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Chapter Twenty-Nine

“There you are,” Chalmers said, examining the surveillance records tracking the shift sergeant’s movement. Every other guy on the downport’s security shift had been relatively easy to bribe or blackmail. Not Sergeant Siggun. He was simply not going along with the program, and it had to be third shift. The other shifts were either not in the proper places or would leave the team too exposed to observation from other patrols and checkpoints.

“Options?” he said, stepping back from the notice boards they used to display the various notes and surveillance records for collective review and planning. It was a security risk, but Chalmers wanted input, and this was the best way to get it. They’d lock everything up once they were done, and the staff had already been sent home.

“Liquidate him?” Moose asked, pinning Yukannak’s assessment of the survey lighter crew schedule to the board in front of him. He nearly bumped into Jackson as he stood up. The meeting room was crowded between the notice boards, the Lost Soldiers, and Yukannak.

“Jesus,” Jackson said, shaking his head. “This ain’t the ’Nam, man.”

“What, it’s an opti—” Moose started.

Chalmers interrupted, “I’d like to do this without smoking too many people. That kind of mayhem will leave a trail we don’t want.”

“What do we know about him?” Vat asked.

“He doesn’t gamble, doesn’t visit the happy houses, and isn’t in debt to anyone on R’Bak. He does two things aside from eat, sleep, and work: read and hit the gym.”

Vat looked thoughtful. “What kind of gym?”

“Not sure,” Chalmers said. He glanced at the record again but caught Yukannak’s puzzled expression.

“What is it, Yukannak?”

“The question is strange to me.”

“What question?”

“There is only one kind of gymnasium on Kulsis.”

“Oh?”

“Thega-Tak.”

“And what’s that when it’s at home?” Chalmers asked.

“Their premiere school of unarmed and melee close quarters combat,” Vat explained before Yukannak could answer. “From what I’ve heard at the fights, it’s similar to the fighting style we see in the arenas here on the island, but focused on disarming, disabling, and ending resistance as quickly as possible.”

“What, you don’t lift weights, run, jazzercise?” Chalmers asked.

“What is ‘jazzercise’?” Yukannak asked.

Chalmers shook his head and smiled. “An ancient form of exercise.”

“We do other things than this jazzercise in order to build strength and endurance for military operations or Thega-Tak rites.”

“Can we pay someone to put him down for a while in the gym, then?” Jackson asked. “Break an arm or something? Engineer some kind of training accident?”

“Hell, get him into the arena and see how he fares?” Chalmers queried, looking at Vat.

“No one from the survey crew fights in the arena,” Vat said, looking at Yukannak. “Something about ‘pretend fights’ being beneath them.”

Yukannak nodded. “We do not expose to those beneath us those techniques we may someday be called on to deploy against them. This is especially true of those entrusted with command of those outside their own houses.”

“How very…Übermensch of your people,” Jackson said.

Moose and Chalmers both snorted.

Yukannak must have decided he didn’t want to know, because he went on without addressing the comment, “Also, not every survey member is…fully proficient in the techniques, and their participation in such fights might prove an embarrassment to the leadership. I have only recently begun rebuilding my strength, and not every Kulsian has the drive to improve their skill as I do.”

Chalmers let that go, thinking that gym rats were the same everywhere and everywhen.

“Do they spar?” Jackson asked. He’d always been more into martial arts than Chalmers.

“Of course.”

“So we can set up something where he gets hurt in training?” Jackson insisted.

Yukannak cocked his head. “Perhaps. This man seems very serious in his training regimen, however. That could make it hard to find someone to accomplish your ends.”

“Still, it’s a better option than attempting to cover up his killing, no?”

A slow nod. “I believe so, given mission parameters. But I think it will be hard to accomplish with local talent. These people are not exactly the best representatives of strong breeding. They are…inferior.”

Chalmers saw the quickly hidden disgust in Jackson’s expression as the Lost Soldier asked, “Right, so what do you suggest?”

A small shrug. “I have no suggestions. Only cautions.”

“Why not just put something in his drink?” Moose asked.

“They all carry canteens around,” Chalmers mused, liking the idea.

“Canteens they do not bring onto the fighting floor,” Yukannak added, nodding.

Jackson was smiling. “One problem down?”

Chalmers looked at the others. Seeing no objections, he nodded.

“All right. So let’s assume everything else worked, and we’ve made it onboard. How do we take control without busting up the place?” Jackson said.

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Moose said, nodding.

Jackson and Chalmers both looked at Moose, but it was Chalmers who said, “I’ve heard of the million-dollar question, but that’s an oddly specific amount.”

Moose shrugged. “A game show from when I was a kid.”

Chalmers smiled. “I keep forgetting we’re all time travelers here.”

Yukannak frowned. “I am not. I may not know what a dollar is, but we have to avoid shooting on the bridge or anywhere aboard. Gunfire in any pressurized environment is suicide. You are not trained to fight in microgravity. You will get in each other’s way and injure yourselves. And that is assuming you can get to the crew without being detected and then murdered in whatever spot you manage to stow away in. If the crew are the least bit competent and conscious—”

“It’s a shit show, we know,” Chalmers interrupted, barely keeping his anger in check. He didn’t need reminding, the guys didn’t need reminding, and he didn’t like Yukannak doing the reminding. Not one bit.

“I don’t understand your anger. I merely point out facts relevant to your plan of actions.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Jackson said.

Chalmers bit his lip to keep from piling on. He really did not like the Kulsian.

“I am not a captain,” Yukannak said, gold eyes slitted as he stared back at Jackson.

“No, you’re not. You’re our pilot,” Moose said with a meaningful glance at Chalmers.

Intercede, man! the look begged.

“Moose is right, Yukannak,” Chalmers said, careful to keep the reluctance from his voice. “You’re our best bet.” Chalmers could see Jackson swallowing against gut-level dislike. He continued to speak to Yukannak, looking for the words that would mollify the new man. “And we need your help planning this. Forgive us, as we’re very informal in our speech, and find it easy to misunderstand your words just as you find it easy to misunderstand ours. No offense is intended.”

Yukannak blinked cold gold eyes. “None taken.”

And if I believe that, smack my papa for raisin’ a sucker, Chalmers thought, but, very carefully, did not say.


The heat pump kicked on again, even though it was well after sunsdown. It was still well into the hundreds outside the climate-controlled homes and businesses of the island. A grateful Chalmers made another blespa and rum-analogue. He and Vat had been drinking hard for—he squinted at the office clock—a couple of hours, now. Everyone else had gone off to bed as the nightly skull session wound down, but Chalmers had been banging his head against the problem for so long he felt the need to get a little fucked up and forget for a moment how much was riding on their success or failure.

Also, late at night was the only time he felt comfortable enough to really think, now that the fast-approaching Searing was making the equator a sunbaked hell. Even the evenings were hot enough to broil the brains, given that the humidity off the water retained a lot of the day’s heat when the winds didn’t blow.

But the approach of the Searing wasn’t his problem. The problems he had were hard enough as it was: how to stow away aboard a lighter, then take that same lighter’s crew down in a cramped, pressurized environment—in microgravity, no less—and without giving them a chance to radio for help or breaking important shit like the ship’s controls.

“No matter how many firewalls and cutouts I use to hide my involvement with you guys, I’m still not sure I’ll be able to stay here after you’ve gone,” Vat said, drawing Chalmers from yet another go-round with the problems the mission posed.

Glad of the distraction, Chalmers nodded. “I’m sorry about that.” He offered Vat his freshly made drink. “I wasn’t clear on why—aside from the money and position—you wanted to stay.”

Vat accepted the glass with a wry smile. “I’ve got a kid.”

Chalmers was so surprised he spilled some rum-analogue as he poured a fresh glass for himself. He set the bottle down and picked up the pitcher of iced juice. It held enough ice-cold blespa for maybe one more round.

“But…” he mumbled.

Vat pointed at the floor with one hand. “Here, not back when.”

“But…” Chalmers repeated. Vat’s answer hadn’t exactly clarified matters.

“But I’m gay?” Vat finished.

Chalmers nodded, then drank off a good portion of his glass.

“I am.” Vat’s smile grew mischievous. “I like men. But desperate times and all that…”

“Desperate ti—” Chalmers snorted.

“Not like that.” Vat interrupted. “Not me that was desperate. Just that the local ladies are pretty damn insistent when it comes to making babies with successful fighters…one of ’em, she made it clear I was the donor she wanted.” He shook his head. “Not that my reputation ain’t a bit overblown.” He took a long drink. “Besides, I’m young enough that if you stimulate the equipment in the right way things happen, regardless of where the mind wants to go…”

Chalmers snorted into his drink. He’d enjoyed the advances of a few women since Clarthu, and they’d all been quite clear about what they wanted—and didn’t—from him.

“Regardless, the kid exists. And you know the fucked-up thing?” Vat’s words were quite slurred now.

“No?”

“The fucked-up thing is, I want to see him grow up. I want to be there for it. Teach him the shit he needs to know ’bout life.”

“Makes s—”

Vat interrupted him again, slurring through another realization, “Christ on a crutch, I want to be a dad, not a daddy.”

“Right, man,” Chalmers said, uncomfortable. “Jesus, I didn’t need to know that.”

“What, that I’m a daddy, or that I used to want to be a daddy?” Vat said. Chalmers saw the man’s grin had grown a bit green around the gills.

“Either? Both?”

“Ah, fuck you, Chalmers,” Vat said without heat.

Chalmers chuckled, took another drink.

Vat hiccupped, belched wetly, and scratched under his robe. “Hell, why not both daddy and dad?”

Chalmers looked at Vat, decided the other man was definitely not getting another drink.

A brief silence fell. Chalmers started thinking about how to take advantage of the firsthand knowledge Yukannak had shared. It might not prove useful, but Chalmers thought it over anyway. None of them had known, for instance, that whatever space was left over in a given lighter crew’s supply container, was, by tradition, open to freight whatever cargo the crew saw fit to carry. Not on every run, but on missions marked “survey” they were.

He looked through the paperwork, stopping at the shipping schedule they’d bought yesterday. Two weeks of lighter shipping. One “survey” lighter scheduled for the end of next week. Flight 1517B. The crew consumables container for it would not be ready yet.

“I-I think I might have had too much to drink…”

Hooking it with one leg, Chalmers pushed the trash can across the floor.

Vat turned his head, threw up in the can.

Mostly in the can.

“This is awesome. So. Damn. Awesome,” Chalmers said, toasting God, the gods, the Holy Spirit, aliens, humans-who-looked-like-us, whatever. They sure knew how to dick with one Warrant Officer Chalmers.

It wasn’t until he was helping the other man into bed that things started clicking into place behind his eyes. One thought led to another to another and then bang!

At first Chalmers sat in the high, narrow hall outside Vat’s room, thinking. After an hour or so, he believed he might have figured out how to disable the flight crew. He got up, unsteady at first, and tried the idea out as he paced the halls. He tried to run down all the angles, searching for flaws, playing devil’s advocate. Only when he was reasonably sure he had a plan that might work did he wake Jackson and run it by him.

Jackson wiped sleep from his eyes, shook his head. “I’ll want you to run all that by me again, once I’ve had something to wake my ass up.”

“Fuck you, I haven’t even slept.”

Jackson stretched. “And that’s my fault, how?”

“It ain’t,” Chalmers said, tired in his bones. And not just because of the long night. He was tired of the constant tension. Of the not knowing—no, that wasn’t accurate; it was the actual caring about—who would get hurt. And not just by his actions, but by his failures.

Say one thing about old Chalmers: he’d always felt he had so few options, so little room to maneuver, such limited time between crises, and so much on the line that giving a shit about what his actions might do to other people never really entered into his calculations.

That wasn’t the case anymore. Not by a long shot.

“I need you to tell me it’s okay. That I ain’t fucking up. Again.”

Jackson was quiet for what seemed like a long time after that.

“I’m fucked, right?” Chalmers said when he couldn’t take the suspense any longer.

“Shit, no,” Jackson said, holding Chalmers’s gaze. “Best I could come up with was to put a bullet in the head of each crewman. In microgravity. With—much as I hate admitting it—a bunch of vital electronics we can’t afford the least bit of damage to as the backdrop for our shooting.”

Chalmers looked away. “Might still have to, something goes wrong.”

“Yeah, but none of us are what you’d call a cold-blooded assassin.”

“Right, but still…”

Jackson cocked his head. “It’ll be a lot easier on my conscience knowing we tried to avoid killing noncombatants.”

“Are they really noncombatants, though?”

Jackson sniffed. “These supremacist fucks still look at everyone else as their inferiors. Subhumans. Not people. That sort gets what’s coming to ’em in my book.”

“Couple of ferry pilots hardly constitute the Waffen SS, though.”

“No, but all that is required for evil to prevail—”

“—is for good men to do nothing,” Chalmers finished.

“And these assholes have been doing a lot more than nothing to ensure the continuance of Kulsis’ dominion over R’Bak. So, yeah, push comes to shove, I’ll do what’s necessary.” He looked at Chalmers again. “We all will.”


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