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  “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.”