Drifters' Alliance, Book 3, Page 2

  He’s furious, for about ten seconds. Ten long seconds where I wonder if his next move will be to try and choke the life out of me. But then slowly, his ire turns to confusion and then finally embarrassment. In the end, he smiles and starts to laugh too.

  He shrugs. “What can I say? I like fritters.”

  I fall back on the bed, still laughing, holding my stomach so it won’t jiggle so damn much. I’m starting to feel sick.

  He lies back with me, and we both stare at the ceiling of his room. When I can finally speak without spitting out laughter, I turn my head to face him.

  “If you want a fritter that bad, I’ll get you a damn fritter.”

  He doesn’t look at me. “I don’t want a damn fritter. I told you … I want a fucking fritter.”

  “Adelle!” I shout, looking up at the ceiling again.

  “Yes, Captain. What may I do for you?”

  “Please inform Jeffers that I need a fucking fritter prepared, on the double.”

  “I am sorry, Captain, but I do not know what a fucking fritter is. Could you explain?”

  Macon snorts.

  “Just tell him what I said. He’ll understand.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Oh, and Adelle?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me there was an explosive device affixed under my ship?”

  “I was not aware that there was anything affixed to the ship. You did not instruct me to do a sweep, Captain. Shall I do one now?”

  I press my fingers onto the bridge of my nose. It’s not like I can punch my compubot or anything, so managing the headache she gives me with acupressure points is my only option. “Yes, Adelle. Do that. And also do a sweep for any listening devices or other monitoring technologies that might be located in or on the ship.”

  “Yes, Captain. I approximate that this sweep will take seven minutes at a minimum and will require two percent of our operational resources.”

  “Fine. Approved.”

  “You think someone bugged the ship?” Macon asks.

  “I know someone bugged the ship. Those assholes on the DS Mekanika for one. Probably your buddy Tremblay, too.”

  “He’s not my buddy.” There’s enough disgust in Macon’s voice that I believe him.

  I glance at Macon again. “Then who is he? Why were you hanging out with him?”

  “I wasn’t.” Macon sighs loudly. “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong time.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Why should I?” He finally turns his head to look at me.

  “Because we were friends once.”

  “Doesn’t matter now.”

  “Because I’m giving you a fucking fritter, then.”

  He stares at me for a long time before answering. “One fritter isn’t going to make up for what happened.”

  “It’s a start, though, right?” I bite my lip as I wait for his answer. I really don’t want to lose him a second time.

  “Being your friend is bad for my health, Cass.”

  “Then? Or now?”

  “Then and now.” He goes back to staring at the ceiling.

  I’m about to press him for more details, but Adelle’s voice interrupts me.

  “Captain, your presence is being requested in the engine room.”

  “Can it wait?” I ask.

  “It does not appear so.”

  I sigh, looking at my friend as I get to my feet. “We’ll continue this conversation later.”

  “Goodie.”

  “Go eat your fucking fritter, would you? You’re too skinny.” I turn around to leave, not expecting to hear anything else from him. I’m at the top of the stairs opening the door when he sends off his parting shot.

  “I missed you, Cass. For three years I wanted to kill you, but I missed you too.”

  My heart feels like it’s going to explode with happiness. “Me too.” I leave without looking back.

  Chapter Three

  AS I APPROACH THE PORTAL, a wrench hits its window and drops to the floor with a clang. I hear the sounds of muted yelling beyond.

  Pressing my hand on the keypad, I lean in close to the comm box. “What the hell is going on in there?!”

  “He’s going berserk!” one of the twins yells.

  I assume it’s Gus losing his shit, angry over the idea that the ladies of the Osiris are going to turn him down at the meet and greet because of his freckles. I seem to recall he was particularly worried about his inability to drift in the Dark for too long without female company.

  “Open the door, Adelle.”

  “I do not advise you to enter, Captain. The biorhythms inside the engine room indicate a lack of reason.”

  “Thanks for the heads up.” Another tool hits the window, making me jerk my head back in surprise. “Open up anyway.”

  The door slides open, and my hand flies up without me even thinking about it to snatch the next projectile out of the air. It’s a hammer, and its claw might have embedded itself into my forehead if my reflexes hadn’t been so finely honed from all the practice they’ve been put through.

  “What the hell is going on in here?!” I fling the hammer at the worktable and it bounces off, landing on the floor with a crash.

  One of the gingers is standing in the middle of the workspace, facing toward the first in a row of server and circuit walls. His head jerks toward me and then goes back to staring into the dark spaces holding our ship’s most important parts. He projects his voice into the shadows.

  “Oh! Hey, Captain! What’re you doing here? Captain in the engine room! Standing right here!”

  Gus. It surprises me to learn that it’s Tam losing his shit in here.

  “Tam!” I scream, louder than I mean to. The sound of machinery working in here is almost deafening for someone not used to it.

  Things go still for a few moments, the banging around I was hearing pauses. But then it starts up again along with a roar. “Arrrraahhhh!”

  Gus runs to the end of the first row of equipment and then ducks as a piece of metal comes flying at his face. Its sharp end embeds itself into the wall behind him, and Gus’s eyes go wide when he turns around and realizes how close he came to getting his gray matter speared.

  I stride over, shoving him out of the way.

  Instead of falling to the side, Gus grabs me by the arm and tries to drag me back. “No! Don’t go back there! That’s engineers only! It’s a restricted area!”

  I shove him off me, sending him flying into the worktable, which knocks parts all over the floor. I’m furious not only at the damage being done here, but the gall of this guy telling me I can’t go somewhere on my ship.

  “Nothing is restricted to me here! Nothing, you hear me?!”

  I turn back toward the walls of equipment, to face the crazy ginger twin who’s obviously lost his mind somewhere in the belly of the beast. This is the worst place in the world for this to happen, and he knows it. I’m so furious, I swear, I’m going to knock him out when I get to him.

  I catch just a glimpse of him as he disappears around a corner. He’s moving pretty damn fast for a guy who was dead less than a day ago.

  “Get back here, Tam!” I’m hoping he’ll hear me over the sound of all the machines working in here. “I need to talk to you!”

  “Just leave him alone!” Gus grunts out, trying to stand amidst the chaos he crashed into. “He’ll be fine in a little while. He just needs some time …”

  “Screw that.” I take off at a light jog, hopping over parts that shouldn’t be on the floor. “Tam! Stop running!” I reach the corner and hesitate. “And don’t you dare throw anything at me, or I’m going to make you eat it when I finally catch you.”

  There’s no response and no sounds of crashing equipment anywhere close by, so I continue on after taking a quick look to verify it’s safe. The next aisle is empty, save for more bits of metal on the floor.

  “Adelle!” I’m already breathless. I
think it’s adrenaline making me feel like I’m about to run out of oxygen, though, and not my fitness level. Except for the panic making my chest heave, I feel like I could run fifty kilometers. Thank the scarciossis chamber for that. Who knew I’d need the extra boost of new bone strength to tackle one of my engineers?

  “Yes, Captain.” Her voice is everywhere in here.

  I climb over a large piece of equipment I can’t identify, abandoned right in the middle of the aisle. “Where is Tam?”

  “Tam is behind you, Captain.”

  I stop in my tracks and spin around with my fists up, expecting to be delivering a knockout punch that’ll save my life.

  Except … there’s no one there. Just equipment — hot, stinking, and blinking lights like it always does.

  “No, Adelle, that’s Gus back there. Where’s Tam?”

  “Tam is behind you, Captain.”

  My fists lower to my sides. “Okay, Adelle … then where is Gus?”

  “Gus is behind you, Captain.”

  My head drops to my chest. “Adelle. I really, really hate you sometimes. Did you know that? And just in case you were wondering, now is one of those times.”

  “I am sorry, Captain. Have I done something to displease you?”

  “Yes, you have. You’re telling me both of the twins are behind me, when I just saw one of them running ahead of me. So, unless this engine room is one big circle, which I’m pretty sure it isn’t, then you’re not being truthful. Or at the very least, you’re confused. Either way, it makes me hate you, because if you were a human, you’d have an excuse for your failures, and I’d have reason to feel forgiving. But you’re not, so I can’t, and I don’t.”

  “I understand your logic, Captain, but the mistake is not mine.”

  “Well, whose is it, then?”

  “It is yours, Captain.”

  I stand there listening to the engine’s computers whirring and the mechanical clanking and hissing of parts sliding together as they do the engineers’ bidding. But for the life of me, even though nothing else is intruding on my thought process, I cannot figure out how she could possibly be correct.

  “I don’t get it, Adelle. Please explain to me how the twins can be ahead of me and behind me and also both behind me at the same time.”

  “The crewmember you saw running ahead of you, who remains ahead of you crouched down behind wall seven, space six, is the shadow-self of the human formerly known as Tam. Tam’s twin brother Gus, the host of Tam’s true consciousness and himself a fully functioning human, is behind you. That, Captain, is how the twins, as you call them, can be both ahead of you and behind you simultaneously.”

  My hands and feet go numb as the reality of what she’s saying settles in. My whisper is high and almost not there. “Holy mother of all freaks of nature …” The lack of feeling in my feet causes me to stumble, and I fall backward slightly, banging my shoulder and back into a bank of servers. Alarms blare out at me until I get off them by righting myself.

  Footsteps come from around the corner behind me, and Gus shows up. He opens his mouth to say something, but I stop him completely with a punch to the nose. I rest in a fighter’s stance, staying light on my toes with my hands up, ready for anything. This can’t be happening! This can’t be happening! They’re not real! Shadowing is not real!

  His head snaps back and he stumbles, while his hands fly up to protect his face from further abuse. Blood comes out from behind his fingers as he finds his feet and stares at me, fear in his eyes.

  “Get back to the front of the engine room,” I growl at him, lowering my hands a little so he can see my eyes, understand that I mean what I say.

  “What the hell, Captain! I mean heck. What the heck? Why’d you hit me?” He sounds like he’s going to cry.

  I point to a spot over his shoulder, leaning toward him enough that he draws away with fear in his eyes. “Get back to the front of the engine room and wait for me there. Don’t leave, don’t fucking call anyone, and don’t under any circumstances do anything to affect that shadow-beast back there.” I jerk my thumb behind me before putting my fists up together again. I am so ready to knock his stupid ginger ass out.

  Gus’s face falls. “Shadow-beast? He’s not a shadow-beast. He’s my brother.”

  “My ass, he’s your brother. He’s a monster, and you know it.” I don’t know what the hell is really going on here, but if Adelle is right, and Tam really is what she says he is, we are in a shitload of trouble.

  I leave Gus there, promising myself that if he doesn’t follow my orders to the letter and bring his stupid ass to the front of the engine room, I’m going to float him and his science experiment gone wrong without a single regret.

  Chapter Four

  I FIND THE IMPOSTER EXACTLY where Adelle said I would, crouched in a niche of wall seven at space six. He looks smaller when he’s balled up the way he is, making it even easier to not recognize him as Tam anymore.

  I want to kick this alleged non-human until he keels over dead, but I don’t. I stand a meter away, legs apart, ready for anything. If he so much as looks at me funny, I’m going to cut his head off.

  “Get up.” I recognize my tone and cringe a little inside. There’s too much Drake in me. Too much, too much, too much. This whole thing is too much.

  He doesn’t move.

  “I said, get up.” I take in a deep breath and let it out, trying to bring my temper and fear down a few notches. I need to be rational and reasonable. If handled incorrectly, this situation could turn the entire crew into a mob of angry people. Please don’t let there be a whole crew of shadow-beasts on here! I nearly laugh out loud at myself then. What am I thinking? Shadowing isn’t real. It’s just stories told in the dark to get people riled up. But something weird is going on here, and until I know what it is, I’m not letting my guard down.

  “You’re going to kill me.” He’s afraid. I take that as a very good sign.

  “Yeah. Maybe. For sure I will if you don’t do what I tell you to do.” Five seconds, Shadow or whatever you are. You have five seconds to get up or I will stab you in the neck.

  He lifts his head and stares at me with the saddest expression. “I’m not a shadow-beast. I’m human. As human as you, but with my consciousness uploaded as a copy and the original stored elsewhere.”

  That just pisses me off. Even if he’s only deluded, it’s like Adelle telling me she’s a person. “No, shadows are not human.” I nudge him with my toe. “Get up right now or you’re going to say goodbye to your consciousness copy or whatever it is you think you have in that head of yours.”

  He slowly unwraps himself and gets to his feet. He stands slouched over, his head nearly to his chest. “I’m up. Now what?”

  I’m not sure I believe I’m standing here looking at a real, live shadow. Like everyone I’ve ever known, I thought those things were only beasts of myth and legend, tales imagined and spread by outlaw scientists in the Far Reaches to keep the OSG centralized and motivated to remain that way. We all have our bogeymen, even the OSG.

  I motion with the knife I’ve pulled from my thigh holster. “Move.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not we, you. I’m moving you to the brig where you will remain until I figure out what the hell I’m going to do with you.” He’s either crazy off the range, or some kind of science experiment. Regardless, I don’t want that nonsense around my engine room. It makes me shiver to think how long he’s been in here messing around already.

  He trudges ahead of me, but doesn’t go quietly like I wish he would.

  “You can’t run this ship without me here. If I’m stuck in the brig, you’re going to have problems.”

  “Gus can handle it.”

  “Gus can handle the electronics. He can’t handle the mechanics.”

  If what I know about shadow science is right, if the myths are to be believed, this is a lie. “Sure he can. He’s got both of you in his head, right?”

  “Yeah, but he can only
use one consciousness in one body at a time, and you need two bodies down here to use both consciousnesses.”

  My head is spinning.

  Shadow-Tam turns the corner and moves down wall six. “The ship’s already barely functioning as it is. You can’t afford to lock me away.”

  “And I can’t afford to let you work down here without supervision!” I scream at the back of his head, beyond frustrated. “So where does that leave me?!”

  Macon’s comments about me being set up to win this ship are making more sense with every passing second. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that someone out there hates my guts enough to orchestrate this entire thing, and is watching all of this roll out and laughing his ass off. Hell, whoever it is is probably broadcasting it as some sort of reality entertainment for the universe to enjoy. It makes me sick to even imagine it — being the star dupe in the con of the century.

  He crouches down and pauses in response to my yelling at him, probably waiting for me to stab him in the back. After a couple seconds he looks over his shoulder at me. “Gus supervises me all the time. You don’t have to worry about it.”

  I gesture at all the crap on the ground around us. “Yeah. He’s doing a fabulous job of that, I can see.”

  Tam has the decency to look a little chagrined. “Sometimes I get frustrated. It’s all part of the process.”

  I press my hands over my ears, careful not to nick myself with my blade in the process. “Shut up. I don’t want to hear that garbage.”

  “It’s not garbage, Captain.” His voice is bleeding through my fingers, much as I don’t want it to. “It’s my life. It’s who I am now.”

  I let my ears go and point my knife at him. “Shadows are fucking monsters, and I don’t want to hear another word about your so-called life, okay? Just shut up and walk. Not another word.”

  He turns and does as I asked, every step leaden and deliberate. His boots kick loose parts strewn on the floor off to the side indiscriminately. I maintain a safe distance, watching his arms for any sudden movements toward our equipment, telling myself I’ll throw this knife into his spine to keep him from destroying anything. But he does nothing outwardly threatening, and we reach the engine room’s workspace without incident, sparing both of us that nightmare.