Pleased I had at least some knowledge of doctrine, Thoreau nodded. “And you will be fed and watered well enough on the ship. As for the lay, the Father says that we owe our brother forgiveness to the tune of seventy times seven, so let us make it that.”
My shit mental arithmetic told me three things. That seventy times seven was 490. That 490 was alotbigger than 250. And that because of how division worked, a 490th of something was much less than a 250th of it.
“There,” Emerson said with worrying finality. “That settles—”
“I don’t think it does,” I interrupted. The ship had called to me, but I wasn’t quite sure it had called to me loudly enoughthat I’d sign on for barely more than half what I thought I was worth. “With my experience I’d be expecting something around”—fuck it, swing for the fences—“the two hundredth?”
Thoreau brayed with laughter. “The two hundredth? Mean you to beggar us? ’Twill be the four ninetieth or nothing.”
“Now, now.” Mr. Emerson seemed slightly more willing to negotiate, although I was beginning to feel uncomfortably like this was all part of a well-rehearsed grift. “We can offer her something a touch more generous than that, surely? After all, where her treasure is, there will her heart be also.”
“You pitch close to blasphemy, Emerson,” replied the irascible Mr. Thoreau. “As we husband our worldly wealth, so do we husband our wealth hereafter. If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” He frowned, deep and sour. “The four hundredth and no more, lest we prove ourselves unworthy stewards.”
Mr. Emerson appeared to quail before his partner’s weaponized scripture. “We may go, perhaps, to the three fiftieth without imperiling our soulstoomuch?”
“I’d take three fifty,” I said quickly, before Mr. Thoreau and the Father could team up to beat me down to three seventy-five. I felt a lot like I’d been scammed and, worse, like I might have scammed Q into the bargain.
“And a blessing it has been to do business with ye,” said Emerson. “Now, what about your strange friend here?”
“Ye adulteress,” intoned Thoreau. “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with the Father?”
“Two are better than one,” I replied reflexively, “because they have a good reward for their labor.”
That made Emerson snap out a sharp laugh. “She has ye there, I’ll swear she does.”
Not, perhaps, expecting to be out-scriptured by a wandering ship’s hand worth no more than the 350th lay, Mr. Thoreau gave a littlehrrumphand changed tack. “Even so, she’s a pagan look to her, and evil company corrupts good character.”
“Sheisa harpooner,” I reminded them. “And I’ve heard a good spear is hard to come by these days.”
I might have been projecting, but I thought I saw a gleam of avarice in Emerson’s eyes. The facts that Q was clearly an outsider, clearly spoke little Exodite, and potentially had useful skills must all have been adding up to profit in his pious, acquisitive mind. “And are you?” he asked Q. “A good spear, I mean?”
She nodded, once but deeply.
“Experienced?” asked Thoreau.
She nodded again.
“How?”
Giving a full resume would, I thought, involve more Exodite than Q had readily available and, when I saw her bending down into her bag, I assumed she was going to consult her idol for further instructions.
Instead she fished out the helmet of her environment suit. Unlike the rest of her gear it definitely wasn’t Terran, but then why would Terrans need them when the world made oxygen naturally?
“Watch.” She snapped the helmet into place and strode with more confidence than I could ever have mustered into the airlock connecting the office to the landing platform.
Emerson and Thoreau made their way over to a viewing window to see what exactly this strange heathen interloper was going to do. Q brought a hand to her neck and adjusted her suit to cast broad and local.
“Vides.” Her voice crackled over the office intercom, and she pointed high into the sky above the platform.
For a moment I couldn’t quite see what she was pointing at, but then I noticed that a small maintenance drone was zipping about between the topmost pylons. Having seen it, I quickly worked out what she was going to do and tried not to think about the nine or ten ways it could go wrong.
With an almost casual ease, she shouldered her coilgun, drew a bead on the swift-moving drone, and fired. An electrodynamicdart flew into the sky, its monofilament cable trailing behind it, and struck the unfortunate machine square in the jets. The instant it impacted, Q turned her wrist, set the gun to retrieval, and dart, drone, and debris all together reeled back into her waiting hands.
She returned with her prize and set it down on the desk between the two businessmen. Lying there in front of us, it was larger than it had seemed out the window, but it had still been an impressive shot by anybody’s standards. I’d have said fuck me, she was amazing, but she already had and already was.
“Precise work,” Thoreau admitted, rather grudgingly.
Emerson frowned and peered at his partner over his half rims. “Heathen or no, we have to take her.”
