“Kala, unseal the hatch please,” Kalan requested of the AI.

The hatch unlocked and swung open. Kalan exhaled a breath that he told himself wasn’t a sigh and stepped into the room. He swung the hatch shut behind him and the ship automatically locked it. The woman perched on the bed directed a bitter look at him. He gave her a bland look in return, which just seemed to annoy her more. He walked over and set the tray on the bed next to her, all but daring the woman to attack him. She tried it twice since he’d all but thrown her into the makeshift cell and had the ship disable every control in the quarters. Apparently, she’d decided that she’d lost enough fights to him because she didn’t try anything. He went to the only chair in the room and sat down. He started counting down from twelve hundred. He’d reasoned that countdown would take him between fifteen and twenty minutes, assuming he didn’t rush it too much. That should give the woman enough time to eat the meal he’d brought her.

She glared at him for about half a minute before she started eating. She didn’t hurry the eating, but she didn’t waste her time either. Kalan had only gotten down to five hundred by the time she finished. He stood and held out his hand for the tray. She stared at his hand briefly and then handed him the tray. He turned toward the hatch.

“What do you want from me?” she demanded.

He turned back to her and met her eyes. “Nothing. At least, nothing that keeping you in this room can’t accomplish.”

“We’re on a ship inside a wormhole. It’s not like there’s somewhere I can escape to. Where would I go? You don’t have to keep me locked up,” she said.

“We won’t always be in the wormhole. Besides, you could hurt members of my crew or try to create a hostage situation. You could damage the ship’s systems. You might even find a way to make the ship self-destruct. I find all of those possibilities unacceptable. So, you stay here,” answered Kalan, turning back toward the hatch.

“So, you’ll do what? Keep me locked in her forever? Push me out of an airlock?”

“Not unless you make me. I expect that I’ll leave you somewhere at some point,” he offered, fixing her with a look over his shoulder. “As long as you can contain your homicidal impulses until then.”

She shifted nervously under the intensity of his look, averting her own eyes. He wasn’t sure if she was actually nervous or just excelled at artifice. He wasn’t sure he cared all that much either.

“Anything else?” He asked.

The woman shook her head. He waited as the ship unlocked the hatch and it swung open before he looked away from her. He stepped back through the hatch. When he heard the lock re-engage behind him, he felt a small surge of relief. He didn’t enjoy being the woman’s captor. He disliked it so intensely that he hadn’t even bothered to try to get a name out of her. Not that he would have believed her if she had given him a name. He was running exceptionally low on trust ever since he’d learned how Tessan and Estra had used him. For their part, the husband and wife had only rarely strayed away from the cabin someone had assigned them, generally only coming out for food. He was relieved that they had the good sense to steer clear of him. There was an angry part of Kalan that still wanted to kill Tessan for the danger he’d put them all in with his lies. Yes, the less he saw of those two, the better it was for everyone.

He wished he could avoid the prisoner as easily. Yet, she needed to eat. He literally couldn’t send anyone else into that room with her. Fresia wasn’t even close to ready for that kind of challenge. Petronan might be up to the challenge psychologically, but Kalan thought that the man would lose in a one-on-one fight with the woman. That meant that he had to go to her cell three times a day with food. It was tedious and made even more tedious by his complete disinterest in speaking with her. It might be different if he thought she knew something useful, but he was certain she’d only reveal that information under some kind of coercion. He’d never had to torture someone before. He was quite comfortable with keeping that particular scorecard empty.

It wasn’t so much that he didn’t think he could make her talk. He knew more than enough about the human body to put her in so much pain that she’d tell him anything he wanted to know. On balance, though, he doubted he’d get any reliable information from her that way. His parents had always told him that torture was usually a dead end for getting useful intelligence. Plus, he simply didn’t want to do it. Knowing he could do it, if he had to, was very different from carrying it out. This was one situation where he didn’t have to do it. So, he chose not to do it. He just didn’t want that on his conscience, plain and simple.

It didn’t make sitting in that room with her any more bearable. Every minute trapped in that room was a minute where he couldn’t relax. He felt supremely certain that she’d notice if his attention slipped in the slightest. Then, she’d do everything she could to capitalize on it. Kala would probably keep the woman contained in that room, but it would still leave Fresia, Petronan, Em, and the ship at the mercy of whoever took control after him. He suspected it would be Estra and that she probably wouldn’t harm the crew. It was that probably that haunted him. She claimed that she and Tessan weren’t his enemies. He granted that he was mostly sure that much was true. It didn’t mean they were his friends, though. He certainly wasn’t ready to gamble everyone’s lives on a probably.

Those thrice-daily trips to the prisoner’s quarters also chewed into his training time with Fresia. He’d expected the burst of intense focus she’d displayed immediately after her brush with disaster on Hasen 5 to fade after they got back to Cobalt 7. It hadn’t. He could be using those wasted minutes with the prisoner on Fresia’s training. Still, there was simply no getting around it. He’d brought that woman aboard. She was his responsibility. Kalan didn’t always enjoy his responsibilities, but he carried them out. To do anything less wasn’t in him. He could still begrudge those responsibilities in his own head, even if he’d never voice them to anyone else. If he started complaining about doing things he didn’t like, he’d set a terrible example for Fresia and Petronan. Em, on the other hand, would just keep carrying out his duties and pepper sarcasm into every exchange. Oh, the robot would deny that he could engage in sarcasm, but Kalan thought that some programmer somewhere had snuck a sarcasm subroutine into the robot’s operating system.

“They’re probably looking up at me from one hell or another and laughing,” muttered Kalan as he entered the galley.

Fresia looked over at him but continued nibbling on a piece of some fruit. He nodded at her and dropped the used tray into the cleaning unit. He fixed himself a tray of food and joined Fresia at the table. She gave him a bright smile.

“How’s your new pet?” she asked with a gleam in her eye.

“Very funny,” he said. “You shouldn’t call her that.”

“I won’t call her that to her face.”

He frowned at her. “I’m not sure that really makes it any better. She’s a person.”

“A person you clearly don’t like very much. I’m on team captain, so I don’t like her either,” declared Fresia.

Kalan found himself oddly touched by Fresia’s spontaneous declaration of loyalty. Although, he was a little baffled by where it came from. He wondered when that had changed. He wondered if even Fresia could pin down the moment when she’d gone from thinking of him as her boss to thinking of him as someone who deserved that loyalty. He gave her a smile.

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“It’s much appreciated, Fresia,” he said as he examined his own thoughts. “You’re right. I don’t particularly care for her. Call it a byproduct of her trying to kill me. It’s not the most endearing behavior.”

“I should hope not,” said Fresia. “Did you at least get some useful nuggets out of her?”

Kalan shook his head. “I haven’t asked her anything. There’s no point. Even if she did answer, which I don’t think she would, there’s a good chance that she’d just be lying. Since I don’t care to try to sort the facts from the fiction, I just don’t talk to her.”

“At all? I mean, you’re in there three times a day. Seems like a wasted opportunity.”

“What would I ask her?”

Fresia thought about the question for a moment and then shrugged at him. “I don’t know. Figuring that out sounds like a captain problem to me.”

“So helpful, as always.”

She gave him another bright smile. “I do my best. Still, you should probably ask her something.”

“I’ll think about it. In the meantime, don’t you have reading to do?”

“I’ll have to do that later. Petronan says he needs to teach me something called calculus to solve one of the problems the computer gave me.”

Kalan suppressed a smile. Petronan had clearly undersold the mountain of work involved in learning calculus. He decided to let Petronan deal with shattering whatever illusion Fresia had about solving that problem in a hurry. Kalan did make a mental note to notch back Fresia’s reading assignments for a while. She was going to have plenty of hard work ahead of her without him piling on more. The right amount of pressure was good. It would help hone her sense of discipline. Too much pressure, though, would simply dull her.

“Well then,” he said, “I guess you better go see Petronan.”

He watched her go and wondered for at least the twentieth time if he should have left her back on Cobalt 7 before making this trip. He’d explained the situation to her and Petronan, as well as the likely and potential risks that he could foresee. They’d both volunteered to come anyway. Petronan had done military service. He understood what he’d signed on for well enough that Kalan could take his volunteering at face value. Fresia was so inexperienced that he wasn’t at all confident that she understood. Of course, the only remedy for that problem was getting hands-on experience with danger and, if necessary, violence. The level of risk was a lot higher than he’d have preferred for her so early on in her training. Still, he had to know what was on that crystal to figure out the right next move. That meant risking the unknown and everything that came with it.

When he arrived to bring the prisoner her evening meal, he’d been pondering Fresia’s recommendation that he ask the woman about something for the last several hours. Even if he didn’t gain any useful information, it was probably better than the tedium of his countdown. He paused as the hatch opened to make sure he could see the woman, then stepped through. She was leaning against the wall on the far side of the room, a pensive look on her face. She glanced over at him, made a halfhearted attempt at glaring, and then gave up on it. He set the tray of food on the bed and then turned to look at her. She did glare at him that time.

“You won’t even sit when I’m standing,” she demanded.

“Would you, if our situations were reversed?”

She opened her mouth to say something, paused, sighed, and shook her head. “I don’t expect I would.”

She walked over and sat on the bed. Kalan settled onto the chair and reflexively began counting down. He made himself stop and just looked at the woman. She settled the tray on her legs and started eating. He had not provided her with cutlery or food that would require it. She took a few bites of the sandwich. She didn’t appear to enjoy it and switched to the fruit. After a few bites of that, she just sat there, staring down at the food.

“Not to your liking?” Kalan asked.

Her eyes snapped up to his, a moment of shock passing across her face before she contained it. “It’s not the food.”

“The company?”

“The situation,” she said.

“All things considered, I think I’ve been a remarkably gracious,” he considered his next word with care, “jailer.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t call me a guest,” she said.

“Guests are a welcome presence,” he replied. “What possible reason could I have for welcoming you?”

She went very still. Kalan got the impression that she was thinking about attacking him again. She met his eyes, and he couldn’t tell what emotion was lurking in their depths. He wasn’t sure if that was a failing on his part or if the exact emotion was simply opaque to her as well.

“Just tell me what you want,” she demanded.

He cocked his head to one side. Kalan felt he’d been very clear on this point with her, on several occasions. He decided there was no harm in explaining it one last time.

“As I told you, repeatedly, I don’t want anything from you. I don’t want your master’s secrets,” he began.

“Mistress,” corrected the woman.

“Fine. I don’t want her secrets. I don’t care about your previous missions. I don’t care about your government. I don’t even particularly care about you, save that you keep making yourself an inconvenience for me. If I thought you’d stop doing that, I would let you go. It’s abundantly clear that you won’t stop, so I’ve done the only thing I can. I’ve contained you. Once I’ve decided what to do with the data and done it, I’ll leave you somewhere. Then, you won’t have any reason to bother me again. It’ll also mean that if I do see you again, I’ll know you’ve come to kill me for personal reasons. I’ll act accordingly, explain your death to the local authorities, and we’ll be done of each other.”

“You’re so damn sure you’ll kill me,” she shouted, knocking the tray off her legs. “You’re so arrogant!”

Kalan looked at the tray and spilled food for a moment. Then, he returned his gaze to her face.

“Am I?” he asked, his voice quiet, calm, and steady. “Am I really?”

“Yes! You come in here, perch on that chair like you think you’re some kind of prince. You can’t even be bothered to talk to me or even interrogate me. Like I’m not even worth the effort.”

“What would you like to talk about?” Asked Kalan.

“I,” the woman all but shouted and then spluttered to a stop. “What?”

“You said that you’re angry I didn’t talk to you. So, what would you like to talk about?”

Kalan watched with a somewhat academic interest as the woman’s mouth moved a few times without any words coming out. It reminded him a little of a fish in the water. He lifted an eyebrow at her.

“Well?” He asked.

The woman seemed to gather herself a little and fixed him with a suspicious look. “What kind of game is this?”

“Oh, for the gods’ sake,” he said, standing up from the chair. “I give up. You’re hateful when I’m silent, and now you’re hateful when I’m not.”

He walked toward the hatch.

“You’re a Warder Under the Night,” she said.

After a long few seconds of standing by the hatch, he retook his place on the chair. “No. I’m not a Warder Under the Night. I am just a freighter captain.”

“They trained you, though,” she said in a way that was half question and half statement.

“They did,” he admitted.

“They don’t take in outsiders. If they trained you, you’re one of them.”

Kalan wasn’t sure whether he wanted to reveal so much about himself to her, but it wasn’t a secret. “I’m an exile.”

The woman blinked rapidly, as though her mind had tripped over something and she needed to catch her mental balance. “An exile? I didn’t know they did that.”

“As a rule, they don’t. There were special circumstances. They showed me mercy if you want to see it that way. Or they did the cruelest thing imaginable if you look at it from a different angle. Either way, I’m not welcome among them. I can never go back.”

The woman sat there in a protracted silence before she spoke again. “Why this? With your training, any government would have hired you for nearly any price you asked.”

“To do what? Kill for them. Train killers for them. That would make me a Bloodhand,” he said, all but spitting the last word. “I built this life for myself, instead. I bought this ship. I hired this crew. I am responsible for them. You were very wise in confining your murder attempts to me.”

The woman went still as his implications settled on her. She gave him a thoughtful look.

“How did you end up in the middle of all of this?”

Kalan let out a bitter laugh. “I just took on the wrong cargo.”

She shook her head and said, “You’re serious. That’s really what happened?”

“That and I trusted the wrong people. I’m sure you can appreciate that in your role as an agent for the Ikaren government.”

She masked the surprise well, but he’d been watching for it. So, he saw the flicker of an expression on her face. She saw that he’d seen and gave him a dirty look.

“How?” She asked.

“Barus-ur. Only one part of space you could have learned that fighting style.”

“I thought you said you didn’t care about my government,” she accused.

Kalan stood again and gave her a smile. “I don’t. I was just curious if I’d worked it out right.”

He walked back to the hatch.

She called after him. “Aren’t you going to ask me anything?”

He looked back at her. “Sure. What’s your name?”

She hesitated before she said, “Temera.”