11


The bridge to Jeppa was empty when I finally went to sleep, which somehow made the nightmare worse. All I could hear was the occasional gust of wind and the creaking of the support beams that hung toward the river far below.
No artillery. No orders from Captain Clark. Not a single plea for help from the woman.
My mouth tasted like bad whiskey. Jeppa smelled like a two-day-old cigar despite the gusts of wind whipping past my ears.
* * *
I slipped out of my bunk the moment I woke up. Moving as quietly and quickly as possible, I dropped low and crossed to the other side of the dark room. Kneeling on one knee with the other foot slightly forward, I could’ve been a sniper scanning the night.
But this was only my room and there were no enemies. “X, how’s my resting heart rate?”
Getting out of bed like this was an immediate action drill that I didn’t think about. I’d used the routine on several missions. It kept me alive. I’d been places where it was never too early in the day to start fighting for survival. The nice thing about my cabin on the Jellybird was that no one was here to judge me.
So what if I came out of bed ready for a fight to the death? I wasn’t paranoid or burdened with post-traumatic stress. I was all right.
I was alert and ready to throw down, but that didn’t mean I felt full of youthful energy and excitement. It took effort to control my breathing while X-37 evaluated my biometrics.
“Good news, Reaper Cain, you’re still alive,” X-37 said.
“Did I upgrade you with smartass software? Never mind. What’s the status of the crew?” I asked.
“Elise and Path are warming up for a sparring session with practice swords,” X-37 said. “Tom is reading historical fiction out loud to Jelly on the bridge.”
“Fantastic,” I said, then took a quick shower. Minutes later, I was dressed, ready for anything, and on my way to the bridge.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the training room?” X-37 asked. “It looks like Elise and Path are beginning to train in earnest. You might want to be there to keep them from hurting each other.”
“They’ll survive,” I said.
“What is the basis of that conclusion?” X-37 asked. “They are hitting each other with carbon fiber practice swords. My analysis of the speed of the strikes, combined with the mass of the weapons—as slight as they are—suggests a significant amount of force transfer that is likely to result in serious injuries of both participants.”
“I’ll watch from the bridge. I need to contact Henshaw and set up our hide and seek match. He claims the stealth cloak is ready for a trial,” I said.
“Very good, Reaper Cain,” X-37 replied.
“Good afternoon, Captain,” Jelly said as I dropped into my captain’s chair.
As usual, getting Henshaw to answer a hail from the Jellybird was slow and painful. I was starting to think the man was doing this on purpose just to annoy me.
I flicked on the holo feed from the training room and smiled cautiously. For two people who didn’t like or trust each other, Path and Elise now acted like kindred spirits. Maybe a better way to describe them would be as reflections of one another—opposite sides of the same credit chip.
Path had a mixture of long and short hair. In places, it was spiky, and in other places, it was braided into elaborate ropes that hung down his back. Glowing beads and other jewelry were woven into the tangle of dark and light colored hair. He had three piercings on his right eyebrow that flashed a tiny amount of light from time to time and made me think of an antenna for boosting limited artificial intelligence signals.
He had a similar ring through his bottom lip, slightly off-center, and wore rings on his left and right hand with similar blinking lights.
X-37 and I were still working on exactly what these did, if anything. When we first met, it seemed obvious they were just for show, but now I wasn’t so sure. My companions were more than they seemed.
Elise had shortened her hair and spiked it while also increasing the color variation. It was still fairly long and dark in the back when she untangled it from the braids she used to imitate or mock Path. She lacked piercings or tattoos, but she covered most of her skin with a service jumpsuit or tactical gear anyway, so it didn’t matter.
They circled each other with the practice swords raised, watching each other and looking for opportunities to strike.
“They have been significantly more cautious during this match than previously,” X-37 observed. “At the moment, they are fourteen seconds beyond the moment Elise attempted a first strike during their last engagement.”
“I’m assuming that Elise always strikes first or attempts to,” I said.
“That was my initial assumption as well, but it turns out to be incorrect. Statistically, Elise is only two percent more likely to strike first than Path,” X-37 said.
They exchanged a flurry of strikes and backed away from each other. Elise moved with as much skill as anyone I knew, except for Path or Uriah, the sword saint I had been lucky to defeat on Roxo III. The expression on her face suggested she wasn’t anywhere close to satisfied with her performance.
“Are you there, Mr. Cain?” came through the speaker.
“I’m here, Jimmy,” I said, watching his reaction. He tried to play it cool, but I knew that it rankled him when I didn’t return the same level of formal courtesy as he was presenting.
I sighed. “I can hear you well, Mr. Henshaw,” I managed.
“Are we ready to begin our drill?” Henshaw asked.
“Sure,” I said, resisting the compulsion to call him Jimmy. I liked him better as Jimmy. And I wished he would stop being so pretentious. It seemed like an act most of the time, like he had practiced with a voice coach, but it still rang false in my ears.
My attention was drawn away by a violent clash in the training room. Elise drove Path back with a furious onslaught of slashes, stabs, and kicks. She was practically growling and spitting. Her face reddened and her technique deteriorated.
“I don’t believe she can maintain that pace,” X-37 observed.
I shook my head, totally disagreeing with my limited artificial intelligence’s assessment. “She has more physical endurance and mental willpower than most spec ops soldiers. I’ve pushed her as hard as I was ever pushed in my Reaper training and she never quits.”
“Of course, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said. “She may continue to fight, but her technique and her choices are becoming less and less effective.”
“I can’t argue with you, X,” I said. “Jelly, move us away from the Lady Faith and initiate Operation Middle Finger.”
“Right away, Captain,” Jelly said.
“Are you already starting?” Henshaw complained. “I wasn’t sure we had even agreed to do this drill much less decided to begin.”
“Oh, we’re doing it,” I said, giving a hand signal to Jelly’s bridge sensors to begin. On the bridge where she had most of her internal camera and sensor clusters, Jelly could interpret my body language well. We had been working on it, playing little games and doing impromptu tests of her ability to accurately interpret my hand and body signals. I was sure she understood the significance of Operation Middle Finger—although I had never presented one to her, only explained what it meant.
Henshaw, Jelly, and X-37 hadn’t been able to reassure me that speed didn’t affect our current stealth configuration, so I had mandated that we cut engines and coast for a bit during the first stages of our stealth cloak initiation procedure.
I tensed, waiting for something spectacular to occur. It had been a while since I was on a Union stealth ship. Before they betrayed me and sentenced me to death in the Blue Sphere Maximum-security Prison, traveling unnoticed had been routine. Contrary to what I’d been told by my instructors, traveling in a ship that was in stealth mode felt different to me.
Once, I attempted to explain this to X-37. He assured me it was my imagination or that I was some type of hypersensitive freak.
The primary holo display showed Jelly as a small icon moving away from the Lady Faith in a curving vector that would eventually put us in the smaller ship’s wake. Readings from our power core were steady. Our small assortment of ship to ship weapons—light rockets and auto-cannons that barely deserved the name—were online.
“We seriously need to upgrade our offensive capabilities on the ship,” I said.
“Agreed,” X-37 said.
Jelly didn’t respond but I doubted she disagreed.
On the display, Henshaw’s ship searched in a three-dimensional grid pattern. At the same time, he continued moving, practicing several of the evasive maneuvers I had explained were necessary, even when we thought we were alone.
In time, our well-reasoned and tactical paranoia would pay off.
“Cain for Tom, can you come to the bridge?” I asked.
He responded a second later. “I’m on the way. I just need to close out this project.”
“He means finish the chapter he’s reading,” X-37 said.
“You’re missing the inaugural launch of the stealth cloak,” I said to Tom.
There was excitement and urgency in his voice when he responded this time. “I’m on my way. I didn’t realize we had decided to go forward with the trials. Have I missed anything?”
“We’re undetected so far,” I said, then turned my attention back to monitoring the progress of the Lady Faith.
Both ships continued to move while I waited for the well-read mechanic. He arrived out of breath and quickly leaned toward the copilot’s holo monitor. “This is good stuff.”
He typed furiously on one of the datapads and swiped his left hand several times at the three-dimensional controls of the dataflow. “I just don’t see any problems with our performance. I hadn’t dared hope it would be this smooth on the first try.”
“These are ideal conditions,” I warned. “No one is trying to kill us.”
Tom laughed. “That’s good. However, if anyone is going to be able to detect our presence, it will be Henshaw. He wrote the software.”
“You helped,” Jelly said. “Your input has been invaluable.”
“Thanks, Jelly,” Tom said. “It’s not every day a guy like me receives such praise from an artificial intelligence flying the most notorious ship in the galaxy.”
The dance through the void of space didn’t take long to become boring. We continued to try new things and gather data. After a while, even Tom was looking less enthusiastic.
I reactivated the view of the training room and saw that Elise and Path were still at it. Both of them were drenched in sweat, their funky neon hairstyles and clothing in disarray.
“It looks like they’ve been mixing ground fighting with sword fighting this time,” I said.
Tom’s expression went pale. “Path gave me a few lessons on basic self-defense. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. The worst part was how he never seemed to exert himself or become angry.”
“He’s exerting himself now. Unless he’s just sweating at random. Watch closely and you’ll see him dry one of his hands on his jacket from time to time. Holding those practice swords becomes surprisingly difficult after a while,” I said.
Elise spun in a tight circle and smashed her weapon into Path’s shoulder, scoring one of the few hits I’d seen against the sword saint.
Tom and I gasped at the same time.
“That had to hurt,” I commented.
Elise and Path separated briefly, then charged, their weapons clacking louder and louder as they fought. Before long, Tom and I were both ducking and leaning to avoid strikes, even though we were only spectators. Once or twice we laughed, but other times we cursed, as we imagined what the strikes had to feel like.
“You don’t flinch like that when you get hit during training,” X-37 said.
“That’s different. Ouch! She’s got to defend against that downward diagonal,” I said, imagining the pain of the glancing blow to her head.
“Perhaps you should pay more attention to your own training assignment,” X-37 said. “My analysis suggests that Henshaw may catch you this time. He’s coming around fast with a full sensor sweep.”
“What the hell?” I asked, spinning my chair back to my primary duties. “He acts like he has us, but there’s no way he does.”
“My analysis suggests you are correct. It should be impossible,” X-37 assured me.
“What are you two talking about?” Tom asked. “It was only a matter of time before Henshaw found us, even if he didn’t cheat. He wrote the code and helped install the hardware.”
“I had X-37 slip in a little something extra just to keep him off our back. I don’t want him changing sides and giving us up to Nebs when things get tough.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Tom said defensively.
I agreed, but old habits were hard to break, even with friends. Long ago, I’d been taught to trust but verify and to always have a plan to kill everyone I met just in case. Grim? Yes. Effective at staying alive? Absolutely.
“That is…” Tom said, struggling for words. “… probably smart. Henshaw isn’t someone I would want as an enemy.”
“What are your orders, Captain?” Jelly asked. “If you pull up the subsection of the secondary display terminal, I have listed several maneuvering options.”
“I know, Jelly. I already looked at them,” I said.
“You spent two point three seconds on that task,” X-37 chimed in.
“Tactics are simple,” I said, annoyed with my tattle-telling LAI. “Your preprogrammed options are pretty standard.”
“You may add to the selections if you wish, Captain,” Jelly offered.
“Later,” I said, typing on my screen to check my assumption. “Full stop, Jelly.”
The displays indicated we had become a fixed object as much as was possible in a galaxy that was constantly changing. The Lady Faith’s icon spiraled away from us by comparison. It was more than a bit disorienting.
“That should throw Henshaw off,” I said, crossing my arms.
“It did indeed,” X-37 said, “for nearly five seconds.”
“We are being pinged by the Lady Faith. She has located our presence in the system,” Jelly said.
Henshaw hailed us a second later. “That was tricky, Mr. Cain. The Lady Faith tells me that you delayed discovery by four seconds.”
“Five seconds,” I said defensively.
“Near enough,” Henshaw admitted.
“How did you do that, Jimmy?” I demanded.
“My latest detection algorithm is far more advanced than anything I did for the Union,” Henshaw said. “They never gave me free rein for my more creative solutions to this particular tactical problem.”
I considered his response and was reasonably sure he was telling the truth. There wasn’t a way to confront him on whether or not he had detected X-37’s code snippet without giving away what we had done to cheat.
“Give me details, Jimmy,” I said, noticing that he didn’t mind his nickname when he was gloating about his victory.
He smiled and lit one of his Starbrand Premium cigars.
“Stop gloating,” I muttered.
“I’ve found it necessary to have a hidden stash when my guests are notorious for their sticky fingers,” Henshaw said. “You’ll have to forgive me. This is a moment of vindication. I wasn’t crazy all these years. True freedom from the Union is going to be good for me and my creative energies.”
“We still have a vice admiral and his fleet of trained killers tracking us. Don’t start celebrating just yet,” I said.
“Would you like a head start this time?” Henshaw asked.
“Why not? Let’s put this stealth cloak to the test. I’d like to try it in all conditions if possible, including at speed,” I said.
“It will be good for gathering data,” Henshaw agreed, “but I’m going to catch you every time.”
“Care to bet on it?” I asked before I thought about who I was talking to.
“I’d love nothing better than a good wager, but what exactly do you have to offer if you lose?” Henshaw asked.
“I’ll stop stealing your cigars for one standard month,” I said.
“Nice improvisation,” X-37 commented privately.
“Not much of a bet,” Henshaw muttered. “And I imagine you want one of my Premiums if I lose?”
“A box of Premiums,” I said.
He laughed. “Well, that’s probably fair since you’re not going to win.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said, then signaled Jelly to make us disappear.