Chapter 5
The Present—November 12th, 2944—Stanton System.
The outbound run had been exactly as pleasant as Penny suspected it would be. Hardly two hours into the trip, she and Tess had come to an unspoken agreement to stay on opposite ends of the ship except when both of them were needed up front, and the uneasy truce had held—for the most part.
Their delivery orders specified a private landing pad on Hurston, and Penny wondered privately if the location of her mysterious meeting was a coincidence, or if somebody inside the company was feeding information to whoever wanted to meet with her. That was... an uncomfortable possibility. Ostler Transstellar was doing far better than it had been when she hired on, but the list of people privy to all ship crew assignments and destinations was still very short indeed.
After the delivery, and once Tess had secured a reasonably profitable cargo for the return trip, Penny broached the subject of a detour to ArcCorp. The reaction was more or less what she expected—a screaming match that nearly degenerated into fisticuffs. In the end, Tess proposed a compromise that Penny was certain served a dual purpose of getting her out of Tess' hair for a few hours: as the Vanilla May passed ArcCorp on her way out to the jump point, she'd make orbit and delay for a few hours while Penny borrowed the Merlin and made a jaunt groundside.
It suited her just fine; this way at least she didn't have Tess breathing down her neck, although she fully expected to face another round of baseless accusations when she came back aboard. Suspicious this, sneaking off that... she'd long since stopped trying to convince Tess that she wasn't out to undermine what was left of the company's reputation with drugs, murder, and petty thievery.
Separation felt akin to liberation—the moment the little snubfighter dropped free of the May, Penny felt a surge of excitement the like of which she hadn't known in a year or more. It felt so good that she couldn't resist putting the Merlin through a few tricks for old time's sake—to Tess' great irritation, as she made perfectly clear over the comms. Penny ignored her irritable aunt and made atmo at the steepest angle she legally could, relishing every shudder of the tiny fighter as it fought against the very air.
Landing, however, was appreciably less pleasant. Penny approached the public facility nearest to "Tollhouse," which—of course—had turned out to be a bar when she looked it up... and promptly found herself in handcuffs being carried off the pad by a pair of Corporate Security muscleheads. Nothing she said seemed to penetrate their helmeted skulls, so she took it in stride. Chances were that they had standing orders to collar anyone who wasn't wearing a three-piece suit... or it was also very possible that she'd pinged somebody's facial recognition database. The fact that she had no official criminal record had never stopped the Advocacy from getting on her case, and Corpsec goons had even fewer rules to abide by. She wound up in a holding cell—one of the nicer ones she'd seen the inside of, all things considered—cooling her heels until someone felt like dealing with her. Tess is gonna fizz when she gets wind of this. But it couldn't be helped; if she busted out of here, she'd probably never get any answers.
It was well into local evening by the time Penny was transferred from the cell to an 'interview' room one level up, which at least had padded chairs. There was a suit waiting for her on the other side of a fancy-looking fake wood desk—he looked up from his Glas just long enough to make eye contact before returning his attention to the screen.
"What is your business on ArcCorp?"
The directness of his question—more of a demand, really—was refreshing. No 'state your name' or 'good evening' shit; he knew her name before she walked through the door, and she had no reason whatsoever to care about his. "I'm meeting a friend," she said with a little shrug.
"For what purpose?"
She knew what he was after: any kind of admission, or anything he could interpret as an admission, that she was a smuggler. She had the look, and he wasn't too far off the mark. She had been a smuggler, among other things. Today, though?
"I got a message. It's with my stuff."
The suit nodded and gestured for one of the goons to go fetch. There was silence while they waited; Penny tried to make her interviewer uncomfortable by staring at him and tapping her foot, but gave up when he failed to react in any way at all. The goon returned, and plopped a box on the suit's desk containing Penny's satchel and gear.
"This is it?" the suit held up the card she'd found taped to the Chance's nose. She nodded. He turned it over—and his eyes widened as he saw the symbol printed on its back. He flipped it back over, scanned the text... and pushed the box across his desk toward Penny. He turned to the helmeted Corpsec goons. "Vogel, Stevens, you can go now." Penny quirked an eyebrow, but got no answer until the goons had left and closed the door behind themselves.
"Well, this is... awkward." The suit shook his head, then stood up and poured a couple drinks. "You're on our watchlist, you see," he explained unnecessarily; Penny had taken that as a given. "I'm supposed to question you, then have you escorted off-planet. This... complicates my position." He unlocked Penny's cuffs and handed her one of the glasses, which was—to her disappointment—filled only with water, then fished around for something in his pocket. He dropped it in her other hand.
It was another one of those coins. Not the one the Tevarin had given her; she was sure of that. Hers had a ribbed edge, while this one was checkered. So this guy's one of these crazies too? Better to play along, then.
"Sorry to jam you up like this, but I gotta see this guy. Big guy, Tevarin. We met a few weeks ago on Terra, then he left me that card."
The suit nodded, stroked his chin, then shook his head. "Haven't had any Tevarin come through here, but that doesn't mean he didn't land somewhere else. That his name on the card?"
Penny shrugged. "Could be. All I know is we ran into the same pack of Scalies together... it was bad. We lost some people." That was all she was willing to say on the subject, and she hoped that the suit wouldn't press further. It would be a shame to have what seemed to be a productive conversation end in something unpleasant.
"Everyone's got a reason," the suit whispered soberly. He took the card again and sat back down behind the desk to type something into his Glas. After a few moments, his head came up again. "Here's the customs record. Sennek Tul Na... Tevarin male, two point five meters, black hair?"
"Sounds about right." She actually didn't remember what color the guy's hair was, but he had been pretty bloody tall.
"He made planetfall two days ago, three districts over. Listed the Tollhouse Bar as his final destination and... left a message for you."
"Any chance you could let me see that?" He re-keyed the display to be viewable from both sides and she leaned in close. Better late than never, it read.
I'm gonna kill him, she thought. If he'd left her some damned contact info instead of this stupid cliche out of a bad spy flick, she wouldn't be in this corporate hellhole in the first place... not that he had any way of knowing she'd have trouble clearing security. If she'd had more than a slight worry about that herself, she never would have landed. Still...
"Look, I know you aren't supposed to let me through, but it's important. I need to hear what he's got to say." Which was a lie. She was curious, to be sure—curious enough to suffer through an interstellar voyage sealed in a can with aunt Tess—but if it didn't work out, she could still walk away clean. She could probably even get her answers somewhere else; clearly this Pitchfork thing was more widespread than she'd thought.
The suit was clearly torn. He didn't want to go against his superiors, but that symbol had woken something up. If it wasn't loyalty, it was something very close to it, and that was one of the strangest things Penny had ever seen—here was a guy who'd never met her before in his life, whose orders and instincts were telling him to deny entry to her... and yet he was considering just letting her go.
He is just letting me go, she realized when he logged into his corporate account and a release authorization splashed across the display. "You can pick up your weapons when you leave ArcCorp," he told her, "and I'd caution you not to overstay your welcome here. If you're not offworld by morning..." he shrugged. "It's as good as I can do."
"Thank you," she said, and genuinely meant it. She couldn't tell if the guy was just that gullible or if something else was going on, but he'd stuck his neck out for her and that bought a lot of good will in her book. Not many folks had ever been willing to do that.
"We all have reasons," he explained as she gathered her things and walked out the door.
Tollhouse, as it turned out, was not exactly the sort of dive Penny expected it to be. While not upscale enough to have a VIP line and a guest list, the front of the building was clean and polished and the patrons looked solidly middle-class. She added it to the list of reasons why her Tevarin 'friend' needed a boot up his ass and elbowed her way past a couple of idiots who were blocking the door. First stop, bar.
Once armed with strong drink, she took a good look around to get her bearings and take note of anyone who might become a problem. It was a quiet place; the patrons were mostly in small groups at private tables, relaxing to the subtle notes drifting off the band's guitars. There wasn't any sign of...
Someone tapped her shoulder. Her hand reacted instantly, but grabbed only pocket lint, and for a moment panic froze her heart—Corpsec still has my gun!—but as she spun on her heel, she came face-to-belly with the biggest Tevarin she'd ever seen and knew there wasn't anything to fear. It was the same guy from the bar on Terra, the one who'd left her the message telling her to meet him here. Besides, if this mountain of muscle meant her any harm, she was pretty sure shooting him would've just made him angry. A simple hello was inadequate.
"How the fuck can you sneak up on... anyone?!" She looked up for an answer, but he only gestured to an empty booth. There were already drinks waiting—one of which, she noted with amazement, was the same thing she'd been drinking the night she met him. I'm amazed I even remember. Evidently the old saw that Tevarin forget nothing wasn't so far off the mark.
"The same way you managed to hold onto that glass," he replied at last with a quirk of his brow, "while you were trying to shoot me with a gun you do not have."
"Everyone's gotta have a talent."
He grinned at that; Penny cringed. It was hard to say exactly what made that smile so disconcerting, but damned if it wasn't the freakiest thing she'd ever seen on a man's face. She downed the rest of the drink in question and finished its replacement just as quickly.
"So what was so important that I had to fly all the way here instead of just meeting you back in Quasi again?"
He shrugged. "This was my home port. The last survivor of my crew is here."
Fair enough.
He gestured at her three-fingered right hand. "Did you lose those also, at Elysium?"
Penny closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Easy does it, Nels. Guy doesn't have a clue. "No," she said flatly. "And don't ask about them again," she added when he opened his mouth to say something else. His jaw clicked shut; he nodded. Those fingers were between her and her father, and no one else alive.
"The Corpsec suit running customs was in on that suicide mission of yours," she said, putting considerable distance between herself and any discussion of her ghosts. "But I guess you knew that already." The Tevarin laughed, and somehow that was even more unsettling than his grin. Yeah, damn right he knew. This whole thing is one big setup—I may want to kill my father, but he didn't raise an idiot.
"We are everywhere, Miss Clairmont. We come from everywhere. The one thing we all share is a desire to see the Vanduul driven from our borders."
"Stars, you big dolt. Call me Penny. Or Nels. Anything but... that." He made her sound like a junior executive vice-something-or-other; she didn't want to hear anyone using her family name unless they were arresting her!
"Very well. I presume you know my name already, since you obviously received my message."
"Sennek Tul Na, right?" Weird name for a Tevarin. Penny knew a few words of Tevarin, just enough to speak with the handful of aliens in her father's organization, and she was pretty sure this guy's name was a mouthful of gibberish. That made her curious, but it seemed like the sort of thing it was best not to ask about.
"Just Sennek. And now we have been properly introduced." He raised a meaty arm and beckoned for someone to refill their drinks. Penny leaned back so she could look the big guy in the face without craning her neck, crossed her arms, and waited. There was a point here somewhere, and he was taking his own sweet time getting around to it, but she was ready to wait however long it took. After all the trouble of getting here, she wasn't leaving this bar with another damned mystery.
"So here we are," she intoned at last when it was clear that no answers were forthcoming, "in another bar, on another planet, in another system... having the same conversation. Anything new to add?" That was probably too much snark. From what little she knew of Sennek's sense of humor, he'd probably... yup. Shit. He's grinning.
"A proposition," he said simply with a shrug that cast a shadow over the whole table. "If you will listen to it." She nodded slowly. "Good. Since you are here, I will assume that you have decided to act?"
"I've decided to hear you out, big guy. We'll see about the rest."
"That is reasonable. I have been... busy. It was difficult, but I have found the remaining survivors. From Elysium."
I think I see where he's going with this.
"You want to put a crew together."
Sennek nodded once—then again, with deep respect, to the waiter who brought their refills. He sipped at his whiskey; as he did so a slightly less spine-tingling smile snaked across his face and he sighed.
"My kind are known for their long memory. And for our inclination to hold grudges. To seek vengeance. Many feel this way towards... your kind. I do not. Those wounds are so long past that those who open their scars are fools. I am an equal of any human in the Empire, a Citizen! At least under the law."
I'm not, Penny thought. Citizenship was... difficult for someone of her upbringing to attain. Even if it were offered, she wasn't certain she'd accept—what had the Empire ever done for her, anyway? It had tried to kill her a few times; it had tried to imprison her several more times, often with no better cause than that she looked like a pirate. Wasn't Sennek here to convince her to join this 'Operation Pitchfork' to fly off and do what the Empire was unwilling to? Why even bring them up then?
"I am proud of my home," he continued. "It has been good to me—often in spite of itself. I am free, I am in debt to no one, and until a short time ago I traversed the Void between stars. What my kind so often forget is that the Empire could have annihilated us, and chose not to. There is no question that we would have done so had our positions been reversed.
"We are uniquely able to see what the Vanduul are. They are us. They are what we were, hundreds of years ago. An enemy that must be fought. Peace is not possible—have they not killed any who offered it to them? Such forces as theirs, and ours, can only be tested in conflict. One must prevail for either to survive. It must be us, for they will not hesitate to kill every human, and every Tevarin with them.
"And now I have dead of my own to avenge. There can be no more delay for me. No more pretense that I may trust in the Empire to do what must be done. Because of this, I have decided to fight with others whose minds are as mine is."
Penny considered her drinking companion for a long moment after he finished speaking. It was a pretty good speech, all things considered. I wonder if he practiced. Or if he's gone this far out of his way for any of the others who were there that day.
"What's that got to do with me?"
"I find myself without a ship. It is my understanding that yours was not destroyed."
His balls must be bigger than the rest of him.
"Look, Sennek, that's not gonna work. Last time the Chance tangled with Vanduul, she didn't come off so good. I still don't have her back together yet." That was largely because she hadn't wanted to even think about it since Elysium, but denial and procrastination aside, her ship was still in pieces.
"That is not the same as a no."
"I..." her voice trailed off. She lifted an eyebrow at him, and her fingers went to the coin in her jacket pocket. "No, it's not." Am I really going to throw in with this bunch of lunatics? But what else was there to do? Make cargo runs with her aunt, who hated her, or go work at the office with her uncle, who'd never stop trying to make her... fit in his world? An alternative was just starting to take shape and it was, in its own way, even more terrifying.
"Okay," she whispered. "I'm in." Then, louder: "but if we're gonna do something this stupid, we're gonna do it right. We need a ship. Like you said... but not the Fool's Chance. Something that can take a beating—a warship." There was that damned grin again. Sennek clinked his glass against hers, hoisted it into the air, and swallowed its potent contents in one small—for him—gulp. Penny rolled her eyes, sighed, and downed hers as well. Now that she'd said the words, the flutter in her guts was getting stronger. What am I doing? Is this why I've fought so hard to avoid going back there?
"I do not suppose you know where to find a warship?"
"I do," she said. Several of them. Fully armed, milspec harware. There's only one problem. "But... it's not gonna be easy to get it. Get them." If she was going to pitch an idea this crazy, then there wasn't any point holding back. Might as well just go all in. She couldn't get much worse than dead if it went sideways—not much worse, anyway. "The guy who... 'owns' them? We're not exactly friends." But we are family, she thought. Maybe that will still count for something.
The Past—Four years ago—July 31st, 2940—Nul System.
Her father spoke not a word when he stepped through the hatch. That silence was worse than anything he could possibly have said; she knew right away what it meant, and her heart began pounding in anticipation of what had to come next. He drew a pair of metal shears from under his coat and laid them on the table in front of her—stepped back, crossed his arms, and waited.
Hell of a present. Hell of a birthday.
Penny didn't bother pleading. It hadn't worked the first time, and it wouldn't help now—just once, a man had refused, and her father had taken his whole hand instead. The look on his face now said that not even blood would spare her this. She set her jaw and took the shears.
I could kill him, she thought. It's an easy shot from so close. That familiar surge of hope was just fear in disguise. She knew he was faster, and his hand was already at his gun. While her lizard brain screamed at her to run, to fight, to do anything but this, her rational mind knew that she had chosen this the moment she came back empty handed. She could have run—but some dark little part of her wanted to see the look on her father's face. He'd spent months planning that raid—scouting out the right ambush site, shadowing the transport to make sure his intel was solid, waiting for exactly the right moment... he'd wanted his little girl's first big job to be perfect.
She'd warned the target instead, bouncing her telemetry to the terrified captain and lighting up her ship like a solar flare. He'd done the smart thing and fled back through the jump point, taking his valuable cargo—and passengers—with him. She wished that it had been worthwhile—that righteous anger would carry her through the consequences of her actions...
But the price of crossing Quentin Clairmont was always high.
It could have been worse. If the transport captain had chosen instead to fight, if Penny had gotten any of her crew killed or, worse, seriously damaged the Wendigo? Dad loved that shitty old Caterpillar. He only let his most trusted lieutenants take her out on jobs, and that he'd trusted her to Penny was nothing less than a vote of ultimate confidence. Which she'd betrayed—his own flesh and blood. It was damned lucky that Matt hadn't been out there with her; Dad would've spaced him for letting so much money slip through his fingers. Even for Penny, though, there was a debt to settle, and she looked her father straight in the eyes as she paid it.
Was it done, or had she only imagined the crunching of bone? She threw the shears at her father's feet, spattering blood across the table and onto the deck. Her vision blurred—from the tears or the pain; it didn't matter. This wasn't a failure. That had come years ago, the first time she'd tried to steer her father towards something better.
If what he'd forced her to do affected him at all, he didn't show it. He picked up the shears, wiped them off, and summoned a medic—a slave, she noticed; the man who came to treat the wound where her finger had been wore a broken stare and an electronic bracelet. Didn't her father understand that this was what she wanted him to avoid? There were borders, even for an outlaw. Lines that should never be crossed. He had taught her that, when she was just a little girl! But greed had ruined him. Beaten down and smothered his conscience until the only thing that remained was hunger. A hunger that had cost Penny two fingers and more sleep than he'd ever know.
The slave-medic injected something into her arm and the pain in her hand soon faded, leaving only a dull ache and the muscle-memory of an appendage that was no longer there. How many pieces of myself do I have to lose before I give up on him? The man across the room from her was not the father that had raised her. He was not the Quentin Clairmont who had stolen away with her mother's heart, and for the first time Penny wondered if Victoria Ostler hadn't done the right thing, leaving him before he truly lost himself.
What if she didn't leave at all? The thought sprung into her mind unbidden, but immediately it dominated her consciousness. She remembered her mother only faintly, but not one of those few blurry recollections was of cruelty. The woman in those hazy memories would not have abandoned her to this! Had her father killed her mother rather than let her go?
And what would he do if he lost his only daughter as well?