Ends, Means, Laws and an Angry Ship Read online

  Tyce grimaced as a series of small holes in the wall opened like a row of tiny gaping mouths. And gross. Organic tech was gross.

  “And stinky,” Mond added. “These sulfur levels are disgusting.”

  “If the ship is alive, it has to ingest fuel and off-gas waste product. We might be standing in the middle of a fart,” Ama said.

  Tyce forced down a gag. “Oh, that is so much more pleasant. Thank you.”

  Ama put her hand on his communication patch to create a private connection. “At this level, the sulfur is unhealthy for us long term and it’s dangerous for children and the elderly or sick. They’ll die.”

  “Then we find a section with cleaner air or we set up a clean room and start our own atmospheric scrubbers. Right now, focus on clearing the ship and identifying critical systems.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then nodded—all business. “Volie, Wyt, track power conduits. Mond, give Tuch a hand on biologicals.”

  Tyce refocused on logistics. They needed to find the water supply for the vapor in the air, the command deck or any sort of interface, crew quarters or defensive systems, and the location of the Command boarding party. “Alpha, Foxtrot, move out. Secure any locals, but do not engage unless targeted. Bravo, Echo, board and follow.”

  No doubt a few soldiers were having private conversations about how Tyce was insane for that order, but he wouldn’t start a fight unless the other side wanted one. They’d learned from the Anla that aliens rarely had the same instincts as humans, so maybe these people had some alien reason for opening fire on them. They’d targeted the Dragon’s engines and weapons while avoiding life support systems. That was enough for Tyce to give them the benefit of one doubt. Just once. Any additional aggressive acts would be met with extreme prejudice.

  They reached the first set of doors, but they were secured. “Are the aliens hiding?” Ama asked softly. “Maybe they rely on their technology and are too fragile or frightened to fight in person.”

  “Then they shouldn’t open fire on other ships,” Tyce said.

  His radio clicked. The familiar pattern meant they had Command in the area. Fuck. He clicked back for radio silence. No one won a war on two fronts. No one. At least not without being so weakened that another force immediately took advantage of the chaos. That was one of the primary lessons of war college. That was why Earth had immediately brokered a truce with the Anla the moment the colony planets had used that distraction to declare independence. Tyce didn’t know if this would turn into a human versus alien battle or if the Dragon crew would have to fight off both alien and Command personnel too stupid to realize that their changed circumstances required them to shift tactics. They may have been sent out to hunt down fleeing rebel ships, but no one back home had briefed them for this possibility.

  Ama said in their private line. “It changes nothing.”

  “If they get control of critical systems, they’ll arrest us.” The second the other crew felt in control, they would go back to primary orders, assuming they didn’t carry out arrests in the middle of an alien battle. They might do that.

  “They’ll have as much trouble finding the systems as we are,” she pointed out.

  “I know. But we need to move faster. We have to claim territory or risk getting isolated if their soldiers move too fast. We need everyone in here.” Tyce knew he was right. They had made him captain not to run the day-to-day operations. The Dragon had successfully run blockades and salvaged ships long before he’d joined their crew. No, they made him captain because they lacked the understanding of the military mindset. Tyce could counter Command’s moves... even the illogical ones. He turned his radio to all-broadcast. If Command officers heard him, all the better. It would make them cautious and slow. “Full deploy. Full deploy. All Dragon crew with self-contained air units to docking beacons.”

  Three members of Alpha team came running back toward him, breaching rods already out. One punched a hole through the hull near them while the other two ran farther back to leave room for the shuttles to maneuver and lock on.

  With her radio set to general broadcast, Ama said softly, “The die is cast.”

  Chapter Three

  TYCE LISTENED TO THE general chatter on the radio. The teams had set up an air-scrubbing quarantine in the corridor where most of the shuttles had attached. Other than one near-disaster where a breaching charge had cut through a line of corrosive fluids and damaged the docking equipment before the spill could be neutralized, taking the ship had been less eventful than a cargo run through empty space.

  Mond came and sat next to Tyce on the long pipe where he’d set up an office of sorts. It was close to the section Command was holding and since they hadn’t found any aliens, Command had moved up to worry number one. “Oxygen levels are rising,” he said.

  Tyce nodded. The crew knew their jobs, so he wasn’t surprised.

  “No, you don’t understand.” The breathing mask muffled his words, but his frustration still came through. “The oxygen levels are rising too fast. Someone other than my team is pumping out oxygen, and not just in the quarantine area.”

  “Command?” Tyce asked.

  Mond sighed. “Maybe. At the levels I’m seeing, they would have to be using ship systems, so they may have found environmentals.”

  Tyce closed his eyes. Fuck. The Dragon crew had opened a dozen hatches, but so far they’d only found bunk beds too short for anyone over four feet and empty storage bays. “Other options?” he asked. No need to panic yet.

  “Tuch is the pessimist in the science unit. You know that, right?”

  That sort of minimization did not make him feel better. “Oh boy. What did she say?” Hopefully she was imagining disasters.

  “Oxygen is poisonous and flammable. It might be an automated defensive system or some alien holdout turning the ship systems against us.”

  Tyce wished he could rub his eyes. Of course. Fuck. At least this was an easy decision from a leadership position. They had no other choice but to keep putting one foot in front of the other and plodding on. “Watch the levels. Be prepared to switch to oxygen removal in the quarantine area.”

  “No. We planned to ignore the obvious precautions.” Mond left before Tyce could come up with a response for such thick sarcasm. Asshole. Then again, most of the Dragon crew were. Something about living in a war zone left them prickly. War atrocities did that to a person.

  “Alpha nine to Captain. We need you here now!”

  Tyce bolted to his feet, knocking over his improvised work table. That sounded like Yoss on the coms, and he never panicked. Never. Tyce ran through twisted and curved corridors until he almost ran into Yoss’s back.

  “Report!”

  “We have idiots on patrol.” Yoss had his teeth clenched and his Ribelian accent was thicker than usual.

  “What did our idiots do?”

  “Got captured.”

  Coldness and calm, dark anger rolled through Tyce a half second before he realized he could see Yoss’s face. “Yoss, where is your breathing mask?”

  “Don’t need it. Even Tuch says the air is breathable, even if it does smell like ass. Good thing it is. Look.” Yoss had claimed a sheltered spot behind a vertical pipe. It allowed him to guard the corridor, but now he stepped back, allowing Tyce to slide forward. At the far end of the hall before the curve of the ship would have made them impossible to see, Arli and Ter stood, their hands behind their backs, their elbows tied together. They blocked the corridor. No doubt Command soldiers stood with weapons pointed at them. Fuckity-fuck-fuck. Ter was a fucking child. He couldn’t even grow a decent beard.

  Tyce eased back. “Keep an eye on them.”

  Yoss snorted.

  Footsteps charged down the corridor, and Tyce held out his hands to block Ama and Joahan. Neither had on a mask. Tyce clicked his respirator off and removed his mask.

  “What’s going on?” Ama asked.

  “Arli and Ter were captured. It looks like Command.”

  Ama
lost most of her color. Ter was her great-nephew, and he could make her lose every ounce of calm.

  “I’ll get Bravo geared,” Joahan said. He turned, but Tyce caught his arm.

  “They have our people blocking the corridor and we don’t have an alternative route. If we go with a direct assault, both the boys are dead.”

  “And Command can follow,” Joahan said darkly.

  Ama rested her hand on his shoulder. “They are individuals, just as vulnerable to fear as us. They have not hurt the boys...” She looked at Tyce, and he shook his head. Both had appeared fine. She pressed her lips together for a moment. “We should approach this carefully. Tyce, what do you recommend?”

  Tyce tried to put himself back in that mindset of Command. Nothing in the rule book allowed for the use of a prisoner as a tactical shield. So these guys were more interested in results than academic discussions of ethics. It soured his stomach.

  But on the other hand, the boys were unharmed. Hopefully, that meant these guys weren’t the sort that hated anyone from Ribelo. With the strange names and accents, the boys wouldn’t have been able to hide their home planet, and Command considered Ribelo the center of all evil.

  “We open a dialogue. That will keep them focused here, and they’ll assume we’re playing by their rules,” Tyce said. “Joahan, put a fire under those tech’s butts. They’ve had plenty of time to study the ship. Mechanics have to follow a certain logic or the ship won’t work. So you tell them to make their best bet about where to find a corridor that runs parallel to this one. Get the children and elderly back onto the shuttles in case a tech hits a nuclear containment wall. In fact, get all non-essential personnel and at least fifty percent of our critical people, including all unit leaders onto the shuttles.”

  Joahan gave a quick nod and sprinted off to follow orders.

  “Should I even bother trying to get you on a shuttle?” Ama asked.

  Tyce scoffed. “Nope.”

  “If they learn you’re here, they will do anything to get you. People always desire that which they feel they lost unfairly.”

  Tyce was counting on that. “Thank you for making me feel like a lost toy.”

  Ama, however, did not give up easily. “Humans often develop sentiment toward objects, and they are equally as likely to dehumanize a person. You are not responsible for every disaster, and you can consult on the proper course of action from the safety of a shuttle.” She had definitely put on the mantle of spiritual leader.

  “Yeah, you’re not telling me anything I don’t know.” Tyce turned his back to her. He respected the hell out of Amali , but her ability to state the obvious in a disappointed voice annoyed him. The worst part was that she was probably right. She was equally skilled at targeting computers and counseling the crew. She was the first to have offered him her friendship when he’d expected the rebels to gut-shoot him and leave him to die.

  Maybe he’d even wanted death. Back then he’d believed he deserved it, but Ama had taught him to forgive himself for not being strong enough to force the universe to be fair. “Signal me when Joahan has found a corridor. I won’t move until then unless the situation appears to be deteriorating.”

  She sighed before retreating.

  Tyce moved to stand behind Yoss. “You’re right about the air smelling like ass.”

  “If they kill those kids, I’ll murder every last bastard,” he said with a quiet intensity that made the hair on Tyce’s arms stand at attention. “I’ll make them beg for death, and I’ll spit on their corpses.”

  The whole time, he kept his weapon trained on the corridor. Tyce sighed and leaned back against the wall. Waiting was the most important step in negotiations. If someone felt rushed, they made mistakes.

  “Are you going to do something?” Yoss demanded, after four or five minutes.

  “Nope,” Tyce said. “We wait.”

  Yoss’s shoulders hunched a little more. An unhappy Yoss was an unstable nuclear reactor, but if Tyce ordered him away from his position, he would refuse to go. Tyce couldn’t afford a power struggle right now. How ironic. He’d left one army because he couldn’t get anyone to obey an order and now he’d joined a ship where people only obeyed when they felt like it.

  Minutes ticked into quarters which turned into hours, and all remained the same. Tyce sank to the floor where he sat behind Yoss and waited. Nothing blew up or blasted the air with poison. If anything, the ass smell was fading. And still they waited. Maybe Command was playing for time, too. They would want an alternative path into Dragon territory, and they might be using the hostages to distract the crew, but Tyce had patrols out on every section, and most of their people were safe inside shuttles, ready to blast away.

  “Arli and Ter are shifting. I think they see something,” Yoss said.

  Tyce climbed to his feet and peered over Yoss’s shoulder. Ter was trying to twist around, pulling on Arli’s elbow because they were tied together.

  “We need to talk to a spokesperson!” Someone shouted.

  “Don’t do it!” Ter shouted. He had his aunt’s bravery, but not much of her common sense. A soldier hit him in the ribs with the butt of a gun, all while hiding behind the wall.

  “Why?” Tyce called.

  Yoss gave him an incredulous look, but it was as good of a place to start as any. As a bonus, it would confuse Command soldiers. Sure enough, silence filled the air for long minutes.

  A new voice called out, “Are you speaking for the rebel ship?”

  Tyce played for time and prayed his people found an alternative path to the Command soldiers. “We don’t have a ship. It got blown up, and the people on that ship weren’t rebels.”

  “Are you speaking for them?”

  “I’m speaking. No one speaks for anyone on a family ship,” Tyce said. “It’s like a normal family, only everyone ignores each other over the hyperspace engines instead of the dinner table.”

  “Your brain is cracked,” Yoss whispered. Tyce didn’t argue. Kinder people than Yoss had said worse. A soldier edged out so Tyce could see part of an arm.

  “I have a shot.” Yoss sounded too eager.

  “No. The boys won’t survive.” Tyce wished he had Ama or Joahan here, but even he had to admit that Yoss was the best shot, even if his youth and grief made him far less stable than the older crew members. He turned his attention back to the corridor. “Send those two boys back over here, and we can call this hallway the official border.” Realistically, Tyce didn’t expect that to work.

  Someone shouted one word. “Surrender.”

  “To whom?” Tyce called. “Your big, old Command ship got blown up like ours, so it seems like we’re both trying to survive in alien territory.”

  “You’re fugitives.”

  “You’re shipless,” Tyce countered.

  “We’ve found the control deck,” the officer at the other end said. “The war is over. If you aren’t terrorists, Earth has no interest in paying to imprison you. You don’t sound Ribelian.”

  “I’m more of an in-law,” Tyce said. The radio was ominously silent, so the crew hadn’t found any alternative attack route.

  “Unless there’s a warrant out for your arrest, you have no reason to fear Command. Surrender and we can drop you off on Earth. Any member of your ship not involved in terrorism can either stay on Earth or return to Ribelo.”

  Tyce doubted that. The crew would be told to buy their own damn tickets back to Ribelo. If Earth had treated the outer colonies kindly, the war never would have happened. True, certain assholes on Ribelo had taken their objections too far, but Earth had provoked the colonies. “There’s no guarantee you can figure out navigation before the aliens who own this ship show up to reclaim it. Do you want to fight with one another while the enemy is out there?”

  “We don’t know anything about the aliens. I know something about Ribelians, and I don’t want to defend myself against a series of terrorist attacks.”

  Yoss couldn’t control his temper any longer. “Your people s
tarted the fucking war. If you can’t stand the heat, don’t set fire to the fucking nuclear reactor.”

  “Stop.” Tyce caught Yoss’s arm, but he shoved Tyce away and brought his weapon up. Leaping forward, Tyce put his back to the Command soldiers so he could grab the barrel of Yoss’s weapon. He could only hope they followed the regulations against shooting unarmed people in the back.

  “Stand the fuck down,” Tyce ordered Yoss. “You’ll get yourself and those two boys killed with your fucking stupidity.” Maybe terrorism wasn’t hard-baked into Ribelians, but stubbornness was. Yoss clenched his jaw. The man was a walking stereotype of a Ribelian.

  “They killed Zee.” Yoss’s voice broke with anguish when he mentioned his late wife’s name.

  “Put the living ahead of the dead.” Tyce didn’t want to sound callous, but that was the simple truth. Nothing would return Zee, but Arli and Ter didn’t deserve to follow her, not when the war was over and they had a chance at a life.

  “Tyce?” The officer at the end asked, his voice unsteady.

  Tyce turned around, and his stomach dropped. John. He was older and his shoulders had broadened some, but the man in a Command uniform was definitely John. Tyce’s John. Fuck.

  Chapter Four

  TYCE HADN’T SEEN JOHN in nearly eight years. He’d been younger, scrawnier, less tired. He still had blue eyes, but they appeared more washed out than the vibrant blue Tyce remembered. They’d been best friends for three years, and now John held a concussive rifle in Tyce’s general direction.

  “It’s you.” John took a step forward, which put Tyce in an even more awkward position because he wasn’t armed. He hadn’t intended to step into the middle of the corridor between armed combatants. He gave Yoss a dirty expression, and the man had the grace to blush.

  Tyce turned his attention back to the far end of the corridor where the boys stood, each gawking, their gazes shifting from John to Tyce and back. Arli shuffled his feet nervously, but Ter had the audacity to look curious rather than scared shitless. Idiot.