Crossfire (Star Kingdom Book 4) Read online

  “That’s just what they’re offering for my retrieval.” Qin bared her fangs. “I’m not sure how much it originally cost them to have us made and trained, but it must have been a lot more than that. And an investment of time as well as money.”

  “So, our options are either to convince them to accept the fifteen thousand as payment, by making them believe they were never going to get you back, and it’s better for them to get paid something… or we need to take the person who issued the bounty out of the equation. One of the Drucker brothers, I assume? We can’t sneak onto his ship and threaten him—these pirates with their big egos hunt you down and kill you later if you try moves like that. But maybe if there’s a bounty out on him, we can capture him, turn him over to the law, and not have to worry about him until he gets out of prison in fifty years. Unfortunately, even if we could capture him, there’s a whole family left to avenge him.”

  “Yes,” Qin said bleakly. “They have a tradition of slaying anyone who messes with the family. Not all two-thousand-odd crew members are related, but the five brothers who run their five warships have a lot of relatives. Honestly, I think my best bet would be to stage my death somewhere so that they write me off as a loss.”

  “Let’s put that down as an option, but it’s not ideal. You’d have to spend the rest of your life worrying about being spotted. In addition to their two thousand people, they must have a lot of spies throughout the systems that report to them.”

  “If I was careful, maybe eventually, they would forget about me.”

  “If we’re regularly collecting bounties among the demimonde, I’m afraid word will get back to the Druckers. You’re very memorable.”

  Qin retracted her painted claws. “What do you think is best?”

  “I think we need to talk to them, feel them out. Maybe we’ll learn something. Like how badly do they want you back? Is it even one of the warship captains—one of the brothers—who put that bounty out? Or did some guy in accounting get reprimanded for the loss of an asset, so he’s making a halfhearted attempt to clean up the books?”

  Bonita hated that anyone might think of Qin like property or an asset reported on a balance sheet, but the systems were what they were. Even if she didn’t like it, slavery was legal in some of them, and even the more egalitarian systems tended to identify genetically engineered creations that had been purchased from a lab as property rather than people.

  “How likely is it that they know you work for me?” Bonita asked.

  “Likely. Remember when we met? You helped me turn in two of the Druckers’ men and collect the small bounties on them.”

  “Yes, true, but hopefully those men are still in prison and haven’t had contact with their employers. Even if the Druckers do know you’ve been working for me, what if I, being a greedy bounty hunter, noticed there was money out for you and sent them a message saying I’d sell you back? But only if they doubled what they were offering. That might open the door for negotiations or at least get us in touch with whoever’s in charge of your retrieval.”

  Qin grimaced. “Captain, I do want my freedom, and I appreciate that you want to help me get it, but I’m afraid you’ll get in trouble on account of me.”

  “Let’s at least talk to them. If it seems too dangerous, we’ll try another approach. What are your thoughts on cosmetic surgery? Maybe if you had your ears snipped, your fangs and claws filed down, and glued some astroshaman machine bits to your face…”

  Qin’s eyes widened, and she touched one of the pointed ears sticking up through her hair. “My… ears snipped?”

  “And some serious hair—fur—removal. That’s our last option, I think. Try to disguise you. You could try a hood like Rache has, but those ears would try to poke out of it. They would definitely have to go.”

  Qin covered her ears protectively. “Comm them.”

  Bonita smiled. “I’ll compose a message right now.”

  As she reached for the comm panel, a message landed on her personal chip. Casmir’s words floated down her contact.

  Greetings, Captain Laser!

  I hope that you and your knees are doing well. I also hope Qin is doing well. I recently experienced a clumsy assassination attempt—technically, it may be less that it was clumsy and more that they did not anticipate Zee’s sturdy presence—and I’m hoping you can tell me if my name has popped up again on that virtual bounty-hunter job board of yours. I assume Rache isn’t after me this time, but it would be handy to know who is. And how many of them there are. Is it still the Black Star terrorists? Or is some other moneyed organization irked with me? I would be grateful if you could let me know.

  Thank you, and good luck to you and Qin on your next adventure.

  ~Casmir

  “Captain?” Qin asked. “Everything all right?”

  Bonita realized her hand was hanging in the air over the comm panel, and she pulled it back. “Casmir sent me a message.”

  “How is he doing?” Viggo asked. “Has he decided to travel with us again? I’d like to get his opinion on a new brushless motor I’m thinking of ordering. And I’ve been debating ways to enhance the nozzles on the robot vacuums to more easily suck dirt from crevices. Perhaps he has an opinion on nozzles.”

  Bonita rolled her eyes. “I’m sure he does. Most men do.” She looked at Qin. “Someone’s trying to kill him.”

  “Again?”

  “He’s not sure if it’s the same terrorist group or someone new. I’m going to search the bounty-hunter job board, as he called it, and see if there are any entries.”

  “Should we go help him?”

  “He’s on a Kingdom Fleet warship. If they can’t keep him alive, nobody can.”

  “I’m going to arrogantly believe that I would be better at keeping him alive than a soldier who doesn’t care about him.” Qin extended her claws again. “Or even one who does.”

  Bonita smiled. “That’s possibly true, but he has his mission, and we have ours. I’ll send him whatever I can find, but we are going to confront the Druckers.”

  “I wonder if they have an opinion on vacuum nozzles,” Viggo said, sounding mournful that Casmir wasn’t on the way to visit them.

  “Not unless they’re gold-plated and worth a lot of money, I’ll wager,” Bonita said.

  Qin, who knew the Druckers’ tastes far better than Bonita, did not comment. She only gazed pensively at the stars on the display.

  Less than an hour after the attack, a firm knock sounded on the door to the computer cabin. Casmir doubted an assassin would knock, but he was glad that Zee shifted to stand in front of it. Kim had gone off to speak with Ishii about her ideas, or maybe to lecture him on letting assassins prowl his ship, but only after Casmir had spent fifteen minutes convincing her that Zee would protect him and he was safe. And only after an armored marine had shown up to guard the computer cabin.

  As the door slid open, Casmir sneezed. He needed to grab his antihistamines out of his bag. When he’d traveled on the Stellar Dragon, he hadn’t needed them, but maybe the Osprey’s air filters weren’t as assiduously attended as Viggo’s.

  “Casmir?” came Asger’s voice around Zee’s head. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I heard about the attack. May I come in?”

  “There’s only one seat.”

  “Knights have legs. We’re capable of standing.”

  “An admirable skill. Let him in, please, Zee.”

  “He carries a weapon,” Zee stated without moving. “Your life was threatened tonight. It is not wise to trust the humans on this ship.”

  “Yes, but we know Asger. He’s a friend.” Casmir tapped Zee on his hard, cool back. “He’s not going to stab me.”

  Zee stepped aside, but he didn’t go far. Asger had to turn sideways to ease past him and into the cabin.

  Asger frowned, gripped Casmir’s shoulder, and looked him up and down. “Do you need an escort to sickbay? Were you injured?”

  “I’m fine.”

 
; “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

  “I suspect that’s the first time someone has ever said that in this cabin.” Casmir waved to the rack of servers humming softly and emitting heat.

  Asger didn’t smile at the joke. He lowered his hand and shook his head. “I was in the gym, exercising and sparring with some of the marines. I need to be as fit as possible for this mission, and I know it, but… I should have been here. I’ve been tasked with keeping an eye on you. I just didn’t expect you to be in any danger here.”

  “Do you know what happened? Nobody’s told me anything.”

  “Not yet. Ishii said he’ll give me a report after his security people are done questioning those two men. I did learn that they’re kitchen staff, both on their first tour of duty.”

  “The kitchen staff tried to assassinate me? I haven’t even complained about the food.”

  “I’m guessing someone suborned them, offered them a lot of money if they were successful. You’d think whoever it was would have picked someone with more combat training.”

  “I didn’t mind them being inept.”

  Asger smiled for the first time. “No, I wouldn’t have either. I should have been here. I will be from now on. I’ll sleep on the deck while you work.”

  “If you sleep on the deck, how will I get out of the cabin to pee? You may have noticed the lack of floor space.”

  “When my cousins and I were little and went on long air-speeder trips with my grandfather, he would toss an empty jinga-juice jar in the back for us to use. He didn’t like to make stops. He was focused on getting his desired number of miles in each day.”

  “Asger, I’m not using a jinga-juice jar for the sake of your beauty sleep. Zee doesn’t need to lie down to sleep, so he takes up less space, and he can protect me just fine. He handled those two men by himself.”

  Asger’s gaze drifted to the melted display that had been struck and a black scorch mark in the wall over the console.

  “Those weren’t even close to hitting me. I was hiding over there.” Casmir pointed to the wall. “I’m good at hiding.”

  “I doubt that.” His face screwed up into a conflicted expression.

  “Look, I appreciate that you want to protect me. Really, I do. Especially since the number of people trying to kill me seems to be growing as fast as bacteria in one of Kim’s petri dishes.”

  Asger’s forehead furrowed.

  “Bad analogy, sorry. They divide and increase their population. They don’t grow.” Casmir patted Asger on the arm. “You don’t need to watch me. I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

  Asger slumped against the wall. “I just want to do the right thing and earn my superiors’ and colleagues’ respect back.”

  “Back? What did you do to lose it?”

  Asger opened his mouth, but he shut it again and looked at the wall above Casmir’s head, instead of at him.

  “Ah,” Casmir said. “You helped me escape the Osprey last time, and I didn’t put the gate into Fleet hands, as everyone in the Kingdom believes I should have. So you’re getting blamed.”

  “Not fully. Nobody has any trouble blaming you for those things, but it didn’t look good for me. They think you duped me.”

  “I’m sorry.” Casmir studied the deck. “Did you tell them I’m not that clever?”

  “No.” Asger looked at him. “I just—you’re not going to try anything shifty this time, are you? I understand that you weren’t comfortable giving Jager the gate, but as you’ve seen, it’s not wise to go against him.”

  “I know. This is my chance to prove myself to him, or so he said.” Casmir tried not to think about Rache’s conversation with the ex-chief superintendent of Royal Intelligence, about how Rache had once been asked to prove himself to Jager. Casmir wished he and Rache hadn’t had to part ways in such a rush, that he could have asked for more details. But would Rache have revealed them? Thus far, he’d been close-lipped about his past. “I’m sure if I go against Jager, I will be exiled. Or worse. He might send the laundry staff after me.”

  Asger snorted. “I’d find that more amusing if you’d actually answered my question.”

  “I promise to help the captain find the gate.”

  “Without being shifty?”

  “I’m not sure. What if shiftiness is required to get it away from the astroshamans?”

  “It won’t be. You won’t have to do anything. Just point us in the right direction, and we’ll unleash the might of these warships on them.”

  Another knock rang out at the door. Zee moved into position.

  “I don’t think any more people are going to fit into this cabin,” Casmir said.

  “We could go to one of the rec areas.”

  “I’m not allowed out.”

  “Dabrowski,” came Ishii’s cranky voice as the door slid open. “Are you somewhere behind this mass of metal?”

  “That’s an impolite thing to call Zee, especially when I sent you his schematics.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to look at them.”

  “You’ll be much more impressed with him once you know him better.”

  “I’ll bet. Is he going to move?” Ishii’s boots, all that Casmir could see around Zee, shifted impatiently.

  “This man is armed, and I do not believe he is a friend, Casmir Dabrowski.” Zee remained solidly in position, blocking the doorway. “It would be unwise to allow him entrance.”

  “Oh, I’m certain of it, but let him in anyway, please.”

  Despite being a stoic and emotionless crusher, Zee managed to convey grudging acceptance as he stepped aside.

  Ishii wasn’t as tall or broad as Asger, being closer in size to Casmir, so he didn’t have to turn sideways to enter, but the cabin grew even more claustrophobic with three men and Zee inside.

  “What did the interrogation turn up?” Asger asked without preamble.

  “They were in it for the money,” Ishii said. “One of them was a dropout from the flight academy, and he knew enough that he thought he and his buddy could slip away in a shuttle after doing the job. They planned to ditch it somewhere, get paid, and live like kings in another system. They were genius enough to believe fifty thousand crowns would get them that. And that whoever put out the bounty would actually pay them. Idiots.”

  Before Casmir could chime in, a response to his message came in from Bonita.

  El Mago, yes, there’s another bounty on your head. This one wants you dead, not kidnapped and delivered somewhere. Who have you annoyed now? The man who put up the bounty is Prince Dubashi from the Miners’ Union. He’s offering fifty thousand Union dollars for your head, preferably detached from the rest of your body. Sorry to give you this news, but if you decide it’s too dangerous to venture close to System Hydra—the prince makes his home there on a private asteroid in the middle of his fleet of robotic asteroid-mining ships and his claim on the entire Golden Belt—you can come with us to System Cerberus. Qin and I are going to figure out a way to get the Drucker pirates to leave her alone. A robot army would not be unappreciated.

  Casmir sighed, both because someone else wanted him dead and because he couldn’t go help Bonita and Qin. He didn’t want either of them to be hurt, and facing a huge and deadly family of pirates alone sounded like an inevitable road to hurt.

  “It’s fifty thousand Union dollars,” Casmir said. “Not Kingdom crowns.”

  “What?” Ishii asked.

  “I got confirmation from Captain Lopez. A Prince Dubashi put out the bounty.”

  “Prince Dubashi?” Ishii asked. “Why would one of those Miners’ Union money-grubbers want you dead? You’ve never been out of our system, have you?”

  “No.”

  Asger scratched his bearded jaw. “Could it be for the same reason the Black Star terrorists wanted you dead? Did you figure out the reason for that, by the way? I assumed that someone who didn’t want to see the Kingdom expand again worried about history repeating itself.”

  Casmir nodded. “That’s what I inferred fro
m my brief interaction with the leader.”

  Actually, that had been Rache’s interaction. Casmir had been hiding in a crawlspace, other than that brief moment when Bernard had jumped up and tried to throw a grenade at him. Did that qualify as an interaction?

  “History repeating itself?” Ishii looked from Asger to Casmir and back. “What does that mean?”

  Asger extended a hand toward Casmir. “It’s your secret to tell—or not—if you wish.”

  Casmir appreciated the gesture. He would have assumed that Asger and Ishii drank after-hours beer and sake together while sharing gossip. He figured all men in the nobility did that.

  “How long have you known it?” Casmir asked curiously.

  Ishii scowled and folded his arms over his chest.

  “I had suspicions—I think I told you that weeks ago—based on some overheard comments the queen made, but it wasn’t until I mentioned to the princess that you were interested in visiting the seed bank that she confirmed it for me. I hadn’t realized she might be a resource.”

  “Thank you for that,” Casmir said. “For letting her know about my interest. She was the one to give me an access card so I could get in.”

  “To a seed bank?” Ishii asked. “Are you planning to grow some rare heirloom tomatoes this summer?”

  “No.” Casmir thought about telling Ishii about his genes, but he already felt pressure due to the king’s expectations. He wanted to change Ishii’s opinion of him, but not by revealing that he’d been cloned from a three-centuries-past war hero. “I guess I’ll avoid all asteroid miners and wealthy princes in the future. And System Hydra.”

  “And avoid bounty hunters,” Asger said. “And ill-contented privates in the Fleet military who are looking for a way to get rich. Semi-rich. Can you even buy a good air speeder for fifty thousand? I suppose Union dollars are worth more than crowns.”

  Ishii scowled at this change of subject. He was squinting at Casmir, not Asger.

  “Give us a minute, will you, Sir Knight?” Ishii asked.

  Asger hesitated, looking at Casmir and lifting his brows. Asking for permission to leave? Or maybe wondering if Casmir thought he would be safe here alone with Ishii.