1


I understood the nightmare wasn’t real. The uprising on Carson’s World had been settled after an intense six-month battle against Sarkonian trained insurgents and regular military troops—most of which I’d missed after losing my arm on a bridge to Jeppa, a mining center where the unrest had started.
Surviving the physical wounds had been hard enough. Facing what I had done, or more importantly, what I had failed to do, made the days long and lonely. My convalescent time was occupied by regret but also hope, because a tough, well respected lieutenant named Briggs had visited me and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
The sound of the Union artillery hammering the bridge haunted me at night. Worrying about the future tortured me all the godsdamned days.
I knew this wasn’t real because X-37 was with me, and the battle for Jeppa had been before the Reaper Corps. Jeppa had led me—or pushed me—into the program.
“It’s time to wake up,” X-37 advised.
“I can’t let her go,” I argued. “She has two little girls. They need her. We caused this. Jeppa is our fault.”
“My analysis gives her children a very reasonable chance for survival given the dynamics of this situation. Well over twenty-eight percent,” X-37 advised. “Let the woman go. You lack the strength to hold her for much longer and neither of you can survive the fall. Make a decision, Halek Cain.”
Artillery shells screamed down, slamming into the Jeppa side of the bridge. The woman from Jeppa stared at me without saying a word or begging for help. She was just there, seeming unreal and insubstantial.
Like my conscience.
“We are going to emerge from the slip tunnel without you on the bridge, Reaper Cain. Please rouse yourself or I will do it for you,” X-37 demanded.
“Get off my ass, X. I’m up,” I said, rolling out of bed and scanning my surroundings for threats until my brain caught up with my body.
“Very good, Reaper Cain. When you are done being a paranoid slacker, I will send a message to Jelly that you are on the way to the bridge,” X-37 said.
* * *
Emerging from the slip tunnel amazed me and filled me with hope every time. Even when I was being hunted by the most dangerous, most powerful psychopath in the Union.
Given the people I had associated with before getting betrayed and sentenced to death, that was saying a lot. Vice Admiral Nebs wasn’t going to quit until I was dead and all of my friends were captured for some dark Union purpose.
“I’m an asshole, X,” I muttered as I searched the navigation console for the next slip tunnel.
“Are you expecting me to argue?” X-37 asked. “It will take some time for me to gather evidence to contradict that statement. Unless of course you expect me to agree with you. If that’s what you want, I can gather plenty of data in a surprisingly short amount of time. Three or four seconds should be sufficient.”
“I see two slip tunnels within reach,” I said, ignoring my limited artificial intelligence and concentrating on the holographic readout. In Union space, and most of the Deadlands, the entrances to slip tunnels were well documented. Out here, we had to detect them through sensor readings.
X-37 had been with me for most of my adult life, since I’d left Union special operations, dark ops to be specific, and volunteered for the Reaper Corps. I’d been required to make sacrifices and do things that still haunted me.
“You should leave astro-navigation to Jelly and me,” X-37 advised. “If you do the math, the slip tunnel at location Delta-079-000-982 is nearly twenty-four hours farther away than Delta-079-000-979. They are also in different directions from our current location, forcing us to choose now rather than later.”
“Whatever,” I said. Our recent adventures had exhausted me physically and emotionally. I’d been spending far too much time on the bridge, barely allowing Tom to take a shift. He argued that Elise could take a turn. There wasn’t much during this part of the trip that couldn’t be handled by Jelly and only required a human as a safety check, someone to come wake me up if the wings started to come off or we were attacked.
Tom was right. X-37 was right. Everyone was right. This part of our escape was nothing but grinding it out and staying ahead. We should all be training for the next fight and resting as much as possible. But sleep wasn’t my friend.
About a week ago, I had introduced each member of Team Cain to ship-to-ship battle. We were still testing for aptitude, rotating through the assignments. Everyone needed to be multifaceted in the event I was no longer on the ship.
Nebs and his stealth carrier group were never far behind. A small mistake would result in our capture or destruction. Going head to head with squadrons of fighter jocks would get us killed quickly, despite how easy the holo movies made it look. But we would have to fight some— hopefully not much, like for thirty or forty seconds at most if I got to choose.
It was quiet on the bridge now and I enjoyed watching the walls of slip tunnels. The holo view was smaller than on the observation deck, but equally high resolution. There was time to think, which was a good thing and a bad thing for a man who had been the Union’s ultimate assassin and enforcer.
It was hard not to regret some of the decisions I’d made. Youth, pride, and angry frustration at the state of the galaxy had provided me with a false sense of immortality. Believing I could make a difference was perhaps the most disappointing thing I’d ever done. Because that led me to becoming who and what I was.
“Unreasonable moodiness detected,” X-37 said.
“Now you’re just making shit up,” I countered.
“I dare you to prove me wrong,” X-37 said.
“Come on, X, we talked about this. You don’t understand what a dare is or how to use them,” I said.
“On the contrary, I have looked up the word and documented references to it in every known language. It is entirely reasonable that I understand its meaning and historic examples of its usage far better than you could if you dedicated your entire life to it,” X-37 said a bit pompously.
“How long did that take?” I said, suspecting what the answer would be.
“Eight minutes and two seconds, if you want to be exact,” X-37 said.
“And you’re still a dumb machine,” I said, closing out my workstation and sending a query requesting Tom and Elise report to the bridge.
“Are you attempting to hurt my feelings?” X-37 said. “Analysis of your tone and word choice indicates you are an offensive jerk-wad, but I should remind you that I am incapable of feeling emotions.”
“By that logic, there’s no need for me to apologize,” I said.
“And yet you have done that very thing three times since I was installed in your nerve-ware.” X-37 made a sound that was like someone leaving a mic open—one of his quirks I interpreted as an expectant pause, him waiting stubbornly for me to answer.
“Has to be more than three times,” I muttered.
“You are an asshole,” X-37 said like he was diagnosing a personality disorder or reading an instruction manual.
“Did I hurt your feelings, X?” I said, mentally shifting away from a conversation that was going nowhere.
“Of course not. I was merely reminding you of information you need to remember,” X-37 explained.
“Well, good job. Mission accomplished,” I said, stretching the kinks out of my back.
“The mechanic and your protégée are approaching the bridge,” X-37 advised. “I’ve been spying on them through Jelly’s internal surveillance system and they clearly agree with my assessment of your personality.”
“Does Jelly know you’re doing that?” For some reason, the thought of my people talking candidly about my asshole-ishness hurt more than it should.
“She does not. I would appreciate it very much if you didn’t tell her,” X-37 admitted.
The door to the small, cockpit-like bridge opened. Elise and Tom entered looking clean and refreshed.
Elise plopped down into the copilot chair. “I don’t know, Tom. With the Reaper hogging the bridge, I’m starting to enjoy all of my free time.”
She had started calling me Reaper instead of using my name. I wasn’t sure how long it would last, because she had tried several other nicknames during the last week and a half of evading Union stealth carriers.
“I can’t disagree with you, Elise. I’ve completed almost all of my side projects and feel more rested and well fed than I ever have in my life,” Tom said as he reviewed our flight logs. He turned to me. “We should head for the slip tunnel at Delta-079-000-982. We’ve been able to increase our lead slightly with each jump. The ship specs don’t show it, but the Jellybird is slightly faster than these carriers. Our lead will build up over time.”
“And get wasted the first time the Reaper makes one of his stupid mistakes,” Elise said. “Because he is a stubborn jerk who knows everything, apparently.”
I turned my captain’s chair to face them and crossed my arms, staring at them until neither of them looked like they were going to interrupt me with one of their increasingly annoying comments. “I can take a hint. And this bridge is starting to feel like a prison cell. One of you can have it for a while, as long as you keep us headed deeper into the area beyond the Deadlands.
Elise stared back at me, her tough girl act as good as ever. Tom looked worried but didn’t say anything. He’d already made his concerns about heading so far into unknown and uncharted regions of space clear. While there were raw materials aplenty, we didn’t have the ability to process many of them. In his opinion, which he had articulated very reasonably many times, we needed to find an outpost in the Deadlands where we could resupply and refuel without being betrayed to the Union.
I didn’t take the bait. Instead, I watched them without showing any emotion. X-37 had frequently advised me what kind of effect my dead-eyed stare had on most people.
Elise wasn’t just any teenage girl, but a runaway test subject who had survived more dangerous situations than many soldiers faced in a full career. She was average height for a young woman her age and was going through a short hairstyle phase with a lot of spikes and random colors. I thought Path might be having an effect on her fashion standards.
The sword saint was perhaps the oldest member of my associates. He was calm as a warrior monk on the inside and a psychedelic punk rocker on the outside. He had more piercings above the neck and glow strips in his hair than I’d ever seen before encountering him on Roxo III, a tube world station that was probably falling apart by now.
At the moment, it was just me, Elise, and Tom on the cockpit-style bridge of the Jellybird. Tom was infinitely more clean-cut than when we’d first met. He kept a conservative hairstyle and well-pressed jumpsuits normally issued to ship engineers. The only thing unusual today was that he didn’t have his tool belt.
Without any of his normal distractions, he began to fiddle with his hands and look away from me. Elise resisted longer, staring me down like she could do this all day.
When she finally broke, it was with all the teenage theatrics I’d come to expect from the girl.
“Oh, you’re so annoying! None of what I just said even bothered you? Did you learn that in the Reaper school or are you just normally that difficult?” Elise complained.
“For the record, we are in total agreement on the best tactic to escape Nebs and his stealth carriers. If something serious happens, you know I’ll listen to reasonable suggestions,” I said, stretching my arms above my head before letting out a long sigh. Then I dropped my hands abruptly into my lap. “Now that you mention it, I could use some time in the gym and then some sleep.”
“I’d be more than happy to take a shift,” Tom said, like the entire encounter had been preplanned. He took a seat, logged into one of the workstations, and immediately pulled up several view screens and holos that I was familiar with.
“The bridge computer is far more powerful than what I can access in my quarters,” Tom said. “If you have just a moment, I can update you on our progress with retrofitting a stealth cloak to the Jellybird.”
I faced Elise while Tom was getting set up. “Do you think I’m an asshole?”
Elise laughed and it warmed my Reaper heart. “Of course. But you’re our asshole.”
I had no idea what that meant but felt everything was okay between us—as okay as it ever would be.
Elise plopped down in a seat where Tom couldn’t see what she was doing, then rolled her eyes several times and jerked them toward Tom like I was supposed to get some sort of message.
“What?” I mouthed the word quietly.
She nodded her head more insistently toward Tom, then put on her angel face and quiet demeanor when he turned to look at her.
“Are you two up to something?” Tom asked, a half smile on his face, like he almost got the joke but wasn’t quite sure what was going on.
“I think Elise is going through second puberty,” I said.
She grabbed a datapad from one of the workstations and hurled it at me. I caught it easily and set it down.
Tom pulled up the schematics for the ship stealth mode interface and started to explain each detail. Elise pointed under my jacket where I kept the stealth cloak concealed. I knew what she wanted and it had nothing to do with Tom’s discussion. The stealth cloak and the stealth mode of the ship were totally different technology.
She was up to no good, hatching pranks and plots to keep life on the ship interesting. Because it could get pretty dull traveling slip tunnel after slip tunnel.
I drew my hand horizontally through the air and mouthed the word, Enough.
Elise crossed her arms and sat back like only a teenager could.
Tom continued to talk, noticing none of the interplay. “Henshaw’s design is surprisingly simple despite its brilliance,” he said. “Even so, I’m just a mechanical engineer with a reading habit and the compulsion to tinker with things. Look here. This graph you’re seeing right here displays the probability of success on a first trial.”
I watched the holo and listened carefully. Tom was a lot smarter than he would admit.
“That doesn’t look promising,” I observed.
He shrugged awkwardly. “But there is a chance. When we first started experimenting with this, it seemed impossible with what we had to work with. I’m telling you, the man is truly brilliant. When this goes live, it will be one-of-a-kind. Like I said, his design is complex in its simplicity.”
“Great,” I said.
“You don’t understand,” Tom said emphatically. “The more unique it is, the less likely the Union will be able to figure it out. They won’t be able to see through it.”
“Now that’s something we can use,” I said.
Tom almost blushed at the praise. “Well, that’s if we can get it online. Go on, get out of here. I’ve got the bridge. I can just review some notes and make a few sketches while Jelly does most of the hard work navigating the ship.”
I patted Tom on the shoulder as I stood to head for the door. “Let me know if you need me.”
Elise fell in beside me, swaggering with her usual overconfidence. The moment the door closed behind us, she spun to confront me, laughing as she pointed a finger and leaned forward slightly. “You chickened out. I thought you were going to do the prank.”
“Whatever,” I said waving her comments away.
“I would’ve thought a Reaper could pull off something like this easily,” she said. “Maybe you’re scared to fail, afraid to look like a dummy.”
“Yeah, that’s it. Terrifying. Absolutely shaking in my boots that have left more bloody footprints than you can count,” I said, holding forward my right hand, which was as level as any sniper could want in such an appendage. My cybernetic left hand was an even steadier shooting platform.
“I still say you wimped out.” She walked slightly ahead of me, something she did often when she didn’t think I could keep up with her. “If we’re going to train, let’s train.”
I didn’t respond to her comments. She’d see what it was like when I pulled the prank.