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Moving to his side, Ramsay crouched down next to him. “How
much they pay you, Tom? I need to know how many resources are lined up against
us, so this is important.”

A laugh slipped out. “They didn’t,” Tom said. “I did it
because I didn’t trust Da’shay in the crew, not because they paid me one
credit.”

Ramsay stood up and Tom tried to ignore a tightness in his
chest so bad that he couldn’t take a full breath. His air came in little gasps.
A buzz startled him a half second before Ramsay turned him loose.

Tom’s eyes opened, but he stayed on the ground, looking up
at Ramsay as he tried to understand what was going on. “You calling Command?”
Tom asked warily.

“Aw, hell, Tom. You do complicate things.” Ramsay headed
back toward the front of the ship.

Tom looked at the
Kratos
’ thrusters. “Not for much
longer.”

“Come on.” Ramsay called him over, but Tom didn’t want to
go. Ramsay was right that Tom wouldn’t survive a cage. It was better this way.
He had a weird sense of calm looking at the end of his life and knowing that
Ramsay had lined it up and all Tom had to do was die. It was also ironic that
it was Ramsay and the
Kratos
killing him because he would have said that
of all the ships he’d served on, this was the one where people were least
likely to harbor homicidal thoughts about him. “Hurry up, we’re burning
hydrogen,” Ramsay said.

Tom used the wall to push himself up. If Ramsay wanted to
turn him over to the Corps to get information out of him, then that’s what Tom
would do. His knees were still unsteady, but he managed to walk over to the
side of the
Kratos
where Ramsay was standing. Da’shay had her back to
the ship now, leaning against it with her eyes half-closed. She made a little
keening sound that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It was her
fault. He knew that, but if Ramsay didn’t believe it, there wasn’t a thing he
could do about it.

Ramsay was talking and Tom had to concentrate on the words.
“If I trusted Command to treat you fair, I’d let them punish you. A hundred
lashes or a year in a prison cell wouldn’t be a bad way to remind you to stop
and fucking think. Problem is that Command does tend to overreact when someone
says something like ‘illegal tech’ or ‘attempted murder.’ But you will pay,
Tom. There will be ship punishment for this, and if we don’t report this, that
means we’re going to have to figure this out ourselves.”

Tom could only stare at Ramsay, not even sure he could
follow the conversation. He’d had too many changes hit him too fast.

“As soon as we get back from this mission, we’re going to
approach this just like we would any other investigation.” Ramsay glanced over
at Da’shay. “We try to get some straight information about who might be trying
to kill her, we run a sketch of the man you met through facial recognition, we
figure out if anyone’s been checking on our files to see who might turn. And
you remember that you’re not going to breathe without asking me for permission,
because you’re the one who turned, Tom. Got it?”

Tom stared at Ramsay in confusion. “That’s it?” Tom couldn’t
figure out why he wasn’t still chained to the wall.

“No, that’s not it. You’re on restriction to quarters until
I feel like letting you out. If you want to pull a stunt this stupid again,
let’s make sure you know what it feels like to live in a six by six box for a
while.” Ramsay turned and walked toward the still open hatch. Da’shay walked
over and picked up Tom’s handheld and came over with it held out like an
offering. Tom stared at her, half expecting her to gut him on the spot. Instead
she waited with her hand outstretched. Tom took his handheld and shivered from
the intensity of her gaze.

“Get the lead out, Tom,” Ramsay called and Tom headed for
the ramp, trying hard not to fall down because his knees still felt like
rubber, Da’shay right behind him.

Tom paced the length of his room and back again. It took
exactly three steps. He’d travelled those same three steps so many times that
he was pretty sure the decking was going to start showing wear, but there was
little else to do in the room.

His handheld was broken, cracked by the pulse blast. If he
hadn’t believed Ramsay before, he did now. He couldn’t survive in a cage like
this, not for the years he would be locked up if he was convicted of treason.
God he was stupid. That wasn’t the worst part. When Ramsay looked at him, there
was a wariness in the man’s eyes that made it pretty damn clear that Tom’s time
on the
Kratos
was running out. Oh Ramsay would keep him around to
investigate the little man Tom had met, but he figured two seconds after that,
he was going to find himself either out of work or in a cell like this one for
the rest of his life.

Lying down on the bunk, he stared at the low ceiling. His
stomach growled and he scratched idly. Three days and no one had brought food.
Tom could think of all sorts of reasons why that might be, but not many of them
made sense.

If Tom was hiding information, making a prisoner worry about
basic necessities was a standard torture technique. Illegal, but effective. If
the
Kratos
was in trouble, crew might be too busy to bother, but the
panel beside Tom’s locked door showed green lights.

So that meant there was some game being played. He’d thought
the
Kratos
was different. He and Ramsay were colony kids—raised around
enough dirt and poverty to appreciate what they had. The captain had a hard
edge that made other smugglers believe he was one of them. Becca was from the
colonies too, and so was the engineer before her. They all had a habit of
speaking the truth, even Becca who did it with a smile so wide you didn’t
figure out until days later that she’d insulted you.

If pushed, Tom would guess it was Da’shay trying to starve
him out of the ship if she could. Hell, he wouldn’t even blame her. If she put
a gun to the back of his head and pulled the trigger, he’d call that
self-defense and tell her she was in the right.

The door beeped, and Tom tossed his handheld onto the small
table and stood up as it slid open. Even though the ship put the same air into
every inch of the
Kratos
, Tom could swear the air from the hall just
smelled fresher. Ramsay stood outside Tom’s quarters looking uncomfortable.
“Thought we needed to talk about the mission.”

“Come on in,” Tom said with more than a touch of sarcasm.
Tom didn’t have much else to say. He wasn’t even sure what the mission was
since he’d been locked in his room during the briefing.

“You review the files?” Ramsay looked down at the table
where Tom’s handheld sat. Eli stood at his six and Tom wondered if the man knew
exactly what Tom’d done to get put on lock down. If he did, he was good at
hiding his disgust.

“It’s broke,” Tom said with a shrug. “Get me a new one and
I’ll review what I need to know, sir.”

Ramsay frowned. “Should’ve asked for a new one before. We’re
landing in three hours.”

Tom didn’t answer. He’d done exactly what Ramsay had told
him to and he still managed to fuck something up.

With a sigh, Ramsay ran a hand over his face and then tried
again, this time his voice far more weary. “Why didn’t you ask Becca to fix
this?”

“Ain’t like I could head over to the engine room and ask her
to fix it up.”

“No, but when she brought dinner, you could have asked for a
favor.” Ramsay crossed his arms, clearly unwilling to back down on this.
However, Tom could only stare back. If Becca had brought him any dinner, he
might have considered that. However, she hadn’t. Now Tom was wondering if maybe
Becca wasn’t pissed with him, maybe for that mess on the docks when he’d been
trying to ask her out. He didn’t think he’d said anything worth starving a man
over, but she had been mighty pissed.

“You planning on explaining yourself?” Ramsay demanded.

“Wasn’t planning to, sir,” Tom answered. He didn’t know what
was going on and he’d learned a long time ago that when he didn’t understand
people, the best course of action was to keep his head down and either get out
of people’s way or shoot them. He wasn’t shooting his own crew.

“Some days, I swear he does this to annoy me,” Ramsay
complained.

“Yes sir,” Eli agreed, all military.

“I’m going to go see if Becca can replace this.” Ramsay
picked up the handheld, “Give him the rough outline while I’m gone,” Ramsay
told Eli before he walked out.

“What the hell did you do?” Eli asked the second the captain
was gone. That answered one question.

Tom leaned back against the wall behind his bunk. “Fucked up
on leave. Not like I haven’t done that before.”

Eli leaned against the wall and studied Tom. “Enough for
three days confinement?”

“Yep,” Tom answered. The silence lasted just long enough to
get awkward.

“What did you do this time? The captain isn’t talking.”

“Then I reckon I’m not either.”

Eli shifted from one foot to another and Tom had a little
twinge of sympathy. It wasn’t easy being the one no one talked to, but that was
Eli’s problem. He could suck it up and deal with it like the rest of them had
when they’d been new on crew.

“I suppose I should cover the mission,” Eli said, some of
the military starch back in his voice. “First stop in our mission is
Nodar
.
We’re working with the explosion on the
Reseda
. The story is that we
landed and the
Reseda
’s captain tried to double the price, and finally
ended up refusing to sell at all. We had Becca bring the ship in fast, thinking
he was trying to double cross us and take the money anyway, and venting the
engines set off the explosion.”

“So, we’re telling them the truth?” That was novel. Of
course, most times Tom didn’t talk to people much at all.

“We’re leaving out the part where we’re Corps.” Eli sat at
the small table that was little more than a small oval welded to the wall. “So,
the mission is to go in there saying we want whoever sent the
Reseda
out
to double-cross us. We want credits to replace what got blown up and more to
cover repairs to the
Kratos
and our medical costs. And if people get in
our way, we’re mad enough to shoot our way through them.”

Tom narrowed his eyes on that one. Most planets, they used
force only as the last resort. Even Tom thought twice before shooting a man
because the paperwork on an unapproved kill was about more than he could take.
The first time he’d shot a man who hadn’t had a chance to get off a shot at
them first, Tom had almost quit. After that, he made sure he let the other side
get off at least one shot before putting a bullet between their eyes. “How
picky are they going to be about following protocols for lethal force?”

“This isn’t friendly territory. We can’t go to local Command
and request backup. We may not be able to retreat if things get rough because
we’ll have to wait on
Nodar’s
government to give us flight clearance or
we’ll have to risk the orbital cannons. So Command’s first order is to blend
in. Their second one is that if we get caught, they have no idea who we are.”

Scratching his arm, Tom thought about the setup. He’d have
to watch Ramsay’s back and his own, and he still wasn’t sure Da’shay was on
their side. “So, do I have to do anything other than shoot anyone who tries to
shoot us?”

“You might.” Eli’s face twisted into a grimace for the
briefest second, and then he cleared his throat and his all-military mask was
back in place. “Command says that we may have to apply pressure on some people
and that Ramsay is authorized to give orders in violation of Section 39-7.”

Tom stopped breathing. “They wrote that down?”

Eli shook his head. “No, they told the captain that in
person before we left.”

That figured. If you ordered your officers to violate the
rules against torture, you really didn’t want to leave an electronic trail
leading back to you. Tom just wasn’t sure if Ramsay would actually do that.

Eli fell silent, a God-almighty unhappy look on his face.
Tom figured Eli had put his faith in government laws and now Command was
telling him he didn’t have to follow ‘em. If Tom were a little bit smarter, he
might be able to figure out if that made Eli likely to quit or just take up
drinking like the rest of them. Hell, even Becca knew how to get shit-faced when
things got rough.

Eventually Ramsay showed up at the door, a new handheld in
his hand. Instead of saying anything, he stood there, staring at Tom. His jaw
was clenched and his white hair that had been tied back was pulled out one
side. Tom traded an uncomfortable look with Eli. Something wasn’t right.

“Captain?” Eli asked, moving to the side as best he could in
the cramped quarters.

“Tom, I’m so sorry,” Becca said, sticking her head around
the captain so she could see into his room, and Tom was starting to feel more
than a little claustrophobic with all these people in his room.

“For what?” Tom asked, suddenly even more uncomfortable. A
little part of him wanted to push them all back out so he could have his room
to himself, which was surprising considering he’d spent the last three days
wishing he had something to distract him from a whole lot of ugly thoughts.

“I didn’t—” Becca swallowed, and it looked as if she was
trying to push past Ramsay, but he didn’t give her enough room to fit. “I
hadn’t worked on a raptor class ship before, and when I first joined up, I was
all caught up in the technical specs and I read the other duties section, but
it didn’t sink in. I never meant to forget you in here.”

“Sir?” Eli turned his back on Tom and focused on Becca and the
captain.

“She hasn’t brought any meals,” Ramsay said, his voice
tightly controlled. “Three days Tom’s been in here and she didn’t remember the
part in the ship rules where the engineer was responsible for bringing meals
when someone was restricted to quarters.”

“I’m really, really sorry,” Becca said. Her eyes were puffy,
as if she might cry, and Tom shifted uncomfortably.

“Not the first meals I’ve ever missed,” Tom said.

Ramsay slapped his hand against the wall. “Why the hell
didn’t you call someone?”

“With what handheld, sir?” Tom asked, looking at the one in
Ramsay’s hand. It wasn’t as if he’d asked to have his computer broken, not when
he was stuck for three days staring at the same walls wondering how much shit
he was in.

Ramsay pointed to the control panel. “Then you hit the
emergency button, but no, you have to play martyr and sit in here for three
days without food. God damn it, Tom. Do you have even one ounce of common
sense?”

There were a lot of things that ran through Tom’s mind.
Emergency buttons were for emergencies and Tom wasn’t anywhere near starving to
death. Even if he had hit the button, he had no way of knowing whether or not
Ramsay was trying to teach him a lesson. Yeah, thinking on it now, it was
unlikely, but he would have said it was unlikely that Ramsay would chain him to
a wall and threaten to kill him and Ramsay had done that. However, none of
those excuses would sound right the second Tom started saying them out loud. He
knew that. So instead, he stayed silent.

“He hasn’t eaten at all, sir?” Eli looked at Tom with
something close to pity and Tom glared at the man.

“How long did you plan to sit in here? A week? Two weeks?”
Ramsay demanded. “You two, out,” Ramsay said, poking his thumb toward the
passage. Becca was already out, but Eli just about broke his neck getting past
Ramsay.

“I’ll make you something really special, next stop,” Becca
called, but her voice echoed from farther down the passage, so she was in full
retreat. Ramsay had a way of going from looking like about the most average man
around to looking as if he was about ready to take a man’s head off with his
bare hands. No wonder they ran. However, Tom wasn’t one to be intimidated. He
waited.

“Six fucking years, Tom. I know you’re a distrustful man;
you have been since stepping foot on the
Kratos
. But after six fucking
years, haven’t I earned enough of your trust to think I wouldn’t starve you to
death?”

“Never thought you’d go that far,” Tom said all carefully.
He sure as hell wasn’t going to mention that he thought Da’shay might be
intercepting the food, not after the mess he’d gotten himself into with her
already.

“But you thought I’d let you go hungry for three days?”

Tom shrugged. “My pa done as much when I wasn’t more than
twelve. Didn’t seem all that unreasonable.”

Ramsay stared at him, his mouth half-open as if he’d been
caught in the middle of saying something, only without the sound. Then he
closed his eyes, and for a while there, Tom really wasn’t sure what was running
through his captain’s mind because the man was looking mighty unhappy. Finally,
Ramsay opened his eyes and his voice got that real quiet tone that meant he was
trying his best not to shoot someone. “How long did you plan on letting this go
on?”

Tom hadn’t really thought about it that much. “Until you opened
the door,” he finally said.

Ramsay’s hand came up and grabbed the edge of the doorframe.
With his other hand, he carefully put the handheld on the table. He moved so
slow and careful that it was pretty clear he’d rather throw the thing across
the room. “Get your head in the game, Tom. We’re out here on our own, and if I
can’t trust you to be thinking clear, maybe this is a good place for you to
stay.” Ramsay grimaced. “I need you out there, so just…just pull your head out
of your ass, soldier.” Turning around, Ramsay stormed out so fast that Tom
wondered if he’d said something else wrong.

The door hatch shut without locking, but he still wasn’t
sure if that mean he was off restriction or that the captain was simply too
pissed to remember the lock. With a sigh, Tom realized that he had no way of
figuring it out either.