Honour's Knight Read online

  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.

  “St
op 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.

  I gave up after that. I disliked looking unkempt in front of an officer, but I was already all the way down here, and the captain wasn’t going to mind a little bit of dirt. Still, once I was done knocking, I moved my hands out of sight when the door opened and Caldswell stuck his head out.

  “Morris?”

  “Sir,” I said, standing at attention. “I have the first candidates for you to look at.”

  The captain’s look brightened at once. “Let me see.”

  I’d already sent the applications to his com, so we stood together in his door while he looked them over. In the end, he approved the whole lot, and I left to make my callbacks feeling infinitely better than when I’d arrived. There was no way the cook was going to poison the captain against me now, not that he’d had any luck before. Asshole.

  It might have been childish, but that thought made me grin as I jogged back upstairs to wash the gunk off my hands. By the time I reached the bathroom, though, the black stuff was gone. I stared at my clean fingers in confusion for a moment, then I shrugged and headed back to my bunk to make my calls, whistling as I stepped around the Terran crew who were hard at work prying the bullets out of the hall ceiling.

  CHAPTER 2

  The repairs to the ship were due to be finished tomorrow afternoon, so I’d set all our interviews up for that morning. It was short notice, but that was the standard run for armor jobs, and considering the positive response I’d gotten from my callbacks, I had a good feeling about this. At nine sharp, I walked into the lounge suited up and ready to roll. As had become my habit, the first thing I did was glance around for the cook so I could plan where to sit accordingly, but the kitchen was empty. So was the couch. The cook and the captain’s daughter must be downstairs, I realized with a relieved sigh.

  Caldswell was there, already seated and waiting for me at the table. He did not look happy, though, and my good feeling began to sour. “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” Caldswell said. “That’s the problem. There are only five people in the cargo bay.” He glanced at the clock. “This might be a short session.”

  “Five?” I cried. I’d confirmed interviews for seventeen applicants yesterday. One or two dropping out was expected, but twelve was just ridiculous. “I guess your reputation preceded you,” I grumbled.

  “More likely your accent scared them off,” Caldswell replied drolly.

  I rolled my eyes and walked out to see what we had left.

  It was slim pickings. Of the seventeen candidates I’d called, only the dregs had bothered to show. We had two idiots in rental armor who, despite what they’d told me over the com, had clearly never been outside of the central Terran systems, and one kid whose “combat experience” turned out to be a medical discharge from Republic Starfleet boot camp. The fourth was a veteran with a solid record I’d had high hopes for, but I could smell the alcohol on her as soon as she came up the stairs, and I didn’t even look at Caldswell before I declined her.

  Thankfully, the fifth and final applicant looked like a winner. According to his résumé he’d been in the Terran Army for five years as a gunner before moving into private contract work. We didn’t really need a gunner since Mabel did all our ship-to-ship shooting, but he had some armor experience as well. Of course, by this point I was ready to take anyone who wasn’t a liar or a drunk, but when I stuck my head out the lounge door and peered down into the freshly repaired cargo bay, the man who peered back up at me wasn’t the one pictured on the application.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “I’m here about the job,” the man answered.

  I scowled. The man standing at the base of the cargo bay stairs was thin and dark skinned with thick, curling black hair going gray at the top and brown, laughing eyes that made him look like he was smiling even when he wasn’t. He was older, fifty maybe, but he carried himself like he knew what he was doing, and the gun case strapped across his back looked sleek and expensive. Unlike the others, who’d been almost impossible to understand through their heavy Wuxian accents, this man spoke perfect Universal. He also bore no resemblance to any of the pictures on the applications I’d set aside yesterday afternoon.

  “This is a closed interview,” I said. “We’re not talking walk-ins.”

  The man looked around at the empty cargo bay. “But it seems I am the only one left,” he said. “If the position is not yet filled, surely it would be no trouble to look at my credentials at least?”

  My eyes went back to the expensive gun case. “Come on up.”

  The man gave me a close-lipped smile and trotted up the stairs. I showed him to the interview chair and took a seat at the table beside Caldswell.

  “My name is Keno Rashid,” the man said.

  “Brian Caldswell,” the captain replied, holding out his hand. Rashid shook it and then looked at me, but I shook my head.

  “Not wise to shake hands with someone in armor,” I cautioned. “I could sneeze and break something. I’m Deviana Morris, head of security for the Glorious Fool.”

  Caldswell arched an eyebrow at that, but he didn’t say anything. Not that he could. Way I saw it, if I was doing the hiring as well as all the work, that made me the boss, and the earlier you established rank, the easier it was to keep it. Terran mercs might not be as pushy as Paradoxians, but that didn’t mean I was going to waste time laying down the rules twice.

  “A Paradoxian head of security,” Rashid said, eying my armor appreciatively. “In a Verdemont suit, no less. I like this job better and better.”

  My opinion of him shot up several notches, but I refused to let it show. If the captain found out I could be won over by anyone who knew his armor, he’d never trust my judgment again. But when Rashid set his handset on the table and pulled up his résumé, my opinion only rose higher.

  The man’s work history read like a military thriller. He’d been in the Republic Starfleet as a combat ops sniper for twelve years before moving on to the Free Guards, the Terran mercenary unit that was the Blackbirds’ primary competition. Before that, he’d worked security on a mining station in the K5 asteroid belt, which was about the most dangerous job I could think of. The running gag in the Blackbirds was that the reason the belt was named K5 was because you ran into five thousand pirates every time you went through. If this man had survived three years as guard in that, life on the Fool would seem almost dull.

  Best of all, though, was his equipmen
t. We’d advertised this as an armored position, which usually meant a heavy suit of some sort, but Rashid was packing what the Terrans call tactical armor. I called it padded clothes, but it was an intriguing setup nonetheless.

  His “suit” was a steel woven polymer lined with ballistic gel instead of plates. It wouldn’t stop an ax, but it was light, mostly bulletproof, and extremely nimble, especially with the reaction net added in. Since it didn’t have a real motor or strength augs, the whole thing only weighed about twenty pounds and rolled up small enough to fit in a small duffel, which in my mind put it miles above the hulking idiot boxes Terrans had the nerve to call heavy armor. But interesting as his armor was, what really sealed the deal for me were Rashid’s guns.

  The sleek, expensive case I’d admired earlier was only the beginning. He had four guns in total, starting with a gleaming 5000 Series Jakob’s sniper rifle so modded I didn’t think a single piece of the original hardware remained. Next he showed us his two pistols, a heavy Republic Army slugger that was nearly as customized as my Sasha and a cannon of an energy weapon I didn’t recognize.

  “It’s called a disrupter pistol,” Rashid said when I asked him about it, hefting the big handgun with practiced ease. “And I’m not surprised you haven’t seen one before. They used to be the standard anti-xith’cal weapon for the Republic a few decades ago, but they’re not used much these days.”

  My ears pricked up. “Anti-xith’cal? How so?”

  Rashid smiled and turned the pistol so I could see the two-notch meter on its side. “It’s a heat weapon. Since xith’cal scales are about as easy to shoot through as a ship hull, the idea was to cook them from the inside. Highly accurate and destructive, especially against lizards.”

  I stared at the gun in his hands. I’d never even heard of a weapon like that, but now that I’d seen it, I wanted one in the worst way. “Why isn’t everyone using them?”

  “Because they’ve only got two shots,” Caldswell said. I glanced at the captain, but he wasn’t even looking. He was still studying Rashid’s résumé, paging through the projected screen thrown up from the merc’s handset with his thumb.