Turk often peoplewatched while servicing the Clean Livin'. The wharf deck was an area fifty feet deep and a couple of dozen moored spacecraft wide, and the facility spanned a stack of similar decks which teemed with spacecraft, cargo, and people. Most of the vessels were the size of his, owner-operated haulers a couple of hundred feet in length, and most of them were at least as old and grimy. Quess Junction itself was a huge facility. Turk had seen the level numbering on the map through the slightly floating unreality of microbe translation and wondered at the scale of the place. Any one of the wharf decks was a colorful place to spot colorful people moving up and down the short walkways that connected parked spacecraft to the concourse proper. That morning, he'd bought a suspicious-looking but ultimately great-tasting snack from a traveling bazaar-ship that had started emitting the smoke of live flame cooking almost as soon as it had docked. Turk always tried to have fun with the travel that his work required, and today had been easy to enjoy.
Now, he stood on the servicing platform at the port side of his spacecraft, leaning on the open facilities hatch while the tanks filled. It was a pose that would have been recognizable to users of many types of vehicle, in many places, at many times. In his scuffed boots and tan overalls, which had once been emblazoned with the insignia of a cargo-handling cartel, Turk was hidden in plain sight. He adjusted the fit of the communications headset, not because he expected to speak to anyone but because the ship would ping him when the fuel load was complete, so he didn't have to stare at the displays. This liberated Turk to concentrate instead on the two badly-disguised women who were meandering through the crowd. It was fun to fantasize about who and what they were, the more enjoyable ideas tugging his mouth into a half-hearted grin. Twin sisters, scouting for a mark to ensnare with the promise of both their company in a darkened suite, and then to rob or murder? No, he thought. One of them looked frail, guided at the elbow by the other. A couple of friends, perhaps, after a night out? The sun was hours from making its way around the curve of the planet, but it wasn't too early for people with early-morning appointments to be calling it a night. The frail-looking sister – and they did look like sisters, Tuck realized, as they drew nearer – might well be intoxicated. The smile tugged again. Get the drunkard away from her protective sibling, and the dimly-lit room might remain a possibility, and with far less risk of injury.
Then Tuck realized that none of that would be possible, because it became completely obvious that the two women were Nebari, both painted an unconvincing magnolia shade which could only be intended to mimic Sebacean flesh. The artifice had become obvious as one of the animated commercial hoardings had flashed white for a second, erasing shadows and highlighting color. Turk frowned. Nebari away from the homeworld were rare. Most encounters involved working Establishment enforcers, who strode around with an air of imperturbable entitlement and could be an inconvenience if accidentally antagonized. They moved quickly while alone, but more slowly while handling a securely-collared arrestee, as if enjoying the spectacle of their own trade. Less often, but more enticingly, Nebari were furtive, skittish escapees, who could sometimes be moved to violence if they felt cornered but were generally too paranoid to be dangerous. Danger, if any, came from their pursuers. The regrettable makeup job could not have more clearly identified the people Tuck was watching as members of the latter group, and he found himself glancing around the concourse for immediate signs of pursuit. There were none, but Tuck unconsciously rested the heel of his hand on the butt of his weapon anyway.
A rising double-bleep sounded in Tuck's left ear, and he glanced into the open hatch on the side of the spacecraft. Glowing amber numbers were still spinning up – and the credit in his account spiralling down – but the fill was sufficient for the journey he had in mind. Busying himself valving-off the flow of reactants and unlatching the heavy, four-inch hose and its accompanying vent and purging lines, Tuck had entirely forgotten about the two women until a voice spoke close enough to his ear to make him flinch slightly.
"Hey, you the pilot? We're looking for a ride?"
The voice was confident but high and slightly hoarse, as if the speaker spent too much time shouting. Up close, she looked perhaps thirty cycles, give or take the paint. Tuck vaguely recalled that the woman's – the girl's – noticeable mode of speech was a popular affectation among the persecuted freethinkers of Nebari youth. It turned every statement into a question. It was cute. Tuck turned.
"OK," he said, with an air of resignation. "You're Nebari, I'm a captain, you want passage offworld." The lead definitely-not-Nebari sucked a panicked breath in through her teeth, her gaze going askance with a birdlike twitch of the head, but Tuck raised a calming hand. His left hand. The hand not hovering by his weapon. She recovered quickly, though, and Tuck let the breath he'd been holding go.
"You don't look as worried as I thought you might," she said, favoring him with a flash of a smile. It would have been fun to watch if it hadn't almost instantly vanished. Tuck found himself mirroring her, not minding that he looked conspiratorial.
"Worrying never helped anyone," he said, hoping his expression would calm the woman down. Her companion, by comparison, gazed levelly out from under the hood of her traveling cloak with an expression Tuck found slightly unnerving. The first spoke again, a welcome distraction from her companion's empty gaze.
"We're heading for Varlenn. But we'll take any ship? We just need to get, you know. Out."
"Ladies," said Tuck, with mock reproach. "This is not any ship. This is the good ship Clean Livin', aboard which I ply my trade, and it's a motto I take to heart." He beamed, spreading his hands. The lead Nebari woman let her gaze travel up and down Tuck's stained overalls. As she did so, a pulse of light from the anti-collision beacons of the vessel moored in the next-door slip caught her eyes, revealing the sapphire blue color of the large pupils that usually just looked black. Yes, definitely Nebari. Fine. Runaways had usually spent months or years stockpiling credit for their escape, although Tuck was noticing the second woman's empty and unnerving gaze more and more frequently, and was beginning to suffer the first pangs of doubt. She was thinner-lipped than her companion, but not unattractive, the heart-shaped face topped with pronounced white bangs which twitched when she blinked.
Tuck drew breath to say more, but the lead woman was already speaking.
"Clean living? Then you'll understand what I mean, right?" She leaned closer, too close, and darted her head closer to his ear. "We've got sixty-five thousand for both of us? Safe and intact to Varlenn. And there will be no favors on the side, understand?" She pushed open the folds of her black hide greatcoat – a Peacekeeper officer's issue, if Tuck was any judge, and a surprising thing to find wrapped around such a petite girl with such a close fit. It was, he noticed, decades out of date, but then he stopped noticing the coat and stared at the hand which emerged from beneath it, wrapped around the grip of a firearm. It was, Tuck noted with relief, muzzle down, and he could see the glowing white telltale of an engaged safety.
"I'm happily married," said Turk, who had been once. "With three children." This was an outright lie, but he'd found that claiming fatherhood was often a route to trust. Not, he realized, that he was entirely sure that the family reference would make sense to Nebari. The woman gave him the quick smile again, and a strange sucking laugh that seemed genuine but came out as a truncated cackle, three clicks of inhaled breath.
"And I'm sure they're all as good looking as you."
"Thanks," said Turk, brightly, still nervous about the quiet sister but happy to keep the conversational sparring lightweight. "But you're overpaying. Are they on to you already?"
"No," said the woman, simply.
"What's wrong with your friend?"
"Nothing," she said, her tone suddenly free of the twitchy playfulness that Turk had already started to assume was put on.
"Is it contagious?"
"No."
"Is that a lie, like you gave me when you said there was nothing wrong with her?"
"It's psychological," said the woman. "She'll be no danger to anyone."
"She's a psycho and you keep a gun around? Outstanding!"
"I'll be responsible for her."
Turk allowed the weight of his arm fall onto the butt of the pulse pistol on his right hip, letting the holster creak for a second. "Yes," he said. "You will. Whatever happens to any one of us."
The woman met his gaze levelly. "Nothing will happen. And if you take your hand away from that pulser, Kye will put hers away, too.
"Ah," said Turk, realizing he'd been paying attention to the wrong person. The gaze of the second – Kye – was still blank, but just visible under the cloak was a hand gripping a big, chunky weapon. Turk swallowed; if the women's intentions were hostile, he would be hustled inside and murdered, away from the crowds of the station's concourse area. To his immense surprise, though, the tension was dispelled not by any one-line piece of comic relief he'd been able to think up, but by the second woman, who drew a breath and in a calm voice pitched at a medium level asked:
"I assume your vessel is properly maintained, bonded against loss and damage, and that you are qualified to captain her?"
"Yes," said Turk, with equal simplicity. "If you're seriously interested in passage, come aboard and you can examine my paperwork all you like."
"I will," said Kye, rather bluntly, but she snapped the weapon back into the foldout holster on her thigh, the motion obscured in a billow of cloak.
o0o
The Clean Livin's hold looked tidy because it was empty. The Quess dockyards had been just as empty, and Turk had been so keenly interested in his new passengers in mainly because he wanted to offset the costs of returning home empty. He didn't think the commercial situation had affected his judgment. Even so, he had to admit they were interesting, even beyond his usual interest in doing the wrong thing where an oppressive bureaucracy was involved. Kye's companion had paperwork claiming that she was known, in the abbreviated form, as Mico, which seemed genuine from Kye's use of the name during their hushed conversation. The papers had to be counterfeit, though, and Tuck hadn't bothered submitting them to the port authority. The wafers of fiber and metal looked like reasonably good fakes, but his own sensor-masking tech seemed less of a risk than imitation documents he knew nothing about. Tuck skimmed the files for his own amusement while the women cleaned themselves up, then threw both folders onto the coaming above the instrument cluster and forgot about them. Turk had shown Mico and Kye to the single passenger cabin and the shared washroom facilities and, entirely without meaning to, had overheard Mico's gentle words as she shepherded Kye toward the washroom and guided her through the process of cleaning off the makeup. As far as Turk had been able to tell, they'd shared the facilities, standing together under the falling water. From the tone of voice and quiet words, he formed the impression that Kye needed Mico's help to really understand what was going on. It was unnerving, and there had been a thick scum of brownish makeup residue on the washroom floor after they'd finished. Still, he didn't blame them for making him hose it down. It never drained very well.
Turk checked the time, confirming that there was time to eat something before their departure window. He turned, intending to rise from the console and grab a snack from the station at the back of the control deck, but froze as he caught sight of the figure standing at the top of the middeck companionway. To Turk's eyes, Nebari women were often striking to look at, and Mico caught his gaze for longer than most. In the cool half-light of the navigation displays, she looked even younger than she had when they'd first met, when cracks and creases in the makeup had added a few years to her age. Now, her milk-white skin was clear and slightly luminous in the cool blue glow of the local star. She was a head shorter than him, and Tuck wasn't tall, but she moved with confidence, the jaw strong whether by nature or expression. Her mouth was full, and he saw that it could be slightly cruel, a silhouette in dark gray with the usual blush of central brightness. Her eyes darted suspiciously but were expressive when they rested on him. Tuck realized he didn't mind the jaw. Mico saw him seeing her, and shoved a hand through her mop of hair, which would, when it was more completely dry, assume the standard blunt wedge cut. Turk knew the style, and knew it represented a low-profile option for those who didn't want to seem out of place on the homeworld. The grubby white spacer's boots with the orange piping and insignia were back on Mico's feet, and she'd pulled back on the loose-fitting white cargo pants that had been only partially visible under the military greatcoat. They facilitated her holster nicely and had pockets that looked as if they contained spare ammunition. The coat itself was gone, and Turk couldn't remember if she'd been wearing the vest top under it. The blue and yellow hide jacket with all the padding, latches and pockets was definitely new. It was tough, practical, traveling clothing, but well chosen and perfectly fitted, and, Turk realized, far from stereotypically Nebari. He blinked. She'd noticed he was staring.
"I'm sorry," said Mico, all the twitchiness gone from her bearing. "I didn't mean to scare you."
Turk unfroze. "Don't worry, I'm hard to scare. You hungry?"
"Please."
"It's cubes or cubes," said Turk, pulling two sealed trays of waxy-looking greenish lumps, coated for cleanliness in zero gravity, out of a cryocrate. "But they're the Quess ones, they're not so bad." He handed her a tray. "How's your friend?"
"Sleeping," said Mico, and there was a moment of slightly awkward silence. Turk was wondering whether to fill it, and how inquisitive he could be about Kye, when Mico spoke again.
"You took us on very readily, given you knew what we were."
"No offence," Turk shrugged. "but I don't care who you are."
"Even so. You seem to know who we're running from. You're taking a risk."
Turk tore a hunk out of a cube and talked and chewed at the same time. "I'm a commercial operation. And you're not breaking any rules in this jurisdiction."
Mico's lips parted for a moment's consideration before she replied. "If we're discovered or chased or... anything like that, I won't expect you to do anything but give us up."
"You wound me," replied Turk through a mouthful of cube. "You're my clients. I'll do what I can for you."
"If we're found, they'll happily wound you," she said.
"You said you weren't being chased," said Turk. "And either way, you may as well sit down and relax in the meantime."
Mico lowered herself rather gracefully into the seat installed for the Livin's unnecessary navigation officer, watching as Turk punched a few buttons.
"You're welcome to pull up the plot yourself, if you want to check where we're going," he said, without turning. Mico closed her eyes in a gesture of self-recrimination, lifting her hands away from the controls.
"Sorry. It's just..."
Turk waved a hand. "I understand. If there's anywhere else that's better for you to go, I'm not particularly wedded to Varlenn. Markets are up and down over there."
Mico took so long to respond that Turk half-turned in his seat to look at her, and was astonished to see her vanishing down the companionway, her footsteps masked by the rumble of the Livin's engines. "Hey," he called. "You want another tray?"
"It's enough for both of us," she said, and was gone. Turk watched for a moment, then stood, walked to the back of the control deck, and closed the door. It'd open at the push of a button, but he'd know if he wasn't alone.
o0o
Mico made her way down the narrow steps to the Livin's bottom deck, to the narrow living space tucked in beside the cargo hold, balancing the opened tray of cubes precariously in one hand. She moved quietly because Kye was – she hoped – still dozing, but also because she had formed the habit from long experience. Kye herself was naturally quiet. Or at least, Mico thought, she was now. When Mico rounded the corner, though, Kye was sitting on the edge of the lower bunk,
Kye stood as Mico entered, then almost immediately looked crestfallen.
"I'm sorry, I know you told me not to stand..."
Mico closed her eyes for a moment. "I didn't tell you. I asked you. I asked you not to feel like you had to."
Kye's expression twitched slightly more toward disappointment. "You know I try to do as you ask."
"I know," said Mico, and stepped closer. "And I love you for that, OK?"
Kye's mood recovered just a little as Mico pecked her on the cheek. "I love you too, Mico," she said, in a slightly flat tone of voice that betrayed a well-rehearsed statement. Mico just nodded.
"I bought us something to eat."
"Thankyou, Mico, but you should eat first."
This was a well-worn argument, and one Mico was used to having. "Neither of us has eaten in a day. I know you're hungry. There's plenty for both of us. Just..." Mico sighed her frustration. "Take a cube and eat it."
"As you wish," said Kye. She reached for the food, but Mico jerked the tray away.
"No. Frell. I don't want you to do it because you've been told to. Make your own decisions."
Then Mico realized that she'd allowed her anger to show too much, that she'd punctured the thin shell of comprehension that kept Kye lucid, and in half a second both pairs of eyes were filling with tears. Kye spoke first, trying and failing to maintain her customary expressionless benevolence.
"I'm sorry I can't make you happy. I'm sorry, I try to do as you ask..."
Mico lunged forward and held her fiercely. "I know. You do make me happy. You make me happy with every breath you take."
"I don't think I do. I get things wrong. You told me."
Mico let her tears spatter Kye's neck, kissing them away. "It's not your fault. It's never been your fault. You understand that, right?"
"I know what you told me. I know what I was. I know you want her back."
Mico held Kye even tighter, trying to put enough emotion into the embrace for both of them, and trying to ignore the anemic, back-patting arm wrap that was Kye's best effort. "You are not a second best, you understand that? You're my girl. And we're going to keep working on it until you're OK, right?"
Later, when Turk wandered past their cabin on the way to his own, he would notice only that they'd left the door open, and that only the bottom bunk appeared to be occupied.
o0o
When Mico awoke, Kye was still sleeping peacefully. Mico cherished the moment, enjoying a brief fantasy that the one sleeping opposite was the person from her memory. It was a hard moment of imagination to enjoy, though. Kye as Mico had known her wouldn't have needed to fall asleep in someone's arms in order to feel secure. The old Kye, faced with any problem sleeping, would have drunk and drunk until she fell over, fallen unconscious with a smile on her face and woken up with a head like a meteor crater.
Then Mico realized with a start that they'd fallen asleep with the cabin door wide open, an unpardonable lapse in security and an embarrassment as well. She wondered what the captain might have seen, and what impression he might have formed, and whether there might be any ice to break. Then there was a click, and a slightly raucous blast of static, before Turk's voice crackled into being from a terminal on the wall.
"We're on approach to Varlenn. Passengers to control, please."
Mico sighed, and prepared herself for the draining prospect of waking Kye up, and ruining her favorite fantasy. She reached forward, gently touching the other woman's shoulder, and hoped, as she forced herself to every day, that the Kye who awoke would look up at her with a lopsided grin and ask what had happened to the last hundred and one cycles.
"Good morning, Mico," said Kye, her tone cautiously level. Mico didn't think Kye would notice, but she stifled a sigh and did her best to hide the disappointment anyway.
"Morning, Kye."
o0o
Varlenn was a world, but the term universally referred to the trade, repair and refuelling facility on its second moon. The view from the Clean Livin's forward portal showed the curve of the gas giant, backlit by the bluer of the local stars, with the moon silhouetted against the planet's outermost ring. Also visible, on a detail inset, was an black spacecraft with angular insignia in red and white, and a selection of highly visible weapons clusters.
"Peek guardship," said Turk, gesturing vaguely. Mico stepped a little closer to his right shoulder, Kye following at hers.
"Why are they here?"
Turk shrugged. "Varlenn can afford them."
"Are they talking to us?"
"No," said Turk, "but they probably will if we look like we're making a docking run. Or if we hang around here too long, or if we look like we're retreating. Or if one of us is wearing shoes they don't like."
"So talking to them is inevitable at this point."
"If we want to dock," said Turk. "What I have to ask is..." he turned in his chair, "...do we have a problem?"
Mico put her head on one side. "Peek commandants have been known to pick people up for the Establishment just for favors, when they're bored."
"I suppose they have some things in common."
"They're all fucking psychopaths," spat Mico, with sudden venom.
"What did you say?"
"I said they were a bunch of frelling psychopaths," she said. Tuck drew a slow breath before responding, but decided not to argue.
"Well," he said, "You might want to keep that attitude in check, because we're probably going to have to have a face-to-face with them before the end of the day."
"Look, I'm sorry, it's just - "
"Fine. Fine. Just remember. Right now there's no reason this can't go smoothly. But cool heads, right?"
"Sure," said Mico, nodding. "And we do have a procedure for this." There was a bleep.
"And that's a good thing, because they've decided they want to talk to us," observed Turk.
"Audio only?"
"If you like. It wouldn't be unusual."
Mico nodded. "Mind if I do the talking?"
Turk gestured toward the console, so Mico took a deep breath and pecked at the appropriate key.
"This is the charter captain of the merchantman Clean Living. State your business."
The image of a raven-haired woman with striking pale blue eyes appeared. "This is Lieutenant Viander, Tenmar company, Fanik regiment, and first you will state yours."
Mico eyed Turk for a moment, then spoke with what she hoped was confidence and vigor. "I am representative five-five-one-six-five of the department of wellbeing and contentment, and I am traveling on case work."
"The department of what?"
"It's a branch of the Nebari government," growled Mico, with the testiness of genuinely tried patience.
"You're out of jurisdiction, representative." Mico frowned; Viander would not have been so offhand had Mico been at the conn of even a modest Nebari merchantman. "State your complement and supernumeraries."
Viander's delivery was that of a bored administrator, and Turk immediately began to understand that Mico's approach was reasonable. The phrasology was believable; Turk had heard real Establishment people describe themselves as caseworkers before. It was, in many ways, less of a deception than he'd used in the past in similar situations. What a real Establishment enforcer wouldn't do was to explain her business in any detail. Turk assumed Mico knew this, and was relieved when she replied.
"I regret I am not at liberty to discuss the details of my work but I can confirm that we are traveling with one supernumerary, as well as the ship's owner-operator."
Turk saw what Mico was doing, and nodded as she glanced at him. A successful enforcer, returning with a prisoner, would provoke few security concerns. An empty-handed one, though, might spend some time in the area pursuing lines of enquiry, making waves and potentially provoking acts of desperation from the pursued. Mico's mention of an extra person on board was a well-judged piece of enforcer jargon which would be readily understood as a reference to a prisoner. Assuming, Turk thought, the young Lieutenant Viander aboard the Vigilante was even slightly informed about the area in which she was operating. Unfortunately, Viander disappointed him.
"Under the authority of the Varlenn TRRF, heave to and prepare to receive an excise team."
"Lieutenant, I appreciate your concern, but we're in a hurry - "
"I'm not concerned, I'm implementing procedure. Viander out."
There was silence for several seconds after the connection closed, then Mico said:
"We have a plan for this. Don't worry."
Turk started worrying.
o0o
When Turk next saw her, Mico had discarded the grubby white boots for plainer black ones and was wearing the officer's greatcoat again, which worried Turk but which she'd assured him would be seen as a friendly gesture given its decidedly historical cut. She'd sharpened the centre parting in her hair, revealing the black roots more strongly, and, he saw, two sharply-crenellated metal studs gleamed above her right eyebrow. She met his gaze.
"Now all I need is the attitude, right?" She struck a pose, doing her best to look imposing despite being ten cycles too young to be really convincing. His attention, however, was on Kye, whose appearance and attitude had both changed almost beyond recognition. Her hair, previously as determinedly neat and tidy as Mico's new enforcer cut, was tousled and matted, and the gray-shouldered black traveling cloak was stained and torn. More startling than that, though, and more startling even than the cuffs or the brassy collar at her neck, was the change in attitude. Turk had almost become used to Kye's blankness, the face that betrayed no emotion, but her new expression of haunted misery would have been diverting regardless. She knelt on at Mico's feet, tears already spattering the deck plating, working her wrists in the cuffs and stifling sobs. The performance was impeccable, and made Turk even more curious.
The Peacekeepers, when they arrived, executed the same highly professional entry procedure they'd have used if the Clean Livin's cargo hold had been known to be full of armed opponents. As it was, Turk, Mico and Kye simply stood their ground until the four-strong team had stopped shouting and making hand signals and the weapons were all aimed in a safe direction. There was a moment of peace during which a lightly-armed man consulted a handheld device – a weapons scan, Turk guessed – called "safe!", and retired.
The officer, a man in red and black hide which would have mirrored Mico's attire even without her ex-service overcoat, clicked his way down the transit tunnel between the two spacecraft as if he owned them both. Even so, he did Mico the tiny courtesy of a smile before announcing himself. Nebari were a notoriously poor choice of enemy.
"I am Captain Japp," he said, seeming pleased about the fact. "If you had any cargo I'd inspect it but as I can clearly see your holds are empty I shall instead restrict myself to making a record of your documents."
"I'm their frelling cargo," screamed Kye, suddenly enough to make everyone flinch. Then Mico touched her brow, and the kneeling girl was suddenly prostrate on the deck, trying and failing to scream in agony.
"I apologize for this inappropriate display, Captain," said Mico, in a voice of velvet. "I'm sure you understand the nature of my work."
"Quite so," said Japp, although his face betrayed a moment of disquiet as his eyes flickered toward the writhing woman on the deck. Mico let go of the studs, and glanced down as Kye's breathing decayed from panicked gasps to shuddering sighs.
"Be calm, child," she added. "Remember the meditation techniques we discussed."
Even through the knowledge of the pretense he was witnessing, Turk found the scene revolting – Kye's apparent suffering, Mico's infuriatingly calm disinterest, and Japp's unwillingness to intervene, and he felt the need to show at least some of the humanity that the officer might expect to see.
"Is that necessary, aboard my ship? I mean - " When Mico rounded on him, her barbed glare was real enough to silence him mid-sentence, but the honeyed tones remained.
"You are being well-paid for your services, Captain. It's for the sake of your ship that I do these things. Please understand it hurts me more than it hurts her."
Turk doubted it, but took the opportunity to back down, not wanting to risk derailing Mico's deception.
"I commend you on your dedication to duty," said the Peacekeeper captain. Mico inclined her head in recognition of the compliment. "Unfortunately, I'm bound to implement a few further checks. Might I ask for your secure word-of-the-day?"
Mico smiled, benevolently, kindly, doing her best to maintain the pretense, although the moment the captain had spoken she had begun unobtrusively shifting her weight, optimising her stance for the actions she might soon have to perform. "I'm sorry, Captain, but if I had any such word I would hardly be at liberty to discuss it with you."
Japp's unit, the four-strong boarding team, must have been aware of the tension, but they didn't move. Mico eyed them. Professionalism, she reflected, implied a degree of predictability. Japp was talking again, but she was concentrating too hard on other things to catch more than the end of his sentence.
"...introduce you to our Establishment representative."
Mico paused in her train of thought. What? Then, as she refocussed on Japp, all her cleverness with the outfit and the haircut and the fake collar control studs began to seem very childish and inadequate and laughable, because advancing with completely carefree nonchalance was a man who looked red in the alert striplights of the transit tunnel, but whose flesh matched the cool white tone of Mico's own as he stepped into the white light of the Clean Livin's cargo bay. As he smiled in greeting, Mico already knew that he knew, that the pretense was over, that he had checked her credentials and found nothing, and the only comfort left was that their only backup plan might still work.
"I don't believe we've met," he said, in a voice much more used to the passive-aggressive than Mico's had been. "But I know your name is Mico."
"Kye!" screamed Mico. "Now!"
Every single one of the boarding squad reacted to the noise, and even Japp himself was grappling for a weapon before he died, but Kye and Mico had taken every advantage of the surprise they had. Turk would remember the scene in slow motion, tilted crazily while he dove for the scant cover of a doorway, as both women reached inside their concealing clothing with both hands and came out armed, Kye's cuffs falling away with only a tug. The guns looked chunky even to someone used to pulse weapons, big black metal T-shapes which bucked and roared and spat white flame and a shower of brassy metal tubes. The women worked out from the center and in from the sides simultaneously, painting the end of the cargo bay with staccato light and blinding explosions of vaporising metal which burst across the width and height of the room and fell like incandescent rain. The two members of the peacekeeper boarding team on the outside edges died first, almost simultaneously with Japp himself as Kye's right-hand weapon and Mico's left converged at the centre of the group then swept the rest of the room with stroboscopic light and deafening sound. In under three seconds all four of the projectile weapons were empty and all six of the enemy – the four-person boarding team, their officer, and the Nebari laison – were dead, or at least horizontal and bleeding.
Turk cowered, horrified, in the doorway, trying to control his breathing and thanking any available god that it was over, but Mico had other ideas. Dropping the two stubbers, she reached under the coat, into her left armpit, and pulled out another one, smaller, but still chunky and with a triangular barrel profile. Without the slightest hesitation, she stalked forward, taking three big strides that made the coat billow behind her, and pumped two rounds into the face of the first man she'd shot. The weapon's report was deafening in the confines of the cargo bay, and Turk found himself protecting his ears. Mico's second target had retained his helmet, and she fired five rounds at point-blank range before she was satisfied, leaving the rearmost section of the weapon's upper half locked back until she ejected what Turk recognized as an ammunition carrier, rammed in another, and continued. She'd fired another ten or twelve rounds before Turk heard her board the Marauder troop carrier, followed by more distant shots. Then she returned, and he heard a strange, wet sound he couldn't identify. And, he realized, the sound of Mico cursing and screaming and sobbing and gasping for breath. There was something odd about her words, and Turk took a moment to listen beyond the microbes. It didn't sound like Nebari, but Turk hardly spoke the language, and in any case he'd realized what Mico was doing.
By the time Turk got to her, Mico had hammered the butt of her weapon into the Nebari man's face so many times that he was barely recognizable as such. Hoarse from screaming, she turned on him, snarling, then met his gaze.
"Stop," he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.
"Frell you, stop. I'll kill every single one of them and then I'll stop."
"You have," said Turk, truthfully. "On my ship. And I'm telling you to stop."
"I'll do whatever I-"
"Don't make me," bellowed Turk, hand on his weapon. Then, as she subsided, more quietly. "Don't make me."
Mico stood for a moment, splattered with blood that was partly red but mainly blue, and glanced beyond Turk to where Kye was standing, watching her with huge eyes and an uncertain expression. Then she spun on her heel and was gone.
Turk found it surprisingly easy to spend half an hour cleaning up, pushing the bodies of the boarding party barely back over the threshold of the Marauder assault shuttle and sealing the other ship's doors against the stench that would soon begin to build up. The bay itself was easy enough to hose down, but the paintwork and fittings over the entire rearward end of the room, and the doors themselves, were pockmarked with dozens of tiny high-velocity impact marks, almost like a micrometeorite strike but too regular in size to have been caused by any natural phenomenon. He spent the next ten minutes on his knees, picking the tiny gold-colored projectile casings out of cracks and fissures in the deck plating, and gave up when he'd found a hundred and twelve of the hundred and twenty-eight there should have been. Then he picked up the four empty weapons, a dozen of the much larger casings from Mico's semi-automatic handgun, and bundled the whole collection into an old shoulder pack which he hid, rather halfheartedly, in a tool chest.
Then Turk, too, drew his weapon, and moved with furious determination toward the guest cabin, chastising himself all the while for his bravado back at Quess.
o0o
He found them before he got there, standing with their bags in the lower deck companionway as if waiting for some sort of rendezvous. The surprise of it blunted his mood, so it was with only subdued fury that he interrupted Mico when she began to speak.
"Look, I need to -"
"Shut up," said Turk. "Do you have any idea what you've done? You said you weren't being pursued!"
"We weren't!"
"That guy knew your name! Explain that to me! The peacekeepers will kill us on sight. The Nebari will kill us on sight. And after all your fine words about giving up if they caught you."
"You think they'd have let you off if you had?"
"I didn't break any rules!" screamed Turk.
"You think a frelling peek Viglante crew with a frelling Establishment enforcer seconded to them would have let you go for a heartbeat? You took the risk when you picked us up."
"I wasn't expecting to face off against both the peacekeepers and your government at the same time!"
"Neither were we," said Mico, with intense, cold finality. She shouldered the larger of her two bags. "I am deeply sorry for your involvement with this but I will not apologize for what I've done."
"Where d'you think you're going?" said Turk, arms spread.
"I'm going to commandeer the Marauder and make best speed for somewhere else. We can leave you chained to a pipe, if you like."
"Convincing."
"Or I can just kill you," said Mico, pulling out the big stubber again. "Which would be entirely convincing."
Turk realized he'd had enough.
"Oh, frell this." He grabbed the gun, forcing the barrel away from him, confident of overpowering someone he was increasingly starting to see as a small, frightened girl way out of her depth. What he hadn't anticipated was Kye, who charged him with her entire weight. Kye's entire weight wasn't much, but she used it to drive her thumb and forefinger up under Turk's chin with a windpipe-bruising jabbing action, and by the time they were both on the deck, she had another of the big handguns at his head, too.
"If you continue to resist," said Kye, in her calm contralto, "I will kill you. If you attack Mico again, I will kill you. Do you understand?"
"Attack her?" choked Turk, with lungs compressed by her weight and a throat bruised by her fingers. "I was defending myself."
"Kye," said Mico, her voice flat. "Let him up. He's right." She sounded genuinely contrite, but as Turk struggled to his feet, Mico was speaking again, her tone strident. Mico's ability to forget reversals and carry on regardless was something Turk was beginning, if he was honest with himself, to tacitly admire.
"Whatever we're going to do," said Mico, "we have to do it before the peeks send over a couple of Prowlers to find out what's happened to their boarding party. If you want us to board the Marauder and leave, we will."
"Oh, no, no," replied Turk. "I need you here. Then if the plan doesn't work, you can tell them you captured me, and it isn't just my word."
"Plan?" asked Mico.
"Yeah," said Turk. "I have those, sometimes, too."
o0o
By the time they were ready, Kye was asleep again. Turk and Mico had very little to do but sit on the darkened control deck and wait, wrapped, like Kye, in layers of blankets against the encroaching cold of deactivated life support, huddled together for shared warmth. Mico checked the time.
"It won't be more than half an arn."
Turk glanced at Kye, who was propped in a half-seated position against the navigation console. "She sleeps a lot, doesn't she."
"I that's your way of asking what's wrong with her -"
Turk was less cautious about interrupting her than he might have been before. "I think I'm entitled."
Mico paused for just a moment's consideration before her lips parted. "You know what they do to people on my world."
Turk did. "The brain wash?"
Mico's nod was tiny, her gaze fixed on the middle distance.
"What's your involvement?"
Mico looked at him. "I loved her. Before. I shouldn't say loved, I shouldn't say it in the past. I still love her. But she's not... she's not... the same person."
Turk sighed out a quiet oath. "I'm sorry that happened to you."
"So am I. But she's not stupid. She's not an idiot. She can act. She can fight, she can do anything if I can convince her it's for the greater good." She spat the words like acid.
"You're... deprogramming her?"
"I'm trying to. I think it's working, slowly. She has moments. There are rumours it's been done. But the choice was take her with me or leave her to be an Establishment slave. And that wasn't a choice."
"What can I say?"
"You don't need to say anything. You took us on board, knowing what we were. You knew what they'd done to her as soon as we'd met, right?"
"I suspected. But I still don't understand. You haven't had your brain cleaned out. And forgive me, but you don't look to be a hundred cycles old."
"Oh," said Mico. "They did us both." She glanced at him, anticipating the question, but he was just admiring the forward view of the gas giant.
"And it didn't work," he said, "because you're not..."
In spite of everything, her mouth quirked into a smile. The mouth that would have been spectacular in any color other than gray, and now he began to realize that the gray wasn't that offputting. Neither was the scent of her. She smelled of her species, a tang that people from worlds with trees would think of as ashen.
"No," she said. "I'm not really Nebari."
He took it as permission to look at her some more. She pushed a hand through her hair, a gesture Turk was beginning to identify as a nervous tic.
"You look like a Nebari."
"I spent six days feeling like my blood was turning to acid to look like this."
"Tough transition?"
"Well. You know a lot about us."
"I get around," said Turk.
"You know Nebari can't have kids with Sebaceans, I guess. It's just not compatible biology. I was given a quarter of a chance of not surviving the procedure."
"You were Sebacean?"
"Yeah. Well. Sort of. Roughly. More or less."
"It looks good on you," he risked.
"Thanks. Anyway, it was very rough."
"Then why do it?"
"For her," said Mico, indicating Kye with a tilt of her head. It let in a gust of cold air, and she gathered the golden, heat-reflective quilting around them again.
"She wanted you to..."
"No. Frell, no. It was the only way to be together." She sighed, giving up on the idea of keeping a secret. "OK. Fine. You want the story? She was an Establishment caseworker."
"Wow," said Turk, sincerely.
"Yeah," she said. "I was helping the resistance. We met. She thought I was a peek liaison. We..." Mico paused, moistening her lips. "We spent some time together. We helped each other realize some things about how life works."
"You broke her."
Mico laughed. "Was a time she'd have eaten you alive for saying that. But yeah. By the time we realized we needed to be together, she was back on Prime. They were suspicious, already. So it was easier to get me in than her out."
Turk tried to start speaking three times before he found a sentence that made sense. "You went through a maybe-fatal gene mod in order to go and live in a totalitarian state? For her?"
"Haven't you ever fallen in love?" asked Mico.
Turk was still staring at her, head buzzing with a thousand supplementary questions, when the console chirped. Mico squinted at it.
"Peeks want to talk to us."
"Let's do it," he replied, and threw the blankets aside.
To Be Continued