17
Aubrey squinted. “My sight is still off-line.”
“It’ll get better. Your sight has been off-line awhile.”
Aubrey clenched his jaw. “How long a while?”
The captain snorted. “Long enough to make you nothing but a scrawny bag of bones. I’m afraid if I sneeze too hard, I’ll break you.”
Aubrey was jerked to a halt. The hiss of an opening lift door came from right in front. Bodies moved past them. The captain pushed him into the lift.
Aubrey let himself be jerked around to face the front. “Captain, how long a while have I been playing executable program floating in a liquid tank?”
The captain sighed. “Kid, you really, really don’t want to know the answer to that one.”
Aubrey clenched his jaw. “The men said nine cycles.”
The captain chuckled. “It’s been a little longer than that.”
“How long?”
The lift doors opened. Smoke drifted into the lift with the sounds of screaming metal and shouting men.
Aubrey was shoved forward and angled to the left. His eyes watered in the acidic air.
The captain leaned down to talk in his ear. “Just so you know, most of the docks have already been holed. I don’t know how anyone knew to pull you from the tank and send you here, but this dock holds the one hidden shuttle on this ship. The first officer doesn’t even know about it.”
Aubrey choked. “You’re abandoning your first officer?”
“Fuck yeah. It’s a two-man craft. I’m taking the only thing Moribund wants to keep… You.”
Aubrey shivered. “What the hell kind of people are you? Killing whole crews, even your own?”
“We’re mercenaries.”
Aubrey scowled. “That’s crap! My dad was a merc, and his company didn’t do shit like that!”
The captain tugged Aubrey to a halt. “Yeah, well, he didn’t work for the Moribund Company, did he?”
Aubrey’s eyes saw a colored blur right in front of him. He heard a door open. A hand at his back shoved him up some steps and through a door.
The captain followed right on his heels and grabbed his collar. “You know what Moribund means, don’t you?”
Aubrey grabbed for the hand at his collar. “No, I don’t.” He was propelled forward.
The captain chuckled. “It’s an old Terran term for a dead or abandoned house.”
18
Morgan Hawke
Aubrey banged his shin on what he suspected was a chair. He hissed.
“Appropriate since that’s what you guys do, kill everybody on the ships to empty them.”
“Pretty much.” The captain shoved him into a chair. “Hold still.” His hands closed around Aubrey’s throat and squeezed.
Aubrey gasped and grabbed for his wrists.
The captain released him. “Relax, it’s just a collar.”
“What?” Aubrey grabbed for his throat and felt a metal ring around it. “What the fuck…?” The ring went all the way around. He couldn’t find a seam or an opening of any kind.
“Like I said, we can’t afford to lose you. You’ve tripled our take since we jacked you in.” The captain stepped away and a chair creaked to Aubrey’s left. “Buckle in. This is going to be a bumpy ride.”
Aubrey fastened the seat harness over him out of sheer reflex. “What the fuck did you put on me?”
“Oh, that’s an old-style penal collar. It has a homing beacon in it. This way if we crash and you slip out of my hands, the ground party can find you anywhere on the planet.”
“Wait a minute, we’re over a planet?”
“Yep, but not much of one. The air’s a little corrosive, and you have bad lungs, so I’d stay on the ship if I were you.”
The craft jerked hard under them.
“And we’re away.” The captain sighed. “Good-bye, Interceptor, hello, raise.”
Aubrey frowned. “Interceptor?”
“Oh, you didn’t know? That’s the ship’s name.”
“I thought it was Niobe?”
“That was its name when we got it. Sweet craft, but a little unstable in places.”
“Compared to what? Your nav-pilot is completely insane!”
“Yeah, well, for a twisted little fuck, she could pull off miracles, and that’s all that counted. We lost the occasional subpilot to her, but they were pretty easy to replace considering all the ships we took.”
Aubrey gripped the armrests. “Do you even hear what you’re saying? You are deliberately destroying people’s lives!”
“So? What do I care? It’s making me rich.” The captain shifted next to him, flipping switches. “It’s just the way the universe works, kid; either you’re predator or prey.”
Aubrey folded his arms. “That’s a total pile of shit.”
“Hey, I’m not the one going back into a liquid tank at the end of this trip to play subroutine to another ship.”
Interstellar Service & Discipline: Lost Star
19
Aubrey’s temper flared hot. He shook with anger. “No, you’re the one whose ship got blown all to hell because you wandered into the wrong territory.”
“That was not my idea. The reason our asses got blown all to hell is because that damned ship shut down all external sensors and decided to pick a fight with the pilot.
We didn’t even know we were in Skeldhi territory and under attack until damage reports started coming in.”
“Good for Niobe.” Aubrey blinked and realized that he was seeing shapes. He could almost make out the dashboard right in front of him. He looked to his left and could just make out the hulking shape of a man next to him.
“You know, if I thought I could beat you without killing you, I’d do it.”
“Like I’d care if you killed me. I’m going back into a liquid tank at the end of this trip, remember?”
“Keep it up with the mouth, kid.” The captain scowled, not a good look on his scarred and grizzled face. “I’m sure I can do something to make this trip really uncomfortable without breaking something.”
Aubrey almost smiled. The captain’s face might not be a pretty sight, but his ability to even see it meant that escape was actually possible. If it weren’t for the fucking beacon collar. Even if he did escape, he wouldn’t get far. He licked his lips. But maybe he could get far enough to kill himself… “How long do we have until rescue?”
“What, change your mind
