The Kassa Gambit

molecules, before poofing into atomic plasma. She got out of her chair, went over to Jorgun’s, and held his hand.

“It’s all right,” she told him, with a smile. It would be quick. Instantaneous, even.

This was not how she wanted to die. In space. She wanted to die on a planet. On a place she could call home. She wanted to make that one last landfall someday, come to rest on a dirty rock and never leave. As young as she was, she had thought she had more time to find it. But all of her searching had led only to deals. Negotiations, not acceptance; contracts, not trust. Even the few men she had taken to her bed had been dealers, of one kind or another.

With her free hand, she touched the medallion that hung around her neck. Just another dream that would fail, dying silently and unfinished in the black of space and blinding fire.

The hum of the laser went away and the lights returned. As life support began pumping air, she could smell the burned silicon.

Thirty seconds.

Out of habit, she kept trying. From Jorgun’s console she flicked the engines back on. No more time for random dodging: she pushed the ship into as steep a turn as it could pull from this distance. Not much, but at least she could feel it.

The gravitics display went blank, its crude accuracy incapable of distinguishing mine and ship at this close range.

Ten seconds.

She really didn’t want a damn countdown, but Jorgun faithfully whispered the numbers.

“I think I got it.” Melvin’s voice was jarring. “I defocused the beam a lot, at the end. I’m sure I hit it.”

If he had succeeded in damaging it, why hadn’t it self-destructed? At this range the blast would probably have killed them anyway. But she took pity on him, as she had on Jorgun, and let him believe.

Jorgun stopped counting.

“Are we safe now?” he asked.

“Sure,” she told him. It would be good to see him smile one last time.

He turned on the intercom.

“We’re safe, guys. Prudence says we’re safe now.”

“Jorgun, you half-witted genetic cesspit—” Garcia unloaded a lifetime’s bitter frustration into the nearest target. Prudence flicked off his intercom.

“Garcia sure can swear, can’t he?” Jorgun said with a grin. “Like you told me, Pru, we all have our own special talents.”

Jorgun was a giant, seven feet tall and well proportioned. He could crush Garcia like an eggshell. But Jorgun was incapable of violence. The best he could do was to glare silently from behind dark glasses. It had worked a number of times, browbeating port officials into being less obnoxious, but if he forgot his role and took off the shades, they could see his eyes were laughing. It was just a game to him.

Now he thought the game was over. He was trying to raise Jelly on the comm again.

Prudence held her breath, involuntarily.

The gravitics display winked on. The mine had passed them, was still sailing blindly out into space.

Melvin really must have hit it somehow. The odds were impossible; not merely astronomical, but impossible. Far more likely the damn thing had malfunctioned on its own, but Melvin would never accept that. The man would be impossible to live with now.

She laughed at the irony. Complaining about living conditions when you expected to be dead was Melvin’s shtick, not hers.

Turning on the intercom, she shouted over the noise.

“Shut up, Garcia!”

The swearing stopped.

“We’re safe. It missed, and it’s not even slowing down. It’s on a dead run.”

“I told you I hit it,” Melvin crowed.

Garcia, a rational person despite his cavalier attitude toward the truth, was too stunned to say anything. At that moment Prudence remembered what they shared, why she had kept him on the ship so long. They were the only two with a shred of common sense.

The distress beacon was still calling.

Sighing, she pushed caution aside, and entered a course for planetfall.

The Ulysses floated out of the sky on a cushion of gravity. Prudence sat at the helm, her fingers twitching, ready to spook and run at the shadow of a threat.

The beacon lay in the middle of a burnt field, whining plaintively. A village was over the hill, or had been, once. Now it was a smoking pile of rubble.

Nothing stirred below; the field was quiet and still. On this silent world, it seemed like a warning siren.

“Melvin, give me a targeting sweep.”

The comm panel told her he was trying. It also told her the result.

“There’s nothing down there made of metal. ’Cept the beacon.”

“Sweep the horizon,” she said. Melvin tended to think a little too directly.

“Hang on—I got something out in the woods. Aft of us. Light metal—it’s bouncing up and down!”

Reflexively, she touched the controls. But left them unmoved.

“Tell me if it starts coming at us.”

“It’s gone now,” Melvin complained. “How can I tell you if it’s coming, when it just blinks in and out?”

She sighed. Melvin was used to space, where things were neat and clean. Planetside, there were always obstructions and distractions. She sighed because she sympathized with Melvin. Space was better.

Gently she rotated the ship until it faced the mysterious woods. Hovering for a moment, she stared at the view-screen, trying to pick out details. But the trees yielded no secrets.

The thought of landing twisted her stomach into knots. Anything could be buried in that innocent field: plastic explosives, a magnetic grapple, electrifying cables. The Ulysses belonged in the sky, the only place it was safe. If somebody out there wanted her attention, they would have to play their cards first.

Very slowly, she started going back up.

The watching woods parted. A figure stepped out into the open and waved both arms in a universal, timeless signal.

Over here.

“The metal’s moving again—now there’s more! What the hell is going on, Pru?” Melvin was obviously too absorbed in his radar screen to look at his visual. At least he couldn’t panic and open fire. The laser was dead.

“Somebody down there is asking for our help, Melvin. But they’re not alone, and they’re not stupid. The metal you’re detecting must be hand weapons.”

“Weapons! Don’t go down, Pru. Get us out of here,” Garcia’s voice demanded through the intercom. He hated being strapped into the passenger lounge, but there were only two seats on the bridge. Prudence had had the other two removed years ago, one of the best decisions she had ever made.

Melvin voiced his opinion by aiming the defunct laser at the woods.

But Jorgun cast the deciding vote. “Is it Jelly?” he asked, and Prudence’s heart wrenched.

“No, Jor, it won’t be her. She lives in Baliee, a thousand klicks away.”

“Oh,” he said, disappointed. Too simple to understand that meant hope for her. Too innocent to guess that hope was all there was.

Prudence took the ship down again, heading for a spot halfway between the woods and the beacon. The tiny figure watched her.

She punched up the zoom on the visual display, brought the man into focus. Dirty, bearded, disheveled. At this range, his face was inscrutable.

The feet of the Ulysses touched ground, unsteady with the tension between mass and apparent weight. She left the gravitics on, ready to spring up, to safety.

The man waited, unmoving. Her turn to play a card.

“Jor,” she said, hating herself for using him. “Open the boarding hatch. But stay on the ship. Do not get off,