Monkey's Luck Page 3

  was delusional. Why try to jury-rig an override? Destination ports were public postings. Fool

  Dog could probably have just asked. But then, maybe he’d tried. Maybe this old tub did have

  defenses I’d somehow bypassed. Suddenly I was feeling pretty damn curious about our

  destination port myself.

  Something else in the feed caught my attention. Ship diagnostics showed that the freighter’s

  engines were intact. Matter of fact… I had ShipMind run the engine stats past me again. Hells,

  our engines weren’t just intact; those engines had power enough to outrun an angry god. Hells,

  the Dogs hadn’t even bothered to disable the ship. They’d gone straight for the hold. But how

  could they have known…

  Then I remembered Sasaki.

  Dogs had taken that man off for a reason. Maybe it was for interrogation. In that case they

  weren’t likely get whatever they wanted out of him. SamuraiType is hard-coded loyal and

  stubborn on top of it. The man’s heart would give out before his tongue did. But they must’ve

  had their own doubts about it. That’d explain why they left an officer here. And why he was

  trying to check ship’s records. None of that mattered right now. All that mattered now was

  whether they got Sasaki to talk or not, there’d be some Lupan scouts heading back this way to

  pick up their pack mate. And the ship, too, most likely. I emphatically did not want to be here

  when they arrived.

  Only where was here? I ran a standard inquiry through ShipMind. Answer came up blank. All

  ShipMind had in immediate access were a couple of security-coded message packets that weren’t

  of any use to anybody now.

  I must’ve done something wrong. I tried again. Same result. Either I was even less competent

  than I thought or this tub had some kind of security lock on its destination.

  I leaned back and blinked Roy into focus through the shimmering holographs ShipMind

  splashed across my mind. He was leaning against the rail that divided command from the ops

  stations, head down, fingers toying with the tip of his rainbow scarf. I glimpsed some deeper,

  darker emotion in his profile than he’d let me see so far. Made me wonder if there was more to

  the kid than fluff and flutter. But then, if I’d been a slave with a dead owner I probably wouldn’t

  be thinking happy thoughts about now, either. I ignored the thought and whistled for his

  attention. “Hey, pretty boy, where were we headed?”

  He lifted eyes to me, automatically pasting on a wide-eyed simper. “I don’t know.”

  “Whaddya mean you don’t know? Nobody signs on –”

  “I’m cargo, remember?” This time he didn’t hide the flash of annoyance.

  Of course – he was property. Captain would no more have bothered telling him where they

  were going than he’d have told the chairs.

  I dove back into the sync feed to hide my embarrassment and told ShipMind to list the nearest

  ports. Once again, the answer came up blank.

  Muttering to myself I told ShipMind to just resume course.

  Need coordinates, ShipMind said. It was starting to sound exasperated.

  I told the AI to run that past me again. Turned out Sasaki had never given ShipMind a full

  course to plot. Instead he’d fed it the next leg of the course each time we dropped out of Jump.

  Then the sonuvabitch had erased all our previous Jump-points to boot – all the way back to

  origin. Poor freighter didn’t even know where it’d been.

  I leaned back and tried to figure my way through likely locations on my own. My guess was

  we were way off the standard shipping lanes. Fair bet nobody on our side would come looking

  for us, either. The very fact we were Marines in a civ freighter meant we were the brass asses’

  secret squirrel. Still, hope didn’t carry a price tag. I set ship scan to long range and strained every

  filament of my sync’d essence looking for any signal that could mean rescue. Nothing. I left scan

  on and went back to using my own brain cells.

  If ShipMind didn’t know our port, then I was free to take us wherever the hells I wanted. I

  sure as hells didn’t want to head on to wherever we’d been bound. If this mission was such a

  gods-be-damned secret squirrel then wherever we’d been going was someplace I did not want to

  be. On the other hand, returning to home base as a sole survivor of a top secret mission – not a

  good idea. Which left everyplace that wasn’t one of those two. So where to go?

  Derakht! Derakht world was neutral. That infamous R & R world buggered both sides with

  enthusiasm. More importantly, it was the kind of world where nobody asked questions. I could

  sell the freighter and be on my way with credit to whatever name I chose to create. Maybe even

  have enough left over to get that choom Roy patched up. The Aryan attitude in my overlaid gene

  pack made me consider that I could sell Roy, too: Derakht’s slave market was as infamous as the

  rest of its entertainments. And there was a kind of stable master who’d pay extra for a pretty boy

  as scarred up as Roy was now. I told my Aryan attitude to go gob itself. Then I told ShipMind to

  take us to Derakht.

  No coordinates, ShipMind told me.

  So much for the get rich quick scheme. I tried a couple of Free World locations. Same answer.

  I was going to have to do this the hard way.

  I blinked Roy back into focus. “Hey, Sweets, we’re missing star charts. Where’d your Captain

  store his back-ups?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look …” Deep breath, keep it simple. “Every captain keeps back up charts. They have to,

  it’s the law. Even I know that much.”

  “I think only Commander Sasaki had them.” He frowned, like he’d just met a thought and was

  trying to ID it. “Doesn’t ShipMind know?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Roy just shrugged and developed a fascination with the dead Dog. Yeah, well, I couldn’t

  blame him. Thinking probably wasn’t part of his duty description.

  Damn. Without star charts we were right and truly gobbed. I heard a whimper and forced my

  focus away from ShipMind’s data feed to see the fool Sprite standing over the Lupan. He was

  staring down at the dog like he’d never seen a corpse before. Come to think of it, before today he

  probably hadn’t. Didn’t blame him. I’d sure as hells want to drink in the death of anybody who’d

  scarred me up that way. And if he was planning on throwing up, I couldn’t think of a better place

  to do it.

  Didn’t solve my problem, though. We were trapped on a dead ship. I could try plotting a

  course manually, but I knew as much about stellar navigation as Roy. I’d be more likely to land

  us inside a supernova than a friendly star system. Left us the choice of keeping the dead

  company till life support gave out. Or our dead doggy’s friends came back to see if he’d finished

  the job.

  Unless…

  I thought again about the implications in that Samurai woman’s corpse. Each of the

  genetically engineered human Types carries Type-specific personality traits as well as physical

  features. Samurai, now… Samurai were thinkers as much as fighters. Sasaki had put his second

  on the comm board, not nav. So maybe, just maybe, he’d had her set up some kind of back-up

  distress code, something uniquely Samurai.

  I told ShipMind to send out a Mayday on every channel it had, and to
yelp especially loud on

  any channel with a Samurai code. Then I sat back and listened while ShipMind yelled for help in

  every language known to humanity. Didn’t take long before something that had to be Samurai

  flashed through sync. Wasn’t much of a signal, just a series of beeps: three long, three short,

  three long. Repeated over and over. I could only hope it meant ‘help’. Samurai being Samurai,

  there was a good chance Sasaki’s idea of ‘help’ would be a suicide call.

  I slid my hand out of the sync link to find the Sprite by my side. The change in him made me

  do a double-take. Judging by his expression he must’ve had a trank stash tucked in his pocket.

  Looked like he’d given himself a helluva good dose, too. Little bastard looked downright

  blissful.

  Well, I could use some bliss myself about now. I snapped fingers under his nose till I got his

  eyes focused on me. “You got any more of that trank? I could sure do with a dose.”

  “What trank?”

  Deep breath, count slow… “Of whatever’s making you so damned happy, choom. You find

  that in a med pack, or you packing some of your captain’s private stash?”

  The boy brightened. “He’s not dead, you know.”

  It took me half a second too long to realize he didn’t mean the captain.

  Taloned fingers yanked me out of the command chair. I kicked up against the Lupan’s grip.

  My foot caught him just behind one of those wolfish ears.

  The blow staggered him enough to break his grip. I grabbed my rifle as I fell and fired on the

  up-roll. Fireworks skittered where the bolt flared against the back wall. The metallic tang of

  burnt filaments put a sharp edge to the death stink.

  The Lupan kept coming.

  The Dog kicked the gun out of my hands before I could fire again. A green aura blossomed

  around his boot where he stomped on its power pack. I rolled clear and lunged for that cannon of

  his.

  He kicked me across the deck before I could reach it. The blow knocked me head first onto

  the captain’s corpse. Momentum slid me across it, raising a whole new world of stink in my

  nose. I skidded on a trail of gore to slam my back into the forward nav chair with a crack.

  The Dog jerked me up by the rim of my armor before I got my footing. Sinking talons into my

  armor’s neck, he dangled me at arm’s length.

  Staring into those fangs I could believe Army’s line that Lupans had killed those women at

  Marg Sang. The thought triggered ugly memories. I’d been through my own personal Marg

  Sang. I wasn’t going through it again. I clawed at his wrist. Might as well try to scratch rock. His

  reach was too long to try punching him. I put everything I had into kicking his nuts.

  Forgot I’d removed my boots.

  My toes slammed into his armored groin. I felt the bones in my toes shatter. Hurt so damn

  much I couldn’t even shriek.

  “Didn’t your trainers teach you not to kick armor barefoot?” Miserable sonuvabitch sounded

  like he was trying not to laugh.

  “Just finish it, you gobbing moron!” I hurt enough to almost look forward to death.

  “Or you’ll what? Kick me with the other foot?” He grinned, putting those nightmare fangs on

  full display. “Lucky for you, I don’t take orders from non-coms. Particularly not from flat-tooth

  non-coms who’ve just tried to kick me in the balls.” Through the pain-haze I saw his nose twitch.

  He glanced at Roy, ears perking, then back to me. “You’re a woman.”

  He had to sound surprised.

  “No, I’m a gods-be-damned fish!” My foot hurt so much death was sounding downright

  attractive. “Just end it, all right?”

  He lifted me higher, turning me so he could study my face in profile. Despite the pain cold

  terror shot through me. He must have caught it in my scent. He made an uhffing sound, and

  angled his eagle’s frown toward Roy. “Or is this another of your kind, fraud?”

  “No, she’s the real thing.” I couldn’t twist enough to see Roy, but I could hear the bitterness

  in his voice.

  There was something else there, too, but I hurt too much to think. “Just kill me clean,” I

  grated. I managed not to make it sound like a plea. Damn, that Dog still had me off the ground at

  arm’s length. And his arm wasn’t even shaking.

  The Lupan lifted his hand and I braced myself for his killing blow. I tried to keep my eyes

  locked on his. But I caught a movement at the edge of my vision, a half-glimpse of something

  moving within his palm. Old memories sent terror into hyperdrive. I tried to cringe away from

  his hand. No go. I bit back a shriek as he laid his palm against my throat.

  And the universe exploded.

  A tsunami of longing and regret and sorrow, of need hammered straight past my conscious

  mind right through to the core of my being. Whatever the Lupan was doing, it felt like it was

  opening a door to some great, shared soul… I could feel the warmth reaching out for me,

  promising safety, oneness. The part of me that was still me, rose up in joy. StelFleet, war, the

  Commonwealth be damned. Whatever the Lupan was offering, I wanted it.

  But my store-bought Aryan instincts howled ‘trap’ and recoiled. I felt that wonderful sense of

  oneness shatter.

  The Lupan dropped his hand, shoulders slumping. Then he pivoted and dumped me into the

  captain’s chair.

  I tried to scramble free, but he pinned my arm to the armrest with a fingertip. He was

  breathing hard, but not in the lust I’d feared. It was more like he was fighting some powerful,

  painful emotion. He got himself under control faster than I did.

  “Gods damn you,” I gasped. “What the hells did you do to me?”

  “Nothing, it seems.” He squatted beside the chair, looking suddenly exhausted.

  Roy fluttered past me. He reached to hug the Lupan. The gesture earned him a full-fledged

  battle snarl that sent him jumping back. I figured it must be the aftermath of the shock, but I

  could’ve sworn I felt the Lupan’s raging contempt, just as I felt the boy’s mix of hurt and

  jealousy. And once again, I caught a flash of something much deeper, much darker, something

  Roy wanted to keep hidden. Something that sent my Aryan instincts into Jump drive. Whatever it

  was, there wasn’t anything I could do about it now.

  “Hey, don’t let me get in your way,” I told him. I started to shift position; a flash of searing

  pain up my foot changed my mind for me. “I’m just the dumb grunt around here.”

  “Sure you are… Vahrheitsyaeger.” Roy pronounced the damn name better than I could. He

  also made it sound venomous. “I mean, what interrogator would ever choose a name that means

  ‘hunter of truth’?”

  Oh, shit. The little bastard must’ve been around some damn ugly blocks to pick up on Aryan

  naming conventions. “Look, I didn’t choose the name. I…just got stuck with it, okay?”

  “Of course.” The Lupan leaned back on his haunches to flash that fanged grin at me. “And if

  we believe it, you have a bridge to sell us, yes?”

  Oh, gobbing gods, sounded like they were talking some kind of code. The Aryan in me

  wanted to play along, see what these two were up to. The rest of me just hurt too damn much to

  care. “Look, you two. I don’t know nothin’ about no bridges, okay? You want to go that route,

  all you’re getting is my name, rank, and
serial number. Otherwise…” I shifted weight and

  winced. “I’d sure appreciate if one of you could help me rig a splint for this foot.”

  “We can do better than that.” The Lupan rose, smooth and fluid. “The fraud can fix it for

  you.”

  “My name is Roy! And I’m more than enough of a man for you!” The boy’s protest would’ve

  been more effective if he hadn’t been wearing a dress. Or struck a hands-on-hips pose.

  The Lupan just made that uhffing sound. “Lucky for both of you that Lupan men do not abuse

  women.”

  “Yeah, right. Tell that to the women at Marg Sang.”

  His wolf-ears went flat. “Marg Sang wasn’t our doing.”

  “Yeah, right.” Everything the Army had told us said he was a liar, yet I believed him. True,

  the Sisters had always insisted Marg Sang was not Lupan work, but in my gut I knew that wasn’t

  why I believed him. Well, I did. My Aryan instincts weren’t having any part of it. “Don’t pull

  that line on me. I saw what you people did to those women.”

  “You wear a marine’s armor. You should have seen what Lupan talon work looks like.” He

  lifted one ear at me. Somehow, he made it look snarky.

  “She’s an interrogator.” Roy’s voice cut in, jealousy dripping from every word. “She’s never

  actually fought anywhere.”

  “Hells I haven’t! I was at Marg Sang! I got stuck on the clean-up crew -” I caught myself

  before I broke the name-rank-serial number rules. But it occurred to me, finally, what it was that

  was driving my inner Aryan nuts. These two were using a classic, tag team interrogation

  technique. An Aryan technique.

  That was the other thing my rogue gene tech neglected to tell me. The gene pack he’d

  overlaid on my DNA had been lifted from the only human Type engineered to do the politicos’

  dirty work: Aryan. Good thing for my sanity the genepack didn’t include the woman’s

  memories; I had enough of my own without adding an interrogator’s to them. But it sure as hells

  included her attitude. That infusion of the Aryan TypeCode had given me a serious case of

  practical paranoia. I’d have given anything to just be simply myself again, to trust without

  reservation again. But those stolen instincts were the only reason I’d survived the past three