamber with Kim, Rache—back in full armor now—and three men and a woman who had orders to “Keep an eye on Dabrowski.” He didn’t know if that was because she was an assassin or someone who would know if he was fiddling with electronics in an inappropriate way. Another batch of mercenaries waited in the corridor to follow them out. The doctor hadn’t been among them. Too bad. He’d been the only one Casmir had spotted who’d seemed sympathetic and might have been talked into helping.

The ship’s outer hatch opened, and his helmet display reported a lack of oxygen in the atmosphere. Casmir had the urge to shove the mercenaries out of the way—or try—in an attempt to get out there for the exchange as quickly as possible. He resisted it. Exerting himself would use up his limited air faster.

The men strode down their airlock tube and fanned out in the refinery, their magnetic boots keeping them attached to the floor. They didn’t have to look far for their new cargo. A tall broad-shouldered figure in a galaxy suit faced the airlock tube, the case floating in the air before her. It was either Qin or Lopez, there being no other options. Casmir thought Qin. She was taller and broader of shoulder. But the suit and helmet made it hard to tell. The dim lighting of the pipe- and tank-filled bay, along with the reflection of her helmet light on the faceplate, obscured her features.

A rifle was slung over Qin’s shoulder on a strap, but her hands were up in the air and empty. She gestured for the mercenaries to take the case into their ship, but Rache stepped past Casmir and pointed deeper into the refinery. Qin looked but didn’t move. She gestured toward their ship again and stepped back, lifting her hands. The case floated without a guardian.

Rache must have spoken to her on a comm link, because she returned to the case, steered it around, and strode in the direction he’d pointed.

What’s he doing? Kim texted Casmir, the message popping up on his contact.

Either because Rache hadn’t thought of it or there hadn’t been time, he hadn’t ordered their contacts removed or their chips torn out. That would have been devastating, but Casmir knew from the news that it was a typical torture tactic among criminals and vigilantes. It kept the subject from accessing networks and calling for help, and ripping a chip out instead of having a surgeon remove it tended to have some nasty neural side effects.

I don’t know, Casmir replied. He didn’t tell me.

What did you talk about for so long?

I’ll tell you later. Casmir wouldn’t be surprised if the mercenaries could monitor their communications. What was in his room that he wanted you to see?

A mercenary shoved Casmir from behind. Apparently, he was to follow Qin and the case. Rache was already heading in that direction.

Long story, she replied. I’ll tell you later.

I hope for both our sakes that there is a later.

Me too.

Every time Qin glanced back, Rache waved for her to continue. Casmir didn’t like that they were traveling deeper into the refinery while his and Kim’s air wound down.

They left the bay and the airlocks and passed through more cavernous rooms made claustrophobic by huge holding tanks and pipes. Here and there, robots flitted past on tracks that ran high over their heads.

Rache finally stopped Qin. They were in another big bay with tanks and more computer equipment than had been in the others. A processing room? It was likely where the different types of gases were separated from each other.

“You two,” Rache’s voice sounded over Casmir’s helmet speaker. “Come check this. Make sure Lopez didn’t take anything out and isn’t trying to screw us.”

Normally, Casmir might have said something flippant, but he hurried to the case, aware that he was already almost halfway through his twenty minutes of air.

Rache thrust something toward Casmir—his tool satchel.

“Thank you,” Casmir said, startled.

For a moment, he was grateful to have all his belongings back, but then he realized Rache simply wanted him to have what he needed to open the case. Logical, but Casmir was afraid to open the satchel here. Everything was piled inside, not neatly secured for use in zero gravity.

“Go back to your ship,” Rache said. “Don’t get lost.”

At first, Casmir thought the message for him, but Rache was speaking on a broad channel.

Qin hesitated, then turned around and walked away.

Casmir felt a fresh twinge of betrayal, stung that Lopez and Qin would truly leave him and Kim here with these people, these hardened and remorseless killers.

“Make sure she doesn’t get distracted along the way,” Rache told one of his mercs, pointing after Qin.

Aware of time ticking, Casmir focused on the case. He remembered the code from before and tried tapping it in, but it had either changed on its own, or Lopez had changed it. If the latter, that seemed odd. Especially since Lopez had attached the device he’d created to thwart the lock. It floated, tied to an eyelet on the case with a piece of wire. She must have intended for him to get inside. Eventually.

“What’s that?” the mercenary woman asked, attractive brown-skinned features behind her faceplate.

Somehow, Casmir had expected all mercenaries to look like brutes. The batch on the bridge had more closely fit his imagination.

“Lock pick?” He picked up the device, secured it to the code pad on the case, and turned it on, hoping Lopez hadn’t done something awful, like breaking some of the vials. He doubted a lack of air or gravity would save them all from contamination.

“Are you asking me or telling me?” the woman asked.

“I’d rather not talk at all, if you don’t mind. Your boss didn’t give me an oxygen tank.”

“No? I guess he decided he didn’t like you. Or that you’re working for Jager.”

“I’ve never even met King Jager.”

“He’s an ass.”

Casmir couldn’t identify her accent, but he was positive she wasn’t from a Kingdom population center. Not that he cared. He waited impatiently for the device to run. Had it taken this long to crack the code last time?

Less than eight minutes of air left. He tried to stay calm, but his heartbeat hammered against his eardrums. It had taken almost that long to walk over here. Why had Rache brought everyone to the backside of the refinery?

Casmir couldn’t hear the beeps as his electronic lock picker tried to crack the new code, but it flashed, warning him it was close. Again, he wondered why Lopez had changed the combination. If she hadn’t wanted the mercenaries to be able to open it, why send the lock-picking device along? Was it possible there was a message for him? Could she have guessed that he would be the one to open it?

He looked at Kim, subtly shifting his body to hide the display from the woman looming behind them. She was paying far too much attention to what he was doing. Casmir wagered she was Rache’s engineer or maybe a systems administrator.

The new code scrolled across the display. GET OUT.

Shit. Casmir opened the case promptly so the code would disappear. Kim stirred. She’d seen it. Had the female engineer? And how were they supposed to obey the command with all those guns pointed at them? What happened if they didn’t obey it?

“Your turn, Kim.” Casmir strove to make his voice calm, waving her in to look at the contents as he backed away slightly, looking around for inspiration.

Rache watched him intently from a few paces away, but several of his troops had moved off. Some remained, pointing weapons at Kim and Casmir, but the others floated from spot to spot in the room, planting compact black boxes on the tanks. What? Explosives? Were they going to blow up the refinery? Because it was a Kingdom asset?

Casmir gritted his teeth as he stared at Rache’s faceplate. The fuel that was generated here supplied all the ships and stations in the belt, everyone mining and living out there. To lose the Saga refineries would be a huge blow to the system.

“Everything is still here,” Kim announced. “Several deadly concoctions designed to survive in the harsh conditions of space, eat through your spacesuit, and kill you and everyone on your ship in the most horrible way you can imagine.”

Rache walked toward her to look inside.

Casmir pushed off a pipe and eased farther back. Six minutes left. An orange alert was flashing inside his helmet, warning him of the need to attach an oxygen tank. As if he didn’t know.

To his surprise, the helmet display also showed some oxygen in the outside environment that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t enough to breathe, but why was it there at all? A leak in one of the refinery’s tanks? No, there wasn’t any oxygen in Saga’s atmosphere to be mined.

His gaze strayed to the mercenaries flitting around setting charges, and his stomach sank. Of course. Each of their bombs would have an oxidizer built in, but if they wanted a humongous explosion, sufficient to utterly destroy the refinery, it would be helpful to cause a chain reaction that could ignite the fuel in all the tanks in the place.

As Casmir peered around the bay again, his brain spinning uselessly instead of coming up with the brilliance he needed, he spotted a black shape arrowing toward Rache like a hawk diving for its target. Startled, Casmir almost shouted a warning. But he clamped his mouth shut.

“The woman from the smuggler ship is coming back,” someone barked over the comm. “There’s no sign of Jackson.”

Rache turned as the black shape smashed into his torso, knocking him over the case in a crazy somersault. It was the crusher. Casmir’s crusher.

“Zee!” he blurted before realizing it wouldn’t hear him.

But he couldn’t smother his delight. The crusher had recovered. Since it didn’t give off much heat, the mercenaries must not have detected it with their scanners.

Weapons fire filled the room, red energy bolts streaking through the dim light. The men weren’t afraid to fire toward Rache, maybe believing his armor would protect him. They shot at the crusher even as it gripped Rache, wrestling with him and trying to find the leverage to hurl him into a tank.

Kim looked over at Casmir, and he waved furiously and pointed toward the exit. This was their chance to escape.

He spotted someone in the doorway. Qin. She’d come back for them.

A mercenary lunged for Casmir, but Qin fired her rifle, a bolt slamming into the merc's shoulder. The force was enough to knock his magnetic soles loose, and he floated away, struggling to twist himself back around.

Casmir pushed off another pipe, knowing it wouldn’t take the mercenary long to fire his boot jets and get back into the fight. They would all be in the fight soon. Several men returned fire at Qin. She backed out of the doorway and took cover behind the wall. Someone’s bolt struck a tank right beside the doorway. A hole ripped open, and a gaseous cloud spewed out.

Casmir dove under it, scrambling for the doorway. A crimson beam streaked through the gas, and fiery orange light flared all around him.

Qin snatched his hand and pulled him out of the room, hurling him into the next bay. He flailed, tumbling through the air with nothing to grab to slow him down, nothing to push off to alter his course.

He started to shout that he wouldn’t leave without Kim—his rear helmet camera showed the gas burning, an orange cloud spreading from the tank and blazing like a solar flare. Qin returned to the doorway, firing into the bay to keep the mercenaries from charging through after them.

Casmir imagined a stray bolt hitting the open case, vials exploding and spewing their deadly contents everywhere, spraying everyone’s suits…

He finally ran into something that stopped his tumble. A pipe near the ceiling. He tugged himself down it and back to the floor until his boots could attach themselves.

Kim appeared in the burning gas, her suit charred around the edges. A mercenary grabbed her shoulder, trying to pull her back into the bay. With nothing but his tool satchel, Casmir didn’t know how to help, but he strode toward the doorway as quickly as possible.

Qin shot the hand that gripped Kim. The mercenary let go but lunged toward them. Qin pulled Kim through the doorway even as she launched herself at the armored man, pummeling his chest and knocking him back into the burning gas.

Kim scrambled toward Casmir. The lack of sound was surreal and made it hard to tell what was going on in the battle beyond the burning gas. The mercenaries had to be talking to each other over the comms, but they’d switched away from Casmir’s channel.

A warning flashed red in his helmet. He had less than a minute of air left. He was already lightheaded, his fingertips numb.

Waving for Kim to follow, he pushed off the floor and dove toward the airlock bay. It was faster to fling himself around in zero-g than to run when he had to keep one foot attached to the deck.

When he reached the airlock for the Stellar Dragon, the only vessel he could imagine returning to, he almost ran straight out into space before realizing the ship was gone. He gaped out the nearest porthole. The ship wasn’t gone yet, but it was leaving. It hovered a hundred meters from the refinery. Did Lopez know about the explosives Rache had set? What was the crazy mercenary thinking when the case sat right in the middle of all that?

Kim caught up and slapped him on the back. Casmir pointed. She looked from their empty airlock to the one where the Fedallah was still docked. With seconds of air left, Casmir realized he had to go back that way, had to hope the mercenaries would take him in and wouldn’t kill him.

Then Qin caught up with them.

“I blew the charges I set,” she said on the Dragon’s comm channel. “And the crusher is blocking the way. Hurry, the captain is waiting for us.”

“Out there?” Casmir flung his arm toward the ship, cracking his hand on the airlock hatch.

“Out there. How’s your aim?”

“Horrible,” Casmir said.

“Hold on to me. Both of you.”

“What about Zee?”

“With luck, he’s buying us time.”

Casmir gripped the back of Qin’s suit, careful not to disturb her tank. Kim hadn’t spoken, and when she grabbed Qin’s other shoulder, her grip was clumsy and she missed twice. Were her oxygen reserves even more depleted than his? Casmir grabbed her with his other hand, making sure she wouldn’t lose consciousness and let go.

“Ready,” he told Qin, his chest hurting, his lungs trying to gulp in what wasn’t there.

Qin pushed open the outer hatch and sprang off, angling for the Stellar Dragon, the luminous blue orb of Saga filling the backdrop. The ship floated free, half-tilted, as if she were damaged and adrift. Maybe Lopez wanted the mercenaries to believe that, not that she was trying to escape but that some mechanical problem had resulted in her releasing her docking clamps.

Qin cursed.

“What?” Casmir blinked, trying to focus. His vision was dim, his body lethargic.

“Captain told me the merc ship is getting ready to fire on the Dragon. We’re almost there.” Qin stretched a hand toward the ship.

Casmir felt cold. He didn’t know if it was his suit struggling to compensate for the frigid temperature of space, or if his body was shutting down.

A jolt ran through him as they landed on the side of the Dragon. Qin had alighted right on the airlock hatch. She hit the controls to swing it open and pulled them inside. As soon as it swung shut and air rushed into the chamber, Kim tore her helmet off and gasped in huge breaths. Casmir hurried to do the same, sucking in pure, delicious air as they floated in the dim chamber.

A pale blue light came on, and the inner hatch unlocked. Qin raced across the deck as quickly as her magnetic boots would allow, charging up the corridor toward navigation.

Casmir didn’t know what help he could offer, but as soon as Kim waved that she was all right, he pushed off the bulkhead to follow Qin. The ship rumbled, engines flaring to life. It started accelerating, and Casmir smashed against a wall, then pitched to the deck. Growling, he scrambled and clawed the rest of the way to navigation.

“What’s happening?” Qin asked, gripping the back of the co-pilot’s pod.

Lopez was cocooned in hers, little of her visible from behind. “The refinery is blowing up. A lot. You tell me, Qin. I only gave you one charge.”

Qin glanced at Casmir.

“The mercenaries were setting explosives in a processing room as we were opening the case,” he said.

“Their ship is still attached to the airlock,” Lopez said. “Why would they detonate them now?”

“It’s possible that burning gas leak—or you said Qin set a charge?—triggered theirs earlier than they intended.”

“I set mine in the first bay, close to their ship, but I hit one of their explosives intentionally once we started shooting at each other.” Qin patted her rifle. “It may have set off a chain reaction.”

“I don’t know why they were setting explosives to start with,” Casmir said, alarmed that they might have wiped out Rache and all his men, but relieved to have made it off the refinery.

“While you were gone, I realized there’s nothing but wreckage where Saga’s other refinery used to be,” Lopez said. “Maybe they got paid to blow both of them up. Though I don’t know why he would have wanted the case delivered in the middle of all that.”

“Is it possible he intended to destroy it along with the refinery?” Qin asked.

Lopez shook her head vigorously. “I’m sure he wanted it for nefarious purposes. Either to resell it to someone who would use it against the Kingdom or to use it himself.” She tilted the ship, trying to avoid shards flying from the refinery as she backed them away from the dock, but one struck a glancing blow. “The Fedallah isn’t leaving dock yet. They’re going to take a lot of damage if they don’t depart soon. They may already have. Not that this is a bad thing for us, mind you.”

“They may be waiting for their captain,” Qin said. “The last I saw, he was fighting Casmir’s crusher right next to the case.”

“Maybe he’s dead then. I blew up the case.” Lopez held up a detonator. “But not until you three jumped out the airlock. Here comes someone else out the airlock.” She pointed at a display from one of the rear cameras.

“Zee,” Casmir blurted. “He made it. Can you wait for him?”

“I’m maneuvering us around to get out of here now,” Lopez said. “That’ll take a few more seconds, but I’m not waiting for anyone.”

The crusher sprang from the airlock platform with powerful legs, its speed far greater than Qin’s had been.

“He’s coming straight toward us,” Casmir said. “Just give him a few more seconds, please. If we could keep him, he could help tremendously with… wherever we’re going next.”

“Probably to Hell. The mercenaries still have their weapons locked on us.” Lopez squinted at a display. “I’m surprised they haven’t… Oh, they’ve got a problem. Their reactor must have taken a hit. Something is overheating in their engineering compartment. Maybe Qin’s charge went off close enough to hurt them.”

Even as they stared at the ship, the refinery lit up the night sky, flashing white and hurling pieces of the massive structure in all directions. Dozens of house-sized pieces slammed into the mercenary ship. It pitched, breaking free from the airlock, but not on purpose. Its airlock tube tore in half, one end still attached to the refinery.

“We may have time, after all,” Lopez said. “Qin, go open the hatch and let Casmir’s toy in.”

Kim shambled into navigation as Qin rushed past her. The crusher reached the ship, landing like a tick on its hull.

“Do you think Rache will survive that?” Lopez mused, looking at the destruction on the display. “I think some of the tanks must have blown too.”

Casmir shrugged. He had no idea what had happened after he’d fled.

“If he doesn’t, I’m going to seriously regret sending that money back,” Lopez added.

“He actually paid you? For me?” Casmir touched his chest.

“Two hundred for you, fifty for the case.”

“And you sent the money back?” He stared at her in surprise.

“When I decided we were going to try to get you back, yes. And I never wanted to give him the case. He just assumed he could buy that from us.” She lifted her chin, gaze still locked on the display as the ship flew farther away. “He assumed wrong.”

“Thank you, Captain. I know you could have used that money.”

“You’re welcome.”

“The crusher is aboard,” Qin said over the comm.

“Good,” Lopez said. “I’m getting us out of here.”

“Fine with me.” Casmir slumped against the wall and closed his eyes, exhausted. “Fine with me.”

22

“There are three Kingdom warships heading this way, Captain,” Viggo announced.

Bonita opened her eyes. She’d only closed them for a moment, savoring their victory. Or at least their survival. She was still out the money she’d paid for the case of evil, but the Dragon had fuel, and they could keep flying a little while longer. If the Kingdom didn’t chase them down. She prayed these warships were after Rache, not her, but she didn’t know if she would get that lucky after her disastrous departure from Forseti Station.

“How far away?” Bonita asked.

The largest remains of the refinery were specks in the rear camera now. The slydar-coated Fedallah had disappeared from their scanners as soon as they’d moved more than a thousand meters from it. She doubted it had been damaged beyond repair, but she hoped it would take days before it could go anywhere. And she hoped Rache had died on the refinery.

“Two days away,” Viggo said. “If we want to head for the gate now, we should have time to reach it before they catch up.”

Assuming they could bribe the Kingdom ship that guarded the gate to look the other way.

“Or we could hunker down in Saga’s atmosphere for a while and hope the Kingdom forgets about us. Those ships have to be coming to investigate the destroyed refineries, not us.”

One of the cleaning robots rolled into navigation.

“Being forgotten does sound appealing,” Viggo said.

“Captain Lopez?” Casmir asked, stepping into the hatchway.

He’d removed his helmet, and his hair stuck out in mussy tufts, despite the return of gravity.

“You might as well call me Bonita now that we’ve been through life and death together. Laser is also an option.” She arched her eyebrows, though it had been easier to get people to call her that when her hair had been black instead of gray, and she’d had more opportunities to show off her marksmanship abilities.

She also didn’t know how Casmir felt about her after she’d tried to trick him and turn him over to Rache. Would he forgive her? Normally, she wouldn’t care if someone she barely knew did or not, but he’d helped her, and she’d wronged him. Maybe she’d feel she truly had redeemed herself if he forgave her. At the least, she owed him an apology.

“Laser?” Casmir asked. “The traditional spelling or is a z involved?”

“Always an s. Though in the language of my home system, there’s an accent mark over the a. Láser Lopez.”

“Oh yes, I can see how that makes a big difference.” He flashed his goofy grin.

Kim stepped up behind him, lifting her eyebrows, and his grin faded.

“Ah, can we show you something, Captain Laser?” Casmir asked.

Bonita wasn’t sure why, but it delighted her that he used the name. Maybe because he said it matter-of-factly rather than mockingly, like it was fine by him if she still thought she deserved it.

“Is it trouble?” she asked.

Casmir gave Kim a considering look. She twitched a shoulder.

“Never mind,” Bonita said. “It’s you two. It must be trouble.”

She waved them in.

Casmir plopped down in the empty co-pilot’s pod and waved an interface cable he’d found who knew where. Kim stepped up and held up a tiny chip.

“We thought you might like to see this,” Casmir said and attached one end of the cable to the chip and one to Viggo’s universal port. “Kim stole it from Rache.”

“I didn’t steal it,” Kim said. “I had it in my pocket when he opened the door and shoved me across his briefing room.”

“How did it get into your pocket?” Casmir asked.

Kim hesitated. “It fell in.”

“Yes, I can’t tell you how often that happens to me. I’m walking around someone’s quarters, and deodorant, hairbrushes, and priceless data chips spring off dressers and into my trousers.”

“Funny.” She swatted him.

“This is definitely trouble.” Bonita leaned back in her chair, wondering if this would affect her plan to set course for the gate.

“Honestly,” Kim said, “I thought he would search me and take it, but he got distracted.”

“To death, if we’re lucky,” Bonita murmured.

A conflicted expression crossed Casmir’s face. That surprised Bonita. Even though he wasn’t bleeding from his eyeballs or awash in contusions, she assumed his stay on the Fedallah had been less than pleasant. Surely, as a Kingdom subject, he had to want to see Rache dead. Or at least in prison for life.

“There’s not much on the chip,” Viggo said. “Beginning playback.”

Casmir turned and watched the display intently as video footage of some party’s walk through a deserted ship started up. A crashed deserted ship, Bonita amended, when the team reached a gaping hole in the ceiling with six feet of snow piled below it. They continued to an engineering section where a monkey ran up with a piece of metal.

Neither Casmir nor Kim appeared surprised, but Bonita couldn’t keep from sharing a bewildered look with them. “What is that?”

Casmir paused the playback. “That is Kim’s archaeologist mother.” He pointed at the monkey. “And we believe that is from a gate.”

“Mother? I fail to see the resemblance.”

“Thank you,” Kim murmured without humor.

“She had her brain transferred to the monkey droid before her original body died,” Casmir said. “She’s eccentric but not as inexplicable as what they found. If that truly is a piece of a gate, that’s not only incredible, it’s unprecedented.”

Bonita scratched her jaw. “There aren’t any spare gates—or spare gate parts—in any of the systems, right? Did someone take that from one of the existing ones? That’s strictly forbidden. That’s why the gates are all guarded. Nobody wants someone to tinker and inadvertently cut one system off from the network—and the rest of humanity.”

“I searched the news,” Casmir said, touching his temple, “and there’s nothing about a gate with a missing part out there.” He glanced at Kim. “We think an archaeology team may have discovered some spare parts or maybe even an entire disassembled gate. Which, if true, would be the find of the millennium. It might be what we need to finally understand who built the gates and create one on our own, one to return to Earth and find out what happened to our ancestral home. And if we knew how to replicate them, we could expand and colonize more of the galaxy. This could be the biggest news story of our lives.”

“Huh,” Bonita said.

“I told you she’d be excited,” Casmir told Kim.

“I see.” Kim’s expression remained grave.

Maybe she was the one Rache had tortured.

Casmir let the rest of the footage play, but there wasn’t much more. “We’re not sure how Rache got this, since he didn’t tell Kim anything before we left, but he knew that was her mother, and he implied…” He bit his lip, glancing at his friend again. “We’re concerned that she’s in danger and also that he’s after the gate artifacts himself. To sell to the highest bidder, presumably the highest bidder that isn’t King Jager.”

“Sell?” Bonita raised her eyebrows. She didn’t want to get caught up in doing something stupid for money—again—but she was in a worse situation than she’d been in at the beginning of this. If there was a chance to make a few pesos to tide her over until she could get another legitimate gig…

“We believe this footage may have been taken on Skadi Moon,” Casmir said. “Before we knew you’d come back to get us, we were planning to take one of the mining ships to try to reach it. There’s an archaeology ship in orbit there right now.”

“You’re planning on going on an archaeological dig? Aren’t there still people trying to kill you?”

Casmir grimaced. “I haven’t forgotten, but I can’t just leave the system and hide forever. I need to stay here and figure out who’s after me and how to make them go away. And Kim needs…” He extended a hand toward her.

“If my mother is on that ship or on that moon,” Kim said, “I need to warn her that Rache may be coming for her and her team.” If it’s not already too late, her solemn eyes seemed to add.

“And I need to help Kim, because she’s been helping me all month, and it’s my turn.” Casmir smiled, though it had a worried edge.

“What do you want me to do?” Bonita asked.

“Will you give us a ride over there and comm the ship and see if we can transfer over to join them?” Casmir asked. “If Kim’s mother is there, they should take us. And if they say yes, you can finally get rid of us.”

“Well, that would be a relief.”

“I thought so,” Casmir said. “Will you do it?”

“Yes, but you should know that some military ships are on their way. Two days out. I’m hoping they’re coming because of Rache and the refineries, but… they may see us and veer off.”

“Well, two days is a long time, right?” Casmir asked.

“Oh, ages,” Bonita said.

“If they prove to be overly interested in us, we’ll come up with something. Or hide down on Skadi Moon.”

“Hide? Where?”

Casmir waved to the display. “Wherever that derelict ship has been hiding for centuries.”

Bonita snorted but said, “I’ll try to contact the archaeology ship.”

“Thank you, Captain.” Casmir bowed, and they walked out.

Bonita stroked her chin and wondered if there could be any money to be made from the news story of their lives. If there were numerous chunks of a gate, could she slip away with a piece and sell it? Would someone pay for footage of the wreck site? Since it looked like she was going to live a little longer, she had to get back to thinking about how to keep her ship flying and fund her retirement.

It was some time later that Bonita realized she hadn’t apologized to Casmir.

Casmir tensed when Bonita walked into the lounge, worried she had bad news about the archaeology ship or that she would report that the Fedallah had repaired itself and was shooting after them at top speed.

“We’re en route to that research ship and the moon.” Bonita glanced at Kim, who was jogging on the treadmill, but walked up to Casmir.

He was standing at the porthole, looking toward Skadi Moon. Zee, who stood guard from a few feet away, shifted slightly, prepared to defend him if needed. Casmir smiled slightly, pleased Zee had escaped the refinery.

“I commed them, but they haven’t answered,” Bonita added. “Not even an automatic message.”

“Oh.” Casmir glanced at Kim. “Maybe their whole crew is down on the moon checking out their find.”

“Maybe.” Bonita shrugged easily, but they all knew it was unlikely an entire ship’s crew would leave the ship for any reason. “We’ll be there in about ten hours. Do you have time to help with some repairs?”

“Does Viggo have more vacuums in need of service?” Casmir smiled.

“We took damage as we flew away from the refinery.”

“To… the vacuums?”

“To the ship. Some of the shrapnel was large and hit us hard, and I want the Dragon to be in good shape in case—” She shrugged again. “Just in case. I know you can do more than tinker with robots.”

“Yes.” Casmir turned from the porthole. “Do you want me to start now? What’s most urgent?” He suspected she was worried about the military ships en route, and he didn’t blame her. Since that knight on Forseti had seemed certain he was involved with the bioweapon, he was potentially in as much trouble as Bonita until he figured out how to clear suspicion from his name.

“Not yet.” Bonita held up a hand. “I also came to say something I forgot to say earlier.”

She took a deep breath—a bracing breath?—and Casmir wondered if she had truly come to talk about repairs.

“All right,” he said warily.

“This is hard.” Her gaze shifted to the porthole. “I don’t know why. Maybe because you’re half my age. It’s hard to admit you’re wrong to a kid. And it’s frustrating to realize that life can deal you a set of cards that leaves you desperate enough to set your morals aside. I always figured I’d have it all worked out by the time I was this age, but I’ve got a history of making bad choices. My mother was like that too. Maybe it’s in my genes, and it’s too late to change that. Maybe it was always my fate.”

Casmir realized she was apologizing to him—or getting to that—and he clasped his hands behind his back and did his best to appear nonjudgmental.

“In light of recent revelations,” he said, “I’m inclined to think, now more than ever, that there’s no such thing as a genetic fate or predestination. A person’s upbringing and life experiences do a lot to shape them. A lot.”

Bonita waved a dismissive hand, but Kim squinted at Casmir from the treadmill, paying attention even if she remained silent.

“Whatever,” Bonita said. “I just want to say I’m sorry. I told myself that whoever put that bounty out for you had to want your brain, or some top-secret information you might have in it. Not that they wanted to kill you. Not that it was devil-spawn Captain Rache. If I’d known that, I never would have… Well, I did, and I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you,” Casmir said, thinking she wanted to hear that. And he’d never truly blamed her, not when he’d brought trouble onto her ship from the beginning and hadn’t thought to warn her beforehand.

“You do?” Bonita sounded surprised.

“Yes.”

“Well, good. Thank you. Now if Rache will just turn up dead, my month will be looking up.”

Casmir nodded, even though he didn’t know if he wished that fate for Rache or not. He deserved it, no doubt, but Rache had the answers to some of the questions burning in Casmir’s mind. He might be the only one who did. Casmir wished their conversation had not been interrupted.

“I’ll keep trying to comm the ship.” Bonita lifted a hand and left the lounge.

“What was that about?” Kim asked when she was gone. “Your eyes got haunted when you talked about genes and predestination.”

Casmir held up a finger, realized Rache had held up a finger in the same way, then jerked it down.

He removed a second treadmill from a cabinet, placing it beside Kim’s and setting it up with the straps. If he was going to keep roaming the system at a fraction of Odin’s gravity, he had better start exercising. He remembered Rache’s arm muscles, and his mind boggled at the thought that his own could be anything but scrawny. Of course, he didn’t know what kind of cocktail of drugs and growth hormones Rache took to go along with his cybernetic implants.

“Casmir?” Kim prompted.

“While you were in Rache’s quarters, he and I had a chat.” He strapped the treadmill belt to his waist.

“About why he put a bounty on your head?”

“That was curiosity, I believe.”

Casmir nibbled on his lip and walked, his muscles promptly protesting the extra force exerted by the straps. He couldn’t imagine not telling Kim everything, but he remembered the subtle threats Rache had given to his doctor. For whatever reason, the man didn’t want anyone knowing about his DNA. Which made Casmir want to go back to Odin, take a sample of his own blood, and compare his DNA to every record in the public and university databases. Maybe Kim could compare it to all the medical records on file with the hospitals.

“He had my blood taken,” Casmir said. “And he had his blood taken.”

Kim missed a step on the treadmill and grabbed the bar.

“We are either twin brothers or I am a clone of him. Or he is a clone of me. If either of those, it would have to have been done at a very young age. I saw him with his hood off, and we looked the same age.”

We looked the same, his mind corrected silently. Somehow, that notion bothered him a lot more than the possibility that he could be a clone. That was a little unsettling—and how would Sir Friedrich have spoken to his mother if he was a clone?—but it was a thing that people did occasionally on Odin and even more than occasionally in the rest of the systems.

Kim stared at him, her legs moving, but her brain appearing stuck.

“Yes, I found the revelation rather alarming myself,” Casmir said. “I’m trying to figure out what it means for me, if it changes anything.”

“You’re sure?” she finally asked. “You saw the DNA test results?”

“No, but I saw Rache’s face. I think I may be the only one who has in a long time. The doctor acted like he’d never had access to Rache’s blood before and didn’t know anything about him.”

Kim walked in silence for a while. “Why would anyone clone a baby?”

“I don’t know.”

“You clone a person or animal after they’ve proven their value.”

“Right. Like my colleague Professor Althaus, who’s had the same dog all of his life. Except they’re not all the same dog. He’s admitted that. They look the same and have similar personality traits, but…”

His throat tightened, as if he were having an allergic reaction. No, a distressed reaction. He didn’t want to be similar in any way to Rache. It horrified him to think that any situation, any upbringing, could have prompted him to turn into a cold-hearted killer. A murderer.

“They’re not the same,” Casmir whispered, aware of Kim looking over. “And neither are we. Genes aren’t all that make a man, right? Just because he’s a psychopath…”

“I see why you’re disturbed, but whatever Rache has become, it’s not a disease. You’re not in danger of catching it.”

“If it’s genetic… Psychopathy is, isn’t it?”

“You’ve chosen that label for him. That doesn’t make it accurate.”

“Actually, the media is fond of it.”

“That definitely doesn’t make it accurate.”

Casmir squinted at her. “You were in his quarters.”

“For far longer than it took to watch that video, yes. The door was locked. I was beginning to fear he’d show up later in a negligee and expect sex.”

“Usually, the woman wears the negligee.”

“Oh, is that how it works? You know this isn’t my area of expertise.”

“What were his quarters like?” Casmir didn’t want to be curious or to care at all about Rache, but he couldn’t help it.

“Not what I would have expected. Normal. No weapons collections on display. No notches in the wall of people he’s killed. He had books. A sketch pad in a drawer. Art on the walls.”

“Weird art of grotesquely mutilated bodies?”

“No. Landscapes mostly. From different worlds. There was one that I thought might be the coast outside of the capital, but I wasn’t sure. They were all empty of life. Lonely. Except there was a framed photograph of a beautiful woman.”

“Huh.” That wasn’t what Casmir would have expected either. A sketch pad? What kind of villain drew? And what did he draw?

“A sociopath might be a more accurate label if you truly do share identical genes with him.” Kim sounded skeptical. “I’d want to see the results of that DNA test myself before making assumptions. If your genes are identical, a twin brother seems more plausible than a clone, especially since you don’t know who your parents are. Does he?”

“It didn’t come up.”

“Who raised him?”

“That also didn’t come up. Our chat wasn’t that long, despite you having time for negligee fantasies.”

“Regardless, I can’t believe you have it in your genes to have turned out as a psychopath under any circumstances. You empathize with people, animals, robots, inanimate objects, and even red-headed step lizards.”

“It was a red-headed rock agama. And I don’t empathize with inanimate objects.” He couldn’t argue about the rest.

“I’ve seen you apologize to the couch, Casmir.”

“Only when I’m absent-mindedly thinking about work and don’t realize what I bumped into.”

“Also the coat rack. And the ottoman. You bump into a lot of things around the house.”

“I’m absent-minded a lot.”

“I won’t argue with that.” She grinned and swatted him on the shoulder.

“Thanks. I’d swat you back, but it would be a lot of effort, and I’m already panting here.” Casmir waved to the treadmill.

“That’s because you haven’t been exercising all along. You’ll probably wither up like a salted slug when we step foot back on Odin.”

“Have I mentioned how delightful it is to have such a supportive friend?”

“Not as often as you should.”

“Well… it is.” Casmir managed to return her grin, even if his mood was somber. Concerned.

He was glad she was here with him, that he wasn’t facing all of this alone. He’d once described Kim to his adoptive mother as mishpokhe—family. At the time, he’d been explaining her as not-a-girlfriend-but-a-very-good-friend. It still seemed apt. He had always been aware of the sense of family that transcended blood ties—for him, how not?—and it seemed to be more important than ever for him.

“Pardon the interruption,” came Viggo’s voice from the nearest speaker, “but the captain wishes to inform you that a combat shuttle has departed from the vicinity of the destroyed refinery. It appears to have originated at the mercenary ship.”

“Which way is it heading?” Casmir asked, afraid he didn’t want to know, afraid Rache was alive and aboard it.

“The same direction as we are.”

Casmir slowed the treadmill and gripped the railings for support.

“If we see him again,” Kim said, “you should ask him about his parents and who raised him.”

“If we see him again, I think he’s going to kill us.”

THE END

SHIP OF RUIN

1

Professor Casmir Dabrowski banged his toe on the lip of the hatchway as he stepped into navigation. He was surprised at the size of the research vessel they were approaching, the display showing its cylindrical length and three large rings, all spinning to create artificial gravity as it orbited the frozen moon of Skadi. The Machu Picchu, its identification transmitter said.

“Morning, Casmir,” Captain Bonita “Laser” Lopez said from the pilot’s pod, the seat cupping her like an egg. “We’re less than a half hour away now.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“Nobody else trips going through the hatchways.”

“They’re not uniform. The lip on the hatchway going into the lounge is at least a centimeter higher, and there isn’t one at all when you walk into my cabin. In engineering, it’s like stepping up into a bathtub.”

“Facts that do not negate my statement.”

Casmir, not in the mood to explain that his strabismus impaired his depth perception, pointed at the ship ahead of them. “Have they responded to your attempts to comm them yet?”

“No.”

Casmir could think of a lot of reasons a research vessel wouldn’t respond to their comms. Unfortunately, none of them were good.

“They’re not answering the Kingdom warships, either, if that makes you feel less rejected,” Bonita said.

“I wasn’t feeling rejected. Not for that. Give me a minute, and I can come up with a list that applies to life in general.”

“You and me both, kid.”

Casmir patted her on the shoulder.

He couldn’t say that the bounty-hunter-and-smuggler Bonita Lopez reminded him of his loving and supportive physical-therapist mother, beyond their shared lack of interest in coloring their gray hair, but he felt a kinship toward Bonita since she’d helped him escape from Tenebris Rache and his nefarious band of pirate-mercenaries. Actually, the pirate-mercenaries were probably run-of-the-mill. Rache was nefarious. And apparently, Casmir’s identical twin. A full day later, the revelation was still mind-boggling.

He wished he could talk to his mother about it, not that his adoptive mother would have any knowledge of Rache. She hadn’t known where Casmir had come from, beyond whatever the placement agency in Zamek had told her, the agency that had disappeared when he’d been little. Still, he found himself missing Shabbat dinners with his parents and spilling the details of his life to them. He hadn’t dared answer their messages these past weeks, other than a brief note to say he was fine, off-planet, and that he would explain it all when he got home. He was too worried that crushers would show up on their doorstep if whoever wanted him dead learned how close he still was with them.

“Remember those three Kingdom warships that were heading out to Saga to check on the destroyed refineries?” Bonita waved to the scanner display. “Two of them are still on course.”

“I don’t suppose the third decided the mission was boring and turned for home.”

“It’s veered off and is on course for the same research vessel you’ve talked me into visiting.” Bonita gave him a frank look over her shoulder. “Perhaps this would be a good time to remind you that we didn’t leave Forseti Station under the best of circumstances and may be wanted by the Kingdom Guard.”

“I haven’t forgotten.” Casmir had personally disabled the station’s torpedoes so the Stellar Dragon could escape. “How far away is that warship?”

“We’ll get there a good ten hours before them, which gives us some time to figure out if anyone on the research vessel is left alive.”

Casmir stared at her. “Why wouldn’t they be alive?”

“You tell me. What else could explain their comm silence?”

“I assumed they didn’t want to talk to us because we’re… dubious.”

Bonita snorted. “Maybe.”

That, however, wouldn’t explain why the researchers weren’t speaking with the warship. Casmir rubbed his shaggy hair, contemplating the conundrum and wondering if Laser Lopez could wield trimmers. Kim had already told him that bacteriologists who’d endured eight years of higher education did not cut hair.

“Should we dock with their ship and go see if they’re all right?” Casmir asked. “Maybe they need help.”

“How would you give it? By fixing their robot vacuums?”

“I do have a few more skills than that.”

“Medical skills?”

“Well, no.” Casmir almost pointed out that Kim had medical skills, but she was a researcher, not a doctor. She made customized strains of bacteria; she didn’t bandage owies.

“I know you were thinking of asking for a ride with those guys,” Bonita said, “but we might want to abort this. If the crew is gone or dead, the Kingdom Fleet may think we’re on an illegal salvage mission and give chase when we try to leave. Or they could simply comm the Kingdom ships guarding the gate to tell them not to let us through. I’m afraid the Dragon doesn’t have a slydar-coated hull. But if we leave now, while the Kingdom ships are preoccupied with Rache’s destruction of those refineries…”

Casmir blew out a slow breath. “I need to stay in the system and figure out who wants me dead. And then convince them not to want that.”

“And remind me how visiting this research ship orbiting a moon in the armpit end of your system is going to convince anyone of anything?”

“It’s not, but Kim’s mother is missing, and we believe she was last seen in a video recorded on that very moon by archaeologists from that ship. She’s my friend, and I have to help her.”

Casmir also hoped the research ship would give him and Kim sanctuary. Bonita had burned some bridges and wanted to leave the system, so he didn’t expect her to stay longer than it took to drop them off.

“Kim’s mother, formerly a person and now a person’s brain inside an android monkey.”

“Technically, there was a transfer of memory and consciousness. No actual brain matter is inserted into the computer chips and circuits. That would be messy.”

“Whatever,” Bonita said. “How much trouble can she truly be in? Androids are fairly indestructible.”

“Fairly.” The crushers could disassemble one quickly enough, though Casmir didn’t have a reason to suspect the archaeological mission had anything to do with the person or organization that kept sending the killer robots after him. “But she hasn’t responded to Kim’s network messages, just as this ship hasn’t responded to our comm attempts.”

“If she was last seen on the moon, can’t we skip visiting this ship and go straight down there?”

“We can if you find an ancient wreck down there for us to investigate.” Casmir had looked earlier and knew nothing showed up on the scanners.

Bonita shook her head. “If there’s a ship, it’s probably buried under a glacier. I can only imagine how a team of archaeologists found it to start with.”

“The answer could be on the Machu Picchu.”

“Think you could find it in ten hours before the warship arrives and arrests us for snooping?”

“That would be ideal.” Casmir’s nerves tangled like wires stored in a junk drawer as he glanced at the scanner display. He’d been cavalier about the warships when he first talked Bonita into taking them to the research vessel, but at the time, he’d been certain they would head straight after Rache and ignore her little freighter. He didn’t want to get Bonita in trouble. More trouble. “Has that warship commed us?”

“No.”

“Do you mind if we comm them?”

Bonita peered over the side of her pod at him. “Do I need to remind you that the Kingdom authorities know we fled Forseti Station with a bioweapon in the hold? And that they have no way to know that Captain Rache took it from us and that he may or may not be in possession of it now?”

“No, I have an excellent memory.” Casmir smiled, though Rache was the last thing he wanted to think about. He pointedly hadn’t asked if the mercenary shuttle, which had left the destroyed refinery shortly after they had, was still heading in the same direction as they were. “But in order to ensure the Kingdom doesn’t think we’re scavenging that ship, I can have a chat with the captain.”

“Captains don’t chat with fugitives. You’ll be lucky to get the sub-lieutenant in charge of pots and pans in the mess.”

“Just comm them, please. Let’s find out now if I can schmooze them into working with us. Otherwise, you can drop Kim, Zee, and me off and head out of the system. I know you were interested in the gate mystery and possibly capitalizing on it to make some money, but there must be less-dangerous gigs.”

“Trust me, I’ve been thinking about that. Fine. I’m contacting them and requesting a chat.”

“How are you going to get them to believe we don’t have the bioweapon and never wanted it in the first place?” Kim asked quietly.

Casmir jumped. “I didn’t hear you back there.”

“That’s because she doesn’t trip over the hatchway,” Bonita said.

Kim ignored her and merely focused on Casmir, raising her eyebrows in inquiry.

Remember that message I left in the torpedo launchers that we sabotaged? he asked, switching to chip-to-chip communication, since he hadn’t told Bonita about that attempt to save his own ass. To be fair, she’d been trying to collect his bounty then.

Yes. But what are the odds they believed it? The station tech who found it, if it was found, may have erased it without informing anyone.

Casmir shrugged. I’m going to volunteer for truth drugs. That’s probably the only way to clear our names.

Eslevoamytal, the drug the military uses for interrogations, has an eighty-five percent efficacy rate. Some people can beat it, so juries are instructed not to base their verdicts entirely on testimony given under its influence.

Are you sure? It always seems to work wonderfully in the police procedurals.

She gave him the flat look the comment deserved.

“They’re accepting our comm,” Bonita said. “Get ready to schmooze.”

Casmir faced the display as the view of the Machu Picchu minimized, replaced by a man in a blue military galaxy suit with gold trim. It was the captain, not a pot-scrubber, and Casmir recognized him. Given how few interactions he’d ever had with Fleet officers, that surprised him, and not in a good way. His left eye blinked three times in his habitual nervous tic.

“Casmir Dabrowski,” the captain said coolly. “It really is you. I recognize the eye.”

Casmir cleared his throat. “I’m so glad it made an impression on you, Sora Ishii. Though I was hoping you’d remember me more for my ability to annihilate your robots with my robots.”

“It’s Captain Ishii, and I remember you getting lucky once. I remember you crying a lot more often than that.”

“Then it’s Professor Dabrowski, or Scholar if you prefer the general academic title for someone with an advanced degree, and I was lucky in all of our encounters but the last. And for the record, those were victory tears.” Casmir grew aware of Kim and Bonita gaping at him, but he couldn’t keep from adding, “That’s why they were accompanied by whooping.”

Ishii’s eyes narrowed.

“If this is how you schmooze people, Casmir,” Bonita whispered, “you’re not doing it right.”

“The original Yiddish definition of that word conveys only that it’s an intimate chat,” he murmured while wondering if Ishii’s bridge officers were also gaping at their captain in puzzlement at the odd conversation. The video pickup only focused on his face.

“I understand you’ve turned criminal of late, Professor,” Ishii said. “Upset by the paltriness of your university pay?”

Casmir took a deep breath, worried Kim was right and that the message he’d left on Forseti Station hadn’t been seen by anyone in authority. Or if it had been seen, it had been ignored.

“Actually, no. A pair of crushers appeared at the university, tried to kill me, and a knight warned me to flee the planet. The entire system, actually. Since then, all I’ve been doing is trying to stay alive and figure out what’s going on. I’d love to tell you about it.” Casmir worried Ishii would turn him down, deeming his confession too lowly to bother obtaining—it was true this was more a matter for the Kingdom Guard than the military. Hoping to pique his interest, Casmir added, “I also have some intelligence on Captain Rache that you may find useful. He blew up a couple of refineries, you may have noticed.”

Kim stirred behind him, but Casmir kept his attention on the display.

Ishii’s face hadn’t been warm before, but now it turned to ice. “You’ll tell me everything you know. From the brig of my Great Raptor 7 warship.” His chin came up, as if he were bragging. Maybe he was. Letting Casmir know he’d gotten a toy far snazzier than the robots they’d made at camp that summer?

“The brig wouldn’t be my first choice for a tête-à-tête, but I volunteer to answer any questions you have while under the influence of one of your truth drugs. I’m eager to clear my name.” Casmir smiled as warmly as he could, hoping that twenty-odd years and a lot of growing up would keep Ishii from holding a grudge.

Any questions? Kim’s text scrolled down his contact. Such as that you and Rache apparently share faces? And all of your DNA?

Casmir kept his smile locked in place, though alarm charged through his veins at the reminder. He hadn’t forgotten about that, but it hadn’t occurred to him that it might come up. Which it should have, since he’d just volunteered to share information on Rache’s recent activities.

“I’m sure you are,” Ishii said, his dark eyes closing to slits. Suspicious slits. “We’ll be there soon. If you want me to look favorably upon your transgressions, present and past, you’ll stay away from that research vessel. Is that freighter’s captain present?”

Casmir looked to Bonita, silently asking if she wanted to admit to being present.

“Captain Laser Lopez here,” she said.

Ishii snorted. “Laser, right. Listen, Lopez. That research vessel has just been declared off limits due to a medical quarantine. You will not dock with it and will not go aboard. If you do, we will blow up your ship and everyone on it, as will be our right per Kingdom Military Command Procedures, Chapter 12, Quarantines, Section 3, Failure to Comply. Do you understand?”

He was speaking to Bonita, but his icy gaze remained locked on Casmir.

Casmir didn’t allow himself to squirm under it. Or believe that Ishii truly wanted to kill him. He did allow himself to realize that twenty-odd years might not have been long enough for memories of harsh emotions from rivalries to fade.

“We’re not to dock with the research vessel,” Bonita said. “Got it, Captain.”

She made a circle with her finger and thumb that likely referenced one of Ishii’s orifices in an uncomplimentary way, but she kept her hand out of sight under the console.

The comm closed, Ishii’s face disappearing, and the view of the research vessel returned. The quarantined research vessel. Or so Ishii claimed. Was he lying or exaggerating the truth to make Casmir and his allies too fearful to visit it before the warship arrived?

“Transgressions present and past?” Kim asked. “What did that refer to?”

“Robotics camp.” Casmir clasped his hands behind his back. “When we were ten, we spent a summer doing weekly battles with new robots we constructed and perfected during the days leading up to the competitions. Robot Wars, we called them. I loved it. We competed as teams. He was the leader of his team, and I was the leader of mine, so we sniped back and forth a lot. My team’s robot won every week except for one—he’s the one who got lucky that last week—and I suspected him or someone on his team of cheating, because we saw afterward that ours had been damaged, inside the casing where it couldn’t have been an accident. He always accused me of cheating.”

“I assume you didn’t,” Kim said.

“No, of course not, but thank you for assuming that. He’s noble, from a rich family, and he was a snot at that age. Maybe he still is.”

Bonita leaned forward in her pod and dropped her face in her palm. “Robot Wars. Of all the military officers in the Kingdom Fleet, I get one with a grudge against my passenger, due to Robot Wars.”

A hum vibrated through the deck, and Casmir felt the shift in gravity as the Stellar Dragon increased its deceleration.

“Wait.” He lifted a hand. “Don’t stop.”

“We can’t dock now,” Bonita said. “I’m not giving that smug ass a reason to fire on us.”

“We won’t dock, but there must be a way we can still check out that ship before they get here. What if Kim’s mother is on there? As a droid, she wouldn’t show up on a life-detector scan. But if they’re going to blow up the ship…”

Casmir looked over his shoulder and met Kim’s grave eyes.

“They said they’d blow us up,” Bonita said, “not the research ship.”

“If they’re willing to blow us up for docking with a quarantined ship, I’m betting they already have orders to blow it up. If it truly is quarantined.” Casmir shrugged. “It’s possible he was trying to scare us, but I wouldn’t think a Kingdom ship captain would lie in front of his crew, and it looked like he was on the bridge, didn’t it?”

“It did,” Bonita said.

“You may be correct, Casmir,” Viggo, the ship’s computer and a previous owner who’d uploaded his consciousness into the Dragon, said. “I just read the chapter on quarantines that the captain quoted, and the military has the right to destroy both military and civilian vessels suspected of a virus outbreak if the crew and passengers are believed to be deceased. I am currently reading no life forms over there.”

“Wait, what virus?” Bonita lifted both hands. “This can’t have anything to do with the bioweapon we had. We didn’t come by here. Even if those vials and Rache somehow made it off that refinery, he hasn’t had time to get over here either.”

Casmir spread his hands. “I don’t know. That’s why we should investigate. Or send someone impervious to viruses to investigate.”

“Zee?” Kim asked.

“Zee.” Casmir nodded. “He’s capable of recording what he sees. We can send him over without docking and disobeying Ishii, and he can come back before anyone even notices him. We’ll run him through the Dragon’s decontamination chamber just in case.”

Kim closed her eyes and nodded slightly. Casmir doubted she’d wanted to ask anyone to get into trouble on her behalf, but she had to be worried that her mother might be over there—and in danger of being blown up. And then there was the mystery of where the rest of the crew had gone. What was going on out here, in the armpit of the system, as Bonita had called it?

“Me parece una mala idea,” Bonita grumbled as she adjusted their speed again. “I should know better than to listen to passengers.”

“Even delightful passengers who fix your ship’s robot vacuums?” Casmir asked.

“Especially them.”

2

Dr. Yas Peshlakai sat shoulder to shoulder with Chief Jess Khonsari in the middle row of one of the Fedallah’s two combat shuttles. A harness belted him in, but he felt the g-forces shift as Rache switched from accelerating to decelerating toward Saga’s icy moon, Skadi. Or maybe he was targeting the escaped smuggler ship and his quirky twin that nobody else knew about. Or even the research vessel orbiting the moon. Rache hadn’t said anything of their plans or their destination, just that he needed his doctor along.

Apparently, he also needed two giant cyborg mercenaries and his assassin along. The hulking men in their combat armor took up the back row of seats. The man named Chaplain was Rache’s size, barely over five and a half feet tall, and sat on Yas’s other side, also in full combat armor, save for his helmet.

Yas hadn’t seen the man in sickbay yet and didn’t know if he had any cybernetic implants, but he barely looked human, with tattoos swirling and throbbing as they danced across his face with every movement. When he opened his mouth, sharpened metal teeth glinted where human ones should have been.

Jess’s gloved fingers tapped restlessly on her thigh. Yas wondered when she’d taken her last dose of the trylochanix she’d stolen from sickbay. Knowing she was likely addicted to the potent painkiller and antidepressant had only disturbed him on moral and humanitarian levels when they had been on the Fedallah, a large warship with numerous engineers and numerous failsafes; now that Jess was likely the only one here who knew how to fix mechanical issues, he wished he’d spoken to her about her problem earlier.

Yas shook his head. With a murderer on one side, a drug addict on the other, and a bunch of gun-stroking meatheads behind him, he had little confidence in his ability to survive the near future. Whatever it would entail.

“Captain,” Yas said, since none of the others had addressed their putative leader during the first half of the trip, “will you be briefing us before we reach our destination? Or telling us what our destination is?”

Rache looked over his shoulder, his hair covered and his face masked, as usual.

Yas did not point out that he knew what the man looked like now, in part because he doubted anyone else in the shuttle did, and in part because it was possible he didn’t truly know. He’d seen Rache’s twin brother, Casmir Dabrowski, but Rache might be hiding some disfigurement that had nothing to do with genetics. The mystery around Rache’s origins puzzled Yas. The fact that he had some Odinese robotics professor for a twin brother didn’t seem that significant. Especially since they apparently hadn’t been raised together and hadn’t known of each other’s existence until recently.

Was it the fact that the brother was from Odin? Because it implied Rache was from Odin? Or at least the Kingdom? That wasn’t surprising. Rache had a Kingdom accent, so Yas suspected his origins were common knowledge. What Odin had done to kindle such hatred in him was another story. Yas could only guess.

“With luck,” Rache said, “we’re going to retrieve something before that research vessel sends a team down to get it or that warship gets here and sends soldiers down to get it.”

“That circuit board thing?” Yas asked before considering if Rache would be irritated that he’d hinted of the video they had watched together. “Aren’t we assuming they already pulled it up? And it’s what they were killed for?”

Jess eyed him curiously.

“That particular piece I’m sure they took. But I’m guessing there’s a lot more down there.” Rache tapped the control console, and the display shifted from the frosty white moon to an image of the monkey-droid holding up her find. He zoomed in until the screen filled with just the circuit board. Then it zoomed out, far out, and a great circular shape filled a dark background.

Yas had no trouble recognizing that. It was one of the twelve stationary wormhole gates that linked the Twelve Systems humanity had colonized two thousand years earlier.

“Shit,” Jess said. “Is that a piece of one of the gates?”

“A piece of a gate,” Rache said. “Probably. We’re only going by the video. Videos can be faked. But I suspect this one was not.”

Yas made a strangled noise. Yes, probably not, given that he’d pulled the chip containing it out of a capsule in a man’s colon. The engineer clearly hadn’t wanted the information to fall into the wrong hands. Such as Rache’s?

Yas grimaced, not wanting to see that. He’d promised to serve as the mercenary’s ship doctor for five years, in exchange for Rache saving his life, but he hadn’t promised his loyalty beyond that.

“That first picture looked like it was taken in a ship,” Jess said. “Is there a wreck down there, sir? A very old wreck?”

“We’re going to find out. The Fedallah needs extensive repairs and to hide from the Kingdom warships while it undergoes them. It’ll be four or five days before it can leave the system. I’m giving us that much time to find the wreck and anything valuable it might contain.”

“I didn’t know treasure hunting was one of your hobbies, Captain,” Yas said, keeping his tone polite.

As much as he didn’t want to bow and scrape before the man, he’d fallen into addressing him in the same respectful manner that his mercenaries did. It seemed safest. Rache always had an air of danger around him, like an old-fashioned stick of dynamite ready to explode if mishandled. Someday, when he did snap, Yas didn’t want to be standing next to him.

Back home, Yas had been a respected surgeon and toxicologist. Until he’d been framed for murder. Here, he was… not nothing, but certainly nobody with resources and friends to stand up for him. It was depressing to admit, but all he had was Rache.

“I’ll do much to keep King Jager from getting ahold of the gate technology,” Rache said. “The Kingdom is not going to duplicate the gates, build new routes to new systems, and colonize and spread their antiquated beliefs and prejudices to the rest of the galaxy. Nor will they turn it into a weapon to be used against people in other systems. They have enough weapons already.”

“Nobody knows who made the gates or how to replicate the technology, right?” Yas whispered to Jess. As a doctor, he wasn’t the most up-to-date person when it came to space-travel technology.

“That’s right, Doc,” she replied, not bothering to whisper. “Some people think it was aliens that have been hiding ever since humans have had telescopes strong enough to see other planets.” She lifted her hands, fingers curling like claws, as if to emulate some evil predatory aliens—or maybe boogeymen from children’s closets. “Others think humans were the ones to make and place the gates before sending out the colony ships, and that we’ve since lost the technology. Disassembling the existing gates to try to better understand them is strictly forbidden since if we broke something, we’d be cutting off an entire system from the other eleven. It’s possible that breaking one could even bring down the entire network.”

“But if we had a spare…”

“We might be able to reverse-engineer it and finally learn the technology. There’s no known physics, such as we understand it, that would allow for wormholes. And yet…” Jess waved a hand toward the stars. “Three weeks ago, we were in System Hind, ten thousand light years away.”

Jess leaned forward in her seat and tapped a display built into the hull beside her. “Sir, how are we going to find the wreck? Nothing shows up on the scanners except for a couple of crashed robotic explorers that look as dusty and old as the Kingdom’s beliefs.”

“I’ve got a search algorithm crosschecking publicly available references to the moon with the existing maps of Skadi, looking for trenches and fissures in the icy surface large enough to hide a ship. It’s compiling a list of some likely spots to check first. If there are too many for us to search quickly, we’ll try the research ship in orbit. The Machu Picchu, its ident transmitter says.”

“If they’re the ones who originally sent that team to the surface, it seems like they must know where the wreck is.” Yas didn’t want to recommend Rache go interrogate people, but he was a little surprised the mercenary hadn’t opted for that from the start.

“If they’re alive, I’m sure they do.”

If they’re alive. Yas remembered the mysteriously dead team on the refinery. Did Rache believe the crew of the research vessel had suffered the same malady? Was that why he wanted to avoid it?

“You think the people we found dead on the refinery originally came from there?” Yas asked.

“They were in a short-range shuttle. It had to come from somewhere, and I don’t see any other research vessels in the area.”

“Probably because there are other less inhospitable and boring places in the system to research,” Jess suggested.

Chaplain watched the exchange but said nothing. The grunts might as well have been sleeping for all the input they gave.

“If we find this wrecked ship on the moon,” Yas said slowly, “we could still have to deal with whatever killed those researchers.”

Rache glanced back. “Do you deem that likely?”

Yas hesitated. He had never identified a pathogen or poison or anything else under the microscope. He’d only seen the cellular damage itself. Damage that had killed all of those people within days. But had it originated at their dig site? Or was it that they’d found something important, and someone else had killed them in a creative way so they could take the secret for themselves without anyone linking the murders to them?

“It’s two hundred degrees below zero on the surface of Skadi,” Rache added, “and there’s never been any life discovered there.”

“I agree it’s unlikely that there’s a virus or bacterium down there,” Yas said.

“It looks like your two prisoners are heading to the research ship, Captain,” Jess said, tapping the scanner display.

“I know,” Rache said.

“I admit, sir, I thought we were going after them when you ordered us all to the shuttle.” Jess waved toward the big armed men in the back row and at Chaplain. “To pay them back for all that damage the ship took before we got out of there.”

Chaplain flashed a fang-filled grin. Someone in the back cracked his knuckles. The grunts were awake, after all.

“It crossed my mind,” Rache said.

His tone wasn’t as icy as it got when he talked about the Kingdom. Yas didn’t know if Sato and Dabrowski had been responsible for the premature explosions on the refinery—he hadn’t been there—or if the crew of the smuggler ship had handled that as part of a rescue attempt, but he’d witnessed Rache grow irked before at his own mistakes. He seemed more inclined to blame himself than whoever had bested him, whether smuggler captain or robot sentry. Which again made Yas wonder how the Kingdom had gotten so deeply under his skin. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be something that Rache considered at least partially his fault.

“We’ll capture them and interrogate them if we need to,” Rache said. “That’s a Kingdom research vessel, and the dead on the team hiding in the refinery were Kingdom engineers and archaeologists. And like I said, I’m not letting the Kingdom claim the secrets of the gate for itself.”

Kim caught herself clenching a fist as she stood at Casmir’s shoulder in navigation, watching the video footage transmitted back to them from the crusher he’d made and dubbed Zee.

The six-and-a-half-foot tar-colored and nearly indestructible robot existed as a liquid or a solid, depending on its needs, and was currently in humanoid form. It—he, Casmir always called it—had timed the spin of the research vessel, sprung from the Dragon’s airlock chamber, arrowed hundreds of meters over to the other ship, and forced open a hatch to gain access. He had done it in less than thirty seconds, fast enough that the Kingdom warship, still some eight hours away, may not have noticed.

On the video, the empty corridors of the Machu Picchu passed quickly, the crusher running instead of walking, the ship’s spin gravity making it easy. Zee reached the bridge—and the first body.

Kim’s shoulders slumped. She’d had a niggling suspicion they would find everyone dead.

Was this the captain or first mate? Whoever it was had died on the deck next to a command chair. The woman wore a galaxy suit with the helmet on.

“I was afraid of that,” Casmir whispered. “I wasn’t being rejected earlier. They weren’t answering the comm because they’re dead.” He rubbed his face. “Maybe there is a deadly virus.”

He looked at Kim.

She could only shrug. “You should have asked Rache more questions when you were chatting with him.”

“I was distracted by his doctor shoving a giant needle in my jugular to take a blood sample.”

Bonita looked back at him, and he fell silent, waving a dismissive hand.

Casmir had told Kim all about his new knowledge of the twin brother he’d never known he had, but she didn’t think he’d told the captain or her assistant, Qin. Who wanted to admit to sharing identical DNA with an infamous pirate loathed by the entire Kingdom?

The crusher walked around the bridge, recording everything.

Kim didn’t see any other bodies. “You’d think there would be more people up there if they all died at their duty stations.”

“Maybe they died in their bunks,” Bonita said. “Or puking out their guts in the lav.” She slanted Kim a hard look.

Kim refused to feel bad that she’d infected her with a virus, not when Bonita had been in the middle of enacting her plan to hand Casmir over to Rache for two-hundred-thousand crowns.

“Zee, please check the computer banks for logs and to see if the Machu Picchu has shuttles that were launched.” Casmir glanced at Kim. “Also keep your eye out for a monkey-shaped droid.”

The crusher was capable of speech, but it complied without comment. The robots seemed designed to be silent killers rather than conversationalists. Kim hadn’t known the things could speak at all until Casmir created Zee, and he had introduced himself.

She noticed something as Zee walked near the command chair again. “That dead woman is wearing an oxygen tank. Isn’t the life support working on the ship?”

“Ah?” Casmir held up a finger as he checked something—he was linked to the crusher through his embedded chip. “Zee shows the temperature is a pleasant twenty degrees Celsius over there, with the air set to the same mix as in Odin’s atmosphere. Environmental controls appear to be working fine.”

“So, for some reason, she was relying on independent oxygen.” Kim grimaced, afraid the virus scenario looked more and more likely. But why hadn’t that woman’s galaxy suit protected her? Had she donned it too late? Kim hadn’t noticed any damage that would have allowed an airborne pathogen to penetrate the self-contained suit.

“The ship’s computers are protected by passwords and require retina scans,” Zee said. “I am unable to gain access.”

“Right.” Casmir didn’t sound surprised. “Head to the shuttle bay and do a manual check to see if they were launched. And then check sickbay and engineering to see if anything is amiss. I guess we’ll do a check of crew quarters last if there’s time.” He met Kim’s eyes. “I don’t suppose your mother is the type to keep a diary.”

“She has a computer brain, so she remembers everything she sees.”

“I guess that’s a no.”

“I don’t even know if she ever did.” Kim shrugged. “She’s my mother, but… she had me delivered in an artificial womb after she—her human body—died. And she handed me over to my father for care when I was young. She visited regularly, but I honestly don’t know her well. My father says I’m like her, or like she was when she was human, but—”

She shrugged again. She was here, trying to find her mother out of a familial sense of obligation, not because she felt great love for the woman. She wasn’t sure she’d ever loved anyone. She never felt completely comfortable around her father and half-brothers even though she usually saw them every week. That, she also did out of a sense of obligation. And because it pleased her father when she came to workouts at the dojo. She’d long suspected that part of her was broken, the part that felt love and other strong human emotions. Sometimes, she felt like the one in an android body.

“Odd,” Casmir murmured.

For a confused second, Kim thought he’d read her thoughts somehow, but he waved at the video. The crusher was striding through engineering, where there weren’t any alarms showing, and everything appeared to be operating within normal parameters.

“There haven’t been any other bodies,” he added. “It’s a big ship. You’d expect…” He paused, accessing the network. “For that model, it looks like a crew of thirty or forty is typical, and then it can hold hundreds of research scientists and their equipment. There are levels and levels of laboratories devoted to the various sciences. Zee passed a bunch of them on the way to engineering, and I didn’t see any bodies.”

Kim focused on the display, not admitting that her thoughts had wandered and she hadn’t noticed. “At least one team went to the moon, we know.”

“Days ago, yes. It would have to have been days ago. I wonder where Rache got the footage that you liberated.”

“I am unable to access the systems in engineering,” Zee said. “I will check the shuttle bay next.”

“Good,” Casmir said. “Thank you, Zee.”

“You’re the only one I’ve met who says please and thank-you to robots,” Bonita told him, drumming her fingers on the control console and watching the warship approach on the scanner display.

“I doubt that’s true,” Casmir said.

“He also apologizes to the furniture at home.” Kim tried a smile, though she wasn’t in the mood, and it was a half-hearted attempt at a joke.

“I try not to make enemies of humans, robots, or furnishings.”

“Just fellow students in robotics camps?” Kim couldn’t believe they’d run into the one person in the Kingdom Fleet that knew Casmir—and didn’t like him. She vowed to stand next to him and watch out for him in that interrogation.

“I hadn’t yet fully developed my life policies at ten,” Casmir said.

“One shuttle has been launched,” Zee announced from the threshold of the bay, “and three remain docked.”

“Captain Laser,” Casmir said, “now that we’re closer, can you search the moon to see if there’s any sign of that shuttle?”

“Checking.” Bonita smiled slightly.

Maybe she was pleased that Casmir had agreed to use her nickname.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything in that bay that would suggest where the shuttle went?” Casmir asked.

“Negative,” Zee said.

“Doesn’t anybody leave handwritten diaries around?”

“I was not programmed with instructions for journaling,” Zee stated.

“We can try adding that code in the future.” Casmir smiled faintly, but he looked tense. He also kept glancing at the approaching warship. “Check sickbay next, please, Zee.”

The crusher jogged off again.

“That may be ugly,” Kim said quietly.

“You think that’s where all the bodies of the missing crew will be?” Casmir asked. “All except the one person who stayed to die on the bridge?”

“That would be my guess.”

The crusher strode into sickbay. There were a couple of bodies under sheets but not as many as Kim expected. The crusher strode deeper into what turned out to be a facility full of laboratories as well as patient-care areas. He came to a large well-lit room in the back, sectioned off with a thick Glasnax wall. Several bodies lay on temporary cots while others sprawled on the deck. They weren’t in galaxy suits but instead wore a mishmash of civilian clothing and what had to be ship’s uniforms.

A big sign on the transparent wall read: Quarantine Chamber.

“There’s your dead crew,” Bonita said.

As the crusher stopped in front of the locked Glasnax door, one of the “bodies” sat up and stared at it. A woman. She poked someone beside her, and other people sat up.

“Or not so dead,” Bonita said as Casmir gaped.

A few of the people rose to their feet, frowning and pointing at the crusher. One pulled out a stunner. They were speaking, but the crusher either wasn’t recording audio, or the quarantine wall was soundproof.

“Are they sick?” Casmir asked. “Or protecting themselves from those who were sick on their ship?”

Kim shook her head. There wasn’t any way to know without speaking with them.

“Can you have Zee ask them questions?” she asked.

“They don’t show up on my scans,” Bonita said, running a new one. “I mean, it’s hard to pick out individuals under any circumstances, but from this close, I ought to be able to read their body heat. Viggo’s scanners are fairly sensitive.”

“Correction,” Viggo said. “My scanners are exquisite. They were upgraded less than five years ago.”

“Maybe the quarantine chamber insulates them,” Casmir said. “Sickbay is already right in the center of the ship, according to the schematic I pulled up.”

“That could be,” Bonita said.

“Say hello to them, Zee,” Casmir said.

“Hello,” Zee announced, his voice coming over the link without trouble. “I am a Z-6000, programmed to protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski.”

“Why does he always say my name first when he does his intro?” Kim asked.

Casmir gave her a lopsided smile. “I prioritized you.”

That was sweet, and she appreciated it, but the other way around would have been more logical. “You do know I’m more likely to survive a fight than you are, right?”

The smile turned into a grin. “I have no doubt. But your work is more likely to change the world—the systems—for the better than mine. If I had to pick, I’d rather you make it.”

Kim swallowed a lump of emotion. She should have hugged him, but she’d never been that comfortable with physical contact, even with old friends. There was a part of her that sometimes wished she had romantic feelings for him, but aside from vaguely admiring the agile interplay of muscles of men at the dojo now and then, she’d never been attracted to anyone. She doubted she was capable of such feelings. They were wrapped up with love, and as she’d just been thinking, she hadn’t ever experienced that.

“You’re a good man, Casmir,” she managed to say.

His grin widened, and he gave her a quick bow before returning his focus to the camera display. “A good man who can’t hear what those people are saying.”

Fortunately, she’d never gotten the sense that he harbored some secret romantic feelings for her. He was the best friend she’d ever had, and she would hate for anything to get in the way of that.

“It doesn’t look like they heard the crusher’s proclamation,” Bonita said.

“Is there a speaker somewhere?” Kim asked. “There must be a way to communicate with those people.”

“It might be easier to go over there in person.” Casmir waved at them. They’d all stood up—at least thirty of them—and backed to the far wall. A couple more stunners appeared, and they pointed nervously at Zee.

Kim wondered if they’d seen the news from Odin about the crushers destroying the university parking garage and killing a knight. Even if they hadn’t, Casmir’s robots looked like pure evil. She would also find one alarming if it appeared out of nowhere on her ship.

“If there’s a virus, that’s not a good idea,” Kim said.

“If there’s a warship planning to blow them up, it’s definitely not a good idea.” Bonita glanced again at the approaching vessel.

Casmir frowned. “If Viggo’s exquisite scanners can’t detect those people on board from right next door, then the warship won’t have sensed them either. If they have orders to destroy that ship…”

“We better comm them again and let them know there are people alive there,” Kim said.

“Or we could rescue everyone and bring them back here to safety.” Casmir’s eyes glinted with enthusiasm for this heroic notion.

Kim was starting to miss the days when he’d been too space sick to leave his bunk.

“Virus,” Kim said.

“Warship,” Bonita said.

Casmir sighed. “Right. Those are definitely problems. Captain, will you comm Ishii, please?”

“Only if you promise to let someone else do the talking and robotics camp doesn’t come up.”

Indignation flashed in Casmir’s eyes, but he bowed again, this time in acquiescence. “Kim might be a better choice to explain a quarantine situation.”

“Or any situation,” Bonita muttered, looking at her.

Maybe she also longed for the days when Casmir had been space sick.

“I’ll do my best.” Kim waved to the comm panel.

A moment later, a face appeared on the display. It wasn’t the dyspeptic captain. Kim didn’t know if that was good or not. She was fairly certain the lone star on the young man’s galaxy suit denoted him as an ensign.

“I’m Kim Sato,” she announced, not bothering with pleasantries. “A medical researcher on Odin. Look up my credentials. I have them. We haven’t docked with the research vessel, but we’re close enough to read that there are people aboard. If you truly were intending to nuke the ship, I suggest you don’t, as you would be murdering thirty civilian scientists.”

The ensign had the grace to wince and appear alarmed. That was good. Kim would have been disturbed if it turned out the military knew there were people on board and planned to destroy the ship regardless.

“I’m willing to volunteer myself to go over and assess the situation as a medical researcher if your captain wishes it,” Kim added, not reacting when Casmir looked sharply at her. “Viruses aren’t my area of specialization, but I have experience dealing with deleterious bacteria and quarantine situations.”

“I’ll tell him,” the ensign said, and a hold screen with a logo featuring the warship came up.

“Kim,” Casmir said, his voice distressed. “Zee can’t protect you from microbes.”

“A design flaw?”

“I should have equipped him with laser eyes that could sterilize a ship.”

Kim clasped her hands behind her back and waited for the captain’s response. She didn’t want to put herself into a quarantine situation, but the thought of unqualified people handling it—or murdering innocent civilians to avoid handling it—sent chills through her. If the warship had been sent out to deal with Rache, she feared it would not have the specialized medical personnel required for this task. She hoped she was wrong. Maybe it would turn out that the captain had known about the quarantine situation from the beginning and had a team of experienced experts.

“What is your area of specialization?” Bonita asked her. “You had that virus along that made Qin and me sick enough to feel like we were going to die.”

“I happened to be delivering some virus specimens for a friend at work when all this started,” Kim said. “I specialize in bacteria that have, or can be made to have, a symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationship with humans.”

Bonita’s forehead creased as she parsed that. “And that involves quarantine situations?”

“Not my work specifically, though I do sometimes start with antagonist strains of bacteria with desirable attributes and alter them, but some of my colleagues work with viruses, so I have familiarity with procedures. Further, since our facility is well-outfitted for dealing with biological hazards, we occasionally get surprise deliveries that the government wants us to neutralize. Everyone on our campus has training to handle those instances.”

“Huh.”

The hold screen disappeared, and Captain Ishii’s charming face appeared. He scowled briefly at Casmir before focusing on Kim.

“I was told everyone on that ship is dead and that it simply needed to be checked for evidence and then destroyed,” Ishii said without preamble.

Evidence? Of a virus? Or did they know about the piece of a gate that was found? Presumably, the archaeology team had been keeping someone up-to-date back on Odin. Had that someone been speaking to the government?

“We’re not reading anyone alive on there now,” the captain added, squinting.

“Approximately thirty people are in a quarantine room in sickbay,” Kim said. “We believe it may be insulated enough that scanners can’t pick up their signatures.”

“How did you pick them up?”

Kim opened her mouth to suggest it was because their ship was closer—she didn’t want the captain to have a reason to punish Bonita or take shots at the Dragon—but Casmir spoke first.

“I sent a robot over,” he said, then shrugged at Kim. “It was going to come out sooner or later when they question me.”

Ishii ground his teeth. “To look for top-secret military intel?”

Kim decided the captain definitely knew about the gate piece. And didn’t want anyone else to know.

“To look for Kim’s mother,” Casmir said. “If you have the roster of the scientists that were on that ship, an Erin Kelsey-Sato should be on the list. She’s missing.”

“I’m sure a lot of those scientists are missing. As in dead.”

“I’m positive a virus didn’t get her,” Casmir said.

The hold screen came up again.

“Sorry,” Casmir told Kim. “I don’t know if you wanted them to know, but I think we’re going to have to be very honest with the military if we don’t want to end up in prison. The authorities have gotten some odd notions about us lately.”

Bonita snorted.

“It’s fine,” Kim said. “I don’t disagree.”

Ishii’s face returned. “She was on the roster, yes. Retrieve your robot, Dabrowski. Send any footage it recorded, and then destroy your copy of that footage. If you don’t, we’ll find out about it.”

“Uh, all right.” Casmir looked like he was trying to sound puzzled, but Kim knew he followed right along. The military didn’t want them to have footage that contained clues about what the archaeologists had found.

“I will speak with my chief medical officer,” Ishii said, “and get back with you on your offer, Scholar Sato. In the meantime, stay the hell off that ship and get your captain to back away from it.” He looked at someone off to the side of the vid pickup. “If they don’t move at least ten klicks away, shoot them as soon as they’re in range.”

A woman’s emotionless “Yes, sir” was audible.

“Ishii, out.”

“Get your robot back here, Casmir,” Bonita said. “I’m not delaying. They’ll be in firing range soon. They could send a long-range missile any time.”

Bonita grumbled under her breath, and Kim had a feeling she regretted not leaving the system right after they’d escaped the refinery.

Kim closed her eyes. She just wanted to make sure her mother was safe, make sure people were done trying to kill Casmir, and go back to her work on Odin.

After seeing that video, she had sent numerous messages to her mother, but they’d all gone unanswered. She hated the idea of having to tell her father that she had been destroyed and lost forever. Even though her parents had been divorced by the time her mother contracted the bacterial infection that had done in her human body, Kim knew her father still cared about her. Maybe even loved her. He’d always been the one with the romantic streak, and Kim didn’t think it was possible for him not to care about someone he knew. More than once, she’d wondered why that trait hadn’t been passed along to her.

3

“You’re going by yourself?” Qin stood in combat armor with her big Brockinger anti-tank gun slung over her back on a strap and a helmet tucked under her arm. The pointed ears poking up through her thick black hair rotated slightly.

Casmir raised his eyebrows as Qin looked Kim up and down, pursing her lips and shaking her head. The three of them were in the cargo hold, waiting for the warship’s shuttle to arrive and pick up Kim to take her to the research vessel. Ishii, or more likely his chief medical officer, had accepted her offer of assistance. Casmir wasn’t sure whether he was afraid for her or envious. Maybe both. She got to go explore a ship full of mysteries but also a ship full of something that had driven the crew into quarantine.

Meanwhile, he was waiting for another shuttle that would supposedly pick him up and deliver him to the warship where he would be greeted by an interrogation specialist with the appropriate drugs. When he’d volunteered to be questioned, he’d imagined being on the neutral ground of the research ship, or even here on the Dragon.

“You don’t even have your little sticks anymore,” Qin added.

“My bokken weren’t really weapons anyway,” Kim said. “I was carrying them home from the dojo when this all started. I would like them back someday. They have sentimental value.” She looked at Casmir.

As if he had any way to contact Rache and request their belongings back. After all the damage they’d caused to Rache’s ship during their mad escape from the exploding refinery, Casmir feared his newly discovered twin brother would kill him the first chance he got.

“I’ll be sure to let him know you’d like them back if I get the opportunity,” Casmir said, though he was relieved the mercenary shuttle had headed down to the surface rather than chasing down the Dragon. The last he’d seen, it had disappeared from the scanners. He wondered if Rache already knew where the wreck was.

“I could go with you,” Qin offered Kim. “I bet the captain would let me be your bodyguard.”

“She may need you to be her bodyguard,” Kim said.

A valid point. Ishii hadn’t mentioned the bioweapon, but Casmir had a hard time believing he hadn’t been briefed, even if it had been the Kingdom Guard handling security on Forseti Station, not the military. Maybe Ishii had been distracted by memories of robotics camp.

“You think so?” Qin sounded hopeful. “Do you think they’ll force-board us? Do you think they have any knights?”

A clang reverberated through the ship, and a light on the airlock control panel flashed, indicating the Fleet shuttle had hooked onto them.

“Knights are rare,” Casmir said, bemused by the nineteen-year-old super soldier’s interest in the topic. Admittedly, they were the stuff of legend and fairy tale, having existed since the Kingdom’s founding, and highly romanticized. “And they’re closer to secret agents than soldiers. It would be surprising to find one on a random Fleet warship.”

“Oh.” Qin scuffed her boot on the deck.

“Besides,” Casmir said, hoping to distract her as Kim headed to the airlock hatch, “if one was there and force-boarded the Dragon, you’d have to fight him.”

“That would be all right. I’m curious about their legendary fighting prowess.”

Casmir tried not to think about the knight who’d given his life battling two crushers in order to buy him time to escape the university campus back home. “I thought you were curious about, uhm, romantic things.”

“I just think knights sound terribly chivalrous and would treat a girl right. I don’t have many delusions about how romance works.” She sniffed.

The hatch swung open, and two soldiers in blue combat armor walked out, one aiming a rifle around the cargo hold, one stopping in front of Kim. He looked her up and down, then handed her a bright yellow suit. It was bigger than her galaxy suit, which was on loan from Bonita, and a hood draped the helmet. Casmir recognized it as a hazmat suit, a higher level of protection than what Kim wore now, and his stomach flip-flopped, his concern rearing up again. It worried him that she was going somewhere that she might need that—he had been incredibly naive when he’d been thinking of going over there himself—but he was relieved that the military intended to treat her right, not like some criminal to be sacrificed.

“You can put it on in our shuttle Scholar Sato,” the soldier said politely and led her into the airlock.

The second soldier was gaping at Qin, who had her helmet off, revealing that she wasn’t quite human. He kept his rifle pointed at the deck, but he backed warily into the airlock with the others, his heel bumping the lip of the hatchway. Casmir almost joked that he wasn’t the only one who tripped on those things, but Bonita wasn’t there to hear it. And he wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

As the hatch swung shut, Kim sent him a message that appeared on his contact display. Wish me luck.

Of course, Casmir replied. And shalom, my friend.

What’s the literal translation of that? Deep peace? That may be a stretch to find on a ship full of dead and quarantined people.

Hence my wish that you find it anyway.

“They’re departing,” Bonita said over the comm, “and the second shuttle is pulling in right after them. I feel like a gas station here.”

“Just hope they don’t ask where you got your last fill-up,” Casmir said.

“That’s the truth.”

Qin gave him a concerned look as he walked to the airlock hatch. “Do you need a bodyguard?”

Either he looked like he was going to pass out, or she really wanted to see a knight.

“Very likely, but I’m going to do my best not to mention you or the captain, in the hope they’ll forget about our actions on Forseti. It’ll be hard not to mention you if you’re along.”

“I can stay quiet and keep my helmet on.”

“They’d take your gun away, and you wouldn’t be happy.” He gave her armored sleeve a thump. “Thank you for offering, though. I’m glad you’re not irritated with me for, uhm, sort of tricking you into telling me about the bounty.”

She studied the deck as the airlock light flashed again. “I was just upset at having to choose loyalties. I knew we weren’t… that it wasn’t right, but—”

“I know. You don’t have to explain anything to me. I’ve never been in the military, but I know that loyalty is important there.”

“I think it’s important everywhere, isn’t it?” Qin cocked her head. “You said you lead a robotics team. Are they not loyal to you?”

“Well, nobody’s stabbed me between my shoulder blades and tried to patent one of my inventions behind my back, but civilians are a little harder to wrangle. You have to convince them that they really want to do what you need them to do. That it’s good for them. And rewarding.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“It is.” He grinned, but then the hatch opened and four armed and armored men stomped out, and he sobered quickly.

Zee strode up behind him, and Casmir realized he hadn’t given him a command to stay on the Dragon. The crusher might assume he needed to come to protect him. Casmir looked wishfully over his shoulder, especially since he had a feeling he might need some protection. Kim had only garnered two armed soldiers, after all. And they’d brought her fancy clothes. He got four rifles pointed at his chest and no proffers of gifts.

Zee stomped in front of him, and the soldiers almost fired.

“It’s all right,” Casmir blurted, raising his hands. “He’s—” He was on the verge of saying not coming, but he realized two things. First, he might be able to get away with bringing Zee. Second, Bonita didn’t truly have a reason to stick around, beyond a vague notion of profiting from finding the gate, and she might prefer it if there was nothing keeping her from making a getaway. “He’s my personal assistant robot,” Casmir finished. “He has the footage that Captain Ishii asked for.”

Casmir also had the footage copied onto his chip, but no need to mention that.

The soldiers exchanged dubious looks, and he was sure they were muttering to each other over their helmet comms.

“Ishii said he wants the footage wiped after he sees it,” Casmir added. “The only way to do that is to bring Zee along.”

“Captain Ishii,” one of the men growled, looking like he wanted to point his rifle at Casmir’s chest again.

Alas, Zee was big enough and broad enough to do an effective job of blocking the soldiers.

“I’m not in the military,” Casmir pointed out. “Not only am I not required to call him by his rank, but I could whisper his nickname from robotics camp into your ears.”

One ordered, “Get in the airlock,” without humor as another sidled close and whispered, “I’ll give you twenty crowns for that information.”

“You can keep the crowns if you slip me a wrench, a magnet, and a piece of gum after your captain throws me in the brig.”

“Because… you can use them to escape?”

“Nah, that’s silly. But magnets are entertaining, and gum helps keep the saliva flowing if you’re deprived of water.”

Three out of the four soldiers snorted. They weren’t exactly guffaws of laughter, but at least their rifles weren’t pointing at Casmir or Zee now.

“What about the wrench?”

“Ssh, don’t waste his time,” another said as the lock cycled. “I want to know the captain’s nickname. And when did you know him? Did he really go to robotics camp? That’s so dorky.” He snickered and poked Casmir in the arm. “If you tell us, I’ll bring you a cupcake when you get thrown in the brig.”

“I’m pretending I’m not hearing any of this,” the grumpy soldier muttered as they walked through the tube toward the shuttle.

“Oh, like you don’t want to know, Sergeant.”

“He did go to robotics camp,” Casmir said. “We were ten, and his nickname was Queenie, because win or lose, he couldn’t get through a chess game without sacrificing his queen.”

“Queenie?” one of the men blurted with a giggle as the hatch to their shuttle opened.

Casmir came face to face with Captain Ishii. A scowling Captain Ishii. The giggle cut off as if the man had been garroted.

“Ah, hello, Sora,” Casmir said. “I didn’t realize you would come to pick me up personally.”

“Clearly.” Ishii folded his arms over his chest, which might have been intimidating if he’d been any taller than Casmir, but they were the same below-average height. “I see your growth spurt wasn’t any more impressive than mine,” Ishii growled.

“There was a spurt? I think I slept through mine.”

“I bet. What is that, Dabrowski?” Ishii pointed at Zee, who was looming impressively at Casmir’s shoulder.

“That is one of the robot monsters that killed Friedrich,” someone said from one of the shuttle’s seats.

Casmir recognized his telltale armor and purple cloak as the man lurched to his feet and reached for the weapon hanging at his belt, thick brown hair swinging around his shoulders.

“No, this is one I made.” Casmir held up a hand and stepped in front of Zee. He would trust the crusher to handle himself against the soldiers in armor, but the knight’s pertundo and its mysterious piercing and cutting technology might seriously damage Zee. “To protect me from the ones that attacked Sir Friedrich. Did you know him? He tried to give me a message, but there wasn’t enough time for it all. I don’t suppose you…”

Casmir trailed off because the knight was glowering at him as much as he was at Zee. He was young but didn’t look naive. He had angular features made more pronounced by a short beard and mustache and looked to be twice Casmir’s weight—all in muscle.

“Want to question you?” the knight finished his sentence with an eyebrow quirk. “Yes, I do. And so does the captain.”

Ishii nodded once, a pleased glint in his eyes.

“Will drugs be involved?” Casmir asked, wondering if he was truly going to get a chance to clear his name, or if these men would devise a way to cause him to incriminate himself further. Ishii had been a clever ten-year-old, and Casmir didn’t imagine that had changed much. Maybe he had been naive in volunteering to come to the military, but what choice did he have? He wanted to go home, and he hadn’t had any luck figuring out who was after him yet. He couldn’t flee forever, not if he wanted his life back, his work and his projects and his friends and his parents.

His adoptive parents, yes, but he’d never known any others, and they had always loved and supported him. His father’s birthday was coming up, and Casmir and his uncles always got him gag gifts, much to his mother’s horror. She always gave him something respectful and proper. Casmir was convinced his father preferred the goofy things, including the ambulatory soap dispenser he’d made that dispensed soap everywhere except into one’s hands. Casmir had never missed his father’s birthday, and he didn’t want to start now.

“Oh yes,” Ishii said. “Several kinds of drugs, I should think.”

“Goodie,” Casmir murmured as the shuttle departed, heading for the ominous black spear of a warship. He tried not to think about Kim’s admonition that the truth drugs might knock his brain cells out of alignment or how he would look convulsing on the deck at Ishii’s feet.

Yas stared at the display as the shuttle settled onto hard snow, deep inside a dim canyon full of spikes of ice that appeared to be natural formations. If not for the headlights, he wouldn’t have seen the frosty metal structure almost entirely buried in the side of a glacier in front of them. Since Skadi was one of the farthest bodies from the sun in the solar system, little sun reached it, especially down here. Yas wasn’t sure how deep the canyon was, but they had descended a long time before reaching the bottom. A thousand meters? Two? At least.

“I can’t believe you found it, Captain,” Jess blurted, unbuckling her straps.

Rache looked over his shoulder from the pilot’s seat, though of course, his expression wasn’t visible through his mask.

“I mean, I figured you would,” Jess amended, “but not on only the fourth try.”

Was that all it had been? Yas’s butt was numb, and he felt like they’d been flying forever. He’d dozed off more than once, and his stomach growled.

But Rache didn’t suggest anyone partake in a leisurely lunch. He stood, tapping his chest control so that his helmet snapped over his head, and grabbed an oxygen tank from a rack on the wall.

“Check your suits,” he said, talking over Yas’s and Jess’s heads to the combat men in the rows behind them, “and take a look around. Scans don’t show any life forms, but they also can’t penetrate the metal in the hull of that ship.” Rache waved at the buried structure.

A ship? It could have been anything under all that ice.

“There could still be archaeologists in there,” Rache added. “Or the people who killed the archaeologists.”

“Do we shoot to kill, Captain?” Chaplain patted his rifle lovingly.

“Defend yourselves with deadly force if necessary,” Rache said, “but try to take someone alive if we meet a team. I have more questions than answers, at this juncture.”

Yas wasn’t sure whether or not to be glad he wasn’t the only one.

“Dr. Peshlakai, Chief Khonsari,” Rache said, grabbing a rifle out of the armory cabinet, “stay here for now. If there’s a need, I’ll call you in once we’ve secured the ruin.”

“Gladly,” Yas said, as Jess made a noise of protest.

“Captain, is that an ancient Earth ship?” she asked. “Don’t you think I’d be more useful in there than Chaplain and Chains?”

Chaplain hadn’t put his helmet up yet, and he flashed his metal fangs at her.

Jess was too focused on Rache to notice.

“We’ll secure it first, Chief,” Rache said firmly but not as coolly as he might have to someone else who questioned him. “Then you can come in and rub your hands on the engines.”

“You know how to get a girl excited, Captain.”

“Disgusting,” one of the men muttered.

“I can get girls excited too,” one said more forlornly.

Yas barely heard them. He was gaping at Jess, surprised and a little distressed that she would flirt with Rache. Did he ever flirt back? Something about that notion was alarming.

Rache didn’t acknowledge the comment.

“Put your helmets up,” he told the men, then reached for the hatch controls. “We’ll leave the shuttle running, but it’s cold enough out there to freeze your ears off in seconds.”

Yas complied even though he wasn’t going outside and the comment probably wasn’t for him. The men exited into an airlock chamber before stepping out onto the frozen moon. The display showed frosty bullets of snow skidding sideways through the forest of stalagmite-like ice formations. In their black combat armor, the men were imposing figures striding toward the wreck, but the moon itself seemed far more forbidding and dangerous.

Yas was tempted to ask Jess if she’d ever had a relationship with Rache, but that was definitely none of his business. Instead, he eyed the navigation control panel while realizing this was the first time he’d been left alone—mostly alone—with a means of escaping the mercenaries.

“Can you fly a shuttle?” he asked Jess casually, though his heart rate sped up, beats thundering through his body, at the mere thought of slipping away.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t leave without stranding Rache and his fighters down here. Yas didn’t want to do that—if Rache escaped, he’d likely come after Yas and kill him in the most horrific manner—but he couldn’t help but think about how badly he wanted to go home, clear his name, and get his old life back. A life where he’d been respected and had helped good people, not thugs and murderers.

“Well enough to get one in and out of the repair bay,” Jess said.

“Well enough to get it out of a canyon and to a station somewhere?”

Jess gave Yas a frank look. “First off, no, these shuttles don’t have the range to get far. Second, of all the men in the Twelve Systems you might betray without repercussions, Rache would not go on that list. He saved your ass, Doctor. And you agreed to his five years. I was there, remember? You almost spilled my coffee when you collapsed at our feet.”

Yas closed his eyes, the memories of terror still hot and fresh in his mind. “I remember, but I didn’t know who he was when I agreed to that. It’s like working for the devil. You hear how cavalierly he said it was all right to kill any archaeologists they might find in there? Oh, except one that he wants kept alive for questioning. I was desperate and didn’t have time to think.”

“You want out of that deal, then reason with him and try to make a bargain. Don’t screw him over, or it’ll be the last thing you do.”

Yas dropped his head into his palm. “I know. But would he be reasonable? I always feel like I’m on thin ice with him. And you said he likes me.” Yas laughed shortly.

“Nah, I said he told the men not to kill you. Could just be that doctors are useful.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“I don’t think he likes anyone, but the only time I’ve seen him be illogical is when he’s pursuing his revenge. He’s a little mad when it comes to the Kingdom and Jager.”

“No kidding. You have any idea why?”

“Nope. Like I said, he doesn’t talk to the crew.” Jess hopped to her feet and headed past the tiny mess and lavatory and into the engine compartment. “I better earn my pay and run a maintenance check on the shuttle while we wait.”

“Is that why you’re here? The pay?” Yas followed her partway back and poked into a cabinet for a ready-meal. “Or did you also make a deal with the devil out of desperation?”

“I’ll admit my head wasn’t in the best place when I joined,” Jess said, “and it still isn’t all of the time.”

Yas wondered if, since they were alone together, he should bring up her relationship with trylochanix. Maybe offer to help her wean herself off it and find some less addictive alternatives.

“I actually hired Rache,” she went on. “That’s how we first met. I was recovering from some injuries…”

“The injuries that resulted in you having more than a few cybernetic bits and a brain that’s half circuitry?”

Jess leaned out the door and grimaced at him, and he wished he’d asked more delicately. The mercenaries were all so blunt and cavalier about everything that it seemed the way to broach things with them.

“Yes. Star Strider terrorists attacked our hab in System Geryon when I was home visiting my family. My brother and parents were miners—almost everyone that lives in Shiva Habitat is—working on pulling ore out of Pushya, and admittedly not worrying too much about defacing the planet. It’s an ugly hunk of rock. It’s not like we were destroying life or even a ruggedly appealing landscape. Anyway, some politics and arguing and negotiations had been going on, but I’d been out on the soccer tour, where I was playing professionally at the time, so I wasn’t that aware of how bad things had gotten. I happened to be home for a visit when the Strider terrorists decided they were tired of negotiating and wanted to make a statement. Because they were upset that humanity was mining planets, they blew a hole the size of a moon in the side of our hab. My parents and my brother didn’t make it. I almost didn’t make it either. Some doctor recognized me and figured I’d have the money to pay for surgery, I guess, since he’d seen me play and knew I had sponsors and the like. He did all this.” She waved at her eyes and lifted her cybernetic hand. “Then gave me the bill afterward.”

“Did you pay?”

“I paid. For that and for my brother’s and my parents’ funeral.” Jess disappeared back into the engineering compartment, and a few clanks and thunks sounded. “I knew I’d never play on the tour again, since it’s skins only, nobody with implants, and the implants weren’t such that I could have been competitive on the teched tour. Not that I wanted to play anymore after that anyway. I took what money I had left and hired Rache to kill the terrorists that had masterminded the bombing.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. He understands the revenge game very well.”

Yas kept himself from making a snide comment. He’d never expected her or any of the mercenaries to bare their souls to him, and he didn’t want her to regret it. Besides, his dissent was with Rache, not her.

“We talked a few times during the process,” Jess went on, “and when he learned I’d graduated with honors from an engineering program before going into soccer full time, he offered me a job. Had I been in a different frame of mind, I probably would have said no, but as strange as it seems, I’d hired a criminal to kill people without giving them a trial, so I was a criminal myself at that point. And with my family all gone… I had nowhere else to go.”

A few more clanks sounded.

Yas didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, though it was inadequate.

“I know you don’t think much of Rache or the men,” Jess said, “but they’ve become a family of sorts for me. And even if Rache doesn’t let anyone get close, and I can’t claim that we’re buddies, I know he’d have my back if I needed it.”

“Does that mean you and he haven’t, ah, had more than coffee?” Yas almost smacked himself as soon as the words came out. Why was he worrying about that? Because he wanted to ask Jess for more than coffee himself? That wouldn’t be appropriate, not when she was essentially a patient. A patient with a problem that he needed to help her address. On a professional level.

“Rache doesn’t have more than coffee with anyone, as far as I know.” Jess joined him in the mess and pulled out a ready-meal for herself. “But if you’re interested in him, I can try to put in a good word for you.” She winked.

Yas coughed and dropped his ready-meal. “Er, no, thank you.” He picked it up and tore open the wrapper. “It did cross my mind that if I served him for the five years he asked for, he might be willing to help me find those who killed President Bakas and framed me. I go back and forth on whether to ask him about that or to try to escape and handle it on my own. I’m afraid that if I wait five years, it’ll be too late to find the tracks.”

“So don’t wait. You could do like I did. Offer to hire him.”

“How much did that cost?” Yas opened a pouch labeled Masala Vat Lamb Cubes Stew, the contents warming in his hand from the internal heater.

“In my case, I paid him a hundred thousand Union dollars.”

“That’s a lot more than I have access to right now. My banking chip was cut off within days of me disappearing from Tiamat Station. My parents… I don’t want to go to them and ask for help hiring mercenaries. I haven’t even contacted them since I was framed. I didn’t want to get them in trouble.”

Nor was Yas sure they would help. His father, in particular, who had political aspirations, might be doing his best to distance himself from his supposedly criminal son.

“Noble, but they’re probably worried about you and would like a message.” She pointed a fork with noodles dangling from the tines at him. “Don’t assume your parents will just be alive and well the next time you get around to visiting them.”

Given the story she’d shared, he couldn’t argue with that.

“Maybe Rache would take less for that,” she said. “An investigation, followed by an assassination, wouldn’t take his whole ship. Ask him about it.”

Yas didn’t want people assassinated. He just wanted justice. And to have his name cleared. Could he truly hire criminals to do that? What was the alternative? That those who had killed the president would never be brought to justice? And that he would be a fugitive for the rest of his life?

The comm beeped.

“I need you inside, Doctor,” Rache said. “Suit up. I’ll meet you at the hole in the side of the wreck.”

“What about me, Captain?” Jess asked. “I’ll be bereft without Dr. Yas’s delightful company.”

“His what?”

“Delightful company. Has he not delighted you before, Captain? He asked me questions about myself and listened when I answered. That doesn’t happen often with mercs. I practically felt wooed.”

Yas dropped his face into his hand, not surprised when Rache didn’t respond to that.

“Stay there,” Rache finally said, “and watch for other ships. We’re not the only ones who know about this wreck.”

“Yes, sir.”

Yas grabbed an oxygen tank while wondering what Rache had found that required a doctor’s presence. Last time, it had been a body. He had a feeling he couldn’t hope for anything better this time.

4

Kim stood quietly on the shuttle, gripping a handhold as her feet floated in microgravity, and wondering what it said about her that she was more worried for Casmir than herself. She was simply going to deal with what she assumed was a potentially horrific and extremely contagious bacteria or virus. So, stuff she dealt with semi-occasionally at work. He was heading into what could turn into a full-fledged interrogation by a high-ranking Fleet officer who clearly didn’t like him.

A few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have worried about either of them being in the hands of the Kingdom military, but that had been before those bungling oafs at Forseti Station had somehow come to believe that she and Casmir were assisting Bonita in smuggling that bioweapon. It had also been before some unknown entity had started sending crushers to assassinate Casmir. And before she’d known he was, at least according to Rache’s doctor, the genetic twin of a man hated and loathed by the Kingdom. She worried that connection, if it became widely known, could get Casmir into trouble simply because of shared DNA.

“Scholar Kim Sato?” a woman asked, floating into view.

She was with a man, both in yellow hazmat suits, and they gripped nearby handholds as the shuttle sailed closer to the research vessel. They had been in the back when Kim first boarded. The man, his broad face visible through his faceplate, settled closer to Kim than she would have preferred, and she wrestled with the urge to push back to the next handhold.

“Yes,” Kim said, nodding to the woman.

“I’m the Osprey’s chief medical officer, Dr. Sikou,” she said, bowing awkwardly in the nonexistent gravity, “and this is our surgeon, Dr. Angelico. I’m familiar with your work. I’ve inoculated a number of our crew with your radiation-consuming bacteria. Our ship is part of Phase II testing.”

Kim returned the bow and groped for an appropriate response. Thank you wasn’t right. Good? For some reason, she always felt awkward when she met people who knew about her or her work.

“I hope it’s going well,” Kim settled on. She then felt compelled to add, “The radiation-eating bacteria have been the work of many people on my team,” lest it seem she was allowing Sikou to give her too much credit.

“Yes, extremely so. The crew members have reported evidence of some of the beneficial side effects mentioned in the literature. I wish we had time to discuss it, but…” Sikou looked toward the two pilots guiding them toward the same airlock on the Machu Picchu that Casmir’s crusher had used earlier to board.

“I haven’t heard of you,” Dr. Angelico said, thrusting a gloved hand toward Kim, “but I look forward to making your acquaintance.” He grinned and winked.

Kim hesitated, then returned the handshake, trying not to show her reluctance at such familiarity among strangers. She might have grown up in the mixed-culture capital and be used to greetings that ranged from bows to hugs and from handshakes to high fives, but touching always felt uncomfortably intimate to her. At least the gloves kept her from feeling callouses or hand sweat. Unfortunately, the man held the grip longer than she would have liked, and she was the one to break eye contact, though he continued to look at her through her faceplate.

“You have experience with outbreaks?” Sikou asked.

Kim thought about the last time she’d been in a positive-pressure hazmat suit, when the Kingdom Guard had swung by the lab in a panic, bringing a package some terrorists had delivered along with blackmail demands. Typically, military specialists handled problems like that, but her corporation’s lab had been much closer than the nearest base with proper facilities. She’d been brought in as an advisor and had ended up with a nice consulting fee that had covered the cost of paying for an editor for her fantasy trilogy. She snorted softly at the memory, still amused that some terrorist’s attempt to infect King Jager with a designer disease had ended up financing her hobby.

“Yes, some,” was all she said, not wanting to explain everything.

“Good. Angelico and I have had the basic training courses, but we’re far more often called upon to remove bullets and repair damage from DEW-Tek bolts. ” Sikou waved to a couple of hulking figures that appeared more like robots than people, since they wore combat armor under their hazmat suits. “The captain sent a couple of marines in case there’s any physical danger we need to worry about.”

Kim almost mentioned that Casmir’s crusher hadn’t found any danger, but what kind of bandit—human or robot—would leap out and pick a fight with Zee? She truly had no idea what to expect and looked forward to speaking with the people in quarantine. Had they placed themselves in there? Or been thrust in by someone else?

Gravity returned with a lurch as the shuttle latched onto the research ship, and Kim felt a twinge of vertigo as they started rotating along with the vessel, the stars outside appearing to move past the portholes.

As soon as the marines ran out and assured them there wasn’t any immediate danger, the rest of the group hurried into the Machu Picchu, where the interior was aligned so that the spin gravity pushed them toward the deck instead of a random wall.

“We don’t know what to expect, I admit,” Sikou said, walking beside Kim. “A few days ago, Headquarters got a message from this ship’s captain, speaking about the archaeological find of the century and also a mysterious illness that a team may have brought back from a wreck on the moon. Our warship, along with two others, had just been dispatched to address a threat, the pirate Rache blowing up first one and then the second of Saga’s refineries. Run-of-the-mill stuff for us. But as we were en route, we received an update that the crew on this ship was sick.” Sikou waved to the walls of the ship. “Our original orders were to divert and give assistance. That later changed to blow up the ship. We were told it had been confirmed at that point that there weren’t any survivors. We were also supposed to blow up the wreck on the surface, but we don’t even know where it is. Our scanners couldn’t pick it up.”

“Ours didn’t either.” Kim wondered if Captain Lopez had taken off or would stick around. Given how quickly the situation had escalated, the military might not appreciate a civilian lurking nearby.

“Then your ship commed ours, saying there were survivors on board. The captain was livid that you’d disobeyed his orders to avoid the ship.”

“He told us not to dock. We didn’t. My friend sent a robot over to look around.”

“Right, but it’s a quarantined ship. Nothing should have been sent, certainly not by civilians.”

“The captain,” Dr. Angelico added from behind them, “was going to blow you up just to be sure you couldn’t spread whatever this is around the system. Your presence, Scholar Sato, and Sikou vouching for you, was the only reason he didn’t.”

Kim wasn’t that surprised by the statement and didn’t argue against the notion. If her mother hadn’t been missing, she would have waved away Casmir’s curiosity and argued to avoid the Machu Picchu.

The marines led the way deeper into the ship, asking the computer for directions a couple of times—it was a large vessel with numerous levels. They passed a couple of bodies that Zee had missed earlier. Kim shook her head grimly. She had been afraid more than that bridge officer would be found dead.

“Can we get one of these to autopsy?” Kim asked the big men, though they seemed more inclined to hurry past them.

The marines hesitated. “You want us to pick them up?”

One wiped a gloved hand on his suit, as if he already worried he’d caught something.

“Maybe there’s a hov-gurney somewhere,” Kim suggested. “Or we can find some medical androids willing to do the job.”

“I’ll get one,” one of the men said with a grunt and hefted a body over his shoulder.

Kim glimpsed a woman’s features through the faceplate, her hair fallen into her eyes. She looked like she was sleeping rather than dead. Perhaps thinking the same thing, Dr. Sikou pulled out a scanner for a quick check, then shook her head.

“I don’t think anyone here has been dead for that long,” she murmured.

They reached sickbay, and Kim headed straight for the quarantine room that Zee had found. The people who’d been sleeping before must have been expecting more company. Most of them stood, facing Kim and the newcomers. One pointed to a comm panel on the wall. It hadn’t shown up in Zee’s video, but Kim had been certain it would be there, and she nodded and activated it. She glanced toward Sikou, wondering if she would want to take charge and do the introductions, but she and Angelico were instructing the marine to lay out the body on an exam table.

The people inside the quarantine room watched with grim expressions. Interestingly, they weren’t wearing galaxy suits or any kind of hazmat suits. They were clad in a mix of civilian clothing, styles typical of Odin.

“I’m Kim Sato, a medical researcher,” she said into the speaker, “and these are doctors from the Kingdom warship Osprey. They received some of the crew’s comm messages about an illness, but we need to be updated on everything so we can help you. Have you been afflicted?” Kim tried to poke what appeared to be a Glasnax quarantine wall and was surprised when her gloves met resistance before touching the wall.

“As far as we know, we haven’t,” a man inside said. “The team that went down to the moon warned us as they were flying back up to the ship that they were experiencing some anomalous health readings. They didn’t think it was a virus, or that they could have possibly encountered something living on Skadi, but the captain decided to quarantine nonessential personnel and only leave out the crew necessary to run the ship. Nobody’s come down here in two days.” The man looked at the body on the table, then swallowed and licked his lips. “Is that… Is everybody who was left out dead? We know some pirates came by and took advantage, and that most of the original team launched another shuttle, trying to lure them away from the Machu Picchu.”

Pirates? Kim would have scratched her head if she hadn’t been wearing a helmet. She never had gotten the story of how Rache had come to have that video.

“We haven’t had an update for days,” the man continued, “so we don’t know what’s going on. We’ve been stuck here, hoping someone would come by.” He raised his eyebrows hopefully.

“Are you all civilians? Researchers?” Sikou asked, coming over.

Angelico was removing the dead woman’s suit to begin performing an autopsy.

“Yes,” the man said as others nodded. There were thirty-two people inside. “We have a mix of scientists, civilian engineers, and archaeologists. I’m Erden Ayik, archaeologist. I specialize in underwater and under-ice investigations. I was supposed to go down to the moon with the original team, but I had a cold. Who knew that would save my life?” He laughed, but it had a hysterical edge to it.

“Was an Erin Kelsey-Sato on your ship?” Kim asked.

“Yes, she went down with the original team, and she stayed down there, from what I was told, since she couldn’t be infected with anything. Wait, what did you say your name is? Sato? Are you related?”

“She’s my mother.”

Sikou gave Kim a sharp look. Maybe nobody had given her that detail. Kim had a feeling there were a lot of details that weren’t being shared around.

“So, she might still be down on the moon?” Hope blossomed in Kim’s chest. She hadn’t realized she’d already been bracing herself for the worst when it came to her mother, fearing she’d have to deliver the news to her father that she was truly gone this time. “I’ve tried sending her a number of messages, but she hasn’t responded. Is there network access on Skadi?”

“Technically, there should be some delayed access from the Saga satellite, but we had trouble comming back and forth with our team after they landed. They may have been down in one of the fissures in the ice.”

“Dr. Sikou.” Angelico waved her over.

“You’ll find a great deal of cellular damage,” Ayik said, “and nothing to account for it. Our ship’s doctor was trying to figure out the problem before she disappeared—succumbed, we fear. She thought some intense radiation at first, and that’s why our engineering friend, David—” he waved to someone in the back of the group who waved back, “—rigged a magnetic field around the quarantine chamber, in case the team had accidentally brought something radioactive back on the ship, but that never made sense. First off, our people should have had equipment to detect radiation, and it’s not like anyone would be stupid enough to bring a radioactive artifact on board, and second, the way people died is similar to but not the same as getting an intense burst of cosmic radiation. It’s more like their natural aging process was ratcheted way up, and their bodies didn’t have a shot at repairing it.”

“Thank you for the input,” Sikou said. “We’ll try to find your doctor’s records and start up where he left off.”

“We may want to rig a magnetic field around sickbay if we can,” Kim suggested. “Since these people are inside of one, and they’re alive. I’m skeptical that the Glasnax alone is protecting them, since we’ve now encountered numerous crew who died in full and, at least at first glance, un-breached galaxy suits.”

“It may just be that they—” Sikou pointed at the quarantined scientists, “—never came in contact with the—whatever it is. Ayik, you said your people got in there before the team returned?”

“Yes. And we haven’t left in case…” He waved at the sickbay, or maybe the air in sickbay and the ship as a whole.

“A good idea,” Sikou said. “I’m going to suggest you stay in there until we’re able to ensure there’s no threat out here. But don’t worry. We’re on it, and the labs here look state-of-the-art. There’s equipment for everything from specimen analysis, incubation, biosafety, and research and development. There’s even a cryonics chamber. We should have everything we need to solve this problem.”

Kim didn’t point out that the Machu Picchu’s doctor, who’d had access to everything here, hadn’t managed to do so.

Sickbay on the warship reminded Casmir more of a vault than a hospital. It was located in the center of the great vessel, with no portholes and pale gray walls that matched the pale gray ceiling and complemented the dark gray deck. There weren’t any entertainment displays, bookcases, or holo-games. He imagined patients got better as quickly as possible so they could escape.

He wasn’t sure whether to be encouraged or disturbed that his interrogation was going to take place in sickbay rather than the brig. He had a lot fewer bad associations with jails.

It wasn’t that he’d ever received poor care in a hospital, just that there had been so many trips in his youth. Countless tests related to his seizures, the eye surgery, instances of anaphylactic shock from allergies, broken bones from his woeful attempts to participate in sports. All those childhood visits should have inured him to the hospital experience, but he’d always had a gift for mentally torturing himself with worry. Even as an adult, every time he went for a simple doctor’s visit, he was certain someone would confirm his suspicions that his inevitable and painful death was close at hand.

A male nurse saluted sharply when the captain and the knight came in, the man’s face as serious as a dagger to the heart. A female nurse winked at the knight and saluted her captain with a saucy jutting of her hip. Ishii’s lips pressed together at this slight irreverence. Casmir promptly liked her. She was pretty, with glistening ringlets of black hair that made him want to tug at one to see if it bounced. Other things, he could already tell, bounced nicely.

The presence of the captain, the knight, and two guards flanking Casmir quelled any urge to flirt. He clasped his hands behind his back and waited for instructions.

He didn’t see any doctors and wondered if they had all gone over to the research ship to help Kim. Or maybe this procedure was simply so basic that a doctor didn’t need to stand by. He hoped so.

“We’re questioning this man, Lieutenant Adjei,” Ishii said. “Prepare a dose of eslevoamytal.”

“Yes, sir.” The female nurse—Adjei—smiled at Casmir. “Are you on any medications? I need to make sure nothing in your system could interact with the eslevoamytal.”

Flustered by the smile, which was even more intriguing than the hair, he stumbled over his words. “No. I mean, yes. Er, I was, but they’re probably out of my system now. A pirate stole my meds.” His eye blinked and watered, and he wiped it. “Even the antihistamine,” he added, hoping allergies might explain his tics.

“A pirate? Unfortunate. Do you have any known allergies or reactions to drugs?”

“Do you want a list?”

Her lower lip drooped—in surprise?

“The only drug I’m deathly allergic to is the seizure medication ethosuximide,” Casmir said. “Found that out the hard way. Also, you can kill me with cashews and pomegranates. Though I’d prefer it if you didn’t. I’m doing my best to stay alive this month.”

Ishii made a disgusted noise. “There aren’t cashews in the truth drug. Sit there.”

He gripped Casmir’s arm and propelled him to a chair locked to the deck. He swiveled it so it faced the room.

If Zee had witnessed the rough handling, he might have attacked, but Casmir had ordered him to wait in the corridor. That wouldn’t, he hoped, prove a mistake.

As soon as Casmir sat, Adjei came over with a jet injector full of a dubious fluid that looked like it should be used to clean drains rather than inserted into someone’s vein.

“Efficient,” Casmir murmured.

“We strive for that on the Osprey. Will you tug down your suit top, or do I need to get the burly men to do it?” She waved at his sleeves and gloves.

Casmir resisted the urge to be stupid and ask if she would remove his suit for him. Besides, she kept stealing glances at the knight, who was tall, handsome, muscular, and probably starred in women’s fantasies on a nightly basis.

The knight didn’t seem aware of her glances. He’d pulled out a physical book from who knew where under his cloak and was reading.

“I’m here to cooperate.” Casmir flashed back to Rache’s doctor drawing his blood from his neck, and he unfastened the top of his suit. He caught the captain glowering at him and realized it would be a good idea to attempt to befriend Ishii rather than continuing to pick at old scabs. That might have been easier if Ishii hadn’t heard him sharing his childhood nickname with his men. “I’ll answer anything you need to know, Captain. By the way, I know we were busy sniping at each other earlier, but the Osprey is really impressive. Congratulations on the command. Have you had it long?”

Ishii gazed flintily at him. As much as Casmir wanted to dislike him and assume his noble blood had gotten him the command, that was probably only partially true. Casmir didn’t interact often with members of the military, but even he knew thirty-two was young to have a ship like this and the responsibility that went with it.

“You said it was a Great Raptor 7, right?” Casmir went on, having found success enticing sullen colleagues into talking by bringing up their passions. Ishii had to be proud of his ship and know all about it. “Two fusion reactors for redundancy, and what, twenty or thirty DEW turrets, ten torpedo bays, and six railguns? Crew complement of over five hundred?”

“Six hundred,” Ishii said grudgingly. “We have a company of marines too.”

“You must have been sent to hunt down Rache.” Casmir doubted platoons of marines would be sent along to deal with a quarantined civilian ship. That suggested the Osprey had only recently been diverted, as he’d suspected.

“I’m surprised a roboticist knows anything about spaceships,” Ishii said. “Or would be out here at all. I seem to remember you puking on a children’s ride once. The Teacup, I believe it was called.” His eyes glinted with pleasure at this memory.

Nurse Adjei was focused on his bare forearm, finding just the right spot for her injector, and only twitched an eyebrow at the comment. Casmir wondered if it was too late to crawl under the desk next to the chair.

“I have a colleague who collects model spaceships of all kinds,” Casmir said. “He educates me on the attributes of everything in his collection whenever we have lunch together.” Which was more often than Casmir might have opted for, but the rest of the faculty tended to avoid Kovacs. He didn’t have an off switch, as Simon always said.

The jet injector hissed as the drug entered his bloodstream.

The nurse paused, a frown creasing her brow. “You’re not on anti-nausea medication, right now, are you?”

A twinge of worry went through him at her reaction and the possibility that he did still have some in his system. The Dragon had plenty of non-prescription stuff in its little sickbay, but he didn’t think he’d taken any since his capture. His body had finally somewhat acclimated to the variable gravity of the ships he’d been on.

“Not for a couple of days,” Casmir said. “The gravity on your ship here is actually quite delightful.” He smiled at Ishii, having no problem making the statement sincere.

“Uh huh.” Ishii looked at the knight. “Do you want him first?”

The knight, whose name hadn’t been mentioned yet, put a finger in his book to mark his spot and extended a hand toward Casmir. “Go ahead. Establish whether he’s done anything criminal or not, as that will affect what I divulge to him.”

Casmir studied him with fresh curiosity, trying to decipher the statement—was it possible this was another knight who’d been sent to warn him of something? Before he could get far in his musings, Ishii distracted him by leaning forward and dropping his hands onto the armrests of the chair.

“This would be more intimidating if you were taller,” Casmir informed him.

Ishii’s eyes closed to slits.

Casmir hadn’t meant to resort to insults. Was that the drug already affecting him?

“Did you know about the bioweapon when you boarded the Stellar Dragon?” Ishii asked, getting right to business.

“No. And neither did the captain. She thought she was smuggling weapons, I gathered. The guns and cannons kind, not the terrible disease-in-a-vial kind.” An uncomfortable warm sensation plucked at the back of Casmir’s throat. God, he wasn’t having an allergic reaction to the drug, was he? “She’s a bounty hunter, but she’s run up against some hard times, so she started smuggling stuff. Except for when she tried to collect a bounty on me. Did you know Tenebris Rache—”

“Stop,” Ishii said.

Casmir complied, glad for the command since he’d been burbling. He’d hoped to avoid the subject of Rache, at least the part where they were twin brothers.

“Did Kim Sato know about the bioweapon when you boarded?” Ishii asked.

“No, she didn’t even want to come along.” Casmir moaned. “It’s my fault that she’s here. Those crushers came after me, and that knight told me to flee the planet because someone wanted me dead, and I was afraid they’d interrogate everybody who knew me in order to find me, so I told Kim she had to leave home. She’s my roommate, you know. She was buying me celebratory wine because my prototype bird flew. Isn’t that nice? People don’t always get her, because she prefers work or being alone to social gatherings most of the time, but she doesn’t dislike people. They just make her uncomfortable in large numbers. She thinks I’m all right though. Most of the time. Do you know the story about how we almost didn’t become roommates?”

“Stop.” Ishii sighed and looked at the knight in exasperation.

Was this not going as expected? Casmir had no basis for comparison, but he hoped Ishii hurried this along. He’d imagined this would be like consuming alcohol—something that tended to leave him awful at lying—but it was definitely a drug. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his heart pounded in his chest, and his throat was itching in earnest. Should he tell the nurse he needed some allergy medicine? Or was he simply having a panic attack? It wasn’t as if those never happened…

Ishii snapped his fingers in front of Casmir’s face, and Casmir realized he’d missed some more questions.

“Did you cheat at robotics camp?” Ishii asked.

Casmir wasn’t sure if it was a test question or something for calibration. He couldn’t imagine Ishii cared after all these years, but he heard himself answering promptly, as if his mind was detached from his body, and he listened from somewhere else in the room.

“No, you did,” he said with unfeigned distress. “Or someone on your team did. Rocky—that was our final robot—you remember? Rocky was sabotaged before the battle. We didn’t realize it until afterward, but he was missing…” Damn, why was his throat so tight? And was he breathing heavily or was that Ishii? Someone definitely was. He was so hot. “Someone took a piece out of the high-torque servo—he was walking kaput. Like me. I can’t—uh, nurse? I think I need…” He was wheezing. That was definitely him. He patted Ishii’s arm urgently. “Epinephrine, please.”

He had to be polite with nurses and doctors. Reasonable and logical. His mother had told him that once. He couldn’t be afraid all the time or talk about minor issues, or they would think he was a hypochondriac.

“Sir,” the nurse said from somewhere far away. “Back up, please.”

“What the hell is wrong with him?” Ishii stepped back and squinted at Casmir’s face. “Are those hives?”

The nurse approached with a jet injector. Was that an antagonist? Or more of the truth drug?

Casmir shook his head violently, abruptly afraid of the latter. They would kill him.

“Sir, he’s—”

The world disappeared from his awareness, and Casmir didn’t hear anything else.

5

“This way, Doctor,” Rache said, waiting in the shadowy interior of the buried wreck.

Yas didn’t know when it had crashed, but it looked to have been embedded in the glacier filling one end of the canyon for a long time. Maybe the glacier had shifted and revealed some of the ship only recently. He didn’t know anything about this moon, other than the ridiculously frigid temperature his helmet display reported, but he assumed Skadi had some kind of tectonic activity in its core, something that had created its varied terrain features.

“Nobody’s had their suits or helmets off,” Rache said, apropos of nothing, as far as Yas could tell.

He led the way into the wreck, through shadowy holds and corridors, the walls more akin to circuit boards than the panels or smooth surfaces that humans would typically cover things with. Yas paused and touched one of the exposed surfaces, shivering even though he couldn’t feel the extreme cold through his gloves.

“I would assume not,” Yas said, eyeing the environmental stats displayed in his helmet. “It’s rather lacking in oxygen out there. And nippy.”

“The temperature is the least of our concerns.”

Rache led him into a cavernous space filled with… Yas wasn’t sure. Giant empty molds? Then he spotted a couple of bodies, and he forgot to wonder what had been in them.

They wore yellow and brown galaxy suits that had frosted over, so they weren’t Rache’s men. Were they part of that original archaeology team? For scientists, they had an unlikely number of rifles and pistols strapped to their suits. How long had they been there?

“Am I here to look at the bodies?” Yas asked quietly.

“Take a blood sample. See if they had the same thing that killed those scientists on the refinery.”

“Do you think they’re part of that team that got left behind? Guards, maybe?” Yas waved at the rifles.

“No.”

He waited to see if Rache would explain further, but he only jerked a hand toward the bodies. “Do you have something in there to cut open their suits and get their blood?”

Blood that would be as frozen as they were. But that shouldn’t matter much. He could still test them for the cellular damage that had killed the others.

“Yes.” Yas patted his medical kit.

“See if you can identify them too. I’m guessing they’re not from this system.”

Yas wasn’t either, so he wasn’t sure about the significance of that, but he said, “Yes, sir.”

“After you get that, you better take samples from the rest of the men too.”

Yas looked sharply at him.

“Chains and Getton both independently reported feeling off. I’ve got Chaplain running scans of everything to check for radiation or any strange energy readings. Nothing so far.”

“We’ve been down here for less than two hours,” Yas said. “Even if there was a pathogen that they had somehow contracted through their suits—I deem that highly unlikely—they shouldn’t have symptoms of anything yet.”

“Test everyone, anyway.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rache walked over to join Chaplain. The other men must have been exploring elsewhere, deeper in the wreck. Dark conduit-lined corridors—or maybe access tubes?—headed away from the bay.

Rache and Chaplain pointed at the huge molds while holding a private discussion. Chaplain gestured with his hand scanner and shook his head. Each of the molds was wider across than a person, and whatever had lain inside had stretched thirty or forty feet in height and a dozen feet in thickness. Had they been empty for centuries? Or only recently cleared out? It was hard to imagine anyone in a shuttle coming down and taking even one of the large pieces, much less hundreds.

After some final orders to Chaplain, who jogged off deeper into the ship, Rache headed back toward the exit.

“Where are you going, sir?” Yas asked, a little alarmed at being left alone in the strange place, especially when he didn’t yet know what had killed the two armed men on the ground.

“To look for signs that something larger than a shuttle filled with archaeologists landed here recently,” Rache said without looking back.

He sounded irked. Because someone had cleared out the place first? What did he think had been in the molds? Pieces of a gate? An entire gate?

“Take those blood samples, Doctor,” Rache said.

“Yes, sir,” Yas murmured and set to work.

He took his samples as quickly as possible and returned to the shuttle, setting up a small lab in the mess area. Over the next couple of hours, he analyzed specimens and had Rache’s grunts report to him for blood draws.

By the time Rache returned from his search of the area, Yas had some results. Alarming results. His bloodwork was normal—he’d tested himself first—and so was Chief Khonsari’s. But Chaplain and the four fighters were showing the first signs of abnormal cellular damage, the same as Yas had seen in the dead scientists from the refinery.

“We have a problem,” he said slowly, staring grimly and numbly at the microscope as Rache walked up.

“We’ve been affected?”

“Not everybody, not yet, but it may be only a matter of time.” Yas stepped aside and waved for Rache to peer through the microscope and see.

“Is there a way to reverse it?”

“I don’t even know what’s causing it. I definitely suggest leaving.”

“Not yet,” Rache said. “I didn’t find signs of another ship having landed, certainly not one large enough to remove those gate pieces, if they were there to start with. I’ve got the men searching deeper in the labyrinth of the wreck. It’s huge, and maybe it’s possible the pieces were moved somewhere else in the ship. If they’ve simply been gone for a long time, it may be possible to find more of the circuit boards like that monkey droid held.”

“Sir, I think staying here is a very bad idea.”

“Noted. We won’t stay long.” Rache leaned back from the microscope. “Just long enough to complete the search. Meanwhile, if you can figure out how to give us immunity from whatever is causing this, and how to reverse the damage, that would be ideal.”

Yas made a choking sound. “I’m sure it would, but I can’t do that with the contents of my medkit. At the least, I’d need a fully stocked lab of—”

“There’s more medical equipment secured in those cabinets.” Rache waved to a storage area opposite the little mess.

Frowning, Yas opened a couple of cabinets. There was a lot of equipment, far more than would have been typical on a combat shuttle.

“You knew,” Yas whispered, unable to keep the accusation out of his voice. “You knew this was a possibility, that we’d be infected.”

“Of course I knew it was possible. I didn’t think it likely that a pathogen originated down here, but…” Rache twitched his shoulders. “I deemed the possibility of acquiring pieces of a gate worth the risk. This find could change the course of human development and the development of the entire galaxy. And whoever holds and controls that technology would be able to direct those changes.”

“Worth the risk?” Yas couldn’t keep his voice from rising in disbelief. “You decided that for all of us?”

“It’s my prerogative as the commander of the Fedallah to make decisions on behalf of my crew every day, Doctor. Stop wasting time, and research how to stop this damage to the cells while we continue to search the ship.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Yas said.

Rache had already been turning away, but he turned back to stare at Yas.

“I’m a surgeon. Occasionally a toxicologist. Whatever is affecting people—killing them—isn’t a drug or a poison. I checked. I don’t know what it is. If it’s a pathogen, which I saw no sign of in any of the blood samples, I don’t know how it’s being transferred. I already investigated all this when I did the autopsy on the dead archaeologist. I didn’t know then, in the lab on your ship, and I’m not going to figure it out in some dinky field lab set up in the kitchen.” Yas flung a dismissive hand at the tiny mess area.

Rache wasn’t moving, didn’t seem to be breathing or blinking at all behind that mask. Yas licked his lips. Had he pushed the man too far? He’d been ready to ask him for a favor after talking to Jess, but what kind of bastard would do this? Risk his own crew’s lives, and for what? Empty molds that may or may not have ever held pieces to a wormhole gate?

“You should have kept the bacteriologist,” Yas added. “Why’d you send her to the damn refinery if you knew you were coming here and might end up infected with something?”

“In hindsight, that was a mistake,” Rache said quietly. “I didn’t know what to expect from the bioweapon.”

Yas hadn’t even known there had been a bioweapon. Did Rache keep anyone in his crew in the loop?

“You think she would be better qualified than you to solve this?” Rache asked.

“I know she would be. I mean, from what I saw of her record, she’s not a virologist, but this is far closer to her realm than mine.”

“Very well, Doctor.” Rache opened a channel to speak with the whole team. “Chaplain, Chains, come with me. We’re taking a short trip. Chief Khonsari, join the rest of the men in the wreck and see if you can help them find some interesting technology while we’re gone.”

“Yes, sir,” numerous people said.

Yas, however, blurted, “Wait. Where are you going? You can’t just leave Jess and the others down there. And are you leaving me too? I can’t even get a network signal down here. If something happens to you, we’ll all be marooned.” Marooned until they ran out of air and died, which wouldn’t take very damn long…

“Then pray nothing happens to us.” Rache headed toward the pilot’s seat. “I’m going to bring you help.”

Yas stared at his back, realizing he’d just condemned that bacteriologist to being kidnapped. Again.

Kim leaned over the microscope while the computer analyzed blood samples the team had taken from four different bodies. All manner of results came up for bacteria and viruses that were typical human companions and usually lay dormant, occasionally rearing up to cause some illness during times of stress. She didn’t see anything that would explain what they were seeing. As Ayik had said, these people had died of intense cellular damage, which had caused multiple systems to shut down.

Every sample she looked at was filled with massive clumps of misfolded proteins, the kind of thing that happened over time in degenerative diseases and could be caused by age, mutations, and environmental stressors. Acute radiation poisoning was the only thing she could imagine causing such an abrupt response, but she’d had Dr. Angelico check the ship for excess radiation, and she’d checked the bodies and the galaxy suits the crew had been wearing when they’d died. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nor did the bodies have any of the outward signs of acute ionizing radiation poisoning, such as bruises, bleeding, and hair loss. On the cellular level, the damage was more akin to what one might expect to develop over time from slow doses of non-ionizing radiation. But these people had all died in days.

Kim leaned back and rubbed her lower back. Her head throbbed, reminding her it had been a long time since her last cup—make that squishy bulb—of coffee.

She craved espresso shots from The Roasting Tree on campus back home. She could imagine the rich velvety coffee caressing her tongue, making her feel alert and alive as it warmed her throat. God, she missed her life. As it was, she would probably have to find some caffeinated booster in sickbay so she wouldn’t have to deal with withdrawal symptoms while she was trying to work. She couldn’t keep herself from giving the microscope a disgusted sneer.

“How’s it going, Kim?” Angelico ambled into the lab she had claimed and leaned an elbow against the counter.

She hadn’t invited him to use her first name and bristled inwardly at the familiarity, but she reminded herself social conventions did not matter now. “I’m aching for a good cup of coffee, and I’m ninety-nine percent sure we’re not dealing with a viral or bacterial infection.”

She wished they were because that would have been far more in her wheelhouse than this. Not only was she mystified as to what was causing this; she wasn’t sure how to stop or reverse the damage. Might some of the proven anti-aging therapies out there help? And if so, would this research ship have any of the equipment necessary? People typically went to specialized medical spas for treatments.

“Coffee,” Angelico said. “There’s an addiction if I ever met one. You should wean yourself off it. Why rely on exogenous substances to feel normal?”

“Because they taste good. Can I help you with something?”

“Sikou wants a blood sample from you. She’s taking them from everyone on the team to see if we’ve been infected. Or, if you’re right, I guess it would be affected?”

Kim wondered why he used Sikou’s last name and presumed to use her first name. Then she wondered why it bothered her.

“I’ll go see her in a minute,” Kim said.

She’d thought of testing herself earlier, as soon as she’d realized that her hazmat suit wasn’t likely to do anything to stop this, but a part of her didn’t want to know. It would be easier to do research and think clearly if she wasn’t worrying about her own impending death.

All she’d wanted when she’d asked Casmir and the others to head this way was to find her mother. How had she gotten herself tangled up in all this?

“I’ll let her know.” Angelico stepped closer and rested a hand on her shoulder. “If you do like coffee, there’s this place on the Odin Orbital Station with all these pools and waterfalls and trees that serves all manner of fancy drinks. You can sit and have a great view of the planet while you imbibe your chosen poison. They’ve got great green smoothies too—those are my stardust. Super healthy, you know. We should go have a drink sometime after we survive all this. Take in the views, chat about work. Or recreation.” He smiled and squeezed her shoulder.

She stared at him in disbelief. Was he hitting on her while there were corpses in the other room and they were trying to keep more people from dying? Why? He couldn’t even have a good idea of what she looked like through her suit and faceplate.

“After this, I’m looking forward to enjoying the views of Odin from Odin. Thanks.”

He chuckled. “Maybe you’ll give me a chance to change your mind later.” He patted her on the shoulder, letting his hand linger for intolerable seconds, then winked and ambled back out.

Kim decided that was a good excuse to step into the lab’s little sanitation room so she could thoroughly decontaminate before doing a quick blood draw. She may have scrubbed her shoulder more than necessary.

When she was done, she checked her blood herself, trying for her usual calm detachment as the test ran. It was just another blood sample. No reason for the moon rocks of dread weighing down her stomach.

Relief flowed through her veins when her blood didn’t show any more than normal signs of aging, at least not yet. Was it possible that only people who went down to the wreck were affected?

No, according to Ayik, the crew members who’d died here on the ship hadn’t gone down there. They were the ones Angelico had used for his autopsies. Kim wondered if they had all had contact with the returning team. Unless she went over all of the ship’s internal camera footage for the last week, that would be hard to discern. The only people left living on the Machu Picchu had been locked up in quarantine when that team returned to the ship.

“Scholar Sato?” Sikou said from the doorway to the lab. “Did Dr. Angelico—”

“Yes, I just tested my blood.” Kim waved to the display. “It’s negative, so far. I can send you the results.”

“Good. The people inside the quarantine still read as normal too. As does our team. Let’s hope that continues.” Sikou frowned and looked toward the exit to sickbay, then held up a finger and left.

Kim followed her out to the corridor and looked in the same direction. She hadn’t heard anything, but noticed the marine who’d stationed himself at the door was gone.

An alarm wailed, and red lights flashed.

“Security is compromised,” the ship announced in a female voice. “Weapons fire is taking place in the corridors. Security, dispatch a team to sickbay.”

If the entire crew was in quarantine or dead, there was no security team to be dispatched.

Sikou cursed and stepped back into the lab, waving Kim to go with her.

“Roark, report,” Sikou said.

A boom sounded, and the deck shivered.

“Was that an explosive?” Kim looked around for something she might use as a weapon. Unfortunately, she didn’t see anything deadlier than small scissors and scalpels. Both would be useless against combat armor.

“Roark,” Sikou shouted this time. “Report!”

Two men in black combat armor charged into sickbay. Shit. Those weren’t Kingdom Fleet colors.

Another explosion reverberated through the walls, much closer this time. Shards flew, and Kim glimpsed a blue-armored man skidding across the deck outside, arms flailing, a blackened hole yawning in the chest of his armor. That was one of the marines. He struck the wall and didn’t get up.

One of the black-armored intruders sprang through the doorway and into her lab. Sikou scurried out of the way, pressing her back to the counter. The intruder didn’t seem to notice her. He lunged for Kim.

She sprang to the side, but he moved faster than should have been possible, and he caught her shoulder, a steel grip latching onto her suit. She cried out in anger and slammed a palm strike into his side. It hurt her hand far more than it hurt him through that armor, but she hardly cared. She struck again, trying to knock him back so she could twist away and flee into the bowels of the ship.

But he didn’t let go. He hoisted her over his shoulder and strode out of the lab.

She twisted enough to slam her elbow into the back of her captor’s helmet, but she didn’t get so much as a surprised grunt. The arm wrapped around her tightened, and she could barely breathe. Her captor strode through the deserted corridors, passing charred and warped bulkheads.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Kim gritted out, reluctantly accepting that her martial-arts training was worthless on someone protected by combat armor, “but everyone on this ship is afflicted with some killer disease that can pass through galaxy suits and combat armor. You’re an idiot for coming here.”

“Really,” came her captor’s dry reply.

It was a familiar dry reply, though it took her a moment to place the voice. It almost sounded like Casmir. Casmir with a more cultured Kingdom accent.

Kim groaned. “I was hoping I’d never see you again.”

“How distressing for my ego.” Rache set her down in front of an airlock hatch but kept his hand around her neck, the pressure of his grip all too noticeable through her hazmat suit. A normal human might not have been able to hurt her through it, since it was as strong as the material used in galaxy suits, but he wasn’t normal. “Any chance you’d like to come along voluntarily, so I don’t feel like an ass for kidnapping you?”

“You’re asking me this with your hand around my neck?” she asked in disbelief, her fingers curling into fists. She wished she knew one vulnerable spot on that armor, as she would gladly risk herself for a chance to send him flying. “After you just killed the marines sent along to protect us?”

“I suppose my timing could be better.”

“You are an idiot. I don’t know how that could be possible, all things considered, but it’s as clear as Glasnax.”

“An idiot who needs a doctor to help his men down at the wreck.”

The wreck? The wreck where her mother had last been seen? She did want to go down and look for her, but not before she found a solution to their medical mystery and not with some murdering pirate.

A second man in black armor jogged up. “Nobody’s coming after us, Captain. Made sure of it.”

“Good.” Rache waved him through the open hatch into a shuttle. “Scholar Sato?”

“I’m not volunteering, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Unfortunate.” He lifted her and spun her toward the shuttle.

Furious at the manhandling, even if her suit protected her from injury, she twisted in the air, coiled her legs, and slammed a side kick into his chest. She knew it wouldn’t hurt him, but she trusted that he needed her alive, and it felt good to protest. Childish, but good.

“She’s feisty for a doctor,” one of Rache’s men commented.

There were two of them in the shuttle, each carrying weapons that looked more like cannons than guns. They’d probably been designed to take down aircraft. Or men in combat armor.

Kim shook her head bleakly as Rache, unbothered by her mighty kick, strapped her into one of the two front seats. She wondered if Dr. Sikou or anybody else who’d come over with her was left alive. Not certain where she was going or how long she would have reception, she thought about sending Casmir a short message, but she knew he would worry.

6

Casmir woke up with a pounding headache and stared up at a gray ceiling, confused. Where was he? He wanted to be home, with his mother taking care of him, but unfortunately, awareness returned quickly, and he remembered where he was. And that he’d had an allergic reaction to the drug he’d so wisely volunteered to take, and broken into a wheezing hive-speckled mess in front of the cute nurse. How lovely.

The nurse’s concerned face came into view, and she touched his shoulder. “How do you feel?”

“Alive,” he croaked. His throat hurt, but at least it wasn’t swelling shut anymore.

“That’s good. You scared me.” She smiled quickly, but the worry didn’t fade from her eyes. “Doctors Sikou and Angelico are over on the other ship, and I didn’t know… I mean, I’ve administered epinephrine and diphenhydramine for allergic reactions, of course, but then you had a seizure.”

“Yeah.” Casmir patted her arm, wondering what it said that he needed to comfort her. Just that he was used to his life, and she wasn’t, he supposed. “Like I said, Rache took my meds.”

“You should have told me that you’re prone to seizures.”

“You didn’t ask. And I wanted the drug to work, so I could clear my name. It’s been a very confusing month, and I think the authorities are, unfortunately, even more confused than I am. Uhm, you don’t, by chance, have some rivogabine in here, do you? I can print off my prescription for you if you need it.” He made a vague gesture toward his embedded chip.

“I’ll check the inventory, but people with seizure disorders aren’t allowed into the military, so I’m not sure…”

“Yes, I have a whole list of stuff that ensured I wasn’t going to enlist when I turned eighteen. It’s fortunate I was far more interested in building things to do my fighting for me than flinging myself out on the front lines.”

Ishii walked into view and frowned down at Casmir.

Casmir decided that statement had sounded rather cowardly, even if it was true. Oh, well. He’d given up on trying to impress the nurse as soon as he broke out in hives, and Ishii, who seemed fixated on the antics of ten-year-old Casmir, wasn’t responding well to his overtures of friendship.

“You really didn’t cheat at robotics camp?” Ishii asked.

Casmir almost laughed. “Has this really been bothering you all these years?”

“No. I hadn’t thought about it until you showed up on my display, but it may have checkered my belief that you could be involved in something criminal now.”

Casmir closed his eyes, weariness making his lids heavy. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been knocked out, but he suspected it had been longer than typical for a seizure. He probably had an impressive cocktail of drugs swimming through his bloodstream.

“I did disable the weapons on Forseti Station,” Casmir said, compelled to honesty. He didn’t know if it was the aftereffects of the drug, or if he just needed to confess. “So we could get away, but only because Captain Lopez promised me that bounty hunters would be after me, and I needed to get off the station. I already knew the crushers were after me. I don’t suppose you people know who sent those?”

“We people?”

“The military. I’ve assumed the government isn’t after me, for several reasons, including that the crushers were stolen from the military research lab instead of merely checked out.”

“I don’t know. Sir Asger might. He arrived only a few days ago, docking his shuttle in a bay here and giving me travel orders from Royal Intelligence signed by the commander and the queen. Neither he nor the orders said what he wants here—I thought he’d been assigned to assist with capturing Rache—but he was awfully interested in collecting you.” Ishii raised his eyebrows. “What are you involved in, Dabrowski?”

“I really don’t know, but I was on the design team that invented the crushers.” Casmir lifted his head. “Uhm, is Zee still in the corridor?”

“Looming and collecting dust, yes.”

Casmir refrained from mentioning that Viggo’s vacuums would have kept that from happening and that Ishii’s fancy warship might have a substandard cleaning system.

“From what I’ve learned about the crushers from a brief chat with Asger, I’m relieved you ordered him to stay out there.”

“Yeah.” Casmir shivered as he imagined dying on the deck as Zee hurled the nurses around and kept them from helping him.

“I’ll send Asger in to talk to you now.” Ishii walked toward the door.

Casmir was curious about what the knight would say, but he wished he could sleep for twelve hours before anyone else questioned him. When Asger and his purple cloak swept into view, Casmir struggled to get his brain into order.

“You look like hell.” Asger had walked in with his book. He lifted his cloak and made the tome disappear into some pocket.

Casmir wouldn’t have guessed cloaks had pockets, but they weren’t a garment he ever shopped for, so who knew?

“Thanks. You look like the guy on the posters plastered around the capital to perpetuate the legend of knights and convince kids with a smidgen of noble blood to apply for the program.”

“Actually, I’m on the bodybuilding posters, promising dazzling delight to all who come to my shows.” He posed, flexing his biceps. He wore his gray liquid armor, but that didn’t keep the size of his arms from being apparent.

“Bodybuilding?” Casmir asked, surprised by this turn toward the whimsical.

“You haven’t seen any of my shows? What about the calendar? No? That’s disappointing.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed knights were allowed to engage in, uh, spectator sports.”

Asger shrugged. “It’s something I got into as a teenager. A little modeling but mostly bodybuilding in competitions. I got an agent and was doing shows all around the continent while I was still a squire, and he talked my commander into letting me continue, as long as we didn’t use my knighthood as a selling point. I’m pretty good at filling the seats based on my own merits.”

“Merits?” Casmir wasn’t sure if he was confused because his mind was a postictal, drug-addled mess or because this wasn’t even vaguely the conversation he’d expected to have with the knight. Maybe both.

Asger did the pose, showing off the biceps again. His blue eyes glinted with mischief or humor, maybe both, and Casmir hoped that meant the man didn’t take himself too seriously.

“Of course,” Casmir said. “Merits. I see now.”

“If you were female, you would have noticed them right away.”

“Undoubtedly true.”

Casmir decided his new knight acquaintance was younger than he’d realized. Early twenties. It crossed his mind that this might be a suitable knight to introduce to Qin, merits and arrogance aside. Someone that age might be less likely to hold the old biases tight to his chest. Casmir wondered if he could set them up for a coffee date. Or a sparring date. He wasn’t entirely clear about what Qin wanted to do with a knight, beyond meeting one.

“How much did Sir Friedrich tell you?” Asger asked, thankfully switching topics.

“Hardly anything. The crushers showed up, and he jumped out the window to fight them, to give me time to get away.”

“You know he’s dead.” Asger’s eyes narrowed, and Casmir remembered that he’d lied about that when he left his message on Forseti. Did Asger know?

“I suspected, yes. I saw some of the footage from a parking-garage camera.”

“Our… employer sent him to help you, to get you to safety. She sent me to try to find out who stole the crushers and wants you dead. I followed two of the crushers to Forseti Station and then got bogged down in the mess you left there.”

“Sorry. I—did you say she?” Casmir’s breath caught. “Do you mean—Sir Friedrich said my mother sent him to deliver the message to get off the planet.”

“Mother? That would be a rather surprising turn of events. Friedrich was my senior and actually lived at the castle, so he might have known more, but…” Asger squinted at Casmir, then shook his head. “I don’t see it. Not even vaguely. Unless he didn’t mean in a biological sense.”

Casmir felt a twinge of disappointment, even though it didn’t sound like Asger knew much for certain. As much as he loved his adoptive family, he’d gotten his hopes up at the idea of potentially meeting the woman who had given birth to him. Or at least commingled her genetic material with someone else’s to have him created and birthed in an artificial womb.

“Are you talking about…” Casmir bit his lip. “Who are you talking about?”

Asger hesitated.

“It’s not the queen, is it?” Casmir couldn’t imagine why the queen would care about him, but Ishii had said she’d signed Asger’s orders personally. Did that make her his employer?

Asger glanced over his shoulder. The nurses were gone, and so was Ishii.

“I asked that this not be recorded,” Asger said, “but…” He shrugged and looked at Casmir.

A text message scrolled down Casmir’s contact: Messaging rights requested from Sir William Asger. Accept or deny?

Accept, Casmir thought promptly.

The queen was the one to assign me this task, yes. And to tell Friedrich to help you get off-planet and—she hoped—out of danger. I don’t know if the king knows anything about any of this. They have a close and amicable relationship, as far as I know, but they monitor different parts of the government and often work on different things.

Was Casmir a thing? And if so, why?

Aware of Asger watching him, Casmir nodded slightly, trying not to react much to the news, in case they were monitored. Did this silence mean Asger didn’t know if he could trust Ishii? Or was all this supposed to be kept secret for some reason? Casmir’s mouth went dry at the idea that the queen not only knew who he was, but might know more about who he was than he did.

I’ve only had modest luck with my part of the assignment, Asger continued, but there’s a terrorist outfit back on Odin—the Royal Intelligencers haven’t yet been able to find their main base of operations—and I’m beginning to suspect they may be involved.

Terrorists want me dead? Any idea why?

I don’t know. It’s more that there are clues linking them to the stolen crushers than anything obviously pertinent to you. Asger squinted at him. You’ll have to pardon me, but… you’re not what I expected. I’m a little flummoxed as to why someone would consider you a threat.

Yeah, you and me both.

Given that the knight had so far only seen him go into anaphylactic shock and have a seizure, Casmir could understand why he was underwhelmed.

Asger’s forehead creased. Maybe it wasn’t the response he’d wanted.

The terrorist organization—they call themselves the Black Stars—is working against Jager and his desires to expand again into other systems. They’ve struck both at home, near Zamek and the castle, and abroad. If they want you dead, it must be because they believe you have some value to Jager and his plans.

I’ve never met King Jager. Or the queen. Or anyone in the royal family. They don’t slum at Zamek University that often.

It must have to do with your work.

Casmir shrugged helplessly. Any input I had in the crusher project ended a year ago. I don’t even know who the team lead for the robotics division of the military research lab is right now.

He wondered what Asger would think if Casmir asked him to leave. He truly could use some rest, but now that he had the name of the group that had stolen the crushers and might have sent them against him, he wanted to scour the network for information on them. Black Stars. Maybe he could find something that had eluded Asger.

Did you travel outside of the system at all when you worked for the military research lab? Asger asked. Do any work that could have caused grudges? Right now, the Kingdom is getting blamed for some things perpetrated by various organizations out there that want change. Numerous prominent habitat and world leaders like President Bakas have been assassinated in the last six months. It’s true that Jager wants to bring more systems back into the Kingdom and is vehement about condemning the freaks of nature out there and what humanity is turning itself into, but I doubt he’s behind those assassinations. The Senate would never approve of anything even hinting of that. Someone may be using us as scapegoats. Asger rubbed his short beard, continuing to consider Casmir as he transmitted his words. If you were out there, maybe someone is using you as a scapegoat.

Casmir shrugged. This is my first time off Odin. Before last month, I’d never even left my continent.

Huh. Maybe it’s not what you’ve done then, but something they think you will do. Asger waved toward the corridor, perhaps indicating Zee.

Uh, unless someone’s scientists have mastered time travel, I don’t see how anyone could know what I’ll do. I certainly have no plans to create any more killer robots. I turned down a big bonus when the military asked me to continue research and development for them. I prefer being poor and being able to sleep at night. Casmir didn’t want to downplay his worth or importance so much that the knight would grow disgusted and abandon him, but he found everything revealed thus far puzzling. All I do now is teach and work on medical robots. Occasionally, robotic flight on the side. None of that should drive fear into the hearts of terrorists or any enemies of the Kingdom.

Regardless, the latest I got from the queen is that she wants me to protect you. It doesn’t matter if I understand why. Though I am pleased that it doesn’t look like you’ve turned criminal. That would have created complications of loyalty and morality for me.

Casmir was bemused that his garbled answers to Ishii’s questions had somehow proved his innocence, but he was happy if that meant no more Kingdom Guard officers would try to arrest him. He was less happy about Asger’s promise of protection. The last knight who’d tried to protect him had gotten himself killed, and that made Casmir very uncomfortable. It was like he’d failed a test before he’d even realized he was taking one. He would prefer to rely only on Zee. He didn’t want to lose Zee, either, but that would be less devastating than a human being.

The sickbay door hissed, and Ishii walked back in.

“We have two problems,” Ishii told Asger, ignoring Casmir.

“New ones or old ones?” Asger asked.

“New. The Kingdom ships that guard the gate are under attack from an unidentified cargo vessel—what appears to be a cargo vessel but has massive shielding, a huge arsenal of weapons, and stealth technology. There’s speculation that it’s something even greater than a slydar hull, but someone may simply be making excuses to explain why they haven’t taken it down.” Ishii clenched his jaw. “It almost slipped past our people, but they’ve got the gate blockaded sufficiently right now and are keeping it in the system. But at great cost. They’ve requested backup. The Goshawk and the Kestrel—the two other warships we were traveling with—have left the refinery investigation and search for Rache’s ship, and are heading over, but we’ve also been commanded to set course for the gate to help.”

“That seems like overkill for one ship, no matter how high tech,” Asger said.

“I wasn’t given many details—” Ishii grimaced, sounding frustrated at that, “—but I read between the lines that the cargo ship may have used its stealth to sneak into the system and steal something important. Something we’re going to be in trouble over if it gets out.”

Casmir frowned down at his blanket and mulled over whether that could have to do with the missing archaeologists and the piece of gate they’d discovered.

“What’s the other news you mentioned?” Asger asked.

Ishii finally turned his attention to Casmir, and a twinge of dread drove out his other thoughts. Before Ishii spoke, Casmir knew it would be bad news.

“The other news is that Kim Sato was kidnapped.”

“What?” Casmir lurched into a sitting position, not caring that his headache intensified, as if someone was hammering his skull with a mallet. “How?”

He almost asked who, but somehow, he already knew. His dread curdled in his stomach.

“A combat shuttle sneaked up to the Machu Picchu from the moon, and a raid team shot the marines I sent over and snatched her away before anyone commed us. My medical officers are injured and the marines are dead.” Ishii’s eyes turned molten with anger.

“I’m sorry you lost men.” And Casmir was, but he couldn’t keep from blurting, “Where was she taken? Do we know?”

“The shuttle was heading back toward the moon before it disappeared from our scanners.” Ishii frowned at Asger. “I’m irritated at all the mysterious tech that’s shown up this week. Why are we behind? Don’t we have intelligence officers—and knights—stationed all over the Twelve Systems so we won’t be surprised like this?”

Asger sighed. “Just because you’re surprised doesn’t mean Royal Intelligence doesn’t know about new developments.”

“We have to get her.” Casmir barely heard their conversation. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, wondering why and when someone had put him in a loathsome hospital gown, and teetered as soon as his feet touched down. Unfortunately, he didn’t think he could blame the gravity. “It’s Rache. It’s got to be.”

Asger gripped his arm to keep him from tipping over. “What do you mean it’s Rache? You think he’s on the moon?”

“I think he’s kidnapped my best friend.”

“Why would he want a bacteriologist?”

“Why did he want me? I don’t know.” Casmir looked around. Clothing. Where was his clothing? And his borrowed galaxy suit? He needed to be dressed to rescue Kim.

Ishii scratched his cheek. “We didn’t get to that part of the interrogation, did we? Why did he kidnap you? And what happened to the bioweapon?” He glanced at Asger.

Asger only shrugged. “We’ve been trying to get a spy onto Rache’s ship for years, but he’s talented at ferreting them out. It’s unfortunate that the female assassin didn’t succeed. We’d thought…” He waved a dismissive hand. “That was years ago, and we’re certain she’s dead now.”

Ishii seemed to find the answer more frustrating than enlightening, and he turned back to Casmir.

Casmir spotted his suit draped over a chair and clawed on the lower half, again with Asger keeping him from falling over. His weary limbs were even more lacking in coordination than usual.

“He didn’t kidnap me,” Casmir said, sensing he’d have to explain what he could in order to get Ishii’s help. “He put a bounty out for me, and I don’t know why.” He was glad he had the excuse of focusing on dressing to avoid looking Ishii in the eyes. He didn’t know if curiosity about their blood was the only reason Rache had wanted him, but it was the only one he knew, and he didn’t want to admit that link to anyone. “Maybe the same reason the people who stole the crushers sent them after me. Whatever that is.”

Casmir didn’t buy Asger’s reasoning that he might one day invent something important that would help the Kingdom. Who could possibly know that?

“As for the bioweapon,” he continued, guessing that concerned the men more than his bounty, “I’m crossing my fingers that it blew up along with the refinery. The case holding it was open and in the middle of a firefight when Kim and I escaped. There were explosives everywhere. Captain Lopez and her co-pilot helped set them off and get us out, apparently feeling guilty about handing me over to such a notorious pirate. If the bioweapon didn’t blow up, then Rache has it.” Casmir tugged his suit over his shoulders and fastened the seam. “I was hoping Rache blew up, but then a shuttle appeared behind us. We thought it was chasing us, but it headed to the moon instead of to the research vessel. Rache must want what’s down there. Maybe he got himself infected with whatever has people quarantined on the research vessel.” Casmir looked at them. “Damn, that must be it. Why else would he need Kim?”

“What could possibly be down there that’s making people get sick and die?” Ishii asked.

“I don’t know. All I know is that the archaeologists found a gate fragment down there. At the least.”

Ishii’s eyebrows shot up.

“You don’t know about that?” Casmir looked back and forth between them.

Did Asger seem less surprised? It was hard to tell.

“I assumed the archaeologists reported all their findings to the government when they asked for help,” Casmir added.

Ishii frowned, looking perplexed.

“I’m aware that they reported finding what might be a gate,” Asger admitted. “It’s in pieces down there, or it was.”

“How do you know more than I do?” Ishii asked in exasperation. “Isn’t he your mission?” He thrust a finger toward Casmir.

“It seems so.” Asger contemplated Casmir as if he believed someone had made a mistake in sending him out to protect a lowly civilian roboticist.

“Why wouldn’t Fleet have told me about all this?” Ishii demanded. “I understand need-to-know, but they sent me to blow up a ship with quarantined survivors on it. Do they truly fear a virus or are they covering up that we may have found a gate? And how much trouble am I going to get in because I didn’t blow it up?”

Asger lifted his hands in a gesture that wasn’t successful at placating. “I don’t know much more than you do. It’s possible the Fleet higher-ups don’t know anything about this at all, that it went straight to Royal Intelligence and the king and queen. That’s a civilian research ship, after all.”

“Is that what that teched-up cargo ship stole?” Ishii flung a hand toward the wall. “A spare gate?”

“I doubt anyone found an entire gate,” Asger said. “The report mentioned pieces…”

“I bet Rache knows more than both of you combined. Maybe that cargo ship is full of his friends or employers.” Casmir tugged on his boots. “If we get Rache, we can get Kim back, and you can interrogate him about all he knows. I’ll cheer you on as you do it.”

As soon as the last words came out, he wondered if they were true. If they got Rache’s mask off, everyone would see the unsubtle resemblance, and everyone would know they were related. Would that land him back in trouble again? Guilt-by-association? Or guilt-by-blood, more accurately. Casmir snorted, wondering if Rache would have an allergic reaction to interrogation drugs.

“Dabrowski,” Ishii said, “we have orders to go to the gate and stop that cargo ship from leaving the system.”

“If they have gate bits in their hold, that seems like a good idea.” Fully dressed, Casmir stood on his own and faced them.

He was ready to go get Kim, but he needed a shuttle. That was the only way off the ship and the only way to catch up with Rache. Except, ugh, he needed a pilot too. Casmir’s poor depth perception would have gotten him laughed out of flight school if he’d ever applied.

“But you need to leave behind a strike team and a shuttle, Captain. And I need to be on it. We can’t leave Kim with that man.”

Asger frowned. “You don’t even know that’s who has her. Or why he would want her.”

“Like I said, it’s got to be for the same reason you wanted her. Nobody else out here has any experience with horrific bacteria that kill people.” Casmir had no idea yet if that was what they were dealing with, but he didn’t much care. He just knew he had to rescue his friend.

He didn’t like the way Ishii and Asger were exchanging long looks.

“Just leave me with a shuttle and some men, Captain. Sora. Please.” Casmir spread an imploring hand. “I promise not to tell anyone else your childhood nickname.”

Ishii scowled, not looking amused.

“And I won’t complain if you tell everyone you know about my Teacup experiences. Please.”

“I have orders, Dabrowski. We’ve already left orbit.”

“What?”

Casmir lunged to grab him, but Ishii stepped back and evaded the grasp easily.

“Asger, calm him down or put him in the brig until he calms down on his own,” Ishii said. “I’d say to drug him, but I don’t need him convulsing on the deck again.”

“Wait, Sora—”

“Captain Ishii,” he said and stalked toward the door.

As Ishii strode out, Casmir glimpsed Zee’s shoulder, the crusher in the precise spot where Casmir had told him to wait hours earlier. He almost, in a fit of stupidity, ordered Zee to stop Ishii, to force him to give Casmir a shuttle and a pilot, but even Zee couldn’t plow through a crew of six hundred, including a hundred marines in combat armor.

Casmir slumped into the chair, utter defeat making him far more fatigued than the drugs had.

“I’m sorry, Casmir,” Asger said quietly. “As much as Rache hates the Kingdom, he doesn’t usually target civilians. If she cooperates, maybe he’ll let her live.”

“I’ve known Kim for seven years.” Casmir dropped his head between his knees and gripped the back of his neck with both hands. “If there’s one thing she doesn’t do, it’s give in to the demands of bullies.”

7

Yas hadn’t found anything enlightening, at least in regard to the medical problem, in the strange derelict, and he rushed outside as soon as the shuttle returned, descending slowly into the narrow canyon. It landed in the same icy spot, lights brightening the forest of frozen stalagmites. The sun had set, its meager light fading from the moon.

Yas strode toward the shuttle and waited for the hatch to open. Long moments passed, and he stepped back, wondering if some Kingdom soldiers might have killed Rache and taken it. What would he do if angry marines leaped out, pointing rifles at his chest?

When the hatch finally opened, interior light slashing out into the night, nobody at all stepped out.

“Come help your new colleague set up the lab, Dr. Peshlakai,” Rache’s dry voice came over the comm.

Yas grimaced and walked into the shuttle, expecting to find a hapless woman tied to a chair. He found Kim Sato in a bright yellow hazmat suit leaning against the navigation console with Rache next to her in his black armor. She wasn’t tied and didn’t hold any weapons, but the way her arms were folded over her chest made her attitude clear. When her dark gaze landed on Yas, he read accusation in her angry eyes.

Yas turned to close the hatch—and avoid her eyes. He wished he dared say he wasn’t with Rache, that he was also a prisoner. But that wasn’t strictly true. He’d agreed to this, and he had, however inadvertently, been responsible for Rache bringing her down here.

Rache pointed toward the back of the passenger area, to the mess-turned-laboratory where Yas had been working before. Yas sighed and headed back to pull out the medical equipment. Maybe he could apologize to Scholar Sato when Rache wasn’t glaring at them both.

Rache reached for her, as if to force her to follow, but she jerked her arm away before he touched her. Chin up, she strode down the aisle toward the lab.

“I brought as much medical equipment from the Fedallah as I thought would be useful and that would fit,” Rache said.

Even if they’d had all the equipment in the warship’s sickbay, Yas, who’d done an inventory and knew what was there, doubted it would have been sufficient for their purposes.

Judging by the way Kim stopped and stared at the counter and the contents of the cabinets, she was unimpressed. Or perhaps in shock.

“Have you contracted the disease yet, Doctor?” Rache asked.

“I’m showing signs of cellular damage, yes. I retested everyone down here less than an hour ago, and everybody is now. We should retest you.”

“I’ve been away from the moon and the wreck.”

Kim spoke for the first time. “Numerous crew members from the research vessel who never came down here died—according to the quarantined people who remain unaffected. I was in the middle of determining if person-to-person contact caused it, whether something in the air did, or if they brought back something from the wreck that caused the people on board to be afflicted. By the way, I’d like to see the wreck at some point to see if it spurs any ideas. I was on the verge of going over internal video footage of the research ship to try to learn exactly what happened and how this spreads.”

“Does this mean you’re agreeing to work on this now?” Rache asked.

She shot him a hard look. “I was working on it before. You didn’t need to drag me down to this frozen hell.” Judging by the way she waved at the mess station, she might have been referring to her new work area more than the moon. “I had a state-of-the-art lab up there. I’d be hard-pressed to find evidence of the common cold here.”

“I’ll be happy to give you a tour of the wreck personally,” Rache said.

“What an honor.”

“This is Dr. Peshlakai.” Rache waved at Yas. “He will assist you as needed.”

Yas grimaced, hoping Rache wouldn’t say he’d been the one to request Kim for the team. That hadn’t been his intent when he’d brought her up.

Kim gazed at him with dark impassive eyes. It was his first time meeting her—he’d seen the roboticist, Casmir Dabrowski, when they’d been on board but not Kim Sato—and Yas wished the circumstances weren’t so dire. He would have been curious to ask her about her work.

“Yas Peshlakai?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, surprised a Kingdom medical researcher had heard of him.

“I took a toxicology class at the university,” she said. “I remember reading some of your papers and being surprised that you weren’t much older than I was and had publications in a prestigious journal.”

“It was something I got into at a young age.” He felt wary with her but warmed a little at the recognition.

“I wouldn’t have expected to find you working for a mercenary.” She must not have heard about his president’s death.

Yas snorted. “I wouldn’t have expected it either.”

“My people currently have a limited amount of time to live,” Rache said coolly. “How about you get to work and save the lengthy introductions for later?”

“Their—our—lives wouldn’t be at stake if you hadn’t insisted on coming here, Captain,” Yas said, feeling bolstered by Kim’s presence, though maybe that was foolish. Did he think having a woman around would keep Rache from killing him? If anything, Rache might see him as superfluous now.

“A risk worth taking,” he said again, heading for the hatch and waving for his fighters to come outside with him. So he could return to searching the wreck?

As far as Yas knew, nothing had been found while he’d been gone.

“Don’t forget to send us a sample of your blood, Captain,” Yas said.

“I will when I’ve had more time down here to be infected.” Rache opened the hatch and stalked out.

“I suppose there’s no chance he’ll be the first to die?” Kim leaned against the counter with her arms folded over her chest again.

Yas realized she hadn’t agreed to help. What if she stood there, glowering at the equipment, and refusing to do anything? It would be hard to blame her, given that she’d just been kidnapped, but he knew he’d soon feel the effects of all that internal damage, so he wanted her assistance. No, he wanted her to take the lead and know what to do.

“Scholar Sato,” he said, “I’m very sorry you were brought into this, but I hope you’ll continue the work you started up there. As I told Rache, I’m afflicted, as is our engineer.” He wondered if introducing her to another woman might make her more inclined to help. But Jess’s mouth might not endear Kim, and it wasn’t as if Yas could tell the story she’d shared with him in confidence. Even if it might evoke sympathy from an outsider. “It’s also likely that you’ll be afflicted now that you’re down here.”

Yas had been wearing a galaxy suit and breathing from his oxygen tank while he’d been outside, but he removed his helmet now. Kim, ensconced in the hazmat suit, eyed him through her faceplate. He doubted he had to tell her that it was unlikely any form of suit would protect her from the threat.

“How did you end up here, Dr. Peshlakai?” she asked.

“You can call me Yas, and it’s a long story. Essentially, I was framed by someone who made it look like I killed my president. Rache helped me escape, but there was a catch.”

“I bet.”

“I agreed to work for him for five years. At the time, I was desperate and didn’t know who he was.”

“Finding out must have been delightful.”

“I may have cried a little. In a masculine way, as befitting a man of my stature.”

Kim snorted, but she turned around and waved at the microscope. “Show me what you’ve got so far.”

Casmir paced in sickbay while Zee stood by the door, and Asger sat in a chair, his book open in his lap. Casmir didn’t know how much attention he was paying to it, as he’d been on the same page for a while, but he did know the knight wouldn’t let him go out the door. He’d already tried. Sort of. After a few steps in that direction, he’d scurried back, because Zee had stepped ominously forward to intercept Asger’s attempt to intercept Casmir.

He hadn’t wanted to start a battle between his two allies, even if Asger’s support was somewhat academic and stifling at this point. At least he hadn’t followed Ishii’s suggestion to throw Casmir in the brig.

In the last hour, Casmir had sent a number of messages to Kim, but wherever she was, she wasn’t responding. He hoped that meant she simply didn’t have network access, not that she was unconscious—or worse. Either way, her silence worried him.

“Get some rest, Dabrowski,” Asger said, perhaps annoyed by his pacing. He stuck a finger between the pages and waved the book in a motion that might have meant go-to-bed or I’m-close-to-beating-you-with-this. The title on the front read Either/Or. How appropriate. “You’re not going anywhere except to the gate with the rest of us.”

Casmir gritted his teeth, wondering where Bonita and Qin were. Had they taken off in the Dragon or were they still lurking in the area, waiting to see if any opportunities to make money from the gate discovery came their way? Maybe he should have asked Ishii to drop him off on Bonita’s ship—if it was around. Requesting a shuttle had been too much. Why would Ishii give him one of his shuttles? Even if losing Kim would be tragic because of her contributions to medicine, she wasn’t one of his officers, so he probably didn’t feel obligated to protect her.

Not like Casmir. She was only out here because of him, damn it.

While he paced, he accessed the network and found a chip ident for the only Captain Bonita Laser Lopez listed in the directory. He’d never spoken chip-to-chip to her when he’d been on board, but she didn’t wear glasses, so he assumed she had an implant and contact display.

He sent a request for approval and paced, hoping she wasn’t sleeping or already in another system. Though if there was a small war going on at the gate, she would have a hard time leaving.

How’s your interrogation going, Dabrowski? came her response.

I had an allergic reaction and a seizure, Laser. Please call me Casmir. Thank you.

So it’s going well, eh?

Kim was kidnapped from the research ship. Casmir was relieved she’d responded quickly, but he didn’t want to waste time chitchatting, not when the warship was taking him farther from Skadi Moon with every passing minute. Are you and the Dragon still in the area?

More or less. We’re orbiting the moon on the opposite side from the research ship, mostly hoping the military forgets about us. Viggo is finishing the repairs that we started. They need to be done before we jump to another system, and…

You’re still waiting for an opportunity to make money?

There was a long pause before a response came back.

I don’t want you to think I’m a greedy, money-grubbing ratera, Casmir, which wouldn’t be surprising since I was willing to sell you, but I could really use a break. I don’t have anything lined up, and because I was an idiot and sent that money back to Rache, who’s probably dead…

I don’t think he’s dead. I think he’s the one who kidnapped Kim. And you didn’t sell me. You tried to collect what was, presumably, a legally issued bounty. He was about to ask for a favor, so he didn’t want her to think he held anything against her.

Why would he want Kim? Did he get himself infected with something vile when that bioweapon exploded?

Casmir hadn’t considered that possibility, but if Rache had been infected by the bioweapon, he would have gone after Kim immediately. He wouldn’t have taken a meandering route down to the moon first.

I think he got infected with whatever is in that wreck down there. The same as the archaeologists who visited. Casmir returned to pacing—he’d stopped and was staring blankly at the wall while he read his messages, and Asger was squinting suspiciously at him. Casmir kept his head down, studying the deck.

You think I should take the Dragon down there and fire my railgun at him, his shuttle, and the wreck? See if I can blow them all up for real this time? There is a bounty on his head, FYI. I checked. The Kingdom government has issued one for almost a million.

While I understand your desire to rid the systems of him and collect a bounty like that, I’d prefer you not attempt to obliterate him when Kim is standing next to him.

Ah, right. Sorry. What did you have in mind? I assume you didn’t contact me just to catch up. You’re not in the brig over there, are you? I would have assumed they had their cells shielded to prevent inbound and outbound messages, but you’re probably crafty enough to get around that.

No, I’m in sickbay with a knight standing guard.

Ah, the seizure. Right.

Casmir thought about pointing out that the allergic reaction had been more alarming than the seizure, but it didn’t matter. Will you help me if I can get Captain Ishii to transfer me to your ship?

Another long pause followed. He knew he was asking her to risk getting close to the military, who might have a grudge against her thanks to the Forseti Station mishap, and also to potentially confront Rache. It was a major request. What could he offer her—legitimately offer her—to make it worth her while?

To help her snatch a piece of the gate? His conscience wouldn’t allow that, not when she might take it and sell it to the highest bidder. But maybe…

Laser, I know I’m asking you to put yourself in danger for me—for Kim—but in exchange, I’m willing to help you make some money. I’ll either build something with my robotics skills that you can sell, or I’ll help you brainstorm ideas. I’m good at talking people into giving me money.

Please, I’ve seen your wardrobe. That can’t be true.

Let me correct that. I’m good at getting people to give money to my department for research. I’ve gotten grants for millions, Laser. Just this past winter, I talked BornTech into giving us four state-of-the-art robots worth a million crowns each so we could focus on programming and not have to worry about building our own from scratch. I’m the one who gets sent to all the fundraiser dinners.

Is that because you’re such a gifted negotiator or because you’re the least socially awkward person in your department?

It’s possible I’ve spent too much time on your ship.

I guessed right, didn’t I?

All right, let’s talk patents. I have several that I’ve never tried to make any money from. They were a result of extra-credit projects. I know enough people in the industry that I’m sure I could find a buyer for some of them. I’m willing to sign them over to you and get you in touch with those people.

If they’re worth so much, why haven’t you sold them?

I don’t have a ship I need to keep flying, and I live in faculty housing with a roommate. My salary has always been sufficient for my needs. Laser, time is of the essence here. Please say yes so I can switch over to negotiating with the captain. You have my word. Help me, and I’ll help you.

I’m positive I’m going to regret this. Why am I agreeing to it?

Because you’ve missed me terribly since I left?

That can’t possibly be it.

Because Viggo wants someone to repair his vacuums?

That’s closer to the truth.

He grinned and sent her the information on the medical vending machine he’d patented a few years back. It scanned a user’s injury and dispensed bandages of the appropriate size along with a small tube of Skinfill. He would have to do some poking around once he got home and life settled down, but he believed he was being honest and could find a corporation that would be interested in it.

“Sir Asger.” Casmir stuck his hands into the pockets of his suit and faced the knight. “I’m guessing the captain placed you here to keep me out of trouble, such as wandering off and trying to hijack his ship and turn it back around.”

“Actually, I’m here to protect you. I sincerely doubt Captain Ishii is worried about you hijacking his warship.”

“Ah.” Casmir decided to take that as a logical assumption based on the prowess he’d thus far displayed rather than a deliberate insult. “Would you be willing to escort me to his office? I have a proposition for him.”

“If I deny your request and try to keep you here, would I have to fight your robot? It seems to be programmed to protect you.”

“I am a Z-6000, programmed to protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski,” the crusher announced in his flat monotone.

Sadness struck Casmir in the chest like a hammer. Kim wasn’t there to be protected.

Why hadn’t he sent Zee to the Machu Picchu with her? Rache and his mercenaries had gotten the best of the crusher before, but if it had been a small strike team, maybe Zee could have made the difference this time.

“Yes, quite,” Asger murmured, eyeing the crusher.

He knew about Friedrich’s death and had surely seen the footage of his fellow knight’s demise. Casmir should be pleased Asger hadn’t gone berserk and attacked Zee the instant he saw him.

“I don’t want to start a fight,” Casmir said. “I just want to—need to—talk to the captain.”

Asger stood, his long purple cloak swirling about his calves. He stuck his book into that hidden pocket.

“I’m a guest on Ishii’s ship, and Fleet orders are usually the same as the king’s orders.” Asger’s tone turned dry. “I’m not helping you escape.”

“What makes you think I want to do that?”

Aside from the joke he’d made about doing so, of course…

“The steam coming out of your ears as you were pacing. The last time I saw someone think so hard, his brain exploded from spontaneous combustion.”

“Was that a joke?” Casmir asked, hoping to divert Asger’s thoughts, since he was fairly close in his guess. “I didn’t know knights were encouraged to have senses of humor.”

“We’re normal people.”

“With terrifying weapons, deadly reputations, and cloaks.”

“That last naturally being the thing that precludes humor.”

“You never see a stand-up comedian in a cloak.” Casmir extended a hand toward the door. “Will you come? Or not stop me if I go?”

“Oh, I’m coming. I’m keeping an eye on you. Much like your solid friend here. He’s taller than the other ones. Did you build him?”

Did Asger look the faintest bit intrigued or even impressed? Maybe that was wishful thinking.

“Yes. I was tired of being picked on by crushers. And overzealous Kingdom Guards. I thought I should be prepared for the next would-be bully that came my way.”

Asger arched his eyebrows.

Either thanks to sublime genetics or attentive grooming habits, they were as perfect-looking as his short beard, mustache, and shoulder-length hair, which fell in tidy waves to his broad shoulders. Casmir promptly felt silly admitting having had trouble with bullies to someone who’d probably never been picked on in his life.

Casmir stepped into the corridor, relieved there weren’t any guards that he would have to navigate. “According to my model-loving friend, the bridge and the captain’s office are this way, right?”

“You must pay more attention to his lunch lectures than most people.”

For some reason, Casmir felt pleased that Asger had been paying attention to his blatherings to Ishii. Maybe this was a man he could work with. He already seemed better than the knight at Forseti Station.

Asger didn’t object when Casmir led off with Zee taking the second position. Numerous uniformed crewmembers stared or lifted their hands, as if to object to these odd beings roaming their ship, but then Asger would step forward and nod. A nod from a knight was apparently enough to convince everyone that the ship was rotating as expected.

When Casmir reached Ishii’s office, he paused outside to collect his thoughts and consider how this negotiation might go. What could he offer the captain of a top-of-the-line Kingdom warship? Ishii probably had everything he’d ever dreamed of and a few things he hadn’t. What would be important to him? Successfully completing his mission, no doubt. Was there any way Casmir could help with that?

He grimaced, knowing he couldn’t offer that without also delaying his retrieval attempt, but Ishii had already made it clear he wasn’t going to lend Casmir a shuttle or divert from his route. But if Casmir could help Ishii, perhaps the captain would feel obligated to return that help afterward. Which would be extremely useful. It wasn’t as if Casmir, Bonita, Qin, and the Stellar Dragon would be a match for Rache and all his mercenaries, especially if he’d already repaired his big warship. The Fedallah could already be stealthily lurking in the moon’s orbit.

And, as much as Casmir hated the idea of leaving Kim with that psychopath, he doubted Rache would kill her. He ought to be willing to give her days to figure out their medical mystery, days during which she would be safe. Casmir worried he would hurt her, but he also trusted that Kim was incredibly capable and could probably deal with the man, at least for a few days. He prayed that reasoning was sound.

Casmir waved at the automatic announcer, and the door soon slid open.

“I thought I told you to put him in the brig,” Ishii said—irritably, not jokingly. He sat at a desk facing the door and glowered at them.

Casmir glanced at Asger, the edge of his shoulder and telltale cloak just visible behind Zee.

Asger leaned further into Ishii’s view. “He seemed wan and weak for that. I thought he might relapse.”

Casmir rubbed his face. Maybe he ought to thank his medical issues for this unexpected help, especially if it was true, but he mostly wished they would cease to be a problem and everyone would forget about them.

“That would be unfortunate,” Ishii grumbled, a tablet pen clenched in his fingers like the dagger he was possibly fantasizing about thrusting at Casmir. “What do you want, Dabrowski?”

“I would like to assist you in completing your mission.”

“I’m sure.”

“I don’t want stolen gate technology leaving our system. If it was found here, it seems the Kingdom has the most legitimate claim on it.”

“Yes, it does.” Ishii squinted at him. Suspiciously.

Why did everyone squint suspiciously at him?

“I’ve already talked Captain Lopez of the Stellar Dragon into assisting us,” Casmir said. “If you’re willing to allow her to catch up and link to your ship, she’ll take me on, and we’ll be at your disposal to help with that cargo ship in creative and unexpected ways. We’ll double the resources you can bring to the battle. We’ll make sure the gate pieces aren’t going anywhere before we head off to rescue Kim. Should you feel obligated to assist us in return, I wouldn’t object, but I’ll go after Rache myself, if I need to.”

“Double the resources?” Ishii dropped his pen. “Are you claiming that freighter is equal to my warship?”

“No, I’m claiming that you have a mere one ship right now, and you could have two at your disposal. Captain Lopez is a capable pilot, and she has a very talented combat specialist on her crew.”

“I have hundreds of combat specialists.”

Casmir thought about mentioning that Qin was modded and perhaps more than a match for his marines, but she was only one person in the end. Besides, a Kingdom military officer wouldn’t be impressed by a cat woman.

“Zee would also help.” Casmir stepped aside and gestured to the imposing robot as he might a used scooter he was trying to sell.

“Well, that will just make all the difference in a space battle, won’t it?”

“I think you’re undervaluing how useful an outsider with permission to apply creative thinking to the problem could be to your efforts,” Casmir said. “Did you know there have been numerous studies showing that radical innovation can often, when the chance is given, arise from people in different but analogous fields of study? It’s because those people are pulling from different experiences and backgrounds, and they’re not constrained by knowledge of the typical tactics and solutions in the original field.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot, Dabrowski? You just want off my ship so you can go get your friend. Even if I thought your help would be as valuable as the drivel flying out of your mouth implies, there’s no way you actually mean to give it.”

Casmir had anticipated numerous objections and had responses ready, but he hadn’t expected his word to be doubted. He promptly realized he should have. Just because none of his colleagues or superiors back home had reason to doubt his honesty didn’t mean that would apply to someone he hadn’t seen in more than twenty years.

“I wouldn’t lie to you, Sora.” Casmir gazed steadily into the eyes of his old nemesis, hoping to convey his earnestness. As much as he wanted to go right down and help Kim… if he promised to help at the gate, he would do that first. In whatever way possible. “We can fly in and comm them, try to distract them while your people plan thrilling military maneuvers.”

“Put him in the brig, Asger,” Ishii said. “I don’t care if he collapses.”

“Perhaps guest quarters would be sufficient?” Asger suggested.

“The brig. And the robot too. I don’t want that thing to have free rein of my ship when Dabrowski is plotting ways to get off it. But if the genius boy can figure out a way to defeat our enemies from his cell, I’ll happily help him recover his friend afterward.” Ishii flicked a dismissive hand. “I have a command meeting with the other captains. Get out of here, all of you.”

The door shut in Casmir’s face.

“That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped,” Casmir admitted.

He wondered if he should feel heartened that Ishii had said he would assist with Kim if Casmir figured out a solution. The entire sentence had been laced with sarcasm, so he didn’t know if he could truly put stock in it. But Ishii had made the statement in front of the knight. Maybe he would feel even more honor bound than usual to keep it. The problem was that Casmir had no idea how he could defeat an enemy ship while locked in the brig.

Asger gave him a pitying smile. Casmir shook his head bleakly. He didn’t want to be pitied. He wanted to find a way to help Kim and help anyone who could help him help Kim.

8

Kim yawned fiercely and clunked her gloved fingers against her faceplate when she instinctively reached up to rub moisture from her eyes. She should have been used to wearing a helmet after all this time in space, but she was tired and not surprised that her fingers had forgotten. She’d lost track of how long she’d been looking at blood samples and running analysis programs, but it had been well over an Odinese day and night since she’d slept.

Yas had helped her set up the equipment and briefed her about what he knew and what he suspected that Rache knew—apparently, surprise surprise, the captain wasn’t forthcoming with his men. Now, Yas was sprawled out across a bank of seats while their various analyses ran.

Kim didn’t blame him. There wasn’t room at the tiny counter for both of them to poke around, nor was there much for them to do. She was running every blood test she could think of that the limited equipment could handle. So far, she could see the damage and see it advancing hour by hour, but she didn’t know what was causing it or how to stop it. She kept coming back to radiation, or something close, but she’d dug up EMF and radiation meters, gone outside and pointed them at the exposed portion of the frost-covered metallic wreck, and gotten exactly the numbers she would have expected on a moon with no atmosphere to protect it from space.

She’d tried to double-check the data on the network but had been reminded, for the sixth or seventh time, that she didn’t have access. She’d had it up on the Machu Picchu, but suspected the walls of the deep canyon put them in a dead spot. Now, she regretted that she hadn’t sent a message to Casmir. She hadn’t wanted to worry him, but he would worry, regardless, when he couldn’t get in touch with her.

Assuming he had network access. She hoped he wasn’t in as much trouble as she was. She could envision him in a brig cell, that grumpy captain with a grudge not having appreciated the answers to his questions.

The shuttle hatch opened, and Kim decided if it was Rache, she would ask him for that tour of the wreck. She wanted to take readings for radiation again from inside—it was possible the hull, however damaged, was blocking something—and see what exactly was in there. Inspiration, she hoped.

She wondered if her mother—or her damaged droid body—was in there somewhere. It had sounded like she’d stayed behind when the rest of the archaeology team left. So, where was she? Hiding? Disassembled somewhere?

Unfortunately, finding a cure had to be Kim’s priority. On the research ship, her blood test had come back negative for any signs of cellular damage, but that had changed when she came down here. She’d tested herself an hour ago and confirmed she was also suffering now. How long until she started to feel the effects? Fatigue would be among the first symptoms, she suspected, but how would she know if that was from the damage or the lack of sleep?

She snorted and removed her helmet. Her eyes were watering, and she was tired of not being able to wipe them.

“Does that mean you’ve contracted it?” Rache asked, walking over.

“I don’t think contracted is the applicable word, but yes. I’m starting to show signs of damage. But you knew that would happen, didn’t you?” She frowned at him.

“I suspected. Everyone who came down here has contracted it.” He lifted a shoulder and corrected himself. “Been affected by it.”

“Thanks so much for dragging me into it.”

“You were already researching it for the military.”

“Somewhere with good labs and where I wasn’t being affected.” At least not in the hours she had been there. She supposed it was possible she would have eventually gotten ill, since the rest of the crew had.

He didn’t have a comeback for that. Did he regret anything? Care about anyone? Who could tell when he hid his eyes?

Maybe she’d do the Twelve Systems a favor if she didn’t find a cure and she let him die here. But that would mean sacrificing herself and the others who’d been affected. It would also mean failing to solve the problem, a thought that made her gnash her teeth.

She set her helmet down out of the way. “It’s been clear from the beginning that the suits haven’t done anything to protect anyone, hasn’t it?”

“Yes. Why do you think that is?”

“Because it’s not a virus or a bacterium that we can keep out. I’m guessing it’s something akin to radiation, though I’m not getting any readings to verify that. Not from that wreck and not in people’s blood. There’s definitely DNA damage, which you’d expect, but there isn’t any drop in red and white blood-cell counts, which there should be. It also doesn’t make any sense that radiation exposure could be passed from person to person through contact, unless it was clinging to their suits, but damn it, we test for that every time someone comes in through an airlock. You get a nice shower if you’re glowing like polonium.”

“I ran scans inside the wreck and also didn’t see signs of radiation, not higher than typical for the moon.” Rache leaned against the hatchway jamb. “But I haven’t seen the entire ship yet. There are miles and miles of corridors—well more like conduit tubes—back there in addition to the huge storage bays. And it’s a maze. The layout is confusing. My men are still searching and mapping it. I expected something akin to the colony ships—though it’s questionable whether our blueprints for those are accurate, since the colonists disassembled them for raw materials—but this isn’t akin to… anything. It doesn’t even seem like it was designed for humans.”

Kim dug her fingers into the back of her shoulder, trying to soothe an ache from leaning over the microscope. “Another time, I’m sure I would find that interesting. But right now…”

“I understand. Where is Casmir?”

Kim blinked, surprised and then wary by the question. “Why do you care?”

“Believe it or not, I found myself wishing his robot was here to help with the search. It wouldn’t have been afflicted with anything, I’m sure. I could use an army of those robots. But I gather his army is busy invading, oh, where was it? Stribog Station.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The last I talked to my ship, they mentioned it. Stribog Station wanted to hire us to get rid of them if we were in the area. It seems Jager has a couple of ships there, trying to get a toehold in System Augeas.” Rache’s tone was icy with disapproval.

“I see.” Kim wasn’t sure if she believed Rache or if it mattered even if he was telling the truth. It didn’t have anything to do with their current problem, and it would upset Casmir if he heard about it. Maybe she wouldn’t tell him. “Casmir isn’t in System Augeas and doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

“He made the crushers, didn’t he?”

“When he worked for the military, he was always told his inventions would be used to defend Odin from outside aggressors, not to start a war, or whatever Jager is doing.”

“Then he was naive,” Rache said coolly.

“I guess he couldn’t be the paragon of perfection that you are. By the way, you never gave me your blood sample.” Kim looked at his faceplate, though she couldn’t see anything through that stupid mask he wore. What a time to worry about his super villain costume. “I assume you’re as affected as the rest of us, but I’d like to verify that.”

He gazed back at her and didn’t respond right away, then looked over to Dr. Peshlakai, who was snoring softly. None of his other men were in the shuttle. It made Kim a little uneasy to know she was essentially alone with this killer who had kidnapped her, but she told herself that he wanted a cure for himself and his men. He shouldn’t pester her or do anything but assist her.

And there was a part of her that had a hard time believing he’d be a sexual deviant if he was related to Casmir. More than related to him. That was something she could confirm if she ended up being able to keep a sample of his blood. Not that it was anywhere near the top of her priority list right now.

“I see no reason why I wouldn’t be affected,” he finally said. “I’ve been here numerous hours now.”

“I agree, but it’s foolish not to gather all the data on hand. A blood test isn’t going to tell me your real name, if that’s what you care about. I haven’t even got a network connection right now.” She waved overhead, indicating the towering walls of the canyon. “If that’s like other combat armor I’ve seen, you can have your suit take one and send me its analysis, but it would be better for me to have the sample itself so I can run tests.” She pointed toward the vials she currently had being run for everything from vitamin deficiencies to who’d been vaccinated with what in their lifetimes.

Rache hesitated another moment, then removed his helmet and stepped toward her. He pushed up his hood enough to reveal his neck and flicked two fingers toward a syringe on the counter. “Go ahead.”

“What, you want me to take it from your jugular?”

“It’s a pain in the ass to take off the armor.” He lifted his gauntleted hand. “Peshlakai has done it this way.”

“Peshlakai is a medical doctor. I’m a researcher. My degrees are in microbiology and pharmaceutical bacteriology. I minored in literature. You don’t want someone who takes blood draws once every five years sticking a needle in your neck. Though I’m sure many people fantasize about doing so.”

She thought about pointing out that they could wake up Peshlakai, but Rache started taking off his chest and arm pieces and the gauntlets.

“Literature?” he asked.

“I needed electives, and I like books.”

“Ah yes, you’re a Moby Dick fan.”

“I analyzed it for a class. I wouldn’t say I signed up for the fandom.” Kim grabbed the syringe, drummed the vial on her arm, and waited for him to finish undressing his top half.

“What books do you like?”

She couldn’t keep from giving him an exasperated look. “This isn’t a date at the coffee shop. You’re my captor. I’m not discussing literature with you.”

Though she would probably do it if it meant she was drinking coffee at the same time. Good coffee. It was almost embarrassing how much she missed it.

“Fair enough.” Rache bowed an acknowledgment as he continued unfastening his gear.

He was right. It took several minutes just to remove the top half. Underneath it, he wore a thin black long-sleeve shirt that hugged his lean, muscular torso.

“You’re really Casmir’s twin?” Kim asked skeptically, then promptly grimaced, both because she wasn’t sure how he would react to finding out that Casmir had told her, and because she didn’t want him to misconstrue her comment as some kind of sexual interest.

“So Dr. Peshlakai’s DNA test said.” His tone was more amused than annoyed. “I don’t usually get grimaces from women when I take off my armor.”

“No? Given your occupational choice, I have a hard time believing you get hordes of voluptuous females flinging themselves at you in a sexual fervor.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then laughed. “You’re very blunt.”

“I’m not good at editing words before they come out of my mouth.” Kim waved for him to push up his sleeve. “Fortunately, nobody where I work cares, and my inability to schmooze people, as Casmir would say, rarely matters.”

“I actually do get targeted by voluptuous females—more often than you might think. Females with low standards, clearly.”

“Clearly.” She waved at his sleeve again, finding it surreal that they were having this conversation. What a nut.

“I’ve learned to avoid them. Every now and then, there’s an assassin in the mix.”

“I’m shocked,” she said.

She managed to catch herself before pointing out that he could hardly expect anything less when he’d decided to make himself King Jager’s personal nemesis. He was still her captor, and it would be better to keep her mouth shut and avoid antagonizing him.

Not responding to her sarcasm, Rache finally pushed up his sleeve. “Now that you’ve told me how much experience you’ve had at this, I’m wondering if I should be concerned.”

“A bruise from some spilled blood is the least of your concerns right now.” She did the draw without trouble; the veins on his arms stood out and made it easy. “After I run this, can I get that tour of the wreck? I hate to admit it, but I’m stymied here. I’m hoping for some elucidation in there. Or to find something emitting a previously undiscovered relative of cosmic radiation.”

Kim supposed that was a possibility. That they had discovered something new.

“I’m not aware that tests on the gates have shown that they do that.” Rache started dressing again.

“Did you find any pieces of the gate in there?” Kim well remembered that video with her mother waving what Casmir had believed was a gate fragment, but she didn’t bring it up, also remembering that she’d stolen the chip with the video on it from Rache.

Had he realized it yet? He’d probably been busy since then.

“Not yet.” He sounded frustrated.

Kim divided his blood into smaller containers for the tests she would run and made a slide—she’d had no trouble seeing everyone else’s cellular damage under the microscope.

“We believe we’ve found the molds that held a disassembled gate for transport, but someone cleared everything out. It’s hard to tell if it was done thousands of years ago or last month. I’m hoping my team will come across a forgotten piece, so we’ll at least get something out of this diversion, but I’m hypothesizing that someone else has been here since the original archaeology team came, and that they took everything valuable. It’s possible they did something to cause this… not-a-disease.”

Kim was skeptical that this was a manmade phenomenon, but all she said was, “What happens if we don’t find a cure for it? Any chance you have a brilliant backup plan?”

“No. But I suppose I might, in a spurt of vengeance, fly to Odin and take a kamikaze run at Jager’s castle. Unfortunately, I don’t think I would live long enough to make the trip. People have been dying quickly from this.”

“No kidding. I’d appreciate it if…” Kim grimaced, hating the idea of asking him for a favor. Of asking her kidnapper for a favor. “I have a father and brothers back on Odin. Friends and colleagues. I’d like to be able to get a message back to them. I guess if I could even send something to Casmir, he’d make sure they got it.”

She swallowed, irritated at the lump welling in her throat at the thought of never seeing anyone again. Emotion wouldn’t help anything, and she needed her mind calm and clear to work.

“You two are a couple?” Rache asked, his tone hard to read.

She fought down the urge to bristle and say it was none of his business, and why did he care anyway? Then it occurred to her that he might be curious about Casmir. Casmir had said that was at least one of the reasons he’d put the bounty out to collect him, at least according to Rache. Well, she wasn’t going to answer questions about Casmir, not to this man. Who knew what his true motives were?

“Just good friends. We’ve been roommates for seven years.” Kim slid his slide under the microscope and leaned in for a look.

“If we’re not able to find a solution here, I’ll fly you and the group back up to orbit. There will be reception for sending messages there.”

She couldn’t bring herself to thank him. He was the reason her life was in danger.

Rache tugged his helmet over his head. He’d never removed the mask and hood. She felt a twinge of disappointment, mostly because she wanted to know if he truly looked exactly like Casmir. Since she didn’t have a blood sample from him along, or a DNA sequencer, she couldn’t compare the two side by side to see if they matched.

But what she saw under the microscope made her forget all about that. “What the hell?”

She squinted, not trusting her eyes, and had the linked computer run a quick analysis.

“Something weird swimming in there?” Rache asked.

“You’re not showing the same signs of cellular damage that everyone else is.”

“Oh? Huh.”

Casmir trailed Asger down several levels and through the corridors of the sprawling warship, not paying attention to their route or the stares of people they passed. He was trying to tell himself that Kim could take care of herself and that he’d done all he could, but he couldn’t help but think of the Stellar Dragon, perhaps even now flying to catch up with the Osprey.

Because he’d asked Bonita to come get him. And now, he couldn’t meet her for a transfer.

He needed to send her a message before he was tossed in the brig with cell walls that would muffle transmission, and let her know he wouldn’t be joining her. But it was frustrating to admit defeat. If he could just get a ride over there, or convince someone to let the freighter attach to one of the airlocks…

But who besides the captain might be able to approve that? Some admiral back at Kingdom Fleet Headquarters? Casmir didn’t know any admirals. All of his connections were in academia, and he couldn’t think of any military officers on the board at Zamek University.

Asger slowed down, and Casmir stopped before bumping into him. Zee stopped behind him. There weren’t any crewmembers in their current corridor to give curious looks to their odd party. Had they arrived at the brig?

As Casmir looked around, seeing a large doorway rather than a bank of cells, Asger turned to face him. And gaze thoughtfully at him. For several long moments. Casmir grew self-conscious and had the urge to comb his fingers through his hair. Or maybe his beard. He hadn’t smeared hair removal gel on his jaw for several days and was bristly.

“If you were a woman looking at me for that long, I’d get my hopes up for a kiss,” Casmir said.

Asger closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. “I can’t believe I’m contemplating this.”

“Er, it’s not kissing, right? Because that woman thing is a requirement for me.”

“I hope I’m right,” Asger muttered and pressed his palm to a print reader beside the hatch, then leaned in for a retina scan. “He should have added me to the database since I’m parked in here,” he muttered, seconds passing slowly. “I can’t promise Ishii won’t get an alert.”

Abruptly intrigued, Casmir studied their surroundings again, looking for more clues as to where they were. 1A was all the label by the door said. The corridor was wide here, the ceiling high, and he spotted a few insulated doors that might be for refrigerators or freezers farther down.

“Approved,” a computer voice said. “Welcome back, Sir William Asger.”

The door slid open, and Asger walked into a dim room. Lights came up, shining on two sleek shuttles resting on magnetic plating. One was a match for the blue-and-gold exterior paint of the Osprey and clearly belonged. The other was white with royal purple highlights, the color an exact match for Asger’s cloak.

Hangar doors on the far side of the small bay offered an exit into space, and Casmir’s stomach flip-flopped.

“Are we going somewhere?” he asked as Asger strode toward the second shuttle, a hatch in the side opening automatically.

“Not if you don’t hurry up. Someone on the bridge will probably get an alert, since we’re entering the captain’s private bay, and Ishii can override the doors from up there.”

Casmir convinced his weary limbs to jog to catch up. “This is your personal shuttlecraft?”

Being a knight came with more perks than he’d realized.

“It’s one from the knights’ ship stable back on Odin.” Asger led the way inside and jumped into one of two piloting pods up front. His fingers were flying across the control panel before he sat down. An articulating arm with a chip interface swung toward his face, similar to the setup in the Dragon.

As soon as Casmir and Zee entered, the hatch swung shut, sealing them into the shuttle.

“Put your helmet on and pod up,” Asger ordered. “Even if the bridge doesn’t object, this is going to be a tricky takeoff. The warship left orbit a while ago and is accelerating for the gate.” His voice lowered. “At a constant, I hope.”

“How much piloting experience do knights get?” Casmir smiled, but he couldn’t help but feel nervous as he sat in the pod next to Asger’s and the intelligent insulation wrapped around him like a cocoon.

“Enough.”

“Zee, sit in one of the pods, please,” Casmir called to his silent robot friend. “Having you go flying across the shuttle and crash into us would be extremely painful. For us.”

“I’ll bet,” Asger muttered, firing up the thrusters. “Let your friends know we’re coming.”

Casmir almost said that they should see if they survived the takeoff first, but for whatever reason, Asger was helping him. He had better keep his sarcastic thoughts to himself.

“Will do.”

Asger looked over at him. Was Casmir supposed to add on a sir or a my lord? He thought my lord and my lady had fallen out of fashion over recent centuries, but he also didn’t interact with the nobility often. Most of the qualifying people that he knew in academia acted like normal people, the main difference being that they lived on some centuries-old family estate in town or the countryside instead of faculty housing.

The shuttle-bay doors opened. An indicator flashed on the control panel.

Asger sighed and rotated the shuttle, so its nose pointed at the doors, before answering. “Yes, Captain?”

“Are you going somewhere, Asger?” Ishii’s voice came over the speaker.

“For a jaunt to stretch my legs.”

“My security officer reports that Dabrowski wasn’t delivered to the brig. Don’t tell me his legs need stretching too. It’s not like they’re going to get any longer.”

“I know he’s not poking fun at my height,” Casmir whispered.

Asger didn’t answer. He flew carefully around the other shuttle and toward the exit.

“Answer me, Asger,” Ishii said.

“It’s Sir Asger. And I’m not in your chain of command, Captain. I answer to the king and queen.”

“I’m positive the king and queen don’t want you to take a civilian roboticist off on some harebrained mission,” Ishii said.

“Don’t be so sure,” Asger said.

The bay doors started closing.

Asger growled, and at some silent command he gave via his chip, the shuttle surged forward.

Casmir squinted his eyes shut, imagining them smashing into the doors. But the shuttle cleared them and shot out the back of the warship like a bullet. The Osprey continued on its course, and Asger turned them toward the bright blue dot of Saga, the planet far more distant than it had been the last time Casmir looked out a porthole.

“If you go get yourself in trouble with Rache,” Ishii said, his voice glacial, “don’t expect us to come bail you out. We have bigger problems.”

“I’m certain you’ll do whatever Fleet orders, Captain. Asger, out.”

The comm light went out, and Casmir sagged in the pod.

“Your friends?” Asger brought up the scanner display to show ships in the area.

“It’s the Stellar Dragon. I’m letting them know we’ll meet them now.” Casmir hurried and sent a message to Bonita, chagrined he hadn’t already done that. “We’re still going to the gate to help stop that cargo ship, right?”

Casmir looked at Asger, wishing he would override that plan, that for some reason he believed his employers would be more concerned about getting Kim back. But Asger nodded.

“Like you, I believe I can be more help out here in my own ship than standing uselessly on Ishii’s bridge. And you…” Asger pinned him with an appraising look. “I’m not sure yet what you can do, but I’m hoping it’s more than standing uselessly in a brig cell.”

“I hope I can, too, but may I ask why you have any faith in me?” Casmir hated to admit it, but he understood why a Kingdom Fleet captain would believe a civilian robotics engineer next to useless in a combat situation. Wouldn’t he feel the same way if a military officer came into his lab and offered to help assemble a robot?

That’s not the vessel we thought you’d meet us in, Bonita’s message scrolled down his contact while he waited for Asger to answer—if Asger intended to answer at all. Qin wants me to ask if you’re with a knight.

I am. Casmir didn’t say more, not when Asger had made that comment about freaks of nature. He had no idea how he would react to Qin’s unique appearance and abilities.

Is he going to help us get Kim?

Not exactly. There’s something else we have to do first.

I trust you’ll explain that while you’re telling me what this schematic you sent does.

I will.

Asger set a course to rendezvous with the Dragon, then gave Casmir another long, considering look. He opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head at whatever thoughts were on his mind. He finally said, “The queen believes you are worth protecting. Even at great cost.”

Casmir sank deeper in his pod, memories of Sir Friedrich returning to mind. Memories and guilt. What if he ended up getting Asger killed too?

Once the autopilot was engaged, Asger pulled out his book and propped his heels up on the navigation panel. He didn’t seem inclined to talk further.

Casmir closed his eyes, knowing his body needed rest, but he doubted his mind would comply.

9

Kim alternated between studying the computer readouts on the dozens of analyses of Rache’s blood that she had going and studying him. For a while, he’d spoken to one of his fighters who’d come in to update him on the search, but he’d returned to the wreck, and Rache was back to leaning against the jamb next to the lab, waiting to give Kim the tour she had requested. But his blood had become her little mystery, and she wanted to figure it out. It might hold a clue that could save them all.

Every other person in his party, including her, was getting more and more damaged, and he seemed unaffected. No, not seemed. His bloodwork showed that he was unaffected.

Why? Kim didn’t see anything abnormal in it. No nanobots roaming around repairing damage. His white blood-cell count was slightly higher than typical, but she’d seen that in people who got regular immune-system-enhancing shots.

“You’ve got cybernetic implants, right?” Kim asked.

“Yes, but so do many of my men who are affected.”

“And you get immune-system enhancers?”

“Yes, but so does Chaplain. We go together whenever we pass Jotunheim Station.” His tone turned dry. “While the other men visit the brothels and casinos.”

Whenever Rache got dry, his voice reminded her of Casmir. Even though she wouldn’t wish this illness on him, she wouldn’t have minded having him down here. She had a feeling this was all tied in with that wreck, and someone with an engineering background might have some insight that she lacked. Maybe she could talk to Rache’s engineer later.

She forced her wandering thoughts back on track. “Chaplain is one of the men here and affected, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Damn, I wish I had some of Casmir’s blood too. I’m curious if he shares your immunity. He’s sort of the baseline you, right?”

Kim squinted at Rache, wishing he’d take off the mask. His sleeping doctor was the only other person in the shuttle, and it sounded like he already knew about Rache and Casmir.

“I see he swore himself to secrecy after our chat.”

“We’ve been roommates for a long time. I know that he wears superhero underwear and uses Robot Remstar shampoo. Secrets are few.”

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

“I’m fairly certain he doesn’t know of anything unusual about himself or his genes. I don’t suppose you, being perhaps more knowledgeable, would care to enlighten me.”

“No.”

“Nothing that could account for your apparent immunity?”

“We’re not genetically engineered super humans, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’ve shared a bathroom with Casmir for seven years. I know he’s not a super human.”

“Since you said your relationship isn’t romantic, I’ll assume that’s not a dig about the size of his reproductive organs.”

“No. I just assume a modded super human would be capable of replacing the toilet paper after finishing off the roll.”

“You think the geneticists code that in, eh?”

Kim made an exasperated noise and went back to the microscope and tests, scouring the data. The answer had to be here. It couldn’t be a fluke that Rache was fine when every other single person was dying, their cells aging decades for every day.

The hatch opened, and the engineer came back inside, ice crystals dusting the shoulders of her black combat armor.

“Sir?”

“Back here, Chief,” Rache said. “Any sign of parts of the gate?”

“No, Captain. We’ve been over about seventy-five percent of the ship at this point. We’ll keep looking, but, uhm, is Dr. Yas sleeping?”

“The snoring suggests it.”

“Shouldn’t he be… It’s Chains, sir. He’s not looking too good. And I’m kind of…” The woman looked toward Kim and her makeshift lab, then lowered her voice. “I’m not sure how much longer we’ve got, Captain.”

“Understood. Finish searching the ship, and then we’ll get out of here if we find nothing.”

“Back to the Fedallah, sir? Are the repairs complete?”

“Close to complete. I’ll comm them when we have reception and get an update.”

“Yes, sir.” The woman saluted and left the shuttle.

“The archaeology team took whatever this illness is back up to their ship, and their crew is dead now,” Kim said. “You might not want to—”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

Kim digested that. “Lying to the troops probably isn’t good for morale.”

“You have my blood, Scholar Sato. Find a solution.” Rache headed toward the hatch.

Apparently, her tour was off the table.

“You and your muscles and enhancements aren’t very good at people,” Kim muttered, not expecting him to hear the comment or to care if he did.

Rache, his hand on the hatch, looked at her. She braced herself for a threat.

“What would Casmir do to entice you to work harder?” he asked.

“He would know I’m doing the best I can, but he’d definitely offer to help me if I helped him. I came here looking for my mother. I know you saw her in that video. If your people happen to run across any droid bodies, I’d appreciate it if you told me.”

“They have not, but I will look myself,” he said and walked out.

Casmir gave the Stellar Dragon’s airlock hatch a jaunty knock from the outside. Zee stood behind him in the connecting tube that Asger had extended. The outer hatch opened, and they stepped into the airlock chamber. Asger jogged up the tube and hopped in with them. He wore a helmet, and presumably his fancy knight armor doubled as a spacesuit, but the cloak still hung down his back.

“You don’t need to stay and fly your ship?” Casmir had hoped to speak with Bonita and Qin without a stranger present, a stranger who might hurt Qin’s feelings with some rant about modded humans.

“The automatic pilot and wireless interface are the best there is.” Asger waved at his temple. “And I need to keep an eye on you. Both eyes.”

“I hope that’s not literal. I’m a little squeamish about being touched by organs.”

Asger rested his hand on his pertundo, the telescoping handle retracted so it hung from a belt loop like a simple axe or mallet. Casmir hoped he didn’t think he would need it on the Dragon.

A red light flashed, and Bonita’s voice came through a speaker. “Just as a precaution, we’re running the decon program.”

“We haven’t been over to the research ship since we were last here,” Casmir said, “but if you feel you need to hose us off, that’s understandable. There’s a knight with me, so make sure the spray doesn’t wrinkle his cloak.”

Asger’s eyebrows twitched upward. Casmir smiled innocently. He’d wanted to warn Bonita of his presence so she wouldn’t have Qin answer the door, but he hoped Asger wouldn’t think anything of the comment.

A fine mist sprayed them from multiple nozzles, and Casmir was glad he was still wandering around in the galaxy suit. When they were finally able to step inside, Bonita waited with no fewer than ten robot vacuums rolling around the deck next to her.

Casmir blinked. Had she brought them down for repairs? How much could they have been damaged in the last day?

The vacuums zipped toward him, and he fought the urge to spring back into the airlock hatch for protection. A boisterous song he didn’t recognize played from speakers in the cargo hold, and the robots synchronized themselves as they flowed around and between Casmir’s legs in something akin to an organized dance.

He looked to Bonita for an explanation.

She rolled her eyes. “Viggo missed you.”

“The vacuums missed the one who repaired many of their faults,” Viggo said. “They are expressing their gratitude.”

“The vacuums aren’t the ones who play that silly opera every time they clean.”

“I’ve run tests. They perform more efficiently with music.”

Bonita shook her head. “You’re full of dung, Viggo.”

“My internal sanitation systems ensure that’s not possible.”

Asger stepped out of the chamber warily as he eyed the exuberant robots zipping around Casmir. “That may be the oddest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“You must not get off Odin much if that’s true.” Bonita frowned at him. Apparently, she didn’t share Qin’s fascination with knights. “You Casmir’s keeper?”

“In a manner of speaking. I am Sir William Asger.” He put some emphasis on the sir, as if to instruct her to use the honorific. He had better not hold his breath waiting for that. “Casmir, why does this woman think you need a keeper?”

“Well, she’s met me.”

As Zee strode out of the airlock chamber, the vacuums scattered, and the music stopped playing.

Asger focused on Bonita, his expression growing pensive. “You are Captain Bonita Lopez, a bounty hunter and smuggler?”

“Captain Laser Lopez, and I’ve retired from my brief stint with smuggling.” She turned her frown on Casmir before aiming it back at the knight.

Casmir wanted to tell her that Asger had looked her up on his own, that he hadn’t blabbed about her occupations. He hoped Asger wouldn’t try to arrest her.

“She’s also the pilot who’s going to take us to the gate to help the Kingdom Fleet,” Casmir said.

“Do we have to pay her?” Asger’s lip curled as he looked down his nose at her.

There was a height difference of some eight or nine inches, but Casmir had a feeling he would have looked down his nose no matter what, and he glanced nervously about, hoping Qin was in her cabin. They would have to meet eventually, but maybe it could wait until Asger was settled in and less… stuffy.

He hadn’t been that bad on the Osprey. It seemed smugglers and smuggling ships impinged on his knightly sense of morality.

“Casmir’s already bribed me with useless schematics, though I do hope he’s going to explain to me why we’re now going to the gate instead of back to Skadi Moon to retrieve Kim.” Bonita’s gaze met his. “Didn’t you say she’d been kidnapped? Is she still kidnapped?”

“Yes, and yes, but I promised to help Captain Ishii and the other Fleet captains with a problem—there’s an extremely high-tech and weapons-laden cargo ship trying to bust its way out of the system with stolen goods. A couple of warships are blockading the gate, but they’re having trouble taking the thieves down.”

“And how are you going to help with that?” Bonita waved at him. “Are you even armed?”

“With my wits, yes.”

“Dear God.”

The vacuums, having recovered from their alarm at Zee’s entry, buzzed in again. One ran over Casmir’s foot. He wasn’t sure if it was a programming mishap or if he had lint on his boot.

“I may also have a small robot army to call upon.” Casmir waved at the vacuums. “And I left my tool satchel in the cabin here, so I can make things.”

Asger considered the vacuums dubiously, then turned a more speculative eye on Zee. “Can you make more like that?”

“Not unless we go back to Forseti Station or Odin or somewhere with a huge manufacturing facility and all the materials and tools I would need.” Casmir didn’t mention how much it would cost to legally buy those materials, since he hadn’t purchased the ones he’d used on Zee. He felt like more of a criminal than Bonita currently, even if he hadn’t smuggled anything in his life.

“Too bad. An army of those might make a difference.” Asger tapped an invisible button on his chest, and his helmet retracted. “But we’d still have to figure out a way to get them aboard the enemy ship. I suppose we should head to the gate and see if the Fleet even needs our help. They may have dealt with the problem themselves by now.”

Casmir decided he should wish for that rather than for a chance to do something heroic that might cause Ishii to feel indebted to him so he would bring his big warship to help with Kim’s retrieval. Besides, Bonita was right. He didn’t have any weapons, and neither her freighter nor Asger’s shuttle would be a match for a ship capable of giving multiple Kingdom warships a hard time.

“If I get all the way to the gate,” Bonita said, heading across the cargo hold, “don’t count on me wanting to stick around in this benighted system.”

“Benighted?” Asger said with indignation.

“She might mean be-knighted,” Casmir said, though he was sure all knights had heard the pun far too many times to find it amusing.

Asger ignored him. He was looking at something across the cargo hold, his eyes narrowing.

Bonita had paused to make a shooing motion with her hand. Casmir glimpsed Qin jerking her head out of sight—she’d been leaning around the corner.

Asger sucked in an alarmed breath. “What was that?”

“Not what, who,” Casmir said. He had hoped to wait a while before introducing Qin, but they would have to get it out of the way now. Maybe Asger would be more reasonable than Casmir expected. “That is—”

Asger charged across the cargo hold, yanking his pertundo from its holder. He almost knocked Bonita over as he raced toward Qin.

“What the—” Bonita blurted, jerking her pistol from its holster. “Stop!” she cried, aiming at the back of Asger’s head.

Bewildered, Casmir lunged toward her and knocked her arm up. The bolt fired into the ceiling as Asger sprang out of sight around the corner.

A crack-thud emanated from the corridor, and Qin loosed a bellow that sounded half shriek of alarm and half battle cry. The thuds and clashes of battle rolled into the cargo hold.

Bonita threw Casmir a scathing look, then charged toward the fray.

“Zee,” Casmir yelled, “stop them. Don’t let them hurt each other.”

The crusher sprinted for the corridor, easily passing Bonita who ran with a limp, and sprang out of sight.

“And don’t hurt either of them!” Casmir yelled, running after Zee.

What was going on? Why had Asger reacted so violently?

Casmir reached the corner at the same time as Bonita, who lunged around it, her pistol ready again.

“Don’t you have a stunner?” Casmir yelled, trying to bump her arm to keep her from firing the deadly weapon at anyone.

Cracks and bangs and thumps continued to sound, but Zee’s body blocked the view. Someone was backed halfway into the ladder well and fighting for his life. No, her life.

“Don’t you?” Bonita snarled, pushing him aside.

No, he only had his wits, and they weren’t doing any good.

Zee gripped Asger’s shoulder and pulled him back and hefted him in the air. Asger hollered, swinging with his pertundo. The axe edge of the halberd slammed into the bulkhead, digging deep, blue branches of electricity flaring around the head. Zee only pulled him farther back. The weapon almost came out of Asger’s grip, but he held on tightly and yanked it free.

The lights in the corridor flickered out, some electrical wire cut, but not before Casmir glimpsed a bewildered Qin crouching in a defensive posture, her fists up. She wasn’t even armed?

“Explain yourself, knight.” Casmir clenched a fist and glared at Asger.

Asger didn’t hear him. He snarled, twisted in the air, and slammed a boot into Zee’s torso, almost wrenching himself free. Zee’s grip tightened on his shoulder, and he didn’t let go. Asger drew his pertundo back to swing it at the crusher.

“No!” Casmir lunged forward, afraid the mysterious weapon would damage Zee.

The crusher was faster. He flung Asger away before the weapon could bite into his torso.

Asger twisted in the air, but he’d been thrown too hard and fast to manage to get his feet under him. He slammed into the deck, shoulder striking first. Qin lunged in from the opposite direction and snatched his halberd out of his grip.

“Stop!” Bonita yelled, waving her pistol.

“Everyone!” Casmir added.

Qin could have swung the weapon at Asger’s head and taken advantage of him being down, but she only skittered back, holding it defensively in front of her. Asger leaped to his feet, eyes blazing, chest heaving as he faced her. He took a single step toward her, but Zee came in from behind him, moving so quickly Asger didn’t have time to react. One robot arm wrapped around his body, pinning his arms to his sides, and Asger was hefted into the air again, his boots dangling above the deck.

“Hold him there, Zee.” Casmir stepped past Bonita, trying to block her line of sight. She still looked like she wanted to shoot Asger. “Asger, did someone spill fizzop on your circuit board? What are you doing?”

“What is that doing on this ship?” Asger couldn’t point with his arms pinned, but he jerked his chin at Qin. “That’s one of the Drucker pirates’ modified warrior freaks. They’ve killed hundreds. They’ve killed knights.” He snarled, trying to buck free of Zee’s grip again.

“No, that’s Qin Liangyu, the captain’s assistant.” Casmir looked toward Qin, feeling responsible for the attack and groping for an apology.

To his surprise, her shoulders slumped, and she let her captured weapon droop to the deck.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, eyes downcast. “The captain said I shouldn’t come out, that I should stay in my cabin. I was curious.” She glanced at Asger, but the livid anger on his face made her flinch. “I’ll stay out of the way.” She leaned the weapon haft against the bulkhead and fled up the ladder.

The fury and indignation faded from Bonita’s face, and she lowered her pistol.

“Is that where she came from?” Casmir had a hard time believing Qin as the killer Asger had described, but he did remember her alluding to pirates in her background.

Asger continued to stare at the ladder well, his face red, and all of his muscles tense.

“I’m not sure exactly.” Bonita shrugged. “I know she came from—was, er, commissioned by, I guess—one of the pirate families, but I didn’t ask for details about which one. She’s smart, and she’s an amazing fighter. She doesn’t even care that I can’t always pay her. She’s a good kid.” She glared at Asger, some of her anger returning.

Casmir held up a hand, silently promising he would find a way to create peace. As soon as he figured out how.

“Set him down, please, Zee.” Casmir walked up to Asger’s side, the corridor tight with the large knight and the even larger crusher filling the space.

Zee lowered Asger to the deck without releasing him.

“Get your thing off me, Dabrowski,” Asger growled, finally looking at him.

“Zee will be happy to release you if you promise not to attack the crew again. Captain Lopez and Qin—” Casmir waved in the direction she’d gone, hoping to instill in Asger that she had a name, “—are on our side.”

“That creature is not on my side.”

“Well, she’s on my side. And so is Zee. I think that means we’ve got you outnumbered.”

Casmir walked over to pick up Asger’s pertundo while he tried to think of something less antagonistic to say. He was irritated that Asger had attacked Qin and not being even vaguely diplomatic. Hadn’t he prided himself in the past on being able to get enemies to work together? Admittedly, those had been engineers with clashing personalities, not warriors who’d watched friends die in battle.

Taking a deep breath, Casmir faced Asger and held out the weapon. “Which doesn’t matter all that much to a knight, I suppose.” He forced a smile. “Please agree not to attack anyone on the ship while we’re here. I think it’s very possible Qin isn’t anyone you’ve faced before, but even if she is, we’re all going to be working together for a few days. Qin and Laser have agreed to help the Kingdom with the gate problem, the same as I have. Even though they’re not from our system. I think we should be gracious. You know, knightly. And chivalrous.”

“Have your robot let me go,” Asger said coolly.

“Will you give your word first that you won’t attack Qin again?” Casmir gazed into the knight’s icy blue eyes, hoping to find honor there under the anger. Maybe later, once tempers cooled, Casmir would ask what had happened—it sounded like Asger might have lost a friend, a good friend—but this wasn’t the time.

Asger’s shoulders flexed as he tried to escape the crusher without conceding anything. For good or ill, Casmir had made the robot well. Zee didn’t budge.

“I will not attack her while I am on this ship and we are working toward a common goal,” Asger said stiffly.

“Let him go, please, Zee,” Casmir said.

Zee released Asger.

Asger stepped forward, toward Casmir and also toward the ladder. Casmir tensed, afraid he would have to shout an order for Zee to grab their new ally again, but Asger only snatched his halberd and jammed it into its holder.

“Where are my quarters?” Asger looked from Casmir to Bonita. “I would prefer to keep to myself during the journey to the gate.”

“This way.” Bonita shot a glare at Casmir as she walked past him. With her back to Asger, she mouthed, “Where are my quarters?” with a mocking face, then raised her voice and spat a stream of words in her native tongue.

Casmir had no idea what they meant, and Asger must not have either. He followed her up the ladder well without hesitation, and Casmir was soon alone in the corridor with Zee. A couple of the robot vacuums trundled in, cleaning the deck where the fight had occurred.

Casmir felt the need to apologize to both Qin and Bonita, but he would give them a little time to recover from the incident.

“Viggo?” Casmir asked. “Are you listening?”

“I’m always listening,” the ship’s computer replied.

Casmir decided not to find that creepy or alarming. “How far to the gate? And how soon can we head in that direction?”

“Approximately eleven hours. The knight’s shuttle is detaching now. I shall ask Bonita if she is prepared to depart.”

“I have a feeling she’ll want to get this over with as quickly as possible,” Casmir murmured.

“That is likely true.”

“Let me know if I can repair or upgrade anything for you while I’m here.” He was tired and should try to sleep while they traveled, but he didn’t know if his brain would turn off.

“I will do so.”

Casmir headed up to the cabin where he’d left his tool satchel but paused at the open hatchway to the lounge. It seemed strange to be back here without Kim. She would have already been running on one of the treadmills, he wagered.

Hoping he was doing the right thing, and hating that they were flying away from Skadi and Kim, Casmir turned into his cabin.

10

Yas woke up with a start, almost falling out of the seat bank he was sprawled across. He clawed himself into an upright position, feeling dizzy, flushed, and more tired than when he’d gone to sleep. The disease, or whatever it was, was progressing.

He spotted Kim Sato studying data in the tiny lab and felt guilty that he’d left her to work while he’d slept for however long it had been. Had she made any progress?

Yas pushed himself to his feet, wobbling and gripping a seat back for support while he fought off a dizzy spell. Fear charged through his limbs, the fear that he might die down here in some forsaken frozen canyon thousands of light years from home. His parents would never know what had happened, never know that he’d had nothing to do with the president’s death.

An unexpected sadness came over him at the realization that he didn’t have anyone else except his parents who might lament his death. Shouldn’t there have been a wife by now? Children? He’d always been busy with work and his goals, but deep down, he knew he’d used that as an excuse to explain his solitude. Even though he’d won respect from his peers, he had never been good at enticing women to appreciate his assets. Him.

President Bakas’s words rang in his mind. Perhaps your pomposity wasn’t so lovable after all. She’d barely known him, but she’d seen right into the heart of his problem. She’d been a good president, good with people. He regretted that he hadn’t had an opportunity to find her killer. Her real killer.

He rubbed his face. His skin was warm and damp with sweat.

Needing a distraction from his thoughts, and a chance to be useful, Yas walked over to the makeshift lab. “Any progress, Scholar Sato? Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Do you know anything about Rache that I don’t?” Kim asked without looking up from the computer display. Her voice was flat, hard to read.

“Probably not. He saved my life, so I suppose I should be grateful to him, but I’m mostly wondering if I’m going to survive this trip down here.”

“Me too. He’s not affected by whatever is killing the rest of us.”

“No? Did he give you a blood sample?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve been poring over it for hours,” Kim said. “Right now, I’m running tests on antibodies to common illnesses because… I’m grasping at straws. Maybe it’s just his enhanced immune system that’s keeping him from being affected by this. But he said at least one of his men has had the same shots that he’s had.”

“Yeah. Most of the mercs are souped-up in one way or another.” Yas thought of Jess and the story she’d shared. She was probably one of the few who hadn’t altered herself to become a better killer. She’d had no other choice. He also regretted that she might die down here. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do. I don’t want to get in your way, but I’m afraid… I’m just afraid, Scholar Sato.”

“Me too,” she said quietly. “Call me Kim.”

“I’m sorry that you’re here. It’s my fault.”

Kim looked at him for the first time since he’d arisen. Her helmet was off, sitting on the counter, and numerous strands of hair had fallen free of her braid. She was on the plain side when compared to Jess’s striking beauty, but he imagined she would be cute with a little make-up and a smile. Not that he should be worried about such things now. What was there to smile about?

“I told him you were more qualified for this work than I,” Yas admitted, “so he decided to kidnap you.”

“I see.” Kim turned back to the computer displays. “I had access to a good lab up on the research ship. I’d much prefer to be working on this up there.”

“I’m sorry.” It sounded inane, and Yas knew it.

A soft ding sounded, and she shifted her attention to another display.

“That’s interesting,” she murmured, “but I fail to see what it would have to do with anything.”

“What’s that?” Yas stepped closer.

“It seems that the brave and virile mercenary Captain Rache was never inoculated against the Great Plague. Or, I should say, his ancestors never were.”

“It’s a hereditary vaccine, right? Everyone who received it… oh, about two hundred years ago should have passed it along to their children. Most doctors don’t even check now to make sure it was administered. Back then, there were massive campaigns to make sure that everyone in the Twelve Systems was safe from the virus.”

“That’s right. So why doesn’t Rache have immunity to that?”

“Because he was made in some scientist’s laboratory instead of a woman’s womb?” Yas smiled wanly.

Kim leaned her elbow on the counter and looked contemplatively at the wall. “I suppose that’s possible, since even on Odin, artificial wombs are relatively common these days.”

“You know I tested his DNA, right? And your friend’s?”

Kim nodded. “I assumed you were the one. Did you find anything interesting? There’s no DNA sequencer here.”

“Mostly just that they were identical for the most part. Your friend didn’t undergo gene-cleaning as a baby, and Rache did.”

“That shouldn’t have anything to do with vaccines. Rache has vaccine-induced antibodies to other typical childhood illnesses, Kingdom illnesses, that is. I checked. I’ve been desperate and checking everything. But as you pointed out, the Great Plague vaccine was hereditary. Technically, it wasn’t a vaccine. It was a genetic modification to our DNA, specifically, the DNA in our mitochondria. A slight alteration that made them less appealing to a virus native to System Hind that, when humans encountered it, decided that our mitochondria were delicious. The virus spread so thoroughly and rapidly that the extinction of humankind was predicted.”

Yas nodded, remembering reading about the Great Plague in his early years as a medical student.

“Even the Kingdom, which was as ravaged by the plague as anywhere else, couldn’t object to the genetic tinkering, not when a few slight alterations proved effective at deterring the virus. By then, everyone was desperate for a solution.” Kim tapped a pattern on the counter as she spoke, though she seemed unaware of doing it. “As far as I’ve read, there have never been any negative side effects from the mitochondrial changes. There’s no reason someone would opt to change the DNA back on a baby born today. Or born thirty-two years ago. It would result in that person being susceptible to the plague virus, which doubtless still lurks in pockets out there.”

Yas wiped sweat from his forehead. “It’s an interesting find, but it doesn’t really help with our problem, does it? Even if we could somehow snap our fingers and change every bit of our mitochondria to match Rache’s, it couldn’t possibly save us, right?”

“I don’t see how, given that whatever is affecting us resembles radiation far more than bacteria or a virus, but I need to think about it. I feel like I’m missing something key.” Kim covered a yawn, looking as tired as Yas felt, but she went back to drumming her fingers, working over the problem. “How could this cause Rache to be less susceptible to something like radiation?”

“You keep saying radiation. Is it possible this is some new radiation that we haven’t encountered before and don’t have a meter capable of registering?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering. If it originated with that wreck—that ship out there… who knows what star systems and empty space it sailed through before it arrived in our system? Maybe it encountered something deadly out there and is emitting it, and we’re all standing around like idiots, sucking it up.”

“Sounds like a good argument for leaving,” Yas said, “but that’s what those archaeologists did, and they still died.”

“The team from the video?” Kim frowned at him.

“Yeah. We found them all dead on that refinery.”

“Something else Rache didn’t feel was important to share with me.”

“I’m sorry. I should have realized you couldn’t have known about that and told you earlier.” Yas tilted his head. “Does knowing that help with anything?”

Kim closed her eyes. “I don’t think so. If you got acute radiation poisoning, you could easily die a few days later, after you’d been removed from the exposure. Maybe that’s what happened to them. What’s more puzzling is that people have died who weren’t down here. The crew of the Machu Picchu is dead, maybe affected or contaminated somehow by the team that went back there before presumably leaving and ending up on that refinery.”

“With someone chasing them. We saw that on one of the refinery cameras.”

Kim opened her eyes and issued an exasperated noise, and he realized he hadn’t told her about that either. Yas shrugged apologetically, now wishing he’d taken the time to carefully go over everything with her from the beginning. He’d already been feeling sick then and hadn’t been at his best.

“I care less about that,” Kim said. “I’m just trying to figure out why the crew died. Could it have been that circuit board? I suppose the team could have taken that with them back to the research ship. Yes, if they weren’t aware that the wreck down here was oozing some… pseudo radiation, they might not have considered that piece of the gate or the ship or whatever to be dangerous. I mean, I’m sure they examined it with every scanner they had before taking it back…”

“But if it emits something we can’t read, it wouldn’t have been enough,” Yas said.

“Right.”

“Everyone up on the research ship died, then?”

“Not everyone. A bunch of the civilian researchers quarantined themselves in sickbay behind Glasnax—and a magnetic field.”

“A magnetic field would protect against radiation as we know it.”

“That may be the answer then, though…” She grimaced.

“That doesn’t help those of us who’ve already been exposed,” Yas finished.

“No.”

“And it doesn’t explain why Rache’s mitochondria are making him immune.”

“No. And I admit, we don’t know if that’s the reason he’s thus far been immune. It’s just an anomaly present in his blood that isn’t present in anyone else’s down here.”

The hatch opened, and Rache and Jess walked in.

“Take a seat,” Rache said. “We’re going for a short ride.”

Jess flopped down with a weary groan. By now, she had to be feeling as poorly as Yas.

“Find anything interesting in the wreck, Jess?” Yas asked.

She shook her helmeted head as Rache headed for the pilot’s seat.

“I think we arrived too late, Doc,” she said. “It looks like someone cleared out all the good stuff. There’s not so much as a screw from a gate anywhere in there. Whoever it was, they may have had a spy in the archaeologists’ camp. I don’t think this wreck has been visible for that long. Some tectonic shift revealed it. I’m assuming that’s why someone finally found it, even though archaeologists and treasure hunters have been searching for centuries.”

Rache fired up the thrusters, and the shuttle rose into the night. He stayed in the canyon, lights playing over the forest of ice stalagmites ahead of them.

“If every piece of the gate is gone,” Kim murmured, “what’s emitting our pseudo radiation? The wreck itself?”

“It must be,” Yas said. “Like you said, the ship probably traveled through something weird, and the whole thing is contaminated, including everything that was in it.”

“Hm.” Kim squinted at the back of Rache’s head.

Still thinking about his quirky mitochondria?

“Maybe I should take that tour of the wreck now,” Kim said. “I’d like to take some pictures before we go.”

“You think we’ll get to go soon?” Yas asked wistfully. He didn’t want to die down here, but his fate was in Rache’s hands.

Rache, who was focused on flying, ignored their conversation.

“It doesn’t sound like he found what he was looking for,” Kim said. “Not much point in staying now.”

“True.” Yas was about to raise his voice and ask Rache about that when the shuttle landed.

They had only gone a couple of miles. The canyon had widened slightly but appeared mostly the same, yet he opened the hatch, cycled the airlock, and trotted into the icy darkness outside.

“What did he find?” Yas wondered, watching the forward display.

Rache soon came into view of the running lights, jogging toward mounds of snow swept against one side of the canyon.

“Not what,” Jess said. “Who. One of the original team of archaeologists, he said, though I was a little confused. He had me looking for metal on my hand scanner. Metal outside of the wreck, not in it.”

“Metal?” Kim lifted her head.

Rache bent, digging something out of the snow, and Kim left the lab, her gaze locked to the display.

He withdrew the body of the monkey droid Yas had seen in the video. Most of it. He pulled a detached leg out next, and dug the dismembered head out of another pile of snow.

Yas caught a stricken expression on Kim’s face before she jerked away, closing her eyes and bringing her fist to her mouth.

Yas didn’t know the story of how her mother had come to be a loaded droid, but it must have involved the death of her corporeal body. He could only guess at what Kim was feeling and what it would be like to lose a parent not once but twice.

Casmir knocked softly on Qin’s hatch. Bonita had disappeared into her own cabin to sleep while Viggo handled the flight to the gate, and he hadn’t seen Asger since the incident with Qin. He did know the knight’s shuttle was flying alongside the Dragon, matching its pace.

Casmir was a little surprised Asger hadn’t insisted on returning to it and sleeping there, staying as far from Qin as possible. But it seemed he’d been serious when he’d said he needed to keep his eyes on Casmir. Even if that would be hard to do from inside his locked cabin. Maybe he felt that was close enough to keep Casmir from getting in trouble.

“He doesn’t know me very well,” Casmir muttered and stepped back.

Qin hadn’t answered. She either didn’t want to talk or was sleeping, something he’d only managed to do for a couple of hours himself. It hadn’t helped that he’d dreamed of the attack in the corridor, but in the dream, Asger had succeeded in lopping off Qin’s head. Her body had lain in blood on the deck, cat-like eyes staring accusingly up at Casmir.

The hatch opened as he was turning away. Qin stood with the lights dimmed behind her, her shoulders slumped, her six-plus feet of height barely seeming greater than Casmir’s five-feet-seven. Her eyes weren’t accusing, but moisture glistened on her cheeks.

Had she been crying? He promptly felt twice as bad for bringing Asger.

“I’m sorry.” Casmir lifted an apologetic hand. “You were sleeping. I don’t want to bother you. It can wait.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.” She forced the briefest half smile he’d ever seen.

Right, she’d been crying.

“I came to apologize for bringing someone antagonistic on board,” Casmir said. “I didn’t have much choice since I was on my way to the brig, and he helped me avoid that fate, but I could have warned Captain Lopez sooner. Warned you.” He extended an open hand toward her and met her eyes, hoping she would see his sincerity. “I wasn’t expecting his reaction to be so strong. Combustible, you might say. I mean, I knew he was Kingdom and would probably share our prejudices toward people with genetic modifications, but that caught me off guard.”

Casmir lowered his hand. He was curious about her past, and was tempted to ask if she’d truly worked for one of the pirate families, but it wasn’t his business, and it shouldn’t matter unless pirates were the ones attacking Kingdom ships at the gate. He doubted it. The pirate families ran small outfits, usually a single ship or a small fleet, and they didn’t pick fights with military vessels. At least from what he’d heard in the news.

“Me too,” Qin whispered, glancing toward the cabin Asger had been given. “I just wanted to see a knight. Viggo said he was here, and I’d been trying to see one for a while, to see if they’re as brave and noble as they say in the vids and books.” She dropped her gaze to Casmir’s boots. “I know it’s silly, but I guess I thought they’d be chivalrous even to me. In the stories, they’re always protecting and rescuing ladies and risking their lives on their behalf. But it’s not like I’m a lady. I’m a freak, like he said.”

“Qin, you most certainly are a lady.”

He resisted the urge to point out that she was quite beautiful to anyone who could see past the fact that her arms had fur instead of hair. Maybe she needed to hear that, but not from him. He was fairly certain she was younger than most of his students, despite the muscles and enhanced ability to kill, and he would feel weird saying anything that could be construed as flirting.

She looked up, her eyes wary. Almost as if she expected a blow and was prepared to flinch.

“And you’re not a freak. I would know if you were. I can recognize my own kind, you know.”

Her eyebrows rose with skepticism.

“It’s true. You may not be able to tell from the handsome and suave gentleman I am now—” he wriggled his eyebrows, hoping to lift her spirits, “—but I’ve occasionally been ostracized. At school, at the synagogue, in sports—dear God, sports—I was that guy who didn’t fit in. I may not have fur and pointed ears, but it seems to be part of human nature, or perhaps the nature of a crowd, to be able to home in on those who are more than a standard deviation or two from the norm. And make sure they never forget it.”

“Yeah.” She hung her head, looking so dejected that his heart ached.

That had been more honest than he’d intended, and he feared he’d only reinforced her feelings of chagrin and despair instead of helping. He reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not your fault. And it’s nothing wrong with you. And you really can’t expect much from us backward Kingdom guys. We practically live in caves. Even my mild-mannered and scholarly father throws his head back and beats his chest with his fists when his favorite sports team scores goals.”

“Well, everybody does that.”

Casmir snorted but was glad she gave him a more sincere smile.

Once again, it faded quickly. “I didn’t do what he said, Casmir. Maybe the others did, the older cohort. I don’t know. I did fight for the Druckers—that’s what they trained me to do from the day the scientists handed me over to them. They paid for me to be made, so it’s not like I had a choice, especially when I was younger. But I’d never seen a knight before today, not in person. I’ve definitely never killed one.”

“I believe you.”

“Good.” She stepped from the safety of her hatchway and hugged him. Strongly.

He returned the hug, trying to react like a friend and not someone who was terrified she would snap his spine. He wasn’t sure why his opinion mattered, but he was glad she seemed more at ease. He was tempted to promise her he’d help find her a nice open-minded knight if she stuck around in his system, but he feared that would be difficult to accomplish. He didn’t know that many for starters, and he thought it might be challenging to find one who wasn’t deeply indoctrinated in Kingdom beliefs. Perhaps some of his students would be a better match for her. If she ever ended up back on Odin. He’d recognized a few kindred spirits among them, young men who knew what it was like not to fit in.

Qin released him and stepped back, wiping her eyes.

“How old were you when—uhm?” He waved vaguely.

He hadn’t intended to pry, but he wanted to know what bastard scientists made kids-to-order for criminals. They were probably too many light years away for him ever to have the power to do anything about it, but he liked to think he could start some network boycott or something. How much did it cost to have a tailored human being—or not quite entirely human being—made from scratch and raised?

“When they took delivery of me?” Qin asked. “Almost twelve. Old enough for training and for sex.”

“For what?” he blurted.

She shrugged again. “I didn’t care that much about that. They made us not-ugly enough that they could get their money’s worth in bed as well as on the battlefield. I had seven sisters too, so the pirates’ demands were kind of spread out. And then there was an older cohort that was delivered a couple of years before us. Not many of them are still alive. We all hated it there, even if some of us were quieter than the others and didn’t complain much. Liangyu Two and Seven led a mutiny, though, and killed a lot of the pirates. Then they were killed themselves, and everyone who’d sided with them was punished or killed. There are a lot more Druckers than there were of us. You know them? It’s a huge and powerful family. Hundreds of them, and they’ve got five ships now. It’s not a good idea to cross them. That’s why I used to wish…” Her eyes grew distant as her focus drifted toward Asger’s cabin, and then to the deck again. “Never mind. It’s silly.”

“To be rescued by a knight?” he guessed.

“Maybe.”

How disappointing it must have been for her to meet her dream man in real life and have him attack her and call her a freak. Casmir wiped moisture from his own eyes.

“I’m sorry, Qin. I’ll let Asger know he mistook you for someone else. Maybe he’ll be a little less of an ass.”

She shook her head. “Thank you for caring, but don’t worry about it. It was my stupid fantasy that was the problem. The galaxy is what it is.”

“The galaxy, yes, but the human beings who live in it have the ability to change and be changed. I’d like to think there’s hope that we can encourage people to change for the better.”

“Thank you for caring,” she said again and kissed him on the cheek before stepping back into her room and closing the hatch.

Casmir slumped against the wall, wondering when he’d shifted from being happy building robots to help a few people here and there to wishing he had the power to change the system—all of the systems. He’d enjoyed his life at the university and thought he was doing everything he’d dreamed of as a boy, but it had been a small life, hadn’t it? Maybe when he solved his immediate problems—he refused to put an if in there—and could go back home, he would get involved in politics, try to get elected to one of the positions open to people who weren’t of the nobility. Maybe he could at least help change the viewpoints of Kingdom subjects.

A hatch creaked open.

He looked up, half expecting Asger and already preparing words for him. But Bonita was the one to step out of her cabin.

She raised her eyebrows, doubtless wondering why Casmir was lurking in the corridor, but all she said was, “Good,” and gestured toward the ladder leading up to navigation. “This is your problem. You’ll want to see what’s going on.”

“I’m sure I will.” Casmir followed her as she climbed the ladder, favoring one of her legs. “Which problem is it?”

“Viggo updated me on the gate.” She plopped down into her pod in navigation.

The front display came to life, first showing a field of stars and then zooming in to the gate and two large warships placed to block access to it. They were almost side by side, but one listed a bit, and Casmir grimaced. Was that a strategy, pretending to look damaged, or was it genuinely damaged?

Smaller ships whipped around, almost like the robot vacuums had been doing around his feet earlier, firing at the large vessels. As they watched, one of the warships fired a huge weapon, one that resulted in a flash of white light. Two of the small vessels blew into pieces, but that didn’t change anything. There had to be a hundred of them.

And what of the cargo ship? Casmir couldn’t even see it. Ishii had mentioned stealth technology that might be beyond a slydar hull plating. Was the enemy ship appearing and firing and then disappearing again? Continuing to battle until the Kingdom ships gave up and let it through the gate? Or until they’d been destroyed and had no choice but to let it through the gate?

If the cargo ship blew up the already-damaged warship, it could likely slip past the other one, depending on its size. Whatever that was. Casmir had no idea. The term cargo ship conjured notions of something big in his mind. The gates were all uniform in size, a couple of miles across, which seemed massive on paper, but theirs didn’t look that large with the big warships in front of it.

“Those are the warships that were investigating Rache’s mercenary actions.” Lopez pointed at the vessels blocking the gate. “The regular ships that guard the gate are either missing, or they’ve been blown to pieces. If your friend Ishii’s ship doesn’t get there before that one is blown up or knocked out of the way—” she pointed to the listing vessel, “—then the enemy ship is going to escape before we get there.”

“Are there any other Kingdom ships en route?”

“Two more warships heading toward the gate from Forseti Station, but it’ll take them days to get there.”

Another ship appeared on the display, and Casmir sucked in a breath. It was every bit as large as the Kingdom soldiers had described, spinning to create gravity for its crew, with turrets and railguns and weapons platforms he couldn’t identify visible all over the rotating hull. The porcupines in the Zamek Zoo had fewer protrusions.

White-yellow light flashed, obscuring the gate and all the ships for long seconds, and then the ship disappeared again. A volley of missiles fired from the warships blasted toward the space it had occupied. The enemy ship’s weapons—nukes?—arched toward the gate. The warships maneuvered, trying to shift out of the way, but Casmir realized the problem right away. They had to stay in front of the gate to keep it blockaded, so they were extremely limited in how far they could move.

A projectile slammed into the edge of one of the warships, and the hull seemed to shatter, shards flying in a thousand directions. Meanwhile, the missiles they had launched flew through empty space. They turned—were they heat-seeking?—but merely flew around, not finding a target. It was as if the enemy ship had shifted to another dimension. Casmir highly doubted that was happening, but it unnerved him that the experienced military captains were having trouble figuring it out.

“What a farce,” Bonita said. “You really want us to get involved in that? One of those missiles flying around, not finding its real target, could find us, and we’d be dead.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that.”

“I wasn’t planning to engage them in a firefight.”

“What were you planning? Because I refuse to get close to that mess without a plan that ensures the Dragon won’t be fired on.”

“Understandable. Will you comm them for me?”

“Oh right, because it goes so well whenever you chat with the enemy.”

“We might as well try. We might learn something if they answer, such as who they are. It didn’t sound like the Fleet ships knew, at least not when I was over there. Did you get a shot of it when it appeared? Viggo, do you mind looking up that ship and trying to identify the model and what system it’s out of?”

“I did scan it,” Viggo said, “and I am looking for a match now.”

“We can’t comm them if they’re invisible,” Bonita said. “They’re not showing up on the scanners any more than they are visually on the cameras.”

“It looks like they have to appear to fire—or firing causes them to appear. I’ll record a message that you can send the next time they pop up. And, Viggo, would you mind scanning for life on there when you get a chance? It would be nice to know how big the crew is.”

Casmir thought of Asger’s comment that an army of crushers might be useful if they could get them over there. As he’d admitted, there was no way he could build more crushers here, but if he and a team of elite fighters—specifically, Asger, Zee, and Qin—could somehow board that ship, maybe they could do something. Distract the bridge crew, at least, and give the warships time to home in on it.

He hadn’t figured out how they would get aboard it yet. The Kingdom ships had squads and squads of combat marines, so if a forced boarding were achievable, they would have surely done it already.

He also wasn’t sure why he was imagining himself leading that team. Not when he had the combat abilities of a slug. Maybe his subconscious was feeling frisky since it had been almost two days since he’d thrown up from space sickness.

“We’re still too far away to scan for life,” Viggo said, “but I can send a message once you prepare it.”

“Your buddy is closer,” Bonita said. “Maybe his people have done a scan and would share the results.”

“My buddy? Is that Captain Ishii?”

“Do you have so many friends that you lose track of them?”

“Only the ones who threaten to throw me in the brig.”

“Record your message so Viggo can send it,” Bonita said. “If they can tell us to go away, we can save ourselves some time and turn around now.”

“If I turned around every time someone told me to go away, I wouldn’t have had a date to the Grad Night Dance when I was eighteen.”

“I didn’t know robots were that choosy.” She waved impatiently at the comm panel.

“We know what kind of ship it is yet? From which system?”

“It is a modified Union-5 Cargo Hauler,” Viggo said, “originally constructed in the Lunar-5 factory at Belt Station Etium. Greatly modified somewhere else. Some of its weapons are out of System Cerberus. Some are not listed yet in public records.”

“Union? It was used in mining then?” Casmir groped for ways that might be helpful.

“To haul ore, maybe,” Bonita said. “But not necessarily. The Union has a lot of power across multiple systems, with stakes in almost all of the asteroid belts out there. They have plenty of ships that are involved in trade and passenger transport, in addition to their mining fleets. But if that was originally an ore hauler, the Union princes definitely have the money to pay for modifications to ships. They have the money to buy planets and moons if they want.”

“So they might want gate bits to make sure they’re the ones to control the next evolution of humanity into the galaxy.”

“Gate bits?” Bonita glanced at him. “Is that what they’re carrying?”

“What they’re stealing from our system, I gathered. Though I’m not sure if anyone is quite sure or if they’re guessing.”

Casmir questioned whether Royal Intelligence or Fleet Command had seen a version of the video Rache had gotten hold of, but it made sense that the archaeologists would have sent preliminary results home. Someone back there had to know what they’d found. And that someone else wanted it.

“If it’s the Union,” he mused, “do they just want to be first to install a new gate so they can stake out a place in the history books? Or do they already have a profit angle in mind?”

“If it’s the Union, profit is more than an angle. Those people live and die by capitalist rule. You want to become a prince, you have to have the money to buy a private asteroid station, minions to serve you, and a harem.”

“I didn’t know harems were a requirement for rulers.”

“It shows everyone how wealthy and important you are.” Bonita sneered. “I wouldn’t object to their methodology if there were any Union princesses. The princes always seem like misogynistic assholes.”

Casmir thought about pointing out that a princess who could afford harems and private asteroid stations might not be a delightful person either, but he had little experience with the breed, either self-made or hereditarily appointed. The media always portrayed King Jager’s twenty-something daughter, Princess Oku, as pretty but dim, using Kingdom resources to fly about the Twelve Systems, collecting flowers for her garden.

“Ready to record, Viggo?” Casmir leaned against the back of the co-pilot’s pod.

“Ready.”

“To the captain of the Union ship, my name is Professor Casmir Dabrowski from Zamek University on Odin. I am a mechanical engineer who’s long studied the gates from afar and found them fascinating. I’ve won numerous awards, been published in dozens of journals and periodicals, and have an aptitude for deciphering engineering mysteries. I understand you’re about to successfully leave this system with part or all of a previously undiscovered wormhole gate in your hold. I’ve been eager to leave the Kingdom for ages, and I’m willing to offer my services to the research and development team that you must certainly have waiting at home. I’m even willing to forgo pay, providing I receive an author byline on any papers published and credit for any discoveries made. Please let me know if I can transmit my résumé.”

Bonita waited until he was done recording to let out a snort that echoed from the walls of the small navigation chamber.

“Careful. I think you blew your tonsils out through your nostrils.” Casmir pointed at the deck. “Are those them?”

“Did you just offer to send your résumé to the enemy vessel trying to blow up your government’s military warships?”

“Yes. I would send a message to the king to let him know it wasn’t a sincere offer, since I am fond of Odin and my job in Zamek, but it’s unlikely he reads mail from random subjects. I will inform Sir Asger, in case he has the capacity to pass messages along to His Majesty.”

Bonita shook her head. “Was any of that true, or are you just hoping they don’t decide to research you?”

“I have been published numerous times, and I have won awards.” Just none that had anything to do with gates, an area about which he was completely ignorant. If someone from the enemy ship actually replied, he would have to take a crash course on astrophysics and wormhole theory. Or was it wormhole hypothesis? The last he’d heard, nobody understood how the gates worked, and the scientific community had no trouble labeling wormhole travel as impossible at the same time as they booked flights to other systems.

“Was the award for creating a robot girlfriend to take to that school dance?”

“No. Most recently, I was recognized for excellence in leadership in the robotics industry.”

“Huh, maybe you are good at bamboozling people.”

Casmir opened his mouth to object to her interpretation, but Viggo interrupted them.

“The enemy ship has made another reappearance.”

Casmir grimaced, facing the display, though he feared they would only see more of the vessel getting the best of the Kingdom warships. He had zero experience with military maneuvers or spaceship battle tactics, but he decided right away that being on the defensive was awful. What was his backup plan if this didn’t work? There was no way the Dragon could get close enough to force-board, not with the cargo ship appearing and reappearing and all manner of what looked like drone fighter ships whipping around to protect it.

After another round of exchanging fire—this time, the Kingdom warships clipped the enemy vessel before it disappeared—Viggo said, “I’ve sent your message, Casmir.”

“Thank you, Viggo. I shall be eagerly waiting to see if they send a request for my résumé.”

“Your résumé that says nothing about gates?” Bonita asked.

“Yes. Do you think I should spruce it up a bit, just in case?” He highly doubted anything would come of his attempt at a ruse, and if some Union miner asked for his résumé, he would be flabbergasted. Mostly, he was curious to hear what kind of response he did get. Surely, if he learned who they were dealing with, he could come up with a better plan than the one currently in effect: taking potshots at each other.

“I would,” Bonita said.

11

As Rache led the way from the shuttle to the wreck, Kim paused and looked up at the stars visible through the narrow slit of their canyon. She had queued a long letter to Casmir to go out whenever there was enough of a signal—she suspected that wouldn’t be until Rache gave up on this place and flew the shuttle back up to orbit.

Her letter included wishes for her remains, messages to her family, what she’d learned—or hadn’t learned—about the strange energy attacking their bodies, and that she’d found her mother’s broken droid remains. It was possible Casmir or another engineer could repair her and get the droid powered back up again, but she wasn’t working now. Kim had no idea if that was permanent or not. There had been damage to the head, aside from it being ripped from the body, which may have broken chips and circuits. All that her mother was might now be irretrievably lost.

Even though they had never been close, that filled her with a sense of bleakness and regret. She wished she’d had a chance to say goodbye, to have known her better before having to say goodbye.

“Scholar Sato?” Rache said from the hole in the side of the wreck that his team used as a door. “Are you coming?”

“Yes.”

Kim forced her heavy legs to work. She could feel the affliction progressing and her weariness increasing. Dr. Peshlakai was sleeping again, and several of Rache’s men had gone into the shuttle, peeled off their helmets, and collapsed on the seats or the deck. Only Rache remained unaffected.

She added that as a postscript to her letter to Casmir. That neither Rache nor his ancestors had received the Great Plague treatment and that he wasn’t being affected by this cellular destruction, that maybe someone with more time could run experiments with mitochondria. If she’d had bacteria or viruses to work with, something she could have isolated, it would have been a simple matter to place them in solutions with both types of mitochondria and see if they preferred one over the other. But she had no way to capture whatever this was, not yet. Nor did it make sense to her that something akin to radiation would care one whit about a person’s mitochondria.

She wished she had some of her radiation-eating bacteria with her to see if they might make a difference. It was possible they would be able to detect what human instruments couldn’t. And if it was compatible, maybe they could even consume it.

But she didn’t have them. She’d never planned to leave Odin, so she hadn’t inoculated herself with them.

She wondered if Dr. Sikou had been inoculated with them. She’d mentioned the Osprey being in Phase II testing. If she had been, it might be possible to extract and isolate some of the bacteria from her body.

Kim had no idea if they would be useful against this threat, but it would be worth trying. She composed a quick message to Sikou, not surprised when all it did was sit in the queue with Casmir’s, unable to go out until she had network access.

Rache shifted his weight, then stepped into the wreck. Kim ought to be arguing for them to go back to the research ship where she was far more likely to be able to find a solution. Instead, she followed Rache inside.

She wanted to take pictures to send to Casmir along with her letter, to hear what his thoughts were on the wreck. Rache’s immunity nagged at the back of her mind, and she couldn’t help but feel she was close to grasping the reason for it. And that in it, there might be something to help the rest of them.

“Just looking at the stars,” she murmured to Rache when she caught up with him. “In case I don’t get another chance.” She didn’t mention the messages saved in her chip, waiting to go out. “I cannot tell you how much I wish there was a coffee house here.”

The idea that she might die without ever having had one last good cup of coffee distressed her almost as much as everything else.

“I admit,” Rache said quietly, “when I decided to come down here, I thought at least some pieces of the gate would still be here. I also thought that if some killer virus lurked within the corridors of the wreck, I’d be as likely to die from it as anyone else.”

“Does it not sit well with you that everyone around you will die while you live?” Kim had a hard time believing he truly cared.

“It doesn’t, no. I’ve always known my choices would get me killed.” He gestured toward the stars, maybe including his ship, wherever it had gone, named for a character from Moby Dick. “And those who signed on, well, they knew the job would likely get them killed eventually. They get good hazardous-duty pay. But you and Dr. Peshlakai…”

He didn’t finish the thought, merely extending his hand toward the shadowy interior of the wreck.

“Did you also kidnap him?” Kim shone the flashlight built into her helmet around as she walked slowly into a strange, alien place full of harsh angles and exposed circuitry covered in layers of frost. There was a mathematical precision to those angles, and she thought that if she’d felt better, she might have stood there and picked out patterns.

“I saved his life, actually.” As Rache walked at her side, he nodded toward a wide tube that led deeper into the ship—and deeper under the glacier. “He collapsed at my feet with his station’s security chasing and shooting at him. Shooting to kill, oddly. That’s not their modus operandi on Tiamat Station. I offered to help him if he would work for me for five years. I’d recently lost my previous surgeon. When he appeared, it seemed like fate, though it’s a cruel fate that would place a hapless man in my path.”

“You know and acknowledge that you’re a villain?” She glanced at him. “But you choose that path anyway?”

“King Jager is the villain,” Rache said, the frost crystals they walked on now lacing his tone. “If you haven’t met him and aren’t familiar with him enough to know that, consider yourself fortunate.”

And naive, his unspoken words seemed to be.

“What did he do to you?” Her skin was flushed with fever, and sweat dribbled into her eyebrows.

“It’s a long story.”

“I guess I don’t have time for that. Nobody except you does.”

She’d put her helmet and oxygen tank back on to come outside, and already, the gear felt cumbersome, stifling. She wanted to be back home, reading in bed, feeling well, getting ready for work the next day. If fate did exist, her version was surely as cruel as Dr. Peshlakai’s. She never should have been out here, wrapped up in this hell.

It was hard not to feel sorry for herself, but she berated herself in irritation when a sniffle slipped out. No doubt, the comm would pick it up, and Rache would know she was on the verge of tears. She didn’t want him witnessing her weak moment.

He looked over at her as they continued, transitioning from the large outer chamber into a maze of tubes. “I would offer you a hug, but I think you’d find that particularly offensive coming from me. And hypocritical, since I brought you here.”

Ugh, he had heard the sniffle. Damn it.

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t even encourage people I like to hug me.”

They entered another open chamber, this one full of massive empty molds. Kim ordered her chip to take pictures of the walls, the ceiling, the deck, and the molds via her contact interface.

“We believe the gate was stored in here in sections,” Rache said, walking among them. “A full gate, at least at one point. I’m not sure if it was all here when the archaeology team arrived, but I added up the dimensions of all the molds, all five hundred and twelve of them.”

“And?” Kim looked around, curious about the gate even in her fevered haze, though she couldn’t imagine what here would enlighten her when it came to fixing their health.

“There were almost exactly enough pieces to match the known dimensions of each of the gates in our gate network. There were two left over. I’m hypothesizing that this ship brought a couple of extras in case something broke in transport.”

“Transport from where? Earth?”

“Possibly,” Rache said. “Nobody has discovered an intelligent alien civilization yet—Odin is the only planet in the Twelve Systems that had higher-order animals, insects, and plants—but…”

“The gate technology is more advanced than we are now, two thousand and more years after humans came to the Twelve Systems. I know. I’ve heard the speculation. From my mother.”

Kim leaned a hand against one of the molds, watching it to see if any mysterious waves of light crawled onto her glove. They did not. The cold seemed to emanate through the material, even though she knew that was unlikely. The galaxy suit adjusted to keep her body at the perfect temperature, fingers and toes included, but her brain felt hot. Her entire face did.

“I think we should get away from here,” Kim said. “If whatever is wrong with us—with most of us—is exposure related, then maybe we’ll buy ourselves a little more time.”

“Any suggestion on where to go that might help?” he surprised her by asking. “I’ve been in contact with my ship off and on, and they’re finishing up the repairs we can do outside of a shipyard. There’s more lab equipment and space up there, but probably still not what you need.”

What she needed. Did he still think she could master this somehow? Even if she figured out what was happening and how to stop it, the damage would still be there. Every hour here probably took five years off their lives.

“Judging by how quickly the archaeology team died,” Rache added, “I doubt there’s time to get anywhere with really good medical facilities.”

“Your willingness to go must mean your men have finished searching the wreck and didn’t find anything.”

“Someone was here first. I wouldn’t have guessed anyone could have cleared out so much so quickly.” He waved to the empty molds, the giant empty molds. “But I think that whoever blew up the escape ship those archaeologists were in got the gate. Or however much of the gate was here.”

Kim knew she was missing some information—what ship had been blown up when and by whom?—but she couldn’t muster the energy to care. Her mother hadn’t been on it. Her mother was back in the shuttle in pieces.

She wished she’d gotten another chance to speak to her before they both passed away, to ask her something she’d always wondered, why her mother had bothered having Kim when she’d had so little to do with Kim’s upbringing. More than once, she’d wondered if she had disappointed her mother or not been what she’d expected, what she’d hoped for, and that had been the reason for the distance. Or had she simply realized motherhood didn’t suit her?

Kim didn’t think she’d ever wrapped up her own self-worth in her mother’s approval, but… there were definitely things she would like to have known. She longed for the frank conversation they’d never had.

“I’ll gather my men, and we’ll head up to the Fedallah,” Rache said. “Unless there’s more of the wreck that you want to see?”

“The Machu Picchu would be better. It has excellent labs.”

He gazed at her, and she expected him to object, to suspect duplicity.

“Very well,” he said.

Kim nodded, pleased he hadn’t argued. “I’ll take a few more pictures and be ready to go back to the shuttle.”

“Pictures? For what?” He sounded suspicious again. Was he still worried clues would get out and someone else would get to the gate first? Too late, buddy. Someone already had.

“Not what, whom.” Kim was too tired for subterfuge. She waved to the walls. “It’s computer-y. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to get Casmir’s opinion on the wreck, assuming I get somewhere with reception, so I can send the files.”

“Ah.”

Rache strode off without forbidding her to take the pictures or commenting further on it. She walked around and had her contact record some footage as well as take close-up shots of anything that looked interesting. Unique.

She wondered if she would still be alive when Casmir got the letter and files.

The Union ship hadn’t responded yet. It had been two hours. Another hour, and the Stellar Dragon would be in firing range. Technically, they already were in firing range, but this far out, they could maneuver and get out of the way if the enemy sent nukes at them. Assuming they weren’t heat-seeking nukes.

Casmir sat in the co-pilot’s pod and alternated between nibbling on his fingernails and cracking his knuckles.

After one particularly loud crack, Bonita scowled over at him. “Why don’t you take a nap? I’ll let you know if they respond.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me, Captain?”

“You just now noticed?” She shooed him toward the hatchway. “Don’t you need to tell that uppity knight that you’re not really out to get the Kingdom? Just because the enemy didn’t answer your comm message doesn’t mean the warships didn’t notice it.”

“Ah, good point.”

Casmir pushed himself out of the pod and headed to Asger’s hatch. He knocked and wasn’t surprised when Asger promptly answered. It was hard to imagine anyone sleeping well knowing they were heading to a battleground.

“Come in,” he called.

When Casmir opened the hatch, he found Asger in a pushup position on the deck. He sprang to his feet and stuck his head out to squint both directions down the corridor before stepping back and letting him in. What, had he been afraid Qin would be standing out there, ready to leap into his private space? Back on the Osprey, Casmir had been inclined to like Asger, since he’d helped him escape confinement, but his attitude toward Qin made Casmir wanted to punch him in the nose. Still, he shouldn’t burn bridges—or knights—as they could be useful when trying to escape villains.

“Do you have a minute?” Casmir asked. “We’re about an hour from the gate. I thought we should discuss our options.”

“Do we have options?” Asger sat on the edge of his bunk.

A few wrinkles creased the blanket, but he clearly hadn’t been under the covers. His book lay on the pillow.

“No. We need to make some.”

“Ah.”

“And I should warn you before someone else tells you that I offered to submit a résumé and work for the enemy if they would take me on board. I also expressed disgruntlement as a Kingdom subject, but I was actually quite enjoying my work and my life before all this started.”

Asger gazed blandly at him, either thinking he was a loon or not knowing what he was talking about. Well, if he hadn’t been sulking in his cabin, he could have been there for the genesis of that comm message.

“I thought someone who works for the king should know,” Casmir added. “In case some overzealous communications officer on one of those warships recorded it to blackmail me later.”

“What happens if someone on the enemy ship offers you a job?”

“The odds that they’re here for job recruitment seem slim. I was just hoping someone would reply, and we could learn more about that ship and who’s flying it and why. Also where they’re taking their stolen cargo, in case we need to pursue them through the gate.”

Asger grimaced and didn’t deny the possibility. Maybe he was in communication with Ishii or someone else on the warship and had been keeping tabs on the battle.

A message alert came through on Casmir’s chip, and it automatically downloaded a long letter and some large files. From Kim.

“She’s alive.” Casmir clenched his fist. “Kim’s alive.”

He started to smile, but as soon as he began reading her letter, grimness replaced relief.

“She’s been afflicted with the… She’s not calling it a disease. She says it’s not bacterial or virological.” His shoulders slumped. “And she doesn’t think she has much time. She sent letters for me to send along to her family in case she doesn’t get a chance to…”

His throat tightened, and he couldn’t keep speaking. He tried to sit on Asger’s bunk, but his focus was locked on the letter, and he missed the edge. He ended up on the deck, staring as the lines scrolled through his vision.

How long ago had she written this? She mentioned not being sure when it would go out due to limited reception because they were down in some canyon. He wiped his eyes. What if she’d already died?

There were three postscripts at the end of her message to him.

P.S. For some reason, this isn’t afflicting Rache. You may be immune too. I found something interesting in his blood, though I’m not sure yet why or how it would convey immunity.

That confused him, but he read on, less concerned about himself now and definitely not concerned about Rache.

P.P.S. I found my mother… in pieces and inoperable. I don’t want you to risk coming here, since everyone except Rache is deteriorating rapidly, but if you get the chance to collect her somehow and can repair her, I would appreciate it.

P.P.P.S. I went into the wreck and looked around. Rache believes someone got here first and stole the gate pieces that were in the hold. I’m sending a bunch of pictures and some footage I recorded, some of the molds, but more of the ship itself. Let me know what you think if you get this in time. Rache’s people seemed more interested in searching it than in figuring out who sent it. It doesn’t look like anything humans would build, so who did? If we figure that out, maybe it will help.

Casmir opened the attachments and watched her recordings. He’d gotten a sense of a dark, shadowy background before, in the video with the monkey droid—Erin Kelsey-Sato—waving a piece of gate around, but it hadn’t focused on the walls or drives or anything in the ship. Now, he watched intently. Even though it didn’t look like Kim had gotten back to engineering, it didn’t take him long to form the opinion.

In case time was of the essence, he sent back a quick response. Later, he would go over the footage in more detail and send a longer reply.

Kim, I’m glad you’re alive—please stay that way, as you know damn well how hard it is to find good roommates! Your pictures remind me a lot of images humans have taken from space of Verloren Moon, the one claimed by artificial intelligence and built out into one giant computer, as far as we know. Your mother might know more—I’m sorry her body is inoperable currently, and I will definitely try to fix her when we get back together, which will be soon—but I’ve always thought the theory that makes the most sense is that automated ships were sent from Earth to set up the gate network long before humans ever arrived in the Twelve Systems. If that’s true, the archaeologists may have found one of the ships that didn’t make it all the way for some reason. Or maybe it made it but had a spare gate, so its cargo wasn’t used, and it simply landed on Skadi in case its gate was needed for backup in the future.

If that is what happened, those computerized ships would have traveled the long way to the Twelve Systems, and passed through who knows what strange places over the centuries. Is it possible they were equipped with a means to defend themselves if some previously unknown alien life tried to jump them and steal their cargo? And that the archaeologists triggered it somehow?

That’s just a guess. My mind is on combat right now. It could also be that it simply flew through something strange and deadly to humans but not computers and is now contaminated. I’ll do some research and send more information as soon as I have it.

I wish I could say I was on my way to help you right now, but I need to help the Kingdom warships keep what is very likely the stolen gate from getting out of the system.

Stay safe, my friend.

“Casmir?” Asger prodded his shoulder.

Casmir blinked, refocusing his eyes. Asger crouched in front of him.

“Are you all right?” he added.

“My best friend is dying,” Casmir said, the words coming out raspy and broken. He was sitting on the deck, crumpled against the bunk, but he didn’t care. “And I’m flying in the opposite direction when I should be back there helping.”

Was Kim still down on the moon? With Rache? Or had they left after finding out the gate parts had been stolen?

“I’m sorry.” Asger lowered his hand. “I spoke to Ishii earlier. He doesn’t expect you to be able to do anything and said you’d just be in the way. I should jump in my shuttle and continue to the battle to assist in any way I can, but if you want to fly back to Skadi, I won’t try to stop you.”

Casmir dropped his face into his hand. A part of him wanted to run to navigation and tell Bonita to change course, but he’d told Ishii he would help, whether Ishii believed he could or not. And they were almost to the gate. Shouldn’t he try to do something after they’d flown all this way?

Not that he wouldn’t rather help Kim. Did he truly care which faction of humanity got hold of this new spare gate? Yes, it could change the face of the future, but it wouldn’t likely change that much in his lifetime. And if Kim died—

A beep sounded, and Bonita’s voice came over the comm. “Uh, Casmir?”

Her tone held a strange note.

Casmir pushed himself to his feet. “Yes?”

“You should come see this.”

Casmir stepped into the corridor, pausing when Asger came out after him. He hoped Qin was sleeping in her cabin and that they wouldn’t have another incident. He’d meant to address that issue when he knocked on Asger’s door. Not that it seemed that important after reading Kim’s message.

Casmir climbed the ladder and entered navigation, where a robot vacuum whirred along the deck. “What is it, Laser?”

“The last time the Union ship appeared, it launched that.” Bonita pointed at the display.

They were close enough to the gate now, that Viggo didn’t have to magnify the view much, and Casmir’s stomach twisted with nerves as he saw the warships. The one that had been listing was now little more than a dead hulk floating in space. Shuttles ran between it and the other warship still defending the gate, and there was Ishii’s Osprey stationed on the other side of it, also sending shuttles. To pick up the survivors?

Bonita wasn’t pointing at the gate or the Kingdom ships but at a blue cylindrical shuttle speeding away from the scene. It was heading in their direction. Back toward the Kingdom planets and habitats?

“It launched a shuttle?” Casmir asked. “Is it an escape pod? Were they damaged, and they’re sending their survivors?”

“The cargo ship continues to have the ability to maneuver, enter stealth mode, and fire weapons,” Viggo said.

Bonita didn’t answer, merely looking at Casmir as if he were missing something obvious.

“You think it’s coming for us?” he asked.

It was coming toward them. Straight toward them? It was hard to tell without a top-down view of both ships.

“I think it’s coming for you,” Bonita said. “You’re the one who offered to hire on.”

“Uh, have they commed us?”

“Not yet.”

A yellow light flared to life on the comm panel.

Bonita arched her eyebrows. “Now they have.”

“Freighter Stellar Dragon,” a bland unisex voice said. “Prepare to link ships and send over mechanical engineer Casmir Dabrowski.”

Before Casmir could respond, the channel went dead.

“You may have just gotten the job you applied for,” Bonita said.

“Uh,” Casmir said again.

It was all he could come up with.

12

A soft chime sounded in Kim’s mind, letting her know that her chip had found access and sent her files. She let out a relieved breath. She was sitting in the shuttle between Yas and the engineer, strapped in as Rache flew them out of the canyon and up toward orbit. Toward the Machu Picchu, Kim hoped.

“We going to die, Doc?” the engineer asked, her voice tired and defeated.

Yas didn’t answer. Kim thought he might have nodded off again. The fighters were in the rows behind them and barely making any noise. One had been helped into his harness by his comrades, and Kim wouldn’t be surprised if he died before the day was out.

“I’m hoping I can find something in one of the labs that can reverse our cellular damage,” Kim said, responding when Yas did not.

“Is that possible?” the engineer asked. “I was meant to die a couple of years ago, when the rest of my family did, and somehow I survived. I always figured I’d been living on borrowed time since then, and there were times when I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. But now that I’m looking death in the eye again…” She cleared her throat and glanced at Kim, seeming a little embarrassed.

Kim wouldn’t have judged her. She understood perfectly.

“I’m Jess, by the way. I don’t think anyone ever introduced us.”

“Kim Sato. And as soon as the network access gets a little stronger, I’ll do some searches. There are numerous proven anti-aging therapies out there. I’m hoping that something like that might work—and that the research ship has the appropriate equipment. The Kingdom doesn’t embrace that technology as much as other systems since it strays into areas that most of the predominant religions find questionable.”

“I sure wouldn’t mind a room in the TamTam Medical Spa right now. A little massage, a little muscle stimulation, a little regenerating the crap out of my cells… I used to go there when I was an athlete. They have some stuff that works good.”

Unfortunately, those medical spas were weeks away. Kim would have to find something on the Machu Picchu that could regenerate cells. She would also need to make sure any souvenirs the archaeology team had brought back were disposed of. Something had killed the crew, and there was little point in researching rejuvenation techniques if it was still up there, oozing death.

Not that she expected to find anything capable of doing that up there. It was a science research vessel, not a medical spa. The best she could hope for was—

She sucked in a breath as a thought bounced into her mind. Dr. Sikou had mentioned a cryonics lab. If the ship had the means of reviving frozen specimens, not just freezing them…

“That could be it,” Kim whispered. “Cryonics by its very nature has to rebuild aged and frozen—i.e. damaged—cells from the inside out in order to revive a body.”

“Enh?” Jess looked blearily over at her through bloodshot eyes.

“Just think hopeful thoughts.” Kim nodded at her, unfastened her harness, and made her way up to the front to sit in the co-pilot’s seat beside Rache.

“You came to keep me company?” he asked. “Thoughtful.”

“I want to make sure you’re planning to take us to the Machu Picchu,” Kim said. “I need to do some research, but I have an idea that may work as long as we’re no longer being exposed.”

She thought of the quarantine area inside sickbay. If nothing else, she could ask the engineer who’d devised the magnetic field if he could extend it to include the cryonics lab. Assuming that lab had what she needed. If it didn’t, they could all freeze themselves and order the ship to pilot them back to Odin where an advanced military facility could revive them. She shivered at the thought of essentially dying and being revived, but it would be better than simply dying. Forever.

Rache poked her shoulder.

“What?” She blinked at him. Had he spoken?

“I said I’ll drop you off, but I can’t stay. I need to rejoin my ship. They’ve alerted me to something that needs my attention.”

“Your crew needs your attention.” Kim waved behind her.

“It sounds like they need your attention. I’ll drop you all off there.”

Kim was tempted to object, but did she truly want him to stick around and breathe down the back of her neck while she worked? No, it would be better and more comfortable to be free of him. It just rankled that he would leave his dying people behind instead of staying to…

To do what? Hold their hands? She could hardly imagine him doing that.

Casmir would do that. He would give everybody hugs and make silly jokes to make them feel better.

She wished she’d hugged him before they’d parted ways. But as much as she hated to admit it, she was probably more like Rache. Stiff and aloof. Finding the idea of touch unappealing. She would rather throw herself into finding a solution than sit and hold someone’s hand. Her brain knew how to work on solutions. It didn’t know how to be… comforting. Sympathetic. Human.

She shook her head, irritated with her meandering thoughts. This was the time to focus on that solution-finding, not on her own deficiencies.

“Fine,” she said, realizing Rache was watching her. “I’ll do what I can.”

He nodded. “Good.”

As they flew higher, and more of the stars came into view, Casmir’s response to her letter and files came in. Glad for the distraction, Kim read it promptly.

He thought that wreck had been a robot ship from Earth? And that the damage it was inflicting on people who came in contact with it might be an attack? Hm. Was it possible the gate pieces were booby-trapped to keep anyone—or anything—unapproved from taking them? That was one of his hypotheses. He also shared the same thought that she’d had, that the ship might have passed through something strange in space and carried it along with it.

Kim leaned back in the pod. Her helmet was off, and she brought her braid around to her face and rested it against her flushed skin while debating if Casmir’s observations changed anything.

Did it matter if that ship had exuded some kind of defensive attack to keep people from getting the gate pieces? Would that even make sense? The existing gates that were anchored in space let humans go through them. Humans in ships, admittedly. There was no flesh-to-gate contact. But still, astronauts had gone out in suits to study them in situ. She’d never heard of them being afflicted with this accelerated aging.

She closed her eyes, feeling like she was close to grasping something, but it kept eluding her. Maybe because she was exhausted and her brain was turning to mush in her skull.

She looked at Rache, wondering if he would have any better insight. His brain ought to be fine. And in theory, as useful as Casmir’s brain, though she had no idea what kind of education he had in there. He read books. But would that help with this?

“Casmir thinks that wreck was an automated ship sent from Earth to bring the gates here for installation—that one down there might have been a backup—and that when the archaeology team entered the structure, it decided they were unauthorized personnel and attacked. The archaeologists, and now us. Everyone except you, for whatever reason.”

The Machu Picchu was visible on the forward display now, and their route shifted as he guided them toward an airlock hatch, but he glanced at her while piloting. “Did you ever figure out what’s different about my blood?”

Oh, hadn’t she told him? No, that long discussion about the plague had been with Yas.

“You—or your ancestors, I suppose—were never genetically altered to grant immunity from the Great Plague.”

“That all happened about two hundred years ago, right? The Great Plague?” Rache nodded to himself. “That makes sense then.”

Kim would have fallen out of the pod if not for its protective hug. “What makes sense?”

Rache guided them toward the airlock hatch. At first, she thought he was concentrating on piloting and couldn’t answer. Eventually, she realized he didn’t intend to answer.

“Rache,” she whispered. “Why does it make sense that you weren’t altered?”

A soft clank reverberated through the shuttle as they connected to the Machu Picchu.

Rache unfastened his harness, stood, and looked down at her. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out when you’re feeling better and your mind is clear. But to add my hypothesis to the one Casmir gave you, I’ll posit that our blood is perhaps more authentically human than yours at this point in humanity’s evolution. If those gates were intended for humans, maybe the built-in security of the ship or the gate itself didn’t think the archaeologists quite qualified anymore. Or anyone else in this shuttle.”

While Kim puzzled that over, Rache strode to the passenger seats. “Everybody up and out. Scholar Sato is going to fix you up.”

The fevered fighters shuffled to the hatch without complaint.

Jess hesitated. “You’re leaving us, Captain?”

“Yes,” Rache said. “To make sure Jager doesn’t get the gate. And to find out who does have it right now.”

Kim wanted to wring his neck for a better explanation, but he wasn’t paying any attention to her. He helped Yas, who was stumbling, to the hatch. Kim knew these people didn’t have much time—they’d been down at the wreck longer than she and had received a greater dose—so her questioning of Rache would have to wait until the next time she saw him. Whenever that would be.

She went to the back of the shuttle where she’d secured the pieces of her mother’s droid body and carefully gathered them up.

“Captain,” Jess said, lingering inside, “should we meet up with you somewhere if Kim gets us healed up?”

“If you can,” Rache said. “Let me know. I’ll pick you up after I deal with the gate.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rache extended a hand for Kim to follow her out. “Do what you can, Scholar Sato.”

“Please,” Kim murmured, trailing after Jess and the others, her arms full.

“What?”

She paused in the hatchway. “I’m admittedly not one for excess social verbosity, but even I like hearing a please and getting a thank-you occasionally, instead of being ordered around by a tyrant.”

He gazed at her without comment.

Kim shook her head—it was like conversing with a wall.

“You definitely owe me a good cup of coffee if I figure out how to keep anyone else from dying,” she told him in parting as she walked out.

She didn’t expect an answer, but he gave her one.

“If you keep my men from dying, I’ll have a crate of beans, a roaster, a grinder, and an espresso maker delivered to your door.”

“Good. I’ll hold you to that.” Not that she had any intention of telling him where her door was. She would be delighted if she never saw him again.

“And I’ll owe you a favor,” he said so quietly she almost missed it.

Quality coffee would do. So long as she lived to appreciate it. She dearly missed sitting on her little patio during summer mornings, reading a recent publication, and sipping from a fresh cup of coffee while squirrels cavorted in the oak trees behind the house.

Rache’s weary troops slumped down against a wall inside the airlock bay. Men who’d come less than two days earlier to kidnap her could now barely move. She thought about trying to arrange for them to be deposited in a cell, sans their armor, but she needed to see if anyone was even left alive here. If not, then it hardly mattered if criminals had free rein of the ship.

Kim found a safe spot to deposit the droid parts, then headed straight for sickbay and the quarantined area. With luck, those people had stayed put and were alive and well.

As she walked, Rache’s words came back to her. I’ll posit that our blood is perhaps more authentically human than yours at this point in humanity’s evolution.

“Oh.” She stumbled and gripped the closest wall. “Oh.”

Kim realized what Rache had meant—she and Casmir were going to have to have a chat about the impossibility of his mother still being alive—and that… none of it mattered as far as finding a treatment. She and the others were already afflicted—had stumbled across the robotic security system and failed its scan without ever knowing one was being done. Because their mitochondria—the DNA of their mitochondria—wasn’t quite human anymore. It didn’t matter now. She had to simply focus on healing everyone.

“Hello?” came an uncertain call from the general sickbay.

“It’s Kim Sato,” she called back, thinking she’d reached the quarantined people.

But Dr. Sikou stepped into view.

“Kim!” she blurted. “I got your message. How did you escape?”

Sikou rushed forward and gripped Kim’s arms.

“It’s a long story,” Kim said, relieved to see her. “I’m pleased you’re still alive. Have you had any progress with the pseudo radiation?”

“It sounds like you decided that’s what it is too.” Sikou nodded. “Some new radiation that we don’t yet have a way to read and that doesn’t react quite the same in the human body.”

“That’s my guess. Were you, by chance, inoculated with my bacteria during the Osprey’s trials?”

“Dr. Angelico and I weren’t, but the marines were, including the ones that accompanied us to this ship.” Sikou grimaced. “They were killed in the attack, but we still have their bodies. When I got your message, I took samples and was able to isolate the bacteria. It was the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack situation, but they’re fortunately quite distinctive, and the equipment and the computers here are excellent.”

Kim nodded, disturbed that Rache’s men had killed the marines, but she was glad Sikou had thought to check their bodies. The bacteria would have been able to stay alive for days after the deaths of the hosts. “Have you had time to run any tests yet?”

Kim checked the time stamp to see how much time had passed since her message to Sikou had gone out. It had been shortly after the shuttle had flown out of the canyon. It had taken a few hours for Rache to fly it up to orbit and catch up with the Machu Picchu, but even if Sikou had started her experiments right away, she might not have had time to do much.

“A few.” Sikou hesitated. “When I introduced the bacteria to blood samples containing the damaged cells, they died rather quickly.”

Kim stepped back, pulling her arms from Sikou’s grip. “My bacteria died?”

“Apparently, they’re as susceptible to this as anything else.”

“They’re extremely hardy. Very little kills them. Not even direct exposure to cosmic radiation.”

Sikou spread her hands.

“This is definitely sounding like a weapon,” Kim muttered. “But maybe I can learn something from how they died. Do you still have everything?”

“Yes. I was hoping you would make it back and that you could learn something useful. Er.” Sikou looked down the corridor behind her. “Are Rache and his men here? After they killed our marines, I’m not eager to see them again.”

Kim shook her head. “I can imagine. Rache is obsessed with hurting King Jager, and he doesn’t seem to care who lives or dies along the way.”

Sikou reached toward her again. “Are you all right? I can’t imagine being captured—being in that monster’s grasp.”

“The illness is more of a problem. I’ve got it now, and it’ll kill me a lot faster than Rache would have.”

“Angelico and I have it now too,” Sikou admitted. “The quarantined people are still safe.”

“You’ve been affected? Did you ever find a piece of the gate here?”

“The gate?” Sikou shook her head.

“We’re going to have to go over the security camera footage and try to find the day the team came back on board,” Kim said. “See if they were carrying anything. It was something I’d been on the verge of doing when Rache’s people showed up. I also want to look at my bacteria to see what exactly happened to them. Oh, and I need someone to check the cryonics lab to determine if it’s capable of reviving specimens.”

Sikou looked daunted by the list, but she nodded. “We’ll take care of that.”

“Thank you. I know it’s a lot, but we’ll split it up. We don’t have much time.”

“I know,” Sikou said. “I know that very well.”

Kim nodded and strode straight for the lab she’d been working in before.

Casmir checked his suit and oxygen tank for the third time as he stood in front of the airlock hatch, waiting for the shuttle from the mysterious enemy cargo ship to dock. When he’d left navigation, it had been coming around, matching their speed, and extending a short tube.

He had a spare oxygen tank attached to the first, and he was already on the verge of hyperventilating as he wondered if he would have enough. Viggo’s scan of the shuttle hadn’t shown any people on board—any heat signatures at all—or a breathable atmosphere. He crossed his fingers that the cargo ship had humans aboard and would have an amenable environment, but the idea of going off into the unknown with a limited supply of air made him worry. He hadn’t forgotten his experience on the refinery, almost running out of air before he’d made it back to the Dragon.

“Are you ready to keep me alive, Zee?” he whispered to his silent companion.

The crusher loomed at his shoulder, needing neither tank nor suit to survive in space or anywhere else. Casmir envied him that. He wondered if he should update his will, however unofficially, before he left the Dragon, and leave Zee to one of his friends back home. Would the Kingdom even allow that? They might simply suck him up into the crusher army they’d already made.

“I am always prepared to protect and defend Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski,” Zee stated.

The sad lump that hadn’t quite left his throat after reading Kim’s letter returned in full force.

“I’m glad,” he whispered. “You’ve been a wonderful ally. I wish I’d had you around when I was a little boy. I bet you would have kept me from getting stomped so much by the kids in our tenement building.” He smiled, imagining one scenario in particular where it would have been delightful to have the crusher step out into the hallway and hoist up one of the bigger kids who’d enjoyed picking on him.

“Stomping people is unacceptable behavior,” Zee said.

“I agree completely. But I still have moments where I fantasize about it a little.”

Something about being pushed around and chased and shot at these past weeks had memories of his childhood years rearing up far more often than usual. In the last decade, he’d gotten used to working with people like himself and having a modicum of respect from his peers and others at the university, a place where he’d largely fit in. Even the military research and development lab had been full of people more like him than not. It was depressing to realize that once he left those environments, he went back to being the scrawny kid who made an appealing target for the rest of the universe. Or at least some thugs with a grudge.

Metallic footfalls rang out on the cargo hold deck behind him. Asger walked up wearing his helmet and an oxygen tank strapped to his armored back, the cloak rucked up over it, making him look like a hunchback. A hunchback with a DEW-Tek rifle slung across his chest on a strap and his trademark pertundo in its holder on his belt.

Casmir had been prepared to go alone—this had been his harebrained idea—and hadn’t asked for Asger to come, but he was relieved to have a true warrior along. Even if the shuttle was all automated, he fully expected to be greeted by bullies with rifles pointed at his chest when he stepped out of it.

“Trying to leave without me, Dabrowski?” Asger asked.

“It sounded like you’d given up on me being able to help.”

“That was Ishii. I’m withholding judgment on you.” Asger glanced toward the hatch. “I’m somewhat intrigued that you got us an invitation over there, even if we’re likely walking into a trap.”

Being the true knight that he was, he didn’t sound daunted by the prospect.

Casmir didn’t mention that the invitation hadn’t included Asger.

A faint clang reverberated through the hatch—the shuttle securing its tube and clamping onto the Dragon.

“Also,” Asger added, holding something out, “I forgot to give these to you earlier.”

Casmir opened his gloved palm, and Asger dropped two bottles of pills and a jet injector into it. As he read the labels, he almost laughed. “You got my seizure medication for me? And what’s this? Ah, motion sickness pills. And epinephrine. I hope nobody else sticks me with some drug I turn out to be allergic to, but thank you.”

“The nurse brought them by while you were attempting to schmooze Ishii. It’s possible the enemy ship will be overflowing with cashews and pomegranates.”

“If that’s true, the other systems are every bit as weird as they promised us in school.”

“They are.” Asger glanced over his shoulder. “Trust me.”

Casmir hoped he wasn’t thinking of Qin. Maybe once this was all over, he could get them in the same cabin together and figure out how to make Asger be the gentleman the legends said he ought to be. To every lady, not just Kingdom-appropriate ones.

“Thank you.” Casmir held up the drugs, removed his helmet long enough to take one of the rivogabines, then found a sealed suit pocket for the rest of the medication. He had no idea how long this trip would take and didn’t want to risk leaving them behind.

He wished Asger had thought to give them to him earlier, so his seizure medication would have had time to kick in. Unfortunately, it was meant to be taken twice daily as a preventative measure, and he had a feeling it would take a few days of uninterrupted doses before his brain righted itself, but he would take what he could get. Maybe he would be lucky, and nothing stressful would happen in the next few hours.

This time, he did laugh. It sounded maniacal in his ears. Once again, he felt he was on the verge of hyperventilating.

Asger eyed him. “Should I be concerned about you, or do drugs always make you weird?”

“I’m afraid it’s not the drugs that make me weird.” Casmir ordered his helmet back over his head and checked it three times.

“I’m coming too,” Qin said from behind them. “The captain said I could. Actually, she said it was a good idea, that you’d definitely need my help, Casmir.”

She walked toward them, her big Brockinger anti-tank weapon in her arms and a pistol and dagger on her armor’s utility belt. Asger stiffened, his fingers twitching toward his halberd.

“Thank you, Qin.” Casmir rested his hand on Asger’s armored forearm and gave Zee a pointed look. “This isn’t your fight, so I really appreciate your willingness to risk yourself. And I appreciate yours, too, Sir Asger.”

Asger clenched his jaw, not giving any indication that he heard Casmir. At least he didn’t try to draw his weapon.

“You stay out of my way, knight,” Qin said, not taking her eyes off Asger, “and I’ll stay out of yours.”

She came up to stand at Casmir’s side, next to Zee and opposite Asger. Casmir chose to think of himself as the glue that would bind this team together, rather than the little guy in the middle who would get smashed if they started trading punches.

Clangs sounded in the airlock hatch, and Asger turned stiffly to face whoever—whatever—was coming to get them.

“I meant that, Qin,” Casmir said quietly. “I’m very thankful to you for coming and to Laser for allowing it.” He wanted her to know that he wanted her here, even if Asger was as welcoming as a black hole.

Qin nudged him with an armored elbow. “She doesn’t know what to do with that schematic, so she wants me to keep you alive.”

“Naturally.”

The hatch swung open. An unarmed android in unassuming brown overalls stood in the airlock chamber, his head bald, his face free of facial hair. One of his hands was composed of a complex toolset instead of human fingers.

“You are the mechanical engineer Casmir Dabrowski,” the android said without preamble. “You will accompany me to the Asteroid Hauler.”

“Yes,” Casmir said. “I’m ready.”

“You will come alone,” the android added as he stepped forward.

“Oh, I can’t do that. These are my assistants.” Casmir gestured to Qin, Asger, and Zee. “She holds my wrench, he holds my toolbox, and Zee records my research notes.”

“We are not unintelligent, Casmir Dabrowski,” the android said. “You will not bring combatants along. You are being invited to perform work, not to assist the Kingdom warships in defeating us.”

Perform work? Gods, did they expect him to know how to do something with the gate they’d picked up? He’d assumed that his ruse wouldn’t work and that even if it did, they wouldn’t expect him to do anything until after they’d finished their battle with the warships. That would have given him time to come up with something clever.

The android stepped aside, extending a hand for Casmir to enter the airlock tube even as he lifted the tool-filled one as a barrier to Qin and Asger. Interestingly, he didn’t object to Zee.

“Look, friend,” Casmir said. “I’m a little guy. I need assistants and bodyguards to survive in a realm of malevolent humans. Also to boost me up so I can reach things. If they don’t come, I don’t come.”

Casmir lifted his chin. He also tried to catch Qin’s and Asger’s gazes. If one of them could grab the android and keep him busy, they could charge in and take the shuttlecraft. Whether they’d be able to fool anyone on the cargo ship and gain access to it, Casmir didn’t know, but he wasn’t stepping into the lion’s den without help. All he had was a stunner, a spare oxygen tank, and his tool satchel.

They both seemed to catch his meaning, because they nodded behind their faceplates.

The android didn’t answer right away. His head tilted as he presumably received some orders or advice from the ship.

Casmir wondered if one of the Fleet comm officers might trace those signals to their source and be able to track the enemy vessel and fire at the right spot. The last he’d seen, the warships were sending missiles into the expanse, hoping to get lucky.

“You may bring one warrior-assistant,” the android said.

His willingness to negotiate made Casmir believe his superiors thought Casmir had some worth. He didn’t know yet what they wanted him for, but for some reason, they did want him.

He folded his arms over his chest. “They all come, or I stay here. Actually, I leave this area completely. I have a friend in need of help farther back in the system.”

Another long pause as the android communicated with whoever was over there.

Casmir sent a chip-to-chip message to Bonita. Our android visitor is either having deep internal debates with himself, or he’s communicating with his mother ship. Is it still invisible? Maybe Viggo can track its location through the signal and send it to the Fleet.

It’s still camouflaged somehow, yes, she replied, but do you really want us sending its location to a bunch of frustrated warship officers with big guns? When you’re about to board it?

Well, we’re still waiting to see if he’s going to allow me to come over with all my large and heavily armed friends.

I’ll see if we can trace it. Be careful, kid.

I’ll try.

“You may bring your warrior-assistants,” the android finally said, turning and leading the way down the tube.

“Thank you.” Casmir waved for the others to go ahead, since he was the one with value, at least in the android’s eyes. He doubted the android would do it, but he could envision a scenario where he flung the hatch shut after Casmir, disconnecting him from his allies.

They trooped onto the shuttle without incident and belted themselves into seats. The android also sat in one of the passenger seats, leaving the piloting station unmanned. The shuttle unclamped, drew in its tube, and headed toward a dark patch of nothing in the starry sky.

Casmir activated chip-to-chip communication with Asger. Will you let Ishii know we’re on this shuttle and not to fire at us?

I’ve told him. He thinks we’re idiots.

You too? Not just me?

He thinks you’re an idiot for pretending you have a clue how to handle this and I’m an idiot for following you.

Are Fleet officers allowed to speak so bluntly to knights?

It depends on whether the officer has noble blood and a large warship at his command. And how much of a naive goof he considers the knight.

Casmir blinked at that last sentence. Asger was young, but Casmir wouldn’t have expected anyone who’d passed the arduous knight training to be treated as anything less than an asset. He hoped Ishii hadn’t formed that opinion because Asger had chosen to help him.

If you were chosen to work for the queen, I’m sure you’ve proven yourself many times already.

Asger looked at him for a moment, then flicked his fingers. It might have been in acknowledgment or dismissal. Casmir let the conversation rest.

As the shuttle sailed toward an indeterminate location down and to the left of the gate, Casmir looked up the make and model of the craft. It appeared very modern and new—if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet, he fancied he would have smelled the newness of the recently installed carpet and upholstered seats—but it didn’t look like a match to the cargo ship they had looked up.

The result that came back was that it was a combat drop shuttle popular in the contended System Augeas, which currently had numerous factions wrestling for control and launching guerrilla attacks at each other.

That made Casmir less certain that they were dealing with Union princes or miners at all. Maybe someone had simply been stealing ships, much as they had been stealing gates, and putting together the best force they could.

Casmir drummed his fingers on his thigh as minutes passed. His mind floated back to the postscripts in Kim’s messages, especially that bit about how he might be immune to whatever was affecting the people who visited that wreck. Why would that be? And was it the wreck that was the problem or the gate pieces?

He realized with a start that they were traveling to the ship they believed had stolen the gate pieces. Its crew must have gone down to the wreck to retrieve them. Would they be sick too? If so, Casmir was the wrong person to help with that. He hoped that wasn’t the reason they were bringing him in.

With those thoughts in mind, he was tempted to send Kim another message, but she hadn’t responded to his first, so he feared the moon had rotated enough to take her out of satellite range. He prayed he wasn’t about to get himself killed before they could talk again. The fact that he wasn’t heading straight toward her as fast as possible to help her with Rache grated on him, and as the shuttle sailed closer to the gate, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made a huge mistake. Was this even his fight? He cared what happened to the Kingdom and his friends back home, but how much difference would it make if some other government gained control of this new gate? He’d volunteered to help entirely because he’d hoped Ishii would then help him get Kim back from Rache.

“I never killed any knights,” Qin announced, startling Casmir.

He was sitting between Qin and Asger, while Zee loomed behind him and watched the android.

“I’ve seen you before,” Asger said coolly. “We fought at the Battle of Pirate Moon.”

“I’ve never heard of such a battle, and I would remember if I’d fought knights before.”

“Your… people may have called it something else. Do you deny being one of Drucker’s creations?”

“I’m not a creation; I’m a person.”

“Spawned in a test tube.”

Qin’s gloved fingers gripped her armored thighs, and Casmir had no trouble envisioning them forming into fists as she sprang across him to strangle Asger.

“Lots of lovely and impressively accomplished people have been spawned in test tubes,” Casmir said. He wasn’t in the mood to play conciliator now, but he realized he might have to if he wanted a cohesive team to walk onto the enemy vessel with him. “Even on Odin. Even before we had artificial wombs, there was assisted fertilization. My parents—adoptive parents, actually—tried quite a few different things before learning that my father had substandard sperm and they couldn’t conceive even with the assistance of medical science. Uh, don’t tell him I told you that, by the way. He’s a little touchy on the subject. They fostered several children before me, and then officially adopted me when I was six. By then, they’d seen how delightful I am. It’s possible I was also spawned in a test tube. I don’t know my parents, so I can’t ask.”

Casmir smiled at Asger, hoping that his easy acceptance of Qin would make him feel that he should also accept her.

Asger glowered at him.

“I see you’re fascinated by my story,” Casmir said. “Perhaps we can discuss my family—and any other issues that might be of concern—further after we’ve completed this mission and there aren’t strange androids watching on.”

Asger issued something like a growl but faced forward and stopped talking. Qin’s fingers remained tight on her thighs, but she also faced forward. Casmir was starting to miss his days of getting Simon and Asahi to work together. He’d known their weaknesses and how to bribe them to cooperate. He didn’t know Qin or Asger as well yet, though he could envision a scenario where he sent candles shaped into mythological figures to Qin with a note saying they were from Asger.

The front display changed abruptly, and Casmir would have lurched from his seat if he hadn’t been belted in. The massive blue hull of a ship bristling weapons appeared right in front of them, shuttle-bay doors already yawning open, revealing a well-lit interior.

Their android guide did not react. Still on autopilot, the shuttle flew through the bay doors.

White light flashed somewhere off to the side, brightening the display so much that Casmir lifted a hand protectively as his faceplate automatically dimmed.

Some force knocked against the shuttle. It lurched sideways, throwing Casmir against his harness. The craft jerked, scraping against the edge of one of the bay doors, and it tilted, then struck the deck. It skidded into the bay as red lights strobed.

Casmir flung his arm over his eyes, terrified of having another seizure.

“Not now,” he whispered, “not now.”

The shuttle struck a wall, and again, he was almost hurled from his seat. The harness digging into his chest stopped him, as did Zee gripping his shoulder. Somehow, the crusher defied physics and remained on his feet.

The lights in the bay went out, and the shuttle display also went dark. A few blue indicator lights flashed.

Casmir held his breath, not sure what to expect next. Had the Kingdom warships fired when the Union vessel appeared? As this shuttle was docking? He could feel gravity pressing down on him even though the shuttle wasn’t moving. Had the big Union cargo ship been spinning before? He couldn’t remember.

“You’d expect better piloting from a computer,” Asger grumbled into the silence that fell.

The android rose. “We have arrived. I will take you to work, Casmir Dabrowski.”

“Ah, good. Thank you.” Casmir willed his hands to stop shaking so he could unfasten his harness.

“The ship must have gone back into stealth mode,” Asger said. “Every time it reappears, our people fire at it. Which makes it the ideal place for us to be spending time.”

Not wanting the android to hear, Casmir switched to a message for his response. Just look for ways to disable it as we’re taken… wherever we’re going. You and Qin need to set aside your differences for now and work together. Maybe you can slip away while I’m doing… whatever they want me to do.

Your vagueness is so reassuring.

I’m afraid it’s all I’ve got.

The android waited by the now-open hatch. The lights flickered back on in the bay outside, revealing it to be devoid of other ships. Of course, they were all out battling the Fleet.

Casmir followed the android out of the shuttle, affirming that there was gravity, about half that of Odin, he guessed. Qin, Zee, and Asger followed as the android led them into the corridors of a ship with white-painted walls and arrows along the deck pointing to various important stations. The walls held plenty of signs and labels written in System Trade. Engineering. Cargo Hold. Bridge.

Casmir itched to go to the cargo hold and see if pieces of a giant gate were stored there, but the android followed the route to the bridge. They took a lift upward and stepped out onto the first deck that was modified from what Casmir would have considered the norm. He had a schematic of the ship pulled up so he could compare.

Tubes and cords ran along the walls, fastened by brackets that had been added after the ship left the factory. Machinery hummed somewhere up ahead, and the sound made Casmir realize he could hear. He glanced at the exterior stats displayed on the corner of his helmet’s faceplate. There was breathable air, and it was warm enough that he could have removed his suit, even a couple of degrees above what was considered room temperature back home.

The environment boded well for a human crew, but why hadn’t anyone come to greet them?

The bridge doors slid open, revealing a greenish-blue light that seemed a strange choice. Numerous strange pods were fastened to the walls in between computer stations. Pods with green-lit liquid and naked human beings in them.

Asger cursed and snatched his pertundo from its holder. Casmir simply stared, trying to figure it out. There were twelve people, male and female, in the liquid-filled pods, with wires and tubes attached to their bodies and their heads. Their faces were a mixture of skin and some kind of grayish blue material. It might have been metal.

All of their eyes were closed. Panels next to the pods flashed ominous red warning lights.

“Ah,” Qin said, stepping up beside Casmir.

“Ah?” Casmir felt bewildered, not enlightened. He’d seen something like this before in a news vid, a human hooked up to a computer in a pod while sleeping, but the man had been able to detach the cables, open the pod, and walk about. He hadn’t been a permanent fixture in the thing.

“Astroshamans,” Qin said. “They’re basically just cyborgs, but they spend a lot of down-time linked to computers. They claim it’s a superior state and how they find enlightenment. The Dakmook pirate family is all into it. I’ve met them at gatherings.” She glanced warily at Asger. “Before I escaped.” She waved at the closest pod. “I’ve seen this before. It’s how they operate their ships. Linked directly into it. The tanks handle their biological needs and keep them in a somewhat suspended state while their minds are directly interfaced with the systems.”

The deck shifted under Casmir’s feet as a jolt struck the ship, sending him staggering. He caught himself on one of the pods and stared into a woman’s face.

“I think we’re visible again and being fired on.” Asger looked toward the bridge display rather than the pods. The gate and one of the warships was visible, but only for a moment. Their cargo ship was making evasive maneuvers.

Was one of these pod people—astroshamans—navigating?

The android had waited by the doors as they looked around, but now he strode to Casmir.

“The handlers cannot be woken. You must fix this, Casmir Dabrowski.”

“Uhm.” Casmir looked from the woman’s stationary face to the android’s bland one, closed eyes to open eyes. “What exactly is the problem?”

His gaze drifted to the flashing red panel. An alarm indicated a systems failure. His stomach sank as he glanced to the woman’s face again. He had a feeling these people weren’t sleeping; they were dead. Did that mean computers were operating the ship?

“All of the bio-pods developed malfunctions within one day cycle of each other,” the android said. “They report that the human inhabitants have died, but this is not possible. They were chosen for this mission because of their health and vitality. We are certain the bio-pods have developed an error, but we have not been able to fix the problem or wake our handlers. We are continuing the mission to the best of our abilities, but we must not risk gate travel while there is a threat to them. You must repair our handlers, Casmir Dabrowski. You work with robots; we saw this. You must have experience with human-computer interfaces. You were the only one in the area we could locate.”

Casmir would have dropped his chin into his hand if he hadn’t been wearing his helmet. He walked from one pod to the next, looking at the encapsulated people and the flashing alarm light. Systems failure. Systems failure.

Earlier, he’d worried the crew might be sick, but he should have realized that too much time had passed for that. These people must have visited the wreck before Rache arrived. Whatever had killed the archaeologists had also had time to kill them.

“Casmir?” Qin asked uncertainly from the doorway.

Several robots marched in, faceless constructs closer in appearance to his crusher than to the android. They had massive guns on the ends of their left arms. They spread out around the bridge and pointed those weapon arms at Casmir and his allies.

“You will repair our handlers, Casmir Dabrowski,” the android stated again. “Or you will not be permitted to live. Kingdom subjects are enemies to the astroshamans, and you are now a threat to this ship.”

“Are they as dead as they look?” Asger muttered, facing a pod.

With the android staring implacably at him, Casmir didn’t answer aloud. Chip-to-chip, he messaged, Yes.

Asger looked around at all the robots pointing weapons at them, robots that appeared to be almost as indestructible as Zee. There were twelve of them. Twelve to match the twelve pods and the Twelve Systems? Or just twelve to ensure the ship’s visitors were outnumbered three to one?

Are we as screwed as I think? Asger messaged.

Casmir looked bleakly at the dead people, the dead people that he couldn’t bring back to life, no matter how badly the android wished it.

Yes.

13

Kim leaned back from the DNA-editing computer and dozen-odd petri dishes that were growing slightly different strains of her radiation-eating bacteria. When she’d looked at Dr. Sikou’s results from her attempt to deploy them, she’d been encouraged rather than chagrined by their deaths. The bacteria had multiplied numerous times before dying, which suggested they’d not only been able to detect the pseudo radiation but that they’d fed off it. For some reason, they’d eventually been overwhelmed, but Kim had the resources to tinker. And that was exactly what she was doing.

Unfortunately, even bacteria took time to multiply, and she felt time bleeding past. Sweat dampened her brow, and even the intelligent weave of her galaxy suit couldn’t seem to compensate for her feverish body’s fluctuating temperatures. A part of her wanted to strip it off—to strip everything off. If she’d had some baggy pajamas to change into, she definitely would have.

A soft ding sounded to her left. She looked at the footage she had running on a different display, more than a dozen different ship’s cameras that had recorded the corridors, bridge, engineering, and sickbay over the past week. She’d been trying to find the footage of the shuttle bay from when the original team of archaeologists had come aboard, but she hadn’t had times or even dates, so it was tedious to go over it all. Finally, the program had spotted the human activity she’d been looking for. The airlock bay. That was where the team had come aboard.

She watched as the team walked out of a decontamination chamber. They wore galaxy suits and carried cases of tools and equipment and—

Her breath caught. There it was. A man walking with what looked like the same piece of circuit board that Kim had first seen in the video with her mother. It was secured in a clear insulated bag, but that wouldn’t have done anything to block her pseudo radiation.

“Sync the footage from the other cameras,” she ordered the computer, “and track that team as they walk through the ship.”

All of the cameras showed footage with the same time stamp, and she watched the team progress through the ship, some splitting off to go to sickbay, others to the bridge, and others to their cabins. She stuck with the man carrying the circuit board. The two-thousand-year-old circuit board. Maybe she should think of it as an artifact.

The man carrying it removed his helmet, revealing sweat-dampened gray hair—had he been afflicted with symptoms at that point?—and stepped onto the bridge. He had a long chat with the bridge officer in the command chair. Kim remembered the lone body they’d found on the bridge and shuddered.

Another soft beep sounded as a different camera display alerted her to movement. It was one of Rache’s marines, and it was happening now, not in the past.

Kim had decided against trying to drag them to a cell, especially when the computer had informed her that the Machu Picchu didn’t have a brig, because she’d been too tired to contemplate finding a hover gurney and maneuvering the men onto it. They also hadn’t been moving at the time. This one was on his knees, though, and looking around. Maybe he was sick and needed a place to throw up. Or maybe he was debating taking over the ship.

Kim commed the other two doctors, each working in different labs. “We have a problem.”

“What’s going on, Kim?” Dr. Sikou asked from the doorway a few seconds later.

Dr. Angelico also stood there, leaning heavily against the jamb.

“A couple of things,” Kim said, only glancing at them as she divided her attention between the footage of the bridge—she had to figure out where that artifact ended up so she could get it off the ship—and the mercenaries. Most of them were still slumped down in the corridor. Dr. Peshlakai hadn’t moved. “You said none of the Fleet marines survived the attack, right?”

Angelico grimaced. “Correct. I’m lucky those animals didn’t rip my head off when they saw me.”

Kim didn’t point out that she’d glimpsed him hiding behind a lab station. It wasn’t as if she could blame him for that. Being brave hadn’t gotten her anything except kidnapped.

“You, Angelico, and I are the only ones who aren’t in quarantine and are ambulatory,” Sikou said. “Mostly ambulatory.” She glanced at her comrade. “I told you we’re showing signs of the cellular degeneration now too, right?”

“Yes. Because, unless I miss my guess, that’s still here.” Kim pointed to the artifact on the camera display. The archaeologist was still discussing it with the captain, but he’d laid it on a nearby console. “It’s a small piece, but I’m assuming it also puts out the pseudo radiation. When I was kidnapped, I hadn’t been exposed to enough here yet to show symptoms, but everything was accelerated down on the moon when I was in a shuttle parked right next to the wreck. I suspect anybody who’s had contact with the wreck or any of the gate pieces will be in trouble. The more exposure, the worse it’ll be.”

“We should go find that then,” Sikou said. “And get it off the ship.”

“I will in a moment. I want to see if they moved it after their chat.” Kim waved at the bridge. “What I need from you two is to visit the mercenaries and get them into a room we can secure.” She pointed at the one who’d managed to get to his feet. “Also get them out of their armor, so we can stun them if needed.”

“You want us to move a bunch of trained killers?” Angelico asked dubiously.

“Yes, please. I’ll deal with that.” Kim pointed at the artifact. “We’ve got to get it off the ship if anyone is going to have a chance at recovering.”

“I’d rather deal with that than murderers,” Angelico said.

“I wouldn’t,” Sikou said grimly.

“If they won’t cooperate, maybe you can tell them you have a treatment and that they need to remove their armor to get it.” Kim hated the idea of lying, but they couldn’t risk someone getting an itch and deciding to take over the ship. “I’m hoping we’ll have a genuine treatment soon. At the least, a way to clear the pseudo radiation out of the body.”

Kim shifted her pointing finger to her strains of bacteria.

“Me too,” Sikou murmured.

After they left, Kim ran the footage on fast forward. The artifact remained on the console for a long time, for more than one shift change. She had been on the bridge earlier and was positive it wasn’t still there. The crew moved around it, never interacting with it, but she knew it was silently killing them, and she blinked away moisture in her eyes when she was forced to watch people showing signs of growing weaker. Some left. Some left and came back. The captain slumped in his chair for a long time, then stalked to the artifact. He glared at it and snatched it up.

Had he realized it was what was making them sick? He stalked off the bridge.

Kim was thankful for all the cameras on the ship, as she was able to follow him. He carried it down two decks and locked it in a vault in an engineering lab, maybe choosing that because it was far from sickbay.

“Time for a walk,” she muttered, glancing at the mercenaries on the display before heading out.

Sikou and Angelico had reached them, Sikou waving a medical kit and holding up a jet injector. One full of a tranquilizer, Kim hoped.

Trusting them to handle Rache’s men, Kim strode out of the lab.

She paused when she reached one of the dead marines—the body had been partially dragged into a lab so it wasn’t in the walkway, but the combat armor would have made it onerously heavy to deal with. Kim knelt to pick up the rifle the marine had been holding as he battled the mercenaries. A part of her wanted to jettison Rache’s men and let them die for their crimes, but she’d gathered that neither Jess nor Yas—especially Yas—was a killer or had wanted to kidnap her. She would do her best to save them. But if any of the others attacked her again…

She slung the rifle over her shoulder. She would deal with them without hesitation or remorse.

“Can you fix the pods and revive the handlers, Casmir Dabrowski?” the android asked, his wrists clasped behind his back.

Casmir had his toolkit open and a scanner out, pretending to contemplate the pods and the machinery linked to them as he bought time to think. “I’m attempting to diagnose the problem now. I’ll let you know shortly.”

The android accepted the answer without comment, but he hadn’t given an order for all the robots on the bridge to stand down. Right now, several of their arm guns—more like cannons or grenade launchers than guns—were pointed at his back. Actually at Zee’s chest, because he’d moved to stand behind Casmir to do his best to block any assault that might come.

Qin and Asger crouched nearby, their weapons in hand as they faced the robots. They kept glancing at Casmir, as if waiting for an order. Was he in charge of this strike team? A terrifying thought.

The only potential upside of the situation was that if everyone started firing, it might do damage to the computers, including the system that controlled the ship’s stealth capacity. The cargo ship would be much easier for the Fleet warships to disable if it was visible.

Casmir had pulled up a schematic of the bridge, which had no mention of a stealth device, and decided it might be the large piece of jury-rigged equipment sticking out in front of a bank of computers on the side opposite from him. It was shiny and new, more so than the rest of the ship, and hummed and whirred, indicators flashing with activity.

“Are you the only one left in charge here, android friend?” Casmir suspected the armed robots had been programmed with security routines but not the ability for independent reasoning. “And do you have a name or designation?”

“I am Tork-57. I assist the handlers.”

“Who’s running the ship’s attack and defense program? Are you trying to get through the gate as soon as possible, or waiting until the bridge crew is revived?”

Casmir downloaded everything he could find related to the ship as they spoke. Unfortunately, he didn’t see any schematics on the network that matched what he’d chosen to dub the stealth generator. He couldn’t even find a description of such technology to prove it existed. He did find the schematics for the astroshaman pods—apparently, they were standard interfaces for spacefaring followers of the religion—but with the people inside dead, there wasn’t much point in examining them further.

“I will not answer your questions,” Tork said. “You must be deemed an enemy and hostile until proven otherwise.”

“Hostile? Me? I hardly think you have anything to worry about.”

Tork glanced at Qin, Zee, and Asger and did not reply.

Through his chip, Casmir investigated the ship’s local wireless networks. Not surprisingly, the pods, the main system computers, and security—did that include these robots, by chance?—were protected by passcodes, with some requiring retina and fingerprint scans as well. Even if he found materials, he doubted he could build a passcode cracker with Tork watching his every move. It would be easier to find a way to physically or virtually interrupt power to the systems.

What happens when he realizes those people are dead and you can’t fix them? Asger asked in a message.

I’m not sure there’s a way around fighting him—fighting all of them, Casmir replied. I’m trying to figure out a way to interrupt power to the machine I believe is controlling the ship’s stealth capabilities, at which point the Kingdom ships will start firing at us. Relentlessly. And at which point the robots and Tork will realize I’m working against them.

You want the Fleet to fire at us while we’re on the bridge?

I’m hoping that you, Qin, and Zee can best the robots, especially if they’re distracted by an attack, and that we can take control and tell Ishii and the others to stand down. I’m hoping they’re not going to try to obliterate the ship when the gate they want is in the hold.

Or so he hoped. Casmir hadn’t been down there to look yet.

I’m ready, Asger said. Get down and stay out of the way once the fighting begins. And don’t have a seizure.

I always suspected knights of having great wisdom. In some matters. Casmir kept himself from glancing at Qin and reminding Asger he was being an idiot in that regard.

In some, Asger agreed.

Casmir pushed back from the machinery by the pod he’d been poking into and started toward an electrical panel on the opposite side of the bridge. A couple of the robots shifted their aim to follow him. Zee hurried to do his best to block their access.

“Explain your actions, Casmir Dabrowski,” Tork said.

“Oh, sorry.” Casmir waved nonchalantly and pointed. “I need to get into that panel over there.”

“That is an electrical panel. Electricity is flowing to the pods. That is not the problem.”

“I think there may be voltage fluctuations. Perhaps the reason for the alarm.” He licked his lips and ignored the bead of sweat that trickled from his hairline.

“You show signs of nerves,” Tork announced. “I believe you may intend duplicity.”

“I’m only nervous because of all the weapons pointed at me. Can’t you convince your robots to stand outside while I work?”

He kept walking, hoping the android was desperate enough to get his handlers back to risk putting some faith in Casmir.

Tork’s pale silver eyes watched him intently. Casmir felt bad for trying to dupe him, but he didn’t know what else he could do. Like the android, the robots would have their own power supplies, so he couldn’t cut their electricity. And he’d likely need a manual connection to the android to alter his programming. He hadn’t seen a wireless network specifically for Tork, though it was possible one of the jumbles of numbers and letters represented him. It was also likely he was connected to the security network. Someone was giving those robots commands.

As Casmir slid open the electrical panel, Tork walked over to stand beside him. “I do not see anything that would indicate power fluctuations. There are no errors to the bridge currently. I have been running diagnostics and repairs on the minor damage we’ve received from the enemy ships.”

“I’ll just take a quick peek.” Casmir whistled cheerfully—and nervously—as he pulled up the bridge diagram on the touch display inside.

Zee moved to stand close enough to Tork to react if he reached for Casmir. Several of the robots moved close to ensure they had a line of fire if Zee did anything to their leader.

“Casmir,” Qin whispered tensely. “You’re in the middle of—”

“Stop.” Tork reached for his arm.

Zee snatched him around the waist and hurled him across the bridge.

“Down!” Qin and Asger shouted at the same time.

A barrage of fire opened up, and Casmir flattened himself to the deck.

Zee lunged at the closest robot, knocking it into a bulkhead. But the robot recovered and lunged back. Asger sprang behind two of them, wielding his pertundo like a logger. Casmir had no idea where Qin was. Red and orange DEW bolts flashed as they pounded into the deck, ceiling, and equipment, and he didn’t dare lift his head.

Shouts, crashes, and thuds rang out over the buzz of weapons fire. An explosion ripped through the bridge. One of Qin’s anti-tank rounds?

Casmir resisted the urge to hide behind something and curl up into a tiny ball. As good as his allies were, he feared they would need help to win this. He also feared Tork could call up more robots from the bowels of the ship.

Trying to make himself as small a target as possible, Casmir pushed himself into a crouch so he could reach the touch display. A bolt slammed into the panel door, blowing it off its hinges.

“Shit!” He ducked down, glancing back.

Zee slammed into the robot that had fired toward him. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs.

Across the bridge, Qin grappled with Tork.

Casmir rose up, knowing he had to try again. Without the android watching on, he let his fingers fly over the interface. He found a recently added unlabeled line that was in use. Hoping it led to the stealth generator, he did the computerized equivalent of switching off a circuit breaker in his cottage back home.

The indicators on the physical unit went dark as Asger was hurled over it, flying and crashing into a bulkhead. Nothing greater happened. Was it still humming and whirring? Casmir couldn’t tell over the cacophony of the battle.

A bolt slammed into the wall near his head, and he dropped to his belly again.

Was there more he could do? Had what he had done even accomplished anything? What if that generator had backup power? Or what if the Kingdom ships weren’t in a position to take advantage of the now-visible cargo ship?

“Need to get control of the robots,” he muttered, using his chip to look for networks again.

A feminine cry of pain came from across the bridge. Tork had gained the upper hand—with help. He and two of his robots had Qin pinned to the deck.

Casmir grabbed the stunner off his belt, but it would be useless here. Why hadn’t he asked Bonita to borrow a weapon with more power against robots and androids?

Qin grunted, trying to fling off her attackers, but they’d torn her weapon out of her grip and kept her down.

“Zee, help her!” Casmir cried.

But Zee had been mobbed by five robots with the same strength that he possessed. They blocked his attempts to obey orders. One fired a huge bolt of energy at his head, and it exploded. It overwhelmed Zee’s surface tension, and his head and neck warped into indistinguishable pieces.

Casmir scurried behind a console, hoping it would provide cover enough to keep a stray shot from hitting him. He needed a minute of peace to work. He needed to gain access to the robots’ network. Or to shut it down. If he knew where the damn router was, he might have been able to pull the plug, but it was probably down in engineering somewhere.

The ship lurched, hurling Casmir sideways, and the force of rapid acceleration pitched him against a bank of computers. The cargo ship had started evasive maneuvers.

“We’re being hit by the warships’ fire now!” Asger yelled as he sprang onto Tork’s back, pulling him off Qin.

“No kidding!” an angry Qin yelled back.

She found the energy to throw off her remaining robot attackers. Asger spun about and hurled Tork across the bridge. The android slammed into the electric panel and tumbled down right behind Casmir.

His first instinct was to scurry away, knowing the android wouldn’t be down for long, but he spotted a small panel ajar on the back of Tork’s neck. Casmir fought to stay put against the myriad forces trying to throw him in different directions as he tore it open, hoping for an off button. All he saw were access ports with connectors he didn’t have a match for. Wait, there was an ID code on a tiny plaque across the top. Casmir recognized it from his network search. Underneath it, a line held a bunch of symbols. The passcode? Was it possible the crew wouldn’t have changed the factory settings?

As Casmir ordered his chip to try to make a connection, the ship lurched again. A snap and a pop came from the front of the bridge, and the acrid scent of something burning filled the air.

Even as Casmir linked to the android’s network and tried the passcode, Tork turned his head, eyes locking onto him.

“Would you believe I’m still checking voltages?” Casmir blurted as a screen came up on his contact. Commands for Tork. He’d gotten in.

Tork’s arm moved faster than a viper, and a hand wrapped around Casmir’s neck. Before he started to squeeze, another attack from outside hit the ship. The deck heaved, throwing them both into the air. The android’s head cracked against a railing, and his grip slipped.

Casmir jerked his neck out of reach as he surfed through the menu. Diagnostics, file downloads… power off. There!

Tork grabbed him and snatched for his neck again.

“Go, go, go,” Casmir ordered as the system lagged.

He tried to knock away the android’s arm, but Tork had strength superior to any human’s. A hand like a vise latched onto his shoulder and squeezed. Casmir couldn’t keep from screaming in pain.

But then the android stopped moving. His grip released, his limbs sagged, and he toppled sideways onto the deck.

Casmir lurched away, putting his back to the wall and bracing his legs against the deck. The fight continued to rage on the bridge—and outside. One of the Kingdom warships was flying straight toward them. The cargo ship lurched wildly, its automatic piloting system still engaged in evasive maneuvers.

“Asger,” Casmir shouted over the thuds of punches connecting and the buzz of weapons firing. “Tell Ishii to stop attacking, that we’ve got control of the ship.” A bolt slammed into the wall an inch above his head, and Casmir flung himself onto his belly again. “I mean that we will have control!”

“I tried,” Asger’s voice came back, muffled.

He was on the deck under a pile of attacking robots as Qin and Zee fought back to back several feet away. Detached robot limbs littered the deck, but the constructs fought on. There seemed to be more than before. Tork must have called up reinforcements.

“Comm system,” Casmir blurted, lunging to his feet but staying low as he raced toward the front of the bridge.

He needed to figure out how to take control of the robots now that Tork was out of the picture, but if he didn’t stop the warships from firing, they could be blown to pieces in seconds. He rose up just enough to access the comm panel and figure out how to open an outgoing channel on a burst broadcast.

“This is Dabrowski with Sir Asger. We disabled the cargo ship’s stealth technology, as you can see, but we’re on the bridge ourselves right now. Cease fire. Captain Ishii, please cease fire. We’ll update you when we’ve gained control over the security system.” A thunderous boom punctuated his last sentence.

Wonderful.

Hoping the warships would hear him and stop firing, Casmir sank behind cover again. He checked the networks, then attempted to connect to the security one. It had shown as locked before, and it still was. He tried the same passcode that had worked for Tork.

Access denied.

On a whim, he tried Tork’s ID, the numbers and letters burned into his brain. Maybe he was always in charge of the robots.

He gained access, and he let out a whoop. Until nothing but ones and zeroes appeared on his display. Right, androids and robots wouldn’t need a human-friendly interface to communicate.

He transmitted a zero for off, though it was probably vain to believe something so simple would work. Until it grew abruptly quiet on the bridge.

“They stopped attacking!” Qin yelled.

“They stopped doing anything.” Asger sounded puzzled.

Casmir flopped onto his back and laughed, not caring that it had a hysterical edge to it. He managed to stop himself only because he was afraid his words wouldn’t have been enough for Ishii and the other warship captains. He sat up and waved Asger toward the comm.

“Tell them we have control of the ship, please.”

Asger eyed a robot standing in front of him, frozen in the middle of lunging at him. “Are you sure?”

“I think so. It’s possible they’ll reset themselves, but I got access to their network, so if I have some time, I can probably reprogram. And the human crew…” Casmir looked grimly at the pods. “Isn’t going to wake up.”

“What about the android?” Asger lowered his pertundo and walked to the console, peering down at Casmir.

Casmir waved at the deck where he’d left Tork. “He’s off too. He’ll be more complicated to reprogram. I’ll just focus on the robots for now.”

“Huh.” Asger gazed down at him.

“The last time you looked at me for that long,” Casmir said, “I got a little worried you were going to kiss me.”

“Well, the helmets would preclude that.”

“Only the helmets?”

Asger snorted, looked around at the immobile robots, and lowered his hand. “You’re not what I expected, and yet… you kind of are.”

Casmir accepted the hand and the help to his feet. “Care to explain that?”

He remembered Asger saying he was helping Casmir because the queen wanted him alive. He also remembered that Asger had paused before giving that answer, as if it hadn’t been the first one that came to his mind. Was it possible he knew something more about Casmir?

Asger looked over at Qin. “Maybe later.”

“Right,” Casmir said.

The comm light flashed with an incoming message. Casmir waved for Asger to answer it, figuring Ishii would be more likely to listen to him.

“This is Sir Asger.”

The ship had steadied, no longer accelerating wildly through its maneuvers. Casmir hoped that meant the warships had stopped firing.

“I want visual,” Ishii’s voice came over the comm. He sounded suspicious. “How the hell did you and Dabrowski get over there?”

“It’s a longish story. Let me see about a visual.”

While Asger poked around, the smoke from damaged computers hazing the air, Casmir stapled together enough binary to bring the robots, those intact enough to walk, over to stand behind him at the console. That ought to help convince Ishii that they had indeed taken control of the ship.

When the visual link came through, two faces appeared side by side on the display, replacing the visual of the warship. Captain Ishii and a beleaguered man in his fifties or sixties, also with captain’s rank. Smoke filled the air behind that man, and his white hair stuck up in a dozen directions. Red emergency lighting flashed behind him, and someone in the background was helping someone else off the bridge. Maybe he was the captain of the ship that had been blockading the gate.

“We had a bit of a battle, Captain.” Asger removed his helmet so they could see his face. “But we’ve come out on top and, barring unexpected surprises, have control of the ship. Apparently, it’s useful to take a computer hacker along on combat missions.”

“I’m a robotics engineer, and I didn’t hack anything. I pulled some plugs.” Casmir also removed his helmet, then promptly wished he hadn’t because the unfiltered, smoky air assailed his lungs and he ended up coughing.

“Why are you surrounded by robots?” the second captain asked.

Asger looked behind him. “I believe that’s Dabrowski’s new army. Any minute, they’re going to swear to live and die by his command.”

Ishii scowled.

“I’m not sure this is the time for humor.” Casmir worried jokes like that might be interpreted literally. He didn’t need King Jager’s intelligence people to hear rumors about a rogue engineer gathering a robot army. “Besides, didn’t we decide knights don’t make jokes?”

“You decided that. Based on my deadly weapon and my cloak, I believe.”

“Have you checked for our stolen cargo?” Ishii asked.

“Not yet,” Asger said. “We’ve only had control of the bridge for two minutes.”

“Go check. I’ll bring the Osprey over while Captain Hildebrand continues to blockade the gate.”

“Lucky me,” the other captain muttered, wiping his brow.

“Check for the cargo and report back within fifteen minutes,” Ishii said.

The display switched back to a view of the warship as the comm ended.

“He still hasn’t grasped that I’m not in his chain of command,” Asger said.

“I think captains are just accustomed to giving orders and being obeyed.”

“Maybe so. I’ll see if the gate is here and all this was worth it.” Asger patted him on the shoulder and turned to walk around the robots and toward the exit. He looked at but didn’t say anything to Qin, who’d walked up to Casmir’s other side. “Do whatever you need to do to make sure the android doesn’t wake up and you retain control of those robots for now,” he called back.

“You know I’m not in your chain of command, either, right?” Casmir asked.

“Knights are also accustomed to giving orders and being obeyed.”

“That may be why people think they’re humorless.” Casmir lowered his voice and smiled at Qin. “And pretentious.” He gripped her shoulder, though she wouldn’t feel it through her armor. “Thank you so much for your help. That wasn’t your fight.”

“Was it yours?” she asked.

“Ah, technically, I don’t think so. But there were robots, and I did volunteer myself to come over here, so…”

A new message scrolled down Casmir’s display, and he held up a finger. It was Kim.

Casmir, I’m incredibly busy, but I wanted to let you know that I’m back up on the Machu Picchu, and we’re trying to figure out a solution to the pseudo radiation problem. I may have a lead, but it’s too early to tell, and my health is deteriorating. Don’t worry about me. I have more resources now to hopefully solve this, but I want you to stay away from any of those gate pieces. It’s not just the wreck that emits this stuff that’s deadly to us. Even a small gate piece could kill a crew—did kill a crew.

“Uh,” Casmir said, looking in the direction Asger had gone. Kim, I’m on the cargo ship that we think was trying to steal the gate. We’ve gained control of it, but the gate… you said Rache is immune. Do you think I would be?

He bit his lip, glad they could talk but annoyed by the time lag.

“What is it?” Qin whispered.

“I got a message from Kim. Hold on,” he said as a reply filled his vision.

I think so, but unless I miss my guess, nobody else with you is going to have that immunity. You better get everyone else off that ship before it’s too late. The more exposure they get, the faster they’ll die.

Damn it, Kim. What is this stuff?

I think you may be right in that it’s the ancient ship’s security system. If you’re not human enough, you get zapped with some homemade type of radiation we can’t detect.

Not human enough? What does that mean? You said Rache is immune. There’s no way he’s more human than you.

I’ll explain that later.

“I found the cargo hold,” Asger said over the comm. “And more giant segments of the gate than I can count.”

“Get out of there!” Casmir yelled. “Close the door. Bar it off. Get back up here. No, you need to get the hell off this ship now.” He glanced at the pods full of dead people. “Damn it, why didn’t I realize what must have happened to them earlier?”

Because he’d had a dozen robots pointing weapons at him, and contemplating why the people were dead hadn’t been his highest priority…

“What?” Asger asked.

“The gate is what killed the crew. It’s emitting some kind of radiation we can’t detect. If Kim doesn’t find a fix and if we can’t get to her in time, we’ll suffer the same fate as these astroshamans.”

There was a long pause and the faint hiss of a door shutting.

Asger swore vehemently. “Everyone, get to the shuttle. We’ll explain it to Ishii from there.”

Casmir opened his mouth to agree, but another message came in from Kim.

I hate to give you more bad news, Casmir, but Rache dropped us off and took off to rendezvous with his ship, which has, I believe, been repaired enough to be dangerous again. He openly admitted he’ll do whatever it takes to keep King Jager from gaining control of that gate.

Shit, I’m standing on the same ship as that gate right now.

There was a pause that went beyond what signal lag should have caused.

It’s on the Osprey? Kim asked.

No. I took a small trip.

If you were here, I’d punch you.

It’s possible I might deserve it. Casmir thought about saying that he’d only been trying to assist the Fleet so they would assist him in retrieving her, but it seemed like too long a story to explain now. How long ago did Rache leave you?

Uhm, eight hours? Ten?

“That means he could be here any minute.” Casmir groaned.

14

Casmir caught up with Qin and Asger in the shuttle bay, trailed by Zee and ten robots from the bridge—those with legs and arms still mostly attached. Asger threw a startled glance at the small army but waved Casmir toward the open hatch of his craft. Qin was already inside. Good.

“You two go,” Casmir said. “I have to stay here.”

“What? You just said we all have to go. That we’ve already likely been afflicted.”

“That is true. Take the shuttle back to the Stellar Dragon, make sure Captain Lopez runs the decon shower in the airlock, and then get back to the Machu Picchu in orbit around Skadi. I have faith that Kim is on to something by now, and she’ll have a cure.”

“Which you’ll need as badly as the rest of us, right?” Asger asked.

Casmir hoped not. He wished Kim had gone into more detail on Rache’s immunity.

“I got a message from Kim,” Casmir said, trying to figure out a way to explain why he was the only one who could stay without revealing the secret he didn’t want to have. He suspected his trustworthiness among the knights, the military, and the queen would plummet if people knew he was Rache’s twin brother. “That’s why I realized we needed to avoid the gate. But it’s also how I know that Rache is on his way. And he’ll do anything to keep our king from taking delivery of it.”

Asger banged his fist on his armored thigh. “He’s not working with those freaks, is he?”

Asger flung a hand upward. To indicate the dead people in the pods on the bridge? Casmir bristled a little at his willingness to label everyone who wasn’t like him as a freak, but this wasn’t the time to argue semantics.

“I actually don’t know,” Casmir said. “It could be possible. He’s a mercenary, right? Meaning he’ll work for the highest bidder? But he definitely has a grudge against Jager, so maybe it’s just personal.”

“Yeah, I know about his grudge.” Asger shook his head in disgust.

“I’d ask you to enlighten me, but I’m not sure how the exposure to the gate works. It sounds like it’s something like radiation, and I know radiation would have no trouble going through the decks of this ship. The sooner you get out of here, the better.”

Casmir nodded to Qin, who’d appeared in the hatchway, no doubt wondering why they weren’t already taking off. He wished he wasn’t sending her off alone with Asger, but now that they had battled killer robots together, maybe they could survive a shuttle ride without springing for each other’s throats.

“And what, you’re going to stay here and sacrifice yourself to keep Rache from getting the gate by blowing up this ship? Don’t tell me you think you can fly into battle against him and his hardened pirates. This ship may have good guns, but you disabled the android controlling them.”

“I wasn’t thinking of doing either of those things, actually. Especially not while I’m on board.”

“What are you thinking of?”

Casmir hesitated, feeling he shouldn’t admit that he hadn’t gotten far yet with his plotting and scheming. His main thought was that he should reenable the stealth system so Rache couldn’t find the ship or the gate.

“Look, Dabrowski.” Asger stepped forward and gripped his shoulder. “Casmir. You and your new allies—uh, that one’s arm is falling off—aren’t a match for Rache. Let Ishii and the other captains handle it. There are three good warships out there. Rache only has one ship. It’s state-of-the-art, yes, but so are those warships.”

Casmir thought of the beleaguered captain who’d appeared on the comm. “How much damage did they take battling Tork and this ship?”

Asger winced. “I’m not sure yet.”

“Rache’s people have probably had time to get their ship back in top condition.”

“You don’t need to sacrifice yourself to keep him from getting the gate.” Asger shook his shoulder gently—or maybe the act only seemed gentle through Casmir’s suit. “I promised the queen I would try to keep you from getting killed. This wasn’t what she had in mind at the time, I’ll admit, but you’re meant for greater things. I’m sure of it.”

“Care to explain that?”

Asger hesitated, then tilted his helmet toward the hatchway. “If you hop in the shuttle and leave this mess for the military, I’ll tell you what I know.”

Oh, how Casmir wanted answers. Whatever answers Asger could provide.

The temptation was real, but… Casmir couldn’t help but believe that Rache would get the gate if he walked away from this ship, and even though it didn’t make a lot of sense, he felt some responsibility for Rache’s actions. As if, because they shared DNA, it was his responsibility to stop him.

Maybe all Rache wanted was to keep Jager from getting the gate, but what if he wanted it for himself? To sell it to the highest bidder? Casmir didn’t know if King Jager was the most honorable person in the Twelve Systems, but the Kingdom government was stable, and life on Odin came with a lot of freedom and opportunities. He wasn’t convinced the man was evil. He definitely wasn’t convinced that this technology would be better off in a pirate’s hands.

“It’s not my intention to sacrifice myself,” Casmir promised. “Just to hide the gate somewhere so Rache can’t find it.”

“You need to just hand it to the Fleet.”

“I’m willing to do that, but I’m concerned they might not be a match for Rache right now.”

“Where are you going to hide it?”

“I don’t know yet. I need to get the stealth generator back online.” Casmir smiled and didn’t mention that he hadn’t the foggiest idea how that stealth technology worked or that he worried the ship had been damaged enough that simply fixing the electrical connection wouldn’t get it working again. “I’ll meet you at Skadi, at the Machu Picchu, as soon as I’m able. I promise.”

“There aren’t any other shuttles in this bay, Casmir. And if you bring the entire ship to Skadi, nobody’s going to have a hard time finding it.”

“I’ll find a way to get there. I’m crafty. Really!” He gave them his most winning smile, more because he wanted them to leave the ship before they were exposed further than because he had any clue what he would do or how he would do it. “Now, you both need to go. Please. But thank you for everything on the bridge, for risking yourselves and keeping me alive. You were amazing. Both of you.” Casmir met Qin’s eyes and nodded to her. “Tell your captain that you need a raise. Or at least a new candle. A really big one.”

“Casmir,” Qin whispered, distress in her voice.

But she didn’t try to stop him. She hopped out of the shuttle, gave him a crushing hug that made his bones creak, and then ran back inside.

“Stay safe, Dabrowski,” Asger said, then also stepped through the hatchway, shaking his head as if he knew he’d never see Casmir again.

The hatch closed, and Casmir ran out of the shuttle bay so they could depressurize it and fly out. They would see him again. He wasn’t sacrificing himself. He swore it.

Casmir doubted he had much time, but he couldn’t resist running down to the cargo hold, his new robot friends clanking and clattering behind him, to take a look at the gate.

When he’d been back on the university campus, light years from System Lion’s existing gate, he hadn’t thought much about it, especially since it had been more than ten years since his class on astrodynamics, which he’d mostly taken because it had satisfied an elective and hadn’t involved getting up before dawn. But now that he was out here, traveling between the planets, he found himself more curious than ever.

He stepped into a vast cargo hold—it had to occupy half of the massive ship—filled with great puzzle pieces, as his mind immediately identified them. The gate was so large that each section only curved slightly, but he could envision them fitting together to form a circle, one large enough for the largest ships to fly through. What he didn’t know was how they communicated with each other once they were together and somehow created a wormhole in space, allowing nearly instantaneous travel between one star system and another, systems that weren’t even that close to each other.

Nobody knew that. But if they had the opportunity to study these disassembled pieces, they might learn.

As he walked among them, peering at the ends and searching for seams or panels, Casmir had the urge to take one apart and see what was inside. To try to figure out how they worked. It was amazing that humanity had managed to keep anyone from doing that for centuries, collectively agreeing, when various systems agreed about nothing else, that the gates had to be guarded at all costs, that they couldn’t risk breaking the network.

He reached out to run a hand along one of the pieces but drew back. His eye blinked a few times.

He couldn’t see the glow he imagined of some highly radioactive piece of metal, but Kim’s warning came to mind. She hadn’t explained why Rache was immune—if she knew—and maybe he was foolish to be down here, assuming that he shared that immunity. She’d seemed to believe he would, but what if she was wrong, and it had to do with the various upgrades Rache had admitted to getting?

Casmir backed away from the gate, hoping he hadn’t needlessly exposed himself. Though it probably didn’t matter. As soon as he’d come aboard the ship, he’d exposed himself.

Kim, he composed a message as he headed to the bridge. I’m sure you’re busy, but I’ve visually confirmed that the gate is on this cargo ship I’m aboard. Some astroshamans were apparently trying to steal it and take it back to one of the systems where they have their monasteries. They died before I got here, presumably due to exposure.

I have control of this ship for the moment, but I’m expecting both Rache and the Fleet to try to take it from me. Given what you’ve told me, I’m not sure I should let even the Fleet have it until someone has figured out a way to keep more people from dying. Let me know if you have any ideas about that, eh? If it’s akin to radiation, would creating a magnetic field around the gate pieces work?

I sent Qin, Bonita, and a knight named Asger to find you on the research ship. Qin and Asger were exposed. I hope you can help them. I’m positive you wish you were back home right now, and I definitely wish you were somewhere safe instead of dealing with this, but I know you’re the person to solve this problem, and I’m relieved you’re on it.

Anyway, I won’t distract you further while you’re trying to fix people, but I hope you’re safe. We need to figure out how to get back home. I doubt anyone else is feeding the squirrels in the tree out back. They might starve.

~Casmir

P.S. If it turns out you make it and I don’t, please tell my parents that I love them. And make sure my collectible automata toys go to a worthy home. I’d give them to you, but I’ve noticed they don’t delight you as much as they do me. That’s very odd, but I forgive you for your flaws. Thank you, my good friend!

As Casmir sent the message, he was walking past the shuttle bay. He glanced through the hatch window to make sure Qin and Asger had taken off. Yes, the knight’s craft was gone.

It was what Casmir had wanted, but he couldn’t help but be aware that he was alone now, on a giant ship he didn’t even know if he could fly.

Well, not entirely alone. He glanced back at Zee and his cadre of robots. A lot of them needed repairs, but they trooped along without complaint. It probably helped that only one of them could speak.

“What do you think of our new friends, Zee?” Casmir asked.

It was silly, since he knew the crusher had no feelings, but he couldn’t help anthropomorphizing and thinking Zee might be jealous or worry he was being replaced.

“They are inferior models,” Zee stated.

“So, I had better keep you?”

“I am necessary to protect and defend Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski.”

“Yes, you are. And we better get that stealth generator back online to help with that.”

He could worry about choosing a hiding spot for the cargo ship afterward.

As soon as he stepped onto the bridge, Casmir headed for the electrical panel, intending to return power to the stealth generator. But lights flashed on numerous other panels on the bridge, and a ship filled the forward display. His stomach churned. It was the Fedallah.

He could see one of the warships in the distance, still guarding the gate, and the two other warships had to be out there too. Hopefully, coming this way with railguns pointed at the Fedallah. Assuming the fleet saw the mercenary ship. Casmir knew from his experience at the refinery that the Fedallah’s slydar hull plating made it almost invisible until it was within a few miles. Right now, it was almost up the cargo ship’s nose.

He tapped furiously at the touch panel, reconnecting power to the stealth generator. An error message flashed. A connection had been damaged in the fight on the bridge.

“Not good.” Could he even reach it without tearing out half of the consoles?

A flash of yellow came from the forward display. The Fedallah was firing.

Casmir vaulted a railing and flung himself into one of the helm positions. Shielding? Did this ship have any sort of shielding?

A missile slammed into a lower section of the hull near engineering, and a shudder racked the cargo ship. Casmir would have ended up on the deck, but Zee had followed him and pressed a hand down on his shoulder, keeping him from tumbling from his seat.

“Comm,” Casmir whispered, lunging over to slap the panel.

He had to let Rache know he was here and hope that mattered to him. He didn’t allow himself to consider that Rache might already know he was here and might not care. What if he was holding a grudge for how their last meeting had turned out? With the bioweapon blown up and his ship damaged from the explosives that had gone off in the refinery? Granted, those had been Rache’s explosives, but Qin had ensured they detonated prematurely.

“Captain Rache,” Casmir blurted.

He sent his broadcast wide, hoping the warships were paying attention and would realize the Fedallah was nearby, if they hadn’t detected it yet. As he spoke, he found the controls for the cargo ship’s shields and raised them.

A flashing diagram showed that he had numerous weapons online and available to him, should he wish to engage in a firefight with the Fedallah. Considering he was the entirety of the bridge crew—of all of the crew—that didn’t seem smart. Tork may have been keeping the warships busy, but Casmir didn’t have the processing power of an android.

“It’s Casmir Dabrowski. It’s been a few days since we chatted, but I’m hoping you remember me. Uhm, I’m over here on the cargo ship. I’ve liberated it from its previous crew, and I’m deciding what to do with its cargo. I’d appreciate it if you not fire at me currently, as I haven’t had a chance to take a thorough inventory yet. I thought you might be interested in this cargo, actually, so I’m a little surprised you’re flinging missiles at it.”

As he waited for a response, Casmir crawled to the stealth generator and opened a panel on the structure, hoping that broken connection was in a spot he could reach. He wished he’d been able to find schematics for the device during his earlier search. It was probably too top secret for that.

Rache’s face appeared on the bridge’s big forward display—technically, it was his mask and hood, his face hiding somewhere behind all that.

“I assume the pieces of the gate are largely indestructible,” Rache said calmly, not sounding surprised to find Casmir on the vessel. “I was going to blow up the cargo ship and collect them.”

“Fishing them out of wreckage sounds like a tedious project, especially considering a bunch of Kingdom warships are heading your way right now.”

“Actually, they are engaged in repairs and don’t seem to have noticed me yet, though I see you’re transmitting your message to everyone within a light year who’s listening, so I suppose that will change.”

“Am I?” Casmir asked with as much innocence as he could muster. “Sorry about that. I’m brand new to this ship and still finding my way around spaceships in general. This isn’t exactly my milieu.”

“What are you planning, Dabrowski?”

Yes, what was he planning? To fix the damn stealth generator for starters.

“I’m open to suggestions. Do you want to barter for the cargo? The previous owners of this ship passed away, so I believe under the intergalactic salvage laws, it’s mine to do with as I please.” Technically, those laws did not apply in Kingdom space. Casmir was fairly certain anything found and not rightfully owned by someone belonged to the king by default.

“You killed the crew?”

It bothered Casmir that Rache didn’t sound stunned. Did the man truly think he was capable of that?

“The gate killed the crew. I’m sure you know all about how that works by now. An android was in charge, and the ship’s autopilot was battling the Kingdom warships and trying to get through the gate and back to its system.”

Rache barked a short laugh. Casmir didn’t think he’d heard the man laugh before. It wasn’t a friendly or appealing sound.

“And all those Kingdom warships couldn’t handle it? Pathetic. Let’s talk terms of surrender.”

“You wish to surrender to me?” Casmir asked. “I accept.”

Apparently, the joke wasn’t worth responding to, for Rache ignored it. “How many people do you have with you, Dabrowski?”

Alarms jangled in Casmir’s brain. Did Rache want to know because he had changed his plans? Because he now intended to board the ship and take over the whole thing? That would definitely be easier than fishing hundreds of gate pieces out of space…

“I have whole armies of people with me. Knights, marines, snipers, bounty hunters who love pirate targets…”

“I’m a mercenary, not a pirate, and you’re an abysmal liar.”

The channel cut out, and Rache’s face disappeared from the display. Unfortunately, the Fedallah was still there.

Casmir found a melted cable inside the stealth device. The good news was that he thought that was the only problem. The bad news was that he didn’t have a replacement cable in his tool kit.

“Let’s hope we can borrow an identical piece from somewhere else,” Casmir grumbled, crawling to the scanner station. “Zee, let me know if that ship moves, please. Or if anything significant happens.”

“I will.” Zee faced the display, his head not moving.

“Also, can you see if you can figure out how to send a tight-beam communication to Captain Ishii’s ship? The Osprey.”

A beep came from the comm panel. The Osprey was contacting him.

“Never mind,” Casmir said, then ran over to accept the incoming message. Why were all the stations on this bridge so far apart?

Captain Ishii’s face appeared on the display.

“I hope you’re here to tell me that you’re on the way and plan to keep Captain Rache from blowing me up,” Casmir said, heading off whatever Ishii had intended to open with. He wanted the warships to take care of Rache, but he feared they wouldn’t be in position in time and that he had to come up with something on his own. “I tried to stall him, but I don’t believe it worked.”

“Where is he?” Ishii asked. “We intercepted your message.”

Shuttle-bay doors opened on the side of the Fedallah, and Casmir grimaced and ran back to his work, not caring that Ishii wouldn’t be able to see him.

“You didn’t intercept it; I broadcasted it. And he’s about two hundred meters in front of the nose of this ship. For now. It looks like he’s launching a shuttle.”

“Shoot him!” Ishii ordered. “I know that ship has weapons capability.”

“Most of its capabilities are compromised right now. The bridge took a lot of damage when we were taking it over.”

Irritation mixed with puzzlement on Ishii’s face. Asger must not have kept him as up-to-date as Casmir had expected.

“I’m the only one here,” Casmir said, glancing to make sure this was a tight-beam transmission, but with the Fedallah so close, he couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t intercept messages. It might not matter. Rache had been certain Casmir was lying about having allies on board. “I have limited options. And no time to discuss them. Sorry, Sora.” Casmir waved at Zee. “Turn that off, please.”

He stuck his head back under the console and looked for—

“Ah ha, there you are, my match. What do you control? Weapons? Well, I wasn’t going to start a war with anyone anyway.” He grabbed a few tools and carefully disconnected the cable.

“The mercenary warship is moving off,” Zee announced.

“It is?” Casmir jumped to his feet with his new cable in hand. Maybe Ishii and his allies had located the Fedallah and were swooping in to attack. He didn’t know how they could miss it. However camouflaged it was, it ought to be blocking someone’s view of the cargo vessel.

Casmir started to let out a whoop as the Fedallah navigated away, thrusters firing orange, but then he spotted a sleek combat shuttle heading for the cargo ship’s airlocks.

He groaned. Rache must have sent his warship to deal with the Kingdom vessels, maybe even clear a way to the gate, while he brought a strike force over to capture this ship.

Casmir hurried to affix the cable. If he didn’t figure out something clever, Rache would have the cargo ship, the gate, and him within minutes.

As he worked, he looked up the model and passenger capacity of the shuttle heading over. And groaned again. It could hold eighteen people, plus a pilot. Casmir had never learned how many men Rache commanded, but he was positive he could fill that many seats with elite fighters in the best combat armor and carrying the best weapons that money could buy. Not to mention most of them were cybernetically enhanced or genetically modded to be superior warriors.

With the cable plugged in, the stealth generator came back online. Casmir jumped up and manually toggled it on. An indicator flared to life, informing him that stealth mode had been activated.

But it didn’t matter. Another indicator flashed on the docks and bays monitor on the other side of the bridge.

Rache’s shuttle had docked. It was too late.

15

Kim watched the artifact fly out into space through a porthole next to an airlock, not caring if anyone ever found it again. Someone somewhere had the entire gate—no apparently, Casmir had the entire gate. Or was at least in the same place where it was located. She hoped he wasn’t with a lot of people—and that he truly did share Rache’s immunity.

She headed back to her lab, walking the eerily quiet corridors of a research ship capable of housing a thousand people, crew and scientists. Including the quarantined people, there were fewer than forty aboard. She ought to be able to let them out now that the artifact was gone, but she would wait longer to make sure. So far, those people—and Rache—were the only ones who’d survived a close encounter with the ancient technology without being afflicted.

When she walked into her lab, the display for the computer monitoring the bacteria growth was flashing. Had another strain died swiftly and dramatically? Grimacing, she stepped up and scanned the results. Several more had died when exposed to the blood of people affected by the pseudo radiation, but one of the modified strains was doing well. More than well. It was thriving and multiplying quickly.

“Are you the answer, my little friends?” she murmured, sliding the dish under a microscope so she could look herself.

The tiny wriggly worm-like bacteria were indeed alive. Alive and thriving. She couldn’t see what they were eating—the microscope wasn’t good enough to view subatomic particles—but they were dividing every twenty minutes, so they had to be munching on something they found nourishing.

Kim grabbed a stack of empty dishes. It was time to make a lot more of them and hope this was the answer. Or at least part of it. She still needed to get a report from Angelico—he was the one inspecting the cryonics lab—on whether they could repair damaged cells here.

As she worked, a new message from Casmir came in. She kept working as the words scrolled along at her preferred reading speed. He was very vague on how he’d gained control of the gate—how did a robotics professor who couldn’t float through zero-g without puking take over a spaceship?—but his suggestion that he would keep the Fleet from having it, for their own good, made her uneasy. She highly doubted the military would appreciate that. She could understand not wanting to let Rache get it, but… why was this Casmir’s problem to deal with? He already had someone sending crushers after him, and he hadn’t gotten to the root of that problem yet. If he continued along this trajectory, he would end up with the entire system pissed at him.

Yes, she replied, making herself hold the censure for later—if Rache showed up, he wouldn’t have time to read a long diatribe. A magnetic field might do the trick.

When she read his postscript, her eyes teared, and she grew more frustrated at him for willingly getting himself into this mess. She definitely needed to punch him.

And you better survive, she added. Otherwise, I’m giving your automata toys to the squirrels out back.

There. If that didn’t motivate him, nothing would.

She shook her head, wishing she’d found an opportunity to shoot Rache. Or drug him. She might have been able to slip something to him when she’d taken his blood. If she’d known he would leave her only to go harass Casmir, she definitely would have tried something.

A knock sounded at the door.

“Kim?” Dr. Sikou asked from the doorway. “Dr. Angelico and I have been studying the offerings in the cryonics lab, and it looks like there is equipment for reviving specimens. Hopefully, there’s no need to freeze yourself first.” She smiled slightly. “It does look like a complicated process, and we’ll have to see if there’s enough of the solution to do everyone here. Will you come take a look?”

“Yes.”

As Kim followed Sikou into the corridor, she almost mentioned her new strain of bacteria, but she was hesitant to speak about it before she had proof that it worked. There were no lab rats to inoculate with her bacteria, so she would have to be her own test subject.

She told herself the bacteria shouldn’t be that different from the proven efficacious-and-safe strain that had been in use for years, but she couldn’t help thinking of the early days of medicine when scientists had tested things on themselves… to deleterious results.

Casmir ran to the cargo hold, ordering all of the ship’s security robots to meet him there. He’d surfed the network and found a few more in storage compartments in lower decks, and he’d activated them. He wished there had been time to repair the ones that Qin and Asger had torn apart on the bridge, but he wasn’t even sure he had time for this diversion.

It had been almost ten minutes since Rache’s shuttle docked. Casmir had made sure the airlock hatch was secured, but the mercenaries would have tools to force their way in. How long would that take? Not long, he was sure.

He swung into the hold and did a quick count of the robots waiting for him there and the ones who’d followed him. Sixteen, the same as his network connection indicated. He would have felt better if they outnumbered the members of Rache’s strike team, but he doubted that would have mattered. Though the robots looked intimidating, with their shiny large bodies and cannon-like arms, Qin and Asger had been able to fight off superior numbers, and he had little doubt Rache’s men would be able to do the same. All he could hope was that he could perhaps surprise them or trick Rache somehow, but Rache didn’t seem easy to trick. Casmir reminded himself that he was dealing with his twin, his twin who’d spent the last however many years of his life in space, making war on people professionally.

“Nothing to worry about, nope,” he muttered, waving to the robots to hide among the gate pieces, even as he sent the more precise and necessary commands across the network.

Once they were out of sight—poised to strike, he told himself, not hiding—Casmir rushed back out. “Follow me, Zee.”

“Are you going to put yourself in danger, Casmir Dabrowski?”

Casmir almost laughed. The crusher never asked questions and usually only spoke if he was given an order or asked a question. Did this mean he worried he wasn’t going to be able to fulfill his mission?

“Unfortunately, yes,” Casmir said, breathing heavily as he ran toward the shuttle bay. If Kim had been there, she would have berated him for not keeping up with the treadmill work. “But I’m going to try to talk to Rache first, so don’t open up with an attack. I’m hoping I can… Well, I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m hoping for inspiration, brilliance, and an opportunity that gives me an advantage. Is that too much to hope for?”

“Yes,” Zee said in his typical monotone.

“I see I should have programmed you with more optimism.”

Casmir skidded to a stop at the shuttle-bay door, pausing to catch his breath and collect himself. Sweat ran down the side of his face. He peeked through the Glasnax window. The bay was empty, but he’d expected that. Rache was coming in through one of the three airlocks at the end. A blue light indicated which one had a shuttle hooked up to it.

Casmir walked into the bay. Should he put his helmet up? Or was there even a point? With it, he wore a self-contained suit that could take more of a beating than simple flesh. But it wasn’t the equivalent of combat armor. If the mercs unloaded their weapons on him all at once, they would perforate his galaxy suit—and his organs—in seconds. Casmir didn’t even have a weapon that would be effective against them.

He snorted at the stunner still holstered to his suit’s utility belt. Again, there seemed little point in having it. He removed it and stuffed it in his tool satchel.

The less he looked like a threat, the less likely they would be to shoot him. He hoped. He still wasn’t sure how angry Rache was with him over the refinery incident. As far as Casmir had heard, Rache’s voice came in two tones: deadpan and icy. So far, he’d mostly been deadpan with Casmir, but Casmir had a feeling Rache could shoot people with his mood never escalating to ice.

A warning bleated, informing him of a rupture in the outer hatch. Casmir hoped his seizure medication had kicked in. He was pleased he hadn’t collapsed on the bridge during the fight, but this almost seemed worse. There was too much time to think.

Afraid he would think himself into a panic attack, Casmir strode to the airlock hatch and overrode the lock. It swung open, revealing a man in combat armor with a blow torch in the middle of cutting through the lock.

“Greetings,” Casmir said cheerfully while spreading his open hands—the blow torch had already swung in his direction, along with the weapons of the five men crammed in the airlock chamber behind him. “Welcome to my newly acquired cargo vessel. Which one of you strapping fellows is Captain Rache? I’m ready to start negotiations for my cargo whenever he is.” He raised his eyebrows toward the man in the middle, the only person under six feet tall and precisely Casmir’s height. “Or do you want a tour first? The bridge is a little bunged up, and there are a bunch of creepy dead people strapped into pods, but other than that, it’s a pretty nice ship.”

“Fan out,” Rache ordered.

The men strode out, weapons at the ready, and Casmir stepped back lest he be trampled. One of the men pawed him over, grabbed his satchel, and opened it.

“That’s a little rude,” Casmir said. “Do you do that with women’s purses too?”

“Only if they’re on the ship we’re commandeering for ourselves,” Rache answered, striding out. His weapon—one of them—found Zee right away and pointed steadily at his chest. “Is this the same robot that we keep utterly destroying?” He glanced at Casmir.

“Perhaps not utterly.”

“I should have you make me some.”

“Well, we can put that on the negotiations table, but I’ll warn you that I doubt this ship or yours would have the raw materials I need.”

“Negotiations. Right. What are you even doing here, Dabrowski?”

“That’s a long story.”

One of the hulking men shut the hatch, and the airlock cycled behind him. More of Rache’s men coming in, no doubt.

It occurred to Casmir that if he’d wanted to have a shot at overpowering Rache, he should have had his robots stationed in here, ready to spring into the airlock chamber and take the first group by surprise.

“What course did you set this ship on?” Rache asked. “It started moving right after we latched on.”

“Did it? Huh.”

Casmir hadn’t set it on any particular course, just in the general direction of Skadi Moon. Mostly, he’d wanted to move it, now that the stealth technology was engaged, so Rache’s warship wouldn’t easily find it again, just in case Casmir somehow managed to defeat the strike team and keep Rache from taking it over. An admittedly idealistic hope.

Rache’s rifle swung toward Casmir’s chest. “Quit playing stupid with me, Dabrowski. I know what your IQ is.”

“You do? That’s kind of odd, don’t you think? Unless you’re a fan of mine. Did you see my videos on the net? About some of my team’s recent projects? The one with the fire-breathing robot got a lot of play. Especially popular with visitors aged ten to fourteen. The university is thinking of adding it to their portal to help recruit students into their science and engineering program.” Casmir could hear how quickly he was talking—babbling—and feel sweat running down the back of his neck.

Stop panicking, he told himself, and did his best to smile affably at the men fanned out around Rache. He doubted he had a shot at winning any of them over to his side, but he held the hope that they would hesitate to fire at someone who seemed harmless and goofy.

The man who’d been searching his satchel handed it back sans the stunner. Casmir was somewhat bemused because at least three of the tools in there would be more dangerous to someone in combat armor. But it wasn’t as if the men would give him the ten minutes he would need to drill, burn, or pry his way into their tortoise shells.

The hatch opened, and more mercenaries filed out. More weapons pointed at Casmir and Zee. The hatch cycled again, and Casmir grimaced inwardly. It seemed Rache had brought along the full passenger complement of men. All to deal with Casmir? He must have thought Casmir had some allies. Which he did have. Just not of the human variety.

It irked him, on the mercenaries’ behalf, that Rache was willing to expose so many of his men to the gate’s deadly radiation. Did they know they were on a death mission?

“Go secure the bridge, Sergeant, Lieutenant,” Rache told two of his men, then waved for four others to follow them. “Turn it toward the gate, but don’t get too close yet. Let the Fedallah deal with the Kingdom ships. It was convenient to find them already damaged.”

Casmir refrained from commenting. He’d used the access he’d gained from the android to put a passcode on the navigation system, but since he’d only had seconds to do it, he wasn’t confident it would keep Rache’s men out for long. Or at all.

“Dabrowski, you offered a tour. I’m eager to see the cargo hold.” Rache put a hand on Casmir’s upper back and pointed toward the door. “And for the record, I’m commandeering your salvaged ship and its cargo. There will be no negotiations.”

Casmir knew that hand could go easily to the back of his neck and that with his cybernetic implants, Rache could break it without much effort. Why had he opted not to wear the helmet? So he’d look unthreatening? As if he’d needed a lack of a helmet to achieve that. He was a bump on the sidewalk to these men. For the most part. Zee strode up to Casmir’s other side.

“Are you threatened, Casmir Dabrowski?” Zee’s vaguely human face turned toward Rache. “Shall I use force to remove this human?”

Casmir couldn’t see Rache’s face through his helmet and the mask he wore, but he heard a faint snort.

Rache wasn’t worried, not with his men marching behind him. The ten that remained after he’d sent that group to the bridge. Casmir wondered if his robots had any chance of defeating Rache in the cargo hold. And if he attempted to defeat him and lost, would Rache shift Casmir from the annoying-twerp category to the dastardly enemy category? Someone to be shot on sight the next time they met?

Casmir still wasn’t sure Rache wouldn’t shoot him this time. Once he’d secured the gate and the ship, what need would he have for him? Casmir feared he might only be alive now because Rache wasn’t yet sure if there were any booby traps about that would require a robotics geek to deactivate. Unfortunately, Casmir hadn’t had time to lay booby traps.

“No, Zee,” Casmir said. “Thank you, but Rache and I aren’t confirmed enemies at this point. There’s even the chance that we could become friends.” He tried his affable smile on Rache, but he felt stupid smiling at someone wearing a black mask. “Do come with us to the cargo hold, though, Zee. The mercenaries may need you to move heavy things.”

“We can move our own heavy things,” the closest man behind them said.

“Where are you going to take the gate?” Casmir asked Rache as they walked into the corridor. He was genuinely curious, but he also figured that the more he learned, the more opportunity he might find to escape his current predicament.

“Out of this system,” Rache said.

“And then? What will you do? Sell it? Keep it? Will you warn people that exposure to it can kill them within days?” Casmir pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “Did you warn your team that they were going to die?”

“Quiet, Dabrowski.” As anticipated, Rache’s hand moved up to the back of his neck for a warning squeeze. Somehow, it was at once more intimate and more terrifying than a weapon simply poking him in the back. “Does your mouth get you in trouble as much as I suspect it does?”

“It hasn’t been a completely innocuous body part in my past, but you do make me nervous, so I babble.” Casmir had hoped that Rache’s men would scream and run away when they learned about their fate. Unfortunately, they hadn’t reacted. They continued to march down the corridor after their leader. Maybe Casmir had been too subtle.

“Uh huh.” Rache lowered his hand. “We don’t need to be enemies, you know.”

“Are you sure? You’re commandeering my ship and my cargo. Being enemies seems right.”

“Your ship and your cargo. How long have you even had it?”

“I acquired it roughly ten minutes before you showed up.”

“So it has deep and sentimental value for you.”

“It’s more that I’m concerned about what you plan to do with it,” Casmir said, struggling to fight down rising panic as they turned down the corridor that led to the cargo hold. He hadn’t come up with a brilliant plan yet. Once they were inside, he would have to decide if he wanted to activate the robots and start a fight he couldn’t win… or let Rache have his way. “Or who you plan to sell it to,” he added.

“Anyone but Jager,” Rache growled.

“That’s unspecific enough to worry me.”

“It’s not a weapon that could be used to destroy people.”

Aside from the fact that everyone who came in contact with it was dying…

“But it’s potentially access to the rest of the galaxy,” Casmir said. “Eventually. Once the scientists figure it out. That’s opportunity and power. If you didn’t agree, you wouldn’t care if the king got it.”

Rache stopped and looked at him, and the ten men and Zee also stopped. The entrance to the cargo hold was less than twenty-five meters away.

“Wait here,” Rache told his men, then waved for Casmir to continue on with him.

At least he wasn’t guiding Casmir by the scruff of the neck this time. Zee followed close on their heels. Rache glanced back but must have decided the crusher would be indifferent to whatever tête-à-tête they had. Casmir let himself feel a smidgen of hope when Rache turned his back on his men. What was he about to tell Casmir that he didn’t want them to overhear?

“I was serious earlier when I said I could use a squad of those robots.” Rache waved at Zee.

Casmir bit back a sarcastic comment. If Rache was about to make a concession or an offer, he had better keep his mouth shut, lest he irritate the man.

“I have a couple of good engineers, but I could always use more. I’m sure, even if it’s not your area of expertise now, you could pick up ship systems easily enough.”

It slowly occurred to him where Rache was going.

“Are you offering me a job?” Casmir asked.

Rache spread his hand. “And answers to questions you may have. I don’t know everything, since I didn’t even know you existed a month ago, but I think I know more about you than you do.”

Casmir rocked back. The idea of a job working as a mercenary—a pirate and enemy of the Kingdom—was far more horrifying than it was appealing. But information. He craved that.

A couple of months ago, he would have said he’d long ago come to terms with not knowing who his real parents were or how he had come to be in foster care, and he would have meant it, but now? Now that someone wanted to kill him, either for who he was or something he might do the in future? Now he wanted to know. He ached to know. And it sounded like Rache could tell him.

But to say yes to him was to say goodbye to his job, his friends, his adoptive parents, and his life back home. If he sided with a criminal, an enemy to the king, he would never be able to walk freely on Odin again. And he would be choosing to act against a king he didn’t even know beyond the sound bites that went out to the media. The problem was that, as far as he believed, Jager wasn’t an ass. His government was stable, people had freedom to come and go as they wished. Only his stance on genetic engineering was restrictive to someone who loved science, but it wasn’t as if Jager had put those policies in place. They had existed for centuries, the Kingdom’s answer to some of the crazy and dangerous things that had happened elsewhere in the Twelve Systems.

“Dabrowski,” Rache said, then softened his voice and switched to, “Casmir. I know it’s not a simple decision to make, but if you’re considering it, I need to know soon.” He gazed at the door. “And I need to know if any booby traps are going to go off when I walk into that cargo hold.”

Casmir realized the offer might be in earnest, but it was prompted by concern. Did Rache believe he had something up his sleeve? More than he truly did? Casmir felt honored to be considered such a clever and dangerous adversary, even if it seemed wholly unwarranted. Maybe Rache was basing his assumptions on himself, believing he would have put together a booby trap. Unfortunately, Casmir hadn’t had time to do more than gather his robots.

“And if I decline the job offer?” Casmir asked.

“You’re not even going to ask about salary and benefits?” Rache asked dryly.

“Do mercenaries get benefits? Paid vacation? A retirement plan?”

“Of course. We’re not heathens. Though few survive long enough to retire.”

“That shouldn’t be part of your recruitment pitch.”

“I’m an honest man.”

“Are you?” Casmir squinted at him, wishing he could see Rache’s face. All he had was his memory of what Rache looked like under the hood. He still didn’t know why his genetic twin bothered to wear it. As far as Casmir knew, he—they—didn’t look like anyone. “What were you going to do with the bioweapon?”

“Exactly what I did to it. Blow it up with the refinery. Admittedly, my ship wasn’t supposed to be attached to the refinery when that happened.” His tone grew a touch frosty.

“You paid fifty thousand crowns so you could blow it up and not get any use of it? You couldn’t know at the time that Captain Lopez would return that money.” Casmir realized he had only her word that she had done that. “She did, didn’t she?”

“Yes, and your bounty also. Look, I’m sure you believe I’m a heinous villain, but I have my reasons for acting against Jager. God knows someone has to keep his schemes for retaking the Twelve Systems from finding root. I’m not…” Rache brought his open hand to his face and closed his fist. Tightly. “I wouldn’t want to see a horrific weapon like that used on civilians. Kingdom or not. I have a hard time forgiving ignorance in people who ignore what’s going on beyond the neighborhood they live in, but I wouldn’t want them to die as pawns in some war.”

Casmir hated to admit that he’d barely paid attention to what happened off campus and out of his narrow field of passion and expertise. He still didn’t know much about what was going on in the systems beyond their gate, what truths were and weren’t being conveyed by the media.

“You know he’s using your crushers, right?” Rache asked.

Casmir gripped the wall. “What? Jager is?”

“In other systems, yes. I was offered a job by Stribog Station in System Augeas. To get rid of them and some Kingdom infiltrators.”

Casmir stared at him. Was he telling the truth? That Jager was using the crushers against people in other systems?

“I didn’t know, no.” Casmir decided he would search the news for himself rather than taking Rache’s word for it.

But what if Rache was telling the truth? He supposed, deep down, he’d always known it was a possibility that the military would use them for offense and not just defense, but he’d been told… He closed his eyes. Maybe he’d been naive to believe anything he’d been told.

“So you bought the bioweapon to get rid of it?” Casmir asked, turning the conversation back to that, not wanting to deal with his own mistakes, not until he’d researched Rache’s claims and knew for certain that self-flagellation was in order.

“I bought it to get rid of it,” Rache said. “Yes. And I put the bounty on your head so someone would bring you to my ship and get you away from whoever is trying to kill you.”

Was it true? Was any of this true?

Casmir would like to believe that Rache wasn’t pure evil, but he couldn’t help but feel Rache was playing him, trying to win him over just as he might try to win someone else over. Because he thought Casmir had set some booby trap that might endanger his men.

“I don’t suppose you know that information. Who’s trying to kill me.”

“Not that, no. What—” Rache lifted a finger and paused.

Receiving some communication from his ship? The thought reminded Casmir that Ishii and his colleagues were fighting Rache’s big warship right now. As soon as the outcome of that battle was determined, Rache would be done chatting and would force the issue. One way or another.

Rache lowered his hand. “I need you to make a decision. Whether you’re with me or against me. I can forgive the refinery—you were a prisoner doing your best to escape, and I would’ve done the same thing. But if you try to get me killed again, we’re done.”

Casmir closed his eyes. Logically, he knew it would be smart to play along with Rache, to save his ass today, even if he meant to escape at the first chance, but his sense of honor wouldn’t let him.

“I cannot forgive you,” he said slowly, his eyes focused on the wall past Rache’s shoulder, “for knowingly screwing over my best friend by exposing her to that radiation. And for doing it to all of them.” Casmir flung a hand toward the armored men waiting patiently—brainlessly—for their boss to finish. “You want to know what the end result is? Go up to the bridge and look at the people who died because they wanted to take this gate home. I’m sorry that King Jager did something to piss you off, and that maybe it ruined your life, but that doesn’t give you the right to throw other people’s lives away.”

Casmir lifted his chin and made himself look into Rache’s eyes—or where they would be if he could see them. He wished he could tear the mask off and force Rache to look back at him. But maybe this was better. Maybe it would be too eerie to have his own eyes looking back at him.

Several long seconds passed. Rache was still holding that rifle, and Casmir still didn’t have his helmet up. If the man wanted to shoot him… he was fast enough to do it before Casmir could don the protection.

Rache grabbed Casmir by the front of the suit and pushed him against the wall opposite the door. He waved for his men to come over.

“Check the cargo hold. Make sure there aren’t any booby traps and that the gate is in there.” Rache tilted his helmet. “Lieutenant, you have the bridge secured yet? Report.”

“Working on it, sir. Everything is locked down with passcodes. Dao Hu is trying to hack his way in.”

“Understood. I’ll be up shortly with someone who will tell you the passcodes.” Rache stared at Casmir, who couldn’t do much while he was pinned to the wall. He didn’t even have his borrowed stunner anymore, not that it would have done any good against the fully armored Rache.

Casmir watched helplessly as the mercenaries stalked into the cargo hold. His chip was still logged in to the robots’ network. Should he order them to attack? What would he be starting if he did? Or what would he be ending?

Rache was staring at him, not his men. Contemplating killing him? Or torturing him for the passcode to the ship’s navigation computer?

“Uh, sir?” came an uncertain query from the cargo hold.

“What?” Rache grabbed Casmir’s arm, his grip painful even through the protective layers of the galaxy suit, and pushed him into the cargo hold.

As they walked in, the door slid shut behind them, and the lights went out.

16

Yas woke groggy and confused to the sound of voices.

“…can’t just stay in here and die.”

“Breaking out of here isn’t going to keep that from happening.”

“At least we’d die on our feet.”

“No, you’d die collapsed in a corridor, marinating in your own piss.”

“I’m not going to piss myself as I die.”

“You sure? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the energy to pull my dick out of my pants right now.”

“If you don’t have your suit’s piss sucker hooked up, that’s your own fault.”

“They took our armor off, you idiot.”

“Oh, right. Shit. Where is it?”

Yas blinked slowly, gradually identifying the speakers as Corporals Gonzales and Chains. How fortunate that he was going to die in the company of such cultured and erudite individuals.

He touched his chest and found that he was indeed in nothing more than the wrinkled long-sleeved shirt and underwear he’d worn under his borrowed combat armor. The thin material lacked temperature-regulating capabilities, and the hard deck was cool under his back. He vaguely remembered people who hadn’t identified themselves promising treatment and then, as he lost consciousness, dragging him onto a hover gurney. And into this unremarkable room. Better than being shoved out an airlock, he supposed.

“Doc.” Corporal Chains shook his shoulder.

Yas groaned.

“If we can get out of here, can you fix us up? I feel like shit. I don’t wanna die like this. Why couldn’t Rache have taken us into battle somewhere if we had to die? This is godawful.”

Yas tried to focus on the speaker and what he was saying, but his brain wasn’t working at optimum.

“Doc?” Another shake.

“Sorry,” Yas rasped. “If I could do anything, I would have. I’m sick too. Trust me. I—”

A soft hiss sounded, and the door opened. Chains lurched to his feet and whirled toward it.

“Back up,” a woman said—Kim Sato. She still wore her galaxy suit, but without a helmet this time, and a dark braid of hair hung over her shoulder.

She stepped in, a rifle pointed at Chains’s chest. Another man, the one who’d helped the female doctor knock them out, eased in beside her, a rifle also in hand. He didn’t look like he knew how to use it. She did. Maybe she was simply better at faking it—Yas couldn’t imagine that a bacteriologist spent a lot of time at the shooting range.

“I’m in need of lab rats,” Kim said, “and you five are all I’ve got. Besides myself and my colleagues.”

“You got another cure?” Chains growled. “Your people knocked us out last time. That one did.” He thrust an accusing finger at her companion. He crouched, as if he might spring out the door.

Kim’s eyes narrowed as her finger tightened on the trigger. Chains wasn’t wearing any armor, and at that range, it wouldn’t take an expert in marksmanship to hit him in the chest.

“I told them to,” Kim said. “You killed Kingdom marines the last time you visited this ship, so we had to get you out of your armor and locked up. But here’s the deal: Rache said he’d get me some decent coffee if I managed to save your lives, so I’m extremely motivated.”

Her buddy glanced at her in surprise.

Yas thought it sounded like a joke, but it was hard to tell. She was deadpan.

“I’ve created a strain of bacteria that can eat the pseudo radiation swimming through your bloodstream right now. You need to get rid of it before your body can heal. Dr. Sikou is working on that part of the equation upstairs in the cryonics lab. This is Step One.”

Yas pushed himself into a sitting position. “You honestly found an answer?”

He would have been inclined to trust her without question, but he shared Chains’s feeling of betrayal from their interaction with the other doctors.

Kim nodded. “A way to slow down and maybe completely counteract the effects of the attack, yes.”

“Attack?”

“Defensive measures may be the more accurate term. I’m not sure yet. Our engineers are going to have to build a special meter to even be able to see and measure this new type of radiation. If any archaeologists truly want to study that gate, they’re going to have to do that first. Or find scientists who are the descendants of some centuries-old humans who were never inoculated against the Great Plague.”

“Er, I think I missed something.” Yas looked past Chains and Gonzalez to where Jess lay curled on her side, one of her legs twitching. She’d vomited while Yas had been out, and his fingers twitched in sympathy. The assassin, Chaplain, was behind her and either sleeping or unconscious. Hopefully not dead.

“I usually do,” Gonzalez muttered, sitting against the wall and looking less inclined than Chains to jump up and cause trouble.

Yas frowned at Jess. “Will you check her?” he asked Kim. “Or let me do it? Vomiting hasn’t typically been a symptom, has it?”

Kim shook her head. “Of typical acute radiation sickness, yes, but I haven’t observed it so far with this.”

Yas looked around, but he’d been too ill to worry about taking his medical kit off the shuttle, so he had nothing, not even a diagnostic scanner.

Chains shifted, maybe thinking of attacking again.

Kim jerked her rifle. “Go stand over there,” she told him. “If you try anything, I will shoot you. Rache didn’t stipulate that you all had to survive for me to get my coffee. He’d probably be happy even if all he got back was his doctor and engineer.”

“What, combat specialists are disposable?” Chains glowered, but he backed away, moving past Yas and folding his arms over his chest as he leaned against a wall in the corner of the room.

“Combat specialists who kill Kingdom marines are,” Kim said coolly.

He curled his lip but didn’t object further.

“There’s coffee in the mess hall two levels up,” the man with her murmured.

“Coffee or coffee bulbs?” Kim tilted her head for him to go check on Jess. “They are not synonymous.”

“Uh, coffee in little boxes that you can heat up.”

“That’s primitive. I can’t believe people willingly live in space.”

Jess groaned, and Yas willed them to stop the banter and help her. But the man also didn’t have a medical kit with him. Was he even a doctor?

“Dr. Peshlakai.” Kim slipped her hand into her pocket while keeping an eye on Chains. “I’ve already injected myself—about a half hour ago—so you would be lab rat Number Two. If you’re willing.” She withdrew a jet injector and five vials.

“That’s the new bacteria you made?” Yas held out his open hands, not trusting his legs to hold him if he attempted to stand.

“Yes. Inject yourself and any of your people who are willing. I think it’s the only way you’ll survive. We all got exposed to a lot more of the pseudo radiation down at the wreck site than the crew did here when the archaeology team brought back a piece of the gate. And none of them made it, except for those who had some warning and quarantined themselves before the gate piece arrived.”

“Everyone on the ship should have done that.”

“I agree.” Kim walked over and laid the injector and vials on Yas’s palm while continuing to keep the rifle pointed at Chains.

Yas held up a hand toward Chains, just in case he still had notions of escape in mind. They could escape after they were better.

“When will the Kingdom ships be here?” Gonzalez asked.

Kim looked at him, her brow creasing.

“Someone must be on the way by now,” he said. “It’s been, what, three days since we kidnapped you?”

“Maybe so,” Kim said, “but there’s a lot of craziness happening at the gate. Rache and all those warships headed that way.”

“Still, your Fleet isn’t going to forget about a ship full of scientists in trouble for long.” Gonzales exchanged a long look with Chains, who nodded slightly.

“The Fleet is busy right now.” Kim backed to the doorway, where she could easily keep both of them in sight. “You should rest your bodies. It’ll take time for the bacteria to multiply, and that’s only Step One, as I said. Dr. Sikou is working on a way to reverse the internal damage.”

“Cryonics treatment should work,” Yas said. “I know the anti-aging spas use something based off that technology. A lot of their stuff is hokum, but that obviously works to revive frozen corpses and turn back time for them. We’re not even frozen, so it should be easier.” Yas smiled, feeling encouraged. He hadn’t considered cryonics treatment, but it made sense now that she’d brought it up, especially if her bacteria scoured any lingering radiation out of the body.

“So I’m hoping,” Kim said.

Jess moaned again, her eyes squeezed tightly closed.

The healer in Yas wanted to go over and comfort her—to do something for her. If only he had the strength.

“Her pulse is fast,” the man said, “dilated pupils, tremor. These aren’t symptoms of the radiation.”

Yas almost slapped himself in the forehead as realization struck. “Damn it.”

The doctor looked toward him.

“I don’t suppose you have any trylochanix?” Yas asked. “I suspect she has an addiction, and I want to help her switch to something else, but this isn’t the best time for her to have to deal with withdrawal symptoms. On top of everything else.”

“You give your patients trylochanix?” the man asked, frowning deeply, his eyes full of judgment.

Yas clenched his jaw. “Their previous doctor did, or she got it herself. I don’t know. I didn’t sign up for this damn job. I was coerced by threat of death.”

“Rache has an interesting method of recruiting people,” Kim told her colleague.

“Not everybody can be won over by coffee,” Yas said. “Will you find her something? Please?”

The male doctor shook his head, but Kim said, “I’ll see what’s in the sickbay cabinets.”

“Thank you,” Yas said.

Jess could wean herself off the drug later, when she wasn’t dealing with another health crisis.

They backed out of the room, and a thunk sounded as a heavy lock was thrown.

Yas injected himself, then inoculated Chains, Gonzalez, and Chaplain without asking if they agreed to being lab rats. If the alternative was death, what did it matter?

Lastly, he pulled himself to Jess’s side on his hands and knees. “I’m sorry, Chief.” He rested a hand on her shoulder, then touched her cheek, where sweat glistened on her dark skin. “I’m sure you’re miserable.”

“You’re not miserable?” Gonzalez asked.

“Probably not as miserable as Jess—Chief Khonsari.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Gonzalez muttered.

Yas used the last vial on Jess, hoping the bacteria wouldn’t make her feel any worse as they worked.

She groaned but didn’t open her eyes or otherwise respond. Yas leaned against the wall, hoping Kim would be able to find some of the medication. And wondering if he would be able to talk Jess into weaning herself off it after this.

If they survived and if they didn’t all end up in a Fleet prison somewhere. Yas assumed that would be his fate, the same as the other mercenaries, if the military showed up. His fate might even be worse. What if he was extradited back to Tiamat Station, where the authorities were still in the mood to kill him rather than give him a fair trial?

Something slammed into Rache, knocking him away from Casmir.

In the darkness that had fallen over the cargo hold, Casmir had no idea what had happened, but he welcomed his chance to escape and scrambled farther away from Rache. Weapons fired. What the hell? He hadn’t ordered the robots to attack yet.

A crimson bolt struck the wall inches above his head. Casmir dove for the hulking segments of the gate, for their protective cover. He tapped his chest controls, and his helmet unfurled and clicked into place. It gave him a semblance of night vision, and he glimpsed Rache’s armored men whirling and trying to find a target. A dark figure pushed away from Rache, sprang to the top of one of the gate pieces, and ran out of sight, chased by energy bolts. A cloak flapped behind him, one bolt scouring a hole through it.

Casmir shook his head. He didn’t understand what he was doing here, but unless some other knight had sneaked aboard, it had to be Asger. And all of Rache’s men gave chase.

Attack! Casmir silently ordered the robots through his interface with their network. The men in black combat armor, he added, hoping they could differentiate between Rache’s mercenaries and him and Asger.

He scooted back into a narrow aisle between long gate pieces stacked two high and crouched down as the robots streamed out, firing at the armored men. A cacophony of noise rang from the walls, and Casmir winced at the assault on his ears. But better than an assault on his body.

Zee stood behind him, ready to defend him. Even though it felt cowardly, Casmir kept himself behind cover. There was nothing he could do against those men. He had to let his suborned robots fight his battle for him. Which was easier than he could have hoped—they had been programmed to defend the ship, and they did, attacking the mercenaries with more coordination than Casmir could have managed if he’d been manipulating them one by one.

The fight raged out in the open, between the stacks of gate pieces and the door. The mercenaries, accustomed to their armor protecting them, weren’t quick to duck for cover. Casmir had no idea where Asger had gone. He also had no idea where Rache had gone, and that worried him. Would his twin see this as a betrayal, the very booby trap he’d suspected, and take the opportunity to kill Casmir?

The robots crashed into the men, a tide of machinery slamming to the deck. Unfortunately, the mercenaries crashed back. Casmir winced as one of his new allies was hurled against a wall so hard that one of its limbs flew off.

Nearby, a crunch sounded, and someone screamed.

“It’s a knight!” a man shouted. “He’s got a halberd.”

“Comms only,” someone barked, which Casmir took to be an order not to shout anything else, to communicate quietly over their helmet speakers.

The doors opened, and the mercenaries Rache had sent to the bridge flooded in, joining their comrades.

Casmir cursed under his breath. Even with Asger helping, the odds were against their side.

Something clattered across the deck and skidded toward him. The stunner. He almost laughed. The mercenary who’d snatched it from his tool satchel must not have had a secure place to put it, and it had fallen out of some pocket or pouch in the fight.

Casmir grabbed it. Unfortunately, there was still nobody he could use it effectively on.

He backed farther down the aisle between lengths of gate pieces stacked atop each other and pulled up a schematic for the ship. Was there anything built into the hold that he could use? The lights were still off—he assumed Asger had done that to create confusion and surprise—but with his helmet on, he had night vision, and it was clear the mercenaries did too. Maybe he could key into the mainframe from here and do something that would make more of a difference. Like stopping the ship’s spin? Would suddenly having to fight in zero gravity convey an advantage to his side? No, it would change the situation but affect both sides equally.

There was an environmental-controls access panel in the back of the room. Not sure yet how he would use it, Casmir turned, slipped past Zee, and jogged toward it. Once again, he hoped inspiration would come along the way.

As the access panel came into view, a thunderous scrape sounded above Casmir and to the right. He skittered to the left, his shoulder bumping against the stacked gate pieces. The top gate piece on the right shifted off the pile and toward him.

He squawked and sprinted for the end of the aisle. That thing had to weigh tons. It would crush him.

It fell before he reached the end, and he flattened himself against the other stack, praying the aisle was wider than it looked.

It wasn’t, and the piece blocked out the light as it fell, but it halted an inch from smashing onto his helmet. Zee had dropped into a low squat, his arms overhead, holding up the gate.

“Escape, Casmir Dabrowski,” Zee ordered.

Casmir gave him a thumbs-up and sprinted out of the shadow of the massive slab. He dove as he exited the aisle, certain that had been a trap meant to kill him or drive him from hiding—or simply occupy Zee.

He was right. Rache was waiting.

He swung a rifle butt at Casmir’s head, but he hadn’t anticipated the dive. Casmir flew under the swing. There wasn’t room to roll or stop himself in a competent manner. He slammed into the back wall of the cargo hold. His suit and helmet insulated him somewhat, but it still took him a split second before he could think to jump to his feet and get out of the way. A split second too long.

Rache gripped him from behind, grabbed the top of his helmet, and supposedly impervious Glasnax crunched in Casmir’s ears. He threw an elbow backward, wishing he’d spent more time sparring with Kim. Even if he had connected—he didn’t—it wouldn’t have mattered, not with his assailant in armor.

Rache broke his helmet and ripped it back, exposing Casmir’s face and neck. Terror coursed through his veins as Rache spun him around, slamming his back against the wall. He’d missed his opportunity, said he wouldn’t work with Rache, and now Rache—his twin brother—was going to kill him.

Rache ripped the stunner from Casmir’s grip and pressed the cool muzzle of a DEW-Tek pistol against his temple. Casmir begged his brain to stay calm, as he doubted Rache would bother keeping him alive again if he had a seizure in his arms. At least he hadn’t strobed some light in Casmir’s eyes. No, he wanted something.

“What’s the passcode for navigation?” Rache demanded, the cacophony of the battle raging on the other side of the cargo hold almost drowning out his words.

Was Asger still in the fray? Dare Casmir hope the knight could somehow help his robots win the day? Was there any point in delaying giving in? Would Rache kill him as soon as he did give in?

Casmir licked his lips, tasting the sweat on them. “It’s long. Numbers, letters, symbols. Would you like to get out a piece of paper and a pen?”

“Just say it, you ass. I’ve got a—”

Rache broke off, jammed the stunner into his armor’s utility belt, and spun around as a shadow dove toward him. Asger.

The knight’s halberd swung at Rache’s head, but Rache sprang to the side. The ends of the gate pieces hemmed him in, but he contorted and leaped with uncanny agility, avoiding the weapon and Asger.

Casmir scurried sideways along the wall to get out of their way. Rache glanced at him, keeping tabs on him no doubt, but was forced to deal with this new threat. Asger was almost a foot taller and bigger of arm and broader of shoulder, but whatever implants Rache had, they let him move faster than any human being should.

He was a match for Asger, not simply avoiding him and dodging the swipes and stabs from the deadly pertundo, but rushing in and driving Asger backward as he fired a stream of bolts at Asger’s chest plate. The energy attacks bounced off, but Rache came in behind them, lunging and grappling with the knight.

The stunner slipped from his utility belt and clattered to the deck. Neither man noticed. Asger heaved his foe away, but Rache sprang back in, launching a side kick that caught Asger in the hip.

The force spun the knight, and Rache grabbed him from behind, smashing him into the wall, much as he’d done Casmir.

Where was Zee? If Casmir could get both of his allies fighting Rache…

That gate piece was still in the air, still being kept from crashing down. Casmir scooted back to peer down the aisle, ready to order Zee to release it and come help.

Zee was indeed still holding it aloft, now with one hand, but two mercenaries faced him. They fired rifles at his torso. Most of the energy bolts were deflected, but Zee’s mercurial facade had numerous dents in it. He was too busy holding up the gate to focus on repairing himself. More than that, he was blocking those mercenaries from getting through and attacking Casmir. Was that why he was standing there like a boulder?

“Zee,” Casmir called softly, hoping his crusher would hear but the mercenaries wouldn’t. “Scoot back here. If you drop it, and you’re fast enough, they’ll be flattened.”

Rache punched Asger with the power of a mechanical battering ram, and Asger flew through the air right in front of Casmir. Asger’s hand banged against one of the gate ends, and his halberd clattered to the deck.

Casmir sucked in his belly and pressed his back to the wall as Rache blurred past, throwing himself after his foe. Too late, he wished he’d stuck out his foot to impede Rache, but with the power and momentum those two were employing in their battle, his leg might have been ripped off.

Asger. Casmir risked sending a chip-to-chip message, hoping it wouldn’t distract his ally at a crucial moment. Back him up to the end of the aisle here. Right in front of me. Zee will help.

Before Asger could reply or react, Zee sprang out of the aisle.

He no longer held up the gate piece, and it clattered down hard enough to make the deck shake. The shouts of men trapped under it echoed through the chamber. Casmir hoped they were still alive, protected by their armor, but also that they were out of the fight. He didn’t ever want to be responsible for people’s deaths, and he’d already given Rache enough reasons to detest him.

When Rache glanced back at the dropped gate piece and the appearance of Zee, Asger had the opportunity to spring to his feet. He snatched up his halberd and swung it at the back of Rache’s head.

Either through instinct or a helmet camera, Rache saw the blow coming and ducked—almost.

Zee lunged toward him and grabbed his arms, arresting his movement. The halberd sliced through the top of Rache’s helmet, lightning flaring as it sheared off a piece.

Casmir sucked in a scared breath. From his position, he couldn’t tell how much had been sheared off—and if part of Rache’s skull had gone along with it.

Zee, still gripping Rache by the arms, lifted him several inches off the deck, as if to hold him so Asger could strike again.

Rache coiled his legs into a tight ball, then shifted in Zee’s grip and pounded his heels into his captor’s chest. Even the strong crusher couldn’t keep from reacting to the force. Zee stumbled back, one hand slipping from Rache’s arm.

Asger readied his halberd for another swing and rushed in. Somehow, Rache twisted in the air while his other arm was still stuck in Zee’s grip, and he kicked backward, catching Asger in the chest. Asger staggered back, but he set his jaw with determination and kept his footing. He lowered his weapon to use it like a lance, to ram it through Rache’s spine.

Casmir, his back to the wall as this unfolded in front of him, realized that as good as Rache was, he wasn’t going to come out on top, not unless more of his men figured out where he was and got back to help him. Judging by the buzz of fire and the battle shouts from the other side of the hold, they were still busy with the robots.

Rache twisted in the air again, almost evading Asger’s attempt to ram the long point of his halberd straight through him. The weapon clipped the side of Rache’s armor, and white lightning branched from its tip, engulfing him.

Rache screamed in pain, startling Casmir. Then he realized why. His helmet had been breached, so he wasn’t fully protected any longer.

That ought to mean…

Casmir lunged away from the wall, grabbed the stunner off the deck, and fired at Rache’s head. He didn’t have the right angle to shoot into the hole in the helmet, but the nimbus must have been enough to catch him. Rache went limp in Zee’s grip.

Asger had stepped back to ready himself for another attack, and he roared in glee and lowered the tip of his halberd for another stab.

“Wait!” Casmir lunged forward, raising his hands.

Thank his imperturbable ancestors, Asger paused.

“What?” he demanded.

“Drop him, please, Zee.” Casmir stepped between Asger and Rache, not trusting Asger’s battle fury to not get the best of him—or simply his desire to see the infamous pirate dead at his feet. “He’s stunned,” Casmir added for Asger’s sake.

Zee released Rache, and he flopped lifelessly to the deck, his armor clunking down hard. Casmir peered through his faceplate to make sure he truly was stunned, but his mask was still on, hiding his eyes. Casmir had to trust that Rache wouldn’t be lying on the deck in front of enemies if he was conscious.

“Sounds like an excellent time to finish him off,” Asger said.

“Isn’t there some knight-chivalry thing about not beating up on helpless opponents?” Casmir asked.

“Chivalry means I open doors for ladies. It doesn’t mean I let heinous enemies of the crown survive to harass—to slay—our people another day.” Asger loomed above Casmir, his grip tight on the shaft of his halberd. Would he simply pick up Casmir and set him aside so he could finish off their enemy?

Casmir waved Zee forward. “I need you two to help the robots with the rest of the mercenaries. I’m not convinced our side is winning. I’ll keep an eye on Rache.” Casmir waved the stunner.

“Or,” Asger said, “we could kill him now and then go defeat the mercenaries, who will be like headless chickens with their leader dead.”

“You’re not killing him.” Casmir, realizing he had no right to give orders to a knight, groped for a way to convince him. “I have a plan. Please, Asger. I’ll explain it as soon as we’re sure we have the ship secured. I want the mercs knocked out and stripped out of their armor.” He looked at Zee.

The crusher nodded, sprang atop the nearest stack of gate pieces, and strode toward the front of the hold.

Asger scowled, but all he said was, “Don’t take your eyes off him, and don’t hesitate to shoot him again.”

“I won’t. Thank you.” As Asger strode away, Casmir added, “And thank you for disobeying my wishes and staying behind to help.”

Asger waved his halberd but didn’t look back.

Casmir looked down at the brother he’d never known about, dozens of thoughts and feelings tangling up in his brain. The idea of killing Rache, or letting one of his allies kill him, repulsed him. As he’d just admitted, he didn’t want anybody to be killed because of him, but the thought of ending someone who had the exact same DNA as he did was even more unappealing.

The problem was that Rache would keep coming after Casmir as long as he had the gate, the gate that Rache had been willing to sacrifice so many people to get. To keep Jager from getting it, he said. Casmir had no idea if that was the truth. He had no trouble believing that Rache hated Jager, but what of his own personal ambitions? Maybe he dreamed of having power over and controlling more than a mercenary ship, and he saw the gate as a way to do that.

The obvious solution was to hand the gate over to Captain Ishii and the Kingdom military officers, ideally in a way that Rache would believe he’d had no choice. That ought to keep him from fantasizing about avenging himself on Casmir. Which he might after this. After having Casmir get the best of him—or at least escape his clutches—two times.

Though Casmir had to wonder if his ability to execute those escapes represented a similar ambivalence from Rache. After all, Rache had admitted he’d posted that bounty and had Casmir brought to him out of curiosity. Maybe deep down, he didn’t want to kill Casmir either.

Unfortunately, depending on what Casmir did next, that might change. And Casmir regretted that.

He’d been raised as an only child, and he’d occasionally wondered what it would be like to have siblings. He hadn’t imagined a twin, but more an older brother who might have been young enough to chum around with but old enough and big enough to protect him from bullies at school. Someone who would have been a friend, even if Casmir was a big doofus and they had nothing in common, because that was what blood meant, wasn’t it? An automatic tie. His parents were wonderful, but he’d often felt alone as a boy and longed for more ties with others of his age.

“What did you long for as a child, I wonder?” Casmir murmured. “And what did you have? More than I did? Less?” It was hard to imagine someone with Rache’s bitterness having grown up in a normal loving family. Something had to have shaped him into a killer.

Casmir crouched beside him, careful to keep his stunner ready, and fumbled for access to remove the rest of Rache’s helmet and check to see if there had been a head injury. The helmet broke in two, the Glasnax having lost its semi-fluid folding ability. Casmir pushed the pieces to the sides. He was tempted to take off Rache’s mask so he could tell when he woke up and his eyes were open, but then he would have to explain to Asger why there were two identical faces looking at him.

Unless Asger already knew? He knew something.

And so did Rache. If he’d had the medical resources, Casmir would have been tempted to try Ishii’s truth-telling drugs on him. Though it was possible Rache had the same food and drug allergies Casmir had. Maybe. That seemed a deficiency of the immune system, something that might have been fixed when Rache was gene-cleaned as a baby, or something his subsequent genetic and cybernetic tinkering might have addressed.

A wrenching sound came from the front of the cargo hold, and Casmir jumped. It had grown silent save for that noise.

“Asger?” Casmir checked the network to get a status report on the robots. Only three of his machine allies remained upright and intact. The others were damaged, many missing limbs, and some were so broken that they no longer registered on the network.

“I’m prying mercenaries out of their armor,” Asger called back. “While your crusher stomps on them to keep them from moving. For the record, this isn’t the approved use of a knight’s mighty pertundo.”

“No? Perhaps if you sent me the schematics that explain how exactly that blade pierces combat armor, I could come up with a more appropriate tool for the job.”

“You’d have to talk to Weaponssmith Ariyoshi in the castle. He’s the keeper of that secret.”

“If you can get me into the castle, I’ll certainly accept the invitation.”

Another wrenching sound was his only response. Too bad. A few months ago, Casmir had never dreamed of going to the castle or cared much about talking to the king or anyone in government, but now that he had this gate, he felt obligated to make sure it didn’t fall into dubious hands. He found he wanted to know more about what the king and the Senate were up to. He feared he might regret it if he handed the gate over to the military without knowing more about why they wanted it.

He already regretted helping to invent the crushers. He thought again of Rache’s words about them being used on people in another system and shook his head.

“I need time to think. And to research that incident.” Casmir rose to his feet, a plan percolating through his mind. It was one that would most surely get him into trouble—more trouble—but maybe he could make things turn out for the best in the end. Maybe he could even leverage the gate to force government leaders to work harder to get along with each other. “Zee, will you come back here, please? I need a hand.”

Casmir searched the schematics he still had up for the ship and located two emergency escape pods that could be launched. They were more akin to lifeboats than shuttles and wouldn’t get the occupants very far. But Casmir needed Rache’s shuttle for his plan. He would leave it somewhere the mercenaries could find it later and hope, perhaps vainly, that Rache wouldn’t hold a grudge for all of this.

Zee strode into view, and Casmir pointed at Rache. “Lift him, please. He and all of his men are going into the escape pods.”

Wordlessly, Zee hoisted Rache over his head. Casmir followed with the stunner in case he woke up. Sometime very soon, he needed to figure out the last part of his plan, how he was going to hide this ship without anyone seeing where. That was going to be hard with Asger standing at his side, Asger who was loyal to the king and could tell Jager everything he knew.

17

Kim didn’t want to give in to sleep, but she finally collapsed on a cot in the lab, unable to continue to function. She had lost all track of time, but she’d barely slept—mostly by dozing off while standing up—since Rache had kidnapped her. No, since she’d volunteered to leave the Stellar Dragon. Three days ago? No wonder she was exhausted.

Despite that, she dozed fitfully, waking often with a start and glancing at the computers she’d left running, their displays illuminating the dim room. They were monitoring the multiplication of her bacteria. She kept dreaming that they ran out of food and died or that someone opened an airlock and all her work was blown through the corridors of the ship and out into space.

More than once, she dropped her hand to the deck next to the cot, making sure the rifle was still there. She and Angelico had left the mercenaries locked in that room, but something kept niggling at her weary subconscious. A certainty that they still represented a threat. She’d given them the bacteria, and they might start to feel better soon, if only nominally better until the other treatments were implemented. But good enough that they might be able to conjure up a plan, a way to escape. And she doubted they could accomplish that without hurting people as they fled. They certainly hadn’t managed to kidnap her without doing that.

But no, they were locked in that room, and she’d made sure they didn’t have any weapons or keys or—

Her eyes flew open as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on her face. They didn’t need keys. She remembered Rache’s muscled chest and forearms. Enhanced muscles. Idiot, she’d forgotten. Half of those mercenaries had some cybernetic enhancements or another. That meant—

A faint rustling sounded in the corridor outside. Kim lay on her back on the cot, but she eased off it and grabbed her rifle.

She slipped into the nearest corner where she wasn’t visible from the threshold and further hid behind lab coats hanging on hooks. Soft seconds passed in the dim room, the only light a green digital counter on the computer display, updating the amount of bacteria in the dishes.

Maybe she hadn’t heard anything. Or maybe one of the doctors was up and working.

Someone silently stepped into the doorway, the brighter light of the corridor sending a shadow across the deck. Kim didn’t think it was Angelico or Sikou. There shouldn’t have been anyone else out of quarantine—or that locked room.

She lifted the rifle, pressing the butt into the hollow of her shoulder. Most of her familiarity with firearms came from learning how to disarm someone carrying a prop version, but she’d taken enough of her brother’s kyudo classes to be practiced at hitting a target. She was confident that if she could do it with a bow, she could do it with a rifle.

Her brother’s voice floated through her mind, and she could see him out behind the dojo, sun shining on his short black hair as he taught, sharing one of his favorite quotations from an ancient Earth sensei. “When shooting, sometimes we will hit the target but miss the self.”

Another time, she would have happily pondered the philosophical connotations of the line, but now, she willed her mind to empty, to push away the homesickness that plucked at her soul.

The figure stepped into the room, large, broad, and muscled. And armed.

The mercenary must have roamed the ship until he’d found some weapons.

Kim’s finger tightened on the trigger, but she hesitated to fire, to use deadly force. She wished she’d found a stunner among the fallen weapons. She lowered her aim to the big man’s thigh.

He looked around, and she held her breath, waiting. He’d broken out of his room and armed himself, so she was inclined to mistrust him, but what if he’d come looking for medicine or just wanted to speak with her for some reason?

A few days ago, she would have shot first and asked questions later, but uncertainty turned her to a statue. This was one of Rache’s men, and that made him… she wasn’t sure. Still an enemy, but she’d implied she would try to help his people, not kill them. And he’d promised a favor if she succeeded.

But they’d killed Kingdom marines. If she sided with them, she sided by default against her government.

His gaze lingered on the cot. She was fairly certain this was Corporal Chains. He didn’t seem to see her. The men hadn’t found their armor, so he was relying only on his eyes. Eyes that didn’t have a night-vision enhancement, or he surely would have picked her out among the coats.

He must have decided the lab was empty because he walked across it to the counter. He reached toward the petri dishes. To steal one?

“Stop, and drop your weapon,” Kim demanded. She meant for the words to come out with calm authority but heard the alarm in them and winced.

He whirled toward her, his weapon rising instead of lowering. She fired at her target—his thigh—and dropped into a low crouch. He returned fire, a crimson bolt streaking into the wall above her head. Shards of paneling flew, raining down on her.

She fired again, not worrying about aiming for a nonlethal target this time, then lunged behind the cot.

He grunted—with pain? She couldn’t tell, but he swung his rifle toward her again.

The cot was flimsy and didn’t provide proper cover. She kicked it across the room at him, then fired again. This time, she saw her bolt catch him in the shoulder.

Instead of continuing to fire from the open, he sprinted out the door, limping slightly but still running fast. Too fast. She fired again, but her bolt only slammed into the jamb. He was already gone.

Kim lunged to her feet, leaped over the cot, and paused to check the dishes before pursuing him. Two were missing. She had more, but those had been farthest along and had grown the most of the bacteria she needed to inoculate the quarantined crew—and anyone else who came in contact with the ancient technology.

She growled and rushed for the doorway but made herself halt on the threshold, envisioning men waiting in the corridor, ready to shoot. But her quick glance revealed that it was empty. Thundering footsteps rang out in the distance. The corporal.

She ran after him. Unless Rache had shown back up with his shuttles, the mercenaries didn’t have anywhere to go. Or did they? There were shuttles in the bay here. She remembered from her stultifying perusal of the ship’s camera footage.

She ran in that direction and made it to a bank of lifts, not in time to see the mercenary run into one, but an indicator showed it descending to the lower decks. To the shuttle bay.

A few blood droplets spattered the deck in front of the doors. She’d hurt him. That might make him more likely to hurt her back.

Too bad. She was not going to let him steal half her work, work that the people here needed.

Kim gritted her teeth and slammed a button for another lift to come, then flung herself into it. It descended with tedious slowness, and she waited behind cover as the doors opened, again afraid the mercenaries would be lying in wait to stop pursuit.

More blood droplets dotted the deck, a trail of them, but nobody waited. She raced for the shuttle bay even as she wondered if she should let the man go. Let all of them go. If he hadn’t stolen half of her bacteria, she wouldn’t be chasing him. Why did the mercenaries even want the dishes? She’d already given them each a dose. It was possible they would need more, but they ought to multiply in their bodies without need of more shots.

But did they know that? She hadn’t told them.

When she reached the bay door, it was locked. She peered through a porthole in time to see one mercenary help another through an open hatch and into a shuttle. Dr. Peshlakai and Chief Khonsari, her arm slung around his shoulders, stumbled toward the compact vessel with the corporal trying to urge them along more quickly.

Kim stepped back, tempted to fire at the control pad by the door, but she slapped her palm to the reader, hoping to get lucky. Surprisingly, the door hissed open. Sikou must have added their team to the ship’s security database.

The corporal in the rear spun toward her, and she fired preemptively this time. Nobody had a stunner. These lunatics would kill her if she got in their way.

Her bolt slammed into his leg. Just as he returned fire, Yas knocked his arm aside.

“Get in the shuttle,” he ordered. “Fire it up.”

The mercenary hesitated, glancing from Yas to Kim.

“Do it, Corporal,” Jess whispered, her dark skin pale, though she looked better than she had.

Kim had brought her that medication. Had it been a mistake?

“You’re not leaving with my bacteria,” Kim said, noticing that Yas held the containers.

Had he been the one to send the mercenary for them? Or had the corporal simply thought they needed the bacteria?

“You don’t need more doses, and you’re not giving that man samples of my work,” Kim said.

Yas licked his lips. “He was going after the people who took the gate.”

“That means more of our people will have been exposed by now,” Jess said.

“Because he’s an asshole,” Kim said, frustration welling inside of her.

She didn’t want people to die when she had something that could save them, but damn it, they could come here if they wanted to be healed. Shouldn’t they have to turn themselves in to be treated? And to accept the consequences of the lives they’d chosen? They deserved to be locked in prison cells.

The corporal was watching Kim, his body a statue, his weapon pointed toward the deck at her feet, not at her chest. Abruptly, he shifted it, and she almost fired at him. But she wasn’t his target. He fired at a spot high on the wall above the door. The shuttle bay security camera. His aim was accurate, and the small dome on the wall melted.

Kim scowled. What was that supposed to change? Did they think she would let them go as long as there were no witnesses?

“I can see why you would think that,” Jess said slowly. “He’s not the most lovable man, but he helped me out, and he saved Dr. Peshlakai’s life.”

“Yeah, I heard about that winning bargain. We call that indentured servitude in the Kingdom.”

“It’s better than being dead. And asking for something in trade seems fair when you’re putting your life at risk and getting yourself marked a criminal in a habitat.”

Yas’s lips thinned, but he didn’t shake his head in disagreement.

“I won’t argue that he’s a good man or that he doesn’t have a chip the size of the Great Wall of Andovia on his shoulder, but we’re just soldiers.” Jess waved at the corporal and at herself. “Are you going to punish us for that? For following our captain’s orders?”

“A lot of evil has been done throughout history by soldiers who were just following orders,” Kim said.

“And what about scientists working for totalitarian regimes?”

“The Star Kingdom is not a totalitarian regime,” Kim snapped, annoyed that they were standing at gunpoint and having this conversation. Another time, she would have willingly debated the various political structures in the Twelve Systems, but she was exhausted and tired of this whole situation. “The king can’t pass any laws without majority approval from the Senate, and citizens of the Kingdom are free to come and go as they please, so long as they obey the bioengineering mandates. I don’t claim to know what’s going on in the rest of the systems right now, but I’m sure it’s not anything simple or propagated by one man. And for the record, I work for a private corporation with headquarters in three different systems. We make sure anyone who wants our work has access to it. It’s not even expensive, not like something out of Sayona Station or the Sun Asteroids Habitats.”

Jess slumped against Yas and sighed with weariness.

At first, Kim thought she was being theatrical, but she remembered Jess was dealing with even more than the radiation sickness, and she felt bad for bristling and spewing defensive words.

“We’re not bad people,” Jess whispered. “Sometimes, the universe just gets screwed up, and you end up losing everything. Everyone.”

Her eyes were so bleak and haunted. And Kim couldn’t muster the energy to argue further.

She lowered her rifle. “Just take it, and get out of here.”

Yas murmured something to the corporal, and he slung his rifle over his shoulder and took Jess, guiding her into the shuttle. Leaving Yas facing Kim, no weapons in his hands, only the stolen petri dishes.

It crossed her mind that she could probably wrestle him to the deck and take them, but a wave of weariness washed over her, and she only shook her head. She didn’t agree with anything Rache was doing, but Jess’s point that Rache’s soldiers were just following orders and didn’t deserve to die from this poison rang in her mind. Kim didn’t think she was wrong, but she didn’t think Jess was entirely wrong either. One probably had to get shit on a lot in life before ending up soldiering on some mercenary ship, and Jess likely wasn’t the only one for whom it had been a job of last resort.

“Thank you, Scholar Sato,” Yas said quietly.

She bowed and tried not to make the gesture grudging. Yas wasn’t who she was angry with.

Rache’s masked face floated through her mind, and she silently growled at it, willing it to go away. But her brain wasn’t in the mood to comply. She blamed her weariness. Sometime soon, she hoped to sleep for a full day and night. Or three.

The shuttle engines rumbled to life, but the hatch was still open, and Yas was still looking at her.

“You’re still here,” Kim observed.

“Yes.” Yas looked to the open hatch, then back to her. “I have no love for Rache, even though Jess is right. He saved my life, but as you pointed out, demanded five years in exchange for it. Five years of serving as a doctor to people who make a habit of slaying other people.”

“So don’t go back.”

“I am tempted.” He looked from the shuttle to her again, his gaze wistful. “But I did give my word, however desperate I was at that moment, and even though my life has fallen apart, I can’t bring myself to go back on it. When everything else is lost, honor may still remain, eh? Someone long dead said that, I believe.”

“Yes, Dr. Kensington Sage. But he was writing about how cultures of honor often develop in regions without central authority, which leads to increased brutality and homicide rates due to a tendency to answer insults and transgressions with violence. His quote is almost always used out of context.”

Yas chuckled. “I believe quotations are frequently uttered based on the needs of the speaker rather than the intent of the source. For myself… I believe I will do as Jess suggested.”

Kim had no idea what that was, but Yas nodded, as if he’d made a decision.

“Rache will probably never thank you for saving the lives of his men, but I will thank you. For them and for myself.”

“You won’t be in the clear from the bacteria alone.” She waved at the dishes. “You’ll have to take everyone who was exposed to a cryonics lab and get the cellular damage reversed. Otherwise, you’ll all have significantly reduced lifespans.”

“I understand. I will make sure Rache knows.” Yas lifted a hand in parting and climbed into the shuttle.

Kim shuffled back to her lab, wondering when her colleagues would figure out that the mercenaries had escaped. And wondering what she would say.

Casmir exhaled a sigh of relief when the two escape pods shot away from the cargo ship. He’d tranquilized Rache and his men before having the robots dump them inside, so they shouldn’t wake up for a couple of hours. He hoped that would be far too late for them to find him. The cargo ship had been underway for a while, but he’d changed the course again, and he would do so one more time once he knew Asger wasn’t paying attention.

For now, Casmir sat on the bridge with tools purloined from engineering, and he was repairing some of the least damaged robots while Zee stood guard over him. He expected Asger any moment and had a medical kit waiting nearby, his stomach twisting and knotting as he prepared to lie to a man who’d risked his life to help him.

More than that. Asger must have believed he was giving up his life when he’d chosen to stay, further exposing himself. It was only a matter of time before the effects of the gate touched him—and Casmir still wasn’t positive they wouldn’t touch him, that he would share Rache’s unprecedented immunity. He was sure Rache’s men didn’t, and, knowing he was eventually going to rendezvous with Kim in Skadi Moon’s orbit, he’d felt bad about booting the mercenaries from the ship. But if she found a cure, Rache could negotiate with her himself on his men’s behalf. He owed her, and he could damn well grovel, if that was what Kim wanted. And if Rache was willing to do so on his people’s behalf.

The door slid open, and Asger walked up to where Casmir sat cross-legged on the deck between the captain’s seat and the navigation station, disassembled robots all around him.

“Are you reconstructing your army?” Asger sank into the command chair with a weary groan. He was still wearing his dented and charred combat armor, but he’d removed the helmet, and his long hair hung limply about his shoulders. He let his head flop back against the seat.

“Just repairing a few of the less broken ones.”

Asger grunted. “You’ve talked to Ishii, right?”

“No, he hasn’t commed me.”

Actually, the comm light had been flashing when Casmir had first walked onto the bridge. It had been Ishii. And Casmir hadn’t answered or commed back. He hadn’t even looked at the message.

“Really? He messaged me personally earlier, asking for an update. I was busy fighting at the time. Now, he’s not answering. He and the other captains must still be busy dealing with Rache’s cursed warship. Hopefully, once Rache wakes up and comms the Fedallah to pick him up, it’ll break off. Or, even better, the warships could just defeat it. That would be nice. They’ve got the mercs outnumbered. Even if they were damaged fighting this astroshaman ship, they should be able to take down the Fedallah. Especially considering Rache wasn’t on the bridge for the battle.”

The fact that Asger could communicate so easily with Ishii was another reason Casmir had to relocate the ship without his knowledge. Easier said than done.

“Yes. And since Rache didn’t get the cargo—” Casmir waved in the direction of the hold, “—he won’t have a reason to keep fighting to reach the gate. With luck, he’ll give up for now and disappear back into the ether to lick his wounds.”

“I hope he has some wounds.” Asger rotated his shoulder, grimaced, and gripped it. “I also hope to never face him in battle again. He had to have had some knight training at some point. He knew exactly how to fight someone with a pertundo.”

“He does have that Kingdom accent.” Casmir smiled, though mostly, he added another piece to the puzzle that was Rache.

“Yes… Have we reached the point yet where you’re going to explain to me why you didn’t let me get rid of the Kingdom’s most hated enemy?”

Casmir had promised to explain, even though he hadn’t been sure then how he would, and he wasn’t sure now. “Not yet. First, it’s time for some medical treatment.”

He pushed himself to his feet and headed for the medical kit, willing his hand to be steady as he reached for the jet injector he had prepared. He glanced toward the doorway to make sure Zee was where he’d left him, in case Asger twigged to this and fought him. Yes, the crusher loomed by the door, watching attentively.

“I just need to get back to Odin and spend a couple of days in a regeneration tank,” Asger murmured, his eyes closed.

“Unfortunately, that’s not all you’ll need.” Casmir stopped in front of him. “I appreciate you staying aboard to help me—I’m not exaggerating when I say that even with all those robots, Rache and his mercs would have come out on top if you hadn’t jumped in—but there was a reason I wanted you to go.”

“The disease from the gate.”

Not a disease, it sounded like, but Casmir nodded.

“Which you were willing to expose yourself to in order to stop Rache from getting the gate,” Asger said.

Guilt stomped all over Casmir’s soul. It was possible he’d exposed himself, but he’d definitely believed he might be immune. However, he couldn’t explain that without explaining his link to Rache.

“I couldn’t let you die doing something heroic—this wasn’t even your battle—while I ran off with my tail between my legs. That’s why I told the—that woman—to leave without me. She wanted to stay too.” Asger smiled slightly. “You seem to inspire loyalty in people who don’t know you that well.”

“That goes away once they know me better and find my quirks annoying instead of charming.”

Asger snorted, but then his gaze strayed to the jet injector. “Are you going to test my blood to see if I have it?”

“I’m just assuming you do since everybody gets it. I spoke to my medical researcher friend, Kim, the one Rache kidnapped to start working on a cure, and we’re going to have to go meet up with her on that research ship if we want solid treatment. But this is supposed to slow down the rate of the cellular damage.” Casmir lifted the injector and tried to look honest and sincere. He’d looked up the name of a drug that was used in radiation treatment, and he was ready if Asger asked.

“Did you already dose yourself?” was what Asger asked.

“After I verified the gate was in the hold, yes.” Lies, lies, lies. Why did it bother him so much to lie? He’d never been great at it, but something about this seemed particularly heinous. As if lying to a knight was the equivalent of lying to a rabbi. “I guess we’ll find out how much it’s been helping when we reach the research ship.”

“We need to hand over the gate to Ishii and the other captains first,” Asger said, “but that mercenary shuttle should have enough juice to get us back to Skadi.”

Casmir nodded. “Of course. That will be perfect. Ready?”

“Yes.” Asger tilted his head and pushed his hair back to reveal the side of his neck.

Casmir grimaced, though it was what he’d come to expect from people wandering around in battle gear. Knight liquid armor wasn’t as bulky as typical combat armor, but it was probably just as tedious to remove.

He pressed the injector to the side of Asger’s neck, appreciating the show of trust but also hating that he was betraying it. Yes, only for a short period of time, and only because he wasn’t sure handing the gate to Jager was the right thing to do, but who was he to make that decision? As Asger had pointed out, this wasn’t even his battle. It was chance that had brought him this way, a suggestion that the military would help him recover Kim if he helped them.

But she had recovered herself—he would have to ask her for the details on that—and he… had searched the network for news of that station attack Rache had brought up. And found it. The crushers hadn’t been mentioned specifically, but he’d found a video clip with two of them stalking through the corridors, chasing down what had looked like the local police.

It mortified him to think that his king might be secretly making war on other nations. Or, more likely, picking on small stations in an attempt to bully them into joining his side. Casmir had always hated bullies, and if King Jager now fell into that category…

“You sure you’ve got the right drug?” Asger smirked at the long delay.

“Yes. Sorry.” Casmir blushed and pressed the button, eliciting a soft hiss as the injector delivered the measured dose of tranquilizer. “I’m not that experienced at giving people shots.”

He started to back away, but Asger gripped his arm.

Fresh fear chilled Casmir’s blood. Had Asger already sensed the betrayal?

“I helped you because the queen assigned me to protect you,” Asger said, meeting his eyes, “and because I thought you might be the man to beat Rache. I was glad to be right, glad you made good on your word and came and helped keep him from getting the gate. And kept the shamans—their robots—from getting it out of our system. You’re crafty. I thought, if I was guessing right, you would be. That you had to be.”

Casmir felt like a heel since Asger was praising him and he was in the middle of betraying him, but he was bewildered and intensely curious about where this was going.

“Oh?” he prompted. “Why is that?”

“Just something I overheard the queen say.” Asger smiled blearily and yawned.

Casmir’s heart sank. Was the tranquilizer kicking in already? He would have waited to deliver it if he’d known Asger planned to divulge deep secrets.

“What did she say?” Casmir asked. “Does she—do you know where I came from?”

The comm panel flashed again—Ishii wanting to ask where the gate and the cargo ship had gone, no doubt. Casmir shifted his position so Asger wouldn’t see it.

“Just a hunch,” Asger mumbled sleepily. He yawned again, and this time, his eyes closed.

“Asger.” Casmir patted the side of his head. “You can take a nap in a minute, but can you please explain your hunch to me first?”

Asger’s head lolled to the side, and the even breathing of sleep overtook him.

Casmir groaned and stepped back. He told himself that the tranquilizer would wear off in eight hours, and he could ask Asger to explain then. If Asger was still talking to him. Unfortunately, he didn’t know if that would be the case.

18

The stolen mercenary shuttle was jetting away from Modi Moon, one of Saga’s many natural satellites, when a faint groan came from the rear row of seats. Casmir dimmed the navigation display and wiped everything that would have shown their route and where they’d come from off the control console.

That sound signified Asger waking up, and Casmir worried about how he would react once he recovered from a drug-induced hangover and figured out what was going on. Casmir had tranquilized him again when the first round had worn off, realizing he needed more time to hide the cargo ship. He’d been in the middle of programming navigation instructions into its navigation system and a routine for it to follow for the next two years, if need be. At that point, it would run out of fuel, and its orbit would decay, but he thought he could resolve the gate situation, one way or another, before then.

Now, they were hours away from the stealthed cargo ship, flying in Rache’s shuttle, which thankfully had an excellent auto-piloting system. A good thing, because Casmir had almost crashed twice getting it out of the cargo ship’s bay. He wasn’t sure, however, if the autopilot would be able to dock with the Machu Picchu. Casmir hoped Asger would handle it, since it seemed like the kind of thing that would require excellent depth perception.

Asger groaned again.

Casmir walked slowly to his spot on the bank of seats, his magnetic boots required now that they were back on a small craft without spin gravity. He’d harnessed Asger into the seats as well as he could, but he’d wondered if locking the powerful knight in the lav—the small bullet-shaped shuttle didn’t have a brig—would have been wiser, at least until he promised cooperation, or a lack of antagonistic behavior. But he suspected Asger had the power to break down a lav hatch.

Casmir risked sitting next to him as his eyes opened, bewildered at first as they focused on him. They stayed bewildered as he lifted his head and glanced around.

“Are we in Rache’s shuttle?” Asger asked.

“Yes. Since Qin went back to the Dragon with yours, it was the only option.”

“What happened to the cargo ship?” Asger’s brow furrowed as his gaze locked on to Casmir again. His eyes slowly narrowed into a suspicious squint. “That injection you gave me… It wasn’t for radiation, was it?”

“No, but I have had time to talk to Kim, and she’s optimistic that she can help you when we get to the Machu Picchu. Help us.” Casmir didn’t know how to test his own blood for signs of cellular damage, so he still didn’t know if he was immune or not. He didn’t think he had any symptoms, but he also didn’t know how long they took to show up.

Sweat dampened Asger’s brow, and his skin had felt hot when Casmir checked him earlier, but he didn’t know if that was a side-effect of being tranquilized twice or a sign that his body was deteriorating.

“You knocked me out,” Asger said. “Why?”

He didn’t sound angry—yet—but maybe because he was trying to figure out what was going on. The anger might come, and Casmir lamented that. He’d never dreamed of having a knight for an ally—for a protector—and he fully acknowledged that Asger had saved his butt.

“It’s mostly luck rather than a premeditated plan that I ended up with the cargo ship and with the gate,” Casmir said, “but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wanted to talk to somebody, a neutral third party if possible, before handing it over to the military. To King Jager.” Casmir assumed they were one and the same. The military served the king. Jager might not know everything they did, but Casmir suspected he’d heard about the gate and given orders to retrieve it. He also suspected that when those crushers had been sent in to subdue that station… he’d known about it. “I’ve always considered myself a loyal subject,” Casmir added as he watched Asger’s eyes cloud over, “and it’s not my intention to do anything that could harm Odin or the Kingdom, but I’m not sure yet that I believe King Jager is the ideal keeper for the greatest technology our people have ever known.”

“That’s not your decision to make. You just admitted that it was nothing but luck that put you on that ship.”

“Maybe not nothing but luck,” Casmir murmured.

“You’re a math teacher. You don’t get to pass judgment on the king or decide if he’s good enough for something you essentially stole.”

“No, the astroshamans stole it. I—we—recovered it. I just haven’t decided yet when and to whom I’m going to turn it in. I will turn it in. Gates aren’t my field of study, so it’s of limited interest to me. You know, as a math teacher.”

“Where’s the ship?”

“Somewhere safe.”

“You hid it?” Asger tried to lurch upright, but the seat straps caught him. He snarled and unbuckled them, so he could sit up.

Casmir made himself stay in place, fighting the urge to skitter back. “I’d already re-engaged the stealth generator so Rache’s people couldn’t find it again. After I sent them off in their escape pods, I put it on a different course. One I’ll share as soon as I’ve talked to a few people.”

“What people? What neutral third party could you possibly have in mind?” Asger gripped the seat to keep himself from floating off it—or maybe to keep himself from throttling Casmir.

Kim, for starters, Casmir thought. He wanted to get her opinion, but also… “If it’s possible to repair her body and her chip wasn’t too damaged, Professor Erin Kelsey-Sato.”

Asger gave him a blank look.

“A loaded droid and one of the archaeologists who was down there and found the gate. Since her body isn’t human anymore, she’s probably the only person left alive from that team. I’d like to hear her thoughts as one of the scientists who was presumably involved in discovering it.”

“Scientists? Scientists serve the Kingdom.” Asger scowled at him. “Like knights. And math teachers. They don’t judge the king.”

Casmir smiled sadly. “It’s robotics.”

Asger groaned and dropped his face into his hands.

For a moment, Casmir wanted nothing more than to turn the gate over to Asger and go home, back to his old, comfortable life. Back to being respected by his peers and working on projects he loved. Back to being roommates with Kim and debating over the grocery list rather than having their lives threatened at every turn.

But even if that was an option, could he do it? Could he ignore the rest of humanity now that he knew Jager was using his crushers on other systems and that war might come to Odin one day?

“Dabrowski,” Asger started, sounding like he was trying but failing to be patient.

“I understand your frustration and that you’ve sworn an oath to the king. And you’re correct. I don’t have any right to do this, but I feel strongly about it, that maybe it’s worth my career, if not my life, to make sure I don’t make a mistake—another mistake—that could affect the lives of people throughout the systems. I am sorry I blindsided you. You don’t deserve that, but I knew you’d be loyal to the king—and rightfully so. I wasn’t sure you would allow yourself to contemplate morality if it might go against his wishes.”

“I always contemplate the morality of my actions,” Asger said stiffly.

“Good. I’m glad. But I think it’s better this way. You don’t have to contemplate anything. You were unconscious, and you don’t know where the gate ship is, so when the king asks, you can’t be found at fault.”

“I can be found at fault for not strangling you.”

“Ah. Yes, I suppose that could be problematic, although…” Casmir cleared his throat and pointed to where Zee stood by a wall, along with the ten security robots that had been in good enough condition to bring along.

“Are you suggesting that your robots will stop me if I attempt to strangle you?”

“Zee will. I’m not sure about the others yet. I haven’t had time to teach them about how delightful and worthy of protection I am.”

Asger flopped back against the seat, looking more frazzled and irritated than delighted. “I took a chance in helping you get off Ishii’s ship. There will be repercussions, especially now. If you’d saved the day and handed the gate over to the military, maybe my actions would have been overlooked.” He looked at the porthole.

“I didn’t not save the day,” Casmir offered. “We kept Rache from flying to another system and handing the gate over to someone else.”

“There’s not going to be any proof of that, especially if the mercenaries ended up getting away.”

“If you get kicked out of the knights, you can come work for me. As a teacher’s assistant. The cafeteria food isn’t bad, and there’s a nice gym on campus. You can fall back on your bodybuilding career.”

“You aren’t going to be able to step foot back on Odin. If the Black Stars terrorists don’t get you, the king will have knights waiting to wring your neck until you share the location of the gate.” Asger shook his head. “You should talk to him, not some archaeologist.”

Casmir hesitated. He hadn’t considered that as an option. If it was possible, would it be worth it? He definitely wanted to talk to Kim’s mother, but… how better to gauge Jager’s plans and motivations than by speaking directly with him? If Jager would be honest with him. That was a big if, though. Who was he, in the eyes of the Kingdom, but a math teacher?

“Do you think you could get me a meeting with him?” Casmir asked.

“Probably.”

“Do you think he would actually speak to me instead of sending me down to some dungeon to be interrogated?” Casmir had never been inside the castle, but it supposedly dated back to the arrival of the original colony ships, and it had been quarried from the local limestone. He was positive an old stone castle had to have a dungeon.

“Probably… not,” Asger admitted.

“Given how my last encounter with truth drugs went, I’m not eager to volunteer for interrogation again.”

Asger sighed and reached into his cloak. He patted around before pulling his book out of some inner pocket, the corner burned off as if an energy bolt had blasted it. It probably had.

Casmir watched as he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and studied the book. Did that mean the conversation was over? Asger was looking at the cover, not opening it to read. Either/Or. Søren Kierkegaard.

Casmir tried to dredge the name from his memory. Some Old Earth philosopher? Kim would know, he was certain.

“You may not believe it,” Asger said, rubbing his thumb along the spine, “but I contemplate ethics and morality a lot, and how I can navigate between my loyalty to the crown and what’s the right thing to do as a human being. Sometimes they’re the same, and sometimes I’m not certain they are.”

“Of course.” Casmir nodded, encouraged by this thoughtfulness—and the fact that Asger wasn’t trying to strangle him. “Why wouldn’t I believe that?”

“Because I’m a bodybuilder on posters and cards and calendars. I think there’s even a puzzle.” Asger waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t pay that much attention. My agent just sends me my cut.”

“So pretty people with muscles can’t contemplate ethics?”

“Not according to most people.” He snorted. “Only the queen…” His gaze grew less focused as he trailed off.

Casmir raised his eyebrows, waiting.

After a moment, Asger looked at him. “If I could get you an audience with her, would you go? I think… I think she wouldn’t throw you in the dungeon.”

“Ah, so there is a dungeon. I knew it.”

“Of course. What kind of castle doesn’t have a dungeon?” Asger smiled but fleetingly. He kept watching Casmir, his eyes intent.

“I’m not sure about the logistics of getting in to see the queen without the king finding out and throwing me in that dungeon, but I will trust you if you’re willing to set it up.” Casmir admitted that there probably wasn’t anyone in the universe that he wanted to speak with more than the queen right now. She seemed to know who he was, and he wagered she knew more about him than Rache did. Would she tell him? That was the question. He would have to do his best to charm her.

“You have my word,” Asger said. “I’ll take you to see her, and I’ll do my best to keep you from getting captured prematurely by anyone else.”

“Will flex-cuffs be involved?”

“If that crusher wasn’t looming over there, you’d already be cuffed and locked in the lavatory.”

“That’s where I was thinking of locking you. I noticed the lack of a brig.”

Asger snorted softly. He was still watching and waiting for an answer. A confirmation.

Casmir had a feeling Asger hoped he would hand the location of the gate over to the queen once he met her, but he hadn’t made him promise to do so. That was a relief. Casmir wanted the queen to be someone good whom he could trust, and he even hoped to find that Jager hadn’t known about the crushers and wasn’t behind these encroachments by the Kingdom into other systems, but he didn’t want to walk into a meeting feeling obligated to hand over the gate, lest he learn something… unappealing.

He just hoped he wasn’t being naive in believing Asger could get him in to see the queen without castle security finding out and arresting him. Even if he was being naive, didn’t he have to take this chance? Not only to learn more about the king and queen and their motives, but to learn about himself? About who he really was and where he’d come from?

Casmir nodded. “Excellent, then it’s decided. We get all fixed up—I hope—on the Machu Picchu, and then it’s back to Odin to speak with the queen. While dodging terrorists who still want me dead for some reason. I wonder if I could get an audience with them. Then we could chat about our differences.”

Asger laughed. “You would do that, wouldn’t you?”

“My odds are generally better in a chat than in a gunfight.”

Asger looked to the robots. “I don’t know about that.”

“It does help if large hulking metal constructs are willing to stand in the way of the bullets.”

“Or knights?”

“You do hulk well.”

“I know. Two of the calendar photos involve that.”

Casmir thought about asking if nudity had been involved but decided he didn’t want to know.

The comm beeped, and Casmir maneuvered back to the pilot’s seat. His first feeling was dread, expecting it to be Captain Ishii. Even though they weren’t near the gate anymore, Rache’s shuttle lacked the slydar-covered hull of the Fedallah, so if the warships were looking for other ships in the system, it was feasible they would find it. Would they assume Rache’s men piloted it, rather than a rogue roboticist?

But the familiar Stellar Dragon identification popped up, so Casmir answered.

“This is Laser Lopez, hoping the robot whisperer is alive and aboard that shuttle, over.”

Casmir wondered how she had guessed that he was in charge instead of Rache’s people. Maybe it was a simple hope? He glanced at the collection of robots lined up in the passenger area.

“I think that term applies to taming animals, Captain Laser. The Robot Programmer would be more apt.”

“If you’ve ever had eight automated vacuums try to slurp up your socks as you’re putting them on, you would agree that robots are more akin to animals than computers.”

“It’s possible the vacuums need a calibration.”

“Possible? It’s a certainty. Are you coming back on board?”

Casmir brought up the scanner display, checking to see if the Dragon was nearby.

The answer was yes. They were also on their way to the Machu Picchu.

Casmir looked over his shoulder, but Asger had flopped back onto the seats, perhaps still feeling the effects of the tranquilizers—or the early effects of the illness.

“I’m without a pilot at the moment,” Casmir said, “so maybe we better meet at the Machu Picchu. Qin should see Kim, to have her blood checked.”

“So I understand,” Bonita said, grimness replacing the humor in her voice.

He regretted that. He much preferred humor. How many people had died or would die because of the gate? The radiation threat was another good reason to keep it hidden a while longer. Maybe Kim would be able to advise on a good way to protect the next research crew from it.

“We’ll meet you there,” Bonita added. Then her tone turned dry again. “Though you’re going to have to dock that shuttle eventually. Unless you’re planning to spacewalk to the research ship.”

“I’m hoping my pilot will feel better by then. Otherwise, someone will have to put out a ball on a stick for me.”

“We’ll figure something out. Glad to hear you’re alive. Viggo was worried about you.”

“I appreciate the sentiment.”

19

Kim was exhausted by the time the Stellar Dragon and one of Rache’s shuttles docked. A shuttle that Casmir had stolen after somehow defeating Rache. Apparently, a squad of robots had been involved. She’d only shaken her head in bemusement when she’d read his version of events.

Rache was a wrecking ball who’d managed to smash into both their lives this week. Kim had a feeling she would have to use her favor, should he see fit to redeem it, to keep her best friend alive. She had no trouble imagining Rache’s icy rage, perhaps less over the loss of the shuttle and more over his defeat at Casmir’s hands. It was unfortunate that the Kingdom Fleet didn’t owe her any favors, because Casmir had to have irked that Captain Ishii too.

Whatever had truly happened out there, she was glad Casmir had survived. She had been as worried for him as she had been for herself, and she jogged out of her lab to greet him.

Casmir rounded a bend on the way to sickbay, grinning and waving enthusiastically when he spotted her. Zee strode around the bend right on his heels, which Kim expected by now, but the rest of the robots, each a hulking dark gray construct with a cannon-like left arm, startled her. She’d assumed he had left them behind on the other ship.

He broke into a run, arms spreading wide, but he paused before he pounced on her with a hug. “I know we’ve agreed that touching is wholly unnecessary in a platonic relationship, but since these are extenuating circumstances, will you—”

Kim stepped forward and hugged him. We’ve agreed, he’d said, but she knew he was a hugger and only abstained out of respect for her boundaries. Which she appreciated—more so than ever after enduring the handsy Dr. Angelico—but they’d both looked death in its ugly slavering maw this week. Hugs seemed appropriate.

“Excellent,” Casmir said, squeezing her and thumping her on the back. “I’m so glad you’re all right.” He stepped back while leaving a hand on her shoulder and squinting into her eyes. “You are all right… right?”

“I’m fine now.”

“Now?” His eyebrows rose.

Worried she had insinuated that Rache had been worse than he had been, she clarified. “Now that the bacteria have consumed the pseudo radiation in my body. The kidnapping itself was largely a non-event for me, other than getting me exposed to more of it more quickly. But I’ve undergone the cryogenic revival, and my cellular function is improving. With luck, I’ll be back to my biological age soon. Or even younger.”

Casmir grinned and released her, seeming relieved and also to accept her words at face value. “Don’t let it make you too young. You know how hard it is to be treated seriously in academia if you don’t have a few gray hairs.”

“True.” Kim waved him toward sickbay. “Let me take a blood sample and see if you’re immune or if you need treatment. And then, if you don’t mind—”

“I’ll look at your mother’s damage and see if I can repair it.”

She nodded with relief. “Thank you.”

“I actually want to talk to her and get her opinion on who should and shouldn’t be involved in researching the gate, so I’m crossing my fingers for more reasons than one. I have… Well, it’s a long story. But it won’t be safe for me to stay here for long. Captain Ishii will be back for his doctors soon, and I don’t want to be here when he arrives. Do you want to return to Odin with me? I’ve decided I must confront my enemies there—I’m hoping it’ll help that Asger was able to give me a name of the organization. He also says he can get me an audience with the queen, ideally one where I’m not thrown into the castle dungeon and interrogated at any point.”

“Confronting enemies and an audience with the queen. Oh good. I was worried our lives would get back to normal and how tedious that would be.”

“I sense sarcasm from you.”

“You do have that gift for reading people.” Kim eyed what had gone from one crusher to a total of eleven robots as his troop followed them into sickbay. “Are you keeping all of those?”

“Possibly for now. It’s good to have allies.”

“I imagine so.”

“My new human ally should be along soon—Asger—and I can introduce you. And Qin will be coming for treatment too. They probably won’t come together, since they tried to kill each other when they were on the same ship, but they were both exposed to the gate. Especially Asger. He was in the cargo hold, fighting Rache’s men with me, close enough to the gate to lick it.”

Kim pulled Casmir into the lab she’d claimed as her own and drew a blood sample. While she analyzed it, he poked his head into the other labs and also the now-empty quarantine chamber.

“The people who were in there were safe, you said?” Casmir asked. “Because of a magnetic field someone threw together?”

“It’s possible there’s another explanation, but that seems a plausible one. Glasnax alone wasn’t enough to protect anyone.”

“I’ll keep that in mind in case I find myself in the position to advise people on the gate.”

“Where is the gate?” she asked.

He’d been extremely vague on that.

“Safely hidden.” Casmir winked.

Kim checked the microscope and also the results that came up on the computer display, then turned around, folded her arms over her chest, and leaned against the counter. “You’re fine, Casmir.”

“Naturally.” He wriggled his eyebrows at her. “But am I immune?”

“Just like Rache, yes.”

His amused expression turned to one of distaste.

“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to be compared to him, but in this case, it’s a good thing.” Kim waved toward the slide.

“Right. You implied that you figured out why we’re immune.”

“Well, I’ve come up with a hypothesis. To make gains at proving it, I’d have to test more people who weren’t genetically altered to grant immunity to the Great Plague, and I don’t even know where I’d look for qualifying subjects. That disease spread faster than the speed of light through the Twelve Systems, and those who weren’t altered died, so to find people alive who don’t now have that induced mutation in their mitochondria…” She spread a hand. “Regardless, I believe that, as you suggested, our pseudo radiation wasn’t naturally occurring but was man—or machine—made. And that it was employed as a defensive attack against anyone who tried to take the gate who wasn’t human. But humans today are a little different than they were thousands of years ago when that ship left Earth—assuming we learn the gates did indeed come from there.”

Casmir nodded. “We’re still without proof of alien intelligence in the galaxy, so that’s a reasonable assumption.”

“It’s not that humans have experienced that many generations or evolved significantly in a mere two thousand years, but we have adapted to our new environments, in some cases even drawing from them. There have been substantial changes of the types and amounts of bacteria within us, for example, but since you and Rache are immune, I suspect it was the change we chose to give to our mitochondria in order to survive the plague virus that altered our humanity, at least in the eyes of that ancient technology. My guess is that whoever—or whatever—programmed the security system realized it would be faster to read the DNA base pairs in our mitochondria than to sequence the entire human genome. How it does that without taking blood samples, I don’t know, but if they had the technology to build the gates, they were presumably more advanced across the board than we are now. And then, if the security system didn’t get the precise match it wanted, it would assume a non-human being was trying to make off with the gate and attack. I don’t know how mutations would have been handled. Maybe a certain number of them were factored in, but the changes we made for the plague were simply too much.”

“The alteration didn’t intrinsically change anything about what it means to be human, though, right?”

“No. We actually have a lot of genes that you can tinker with without fundamentally changing how our brains work.” Kim thought of Qin and wondered if she would represent any challenges insofar as her bacteria were concerned. She would have to make sure to start her on the treatment right away so she could monitor her here in these state-of-the-art labs rather than on the Dragon or whatever craft Casmir planned to take back to Odin. “If this security system is something integrated into all of the gates, it’s a good thing that none of our ancestors ever tried to disassemble one and take it home.”

Casmir dropped his chin in his hand. “This is all interesting, and it makes me wonder if our Earth ancestors believed there is intelligent alien life somewhere in the galaxy, but being the self-absorbed person I am, I can’t help but wonder how Rache and I avoided having this alteration.”

Kim gazed at him, wondering if she should share her hypothesis on that, or if he would find the connotations disturbing. It wasn’t as if she could truly know, and she might distress him for no reason. Or he might take it in stride. For a Kingdom man, he was fairly enlightened. He’d never found the circumstances of her birth that alarming.

“You know?” Casmir was watching her face. “Do you think we were… made in a lab, or something?”

“From a DNA sample more than two hundred years old, yes. From before the Great Plague. Rache knows. He more or less confirmed that he’s from, ah, old stock, I guess you would say.”

“Who?” He stared at her, his brow furrowed. “Some old dead guy from Earth? One of the first colonists, or something?”

“Rache didn’t say.”

“Kim… I.” Casmir rubbed his face—hard. “I don’t even know what to say. That’s mashugana. Who would intentionally create someone like me more than once?” He waved at his own body, probably indicating the various medical issues he had. “Even if it seemed like a good idea to make a—a—robot whisperer, as Laser called me, then why fix Rache after he was born and not me?” He started pacing, hands jerking in frustration. “What, was I the byproduct? An extra to keep around just in case? I wouldn’t even be good for spare parts. Who wants a brain prone to seizures?”

Kim lifted placating hands, wishing she hadn’t said anything. Maybe she had misunderstood Rache. Maybe she was wrong about it all.

“Easy, Casmir, or I’m going to have to get you a paper bag to breathe into.” She stepped in front of him to stop his pacing and patted him on the shoulder, wishing she weren’t so clumsy at comforting people.

“We’re in a sickbay full of advanced laboratories and medical equipment, and you’re offering me a paper bag?”

“You want a sedative?”

“Maybe a few shots of vodka.” Casmir looked around for somewhere to sit, but he eschewed her cot and sank down on the deck against the wall. “Sir Asger said the queen sent Sir Friedrich, the knight who was killed by the crushers in the parking garage, to warn me to get off the world, and that she later sent him to protect me. From some terrorists called the Black Stars who want me dead because of something I might do in the future. That’s his hypothesis. I thought he was wrong, that it must have to do with the crushers, but he seemed doubtful.”

“Did you get a chance to talk to Rache?”

Casmir snorted. “Not about his home life and where he came from, like you suggested. He was busy threatening me and making demands.” Casmir hesitated. “He actually did offer to tell me things about myself… if I agreed to come work for him.”

Kim stared at him. “As a mercenary?”

“I guess. I think he was impressed by how many times he’d utterly defeated Zee, only to have him keep showing up. He wanted me to make him a crusher army of his own. Of course, I couldn’t say anything but no, especially when he’d just kidnapped you, but a part of me wishes there had been a way to play along, if only for a while… Long enough to find out what he knows.”

“I have a feeling that would have been a Faustian deal that you would have regretted.”

“Oh, I have no doubt.” Casmir leaned his head back against the wall.

“You don’t need him. I think the answers are back on Odin. You said you’re getting an audience with the queen?”

“Sir Asger said he would try to set something up. I… hope I can trust him. I did tranquilize him. Twice.”

“You left that out of the messages you sent me.”

“Did I? Huh.”

Kim shook her head slowly. She hoped Casmir wasn’t going home to a trap. Especially when she planned to return with him.

“The queen has the answers,” Casmir murmured. “She must. She’s the one who set all of this in motion. I just have to convince her to tell me. Without being shot or thrown into a dungeon along the way. That’s doable, right?”

His eyes had an uncharacteristically bleak cast when they met hers.

“I hope so, Casmir,” Kim murmured. “I hope so.”

Kim wanted to stand and look over Casmir’s shoulder while he reassembled her mother’s droid body and attempted to fix her damaged circuitry and chips, but maybe it was better that there were more treatments to give and two new people who needed the bacteria injection. She’d been told that the Machu Picchu’s scanners had picked up Captain Ishii’s warship leaving the gate and heading their way, so neither of them had time for distractions.

“Are you sure this will work with my body?” Qin asked, clasping and unclasping her hands, as Kim prepared a dose. “And not kill me? You may not have noticed, but I’m not entirely human.” She held up one of her clawed fingers.

“It didn’t escape my notice. I’ve run a few tests from the blood sample you gave me earlier, and I think you’ll be fine.” Kim smiled, though she felt leery at injecting her new strain directly into people—there should have been years of testing first—but when the alternative was letting someone die… she had little choice. “The original bacteria was tested on rats, cats, and dogs without ill effects, and this new change just slightly adapts its preferred energy source.”

“Good.” Qin nodded, but she continued to pace back and forth, her six-foot-plus frame making the lab seem cramped.

Kim thought it might be good to distract her. “Are you and the captain leaving the system next? Or sticking around?”

“I’m not sure yet. Casmir gave the captain some sort of schematic patent… thing, and she’s afraid the only place she can sell it is Odin. Or maybe that’s the only place Casmir has the connections to get someone to buy it. I’m a little fuzzy on what exactly their deal was.”

“Well, we’re planning to head that way soon. Before the Fleet comes back here to retrieve its doctors. I think Casmir’s knight offered to give us a ride back to Odin, but I’m not sure we can trust he won’t deliver Casmir to the Kingdom Guard as soon as we land. Do you think Captain Lopez would be willing to transport us? If you’re going that way anyway?” Kim pressed the jet injector to Qin’s lightly furred arm.

“Casmir’s knight tried to kill me the first day we met.”

“Sir Asger?”

“He called me a freak and blamed me for something someone else did. Someone who looked like me, I guess.” Her lip curled. “He just assumed it was me, that I’d been there. He labeled me an enemy before I’d even said a word.”

“Ah.” Kim decided she should have left negotiating for transportation to Casmir. She also decided she shouldn’t refer to the knight as Casmir’s, not if Qin loathed him. “I’m sorry.”

“I hope his balls wither up and fall in the toilet and get flushed out into space where they’re sucked into a black hole.”

“That sounds unpleasant.”

“Good.”

Kim set the jet injector aside. “Your next stop needs to be the cryonics lab, two levels up. Dr. Sikou will be waiting for you.” She hoped Sir Asger had already finished up so Qin wouldn’t run into him. He was in too weakened a state to risk losing his manhood to a black hole. “I’m going to check on Casmir’s progress with my mother, but comm me if you feel strange. You shouldn’t, but take a nap after the treatment. It’s tiring for the body to rejuvenate itself.”

“All right. Kim…?”

Kim paused in the doorway. “Yes?”

“Do you think there are any friendlier knights on Odin? Or are they all… jerks?”

“Uh.” Kim had no idea how to give advice on romance—she wasn’t even sure if that was what this was about. “I’m sure you can find someone who thinks you’re wonderful. I don’t know if he will be a knight. You might want to cast a wider net.”

And look beyond Odin, Kim thought silently—and sadly.

“I guess,” Qin said. “Thanks.”

Kim found Casmir in a laboratory near engineering, her mother’s droid body on a work table, already reassembled with wires running to an open access panel. Toolboxes and meters sprawled across the counters, and he had a schematic up on one display while he ran tests, sure fingers shifting competently from one tool and task to the next, almost eerily efficient. As she watched—he didn’t seem to notice her arrival—he performed repairs on a memory chip with the easy precision of a surgeon.

She couldn’t guess whose DNA he might have been cloned from, but she had an easier time imagining the scenario than he did. He was gifted at his profession, and if anything, the medical issues had probably helped keep him humble all of his life. Rache could use some of that humbleness.

After Casmir slipped the repaired chip back into the droid head, he touched something just inside the access panel. Her mother sat up abruptly, eyes opening.

Casmir breathed a soft “Ha!” and stepped back.

Kim gripped the doorjamb.

Would her mother retain her memory? Or had it all been wiped? If it had… Kim had no idea if she had a backup in some storage center on Odin. They’d had so few conversations since she’d reached adulthood. Kim barely knew anything about her mother or what she’d been doing for the last ten years. It had been a mistake on her part to get so wrapped up in her work that she didn’t take the time to communicate. Even if her mother was the same way. Kim should have made the effort.

“Ms. Erin Kelsey-Sato,” Casmir said. “Do you remember anything?”

Kim’s mother looked up at him. “You are Casmir Dabrowski. You’ve visited my apartment in Zamek three times, and you’ve never been able to remember to use a coaster. I had to clean sticky rings off my coffee table.”

Casmir’s eyebrows drifted upward, but then he grinned. He noticed Kim standing in the doorway and waved her in.

“Your mother remembers me,” he reported.

“Fondly, I see.”

“Accurately, anyway.” His brow creased, and he looked a little embarrassed. “I get intimidated and nervous sometimes meeting notable people, and I forget my manners.”

“You leave drink rings on the coffee table at our house too. That grape fizzop stains.”

“Oh? I’ll work on that.” Casmir smiled and backed away to pack up some tools.

Kim took a deep breath, feeling nervous herself as she came around the table to face the only mother she’d ever known in the only body she’d ever known. She’d seen photographs of her mother as a human, pale-skinned and blue-eyed, and had often struggled to find herself in that face. She’d always thought she looked a lot more like her darker-skinned and darker-eyed half-brothers, but her father had often noted that they were similar in other ways.

“I’m glad you’re in working order, Mother.” Kim winced at how formally her words came out, but they’d always been formal with each other, and she didn’t know how to be anything else. “We’re on the Machu Picchu. We found you outside on Skadi Moon next to the wreck that had held the gate. It was gone by the time we got there.”

Kim wasn’t sure why she was including herself in the we of Rache and his people. As if they had been a cheerful team working together. It was easier, she supposed, not to explain the story of how she’d been kidnapped by pirates. Besides, it seemed a failing to have allowed that to happen, and she was reluctant to admit to it.

“Outside?”

“Buried in snow drifts. In pieces.”

“Yes…” Her mother looked to the schematic on the display, a schematic of her body. “I suppose I’m not surprised that those miscreant astroshamans tore me to pieces. They’ve all the power of androids, all the manners of animals. The others—my team—got away before they showed up and headed up to the ship to comm the military and show a piece of the gate to the crew up here. Did they make it, do you know? I tried to delay the astroshamans, to keep them from going after the others, but I had no weapons or the inclination to use them. I suppose they’re the ones who got the gate.” She tilted her head. “What are you doing here, Kim?”

“It’s a long story,” she said, finding herself echoing Casmir’s earlier words.

When she looked up and met his eyes, he raised his brows and pointed toward the doorway, silently asking if he should leave.

Kim shook her head. They didn’t have much time, and Casmir had mentioned wanting to ask her mother some questions.

“I’m afraid… We don’t believe the rest of your team made it,” Kim said. “Also some of the crew here passed on. Some of the scientists successfully quarantined themselves and can likely answer any more questions you have.”

“I see.” Her voice sounded more android than human, devoid of emotion, but Kim had been called a robot more than once in her life, so she didn’t know how much of this was an effect of her mother’s droid body and how much was just… how they were.

“I’ll explain everything I know as soon as I get a chance,” Kim said, “but Casmir has a few questions for you. He’s the one with the gate. Sort of. I gather he’s hidden it and wants advice on what to do next.”

Kim nodded at Casmir, inviting him to take over.

“Hidden it?” Her mother’s droid did not have eyebrows in the human sense, but she could make an impressively surprised face.

“Yes. I didn’t want the mercenary Rache to have it, but I also wasn’t certain I should just hand it over to the Fleet, and ultimately the king.” Casmir came forward and, speaking animatedly and with a lot of hand gestures, relayed the story in his rambling style.

Kim would have been more succinct and used fewer adjectives to describe Rache’s dastardliness.

“So, I’m basically wondering what the best course of action is going forward,” Casmir said. “I’m afraid I’ve put myself, and maybe also Kim, in some danger, which would not have been my first choice, but the Kingdom is using some of my prior work to hurt inhabitants of other systems, and I’m a little gun-shy about trusting Jager’s military right now.”

Kim wondered if Rache had told him about the crushers attacking that station. She hoped Casmir had looked that up and confirmed it for himself.

“The simplest thing to do, and the easiest thing for your career and welfare, would be to hand it over to the military,” Kim’s mother said.

Casmir nodded. “Yes. Is that what you think I should do?”

“I can’t tell you what you should do, but I will admit that I would have been uneasy putting such powerful technology into King Jager’s hands. I’ve been around, in one form or another, since before he took the throne, and I’ve seen the changes over the last thirty years, the evidence of his ambition. I’ve traveled to many other systems for my work, and I’ve heard stories from the denizens there of knights and Kingdom agents quietly going about, taking advantage of the existing discontent out there. I do believe he wants to see the Twelve Systems reunited and back under Kingdom rule, and he wants that to happen in his lifetime. I don’t believe he’s inherently evil, but he is definitely ambitious and manipulative.”

“And am I overblowing the potential importance of discovering this new gate?” Casmir asked. “Could it tip the scales as much as I fear? I know Captain Rache was desperate to make sure that Jager doesn’t get it, but he’s hardly an unbiased party.”

“Rache the pirate? I can imagine.” Kim’s mother rose on the table and flexed her knees and articulated her arms and rotated her shoulders. Testing her body?

She swished her tail in a circle while looking over her shoulder and nodded, as if pleased it was still there. Not for the first time, Kim wondered what had possessed her mother to choose an animal droid instead of an android body.

“I don’t think you’re blowing anything out of proportion,” her mother said. “With the gate—and the promise that it could be reverse-engineered, replicated, and the gate network extended—that would definitely give King Jager more to build on, as far as establishing his platform and his case with the other governments of the systems. Join the Kingdom, and we’ll colonize the entire galaxy—and reap the benefits of its resources.”

Casmir appeared morose at the answer. Kim wished her mother had told him to hand over the gate. She had no doubt that the moral concerns were real, but it wasn’t their place to judge the king or risk themselves over vagaries. She’d endured enough risks and enough adventures in the past weeks. She wanted her old life back and to return to the work she enjoyed. She wanted to go home.

“Thank you, Ms. Kelsey-Sato. I’m going to—”

Kim’s mother held up a hand. “You’ve already told me more about your plans than you probably should have. If the military shows up here and starts questioning everyone, it would be better for you if nobody knows where you are headed and what your goals are.”

“A consideration, to be certain, but I’d think you would be immune to truth drugs.” Casmir smiled.

“Unfortunately, I’m not immune to being deactivated and having some overly smart programmer poking around in my head.”

Had that happened with the astroshamans? Had they downloaded everything she knew about the gate before tearing her into pieces and hurling her out the hatch? Kim grimaced in sympathy. Even if her mother could no longer feel pain, that couldn’t have been a pleasant experience.

“We could add some layers of security to your brain emulator,” Casmir offered.

She considered him thoughtfully while fiddling with her tail. “I actually wouldn’t mind that. How much time do you have?”

“Enough,” he said firmly.

Kim thought of the approaching warships but said nothing.

“Good,” her mother said. “I accept your offer.”

Casmir nodded and went to work again. Kim’s mother spoke to him, asking questions about software, automated security updates, and hardwiring failsafes. Casmir answered with knowledge and enthusiasm that seemed to satisfy her. The robot whisperer, indeed.

Kim stepped out into the corridor, disappointed that she hadn’t gotten to catch up more with her mother—and that her mother didn’t seem to mind—but telling herself there would be another time.

Casmir had to get off the ship before the military showed up, lest he truly be thrown into a brig cell this time and tortured until he revealed the gate’s location. And she… She wasn’t sure how much danger she was in now, but she couldn’t imagine leaving Casmir to fend for himself. She would help him defeat those terrorists, or at least figure out how to get them off his back.

As she walked back to her lab, she wondered if Yas and Jess and the other mercenaries would rendezvous with Rache and find treatment in time. If they survived, Rache should concede that he owed her a favor. It might have to be simply asking the man not to avenge himself on Casmir, but she hoped she could help Casmir find out whose DNA imprinted his cells.

THE END

HERO CODE

PROLOGUE

Fire burned in Yas’s veins as the treatment solution flowed into his arm. His breath caught, and his entire body clenched in pain.

Had he been a true cryonics revival patient, he would have still been dead, and he wouldn’t have had to live through this. He supposed feeling envious of a corpse was strange.

A groan came from the bed next to him, its occupant strapped down, the same as he was. Maybe it was to keep the patients from flying off their beds in the low gravity of the small medical facility. Maybe it was to keep them from tearing out the IVs and fleeing the premises.

“You all right, Jess?” Yas tried to remember when she’d last taken a dose of trylochanix, the drug she was unfortunately addicted to. If they survived this, he vowed to help her wean herself off it. Of course, he wouldn’t have minded some of the potent painkiller himself right now.

“The only things that don’t hurt,” she bit out around clenched teeth, “are my hand and foot and eyeballs.”

“Your cybernetic replacements? I suppose they don’t have cells that need regenerating. You’re fortunate. I’ve had nothing replaced, so I’m entirely human.”

At least the fire was fading as the solution in the IV bag dwindled. A pump whirred softly, helping drive it into the tubing—and into him—in the limited gravity.

“Yeah, fortunate.” Jess closed her eyes, but that didn’t hide the tears on her lashes.

From the pain, Yas presumed, but she might also be feeling the effects of some of the mental trauma of the last week—or of her entire life. Unlike the rest of Captain Tenebris Rache’s mercenaries, many of whom had paid for the various enhancements to their physiques, her cybernetic replacements had been done because of a terrorist attack that had left her body too damaged to repair by biological means.

More than a dozen of Rache’s burly mercenaries were strapped to beds on the other side of Jess, the long bay stretching back to a bank of computers. Robots with squat bodies and articulating arms rolled about on wheels, checking on the patients. In addition to the cryonics treatment, they had all been inoculated with the custom strain of radiation-eating bacteria that Yas’s team had taken from the microbiologist, Kim Sato. Yas had never imagined himself helping mercenaries steal bacteria, but in this case, it had saved their lives.

Yas hoped he never had to have anything to do with that ancient gate, or the pseudo radiation it oozed, again in his lifetime. He doubted he would be that lucky.

A soft clang came from the entrance of the bay. Rache walked toward them in his black combat armor, his helmet off and tucked under one arm, but his head hooded, his face masked. As always. He walked straight toward Jess and Yas, stopping between their beds.

“I’m ready to retire, Captain,” Jess announced. She blinked away the moisture on her lashes and managed a cocky smile for him.

“Because Dr. Peshlakai is such a poor conversationalist that you feel the need to flee the unit?” Rache asked, his voice so deadpan that Yas wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not.

“Because I was only prepared for getting shot at and blown up as a mercenary. This—” she twitched a finger toward the tube oozing its viscous liquid into a vein on her brown-skinned arm, “—is an imposition.”

“It is an unappealing shade of green-gray,” Rache remarked.

“The color isn’t the problem.”

“It feels like ants gnawing their way through your veins,” Yas told Rache. “Be glad you were immune.”

Yas had never figured out why Rache was immune, but he’d barely been coherent the last couple of days before Kim Sato had found a treatment. Even days later, on a secret hospital favored by pirates and smugglers and hidden away in an asteroid that had the ability to move to different parts of the system, he didn’t feel magnificent. But after this treatment, he hoped for a marked improvement. He had been lamenting that his life was a miserable mess after being framed for the assassination of President Bakas back on Tiamat Station, but he now believed it was still superior to the alternative.

“Yes,” Rache said quietly. “I had injuries of my own to deal with—” he touched the top of his head, “—but I’ll concede that your situation is worse.”

Since the hood covered it, Yas had no idea what he referred to. All he knew was that Rache had supposedly battled for and lost the gate and the cargo ship that his twin brother had somehow acquired. The man, Casmir Dabrowski, was an academic with no military experience. Yas couldn’t envision a scenario in which Rache wouldn’t have come out on top, and yet… Rache and his squad of enhanced fighters had been dumped into two escape pods and left stranded until the Fedallah picked them up.

Rache was lucky he had a loyal crew who had wanted to come pick him up, and hadn’t decided to leave the system, sell the ship, and disappear. Not that many people would risk Rache’s wrath for any amount of money. Yas ached to ask how Casmir had gotten the upper hand, but he didn’t want to irritate his captain, not when he was paying for the very expensive treatment Yas, Jess, and the others were undergoing.

“It’s my understanding that you had the chance to stay on the research ship,” Rache said, his mask turning toward Yas, “and receive treatment there, but you opted to retrieve some of the bacteria and come back to the Fedallah to help my men.”

Yas’s heartbeat doubled, and he could feel it pulsing in his ears. Rache’s tone was neutral. It sounded like he approved, but if he’d heard this story, it had to have been from Corporal Chains. Yas had been with Jess the whole time, and he would know if she’d spoken privately to Rache. Chains might have also mentioned that Yas had lingered, debating whether he could get away with staying behind, before finally climbing into the shuttle with the rest of the mercenaries. Did Rache know that? Would he resent that Yas had paused? That he’d been tempted?

“We all figured jail, if not a firing squad, would be waiting for us at the end of that treatment,” Yas said, refusing to pretend he’d been more of a hero than he had been.

Jess nodded firmly.

“And Chains was the one who broke down the door and sneaked up to the lab to take the bacteria,” Yas added.

“But you told him what to get and where to find it.”

Yas shrugged. “I knew you had other people who had been exposed, and I wasn’t positive the single dose we’d gotten would be enough.”

He was relieved that Rache didn’t sound irked, that he appreciated that Yas had chosen to return. He wondered if there was any chance that Rache would feel grateful enough to help him with his personal problem. As he’d told Jess, Yas wished he could get to the bottom of President Bakas’s assassination and figure out who had truly killed her, not only to clear his name but because she’d been a good woman and the station—the entire system—ought to know who had truly taken her down. Jess had suggested he try to hire Rache, just as she had once done, to investigate the mystery.

“Do you believe the bacteria will remain in the men’s bodies and give them some immunity if we have the opportunity to get near the gate again?” Rache asked.

Yas pulled his mind back to their medical problem. “I know the strand that Sato and her colleagues originally made to consume standard radiation is self-propagating in the human body. I do not know what changes she made to the bacteria to get it to work on this stuff. As I’m sure she told you, it’s not quite radiation, not like any kind we’re familiar with.”

Rache nodded.

“But I can look in a couple of weeks. I should be able to find signs of them in our blood if the bacteria is still there.”

“Good.”

“Are we going to try to get the gate again, Captain?” Jess asked. “And if so, how soon?”

“Are you eager to get a look at it?”

“Actually, I wanted to know how much time I had to fill out the paperwork for my retirement request.”

“Request denied. You’re too young to retire.”

“Damn.” Jess let her head flop dramatically back onto the pillow.

Yas wondered if Rache would truly keep her if she wished to leave.

“I do not know where it is currently,” Rache said, “but I will.”

“Dabrowski got away with it?” Yas asked, the question based solely on what he’d heard from the other men in the bay, those who had been there, battling robots in the cargo hold around giant pieces of the gate.

“He did,” Rache said coolly. “The cargo ship has advanced stealth technology. I’ve had the Fedallah trying to track it, but they haven’t found anything. Several days have passed now, so it’s less and less likely they’ll chance across it.”

“You think he’s taking it back to Odin to give to King Jager?” Jess asked.

“I do not know what he’s doing with it.” Rache shook his head. “That is a possibility, that he wants to take it to the king directly to curry favor. Had he merely wanted to make sure the Kingdom had it in its possession, he could have given it to the Fleet warships that were also fighting for it. The irate communications we intercepted suggest that he was supposed to give it to them, not disappear with it. From what intelligence I’ve gathered, he left the cargo ship—and presumably the gate—hidden somewhere and rejoined Kim Sato on the research ship. From there, he joined the same smugglers that he showed up at the refinery with. They appear to be heading toward Odin in their freighter. An odd choice, since there are people back there who want to kill him.”

“He must want to give it to the king personally,” Jess said.

“If that is true, I will do my best to stop him. Jager must not be allowed to have such technology, such power. With a wormhole gate to study and replicate, he could lead the expansion of humanity into the rest of the galaxy. Maybe even beyond.”

“So you’re going to hunt him down?” Jess asked. “Or maybe Sato knows what he plans. Is she still on the research ship? Maybe you could question her.”

Yas looked sharply at Jess, wishing she hadn’t brought up Kim. They owed her for finding a solution to this, for saving their lives. Yas had already inadvertently caused Rache to kidnap her once. He didn’t want her to be in Rache’s sights again.

Rache gripped his chin. “She does seem to be Dabrowski’s confidante.”

Yas searched for something to say that might deter Rache from this line of thinking. Surely, Kim wouldn’t be any easier to find than Casmir himself. They had probably left the research ship together. It wasn’t as if Kim was employed by the military or part of the crew of that ship. She’d been helping them out of necessity and that was it. If Rache wanted to interrogate someone, why not capture Casmir and ask him about the gate? He was the one who’d slunk off with it when nobody was looking.

“No.” Rache lowered his hand. “I owe her a favor, not an interrogation. I’ll find Dabrowski and question him.”

Jess shrugged easily. She had probably only meant to be helpful, not toss Kim into a black hole.

“You two get better soon,” Rache said. “I need you back on the Fedallah.”

“To go after Dabrowski and the gate?” Jess asked.

“Yes.”

Rache started to turn away. Yas glanced at Jess and cleared his throat.

“Uh, Captain,” he said, “I was wondering if, after you finish with this mission, I could convince you to help me find out who really killed President Bakas in my system.”

Rache faced him again.

“I’m sure I could scrounge up a little money to hire you, if that’s how it works. And I would have access to more if I was able to clear my name and get back into my accounts.”

Long silent seconds passed. Thanks to the mask, Rache’s face was impossible to read—to even see. Was he annoyed at Yas’s audacity? Or was he considering the request? Maybe wondering how much money Yas could get together?

“You would finish out your five years as my ship’s doctor?” Rache asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“Then we can speak of it after the gate mission. It is possible I can find some work in System Hydra that would justify the trip.”

“Thank you, sir.” Yas dared not ask for a firmer commitment. It was more than he had expected.

Rache nodded—the man never said you’re welcome—and walked out.

“He’s distant, aloof, and a little quirky,” Jess said, “but he’s more reasonable than most people think, and not bad at all if you stay on his good side.”

“So I see.”

Yas was glad he’d chosen to do just that. Though he felt a little bad for Casmir Dabrowski, who was clearly now on Rache’s bad side.

1

The six-and-a-half-foot-tall crusher loomed near the porthole in the lounge while Casmir sat on the deck, his tools scattered within reach, the arm of one of his newly acquired but battle-damaged robots in front of him. He had already fixed the fan on one of Viggo’s carbon-dioxide scrubbers, the sanitization spritzer in the bottom-level lavatory, and the leak in Bonita’s supposedly vacuum-sealed and space-rated soup cooker.

There wasn’t much left to fix, which was distressing, because his brain, left to its own devices, would likely find its way into a panic-attack-inducing state of worry. He was on the Stellar Dragon, a freighter possibly wanted by the Kingdom Guard, and heading back to Odin where terrorists wanted him dead. Further, he now was the only person who knew the location of the priceless ancient wormhole gate, a secret that King Jager might be willing to kill him for. Or at least torture him for.

And what was his plan? To trust Sir Asger to get him a meeting with the queen, who might possibly be sympathetic to his goals and help him find a way to share the gate, and all that might be learned from it, with scholars throughout the Twelve Systems. Never mind that she lived in the castle with Jager, and Casmir couldn’t imagine how he would be able to meet with her without running into the king.

“Your respiratory rate has increased twofold, Casmir Dabrowski,” Zee announced. “Are you experiencing a medical emergency?”

“Meaning am I going to have a seizure and collapse at your metal feet?” Casmir grimaced, since that was always a possibility. He felt safer now that he was back on his medication, but the fluctuations between partial gravity and no gravity that they experienced out here added an unstable variable to the already dubious equation of his health. He wasn’t confident that his seizure medication had been suitably tested on a large space-faring control group.

“I am not programmed to protect you from the failings of your own body,” Zee said. “What is the proper procedure? Would I get the captain?”

“Can we not call them failings, please?” Casmir set down his pliers and rose, waving the bipedal robot owner of the arm over to him. “Get Kim if I have a medical event in space.”

He probably should have programmed Zee with basic first-aid instructions. The original crusher programming had been more concerned with battling enemies than healing them.

“Understood. What is the preferred human term for genetic shortcomings?”

“Delightful character-building opportunities for growth.”

Zee didn’t have distinct human features, not like an android, but he did have a semblance of eyes, a mouth, and a nose, and they turned straight toward Casmir. “You programmed me with the ability to detect sarcasm, Casmir Dabrowski.”

“Yes, I know.” Casmir worked on fastening the robot’s arm while he spoke. “That may have been an error. It’s definitely more important to know what to do with a seizure patient.” Casmir had used the same template he and his team had used when building the first crushers for the Kingdom military. It had been deemed important for them to understand human emotions, including sarcasm. Looking back, Casmir should have known then that he wasn’t simply building robots to help defend his home world. The military had probably wanted the crushers to have that programming so they could more effectively interrogate people and figure out if answers given were believable. “Though in most cases, I shouldn’t need medical intervention. Just pull me out of the way if I’m in danger of being stepped on. If I’m not bleeding or foaming at the mouth, I’ll probably be fine.”

“Foaming?”

“Like a rabid dog.” Casmir doubted he had ever foamed, but he’d definitely drooled. Unfortunately. Sometimes, he was glad he was on the inside and couldn’t see what he looked like to others.

“My ability to detect sarcasm is not as keen as would be preferable,” Zee said.

“Nah, you’re doing fine.” Casmir reached over and patted the solid tar-colored arm, nothing about Zee’s current humanoid form hinting that he could liquefy, slide under locked doors, and reconfigure himself into whatever shape with equal mass that he wished.

“What are you doing, Casmir?” Kim asked, stepping into the ship’s lounge with Sir Asger coming in after her.

Their faces gleamed with sweat. She carried a towel and her wooden swords—bokken. Asger was empty-handed, his legendary pertundo perhaps deemed inappropriate for a friendly sparring match, though he hardly appeared unarmed, not with bare muscled arms the size of Casmir’s thighs. They looked like marble rather than flesh and blood.

Casmir wondered how Kim had fared. She was closer to his height—he refused, as always, to admit, she was a half an inch taller—with limbs of normal breadth and density.

“I’m bonding with Zee,” Casmir said.

“It looks like you’re making a mess.” Kim waved at the tools scattered around his work area as she headed to the kitchen where she filled two water bottles.

“You only say that because the deck looks like the living room back home.”

Home. Casmir felt surprisingly intense nostalgia and longing for the cottage they shared back on campus. The Stellar Dragon was heading to Odin, but until he had a chance to find and stop the terrorists who’d been sending stolen crushers after him for reasons he didn’t yet know, it wasn’t safe to return. He wasn’t even positive there was a home to return to. The last time they’d seen their cottage, a crusher had lurked on the threshold.

“Will you put a scoop of protein powder in mine?” Asger asked as Kim turned away from the kitchen and started to toss a bottle toward him.

“No.” She finished tossing it, then stepped over a couple of tools so she could sit at the table.

Asger blinked a couple of times as he looked down at the bottle. Casmir suspected others didn’t deny knights’ requests often, not others who weren’t of the nobility.

“Kim believes in people who can do things for themselves doing things for themselves,” Casmir explained, waving that the robot could step back and join the nine others lined up against the wall opposite Zee. The cadre of battle-bots, as their manufacturing plaques identified them, lacked Zee’s chattiness.

“Or at least putting in the request beforehand,” Kim murmured.

“I realized my macros are off for the day. I have to keep my physique in top shape, especially now that we’re returning home. If I don’t get arrested for assisting a felon, I have a competition next month.” Asger wriggled his eyebrows and flexed his biceps.

Kim rolled her eyes. If a man’s physique had ever impressed her, Casmir wasn’t aware of it.

“I’m thinking of asking the princess to come,” Asger added. “She probably won’t—I’m not even sure if she’s on-planet, right now—but as long as I need to take you to the castle anyway…”

“Princess Oku?” Casmir started picking up tools and returning them to his satchel. “Would she go to a bodybuilding competition? I thought her interests were travel and flowers.”

“Travel to pick out flowers,” Kim said.

“Right.”

“She has a lot of interests. She’s very smart. And beautiful.” Asger flattened a hand to his chest, and he sighed deeply, his eyes growing wistful.

“The princess is very smart?” Casmir asked. “That’s not the impression one gets from the media.”

“The media.” Asger snorted and waved a dismissive hand. “She lets them think whatever they wish. She may even encourage them to think she’s not very bright. If anything ever happened to Prince Jorg, she would be next in line for the throne, which would probably result in people trying to use her, and her younger brother trying to get rid of her. Prince Finn is a spoi—” Asger paused before continuing. “Finn wouldn’t be my first choice as a monarch.”

As Casmir finished putting away his tools, he grew concerned that he might have to interact with these royal celebrities that he’d largely ignored and knew little about. “You don’t think I’ll run into any of the queen’s children, do you? And need to be aware of more than their names? I know some people pay a great deal of attention to the hobbies, dalliances, and adventures and misadventures of the royal family, but I do not.”

Asger shook his head. “Probably not. I’m going to have to… not sneak you in exactly, but it’ll be desirable if we run into as few authority figures at the castle as possible.”

“Is that because the queen doesn’t know I’m coming yet?”

“I’m still working on securing your appointment.” Asger offered another dismissive wave, as if this was no great obstacle.

Casmir reminded himself that Asger read books on philosophy and was likely smarter than his biceps-flexing persona suggested. He wasn’t sure if he should trust the knight or not.

Kim stood up, having drunk and recuperated, and pointed the tip of her water bottle at Casmir. “You should have joined us in the cargo hold for some exercise.”

“I still have bruises from the last time I sparred with you.”

“It’s been weeks since we sparred. If you’re still bruised, you may want to get an exam, assuming you’re not on any anticoagulant medications or anti-platelet agents.”

“Just anti-foaming ones.”

Her brow furrowed slightly. So did Asger’s. Zee, the only one who might have gotten the joke, did not react. A tough room.

“With my limited athletic ability, I believe practicing swordsmanship isn’t the highest and best use of my time,” Casmir said. “I’ll stick with my current method of defending myself from bad guys.”

“Hiding behind your robots?”

“Precisely. I believe Qin would enjoy exerting herself physically with you two, if you intend to return to it.”

“She would be welcome to join us,” Kim said.

Asger didn’t scowl outright, but he did clench his jaw and adopt a mulish expression.

Did he still believe that Qin was the genetically modified cat woman who’d killed one of his knight friends? Even though Casmir had told him otherwise. Or was he, because of his ingrained Kingdom prejudices, simply positive that anyone genetically modified had to be evil?

As if someone with unicorn candles in her cabin could be evil.

As someone who prided himself on being able to get colleagues with strong personalities to work together, Casmir had been debating ways that he might do the same with them, but since he wasn’t in charge of either of them—if anything, Asger considered himself Casmir’s keeper—it was a challenge. Asger and Qin had worked together to help him take over the cargo ship, and they were the only reason he was still alive, but as far as he knew, they hadn’t spoken since returning to the freighter.

“Professor,” Bonita said, leaning through the hatchway. “I need you in navigation.”

“Of course, Captain.”

All day, Casmir had been expecting Bonita to let him know that she’d flown as close to Odin as she dared and it was time for him, Kim, and Asger to transfer over to the knight’s shuttle for the rest of the trip. Currently, the Dragon was towing it. At first, Casmir had been surprised Asger hadn’t opted to remain in it instead of flying on the century-old freighter, but his keeper had an easier time keeping an eye on him here. He might deem it likely that Casmir would hare off on his own instead of going to see the queen.

Casmir was nervous about essentially turning himself in. He doubted he would have chosen this route if he didn’t so long to talk to the queen, the person who’d originally sent a knight to warn him that people were trying to kill him. The person who had to know whose genes Casmir carried in his blood.

“You, too, Señor Knight,” Bonita called, waving for Asger to join her and Casmir in the corridor.

“It’s Sir Knight.” Asger frowned at her as he stepped out of the lounge and strode straight toward the ladder to navigation, as if he expected a comm to be waiting for him. Maybe he did. “Or Sir Asger,” he called back.

Bonita rolled her eyes. “Are all knights this difficult?” she muttered to Casmir.

“I haven’t interacted with that many, but they’re all talented warriors supremely confident in their ability to handle any situation, and they all come from the nobility, so they have a tendency toward…” He groped for a diplomatic way to finish that sentence.

“Assholeness?”

“Hubris.”

She rolled her eyes again, probably preferring her word.

“You can call me Señor Professor, if you like. That sounds rather exotic.” Casmir was fairly certain that meant Mr. Professor and was an invitation toward excessive honorifics, but he had no pride wrapped up in his title.

Bonita squinted at him. “You don’t have a lot of Mexicans in the Kingdom, do you?”

“Mexicans? Oh, people whose ancestors originated from Central America on Old Earth? No, the two colony ships that came to System Lion were from Europe and Japan. The Kingdom does allow immigration to Odin and our space habitats, but obtaining citizenship is more complicated than wiring up an eight-limbed Slatern-79 house-cleaning robot, and you’re encouraged to assimilate once you’re here.”

“Yeah, my understanding is that people who came from the minority world powers on Earth were never real eager to assimilate themselves once they found spots out there.” Bonita limped toward the ladder leading up to navigation, not quite hiding a grimace as she stepped onto the first rung.

“Oh, Captain,” Casmir blurted, reminded of earlier research he’d done for her. He rushed forward, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. “I assume you’re not going to take us all the way to Odin, and since we have Asger’s shuttle, that shouldn’t be necessary, but when I sent you the schematic I patented, I believe I promised I’d get you in touch with some people who might be interested in buying it.”

Bonita stepped off the ladder and faced him, eyebrows raising.

“There may be many more, of course—” Casmir unfolded the paper and showed her the names and contact information he’d scribbled on it, “—but these are three companies on Odin that make and sell medical equipment. Kenko, right in the capital, has done other dispensing systems, so they may be interested in my bandage machine. My department has worked on a couple of things for them before, so you may find it useful to mention me. They also have a sister company that performs stem-cell-based therapies. I’m not sure how much value my patent will ultimately have—the entrepreneurs are always quick to point out that value is whatever someone will pay—but maybe you could negotiate for a discount…” Casmir waved to her legs since he’d seen her limp on both, though she tended to hide it if someone was watching. “On therapy. If that’s something you need or have ever considered. Maybe after things have settled down and Forseti Station has hopefully forgotten about you.”

Casmir smiled and offered the paper, hoping he wasn’t stepping across any of her boundaries. She never spoke of being in pain and seemed to have some of Asger’s pride herself, so she might not appreciate any help from him, but he did owe her for the transportation she’d given him and Kim.

“Huh.” Bonita accepted the paper. “Thanks.”

She climbed up the ladder, turning her face to the side, so he couldn’t see it this time if she grimaced.

Not sure if he’d offended her or pleased her, Casmir trailed her up to navigation where Asger was on the comm with someone. Two someones. A man and a woman were visible on the forward display, and they wore purple knights’ cloaks with earthy beige, brown, and green shirts and jackets that suggested they were enjoying Odin’s gravity rather than flying around in space somewhere a galaxy suit—or a knight’s liquid armor—would be more typical. Casmir had never seen a female knight, though he was vaguely aware that they existed. From what he’d heard, at any given time, there were only a couple dozen women who wanted the job, had the right blood, and could qualify for the stringent physical tests. Cybernetic implants weren’t forbidden on Odin, but the knights had always taken pride in being unchanging throughout the history of the Kingdom, including remaining purely human, and he didn’t think there were many exceptions.

“My understanding is that the bioweapon was destroyed by Captain Rache, along with Saga’s two refineries,” Asger was saying when Bonita and Casmir stepped into navigation.

“Your understanding?” The woman had short hair, broad features, and looked like she spent a lot of time angry. “That’s not good enough, especially when your reputation suggests your understanding is mainly of how to look pretty and model.”

Asger’s hands, which were down at his sides and out of sight of the camera, curled into fists. “The captain said that’s what happened, there were other witnesses, and I’ve seen no sign of it on the ship.”

“Whether it’s there now or not, that captain disabled Forseti Station’s weapons and threatened a knight with a deadly virus in order to escape,” the woman said.

“Technically, I threatened him with garlic and basil,” Bonita said.

The woman ignored her, perhaps because she wasn’t visible behind Asger’s broad back. “She’s not to be allowed anywhere near Odin. If you weren’t on board right now, with your shuttle toddling along behind, we’d be sending fighters to blow that old freighter out of the stars.”

“Old,” Viggo’s indignant voice came from a speaker.

Casmir wondered what his own status was with the various law enforcers, but he didn’t want to ask. He leaned against a side wall, staying out of sight of the camera pickup.

“If this freighter is denied access to Odin, simply say so,” Asger said. “I will transfer to my shuttle and part ways with the captain.”

“Of course it’s denied. And if you’re not a complete idiot, you’ll arrest the captain and bring her down to stand trial.”

Bonita’s eyebrows flew up.

“Right now, you’re on thin ice,” the female knight added. “Captain Sora Ishii’s report has filtered up to the head of Royal Intelligence and the king. You had better be prepared to explain yourself when you get home.”

“I am prepared to explain everything,” Asger said. “I have done nothing wrong.”

The woman opened her mouth to speak again, but her male comrade bumped her arm. He’d worn the unfocused expression of someone accessing the network or reading a message on one’s contacts, but it sharpened as he looked at Asger.

“I’ve received an update from Chief Superintendent Van Dijk,” he said. “Is Kim Sato aboard?”

“Yes,” Asger said.

Casmir grimaced. Kim wasn’t, as far as he knew, a part of any of the trouble he’d gotten himself in, but since she could be linked with him, he hated to have her presence announced.

“We’re willing to allow that freighter to land, providing the captain is willing to allow it to be searched. Van Dijk requests Sato be brought to the Royal Intelligence office for an interview.”

“I’ll let her know,” Asger said, even as Casmir shook his head off to the side.

He suspected this was about the Kingdom wanting the new strain of bacteria Kim had made, so she ought to be safe, but he still worried that she, as his friend, might be targeted by someone trying to get to him.

“I’ll transmit the coordinates of the air harbor where you’ll be permitted to land,” the male knight added. “Expect an escort to arrive shortly to help you find the location.”

“I’m sure I know all the air harbors on the continent and can guide the captain down,” Asger said dryly.

The knight’s eyes narrowed. “You will be escorted. Do not let the captain diverge from the coordinates. I trust you are capable of keeping a seventy-year-old woman in line.”

Now, Bonita’s fists clenched. One even twitched toward her DEW-Tek pistol, as if she might shoot the man through the display. Or maybe she was considering shooting Asger for presuming to talk to such a man.

“Of course,” Asger said. “Asger, out.”

The display went dark, and he turned to face the seething Bonita. She wasn’t speaking, but her face was red, and she looked like she might spring for his throat at any second.

“I believe,” Casmir said, raising his hands, “that Laser has already decided she isn’t going to accompany us to Odin, Sir Asger. She’s been more than accommodating already in transporting us this far. Don’t you think we could go to these special coordinates in your shuttle?”

Asger’s eyes narrowed to slits as he regarded Bonita and ignored Casmir. “I have orders to bring the ship down.”

“I’m not taking the Dragon down to Odin, not with escorts, and not at all,” Bonita said. “Not when we’d need your precious and monitored launch loop to break atmosphere again. Step aside, Sir Asger.” She pointed at the piloting pod behind him.

Asger didn’t move. He wasn’t as tense and poised-to-spring as Bonita was, but he did look determined.

“Asger?” Casmir asked, stepping closer to them, even if putting himself in a knight’s path seemed dangerous—and he wasn’t sure how wise it was to step in Bonita’s way right now either. “Should I be concerned that your knight friends didn’t mention me at all?” Casmir looked up at Asger, noticing how much taller the knight was than he, and patted him on the chest. “My modest pride isn’t at all crumpled by having Kim receive more attention than I, but you’d mentioned arranging that meeting with the queen for me. Do you think that will still happen? Your fellow knights seemed less than delighted with you.”

“Four Kingdom fighters have departed a station we’re passing, and they are flying in this direction,” Viggo announced. “Swiftly. Approximate arrival in thirty-seven minutes.”

“Step aside, Asger,” Bonita said again. “You can leave if you want, but my ship and I are not sticking around.”

Asger sighed. “I must obey my superiors, Captain. This freighter will land on Odin at the coordinates being sent. I’m sorry. If you didn’t want this to happen, you should have left the system instead of coming back toward Odin.”

“I was giving Dabrowski and Sato a ride. And you’ve been freeloading on here too. I’m towing your damn shuttle for nothing. And, damn it, how am I supposed to cash in on that patent if I flee the system?” Bonita threw Casmir an exasperated expression, then jerked the paper he’d given her into the air.

“Shall I reverse course, Bonita?” Viggo was capable of steering the freighter without her input.

“Yes,” Bonita snapped.

“No.” Asger’s gaze dipped toward Bonita’s hand.

It hovered over her holstered pistol. He hadn’t reached for his pertundo yet, the telescoping halberd-like weapon hanging from his own belt, but Casmir had no doubt he could draw it quickly. More quickly than Bonita could draw her pistol? He didn’t know. Right now, Asger wore his liquid armor, with only his head unprotected, since his helmet was folded back. The idea that Bonita would be forced to fire at his face if she wanted her shot to be effective made Casmir sick.

“Friends,” Casmir said, addressing them both, “we’ve worked together already. Successfully. We can work together again. What do we all want here? Let’s figure out how we can make a deal that benefits both sides.”

They continued to glower at each other. Their hands dipped toward their weapons.

Casmir had already shifted toward them, and now he stepped right between them. “Enough. Viggo, please do as Bonita wishes. Asger, you can’t best everybody on the ship, so let’s not start this, eh? Even if you out-draw Laser, you’d have to deal with Qin.”

Asger snorted. In dismissal? Casmir had a hard time believing Asger truly believed he could easily best her. Hadn’t he seen her in action against those robots on the cargo ship? She’d been just as effective as he.

“And my cadre of friends,” Casmir added.

A shadow appeared in the corridor outside. Zee. Impeccable timing. Had he heard the raised voices?

For the first time, Asger’s confident expression faltered. As it should. Zee had held him up by the scruff of the neck before.

“We could fight and get bruises and broken bones, or we could just tell your knight friends that we did and say it didn’t go your way.” Casmir smiled at Asger again.

Asger glared, but at least this time, he looked at Casmir. Also in exasperation. Odd how often he elicited that expression in people.

“I can’t lie to them.” Asger lifted his chin. “If you wish me to report that I was defeated due to superior numbers and wasn’t able to deliver this freighter as requested, then you must actually defeat me.”

Casmir wished he had more of that tranquilizer he’d used on Asger before. He didn’t want to fight him—or order Zee to fight him—not when he’d risked his life to help Casmir keep Rache from getting the gate.

Gravity shifted, then disappeared, and Casmir’s stomach writhed in protest. He realized what was happening right away, since he’d endured it before when the ship switched from acceleration to deceleration, flipping over so that the force continued to simulate gravity pushing them against the deck, but during the previous times, he’d been warned so he could strap into a pod. Now he found his feet lifting from the deck, his head angling toward a wall.

Someone’s elbow clunked him on the shoulder. He scrambled and managed to grasp a handhold. His stomach grew heavy as more gravity than he’d experienced in a while pressed down on his body.

“Actually,” Viggo said, “in order for this freighter to be delivered to a planet against Bonita’s wishes, it is I you would have to defeat.”

The ship settled down with gravity taking Casmir’s feet toward the deck again. Asger spun, scowling at the control panel while his hand rested on his pertundo.

“I’d recommend against defeating the ship we’re inside of and relying on to provide life support,” Casmir hurried to say.

Bonita folded her arms over her chest. “We are not going to Odin.”

The comm beeped.

“And you can tell your meddling friends that right now.” She pointed at the panel.

“That transmission isn’t coming from Odin,” Viggo said.

“Is it from one of those fighter ships?” Casmir wondered how many minutes they had left until the Kingdom escort arrived.

“No,” Viggo said.

Asger was closer to the control panel and sighed as he identified the comm signal. “It’s Captain Ishii.”

Casmir slumped against the wall. He’d been puzzled that he hadn’t been mentioned in the comm from the knights, but he had a feeling he would figure prominently in this transmission. Ishii had tried to comm him numerous times after he’d finished dealing with Rache’s ship in the gate battle. At the time, Casmir had been on the cargo ship, its highly advanced stealth generator hiding it from scanners, so he’d felt safe ignoring the captain. He doubted they could do that now.

“Since you two are good friends, and you’re standing right there, I assume you’ll want to take that.” Casmir extended his hand in invitation.

“Right.” Asger gazed down at the flashing indicator without moving his hand toward it.

“Or we could pretend we’re not home,” Casmir suggested.

“Because that would obviously work on a spaceship,” Bonita said.

“Viggo could be flying it by himself, taking a tour of the system.”

“Is it a recording or a live feed?” Bonita asked. “How far away is his warship? Any chance he’s still out at the gate?”

“The Osprey and another Kingdom warship are, at their present speed, approximately fourteen hours away from Odin,” Viggo said. “And ten from us.”

“Is the latter relevant because they’re on a course for us?” Bonita glowered over at Casmir.

He lifted his hands, wishing he could say this wasn’t his fault, but it was. Bonita had gotten into trouble with the knights by herself, but Ishii would be after Casmir because of the gate.

“It appears likely,” Viggo said.

Asger shook his head and answered the comm.

“Sir Asger here,” he said with calm authority and no suggestion that he deeply regretted getting involved with Casmir and his friends.

“Where’s Dabrowski?” Ishii snapped, his face filling the display. His angry, irritated, and weary face, if Casmir was reading him correctly. “Hiding behind one of those pods? He likes hiding.”

Casmir willed Asger to say he’d stepped out for a smoke, but he faced Casmir expectantly. That knightly inclination toward honesty was inconvenient at times.

“Hello, Sora.” Casmir smiled and waved as he stepped into the camera’s pickup. “What can I do for you?”

Ishii sputtered. Casmir couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a man sputter.

“Where the hell is the gate?” Ishii finally spat out.

“I didn’t want anyone else to be afflicted with the radiation it’s exuding, so I left it someplace safe until such time as I can speak with the king or queen.” Definitely the queen. He hoped.

“Speak with the king!” Ishii sputtered again. He had better get some water after this conversation. At this rate, he would be dehydrated by the time the comm ended. “You’re not a high-ranking fleet officer, not a knight, not even a noble. You don’t get to speak with the king. You’re a nobody.”

“Have you not kept up with my publications, Sora? I’m quite well known in the field of bipedal, self-powered robots.”

Ishii slapped his hand to his forehead. “You’re not going to get in to see the king. If anything, you’re on your way to an oubliette. Tell me where the gate is, and we’ll deal with the radiation threat.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t feel comfortable doing that.” Casmir opened his mouth to continue on, but Ishii interrupted.

“You’re not comfortable? This isn’t the Rirakkusu Spa, Dabrowski. I’m going to catch up with that rickety freighter and string you up and interrogate you. With drugs. Lots of them. I don’t care if you have ten seizures on the deck; I’ll find out where you hid that gate.”

“Thank you for the offer of more adventure in your sickbay, but I’m going to have to decline.” Casmir spoke quickly so Ishii couldn’t interrupt again. “I can promise you that Rache doesn’t know where it is either. And the astroshamans who stole it the first place… They didn’t make it. Did you know you were doing battle with an android? With the help of my friends, I disabled it. You’re welcome. I know it—Tork-57 was his designation—was troubling you. I was pleased that I was able to keep it from destroying your ships and escaping back to its system. It was my honor to serve the Kingdom and help the military.” Casmir smiled brightly as he lunged past Asger to cut off the comm before Ishii could get in any more threats—or demand that Asger arrest him.

Ishii was in the middle of sputtering again when the display went dark.

Bonita and Asger stared at Casmir. Even Zee was gazing in his direction, such as he could gaze without eyes.

“I was trying to remind him that he is somewhat as-seen-from-a-certain-point-of-view indebted to me,” Casmir said. “Do you think it worked?”

“I think you better sleep with your robot under your pillow at night for a while,” Bonita said.

Asger nodded.

They were standing shoulder to shoulder, facing him. Their earlier antagonism seemed to have been forgotten. Should he be pleased that his plight had distracted them?

“Zee would be a strange bedfellow,” Casmir said.

“You’re a strange bedfellow.” Bonita shook her head.

“Shall I maintain our new course away from Odin?” Viggo asked. “Because we are currently flying straight toward the warships. Also, those fighters have shifted course to ensure they intercept us, now in approximately twenty-three minutes.”

Bonita dropped her chin to her chest. “Just… take us to Odin. Their coordinates. After we’re thrown in jail, maybe Casmir’s robots will rescue us.”

Casmir didn’t point out that he might end up in the adjoining cell. Or oubliette.

Shaking her head, Bonita shuffled out of navigation, not bothering to hide her limp.

“Any chance you’ve arranged that appointment with the queen yet?” Casmir asked Asger.

“Not yet. I don’t have her direct comm code, but I left a message.”

Left a message? Casmir was fairly certain he could have commed the castle and left a message with some minion. This was not going to go well.

2

Qin Liangyu Three sat in the co-pilot’s pod as the blue and green of Odin’s oceans and continents filled the display, a fluffy band of white clouds hugging a mountain range. Even knowing that trouble awaited, she couldn’t help but admire the beauty of the planet.

She supposed it was silly to wish they could stay longer this time. During their last visit, she’d only gotten to step foot off the Stellar Dragon in that shipyard, and that had been to help with repairs. She wanted to see and smell the forests and lakes and oceans that she’d only read about in books and seen in videos. As someone who’d been raised on a space station and then sold to the Drucker pirate family where she’d lived solely on a ship, she loved nothing more than the exoticness of walking on grass and dirt.

“The knights said they’re going to search the ship.” Bonita looked over at her from the pilot’s pod. Her boots were up against the console, her body scrunched in on itself. “Thoroughly, I’m sure. There’s probably not any point in you hiding. That damn Asger would point you out.”

“I know. I’ll just… try to look innocuous so they don’t worry about me.”

Bonita glanced at Qin’s hands—her claws. They were as retracted as possible, painted purple and covered with tiny unicorn decals—Bonita had done the application herself—but that didn’t make it any less obvious that Qin had claws instead of flat human fingernails. Her hands looked human, aside from the light dusting of fur on the backs, and her face was human…ish, but her pointed cat’s ears always stuck out of her hair, no matter how she wore it. Add to that her six-feet-two-inches of height and musculature to rival Asger’s, and there was no missing that she was genetically modified—and had been from birth.

“Good plan,” was all Bonita said.

“Should I wear my combat armor? Or will we let them question us without resisting?”

Bonita closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. “There’s not any point in resisting. I’m sorry, Qin. I’m not sure how I let us get sucked back to this crotch of a planet.”

“You were helping a friend. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Casmir? I’m not sure I’ve elevated him to friendship status. He’s a passenger.” Bonita withdrew a folded piece of paper and rubbed it thoughtfully between her fingers and thumb.

“I like him. He’s a friend to me.”

“You like and want to make friends with everyone.”

“Not everyone.” Qin sent a dark glower over her shoulder, though nobody was standing in the short corridor behind navigation. She’d made sure Asger wasn’t around before slinking up to join Bonita.

He made her uncomfortable. He hadn’t called her a freak or attacked her lately, but she wouldn’t assume that meant he’d changed his feelings about her. He’d simply been avoiding her—and she him. When they did pass in the corridor, he looked past her without acknowledging her existence. As if she were furniture.

“I’ll assume that glare isn’t for Kim or the crusher,” Bonita said.

“No.”

Qin didn’t want to talk about it and was relieved when Bonita unfolded the paper and studied that instead of asking more questions.

“I contacted these people Casmir gave me and left messages.” Bonita stuck one of her legs straight out on the console, grimacing at her knee. “He seems to genuinely think that schematic he gave me is worth something. I know it’s patented—I checked—but a lot of useless junk is patented.”

“You didn’t think it was worth something all along?”

“Not really.”

“Then why did you pick him up and agree to bring him back to Odin?” Qin smiled. “Could it have been friendship?”

“Desperation, maybe.” Bonita held up a finger. “I have a message coming in. Huh, it’s from one of these companies.”

“Oh?”

“The one in the capital. Let’s see what they say. As long as we have to go to Odin anyway, I might as well try to make some money. Viggo needs parts, and I need to pay his taxes to stay legal in our home system.” Bonita’s eyes grew unfocused.

Qin knew her captain was in a financial bind, and hadn’t said anything about the lack of pay over the past two months. She wondered if Bonita’s hope that she could make a deal on Odin had anything to do with why they were going along meekly with the knights’ orders. Not that they had much choice with a warship zeroing in on them and the fighters—their promised escort—flying in formation around the freighter. It wasn’t as if the Dragon had stealth technology, and there weren’t many places to hide in space without it.

Bonita lowered her finger. “A Baron Takahashi is interested in speaking with us about acquiring the patent.”

“That’s good.”

“Maybe. I’m not sure if I can figure out how to evade the Kingdom Guard or knights—whoever shows up to search the ship—and slip out into the city for a meeting. Also, this guy wants to meet me and Casmir. I’m reading between the lines that he doesn’t believe the patent is mine to do with as I please, and he wants to see the designer in person to vouch for me.” Her lip curled at this slight to her honor.

“I would happily go with you into the city.” Qin had read that Zamek was full of canals and parks and had a religious boulevard lined with churches and shrines and temples on a bluff that overlooked the sea. She did not think Odin had Buddhist temples, but she would be curious to see a Shinto shrine. Maybe it would be surrounded by trees and shrubbery, and grass that she could walk barefoot on. Was that allowed? It had to be. “You’ll need a bodyguard, right, Captain?”

“Let’s find out if we can slip away first. I—uh, Qin?” Bonita’s voice took on a strange note. Was she still reading messages? “When was the last time you checked the bounty hunters’ net group for lists of prospects?”

“I’ve never checked it. Do you want me to add monitoring it to my duties? Are we going to avoid smuggling and return to bounty-hunting?”

Bonita turned a grave expression toward her, then nodded at the forward display as she transmitted her data to it.

Qin’s heart shriveled up when her face appeared under the bright red words: 15,000 Union Dollars.

“There’s a bounty out for me?”

It had to be the Druckers. After she ran away, unfortunately doing a poor job of staging her death, she’d gotten away from the men the family had sent to retrieve her. She’d arranged for them to be arrested instead, since they’d had bounties of their own on their heads, and she’d hoped—a deluded hope—that it would end there, that neither Framer nor Khan would send more people after her.

Damn it, she was nineteen. If she were a completely human girl who’d been born to parents, she would be free to chart her own course by now. She understood that they had paid for her to be brought into the world, and that in some systems, that granted indefinite ownership, but she wasn’t in one of those systems now.

“Sort of.” Bonita waved at the smaller text under the photograph. “It’s promising a reward for the retrieval of stolen property.”

“Stolen! Nobody stole me. I stole myself.”

“The law gets fuzzy in places like System Cerberus where slavery is legal.” Bonita gazed over at her, maybe wondering where she’d been born.

Qin sighed without answering. In a genetics lab on a station in Cerberus, of course. She didn’t think she’d ever told Bonita that. She’d been so relieved when Bonita had agreed to give her a job, a job on a spaceship that had seemed to represent the epitome of freedom, that she hadn’t wanted to share the sordid details of her past. She hadn’t evaded direct questions, but she also hadn’t wanted to risk making herself undesirable—too dangerous to take on board.

“Yeah,” she said glumly. “Are you going to turn me in?”

“Of course not. Though we better make sure Asger doesn’t see this. He might turn you in.”

“Casmir wouldn’t let him.”

“Casmir is a foot shorter than he is and not in much better of a position than we are.” Bonita tapped her chin. “He may be in a worse position than we are.”

“But he has Zee.” Qin couldn’t help but think fondly of the big robot. Maybe she should have grown up reading stories about robots that rescued girls instead of knights that apparently only rescued very pretty and fully human girls. Possibly only of the nobility.

“Yes, Zee and all those others. Maybe they’ll be enough to keep him from being arrested. We’re going to need him for a meeting with this baron.”

“You’re sure you’re going to go?”

“I am now.” Bonita flicked her finger, and the horrific stolen property report disappeared. “Because we need to figure out how to make enough money to buy your contract or title—what do slavers call it?—from this Drucker family. Then you can be your own free person.”

Qin leaned out of her pod. Would that be possible? She had never considered trying to buy her freedom. Because she didn’t have anywhere near 15,000 Union dollars, and that was just what the Druckers were offering as a reward. They would want more to tear up the paperwork and proclaim her free.

“It’ll cost more than fifteen thousand,” she warned, hoping Bonita hadn’t already etched the figure into her mind.

“Maybe not. We just need someone who’s good at negotiating to talk to them. Someone who can point out that they could get nothing since you are such a formidable warrior and can destroy anyone they send after you. Once they wisely see that, fifteen thousand may seem like a steal.”

Qin hesitated. She wasn’t a negotiator. And Bonita had a short temper and a tendency to reach for her pistol at any hint of an impasse. “Do you know a good negotiator?”

“Casmir has promised me he has the ability to get people to donate million-crown robots to his university department.”

“You think we should send him to negotiate with pirates for me? Captain, I don’t think he’s ever met a pirate.” Qin liked Casmir, but she’d noticed he was as likely to turn people into enemies as allies. And she wasn’t sure his easy-going, let’s-just-be-friends antics would work on the Druckers. They might shoot him. Besides, she couldn’t ask him to come with her to another system.

“If Rache counts, he has. And he didn’t seem daunted by Rache.”

“That is true.” Qin shuddered, having her own unpleasant memories of the mercenary. She would be daunted by an encounter with him.

“So, we’ve got a plan. Land on Odin, elude the Kingdom Guards who will show up to interrogate us, sneak off to this meeting, somehow kidnap Casmir long enough to go with us, and then convince this baron to give us lots of money for a drawing on a virtual piece of paper. Then we buy your freedom from the Druckers. Easy.”

“Easy? You ran out of breath just listing all that.”

“We’ll do it, kid.”

Qin was skeptical, but she smiled anyway. She stood and hugged Bonita, appreciating that she cared enough to try and wouldn’t simply turn her in for the money. Then she skipped through the hatchway.

“Formidable warriors don’t skip, Qin,” Bonita called after her.

“What?” Qin paused in the ladder well. “Not even if they do it quietly?”

“Absolutely not.”

“What about sashaying? Is sashaying allowed?”

“No. It might get that knight excited.”

Qin knew it was a joke, but she couldn’t keep from frowning, aware of the unlikeliness of that. Not that she wanted some jerk who called her a freak to get excited, but it would be nice to be able to interest men who weren’t pirates who owned her and felt entitled to use her however they wished.

“No sashaying,” she agreed softly and descended the ladder, wondering if she truly had any chance to escape the Druckers’ long reach.

Kim gripped the handhold next to the porthole in the lounge as the Stellar Dragon descended toward an air harbor she didn’t recognize. The swath of cracked pavement was miles from the ocean in an industrial part of the city. As she watched, the four escort ships veered away, heading north, to some other port or perhaps to the launch loop to return to their space station.

“I guess they think we’re committed at this point.” Kim glanced at Casmir.

He sat, almost hidden in the nearest pod, its smart sides curved to protect him during the landing. His face was a rictus of discomfort, but Kim doubted it had anything to do with g-forces. They were descending on an almost vertical line and at a reasonable speed, the ship’s thrusters firing from the flat side of its dome-shaped body. The deck vibrated fiercely underfoot, and something rattled in a kitchen cabinet. The tug of Odin’s gravity felt intense after so many weeks at half a g or less. She felt twinges of dizziness and queasiness if she moved her head too quickly.

“Did you take a motion-sickness pill?” she asked.

“Yes. Laser warned me that returning to full gravity after being in space tends to make a person puke and fall over, not necessarily in that order.”

Kim nodded, remembering that she’d felt off for days after returning from her research study aboard the planet’s orbital space station. The motion-sickness pills had helped her a lot, but she knew not everyone was that lucky.

“Hopefully, you’ll complete your puking experience before your meeting with the queen.” She smiled, meaning it as a joke, but Casmir’s eyes widened, and he groaned.

“Why did you say that? That’s exactly the kind of thing that would happen to me. The instant I thought that nurse on the Osprey was cute, I had a seizure.”

Kim didn’t remember him relaying that part of his adventure on Captain Ishii’s ship. “Because her cuteness made you stress out and panic?”

“No, because she pumped me full of a drug I ended up being allergic to. The eslevoamytal.”

“Ah. If it helps, it’s unlikely the queen will give you that.”

“Thanks.”

“She’ll have a minion give it to you.”

“You’re extremely helpful. I hope—” The ship adjusted its angle for the final landing, and his face grew green, and he took a deep breath. “No, I won’t hope that on you.”

“What’s that?”

“I was going to wish you’d throw up on the Royal Intelligencer’s shoes, but you’re the only one on this ship not in danger of being thrown in a dungeon. I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

“You’re a good man, Casmir.”

“I appreciate you… saying that… but if it were true… there wouldn’t be so many… people trying to kill me.” Casmir closed his eyes and took deep breaths.

Kim decided to stop speaking to him, because he was obliging enough that he would keep trying to answer, even if it made his condition worse. But she did finish with a firm, “We’ll get it straightened out. If nothing else, Rache promised me a favor for saving his men’s lives.”

Casmir snorted. “If he’s smart… he won’t come… anywhere near Odin.”

“He’s as smart as you are, and you’re here.”

“Funny.”

Casmir was probably right. Given how badly King Jager and the military wanted Rache dead, he would be foolish to bring his mercenaries anywhere near the planet.

As the ship settled onto an open area surrounded by freighters of all makes and models, some rusty and dilapidated enough to give the effect of a junkyard, an alert flashed on Kim’s contact. Appointment reminder, it read, as if she had a massage scheduled for later that afternoon. Royal Intelligence Headquarters, Chief Superintendent Van Dijk’s office, in one hour. A map appeared to show her the location, adjacent to the castle on a bluff in the wealthy part of the city, overlooking the ocean.

Casmir had warned her about Asger’s message, so she wasn’t unprepared. But she had assumed she would be allowed to rest for a night, reacclimate herself to gravity, and consume no fewer than eight excellent cups of coffee before being expected to show up.

Nothing about the alert asked for a confirmation or suggested that the meeting was optional.

“Nobles,” she muttered, certain this Van Dijk qualified. The rank suggested he or she had come out of the Kingdom Guard, but most high-ranking military and political positions were only open to those of noble blood, and therefore deemed trustworthy in the eyes of the king. “I’m glad I don’t usually have to deal with them.”

Nerves twisted in her stomach at the knowledge that she needed to deal with them today. And would likely be late for this meeting, since getting across the city in an hour seemed a challenging proposition, even if this remote landing pad was close to one of the mag-tube stations.

The reverberations coursing through the deck faded, and the ship grew quiet.

“I was hoping that would bring relief,” Casmir said, his eyes still closed, “but I feel weird pressure in my sinuses. My ears are stuffy.”

“You’re probably going to die.”

“That would solve some of my problems.”

“Only some?”

“It would create others. I would feel bad for my parents. They would have unexpected funeral planning and expenses, and they’d wonder what happened to me, because I never felt comfortable sending them long messages to explain everything, not when it might put them in danger. Remind me to send a message as soon as my stomach settles. Also, if I died, you would have to deal with all my belongings at the house. See? Problems, aplenty.”

“Yes, I see. Your comic-book collection is large.”

Someone jogged past the lounge hatchway. Asger?

“Do you need help getting up, Casmir?” Kim asked. “It seems I have a firm appointment time at the Royal Intelligence office, so I had better leave as soon as the hatch opens.”

She wondered if she would have trouble getting past the Guards or knights that were sent to search the ship. She hoped not.

“Nope. Not getting up today.” Casmir’s eyes were still closed, his face still green. “Maybe tomorrow. Or next Thursday. After the world stops feeling—” He broke off with a moan.

“Good luck then.”

“Wait!” Casmir’s eyes opened and he lurched to his feet, grabbing the wall for support. He flung up a hand, but bent double before he could say what had leaped into his mind. He staggered over to the kitchen and demonstrated just how sick he was.

Kim looked away, trying not to let the noise make her sick.

Zee and Casmir’s cadre of robots watched blandly from the wall, apparently not considering this something they could protect him from.

“Sorry,” Casmir said after a minute, wiping his face and wobbling slowly back to her, clutching a hand towel to his chest. “You said you’re going out by yourself? To that meeting?”

“I don’t think I have a choice. Do you want to come with me?” Kim had been trying not to judge him for his decision to hide the gate and take on a burden that he was by no means qualified for or obligated to handle, but it was hard when he was getting himself deeper and deeper into trouble with each passing day. She wouldn’t be surprised if a company of soldiers waited out there to drag him off. “It might not be too late to report where you hid that ship… without repercussions.”

“No. I’m still hoping Asger can indeed get me in to see the queen. She wants me alive, so I’m hoping she’ll be more sympathetic than people who are indifferent to my zoetic state.”

“Maybe this chief superintendent will take you to see her.”

“I doubt it. But look, if you’re going off alone, I want you to take Zee. For protection.”

“Casmir.” Kim looked him over, from hair in need of cutting to dirty towel clutched to his chest, to the rumpled rockets-and-robots T-shirt he’d been wearing under his galaxy suit for weeks, aside from brief laundering stints. “I think you need protection a lot more than I do.”

“I’ll have Asger.”

“A man who has sworn an oath of loyalty to the king, not you.”

“It’ll be fine. I’m going where he wants me to go. Look, I’m worried about the terrorists, Kim. And however many crushers they still have in their possession. I know I’m their target, but I’m worried they’ll try to get to me through you, especially if they see you walking alone in the city. I know you’re not defenseless, but why take a chance? Nobody will bother you if you’re walking down the street with Zee.” Casmir extended a hand toward the stolid black crusher.

Kim imagined small children fleeing into alleys to get away from Zee. Also large children, adults, dogs, cats, and birds.

“Can I put a bow on him?” she asked.

“You want to accessorize him? Certainly.” Casmir looked toward Zee. “Uhm, what color?”

“Pink.”

A hint of horror filled his eyes. “How about blue? Blue is nice.”

“I want him to be less intimidating to innocent people we pass.”

“Blue isn’t intimidating. How about periwinkle? And maybe more of a tie than a bow. He’s not a dog. He’s dignified.”

A robot vacuum zipped into the lounge, circled Casmir’s feet twice, and then vacuumed up the side of the cabinets and into the sink area.

“As all robots are,” Kim said.

“Indeed. Just take him with you. Please. I’m sure you won’t regret it. Zee, will you go with Kim and protect her today, please?”

“Yes.” Zee strode forward, heavy metal feet clanging on the deck, and stood at Kim’s side—a foot taller than she.

It was going to take more than a pink bow to make him less intimidating. Maybe an entire suit in the color. She could buy him a periwinkle handkerchief to make Casmir happy.

“All right, Zee. We better get going.” Kim headed for the hatchway but paused to look back. “Do robots require train tickets?”

“Unless you want him to ride in the cargo area—and you don’t—they do. I have, however, argued that the medical robots I was working on before this all started are similar to therapy dogs and should ride for free as long as they don’t require a seat.”

Kim snorted. “Does that work?”

“It depends on how susceptible the ticket-taker is to my charms.”

“So if the ticket-taker is a robot, you’re in?”

“If the ticket-taker is a robot, we both usually ride for free.”

Kim couldn’t tell if he was pulling her leg or not. Was it possible the robots of Odin networked with each other and had deemed Casmir a robot-friendly human deserving of superior service?

Casmir winked at her. “I also do well with women aged forty-five to seventy-five, who believe I’m adorable.”

She snorted again, decided he had been joking about the robots, and headed for the ladder. If she had to navigate her way past a company of Guards, she had better do it quickly.

The cargo hold was quiet when she reached it, with Bonita and Asger gazing outside. The wide hatch was open and all the way down, serving as a ramp leading to the pavement where sunlight glinted off puddles left by an overnight rain. Kim couldn’t see anyone outside yet. Qin stood a few paces back, her big anti-tank gun not in hand today. She and Bonita weren’t wearing their armor or weapons, having decided, it appeared, to cooperate with the authorities. Asger wore his liquid armor and pertundo and carried his pack over his shoulder, prepared to leave for good, perhaps. She didn’t know what had happened to his shuttle, if it had been left in orbit or landed on its own.

Kim stepped up beside Bonita. There was no sign of the Kingdom Guard she had expected. There was no sign of anyone, not even the robot loaders typical at industrial air harbors. Horns honked and beeped in the distance, and she heard the rumble of a mag train passing somewhere, but outside, nothing stirred.

“Where are your buddies, Sir Knight?” Bonita asked.

“I don’t know.” Asger’s brow was furrowed, and he genuinely sounded puzzled. “I just sent a message and haven’t received a response yet.” He looked at Kim, then at Zee, who came to a stop behind her. “Where’s Casmir?”

“Puking.”

“Didn’t he take a motion-sickness pill? That usually helps with reacclimating to gravity.”

“He says he did. You may have to carry him to see the queen.” Kim raised her eyebrows. “Or are you still waiting for a message from her people too?” She didn’t try to keep the suspicion out of her tone.

She knew Asger and Casmir had been through a battle together, but she barely knew the knight. She highly doubted he would put Casmir’s safety above his duty.

“Still waiting. I—”

“Ssh.” Bonita jerked a hand up and pointed across the pavement toward a pair of freighters parked close together. “Trouble.”

At first, Kim didn’t see anything in the shadows of the freighters, but then she picked out movement. And groaned. The all-black crushers blended in well with the dark pavement, their tarry bodies absorbing sunlight rather than reflecting it.

“Unless those belong to your people?” Bonita stepped back while looking at Asger. Her hand lifted to the hatch controls, poised there.

Four crushers sprinted toward them. A squad of men in mismatched combat armor appeared between the freighters, then sprinted right after the crushers.

“No.” Asger shook his head. “My people should be here, but—”

Bonita slammed her palm against the hatch controls, not waiting to hear the rest.

The first two crushers sprang toward the Dragon as the hatch-ramp lifted from the pavement. The process wasn’t fast enough, and they caught the lip of the hatch before it closed all the way.

“Shit,” Bonita swore, sprinting for the small armory between engineering and the hold. “Qin, weapons!”

“Bring me my Brockinger,” Qin yelled back as she sprang in front of Kim, landing in a fighting stance with her fists up.

One of the crushers made it inside and sprang toward her. The second leaped for Asger.

The only one with weapons already, he whipped his pertundo from its holder, telescoping out the handle and using it like a spear. He jabbed the long point at the crusher, trying to keep it at bay.

Zee pushed Kim backward as he rushed to intercept the crusher attacking Qin.

The banging of metal on metal came from the hatch. The hands of the third and fourth crushers gripped the edge, just their fingers visible. The hatch kept trying to shut but it got stuck on them. The hands shifted into levers, and more warping and wrenching sounds echoed through the cargo hold as the crushers pried open the hatch.

“Casmir!” Kim yelled over her shoulder. “We need the rest of your robots.”

She looked at her own empty hands and ran behind crates ratcheted to the deck near the corridor leading into the ship. The idea of hiding made her bristle, but it wasn’t as if her fists would do anything against crushers.

“Captain Lopez,” Kim yelled, “bring me a weapon too.”

Zee hurled one of the crushers across the cargo hold so hard that its head dented the hull. Unfortunately, the blow did nothing to damage it. The crusher landed and sprang to its feet. Kim expected it to leap back into the fray against Zee, Asger, and Qin, but it paused in a crouch, its quasi-human face turning slowly as it looked around the cargo hold.

Looked? Kim had no idea where whatever optical sensors it had were. From what she’d seen when Casmir had constructed Zee, all of their programming was in the nanites in their matrix, and she had the impression that those worked akin to cells rather than the cybernetic sensory organs in an android.

However it saw, she shuddered when its face pointed straight at her. She couldn’t be its target, could she?

Its head shifted a couple of inches to the side as Casmir ran out of the corridor. He halted abruptly, gaping at the mayhem as Qin was hurled into a bulkhead. Bonita ran into view with three rifles and Qin’s huge shell gun.

“Qin!” Bonita threw the big gun across the cargo hold.

The crusher that had been watching Casmir and Kim leaped higher than any human could and intercepted the throw, catching the gun out of the air. It landed as Bonita cursed and opened fire with one of the DEW-Tek rifles. Crimson energy bolts hammered the crusher as it sprinted toward Casmir.

Kim grabbed him and pulled him behind the crate, though she knew that wouldn’t do anything to protect him.

Several of his battle-bots ran out of the corridor. Clunks, bangs, and screeches erupted as they plowed into the crusher at top speed. Something flew and clanged against the wall behind Kim and Casmir.

She ducked as she pulled him farther from the melee. A robot arm tumbled to the deck with a clatter.

Casmir swore. “I just attached that.”

His robots weren’t going to be up to battling a crusher; Kim could tell already.

Then the crusher flew past, disappearing backward into the corridor. Kim was confused until another crusher sprang after it—Zee.

“Go, Zee, go!” Casmir hollered.

“Shush.” Kim tugged him through the narrow aisle between crates and the bulkhead, hoping to work their way around to Bonita, so they could get a couple of those rifles. “They’re here for you.”

“All the more reason to cheer my guys on.”

Casmir scrambled after her, and when they reached the end of the crates, they found Bonita, her back to them as she leaned out and fired. Two of the extra rifles she’d grabbed lay at her feet.

Without glancing back, she somehow sensed their approach and kicked the weapons behind her to Kim and Casmir. She kept firing methodically, her entire body steady. Nobody seemed to be targeting her—yet.

The cacophony of robots and crushers—and Qin and Asger—battling for their lives echoed from the bulkheads, slamming at Kim’s eardrums like a hammer on an anvil. She grabbed the rifles and thrust one into Casmir’s hands. Judging by his expression, he felt she’d just given him a poisonous snake, and she doubted he would use it. Kim didn’t know what it said about her that she would.

“Watch our backs,” Kim told him, jerking her chin along the wall the way they had come.

“Right.” Casmir faced the indicated direction, the rifle loose in his grip. “I’m placing two of the robots in the way as barriers.”

Kim eased into the gap between Bonita’s shoulder and the wall so she could get a view of the main battle by the hatch. The hatch that was stuck halfway open with the men in combat armor now swarming through. Kim groaned.

Bonita was targeting them—four had already made their way in—while Qin, Asger, and Zee kept the enemy crushers busy. Casmir’s other robots were harassing the armored men, whoever they were. Not Kingdom Guard or Fleet—they would have been in matching armor in the same colors as their uniforms. Nor were they knights. Knights all dressed like Asger. Kim feared these were the terrorists that had been sending the crushers after Casmir all along. But maybe that was good. If they could capture and question one…

The trouble was getting to them through their armor. Bonita was targeting their seams with impressive accuracy, but it wasn’t doing much.

Growling, Bonita leaned back and pulled a grenade from a cargo pocket. “Didn’t want to do this on my own ship, but we may not have any choice.”

Kim barely heard her over the cacophony of the battle.

A thunderous boom rose over the noise, and the deck shuddered. Two of the armored men flew backward as something exploded right in front of them.

“Looks like Qin got her gun,” Bonita said calmly. “Good.”

She’d been prepared to throw the grenade, but she pocketed it again and aimed her rifle at the two Qin had hit. They’d struck the hull and crumpled to the deck, their armor sooty and cracked. One dropped to all fours, shaking his helmet. Bonita targeted the seam between his arm and torso pieces—it had broken open slightly. Her bolts found the spot, and a blood-curdling scream escaped his lips.

He dropped his rifle and sprinted up the slanted hatch, sprang from it, and disappeared outside.

“Try to capture one if you can.” Kim had to yell so Bonita would hear her.

Bonita glanced at her. “I’m just trying to stay alive, kid.”

She opened fire on the second man who had been caught in the explosion, seeking another weakness in his armor. Kim lifted her rifle to help, but drew back to poke Casmir in the back instead. He jumped but fortunately didn’t swing the rifle in her direction.

“Try to get Zee to capture one of them,” she said. “These have to be the terrorists hunting you down.”

“I gathered that,” Casmir said over his shoulder. “I’ll try.”

Right, who else would have crushers and be after him?

Kim eased out again and almost lost her ear as an orange energy bolt slammed into the bulkhead. One of the men was firing back at Bonita now, Bonita and anyone standing next to her.

“Stay back,” Bonita barked, then leaned out and returned fire. She only shot twice before ducking back again. Two more bolts slammed into the bulkhead where her head had been.

Kim feared she would only be in the way if she jockeyed for position there. She felt useless but didn’t know what she could do to help. Jump up on the crates and fire from above? Her father had often mentioned how advantageous high ground was in a fight, but that presumed everyone was barefoot and in a gi in the dojo, not that one’s enemies all wore combat armor or were nearly indestructible robots.

A man shouted in pain and frustration—was that Asger?

“Look out!” Qin yelled.

Kim couldn’t see either of them.

Before she could think better of it, she tossed her rifle atop the crates, then leaped, caught the lip, and pulled herself up. She grabbed the weapon again and belly-crawled across, careful to keep her head very low. She found a spot where she could peer over the edge and see everything happening below.

Zee and the robots had all except one of the crushers busy in the corridor. The remaining crusher battled with six armored men against Qin and Asger. Asger’s helmet was up, and he was fully armored now, but poor Qin still wore only her clothing. And was surrounded by three men. Asger kept trying to block them from getting to her, but he was dealing with two of his own and the crusher. The last armored man was trying to get to Bonita, shooting every time she stuck her head out to fire.

One of Casmir’s robots appeared to have been helping, but it lay on the deck now, one of its legs half ripped off. Other pieces of robots were scattered among the combatants.

In the close quarters, Qin used the Brockinger more often like a club than a projectile launcher. An effective club—she connected with a man’s helmet and knocked him ten feet—but she surely would have preferred to fire more explosives.

One of her shells lay on the ground behind two of the men who still faced her. She must have been trying to load her gun when someone knocked it out of her hand.

Kim eased her rifle over the edge of the crate and targeted the shell. She waited, trying to time it so it would blow up and damage the men’s armor without hurting Qin.

Qin must have seen her, for she sprang backward, doing a backflip in the air before landing several meters away. The men started after her. Kim fired.

From the awkward position, she almost missed the little shell. But she clipped the end, and that was enough. It blew up, yellow fire and black smoke filling the cargo hold. Men shouted, some in surprise, some in agony.

Zee startled Kim by running through the mess, another crusher slung over his shoulder, the thing’s neck twisted and its head hanging off to one side. Zee ran to the broken hatch and hurled his foe halfway across the pavement. Kim didn’t see where the crusher landed, but it was well out of her sight.

“Retreat!” someone cried, and one of the armored men who had been caught in the explosion limped toward the hatch. “There are too many robots!”

“Not just robots,” Kim whispered.

She fired at his soot-covered back, hoping to find a weakness in the armor. If they didn’t capture one of these people, they would never find out how to keep them from hunting down Casmir. Yes, Asger had given Casmir a name of a terrorist organization, but it wasn’t as if that came with an address and directions to their hideout.

The man sprang from the hatch without slowing down. She cursed as her energy bolts struck his armor but did nothing. Three more men raced after him. She groaned. They were getting away.

Zee had run back into the corridor to battle the other crushers.

“Casmir!” Kim called. “Get him to—”

“Zee!” Casmir yelled from atop the crates behind her. “Stop one of those men, please!”

Kim couldn’t believe he added that please. Maybe the ticket-taking robots did give him a discount on train fare.

The biggest of the crushers charged into view again—Zee. The last armored man glanced back as he sprinted for the hatch. He was fast, but Zee was faster. He caught the man around the waist as he jumped, and yanked him back inside.

“Good work, Zee!” Casmir cheered, scrambling to the edge of the crate beside Kim and dropping to his belly.

Sounds of fighting still came from the corridor, so Kim assumed the other crushers continued to be a problem.

“How’d you get up here?” Kim asked.

“I jumped, the same as you. I’m not that helpless, you know.”

“I apologize. I just assumed from the vomitus towel tucked into the neck of your shirt that you might be in a weakened state.”

Casmir grimaced and touched the towel. “I am, but that should be a testament to my prowess. I pulled myself up here even in a weakened state.”

“You’re a true action hero.”

Zee strode toward Casmir, his captured man shouting and flailing. He kept clunking the crusher in the head with armored knees and elbows, blows that would have felled a person, but Zee was impervious.

Four of the battle-bots ran out of the corridor, a warped crusher strung between them. This one’s head and one limb were half-liquefied, and it was trying to re-form itself as they ran, but they reached the hatch and hurled it outside. Three more robots dragged another one out and threw it after the first.

“Gotta get that hatch shut,” Casmir said and slithered off the crate.

“Hold fire!” Kim shouted, envisioning some stray bolt striking him.

But Qin and Bonita had already stopped shooting. Asger ran to the hatch with his pertundo shaft mostly retracted—he held the halberd over his shoulder like an axe, ready to attack any crusher that tried to get back in. The armored men outside had dispersed, but two of the crushers had already recovered. They ran back toward the hatch as Casmir clambered up to reach the pneumatic arms that were stuck. He opened his satchel and yanked out tools, working almost under Asger’s feet.

One of the crushers launched itself at them. The armored man must not have shared his order to retreat with them.

Asger met the crusher with his pertundo, the blade of the halberd striking it in the chest. It only bit in a half an inch, but white arcs of lightning surged all around his attacker. For an instant, the crusher froze, as if shorted out. Asger spun and slammed a side kick into its waist. The crusher flew backward, slamming into another one that was trying to get in.

Qin leaped past Casmir and fired her anti-tank weapon at both of them. The shell struck one in the face, and the explosion knocked them apart, their torsos warping and deforming.

Kim dropped off the crate and ran past Zee, who still held the squirming man. Before she reached the hatch, Casmir shouted a triumphant “Hah!” and rolled back down to the deck. He jumped up and slapped the control panel.

Qin and Asger backed inside as the hatch finally closed.

“Take us to another air harbor,” Asger barked at Bonita.

Bonita scowled at him. “Please.”

“Please take us to another harbor before those crushers get sent back and we have to deal with them again,” Asger said.

“What harbor? Where aren’t we going to get ambushed?” Bonita looked at Casmir instead of Asger.

Casmir’s shoulders slumped. He had to know the crushers had come for him. Again.

“Drachen Landing,” Asger said.

“Isn’t that right by the castle?” Kim asked. “And used exclusively by knights, nobles, and royalty?”

“Yes,” Asger said. “No terrorists will ambush us there.”

Right, just knights, nobles, and royalty…

“Got it.” Bonita ran toward navigation.

“How did they know to ambush us here?” Casmir asked.

“I don’t know,” Asger said grimly.

“Well, thank you for fighting them. All of you.” Casmir looked at each of them, his eyes full of sincerity. They widened when his gaze landed on Qin. Blood ran down the side of her face and from a cut in her side that had left her shirt and her flesh torn open. “Damn them, I’m sorry, Qin.”

“It’s all right.” Qin shrugged easily. “I heal fast. And it’ll teach me never to walk about on Odin without armor again.” Her expression held a sad wistful tinge that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the battle. “This place isn’t safe for people like me.”

“No, no,” Casmir said. “There are safe places. Once we deal with these jerks who are trying to kill me—if it helps, Qin, they probably don’t have anything against you.”

Judging by Qin’s lopsided smile, it didn’t help.

“I’ll take you somewhere safe as soon as I’ve convinced them to stop attacking us.” Casmir gripped Qin’s forearm. “To my parents’ apartment for Sabbath dinner. My mother would love you. All of you. She’s a physical therapist, so she can help with any lingering injuries from battles.” He smiled cheerfully at Qin and Asger, nodding to include Kim. “And my father is an excellent cook. He makes a mouthwatering brisket. And blazing matzo ball soup. You’d like that, Asger. Matzo balls are high carb. Good for your macros.” Casmir used his other hand to clasp Asger’s forearm. “You’ll come, right?”

Kim watched this exchange in bemusement, wondering if he was trying to set them up on a date—of a sort—or if he was merely trying to show appreciation for their assistance. She couldn’t imagine Asger ever doing more than fighting beside Qin. Kim was a little surprised he could even manage that since he ignored her the rest of the time.

“Uh,” Asger said, eyeing both Casmir and Qin warily.

Qin’s expression was more wistful than wary as she looked at Casmir. “I’ve never had a mother. Or a father.”

“Oh, they’re highly recommended.” Casmir patted her arm. “I’ll be happy to share mine.”

Qin looked uncertainly toward Kim. Wondering if his parents would let her in their apartment without calling her a freak?

Kim nodded in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. She would remind Casmir to warn them first, but the Dabrowskis were warm, open-minded, and largely unflappable. They had to be to have survived someone building robots out of their kitchen appliances.

“We’ll see,” Asger said. “After Casmir has his appointment with the queen.”

“Oh,” Casmir said brightly. “Did you arrange something?”

Asger nodded, though he looked down at the hand on his forearm and didn’t meet Casmir’s eyes. “Right before this started, I did.”

“That’s a relief.”

Kim wished she could say it was a relief that she was going to meet the head of Royal Intelligence. She didn’t want to meet that person, and she wouldn’t have wanted to meet the queen either. If she had her choice, she would get a huge steaming latte with extra shots of espresso, and go to the lab to check in and see what work she was behind on.

“Yes. But we better deal with that first.” Asger withdrew his arm from Casmir’s grip and pointed to where Zee stood like a statue, his captive still slung over his shoulder.

Surprisingly, the man had stopped struggling. He hung limp and still, the face of his helmet against Zee’s torso.

“I don’t know how to interrogate anyone,” Casmir said uncertainly.

“I’ll handle it.” Asger pulled the man off Zee’s shoulder and tried to stand him up.

But the man collapsed. Frowning, Asger laid him on his back on the deck. The man didn’t move.

“What happened to him?” Asger looked at Zee.

“I merely constrained him,” Zee said. “I did not apply enough force to damage him.”

“There’s nothing wrong with his armor.” Casmir pointed. “He definitely wasn’t crushed. Zee, can you get his helmet off?”

Zee bent, gripped the helmet, and twisted it with a thunderous snap. He pulled it off, revealing the closed eyes of a pale-skinned man of about thirty who had the pallor of someone who rarely saw the sun. He had a beard and hair longer than typical for Kingdom soldiers. He didn’t react to the removal of his helmet—he didn’t move at all.

Kim shook her head, having a feeling they weren’t going to be able to question him. “Is he dead?”

“Dead?” Casmir stared at the man in confusion as Zee dropped the helmet.

It clunked on the deck near the man’s ear, but again, there was no reaction.

Asger dropped and checked for a pulse. “Dead. I don’t know what from.” He looked at the man’s armored form. “Did he poison himself? Have his armor inject something?”

“Why would he do that?” Casmir asked.

“To keep from being questioned.” Asger rose to his feet.

“We wouldn’t have tortured him.” Casmir pushed a hand through his hair, his eyes distressed. “Why would he feel he needed to do that? I just want to know why they’re trying to kill me. I wouldn’t have…”

“He may have feared his superiors would have tortured him,” Asger said, making his voice gentler than Kim had heard. “Or he may simply have believed in his cause to an extent that he didn’t want to betray his brethren.” He rested a hand on Casmir’s shoulder. “It isn’t your fault.”

As the deck vibrated, the Dragon taking off, Casmir stuck his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “Isn’t it?”

3

The second time the Dragon landed, the pavement outside was nearly empty of ships, and a squad of soldiers in blue and gold uniforms waited outside. Asger was the one to open the cargo hatch that Casmir had fixed earlier.

Casmir still felt numb from that battle, the dead man’s face burned into his thoughts. Why had he killed himself? All Casmir had wanted was to ask why his people were trying to kill him. He wouldn’t have ordered Zee to capture the man if he’d known he had orders to commit suicide.

Casmir pushed a hand through his hair, wondering if he should have brushed it during the quick flight to this backup air harbor. After all, he hoped to see the queen. But would that truly happen?

He looked over at Asger, glad the knight had fought on his behalf—twice now—but still not certain he could trust Asger to do more than hand him over to those soldiers. Or to Guards or knights waiting inside Drachen Castle.

“Let’s go before something else happens.” Asger strode down the cargo ramp.

“Casmir Dabrowski,” Zee said from behind. “Do you still wish me to stay with Kim Sato and protect her?”

Kim stood in the middle of the cargo hold with Bonita, waiting for her turn to leave. She would probably try to slip off to her appointment while the soldiers were busy searching the ship. Casmir, not certain he would be allowed to return to the Dragon, had grabbed his tool satchel and meager belongings. He was out of tooth gel. Maybe the queen would have some he could borrow.

“Yes,” Casmir said. “Now more than ever.”

Kim looked gravely at him. “Don’t get yourself thrown in a dungeon.”

“I believe Ishii suggested it would be an oubliette. Those come with windows on the top, don’t they?”

“Trapdoors or hatches in a high ceiling that are usually never opened again. Trust me, there are no windows.”

“Ah, I forgot you’re well versed in such things. Did you throw your characters into oubliettes in your allegorical fantasy novels?”

“How else would they contemplate their life’s failings?” Her eyes narrowed.

Casmir had a feeling the sentiment was more for him than her fictional characters. “As a typical male, I contemplate such things in the lavatory.”

“There’s nothing typical about you, Casmir. Be safe. Don’t irk anyone powerful.”

“I’ll attempt to follow your excellent advice.” Casmir bowed to her, then turned to follow Asger.

He was waiting at the bottom of the ramp. The soldiers hadn’t swarmed forward to arrest him. But they wouldn’t. He was a trusted knight. Casmir was the one who needed to watch for swarms.

“Good,” Kim said, her voice trailing him. “I think Qin will be disappointed if she doesn’t get that brisket at your parents’ place.”

“We all will be. Even Asger, though he doesn’t believe that yet. My father’s brisket melts in your mouth.”

Asger glanced back but didn’t comment on the conversation. He only pointed at his side in a hurry-up manner.

“Coming,” Casmir murmured.

He lifted his chin and set his shoulders as he fell into step beside the much longer-legged Asger. As they headed for the exit, he waited expectantly for the soldiers to impede them. But they merely watched until Casmir and Asger had passed. Eight of the soldiers remained in place—one pointed at the freighter and murmured a few orders. Right, they meant to search it. Four other soldiers fell in behind Asger and Casmir. Another escort.

Casmir wondered if it was ill-timed or precisely timed that their last escort, the four fighter ships, had disappeared before the terrorists showed up. Had that been planned? Was one of the two knights who’d spoken to Asger sharing information with those people? The Black Stars group? It seemed that had to be the case, unless some disloyal servant had listened in on the conversation. Otherwise, how would the terrorists have known where the Dragon would land?

The royal air harbor was walled, with security robots patrolling the tops and human guards stationed in towers at the corners. Asger led Casmir to protected stairs that took them up to a covered bridge over a busy street, Glasnax walls providing views of the massive castle and two smaller buildings to either side, both built from the ancient stone that had been favored in the early centuries after founding, before the colonists had regained large-scale smelting abilities. Modern additions were subtly interwoven into the old structures. All three buildings—one was the Royal Intelligence Headquarters that Kim would be visiting—overlooked the ocean from a bluff more than two hundred feet above sea level.

Human and android guards were stationed at the exit from the covered bridge and along an elevated walkway that led to the castle. Drones with cameras and weapons patrolled the area from the air. Casmir licked his lips as a couple of them zipped down toward him. For a better look? To scan his face and determine if he should be shot on sight?

It chilled him to realize someone in a security office could push a button and make that happen. He wasn’t sure why that bothered him when crushers had already tried that day to annihilate him, but simply being here on these grounds made him uneasy. He was surprised that Asger hadn’t been asked yet to explain his guest. Was it because Casmir was expected? Or because knights were so trusted that they could come and go with whomever they wished in tow?

As Casmir followed him down the stairs into a walled courtyard and toward the grand double doors at the front of the castle, a shuttle roared in from the sea and headed for a private landing pad to one side of the courtyard.

Asger’s step slowed as he watched its approach. The purple hull made Casmir wonder if another knight approached. Several men rushed out of a side door and along a walkway toward the landing pad. They wore black-and-white uniforms. Butlers or some other staff?

“Let’s go see if that’s who I think it is.” Asger veered off the front walkway and across the manicured grass.

“Uh, all right.” Casmir jogged to keep up with him while throwing glances toward the towers and drones, afraid someone—or something—would open fire at this presumptuousness. Walking across the castle lawn. Was that permitted? Even by a knight? “Just to be clear, the only reason I’m not being shot right now is because I’m with you, right?”

“That’s right.” Asger smiled over his shoulder, his face suddenly more alive than it had been in days. “You owe me.”

“How would you like that debt repaid?”

“You could buy one of my calendars.” Asger hopped over a flower bed and found a path made from tumbled blue and green agates. “I get fifteen percent of sales.”

Casmir hurried onto the path, still worried about being caught on the grass. “Are those the calendars that women like? Where you show off your biceps?”

“Biceps, pectorals, abdominals, other things.” Asger quickened his pace. The hatch in the side of the shuttle had opened.

“Other things?” Casmir tripped, flailed, and caught himself. “Like what? You’re not naked in the photos, are you?”

“Not scandalously so. Any potentially salacious body parts were artfully covered by stone pillars, plants, mailboxes and the like.”

“Mailboxes? Asger, can’t I just give you twenty crowns? I don’t want to see your biceps, pectorals, or other things. I…”

He trailed off because a woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties had stepped out onto the shuttle ramp, her arms full with a square wood box, and she looked curiously in Casmir’s direction. Or more likely in Asger’s direction. If Ishii’s female nurse qualified as a statistically significant sample size, most women would look at him whenever they stood together.

Staff in the black-and-white uniforms streamed past the woman and into the shuttle, murmuring greetings and bowing low to her as they passed. When they came out, they carried all manner of covered flowerpots, bags of dirt, and containers labeled samples or seeds. One of the staff almost bumped into the woman, apparently not expecting her to remain in one spot on the ramp. The man apologized profusely, bowing three times as he maneuvered around her. The woman didn’t seem to notice. She was staring at Casmir and Asger.

Even though Casmir had seen her face in newspapers and videos more times than he could count, it took him a few seconds to identify her as Princess Oku. He’d always dismissed her, perhaps because the journalists were so quick to do so, as merely decorative and without any real use to her father and the Kingdom government. That might be true, but she was beautiful, with elegant facial features, piercing brown eyes, and flawless bronze skin that seemed to glow with inner warmth. For all the media coverage, her thick black hair was arranged in a sophisticated bun or twist swept back or above her head, but today, she wore it in a simple ponytail.

With gloves on her hands, she was clearly working—unloading the shuttle, at least—so Casmir slowed down. He wished he could also slow Asger down. He didn’t think they should bother her.

“Your Highness, Princess Oku,” Asger greeted, dropping to one knee and bowing over it. “It’s been far too long since we spoke. You look lovely today.”

It took Casmir a moment to realize that his sturdy and stalwart knight might be enamored with the princess. Asger’s words about how the media portrayed her incorrectly and that she was smart leaped to mind. No wonder he’d said those things. He had a crush on her.

“Thank you, Sir Asger,” Oku said, her voice distracted. She was staring… not at the handsome knight bent over his knee at the bottom of her ramp but at Casmir.

What was he supposed to do? He’d never been in the presence of royalty, and she kept looking at him. Why? Because he was behaving improperly? Because he’d presumed to walk on the grass? Was he supposed to drop to one knee like Asger had? Or would a simple bow suffice? He wasn’t sure he could manage the knee without falling over. He still felt a little dizzy and nauseated from the return to gravity. And to think, he’d only been worried about puking in front of the queen.

“Uhm, greetings, Your Highness, Princess,” Casmir said, truncating his attempt to copy Asger, because he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to use her first name.

He reached the landing pad and bowed deeply, briefly dipping his knee and grimacing when his balance threatened to betray him. He swept his arm out, as if he wore a cloak, though it was only to help keep his balance. Asger was still down on one knee with his head bowed. Was he waiting for her to touch his head or some such thing so he could rise? Was Casmir supposed to do that?

“Sorry to bother you,” Casmir said, realizing that she was still staring at him—she seemed puzzled by his appearance, almost as if she recognized him, but how could that be?—and that all of the staff had stopped to stare at him too. Two burly men that had to be bodyguards were glowering down from the hatchway. “We just noticed that you were carrying a bunch of, uhm, pots.” He waved to her box. It wasn’t a pot, but he didn’t know what it was. “And wanted to make sure you didn’t need any help. Sir Asger is quite strong and could likely unload your entire shuttle by himself. He has prodigious muscles, you see.”

Head still bowed, Asger shot him a look that didn’t suggest he was thankful for this intervention.

“Yes, I’ve seen his calendar,” Oku said dryly.

She sounded amused—or maybe bemused? Casmir couldn’t tell, but he thought either reaction was superior to irritation.

“You have?” Asger rose gracefully, his chest puffed out. “You don’t have a copy, do you? Because if you do and you want, I would be happy to sign it for you.”

“I got a copy as a gift for my grandmother, actually.” She tore her gaze from Casmir and smiled faintly at Asger. “She likes to ogle young knights, and she thought you were particularly ogle-worthy.”

“I… Your grandmother did?” Asger’s eyebrows rose. He didn’t seem to know if he should consider that a compliment or not.

Casmir had no idea. All he knew was that someone should offer to carry that box for the princess. It looked heavy and awkward. It also occurred to him that it wouldn’t be a bad idea if someone in the royal family thought favorably of him. Given that the king likely wanted him flayed because of his presumptuousness over the gate, and that the queen… Well, Casmir doubted Asger had truly succeeded in setting up an appointment. Asger had gone from I-left-a-message to oh-yes-you-have-an-appointment in a short period of time. He wondered if the queen was even in the city. Or on the planet. She was known to do humanitarian and diplomatic work throughout the Kingdom and even in some other systems.

“Yes,” Oku said. “I’m certain she would be delighted if you signed it.”

One of the servants murmured something to her, hands spreading, as if to take her box. She shook her head firmly and descended the ramp.

Casmir came to a stop at Asger’s side, wondering if he should ask her about her load and her hobby. Or was it more than that? The media implied she cavorted around the systems on the government’s crowns, collecting unique flowers for her garden.

“I apologize for staring,” Oku told Casmir. “You just remind me so much of someone I used to know, but he passed away more than ten years ago, so—” Her eyebrows rose in enlightenment. “Oh, you must be the roboticist. Right?”

She knew who he was?

He’d assumed the queen was the only one who might have a clue, but could the princess also know his secrets? The secrets he didn’t know? And who did he look like that she knew? Rache was the only person it could possibly be, unless there were more of them out there. That was a terrifying thought. But why would she think Rache was dead? And in what capacity had she known him? Did she know what he was now?

Asger poked Casmir in the side.

“Sorry,” Casmir blurted. “I’m sorry.” She’d asked something, hadn’t she? “Yes. The answer is yes.”

“Are you sure?” She smiled.

It was a lovely smile, one that immediately had him feeling guilty for believing the media that she was dull and overly obsessed with galactic flowers. Even if that was possibly all true, he shouldn’t have judged her for it. What right did he have to judge anyone?

“Reasonably sure, yes. I research and construct robots. I mean, I did. I’m not sure about the state of my employment currently.” He pointed at her box. “Can I carry that for you? Or can Asger? Or can I get out of the way so you can deliver it to the garden shed or…” He looked around the castle grounds, wondering if something as prosaic as a garden shed existed among the exquisite gardens and lawns.

“No, thank you. And they’re bees.”

“Bees?” Casmir stepped back.

“They’ve been smoked. They’re fine. And they’re going to my laboratory for study.”

“Smoked,” Casmir mouthed before his memory kicked in with science trivia from his youth. “Oh, right. To mask their sense of smell and prevent them from transmitting the intruder alarm signal.”

Oku blinked. “Yes.”

“What are you studying about them?” Casmir asked before he noticed Asger frowning at him.

Maybe it was cheeky to ask the princess questions. Or maybe Asger simply wanted to be the one doing the asking. Casmir stepped back and tilted his head, inviting him to take over. It wasn’t as if he was going to ask Princess Oku on a date. He did dearly hope she would give him some more hints about himself, about how and why she knew who he was, however vaguely.

“These bees came from the Shango Habitat. They’re all that are left of the four hives we sent to assist in pollinating the almond orchard the farmers planted in the big greenhouses there. Bees are required for pollinating almond trees, and assist greatly in melons, broccoli, cranberries, and cherries. Gyzomi and makka too. Even though those crops are indigenous to Odin and have native insect pollinators that existed before humans arrived, bees have proven to be twice as effective, and since the makka grain is a staple on Shango Habitat…” She hitched a shoulder. “It’s difficult for them to maintain their independence without a way to grow it in space.”

“Shango Habitat isn’t in the Kingdom,” Asger said, his forehead scrunching.

“No, it isn’t.” Oku gave him a sad look.

“Couldn’t the flowers be pollinated manually?” Casmir asked. “Or even mechanically? I was in the middle of building a robot bird with realistic flight when my life was turned upside down. I imagine robot insects would also be possible. I don’t have the prototype of my bird anymore, unfortunately—a loathsome guard on Forseti Station smashed it under his boot—but I still have the schematics.” He waved to the chip at his temple. “I could show them to you if you’re interested. And come up with a proposal for creating smaller insect versions.” He smiled, excited at the idea of the project, even if he had a lot of other things to worry about. Or maybe because he had so many other things to worry about. His mind could use a distraction.

But Oku frowned at him. “Robot bees?”

“Yes. I would have to do some research to see if it would be possible to give them the ability to turn nectar into honey, but they could certainly carry pollen from the, uh, stamens—is that the right term?—to the stigma?” Damn, it had been too many years since he’d taken biology; he hoped he wasn’t mangling the plant parts. “Whatever is necessary to help with pollination of fruit trees and vegetables.”

“Robot bees sound like they would lack a certain… aesthetic.”

Now, Casmir was the one to scrunch up his forehead. “In the case of providing food for a habitat, shouldn’t function matter more than aesthetics?”

“People who live their whole lives on habitats have so little interaction with nature, such as we take for granted down here. I would prefer to come up with a solution that creates greater biodiversity in space, not less.”

“Oh.” Casmir scratched his jaw, now wishing he’d shaved—and gotten his hair cut—before coming to the castle. “What if the robot bees could be made to look and sound like real bees?”

She gave him a pitying smile. Casmir well recognized it as such because he’d received a lot of them from women over the years.

“Forgive me, but my arms are getting tired, and the girls are restless.” Oku tapped her chin against the box—the beehive. “It was nice to see you, Asger, and to meet you, ah…”

Hadn’t he introduced himself? He’d been so busy trying not to throw up or tip over that he couldn’t remember.

“Casmir,” he supplied. “Casmir Dabrowski. Uhm, who did you say I reminded you of?”

She opened her mouth but lost her grip and fumbled the beehive. Casmir and Asger lunged forward to help, bumping their shoulders together, but she recovered it on her own.

“I have it. Thank you. Please enjoy your stay in the castle.”

She hurried down a path toward a large stone building adjacent to a greenhouse, with the servants and bodyguards—they glowered suspiciously at Casmir on their way past—trailing after her. One man hurried to open the door for her. Before stepping inside, Oku glanced back at Casmir and Asger, her lips pursed in something that was either displeasure or puzzlement. She turned away and hurried inside.

“She’s in the royal seats, buddy,” Asger said.

“What?” Casmir found Asger studying him.

“She’s in the royal seats, and you’d be lucky to get a job mopping the arena floor.” Asger patted him on the shoulder, but there was a tension in the set of his eyes. “You’d better stick to girls who aren’t from the nobility.”

“Oh.” Casmir grasped his point. “I wasn’t flirting with her.”

“No? I thought that might be how roboticists did it. By offering to build bees for girls.”

“My mother has told me that gift-giving is appropriate, assuming it’s something the woman wants, but no, I was just hoping she’d tell me who I reminded her of and how she knew my profession.”

Asger shrugged and pointed toward a door near the back of the castle. “The queen knows. They’re close.”

“You think they’ve talked about me?” A few weeks ago, Casmir wouldn’t have believed anyone in the castle knew who he was or cared. He still found the notion bewildering.

“It does seem unlikely, but terrorists want you dead, remember.”

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten.”

“You’re important to someone.”

Asger headed down the pathway toward the door, keeping his hand on Casmir’s shoulder to guide him. Or to make sure he didn’t escape? As if he were some wall-climbing squirrel.

“Maybe the queen will be able to enlighten me on that matter,” Casmir said, walking alongside him. The sun warmed his cheeks, and he could hear the roar of the surf as waves crashed against the bluff far below. “When did you say my appointment with her was?”

“Soon.”

Asger stopped in front of a carved wood door with no hint of automation. Before he reached for the latch, it opened. Uniformed men ran out, rifles pointing at Casmir from all directions as they encircled him.

Two knights—the man and woman who’d spoken on the comm with Asger—strode out and stopped in front of Casmir.

Asger didn’t react to the ruckus. He looked like he’d expected it.

“Sir Asger,” the woman said, “you’re late.”

Asger’s eyes closed to slits. “We were attacked by terrorists with crushers at the landing coordinates you gave me.”

The woman’s eyebrows flew up, and she glanced at her male comrade. He shrugged in return. Casmir couldn’t tell if his indifference was because he didn’t care much what befell Asger—and Casmir—or because he’d had some prior knowledge and hadn’t been surprised.

“They grow too bold,” the woman whispered, scowling at the ground. “The king won’t be pleased by another terrorist attack in our very city.”

“No, he won’t,” the male knight said. “Lieutenant, take this man to the dungeon.” He pointed at Casmir. “Remove anything he could use as a weapon, and secure him in a cell until Van Dijk’s officers arrive to interrogate him.”

Casmir slowly spread his arms, opening his palms to show he had nothing dangerous. Someone behind him removed his tool satchel, but the strip search would probably wait until he wasn’t out in the open in the castle courtyard. Or so he hoped, just in case Princess Oku walked out of her greenhouse. His skin was extra pasty after weeks in space, and he had a sense that a princess shouldn’t be subjected to such a sight.

“Asger, Baron Farley wants your briefing,” the male knight said.

“Understood. I’ll head up to his office.”

One of the uniformed men pulled Casmir’s arms behind his back and secured flex-cuffs around his wrists. “Get moving, criminal.”

Another man prodded him in the back with his rifle. The knights stepped aside so Casmir could head into the castle.

“Perhaps you could take me straight to see the queen,” Casmir said, “and we could forgo the dungeon today.”

“The queen, right. She’s going to want to see a criminal.”

“The king?” Casmir asked.

He doubted the king would treat him favorably, but he had been hoping for a chance to talk to the man, to gauge him as a person rather than as the royal entity filtered through the media. Who could know the mind of someone only heard here and there in public speeches and addresses to the Senate? Casmir wanted to figure out if Jager could be trusted to do the right thing with the gate and would be willing to let scientists, engineers, and archaeologists like Kim’s mother research it. Scientists and engineers from all of the systems, not just the Kingdom.

“Maybe he’ll show up for your execution.” Another prod.

“Nobody actually gets executed in the Kingdom, do they?” Casmir asked. “The only capital punishment that’s still on the books is for treason.”

“That’s right, criminal.”

Casmir opened his mouth to say that he hadn’t betrayed the Kingdom in any way, but was that true? Was it possible others would see his choices as treasonous? A good lawyer ought to be able to argue otherwise, but… would he be permitted a lawyer? Or would being arrested directly by the crown result in some strange bypassing of the judicial system and abeyance of his liberties?

Casmir glanced over his shoulder as he walked into the cool castle interior and caught Asger looking glumly at him. Asger’s gaze shifted away at the eye contact. Well, at least he felt bad about this.

A message came in through Casmir’s chip. It was Asger.

I apologize for lying to you, Casmir. It’s not what I would have preferred, but you’ve proven yourself capable of worming your way out of trouble, and I thought you might do that again if you were warned. The king wants the gate, and we—the knights—have been tasked with getting it for him. I’ve already jeopardized my career once by helping you. I can’t do that again. I need to be a good, obedient knight for a while.

It’s all right, Casmir replied as the soldiers led him down a set of stone stairs that appeared to have been carved from the bluff itself. When I opted to return to Odin, I knew this might end up happening. I forgive you.

You do? It would feel more right if you felt betrayed and raged about what an ass I am.

Then I definitely forgive you. I’ll forgive you even more if you keep an eye out for Laser and the Stellar Dragon. Casmir kept himself from mentioning Qin, though he worried about her most of all. She lacked Bonita’s experience, and she might be attacked on sight here simply for being different. Unless I miss my guess, Bonita will try to sell the patent I gave her, and if someone is watching the ship, she could be in danger.

They should be fine in the royal air harbor, but I’ll check in on her.

Thank you. Since she was basically forced into coming because she was helping me out, I feel responsible for her safety.

When a response didn’t come immediately, Casmir assumed the conversation was over, but a minute later, Asger added, If you find it encouraging, the queen did say she would speak with you. But you need to survive for three days. She’s at a meeting on the other side of the planet and won’t be back until then.

Survive? Was everyone sure he was going to be killed for treason? That was disturbing.

I’ll do my best, Casmir tried to reply, but the message didn’t go out. Signal lost, his chip informed him.

As they descended deeper, he feared it would stay lost. Castle security surely didn’t want its prisoners speaking with the outside world, so signals were likely muted.

He tried not to panic or think about what his interrogation would involve. He hoped someone told the medical staff about his drug allergies.

4

Qin could smell trees, grass, dirt, and countless flowers she’d never encountered before. She stood inside the cargo hold but leaned against the open hatch, nostrils twitching as she examined the world around the parked freighter with more than her eyes. Her view was limited, blocked by walls and other ships that had landed since they arrived, but her keen sense of smell told her about the ocean and a nearby park, even about small creatures scampering through the trees there. She wasn’t hungry, but some instinct deep inside her blood made her think that it would be appealing to climb those trees and hunt those creatures.

“Here they come,” Bonita muttered.

She leaned against the jamb on the other side of the wide cargo hatchway, her arms folded, her hand close to the hilt of her DEW-Tek pistol. It was the only weapon she carried, and she wore it openly. Neither she nor Qin wore galaxy suits or armor. The only weapons Qin carried were her fangs and claws; it wasn’t as if she could leave those in her cabin to show her peaceful intent.

Eight uniformed men and women strode toward the ramp. They’d been standing in a formation on the pavement, watching the freighter for almost an hour. They hadn’t stopped Kim when she’d left, striding toward an exit as if she knew where she was going and had every right to go there. Maybe she did. She was a citizen of this planet.

Qin and Bonita were not. What rights did they have here?

“Captain Lopez,” the woman leading the squad of Kingdom Guards said as she walked up the ramp. “I’m Lieutenant Kara. You’ve agreed to have your ship searched for the bioweapon you left Forseti Station with. Will you also agree to being questioned under the influence of—” she had been glancing into the cargo hold as she spoke, and her gaze landed on Qin. “Dear God, what are you?”

Her hand dropped to a stunner on her waist, and murmurs came from the troops behind her.

“That’s Qin, my security officer,” Bonita said. “She won’t give you trouble, and neither will I. We just want to clear our names, so we can do business on your world.”

“Uh…” It was a moment before the lieutenant wrenched her gaze from Qin.

Qin tried not to let her feelings show, the hurt she experienced when people looked at her as if she wasn’t as human as they were. She’d always gotten looks wherever she went because she was tall, furred, and fanged, and that made a striking combination, but the Kingdom was the worst. Nobody here had genetic modifications, so she stood out far more than in other systems.

Lieutenant Kara cleared her throat and shifted her gaze to Bonita, though she was careful to keep Qin in her peripheral vision, as if she might spring for her neck at any moment. No, Qin would only do that if they threatened her captain.

“What business do you have here, Lopez?” Kara asked.

“I’m hoping to sell a patent to a medical equipment manufacturing company.”

Kara’s mouth dangled open. “You are a smuggler and bounty hunter, are you not?”

“I’m a bounty hunter—no smuggling going on anymore, as that was a career mistake. As of a couple of weeks ago, I now speculate in patents.”

“I see.” Kara didn’t look like she truly saw, and Bonita didn’t explain further.

Understandable. It was a long story.

“Fan out and search the ship,” Kara told her people.

They boarded, some only with their weapons, but others with heavy-duty scanners. No matter what they carried, they stared and gaped at Qin as they passed.

Freak, freak. None of them said it, but she could see the word in their eyes. The memory of Asger saying it still echoed in her mind. Somehow, it had hurt a lot coming from him. Because she’d expected a knight to be noble and chivalrous. Because of her own silly notions.

A man carrying a medical kit walked in last.

“Where shall we do the interrogation?” he asked politely.

“I get a choice?” Bonita asked. “There’s a sauna and a salt room on the middle deck. Quite cozy for interrogations, I imagine.”

“A what?”

“Sauna and salt room. Viggo’s ancestors came from System Hesperides, and the ship was originally built there. They’re into saunas.”

“Ah.” The man looked puzzled rather than enlightened.

Bonita sighed and jerked a thumb toward the ladder. “Might as well do it in the lounge.”

The lounge where she kept her blowtorch. Qin watched Bonita’s face in case she gave some silent warning with a widening of her eyes, but Bonita merely headed across the cargo hold, doing her best—Qin could tell—to hide her limp. She intended to cooperate.

Qin, worried she might be manhandled during the questioning, started after them.

“Not you, freak,” one of the remaining men said, his rifle swinging up to point at her chest.

“God, are those claws?” the one beside him said, also lifting his rifle. “What is she? Does she even understand System Trade?”

“I’m a genetically engineered warrior, and I understand you fine.” Qin lifted her chin. “I’m not a freak.” She almost said that Casmir said so, but these people probably didn’t know him. “I need to accompany my captain in case she needs help.”

“She won’t need help answering questions.”

“He’s going to drug her, right? I need to be there in case anything gets violent.”

“As long as she cooperates, nothing will get violent. It’s not like Inspector Tsukuda has claws.” The man snorted.

Qin clenched her jaw, torn between wanting to protect the captain and not wanting to make trouble. It was hard. These two were the only men near the cargo hatch—the others were busy searching the ship. They didn’t appear to have any cybernetic or genetic enhancements, and she believed she could disarm them both and lock them in the cleaning-robot closet.

But what would the ramifications be if she did? Would she cause more trouble for Bonita?

“What’s going on here?” a familiar voice asked.

Asger appeared at the base of the ramp, his gaze locked on the men’s rifles. They were pointing unerringly at Qin’s chest, not that she was worried. She would see when they started to pull the triggers and have time to react. Her reflexes had always been much faster than those of a normal human.

“The captain is being questioned in the lounge,” Qin said, hurrying to speak first. She didn’t trust that Asger wouldn’t side with these two and call her a freak, especially if they had time to explain themselves. “I wish to go in with her to make sure she isn’t threatened or harmed in any way. These two men object.” She looked at Asger, who was continuing up the ramp, and didn’t care if her expression was challenging as she added, “I was debating if I would get in trouble for disarming them and locking them in the cleaning closet.”

Both men curled their lips.

“You could try, little freak girl,” one said, a weird glint in his eyes suggesting he wished she would, that he wanted to shoot her and just needed an excuse.

Asger reached the hatchway and pressed down on the man’s rifle, then flicked a finger, telling the other man to also lower his.

“I’ve fought with her twice,” Asger said. “She’d rip your heads off before you could squeeze your triggers.”

Indignation filled their eyes. Qin didn’t know whether to be bolstered by his support, surprised by it, or offended that he truly thought she would rip people’s heads off. She’d intended to lock them in the closet with all of their body parts still attached.

“Fought with her, Sir Knight? Like… on the same side?”

Asger hesitated, and Qin suspected he was trying to figure out how to say it had been Casmir’s side, and she’d happened to be there too. Surely, he feared some taint would linger on him like radioactive isotopes if he admitted they’d gone into battle together.

But in the end, he said, “Yes,” and made a shooing motion to them. “Guard the ship from out there, will you? We were attacked earlier by terrorists. I’d like some warning if they—or their stolen and reprogrammed crushers—show up again.”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

The men trotted down the ramp, and Qin found herself without any weapons pointed at her chest. She wondered what it would be like to command that kind of respect simply by showing up in a purple cloak. Not that Asger didn’t fight well. She’d seen that for herself and assumed all knights were similarly capable. But she fought just as well. And she was a freak.

A freak who wanted to walk freely outside and go find those trees and lie on her back in the grass, inhaling the scents and feeling the sun on her skin. But that wouldn’t likely happen here.

“The captain is being interrogated?” Asger asked.

“Yes, in the lounge.” Qin, no longer detained by surly strangers, headed toward the ladder.

When Asger followed her, Qin frowned over her shoulder at him.

“Casmir asked me to make sure she was all right,” Asger explained.

“Where is Casmir? I thought you were going to see the queen together.”

“He’s in the dungeon.”

Qin lurched to a stop at the base of the ladder. “What?”

“He hid something very important from the Kingdom fleet. The king, the military, Royal Intelligence, and everyone in between want to know where it is. He’ll be interrogated.”

“You just let them throw him in the dungeon?”

“I work for Royal Intelligence and His Highness’s knights. Casmir tranquilized me after I helped him not once but twice, first with getting off Ishii’s ship and then with taking down those robots and gaining control of the cargo ship.” Asger shook his head, looking both indignant and flustered, as if he felt he was making excuses and that he’d done something wrong.

Qin sure thought he had.

“You know we wouldn’t have won that fight if he hadn’t found a way to nullify those robots. And if you helped him off that other ship, it was only because you wanted something.” Qin pointed a finger at his chest. “You wanted that gate, and you thought he could get it in a way that the military couldn’t. And you were right.”

“That’s ridiculous. He’s just an engineer with no combat training. I couldn’t have known he would do anything but get us all killed.” Asger looked away from her, and she sensed his lie.

She wasn’t sure why he’d had faith in Casmir early on, but Asger had known Casmir had some unique talents that might prove helpful—and he’d bet on him. Qin wasn’t good at a lot of things when it came to people, but she’d learned long, long ago to detect when they were lying to her. Probably because it happened so often. She’d had a lot of practice.

“But he didn’t get us killed. And he kept Rache from making off with that gate. You owe him.”

“I do not owe him,” Asger snapped, his gaze jerking back to hers, his thick hair swinging about his shoulders with the movement.

Even though he’d tried to kill Qin when first they met, and even though he could never find her even vaguely appealing, she couldn’t help but notice that his hair, his face, and all of him was handsome. Very handsome. For a moment, she wondered what it would be like if she were some beautiful and fully human princess here on Odin, and she could have a man like him. Any man at all. She liked to think she’d only choose someone as kind and noble as he was handsome, but for her whole life, she hadn’t gotten to choose. She’d always been someone’s property with no freedom whatsoever.

These last few months, working for Bonita, she’d had a semblance of freedom, even if she’d agreed to follow her captain’s orders. Now, she was in danger of losing that, of being dragged back to the Druckers. Of never getting to choose anything—or anyone—for herself.

“I don’t owe him,” Asger repeated, staring past her shoulder, the words seemingly more for himself than for her. “It’s my duty as a knight to obey the king and my superiors. They wanted him for questioning, and I had to let them take him.”

Qin wrenched her attention back to the moment, to Casmir’s problem. It felt less selfish to focus on that than on her own concerns. “We should break him out before they torture him to death.”

Asger’s gaze locked back onto hers. “They’re not going to torture him. This is the modern era, and the Kingdom is not, whatever you people in other systems think, some tyrannical regime where life is treated cavalierly.”

“I’ve been elevated from freak to you people? I suppose that’s an improvement.” Qin, not sure why she was debating this with him, climbed up to the ship’s middle deck. She needed to make sure Bonita wasn’t being treated cavalierly right now and get her opinion on Casmir’s imprisonment.

Qin doubted Bonita would suggest a rescue, but maybe she would be willing to help Casmir rescue himself again. If that was possible.

Asger muttered something about difficult women under his breath and followed her up. With her keen ears, Qin would have caught it if he’d said more, but she didn’t think he had.

The hatch to the lounge was open, with two uniformed men, the man with the medical kit, and the lieutenant inside. The lieutenant stood facing Bonita, who sat at the table. Her blowtorch wasn’t anywhere in sight. Her palms lay flat on the table, and her face vacillated between tense and relaxed. Had they already given her a drug?

The lieutenant frowned at the hatchway and held up her hand.

Qin stepped inside but didn’t try to go farther. She leaned against the bulkhead. All she wanted was to make sure Bonita wasn’t hurt.

“So you thought to sell the bioweapon to Rache?” the lieutenant asked, turning back to Bonita.

“No,” Bonita said. “I was looking for a way to get rid of the thing, but not like that. I didn’t want it to be used on anyone.”

Asger stepped inside and stood against the wall beside Qin, not close enough to touch. Never close enough to touch.

As the lieutenant continued to question Bonita, a part of Qin wanted to tell Asger to go away, that he’d only been invited onto the ship when he’d been Casmir’s guest, and now that he’d abandoned Casmir to who knew what fate, he wasn’t welcome. But she grudgingly admitted that he might be useful. Especially if he’d told Casmir he would keep an eye out for Bonita. If he felt some guilt about abandoning Casmir to his colleagues, he might do even more than that. Maybe it was Qin’s imagination that she sensed that, but she didn’t think so.

“Very well, Captain,” the lieutenant said, stepping back from the table. “I’ll take this report to my superiors.”

Bonita, still under the influence of the drug, smiled blearily.

The smile was so out of place on her face that it made Qin uncomfortable. Bonita wasn’t cranky or grumpy all the time, but she always looked weary and beaten down, like life had struck her too many blows for her to ever recover fully. Qin always wished she could help ease the way, but Bonita was stubborn and independent, and even when she said she would rely more on Qin, she never did.

“Uhm, Lieutenant?” Qin said as the woman headed for the hatchway. “Are we—is she allowed to leave the ship now?” Qin pointed at Bonita, knowing she wanted to arrange that meeting.

“The ship may not leave. Not until we’ve finished our scans and analyzed the data. As for the captain…” The lieutenant pursed her lips. “Her status is undetermined at this point. She is not a Kingdom citizen, but she has committed crimes in our system. If she leaves, she will do so under surveillance.”

Qin started to object, but realized the words if she leaves did not forbid her to do so. She closed her mouth.

The lieutenant continued toward the hatchway but paused again before leaving the lounge. “Are you coming, Sir Knight? There’s no need for you to remain here.” She pursed her lips again, oozing disapproval as she glanced at Qin.

“Soon,” was all Asger said.

“Of course.” The lieutenant bowed to him and walked out.

Bonita’s eyes were focused—no, unfocused—on the ceiling. It would take a while for the drug to wear off. Until then, Qin would watch over her. She didn’t think she should presume to contact the person who might be interested in buying Casmir’s patent. She knew nothing about the situation and didn’t want to risk messing up.

Assuming Asger would leave, Qin pushed away from the bulkhead, swinging her arms and flexing her muscles, wishing for an outlet for her tension. It had been some time since she’d had a worthy opponent to spar with. More than once, she’d thought about asking Casmir if Zee would be able to do that without escalating to violence. Now, she feared she’d lost her opportunity. Zee had accompanied Kim when she left the ship. What if she never saw either of them again?

“Everything all right, Captain?” Qin rested a gentle hand on Bonita’s shoulder. She’d learned at a young age that she had to be gentle when interacting with humans—and to always make sure her claws were retracted when touching them.

“My knees never stop aching, I don’t trust the Kingdom, and the digits in my bank account are negligible.” Bonita shook her head sadly, looking through Qin rather than at her.

Bonita was usually blunt, but the honesty startled Qin, until she remembered the drug.

“I’m sorry,” Qin said quietly. “If we’re able to secure money for that patent, you should keep it for yourself—for resupplying the ship and—”

One of Viggo’s vacuums skittered into the lounge, looking more like it was fleeing a predator than navigating one of its usual cleaning circuits. It zipped up one of the walls and sucked microscopic debris off the ceiling. Maybe one of the men inspecting the ship had kicked it.

“You should just take care of yourself,” Qin finished. “I’ll worry about the bounty on my own. It’s not your responsibility to bail me out of my own problems.”

Bonita smiled blearily at her.

“Bounty?” Asger asked from the bulkhead.

Qin grimaced. She hadn’t forgotten he was there, not exactly, but she hadn’t thought he would care enough to pry.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m going to make sure your people aren’t molesting Viggo’s vacuums.”

She headed for the corridor, and Asger lifted a hand, as if he might stop her, but she gave him a cool look, and he lowered it, deciding against impeding her. Qin walked out, wishing Asger were in the castle, getting Casmir out of the dungeon instead of lurking on the Dragon.

5

Yas was back in the familiar sickbay of the Fedallah and feeling much better, but he couldn’t say it was like coming home. He was a little bolstered that Rache had agreed to look into President Bakas’s assassination—and Yas being framed for the murder—but Rache wanted to find that gate first. Yas told himself he would have to be patient. In the meantime, he would be a good doctor to the mercenaries, whether they appreciated it or not, and do the job he’d promised to do. And try to help Chief Jess Khonsari.

Assuming she deigned to see him again. She had agreed to an exam, so he could get a fresh look at everything and come up with some alternatives to the powerful and addictive trylochanix she took for pain, but she was ten minutes late. When they had made the appointment, he had only mentioned making sure she was recovering fully from the pseudo radiation, but maybe she had sensed that he wanted to talk about more than that.

The sickbay door opened, and he spun toward it, his heart speeding up. He snorted at himself, admitting that maybe he wanted to see Jess again for more reasons than the purely medical.

But it was Captain Rache who strode in, followed by a gangly dark-skinned mercenary who had to duck to pass through the doorway. A cybernetic headset had been surgically attached to his skull and covered half of his face, leaving lenses in front of his eyes—or perhaps in place of his eyes. Yas hadn’t spoken often to him but recognized him and remembered skimming his record. A former cattle farmer turned astroshaman turned mercenary, Lieutenant Amergin ran security, hacked into networks far and wide, and sang a cappella with two other officers whenever there was a drunken gathering in the mess hall. Since Yas avoided those gatherings, he didn’t know if the man was good at it.

“Dr. Peshlakai,” Rache said. “Lieutenant Amergin is going to sift through the news, mainstream and not, in the various systems and help you figure out who killed your president.”

“Oh?” Yas leaned forward with new interest in the man. He hadn’t expected Rache to do anything this soon to try to solve that problem. “Thank you, Captain. And Lieutenant.”

Amergin grinned—despite the top half of his face being covered, his mouth was normal, full of white human teeth—and tipped the wide-brimmed hat he wore. It seemed out of place above the black galaxy suit that covered the rest of his body, but most of the mercenaries seemed to favor eclectic attire. “Shouldn’t be too hard. People always want to talk. You just have to know where to stick your ears to listen.”

“Wise words,” Yas murmured, noticing that one of Amergin’s ears had a gray-blue mechanical interior.

“I’m heading down to Odin,” Rache said. “To find Dabrowski and figure out where he hid the gate. Once we deal with that, if Amergin finds out where your responsible parties are, we’ll pay them a visit.”

His tone had that icy edge that it so often did, and Yas didn’t know if it was directed at Dabrowski or the people who had framed Yas. It was strange to imagine having the deadly mercenary on his side, like a trained attack dog prepared to spring for an enemy’s jugular.

“Then let me hope you find the roboticist and the gate swiftly,” Yas said before considering the implications of Rache’s words. It was unlikely Dabrowski wanted the mercenaries to know where the gate was, so Rache would have to forcibly retrieve the information from his brain.

Yas tried not to shudder. Maybe Rache was more like a rabid attack dog than a trained one, dangerous to anyone around him, anyone who irked him just a little.

“Will you go alone, Captain?” Lieutenant Amergin asked. “A lot of people on that planet want you dead. Might want to take a strike force in case things get hairy. You’ll take the blank-slate shuttle, I assume? Want me to help the chief spruce it up just for this planet? It’s still got L.S. Antiquarian Furniture Delivery on the side and for the ident marker.”

“Yes, let’s assign it to a Kingdom delivery company. But I’ll fly it down alone. Stealthily. There’s nothing to be gained from fighting Kingdom Guards and knights on their own turf.”

“No? Thought you enjoyed killing them for sport, sir.”

“Not on their home soil where I’m outnumbered five billion to one,” Rache said. “I’ve occasionally considered sneaking into the castle to assassinate Jager myself, but his eldest son is only thirty and as much of a manipulative ass as he is. If a less subtle one. I don’t know that I’d be doing anyone a favor. I’ll reconsider that if the money is ever high enough to make the risk worth it.” Rache spread a hand toward the ceiling.

Yas said nothing. He didn’t want to encourage talk of assassinations.

“What happens if King Jager is behind President Bakas’s death?” Amergin asked. “We still going to help Yas get his revenge? You said his job is pro bono, didn’t you?”

Yas raised a finger. “I’m not looking for revenge so much as to exonerate myself. I was wrongfully accused, and it’s… inconvenient.”

Rache snorted. “Yes, it often is. I don’t actually think Jager is behind that, but we’ll sail through that gate when we come to it.”

“Who else would have done it?” Yas asked. “President Bakas had just quashed a movement to make an alliance with the Kingdom. There were people on our own station full of dissent over that, but it’s hard to believe someone who lived there would, ah, drop a bomb in their own outhouse, as Corporal Chains would say.”

Yas couldn’t believe he was quoting one of the mercenaries. What had his life become?

“That’ll be for me to find out.” Lieutenant Amergin poked his thumb against his chest. “With whatever clues you can give me as a near-eyewitness, Doctor. Could be lots of people there that wanted someone lenient to the Kingdom to be put in charge, and it sounds like your vice president qualified. Times have been changing a lot lately.”

“An Old Earth poet once said, ‘Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.’” Rache inclined his head and left sickbay.

Amergin shrugged at Yas. “I don’t know what to say when he gets philosophical.”

Yas was encouraged whenever he was reminded that Rache read books now and then. Though maybe it would have been safer for the galaxy if he’d been more of a thug and less of a thinker. Yas thought of Dabrowski and how this might end for him, then shook his head. He had his own life to think about—and helping people more directly in it.

“You said you and Chief Khonsari will be working on a shuttle later?” Yas asked casually.

“Yup, I’ll wrangle her up. I do all the programming, but she’s a whiz with the paint droids and can change up the hull in minutes.”

“Good. Thank you.”

If Jess wouldn’t come to sickbay, Yas would go to her.

Kim felt conspicuous walking down the street toward Royal Intelligence Headquarters with a looming crusher a couple of steps behind her. But after the attack, she couldn’t fault Casmir for being cautious, and she felt lucky to have a friend who wanted to keep her safe. She just wished he’d focus more of his brain power on keeping himself safe.

Even though robots, androids, and automated vehicles were common in Zamek, Zee drew more than a few curious—or were those concerned?—looks from passersby. Fortunately, Kim didn’t need to go far. She stopped at the driveway leading up to the Intelligence offices and braced herself. The headquarters building was almost as intimidating as the castle itself, with an ancient stone exterior, guard towers at the corners, and a crenellated walkway along the edge of the gray-blue metal roof.

The faintest hint of roasting coffee beans reached her nose, and she located a coffee vending kiosk down the street. She started salivating. How long since she’d had anything except those dreadful coffee bulbs with their twenty-seven ingredients, only one of which was vaguely representative of actual coffee?

“Too long,” she muttered, looking from the kiosk to the building and back to the kiosk.

It wouldn’t hurt to get a latte, would it? She was already a half hour late for her appointment, not that she had voluntarily set that or ever found the timing reasonable.

But whatever security cameras the place possessed would have already captured her. Right now, someone might be wondering why she was dilly-dallying. Maybe she could send Zee for the coffee. Like an ominous secretary. But how would the crusher pay? She didn’t have any physical currency, just the banking chip embedded in her finger.

“Casmir wouldn’t send you on some menial errand, would he?” Kim asked, heading down the street to get the coffee for herself.

“I am programmed to protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski.”

“Yes, but what about coffee retrieval?”

The crusher didn’t have eyes, but his face turned toward her, and she sensed that it didn’t quite know the appropriate answer. “My specialty is combat, but I am familiar with object acquisition, and I have been instructed to enter dangerous areas in order to rescue trapped individuals. There is no specific mention of coffee in my programming, but I am adaptable. I could retrieve what you wish, Kim Sato.”

Kim imagined the crusher leaping into the kiosk, knocking anything or anyone threatening out of the way, and snatching the entire espresso machine and running. “We’ll just go together, eh?”

The crusher walked at her side, not complaining. But as she reached the line for the kiosk, stepping into place behind several uniformed men and women who frowned at Zee, he spoke again.

“A drone approaches, Kim Sato. I believe it is watching us. It came from the Intelligence building.”

Kim spotted an aerial robot about the size of Viggo’s vacuums. It whirred in close, circled the kiosk, then hovered.

In case it was there for her, she held up a finger and pointed at the front of the line. Unless those Intelligence people sent a fleet of troops to drag her away, she wouldn’t be deterred from her mission.

“I am prepared to take the next order,” the robot cashier said, bulbous eyes and boxy body rotating toward Kim.

She ordered a large latte with extra shots and a straight drip coffee with a warming sleeve, in case she got stuck in that building for a long time.

“Is that for your robot?” a man asked when she paid and clenched the beverages close, one in each hand.

“Both are for me,” Kim said, though she preferred not to make chitchat with strangers. “I’ve been off-world. The coffee options are—”

“Say no more.” The man raised his hand. “I’ve been. And I understand.”

Kim hurried back to the office building, taking deep and satisfying swallows of the steaming latte as she went. She wasn’t surprised to find an athletic woman with short salt-and-pepper hair and a lot of shiny rank pins on her uniform jacket standing outside, tapping her foot and waiting. Chief Superintendent Van Dijk?

“Scholar Sato?” she asked, frowning as she looked at Zee.

“Yes,” Kim said, not explaining the crusher.

“You’re late.” She sounded irritated.

Kim was on the verge of describing how their ship had been attacked by armored men and crushers when they’d landed at the coordinates the authorities had provided them, but she noticed Van Dijk looking at her coffee cups.

“Is one of those for me?” she asked.

Kim caught herself before she pulled both cups tightly and protectively to her chest. Normally, she would have no problem ignoring social conventions regarding politeness, but this was a person it might be good not to irritate. She worked for the crown and likely reported directly to the king every morning. Or maybe a gift would have been appropriate to bring regardless of irritation considerations?

Casmir would smile widely and give the chief superintendent one if not both coffees, whether he wanted to curry favor or not. Kim wasn’t sure what it said about her that she considered her admittedly quirky friend as a barometer for what was socially acceptable, but he was better at that stuff than she.

“Yes,” Kim said. “Do you prefer a black coffee or a latte?”

“Black coffee.”

Kim offered the smaller cup, relieved she didn’t have to explain that she’d already consumed a third of it and left saliva on the lid.

“Thank you.” Van Dijk sounded less irritated.

Kim had made the right decision. She could buy another coffee later.

“Let’s talk in my office.” Van Dijk strode up the walkway.

Kim hurried after her, wondering if she would be asked to leave Zee outside the door. Or outside the building. There was an ancient stable that had been converted into a vehicle house, and she imagined being asked to park the crusher in a stall.

But Van Dijk said nothing about Zee as she led the way through the rambling building, the corridors and offices a mixture of ancient architecture and modern amenities, such as computer displays on the stone walls, showing updates of news stories, citizen media searches, and economic markets. In the back, they took a lift to the top floor, then walked to an office overlooking the city rather than the sea. Kim supposed the head of Royal Intelligence needed to keep an eye on the citizens rather than enjoying nature.

Van Dijk stopped in the doorway and pointed at Zee. “I assume that has recording abilities?”

“Yes.” Kim wasn’t quite sure how, given that everything in the crusher, including sensory inputs, was handled on the molecular level, but she’d seen the video Zee had recorded and transmitted from the Machu Picchu.

“If you can turn it off, he can come in, but you’re not in danger here—I’m presuming that its purpose is to protect you? If you can’t turn it off, I have to ask you to leave it outside.”

Kim considered Zee. “I’m not positive he doesn’t record everything automatically. He’s not mine.”

“Professor Dabrowski made it, right?” Van Dijk’s tone chilled again.

“Yes.” Kim saw no point in lying. With agents all over the system, and likely the eleven other systems, the superintendent probably knew almost everything that had happened to Kim and Casmir by now. “Wait outside, Zee.” Remembering that Casmir was always polite with the robot, she added, “Please.”

“Affirmative.” Zee stood beside the door in a guard position. “Yell if you are threatened, Kim Sato. I sometimes struggle to determine when humans are being threatened and when violence is desirable.”

Yes, Zee had stormed in to intercede the first time she and Asger had sparred on the Stellar Dragon.

“I will. Thank you.”

Van Dijk waved Kim to a seat and sent some wireless command to close the door.

“It would behoove you to distance yourself from Professor Dabrowski—and his creations—for the near future,” Van Dijk said.

Kim did not like the sound of that. Casmir’s appointment with the queen must not have gone well. If there had been an appointment. Asger could have been lying.

“He’s my roommate,” Kim said, judging from Van Dijk’s pause that she expected a response.

“Yes, I know. You may want to seek out a new roommate. I don’t think he’s going to be in a position to pay his rent for a while.”

Kim’s fingers tightened around the coffee cup. She knew Casmir had made a dubious choice and could expect punishment, but she’d hoped… He had a knack for wriggling his way into people’s good graces, so she’d hoped he would be able to do so again, especially since the queen seemed to care whether he lived or died.

“I see,” Kim said, certain that nothing helpful would come of her trying to defend Casmir’s choice.

If anything, it might make Van Dijk less likely to trust her. Kim didn’t know yet if she was in trouble, but she’d helped the people on the Machu Picchu. She hoped the government would look favorably on her for that. She also hoped Van Dijk didn’t know that Kim had let Rache’s people go when she could have tried harder to stop them.

Van Dijk sat at the chair behind the desk and waved at her contacts. “I’m looking at the report I recently got from Dr. Sikou on the Osprey. From what I understand of this and the other reports I’ve received, the gate is emitting a pseudo radiation, as she called it, that may be a defense mechanism. Tenebris Rache proved immune, possibly because his mitochondria were never altered as a preventive measure against the Great Plague.” She raised her eyebrows.

Kim nodded once. She wished Sikou had left that bit out but couldn’t be surprised that she hadn’t. It was possible it could be useful in coming up with an immunity for other people who might want to work with the gate.

“You were also able to adapt your existing radiation-consuming bacteria to consume this new pseudo radiation, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible that someone inoculated with it before coming in contact with the gate would be immune to its attack?”

“It’s… possible, but the exposure was so high, capable of killing a person in scant days, that I fear the bacteria might finish consuming the radiation after their human host had died. In most cases.”

Van Dijk leaned back in her chair. “I was afraid of that. Do you think it would be possible to tinker with our mitochondria to make some researchers immune to the gate’s attack without also making them susceptible to the Great Plague again? I take it Captain Rache is lucky he’s never encountered that particular bacteria.”

The way Van Dijk said his name made Kim think she knew it was a fake name. Maybe she even knew his real name.

“It’s a virus,” Kim said. “Not a bacteria. And yes, he would be susceptible to it if he encountered it. Likely. He mentioned that he has immune-system enhancements acquired at a station in another system. The Great Plague originally had an eighty percent death rate. Some people survived, though they were rarely left unscathed.”

Van Dijk waved a dismissive hand at these details. “If people were willing to risk the Plague and to have their mitochondria altered back to what the original humans who settled the colonies had… could that be done?”

“I’m not sure we have the technology in System Lion. You are, after all, proposing genetic modifications that end up being hereditary.” Kim didn’t point out that such tinkering was illegal in the Kingdom, assuming that Van Dijk already knew but was far enough above the law that she didn’t have to care.

“I understand that. Could it work?”

“It’s easier to do gene editing during the embryonic period. It’s obviously possible to alter all of a person’s mitochondria, since we did it two hundred years ago, but as I said, the technology and equipment to do so won’t likely be found here.”

“We can acquire equipment from other systems if need be. Our people need to be able to study the gate, assuming we’re able to locate it again.” Van Dijk squinted at Kim. “I don’t suppose you know where it’s hidden?”

“Casmir was careful not to tell me or anyone else.”

“I bet. Would you be willing to answer that same question under the influence of eslevoamytal?”

Kim shrugged. “Yes.”

“All right.” Van Dijk sipped from the coffee.

The aroma of their combined beverages lingered in the room, almost making Kim happy to be there, breathing it in. Almost.

“What’s the most plausible way forward, Scholar Sato? In your opinion?”

“To allow people to research the gate? You could send the loaded droid Dr. Kelsey-Sato in to study it with radiation-hardened androids with engineering and gate knowledge. They should be immune to the effects and capable of doing the necessary research.”

Van Dijk grunted. “Your mother is known to have as many colleagues and contacts in other systems as she does here. She wouldn’t be the king’s first choice to lead a team. He has loyal people picked out that he already promised this to.”

Kim filed away the tidbit so she could warn her mother later that she might not be in the best standing in the Kingdom.

“We can alter people so they can work with the gate, as you suggested, and inoculate them with my bacteria for added security, but it may be more logical to figure out if the gate’s defenses can be deactivated.”

Van Dijk’s eyebrows flew up.

Had she not considered that? Kim would have thought everyone would consider that first before possibly irrevocably changing people.

“We aren’t very familiar with the technology, but perhaps a team of computer experts could study the gate over videos or by linking with an android…” Van Dijk drummed her fingers on the desk and looked out the window.

Kim debated whether she should mention the most obvious person to study the gate who might have the background necessary to figure out how to turn off its defenses. It would mean revealing that Casmir was as immune as Rache—something Kim hadn’t mentioned to Dr. Sikou—and she wasn’t sure if she should assume that Van Dijk already knew all about Rache and Casmir’s identical genes. It seemed plausible that she would, but if she didn’t, Kim would hate to put Casmir in danger—more danger—by revealing it.

“Yes,” was all Kim said. “May I return to my home and place of employment?”

Van Dijk gave her a strange look that Kim couldn’t decipher. Had she phrased her question oddly?

“Didn’t you leave because you were in danger of being targeted by those targeting Professor Dabrowski?” Van Dijk asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s still a problem, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but I long to return to useful work, and Casmir lent me Zee as protection.”

“We would like for you to continue to work on the bacteria that can consume the pseudo radiation, to enhance them to break it down even more quickly, if that’s possible. We’ll put you in a secure and state-of-the-art lab.”

We would like… Did that mean Kim had a choice? Or was Van Dijk merely being polite?

“For how long?” Kim asked.

“Just until you’ve convinced our people that you’ve done all you can. Further, we may need to consult you on the gene editing, if our computer experts don’t have any ideas about disabling the gate’s defenses. You’ll be compensated for your time, of course. At the same rate of pay as you earn at your regular job.”

“Do I have a choice?” Maybe Kim shouldn’t have asked, but she wanted to know.

And she wanted to go home, damn it. Back to her books and her regular routine. She missed her work and her house and sparring with her brothers and father at the dojo.

“I can’t give you a choice, I’m afraid. I have orders straight from the king. You also can’t return home—that’s for your own protection—until we’re certain the terrorists are no longer after Dabrowski and might hit you, simply because you’re standing too close. Your unique talents are very important to the Kingdom. We’ve done our best to keep any alarming news from filtering back home, but we are on the brink of war with several of the other systems, and if they band together, we’re outgunned and outnumbered.”

“I see. Can I at least stay at my mother’s apartment? Terrorists shouldn’t think to look for me there.” Kim wasn’t sure that it mattered—it wasn’t as if her mother’s occasionally used apartment had ever been a home for her—but she had a niggling suspicion that it would be safer if she could retain a semblance of autonomy. That would be much easier if she lived somewhere separate from whatever lab they wanted her to work in. She could easily envision them assigning her a room on a military base or even in the castle.

“What’s the address?”

Kim supplied it.

“Ah, that’s actually less than a mile from the research facility we have in mind. That will do, yes, but you’ll have two bodyguards with you at all times.”

Kim’s shoulders slumped. So much for autonomy.

“As I said, we’re very serious about keeping you alive.” Van Dijk’s eyes tightened. “I trust you will cooperate and that you won’t attempt to elude them or something as silly as that. You’ll be allowed to return to your normal life once we’ve resolved this.”

And when would that be?

“Assuming you don’t do anything illegal or treasonous.” Van Dijk smiled, but her eyes remained tight.

It didn’t take a genius at body language to decipher the warning.

“I hadn’t planned to,” Kim murmured.

“Good. I’m glad we understand each other.”

What Kim understood was that she was now a prisoner in her own land.

6

Either the person who led interrogations at Drachen Castle had a busy schedule, or the information locked up in Casmir’s brain wasn’t as important as he thought. The rest of the day and a full night had passed without anyone coming to see him. He hoped that wasn’t because the person was busy interrogating his friends. Kim hadn’t committed any crimes, so she shouldn’t be in danger, unless being associated with him got her in trouble. He scowled at the thought.

His shoulder blade itched, and he shifted to scratch it, but he couldn’t reach it. After the search, the guards had shifted his cuffed wrists from behind his back to in front of his groin, but that didn’t make his life noticeably comfortable.

Now, he lay on a cold stone bench in his dark, windowless cell, the roar of the surf no longer audible. Nothing was audible except for the sound of his own breathing and occasionally the thump of his heartbeats. Those were only audible when he worked himself up into a panic about what would happen to him if the interrogator used eslevoamytal—which he now knew he was deathly allergic to—without a nurse with epinephrine and a slew of other drugs nearby.

What if the castle staff killed him, not because he was a traitor, but by accident?

Casmir wished he’d taken time to send more than a quick note to his parents before following Asger into the castle. His mother had messaged back immediately, saying he must come to dinner and tell them all about everything. She’d asked three times for a confirmation on dinner, but he hadn’t gotten a chance to give it—or explain that he wouldn’t be able to make it—before he’d entered the network’s dead zone. He almost wished he hadn’t messaged her at all, because now she would worry anew at his abrupt silence.

Casmir rubbed his face and went back to his distraction. Though he didn’t have network access, he didn’t need it to use the basic applications on his chip, and his contact could provide enough illumination for the optical display without outside light.

He had the schematics for his robot bird up and was dithering around with ideas for a smaller insect version. Considering all that could be done with nanites, he didn’t think a bee-sized robot would be too challenging. Imbuing it with flight without giving it something akin to a drone’s thrusters would be hard, but he found himself wanting to do that, to create something as lifelike as possible for Princess Oku’s aesthetic sensibilities.

The overhead light came on without warning. He flung his arm up to protect his eyes and nearly pitched onto the flagstone floor. He recovered and swung his legs off the bench. His captors had taken his belt and shoes, along with his tool satchel, so he could feel the cold floor through his socks.

Aside from the bench that extended six feet along the back of the cell from wall to wall, there were no furnishings. Only a drain in the middle of the floor. Casmir tried not to imagine blood from past prisoners streaming toward it in rivulets. Somehow, the lack of thumbscrews, whips, and pears of anguish hanging on the walls didn’t convince him that torture had never occurred here. He would be surprised if it occurred in this modern era, but he didn’t want to make assumptions.

Footsteps sounded in the wide corridor outside, and Casmir shuffled to his feet out of some notion that he should face his fate with his chin up and his spine straight. He tried not to think about the fact that he’d now missed two doses of his seizure medication. He’d had the foresight to bring it with him when he left the Dragon but it hadn’t mattered. The guards had removed it along with his tool satchel. He didn’t know why so many people who imprisoned him insisted on taking his medications, but after all this was over, he intended to lobby for a stipulation in the Intersystem War Treaty that made it illegal to keep prisoners from their prescription drugs. Admittedly, that treaty applied to prisoners of war, not simply prisoners, but—

Four people stepped into view. Two were guards in combat armor, their helmets and faceplates obscuring their expressions. The third man wore a doctor’s white coat, and the last a high-ranking officer’s Kingdom Guard uniform. A Royal Intelligence officer, Casmir guessed, though he didn’t know what the insignia for the various branches were.

“Make sure he doesn’t slip out,” the officer told the guards, then slapped a panel on the wall.

The metal bars that comprised the front of the cell clanked as they slid aside. Ishii had been wrong. Casmir hadn’t been dropped in an oubliette. His cell was disappointingly mundane.

“You think?” one of the armored men asked, his voice muffled by his helmet. “Should we also loom imposingly to intimidate him?”

The officer frowned at him, then shook his head at the doctor. “I always get the comedians.”

The doctor had an expressionless face and didn’t react to the comments.

The officer waved him into the cell. “Set up, and let me know when you’re ready.”

“It won’t take long.”

“I’m allergic to eslevoamytal.” Casmir eyed the doctor as he opened his kit on the bench. “Very allergic.”

“We’re aware of the incident on the Osprey,” the officer said.

“The incident?” Was that what the report had called Casmir going into anaphylactic shock and having a seizure? How vague and distancing.

“We’ll use a different interrogation drug.” The doctor held up a small brown bottle and a syringe. “And we’ll test you for a reaction first.”

“What happens if I’m allergic to that one too?” Casmir asked.

“We get to do more than loom.” The chatty guard cracked his gauntleted knuckles.

“I guess I’ll hope for a lack of hives then,” Casmir said.

“I would,” the officer murmured. He gripped his chin and watched Casmir intently.

“This isn’t necessary, guys,” Casmir said. “I’m more than happy to discuss the things in my head. Just ask my roommate, Kim. As she’ll be the first to admit, getting me to shut up about the things in my head is the real challenge.” Casmir wasn’t sure he should mention her, but being cooped up in here without network access had him aching to know what was happening to his friends.

Were Qin and Bonita all right? Was the Dragon still being kept in the air harbor across the street? How had Kim’s meeting with Royal Intelligence gone? Would this man know? Would he share?

“Where’s the gate that was taken from a wreck on Skadi Moon?” the officer asked.

“I’d prefer to give that information directly to the king.” Maybe. After he talked to the king and found out what his plans for the gate were…

The officer grunted. “I’m sure you would. Perhaps while delivering some poison you were programmed to inflict during your time as a prisoner on Captain Tenebris Rache’s ship.”

Casmir didn’t know whether to be alarmed or heartened that this man appeared to have most of the details of what had been happening to him during the last few weeks. Not all of them, he hoped. Such as the secret connection he wished he did not share with Rache but did.

“If I were carrying poison, your guards’ very thorough search would have uncovered it,” Casmir said. “They removed everything I was carrying, and now they have intimate knowledge about what I have and haven’t been digesting these last few days.”

“That’s disgusting,” the chatty guard said from his spot in the corridor.

“You still want to put your hands on him?” the officer asked.

“Not that part.”

“Your arm,” the doctor stated, coming to stand at Casmir’s side with a small needle and what looked like a swab doused with disinfectant. Its astringent smell wafted up to Casmir’s nostrils.

Reluctantly, Casmir offered his arm. At least they were testing him for an allergy before drugging him.

The doctor pushed up his sleeve, swabbed cool moisture against a spot on his inner arm, then pricked him with the needle.

Knowing they would wait a couple of minutes for a reaction, Casmir groped for a way he could avoid telling these people where the cargo ship was orbiting. If the military found it and secured it, not only would his decision to hide it have been for naught, but he might be deemed an enemy to the Kingdom for attempting to obstruct them. Maybe he’d signed up for that fate the day he hadn’t given the cargo ship to Captain Ishii, but he’d hoped to manipulate the situation somehow so that all the systems could have access to the gate… and he could still go back home to his old job. He’d envisioned himself in the role of hero and freedom fighter, not betrayer of the crown, but maybe the two had always been mutually exclusive, and he hadn’t realized it.

“No clinically significant reaction,” the doctor said.

“Are you sure?” Casmir squinted. “That looks like a hive.”

“It’s very small. You should be fine.”

“Should be.” Casmir gave the officer his most imploring and innocent smile. “Sir, I don’t want to cause trouble. I just hid the gate because I wanted to make sure nobody else would be harmed—no, killed—before we figured out a good way to handle it. I know Captain Sora Ishii. I didn’t want to see dozens of his crew killed by the gate’s deadly defense because he was given orders to transport it back to Odin. And if it had been brought down to the planet, how many more might have been killed by exposure? I was afraid the military would underestimate the danger.”

The officer hesitated.

Casmir held his gaze, oozing imploringness and willing the man to believe he was speaking the truth. It was at least a partial truth. “Do you really want to send the military out there to retrieve the gate before we’ve figured out how to nullify its tendency to zap people with a horrific pseudo radiation?”

“We’ll deal with it,” the officer said. “Your friend Scholar Kim Sato has already been recruited to ensure our troops and scientists are equipped to handle it.”

“Recruited? Did she have a choice?”

“She knew without having to be forced that cooperating with the government is the wise route, if one wants to remain a citizen in good standing.” The officer pressed his lips together in disapproval, then nodded once at the doctor.

“She’s always been smarter than me.” Casmir sighed and sat on the bench. There was no point in physically struggling. Or wishing that he’d allowed Zee to accompany him to the castle and hurl all of the guards over the wall and into the ocean far below.

No, that only would have made his situation worse.

The doctor pressed a jet injector to Casmir’s arm, and the sharp hiss made an unpleasant tingle go up his spine. He eyed the spot warily, afraid far more than a hive would arise, and he paid close attention to the back of his throat, waiting for the telltale tickle of an allergic reaction. It didn’t come.

“Go ahead, sir,” the doctor said.

The officer withdrew an electronic tablet and stylus. “What is your full name, Casmir?”

“Casmir Eliezer Dabrowski.”

“And why does the Black Stars terrorist group want you dead?”

That wasn’t the calibration question Casmir had expected, and he had no doubt answering with an honest and aggrieved, “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out for weeks.”

“Who leads the Black Stars?”

“I don’t know.”

Why were they asking him that? Until Asger had told him, Casmir hadn’t even known who was behind the crusher attacks.

“Where are they located on Odin?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is your relationship to Captain Tenebris Rache?”

Oh, hell. That one he knew—more or less—and panic welled up in his chest. Casmir didn’t want to answer, but the words flowed from his lips. “We look the same.”

The doctor’s eyebrows flew up. The officer didn’t react at all. He didn’t even look like he was trying to hide a reaction. Could he already know?

“Did he ask you to do anything when he captured you?”

Casmir thought back. “I had to open a case holding a bioweapon for him, but my friends showed up, and we escaped before I had to help him with anything else. Later, he asked me to work for him and build robots. I said no. He’s a psychopath. Well, maybe that’s not the precise term. Kim said that’s just what the media calls him. But that maybe he’s a sociopath. Either way, he’s evil. I know it.” This time, Casmir didn’t have to consciously make his eyes imploring. That was simply what happened when he gripped his knees and looked up, meeting the officer’s gaze. “I’m not evil. I just want to help people. I made mistakes. With the crushers. I thought they were for defending the planet, like golems from the old Yiddish tales, you know? They could help out and protect the people of Odin. That’s what I wanted when I helped make them. But someone is using them to hurt people, to take over other stations.”

In the back of his mind, Casmir knew he shouldn’t be saying this, shouldn’t be objecting to orders that had likely come from the king and that this officer either agreed with or didn’t care one way or another about. But he couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t keep from babbling everything in his mind. He felt intoxicated and without impulse control.

“Did he ever try to brainwash you or suggest you should kill the king?” the officer asked without commenting on the rest.

“No, but he hates King Jager. I don’t know why. Do you know? The princess said she recognized me because she knew someone who looked like me once, but I only know about looking like Rache. Do you know why she would have known him?”

The guards exchanged looks, and the doctor continued to look surprised by Casmir’s words. The officer continued to not look surprised. How much more about him—about everything—did Royal Intelligence already know?

“He’s evil,” Casmir repeated. “He kidnapped Kim and exposed her to that damn wreck. I don’t want to be anything like him. It’s not right. He’s so strong and perfect too. He doesn’t have any of my—” he jerked his hand down his body and waved at his eye even as it blinked twice, “—issues. It’s not fair.”

Now he sounded like a petulant kid. He wished he could keep the words in, but they wouldn’t be held back.

“Are you prepared to tell us the coordinates of the gate?” the officer asked dispassionately. He clearly didn’t care that it was unfair that Casmir had an identical twin that was better than he was in every way.

“Oh, sure,” Casmir burbled. “It’s in orbit around Modi Moon. Nobody goes there. It’s just a bald hunk of rock. The exploratory ships didn’t find anything worth mining when they visited.”

“Excellent.” The officer handed him the tablet. “Write down the coordinates.”

No, came a stern order from the back of Casmir’s mind. Don’t give them this, or they’ll have no use for you. They might make you disappear, especially now that they know you’re Rache’s twin…

Despite the admonition, Casmir couldn’t keep from writing down exactly what they wanted.

“It looks good,” Yas said, walking into the shuttle bay where Jess was touching up the paint job on the hull. It looked completely innocuous, especially compared to the weapon-laden black combat shuttles lined up beside it. Mattresses and tables were painted on the side. “You’re not inhaling any fumes, are you? You should avoid any extra toxins while your body is in a fragile state.”

Jess lowered the spray brush tool and gave him a wry look. “I’m not pregnant, Doc. I’ve checked recently.”

“That’s not what I—er, you checked?” All he’d had in mind was talking to her about the exam she hadn’t shown up for, but he immediately started wondering about why she’d felt she needed to check. He supposed it was silly to assume she wasn’t in a relationship with anyone—after all, with her beauty, she could have crooked a finger and had any of the mercenaries—but he had assumed… well, she could do so much better than these thugs. She ought to be with a handsome, charming, and well-educated professional. Ideally, someone not wanted by the law for murdering people.

Yas wasn’t sure what expression he wore, but she smirked. “Maybe I should say nature informed me in its special way rather than that any kind of checking was required.” She held up the tool. “Did you come to help paint?”

“No. I came because you missed your appointment, and I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine, Doc.” She turned back to her project. “I’m just busy.”

“We went through a trauma that almost killed us. You need to come by every few days for an exam, at least for a couple of weeks.”

“Are you examining yourself?”

“Oh yes. I’m a hypochondriac even at the best of times. I regularly examine everything.”

“Everything? How’s everything working?” She smirked at him again.

Was that an innuendo? And if so, was she flirting? “Sublimely.”

“Then I’m sure my bits are all fine too. I’ll let you know if they aren’t.”

Yas sighed. “Jess…”

“I know what you’re trying to do, and I wish you’d just drop it. I don’t take the trylochanix that often. Just when I’m in pain and need it. I’m not addicted.”

“You were suffering from withdrawal symptoms when we were locked up on that research ship.”

“No, I was suffering from some ancient wreck trying to irradiate me. We’re lucky we’re not all glowing like bioluminescent algae right now.”

Yas kept himself from sighing again. He didn’t want to nag her—he wanted her to consider him a friend, not someone obnoxious that she wanted to avoid—but how else could he help her?

“I’ve never seen that,” he said.

“The water worlds in System Hydra have all manner of amazing fish and seaweed and weird water critters that glow in the dark. There’s an octopus kind of thing that alternates glowing through all the colors of an Odinese rainbow. I stayed on Nabia for a week once after a big match. No place to stand, except on the manmade islands and cloud cities, but it’s a memorable experience.”

“It sounds like it. Jess, I don’t want you to feel pain. Really. I just want to help you find something less addictive, so you won’t end up in a situation where you’re vulnerable in enemy hands because you rely on a drug. And because I want you and your liver to have a long, healthy life. I’m sure we can—”

The shuttle-bay door opened, and Rache walked in wearing full combat armor and several weapons. Lieutenant Amergin ambled in behind him.

Jess smiled and waved. “Captain! I’ve got your chariot all painted up.”

Yas wondered if she was truly that pleased to see Rache, or if she was merely relieved that Yas had been interrupted and she didn’t have to respond to his words.

“Good.” Rache’s tone was flat, and he strode to the hatch of the shuttle, a pack over his shoulder. “Lieutenant, brief the doctor, and keep researching while I’m gone.”

“Will do, Captain.”

Rache hopped inside, and the hatch promptly shut. A warning flashed, the shuttle bay controller warning them that it would depressurize in thirty seconds.

“He doesn’t dilly dally, does he?” Yas hurried out with Amergin and Jess.

“Never.” Amergin leaned against the corridor wall as the shuttle-bay door closed.

“You have something to brief me about?” Yas asked.

Dare he get his hopes up this soon? The day before, he’d told Amergin everything he remembered from that eventful night, but since they weren’t in the same system, Yas had expected it would be weeks before he heard anything.

“Not specific to your president’s assassination, but you should know that wasn’t the only one. The Mining Union lost one of their key leaders a few months ago—mysterious poisoning—and there are rumors out there that the attack on Stribog Station in System Augeas wasn’t something the Star Kingdom instigated, despite a bunch of their crushers being seen there. Who’s involved? There’s lots of speculation, but someone who has access to those crushers—or who knows how to make them.”

Yas had never heard of them until a few weeks ago. As far as he knew, Rache’s quirky twin was responsible for inventing them, but that didn’t mean much. If the schematics had been shared around, manufacturing facilities all over the Twelve Systems could be creating them now.

“There’s a terrorist group down on Odin known to have some—the Kingdom is calling them terrorists, anyway; I reckon they’re someone else’s freedom fighters.”

“Some crushers?”

“Yup.”

“I didn’t see any of those on Tiamat Station that night—or ever.”

“Doesn’t mean they weren’t there. You know your president was strangled, right?”

“That’s what the news reports said, yes.” He shuddered, imagining someone doing that to the poor old lady. And it also disturbed him to think that someone would think him capable of such a thing.

“I’ll keep looking for information. Just be aware that it might be a powerful group that’s behind things, if these deaths and attacks are all linked.”

“Does that mean Rache won’t be willing to go after them?”

“Not necessarily, but he might want more pay.”

“I’m not paying him at all, except with my time.”

“Yup.” Amergin smirked and gripped Yas’s shoulder. “Seems like you might be living on this ship for a long, long while, Doctor.”

Yas sagged against the wall.

Amergin released him and ambled away.

Yas looked for Jess, wanting to resume their conversation, or maybe just cry on her shoulder, but she was gone.

7

A robot vacuum whirred softly as it trundled along the deck in front of the open cargo hatch, slurping up water spatters left by the misty breeze. Night had fallen outside, and the wind had blown clouds in from the sea. The air smelled delightfully salty, and Qin liked the sensation of cool water droplets landing on her cheeks.

Occasional honks, beeps, and sirens sounded out in the city, but the area around the air harbor and the street running past the castle were relatively quiet. She wished she could go out and explore, perhaps visit those trees she kept smelling.

“Must we leave the hatch open?” Viggo asked.

“No, but I may not get to go outside, so I’m trying to enjoy what I can.” Qin’s heart ached at the idea of staying on the ship the entire time they were on Odin, however long that would be. The search and interrogation had been completed, but four Kingdom Guards remained on duty, sitting in and standing near a vehicle parked fifty meters from the cargo hatch. Qin had little doubt their job was to make sure that she and Bonita didn’t wander off.

“Outside is filthy. Staying in here is much preferable.” Four more of Viggo’s vacuums sailed out of engineering to dry the only slightly damp deck near Qin’s feet. “Inside with the hatch closed. You’re going to clog my filters with all manner of unsterile microbes.”

“Isn’t that what those filters are there for?” Bonita asked from the ladder well. She walked across the cargo hold, limping even though she looked like she was trying not to limp. “To bathe in all manner of unsterile dirt and germs?”

“Had I a stomach,” Viggo said, “it would be extremely unsettled at the thought.”

Bonita stopped next to Qin and grimaced at the lit pavement outside, or perhaps at the Guards watching them. It could also be that her knees were bothering her more than usual. Her limp had been more pronounced since they landed. Was it because of the strain of Odin’s strong gravity? Qin hoped she hadn’t injured her knees further in the battle.

“We have a meeting tomorrow.” Bonita patted Qin on the shoulder. “With the baron who may buy Casmir’s patent. He still finds it suspicious that the creator is not available to state that he gave it to me, but I’m hoping Casmir will find a way out of that dungeon.”

“So he can come talk to the patent buyer?” Qin asked. “Or so he’ll avoid torture and great personal pain?”

“I’m amenable to both of those things. He’s not a bad kid. And I wouldn’t wish torture and personal pain on more than sixteen or seventeen people.”

“That many?”

“Well, I have three ex-husbands.”

“The rest are just mortal enemies?”

“Men and women who have done me wrong—who have done a lot of people wrong. You work in the bounty-hunting business long enough, you run into some unappealing sorts.” Bonita cocked her head. “Wouldn’t you wish your pirate masters—your former pirate masters—some torture and pain?”

“No.” A breeze brought in a fresh misty whiff of the ocean, and Qin inhaled the salty scent. “I guess I was raised to know I was their property and expect… what I got. I feel rebellious for having run away, for being out here wondering how I can make my freedom permanent. But I don’t wish anyone torture and pain. I guess if I wished anything, it would be for something to happen in their lives that would cause them to empathize with others and not treat them so callously.”

“You know what’s likely to happen in their lives to cause that? Their deaths. Their painful deaths, ideally.”

Qin smiled and let it go. She and Bonita were different people, and that was fine. More than once, Bonita had stuck up for her when she hadn’t been willing to do it for herself, when her instinct had been to turn the other cheek. In battle, different instincts came into play and she could kill enemies without a thought, but outside of battle, she tried to keep her equanimity. She was too dangerous to let herself lose her temper. This was a better way for her.

Another scent tickled her nostrils, and she knew Asger had also come down the ladder. She wondered if he’d heard any of the conversation and, if so, what he thought of it.

Not that it mattered what he thought. She had to keep telling herself that. She wasn’t even sure why he was still on the ship. What exactly had he promised Casmir?

“The baron is going to come here for the meeting,” Bonita said. “We don’t have to go anywhere. I explained our predicament. After the baron—I think he’s also the chief executive officer—got over his alarm that we are possibly considered criminals in the Kingdom—pending the outcome of this little investigation, I suppose—he agreed to come personally.”

“That’s good.”

Good that Qin would never have to set foot off the ship. Never see the beach or the trees…

Bonita noticed Asger walking up, his pack over his shoulder.

“Captain.” He bowed politely, a very shallow bow. “Since the investigators have left, and you seem to have recovered from the questioning, I’ll take my leave of your ship.”

Bonita stepped to the side and gestured toward the ramp.

“As I told Qin,” Asger said without looking at Qin, “Casmir asked me to help you if you need anything. You’re welcome to comm me if any trouble comes looking for you. Also, those gentlemen by the vehicle out there have instructions to protect you as well as to keep you here.”

“I suppose it’s bad form if something happens to the prisoners on their watch,” Bonita said.

“I suppose.” He nodded to her, then looked at Qin, hesitated, and nodded to her as well before heading down the ramp.

Qin knew it was silly, but she felt a little zing of triumph at his eye contact. Maybe eventually, he would come to see her as a human being. Or at least a person with human thoughts and feelings.

Bonita closed the hatch, cutting off the scents and the mist. A surge of disappointment rushed through Qin. It was a ridiculous feeling—after so many years on ships and stations, she should be used to being closed up inside of them—but she couldn’t help but long to experience nature.

“I’m going to get some sleep,” Bonita said, heading for the ladder again. “So I can be perky and bright for any negotiations that might take place tomorrow. I should know better than to get my hopes up, but it would be nice if we could leave this system at a net profit instead of a net loss.”

Qin trailed her to the ladder as the ship’s lights dimmed for the night cycle. “Do you think afterward, if we haven’t heard from Casmir, we should do something?”

Bonita stepped out of the ladder well on the middle deck but paused before heading to her cabin. “Just get that out of your head, kid. This isn’t like the deal with Rache. We didn’t get Casmir into this trouble. He picked it for himself, and he can get himself out of it. Besides, we can’t take on a whole government. What are we going to do? Bomb their castle?”

“No. I just wish we could help.”

“Then pray for him, kid.” Bonita headed into her cabin, shutting the hatch with a soft clang.

Qin didn’t point out that she hadn’t been raised to believe in any deities and knew little about religion of any kind. It hadn’t been deemed important when the scientists and their military advisors had been training her to kill. Maybe the Druckers would even have considered it a flaw if she developed some kind of religion-inspired morality that made killing objectionable.

She headed toward her cabin, having a vague notion that lighting a candle and hoping for Casmir’s well-being would be the same as praying, but thoughts of the trees and the smells of nature crept back into her mind. She was sure a park was nearby. It shouldn’t be in use this late at night. Maybe… maybe she could slip out without the guards outside being any wiser. She was fast and stealthy. They might not see her leave.

Before she’d consciously decided to enact her plan, her feet led her up another set of rungs to navigation and the hatch in the ceiling right behind it. She climbed up and slipped outside, inhaling deeply and feeling invigorated by the damp air.

It was dark on top of the ship, and the Dragon’s dome shape provided enough contours for her to stay low and out of sight of the guards. She slithered partway down the hull, then sprang free, landing in a soundless crouch twenty feet below. She ran across the pavement, keeping the ship between her and her potential observers. Here and there, red lights glowed, indicating cameras and drones patrolling the perimeter of the air harbor. She doubted her trip would go unrecorded, but she hoped she could make it to the park and back before anyone cared enough to look for her. She also hoped she wouldn’t get Bonita in trouble.

When she reached the towering wall around the landing area, she sprang into the air, powerful muscles letting her sail as high as a panther. She alighted atop the wall, then jumped down into an empty street, closed businesses lining the sides. She couldn’t yet see trees, but her nose guided her toward them.

If anyone was watching the street from the windows, they didn’t call out. But why would they? In the dark, who could tell that she wasn’t entirely human?

A half a mile whizzed past under her boots, and it wasn’t long before the scent of earth and grass and trees grew stronger, and the dark swath of a park came into view. Qin sprinted the last quarter of a mile and sprang to land in the grass, ignoring the gravel path meandering through the vegetation. She ran to a tree and rested her palm against the trunk, letting her claws expand to lightly grip the bark. At first, she just wanted to touch it, to revel in this hint of nature that called to something deep in her genes. But as she looked up at the sprawling branches and how they stretched to the next tree over, which stretched to the one after that, an idea formed in her mind, and she knew she had to make it a reality.

She tore off her boots and her socks, then climbed the tree. Branches rattled, her body too large for the soundless passage she would have preferred, but she found her balance as easily as she’d hoped, and ran out on a tree limb. A startled bird that had been roosting for the night squawked and flew off. Some predatory urge to spring after it rose up within her, but she squelched it. She wasn’t hungry. She didn’t need to hunt. She needed… She didn’t know what, but she sprang to the next tree. And the next.

The branches weren’t wide, but they were strong enough to support her weight, and she landed easily, claws sinking in when she needed. A grin sprawled across her face as she felt the damp wood under her feet, the scent of foliage all around her. She’d never in her life done this. Only three times had she been on worlds with trees like this, and she’d always been with the pirates, never allowed to run off, to play. Only to work, always to work. And often to kill.

She traversed the entire rim of the park before running out of conveniently placed trees. Finally, she dropped down and wrapped her arms around the one next to her, wishing she knew the name of the species. Wet grass tickled the bottoms of her foot pads, dampening her sprinkling of fur. She pressed her cheek to the trunk, inhaling deeply, so pleased to be there that tears welled in her eyes.

She heard the soft whisper of footsteps in the grass before she smelled anyone’s approach. The breeze had shifted, and she was upwind of the other park-goer.

Qin, trained to expect danger from every quarter, turned to face the person as he spoke.

“Uh, Qin?” It was Asger.

Had he followed her? Why? To protect her from trouble? Or to make sure she didn’t get into trouble?

“Yes?” She crossed her arms over her chest, refusing to feel silly about having been caught hugging a tree.

“What are you doing here?”

He gazed curiously at her, his face in shadow and difficult to see, even with her enhanced nocturnal vision. He stood on the grass, the city and the bluff lit up behind him. The castle wasn’t visible from here, but numerous large structures along the bluff were, and she experienced some amusement at a phallic spire sticking up directly behind his head. Bonita had a tendency to call pompous people dickheads. It seemed especially appropriate for Asger.

“I wanted to see the park,” Qin said.

Asger looked at the tree she had been hugging. “Oh.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I was talking to the guards when one of the air harbor cameras spotted you jumping the wall and gave them an alert. I said I’d find you. I was afraid if they went after you, they might shoot first and ask questions… never.”

“Would that matter to you? You did try to kill me the first time we met.” Qin wondered how she could ask him to leave so she could flop down in the grass and wriggle her bare toes in it. She longed for a couple of hours out here before she had to go back to the ship. Would he allow it or try to force her to return?

Asger gazed to the side, toward the buildings on the bluff. “Casmir said you weren’t the one who killed Sandor.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“My friend—a knight—who we lost at the Kvasir Belt, fighting pirates—the Drucker pirate family—who were stealing from miners in the belt. We drove them off but lost men. Good men.”

Qin closed her eyes and tried to remember such an incident. The Druckers stole from many and claimed five large warships among them. They were rarely all together, so it was possible this had happened without her knowledge.

“I hadn’t been to System Lion before I came with Bonita, but the Druckers have five ships, or they did when I last saw them, and they only sometimes work together. Each brother captains one, and they’re often out for themselves. There were two cohorts of us that they ordered, three years apart. Nine in each. There are—were—nine Qin Liangyus and nine of the older girls. I’m Liangyu Three. We’re not identical to each other or the older cohort, but we’re all from similar genetic material. You could call us sisters.”

Qin prodded the damp grass with her toe. She didn’t like talking about her past with normal people who’d grown up in homes with parents, because it only emphasized that she was an oddity, but she didn’t want to be enemies with Asger. If by explaining she could make him understand that she wasn’t the Qin Liangyu he had a grudge against, maybe it would be worth it. Or maybe it didn’t matter. Casmir had befriended Asger, and it hadn’t gotten him very far. It bothered Qin that Casmir was trapped in some dark dungeon with nobody to fight for him. Had his family even been told?

“But you killed when you worked for the Druckers?” Asger asked.

“Yes, I killed for them. But I didn’t work for them. They never paid me. They paid to have me made, and so they owned me. That’s the law in some systems. There’s a contract out for me right now—they’re paying to have me returned.” Maybe she shouldn’t have admitted that, but she doubted a Kingdom knight would stoop to collecting a bounty put out by pirates. “I escaped six months ago. I don’t want to go back. I’ve always longed for freedom. Battling seems to be in my blood, but I want to choose my battles.”

“They think they own you?” For the first time, Asger sounded indignant. Indignant on her behalf or just at some vague notion that people shouldn’t be bought and sold?

“They have a piece of paper from System Cerberus that says they do own me.” Qin couldn’t manage to speak with his same indignation. There was slavery in several systems, and that was just how it was.

She was surprised it didn’t seem to exist in the Kingdom. She’d expected System Lion with their royalty and nobility to be less egalitarian than more.

“That’s loathsome. How much money do you need to buy your freedom?” Asger spat. “You shouldn’t even have to buy it. It’s your right to have it. You should wipe out those damn pirates.”

“There are about two thousand of them spread between those five warships,” Qin said. “I’d have to talk Casmir into building me a very large robot army to have a shot at that.”

Asger snorted. “Don’t suggest that. He probably would. He’s in enough trouble without incurring the wrath of pirates.”

“He does have a noble streak.” Qin almost pointed out that Casmir had the noble streak she had expected in Asger, but he was having a real conversation with her for the first time, and she didn’t want to ruin it. “Is there any way to help him out of that dungeon? Bonita said she wouldn’t act against the king and all his men, and I understand that—that’s even worse than taking on all the Druckers—but it seems like there ought to be something crafty we can do.”

“The queen will be back soon. She said she would speak with him. I’m hoping—”

A boom thundered through the city, and orange light flashed on the bluff behind Asger.

He whirled. “What the hell?”

Fire leaped from the rooftop of a blocky building at the end of the bluff. A siren wailed, and a dozen others started up. Qin winced, the sounds an assault on her sensitive ears.

“A bomb?” she asked uncertainly, more accustomed to seeing explosions in space, where they weren’t so violent and where the vacuum swallowed sound. They had to be a mile away from that structure, but she could hear the flames crackling.

“It’s the synagogue.” Asger broke into a run. “People could be in there. Sometimes, they have night services.”

As he sprinted for the street, Qin only debated for a second whether to follow him or return to the ship. If it had been a bombing, people could be hurt, and whoever had done it might not want a knight to show up to deter their getaway. Qin didn’t feel loyalty to Asger, but now that she knew him a little, she felt something. They’d fought together before, so he was akin to a crew member in her mind, and she didn’t want him to be hurt.

She snatched up her boots, put them on, and raced after Asger. She was impressed by how fast he could run without, as far as she knew, any cybernetic enhancements or genetic modifications, but she was almost as tall as he was, and she caught up and ran beside him.

He glanced at her but didn’t suggest she go back to the ship. He kept running, the street swinging wide to switchback up the hill toward the bluff. Emergency aircraft appeared in the sky, and the sirens continued to wail. Lights in the city that had been off earlier came on, and people stumbled out of apartment buildings to gape at the flaming building.

As Qin and Asger reached it, aircraft tankers started dumping water on the flaming rooftop. A different aerial vehicle sprayed a white fire suppressant.

“Crushers!” Asger blurted. He’d been running toward the structure—the synagogue, he’d called it—but he switched directions, racing down the street after two tarry black forms. They were also running. Fast.

Qin started after Asger, but a scream of pain came from the synagogue. Two of the stone walls had been blown out at the corner, leaving a gaping hole with the roof half-collapsed. The flames were already dwindling, but cries for help increased. The air smelled of soot and the residue of Mark-Pak, an amalgam explosive Qin was familiar with. It also smelled of blood and burned flesh.

Qin glanced at Asger, his cloak flapping as he sprinted after the crushers, but she decided to go to the people. Even with her speed, she doubted she could catch the robots.

She sprang over rubble that had been a section of wall and into the structure. Numerous people were trapped under wood beams and collapsed pieces of the roof. She ran to a woman who was pinned alongside a child and used her enhanced strength to hurl a beam off them.

Her first-aid training was limited, and more people were trapped under rubble, so she left the pair once they were free, trusting that medics were on the way. She ran to another pinned person, a bearded man with blood streaming down his face. She freed him, then heard victims crying under a mound of rubble. She dug into it, throwing pieces wildly to the sides until she realized more people were streaming into the area. Uniformed Kingdom Guards and medics with robots with hover gurneys. They lifted the people Qin had freed, helping them walk out or laying them on the gurneys.

When Qin pulled a frail gray-haired woman out from under crushed pews, she started to pat Qin thankfully, but then she saw Qin’s face and her pointed ears, and she reared back with a terrified gasp. She scrambled to get away, glancing back and almost falling several times as she fled the building.

The reaction stung, but Qin made herself keep working, keep freeing people. Her great strength ought to be good for more than slaying enemies.

Unfortunately, some of the worshippers did not move when she cleared the rubble from atop them. She didn’t stop to check for pulses, again leaving that for someone else.

Finally, when her ears, nose, and eyes told her that everyone who could be rescued had been, she turned for the exit—the gaping hole where the corner walls had met. When she stepped out into the light from dozens of land and air rescue vehicles parked outside, several Kingdom Guards pointed rifles at her.

“Stop right there!”

“God, what is it?”

“Some freak from another system.”

“She might have done the bombing. Cuff her.”

“You cuff her.”

Qin blinked rapidly to keep tears from forming in her eyes. This wasn’t the time for hurt feelings. She crouched, preparing to spring to the rooftop—what remained of it—and flee back to the ship before they could arrest her.

“Lower your weapons,” came Asger’s stern voice as he strode up from the side.

Sweat bathed his face, some of his shoulder-length hair was plastered to his neck, and he was breathing heavily, but he managed to look authoritative as he approached. Four of the five Guards lowered their weapons. Only one hesitated, glancing back and forth from Asger to Qin.

“But, Sir Knight—”

“Lower it.” Asger had reached him by then, and he snatched the rifle from the man’s grip. “She was with me when the bomb went off. She wasn’t responsible.”

“Er, but she’s not… human.”

“Go find who was responsible. At the least, there were two crushers—big black robots that can turn to liquid and back to a solid at will. But there may have been people here too.” Asger looked toward the injured men, women, and children being loaded into ambulances. “Terrorists.”

He clenched a fist, his eyes burning with fury. The Guards, perhaps thinking some of that anger was directed at them, scurried away.

“I want to see if there’s any obvious evidence before the Guard swarms all over the interior,” Asger said to Qin and strode toward the interior.

A part of her, thinking of the dead she’d uncovered, was reluctant to go back inside. She felt she’d failed those people by not arriving in time. But if she didn’t stay with Asger, she might end up being arrested. Besides, it would be cowardly to be unwilling to walk among the dead. It wasn’t her fault that this had happened. She’d done the best she could.

As Asger climbed over the rubble, a boy of seven or eight ran up to Qin, a metal robot doll clutched to his chest. He stopped and stared up at her.

“You are a cat woman,” he whispered.

“Something like that,” Qin murmured warily, certain he would blurt freak next.

“That is so supernova! And you saved my sister.” He jumped up and hugged Qin.

She was so startled that she almost couldn’t stop her instinctual reflex to spring away from a threat. But she did. She stood still for the embrace, the robot doll being smashed against her thigh.

“Herschel!” a woman called, waving from one of the air ambulances.

“I have to go. Here.” The boy thrust the doll at her. “A sheynem dank!”

Qin gaped as he ran to join his family as they climbed into the ambulance. The hatch closed, and it rose into the air and disappeared over the rooftop. Qin belatedly realized the boy had given her a gift.

“What was that?” Asger looked back at her, glancing at the robot doll.

“A young Casmir, I think.” Qin cradled the boy’s gift in one arm, vowing to clear one of her candle statues out of its case in her cabin to make room for it.

“Is this his religion?” Asger waved at the structure around them. “Or do you mean because of the toy?”

“I think both,” Qin said, though she’d only meant in demeanor—and because the boy hadn’t called her a freak.

“Hm.” Asger walked through the interior, water dripping from the destroyed roof, most of it now open to the misty night.

The flames had dwindled, and he took a flashlight from a member of the search-and-rescue team. They were focused on carrying out bodies. Asger pointed the light beam toward the walls and ceilings. In addition to the corner having been blown out, there was another gaping hole high in the back wall of the main room.

“Are you looking for where the blast originated?” Qin asked.

“Yes, or other clues.”

“I can find the spot.” Qin tapped her nose, then focused on sifting out the myriad odors in the area. She’d caught a whiff of a familiar explosive before. Yes, it was still there, underlying the scents of charred wood, stone dust, and death.

She climbed over shattered pews and rubble to a doorway near a pulpit. A flame burned in a hanging lantern, undisturbed by the chaos around it. The hallways and rooms in the back were dark, but her nose led her down a corridor, up a set of stairs, and back toward the hole they’d seen. Light poured in through it. Asger had followed her, and they soon overlooked the worship area.

“There were probably two bombs.” Qin pointed toward the collapsed corner where they’d come in and then at the opening in the wall in front of them. “One was planted around here and probably destroyed in the blast, but maybe…” She sniffed, letting her nose lead her to the remains of a small piece of wrapper, half shredded by the explosion. “I’ve seen bombs like this before.”

She was about to describe them, but Asger took the foil from her and said grimly, “So have I. A Mark-Pak. They’re manufactured in System Cerberus.”

“You think pirates did this?” Qin asked uncertainly, knowing the Druckers had often purchased such supplies in the dubious no-taxes, no-questions system. She couldn’t imagine them targeting the Kingdom—what could be gained?—but worried Asger would have reason to be suspicious of her again.

“Terrorists,” he said. “The Black Stars. We’ve recovered the remains of their ordnance before.”

“Are those the same people who are after Casmir?”

“Yes. I hope it’s a coincidence that they targeted this place. There are seven other churches and temples on this street that represent the major religions practiced in Zamek City and the Kingdom.”

Qin also hoped it was a coincidence. She knew Casmir would be horrified if someone targeted innocent people as a way to hurt him. She feared he would be horrified when he heard about this, regardless.

8

The second evening that Kim returned to her mother’s apartment was similar to the first, except that she walked in distracted, answering messages that scrolled down her contacts, both from her brothers and from Casmir’s parents. Her brothers wanted reassurances that she was fine and would return soon to the dojo. Casmir’s parents wanted to know what had happened to him. She wished she could tell them precisely.

Apparently, he’d sent them a quick note when they were landing, saying he was back on Odin and hoped to see them soon, and they hadn’t heard from him since. Kim also hadn’t heard from him since he’d walked off to the castle with Asger. She could only assume he’d been detained somewhere that blocked network access.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t much less of a prisoner. She did have network access from the apartment—the government lab she’d been assigned to blocked personal communications and all but work-related resources—but as she’d found out the day before, her two bodyguards would allow her to walk to and from work, but she couldn’t detour elsewhere. When she’d asked about stopping for take-out, they had laconically informed her that she should get used to grocery delivery.

More than once, she’d thought about asking her new shadow, Zee, to hoist them from their feet and toss them into a dumpster, but she feared her career and her citizenship would be at risk if she didn’t cooperate with the government.

At least Zee and the guards remained in the corridor outside of her mother’s apartment at night, and Kim had the interior, including a small balcony, to herself.

Or she usually did. She lurched to a stop when she walked into the living room and spotted a large gift basket resting on the dining room table.

She looked around warily. The unimaginative rental furnishings were undisturbed and the door to the single bedroom stood halfway open, as she had left it that morning, her shower towel draped over the corner to dry, because the laundry machine needed repair. A built-in bookcase, its shelves overflowing, rose to one side of the door, and she eyed it, but if any of the tomes had been disturbed, she couldn’t tell. They were mostly non-fiction books related to her mother’s field, but a few fiction classics that might have come with the apartment lurked on the top shelf, and her mother had, to Kim’s surprise, kept the four novels she’d written and published under a pen name. She had signed them and given them as a gift, but her mother had never mentioned if she’d read them. Probably not. Her mother had always preferred historical mysteries and thrillers.

The curtains stirred in a breeze, and Kim realized the sliding Glasnax door to the balcony was open a couple of inches. She hadn’t left that open. Even though the apartment was ten stories up, she wouldn’t have made such a security faux pas, not with the city in a state of high-tension in the aftermath of the synagogue bombing.

Did that mean that whoever had brought the basket was still here? It couldn’t be for her mother—it had been months since she’d been on Odin last—but nobody should know Kim was here. What if it was a booby-trapped basket, left by some of the terrorists after Casmir? Or what if someone was waiting for her to be distracted by opening it and would jump out and grab her when she did.

Now, she wished she’d made a habit of bringing Zee into the apartment with her in the evenings, but a lewd discussion from the guards about whether he could morph himself into something more anatomically accurate had left her disinclined to give them more joke material.

The curtains stirred in the breeze again. Or was it just the breeze? She eyed them warily.

At home, she would have had bokken and various sporting implements at hand to grab, but there was nothing like that in her mother’s apartment. If someone jumped out at her…

Kim curled her hands into fists and lifted her chin. They would find that she wasn’t defenseless.

It occurred to her that she could call in the guards to have a look around—in theory, they were there to protect her as much as to imprison her—but she was reluctant to ask for help or have them tramping around in her personal space. She also wasn’t certain she wanted to set them on the trail of whoever had brought the gift.

She walked slowly and quietly, toes touching down first, around the apartment, checking the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom to make sure nobody would jump out. Lastly, she approached the balcony door. She paused before sliding it open further. Full night had fallen, and she could easily imagine someone crouching in the dark, poised to spring.

Kim flicked the outside light on, and it illuminated the two chairs and small table out there but nobody lurking. She thought about simply closing the door and locking it, but some instinct, or maybe her curiosity, made her open it further and look to the side.

A dark figure leaned against the wall in the corner of the balcony.

Kim leaped back, landing in a crouch with her fists up. The figure did not rush into the apartment after her or even peek inside.

Was it possible he or she—the figure had been cloaked with a hood up—hadn’t seen her? Or heard her pushing the door open? No, the door had made noise. Even the distant roar of the sea wouldn’t have drowned it out.

“That’s not a public balcony,” Kim called.

“No? I didn’t see a private-property sign on it.”

She gaped at the familiar dry voice. “Rache?”

What was he doing here? On Odin? Wouldn’t his ship be shot out of the stars if it was spotted near the planet? For that matter, wouldn’t he be shot if he was spotted?

“What are you doing here?”

Kim didn’t lower her fists. She had no idea what to expect from him. How had he even found her? She was positive she hadn’t told him her address and certainly not her mother’s address. Both might be in a public directory somewhere, but how had he known she would be here?

“I came to deliver your gift. I would have taken a more conventional approach, but there are Kingdom special agents adorning your front door.”

“So, what—you climbed the ten floors to my balcony?”

“Of course not. I’m not an orangutan. I have jet boots.”

Kim kept expecting him to come inside or at least stick his head through the door so they could speak without raising their voices, but he remained in his spot against the wall. It couldn’t be because he worried about intruding on her privacy, not when he was lurking on her balcony and he’d obviously been inside to drop off the basket.

“If you’ll open your gift and let me know if it’s acceptable, I’ll leave you be, assuming that is your wish.” Rache paused. “Though I’d be amenable to a sample if you’re inclined to try it out.”

“Of course it’s my wish. You’re… you.”

“A crime in itself.”

Kim picked up the basket—it was heavier than she expected—and walked out onto the balcony. “I can’t accept a gift from a criminal. Or have you here. I’m already…”

She paused. She didn’t want to admit to him that the authorities were suspicious of her because of her association with Casmir, not when she didn’t truly blame Casmir for anything he’d done. Yes, he’d been impulsive and unwise, but she understood that his heart and emotions drove him as often as rational thought.

“You can’t accept it?” He stood in the same spot, his shoulder blades against the wall, his arms folded over his chest, his hood up and that mask on. He also wore black gloves to match the rest of his black attire. For a ludicrous moment, she imagined him with the same pink bowtie she’d wanted to wrap around Zee’s neck. “You requested it,” he added.

“I requested…” Kim thought back to their last conversation. “I said you owed me a cup of coffee if I kept your men from dying.”

“Yes, you did, and I promised I would get you all the paraphernalia for making a high-quality one.” Rache spread a hand toward the basket.

He had. If she hadn’t wanted him to do that, she should have said something back then, as she was getting off his shuttle. She hadn’t thought he’d follow through with that promise. And she certainly hadn’t expected him to come in person. He couldn’t have come all the way to Odin just for this. He had to have some business here. But what business could a mercenary possibly have on a planet with its own protection agencies capable of keeping the peace?

Idiot, she realized, rocking back. He was here because of Casmir. Because Casmir had hid that gate and, like everybody else, Rache wanted to know where.

Kim looked down at the basket, still tempted to give it back to him, afraid that accepting anything from him would only get her in trouble, especially here, in the capital city. In the heart of the Kingdom. There were security drones all over the place. One might be watching her balcony even now.

“You couldn’t have had it shipped?” she grumbled and went inside.

“Your heartfelt gratitude warms my soul.”

“Shut up, and come inside before someone sees you out there.”

Kim set the basket back down, flattened her hands onto the table, and leaned against them as she stared at it. She wished she hadn’t asked Rache for anything. Though she couldn’t help but think of the favor he’d offered her. Before, she’d thought she might ask him to redeem it by sharing everything he knew about his and Casmir’s genes. But now, with Casmir perhaps in a dungeon cell and herself a prisoner with only slightly more freedom, should she ask for help getting out of their current predicament? But what kind of help could he offer? He had resources—an entire ship full of mercenaries—at his disposal, but it wasn’t as if he could park them on the castle lawn and force Jager to release Casmir. The entirety of the planet’s defenses would mobilize if the Fedallah even appeared in orbit.

“It’s not a bomb,” Rache offered.

“No, I didn’t think it was.”

“And it’s not booby-trapped, but I can open it for you, if you’ll feel safer.”

She frowned darkly at the basket.

“If this is your typical reaction to gifts, I can’t imagine that men feel compelled to deliver them to you often.”

“That’s… not untrue. I usually tell people not to give me gifts, because then I feel socially compelled to reciprocate, and I don’t know what to get. I prefer practical presents and believe other people should too. But everyone I’ve given a practical gift to has seemed confused. I’ve gotten Casmir numerous books on cleaning and organization, full of advice which he clearly needs, and yet he always seems puzzled. One even had illustrations and was structured like a comic book.”

“Does he give you practical gifts?”

“No.”

“Do you scrutinize his gifts this thoroughly and with such a disapproving expression?”

“More thoroughly and with more disapproval, usually.” Kim tugged at her ponytail. “He has a fondness for the ridiculous.”

“Ah.”

Rache clasped his hands behind his back and strolled to the bookcase. Kim wondered if that meant he hadn’t perused it while he’d been waiting for her to return. Maybe he’d brought in the gift, set it down, and retreated outside to wait, somehow seeing that as less of a trespass.

Kim unfastened the tasteful metallic gift paper, assuming he’d had it professionally done and hadn’t wrapped it himself. Something about the idea of the infamous criminal Captain Tenebris Rache being a practiced gift-giver was ludicrous.

“On Casmir’s last gift,” Kim said, finding the silence awkward, “the wrapping paper featured Robot Remstar chasing a robot cat chasing a robot mouse chasing a piece of cheese hanging out of Robot Remstar’s back pocket.”

“That’s either goofy and immature or a poignant philosophical statement about the eternal quest for achievement being forever plagued by the threat of destruction.”

“Probably the former, though he might have considered the latter. He’s not as simple as he pretends to be.” Kim withdrew a high-end espresso maker from the basket. Damn it, it was beautiful. And her mother’s apartment didn’t have one, so she’d been getting lattes from a kiosk on the way to the lab. She also found beans from a local roaster with a good reputation, cups, a tamper, a steaming pitcher, and a grinder with settings sufficient for the fine grind that espresso required.

“I wouldn’t imagine so.” Rache pulled a book from the shelf and opened it, but he looked over his shoulder at her. “Since I’m wondrously complicated.”

She had the sense that he smiled as he said that, but with the mask, who knew? Maybe it was better not to know. If he was flirting and she knew it, she would find his presence here that much more alarming. But she suspected he had chiefly come in the hope of getting Casmir’s location, or maybe even the location of the gate, from her.

“No doubt.” Kim held up the bag of beans. “Thank you. They’re excellent choices, and I will use them.” Because she deserved them after dealing with his kidnapping and being pressured while she hunted for a solution to their problem. Not because of any fondness or appreciation toward him. His thugs had killed Fleet marines when they’d kidnapped her. She would not feel anything toward him except the hope that the Kingdom caught up with him one day and delivered the punishment he deserved.

“Good.” Rache turned, lowering the book in his hand. “I also, as I recall, promised you a favor. Do you need it redeemed at this time?”

“No,” she said, even though she had been thinking of requesting his help.

If he was only here because he wanted information about Casmir, she wouldn’t give him a reason to linger.

“Ah?”

Surely, it was only in her imagination that he sounded disappointed.

“Well, if you change your mind, this is my comm information for my ship.” Rache stepped forward and set a card with nothing but a code on it on the table. “They’ll put you through to me. I don’t plan to be in the area longer than it takes to gather some information, so it would be preferable if you thought of your favor sooner rather than later. But there’s no moratorium on it. It just may be more difficult to fulfill when I’m several weeks and a wormhole jump away.”

Gather information. That had to refer to getting the gate location from Casmir.

She shivered when she imagined him showing up for Casmir with a gun instead of a gift. But if Casmir was truly in a cell in the castle, he ought to be safe from pirates of all sorts. He probably had more to worry about from the king right now.

Unfortunately, Kim didn’t find that comforting.

“I understand,” she said.

Rache hesitated, as if he expected her to say more or change her mind. Or was he considering asking her about Casmir?

He lifted the book. “I’ll just put this back and head out.”

Kim’s heart forgot to beat. It was the first novel in the fantasy trilogy she’d written and published a few years earlier. How could he have known? There was no public information linking her to the pen name and vice versa. She’d made sure of it because she hadn’t wanted it to impinge on her bacteriology career. If he’d found out…

“I was surprised to find the trilogy here.” Rache returned the book to the shelf. “It’s a relatively obscure author, even here in the Kingdom. Have you read him, by chance?”

Him? Kim stared at the back of Rache’s hood as he tucked the book next to the other two in the trilogy. Her pen name was just initials, so the gender wouldn’t be obvious, but it hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would assume the books had been written by a man.

“If your mother were here—did you get her back into working order?—I’d be trying to interrogate her for information, since the books are signed. I presume they’ve met. I’ve been expecting another series for some time, but…” He shrugged and turned around. “Maybe they didn’t sell well enough to satisfy the publisher.”

Kim rushed to wipe off whatever panic or alarm might have been on her face and forced out a calm, “Probably,” along with a nod. “And, yes, Casmir was able to repair her damage.”

“Good. Enjoy the coffee.” Rache pointed to the balcony. “I’ll see myself out. If you’re going to report my presence to your bodyguards, I’d appreciate it if you gave me a few minutes head start.”

“You… expect me to do that? Report you?” she asked as he walked toward the door.

“I was careful not to leave fingerprints or show my face to any cameras, but it’s possible an attentive Kingdom Guard with more than three brain cells could guess my identity. If you wish to ensure you’re not suspected of inviting me here, raising an alarm would be wise. It would make my continued movements on Odin more difficult, but that’s nothing I’m unaccustomed to.”

He paused in the doorway, bowed like a knight, then sprang over the balcony railing, presumably activating his jet boots before plummeting to his death.

Kim stared out the door for a long moment after he disappeared, befuddled by the meeting. She was puzzled because he hadn’t asked her for Casmir’s whereabouts or if she knew where the gate was located. And she was flummoxed that it sounded like he’d read her books. She didn’t think she’d ever met anyone who’d read them. Even her most supportive friend, Casmir, had fallen asleep when she’d read passages aloud to him.

“This doesn’t change anything,” she muttered. “He’s still what he is.”

She picked up the comm card and thought about ripping it up. But no, she might need that favor if Casmir couldn’t figure out how to get out of the castle on his own. She hoped he could. She would prefer to have Rache owing her a favor rather than the other way around.

9

Casmir lay in the blackness of the cell, his chip the only reason he knew how much time had passed. He’d slept, woken, slept, and woken, the darkness throwing off his body clock. Several times, he’d been delivered food by a drone he’d been tempted to capture and try to reprogram, but without his tools, he doubted he’d even be able to get the lid off to poke around inside.

With nothing else to do, he’d been working almost obsessively—no, he admitted, obsessively, there being no almost about it—on his self-assigned robot bee project. Stored on his chip, he had numerous books and articles about the latest developments in robotics and engineering, and there was always Talmud study to catch up on, but this project—this challenge—was the only thing that occupied his mind enough to serve as a true distraction.

He’d contemplated how to dress up his hypothetical robot insects to look like authentic bees and how they could be powered by the same light source that gave life to the trees and plants they would help pollinate. He had also attempted to anticipate all manner of errors and problems that might arise, then recorded several pages of suggestions to address them. He’d done everything short of building them, but since they were based on the same technology he’d used for his robot bird, he believed that part would be relatively simple, especially if he had access to all the tools in his research lab on campus.

But would he ever have access to his lab again?

The fact that he’d told that Intelligence officer everything he knew and was still being held unnerved him. He’d assumed they needed time to send a Fleet ship to check the coordinates and find the cargo vessel, which would be difficult with that stealth generator engaged, but he’d shared everything he remembered about that too. Surely, some smart military officer would come up with a way to locate the ship. Eventually.

Would he die of old age first? No, Asger, wherever he had gone, had promised him a meeting with the queen. If he could be believed, she would return the next day. But would anyone tell her where he was? Was Asger anywhere near the castle?

Casmir grimaced at the idea of the queen coming down to this part of the castle and seeing—and smelling—him. He longed for a hot shower, a bristly scrub brush, a toothbrush, and beard removal gel.

He sneezed three times, and moisture leaked from his left eye. And antihistamines. He dearly longed for those too.

He wouldn’t have thought that anything in the bowels of a rocky bluff deep under a castle could cause an allergic reaction, but there was mildew or mold or something even more inimical growing in a dark, damp nook that bothered his senses and made him long for the sterility of the highly filtered Stellar Dragon.

The lights came on with the same abrupt blinding nature as before, and he yelped in surprise and covered his eyes. Footsteps sounded in the corridor. A lot of footsteps.

Casmir swung his feet to the floor and watched as armored guards trooped into view. Two, four, six, eight… There ended up being twelve packed shoulder to shoulder, all facing his cell from the opposite side of the corridor, the effect bordering on ludicrous.

Nerves pounded like a jackhammer in his stomach as he realized the implications. Would so many guards—bodyguards?—come down for anyone other than royalty? Surely not.

Was it crazy to hope the princess had heard he was down here and come to visit him? Yes. She had no way to know he had a bee project to share with her. One he was reasonably sure she didn’t want because she wanted real bees, and creating those was beyond his abilities. And beyond what the anti-genetic-engineering laws of the Kingdom allowed. He wondered if she was tinkering with the bees the same way the gardeners tinkered with crops, by selectively breeding for different traits.

The Intelligence officer who had questioned him two days before walked into view with an older female officer. She wore a nametag. Van Dijk. That was the chief superintendent, the head of Royal Intelligence, who had brought Kim in to speak with, wasn’t it?

Casmir opened his mouth to ask, but then King Jager walked into view.

He wore plain clothing, black trousers and a rich blue tunic, with neither the crown, scepter, nor purple fur-trimmed cloak that he wore for public occasions, but Casmir had seen his face often enough to recognize it, even half-blinded by the light and with tears weeping from his left eye. That eye blinked a few times on its own schedule.

Casmir dropped to one knee and bowed over it, as he’d seen Asger do for the princess, and used the motion to hide rubbing his face. He willed his eye to knock it off and for his nostrils to be strong, to refrain from sneezing through the bars and all over the king.

“Greetings, Your Majesty,” Casmir said without looking up. Unfortunately, that meant looking at the drain. He did his best not to dwell again on thoughts of blood from torture victims dribbling down it. “Thank you for coming to visit me in this most humble of domiciles. A temporary domicile, I do hope. Please let me know if I can be of service and perhaps win my freedom from—”

That was as far as he made it before the sneezes started. A whole chain of them that left both eyes watering. Alas, nobody stuck a handkerchief through the bars for him, so he was forced to sniff indignantly.

“He doesn’t look like a threat to king or Kingdom,” King Jager observed in a deep dry voice that reminded Casmir of Rache. Not the timbre but the affectation that the educated elite all seemed to have. Princess Oku had it, too, but it hadn’t sounded as pompous coming from her lips.

A puzzle piece that had been floating over its slot for a long time clicked into place for Casmir. Rache had been raised here among the nobility. Maybe even among the royalty if Oku had known him. But she’d thought he was dead. Had he staged his death for some reason? And then changed his name and donned the mask so he couldn’t be recognized by Jager and his family?

“Not physically, Sire,” Van Dijk said. “But he’s the cause of all of our problems.”

“All?” Casmir lifted his head and focused on her, since there was probably a rule against making eye contact with a monarch. “That can’t be true. If it is, ruling a kingdom is vastly simpler than I was led to believe, and I’d like to apply immediately for a job on the staff.”

Van Dijk stared at him. So did Jager. Then Jager laughed.

It was such an unexpected response that Casmir rocked back in surprise, the flagstone floor grinding into his kneecap.

“What job would you apply for, Professor?” Jager asked.

“Court roboticist, of course. If that’s not currently a position, perhaps I could convince you of the merits of adding it.”

“We already have a jester, so it couldn’t be similar to that role. Do you imagine this roboticist would work with security?”

Casmir thought of the crushers he’d created to defend Odin and how they were now attacking stations in other systems, and he lost his willingness to banter with the king. “Perhaps,” was all he said.

“If I may, Sire?” The male Intelligence officer extended a hand toward Casmir. An electric shock baton hung from a clip on his belt, something he hadn’t worn on his first visit, and his eyes were hard and humorless as they regarded Casmir. “He may not look dangerous, but he was able to evade the truth drug.”

“What?” Casmir frowned at him.

“We had two ships search the coordinates and orbital trajectory you gave us. The cargo vessel isn’t there.”

Casmir lurched to his feet. “Are you sure? Do they realize how good the stealth technology is? They wouldn’t simply have been able to search for a heat signature.”

“Our best ships went. They sprayed a tracking chemical into the orbital path you gave us. The ship would have passed through it, and they would have found it. If it had been there.”

Casmir gripped his chin, aware of everyone watching him, including the king. This wasn’t what he’d expected. Was it possible some automated system had kicked in with instructions to take the ship home? He’d searched carefully through the navigation and autopilot computers when he’d been en route to Modi Moon, and he’d disabled communications to ensure none of the allies of the astroshamans could pop through System Lion’s gate and turn on a beacon to draw their lost ship home. But he hadn’t been that familiar with the technology. It was possible he’d missed something.

“Damn,” he whispered. He didn’t want those astroshamans having sole access to the gate any more than he wanted the Kingdom military to control it. “That’s where I left it. I’m trying to think of how it might have moved. The crew was all dead, and I reprogrammed the robots and computer systems I left there. I kept the android Tork-57 offline, since he had a lot of autonomy and might have tried again to take the ship home.” Casmir looked at the king and the officer. “Has the gate out of our system been activated? If not, you may want to reinstate a physical blockade and checkpoint to make sure the cargo ship can’t sneak out. If it’s not too late.”

Casmir grimaced. If the cargo ship escaped the system with the ancient gate after all he’d done to keep that from happening, it would be his fault. He could have let the military have it and ensured it would at least remain in System Lion. But now, possible enemies of the Kingdom might have it. His vision of a joint research project that all of the systems could benefit from shattered.

He pushed a hand through his hair. Why had he ever believed he had the right to try to make that happen? Or the power?

“Go,” Jager told the male officer. “Send a message to the warships at the gate.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Jager and the superintendent clasped their hands behind their backs and studied Casmir. He wished he could disappear under one of the flagstones. He’d thought he was being clever, and all he’d done was hand the gate over to possible enemies of the Kingdom. If Jager had him shot for treason, would it even be unjust?

“Do you believe him?” Jager asked Van Dijk. “I know Kyburz was prepared to physically torture him because he thought he knew how to resist the drug.”

Van Dijk hesitated. “It’s hard to say, Sire. He could be a good actor, or he could be a poor one. He has that eye tic, but I’m not sure it’s a stress response.”

“Perhaps not. His genes were flawed from the beginning.”

And with that comment, Casmir realized the king was among the people who knew where he’d come from. He also likely knew who he’d been cloned from. Casmir still struggled to come to terms with the idea that he was a copy of someone who’d lived and died long ago, but for the moment, he remained still, hoping they would give him more information.

“I’d be inclined to give him more credit rather than less, given those genes.” Van Dijk glanced at the silent and unmoving guards. Perhaps because of them, she didn’t comment further.

“Yes, me too.”

“And whose genes are those exactly?” Casmir offered an affable smile, even if his heart wasn’t in it. He felt like kicking himself, not smiling.

Neither of them looked at him.

“So you suggest torture?” Jager asked, not sounding like it would bother him one way or another.

Casmir stuck his hands in his pockets, wondering if that had been inevitable. Would he crumble at the first hint of pain? Probably. He was no knight with a constitution of steel.

“I know Kyburz was in favor of it, but if Dabrowski eluded the drug, he may be able to withstand torture too.” Van Dijk cleared her throat diffidently and gave Casmir an almost apologetic look. “He has friends and family that he’s close to.”

“Mm,” Jager said noncommittally.

Casmir’s blood turned to ice in his veins. He imagined Kim or his parents being hurt because these people thought he was holding back information that he wasn’t. A thousand protests threatened to erupt from his mouth, but he made himself close his eyes and take a steadying breath. As he’d long ago learned to be calm and rational with doctors, so he would have to be calm and rational here. He didn’t know these people well, but he doubted an emotional tirade would sway either of them.

“It sounds like I made a big mistake,” Casmir said, “in failing to anticipate some action that either the cargo ship, the AIs aboard it, or even some astroshaman ally in the system could have taken. There’s no need to threaten my family—or me. I ask that you give me an opportunity to fix it. I’ll find the ship and the gate, no matter where it might be.” His heart wilted at the idea of leaving Odin again, without even getting the opportunity to see his parents. By now, he even missed Simon and Asahi from work. “I have no objections to Asger or others being sent along to guard me. I’d welcome the assistance.”

“Asger was sent to guard you before,” Van Dijk said, “and he let you out of the brig and personally escorted you away from the Fleet in a private knight’s shuttle.”

“Technically, I was never in the brig,” Casmir said. “And my understanding was that Asger was sent to protect me, not imprison me.”

Van Dijk raised her eyebrows toward Jager.

Jager hitched a shoulder. “My wife sent him. She’s always had more invested in this one—” he flicked two fingers toward Casmir, “—than I.”

This one. Casmir made himself stand tall, but he felt how he imagined Qin often felt. Not a true human. A clone. Something cooked up in a scientist’s laboratory.

“Perhaps we should wait to consult her, Sire,” Van Dijk said. “Isn’t she due back tomorrow?”

Yes, if they could hold off on the torturing and threatening of friends and family until he had his meeting with the queen, Casmir would deeply appreciate that.

“I fear she may be biased and that it’s best to make this decision rationally and without emotion,” Jager said.

And so he called his wife emotional and irrational… From what Casmir had heard of the queen, he didn’t think that applied. But he admitted how little he knew about the royal family, and that all of his perceptions were colored by the media’s extensive filters. After all, he’d believed Oku to be pretty but useless with nothing better to do than spend the Kingdom’s money. He didn’t know what she was exactly, not yet, but he didn’t believe she was useless.

“It’s possible, Sire,” Van Dijk said neutrally.

“Please give me a chance.” Casmir spread his hands. “What do you have to lose? If you send people along with me, I can’t flee the system. Nor am I foolish enough to believe there’s anywhere to flee that would be safe from your wrath. The only two reasons I hesitated to turn over the gate were because it’s currently deadly to anyone who goes near it and doesn’t receive a very specialized treatment in time and because…” Casmir let himself meet Jager’s eyes for the first time—they were cool and green and seemed older than his face, a face that looked no more than forty or forty-five when Casmir knew the man was in his sixties. “Because I’d heard that the crushers I helped design for the defense of Odin were being used to attack a station in another system.”

Jager’s brows rose slightly. Mild surprise, not great surprise, Casmir judged. He’d heard about the attack if not ordered it himself. What seemed to surprise him was either that Casmir knew about it or that he cared.

“When I signed on to that project,” Casmir said, “I was explicitly told my robots would be for defending the Kingdom, for defending Odin, the only truly Earth-like planet in the Twelve Systems, and one that, they say, is coveted by all who don’t live here. I believed there was a need for that defense. I didn’t know there were plans to try to expand again. It was because of those plans that I was hesitant to hand such a powerful technology over to the military. I’d made that mistake once, and I was afraid of what would happen if I made it again.”

He half-expected them to point out that the gate was merely a means of transportation, not something for killing people, not like the crushers.

But Van Dijk snorted. “So you decided to make a different mistake instead?”

“Apparently so. I’ve been accused of being naive.”

“That I believe.” She glanced at Jager.

He was watching without comment. Observing Casmir while his Intelligence officer handled the questioning?

“As I said, I’m willing to risk my life to fix that mistake,” Casmir said.

“And bring the gate back here?” Jager pointed to the stone at his feet.

This time, Van Dijk’s eyebrows twitched in surprise. “Your Majesty, are you considering it? He would say anything to get out of here. And if he was out in space again, a little fast talking, and he could—”

Jager lifted his hand, and she stopped speaking.

Casmir held his breath, wanting out of his prison, but wondering if he was offering to get in bed with the devil. He’d refused an offer of employment with Rache. Would it be equally unwise to place himself in the king’s employment? To give his word to work for him?

But what other choice did he have? If he couldn’t prove himself a trustworthy Kingdom subject, he would either be killed or exiled. And once again, those he cared for seemed to be in danger because of him. He feared he’d simply have to hope for the best, hope the king wasn’t a monster, hope that there had been some provocation behind the crusher attack on Stribog Station, that it wasn’t simply the beginning of an attempt to make history repeat itself by extending the Kingdom’s rule over the entire Twelve Systems.

“You are correct,” Jager said. “It would be too easy for him to flee if he were out in space. And we haven’t yet determined whether the cargo ship escaped the system. I believe I would like Professor Dabrowski to prove himself before I consider giving him such autonomy.”

Jager’s gaze landed on Casmir again.

Casmir struggled not to squirm. Prove himself? In the drama vids, that was usually when people were asked to kill a loved one to prove their undying loyalty to the crown. But those were historical dramas. Nobody truly expected such things anymore, did they?

His eye blinked.

“We’ve been having trouble with the Black Stars terrorist organization,” Jager said. “You’ve heard of them?”

Van Dijk’s eyebrows twitched again, as if she had no idea where the king was going with this.

“I’ve heard of them,” Casmir said.

“They’ve been behind bombings around the planet, and they just bombed a synagogue in the city.”

“A synagogue?” Casmir whispered, thinking of his chavrusa buddies and family friends he’d known all his life.

“My city.” Jager growled, not hearing him. “These terrorists often send robots and drones. Sometimes, they send humans who don’t care if they throw their lives away—they simply poison themselves if they’re captured, before they can be questioned and we can find out where their bases or cells are located.”

Casmir nodded, shifting his thoughts to the man in the cargo hold who’d killed himself, though he vowed to find out more about this synagogue bombing as soon as possible. “I’ve seen this, yes. I assume you know they also want me dead for some reason.”

Surprise flickered in Jager’s eyes, and he looked at Van Dijk, who was already nodding.

“We believe they’re who sent the crushers after Dabrowski at Zamek University,” she said.

“Oh? Then he should have even more reason to pursue the mission I’m giving him. Perhaps too much to prove his loyalty to the crown…” Jager lowered his voice, as if speaking to himself. “No, this is better. Small steps.” He lifted his gaze and spoke to Casmir again. “These terrorists are like tacks littering the floor when you’re barefoot. We cannot have this unrest going on at home when there are other concerns requiring our attention in the rest of the systems. I will not deny that I have ambitions and have sought alliances with other habitats and worlds that seem amenable to returning to Kingdom rule, given the correct stipulations, but I am not a tyrant who seeks to displace governments and force people to live under my rule. We, Professor Dabrowski, are being used as scapegoats.”

Since the king was gazing into his eyes, Casmir allowed himself to gaze back, to try to determine if he was telling the truth. Jager had sounded most honest when he’d admitted to having ambitions. Casmir was less sure about the rest. Maybe it was the truth. Maybe it was a truth that Jager had talked himself into believing. Casmir had always thought himself decent at reading people, but it wasn’t as if Jager had some facial tic that hinted at lies.

His own eye blinked. He snorted inwardly.

“I am tasking you with finding the location of these terrorists, at least where their leaders are hiding out,” Jager said. “To strike as frequently as they do, they must either be on our world or somewhere nearby. As I said, they often send robots to attack, so perhaps you will have some insight that my regular analysts lack.” His lips thinned, and he looked at Van Dijk.

It wasn’t blatant censure, but her cheeks turned pink, and she clenched her jaw. Even if Jager hadn’t blamed her explicitly for being unable to find the terrorists, she must feel it her responsibility and that she was failing. Would she resent that someone else was being asked to help?

“That is possible, Your Majesty,” Casmir said, warming to the notion of helping the Kingdom find these people.

This would be far less morally ambiguous than recovering the gate for Jager. If he succeeded, it might lead to that task, but for now, it was a chance to do all he’d wanted since this mess got started. To find the people who were targeting him with his own crushers and convince them to stop. Admittedly, he’d envisioned doing that through words, a long chat with the leader, but if they were truly killing innocent civilians, he wasn’t against marking the base so the military could come in and do what it must.

That was all he’d ever wanted to do, to use his talents to protect people and make sure Odin remained the safe and beautiful place it was.

“I would be highly motivated to find and stop these terrorists,” Casmir added with heartfelt sincerity.

“Good,” Jager said.

Van Dijk frowned. “Are we just going to let him go, Your Majesty? He’s not going to work in my office, is he? Have command of some of my people?” She grimaced. “It wouldn’t be fair to force them to endure the flippancy of some untrained outsider.”

As Casmir debated whether he should take offense at her dismissal of his abilities to lead Intelligence officers, Jager lifted a placating hand toward her.

“Have no fear, Chief Superintendent. I intend nothing of the sort.” Jager’s green gaze locked onto Casmir. “If he’s half the man his genes suggest he should be, he will be able to do this on his own.”

Casmir stared at him. He was supposed to do what Van Dijk, all of her Intelligence officers, and however many knights were stationed here on Odin hadn’t been able to do?

“Er,” Van Dijk said, “we believe there are hundreds of terrorists, a huge secret base somewhere, dozens of cells they operate out of, and money and resources flowing in from powerful off-world connections.”

“Yes, I’ve read your reports.” Jager smiled at Casmir. It wasn’t a cruel smile, but it wasn’t a warm one either. Wry? Ironic? It was hard to tell. “My wife thinks I made a mistake with you. This is your chance to prove yourself in more ways than one.”

“Can I at least have Asger?” Casmir wondered if he could talk Bonita and Qin into helping again. If there was some secret base, it could be anywhere on the planet—or even up in orbit, using a stealth generator similar to the one he’d already encountered. It would be useful to have the Dragon to ferry him around. And Qin was always useful.

“Yes,” Jager said. “In fact, that’s perfect. He needs to prove himself as well, especially if he insists on trailing along after my daughter.” Jager sneered for the first time.

Casmir wondered if he should let Asger know that the king knew about his crush and didn’t approve. The princess hadn’t seemed inclined to reciprocate it, so maybe it didn’t matter. She was probably destined to some arranged marriage with a prince or emperor in another system. A lamentable thought, that.

Jager pressed a button on a control panel, and the wall of bars slid aside. For the first time, the armored guards, who’d been like statues throughout the conversation, stirred. Some dropped their hands to their rifles. Others glanced at each other, as if confused.

“Find the terrorists’ main base and send a signal to our soldiers so they can annihilate it,” Jager said, stepping aside and gesturing for Casmir to step out of the cell. “Do that, and I will give you the opportunity to retrieve the gate that you lost.”

Casmir again wondered about the wisdom of working for the king, but again doubted he had much choice. At least he could do this first task with a clear conscience.

In the corridor, Jager dropped a hand onto Casmir’s shoulder.

Casmir braced himself, expecting him to squeeze or make a threat. Jager was more than a half a foot taller than he was, and he looked strong and fit for his age. For any age.

“We needn’t be enemies, Casmir,” Jager said. “Accomplish these things for me—for the crown and your Kingdom—and we’ll discuss a position that would be suitable for you.”

Casmir licked his lips—his mouth was very dry. This reminded him uncomfortably of the offer Rache had made him, of employment among his mercenaries. He had prefaced that with the very similar, “We don’t need to be enemies.”

“Court roboticist?” Casmir asked.

Jager chuckled. “We’ll see. Believe it or not, I don’t insist that everyone around me agrees with me. I prefer people who speak plainly. It’s the ones who are always quick to agree that you have to watch out for, as they surely have secret motives.”

Van Dijk’s face was carefully neutral at the comment. It was probably her job to agree with everything the king ordered. Jager likely referred to nobles and those with positions in the Senate, people with the right by blood and history to argue with him without repercussions.

Jager dropped his hand and stepped aside so Casmir could head for the stairs. “Escort him out, Van Dijk.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Should I give him anything?” She looked him up and down. “A weapon, at least?”

Casmir would have settled for his shoes and his tool satchel.

“No,” Jager said. “His wits should suffice.”

Casmir remembered proclaiming to Bonita once that he was armed with his wits. She hadn’t been impressed.

10

Sunlight streamed through the cargo hatchway the next morning when Qin and Bonita opened it for their visitor. A man in a blue and black suit with four shimmering tails swishing and swirling in the air behind him rode toward them on a sleek gold air bike. The Kingdom Guards—a new shift of them—watched indifferently as he entered the facility.

The guards on duty the night before had glared sternly at Qin when Asger escorted her back to the ship, but thanks to his presence, they hadn’t said anything about her sneaking off. He hadn’t explained it to them, but they hadn’t presumed to question a knight. Asger had left after seeing her to the ship, the foil from the explosive held carefully between thumb and forefinger as he headed off to report to his superiors.

The man on the bike brought it to a halt, placed it in park, and dismounted. His tails continued to swirl in the air behind him, more like something attached to an animal than pieces of fabric. He removed a helmet, hung it on a handlebar, grabbed a silver briefcase, and walked toward them.

He was a middle-aged man with brown skin and wavy black hair, and his eyes seemed to be ocular prostheses, similar to real eyes in appearance, but slightly more reflective. Had he been born blind? If so, maybe that was why he’d gotten into a medical-equipment business.

“Baron Denji Takahashi?” Bonita started to stick out a hand for a clasp but shifted to a bow, which seemed to be favored among Kingdom subjects.

“Yes. Call me Denji.” He returned the bow. “And yes, I’m related to the queen, and no, I can’t get you an audience.”

Qin found the comment bewildering—she hadn’t known the queen’s maiden name and wouldn’t have assumed a relationship, regardless.

Bonita straightened. “No problem. I doubt she wants medical-bandage vending machines.”

“But I do, and if you are truly the rightful owner of the patent, I’m prepared to negotiate for it and for all research, schematics, data, etcetera, etcetera relating to it.” He raised his eyebrows. “Are you the rightful owner? You said Professor Dabrowski gave it to you, but my understanding is that you don’t have any notarized documentation.”

“No, the professor and I have been busy eluding mercenaries, pirates, and killer robots. We haven’t spent much time in the company of, uh, notarizers.” Bonita looked at Qin, as if questioning if that was the correct term.

As if Qin would know. She was only here to be the muscle.

“A Kingdom notary public would be the appropriate person,” Denji said dryly. “In lieu of notarized documentation, I will need to speak with Professor Dabrowski and record an oral transferring of the rights. You said you’ve been traveling with him?”

“Yes, but he’s currently…” Bonita looked toward the castle, the top half of the sprawling stone structure visible from the air harbor. “Detained.”

Denji’s lips pinched together.

“Maybe you can go see him in the castle,” Qin suggested. “If you know the queen.”

“She’s my second cousin. I’m actually on better terms with her daughter, Princess Oku, but it would be deemed somewhat strange if I visited her without bringing botany equipment for her greenhouse lab. What do you mean, exactly, detained?” He frowned at Bonita.

“Uhm.”

Qin caught a familiar person’s scent on the breeze and leaned outside to spot Casmir walking across the pavement in socks, wearing the same rumpled T-shirt and black trousers he’d been in two days ago. Except that they were more rumpled. And so was he.

“Captain?” Qin pointed.

Casmir wore a worried, distracted expression, as if he was reading some news on his contacts. Maybe he’d already heard about the bombing.

Bonita spotted him, gawked, and then spread her arms in a far warmer welcome than she’d ever given him. “Casmir! El Mago!”

“El what?” Qin asked.

“El Mago. The wizard. Robot whisperer was too much of a mouthful.”

A faint refrain of Viggo’s favorite opera played on the speakers. It was the one the vacuums liked to work to, at least according to Viggo.

Casmir appeared bemused by the spread arms, but he waved agreeably as he ambled up the ramp. “Hello, Laser, Qin. Gentleman with a beautiful Model 87 air bike.”

“Baron Denji Takahashi.” The man bowed. “You’re Professor Dabrowski?” He considered Casmir’s dirty socks. “I’d heard you were quirky.”

“Is that my reputation in the world these days? Huh.”

“Is it not your reputation in the robotics community?” Qin asked.

“Oh, it is. I just didn’t know it had spread.” Casmir grinned and patted her on the arm.

“Mr. Takahashi is here from Kendo Equipment Manufacturing,” Bonita said. “He is related to the queen but can’t get you an audience.”

“That’s all right. I’ve already had my expectations of an audience with the queen sufficiently dashed.”

“I’m here to possibly make an offer on Patent Number 183794729-b,” Denji said. “You filed it, Professor. And this lady says you gave it to her.”

“That’s true. In exchange for space fare and food.”

“She doesn’t have any notarized documentation.”

“No?” Casmir raised his eyebrows at Bonita. “Did you explain the pirates and mercenaries?”

“And the killer robots,” Bonita said. “I tried.”

“If you’ll allow me to make a recording,” Denji said, “we can formalize everything now and begin negotiations.”

Qin thought Casmir might ask for a shower or food first—shoes, perhaps—but he nodded and said, “Happy to.”

As he, Bonita, and Denji headed into the ship, the music increased in volume and two dozen robot vacuums whirred out of the ship’s nooks and crannies to zip around Casmir’s feet.

Denji gaped.

“It is good to have you back, Casmir,” Viggo’s voice came from the speakers.

“Thank you, Viggo. Do you have anything that needs repairing or fine-tuning?”

“There is a rattle in my primary engine housing that developed during our last landing.”

“I’ll look at it as soon as I’ve helped Laser.”

“Excellent. The robots can direct you to the spot when you’re ready.”

Bonita sighed and shook her head. “Definitely El Mago.”

Qin remained at the cargo hatch, in part because she didn’t know anything about negotiating for patents, and in part because she feared a legion of law enforcement officers would soon race across the pavement, intending to drag Casmir back to the dungeon. He had the look of an escaped prisoner. If he’d been let go, wouldn’t they have returned his shoes to him?

Only a single man strode toward the Dragon. Asger.

He was as handsome as ever, but there were uncharacteristic bags under his eyes, and he didn’t look like he’d slept.

“Qin.” He nodded once as he climbed the ramp. “Is Casmir here?”

“He just arrived.”

Asger’s mouth twisted. “I’ve been assigned to protect, guard, and spy on him again.”

“You object?”

“Maybe not. The verbal orders I received from my superior were somewhat vague, but my understanding is that we’re going to find the terrorists. The people who bombed the synagogue last night, the people who’ve been attacking other targets on Odin, and the people who—Royal Intelligence believes—are trying to keep the Kingdom distracted by troubles at home so we don’t pay much attention to the crimes being committed in our name throughout the systems.”

“I would definitely like to help stop the people who bombed that building last night.”

“Good. We’ll need help. I’m confused about the why, but apparently, only Casmir and I have been given this responsibility. Even though a dozen knights and countless Kingdom Guards and Royal Intelligence agents have been trying to stop these people for the last two months. Without success.”

His lips shifted into another position, his expression one she hadn’t seen on him before.

“Are you… daunted?” Qin guessed.

“Of course. Shouldn’t I be?”

“The myths and legends don’t mention knights being daunted.”

“I guess we’re supposed to hide that under our cloaks.” His smile was fleeting. “I need to talk to Casmir.”

“You’ll have to get in line.”

“Behind whom?”

“A chief executive officer who’s related to the queen but can’t get you an audience and Viggo’s robots.”

“Casmir’s popularity knows no bounds.”

Asger waited by the hatch with Qin, showing a new willingness to answer questions—she asked him about how one became a knight and what kind of training they did. She didn’t know what had made him decide to look at her instead of through her or away from her, but she was encouraged by the change. She started to regret that she’d wished his balls would wither up, fall off into the toilet, and be flushed into space and sucked into a black hole. Fortunately, she hadn’t voiced those words to him. Kim had received that diatribe. And she didn’t seem like the kind of person who would gossip it back to Asger.

After a half hour, Bonita, Denji, and Casmir returned to the cargo hold. Casmir patted Denji on the back as they ambled toward the hatch. Casmir was still in socks. Did he even have any backup shoes? During their time in space, Qin had only seen him in the one set of pants and a T-shirt. If he borrowed one of Bonita’s galaxy suits again, at least he would have use of the boots. And some protection if a random terrorist tried to shoot him on the streets.

“Of course, I’ll make myself available should you have any questions once you get ready to begin manufacturing,” Casmir said. “I’m hoping my new, uhm, project for the crown won’t keep me too busy. But message me whatever you need, and I’ll prioritize answering you.”

“You’re working for the crown now?” Denji didn’t sound that surprised.

“I’m applying for the position of court roboticist.”

Denji paused at the top of the cargo ramp. “I’ve been to the castle for a few functions, and I don’t remember a representative from that position.”

“That’s because it doesn’t exist yet. It’s a long story. I’m hoping it will work out favorably.” Casmir’s face twisted into a strange expression that seemed to all at once be wistful, optimistic, and terrified.

Denji didn’t seem to know quite what to make of it, but he bowed and said, “I’ll wish you luck, then. Like her daughter, the queen is a scientist by training, though the media portrays her only as a smiling benefactor who hands out blankets to the poor. You may find that she would be the one most receptive to an application for such a position.”

“Oh, I’d very much like to see her and ask about it one day.” Casmir lifted a hand, as if to wave farewell, but he halted mid-motion. “Denji, I know you said you can’t arrange audiences, but do you by chance have a contact code, either for the queen or the princess, that might be used to send a packet of schematics?”

“Schematics?”

“I’ve been working on a robot bee project that I think the princess might find interesting. Or utterly appalling but practical. I fear it would never be seen if I sent it to one of the general castle correspondence addresses.”

“Robot bee project?” Qin mouthed to Asger.

Asger met her eyes and shrugged back.

“Ah.” Denji tapped his lips. “That actually does sound like something that would interest the princess. And the queen. She originally studied as a botanist, you know.”

“I didn’t know that,” Casmir said, though Asger nodded. He seemed to have more of a relationship with the queen.

“Forward the message to me, and I’ll send it along to them,” Denji said.

Casmir brightened. “I will. Thank you.”

“What are the robot bees for?” Bonita stepped up to Casmir’s side as Denji strode down to his air bike.

“Pollinating flowers, of course, though I think the challenge of creating robots that could also make honey would be enjoyable to work on. Gathering nectar and pollen is a mechanical process, of course, but my understanding is that there are enzymes and proteins in the bee’s stomach that break down the complex sugars in the flower nectar before it’s stored in honeycomb cells. It’s certainly not impossible to use mechanical means to replicate biological processes, but it’s not easy.”

Bonita looked at Qin, with a similar expression to the one Qin had given Asger.

“Asger,” Casmir said, his tone graver. “I need to go on an errand. Will you accompany me, please?”

“It’s my understanding that I’ll be accompanying you everywhere for some time.”

“Working for the crown comes with onerous obligations, doesn’t it?”

“You’re only just beginning to find out.”

They headed down the ramp, and Qin raised her eyebrows toward Bonita, curious how the meeting had gone. It had sounded promising.

“We’re selling Casmir’s patent.” Bonita nodded firmly. “For fifty thousand crowns.”

“That’s good, right? It’s as much as you would have been paid for that bioweapon, and it will help people.”

“People in need of bandages without quick access to a medical facility, yes. And fifty thousand is enough to be useful. It’s a lot more than I expected to get, honestly. Now, I can pay you your last two months’ wages, and we can attempt to negotiate with the Druckers for your freedom.”

“Thank you, Captain, but I don’t want you to feel obligated to share your money with me—and definitely not with them.”

“We’ll figure something out.”

“Are we leaving soon?” Qin didn’t manage to keep the alarm out of her voice.

She wanted to stay and help Casmir and talk more about knights with Asger. Casmir hadn’t told them yet what exactly he was up to—the wry way he’d said court roboticist made it sound like a half-truth, at most—but Qin was sure he was still in danger. He had to be. All those people wanted that gate, and only he knew where it was.

“Not for a few days. As Casmir suggested, I negotiated for something else as well.” Bonita flexed one of her legs. “And it’ll take some time for contracts to be drawn up and for everything to be signed and made official. I don’t want to fly off until I see the money sitting in my account.”

“Understandable.” Qin smiled, relieved, though she didn’t know how much Casmir would resolve in the next few days. She also didn’t know where Bonita planned to head next, but Qin feared that in other systems, she would be more likely to run into bounty hunters and opportunists trying to collect her for the Druckers’ reward.

Maybe it was a delusion, but she sensed that here, she would be less likely to encounter such people. The Kingdom seemed isolated from the rest of the systems. And it had that beautiful park.

She supposed it was silly to wish to stay here so she could run through the trees again. It wasn’t as if she had the freedom to move about without people shouting freak at her. If she hadn’t had Asger at her side the night before, she would have been arrested, even though she’d been helping. The little boy giving her the robot doll had been sweet, but she had a feeling it would be naive to think she could ever have a life someplace like this. No matter how beautiful the trees were.

Automated tractors pushed rubble into neat piles as the warm sun beat down, glinting off their metallic bodies. Casmir thought thunder and rainstorms would have been more appropriate for the situation. Asger had explained what it had been like at the synagogue the night before, and Casmir wasn’t sure if he was relieved the injured and dead had all been removed, or if he felt guilty that he hadn’t been here to help. This wasn’t the place where his family worshipped, but he’d been here several times for special ceremonies, and he knew a number of those who’d gone to the hospital after the bombing.

…and the Kaganovichs, their little girl came out of the ICU this morning, bless the family. The Marshaks are unaccounted for. We’re praying they were simply out of town and will respond as soon as they’re able. You know they enjoy their camping trips. Casmir, this is so dreadful. Do you know if the king plans to do anything?

No, Mother, he replied to the text scrolling down his contact, finally having the opportunity to catch up with his family this afternoon. We didn’t become close while he was questioning me. But he has assigned me to find the terrorists and guide the Kingdom Guard to them, and I intend to do so.

Casmir spotted a child’s purse left among the wreckage, and he clenched his fist. He would have taken this assignment whether the king had wished it or not. This was despicable. Who would attack innocent civilians? And why? To get at him? If it was directed toward him, why not bomb the synagogue his family attended? He hoped it had nothing to do with him, that the synagogue had been chosen over the other religious buildings on the bluff because it had been at the end and an easier target.

“As usual,” he muttered, wiping his eyes.

You know I want these awful people brought to justice, or at least removed from our world, but why are you involved, Casmir? I don’t understand. And why can’t you comm me? And come to dinner tonight?

I don’t want to endanger you and Father. I told you. Casmir had been going back and forth with his mother for over an hour. He was glad to finally have a chance to speak with her, even if by text message, but he needed to focus on figuring out his new assignment, and he feared he might have to start filing away her notes for later. Until after he’d come up with… He didn’t know what yet. Something.

He gazed toward the ocean and the street out front.

Asger leaned against one of the still-standing walls, alternating between watching him and watching their surroundings. With Zee still with Kim—he had sent her a message earlier to let her know he was all right, but he hadn’t heard back from her yet—he was counting on Asger to protect him if crushers showed up. What he hadn’t admitted to Asger was that he wanted crushers to show up.

If they didn’t, he would spend the next couple of days sifting through all the university and public databases to gather as much information on the Black Stars as he could, but he had to assume that the Royal Intelligence office had all the information that was out there and then some. It was almost unbelievable that they couldn’t locate a terrorist headquarters—or even a network of cells—on their own planet. Casmir, suspecting the Black Stars had some high-tech method of hiding themselves, needed to try something the Intelligencers hadn’t. Or weren’t able to. If he could intercept and nullify a crusher—a daunting task, especially without Zee here to help—maybe he could hack into its programming and find the location of its home base.

It wouldn’t be easy. He and his team at the military research lab had made it difficult for them to be hacked. Zee was keyed to a code that could only be transmitted by Casmir’s chip. He’d done that at Zee’s creation. If the terrorists had stolen crushers from the lab, units that hadn’t yet been keyed to someone, they may have been able to take control that way. It would have taken a talented programmer though. Did Royal Intelligence know that? That they should be looking for a programming expert, probably one with experience in robotics?

I don’t understand why you’re being targeted, Casmir, his mother messaged.

I don’t understand yet either. It’s one of the things I have to find out.

You haven’t done anything wrong!

Casmir let his head fall back, his vision blurring as seagulls wheeled overhead. Hadn’t he? He’d helped create the crushers. And now they’d blown up—or assisted in blowing up—a synagogue, and they’d attacked a station in another system. What evil would they do next?

He didn’t think they were the reason a terrorist organization would target him, but he couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that he owed it to the universe to try to atone for what he’d helped cause.

I went by your house, his mother added. Almost all of Kim’s plants are dead. Where is she? Is she all right? Is she being targeted too? Does she need to come stay with us?

I don’t think so, Mother. But I’ll let her know you’re offering. Casmir smiled faintly. You should stay away from the house, though, as long as I’m a target. It makes me nervous knowing that you’re in the same apartment that I grew up in.

It’s not like bad guys wouldn’t be able to find us, dear. Your father and I have worked at the same places for almost that long.

I know. Just don’t take any unnecessary risks, please. Such as standing outside a recently bombed synagogue, waiting to be targeted, he thought but did not send.

Casmir, I looked in your closet. Your clothes are all there.

I know, Mother. There was a crusher in my house, so we couldn’t go inside to gather luggage before leaving the planet. Casmir was somewhat heartened that it didn’t sound like anything more egregious had happened to the house than the dead plants. He knew Kim was worried about her books.

Do you mean to tell me you’ve been wearing the same clothes for two months? The same pair of underwear? Casmir!

Our ship has laundering facilities, Mother.

Even the most well-made clothing is not meant for daily use.

Casmir poked a finger into a hole that had developed near the hem of his shirt. It was true. Especially if one was wearing normal clothing, not anything with a SmartWeave.

Do you need me to send you new underwear?

No, Mother.

You didn’t go to the castle—to see the king!—in holey underwear, did you?

Now that I’m back on Odin, I can order my own underwear, Mother. Thank you.

You did see him in holey underwear!

He wasn’t there for the strip search. Unless his guards file extremely thorough reports, he is still in the dark when it comes to my undergarments. Casmir spotted Asger walking his way. I need to get to work, Mother. I thank you for the concern. Now that I’m back in the city, I shall replace my failing garments posthaste. There’s no need to send more. Thank you.

“Are you all right, Casmir?” Asger asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ve been standing in the open and staring at the sky with a distressed look on your face.”

“Well, I was talking to my mother.” Casmir left it at that and didn’t mention the underwear conversation.

“That explains the distressed look, but why are you in the middle of the square? You’re an easy target.”

“I was kind of hoping for that. That the terrorists would realize I’m here and send a crusher.”

“I see you want to make my tenure as a bodyguard simple and painless.”

“You’re not a bodyguard; Zee is a bodyguard. You are my amazingly talented, strong, and conveniently armed and armored ally.” Casmir smiled and patted him on the arm.

Asger arched a single eyebrow. “It’s amazing that you can say something like that without sounding sarcastic.”

“It’s because I’m not sarcastic. Look, I’m trying to turn myself into bait, because it’s clear that they want me. I’d really like to get my hands on, if not a crusher, some other robot or drone the terrorists have used. I don’t suppose there’s anything in the Royal Intelligence evidence rooms that might qualify?”

“I’ll check.” Asger started to turn away, but he turned back, put his hand on Casmir’s shoulder, and guided him into a doorway. “At least consider being bait from behind partial cover.”

“Yes, I will. Very good advice. Thank you.”

Asger squinted at him, as if still searching for sarcasm. Casmir spread his hands. He genuinely appreciated that Asger had been assigned to him and that Asger had been willing to be assigned to him. It wouldn’t have surprised him if some other young knight had appeared at the ship that morning, claiming that Sir Asger was too busy for this mission.

Casmir, a message came in from Kim, are you out of the dungeon?

I am! Did you get my message this morning?

Yes, just now. Along with several messages from your mother, showing distress that you left home without packing sufficiently.

She didn’t mention my lack of underwear, did she?

Repeatedly. The lab where I’m working doesn’t allow outside communication, so they all dumped in at once when I walked out.

That doesn’t sound like your usual lab.

No, I’m a quasi-prisoner of Royal Intelligence while working on refining my new strain of bacteria.

I hope you weren’t spending your nights in a dungeon cell adjacent to mine without me knowing it.

No, they’re letting me stay at my mother’s apartment. With Zee and two bodyguards instructed to protect me while keeping me from wandering off.

Sounds stifling. Casmir peeked out from behind his wall in case any nefarious robots were advancing through the square, but only the same rubble-clearing tractors whirred and ground about.

Asger, who was back to leaning against a wall with his arms folded over his chest, glared at him until he leaned back behind cover.

It could be worse, but, yes, it is stifling. Rache came to visit last night.

Casmir reflexively stepped back, appalled. His heel clipped a heavy stone, and he pitched to the ground.

Asger lunged forward, yanking his pertundo from his belt with one hand while covering Casmir protectively as he squinted into the shadowy interior of the synagogue.

“What happened?” Asger whispered. “Were you shot?”

“No, sorry.”

“Sorry you weren’t shot?”

“Sorry I made you think I was.” Casmir rubbed his back while messaging, What do you mean Rache visited you? Like he commed you on his way out of the system or he showed up in your apartment like a creepy stalker? Out loud, he said, “Kim sent me some startling news. I’m waiting for clarification.”

Asger hauled Casmir to his feet and pushed him toward the wall again. “It must have been extremely startling.”

“You have no idea.”

He came in person. To bring the espresso maker and coffee beans he promised me.

And you let him in?

He was already there when I arrived. Adorning my mother’s balcony with his all-black ensemble.

Kim! That’s definitely creepy stalker-ish.

It was fine. He wasn’t any creepier than usual.

That’s not a relief!

He didn’t do anything. Calm down. But I wanted you to know he’s on the planet.

Casmir rocked back, this time without falling over, as he realized why Rache would be here on Odin. Maybe nothing to do with stalking, after all. At least not stalking Kim. Did he ask you where to find me? Or ask you about the location of the gate? Kim, I’m so sorry.

I expected him to, but he didn’t. He just left the coffee, looked at my mother’s bookshelf, and asked if I wanted him to redeem the favor he said he owed me.

Owed you? Because you kept his men from dying?

Yes.

Casmir bit his lip. He was somewhat heartened by the idea that Rache might actually care whether his mercenaries lived or died, but he was also suspicious. What if it was a ploy? What if Rache thought he could track Kim to Casmir? Not that he was that hard to find at the moment.

I suspect he can find you on his own, Kim added. He found me at my mother’s apartment easily enough. Keep an eye out.

I will. I… Wait, did you ask him for anything? To redeem that favor?

No. I prefer he owe me a favor rather than the other way around.

Uhm, any chance you’re willing to abandon that stance? After all, if he believes he owes you a favor, and he redeems it, you’d just be even, right? You wouldn’t then owe him a favor. You shouldn’t be entering into some weird reciprocal bequest-granting relationship.

There was a long pause. Kim, Casmir was positive, knew him well enough to guess where he was going.

What do you want me to ask him, Casmir?

He once said in an offhand manner that the people trying to kill me would be more likely to hire him than try to kill him. Presumably because he’s blatantly and brazenly anti-Kingdom. As are they.

You want me to ask him to try to get hired by them?

Yes, can you? And then Asger and I will tag along with him for the job interview.

Another long pause. It was amazing how often even his good friends had to stop to digest his brain’s utterings.

This made perfect sense to him. Rache could be the one lead open to him that wasn’t open to Royal Intelligence. Technically, it was a lead open to Kim. If she was willing to make the request. And if Rache was willing to go along with it. How obligated did he feel to grant her favor?

That sounds like something that might damage his reputation and ability to gain employment in the future, Kim finally replied. He may not feel that indebted to me.

Exactly what Casmir had been thinking, but he couldn’t resist trying to sell it further. This would be much more desirable than waiting to be attacked by enemy crushers and hoping in vain that they could capture and reprogram one.

Didn’t you save his doctor and his engineering chief? Those are super important people. Do you know how hard it must be to find a surgeon willing to forego his cushy hospital life to service mercenaries on a ship wanted by the law in nine out of twelve systems? Casmir didn’t know if Rache was truly wanted dead in that many places, but he had met Rache twice now, and could certainly imagine the scenario.

I’m skeptical that he’s going to be willing to do this, Kim replied, but I will ask.

He sensed her reluctance, even through text messages, and debated if he truly needed to ask Kim to beg a favor of Rache.

Wait. What if you just ask him to join you for dinner somewhere? Casmir imagined watching Rache lift up his mask just enough to pop food into his mouth and then lower it again. What a weirdo. And then I’ll show up and ask him for help myself.

Casmir, the first time you met him, you almost blew him up. The second time, you locked him in an escape pod and jettisoned him.

So… you don’t think he’ll be willing to help me?

I think you’re in danger of him strangling you as soon as he learns where you hid the gate. Or as a tactic in order to learn where you hid the gate.

Casmir grimaced, since he didn’t have information on the gate’s whereabouts any longer. He was still kicking himself over whatever consequence he’d failed to foresee. He wondered if one of the king’s people would update him if they learned the cargo ship had flown out of the system.

I’ll tell him what we’d like, Kim said, and invite him to a planning meeting somewhere in town. No, wait. I’m still stuck here with these bodyguards. It would have to be…

Your mother’s apartment? We’ll be there to make sure he doesn’t stalk you creepily. Tell him it’s a dinner, and I’ll arrange for food to be brought. I’ll bring Asger and maybe Qin and Bonita if they can be talked into helping us.

Did Rache have a shuttle of his own down here that he could use to fly them to wherever the terrorist headquarters was? Or had he come down on public transportation? Casmir couldn’t imagine the Fedallah getting close to Odin, even with its slydar stealth technology.

Not pizza and pot stickers.

That’s not the only delivery food in the capital.

It’s the only delivery food I’ve seen you order.

That’s because pizza and pot stickers are the perfect pairing. My gaming buddies all agree. But I’ve been to fancy fundraising dinners before, so I know about gourmet food. I’ll contact a caterer. Casmir hoped he could afford a caterer. Fortunately, he had some money in his bank account and access to it once again—he’d been nervous that morning when he had, for the first time since returning, tried to use his chip to buy a bottle of fizzop from a robot vendor. But it had worked. Apparently, the bank hadn’t cared that he’d gone MIA for two months, and nobody had decided he was criminal enough, at least here on Odin, to order his account locked.

When do you want to do this? Kim asked.

As soon as possible. Tonight, if you can arrange it.

Don’t show up if you can’t talk Asger into coming. And I’ll make sure Zee is in the apartment instead of outside.

Should I be concerned that you think Rache is going to strangle me?

Yes.

Don’t worry. I’ll be charming. Should I bring him a gift? I should. Mother says you’re always supposed to bring gifts to dinner parties. Technically, for the host or hostess, but it also seems wise to appease an angry pirate with overtures of friendship.

What kind of gift would charm a mercenary captain? Guns? Daggers? Oil for his cybernetic bits?

Casmir snorted at the idea, though he suspected he’d only get himself strangled more quickly if he handed Rache a can of spray lubricant.

I was thinking of a stack of first-edition comic books. After all, he’s like me, right?

Nobody is like you, Casmir.

Thank you.

This is going to be an interesting dinner.

Yes. I’ll start inviting my half of the guest list. Let me know when Rache confirms.

“Casmir?” Asger asked warily. He hadn’t been privy to any of the conversation, but he must have read something on Casmir’s face. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“You’re wearing this weird grin. I’m going to assume you’re not talking with your mother again.”

“Nope. I’m plotting and scheming.”

“I was afraid it might be something like that.”

Casmir patted his shoulder. “What are you doing for dinner tonight?”

11

Kim eyed the place settings and the mishmash of chairs, worried everything was positioned too closely together around the round table, especially if Asger and Qin were coming. They had shoulders capable of knocking down trees. Casmir and Rache wouldn’t take up as much physical room, but Rache and his black clothing—and his aura—might prompt the others to scoot their chairs away. And Bonita, with her sore knees, might constantly be flexing her legs under the table and bumping other people and the pedestal.

Unfortunately, the round table was all the apartment offered. Kim doubted her mother had been thinking about entertaining hordes of people when she’d ordered the furniture. She’d had to drag in two patio chairs to have enough seats for everyone.

“Why did I agree to this?” she muttered.

“There is an Old Earth saying,” Zee said from the spot he’d taken up just inside the door, “that it is good to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

“I see Casmir programmed you with his wit.”

The crusher spoke so seldom that it always surprised her when he did.

Kim adjusted the place settings slightly to put hers closer to Rache. She’d spent the most time with him and was probably least likely to be put off by his black aura. It was either that or sit in Asger’s lap, and her aversion to touching would never permit that.

The doorbell rang, and she shook her head. At the least, it would be good to see Casmir again. She’d been more than a little worried he would end up moldering in the dungeon for months—or be shot outright. She was curious about the details of whatever deal he’d struck with the king.

When she opened the door, Casmir stood between her two bodyguards, his arms laden with boxes. Qin, Asger, and Bonita were strung out down the hallway beyond him.

“Should we demand to search those?” one of the guards was asking. “We’re supposed to protect Scholar Sato from assassins, terrorists, and short shifty people with boxes.”

“That can’t be on your orders,” Casmir said, his voice muffled with his lips almost pressed against one of those boxes. “And I’m not short. I’m average height for a male without any gorilla genes in his ancestry.”

The guard’s brow furrowed, as if he was trying to decide if that was an insult. As Kim had noted before, she hadn’t been given the shiniest drabonbon melons in the Kingdom Guard harvest.

“No objection to being called shifty?” Kim asked.

“Not really. I’ve been doing all kinds of scheming today. I can’t wait to share my ideas with you.” His eyes—they were all she could see of his face—crinkled madly.

“You just want to search the boxes,” the other guard said, “because that middle one is from a chocolatier.”

“Yes, that box looks especially suspicious. All foods should be tested before Scholar Sato eats them.”

“She’s not the queen, and you’re not the court taster.”

The guard prodded the chocolate box. “I could be.”

“I’ll just take these inside,” Casmir said, shuffling past them.

The hungry guard lifted a hand, as if to stop him, but Asger stepped forward, wearing his gray liquid armor and his purple cloak.

“Nothing is going to be tested,” Asger said. “Scholar Sato wouldn’t be so foolish as to invite dangerous guests to her dinner party.”

Kim almost choked, imagining Rache using his jet boots to fly up to her balcony even as they spoke.

“Yes, Sir Knight.” The guard backed off and resumed his official stance beside the door, though he did watch the chocolate box disappear into the apartment with longing in his eyes.

“What is all this, Casmir?” Kim took a couple of the boxes as she waved everyone inside. “Not all comic books, surely.”

“Not all, no.” He smiled, set the rest of the gift boxes on a bookcase, then spread his arms in invitation.

Kim hesitated, not sure they needed to hug twice in two months.

Casmir only smiled wider and stepped forward and hugged… Zee.

“Zee, buddy, I missed you!” He patted the hulking crusher on the back. He looked like a kid standing next to the construct, his cheek only reaching Zee’s torso.

The crusher patted him on the head. “It is pleasing to see my creator. And it is easier for me to protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski when they are in the same area.”

“I aim to make life easier on my bodyguards,” Casmir said, stepping back.

Asger coughed loudly and throatily. He either objected to the statement or a bird had flown down his throat.

Bonita and Qin came in last, shutting the door behind them. Bonita locked it. Casmir must have warned her about who else was joining them. Kim wondered if they meant to keep Rache out or ensure the guards didn’t come in and witness his presence. It wasn’t as if he used the front door.

“This is for you, Kim.” Casmir slid out the chocolate box and handed it to Kim. “And also this.” A second box went on top of the first.

“Because of your mother’s policy of bringing gifts for the hostess?”

“Exactly. My mother is a wise woman.”

“El Mago is especially pleased with her since she sent him clothes today,” Bonita said.

“El-what?” Kim asked.

“It’s Laser’s new nickname for me,” Casmir said. “And, yes, while I was shopping for you and Rache—online, of course, as, pending the successful implementation of this plan, I’ll no longer need to appear in public places as bait—my mother was shopping for me. She went to the house, you see, and in addition to being concerned that I hadn’t packed clothing before leaving the planet, she decided that the garden of my wardrobe had been insufficiently tended these past years.”

“The garden of your wardrobe?” Kim asked. “Did she say that or did you?”

“She might have said that it looked like a garden had fallen onto my wardrobe. I forgot to do laundry before going to work that morning, and after two months of sitting in a rumpled hamper…”

“Maybe I’m glad we haven’t been permitted to return to the house.”

Casmir nodded ruefully. “Oh, and in case she asks… we didn’t have a dinner party tonight without inviting my parents.”

“Naturally not.”

“I keep telling her I can’t make it to dinner because I don’t want to endanger them.”

“Yes, it’s thoughtful of you to save the endangerment for me.”

He smiled, but anguish flashed in his eyes, and Kim wished she hadn’t made the joke. She knew he regretted that her life had been turned upside down because of her association with him.

“It’s all right.” Kim hefted her box. “You brought me chocolates, so I can forgive any recent disruption to my routine.”

“The chocolates are covering espresso beans.”

“Really?” She lifted the box with keener interest and read the print on the side next to the pictures. “Shade-grown gourmet espresso beans enrobed in rich truffled dark chocolate.”

“When you said this would be catered,” Bonita said, “enrobed coffee beans wasn’t quite what I imagined.”

“They’re fantastic,” Casmir said. “You’ll love them. If Kim shares.”

Kim clutched the box to her chest, thoughts of sharing far from her mind.

“We might want to use these for dinner.” Casmir gave her the second box. “They’re little espresso cups.”

“It seems Casmir believes we’ll need to be alert tonight.” Asger was walking around the small apartment and peering into rooms and under furniture.

Not, Kim realized, examining her belongings—technically, her mother’s belongings—but looking for intruders. Rache.

“He hasn’t made his appearance yet,” Kim said, walking into the little kitchen. “But someone could open the balcony door for when he does.”

“The balcony? Is that his natural milieu?” Asger asked. “Like a potted plant?”

“More like the creeping kudzu at the air harbor on Forever Nine,” Bonita said, “that grows up over your parked freighter and swallows it whole while you’re bartering for supplies.”

“Who wants a beverage?” Kim called, not wanting Rache to appear as people were insulting him. “There’s water, wine, and fizzop. And I can make coffee.”

Hopefully, the selection she had ordered sufficed. Casmir had promised to have food delivered, but she’d assumed people would want beverages. She’d never hosted a dinner party and hadn’t the foggiest idea what she was supposed to do beyond ensuring people did not go thirsty or hungry. Having people over for social gatherings was well outside her comfort zone, and she already felt the apartment distressingly full of people.

She reminded herself that these were all acquaintances, if not outright friends, and she didn’t need to worry about failing to perform adequately in a social capacity. They already knew her, for the most part. And Casmir would likely talk throughout the meal and ensure she didn’t have to carry a conversation.

“What kind of grown adults drink fizzop?” Asger asked.

“Short, shifty ones,” Casmir said. “One for me, please, Kim.”

“I like it too,” Qin admitted so softly Kim almost missed it.

“Oh.” Asger sounded apologetic, like he’d only meant to tease Casmir.

Qin shrugged as Kim stepped out with the bottles in hand.

“My metabolism is fast,” Qin said. “It’s helpful sometimes to drink calorically dense beverages.”

“And who doesn’t like bubbles tickling their tongue?” Casmir winked.

As Kim was about to set down the bottles, the curtain stirred, and Rache stepped into the apartment. All in black, including hood, mask, and gloves, he faced Casmir right away, his hand resting on one of two DEW-Tek pistols holstered at his belt.

Kim tensed, worried he’d only accepted the dinner invitation so he could capture Casmir. She clunked the bottles down, ready to spring at him and try to keep him from firing. Zee also spotted the threat and stomped into place in front of Casmir.

Everybody stared at Rache. Asger’s face was like a glacier. Bonita’s expression wasn’t any warmer. Qin vacillated between terror and aggression as she gripped the edge of the table, her claws digging into the wood.

Panic sparked in Kim’s brain as she feared she’d made a huge mistake. She’d invited Rache to dinner and told him Casmir would be there, only because she hadn’t wanted him to feel blindsided by Casmir and whatever scheme he proposed, but she hadn’t made him promise to come in peace. Now she wished she’d emphasized that no weapons would be allowed.

“Rache!” Casmir stepped out from behind Zee and waved cheerfully. “I’m glad you made it out of that escape pod. I assumed your people would come to collect you, but I wasn’t positive how much they loved you. It could have been an opportune moment for a mutiny. You know, from their perspective.”

Casmir headed for the bookcase holding the boxes, seemingly oblivious to Rache watching him with his hand on his pistol. Caressing the hilt of his pistol, one might say.

When Rache didn’t speak, Casmir kept going. “I did feel a little bad about that, even if you forcefully boarded and definitely weren’t invited, and I felt fully within my rights to defend myself. So I picked up a couple of gifts.”

He ambled over with the two large boxes and a hastily wrapped tube that was on top of the stack, nodding and smiling at Rache, who was like a black statue at his approach.

“One of these is technically from my mother,” Casmir admitted, unperturbed by the frosty reception. “A re-gift if you will. She had six tubes of underwear sent over today. I don’t know how much room she thinks I have in that little cabin on the Stellar Dragon, but it’s not enough for six tubes of underwear. I don’t know how often space mercenaries get to shop, so I thought you might appreciate them. I think they’re white. Is that all right with your faith? Whatever faith you are.” Casmir waved at Rache’s wardrobe, as if some religion might explain the all-black preference. “It’s not like they would show. The other two gifts, I picked out. An apology, if you will, for me not being super amenable to coming to work for you. You made a legitimate offer, and I may have come across as ungrateful. Sorry about all that.”

Casmir stopped and thrust the boxes toward the unmoving Rache.

Qin, Asger, and Bonita were gaping, just as unmoving. Kim was tempted to drop her face into her palm.

Sweat beaded on Casmir’s forehead, so she could tell he was nervous. Even he didn’t usually babble that much. But she didn’t know if Rache would perceive that or if he would simply think his clone brother was… strange.

Rache looked in her direction. Not for the first time, Kim wished she could see his face. She wanted to know if he was angry, uptight, or puzzled and trying to figure out how to react.

“Casmir’s mother’s taste is better than his,” Kim said, deciding that lightness was best for the situation. “I don’t know what’s in those boxes, but you’re probably safe in regard to the tube.”

Casmir nodded vigorously. “They’re just plain white. I have to buy the ones with rockets on them myself. For special occasions.”

Rache released his pistol and stuck out his hands, palms up. Casmir smiled and dropped the boxes onto them.

“I suppose,” Rache said, speaking for the first time, “that since we’re in Scholar Sato’s apartment, I needn’t worry that these boxes will explode and make a mess.”

“No, you wouldn’t have had to worry about that, regardless.” Casmir scrunched his face. “I don’t want to kill you. I just want for you not to kill me. And I also want you to continue to wish to redeem a favor for Kim. Even though I fully confess that I’m the one who’s asking for the favor, and she thinks this is a bad idea.”

“I didn’t say that explicitly,” Kim said.

“Explicitly.” Casmir picked up a bottle of grape fizzop and smiled at her.

The doorbell rang. Rache looked in that direction like a deer poised to spring. Or a panther poised to spring. Would he avoid being seen? Or leap to attack anyone who saw him, thus to eliminate witnesses?

“Probably the caterer,” Casmir said. “I’ll get it. Rache, the potted plants need watering, I think?”

He made a shooing motion toward the balcony.

Kim, feeling bad about throwing out Rache, even if it seemed a good idea, waved the others to the table and walked out with him.

“Sorry,” she said as soon as they stepped outside. “Casmir promised to buy the food.”

Rache had stepped out of sight beside the door. He held up the sloppily wrapped tube. “What could go wrong?”

“At worst, you’ll get pizza and pot stickers. He won’t actually eat the pot stickers, since they usually have pork in them, so if you like them, it works out well.”

“Hm.” Rache set the tube on the patio table and lifted the remaining two boxes. They were rectangular, flat, and appeared to have some heft. “These are about the right weight to contain ordnance.”

“Going by what he said earlier, you’re more likely to be holding comic books.”

“Comic books?” Rache glanced over his shoulder, though he couldn’t see Casmir from his spot.

Sensing judgment in the question, Kim said, “About ninety percent of what he reads are technical manuals, research papers, and reports on technical manuals and research papers. He likes fluff for the other ten percent. Though I’m told General Hawkeye Archambault is full of shades of gray and has deep thoughts pondering the treatment of superheroes in society at large.”

“Ah, superheroes. The overlooked minority.”

“Yes.”

As Rache peeled open the end of one package and peered carefully inside, Kim debated if she should try to sway him toward Casmir’s cause. But Casmir was much better at that kind of thing than she was, even if he and Rache weren’t on the best of terms. It wasn’t fair of Rache to blame Casmir for that, when he’d been the antagonist for both incidents.

“Huh. They do appear to be comic books.” Rache sounded faintly bewildered.

That a grown man would like comic books? Or that a grown man would give him comic books?

“Not the type of gift you usually receive?” Kim asked.

“Ordnance would be more practical.”

“Casmir is fond of whimsy.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed.” Rache peeked under the wrapping of the second box. “It’s a robot-building kit.”

“Maybe he thinks you need a hobby.”

Rache snorted. It almost sounded like a laugh.

Casmir knocked on the Glasnax door. “Food’s here.”

Rache waved for Kim to go in first, pausing to scrutinize their surroundings. Looking for drones with cameras? They were certainly a possibility here in the city. Kim realized what a risk he’d taken coming here not once but twice.

When she stepped inside, she found that people had chosen their own seats rather than sitting where she’d intended. She hadn’t thought to put name cards on the table, since she’d assumed she would be present to direct her guests. She decided it didn’t matter, but when Casmir sat down, her only choice was to sit between Qin and Bonita or Qin and Asger. Kim wondered if Qin had deliberately put herself where she would be able to act against Rache if needed.

“I hope this will do.” Casmir waved at a huge bowl of salad, a tray of artfully cut vegetables, platters of pâté and toast points, soup in a fancy tureen, a bucket of fried potatoes, and a stack of pizza boxes. It was an almost ludicrous combination of elegant and lowbrow.

“Are the pizzas for you?” Kim sat between Qin and Bonita.

“You didn’t think I was going to eat vegetables, did you?” Casmir winked. “But I’m willing to share. Rache, what are your thoughts on beef sausage, garlic, and roasted-pepper toppings?”

“That nobody will want to kiss you after you consume that.” Rache leaned against a wall without taking a seat. He withdrew some kind of scanner, and a few soft beeps came from it.

“Well, that wasn’t going to happen anyway. The women at this table are all too mature for me.”

“I might take that as a slight against my age,” Bonita said, “but you included Qin.”

“Qin is definitely too mature for me.”

“I expect most girls over age ten are,” Asger said.

“Ouch.” Casmir pantomimed Asger’s halberd hacking out his heart. It was a detailed and graphic gesture that made Kim wish she’d sat next to Casmir so she could elbow him when appropriate.

Kim caught his gaze, raised her eyebrows, and tilted her head toward Rache’s device.

I think he’s checking for spy cameras and eavesdropping equipment, Casmir messaged her. Either that, or he’s about to blow us all up.

Hopefully not before the pizza.

My thoughts precisely!

Rache put away the device. “Let’s talk, Dabrowski. What is it you want?”

Casmir, a piece of pizza in his mouth, lifted his eyebrows. “You don’t want to eat first? And banter more?”

Rache stared at him.

“Is it because of your mouth being covered? I ordered soup in case… you know.” Casmir waved at Rache’s mask.

This time, Kim did drop her face in her hand.

When Rache continued to stare wordlessly at him, Casmir sighed, pushed his plate forward, and folded his hands on the table. The others continued to eat, looking back and forth between them as if this were dinner theater.

“The gate I so carefully hid is missing,” Casmir told Rache. “And I mean really missing. The king’s people questioned me under the influence of a truth drug, and I, of course, blathered everything, including precise coordinates. They sent ships to look for it, and it’s gone. I, hoping to get myself out of trouble with the king so I don’t have to flee my home world forever, offered to go find it. Oddly, he didn’t trust me fully.”

“Fully.” Bonita snorted.

“He told me I needed to prove myself by finding the Black Stars terrorists and marking their base somehow so knights, Guards, soldiers, and grannies with rolling pins can descend on them and exact revenge.”

“Prove yourself.” Rache grunted. “If you knew half of what that man had done, you wouldn’t want anything to do with him.”

“I don’t suppose you’d like to enlighten us about your experiences with him?” Casmir raised his eyebrows in what Kim guessed was genuine curiosity.

Rache looked in her direction before saying, “No.”

Kim didn’t know what to make of that look. Did it imply he would tell her in private if she asked? Or maybe that he wouldn’t share in front of her? Or in front of the women in general? She couldn’t guess.

“I’m still forming an opinion on him,” Casmir said, “but the terrorists have been trying to kill me for two months, and they bombed a synagogue here in the city and killed thirteen people and sent dozens more to the hospital. They’ve bombed other places where Kingdom citizens congregate. That alone is plenty to make me want to bring them down. And even though you hate Jager and you’ve proven that you’ll kill anyone directly in his employ—”

“Those who’ve mindlessly sworn oaths to serve him without questioning his methods or motives or whether he’s fit to rule a nation,” Rache interrupted coolly.

Casmir spread a hand. His face was serious now, the jokes set aside. “Even so, you’ve demonstrated that you’re willing to spare the lives of Kingdom citizens, those who were simply born here and know no other way of life. You said you destroyed the bioweapon so it wouldn’t be used on Odin.”

Casmir paused for a response, but Rache didn’t reply.

Asger squinted at him. Wondering if it was true?

“You also mentioned once,” Casmir continued, unfazed by Rache’s silence, “that the terrorists trying to kill me would be more likely to hire you than target you.”

“Why would they target him?” Asger asked. “He makes hell for the Kingdom, the same as they’re doing.”

“Exactly,” Casmir said, not letting on that he may have faltered a bit there. Not that anyone who didn’t know their secret would have caught it. “I’m hoping, Rache, that you can comm these people—surely you have contacts for terrorist organizations and the like—and apply for a job. You’d be welcome to show up with some of your own people, of course—is your ship around?—but I would invite myself along, along with Asger and possibly Qin, if she’s willing. We could all be a part of your entourage. And then when we’re invited into the compound, we could transmit its coordinates to the Royal Intelligencers. And then, while we’re waiting, maybe I could distract the person in charge by having a chat with him or her. I dearly want to convince these people that I’m not anyone they should kill.”

“Chat?” Rache asked. “Why wouldn’t you just shoot the person and end the problem?”

“Well, he or she might have subordinates. Or superiors. People here or on other worlds who would simply take over the position. I was thinking of trying to steal back the crushers they stole. Robot emancipation, if you will.”

“Dabrowski, you have to kill your enemies, not simply steal their robots. Don’t you know anything?”

“Very little when it comes to terrorists and infiltrations. But I’m willing to learn if you wish to teach. As long as your methods aren’t too violent.”

Rache rubbed his forehead through his mask.

“I think you succeeded in giving him a headache,” Qin whispered to Casmir.

“It’s because he hasn’t eaten. His blood sugar is probably low.”

“I’m sure that’s it.”

Rache lowered his hand and studied the ceiling for a long minute. Maybe Casmir was giving him a headache.

“You’re asking a lot, Dabrowski,” Rache finally said. “I’m already risking my life by being here on Odin. I was willing to take that risk in order to find you so I could wrench the location of the gate out of your brain. But now you tell me you’ve lost it.”

“Temporarily.”

“I can’t bring my ship any closer than it already is, so I don’t have access to its resources. I didn’t bring any of my men with me because of the risk and also because they’re already gathering intel for another assignment. While it’s true that I’ve worked with various extreme groups before, I haven’t worked with the Black Stars organization—their guerrilla tactics used against civilians, as you guessed, do not agree with me. It’s possible I could reach out to contacts in the system and get a comm code for one of their officers, but if I walk into the hideout with the intent to betray them, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t shoot me. Right after they shoot you.”

“Did I mention that I can bring Zee along for protection?”

“I’m sure that’ll make all the difference.”

“He hefted Asger off his feet once,” Qin put in.

Asger frowned at her. “Don’t tell him that.”

“I will happily extend his protection to you if you’re willing to assist me. Just help us find their headquarters. We can sneak in on our own. You don’t even have to show up. In fact, I could show up, pretending to be you. It’s not like anyone knows what you look like.”

Kim barely kept from making a choking noise since Casmir could have, even if someone did know what Rache looked like, pretended to be him. As long as he wasn’t required to take his shirt off.

“But if you want to come along and be involved in saving the lives of Kingdom citizens, that’s fine too,” Casmir magnanimously offered. “If things go wrong, we can tell the terrorists that we captured you.”

Rache snorted. “I was thinking of telling them that I captured you.”

“If things go wrong?”

“No, up front.”

Casmir leaned back in his chair. “That’s actually… not a bad idea. Better than you randomly showing up for a job interview for a position they didn’t post.”

“So I thought,” Rache said dryly.

Kim frowned, not liking the idea of Casmir being dragged into some high-tech terrorist facility in cuffs, with Rache leading him along on a chain. How would Qin, Asger, and Zee go along to protect him if he was pretending to be a prisoner? Would it even be a pretense? Despite the gifts, Rache might relish the idea of handing Casmir over to be tortured.

“I would just… have to put a lot of trust and faith in you,” Casmir said, not managing to hide the concern in his eyes.

“Yes.” Rache sounded pleased by the idea.

“Did you like the comic books? Would you feel bad about betraying me after receiving them?”

“I’d have to read them before forming an opinion on them.”

Kim wondered if that was a callback to Casmir’s comment about forming an opinion on the king.

“Ah. Of course.”

“Let me see if I can find a contact. I’ll let you know what I learn.” Rache headed for the balcony door. “Do your best to stay out of sight in the meantime. In case I have to say I have you locked up in one of my cells.”

“Why do so many people want to lock me up?” Casmir moaned.

“It’s a mystery,” Bonita said.

Rache pushed open the sliding door.

“Wait.” Casmir grabbed two of the pizza boxes, stood up, and strode toward him. “Since you rejected the soup.”

Rache stared down at the offering. “Is this the garlic and peppers thing?”

“Yes, but don’t worry. Nobody was going to kiss you tonight either.”

“You sound certain of that.”

“Women don’t like the taste of mask fabric.” Casmir thrust the boxes at Rache.

He accepted them, looked back at Casmir as he stepped onto the balcony, then hopped onto the railing. He activated his jet boots and disappeared into the night.

The group relaxed noticeably, even to Kim’s non-fine-tuned senses, and the chat grew jovial as dishes and pizza boxes were passed around. Qin and Asger challenged each other to an eating contest—who could eat an entire pie the quickest. There was no doubt that they could easily consume entire pizzas by themselves.

Kim was glad to see everybody again and relieved they were having a good time without her having to do anything special as hostess, but a part of her felt sad for Rache, that he’d chosen a life for himself where he didn’t likely have fun gatherings with friends. Maybe that was an incorrect assumption on her part, and boisterous dinner parties were a staple on the Fedallah, but she’d had the impression of a detached commander who kept a distance between himself and his troops.

Tenebris Rache requests permission to contact you, a message scrolled down her chip. Do you accept?

Kim’s eyes went out of focus as she stared at the words. Did she? Did she want him to be able to message her at any time of the day or night? Not really. The thought of such intimacy with him made her uncomfortable. Not so much that she believed he would be a pest or say anything offensive, but because he was a criminal, and she could envision some future scenario where, due to some court order, all the conversations were downloaded from the memory integrated into her chip.

But then she realized he might have chosen her over communicating directly with Casmir about this charade, so they were less likely to be linked. Since it might be that, she had to say yes. She could always remove his access later.

Did you forget something? Kim asked along with sending her acceptance.

No. The weight of these gifts was almost too much for my jet boots to compensate for. I was close to finding out if I could survive a ten-story drop.

If it helps, I don’t think that’s why Casmir chose those gifts.

You don’t think so, huh? I wanted to ask you… A long pause followed the transmission. Will you agree to a dinner sometime without him there? Any of them.

Kim almost dropped her fork. She’d been holding it up for two minutes without moving it, so she set it down. Was he asking her on a date? If so, why?

She had to say no. She had no interest in a romantic relationship with anyone, certainly not the most notorious criminal in the Kingdom.

She shook her head in a no, but somehow, what her brain sent to her chip was, Will you take off your mask?

Yes.

I’ll think about it.

Good.

Kim put her elbow on the table and dropped her face in her hand for the second time that night, this time for a far different reason than the first. Why had she said that? Why hadn’t she simply said no? She’d meant no. She hadn’t meant to open a negotiation.

“Are you all right, Kim?” Casmir asked.

She lowered her hand and looked at him.

“I made a delightful joke, and you didn’t laugh. I assume something must have been distracting you. Or that you’re not feeling well. Did you eat the salad? It looks a little suspicious. All of the vegetables are green.” He smiled at her, but his eyes held concern.

“I’m fine.” Kim tried to wave away the concern, especially since everyone was looking at her now. “I just made a mistake.”

“The salad?”

She thought about telling him, or messaging him privately, but he would only agree that she’d made a mistake. And then offer a dozen ways to help her get out of it.

“That must be it,” she said.

“I thought so.” He smiled, but that concerned look didn’t leave his eyes.

She reminded herself that he was better at reading people than she was. Sometimes, that was useful; sometimes, it was inconvenient.

As the small dinner party wound down, Casmir brought a stack of dishes into the kitchen where Kim was already trying to maneuver his empty pizza boxes into the recycling chute. He set the dishes aside to help her.

“Thank you for inviting us all here, Kim,” he said. “Especially him.”

Kim’s eyebrows twitched slightly.

“Do you think I can trust him?” Casmir asked.

“You’re asking me? You read people better than I do. I don’t even know where to start with someone who always wears a mask. Not that I usually look at people’s faces anyway.”

Casmir shrugged. “You’ve spent more time with him than I have. Every time we’ve met… Well, this is the first time he hasn’t steered me around by the back of my neck.”

“You must have won him over with the comic books.”

“I doubt that. I think he thinks I’m an idiot.”

“He knows you’re not an idiot. You do babble around him though.”

“No kidding. How can you be so calm around him?” Casmir pushed the plates into the washer, letting the machine handle removing the food before starting. “I mean, I guess you’re always calm, but he makes me so nervous.”

“I’m not sure how far you can trust him, but I assume you have plans of your own and are just hoping he can get you into the facility.”

“Yes. I don’t expect him to bring his men down and storm the terrorist stronghold for me. And about those plans…” Casmir faced her and raised his eyebrows.

“Don’t tell me you want me to come with you and beat up the bad guys.”

“No… though the idea of you getting a ride in your father’s van and bringing along all the people from the dojo to help is somewhat appealing.”

“I’d prefer not to fling my peace-loving family at terrorists with DEW-Tek weapons and explosives. My little brother Junpei is the only one who doesn’t train simply so he can defend himself.”

“What does he train for?”

“To get girls.”

“How’s it working for him?”

“He does all right. Though I’m not sure how one can go from being incredibly agile and light on his feet in the dojo to tripping over everything in sight if a pretty girl is watching.”

“It’s not that hard. Trust me.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Your baseline is lower, so the differences aren’t that noticeable.”

“Thanks. I’m going to ask you for a favor even though I’m fairly certain you’re insulting me.”

“Another one?”

“Yes. Your new government lab is just as well stocked with equipment and supplies as your regular one, right?”

“Yes.” She eyed him warily.

“Can you cook me up an anti-terrorist bacteria of some kind?”

“Anti-terrorist?”

“I mean, I guess that couldn’t work, that you could specify them in particular.”

“Not without access to each individual’s blood.”

“We don’t even have access to their comm or know where they’re hanging out yet.” Casmir stroked his chin. “Could you make something that I or one of my robots could unleash on people that would make them sick or somehow distracted? Nothing deadly, but if they were writhing, clutching their stomachs, and unable to defend themselves when I called in the knights and Guard, that would be handy. Like when you made Qin and Bonita sick.”

“That was with a virus, not a bacteria.”

“I’m really not that picky. I’m not sure where their base will end up being, but I’m sure it’ll take our people time to get there.”

“You may want a chemical rather than a virus or bacteria, since the latter would take time to incubate in the human body and have a noticeable effect, but I’ll look in the warmers and see if there’s anything useful that I might be able to get away with pulling out. This isn’t like my old job where I was trusted. I’m watched.” Kim shoved a pizza box into the chute with more force than necessary.

“I’m sorry,” Casmir said glumly.

Even if she had volunteered to go over to the Machu Picchu and assist the Fleet with resolving the quarantine, she never would have been out there if not for him.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Oh, it probably is. Most things are these days.” He smiled, though it wasn’t that sincere. His heart ached at all the people in his wake who’d been hurt. All the people not in his wake too. Not only did he want to stop these terrorists, but he wouldn’t feel bad in the least if some bacteria made them miserable for days along the way.

“You’ll get to the bottom of it.” Kim nodded at him. “Don’t worry about me. I just miss my chances to train. I need a physical outlet after a long day of standing and sitting at work.”

“Your mother’s apartment doesn’t have a treadmill that folds out of the cabinet? You should move promptly back to the Dragon.”

“Have you been using Bonita’s treadmills?” Kim poked his shoulder.

Casmir was relieved she hadn’t poked his stomach. He didn’t remember to eat often enough to have a paunch, but it wasn’t rock hard. Rache’s probably was.

“Define use.”

“Walked, jogged, or sprinted on a treadmill for periods of at least twenty minutes.”

“Then no. I walked by the cabinet where they’re stored and looked at them. You know, to exercise my eyes.”

“You need more help than my bacteria can give you, Casmir.”

“I don’t doubt it. I’ll definitely be building some more robots. But your assistance will be invaluable.” He smiled at her. “You’re a good friend.”

“Yes.”

He smiled wider and strode out to accompany the others back to the ship. Maybe he would pull out one of those treadmills. To get himself fit for being Rache’s prisoner. That sounded as onerous as going into space.

12

“Those are fantastic,” Qin breathed, admiring the fresh galaxy-blue and silver-flame polishes painted on her claws. “You’re really good at this, Captain. You could work in a salon.”

Bonita snorted as she finished the last claw on Qin’s left hand. “All of that is done by robots these days. Nobody has openings for a manicurist. Even if I could stomach taking orders from some uppity employer.”

“Robots are very useful,” Viggo’s voice came from the speaker as two of his vacuums whirred around the lounge. “Just ask Casmir.”

The hatch was open, and bangs and clunks drifted up from the cargo hold.

“Is that why he’s building a robot army down there?” Bonita asked.

“He said he would feel unarmed facing terrorists without mechanical assistance,” Viggo said.

“Some people use guns for that.”

“Casmir is different.” Qin blew on her nail paint.

“Tell me about it.”

Qin picked up the galaxy-blue and grinned. “Do you think he would let me paint his nails?”

Bonita shook her head. “We need to find you more girlfriends, Qin.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a yes or no.”

Clunk, clunk, bang, whir!

“His hands may be busy, but you’re welcome to ask.” Bonita grimaced and flexed her knee under the table.

“You didn’t give me many details about the surgery that you guys finagled as part of the deal with the baron. Are you still going through with it?” Qin thought Bonita’s pain had been worse lately.

“Yeah, any galactic citizen will tell you the Kingdom is the place to go for high-quality medical procedures.”

“You sound sarcastic.”

“Because I am. But the price is right. And it doesn’t sound that complicated. It’s a procedure, not a surgery. Something about stem cell injections and nanite repair.”

“Free is a good price. I hope it works out well. Then you can spar with me in the cargo hold.” Qin examined her nails in the light, then added a couple more dots for stars.

“So I can break other joints and require more procedures? You know I prefer to hide in the back and shoot from behind cover.”

“That seems reasonable for a bounty hunter.” Qin did wish she had someone to practice with regularly. That was one thing she missed about having numerous cohort sisters around. They had all been equally strong and tough, so they hadn’t had to worry about hurting each other.

“Reasonable and healthy for one’s longevity.” Bonita put the cap back on the nail polish. “Qin, I’d like to give you that fifteen thousand. And help you start a negotiation with those pirates. You deserve to be free. Completely free.”

“I don’t think anyone is ever that free, are they?” Qin waved to the walls of the ship, though she meant to imply the debt and taxes that Bonita owed on it. If she didn’t pay them, her government would eventually come take the Dragon away from her, and how would she work then? Where would she live?

“You’re too young to be pessimistic.”

Qin lowered her chin. “I don’t want to take your money, Captain. Especially not when I don’t think it would work. I don’t think…”

“You have to learn to fight for yourself, Qin. And want your freedom and rights. It’s okay to want things. It’s not selfish. It’s human.”

“I’ll think about it.” Qin noticed the bangs had stopped, and she heard soft footfalls on the ladder rungs, so she was facing the hatchway when Casmir leaned in and knocked.

“Captain Laser,” he said. “I got another delivery. The cargo hold is about full, due to my workshop expanding to fill half of it. Do you mind if I put a few things in your freezer? Or engineering?”

“My cargo hold is full? Of what? Robot parts?”

“And complete robots.” Casmir smiled cheerfully.

“Where did you get the money for all that?” Bonita asked. “You refused to take a cut from the patent payment.”

“Denji actually paid me for a couple of hours of work related to that, but that mostly covered the pizzas the other night. These robots and parts are free. They’re from the various storage containers that my lab controls on the university campus. I asked a senior professor there if anyone would care if I took them. He said the students charged with cleaning graffiti and bird poop off the storage containers would be delighted if they disappeared entirely.”

“So you’re building this army out of quality materials.”

His smile grew a touch lopsided. “I’m improvising.”

“That should impress the terrorists.”

“We’ll see as soon as we can find them.” His smile waned. “I’m still waiting to hear back from Rache. I hope he didn’t back out. Or that if he did, he’d at least let us know. Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that I lost the ancient gate. He’s probably less interested in capturing and torturing me for that information now.”

“How sad,” Bonita said.

“Casmir, you look tense.” Qin rose to her feet and swept an arm toward her chair. “Would you like to step into our salon?”

His eye blinked. “Your salon? Like for massages? Or…” He glanced at the table full of paints and then at her claws.

Qin fought her usual instinct to hide them behind her back and, instead, lifted them for his perusal. “We’re doing manicures.”

“Yeah, how are your cuticles, El Mago?” Bonita leaned back in her chair and smirked. “I’m sure working on robots has a tendency to leave nails ragged and unkempt.”

Casmir stretched his fingers out and considered the short nails. They—and the rest of his hands—were half-covered in grease smudges. “I’ve never had a manicure, so I’m not sure what well-tended nails should look like.”

Qin pointed at his black pinky nail. She was certain the color was due to grease and not some strange fungus, but it still could use some help. “Not like that.”

She caught a whiff of an unfamiliar scent wafting up from the cargo hold. Something from Casmir’s robots?

“Did you leave the cargo hatch open?” Qin asked.

“Yes. It’s a lovely evening. It’s not even raining. Also, the ventilation down there isn’t the best, and I was welding.”

“I smell something. I’m going to check on it.” Qin pushed him gently toward Bonita. “The captain will do your nails.”

Bonita’s eyebrows rose. “I thought you wanted to do his nails.”

“Just the painting part. That’s fun. Filing and de-greasing are boring.”

“So I should do them.”

“Naturally.” Qin waved to reassure Casmir—his expression was dubious—then descended to the bottom level, sniffing as she headed around the corner and toward the cargo hold. Asger had gone back to sleep at the castle or wherever his room was, so there wasn’t anyone else aboard who could be doing something to cause strange odors.

The sight of so many robots and crates of robot pieces in the cargo hold distracted her for a moment. He truly was building an army. But how did he expect to deploy it?

If he went in as Rache’s prisoner, wouldn’t he have to go alone? Even taking Zee would be suspicious. It had been a couple of days since the dinner party, but Qin hadn’t heard of any updates to the plan. She also hadn’t heard if Rache—she shuddered at the idea of trusting him for any of this—had successfully contacted the terrorists to put the plan into play.

A few of the robots shifted to track her movements as she walked across the hold. A couple of them had glowing red eyes. That was unnerving, as was the fact that many of them had guns or cannons mounted to their arms or instead of arms. Some were bipedal and others were on treads, like small tanks.

When she reached the cargo hatch, she sniffed a few more times. The odor she’d picked up came from outside. She didn’t recognize it, but it had a chemical or maybe pharmaceutical underpinning. Something from somewhere in the city around them? It seemed closer.

It was dark out, but her night vision allowed her to see around the walled-in air harbor easily enough, and she didn’t spot anyone near the handful of other ships. This had proven a secure place, well patrolled and monitored by numerous cameras, and the terrorists hadn’t struck at them here. At least not yet.

She gazed toward the Kingdom Guard vehicle that had been parked near the Dragon every day and night, with only the men and women stationed there changing. The locals weren’t hiding the fact that the Dragon and its crew were under surveillance. Qin had been surprised their group had been allowed out for Kim’s dinner party. Asger’s presence had made that easier. His presence made everything easier here.

None of the four guards that were typically standing around or sitting inside the vehicle were visible tonight. That was odd.

She debated whether it was anything she should be concerned about or check on. She risked them mistaking her act as hostile if she walked over there, and Asger wasn’t here to countermand their instincts to point rifles at her chest. Not that she couldn’t take care of that if she needed.

That unfamiliar scent continued to tease her nostrils. Qin sprang to the pavement, landing lightly beside the ramp. The Guard vehicle’s running lamps were on, as they usually were, spreading cones of yellow illumination into the night. She padded across pavement damp with puddles from an earlier rain, the scent of engine oil and water commingling, underlying the other more pungent scent.

As she closed on the Guard vehicle, nobody jumped out to question her. The chemical scent grew stronger, and she started to think she should have grabbed a weapon before coming outside.

She rounded the vehicle and spotted two uniformed people—two bodies?—lying on the pavement. A man and a woman. A tiny dart was visible protruding from the side of the woman’s neck.

Qin crouched beside her, putting her back to the vehicle, as she looked around the pavement and up on the wall. She sniffed and listened intently, suspecting this had happened recently. She retracted her claws and rested a finger on the woman’s throat. There was a pulse.

“Tranquilizer?” Qin whispered, withdrawing the dart, careful not to touch the bloody tip.

When she brought it to her nose, the chemical scent intensified. Careful to stay low, she opened the vehicle door and spotted two more unconscious guards crumpled on the seats inside. Whoever had done this must have been someone familiar to them or at least someone wearing one of their uniforms. How else would the person have sneaked up so easily?

A faint clink-clank reached Qin’s ears, and she focused on a parked shuttle in a dark corner. A cylinder the size of her fist rolled out from behind it, heading straight toward the Guard vehicle. And Qin.

A grenade?

Qin tensed to spring away, but if it blew up, the Guards might be killed. She sprinted for the cylinder and snatched it up, hoping she was faster than her assailant expected. She hurled it over the nearest wall. It hissed instead of blowing up, and greenish smoke spewed out as it disappeared into the darkness.

The faintest whirring sound came from behind her, and Qin spun back toward the vehicle. A drone hovered there, and she realized her mistake in assuming that a person had fired those tranquilizer darts.

She flung herself to the side as the drone shot. A tink sounded as a dart struck the pavement where she’d been.

Qin jumped to her feet, tempted to rush the drone and try to destroy it before it could fire again, but the drone wasn’t what had rolled the smoke grenade toward her. She spun around and ran toward the shuttle, zigzagging her path, certain her airborne assailant wasn’t done.

She was right. More darts tinked off the pavement, one missing her by less than an inch. She sprang around the back of the shuttle and heard the drone whizzing after her. But she also spotted someone running away. Someone in black and tan, not the colors of the Kingdom Guard.

She sprinted after him, her speed twice as fast as his, and tackled him as he ran for an exit. He hit the ground with an oomph.

Hearing the drone whirring closer, Qin pulled the man over on top of her as she locked his arms behind his back so he couldn’t use them.

“Get off me, animal!” he shouted, struggling.

But he lacked any enhancements, and she easily kept him from escaping. Faint clicks sounded as the drone fired three times. The tiny darts thudded into the man’s chest. He shrieked curses.

The drone hovered right over them and fired again, targeting one of Qin’s arms. She jerked the man sideways in time to block another dart. Then she hurled him ten feet into the air. He smashed against the drone, knocking it aside.

He flailed and tried to find his feet as he dropped back down, but the tranquilizer was already taking effect—four times the needed dose. He landed in an ungainly heap.

As the drone righted itself, Qin leaped up, caught it, and hurled it to the pavement. It cracked but whirred indignantly, as if it meant to rise again. She stomped on it. Pieces of its plating and internal parts flew free. One clattered all the way to the ramp of the Dragon where Casmir and Bonita were exiting the ship.

They glanced around as they ran toward her. Bonita went to the moaning but quickly losing consciousness man. Casmir knelt before the pitiful remains of the drone, fingers outstretched.

“It was shooting tranquilizer darts at me,” Qin said. “At everyone. The Guards are sleeping. That guy threw a smoke grenade at me.”

“They were targeting you?” Casmir scratched his head and peered around. “Or did you stop him on his way to come try to kill me?”

“What’s the matter, El Mago?” Bonita nudged the man with her boot, but the tranquilizer had kicked in, and he didn’t react. “Upset that someone else might get shot at?”

“I’d prefer nobody be shot at, but I’m not sure I’m a proponent of spreading the target around. That makes defense harder. It’s just him?”

“Him and the drone,” Qin said.

“Hm.” Casmir picked up one of the dozens of pieces that were all that remained of Qin’s assailant. “Underwhelming assailants, given what the terrorists have thrown at me previously.”

“Maybe he was here for Qin,” Bonita said. “Did she mention there’s a fifteen thousand Union-dollar reward out for her return? And since she’s wanted returned alive, that would explain the tranqs.”

Casmir walked over to study the prone man. “He’s wearing typical clothing for the Kingdom. Did he say anything, Qin? Could you tell if he had an accent? A Kingdom accent?”

“He called me an animal.”

“Ah. Then I’d lean toward him being a local.”

“Not necessarily,” Bonita said. “The Kingdom doesn’t have exclusivity on being assholes to genetically modified people.”

“Why don’t we haul him inside and see if we can question him when he wakes up? And before he kills himself.” Casmir shuddered, then waved at Qin. “Do you want to hoist him up, or shall I call in my mechanical assistants?”

Qin almost laughed because one of the robots with treads rested at the top of the cargo ramp, like a dog waiting to be released into the woods for a hunt.

“I can handle it.” Qin searched the man, pulled a couple of compact pistols out of his pockets, left them on the ground, then slung him over her shoulder.

“I wasn’t sure you’d want to risk smudging your claw paint,” Casmir said.

“It dries quickly.” Despite the words, she shifted her burden so she could check her fingers. She frowned at a smear on one and showed it to Bonita.

“It may need a touch-up,” Bonita agreed.

“It’s difficult being a lady and a warrior,” Qin said, walking toward the ship, her prisoner dangling halfway down her back.

“I’m sure that’s been a lament all the way back to Old Earth and the Amazon women,” Casmir said. “If they existed. I seem to remember Kim’s mother mentioning they were likely fictional.”

“Warrior women have always existed,” Bonita said, “in heart if not in biceps size.”

“I have no doubt this is true.”

They took the man to the ship’s small sickbay, laying him on the single exam table. He started convulsing, and Qin stepped back in alarm.

“Did he have time to take poison?” Casmir asked. “Like that other guy?”

“I don’t think so.” Qin shook her head. “But he got shot a bunch of times.”

Bonita checked his pulse. “Erratic heartbeat. I’m not sympathetic to people who try to kidnap my crew members, but I’d really prefer to question him before he dies.”

Casmir spread his hands. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. This is usually where I go get a doctor. Or my mother.”

“Is she a doctor?” Qin asked.

“A physical therapist. She specializes in people with prosthetic and cybernetic replacements. But she’s had a decent amount of medical training. Uh, should his foot be twitching like that?”

“Viggo.” Bonita opened the cabinets and started pulling out equipment. “Am I going to need a defibrillator or what? Get your medical program rolling. What do I do with this idiot?”

“Improve your bedside manner?” Viggo suggested, but as he spoke, a display flared to life with a doctor gazing benignly out at them. Three thunks sounded, and a beam scanned their patient.

Bonita opened a cabinet, the door clunking against Qin’s leg. “You two are in the way. Wait outside. I’ll let you know if he lives.”

Qin wanted to help, but she felt especially bulky in the cramped sickbay, so she nodded and moved into the corridor with Casmir. The computerized doctor program started giving instructions about starting an IV and preparing a dialysis machine. Bonita’s intermittent growls of, “Idiot” and “did this to himself” floated out.

“I sent a message to the closest hospital.” Casmir tapped his temple. “Someone with better equipment should be here soon.”

“The captain is pretty experienced, actually. She’s fixed me up after battles. We’re used to making do out there all alone.”

“I understand, but we’re in the middle of Odin’s highest-tech city. There’s no reason to make do.”

Qin’s sensitive ears picked up the wail of an ambulance siren. “If they take him away, we won’t be able to question him.”

“True.” Casmir tapped his lip and slipped back inside. He dug into the man’s pockets.

Qin’s search outside had been cursory, and she’d only been looking for weapons. Casmir returned with a wallet and tossed it to her as the wails grew louder, and voices from outside reached her ears. The ambulance had already arrived.

“That wallet, sadly for him, fell out while he was in a scuffle. Stay here.” Casmir ran back to the cargo hold and shouted, “He’s up here, ladies and gentlemen. He tranqed those Guards out there, and then his own drone got him several times.”

Casmir ran back up ahead of what Qin assumed were paramedics. The siren wails were hammering against her eardrums from just outside. Casmir’s satchel flapped against his side now. He pulled out a small meter, slipped back into sickbay, and read the man’s identity chip.

Clatters came from the ladder well, along with someone grousing, “How’re we supposed to get a hover gurney up that?”

Casmir put away his meter and guided two paramedics into sickbay.

“Enh?” Bonita must not have heard the sirens—that was hard for Qin to imagine, but she knew her hearing was better than a normal human’s—for she looked up in surprise. “Oh, right. Take him. Me trying to hook up this fifty-year-old dialysis machine was going to get ugly anyway.”

The paramedics gave her alarmed looks as they carried the man out. He’d stopped twitching, so Qin hoped his heart rate had settled down. His eyes were open but glazed, and he shook his head.

“Just needed some cash,” he mumbled, words slurring together. “Wanted out… the king’s going to get ’em… not safe… k’stars are taking too many risks…. Don’t need me… anyway. A little cash… and I could have… gotten off this rock.”

The paramedics maneuvered him into the ladder well, and the man groaned and stopped talking.

“Thanks for coming,” Casmir called after the paramedics. “Let us know if he wants visitors later.”

Nobody replied. A few clinks came from the cargo hold, and Qin’s ears told her they were loading him onto a gurney and carrying him out.

Bonita snorted. “I doubt they’ll let you go in and question a patient, Casmir.”

“I know. That’s why we arranged for his wallet to fall out and into Qin’s hands.” Casmir frowned at his meter. “Though I have his identity here.”

“Aren’t people’s identity chips usually encrypted so only special law-enforcement scanners can read them?” Qin asked.

“Are they? My scanner must be above average.” Casmir winked at her. “This is a former Sergeant Tim Baum, currently unemployed.”

Baum? Qin scratched her cheek. Why did that sound familiar?

“He’s been arrested twice in the last few years and been in and out of a psychiatric hospital. His brother is missing and believed to have been associated with a known terrorist group. It doesn’t say which terrorist group, but…” Casmir shook his head. “I’m not sure, Qin. I think this may have been about me. Or just as much about me as you. He said he wanted some money to get out, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Wait.” Bonita gripped Casmir’s forearm. “You said Baum with a brother linked to terrorists?”

“So his Kingdom Guard report says.”

Bonita looked at Qin, her expression grave. “We were supposed to deliver that bioweapon to a Mr. Baum. We didn’t know that’s what it was then, but he surely did.”

“Yeah.” Qin shuddered at the thought that they had almost handed over that case, purely through ignorance, and how different this planet might look now, with those vials of evil being blasted open in the atmosphere and killing tens of thousands of people.

“I’m going to lock the hatch and make sure nobody else pesters us tonight.” Bonita headed for the ladder.

Casmir was going over whatever additional data he’d gotten from the guy’s chip. Qin looked at the wallet, but she doubted she needed to know anything else. Casmir would never be safe until they dealt with the terrorists, and she… she wouldn’t be safe from people willing to do the Druckers’ dirty work, not even here in the Kingdom.

13

Casmir kept his touch gentle as he wired the last of his mishmash of battle robots, but on the inside, he was jumping up and down and flailing with impatience. Were they ever going to hear from Rache? It had been five days since the dinner at Kim’s place. He’d barely heard from her. All he knew was that she was working from dawn to dusk and beyond in some government lab, cut off from her friends and family except for a couple of hours in the evenings.

Casmir’s family and friends had learned he was back on the planet and were sending frequent messages asking when he’d be back at work or when he would join them for gaming or a study group—every day, his mother mentioned the hour dinner would be served, in case he wanted to swing by. He was touched that so many people had missed him, but he had a hard time thinking about social activities with this incomplete mission looming over him. He needed to be as prepared as possible in case Rache commed with a date and time.

Besides, he still worried that he would endanger his family and friends if he saw them—or simply by being on the planet here. Several times, he’d urged his parents to stay elsewhere until this was resolved, but they kept insisting they were too old and boring for anyone to want to bother.

As he worked, Qin wordlessly handed him parts and tools. Casmir sensed her impatience, too, the desire to do something more physical. As he’d learned early on, she wasn’t someone who did well with inactivity. Or in captivity, which this seemed to be. Nobody had told Casmir or Qin that they couldn’t walk about in the city, but every time she left, she risked some idiot shooting her out of fear—or some bounty hunter trying to collect out of calculation.

And he… He worried crushers would appear if he went out in public, and his gut twisted every time he thought of the synagogue and those who had died. He wanted to get these terrorists off his planet, especially if they turned out to be the same group that had ordered that bioweapon.

“Are you supposed to be grinding your teeth while you work on your robots?”

“You have excellent hearing, Qin.”

“You weren’t grinding them that softly.”

“I’m sorry. I’m agitated and impatient—and wondering if Rache is actually going to help us.” Casmir made himself smile at her. “Thank you for helping me. I know you’re tired of being cooped up too.”

“You’re welcome, but I was going to have to stay anyway. The captain’s surgery—procedure—is in three days. After that… we’ll see. She said it wouldn’t take her long to recover, and then we can go anywhere and deal with… anything.”

“Anything?” Casmir closed the panel he was working on and plugged in his diagnostic tester. “Like convincing those pirates to retract their bounty and let you be a free woman?”

Qin nodded slowly. “That may have to be part of it. I’d thought… For a while, I was thinking maybe I could hide here, in the Kingdom. It seemed so far away from the Druckers and their usual haunts. But their reach is longer than I realized.”

“If you have to spend your life in hiding, that wouldn’t be much of a life.” Casmir shook his head. “I wish I’d realized that myself a couple of months ago. I allowed people to tell me to get off Odin, when I probably should have stayed and confronted those terrorists right away. Not that I knew there were terrorists then. Or had as many burly friends.” His second smile came more easily as he nodded at her.

“You wouldn’t have a fetching new nickname if you hadn’t come to space and met us.”

“That would have been horrible.” Casmir didn’t mind El Mago. Coming from Bonita, it was a more flattering nickname than he ever would have expected.

“But, Casmir, don’t you have to hide sometimes? When you’re horribly outnumbered and outgunned?”

“No, that’s just when you get sneaky instead of planning a direct assault. I know all about that. I’ve never been able to plan a direct assault on anything in my life.”

“Are you offering to help me with the pirates?”

“Well, first I have to defeat the terrorists, and then I have to find the gate for the king, but if I’m still alive after that, I can definitely check my calendar.”

Qin snorted.

“I’ll help. And so will all my robots.”

“Good, that’s what I really wanted.”

“You don’t think I could take on these Druckers by myself? I have my virile and manly moments, you know.” Casmir flexed his hand, showing off his freshly manicured fingernails. He hadn’t been sold on any of the paint colors that Bonita had offered, but he admitted having his nails all the same length—and clean—wasn’t bad.

“Do these manly moments occur when you’re sleeping and nobody is around?”

“Most of them, yes. In my dreams, I leap tall buildings, throw bad guys into live volcanos, and ask out beautiful women without fear of rejection.” He winked. “You can find a way, Qin. Don’t let yourself be bullied into accepting a frenzied and panicked existence. And I’ll try to take my own advice and do the same.”

“Thank you, Casmir.”

Someone knocked on the cargo hatch. Casmir jumped up and jogged over, wondering if it was Rache. He probably wouldn’t visit the air harbor across from the castle in broad daylight, but who knew?

A woman in a green-and-gold courier uniform stood on the cargo ramp. “Package for Casmir Dabrowski.”

“That’s me.”

“Signature, please.” She held out a tablet, her gaze taking in the cargo hold behind him with boredom until she noticed all the robots. Then she gaped. “Are you going to invade the castle with those?”

“No, castle invasions are frowned upon in this modern era.” Casmir signed the tablet and held out his hand.

“Something else then?” She gave him the package.

“If I get lucky.”

Stickers labeled fragile and biohazard adorned the side, so he accepted it gingerly. Only seeing Kim Sato on the return address kept him from pushing it back at the courier.

She gave him a bewildered look but walked away without further comments.

Casmir sent Kim a message, though he didn’t expect a response until she got home from work. Kim, let me know what this is when you get a chance. And if it’s safe to open it. Or if it needs to be refrigerated or something.

Her response surprised him by coming back promptly. Maybe she had been allowed outside on a lunch break.

It is a mucous-membrane-irritating and vomit-inducing biological agent. It does not need to be refrigerated, but don’t store it anywhere hot. I loaded the agent into numerous small vials so you can spread it around. Breaking them open will release the contents, as the liquid will turn gaseous upon contact with air.

What’s the area of influence?

One vial should have a noticeable impact on everyone within a twenty-by-twenty-foot area. Outdoors, the gas will dissipate quickly and have little effect. I hope for your sake that the terrorists are not fans of open-air architecture.

They’re probably holed up in tunnels somewhere. Bad guys are allergic to sun, you know.

Did you learn that from comic books?

Cartoons, actually. An equally reliable source.

I find nothing to refute about that statement. It should go without saying that the agent will be ineffective if your enemies are in combat armor with self-contained breathing systems. It’s not acidic and won’t eat through their suits. I didn’t want to pick anything overly horrific or likely to be deadly.

That’s fine. And preferable. Casmir’s mind boggled that such an agent could have been an option. Were those vials simply stored on a different shelf in her lab? I wouldn’t think the terrorists would be in armor if they’re lounging in their base here on Odin.

Be careful not to inhale the fumes yourself. They’re extremely pungent, and the irritation will last until you’ve washed thoroughly. You’ll know it if you accidentally smell it. The odor is like a mix between sewage and rotten eggs.

Casmir held the package out at arm’s length. Are you sure this was legal to send in the mail?

I sent it via courier.

Well, that makes it perfectly fine then.

I don’t think you can judge me when you’re going to fling it around in a base full of people.

An enemy base full of people. I would never risk making a government postal worker sick.

You’re a paragon, Casmir.

Thank you.

For the compliment or the agent?

Yes.

Casmir walked back into the cargo hold, careful not to trip over any of his tools or parts and send the package flying. Where should he store it? His cabin? That sounded unappealing. Maybe the hidden nook behind the wall in the lavatory?

Qin looked curiously at the package, but before he could explain it, Bonita stepped into the cargo hold.

She pointed a thumb upward, toward the navigation level. “Message for you, El Mago. A deadpan guy in a mask.”

Casmir set aside the package and raced for the ladder. Had Rache managed to contact the terrorists? Finally? Or was he comming to say it wouldn’t work out and that he was flying out of the system with his comic books and toy robot?

Casmir sprang into navigation and hit the comm button. It was a recording, not a live message. There was no video—Bonita must have been making assumptions about the mask.

“I’ve checked my finances, Dabrowski,” the recording started without preamble, Rache’s familiar dry voice coming through, “and I’m prepared to purchase ten of your crushers. I’m transmitting the coordinates for delivery. Be there at midnight tomorrow. If you turn the Kingdom Guard on me, I’ll scrag you like a boot stomping an ant. Out.”

Casmir sank into one of the pods as the coordinates flashed on the display.

Bonita leaned through the hatchway. “Is that all you expected it to be?”

“I think the plan is on. And that he believes this channel is monitored. My question is if those are the real coordinates. Royal Intelligence should know the king assigned me to hunt down the terrorists, but they wouldn’t know anything about Rache.” They also might be quite alarmed by the idea of him selling crushers to Rache, though if terrorists were listening in, it should sound like a plausible reason for them to meet.

Casmir glanced at the from field on the transmission. It showed as unknown. Either Rache hadn’t sent it from his ship, or he’d been able to scramble the origination. But someone who recognized his voice would identify him. Casmir was surprised he hadn’t scrambled that, too, but then Casmir wouldn’t have recognized it. Though he was sure he would have twigged to the ruse without recognizing the voice.

“If Royal Intelligence thinks Rache is going to show up at those coordinates,” Casmir said, “then what? He can’t kidnap me if a hundred Kingdom Guards are trying to kidnap—or kill—him.”

Bonita muttered something, but a message came in via Casmir’s chip, and he held up a finger.

Casmir, Kim messaged. I just got a random set of numbers from Rache. I assume they’re for you and not a love letter to decode. I’m forwarding them.

“A love letter?” Casmir choked out. “That’s not very damn funny.”

“Uh, what?” Bonita asked.

Casmir held up a finger as the numbers came through. Coordinates. “Ah, I think I’ve got the real destination for our rendezvous with Rache.” He transferred them to the navigation computer, and a map appeared on the display. “Looks like four hundred miles up the coast, well north of Zamek City and the launch loop.”

“What are those white things on the map?”

He glanced at her, not sure if she was serious, but from the way she squinted at the display, maybe she hadn’t seen many maps that denoted ice.

“Glaciers,” he said. “Those bays are full of them. In the summer, people go dogsledding and tramping around in the ice caves.”

“Sounds like a lovely place for a kidnapping.”

“It will be.” Casmir stood and faced her. “I’m assuming Rache will want to steal me away in some shuttle and not let me take my robot army.”

“No? He’s not very considerate.”

“It’s what I figured on from the beginning. I’m hoping you’ll be willing to help me by transporting them. First, I need you to drop me off at Rache’s coordinates, then follow us a couple of hours later and get as close as you can to the terrorist base without being seen. Then land, open the hatch, and shoo my robots out the door. I’m programming them with instructions to stomp in and attack the terrorists’ defenses, though it’s my hope that I’ll continue to have network access and be able to command them myself.” Casmir had no idea if this base that they were only assuming existed would be in a city or on a mountaintop or somewhere in between. If it was in a city, he worried about his robots doing unintended damage along the way. They lacked the intelligence and autonomy of an android or a crusher.

“How am I supposed to follow you a couple of hours later?”

“With this.” Casmir pulled a small device out of his pocket. “It’s tied into a subcutaneous transponder that Qin helped me inject in my arm.” He waved to the spot. “You should be able to track me as long as they don’t stick me in some network dead zone. Hm, maybe you should only wait an hour before taking off after me.” He raised his eyebrows. “Will you do it? I know you don’t owe me anything, and I’ve been making your life more complicated lately. Unfortunately, that seems to be true of everybody who comes in contact with me. It’s why I’ve been so hesitant to even visit my parents.”

He smiled, but a lump had formed in his throat, and he wiped moisture from his eyes. Allergies, not tears, he told himself. But he couldn’t help but feel he was making life difficult for everyone, and he didn’t know how to put an end to that. Except by helping the government find and capture all of these terrorists.

It was possible he wouldn’t need the help of the robots, that all he would have to do was find the base and stick a locator beacon on the door, then call in the Kingdom Guard. But he had to assume it wouldn’t be that simple and that he needed something to keep the terrorists busy, so they didn’t flee while he was waiting for the Guard.

“I don’t owe you anything?” Bonita leaned against the jamb. “I have just received fifty thousand crowns in my bank account, I’m getting a free knee-fixing procedure in three days, and Viggo’s innards have never been in better shape.”

“Really, Bonita,” Viggo said. “That’s rude. I don’t discuss your innards.”

“For which Casmir is vastly grateful.”

Casmir was more grateful that it sounded like Bonita would help him. His conscience almost made him point out all the trouble she’d gotten into lately because of him—surely, all that outweighed what she was receiving for the patent that he’d used to bribe her with—but he caught himself. He needed her help one more time. Better that he not try to convince her that he didn’t deserve it. He just hoped she wouldn’t be in any danger. Casmir assumed Asger would come along and join his robots in the infiltration, but he didn’t want to endanger Bonita. After all, that procedure was only designed to fix knees.

“I am very grateful.” He gave her a sincere bow.

“I’ll take you to that rendezvous point—glaciers, dear God—and I’ll come after you to drop off your army, but, Casmir, are you sure about this? That you can trust Rache? Because he seems like even more of a devil than the terrorists. I didn’t say anything during that crazy dinner party, but you know he manipulated you into this, right?”

“He proposed what sounded like a logical plan, and I agreed.”

“Yes, that’s how manipulation works. Didn’t they teach you anything in robot school?”

Casmir could understand why Bonita was suspicious of Rache, but he didn’t know how to assuage her suspicion without explaining their shared DNA. He also didn’t know if that would assuage anything. Or should. Was he being naive about this? After all, he’d thwarted Rache’s plans twice, and Rache had only come all the way to Odin because he wanted to know where that gate was. Did he believe Casmir no longer knew? Or would he be waiting at the rendezvous spot with a syringe full of a truth drug?

“They didn’t teach us about manipulation, no,” Casmir said. “They did teach us how to manipulate robots, but that’s not quite the same.”

“A clear deficiency in the curriculum.”

“Yes.” Casmir took a deep breath. “It is possible I’m walking into a trap, but I think he could have kidnapped me at other points if he really wanted me.” Such as during that quirky dinner date… “I genuinely believe he’ll take me to the terrorists.”

“And help you thwart them?” Bonita’s eyebrows rose. “Or turn you over to them so they can finally kill you?”

“I’m hoping for the former.”

“Hope isn’t a plan, Dabrowski.”

“What happened to El Mago?”

Bonita shook her head and walked away. “I’m rescinding that if you walk yourself into a trap.”

When Kim returned home, the balcony door was open, the curtain stirring in the breeze.

A nervous flutter passed through her stomach. She could only assume Rache was there, but why? The day before, she’d transmitted to Casmir the coordinates that Rache had sent in his extremely brief message, the only one he’d presumed to send her since the night of the dinner. He should be on his way to that rendezvous point if he truly meant to meet Casmir there. Surely, he hadn’t come for his dinner date.

“You work late hours,” Rache’s voice came from the balcony as she approached the door.

“The government isn’t taking my suggestion, insofar as I can tell, and has me refining a strain of bacteria that will—they hope—keep anyone who goes close to study the gate, whenever it’s found, from dying horribly.”

“What was your suggestion to them?”

“That they send in someone who’s immune to its effects to see if they can deactivate the security system. I had Casmir in mind, though I didn’t mention his immunity.”

Rache didn’t answer right away. Kim hadn’t stepped out onto the balcony yet, but curiosity drove her to open the door fully and join him. He never seemed willing to step into her apartment without an invitation. But standing on her balcony and opening the door was acceptable in his mind. He’d set up strange boundaries regarding her privacy, but she supposed it was better than walking in and finding him lounging on her bed. Maybe he’d be more normal if the situation allowed it. It wasn’t as if he could knock on her front door.

“Did you mention mine?” Rache finally asked.

“Yes. Technically, Dr. Sikou did. I told her all about the altered and unaltered mitochondria when we were working on solutions, and she reported it.”

“Ah.”

Kim couldn’t tell from his tone if he disapproved or felt betrayed. It wasn’t as if they had been working on the same side. He’d been her kidnapper at the time. And now he was… she didn’t know exactly. Someone going off tonight to either capture Casmir or pretend to capture him. She hoped it was the latter, but a large part of her wondered if she was foolish to trust him.

“As you likely guessed from my message,” Rache said, his back to the wall, his masked gaze toward the city rather than toward her, “I made contact with one of the officers in the terrorist organization.”

“And told them you’ve kidnapped Casmir and will bring him to them to kill. I assume.”

“That’s the gist of it. They gave me coordinates and a meeting time—three hours after midnight. It’s in the middle of the Zachowac Kingdom Forest.”

“Do you think that’s where their base is? That it’s camouflaged somehow?” Kim had been to the Kingdom Forest with some friends at the university. It covered hundreds of thousands of acres, and hundreds of inches of precipitation fell every year, turning it into a lush temperate rainforest. Parts of it were remote, but she was sure park rangers covered the territory regularly and that satellites would have picked up the installation of any structures. There were mountains and volcanos out there. She supposed something could have been built underground.

“Possibly. It could just be a meeting point they chose because it’s in the middle of nowhere.” Rache faced her for the first time. “They agreed to pay me twenty thousand crowns for Dabrowski, and they don’t care if I bring him in dead or alive. All they said was that if he was dead, they’d run a DNA check to make sure I wasn’t fooling them with the wrong guy. They said they would know what to look for.”

Kim digested that. Even though she couldn’t see his face through his mask, from the way he looked steadily at her, she suspected he wanted her to twig to something.

“Implying they know who your clone progenitor is?”

“That was my takeaway, and it’s what I’ve suspected since I first learned of Dabrowski’s existence and that he’s being targeted. Someone is worried history will repeat itself.”

“Casmir.”

“What?”

“He gave you underwear and pizza. I think you can call him Casmir now.”

“When I kidnap him, I’ll discuss how he feels about such familiarity.”

“I’m sure he would be fine with it.” Kim tilted her head, watching him, suspecting more than the desire to chat had brought him to her balcony. “If they know who he is and want to kill him because of it, is it possible they know who you are?”

“That’s my fear. My contact didn’t say anything to suggest it, but my sixth sense, if you will, is telling me this is a bad idea, that we’re both walking into a trap.”

“Are you going to back out?”

“No.”

“Why not? I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I don’t want to see Casmir—you and Casmir—get killed.”

“I’m delighted that you shoehorned me into that sentence, however parenthetically.”

Kim spread her hand, not sure what he wanted from her.

He slipped a hand into a pocket and withdrew a small device. It looked like the kind of thing a hunter used to keep track of his hounds in the forest.

“I installed a tracking chip under my skin. My first officer on the Fedallah has a device to track me, but the ship is in a very high orbit, doing its best to avoid detection, and I brought down the only shuttle marked with fake identification tags. For them to mount a rescue, it would take time and put them in a lot of danger. As I’m sure you’re aware, we’re all wanted dead by the king.”

Kim nodded.

Rache handed the device to her. “If a full day and a night pass and you don’t hear from me, but my chip still appears on the tracker, then I suggest you give this to Superintendent Van Dijk. You can say it’s me, or you can say it’s Da—Casmir. Whatever seems right to you—whatever seems more likely to incite her to send a dozen ships full of armored men. I’m going to assume that I’ll be in the terrorist compound and that it will lead them to the Black Stars.”

“Are you imagining yourself as being dead or unconscious somewhere while this is happening?”

“I’m just assuming that if we’re able to enact our plan, then we’ll have done it by the end of a day and a night. If we haven’t by then…” Rache shrugged.

“Why are you doing this if you deem that a possibility? Look, I release you from your favor if that’s what’s holding you to that course. I can’t believe you regularly walk into situations you believe you might not walk out of. I’m positive you don’t, or the Kingdom would have caught up with you years ago.”

“What would you have instead? For me to paint your peeling windowsill over there? Or to carry your groceries the next time these people let you out to shop for yourself? This is something that would mean something to you and be a proper repayment for the service you did for my men. I do not intend to go down without a fight, trust me.” He bowed and sprang to the balcony railing, leaving the device in her hand.

“Rache!” she blurted.

He paused and looked back.

She wanted to tell him again not to do it, but it was the best lead the city—the Kingdom—had about these terrorists. Casmir was crafty, and Rache had to be just as crafty. If anyone could survive having a trap sprung on them, it had to be they. And whether Rache was doing it for humanitarian reasons or not—she suspected not—they could, if they succeeded, save a lot of lives.

“Be careful,” she said quietly, wondering if it was the right thing.

While perched on the railing, he gave her a deep, knightly bow, then jumped off into the darkness.

14

Qin donned her full combat armor and stood in front of the mirror in her cabin to sweep her hair back into a braid. Next, she jammed two DEW-Tek pistols into holsters on her utility belt, followed by a dagger and a bandolier of explosive rounds for her anti-tank gun. She grabbed that from its mount in the closet and slung it across her torso on its strap.

She looked at the toy robot sitting in a case with one of her minotaur candles and nodded to herself. She was doing the right thing. As a whole, this planet might not love her, but certain people had been kind, and this was Casmir’s home, and he needed her. Whether he’d asked for her help or not.

He should have asked. All he’d done was request that Bonita drop off his battle robots, but if he was going to take down these terrorists, he would need intelligent, thinking people. With giant guns.

She grinned into the mirror, fangs glinting. “People like me.”

She stepped into the corridor and almost crashed into Asger. He’d come aboard that afternoon, presumably also to help Casmir with the terrorists. He wore his full knight’s armor, his pertundo on his hip, his cloak vibrant on his back, his jaw shaven, and his hair loose about his shoulders. Handsome.

“Qin.” He nodded to her.

“Asger.” She nodded back, then strode past him.

“Where are you going?”

“Same place as you.”

“To stalk Casmir and make sure he doesn’t get himself killed?”

“I thought I’d suggest he save time and take me with him from the start.” Qin hopped into the ladder well as the ship tilted, banking for a landing.

The last time Qin had looked out a porthole, it had been too dark to see anything, but she knew they’d been flying along the coast.

“That would make things easier.” Asger followed her down the ladder. “But I haven’t noticed that Casmir likes to make my life easier.”

“You should discuss your concerns with him. He seems open to self-improvement as a person.”

“He’d probably just apologize and have his mother send me underwear.”

“I’m still agog that he gave the notorious Tenebris Rache underwear. Who does that?”

“Casmir,” Asger said.

“Right.”

They entered the cargo hold together and found Casmir rubbing down his robots as if they were horses fresh from the races. Or maybe he was making sure they were properly lubricated. Several of them stood, or sat on their treads, near the cargo hatch, rattling in sync with the deck as the Dragon descended.

Since the ship was going in for a landing, Qin assumed that nothing outside alarmed Bonita. Was Rache even there yet? It was ten minutes before midnight.

“Casmir,” Asger said. “We’re about to land.”

“Yes, I know.” Casmir waved his rag at him. “Thank you.”

“I meant to imply that you should be in armor, or at least a galaxy suit for a modicum of protection.”

“Since I’m assuming the role of captured prisoner, I thought it would be most believable if I were unarmed and unarmored.”

“Think again. Go put on a galaxy suit.”

Qin watched, curious if Casmir would accept the order. Asger carried his noble haughtiness with him at all times, but it especially came out when he gave orders—and expected to have them followed.

“Rache can say he captured you in it, if anyone asks, and didn’t want to strip you down and have to look at your chest hair.”

“No terrorist is going to believe that a pirate would care about my chest hair.”

Asger’s eyes narrowed. “Put on a galaxy suit, or I’ll put you in one myself. Forcibly.” His hand rested on the head of his pertundo, as if a giant telescoping halberd could help a person get dressed. Get undressed, perhaps.

But the threat worked. Casmir thrust his rag and can of spray lubricant at Asger and ran off to change.

“You have to deal firmly with engineers and scientists,” Asger told Qin. “They’re special.”

“Of course.”

The ship settled, and a faint whistling reached Qin’s ears. Wind railing at the freighter?

“Nobody’s here yet,” Bonita said over the comm.

“That’s good,” Asger said. “Casmir is still dressing for the party.”

Long seconds passed, and Bonita said, “A shuttle is coming. It’s registered as belonging to a local furniture delivery company.”

“Sounds like a cover,” Asger said. “Unless a lot of people living under glaciers order midnight deliveries of end tables and bedroom sets.”

“Rache wouldn’t be able to come down in something the Kingdom might recognize as his,” Qin agreed.

“It’s landing right in front of us,” Bonita said, “close enough to pick Viggo’s nose.”

“Really, Captain,” Viggo said. “If I had a nose, that would be quite unsanitary.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, four robot vacuums whirred into the cargo hold, darting between the treads and legs of Casmir’s stationary army. One vacuum climbed the side of something half the size of a tank, vrooming happily.

Casmir returned in one of Bonita’s borrowed galaxy suits. “This is actually a good idea. If the terrorists don’t strip me right away. I grabbed an oxygen tank, too, in case I get an opportunity to toss some of Kim’s vials. I gave most of them to my robot friends and wrote a deployment program, but I have a few more in my satchel.”

“Weapons?” Asger asked him.

Casmir patted his satchel gently.

“Real weapons?”

“I don’t have any,” Casmir said.

“Doesn’t this ship have an armory?”

Qin nodded, though she’d never seen Casmir visit it.

“I don’t think you fully grasp the nuances of the clever ploy Rache and I have devised.” Casmir walked to the control panel and hit the button to open the hatch.

“You mean the plan he came up with and manipulated you into following?” Asger asked.

“I see you’ve been talking to Bonita.”

An icy breeze whipped in as soon as the hatch opened, making Qin glad she had more fur than hair on her neck.

“Brr.” Casmir leaned out the hatch and looked toward the white shuttle resting near them. The advertising on the side promised the finest furniture selection anywhere on the planet and free delivery. “Another reason the galaxy suit was a good idea. For its body-warming capability.”

“And the ability to block bullets and DEW-Tek bolts.”

“Yes, but especially the heat. Look, you can see one of the glaciers.”

Qin leaned out. She’d never seen a glacier.

The clouds obscured the moon, but the white cliff rising behind the shuttle and encroaching on the pebbly beach was easy to see with her night vision. As bright as the ice was, it might have been easy to see without night vision.

Casmir pointed as the shuttle hatch opened. Nobody came out.

“I guess my date isn’t going to come over and pick me up personally.” Casmir faced them before heading out. “I’ve given Bonita a device to track my transponder signal.” He waved his arm. “She’s supposed to follow and drop off the robots. Asger, if you’re willing, I’d like you to go in with the robots. Hopefully, we’re going to lead you right to the base, and you can call in the Kingdom Guard as soon as you’re sure of the location. Depending on how deep in the forest that is, it could take them a couple of hours to get there. You may have to do your best to keep the terrorists from escaping when they realize what’s happening. I’ll try to help from inside.”

“Uh, Casmir. I don’t think you realize what this means.” Asger waved at his chest—his armor—and his pertundo, then pointed at Qin and her armor. “We’re coming with you.”

Casmir blinked. “But you can’t.” Several robots rolled or walked forward and headed through the hatchway and onto the windy beach. “They can. I hope.”

“You’re taking the robot army with you?” Qin asked. “I thought the captain was bringing them later.”

“Most of them, yes, but I need a few allies along that I can count on. Someone scanning Rache’s ship shouldn’t be able to sense robots.”

“You can count on us.” Asger hopped down to the beach.

Casmir scrambled out after him. “But someone with good scanners would detect you aboard.”

“Darn.” Asger jogged past the robots and strode toward the shuttle.

Qin jumped down and ran after them.

Rache stepped out of the open shuttle hatch in black combat armor, his helmet retracted but his mask and hood hiding his features.

Qin halted. Seeing him at Kim’s dinner in such an innocuous setting hadn’t managed to alleviate her fear of him—or her memories of how he and his men had slain dozens of hardened pirates while her captain had pulled her back out of the way. She’d functioned normally enough when he’d been present in the apartment—thankfully, nobody had asked her many questions—but she still shuddered at the idea of walking up and talking to the man.

Or confronting him, as Asger looked like he meant to do.

He halted a few paces away from Rache and faced him, his hand on his pertundo. Casmir ran around him to stand between them, his arms spread in a friendly manner.

“Rache, you remember Asger from dinner, I trust.”

“And our battle in the cargo hold,” Rache said coolly.

“Ah, right,” Casmir said. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“I doubt that,” Rache said without turning his focus from Asger.

“I’m coming with Casmir,” Asger stated.

Qin stopped a couple of steps away. She also wanted to argue to come, but she would wait to see what happened.

“You are not,” Rache said. “I was told to come alone, without any of my men.”

“Why would you agree to that? How much money are they paying?”

“Not enough to make such ludicrous demands,” Rache said, “but I agreed, regardless.”

“Why?” Casmir asked curiously.

Rache looked at him, or maybe at the robots filing into the shuttle behind him. “What are those, Dabrowski?”

“Just a few helpers to carry my tools. Or—” Casmir pointed to the advertising painted on the side of the shuttle, “—to help with furniture delivery.”

Qin expected Rache to object to them, the same as he was objecting to Asger, but he said, “That might actually work. They won’t show up on a scan, anyway.”

“That was my thinking,” Casmir said.

“Look,” Asger said, drawing Rache’s attention back to him. “Qin and I are coming with Casmir. If we show up on their scan, you can just say that you refused their terms when you realized it would be foolish of you to fly into a terrorist stronghold without backup.”

Qin could imagine Rache’s eyes narrowing behind that mask.

“I cannot refuse terms I already agreed to,” Rache said. “And Casmir’s scruffy band of misfits isn’t who I would want at my back going into battle.” He pointed to Casmir. “Get in the shuttle.”

“Scruffy!” If Asger had jerked his chin up any faster, he might have broken his neck. “I defeated you on that cargo ship, you arrogant ass.”

“Casmir’s robot defeated me.” Rache looked at Casmir. “Why didn’t you bring that one? The crusher. These—” he flicked a dismissive hand toward the last of eight robots rolling or climbing into the shuttle, “—look like rejects from the scrap and recycling factory.”

“You’re full of compliments today, aren’t you?” Casmir presumed to step forward and pat him on the shoulder. “Did you wake up on the wrong side of your supervillain lair?”

“Get in the shuttle,” Rache growled, pushing his hand off. He jumped through the hatch himself, heading for the pilot’s seat up front.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Casmir faced Qin and Asger, lifting his hands. “Stay with Laser, please. And my other robots.” He widened his eyes—to ask them to join the robots when Bonita dropped them off near wherever his transponder signal ended up? He must not have told Rache about that part of the plan. “Both of you. If we want any shot of this working, Rache and I better comply with their demands and not bring too many surprises along.”

“I think you’re walking into trouble,” Asger growled. “And I’m supposed to be the one at your back when you do that, not that condescending, Kingdom-hating jackass.”

“If it’s any consolation, he’s probably not going to be at my back when we walk in. He’ll beat me up, cuff me, and drag me in by my hair.”

“That’s not a consolation.”

“Sorry.” Casmir shrugged and stepped forward to pat Asger on the chest. “Thanks for wanting to come along. Also, you are definitely not scruffy. Your face and, er, naked chest were on one of my tubes of underwear. They don’t put scruffy people on underwear.”

“No, they do not.”

Casmir stepped over to hug Qin. “You’re not scruffy either.”

“Just furry?”

“It’s well-groomed fur.” Casmir grinned and released her, then waved as he strode to the shuttle. “I’ll see you both again soon!”

Qin chose not to acknowledge the weird little feeling in her gut that said maybe he would not.

As soon as Casmir jumped in, the hatch slammed shut. Qin and Asger had to scurry back to avoid the back-blast of the thrusters.

Asger growled and shook his head as the shuttle soared into the night sky. “I feel like we just sent him off with the devil.”

“Let’s hope his robots are sufficient to even the odds.”

“Let’s hope.”

Casmir settled gingerly into the co-pilot’s pod next to Rache and did his best to refrain from sending nervous glances toward his masked pilot. The shuttle took off with enough force to plaster Casmir into his seat, and he hurried to snap on the harness, already missing the smart cushioning of Bonita’s pods. The overhead lights dimmed, leaving only the illumination emanating from the control panel and the display.

The display showed the route ahead over glaciers and dark forests. Gauges showed their altitude and proximity to terrain features.

Casmir told himself not to talk, that Rache wouldn’t see this road trip as a fun opportunity for them to get to know each other, but he only managed about three minutes of silence before speaking.

“Can you tell me where we’re going and how long it’ll take to get there?”

“The Zachowac Kingdom Forest and a little over an hour. We don’t want to break the sound barrier and draw attention to ourselves, even if this is mostly wilderness.”

“Right. Agreed.”

Casmir thought about bringing up a book or video to watch, but he was too keyed up to relax and pay attention. His knee kept wobbling up and down.

Rache glanced at it. Casmir crossed his legs to trap it. He only ended up bouncing both legs.

“You take your seizure medication?” Rache asked.

“Yeah.” Casmir resisted the urge to roll his eyes. It was a legitimate concern, especially if they ended up in battle together, but he hated that this strange man—this clone brother—knew about his weaknesses.

Further, he hadn’t been thinking about the possibility of seizures, but now, they were sure to be on his mind. Just because he’d been back on his medication and taking it regularly didn’t mean he was 100 percent ensured not to have one. He grimaced at the thought of collapsing and convulsing in front of the terrorist mastermind of the organization.

His eye blinked, and he sneezed.

“Your antihistamines?” Rache asked dryly.

“Yes. I was without everything for a couple of days in my castle cell, but they gave my medications back when they checked me out. It was only my shoes that they decided they couldn’t find. One guard admitted a maid threw them away because they smelled like foot odor. I guess the feet of nobles don’t smell. I know their farts don’t. Laser—uhm, Captain Lopez—said a quien tiene buenos dineros, le huelen bien hasta los pedos. I think that was it.”

Rache gave him a long look.

“My pronunciation may be off.” Casmir reminded himself of his vow not to talk and pester his pilot. Even if he continued to be curious about Rache and want to draw him out. Or, more precisely, draw information out of him. “So, how do you know Princess Oku?”

Rache faced forward again.

“Is this a no-talking trip?” Casmir asked. “I thought we might bond.”

“You just want to know what I know.”

“Yes!” Casmir wouldn’t try to play coy and deny that. “I mean, about specific things related to myself. I don’t want to know all the ways to break bones or torture people.”

Rache went back to not speaking. Did he think Casmir was being manipulative? Or did he want to refrain from connecting in any way because he meant to betray Casmir as soon as they landed?

Casmir glanced over his shoulder at the silent robots, wondering if he should have brought more. Too bad he didn’t have Zee along. Zee was worth ten of these scrounged and converted battle robots. But he hadn’t wanted to deprive Kim of her guard. He wished she were here with him for this infiltration, instead of Sir Flinty.

“I met the princess briefly during my trip to the castle,” Casmir said. “Before I knew Sir Asger was handing me over to the Guards instead of taking me for a meeting with the queen.”

“She’s smarter than she lets on. And geeky. You’d like her.”

Casmir arched his eyebrows, not sure how to handle the simple words, words spoken without anger or resentment or sarcastic dryness. “She was kind of affronted by the idea of robot bees replacing real bees.”

Rache snorted. “She prefers biology to engineering. You may like her, but she may not like you.”

“Thanks.” Casmir was the one who turned dry. “Asger has a crush on her, anyway. He reminded me that she’s in the royal seats at the arena, and I’m a janitor mopping the floor.”

“Diplomatic of him.” Rache glanced at him. “But it’s not true, you know. The Kingdom laws are a little fuzzy when it comes to clones, but you should be considered of noble blood.”

“Oh?” Casmir wasn’t that surprised at the revelation, not the way he would have been a couple of months earlier. He doubted the queen would have taken any interest in the son of a janitor. Or the clone of a janitor, rather. “Because we’re clones of who, again?”

“You haven’t figured that out yet?”

“People have been maddeningly vague. Someone who lived more than two hundred years ago. That’s all I really know. Care to enlighten me? Before we sail into possible death together?”

“I was going to give you that information if you came to work for me.”

“That job offer can’t possibly be open at this juncture. I stunned you and threw you into an escape pod with a bunch of sweaty men who were most definitely not nobles.”

“If you took off their boots and smelled their feet—or anything else—that’s your own fault. Dr. Peshlakai wouldn’t even do that. Not on what I pay him.”

Casmir pushed a hand through his hair, sensing Rache simply wouldn’t tell him. Had Kim figured it out yet, he wondered? Was she even worrying about it? She sounded so busy with the long hours of work foisted on her. He hoped she wasn’t lonely at night when she came home to that empty apartment. He knew she didn’t seem to need companionship as frequently as he did, but he suspected even she liked having a roommate around for occasional chitchat. It had been more than four years since she finished her post-doctorate work at the university and had taken a job in the private sector, but she continued to stay in their rented cottage on campus. Because it would be too much work to look for a new place and move her books, she always said. He knew better.

“You have a plan, Dabrowski?” Rache asked. “If this works as we’ve attempted to set it up, I am handing you over to the terrorists, getting paid, and walking away. I don’t know for certain that the coordinates they gave me are for a neutral location, but that’s my assumption. I doubt they’re inviting me into their secret base.”

“I have a plan. I don’t know if it will be sufficient.”

“Tell me. I’ll critique it.”

Casmir raised his eyebrows. He couldn’t tell if Rache seriously wanted to help or if he was setting Casmir up to be mocked. Or, worse, if he wanted to know so he could warn the terrorists. Casmir was banking on Rache genuinely being appreciative of Kim having saved his men’s lives and feeling honor bound to repay the debt. He would have felt honor bound to repay it. But did Rache?

What if Rache was simply setting him up to get killed? Logically, Casmir didn’t know why he would go through all this trouble if that was what he wanted—he could shoot Casmir right now or could have done it at Kim’s dinner, if that was his wish. What would he gain from turning him over to these terrorists? A greater revenge than simply shooting him?

Rache looked over at him. “I am the commander of a military ship. It’s possible I could offer suggestions for improvement.”

“I was debating if I could trust you or if you’re setting me up.”

“Such as you did when I walked into that cargo hold and your knight jumped me?”

Casmir almost claimed that he hadn’t known Asger was there—which was true—but he clamped down on his tongue. Maybe it would be better to have Rache believing he was more of a genius than he was.

“Maybe,” he said. “Kim thinks I can trust you.”

“Does she? Huh.”

“She’s not very good at reading people.”

Rache looked at him again. Maybe it was a frown. Who could tell?

“She’s the first to admit that,” Casmir said. “I’m not spilling any secrets. And my plan is to send my robot army in as soon as I have coordinates. Barring us receiving any, they’ll simply track me after a suitable delay.”

“I hope those robots are sturdier than they look. I’d wager a few DEW-Tek bolts would knock them to pieces. Or a good kick.” Rache glanced back. “Or a stiff wind.”

“Disparaging my robots isn’t very brotherly.”

“No? I thought it seemed like the kind of thing siblings would do.”

Casmir leaned back in his seat as the dark forest zoomed past below them. Here and there, the lights of towns sprawled for a few miles, but this far north, the population wasn’t very dense. Odin’s northern continent was much larger than the two southern land masses combined, but a lot of it hugged the Arctic Circle.

Rache turned them southwest eventually, into the Kingdom Forest. Lighted clumps signifying urban areas grew less frequent, the vast wilderness below set aside for preservation. Was the terrorist camp out there somewhere? Or was this just a neutral meeting place?

The comm beeped, and Rache answered it.

“I said not to contact me.”

“Er, it’s me, Captain. Dr. Peshlakai.”

Casmir raised his eyebrows. Whoever the doctor was, he was apparently not the most likely person to comm Rache from his ship.

“Ah, go ahead.”

“Someone on the planet contacted me. He, uh, offered me some money.”

“For what?”

“Your medical records or at least the results of a DNA test.”

Casmir’s eyebrows climbed higher. Rache didn’t react at all. His hands were still on the control panel.

“He offered five thousand crowns if I agreed to transfer the file. He didn’t give his name or any identifying information. I thought about trying to get an address or something from him, but I figured I would just get myself in trouble or inadvertently give away something if I attempted to be clever. So I hung up. I just thought you should know.”

“Yes,” Rache said. “Thank you, Doctor. That is useful information.”

“It’s useful to know people want to know about you?”

“Always. Rache, out.”

Casmir started to ask if Rache thought it was the terrorists, but his fingers danced across the comm panel, and another voice came over the speaker.

“Yes, Captain. Amergin, here.”

“Dr. Peshlakai said someone commed him from the planet. See if you can trace it and give me the origin point.”

“I’ll wrangle up what details I can find.”

Rache closed the channel.

“You don’t think the terrorists—I’m assuming it’s the terrorists you’re supposedly selling me to that are looking you up—would have thought to bounce their signal through a free relay to hide where it came from?” Casmir asked.

“I’m sure they did, but Amergin is good. I only hire people who are good.”

Casmir wondered if he should take that as a compliment, since Rache had offered to hire him. Probably not. There had been robot-disparaging since then.

Rache drummed his fingers on the control panel, his first sign of agitation. “We’re almost to the rendezvous point. I could bank and circle a few times, pretend I can’t find a good landing spot, but it’s likely we’re already on whatever scanning equipment they have.”

“Are you having second thoughts about the meeting?”

Rache snorted. “I’ve been having second thoughts about the meeting since I set it up. I think we’re flying into a trap.”

“You think they know who you are already?”

“They wouldn’t have commed Peshlakai if they were sure, but they must have suspicions. I’ve worn the mask for ten years, but it was probably inevitable that some people would connect the dots. I expected it from Royal Intelligence. I’m surprised terrorists would care and that they even found you. I bet they have someone on their team that came out of Royal Intelligence. Jager is good at alienating people.”

“I still don’t know who you are—or who I am—but is the result of your musing that you believe they want you dead too?”

“That’s my thought. That maybe someone thinks my whole career has been a ruse or a front and that I’m loyal to the king. It’s hard to imagine someone could have so much right and be so dead wrong about that.”

The comm beeped.

“There he is. Talk to me, Amergin.”

“I’m sending the coordinates now, Captain.”

“Excellent. I’ll see that you receive a bonus.” Rache closed the comm as soon as the file transferred. “If I survive the night,” he grumbled.

The location his officer had sent appeared on a corner of the display.

“That’s only fifty miles away and still in the forest,” Rache said. “Interesting. I thought they would be in the city.”

Casmir found the controls for the scanner on his side of the control panel and ran a search for life. The heat signatures of hundreds of types of animals in the lush forest below registered, but when he stretched toward the coordinates, he didn’t get any sign of large structures or heat signatures that would have signaled a power plant or energy use.

“Could they have built something out here without anyone knowing?” Casmir asked. “Would a slydar hull work on a building? Or is it possible, if they came from another system, that they also have the type of stealth generator that the astroshaman cargo ship had?”

“I never got to look at that. Someone beat me up and stuffed me in an escape pod.”

“It’s good that you’re not bitter about past defeats.”

“There are three combat shuttles waiting at our rendezvous point. That’s a lot just to pick up a prisoner. I’m going to fly over them and take us toward Amergin’s coordinates.”

“What if they give chase?” Casmir doubted any terrorists in hiding would believe a furniture-delivery shuttle happened to be doing a midnight run over uninhabited forests.

“Then our flight could get interesting.”

On the scanner display, Casmir watched the three shuttles as Rache flew away from them. He wasn’t surprised when first one and then the other two zipped into the air.

“They’re coming,” he said.

“I see. Belt yourself in tight.”

Casmir already wore his harness, but he glanced back at his robots, fearing they would be flung around the cabin. He unclasped his harness and ran back, looking for cargo straps.

“Dabrowski,” Rache snapped. “That’s the opposite of belting yourself in.”

“This won’t take long.”

He hurried to tie them down while sending wireless commands to the more sentient ones with gripping devices or hand-like appendages, telling them to hold on.

The shuttle hummed as it increased velocity, and soon, Casmir’s teeth were rattling in his mouth.

“They’re gaining.” Rache sounded surprised. “This shuttle is one of the best money can buy, and they’re gaining.”

“Maybe they stole their shuttles instead of buying them.”

“That is a possibility. Hold on.”

Rache turned their nose up and angled them to the side. Orange light flared outside, brightening the treetops below, and Casmir glimpsed a massive energy bolt sizzling past before they turned fully. He flung himself into his seat and fastened the harness. Tightly.

“Two more shuttles just showed up on the scanner,” Casmir reported, frowning as they appeared out of nowhere. Or out from behind whatever invisibility shield hid the base?

Invisibility shield? Was that a thing that existed? He didn’t think so, but as Rache took the shuttle into a series of nausea-inducing dives and rolls, all Casmir could do was grip his armrests and hope he wasn’t about to die. Looking up information on the network wasn’t something he could manage at that moment.

“Why,” he groaned to himself as more g-forces than he wanted to measure pulled his cheeks back toward his ears, “why didn’t I bring motion-sickness pills?”

Rache, focused on piloting, ignored him.

“Abort?” Casmir asked through gritted teeth, closing his eyes in the hope that his stomach would revolve less if he didn’t see stars spinning on the display.

“They’re faster than we are,” Rache said with irritating calm. “Even if we turn around, we can’t escape. I’m returning fire.”

“Oh, good. Get them mad.” Casmir clamped his mouth shut, afraid more than words would come out.

The forces of the insane aerial maneuvers seemed like they were ripping him to pieces, hurling him against his harness first one way and then another, and then trying to fling him to the ceiling. He heard soft bzzts as Rache fired, but he had no idea if the shots struck or did any damage. A few orange flashes lit up the display, brightening his eyelids even though he had them clenched shut. Near misses. Another time, Casmir might have admired Rache’s ability to avoid what had to be fire coming from numerous sources. But right now, he was too busy—

He lost the contents of his stomach. They were in the middle of a dive toward the ground, so they might as well have been up in space. It made a mess.

“Sorry, sorry, erg.”

“Dear God, Casmir,” Rache said. “That’s disgusting.”

“Could we not worry about it now?” Casmir groaned again. When would this mad ride end?

“One of your robots better be able to clean my shuttle.” Three rapid bzzts sounded. “Hah, got one!”

Casmir shook his head as orange light flared again. He couldn’t believe Rache could joke—or whatever he was doing—now.

A message alert came in via Casmir’s chip, but it wasn’t from Kim, Asger, or Bonita, so he shunted it to the side for later.

A jolt came from their rear, and the shuttle felt like it tumbled head over tail in the sky. Casmir was flung against his harness so hard it gouged his chest.

“One got us. Critical.” Rache swore. “We’re going down.”

Casmir knew Thank God wasn’t the correct answer, since going down could involve landing in a fiery crash that would kill them both, but it might be worth the risk if it ended the insane flight.

“Hang on. I’m keeping the nose up the best I can, but this is going to be a hard landing. Probably halfway up in a tree.”

Casmir groaned.

“And don’t throw up again.”

“Not like… things can… get worse.” As the words came out, Casmir remembered that delicate vials of a biological agent that could make them both very sick lay nestled both in his robots and in his tool satchel, and he groaned again.

“Says the man who’s not covered in his passenger’s vomit.”

The cabin lights went out. Casmir braced himself. The display went out, too, as did the rest of the instrumentation. They couldn’t see a thing.

Thunks and screeches came from all sides. Tree branches tearing at the hull. They ricocheted off something hard enough to alter their trajectory. Rache growled and struggled to right the shuttle. They didn’t land in a tree, but they hit the ground hard enough to bounce three times. Casmir kept from screaming—barely.

They crashed into a boulder with a horrible wrenching sound and came to a halt, the nose in the air, the deck at a thirty-degree angle. Casmir was disoriented, but at least his nausea faded when their movement stopped.

It was already dark, save for a few glowing power indicators on the robots, and it grew silent. Deathly silent.

Casmir tried to swallow but couldn’t. His mouth was drier than an asteroid. His entire body ached. He could hardly believe he wasn’t unconscious.

“Rache?” he rasped.

No answer.

“Rache?”

Nothing.

15

Kim paced the balcony, shivering as the sea breeze swept a damp mist inland, but not thinking of going inside. She had some notion that the tracking device Rache had given her would have fewer barriers to penetrate if she was out here rather than in the apartment. Not a scientifically sound notion, she admitted, but she pointed it inland, toward the tiny dot showing his location two hundred miles away.

Earlier, it had been moving at the pace of an airplane or shuttle, first up the coast, and then southwest, toward the Zachowac Kingdom Forest. Now, it wasn’t moving at all. Had they arrived at their destination? Or had something happened? Their flight had been erratic right before the dot stopped moving.

Why hadn’t she volunteered to go with them? Or at least on the Dragon where she would be close enough to help? Casmir hadn’t fully explained his plan about his robot army going in after him, but she gathered he had given her vials to some of the ground robots and air drones to deploy if they could find the base.

She wasn’t a combat expert and couldn’t likely do much to help, but Casmir wasn’t a combat expert either. And he was going. Because the king had asked—or ordered—him and because he wanted to stop the terrorists. She didn’t think she was any less qualified than he. She could have found a way to help. Instead, she’d been too worried to break what was essentially house arrest to help a friend.

She slammed her palm onto the balcony dining table.

A message came in via her chip, and she jumped, half-expecting it to be some downstairs neighbor complaining that she needed to keep it down. But it was a Scholar Chava Moskowitz. The name was familiar, but it took Kim a moment to place it. Scholar Moskowitz taught linguistics at the college where Casmir’s father worked, and she was one of their neighbors. Kim had chatted with her a few times when she’d allowed Casmir to lure her to dinners at his parents’ apartment, which had often turned out to be large affairs with far more than his immediate family.

Scholar Sato, the message read, have you returned to Odin? I heard Casmir was back, and Irena mentioned you’d been traveling together. I was wondering if you might know where Casmir is. I was supposed to have Sabbath dinner with his parents tonight, but they’re not home, and there’s furniture knocked over in their apartment and decorations on the floor. I already reported this to the police, and I just tried to send a message to Casmir, but he hasn’t responded yet. Do you know where he is?

Kim set the tracking device down and flattened her hands against the table. Casmir’s parents were missing? He would be devastated. Maybe they had been robbed, not kidnapped. But if they’d promised Scholar Moskowitz a dinner, they wouldn’t have gone out. And—she dredged up what she knew of their religion—they wouldn’t likely have gone out to shops or a movie on Sabbath night.

The king tasked him with dealing with the terrorists, Kim replied. I’ll try to get in touch with him.

Dealing with terrorists? How is a robotics professor supposed to do that?

He said he would use his wits.

Dear God.

Kim ended the message and looked at the tracking device again. The dot still wasn’t moving.

“Zee,” she called into the corridor. “I have an errand for you.”

It took three tries for Casmir to unfasten his harness buckle. He told himself it was because of the dark, not because his hands were still shaking. He managed not to fall, though the deck was tilted like a mountainside and he had to keep a firm grip on his seat.

“Rache?” he asked for the third time.

His co-conspirator did not answer. Casmir couldn’t tell if he was breathing. The sound of his own breathing was echoing loudly in his ears.

Fortunately, he still had a connection with his small robot army. He ordered them to free themselves, open the hatch, and climb out. If they could. Rache had joked about landing in a tree. Casmir didn’t think that had happened, but with the display and all the power out, he couldn’t see outside.

Faint scuffles sounded as his robots tried to obey him. Maybe he’d tied them down too well and would have to free them himself. After he checked on Rache. What if he was dead?

A sick lurch went through Casmir’s stomach, and it had nothing to do with motion. He groped his way to Rache’s seat and tapped his arm. The combat armor should have protected his body, but Rache hadn’t been wearing his helmet while he flew.

Rache was still in his harness, but he didn’t react to the tap. Casmir reached toward his neck to take his pulse, but his knuckles bumped into something hard. He felt around in confusion. It was metal, bumpy, and—oh. The hull had been pushed inward by something.

He found Rache’s head still intact, but the hull was against it. It must have knocked him out. Or worse.

Swallowing, Casmir tugged off Rache’s hood and mask. Something warm smeared his hand. Blood? Not good. Casmir found Rache’s throat. A strong pulse beat under the skin.

“That’s better,” Casmir muttered. “Because I don’t know how to fly us out of here.” He worked around the inward bulge of the hull to unbuckle Rache’s harness. “If this shuttle is capable of flying again.”

He was skeptical of that. Smoke tickled his nostrils.

The hatch opened with a thunderous wrenching sound that made Casmir jump, lose his footing, and almost slide down the deck to the back of the shuttle. One of his robots had freed itself and was poised in the hatchway, silhouetted against a tree-filled night. The moon must have come out, for there was a little light, if not much. It was one of the treaded robots, and it debated the drop-off before rolling out. It landed on what looked and sounded like ferns or maybe broad-leaved zorcrest—there was a lot of native foliage out in these preserved forests.

Casmir gave up on trying to lift Rache out of the seat—even if the deck had been level and the hull located where it should have been, that would have been a challenge. He scrambled over to free the rest of the robots and ordered a bipedal one to help. It lifted Rache far more easily than any human could have and sprang out into the night.

The buzz of an engine grew audible, filling the still night air.

“I suppose those are the people who hit us,” Casmir whispered. “Looking to finish the job.”

He got the rest of the robots out, then rushed after the one that had Rache. The forest floor was covered with vines, shrubs, logs, and ferns taller than Casmir, so it wasn’t easy going. Even though it wasn’t raining, dew covered all the foliage, and he was glad his galaxy suit kept him dry.

“Set him down there,” he said, then remembered to give the mental command over the network. These robots weren’t as sophisticated as Zee.

Casmir hurried forward to catch Rache as the robot dislodged him without any gentleness. Casmir settled him between two ferns.

“This would be a good time for you to wake up, Rache,” he whispered, glancing upward as the engine roar grew louder.

Their shuttle had broken dozens of branches on its way down, carving out a clearing of a sort, and Casmir could see up to the night sky where clouds half covered the moon.

“Are there any supplies in the shuttle I need to get? A first-aid kit, perhaps? Weapons?” Casmir activated the night-vision program in his contacts and started back toward the hatch. It was weak compared to what someone with goggles or ocular implants would have, but it helped him see the forest around him.

And when the enemy shuttle roared into view, he had no trouble seeing it.

Casmir skittered back. It was almost on top of them.

Orange flared from twin weapons under its nose, and bright energy bolts zipped down from above.

Cursing, Casmir turned his back and ran toward Rache. One of the bolts slammed into the earth, sending dirt and foliage flying everywhere. The other struck the shuttle, and it blew up.

The shockwave sent Casmir tumbling on top of Rache. Shrapnel joined the chunks of dirt raining down. Casmir did his best to protect Rache’s head and face from further damage. Something needled into his back, and he couldn’t keep from crying out.

Overhead, the enemy craft banked. Was it coming back to fire again? Nothing was left of Rache’s shuttle.

But the enemy’s scanners would sense their heat signatures, Casmir realized. He ordered the robot to heft Rache again and for the rest of his mechanical crew to do the best they could to traverse the rough terrain. There wasn’t anything close to a road or a trail out here.

The shuttle fired again, blasting the wreckage into a thousand pieces. Casmir and Rache were definitely not flying back to civilization in that.

At first, Casmir simply headed out into the dark, with no direction in mind, but he’d been watching when Rache’s officer sent the coordinates of the person who’d commed the doctor. He found the numbers on his chip’s memory and pulled up a map and plugged them in.

Given the way the night was going so far, he expected to be at least fifty miles from the place. He was shocked that they were only three miles away. Traversing three miles without a trail through this dense undergrowth wouldn’t be easy, but it was an attainable goal.

Not that Casmir knew what to do if he managed to arrive at those coordinates. Especially if Rache didn’t wake up.

No, that wasn’t true. He had a plan. To sneak in, verify the location of the base, then send it to Asger, who would comm his knight and Guard allies for backup. Meanwhile, Casmir would disperse Kim’s biological agent and send his robots in for a distraction to keep the enemy busy until the main force arrived.

His plan had never involved Rache helping him. It hadn’t involved one of his robots having to carry Rache, either, but the bipedal porter-75 was strong. All of his robots could handle this. Those with treads were having an easier time navigating the foliage than he was. They simply mowed through the undergrowth or rolled over it. As soon as Casmir realized they were leaving a path, he ordered the bipedal robots to follow it, and he also walked in their wake. Until the enemy shuttle returned—with reinforcements.

Several combat vessels flew in the night sky, back and forth in a search pattern. Every time they were close, Casmir hid in the shadow of a tree. Fortunately, the trees here were six feet in diameter and hundreds of feet tall. He wouldn’t put it past the terrorists to try to mow down the forest to get at them, but he hoped all the foliage, and perhaps the presence of animal life, made it difficult for their scanners to pinpoint him and Rache.

A couple of times, the shuttles dropped bombs between the trees. The forest shook, and birds woken by the booms shrieked. A wolf howled in the distance, answered by the crack-crack-cracks of a nocturnal tree darter. The blasts were close enough to see, but none came as close as the first ones had. Casmir imagined the shuttles as destroyers dropping depth charges and hoping to get lucky.

After a half hour, Rache finally stirred, groaning and lifting his head. He was still slung over the shoulder of the porter-75.

“Dabrowski,” Rache said, sounding more irritated than wan, “where’s my mask?”

That was his first question?

“Uh.” Casmir remembered pulling it off to check Rache’s pulse and wound… and then what? He’d dropped it, he was fairly certain. In the shuttle. “The bad guys blew it up.”

“I don’t suppose that’s one of your typical attempts to be funny.”

“I wish it were, but nothing funny has happened tonight. I took it off to try to figure out why you were knocked out. The hull connected with your head, in case you’re curious.”

Rache hesitated. “I had my harness on.”

“Right. Your head didn’t connect with the hull. It was as I said, the hull reached out to touch you.”

“Without asking first? Presumptuous.”

Casmir snorted, amused despite his misery. And glad Rache had a semblance of a sense of humor under all that black. “Yes, but have no fear. The shuttle suffered for its presumptions.”

Rache sighed. “Does that mean the bad guys blew it up too?”

“Twice.”

Rache shifted and tried to climb down, but one of the robot’s limbs was fastened around him to keep him in place. “Am I your prisoner now?”

“No, I’m rescuing you.”

“Oh? I feel imprisoned.”

“If I give him the order to release you, will you be able to stand up?” Casmir grunted as he stubbed his toe against a log buried under a fern. He would have bought hiking boots if he’d envisioned the night going this way.

“I won’t know until I try.”

Casmir silently ordered the robot to release Rache as he maneuvered closer to catch him if he fell. As before, the porter-75 let go abruptly. Rache tumbled off its shoulder but twisted in the air like a cat and landed in a light crouch. He didn’t even stub his toe on a log. Show off.

“I’m a little dizzy, but I can walk,” Rache said.

“Good. We’re going that way.” Casmir pointed into the tree-filled gloom.

He expected Rache to say that the forest looked the same in all directions, but he must have already loaded the coordinates onto his own map. “The base is only a mile away?”

“Or the phone booth where your doctor’s contact made his comm call.”

“Right. I suppose we won’t know until we get there. I’m surprised we’re that close.”

“My robot carried you two miles. Don’t forget to tip him.”

The treaded robots had pulled ahead, so once Casmir was convinced Rache wouldn’t pitch over, he hurried to catch up. A message came in from Kim.

Casmir, are you able to speak right now?

Casmir glanced around at the dark forest. Yes. Until something jumps out from behind the trees and starts shooting at us.

Is that likely?

We were shot down, and we’re on foot. It seems inevitable. But go ahead and give me your news. Casmir remembered the message that had come in earlier when he’d been airsick. It had been from one of his parents’ colleagues. He’d been too busy to glance at it before, but a feeling of dread crept into his stomach. Was it related to Kim’s contact?

Scholar Moskowitz messaged me. Your parents are missing, and their apartment was ransacked.

The dread threatened to turn into panic. Casmir rushed to read the earlier message. It was from Scholar Moskowitz. And yes, it reported the same thing.

He scrubbed the back of his neck and told himself that he couldn’t have done anything even if he’d read it earlier, but it didn’t matter. He felt guilty for not taking the fifteen seconds to check it.

Thank you, Kim. I… Casmir didn’t know what to say. He wanted to run over to his parents’ apartment and check it, but he didn’t even have transportation out of this forest, not now. Besides, if they were gone, all he would be doing would be looking for clues. And did he really need clues? Was there any question who had taken them?

Casmir prayed they had been taken and not something worse. So far, the terrorists had killed everyone in their path.

I’ll do something as soon as I can, he finished, knowing Kim was waiting for an answer.

Do you think it’s possible they were taken to the same base you’re trying to find?

I don’t know. Why would the terrorists want them?

They know you’re coming, and if they’re not a hundred percent sure Rache is on their side, they may feel they need an additional lever on you.

Casmir shook his head. All the evidence suggested that the terrorists simply wanted him dead. Why would they need levers to make that happen? Did they think he was such a mastermind at stealthy incursions that they wouldn’t find him unless they dangled his parents as bait? He couldn’t imagine what in his life history would lead them to believe that. The résumé he’d filed with the university didn’t mention stealth.

I’ll keep my eye out just in case, he told Kim, then grimaced, because that meant he needed to do more than put his hand on the wall of the base and comm Asger to order an attack. He needed to hunt around inside and find his parents before any kind of air strike started.

Do you need help?

I’ve got your biological agent and… Rache.

Neither of those is likely to have your back in a fight.

Tell me about it.

I sent Zee with a tracking device to find you. Technically, to find Rache, but it sounds like you’re together. It looks like you’re a couple hundred miles away, and I don’t know his max speed, so I don’t know how quickly he’ll get there… but if you can dawdle, maybe he can have your back.

Casmir’s first instinct was to protest—if his parents had been kidnapped, surely Kim might be a target too—but she had the Royal Intelligence bodyguards outside of her apartment. She ought to be safe. Besides, how many levers would the kidnappers think they needed against him?

“Just one,” he muttered, checking the time.

Zee maxed out at about sixty miles an hour, assuming he ran the whole way here and didn’t find other transportation, and the lack of roads out here would slow even him down. Casmir doubted he would make it out here before dawn. He would have to rely on his other robots.

“Is something wrong?” Rache had pulled ahead, and he paused to look back.

“Just reading some messages.” Casmir almost told Rache about his parents, but he reminded himself that they weren’t Rache’s parents. He’d never even met them. What would he care?

“Well, read faster. The person with the concussion shouldn’t be outpacing you.”

“Aren’t you genetically engineered to do everything faster than a normal human?”

“Ride one of your robots if you need to. I doubt we have much time before they make a more serious effort at finding us.”

Casmir was tempted to make sarcastic comments, but Rache was right. The buzz of engines continued to come and go as their enemies searched from above. Eventually, they would send out men on foot. Or crushers on foot. Casmir’s stomach twisted at the idea of battling them without Zee’s help.

Rache halted abruptly and looked around, his hand on his pistol.

“You feel that?” He glanced back.

Casmir shook his head, but as he walked closer, a sharp buzz of electricity crawled over his skin like ants. He jumped back, and the sensation disappeared. Rache jumped forward and turned around.

“It’s gone.” Rache looked up. “Some kind of energy field. Something that scrambles signals and hides the base from satellites and ships?”

“Can you access the network from that side?”

Rache paused. “No. Can you still?”

Casmir ran a quick search. “Yes.”

“This may actually be what you’re looking for then. Not just some small hideout in the woods. Their main base.” Rache turned and strode in the direction they had been heading.

“Wait.” Casmir held up a hand. “I need to order the rest of my robots delivered before we lose contact with the outside world.”

“There are more?” Rache looked at the ones trundling across the invisible energy field. None of them reacted to it.

“Yes.”

Casmir sent a message to Bonita. Captain, Rache and I are crossing through a barrier and believe we’re close to the enemy base. I know I was supposed to let Asger know when we located it, so he could call in reinforcements, but my parents were kidnapped earlier today, and I’m afraid they may be inside. I need to find them before the Kingdom Guard unloads all their weaponry on the place. Please bring the robots in and deploy them. They have orders on what to do. Don’t let Asger order in the troops yet. Thank you.

Bonita didn’t respond right away. Casmir hoped they hadn’t also run into trouble, but as long seconds passed, he worried they might have.

“Come on, Casmir,” Rache called from the trees ahead.

Reluctantly, Casmir passed through the barrier again. He’d said what he needed to say to Bonita. He hoped she was in a position to get the robots here and that he and Rache weren’t on their own. He wasn’t even positive Rache was fully with him. These people hated the king, and so did Rache. Casmir hoped that Rache was irked after having people try to snoop into his DNA and shoot him down. Though from what Casmir had deduced so far, Rache would likely see the former as far more of a crime than the latter.

A crunch echoed from somewhere ahead of them. A branch snapping? It sounded like something more substantial than a twig. Casmir’s robots had been making such noises all along, but none of them were that far ahead.

Rache drew his pistol. “I wish I had more firepower.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t come with an entire armory.”

“I did. It was in the back of the shuttle our enemies apparently blew up along with my mask.”

“You sound more irritated about losing the mask.”

“They won’t need bloodwork to identify me if I’m not wearing it.” Rache tapped over his shoulder, as if to verify that the helmet of his combat armor was still folded against his upper back, ready to deploy.

It didn’t appear to have been damaged in the crash, but the clear Glasnax faceplate would not hide his identity. Casmir’s borrowed galaxy suit also would not hide his identity, so if they walked into the base side by side, the resemblance would be noticeable. Probably startling to someone who wasn’t expecting it.

Up ahead, faint blue light appeared through the trees. For a moment, Rache was silhouetted, his short, dark hair an oddity after Casmir had seen him so often with his head hooded. Rache sprang for cover and disappeared from Casmir’s sight.

More crunches came from up ahead. It sounded like vehicles or moving machinery. The snapping of wood echoed through the forest. Casmir envisioned logging robots sent out to attack them.

A touch to his shoulder made him jump. Rache had circled back to stand near him.

“I’m not able to use my chip to message you, so we’ll have to stick to voice,” Rache whispered, the words barely audible over the snaps and crunches. “Can you send your robots out for a distraction? I’m going to scout ahead, but I assume someone up there will be able to detect heat signatures and will be gunning for me.”

“I suppose there’s no chance that they’re not looking for us and we can sneak in the back door.”

Rache gave him a scathing look before ordering his helmet into place. “They shot us down on their doorstep, Dabrowski. They know we’re here.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Hide behind a tree and stay out of trouble.” Rache flicked a finger at Casmir’s galaxy suit. “If they have serious firepower, that won’t save you.”

“Oh, I know. Hiding is always an integral part of my plans.”

“I bet.”

Rache left, his black armor helping him disappear into the shadows. Or maybe it was whatever elite stealth abilities mercenaries learned when they became wanted by the law.

Casmir stepped behind a tree, hiding from the blue light, though he didn’t yet know the source of it. Things were moving in front of it. Long, ominous shadows shifted through the trees.

“Begin Plan B,” Casmir told his robots, realizing he couldn’t send instructions to them via the global satellite network any longer. That barrier kept him from accessing it. Fortunately, they had auditory sensors, and he’d preprogrammed the robots with routines to follow that should be sufficient for Rache’s distraction. “Do not deploy the vials yet.”

There was no point in that until they were inside of… whatever was up there. A building, he hoped. A building with his parents in it, ideally right up front in some foyer, so they would be easy to rescue. Did terrorist lairs have foyers?

It didn’t matter. He would find them. Casmir clenched his fist as the robots shambled off toward the light.

The bzzt of a DEW-Tek weapon drifted back. Rache? Or someone firing at Rache?

Casmir shifted his weight behind his tree, tempted to get closer so he could see what they faced. It would be wiser to stay back and let Rache handle this, but he didn’t know how fully he could trust his twin.

Hoping he wasn’t being an idiot, Casmir moved closer, darting from one tree to the next. The blue light and whatever was moving around up there made uneven shadows, and he tripped more than once. Somehow, he was certain Rache never tripped when he was sneaking about.

It didn’t take long to reach the edge of the trees. They stopped abruptly as if they had been clearcut by logging machines. Maybe his earlier guess hadn’t been far off.

But the machines tramping around in front of a cliff and firing into the woods weren’t for logging. They were Quasar Stalker combat robots, deadly on land and in space. He’d never seen one in person, as they were manufactured in another system, but he’d seen videos on the network. They looked like bipedal insects with heavy armored carapaces and weapons for arms and antennae.

He counted ten of them stomping about, each more than twice the size of a man in combat armor. They made Zee seem small, and he was positive they would give crushers a good battle. But what were they out here guarding? That cliff? He didn’t see a building or a tunnel entrance.

Casmir, only when he was certain none of the Stalkers were pointed in his direction, eased his head out far enough to look left and right along the base of the cliff. The ground was cleared for hundreds of meters along the base of the rock face. Branches and a few fallen logs had been left behind, but it would be difficult to cross the area without being seen by the robots and whoever else was out there.

He looked up, expecting to find drones with cameras and weapons zipping around. That was when he spotted the structure built into the side of the cliff up above, the stone walls almost matching the surrounding dark gray rock. It looked far more like some ancient fortress than a modern base. Casmir realized that was exactly what it was.

When the colony ships had landed, most people had stayed and created the civilizations that eventually evolved into the Kingdom on the northern continent and the various city-states on the southern land masses. But splinter groups had gone off into the wilds, some creating settlements that had never attained modern sophistication. Some still remained out there, and some had been abandoned.

Like this one?

Vines and foliage draped down from the tree-filled bluff high above, and Casmir wondered if this stone fortress had been lost and forgotten until the terrorists had found it.

Half of a large satellite dish was visible at the edge of the cliff, the only sign of modern tech other than illumination coming from openings halfway down the rock face—windows. They were about fifty feet above the ground. And so, he realized, numbly, was the entrance. The only entrance, at least that he could see. Those windows were more like arrow slits than something a man could crawl through.

Two guards stood on a platform that extended out a meter from the entrance, watching the robots below tramping around and firing into the woods. There was enough light for Casmir to make out faces that weren’t fully human. They appeared a mix of metal and skin. He didn’t think they were androids. They reminded him of the people who’d died in those pods on the cargo ship. Astroshamans.

He groaned. He’d been thinking earlier that it would have taken a robotics expert to reprogram the crushers. But these people, half machine and half man, could have likely done it with ease.

Had they been hired by the terrorists? Or were the astroshamans the ones behind the terrorism?

An explosion roared to one side, and metal flew in all directions. Casmir slumped against the tree he hid behind. It was one of his robots. The Stalkers had blown it up. Easily.

Casmir couldn’t remember if that robot had been carrying one of Kim’s vials, but he put up his helmet, hoping for a modicum of protection, in case it had been. He didn’t start drawing on the small oxygen tank he’d brought, not yet. Kim had said the biological agent would disperse quickly outdoors.

Another of his robots exploded, some ordnance striking it with unerring accuracy. Casmir leaned his forehead against his tree. He had a feeling this attempt at an incursion wasn’t going to last long.

What else could he try? If he failed, his parents might be killed.

16

“I’ve lost his signal,” Bonita said.

“What?” Qin leaned forward in the co-pilot’s pod, frowning at the display, dark trees whizzing past below the ship. They had been flying inland for more than a half hour, tracking Casmir’s transponder chip. “That doesn’t mean he’s dead, does it?”

“No, it just means that I’ve lost his signal. If he were dead, the chip would still be transmitting. Unless he died horribly by being pulverized or incinerated in such a manner that the chip was destroyed too.”

“An explosion might have done that,” Asger murmured from the hatchway. “Or the terrorists might have captured him, scanned him, found the transponder, and yanked it out and zapped it.”

“He was flying a minute ago,” Bonita said. “He would have to have been captured and de-transponder-ized at record speed.”

“That’s not a word.”

“It is now. I’m going to keep heading in the direction he was going. Maybe he passed into a shielded area.”

“They also could have crashed,” Asger said. “That could have resulted in an explosion that destroyed the transponder.”

“I had no idea knights were more pessimistic than bounty hunters,” Bonita said. “The Kingdom doesn’t have any kind of invisible barrier that could cause us to crash if we hit it, does it? I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I hadn’t seen anything like the stealth generator that astroshaman cargo ship had either.”

“Whoever these terrorists are,” Asger said, “they’re not Kingdom subjects.”

Bonita glanced at Qin, as if wondering if that had been an answer to her question.

“I’m tempted to call in my backup now.” Asger eyed the corner of the display, which showed the last spot where they’d received a signal from Casmir’s transponder. “And send them to search that area.”

“I thought we were the backup.” Bonita waved toward the deck, toward the army of robots in the cargo hold two levels below.

“Just the distraction. My knight colleagues and the Kingdom Guard are waiting to be called in. But we better check out that spot first.” Asger waved at the tiny frozen blip. “Make sure Rache didn’t kill him and throw him out the hatch.”

“Again with the pessimism. Qin, can’t you perk up our knight?”

Qin eyed the grim-faced Asger. “I’m not sure how.”

“I’m disgruntled because we didn’t get to go along,” Asger said. “And I’m afraid Casmir is going to get himself killed because he trusted that villain.”

“Wait.” Bonita held up a finger. “I just got a message from him. He said he’s going through some kind of barrier and may lose contact, but we’re supposed to bring in his robots. And hold off on calling Asger’s buddies.”

Asger frowned. “Why?”

“There are two vessels flying toward us,” Viggo announced before Bonita could check.

“Since when?” Bonita asked.

“They just appeared on my scanners. Approximately twenty miles to the west and heading in our direction.”

“Twenty miles west? That’s almost on top of the spot where Casmir’s transponder disappeared.”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell if they have weapons?”

“Yes,” Viggo said, “they do.”

“Is that railgun on the roof the only weapon this ship has?” Asger asked.

“On the outside, yes.” Bonita looked at Qin.

“I’m her other weapon.” Qin smiled.

Asger snorted. “How are you at knocking shuttlecraft out of the sky?”

Qin hopped out of her pod. “I’ll get my Brockinger anti-tank gun, and we’ll find out.”

“Are you joking?” Asger asked as she squeezed past him. “Lopez, is she joking?”

“No. Stop pestering me or go help her. Or both.”

As Qin descended the ladder toward her cabin, she heard Bonita add, “I have a feeling I’m going to need to concentrate on my flying soon.”

Qin already wore her full combat armor, and it only took her a moment to grab her Brockinger since she’d had it out earlier, intending to take it along to help Casmir. Not sure if she would end up in some ground battle eventually, she also grabbed a DEW-Tek rifle and a couple of pistols from her storage drawer.

The Dragon swooped through its first evasive maneuvers as she climbed the ladder back up to the top deck. Asger was still there, also armed and armored, standing in the corridor behind navigation and gripping a handhold.

“I’ve got visual contact,” Bonita called back. “Those are some sleek ships. And yes, they have weapons aplenty. Hang on!”

The Dragon lurched as she spun them into a turn.

Qin almost tumbled into Asger. She lunged for the ladder leading up to the roof hatch and caught herself before she struck him.

A weapon that whistled like an obnoxious firecracker streaked past somewhere nearby. Rapid-fire booms followed. The freighter dipped and rose, rolling and banking to avoid the attacks. Something caught the Dragon’s side, and the ship shuddered. Qin wasn’t used to hearing all the sounds of battle, not in space where everything happened in a vacuum of silence.

The railgun fired with a thwomp.

“Slick bastards,” Bonita growled.

“Should I climb up and try to hit them?” Qin asked.

“Climb up?” Asger asked. “On the roof? The wind will whip you off.”

A snap-crack emanated from the rear of the ship, and the lights flickered.

“Anything you can do to help,” Bonita called.

Qin climbed the ladder and opened the hatch. The wind blasted her helmet.

Bonita spun the Dragon into a roll, and Qin planted her lower body, hooking her feet under rungs so she wouldn’t fall out as the dark sky and the even darker ground alternated places over her head. She craned her neck, looking for the other ships as she raised her Brockinger to her shoulder.

The Dragon swept low and upside-down, and Qin’s helmet almost skimmed the treetops. But then she spotted the reason for the dangerous maneuver. A pursuer zoomed down after them.

The freighter’s railgun swiveled and fired. Even though the enemy shuttle was close and didn’t have much time to react, it was agile, and the pilot whipped to the side in time to evade it. But they were so close to the trees that the shuttle almost swerved into a tall one. It had to readjust its course, and Qin took advantage as it banked hard. She fired before the shuttle could pull fully away from the tree.

The Brockinger wasn’t as powerful as the railgun, but her shell struck the vessel straight on and exploded.

“Right up the nose,” she whispered.

The shuttle likely could have taken a few hits, but her attack caught it at the right moment, and the small lurch it caused made it clip the tree. The craft wheeled out of control, hit two more trees, then streaked toward the ground, streaming flames and smoke.

“That’s one!” Qin called down—or up—as the Dragon turned back to an upright position.

“Good shooting, Qin!” Bonita yelled back. “Hang on. The other one is swooping down from above.”

The enemy shuttle came into view before the warning was complete, and something that looked like a flaming torpedo streaked toward them from above. Bonita tried to get the Dragon out of the way, but there wasn’t enough time. Qin pulled herself back inside, intending to grip the rungs so she wouldn’t be knocked free, but the torpedo caught them on the top of the freighter.

A boom roared in Qin’s ears, and a massive jolt wracked the ship as she was adjusting her grip. The force flung her out, and she yelled in surprise. The Dragon kept flying as she plummeted toward the trees, trees that were hundreds of feet tall.

She twisted in the air, almost dropping her Brockinger as she lunged and tried to catch a branch. Her back struck one, tossing her sideways. She hit a trunk and bounced toward another tree. This time, she managed to grab the trunk. She skidded down ten feet, snapping branches and shearing off bark before she could stop herself.

The tree swayed violently under her weight, and she grimaced, expecting the trunk to snap off and send her plummeting again. But as the roar of the Dragon’s engine faded, the tree stopped swaying. Qin caught her breath, glad her armor had protected her from those blows, but feeling silly that she’d let herself be thrown out of the ship. Yes, they’d been struck by enemy fire, but she was supposed to be better than that. She was embarrassed that Asger had been there to witness it.

At least she was alive. Alive and—she peered through the myriad branches between her and the ground—more than a hundred feet up. Well, she had cat genes. She could climb down.

As she started down, she commed Bonita. “Captain, are you all right?”

“Yes,” came the prompt reply, “where are you?”

“I fell out,” she said at the same time as Bonita said, “Never mind. Asger just told me. Qin!”

“Sorry.”

“I need to lose this guy. We’ve taken damage. I’ll circle back as soon as we survive. Just wait where you—no, wait. You’re actually less than a mile from where—” Bonita broke off, the shriek of weapons fire filling the comm. “From where we lost the signal. Head west and see if you can figure out what happened.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“If we can’t lose this guy, I’m going to try to at least find a place to open the hatch long enough for Asger and the robots to jump out.”

“Understood,” Qin said, though she wondered how Casmir’s robots would survive a jump of more than a few feet. Zee could have, but the rest of them seemed far less malleable and durable.

“Lopez, out.”

Qin had been descending as she spoke, and she jumped the last thirty feet to the ground, her strong legs and shock-absorbent boots making that an easy matter. She used her helmet map to get her bearings, then sprinted through the damp foliage in the direction Bonita had indicated, hoping she wasn’t too late to help Casmir.

More booms and more DEW-Tek fire burst into the night. Casmir lifted his head from his tree-trunk hiding spot. Rache was out there fighting somewhere, and his remaining robots continued to tramp around, creating a distraction. Casmir shouldn’t waste that. He rested a hand on his tool satchel, the closest thing he had to weapons, and groped for something he could do.

Could he hack into the local network that the Quasar Stalkers operated on? It registered on his chip, but he’d already examined it, and there were about a dozen layers of security on it. He feared it would take hours—or months—to hack into, but as long as he was crouching in damp ferns, he might as well try. Maybe he would get lucky, as he had on that cargo ship. Admittedly, his friends had needed to render an android unconscious before Casmir could find that log-in code, but…

Before he’d done more than start one of his hacking programs running, one of the Stalkers charged away from the cliff in Casmir’s direction. He didn’t think Rache was anywhere nearby, and he gripped the bark of his tree tightly. Could it have sensed his heat signature?

Branches crunched as the Stalker came to a stop. Casmir ducked low and tried to make himself as narrow as possible. The robot’s insectoid head rotated, a pair of round crimson eyes swiveling toward the forest. Casmir knew the sensors were in a chest panel, and that the eyes were only for effect, but it didn’t matter. In that moment, they were creepy.

He couldn’t hear his breathing over the cacophony of weapons firing, but he worried the Stalker, with its exceptional auditory sensors, could. He tried to inhale and exhale as lightly as possible.

A faint crunch was his only warning. The Stalker sprinted toward him.

Casmir sprang back and raced for the trees behind him. He glimpsed the robot running on its springy legs. A heartbeat later, the tree where he’d been hiding exploded.

The boom roared in his ears, and the shockwave hurled him into the air. He flailed, trying to avoid slamming into a huge trunk right in front of him. His shoulder clipped it, and he bit his tongue to keep from crying out. Not that it mattered. The Stalker knew right where he was.

It charged through flames burning up and down the stump, which was all that remained of that tree, and sprang toward him.

As soon as Casmir hit the ground, he scrambled for cover, anything that could protect him. He flung himself over a fern, damp fronds batting him in the eyes, and dove behind another tree.

The Stalker fired, and the tree erupted with a thunderous crack. The trunk pitched down toward Casmir.

He gasped and rolled to the side, flinging himself through the undergrowth to avoid it. The trunk might have hit him anyway, but it smashed against another tree, and that halted its fall. It did nothing to halt the Stalker. The agile robot sprang over a log, and its crimson eyes stared at him as it lifted its cannon-like appendage.

Even as Casmir threw himself to the side, he knew he wasn’t fast enough to dodge. No normal human would be.

A black figure sprang onto the Stalker’s back.

Zee? No, it was Rache in his black combat armor.

He roared, gripped the robot’s head, and twisted and yanked it off with inhuman strength. Shorted wires spat and hissed. Rache jammed something down into the headless stump and sprang away.

“Move!” he shouted.

Casmir jumped up and ran deeper into the woods. An explosion roared right behind him, and shrapnel pelted him in the back. Thankfully, the galaxy suit protected him somewhat, keeping the shards from penetrating, but one piece was large enough to knock him over again.

Something grabbed Casmir from behind, and he almost yelled in alarm before he realized human hands held him, not robot grippers. Rache lifted him to his feet and pulled him behind a copse of trees. He was panting inside his helmet, dents and melt marks marring his armor, but his eyes had a wild gleam, and he was grinning.

“Thanks,” Casmir said.

Rache slapped him on the shoulder, almost sending Casmir into another tree.

“Where did you get explosives?” Casmir asked.

“Stole them from a robot I took down,” Rache said. “We have to get inside. Running around out here and fighting the cannon fodder is going to get us killed.”

“You don’t think going inside might also accomplish that?”

“We need to find who’s in charge.”

“To negotiate with him?”

“To kill him. Cut off the head, and the snake dies.”

“Little known scientific fact,” Casmir said. “Severed snake heads can still bite for up to an hour after decapitation.”

“Maybe we can round up enough ordnance to blow up their base from out here. The whole cliff.” Rache waved toward it. “That old fortress built into it looks like it could collapse without much effort.”

Rache turned, as if to enact his idea right then.

Casmir lunged and grabbed his arm. “You can’t. My parents might be in there.”

“What?”

“I just found out, not an hour ago. They were kidnapped from their apartment. I don’t know they’re in there, but I’m afraid they might have been picked up to ensure my cooperation.”

Rache looked toward the cliff again. Another of the Quasar Stalkers stomped into view beyond the trees, maybe wondering what had happened to its buddy.

“All right. This way.” Rache drew Casmir along a line parallel to the cliff, keeping the trees between them and their enemies.

Another boom erupted, followed by metal raining against stone and wood, and Casmir knew another of his robots had been destroyed. There couldn’t be more than five left. Once they were gone, nothing would remain to distract their enemies, nothing to keep all those Stalkers from charging into the woods and mowing down Casmir and Rache.

“We’re going to have to go back to the idea of going inside,” Rache said. “Find the boss, make him tell you where your parents are.”

“The entrance is fifty feet up.” Casmir grunted as he stumbled over another hidden log. “And there were two astroshamans standing on the platform, guarding it.”

“I saw. They’re only partially armored. Their heads are vulnerable.”

“To what? They’re way up there. And we’re—”

“I have jet boots.” Rache pointed at his feet.

“Oh, right. So you can get in. Uh, can you carry me up there?” Normally, Casmir wouldn’t have volunteered to help storm an enemy base, but staying out here would be a death sentence.

“Maybe. Do you weigh more than a bunch of comic books, two pizzas, and a toy robot kit?”

“Uh, probably not much more. That didn’t exceed the weight allowance and make you crash, did it?”

“No. It just altered the handling noticeably.” Rache turned, putting his back to him. “Climb on—wait.”

One of the Stalkers raced between the trees and toward them. Casmir sprang to the side. Rache charged right at it. Robot and man hit like two wrecking balls slamming into each other and bouncing off. The Stalker struck a tree. Rache flew ten feet, landed on his feet, and sprang toward it again.

The agile robot recovered before he reached it. Whirling and blocking, it kept Rache from gaining a grip.

Rache fired twice with his pistol. The bolts did nothing to damage the Stalker.

The robot leveled one of its cannons at him. Rache flung himself to the side a split second before an energy blast burned through the air. It slammed into a three-foot-wide trunk and snapped it. The tree pitched over, startling Rache, and for the first time ever, Casmir watched him lose his footing.

The Stalker rushed him.

“Look out!” Casmir shouted—uselessly.

Rache regained his footing, but the swift robot would have barreled into him. Something barreled into it first. One of Casmir’s bipedal robots. It and the Stalker clattered into the undergrowth at Casmir’s feet.

With the Stalker busy battling another foe, Rache recovered and had time to yank out another explosive. He waited until he could leap in, then jumped atop the Stalker and, as with the first, ripped off its head. He shoved his explosive inside and, even as Casmir sprinted to get away, Rache grabbed the robot with both hands, hefted it over his head, and hurled it twenty feet. It struck a tree at the same time as it exploded, fiery orange light illuminating the forest.

“Combat armor seems useful,” Casmir noted.

“You should get some.”

“I’ll put it on my Hanukkah gift list. Chocolates are more common, but it is a holiday about celebrating victory in war.”

“Good armor is expensive. Your gift-giver may need to finance it.”

“If we rescue my parents, I’ll finance it.”

All business, Rache turned again and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Get on.”

Casmir made sure his tool satchel was secured, then grabbed Rache around the armored neck and wrapped his legs around his waist. A memory popped into his head of his father giving him piggyback rides when he’d been about five. Since he and Rache were the same height, this seemed like a ludicrous version of that.

“Hang on,” Rache warned, and fired his boots.

For some reason, Casmir expected him to angle through the trees and toward the entrance halfway up the cliff, but he shot straight up into the air. Casmir had been holding on tight, as ordered, but as they rose over a hundred feet, his sensible grip turned into a panicked vise-like clenching with all of his limbs.

They rose higher than the cliff and were looking at the trees on the bluff, and the Stalkers far below, before Rache stopped rising. He angled them inward on a more horizontal plane.

Casmir’s stomach protested the shift with a queasy lurch. He told it to knock it off. He was not going to puke on Rache. Not twice in the same night.

“I’m going in fast since we’ll be a target,” Rache said as the entrance and the two astroshamans came into view.

For a few seconds, they were even with the satellite dish, and Casmir studied it briefly. It was clean, modern, and free of dirt and vines. He wondered how it transmitted through the barrier that was blocking his chip from accessing the global network. He almost asked Rache to fly closer so he could take a look, but it was too late. Rache tipped them downward.

The wind battered at Casmir’s helmet as they dove out of the trees and toward the astroshamans still out on that ledge.

Casmir realized why Rache had wanted gravity on their side. They plummeted down like hawks, and their startled enemies didn’t have time to point weapons at them. One managed to spring back into the fortress entrance before Rache struck. The other didn’t.

Rache hit so hard that Casmir flashed back to the shuttle crash. He lost his grip and crashed into a wall, biting his tongue, and blood tainted his mouth. He flung his hands out for balance, afraid he’d fall off the precipice. That was what happened to the first astroshaman.

Momentum carried Casmir into the entrance corridor. He bumped into the second astroshaman a moment before Rache hit the man like a mag train. Casmir barely had time to flatten himself against the wall and get out of the way.

It only took him a second to get to his feet, but the skirmish had ended by then, with Rache standing and the astroshaman on his back, his neck broken.

The first astroshaman who’d been knocked off the precipice reappeared, using jet boots of his own to regain the perch. He aimed a rifle at Rache’s back.

“Watch out!” Casmir yelled. Unnecessarily.

Rache must have had a rear helmet camera on. He ducked right before the energy bolt streaked down the corridor, then whirled and sprang at their enemy before he could fire again. Rache ripped the rifle from the man’s grip and hurled it further into the fortress. The astroshaman sprang at him, launching a barrage of punches. He wore armor, and his fists blurred, but Rache’s blocks were just as fast. Rache roared as he charged, punching his foe in the face.

For the second time, the astroshaman flew off the ledge. This time, his nose was splattered flat, and he looked too dazed to react as he tumbled away. Rache ran to the edge and peered over to make sure.

A distant thud floated up.

“He’s dead,” Rache said.

An orange energy bolt streaked up from below. Once again, Rache’s enhanced reflexes were enough for him to anticipate it and dodge.

“The robots aren’t.” Rache ran into the corridor. “You all right?”

“Yes,” Casmir said. “Other than feeling like a damsel in distress.”

Rache picked up the discarded rifle, kept it for himself, and held out his pistol in offering. “Want it?”

Casmir eyed it. It would make sense to be armed, but would he actually shoot at someone? If he’d had a stun gun, yes, but not with a weapon designed to kill. He doubted his aim was good enough to ensure he wouldn’t cause a fatal wound. Assuming he didn’t hit his own ally.

“No, thanks.” Casmir opened his tool satchel and looked for something that might help with their assault of the base. He had four vials of the biological agent, carefully insulated with bubble wrap, but so far, they had run into more robots than human beings.

Casmir pulled out a power drill and hefted it. Maybe he could open a panel in an astroshaman’s half-computer head.

“Perhaps your friend could give you some combat lessons.” Rache holstered the pistol and passed Casmir, waving dismissively at the drill. He strode down the empty, dimly lit corridor.

“Which one? Asger or Qin?”

“Kim.”

Casmir almost tripped. Not because she wasn’t capable of handling herself but because he didn’t know when Rache had learned that. “You’ve seen her fight?”

“She resisted kidnapping.”

“Well, good.” Casmir wanted more details but decided this wasn’t the time to ask for them.

Rache headed for a modern metal door blocking the old stone corridor, a control panel glowing from the wide jamb. The terrorists had been settled in for long enough to modify the ancient ruins.

“Are you sure we should go this way?” Casmir asked. “Like you said earlier, it’s a foregone conclusion they know we’re here.”

“It wouldn’t be my first choice, but I didn’t see any other entrances when I scouted around.”

“What about the satellite dish?”

“What about it?”

Rache planted his gauntleted palms against the door and tried to heave it open.

“I bet it’s hard-wired to wherever their control center is,” Casmir said. “It would be hard to get a wireless signal through all this rock.”

“Fascinating.”

“Someone would have had to run that wire. There may be an access shaft.”

“Did you see one?” Rache growled, straining with the door.

Despite his muscular enhancements and the additional strength the combat armor gave him, it didn’t budge. Maybe the terrorists had anticipated robots—or knights in armor—busting into their stronghold.

“I’ll open that for you if you give me a ride back up to that satellite.” Casmir stepped up to the control panel, switched out the drill bit for a screw head, and unfastened the exterior with four quick buzzes. He smiled and extended a hand toward the interior wiring, assuming he could figure out how to open the door in a few seconds of tinkering.

“I’m not a shuttle bus, Dabrowski.”

“Just drop me off, and I’ll either find a way in or enjoy the view of the robot battle from the ferns atop the cliff.” Casmir put away the drill and pulled out wire clippers, waving them in offering.

Rache reached into the panel and tore out most of the wires inside. Something snapped and spat smoke.

“Uh,” Casmir said, “that probably won’t—”

The door slid open. And then shut again. But not before they saw six armed men waiting with rifles pointed in their direction. The door slid open again, and Rache pulled Casmir behind the jamb as their enemies fired. Several bolts made it through, skimming past in front of Casmir’s eyes, before the door shut again. After a pause, it slid open again. Rache’s solution hadn’t been as tidy as Casmir’s would have been.

Before the men on the other side could advance, Rache leaned out and threw an explosive. The door slid shut, some of their energy bolts pinging against it.

Casmir kept his back to the wall, his belly sucked in while the access panel hissed and smoked next to his ear.

“Come on.” Rache grabbed Casmir’s wrist and slung him over his back like a potato sack.

Casmir squawked in alarm, but a boom thundered from within as the door opened again. Rache’s explosive. Casmir didn’t hear any men yell in pain, so maybe the six guards had scattered in time to avoid the attack. Rache had time to sprint back to the platform, fire his jets, and leap into the air.

Casmir dangled from his grip, doing all he could to keep from screaming.

The robot battle below had stilled, with the Quasar Stalkers stomping over the wreckage of Casmir’s robot allies. His former robot allies. He hoped Bonita was on the way with the rest of his army. If the terrorists were able to focus fully on Rache and Casmir… that wouldn’t be good. Casmir had no idea how many people and robots were inside the base, but it was a foregone conclusion he and his twin were outnumbered.

As Rache zipped up the side of the cliff, Casmir twisted to look for the cables he expected to see. There, below the edge of the bluff and the dish, a waterproof conduit ran ten feet down the stone face and disappeared into a fissure.

“There’s a tunnel,” Casmir blurted as Rache angled to land in the foliage next to the dish. “Did you see it?”

“I saw a hole. It probably goes three feet into the cliff and ends in a pile of wire and a router.”

“I don’t think so. I’m going to try to get in that way.”

“It’s too small.”

“I can fit through.”

“I can’t.” Rache let him go and thudded a fist against his armored chest.

“That’s all right. This isn’t your fight. I’ll go in and try to find a way to bring down the barrier that’s blocking transmissions and hiding this place from the satellites. Then Asger will know where to send his allies.” Casmir grimaced, because he wanted badly to find his parents and make sure they were safe before those allies arrived and fired everything they had.

“You’ll get yourself killed if you go in alone. You don’t even have a stunner, do you?”

“No.” Casmir pulled out his drill again and waved it.

“Yeah, that’s going to drive terror into their hearts.”

“I also have some vials of a biological agent that can make people puke.” Casmir patted his tool satchel.

“Presuming they’re not in combat armor and using a self-contained breathing system. You said it’s possible your parents are in there, right?”

“I’m not sure. They might be. That’s another reason I have to go in.”

Rache shook his head.

“If you want to help, you can fly around and keep them distracted.” Casmir waved toward the robots below.

“Distracted? Look, Dabrowski. I’m nobody’s distraction. I’m the main event.” Rache thrust the pistol at Casmir again, making sure he took it before stepping back and off the cliff.

His boots fired, and he flew down, zigzagging in the air. Several of the Stalkers below must have spotted him, for they fired. Rache dipped and darted and somersaulted twice, avoiding their blasts, then zipped into the entrance corridor again. Smoke was still flowing out of it. Within seconds, crimson energy bolts also sailed out. Shots meant for Rache that missed, Casmir hoped.

He shook his head. Even with his combat armor, Rache couldn’t storm an entire compound by himself.

“And he thinks I’m going to get myself killed.” Casmir stuffed the pistol in his tool satchel, dropped to his hands and knees, and scoped out a route to that fissure.

His heart quailed at the ten-foot descent he would have to make down the vertical rock face to the hole where the conduit disappeared. But Rache was down below charging an army for him—or to redeem Kim’s favor—so he couldn’t let himself fail. He slid his legs over the side while trying not to think about why Rache was willing to risk his life to redeem a favor, especially when the request had simply been to get Casmir into the terrorist stronghold, not to storm their base and take on an entire army.

As he carefully descended, wishing he had a rope in his tool satchel, a rock slipped free and clattered down the cliff. He feared one of the Stalkers would notice him, especially now that Rache had gone inside, but he was too terrified to look down to check.

One of his feet reached the fissure. He realized he would have to climb down below it, so he could go in headfirst.

Another boom erupted inside that entrance corridor, and more smoke flowed out. It hazed the air, and Casmir hoped it would make it hard for the Stalkers to sense and target him.

He picked his way farther down, his arms shaking from more than exertion. Finally, his face was level with the fissure. Rache had been right that it was only a couple of feet wide—too narrow for someone in armor, but if it didn’t get much narrower, Casmir could navigate it.

“I hope.”

He slipped his arms inside and clawed and pulled the rest of his body in with such a lack of grace that he was glad there were no witnesses around. For some reason, he imagined Princess Oku seeing this on some drone’s security camera footage on the news. He hoped the news story wouldn’t be explaining his death.

Red light flashed behind him, and a bang sounded above the opening in the fissure. Casmir jerked his legs inside, cracking his knee on the rock. The smoke must have cleared enough for the Stalkers to target him. More bolts sailed up, smacking into the face of the cliff. Rock tumbled down, and the opening collapsed.

Casmir hurried deeper, terror clutching his chest as he imagined the ten feet of rock above him all collapsing. There was no way he would be able to dig himself out.

The robots stopped firing. Darkness engulfed Casmir. He activated his night vision, and the dark gray outline of his cave—his coffin, his brain wanted to say—came into view. He could still make out the conduit running along the bottom and see that it continued deeper into the cliff.

“Time to see if it goes somewhere useful.” He decided not to think about what would happen if the passage narrowed, since the only entrance he knew about had been blocked.

17

Qin stared at the crashed shuttle, the wreckage smoldering, what little remained of it. It was so charred and in so many pieces that she couldn’t be positive it was the furniture-delivery vessel Rache had been flying. But the queasy feeling in her stomach made her suspect it was. Some part of her knew.

Had this happened before or after Casmir had sent Bonita that message? It was hard to imagine anyone walking away from this crash.

As she picked her way around the wreckage, looking for but hoping not to find Casmir’s body, her ears picked up the sound of weapons fire. She guessed it was three or four miles away—it was difficult to gauge distance in the dense forest.

A distant boom sounded. Explosives.

Hoping that meant Casmir—and Casmir’s robots—had survived, Qin ran in that direction. It sounded like they were assaulting the enemy base. That didn’t sound like a wise plan, even if all the robots had survived. Casmir would need her help.

She pushed herself to run faster and was encouraged when she spotted the treads of robots and the occasional footprint in the churned mud. It looked like Casmir and Rache were both alive. And she was on the right path.

Her skin tingled with a harsh buzz, and she lurched to a stop and jumped behind a tree, suspecting some enemy’s weapon. A stunner? No, she wore her armor. She wouldn’t have felt a stun blast. What had she felt?

She looked all around, but nothing but ferns and trees and bushes she couldn’t name rose up in the darkness. Her eyes were keen enough at night that she would have seen people or robots. There was nothing.

“An energy field?” she murmured, exploring the area with her hand.

She felt the buzz again, penetrating her suit. Some kind of electrical field. It must be what protected the base and made it hard to find.

The booms and weapons fire had faded. What did that mean? That Rache and Casmir had defeated their enemies? That their enemies had defeated them?

Though she wanted to sprint in the last direction she’d heard noise, Qin reminded herself that Casmir’s goal had been to find the terrorists and give the location to Asger so he could bring in help to defeat them.

She stepped away from the invisible field and sent a message. Captain? I’m on the trail of Casmir and Rache, and I believe I found the energy field that may be keeping the Kingdom from locating this place. Can you pinpoint my location?

Yes, Bonita replied. We just got rid of that other shuttle—Asger isn’t bad with a railgun for someone with such pretty hair.

Why would pretty hair affect his aim? Qin asked, confused by the comment.

Pretty people get through life on their looks. They don’t have to spend thousands of hours at ranges, mastering marksmanship.

Spending time at the range is enjoyable. And he is a knight, so perhaps he revels in physical training.

Yeah, yeah. About this field. Do you know how far outside of the base it is?

I heard weapons fire approximately two miles northwest of my current position. Should we meet there?

I’ll do my best, Bonita replied. The Dragon was damaged, so we may have to set down for emergency repairs.

You could set down at the base and disgorge Casmir’s robots.

Qin, you don’t land your damaged spaceship right outside of the enemy base to do repairs.

Not even when you have a robot army? Qin stepped through the field and started running again, worried the silence that had descended on the forest meant Casmir was in trouble.

It was only when a minute passed without a response from Bonita that she realized their communications might not be able to pass through that energy field. She didn’t want to waste time by going back, so she hoped Bonita had all the information she needed.

The smell of burning wood and scorched metal reached Qin’s nose long before a blue light grew visible. The noise of something—several somethings—crunching over what sounded like wreckage reached her ears. She made herself slow down and tried to approach from a darker section of the forest.

Up ahead, the trees thinned. She crept to the edge of the forest and gaped at the wreckage spread hundreds of meters along the base of a cliff. The only moving things in sight were six hulking insectoid robots that didn’t look like any of the ones Casmir had been working on. The pieces lying on the ground might have been the remains of the ones Casmir had been working on…

Qin fingered her Brockinger. The robots appeared sturdy, as the victors of a battle would, but could they take an explosive to the torso?

Did it make sense to start a war with them and announce her presence? If Bonita was coming, she ought to try to clear the ground in front of the cliff—it was the only potential landing area she had seen—but where were Rache and Casmir? Had they been taken prisoner? She didn’t see a base.

She peered higher up the cliff, thinking it might be on top. Then she spotted the chiseled stone walls of an ancient structure built into the rock face, along with an entrance in the rock fifty feet up. She could climb to it easily enough if she weren’t being shot at, but she didn’t know if she could avoid being spotted. The robots were patrolling back and forth like sentries.

Movement in the sky caught her eye. Uh oh. The Dragon?

No, it was a smaller craft. An armed shuttle similar to the ones that had attacked the Dragon.

It arrowed down from the sky, skimming close to the cliff, and Qin expected it to land. She readied herself to spring out and attack whoever came out. Assuming it was a human, he or she might have answers to some of her questions.

But the shuttle didn’t land in front of the entrance to the stone structure. It continued past, following the rock face and flying right past Qin’s hiding spot. She crouched low as it zipped through the clearing and between trees at the far end. There was barely room for it to land, but the shuttle settled into a gap.

Qin backed farther into the trees so the robots wouldn’t spot her, then ran parallel to the cliff and toward the shuttle. She felt certain something would be gained from capturing its pilot and whoever else was inside.

The hatch swung open, and a crusher strode out. Her heart sank. Maybe there weren’t any humans, after all.

The tarry black crusher’s head shifted left and right, as if it were sniffing the air. But it lacked a nose and eyes in the traditional sense, and Qin had no idea what receptors truly sensed its surroundings. Whatever it had worked, for the head turned toward her.

“A threat is present,” it announced.

“Get rid of it,” came a man’s voice from inside the craft.

The crusher sprinted at Qin.

She cursed. She’d gotten the best of one before but not by destroying it. She had no idea if it was even possible to destroy one. Before, she’d been able to fling it off the hull of the ship and into an ocean. Here, all she had were trees.

A man appeared in the hatchway as the crusher sprinted toward her, and Qin thought she saw someone lying on the deck behind him. Someone tied up? Or someone dead?

She sprang up the nearest tree as the crusher rushed toward her. Though she wished she weren’t wearing her gauntlets so she had the use of her claws, she still scrambled up the trunk like few humans could. The crusher paused to stare up at her. Could they climb?

The tree swayed alarmingly as Qin ascended farther and the trunk narrowed. No, the trunk wasn’t the problem, she realized. The crusher gripped the tree near the base. A snap sounded as it broke the trunk.

Qin leaped off it before it tipped toward the ground. She sprang to the next tree and then the next. She ran from branch to branch, angling toward the shuttle. Maybe she could reach the pilot and avoid fighting the crusher.

It only broke one tree before following her on the ground, waiting for her to come down. Maybe it had already figured out her intent, and it would head her off if she tried to jump down to the shuttle.

She paused in a clump of branches forty feet up, the needles and cones dense enough to hide her movements, and she loaded a canister into her Brockinger. As her robotic foe gazed up at her, she leaned to the side of a branch, aimed, and fired.

The crusher was almost fast enough to leap out of the way, but her round struck its shoulder and blew. Flames and smoke hid it, but she doubted it was dead. Qin leaped through two more trees and down onto the roof of the shuttle.

As she landed, she glimpsed the crusher, its head and shoulder torn half off, but already, it was reassembling itself, more like a liquid than a solid as it re-formed.

Qin leaped down from the roof as the man inside jumped out, whipping a rifle toward her. He wasn’t armored, and a cigarette dangled out of his mouth, the scent of burning tobacco pungent in the air.

He got two shots off, the DEW-Tek bolts ricocheting off her chest plate, before she landed. She grabbed him under the armpits and hurled him between the trees. He struck the crusher and bounced off, crying out as his shoulder slammed into a tree.

Qin rushed inside the shuttle and found a button to close the hatch. Stealing the shuttle seemed to offer more options than running out to engage in combat with the recovering crusher.

The legs she’d spotted were attached to an older man who was tied to an older woman, and they were both tied to the base of a seat. They were gagged, but from the way they stared at her, Qin was sure they were gaping.

“Hi.” She ran toward the pilot’s seat, hoping she could figure out how to get the craft in the air. Bonita had given her some lessons on the Dragon, but that was her only experience. “I’m Qin. I’ll explain when—”

A thump sounded as something landed on the roof.

“—we get rid of that,” Qin finished, certain it was the crusher.

Fortunately, the shuttle was still powered up, and it had a flight stick that appeared intuitive. She lifted them into the air, branches scraping the hull, and did her best to back out of the tight parking spot without hitting a tree.

Thump, thump, thump.

She tracked the crusher’s heavy footfalls as it ran across the roof toward the hatch. Any second, it would tear it open and try to get inside. Would it simply attack her? Or try to hurt the prisoners to keep them from getting away?

The shuttle cleared the trees, and she twisted the flight stick, hoping to dislodge the crusher. She almost sent them careening into the cliff. Usually, this was Bonita’s job…

She wondered if either of the two prisoners could pilot. Then she could climb out and knock the crusher off.

But there wasn’t time to free them and ask. As she tried to gain ground, hoping she would have more opportunity for maneuvering once she was above the trees, a second loud thump sounded.

Now what was the crusher doing? That had sounded like something else landing on the shuttle. If there were exterior cameras that she could call upon, Qin didn’t know where the controls were. All she could see was what was visible directly in front of them. At the moment, that was the cliff.

She veered away as more thumps and an ear-splitting screech came from the roof. An alarm flashed on the display, and something that sounded like rocks bouncing off the hull came from underneath them. No, not rocks. Energy bolts. The robots on the ground were firing at the shuttle.

Qin growled in frustration. How much damage could the craft take?

Another alarm flashed to life. Had she rescued these people, whoever they were, only to crash and cause them to die?

No, damn it. She—

White light flashed outside, and an epic boom thundered, rattling the hull. Something like a railgun blast slammed into the ground below and exploded. Three of the robots that had been firing on Qin were hurled into the air. One slammed into the face of the cliff hard enough for pieces to fly off.

“What was that?” She tilted the nose of the shuttle upward and almost laughed. The dome-shape of the Stellar Dragon filled the sky.

Just as she thought she was rescued, Qin realized Bonita wouldn’t know she was the one piloting this shuttle. It might be Asger’s next target.

More thumps sounded above her, right above her. That crusher was still up there, maybe more than one.

She angled back toward the ground. She couldn’t handle flying. She would rather be on the ground and fighting. If she could lead the prisoners out into the forest—

Metal screeched, and a black spear drove down through the ceiling. The point halted an inch from Qin’s helmet. She jerked her head back and instinctively released the flight stick so she could grab whatever that was and keep it from retracting and striking again. It was tarry black, like the crushers. No, she realized as she gripped it, and it pulled back—hard. It was a crusher.

The freighter’s railgun fired again, the round shrieking right past the shuttle and blowing into the side of the cliff. A huge piece of rock slammed into the hull, knocking them sideways. The black spear was torn from Qin’s grasp as the craft struck the ground, bouncing and then skidding into something. A tree? The cliff? The screen went dark and she didn’t know.

She abandoned the pilot’s seat and sprang for the hatch, only knowing that she couldn’t let the crushers get inside.

The prisoners were still on the deck, their eyes bulging even wider now.

“Sorry,” Qin blurted. “I’m young. I haven’t rescued a lot of people yet.”

She didn’t even know if she was supposed to be rescuing these people. The hatch squealed as it was ripped off its hinges. A crusher hurled it into the woods.

Qin leaped in front of the prisoners and pointed her Brockinger. Before she could fire, another crusher slammed into the first, and both tumbled out of view.

“Was that Zee?” Qin leaped out to help.

The two crushers wrestled and thrashed on the ground beside the shuttle. Wind batted at Qin’s armor, and leaves and pine needles flew through the air as the Dragon settled down a few dozen meters away. Pieces of robots crunched under its weight. The cargo hatch opened, and new robots stomped, rolled, and flew out.

“Oh, good.” Qin grinned at the captives. “Casmir’s robot army is here.”

The man and woman looked at each other.

Qin figured they had no idea what she was talking about. She hoped Casmir was all right and not crumpled up and dead among the broken robots out there.

Zee—he was noticeably larger than the other crusher—hurled his foe against the rock face hard enough that it lost its form. Qin expected him to keep attacking, but he sprang twenty feet up the rock wall and found a handhold. He climbed toward the entrance up there.

She suspected that meant Casmir was somewhere inside. And that she’d just been left to finish off this foe.

The battered crusher started re-forming itself. Qin raised her anti-tank gun. She would handle it.

18

The galaxy suit kept Casmir from scraping skin off his shoulders on the tight walls of his crawlspace, but he doubted it would keep bruises from forming. He pulled himself determinedly forward, on his hands and knees—sometimes on his elbows and belly. The conduit continued to line the bottom of the shaft, leading him slightly downward and deeper into the cliff. Every time the passage leveled out, his hands landed in puddles.

“Poor infrastructure planning,” he muttered.

At least the crawlspace continued to be large enough for him, as he’d hoped. Someone had laid that conduit. Or some robot or drone had. A robot or drone that might have been smaller than he was. What happened if his tunnel shrank?

“Think positive, Casmir,” he muttered to himself. “You’re not a big guy. You’re smaller than most robots.”

A distant boom sounded, and the cool stone under him trembled. Dust and tiny bits of rock shifted and fell free. He grimaced and ordered himself not to panic, to keep his breaths steady. That was probably Rache throwing explosives at someone, and he wouldn’t do that in an area where he was likely to bring the cliff down on himself.

Alas, this logic only partially helped Casmir. He could hear his ragged breaths reverberating off the rock. Nonetheless, he continued onward. His tool satchel kept getting stuck, but he wouldn’t dream of leaving it behind.

Distant shouts filtered through the rock. They were far too muffled to make out, but they gave him encouragement, since they seemed to be coming from deeper in the cliff. That ought to mean that his passage would connect to something at some point.

“Hopefully, before I run out of food and water and die,” he whispered.

A part of him wished Kim were here, to make some pithy comeback as she crawled along behind him. But the larger part of him was glad she was safe back in the city. He only wished his parents were.

The rumble of machinery reached his ears, and he made himself focus on that instead of worrying about people. Machinery was promising. Far preferable to deal with than armed men.

The rumble grew louder until he couldn’t hear anything else. It remained dark ahead of him. Even with his night-vision enhancement, he almost missed an opening to the side of his passage. The conduit he’d been following ran into a T-connector, with a tuft of clumsily laid wires going off into a machine room while the rest of the wires continued on in the closed conduit. A few yellow and blue indicator lights glowed in the machine room.

Casmir twisted, clunking his elbow on the stone as he maneuvered his flashlight out of his tool satchel. He shone his light over numerous machines and almost laughed when he spotted something exactly like the stealth generator on the bridge of that cargo ship.

He’d already wondered, at the first sign of an astroshaman, if this group was tied to the group that had stolen the gate from the archaeological site, and this seemed to cement that. Another machine looked like a power generator, and there was a huge tank and a water pump.

“Environmental control room,” he decided and pointed his flashlight down to see how far of a jump he had.

He and the wires had come out ten feet up from the floor. They were bolted to the wall, so he couldn’t use them as climbing aids. He figured he could get down without too much trouble, but jumping and pulling himself back up would be a challenge if he couldn’t find something to stand on. Should he attempt to sabotage the equipment down there? Or continue to follow that conduit to what was likely the communications area?

No, he didn’t need to make any calls. If he knocked out the stealth generator, and the entire base appeared on the Kingdom satellites, it wouldn’t take the Guard long to send ships to destroy it. He would have accomplished what the king asked. And his parents… He would just have to find them before the reinforcements arrived.

Casmir swung clumsily down—the opening wasn’t that wide, so he had to awkwardly go past the opening and then back so he could lower his legs out of the hole first. He imagined Rache rolling his eyes at Casmir’s lack of athleticism.

There was a closed metal door on the opposite wall. Casmir ran to it, hoping he could lock it from the inside. No such luck. There wasn’t a lock at all. He would have to work quickly.

The stealth generator looked to be the exact same model. He spotted the on/off switch and almost flicked it, but that wouldn’t be enough. As soon as one of the local goons realized it was off, he or she would run back in to check on it.

Casmir put his screwdriver to use again removing the panel. He could have smashed up the inside and broken circuit boards, but his soul rebelled at such wanton destruction. He removed a few select pieces, then found the power cord and cut it. The generator thunked off, its indicators going dark.

Casmir eyed the other equipment, debating if he should turn off the lights. If everyone was in combat armor, darkness wouldn’t matter. Those helmets had better night vision than his contacts.

He looked around, hoping to spot the controls for a ventilation system. There had to be fans to pull potentially toxic gases out of the underground tunnels and bring in fresh air. If he could ensure they were blowing air inward, and break Kim’s vials into the flow, maybe he could deliver an effective dose to those inside who weren’t wearing armor.

A nice thought, but he didn’t see a ventilation system, not operating out of this room.

“The gas probably would have dissipated too much anyway,” he muttered.

Still, he was tempted to go through that door and see if any adjoining rooms held the heart of the ventilation system.

A shout sounded nearby and convinced him not to wander. As he turned back toward the hole in the wall, debating how he would reach it, another shout echoed through the facility. Closer.

He hunted around for a chair or something he could use for a boost.

Footsteps rang in the corridor outside. He was out of time.

Casmir ran and sprang for the lip, hoping his vertical jump was better than he remembered. He slammed into the wall three inches below the hole, his fingers coming nowhere close to gripping it. Damn it.

As he landed, the door squealed open. Casmir flung himself behind the closest piece of equipment. Which happened to be the stealth generator, the first place they would look.

Idiot, he cursed silently as he squeezed himself as far back as he could, praying they somehow wouldn’t notice him.

Two people with heavy footsteps charged into the room. They headed straight for the stealth generator. Had he damaged it enough to keep them from getting it working again? Would they hear him breathing?

“Someone’s been in here,” one man said.

“No shit. There’s a whole army of people storming our secret compound.”

An army? Was that Rache? Or was it possible Casmir’s robots had arrived? Even if they had, he didn’t think any of them could climb up the cliff to get to that entrance. Only the handful of drones, and they had modest weaponry. He’d only ordered them to deploy some of the vials.

He supposed it was too much to hope that they were inside and dumping the vials now, vials that would ooze in here and affect these people.

“What’s that?” someone asked, his voice sounding closer to Casmir.

He grimaced, wishing he had Rache’s pistol in hand. But could he truly shoot someone? Even someone helping terrorists?

A wrenching noise came from the corridor. It sounded like a door being torn off its hinges.

“What the—”

Weapons squelched.

“Donner, Daiju,” someone yelled from the corridor. “Get out here, and help with this thing!”

The men cursed and ran back out the door.

Casmir peeked out. For the moment, he was alone. Bangs and thumps and weapons fire continued in the corridor, but he couldn’t assume that was an ally attacking them. He hoped it was, but they wouldn’t have described Rache as a thing.

With more time to hunt around, Casmir found a tool cabinet and pushed it to the wall so he could climb it to escape. One of the drawers was open, and he tugged on it, curious if he would find anything useful to add to his satchel. It was full of tape. Not exactly an elite robot-making tool, but he snatched a roll of duct tape. He could twist it up and use it as a rope to lower himself down if he had to go back the way he’d come.

Footsteps rang out in the corridor again. Casmir climbed up the cabinet and into the hole, tugging his body out of sight as quickly as possible.

Once again, he crawled deeper into the cliff. The sounds soon faded behind him, dulled by the intervening rock. He bumped his shoulders several more times, gritting his teeth as he rounded bends and half slid down a steep slope.

A male voice sounded up ahead, and Casmir paused. A second man responded. Casmir thought they were speaking in the Kingdom tongue, but he couldn’t quite make out words.

Had he found the inner sanctum? Or the route into the terrorists’ lavatory? He wished he had a map of this place—or access to the network to download one.

As he turned a bend, a clear string of words made it to his ears. “…I can’t say how honored I am that the mighty Tenebris Rache would come to my humble abode. And without his mask! You’re as pasty as I suspected you would be after all those years under a hood.”

Dread spread through Casmir’s limbs. Those words were delivered with the haughty sarcasm of someone who had the advantage.

“It’s hard to get a tan in space,” came Rache’s cool reply.

Rache didn’t sound like he was crying in pain and defeat, but Casmir wasn’t that heartened by that. Rache was someone who he expected would spit promises of revenge while he was dying on the floor.

Casmir kept crawling, doing his best not to make any noise. He could tell that the speakers weren’t standing close together and that they were at a lower elevation than he, but not much more than that.

“Put him over there,” the unknown speaker said. “And figure out how to get the rest of his armor off. You’ve got all of his weapons?”

Casmir couldn’t make out more than a grunt of acknowledgment, but it was enough to tell him that there were more people in the room than Rache and the speaker.

“I must say, it was thoughtful of you to deliver yourself to me. I spent the last five years I worked for the king trying to catch you and kill you. Ironic that now that I’ve left that arrogant bastard, I have my opportunity. My colleagues want me to leave you alone, since you’ve proven yourself a thorn in Jager’s side, but why not take both of you out, I say. Just to be safe.”

Both of you. Rache and Casmir? Who else?

Casmir kept scooting closer, not daring to go quickly, lest he make noise. Was the speaker wearing armor, or would he be vulnerable to Kim’s biological agent?

“What made you change sides?” Rache asked.

“Jager is a pompous ass who wants to drag humanity back to Neanderthal days.”

“Yes, I agree. And I’m confused. Remind me why we’re working against each other?”

“Because you showed up with the intent to trick me. Do you really think I believed you’d risk coming down to the planet for twenty thousand crowns? Your allowance used to be more than that.”

“Not quite,” Rache murmured.

A wrenching noise echoed from the stone walls. Someone prying him out of his armor? Casmir hoped Rache hadn’t been captured because he’d been helping him when he’d been cornered in the environmental control room. But he feared that was the case. Who else would have been inside the compound, firing at those men right where Casmir had been trapped?

Casmir could see light ahead. He scooted faster. Nobody would hear him over those wrenching noises.

“Why are you here?” the speaker asked. “Do you care about your twin?”

“I’m not here for him, no.”

A favor for Kim, Casmir thought but hoped Rache wouldn’t say.

Faint booms echoed through the rock. Odd. If Rache was captured, who was attacking the base? Casmir’s robots had been destroyed. The ones he’d brought along. Was it possible that Bonita had dropped off the rest of his robot army? He hoped it wasn’t an air assault that Asger had called in. Not when he, Rache, and possibly his parents were inside a cliff that might collapse on top of them.

“Were you the one to send the assassin?” Rache asked.

“The girl? Vickers?”

“The female assassin, yes.”

“I sent her. Jager ordered me to get rid of you. He did suggest the idea. He thought he knew your taste in women.”

“Of course he did. He met my fiancée several times. That didn’t keep him from killing her.”

“You brought that on yourself.”

“I did not,” Rache roared, rare naked rage in his voice. “That was his manipulative scheme. His test so I could prove myself. All that man ever does is treat people like puppets on strings.”

Casmir had no idea what he was talking about or what had happened, but his stomach twisted uncomfortably at the words prove myself. Hadn’t Jager offered him a chance to prove himself?

“And so you’ve spent the last ten years of your life exacting revenge and taking down everyone who gets in your way,” the speaker spat. “Even if Jager has lost my loyalty, I have to admit I’ll enjoy seeing you die. I knew it was you, by the way. Oh, maybe not at first, but eventually, the pieces added up. How they never found your body. How you knew Jager so well. What random space mercenary would have intimate knowledge of what pushes the king’s buttons?”

“His buttons aren’t subtly labeled.”

Casmir reached the end of the passage and the source of the light, a large room with rock pillars supporting a high ceiling. The conduit ran down the wall and toward communications computers in the back.

He was ten feet off the floor again, overlooking more than a dozen armed men, some with obvious cybernetic bits attached to their skulls, others appearing like normal humans. All of them were pointing their rifles at Rache, whose helmet had been snapped off. His torso seams had been wrenched open, and a man with a crowbar was working on getting his armor the rest of the way off. Rache wasn’t looking at him, not at any of the guards. He faced someone in gray combat armor. The man—the other speaker—wore his helmet, and Casmir couldn’t see his face from his position.

Unfortunately, the biological agent wouldn’t affect him. The rest of the armed guards didn’t wear helmets, so it could affect them. But Rache was right in the middle of them, and it would also incapacitate him. Leaving Casmir to face a bitter, angry man in full combat armor by himself.

Rache looked right at Casmir. They were more than thirty feet apart, and it was the briefest of eye contact, but Casmir knew Rache had seen him. Rache didn’t nod or do anything to draw attention to Casmir.

Casmir wished he had nodded, or even widened his eyes slightly, giving some hint of a message about whether he wanted Casmir to throw the vials. Would it be enough if he saw them coming and held his breath? If they acted on mucous membranes, not breathing wouldn’t be enough to protect someone, not entirely.

“We don’t have to get his armor off to kill him,” the man with the crowbar growled, looking at his boss.

Casmir drew the four vials out of his satchel and carefully unwrapped them from their insulation. He had a feeling it had to be now or never.

“True,” the leader said. “But we need to know where the other one is before we kill him. Dabrowski is the one more likely to become the king’s little sycophant and someone we need to worry about. But Jager isn’t going to get history to repeat itself. He isn’t going to spread his backward ways out there again like some virus. Or plague.”

Later on, Casmir would find that sycophant comment insulting. Now, he was too busy focusing on not dropping the vials—or himself—as he shifted his upper body out of the passage. How he was going to throw accurately from that position, he didn’t know.

“Where is he, Rache?” The leader strode forward and punched him in the face with an armored fist.

Rache’s head snapped back. That had to have felt like a battering ram striking.

Casmir gripped two of the vials, saving two in case his aim wasn’t good enough, and raised an arm to throw.

One of the guards started to turn in his direction, and he froze.

Rache snarled loudly and shifted, as if he might charge the men. All eyes focused on him, and the rifles came close enough to touch his temples.

Casmir threw the vials.

They sailed through the air, almost hitting one of the stone pillars. They landed at the outskirts of the group, striking the hard floor and shattering open.

Was it close enough? Would the men be affected? If they were, how long would it take?

The leader and all twelve men whirled toward Casmir.

He almost fell out in his haste to scoot back out of sight. Weapons fired en masse, slamming into the rock wall and into his passage. One ricocheted off the roof inches above his head and struck him in the back.

The galaxy suit kept it from piercing flesh and muscle—and organs—but it felt like a boulder landing on him. He couldn’t keep from crying out in pain, but he made himself keep going, scooting farther from the opening. He tried to remember how far back the last bend had been. Until he rounded it, the men would easily be able to leap up and shoot him.

Footsteps thundered toward his passageway. Casmir glanced back. The bend was too far away. He would never make it in time.

19

Qin had wondered what it took to damage a crusher to such a degree that it couldn’t repair itself. She still didn’t know. As the smoke cleared from her second explosive round, her robotic enemy stood in front of the cliff, warped and split nearly in two, a huge crater in the rock behind it. As she watched, its halves liquified, pulled together, and started to re-form into a humanoid shape.

Nearby, the Dragon disgorged Casmir’s robot army, and they engaged with the insectoid defender robots, having far more luck blowing them into pieces.

Asger was out there among them, cleaving off mechanical arms and heads with his pertundo. Would that weapon have more luck against a crusher? Every time he struck one of the robots, lightning branched all around his foe, and circuits shorted and smoldered.

“One more try,” Qin muttered as the head of the crusher melted back together.

She hefted her Brockinger and fired. She was aware of the couple inside the shuttle, still on the deck and staring out at her. They’d drawn themselves up to their knees and seemed to be helping each other get their bindings off. She hoped they wouldn’t run out into the battle where they might be hit.

Her round lodged in the crusher’s chest and exploded. Black tarry bits flew in a hundred directions. One splatted against the faceplate of her helmet, and she jumped. It dropped limply to the ground but only stayed there a moment before turning into a liquid blob and oozing over the dirt and pine needles, back toward the rest of the mangled crusher.

She was tempted to step on it, but it would just squeeze out from under her boot. At a loss, she stared at it, shaking her head. Wasn’t there some volcano she could throw this thing into that would end it?

“Qin!” Asger shouted.

She looked around, thinking he needed help. He crouched on the roof of the Dragon, and, when she made eye contact, pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the railgun mounted behind him.

“Can you throw that crusher up here?” he yelled.

He was more than forty feet in the air, but she had her natural strength in addition to what her combat armor added. She nodded once, lowered her Brockinger on its strap, and ran to the cliff. All of the smaller pieces had returned to the largest part of the crusher, its warped mass once again coalescing into a solid.

Qin grabbed it, hefted it over her head, and ran toward the freighter. She almost laughed at the way the couple inside the shuttle gaped at her as she sped past.

When she got close, she spun around and around, holding out the crusher at arm’s length. When she had enough momentum, she released it, sending it on an upward trajectory. It sailed to the Dragon’s dome roof and almost crashed into Asger. He ducked in time, and it slammed down behind him.

“You’re the strongest girl I know,” he yelled down at her, then turned and disappeared.

“Yes, I am.” That was one accolade she wouldn’t reject as inaccurate.

“Fire, Lopez!” Asger called through the hatch in the roof.

The railgun boomed, and it was Qin’s turn to gape as the powerful weapon launched the half-formed crusher over the trees where it disappeared from sight.

She didn’t know if that would be enough to permanently deactivate it, but at the least, it would take a while for it to recover and run back.

Qin looked for another fight to join, but Casmir’s ragtag army of robots had battered down the insectoid defenders. Through numbers more than superior fighting ability.

“Whatever works,” she muttered, lowering her weapon.

Her ears detected soft footfalls behind her.

“Excuse me.” The older woman stopped a couple of steps away and lifted her finger uncertainly. The man—her husband?—tossed their gags and the remains of their bindings aside and came up beside her, wrapping a protective, or maybe a supportive arm around her shoulders. “Do you know where our son is?” she asked. “Casmir Dabrowski.”

“Uh.” Qin looked toward the entrance high up on the face of the cliff. She could hear gunfire and explosives going off inside and worried they would collapse the entire structure. “I’m afraid I do, ma’am.”

The footsteps halted. Casmir could tell the men were right under the crawlspace entrance.

He skidded his last two vials toward the opening, hoping they wouldn’t break until they landed—ideally on someone’s head.

Glass shattered. Casmir kept scooting for the bend, pushing himself backward through the crawlspace as quickly as he could.

A face appeared in the opening, silhouetted against the light of the room behind him.

“I see him,” the man snarled. “Hand me up my…” He grimaced and dropped back out of sight.

Coughs replaced voices. Casmir thought he heard someone throwing up. He hoped it wasn’t Rache.

Footsteps thundered again, this time away from his passageway. More precisely, away from the vials shattered underneath it.

A thud, followed by a clatter arose over the gagging sounds. Someone cried out.

Casmir paused. It sounded like a fight. He’d expected the armored man, who would be unaffected by the gas, to come for him. But maybe Rache had held his breath and wasn’t as disabled by the noxious air.

It might have been wiser to keep scooting away, but what if it wasn’t a fight? What if the leader was simply taking advantage of Rache being incapacitated to throw more punches at him?

Casmir held his breath and scooted toward the room again.

Several men had fled the area. Others lay writhing on the floor, clawing at their faces.

At first, Casmir didn’t see the armored men, but then Rache’s black armor came into sight as he was hurled across the room. He flew twenty feet and slammed into the communications equipment. Tears streamed from his eyes and snot from his nose, but he’d snatched a rifle from a sick guard, and when he leaped to his feet, he pulled something out of his utility belt. A grenade?

He must have landed some solid blows on his opponent, because the gray-armored man staggered, steadying himself instead of rushing straight after Rache.

Rache lifted his arm, as if to throw his grenade.

Casmir could envision it bouncing off the armored man and blurted, “Rache!” as he dug into his tool satchel again.

When Rache glanced his way, Casmir tossed the duct tape to him.

“Stick it to him,” he whispered, miming madly with his hands.

Their enemy pulled out a grenade of his own and charged. Not at Rache but Casmir. His face was visible for the first time, human features with computer interfaces integrated openly. His eyes were fully human—and full of determination. They promised he was going to kill Casmir.

Casmir scrambled away from the edge again, but the man leaped up and caught the lip of the opening. He drew back his arm to throw his grenade into the tunnel.

Rache appeared behind him, stopping the throw and dragging their enemy out of sight.

Panting, Casmir paused. Thumps, cracks, and thuds floated up to him. He couldn’t see a thing and wanted to rush forward to help, but what more could he do? He was out of vials. All he could do was be a target.

But he couldn’t imagine crawling out without making sure Rache made it too. He crawled forward again.

The men were wrestling on the floor, each trying to gain the upper hand. Rache threw an elbow and caught his opponent in the chest, knocking his grip loose. Instead of springing at him, Rache turned and ran toward the exit.

His foe was startled for a second and didn’t follow. Casmir spotted the grenade taped to the back of the gray helmet. The man hurled his own grenade after Rache.

Both explosives blew at the same time, the roar thunderous in the underground room. Casmir spotted the gray-armored man’s helmet—his entire head—being blown off an instant before smoke filled the room, hiding everything from view.

Casmir gaped at the horrific sight—at what he had helped cause. But the massive snapping of stone hammered at his eardrums, and there was no time to ponder it.

The rock passageway quaked all around him. He tried to draw back into the tunnel, hoping for some small protection, but the rock heaved and hurled him into the room.

He tumbled to the floor as boulders rained down all around him. Rock dust filled the space, and he couldn’t see a thing. Something slammed into his shoulder, the galaxy suit doing little to dull the blow. He gasped and tried to crawl to a wall, covering his helmet.

Something black loomed out of the brown dust. Rache in his combat armor?

No. He gasped and tried to lurch away. It was a crusher.

But it grabbed him, pushed him against the wall, and held him in place. He squirmed, but it leaned in closer. What the—

“I am a Z-6000, programmed to protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski.”

Casmir barely heard him over the rock tumbling down, threatening to bury them both alive, but he heard enough. “Zee!”

He realized the crusher was protecting him from the rocks. They bounced off Zee’s back and head and piled high to either side of Casmir.

“You’re amazing!” Casmir yelled, even though he didn’t know if this would be enough to save him. If the entire cliff collapsed, he would simply be buried underneath Zee.

He hunkered against the wall and buried his head in his knees, praying the rockfall would end soon and thinking of the people who’d died at the synagogue, also buried under rocks. They hadn’t had a Zee to protect them. He wished he could have given them one.

It grew darker and darker, and Casmir closed his eyes, trying not to panic. Tears ran down his cheeks as he realized all the men who’d been sick on the floor from the biological agent had to be dead now. They hadn’t had armor, not even galaxy suits.

And what of his parents? Were they inside the compound somewhere? Was more than this room collapsing?

The cacophonous noise filling his ears finally abated. Casmir looked around, but rocks were piled high to either side, and Zee was frozen above him, like a lean-to. If not for his night vision, Casmir wouldn’t have seen even that much.

He tried to determine if Zee was buried. How many feet of rock were atop him?

“Zee?” Casmir croaked. Even though his helmet had protected his mouth from dust, it was dry from fear. “Is it over? Can you tell how much rock is on top of you?”

“Approximately two tons. I will attempt to move it aside without letting boulders fall on you.”

“Thank you. You’re a good friend. My galaxy suit should help protect me if some get through.”

Zee reached down and patted him on the helmet. Casmir didn’t remember programming any playfulness into the crusher, though he had encouraged it to be friendly. Zee shifted, using one hand to push away boulders on top of him while continuing to lean against the wall and shield Casmir with his body.

“Rache?” Casmir called, though he doubted his voice would carry through the rocks. “Are you alive?”

He didn’t get an answer. With his inhuman strength, Zee kept pushing boulders away. Some tumbled back down, and Casmir had the impression of trying to unbury oneself from an avalanche, but eventually, Zee shifted, rising slightly. Casmir dug in his satchel and found the flashlight. He pointed the beam upward and could see past Zee’s torso to a distant jagged ceiling. A lot of it had fallen, but there was air up there. They weren’t completely buried.

After moving a few more rocks, Zee pulled himself out of the hole they were in. He reached down and pulled Casmir after him.

“How did you get here so fast?” Casmir asked.

“I ran. Kim Sato told me to come help you.”

“She’s safe?”

“She remains undisturbed in her home.”

“Good. I’m not sure whether to be relieved or alarmed that she can sense from afar that I’m in trouble.”

Casmir clambered about on hands and knees, pointing around with his beam. There was an exit at the end of the room, opposite the smashed and buried communication equipment, but only a foot at the top remained open. He couldn’t tell how much of the corridor outside had also collapsed.

Neither Rache’s black armor nor their enemy’s gray armor was in sight. Not that Casmir would have wanted to see a headless man. He knew he should have forgiveness in his heart for all human beings, but it was hard not to feel that the leader had deserved death. He hadn’t even known Casmir, and he’d been trying to kill him. If he was the one who’d ordered the bombings in the city, maybe this was a fitting end for him.

“Zee, can you dig over there?” Casmir pointed to the area where he’d last seen Rache. “My… ally was about there when the rocks started falling.”

It was possible Rache had escaped the room, especially with his armor to protect him, but Casmir couldn’t be certain of it.

“I sense vibrations in the rock.” Zee pointed at a spot near where Casmir had pointed.

“Is someone down there moving? Or trying to?”

“Yes.”

“Dig him out, please.”

Casmir tried to help, but the galaxy suit didn’t enhance strength the way combat armor did, and he mostly ended up in the way.

“Rache?” he called. “Is that you down there?”

If he was alive, how injured was he? Would he need medical attention right away? Who here on Odin would grant it? If the Kingdom Guard or the knights showed up—and Casmir had to assume they would, now that the stealth generator was down—they would shoot Rache instead of helping him.

It occurred to him that the stealth generator might have also been responsible for dampening signals, not just hiding the base.

Asger, he sent a message. If you receive this, please message me. I may be… Casmir looked around the chamber as Zee continued to dig. Stuck.

His chip let him know that he had a weak signal. All the rock around him probably blocked wireless transmissions almost as much as the special field had.

A boulder flew into the air. Startled, Casmir jumped back. Zee hadn’t done that.

Zee peered into the hole he’d been digging. Another rock flew up, larger than a man’s head. Zee caught it and tossed it aside.

“Rache?” Casmir asked warily.

After a pause, during which no more rocks were thrown, an equally wary, “Dabrowski?” came back.

“Yeah. I think you can call me Casmir now.”

“I see a crusher’s ugly head.”

“That’s Zee, and his head is as beautiful as the rest of him.”

Rache would know that if Zee had protected him from a massive rockfall.

“You’re a weird kid, Da—Casmir,” Rache said.

“Kid? Does that mean you’re older?”

“I don’t know, actually.” Another rock flew up. “It may be the other way around, but you seem younger than me. Than most adult men I know.”

“That’s because you spend your days with surly mercenaries instead of comic-book-reading robotics professionals.”

“They don’t all read comics, do they?”

“Only the ones you’d want to spend time with.”

More of Rache’s dusty armor came into view. Zee gripped his armpits and dragged him out of the hole, rocks tumbling into the vacated space. His face was bruised and bloody. Casmir was impressed that he’d managed to protect his naked head enough to survive the rockfall.

“I can’t believe you and your robot are rescuing me.” Rache sounded thoroughly disgusted.

“Would you rather have died under a crushing pile of rubble?”

“Let me think about that and get back to you.”

Casmir smiled slightly. He wasn’t positive Rache had needed rescuing. Had he ever truly been as helpless as he’d seemed? Maybe he’d allowed himself to be captured so he could find the leader. He might even have manipulated the situation to end up in the very room where Casmir’s crawlspace exited. He’d conveniently been standing in a spot that had kept all the guards from looking in Casmir’s direction. Maybe it had all been luck, but he was inclined to give Rache more credit than less.

CASMIR! came Asger’s reply. We’re tunneling in to look for you. Everyone is positive you’re dead.

I’m not dead yet. Who’s everyone?

Me, Qin, Lopez, and your parents.

My parents are here? Casmir rocked back, so relieved his knees almost buckled. Are they safe?

They’re waiting at the Dragon with Captain Lopez. Qin rescued them from a shuttle pilot who was bringing them to the base.

Oh, stellar! Kiss her for me, please.

Er, will a handshake do?

Be a mensch, Asger. The girl deserves a kiss. And so do you.

From her or from you?

Which one would alarm you less?

He hesitated. I’m not sure. Her, I think.

Good.

There are also a bunch of knights and Kingdom Guards that just arrived. Your robots can’t climb up to the entrance, but they helped secure the area outside.

Kingdom Guards? Casmir frowned at Rache. He’d been afraid of that.

Yes. They were already on the way when I messaged my commander. The shield that was protecting this base from being spotted by the satellites dropped.

I know. I dropped it.

I thought it might have been you.

Casmir was bolstered that Asger would give him that credit but also worried about what would happen to Rache when all those knights and Guards stormed in.

Zee is in here with me, Casmir told Asger, saying nothing of Rache. Don’t let them burst in firing, please. The doorway is mostly blocked, but we’ll start trying to clear it. Are you already inside the fortress?

Clearing a blocked passageway, yes.

Excellent. I look forward to being rescued.

“I lowered the energy field before finding my way to this room, so the knights and Kingdom Guard are all here and on their way in. You need to… I don’t know.” Casmir looked around bleakly, his night vision not showing much but rubble. “Hide. Or maybe you can get out the way I came in.”

Rache looked toward the high hole. A portion of the wall had collapsed along with the ceiling, but the crawlspace still appeared accessible. It was the only other exit, if one could call it that. Rache looked back to Casmir.

“They’re not going to listen to me if I tell them not to shoot,” Casmir added, not sure if Rache doubted the need to leave or was simply skeptical that he could get out that way. “Maybe you can take off your armor and push it ahead of you in there. If the ceiling hasn’t collapsed, it wasn’t that tight. Even if some collapsed, you have that rifle.”

Casmir waved at it. Rache had dragged it out of the hole with him.

“Maybe you can blow aside the rock with it. Quietly.” Casmir felt guilty that he couldn’t, after the help Rache had given him, offer him a ride back to civilization on the Dragon, but for all he knew, knights were prowling all around the freighter.

Rache pushed a hand through his sweaty hair—it was covered in dust and as mussy as Casmir’s usually was, albeit military short instead of flopping into his eyes.

“Are you all right?” Casmir asked, thinking Rache looked a little dazed. His armor was in poor shape, and he hadn’t had Zee to protect him from the boulders crashing down.

“Yes. That man who tried to kill us was Jager’s last chief superintendent of Royal Intelligence, before Van Dijk was promoted to the position. You may want to do some digging and find out what Jager did to alienate him.”

Casmir was more curious about the details of what Jager had done to alienate Rache. Had that comment about a killed fiancée been literal?

Faint scraping sounds—digging—reached his ears, and Casmir knew there wasn’t time for a long chat, even if Rache had been more forthcoming than usual.

“If I get a chance, I will,” Casmir said.

Rache removed his battered and soot-covered right gauntlet and stuck out his hand. It took Casmir a moment to recognize he was offering a handshake.

“Does this mean you don’t want me to hug you?” Casmir clasped the hand.

“This is as much growth in our relationship as I can handle for one day.”

“Seems fair. Though it has been a long and eventful day.” A long and eventful night, actually. Casmir’s chip informed him that dawn was approaching.

“Tell me about it.” Rache lowered his hand. He sounded exhausted.

Casmir wondered what all he’d had to do to make his way back to this room.

Rache walked across the uneven rubble toward the crawlspace. “I think you’ll find the answer to the question you keep asking me in the capital. In the Royal Zamek Seed Bank.”

“Seed bank?” Casmir asked.

Rache didn’t explain further. He put his gauntlet back on and sprang to the hole in the wall. The armor should have made it harder to maneuver in a tight space rather than easier, but he slid inside with grace that Casmir had never in his life known. He soon disappeared from sight, making not a sound as he slithered through the passage.

Rocks tumbled away from the main corridor entrance.

“Casmir?” Asger called. “Are you in there?”

“Yes.” Casmir faced the newcomers, debating what he would say if anyone asked what had happened to Rache. That he’d gotten away? That would be accurate.

“We’re coming to rescue you.”

“Good.” Casmir leaned against the solid Zee and closed his eyes. “I’m ready to be rescued.”

20

Kim put peanuts out on the railing behind the cottage she and Casmir shared on campus, wondering if the squirrels had long since given up on her and moved on to another more lucrative part of the neighborhood, or if they would catch the whiff of fresh food and quickly return.

She sipped her coffee and went back inside to get ready for work. She and Casmir had spent the previous evening cleaning up the mess the crusher had left behind—apparently, robot intruders weren’t superior to human thieves and couldn’t stomp through a person’s home without knocking over furniture and rifling through dresser and desk drawers. The place looked much better in the morning light, almost back to normal. A cleaning robot whirred through the kitchen, wiping up the toast crumbs Casmir had left on the counter.

“Almost back to normal,” she murmured, though it wasn’t, not really.

Most of the terrorists had been arrested and the base destroyed, but the missing gate still loomed over Casmir’s head. He seemed certain the king would soon send men to drag him off to find it. And for herself, Kim was still working for the government in their lab near the castle, rather than at her own place of employment. They’d allowed her to return home, now that the terrorists shouldn’t be a threat. But Chief Superintendent Van Dijk had made it clear they would keep an eye on her and that she wasn’t to take any unannounced leave until they were satisfied she’d refined her bacteria all she could.

Still, it was good to be back in the house. She gave her coffee grinder a loving pat as she strolled through the kitchen. She’d brought Rache’s espresso-preparation gifts back with her and felt a little silly with so many coffee accoutrements lined up on the counter, but as she’d told Casmir, it wasn’t a bad idea to have backups.

An alert appeared on her contact, telling her of a message arriving, and she gripped the counter, abruptly nervous. Rache.

What if he wanted to set up that dinner date?

No, thanks to some video footage the knights had uncovered in the rubble at that base, the entire Kingdom knew he was here now. The last she’d heard, they had been scouring the forest, looking for him, wanting him as badly as they wanted all the terrorists. More badly.

Greetings and farewell, Scholar Sato, the message read.

I waited until I was on my way out of orbit before composing this. Despite the hospitable weather in Zamek during my stay, I shall be avoiding Odin for a while. I had a few near misses with a handful of knights as I found covert transportation out of the planet’s cumbersome gravity well.

I regret that I’m unable to suggest a time and meeting place for that dinner date, though it would not surprise me if you were relieved. Nonetheless, I shall take this moment to thank you for the gift of those little vials. I didn’t recognize what precisely was in them—was it a custom concoction, perhaps?—but I must admit from personal experience that they were effective. Very effective.

Kim grimaced. Had he been doused himself?

Casmir deployed them at an opportune moment. A more opportune moment might have been ten seconds before I was captured and I still had my helmet on, but one mustn’t be picky when working with amateurs. I was able to escape with my life, which wasn’t a certainty for a while.

An image popped up of the sun rising over Zachowac Kingdom Forest, taken from some high point overlooking the treetops. The photograph captured the beauty of the lush greenery contrasted with the pink and blue sky, and it gave Kim a strangely poignant feeling, as if she had lost out on something by not seeing it in person.

I considered sending a picture of your agent in action, so you could see its effectiveness, but at the last moment decided images of men writhing in their own vomit might not be the most appropriate thing to share with a woman. Should you ever find yourself without a job or a safe place in the Kingdom, I would be most pleased to hire you.

~ David

David? Was that his real name? Huh.

She thought about replying, but he hadn’t asked for a reply, and even though she appreciated hearing that someone had found her contribution useful, she was, as he’d deduced, relieved—or at least ambivalent—that he was heading off and she wouldn’t likely see him again. It was for the best, and she would let it end here. She wasn’t going to become penpals with the most hated criminal in the Kingdom.

Casmir paced in the waiting area of the clinic, his hands clasped behind his back. Qin stood in a corner, her arms folded over her chest, pretending not to notice the glances her pointed ears earned her. Casmir was sure her alert eyes didn’t miss anything.

His mother and father were also in the waiting area. They had only met Bonita briefly, but they had both come along, and they watched his admittedly vigorous pacing without commenting that the breeze he was making was stirring the leaves on the potted plants.

“It’s a routine procedure, dear,” his mother said. “I’m sure she’s doing fine. She seemed very fit.” She didn’t add for her age, but that seemed to be implied.

Casmir refrained from pointing out that at fifty-eight, there weren’t that many years between them. She might disagree.

“Very routine,” his bespectacled father said, his gaze glued to the zero-g soccer game playing on the huge wall display. Now and then, his mild expression shifted to one of zealous approval as he half rose from his chair and clenched his fist.

Neither of his parents seemed emotionally or physically scarred from their brief stint as prisoners of terrorists. His father taught teenagers, so maybe it hadn’t been that different from a normal workday.

“I know,” Casmir said, not able to still his pacing. “And I’m glad. I’m just worried because I was the one who arranged this, or at least suggested it, and convinced Baron Denji Takahashi that he should speak with his colleagues about having it added to the patent purchase agreement.”

“Oh.” Mother clasped her hands together. “Did we tell you that we’re so proud of you for selling one of your patents?”

“Yes, three times. I appreciate it. Thank you.” Casmir also appreciated that his parents, who weren’t exactly swimming in wealth, hadn’t batted an eye when they’d found out he’d given what had turned out to be fifty thousand crowns, or a year of his before-tax salary, to someone else. “I’m just concerned because if things go wrong or aren’t as good as Laser hopes, I’ll feel responsible. I want her to be able to walk around her ship without being in pain. There are only ladders. No stairs or ramps or lifts.”

“Ladders?” Mother’s eyebrows rose. “That doesn’t sound at all like it meets Kingdom Accessibility Accordances and Laws.”

“No, Viggo—uhm, the Stellar Dragon—isn’t a Kingdom ship. There’s a sauna.” His distracted brain somehow thought that sounded like a logical explanation for the lack of a handicap-accessible ramp.

“So, after she falls down the ladder and twists her knee, she can go sweat? That doesn’t sound like a fair tradeoff.”

“There’s a salt room too.”

“A salt room?” An intermission with Recommended Kingdom Educational and Enrichment Material—or RKEEM—came on, and his father’s focus shifted to him. “I’ve heard such things are popular in System Hesperides culture, and have read that the negatively charged ions in salt supposedly improve health and positively alter brain chemicals. But I’m not aware of any peer-reviewed studies that have been done in the Kingdom. Do you think there’s anything to it? Or is it superstitious mumbo jumbo? And how many crystals of salt and at what size would you need for a sufficient dose?”

“I actually haven’t been in there yet. Most of the time I was in space, I was busy trying not to throw up.” Casmir looked at Qin, both to include her so she wouldn’t feel left out and in case she had an opinion to add.

“I’ve only been in there once,” she admitted. “I licked one of the crystals to see if it was real.”

“Was it?” Casmir’s father asked, smiling with amusement.

“Yes. It didn’t even taste stale. The ship is a hundred years old.”

“Maybe the salt gets replaced now and then.” Casmir’s mother’s brow creased, and she appeared slightly sick, either at the idea of stale salt or of licking walls full of it.

“I don’t think salt gets stale,” Casmir said. “They collect it from ancient dead seabeds.”

“If you say so,” his mother murmured.

Casmir went back to pacing, glad for their company. He’d promised to buy them dinner at the deli if they accompanied him. He didn’t need the moral support—he wasn’t the one having the surgery, though after all the abuse his body had received in the crash, he was tempted to schedule a visit with his doctor—but he was hesitant to let them out of his sight.

The Kingdom Guard and the knights should have mopped up the rest of the terrorists by now and sent the survivors back to their systems for rehabilitation or off to one of the convict-serviced Kingdom asteroid mines, but Casmir couldn’t quite believe he and his family were safe yet. Admittedly, he wasn’t. Any hour now, the king’s people would drag him off and remind him that he’d promised to find that gate.

He wondered if there was any chance that he’d be able to get into that seed bank before he left. When he’d asked Asger about it, Asger had said nobody but the royal family and their special guests were allowed inside.

“Are you going to continue flying around the system, Casmir?” his father asked. “Or will you be able to return to your work now? I know Professors Gunter and Sulu were very concerned by your abrupt absence.”

“And the increase in their workload?” Casmir smiled.

“That follows, I suppose. Gunter mentioned grading your students’ projects and that some of them were disturbingly creative. I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or a concern.”

“I think he was talking about Hoshi’s robot arm and what he preprogrammed it to do. He just called it The Helper, but we were all positive he had more than holding a sake bottle in mind.”

His father’s forehead crinkled, and he looked at Mother. “I see the students at Zamek University aren’t any more mature than those at my little college. Despite the higher test scores required to get in.”

“If it helps,” Casmir said, his gaze drifting to the glass door as a familiar figure came into view, “I’m sure Hoshi’s math was impeccable.”

“That is some small comfort.”

The front door swung open, and Kim walked in.

“Kim!” Casmir’s mother sprang from her chair like a panther and pounced, smothering Kim in a hug.

“Sorry,” Casmir mouthed, not missing the pained grimace that crossed Kim’s face before she managed to smooth her features into a socially acceptable if stiff smile.

“Hello, Mrs. Dabrowski,” Kim said, awkwardly patting her on the back. “It’s good to see that you’re well. And you, Scholar Dabrowski.”

Casmir’s father rose and gave her a few pats on the shoulder, then drew Mother back. “We were the ones kidnapped, love, not her.”

“Technically, that’s not true,” Casmir said. “Kim was kidnapped earlier in the month. It’s the trendy thing for villains these days.”

His mother gasped and hugged her again before allowing Father to pull her back. Casmir felt a little bad calling Rache a villain after he’d helped him defeat the terrorists, but that couldn’t erase all the evil he’d done over the years. And Casmir had pulled him out of the crashed shuttle before it blew up and helped him get away from the base before the knights arrived. That should make them even, shouldn’t it? Just to be sure, Casmir would buy more gifts for the next time they met. He didn’t know how well received his starter set of comics had been, so maybe he would go with something more practical next time. Foldable, pocket-sized mask replacements, perhaps, for when bad guys blew up the main mask.

“I’m fine,” Kim said. “Thank you.”

“The galaxy isn’t what it used to be,” Casmir’s mother said.

“How did the surgery go?” Kim asked. “Has she had it yet?”

“The last we heard, they were monitoring the cartilage regeneration to make sure it’s underway as expected,” Casmir said. “They’ll make sure everything is promising before they let her go, and then she should know how much improvement there is after a few days. She’s supposed to be able to walk out without any need for mechanical aids.”

“Though she should definitely have professional therapy for several weeks,” his mother said.

“I’ll tell Viggo to download some routines,” Casmir said.

“Is Viggo an android?”

“Sort of. He’s the sentient essence embedded in her ship.”

His mother propped a fist on her hip. “A sentient essence can’t do therapy for someone. You need to be able to manipulate their limbs!”

“Laser is too grouchy to let anyone manipulate her anything,” Casmir said.

“You don’t think the procedure will change that?” Kim asked. “I thought she might be less grumpy if she wasn’t in pain all the time.”

Casmir looked to Qin again for an opinion. Qin had known the captain longer than he or Kim had.

“If she’s not grumpy, she’s usually melancholy,” Qin said. “Those are the two main states I’ve noticed.”

The front door opened again, and four sturdy men in the colors of the royal guard—royal bodyguards?—strode in. Was someone from the castle here to have surgery?

The men fanned out, hands on weapons, as they peered at the people in the lobby and waiting area. One spotted Qin and jumped, jerking his pistol from his holster. Qin crouched, either to spring at him or spring out of the way. Casmir’s mother gasped and lifted her hands.

Another of the guards stepped forward, gripped his buddy’s arm, and shook his head.

“But that’s—”

“Not a threat,” Casmir said, stepping in front of Qin and lifting his hands. It was only a moment later that he realized he was using the same gesture as his mother. “She’s a friend of one of the off-world patients.”

The guards stared at him longer than they’d looked at Qin. All four of them did. Casmir was beginning to squirm and feel nervous when one sighed and murmured something into a small comm pin.

A few seconds later, Princess Oku walked in, trailed by one more guard, who turned his back to the room to keep his focus on the square out in front of the clinic.

Casmir couldn’t imagine what had brought her here—he caught himself glancing down at her knees, as if they would be knobby and swollen from some malady. He recovered and bowed deeply, aware of his parents doing the same. Casmir assumed Oku would ignore all of them and head to the receptionist to check in for whatever treatment she needed, but she clasped her hands behind her back and walked straight to Casmir.

Only then did he remember that he’d sent her pages and pages—and pages—of notes on hypothetical robot bees. Robot bees that he’d dreamed up in a pitch-dark dungeon cell. He didn’t need light to interact with his chip and type up notes, but he might need it for his sanity and cohesiveness. Who knew what gibberish he’d sent over to her? Why hadn’t he thought to keep it to himself until he had more time to go over it?

“Professor Dabrowski,” Oku said.

“Yes, Your Highness?” He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to bow again, but it seemed safe. Until he found himself looking at her toes—she wore simple leather sandals, and a blade of grass stuck out from one of the straps. He wasn’t sure why, but he found that delightful, that she would wander about town without worrying about changing into some fancy dress—and grass-free—attire.

“Oh dear.” Oku must have wondered why he was holding his bow so long, for she looked down and spotted the grass blade. She plucked it up and held it out to drop it on the floor, but then reconsidered, as if that might be construed as littering. But her dress didn’t have any pockets.

She handed the blade of grass to an expressionless guard. He didn’t react other than to stick it into one of his pockets.

“Professor,” Oku said, recovering her equanimity and smiling. “Or may I call you Casmir?”

“Certainly, Your Highness.” He didn’t presume to ask her permission to use her first name. Or any name. “How may I help you?”

He pointedly did not look at his parents, who stood to the side, openly gaping. His father didn’t even glance toward the soccer game, though some exciting maneuver had the audience in the display rising up en masse and cheering.

“It is I who may be able to do you a favor. I appreciate that you sent that thorough report to me on robot bees, even if I’m… not certain I’m ready to relinquish my stubborn appreciation of the natural and aesthetically pleasing in favor of mechanized constructs.”

“Did you see the picture I drew where the robot bees had fuzzy yellow carapaces?” He lifted his eyebrows, then, realizing she’d mentioned doing a favor for him, shook his head. “Sorry, never mind. Go on?”

“I heard from Sir Asger—”

For some reason, Casmir had to fight his facial features not to wince at the notion of Asger strolling through the castle gardens with the princess.

“—that you’re interested in going to the Royal Zamek Seed Bank.” She tilted her head.

“Oh. Oh, yes. I was told…” A part of him wanted to bring up Rache and ask her how she knew the man—or had known him—but not here with everyone looking on. “I was told I might find it enlightening.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his mother’s eyebrows climbing.

“Seeds?” his father mouthed.

Realizing the princess might wonder why they were staring, Casmir rushed to introduce them, though he had no idea what etiquette would be appropriate. He ended up blurting, “These are my parents, Irena and Aleksy Dabrowski. That’s Qin Liangyu and Scholar Sato. Mama, Papa, everyone, I’m sure you’ve seen Princess Oku on the news. She’s here for, uhm…” Not simply to see him, he was certain, but if she had some medical affliction she needed treated, he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by drawing attention to it. “Reasons.”

Oku’s smile wasn’t quite amusement, but it wasn’t pain either, so he regarded that as a victory. If anything, he suspected he was befuddling her.

A couple of her bodyguards rolled their eyes. Maybe men were often befuddled around the princess.

“Yes,” she said. “Reasons. And to give you this, Professor.”

As she dipped her hand into a purse, Casmir almost blurted that she should definitely use his first name, but that would probably cause more eye rolling from the guards. And wasn’t likely appropriate. Professors should be formal with princesses, especially professors who weren’t of the nobility.

Though Rache had said that wasn’t true, that Casmir—they—would be considered noble if some legal precedent regarding clones was set.

“I go a few times a year to make copies of the original flower and vegetable seeds, whenever I’ve fumbled sufficiently that I need to start from scratch.” Oku snorted softly and pulled out a keycard with an acorn imprinted on one side. She handed it to him. “There’s not usually a guard or overseer there managing it, but security keeps out anyone without an access card. You can use mine. Just leave it at the desk before you go. Someone will find it eventually, assume I left it, and return it to me.”

As she explained the scenario, it dawned on Casmir that she was essentially offering to help him break in, not giving him legal access.

“Thank you, but you won’t get in trouble, will you?” Casmir didn’t know what kind of trouble the twenty-something-year-old daughter of the king and queen could get into—being grounded and confined to her room?—but he hated to imagine her even being lectured.

“Probably not.”

“Probably?” Casmir held the card back out toward her. “Your Highness, I appreciate your offer, but I don’t want you to possibly get in trouble because you helped me.”

“And yet, I’m certain your curiosity will drive you to use that.” She smiled, clasped her hands behind her back, and walked to the desk where two receptionists had appeared.

One bowed profusely and hurried to walk the princess to the door to the treatment area—while continuing to bow profusely. Hands still clasped behind her back, Oku strolled inside.

Two of the bodyguards followed, and the other three took up positions along the wall near the front door. Casmir looked at them, raised his eyebrows, and held out the card. Perhaps the one who’d taken the blade of grass would accept it and return it to Oku?

But all three merely stared stonily at the wall behind Casmir, their gazes going over his head. Unless he wanted to presume to walk up and tuck it into one of their pockets, he wasn’t going to get rid of it. He looked over at Kim, but she only shrugged.

Reluctantly, Casmir slipped it into his own pocket. Just because she had given it to him didn’t mean he had to use it. He could give it to Asger to return to her the next time he was at the castle.

“Casmir?” his mother asked. “What was that all about?”

“I don’t know.” He waved toward the door Oku had disappeared through, pretending to misunderstand, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to explain to his parents that he was on the hunt to find out who he’d been cloned from. He would tell them eventually, but for some reason, he felt the urge to keep this quest to himself, at least until he found out. “We’ve only met once before. I wonder if she’s here for a treatment of some kind or visiting a friend? The media have never mentioned her being ill, have they?”

His mother’s eyes narrowed. She probably knew he was deliberately avoiding her question.

“Not that I’m aware of,” his father answered.

“I meant about the seed bank,” Mother said. “Since when do you have an interest in horticulture?”

Before Casmir was forced to come up with an explanation, the inner door opened again, and Bonita walked out, accompanied by a nurse. She was walking stiffly, but as soon as she reached the waiting area, she hiked up a pant leg, revealing a knee brace with blinking indicators. They appeared to be the reason for the stiff gait.

“I got knee warmers,” she announced to Qin and Casmir.

“Are they… permanent?” Qin asked.

Now it was the nurse who rolled her eyes. That seemed to happen a lot in this building.

“They’re to be worn for three days,” the nurse said, “and they’re regeneration enhancers.”

“They’re making my knees warm and tingly,” Bonita said.

“Yes. I’ve messaged you a list of stretches and exercises to aid with your recovery. Comm us if you have any difficulties.” The nurse walked out swiftly.

Casmir tried to decide if she was rude or if Bonita had been a particularly nettlesome patient. The latter seemed a distinct possibility.

Qin came over and hugged her. “You can do your exercises with me, Captain.”

Bonita seemed almost as startled as Kim had been by her hug. She patted Qin’s arm.

“I hope you mean at the same time on adjacent mats rather than in a sparring and wrestling manner,” Bonita said.

“You don’t think you’ll be up for some light sparring now that your knees are fixed?” Qin smiled.

“Not with you. I might be able to take on Casmir.”

Ah, the reputation he had. He only smiled. “You know you don’t get me without Zee.”

“In that case, I’ll spar with myself. In bed. While munching on chocolate-drizzled sopaipillas.”

The receptionist tapped Casmir on the shoulder, distracting him from Qin’s stern response about taking rehabilitation seriously.

“Yes?” His first thought was that she would tell him the princess wanted to see him, but he couldn’t imagine why that would be.

“Someone out back wants to talk to you.” She pointed to a side door. “There’s a parking area through that alley and to the rear.”

“Er, someone?”

This sounded like the set up to a kidnapping. Another one.

“He said not to say, but I suggest you don’t delay if you value your life.” Her face was grave, no hint of humor in her eyes suggesting it was a joke.

It wouldn’t be Rache, would it? Casmir assumed he’d left the planet and returned to his ship as soon as possible.

“Qin,” Casmir said. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, please come after me. I’ve probably been kidnapped.”

Qin’s eyebrows shot up. So did Kim’s. His parents, who were intimately aware of his sense of humor after thirty-two years, merely smiled. For once, Casmir wasn’t joking, but he didn’t want to alarm them, so he didn’t correct their assumption. His mother was busy giving Bonita commentary about the merits of exercises that would likely be listed in the rehabilitation file.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Qin asked.

Kim took a step toward him, as if to come.

Casmir held up his hand. “No, thanks. I’ll holler if I need you.”

Fearing he had only ensured Qin and Kim would worry, Casmir hurried out into the alley, where a drizzle fell from the gray sky. He walked warily to the parking lot out back, and his stomach flip-flopped a few times when he spotted a sleek shuttle painted in the purple and gold of the Kingdom. It was smaller than the shuttle Asger had used, but it had weapons and a durable hull that could surely repel weapons of all kinds.

The side hatch was open, and two bodyguards in the same uniform that Oku’s people wore stood to either side. When they spotted Casmir, one crooked a finger in stony-faced invitation.

Was this the shuttle and crew that had brought the princess? Or had someone monitored the exchange and reported the passing of the keycard and sent them to fetch it? Casmir touched his pocket, reluctant to give it back, even though he’d decided not to use it. Probably.

When he stepped into the shuttle, a chauffeur waved him to a seat. The hatch closed behind him. Casmir was halfway into the indicated seat when he recognized the man sitting across from him. King Jager.

“Oh, Your Majesty,” he blurted, and tried to alter his motion from sitting into a bow. He almost pitched forward and fell into the king’s lap.

The chauffeur stuck an arm out as one of the bodyguards surged forward protectively. Casmir managed to catch himself before their services were needed, and he quickly sat in the seat.

Jager watched this all impassively. There were other empty seats in the back of the shuttle. Casmir guessed he had come along with his daughter, and their myriad bodyguards, for her… treatment, if that was what she was getting. Casmir was curious about it, but there was no way he would ask the king for details.

He rested his hands on his knees and waited to be addressed, though he assumed this would be about the keycard. Would Jager simply demand it back? Or would he want to know why Casmir wanted to visit the seed bank?

“You look reasonably well after your adventures,” Jager said.

“Yes, Your Majesty. I got battered around a bit, but my mother gave me some Rejuv, and it worked better than I expected. She uses that on everything, you know. Applies it to wounds, burns, rashes, eczema, and gives it orally as an immune-system boost. Those are the on-label uses, I believe. I’ve also seen her give it to plants. Externally, of course. I don’t think there’s a way to give plants an oral treatment. Though I suppose one could do injections of a sort.” Casmir could hear himself babbling, and was aware that he needed to end it, but for some reason, he couldn’t make his mouth stop spitting words. It was just like with Rache. Jager also made him nervous.

“And you’ve seen your family,” Jager said, ignoring the babble completely. Maybe his mind had wandered. Casmir couldn’t be the most important morsel on his plate for the day.

“Yes.” Casmir forced his lips together to keep further words from spewing out.

“The results of your trip to the terrorist base were adequate. I would say more than adequate, but I’m not pleased to learn that a heinous criminal was not only on my planet but seemed to be working with you.” Jager’s brows rose. Inviting an explanation?

“I figured I had to draw upon resources that weren’t readily accessible to the Kingdom Guard and the knights, since they’d already tried and failed to locate the base.”

“And you consider Rache—” Jager spat the name out like a poisonous mushroom, “—a resource?”

“Not technically.” Casmir’s eye blinked twice.

He had to be careful—very, very careful. If the king believed he and Rache were buddies now, Jager would have him exiled—or worse—as a punishment, whether Rache had helped with the terrorists or not. And if Casmir really screwed up, he could get Kim incriminated too. But he couldn’t lie or skirt the truth or he’d break out in a sweat, if not hives, on the king’s expensively upholstered seat. That might happen whether he lied or not.

“I wouldn’t say I manipulated him into wanting to work toward my goals,” Casmir said, “because that sounds, er, manipulative, but after the terrorists bombed the synagogue and kidnapped my parents, I knew I had to do whatever was necessary to stop them.”

“I assume you’re done manipulating him?” Jager asked.

“Oh, yes. He’s a most distasteful human being. I have no desire to spend time with him.”

Jager snorted, and Casmir was positive he read the irony in the king’s eyes. By now, Casmir had no doubt that Jager knew he and Rache shared the same genes—and he was positive the man knew who their progenitor was and likely who had ordered them cloned.

“See to it that you don’t cross his path again,” Jager said. “You are only of use to the Kingdom and the crown if we can trust you.”

Casmir nodded and smiled. “I understand.”

But could he trust Jager?

And did it matter, even if he couldn’t? He didn’t want to give up his home, and he longed to one day return to the work he loved at the university, even if he planned to get more involved in politics and fight harder to make changes for the better for people. As long as he wanted to live on Odin and be a Kingdom subject, he had to do whatever the king wanted. Even if he now wished he’d never met Jager.

“Good. My Fleet reports have come in.” Jager’s eyes closed to slits. “An invisible ship was reported activating the gate and escaping our system. More than seven days ago. It could be anywhere in the Twelve Systems.”

Casmir slumped back in the seat. He hadn’t forgotten that he’d promised to find the missing gate and fix the problem he’d inadvertently created, but he’d hoped it would turn out that the Fleet ships that had checked his coordinates had simply failed to search adequately. How had he messed up and let someone else find it? Someone else who’d taken it… He couldn’t even guess where. The astroshamans were a religion, not a nationality. They existed all over the Twelve Systems. Their headquarters could be anywhere. And they could also be working for someone else. As the terrorists here might have been.

“You promised to find the missing gate to redeem yourself,” Jager said.

“Yes, Your Majesty. I did.”

“Pack your belongings and whatever tools you need for an extended journey. You’ll only be welcome back on Odin if you bring that gate with you.”

“I understand.” Casmir dropped his chin to his chest. He wanted to rail that this was unfair, but was it? He’d meddled, overestimated his abilities, and this was the logical result. The king could have shot him outright.

“Captain Ishii and the Osprey are on their way to Odin to pick you up. They’ll be here in three days.”

Casmir jerked his head up. “Ishii, sir?”

“Yes.”

Of all the warships and captains in the Kingdom Fleet, he had to be assigned to travel again with his nemesis from robotics camp?

“Is there any chance that I could, if I can talk her into it, fly with the Stellar Dragon and Captain Lopez? I would prefer—”

“No.”

Casmir lifted his finger. “But we’ve worked together in tough situations a number of times now, and I’ve found it advantageous to have an unassuming freighter rather than—”

“No.”

Casmir lowered his finger. “No?”

“This will be a military operation with a military commander in charge. You will go as a civilian advisor and answer to him. A knight will accompany you to act as your bodyguard and to keep you out of Captain Ishii’s hair.”

“A knight?” Not his knight? “Not Sir Asger?”

“I am debating whether Sir Asger’s loyalties are compromised when it comes to you.”

“He did deliver me to your dungeon.”

“After releasing you from Ishii’s brig cell and taking you off in his shuttle, presumably at your urging, to start the whole mess with the gate.”

“May I point out that if Sir Asger and I hadn’t intervened, the cargo ship would have escaped the system or Captain Rache would have obtained it?”

“The ship escaped the system anyway.”

“But Rache doesn’t have it.” Casmir hoped the king would see that as a positive point, since he felt so strongly about Rache.

“Let’s hope. If he hadn’t been seen in your wake here on Odin, I would assume he’s already looking for it. Is that where he was going? Did you tell him anything?”

“I told him I was responsible for it currently being lost,” Casmir said. “He neglected to tell me where he was headed after this.”

“Pack your belongings and be ready, Dabrowski.” Jager pointed at the hatch, and it opened. “I’ll consider whether I’m going to give Asger a chance to redeem himself or not.”

“He was paramount in bringing down the terrorists, Your Majesty.” Casmir wouldn’t argue about his own merits, but it bothered him to let Asger be disparaged without saying anything. “I know he’s loyal to the Kingdom.” He almost added and the queen but realized that might be part of the problem. Maybe Jager didn’t care for a handsome young knight being more loyal to his wife than to him.

“Let’s hope,” Jager repeated, pointing again to the hatch.

Having no urge to linger, Casmir hurried out. He found Qin and Kim waiting in the alley, standing under the eaves and watching the shuttle in the drizzle.

“We wanted to make sure you weren’t kidnapped,” Kim said.

“Those bodyguards and I have been practicing our glowers on each other.” Qin leaned around the corner, but she smiled and waved instead of glowering. Maybe the glower practice had only been necessary while Casmir had been inside.

“Whose was fiercer?” he asked.

“Mine. You can’t glower effectively without fangs.”

Casmir believed it might be more of a sneer than a glower if teeth were on display, but he wasn’t an expert on menacing people, so he kept the thought to himself.

“Everything all right?” Kim eyed Casmir. “Your mother invited everyone to dinner.”

“Even me.” Qin beamed.

Casmir’s throat tightened. He realized that he might not see Qin and Bonita again after he left Odin. They would likely depart soon, headed off to whatever bounty hunting or cargo hauling they planned to do next, and he… He had a date with the extremely unappealing Captain Ishii. Ishii glowered very well, even without fangs.

“Good,” he said and made himself smile. “Bonita too?”

“Yes.”

“Does she realize my mother is a physical therapist and will insist on helping her with some exercises before dinner?”

Qin looked toward the door. “I think so. They were discussing leg lifts and wall squats when we left.”

“I’ll make sure to bring alcohol to the dinner. To ease the pain.”

“From the procedure?” Kim asked. “Or from enduring your mother’s well-meaning assistance?”

Casmir nodded. “Both.”

Qin packed the recently delivered food crates into the freezer section under the cargo hold deck as Bonita lay on a mat, groaning dramatically as she did leg lifts.

“I would rate that an 8.7,” Viggo said.

“A what?” Bonita lowered her leg and scowled suspiciously toward the closest speaker.

A robot vacuum trundled past her mat.

“I have decided to rate your groans on a scale from zero to ten, with zero being inauthentic and ten being worthy of a theatrical award.”

“You’re hilarious, Viggo.”

“Indeed. Over the years, numerous passengers on the Stellar Dragon have remarked on that very fact.”

“How many is numerous?” Qin climbed out of the freezer and closed the lid.

“Not less than six.”

“In a hundred years?” Bonita grimaced and did a few more leg lifts. “That’s a long time, but that number still seems too high.”

A beep came from the closed cargo hatch. Had the delivery robot found another crate it had forgotten to bring?

Qin jogged over and opened the hatch. The same woman who’d delivered a parcel to Casmir the week before stood on the ramp. When she saw Qin, her mouth opened and closed a couple of times before she managed to thrust it at her.

“No signature necessary,” she blurted and ran back to her vehicle.

Expecting it to be for Bonita, Qin headed toward her mat with the flat, lightweight package. But she read the shipping label as she started to set it down. It was addressed to her and from Sir William Asger.

A nervous flutter teased her stomach.

“What is it?” Bonita asked. “Not a book about knee exercises from that awful nurse, I hope.”

“It’s from Asger.”

“What are his feelings on knee exercises?”

“I don’t know. It’s addressed to me.”

“Oh?” Bonita sat up and waved at the flat package. “Open it.”

Qin used a claw to slice a careful opening and slid out a card in an envelope and a Kingdom calendar for the upcoming year. On Odin. Qin scratched her head with the same claw. “That’s an odd thing to give to a space traveler. Does he think I’ll visit here often and need to know the date?”

“What is it?” Bonita climbed to her feet.

Qin showed her the front of the calendar, the image of a hooded man on the cover, his face in shadow.

“Is that him?” Bonita pointed at the jawline visible, its dark blond beard and mustache impeccably trimmed.

“Oh. I think it is.”

Bonita took it and flipped to the first month, then laughed at the shirtless Sir William Asger posing with his leg up on some metal beam with industrial buildings in the background. His muscles were on prominent display, his eyes twinkling as he smiled at the camera. Bonita turned to the next month. This time, Asger’s legs were also naked as he stood in front of trees, with nothing but an artfully placed branch blocking the view of his groin.

“Ay, que güero,” Bonita purred.

Qin’s cheeks flamed red.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen naked men before. It was just that none of the Drucker pirates had looked like that.

“I don’t think it’s the date that he wants you to look at.” Bonita held up the near-naked picture for Qin’s perusal. “If I were still married, I might have left my husband for this. If only to fool around. But he’d have to promise not to talk or stick his haughty nose in the air.”

“Why do you think he sent it to me?”

Bonita had flipped to the next month. In the photo, Asger was dressed and on the beach with the surf in the background, but the way his wet clothing hugged his muscular form left even less to the imagination than the branch picture.

“Captain?” Qin prompted when Bonita continued her perusal without answering.

Bonita smirked and looked up. “I’m just making sure they didn’t leave any months out. Look, he signed December. Oh, and the front.”

“Does that… make it more valuable? Like a signed book?”

“I’m not sure what the collectors’ market on calendars is like. I imagine he mostly wants you to hang it in your cabin and ogle him while you’re entertaining yourself.”

Qin’s cheeks flushed even hotter. She wasn’t positive Bonita was alluding to… sexual entertaining, since they’d never discussed such things, but she found herself mortified nonetheless.

“He wouldn’t want that. He’d be horrified at being ogled by a… me.”

“I’m not sure that’s true. All men like to be ogled by all women. It’s human nature. What’s the card say? That he’s realized you’re the most magnificent woman ever and that he was an idiot for prejudging you?”

“I’m guessing not.” As Qin used her claw as a letter opener, she noticed that Bonita had tucked the calendar under her arm. Maybe she intended to put it in her cabin. “Liangyu Qin,” she read. “He got it backwards, but most people do.”

“Give him credit for trying. I wouldn’t have guessed he knew you had more than one name.”

“Qin, my apologies for attacking you when we first met. If you return to Odin in the future and need an escort to the park to hug trees at night, let me know. I’ll be happy to go with you.” Qin smiled. It wasn’t a confession of love, but at least it seemed an offer of friendship.

“Hug trees?”

“My feline DNA called me to the wilds of the park over there.” Qin waved.

“And for you to cuddle with the native foliage?”

“An urge came from somewhere.”

“Usually, felines sharpen their claws on trees.”

“You file my claws every month, so that’s not necessary.”

“Huh.” Bonita handed her the calendar and waved skyward. “Where to next?”

“You’re letting me decide?”

“As long as it gets us out of this system. I’ve had enough of the Kingdom. And I thought you might like to pursue your freedom.”

That had been on Qin’s mind. She still didn’t want to accept any of Bonita’s new money to attempt to bribe the Druckers, but she did long for her freedom. True freedom where she wasn’t owned by anyone, even on paper. She didn’t yet know how she might barter for that, but she had speed, strength, and agility, and a captain willing to fly her places. That was more than most people had. She couldn’t help but think of all the things Casmir seemingly fearlessly accomplished without any of those things. If he could do it, couldn’t Qin?

“Yes,” Qin said firmly.

Bonita raised her eyebrows.

“The last I heard, the Druckers’ main ships are in System Cerberus.”

“The system run by criminals, liars, cheats, frauds, pirates, and gangsters?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll set a course. If nothing else, there should be plenty of bounty-hunting work.”

“Of that I have no doubt.” Qin knew there would be more than the typical number of people there who would try to collect on her bounty, but she vowed to elude them and find her freedom. One way or another.

EPILOGUE

Casmir stood in the shadows of a row of hedges that surrounded the five-story black glass and blacker steel cube of a building that was the Royal Zamek Seed Bank. It was late, and only the windows by the lobby were lit. A robot guard on two wheels rolled around the exterior of the complex, making steady and predictable circuits. There weren’t any gates or other barriers across the wide sidewalk that led to the front door.

Casmir pulled the keycard out of his tool satchel, the acorn appearing to be no more than a dark smudge in the dim lighting.

It wasn’t too late to back out. He’d said he wasn’t going to do this, because he didn’t want to risk Oku getting in trouble. But tomorrow, he was to ship out on a mission he might not survive. Even if he made it back, he didn’t know when that would be, and he couldn’t help but feel like an idiot for not yet having figured out who he’d been cloned from. Rache knew, Jager knew, the queen knew, and Royal Intelligence probably knew. Even Asger had seemed to suspect something. Did Princess Oku also know? Probably. She had known of his existence before they’d met face to face.

“Do you want me to do it?” Kim asked from his side.

“Yes.” Casmir imagined Kim getting in trouble when her fingerprints were found on the card and promptly changed his mind. “No. I’m ready.”

She shrugged, and they headed up the sidewalk. The security robot whirred toward them, and Casmir held up the keycard. He didn’t know if that would be enough to satisfy it, or if it would tell them to come back during the building’s listed “open” hours. Which were three hours one day a week. Apparently, a custodian came in to make copies of seeds and embryos for those with the proper paperwork. She was a noble and a distant relative of the royal family. As Casmir had learned, few people who weren’t members of the royal family were ever allowed in.

A red beam flashed across the card as the robot scanned it. Without a word, it returned to its circuit.

“I guess we’re allowed in,” Casmir said.

“It’s a good thing photo ID isn’t required. Even a robot without eyes could tell you’re not Princess Oku.”

“Not much of a resemblance, eh?”

“She’s prettier than you.”

“Yes, I noticed that too.”

Kim gave him a long look, and for some reason, his cheeks heated. Casmir hadn’t meant to imply anything with that statement.

“It’s allowed, right? To notice?” He shouldn’t have said anything. Kim hadn’t said anything. Yet he heard himself adding, “It’s not like I’m going to ask her on a date.”

They had reached the front door. Kim faced the lobby without commenting.

“Asger likes her.” Casmir inserted the keycard into the slot. “He’d probably see it as a betrayal if I tried to ask her on a date. When I suggested robot bees for her space habitat project, Asger pointed out that I was a janitor mopping the arena floor and that she’s in the royal boxes.”

He wondered what it said about his sense of self-worth that he kept repeating that to people.

“That doesn’t seem entirely accurate,” Casmir added. “I’m at least the guy who builds the robots who mop the arena floor.”

The card reader beeped, and the door swung inward. He glanced at Kim again as they walked inside the lobby.

“You’re not saying anything. Is it because you get bored discussing these topics or because you’re silently supporting me and think that if I possibly someday do want to ask the princess on a date, I might be charming enough to convince her to say yes?”

“I am silently supporting you in your various endeavors.”

He squinted at her, searching for sarcasm, but she seemed sincere. She was probably indifferent to who he dated or how he embarrassed himself.

Unexpectedly, she added, “I told our dinner guest that I would have a private dinner with him if he took off his mask.”

Casmir dropped the card. He cursed and tried to pick it up, but it was difficult on the smooth marble floor. Either that, or he was so flustered that he couldn’t use his fingers properly. Finally, he pulled it up and stared at Kim.

“Please tell me you’re talking about Asger.”

“Does he wear a mask?”

“Maybe a slumber mask so he doesn’t get eye wrinkles.”

“You’re thinking of cucumbers.”

“I’m so confused.” Casmir couldn’t stop staring at Kim, but her face was as impassive as ever.

“Cucumber juice can reduce swelling, soothe damaged skin, and stimulate antioxidant activity.”

“I meant about R—him.” At the last second, he realized there might be cameras in here—it was highly likely there were. They couldn’t talk about this here. He didn’t want to talk about it anywhere. Was it possible she was teasing him? Kim could deliver a joke in the most deadpan tone. She excelled at it.

“I’m unsure about his soothing and stimulating effects,” Kim said.

That was a joke. Her eyes glinted with humor.

But Casmir was too horrified to find anything humorous about this. “There aren’t any. Kim.”

He rubbed his face, almost poking himself in the eye with the keycard. She couldn’t be serious about going on a date with Rache. She didn’t even date. She hated sex. If she ever procreated, she wanted it all to be handled in a lab with test tubes. She’d told him that. Many times. In the seven years they had been roommates, he’d never seen her go out on a date. And he had seen her turn down offers from men. Nice, attractive men. Not psychopaths!

She sighed. “I suppose you can’t be silently supportive.”

“No.”

She gave him a sad look, and he felt like someone who’d kicked a kitten.

“I’m sorry.” His apology was for not being able to be silently supportive. He couldn’t make himself rescind his objection to Rache. That man was evil. There was no reason to have dinner with someone like that, unless it was to talk him into helping do a good thing.

Kim pointed to a computer terminal built into the wall next to a pair of heavy steel doors without handles or knobs. “Perhaps we should start there.”

She walked over first. Casmir took a deep breath and steadied himself before following her. He found some peace in knowing that Rache had left the planet. Kim was here and would hopefully return to her regular life and her regular work soon, and she would forget all about him. And Rache would realize he couldn’t risk coming back to Odin for a dinner date.

“It shows records of people who entered and whether they checked out or made copies of materials.” Kim scrolled down a screen. “Maybe just made copies. It doesn’t look like anyone is allowed to leave with the original material, even if there’s a field for it.”

Casmir made himself focus as the names of people listed for the past few months scrolled past. Oku was the last listed for today—their entry.

“It’s the same people over and over,” Kim said. “Members of the royal family and a couple of well-known scientists of noble blood. It looks like almost everybody gets copies of seeds, but here’s someone who got a frozen frog embryo. And a couple of years ago, the princess checked out some bee embryos.”

“Yeah, she mentioned starting from scratch a couple of times.” Casmir lifted a finger, intending to key in a search, but his hand was shaking. He almost laughed, embarrassed. For some reason, he was nervous about what he would find. “I have a birthday coming up. Can you look up who was checking out what thirty-three years ago? Er, thirty-three years and nine months?”

“It would have been closer to six months if they used artificial wombs. They speed up gestation.”

“Right.” He waved for her to run the search. “I’m sure that’s how it—how I—was done.”

His mind still boggled at the notion that he was someone’s clone. In part because it seemed weird that someone would choose to clone a progenitor plagued with all of his genetic idiosyncrasies. And in part because it was difficult to accept as being core to his identity—it shouldn’t be, since it happened all around him, albeit more often with animals than people, but it meant he was exactly like someone else who had already lived. At least on the genetic level. It was surprising that he and Rache were so different, even with the gene cleaning Rache had received.

“Here.” Kim pointed to the screen.

There had only been a handful of entries that year. She pointed straight to one set of names, not even considering any of the others.

Prince Jager and Princess Iku—it had been two years before the old king was assassinated and Jager crowned. They had checked out…

“Embryo 7J?” Casmir scrunched up his nose. “That’s not super enlightening.”

Kim tapped a couple of buttons, and a map appeared. “It’s in the basement.”

They stepped up to the intimidating doors, and Casmir imagined a legion of security robots waiting to mow them down for presuming to sneak into the facility. Or maybe the doors wouldn’t open at all. He slipped the keycard in another slot. Would Princess Oku’s access get them all the way to this embryo basement?

The doors opened, and lights flickered on, revealing a large room devoid of robots or any other type of security. Corridors headed off in several directions, and there was an elevator at the back. Nothing impeded them as Kim and Casmir walked through, though he did notice light glinting off the lens of a security camera. Eventually, someone would know they had been here.

They stepped into the elevator, and it descended without input. Because it only went one place, or because the computer system knew what they had been looking at and assumed that was where they wanted to go? Normally, intelligent and intuitive computers didn’t bother Casmir, but he found the idea strangely ominous tonight. Maybe this trip had been a mistake.

“If my guess is right,” Kim said apropos of nothing, “I will find that conversation about the princess to be a quite literal example of history repeating itself. I suppose it’s impossible for the Kingdom to experience a sense of collective déjà vu, but it’s hard at times not to personify institutions.”

Casmir stared at her. “Does that mean I shouldn’t ask her to dinner?”

“No. But if she accepts and your identity becomes widely known, it could prompt prophesying.”

“You already know what I’m going to find down here?”

The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open on a dark room with an icy chill.

“I have a suspicion,” Kim said. “There aren’t many old dead people that I could imagine Jager wanting to clone.”

Old. A reminder that his progenitor had lived in a time before The Great Plague, that his mitochondria had never been altered to thwart the virus that had decimated humanity.

“Someone else might have chosen a renowned scientist or engineer,” Kim said. “I highly doubt he did.”

She stepped out. This time, the lights didn’t come on. Casmir joined her and waved a hand, in case motion sensors had failed to register. Nothing happened.

He dug into his toolkit and pulled out a compact flashlight. It was for peeking into robot housings, not illuminating rooms, and a laughably narrow beam came on.

Fortunately, there wasn’t far to go. There was a single room—a vault—and it wasn’t as large as Casmir would have expected. The walls were full of what looked like drawers with keyholes. Whatever was in them—frozen cells, presumably—he wasn’t going to be able to extract. That was fine. He already had what was in the drawer he wanted to see.

Casmir swallowed and walked forward, looking for Row 7. His mind was oddly blank, refusing to process Kim’s words and make guesses. In a few seconds, he would know.

Kim walked behind him, not saying a word.

Row 7. Casmir’s hand shook, the beam bouncing on the drawers, each one labeled with a plaque, a name. He passed the kinds of names he might have expected, award-winning scientists and scholars from the last hundred years. It hadn’t occurred to him that anyone would save tissue samples from those people, but he supposed it made sense. None of them were old enough to predate the Plague. Not until he reached… J.

His mouth went dry. Admiral Milos Mikita.

A famous warrior?

Casmir checked the row and letter again. 7J. Admiral Mikita. The man who had, over three hundred years ago, almost singlehandedly united the Twelve Systems under Kingdom rule for King Dieter. King Dieter and his daughter, Princess Sophie, Casmir amended silently, Kim’s elevator comment coming to mind. The princess had supposedly been his inspiration, the one whose love he’d sought to prove himself worthy of.

Casmir looked at Kim. Was this truly what she had guessed?

She nodded once.

“I don’t see how.” Casmir’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “He was a great warrior. And he was eight feet tall. And handsome. Someone like Asger, not like me.” Casmir waved his hand over his scrawny five feet and seven inches of height.

“He was an officer who led warriors. Eventually. He came out of the common class and somehow finagled his way into the knighthood but was only made a noble after a number of victories. You’ll have to find one of the history books to read. An old physical history book. I suspect there’s been some revisionist history over the last couple of centuries, at least in regard to his physical appearance.”

Casmir stared at the drawer, as if it could show him what the real admiral had looked like.

“Remember that comment Qin made after we first met her?” Kim asked. “When she said you kind of looked like Mikita? Maybe you should check her bookcase. Whatever she has wouldn’t have come out of our system.”

“Have you known that long?” Casmir couldn’t believe Kim wouldn’t have said something.

“No. I didn’t think anything of the comment at the time. I didn’t have a clue until I saw Rache’s unaltered mitochondria. But now it makes sense.”

“It does?”

“That Jager would try to make his own Admiral Mikita? Yes. Two of them, technically, though I suppose…”

“I was a mistake?” Casmir snorted. That he could believe. “That the artificial womb flubbed up with my genes, and they had to make another one? Would that make me Rache’s older brother, do you suppose?”

“Artificial wombs don’t work like that. My guess is that they threw you in the stewpot without doing any gene testing, in part because modifying genes is illegal in the Kingdom, and in part because they assumed nothing would be deleterious in Mikita’s genes. And then at some point, a doctor did a checkup and called them in.”

“And said this kid’s eye is in the socket sideways and he’s going to have seizures all over the place when we let him out of this box?”

Kim snorted. “Your eye isn’t that bad.”

“I’ve seen pictures from before the surgery.”

“Mm. Anyway, at that point, they may have decided to start over with Rache and had the doctor do some less than legal gene cleaning.”

“So I should feel lucky they didn’t flush me down the toilet?”

Casmir pushed a hand through his hair. He wondered if he had the queen to thank for that. He couldn’t imagine Jager having a soft spot in his heart for a mistake. Maybe Queen Iku had been the one to hand him off to the foster parent system. As a kinder alternative to death? Someone had made sure his education was funded. His adoptive parents didn’t know anything about his birth or where he’d come from, but they had been given enough money to pay for all the years of school it had taken to earn an advanced degree.

“I wish I’d gotten a chance to talk to her,” he murmured.

“Who?”

“The queen. But now I’m off on some new mission tomorrow, and I don’t even know… God, that’s why Jager is letting me do this stuff, isn’t it? He thinks somehow my genes are going to allow me to perform great heroics, even if I was a reject. Like there’s some magic or code in someone’s DNA that makes them capable of amazing things.” Casmir thought of Rache, of what it had been like following him into that base and watching him singlehandedly mow down killer robots, astroshamans, and enhanced humans. Had all of that been due to his cybernetic enhancements? Or had some of it just been potential based on genes that had been fixed?

“I think you’ve spent the last ten years proving you’re capable of amazing things, Casmir,” Kim said dryly. “Don’t get hung up on the physical. I know what the pictures in the history texts show—today’s history texts—but it’s not like an admiral on a spaceship would have fought enemies hand to hand. He would have been crafty and smart—and probably very good at getting people to work well together.”

“Yeah.” Casmir tried to make his agreement heartfelt, but lately, he felt more like a screwup than anything special. Maybe if he could find the gate and do what he’d wanted from the start, figure out a way to ensure all of humanity could come together to study it… he would feel more adequate.

“And I’m skeptical that you were the reject.”

Casmir frowned at her.

“Oh, not that Jager rejected you, but it makes more sense that you’re the real deal and Rache is the altered copy. I don’t think we had gene cleaning back when Mikita lived. Our medical advancements lagged behind the regaining of spaceflight and some of the simpler sciences. Physics is the same across the universe, but biologically speaking, Odin isn’t Earth, despite being the closest match in the Twelve Systems, and some of the things that worked in the human body back on Earth had to be altered or changed altogether to work in this biome. I’ve often wished I could see Earth—and take my microscope there.” She thumped him on the back. “You should locate that gate and get it working, so humanity can find its way back to its origin system and see if anything is left alive back there.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Casmir stepped back from the drawer, though the plaque with its simple letters was burned into his memory. He wasn’t sure he could imagine Mikita accomplishing all that he had accomplished if he’d had Casmir’s gene mutations, especially if medicine had been less advanced back then, but at least he now knew where he’d come from. And that he should probably be extra careful around King Jager, whose interest in him was now rekindled after thirty-three years.

He shelved the thought for later and forced a smile. “Thank you for the support. Silent and otherwise.”

“You’re welcome.”

THE END

Thanks for picking up the Star Kingdom bundle! If you’re enjoying the story, you can continue on with Book 4: Crossfire.

Also, make sure to sign up for the newsletter to get “Roommates & Robots,” a fun little short story showing how Kim and Casmir first met:

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Table of Contents

Copyright

Table of Contents

Foreword

Shockwave

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Ship of Ruin

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Hero Code

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue