“Is that how you wound up working for Sedaya?” I asked. “You were born on one of his planets?”

  “Not exactly,” she replied, somewhat cryptically. “But you aren’t wrong about the general idea. When a noble conquers a planet from another noble, there are no riots or efforts to overthrow the new government. The new rule is accepted and all individuals born on the planet become subjects of the new ruler. Many take pride in the flag they were born under, even Sedaya’s. They won’t take jobs with rivals without explicit permission. And they will never work against the best interests of their leader.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I think I understand. So by being from Earth, we don’t fall under anyone’s flag. We’re completely independent and can pretty much do whatever we want.”

  “As long as it doesn’t disrupt the flow of the overall Hegemony, yes."

  “What do you mean by that?” Matt asked.

  “The Empress’ Royal Sentries monitor activity across the Hegemony. They prefer not to intervene in any small affairs, but cross them or make enough noise and you’ll attract their attention. It’s better that they never know you exist.”

  “That seems straightforward enough,” I said.

  “So, what do we do now?” Matt asked.

  Alter scrolled her fingertip down to another planet and tapped on it, shifting the new planet to the center of the interface and zooming in on it. “This is Cestus Alpha,” she said. “It’s one of a few dex planets.”

  “Dex planets?” I asked.

  “Dark Exchange,” Alter answered. “Where mercenaries go to pick up work.”

  “Why not just post the jobs on the hypernet?” Matt questioned. “Or the dark hypernet? I guess you don’t have LinkedIn here.” He smirked, thinking he was funny.

  “The jobs available at a dex are sensitive enough that if their origins were discovered, wars would break out and thousands of innocents would die. Digitized comms always leave a trail, and even the best encryption may be vulnerable in time.”

  “Oh,” Matt said, the smirk wiped from his face. “Yeah, I guess that would be bad.”

  “Verbal agreements, on the other hand, are known only by the parties involved.”

  “How far is Cestus Alpha?” I asked.

  “Three days in hyperspace,” Alter replied.

  I eyed the map. “That’s all? The planet seems pretty far away.”

  “About three thousand light years.”

  “So we move a thousand light years per day. Forty-one light years per hour. That’s Earth to Trappist in less than an hour. To Proxima in minutes. Wow.”

  “We went from Earth to Caprum in three hours,” Matt said. “That’s more impressive. How’d we do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Alter replied. “Keep made it happen. He refused to tell me how.”

  “That’s…strange,” I said, looking for a good word. “You went to Earth with him, but you don’t know how you got there?”

  “No. Everything you saw on Caprum except the ship was a hologram to make you think you were still on Earth. As soon as we entered or exited the hangar, we were on your planet. Keep would always sit in the back out of my sight, so I never saw what he did to make the transfer happen.”

  “What if he’s the only one who can get there?” Matt said. “What if we can’t get back without him?”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” I replied. “We’re not about to go home yet, anyway. Three days. That’ll give us time to finish our tour of the ship. If you don’t mind?” he asked Alter.

  She shrugged. “I think you’ve seen pretty much everything.”

  “I haven’t seen Deck Five.”

  “There’s nothing important on Deck Five,” she answered.

  “Then it’s not a big deal if I see it,” I replied.

  Alter’s expression told me she didn’t want to show us the deck. “Deck Five is my quarters.”

  “Not Three, with us?”

  “No. I prefer solitude when I’m not occupied caring for the ship.”

  I wasn’t going to push her to see her room. “Okay. You could have led with that. We respect your right to privacy.”

  “Thank you. Do you have any other questions?”

  “Not a question,” Matt said. “More of a request.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Well, if we’re going to be smuggling or doing whatever illegal stuff that’ll make us a big payday in a short time, I think it’s important Ben and I are better equipped to protect ourselves if need be. I have a lot of martial arts training, and I’ve shot a gun before, but I’m sure there’s a lot we could learn from you.”

  Alter smiled. “You need a teacher.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” I said.

  She bit her lower lip thoughtfully before nodding. “Okay.”

  “I want to learn other things too,” I said. “Like how to fix the ship.”

  “There’s no need. I can handle maintenance.”

  “What if something happens to you? What if you’re killed or disabled or something?”

  “If I’m dead, it’ll mean you’re also dead.”

  The statement sent a chill down my spine. Dark, but also true. “I’d still like to learn at some point. I’m interested in how everything works.”

  “Let’s start with making you less of a liability in a fight,” Matt said. “Then you can nerd out to your heart’s content.”

  “Fine. When do we start?”

  “We need to put Head Case into hyperspace,” Alter said. “Then we can begin.”

  “Great. Can you go straight to the flight deck, or do you need to change first?”

  Alter’s eyebrows lowered as she glared at me, confused. “What do you mean, change first?”

  I almost laughed out loud. “Nevermind. We’ll meet you on the flight deck.”

  “Of course.”

  Matt and I stood up and left the conference room, making the short trip to the flight deck. I lingered through the hatch, hoping to catch Alter as she exited the room, but she remained behind until the doors had slid shut, blocking my view.

  “Give it a rest,” Matt said, noticing my antics.

  “I’m just curious how she does it,” I replied.

  “It’s maaaagggiiccc,” Matt said, wiggling his fingers. “Let it go.”

  “Fine. Are you sure you want to do this? Become a smuggler or whatever?”

  “I’m sure I want to save your life if we can. It doesn’t matter how we get there, as long as we get there. Besides, I wouldn’t mind sticking it to Sedaya a few more times in the process.”

  “It could get dangerous.”

  “Could? No. It will be. But what’s the adventure of a lifetime without a little danger? I’m more worried about the music here.”

  We both laughed as we took our seats, me in the pilot’s seat, him on the sofa. The flight deck hatch slid open and Pilot Alter walked in, dropping into the co-pilot seat. I held back my comment on her change in appearance, which she had managed in under two minutes.

  Magic. Right. I doubted that. But I also accepted it.

  “Are you two ready?” she asked.

  “We’re all set,” I replied.

  “Then let’s get to it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The next three days passed in a hurry. Being on board Head Case felt more like a vacation. Matt and I spent three hours each day learning about the different weapons, armor, and other gear stored in the ship’s armory, practicing their use and going through some basic self-defense moves with Alter. According to her, Keep had bartered for all of the equipment at the same time he negotiated the construction of the ship with the Acheon. All of it was rebuilt, reconditioned, or recreated from the piles of garbage the Quadrant dumped on the planet, returned to usefulness by the resourceful aliens.

  The education and exercise left me feeling great, especially when combined with both the medication I had bought on Earth and the added chemicals available in sickbay. For the first time in months, I could get my heart rate up and my blood pumping without dizziness, and practice kicks and punches, holds and grabs without falling flat on my face from the exertion.

  Not that it really improved my aptitude for fighting. While Matt was able to hold his own against Alter when she pulled her punches, my skills were more than a little lacking. Her simplest maneuvers often found me flat on my back, unsure of how she had put me there. Anyone could become good at anything given enough time and dedication, but we had only three days. Yet, with the hope of surviving my cancer putting my focus through the roof, the training left me happily exhausted.

  The downtime set me to exploring the compartments of the ship I had yet to see. Wandering through Head Case, I opened every hatch, cabinet, drawer, and panel, save for Deck Five. It still seemed odd to me that Alter chose to live there instead of Deck Three, and that she had the whole deck to herself. Matt had described seeing piles of random stuff there, storage, and I wondered if maybe she had recreated her environment on Demitrus, holding tight to the one place she said she felt safe.

  What had happened to her before Demitrus? Keep said she had been an assassin, but that reaction indicated something deeper and more damaging than a weariness of killing. I tried inviting her to join Matt and me at mealtimes, but she always declined. Whenever she wasn’t training us or fixing something, she withdrew to her quarters. She lived on the ship, took care of it, and helped us as best she could. Even so, I had the impression she only tolerated our presence in what she considered her ship. Her home.

  Whenever I wasn’t training, exploring the ship, sleeping, or eating, I could be found either in the pilot’s seat on the flight deck working on mastering the interface, or with Keep’s phone, trying to learn all of Head Case’s controls. Matt was more than happy to pass the settings over to me. He had never been much of a techie, preferring to spend his free time in the small gym or in the living room. He was dismayed when he learned the hypernet didn’t work in hyperspace and the onboard datastore didn’t have a wide selection of media content. Instead of getting a feel for society in the Fertile Quadrant, he was left zoning out to Alter’s favorite picks. It seemed she had a thing for cats and dogs and had saved hundreds of videos from YouTube.

  I moved my bedroom from the small cabin where I had awoken to a slightly larger one closer to the stairs, mainly because the overhead light fixture looked more Ikea than fifties kitsch and it was closer to the downstairs head. I slept like a baby on the foam mattress in that room, and woke up sore but satisfied every morning of the trip.

  Fresh out of the shower on the third day, I found Alter in the kitchen with Matt. She was in her pilot persona, which I hadn’t seen since we had entered hyperspace. Over the last few days we had primarily spent time with Sensei Alter, in long white robes and barefoot, her hair pulled tight into a geisha bun and held by sticks he had used as an effective teaching aid. Sensei Alter was both calm and demanding, zen in her instruction, determined to see results. She had carried a different personality into our weapons training, presenting as Drill Sergeant Alter. Loud and brash, quick to admonish, firm and strong. To be honest, I liked that Alter the least of any I had seen so far.

  “What are you wearing?” Alter asked, eyes flicking over my outfit.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, straightening my coat. “I’m trying to fit in. You know, not to look like an Earther.”

  “In that?”

  “Like Han Solo. Star Wars? He was from a galaxy far, far, away. That’s where we are now, right?”

  I glanced at Matt. We had both gone that route, him the older version of Han, me the younger, both in futuristic jackets, a long sleeved shirt with an open collar, dark trousers, and boots that came up just below the knees. I wore the gunbelt too, though I hadn’t pulled a blaster from the armory to finish the outfit.

  He wasn’t wearing his jacket, and his pants and boots were obscured by the table, evading her discernment.

  “You think the Quadrant is like an Earth movie?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what the Quadrant is like,” I replied. “Come on. This has to be better than jeans with a perfect round hole over the knees and a hoodie.”

  “Yes, it is an improvement over that. But the lack of space boots will draw attention.”

  “Are you sure they aren’t called hyper boots?” Matt quipped.

  We both ignored him. “These are space boots,” I said. “I just had Asshole bring them below the knee.” I had tried not referring to the machine that way, but it rolled off the tongue so much easier than calling it the assembler.

  “Lose the boots,” Alter suggested. “That will help.”

  I shrugged. “Are you here because we’re almost there?”

  “Yes. We’ll arrive at the drop point in twenty minutes.”

  I moved past her to the assembler. “Asshole, please make me bacon and egg on a bagel, with extra cheese.”

  “You got it. One bacon and egg on a bagel, coming right up.”

  “Did you do something to the assembler’s voice modulation?” Alter asked, glancing at the round aperture as though it were broken.

  “I played with the settings,” I replied. “It should sound like a Brooklyn accent.”

  “Brooklyn accent?”

  “You know. Hey yo, yo hey,” I said, presenting my best version of it. Mom was born in Brooklyn, and the effect had still snuck out from time to time even though she had been out of New York for years. “Do you like it?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I told you,” Matt said. “It’s not even a good Brooklyn accent.”

  I laughed. “I’m still messing around with it. But the original response phrases were way too stiff. It felt like talking to a machine.”

  “It is a machine,” Alter pointed out.

  I smiled as the aperture rotated open, the sandwich waiting inside. My mind had already put a mental block on where the protein on the bagel had actually come from, allowing me to not only eat it, but enjoy it. I pulled the plate out and grabbed a mug, sticking it inside.

  “You won’t have time for coffee,” Alter said. “We’ll drop pretty close to Cestus Alpha’s orbit. And there’s no food or drink allowed on the flight deck.”

  “What? No drink on the flight deck? Whose starship is this?”

  “It took me four hours to repair the damage Matt’s vomit did to the underdeck wiring.”

  “No food or drink on the flight deck,” Matt said, finishing his coffee. “You lose the vote.”

  “We didn’t have a vote,” I replied.

  “Sure we did. Alter said no. I said no. Quorum reached. You lose.”

  “Damn it,” I said. “Asshole, just some water, please.”

  “You got it, Bennie. One water, coming right up!”

  I picked up the sandwich and took a big bite, chewing quickly. I didn’t have much time to eat.

  “I’m heading up to the flight deck,” Alter said. “I’ll see you two there.”

  “Okay,” Matt said.

  Mouth full, I settled for a wave.

  The aperture opened and I retrieved the mug of water, swallowing my bite. Damn, it tasted good. Probably too good. I reminded myself not to think about it.

  “Are you ready to start our new life of crime?” I asked.

  Matt smiled. “It’s only a crime if you get caught.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “Go ahead,” Alter said. “Bring us out of hyperspace.”

  I leaned forward, positioning my pinkie on the toggle switch beyond the throttle that controlled hyperspace. As she had explained, the trick to dropping out of the FTL bubble wasn’t so much the act of slowing down, but rather regaining immediate control of the ship. While the hyperspace lanes and drop points were predetermined for all inhabited planets, there was no way to control the arrival of multiple vessels at one time, meaning there was always a chance of a collision. Then there were the drops into contested areas, war zones, and the like. You never knew what you were flying into until you got there and it was always better to be prepared.

  As a dex planet, Cestus Alpha’s biggest risk came from the authorities, either those of the nobility controlling the area of space or the Empress’ Royal Sentries. The latter would be the worst case. It would not only mean dropping into a death trap, it would mean the dex no longer existed, exterminated because someone there slipped over the thin red line.

  All of that swirled in my head as I knocked the toggle off, immediately grabbing the throttle as the hyperdrive disengaged. My heart pounded harder than it probably should, my nerves tense. Alter had offered to handle the flying for the initial drop. I refused. This was my and Matt’s ship. I had to be responsible for it.

  Eyes first, as Alter had instructed. Primary sensors second. Secondary sensors last. The starfield ahead of us decompressed, and while I spotted a handful of ships in the distance, they were little more than specks against the backdrop of what I assumed was Cestus Alpha. The immediate space ahead remained clear. I glanced at the HUD, quickly taking stock of the other ships in the area. There were two more within the drop zone and about thirty in orbit around the planet. Still good. I tapped on the HUD’s grid, switching it to energy readings. Ships moving into the drop zone would come in hot, giving us a few seconds to get out of the way.

  Nothing. We were safe. I kept Head Case on course for the planet, setting the throttle to half. It would take only a few minutes to reach orbit, where we would need to ping Cestus Orbital Control for permission to land.

  “Good entry,” Alter said. “Smooth and stable.”

  “Thank you,” I replied. “I have to admit, I was nervous about it.”

  “That’s not unreasonable your first time.”

  She had already described Cestus Alpha to Matt and me, complete with images and video. Eighty percent the size of Earth and circling a red dwarf star, Cestus was ninety-eight percent ocean. In fact, water was its largest legal export, a series of space elevators visibly rising from the planet. Many miles long, tubes carried the water to satellites that processed the abundant liquid and filled waiting supertanker starships with the finished product. Those ships would carry the water across the Quadrant, mostly supplying dry worlds occupied by mining companies.