“Well, sure,” said Kohl. “But then what?”
“What do you mean?” Nate lowered his blaster.
“I know I use a lot of booze, and a lot of drugs,” said Kohl. “I’m dry now though. I’m dry. I wish I wasn’t, but that’s the way it is. I saw people who had heads full of insects. The way I see it, there’s no coming back from something like that. A bug eats your brains? Your brains are gone, Cap.”
“You’re telling me this why?” said Nate.
“Because,” said Kohl. “You always want to do something about it. Me, I don’t care. You pay me and tell me where to shoot, I’ll shoot. But you need to know. There’s more shooting before this is done.”
Nate gave Grace a glance. “Then there’s more shooting. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
She was a fucking esper.
Oh, sure. She hadn’t said that. Not exactly. But Nate had worked with the Old Empire’s Intelligencers enough to know their turns of phrase. The way they saw people. The way they could see them without seeing them.
He’d let an esper on his ship. On his crew.
How much of what he’d done was because of her? How much of the choices he’d made, the places he’d gone, was because Grace Gushiken had touched his mind, heard his thoughts? The strongest of them were rumored to influence thoughts. Had he taken this job, come to this planet where the people were infected with, what, some kind of insect parasite, because she’d given him the nudge?
Nate’s hand clenched on his blaster. He wanted to point it at her, pull the trigger. Keep pulling until there wasn’t anything left.
Nothing was more vile than someone who could hear your thoughts. Get in your head. The Republic were bad enough with control, but at least the assholes at the top were just people. They hadn’t overthrown their Emperor, caused the collapse of a civilization, and handed the keys to a new regime. That’s what the Intelligencers had done. He’d been discharged, sidelined, given a custom sword by an old friend and told to sit this one out. Dom had told him that his time would come. He’d thought at the time it was kind words to help him recover from being a cripple.
It still felt like words, but no longer kind ones.
Nate, done is done. You’ve just got to put her in a box on the way back, drug her into a coma if need be. But you’ve got others depending on you. El. Hope. Even Kohl. You can get angry at yourself later.
What he wanted to be angry about was that he didn’t have the will to put a shot of plasma into her brain. Because there was something in the back of his head that said, she’s on the run, Nate. She’s tiny against the mighty. You know what being on the run feels like. And she’s been good to you. Kept you and yours safe. Hell, Nate, you kind of like her.
He rubbed an angry hand against the side of his helmet, wanting to erase that voice of weakness.
“Boss,” said Kohl. “You good?”
“No,” said Nate. “Rooftop, eleven o’clock.”
“Got it,” said Kohl, leaning back to brace the rotary laser. The weapon spun up with a whir, red lancing out to carve chunks out of a building. It had been some kind of low-slung store selling textiles; now a figure stood on top with a launcher. Red death turned the body into a pyre, the launcher tumbling down the side of the building to break on the street below.
Grace was walking towards the broken launcher. Let her go. Let her die. Despite himself, Nate said, “Grace. There’s no time.”
She moved fast, though. Useful, despite being the enemy of humanity. He watched her kick through the launcher’s remains, pulling out a pouch. She shook it open, a net falling free. “They want to catch us,” said Grace. “They want to infect us.”
“Well, fuck that noise,” said Kohl. “I figure I can just keep setting them on fire. Should put a dent in that plan.”
Kohl might be a borderline psychopath—
He’s not borderline. There’s no actual border there at all.
—but he was effective. He caused friction in the crew, wanted to sell Hope to the next lot of bounty hunters to sail past, didn’t respect El, hell he didn’t respect Nate, but the man knew fighting. Kohl knew all war’s ugly faces. “Kohl,” said Nate. “We need the admin center. We need to get there alive, and we need to not be infected by parasites. You got that?”
“I got that,” said Kohl. He hefted the laser, something feral in his expression. Something happy. “I can keep doing this all day.”
“Move,” said Nate. He turned, set the pace. A jog through deserted streets. Head on a swivel, checking doorways, ground cars, windows. Grace, jogging at his side, sword sheathed, scabbard held low in one hand. Ready to draw, to cut.
What’s fucking with you, Nathan Chevell, is why she hasn’t used that sword on you. She’s got in with the crew, excepting Kohl, and not even that man’s own mother loves him. She could leave you to die here. Take your ship. And she hasn’t.
That’s what an esper would do. It’s what they had done. Intelligencers had got into every level of the Old Empire’s government, rotted it from within. Made the walls weak, soft, so the death of a good man was enough for the whole house to fall down.
Nate saw movement out of the corner of his eye, a shadow in the front of a shop. Holos moved and shimmered, advertising some kind of swim wear. Behind those ads, something hulked in the gloom where the interior lights were out. Bigger than a tall man, bigger than Kohl. Nate, swung his blaster around, pulled the trigger. Plasma ate the clear ceramic windows, shards of glowing material showering into the store. He didn’t know why he’d pulled the trigger, he hadn’t identified a clear target, but something at the back of his mind gabbled at him, and he’d clawed the trigger almost by accident.
Kohl was looking at him. “You good? You just set fire to a swim suit store. I mean, I got nothing against swim wear, and I figure the same’s true of you, so what you doin’?”
“You didn’t see that?” said Nate.
“See what?” said Kohl.
“I saw it,” said Grace. “But I don’t know what I saw.”
Nate walked to the shattered frontage, the edges of the clear ceramic still glowing where plasma had scorched them. He looked into the darkened interior. Ceramic shards spread across the floor, right up to the destroyed frame of a robotic model. Standard machine, capable of looking male, female, or neither. It’d model your body, wear the clothes, and you could see what you’d look like in the latest summer fashions. Not this particular robot, because it was in smoldering pieces. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a robot.”
He couldn’t shake the feeling that what he’d seen hadn’t looked like a robot. Not when he’d pulled the trigger. What he’d seen was huge. It hadn’t moved like a person.
You’re just imagining things. A parasite inside people has got you jumpy.
Sure, humans had encountered horrors in their walk across the galaxy. Weird bacteria and viruses that found humanity delicious. The Republic sent in pest control. That had to be the situation here, although this would be the first time they'd be sent in for anything larger than a weasel. They just needed to get to Penn so the Rear Admiral could call in the exterminators.
But. That didn’t explain the Gladiator, hole in her hull, fire control set to extreme prejudice. He shook his head. Focus. Thinking about the Gladiator would be a useful exercise for another time.