The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(57)

“Your fucking lungs, Chat.”

“I. Don’t. Know,” Chat said again, so emphatically the last word came out as a wheeze. “I thought ransom. But makes no sense.”

“Because you were told to kill him if you couldn’t bring him back alive.”

Chat nodded.

“Well, can’t you fucking guess?” Kiva asked. “You work directly with Ghreni. You have to have heard something. You have to be able to speculate.”

Chat shook his head. “Doesn’t talk. Unless involved, nothing.”

“You’re involved, Chat.”

“To do. Not for why.”

Kiva nodded to Pinton again, and he closed the circuit. “Well?” she asked him.

“I think he’s telling the truth.”

“I know the fucker is telling the truth,” Kiva said. “I want to know what you think we do now.”

“Well, we don’t space him,” Pinton pointed at Chat. “He’s been cooperative.”

“Hard vacuum will do that.”

“So he’s not a problem anymore. But we still have the pirates on their way. And if Lord Ghreni was willing to go this far to get Claremont back, then you have to figure he has a plan for if Chat here failed.”

“You mean the pirates are going to either come away with their prize or make sure he’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“And if we all happen to die too, then that’s just the way it goes.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, shit, Pinton,” Kiva said. She looked back to Chat. “I guess we better give them what they want.”





Chapter

12

Marce’s tablet pinged with the command for him to report to Nubt Pinton, the Yes, Sir’s head of security. He briefly considered not responding to the order, but then did anyway, moving through the ship with a gradually increasing awareness of and comfort with his surroundings. Because the ship was under acceleration at the moment, the ship’s artificial gravity was more push fields than ring rotation, and Marce felt pressed down. But he noticed that it was bothering him less even a couple of days in. A body could get used to it, it seemed.

Nubt Pinton was in the Yes, Sir’s brig, a small and unhappy room with even smaller and more unhappy cells, inside one of which was Chat Ubdal. Marce looked in at Chat, who looked back, balefully.

“He’s a mess,” Marce said.

“Yes, well. Lady Kiva tossed him out an airlock,” Pinton answered.

“You threw him into space?”

“Yup.”

“And he didn’t die?”

“We only threw him out a little bit.”

Marce looked again at Chat, whose eyeballs looked spray-painted red. “I almost feel sorry for him.”

“Don’t get too broken up, Lord Marce. He’d still murder you if he had a chance.”

“You asked to see me, sir,” Marce said, turning away from Chat.

“I did. I needed to get a good look at you.”

“All right. Why?”

“We’re being tailed by pirates. Your would-be assassin here tells us that their plan is to take you off the ship. We suspect that if they can’t manage that they’d rather destroy the Yes, Sir than let you escape. We could fight them but if their goal is to blow us up rather than board us then our options are limited.”

“Are you planning to turn me over?”

“If I were planning that I wouldn’t be talking to you. I would have had you stunned when you weren’t looking and then prepped you for delivery.”

“Good to know.”

Pinton nodded. “What I need from you is your willingness to help us save ourselves, and save you, and in the process maybe cause a little pain to these pirates, and the people behind them.”

“You mean Ghreni Nohamapetan.”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“I’m in.”

“It won’t be entirely risk free for you.”

“I don’t care. I’m in.”

“Good.”

“How do we do this?”

Pinton pointed to Chat. “The first thing we do is make it look like this one was successful.”

“In killing me?”

“In planting a bomb that was meant to keep us from entering the Flow. Once we do that we’re pretty sure the pirates are going to hail us and discuss their terms.”

“What’s the second thing?” Marce asked.

“Well,” Pinton said. “Have you noticed that you and Chat here are roughly the same size and coloration?”

“Not really, no.”

“Well, I have.”

*

The fake bomb “went off” a half hour later, and the Yes, Sir sent a general unencrypted distress call toward Imperial Station to let it know of its predicament. The idea would be to make the station aware an event happened and that the station should prep rescue and retrieval efforts, to be deployed if and when the Yes, Sir followed up with an even more dire distress call. The drawback was that even the fastest imperial cutters would be more than a day out. The Yes, Sir was alone, save for the one small ship trailing it, now only a few hours out from intercept.