I sigh heavily, tired of the subject already. “Listen, Beltz, we have a disk, but it’s not for sale. I want to know about this Alliance and who’s a part of it and what your next move is.”
“But you had a chip in your back. You are OSG. Or you were, at least.”
“I was a kid born into an OSG family. That doesn’t make me OSG. And your buddy Jacov was OSG too, so don’t act like you discriminate all that much.”
Beltz thinks he’s as smooth as ice, but I see the flicker of curiosity in his eyes. “I am surprised he told you.”
“He didn’t have to.”
“So.” Beltz is done messing around. Standing up straight, he delivers his next words with conviction. “You are a little girl who had a picochip in her back and you need a boom chuck. I am a man of simple means. I want the disk. We can make a trade.”
I shake my head. “No deal. You already struck the terms, and you can’t change them now.”
“But you told me you did not have the disk. You lied. That is not nice to lie to me.” His threat is unmistakable.
“Nothing in the books or our customs says I need to tell you what my ship’s inventory is. That disk is inventory as far as I’m concerned. You agreed to trade one Mekanika Special Boom Chuck for nuts, and that’s the trade that’s going to happen.”
Rollo’s head starts bobbing from the back of the group and he gives me a thumbs up along with a wink. I have to battle not to roll my eyes and sigh at his obvious and goofy approval. But at least I know I got it right in his world; and according to Baebong, his world is all about finding hard to find things.
“And if I refuse?” Beltz straightens to his full height, which is impressive, but not as intimidating as he thinks it is. Not to me, anyway. Lucinda and Rollo look like they want to run, though.
I shrug. “Then I’ll board your ship with weaponry, take it, and leave you with nothing.”
“No nuts,” Rollo adds, putting on a show of bravery I know he doesn’t really feel. He holds up two fingers bent over. “That’s how it works. You snake on a deal, you get fanged.”
Everyone turns to look at him.
“What?” He shrugs. “Rollo knows the traders’ code. It’s a rule. You can look it up.”
Beltz stares at me for the longest time. The flightdeck goes silent, save for a couple boot shuffles and throat clearings. Then footsteps take up all the sound space as Baebong mounts the rest of the steps and claims his seat as my navigator.
Jeffers is next. He takes the seat behind me and to my right. That’s three people I can count on now. Booyah.
“If you need me, I’ll be in my work chamber,” Lucinda says.
I nod at her, grateful for her foresight. Had she said she was going to the biogrid, it would have clued Beltz in to what else we’ve hidden from him on our ship. As far as he’s concerned, she’s just a regular old grower, not a biogrid genius. Yes, I called her a genius. I’m feeling pretty generous right now. And why wouldn’t I be? I have a crew again. Hell yeah!
Gus lifts a finger. “We have some things to do in the engine room, soo…later, humans.” He and Tam disappear behind a swoosh of the portal door.
Rollo walks around to stand next to Beltz, facing him. “Are we doing this deal or not? Clock’s ticking. Better decide soon or the rate goes up.”
Beltz looks slowly over at him, but Rollo doesn’t move. I say nothing, waiting for things to play out.
“You look like you could use a nice blue ring around your eye,” Beltz says to him.
Rollo frowns. “And you look like someone who could use a reminder about what happens to people who back out of negotiated deals.” He looks over at me. “You want me to get the float-lock ready?”
I nod.
Rollo leaves out the flightdeck door, probably to go hide somewhere, seeing as how he has no idea where the float chamber is, and I’m pretty sure his bluster is just that. But he did do a good job of reminding Beltz about trader conventions. Hopefully it’ll make him think twice before he puts his finger on a trigger.
Beltz looks at me and waits.
“You have the deal in front of you,” I say, calm as hell. “Make your decision.” My heart is hammering away, but he’ll never know. My training allows me to keep my exterior calm while my insides flip and twist in on themselves.
His bottom lip comes out and then he nods, very slowly. “I have made my decision.”
I raise my eyebrows. “And?”
“I decide that maybe you want to know about the Alliance.”
“Insightful.” Or not, since I already asked about it. I have to be patient and let him work his way through this, though. I have a feeling this Alliance thing might be something we could use to our advantage, if having disks that can activate in the presence of picochips is part of the deal.
“We must discuss it in private,” he says. “Captain to captain. No crew.”
“Fine.” I look to my left and right. Baebong and Jeffers take the hint and leave through the portal that leads to Lucinda’s chamber. I suspect, however, that Baebong will wait just outside the door. This fact allows me to be more confident while alone on the flightdeck with this hulking form of a man who I’m still not sure I can trust.
Beltz rocks up on his toes and then back to his heels, his hands clasped behind him. “So, you are former OSG. Tell me about that.”
I tap a finger on the arm of my chair. “Tell me about the Alliance.”
“We will trade information.” He smiles. “You first.”
I weigh the risk of sharing a little of my history against learning about this so-called Alliance, and decide I can part with some of the basics. He already knows about the picochip.
“My father is an OSG commander. I was born into it. I was trained until I was sixteen as part of the Defense Squadron before I left.”
“What level of training did you reach?”
I shake my head. “Nope. It’s your turn now. Tell me about the Alliance.”
He shrugs. “We are a group of drifters who seek to work together to combat the growing influence of the OSG on our operations. Now you.”
“I reached Level Ten.”
He frowns. “That cannot be true.”
“Sure it can.”
“No one reaches Level Ten at your age. I know men in their thirties who have not yet reached it.”
“Jacov for example?” I wait for him to deny it, but he says nothing. “Your turn. I answered your question, now you answer mine: who’s part of the Alliance?”
“I cannot reveal ship or captain identifiers, but I can tell you that it is all drifters. We do not accept government-tainted members.”
That leaves out cargo ships, transporters, and pretty much every other class of ship in the universe. Interesting.
“How many of you are there?”
He shakes his head. “It’s your turn. Show me your Level Ten.”
I lift an eyebrow. “You want me to slit your throat?” I still remember my final training: a fight to the death. I stopped just before the guy’s artery was laid open, but not before I’d sent my opponent into a very deep sleep that probably took months to wake from. I didn’t stick around long enough after that fight to find out the details.
“I prefer to see other evidence.”
I sigh as I push up my sleeve. “POW training. Level Nine. That’s the best I can do without hurting someone.”
He steps forward and examines my scars more closely, grunting and nodding when he sees the extent of it. “You did not use MI. Why?”
I smile. “My turn. How many are in the Alliance?”
“We are four at this time.”
“Four including Langlade? That makes you three. Regardless, that’s not going to make any difference if the OSG decides it’s going to bend you over.”
He looks at me for the first time with a very serious expression. There’s no humor there, no threat, no nothing except maybe a promise. “You would be surprised what four like-minded groups of people can acco
mplish.”
His answer makes me even more curious, as does the fact that he failed to answer the part about Langlade. I’m not much of a group activities person, but the idea of four other DSs having my back is definitely appealing.
“The MI,” he prompts. “Why not?” He points at my arm.
I push my sleeve back down. “So I won’t forget.”
“So you won’t forget or so the person who did it won’t forget?”
I stare at him, wondering if he’s that uber perceptive or just shooting into the Dark.
“Makes no difference either way, does it?” I stand and walk down the stairs to be at his level, which forces me to have to look up to meet his eyes. “The OSG is trying to tax our water, but you knew that already. Looks like you’ve known about it for a while, and you’re preparing yourself for some kind of conflict with that cloaking system you have. What else do they have planned? Do you know? Where are you getting your information?”
“Do you know what they have planned?” He’s challenging me. This, I know; but what I don’t know is how to respond. Now I’m the one shooting into the Dark.
It’s his turn to respond to my questions, but I’m willing to invest a little more of myself to get some better answers. “I know that until now, the OSG has been focused on settlements and putting together their infrastructures. They say their sole mission is to populate any habitable planetary surface with our species, but I always wondered why they spent so much time training us how to kill each other when they claimed to want a peaceful existence.”
“A very astute observation. Shall I tell you about realpolitik, the true version of the OSG’s plan for our universe?”
His words make me want to run out of the room behind Lucinda and Rollo, or hide in the engine room with Gus and Tam. But I’m the captain of this ship now, so I don’t have the luxury of being a coward. Half of me is sad about that and the other half is ready to go kick some OSG ass.
“By all means.” I fold my arms over my chest, waiting to hear his theory, hoping it won’t dredge up any memories I’d rather keep suppressed.
Chapter Twenty-Five
BELTZ LOWERS HIMSELF TO A step, sitting on it as he rests his elbows on his bent knees. I take the step nearby, turning to slightly face him. My arms remain folded, although now raised to my knees as well. It’s weird that I feel a kinship with him, but maybe it shouldn’t be; we’re both captains, we both don’t trust the OSG, and we both think it’s funny when someone gets the better of us and cuts us open for it.
“I do not know who your father is, but if he is part of the OSG, and he recruited his own daughter to their fighting forces, then of course I am speaking to someone who has heard, first hand, of their realpolitik.” A special kind of furor overtakes Beltz’s words and makes me want to lean in to hear them more clearly. “They say to the universe that they want peace and diplomacy, but believe me, when that fails, they are not afraid to use the big stick.”
“The big stick?”
He waves my comment off. “Oh, do not worry. It is just a very old maxim in the government. They used to say when our ancestors walked the Earth that a strong leader must speak softly and carry a big stick.” He points at me. “When you were with your father, you were part of that big stick. You and many like you are part of their threat. And their particle weapons of course, they are a part of the big stick. The drifters do not have a chance against something like that.” He scowls. “I do not care what they say to you and to me. The OSG is not about peace and nice, pretty little biodomes on the planets for all the families. It is about dominance and submission. You guess who is to submit.” He nods once to let me know it’s us, as if I didn’t already know that.
“So what’s the point of the Alliance?” I ask. “What’s your mission?”
“As one single drifter, we are doomed to subservience and slavery. To eventual grounding. We are much easier to control on the ground, are we not? But as a group, we are not doomed. At least we have a chance.”
“A chance to what? Defeat the OSG?” Disbelief colors my tone. He must be insane if he thinks four drifters could even punch a hole in the OSG.
“No, not to defeat anyone. To live. To remain independent and free to make our own choices.” He leans in closer. “That is all we want to do. To live our lives the way we want, without some big brother telling us what we must and must not do.”
I nod. I get where he’s coming from completely. “So this Alliance is not for fighting against the OSG?”
His tone lightens. “Oh, sure, we can fight if we must. But more so, we can communicate. We can trade. We can be eyes in four places, not just one.” He leans in closer and whispers. “Five, if you join us.” He winks.
“And those five do or don’t include Langlade?” After taking his ship, I’m kind of in the mood to avoid him for the next fifty years or so.
His expression goes dark. “No, it does not.”
“Then why does he have a disk?”
“Forget Langlade. Do you see the value of the Alliance, or are you so much of an anarchist that you cannot imagine yourself working with others toward a common goal?”
I shake my head, seeing the need for it and the benefits. Everything he’s said about the OSG rings true against the things I already know and have seen and heard growing up in my father’s household.
“It’s not that I’m an anarchist, but any alliance like you’re talking about depends completely on trust.” I say this to him knowing that this particular resource is in short supply throughout the Dark. Even Baebong kind of let me down today, getting all suspicious on me. To be fair, though, I never did trust him enough to tell him my family history. It makes me sad to think that in my search for independence, I’ve managed so well to find loneliness. I’m only now realizing how different the two concepts are.
“That is right. Trust is imperative. And so we have the disk. That is part of it. The other part…,” he shrugs, “…well, that is just faith. We have faith in each other, faith that we have the same goals and realize that we’re better off together than apart. United, we stand. Divided, we fall. Another maxim from long ago.”
I laugh a little to myself as I realize my childish notions of being a drifter are just that: silly dreams of a young girl. “So being a drifter isn’t about being alone and self-reliant?”
“It is, to some degree. But again, not really. No one can be truly alone for a long time. We are humans, after all. We crave the company of others. It is in our blood, our instinct. It is what keeps our race free from defects and strange happenings. We must keep the gene pool deep, eh?” He reaches over and nudges me, sending a jolt of something electric up my arm and into my chest. His arm is warm.
I glare at him. “What did I tell you about touching me without my permission?”
He smiles back. “What can I say? I have a very small memory for nonsense like that.”
“We’ll see if you still consider it nonsense when I stick you in the jewels with my knife,” I mutter. Then in a louder voice, I ask, “What’s the deal with the disk and the chicken?”
“I can only tell you if you are in the Alliance.” He shrugs, but smiles.
It’s almost charming when he looks at me like that. Is he flirting with me? Yikes. He’s out of my league. I can tell from the look of him that he’s had a lot of women in his bunk.
“Are you inviting me in?” I ask, hoping I don’t sound like I’m flirting back.
“I don’t know,” he says slyly. “Can I trust you?”
I stare him down. “Can I trust you?”
I can’t help thinking about my father and how easily he sold me out for his cause — for his realpolitik or whatever Beltz called it. He should have been someone I trusted with my life, but I could always trust my father to treat me like he treated all his other troops: as someone expendable, someone to be used for his own purposes — purposes he didn’t share with those who didn’t have a need to know. I’ve been a pawn before, and I’ll never allow mys
elf to be one again.
But Beltz is right about one thing; we can’t survive out here alone as a single drifter ship if the OSG is planning on making a move toward controlling our resources — especially if that resource is water. We can trade for almost anything else, but water is something we need to have direct access to.
So far, the crew of the DS Mekanika says they can make that happen with their boom chuck. And that locator device Jens used on me worked really well at finding that picochip. With a fabrication ship like Beltz’s on my side, I could get the DS Anarchy in tiptop shape in no time. The idea of allying myself with them is positively energizing, but only if I can trust this Captain Gunter Beltz. That’s a big if in my world.
I study Beltz’s face, using my training to try and suss out any signs of deceit in his micro-expressions. All I see there is a frank openness and maybe a little heat. He keeps flicking glances at my chest.
He shrugs. “Trust for me is easy. I see you, I like you, I believe you, I trust you. If you double cross me, I kill you. End of the story.”
I can live with that; at least he’s honest. “Same goes for me.”
He holds out his hand. “We bind our promise by the hand.”
I look at the paw that’s twice the size of mine, wondering if I’m going to regret taking it.
“Go ahead, Crazy Bitch, I am not going to hurt you.”
My smile is slow in coming, but then it finally breaks out as I realize I’d rather have this guy on my side than against it.
“Call me crazy bitch one more time, and I’m going to have to cut you.”
His head falls back as he barks out a huge laugh, his hand enveloping mine in warmth. Another sizzle of electric heat moves through me, this time not nearly as unwelcome as it was before.
Chapter Twenty-Six
STANDING IN THE ENGINE ROOM next to Baebong, I reflect on my first twenty-four hours as Captain of the DS Anarchy. Is this even real? Did I actually win this ship in a card game and then drive it straight into a political astroid storm of epic proportions necessitating the joining of a rebel alliance? Either I’m dreaming while suffering under the influence of some serious chemicals or my life has gone completely out of the galaxy. I don’t know which to hope is true.