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  Barnabas smiled at Carter’s expression. “Not what you expected from Ranger Two?”

  Carter held a hand up at head height. “I thought…you know, taller? And serious, maybe. I mean, she’s done some insane shit if even half of the stories are true. Sorry for swearing,” he added hastily.

  Barnabas only chuckled. “She definitely has done some…well, impressive things, shall we say. You could not ask for a more loyal ally. Of course, she embodies the term ‘chaotic neutral.’ But I’ve come to appreciate that chaos over the years, even if she is a bad influence on Shinigami. Probably on me, too.” He set down his glass with a sigh. “Say hello to Elisa and the kids for me. And if you ever need help, do feel free to call on either Tabitha or me. I’ll be back when I can.”

  “Where are you going?” Carter asked curiously. He had known for a while that Barnabas intended to head off-planet, but so far he hadn’t told Carter anything about where or why.

  “I’m not exactly sure.” Barnabas flashed Carter a smile full of teeth that were a lot sharper than humans usually had. “I’ll be on the lookout for the people who came to Lan’s aid. There are a lot of people out there who target planets like High Tortuga because they think no one’s protecting them. My mission has always been to make people like that…reconsider their course of action.”

  Carter considered pointing out that people had to be alive in order to reconsider things, but decided not to say anything at all. He waved as Barnabas disappeared, then he cleaned the glass with a shake of his head.

  Barnabas had been a stalwart ally and a good friend, and he was surprisingly indulgent with Carter’s twins, Alanna and Samuel.

  But Carter would never, ever want to get on his bad side.

  On the Shinigami, Gar opened his eyes as the Pod-doc hissed open. He sat up, squinting in the bright lights. His head ached fiercely.

  “Any progress?”

  “Yes.” Shinigami’s voice came from the speakers nearby. “Your physiology is quite interesting. Not only are your bones more brittle than those of other species, your skeletal structure is not well suited to walking on land. It supports the theory that the Luvendi did indeed evolve from marine mammals, even if it wasn’t on Luvendan.”

  Gar nodded as he got dressed. The history of the Luvendi was shrouded in mystery. His people now lived in submerged towers in the oceans that covered the planet Luvendan, but no one could remember how and when the towers had been built.

  It was a mystery that quite intrigued Shinigami.

  “Barnabas is back,” Shinigami reported. “He asks that you join him in the planning room.”

  “Of course.” Gar felt the usual thrill of worry he got when he anticipated seeing Barnabas, although he was aware that he was in no danger as long as he did not do anything immoral or unjust. He was even more aware of the fact that Barnabas had very high standards

  And that he was very, very dangerous.

  Since Barnabas was back now, Gar assumed he had picked a place for them to go first in their search for Lan’s allies. He adjusted his robes as he walked down the hallways, and found himself shaking his head.

  Those poor bastards had no idea what was coming.

  2

  Barnabas waited in the planning room. True to form, he was making notes in pen on the printouts of the maps and schematics that he’d gathered for their mission. The pen was a concession he had made to Shinigami when he had pulled out a pencil and she had asked why he wanted her to have to filter graphite particles and sawdust out of the air.

  He preferred to do things with paper rather than on computer screens. Something about writing and drawing cleared his mind, perhaps a legacy of his days spent among the painstakingly illuminated handwritten texts in the monastery.

  It amused everyone else to poke fun at it.

  When Gar came into the room Barnabas looked up with interest. The Luvendi seemed more subdued than usual, but he offered no reason for this so Barnabas decided to let it be for the moment. Gar had certainly had serious and unpleasant things to consider while he atoned for his past actions, and Barnabas believed that moral wrestling bouts were best done on one’s own. He would only step in if he were asked to do so or if he sensed a problem.

  “We have our first stop,” Barnabas told the Luvendi. He tapped on a star chart and pulled out a set of schematics. “Virtue Station, which was called something unpronounceable by humans in the original language so I translated.”

  Gar frowned at the schematics and shrugged. His own path off the planet Luvendan had involved very few stops along the way, and in any case, there were so many planets and stations that no one could hope to know all of them.

  “This is the source of the mercenaries Jutkelon summoned?” Gar asked. He was learning to speak English and his speech had gradually grown more formal to match Barnabas’, something Shinigami found deeply amusing.

  “Not precisely.” Barnabas frowned. “All Shinigami could find was that one of those ships had docked at Virtue relatively recently. It could have been nothing more than a stop to refuel or run some unrelated errand. It is likely there is actually nothing here.”

  “There is not nothing,” Shinigami countered. “It’s an out-of-the-way station frequented by mercenaries, so there’s got to be something for you to get offended about.”

  Barnabas looked up at the speakers. “I do not ‘get offended,’ as you put it. I simply take issue with matters of injustice.”

  “Yes, you talk very politely while you determine who’s pissed you off, then you start ripping spines out. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own two… Well, sensed it with my… You know what, let’s just go with ‘seeing’ as the verb.”

  “Indeed.” Barnabas returned to his maps.

  “How can I help?” Gar asked when he was sure Shinigami and Barnabas were done trading insults. He had already learned not to get in the middle of those conversations. There had been one the other day about a game of chess that had resulted in increasingly ridiculous threats he was fairly sure were jokes.

  Fairly sure.

  He had, however, barely made it out of the way of a thrown chair and several books, and had since made it a personal rule not to be in the same room with them when they played chess. In fact, he would keep at least one airlock-safe door between him and them.

  Barnabas stared at the plans with his arms crossed. “I had thought you would come onto the station with me.” His brow furrowed in thought as he scanned the schematics. “There is a chance, however slight, that someone will recognize me. If you stay separated from me and are careful about who sees you getting off the ship we’ll have an extra pair of eyes.” He looked at Gar and his blue eyes bored right into the Luvendi. “Are you up for that?”

  Gar wasn’t entirely sure what the question meant. Was Barnabas asking whether he felt safe enough to come onto the station, or whether he believed he was ready to be a part of one of Barnabas’ operations?

  When Gar had helped Barnabas to free the workers in Lan’s mine, he had been acting partly out of self-interest. He knew that if he failed to do the right thing Barnabas would kill him. In fact, Gar had believed that Barnabas would let him die when Lan shot him. At the time, he had accepted that as a fitting punishment for his transgressions.

  Gar had spent the last few weeks since Barnabas had saved his life thinking about what he wanted to do with his unexpected extension. He had learned the important lesson that some things were worth standing up for no matter the risk, and that he could no longer ignore the voice in his head that told him to do the right thing.

  Those sorts of revelations tended to change one’s outlook considerably.

  He hadn’t come to any firm decisions about his next steps, but he did know that Barnabas would be going after injustice and doing the right thing. Until Gar figured everything out for himself, he would help Barnabas.

  He was not foolish enough to think he’d be given a critical role in any of Barnabas’ plans. He still had a lot to prove,
after all. But he had to start somewhere.

  “I’ll go to the station,” he told him. “I want to help however I can.”

  “Good.” Barnabas nodded without commenting on any of the turmoil he had sensed in Gar’s thoughts and tapped the schematics in front of him. “I’m intending to go here. It’s a bar—or at least it should be one—a few floors above the main level. I should be able to hear something that will lead me to more information. Meanwhile, you’ll go here. It’s on the main level and there will be less shady stuff going on—”

  “Not much less,” Shinigami opined. “This place reeks of money laundering. The people in the banks like to dress up, but that doesn’t make ‘em classy.”

  “Don’t gamble,” Barnabas ordered Gar. “And don’t look at anyone oddly. And don’t… You know what, you go to the first bar. I’ll stay on the main level.”

  A raspy chuckle came from the speakers. “Aww, yeah. You’re gonna punch some bankers, aren’t you?”

  “I most certainly am not.” Barnabas aimed his rebuke in the direction of one of Shinigami’s speakers. “Unless they deserve it,” he added under his breath.

  “That’s what I thought.” She sounded smug. “Let me know if you want any backup.”

  “Missiles on a station? Really?”

  “I also have the flamethrower, remember.”

  “We have not established that.”

  “No, because you refuse to let me test it.”

  Barnabas took a deep breath and prayed for patience. “What you’re looking for,” he told Gar pointedly, “is anyone advertising protection, weaponry, or guard services—that sort of thing. Mention that Jutkelon was a contact and referred you to them. If they’re part of whatever group he called on, that will get you in. If not, pretend it was a misunderstanding. Mercenaries generally rely on very unsubtle threats, but they don’t like to be known for killing potential clients. As long as you respond appropriately you should be fine.”

  Gar swallowed. Being a Luvendi, he was remarkably unsuited to combat. His bones were brittle enough that he could not perform manual labor, serve as a guard, or even risk walking along a well-traveled thoroughfare where he would be jostled too often.

  It was one of the main reasons the Luvendi were so little-known, and even then only in areas of work such as information brokering or banking. He would suggest working on the main floor, if not for the fact that Barnabas was right—those who did money laundering were not only extremely dangerous in these out-of-the-way stations, they took offense to almost everything.

  In contrast, those who wanted to sell their services as guards might be physically intimidating, but could usually be mollified by the promise of money. The universe was strange sometimes.

  “Don’t worry,” Shinigami told him. “I’ve got your back if you need it.”

  “Thank you,” Gar murmured. He didn’t say it, but he was fairly sure it would be better not to call on Shinigami unless he was in dire need. He could just imagine the sort of chaos she would find ‘helpful.’ The bar he was intending to sit in might be rubble by the time she was done.

  From Barnabas’ expression, he suspected the same thing.

  “Do we know anything about these people?” Gar asked him.

  “Not much, unfortunately. It is frustrating.” Barnabas sighed. “Jutkelon was clearly part of some larger…syndicate, maybe? Consortium? Or perhaps he simply had favors owed him. Regardless, he was able to call on three armed ships. Their allies, whoever they may be, are likely wondering what happened to them. I could hope of course that those were three totally unrelated captains, all of whom had only one ship and no other connections, but…”

  “But?” Gar asked.

  Barnabas’ mouth took a wry twist. “I’ve been alive long enough to know that things almost never work out quite so neatly. I’ll be looking for anything I can find in the banking part of the station about how these people stored and processed their money, as well as where they got their supplies. Things like munitions might lead us back to a larger group. It might also be a complete mess with too many leads to follow.”

  Shinigami snickered. “Look at it this way—you get to kill more bad guys.”

  “That isn’t precisely my goal.”

  “Of course it is. You seek out injustice. There’s always injustice and the people perpetrating it almost never back down, ergo, you have to kill them. This gives you a good place to start, whereas otherwise your choices would amount to an embarrassment of riches. Yeah, that’s right—I can talk all flowery, too.”

  Barnabas looked at the speakers. “Are you done?”

  “Not quite. Tabitha told me to tell you that your new hat will make you look like an idiot.”

  Barnabas’ face settled into the pleasant smile Gar had learned to fear more than any frown. “You let her into my rooms?”

  “Not so much let her as… Well, yes. Yes, I did. You weren’t listening to me about how stupid it looked and I wanted her opinion.”

  There was a dangerous pause, then Barnabas, to Gar’s surprise, started laughing.

  It was a surprise to Barnabas as well. Part of him took it as a very bad sign that he could find something like this funny. After all, Shinigami had invaded his privacy and then insulted him publicly over a matter of aesthetic taste. He should probably be worried by the fact that he had spent enough time around Tabitha to be amused by that.

  On the other hand, the mental image of Tabitha going through his wardrobe and commenting dismissively on things was incredibly funny, and it gave him an idea.

  “I don’t suppose she tried on the hat?”

  Shinigami paused. “She did,” the AI replied cautiously after a moment.

  “And I don’t suppose you have pictures of that?”

  Another pause. “I do.”

  “Oh, this is going to be so good.” Barnabas rubbed his hands together. “So good. I’m going to need those pictures.”

  “What are you going to do with them?” Gar couldn’t help but be curious.

  “Do the Luvendi have anything in the way of holiday greeting cards?”

  “No?” Gar looked at the speaker from which he could now hear the AI laughing hysterically. “What’s a holiday?”

  “You don’t have holidays and you don’t sing. What do people do with their time on Luvendan?”

  “Mostly we meditate.”

  “A whole planet full of monks,” Barnabas muttered to Shinigami. “Lord help us.”

  Shinigami snickered. “And you are one to talk?”

  “I am the only one on this ship who knows exactly how boring that would be. Well, I suppose Gar does. Never mind. In any case, Gar, in a few months I am going to send a greeting card to Tabitha’s acquaintances to wish them a happy and prosperous New Year with a picture of her in that hat.”

  “She’s going to kill you,” Shinigami predicted.

  “Mmm. She’s welcome to try. How long is it until Christmas?”

  “More than half a year.”

  “She’ll have forgotten by then,” Gar told Barnabas.

  “That’s what I’m counting on.” Barnabas was grinning. “There’s a saying on Earth, ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’”

  Gar frowned, trying to interpret the phrase. Since meeting Barnabas he had begun to gather a mental list of phrases that made very little sense to him. There were already quite a few.

  “Well, if everyone’s clear on the plan, I think we can head out.” Barnabas looked up at Shinigami’s cameras. “As Bobcat would say, ‘Punch it.’”

  Another idiom. Gar resisted the urge to groan. He was never going to figure out this language.

  “Their engines are warming up!” Tik’ta swiveled her chair to look at her captain.

  As usual, she had to work not to laugh. He was pacing the bridge with his hands behind his back. It was an exaggerated gesture meant to emphasize how serious he was, and how impressive it was that he was waiting patiently even though he felt great urgency about…something.

>   Tik’ta was willing to bet there was no particular matter on his mind. Klafk’tin was a man who clearly aspired to greatness and wanted the Hieto to rise to prominence in the universe, but had yet to demonstrate any hint of achieving his desires.

  This job, though... Even Tik’ta had to admit that this job might make the captain’s name. He’d found an incredible ship floating around this backwater planet. Its engines were a dream and its weaponry appeared to be top notch, but it didn’t seem to have more than a skeleton crew.

  In short, it was a perfect target.

  “Follow it,” Klafk’tin ordered. He puffed up his chest, perhaps reveling in the greatness he would have when it was his ship. “What does it say on the prow? What is the ship’s name?”

  “Shinigami, sir. It appears to be a human ship.”

  “Do you have any idea how valuable it is, then? No one has been able to get their technology.” Klafk’tin was practically drooling, though he attempted to look dignified. “I’m going to be rich,” he whispered. “The next time it sets down we’ll go in and we take it.”

  3

  The bars on the main level of Virtue Station were clean and orderly, with all the hallmarks of catering to the rich: decorative accents, soft music and lighting, expensive materials used in the walls and floors, and real flowers.

  And, of course, the obligatory complement of armed guards who were trying not to look like what they were.

  Barnabas took a seat near one of them and attempted to look unremarkable and unthreatening by their standards. He had taken care with his outfit. He was wearing a black suit and a crisp white shirt with a blue tie, which Shinigami had pointed out was clearly a vain attempt to bring out his eyes.

  He had not deigned to respond to that.

  He also wore a pair of slim glasses. Barnabas’ vision was perfect, but the glasses had a tiny camera embedded in each temple which would switch between true color, night vision, and infrared as he required. The cameras could swivel to face the side, or look slightly up from his line of sight so he could “look” at something else while carefully examining a target.