“So.”
Crash sniffed and scratched at the bandage on her arm, where someone had patched her up after she kicked the wall hard enough to make the soldier dragging her down the stairs stumble and send them both into a chaotic tumble that downed six men and left them all in a bleeding, groaning pile at the bottom of the stairwell.
“What did we learn?” Travis asked, after she pretended to ignore him.
“We learned that they are really, really good at lying.” The angry buzz in her head still hadn’t subsided, and every time she thought of the Rifter, she imagined herself putting the tweezers through his forehead.
“No,” Travis said, “we learned that kicking ourselves down the stairs ends up in seventeen stitches, your weapons confiscated, and a time-out.”
“I needed those tweezers.”
Travis watched her with his one good hazel eye showing zero amusement. “What I want to know, honestly, is how you survived to adulthood.”
“I had help,” Crash muttered.
“Clearly.” Travis continued to scowl at her. Finally, seeing he wasn’t going to get her to repent, he relented. “Did you at least get something useful from him?”
“Yeah,” Crash said reluctantly. “He can show us where Quad is.”
Travis immediately perked up. “How?”
“Liar needs a map,” Crash muttered.
“Crash…” Travis warned.
“One of the old ones Quad harvested from the pre-Fall databanks should work.”
“Those are basically useless with all the earthquakes,” Travis muttered.
“It’ll be enough to get his perjuring brain working on something other than fabricating falsehoods and blatant untruths in a civilized conversation.”
The Commandant was silent for so long that Crash had to stop picking at her stiches under the bandage and look up.
Travis’s hazel gaze was hard. “So what do you need? A shot of fentanyl or something? Peyote? Weed? Mushrooms? What?”
Crash frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean, I could slap you, but I don’t believe in hitting women.”
“I do,” Crash said. She squinted. “Well, I mean, women who deserve it.”
He raised a single brow.
“Not me. I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
“Dirks has a concussion and Faguel had to get treated for bruising to the balls.”
“They can do that?” For some reason, Crash had never thought they could do that.
“They were starting to swell enough that it was cutting off blood supply.”
“Oh.” Crash sniffed again, still unable to get the liar’s face out of her mind. She narrowed her eyes. “I want to talk to him again.”
“No. You’re done. Tell me what you figured out. Dude’s going overboard the moment we get to the ocean.”
Crash took a deep breath, then, consciously forcing herself to think of her pet octopus Pylon and not the liar’s smug face, said, “Killing the Pharaoh is a very bad idea. She’s sitting on what is essentially a world-ender—I’m not gonna try explaining that until we get Quad back and he can go over the science with you, just take my word for it—and you don’t want to find a way to kill her before you diffuse the problem.”
Travis grimaced. “That puts a wrench in things. What about Quad? You said this goon can show us where he is?”
“He says he can, but as we have clearly seen, Travis, the dishonorable perjurer is not trustworthy,” Crash said.
Travis gave her another long look that made her fidget. “What did he lie about?” he asked finally.
Crash laughed. “He lied about seeing the future where I convince Quad to run away with me to some other section of space where I die saving the universe from a galactic plague.”
Travis’s eye widened and he visibly paled.
Just remembering it agitated her again. “And here’s the thing, Travis. His glottis didn’t even twitch. That fucking psychopath.”
Travis held her gaze for another moment, then seemed to shake himself. Picking up his comm, he said, “Matthis, get a map and meet us in the cargo bay. This Rifter is going to be useful or he’s going for a swim.” He got to his feet, making the leather sofa creak. “You ready?”
Just the thought of going back out there and facing the man was driving tiny little bone shards through her mind. “On second thought, maybe I should go take a nap,” Crash said. “I still haven’t gotten much sleep.”
“Later,” Travis said. “We need to get Quad before something happens to the kid. I got a look at his face in the surveillance cameras after the Rifter wrecked the base. He’s scared, Crash. I think he’s out of his league with this guy.”
The idea of Quad being out of league with anyone made Crash snort. “He’s just trying to wear the guy down long enough so he can hang around and talk about how to make interstellar engines without getting a box of tampons thrown at him.”
Travis squinted at her. “Did Quad try to tell you how to make interstellar engines, Crash?”
She froze. “No.”
“I thought you hated lying.”
“I don’t!” Crash cried. Then, catching herself, she said, “I mean, I don’t lie. I do hate lying. It’s everywhere. It’s a plague. Liars should be shot.”
“What did Quad say about interstellar engines?”
“I don’t know, something about a trick he’d figured out about how to break the light barrier using a shunt that could be made from locally-harvested minerals if they were properly refined and recombined under the right heat and pressure. Or something. It was nonsense and I didn’t care.”
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Travis closed his eye, took what was clearly a steadying breath, and said, “Did you record it that time, at least?”
“Fuck no!” Crash cried. “I was literally sitting on the toilet, Travis. He was babbling about light waves and rare earth metals as I was literally dropping a turd as he talked. I didn’t care.”
“I’ve ordered you to switch on a recorder every time he shows up,” Travis growled. “Last time, you missed out on a weapon that could’ve dealt with this Pharaoh from our side of the Rift.”
Crash blinked, doing a double-take. “Ordered? I’m a civilian, Commandant.”
“In my country, which is currently under military rule, which means my rule, and you’ll do as you’re fucking told whenever it comes to Quad. Get me?”
Crash scoffed. “No I don’t ‘get’ you. Hell, the inflection in your words just now, Commandant, made you literally sound like you think you can tell me what to do. News flash: You can’t.”
Travis, growling, made a cutting gesture with his hand. “Never mind. I’ll just have one of the linguists you trained review what he said tomorrow, make sure you didn’t leave anything out.”
Crash blinked at him. It wasn’t just irritation in Travis’s voice, but…fury? “You…actually think you can tell me what to do.” It baffled her. Like a wombat thinking it could dictate to rocket scientists.
Travis narrowed his eye at her. “I’ve coddled you enough. We’re gonna get Quad back, and if you keep failing to do your one job, I’m going to have to find someone else who can.” He turned and started out of the room.
“Good luck with that!” Crash laughed at his back. “Quad only talks to me, or did you forget about that?”
“Maybe he only talks to you because he hasn’t been forced to find someone else,” Travis said, his voice like ice. “Get out here. I need you to translate to this fuck and grab some last-minute coordinates before I throw him over the edge.” Then he turned and left.
But Crash hesitated inside the Commandant’s room, the odd little twists in his speech nagging at her. Something about Travis’s words were setting off alarm bells, little warnings she’d overlooked before, but now laid completely bare in his irritation with her. Usually, Travis was the picture of controlled patience. Today, however, his tonal fluctuations weren’t quite right for someone in love, even angry…
Frowning a little, she began going back through her interactions with him in her mind, looking back over the tenseness, every little muscle twitch that seemed out of place, every single emphasis or enunciation or fluctuation that she had subconsciously noted as unnatural.
When she finished her analysis, she twitched like she’d been punched.
He’s just using me, she thought.
Very slowly, now, she did an even more thorough review, going back to the very first time she’d met Travis, how he’d offered to take her out on a date back before the government dissolved under the Alliance, how they’d drunk margaritas and bonded over his tragically missing dad and talked about Quad and the annoying way the kid hung around her like flies on shit and wouldn’t talk to anyone else despite how hard both she and the government at large had tried…
Then she hastily fast-forwarded to the moment he’d asked her about the patch, about whether or not she could date someone without an eye…
The words had been slightly off, the smile just a tiniest fraction fake, unnoticeable to the general public, something that Crash had written off in her enthusiasm to get in his pants.
No, she realized, stunned. Her mouth was open, drying out.
The guy chained to the engine block wasn’t the psychopath. Travis was.
And he’d been lying to her for twenty years and she hadn’t even noticed.
And now that she’d just finished training four replacements, she’d made it clear to him that she wasn’t as useful as he thought she was.
Then she thought of how Quad’s long distance interdimensional transporter had mysteriously gone missing and had trapped him just when he received an urgent communique from his brother back on his side of the wormhole saying they needed him the most, and how Travis had spent years trying to help him find it, all the while pumping the kid for information on what his transporter did, and what things like it did, and how the missing crystal core could be used in other things, too.
His tone and facial expressions had been off just the tiniest bit then, too. Barely detectible, not something Crash had ever thought twice about, but now looking back, she began to feel the cold chill of dread.
The most tensions, the most visible indicators had popped when Travis had idly talked to Quad about planet-killing weapons. Things like his Quadrino Ray, which Travis had convinced the kid to take off his wrist and now ‘stored’ for him on his own wrist.
She thought about how many times her fish tank had exploded, right when she was most enthralled and most focused in trying to piece together the language of an octopus…each time she had ignored something Quad had been trying to say to her because she was beginning to understand what her captive was saying to her. Because she’d been developing a language and not developing weapons.
“Oh my god,” she whispered down to Trebuchet.
Her Newcannon mastiff looked up at her and whined.
“He was lying the whole time,” she breathed. He’d been lying…and she’d missed it. It was breaking something inside her, shattering it, leaving her exposed, vulnerable, confused.
Trebuchet just watched her with those deep brown eyes, seemingly commiserating with her moment of total shock.
Very carefully, Crash reached down at took the puppy’s leash, still attached from whatever grunt had walked him last. Numb and dazed, she gingerly followed Travis out the door and into the main cargo bay of the spaceship.
The Rifter was there, still chained to the engine block, and he was the only one who noticed her enter the bay—everyone else was focused intently on Travis, who was barking orders. Very slowly, Crash wandered up to stand beside the Commandant, who was arguing with one of his pilots about the best way to ditch the Rifter over the edge once they gave them the coordinates they needed. The captain wanted to shoot him first, then have her crew use the forklift to avoid potential damage to the hatch, whereas Travis wanted to simply remove the bolts securing it in place, tilt the ship up, and let the engine drag the man out of the cargo bay, still alive. The way his facial muscles twitched when he said it, the look of a fox trying to pretend he was a hen, he would enjoy the experience, enjoy knowing he condemned his prisoner—who hadn’t done anything wrong—to a slow, terrifying death.
Crash swallowed hard, for the first time realizing that Travis was really, actually serious about murdering the Rifter. She watched Khayu watching Travis, a quizzical look on his face, clearly having no idea they were discussing his death.
“Travis?” Crash asked.
“Not now,” Travis said. To the pilot, he finally snapped, “It’s my ship, just do it. If it causes a problem with the airlock, we’ll just get Quad to fix it.”
“Yes, Commandant,” the woman said, bowing and looking cowed. “Just give me the signal when you’re ready, sir. I’ll be at the helm.” She bowed again, gave Crash an apologetic look, and turned and walked out.
Travis turned back, the twitch of an amused smile on his face—which immediately shifted to darkness when he realized Trebuchet now stood beside Crash in the cargo bay. “What the fuck are you doing, Crash?” he demanded. “I told you your mutt stays in your room when you’re working.”
Now that Crash was paying attention, every glint of his eyes, every muscle twitch, everything he said rang false. Even his smile was fake.
“Travis?” Crash said slowly. “Those threats you keep making about my fish tank… You actually blew it up those other times, didn’t you? It wasn’t the octopus or the light array or an earthquake. You did it.”
Travis rolled his eyes. “Jesus. Okay. Yes. I killed your octopus. All of them. You get too obsessed with those things and you were ignoring what was important.”
Crash’s eyes fell to the bracelet on Travis’s wrist. “Like the Quadrino Ray?”
“Yeah, like the Quadrino Ray.” He sounded distracted, going back to signing off documents his aides were bringing him, only half paying attention.
“Are you a psychopath, Travis?”
Travis stopped, frowning. “Why are you asking?”
“No reason,” Crash said, still feeling dazed, her gut sinking at the way he didn’t deny it. “I think I need more sleep.”
“Yeah, well, not now.” Travis shoved the last clipboard aside and brought a comm to his face. “Matthis! Where the hell are you with that map?! We need to get this guy’s intel before we shove him over the edge.” He started wandering towards the exit, yelling about not giving a shit about air speeds.
As Travis was busy with his assistant, Crash turned to the man tied to the engine block. “You’re not a psychopath, are you?” she asked softly.
“I try not to be,” the Rifter replied. “My duties often makes that difficult, though.” He was watching the goings-on in the cargo bay with extreme interest, but clearly didn’t understand what was being said.
“Can you really break out of your bonds?” Crash asked.
“I’m reasonably sure.”
“And the suppressor?”
He gave her a wary look. “Why are you asking?”
“They’re about to kill you,” Crash said. “And I think me and Trebuchet too.”