“Bull,” muttered Mann, pale, his MRS plate forgotten, half-eaten. “What about empty space would make a sailor try that?”
Gutierrez smiled like a fisherman who just felt a fish swallow a hook and pull the line. “Ah, empty,” he said, “that’s not what they said, oh no. In their mad ravings, they talked about mouths lurking in the dark. Fangs as long as moons, many tongues slithering, hungering, speaking at them…”
Gutierrez smashed the table without any warning, and Mann jumped so hard he almost tore the straps gluing him to his chair.
When the sailors started to laugh, Mann flushed red. Lambert patted him in the back, but she was laughing too.
“We have a poet and a horror screenwriter,” she said. “What an interesting crew.”
There had never been any windows in Alcubierre-capable starships. Windows were structural weak points, and cameras did their job better. Gutierrez made the whole thing up. Stories like these abounded during the months-long trips, a pastime hailing from the times when humanity had hunched over campfires and told stories to each other. Clarke’s favorite version involved space ghosts waiting for unlucky salvage crews boarding derelict vessels.
Clarke glanced at his wristband while Mann pretended he hadn’t been scared. A buzz alert meant he had an urgent message.
It was from Antonov:
Clarke, come to the conference room at once. It’s about time you know what we’re up against.
“See you later,” Clarke told the contractors, feeling his good humor dissipate. Antonov was right.
It was about time.
THE EIF WAITED for him inside the conference room. Clarke floated in to gazes that ranged from indifference to plain hostility. Clarke glared at each of the three members in turn.
Julia was the first to look away. It was the first time Clarke had seen her since their discussion, and it was clear a month in FTL had done nothing to cool her attitude about him.
Captain Navathe’s gaze shifted from Clarke towards Antonov’s empty seat. The captain and Clarke had never exchanged a word since his arrival at the Beowulf. She was a tough woman, half his size, who carried an air of competence and dignity that only years at the helm of a vessel could give a person.
Stefan Pascari maintained eye contact, his lips pursed in disapproval. His nose had no signs of the damage Clarke had done when he headbutted the man during the EIF’s interrogation. Still, it seemed that Pascari’s grudge hadn’t mellowed with time.
“So,” the man told Clarke, “the prodigal son returns. How nice from you to join us after all this time. How long has it been? A month already, am I right?”
Clarke reached an empty chair with a lazy gesture and pulled himself in. Like everyone aboard the ship, he had magnetic boots, but after years of working in zero g, he preferred to maneuver without gluing his soles to the artificial floor. It was faster, this way. Most sailors eventually abandoned mag-boots altogether, using them solely as a fall-back.
“Sir, where’s Antonov?” Clarke asked Captain Navathe.
“Should be arriving soon,” the woman replied.
Clarke nodded and made himself comfortable. Julia’s gaze flickered between him and Pascari. The EIF’s man scowled and said, raising his voice:
“Are you deaf? I’m talking to you, Clarke.”
“I know,” Clarke replied, his voice silky and terse. “I don’t care.”
“That’s right,” Pascari said, “you prefer to meddle with those sweaty contractors of yours. Are you so afraid of fighting that you’ll hide with the civvies when the time comes?”
“Mister Pascari,” Captain Navathe said, her voice as calm as Clarke’s, “refer to my crew as ‘dirty contractors’ one more time, and you’ll make the rest of the trip outside Beowulf’s hull.”
Pascari, as it turned out, had scowls for everyone. “I answer to Antonov himself, not to you,” he told Navathe.
“Not to you you, sir,” Antonov’s voice admonished. The door opposite the one at Clarke’s side had opened without any noise, and Antonov’s straight figure floated into the room with the grace of a statue in a pool. “Captain Navethe’s in command of this vessel, not me, Pascari. If she decides to throw you out the airlock for insubordination, I’ll help her drag you all the way. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Pascari said. His demeanor changed at once when he saw Antonov. His aggression disappeared, substituted for complacent servitude. “I got carried away. It won’t happen again.”
Clarke and Antonov exchanged a look full of meaning.
What’s his deal? Clarke’s expression asked, making the faintest of nods in direction to Pascari.
Antonov shook his head barely a millimeter in each direction. Not now, he seemed to say.
“So,” Clarke said, “you’ll finally tell us what’s going on?”
“Indeed,” said Antonov. “We’re positive Tal-Kader hasn’t infiltrated Beowulf’s crew, and all the bugs and microphones the customs officer installed have been found and isolated. The ship is secure.”
Meddling with Tal-Kader’s listening devices was a capital crime in and of itself. Then again, it was the least of the EIF’s concerns.
Clarke looked at the walls and ceiling out of habit. Bugs could be everywhere, and even with Antonov’s confidence in his skills, a couple could’ve escaped his sweep.
It won’t be a problem until we reach New Angeles, anyway.
Information, after all, only traveled at light speed. Any listening device on board Beowulf would wait until the ship reached a starport to transmit its data contents.
“Well then,” said Clarke, “let’s hear it. Let me remind you, if I don’t like what I’m hearing, I’ll walk.”
Unless Navathe refuses to give me a lift, or she decides to throw me out of an airlock, he thought.
Captain Navathe turned to him as if she had read his mind. “There’s no need to remind us. I’ll honor Antonov’s word, Mister Clarke, rest assured.”
“Thanks, Captain,” said Antonov. He entered a string of commands into his wristband’s holographic keyboard, connected to the conference room’s network, and created a holographic screen across the table, a video with “CONFIDENTIAL” written over a dark screen.
Clarke gestured at the screen and tugged at the air, which created a tiny, personal version of the video feed.
“What you’re about to hear is confidential,” Antonov said. “Many lives have been spent securing this transmission. Thirty seven cycles ago, a night before Mister Clarke’s interview with us, a courier ship reached Jagal after a non-stop trip from planet Dione.”
That raised some eyebrows across the table, including Clarke’s. Courier ships were the SA’s information haulers across the Edge. They used Alcubierre Drives exclusively to travel between systems, upload and download information, refuel, and set for another trip. Couriers were paid and owned by each star system’s government body, technically the SA, in practice, corporations like Tal-Kader. To use one in a Dione-Jagal path implied a great, wasteful use of oryza. Both planets occupied almost opposite sides of the Edge’s sphere of reach.
“Julia Fillon and her informants intercepted the vessel’s laser as it was sent—” Antonov went on.
“How did the EIF know the laser was there?” asked Clarke. The only way to intercept a laser transmission was to know it would be there beforehand, or get lucky beyond belief.
“I’ll explain in due course. First, please watch the video.”
The “CONFIDENTIAL” sign was replaced by pure black. Then, by the visage of a man with a square jaw and tiny eyes with a cruel glint in them. Judging from his musculature and uniform, the man was an enforcer.