M. Planck - The Kassa Gambit

She let the knife collapse into a harmless medallion.

“Are you done?” she said loudly. Bending over, she picked up Jorgun’s sunglasses and put them on his face, hiding his red-lined eyes.

“What’s the trouble here?” The thick security guard was the first to speak, his voice challenging, like a dog daring you to pet it.

“No trouble, officer.” She tried to smile sweetly, but under the circumstances, she didn’t think it came off very well. “Just a crew dispute. I don’t allow violence on my ship, so they had to wait for port to settle it.”

“We don’t allow violence here, either, spacer.” The thick one wanted a fight.

The skinny one just wanted to make fun of someone. “Why’s the big guy crying like that?”

“He’s ribbing me,” Kyle answered. “Said I punched like a girl, so he might as well cry like one.”

The skinny guard guffawed, satisfied with a target of scorn. Kyle reached down and offered his hand to Jorgun. With the glasses on, Jorgun looked like a grown-up. He took Kyle’s hand and stood up, grinning weakly.

“That was funny,” Jorgun said.

“Sure it was.” Kyle clapped him on the back. “Just a couple of tough guys, we are. Sorry, officer, it won’t happen again.”

“Show me your IDs. All of you.” Chubby was angry at being disappointed.

Kyle reached into his back pocket, pulled out a card, and handed it to the officer. Prudence stood perfectly still, waiting to see what would happen when he ran it through his scanner.

The officer glared at Kyle.

“There isn’t a date of arrival for you. Why don’t you have a date of arrival stamped in your file?”

Kyle shrugged and looked over his shoulder, at the hatch that led to the ship.

“Guess the system hasn’t updated yet. I mean, come on, I just walked through that door.”

The guard grunted and handed the card back. He turned to Prudence, took the card she extended.

“I’m logging a complaint on your file, Captain. Any more of this crap and you’ll be fined.”

“Yes, officer.” She’d started out disliking this planet. Five minutes on the ground had brought that to a full boil of hatred.

The three of them waited, doing nothing, while the security team wandered off.

“Back to the ship,” she ordered.

“I can’t check out.” Kyle objected. “They monitor every person in and out. You’ll have to sneak me out in a cargo container.”

As a smuggler, the man was a complete failure.

“Come here.” She grabbed his arm and dragged him through the hatch.

Inside the tube-way she banged on the comm panel until the screen lit up.

“Hey,” she said, before the tired-looking girl on the other end could speak. “You didn’t register my crewman. He just disembarked, walked through the hatch with us, but your damn machine didn’t take his ID swipe.”

“Ma’am, the machines don’t—”

“He’s right here. Look, here’s his ID.” She held his arm up so the camera could see the card in his hand. “There’s a fine for this crap. I’m gonna make sure you pay it, unless you fix this right now.”

Prudence’s conscience twinged when she saw the girl was too tired to even complain.

“Swipe it again, sir.”

Kyle obeyed, playing the part of slack-jawed hayseed to perfection.

“Okay, you’re clear now. Sorry for the trouble, Captain.”

Prudence wanted to thank her, but she couldn’t break character. If the girl knew that Prudence had just got what she wanted, she might become suspicious.

“Stupid machines,” she grumbled. It was the closest she could come to an apology.

The screen clicked off.

“Damn, Pru,” Garcia said from the ship’s hatch. “I thought that dude was dead.”

If Garcia had spoken seven seconds earlier, they would have all gone to jail. But it wasn’t luck. Garcia was naturally adept at conspiracy.

“So did I.” She stared at Kyle.

“He hit me,” Jorgun offered helpfully. “But then he said he was sorry.”

“Maybe we should, you know, set the record straight.” Garcia brought his right hand out from behind his body, revealing the splattergun he was holding. “It’s not like anybody is gonna be looking for the corpse.”

“Put that away, Garcia,” Prudence demanded. With this angle of fire, he was as likely to kill her and Jorgun as he was to hit Kyle.

“I thought we were against the League.” That was a surprise, coming from Garcia. She hadn’t realized he cared one way or another.

Kyle laughed. “Then why are you volunteering to finish their job? You won’t even get paid for it.” He was arguing for his life, but he didn’t seem to be trying very hard.

“Nobody’s going to kill anyone,” Prudence said. Kyle had stopped fighting when Jorgun had started crying. That earned him a chance to explain. “Kyle is going to take a shower. Garcia, you’re going to take Jorgun into the city and buy him a puzzle. Then you’ll start looking for a cargo.”

“We can’t transport out of here.” Garcia knew they didn’t have a license.

“Pretend you don’t know that. Act like you’re here for a legitimate reason, for crying out loud. Act normal.”

“What are you going to do, Pru?” Jorgun asked her.

“I’m going to get a stateroom ready for Kyle.” One with a drop-bar on the outside sounded like a good idea.

She and Kyle swiped their IDs again, indicating that they were returning to the ship. Stupid machines.

While he showered, she went through his pockets.

Only two items looked interesting. The blue pod from Kassa, and a data chip. She plugged the chip in, but it was encrypted.

“What’s the keyword?” she asked him as soon as he stepped out of the washroom. He was wearing only a towel around his waist. She could see bruises on his chest, and a nasty scrape on his shin.

She could also see the breadth of his shoulders, the tight muscles of his belly, the bulge of his thighs. He was solid. Dense, even.

He was definitely her type.

She stood up from the screen, stepped away from it, making room for him to type in the key. Keeping her orbit at a safe distance.

“The password is ‘twin.’ I only encoded it because the camera made me.” He tapped the keyboard, and the screen blossomed with a vid. “I don’t have any secrets left, Prudence. I’m out of money and time. I’m out of secrets.”

She didn’t believe him. People had secrets they didn’t know they had. No one ever ran out of them.

“What are we looking at?” He had paused it on a man in an artistic, tribal mask. It was as dull as a tourist’s home vid.

“Not much, I’m afraid. I thought it would be a picture of Veram Dejae.”

The man in the photo looked about the right size and shape for that.

“Why on Earth would the prime minister of Altair wear a mask like that?”

Kyle grinned lopsidedly. “I didn’t say it was a picture of the prime minister. I said it was a picture of Dejae … one of him, anyway.”

She glared at him from across the room.

“There’s two,” he explained. “Five years ago I almost arrested one for making a wrong turn, while the other one was making a public speech on the other side of the city. Now I’m trying to figure out why Dejae needs to hide his twin brother.”

“The twin is on Baharain?”

Kyle tapped the screen, and the vid zoomed back to the beginning. A glassy dome set in wind-shaped rocks. “He’s head of RDC, the largest and most productive mining concern on the planet. He also has a hobby. A nasty, vicious hobby.” His face was bitter and hard.

“What?” Prudence asked, unsure of what to expect. Had Dejae inflicted those bruises?

“He keeps pets. Spiders, to be exact. Two-meter-tall spiders that kill people that get too close to his dome.”