According to the guard at the door, Deutsch had not emerged from his cabin since Legroeder had left. “Unless he snuck out through the ventilation system,” the Narseil commando said huskily, with an unreadable expression. Humor? Legroeder wondered.
He signaled at the door. When there was no answer, he pressed the handle. The door slid open and he stepped in, blinking in the gloom. The room smelled like a sauna. “Freem’n?” The only light came from the ruby crystal in the hands of the Kyber rigger. Deutsch was sitting exactly where Legroeder had left him; he seemed not to have moved a muscle. But the crystal in his hands was glowing far more brightly than before, casting a blood-red glow over Deutsch’s half-metal face.
“Freem’n?”
There was a long pause. Finally he saw a shift in the pirate rigger’s gaze—not the main eyes, but the two peripheral-vision eyes atop his cheekbones. Just behind them, the augments on his temples were flickering erratically.
The voice-speakers crackled, “Rigger Legroeder.”
“Yes. Are you all right?”
“No,” said Deutsch, with a series of clicks.
“Do you need help?”
For a long moment, Deutsch sat utterly still. Legroeder was wondering whether to call for medical aid when Deutsch spoke again. “How sure are you that you want to do this thing, going back to our base?”
Legroeder turned up his hands. “There are no if’s about it. That’s why we came.”
Though Deutsch’s eyes were inexpressive, something in the shape of his mouth conveyed pain. “I do not wish to go back to that life,” he said finally.
“Neither do I,” said Legroeder. “That’s why we’re going. To take some action against it.”
“And… you hope to learn something about that ship, yes? Impris?”
“Yes.” Legroeder hesitated. “And we have reason to believe there are people at your outpost sympathetic to our cause.”
Deutsch’s lips pursed. “Your commander spoke of an underground movement.”
“Which we hope to contact. But regardless, we’ll continue our mission.” Legroeder cleared his throat. “I have to know what to tell the commander. Will you cooperate?”
Deutsch sighed. When he spoke, his voice was ponderous, as though he were deep in thought. “It’s the strangest thing. I feel as though… for reasons I don’t entirely understand… I may be meant to do this thing with you. I don’t know why. Or how. But the feeling… comes from deep within.”
Legroeder blinked in surprise.
“I’ve been giving the matter considerable thought,” Deutsch continued. “And I’ve reached a decision.”
“And that would be?”
Deutsch’s breath came in a strained sigh, even as his voice reverberated from the speakers. “I hope it’s not a foolish one. But I will help you get to the outpost. And after that, I’ll… well, I’m not sure, exactly. Perhaps I can help you gain your information.”
Legroeder stared at him in amazement. “What made you change your mind?”
“Don’t ask.”
Legroeder raised his eyebrows.
“Don’t ask,” repeated the rigger, his temples pulsing with light.
“I have to ask. We have to know that we can trust you.”
Deutsch breathed in and out a few times. “Let’s just say… I think it is intended. And besides—” his facial muscles twitched “—I don’t want to be returned as a prisoner. If you win, I want to be on your side. And if you don’t—I’d just as soon get it over with. They can smoke us all.”
Legroeder scowled as he inclined his head in acknowledgment.
Legroeder and the Narseil kept a close eye on Deutsch in the following days. Legroeder knew that if anyone was going to notice any deceptiveness or backsliding, it had better be him. Deutsch’s support seemed genuine, as he guided the riggers in the net—not enthusiastic, perhaps, but determined. While Legroeder wondered at the inner forces that had caused Deutsch to agree to cooperate, the result seemed to be decisive.
In the ensuing days, Legroeder spent considerable time in conversation with the pirate rigger, and began to feel that he was gaining some sense of the man. Deutsch was somber, almost fatalistic in his determination to lead the ship back to port; he somehow looked as if his years of captivity were a leaden weight on his shoulders. Nevertheless, Legroeder had the oddest feeling that Deutsch was a man who, under other circumstances, would probably laugh a good deal. Legroeder found himself wanting to hear Deutsch laugh.
With input from Deutsch on what to expect when they reached Outpost Ivan, the Narseil commander and crew began to refine the plans for their arrival. According to Deutsch, one thing in their favor—if their goal was to get in, get information, and get out—was the modular design of the Kyber docks. It was at least theoretically possible to take control of an isolated docking center and hold it—if they were lucky, without tripping system-wide alarms—while they did their spying and tried to contact the Kyber underground. The hope was for a nonviolent contact, but it was a modest hope. The Narseil commando teams were already in full-scale rehearsal for a docking-port capture, which was how they would proceed if they hadn’t made friendly contact prior to docking. Contingency plans were also being shaped up for Legroeder’s role in the event the Narseil were captured.
In the net, the riggers continued flying in formation with H’zzarrelik. At times, the clouds turned an eerie green, like a sky ripe for tornadoes. Though no whirlwinds actually appeared, Legroeder was constantly aware that this region of the Flux could contain many surprises. When the image changed to a nighttime scene, as it did from time to time, he could just discern the ghostly Wall of the Barrier Nebula towering over them. They were venturing ever deeper into the forbidden realms of Golen Space, farther than he had ever gone in this direction.
He found himself thinking of Maris, and wondering if she was still alive. Had either one of them, in the end, really escaped? It was a sobering thought, and he flew for hours after that in a very dark frame of mind.
The Narseil commander paced back and forth in the briefing room as Palagren and Cantha reported privately on their progress so far. Fre’geel was burning to hear what his own people thought of the work of the two humans together. He trusted Legroeder—mostly, anyway—but had a suspicion that the human might be prone, when in doubt, to presenting an overly optimistic view of his own work. And there had to be some doubt about Deutsch, no matter how cooperative he appeared.
Palagren expressed cautious optimism about the performance of the joint rigger crew.
“Nothing to suggest that Deutsch is hiding anything from you?” Fre’geel asked.
“Well, he’s not shown us the whole of the route to the outpost. But that would be difficult to do, anyway. He seems to be feeling his way through.” Palagren stroked the side of his head with a long fingertip. “I believe him when he says that the Flux is highly changeable throughout the area, and the way in is a little different each time.”
Fre’geel blew air through his gills. He resisted an urge to scratch the neck-sail behind his head. Recently out of the gel bandage, his neck-sail was still healing, and it itched ferociously. The makeshift mist-chambers they’d set up on the pirate ship were no substitute for proper Narseil pools. Fre’geel envied the crew still aboard H’zzarrelik. He turned to Cantha. “What’s your view?”
Cantha, as a rigger-science researcher who was not himself a rigger, had a more objective if less intimate view of what was going on in the net and the Flux, and of what they might expect as they approached their perilous destination. “It appears to me,” Cantha said, “that Rigger Deutsch is performing well with our crew. The question is whether he’s doing so because he’s really decided to join us, or because he’s hoping to earn a bonus for turning us all in the moment we arrive.”