“As does the bottom line of Olympus Extraction State,” I added. It was pushing it, I knew, but I sort of hoped that I might be able to take a bit of the heat off of Q if I got Locke focused on me instead.
Or maybe I just liked being center of attention.
“Olympus Extraction State,” replied Locke piously, “employs tens of millions of ordinary people throughout the Commonwealth. I know it’s fashionable to imagine that the incorporate states are these”—they waved a hand—“vast, faceless evils that we honest working folks should rail against. But a corporation, a state, a fusion of the two, ismadeof people. When you hurt Olympus, you hurt those who work for Olympus. And those are ordinary employees like you and me.”
I was a bit surprised that Locke put themself in the same category they put me in. I’d always filed myself very much understaffand them very much undermanagement. “Olympus can swallow the loss of a bit of sperm,” I told them.
“And will it?” Locke arched an eyebrow. “Or will the costs of that wasted sperm”—yes, yes, I know, we both said the funny word, move on—“be passed down the chain until something breaks? A mine somewhere in the Hildas decides it can no longer justify a full-time safety inspector, and so an asteroid undergoes unscheduled disintegration and thirty miners are left spinning in the void where there is nobody like you”—they looked at Q here—“there to save them.”
“So she should have let him drown?” I replied. “Because if she doesn’t some asshole on Olympus Mons will let somebody else die to make up the loss?”
I’d seen a lot of terrifying things on the hunt by then. But I don’t think any of them were quite as terrifying as the way Locke nodded sharply, just once, and said, “Yes.”
Q, who was always more stoic than I was, gave a slight bow,said, “Intellego,” in a tone I thought was probably loaded, and left.
But me, I lingered in the doorway. “You know this is fucked, right?”
With their head tilted just a little to one side, Locke was eyeing me up in a way I profoundly didn’t like. Well, mostly didn’t like, I was eighty-twenty between indignation and a humiliation kink. “My understanding was that you were with the Church of Prosperity. Surely you’re familiar with the theoeconomics of the matter.”
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in,” I quoted. “Which we are taught means that the Father wishes us to prioritize the overall health of the economy over the selfish needs of individuals.”
Locke nodded. “I’m not personally religious, but I thought your church had rather a point on that one.”
“You want everybody on this ship to give their blood and their sweat to the skies in the name of incremental year-on-year economic growth?” I asked, more incredulously than I should have asked it since my own faith taught exactly that.
Pressing two fingers to their lips, Locke was silent a moment. Then they said, “I expect the crew of this ship to give their blood and sweat to the skies in the name of the personal profit they will reap from the voyage. Which will be substantial, even for the least of them, if we have good fortune and…”
I was pretty sure I knew where that thought was going to finish, and I was also pretty sure I wanted them to finish it. “Good fortune andwhat?”
“Sound leadership,” Locke finished.
“And you think”—I was stepping onto dangerous ground here, but Locke was on ground even more dangerous, if I understood them right—“we mightnothave sound leadership?”
The pause was gratifyingly long. “The captain is a woman of undeniable experience and proven capability. But it’s no secret that since the outset of this voyage she has demonstrated”—andhere Locke was giving me a worryingly pointed look—“questionable priorities.”
As one of those questionable priorities, I didn’t have much cause to be complaining. “Questionable how?”
The sheer look ofyou know and I know you knowon Locke’s face should have turned me inside out. I decided to go for the option that involved saying least about my sex life. “You think she’s too focused on revenge?”
One corner of Locke’s lip curled into a smile. “You think it’s revenge she’s after?”
Fuck, had I walked into a trap? “You don’t?”
“I think she’s after something much worse.”
Definitely a trap. I didn’tthinkthis counted as mutiny, or that I was saying anything that would come back to haunt either of us. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me what that is?”
“I think she’s after immortality.”
I didn’t need the subtext explained. I wasn’t the greatest theologian in the world, but I knew that there was only one kind of immortality that a ship’s captain could really achieve. And it was the kind that tended to take the ship with it.
CHAPTER
FORTY-TWOVirgin
I’m not sure quite when I decided I was going to try to bang Locke. I’d have said I was hedging my bets, but in a lot of ways it was the opposite. I was just making sure that if it did come down to them versus the captain, I was guaranteed to have been fucking the loser.
Of course, my mile-wide self-destructive streak also had a big part to play in it, but I think it was mostly for the challenge.
