Renegade (24 page)

In the adjoining room, Petty Officer Lawrence was slumped on one of the wall chairs. Spacer Doraga was in Medbay with the seriously injured marines, with Doc Suelo cursing Private Carville for giving him another patient to care for. Some were suggesting that Suelo should direct resources elsewhere. The interrogator was Jokono, one of Lisbeth’s four security guys. Jokono had been a high level police inspector before joining the personal Debogande security team for a significant pay raise. Interrogation, he’d said, was something of a speciality. Kaspowitz and Shahaim were also here, first-shift having been delayed while second ran overtime.

Trace entered, sweaty in light under-armour shirt, and peered at the screen. “I leave you guys for just a few hours,” she said mildly. Kaspowitz smiled. Erik didn’t. Trace peered at his arm. “Oh nasty,” she deadpanned.

“Up yours,” Erik told her, eyes not leaving the screen.

“He said anything yet?” Nodding at the screen.

“It’s him, Doraga and Cho,” Shahaim said grimly. “Cho set up Carville, there was a bottle of pretty rare whisky he’s been after for weeks. Got his attention for five seconds, they grabbed the LC into a side room, would have knifed him. But the LC’s pretty strong, and they weren’t that good.”

“I’ve had a word with Benji,” said Trace.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” said Kaspowitz. “He’s a good kid.”

“He’s a marine,” said Trace. “He fucked up, and he’ll take his lumps like the rest of us, good kid or not. What’s the connection between these guys?”

“Just friends,” said Shahaim. “Haven’t been on the ship too long, two years max.” She paused. “One of their friends is Dufresne.”

“Hmm.” Trace looked down at Erik, expecting a comment from him. Erik said nothing, staring at the screen as Jokono pressed a line of questions, patient and repetitive. “Are we going to haul in our second-shift co-pilot for questions?”

Again Erik said nothing, grimacing slightly as Rashni’s staples stung. “Short of pilots as it is,” Shahaim muttered. “I don’t think we can. Can’t have bad morale on the bridge.”

“Can’t have disloyal pricks sitting Helm either,” said Karle. He and Dufresne didn’t get along.

Trace squatted at Erik’s side to get a better look at the screen from his angle. An uplink connection opened. Erik blinked on it. “
Hey,”
said Trace’s voice in his ear. “
Look at me.”
He did so. Her dark eyes were intense, with none of the business-as-usual previously in her voice. She stared hard. “
You start feeling sorry for yourself, and I will personally smack you black and blue. Do you hear me?
”

Erik felt a wave of hatred. He deserved better than this. He’d nearly been killed, and here was this blasted woman again, sticking in this knife of her own just when he was most vulnerable. Some supporting friend she was. He glared at her.

“
Good,
” she said. “
Hate me, hate them, hate something. Just don’t you dare curl up into a ball like a child. This whole ship is depending on you, so get your shit together.”

L
isbeth awoke
to find her uplink gave her 0812. And came fully awake with a gasp — she was late! The main-ship and the bridge were both running two shifts now, and first-shift started at 0600! She’d set her uplink alarm herself, how could she have slept nearly three hours past it?

She detached the bed net and climbed from the lower bunk, still in her clothes as all spacers slept, never knowing when they’d need to move. Boots, where were her boots? The under-bunk locker, of course. She unlatched and pulled it out, finding boots alongside her little bag of toiletries that was all she had on this ship, besides her few clothes in the ‘closet’.

When she had them laced, she stood… and saw for the first time that Major Thakur was here, on the top bunk, apparently asleep. “Lisbeth?” Still her eyes were closed. She’d been over on the rock all ‘night’, she had to be exhausted.

“Um yes?” Should she call her ‘Major’? That didn’t seem right, she was a civilian. Calling everyone by their ranks was a military thing.

“Three of the crew tried to kill Erik a bit over two hours ago. We’ve caught them, your security man Jokono is helping with the interrogation.”

Lisbeth stared at her, heart thudding in panic. The Major’s eyes opened, half-lidded, head on the pillows. Watching her calmly. It was a test, Lisbeth realised past the fear. Everything was a test, with this woman, on this ship. The Major was here catching a nap, surely everything was being dealt with.

Lisbeth took a deep breath. “He’s okay, right?”

“He has a cut on his forearm. He needed a few stitches. I think he’s a bit shaken, but that’s understandable.” This from the woman who’d just led two platoons of marines through a hacksaw ambush, and personally shot their queen. And was now discussing the attempted assassination of her ship’s last remaining commander as though she were listing groceries to be bought.

“So, what? Do we just expect the entire crew to rise up in mutiny now?” Lisbeth couldn’t quite keep the tremble from her voice.

“My marines have all the guns,” Thakur replied. And let that hang there, to be considered. Lisbeth nodded, doing that. And put a hand on the Major’s bunk to steady herself, recalling that she shouldn’t be standing unsecured anyway. Though they’d slowed down a lot to make this rock, and debris impacts were no longer such a threat.

“Yes,” said Lisbeth. Took a deep breath. “Sure. Great. Because that’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it?” With some accusation. She wasn’t sure who she was angry at. There was nothing the Major could do about it.

“Yes,” said Thakur. “Sadly, in this galaxy, who has the most guns determines everything. Why didn’t you tell me your security people were so good?”

Lisbeth blinked. “I don’t recall you asking.”

“My oversight. Jokono’s exceptional.”

“He was Chief of Investigations on two major trading stations. But you know, my family pays very good money, we recruit the best. I would have just brought my regular bodyguards to the shuttle, which means Carla and Vijay, but Jokono’s chief of household security and insisted he come along with Hiro.”

“Carla and Vijay are marines?”

“Ex-marines yes.”

A faint smile from Thakur. “No such thing. I could use some replacements. If you could talk to them and see what they want to do, I’d appreciate it.”

Lisbeth nodded slowly. “Carla’s got a husband back on Homeworld, so… I dunno.” Thakur nodded calmly. “Vijay’s always up for a fight though. He’s family, he’s been with us for ages. And the last is Hiroshi. He was United Intelligence.”

Thakur raised her eyebrows. “Which division?”

Lisbeth smiled faintly. “He doesn’t say. And we don’t ask. His skillset’s a bit scary, so you can guess.”

“I’ve made arrangements for all four of them to take two spare rooms just up this bulkhead ring. Spacer section, but fifteen seconds’ sprint away. They were back near Engineering before.”

Lisbeth nodded. “Good. That’s… that’s a good idea.”

“You’re going down to Engineering?” Lisbeth nodded again. “Good.” Thakur closed her eyes again. “Tell Rooke to get his ass moving. I want to get away from this rock and out of this fucking system. And Lisbeth, when you head down to Engineering? Stay in back-quarter, on the marine side of the ship, okay?”

No sooner had Lisbeth left the Major’s quarters and turned aft, she found Hiroshi at her side. “Oh hey Hiro,” she said, pleased to see him. “I haven’t seen you, what’s been up?”

“That was our fault,” Hiroshi Uno said grimly. He was not a tall man, barely taller than Lisbeth. Asian features, he said the name dated back to someplace from old Earth called ‘Japan’… Lisbeth didn’t know much about it, Homeworld wasn’t the place for old Earth ‘remnants’, as such folks were sometimes called, who still clung to long-dead identities. “We kept asking after you, but they put us down the other end of the ship and told us to shut up and do what we were told. And we were a bit intimidated, and we didn’t press it.”

“You?” Lisbeth was astonished, and a bit amused. “Intimidated?”

“Well, maybe nothing intimidates the great and mighty Lisbeth…” Lisbeth snorted. “But the rest of us have grown up on tales of
Phoenix
. Jokono’s run entire security divisions, but to him a
Phoenix
Lieutenant is god. Our mistake, this ship’s a mess.”

“Not on this side it isn’t,” said Lisbeth as they passed the mess, marines fresh from armour rotation carrying food back to quarters or elsewhere. One of the men gave her a little salute and a thumbs up in passing — a tough-looking guy with ripped muscle, tattoos and scars, but that only made her feel safer. Lisbeth smiled at him.

“Yeah, this is the side of the ship to be on,” Hiro admitted. “
Phoenix
might be a letdown, but Major Thakur’s just as advertised. You bunking with her… well, we figured we couldn’t make you any safer.”

“The Major said she needs replacements.”

Hiro nodded. “Vijay yes, Carla maybe.”

“That’s what I told her.”

“We’re still technically employed by your mother. The contract fineprint says ‘all contingencies’, no matter how dangerous or crazy. It basically says we have to die for you if it comes to it.”

Lisbeth blinked at him, sidestepping some traffic. “It’s not put
exactly
like that, is it?”

“No, but it means the same. I’m in. I didn’t take up this line of work to be safe and comfortable, and I knew what I was signing when I signed it.”

“Well Hiro,” said Lisbeth, “it seems to me that we’re stepping very close to that state secrets stuff that you never talk about. Plots at the highest level of Fleet and Spacer Congress. Wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Hiro looked uncomfortable. “I’ll think about it.”

“Think hard. I know you swore an oath, but so did they, to protect and look out for their own people. They broke it first.”

A bulkhead marked the beginning of Assembly, where the ship framework opened up, and walls and ceilings disappeared. They were replaced by gantries, armour racks, mobile cranes and acceleration nets. Marines climbed and swung, locking armour into vertical racks, operating armoury feeds, performing adjustments. The place smelled of grease, hot metal, sweat and faint, acrid smoke. Shouts echoed, equipment and chain-feeds rattled, and armour whined and crashed, while the deep bass thrum of ventilation fans tried to keep the stale air moving.

Lisbeth stared in amazement. Marines really did live in another world from spacers — she couldn’t see a single non-marine present. And no techs either, as marines did all their own tech-work on suits and weapons. So much for the dumb-and-violent stereotype, Lisbeth had looked over the schematics on marine armour before and it wasn’t simple stuff. But marines seemed to like being underestimated for their brains.

“When you want to move around the ship?” Hiro said to her. “Always come through back-quarter. And always make sure you tell one of us first.”

“I’m not going to fit in real well if I have a bodyguard following me constantly.”

“Well no,” said Hiro. “What’s your point?”

On the way into Engineering she saw an uplink feed showing that a lot of people were gathered in a deck 2 storage room. She climbed a ladder to get there, and found Ensign Hale amid vertical storage racks that slotted into floor and ceiling. Two others were helping her with sorting several large storage boxes of very alien bits and pieces. And Lisbeth took a sharp breath — these were hacksaw parts.

She came over and stared. Quite a few of the parts had bullet holes or shrapnel gashes, courtesy of
Phoenix
marines. Hale saw her. “Hey Lisbeth, wanna give us a hand? Processors in A and B racks, weapons in C and D, everything else in E and F.”

“Um sure. Hey, is this safe? I mean…?”

“Will they come alive in second-shift and eat us? I sure hope not.” Lisbeth liked Remy Hale — she was short, pretty and easy-going. And she was a good friend of Erik’s, from when Erik had been third-shift commander. Erik had mentioned her to Lisbeth before, at various times, in his messages home. “We’ve scanned everything for residual power sources, removed everything latent. The thing with machines, they don’t work without power.”

“What about microwave, radiated and non-linear transmission?”

Hale smiled, hefting a large torso-part out of the box with a clank and rattle, and carrying it to the racks. “Those too, scanned and ruled out.” She dumped the part into the storage net. “Face it kid, these things are dead.”

Lisbeth pulled several dead steel limbs aside, and stared down on a big head-unit the size of her chest. A single dead sensor eye, multi-phase and obviously densely constructed of some advanced, photo-voltaic structure… all exposed thanks to the multiple bullet holes straight through the middle. Additional sensor add-ons around the lens. Oversized and far too vulnerable for a hacksaw drone. This was the queen that Major Thakur had shot.

“Incredible,” she murmured. “This thing could have seen the Fathers. So old.”

“Sure, unless it was made yesterday,” said Remy. “No telling with hacksaws. Heard a story about a tech on
UFS Farsight
? Ten years back, he recycled some converters from dead hacksaws in an emergency, increased subsystems efficiency by a thousand percent until it melted. If we get desperate, might get useful.”

Lisbeth stared down at the old, dead queen. And had to remind herself that it wasn’t sad that this frightening, majestic creature had ended up here in a box of parts in a
Phoenix
storage room. This thing had killed seventeen marines, and had been the mortal enemy of all flesh-and-blood lifeforms for nearly fifty thousand years. Given the chance, its kind would rise up again and exterminate the lot of them, human, chah'nas, tavalai and all.

She repressed a shiver, and got to work.