Thieves’ Honor
Episode 15: Head Games, Part 2
by Keanan Brand
Previously on Thieves’ Honor:
“Freedom from the implant is why many ex-convicts join the rebellion,” said Willa. “But most people don’t know, or they refuse to believe, that such a program exists.”
“Any chance you can tell when anyone coulda put a chip where it didn’t belong?” Kristoff’s chin hit the examination table as he spoke.
“Not a chip, sir. An IntuiCom implant is a biomechanical device that wraps around the brain stem or spinal column. Almost impossible to remove. But we’ve learned how to shut them down without killing the host. Most of the time.”
And now, on Thieves’ Honor:
Kristoff rubbed a towel over his wet hair then rested his palms against the sink and stared at his shaggy image in the foggy mirror.
Inside that head, a nasty little bomb ticked away—had been ticking away for twenty years, through the academy, through the war, through this uneasy almost-peace. And the only person who could kill the bomb was a girl with limited skill and no guarantee of his survival.
Think about it, Kris. Live without knowing when you’ll die, or undergo surgery with little chance of returning as yourself—or even waking up.
All right, then. He had his answer.
Kristoff stood straight, popped his neck, ran a hand over his face. He’d get the crew together on the sly and leave the bunker tonight, when the pickets changed topside. He missed his ship.
Ah, but Martina, do you miss your captain?
Of course she did. With all her metal-skinned, carlinnian-trimmed, humming engine of a heart.
Smiling, he tossed the towel into the bin overflowing after the morning round of showers. He tucked in his shirt, pulled on a fresh pair of socks, stomped his feet to settle them in his boots.
“Captain.”
He looked over his shoulder.
Daniel and his guards stood in the doorway. “It’s time you earned your keep.”
The cards on the green felt declared a draw, but the grim stares of the two players refused such an outcome. There must always be a winner; it went against seven-card ethics, splitting the pot.
Alerio, in the objective position as dealer, pushed the face-up cards aside then shuffled the remainder. “All right, boys, first one to call wins.” He slid a card off the deck and left it face-down. “Suit?”
“Hearts,” growled Wyatt.
“Spades,” countered Leo.
Alerio turned over the card. “Clubs.” He slid the next card onto the table. “Number?”
“Ten,” from Wyatt.
“Two,” from Leo.
“Four.” Alerio placed a third card. “Color.”
“Red.”
“Black.”
“Both. It’s the joker. Face?”
“King.”
“Jack.”
Alerio flipped the card. “Queen.”
Muttering curses, Wyatt snapped another pencil between his teeth and tossed it onto the growing pile on the floor. In the corner, Sahir chuckled, and placed a domino. Corrigan shook a pair of dice then rolled them across a game board. Mercedes recorded his score.
If Finney sat here much longer, her bones would fuse into place. She stood and stretched. “Think I’ll go make some trouble.”
Corrigan jumped up. “Me, too.”
She nodded, and headed for the heavy door shaped like a ship’s hatch. Corrigan pushed it open—”Where do you wanna start?”—as eager as a kid with plenty of time and no supervision.
“I can’t exactly run yet, and your hand is in no shape for a fight, so what do you say to some basic annoyance? Stir the pot, watch ‘em go at each other?”
Corrigan grinned. “Why, Finney, didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Don’t, generally. Must be the bad company.”
“Aw. You say the nicest things.”
But no one seemed in the mood for a good fight. The rebels were either assigning tasks and training the newcomers—Tarquin’s house servants—or moving around the vast bunker like an army preparing for a mission.
Corrigan folded his arms. “Seem to you like something big is going down?”
Finney flattened herself to the wall as a gang of men carried weapons and ammunition boxes toward the West Gate. Then came spools of combustion cord, jars of explosive gel, open crates of flares and flash sticks, all piled on a trailer towed behind a motorized cart, sturdier and shinier than the one Alerio had constructed out of old parts on the Vega. This one even had armored panels around the driver. “Daniel never mentioned an operation.”
“Come to think on it”—Corrigan scowled down at her—”you been spendin’ an awful lotta time with that little fella.”
“My daddy and my granddaddy are dead, and I didn’t ask for your concern.”
“Captain know?”
The skin between Finney’s shoulder blades itched. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt me.”
Corrigan grunted. Then he brightened. “Still in the mood for making trouble?” He tipped his head toward the cart, now trundling far down the passage. “I call the guy driving that.”
Finney dusted her palms against her pant legs. “I get the guys with the guns.”
A long, black table gleamed in the center of the war room. Kristoff suppressed a grimace at the tri-planet symbol on the surface; his insides seemed to curl away from it, not in fear but in distrust. He hooked a chair with his foot and sat.
Daniel took a seat at the head of the table. The man wanted to assert his power and keep a pirate in his proper place. Aboard the Martina Vega, roles reversed, Kristoff would probably do the same.
The rebel folded his hands on the table. “You don’t trust me, captain, but I know you well by reputation. You do difficult jobs, stay ahead of the law, and keep secrets.”
Kristoff leaned back and propped his feet on the table’s edge. “I’m pretty slick without all the extra butter. Speak your mind.”
“Steal something for me.”
“What, when, and where?”
“What I will show you. Where is the Horatio garrison. When is tonight.”
“Must not be valuable enough to guard, and not too difficult to find, seeing as you’re making this a rush job.”
“It doesn’t have a price, captain, and there are guards aplenty. Pray your men escape capture.”
Kristoff dropped his feet to floor with a bang and sat upright. “I’m not in the business of sacrificing my crew. I’ll pay for our stay. Give me an armed escort back to my ship, I’ll get you the money.”
“Money’s nice, captain, but this object could be the catalyst for a new uprising.”
“That’s what you said about Finney.” Kristoff stood. “Send one of your bodyguards standing around out there. I’ll get your money now.”
“I’ve already told you, captain. This object has no price.”
A crack appeared in the middle of the table then widened with a low whir, revealing a long wooden cylinder inside a shallow well. Daniel withdrew the cylinder, the table closed, then he pulled open one end of the tube, tipped it, and a scroll slid out onto the shiny black surface. The paper rustled as it loosened, as if expelling a breath.
With a snap of the wrist, Daniel unfurled the scroll. It covered almost the length of the table.
Wait a minute. Kristoff stared at the upside-down schematic, blinked, walked around to view it right-side-up. This isn’t supposed to exist. Not anymore. But—if it did—it just might be the fuse to blow the lid off the smoldering rebellion.
Ah, man. That’d mean that, after all these years of tweaking noses and avoiding causes, he’d have to join the fight.
Kristoff sighed. “You don’t like me, do you?”
Daniel smiled. “Not much.”
Tech manual open on the desk, Ezra turned his head, following Willa’s progress through the nearly-empty communications room. Someone called a greeting, but she walked on, gaze straight ahead.
Folks were acting funny these days.
Corrigan refused to eat at the same mess table with the crew, and hunched protectively over his plate if Sahir even looked in his direction. Wyatt had taken to chewing pencils rather than tapping them on every available surface. Alerio’s lab coat was crumpled and soot-streaked after hours spent testing handguns at the shooting range. He wasn’t speaking much to Doc, probably because she kept tracking down Captain Kristoff to give him checkups he didn’t want.
Kristoff was the strangest-acting of the crew. Aboard ship, he’d face conflict head-on, could be goofy-sociable or hermit-like by turns, but down here in the bunker he spent half his time hiding from Doc and the other half avoiding Finney. Why would a man do that to a woman after nearly killing himself to find her?
And Finney—almost every time Ezra saw her, he saw Daniel. The Vega’s pilot and the rebels’ leader seemed a set, each walking with a limp. Why did she spend so much time with a guy she didn’t like?
And why didn’t Kristoff give the order to return to the ship?
Ezra slapped the manual closed, shoved away from the desk, waved to the computer crew, and ran to catch up with Willa.
Not that he’d actually be able to talk to her.
She didn’t turn around as his galloping steps thudded along the corridor nor when he slowed to walk beside her, but the corner of her mouth seemed to curve up a little. Her long sleeves and wide-legged trousers swished as she walked.
After a few strides, she spoke. “Have you seen your captain?”
Startled, Ezra stopped.
She turned, long brown hair swirling around her shoulders.
The words croaked out of his dry throat. “N-not for a a c-couple of hours.”
“Has he said anything?”
“About what?”
Willa looked at him with the gaze of someone whose thoughts traveled far beyond her sight. Then her eyes widened and her face flushed—she realized she stared at him—and Ezra started to smile, but she turned an abrupt about-face. “Tell your captain to make up his mind. Who knows when someone will decide to use the code?”
Huh?
She clamped her mouth shut, as if she’d said more than she intended.
Frowning, Ezra watched her go.
Thumbs hooked in his belt, Kristoff stood just inside the rec room door and watched his crew. Wyatt and that young medic—what was his name?—faced off over a card game, a mound of colonial coin and folding money heaped between them.
“Six,” said Wyatt.
“Ace,” said the medic.
“Nine,” said Alerio.
Ah. Seven-card. Never divide the pot. Worst game ever for a pirate with a conscience. Best just to grab the money and run.
Kristoff stepped forward. “Stow the toys. We gotta talk.”
“But, cap, we ain’t finished yet.” Wyatt twisted a pencil clamped in his teeth, and gestured to Alerio for the next card.
Kristoff grabbed a wad of bills and stuffed them into his pocket. “I win.”
Wyatt yelped a protest, but the medic leapt up, fists clenched, and glared at him.
Kristoff met that stare. “Got somethin’ to say?”
Sneer twisting his upper lip, the medic looked him up and down. “So, this is what a washed-up war hero looks like.”
Well, now. That could rock a man back on his heels. Kristoff took a deep breath. “I’ve seen you giving me the skunk eye a time or two this past week. I do something to you? I shoot your daddy during the war?”
“Maybe I don’t take kindly to somebody cutting into my game and stealing from the pot.” The medic advanced a step. “Or maybe I just don’t like you.” His breath was fumy, and the edges of his words were blurred, probably by the whiskey in the half-empty bottle on the table.
“And here I was thinkin’ I oughta thank you for helping Finney when she got shot escaping from that crazy bat Tarquin. I hear you and Doc”—Kristoff nodded toward Mercedes—”make a great team.”
That took some wind out of the youngster’s sails, but he billowed right up again. The fists that had loosened curled tight once more, and he took another step forward.
“Listen, Leo.” Wyatt pushed back his chair, sat for a moment with head bowed, then stood. “The captain’s tryin’ real hard not to fight you, kid. Not sayin’ he can’t take you down, just that he don’t want to.” The ship’s steward waved at hand at the scattered cards. “Game’s over. You take your share, I take mine, and we part as friends.”
“Not in seven-card—”
“You bein’ such a moralist, why’d you play cards with the likes of me?” The older man shook his head. “Rookie.”
Leo threw a punch, but Wyatt stepped inside his reach and deflated him with a solid hit. Leo doubled over, wheezing.
Wyatt slapped him on the back a few times. “Never step in crap, kid. The stink follows you home.”
Kristoff pulled the money from his pocket and handed it to Wyatt. “Ship him out.”
“Aye, aye,” accompanied by a shrug and a sloppy salute. Blame the whiskey.
It was Doc, however, who escorted the medic to the hall, speaking to him in a low voice. Pale, Leo nodded a couple of times then left. The crew cleared their games, stowed the liquor, and gathered around the central table, but Kristoff waited.
Corrigan ducked into the room, refused a chair, and stood with arms crossed. “We was just about to have some fun,” he grumbled.
Next came Finney. She closed the door and leaned against it, her expression unreadable.
Come to think on it, her eyes were none too happy. Kristoff looked away, cleared his throat. “Where’s Ez?”
“Helping the tech guys.” Doc sounded as if she ate razorblades for breakfast. “They asked for Alerio, but he decided to play.”
If this crew didn’t have something to do, and quick, they’d be playing, all right. With sticks and knives and what-all else could do a body harm. Kristoff swallowed a sigh; he was captain, not daddy. Then again, he was itching to cause some harm of his own. “Daniel’s got a job for us.”
“He the boss now?” demanded Corrigan.
“Well, like the man said, we need to earn our keep.” Again, Kristoff cleared his throat. “He did save Finney, and give us shelter and medical attention. We oughta pay our debts.”
“What’s wrong with the Vega? Why aren’t we back aboard?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her, and I had my reasons for staying.”
Wyatt twiddled a pencil. “You’re the captain, but I got no call to work for Daniel.”
One by one, the rest of the crew nodded. Except Finney. She tilted her head back against the door and looked up at the ceiling, her skin pale under the sickly lights. “I can’t breathe down here.”
Neither can I. Kristoff stood. “Grab your kit. We’re going home.”
Whooping and laughing, they headed for the door—Wyatt snagging the whiskey bottle—and Kristoff smiled as they passed. But, out in the hall, their celebration ended in abrupt silence.
He ran across the room and through the door.
His crew faced Daniel’s men, who held Ezra by the arms. A bruise blackened the kid’s forehead, and there was blood on his shirt. Looking past the crew to Kristoff, Daniel smiled like some kind of benign devil.
“I just met Leo, and he looked a little rough for someone coming back from a friendly game of cards.” Daniel shook his head. “Seems you need motivation to do the job I requested.” One of his men held a gun to the side of Ezra’s neck. “Now,” said the rebel leader in a genial voice, “shall we begin?”
Two hours later, Kristoff stood at the gates of the small fort where colonial troops garrisoned in the oasis town of Horatio.
Five minutes after shouting his name to a guard, he shook hands with Commander Claudius.
Less than two minutes after that, they laughed over an old academy prank and slapped each other on the back, swapping more adolescent memories all the way to the commander’s office that was built into the fort’s thick wall, a view of the Western Desert on one side and the front gate on the other.
“It’s not too defensible, but I can see my enemies coming fore and aft, as you sailors might say.” Claudius stopped at a side table and lifted a jug. “This liquor is of unknown provenance, but it helps me forget the heat and the sand and the damned bureaucracy that stranded me here.”
“Pour me one.” Kristoff dropped into a sway-bottomed, wide-armed leather chair that had probably seen two or three generations of backsides. He swung his legs over one arm, rested his head against the other, and looked up at the stucco ceiling.
“Carefree outlaw that you’ve become, what do you have to forget?”
“Nothing. Just sharing a drink with a friend.”
“That’ll do.”
Glass clinked. Liquid burbled. The jug thudded back onto the table.
Claudius held out a glass. “No ice, this being the great big utter behind of the desert.” He laughed, but with no great mirth. “Maybe they secretly admire us back in Port Henry, and want to further our training by inuring us to the rigors of the wilderness. Problem is, most of these men are already tougher’n boot soles. Any tougher, they’d be stone.”
Kristoff sat up, took the glass, and raised it. “Boot soles.”
“Boot soles.”
Claudius swallowed, grimaced, hissed “whew!” and took another drink. Kristoff, however, felt as if a conflagration had been set in his mouth, poured down his throat, and made to dance a jig around his innards. He’d cough, if he could only catch his breath, and his eyes stung, probably from the smoke billowing out his ears.
“Yeah, great, isn’t it?” Claudius smacked his lips. “I think the afterburn is some sort of pepper they drop in the mash. But, then again, the alcohol content is a mite higher than most.”
Just a mite.
“So”—Claudius refilled both glasses—”you like living underground?”
Pounding a fist against his chest, Kristoff shook his head.
“We’ve known about the rebels down there for a while, but I don’t see the need for kicking up dust until it’s absolutely necessary. One of my patrols was out there when your pilot made a run for it, and the rebels opened fire, so we returned it. Or maybe it was the other way around. You know how it is.”
Kristoff nodded. Details became fuzzy when bullets and other projectiles started flying.
“And Daniel—he’s a strange one, isn’t he?”
At last, the inferno in his belly shrunk to the size of a small house fire, and Kristoff could breathe again. He only took shallow gulps of air—no use fueling the flames. “Ex-military. Explosives specialist. Seems to keep a tight rein on his people.”
Claudius chuckled. “And then you show up.”
“Yeah, well. Aside from my crew stirring up trouble, it’s been almighty quiet around the bunker. Figured you troopers would liven things up.”
“Well, I did start an assault plan”—Claudius sat on the corner of his desk—”but then we had to play like we were really important and be the honor guard at Governor Tarquin’s funeral.”
Kristoff raised his glass, rocket fuel sloshing against the sides. “Whatever the reason, thanks for the vacation.”
Claudius shot him a sharp, sidelong look. “Your men wouldn’t be here, by any chance?”
Corrigan couldn’t see in the thick darkness, but there wasn’t much need. The space was so small and the ceiling so low that he was as compressed as a junked spacecraft. They’d definitely taken a wrong turn.
A couple turns back, there’d been a secondary maintenance panel at a fork in the access tunnels to the fort’s utility systems. There might be an alternate map inside the panel door.
“Uh, Sahir? Try backing up.”
“Tried. No good.”
“If you’d stop stealin’ folks’ cinnamon rolls—”
“Do not blame the belly!”
“I’ll do whatever I darn well please if my head hits the ceiling one more time!”
“I have knife.” Sahir sounded suspiciously helpful. ” Ankles? Knees?”
“You threatenin’ me?”
“Help make you shorter.”
Corrigan considered all the implications in that sentence. “Aw, now you’re just bein’ mean.”
Arm squished against the wall of the tiny tunnel, he jiggled a flashlight against his knee, but the bulb remained dark. He must have broken the power cells the last time he’d stumbled.
“Your light work at all?”
Jiggle, jiggle. “Only little.”
Corrigan glared at the cook’s round shape, dimly illuminated by the faint glow. “Droppin’ your the’s and a’s, and skipping words—why don’t you speak proper?”
“Trying to fit in with you.”
“You sayin’ I ain’t educated?”
“Ezra’s book says, ‘Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent; with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent.’ ”
Corrigan wriggled his arm free, and delivered Sahir an ineffectual punch on the nose.
Alerio pressed his palm computer against a maintenance panel; numerals scrambled across the screen.
Wyatt looked back down the tunnel. All clear. He flipped to a fresh page in his notebook, and took the pencil from behind his ear. “Ready when you are, Al.”
“It’s not a numeric code.” The engineer tapped a corner of the screen; a new pane opened. “Alpha or alphanumeric, it’s going to take a while.”
“We got maybe five minutes.”
Alerio could have been talking about the weather: “Then we either crack the code or run like the wind.”
“If Corrigan was here, it’d be a foul wind.”
“All the more reason to run.”
Amen.
“First three letters—E. L. S.”
Wyatt scribbled them onto the page.
“I.N.” Pause. “O.R. Looks like one more spot. The program’s still scanning—”
“E.” Wyatt bounced the pencil tip against the paper, leaving random lead dots across the page. “Elsinore. The ghost ship where we found Ezra.”
Alerio keyed the name into the panel; a holographic keyboard and screen appeared in the air.
Wyatt sucked his teeth. “You ever get the feeling, Al, that somebody’s hiding a fifth ace up their sleeve?”
“All the time.”
He waved his notepad at the hologram. “You can’t exactly run the decode on that.”
“Patience, grasshopper.”
Wyatt frowned. “Sometimes, Al, I got no idea what you’re sayin’.”
The engineer made no reply, but handed the real computer to Wyatt and started typing on the transparent one. After a couple error warnings scrolled across the screen, he said, “Look up a passenger manifest for the Elsinore. Maybe the next word is the name of a scientist—”
“No list, remember? We already tried, back when we found Ez. Those files don’t exist—or they’re buried so deep we’ll need ten types of clearance before we can even sniff the folder they’re in.”
“All right, then.” If Alerio was tense, his voice didn’t know it. “The fleet of research vessels is public. Read the names of the ships.”
Muttering, Wyatt fumbled to type a request on the miniscule keys. His fingers might be adept at the delicate work of forgery, but they never did get used to secretarial skills. Three or four misspellings and several curses later, he accessed the list: “After the Elsinore, there’s the Warwick, the Flint, the Glamis, and the Arundel.”
None of the names unlocked the security system.
“Maybe it’s alphanumeric, like you said. Try the name of the ship and the year it was commissioned.”
An alarm blared through the tunnels, and both men flinched, covering their ears.
“Corrigan and Sahir!” shouted Wyatt over the cacophony.
Alerio shook his head. “My fault.”
“Can you stop it? What now?”
Alerio slammed the maintenance panel shut and grabbed his computer from Wyatt. “Now we run.”
- to be continued -
Keanan Brand resides in the Arkansas River Valley, and has worked for a non-profit youth organization since late 1997—not a chosen profession but one that seemed like the right path. Writing under another name, Brand also produces fantasy and general fiction, as well as poetry, essays, and the occasional feature article, and keeps an intermittent blog, Adventures in Fiction, covering the writing process, as well as occasional book and movie reviews. Thieves’ Honor is Brand’s only science fiction endeavor to date.
