Chandler’s Reach, Sixteen Kilometers Below
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.2.16 Interstellar
After another half hour of ensuring there weren’t any pirates lurking in the depths around Chandler’s Reach, the captain stood the crew down from battle stations, and Janus returned to Damage Control Central.
There was no sign of Fury. Mick was still at his security station, and the Hunter turned around, throwing an arm over the back of his seat. “Heard we busted a couple of pirates,” he said nonchalantly.
“It’s more like we put them down,” Janus said, still not feeling right about it. “They didn’t even get a shot off. I’m not even sure they were pirates.”
“Any other reason you can think of for a pair of subs to lurk on a known pirate route?”
“No,” Janus admitted. “And they behaved like they were going to attack us. If they’d been out pirate hunting, they should have revealed themselves as soon as they detected the Chapo and the Deep Rider, or at least hidden until we passed by.”
Mick got a pensive look to him. “I think I know what you’re thinking, though. See, back on Irkalla, when we were route clearing, it was always a bit of a fair fight, you know? I mean, most of the time, the Hunters win, but sometimes the triliths would be just a bit faster or come in numbers. But on Krandermore, there was this one time a group of clanless bandits stole from a research camp, and the ranger unit I was with caught up to them. It was raining, as always, and they didn’t hear us coming. Took them all down at once with synchronized shots.”
“Why didn’t you try to capture them?” Janus asked.
Mick shrugged. “Dunno. Clan law, I guess. Didn’t think about it until later. I don’t think we owed them a fair fight or anything.”
Janus nodded. He’d generally prefer not to fight at all, but he agreed that, on those occasions he’d had to fight, he’d have liked to stack things a bit more in his favor.
It didn’t feel like the same thing here, though. The two submarines had acted in a way that made their ill intentions all but certain, but he had no insight into the degree of their criminality. Were they murderous savages? Were they starving exiles? Would they have taken everything they could carry, including people, or were they just looking for a few spare air filters?
It was the uncertainty about the degree of their crime that bothered Janus, both its motives and the proportionality of the captain’s response. Part of him reflexively thought back to the first time Ivan had hit him, during the collapse of Prometheus Dome. The reaction might have been justified, with an emphasis on the might, but at the time, he hadn’t understood why he was being struck.
Maybe what the captain had done was the normal way of dealing with unknown contacts acting suspiciously near Chandler’s Reach, a long-established practice of submarine captains and sanctioned by the Consensus as the proper way to deal with pirates. Maybe the men and women on those ships had gotten underway knowing this might be the outcome, but it struck Janus as cold for a society that would have locked Red Donnika up for decades rather than harm her, and besides, the captain had been far too eager.
“What’s wrong?” Lee asked, coming up from the second deck to relieve him at the end of his shift.
Janus was about to reply when the captain appeared in the doorway to DCC.
The captain nodded politely to Lee, then said, “Mr. Invarian, when you’re done handing over the watch, please come to my stateroom. It’s time we talked.”
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***
Janus straightened his coveralls and checked himself for lint or stains before knocking on the captain’s door.
“Enter,” the Apostate said, and Janus opened the door and stepped inside.
The space was compact but palatial for a submarine, about the same size as the bunkroom Janus shared with two people, a child, and a jungle dragon. There was no bed that Janus could see, although there was something that might be a foldaway strapped to the bulkhead.
The captain was seated by the room’s small desk and had already started his meal. He wiped his mouth roughly and turned to face Janus. The room smelled richly of fish, butter, and herbs. Janus had only tasted the dairy-based spread as a celebratory gift from Ivan after he’d been officially recognized as an aspirant. It made his mouth water, although he knew that, in practice, he preferred margarine.
“Would you like some?” the captain asked, gesturing to the plate.
Janus recognized whitefish steak, mussels, and something with tentacles, although the species weren’t anything he’d experienced on the surface. It was clearly better fare than what the crew ate. “No, thank you, captain. You wanted to talk?”
“Yes,” the captain said, looking Janus over for several uncomfortable moments. “I like you, Invarian. I thought the reports on you might be the product of young Nikandros’s propaganda mill, but you appear to be the genuine article.”
“Why do you call him that?” Janus asked.
“Young Nikandros?” the captain asked with a grin. “Because it annoys him, and he has a habit of listening to conversations that weren’t meant for his ears.” He reached over with a webbed hand and flicked a switch on the desk. The door behind Janus clanked, and he lost his connection to the ship’s net. “Privacy,” the Apostate explained. “A captain’s privilege.”
Janus swallowed. He wasn’t enamored with the idea of being locked in with one of Dr. Jahangir’s creations.
“You didn’t like what I did to those pirates,” the captain stated, as if he’d read Janus’s mind. “You think I was too brutal and that I enjoyed it too much.”
“Didn’t you?” Janus said, slightly raising his chin.
The captain chuckled. “You’ve got a brass set on you. I’ll give you that. Of course, I enjoyed it, Janus. To match wits against another captain—another sentient being—and defeat them in a game of the highest stakes is one of the greatest pleasures someone like me can enjoy. And yes, I am both a mutant and a monster. A Standard human’s anger has to be triggered, a reaction to stimuli. Mine only needs to be released.”
Janus felt his revulsion grow with every word.
“But that’s not why I did it.”
“Why, then?” Janus said, his throat tight.
“Come now, Janus. Be exceptional. I just told you my aggression mechanism is different than yours. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed. I am always moments from a murderous rage, and yet I control myself. A hundred years in the survivalists’ prison taught me restraint.”
He must be referring to the Deeps, Janus thought. It was the place criminals were sent, the place they were supposed to take Matthias on the way to the Core. If the Apostate had spent a century there, he might reasonably avoid behavior that would send him back. “Is that how all captains treat pirates?”
“No,” the captain said, leaning back and hooking one arm over the back of the chair. “This is the Consensus, not a unanimous view. There are as many ways of dealing with pirates as there are captains. How many times did you almost die during the Trials?”
“Which ones?”
The captain gave him a gentle shrug. “Let’s say all of them. It’s only been two years since you were a mechanic on Irkalla.”
Janus did his best to count. There had been the triliths outside of Mercuria, and the gangs inside of Mercuria. There had been rogue nanites in Beta Station, more triliths, and then a giant trilith. Then, radiation poisoning so bad he and the others had been vomiting blood. The compartmentalists had tried to kill them, and they’d lived on a planet where everything had tried to kill them. “Call it two dozen times.”
The captain nodded. “And what do you think your odds were, each time, even taking into account that you are exceptional?”
“I would say a hundred percent, but that’s probably not the answer you were looking for.”
The captain gave Janus a wry grin for his attempt at humor, and he patted the side of his own leg in a half-clap. “Fortunately, my data is better than yours. An Irkallan aspirant of your generation has a ninety-seven point eight-seven percent chance of survival, and on Krandermore, that chance is ninety-seven point two-two percent. Those are good odds, Janus. If nothing else ever happened to you, you’d have a one percent chance to live to see… one hundred and eighty-eight. That’s almost as old as Nikandros! Well done!”
Janus swallowed.
“What I did, back there, was make the survivor’s choice. I left nothing to chance, not even a sliver, because over a thousand years, the margin of error becomes very slim. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Janus said. It was an inhuman and frightening position to take, but he understood it. “If that’s the case, why are you eating shellfish, and why did we find you in the worst bar in the Reef, pickled in wine and blood?”
The captain bared his teeth. “Number one cause of death among immortals, Janus.”
“Poisoning?”
“Boredom,” the captain said.