Jakus jerked a little.
“—or whatever the hell it is you’re protecting.”
Jakus said nothing. His right eye had begun to twitch, and he rubbed at the tic with his finger. As Jakus shifted his head, Legroeder noticed that a second implant behind the man’s right ear was alive with a tiny, erratic red flicker. Was Jakus connected to something or someone right now? Or was he just thinking?
“The truth,” Jakus said slowly. “Easy word for you to use. What exactly do you mean by it?”
Legroeder snorted. “Do I have to explain the word ‘truth’ to you?”
Jakus worked his mouth for a moment, then cocked his head toward the glowing interior of the rigger-sim. “Well, hell, Renwald, we’re both riggers, right? We both know that half the time there’s no way you can tell what’s real and what isn’t, in the Flux.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Jakus. Is that thing whispering so loud in your ear you can’t even hear yourself think anymore? You and I know what we saw.”
“Not real,” Jakus said, with a shake of his head. “Not real.”
“You know it was real!” Legroeder shouted. “You heard the distress call. Hyutu wasn’t even in the net, and he heard it! If anyone was responsible, it was him.”
“Show some respect,” Jakus said, with a shiver. “A little respect for the dead, okay?”
Legroeder was drawn up short. “Who’s dead?”
“Hyutu.” Jakus make a throat-slitting motion with his finger. “The pirates did ’im. You and me, we were lucky to get out with our skins.”
Legroeder scowled. “How do you know? Did you see it happen?”
Jakus shrugged. He tapped the silver disk on his temple. “You had one of these Kyber things, you’d be able to see things a whole lot better. Understand stuff you don’t know now.”
Legroeder felt a chill at Jakus’s words. Kyber things? “Is that it?” he whispered. “Is that what took your—” he struggled for the right word “—integrity from you? The implants?”
That brought a sharp laugh from the other man. “We gonna talk about my integrity now? Oh, yeah, Renwald—you must’ve had loads of integrity, the whole time you were pilotin’ pirate ships, burning innocent people. Oh, yeah.”
Legroeder’s face grew hot with bitterness and shame. “I did what I had to, to survive. I don’t deny that I rigged ships for them.” There had been no choice, if he’d wanted to live. And it was only his exceptional skill as a rigger that had kept him free of an implant; he’d persuaded his captors that he could rig better without those things in his head.
“Yeah, Renwald, that’s right. We did what we had to to survive. You and me both. Maybe if you’d taken a chip you wouldn’t be so high and mighty about it now.” Jakus sneered. “Listen, it was sure nice of you to stop by, but I’ve got work to do.”
Legroeder realized he had allowed Jakus to derail him from his point. “You lied to the Guild, Jake. Thanks to you, I’m losing my certificate and getting framed for what happened to the L.A.”
“I’m real sorry about that,” Jakus said.
“Sorry enough to go back and tell the truth? Tell them we both saw Impris? Tell them it was real?”
Jakus shook his head. “I told you already—there’s no way to know what was real and what wasn’t. You thought it was real, and I didn’t. Neither did the captain. I ain’t gonna change my story about that.”
“The pirates were real enough, weren’t they?” Legroeder growled.
“Oh yeah, they were real.” Jakus glanced over his shoulder, as though worried that someone might overhear. “Listen—we’re both damned lucky to have gotten away at all. Maybe you’re losing your certificate—not that I have one anymore, either—but at least you got away alive. Isn’t that more important than your certificate? You can still work.”
“Work? More likely, they’ll lock me away for life. If they don’t mindwipe me instead.”
Jakus shrugged. “Whatever.”
Legroeder glared into the oppressive gloom of the hangar, his thoughts burning. “So that’s it? You’re going to let them frame me?”
Jakus shrugged. “If you want to put it that way. Now, like I told you, I gotta get back to work.”
“Yeah.” Legroeder made no attempt to hide his disgust. “You get back to work. See you around, Jake.” He turned away.
“You don’t know what the truth is!” Jakus called after him. His words were punctuated by a loud metallic slam.
Legroeder glanced back; Jakus had climbed back into the sim and slammed the door shut. Legroeder angrily strode away, alongside the half-assembled spaceships. What the hell was going on here? Why was it so important to someone that he take the fall for the L.A.? It was obvious this wasn’t just Jakus’s doing. It seemed to be coming from somewhere in the Spacing Authority. But what conceivable connection could there be between the Spacing Authority and a lowlife like Jakus?
As he made his way back toward the front of the hangar, he also began wondering what sort of a shipping firm would use the services of a place like this. He couldn’t imagine a respectable company letting a contract here. He stared at the ships for a moment, then realized what was bothering him. They looked… armored. A glint of light from a single overhead lamp reflected off the hull plates with a greenish sheen, almost the color of oxidized copper. It wasn’t obvious, and he might not have noticed if he hadn’t just spent seven years around raider warships. But that looked like arnidium hull armor, very hard and resistant to radiation. With a surreptitious glance around, Legroeder crouched to peer beneath the nearest ship.
Not much to see—a number of closed bays on the underbelly of the craft. He looked beyond, to the next vessel; he could see the feet of a worker moving around with a work light. With a mechanical hiss, a bay door opened beneath the far ship. Legroeder squatted lower, trying to get a good look. The feet moved left, then right. The light flickered. For an instant, he caught a glimpse into the just-opened bay. A weapons compartment. He caught sight of three slim shapes—dark, sleek and oily-looking. Then the light moved away, leaving darkness. He heard the hiss of the bay door closing.
Legroeder rocked back on his haunches, letting his breath out slowly. Those were flux-torpedoes, he was nearly certain. Now, what the hell was a ship like that, in a place like this, doing with flux-torpedoes? The vessel bore no markings of police or navy. So what was it? Undercover? Criminal? Right here at the main spaceport? How could the Spacing Authority let that kind of thing slip by their security… unless they knew?
Legroeder rose silently from his crouch. The sooner he got out of here the better. As he started walking again, he saw the worker with the photonic torch moving between the two ships; that must have been the man who’d opened and shut the weapons bay. The man looked at him without friendliness, and stared as Legroeder walked on, heart pounding, toward the front exit.
As he paused near the office door, Legroeder heard footsteps, then a bang of metal. An unfamiliar voice shouted Jakus’s name; Jakus shouted back. Legroeder stood in the darkness, listening. As the voices rose in heated argument, he bit his lip. What have I done? Without quite knowing why, he started edging back the way he had just come. Moving alongside the nearer ship, he tried to make out the conversation. He caught his own name—then Jakus yelling, “—didn’t tell him anything!” The voices became more muffled. He strained to hear the rest of the argument, thought he heard the word Impris. The anger in the voices was unmistakable, and made the speech hard to understand. Then… there was a bone-jarring thump and a prolonged moan. That was followed by a third voice in a language Legroeder didn’t understand—Veti Alphan, maybe. There was another thump, and the cry of pain cut off. Then footsteps, moving away. What the hell was going on?