Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

Brandon’s green eyes pinned Etsudo in the air. “What do you think you’re doing? Deng will flay you for insubordination.”

“That’s interesting. Because he’s technically not my superior, is he? The trade arm of the Hongguo is charged to eradicate illegal technologies through nonlethal methods. We’re a separate and equal arm.”

“If your means are nonlethal, what is this about?”

“Have I hurt you yet?” Etsudo asked. “Are you in pain?”

“You threatened me with physical harm.” Brandon twisted, but there had been stronger, faster, more dangerous men in that chair before.

“The silky cords wrapped around your arms have a monofilament wire in their center. Break the silk and you’ll slice your hands off. If you continue to struggle or get more agitated, you will be responsible for your own self-amputation.”

Brandon stopped straining. He stared at Etsudo, who experienced a brief rush. The power of direct force. A heady drug, and addictive. “What do you want?”

Etsudo leaned forward. “What are you doing aboard my ship, Brandon?”

“Nothing. You’re entirely misguided. This is beyond inappropriate.”

“Okay.” Etsudo held up his arm and clenched his fist. Brandon blinked and looked around, frowning. “Every time I do that, the machine around you, which I’ve disguised as a simple acceleration couch, will rip something of your mind free. A memory, a skill, a part of your personality. I will not harm you, Brandon, but you will cease to be a functioning person when I’m done if you aren’t forthcoming.”

Brandon stared at him. “You can’t recondition my mind. Your ship doesn’t have the permission to keep that equipment. Only the Gulong has it.”

“A special Satrapic allowance, that. Everyone aboard the Takara Bune has had a trip to this room, Brandon. Trust me, this is all very much real. I do really have these machines in this room.” Etsudo made a fist, sending the command through lamina to strip another memory out from the surface of Brandon’s mind.

“What did you just do?”

“Do you remember how you got aboard this ship?”

Brandon blinked several times. He didn’t. It would be a hole in his mind, an odd interruption that eluded him as he tried to reach for it. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”

“Yes, this is very real, Brandon. It’s happening. Again, why are you on my ship?”

“Deng’s going to kill you, not just retire you.”

“Stop worrying about things outside of your control, Brandon, and tell me what I want to know or I’ll turn you into a drooling idiot. Why are you on my ship ?”

“Giving them an excuse to get rid of you.” Brandon looked directly at him. “You’re the last of the pacifist arm. Your ‘balance’ and ‘yin/yang’ concepts aren’t policy anymore.”

“They never were.” Etsudo shook his head. “The Hongguo began life as a company. Profit was king, Brandon, the trading arm wasn’t pacifist, just mercantile and nonlethal. And good at what it did.”

“It’s not needed anymore, it’s been recalled.”

Etsudo nodded. “Yes, but why?”

Brandon looked up toward one of the paintings. The waterfall. Tears leaked out of his eyes and hung in front of him. “Deng told you, you’ll be supporting antipirate activity in the area.”

“That’s such a shame you won’t tell me the real reason.” Etsudo didn’t want to rip Brandon’s mind down to almost nothing. Etsudo was an artist. He wanted a functioning human being. Destruction was for amateurs. And after watching thousands die earlier, he had no desire to see more death. But threats did not seem to work with Brandon, so Etsudo would try another use for his machine. “But I can help. In just a few hours, Brandon, you and I are going to be best friends, and you won’t even think twice about telling me everything I need to know.”

Brandon groaned as Etsudo clenched his fist. Etsudo guided the machine as it probed the man’s mind with magnetic feelers, sifting through Brandon’s synapses and recording them, building up a ghostly image of Brandon’s mind that Etsudo could access, then model. And using that model as a guide, he could begin altering Brandon’s mind.

It took the better of ten hours, even with all the heavy computing power at Etsudo’s disposal in the Takara Bune .

When Etsudo was done, the reconditioning over, Brandon looked up. “I’m so sorry, Etsudo, I’m so sorry.”

Etsudo nodded, grabbed Brandon’s shoulder, and stared the man eye to eye. Brandon’s mind had already been tampered with by Deng, he’d found traces of that. But had he gotten deep enough into Brandon’s head to undo that? Or would Brandon turn on him suddenly, subject to triggers buried deeper in the back of his cortex. “The things Deng has done to your mind are horrible. But I helped you. Everything is back the way it was, Brandon. You’re back to normal. And I’m glad you were able to get a transfer to my ship, where I can protect you.”

“Thank you,” Brandon whispered. “Thank you.”

“It’s been a few years, friend. But you’re okay now. You’re okay.”

Brandon shook with tears as Etsudo unstrapped and pulled him free. “Come on. I’ll take you to your cabin. You’ll rest. We’ll have tea next shift. And then you’ll tell me everything.”

And as conditioned to do, Brandon nodded. “Etsudo, we have to be careful. Very careful. Things are changing, we’re all in a lot of danger.”

“You’ll tell me all about it.” Etsudo guided the dangerous man through the air.

It was always dangerous to tackle gods in their own territories, Etsudo thought. And here aboard the Takara Bune that’s exactly what he was.

What else could he be? If he ran away with his ship, the Satrapy would revoke his docking and fueling rights. If he left his ship and ran into hiding, his fellow Hongguo would hunt him down and wipe his mind down to blank, leaving him as another calculating machine for the Gulong .

He had been doomed to this ever since being born among the Hongguo.

The machine had been a gift. An inheritance from Kenji Hajiwara, the man Etsudo thought of as father, a father whose bloodline included the original Hajiwara of the Hongguo.

Etsudo grew up aboard the Takara Bune . It never bothered him that there weren’t any other children. Not even into his teens as Kenji taught him how to thread the Takara Bune through a wormhole. Not even into adulthood, when the Hongguo began to assist the Satrapy and its alien subjects control human technologies.

“Do you remember your mother?” Kenji had asked him once.

Etsudo remembered standing in the observation gallery by her casket, crying, watching it slide out from the habitat until it dwindled away on its long, decaying orbit toward the blue-tinged sun in the distance.

“Of course I do. Always,” Etsudo replied.

“Do you remember your mother?” Kenji had asked him again, just before Kenji died, riddled with an artificial form of infectious cancer.

“Of course,” Etsudo had told him.

But then an hour later a message came, a recording Kenji had left with a date stamp on it that was over ten years old. Kenji, younger but more tired, faced Etsudo one last time.

“Do you remember your mother?” the recording asked. Kenji looked more incredibly sad than Etsudo had ever seen him. “Because I have a confession to make, my son. A hard one to make, which is why I’m recording this, and locking it to be released when I die. Though I guess that is easier than telling you this myself.”

Kenji had always wanted a child, so he’d taken one from a small orbital research habitat. A five-year-old, whose parents where about to be reconditioned. Kenji created a new mother in his mind, and a new father.