Paladin Read online

  “Ah, yes—the perpetual logical error of thinking that my enemies have even the dregs of a moral code.” Barnabas sighed, then nodded meaningfully to the scout ship on the screens. “As much as I hate to say it, that pilot cannot be allowed to tell them where he found us.”

  Her face was cold and hard as she directed the missile that turned the scout ship into dust. At this range, with the ship trapped, they only needed one. She could have vented the ship, of course, but who knew what automated systems might remain in a Yennai Corporation ship?

  No. Only dust was safe.

  A thought occurred to her, and her avatar smiled. Human mannerisms were becoming second nature to her now.

  “What is it?” Barnabas asked her curiously.

  “Koel Yennai is dangerous,” Shinigami stated. She looked at him. “Some enemies, you wonder if they can change. You wonder if you should offer them mercy.”

  “Like me,” Gar interjected softly. Barnabas and Shinigami turned to him in surprise, and he gave a small smile.

  “Yes,” Shinigami agreed. “Like you.” She nodded at him, then looked back at the screens, where the rubble of the ship tumbled and glinted in the light of the distant sun. “But he’s gone out of his way—many times—to show that he will not change. That we should not make the mistake of trusting him, no matter how helpless we think he is.”

  She smiled again, a rictus that chilled both Barnabas and Gar to the core.

  “The only possible thing to do with Koel is destroy him completely.”

  4

  The bar at Huen Base was dirty and reeked of smoke. Zinqued’s eyes burned as he threaded his way between the tables. There was one alien in particular he’d searched for and tracked through what seemed like an endless set of systems, and to find her here, of all places…

  It was good that she was here, Zinqued told himself. If she were here in this absolute hellhole, she’d almost certainly hear him out.

  After their last run-in with the Shinigami, his captain had decided to go on the straight and narrow. Paun had given up stealing, or so he declared. He’d gone off to join some religious order, and was probably weaving baskets somewhere. Or teaching underprivileged children how to juggle.

  Zinqued didn’t know the specifics, and he didn’t care. What he did know was that he’d managed to buy Paun’s ship from him and he’d gotten Chofal, the ship’s engineer, to sign on with him as well.

  Paun clearly hadn’t thought it was a good idea to sell the ship to Zinqued. He seemed to know that Zinqued wasn’t done with his quest to find the Shinigami and steal it.

  But no one else had wanted to buy the damned thing. The Julentai was a bucket of bolts, an old Torcellan Gav-class frigate that was held together with spit and a prayer. There were an abundance of deathtrap ships for sale. Paun’s wasn’t anything special, and he’d had no luck unloading it.

  Zinqued had sold everything he had to buy the ship, but it had been worth it. He’d never owned his own ship before, and it was liberating. He could go wherever the hell he wanted, and take whatever jobs he wanted.

  Sure, he’d promised not to steal anything anymore, but it was his opinion that promises you made to a creature with glowing red eyes and bloody teeth didn’t count.

  So, with the Julentai at his disposal, he’d started tracking down one person in particular. A person who knew something about the Shinigami…and who might want revenge.

  He’d tracked her through four stations before he heard a whisper that she’d come here—on the straight and narrow as well—and taken a job in one of the many factories that produced a nutritional paste for the variety of aliens in known space.

  It was a miserable job. The paste might be nutritious, but it was nasty. The factory owners usually used cut-rate ingredients, anyway. To keep the factories vermin-free they were usually on desolate moons like this one, so there was nowhere to go if you wanted to quit.

  It was about the last place anyone in their right mind would go. By choice, anyway.

  It wasn’t long before he spotted her. She was a Hieto, just like he was, so she didn’t make too much of it when he sat down next to her.

  “Are you Tik’ta?”

  At that, she looked up sharply. Her eyes were flat and hard. “My name is Hino. I don’t know any Tik’ta.”

  “Sure, sure.” Zinqued smiled. “Just like you never tried to steal a ship called the Shinigami and watched your captain and crew get killed.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m Hino. I’m just another factory worker here.”

  “I saw you telling the story of the heist,” Zinqued said, amused. “On Uto, not too long ago. Someone brought up that they’d seen a human ship, a pretty thing with a new paint job named Shinigami. You told everyone to not even try to steal it. You said it was owned by a demon and that he’d killed your captain.”

  She gave up trying to pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Fine. But not so loud. Here, I’m Hino. I have to keep this job.”

  Zinqued saw the bitterness in her expression. She was penniless now. What had happened to her after he had seen her on Uto?

  “You sold the ship,” he guessed.

  “I had to.” She looked at him bleakly. “Stealing ships was all we knew how to do. We wanted to try smuggling, but we weren’t sure if he’d find us and tell us we couldn’t do that either. Some of the crew left, they were so scared. Nothing good to smuggle, anyway. You couldn’t step on anyone’s turf without them coming after you. And when we tried to go straight, there were permits and certifications and deposits and—and bribes. We tried to do what he said, but it was impossible!”

  “He ruined your life,” Zinqued said smoothly.

  She glared at him. She wasn’t about to be tricked by the fact that he said what she wanted to hear. “What do you want? Why’d you come to this hellhole to find me? I’m just going to tell you the same thing I tell everyone: don’t try to steal the Shinigami.”

  “Because he told you to say that.”

  “He was right!” She shook her head. “Steal whatever other ship you want, but the Shinigami is death if you try. You didn’t see what he did to our captain, Klafk’tin.”

  “I know.” Zinqued had dealt with Klafk’tin back in the day. He tried to come up with something complimentary to say and failed completely.

  For the first time, Tik’ta smiled. It was a conspiratorial smile. “I know what you’re thinking. He was a son of a bitch who deserved to die. D’you know, the ship was booby-trapped, and he told the Shinigami’s captain that he’d just keep sending us in because he was sure he had more of us than there were booby traps.”

  Zinqued whistled. “Not exactly going for the captain of the year, was he?”

  “No.” She laughed. “To tell the truth, I’m not exactly sorry he’s dead. I thought he was just a run of the mill miser. He was arrogant. He kept trying to lower our salaries or make us pay for our food, stuff like that. But then he just said, cool as you please, that he’d kill as many of us as it took to steal that ship, and he meant it. That changed everything. I wasn’t sorry Barnabas killed him.” She shuddered. “All the same, you didn’t see it.”

  “I saw the same sort of thing, though.” Zinqued leaned close. “The Yennai Corporation hired my crew to steal the Shinigami.”

  “No! Yennai?” She leaned in as well. “To tell you the truth, I think something’s up with them.”

  “Oh?” He might know a thing or two about that, but he wasn’t going to tell her yet.

  “Yeah.” Her voice dropped even lower. “They’re one of our biggest clients. Well, they’re one of everyone’s biggest clients lately. You thought they were big already? Well, in the past months, they’ve been buying everything. You name it, they’re trying to corner the market on it—including politicians. More than they used to be.”

  Zinqued nodded. He hadn’t known about the Yennai Corporation’s sudden growth, but it had been clear for a while that they’d had designs on any
number of industries and governments.

  People who stole ships tended to be well-versed in the political goings-on of their sector. Certain governments were more likely than others to make a big deal of waylaid cargo—Get’ruz Shipping had discovered that the hard way about the Jotun—and anytime a new flag or ship designation showed up, ship thieves collected all the information they could.

  They could have told people years ago that the Yennai Corporation was bad news…if anyone had asked.

  No one ever did. Not even the information brokers realized what a goldmine of information was sitting right under their nose.

  Their loss.

  “They hired us for a big job,” Tik’ta continued. She gestured at the rest of the factory. “Only then they disappeared. The money never came through, and we have a bunch of parts we made, nowhere to ship ‘em, no communication, nothing. Management’s panicking.”

  Zinqued smiled. “Let’s just say, they met Barnabas, too.”

  Her eyes got wide.

  “Yeah,” Zinqued said. “He doesn’t just kill ship captains when they piss him off, he kills… Well, you want my guess? He killed Ilia Yennai. That’s my guess, I said—I didn’t see it. But she was one of the ones running the show. The big guy’s daughter, yeah?”

  Tik’ta nodded in understanding.

  “Real piece of work, too,” Zinqued said. Now that he wasn’t there anymore he could joke about it. “She hired us, and she was going to off us after the job.”

  “And he killed her before she could?” Tik’ta was wide-eyed. She clearly enjoyed the conversation. To a ship thief, the flow of information was absolutely vital.

  And anyway, who didn’t enjoy a bit of gossip now and again?

  “That’s my guess,” Zinqued repeated in a tone that said but we both know I’m right.

  He didn’t mention the part where he’d nearly fallen for Ilia’s tricks. He’d survived and learned a valuable lesson. He was grateful to Paun for that.

  That and the ship.

  “Anyway,” Zinqued leaned in, “if they’ve just disappeared…”

  “They have. They definitely have.”

  “Then I’d say they’re on the run, and he’s chasing them.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t think he’s someone who leaves a job unfinished.” Zinqued thought back to his meeting with Barnabas and shuddered. He’d been playing a part for most of this conversation, trying to get Tik’ta to sign on with him. She was a legendary pilot among the loose collective of ships they knew, and if they planned to steal a ship like the Shinigami…

  They needed her.

  Just then, the end-of-break bell rang and the foreman bellowed for everyone to get back to work. Tik’ta glanced over her shoulder, annoyance and worry imprinted on her features, and Zinqued made his move.

  “Got a job for you.”

  She looked back at him, and the expression on her face was half mistrust, half hope.

  “Just got my own ship,” Zinqued continued. “I have a hell of a mechanic, and now I need a proper pilot. You should see me try to land that thing.”

  Tik’ta gave an unwilling laugh. Still, she knew enough to be wary. “How you gonna pay us?” What kind of jobs are we going to be pulling, that meant. She hesitated. “He told us we had to stop stealing things.”

  “And we will,” Zinqued agreed easily. He smiled. “As soon as we got the Shinigami. We’ll never have to pull another job again after that. All of us can retire for good. Mansions, servants, you name it. The Yennai Corporation wanted that ship. Who else would?”

  Her eyes were wide and furious. “You’re crazy,” she hissed at Zinqued. “All of that, and what you took from it was that you should steal the ship? You said he doesn’t leave a job unfinished! You said he managed to kill one of the big people in the Yennai Corporation!”

  “And now he’s going after the boss, who has a fleet…” He gestured to show just how big the fleet was. “You want to know my bet? Neither of them is going to win that. We nip in there at the right time, we can get that ship and be gone without anyone being alive to chase us.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I have to go.”

  “Go where?” He looked at the doors of the factory. “Go make more food paste for a corporation that won’t pay?”

  She wavered. Zinqued could see that she was afraid. Her memories of Barnabas were too fresh.

  That told him which way to go. “When Barnabas is dead, who’s gonna care what you do with your life, anyway?” he asked her.

  That got her. She tried to resist, but he knew he’d said exactly what she wanted to hear.

  Finally, she nodded. She grabbed her badge, caught the foreman’s eye, and threw it at his feet.

  “I quit,” she called across the room. She nodded to Zinqued. “Let’s go, then.”

  5

  Koel Yennai sat in the state apartment of his flagship, the Avaris, and watched the holo of Barnabas’ message to him.

  “You will be destroyed by your own folly,” Barnabas said. “You wanted power, no matter the cost to anyone else, and your legacy will be ruin and failure. It will be me that they will remember, not you. It will be my name on the lips of billions. It will be my vision that shapes the universe.”

  The message ended and Koel fumed, consumed by a cold fury.

  Barnabas’ vision? What was his vision for the universe? It was nothing. It was dust. It was an acceptance of the way things were, using the false ideals of “peace” and “stability” to chain everyone who dared to reach for more.

  Fuck peace. Fuck stability. The universe was constantly in flux. Koel didn’t give a damn if some peasant’s family had been farming on a little backwater moon for eight generations. If they stood in the way of his vision for the universe, they would get crushed.

  That was what happened in this universe: you made the rules, or you were subject to them.

  And Koel would never be subject to anyone else’s rules. He would never accept things the way they were.

  While others schemed to work their way up in governments or militaries, Koel had dared to reshape the entire sector. The others limited their dreams to the companies and governments they knew; the most enterprising ones started companies of their own, but such dreams were small—at most, they wanted to control a single industry.

  His lip curled in contempt.

  None of them, not one of them except him, had shown the vision to create something like this. And that didn’t even take into account the patience it took to see his plan to fruition. He had spent decades finding allies, fronting them small bits of money, gathering information.

  He had been poised to run this entire sector. Not directly, no. It was much better that way. No citizens to answer to directly, no major battles. While governments fought over territory and mining rights, Koel bought stock, subtly directed parliamentary proceedings on half a dozen different worlds, then sat back and collected a cut of the wartime profits.

  He didn’t have to worry that his tax revenues would go down or his territory would be seized. No squabbling board of directors or rogue political faction reorganized his budget. He answered to no one.

  Soft power was enough, and he prided himself on that, too. It took discipline not to try to exert too much pressure. Most people wanted others to know they were in charge, but not Koel. He allowed other people the illusion of being at the top of the pyramid.

  They didn’t realize that the whole fucking pyramid was a lie.

  He’d been within striking distance of having everything he wanted, too. And then…

  Humans.

  His whole body jerked with agony. His wife was long-dead; Ilia and Uleq had been all that remained of his family, and now they were gone, too. They had been stolen in an instant, leaving him with…

  Pain. He would not admit it, except that it nearly crippled him. Before this, he was a fixture on the bridge of the Avaris. He gave the orders and directed everything. Now he was confined to his cabin; he
could not let them see him like this.

  But they knew. When he thought of his children, he could not stand, he could not speak. He could hardly breathe.

  They were gone. He had known he would lose Uleq, but this? This was worse than he had dreamed. One pale hand splayed across his stomach as though he were cupping a wound, pressing over a growth inside his body.

  The humans had stolen everything from him.

  In the end, Uleq had been right. Koel had chastised him and called him a fool, but his son had been insistent. Humans were a threat to everything Koel had built. They were resourceful, Uleq had reported. They had impressive tempers, and yet they retained the capacity to be cold and calculating as they planned.

  And their technology was more advanced than nearly every species in known space.

  Koel hadn’t worried or cared. The Yennai Corporation was hidden. It wasn’t a government, with laws the humans would care about.

  He had been wrong, and he had paid dearly.

  My children—

  He lifted his head, panting with pain.

  He forced himself to stand although his muscles trembled, and he feared that he lacked the strength to do so. He took one shuddering step toward the window, then another.

  His entire adulthood had been spent in this never-ending dance of sacrifice and gain. When the children were still young, his wife had begun to argue with him. Once his greatest supporter, she had started questioning his methods and his motives.

  Isn’t it enough yet, Koel? Can’t you rest yet? We have more than we could ever need.

  She did not understand, and when she threatened to take the children and deprive him of his legacy…

  Well, what choice had he had but to kill her? It had been quick. He wasn’t a monster, after all. And he hadn’t lied to the children, either. He had explained it to them openly.

  Lies could create such bad feeling.

  He had sacrificed Avaris, the woman he loved most in the universe, for the future of the Yennai Corporation. He had named his flagship for her and remembered her fondly. How much more had he given up over the years as well? Reserves of cash, favors called in, ships and planets sacrificed, all for greater gains.