Ben stood and retreated to the back of the room.
“Ben?” Copta asked, her voice low.
“We aren’t supposed to talk about the SC ships,” Ben said. “That’s pretty much the first rule of serving with them. However, I can tell you that Command and SC are not always on the same page.”
“You mean SC might help us get Jacqs and Zeke?” Allie asked. “No offense, but that’s a far dumber idea than Shank’s whole ‘let’s get the pirate families involved’ plan.”
“Gee, thanks,” Shank said drily.
“Um, sorry?” Allie cringed. That came out far harsher than she’d intended.
“I doubt they’d help us,” Ben said, “but I’m not sure they’d go out of their way to stop us, and I know they don’t give a shit about the pirates stealing from each other.”
“Really?” Shank sounded pretty skeptical.
“Really,” Ben said firmly. “We had standing orders whenever we were station-bound. We’d dress in mercenary getups, and then see what we could see. If the situation was illegal, we didn’t automatically get involved or even report it. Level one meant illegal activities that didn’t cause harm being perpetrated by someone who wasn’t of interest. If guys were running illegal gambling games or selling crap without tax stamps, we were under orders to ignore it.”
“The government? The government ignores tax laws?” Shank’s laugh was far ruder than anything Allie had ever heard out of him. “Trust me. The government loves their taxes more than their people. The only family members I have in jail are there because they got arrested on tax violations.”
“Arrested by Command ships,” Ben said with a lot of confidence. “SC ships wouldn’t get involved. Well, not unless they decided that the person doing the illegal activity was interesting enough to be valuable.”
“Is that a level two activity?” Allie said, making a guess.
Ben nodded. “Yeah. That kind of information got funneled back to SC Central. They track fucking everything.” He cringed as he looked first at Becca and then Copta. “Sorry about the language.”
“At least you apologize after. Besides, after five months on theCandiru, I heard way worse, sometimes from her.” She gave Allie an impish grin.
“Hey! I resemble that remark,” Allie complained, but she smiled back. Becca had been nearly invisible lately, so it was nice to see that quiet humor slipping back into place. “What does the SC do with this information?”
“The SC treats Nicve marines as their bodyguards. We were never really let into the inner sanctum, if you know what I mean. But most of us figured they had a good blackmail system going. If we had a mission and we needed something, we had some pretty unlikely allies show up.” Ben gave Shank a long and careful look. “We had family ships run interference for us more than once. I’m not sure they’d do that if they weren’t being blackmailed.”
“I know they wouldn’t. You people are blackmailing the family?” Shank punctuated that with some foreign curses.
Ben rolled his eyes. It was a strange gesture for a man who had to be six foot tall with shoulders wider than most professional athletes. “First, I’m officially an ex-marine who once trained on Nicve; I’m not really a Nicve marine anymore. Second, the marines did not call the shots on the SC ships, and third, I didn’t personally do anything.”
Shank blushed.
“But after saying all that, yeah, I do think they blackmailed the family. But I’m sure that a lot of pirates avoided jail by playing nice with the SC, so it’s a mutual thing.”
“Right, because everyone loves to get manipulated and threatened.” Shank went to the chair Ben had abandoned and sat down. “I’m tempted to go ask my mother right now if she’s been blackmailed, only I think I’ve had enough rejection and insults for the day. And by the way, if anyone is blackmailing my mother, I’m going to pray for their soul, because sooner or later, she will eat it with a side of strawberry jam.”
Ben cleared his throat. “I’ll keep that in mind if I ever get it in my head to try. But honestly, the SC asked us to focus on the major crimes—rape, murder, human trafficking, and terrorism. Those were the crimes we needed to hunt down. And let me tell you, I preferred it when we were assigned to the front because what people do to each other is far more disgusting than any battlefield.”
Becca traced figures onto the tabletop with a finger. “If they don’t care about Command, maybe they would help us.” She looked around hopefully.
Allie was still trying to figure out a polite way of calling Becca insane when Shank spoke. “I’m a huge fan of stupid and dangerous plans, and even I think that’s a recipe for disaster. If the government is publicly saying they can’t rescue the guys, I don’t think Command or SC will contradict them.”
Allie nodded. “Yeah, and if they help us, the bats might accuse them of breaking the treaty, whereas if we go running in there, we’re just five crazy people, not the representatives of human government in this part of space. I like Zeke and Jacqs, but I’d rather not restart the war.”
“That would be bad,” Becca agreed in the understatement of the century.
“It’d be worse if they decided to come at us with guns blazing,” Ben warned. “We have to be careful of the SC, but I don’t think we should panic.”
“Does it matter?” Copta asked.
Everyone gave her an odd look.
“Does it matter if they agree with us, or if they shoot at us?” Copta clarified. Again, no one seemed to have an answer, and she shook her head. “We need a ship, and the only ship we can steal is on a station with SC personnel. That’s our only plan. If we only have one plan, it does not matter if that plan is good or bad because there is no choice.”
