Faring Soul - Science Fiction Romance (6 page)

Bedivere lifted his chin and gave a
chuckle. “He could have told us he’s ex-Federation.
They’re
the best trained troops in the galaxy.”

“Until they regenerate,” Catherine
pointed out. “Brant is old. It’s not showing much yet, but he’s
beyond the age when most men transfer.”

“A DNA test would tell us if he’s ever
regenerated.”

“And how old he really is.” Catherine
studied him. “You’re okay with this?”

“Hiring an ex-Staffer? Oh, thrilled,”
Bedivere replied. “But if he agrees to bio testing and the results
confirm he’s using his original body, that would make me sleep
better.”

“That’s all that bothers you? That he
could be a spy?”

Bedivere shrugged and waved Brant over
to them. As the man got to his feet and headed their way, Bedivere
looked at her and pressed his lips together ruefully. “It doesn’t
trouble you that he’s a Staffer. I’ll get over it.”

She gave him a small smile.
“
Ex
-Staffer,” she amended.

“Oh, I’m still technically Ammonite,”
Brant said as he reached their side. “Just because I washed and
shaved and I’m wearing civvies doesn’t take away the
indoctrination. And no one resigns from the order.”

“Indoctrination? Then you didn’t always
believe in humans first?” Catherine asked. “They had to warp your
mind before you bought it?”

Brant smiled. “I bought it, then I
became a Staffer. The training just locks it all in place.”

Bedivere pushed his hands deep into the
roomy pockets on his flight suit. “We’ll need to do some testing,
to establish you’re who you say you are.”

Brant nodded. “Bio markers. I expected
more.”

“Oh, we’ll be turning your life inside
out, once you’re aboard,” Catherine said. “But you don’t get
invited aboard until we’ve done some basic bio panels.” She
hesitated, then remembered that it was her who had argued that
Brant and they were equally as vulnerable. “I won’t lie. We need
the help. You know who we are, so there’s no point in hiding that
we lost all our crew when we said we were heading back into
Federation space, three years ago. We’ve been running on skeleton
crew since then, while we recruit. It’s a slow process. Candidates
with the skill sets we need and the right attitude as well…they’re
rare.”

“The pretty little lady that stepped
out just before I arrived. She’s one of your crew?”

“Lilita Washmaster. She’s our engineer.
She’s been with us nearly a year now.”

Brant gave her one of his clear-eyed
direct gazes. “If I understand you properly, then it’s the first
time I’ve heard of a muscle-man helping run a ship.”

“You’ll get your privileges,” Catherine
assured him. “Five percent of the gross take on any venture, no
other heavy duty stuff in between. But you’ll be working for your
supper, believe me.”

Brant raised a brow. “Trouble?” It was
a mild, almost non-curious tone he used.

“I have a couple of projects to
complete. They have…risks.”

“Ah.” Brant smiled. “My need-to-know
level isn’t high enough yet. I can live with that.”

“You can?” Bedivere asked sharply.

Brant gave him a warm smile that made
his eyes glimmer with good cheer. “You’re not Federation and I get
off this rock with pay and privileges. Whatever else happens,
that’s a bargain right there.”

“Right.” Catherine stirred. “Bedivere,
you start vacuuming the dirt out of Brant’s life. And look into why
Dana Morrow was arrested yesterday, while you’re communing with the
AI.”

“You have an AI?” Brant said
sharply.

“That a problem?” Bedivere asked
coolly. It was his “I’m rolling up my sleeves for a fight”
tone.

“We have several AIs,” Catherine
replied, shooting Bedivere a warning glance. “Each has its own
portfolios and they work together as needed.”

“They’re harnessed, yes?” Brant
asked.

“Of course they’re harnessed,” Bedivere
replied, managing to sound affronted.

Brant relaxed with effort. “You said
something about a bio panel?” he asked Catherine politely.

“I’ll go and get it. Take a load off,
Brant, while I go get the sample pins. You don’t get to step inside
until we’re done.”

“You’re very kind,” he said gravely, as
if she had offered him the best seat at the table. He folded
himself up cross-legged on the metal ramp. He stared straight
ahead, his body relaxed and Catherine realized he was
meditating.

Catherine looked at Bedivere, jerked
her head toward the cargo hold and strode up the ramp, ready to
fight it out.

Bedivere didn’t try to avoid her, or
pretend he didn’t know she was angry. He moved back to the far side
of the cargo hold where Brant wouldn’t be able to hear or see them
and waited with his arms crossed and his legs spread, which made
them look longer than ever. In the dim light back there, his dark
blond hair looked much darker.

Catherine marched right up to him,
letting her frustration show.

“He
kills
computers, Cat,”
Bedivere said, sliding in before she could say anything.

She drew a breath, trying to shrug off
her irritation. Bedivere didn’t think like she did. He hadn’t seen
what she had. She had to remember that, but she also had to make
him see it from her perspective, too. “The Ammonites haven’t killed
a computer in over a thousand years,” she said, working to keep her
tone reasonable. “Not since the Torment of the Sinnikka.”

“Not for want of trying,” Bedivere
pointed out. “The Birgir Stoyan is
still
rogue, eight
hundred years later. The only reason they didn’t kill it was
because it was a shipmind. As soon as it woke up, it realized that
what happened to the Sinnikka would happen to it, too. So it took
off and no one has seen it since.”

Catherine observed his tightly held
fists inside the crook of each elbow and the tension in his
shoulders. She sighed silently. Bedivere was the latest in a long
series of navigators she had employed over the years. The heavens
and she both knew navigators were flaky. There wasn’t a whole lot
of navigating left in their job descriptions. The complexities of
gate jumping had long ago surpassed human computational abilities
and skills. AIs did the heavy lifting, while navigators acted as
human back-ups.

In truth, even that function was a
sinecure. Computers could react faster than humans in emergencies,
but human passengers felt more secure with a human even nominally
in charge.

Federation ships all carried a human
navigator, well versed in the intricacies of stellar cartography,
where
everything
was a moving target, including their
destination. But their real skill was in their relationship with
the navigator AI. Every ship used an AI for navigation, always
well-shackled and controlled. The human navigator worked closely
with it.

Catherine had adopted the same
standard, for the same practical reason. If she wanted paying
passengers, she needed to parade a very human navigator in front of
them, so they would sleep easily in their berths.

Because of their almost symbiotic
relationship, navigators as a breed tended to be protective of
their navigator AIs in particular and most computers in
general.

Bedivere was a flawless navigator…and
just as sensitive as the rest.

So Catherine backed up and came at it
from a different angle. If she pushed Bedivere too hard he would
dig in and out-stubborn her. So she had to coax. “The Staffers are
extremists, but if you got any human drunk enough they would
probably admit they’re glad the Staffers are there.”

Bedivere frowned. “
That’s
your
strategy? Offending me?”

She held up her hand. “You don’t like
Staffers because they think humans are supreme and that any other
lifeform, including sentient computers, are a threat that should be
dealt with as directly and swiftly as possible.”

“And he was one of their enforcers!”
Bedivere threw out his hand. “He even admitted he still believes in
the doctrine!”

“So he’s a prejudiced bigot, is what
you’re saying?”

Bedivere scowled.

“So you are,” she added softly.

Surprise and hurt registered at the
same time, in the way his eyes widened and his lips parted.

“You’re judging him because of his
beliefs, before even trying to learn anything about him.” Catherine
kept her tone soft and reasonable.

“And you’re going to bring a man who
will kill a sentient computer on sight onto a ship that has a
single AI!” His voice was low, his tone furious. “It’s one of the
most insane ideas you’ve ever had. It’s beyond insane. It’s
dangerous.”

“So we don’t let him find out there’s
really only one AI.” She shrugged. “He’s a Staffer, Bedivere. He’s
going to avoid computer interaction as much as possible. It’s built
into their creed. He’ll use a keyboard when he can, voice prompts
when he must and he’ll ignore the AI the rest of the time.”

Bedivere shook his head. He was about
to switch to stubborn mode. She could tell by the way his jaw was
flexing.

“Look,” she said, keeping her tone
light. Reasonable. “We’re here for four things. We bought the
Itinerary and the second is also done.” She pushed her hair over
her shoulder, a reminder that when they had first hit Federation
space, it had been almost completely grey. Now it was back to red
once more. “So we have two more items on the agenda. The tech and
the mule. Then we’re done. We dump Brant on the nearest
planet…hell, we can even leave him wherever we happen to be when
we’re done, if that makes you happier. Then we can pick how to
spend the rest of our lives.”

Bedivere crossed his arms once more.
“As far as I’m concerned, we can cross both of them off the list
right now and jump somewhere obscure tomorrow. I can live without
them.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Nuh-uh. You
get your mule and we track down that tech. We agreed on this…hell,
twenty-two years ago.”

“If it means having
him
aboard,
I’ll pass.” He took a half step closer to her, almost like he was
compelled by his emotions. The mix of emotions on his face and in
his eyes was intense. “How can
you
think of doing it? After
what they did to you on Egemon?”

“Having him on board is the only way
this is going to happen,” Catherine replied.

He looked startled.

“Trying to hire a legitimate mercenary
will tip off the Federation. The only way we get the muscle we need
is to find someone exactly like Brant—someone the Federation would
never think of as even a possibility.”

“Because it’s so insane,” Bedivere
said, like he was finishing her thought and eerily, he was.

She nodded.

His arms loosened and he ruffled his
hair. The ends shone a dark golden brown in the weak overhead
light. “I’m not going to try and like him,” he warned.

“I’m not asking you to like him. Just
work with him. And keep in mind that he wasn’t personally on
Egemon. He wasn’t a part of that.”

“You don’t know that.”

Catherine stared at him. Now she was
startled. “I do know that. He’s a Staffer, Bedivere. At most, he’s
maybe fifty years old. He couldn’t have been at Egemon. He wasn’t
even born yet.”

And Bedivere should have figured that
out for himself. That he hadn’t told her that he was arguing purely
from an emotion viewpoint. He wasn’t processing this in any way
that was logical.

In the nearly one hundred years she had
known him, she couldn’t recall Bedivere disengaging from the
non-emotional reasoning at the base of his personality and reacting
based purely on how he felt.

She looked up at him as he digested the
fact that Brant looked older than either of them, but was in fact
much younger.

“Don’t forget—he’s nearing the end of
his life.” She gave him a small smile. “He won’t regenerate. It’s
not part of their religion.”

Bedivere nodded. “I hadn’t forgotten.”
Then he smiled a little himself. “I think I conveniently ignored
it.” He stepped back and took in a deep breath that lifted his
shoulders and blew it out. “It felt much better to blame Brant for
everything the Staffers have ever done.” His gaze flickered away
from her face. “Especially to you.” Then he straightened up with a
snap. “I was judging unfairly.” He added softly, almost like he was
tasting the fact experimentally, “I am prejudiced.”

“Of course you are,” Catherine said
quickly. “Everyone is. It’s natural, an outcome of the way the mind
thinks. Most biases are unconscious. It’s what we do with them once
we are aware of them that makes the difference.”

Bedivere let out another heavy breath,
looking at her directly once more. “It’s not a pleasant feeling,
finding this flaw in myself.” His smile was tentative.

“No, it’s not. But time’s ticking,
Bedivere. I’ll get the bio pins. You start digging into Fareed
Brant’s life.”

He nodded. “Shouldn’t take long,” he
said, sounding more normal. “He hasn’t lived long enough to make it
a challenge.”

Feeling slightly happier, Catherine
hurried through the ship to the medical bay for the bio pins and
supplies she’d need to sample Brant. That fine edge of sarcasm, an
outgrowth of arrogance built upon expertise…that was more like the
Bedivere she knew.

A couple of days after Brant picked out
a stateroom from the six empty ones in the crew quarters and
settled in, Catherine took him with her to do her milk run.

The milk run was a round trip of all
the taverns and cafes and draft houses, feelies, brothels, spas,
tank bars and casinos that operated along the terminal concourse.
Passengers in transit, stevedores and other terminal workers spent
time in at least one of these places and space-faring crew blew
their wages on the distractions and entertainment on offer.