“Here’s what I think we have to do: allow the Tulk to gain control of every knight-captain on both worlds. Then, we can fly to Vindar as a single powerful fist.”

  Trask’s hairy jaw sagged. “You’re a bigger traitor than I thought, Gorman. You’re not just selling out Gladius—you want to help this villain capture two of our worlds!”

  The discussion ran for another hour, but we ended where we started. The pertinent facts were stubborn things. The pirate-minded Sword Brothers would never unite into an Armada without being convinced their very survival depended on it. In order to form such a single force, one capable of helping Vindar, they had to be coerced—that’s where the Tulk came in.

  “Let me get this straight,” Trask said. “You want me to help spread these spiny bastards among my own brothers—then fly them all off on a crusade to die on some planet we’ve never even heard of—without pay, mind you!”

  “That’s about right,” I admitted. “In return, Varrick and his kind will be placed on some harmless world to do as they please. A refugee camp, as it might be considered.”

  “Madness…” Trask said. “I don’t think I can do it. My own people are wary. They know something is up. They’ll hide and dodge—they won’t meet with me to accept a handful of spiny jelly.”

  “No, you’re probably right,” I admitted. “But that might not be necessary.”

  I turned back to Varrick. “I have something they want, and I can convince him at the same time,” I said, indicating Trask.

  “What do you mean?” they both asked.

  “I can gather weapons the Sword Brothers covet. Using them as a pretext, I’ll travel among the brothers, distributing these goods.”

  Varrick leered, and the expression wasn’t entirely human. “And there might be a special surprise among your gifts?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “A hidden Tulk.”

  “You’re evil, Gorman,” Trask marveled. “I stand in awe of your scheming powers.”

  “We’re all in agreement, then?” I asked.

  The others nodded, and we all smiled—but I wasn’t sure who was just going through the motions and who was in earnest. It was hard to tell with such a pack of reflexive rogues.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The lower level knight-captains and earls on Flamberge would have been shocked to learn that their glorious leader, Governor Varrick, had a Tulk in his belly. They would have been almost as stunned to learn that Varrick was leaving Flamberge to go off into deep space with some runner he’d just met.

  To avoid confusion and possible rebellion—we simply didn’t tell them either of these uncomfortable facts.

  “Governor Varrick is coming aboard our ship?” Sosa asked for perhaps the fourth time.

  “Yes. Prepare our best stateroom for him,” I said, and I ignored her stare.

  Shaking her head, Sosa turned to Rose and relayed the order. Rose left to do the job without looking overly annoyed. We’d long ago given her the simplest of duties as she wasn’t a properly trained crewman. Unlike Jort and Sosa, who’d both spent long years learning how to fly and run a starship, Rose had only flown as a pampered passenger aboard her parents’ luxurious yacht before joining my crew on Royal Fortune.

  Sosa leaned close to me when she’d gone. “Have you gone mad, Captain? There’s a Tulk riding in that man’s body. I’ve had one of them in me before—you can’t trust him.”

  “This time things will be different. He knows that we know what he really is. We’ve struck a new note of cooperation with the Tulk. They accept—”

  I broke off, sensing a looming presence at my right side. I snapped my head in that direction. “Yes, Jort? May I help you?”

  Jort fidgeted with a stylus in his hand. He held it in the manner an assassin might hold a dagger. “Uh…”

  “Look,” I said as I stood up. “I know you’re both thinking I was compromised during my visit to the surface. I don’t blame you for suspecting me. To prove I’m clean, I’ll allow a sensory scan of—hey!”

  All this time I’d been watching Jort and his stylus—but Sosa was in on the scheme, too. She jabbed me in the belly with a sharp object. I was turned away from her, and she’d taken the opportunity to launch a sneaky attack, just as Jort had been attempting to do.

  “Dammit! Stand down, both of you! I’ll prove I’m still one hundred percent human, all right?”

  Getting out my seat and making sure not to turn my back on either of them, I found a locker with a fluoroscope wand and transmitted a scan of my guts to the main holotank. They watched with interest as I displayed my own internals.

  “What’s that?” Jort demanded. “What’s that long shadow there?”

  Glancing at it, I snorted. “That’s my lunch.”

  “What? Oh… disgusting.”

  “Yes, well… now do you see there’s no Tulk? Nothing at all to worry about?”

  “Yes, but now I’m even more concerned,” Sosa said.

  “Explain.”

  “If you had a Tulk in you, I know we could kill it. However, stupidity or actual insanity is much harder to manage in a commanding officer.”

  I twisted up my lips in irritation. “Are you calling me insane? Look guys, you’ll just have to trust me on this one. The Tulk are very concerned about the Skaintz.”

  Sosa still looked suspicious. “What do you mean by ‘concerned’ Captain?”

  “I mean they fear them more than they hate us. Much more. Accordingly, they’re willing to combine forces to stop their ancient enemy. They’re calling a truce aboard this ship to work together for the betterment of all of us.”

  Jort crossed his thick arms. “I will not trust Varrick. I will never trust him. He will be locked into his cabin at night. There will be no creeping about, no infecting of us in our sleep.”

  “Fair enough,” said a new voice.

  We all turned. Governor Varrick stood at the entrance with Trask behind. Jort made rude killing motions to Trask, who frowned and shook his head.

  Varrick glanced over his shoulder at Trask. “It’s true. At this point, you have me within your power. If you decide to strike, you might even be allowed to leave this planet without suffering any consequences.”

  “Why do you say that?” Sosa asked.

  Varrick shrugged. “Because it’s true. I have purposefully placed myself in a vulnerable position. I hope that my actions will allay your fears and allow us to cooperate together. I’m taking a risk—but there is very little time.”

  Jort moved like a stiff-legged watchdog to another seat while Varrick took his spot.

  Traffic control finally cleared us for launch after many objections, and Royal Fortune took flight at last. Without loitering around, I launched toward open space. Once we were up in high orbit, having slipped away from Flamberge and her bright blue oceans, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Any sign of pursuit?” I asked.

  “None,” Sosa admitted.

  Varrick snorted. “I told you they would stand down and let us pass. The Tulk are well-placed in key spots on this world. Traffic control is one of those areas. We should be clear all the way to the—”

  Lights began blinking all over the bridge.

  “Someone is tracking us, Captain,” Sosa said, working her ops board.

  Various alarms began to beep and whoop. A flasher spun on the ceiling.

  “They’ve got missile-lock.”

  “Strap in, everyone,” I ordered.

  Then I spun Royal Fortune around and applied significant thrust.

  “I don’t understand it,” Varrick complained. “I gave specific orders requiring all local ships to stand aside.”

  “They are Count Poizzi’s ships,” Sosa said. “His squadron is closing in on us—I would guess it is an assassination attempt.”

  “They aren’t even supposed to know I’m aboard!”

  Sosa shrugged. “The Sword Brothers are known for their resourcefulness in these situations.”

  Varrick’s only response was to make a sound of disgust.

  We increased our speed, but various warning tones still filled the cabin.

  “They’re closing in,” Sosa said.

  “Then we’ll blast right past them.”

  She shook her head. “They’re going to fire on us.”

  “Suggestions?”

  “Let’s throw this Tulk-infected bait overboard,” Jort said, jabbing a finger toward Varrick. “Maybe they will let us go.”

  “No…” I said after hesitating for a second, “prepare for heavy acceleration, everyone.”

  I hoped Rose had heard me, because five seconds later, I hit the accelerator hard. We were smashed back into our crash seats. Several people groaned. Some shouted hoarsely.

  I ignored it all, focusing on staying conscious and in control. The ship’s twin terawatt engines wound up to a roar. Soon, the lovely blue-green world known as Flamberge slid away behind us.

  In the end, we outran all our pursuers, ships and missiles alike.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, we relaxed in our seats and began unstrapping. Only Dernel turned out to have lost consciousness. The rest were awake but complaining bitterly.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A week later we arrived at the Sardez system. We did so without fanfare, using the Conclave slip-gates. Instead of fighting our way past the patrol boat that waited there for us, restricting entry, we paid a heavy bribe.

  This was arranged by Dernel and Trask. Baron Trask provided the connection, having apparently dealt with this particular patrol boat captain before, while Dernel provided the funds.

  As we glided away from the slip-gate without incident, I eyed Trask with new respect. “In my experience, most of these patrol guys aren’t corruptible….”

  Trask shrugged. “That’s because you’re a small-ball player, Gorman. I’m a major lord among the Sword Brothers. Let’s just say that we’ve been through this star system before.”

  I frowned, considering his words. “Have you done some kind of favor for them, then? Perhaps chased off a local pirate, or—”

  Trask made an exasperated sound. “No, fool! I’m saying we pay bigger bribes! These patrol-pukes think they’re gods or something. If you can find a man alone with a crew of model-G bots, he’ll take a payout—but it can’t be a paltry sum.”

  “Ah,” I said, understanding at last.

  Baron Trask was calling me cheap—and I knew he was right. In the past I’d tended to low-ball people when I offered payments for favors. Perhaps that was a mistake, or perhaps it was all I could manage. I suspected the latter was most often the case. As a runner, I rarely had more cash on hand than it took to fill my ship’s voracious fuel tank.

  It took us nearly a day to get far enough from the slip-gate to escape detection. At that point, instead of gliding toward the burnt out husk of a planet circling the central star in the system, we angled away toward the out-system. Many hours later, with the local sun turning small and white behind us, we at last reached the cloud of floating debris that included many dark objects. It was the star’s local Oort cloud, a swirling storm of comets, chunks of ice and asteroids.

  At last, we found a contact of surprising size. It was a planetoid, hidden by its distance from the star and the vastness of space.

  Cold, dark, and without the burning trail that comets grew when they came close enough to their mother stars, the planetoid showed no signs of life. None at all.

  “Dammit…” I whispered as we did a slow orbit, checking out the lay of the land.

  “What is it?” Trask demanded.

  I showed my teeth in annoyance and drummed my fingers on the arm of my chair. “I didn’t do the math right. I thought—but never mind. We’re too late. We can’t land.”

  Trask was baffled. “What’s this? Are you mad? Did you bring me all the way out here to play a prank? If so, I’m not laughing, Gorman. Not at all.”

  I glanced at him, then back at the glimmering bluish surface of the planetoid. The day side was brighter than the dark side, but it was still shrouded in gloom. The surface ice didn’t look white in most places. It looked as blue as an underwater glacier.

  “You don’t understand. This rock has an abandoned military base on it—and a supply depot exists under that base.”

  “Yes, yes. You’ve told me as much. So what? Land, and we’ll empty the place!”

  I shook my head. “It’s not so simple. Sunrise, such as it is out here on the fringe of the Fringe, has broken over the base. I’m surprised by that. Maybe my estimates of timing became confused... I’ve been to a dozen other planets for many long months. I must have lost count of the hours.”

  Jort laughed suddenly. “It was probably that drunken jag back on Tranquility. Remember when you went off to chase skirts and didn’t come back to our hotel for days? Did you count every hour then?”

  I glanced over my shoulder at him. He was being quite unhelpful as usual. Rose was on the bridge, and she crossed her arms, giving me a sour expression.

  “Maybe not,” I admitted. “At any rate, we’ll have to wait.”

  “Wait?” Trask demanded. “For how damned long?”

  I shrugged. “Two months, maybe a few days less.”

  Trask’s fist slammed down on the console. The hologram of the planetoid jumped and shimmered. “Forget it. By the time we get back to the Sword Worlds even the Tulk will have forgotten about Varrick!”

  “Did I hear my name?” Varrick asked. He’d appeared at the back of the bridge as if by magic.

  Had someone signaled him? I glanced at Dernel, but he seemed preoccupied and inattentive. This proved nothing, of course, because he always looked like that.

  Sighing, I got up out of my seat and walked toward the back of the bridge. “Conference room,” I said to Trask. “If you want to discuss this.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss!” he insisted. “We grab the weapons and get the hell out! End of story, Gorman!”

  Trask was hard to take sometimes. I was the captain aboard this ship, and I had all the cards right now—but he refused to accept that. He still wanted to run things as if he was aboard his own vessel shouting orders at servile underlings.

  Without making too big a deal out of Trask’s rude behavior, I sat at the head of the conference table and tapped at the computer console. The planetoid we were orbiting appeared and glimmered above the table-like surface.

  Two people followed me, Trask then Varrick. Jort tried to horn his way into the compartment after them, but I put up a stopping hand.

  “I don’t think so, Jort. Man the helm with Sosa.”

  “This Varrick guy is still a freak, sir. I don’t like leaving him alone with my captain.”

  “That’s very thoughtful, Jort. Return to the bridge.”

  Grumbling, he did as I asked.

  Trask slammed the door behind him and turned to me. “We don’t have time to wait here for months, Gorman. We have to do this quickly and get back to the Sword Worlds. Isn’t that right, Varrick?”

  Varrick watched the two of us. So far, he hadn’t spoken up. “The enemy infests this icy rock, yes? That’s the trouble, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have missiles or bombs you can drop on the surface?”

  I considered that idea, but I shook my head. “This ship could fire a torpedo that would kill everything for a kilometer around. The trouble is the planetoid is unstable. The storage facility would probably be destroyed or at least buried. We might have to spend weeks digging down to where the weapons are.”

  Varrick nodded. “How many of the enemy do you think have survived?”

  I shrugged. “It’s hard to say. I’ve fought a shrade. I know there are others—I saw them years ago.”

  Trask snorted. “You mean your master saw them. The original Gorman, not you, you cowardly clone.”

  “I saw them, Trask. I remember them.”

  “What types?” Varrick asked.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I know there was a culus to go with that shrade we killed. But… there might have been something else. Something bigger. One of their soldier-types. Maybe others.”

  “You don’t know this!” Trask complained. “You’re talking about the memories of a dead man that some technician implanted in your head. Because of this, we’re cowering in orbit and hiding from phantoms. It disgusts me.”

  Varrick and I ignored him. We both knew the score. We’d dealt with these creatures before, up-close and personal. Trask hadn’t faced anything worse than a Tulk

  “What do you think, Varrick? Do we go down or not?”

  Varrick thought it over. “Normally, I’d say no. I’d say that we should wait, or even flee this place. But these are unusual times, gentlemen. We’re going to have to face the Skaintz eventually. Why not out here, where they’re weak and few in number? Perhaps we can sharpen our blades on easy prey.”

  “They will never fall easily.”

  Varrick nodded. “I know, Gorman. I know. But I’m willing to face my greatest fears to stop our enemy’s advance. Our lives don’t matter in comparison to this goal.”

  Naturally, I held some reservations about his statements, but I wasn’t going to bring them up now. Instead, I let a big, slow smile cross my features. It was an entirely fabricated expression, of course, but they both seemed to buy it.

  Then I stuck out a hand to shake—but Varrick just looked at it.

  “I don’t see any object that you might be transferring to me,” he complained.

  Trask grabbed my hand and pumped it up and down. Varrick watched this operation with mild interest. Maybe he’d never participated in the ritual before.

  “We’ve got a deal,” Trask announced. “Now land this scow, Gorman. We’re going to gather those weapons in a rush. We’ll move with speed that will impress everyone—even your immortal aliens.”

  I nodded, and we adjourned. Unfortunately, we didn’t even make it back to the bridge before something went wrong.

  Jort intercepted us in the ship’s main passage. Before I could tell him to back off, he began talking in an excited gush of words. “There’s something out there, Captain!”