The Bright Black Sea (61 page)

'I'm a tactician of the Order of Saint Bleyth,' he
said after a sip or two. 'A very ancient and very secret spiritual
society, though we're best known outside for the martial arts
services we hire ourselves out for. We're rather well known in this
quarter of the drifts, and we appear in the Nebula's fiction under
various guises. Our services are sought out by those in need of one
branch of martial arts or another. To put it plainly, we're
specialists for hire, mercenaries, if you want to be snooty about
it. We're much more than that, but as a secret order, that's what
we're known in the Nebula for.

'The Boscone Co-op has engaged the Order's Fleet
Services Division to defend and defeat the Despar space forces
which are currently blockading and laying siege to Boscone Reef.
I've drawn the assignment to direct the relief operation. I have
under my command a mix of Order and free lance jump boat pilots.
The free lancers are mostly ex-Patrol, and with the Order's jump
boats and the Striker, acting as their tender, I was on my way to
Boscone when we were ambushed. As I'm sure you can imagine, it is
extremely unlikely that we could've been ambushed in passage
without our enemies knowing the exact time of our departure and our
exact destination. While I don't know for certain, it's likely that
Despar has also hired some of our services as well, and as I said,
I suspect that someone high up in the Order with personal ties to
the agent working for Despar must've tipped them off about my
mission and given them enough information to ambush me. I can think
of no other explanation. In any event, I am, you see, still honor
bound to perform the services I've been hired to do, at any cost,
hence my rather insistent invitation to this little chat. Since the
six Despar ships that jumped us did not kill me and my crew, I've
no excuse not to get my crew to Boscone as expeditiously as
possible. Which means, in essence,
your
ship
.'

'Sorry, I've no intention of involving my ship in
this drift war.'

'It's your duty to take that cheque token to Tallith
Min, my dear Litang. It is actually her ship, after all, and I'm
sure you know your duty. Tell her it's a charter fee to carry my
pilots, support crew and skip fighters to Boscone. That's all you
have to do. We'll use your cargo holds as our operational base in
passage and we'll actively escort your ship the whole way in.
You'll be the safest ship in all the drifts, Captain. You may well
see action during our approach to the Boscone Reef, but it'll but
only at a safe distance. My pilots and fighters can handle anything
Despar has about the reef and keep them well at bay. We can handle
anything Depar can throw against us anywhere.'

'What of your damaged ship? Talk is cheap,
D'Lay.'

He scowled. 'Point taken, Captain. Still, at six
regular Despar navy vessels to one, Captain Krajik's Striker and my
fighters when launched made a respectable showing. Truth is we
hadn't expected to be attacked that far from Boscone and I didn't
have my fighters deployed. My mistake. I've learned from it. My
fighters will be deployed the whole voyage. We've our own living
quarters, a double container fitted as the crew quarters and
control center. We'll transfer it over to one of your holds so
you'll not have to put up with us in any way besides carrying us in
your cargo hold. We can fit all eight fighters, the crew quarters
in one hold and use a second for the munition containers,' he said,
and took a sip of cha.

'Munitions too...'

'And lots of them. We'll have to keep you quite
safe...' he said with a smile.

I picked up the cup before me and took a sip of cha,
thinking hard. There was something wrong. If this was the ad hoc
option he was making it out to be, he knew too much about us.

'How did you know my owner's name?' I asked, watching
him.

He smiled. 'Oh I've read the reports of a mutual
acquaintance.'

'And who would that be?' but even as I asked it began
to dawn on me.

'Sister Naylea Cin, though I believe you know her as
Nadine,' he said, enjoying my awakening alarm.

'Your sister...'

'Only in the order. She's also a member of the Order
of Saint Bleyth just as I am. Different branch of martial arts. I'm
a tactician, Cin is a stealth. We come from different families and
have different specialties. My family's mostly known for our
military specialists. I'm an expert in space battles. Her family's
famous for their solo agents who specialize is spying, theft,
assassinations and other stealthy things. Other families in the
martial arts specialize in weapons, technology, economics or
logistics. Of course we've a full range of specialties, scientists,
engineers, philosophers, farmers and artists, but we in the martial
arts rather look down on them. Quite the snobs, we are.'

'How could you think I'm crazy enough to have
anything to do with some Order that's trying to kill me – and my
owner? I'd be mad to do that.'

'Actually, it's in your best interest. I've a
priority interest in you. My need trumps Cin's. It is a bit awkward
for me to be hiring you while another branch of my Order is trying
to kill you, but there are very mixed lines running all though this
conflict. I'm almost certainly facing brothers or sisters in the
Order hired by Despar – who are not above cheating... While I can
do nothing about Cin and her orders, I can and will do everything
in my power to keep you safe – for my purposes.'

'There's no way I can take you onboard to meet my
owner, given what you've just told me.'

'If I was any danger to you or your owner, why would
I mention it at all? I needn't have, you know.'

'Pure arrogance would be my first guess,' I muttered,
but let it pass for the moment. I had other questions of a more
pressing nature, 'Who hired this Cin, and why?'

He shrugged, 'I've no idea. And couldn't say if I
did. Sister Cin doesn't know either. Those are matters settled by
the Masters of the Monastery, far above us simple brothers and
sisters. It doesn't matter. She's been assigned to kill you and
your owner or die trying. It's as simple as that. She doesn't need
to know for whom. I, on the other hand, need you and your owner's
willing service, so that I'll be doing everything I can to protect
you while you're under my charter. That in itself is worth
something, ol'dear.'

I didn't believe that for a moment, but let it pass
unchallenged, just in case he wasn't lying. I took a sip of cha and
tried to find a clear course.

'She was good, you know,' he continued after another
sip of his cha. 'Cin was once considered one of the very best and
brightest of our young stealth talents. She wouldn't have been sent
to work in the Unity if she wasn't. Only the best are sent there,
given how very hard it is to do her type of work successfully
within the Unity. But you rather wrecked her career, Willy. One
failure is, well, tolerated. A second or a third is something
else... Having failed to kill you three times has likely put an end
to her career as a prime agent. Oh, she's still been kept on the
assignment – a lesson perhaps – but even if she succeeds, and that
seems unlikely in the foreseeable future,' he smiled, 'I rather
doubt she'll be used again for anything more than a hired out
enforcer for some gang in the Unity underworld...at best,' he took
another sip of cha. 'A shame, really.'

'I'd wish her a far more dire fate than that,'

He smiled and shrugged, 'That'll be up to you or your
owner.'

He paused and added, 'I find her failure very
unexpected. We attended the academy together, so I know her well.
She was very, very good, even – clever, daring, ruthless. A perfect
Stealth. Naylea Cin never met a rule she didn't dare to break. From
the age of eleven, when she entered the academy, until she
graduated ten years later, there wasn't a rule she didn't break or
bend out of recognition. She was quite the hero of our class... For
a while, anyway.'

'You forgot to mention her love of cruelty. That'd
hardly win friends, even in your Order.'

'Ah, yes, have a taste of it, did you? But you're
right, of course. She did rather have a taste for pain, though we
didn't realize that at first. The thing was that she was always
willing to take anyone along on her adventures outside the rules,
and we were all eager enough to join her, knowing her reputation
for success. But well, sometimes her plans may've been too daring
and would go adrift, and culprits would be caught. All except Cin,
that is. Things never got so far adrift that she was caught. No,
not in all her years in the academy. Oh, our masters knew what she
was up to, most of it anyway, but they never could catch her at it.
For the rest of us, that was a different story. Our code of honor
forbid us to tattle on Cin, even though some of us suspected that
sometimes things went wrong more or less by design, leaving us, but
never Cin, to pay for those misadventures with a taste of the
lash.

'Ah, the days of our youth, stripped to the waist in
the Academy Square waiting to take our punishment in the cold
morning air in front of all our classmates, while Cin, ever so
innocently stood amongst them – serious faced, but with laughing
eyes – never stepping forward to declare her part in the
infraction. To be fair, those were her terms and we all agreed to
them at the outset, but still, that didn't make the pain any more
pleasant, for us anyway.

'Early on our masters tried a little trick. They made
Cin administer the punishment for the misfired adventure she'd led
her fellow students on, or into... I suppose our masters hoped to
be able to issue some sort of reprimand for going lightly on her
comrades in misadventure. Little did they know. I think she ended
up with a warning for laying into them too enthusiastically. Cin
always enjoyed punishment. Ours anyway. So as you suggested, little
wonder she had no friends by the time we graduated.

'But enough old school gossip. You, my dear Captain
Litang, have done what no one else had been able to do until now.
You've set her plans adrift and there's no one to take the lash but
her. She's honor bound to follow you and Min across the Nebula
until she kills you or dies trying,' he shook her head. 'Even now,
she'l be making her way here, somehow, or to wherever she thinks
you might turn up next...' He smiled at the thought and looked me
in the eyes and said simply, 'I owe you something for that Litang,
if only this advice, if you ever have the chance, kill her. Don't
hesitate for a second. Know that it will be in self defense even if
you strike first – as you should if you hope to succeed. If you've
any desire to live, you must kill her, for she'll kill you and your
owner if you don't. And I should add that you'd best use several
lethal darts as well. Some stealths have D-matter nano-wires and
capacitors implanted to absorb a portion of the plasma dart's
electrical charge, rendering lethal darts, non-lethal and
non-lethal ones much less effective. And if your Unity Standard
ethics give you pause, just know that you might actually be doing
her a favor by killing her, the order is not sympathetic to
failure.'

'I've little incentive to do her a favor, but I do
want to live. Still, even if I kill her, wouldn't it just mean that
the Order would send out another assassin in her place... If they
haven't done so already?' I added, giving him a hard glare.

He shrugged. 'Yes. Maybe. It is hard to say. Those
matters are decided by our Masters within the various operational
directorates. They might decide to cut their losses at having lost
the reliable services of a first class operative and having to
chase you across the nebula and just return the client's retainer,
but it's not my bailiwick so I can't really say. '

'Which brings us around to your bailiwick. You're a
member of the same organization. How can I trust you not to do Cin
a favor when the time is right?'

'First off, I'm not involved with that side of our
business. As I said, it's neither my department nor concern. Nor is
it the type of job I care to do. I'm a soldier, not an assassin.
The fact of the matter is that it might be my protection that's
keeping you alive.'

'How so?'

'Can't claim to know that for a fact, but I do know
that my assignment is far more lucrative to the Monastery than your
assassination, so that my need of your services has priority over
any assassination. Cin is likely still in transit somewhere as far
as I know, but here in the drifts, the bar is considerably lower
when it comes to things like assassination. You don't need an agent
of Cin's level to do the job in the drifts. And you've been here
long enough to have been targeted if our Masters had wanted you,
and your owner killed. Still, you're not out of danger, there are
likely plenty of people here who would love to put a spanner in my
assignment, and killing you would be one way.'

'You're not making me feel very comfortable.'

'I don't want you comfortable, I want you on guard
constantly. However, I need you and your services, so I'll try my
best to keep you safe.'

Until you no longer need me, I thought, but only
said, 'I'd appreciate that, especially since most of those people
who might want me dead, want me dead only because it might put a
spanner in your assignment.'

He grinned. 'True. It's a tangled web we weave. You
see, Captain, since we hire out our services to all, to maintain
our reputation we must containerize each of our obligations. In
large scale conflict, like the current drift war, we likely have
operatives working on both sides of the conflict and if thrust
comes to blast, we may have to deal a lethal blow to a fellow
brother or sister of the Order. Hopefully, it would be no one we
know well, but that's in the hands of fate and the Masters of the
Monastery. As I said, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that not
only was the ambush arranged by a brother or sister of St Bleyth,
but that the Despar ships were commanded by another tactician of St
Bleyth. Moreover, I'm certain that Despar has operatives on
Zilantre – likely many of them since Zilantre's a hot bed of
intrigue – who may also be under the direction of another stealth
of St Bleyth. That's why I went to such distasteful lengths to hide
my presence here,' he indicated the discarded grey wig with a
little wave of his hand. 'I can be quite dashing in red hair and
heels, but, I didn't care to call attention to myself this time. So
it was all low key, and well, rather abrupt and rude as well.
Knowing just how good we are and how likely some of my brethren are
operating here, I didn't care to take chances with your life or
mine by making a scene.'