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Chapter 15


“All weapons merely extend, focus, or deliver energy.”


Devlin Sinclair-Maru, Integrity Mirror


Che Ramos made his way through the bustling expanse of the Strand, Fleet’s grand orbital facility, a bit farther out from Coreworld. It was the farthest Che had ever traveled, and he felt simultaneously exhilarated and terrified.

The Fleet uniform felt like a disguise, as if he was an impostor, despite the fact that he had aced every exam and qualification. In less than ten days Che had become a Vested Citizen and a Fleet rating, but in his mind he remained a carefree demi-cit student. Nearly being hacked apart in a duel his first hours of citizenry had underlined the point that he had entered a new universe of risky opportunities.

Even as he thought of how close he had come to the point of a sword, Che broke out in a sweat, and that made the fresh implant scar behind his ear itch. He needed a safe harbor while he learned to think and act like a citizen. He also needed income to begin paying down the debt of his new implant, on his first leg of the big plan for his life. That is why he now made his way through the crowd of ratings, officers, Marines, and techs, on his way to the ship, Tanager. He knew it measured almost a hundred thousand cubic meters (or thirty-five hundred Imperial tons, if he used the Fleet jargon), which sounded impressive until he compared it to nearly every other Fleet combat vessel. But it wasn’t the vessel itself that drew Che.

Only one citizen had shown an ounce of kindness toward Che thus far, and that citizen happened to be the new captain of Tanager. Captain Sinclair-Maru appeared to need a rating with Che’s particular skills, and Che was grimly determined to join Tanager’s crew.

Che walked past Tanager’s aft airlock, which stood open, jammed with frenetic activity in and out of the small frigate’s holds. The forward airlock also opened onto the Strand’s companionway, and featured a singular Marine sentry.

“Uh, hello,” Che looked at the Marine’s rank insignia, “uh, Corporal. I’m here—”

“Crewing through here,” the Marine interrupted, jerking a thumb.

“Okay,” Che said, moving hesitantly past the Marine. “Thanks.”

The drab, worn interior of Tanager came as a surprise to Che. He had read up on Captain Sinclair-Maru, and he knew that the Family held a warlike reputation for more reasons than mere dueling. Devlin and Mia Sinclair-Maru’s attack on the forces assaulting Emperor Yung III back in the late 5600s was in all the history texts. Then, Saef capturing the command test record title represented quite the plum. Other forebears of the Sinclair-Maru clan had similarly distinguished themselves in the service to the early Yung Dynasty.

But to Che’s untrained eye—and nose—Tanager seemed like a poor example of the Emperor’s favor.

Just inside the airlock, an antechamber opened, revealing the captain seated behind a narrow desk, that odd blond chief close beside, leaning against the bulkhead, munching a fruit.

Che just remembered to stand up straight before he began speaking. “Captain, y-you may remember me…”

“Certainly,” the captain said, his face wearing only an expression of mild interest…maybe merely polite interest. “I recall you, Ramos, near the Ribbon throughway getting yourself into a jam, as I recall.”

“Well, yes sir,” Che said, feeling more foolish by the moment. “That would be me, I’m afraid.” Che took a nervous breath. “You see, I’m in Fleet now.”

“So you are,” the captain replied blandly.

“I’m looking for a ship…and I wondered…”

“Micro-unit operator?” the blond chief suddenly inquired as her eyes apparently flicked over his Fleet CV.

“Uh, yes, Chief,” Che replied. “That’s my specialty, with training in the latest cumulative and fractional Intelligence programming and oper—”

“Top of your class, I see,” the chief said.

Che’s chest swelled a little at the recognition. “Yes, I—”

“But fresh out of school. No ship experience at all.”

“That’s true, but—”

“We don’t need a programmer for micros, Spec,” the chief said, and Che’s heart crashed down. Ten years he had worked toward this moment, and this might be his only chance to crew a fighting vessel. The captain had seemed almost companionable when he rescued Che from those two young hotheads down by the Ribbon. Maybe…

“Do these micros of yours provide full sensor feeds?” the captain asked out of nowhere, but Che leaped at the thread of hope.

“The most advanced suites provide sensor outputs a starship can’t match, Captain, and with—”

“And you personally interpret the sensor feeds?” the captain interrupted.

“What? W-well, yes, I do, or I program a—”

“Sign him,” Saef said, and Che’s breath gusted out of his lungs.

The slender blond chief paused in her chewing and shot a look at the captain that might have been a line-of-sight message. “He’s not rated, if you think you can fill a hole in the bridge crew.”

The captain shook his head, then looked up slightly and said, “Loki, do Fleet regs allow me to rate a specialist for my bridge crew during a wartime cruise?”

“Yes, Captain,” the ship Intelligence replied.

The captain raised his eyebrows, looking toward the blond chief. “Why?” she asked.

“He’s not likely to stick a knife in my ribs.”

Che thought this was a joke of some kind, and chuckled uneasily, but they ignored him, sharing a long look between them.

“How much would a reasonable selection of micros cost, Ramos?” the captain suddenly asked.

Che blinked, trying to organize his thoughts in some discernible order. “Cost? Well, Captain, they’ve really come down in price lately. I’d say maybe ten thousand for a basic selection plus another five thousand for the—”

“So fifteen?” the captain summarized.

“Y-yes, Captain, thereabouts,” Che stammered.

The captain looked at the chief again and said, “Sign him. Buy his micros, and get him training on our sensor suite.”

The chief shrugged, tossing the core of her fruit into the waste chute, but she said, “Very well.” Then to Che: “Can you get your effects here in less than twelve hours?”

“Yes, Chief,” Che said, his head spinning with the unreality of it all.

“Good. I see you’ve had your implants for only a couple of days. You up to pushing the specs on your micros to me?”

“Yes, Chief,” Che said, blushing. “It’s really not that different from the HUD lenses.”

“Excellent,” she said, and her mouth spread into a broad smile that was somehow quite unnerving. “The ship Intelligence, Loki, will show you to your quarters. Get moving.”

“Y-yes, Chief,” Che stammered, then paused. “Thank you, Captain. You won’t regret it.”

“I certainly hope not, Ramos.” The captain nodded in a friendly manner, already moving on to other business, but Che’s whole body felt suffused with joy.

He walked out into the companionway, barely seeing the drabness of his surroundings as the ship Intelligence directed him aft. Beyond the waist iris, he found the deck swirling with workers and mechs, hurriedly refitting various compartments, but the crew berths remained a pocket of near quiet.

Four shift-bunks opened from the walls of the cabin, but only one of the four appeared to belong to anyone, so Che selected another and lit the vidscreen with his ident, feeling yet another bump in his euphoria.

This warmth faded somewhat when the ship Intelligence interrupted his reverie a moment later. “You don’t happen to have any parasites infesting your body, do you?” Loki asked.

“No!” Che spluttered.

“Oh. Very well,” Loki replied, and Che would have sworn the synthetic voice sounded disappointed.

diamonds

Che’s high spirits continued through the day, as he fetched his scant possessions from the Strand’s crew dormitory, where he had resided only one night, and headed back toward Tanager. This intention proved difficult to fulfill, when an iron hand clamped onto his arm, and a deep voice growled in his ear, “Che Ramos? Imperial Security. Come with us.”

Three tough-looking heavyworlders confronted Che, all wearing civilian clothing. His mind felt jammed with all the lessons of citizenship he recently underwent. What am I supposed to say? To do? But he had little choice in complying as they practically dragged him to a door that appeared to be a maintenance access hatch.

Inside, the small, poorly lighted room barely accommodated all four of their bodies and Che’s luggage.

“What did I do?” Che gabbled. “I-I…”

“You just signed with Tanager, right?” one man demanded.

“What? I—yes,” Che said, clutching his small case fearfully.

“Did you know that Tanager’s captain is actually a rebel spy?”

“A spy?” Che repeated in a much higher voice, his daylong ebullience instantly evaporating as his dream seemed to collapse. Then he saw Captain Sinclair-Maru in his mind’s eye. “A spy?” he said in a much different voice. “I-I really doubt it.”

Che observed the growing glares on the three faces surrounding him, and continued nervously, “You m-mean Captain Sinclair-Maru? Right?”

“Yes, we mean him,” one of the three said in clipped, angry-sounding tones. “You’ve been a citizen for just a hot second. What would you know about him?”

“Well…nothing much, really, I guess,” Che said, nervously looking from one angry face to the next. “So, uh, why—why’re you talking to me, then? Captain Sinclair-Maru is on his ship. Just go arrest him.”

“We’ll do the thinking, smart guy,” one of them said. “What you need to be thinking about is your future.”

“That’s right, then,” another chimed in. “Your future, mate. It’s looking uncertain just now.”

“My future?” Che asked, feeling an increasing sense of dread.

“Your future,” the first one said. “You just pop out of your school and right into a cozy spot on a warship working for a rebel agent. It’s not looking so good, you see?”

“Makes us wonder if you was a rebel the whole time, see?” the second said.

“Is part of plan, no?” the third one said, speaking for the first time and rather ruining the effect with a jolly-sounding voice and a thick accent of some kind.

The other two frowned disapprovingly at the third heavyworlder, who slumped slightly, deflated.

“Plan?” Che questioned in a voice that sounded squeaky and suspicious to his own ears. “No, no, no,” he chuckled with a high, artificial-sounding bray that he despised. “I’m just a, uh, loyal citizen, trying to serve as best I—”

“Serve,” one of the three interrupted. “That’s what you’re going to do, chappy. You’re going to serve the Emperor, see?”

“Be serving, yes!” the third heavyworlder said, then looked at his companions for approval, only to be frowned down again.

“How—how can I…what can I do?” Che asked.

“Nothing so hard as all that,” the first one said. “So you can leave off with all the shaking. It’s a bit of nothing for a smart chappy like you.”

Che internally bristled at the suggestion that he was shaking. It was merely a slight, nervous quiver.

“You, mate, are going to put this,” the second one held up a small, gray box, “in the captain’s cabin.”

“That’s all, mate,” the second one said. “That’s all you’ve got to do.”

Che stared the small gray rectangle. “In the captain’s…? Wh-what is it?”

The first one stared at Che, his expression hardening. “It doesn’t matter what it is, you see? Either do as you’re told and be rewarded, or don’t do as you’re told and we’ll know you’re a spy.”

Che’s mind clutched onto a bit of attractive mental flotsam. “Rewarded?”

“Twenty thousand in your hand when your cruise ends…if you’ve done as you’re told.”

Twenty thousand! Nearly two years’ pay?

“And you know what’ll happen if you’re a spy, eh, mate?”

“Y-yes,” Che said, not entirely sure if spies were executed, mind-pressed, or simply imprisoned. Whatever the fate of a spy, he knew that twenty thousand credits was a much better choice.

Then he thought of what they actually wanted him to do. His gaze fell back upon the strange little box. “The sh-ship Intelligence…it—it will see this.”

“Now you’re thinking, eh?” the first one said, then smiled grimly to his two companions. “He’s thinking. He’s a regular thought-merchant.” He turned his smile back on Che. “No, this bit is special, see? The old ship geist, it can’t see it.”

“How…how can I get that into the captain’s cabin?”

All three of the heavyworlders stared at him for a moment before the first one replied. “That’s the trick, isn’t it? But you got twenty thousand reasons to figure a way. Get to figurin’, then.”

They all three smiled at Che. Che did not smile back.

* * *

Less than an hour later, Che strolled through the airlock, scant luggage in hand, the strange box nestled like a viper among his spare uniforms. He waited for some alarm to blare, or the ship Intelligence of Tanager to call him out, but nothing happened.

Workers continued bustling about the aft compartments of Tanager while the voice of Loki seemed omnipresent, directing techs as they appeared to assemble some kind of hydroponic system in one compartment, while it barked directions to cargo workers filling the hold with stores.

Che passed through the tumult and entered his quarters. When the door closed, he felt the biting contrast with his earlier visit to the same room—back when he rode high on waves of ebullience…and gratitude.

But the captain is an enemy spy! That made Che’s betrayal of trust something else entirely, didn’t it? Just because Captain Sinclair-Maru extended a little kindness to him didn’t mean that Che owed some huge debt. He shook his head, contrasting the somber but kindly image of the captain with the three Imperial security agents. It just served as an example of how deceiving appearances could be.…

He was doing the right thing…surely.

Che kept telling himself that as he stowed his possessions, including the vile gray box, within his appointed lockers. Every time his mind touched upon the image of twenty thousand credits, the immediate flush of pleasure and avarice disappeared beneath a wave of inner arguments. The money only served as a lovely bonus for doing his duty to the Emperor. That’s all…

Che had just about gathered sufficient fortitude to venture out of the cabin when the voice of Loki startled him half to death.

“Specialist Ramos, you’re quite certain that you have no parasites upon your person?”

“N-no!” Che replied, blushing at the question, and his fright.

“You’re sure? They’re a tiny arthropod, quite difficult for humans to detect.”

“No, I tell you!” Che thundered righteously.

Just because I was a lowly demi-cit days ago…!

After a pause Loki spoke again in what seemed a different, almost sly tone, “Specialist Ramos, we are still hours from launch, and within a short walk from this ship I understand there are open-minded, albeit somewhat unhygienic, persons available for sexual congress.…


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