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  Mina shook her head. “I blame you for this, all of it. I had hoped that things might be different if you and I met firsthand, but it is as I feared. You used me.” She went back to the hovercycle and got on.

  She and the other woman disappeared back up the hill.

  I gave Captain Marchant a moment for him to gather his thoughts.

  “We still have to deal with Sawyer,” I said, thinking that all of this had been avoidable.

  We didn’t need to come here.

  Marchant glared at me. “I have a plan.”

  Somehow, I didn’t find that comforting in the slightest.

  10

  Captain Marchant walked back up to where they had met previously, waving his hands and calling out. “Sawyer, Sawyer, I talked your sister down, but you are gonna have to deal with the fact you tried to kill her.”

  Captain Marchant had tried to send me away, but I insisted on coming and had left no room for argument. He was in no position to order me to leave, especially after the incident with Mina.

  He was at my mercy.

  I could either do a report on this, possibly resulting in an internal investigation, or I had something I could use down the road. Either way, this was starting to look better for me.

  Maybe I had a future on the Red Survivor after all.

  Sawyer came out with his sister in tow. It appeared she had gone to meet up with him instead of returning to her transport, the woman she’d had with her was nowhere to be seen.

  Whatever hard feelings that might have existed because of Mina shooting at Sawyer and him returning the favor, it appeared that those issues were trumped by their beef with Captain Marchant.

  She looked at Marchant with a glare that I could only describe as a woman scorned and I felt bad for her. I had a hard time seeing the captain using her as she alleged, but I didn’t think it was something he was incapable of doing.

  She reached into her pocket and wrapped her hand around something that was probably a weapon. She didn’t have her rifle, making me think she had left it with her hovercycle. I still had my rifle slung over my shoulder. I kept it there while keeping a careful eye on Mina, fearing that she might try to take a shot at Captain Marchant.

  I did not want anything to happen to the Captain, at least not on my watch.

  And not ever, I amended quietly, knowing it was bad karma to wish ill on your Captain. I just hoped that someday we would work through our difficulties and come up with something like a working relationship. Or perhaps I can prove he is a traitor and get him removed.

  It was unfortunate Mina had interrupted, keeping Marchant from responding to Sawyer’s request.

  My recorder had stopped when Redding left, I should have thought to start it again as we walked over, but it would be obvious now if I did.

  “Now, we were discussing—” Sawyer started to say but Marchant cut him off.

  “Yeah, that was before your sister tried to kill me. You can forget about that.”

  Marchant didn’t look at me but Sawyer looked from Marchant to me as if understanding why Marchant had changed his tune.

  Sawyer gave a slight nod as if he had picked up on a subtle message.

  “Give us back the money you stole,” Sawyer demanded but without the energy from before. He wanted something else, that was plain now, he was just going to wait until I was out of the picture to discuss it with Marchant. “Mina is satisfied there never was a real relationship between you two. All we want is the money.”

  “You lowlife scum-sucking excuse for a man!” Mina lunged but Captain Marchant stepped back. I reached for my rifle but didn’t pull it down, Mina stopped from going too far, clenched her fists and stepped back. Whatever Sawyer might say, Mina was not over the Captain.

  “I am sorry things got to the place they did, Mina,” Marchant said. “I might have thought for a moment you and I had a real shot at making it if I had not known who you are. It had to be this way. It was the only way.”

  “I don’t care about the money,” Mina said without looking at her brother. “I never did. You just walked away. You walked right out of my life without a word.”

  Captain Marchant glared at her. “Would you expect me to do anything else after everything you knew about me?” He shook his head. “After what you guys did, after what you planned to do to me—yes, I learned about that—I can’t believe you even think that we had some sort of relationship.”

  “I loved you.”

  Marchant took a step towards her. “I’m not saying the feelings weren’t real, I’m just saying I couldn’t act on them in good conscience. You put things right with your life and we’ll talk about it. There’s about to be an indictment. Turn yourself in when the charges are filed. I’ll visit in jail.”

  “Come now,” Sawyer said, his irritation showing through, “enough with all this romantic garbage, we still have the matter of the five million credits.”

  He said this while looking at me as if trying to tell Captain Marchant to get rid of me so they could return to the discussion they’d been having before.

  11

  I looked from Sawyer to Captain Marchant to Mina. I wasn’t going anywhere and I suspected Marchant knew that. He had refused to tell me his plan and I feared it wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

  Had Captain Marchant stolen from these people and not suffered any legal consequences? If not, what made Sawyer think he could ask the captain for a treasonous favor and expect Marchant to make good on it?

  It appeared I had underestimated what Captain Marchant was capable of doing, particularly since he was willing to entertain Sawyer’s request.

  I hardly know the Captain.

  One moment, Captain Marchant was still, the next he was pointing a pistol at Sawyer, moving faster than I thought possible for the man.

  “I didn’t want it to come to this,” Marchant said, “you both leave me no other choice.” Sawyer’s eyebrows rose and his sister didn’t move.

  “Are you going to kill me?” Sawyer asked, unafraid of the Captain. “Seems unlikely for you, especially for a decorated officer of the fleet.”

  “Captain—”

  Marchant cut me off. “This is none of your business, stay out of it.”

  “Mina, how about you and the boy take a walk,” Sawyer said, a tint of desperation showing on his face. “I want a word in private with the captain.”

  I shook my head and almost reached for my rifle. I didn’t know exactly what I would do if Captain Marchant managed to get himself killed, but if that happened it was within my jurisdiction to execute or arrest Sawyer and Mina.

  “You had your chance. I’m gonna give you one last opportunity to walk away from this, if you don’t, there’s going to be consequences for you both.” Captain Marchant spoke in an even voice that was devoid of all emotion which was surprising for somebody who was usually riled up so easily.

  Sawyer raised his hands and took a step backward. “You promised me a private conversation, we were interrupted.”

  Captain Marchant shot him in the leg, just above the knee. The blast sent him to the ground as he clasped his thigh in pain while howling out.

  I was shocked at the sudden violence but there was no blood. After everything Sawyer had done, he had the audacity to look betrayed.

  “This is over.” Captain Marchant leaned down and looked at the man, oblivious to Mina. “If you ever come at me again I will kill you. Go face your charges like a man or flee to the unknown universe or get back on that Plethki ship of yours and go make trouble with them, but I better never see you again.”

  Sawyer was red in the face as he reached for a pistol, but before he got it out, Captain Marchant shot him in the chest.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Mina said.

  “There was no other way,” Captain Marchant said the words in such a way as to make me think he intended a double meaning. He stared straight at her as if trying to keep from looking at me. He took a step forward, reaching out with a hand towards her. She stepped backward and looked ready to pull out her weapon and kill him.

  “Once you’re a free woman look me up,” Captain Marchant said. Mina shook her head.

  “No, not now, I never could, not now that I know the truth. You never loved me. As a final gesture for what we had I’ll keep the Plethki from killing you. Don’t expect anything like that in the future.” She looked for a moment like she was going to shoot him but she stalked back to her Plethki landing craft instead. She didn’t look back at her brother once.

  Sawyer took a breath.

  I was surprised he was alive.

  I bent down and put my fingers to the neck of the man and stifled a gasp.

  “Captain, he has a pulse.”

  “Of course, he does, did you really think I was gonna kill him? His knee will be fine too, just stunned him a bit.”

  I looked at the captain’s gun, I was not aware it had a stun feature. That was when I noticed his sidearm was not fleet issued. It was his own personal weapon. I wondered if Mina had understood what Marchant had done, perhaps that was why she’d had no reaction when Marchant had shot Sawyer.

  Marchant gave me a cold look. “Call back the ship, let’s get this man back on board. Also, let’s make sure to take that transport, it looks like FEDE property. We’ll return it to its rightful owner.”

  “Why let her go?”

  “She’s better off without him.”

  “That doesn’t make—”

  “Let her go.” Captain Marchant walked away, leaving me to keep an eye on our captive.

  This was not how I had anticipated the situation to resolve.

  I also hadn’t learned what had happened between all of them.

  I might never know, I thought, more determined than ever to investigate until I learned the truth.

  I look back at Mina, if we were going to arrest Sawyer, we should arrest her too. I brought up my rifle, thinking of chasing after her, but then dismissed the thought because she was already on the ship with the door shutting.

  I would put together a full report, but I would think long and hard before I actually logged it.

  After our landing craft had returned and we were on our way back, I could not get a single phrase out of my mind.

  There was no other way.

  I had thought Sawyer was dead when the captain had uttered it, but it took on a whole new meaning now that he was alive. I would keep an eye on Sawyer and the Captain to see if they completed their private meeting in the privacy of a jail cell.

  If I woke up one day to find Sawyer missing, I’d know that they had finished their conversation. Something told me that the Captain might still make good on Sawyer’s request.

  What should I do if that happens?

  There was no way I could leave the Red Survivor now, even if I wanted to.

  Like it or not I was now duty-bound to watch the Captain, keeping tabs on everything he was doing.

  He left me no choice.

  The Assassin

  in the Hold

  1

  “Over here, Commander,” Captain John Marchant said to me. “We’ll start with this one.” He kicked the container on the ground in front of him. As a Class 4 FEDE vessel we sometimes took on passengers and freight. It was the captain’s prerogative to examine everything on board, something he rarely did.

  I can’t remember the last time he took a look at what we have in the hold, I thought as I approached, and he’s certainly never invited me to come along with him.

  Marchant seemed to be in a good mood today, which filled me with suspicion. He was ordinarily rude and short with me.

  I came over to where Captain Marchant stood in our hold, feeling like I was walking into a trap. The captain never asked for my advice, nor did he ever show the slightest bit of interest in my opinion. When I gave him my unsolicited ideas, he ignored them.

  Marchant smiled as I approached, making me want to shudder.

  Why the good mood today, Captain?

  I didn’t expect to see him this happy unless he was saying goodbye to me for good.

  To somebody who did not know him, it might have seemed friendly enough, but I was under no illusions. He was playing nice and there was a reason why.

  He kicked the crate in front of him again. “Can you open this one for me?”

  I studied it. “Do we know who it belongs to?”

  “One of the crew members. It’s my responsibility to check anything and everything on the ship. Open it.”

  I looked down at it, uncertain of what to do. It almost seemed as if this were a test of some sort though I was at a loss to see how. There had been a few orders that Captain Marchant had given to me where I had either ignored him or done something different. Obeying this one did not seem like a problem, but I was even warier as I knelt, opened the latches, and pushed back the lid to reveal the contents inside. It was an assortment of items and nothing struck me as out of place.

  “Very interesting, don’t you think,” Captain Marchant said, pointing out a bag that was buried in the back. He pulled it out with two fingers as if he expected that it might bite him. He opened it up and took a whiff before passing it back to me.

  I didn’t need to inhale, I could smell it from where I was.

  “I did not expect to find Krallian spice,” I said, looking at the identification label on the container. The name wasn’t there, of course, but I used the camera on my handheld screen to capture the number to look up the culprit later. My eyes narrowed when I glanced at the captain.

  He had known exactly where to look, almost as if he knew it was there.

  “Neither did I. Good thing we’re taking a look around. This is one of my more important duties.”

  “Do you want me to write this up?”

  “No, we’ll let Ensign Redding do it. I saw you took down the identification information. She can handle it from here.”

  I closed the container, making sure to put the latches in place as I did. It might have seemed to somebody else that Marchant was trying to lighten my burden by not require I handle the offender, but it was my responsibility.

  Marchant loved to delegate my duties to other people and then blame me for when they got it wrong.

  The captain smiled at me again as if he could tell what I was thinking. “Onto the next one.” There was almost a jovial quality to his voice as he nodded at another container. This was double the width of the last one and three times as long.

  What do they have in there, a corpse?

  I opened it up as well, pushing off the lid to fall on the floor with a clatter.

  I was surprised to see a man looking up at me.

  He had a blaster pointed right at me.

  2

  I jumped back out of the way, reaching for my own sidearm as I did, moving just in time. The man pulled the trigger and the blast went harmlessly into the specially treated ceiling of the hold. By that time I was on the floor with my weapon pointed out at the would-be assassin.

  Marchant was hiding behind a couple of barrels of aged Terelly’s Finest, and I was unable to read his face.

  Had he stepped back as I opened the container?

  I couldn’t remember. A dark suspicion formed in the back of my mind.

  If he can’t get rid of me one way, it’s gonna be another, I thought to myself, as I looked over my blaster at the open container, trying to decide what I ought to do next. My training dictated I give the man a chance to surrender before opening fire. Ours was a mission of peace, not war, and if we shot back at all those who shot at us first, we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we had.

  “Throw out your weapon, and come out with your hands up!” I yelled at the man, who had not moved from the container.

  The man had worn a mask, a little detail that I had not fully processed because of the weapon he had pointed at me.

  “Throw down your weapon and come out now.”

  “I don’t think he speaks our language, Commander.” Marchant looked over at me.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked

  “I caught a glance of a tattoo on his ear. Did you see it?”

  “I was too busy trying to dodge out of the way of his blaster to notice. What are we dealing with here?”

  “I think this man is a Karchuck.”

  A shiver went down my back, I had never come face-to-face with any of the assassin’s group before, but I knew who they were. If the stories were to be believed, this man had been raised from a boy to be an assassin, trained in the language and culture that was alien to earth, though they only accepted human recruits.

  “If that’s the case, why aren’t we already dead?”

  “We must have surprised him.”

  Despite everything that was going on, the sudden change in circumstance had not dampened Captain Marchant’s mood.

  My first instinct was that Captain Marchant was trying to get rid of me. Somehow, he had known that this man was here and had decided to take advantage of that fact to bring about my death.

  If the captain didn’t hire the assassin himself. I did think it was a little strange that he invited me along today.

  I could not quite think Captain Marchant capable of doing that, but I decided to remain open to the possibility.

  I thought back to my recent experience with Marchant and a man named Sawyer. Captain Marchant had shown a side that I had never before witnessed. After that it was easy to believe that he had the capability of conning somebody, or even doing a little bit worse than that.

  But murder? Or assassination?

  I did not believe that this assassin was here at his behest, at least that was what I told myself.

  Then why was I so quick to think that Marchant was willing to take advantage of the assassin to get rid of me?

  The question stopped me cold.

  It was two sides of the same coin. It was better to assume Marchant was behind this and try to prove my assumption was wrong than to approach it from the other direction.