The Kassa Gambit

Sheltered in the comfort of vacuum, he fell asleep.

At first he didn’t know what woke him. The rest of the passengers were asleep, too, lulled into unconsciousness by warmth. The room was silent and still.

But they were going down. Sinking back into the grasp of the world, the fears and demands of others clutching at them, pulling them down.

He rubbed his eyes, still gray with fatigue. It had only been forty minutes. Not long enough.

But too long for Dr. Sanders. He’d seen enough dead bodies to know, even from across the room. The old white-haired scientist was sleeping next to her, his arm across her body. Kyle let him sleep. A few more minutes of peace.

He got up and went to find the bridge.

Prudence sat in her chair, alone. Kyle looked around for Jorgun, automatically. He had become that accustomed to the giant’s presence.

“I sent him to bed,” Prudence said, without looking around to see who had come in. Showing that he could not sneak up on her. A spider demonstrating her total control over her web. He wondered if she had tagged him, put some kind of local radio tracker on his clothes at some point. Or if the ship had internal sensors that could distinguish individuals.

Or perhaps it was just her superb operative training.

“Now what?” he said, because he couldn’t help himself.

She looked at him then.

“Now we’re going to offload these people, and then I’m going to turn my ship off and get some sleep. What else did you have in mind?”

What had he meant? So much more than that. More than just the next few hours, the next few days. More than just the aliens and the coming war. He had meant the future, beyond all that.

He had meant what would happen between them.

The realization was startling. He had come to depend on her in the last day, not just to fly the ship, but to make decisions. Like at the wreck, checking for radiation. Or misdirecting Rassinger. Even while he had thought of her as the enemy, he had relied on her strength and ability. Taken it for granted.

“You’re not going to get involved with … Rassinger’s mission.” He didn’t know himself if it was a statement or a question.

“No,” she said, looking away again. “I’m going to collect my pay and get out of here.”

“These people will need help. Off-world help. That means lots of transport. There’ll be work for you here.” Why was he trying to change her mind? Selfishness. He wasn’t prepared to let her disappear from his life.

“We’ve done enough. Every time we come here, Jorgun will ask for Jelly. And every time, I’ll have to tell him all over again. No amount of transport fee is worth that.”

Her voice was bitter, but Kyle almost laughed at her. He had seen through her. So much effort wasted, so many futile precautions. Prudence had bound herself to nothing planetside. Her concerns were only for her ship.

But the crew was part of the ship, and the crew was human. And they did not have the iron discipline of their captain. They had become contaminated by the ground, and now they laid their burdens on her secondhand.

Kyle knew exactly how she felt. All of the relationships in his life were secondhand, too.

He gave her what freedom he could. “I’ll sign a blank voucher. You can fill in the amount. But if you ask for too much, they might ask questions. I don’t think you want that.” The blank voucher would earn him plenty of questions, too, difficult ones; but Prudence had earned it, regardless of what it might cost him. She was what he had sworn to protect from the League: the good and the innocent. Even if she was the only person he could name who fit both criteria.

He put his hand on the back of Jorgun’s chair to steady himself. He had momentarily forgotten that she was a mercenary sent to destroy him in some Byzantine and nefarious plot. He was too tired for this, emotionally and physically drained from the last few days. The last few years, even.

Again she looked at him, with those dark eyes asking questions all by themselves. “That’s generous of you. And by extension, Altair. Will your government be as generous to Kassa?”

He shrugged, honestly. “I don’t know, Prudence. I’m a cop. I don’t even work for the planetary government, just a city.”

“And the League.” Whispered. He wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement.

“And the League,” he agreed, because he had to.

Silence between them. Stretching painful, and complete.

“Who was Jelly?” he asked. Not just to hear her voice again, but because he wanted to know.

“A local girl. She suffered from Tay-Sachs disease. The condition is treatable, but the medicine is delicate. It has to be prepared fresh on a daily basis. It needs complex machinery. It requires electricity.”

Outside, the refugee camp below them was lit only by fire.

He wanted to say he was sorry, but the words sounded trite and inadequate. He didn’t know her well enough to share her grief. “Was that why she got along with Jorgun? Because of the disease?”

Prudence’s voice was so cold, so far away. “Yes. Complications, from childhood. They were alike in that way. Not … perfect. Not candidates for your League.”

The League preached strength. The League had tried to make terminations of abnormal pregnancies a requirement, not just an option. Kyle had never been a parent, never even thought about being a parent. He didn’t used to have a position on the issue. Now he had another crime to add to the list.

Automatically, he pretended to defend them. “It wasn’t the League that killed her. This wasn’t the work of the League.” Even as he said it, the crashing realization that he might be wrong rattled him. Maybe there weren’t any coincidences. Maybe he was supposed to get here first in the Launceston and absorb the mines, thus clearing the way for the Phoenix. The mines that had been left to make sure no one else found the alien ship before Rassinger. Maybe the only unexpected factor was Prudence Falling’s survival.

He had been prepared to accept that the League was taking advantage of this, but he hadn’t gone so far as to suspect them of arranging the attack.

Breathing heavily, he tried to order his thoughts. If she was an operative, then this was a test. He had to defend the League’s reputation, to maintain his own cover. And if she was innocent, then it was even more important to defend the League. So that she would go away. Far, far away where they couldn’t find her. In a war between aliens and imperial politics, a tramp freighter captain would be crushed like a blade of grass under the feet of mighty gladiators.

“The League…” he started, but she cut him off.

“Spare me your rhetoric. I know my place. Now get off my bridge.”

He went. It was what he had wanted. The best possible result. She would be safe, his cover was intact, everything was going according to plan.

Then why did walking away from her feel like surrender, all over again?

SEVEN Running

She had thought it would get easier, but four days in the cocoon of node-space only made it worse.

Surprisingly, they had let her go. “They” being the Phoenix, of course. Kassa didn’t have any way of stopping her. Short of guilt, which they had certainly tried. But she had explained that they needed things from off-world to survive the next few months. Things that Fleet would not be bringing. And Fleet wasn’t going to be eager to share the news about what had happened here. They’d want to lock everything down until they knew exactly what was going on—and that could take a very long time.

So she had offered to go out and spread the word, tell every captain she met what Kassa would buy. The tramp freighters would swarm to Kassa, like flies to a corpse. They would overcharge, but they would bring the