Wizard of Athos

“I’m not the monster you’ve pegged me for, Burch. I’m the monster you send after that monster.”

(Part 3 of “The Misfits” series)

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Hale Burch, Captain, Yankee-Chaos, log entry for run twenty-six. Once again, we got told to drop our prior run to pick up another charge. In this case we were taking a commissioner from the Letters out to meet with a delegation in the Boundary Systems for regional trade talks. The new call was so urgent that we were told to drop the lady in Tousse and head toward Etterus to pick up our next passenger. The commissioner was none too happy, but it came down from on high, and the Letters set her up in a nice suite in the capitol, where Sōsh and Leda dropped her off. We didn’t know anything about this urgent run except that our contact was supposed to brief us with the details when we picked him up in Etteran space.

Ordinarily, a ship like ours from the Letters wouldn’t get within a few hundred light years of Etterus, nor would any other outsiders without cooperation from leadership in Attfield. We were given strict orders not to run any scans nor to approach any planetary bodies close enough to take imagery or the Etterans would blast us into dust. As we neared Etteran space, they gave us coordinates for a dropout where we were to meet an operator with their special forces. The whole situation was odd. Neither the Trasp nor the Etterans were known to rely on outsiders for anything, even such a small thing as a ride to the Letters, and they usually guarded their territory fiercely for the sake of keeping information on critical infrastructure out of the hands of any outsiders, even neutral ones like us. They invited us over and then refused to let us in the door.

We were given coordinates in interstellar space between the Kattan trinary system and P-2, or at least those were the names we had for those systems from the pre-war days, and we didn’t dare scan to confirm our location. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, because as soon as the Etteran transport vessel arrived with this operator, we knew we were headed back out of their territory anyway.

He floated into our airlock in a light suit, the kind of nanosheet shirt and sphere a civilian would wear. I took one look at him and knew him for what he was immediately, because there’s two types of operators in my experience: the first, the common type, has a sharp-eyed presence about them you can spot a million kilometers away—they look as deadly as they are; the second type, the uncommon kind this guy was, you’d never know he was an operator unless it was written on your call sheet. He looked like any old guy, but he wasn’t that, not by a long shot. I had this guy pegged from the jump as the most clean, cold psychopathic killer you could ever come across, which meant that as a war fighter, you only ever wanted to see him when he was on your side and certainly not for too long, because he’d surely left a long trail of compatriots in his wake he’d discarded like useful chess pieces in accomplishing his objectives. A guy like that never gives it a second thought. My goal every moment in his company was to keep myself, Rishi, Ren, Sōsh, Leda, and Juice off that long list of dead colleagues no matter what.

He floated into the atrium from the airlock and took down his nanosheet and had a look around.

“Well this is some crew,” he said. “What’s this, some retirement community for busted veterans? Something like that?”

“Near enough,” I said. “I’m Hale Burch, the captain. Over there is Sōsh, Leda, Ren, and Juice. You can address the ship’s AI as Rishi, and we have a Harold aboard as well. We were told you had the details on the run and that there was some urgency to it.”

“No fussing about here, Captain,” the operator said. “You can call me Transom, and your information is correct. Highest urgency.”

“Care to give us a heading and we can brief along the way?”

“Ruskin Outlet,” Transom said. “It’s a little moon port out in the Boundaries between Harcourt and the Misis System.”

“Yeah, I know it. Outlaw country. Any directives leaving Etteran space?”

“Straight line from here to there, Captain Burch.”

“Rishi,” I said.

“Plotting a course, captain,” Rishi said in her blandest AI voice. “Barring unforeseen complications, travel time will be four days, thirteen hours, and six minutes.”

“No seconds?” Transom said.

“Forty-nine,” Rishi said.

“Your AI can’t take a joke?”

“Basic model,” I said. “Early war era.”

“Right. Fits in great around here, I’m sure. Might as well strap in and get to it. Before we do, I’d like you to dismiss these two,” he said, pointing to Ren and Juice.

Ren and Juice looked at each other.

“Why don’t you two have a seat up front while we discuss the details,” I told them.

They looked at Transom as though he might have had psychic powers, but it was as simple as I said before. Operators know how to spot their own, and Ren and Juice were about as civilian-looking as they come.

Me, Leda, Sōsh, and Transom we all floated over to the table and belted up as Juice and Ren headed up front. Rishi ran the countdown as soon as everyone was strapped in.

After the jump, Transom looked us over and began. “Etteran high command has high confidence in the following intelligence. Somewhere either in the Boundaries or in the inner Barrier, one of our own is developing a superweapon they’re concerned about. We’re to find it and neutralize it as quickly as possible. Simple as that. Any and all necessary force is authorized. I have a single source on the Ruskin Outlet with a lead on one of the people connected with this weapon’s construction. Beyond that, I know just about as much as you do now.”

Leda and Sōsh both looked at each other expressing in their eyes the confusion I shared with them.

“Do you have any idea what the weapon is?” I asked him.

“Negative. Just that it’s major and that it’s deadly.”

“And Etterus’s solution is to outsource it to us?” Leda said.

“No. To me. You’re my ride. It’s that simple.”

“That simple, huh?” I said. “I suspect if it were that simple, you’d be on your own scout ship, flying out to Ruskin solo. Or with an Etteran crew.”

“I may need to call upon a crew with some experience at some point,” he said, “and high command thought it might ruffle a few feathers back home sending out a squad of our special forces to hit our own citizens.”

“So there’s a lot more here than you told us a few seconds ago. Just to be clear,” Sōsh said. “We’ve all done our share of killing, Transom, you don’t have to sugar coat anything or keep us in the dark. But we’re technically civilians now, so we’ll make the call on what we see fit to kill for.”

“And I have no idea whether killing will even be called for,” Transom said. “It’s a superweapon supposedly being developed by a splinter group of Etteran scientists. I’m supposed to locate and neutralize the weapon and its creators. The only reason I’m being vague is that our intelligence is literally that vague.”

“Yet somehow Etterus has high confidence in it?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Multiple sources.”

“I thought you said you had one contact,” Leda said.

“I only have one contact. High command has multiple. At least one source comes from Etteran intelligence contacts. Our other source comes from Athos. When both our AI and theirs points to the same thing, you can bet your life on it. The intelligence is good, or I wouldn’t be strapped in at your table. This isn’t your first mission, is it, kids? Why the hell are you all so jumpy?”

“You,” I said. “Frankly. Each of us paid our ante, lost a hand—two of us literally—and we cashed out. So you show up and aren’t straight with us, it gives us cause to ask a few questions. That’s all.”

“Athos?” Leda said. “What do they care if Etterus is building unsanctioned weapons in the Boundaries? Everyone knows the Trasp are.”

“Oh,” Transom said. “That is something you might like to know. Their intelligence echoes our own on that front. Trasp isn’t the target, from what we can tell. Athos is. Or Iophos. Maybe both. Call it Dreeson’s and Hellenia. All those assholes. Frankly, it’d be fitting if they got a taste of it for once if you ask me, but I don’t issue the orders.”

That was the first thing he said that made any sense. Etteran high command couldn’t afford to piss off Athos, and any aggression against the inner systems from any Etteran people, even without their sanctioning it might have given Athos cause to take Trasp’s side against them. And using us? We could more or less travel freely about the territory between Trasp and the Letters without any suspicion. That was the main reason for the Etterans calling us in. The other reason I suspected I didn’t care to talk about there at the table, but Rishi and I discussed it later that night. We were disposable.

“I’ve never seen you so jumpy before, Burch,” Rishi said as I strapped into my rack. “What’s this guy’s deal.”

“He’s a perfect killer,” I said. “No conscience about it, not a second thought. I’m sure he’s got orders to clean us all out if things go wrong. Hell, probably even if they go right. Believe me, I’ll be looking for our out on this before we outlive our usefulness.”

“I’ll let you know if I see anything coming.”

“You won’t,” I said. “He’s a pro.”

“You speak from experience, Burch? I get the sense there’s more than you’re saying.”

“I’ve met one of his kind before, Rishi. Only reason I’m here talking to you still. At the same time, there’s more than a few in my company aren’t talking any longer because of the same guy.”

“I’ll watch his every breath,” Rishi said.

Transom didn’t show his face much over those first few days on the way out to Ruskin Outlet. I think it was because he could tell we weren’t about to be shined on by his act. Transom was probably convincing at playing both Mr. Tough Guy and Mr. Nice Guy depending on what the situation required. I guess it was a mark of respect he didn’t try to play either. He came out for meals and mostly kept quiet. I’d told Ren and Juice to steer clear as much as they could, and he mostly left them be. But everyone was on edge.

I woke up on night three to a woman’s bloodcurdling scream echoing through Yankee-Chaos’s corridors. Like she was being murdered.

“Rishi?”

“Leda,” she said.

I unstrapped and pushed toward the door, arming myself in the process.

“She’s okay,” Rishi said. “Ren’s with her.”

I pushed my way down there anyway. Leda had never made so much as a peep at night before. Juice and Sōsh were on their way down too.

“Back to your room, you two,” I told them.

Transom poked his head out to see what the commotion was.

“Always this lively around here?” he said.

“Just for you,” I told him. “Give us some space.”

Ren was tending to her when I knocked, and she gave me the okay to come in. Leda was breathing heavy but assured me she was fine. She’d had a nightmare about her burns. Those Tressian doctors had done such a good job repairing her body it was easy to forget she’d been through anything, much less the burns she’d suffered.

“I’m okay, Burch,” she told me. “Just embarrassed is all.”

I told her she didn’t have to explain a thing to any of us. But if things weren’t edgy enough before then, they certainly were after that.

The following day we were slated to arrive out at Ruskin to meet this contact. Transom sat down at breakfast beside Juice, and I happened to be up front watching on the monitor with Rishi.

“What are you doing hanging around with this bunch, Slim?” Transom asked Juice.

“They rescued me,” he said, “and I like them.”

“What do you do? Obviously no good in a fight.”

“I fix things.”

“Isn’t that what the android is for?”

“Who fixes the android?”

“Touché,” Transom said, and Leda was just entering the atrium. “That Leda, she’s pretty delicious, huh? I bet that’s not lost on a creep like you, is it, Slim? She catch you hovering over her rack again last night? That’s what all that screaming was about, I’ll bet.”

“Screw you,” Leda said, staring over at Transom. “Leave him alone.”

“I was just going to ask him what a guy had to do to get a taste.”

“Stick out your tongue and see what happens,” she said.

“Feisty,” Transom said, smiling. “Is there a better creature in all creation than a feisty girl like that?”

Leda floated around behind him, and as he turned his head around to meet her again on the other side, he found Sōsh’s half-metal mug floating right there in his head space, staring him down. Transom smiled an sat there in silence, surprised by the fact Sōsh was even in the room, much less that he’d moved in on him without his noticing. Sōsh strapped himself at the table between Juice and Transom. Didn’t say a word about it, and that was it for Transom’s mouthing off to the crew for the remainder of the trip.

When we got to Ruskin, I thought it best to leave the crew on the ship while Transom and I sought out this contact of his. Ruskin was a quiet, dusty port, small enough that a crew of six touching down was a lot more conspicuous than a pair of guys who looked like they fit into a place like Ruskin. I had Rishi in my ear steering us to the warehouse where Transom’s contact worked as human oversight on the freight flow. The building was non-descript and quiet, and Transom didn’t wait for an invitation or use the front door, just walked around the back and slipped into the delivery port like he owned the place. I followed.

He walked right up behind the contact and pulled him aside by his shoulders, pushing him gently up against the wall, staring down into the guy’s surprised eyes.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“I’m looking for Trungi,” Transom said. “You know where I can find him?”

“That depends.”

“Good,” Transom said. “I’d have been disappointed if you were as stupid as you looked. You did let me walk right up on you, though. That’s pretty stupid.”

“Who are you guys?” he said, looking over at me as though I might be of some help to him.

“I’m here from Etterus, Trungi,” Transom said. “Does that help?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m looking for something. Something very specific. Important people on Etterus would like me to find it, Trungi, and I would like you to help me out.”

“I might have an idea of somebody who knows something like that,” Trungi said.

“That’s good for you,” Transom said.

He stood there through a long uncomfortable silence as Transom continued to stare him down, still clutching him about the shoulders.

“Information,” he said, “out here it costs...”

Transom just looked at the guy, and there was a long silence as Trungi reconsidered his position on remuneration.

“In this case, even though I told your people my expectations, just your consideration will be enough, friend.”

“Go on,” Transom said.

“I heard a rumor there’s people in Danisport. There’s talk—not of weapons, but a new power source. Very small. Compact. People were talking about it, because when they can mass produce something like that, it could change the Boundary systems.”

“I’m not so sure I care about that, Trungi. I want to hear about the weapon.”

“That’s all I know about the thing, but the people who were supposedly moving these units through Ruskin were working for the same guy the rumors say is building a weapon.”

“What kind of weapon?”

“A bad one. A bad, bad one.”

“Did you hear that, Captain,” he said to me. “A bad, bad weapon.”

“That’s all I know.”

“Any weapon is a bad weapon,” Transom said, pulling a knife from its sheath along his right thigh and holding it up in Trungi’s face, “especially when it’s trained on you. What do you think, Trungi, is this knife a bad, bad weapon?”

“Maybe for me,” he said, starting to shake, pulling his head all the way back to the wall.

“Who should I ask about this bad, bad weapon?” Transom said. “And bear in mind, if you send me down the wrong road, I’m coming back until I find the right one. On the other hand, if you give me a better lead than you, I’ll have no cause to ever see you again, Trungi.”

“As I said, Danisport. Scout City. They work for somebody.”

“Who does?”

“Shade’s people.”

“Who do they work for?”

“I don’t know. You have to ask Shade. He moves things for the guy. It was just odd materials coming through here, into Danisport. I asked about it. Shade’s not the guy, just the middle man. Building those reactors. Small reactors.”

Poor Trungi was damn near ready to piss himself.

“Is that all?”

“That’s all,” Trungi said.

“Your people can track down this Shade?” Transom said, looking over at me.

I nodded. Someone in the letters would have a file on a character like that in those Boundary worlds.

“Trungi,” Transom said. “I don’t want to have to come back here again. If I do, I’m going to be very upset. If you talk about this to anyone, I’ll come back here and...well, you get the idea.”

“I swear,” Trungi said.

“I know you do. You’ve been very helpful.”

He eased up on the guy’s shoulder with his left hand and slowly lowered the knife and put it away. Then he casually strolled out the cargo port in the back the way we’d come in.

“What did your people promise him for that intel?” I asked him on the way back to the ship.

“Hell if I know,” Transom said. “They obviously didn’t have any intention of giving him anything if they sent me to question him.”

Danisport was located in the thin stretch of quasi-independent Barrier systems between the Trasp Protectorate and the Lettered Systems. All that territory was largely anarchic and home to a lot of off-book trading between Trasp and the Letters. Transom didn’t care about any of that, just finding Shade. I told him we’d need to stop off in the Letters so our AI could dive in to the appropriate databases. I took the chance to file a preliminary report to the commodore and let her know we had our hands full with Transom. She sent back a pretty clear response.

“Mission critical. Give all cooperation. Athos insistent.”

We stopped in interstellar space in the Deltas where Rishi could get a decent tap into the Letters network. She pulled as much intelligence as she could on Danisport and tried to find information on anyone using the name “Shade” or intel on any new reactors, but we got nothing useful back.

“We’ll have to figure it out when we get there,” Transom said. “So I’ll need to borrow your crew, Captain.”

It was exactly what I wanted to avoid. But it seemed there wasn’t much other choice if we wanted to be rid of this guy—find Shade, find the weapon, find a way to get the hell away from Transom before he knifed someone.

“I want you and metal face on board coordinating, Captain,” he said, referring to Sōsh. “The less conspicuous we can be in a city like that the better. Slim and the quiet one can go out together. They make a decent couple, don’t you think?”

“That’s fine,” I said, thinking that I could keep Juice and Ren safe better if they were far from Transom rather than in his reach.

“I’ll take Leda with me,” he said. “And you can direct your Harold from the ship as well? He has intel gathering programming?”

“Nothing specific, but I can have Rishi scare up some protocols for him. We’ll figure something out.”

“Good,” he said. “I don’t want to be here long. We go in, gather intel on this guy’s network, find a weak spot in his security and snatch him up. That means we’re ready to fly out of there in a heartbeat.”

“I’ll get the word out,” I told him.

I directed everyone on the crew to have a stream up every second they were off the ship. I wanted to see and hear everything.

About ten minutes after landing, I decided to shadow Juice and Ren with Harold. I took one look at that city and didn’t like what I saw, and those two were about as street savvy as a pair of ten-year-old kids from a farming cylinder. They didn’t have a prayer of blending in. Leda I wasn’t much worried about. Even with Transom, I knew she could handle herself.

I had Ren and Juice walk a perimeter around the aerodrome to get a good survey of the city’s center, keeping them clear of any suspicious business. They were too green to spot anything useful, and Harold was too busy watching their six to be of any additional use himself. I chalked it up as a rare opportunity for those two to stretch their legs.

Transom and Leda, on the other hand, knew just which dark corners to seek out. Within a few hours, they were sitting in a bar that was covered by the biggest protection syndicate in the city. Leda was talking friendly with the bartender, batting her wide eyes at him. She played it off like she was impressed by his tough guy act. The bartender. Eventually Transom left her there long enough I started to get concerned about what he was up to. For about forty minutes, the bartender spilt everything about how the city’s underground worked, who the players were. Everything.

“Might want to get Leda out of there, Burch,” Transom came through on the com. “I had a talk with the bouncer that’s going to flag our faces on their system.”

“Is he going to be a problem?”

“Who?”

“The bouncer?”

“Not until they find him, but when they do, they’re going to want to talk to us. I’ve got a lead on Shade’s location, but I’ve got to move on him now. Get everyone back to the ship and be ready to blast out of here in less than an hour.”

“Do you need Leda for cover?”

“Negative. Get her out of there.”

I called everyone back in, and told Rishi to monitor as much of the citywide coms as she could. Transom had switched off his stream, so we couldn’t track him, but I had little doubt he’d show up soon enough.

Sure enough, about forty minutes later, Transom came strolling back to the ship rolling a large metal suitcase like he was off for a two-week holiday on Lime Harbor. He didn’t even look over his shoulder as he came up the causeway. This guy was something else.

Transom wheeled the case up the back ramp, undid the lid, dumped the guy out on the floor, and chucked the case out onto the tarmac before raising the ramp and giving me the all clear to get us out of there. Then he dragged the guy, bag on his head, into the rear airlock and shut the hatch. Meanwhile, Shade’s friends showed up just in time to fire off a few futile shots at Yankee-Chaos’s departing broadside. Rishi saw it coming far enough off that we were long gone into the dusty wind and out of the atmosphere in short order after that.

“We’re going to jump out,” I told everyone over the speakers. “Strap in.”

About fifteen minutes into the first jump, I floated back toward the airlock to see what Transom was getting up to with Shade. I found him floating by the hatch, looking through the window with a grin on his face. He looked pretty pleased with himself.

“What are you so happy about?” I said.

“First time I ever abducted anyone in his own suitcase,” he said. “How does that not bring a smile to your face, Burch?”

“He tell you anything?”

“No,” he said. “Hope that jump didn’t bounce him too hard off the bulkhead.”

“I could have Ren take a look at him.”

“That would kind of defeat the purpose of me stuffing him in the airlock. It’s important he wakes up in there. That’s kind of the whole thing, the effect of it, you know?”

“I see.”

“You will,” Transom said. “He’ll be fine. I mean, probably.”

I shook my head. “Let me know when he’s talking,” I said. “I want to be here.”

I told Rishi to lock out the outside controls to the airlock so the best he could do was threaten. I wasn’t going to have him dumping the guy into space, and I surely didn’t put it past Transom.

“Hey, Burch!” he shouted down the atrium about an hour later. “You gotta come see this.”

Rishi put the feed from the airlock up on the floatscreen in the flight deck. Transom was right. The guy was freaking out. I floated back there to make sure it didn’t get too dire.

Shade was writhing in there, struggling in a fruitless effort to find some way out of the straps Transom had secured around his wrists, twisting his head around, trying to get the bag off his head.

Transom was already tormenting him through the com.

“We’re going to have a conversation, Shade. That’s all. And if it goes well for you, we may just drop you on a moon somewhere in the Letters. If it doesn’t, well, you’re a smart guy, right, Shade? A smart guy floating in an airlock. The subtext is pretty obvious. I don’t want to insult you by stating the obvious, do I? That’d just be patronizing. I’d sooner space you than patronize you.”

“Have you asked him anything yet?” I asked Transom.

“We’re warming up to it, Burch. I don’t tell you how to run your ship. I have thoughts, but that’s beside the point. Just let me do my job here.”

Transom went after the guy psychologically for a good ten minutes. Shade was crying like a baby before Transom had even asked a question, swearing he’d tell him anything, everything, betray his own mother—anything but getting spaced. He didn’t want to die like that.

“Nobody wants to die like that,” Transom said. “Not your choice, though, but you could choose to help me out a little, and in turn, I could make a choice that benefits you, Shade.”

“Anything!” the guy coughed out between wails.

“I want to know about the reactors.”

“The reactors?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself, Shade. That makes me think you’re going to lie to me.”

“Like the black boxes? That’s what this is about?”

“It might be.”

“I just move them.”

“Describe them for me, so I know we’re talking about the same thing.”

“They’re small. About the size of a small suitcase.”

“Not a big suitcase?” Transom said, grinning, still pleased with himself over that one.

“This guy who comes through Scout City has me run them to the Boundaries, all the way through the Letters. They’re powerful. I don’t know how they work, but they’re real. Powerful enough to change things. That’s what he says.”

“Who do you mean by ‘he,’ Shade?”

“He’s just a middleman. Works for some old guy. His boss is some kind of wizard.”

“A wizard? Like that’s his clownish nickname like yours is supposedly Shade?”

“No. He is a wizard. Not like metaphorically. He has powers. That’s what my guy says. The old man’s a shapeshifter. Immortal. Hundreds of years old.”

“Have you been listening to me, Shade?”

“Yes, sir. Yes. Please. Believe me. I’m not lying.”

“Can you tell where I’m from by my voice?”

“You’re Etteran. I think you’re Etteran. That’s all I can guess.”

“You’ve got a good ear, Shade. Now do you think the Etteran high command sent a guy like me all the way out here to look for a wizard?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing, man. I don’t. It’s true. It’s all I know.”

“I’m looking for a weapon, Shade. And these little reactors have something to do with it.”

“I don’t know about a weapon. This guy just says they’ll make the outer worlds more independent. All the stuff I’ve done in my life, and I end up in some Etteran lunatic’s airlock over some kind of generator?”

Transom couldn’t help laughing. “That is ironic, Shady boy. You just made me smile. That’s a good sign for you. This conversation is going well. All I need you to do now is give me your guy. Where can I find him?”

“The wizard or the young guy who works for him?”

“Either. Both. The more you give the happier I get.”

“I mean, I never met the wizard. And the young guy he always comes to me. I don’t know where he comes from.”

“Oh, that’s a bad answer.”

“Wait, wait! Let me think. I’m trying to think. I’m not so good at thinking right now. It’s a lot of pressure, you know.”

“You’d like me to take a little pressure out of the room?”

“No, no! Please!”

“I’m joking, Shade. I’ll give you a little help thinking. This younger guy, he’s from Scout City, somewhere else on Danisport?”

“No. Outside. Somewhere far, I think. The Letters or beyond.”

“So he comes on a ship, then. Any idea what type of ship?”

“My syndicate has people in the airfield. I could get you the manifest from his last run. Probably his registration’s on file.”

“I bet you’d like it if we went back to Danisport.”

“We could call them from somewhere. Then you get your info, and you can leave me off there. I never seen nothing, I swear.”

“You know, Shade, I had no idea this was going to be such a productive day, and just non-stop entertainment. I should really thank you. I haven’t had this much fun since I vaporized a company of Trasp gene-freaks outside Badgely Quarter. You should have seen the looks on their faces when they realized what was coming.”

“Nice,” Shade said.

Transom laughed. “That’s it! Now you’re getting into the spirit of things.”

He turned to look at me.

“This guy,” Transom said, shaking his head and shutting off the light in the airlock before floating up toward the front.

“Hello?” Shade’s voice echoed over the com speaker. “Hello? Please. Somebody out there?”

Rishi flew us to a little outpost just into Letters territory in the Deltas. It was a little anonymous rocky moon with a spaceport, but it was far enough into our territory that Shade’s people would know better than to come after us. Within a few hours, we had flight logs, a ship’s registration, cargo manifests, and even a face and name to go with our middleman—Braylon Keel—which Letters Intelligence rated as an alias with highest confidence. Once Transom was satisfied that we’d squeezed as much information out of that lead as we were going to get, he agreed to dump Shade on that lunar outpost while the Intel bureau was tracking down our middleman. We left Shade in the hangar with the bag still on his head. I could almost detect enough gratitude in Shade’s voice when Sōsh set him loose to make me believe that if we ever got back to Scout City, we might find Shade in another line of work.

Our intel bureau was confident we’d find Braylon Keel somewhere in the outer Letters or Boundary systems, so we started the two-day trek out that way while we were waiting on more specific intel. We didn’t have to wait long. Before we’d even jumped out of that little minor Delta system, they’d identified a small settlement in the Omega sector called Minstik. They were confident it was Braylon Keel’s base of operations and that we’d find him out there when we arrived.

I was pretty familiar with the Omegas, but I’d never heard of the place. Apparently, few others had either. It was a recently developed commercial center with few residential occupants, mostly warehouses and automated manufacturing facilities and a few corporate regional offices. Few nosy neighbors and few questions about cargo moving in and out. All in all, a pretty decent place for someone to get lost.

The benefit of the newness of the settlement was that the intel bureau had a recent city plan by which to plan an op. Mostly, we let Transom take the lead, adding our input when it helped. Our primary objective was locating the middleman, but nearly as important would be to get our hands on one of these modular power generators so we could send specs and data to the intel bureau. They could figure out what kind of weapon it powered better than we could. If we got really lucky, we thought we might even find the wizard there on Minstik too.

With a total unknown commodity as a target, Transom thought it was best to treat Braylon Keel like he was an operator. With his background, he’d either be a genuine nobody or a serious individual with a desire to be left alone. So we planned for major trouble as a precaution.

Ren and Juice would stay on the ship, while Leda and Transom would directly approach the target, ostensibly on business. Me, and Sōsh would run cover from outside, while Harold stood ready to rush in and exfiltrate the generators if they were located.

Once the business end of things was settled, Transom seemed to make himself more at home aboard Yankee-Chaos. Ren and Juice still stayed as clear of him as they could, but Leda and Sōsh spent most of that second afternoon with him in the atrium playing Sabaca. They asked me to join them when I floated back that way for lunch.

“I got work,” I told them. “Logs to catch up on. Old stuff.”

Truth was that the way I saw them there, more and more familiar by the day, I knew that was how you let your guard down, how you forget who and what Transom is. I wasn’t about to allow myself to forget, so I ate my lunch quietly while they played.

At some point as they were playing Sōsh and Transom started talking about gear, weapons, mostly Sōsh just curious what the Etterans used.

“Burch said you carry a knife,” Leda said to Transom.

“You don’t?” Transom said. “I wouldn’t be caught without it.”

“Like a proper old-school metal blade?” Sōsh said.

“I can’t believe you two don’t,” Transom said. “Why the hell not?”

“Nobody issued me one,” Sōsh said.

“Me either,” Leda said.

By that time Transom had taken the blade and sheath from his pantleg and set it between his hand and the tabletop, holding it there for a moment beneath his fingertips before floating it across the table toward Leda, who pressed it between her palm and the table to keep it from floating off. She pulled it from the sheath and held up the blade, admiring the clean simplicity of the metal as it reflected the warm light of the atrium.

“You ever have to use it?” Leda said.

Transom just looked over at her as though it was a ridiculous question.

She looked back at him inquisitively.

“I don’t know how things go down out here, but our war, the way it works is usually this: we throw metal at metal, then when we run out of metal, ordnance, and when all that other stuff is exhausted it becomes what it always was, lines of men shooting at each other for control of territory. The knife is for the rare times you scare up on someone or them on you, too close for a bolt rifle. Or sometimes when an op calls for silence.”

Leda admired the knife, turning the blade. Then she handed it over to Sōsh, butt end first.

“Burch said that guy couldn’t talk fast enough,” Leda said. “I can see why.”

“Honestly, I don’t think it ever changes,” Transom said. “I’d have been just as efficient with a sharp flint if I’d been born a caveman. You show somebody a blade and your intent, that’s always been enough in my experience.”

Sōsh turned the blade over a few times, feeling its mass in his living hand. Then he handed it back to Leda, who sheathed it and passed it back to Transom.

“I want one,” Leda said.

“You should learn to use it if you do get one,” Transom said. “Otherwise it’s just decoration. It strikes me you don’t much go for decoration.”

“That’d be my kind, if I did,” she said.

I unstrapped and left them there. I didn’t have much to add, but I wasn’t surprised I’d seen a lot less of Ren and Juice about while those three were waxing poetic about knifing people in the atrium. It was a hell of a different line of work we’d gotten ourselves into, the four of us.

Before too long, we were creeping up on Braylon Keel’s lonely moon. Rishi wasn’t immediately able to locate our target’s ship as we set down on Minstik, but there were enough warehouses that it was possible he was using one as a hangar. She did get a clear enough scan passing overhead to confirm almost all of the original city plans, filling in a few spots where new structures and roads had gone up. We were still high confidence on the general area of the city we expected to pick up our target.

When we set down, Transom stepped out the back and took a few breaths of the thin, manufactured atmosphere. The way he looked around him was different. He wasn’t nearly carrying the carefree attitude of our past two stops. Leda took the cue into her demeanor as she stepped off Yankee-Chaos and onto the tarmac. They both went into op mode. I caught Transom scanning the area with his eyes several times as they walked off. Leda would have spotted any trouble out in the open like that, but it was his instincts that had me concerned. Guys like Transom had a way of feeling things coming up on them.

Before moving out ourselves, Sōsh and I waited for them to check in to the rooming house. It was completely automated, so there wasn’t any concierge to be looking into their business. Leda took a quick survey from the fifth-story room before heading back to ground level, where she and Transom headed out toward the warehouse district to try and acquire our target. The rest of us watched Leda’s feed from the ship as they walked the city. It was something to see through the eyes the Tressian doctors had given Leda. She picked up movement and focused at such incredible distances it was disorienting at times. Only Rishi could keep up.

About fifteen minutes into their stroll down the main causeway, Leda marked our target from nearly a hundred meters as he turned his head. Dark hair, dark eyebrows, and a two-day beard. The city was open enough that they could track him from that distance without being seen. Plus he was wearing a red flight coat that was hard to miss on a nearly empty street like that.

Transom and Leda followed Keel to a warehouse on the edge of the city. That entire line of commercial buildings served as the border between the city and the moon’s open, rocky landscape. Transom and Leda stepped into an alleyway across the street, tagged the building on the map, and waited while Sōsh and I got out there to take positions beside the building.

On the way over, between heavy breaths in the thin air, I could feel a bit of whatever energy Transom had picked up on. The city was dead quiet, sheathed in a dim light, still, with an eerie quality to it.

Sōsh positioned himself on an adjacent rooftop with a clear line of sight to the rear exit of the warehouse. We left Harold standing by in the alley.

“Covering our target now,” I said, locating Keel on infrared through my scope. “I read only one, corner office. I’m in position. Ship?”

“Standing by,” Rishi said.

“Your op, Transom. You call it,” I said.

“We’re moving,” he stated.

About thirty seconds later, I picked them up walking toward the building. Rishi called out through our earpieces, keeping everyone updated on their position once they stepped inside.

Transom and Leda walked toward Keel’s office casually. She scanned the layout so Rishi got a good survey of the building’s interior, including a quick glance at the warehouse, but they couldn’t linger long. They headed directly down a hallway toward the corner of the building. Keel’s office door was open and he saw them coming.

“I have you both,” I said, picking them up on infrared as Leda and Transom entered the office.

Leda looked around the room as they entered.

“Secondary objective located,” Rishi stated.

Two of the generators seemed to be sitting right there on the floor in the back left corner of the room.

“You folks must be lost,” Keel said as Transom and Leda approached his desk. He was standing behind it.

“We hope we’re not lost,” Leda said.

“We’re looking for a Mr. Keel,” Transom said. “We were told he could help us out with our power issues for the right price.”

The guy looked puzzled. “I don’t usually get visitors,” he said. “It’s not that kind of outfit.”

“I hope our visit’s not a problem?” Transom said. “We have substantial backing—asset-rich, no credit.”

“How’d you find me?”

“A mutual friend in Danisport.”

Keel looked suspicious.

“We’re starting a cylinder group,” Transom said. “I’m Transom. This is my wife Leda, and we represent a group of nearly seven thousand people displaced by the war. I’m sure you’ve recognized my accent.”

“You’re Etteran, sure. A damn shame what’s happening out there. All those systems used to be beautiful places to visit, to live.”

He looked Transom up and down, likely wondering what a fit, military-aged man was doing out of uniform so far from the war. He didn’t say anything about it.

“Braylon Keel,” the man said extending a hand to Leda first, who shook it, and introduced herself.

Transom rebuffed his attempt at a handshake.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Transom said. “As I said, I’m Etteran.”

“Etterans don’t shake hands?”

“Not this one,” Transom said. “I know the origin of the custom. Symbolizes that you come in friendship and come unarmed. I don’t mix business with friendship, and I don’t go anywhere unarmed.”

Keel looked him over again and gestured with his head to the chairs at the front of his desk. “Fair enough,” he said. “Let’s talk business, then.”

They all sat. Leda laid out their cover story—seven cylinders, seven-thousand refugees, types of habitats and sizes, complete with power requirements for draw, dependability, lifespan.

“Those little units will meet all that,” Keel said, “with plenty of room to expand for a couple generations. Seven cylinders, seven units? That’s a fair cost.”

“What the hell’s he waiting for?” Sōsh said. “Why don’t they just bag him?”

“He’s in the room. Operator’s prerogative. Keep your scope on that exit,” I told Sōsh.

“What kind of assets are we talking about?” Keel asked Transom, leaning back in his chair.

Transom went through a list. Options in several bot factories. Mining operations bordering the inner systems. Ships. Hard currency in Dreeson’s coinage.

As they talked price back and forth over a minute or so, Leda’s feed was getting unsteady in my scope. She was looking around the room awkwardly.

“I…” she said, looking over at Transom. “Honey, I don’t feel so good.”

It happened almost instantaneously. Transom looked at her and then back at the guy, and as the two men met eyes, the last thing we saw on Leda’s feed was Transom’s boot kicking Leda clean across the room. Then it went black, and we couldn’t hear a thing except the bolts blasting off the windows and walls.

I started laying down what cover I could, but I didn’t have great options with Leda on the floor at the far wall and the two power generators by the side door Keel had run out of. I could see both Keel and Transom on infrared, still moving, still shooting at each other.

“Harold, get us eyes in there!” I shouted. “I need a status on Leda.”

“Boss?” Sōsh said. “I don’t have eyes. Should I close in?”

“Negative. Stay put. Maintain cover,” I told him, getting up and hustling toward the front entrance from across the street. “I’m moving.”

“Leda’s unresponsive, and her vital signs are all over the place,” Rishi said.

“You’re reading them,” I said. “So at least there’s that. Be ready to pick her up the second we can get her out to you, Ship.”

Harold was already in the building by the time I got to the front door. I could hear Transom and the target exchanging fire in the warehouse. Just the fact Keel was still breathing meant he was some kind of deadly individual, going toe to toe with Transom in a gunfight.

“What’s the status on Leda?” Ren asked. “Is she hit?”

“Standby,” I told her, keeping low as I made my way down that corridor, bolts flying through the walls at shoulder level every few seconds.

By the time I got to the office, Harold was there, hunched over Leda, examining her.

“She’s breathing,” he said. “She doesn’t appear to be hit.”

“Take those two units and get out of here,” I said, gesturing to the two generators behind him. “I’ve got Leda.”

Harold left first, disappearing into the corridor. Bolts were still flying. Sōsh had opened up through the back wall to lay down cover for Transom, who was cussing up a storm trying to get me to come in behind him. “What the hell are you two doing?” he kept shouting to me and Sōsh. “Get up here, Burch. It’s him!”

I was struggling to get Leda through that hallway without either of us getting hit. I knelt there with Leda, limp over my unyielding metal leg, shielding her with my back to the wall facing the warehouse. She didn’t look good, but she was still breathing. I could hardly breathe that thin air myself. It had been a while since I’d taken fire.

“Rishi, get us out of here,” I said. “Keep a tight scan for countermeasures on your way in.”

Then I made a run for the front door. Harold met me at the exit and helped me carry Leda down the street about fifty meters where he’d left the generators.

“Damn it, Burch, it’s the guy! Get up here,” Transom kept saying.

“What guy?” I said.

“This isn’t some middleman,” he said. “It’s the wizard.”

“We’re getting Leda out. Standby,” I told him.

Rishi slapped Yankee-Chaos’s belly down in the street with her back gate already hanging open. Harold hopped in toting the two generators and I stepped in right behind him, carrying Leda in my arms. Ren and Juice were there to meet me.

“What happened to her?” Ren said.

“I don’t know. She’s not hit,” I said, rushing up to the flight deck.

By the time I got up there, Ren and Juice had secured Leda in the medical bay. Harold was in there with them both, working on her. I could hear Sōsh and Transom coordinating crossfire on the target’s position, but it sounded like Keel had slipped out the back and was moving away from Sōsh’s position with Transom pursuing. Sōsh was about to move to support.

“Stay put,” I commed Sōsh directly. “We’ll pick you up from there.”

“Should I move to cover Transom from the ship?” Rishi asked.

“Negative, Ship,” I said. “We’re punching out. This one’s well above our pay grade.”

Sōsh looked none too happy when Rishi pulled him off the back side of the roof he’d been perched on. He didn’t much like ducking out of a firefight before it was settled, but he understood Leda’s condition was urgent and we were pulling back to safety with the two generators in tow. Transom would have to take care of the rest.

He howled a fierce streak at me as Rishi took us up to orbit. I shut off his channel and told Rishi to track Transom’s position and keep an eye out for Keel’s ship.

As soon as we were settled in orbit, I pulled my way back toward the medical bay to check on Leda. She was still unconscious when I got there. Sōsh shook his head at me as I arrived, but he slid to the side so I could get a report from Ren.

“Her vitals are stable,” Ren said. “No sign of trauma. Toxicology’s negative. There’s brain activity, but like a mild coma. It’s bizarre. Any idea what happened to her in there?”

“Negative,” I said. “Sōsh and I will go rewatch the feed in a minute. She’s stable, though?”

“Yes, she’s stable,” Ren said.

“Okay, Harold and Juice, I want you two checking into those generators. See what you can figure out about them. I want to be in touch with the Letters ASAP. Hopefully we can figure out what the hell is going on out here.”

“What about Transom?” Sōsh said.

“He’s right where I want him,” I said. “The hell off our ship.”

“You sure that’s the type of guy you want pissed off at us, Burch?” he said.

“You let me worry about all that, Sōsh,” I told him.

Then we headed up front to look at the footage to figure out what had happened in there. Rishi was already analyzing it. The first thing she noticed was the guy’s face. It was slightly different from the picture on file for Braylon Keel—similar, but different. The composite Rishi took from Leda’s feed gave us a clean look at his real face, presuming the one he was wearing when Leda and Transom had walked in on him was the real one. The facial transformation was also part of the clue to what was going on with Leda. Sōsh noticed it first. The handshake. Leda shook his hand; Transom didn’t.

“Must have passed some nanotech to her,” Rishi said. “Or attempted to. I’ll let Ren know.”

Sōsh was still watching Leda’s footage. The last few moments before it went black was the start of the firefight.

“How the hell did that guy get out of there, boss?” Sōsh said. “I must have laid down a thousand bolts right on that guy’s head with Transom opening on him from inside the warehouse. There’s no way he’s still breathing.”

“If he even breathes,” I said. “Let’s go check on Leda.”

It was quiet in the medical bay when we got back there. Leda looked better, like she was sleeping. Every few seconds, though, she would twitch and tense up.

“There’s nothing I can do to speed up the process,” Ren said, “but it makes sense. Whatever he tried to pass to her set off a reaction from the nanites in her blood, not unlike our own immune system. I expect she’ll wake up when they clear the rest of that foreign matter.”

“Good,” I said. “Good. You two keep an eye on her for now, and I’ll get out a correspondence to Letters intel. Let me know if you need anything.”

I sent out what little intel we had so far on the generators and the updated images of Braylon Keel. Harold and Juice didn’t really know what those power units were, but they’d never seen anything like them. One of those little boxes put out comparable power to a fusion reactor about half the size of Yankee-Chaos herself. You could run about four ag cylinders on one of those little black boxes. After I’d updated Letters intelligence, I figured it was time for a conversation with Transom.

I had hoped he’d calmed down a little, but he was still fuming.

“I’m not going to forget about you, Burch. You can believe that,” he said, as well as a rash of far harsher words for good measure.

“I don’t doubt that,” I told him. “But I’ll give you fair warning. Rishi’s got a fix on you, and I will not hesitate to have her drop an incendiary bolt on your head if I get even the slightest sense you’re trying something. We’re calling it in. We’ve got the generators aboard and we’re awaiting direction. I made the call to pull my people out of there, so if you’re going to hold a grudge, hold it with me, not them. I know enough to know it’s about a fifty-fifty chance you had orders on us, and those weren’t odds I was going to play with my people.”

“I’m not the monster you’ve pegged me for, Burch. I’m the monster you send after that monster,” he said. “I like you guys. And I never like anyone. I wasn’t going to kill you.”

“Probably?”

“Yeah, probably. You had no cause to back out of that fight.”

“For what it’s worth,” I said. “I want to thank you for kicking Leda clear of the line of fire. You didn’t have to do that. She ain’t conscious yet, but she’s breathing. Good chance that’s thanks to you.”

“What the hell happened to her in there?”

“Your wizard passed some nanotech through the handshake, we think. It had a bad reaction with the nanites already in her blood.”

“Figures. I had him dead three times,” Transom said, “and each time, he just up and vanished right in front of my face. Slipperiest bastard I ever seen.”

I let him vent a bit more before I let him know my intentions. “I’m not going to strand you down there, Transom,” I said. “But you’re not getting back on our ship. We’re calling in the cavalry, and you’ll have help tracking this guy down. It’s not going to be us, though. We’ll advise when we know more.”

I did feel awful about it. But I had to keep reminding myself Transom didn’t feel a damn thing about it, and he wouldn’t have if we’d gotten blasted to hell in front of his face. That guy wouldn’t have flinched.

While we were waiting to hear back from Commodore Ahern on our backup, Rishi caught sight of a ship taking off from a blind out in the desert, and she put it on screen after she confirmed it was Keel’s.

“I could pursue,” she said.

“Like hell,” I said. “That wizard’s got more tricks up his sleeve. Believe it. Hold position and be ready to jump if he comes at us.”

“Sure, boss,” she said.

He didn’t come after us, though, just headed straight out to space and jumped out of the system. Not long after that, Ren called me back to the medical bay. Leda had regained consciousness. She had a splitting headache, though. Sōsh was already down there too.

Leda lay there pretty still, strapped to the table as we explained what all had gone down. About the only movement she made while we were talking was to put her forehead in her hands. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known it was registering.

“Transom?” she said.

“On the surface,” I said. “He nearly got the guy too.”

“He saved my ass in there, Burch,” she said.

“Yeah, he also put your ass in that situation too. Don’t forget that.”

“Man, Burch, you really do not like that guy,” Sōsh said.

“No, I do not,” I said. “That’s a fact.”

“How in the hell did you get a tracker on him?” Sōsh said. “I presume that’s how Rishi’s keeping eyes on him?”

“Leda did,” I said, “slipped the tag in the sheath of his knife while you two were admiring the blade. No better way to make sure it didn’t end up in our backs, the way I see it, than to tag it.”

That got a little smile out of Leda. She seemed all right. We decided to let her rest.

A few hours later, we got our response back from Letters intelligence, along with a new set of orders.

“Superweapon identified. Return to Beta-Aurelius 4 immediately with modular power generation units. Proceed directly, making no stops. Alias Braylon Keel positively identified as Athosian highest priority fugitive Clem Aballi. DO NOT PURSUE. Direct Codename Transom to remain on Minstik to secure target area until unit AA-Blight arrives to assist in tracking and neutralizing fugitive Clem Aballi. AA-Blight will direct Codename Transom further on arrival.”

We all had a look at that. I’d never seen a message like that one before, nor had I heard of that tactical unit. It was almost enough to make us think we had unearthed an actual wizard.

 So I relayed the message down to Codename Transom word for word. I wished him luck and relayed a bit of the sense we’d gotten that we were all pretty damn lucky to be alive, all in all. I suspected we wouldn’t be if this Athosian wizard had gotten a whiff of us before Transom and Leda had walked into his office. But that was Transom’s greatest asset—to walk right into places nobody would expect anyone would be crazy enough to go, much less go there without a second thought for it.

That was it for us anyway. Once upon a time, I’d have at least been curious, felt a tinge of regret and a pull. Some temptation. Not these days. We didn’t even get far enough down that rabbit hole to find any of the Etteran scientists that had brought Transom out our way in the first place. I was certain he’d find them in short order as he kept digging. Me? I was just grateful our crew left Minstik breathing and would live to see another boring run shuttling ambassadors and senators and business leaders. I wasn’t fit for chasing monsters any longer, but I guess I was grateful we had a few of our own to send that wizard’s way. Anyway, we had our orders and Transom had his. So I guess that was run twenty-six, and this was Hale Burch again. Captain, Yankee-Chaos. End log.