Chapter 53: Chapter 35: Prison

The Relentless Pursuit launched into the void on the far side of Praxum. The ship’s advanced sensor package swept the likeliest vectors of travel and compiled the results on the main bridge display. Existing stations, ships, and debris dotted the system—known items labeled with the names from their transponders. None were listed as Stardancer.

Cutter eyed the digitized landscape, a tension headache distracting his train of thought. The ship was out there, somewhere, like the deer in the forest. Something had spooked them, but they weren’t safe from him. Not yet. There weren’t many places to hide in space—stars, planets, asteroid belts—but the unfathomable vastness of empty expanse could be as protective as the thickest forest.

The hunt had been delayed by the grilling at the hands of Praxum Depot SecForce. Hours of questions about the tied-up men and the weapons they all carried. Cutter invoked their recovery agent licenses and private contract. The four professionals—or whatever they were—had supposedly not revealed anything of note either. They even refused to press charges. Exhausted of options, SecForce had escorted the agents to their ship and off the station before releasing the other men. He presumed the other party was subject to the same fate, though he didn’t know if they had their own ship. Once the Pursuit reached the other side of the moon, they found, as Cutter had feared, the Stardancer was nowhere to be found.

“Well, that’s just great,” Parr said.

“There’s been no updates on any Galaxy Battles events for the Slyvarkian either,” Bloek said, “meaning we have no leads.”

“That’s right. We don’t,” Cutter said.

Parr tapped on his chair display. “Seeing as we’re sitting here on our asses, we might as well pick up a contract while we wait for a lead.”

The thought of doing anything to jeopardize his mission made Cutter fume. “Not going to happen.”

“Come on. The client will never know. Look, a new contract just popped up. A retrieval op. Some barge lost out near the belt.” Parr swung his chair around to face Bloek. “Tell him you agree with me.”

Bloek didn’t look at Cutter, but said, “I wouldn’t mind making a little cred on the side.”

“The answer is still no,” Cutter said.

“Listen, Cutter, you have to learn to bend the rules a little. We’re entitled to make cred when we can. This one bounty contract I had, the target was a smuggler who had been skimming pharmaceuticals from his deliveries. I took out the bodyguards and snatched the bounty. Before I dropped him off to the client, guess what happened to the skimmed goods?”

“You took a cut for yourself.”

“Of course I did. Why not?”

“The Recovery Agent Commission wouldn’t approve of that,” Bloek said.

“Screw them. You want to chastise me about stealing from scumbags? How about the Commission and their gouging licensing fees.”

“Fair point.”

“We’re not discussing Agency politics again, and we’re not taking on other contracts,” Cutter said.

Parr stood from his chair. “At some point, the client isn’t going to accept our repeated failure to deliver on this contract. You might want to start thinking about a Plan B if that happens. You’re the lead, after all,” he said, and made for the galley.

“He can be grating,” Bloek said after Parr left, “but he’s not wrong about the client.”

Cutter stared at the sensors, as if to will the target ship to appear. “I know.”

---

Dash opened his eyes to complete darkness. Somehow, he was still alive.

He lay upon a hard surface that hummed with a faint vibration. His last memory was the barrel of Milia’s pistol in his face. He groaned, rolled onto his side, and curled into a ball.

His head throbbed and his addled brain put together the pieces and figured out what had happened. Milia nailed him with a stun round. He went to massage his temples, in hopes of stemming the incoming headache. Then he realized his hands were bound. He reached lower and found his feet tied as well. Something dragged along the deck. Dash searched the darkness and found a short slack of freight cable. He traced its origin to a tie-down clamp on the wall.

Engulfed in blackness, he felt along the bulkheads until he found the hatch. The cable attached to his feet was long enough for him to lean forward and touch the handle. He pulled on it, but it was locked, as he knew it would be.

He noticed the subtle scent of sickly-sweet mold in the still air. He knew right away where he was: in one of the Stardancer’s cargo storage compartments in the interior hold. Henrik had forgotten to unload a pallet of numifruit during a delivery several cycles prior. Dash had found the rotting mess days later. Henrik denied it was his fault, of course, and Dash docked him for the lost creds. That resulted in one of their more memorable confrontations—the two of them throwing the bits of rotten fruit at one another while the crew tried to intervene.

He backed into the bulkhead opposite the hatch and slid to the deck. He’d heard countless stories of mutinies over the course of his life. It felt surreal to be living through one. Mutiny was the only real counterbalance to the position of captain. Boran hadn’t talked about it much with Dash, but the few words said never left him.

“There’s certain mindsets that inhabit people in this profession,” Boran had said as they sipped aged Tunisi liquor in his quarters. Dash found it had less of a punch than Human variants, but it was easier to recover from a night of excess.

“Like they are unemployable in any other capacity?” Dash responded. He was a first mate at the time, and fresh from a ruckus with the altered second mate. He sported the black eye to prove it.

“That’s true in many instances. But I’m talking about the restless. They can’t stay still, which is why they roam the stars. One habitat or planet isn’t big enough. But then they’re stuck in a ship, and they have to climb something else. What’s left is the hierarchy. Angelo is a climber. He wants your position.”

“Am I supposed to be threatened by him?”

“No. Angelo is too much of a wildcard for my tastes. He doesn’t take the long view.” Boran topped off his glass, then Dash’s. “He’ll work out for another captain who shares that mindset. Until Angelo is gunning for their chair.”

Angelo was gone two cycles later, and dead within a year.

Now, Dash heard a subtle thumping atop the deck. It grew louder. Someone approached the compartment.

The hatch unlocked, the mechanism grating like a buzzsaw in the small space. It opened a sliver. Blinding light spilled in. He covered his eyes but sensed a presence standing there.

A voice said, “It stinks in here. You really have to do a better job of cleaning.”

He peeked between his fingers. Milia stood in the open doorway. He raised his bound hands and said, “That’s not my problem anymore.”

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Milia leaned against the hatch frame. “No, it’s not. But I’m going to make sure you clean up the mess you made.”

“Where’s Gaius and Wesley?”

“They’re fine, and will be joining you soon.”

Dash took in his first mate. Former first mate. He couldn’t have imagined her trying something like this, even if she was upset in the moment. “You had this planned from the beginning, didn’t you? You targeted the ops crew at that pub. You talked them into this.”

“I’ll take it as a compliment that you think I’m a mastermind schemer,” she said. “The truth is, I took an opportunity that was sitting right in front of me. They had their issues with you. They only needed a leader to see it through. Like Wesley said, it was fate that we ran into each other.”

Dash closed his eyes to fight down a surge of queasiness riling his stomach. The thought that it was an opportunistic mutiny made it worse. “You got the ship. Why didn’t you kill me?”

“I know that’s the traditional thing to do. But you’re more valuable to me alive than dead.”

Her casualness at the prospect of his death ignited a heat within him that swept aside the self-pity and despair. “When you say it like that, I think I’d be better off dead.”

“When the time comes, you can let me know.”

Dash stood up slowly, like an uncalibrated bot who needed a lubricant job on its joints. His hands pressed to the bulkhead to steady himself. “Do you really think this is a good decision? You can’t operate in the system. Even sticking to Cova Straits is risky. Where are you going then?”

“You really think I’ll tell you my plan?”

Dash nodded. “That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re glowering.”

“I don’t follow the rules,” she said, and pointed at him. “That’s why you’re there, and I’m here.”

“At least tell me how long I’m going to be stuck in here.”

“Not entirely sure. Maybe a cycle. Don’t worry, I’ll get you something to sleep on. You’ll be let out for supervised work duty. I’m not a monster,” she said. Her nose twitched. “You can start with this stinky compartment first.”

Dash had smelled worse. Far worse. Rotten fruit was nothing compared to flesh. He experienced it firsthand running cleanup on haulers seized in Marine boarding operations. Even hardened Marines would sometimes emerge from seized vessels, color drained from their faces, barely able to walk. One mutiny had been so bad the perpetrators were executed by firing squad in their own cargo bay, standing across from the body bags of their victims. That was during days of frontier justice, something the Commonwealth had tried to stop. What would happen to Milia and the ops crew if they were caught? The Commonwealth’s power was in dire straits from the Auturia fallout. Would they make it back to Praxa Prime for a trial? Or would they stare down the barrels of a SecForce Spec Ops squad in the Stardancer’s bay, breathing their last breathe?

“It’s not too late to fix this,” Dash said. “The ops crew talks a good game, but they’re not cut out for dangerous living. Dock at a station and go on your way. I won’t come after you, I won’t report you. Because once you go down this path, there’s no coming back.”

She stared at him with a blank expression. Then she burst out laughing. “I should just give up after I’ve won? That’s your angle? Wow, that’s pathetic. Are you still drunk?”

Dash frowned. “I’m being serious. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

She pointed at him, defiance etched on her face. “I absolutely know what I’m getting into. This isn’t my first go-around.” Her face shifted after the words left her mouth.

Dash thought he detected a hint of regret. Then it dawned on him, hit his psyche like the stun blast to his chest. “I should’ve known. You tried to mutiny on your old ship, didn’t you? Except it failed. That’s the real reason you had to leave.”

She hesitated, the muscles in her face tensing. “You’re right,” she admitted. “But now I’m going to fix that mistake.”

“You took over my ship so you could go get revenge on your old captain?” Dash shook his head. “And I’m the pathetic one?”

She stepped closer, not a hint of fear in her. He was almost a head taller than her, but felt small beneath her hostile gaze. “You’re upset because I walked aboard and tossed your sorry butt in a stinky storage compartment. You have only yourself to be upset with. I couldn’t have done it if the ops crew wasn’t tired of your nonsense. How you protect Gaius and his half-assed piloting. Or when you took Wesley aboard when you’re already underwater.”

“Gaius is a good kid, and I don’t give up on good people. He’s got potential, just needs guidance. And Wesley doesn’t take any shares for Lords’ sake!”

“Doesn’t matter, it’s the optics. You brought this on yourself.”

“You manipulated them! We may not be best friends, but I know nothing good will come to them if they follow you down this path. Do they know you’re taking them on a revenge tour?”

“They don’t care, so long as they get their cred on time and take leave on occasion. It’s not that hard.”

It was Dash’s turn for a mocking laugh. “You’re making a terrible mistake.” He returned to his spot on the deck, where he met her glare. “This isn’t over.”

“It is for you.” She pulled a sustenance bar from her pocket and tossed at his feet. His stomach turned at the thought of the powdery, tasteless log.

“I have work to do.” She stepped out of the compartment and returned with a brush and cleaning dispenser. She placed it on the deck. “And so do you.”

“When’s my bedding coming?”

“It’s on my list.” She paused. “The very bottom.” 

The hatch shut, locking with a grating finality that made Dash wince. The overhead light switched on, bathing the compartment in a dull yellow glow. In one instant, his ship became unfamiliar, unwelcoming, even hostile. It made him sick to his stomach, worse than the thought of the sustenance bar.

His home had become a prison.

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