Ship of Ruin Read online

  Ship of Ruin

  Star Kingdom, Book 2

  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

  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

  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 imag
ine 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 u
nder 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…”