Chapter Twenty-Seven

Trusted Courier

“Captain Crush, welcome back,” The guard waved them through the secure lock.

“Thanks,” Crush nodded. “I have to make this a quick one. I have another run to number four to do today.”

“Hey, you’re a popular guy!” The guard joked.

Crush chuckled, the smile on his face dying as he pushed the loaded grav cart down the long gantryway. Cara and Quad followed behind while Prim and Berenice loitered around the entrance to the Fair Weather to be a distraction. From the shouted arguments he could hear, they were doing a good job. With any luck, it would remain a fake argument. You could never be sure with those two.

It had been nonstop for the last couple of weeks. They had been making trips back and forth from the neighboring systems to the construction yard, carrying completed or semi-completed parts. After a dozen or so visits, they were authorized to make deliveries into the secure areas. Despite the number of stations working on their knock-off Harbinger, they were still run off their feet. That was a weakness he was exploiting.

All it took was offering to deliver the cargo to where it was needed whenever they arrived a few times in a row. Eventually, they got lucky, and someone said yes. The next time, Crush offered again and the guard got them authorized to make it easier in the future.

They had kept their heads down for a few more trips, and today, they would finally make some use of their new access. Turning back to look over his shoulder, Crush nodded Cara down one of the side corridors. She waved and headed off with her load of power relays while Crush and Quad moved further in.

She was supposed to drop them off and then get ‘lost’ on her way back. That was it. Cara was going to test exactly how far they could move off the assigned path before someone stopped them.

Quad was next, delivering a load of stem bolts to one of the outer rings. Crush waved him off and moved on to the actual target, a nexus point on the second level. He was delivering some spools of insulated cabling to be fed through the ship. It was one of the only places in the entire build that allowed access between the armor panels they were fitting. Those were something he would love to get his hands on. Just a few scans would tell them all kinds of interesting things. Unfortunately, they were only being carried by Falling Waters ships.

This was the next best thing.

Crush nodded to a couple of patrolling guards, but they knew him and the others by now and simply nodded back. Whistling tunelessly, he finally made it to the delivery point, exchanging a few words with the workers and offering to help them unload. Like overworked people anywhere, they were more than happy for the help.

He loaded a couple of wire spools into place and then turned to grab another one, tripping in the process. As he reached out to steady himself, Crush palmed a small silver marble into one of the access tubes.

“Bloody hells, I got to get some more sleep.” Crush sighed, kicking aside a nearby cable.

“You and me both, guy,” one of the workers called.

Ten minutes later, Crush started back toward the landing bay. A small screen in the corner of his vision showed the feed from the tiny ball of nanites rolling its way deeper into the ship. Two turns of the corridor later, the alarms went off, and troops thundered down the corridors.

Crush stood aside, putting on a wide-eyed look of shock just in case they were headed for him. They ran straight past, and Crush frowned before starting to head back to the ship at a fast trot.

To his surprise, Crush found Cara and Quad waiting with the others well inside the secure area.

“What’s going on?” Crush called to the guard on the door.

“Sorry, Crush,” the guard shook his head. “I think you're going to be late for your next delivery. Some bastard’s got into the arms locker and is taking potshots at—”

An explosion rocked the station, followed by another a few minutes later.

“What the hell do you keep in your arms lockers?” Cara asked.

“Nothing that could do that,” the guard racked his weapon, which emitted a loud hum as it warmed up. “We might have bigger problems.”

Hull Breach Detected! All personnel to the nearest shelter! All personnel to the nearest shelter! Hull Breach Detected!

“Aw, fuck!” the guard looked back at them. “Sorry about this, but no outsiders in the shelters.”

“We’ll wait in the ship,” Crush yelled, “Just open the door.”

The guard wavered before jamming his datawand into the lock and pulling the door open.

“Go! Go! Go!” he yelled, and they all ran through.

Crush looked back to see the guard slam the door shut seconds before a high-pitched whistle began to build.

“Run!” Crush yelled, and they sprinted for the Fair Weather.

The moment they hit the cargo bay, Crush slammed the emergency seal, and the ramp slammed back as the bay doors slid closed.

“Disconnecting from station air!” Prim called as Crush ran into the bridge.

“Switched to internal power,” Tri added.

“Get the internal shields online,” Crush ordered. “And I want the external shields ready to power up at a moment’s notice.”

“On it!” Quad called.

“We’re still clamped to the deck,” Prim warned. “If this place goes, it’s going to take a part of us with it.”

“Get Sec up here,” Cara snapped. “We need to hack into the station comms and find out what is going on.”

Crush saw her glance his way to see what he thought of that, and he gave her a slight nod. Sec was definitely deep in the shit at the moment, but they needed his skills right now.

Sec looked pale as he hurried onto the bridge, sliding into his seat without meeting anyone’s eyes. His fingers flew over the controls as he concentrated and Crush caught himself holding his breath that the Cent was still capable of doing this. Prim and Quad had said they would ‘bring the judgment of Banjo’ down on Sec, but Crush hadn’t expected whatever that was to do this to the man.

He looked lost, haunted even.

“I’m in,” Sec said, his voice quiet. “Play on speakers or give you a rundown?”

“Put it on the speakers,” Cara said quickly.

“...they are moving toward the station reserves….”

“...damned loyalist bastards! We should get those…”

“...scanners are clear in the system so far, but….”

“...didn’t check if we had people from Sand’s Embrace on the schedule…”

Stolen novel; please report.

“...revenge attacks… three more stations hit…”

“...on the run now… heading for the landing bay…”

“Somebody’s got them panicking,” Prim said with no small amount of satisfaction.

“I think the Sand’s Embrace boys weren’t cleared from work lists before they started that attack,” Crush nodded.

“Not just that,” Berenice said. “Half the confederated planets are related to the other half through marriage. This might be their own people attacking them.”

“Brother against brother-in-law?” Crush shook his head. “Nasty.”

“See if you can get a handle on what is going on,” Cara told Sec. “I want a report in five minutes.”

“On it,” Sec said, working quietly.

“There are two armed groups moving through the station,” Sec reported. “One is working toward the station’s security and focused on keeping the troops here busy. The other is headed for the landing bay three down from us and trying to secure a docked destroyer. They are causing havoc on the way there. Damaging everything they can and killing anyone they see.”

“Will they head this way?” Cara asked.

“No, Ma’am,” Sec replied. “There are several groups of guards trying to funnel them away, and they have set up between this bay and the enemy forces.”

He checked a few notes on his datapad. “If they are diverted, it will be to the bay one floor up and two spaces over. A docked fast transport that I suspect is their emergency escape plan.”

“Want me to suit up and go cut us free of the clamps?” Quad asked.

“No,” Crush said, sitting back in his chair and lacing his hands behind his head. “We’ll sit here and wait like good little traders. No need to draw attention to ourselves.”

“Think this will spoil our plans?” Cara asked.

“Might do,” Crush said with a shrug. “They will be more paranoid but less trusting of their own. So, it could actually work in our favor.”

“I’ve ported the comms hack to Prim’s workstation,” Sec said, standing. “I will return to sickbay unless you need me?”

“Uh, no,” Cara said, “You can go.”

Sec nodded and walked off the bridge.

Crush watched him go, noting the slumped posture and blank expression.

“What exactly are they doing to him?” Crush asked Cara.

“No idea,” Cara said distractedly. “Prim, keep on those feeds.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Prim nodded.

Crush kept his stare going until Cara got uncomfortable and looked over at him.

“Boss?”

“Did you just tell me you have no idea what your troops are doing, Cara?” Crush asked levely. “That you have no idea what kind of punishment they are giving Sec?”

“Uh, no?” Cara hesitated. “But they are his family, right? How bad could it be?”

Crush took a long moment to keep his temper in check before replying. “Cara, people will do things to their family they would never do to a stranger all the time. Do I need to remind you who made these people? Do I need to remind you that she made a living ship that ATE another ship, people and all?”

Cara paled slightly.

“Their mother is Paren, and you have no fucking clue what they have been doing?” Crush snapped.

“No, I just assumed—”

“Prim!” Crush ordered loudly. “What is Sec’s punishment?”

“Uh…” She suddenly found something important to do on her console.

“Want me to ask twice?” Crush asked, his accent starting to show a little stronger.

“Well, see, I was really angry.” Prim swallowed. “And so I thought, why not make sure he learns the lesson AND never even thinks about messing with someone I like again?”

“What did you two do?” Tri asked with an amused smile. “Cut off his network privileges?”

“Might have done that,” Quad said awkwardly. “But, we might have done something else too.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Prim protested. “Kind of corrective trauma.”

Cara closed her eyes and put her head in her hands.

“What did you two do?” Tri wasn’t smiling anymore. “Quad? Prim?”

Neither of them answered, and Tri got up from his console and faced off against Quad. “Tell me what you did, Quad.”

“It was a mistake, okay?” Quad said, scratching his neck nervously. “We kind of tied him down and maybe closed him in an unpowered med pod for a half hour.”

“Like a timeout,” Prim nodded.

“Only we thought he could use something to think about,” Quad said quietly. “So, we said that…”

“What did you say?” Tri asked, his voice low and dangerous.

“We said Banjo would be so disappointed in him,” Quad said quietly.

“You what?” Crush spun in his chair a fraction of a second before Tri backhanded Quad across the room.

“He made us into individuals!” Tri roared loud enough to make Crush’s ears ring. “He made us The Four Cents!”

“We didn’t think, okay?” Prim said quickly, backing away.

“Never mind that Banjo would NEVER be disappointed in any of us,” Tri growled. “Did either of you two geniuses ever think about what would happen if Sec decided Banjo wouldn’t be proud of him?”

“What?” Prim asked. “So he sulks for a bit; who cares?”

“What do you think makes us different from the others?” Tri rounded on her.

“Banjo… was…” Prim paled.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Quad started to rock back and forth.

“So, to summarize,” Crush said, standing up. “My second in command is derelict in her duty of care to her troops and Sec…”

“Sec might cease to exist as an individual,” Tri confirmed. “Yes, boss.”

“Sometimes, I miss the fucking abomi-toads,” Crush growled and stalked out of the room.

He needed to fix this.

Sec was sitting in the med bay, staring at the wall with his legs hanging over the end of the bed. He didn’t turn when Crush came in or even seem to notice. What did Andy call it? Catatonic?

Crush understood this part of the Four Cents a lot more than most other people could. Sometimes, when you were just kind of drifting through your life and not really aiming in any real direction, the universe sent you a person.

For the Four Cents, that had been Banjo. For Crush, it had been Elise. They came into your life without warning, and when they left it, you were never the same again. The Four Cents had been just like all the others until Banjo got hold of them. He gave them something—an attitude to life, a way of looking at the world. Elise had done the same for Crush back in the day.

For the lost souls, they were the anchors. For the eternal wanderer, they were the north star. And for the faceless among a mass of copies, they were the spark of individuality.

That was what was happening to Sec. He had lost his anchor, and he was drifting slowly away from being who he was meant to be. If it went on too long, there would be no getting him back. They would return to the Imperium, and the upload would merge the little separate Banjo’s Sec partition back into the rest. Poof! No more Marshall Sec.

That was why all four of them seemed like nutcases most of the time. They had to be extreme to remain separate. Anything less, and they would die as they were subsumed back into the mass of identical models running around linked to the shared cores.

“So, you fucked up big time, eh?” Crush hopped up next to Sec.

“Yes, Sir,” Sec nodded. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, I don’t really care if you’re sorry,” Crush said with a heavy sigh.

“I know,” Sec nodded again.

“No, you don’t,” Crush said with a smile. “But I’m going to tell you. So you listen to ‘Ole Crush while I let you know the truth of the world, okay?”

Sec turned, the blank face hurting Crush’s heart in a way he didn’t expect.

“Now, I ain’t a big talker like some of the others, so I’m just going to give it to you straight, okay?” It felt good to let his accent out fully. Normally he held it back to sound more professional, but Sec needed not just to hear this, but feel it. “You did some stupid shit because you thought it was funny, and you thought you could live with it. Turns out you wish you hadn’t done it, right?”

“I would take it back if I could,” Sec said.

“No second chances in this world, Sec,” Crush said seriously. “There is no taking things back sometimes. So, I’ll tell you what you do. You learn from it. You do better next time.”

There was a flicker of life in the eyes, and Crush seized on it.

“No one gets it right all the time, and you’ll probably fuck up a lot more often than you get it right at first. That’s life, bub. The measure of a person isn’t if they fuck up, but how they deal with it when they do.” Crush let that sink in for a minute.

“Banjo would be—”

“Saying the exact same shit to you I am, Sec,” Crush tilted his head to one side. “Probably with more swearing and a couple of those crazy grins thrown in, but otherwise?”

“Quad and Prim said that—” Sec cut off, unable to say the words.

“Shit, Sec, that kid loved you lot. Nothing would have changed that. Hell, he loved Paren, and she’s the most terrifying woman I’ve ever known.” Crush chuckled. “Man, am I glad she’s on our side.”

“So, you think I can really learn from this?” Sec asked quietly.

“I know you can,” Crush clapped him on the back. “In fact, I’ll even get you started. One, don’t fuck over anyone on your own side. Two, don’t let anyone tell you what you are. Three, don’t cock-block your sister because she's a vicious bitch, just like her mother.”

Sec gaped at Crush for a long moment before starting to laugh.

“I thought you were afraid of Paren?” Sec gasped.

“No shit, why do you think I was several star systems away before I said that!” Crush laughed with Sec for a few moments.

“I’m still in deep shit, aren’t I?” Sec asked eventually.

“You sure are kid,” Crush gave Sec a one-armed hug. “But you’ll make it through and out the other side. When you do, remember to do better next time. That’s all any of us can do.” He patted Sec on the back once more and hopped off the bed, heading back to the bridge.

“Boss?” Sec called. “When we get a chance, can we go look for Colby?”

“We always were going to,” Crush shrugged. “Temp or not, we don’t leave our people behind.”