“Let’s clear the air here,” Li Fei insisted. “This mission hasn’t felt right from the beginning, and I’m not putting myself or my colleague in harm’s way until you start telling me the truth. Why are we really here?”
Andrea didn’t respond to him. Instead, she turned away and spoke over our shared channel. “Commander, we’ve run into an issue down here and need your assistance.”
The Arbiter Commander answered a moment later. “What is it, Caplan?”
“We’ve found a device that may be related to the tragedy on Tower 7. This doesn’t fall under the purview of the warrant. Do we have your permission to proceed with the raid on the ship, or should we resolve the issues of the device first?”
The Commander was silent for a long moment. His voice sounded wary and mildly angry when he came back online. “Li, are you holding up the mission over this? Let’s get this done with!”
To my surprise, Li Fei didn’t just jump when his commanding officer barked at him. “These Section 3 agents are liars, sir. One of their people is—”
“None of that matters, Li. You have your mission. Get it done.”
This time Li was the silent one. When he spoke again, his voice was buzzing with suppressed anger. “Understood, sir.” He turned away from Andrea as if he couldn’t bear to look at her. “Let’s finish this. Intelligence Section 3.” The way he said those last three words, it was like he was mocking the whole idea.
Li Fei turned to Captain Vassar. “You’ll be charged with ordering your men to fire on a Sol Federation Arbiter. They’ll be charged with actually shooting at us. Consider yourselves lucky to be alive. You’ll wait in the bay until we can transport you safely out. Do you understand your situation?”
She just looked right at him and repeated her favorite line. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Get her out of my sight, Mitchell.”
Mike led the woman and her guards away, and Li Fei turned to us again. “I don’t know who you people really are, I don’t know what you really want, but I’ll tell you this: the Arbiter Force does not belong to you. Remember that the next time you request a joint mission from us. You aren’t welcome, you never were, and when the right people are in charge, you will never be given this opportunity again. Now let’s search that ship.”
Andrea chose not to say anything, and he stood there staring at her for what felt like an eon before finally heading for the dock. She watched him walk away for a few paces, then sent us a dataspike message.
This fucking guy is a problem.
Veraldi replied first. You can say that again. You did the right thing, though.
Absolutely, Jones added. He only decided to make an issue out of whatever Thomas found because he was pissed off when he recognized Tycho. That’s all there is to it.
The only person who didn’t seem to have any interest in our problem with the Arbiters was Thomas Young.
Does no one want to talk about the device?
Andrea actually laughed, although it did sound a little bit desperate.
Everyone, clear your heads. Anyone on that ship has had so much time to prepare that we’re probably going into combat. They might have weapons that can get through these suits. Stay sharp.
That was a sobering thought, and it changed the whole mood as we moved through the airlock and out to the docking bay where the Havisham was berthed. The Arbiters went first, crowding in ahead of us as if to make the point that they were the ones with arrest authority on this mission and we were not.
There was no sign of danger when we got out to the dock. The Havisham was there, a sleek luxury yacht any wealthy industrialist would be happy to call his own. The empty dock suggested the crew had probably already boarded the vessel, but there was no indication of what was going on inside.
It looked like everything was exactly the way it should be, like the mission was finally coming together and would soon be over. We could all go home and forget about the shitshow this mission had become.
It’s hard to believe I was ever that optimistic.
8
The directed energy beam went clean through Mike’s head, piercing his drop suit as if it were made of onion skin. In a fraction of a second, his visor flashed with blue light and his head popped like overripe fruit. A glittering black mist ejected from the holes in his helmet, and then Mike crumpled onto the dock.
That arcing stream of liquified gore, disgusting as it was to witness, was probably what saved our lives. It gave us an idea of where the attack had come from. I fired a burst as I dove for cover, hoping to suppress whoever had fired that shot.
To my surprise, the line of shots marched up the wall to my right, and I didn’t land where I’d expected to. I had to course-correct, but I felt like I was trying to chase a moving object.
A moment later, I was crouching down behind the largest and thickest metal object I could find. I don’t even know what it was, but its sheer size and bulk was irrationally comforting. Nearby, I could see Andrew Jones was crouching behind a mooring arm.
Tycho, adjust for the Coriolis Effect, messaged Andrea.
Of course. There was nothing like the threat of immediate and violent death to make a man forget elementary physics. Like the water in the fountain, I could fire a shot in a straight line, but the bullets would seem to curve because of the station’s rotation. That was also why I had gotten disoriented when I dove for cover. Aiming at anything was going to be tricky, although Li Fei and Mike Mitchell had both managed it.
“Can anyone see anything?” asked Veraldi.
“Negative,” replied Li Fei. His voice was flat, like he hadn’t just lost a junior Arbiter. I knew how he must be feeling, and it didn’t bode well for whoever had fired that shot.
“I can see them.” Raven’s voice, although I couldn’t see where she was hiding. “I caught a glimpse of them, anyway. Thermoptic camo, androids.”
Coming under fire meant we were probably on the right trail, but Androids presented a serious problem. Directed energy weapons fire a stream of effectively massless particles at a fraction of the speed of light. They’d be useless in an atmosphere, losing energy as heat over anything more than point-blank range, but in the vacuum of a spacedock they were the deadliest weapons anyone could bring to bear.
Veraldi asked, “how many?”
“Can’t tell. They aren’t moving.”
A beam of light pierced through the equipment I was hiding behind. It punched right through it like it wasn’t even there, and I realized that while I may have concealment, I did not have cover.
Someone returned fire. I didn’t know who. From where I was, I couldn’t see much of what was going on and I couldn’t do much of anything. If I fired a grenade from my position, it could veer off and land on Andrew’s head rather than on the androids attacking us.
Something shimmered near me, and I realized one of the camouflaged androids was creeping up on my position. I opened fire but didn’t correct enough. My shots went wide, and it pulled back, unharmed. Another beam cut through my concealment, followed by another a fraction of a second later.
So at least two of the androids had directed energy weapons.
“Andrea, I’m pinned here.” I flattened against the floor as best I could to minimize my cross-section. “Taking fire. They know where I am.”