The Kassa Gambit

“What seems to be the problem, officer?”

Such a simple question. With a simple answer. Kyle explained it all, in simple words. He remembered what came next with jagged clarity.

“I can’t get a ticket. I can’t … be here. Do you understand, officer?”

By this point in his career, Kyle had already been in several gunfights. He’d already done undercover stings on mobsters and juicers. He knew what fear felt like, recognized its peculiar tang, the heightening of sensation coupled with the shrinking boundaries of awareness. He knew the smell of death, the look in another man’s eyes when you had crossed a line that could not be uncrossed while one of you was still alive.

In that moment he was more afraid than he had ever been.

Dejae was not angry or threatening. The politician was merely … distressed. Uncomfortable with what was going to happen.

Kyle had known with absolute certainty that Dejae was uncomfortable with what was going to happen to Kyle.

He had lowered his data tablet. An act of weakness: submission to fear. Even now it gnawed at him, shamed him. It would have destroyed a younger Kyle, shattered his vision of himself. But this Kyle was older and wiser. This Kyle was not prepared to die for a traffic ticket.

“Not even a warning, if it will leave a record. You have to … forget. You never saw me.”

Kyle had manufactured an excuse. One that sounded good to himself. Mumbled something about state secrets or mistresses. Pretended it was okay for a politician to make a minor mistake and cover it up by threatening murder.

“I won’t forget you, Officer Daspar.”

And Dejae hadn’t. A week later Kyle had been reassigned. A month later, the first promotion, one of many. After a year, the invitation to become a League member.

Surreptitiously Kyle had scanned every news article, crime log, and database he could find. Careful not to let even a whisper drop to his fellow officers, he had run his own private investigation. And come up empty-handed. No murders, no smuggling, no embezzlements had surfaced. No foreign dignitaries had gone missing, no off-world treaties suddenly signed. He had never found a whiff of a hint for why Dejae had to not be seen that day, in that place.

But he had discovered just how powerful the League was. Just how deep it had its claws into Altair government. Still in investigation mode, he went along with the League’s requests. Fixing parking tickets and the like, little things, tests to see how deep his loyalty ran. Those malfeasances didn’t bother him. They weren’t done out of fear, merely part of his undercover act. He wanted to see where all of this led.

He knew he was on to something really important after the second year. After Veram Dejae was elected prime minister of Altair.

And now, three years later, he was still unraveling the threads. This little blue data pod might be one of them. If it wasn’t, then he wasn’t stealing anything valuable from the kid. If it was, then Fletcher did not want to find the spider on the end of that thread.

So many rationalizations. They had become habitual now. He hated that about himself. The only way he could cope was to add it to the ledger he kept in his head. The list of crimes that the League would someday be held to account for.

Bitter memories to bear while trudging through the cold snow. But they had reached the ship now, and he had to put his public face back on. Smiling at the girls, he helped them through the air lock.

“We need to get settled in, quickly. Dr. Sanders is in bad shape. We have to get her out of here fast.” Subtly herding the girls, keeping their minds off the data pods, he guided them to the ship’s lounge. It had enough chairs and couches to seat them all. A more comfortable journey than the cargo hold, where the larger groups of refugees had ridden on hard metal floors.

“Will she be okay?” Brenna kept asking if things were going to be okay.

“We have some medical facilities back at the capital.” An ambiguous answer, but the most hopeful he could offer.

Prudence stalked off, turning back into the captain now that she had passengers onboard. He watched sadly. With the Phoenix here, he would lose his hold over her. If he tried to keep her ship commandeered, Rassinger would just wind up running it. So he would let her go, and she would fade out of his life, into the background of faces and events that streamed past him without really touching him. He would go on alone, as always.

It was what was best for her and her crew. They had to run far, far away, before they got entangled in this web of treachery. Especially now that Rassinger was on the scene.

Rassinger. Of all the rotten luck. Why couldn’t his ship have beaten them here? Then the mines would have paid their respects to District Leader Rassinger, and the universe would be a better place.

But of course, it wasn’t luck. Rassinger had shown up on cue to collect his shiny prize. Sure, there probably was a diplomatic meeting waiting for him on Bierze. They would have made their cover story airtight. And the disinterest he’d shown in the disaster—Rassinger was the perfect man for that. Anyone who knew him would have no trouble believing the man was prepared to sail on by.

Then, ever so conveniently, the Ulysses had located the biggest discovery of all time, and turned it over to District Leader Rassinger. On a snow-covered platter. The League would make hay with this. Bales and bales of it, stacked to the barn roof. In the panic of an alien attack, money would flow into the government’s hands. They’d double the Fleet. They’d recruit scared young men from off-world, men who wanted to fight aliens but weren’t citizens of Altair. Men whose first loyalty would be to the government, not to the people.

And they would pass laws, laws intended to block spies, to increase security, to protect. Laws that gave the government power to do things in a hurry, and in secret. Laws that would be carried out in dark rooms at the end of silent corridors.

Rassinger and his ilk would be there, in those rooms. The League’s thugs would be creeping through those corridors. The fist that reached out to strike the alien threat would never unclench, and Altair would suffocate in its grasp.

But there was a flaw in their plan. Lieutenant Kyle Daspar.

Someone on Altair had dispatched Kyle out here, before the attack had taken place. They needed him here for something. That gave him power. And they had known in advance. That meant the aliens had been negotiated with.

Politics.

This was an arena Kyle could hope to affect. A war was beyond the scope of any one man to significantly influence. But a secret only needed one voice to expose it. If Kyle could find the League’s link to the aliens, he might be able to avert the war.

Even if he couldn’t, he could at least destroy the League. If Altair had to fight for its survival, he might at least give it a chance to preserve what it was fighting for. To remain free, and democratic. To remain Altair.

Assuming he could survive his own private battle with the League. Which made him realize he’d been thinking of Prudence as an innocent, not as an operative. If she was working for the League, he might see her again after all.

But the thought was not comforting. There were only two conditions under which he would be exposed to such a skilled operative a second time. The first condition was if she was trying to kill him.

The second condition was if he was trying to kill her.

Settling into a chair next to Fletcher, he leaned back and closed his eyes. Maybe if he pretended to sleep, they wouldn’t pester him with questions. But he didn’t have to pretend.

After so many hours on the ship, after so many flights, he could tell now when they broke atmosphere. It was a subtle difference. Spaceships were always humming and vibrating, always alive under your touch. But in space the animus was internal, the turbulence of air no longer drowning out the heartbeat of the generators and the breath of life support. He fancied that he could feel a difference in acceleration, even through the passive grav-plating of the deck. The ship no longer weighed down by earthly concerns, but floating free under its own power. He could see why Prudence preferred being in space. It was insulating.