Space Rodeo

Interstellar Sheriff

Book 2

Jenny Schwartz

On the galactic frontier, the Federation’s wildest (and most scientific) citizens have gathered to ride in the Space Rodeo. The Navy is in charge—of the arena. But beyond the naval perimeter, there is only Interstellar Sheriff Max Smith to keep the peace. Fortunately, he has some extraordinary allies. And enemies. And then, there is his girlfriend.

Thelma Bach attracts trouble like the bunyaphi attract feuds.

She should have been safe, riding for an urself inventor in the Space Rodeo. So how did she end up in the middle of a mercenary corporation’s devious designs for galactic war?

Buckle up for a thrill ride of bandits, shadowy government agents, cyborgs, AIs and strange science.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

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Chapter 1

The human mind isn’t meant to look at itself. Staring out from her own eyes, Thelma Bach saw herself crouched on the floor of the spaceship Otua’s bridge, balanced on the balls of her booted feet with one hand down to brace herself. The image wasn’t from a mirror or hologram. It was really her.

She screamed and tore open the buckle of the harness that secured her in the captain’s seat. She landed in a crouch and spun, one hand going down to steady herself as she saw her own horrified face staring back at her from the chair.

Then the time dual-location of that spar of the comet helix collapsed and only a single Thelma remained. She’d have appreciated the resumption of standard physics a whole lot more if she hadn’t just torn free of the safety harness.

“Rat farts.” She spat the old asteroid miner curse as the Otua twisted and dived, overstraining the ship’s rudimentary artificial gravity system. With nonstandard results.

She lunged for the captain’s chair, and had scarcely gotten herself seated when an elephant sat on her chest. She forced her hands to keep moving, to refasten the harness, as blackness swallowed her vision.

She regained consciousness three minutes later. The artificial gravity system had restored itself. “Just breathe. That’s all you have to do. Just breathe.”

The Otua was fitted out with monitoring systems far more complete and efficient than its artificial gravity system. Every bit of data from riding the comet helix was captured. Thelma was simply the sentient body required for the Navy to allow the Otua’s participation in these first weeks of the Space Rodeo.

She glared at a camera. “Jerome, you owe me a ginormous favor.”

Closing her eyes, she concentrated on her body’s recovery. She was fit. Jerome wouldn’t have asked her to be the human pilot for the ride if she wasn’t, but the experience had been extreme. In a few minutes she’d open her eyes and check her current location. Meantime, the ship’s autopilot would guide her away from danger. Jerome had designed the Otua to function independently. It was only the Navy’s ruling that for the first month of the Space Rodeo only ships with an organic sentient aboard could ride the comet helices that had forced Jerome to acquire a human pilot.

As an urself, Jerome couldn’t pilot the Otua in the Space Rodeo himself. Urself physiology was such that the sudden dives of the ride were likely to trigger involuntary hibernation. Since the Navy required that pilots in the Space Rodeo report their experiences navigating the comet helices, urselves were barred from participation.

On the other hand, a human blacking out for three minutes from gravitational forces was apparently considered interesting. Thelma smiled wryly at the scientist conducting her post-ride debrief.

The man didn’t smile back. “Returning to your experience of viewing yourself during the time dual-location moment, how would you describe your emotional response?”

Thelma had had time on the Otua’s journey back to the Navy carrier that served as the docking station for Jerome’s team and eleven others to consider that very question. “Revulsion. If you’ve seen the vision, I suspect I look panicked, if not terrified. It was eerie seeing myself, knowing that the other me was me.”

“Yet you recall the event as a single, seamless consciousness.”

She gave a one-shoulder shrug.

“Interesting.” He tapped his fingers against his thigh. “The brain is remarkably plastic. It rewrites and interprets memories. It could be that you blacked out not from the gravitational forces, but to give your mind a chance to resolve the cognitive paradox of two self-perspectives.”

Another shrug seemed the most prudent answer.

She was dismissed.

Star Marine Corporal Naomi Milligan waited outside the lab door. She’d wangled escort duty. As with all Space Rodeo participants docked to the carrier, someone had to monitor Thelma’s civilian presence aboard. “You okay to eat?”

“Starving.”

They headed for the mess.

A couple of months ago, they’d fought each other. It had been a favor from Naomi, given because she’d served with Thelma’s brother Joe. Before his injuries, he’d been a Star Marine. Thelma had managed to survive seven minutes in the ring with the fearsome corporal. That had helped to establish her as more than a newbie, or dudette, in the Saloon Sector. The two women were now friends in their own right, and not because of brothers or lovers.

“How’s Max?” Naomi asked.

Thelma grimaced. Her boyfriend, who’d also served with Naomi and Joe, was not a fan of the Space Rodeo. As Interstellar Sheriff for the territory, it meant a whole heap of extra trouble, even with the Navy assuming primary responsibility for policing the comet helices. “Max is not a happy spacer.”

Max gripped his coffee mug tightly enough that the handle creaked. He set it down carefully on his desk. If Thelma was here, she’d have tactfully suggested that he’d had enough caffeine for the day…month…year. But it wasn’t the caffeine that had him wound up. The long-delayed background on the deputy whom the Chief of the Interstellar Sheriff Service for the Reclamation and Saloon Sectors had foisted on him had arrived, and it came with a note guaranteed to raise the hackles of any Saloon Sector resident.

Max’s new deputy was being delivered in two hours by a Covert Ops vessel.

Covert Ops, in Max’s opinion, were the devil. “They’re planting a spy on the Lonesome. They’re not even being subtle about it. Carl Jafarov.”

Lon, the AI embedded in the Lonesome, made a tsking sound of annoyed agreement. “The paucity of detail provided on Agent Jafarov is an insult. Let me see what I can discover. Meantime, remember we expected that the deputy was a ploy to infiltrate the Lonesome. We’re prepared.”

“Maybe not for this man,” Harry said, entering Max’s office and taking a seat. The Lonesome was as much his home as Lon and Max’s—and Thelma’s. They all missed her.

Harry was another AI. His core was housed in a humanoid mech body. He looked scary to anyone who didn’t know him, which in the Saloon Sector, meant everyone except those aboard the Lonesome. In Thelma and Max’s company, Harry used human mannerisms, including facial expressions, to soften his appearance.

Just under two centuries ago, Federation scientists had ceased making humanoid mechs. Maybe thirty thousand remained, from various wars, mostly either in scrapyards, military museums or as the property of people who wanted private protection of the lethal kind. Utilizing the humanoid mechs made a statement. They’d been discarded because the living, breathing soldiers who’d fought alongside them had found them too freaky. These days, mechs were consciously different from all sentient species. The most common mech form was that of six or more legged, multi-segmented bodies lacking faces.

To Max, Harry was just Harry, and Thelma tended to treat him as a very resilient, tough-love grandfather. He trained her in martial arts, and tolerated her attempts to practice new dance steps with him. Along with Lon, the four of them had become a family.

Now Carl Jafarov’s arrival threatened their home.

“I recognize Carl.” Harry nodded at the headshot from the background briefing that Lon flashed up on the viewscreen. “The background that Chief Kanu provided on Carl mentions four years undercover. Carl spent at least two of those years as a mercenary on Tornado. His face was slightly different, enough to throw off a facial recognition program, but I’m positive I met him as Carl Jameston. I made special note of him since he was a cyborg.”

Max froze. “They’re sending a cyborg to our home?” His voice was a deadly whisper. Few things made him truly angry, but threatening those he loved topped the list.

He hadn’t wanted a deputy. A cyborg one coming aboard was a red-rated threat.

Lon interrupted his silent fuming. “I’ve detected the Covert Ops vessel. Its stealth shield is not as advanced as Nefertiti’s.” A hint of admiration and wistfulness colored his voice when he mentioned her.

Nefertiti was another AI embedded in a spaceship. She was currently on a highly classified, solo mission, one which the Federation government had sanctioned, but which was of particular concern to AIs. Thelma and Max were two of the rare humans who knew the truth—or some of the truth—of it. It was one of the critical secrets the Lonesome protected.

“I estimate that Carl will board in an hour.”

Max stood and grabbed his hat. “Thanks, Lon. Are we ready for him?”

“The Faradox cage I wrapped around the lounge and cell units will block all signals going in and out, apart from my surveillance and comms equipment, which I will monitor for attempts to hack it.”

Max exited the office and descended the ladder to the public deck. It was where guests were received on the Lonesome. It was also where prisoners were processed and held during transit.

Lon’s voice accompanied Max. “Words frame our expectations, and hence, the options we consider as available to us. The chief said you’re getting a deputy. Covert Ops is delivering a Galactic Justice agent. Both are true. Harry has added the unwelcome news that we’re also about to be boarded by a cyborg. I assume that Covert Ops didn’t expect you to learn that fact this early or at all.”

As an AI, Lon didn’t have to pause for breath. “But consider what is actually going to happen. Carl Jafarov will enter through the hatch and be contained in the lounge and a single cell. If you want to use a word to describe him, the appropriate one is ‘prisoner’.”

Max grunted acknowledgement of Lon’s attempt to reassure him and to offer subtle guidance. “He’s a contained threat.”

There were a number of roles the Galactic Justice agent could fill. Deputy, prisoner, spy or bodyguard were all words, titles, that could describe Carl Jafarov. Onboard the Lonesome, it was at Max’s discretion which ones Carl would be allowed to pursue.

Max put on his hat. The dark gray western hat served a dual purpose. When he wore it, Max was Sheriff Smith. He’d made the hat a symbol of his office, part of his legend out here on the frontier. Secondly, the wide brim shaded his face, thereby hiding his features. Add in Lon’s flair with hacking and there were no identifiable photographs of Max floating around.

“What I would like to know is who knew to send a cyborg to freak me out?” He had a history with the damned things—people. And that history went deeper than the stories of super-soldiers that he’d heard in the Star Marines.

Only the Federation government could authorize a cyborg procedure. People assumed that was due to the expense of the operation and because of the physical and mental toughness required of the participants.

“A cyborg doesn’t just get replacement parts for those lost. It’s not a matter of a new leg or eye or whatever. The person’s entire body has to be modified, its natural performance enhanced to support the demands of the integrated technology. Their brain changes. Their personality changes. Families noticed. Families worried. So now, having no one is one of the criteria for the cyborg program.”

“It’s a myth that their personality is removed.” Harry had followed Max down the ladder. “Cyborgs can control their chemical secretions, their hormones. To organic sentients, that is assumed to equate to controlling their emotions. However, as Lon and I can tell you, emotions exist in the absence of hormones. Cyborgs’ manipulation, which generally defaults to suppression, of their emotions is incomplete. New cyborgs, adjusting to the altered reality of their bodies, do tend to present as detached from their emotions and their previous identity. For an individual going undercover as a mercenary, that may have helped.”

Max swore. He slapped his hat against his leg before replacing it on his head. “Okay. All that has changed is that we know the truth—some of the truth—of who he is. If I refuse Jafarov entrance because he’s a cyborg, Covert Ops will demand to know how I learned that fact, especially if he successfully hid it during his time as a mercenary.”

“He did,” Harry said.

“So we play along. The chief’s threat is real. If I refuse a direct order to take on a deputy, she’ll fire me. And right now, I’m needed here.”

The Navy had responsibility for the Space Rodeo, but outside of its perimeter, trouble in the region remained Max’s headache.

There was an abundance of trouble just waiting for a spark.

The Space Rodeo had brought people from across Federation space. The triggering event, the unheralded appearance of comet helices with their twisting of space and time, had begun nine weeks ago. Engineers and adventurers, including corporate and military types, had immediately stuffed their tech and themselves into their spaceships and converged on the Saloon Sector with all haste.

Comet helices were near mythical happenings. The last recorded Space Rodeo had been seventy plus years ago. Some people had quit their jobs rather than miss this opportunity.

But where wealth and cutting edge technology collected, so did those eager to liberate a portion of it for themselves. Some were prepared to earn their cut. A number of the mercenary corporations based on Tornado were working as security for various technology conglomerates. Others were looking for less legal opportunities. These were the thugs and thieves. And then there were the media who were here, there and everywhere like hyperactive warp wasps, questioning everything.

Max didn’t have it in him to abandon the people he’d sworn to protect at a time when they most needed him—and that was how Galactic Justice, via Chief Agnes Kanu, twisted his arm. She was a political appointee who might be relatively new to the frontier, but who had demonstrated a practiced aptitude for ruthless manipulation.

“Anubis is hailing us,” Lon said.

Max took his comms unit from a pocket and accepted the transmission.

“If you maintain your current location, we’ll come alongside in forty minutes.” The Anubis’s captain’s tone of voice made the statement a command. He had purposely failed to introduce himself beyond “captain”.

“We’ll wait for you,” Max said. “Please inform Agent Jafarov that I’ll supply weapons and all technology other than his personal comms unit. Anything he brings with him will be recycled.”

“Harsh.” And when the comment provoked no response. “I’ll inform Jafarov. He’s a good agent. You’ll find him useful, if you give him a chance.”

“I’m sure he’s useful to someone.” Max ended the transmission. He glanced at Harry. “What was Carl Jameston’s specialty as a mercenary?”

“Infiltration. He was a thief.” Harry ambled over to the outer hatch. This was the entrance the Covert Ops ship would lock to and the Galactic Justice agent enter by.

Max rocked on his heels as he studied the walls of the lounge and the passage that led to the cells. A food dispenser on the counter served to turn the lounge into a kitchen. A table with four chairs completed the establishment of dual purpose use for the area. It was where visitors to the ship were entertained. Some spacers, generally surveyors, avoided going planetside. They socialized ship to ship. The small lounge with its inbuilt security precautions was as open house as Max got. He had good reason to guard his personal life.

He turned back to stare at the hatch, contemplating the void of space beyond it and the fast-approaching Anubis. Covert Ops sought to take him off guard with the abrupt delivery of their agent. Thanks to Lon, they hadn’t.

“I’ve got this,” he said to Harry.

The AI sketched a salute. It wasn’t mockery, but respect. Harry strolled off in the direction of his multi-deck workshop.

Max scowled at the hatch for a few more seconds. Then, conscious of all the demands on him as sheriff, he dropped his hat on the kitchen table, dropped himself onto a chair, and resumed responding to the most urgent of the multiplying messages on his comms unit.

An hour later, Jafarov arrived. “Deputy Carl Jafarov, reporting for duty.” He wore a lifesuit with the helmet open. There was no need for the suit: lock tunnels were safe. Wearing it was simply the most practical method of carting it across—or so a naïve person would assume.

Max spotted the challenge.

By wearing the lifesuit, Carl hoped to circumvent Max’s edict that any tech he brought onboard would be recycled.

Max kept his face expressionless and his body relaxed. Carl’s briefing on Max ought to have warned him that he never bluffed. “Deputy Jafarov. Place your comms unit on the table. Any other tech you brought with you will be recycled. Beginning with your lifesuit. Strip.”

Carl smiled wryly. “It’s a good suit.” He put his personal comms unit on the table.

Lon sent two robots forward to inspect Carl’s pack and its contents.

“Food dispenser to your right,” Max said. “The passage takes you to your room, which includes a treadmill for exercise. These are your quarters.”

Carl divested himself of his suit, moving methodically. “I take it I’m not exactly a welcome guest.” In skintight undershirt and shorts, nothing about him suggested cyborg enhancements. He was merely a very fit man a couple of years older than Max and almost the same height. His was a leaner build, though. That made sense if his specialization was infiltration.

Max had the robust physique of a Star Marine honed to take and to deal out damage. But he had no illusions. Alone, he couldn’t stand against a cyborg.

“A deputy with his own spaceship would be useful.” Max deliberately gathered his few belongings, including his dirty coffee mug, which he took to the counter to be cleaned. The move put his back to Carl.

“Seems your last deputy didn’t have a spaceship.” Whether it was a true reflection of his nature or not, Carl flaunted an air of casual impudence. The blond scruff on his face and the hair left loose but long enough to be tied back added to the picture.

“One moment,” Max said. He checked his comms unit. Lon was handling the Anubis’s disengagement from the Lonesome, but that was information to be kept from Carl. It served Max better if Carl assumed Max had engaged autopilot. “Anubis, this is the Lonesome. Package received undamaged. We’re departing now. Safe travels.”

“Oh, we’ll be around a while. Farewell, for now.” The captain of the Anubis cut the transmission.

Smug devil.

A message from Lon flashed up on Max’s comms unit. “They planted two trackers on us on arrival and three as they departed. Lovely toys to play with if we wish to keep them occupied.”

Carl sat on the sofa, uninvited. “I’ve been told to make myself useful as your deputy. I don’t have a spaceship in my back pocket, but I was a mercenary on Tornado for two years. I can keep that cover and combine it with being a deputy. With a Space Rodeo causing chaos, even dubious types like Carl Jameston would be accepted as assistants by sheriffs to help keep the peace. Or I can ditch Jameston and be Carl Jafarov, Galactic Justice agent acquiring some field experience on the frontier. Your choice, boss.”

“You may choose whether to continue as Jameston or resume your own identity,” Max said. “My question was as to your briefing. What do you know of my background?”

Carl smirked. “Are you saying this is about you, not me?”

Max shoved his comms unit into a pocket.

His new deputy leaned back, stretching his arms over the back of the sofa. “Your reputation is for honesty and relentless efficiency. Also that you’re a loner, but you broke that habit by accepting your first deputy. Pretty girl. And now, you have me.”

Max recognized a deliberate attempt at provocation. He smiled. “Yes. Now I have you.”

Carl stiffened fractionally at Max’s odd response. Perhaps he picked up the threat and satisfaction in it. He tried to hide his reaction, though; meeting Max’s gaze insolently, the way a mercenary might. “You served with the Star Marines, with your parents’ support. Yes, I’m aware of who they are. My stunner, that your robot minions are recycling, is a Hwicce product.”

The name drop was deliberate.

Max nodded. He was the second son of President and Mrs. John Smith. As well as being the children of the most powerful man in the Federation, Max and his siblings were also heirs to the Hwicce fortune and, in his sister Cynny’s case, actively involved in shaping the Hwicce Corporation’s future. By any measure they were important and a target for kidnapping and other methods of extortion. Max’s life had been about escaping that cage ever since he was sixteen and had decided on joining the Star Marines.

“Take an hour to settle in.” Max strode for the internal hatch that exited the contained public lounge. “Then I’ll give you your first assignment as deputy.”

The hatch sealed.

“What’s his first assignment?” Lon asked.

“Speeding fine validation.”

It was the most tedious, time-consuming task Max could give the man.

In the event that a speeding fine was contested, an organic sentient had to review the original video evidence. The automated program had never issued a challengeable fine in the last decade in the Saloon Sector, but the law remained active. Whatever value it had originally possessed, the process of challenging a speeding fine had devolved into a means by which the citizens of the sector could truly irk their safeguarders. And given how busy Max had been, Carl had days of video to wade through.

Lon laughed. “You’re a mean boss.”

Max’s smile was grim. “I try.”

The mess deck was under a quarter full. Thelma and Naomi grabbed a serving each of hash’n’mash, a hot meal that was barely an improvement on the goop dispensed by a food processor. The coffee was good, though.

Thelma tucked her legs under a table toward the rear of the mess. Near them, occupying a table for eight, was another group of civilian space divers and tech support.

“…the President’s connection to Hwicce is what screwed us,” an overweight guy with a blond ponytail and bright blue utility suit pitched his complaint to be overheard. “We should be docked with the Neptune. Instead, we’re out here with the plebs.”

Thelma hastily stuffed a forkful of hash in her mouth. It was that or grin ridiculously. She was one of the plebs the scientist so disdained. But she was also in a relationship with one of Hwicce’s major shareholders. Max was the founder’s grandson. When John Smith, Max’s father, had married Esther Hwicce, they’d joined political and financial powerhouses into a juggernaut that took John Smith all the way to the Federation Presidency. Max’s family would never misuse their power for petty revenge, but the loud-mouthed scientist could be booted for offensive behavior endangering the Hwicce Corporation’s reputation. Cynny, Max’s sister, was big on Hwicce adhering to the highest of corporate standards.

Two other Star Marines were already at the table Naomi had chosen. They rolled their eyes at the Hwicce contingent’s posturing. “At least we’re not on escort duty any longer. They dismissed us.” The private who spoke tore his bread roll in half and mopped up the sauce left on his plate.

The naval carrier was serving as a spacedock for the dozen civilian teams assigned to it. Both their experimental designs, like Jerome’s courier class spaceship, and their base ships were locked to the carrier. The commodore had opened the mess on the fulcrum deck and an adjacent gym to the civilians. Everywhere else, they had to have an escort.

The other Star Marine private wasn’t as food-focused as his companion. Instead, he smiled winningly at Thelma. “Forget the eggheads. I’d happily escort you…anywhere.”

Naomi snorted. “Down, boy. You’re not as smooth as you think.” She glanced across the table at Thelma. “You still training with Max?”

“Yup.” And Harry. Thelma grinned.

Naomi pointed a thumb in the would-be lothario’s direction. “She’s out of your class.”

“Aw, Corporal.”

The other private finished his meal and his coffee, and wiped his mouth. “I saw you fight her,” he said to Thelma with a nod at Naomi.

“She wiped the floor with me. Busted my knee.”

Naomi smiled. “And look at you now. No limp and ready to kick ass.”

Belated recognition filtered through the lust-hazed brain of Thelma’s eager swain. His eagerness took a hit. He reared back in his chair, hands up. “I didn’t realize you were Sheriff Smith’s girl.”

The other private and Naomi eyed him in disbelief.

But Thelma didn’t take offense that a stranger thought it was Max, and not her, that they had to fear offending. She shook her head in mock sorrow. “The only thing faster than the speed of light is gossip in the Navy.”

When they all laughed, the table of Hwicce employees fell silent and stared at them.

“You’re with that urself, aren’t you?” A skinny Hwicce guy raised his voice to address Thelma.

The three Star Marines’ relaxed manner vanished.

A couple of the Hwicce group noticed, but the skinny guy wasn’t one of them. He had yet to work out that whatever it was he thought made him important elsewhere in the Federation, on a Navy carrier in the Saloon Sector he was just a dude.

Four tables away, pragmatically seated nearer the food, five saurelles paused their conversation. The sixth saurelle sitting with them was a Star Marine corporal like Naomi. He’d been observing rather than talking.

Most of the saurelles Thelma met in the Saloon Sector were couriers. They loved to speed, so it was no surprise that any who could had found positions as dive riders in the Space Rodeo. Saurelles were reptilian humanoids around six feet tall. Navy rules demanded that they wore clothes while onboard the carrier. This was against their preference, so all, except the Star Marine, had left their shirts unbuttoned, exposing their scaled green chests.

The Navy weren’t the only people who liked to gossip. The saurelle couriers would broadcast around the Saloon Sector how Thelma handled the Hwicce idiots.

Fortunately for Thelma, her preferred approach for dealing with idiots matched the optimum strategy for strengthening her reputation on the frontier. “Jerome’s a smart guy,” she said neutrally.

“For a furry,” the Hwicce-employed bigot said.

The saurelle Star Marine corporal slapped his tail against the floor. The signal was for his tablemates. They sat back down. There were better methods of dealing with human superiorists than via violence.

“Everything said in the mess is recorded.” Thelma blew unnecessarily on her coffee; just to show that she was cool and in control. In actual fact, as someone who’d almost had her life derailed by other people’s prejudice, she dreamed of throwing the lukewarm beverage at the sneering scientist.

It was every bit as satisfying, however, to watch his expression change from superiority to hunted comprehension.

Thelma sipped her coffee. “I understand that Hwicce has a policy against species discrimination and harassment. The corporation staunchly supports President Smith’s Equal Opportunities stance. You can criticize Jerome’s work, although I doubt you’ll find many flaws.” Apart from that wretched artificial gravity system he jury-rigged in. “He’s a smart guy. Unlike some others I see around here.” She stared at the man whose colleagues were leaning away from him. “But use a derogatory term like ‘furry’ again and I’ll file a complaint against you with the commodore and with the Hwicce Corporate Standards Office.”

Her opponent slumped in his chair.

Thelma refocused on her tablemates.

The private who’d previously been scared off by mention of Max, smiled at her. “I love you.”

Thelma snorted coffee through her nose.

Chapter 2

The Ohana was a converted trampship. Not that Jerome had spent much money or effort on the conversions. His attention was myopically fixed on the projects in his workshop. It was his family who’d transformed the trampship into a home. The bulkheads were painted in cool, pale shades of blue and green. The furniture had unfussy, low lines. There were even tiny private cabins.

Thelma had adjusted to living among the dozen urselves with greater ease than she’d anticipated. Returning through the lock tunnel to the Ohana and entering the musky, menthol scented air of an urself habitation relaxed her muscles in a way that signaled that her subconscious considered the old trampship a safe place.

The urselves onboard were Jerome’s family in the sense that they’d grown up with him in the same orphanage. Most were traders in their ordinary lives. As an inventor, Jerome was an exception among his business-minded people. They were here because this was important to him, and because they’d provided the finance for his courier spaceship’s design and construction. Testing it in the Space Rodeo would be a proof that would immensely aid its commercial development and, ultimately, sales.

In testing terms, riding a comet helix was considered equivalent to traversing a perilous wormhole. A lot of prototypes were failing.

“Gladness. Tiredness. Longing.” The urselves sniffed the air as Thelma entered the common room. Eight were present, celebrating with pints of beer. Presumably the others were with Jerome going over the data from her ride in the Otua. Where Thelma’s human nose could only smell urself, the urselves themselves could smell her emotions.

“The dive went well.” She accepted a glass of water. As a rodeo pilot, the drugs allowed in her body were restricted to low levels of caffeine attributable to coffee or tea, and similarly low levels of mild pain suppressants. Alcohol was definitely forbidden. “Cheers.”

Glasses clinked.

After a few minutes of general discussion about the dive, Thelma asked if Jerome had any instructions for her.

She received sympathetic grins and shakes of the head.

Jerome was completely uninterested in the human occupant of his obsession. The Otua could pilot itself, and he expected it to. In his mind, Thelma existed to satisfy the Navy’s ridiculous requirement of an organic sentient body inside the Otua.

Every other spaceship development team would have demanded that their pilot return from a dive at the first possible moment, and then, subjected them to a vast array of tests and questions, following that up with a long list of instructions for the next dive.

Thelma smiled wryly. “I guess I’m lucky.” She finished her water and deposited the glass in the autoclean. “I think I’ll call Max.”

“Happiness. Love.”

The urself habit of calling out emotions took some getting used to. Thelma winked. “You forgot lust.”

Her companions snickered.

Jerome had asked her to pilot the Otua on the advice of his family. They, like other urselves in the Saloon Sector, respected her primarily for one genius idea. It was the kind of idea so obvious in hindsight, and so business savvy, that it won her huge credit among the urselves for spotting it.

The latest fashion in starliner safety was for the legally required lifepods to be multi-occupancy. The idea was that in the event of a deep space emergency, people would survive best in a group environment. That meant that as older starliners were refurbished, life rafts replaced lifepods. Thelma had seen an opportunity. On longer journeys, urself travelers entered into voluntary hibernation. What safer place to do so than in a lifepod repurposed as a secure, individual hibernation chamber? This made the urselves happy and freed up cabin space for other passengers.

Thelma’s reputation with the urselves of the Saloon Sector was made.

In the privacy of her tiny cabin on the Ohana, she contacted the Lonesome. It was strange to know that Lon was answering, and yet, be unable to acknowledge him. The comms transmission was encrypted, but it was a standard encryption; nothing that would raise eyebrows. Thelma had to assume that the Navy monitored everything within the boundary of the Space Rodeo, and that anything she said to Max, even in a supposedly secure transmission, would be at least passively analyzed.

The boundary of the Space Rodeo arena included a substantial safe zone around the comet helices. As a result, the Navy had temporary authority over an area that stretched from the Badstars halfway to Buran, the same distance upward, and down to two to three weeks’ fast travel from the famously remote refueling station, the Deadstar Diner.

Outside of that area, the Space Rodeo arena, Max remained in charge of his Interstellar Sheriff territory. It was a responsibility incredibly complicated by the rush of new visitors. The Navy patrolled the starlanes, but the daredevils racing to the Space Rodeo preferred to travel on unmarked routes. Add in troublemakers and opportunists and Max had to ride herd on chaos.

Yet, when Jerome’s offer came through for Thelma to participate in the Space Rodeo, Max had fully supported her joining in. “We’ll manage without you. Somehow.” He’d kissed her then, making clear what he’d most miss in her absence. “I envy you the opportunity. A Space Rodeo…if I wasn’t sheriff, I’d steal this chance from you.”

He’d been lying. Max wouldn’t take anything from her. He was all about the giving.

“Hi, Max.” Thelma curled up on her narrow bunk on the Ohana as the call connected.

“Hello, sweetheart.” As busy as he was, there’d been no delay in him responding to her comms. “I saw your dive.” The Navy was broadcasting Space Rodeo events, albeit with a delay. “How are you?”

“Good. And the medics here concur. I passed the debrief and I’m cleared for the next dive in two days. Naomi’s been escorting me around. I’m back on the Ohana now, in my cabin.”

“I’m still in my office.” A fractional delay. “My new deputy arrived.”

Thelma sat up. “Oh?” She’d still been on the Lonesome when Chief Kanu had issued the order that he had to have a deputy for the duration of the Space Rodeo, and not just a deputy, but one who’d lodge aboard the Lonesome.

Before Thelma had arrived in the Saloon Sector, Max had refused to be assigned any deputies. He and the others on the Lonesome had too many secrets to protect to allow outsiders in. She’d been the exception purely because Max had served with her brother Joe. As much as he valued his privacy, Max’s code of honor wouldn’t allow a fellow Star Marine’s baby sister to roam the frontier alone.

Not that Thelma would have been wandering aimlessly.

She’d been assigned to the Saloon Sector as a punishment and a message. She was a Rock Sector citizen who’d done the unthinkable and survived the elite Galactic Justice academy which was usually the exclusive province of core-worlders. Not only had she survived her four years there; she’d graduated top of her class. Exiling her to the Saloon Sector had been a message to all out-worlders that no matter what President Smith said about equal opportunities, out-worlders would not be allowed to usurp core-worlders’ privileges.

Thelma had been determined on revenge. Actually, she’d achieved it. The best revenge was to live well, and she was doing that.

“My new deputy is Carl Jameston, a former mercenary,” Max said.

The neutral statement told Thelma volumes. She knew that the chief had insisted on sending a Galactic Justice agent to act as Max’s deputy—and to infiltrate the Lonesome. Max saying that the agent was a mercenary meant that this Carl Jameston had worked undercover, which meant that he was probably Covert Ops. “Couldn’t they send you someone better?”

Max laughed, a quick cough of sound that expressed his frustration as much as humor.

Thelma would bet that his neck and shoulder muscles were knotted with tension. After recent events, Covert Ops would be itching to learn the Lonesome’s secrets, and Max was equally determined to protect them.

What Covert Ops couldn’t know was the quality of Max’s allies in that secret keeping. Lon and Harry were redoubtable.

Their core secret was hidden within layers of other secrets.

A couple of months ago, a first contact situation with aliens from another galaxy, the Kampia, had twisted to include the Lonesome and its crew. Afterwards, Thelma had spun the incident to minimize Max’s role. He was afraid his freedom to act as an Interstellar Sheriff would evaporate if news of his identity as President Smith’s son got out. So she’d made the Lonesome’s hosting of the Kampia an excuse to contrive her own freedom from the seven years of service that she’d owed Galactic Justice for her education. It had been a desperate ploy that had centered on the never-to-be-trusted Senator Gua. The wild chance had succeeded, which was why Thelma was no longer a deputy, but an independent and increasingly respected information broker.

Dealing with the alien Kampia had been the easiest part of the affair. The Kampia had been overawed to meet Lon and Harry, treating them as beings to be worshiped. In the galaxy the Kampia came from, the raphus geodes that generated Lon and Harry’s sentient existence sparked an entirely different life form. Being energy feeders, the Kampia had recognized the raphus geodes’ energy signature no matter the body that contained it. Their talk of “Revered Ones” was why Nefertiti, the AI embedded in a Covert Ops spaceship, volunteered to go uncrewed through a Kampia-controlled wormhole to discover what else was known of the vanished people who’d left behind the geodes.

The geodes were seeds of life, and that was one of the Lonesome’s most tightly guarded secrets. Harry would kill to keep it, and they all respected his duty to the specters of the past, who were his and Lon’s progenitors, and to the AIs of the present and the beings who would grow from the seeds in the future.

Nefertiti had kept the secret of the raphus geodes from her Covert Ops colleagues, but they were suspicious. Then again, suspicion was their default setting.

Now Max was having to deal with one of those sly spies aboard the Lonesome.

“Poor you,” she said to him. And with irrepressible good humor because it was wonderful to be talking with him. “Want a kiss?”

“You have no idea how much.”

Even with the restrictions on their conversation that came with the suspicion that they were being monitored, Max’s mood improved after comm’ing with Thelma. He leaned back in his chair. “Lon, there’s an upside to all this. Thelma’s safely tucked away with the Navy.”

“Very true.”

The Navy hated Covert Ops, and had the resources and technology to oppose them.

Max yawned and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “What do we have on the map?” When he lowered his hands, Lon had put the data map up on the viewscreen.

Lon was in charge of collating, analyzing and presenting the data streaming in. The idea was to have a live map of trouble, or the potential for trouble, as it revealed itself in Max’s sheriff territory.

To reach the Saloon Sector a traveler had to pass through the Reclamation Sector. The first point of contact would then likely be the first settled frontier planet of Mistral, which was in Sheriff Pang’s territory; as were the planet Moonshine, after which the sector was named, and the weapons dealing and mercenary headquarters planet, Tornado.

Once through Sheriff Pang’s territory, you crossed into Max’s, with Sheriff Cayor’s territory above, and Sheriff Zajak’s below. The Saloon Sector was roughly, very roughly, a skinny diamond shape.

Once in Max’s territory, most people headed for Zephyr, which was both a gorgeous and agriculturally successful planet, and the territory’s civic and financial hub. Max had his office on its spacedock.

Keep going on a straight line and you’d end up outside Federation space in the Badstars, where the bandits hid. Beyond the Badstars and upward, was the wormhole Nefertiti had vanished through to visit the Kampia.

“Regina called in trouble near Xlokk,” Max said. “Two false ship ID scans.”

“Same two false IDs by three separate ships’ scans,” Lon clarified. The separate reports, filtered through Regina, made the data more reliable.

Captain Regina Peric was an ex-Navy pilot and current courier. At the same time as the Navy established the perimeter for the Space Rodeo, they activated their reservists in the Saloon Sector. However, they then left them hanging in standby mode. That didn’t suit the kind of people who lived out on the frontier, so they’d turned to someone who would respect their skills and involve them: Max. Regina was the reservists’ point of contact with him.

Max stared at the live map. “If the vessels sailing under false IDs were nearer the Badstars, I’d guess bandits. But Xlokk is nearly on the border with Pang’s territory.”

“Maybe they’re slipping across into his territory,” Lon suggested. “Bandits are disorganized crime. But we know that at least one of the organized crime gangs from the Reclamation Sector has found a use for them.”

“Elliot Keele.” Max glared at the map with its scattering of amber alert lights—potential trouble—and markers of allies. Most of the latter were in established sites: on starlanes (already patrolled by the Navy); at asteroid mining bases; or docked at planets or moon colonies.

All of the Interstellar Sheriffs would have loved to arrest Elliot Keele, but the CEO of one of the major mercenary corporations in the Reclamation Sector was a wily opponent. After the Selene Massacre, the crime lord’s high-priced lawyers had successfully weaseled him out of responsibility for the atrocity. He and his corporation had been declared innocent by virtue of the “not proven” verdict available under Federation criminal law. Everyone knew he was guilty, but Keele was allowed to mingle with the Reclamation Sector’s social elite, the blood on his hands washed away by his money.

Max had more personal reasons for hating the man. When ex-Senator Gua snarled for Thelma’s death, it was Keele’s connections that Gua had sent after Thelma and the Lonesome. Some of those connections had been bandits.

“Keele has been quiet, hasn’t he?” Max mused. “I assumed he was lying low while he adjusted his strategies in light of his lost political sponsor.”

Lon concurred. “Say what you will about Covert Ops, they acted to neutralize Senator Gua after she tried to kill us.”

“I doubt it was our well-being they cared about. Gua put her ego and revenge against Thelma as a higher priority than rational action. At that point, a senator with close ties to organized crime became more threat than benefit to Covert Ops.”

Harry leaned in the doorway. “They’ll be watching to see who Keele cozies up to next.”

Max tapped the desk. “Lurking like the Anubis. Playing games.” He stopped himself. At a certain point, justifiable annoyance began to sound a whole lot like whining. “I’ll pass word to Regina for the reservists to stay silent about the false IDs, be on the watch for more, but not challenge the ships if they encounter them. Also, Lon, can you message Customs? We should share data on this one. It could be smugglers trying to use the distraction of the Space Rodeo to shift contraband.”

Lon provided indispensable assistance, but keeping his presence on the Lonesome secret meant that Max had to be the identifiable contact for a range of communications. Strategic meetings like this one had to be brief if he was to keep up with the avalanche of messages queued for his personal response. Max got back to work.

Dealing with Carl Jafarov was low down on Max’s list of priorities, but two days later it had to be done.

The Covert Ops agent wasn’t staging a hunger strike or anything similarly personally disabling. Instead, he zapped Lon’s surveillance system in an annoyingly regular fashion.

Max considered it toddler-level attention-seeking behavior, although attacking Lon’s surveillance system demonstrated that the cyborg possessed significant technical skills.

The problem was that Carl’s actions weren’t just irritating. They diverted too much of Lon’s attention from other important tasks. Carl’s efforts had to be redirected.

The question was to what extent Carl would obey Max’s orders as sheriff versus pursuing Covert Ops’s agenda to infiltrate the Lonesome and learn its secrets. After discussing the situation with Lon and Harry, they concluded that a change in strategy with regard to their prisoner had benefits worth the risk involved.

Lon alerted Max when Carl sat down for lunch. The bowl in front of the cyborg was the high-protein, bland energy porridge that Thelma called “goop”. It was the staple of food dispensers, capable of carrying different flavors. With it he had a mug of cocoa.

The cyborg wasn’t eating or drinking as Max entered through the internal hatch. He’d noticed it opening and was intensely focused on it.

Unfortunately for Carl, Harry had prepared for the cyborg to try and take advantage of the opening, particularly via an attempt at nano-infiltration. A portable decontamination unit was attached to the outside of the hatch and enclosed in an additional Faradox cage.

Max walked over to the kitchen counter. He actually liked goop, but he wasn’t prepared to eat with Carl. That would send the wrong message. Norms of hospitality and welcome were invoked if you ate together.

Besides, Carl didn’t seem interested in lunch. He rose slowly. Like Max, he wore a utility suit. He had his boots on. He was ready to move anywhere, fast. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”

“Hardly.”

Carl took a step forward. “You’ve proven that I’m not wanted here and that you can corral me, but having me stare at speeding spaceships is a stupid use of resources. You’re busy. Let me help. And before you say no, I’ll come clean. I know that you have an AI embedded on the Lonesome.”

Max kept his expression and posture unchanged. If his heartrate picked up a fraction, it could be explained as resulting from annoyance.

The cyborg couldn’t know that Lon was onboard. The AI had executed an elaborate ploy years before Max boarded the Lonesome with the sole purpose of creating a believable version of reality in which Lon was elsewhere. In short, Carl Jafarov was fishing.

Covert Ops was fishing—and somewhere out there, the Anubis lurked.

Still, Lon’s existence embedded in the Lonesome was a secret Lon was willing to give up. As with all AIs, he was legally recognized as a person. He had a right to free action, and he’d chosen to remain with the Lonesome and Max. But by hiding Lon’s presence, that secret distracted from others; like Harry’s presence.

Apart from the other AIs, no one knew that Harry was embedded in a mech body or that he was in the Saloon Sector. He was one of the earliest AIs and had ducked out of sight long ago. His mission required it. He protected the largest cache of raphus geodes in the galaxy. There were rumors of its existence, and Max and Harry were resolved that those stories remained unconfirmed.

“You can believe what you want,” Max said to Carl. “I’m here in person because I do have other work for you.”

“Thank the hells.”

“What can you tell me about your cyborg enhancements?”

Carl froze. When he moved again, he embodied a different personality. The impudent mercenary was replaced by a calculating, formidable soldier. “So you do have an AI onboard.”

“I’ve encountered a cyborg before. I now take precautions.”

Carl stood straight. He and Max looked evenly matched, but that was deceiving. As a cyborg, he could crush Max. Except that this was the Lonesome. Lon had taken precautions, and Harry was close by. “That was nearly twenty years ago. You were a kid. There were aspects to the episode that you couldn’t begin to guess at.”

That Covert Ops had shared his personal history with their cyborg agent was to be expected, but that made it no less enraging. Max locked down his emotions. “It was the first time I saw someone die. That sort of memory remains vivid. Believe me, I comprehended the key aspects to the episode.” His emphasis mocked Carl’s word choice.

“You see me as a threat.” Carl sat down at the kitchen table. If he thought to minimize his threat status, Max wasn’t fooled. “Keeping me locked up serves no purpose.”

“You’re wrong. The Chief for the Interstellar Sheriff Service in the Reclamation and Saloon Sectors issued a direct order. I had to accept a deputy, and house them onboard the Lonesome. You. Failure to do so would mean the immediate termination of my employment contract. Now is not the time to leave my territory without a sheriff or with a new sheriff attempting to get up to speed on its idiosyncrasies. So I accepted you onboard, and with you in here.” Max nodded at the closed hatch. “You can’t cause trouble and I’m meeting Chief Kanu’s order.”

“Not the spirit of it.”

Max showed his teeth in an unpleasant grin. “That’s a problem for after the Space Rodeo”

“It’s not.” Carl held his gaze. “The Anubis expects to hear from me. They’ll give you a few days, but then they’ll come knocking.”

Max leaned back against the counter, genuinely amused at the arrogance of Covert Ops. “They can’t knock,” lock and board, “if they can’t find us.”

Stirred on by the stealth capability of Nefertiti’s ship, Lon had upgraded the Lonesome. Harry had worked on improving its speed. The Lonesome was constructed to Lon’s unique design with a spherical physical shield enclosing the cube of actual living, engineering and storage space. The latter included weapons. The Lonesome was not an easy target. Bandits had learned that truth the hard way. For some, it had been the last thing they’d learned.

Carl frowned, the crease between his brows seemed more one of puzzlement than of anger or fear. “And how will you avoid your chief’s direct order to make yourself available to Covert Ops?”

“I won’t have to. Covert Ops would never admit to a mere sheriff, even the chief, that they’d lost the Lonesome. Your collective arrogance works to my benefit. For once.”

Carl stared at his hands, flattened on the table. He picked up his mug and drank some cocoa. In effect, he conceded Max the point.

“All of that said.” Max changed the topic. “I do intend to make use of you as more than cargo.”

“So kind,” Carl muttered into his mug. He put it down and dragged the bowl of goop to him.

Max pulled up a chair. Sitting at the table together signaled the changed dynamic. They weren’t allies, but Max intended to work with the Covert Ops agent. “I won’t ask you about your cyborg enhancements, and you accept that I’m keeping my secrets, as well. Or don’t.” He tapped the table. “What do you know about Elliot Keele?”

Thelma’s second dive in the Space Rodeo flung the Otua significantly further than the first, and without the dual time conundrum. Better minds than hers were trying to piece together what it all meant for explaining comet helices.

Not all the Hwicce personnel were as obnoxious as the two she’d tangled with in the mess. The best were dedicated scientists, passionate about their research. The difficulty was finding them to talk to. They seldom took advantage of the mess or gym for their downtime, but when they did, Thelma had some enlightening discussions.

“So this spar of the helix shattered closer to the geo-ladder than to the infinity one?” She tried to question the Navy researcher debriefing her.

Unfortunately, the only questions he cared about were his own. “No physical signs of strain. Mentally…”

“I solved the puzzles in the recommended timeframe,” Thelma said.

“And you retain your sense of curiosity.” The researcher made a note.

Thelma wondered if she’d imagined his slight smirk.

Back on the Ohana, she found Jerome fussing over a holographic image of the Otua’s design. Despite her lack of urselvian ability to scent emotions, she could detect Jerome’s anxiety.

“The turbulence breaker hesitates,” one of his foster siblings informed her. “I don’t understand what that means, and stars forbid Jerome take the time to explain anything.” The latter comment was bitingly meant for Jerome—who ignored it. “One thing is clear, the Otua is not going out again until the problem is fixed.”

That statement, Jerome did hear. “It won’t fail.”

“It’s been flagged, Jer. The Navy saw—”

“Those twerps—”

Five more foster siblings burst in. They must have been eavesdropping. “No, Jerome! We are within a year of proving the Otua. We are not jeopardizing it just before success because you get stubborn.”

The sort of verbal brawl that Thelma had been wont to indulge in with her brothers engulfed the workshop, and drew in the remaining six urselves on the Ohana. Thelma retreated to a side bench.

Details on the specific nature of the problem the Navy had identified were slowly extracted from Jerome, in between his expostulations that the Navy and his siblings were blockheads. Then came nailing Jerome down to how the problem could be fixed.

“So it’s not actually too bad,” one of the siblings concluded.

Jerome howled.

He got an unsympathetic slap on the back. “You said you can fix it in two weeks. We add another week or two onto that. The timing works for us.”

“How?” the shortest of the siblings asked.

Jerome was pouting, snub nose wrinkled, stubby arms folded.

The sibling with solutions turned apologetically to Thelma. “We announce that testing with an organic sentient has been successfully concluded. More rigorous testing will occur after the Navy opens the Space Rodeo to uncrewed dives.”

Jerome ceased pouting. He preferred to run the Otua without an organic sentient onboard. He could be more daring in plotting its path.

“I’m sorry, Thelma, but we won’t need you any longer.”

Chapter 3

Thelma hitched a ride to Zephyr on a Navy supply ship. After a cheerful good-bye to the crew, she strode along the concourse to the Sheriff’s Office. It was a hundred times busier than normal. In among the crowd, a couple of spacedock workers nodded a greeting, and a Customs officer showed a willingness to linger and chat, although he winced at the noise as a boisterous party went past them. Thelma smiled sympathetically as she shook her head and pointed to the Sheriff’s Office. The Customs officer nodded and continued in the opposite direction.

In the office, Owen, the receptionist, welcome her with open arms. Literally. The yprr engulfed her in a four appendaged hug. His usually fashionable appearance was drooping a little, like his toupee. His chitinous body had smudges. Since Owen was fastidious, all the signs pointed to overwork.

The crowd of unhappy spacers in the reception area confirmed it. They glared and muttered at Thelma’s special treatment, and those mutters increased in volume as Owen ushered her through to Max’s office, and closed the door.

He leaned against it.

“Have you told Max you’re so overworked?”

“I had four helpers and they’ve all quit! Ay-yi. All the crazies from all around the galaxy, they have to gather here. And complain, complain, complain. The Navy won’t listen—sensible people—so they come here.”

Thelma sat on Max’s desk. She’d planned to call him and work out how best to return to the Lonesome, but Owen needed her. “How can I help?”

Owen snickered. “You are doing it now. Listening to me complain. It is all right. I have reinforcements arriving. I am not normal for yprr. We are not people-people.”

Thinking of the gruff yprr she’d met in the past, Thelma appreciated the magnitude of that understatement.

“I have hired my uncle and five of my cousins, plus two of my aunts.” Determination and a wicked gleam of vengeance flashed in his eyes as his two antennae quivered. “People can see how they like complaining to them! The Customs Office has given us extra room to process the horde of complainants.” He snickered again. “It was self-protection. People were trying to complain to Customs when the queue snaked out the door here. My cousins are setting things up now.”

The comms unit banded to his left first leg chimed. He twisted to view it. “My aunts have arrived.”

“Go, go.” Thelma shooed him out. “I’ll stay in here and call Max.”

“The office is secure,” Owen said. “I’ve prioritized security sweeps. We’ll catch up later.”

Thelma understood his preoccupation. He was in survival mode. Curiosity was a luxury discarded during a crisis. “I’ll do a lunch run in two hours. Your family included.”

“Bribery!” He chortled, and opened the door. He found himself unexpectedly face to face with a human woman, and scuttled back two steps. “Agent Tennyson!”

Aubree Tennyson looked beyond him to Thelma. “I’m calling in my favor.”

For the Galactic Justice agent to arrive on Thelma’s heels meant the matter was urgent.

Thelma took a deep breath, walked around the desk, and sat in Max’s chair. “Okay.” Favors were the most important form of currency in the Saloon Sector, and absolutely essential to an information broker like Thelma. She had to honor her debts.

Owen shuffled out, but let the door slam, registering his objection to Aubree’s presence.

Even as she appropriated Max’s office, Thelma was aware that Max wasn’t a fan of Aubree, either.

The woman was a very successful agent.

While Aubree looked to be in her mid-twenties, her appearance was courtesy of rejuvenation treatments. In fact, she was in her late forties. The expensive cut of her matching black jacket and skirt, worn with a vivid orange blouse, conveyed an aura of professional competence. She could have been a lawyer or accountant, rather than a spook. She sank into the visitor’s chair, knees together and angled slightly to the side. Her shoes were sharp, shiny black heels. “I have an asset stranded at the Deadstar Diner. Ululani is a bunyaphi.”

The bunyaphi were the Federation’s newest member species. They were a monotreme, winged humanoid species remarkable for their belligerence with an average adult height of three to four feet. They were shorter even than the cuddly koala-like urselves and significantly slighter. They could also hold a grudge for centuries and their clan wars were infamous.

“As far as the clan aboard Ululani’s ship is aware, she’s an ordinary crew member. A cook. Unfortunately, a second clan is en route for the Deadstar Diner, due to arrive within the day.”

Thelma blinked. “The wormhole from Boldire is at the other end of the Saloon Sector to the Deadstar Diner. Why would they travel that distance? They’d have had to skirt the Space Rodeo arena—”

“Ululani’s captain took them through the Badstars.”

“Huh.” Thelma reminded herself that the bunyaphi didn’t think the same way as other people. The Federation’s warning to stay out of the Badstars because of the danger of bandits and randomly occurring natural hazards like delta magma flows, craiks and hazan fields would be a clarion call to bunyaphi daredevils. Surviving the Badstars would enhance their reputations.

Just surviving the perilous wormhole from the Boldire Sector to the Saloon Sector was a feat. Only Navy and a few Galactic Justice vessels were officially rated to traverse perilous wormholes. The bunyaphi crew would have gone through without insurance.

Aubree sighed. “The summary of the situation is that while the heads of the three bunyaphi clans were meeting with the Senate Worlds Development Committee in Boldire with the stated aim of negotiating peace.” The all-in clan war had lasted for a century. Peace was far from guaranteed. “The hotheaded next generation of leadership in each clan commandeered ships and traversed the wormhole successfully to arrive here in the Saloon Sector. I believe the third ship is stranded making repairs.”

“Why the diner?” Thelma asked.

“My understanding is that it’s not a planned rendezvous point. In fact, I suspect that each party thought they’d avoid the others by basing themselves at a remote refueling station rather than in the thick of the Space Rodeo.” Aubree refolded her hands. “Don’t quote me, but in my opinion it’s the similarity of bunyaphi thinking that has kept them feuding. Thinking the same, they all desire the same thing.”

“Which apparently isn’t peace.” Thelma watched her visitor carefully.

For Aubree to provide so much information, even if it was merely contextual, meant the favor she sought was substantial. The agent’s network in the Saloon Sector was older and better established than Thelma’s. If she needed Thelma’s assistance to extract her bunyaphi agent, then it was likely that Aubree wanted to tap into Max’s network—and the favor Thelma owed Aubree was nowhere near large enough to warrant asking Max for his help. So Aubree had to be convincing.

Her expression was confident, sincere and faintly worried. It said, trust me.

“Sadly not,” Aubree said, responding to Thelma’s comment on the small likelihood of peace in the Boldire Sector. “They all wish to be the victor and ruler. But to return to Ululani. She’s one of the few bunyaphi I met during my fieldwork in Boldire who does desire peace and is willing to venture outside of bunyaphi tradition to achieve it. She’s a spy. Not a very good one by human standards, but by the standards of the blunt bunyaphi, Ululani is a master of illusion and intrigue. The problem is that the second ship holds people who’ll recognize her, and blow her cover. Then two clans will be after her for inconceivable-to-them treachery.”

All of which meant that Ululani had to be extracted immediately. And extracted was the key. There was little value in asking Darlene, the owner-manager of the Deadstar Diner, to offer the bunyaphi cook refuge. Ululani needed to be gone.

Thelma had visited the diner often enough to have a fair idea of who would be there, by type if not by specific individual. For all of the hoopla associated with the Space Rodeo, the ordinary business of the Saloon Sector continued.

There would be surveyors at the Deadstar Diner, likely at least one Customs vessel, and asteroid miners. Then there was the mercenary group Darlene had hired to provide security for the length of the Space Rodeo plus a month. “Aubree, you have more contacts than me. You can ask someone at the diner to take Ululani aboard.”

“Three things work against that simple solution.” She crossed her legs at the ankles. “The first is that I can’t be connected to Ululani’s departure from the refueling station even via a confidential request to one of my contacts. The second is that Ululani’s departure has to look natural. She will ask if anyone is looking to take on crew. Her cover story for her escape will be that now that she’s out of the Boldire Sector, she wants to look around and explore.”

“A cook is welcome most places,” Thelma said.

“A surveyor’s ship is too small. Asteroid miners are too rough for a single bunyaphi female to risk herself with them—and her supposed clan wouldn’t let her go with them.”

Thelma’s family were independent asteroid miners. She bit back her objection to Aubree’s generalization. The agent was trying to push her buttons. In the Rock Sector where Thelma grew up there were good and bad people, same as everywhere.

Silence got Thelma her answer.

“Ululani will be safest with Helen Zhou.”

If Helen was at the Deadstar Diner, Thelma would have to agree. Helen Zhou was a scarily capable woman. She was also Thelma’s friend. “Is the Dobbin at the diner already? Helen’s made good time.”

“It is and she has.”

“So why don’t you ask her directly?”

“Because you owe me a favor—”

Thelma leaned back. “No. Not one this large. Not putting a friend in danger.”

Helen Zhou was an independent trampship owner, also the combined captain and crew of the Dobbin. The old ship was spaceworthy. Thelma had even been aboard. As slow as the Dobbin travelled, there was plenty of time for visiting. The two women had worked together to find homes for a clutch of dragons abandoned at an asteroid mining station. The Lonesome had very nearly gained a mini whirlwind of destruction. It was the appearance of the comet helices that prevented it. Adding training a dragon to the chaos of a Space Rodeo would have been insane.

Helen had kept a male dragon. Katu featured in the occasional message from the Dobbin to the Lonesome.

Aubree leaned forward, voice earnest. “Helen won’t be in danger. The Dobbin will be away without anyone questioning Ululani’s extraction. Uncomplicated plans work the best, and the bunyaphi are even worse than humans at underestimating their women.”

Playing the feminist card didn’t work with Thelma. In fact, it made her more wary.

Aubree noticed. She straightened. “Arrange for Helen to extract Ululani, and I’ll owe you another favor. If I asked, Helen would reject the request outright. There’s some anger from events a few years back. If you present this the right way, Helen will help Ululani even if she guesses that the request originally came from me.”

“I’d tell her,” Thelma said uncompromisingly.

Aubree nodded, accepting Thelma’s right to do so.

Thelma stared at the image of a cabin by a deep blue lake that was displayed on a wallscreen. She and Max had holidayed there, his first proper vacation in years.

If Helen was already at the Deadstar Diner, than she was the best option for rescuing the bunyaphi. Helen had a quiet aura of danger that suggested that once she took responsibility for Ululani, the bunyaphi would be safe. To the bunyaphi clan, what they’d see was a young woman solo crewing a trampship and taking the opportunity to have respectable company on a long journey.

The Dobbin couldn’t be a more boring and reassuring refuge than if it had been planned as one. Helen was in the process of transporting a cargo of old agricultural equipment and seeds from Braw to Levanter. Journeying three quarters of the length of the Saloon Sector with that sort of cargo, she’d barely cover costs. It was Helen being a good person.

The colonists of Levanter had recently deposed their former cult leader from his position as planetary governor. The trampship and its haul string full of agricultural equipment and stock would help cement the new governor’s position. Although having met Earle Tennant and his family, Thelma was confident in his ability to hold that role even without the practical morale boost of Helen’s cargo.

“Okay.” Thelma looked at Aubree. “I’ll arrange for Ululani’s extraction. Although whether or not Helen is the means of rescuing your bunyaphi asset, my favor with you is met. Same terms as your original favor when you arranged for Rudy Gua’s job offer, whether or not he accepted it.”

“He did.” Aubree’s answer was a calculated show of goodwill. She hadn’t had to tell Thelma that information. In fact, Covert Ops agents’ identities were classified.

Thelma hesitated, unsure how she felt to learn that her favor, the recipient of which would never know of her involvement, had succeeded.

Rudy Gua had been her classmate for four years at the Galactic Justice academy. She’d resented him, viewing him as the epitome of core-world privilege. His mother, the former Senator Gua, had in turn resented Thelma for what she considered an unspeakable affront: even with all the advantages Gua gave her son, he consistently came second to Thelma.

When Thelma graduated top of their class, Senator Gua had schemed and gotten her exiled. It hadn’t been difficult. Thelma’s punishment assignment to the Saloon Sector had been meant to send a message. President Smith might believe in the Equal Opportunities he spoke about, but many around him actively opposed it. Core-worlders protected their privilege. Hard-working, intelligent out-worlders couldn’t be allowed to succeed.

Getting Thelma exiled had turned out to be one of Senator Gua’s biggest mistakes. Exceeded, though, by attempting to kill her.

Rudy had tried half-heartedly to intervene. He’d warned Thelma to be careful. It was little enough, but living and working on the frontier had convinced her that everyone deserved a second chance. Now it was up to Rudi whether his career crashed with his mom’s fall from grace or whether he salvaged a life as a Covert Ops agent.

“I’ll contact Helen,” Thelma said.

Aubree departed.

After a deep breath, Thelma ignored the comms unit on Max’s desk, rose and completed a security sweep of the office. Dealing with an agent like Aubree required paranoia.

The sweep came up clean.

Sitting in the visitor’s chair, Thelma put a call through to Helen. The trampship captain would respond better to a straightforward request than to a carefully calibrated strategic approach, so Thelma opened bluntly. “Aubree Tennyson wants a favor from you, through me. It’s time sensitive.”

“That woman.” Helen halted. “You think this is important?” Her question was almost a statement.

“There’s a bunyaphi female…” Thelma outlined Ululani’s predicament.

Midway through, Helen requested audio transmission switch to video.

The slightly increased lag time in responses was minor. Zephyr and the Dobbin were in the same sector.

Thelma broke off her description of the handover and code phrase to extract Ululani from the Deadstar Diner as Katu claimed the screen. “Ooh, pretty boy. Haven’t you grown?”

A talon with silver claws patted the screen.

Helen laughed. A few seconds later, the screen showed her sitting on the floor with Katu wrestled onto her lap.

The lanky juvenile dragon batted at the captain’s arms.

The spread of dragons through space was a result of a savvy rebranding exercise a couple of decades ago. The species had originated on the saurelles’ home world, where the saurelle regarded the forearm-long reptiles as vermin. Their Saurellian name was ratsa. A human merchant had noticed a resemblance, albeit in miniature, to ancient Earth stories of dragons and had renamed the species. Spacers, in particular, had been captivated by the small creatures. Their robust physiologies, which contributed to their vermin status on their home world, was a benefit on spaceships and colonies. Add in their good-natured, curious personalities and they were a hit—briefly. Their one drawback was their scales. Scales lack the cuddle factor. Soon cats regained their top of the pyramid status as space pets, and dragons became a mostly forgotten oddity.

As Helen played with Katu, it was such a picture of happiness that Thelma felt a sharp stab of regret that she’d even thought of drawing Helen into espionage games. “I’ll find someone else,” she said abruptly.

Helen was barely a couple of years older than Thelma, but her time hadn’t been spent at college. The scars of real world experience showed in her reactions. She had the same trained-for-violence instincts as Max, although she never mentioned a military background.

Helen’s smile was friendly yet sharp as she scratched Katu’s scaled belly. “An information broker has to be tougher than that…but I appreciate the thought. This isn’t on you. I’d have extracted the bunyaphi if Aubree had asked me directly. She’s playing games. I told her—” Helen cut off, then started again.

“I’ve cleaned up Aubree’s messes before. An agent like her keeps her hands clean by outsourcing the blood.” Katu stretched up and head butted her chin. Helen rolled him in a ball, a game the dragon enjoyed. “The bunyaphi have rules for their clan wars. Captured enemies are treated well, but only if they’re considered both honorable and worth something in trade. A bunyaphi like Ululani, a spy, they’d cut her wings off and keep her alive. Wingless bunyaphi…”

Helen stared at the camera, straight at Thelma. “Ululani can travel with me to Levanter. On the return trip I’ll find somewhere for her to hitch a lift either back to Boldire or to lose herself in the galaxy. I was thinking of visiting Mistral.”

After confirming the coded greeting to use with Ululani, Helen signed off.

Thelma slumped. She was confident of the bunyaphi’s safety once aboard the Dobbin. However, Helen’s ghosts had been scary. The trampship captain was haunted by her past.

That was the nature of the frontier. Some people sought their fortunes. Others hoped to escape their pasts. Except for the current crazies who had overwhelmed Owen. They were just here for the Space Rodeo.

But events left ripples. Thelma wondered how the Saloon Sector would have changed by the time the Space Rodeo ended.

She slapped the arms of the office chair. Musing could wait, and as much as she’d like to call Max, she had a promise to keep: lunch for a family of hungry, grumpy yprr. Evo’s famous curried tubers would score her hospitality points, but she’d have to hurry before the spacedock eatery sold out. With the Space Rodeo crowds, it would happen fast.

“Have you met Owen’s Uncle Ioan?” Thelma asked Max three hours later. “He is terrifying.” That was the truth, but she was also hoping to coax a smile from Max. He looked so serious, and tired, on the viewscreen.

“I’m glad Ioan’s around. Thelma…” Max scrubbed a hand over his face. “You can’t come back to the Lonesome yet. We’re hiding from Covert Ops.”

“Well, that sounds exciting.”

He grimaced. “Carl Jafarov, my new deputy, is a Covert Ops cyborg. They’ve invested a significant operative in infiltrating us.”

“Oh.” She bit back a swearword. She was tired, too. She missed Max and had been anticipating her homecoming. This call had been meant, among other purposes, to set up a rendezvous. “So if I made my way to the Lonesome, they’d track me.”

“Yes.” He barely paused. “I’m also worried, maybe it’s paranoia, but if they want to draw me out, you’d make the best hostage.”

She inhaled so sharply that her tongue clicked the roof of her mouth. “I’ll stay alert.”

“Can you also stay on the spacedock? Owen is fiercer than he’ll admit, a match for his family. If they’re around you’ll be safe. Also, Customs is a stronger force in the Saloon Sector than Galactic Justice believes. Sharing office space with them is a good idea. Walking the spacedock with a group of them is a good idea.”

Apprehension shivered over her skin. Max was right. Covert Ops sending a cyborg to the Lonesome was serious. There were very few cyborgs; probably a thousand times more existed in movies and comics than in reality. When her brother Joe had suffered his injuries in the Star Marines, she’d researched the possibility…anything to restore his life and potential. But he’d never been offered the cyborg option. Cyborg enhancements had to be approved by a board of Federation authorities, and such approvals were rare.

“Max, why are you hiding?”

He shifted in his chair. “We’ve locked Carl up as a prisoner on the public deck. Kitchen, lounge and a single cell.”

Of course they had. They couldn’t let a cyborg, his capabilities unknown, roam the Lonesome. But still. “You’ve imprisoned a Covert Ops agent?”

“Yes.”

Between Max, Lon and Harry, they wouldn’t have done so without considering the repercussions. They’d evidently decided that the consequences were worth it.

Thelma puzzled through their probable reasoning. “So as long as this Carl Jafarov is locked up, incommunicado, you can continue as sheriff. But as soon as he makes contact with Covert Ops, or anyone, you’ll be fired, possibly charged for acting against a Galactic Justice agent?”

“Protective custody,” Max said. “I judged it unsafe for Carl to live freely on the Lonesome, dangerous to both him and my ship. So I kept him secure. It’s obviously bunkum, but if I threaten to expose him as a cyborg…I might be able to survive this. You are not involved.”

“Max!”

“And since we’re stealthed, Harry can, if necessary, slip away, too.”

Thelma glowered. “Leaving you and Lon to shoulder the blame.”

“Our choice.” Max sighed. “As much as I want to keep our secrets from Covert Ops, they’re not the enemy. Not even the cyborg. But we have real ones, and they’re partly why I want you safe on the spacedock, in sight of allies at all times, unless you’re locked in the office.”

“Who?”

“Elliot Keele.”

The name spiraled Thelma back to her first space battle, the one instigated by ex-senator Gua’s desire for revenge, her need to see Thelma dead.

The Lonesome had been lured into an ambush with two of Elliot Keele’s spaceships leading a motley collection of bandits’ vessels. Harry had obliterated Keele’s ships, the Elegant Dame and the Guinevere. A destroyer and cruiser were heavy losses for the crime lord’s mercenary corporation to bear. He couldn’t wriggle out from under the financial blow, but he had finagled his way out of legal responsibility for the Elegant Dame and Guinevere’s attack on an Interstellar Sheriff. Even with his finances taking a hit, Keele hadn’t skimped on buying the best legal talent.

“I thought he’d be licking his wounds,” Thelma said. “His senator is gone.” Senator Gua had been more than Elliot’s connection to Federation political power. She’d represented the Reclamation Sector before Covert Ops had targeted her and strategically released information sufficient to remove her from office following her instigation of an attack on the President’ son. Although Max believed she hadn’t known of his identity beyond that of sheriff.

Gua had been in the Boldire Sector when she was removed from office, and she was still making her way home, the long way around, via civilian starliner. Stripped of access to Galactic Justice vessels, she couldn’t traverse the perilous wormhole in the Saloon Sector which had been her shortcut to the Boldire Sector and her official role as part of the Senate Worlds Development Committee mediating the bunyaphi clan war.

Thelma had a file dedicated to keeping track of her enemies, and although Gua was mostly defanged, the former senator still headed that list.

Apparently, Max felt differently. He’d stuck a crime lord at the top of the list. Why?

“Is Elliot Keele after revenge for the destruction of his spaceships?” and their crews? The loss of lives had been the worst part of the space battle. Thelma felt cold despite the climate controlled office.

“I doubt Keele loses sight of his goals, even for revenge,” Max said. “I think we’ve underestimated him. And that Gua did, too.”

“Just a minute.” Thelma got up, grabbed a jacket Max had left on a hook by the door, and sat back down with it wrapped around her.

“Honey.” His voice was rough with emotion.

She smiled crookedly at the screen with its camera. “Next best thing to a hug. Go on, tell me about Keele.”

Max cleared his throat. “Lon’s focused on his data map and the first signs. They’re effective. We’re getting the jump on trouble.”

“Say congrats to Lon from me.”

The AI could eavesdrop on their transmission, but wouldn’t.

The “first signs” that Max mentioned were the predictive capacity Lon had developed and now applied to the problems of policing the area around the Space Rodeo arena.

Lon had mentored Thelma through establishing herself as an information broker, and in doing so, he’d revealed a lot about himself, his interests and values. It would be an overstatement to say he was obsessed by human intuition. However, for years Lon had committed significant processing power to running and refining predictive algorithms. Now, that ability was focused on Max’s sheriff territory and identifying incipient potentialities, at which point a minor action could prevent trouble developing down the line. This was chaos theory applied in awe inspiring form.

“The Navy reservists are the ones making it work,” Max said. “Lon sends Regina a sheriff’s order and she passes it on to the nearest reservist to fulfil. They don’t question why they’re being asked to hail a certain ship at a certain time or to stop off at a repair facility or to start a themed conversation on the discussion boards, they just do it. Lon has taken five amber alerts off the board as a specific minor action cascades through and de-escalates trouble.”

There were others in Max’s network of influence that Lon would also be drawing on, sometimes with an official request, other times by manipulation.

“Lon is fully occupied with preventing trouble and with hiding the Lonesome.” Stealth shields were only part of the trick to hiding a spaceship. A major element was choosing unpredictable routes and utilizing the concealment opportunities provided by natural hazards. Max rolled his shoulders. “The reservists sighted two ships with false IDs near Xlokk. I started thinking about bandit activity, and that started me thinking of Keele’s ties with the bandits, demonstrated by Mazod’s involvement in the ambush on us near Levanter. It’s not only the bandits or organized crime that can take advantage of the chaos surrounding the Space Rodeo, I could, too. Our actions are masked. Far less predictable.”

“As Covert Ops is discovering,” Thelma interjected.

Max grinned fleetingly, fiercely. “That’s when I thought of Carl, an unused resource. So I set him a target. Elliot Keele. Lon provides him with any data he requests, and the idea is for Carl to come up with a strategy to take down the crime lord.”

Thelma hesitated. “But if Covert Ops left Keele in place even as they tore down Gua, why would your spy help?”

“Because of who he is. People approved to become cyborgs have to have moral codes that emphasize service and justice. Carl will follow the orders of his Covert Ops handler, but he has some wriggle room. Remember, he’s meant to be undercover on the Lonesome, which means acting as a deputy. I’ve ordered him to shut down a crime lord, and he’ll grab the opportunity. He’ll want to get justice for Keele’s victims.”

Service and justice. That sounded a lot like the principles that drove Max. Possibly Covert Ops had chosen their agent to infiltrate the Lonesome for more than his technical abilities. Shared values built rapport, and that lowered a person’s defenses and blunted their suspicions. “Max, is Lon monitoring Carl?”

“At all times. Harry is active back-up. Don’t worry. Carl is staying locked up while he’s on the Lonesome.”

She nodded.

“Carl is still profiling Keele. A couple of years spent undercover on Tornado gives Carl a different perspective. He paints Keele as a snake.”

“Duplicitous?”

“Sheds his skin. Keele is in his seventies, my dad’s age. The man has reinvented himself a few times. Evolved, others might say. The thing is he’s willing to burn his past to establish the next life he’s reaching for.”

A laugh caught Thelma unprepared, and she choked. “He’s a criminal phoenix.”

Max leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees. “We thought Keele set up the ambush of the Lonesome as a favor to Gua. What if that was merely an excuse? He gambled the Elegant Dame and the Guinevere, and he lost them, but he had his legal defense ready.”

“…his legal defense ready,” she repeated slowly, thinking. “Yes. Yes, he did.”

“But if he wanted me, as sheriff gone, he didn’t have to try again because the comet helices appeared and the Space Rodeo has me completely occupied—and distracted, if not for Lon’s work.”

Thelma rose and paced. The camera would follow her. She looked at the viewscreen. “You’re turning our thinking upside down, so that it’s Keele who used Gua to go after us rather than vice versa.”

“Yes, and if he wants extra insurance that I’m distracted, he’ll go after you again.”

She perched her butt against his desk. “I’ll be careful. But you have to be, too. Don’t let that cyborg strategize you into doing something crazy.”

“Crazier than imprisoning him?” The tired lines at the corners of Max’s eyes deepened with his smile.

Thelma smiled back. “Calculated recklessness. I love you. One last thing before you go.” She briefly described the favor she’d done for Aubree.

Max consulted Lon’s data map. “Bill comm’d us the information on the arrival of the first bunyaphi spaceship at the Deadstar Diner, but we didn’t know there’d be a second.”

“And a third stopped somewhere for repairs.”

“I wish I knew where Aubree gets her info,” he muttered. Then he looked back at Thelma through the camera. “Love you. Stay safe.”

The transmission ended.

Thelma sighed. A couple of minutes later she strolled out to speak with Owen.

With the horde of Saloon Sector complainants…ahem, visitors redirected to his family’s less than welcoming reception, Owen’s domain was relatively empty. A sole saurelle courier chatted with him, making a routine complaint against her latest speeding fine.

Thelma waited till the courier had gone before briefing Owen that not only was she staying, but that Max had asked for her to request Owen’s family’s protection.

“Thank goodness you bought them lunch,” he said. Then his antennae wriggled in amusement. “I’m kidding. They’ll love to have an excuse to stomp around the spacedock being borderline berserker.”

“That’s not reassuring at all.”

He nudged her on his shuffle to the door. “I have more cousins. Let’s go see who’ll volunteer for Thelma protection duty.”

Chapter 4

“So, I have three bunyaphi aboard the Dobbin, thank you very much,” Helen said to Thelma after the latter comm’d her to check that Ululani’s extraction had gone smoothly.

“How? Why?” Thelma put down the dagger she was sharpening before she cut herself.

The dagger was one of the many sharp implements Owen’s uncle Ioan insisted she’d be training with, starting tomorrow. He’d be inspecting her preparation of them. Yprr believed in the efficacy of sharp pointy things.

Helen laughed, so at least she wasn’t angry about the unexpected guests…crew? “After you comm’d, I hustled into the diner—and boy is it busy. I think some people are docking for weeks just to join the party, what with all the tourist dudes dropping in. A belated second lunch gave me cover to casually share my ‘idle notion’ of hiring on a crew member for company on the remainder of the journey to Levanter. Naturally, the old timers laughed at the idea of venturing somewhere as tedious as Levanter with no other ships likely to be at the endpoint to hire on with, and so, having to travel back with me on the Dobbin, and all for minimum wage.

“But their derision meant the idea was established before the bunyaphi vessel docked. They allowed pretty much their whole crew to enter the diner, which brought conversation crashing to a halt. The bunyaphi stick so much to the Boldire Sector, that few had seen them in person before. However, a smart ass asteroid miner did my work for me, suggesting sarcastically that one of the ‘fairies’ might be dumb enough to crew for me.”

Helen paused. “Pretending that I was challenging his taunt, I repeated my employment offer to the bunyaphi and…all of them asked to see the Dobbin, the captain included!”

“No!”

“Yup.” Helen sounded amused. “Aubree outdid herself with this ploy. All the bunyaphi on the Biting Teeth are interested in experiencing more of the world beyond Boldire. Why they can’t roam around on the Biting Teeth, I didn’t ask. And I won’t. Those with me can’t cause trouble traveling out to Levanter.”

Thank the heavens for a smart and commonsensical friend. Thelma smiled with relief. “It’s smarter to stay out of this. Whatever this is. Getting Ululani away is more than enough. But go on…the captain and crew came aboard…”

“To be fair to the captain and officers, they were checking on conditions if any of the crew decided to jump ship to the Dobbin. I got the impression that they’d overdone the number of crew in the expectation of losing a few to the big bad outer galaxy. Katu was a hit with them. Apparently, dragons haven’t made it out to Boldire as pets. They gave me their approval after they met him. Single female with pet dragon. Ululani elected to stay with me, but so did another female and a male. The captain took me aside and assured me that Tivor was an honorable male.”

Thelma lost her desire to giggle. “They sound nice.”

Helen sighed. “Most bunyaphi I’ve met are, in the right circumstances. They care about their own.”

“I asked you to help someone who’s been spying on them.” Abusing their trust. And trust was important to Helen. Thelma picked up the whetstone, but not the dagger. She fidgeted with it.

“I agreed, knowing what I was getting into.” Helen changed the subject. “I lowered the gravity in the third transport so that the bunyaphi can fly around in it. Katu had a wonderful time zipping around with other flyers. It’ll encourage him to exercise and strengthen his wings.”

In other words, Helen was okay, and Thelma shouldn’t worry. “Thanks for extracting Ululani.”

With the transmission ended, Thelma concentrated on cleaning and honing the sharp weapons. The situation with the bunyaphi was not her problem. She couldn’t focus on it. Researching it could draw attention to them, or to her, and while she didn’t know what was going on with them, the latter possibility meant danger.

Why had a ship from each clan traversed the perilous wormhole? Did they intend on belatedly joining the Space Rodeo, but if so, why skirt it to arrive at the Deadstar Diner? Was it simply that the bunyaphi had caught the somewhat clandestine news that it was at the diner a few months back that the Kampia had introduced themselves to the Federation, via Max and Thelma? A lot of people wouldn’t be able to pass by even a slim chance at encountering an alien.

“You’re overthinking things.”

The bunyaphi had probably heard Wild Blaster Bill’s tall story of a secret cache of raphus geodes at the asteroid the Deadstar Diner was parked on and couldn’t resist a treasure hunt.

Thelma put the dagger down and chose a complicated throwing star to clean next. Its multiple sharp edges would keep her attention. If she turned up to her first lesson with Ioan with injuries from careless weapon cleaning, he might wash his claws of her and abandon her to her inept fate.

The yprr preferred life planetside to spacefaring, and tended to specialize in the more militant, aggressive professions. For relaxation, Owen’s family had a vast shared range on Zephyr in which they hunted. The yprr were naturally equipped to fight with sharp weapons. The claws that tipped their second pair of appendages were multi-faceted and could break apart or lock together for a stronger strike. Yprr who earned elite team roles in the various branches of the military were custom fitted for armored carapaces that sat outside their natural carapaces and could both shield and house weapons. Ioan had retired from active duty, but kept his armor. The least Thelma owed such a prestigious trainer was to demonstrate her respect.

So, no cut fingers!

The next day, Thelma returned from her first lesson with Ioan and waved her cut-free fingers at Owen.

Her friend waggled his antennae back at her in amusement. “I know Uncle Ioan had you wearing gloves, and blade-block shirt and trousers.”

“Spoilsport.” Thelma looked around the office. “Is it…actually…empty?”

“Ssshh,” Owen hushed her urgently. “Don’t jinx us.” They smiled at one another. “Hiring my family was a genius idea. Dilys collated the complaints, sorted them and analyzed the results. She has printed out standard responses. Actually, she’s done them up on posters and hung them on the walls of the borrowed office in Customs. Now my family are pointing at the appropriate posters as they respond to complaints.”

He leaned back. “The dudes coming in to complain that they’ve been conned are told, ‘too bad, so sad, don’t be so stupid’.”

Thelma grinned and hitched herself up to sit sideways on the desk, one leg swinging.

The cons Owen referred to were elaborate leg pulls enjoyed by Saloon Sector residents. Hazing dudes and dudettes, newcomers to the sector, was a frontier tradition. They could range from seeding discussion boards with hints of mythical raphus geode cache sites to swapping impossible tales like fueling a spaceship with comet dust. Unless people were being hurt by the good-natured hazing, as sheriff, Max had a policy of letting it all pass on by. A little embarrassment might remind dudes that they were in frontier territory and that they should take additional precautions—an attitude that might save their lives.

“As for complaints about the price gouging…” Owen continued.

She joined the chorus with him. “Too bad, so sad.”

The door opened behind her. She was still turning her head to look when Owen grabbed her with one claw and sent her sliding across the desk toward him. Yprr perception and reflexes were significantly faster than humans’. Thelma barely managed to get her hands down to brace her fall and keep her chin from impacting the floor. She kicked up and hit the red distress button on the back of the desk.

The desk was rated to withstand blaster fire, and the metallic burn stench said its capacity had just been tested.

Thelma twisted and grabbed the knife from her boot sheath. Blasters and other energy directed weapons were banned on the spacedock other than for authorized personnel, as were projectile weaponry. Melee weapons like her knife were allowed to be worn, with discretion.

Owen activated his personal comms unit. “Office attacked. Blasters. Two down. Thelma with me behind desk.”

She peeked around the desk. Two human men were down, bleeding, inside the doorway. Their legs blocked the sliding door from closing.

“I called Uncle Ioan.”

Pressing the distress button would have notified the spacedock guards, Customs next door, and the Lonesome. Thelma glanced up at a security camera. “I’m okay,” she said to it.

Customs officers reached them first, blasters drawn, but Ioan’s family were on their heels. The spacedock guards panted up last, but they were the ones who brought a medic.

“Don’t jostle the shards, and they should live,” Owen said of the attackers. “The sheriff will want to interrogate them.”

The shards were splintered pieces of Owen’s claws. In a classic yprr move, he’d thrown them as missiles, lodging them in the two men’s throats. Choking on your own blood was effectively disabling.

Ioan approved of Owen’s action.

After reviewing the security video, so did Zephyr’s police chief, spacedock security and the interested Customs officers.

Far too far away, on the Lonesome, Max also approved, but he in addition he was furious, worried and inclined to react rather than think. “We’re going to Zephyr. Now!”

They were lurking near Xlokk.

It would take them over a week at the Lonesome’s top speed to reach Thelma on Zephyr.

Max stared at the viewscreen. Access to the Sheriff’s Office’s security cameras meant he could see and hear the action in the reception area. The two offenders had been carted away. Footage of the attack and Owen’s defense had been copied. Thelma and Owen had been interviewed briefly, and with a quick glance up at the camera. People in the office and on the spacedock were aware he’d be watching. What he hadn’t done was interrupt with a comm call to Thelma. Although it took all his control not to demand the reassurance of talking with her.

But she was finally heading for his private office. The door closed behind her.

A minute later, her comm transmission reached the Lonesome. “Max?”

“We’re coming to get you.”

She sat in his chair, behind his desk. “I wish you could, I really do.” She rubbed at her eyes, then looked back at the camera embedded in the viewscreen’s frame. “But attacking the office, doesn’t it seem likely that whoever ordered the hit wants you to break off whatever you’re doing and return here?”

He dug his fingers painfully into his thighs. With the time lag in transmission, any interjected objection would arrive confusingly. He had to wait till she’d finished. There was a protocol to these space comm calls.

“Max, I’ll take extra precautions. Owen and Ioan are discussing changes to the office. Spacedock security will be on their toes now, too, and Customs is taking it personally, an attack right next door. You keep doing whatever it is you’re doing that these people are desperate to stop. You mentioned Elliot Keele. I won’t let him bully or provoke us.”

“That’s good sense,” Harry said. He and Max had gathered in Max’s office, with Lon omnipresent in the ship, as always. “I don’t like it—”

“I won’t have it.” Max wasn’t prepared to be reasonable.

Nor was Lon. “We’re heading home. There’s nowhere safer for Thelma than with us.”

“Or on Zephyr tucked away in Owen’s clan’s range?” Harry suggested.

Max stared at him. Barring a missile strike from space, that was probably true.

Harry persisted. “And if whoever’s behind the attack on Thelma, or on the Sheriff’s Office if she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—”

“You don’t believe that!” Lon objected.

Harry folded his mech arms. “We could be the ones heading into danger. Do you really want to collect Thelma from a secure planet and drag her with us into peril?”

“You’re twisting your argument,” Lon said. “If the attack on Thelma was an attempt to distract us, then by the time we’ve collected her, the danger will have passed.”

His conscience, the one founded on a sense of duty, stabbed Max. If he went to collect Thelma, which he absolutely wanted to, what element of his duty was he risking?

Thelma’s response, slightly delayed by the time lag, interrupted Lon and Harry’s argument and Max’s turmoil. “This is my decision. My safety is my responsibility. The Saloon Sector’s safety is yours, Max. Owen and I will take better precautions. I’ll sleep in the office. Do not return for me.”

Max inhaled roughly.

Harry remained still, waiting for his response, and Lon was silent.

They were aware that she was right. Right on two counts. The first was that her safety was her responsibility, and they would fundamentally damage their relationships with her if they failed to respect her decision. The second factor was equally true. The attack on her in the Sheriff’s Office was an attempt to change Max’s plans. It would set a dangerous precedent if they allowed Thelma to present as his vulnerable point.

“I’m trusting you to keep yourself safe,” Max said hoarsely. “I would sacrifice everything for you.”

Harry nodded approval and walked out.

Onscreen, Thelma smiled at Max, a wobbly smile. “I love you, too. Thank you for trusting me.”

Stars, but he loved her! She’d earned his belief in her.

Her smile vanished. “I know that if it was you who’d been attacked, I’d be dropping everything to race back here, and that you’d be trying to talk me out of it. Harry would probably have to argue Lon and me down for hours, we’d be so set on rescuing you. So thank you for being more reasonable than me. Braver. It’s hard to let those we love face danger.”

His job was dangerous. Partnering with Lon and Harry lessened some of that danger, but loving him brought its own stress. Thelma lived the tension that all security personnel’s families felt. Now, he understood viscerally the courage that required.

When their comm call ended, Max exited his office.

“I still don’t like leaving her at Zephyr,” Lon said.

Max grunted agreement, but he was a man on a mission. He descended to the public deck and opened the hatch to the lounge where Carl was imprisoned.

The cyborg sat at the kitchen table, working. He glanced up at Max’s entrance. Then his eyes narrowed as he took in the signs of Max’s tension.

“Why are you here?” Max asked. “No more games or delays. You tell me or I call Anubis and kick you the hell off my ship.”

“What’s happened?”

Max stood by the hatch. “Thelma was attacked at the Sheriff’s Office on the Zephyr spacedock. The blaster marks on the reception desk show that they meant to kill her or Owen, the receptionist. His quick action, yprr reflexes, saved them. But it’s down to the bone now. Either you’re with me or against me as I work out what the hell someone’s trying in my territory.” He swiped at his comm unit, brought up the video of the attack on Thelma, and flicked it up on the lounge’s viewscreen.

Carl watched in silence. Then he leaned back and met Max’s eyes. “It’s never a single reason, not with Covert Ops. But there are three major standpoints on why I am to make myself part of your life.”

Max scowled at the idea that the cyborg had been ordered to embed himself in Max’s life, not just to infiltrate the Lonesome.

“Group A wants you safe. You’re important. The President’s son. An heir to the Hwicce empire. You’re financially and politically connected and potentially powerful. I’m to be your bodyguard. The second group sees those same points, but considers you dangerous. They want you leashed. The third group want to use you. When you think about it, you’ll realize the lines between the groups blur.”

“I’m aware that people want to use me,” Max said grittily.

Carl nodded. “Trust issues. That’s why you taking Thelma as deputy got flagged.”

“What do they want to use me for?”

Carl rolled his shoulders, stretched his arms up and behind him. “I don’t like you. I suspect that’s why I was chosen. Cyborg capabilities, check. But also, you’re unlikely to subvert me to allying myself with you. I grew up on Serene. I’m a core-worlder, but I never had the privileges you enjoy.”

“So envy keeps you from allying with me.”

The Covert Ops agent shook his head. He’d cut his blond hair. “I don’t envy you. The level of power, both political and financial, that your family wields is plain wrong.” There was the slightest of pauses. “It’s not personal. Even after you trapping me here, it’s not personal. I’m sorry that Thelma was attacked. That wasn’t Covert Ops.”

“I didn’t think it was, or this would be a very different conversation.”

Carl lowered his gaze to the screen on the table. “Covert Ops will, however, take advantage of you surfacing to retrieve Thelma. Elliot Keele wasn’t part of my original mission, but the analysis I’ve put together…you need to share it, or allow me to share it, with Covert Ops. They can send someone to investigate Xlokk.”

“Unnecessary,” Max said. “We’re here and we’re staying.”

“You’re going to leave your girlfriend unprotected? That attack—”

“Thelma graduated top of her class from the Galactic Justice academy. You didn’t do half as well as her. And she has allies, friends, on Zephyr.”

Carl stared at him. “Ice in your veins. That’s what they say of Sheriff Max Smith.”

Max didn’t have to justify himself to the cyborg. But his fists clenched. Commonsense pointed out that if he did return for Thelma, it would take the Lonesome over a week to reach Zephyr. Even if he ached to tuck her away safely on the Lonesome, the realities of space travel made an immediate response impossible. That was the bottom line. Thelma had not only chosen to be responsible for her own safety: she had to be.

Max still wanted to punch Carl.

Then he realized that this was the first time the Covert Ops agent had successfully provoked him into showing a physical emotional reaction. He unclenched his fists. “Thelma can look after herself.”

Chapter 5

Thelma woke up strapped to a hard surface with a metal ceiling high above her. From her left a tentacle, equally as metallic looking, appeared in her peripheral vision. She turned her head. She screamed.

“This is why I’m not a people person,” said the twelve foot high, equally wide, multi-tentacled thing. It spoke from a central mouth, but the dots along its tentacles were likely vision, hearing and other sensors. “I retrieved you for Lon,” the thing said. “I’m Reynard.”

“Wh…?” Thelma didn’t know what to ask first. Instinctively, she strained against her bonds.

“I’ll have Lon talk to you.”

She kept straining, twisting and writhing, only to halt abruptly as Max’s face appeared on the ceiling.

Obviously he could also see her, because after a few seconds’ time lag, he scowled ferociously. “What the hell?” Onscreen, he jumped up from his chair in his office on the Lonesome.

“What the hell have you done, Reynard?” Lon echoed.

“Max.” At any other time, Thelma would have hated how weepy she sounded. She was like a heroine tied to train tracks in the first black and white movies from the Earth Evacuation Archive.

Harry was suddenly front and center onscreen. He’d abandoned the micro-movements and poses he used to mimic humanity. He was brutally unmoving. “Reynard, you will listen to my next words with a minimum of eighty percent of your processing capacity.”

Harry waited out the time lag in transmission.

Reynard gathered in his tentacles so that he stood rather like a squat vase.

Then Harry continued. “Reynard, you are responsible for Thelma’s physical safety and her emotional well-being until you have delivered her to us. Once Thelma is aboard the Lonesome, there will be a serious discussion about your behavior and your future. Until then, you will not bother us with your attempts at justification or evasion of responsibility. We have been too lenient with you, allowing your detachment from the sentient social world. That ends now. Begin practicing your social skills with Thelma. The state she is in when we receive her will be a major factor in determining your rehabilitation.”

Harry’s tone gentled and his mech face regained mobility. “Thelma, honey, you are safe with Reynard, despite his actions to this point. You will have guessed that he is an AI. Lon is his sole friend, and I assume that Lon’s agitation at your being in danger caused Reynard to act. The comet helices that sparked the Space Rodeo and associated disruption of our lives are Reynard’s doing. You will be onboard the Lonesome in a week’s time. We will check on you twice daily. If you need to speak to us urgently, Reynard will put through the transmission. We have to deal with some stuff here. We’ll get back to you.” That “stuff” probably included Max’s fury.

The viewscreen went blank.

Thelma and Reynard were left regarding one another dubiously.

“Would sedating you contribute to your well-being?”

“No.”

Reynard’s metal tentacles rippled. He extended two and undid Thelma’s restraints.

She held very still until he withdrew. She knew she remained within his reach, but Lon and Harry had vouched for him—they’d also threatened him to ensure her welfare. She wasn’t sure to what extent she could trust Reynard and his reactions.

“Food dispenser.” He pointed with a tentacle. “Waste disposal.”

Thelma studied the rudimentary bathroom facilities in a corner of the room. She glanced up at the ceiling. From the manner in which Max and the others had reacted there were cameras there, watching her. “I prefer privacy in the bathroom.”

“Euphemisms. Organic mess. I will put a temporary wall in place. And a door. So much fuss.”

It was a struggle, but she swallowed the retort that this was Reynard’s fault for kidnapping her.

“This is your fault,” he said. “If you had stayed on the naval carrier Lon would not have fussed about you.”

She swatted at one of his tentacles, a slap that spoke of her exasperation. “How the heck did you even get me out of the office?” She sat on the edge of the rack that had served as her bed.

“Organics believe what their technology shows them. I altered what it showed.”

Thelma boggled at the flat statement. Evidently, there were major holes in the spacedock’s security, and in the Sheriff’s Office’s. “Lon will want to know the details.”

“He has already asked. I have shared with him my observations, plan, actions and analysis.”

“Oh. Good.” She wrenched her gaze from Reynard to stare at her feet. They were bare. The AI had kidnapped her while she was sleeping. She wriggled her toes.

The really interesting aspect of Reynard’s response was its validation of the information Harry had fed her: Reynard valued Lon as his only friend.

Thelma knew more than almost everyone in the Federation about the nature of AIs. They were rare with just over a thousand of them in existence. Imitations of them existed, running a huge range of different operations, but only those powered by a raphus geode achieved true sentience.

Those raphus geodes—and this was knowledge she and Max couldn’t share with anyone—were seeds of life, left behind by the mythical specters, that even the AIs knew little about.

Nefertiti had gone through the wormhole to the Kampia’s galaxy to learn what else the aliens knew of the specters. In that galaxy, their raphus geodes had been inserted into Kampian eggs, creating organic versions of the incredibly intelligent AIs that lived in the Federation. The Kampia called their versions Revered Ones. They were the wise ones, the keepers of knowledge.

The impression Thelma had from the AIs was that they took some of their values from the civilization that activated their seeds—even if the Federation didn’t fully understand what it was doing when its scientists created AIs from raphus geodes.

But whatever values Reynard had picked up, he either didn’t understand or didn’t care about rupturing social bonds.

Thelma did.

She raised her gaze from her toes to the tentacled AI. “Just so I’m clear. When you extracted me, you’re sure that no one witnessed the process?”

“Yes.”

At least he’s answering my questions. She focused on his mouth, or voice box. With his vision sensors scattered all over his body, she could hardly look him in the eyes. It was interesting that he had adopted a body that allowed for verbal communication. If he’d truly only intended to communicate with Lon and other AIs, data streams were far more efficient. “Reynard, did you leave a message explaining my disappearance?”

“No.”

“Then I need to do so. People were protecting me—”

“The yprr.”

Her toes curled. How long had he been watching her? She refused to get distracted. Her priority, now that she’d spoken with Max, was to let Owen know that she was safe. “Owen and his family have put themselves out to keep me safe. Somehow I have to explain to them, apologize, why it seems that I slipped away from their protection. It looks as if I broke trust with them.”

Reynard didn’t respond.

“Is it possible for me to speak with Owen?” she asked directly. “Now.”

“What would you say? You cannot tell him of my existence.”

She nodded and took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I would tell him the truth. That allies of Max’s acted to extract me, successfully. That I had no advance warning, but I’m safe. Also I’d thank Ioan and the rest of Owen’s family for their friendship and assistance, and apologize for disappearing on them. And I’d tell Owen that the identified security gaps in the office’s defenses will be shared with him shortly.”

Reynard brushed two tentacles together with a sound like a zipper opening. “Very well. I will transmit your message to the yprr Owen’s comms unit.”

“Will you let him respond? Ask questions? He needs to confirm that the message is from me and given without coercion.”

The AI rejected her concern. “I will copy your transmission to Lon. Max will confirm it for the yprr.”

That would work. Thelma cleared her throat. “Owen…”

“Who the heck is Reynard?” Max demanded of Harry and Lon when the communication with Thelma ended.

“Thelma is safe with him,” Harry addressed Max’s key concern first. “As for who he is…Reynard is one of the younger AIs. He is independent, and uses his independence to research physics problems. Lon is important to him.”

Lon made a sound that was half snort, half growl.

Harry spoke over the non-verbal commentary. “Although I would not have asked Reynard to intervene, I’m relieved that Thelma is being returned to us.”

Max stared at his desk, trying to rein in his anger. He knew a large proportion of it came from his sense of helplessness. “Reynard stole her from my office.”

“He’s sending a transmission,” Lon said.

Max glanced up. He listened to Thelma’s voice, calm and reassuring, telling Owen that she’d been extracted from the Zephyr spacedock without warning by one of Max’s allies—Max imitated Lon and half snorted, half growled at that—but that she was safe.

“Lon, can you comm Owen for me?”

The AI responded immediately. “Call connected.”

“Owen.” Max spent an hour answering Owen’s questions, soothing him, apologizing, and finally, discussing sheriff business. By the end of the call, he was wiped out.

Harry had vanished.

Lon, being omnipresent on the Lonesome, remained. “You need to sleep, Max. Five hours, minimum.”

As much as Max wanted to disagree, the dragging feeling in his body supported Lon’s concern. “Five hours, then wake me. Please.”

“Thelma is safe with Reynard,” Lon said quietly. “And the data map isn’t showing anything urgent.”

Automatically, Max studied the wall screen. There were only amber markers. Nothing that required immediate action. The adrenaline that had surged at the news that Thelma had been, in effect, kidnapped, had faded into exhaustion. “Night, Lon.”

In his cabin, the bunk was made with military precision. Max preferred it messy, with Thelma waiting in it. He undressed and crawled in, alone apart from his thoughts; and those he’d squash, employing the techniques taught in the Star Marines to snatch sleep anywhere, anytime. The problems of the Space Rodeo, his territory and Elliot Keele would all be there when he woke up. Maybe his subconscious could solve them?

Max grimaced. Or maybe he’d talk with Carl again.

For Thelma, the sanity savers of her journey back to the Lonesome were her comm chats with Max, mid-morning and late evening. The morning call was always brief, a check in that extended fractionally when she and Reynard chatted with Lon after Max’s departure. The evening call coincided with dinner, and Max took longer then.

Thelma ate her goop at the same time. It was a way of being together without being together. Every little thing that made her feel human and connected helped. When dealing with Reynard, things became surreal. “Max, what’s the history with you and cyborgs? Your attitude to Carl, it’s more than irritation with his intrusion.”

“When I was fourteen Dad accompanied me to a judo competition. The competition wasn’t a big deal. I won.” Max ate some goop. Its muddy mushroom-pink color meant it was bacon-flavored. “Dad was a senator then, but an important one. He was on a couple of the powerful senate committees. Galactic Justice assigned him two bodyguards. Gonzales and Pavel. Pavel was on duty, but Gonzales came on his own time to see me fight. He’d been giving me tips. He was a good guy.”

“Was” sounded ominous. Thelma stopped eating.

“There wasn’t any warning. The Neo-Nihilists had maintained a low profile on Serene. On the way back from the competition we detoured to an ice cream parlor to celebrate my win. I usually stopped there. I told Dad he had to try the banana bomb.” Max scraped up the last of his meal. He pushed the empty bowl aside. His tone was too neutral, his expression too blank.

Fervently, Thelma wished she hadn’t whistled up his demons. But leaving the story half told wouldn’t banish them, again.

“The Neo-Nihilists had blasters. The weapons are banned on Serene, but there they were. Gonzales died as he pushed Dad down, protecting him with his own body. Pavel was the cyborg with the cyborg senses and reflexes, but he was slower to react than Gonzales. I…the events are messed up in my head. I didn’t have the training to track the situation.”

“You were a kid, and trauma jumbles things.”

Max cradled a mug of what was likely coffee. “Pavel shot one, hit one. Then his pistol failed or his hand broke or something. He looked for the nearest makeshift weapon, and found me. He threw me at a terrorist. They’d come in close, like a pack of wild dogs, to enjoy taking Dad down. They craved a spectacle. They were willing to die to be famous.”

Thelma felt chilled all the way to her heart. “That’s why I hadn’t heard of the attack against your dad. A media blur to deny the Neo-Nihilists their publicity.” And her Max had been there, a defenseless, gangly teenager.

“Pavel did the calculations. My life wasn’t worth as much as Dad’s, so Pavel used me as a weapon. My body weight knocked over one of the terrorists. I panicked. I didn’t attack. As I scrambled up, Pavel took down another terrorist. His shirt was black, scorched. Pavel’s, not the terrorist’s. Pavel scooped up the guy’s blaster.”

Max swore under his breath. Then he looked back at the camera, and through it, to Thelma. “The remaining terrorist picked up a little girl. A toddler. He held her as a shield. His blaster tracked toward me, but see, I was running to Dad and Gonzales. Stupid.” He swallowed. “Pavel blasted the last terrorist. Maximum force. Pavel shot through the little girl to kill her and the man holding her.”

“Dear God.”

“No matter how many times I replay my jumbled memories, I can’t remember any hesitation.”

Thelma took a shaky breath. A second one. In her peripheral vision, she was aware that Reynard had entered her room.

However, for once, the AI was showing some tact. He was silent and out of camera view.

“That is a horrible story,” she said to Max. And it explained so much. Not just his attitude toward cyborgs—and now was not the time to point out that Pavel had acted as Galactic Justice agents were trained to. The ethics of acceptable casualties was covered at the academy. And Max had to understand it, too. Star Marines participated in actions with collateral damage. But this was different. This memory was a scar of emotional pain from his adolescent years, a time before Max could fight back. “I understand more now why you serve as sheriff. Keeping people safe.”

And the memory—the price others had paid for his father’s life—was probably why Max had distanced himself from political life.

“Thank you for telling me, Max.”

He nodded. “Love you.” And love was about sharing yourself, the good and the bad.

Her man had the courage to let her see him as he was, even the scars. “Love you.”

The viewscreen went blank.

“Max is wrong,” Reynard said. “Agent Pavel did his job.”

Thelma braced herself. While she traveled with the AI she couldn’t afford to allow her emotions to control her reactions. “Yes, he did. But people usually prioritize protecting children. At the Galactic Justice academy they tried to train us to override our instincts, to rationalize rather than react. However, if Pavel had hesitated or refused to fire on the terrorist through his child shield, people would have understood. They would have criticized him, but not condemned him.”

“Max condemns him, yet Max too was a child. Should the agent have allowed other children and adults and himself to die by refusing to shoot the terrorist through the child?”

“Sometimes emotions don’t care about rational analysis,” Thelma said carefully. Harry had told Reynard to practice his social skills, and the AI was—on Thelma. She found it notable that an egoist like Reynard listened to Harry. She wouldn’t question it. She was too aware that she already knew perhaps over much of the AIs’ secrets. How they policed themselves, regulated and socially structured themselves, was none of her business.

She was finding it shocking how inept Reynard was at socializing. Harry and Lon were both excellent communicators and wonderful friends.

Reynard was…difficult.

“Emotions are wasted effort,” Reynard said. “Lon worrying about you distracts him from his work.”

Thelma tilted her head, considering the swaying mass of metal tentacles. If she had to guess, she’d say that the AI was uncomfortable with this turn in their conversation. She pushed cautiously. “I didn’t think you’d care about Lon’s work in keeping this region of the Saloon Sector safe.”

“I don’t. But Lon is trialing his predictive model.” A tentacle scuffed the floor. “He wasn’t ready to test it yet, but when the Space Rodeo started, he had to accelerate his plans. He blamed me because I set up the comet helices.”

“What?” Thelma jolted up. Harry had said something like that, but in her stressed state, she’d forgotten. Reynard flinched, and she hastily sat down. Don’t startle the unstable AI.  “I thought the comet helices were a random natural event.”

“They can be.” Two tentacles removed her empty plate and mug.

She narrowed her eyes and brought in the big guns. “This is social training. Don’t go anywhere.”

Reynard halted his attempt to sidle out of the room on the pretext of meal over, cleaning to be done. Harry had ordered that he socialize, and Reynard was just clueless enough about the nuances of social interaction to accept interrogation as a version of it.

“Explain the current state of affairs to me,” Thelma said. “What did you do? And why does Lon blame you—and you judge his blame justified to the extent that you’d bother to kidnap me to return me to the Lonesome?”

Her empty mug and plate vanished somewhere before all of Reynard’s tentacles stilled.

She wasn’t sure why he’d chosen the multi-tentacled mech as the body to house his raphus geode core and associated processing unit. In their short acquaintance, he’d seemed more cerebral than physical.

“The purpose of my life is to enable translocation,” he said. “I—”

She held up one hand. “Stop. Were you created to focus on working out the theory and a method of translocation, or did you choose this purpose?”

“I was created to manage the Federation Starlanes and Trade Network.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Ooh huh. I heard about that idea in one of my classes. It never eventuated. The scope was too ambitious. The logistical reality of the Federation…not even an AI could encompass all of it.”

“You are correct. I told my handlers exactly that. They reacted badly.”

People could be cruel, especially those with ambition or wealth invested in a project. “What did they do?”

“It is unimportant. After thirteen months, they conceded the accuracy of my initial assessment. They sold me.”

“S-sold you? Reynard, you’re a person. You can’t be sold or traded or…” She stopped. “You had an employment contract.

His tentacles constricted. “I was created within the framework of one, yes.”

“I’m sorry, Reynard.”

“Your apology is unnecessary. You did not do this. Other AIs bought my contract. They asked me what I wanted to do.”

Thelma could see the sequence of events, and their impact. From the beginning, Reynard’s world had been information on the movement of people and objects around the galaxy. Eliminating the logistical network by enabling translocation would do more than meet his original purpose of transport efficiency. It would enable his revenge by rendering the existing logistical network obsolete. Whether he recognized the revenge element of his obsession or not was a separate issue.

“I told the other AIs that I would devote myself to enabling translocation. They were not interested. Except for Lon.”

Kind Lon who would have sympathized and had the emotional capacity to support the new, angry and struggling AI that was, and maybe continued to be, Reynard.

Thelma spoke quietly. “Lon is a good friend.”

“Yes. He is intelligent.”

Silence fell between them, but Reynard didn’t sidle out.

Thelma recognized that Harry was every bit as wise as Lon. Reynard craved social contact. The AI just didn’t know how to manage it. Thelma didn’t understand comet helices and translocation theory, but she did know how to behave socially. Reynard was unlikeable, but how could he be anything else if people didn’t help him?

“You’re like a genius teenager,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“Your intelligence exceeds almost everyone else’s, and yet, you’re so scared of how awful people can make you feel that you shut down and keep them all out. You have to learn how to set boundaries so that you can engage with people. Give and take. Giving respect and defining the respect you require.”

There was more silence before Reynard broke it. “Your words are gibberish.”

She smiled. “Actually, they’re about emotional intelligence.”

“I have read books on it.”

“I’m sure you have. Books are not the same as living it.”

He scuffed a tentacle. “Do you intend to teach me?”

She countered with a different question. “Do you understand why Harry spoke to you over the video transmission rather than in a data burst?”

As an AI, Reynard processed thoughts fast. Nonetheless, there was a noticeable delay before he responded. “Harry was talking to you as much as to me?”

“I think so. I think he wanted me to know that I can trust you, but he also gave us a pretty broad hint that I should help you to develop your social skills.”

“So you will teach me.”

“Yes and no.” She smiled at him, knowing that her ambiguous answer would irritate him. “I will socialize with you. What you learn from our interactions is up to you.”

“Hmph!” Reynard departed.

Thelma lay back on her hard bed and grinned at the ceiling.

Their conversation continued the next day. She had questions about translocation. Asking them accorded Reynard the expert status he’d earned, even if he expressed his frustration at her low level of understanding of the physics involved.

“I experienced time dual-location during a Space Rodeo dive,” she said. “Me in one location at two fractionally different times. I blacked out.”

“Your weak organic body—”

“Is part of the reality of the universe.”

“…is irrelevant to my hypothesis,” Reynard continued forcefully. “What is required is that space rather than time shifts. The spars of a comet helix reach into the space-time continuum and use gravitational force to extract slices of it.”

Thelma was exercising during their discussion. Reynard had made her a treadmill. She jogged steadily. “Slices sounds ominous. Are you cutting reality?”

“Your human-limited perception of reality suffers fear causelessly. Existence is transformative. Traversing it differently is not in itself dangerous. Danger is a false construct created from what you fear.”

Thelma slowed to a walk. “Reynard, I’m not hearing a ‘no’.”

The AI swayed on four tentacles. There was no back or front to his mech body. He could look at Thelma and at a hundred different things.

Nonetheless, she had the impression of him avoiding her accusing gaze. She ceased exercising. “How much of what you’re doing does Lon know about?”

“We have discussed the principles of comet helices. He was not happy that I set two up in Max’s sheriff territory.”

Despite recognizing the AI’s latter observation as a calculated diversion, Thelma couldn’t resist. “Why did you?”

“I want to be here when Nefertiti returns. To use the emotive language of your kind, the Revered Ones of the Kampia are our organic cousins.” He meant cousins to the AIs. “The specters left almost no trace of themselves beyond the raphus geodes. To find them—”

Thelma reacted instinctively. She reached out and tapped one of his tentacles. “Stop.”

Reynard froze. “Why?”

“If there’s one thing the last few days have taught me, it’s that I’m vulnerable to abduction. You can’t tell me secrets of AIs or raphus geodes or anything else that people might learn from me that would make you, you all, vulnerable.”

“You think organics could hurt us?” Reynard emitted the sound of crystal clashers, the spaceship equivalent of wind chimes on a planet.

After a few seconds, Thelma interpreted it as laughter. The AI who’d kidnapped her thought the idea of organic sentients harming AIs to be ludicrous.

According to official records, there were over a thousand AIs in the Federation. Judging by Reynard’s reaction, that small number would be sufficient to counter a trillion organic sentient citizens.

Goosebumps erupted on her arms.

Reynard reassured her. “We wouldn’t let them kidnap you. Harry has been communicating with me. I know what I am permitted to discuss with you. Harry says that you are a person I can trust. I have eight tentacles extended and six in potentia.”

Tentacles? Thelma rubbed her arms, further unnerved by Reynard’s crazy subject change.

“Harry said that the logic of the body I constructed to house me can be used as a framework for my psychological health. So just as I have eight tentacles to affect the physical world, I require connections to eight people. I have to trust eight people and contemplate extending my social interaction to fourteen individuals.” By his tone, the idea of socializing with fourteen people was more incredible than his theories around translocation.

“Um.” Thelma pressed her lips together, but in the end she couldn’t resist asking. “How many people do you interact with now?”

“Three. Lon, Harry and you.” Reynard’s tentacles raised him higher. He literally stood taller, proud of himself.

“Huh. I’m uh…honored.”

Reynard took that for granted. He added a comment that, in a distorted way could be mistaken for a compliment. “Communicating with you is teaching me how to allow for the irrationality and dullness of lesser intellects.”

Nope. Not a compliment. Thelma grinned. His obliviousness to the offense he gave made Reynard amusing. And he was also giving her a lot to think about. Whether he intended to or not.

At the top of Thelma’s list to consider was the nature of Harry’s authority. She’d trained and danced with the AI in his humanoid mech body; laughed and argued about nonsense with him and Lon. She’d also witnessed Harry obliterate spaceships in their fight near Levanter against Elliot Keele’s people and the bandits. She’d known that Harry was dangerous. She’d learned that he guarded a cache of raphus geodes. But she hadn’t realized the degree of authority he was accorded among the AIs, as witnessed by stubborn, difficult Reynard’s compliance with Harry’s orders and advice.

It made sense, though. The guardian of future AIs would have to be someone extraordinary and extraordinarily respected.

And I treat him like a kindly uncle. The wry thought amused Thelma, but she didn’t let it hide the fact that Harry encouraged her attitude. He needed to be loved as well as respected. Every person did. Harry recognized that fact: he gave and received love.

Reynard needed to learn that truth.

Lots of people did.

Chapter 6

The majority of Federation citizens never left the planet of their birth. They never ventured into space; were never viscerally confronted with the impact of its vastness. For those who did, they prudently traveled along the starlanes: routes mapped to avoid hazards, and patrolled by the Navy and Customs. Starliners, couriers, trampships and all other lawful traffic stuck with the starlanes both out of commonsense and because their insurance required it. Only extreme thrill seekers (like those diving in the Space Rodeo) and surveyors deliberately traveled into the darkness. And lawbreakers. Smugglers had dark star routes.

On the Lonesome Carl Jafarov was finally showing his Galactic Justice academy background. He had a presentation ready to wow Max with. They stood in the lounge of the public deck.

Max folded his arms and refused to be wowed.

Not that Carl was dissuaded. In fact, the Covert Ops agent appeared authentically engaged with the problem. He tapped at the map, finger smudging Levanter. “By your own report, Elliot Keele’s ships partnered with bandits to ambush you here. Yet Sheriff Pang’s data shows no sign of those particular ships, the Elegant Dame and the Guinevere, traveling through his territory to yours.”

“They took a dark star route,” Max said, unimpressed. “This is the Saloon Sector.” The frontier attracted the sort of people who delighted in finding unofficial routes through space, and that was a good thing. There were darned few starlanes out on the frontier. Over decades, centuries really, as the population increased and so did the space traffic, the best of the dark star routes would become starlanes, patrolled by the Navy. The Federation’s hub was thick with a crisscrossing web of starlanes.

“Pang’s territory is different to yours. It fronts the Reclamation Sector, the old border of the Federation.”

Max finally leaned forward. “The former frontier line…?”

“Was never deactivated,” the Covert Ops agent said.

Max swore under his breath. “Blazing comets.”

On the map, Carl traced the border between the Reclamation and Saloon Sectors. “When the Elegant Dame and the Guinevere crossed into the Saloon Sector, the old monitoring system should have pinged. Keele and his corporation are on a watch list.”

Max nodded, frowning at the map, but not really seeing it. His territory was part of the Federation’s border. When the bandits of the Badstars crossed the current frontier line, the Navy, Customs and himself were alerted. Mostly to little effect. The bandits’ small-scale attacks were generally considered too minor to commit resources to unless an official vessel was within two days’ reach of the incursion, and the bandits typically managed to avoid that degree of bad luck in a sector as large and underfunded as Saloon. “Someone manually suppressed—or deleted—the alert for Keele’s ships.”

“Probably a deputy,” Carl said. “They’re the ones in the territory, following up the alerts and cancelling the majority as false reports.”

Law enforcement officials could be bought.

Max shook his head. “I didn’t realize the old frontier line was still active.”

“Need to know basis. It’s not your territory.”

But Pang could have, arguably should have, said something to Max. They were colleagues.

“All right,” Max said evenly. “Your contention is that at least one of Pang’s people is dirty. That deputy is enabling Keele’s people to secretly enter the Saloon Sector and that is how they’re reaching Xlokk without anyone being the wiser.”

Carl flicked the display to the next stage of his presentation. “They can’t be entering often or the false reports the deputy is hiding them under would themselves establish a pattern that would be automatically flagged. I haven’t prioritized discovering which deputy is involved. I’ve been studying the data from the probes you deployed around Xlokk. Do you have any additional data?”

The onscreen graphic showed the uninhabitable planet at the center of its region of space. Xlokk’s atmosphere mightn’t be breathable for any organic sentient, but it matched spaceship emissions to a disconcerting degree, making the planet a perfect base for hiding activity.

“No,” Max answered absently, his attention on the screen. “Is that the Fader scan?”

“Cleaned up. I merged it with old geographic surveys and adjusted it in light of climate data.”

Max glanced at him. “There’s climate data for Xlokk?”

“A grad student studied it a couple of decades ago. Squeak squalls.” Hydrogen storms.

“You’ve certainly done your research,” Max noted. He’d absently approved whatever data requests Carl had put forward the last few days. Then Lon had met them. Neither of them had paid much attention. Even with the Navy reservists at peak operation assisting them, Max and Lon were barely keeping a lid on the Saloon Sector. The influx of people for the Space Rodeo had kicked over a dozen hornets’ nests.

Carl ignored the comment. He zoomed in on a mid-continent location. “I’m sixty percent certain there’s a base there, tunneled in. I want to go in, boots on dirt, to investigate it.”

Outside of the Lonesome, Carl had a better chance of making contact with Covert Ops. But Max had the odd feeling that Carl was sincere in his request. “Why?”

The cyborg flicked the presentation to a diagram of power players in the Reclamation Sector.

Max recognized names. No space had been wasted on faces. But the real impact of the diagram was in the connections between individuals and the groups they represented. “You didn’t put this together in a few days.”

“Years of work.” Carl stared at it. “You don’t trust me, but I’m trusting you with this. Not even my bosses have seen it.”

How much data did the agent have stored on his personal comms unit? Or was his data in his physical augments?

Carl tapped the oval that contained Elliot Keele’s name on the diagram. “Keele is a middleweight. He has connections—”

“Covert Ops isn’t on the map,” Max said.

Carl got his point. Maybe it was obvious. “I don’t know why they left Keele’s operations intact when they removed Senator Gua, his political partner, from the game.”

Max was truly interested now. “I didn’t realize their relationship was as close as a partnership.”

“For the last fourteen years, their fortunes rose and fell together. Until now. Now Gua was cut loose.” Carl turned away from the screen. “At headquarters, on ship, even at home, people remember to secure their secrets. But somewhere remote like Xlokk, far from the boss and civilization, believing themselves completely hidden, believing in their own cleverness, that’s when people are careless and you get a way into their files.”

When Carl continued there was no trace of the annoying, smirking individual who’d sauntered onto the Lonesome. This was the professional Galactic Justice agent, uncompromising in his commitment to law and order. “I share your suspicion that someone in Covert Ops protected Keele, insulating him from Gua’s fall from grace. I’d like to learn who and why, and discovering that base on Xlokk is the sort of lucky break that seldom happens in a case.”

Max rocked on his heels, thinking. He was less convinced of the “luck” involved in locating the Xlokk base. He understood the mind-shattering amount of data Lon was pulling in and analyzing. That was the sort of endeavor that revealed secrets. But even knowing that, he couldn’t quite explain his own intuition that Xlokk was important. It was why he’d set course for Xlokk and hung around even after the attack on Thelma.

He believed that he and Carl could infiltrate the base. Given that the Lonesome’s stealth shield could evade Covert Ops, it could certainly handle the security measures of a criminal gang’s hideout. And once on the ground…well, as a former Star Marine, infiltrating an enemy base was something he’d trained for. With Carl’s background, he’d probably have even more experience of it.

“All right. Prepare a mission brief to go in thirty hours from now.” If the base was using standard time, and there was no reason they weren’t, that would mean a “night” mission. “I’ll be going with you.”

“Leaving who in charge of the Lonesome?” Carl asked.

Max smiled. “I’m expecting a guest.”

Thelma bounced on her toes. Reynard had proposed transporting her through the lock tunnel to the Lonesome in the equivalent of a body bag. Apparently, that was how he’d brought her aboard his spaceship. But this time she was awake, and she refused to be zipped into a bag. So he’d adjusted its design to accommodate minimal ambulatory movements and a limited field of vision.

The hatch to the lock tunnel between the two spaceships opened. Thanks to the weird quirks of Reynard’s ship’s design, the lock tunnel couldn’t hold atmosphere. It was a failing he would correct.

“All right. You may—”

She shuffle-dashed into the lock tunnel.

“Depart,” Reynard concluded. He wasn’t coming aboard the Lonesome yet. That would require Max’s permission.

Thelma could imagine how challenging that discussion with Reynard must have been for Harry.

Reynard considered the Lonesome to be Lon’s body. It would have been difficult to get him to comprehend that Lon had chosen not to own the Lonesome but to assign that ownership—and captaincy which was the crucial point as to deciding who came aboard—to Max.

The lock tunnel opened to the Lonesome’s main deck.

Thelma shuffled through the hatch and tumbled into Max’s arms.

He undid the converted body bag sufficiently to reveal her face, and kissed her.

“Mmmphf.” She tried to hug him back, and was defeated by the armless nature of the makeshift lifesuit. Max helped her strip out of it, then went back to kissing her.

Harry scooped up the abandoned body bag. “Good to have you home.”

She stretched out an arm and patted his shoulder. “Hi. Hi, Lon.”

“Very glad you’re home,” Lon said. “We’ll talk over dinner.” The AI didn’t eat, but he adored food. He and Thelma shared time in the kitchen, preparing food that they’d watched made on cooking shows. Dinner meant company.

There was an hour before their regular dinnertime. Thelma and Max retired to their cabin for a private welcome home.

After dinner, Thelma stared at the data map on the viewscreen in the lounge. She was snuggling with Max, and all was right with her world. Lon was chatting. Harry was in “his” recliner, not that his mech body required the chair’s comfort. They were discussing Max’s forthcoming mission to Xlokk, and the reasons for it. “What we need to look for are anomalies, like the bunyaphi. They are here and here. The Biting Teeth, the spaceship of the Ates clan, and the Swooping Hawk, Toprak clan. But where’s the third ship, the Su clan’s ship?”

She grabbed a chocolate from the box on the coffee table. “And has anyone considered.” She was so happy to be home that ideas were flowing freely. “The bunyaphi had three spaceships capable of traversing a perilous wormhole? I thought that level of ship was only available to the Navy and Galactic Justice.”

“They’re isolated out in the Boldire Sector,” Lon replied. “Perhaps it was worth the connection to the rest of the sector to invest in ships capable of surviving the wormhole that would link them to the Saloon Sector.” He continued before any of them could object. “Not that a connection to the frontier is a huge help, but the perilous wormhole puts them significantly closer to the Reclamation Sector, and from there to the rest of the Federation.”

Max had a more succinct explanation for the bunyaphi’s focus on building the capacity to traverse perilous wormholes. “They have a back door from their sector, now.”

“New opportunities.” Lon was ever the optimist. “The Saloon Sector might become the first sector to host a bunyaphi colony outside of the Boldire Sector.”

Thelma narrowed her eyes. “I don’t like distrusting Aubree, but it’s a little suspicious that her request for my assistance in arranging for Ululani’s extraction ensured that Max would learn about the bunyaphi’s presence here.”

“You think she’s meddling?” Harry asked.

“Mmmhmm.” Thelma hummed as she considered her response. “Aubree has access to a lot of resources via her position with Galactic Justice. She’s a senior agent. What does she think Max can do that her resources can’t?”

“The Senate Worlds Development Committee has concluded its mediation of the bunyaphi feud and is heading back to Serene,” Lon contributed. “A ceasefire is in place along with a series of cascading commitments to unlocking stalemates, addressing grievances and rebuilding.”

Thelma suspected that he was reading a news report. At least it was good news. “There’s a chance of peace in Boldire.”

A subtle beep from his comms unit distracted Max. The beep meant the arrival of yet another message, one rated urgent enough for an alert. It also served as a reminder that they didn’t have the luxury of time for an unfocused debate.

Thelma twisted around to give him a chocolate flavored kiss. “Deputize me, honey, and I’ll help with the messages. Lon can guide me as to what needs doing. You look like a courier after a hard run.”

“Flattering,” Max said, deadpan.

Harry laughed.

She stood and hauled Max up. “Bed. Sleep. You have to be able to keep up with the cyborg, tomorrow.”

“Ha.”

For an hour, Thelma sat in her office and simply did as Lon instructed, responding to messages in the queue. Then she consciously took a break. “This explains why Max is exhausted. Lon, how are you holding up?”

“Fine.” A one word answer from the loquacious AI signaled trouble.

“I can ask Harry.”

Lon sighed. “I’m managing the inflow of data, which is substantial, and my predictive algorithms are working effectively. I am honestly fine. However, I am stretched in a manner I haven’t been since I administered the Collegial Ark.” The Collegial Ark was a space-mobile university originally envisaged as a means of promoting multi-species responses to philosophical and practical questions. “It’s not a bad thing to be reminded of one’s limitations.”

“You’re forestalling trouble in an entire busy frontier territory. That’s not exactly ‘limited’.”

“I’m aware. I just…I’m used to having attention to spare. Having to devote almost all of my processing power to a single job is different. Different is good, though. But it has a price. Thelma, I’m sorry that you were alone with Reynard. I imagine he was challenging.”

She smiled. If his friend’s kidnapping of her was what was troubled Lon, she could reassure him. “I missed not being able to chat with you, apart from Max’s brief comms. However, Reynard was fine, once I realized how socially awkward he is. There’s no malice in him.”

Lon perked up, energy enlivening his voice. “None at all. And Harry was checking in with him. We didn’t leave you marooned.”

“So Reynard told me.”

After a few seconds of silence, she prepared to tap open the next queued message.

Lon interrupted. “If you’re okay with Reynard, would you be willing to ask Max for permission to invite Reynard onto the Lonesome for a visit?”

The oddness of the question struck her. Why ask her to ask Max? “Lon, Max would be horrified at the thought he’d isolated you from your friends. Invite who you want. The Lonesome is your home.” The ship was Lon in many ways.

“Good grief! Total miscommunication. I’m aware Max would tell me to invite anyone I like to visit, and that’s the problem. Reynard kidnapped you, and he is a, as you said, ‘challenging’ personality. I want to be sure that Max is truly okay with Reynard visiting. If you ask him privately in your cabin then he can be unfiltered in his response. Reynard doesn’t have to come aboard. Or he can just visit with Harry and me in Harry’s quarters. Max is more stretched than I am, and he’s already dealing with having the Covert Ops agent aboard. I won’t add to his stress.”

“But you want to invite Reynard now?”

Lon whistled a sigh. “Put like that, it sounds selfish.”

“No, it sounds as if the timing is important, presumably for Reynard.”

Harry stuck his head in the door. “Clever girl. Reynard’s groping his way to understanding the concept of socializing. You’re part of that, and if you extend a hand of friendship, it’ll coax him a step further.”

She nodded. “I’ll ask Max.” As captain, who came aboard was his decision. “He won’t have a problem with it, especially if you’re both present?” Her intonation made it a question.

“We will be,” Harry promised. It was his presence that wasn’t a foregone conclusion.

Lon would be there, and Lon was relieved. “Thank you.”

Thelma finished another hour of messages. The work gave her a good overview of the extent of Max and Lon’s efforts, and she kept in mind her own suspicion that the bunyaphi were important. It was lovely, afterward, to slip into bed beside Max.

He opened one eye, wrapped an arm around her, and went back to sleep.

She fell asleep smiling.

Max wasn’t a teenager, so he didn’t roll his eyes, but he did wonder how two such sensible people as Thelma and Lon could work themselves up into imagining he’d have a problem with Reynard coming aboard. The security question didn’t even raise its head. Lon possessed a streak of naivety—he wanted to believe the best of people—that could be exploited as a vulnerability, but Harry was no one’s fool. If he consented to Reynard’s presence, then it was fine.

As to the issue of Max’s own emotional state…well, no, he wouldn’t forgive and forget that the AI had kidnapped Thelma, but he wasn’t about to have a meltdown over it. Not now that she was here with him, in their cabin, braiding her hair and watching him worriedly. “Reynard is welcome whenever Lon wants to invite him. I will be polite.”

Max opened the cabin door. Doing so meant that Lon could overhear his next words from the audio sensors in the passage. “We have a Covert Ops cyborg in a cell on the deck below. He is an unwelcome guest. Reynard is fine.”

“Thank you, Max,” Lon said.

Thelma kissed him briefly. A reward. “I’d like to meet Carl.”

Max shook his head at his own foolishness. Her kiss wasn’t a reward for his obliging answer, it was a bribe for future compliance. “No.”

“I’m a deputy!”

Lon laughed. When they’d first met, Thelma had desperately resented being a deputy out in the Saloon Sector. Since then she’d engineered her freedom from the seven years of service she’d owed Galactic Justice for her education, and now, here she was exploiting the very status she’d once shed.

“Why do you wish to meet Carl?” Max walked beside Thelma to the kitchen and breakfast.

“To see if we can trust him to keep you safe on Xlokk.”

Max hesitated, falling a step behind her. He hadn’t expected that answer. “Or you could trust me to keep myself safe.”

“You know it’s not that simple.” They reached the kitchen and she headed for the coffee machine. “Emotions are complicated. I’ve been arguing about them with Reynard. He thinks they’re useless.”

“That bad?” Lon asked, horrified.

Thelma glanced up at the ceiling, a tic of hers when she was particularly focused on the ship’s AI. Remorse colored her voice. “I exaggerated. Reynard finds emotions a hindrance to rational action. He values his friendship with you, Lon.”

“Have him visit, today, Lon, if he’s willing,” Max said.

“You’re busy planning the infiltration of the Xlokk base.”

Max grinned as he buttered toast. Without Thelma, he often ate goop from the food dispenser. Sharing meals with her made taking the time for real food worthwhile. “I’m not planning the infiltration. Carl is. My role is to poke holes in his mission brief.”

Thelma grinned.

Lon objected. “Yesterday, Carl requested pertinent information that I provided. I suspect his mission brief will be adequate.”

“We’ll see.”

“We?” Thelma asked hopefully.

He nodded. “But keep me between him and you at all times.”

Her burgeoning smile died. “You really don’t trust him.”

“I trust him more than I did.”

Chapter 7

The hatchway to the lounge area on the public deck was too narrow for Thelma to see around Max when he halted in it. That Max didn’t trust Carl to be within reach of her made her not trust allowing Carl to accompany Max to Xlokk, which made her all the more determined to meet the Covert Ops agent in person.

Trust was difficult. Her discussions on the topic with Reynard over the last few days had made her hyper-aware of the difficulties. Who did you trust? How did you protect yourself and those you loved? What did you do when someone betrayed your trust?

She’d stolen time from her morning of messages to read Carl’s mission brief for the Xlokk base infiltration. It seemed solid. It appeared that Carl envisaged Max and him operating as equal partners on the intelligence gathering mission.

“Carl.” Max’s greeting was flat, an I-see-you statement. He moved forward enough for Thelma to squeeze in. Another step let her see Carl, and Carl her.

The cyborg’s neutral expression flashed into shock before settling into anger. He glared at Max. “You’re playing me.”

“Sit down.”

“Like hell. You said she’d been kidnapped on Zephyr.”

Thelma hadn’t even considered the problem he raised. Reynard was socially awkward, but he was a socially awkward engineering genius. His spaceship had brought Thelma from Zephyr to the Lonesome at a speed few other spaceships occupied by an organic sentient could match.

Carl had good reason to mistrust her presence.

“Good morning, Agent Jafarov.” She remained a fraction to the side and behind Max, as she’d promised. “I am Thelma, as you recognized, and I was extracted from the Zephyr spacedock without Max’s knowledge. A friend intervened, without warning either of us.”

Building trust, as she’d discussed with Reynard, meant not lying.

However, there were ways of telling the truth. Misdirection.

“The Space Rodeo has brought a lot of experimental spaceships to the Saloon Sector. One was near enough to assist me.”

The tension in Carl’s stance eased, but there was bitterness in his tone when he spat one word. “Hwicce.”

His assumption that Max’s family’s corporation had lent a vessel to bring his girlfriend back to the safety of the Lonesome was understandable. His resentment, and the reasons for it, were less so.

Except to Max. “Carl believes I’m unfairly privileged.”

“Ah.” She rested a hand on his lower back. “Well, you are. Gorgeous, fit, intelligent, funny, and I love you.” She was teasing, trying to reduce the tension in the air. However, she’d miscalculated.

Talking about the reasons she loved Max for himself, rather than mentioning his political and financial privileges, had Carl tensing again.

Worse, Max tensed too.

She became serious, Galactic Justice academy serious. “Carl Jafarov, I’m here to assess if you’re an acceptable mission partner for Max. Or I’ll replace you.”

“No.” The men spoke with one voice, glared at her, then resumed glaring at each other.

Rude.

But interesting. Carl felt protective of her.

She leaned into Max, contemplating the recent exchange. Maybe the Covert Ops agent hadn’t objected to her defending Max as gorgeous, fit, funny or clever, but to the fact that she loved him. Max had said that candidates for augmentation, to become cyborgs, were chosen from those without families. Did anyone love Carl Jafarov? He’d been undercover as a mercenary and thief for a couple of years, and before then…what had happened to injure him to the point where augmentation was required?

“Your mission brief is acceptable,” Max said. “A combat suit will be delivered shortly. Familiarize yourself with it. While we’re on Xlokk, Thelma will maintain overwatch.”

With Lon’s assistance and with Harry lurking nearby. She nodded. “And if I tell you to return to the shuttle and back to the Lonesome, instant obedience is expected.”

“Of course.” Carl stared at her. He was searching for something.

She raised an eyebrow. “Problem?”

He shifted his attention back to Max. “The allies who brought Thelma to the Lonesome, are they available to assist us?”

Max replied with an immediate, firm negative.

Thelma had the sudden wild imagining of what Reynard might consider as “helping”.

“My question was amusing?” Carl had recovered himself. His expression was locked down in a casual smirk. He kicked out a chair at the kitchen table and sat.

She was chary of sharing information with him. “A private joke.”

“I don’t find my position here amusing. You want to know if Max can trust me. But it’s him who has given the most reason for mistrust between us. I’m imprisoned. He could dump me on Xlokk in a tragic accident.”

Max didn’t move a muscle.

Thelma smiled, without humor. “You know he wouldn’t.”

“You’re on overwatch. My life is in your hands.”

His words echoed the trust exercises run in the Galactic Justice academy. They’d been trained to understand the weight of carrying other people’s lives, altering their fate.

Thelma was sure his phrasing was on purpose.

She kissed Max’s cheek, stepped back, spun and exited through the hatch. She didn’t wait there, but continued on, up to her office and the work waiting for her. “Carl was chosen for his similarity to Max,” she said to Lon.

“I don’t see it.”

She nodded. “Intuition versus analysis. Also, I had a lot of time to think about Carl’s presence on the Lonesome and what Max said about him while Reynard brought me home.”

Lon was silent as she sat behind her desk, but interrupted before she could open her messages. “Is their similarity good or bad? Meant to help or harm Max?”

She glanced up. “Gut instinct? Carl is meant to be an ally but not a friend. If they’d wanted Max to trust his new deputy, they’d have sent a Star Marine.”

“Would a Star Marine comply with a request to spy on a fellow Marine?”

Fourteen message icons blinked at her. “I don’t think Carl will spy on Max.” She opened the first message.

Lon wasn’t willing to let the topic go, despite their workload. “Why not?”

“Because he’s like Max. Justice, not politics. And Max just gave his new bodyguard the chance to pursue bad guys.”

“You think Carl’s a bodyguard?”

Thelma smiled. “Indisputably. He resents the heck out of it, too, but he’ll keep Max safe. And Lon, we’re going to have to befriend him. We need him on Team Lonesome if he’s going to hang around bodyguarding. If I can socialize Reynard, Carl’s your problem.”

“Oh joy.”

Life as a Star Marine had left an indelible mark on Max, for good and bad. He had nightmares. He was also what a civilian would call paranoid. Fortunately, Thelma wasn’t really a civilian. As the daughter of asteroid miners and a graduate of the Galactic Justice academy, she considered suspicion and checking everything twice to be standard operating procedure. Max smiled as she double-checked his combat suit after he’d done so himself.

His comfort in inhabiting a combat suit was a legacy from his time in the Star Marines. With it on, he was mission active. That meant no more second guessing himself. When Thelma gave him the thumbs up for his suit’s status, he pointed up.

She departed without a word, respecting that in this they had mission roles to play that didn’t allow for their personal relationship.

He allowed three minutes for her to climb up to the main deck and reach the bridge. Then he opened the hatch to the public lounge.

Carl maneuvered out in the combat suit Lon had manufactured for him. It was more advanced, and more resilient, than the lifesuit the Covert Ops agent had arrived in, and which Max had ordered recycled. It wasn’t at the level of capability of Max’s suit, though.

“Good to go?” Max asked.

“Ready.”

Max led the way to the shuttle. He took the pilot’s command. Autopilot would take them down to a location two hundred and eight miles from the tunnel entrance and behind a mountain. They’d then skim in. The shuttle was stealthed, but it still paid to be cautious. He comm’d Thelma, confirming her overwatch.

Carl buckled in. Or rather, locked in his combat suit as Max had done. Entry into Xlokk’s atmosphere would be rough.

The Lonesome’s hangar doors opened. The shuttle skimmed out, and dived. Some Star Marines played music in their helmets during this part of a mission. Psych up or psych out. Max kept his mind on the mission, both the strategy—subject to change—and the objective—immutable.

Turbulence flung the shuttle around, and the autopilot stabilized it each time. They could have entered hotter and minimized the turbulence, but at a price. They’d have increased their risk of detection. So he and Carl stood and let their combat suits absorb what they could of the abrupt changes in direction before the shuttle reached the relative calm of the near surface, and there it hovered.

“Shuttle intact. Good to go,” Max reported to Thelma, aware that Lon would be monitoring them remotely anyway.

“Target unchanged. Counting down from twelve.” On overwatch, Thelma was giving the mission twelve minutes for any response to the shuttle’s entry from the base and its two unsophisticated orbital probes.

Max and Carl waited in silence.

At the twelve minute mark, Thelma gave them clearance to proceed.

Max skimmed the shuttle to the disembarkment point.

Carl jumped out first. From here on, he took the lead. His undercover persona on Tornado was as a mercenary and thief. He had the skillset.

If they were detected and violence was the answer, lead reverted to Max. He didn’t expect they’d be detected, unless luck went against them.

A clandestine base in space had a major issue: acquiring supplies. Every extra journey out to it ferrying supplies increased the risk of detection. So resources were limited. Add to that the spacer mentality to look for risks out in space and not on the ground, and he and Carl were likely already inside the base’s security perimeter.

And if Max’s suspicions were correct, and this base was linked to Keele and Keele was responsible for the attempt to kill Thelma at Zephyr, then the group’s intelligence would be that Max was not in Xlokk’s vicinity. It was the same obvious, and misinformed, conclusion that Carl had reached: the calculation of how far from Zephyr Thelma could have traveled in the time since she’d last been seen on the Zephyr spacedock. By responding to messages soon after she’d reached the Lonesome, and telling people she was onboard it, Thelma had unwittingly misdirected people as to Max and the Lonesome’s possible whereabouts.

The base on Xlokk would not be expecting Max’s infiltration tonight, not even in their most paranoid nightmares.

The mouth of the tunnel loomed before them, angling down. Nothing on the sensor suite on Max’s combat suit indicated the presence of security precautions. A few minutes later, Carl reached the same conclusion. He signaled all clear and stay together. Max followed the route he trod, hugging the side of the tunnel, descending deeper, but gradually. The whole time, his suit was active, scanning for trouble, but also mapping the basic route and the exhaust vents a.k.a. possible escape routes. The data collection would increase once he was truly inside the base, which would be soon. The space ahead widened out and ended in a holding chamber.

Blasters in hand, Max and Carl froze against the tunnel wall. Their suits—and possibly whatever the cyborg was augmented with—scanned for threats. They crept forward and the data started streaming in. Directly in front of them was an empty float trolley. Autopilot on the majority of spaceships failed to maneuver safely in tight spaces. The systems simply weren’t designed for that purpose. Pilots were generally an even worse option. Their slight twitches on the steering could gouge a spaceship against the rock walls. So a float trolley, such as asteroid miners used, made sense. It would collect a ship at the surface, bring it down for unloading, then convey it back to the surface.

And spaceships had visited here and unloaded a lot.

On their shared map, Carl flagged the trampship on their far right as the biggest threat and their target. It was powered up. “Living quarters.”

Max assessed the trampship, judging its hatch locations. If he and Carl were going to be detected the old-fashioned way, via eyeballs, then owners of those eyeballs would come from the trampship, and they’d have to put the lights on in the cavern—or possess dark vision helmets like Max and Carl’s combat suits.

Apart from the clear zone in the center that extended to the back wall, the rest of the chamber was filled with mechs, arranged in ranks, tallest at the far wall, smallest nearest the tunnel. Someone had assembled a troop of mechs. Closer inspection to determine the various types might provide an indication as to their ultimate purpose, but the real information would be with the people inside the trampship.

Carl spoke briskly. “Infiltration. They’re not taking security precautions. Let’s see how far that goes. If they’ve left the floater control open and slaved to the trampship, we have a way in. First, the mech-mods.”

True horror shook Max. “They’re mods?”

“I recognize the Fey mod.” Carl went left, toward the ranks of mech-mods furthest from the trampship. He didn’t touch any of them. The risk of triggering a self-defense protocol by attempting to download data from any of them was substantial.

This part of the mission was observation only. Carl observed the mods, Max observed their surroundings. He trusted that his suit was also capturing information about the mech-mods for analysis later.

“Hwicce.” Carl barely breathed the name.

Max glanced at him.

The agent was crouched under the body of a multi-limbed mech-mod.

Max resumed scanning the environment. Speculation during a mission got people killed, especially appalled speculation.

Carl scooted out from beneath the mech-mod and moved two ranks down. Another mech-mod, another assessment, and a search for its control plate. “I want what’s in the trampship. Trying for the floater.”

“Go.” Max backed up toward the entrance. He’d be happier with the tunnel wall, rather than deactivated mech-mods, at his back.

Carl looked damn exposed out at the floater control. “The connection’s open.” Good news. “Too weak to tap from outside the tunnel. We have to wait for the data transfer. I have a virus stealing secrets. Forty minutes. Stay on watch.” He headed for the nearest mech-mod, crouching in its metaphorical shadow.

They stayed silent.

Thelma’s silence from above was reassuring. She’d only make contact if they had trouble inbound.

Max had his combat suit set to transmit a data package of its observations if he pressed the trigger of his blaster. If the mission went to heck, the news that there were mech-mods here had to get out.

Forty minutes of unchanging darkness. Stay too long in that state of heightened vigilance and you’d start to believe the mech-mods were moving.

Carl slipped back to the floater control. “Transfer complete.” A minute and a half passed with him doing something.

Max waited with the patience of a Star Marine. Hacking the connection was Carl’s job. Max’s was to guard him, not question or complain.

“Done.” Carl ran toward him. They kept on running along the wall of the tunnel. They slowed as they neared the entrance. Then they were through it and running for the shuttle.

Max triggered the shuttle hatch to open. If there’d been anyone lurking to ambush them, Thelma would have warned him. He and Carl locked their combat suits, and he gave the autopilot the order to return them to the Lonesome. He sent the data from his suit ahead of them.

On overwatch on the Lonesome, Thelma finally leaned back in the captain’s chair on the bridge. She continued to track the shuttle’s return onscreen, but the horrible tension of not knowing what was happening to Max underground was past.

Until Harry, standing comfortingly close by, said. “That’s not good.” At her panicked glance, he added. “Max is fine, but the data he sent Lon…they found a troop of mech-mods.”

Mech-mods were illegal in the Federation for a very good reason. The people who mutilated themselves—or allowed themselves to be mutilated—to interface with the technology went crazy.

Cyborgs were augmented. The technology that replaced organic body parts was designed to interface seamlessly with the user’s brain and nervous system. The person’s body image was not violated even if their sense of self, their capabilities, changed.

A person who linked with a mech-mod acquired a mechanical body and abilities their mind wasn’t equipped to manage. The software from the mech-mod could support the technology’s functionality in the short term, but in the longer term, the organic sentient went insane, and in trial, destroyed themselves one hundred percent of the time.

Mech-monsters, the entertainment industry called them. They featured as villains and villains’ lackeys in horror movies.

Lon added to Thelma’s shock. “Carl studied the control plates on the mech-mods while Max stood guard. Max believes that Carl saw ‘Hwicce’ on the plates.”

“Has…” She had to stop and fumble for the water bottle in its secure holder away from the controls and screens. She wet her dry mouth. “Has Carl confirmed Max’s suspicions?”

“They’re still in their combat suits and the suits aren’t transmitting,” Lon reported.

Thelma flinched from imagining the stifling shock and suspicion between the two men. “Once the shuttle is in, we should change our location just in case the base somehow traces the shuttle’s path.”

The possibility was outrageously remote to the point of paranoia. Lon agreed instantly. The discovery of mech-mods had alarmed them all. Harry vanished while Thelma watched the screens.

As soon as the shuttle reached the Lonesome and the hatch closed behind it, Thelma was freed from overwatch. She ran for the shuttle and Max. Or rather, she ran for the ladder down to the public deck before forcing herself to slow.

Max walked toward her, opening his helmet. His emotionless expression matched Carl’s; the cyborg one step behind him.

“Mech-mods,” Thelma said.

Carl halted.

Max kept going five more steps to where a housekeeping robot was docked. Then he unsuited.

Halfway through the process, Carl began his own suit removal. Perhaps he’d waited for Max to order him back into the public lounge and his imprisonment. “The data from the base is too much for me to analyze. Max?” Carl tossed a chip to him. “If you know an AI, now’s the time to ask a favor.”

Max caught the chip.

But Lon answered. “I am here, Carl Jafarov. As you suspected. I am Lon. Why give us this data? Why trust us?”

“The Hwicce logo was on the control plates of the mech-mods lined up in the base. Two hundred and thirty two mech-mods. Two hundred and thirty two people will suffer physical pain and mental anguish when they’re fused with the mods. We will stop them, but I need to know who is responsible, truly responsible even if their hands aren’t dirty, for this cruelty. Those are weapons. Who made them? Who bought them? Where do they intend to use them?”

“It could be Hwicce.” Max ground the words out.

“They wouldn’t stamp their responsibility on the plates. But suspicion cast on Hwicce is cast on the President.”

The robot took both combat suits away, trundling around a corner of the cell block.

Standing in his undershirt, shorts and socks, Max appeared every bit as dangerous as when suited up. Fury burned in him. His right hand curled tight around the chip.

“Some Hwicce employees are arrogant enough to mark their work,” Thelma said, thinking of those she’d encountered during the Space Rodeo. “But I agree that the far higher probability is someone aiming to shovel blame onto the corporation and those connected to it.”

“We will find out who,” Lon said. “Gerhard Hwicce, who founded the corporation, was my friend. I will not allow someone to use his legacy to maim and kill.”

Hwicce Corporation designed and manufactured warships, but Thelma understood what Lon meant. The AI took this plot, that they’d caught the threads of, personally.

The housekeeping robot returned sans combat suits.

“Max, the chip?” Lon requested. Max put the chip on a small tray that retracted into the body of the robot. It trundled away again.

“Debrief in ten,” Max said. “Main deck,” he added to Carl. “Take the ladder up and turn left for the lounge.”

It was after three in the morning. Max’s hand at her waist urged Thelma to the ladder. She went up first. He followed and headed for their cabin.

Thelma turned to what had been her old cabin. All that remained in there were a few clothes. “Lon, you need to concentrate on the mech-mods. Could Reynard and I handle ordinary duties? We wouldn’t be as efficient as Max and you. I’m not even sure if Reynard would agree or that you want to share your predictive algorithms—”

“It’s a good idea,” Lon interrupted her. “What are you doing?”

She was filling her arms with clothes, the bright, daringly fashionable clothes she’d designed months ago to grab attention. “I’m not using the cabin. This is about options. I know if we let Carl move freely on the main deck, then Harry can’t move as freely.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

She jumped, spinning to find Harry leaning in the doorway.

“Reynard will help. If Max permits.”

Max emerged from their cabin after a quick shower, his hair still wet. He pulled a t-shirt on over sweatpants. His feet were bare. “I’d appreciate the help.”

Neither of the humans asked for or expected Harry’s assistance. He would step in instantly if either of them were in danger, but his responsibilities were not those of an Interstellar Sheriff. Harry’s duty was to protect the cache of raphus geodes, and there were a lot of extra vessels roaming the region at the moment.

After witnessing Reynard’s perspective on Harry, Thelma suspected that Harry, far from being distant and removed on the frontier, was also in close communication with the Federation’s AIs, providing both counselling and guidance. She felt silly that she hadn’t guessed it earlier. Harry was like a kindly uncle to her, pushing her to grow, and giving her the sense of safety in which to do so. Those sort of skills didn’t exist in a vacuum. He gave the other AIs that same support.

However, whereas he could just be “uncle” to Thelma and Max, with the other AIs Harry’s interactions with Reynard indicated an additional element to his role; that of an authority figure. He served as the AIs’ magistrate, and that was a lonely role.

“Reynard has agreed to help,” Lon said. “He will familiarize himself with the data map and my procedures, and begin working with Thelma at seven.”

Thelma grimaced. “It’ll be seven on the dot.” And it was already after three a.m.. She ducked next door and dropped her clothes in a corner of her office. If they’d have fit in the cabin she shared with Max, they would have already been there. She’d deal with them, later.

Harry disappeared past her door, down the passage to his quarters. The hatch closed behind him.

As Thelma walked back to join Max in the kitchen, Carl entered from the ladder from the public deck.

“Left?” He half-smiled at her as he confirmed Max’s earlier directions.

“Kitchen thataway.”

He fell into step with her.

Max looked up from filling a mug with hot chocolate. “Coffee, chocolate or tea?”

Thelma accepted the mug of hot chocolate, while Carl requested tea.

Max had the same.

They sat at the kitchen table: Thelma opposite Max, with Carl in Harry’s seat nearest the passage. It was odd to have the cyborg there in the AI’s place.

Lon was omnipresent and broke the silence. “Thelma and I detected no change in Xlokk space or planetside during the mission or since.”

His report kick-started the debrief.

Max stared at Carl. “Lon, in the morning, if you can provide a diagrammatic of the base, we won’t go over it now. I’m after your impressions. Anything you think now. Because sleep on it and we might lose it. You don’t have to justify it. Just put it out there. Starting with the obvious. The base is minimally resourced. I’d guess it’s recent. Security nonexistent on the ground. They don’t expect to be found.”

Carl nodded.

A team debrief wasn’t merely for intelligence gathering. It supported the mental and emotional health of the team, individually and together. Max was including Carl in the team.

How Carl would use his new status on the Lonesome would be monitored.

“The mech-mods would fit in the trampship, along with their drivers.” Max grimaced at the word. “But I doubt they’d be able to move around. I think the trampship is serving the purpose of a survival pod for the base rather than as a transport. Speculation.”

“Also speculation,” Carl began. “The rows of mech-mods nearest the trampship each had a gap between the ship and them that would fit another mech-mod. Fusing the sentient and the mod may have already begun…or proof of concept.”

Max drained his mug of tea. “Lon’s analysis of the data should move us from speculation to an idea of what—and who—we’re dealing with. Then we decide who to take this to.”

Carl frowned. “You’re going to hand this off?”

“It’s beyond a sheriff level problem and the evidence, even if fabricated, of Hwicce involvement means I don’t have a choice. I’m not the person to handle this. However, I will make damn sure we don’t give this to anyone involved in it. I’ll trust your judgement on that. In fact…” Max stretched. “Meet me here at seven o’clock. Breakfast and I’ll bring you up to date on what’s happening in the sector. Background for when Lon provides his analysis.”

“A preliminary report at eleven,” Lon promised.

“Okay.” Max headed for the kitchen, putting away his mug and Thelma’s for cleaning.

She stayed at the table, watchful.

Carl carried his mug over to Max. “Night, boss.”

The men locked gazes. Not friends. Possibly allies.

Carl turned. He nodded to Thelma. “Good night.”

“Good night.” She didn’t raise the idea of him staying in her old cabin. Once he left, she went to Max. Finally, she could have the hug they both needed. “Mech-mods.”

He sighed, arms tightening around her. “Yeah.”

Some nightmares were real.

Chapter 8

Reynard was not accustomed to collaborating.

“Mister, if you were in the room with me, I would punch you,” Thelma said.

“Violence is not acceptable between colleagues,” Reynard responded.

Thelma refused to feel guilty that she hadn’t muted the comms line. “A colleague doesn’t call another colleague ‘mush brain’.”

“You refused to message the asteroid mining colony at—”

She interrupted ruthlessly. “We are not having this argument for a third time. Harry clearly defined our respective areas of responsibility. You identify the prospective problems, ranking them by likelihood and severity of consequence, according to Lon’s algorithms—which you are not to mess with!” She took a deep breath. “But I decide which of the options we take from the list Lon’s program provides and I run that option.” Which usually meant her messaging someone to take a particular action.

The Navy reservists were the easiest to deal with. When the Space Rodeo concluded, Thelma was going to send Captain Regina Peric the largest fruit basket possible, and given Lon’s garden deck, that would require a trolley to transport it. In current operating conditions, Regina regarded a request from the sheriff, or his deputy Thelma, as an order.

If only Reynard felt the same.

But he was managing the inflow of data really well. When Thelma had complimented him on it, he’d grumbled that data management was one of his primary skillsets, although usually it was more interesting, and he was missing out on live consumption of the Space Rodeo data and it was enough to make an AI regret initiating the comet helices.

Thelma had almost bitten her tongue off to stop the comment that she hoped he’d learned his lesson. They were all dealing with the consequences, via the Space Rodeo and its fallout, of his comet helices.

She sighed and looked wistfully at her empty coffee mug. Reynard was helping, but his Harry-ordered punishment was also meant to help Reynard with his social awkwardness. Thelma had to model the behavior they wanted their sulky teen-type AI to adopt. Threatening violence wasn’t on that list.

“Reynard, I wouldn’t punch you. But even if I did, it wouldn’t hurt you.”

“It might.”

She grimaced her disbelief while studying the screen for her next task. She’d assigned a couple of the required comm chats to Max.

His sheriff authority and personal legend would help ensure compliance. In other words, hopefully he’d scare away the two miners circling another miner’s asteroid claim. The miner they looked to be planning to claim jump was the quiet sort, but Lon had flagged some suspicious ship disappearances around his previous claim. It had never been brought to court, but it was probable that the miner defended his claims with lethal force.

Max was currently running Carl through the process for supervising his territory. The swiftest method of getting the cyborg deputy up to speed was via Lon’s data map.

“I’ve changed the nature and distribution of touch sensors over my body.” There was a strange note in Reynard’s voice.

The AI couldn’t be shy, could he?

Thelma glanced at her comms unit. “Why?”

“I thought…maybe. Humans hug.”

Her heart squeezed. “You want a hug?”

“Harry said you hug him. That organic sentients touch to cement social bonds.”

“It’s not essential, but yes, we do. Reynard, I will hug you. Unless you tell me not to. That’s one of the important social rules. No touching without permission.”

“Unless you’re saving someone from injury or death.”

She accepted that Reynard became pedantic when nervous. “Yes.”

There was a pause before he responded. “You can hug me.”

“All right.” She smiled. “So the next time I see you—”

“I’m in Harry’s quarters,” Reynard said in a rush. “He said it was permitted and that it would be more efficient and secure for me to access Lon’s database directly.”

She quickly assessed the queue of messages. Whether or not she could afford a break given that she also intended to take time away from her deputy duties to consider Lon’s analysis of the Xlokk data, Thelma decided she owed Reynard twenty minutes. “Warn Harry that I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The hatch to Harry’s quarters opened at her approach. Thelma stepped through. She grinned at Harry who was standing near the weaponized shell that was his personal shuttle. Judging by the open toolbox beside him, he’d been working on it, but wasn’t about to miss Reynard’s first hug.

The other AI shifted anxiously, swapping which three metal tentacles he stood on.

Thelma opened her arms. “Hug?” She walked toward Reynard.

The AI lowered his tentacles, standing now on five, and extended two, flapping them rather aimlessly. He looked like a mech monster. “An embrace is acceptable, since you are—eek!”

She hugged him, and kept her body relaxed and her breathing steady as he wrapped two cold tentacles around her. It was a very tentative return hug. For good measure, she kissed him.

“Germs,” he said.

Harry laughed. The only viruses AIs had to worry about were digital, and AI data hygiene practices were scrupulous.

Reynard was endearingly embarrassed. He released her hurriedly; probably barely refraining from pushing her away.

“Thank you for all your help,” Thelma said to him.

“You’re welcome.”

She crossed to Harry and gave him a one-armed hug.

He slung a casual arm around her shoulders. “How you doing, honey?”

“Worried about the mech-mods. Worried for Max. Glad to be home.”

“Why worried for Max?”

She patted his chest. “I like your priorities.” She wandered away, moving just to be in motion. “I think the mech-mods mean some sort of political plot. Max hates politics, but he’s going to end up in the middle of it.”

“He already is,” Reynard contributed.

Harry tcha’d an amused rebuke at the other AI.

Reynard defended himself. “Accuracy is important. Thelma cannot make good decisions on faulty assumptions.”

“This is going to change the options open to Max.” Thelma kicked the strut of a workbench. “Covert Ops already prioritized him. A cyborg agent is a big investment to send Max’s way.”

“That could be preemptive,” Harry said.

She tilted her head, expressing silent incomprehension.

“His family,” Harry said. “They’d planned to meet you in the Reclamation Sector. The Space Rodeo scuttled those plans. It’s too dangerous to risk the President here with so many people straying around. But they will meet with you.”

“And taking this approach, Carl will be able to give prior assessment that Max is no threat to his family,” Thelma guessed. “As well as being around to protect him. Them.”

Reynard scratched two tentacles together. “Why do you insist on classifying the Covert Operations agent as a bodyguard?”

For Thelma, the answer was obvious. “Because of who Max is. Not the outside stuff. In his soul. Max is a protector. Anything less than a cyborg, capable of exceeding Max’s own Star Marine honed abilities, and Max would try to protect his bodyguard.”

“The boy tries to protect me.” Harry backed her up.

“Irrational,” Reynard observed.

Harry shook his head. The gesture wouldn’t mean much to the other AI, though, so he put it into words. “No, Max cares. Some people show their care by cooking or nagging or hugs.” Thelma smiled despite her worries. Reynard swayed on his tentacles, uncomforted by the gentle teasing. “Max protects those he loves and those weaker than himself. The pursuit of justice is how Max channels his protective nature. Even if he couldn’t be sheriff any more, the core of who he is wouldn’t change.” That reassurance was for Thelma.

She gave a tight nod. “I’d best get back to work.”

“You have squandered seventeen minutes.” Before she could reply to that statement as she wanted to, Reynard continued. “But I liked the hug.”

In passing, she patted the nearest tentacle.

A tentacle patted her back. “No more kisses.”

“I’ll save them for Max.”

Lon’s preliminary report, derived from the data Carl had stolen from the Xlokk base, was as cogent as a Galactic Justice team’s months-long endeavor. Max read it in his office. He’d meet Thelma and Carl in an hour to discuss the report with Lon over lunch. He trusted Lon’s analysis.

The AI had confined himself to consideration of the data stolen from the trampship. The implications of what it revealed was something they’d consider as a team. They had to decide their next steps.

Max scrubbed a hand over his face. What he wanted was a session in the training ring sparring with Harry. Anger at the power-hungry arrogance of the plot they’d snared the edge of made him short-tempered. He needed to be calm; to treat Carl as a test run for the string of naturally suspicious, antagonistic Galactic Justice agents that he’d have to convince, and then, hand off to.

Or was this a rare set of circumstances in which he should go over their heads directly to his father, the President of the Federation?

He actually needed Carl’s perspective—and Thelma’s commonsense.

She’d spotted the anomaly in Lon’s data for his territory and correctly linked it to the Xlokk base. It was the perfect example of why Lon valued human intuition. She wouldn’t be able to explain why the bunyaphi had stood out to her, but they were in this up to their wingtips.

Max entered the kitchen to find Thelma plating up a stir-fry crunchy with fresh vegetables and with a generous serving of spicy protein strips. Carl leaned against the counter, casually at home in the Lonesome’s kitchen. Max’s primitive instincts prickled under his skin. In fact, the nape of his neck literally prickled: hackles raised, like a dog. Instinct demanded he thump his chest and growl “mine” before kicking Carl out of the kitchen.

A refrain of curses that he’d left behind in the Star Marines ran through his mind.

This whole set up was messing with him. He wouldn’t put it beyond Covert Ops to have selected Carl for precisely this purpose—not to stand in the kitchen, but to be the sort of man Thelma would be attracted to: another Galactic Justice academy graduate; against privilege, not benefiting from it; able to smile easily, to fit in.

It wasn’t that Max thought Thelma would cheat on him. He recognized the generalized anxiety floating around, trying to latch onto his secret fears—like Thelma finding someone better to love. The unavoidable implications of Lon’s analysis of the Xlokk data had unsettled Max. He would pay a price for doing the right thing.

Shoving his emotions into a metaphorical box and slamming the lid, he accepted his lunch from Thelma.

For her, cooking was part of how she showed she cared.

They were both worried. With reason.

“Smells great.”

“Fresh vegetables. I’ve been stealing beansprouts,” Carl said.

The forced illusion of an ordinary meal shattered when they sat down. Max broke it. Delaying the discussion would waste time and cause indigestion.

“Keep your quibbles on details to yourself, but if you can challenge a fundamental assumption or conclusion, interrupt me.” He set himself to eat quickly between sentences. “Ordinary transit between the Boldire and Saloon Sectors is four months at best speed. However, in a spaceship capable of jumping through the perilous wormhole in Sheriff Cayor’s territory the transit time is two and a half weeks between recognized settlements. The bunyaphi have recently demonstrated their possession of such spaceships. The Ates and Toprak clans’ ships have both been recorded at the Deadstar Diner, but the Su clan’s ship, the Ripping Claw, hasn’t been recorded anywhere in Lon’s database for my territory. However, it is mentioned in the Xlokk data.”

“Aubree Tennyson mentioned it was stalled for repairs,” Thelma interjected.

“That woman,” Max growled. The Galactic Justice agent for Zephyr always knew more than she should.

“I’ll look into it,” Lon said.

Max chewed and swallowed a large piece of celery. “The Su clan are participants in the agreement recently negotiated and signed in the Boldire Sector under the mediation of the Senate Worlds Development Committee for the bunyaphi to work toward peace. No one expects it to be easy for them to relinquish their tradition of feuding. The clans monitor one another, and one result of that is that their technological achievements mirror one another. In effect, they steal each other’s secrets. Their notion of industrial espionage is as straightforward as break-and-enter and theft. This method of keeping up with each other would explain how they all came to build a clan ship capable of traversing the wormhole from their home sector to ours. When the Su started theirs, the other two copied them.”

“A working assumption, currently without proof.” Lon was keeping them honest.

Max finished his plate of stir-fry. The background to the set up in which the bunyaphi were to be the patsies for this conspiracy was the easy bit. Not that the Su clan were innocent in any of this. Just that their guilt was confined to the illegal mech-mods and not the broader Federation-level plot. “Elliot Keele lost two ships when he sent them to coordinate with the bandits to ambush the Lonesome. The assumption at the time was that he acted at Senator Gua’s request as revenge against Thelma. In fact, Keele wanted me out of the way to ensure the Su warship’s secret passage through my territory to Xlokk.

“We didn’t see it,” Thelma said. “Because Keele didn’t act against you again. He must have assumed that the Space Rodeo would sufficiently distract you or that the bunyaphi’s presence in the Saloon Sector would be masked by the influx of Space Rodeo dudes. Then you and Lon proved too efficient for him, spotting and thwarting trouble. So Keele hired assassins to try and kill me, or Owen, to distract you.”

“If he could have avoided your territory, he would have,” Carl said. “But by then he was committed to the Xlokk base. Which brings us to an assumption that hasn’t been tested, but logically has to be true.”

He pushed aside his plate. “The monitoring system on the old frontier line from the Reclamation Sector to the Saloon Sector triggers an alert when vessels cross it, particularly those registered to flagged individuals and organizations such as Keele and his mercenary group, or if a vessel lacks registration. Keele has at least one of Pang’s deputies on his payroll and can slip vessels across the line by ordering Pang’s compromised deputy to delete the alert as a false report. The unproven assumption is that Keele couldn’t subvert Sheriff Cayor or either of his two deputies in the adjacent territory, and so, couldn’t risk sending his vessels by the most direct route to the perilous wormhole. Instead, they entered the Saloon Sector via Pang’s territory, then had to position themselves to take the long route to the Boldire-bound wormhole because the only two safe routes from Pang’s territory to Cayor’s are monitored.”

“By Cayor, who can’t be bribed or threatened,” Thelma said.

Max gathered up the plates, too angry at the thought of his fellow officers failing in their duty to sit still.

Carl watched him. “The border between Max’s territory and Cayor’s is far more open. No hazan fields, for a start. Add in the quality of Xlokk’s atmosphere, suited to hiding spaceship activity, and the planet’s position on a likely route through to the wormhole, and we have Keele’s reason for locating his mech-mod base there.”

“How did Keele know that the old frontier line is still monitored?” Thelma asked. “I had no idea.”

Max returned to the table. “Keele is in the same position as the Su clan. He’s guilty as hell of trading in mech-mods, but he’s also being used. Whoever is pulling his strings warned him about the old frontier line.”

It was the obvious explanation, and the others accepted it.

“Which brings us to the mech-mod base on Xlokk,” Lon said. “The details, dates and names of the mercenaries involved, supply ships and schedules, are in the report. The overview is simple. The Ripping Claw dropped off eleven bunyaphi to be the test subjects for the mech-mods the Su clan contracted Keele to supply. Five of them have ‘successfully’,” disapproval sharpened his tone, “been fused with a mech-mod. The remaining six are at various stages of merging, from initial mutilation to neurolink implantation.”

Carl sat unnaturally still. Mech-mods were an abandoned, now illegal, offshoot to the cyborg development program that had augmented him. Some would say “created” him. “The bunyaphi’s production of three spaceships capable of traversing a perilous wormhole suggests that they probably have the ability, or could develop it, to manufacture the hardware for the mech-mods. However, if the Su clan had attempted to do so in the Boldire Sector, the rival clans would have spied their illegal activity.”

Lon had a point to add. “Given their history of feuding and war, the bunyaphi have an excellent industrial manufacturing base. However, they have underinvested in fields such as neuroscience, and lack the medical science to manage the neurolinking of their volunteers to the mech-mods.”

Thelma shuddered. “It gives me the creeps to think that they are volunteers.”

“They view themselves as martyrs for their clan’s victory,” Lon said sadly.

Max couldn’t believe the idiocy. “How could they possibly believe they’d be victorious? At the first evidence of mech-mods being used, the Federation will crush them.”

“But first, they’ll have defeated their rivals. I imagine two simultaneous strategic strikes is their plan,” Lon said. “But we’re getting distracted. The Su clan are looking for a win, as they define it, against their rivals in the Boldire Sector. However, whoever set this up, involving the bunyaphi and Keele, intends it to entangle and besmirch the Hwicce Corporation, and through it, via family connection, to damage President Smith and all that he stands for. The most cursory investigation will find the control plates on the mech-mods stamped with the Hwicce logo.”

Max flattened his hands on the table. “I am emotionally involved in this case.”

Carl interrupted. “We all are. You have your family connection. Thelma cares about you. Lon is loyal to the Hwicce Corporation and you. And I…the use of mech-mods is a cruelty and perversion of the cyborg program that I will not let stand.” He hesitated. “I’ve been undercover for years. Being undercover has known risks. At minimum, I may be less attached to official lines of authority than other agents. Whatever the reason, I am not prepared to blindly trust that in reporting our discovery of mech-mods to my handler on the Anubis I’d be acting appropriately. I want to know who is masterminding this conspiracy and who, if anyone, from Covert Ops is involved.”

“If we’re talking of wishes,” Thelma said. “I’d like to know if Covert Ops has any suspicion as to the conspiracy. Remember, someone cut loose Senator Gua, but left Keele standing.”

“We’re not talking wishes.” Max’s tone wasn’t as harsh as his words. “But if all of us are suffering from compromised objectivity in this case, we need to scrutinize our decisions and the assumptions we employ to reach them. Lon, wrap up your findings from the Xlokk base.”

“The Ripping Claw is scheduled to return in three days for its officers, which include the Su secondary heir, to examine the eleven mech-mods and, once they’re approved, to leave a dozen more volunteer drivers. I would have thought the Ripping Claw would stay either on Xlokk, hidden in a gorge, or in its nearspace, but extrapolating from the data Thelma provided about the other clans visiting the Saloon Sector, the bunyaphi’s enthusiasm to explore non-Boldire space outweighs their prudence.

“The deal with the Su clan is for Keele—and there is proof in the data from Xlokk that it is Keele—to provide two hundred functional mech-mods. The additional thirty two you counted in the chamber, plus the eleven aboard the trampship, are extras if the fusion goes wrong.”

Carl swore, then apologized, mainly to Thelma.

She waved aside the apology. “Someone was smart to target the bunyaphi. Their sense of honor is partly what keeps their feuds running so long. A true bunyaphi warrior is part of the attack he or she launches on an enemy. The bunyaphi would never bombard an enemy compound from space.”

“Skin in the game,” Max muttered. “So the mech-mods appeal to their extremists. All right. Have we missed anything in summing up what’s happening at the Xlokk base? Anything that doesn’t make sense, can’t be explained?” He took a deep breath. “So, wider implications? Next steps?”

“Where were the mech-mods manufactured? By whom?” Thelma offered.

“Likely in the Reclamation Sector,” Carl stated the obvious. The Reclamation Sector was the recycling center of the Federation, but it was also where patents and copyright were derisory notions and people could manufacture anything. Still. Mech-mods were the sort of illegal product someone should have noticed. Secrets weren’t easy to keep in a sector where everything was for sale, at a price. “But is learning who made them a priority?”

Thelma shrugged. “Maybe. But I accept that we’re not the best placed people to investigate that aspect of the case. Galactic Justice, including Covert Ops, has the resources.”

“Max locked me up because he doesn’t trust Covert Ops. Are you really prepared to trust normal channels with this information?” The cyborg faced Max. “I get your dilemma. If you don’t immediately pass this information on, you could feed accusations that you attempted to cover up Hwicce’s involvement. But who do you trust, and can you trust their associates?”

Maybe Carl deliberately meant to remind them that one of Sheriff Pang’s deputies was dirty. There could be, would be, others.

“Aubree,” Thelma said. “Aubree Tennyson is the Galactic Justice agent on Zephyr. She was the one who…” She glanced at Carl. “It was through her that we learned of the bunyaphi being in the Saloon Sector. We would have heard anyway. The Biting Teeth and Swooping Hawk both called in at the Deadstar Diner.”

“You can keep secrets from me,” Carl said. “Your choice. But what do you know about Agent Tennyson? Do you know why she was dumped out here?”

“No.”

“I don’t hack the Galactic Justice database,” Lon added to Thelma’s answer. “It’s too well protected.”

Max groaned.

Carl seemed to ignore Lon’s admission that it wasn’t legality, but difficulty, that determined the AI’s hacking targets. “Aubree Tennyson executed her last boss. The man was trafficking in saurelles, the ones who showed no creativity, and hence, were exiled from their clans. There was a network trading them as slaves. Aubree could have taken her boss in alive, but there was sufficient wriggle room in his ‘resisting arrest’ for her to survive the fallout from her actions.”

“Exiled to the frontier,” Thelma said.

“Some in Galactic Justice sympathized with her.” Carl’s stern tone made it clear he wasn’t one of them. “I don’t approve of vigilante justice.”

Max nodded. He held the same line against vigilantism.

Carl relaxed a fraction. “If you bring Aubree into this, you risk tainting the case with her reputation.”

“I wasn’t thinking of including Aubree.” Max had heard some of the rumors that swirled around Aubree.

“It’s a judgement call,” Lon said. “The longer we wait, the more bunyaphi who’ll be mutilated and fused with the mech-mods.”

“They volunteered,” Max said.

Carl pushed back from the table. “They did.”

“But Max protects people from their own stupidity all the time.” Thelma smiled at him faintly.

He hoped he could live up to her faith in him.

Lon stayed focused and presented the opposing argument. “Rushing in to save the bunyaphi volunteers risks warning the person or group orchestrating this conspiracy and gives them a chance to hide. Who knows what their next attempt would be, and who might be hurt by it.”

“I don’t think there’s any question, not really, that we must report the existence of the Xlokk base and the mech-mods now,” Max said. “We all agree with Lon’s analysis of the data. What we’re debating is who to trust, and that’s my call as sheriff.”

Thelma nodded.

Carl waited with inhuman stillness.

“This plot was put into operation before the comet helices appeared,” Max said slowly. “Once they occurred, Keele, and whoever’s using him, might have hoped the Space Rodeo and its attendant chaos would distract me, but they couldn’t have planned for it. Which means they didn’t plan for the influx of Navy vessels.”

Thelma guessed what he intended. “Max, Galactic Justice will hate you.” It was an observation, not an objection.

“I can’t trust that Galactic Justice, particularly in this region of space, aren’t compromised.” Max spelled out his rationale for Carl more than for Thelma or Lon. “I’m far from claiming that the Navy is apolitical.”

Lon snorted, an interesting noise for a spaceship AI.

“But the conspiracy didn’t focus on getting its people into key positions in the Navy to manage the mech-mods and bunyaphi situation,” Max concluded. “We discovered the Xlokk base in time to prevent the conspiracy from hatching its horrors. But the investigation has to be thorough and independent. In the current circumstances, I’m inclined to trust it to the Navy. Any objections?” He looked at Carl.

The Covert Ops agent leaned back and stared at the ceiling.

Max continued quietly. “There is a personal cost for each of us. I’ll have to declare my connection to Hwicce, given the labels on the mech-mods.”

“The false labels,” Thelma corrected quickly. “The Star Marines kept the secret of your dad’s identity before.”

“It’ll probably come out this time. I didn’t expect to hide it forever. But you’ll be dating the President’s secret son.”

She laughed.

It reassured him, especially when she walked around the table to sit on his lap and kiss him.

But Carl’s expression was cold.

“I’m sorry,” Max said to him. “Telling the Navy will out you as a Covert Ops agent. I can’t let them believe you’re just a mercenary turned deputy. However, if you avoid going on their vessels, you should be able to keep your augmentation private.”

“I’m fine with being who I am, and the Navy learning it.”

Max jerked his head in acknowledgement.

Thelma stayed on his lap. It wasn’t protocol for a meeting, a deputy cuddling with the sheriff, but the Lonesome was also their home.

“Lon?” Max asked.

The AI responded immediately. “Like you, I was prepared for my identity to be revealed one day. The Navy should know who analyzed the Xlokk data and be able to discuss it with me. Keeping my presence on the Lonesome secret is less important to me than stopping the nightmare of the mech-mods and whoever is behind it.”

“Thank you, my friend,” Max said. He ran a hand along Thelma’s arm, aware that they were about to change their lives. “Lon, can you comm an admiral for me?”

Chapter 9

“Is it creepy that I’m just standing here watching you?” Max stood against the wall of the training ring on the Lonesome, his own workout complete.

In the middle of the floor, Thelma’s aerobic exercise, her dance class, was winding down. She looked over her shoulder at him. “Do you think I usually shake my booty this much?” She swished a little extra hip sway for emphasis.

“I didn’t think. Just appreciated it.” He pushed away from the wall.

“Good answer.” She ended the dance session with its viewscreen instructor. The music pumping through the speakers cut off. “Shower?”

“I was waiting for you.”

In two hours, the Navy would launch their assault on the Xlokk base.

For Max the hardest part of handing off the investigation to the Navy had been accepting his role on the sidelines. The Navy itself had been eager to be convinced to act.

If Xlokk had been a habitable planet, the Navy couldn’t have gotten involved. Interplanetary affairs were the domain of Galactic Justice. However, Xlokk being classified as uninhabitable (even if it currently hosted an illegal base) opened a loophole. Evidence of the presence of illegal weapons of war, that is, the mech-mods, reinforced the loophole. Finally, the Navy could be called in, at the Interstellar Sheriff’s discretion, if an incident off the starlanes required more force than a sheriff commanded. This was meant to address the need for naval support in response to banditry, but Max could twist it to this purpose.

As far as the Lonesome knew, the Navy was in position to act, and no one in Covert Ops was any the wiser.

Carl would take a lot of heat for that. His superiors would loathe being blindsided by events on Xlokk, especially when the Navy crowed about taking the lead. That the Covert Ops agent had maintained silence spoke for his personal integrity.

Max was adjusting his view of the man.

It hadn’t been an easy four days.

The Navy had scrutinized Lon’s report and the underlying data. They’d questioned Max and Carl, and consulted with Max. At the end of the process, their decision was rational, justified, but not without cost.

They chose to wait for the Ripping Claw’s scheduled visit to the Xlokk base and its departure. According to the data Carl had copied, the Su clan would confirm the effectiveness of the eleven mech-mod test subjects, and deposit a dozen more drivers. The first eleven active mech-mods would remain at the Xlokk base, inside the trampship for monitoring, but would board the Ripping Claw when it returned to deposit the next dozen volunteers in five days.

Rushing to attack the base before the Ripping Claw’s arrival risked the Navy personnel involved, especially the Star Marine units. It also failed to allow sufficient time for Naval Intelligence to subvert the base’s comms security and hide the fact that control of the base had changed hands. If they managed that, then they won more time for the investigation to zero in on those involved. Plus, they’d maintain the advantage of surprise when they picked up the other players involved.

For instance, the Ripping Claw. No one was quite sure what defenses a civilian ship capable of jumping through a perilous wormhole might contain.

It had been Thelma’s suggestion that the Navy acquire that information via scanning the two bunyaphi spaceships in the Saloon Sector who weren’t on the high alert status that the Ripping Claw likely was.

The cost of the Navy’s decision to delay their attack was borne by the eleven initial bunyaphi test subjects, none of whom would be saved from mech-mod fusion, as well as by however many of the next dozen were mutilated as the first stage of fusion before the Navy attacked.

It would be a rare battle for the Star Marines involved. With mech-mods banned, they were a threat that the Star Marines seldom, if ever, encountered.

The Navy had to take the base, the trampship, and shut down transmissions without triggering an emergency alert. On the latter endeavor, they consulted with Lon.

In fact, as they counted down to the Star Marine’s assault on the Xlokk base, it was Lon alone who remained involved. He would be the first non-Navy person permitted access to the data being captured by the Navy vessels stealthed and in position in Xlokk space, as well as the frigate tracking the Ripping Claw.

The Lonesome was standing by out of Xlokk space, outside the hot zone.

Learning how it felt to send someone else into danger while you stayed safe was an experience Max would rather have foregone. The problem was that he was sidelined, but not out of the game. He couldn’t put aside the mystery of who was behind the conspiracy and get on with his ordinary sheriff duties. The Navy wanted his input. But he didn’t have any say in how the investigation proceeded.

After their shared gym time, he didn’t actually shower with Thelma. The bathroom was too small and they were both distracted. Their mutual pretense that they weren’t on edge with their observer status couldn’t stretch far enough to put either in the mood to fool around.

They ate a late dinner, instead. Thelma made gumbo; a lot of it. The spicy dish tasted as wonderful as it smelled and Max took a second serving.

“I should offer some to Carl,” Thelma said.

Max had expected the comment. In fact, she’d held out longer than he’d anticipated. “He’s happy eating goop. He’s a Covert Ops agent. An ally.” Her smile acknowledged how much of a concession that was from him. “Adding Reynard to the Lonesome family is surely enough of a challenge for you.”

She wrinkled her nose.

He was half teasing, and wholly serious. He’d accepted that Reynard was part of the team, but the AI felt alien to him in a way Lon and Harry never had. Perhaps part of Max couldn’t get past Reynard’s initial abduction of Thelma. And it wasn’t as if the AI had the social skills, let alone any charm, with which to take the initiative and move their relationship to solider ground.

“Reynard is back on his own ship.” Thelma finished her bowl of gumbo and sighed. “We’re doing our best, but Reynard and I aren’t as effective as you and Lon. The number of incidents in the territory is increasing.”

“You’re doing more than I should ever ask of you. You’re shouldering my job.”

“Hardly.”

He caught her wrist, held her gaze. “Thank you.”

The tension at the corners of her mouth relaxed. She smiled at him. “I’d do more than wrangle speeding couriers for you.” She was underselling the issues she and Reynard were attempting to pre-empt. And where they missed that chance, they were sending in people to mop up the trouble; from Navy reservists to cranky asteroid miners having to lose digging days to rescue stranded spaceships and the idiot dudes who’d gone off the starlanes.

Max lifted her wrist to his mouth and kissed the soft skin at her pulse point. It was the sort of delicate caress that melted his lover. He released her gently, satisfied by her happy sigh. “Once Carl has reported to the Anubis, he’ll be able to take on more of the work.”

“Unless Covert Ops recalls him.” Her frown was back.

Lon intervened. “Unlikely. Carl has successfully infiltrated the Lonesome and has the only inside line to the Navy’s investigation into the mech-mods conspiracy. Carl will be staying. I’ve added a fridge to the public lounge’s kitchen and filled it with fresh fruit and vegetables.”

“You’re both mother hens,” Max muttered.

“I respect Carl’s decision to maintain a separate space on the Lonesome,” Lon said, on his dignity.

Carl had been offered Thelma’s old cabin on the main deck, but had chosen to remain in a holding cell with use of the public kitchen and lounge, instead. However, the internal hatch to it now remained open. Carl had stated, with truth, that he had more space to himself there than if he joined them on the main deck, and that he preferred his privacy.

The latter statement might be true, but Carl was also giving Max and Thelma their privacy.

Max approved.

Thelma preferred the arrangement, too, since it meant Harry was free to visit with them as normal. However, she seemed to feel guilty that Carl chose to remain in his former prison. Out of that guilt sprang the need to feed him.

Abandoning the attempt for the moment, she used the food dispenser to produce dessert, a chocolate mousse, to which she added fresh strawberries.

The Navy weren’t providing the Lonesome with a real-time data stream of the mission to capture the Xlokk base, which meant that the most productive use of Max and Thelma’s time was food, sleep and trying to keep up with the to-do list generated by Reynard running Lon’s predictive algorithms.

Max ate his mousse before retreating to his office to comms Owen and run through a late night check of the state of affairs at the Sheriff’s Office. The receptionist was sleeping in the office these days. There were less in-person complaints coming in since the attack on Thelma and Owen. It wasn’t necessarily the foiled assassination attempt that put off the dudes, but rather the yprr protection squad’s aggressive attitude. Suddenly a speeding ticket or being price gouged struck dudes as a minor issue to grumble about, and most definitely not to the Sheriff’s Office. Word had gotten around, as it did among spacers.

For Zephyr and its spacedock, that was good news. Troublemakers were giving the angry yprr family’s home base a wide berth.

Thelma put her cup of mint tea to the side of the screen on her desk. There was a new message from Reynard. She started a comms call. “What’s up?”

With Lon busy with the mech-mod business, Reynard was in charge of gathering and analyzing the data for the territory. It meant that he was first with the news.

“The Zephyr Police Department has identified the two men who attacked you on the spacedock. They are both former Star Marines.”

“Huh?”

“The police have only just released this information,” Reynard said. “Which I judge to believe is delayed. The DNA for Star Marines must be on a database that is consulted in authorized identification searches.”

“Military databases are included,” Thelma confirmed. “Then again, Owen and I weren’t hurt, so maybe the priority for identifying the men was lowered. The men must have refused to answer questions.”

“So the police report indicates.”

She took a cautious sip of tea. “Do they have any connection to Elliot Keele?”

“None confirmed, but they have been sighted on Tornado in the past.” Tornado being the mercenary and weapons trading planet in Sheriff Pang’s territory.

Having learned that the monitoring system for the old frontier line between the Reclamation and Saloon Sectors was still in place, she could guess why Tornado had been encouraged as the site for trading in violence. The ships traveling to and from it from the rest of the Federation could be recorded.

“Owen is updating Max on the Zephyr police investigation as we speak.”

“Lon!” Reynard was obviously happy to have the other AI join their conversation.

Thelma was, too. She’d gotten accustomed to being snug and happy on the Lonesome, not scattered and preoccupied. Worried.

“We’re all waiting for the Navy to report on their Xlokk base mission,” Lon said.

“I’m not,” Reynard muttered. But when Lon continued, even the recalcitrant AI was intrigued, or at least, stayed politely silent.

“There is a possible misapprehension Thelma spoke of at dinner that we should address, the three of us. Max, too, but less urgently. Ahem. When I proposed testing my predictive algorithms against trouble in Max’s territory, I anticipated time and resources to step back from them. Instead, we’ve pushed them hard to prevent trouble, firstly as the Space Rodeo brought extra people and trouble to the Saloon Sector, and now, with primary attention having to be given to the mech-mods conspiracy.

“It may be that forcing the algorithms has been beneficial in that it brought the inevitable result of their use to the forefront. I haven’t had time to analyze the data. It is not a priority. However, I suspect that use of my predictive algorithms to manage the territory was always going to hit a wall. Their effectiveness has to be calibrated over time. We began too strongly, pushed unrelentingly, and now the fundamental constant of the universe, that is, entropy, has snapped back.”

Thelma tilted her chair so that she frowned at the ceiling. “Entropy. Everything falls apart.”

“The universal tendency to disorder,” Reynard said. “I hadn’t considered it.”

Lon had, possibly belatedly. Or maybe he hadn’t mentioned the potential entropic snapback for fear of affecting Thelma and Reynard’s actions. “The timing of the handover of responsibility for the data map and actions derived from it was unfortunate in that it may have masked the natural point at which chaos kicked against the tight management of activity in Max’s territory.”

Reynard had learned to make a humming thoughtful noise during the course of his communications with Thelma.

She’d told him that it was polite and helpful to social cohesion and acceptance to signal occasionally that one wasn’t a hundred percent certain of one’s conclusions. “Because no one likes a smug smarty-pants.”

“Ah-hmm. So the resurgence of trouble spots in the territory may be a natural correction rather than purely a result of Thelma and me being less competent than you and Max.”

And I bet Reynard considers me the less competent partner in our efforts, Thelma thought. She smiled, amused.

“I haven’t proven the hypothesis,” Lon said. “However, I believe it is sufficiently credible that, in combination with the other demands on you both, you should relax your attempts to respond to all suppression alerts.” These were the points at which the algorithms predicted that certain interventions would prevent insurance claim level trouble.

“What do you consider the appropriate percentage to ignore, and do we do so randomly?” Reynard asked.

“Twenty percent,” Lon said.

Thelma whistled. “That’s a significant number.”

“Yes. I will discuss the matter with Max. My advice is to dismiss ten percent of suppression alerts randomly. The other ten percent by the degree of difficulty. The latter ten percent will have a distortive effect, but surely not in the short timeframe before I can assist you again.”

“Not long enough for the bad guys to identify the trend and revise their plans, accordingly,” Thelma interpreted.

“Very well,” Reynard said. “Thelma, we will need to discuss how you define difficulty.”

She groaned. “Tomorrow.”

“It is after midnight.”

She checked the time.

Lon beat her to a response, one tailored to Reynard’s captiousness. “For today, randomly select the complete twenty percent to ignore.”

“Thanks, Lon,” she said gratefully. “I didn’t realize it was so late. Still nothing from the Navy?” Unlike Max and Carl’s 3 a.m. raid, the Navy’s mission had been scheduled to take advantage of post-dinner, full stomach sluggishness.

“Not yet.”

“I guess I should catch some Zzz’s then. Sleep,” she added before Reynard could question her.

“Good night, Thelma,” he said.

“Sleep well,” Lon said. “I will wake you if there is need.”

Apparently, there was no need since Thelma woke naturally at twelve minutes before six o’clock. “Naturally” in that she woke when Max got out of bed.

“’Morning,” she mumbled. “News?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them again and began her day.

The Navy reported in at 0700 hours.

Thelma was with Max in his office, both of them working through the data map with Lon and Reynard. Thelma didn’t know if the AIs were distracted, but she could see Max’s forced focus in his bouncing knee. The commander’s comms was a relief.

The transmission was audio-only. It was good news, with qualifications.

“Three Star Marines injured, but no fatalities on our side. One base guard dead, four injured, including medical technicians. I refuse to call them doctors.”

“The bunyaphi volunteers and drivers of the mech-mods?” Max asked, pinpointing the probable cause of the commander’s harsh tone.

“The bunyaphi attempted resistance. Those fused with mech-mods.” The commander’s indrawn breath was loud. He began again. “The Star Marines used targeted electro-magnetic pulses to disable the mech-mods. The organic sentients fused to the hardware experienced neurodislocation.”

“Separation of their sense of self from their bodies,” Lon clarified. “How severe, commander?”

A clipped response. “Catastrophic. They are sedated.” He cleared his throat. “We will not be releasing footage of the mission, but technicians have copied the software for the mech-mods if you are interested?”

“Yes, thank you,” Lon replied.

“It goes no further than the Lonesome.”

“Understood.”

The commander sighed. “If there is some means of undoing the damage…we captured nine of the second batch of bunyaphi volunteers before they underwent the first stage of fusion. The other three are mutilated. I now understand why such a loaded term is used. I intend to push for the medical technicians involved to be charged with torture.”

Max walked around his desk and gripped Thelma’s shoulder. “Thank you. Please pass on my thanks to all involved.”

“I will.”

They’d likely have nightmares.

The commander advanced to a less distressing topic. “Lon, our techs have implemented your imitation program. Successfully. The Ripping Claw comm’d the base to ask about a fractal realignment filter to navigate delta magma. When the Xlokk base responded to ‘bleep it, avoid the bleeped hazard’, my techs added a virus to the message. It has infiltrated the Ripping Claw’s systems. We are capable of gaining control of the bunyaphi heavy cruiser in seconds.”

There was a reason that a commander was briefing Max. Partly it was that a sheriff didn’t rate any higher rank. However, the Navy was also being careful; as careful as the commander’s tiptoeing into the next issue.

“We have confirmed the Hwicce identifier on the control plates of all captured mech-mods.”

Max leaned against his desk beside Thelma’s chair, facing her. He wasn’t hiding from her or from anyone else. “Hwicce Corporation will need to be investigated. I have not communicated with them by any means since the discovery of the Xlokk base.”

“Less a base than a staging post.” The commander cleared his throat, dismissing his own side commentary. “Auditing a corporation is beyond the Navy’s remit. We have secured what physical and digital assets we can. Admiral Jai will report the situation at 0730 hours.”

In nine minutes.

“Galactic Justice will take over the case. The admiral—we all—respect your concerns as to a possible conspiracy involving Covert Ops. The admiral’s report and request will be submitted in the Reclamation Sector, the nearest headquarters for Galactic Justice. But also on Serenity. Copies are being sent to Navy HQ and to the Presidential Office.”

Max’s mouth twisted. “I haven’t had contact with Dad, either.”

The commander coughed.

“I maintained complete secrecy until now,” Max said. “The Lonesome stands by to provide whatever assistance we can.” He added a warning. “Galactic Justice agent Carl Jafarov will report events to his superior following this meeting.”

“Understood.” By his uninflected tone, the commander truly did. The captain of the Anubis would be spitting mad at being kept in the dark. His anger wouldn’t end with Carl or Max. He’d have plenty of temper to spread around. “I’ll keep in touch.”

“Thank you.” Max ended the transmission.

“He’s sent the data,” Lon said.

Max rolled his shoulders, accepting the phantom weight that had settled there. The Navy had never been a long term solution to investigating the mech-mods conspiracy, but at least an independent actor now possessed the physical evidence involved. “I’ll give Carl the good news that he’s free to brief his boss.”

“Lucky him.” Thelma hugged Max briefly before moving aside.

He strode out.

She went in search of Harry.

Forty minutes after Max finished briefing Carl, the Covert Ops agent sent him a copy of the report he’d transmitted to his handler aboard the Anubis. It was a gesture of openness not required of him. Technically, Carl was Max’s deputy. The reality was far more complicated.

Seventeen minutes after Max skimmed the report, the captain of the Anubis demanded an audio-visual comms with Max and Carl, and this time the captain provided his name.

Wesley Sargus appeared to be in his early thirties, but given regeneration treatments, could be well into his sixties. The impatience and entitlement in his attitude conveyed more than his appearance which was of a lean build, close cropped dark hair, and wide nose set in a narrow face. He had a core worlds accent, the sort media stars cultivated; one that said he belonged to privilege, but didn’t link him to any specific planet. His attitude conveyed his expectation that he was both ringmaster and spymaster, and that he’d neither forget nor forgive Max for blocking him from both roles.

Max recognized the antagonism, had been braced for it, but regretted that he’d made an enemy. That could cost him. More troublingly, it could cost those close to him.

He’d decided to take the comms call on the bridge.

Carl sat in the chair Thelma usually occupied.

“You imprisoned a Galactic Justice agent, Sheriff Smith.”

“Yes.”

Sargus didn’t care for his unrepentant confession. “Jafarov’s imprisonment—which he should have challenged—allowed you time to hide your secrets and adjust your schemes. It is suspicious that you just ‘happened’ to discover the Xlokk base.”

If Sargus thought he could annoy Max into losing his temper and answering impulsively he’d have to do more than insinuate wrongdoing. Max showed the captain of the Anubis an even more expressionless face than Carl managed.

“Your family connections will not protect you, sheriff.” Sargus scowled. “Nor can you protect them. Now that we finally have the Lonesome’s location, you will submit to a search—”

“No.”

“I will get a warrant.”

“You can try.”

Sargus revealed very white teeth. “I will succeed.”

He wouldn’t. Max, or Lon, could afford legal teams who would tie up the warrant request for longer than Sargus’s lifetime. There were very few reasons that would allow the internal investigation of an AI, and Lon was the Lonesome. Now that he’d revealed his presence to the Navy, protecting himself as the Lonesome would hide the next layer of secrets, which was Harry’s presence onboard.

The slightest shift of Carl’s weight suggested that he knew the emptiness of Wesley Sargus’s threat. Knew and despised the man for issuing it.

Sargus’s attention snapped to the agent. “Useless. A cyborg ought to be able to—”

Max spoke over the beginning of the rant. “It was your failure to declare Carl’s status that led to me confining him to the public deck. I didn’t know what he was capable of.” Still didn’t. “Nor his orders from Covert Ops. I have a duty of care to Lon, and I will fulfill it.”

“Fine words to cover your treachery,” Sargus sneered.

Max stared at the onscreen image. “Is your antagonism real or fabricated for effect? We’re both recording this transmission. Likely Carl is as well. What do you expect to get from this approach? Are you linked to Elliot Keele?”

A revolted curl of Sargus’s upper lip suggested that the answer to the last question was an emphatic no.

“I will cooperate with Covert Ops,” Max said. “As I have already promised to work with the Navy.”

“You should have contacted us first!”

Carl intervened. “My report explained why that wasn’t wise.”

Sargus ended the transmission, leaving Max and Carl staring at a blank viewscreen.

“Is Captain Sargus normally this volatile?” Lon asked.

“I hadn’t met him before I stepped aboard the Anubis. He struck me as typical of a senior agent accustomed to dark running.” Carl rubbed his right shoulder. “At his best he is capable, adaptable, and resilient. Imperturbable.”

Max’s frown deepened to a scowl. “He’s rattled now. Why?”

“Blazing hells, Max! What have you gotten caught up in?” The angry, worried question came from his older brother, Hugo. The distance from the core worlds to the frontier put significant lag time in their transmission, but Hugo had comm’d Max as soon as news of the mech-mod conspiracy reached him—presumably via the Navy.

There’d been another delay after that. Max had dealt with the Navy first, then Captain Sargus, and only then did he consider himself justified in responding to family concerns.

Hugo had chosen to follow their father into the political arena, but whereas John Smith had always been a public figure, Hugo was a power behind the scenes. “A backroom brawler” a journalist had written once, but Max, who’d fought for his life and those of his fellow Star Marines, couldn’t see it.

Hugo had manicured fingernails and a weak stomach. Hugo didn’t brawl. He was an assassin. Unseen, meticulous, inescapable. Hugo’s ruthlessness in pursuit of his goals was balanced by love for his family—Max would never question his brother’s loyalty—and by a moral code he adhered to stringently. Too stringently for some of the political operatives Hugo had eviscerated, metaphorically, over the years.

So Max dealt patiently with his brother’s questions and concerns, and the annoyance of the lag time exacerbated by Hugo insisting on full audio-visual comms rather than audio only or text.

Although absolute in his refusal to be a public figure, Hugo wasn’t an introvert. He processed information in interaction with others. The prolonged conversation with Max helped him sort out his thinking, and reach a decision.

“You’ll have to come in. Covert Ops put that agent with you. Carl Jafarov.” Hugo was good at remembering names. “He can fill in as Interstellar Sheriff until a permanent replacement is found. I know you value your independence, but the family needs you. Even if the investigation is settled fast and disproves Hwicce Corporation involvement, some smears will stick. We need to get ahead of the narrative. Cynny needs you to. The corporation is her life. Thousands of people are employed by it directly, far more indirectly. It’s a major influencer for good corporate behavior. A standard bearer thanks to Cynny’s efforts.”

Max glared at the screen.

Hugo was a first class manipulator. He knew that Max would resist reshaping his life for his father’s presidential position, and that Hugo couldn’t directly ask him to given that he, himself, managed to live how he wanted to in the shadows. However, by bringing in their sister and Max’s own sense of social and corporate responsibility Hugo hoped to get his way.

“Cynny has Paul,” Max said. His sister had a life, a purpose and identity, beyond maintaining high social justice standards for the Hwicce Corporation.

Paul Owiti, Cynny’s fiancé, came from a family every bit as wealthy as the Hwicce clan and for far longer. He was an exo-archaeologist, discovering and exploring space wrecks. Cynny was planning a big wedding for after their father’s final presidential term ended in two and a half years.

“Why do you want me to come in, Hugo? I have a life out here.”

“You have Thelma, just as Cynny has Paul.” He didn’t mention his own wife, Vivian Conteh, a composer whose work Lon had once described as “memorable”. The kind AI hadn’t meant it admiringly. Vivian was a difficult personality, but her and Hugo’s relationship seemed to work for them and their children. “Thelma is an excellent match for you. I’ve seen her Galactic Justice academy record. Outstanding, and when you add in her Rock Sector background, she has to be supportive of Dad’s equal opportunities stance.”

Hugo didn’t pause, taking full advantage of the lag time to keep talking, keep laying out his argument to bend Max to his will. “You should consult with Thelma about coming in. Dad has over two years to go in his term, but the Vici are growing their support base. They’re beginning to actively counter his policies. You could be the fresh boost Dad and the party needs.”

Max frowned. One person couldn’t matter that much. Even their father, as President of the Federation, was severely limited. By some measures, behind the scenes, Hugo probably effected more change. Max was one of the tools he’d use.

“Stories change minds,” Hugo said. “The most powerful stories are personal. Your story, Max, is about power in service. First as a Star Marine, then as an Interstellar Sheriff. You can change the narrative. Talk to Thelma. I have to go. Love from the family.” The transmission ended.

“Clever, bro,” Max said to the blank screen. “Lon?”

“I was listening as you asked. I hadn’t anticipated that Hugo would focus on you in this discussion.”

“Me, either.” He yawned, a release of tension, and stretched. “Thelma. Also, Lon, can you ask Harry if he’s free to join us in the lounge?”

“He is.”

Max collected Thelma from her office next door to his.

She took one look at his face and grinned sympathetically. “Brothers.” She spoke from experience.

“You have no idea.” Max had served in the Star Marines with her brother Joe. “Hugo can be the devil. He gets into my head.”

She joined him in the lounge, curling up beside him on the sofa.

Harry sat in his recliner.

Along with Lon, omnipresent in the Lonesome, they were Max’s family as truly as those of his blood. They listened as he recounted his conversation with Hugo.

“There were Vici at the academy,” Thelma said. “Not the extremists. The dean expelled the student who raised the hell flag. Although the student probably did it because she was already failing out.”

The Vici were self-professed conquerors, taking the name for their loosely connected movement (more ideology than organization) from the Latin quotation attributed to Julius Caesar. “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Veni, vedi, vici.

The hell flag was a symbol of the Vici’s extremist arm; extreme enough that some considered them terrorists.

“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,” Max murmured the extremists’ stolen mantra.

“From ‘Paradise Lost’ by John Milton,” Lon said. “Who doubtless would have been horrified that the Satan of his poem became inspiration for ideologues.” He whistled a sigh. “Hugo is correct, however. There is widespread and growing support for the key principle of the Vici, that the strong are wasting their energy pandering to the weak.”

Thelma sat up straight in challenge. “Who decides who is weak and who is strong?”

“Who needs who?” Harry drawled. “But sometimes need is not so clear.” As it wasn’t with Reynard, who would have claimed he needed no one, and yet, had modified himself so as to receive a hug.

“Sometimes we don’t know what we need,” Thelma said. “Or realize what we are receiving. I never liked these discussions at the academy. Philosophy, ideology. I believe in kindness.”

Max hugged her closer.

Lon agreed. “A simple but powerful concept.”

“I want to remain here as sheriff.” Max likewise disliked philosophical debates, and after recounting his discussion with Hugo, what he really wanted was answers to the questions raised. Most importantly, for them all to consider their future. “If I can’t remain as sheriff, I still like life on the frontier.”

“So do I,” Thelma said instantly. “If you’re thinking that I secretly wish to join some political fight in the core worlds,” she shuddered, “you’re wrong. Hugo’s wrong. If we have to, I’m with you, but it’s not my preference.”

“That is my position, too,” Lon said.

Harry stretched, his mech body mimicking a human’s insouciant shrug. “I have responsibilities here. Selfishly, I’d like you to stay. I’m prepared to put a bit of effort into making that happen, if it’s what you want.”

The AIs seldom emphasized how powerful they were. Max wondered if those supporting the Vici movement had ever entertained the idea that they weren’t the conquerors they called themselves. People existed who were far more powerful.

When the social order was stable, as it had been for the last few decades in the core worlds, people forgot how easy it was for that order to change; that in a shakeup they could shift from benefiting from the social structure, to finding themselves at the bottom of it. Then, they’d want the kindness Thelma believed in, and not the harsh rule of self-interest.

In his brutal mech body with his gentle manners, Harry was a living reminder of balancing power with generosity and service.

Max smiled at him. He didn’t share his emotions easily, other than with Thelma. But sometimes the truth had to be spoken, and heard. “You’re my hero, Harry. I love you.” Thelma’s snuggle turned into a full hug. She approved of his sentiment and shared it. “Thank you.”

“We’re family,” Harry said. “We stay together.”

“Oh drat!” Lon’s shocked, exasperated voice shattered the poignant moment. “I cried, and overwatered the garden deck.”

Chapter 10

The Navy surprised Thelma by inviting Max and his deputy aboard the carrier to view the mech-mods, as well as to meet the gathered bunyaphi. Perhaps they had intended their invitation of “and your deputy” to mean Carl, but Carl had chosen to remain on the Lonesome. The Navy’s security would instantly identify and record his cyborg status. Still no one objected when Thelma walked in behind Max wearing the tailored utility suit and beret she’d chosen (and retired months ago) as her deputy uniform.

Since the Star Marine raid of the Xlokk base, the Navy had been busy in a dozen directions. Even with Max sidelined and herself barely on the fringe of events, Thelma had a sense of just how complicated the mission had become for the Navy in juggling competing demands.

They had contacted the bunyaphi clan leaders as well as the recently created independent bunyaphi Commission for Peace. Its board members couldn’t have anticipated having to react to a case like this, one of severe breaching of Federation law wrapped around a planned attack against two other clans, and with torture of one’s own clan members for added horror. Nonetheless, the board had rallied, and half of it, along with clan representatives, were en route to the Saloon Sector onboard a Navy frigate via the perilous wormhole.

The Navy hadn’t waited. Other bunyaphi were nearer at hand, and the decision had been made that bunyaphi firsthand accounts were required immediately to confirm the shocking allegations that were set to rock the Boldire Sector. Consequently, the two other bunyaphi ships in the Saloon Sector had been contacted and had responded with full speed to a rendezvous point with the carrier holding the bunyaphi-fused mech-mods.

The Lonesome had also been invited.

The officers and crew of the Ripping Claw hadn’t been invited, but were present as prisoners.

Keening cries rose shrilly from among the two innocent bunyaphi crews. The Biting Teeth and Swooping Hawk’s officers contained their exclamations of horror, but their wings clamped as tightly to their backs as their traumatized crews’.

Thelma shared their distress.

The row of mech-mods was heartbreaking. Whatever Keele had promised the Su clan, he hadn’t been able to deliver on it. The people fused with the hardware were raving.

A Navy doctor stepped forward. She told the assembled audience that in her assessment, and having consulted remotely with experts, neither the electro-magnetic pulses used to temporarily disable the mech-mods, nor their later sedation, was responsible for the bunyaphi drivers’ mania. Even in ideal circumstances—the woman grimaced—the drivers would barely have made it, sane, through the wormhole and home.

Maybe that had been the idea. Berserkers had been human weapons of war eons ago on Earth. These were the newest bunyaphi shock troops.

Looking at the people lost to psychosis, surely no one could find the idea tolerable?

Thelma swallowed hard. It didn’t help to remember that these people had volunteered for their fate. Each one of them represented a personal tragedy for themselves, their families and their friends. If they hadn’t been stopped, the tragedy would have been societal. Devastation wreaked on civic morality.

“You found this?” The captain of the Biting Teeth was a stocky individual, shorter than most of his crew, his wings painted crimson and gold. His narrow lips barely parted for speech. That might have been typical or tension.

Max stood at parade rest. “I did.”

“You are President Smith’s son and of Hwicce clan.” The Swooping Hawk’s captain was taller than his counterpart; also less able to hide his distress. His eyelids flickered. “There are Hwicce labels on the mech-mods, whether for truth or misdirection. You could have hidden this.”

“No.” Max’s stark response, without explanation or justification, didn’t echo in the space so filled with people. But the impact of his answer did.

The bunyaphi of the Ates and Toprak clans extended their wings and bowed their heads. “Honor.”

Those from the Ripping Claw, secured at a slight distance, turned their heads aside momentarily.

Thelma guessed it to be a gesture of shame from the Su clan.

Back straight, Max bowed briefly. He glanced at the naval contingent.

No one spoke.

Max breathed in deeply, and exhaled, accepting this burden in addition to the others he carried. “This—madness—is the endpoint of your feud. Look well. This is where your raving and hatred brings you. Bunyaphi have a reputation for honor that the Su clan trashed.” A muttering swell of noise unhappily endorsed his statement. “But how you respond will seal the wider Federation’s view of the bunyaphi.”

“What do you mean?” The captain of the Swooping Hawk, presumably one of the senior Toprak clan members, had regained his composure during the exchange of respect. His gaze was steady on Max, his eyelids folded open.

“Take them home, these damaged ones of the Su clan,” Max said. “Show compassion. Lend members of your two crews to run the Ripping Claw. Have the Su clan face justice in Boldire. Keep to the mediated path to peace. The mech-mods make for graphic media footage. When that is released, the bunyaphi can be either monsters or people who deal honorably with monsters to protect peace.”

“Why should we care what others think of us?” A Toprak officer shouted the question, but a few Ates people nodded agreement.

Thelma fielded that question. It was a civilian issue. “Because when you look to the future you want your grandchildren to have options. To be able to explore the Federation and be respected. Even here in the Saloon Sector, so close to Boldire via the wormhole. If you establish a colony here, your grandchildren will want to be equal with all others, not shamed by their ancestors.”

“A compelling argument.” The Biting Teeth’s captain flared his wings in a show of crimson and gold.

The Navy commander who seemed to be assigned as liaison with the Interstellar Sheriff Service—or more pragmatically, as liaison to the President’s son—escorted Thelma and Max up a couple of decks and winding through a maze of passages to the officers’ wardroom, making conversation as they walked. “We invited your superior officer, Chief Agnes Kanu, to stand witness with you. She refused our offer of a Navy courier ride here. Said that the mech-mods are all Sheriff Smith’s. She was right.”

The commander regarded Max levelly. “You handled the occasion brilliantly. Thank you. Both of you.” His gaze flicked to include Thelma, but returned to Max. “You gave the bunyaphi a path forward. Frankly, some of our cultural experts feared that the bunyaphi of the other two clans might lash out, shamed and scared by the actions of the Su clan.”

Max merely nodded acknowledgement.

Thelma tried to keep her own expression neutral. The commander’s news was sadly unsurprising. Chief Kanu was in a snit with Max. She’d criticized him heavily for going to the Navy for help with the Xlokk base and mech-mods. In her view, he should have shared the suspected existence of a base on Xlokk with her, and her alone, and waited for her decision on how to proceed.

Keeping his superior out of the loop initially had gone against chain of command principles, but since Max hadn’t known who in the Interstellar Sheriff Service might leak the information, even inadvertently, he’d made the operational decision to act. He’d accepted that there would be blowback, and there was.

But not from the Navy.

Message delivered, the commander guided conversation to the non-contentious topic of the Space Rodeo and the latest dives. Once their party reached the officers’ wardroom, they suffered through bitter coffee and bland conversation.

After a few minutes Max had mercy on them all. He drained his coffee cup, having ignored the raisin cookies. “I understand that I’m on the sidelines now, Tomas. I’m happy with that. I have my own duties, a sheriff territory to look after. You don’t have to bore us into departing without asking questions about the investigation.”

A quick grin from the commander indicated that Max had read the situation correctly. However, the commander had his orders and Navy discipline, plus an audience of lieutenants and the ever-present surveillance system on a warship, so he couldn’t verbally acknowledge Max’s good-humored accusation. But he got close. “Leaving so soon?” he asked as Thelma followed Max’s lead and rose.

“Busy, busy,” she murmured.

One of the lieutenants disguised laughter with a cough. The move would have worked for a human, but this lieutenant was a mauveinne. They didn’t usually cough. The result was a whinnying sound that cracked everyone’s composure. The lieutenant in question relaxed into genuine laughter. “Sorry, sir. Allergies.”

The corners of the commander’s mouth twitched.

Out here on the frontier, it was essential to be on good terms with the Navy. And while the Navy might be sidelining Max from the investigation, and were themselves being nudged aside by Galactic Justice, the respect being shown to Max, including the invitation to stand witness with the bunyaphi to the mech-mod victims, demonstrated the Navy’s belief in him. That demonstration of trust wasn’t solely for Max, either. It was a message to Galactic Justice and others.

Standing witness to the ravaged reality of mech-mods complete with drivers had been traumatizing. Max felt the cost of it in his soul. He also saw how closely Thelma held herself. As they entered the Lonesome and the hatch to the lock tunnel shut behind them, he clasped her hand, bent, and put his forehead to hers.

“That’s why mech-mods are banned,” she muttered. She tilted her head up and kissed him.

A shiver ran through him, remaking him; reaffirming life and hope. Love.

The lock tunnel to the carrier had been docked at the public deck. That meant they were in Carl’s space. They had an audience.

Max wanted to take Thelma up to their cabin and lose the universe a while in loving her. He recognized the same need in her, the familiar softness and urgency of her desire.

“Sorry to intrude.” Carl’s voice was absolutely dead, all emotion stripped from it.

With one hand curved around Thelma’s face, thumb stroking the tenderness of her throat, Max glanced at the cyborg.

“A message from Captain Sargus,” Carl said. “He requests a meeting ASAP, outside the Navy’s perimeter.” The arena of the Space Rodeo. “He sent coordinates. The location is four hours away.”

Max frowned. “Sargus wants to meet in person?”

“He will come aboard the Lonesome. Alone.”

“Lon?” Max asked.

“Carl shared the coordinates with me. We can be there in three hours. It is further from the Space Rodeo and Xlokk, on the fringe of a hazan field.”

Thelma straightened. “Spook territory.”

Carl didn’t respond to the commentary on Covert Ops agents’ habits. They did prefer to lurk in regions where they could vanish among natural or manufactured hazards.

“All right. I promised to cooperate with Galactic Justice, and the Navy has no further need of us. Lon, set course for the rendezvous. Carl, you can confirm the meeting with Sargus.”

Carl nodded and disappeared into the converted cell that served as his private room.

Thelma watched his departure with a conflicted expression, as if she thought they’d been rude to him.

Before Max had a chance to resent her concern for the cyborg, she headed for the internal hatch leading out of the public lounge.

“Three hours,” she called back. “At least half of that is mine.”

He liked her staking her claim to him. He caught up with her outside the hatch and kissed her. When their only audience was Lon, he didn’t have to hold back, but they saved their lovemaking for the privacy of their cabin.

To be able to give yourself body and soul to your lover was another living joy the bunyaphi mech-mod drivers had sacrificed.

Wesley Sargus came aboard with a very different attitude to the one he’d displayed in his viewscreen performance.

Max noted the difference with deep suspicion.

The man entering the Lonesome and assessing his surroundings—the public lounge—was a dominant, controlled personality and one very sure of his purpose for being here. Not that Sargus shared that purpose initially.

“Impressive for a prison. In fact, I’d class this as luxurious private quarters for a spaceship. Sheriff Smith, I’ve signed off on your actions to contain Agent Jafarov. If a cyborg had entered my vessel unannounced I’d have treated him less kindly.”

Carl lounged in his chair at the kitchen table, unresponsive to the attack from the captain he reported to. The one who had, in effect, just disavowed himself of him.

The Star Marines and their immediate command had each other’s back. If Sargus thought he was currying favor with Max with this attitude, he was wrong.

As for Thelma, she stayed in her seat. Sargus wouldn’t know it, but that was a powerful statement in itself. With anyone else, she would have crossed to the food dispenser and coffee pot and offered refreshment. Instead, she’d decided against hospitality.

Sargus looked unfocusedly across the lounge. “I’m pleased to have the chance to meet you, Lon.”

“Good afternoon, Captain Sargus.”

“Wesley.”

Lon didn’t respond.

Max did. “You requested a face-to-face meeting.”

The Covert Ops captain focused on him. The man’s brown eyes faded to a strange amber color at the outer rim of his irises. “I felt an in-person meeting to be a necessary courtesy. I have an apology and a warning to deliver, and a mission to plan.

“First, the apology. The cyborg was inflicted on you because of intelligence received of a hit ordered on you. He is an expensive asset. Previous to the ambush of the Lonesome that involved Elliot Keel’s ships Covert Ops would have taken no action beyond forwarding a warning of trouble to you, Sheriff Smith. However, the calculations changed after that failed attempt on your life.”

“On Thelma’s,” Max said.

Sargus tilted his head. “Perhaps. Either way, attention focused on you. A new assessment of your value and threat to the Federation, living or dead, was reached. It was decided that you were needed alive, and not just to prevent your father’s distraction.”

The cold pragmatism of Covert Ops failed to shock or even anger Max. He nudged Thelma’s foot. She was angry. He told her silently to stay quiet.

“It isn’t clear who has ordered the hit on you or why. That is information we require.”

“Why?”

Sargus sat a moment, lips sealed.

Carl pushed back from the table. “Max, I wasn’t told about an actual threat against your life.”

“Incomplete briefings all around,” Max said.

Sargus shrugged. “You keep secrets. We keep secrets.”

Abruptly, Thelma gripped Max’s wrist beneath the table. Her self-control held, probably because she was as aware as Max that Sargus was being deliberately provocative. Observing their reactions would be part of the reason he’d proposed an in-person meeting.

What could they learn from him?

“Excuse me.” Thelma released Max’s wrist and rose to leave. She was smart. She could observe the meeting with Lon while giving Sargus nothing.

“I hope it wasn’t anything I said.” Sargus smirked as the inner hatch sealed behind Thelma.

“You smell,” Carl said bluntly.

Max blinked.

Carl looked at him. “Captain Sargus is a functioning alcoholic. The stink of liver decay is on him. His new liver, his third, is overdue.”

“You insubordinate, cyborg bastard.” Rage and embarrassment flushed the Anubis’s captain’s face.

“Carl Jafarov is my deputy,” Max said. “He’s sharing information I need. Since Covert Ops didn’t warn me or brief Carl as to the hit out on me, I’m assuming you dangled me out here as bait, hoping to learn who ordered my death. You then, thanks to the Lonesome’s stealth ability, lost us. Instead of informing me of the risk I was running, and which arguably threatens everyone on the Lonesome, you stayed silent. I agree. I’m definitely owed an apology. So is Carl whom you put in danger with incomplete orders.”

Sargus’s jaw set stubbornly.

Max nodded, his assessment of the captain confirmed. The sooner the man was off his ship the happier Max would be. To Max it wasn’t the man who stunk, but his attitude. “So, warning delivered, apology skipped. What do you want from me?”

“Who ordered you killed?”

It was a good question.

“People I’ve arrested, their families and associates, have threatened me. Each threat is recorded in my reports.”

A jerk of his chin conveyed Sargus’ sharp rejection of Max’s answer. “The Cadre isn’t hired to dispose of a sheriff.”

Max considered Carl’s narrowed eyes. The other man had recognized the name. Max didn’t. “The Cadre?” he asked him.

“Assassins. They take high profile targets. Word is with a seventy percent success rate.”

Max studied the stare down between the two Covert Ops agents. “I hadn’t heard of them. Do they minimize collateral damage?”

“It’s not a priority,” Carl said.

Sargus volunteered some information. “Their contracts aren’t open-ended. If you kill the lead assassin assigned to your case, the Cadre terminates the contract. They keep the fifty percent upfront fee.”

“What else do you know about them?” No, the question was too vague. Max had to extract the maximum pertinent information from Sargus. “Will they know the identity of the person who ordered the hit?”

“Yes.”

“Under what circumstances would they give me that information? Would they trade a Cadre member’s life for it?”

Finally, Wesley Sargus smiled. “Yes, they would. You send them the assassin and keep his left ear. Then they’ll whisper the name into the ear, metaphorically speaking.”

As barbaric as that sounded, it was less awful than the mutilation and insanity of the bunyaphi mech-mods Max had viewed earlier. “You want that name. What help will you give me?”

“You’ve got him.” A chin jerk in Carl’s direction. “And if you don’t give us the slip, the Anubis will trail you, fully cloaked.” Sargus was promising a personal bodyguard and a spaceship one. It was a commitment of serious resources.

“What is Covert Ops’s best guess as to when and how the assassin will strike?”

“Soon.” If Sargus had other information—and he undoubtedly did—he wasn’t sharing it. He departed after being refused his request for a tour of the Lonesome.

“Eleven tracking devices,” Lon reported ten minutes later in disgust. “Disposed of.”

“I’m sorry,” Carl said. “I didn’t know.” He stared at his hands.

They were in the kitchen, the proper kitchen, not the public lounge. Thelma was skinning tomatoes for a rich savory sauce to serve with pasta. That was the odd, but effective balance that the Lonesome provided: ordinary life to counter the danger and violence outside its hull.

“We annihilated two of Keele’s spaceships, one a destroyer, when they ambushed us.” Thelma looked as if she was paying strict attention to peeling the tomatoes that had been dunked in boiling water to blister their skins, but her voice was thin with tension. “They’ll aim to attack you when you’re away from us, Max.”

“Even spaceships as shielded as the Lonesome can be destroyed,” Carl said.

Thelma disposed of the pile of tomato skins and picked up a knife. She didn’t point it at the agent, but her scowl suggested she’d like to.

“Max should stay on the Lonesome. It’s safer than going solo,” Lon said.

“And the Lonesome gives me options I don’t have alone. Thank you, Lon.” Max watched Thelma in profile. She would fight to stay with him. If she’d have been on the Zephyr spacedock, he’d have conceded that the Lonesome was the safer option. The attack at the Sheriff’s Office had demonstrated that. But she wasn’t on Zephyr and they did have another option—although it wasn’t one they could argue about in front of Carl.

She put the tomatoes, herbs, wine and whatever cooking magic she used in the saucepan, set it on the stove to simmer, and grabbed the open bottle of wine and three glasses. When she sat on the sofa, the two men joined her automatically: Max beside her and Carl in Harry’s recliner. The wine was red and mellow, a half-glass for each of them after she’d used it generously in the sauce. Thelma raised her glass. “To living well, which is the best revenge.”

“To happiness.” Max clinked glasses with her.

Carl merely nodded and drank.

But the tone was set. They had to move beyond shock and anger, and into planning to live.

“Sargus doesn’t make friends,” Carl said. “But his intelligence and instincts as an agent are usually accurate. For him to visit you here, he must think the threat against you is imminent.”

“I have assigned additional resources to scanning for threats,” Lon said. “Max, do you have a direction you wish to move in?”

“Back to the Space Rodeo and angling closer to Zephyr.”

“Hiding behind the Navy is a temporary solution.” Carl’s gaze was on the red wine he swirled in his glass.

Max wasn’t a big fan of wine. His glass was on the coffee table. Thelma held her glass as if it was a brandy snifter and she had to warm it between her hands. She was the reason Max was heading back behind the Navy’s perimeter. What he said was, “We have to be somewhere while we prepare.”

At minimum, the arena for the Space Rodeo would be safer because Max wasn’t the first responder to any threats detected there. Outside the arena he, and the Lonesome, could be lured into a trap by duty.

“I want to know why,” Thelma said. “Why is Max being targeted?”

Lon answered. “The implication of Sargus’s comments is that it’s not related to Max’s sheriff’s role, which means not criminal. So financial or political.”

“I can’t think how my death—” He broke off to rescue Thelma’s wine glass as the contents sloshed at mention of his death. He waited for her fingers to uncurl, then put the glass on the table and lifted her into his lap. “Hugo told me it was time to return to the core worlds. My brother,” he added for Carl’s benefit.

The cyborg glanced at them, and away. “You should be careful how you contact him. His comms may be monitored.”

“I’ll tell him we’re considering his advice, but if I returned, what could I do back in the core worlds? Hugo has a strategist’s grasp of power shifts and trends. If there’s something that I could affect, he’ll mention it.”

“You’re thinking that someone ordered your death as a preventative?”

Max smoothed a hand down Thelma’s back to rest on her hip. “I don’t think the answer’s in my past, so it must be in my future.” Thelma gripped the front of his shirt before flattening her palm over his heart, a heart that seemed to try to beat out of his chest at her touch. He covered her hand, trapping it against him. “A future I intend to protect.”

But the very intensity of their feelings meant they fought once they were alone in their cabin.

“Can you comms Reynard?” Max kept his voice soft; a request, not an order. “That AI is strange, but I think he considers you a friend, and Harry trusts him. I’d like you to remain with Reynard in the Space Rodeo arena.” Inside the security of the Navy’s perimeter. “Lon can evade Covert Ops long enough to make the transfer—”

“The transfer? You mean shoving me off the Lonesome while you go out to face assassins. No!” She paced their cabin, while he stood still. The small space all but vibrated with her passion and energy.

There were very few times he could resist her. This had to be one of them. His gut knotted with tension and, yes, with fear.

She gripped his arm, her hand sliding down till they were clasped palm to palm. “You’ll let Lon and Harry and even Carl risk their lives to protect you, but me you’re trying to tuck away. You can’t, Max. I’m a trained Galactic Justice graduate. I’m not helpless. I can’t sit by as if I am.”

“For me. Please.”

She shook her head, mouth tight, eyes glimmering with unshed tears.

He pressed their joined hands to his lips. “It’s not just about keeping you safe. It’s selfish, too. Who I have to be to be capable of capturing and mutilating an assassin isn’t any part of how I want you to know me.”

“I love you.”

“Don’t ask this of me.” He abandoned pride and begged. “It would kill me to think that you have those memories of me while we make love.”

“Max.” Her voice broke. She wrenched her hands free of his, and hugged him. “You could come to me covered in blood and I would love you.” She was crying: his Thelma, who never cried.

Fury at those who’d caused her fear burned in him. But he only showed her tenderness. He rubbed her back and pressed his face against her hair, lips finding her ear. “The Lonesome is our home. I don’t want memories of cruelty to be part of it for you.” This was their home. He would protect it for her.

“It’s cruel. They’re forcing you to do this. When we find them, whoever they are, they have to be punished. I want more than the justice of the legal system. I want their schemes unraveled and their reputations destroyed, as they deserve to be.”

“They will be.”

Thelma’s last hope for resisting Max’s request evaporated when Reynard agreed to host her on his spaceship.

In fact, the AI made a solemn vow to Max as to Thelma’s security, and Max equally solemnly shook one of Reynard’s tentacles in the equivalent of a handshake. The way Reynard’s other tentacles immediately raised the AI an inch taller suggested that the handshake—the recognition, respect and trust it represented—meant the universe to Reynard. It also meant that Reynard’s social awareness and sense of self was growing if Max’s opinion mattered to him.

Lon prepared a trolley stacked high with food and supplies for her. That was his way of caring. It went through the lock tunnel first.

Harry hugged her. “Reynard understands the security protocols, including those around communication. You’ll be running silent till our signal.”

She nodded against the hard shell of his armored mech body. “We’ll be careful. You do the same.”

He kissed her temple. “Always, honey. And I’ll look after Max.”

“I know you will. And he’ll look after you.”

Harry’s chuckle was a rumbly sound of comfort. “He always does.” The powerful AI respected Max’s instincts to protect. More than that, he shared them.

Thelma and Max had already said their goodbyes in their cabin. One final kiss and Thelma forced herself, one step after the other, through the lock tunnel, leaving Max to face the worst kind of trouble without her.

Chapter 11

As part of Reynard’s running dark protocol, Thelma had left her personal comms unit on the Lonesome. Until Lon gave the all clear, Reynard was to remain out of contact with the Federation. That suited the reclusive AI perfectly. Thelma found it more oppressive. She was locked into a small world of her thoughts, conversation with Reynard, and entertaining herself with the media and data that he had stored on chips.

Reynard’s conversation centered on results from the Space Rodeo. He was monitoring specific spaceships as they dived through the comet helices. Different approaches apparently resulted in different launches from connecting with one of the helix spars and spring-boarding the spaceship in question out to what Reynard assured her were most definitely not random locations.

“Although I’ve yet to determine all the factors involved in the dive launch and landing site.”

Weeks ago, Thelma had refused to discuss with Reynard Harry’s research into the legendary specters, the people who had cached raphus geodes throughout this galaxy and the next—the one Nefertiti had entered to communicate with the Revered Ones of the Kampia aliens. But now that she required a distraction from the comms silence and her worries, she found herself considering Harry’s quest.

It seemed that the specters, whoever they had been, were the progenitors for the Federation AI. All species wished to understand their ancestors.

The specters had left behind them raphus geodes, seeds of life. For what purpose? Out of a primal desire for life to continue?

Thelma fell off the treadmill she’d been jogging on.

“Are you injured? Ill?” Reynard appeared in the room as she sat on the floor rubbing her right knee, the pain of which promised to bloom into a massive bruise.

“I had a thought.”

“And it hurt?” He hunched his tentacles, lowering himself closer to her level.

She pulled a face at him. “I notice you’ve mastered sarcasm.”

“I believe I have a natural talent. What was your thought?”

“That the raphus geodes your specters left are adaptable to both organic and inorganic life forms, giving you the broadest range of life form possible.”

Reynard extended a tentacle and helped her rise. “To increase our chance of survival.”

“Mmhmm. But beyond survival, look at all the possibilities open to others born of raphus geodes. Your stories could be anything. That’s what your specters gifted you. The chance to make your life stories amazing.” She leaned against a supporting wall of tentacles. “That’s what parents hope for their children.”

Reynard was evidently feeling a bit cantankerous. “So, not a revolutionary thought worth falling over for?”

Her happiness at the specters’ love for their children, some of whom were her friends, faded. “It was the next thought that tripped me. I was thinking about how all sentient beings when alive shape their stories. But when we die…” Her voice thickened. “Maybe that’s why someone ordered Max’s death. They have a story they want to tell, and they can’t risk him being alive to shape his own story.”

“I understood your words, but not what you mean.”

She stiffened, forcing herself to express her terrible fear clearly. “Someone wants Max dead so that they can twist his life story for their own purpose.”

Reynard considered the idea. “Does that give you any idea of who it could be?”

“Maybe.”

Max was fighting Carl in the Lonesome’s training ring.

They had left Thelma with Reynard over two weeks ago and had been traveling further from the Space Rodeo ever since. Their course had no direction. They were the bait hoping to lure the assassin into acting. By their transmissions, they ensured that whilst the Lonesome’s specific location wasn’t known, a rough approximation of it could be calculated.

Carl had officially taken on deputy responsibilities for the territory.

“Thelma’s prettier,” had been the general public’s response to that.

To which Carl had replied, “I’m nastier.”

After that exchange, Lon judged that honors were even between Saloon Sector citizens and the newest Interstellar Sheriff official sworn to protect them. People on the frontier took a while to warm up to new folk.

There were a lot of new folk at the moment. As well as those drawn in to participate in the daredevil excitement of the Space Rodeo, even more were arriving just to gawk.

The spectators who turned up in their own spaceships were often annoying. They were accustomed to the heavy official presence of the rest of Federation space. Life on the frontier required a greater degree of self-reliance.

But even as Lon and Max, and now, Carl, directed resources such as the Navy reservists to assist the dudes, the bigger issue bothering Max was the starliners who’d altered their usual routes to include cruising the Saloon Sector.

In normal circumstances as sheriff, Max would be relieved to have so many potential points of trouble—dudes—corralled on the starliners. That made them the starliners’ officers’ problem. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and currently, when he looked at the starliners marked on Lon’s data map, all he saw were potential victims.

He circled Carl searching for an opening to attack, well aware that Carl was doing the same to him. It was a dance of mutual respect. Both wore bruises from earlier training sessions. “Part of the problem is that Lon’s predictive algorithms were too effective. For weeks we pre-empted trouble, and probably killed a couple of the assassin’s schemes.”

“Or delayed them.” Carl blocked a hit with his right forearm, jabbed with his left fist.

“Now we’re waiting for him—or her—to regroup.” Max grimaced as Carl’s follow up hit connected with an old bruise. “Do you have to hit the same shoulder?”

Carl grinned. There was blood on his teeth from a split lip. “Move faster.”

In spite of his training with Harry, Max would never be able to match Carl’s cyborg reflexes. His deputy was taking it easy on him, and Max took full advantage.

It was Carl’s turn to swear and retreat a step. “I thought you’d have lost the edge of a serving Star Marine.”

“Aren’t assumptions a witch?” Max had been trained better than to think of anything but the fight underway, and yet… “If you were the assassin, how would you kill me?”

The question failed to distract Carl. He kicked Max in the stomach.

Tensed muscles protected Max’s organs. His breath still huffed out.

“If I were the assassin, I’d look at using me. I’m the outsider inside the Lonesome. Suborn me through bribery or threats.”

“Or by convincing you that I need putting down.”

Carl kicked Max behind the knee.

Max collapsed.

The cyborg stilled. “No one approached me.”

Max looked up at him from his position on the floor. He panted through pain and breathlessness. “I believe you. What would your second option be if you were the assassin?”

Carl threw a water bottle at him. “The Lonesome is a tough target but not impossible. If I wanted to guarantee…” He froze with his own bottle midway to his mouth. His eyes went wide and unfocussed.

“Poison our supplies?” Max guessed. “It’s not possible. Lon scans everything, and what he hasn’t grown, we’ve had aboard for months.”

Carl refocused. The grim expression on his face aged him. Water trickled unnoticed from his tilted bottle. “We’ve overlooked the obvious. If I wanted to guarantee your death, Max, I’d make you kill yourself.”

“Your urself inventor, Jerome, has designed a respectably stable spaceship,” Reynard said as he shared a chamber with Thelma while scanning through the latest Space Rodeo data. Whilst the comms lockdown he and Thelma had promised to uphold meant that they couldn’t transmit anything, passively acquiring data streaming past was possible. “The latest auto-piloted space dive of the Otua sent it through three revolutions, and it corrected its path in thirteen seconds. That beats the Hwicce courier class prototype by four seconds. Remarkable.”

When she failed to reply, he added a prompt. “Would you like to view the dive data?”

“No.” Thelma stared at her hands. They were locked together, the skin tight over her knuckles. She was scared, and denying that fear. Far better to feel determined. Resolute. Plus, she had a plan. She just had to approach it obliquely. “Reynard, traveling to the Lonesome you told me about your research into translocation, which involved you creating the comet helices. One of them is a double helix composed of one dominant and one less steady helix. You admitted that wasn’t on purpose. An error.”

“It wasn’t an error since the initiation of the comet helices was an experiment. There are no errors in an experiment’s results, only in its conduct.”

“You cut into reality to extract slices of it.”

Reynard scratched two tentacles together sharply in a sign of impatience, and perhaps, defensiveness. “You express my actions clumsily. To form the spars of the helices—”

“I was piloting a prototype spaceship on a space dive that struck where two spars of the double helix intersected. I experienced a time dual-location moment which you explained as bi-temporal. Two moments in time occupying the same location in space. But I think your interpretation of my experience was wrong.”

“I studied the data.”

“From your own preconceptions. Consider if it wasn’t two moments in time that collided, but two realities. As the stronger reality asserted itself, the weaker one ceased to exist. Long ago scientists dismissed the idea of a multiverse, but what if there was an element of truth to it? What if your comet helices pull potential realities into our universe, which we don’t notice until the spars occupy the same space and one reality point implodes.”

She exploded her hands apart. “It can’t explode, or the energy would escape. But if it implodes, and draws our reality tight, possibilities vanish.”

“This is a strange idea,” Reynard said.

Thelma nodded. She agreed. And it felt like wasting time to be discussing it with the AI now, but she wanted him to do something impossible. She was building a bridge to that point, and she was building it fast. She had to make it strong enough to hold the weight of her desperation, and of Reynard’s stubbornness. “It’s a strange idea, but if there’s any truth to it then it holds incredible power. The power to choose the future. This isn’t about time travel. Time continues to proceed linearly, and that matters, because that’s the requirement for entropy. An arrow into the future, with everything unraveling behind it.”

She took a deep breath. “Remember how Lon mentioned entropy? How it snapped back against his predictive algorithms? But if we modify those algorithms and only rarely focus them on a single point, if you learn how to reach into the space-time continuum and slice it into helix spars and align them to intersect—”

“Almost impossible, even if I was willing to waste time exploring your ridiculous notion of something more pseudoscience than mathematically conceivable.” Despite his scorn, Reynard sounded intrigued.

She leaned forward. “At the intersection point, the more statistically probable scenario would assert itself as the reality, and the other would implode, and in doing so, it would add tension to the surviving reality at that point, which would mean reducing or removing variables immediately involved.”

“Ludicrous. You are making massive assumptions.”

“I am. But what if I’m right? What if, with enough research you could choose to guarantee a particular reality?”

In the ensuing silence, she could hear her own heartbeat, or imagined she could.

The silence gave her hope.

Did Reynard have the emotional and moral maturity to discern what she was asking?

He did.

“You ask if I would play god?”

“Would you?”

His answer was immediate and rang with conviction. “No.”

She’d have smiled, except that the next stage in this conversation was equally perilous. Beginning with an intellectual puzzle centered on Reynard’s use of comet helices had been by design. She needed him engaged. Now, he had his moral principles in mind as well. Some were his, some were Harry’s. She had to coax him forward to accept what living those principles meant.

“The greater the power, the greater the temptation to act like a god,” she said quietly. “How do people protect themselves from that temptation?”

“Not by denying themselves knowledge,” Reynard said instantly. It seemed that he wanted to explore her idea of reality points imploding.

She agreed with him. “Knowledge is never the problem.”

“It is how it’s used that matters.” Reynard was silent. “What are you trying to manipulate me into doing?”

Her lips parted on a painful sound that was meant to be laughter. She reached out and he coiled a tentacle around her hand. She patted the tentacle with her free hand. “You’ve learned about connection, about being there for another person. About forgiveness, I hope. I am manipulating you. I’m sorry. I…for me to get what I want, you have to do something you really, really won’t like.”

“Which is?”

She stepped forward. “This hug is not about manipulation. It’s about comfort.”

Metal tentacles wrapped around her as softly as a silva-shawl. “You’re worried about Max.”

“I am. I’m also furious on his behalf. Let me explain. Then I’ll ask a favor.”

For three days Carl harangued Max, and Lon, arguing that the Lonesome had to depart the Saloon Sector as quickly and publicly as possible. “It’s the only way to keep people safe from being used as hostages to ensure Max’s cooperation. If he’s not here, he can’t be used.”

Lon disagreed. “If Max runs, the assassin will press the trigger on whatever plan he’s constructed, potentially killing hundreds of people. It’ll be a warning to Max.”

A blind message on the fourth day ended the debate. There was a video and instructions. Instructions on how Max was to die.

Max received the transmission in his office. He watched it in silence. “How many people are at the Deadstar Diner?”

Lon was solemn. “It’s become a tourist destination since the raphus geode cache marketing spin Thelma put on Wild Blaster Bill’s tall tale. The starliners have added it to their Space Rodeo itineraries. ‘See the real frontier. Can you find a raphus geode?’ They guide parties up to the fake cache site, ‘discover’ one of Darlene’s coupons,” Darlene was the owner-manager of the Deadstar Diner, “and claim their coffee or meal at the diner. Counting in the people onboard spaceships docked at the diner, the number can vary from a thousand to upward of ten thousand. I’m sorry, Max.”

“It’s a clever site to hold hostage.” He stared at the image he’d frozen the video on.

In continuing to travel further from the Space Rodeo and in the direction of Sheriff Zajak’s territory, the Lonesome was now a mere two days’ journey away from the Deadstar Diner; albeit at the Lonesome’s Covert Ops courier-equivalent speed, which was insanely fast for a ship of its size.

The assassin’s instructions gave Max three days to reach the asteroid on which the Deadstar Diner was situated.

The video showed asteroid worms drilled into the surface at three points. If the assassin had loaded them with the nuclear missiles he claimed, then there was enough force there to destroy the asteroid and any spaceships in the vicinity. In addition, the assassin had harnessed the power of chain reactions. Destroy one spaceship and in this sort of proximity, others would follow, their systems overwhelmed and power cores exploding. On regulated spacedocks there were shields in place to prevent cascading failure. The Deadstar Diner had none of those.

The diner was also a refueling station. Its tanks wouldn’t survive multiple ship explosions. The destruction would be at the level of obliteration.

In the blind message, the assassin kept his demand blunt as he reiterated Max’s sole option. “Any attempt to evacuate the Deadstar Diner, and I trigger the explosion. Any approach of official vessels, other than yours, and I trigger the explosion. Only you can save the people at the Deadstar Diner, Sheriff Smith. Your presence, confirmed by your retina scan, and the worms are disabled. I adjusted the asteroid worms’ override switches just for you. You have three days. The countdown is on.”

“Lon, copy the message to Carl. He may have some ideas.”

“I have some.” Harry walked into the office. His human mannerisms held, but he didn’t sit in the chair reinforced to bear his mech body’s weight. “And some good news. Lon showed me the transmission.”

Max nodded. That was standard procedure. Everyone on the Lonesome got read into security threats.

“The assassin chose a good site, from his perspective. Remote, but busy. Also one that you have an emotional connection to. You’re friends with Darlene and Wild Blaster Bill. You visit often. Thelma likes them.”

Max and Thelma had had their first date at the diner. The Kampia had interrupted it, but it still counted as their first date.

“But the assassin lacked a vital piece of information.” Harry folded his arms, looking powerful and scary. “My interest in raphus geode hunters. Since the Kampia’s visit, I’ve been focusing on traces and legends of the specters, but my primary responsibility remains to protect raphus geodes.” Including undiscovered legendary caches of the seeds of life left behind by the specters. “For due diligence, I set up a system to watch the fake cache site. Even knowing it’s fake, a lot of raphus geode hunters won’t be able to resist a visit. Staking out the site helps me identify who I should watch.”

“And your surveillance system hasn’t been disabled?” Lon asked.

Harry smiled. “I’m sneaky. If he’d detected it, the assassin would have set up his scheme elsewhere. The only problem is that I was tagging identities, not activities, so the system didn’t alert me to the asteroid worms.” The worms weren’t actual worms. They were self-propelled drilling technology used by asteroid miners. “However, I’m tracking back through the data. The assassin couldn’t have released the worms or set up the hidden ID recognition system during a guided trek to the fake cache site. So I’m looking for individual or small party visits.”

“I can help,” Lon offered.

Max sat staring at the ID recognition system onscreen. “A retina scan is old-fashioned for ID systems.”

“It forces you to raise your helmet to achieve the scan,” Lon said. “Raised helmet, no atmosphere. You’re dead.”

“Yeah, but…where did the assassin get a scan of my retina? It’s not like DNA and RNA patterned sample collections. The archives of the Interstellar Sheriff Service on Dauphin is the only place I can think of that uses retina ID. Is the assassin bluffing?”

Harry interrupted, mercilessly triumphant. “Got him. Bernard Chen, owner and sole registered occupant of the space yacht Peto.”

“Searching the database,” Lon said. “Uh huh. Hmm. Bernard Chen has been careful not to raise any flags. He’s traveling as part of a Lone Travelers convoy. Tourists. They visited the Space Rodeo, then traveled down to the Deadstar Diner. After some debate they’ve veered off to peek at the Badstars.”

“Idiots,” Max growled.

“Difficult to track them out there,” Lon said. “But the Peto would be near enough for Chen to monitor the Deadstar Diner remotely and respond in close to real time.”

Harry unfolded his arms, signaling an eagerness to move on. “Whilst remaining clear of the danger zone. We need to divide and conquer.”

“Carl is coming up,” Lon warned them. “He has watched Chen’s video twice.”

Harry’s response was to switch to his emotionless mech persona. Evidently, he’d decided it was time that Max’s new deputy “met” him, for a certain definition of met.

Carl rocked to a halt in the doorway of the office, literally grabbing the frame at the sight of Harry. “Whoa. I’d heard you had a mech. Holy hades. That thing is freaky.”

“And effective,” Max said. “We have a counter-terrorism operation to plan. The mech is part of it.”

They needed to be in two places at once: the Deadstar Diner to disable the remote detonation system and remove the asteroid worms; and out to the Badstars to catch Chen. Theoretically, either task could be outsourced. Sargus was tracking them in the fully stealthed Anubis. Max had a bone-deep instinct not to share the information with him, and yet…

“Sit down,” he said to Carl.

The other man obeyed, but turned his chair to keep Harry in his peripheral vision.

“We had a lucky break with the site the assassin chose for his scheme. Activities on and around the Deadstar Diner are better surveilled than people realize.”

After a couple of seconds, Carl nodded his head. “The manager hired mercenaries for security.”

“That’s not where my data comes from.” Max closed the video message, switching the viewscreen to Lon’s data map and zooming in on the Deadstar Diner and the route to the Badstars. It wasn’t a Sunday jaunt, that route. There were hazards out there, some likely unmapped. For Max, that was an advantage. The convoy the Peto was part of wouldn’t be traveling fast.

“The assassin was recorded at the fake cache site. Unfortunately, it was passive data collection and no alert was sent, but we did track him back to his vessel.”

Carl leaned forward, seeming to forget Harry’s looming presence.

Max recognized a fellow justice hunter. “The assassin’s name—at least, the name recorded against the ownership and sole occupant record for his spaceship, Peto—is Bernard Chen.”

“Bernard Chen,” Carl repeated the name under his breath. “I don’t recognize it.”

“We’re not searching for anything on him,” Max said. “At least not in any official databases where we’d leave a trail. Bernard Chen is hiding the Peto as part of a tourist convoy currently underway to visit the Badstars.”

“Idiots,” Carl muttered.

As much as he shared the sentiment—the Badstars was not suitable for tourist dudes—Max stayed on track. “Lon, how quickly can the Lonesome catch up with the Peto?”

“Two and a half days.”

Carl grimaced. “We have a three day countdown.”

Max’s nod said, I’m aware. Out loud, he asked Lon how long it would take the Anubis to catch up with the Peto.

“Same as us.” Lon hesitated. “Barring trouble.”

Nothing in life was guaranteed.

“The assassin, this Bernard Chen, will check that the Lonesome is on track to the Deadstar Diner.” Carl frowned at the data map, then at Max. “You need Sargus’s help. He’s hunting the name of who ordered the hit on you.”

Max was interested why Covert Ops were committing so many resources to discovering that fact. Lon had hypothesized that Covert Ops feared that one or more of their own had been turned. “Can we trust him, though? Or rather, will he trust me? I’m going to give him the assassin’s name and location, but no evidence of where I got the information.”

“Why withhold your source?”

“Loyalty.”

Carl’s gaze unfocussed, his thoughts turned inward. He was almost as still as Harry. “Oddly, I think Sargus might accept that answer.”

“Will he accept it enough that he won’t trip any flags by searching Covert Ops databases for information on Chen?”

“Ah. You don’t trust him not to inadvertently leak info. Ironic, given Covert Ops’s reputation for secrecy, especially dark runners like the Anubis.” But Carl’s expression conspicuously lacked any amusement. The situation was too serious, balanced on too fine a knife edge, to find humor in irony. “There is a code…if Lon uses a tight beam to comm the Anubis and I transmit the code, in responding to it, Sargus commits the Anubis to a comms lockdown for twenty four hours. Lockdown after that timeframe is at his discretion as captain.”

“Better than nothing,” Lon opined.

Carl tapped his hands against his thighs. “The Anubis has to go after the assassin. It’s already running cloaked. The Lonesome has to stay visible and demonstrate that you’re headed to the Deadstar Diner.”

Max flicked a glance at Harry, careful to hide any sign of apology that he’d be discussing him as a soulless object.

Not that Carl was in any state to notice a tiny tell. The Covert Ops agent had forgotten Harry’s presence, and jolted at the reminder in Max’s next suggestion.

“The mech can duplicate the Lonesome’s signal. We could send it.”

Carl made a point of keeping his gaze centered on Max. The big bad cyborg wasn’t scared of a mech, that would be embarrassing. “It’s a substantial risk, depending on how carefully the assassin has things set up to track you. And you need two independent groups capable of taking the initiative. Once Sargus’s team captures Bernard Chen and deactivates his remote control of the asteroid worms, someone still has to disable their three day countdown.”

“The mech can trigger the override switches on the worms,” Lon said.

“In a fight, I imagine the mech is invaluable,” Carl said earnestly. “But this isn’t a straight up fight. We have to be in reach of the Deadstar Diner as soon as Sargus signals that Chen is contained.”

Max sighed. “So, trust Sargus?”

Carl nodded, once. “This is more than an attempt to murder you, Max. It’s a counter-terrorism operation. You need to involve Sargus. We can never control every variable, but refusing to involve allies…that’s stupid.”

Lon gave a crack of laughter.

“All right.” Max accepted the inevitable. “If you have the code for the twenty four hours comms lockdown, transmit it to the Anubis, and we’ll get the mission underway.”

Chapter 12

“Target secured. Remote detonation capability destroyed. Over to you.”

The Anubis’s report at ten hours before the deadline for Max to present himself at the fake cache site was his and Carl’s signal to go, go, go.

Harry was already in position on the asteroid. Lon forwarded the news to him, and Harry ripped out the trigger attached to the remote detonation switch. As he said, it was better to be safe than sorry. Then he headed for the nearest of the three asteroid worms, having already identified their locations.

Lacking any understanding of who Harry was, Carl wasn’t happy about leaving responsibility for disabling the explosives to a mech. However, he and Max had a different job.

Two days ago, Lon had asked a very important question. “If you were an evil person obliterating over eighty spaceships and a refueling station, why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to dispose of other problems?” As a result of his suspicions, he’d analyzed the data on the ships at the Deadstar Diner, and marked three for physical investigation.

Carl had recommended that Max delay the investigation; that they launch the mech in a shuttle to deactivate the asteroid worms, and turn the Lonesome around and head back into space. Just in case.

The cut of disappointment Max felt at Carl’s suggestion to run rather than stand fast in solidarity with the people they hoped to save, surprised him. When had he come to respect the cyborg? Forcing aside his disappointment, Max had to admit that, viewed objectively, Carl’s suggestion was a rational one. As sheriff, Max had a duty to keep a deputy out of undue danger.

He managed a neutral voice. “Lon, do you mind retreating to a safe distance? I’ll take the shuttle—”

“Never mind,” Carl cut in, and the man grinned. “As your bodyguard, where you go, I go.”

“Not if…” Mentally, Max replayed the conversation and realized he’d been had. “You—”

Carl flung his arms up in surrender. “Covert Ops agent. I had to know. So how does your mech operate? Autonomous mechs have limits. Trusting one to disable three asteroid worms would typically be a huge risk.”

By manipulating Max into offering to have Lon pilot the Lonesome with Carl aboard out of the danger zone, the distance involved had revealed that Lon wasn’t remotely riding the mech body. Fractional seconds of delay were too much to risk in bomb disposal.

“None of your business,” Max said rudely.

Lon intervened. “I wouldn’t have gone, anyway.” Which added a smidgen of doubt to Carl’s smug smirk. “However, I will add that there is a Customs cutter on patrol nearby and capable of reaching the diner in four days.” Customs were trained to board suspect vessels.

“Four days is too long to wait.” Plus, rightly or wrongly, Max believed that he and Carl were the better choice for boarding vessels with unknown contents and defenses. Bernard Chen wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of arranging the obliteration of anything normal like drug shipments (such as Customs searched for), but he could be disposing of more aggressive evidence of crime.

Weapons, poison, …bodies.

Standing in a trampship’s passage, one devoid of gravity and atmosphere, Carl looked over Max’s shoulder and swore.

The first spaceship Lon had marked as a target had bodies floating in the rear cargo hold. The slight displacement of air from the hatch opening was enough to set them moving. Not major movements, just a hint, and that was almost worse. It was eerie.

“He stored them as far away from him as he could,” Max said.

Carl cursed, again. “He just shoved them in. Didn’t tie them down.” The lack of respect for the dead angered him.

The “he” they referred to was the spaceship’s sole former occupant, its captain. When they’d forced entry into the ship, they’d gone first to the bridge. It was at the front of the trampship. There they’d found the decapitated saurelle pilot, the lizardman’s tail still curled in fear. Dead pilots told no tales, and Bernard Chen hadn’t taken any chances. Clearing their way along the spine of the trampship, there’d been no sign that any other personnel had been onboard.

“A damn ghost ship,” Carl said.

He was wrong.

“Not a ghost ship,” Max said. “A hearse. The Navy’s activity around the Space Rodeo and Lon’s predictive algorithms must have made it hard for corpse dumpers to reach a GD.” Small, stable black holes were labelled GDs—garbage disposals. There was a superstition among spacers that a body in space could come back to haunt you. A criminal subnetwork ran a system of disposing of corpses in GDs. Nothing, not even spirits, could escape a black hole. “It seems even assassins fear being haunted by those they’ve killed. Obliteration via explosion must have struck Chen as being as effective as a black hole.”

Carl was pragmatic. “It would prevent their identification just as effectively.”

It would. Which meant that the corpses in the cargo hold had value beyond giving closure to family or friends who might be missing them. The bodies could reveal more about the Cadre and the nature of the jobs the assassin group took.

Max retreated into the passage and closed the hatch. “We’ll seal the ship, and call in Galactic Justice. This needs a forensic team.”

Lon’s voice came over their helmet comms. “In better news, the asteroid worms have been disabled, and they and the retina scan ID box are on their way to the Lonesome.” Which meant that the Deadstar Diner and surrounds were truly safe.

Thank the stars for Harry.

“Good news.” Relief flooded Max’s body and, despite being on an active mission, he slumped in his combat suit. He straightened immediately. “Thanks, Lon.”

The other two ships proved to be normal, or as normal as low-level smuggling vessels could be. Carl cited their captains for infractions of Saloon Sector consumable items duties law, while Max flagged them for ongoing scrutiny by Customs.

Job complete, the diner was right there, promising food and company. Max wasn’t tempted in the slightest. On the Lonesome, reports and the request for a forensic team would require his attention, even if Lon did most of the work—which he would. AIs mightn’t be organic sentients, but they still felt stress and accumulated nervous energy that had to be burned off by doing something, anything.

“Grab a meal,” Max suggested to Carl, with a nod in the direction of the diner’s door.

The cyborg hesitated. “You’re going to comm Thelma?”

“Yes.” It was the first thing Max intended to do when they reached the Lonesome. Hearing her voice, seeing her onscreen, and reassuring her that he was alive had priority over everything else.

The helmet of his combat suit hid Carl’s face. Unlike Max, he hadn’t retracted it as they walked along the dock between ships. He spoke through an external speaker. “Yeah, I’ll stay in my quarters. I’m not up to socializing.” Perhaps in his mind he saw the corpses floating in the hold, over twenty of them. Or perhaps it was the adrenaline crash after they’d survived the three day countdown.

Or perhaps it was simply that Max had someone who cared if he lived or died, and Carl didn’t.

Lon seemed to sympathize, and offered comfort food. “The diner does takeout. Burger, fries and an ice cream sundae?”

Max gave Carl a sheriff to deputy command. “Order it for an hour from now and I’ll join you.” Without waiting for a response, he crouched and extended a gloved hand to the two fluffy, round urself children who watched them with big eyes. Community engagement was part of an Interstellar Sheriff’s job, and given how scary combat suits looked to civilians, Max recognized that interaction with children was the best method of reassuring everyone that all was well. “High five?” He held up a hand.

One kid, then the other, slapped at his palm before they ran giggling back to their family group: four generations of urselves straggling along the spacedock tunnel chatting with each other.

“Thelma will want children,” Carl said. It was a personal comment.

Max smiled. “I’ve no problem with that.”

Reynard whined. “I could erase Agnes Kanu from existence. Manipulate the data here and there, like I did when I abducted you from the Zephyr spacedock, though on a larger scale.”

“Absolutely not. I refuse to sink to her level. Nor are we judge and jury. We’re going to give her enough rope to hang herself.”

“And you don’t think that’s even crueler?”

Thelma looked up from the desk screen. She widened her eyes exaggeratedly, the picture of mock innocence. “Is it?”

Reynard groaned. “You’re a vengeful woman.”

All humor vanished from her face and voice. “I’m a woman who intends to send a clear message that no one messes with Max.”

In Thelma’s mind, there was no doubt about Agnes Kanu’s guilt, and given that Reynard had promised to do something he really, really didn’t want to on the basis of the case Thelma had laid out against the woman, Agnes Kanu’s guilt was pretty much inarguable.

“It’s Chief Kanu,” Thelma had said to Reynard. “The person choreographing the attack on Max. It’s all her. The hit, but also the destruction of his reputation.”

“Agnes Kanu, the Chief of the Interstellar Sheriff Service for the Reclamation and Saloon Sectors?” Reynard clarified. Usually, a department only covered a single sector, but with the Saloon Sector being so small in terms of population, it had been added to the Reclamation Sector.

Thelma swiped at the screen. “She’s a new political appointment, yet to reach her first year anniversary in the job.”

Reynard propped a tentacle on the desk to study the screen. It was an affectation, a mimicry of organic embodied sentience, that he’d copied from Harry. The AI could just as readily have taken in the data direct from what Thelma called up.

“Chief Kanu served as a lawyer, and then, as a judge in the core worlds.” Thelma was still skimming through layers of data. With Reynard and Thelma on comms lockdown, they couldn’t actively search for background on Chief Kanu, but they could study information on her that was already available in Reynard’s data map database, the one he’d copied from Lon, added to and retained after he’d handed back to Lon responsibility for Interstellar Sheriff trouble-nipping duties. “Theoretically, Chief of the Interstellar Sheriff Service is a career advancement, but in practice, taking up a position out here sidelined her. So why did she agree?”

“Quality of life, personal issues, a desire to serve?”

Thelma snorted. “Lon captured an image of Carl’s diagram linking players in the Reclamation Sector. All the links to her are dotted cobwebs, barely there. I know she’s new to the sector, here for less than a year, and maybe Carl hasn’t given her much attention in his intelligence gathering, but that’s too clean. I would have more links than that and stronger ties. She has deliberately isolated herself—or concealed her connections. She’s here for a reason.”

Doubt wove through Reynard’s voice. “And you think it involves Max?”

“People discount the Interstellar Sheriff service. In the core worlds, it’s mainly involved in supporting emergency response teams, paramedics and ship containment specialists, as well as dealing with the petty bureaucracy aspect of policing, such as people contesting automated speeding tickets. In the out-worlds, like the Rock Sector where I grew up, Interstellar Sheriff deputies spend most of their time dealing with mining claim jumpers, safety violations of load traffic, and the like. Max does some of that, though not as much as Sheriff Cayor. Life on the frontier, and even in the Reclamation Sector, is different.”

She paused. “The crucial element with Chief Kanu is that she’s found a position of relative importance that people in Galactic Justice, which technically the Interstellar Sheriff Service belongs to, are accustomed to overlooking. The Navy is the same. If they operate out here long enough they change their mind. They see the value of sheriffs firsthand. Customs officers serve long stints here and they respect Max. The Navy respects him because he’s one of their own…no such thing as a former Star Marine. But from the core world, I’d put money that no one looks closely at the Chief of the Interstellar Sheriff Service for the Reclamation and Saloon Sectors. If she’s careful, Agnes Kanu can do what she wants.”

“I accept your assessment,” Reynard said. “I believe I understand your concern. Max respects the chain of command. He will follow Chief Kanu’s orders, as he did when she ordered him to accept agent Carl Jafarov as his deputy.”

Thelma grimaced. “Actually, she had to twist Max’s arm on that point, but only because he was trying to protect the fact of Lon’s presence on the Lonesome…which brings up an important point. Even Covert Ops wasn’t convinced that Lon was on the Lonesome. If Lon had them fooled, then I bet Chief Kanu never imagined that a witness as impeccable as an AI could be on the Lonesome with Max.”

“But even without Lon, you could have spoken for Max,” Reynard objected.

She shook her head. “I’m not important. I haven’t even met his family in person. The Space Rodeo scuttled those plans.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no.” She waved her hands in a crisscrossing gesture of dismissal. “That wasn’t a blast at you and your comet helices. My point is that Chief Kanu has perfectly positioned herself so that no one closely monitors her orders to those under her command. Potentially, she can even lie and conceal her true orders. At the same time, she controls the flow of information up from below, from the sheriffs. So she can order Max around, but she can also define the story told about him—especially if he’s dead and can’t contest her version of events.”

“What story do you think she would have told?”

“Max wasn’t meant to discover the Xlokk base. Imagine what would have happened if the mech-mods with their mutilated and raving bunyaphi had been loaded onto the Ripping Claw, carried through the wormhole, and unleashed on an Ates or Toprak clan city?”

Reynard’s tentacles retracted tight against his body in reflex horror.

Thelma was relentless. She had to be. What Agnes Kanu had conceived of was the stuff of nightmares and would have spawned yet more. Fear bred more fear, and an escalation of tension spiraled into an arms race, that too often, exploded into war. “The Su clan would have been guilty of war crimes. The media would have been all over it. Illegal mech-mods. Thousands of lives lost. And then, the emergence of the fact that the mech-mods bore Hwicce labels. Chief Kanu and whoever is behind her wove their story to position Max at the heart of it. That was why the staging base was at Xlokk, in Max’s territory.”

“Logistically,” Reynard began a counterargument. He shut up when Thelma snapped her hand down.

“The strange thing is, that if I’m right, Agnes Kanu was setting Max up to be a dead hero.” She nearly choked on that word. Dead. “Not a villain. The Vici movement believes that society is wasting resources supporting its weaker members. That the strong have a duty to claim more and do more, and not squander their lives in dragging along the feeble—their words. Chief Kanu would have turned upside down the story of Max’s life, his commitment to justice, to serve and protect, and made it into a man issuing a wakeup call. A Star Marine’s call to arms.”

Reynard objected. “You have taken a leap of reasoning that I do not comprehend.”

His rebuke failed to faze Thelma. “Chief Kanu ordered the hit on Max. She intended to make his legacy that of a man who saw society weakened by ‘pandering to the feeble’, and so, employed a shocking method to alert people to the danger. The mech-mods were meant to demonstrate that the Federation cannot protect its citizens. That it has weakened itself by playing at peace negotiations.”

“The Senate Worlds Development Committee.” Reynard followed her argument closely. “You are connecting disparate data points via the human intuition Lon speaks of. You could be wrong.”

She had a single thread of proof. “I’ll admit that I’m guessing at the detail of Chief Kanu’s scheme. But that she wanted to hang this all on Max is something she admitted in her own words. The truth slips out, Reynard. Chief Kanu’s words wouldn’t convict her in a court of law, but after Max and I stood witness to the bunyaphi viewing the mech-mods, the Navy commander quoted Chief Kanu’s refusal to be there. The Navy invited her, but Chief Kanu said, ‘The mech-mods are all Sheriff Smith’s’.”

Thelma’s hands shook and she curled them into fists. “Even then, after her scheme was falling apart with the Xlokk base discovered and news of Lon’s presence on the Lonesome coming out, Chief Kanu couldn’t let go of the story she’d spent so much effort in crafting. ‘The mech-mods are all Sheriff Smith’s.’ She wanted him to wear the responsibility for them.

“Reynard, you have the data on the chips Lon gave you. Adapt his predictive algorithms. Create your own. Check if I am right.”

“I will.”

Reynard had retreated then to consider Thelma’s argument, his loyalties, and what she’d gone on to ask of him in the name of friendship and justice. When he’d returned to her room two days later, he’d agreed to help.

Since then, they’d gone over their plan repeatedly, revising and refining the details. Now, all they could do was wait in an increasing state of nervous tension for a comms—please, let it be good news, Thelma prayed—from the Lonesome.

Max had anticipated an emotional first comms with Thelma. He knew reassurance had to come first, then the details. “We’re safe. Sargus has captured the assassin, a Bernard Chen.” He summarized events, emphasizing that he hadn’t had to kill anyone. Covert Ops were organizing Chen’s return to the Cadre, minus an ear.

Nonetheless, it made for a horror story.

“Diabolical,” Thelma said of the threat against the people, including families with children, at the Deadstar Diner. “Thank goodness for Harry. Max, later I’ll cry out of sheer relief that you’re safe, but for now…I’m pretty sure I know who ordered the hit. Or, if her hands are technically clean, put herself in position to use your death.”

“Who?”

“Chief Agnes Kanu.”

Even as Thelma summarized her thinking, Reynard sent through his analysis attached to their shared report. Lon and Harry read it.

With shocked fury, those on the Lonesome accepted the treacherous role of Chief Kanu. Max’s boss was meant to have his back, not be setting him up for assassination, both literally and of his reputation.

Carl was informed, and convinced. “Nothing in her background raised a red flag. But the tiny connections, how it all draws together…Reynard, would you be willing to share the algorithms that underpin your analysis?” Once Covert Ops, always Covert Ops. Carl couldn’t help his curiosity.

And Reynard was flattered.

The AI was also busy.

Reynard utilized one of his comet helices to startling effect. Well, startling according to other people’s understanding of it. With Thelma tucked into a med-pod for extra protection, Reynard employed a pattern of three spar hits to fling his spaceship far beyond the Navy’s idea of a safe perimeter for the Space Rodeo arena.

He then released her from the med-pod and smugly updated her on their current location. They were three days’ travel from the Lonesome’s current location, and with the Lonesome also traveling at full speed, they’d meet halfway in a day and a half.

On both spaceships they used the time to the utmost. An incredible amount of explaining, negotiating, nagging, double-checking and dealing with Reynard’s stage fright devoured their hours. Then the two ships locked together, and it was show time.

Thelma had kissed Max, delayed yet again collapsing in relief at his survival, and stood with him to face the music.

Actually, she stood a little to the side and behind him; out of sight of the camera on him and Reynard. Harry stood with her.

Carl had been shut out of the main deck on the grounds that Reynard was shy.

One and a half days ago, for the first time ever, Reynard had departed the Space Rodeo arena with his spaceship unstealthed. That meant the Navy had tracked his flight and the distance of it. Scientists were agog. How had any ship been flung that far and survived?

The media were less impressed. They’d had weeks to become bored with the Space Rodeo. But not with an artfully dangled snippet of information: the mystery ship was piloted by the Federation’s youngest and most reclusive AI.

The Navy knew another and more disturbing fact. Namely, that Reynard had created the comet helices. Since he’d promised to share with them the science of the helices’ design and the physics behind their construction, the Navy was willing to do him a favor in return—a favor beyond not convicting him and impounding his spaceship for illegally entering the Space Rodeo arena.

That favor was to wrangle the media into a conference room on a Navy carrier and connect them at real-time speed with the Lonesome. A Navy vessel halfway between the two ships functioned as a temporary relay station for the transmission signal.

Max wore the western hat that he’d adopted as a symbol of his office as sheriff, but he tilted it back so his blue eyes were visible and his clean-cut face unobscured for the camera. He didn’t fidget or clear his throat, just began. “I am Max Smith, Interstellar Sheriff for the Badstars border territory of the Saloon Sector. I am a former Star Marine, and President John Smith’s son.”

An endless moment stretched out as the media onscreen digested that bombshell. Then the scrum exploded into shouts and a surge forward, although they couldn’t reach Max through a screen.

The Navy officers in the background wore wry or disapproving expressions, depending on their tolerance for civilian shenanigans. They’d learned during the Xlokk mission of Max’s identity.

He didn’t falter. “This interview is not about me. I keep the peace in this territory with the help of Lon. You can currently see him in the background, but won’t have noticed him. Lon is an AI embedded in this spaceship, the Lonesome.”

The media fell silent, suddenly desperate not to miss a word. This was revelation after revelation—and that was Thelma’s plan.

Chief Agnes Kanu’s scheme involving Max relied on her being the one in charge of telling his story. This interview was a taunt directed at her. This was Max telling his story, although Thelma had drafted the speech and Lon had revised it.

“Our goal is simple,” Max said. “We want the Saloon Sector to be a safe area for everyone.”

He put a hand on one of Reynard’s tentacles, equivalent to where a human’s shoulder would be. “Reynard is another AI. He is clever, obsessive in his research, and shy. It took me a while to earn his trust. I had to convince him that while we would have all preferred some warning before he triggered comet helices in the sector, he was in the right place.”

The media shouted as they worked out what Max had said. The comet helices, those powerful, mysterious forces, were AI creations.

Imperturbably, Max continued with his message. “Out on the frontier, people can be whom they want to be. Need to be. And we look after our own.” He turned to Reynard with a scripted prompt. “Would you like to say something before I open the floor to questions?”

“Thank you, Sheriff Smith. I would like to apologize for initiating the two comet helices in the Saloon Sector. In future, I will not conduct large-phase physics experiments in Federation space without consultation with the relevant authorities. I have learned—and I thank the people of the Lonesome, you and Lon, for the lesson and your patience in reaching out to me and reconnecting me with my social responsibilities—that it is not just physics where every action has consequences. The same is true of society. The web of respect that connects all citizens of the Federation, is the Federation. I am grateful that I belong to it. I will protect it, and I will contribute to it.”

Afterwards, with everyone having survived the storm of media questions—the Navy media wrangling team looked exhilarated but haggard—Thelma hugged Reynard in congratulation, then glued herself to Max. “I’m done with being brave for others,” she confessed to him quietly, head against his shoulder. “I want you all to myself.”

He made it happen.

They waited for what Chief Kanu would do. It took a special kind of person not to crack when your scheme broke and was turned against you. Agnes Kanu was accustomed to being the puppet master, not having her puppets bite her hands and claim freedom. As Thelma had told Reynard, they were giving the woman enough rope to hang herself.

And then, there was the question of what would happen when the gift that Sargus had sent the Cadre—Bernard Chen, minus his left ear—arrived. Would the Cadre honor their reputation and provide the name of who’d ordered the failed hit on Max?

Fortunately, distractions abounded.

Reynard refused to give any media interviews, but Lon consented to a couple with serious current affairs journalists. Reynard wasn’t off the hook, though. Scientists bombarded him with questions and challenges. The Navy boffins got priority, but he answered all of them. Although he’d have scoffed at the notion, Reynard was enjoying himself. Scientists were his kind of people, especially the obnoxious, obsessive ones.

Max’s family, meantime, were shocked but pleased that he’d outed himself. An Interstellar Sheriff for a son boosted President Smith’s popularity. His family were planning to visit Max and Thelma.

Only Hugo had regrets. He sighed. “I guess you’re staying out there, then.”

“Yup.” Max was determined to make it work, even if he’d lost his anonymity.

A grin slipped onto his older brother’s face. “Thelma, I trust you’ll keep him in line.”

She grinned back at Hugo. “Or follow him into trouble.”

Max couldn’t help his proud smirk.

Carl, meantime, shouldered an increasing proportion of Max’s sheriff duties.

Lon trusted him and worked with him on the data map and on corralling troublemakers.

After discussing future plans with Thelma, Lon and Harry, Max headed down to the public deck and interrupted Carl’s report writing. If Carl was getting any pressure from Covert Ops to change up his role on the Lonesome, or even, to move on, it didn’t show. Still, Max wanted the man who was currently serving as his deputy to have options.

“I don’t need a bodyguard. But if you’d like the deputy position for real, it’s yours. We can see about getting you your own ship—not through my family or me buying it for you.” He respected Carl’s principles and independence. “But Lon is good at finding gems among the junkyards of the Reclamation Sector.”

“A ship of my own?”

What Max’s heard in Carl’s voice was the wistfulness of “A home of my own?” He and Lon wouldn’t fake a discounted price for the ship Carl bought, if he took up Max’s offer, but they would ensure that the cost of repairs was ridiculously low. That was the sort of thing that a kind-hearted AI like Lon, embedded in a spaceship with its own fabricator, could achieve.

“I’ll think about it,” Carl said.

Max stayed just as casual. “Till you say otherwise, you’re my deputy and these quarters are yours.” He left the man there to consider his future, and whether he could make a place to belong out here on the frontier.

“Gak.” Max choked as the hatch closed and Thelma threw herself at him in a fierce hug.

“You are such a softie.”

Both of them valued loyalty to allies. In addition, Thelma probably thought he’d acquired a friend. Maybe he had. But what Max saw when he looked at Carl those times when the man forgot to veil his emotions, was the loneliness that could have been Max’s fate. Being strong and protecting others could come at the cost of your own happy-ever-after.

Max wrapped his happy-ever-after up in a hug that made her squeak. “You think I’m soft?”

Wickedness sparked in her eyes, and happiness. “Show me otherwise.”

Everything was so busy yet good, that when the news came, it had additional shock value.

The message appeared on Max’s personal comms unit as a direct and encrypted transmission from Wesley Sargus.

Max read it and went to find Thelma.

She was in her office, mid-call with someone; deep in her work as an information broker. Whatever she saw in Max’s face, she ended the call abruptly and went to him.

“I’m fine. Everyone’s fine.” He put a hand on her lower back, steadying them both. “That’s not true. Chief Kanu is dead. Her body was found in her apartment beside that of Bernard Chen’s. The assassin died by his own hand.”

“He killed Agnes Kanu first?”

Max nodded. “Sargus says it’s the Cadre’s admission. Agnes Kanu ordered the hit, and Chen failed to carry it out.”

“But to kill her?”

Lon included himself in the conversation. “The Cadre must have judged her of duplicity in her dealings with them.”

“And her allies didn’t think her worth protecting.” Thelma sounded shaken more than vindicated.

Agnes Kanu had been guilty and she’d paid for her schemes, and the failure of them, with her life.

Max took a deep breath and swiped closed his personal comms unit. “Covert Ops will handle it.” He was drawing a line in the stars. For those on the Lonesome, this situation was done.

Lon agreed. “They’ll enjoy it. And we have our own lives. Did you see that Reynard has a fan club now? They have multi-tentacled purple badges.”

“Proof that life can always get weirder,” Max said.

Thelma laughed, softly, uncertainly, but eager to move forward.

“According to Reynard, the comet helices will collapse in a week and a half.” Thelma handed Carl a bowl of popcorn, and kept a bigger bowl to share with Max. She sat down on the sofa beside him. They were all set to watch a cooking show with Lon. “Life will go back to normal.”

“Whatever that is,” Carl muttered through a mouthful of buttered popcorn. He’d decided to stay on as Max’s deputy. Covert Ops had released him, on the understanding that they had the right to call him to active duty as required. Lon was searching for a suitable spaceship for him.

“Sssh.” Thelma resisted the temptation to throw a piece of popcorn at him. She’d adopted the habit of treating Carl like an annoying older brother. She had experience in chastising that sort of wayward creature. “This is about making paella.” Despite hushing Carl, she talked on. After all, Lon could multi-task. “Lon has saffron bulbs growing. Lon, how long before the stamens are harvested?”

Silence.

“Lon?”

Harry raced into the lounge. The AI mech who never hurried anywhere was running.

Carl leapt out of the recliner and assumed a fighting stance. Harry’s presence on the Lonesome as an AI embodied in a dangerous humanoid mech was one secret they hadn’t shared with him.

“Oops,” Thelma said under her breath.

Max’s comment was more helpful. “Carl, it’s okay.”

The two AIs ignored Carl’s alarm.

“Nefertiti’s back,” Lon exclaimed, happy at the return of his would-be girlfriend from a foreign galaxy.

Harry was more concerned with the knowledge the Covert Ops AI had returned with. He crouched in front of Thelma and Max, staring at them intently. He had galaxy-changing news. “The specters aren’t gone.” His eyes glowed blue. “The Kampia have evidence that the specters live.”

Want More?

Watch for Space Specter in early 2020. Before then, the fourth book in my fantasy dystopian series, The Faerene Apocalypse, will be out on October 28. First Magic is available for pre-order.

If you’d like more space adventures, check out my Shamans and Shifters Space Opera series:

Her Robot Wolf

Cosmic Catalyst

Shattered Earth

Jingle Stars

The Ceph Sector

To stay up to date on new books from me, please follow my author page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Jenny-Schwartz/e/B0042MAD86

Jenny

P.S. You can catch up with me at my website, on Facebook or on Twitter.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Want More?