Author: Rachel Bach

“Is something funny, Morris?” Basil snapped, swiveling his long neck down to put his sharp yellow beak right in my face.

“No sir,” I said, trying not to choke. “I was just admiring your cape.”

Basil rolled his huge yellow eyes. “It’s a mark of respect. I’m not about to embarrass myself going out without my black on Remembrance Day.”

“What day?”

Basil’s beak fell open. “You’ve worked in the Terran Republic for how many years and you don’t know about Remembrance Day?”

“Do I look Terran to you?” I asked, crossing my arms. “The Blackbirds took Republic jobs, but we’re a Paradoxian outfit. We celebrated the five high holy days and King Stephen’s birthday. Besides, Terrans have like ten thousand holidays. You can’t expect me to keep up with all of them.”

“There are a lot,” Nova admitted. “But Remembrance Day is special. Unlike the regional celebrations, Remembrance Day is one of the thirty-seven mandated holidays celebrated on every planet in the Republic.”

I shook my head. Mandated holidays. How Terran. “What are they remembering anyway?” Because if it was some giant defeat at the hands of the Paradoxian army, I was having another beer to celebrate.

“The destruction of Svenya,” Basil said, his whistling voice taking on what he probably meant to be a somber tone. “It was a colony world even older and bigger than Wuxia, but sixty-some-odd years ago its orbit spontaneously destabilized and the planet broke apart.”

Now that Basil mentioned it, I dimly remembered hearing about the tragedy of Svenya back in school, usually as an example of what happened to those who did not have a living saint to rule them. “Didn’t some absurd number of people die?”

“Billions,” Nova said sadly. “Scientists still haven’t figured out exactly what went wrong, but the holiday makes sure Svenya is never forgotten.” Her face fell as she looked down at her sparkling star dress. “Maybe I should go change.”

“No way,” I said. “I’m sure the ghosts of Sven-whatever won’t mind you looking cheerful. Now get out of here.” I nodded at the open cargo bay. “You’re letting in the dirt.”

Nova and Basil hurried down the ramp to their waiting cab. I watched them drive off until the bright blue vehicle disappeared between the hundreds of parked freighters sharing our tiered dock, and then I went back inside to continue the serious work of picking out which new blade I’d be making Caldswell pay for.

The repairs to the Fool went on all night and into the morning. The captain and Mabel took shifts supervising, and when Nova and Basil got back from dinner, Caldswell pressed them into service setting up the new equipment being loaded into the bridge. Hyrek, of course, stayed in his room. There was nothing for the xith’cal doctor to do, and his presence would only terrify the work crews. I was banished for the same reason, but unlike certain lizards, I can’t sit around reading all day. I’d found and ordered my new weapon the night before, and now that I didn’t have blade shopping to keep me busy, I was getting bored.

A bored Paradoxian is a dangerous thing. Caldswell knew it, too, and the moment I came out of my room, he’d put me in charge of picking Cotter’s replacement. I’d never had a hiring position before, and I was so thrilled at the promotion that I said yes before the captain had finished speaking.

An hour later I’d rewritten Caldswell’s grossly inadequate job requirements and put a new ad up on every employment listing I could find with instructions for applicants to send their résumé. The résumé requirement was a risky move since we were leaving tomorrow, but there was no way in hell I was doing a cattle call like Caldswell had used to find Cotter and me. After all, the person I picked would be the one guarding my back. This contract with Caldswell was my ticket to becoming a Devastator, and I’d be damned if I died because I wasn’t willing to take the effort to find a partner who could do the job properly.

If the résumé requirement cut into my replies, though, I couldn’t tell. Not four hours after I posted the position, I had fifty applications waiting on my com. I rejected most out of hand, but by evening I had a nice pile of potentials. All I needed now was the captain’s approval and I could start calling people back, so I hopped out of bed, threw on a long T-shirt over my shorts and tank top so the Terran work crews wouldn’t leer, and headed out to find him.

I’d thought Caldswell would be overseeing the work on the bridge, but Mabel was the only one up there when I stuck my head in. The captain wasn’t in the lounge either, or the cargo bay. That left his cabin, so I started down the spiral staircase to the lower hallway where the captain kept his rooms. I’d just made it to the second spiral when I heard someone say my name.

The sound stopped me cold. I didn’t recognize the voice, but it was masculine, softly accented, and clearly angry. The anger wasn’t what stopped me, though. I couldn’t actually say what had done it, but something about hearing my name in that soft accent hit me like a shot. But while I was trying to recover, the man was still speaking.

“…can’t stay here,” he said. “Send her back to Paradox. Leave her on Wuxia if you have to, just get her away.”

And with that, shock was replaced by rage. There was only one Paradoxian left on this rig, and that accented idiot was trying to get me kicked off. Applicants forgotten, I dropped into a crouch and peered through the gap in the metal stairs to see who the voice belonged to, though I had a pretty good idea already. Sure enough, the cook was standing at the far end of the hall, talking to the captain.

The cook’s back was to me, so I was able to drop my eyes before the revulsion kicked in, but nothing could stop my fury. I don’t take well to people bad-mouthing me behind my back to my superiors as a general rule, but after all I’d gone through for this job, the thought of being undermined by a damned potato peeler made me see red. I was one step away from charging down the stairs and laying the cook out for his trouble when Caldswell came to my defense.

“No,” the captain said. “She stays and that’s the end of it.”

“I didn’t risk everything so you could keep her here.”

Angry as I was, the cold fury in the cook’s voice made me flinch. He sounded as ready to kill as I was. Fortunately, Caldswell wasn’t taking that shit.

“Then you should have thought about that before you disobeyed orders and put me in this position,” the captain said. “You made this mess, you live with it. She stays until I say otherwise, and I don’t want to hear a damn peep out of you. Is that understood, soldier?”

The hall went silent. So much so that I thought the cook must have turned tail and run. But then he whispered, “Yes sir.”

That sounded like the end of things to me, but Caldswell went on. “I’ve heard back from command,” he said. “Your punishment has been set.”

My ears perked up. Punishment for what? And what did Caldswell mean by command? Wasn’t he an independent trader? I held my breath, waiting for the cook to give me a clue, but all the horrid man would say was, “Yes sir.”

The reply was barely out before I heard Caldswell stomp back into his cabin, leaving the cook alone in the hall. Back on the steps, I stood up silently. Considering I hadn’t been a part of it, that exchange had gone remarkably well for me. The captain was clearly on my side, and the cook was going to be punished. For what, I didn’t know, but unless it was for talking about crewmates behind their backs, my job wasn’t over. I’d been a merc long enough now to know that this sort of thing needed to be nipped in the bud, and since I was headed for the captain’s room anyway, now seemed like as good a time as any.

With that, I squared my shoulders and started down the stairs again. I hadn’t heard the cook move or the door to his cabin open, so I was pretty sure he was still standing where the captain had left him. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I rounded the final spiral and nearly ran right into his chest.

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs with his head down and his shoulders slumped. Seeing how he’d just gotten chewed out by his captain, I hadn’t expected him to be cheerful, but this was different. The cook didn’t look upset, he looked devastated, like a gambler who’s lost everything and has only just begun to realize it, and for a tiny moment, my heart went out to him. Fortunately, it was a fleeting madness, because as soon as he looked up, the revulsion hit me like a tank.

For one terrible second, I thought I was going to get sick right there and ruin everything. I had a point to make, though, so I swallowed my nausea and forced myself to keep looking. That was how I caught the strange desperation on the cook’s face before his expression smoothed over into a calm, polite smile so bland and sudden it was like he’d put on a mask.

Once he’d recovered from my sudden appearance, the cook stepped aside to let me pass. When I didn’t move, he asked in a cool, polite voice, “Is something wrong?”

“You could say that,” I drawled, resting my hands on my hips. Now, you might think it’s hard to look intimidating when you’re dressed in a ratty T-shirt, barefoot, and unarmed facing down a man who has a good ten inches on you, but that’s bullshit. Intimidation is all about attitude. All you have to do is let just how much you’d love to kick the other guy’s ass show on your face and even the biggest skullheads will start backing down. The cook must have been a little dense, though, because he didn’t even flinch. Apparently, I’d have to spell it out for him.

“You have a problem with me, you say it to my face,” I said, keeping my voice nice and deadly. “I catch you bad-mouthing me behind my back to the captain again, and I’ll make sure that whatever punishment he has planned for you seems like a day at the beach by comparison.”

To his credit, the cook didn’t try to deny what he’d done, though his voice did get colder. “I meant no offense,” he said crisply. “It won’t happen again.”

“You’re right it won’t,” I promised him. “Because if it does, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

His shoulders tensed, and I braced, ready to take him, but the cook didn’t swing for me. He didn’t turn and walk away either. He just stood there, staring at my face like he was trying to memorize it.

“Stop that,” I snarled. “I am so sick of you staring at me. You want to ogle someone, find a dock girl, but I catch you looking at me one more time and I’m throwing you out an air lock.”

It was a stupid threat to make since we both knew I couldn’t make good on it, but the cook didn’t call my bluff. He just looked away, his blue eyes falling as he slipped past me. “My apologies, Miss Morris. I won’t bother you again.”

It might have been my imagination, but that last sentence had sounded almost sad, and that pissed me off even more. Why the hell was he sad about this shit? He’d started it. But even as the thought crossed my mind, I realized I felt sad, too. Sad and guilty, like I’d just done something cruel.

I clenched my fists and stomped down the final stair to the hall. What the hell was wrong with me? What did I care if I hurt someone who never talked to me but thought he could go around behind my back and bad-mouth me to my officer?

I glanced over my shoulder, but the cook was already gone, vanished up the stairs without a sound. Good riddance, I thought, jogging the final few feet to the captain’s bunk. I didn’t need that shit anyway.

I shook my head and raised my fist to knock on Caldswell’s door, but as my hand came up, I saw there was something on my fingers. The tips were stained black, like I’d dragged them across something sooty. Cursing this filthy hole of a planet, I wiped my hand on my T-shirt, thankful that I’d picked a black one, but the dirt didn’t come off. I scrubbed again, harder this time, but all that did was make my fingers feel funny. All pins and needles, almost like they were asleep.