Chimera Company - Deep Cover 1 Read online

  “No,” Fitz insisted. “Not stranded. Delayed.”

  “How long to get to the nearest planet?” asked Arunsen.

  “Still working on it,” said Izza. “Current best estimate, 157 years. And we won’t even make that if we roast to death first. I want each of your legionaries, Sergeant Sybutu, including yourself, to be responsible for two individuals without EVA experience. They are to suit them up, check seal integrity, and tether together as teams. My crew will be very busy with critical tasks. I don’t want you to be a distraction.”

  Sybutu looked unconvinced.

  “I thought Chimera Company was a team,” Fitz reminded the Legionary. “Didn’t we go back for your comrades in that burning city?”

  “Our comrades who had abandoned us. Yes.” Sybutu sighed, ignoring Arunsen who was bulging his fists, and then started talking into the intercom, organizing the passengers in Hold One.

  Izza gave Fitz a nod, her golden eyebrows pinching beneath a furrowed brow beading with sweat.

  He knew that look. She did not approve of Sybutu, and Izza’s first impressions rarely changed. People Izza did not approve of had a habit of becoming dead people.

  “Good.” Fitz flashed everybody in the flight deck a soothing smile. “Everyone’s happy. Let’s suit up and we can chat over coffee and biscuits later.”

  Izza wasn’t buying it.

  She stretched her arms out like a cat, clenching and unclenching her fists and rolling her shoulders.

  Hidden within her stretch were secret gestures in Guild Cant. Meet me by the starboard horns.

  Fitz sucked in roasting hot air. Now he was in real trouble.

  TAVISTOCK FITZWILLIAM

  The Phantom’s passageways and compartments were filled with heat absorption aerosol, which was buying them a little time but was fast approaching its limits. Near the main hatch, three strings of tethered legionaries and troopers were tied to the outer hull, the insectoid Muryani trooper being secured separately inside a spherical emergency pressure bubble. The three crew – Catkins, Sinofar and Fregg – floated nearby in what Sinofar would call tactical formation, ready to murder the passengers on command. As the tactical officer, Verlys Sinofar felt it was her professional duty not only to always go about heavily armed, but to perfect an attitude of paranoia that many would regard as psychotic. It was an attitude that Sinofar was forever trying to instill in the other crew members.

  This had met staunch resistance, particularly from Catkins, but had saved them on more than one occasion.

  There was a green crewmember, though, who not only agreed wholeheartedly with Sinofar’s philosophy, but frequently admonished her for being too trusting and not heavily armed enough. Izza had never accused her husband of being overly trusting.

  Not until he’d let this Chimera Company aboard.

  “We are ready,” she reported, boosting over to his position by the secondary horns.

  “Thank you. You do the honors, First Officer.”

  While she shut down the airlock safety protocols and prepared to vent the ship, Fitz studied the pointed tubes that swept back from the hull. They did indeed resemble horns.

  “They make my ship go faster,” he liked to tell admirers when they enquired about the Phantom’s two distinctive pairs of horns.

  It was true, in a way. The ‘Klein-Manifold Region emitters’, as Catkins insisted the horns should be called, did indeed mean they could accelerate faster than other ships. And do so without smearing the crew over the acceleration stations Fitz had recently reupholstered at significant expense. It was the least of the ship’s secret tricks derived from playing in the K-MR, but the gleaming horns were now blackened and cracked.

  He looked back to the hatch just in time to see it open and a jet of yellow aerosol-filled air blow out, turning white as it froze in the cold of deep space.

  “It worked.” Fitz’s helmet rang with happiness as Catkins’ voice took on a Gliesan trill of excitement. “Hull temperature is stabilizing, Captain. We’re going to be all right.”

  “Good work, people,” said Fitz. “Sinofar, take charge of refilling the Phantom with auxiliary air. Then secure the ship and escort our passengers on board when you are ready. I need a quick word with the first officer.”

  “Secure the ship. Aye, Captain.”

  Fitz poked with a gloved finger at the nearest horn, wincing as a blackened shard floated away like a scraping of charred meat.

  But there was nothing to be done about that now. There were two questions Fitz had to answer before he could decide their next move. First up would be Izza’s.

  He allowed her to adjust the controls on his vaccsuit’s chest and establish a private direct comm link.

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “I took a chance. It’s what I do.”

  “I know that. Taking rash decisions and making them pay off against all the odds is your most endearing characteristic. Don’t ever change. But I still deserve to know why. Okay, so those legionaries helped us get away from the spaceport, but why did you pick up the Militia troopers in the middle of an active combat zone? And why were you so ready to charge down that ancient ship’s jump tunnel? What are we really getting into, Tavistock?”

  “I…” Words failed him. He honestly didn’t know. He hadn’t had time to think things through. He’d been too busy nearly getting them all killed several times over, and leaving them stranded light years from anywhere. All that, and he didn’t know why.

  He gave an exaggerated shrug that showed even in his vaccsuit. “Who knows? Duty?”

  “Duty to what?” Izza gave that high-pitched Zhoogene rattle in the back of her throat that meant she was either in the throes of extreme passion or felt under extreme threat. “To the Federation? After all these years? Why do you still care? The Federation despises you, Tavistock. The Legion showed its true colors by pinning the blame on you for something you didn’t do, spitting you out, and then stomping on you with armored mag-boots.”

  “Whereupon I landed in the interstellar gutter that is the Smugglers Guild, and finally found acceptance. You’re right, my lady. I harbor no love of the Legion or the federal authorities, but of the individuals I served with… It was long ago, but they were my brothers and sisters once, almost as close as you and I. They never abandoned me. They fought my case, not that it did much good.”

  When his words tailed off with a sigh, she pulled herself close so their faceplates touched.

  “You’re cut up about Malix.” Her anger had flushed away, and her eyes filled with compassion. “It is right that you mourn your old comrade and friend, but we must consider where your memory of former loyalties has left us.”

  “It’s left us on an unexpected vacation,” he replied. “We have enough cryo pods. We’ll coast to the nearest planet. Perhaps the heat’ll be off by the time we get there.”

  Izza growled. They both knew that wasn’t true. Debts didn’t fade with time; they accumulated interest. And everywhere he looked, the Federation appeared to be reaching a crisis point. If they slept for a couple of centuries, who could tell what kind of galaxy they would wake into? It seemed unlikely to be a welcoming one.

  “It’s not just that,” Izza pressed. “We’re vulnerable. Our passengers outnumber us, and they’re soldiers, Tavistock. Soldiers on a mission who are using us to meet their objectives. What do you really know about them?”

  “Nothing. Are you recommending we kill them?”

  “It would be safer. We could consider restraining them, I suppose, but the best way to secure a dangerous animal is to first kill it.”

  He broke contact and looked away into the depth of the void, a vast gulf of nothing except the pinpricks of distant stars.

  Compared to the emptiness in his heart, it was nothing.

  Malix reached out to me.

  Those plugged into the seedier local information flows knew of the obligations Fitz owed to Nyluga-Ree, the Tej Sector’s crime boss. When an unknown contact had offered to make good that
debt in return for being smuggled in and out of the icy backwater that was Rho-Torkis, Fitz had been happy to take the money and ask no questions.

  When the passenger had come aboard, Fitz had felt a bad feeling about the whole affair. It was more than just gut feel: this was one of his premonitions, the legacy of his mutant heritage. When he had put heads together with Izza and tried to unite in a shared vision of the future this passenger would bring, they had failed. In itself that wasn’t surprising – they’d only succeeded in mind bonding on a handful of occasions – but his sense of dark foreboding had grown stronger.

  Lord Khallini, the passenger had called himself. Everyone in the Guild thought they knew about Khallini, but Fitz suspected it was an organization fit to rival the Smugglers Guild, not a single individual. But it was just one person who’d joined them on the Phantom. A creepy little old man with a liver-spotted head, silver-topped cane, and white gloves that he never removed.

  Fitz had made a successful second career out of not asking questions, but now they were stuck here in the void, he was full of questions about Khallini.

  As they had been punching through the atmosphere, escaping from the trap Rho-Torkis had become, Khallini had appeared via the holo-transmitter. How he’d done that was still a great concern. They’d have to sweep very carefully for surveillance devices. Worse was Khallini’s claim that it was he who had disabled the Legion’s orbital defenses around Rho-Torkis. If true, then Khallini had been responsible for allowing through the Saturn bombers that had nuked the base where Francisco Malix had been.

  And I made it all possible by smuggling in Khallini.

  Shortly before his death, Malix had reached out to him, sending an activation code via that unlikely Legion agent, Sybutu. He hadn’t just used one of the Firm’s code phrases. It belonged to a secret group within the Firm, to be used only in the direst circumstances. Using the kind of crazy logic that had made sense to him when he was younger, the message said that the Federation was in such trouble that it needed to be saved from itself. There had to be a coup to put the Federation back on track.

  But Izza was right. Neither of them owed any loyalty to the Federation. To Malix, yes. But he was dead.

  He regarded the green face a foot away through the vacuum, looking at him in concern.

  His loyalty was to her now. To his dreams, his crew, and to the life he’d built for himself in the gutter of the galaxy.

  And yet when Francisco had reached his crisis point, it had been to Fitz he reached out to. Those passengers being hauled into the Phantom by his crew – they were all that remained of Cisco.

  “I’ll tell you what I do know,” he said to Izza. “Those stragglers we picked up – this ‘Chimera Company’ as half of them call themselves – I’m responsible for ruining their planet. I killed their friends. Most of all, I killed Cisco.”

  “We smuggled Khallini onto the planet. We do not know the consequences of that act. You assume too much. I am confident that Sinofar has planned a means to eliminate our passengers. I take it we aren’t asking her to implement it immediately.”

  “Correct. When we wake from the long sleep that is to come, we may pray for our own little marine contingent on board. Even so, ask Sinofar to keep our options open. Having a tame marine squad is one thing, I do not wish to find that we have become a tame crew flying a ship that those hooligans have taken over.”

  “Very well. You have made your decision. Now smile and be yourself. Guilt does not suit you, husband. You do not wear it well.”

  “That was ever true,” he murmured.

  Izza left him alone to his memories.

  He could relive stealing the encryption codes for the 15th Sector Reserve Coup as if it were yesterday. He and Cisco had been kids then, barely out of their teens and trying to outdo themselves. It had been Ratcliffe, the experienced member of their trio, who had watched their six and gotten them out safely after they’d been discovered. The Thyfthkosian, whose pale blue torso was completely covered in a tattoo of their home burrow, had later saved Fitz’s ass when the job on Wutan-Scala-7 had gone south.

  Fitz and Cisco had decided to recruit Ratcliffe into their secret group on the journey home, and the alien was going to explain what they would need to do to earn the privileged of using its full name of ‘MP Ratcliffe’. Except Ratcliffe never made it back from Wutan-Scala-7.

  That was sixteen years ago. The guilt hadn’t lessened in all that time. Not one iota.

  Shepherding these Chimera Company strays wouldn’t relieve the burden either. Wouldn’t bring Cisco back. Wouldn’t matter a damn.

  He needed hired guns, that was all. As soon as the Phantom no longer needed a mob of gun-obsessed marines, he’d dump them. He just had to find a way to buy their loyalty in the interim.

  Fitz took a last look at the damaged horns before making for the hatch with a puff of reaction gas.

  VETCH ARUNSEN

  “A toast,” announced Fitz from the head of the mess cabin table. “To new worlds and new opportunities.”

  The Phantom’s crew cheered their captain. Most of Chimera Company raised their rum-filled beakers in answer, but none cheered the strange words of the toast.

  Vetch couldn’t blame them. First, Major Yazzie had told Vetch’s squad that they were now part of an unnatural construction called Chimera Company. She had ordered them to escort Sybutu’s legionaries across the Great Ice Plain, in an operation that was probably unofficial and possibly treasonous. Then Sybutu’s contact had turned out to be a smuggler captain. One with a strange ship that sprouted horns and accelerated faster than any free trader tramp had a right to.

  When they’d made contact, Captain Fitz had told Sybutu to go to hell, but something had made him turn back and rescue Vetch’s troopers from the capital city of a doomed planet, only to strand them in deep space, decades away from the nearest planet.

  It had all happened so fast that Vetch’s head was still spinning. He needed a beer to put things straight. Maybe a gallon’s worth, but the rum was not a bad substitute.

  Lily leaned over to whisper in his ear. She didn’t have to move far; they were squeezed so tightly on the bench seats of the table she was practically sitting on his lap. “I don’t trust that Pryxian.” Her words were a hissed whisper, the better to defeat Zhoogene hearing.

  “Sinofar?” he breathed back. “She’s the tactical officer. If I were in her boots, I would see us as a serious potential threat too.”

  “Doesn’t mean she won’t murder us while we sleep.”

  Lily had given up whispering. At the opposite end of the table from Fitz, the Zhoogene first officer, Izza Zan Fey, inclined her head in Lily’s direction and gave a feral smile, as if to say: Yes, you damned well should worry.

  Vetch nodded back at Zan Fey. “Our first task, Lily, is to not give them reason to kill us. They rescued us from Bresca-Brevae. Trust in that.”

  “I think it was the legionaries who really came back for us.” Lily smiled sweetly at Sybutu who was sitting in contemplative silence the other side of Vetch. She glanced across the table. “And I think I know at least part of the reason…”

  Vetch followed Lily’s gaze to where Green Fish sat admonishing the legionary admirer fussing over her.

  She was wasting her time. Zavage was a Kurlei, an empath who could sense emotions, and even Vetch could see she was enjoying his attention.

  Zavage and Green Fish. An alien legionary and a human trooper in love. Vetch had seen a lot of strange things in his twenty-eight standard years, but this was a dozy to add to the collection.

  And Green Fish would factor highly in his decision about what to do next. She had taken a deep wound for her legionary sweetheart. The same Sinofar who seemed to be plotting their murder had turned out to be an excellent field medic, and her medi-bay supremely well equipped. Green Fish was stable, the copious blood she’d lost having been replaced by synthetics, but she could barely stand, and he feared whether she would survive the physical trauma of cryogenic
sleep.

  He’d already ordered Rynter’s body into cryo, and Deep Tone was in a peaceful sleep that the medics all agreed he was unlikely to wake from. He wouldn’t lose Green Fish too.

  It was Vetch’s duty to make sure Green Fish received proper medical attention once the Phantom finished its long journey to the nearest planet, and that… that might prove difficult.

  “My friends!”

  Fitz’s hand was on his shoulder. His other hand was on Sybutu’s.

  “Our plans are in tatters,” the man said cheerfully. “Being such outstanding examples of soldiers, I expect when we reach safe harbor, your instinct will be to report in at the earliest opportunity to your respective military organizations.”

  “Of course,” said Sybutu.

  Vetch said nothing. Lily, meanwhile, shifted round to face Fitz and glared at him over folded arms. The captain responded to her hostility with a bow topped off by a flourish of his hand.

  “Your instincts do you great credit,” Fitz said, “yet I implore you to at least consider not reporting in.”

  “Impossible,” said Sybutu with dour predictability. “We are loyal servants of the Federation and our service is through the Legion. It is imperative that we report what we saw at Rho-Torkis.”

  “I admire your sense of intransigence,” said Fitz. “Perhaps others have a different point of view.” Now it was Fitz’s turn to look meaningfully across the table where Zavage was whispering in Green Fish’s ear.

  “The nearest planet is Regina-Ventu,” Fitz said, “and our estimated time of arrival is 157 years hence. You will have been missing in action for the best part of two centuries. Rho-Torkis looked bad when we left, so my guess is that you will be the only survivors from that planet. With all the chaos on that hell world, no one will look for you. Your service file will have been closed and death benefits paid out. You, Sergeant Sybutu, will have been long forgotten by the time we arrive.”

  “Chaos is the word,” said Vetch. “The zombies were the worst. The Andromedan Corruption, Enthree calls them – as in the Andromeda Galaxy. Five Hells, I need a drink just saying that. And then there’s the Panhandler rebels and the Cora’s World zealots who’ve sided with them. With all that going on, Fitz is right, Sybutu. If you’ve any sense, you’ll lie low and check out the situation carefully before squawking your whereabouts to whatever universe we wake into.”