Honour's Knight (6 page)

“A Paradoxian head of security,” Rashid said, eying my armor appreciatively. “In a Verdemont suit, no less. I like this job better and better.”

My opinion of him shot up several notches, but I refused to let it show. If the captain found out I could be won over by anyone who knew his armor, he’d never trust my judgment again. But when Rashid set his handset on the table and pulled up his résumé, my opinion only rose higher.

The man’s work history read like a military thriller. He’d been in the Republic Starfleet as a combat ops sniper for twelve years before moving on to the Free Guards, the Terran mercenary unit that was the Blackbirds’ primary competition. Before that, he’d worked security on a mining station in the K5 asteroid belt, which was about the most dangerous job I could think of. The running gag in the Blackbirds was that the reason the belt was named K5 was because you ran into five thousand pirates every time you went through. If this man had survived three years as guard in
that
, life on the
Fool
would seem almost dull.

Best of all, though, was his equipment. We’d advertised this as an armored position, which usually meant a heavy suit of some sort, but Rashid was packing what the Terrans call tactical armor.
I
called it padded clothes, but it was an intriguing setup nonetheless.

His “suit” was a steel woven polymer lined with ballistic gel instead of plates. It wouldn’t stop an ax, but it was light, mostly bulletproof, and extremely nimble, especially with the reaction net added in. Since it didn’t have a real motor or strength augs, the whole thing only weighed about twenty pounds and rolled up small enough to fit in a small duffel, which in my mind put it miles above the hulking idiot boxes Terrans had the nerve to call heavy armor. But interesting as his armor was, what really sealed the deal for me were Rashid’s guns.

The sleek, expensive case I’d admired earlier was only the beginning. He had four guns in total, starting with a gleaming 5000 Series Jakob’s sniper rifle so modded I didn’t think a single piece of the original hardware remained. Next he showed us his two pistols, a heavy Republic Army slugger that was nearly as customized as my Sasha and a cannon of an energy weapon I didn’t recognize.

“It’s called a disrupter pistol,” Rashid said when I asked him about it, hefting the big handgun with practiced ease. “And I’m not surprised you haven’t seen one before. They used to be the standard anti-xith’cal weapon for the Republic a few decades ago, but they’re not used much these days.”

My ears pricked up. “Anti-xith’cal? How so?”

Rashid smiled and turned the pistol so I could see the two-notch meter on its side. “It’s a heat weapon. Since xith’cal scales are about as easy to shoot through as a ship hull, the idea was to cook them from the inside. Highly accurate and destructive, especially against lizards.”

I stared at the gun in his hands. I’d never even heard of a weapon like that, but now that I’d seen it, I wanted one in the worst way. “Why isn’t everyone using them?”

“Because they’ve only got two shots,” Caldswell said. I glanced at the captain, but he wasn’t even looking. He was still studying Rashid’s résumé, paging through the projected screen thrown up from the merc’s handset with his thumb.

“Two shots?” I said, dismayed. “Why?”

“It takes a prohibitive amount of energy to cook a xith’cal warrior,” Rashid answered. “Far too much for a sidearm. Two shots are all the battery can manage before the gun needs to recharge.”

I sighed. So much for my gun lust. A weapon that could down a lizard in one hit without lining up a head shot was amazing, but with such a small clip, it was practically useless. In my experience, xith’cal came in tens, not twos. “Why bother carrying it, then?”

“Habit and sentimentality,” Rashid said as he carefully returned the disrupter pistol to its nook. “It has saved my life enough times that I’m willing to overlook its eccentricities. We are both of us old guns, after all.”

Considering that I would probably hold a funeral when Sasha broke, I couldn’t argue with that logic. Rashid’s final gun was an automatic assault rifle he claimed was for crowd work. I approved of any merc who used the term “crowd work,” and by the time we’d moved to his weapon repair kit, a five-tiered behemoth that made my rack look like a toy, I was ready to hire him on the spot.

“You seem to have a gap in your work history,” Caldswell said, flicking back to the beginning of Rashid’s résumé. “You left active duty with the Free Guards five years ago but stayed on as a special agent and consultant. Then, three years ago, you quit your consultancy contract without notice. According to your record, you haven’t had a job since. Why is that? What were you doing these last three years?”

“Taking care of a family emergency,” Rashid said calmly. “But I think you’ll find my qualifications are still up to date.”

Caldswell nodded, waiting for more, but Rashid just smiled. I was about to ask if he wanted to do a combat test when Caldswell suddenly stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Rashid,” he said. “Would you mind waiting outside?”

Rashid’s smile didn’t waver. “Certainly sir,” he said, standing in a graceful motion. “I will be happy to wait while you discuss my employment.”

Caldswell smiled back, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He didn’t say anything else until the lounge door was closed and Rashid’s footsteps had vanished down the cargo bay stairs.

“Well, seems like we have a winner,” I said. “Clearly experienced, fantastic equipment, doesn’t seem crazy. If he had a real suit of armor to go with those guns, I’d call him a gift from the king.”

“I don’t like the gap in his history,” the captain said, scratching the stubble on his chin. “And I don’t like how much better he is than everyone else. It seems too convenient.”

“A family emergency isn’t the same as running off to be a pirate,” I pointed out. “And with all due respect, sir, perhaps you’ve gotten a little too used to bad luck. We’re in desperate need of another security officer, and you’re looking to reject the best candidate because he’s too good?”

The captain glared at me, but I held my ground. I couldn’t take another round of double shifts like the one I’d done from Falcon 34, and even though hiring a light suit meant I’d be doing the frontline work, Rashid looked like exactly the sort of teammate I loved working with: experienced, polite, and he clearly took great pride and care in his equipment, the surest sign of a true professional. It was wrong to speak ill of the dead, but after three months of dealing with a skullhead like Cotter and all the dominance bullshit that went with it, working with a career soldier who could be trusted to do his job and not make a fight out of every order sounded almost like a vacation.

“A sniper isn’t much good inside a ship,” Caldswell said.

“But excellent for protecting the ship on planet,” I countered. “And he has three other guns.”

The captain folded his arms over his chest. “Fine,” he said at last. “Call him back up and tell him we’ll hire him on a provisional basis. Two months, same terms as you and Cotter.”

“Yes sir,” I said, grinning.

Caldswell just shook his head and headed for the door. “I’m going to check to see if they’re finished with the bridge. Make sure he fills out all his paperwork, Miss Head of Security.”

I grinned wider still. “Yes sir!”

Rashid must have known he’d get the job, because when I went out to get him he was waiting with his duffel, ammo cart, and gun case ready to go. I gave him the same spiel about pay and duties Caldswell had given me. He listened attentively until I was done before asking a few pointed questions about rotations and the cargo checklists that hadn’t even occurred to me when I’d signed up.

By the time I’d given him the tour of the ship, which took me less than half the time it had taken Basil back on Paradox, I was more certain than ever we’d made the right choice. Rashid was unfailingly polite and surprisingly knowledgeable about antibreach tactics in older ships. We were talking about how he would have handled the xith’cal raid Cotter and I had held off during our first month on the
Fool
when we walked back into the lounge to see that the cook and Ren had returned to their customary places.

I averted my eyes immediately, letting Rashid introduce himself. Our new security officer greeted the cook politely, but when we got to the captain’s daughter, his face lit up in a smile that made all his others look brittle. “Hello,” he said softly. “And who are you?”

Since Ren wasn’t going to answer, I spoke for her. “This is Ren Caldswell. The captain’s daughter.”

“Hello, Miss Caldswell,” Rashid said, leaning over to catch Ren’s eyes. It didn’t work. Ren just kept playing her chess game, moving the little plastic pieces with mechanical precision without so much as a glance in our direction.

“Don’t mind her,” I whispered to Rashid. “She’s like that to everyone.”

My new partner ignored me and dropped into a squat so that he was peering up at Ren from across the table. “Can you tell me about your game?” he asked sweetly.

Ren’s hands didn’t slow, and she didn’t reply. Rashid asked again, his voice even gentler, but the result was the same. He might as well have been talking to the wall. Eventually, he gave up, giving Ren a final smile before standing with a sigh.

“Sorry,” I said awkwardly as we walked out the lounge door.

“For what?” Rashid asked. “She is absorbed in her game. Girls that age are ever too busy. I have a daughter myself.”

“Really?” I said. “What’s her name?”

“Yasmina,” he answered proudly.

I smiled. “That’s a pretty name.”

“She is a pretty girl,” he said. “And very smart.”

“Is she here on Wuxia?” I asked as we walked down the hall.

Rashid gave me a smooth smile I couldn’t help but think of as fake after seeing how he’d smiled at Ren. “Perhaps.”

His strange answer threw me for a second, but then we ran into Nova and Basil and I forgot all about it as we went up to see the newly redone bridge.

Getting blown up might have been the best thing that could have happened to the
Fool
. Caldswell had replaced the entire command deck, and except for the salvaged captain’s chair, which was still the same worn, dirty old leather lounger from before, the bridge now looked almost modern. Basil was beside himself with joy. He spent nearly thirty minutes showing us how his maps could now be projected across the whole bridge, filling the room with neatly labeled stars.

When we finally managed to escape the impromptu navigation lesson, I showed Rashid to Cotter’s old room so he could start settling in. The captain had shipped all of Cotter’s possessions and what was left of his armor back to his family on Paradox when we’d first landed on Wuxia, but with the door closed, I’d still thought of the room as his. Now that Rashid was here, though, Cotter’s presence was gone from the ship entirely, and that brought me down a lot more than I’d expected.

I’d lived among strangers ever since I joined the army at eighteen, but I’d always been around Paradoxians. Cotter had annoyed me, true, but he’d been a familiar annoyance. Now that all trace of him was gone, I was starting to realize that I was alone. Truly alone among aliens and off-worlders for the first time in my life.

That realization killed the good mood I’d managed from hiring Rashid. Between the attack on Falcon 34, my missing memories, losing Cotter, and the bullshit with the cook last night, this was shaping up to be a bad month for me. I needed something to get my spirits up. A xith’cal raid maybe, or pirates, something straightforward I could stomp into the ground. But as I entered my room, I realized I was wrong. There
was
something that could cheer me up even more than a good fight, and it was sitting on my bunk.

Perched on my pillow was a rectangular package wrapped in plastic and stamped all over with caution warnings. I sprang on it like a tiger, ripping it open with my suit’s strength. The plastic shell was just a covering for another case, a metal one, and inside that was the blade I’d ordered two days ago.

To say it was a thing of beauty would be an insult. My new blade was
breathtaking
. At eleven inches, it was a little smaller than Phoebe’s cutting edge had been, but unlike my old blades, which had to be replaced when they burned out, this one had a replenishable thermite edge set into a tungsten steel core. This meant I could actually parry with it, something I’d never been able to do with Phoebe. Also, where Phoebe had been little more than a thermite cutting edge screwed into a handle, my new blade was meant to be integrated into armor, which meant so long as I kept my arm, I’d keep my weapon.

I stared at the thing for a good minute before I grabbed the package and my armor case and ran to the lounge to start installing it.

Two hours later, the lounge table was covered in tools and my new blade was in place. The manufacturer’s suggestion had been to embed the blade on top of the arm, but I’d attached mine to the outer side of my right wrist, which allowed me to hold my gun even while the blade was out. The included installation kit was designed for Terran armor, and I’d tossed it without opening the box. Instead, I used the nano-repair in my armor’s case to integrate the blade’s tiny computer into the Lady’s closed gap system so I could control it directly via my neuronet.

Modding a custom suit like my Lady Gray was always a tricky proposition, especially with non-Paradoxian equipment, but the blade I’d picked was high quality, and after a few tweaks, everything snapped into place. When it wasn’t in use, my new blade rested in a sheath on the outer side of my right forearm, but with a single thought I could shoot it out like a spike. Another thought would fire the thermite. Even better, now that my blade was hooked directly into my computer, I could set the temperature I wanted the thermite to fire at, lowering the base slightly to extend the burn time by up to five seconds.

“I know each moment contains eternity, Deviana,” Nova said when I caught her in the hallway to show her my new lovely. “But five seconds doesn’t sound like much time to me.”

“It’s not,” I admitted, retracting the blade and then shooting it out again just for the joy of hearing the razor sharp edge whistle through the air. “But when you’ve been stuck at eighty seconds forever, five more can be a game changer. Plus, with the tungsten core, the spike will still be useful even after the edge burns out. No more brittle blades. And since it’s attached to my suit rather than held in my hands, I can put a lot more power into each swing.”