Chapter Twenty-Five
Allie stood behindShank as the man came into the ship. He had one hand on Ben’s shoulder, and he held his other hand out, palm showing as if he were surrendering. The surrender thing worked better without a hostage.
“No weapons, just as promised,” he said.
“He’s SC,” Ben said. The stranger had cuffed Ben, and it looked wrong to see Ben unable to defend himself. “There are more SC out there. I’m sorry. I thought I could keep them off your tail.”
The man came all the way into the corridor and let the door fall shut behind him. That gave them privacy, and it also meant he would have a hell of a time getting back out. He would have to turn around to work the latch while at the same time keeping control of Ben as his prisoner.
“Don’t worry about it,” Shank said. His gun was pointed right at this new man, which meant it was pointed at Ben.
Allie had her stunner aimed at them, and she figured she might have to actually fire. Ben would catch most of her blast, but if he collapsed, that might leave the SC guard vulnerable to a second shot from Shank, and that one would be lethal.Damn it. Allie knew they shouldn’t have split up. The others could talk about accepting reality, but she refused to lose another friend. She glanced back to check that Becca had their rear. Becca was stark white, and Allie had no faith that she would be able to hit anything. Copta had the prisoners under guard in the storage rooms in the back of the service area, but it didn’t matter. The corridor wasn’t large enough for anyone else.
“Worrying wouldn’t do much good at this point anyway,” Ben told Shank calmly.
“We just need to talk,” the SC guy said. “There is some concern that you might restart a war that could cost millions of lives.”
“We’re the ones who saved the bat ambassador and made the treaty possible, so we’re not likely to undo that work,” Allie said. “We lost friends to that fight, and if the treaty fails, then they died for nothing.”
“I don’t know how much you know about bat psychology, but they will not understand a group of Command soldiers going rogue. They are not capable of breaking away from their units like that, especially not as adults.”
Shank chuckled. “It’s just like the government to assume that everyone else is an idiot. I understand bat psychology quite well. I’ve known three, including the ambassador. I spent quite a bit of time with a bat trader, and I’m guessing that puts me exactly three bats ahead of you in terms of interspecies diplomacy.”
The SC man stood silent for a second. He still had one hand raised in surrender and the other on Ben’s shoulder, keeping Ben in place. Allie wasn’t buying the whole “I’m unarmed” argument either. If this guy was truly unarmed, Ben would have taken him out with a good swift kick. If this guy could keep control of Ben, a fucking Nicve marine, then he had a weapon—probably a damn big one.
“You surprise me. We didn’t have that information. Was this on your mother’s ship?”
“Okay, that’s petty,” Allie interrupted before Shank could answer. “You’re trying to show that you know who we are. Of course you know. We were on the crew manifest for theCandiru, so it would only take a comm message for you to get our personnel files. Let’s skip the games. We want Ben back, and you don’t want us to restart the war. That sounds like a good place to start since you don’t need Ben, and we don’t want another war any more than you do.”
“But you’re flying into bat territory after your lost crew.”
“That’s one of those nonnegotiables,” Allie said firmly. “Command had no right to leave any of those people there, and I’ll evacuate them all if I can. If Command had done their jobs and gotten that damn transport ship to show up when it was supposed to, all the miners and all our crew would be in human space. Instead, that damn captain played at having engine trouble.” Allie snorted. There was no way she was buying that story. On the one day with an actual emergency requiring the use of a transport ship, the transport ship just happened to be broken.Right.
“I don’t disagree,” the SC guy said slowly. “I’m just saying that your crew sacrificed themselves to save people, and if you restart this war, they won’t thank you.”
“We know that,” Shank said. “We aren’t going in there as Command soldiers. I don’t know if you realize this, but bats are insanely loyal to their crews. They will die with them rather than go on alone.”
“I do know that. The SC has logged more direct contact than any other military unit.”
“Then know that the bats are probably expecting us. If we don’t show up, they’re going to take that as one more piece of proof that humans are coldhearted bastards who don’t have the psychology to understand loyalty.”
“You can’t know—”
