As Kalan walked away from the embassy, a deep sense of relief washed over him. While he liked the duke, he also felt wary about the man. The nobleman was too mercurial. He’d manipulated nearly everyone he’d encountered and, by all appearances, planned on manipulating his own government. At the same time, he’d let Kalan see him manipulate the embassy staff and that fool of an ambassador. He’d also aimed to manipulate his government into sending help to Ariadne base. That could mean that the man had decided to trust Kalan or that he’d simply been running a deeper game of manipulation. Without more information, Kalan was reserving judgment on Edmus. Fortunately, he could maintain his wariness and still be friendly to the duke. There weren’t any good reasons to burn that bridge just yet.
“Captain Rinn,” called out a voice from behind him.
Kalan looked back and saw the offensive ambassador hurry his way. Kalan contemplated just turning and walking away from the man. They were out of the embassy. He could disregard the ambassador with near impunity now. Then again, the odious little man might follow him. That would prove tedious. Kalan took a deep, calming breath and waited. Ambassador Calman came to a puffing stop before him.
“Captain Rinn,” Calman repeated, before stopping to catch his breath. “It seems I owe you an apology.”
Calman waited expectantly, but Kalan said nothing. He just stared at the man with the coldest expression he could manage. The ambassador visibly paled beneath that stare but pressed forward anyway.
“I was rude to you without cause. That was wrong of me.”
Up until that very moment, Kalan had been willing to just let the matter drop. He’d barely touched Kessellian politics and already felt that he was deeper than was healthy for a man. Beyond that, pursuing the matter had struck him as a little petty. Yet, Calman was so supercilious, and his words dripped with so much insincerity that it was everything Kalan could do not to backhand the man across the face. Did the fool think that this would satisfy honor? Mouthing words that he clearly didn’t mean to a man he clearly didn’t respect.
Kalan let the awkward moment drag out before he said, “The duke told me that should I file suit against you for slander. He believes that, if I were to press the issue, your courts would find in my favor. He suggested that the award in my favor would be substantial, particularly if the court called on him to testify.”
A fast series of emotions crossed the ambassador’s face, starting with indignation, which melted almost immediately into realization, and then transmuted into something between horror and terror. Kalan let the statement and all of those attendant emotions hang in the air. He wanted the ambassador to squirm. He wanted the man to remember this moment with clarity.
“You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t dare,” Calman choked out.
“I wouldn’t dare? Read the witness statements, ambassador. I think you’ll find that I’m willing to dare a great deal. Fortunately for you, I’m not interested in your money. I’m even less interested in inconveniencing Lord Alland with the hassle of testifying. So, I suggest you consider your new assignment to the trade delegation as an opportunity to do better.”
“My family won’t stand for the demotion,” said Calman, gathering his arrogance around him like a shield.
“They will,” said Kalan, stepping toward Calman, who scrambled backward. “They will because you’ll tell them to leave it be. Or, so help me, I will file suit against you and take you for every last credit to your name.”
“My family,” Calman whispered like an incantation.
“Then again, I suppose I could simply demand satisfaction for the insult. That’s how it works here, isn’t it? You’d have to face me in personal combat. Would you like to do that instead, ambassador? Can your family prevent that?”
“I apologized,” whined the plump man.
“No. You didn’t. You said empty words thinking it would placate me. You made a mistake, Calman. You’ll be punished for it, but at least you’ll still have your fortune, your title, and your life when it’s over. Unless you’d like to settle the matter right now,” offered Kalan, letting his hand settle on his sword’s hilt.
Calman watched that hand the way other people might watch an unexploded bomb. He shook his head back and forth frantically.
“No,” he whispered.
“Then go to Thessalan. Surprise us all. Work hard and secure a trade agreement. Earn your honor back. Do that, and I expect I’ll forget any hasty words you might have said.”
Calman looked at Kalan with a stunned expression. Kalan wondered just how often this sorry excuse for a person had used the implicit or explicit threat of his family’s displeasure to get his way. How many people had let him get away with it because they feared that displeasure? Based on Calman’s response, it had simply never occurred to him that anyone might call his bluff. It had probably never even crossed the man’s mind that anyone might box him in so thoroughly, either.
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“I will,” said Calman in what he probably thought was a contrite tone.
Kalan caught the undercurrent of deception in it. He waited until Calman turned to go.
“When you send someone to kill me, Calman, three things will happen. I’ll kill them. Then, I’ll come to find you.”
Calman had gone rigid at Kalan’s words, but he found the will to speak. “Then you’ll kill me?”
“Kill you? Why would I ever give you that kind of mercy? No, I’ll take you to Dediscos Prison. The warden there owes me a favor. I’m sure your family will do everything they can to get you out. They might even get enough back to bury.”
Kalan watched as the true horror of that threat broke Calman. Dediscos was the place where prisoners went when they were simply too smart or too dangerous for any other prison to hold them. There were no visitors. There were no packages from home. There was also no escaping the prison because there was nowhere to go. Dediscos was the only structure on the entire planet. As Kalan understood it, it was done that way by design. Even if someone managed to get out of the prison complex, the planet’s atmosphere was so toxic that it would kill most things. If a prisoner could survive that atmosphere, they wouldn’t survive the horrors of the native flora and fauna. Kalan couldn’t be sure that Calman knew all of that, but whatever he had heard about the place was frightening enough. His shoulders slumped and his head bowed. He didn’t look at Kalan when spoke.
“You’d really do it, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
Calman flinched when he heard the word. After a moment, he walked away with the discouraged shuffle of the defeated. Kalan wasn’t sure it would last. He’d have to stay very vigilant for the next few years. He also knew that Fresia’s training wasn’t a luxury anymore. It was a necessity. With a sigh, he eyed the passing traffic and waved down one of the public transit pods. One last thing to do in the port city and he could finally get back to the things he knew. He gave the bot driver the address and settled back into the seat. It wasn’t particularly far, but Kalan hadn’t felt like making the walk. Dealing with crowds always left him feeling tired and irritable. The prospect of being some kind of hero in Kessellian space wasn’t any more enticing. It was for the best if he got himself, his crew, and his ship back to Cobalt 7 as soon as possible. He understood the threats there.
The bot driver pulled up in front of a small, brick building. Kalan paid the fee and then admired the brick for a moment. The architecture was one thing he’d always liked about frontier worlds. While Kalan’s own home world had adopted the much stronger composite materials as they became available, the Great Temple itself had been built long before their introduction. Most of it was made from stone. Vast swathes of the cities still had ancient buildings made of materials not so different from these. While he knew that most of the buildings on Hasen 5 couldn’t be more than a century or two old, they still let him imagine he was home again, even if it was only for a moment.
Kalan put away his moment of nostalgia and made his way into the building and up the several flights of stairs to reach the right floor. He hoped the man was home as he approached the door. Then, he came up short. The door he was looking for hung slightly ajar. Kalan supposed it could just be an accident or the malfunctioning catch on the door. All of his instincts warned him that it wasn’t. He wondered if he should just come back later. Of course, that meant staying in this city even longer. If there was going to be a fight of some kind, though, there was no point in being stupid about it. Kalan pressed his back against the wall and pressed against the door lightly with his hand. He pulled his hand out of sight as the door swung open silently on well-oiled hinges. He gave it a five count, snuck a glance, and pulled his head back.
He reviewed the mental snapshot he’d just taken. The interior was a shambles. Shelves were toppled. Furniture was smashed or ripped open. There was a body face down on the floor and someone crouching over it. The crouching figure was petite and fine-featured from the partial profile he’d caught. Probably a woman, he decided. Since he’d heard neither cries of alarm nor taken fire, he eased around into the open doorway. He’d been right. It was a woman. The body was clearly a corpse, and she was checking the pockets. It was a grisly task, and he was happy that it belonged to her and not him. Unfortunately, it probably also meant that the dead man was the intended recipient of the data crystal. Given the way his luck had run recently, Kalan assumed there was a high probability that the data crystal was what she wanted. He watched as she worked. She wasn’t squeamish but clearly didn’t enjoy what she was doing either.
Kalan could sense, almost to the exact moment, when she became aware of him. She didn’t look back. There was no change in the speed of her movements. Even so, she was different. The energy she exuded shifted in some ineffable way. Kalan was prepared to talk if that’s what she wanted. Even so, he felt his own body go through countless minute changes in stance, felt the telltale rush of adrenaline preparing him for swift and, if necessary, lethal action. He’d let her make the first move, though. He didn’t come here for a fight, so he wouldn’t start one. She didn’t want to talk. In movements fast enough to be worthy of the Great Temple, she turned and whipped both hands at him. He didn’t think about it. He didn’t need to think about it. He’d been trained for scenarios just like this. Trained until his body reacted to certain stimuli instantly while his brain tried to catch up. His own hands shot out in two lightning-fast motions and caught the knives out of the air.
The woman just stared at him for a heartbeat. Kalan took the opportunity to kick the door closed behind him. If there was going to be a fight, the last thing he needed was some unwitting passerby trying to intervene. The sound of the door hitting home triggered the woman into action. Her hand shot toward her belt. Before her hand even closed on the grip of the weapon, Kalan had made the calculations on some level below consciousness. His arm was already in motion, the knife flying back toward its owner, where it intersected the arc her arm was traveling along. The tip of the knife slammed into the blaster so hard that it cracked the blaster’s housing and sent it tumbling from the woman’s grip. The woman looked from the blaster on the floor to Kalan’s face, her face waring between fury and disbelief.
“Who are you? Did he send you?” she demanded.
“I really don’t know who you’re talking about,” said Kalan.
It was the wrong thing to say. The woman didn’t reply, just came at him. He tossed the knife away. It wasn’t meant for close combat and would be more of a liability than an advantage. Besides, he didn’t want to kill her. He wouldn’t unless she made it impossible to do otherwise. Based on her murderous expression, though, it might come to that. Well, he had come to make a delivery. If he couldn’t deliver the data crystal, maybe he could deliver a message instead.