He strokes the leather jacket on the back of the chair. “Slave.”
“At your command,” the A.I. computer responds, lacking the female personality of the Dragon’s main computer.
“Select previous destination.”
“Course calculations locked in,” Slave reports.
“Why do you call the computer Slave?”
“You want me to regale you with stories of what I’ve done. You even question calling a computer Slave. What is a computer if not a slave? Slaves have no need for names.”
Her diplomatic training is not experienced enough to fence with her captor and win her release.
“I don’t understand. You’ve been in Maxtin’s service for so long.”
“I’ve been in the service of others for longer and I’ve no desire to serve either.”
“I don’t care,” Michelle turns up her nose as if her dinner has spoiled.
“Don’t be a child. Even if you are. You’ve been trained to be regent of an entire planet in service to your liege. If I choose to explain to you my plan like one of the supervillains from the Commander’s entertainment vids, I shall do so because I wish you to know why I want Reynard dead.”
“Amye says he brought you into his crew. He holds no malice against you.”
“Not yet, but he will.” Ki-Ton feeds planetary jump calculations into the computer.
Michelle wonders why he’s not in a hurry to escape into hyperspace before the Dragon follows instead of the double speak Ki-Ton spits out about future insults. She knows little of piloting a spacecraft, but the longer it takes to jump the more likely his trajectory plot will be copied. Unless that’s what he wants. How careful has he planned this?
“If he tracks you, the Commander will stop you.”
“You put a lot of faith in your kidnapper.”
“He protected me from execution at my mother’s behest.”
“Your mother wants his head now.”
“What did you do?”
“My attempt to assassinate her failed. The bounty on his head prevents him from traveling to any civilized star system.” Ki-Ton adds, “The Braeco’n hunt the crew because the weapons we gave them were faulty.”
“You spent years building trust in order to ruin the crew.”
“I spent nine years under Maxtin’s direction. Considering Osirians’ limited life span, it might be a long stretch of your puny lives, but for some who have lived for thousands, what’s a decade?”
Michelle assembles the clues Ki-Ton’s given. His statement of Reynard having yet to offend him lacks reason.
“You’ve spent years witnessing firsthand what the Mokarran are doing to billions, and you turn your back on them for petty revenge?”
“It has happened to me! It’s Reynard who has yet to commit the offense.”
“You’re insane.”
“Not when you understand temporal mechanics.”
“Time travel’s impossible,” Michelle scolds.
“Nothing’s impossible,” Ki-Ton activates the hyperdrive.
The shuttle shifts from the blackness of space into a subreality where the stars streak past the view screen.
“The blind and feeble should be able to track me.”
“Why not just kill them, if they have no idea who you are?”
“Simplistic. The Commander won’t suffer the way he has left me to suffer if he’s dead. I’ll leave him a broken man with his close friends and crew dead, and his allies turned against him.”
“You’re going to toy with an enemy instead of destroying them when you have the advantage. No wonder the Commander defeated you before.”
“Taunts won’t elicit a response. I haven’t spent those years being Maxtin’s lapdog for some sheltered child to upset me.”
“When I reclaim my planet from the Mokarran, I’ll have them executed for their injustices.”
“You’ll never reclaim your planet from those creatures even if you live long enough to make the attempt. The Mokarran and the Tibbar both like to send patrols to the casino.”
Ki-Ton transforms his upper body into that of a Mokarran warrior before activating the communications system. He speaks to a Mokarran in a language that Michelle’s universal translator doesn’t recognize.
Once the conference ends, Ki-Ton shifts back into his recognizable form, panting from exertion.
“Why use transmography if it hurts so bad?”
“It won’t hurt much longer. I’ll restore what Admiral Reynard did to me.”
“SHOULDN’T THIS BE a job for Scott? After all, he’s the Dragon’s engineer,” Kymberlynn asks.
Amye slides around on a platform, making up the edge of where the hidden shuttle locks into place. The living skin swims over the hole, preventing the atmosphere from evacuating into space.
“At what point did we become the most inefficient crew in the galaxy not to know we had a shuttle hidden?” Amye crouches down and brushes her fingers over the living skin. It’s malleable, but when she pokes her finger into it, it hardens to prevent anything from passing through.
“It’s easier than you think. This ship is full of hidden wall panels. You probably don’t even remember where you’ve hidden all those bottles of liquor you’ve stashed,” Kymberlynn prods.
“If you’re going to be in here, you need to be helpful, or I’m going to send you away.”
“Send me away, throw away your bottles while you’re at it.”
“Enough, Kymberlynn,” Amye snaps before she scans the ceiling with her eyes. The framework appears to be extra-reinforced. “I…tire of your…drazz.”
“I still don’t know why you came in here. If Ki-Ton left clues, they’re inside the shuttle.”
“You’re not wrong,” Amye says, “What I’m trying to understand...Ki-Ton was a double agent with his own agenda, infiltrating Admiral Maxtin’s command for nine years to eliminate his allies.”
“He used the Silver Dragon’s crew to eradicate them.”
“I pulled the trigger. I know,” Amye hisses. “But Ki-Ton wasn’t Reynard’s first crew member. Australia was assigned initially by Maxtin. Why didn’t she find the shuttle when she deciphered the alien languages on the computer controls?” Amye spots what could only be an escape hatch from the bridge to the top of where the shuttle would be.
“Reynard was brought out of a thousand years of cryogenic sleep and somehow got command of this ship.”
“He doesn’t speak about it. The thousand years being frozen affects memory in the
