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Chapter 28


“Courage springs more from clear thinking than any other human quality.”


Devlin Sinclair-Maru, Integrity Mirror


Che Ramos slumped onto his rack, thoroughly spent. In the last twelve hours he had endured some of the most extreme experiences of his life, including several seconds on a darkened bridge when he honestly thought that he was dead. If that was not enough, he had shamed himself in front of the very peer group that he struggled to join. His mind strayed to that warm moment of redemption, when the captain had commended him.… The captain. The traitor.

The traitor?

Che’s heart plummeted again, just as it had done a dozen times before, over the last days of Tanager’s work up. For the hundredth time, Che wrestled through the implacable logic that trapped him on a path that he could not bear.

After serving so closely with Saef Sinclair-Maru for so many shifts, Che’s impression of the captain only strengthened. The captain simply could not be a traitor…and it just did not matter. Che had less than twelve hours to get the evil little box into the captain’s cabin or he, Che Ramos, would be the traitor. The very idea of the twenty-thousand-credit reward nauseated him now.

Che covered his face with both hands, glad that his cabinmate worked the dogwatch, leaving him to his private sorrow. Che had already worked out exactly how to get the package into the captain’s cabin. He’d even rehearsed the steps a number of times, but here he lay with hours remaining to do as he was commanded. In the constant loop of his tortured thoughts, Che knew he waited for some salvation that would never arrive, and yet he remained, immobile. As he felt the curtain of depressed slumber falling, Che welcomed oblivion, but even in sleep the torture continued.…

Che jerked awake, startled by a voice that may have been his own, pleading with dream images of Imperial agents. He quickly ensured that his cabinmate was still absent, then laid back on his sweaty bunk and watched the seconds tick down in his new UI implant. He could delay no longer.

“I’ve got to do it,” Che whispered to himself. “I’ve got no choice. G-got no choice.” He rolled out of his rack in a burst of desperate decisiveness, and grabbed the hideous little rectangle. With a shaking hand he wrapped the box with a towel. He checked the time…just a few minutes to his window of opportunity.

“Damn it all,” he whispered to himself. “Why me?” He had no answer, so he triggered the door and walked down the passage. Only one crewperson passed him on his path. Che nodded in a way that was meant to convey nonchalance, but it felt jerky, and sweat dripped into his eye. The crewperson walked on by and Che continued. There was the captain’s cabin just ahead.

Che slowed his pace, dragging steps, slower and slower. Would the ship Intelligence cry foul the moment that he set foot in the captain’s cabin? Surely not. Not if Che took nothing and left nothing…left nothing visible to the ship Intelligence.

Che felt conspicuous as hell, standing almost stationary in the passage, but just as he was about to turn away, the door to the captain’s cabin opened to allow the deck-scrubbing dumb-mech to exit, as always. Che sprang forward, the concealed package in his hand. He hopped over the dumb-mech, into the captain’s cabin, and halted with a lurch.

Saef and Inga sat comfortably waiting in the captain’s chairs. Che dimly noted that Inga Maru had no food visibly in-hand, for once, but her face wore an eager sort of grin. Her hands remained out of sight beneath her cloak. The cabin door closed behind Che.

Numb, head swirling, Che said, “You—you aren’t supposed to be here. The dumb-mech…”

“Sit down, Mister Ramos,” Saef said, “and show us what you have in your hand there.”

In a daze, Che sank into the last chair and pulled the towel free from the flat, gray rectangle. He placed it on the table.

“What is that, Ramos?” Saef said, his voice mild.

Che shook his head. “I don’t know.” Che’s mind kept returning to the fact that the captain’s cabin was supposed to be empty. The deck-cleaning mech would only scrub an empty cabin, and every time Che checked, every single watch, the dumb-mech shuffled out and Che had snatched a glimpse of an empty cabin.

“Loki?” Saef said, looking up slightly.

“My sensors only perceive the shadow of an object, Captain, nothing more,” Loki vocalized.

“They s-said the ship Intelligence wouldn’t see it,” Che mumbled absently. Saef and Inga both focused intently upon Che, and he wilted in place.

“Who said?” Saef asked.

“The…the Imperial Security agents.”

“What did they look like, Ramos?” Saef asked in an even tone.

“I-I don’t know… Big.”

“Was one of them female? Blond? Pretty?” Inga Maru asked.

“What?” Che said. “N-no. They were big, big guys.”

“Heavyworlders?” Saef asked.

“Well, yes,” Che said. He wasn’t one of those Coreworld bigots who looked down on heavyworlders like they were some kind of subspecies. “They said you’re a rebel, a traitor,” Che added, then instantly regretted saying it. If Captain Sinclair-Maru was a traitor, Che might be in even more trouble than he thought.

“Oh?” Saef said. “And what do you think?”

Che fidgeted uncomfortably. “Told them it didn’t make any sense. T-told them.”

“To whom do you report on board Tanager?” Inga Maru asked.

Che looked up, confused. “What? Report?”

“Okay, Ramos,” Saef said in a bland voice, “what exactly did they instruct you to do?”

Che looked from Saef to Inga, swallowed. “Um, they…they said that I had to get this thing into your cabin before we transitioned. They said that if I failed, then I—I was the traitor.”

“And if you succeeded?” Inga said.

Che blushed. “They…they said I would be rewarded,” he said in a small voice.

“How delightful,” Inga said, her smile widening. “What sort of reward are we talking here?”

“Twenty thousand.” Che refused to look up.

“Twenty thousand,” Inga repeated. “That doesn’t seem very generous, especially when failure means you get kicked out an airlock.”

Che gasped involuntarily and looked up at Inga and Saef. “I—I…” Che felt the cabin spinning. How could this happen to him? Why had he ever abandoned the safe life of a demi-cit?

“We need to figure out what this device of yours does,” Saef said, ignoring Che in his distress.

“Get Amos Cray to analyze it, perhaps?” Inga said.

“I would rather not,” Saef said. “I want to keep this as tight as possible. We may try some sort of optical scope. It appears to have some small openings on one side that we could access.”

“But if Loki can’t even see what we access, where does that leave us?”

Che listened miserably to their exchange, wishing he were back in his tidy little demi-cit pod. It really hadn’t been bad. He had friends, and that girl, music, and his demi-cit ration of four daily ounces of low-proof alcohol. After school hours they would sometimes get together for a little party. No matter how Che described school, his plans or even just the joy he found in mastering the emerging world of micros, his friends never understood why he would leave the pods for the frightening, dangerous world of the Vested Citizen and Fleet.

Che shook his head, the voices of the captain and Chief Maru fading into a blur as he remembered. His friends had been right, Che never had fit in to this new world, never belonged. He had been a pawn for everyone, pretending to be something that he was not.

Still…there had been moments, seated at his place on the bridge of a Fleet warship where he couldn’t believe his fortune. Although the sensors of this old starship could not compare with the sensor suite on the latest micros…

Che looked up suddenly. “I can figure out what this thing is…I—I think,” he said, interrupting the conversation between Inga and Saef.

“It speaks,” Inga said.

“Really, Ramos?” the captain said.

“Y-yes, if anyone can. Micros. I can get in that with micros. See what it does.”

Saef stared directly into Che’s eyes, and Che held the gaze, almost defiant. “Very well, Ramos,” Saef said. “You get your shot at redemption.”

“So, no airlock ride, then?” Inga said.

“Do restrain yourself, Maru,” Saef said. “Mister Ramos will be so helpful now.”


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