Bitter Angels (21 page)

“Five.” Emiliya shut the connection down, leaving me staring at the console.

If she needed to rework the scans, she shouldn’t be going to Dazzle, she should be going to the habitat, where her rig was. What she had said made no sense. It was a lie, and a clumsy one.

The chill returned to my blood. I could not brush it aside. Whether she wanted to or not, Emiliya was on assignment for the Blood Family. I had no idea what her orders were or how she intended to carry them out.

More than likely they had nothing to do with me. What was I? I was an extra pair of eyes, a kind of backup for the Clerks and all the other systems watching the saints. Why should I worry about what Emiliya’s orders were with regard to them?

I’d have to find a way to talk with Emiliya. When we got to Dazzle, I’d get her into a blind spot and make her tell me what she could. And then…

And then what? When I knew what she was doing, what would
I
do? I couldn’t possibly be thinking
of warning
the saints.

Could I? Could I really?

Leda and Ceshame were coming up the ladder, growling and swearing. I had to move my hands across the console, give the ship’s ID and priorities up to Flight, and try to get our permissions back. They were slow in coming. It was the midnight shift, because the habitats set their clocks by Fortress, and no one was happy to be here.

Terese Drajeske and Siri Baijahn were already in their couches. Terese nodded to Emiliya, who nodded back and took her place in the third couch. While I watched, Captain Baijahn’s gloved fingers moved restlessly across the back of her other hand. Something was being activated down there and nothing on the screen could tell me what it was.

I sent the launch signals down to our passengers and out to the port. The thrusters lifted us smoothly and the automatic systems cut in to start us on the long, sweeping fall toward Dazzle.

“Whoever takes first shift gets a full day off when we get home,” I said to Leda and Ceshame.

They eyed each other and held up their fists. The finger-pointing game of odds and evens went the traditional three rounds. Leda won, and Ceshame and I climbed down into the crew compartment.

I stared at the hatch to the passenger compartment.

“You wanna go in and get her out, I’m not saying anything,” he remarked.

It took me a moment to realize he thought I was itching after Emiliya.

“We’re on duty,” I growled, and pulled myself up into the middle bunk. I shut the door on the world.

I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. I felt like I was standing on the edge of an empty shaft. Tomorrow I would fall, I was certain of it.

Maybe I could put tomorrow off for a little while longer.

I had to remember that. I couldn’t forget that she was one of Oblivion’s children and that we had to hold it together for ourselves. We had no one else, not really. In the end, we would always turn to each other, whatever else it looked like we were doing.

A furious buzzing shot through my head. My eyes snapped open.

“What is it?” I demanded, my hand groping for the bunk capsule’s light panel.

“Captain,” came back Leda’s voice. “We’ve got an unauthorized ship in view.”

I swore and slammed the door open. I didn’t bother getting my boots back on, I just climbed barefoot up into the cockpit.

As soon as I got there, Leda gave over the central seat, dropping into the copilot’s spot. I sat down without looking. Ceshame swung up the ladder behind me and dropped into the number three station.

The window was almost filled by the gas giant turning below us. The riotous stripes and swirls slid silently around its perfect curves. A ship—a bundle of blobs and lights made indistinct by distance—flashed past, finishing its burn to drop into a transfer orbit. I looked up and down, and up and down again, comparing the data I saw on the screen against the reality I saw out the window.

“Shit,” I said flatly. “Get me…”

“Says it’s with the water authority,” Leda told me. “But we’ve got no routing for it.”

“If it’s a smuggler, they’re fuckless idiots to be running where we can see them,” Ceshame muttered.

“We didn’t exactly give Flight a lot of warning,” Leda reminded him. “Maybe they’d already started out.”

I knuckled my eyes. Flight and the Clerks had been waiting for a month for a ship to come and snatch the cargo from that rig on Fortress. Why’d it have to be passing through under my nose?

“Let’s hope they’ll see reason.” Most smugglers didn’t want to die. Most of them gave up when they were spotted, preferring an indenture they had a chance to escape to being blown to bits in the black sky.

I turned the intercom over to an active frequency. “This is the
Iphigenia III
to ship ID string 614780J. Identify yourself. We don’t have a registered flight path for you.”

There was silence, then static, then, “Hey, Brother Amerand.”

“Kapa! I see you, you stoneless pirate.”
With a tanker ship, smuggling water
.

When his voice came back, it was the kind of smooth that makes your skin crawl. “You see nothing, Captain. Nothing at all.”

A faint voice in the background was less sure. “You said no hassle. You said…”

“Shut it!” hissed Kapa.

“If I was you,
Captain
, I’d check with Fortress, see what they say.”

I stared at Ceshame, and he stared back at me. He moved his hand toward the keypad, his eyebrows raised in question.

Was it possible that Kapa had permission from Fortress? If he did, it was because he’d worked a deal with somebody at Flight; otherwise, there’d be an open plan. What the hell kind of smuggler didn’t think to manufacture a flight plan?

“Reverse burn, Kapa. We’re carrying and we’ve got you spotted. Don’t make me shoot you.”

“I’m telling you to call Fortress, you dumb screw!” shouted Kapa. “You think I’d be out here where everybody can see if I didn’t have the word?”

“I’m looking at the run specs, Kapa, and you are not there. For the last time, reverse and park it. We’re loaded and aiming right at you.” Leda had the ship in her sights, and the screens in front of me showed how she was tracking him, and how she had already alerted Flight that we had a shooting situation, getting the authority before she had to pull the trigger.

Silence. A cold sweat prickling my scalp.
Park it, park it, park it
, I silently willed the idiot on the other side of the void.
Not worth it. Not worth your life. You can get out of this as long as you’re still alive
.

I didn’t even have to order Leda to swing our head around with a short, sharp burst. We were all shoved back hard into our seats for about four seconds before Kapa’s ship was centered in the view again, blazing bright over Dazzle’s curve of mottled bronze.

Something was wrong with the burn. It wasn’t a smooth flame anymore. It was shattered somehow, sharp and sparkling.

“What are they doing?” Ceshame squinted at the screen.

I felt the blood leave my face. “They’re burning the water. They’re using the
water
for extra fuel to speed up their run!”

If I’d gone white, Ceshame flushed red.
Wasting lives
, I saw him thinking.
Lives burning out in the vacuum
.

“I’ve got them targeted,” announced Leda.

I should shoot him down. He’d not only stolen the water, he’d wasted it. He’d completely and utterly wasted it.

And if I did, I might just be setting Emiliya free from whatever hold he still had on her.

“Kapa, you can’t outrun us. You’ve burned the damn cargo. Stop this right now.”

The silence on the other side stretched out endlessly.
Don’t be an idiot, Kapa. You were always the smart one. You were the one who could work the angles. You were the one who had the nerve to get out. Have the nerve to stay alive
.

At last the silence on the other end broke. “Okay. Okay.”
I could hear swearing and yelling in the background. Kapa ignored it. “What do you need us to do?”

I eyed my screens, my lists, and my permissions, and all the back-and-forth between Leda and Flight. “Cut your acceleration, let us catch up and dock. And Kapa…”

“Yeah?”

I leaned close. I wanted to be sure he heard me. “Flight’s got you pinned now. If you try anything, they’ll shoot us all down.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “I bet they would.”

“Just so we understand each other.”

“Oh, I understand you.”

“He’s slowing down,” said Ceshame. Our thrusters rumbled and the ship slipped sideways, lowered, and banked. I checked the rate of our fuel burn. We were going to have to coast most of the way home at this rate.

“Got ’em!” Leda cried happily. “Bonus time all around!”

Then she saw my face and swallowed thoughts of extra pay. She turned back around with a shrug.

Out the window, Kapa’s ship looked like it was sitting still. Ceshame and Leda had their eyes pinned on it, and every scanner was up and open, looking for weapons or traps.

“Can’t get an internal scan,” muttered Ceshame.

“No weapons ports,” said Leda. “They got some serious crypto coming and going though. I can’t make out anything but static.”

“Keep listening, in case they’re bringing in friends.” I got out of my chair. “Or in case he wasn’t bluffing about Fortress. Ceshame, you’re with me. Leda, dead man’s switch on the clamps. If that ship so much as twitches, drop us back.”

“Yes, Cap’n.”

“Yes, Cap’n.”

I hesitated. She was a trained soldier, but she was not allowed to kill, and I didn’t think that would slow Kapa down for a second if he decided to put up a fight.

“We have to take a smuggler into custody,” I said. Over her shoulder, I could see Siri Baijahn, dressed like Terese was, and Emiliya, looking pale, thin, and haggard next to the other two, still in her medical whites with her shoes on her feet.

“I’m going to ask you to remain in the passenger cabin,” I told them all.

I half expected Commander Drajeske to protest. But her eyes flicked from me, to Ceshame, to the closed air lock.

“It’s your ship,” she said.

I met Emiliya’s eyes. Beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead. Something very close to panic tightened her face.

Commander Drajeske closed the door.

I pulled my pellet gun from its holster and worked the action. “Have we got a picture yet?”

Ceshame hit the switch on the pad by the door with his left hand while he drew his sidearm with his right. “Not yet. He probably disabled the camera systems as soon as he got his hands on the ship.”

“Probably. Stay sharp.”

Ceshame took up his position to cover me. I tapped out the ID and authorization codes. With a grind and a hiss, the air lock opened to reveal Kapa standing in the frame of the threshold. I pointed my sidearm straight at him and he
spread his clean hands to show them empty. Kapa smiled, flashing his shining, lavender tooth. At the same moment, I heard a shrill whine coming from somewhere in the belly of his ship.

I grabbed Kapa’s arm, swinging him through the hatch into my ship and hurling him across to Ceshame.

The world lurched and shook and the bottom dropped out.

My head hit the ceiling, and I saw stars.