Fool's Gambit (Confederation Reborn Book 5) Read online

  Knox tightened his grip on his pistol and started down the corridor, hurrying to catch up to the heavy metal footfalls. "Hey!" he called out. "Hey, you metal-faced son of a bitch. Hold it right there."

  Vorsin stopped and placed his hands on his hips, shaking his head wearily. "I grow tired of your games, Knox. You are not going to shoot me. Stop pretending."

  "I could," Knox said, raising the pistol to the back of the Yuruk's head. "I've done it plenty of times before."

  "Of course, because you are a soldier. As am I. We have a code. Lines we do not cross. Perhaps they are different, but still, they are our own."

  "You killed our partner!" Knox shouted.

  "The Gorohai was no soldier," Vorsin muttered. "Even his jumpsuit was fake. He won it gambling, most likely. He did not deserve to be among our ranks."

  "He had a name."

  "He was a weakness. One that our enemies would exploit against us."

  Knox felt his knuckles tighten.

  "What happened would have happened anyway, before long," Vorsin went on. "He would have betrayed us, just to keep the money for himself."

  "Like you wouldn't?" Knox said, laughing bitterly.

  "No, I would not. And neither would you. For whoever you are, and whatever you have done, you still have honor. All the Gorohai was instructed to do was get us to our destination. Not to ask about the cargo, not to ask the name of the person we are delivering it to, just to navigate. I did not insist that he tell me where we were going, and I did not insist that you tell me who we're delivering to. I obeyed my orders, as did you. Like soldiers."

  Knox let out a long breath, and lowered his weapon. The Yuruk was right. Knox cursed under his breath and said, "So what do we do now? Do you have any idea where Dolon was flying to?"

  Vorsin shook his head, "Axalis was very clear about our instructions. Three pieces of information, three members of crew. No sharing. I do not think she is the type who will be flexible in the face of changing circumstances. Do you?"

  "What next, then?" asked Knox.

  "We sell the cargo to an alternative buyer."

  Knox took a moment to consider the Yuruk's words. "How easy is that likely to be?"

  "We should have no difficulty finding someone who is interested in what we're carrying. We will probably earn less for it than we'd have been paid by Axalis, but not much less. Especially now that the Gorohai is gone."

  "So you're the only one who knows what we're selling, and we're setting up a new buyer," said Knox, speaking the words as the thoughts themselves crystallized in his head, "In that case, what do you need me for?"

  Vorsin looked at him for what Knox felt was a moment longer than necessary, and then said, "Make no mistake, I do not need you. I am allowing you to stay, because I choose to."

  Knox accompanied Vorsin to the bridge, where Vorsin installed himself in the communications console and sent out encoded messages to a dozen different contacts in a dozen different star systems. "It will be at least an hour before they pick those up and decode them," he said. "How extensive are the repairs?"

  "Not horrible," Knox said. "I collected the parts. Dolon ran a diagnostics report. It looks like the hull is okay, but we'd need to fix several internal systems."

  Vorsin looked over the report and said, "Go and attend to the repairs, then. Contact me when you are finished."

  "There's something else we need to discuss," Knox said.

  Vorsin rubbed his temple wearily and said, "What now?"

  "There's slaves aboard the Rothian ship. Locked in cells."

  "Of course there are. It is a slave ship."

  "I mean, we need to decide what to do with them."

  "Do? Why should we do anything?"

  "We can't just leave them."

  "We can and we will."

  "I'm serious," Knox said, laying a hand on the Yuruk's thick arm.

  The Yuruk stopped as though someone spat in his face. He turned slowly to look at Knox, eyes simmering with anger behind his mask, and he said, "We leave them, and that is final."

  Knox watched the Yuruk turn back to the console, shaking his head in disbelief. "Still a typical Confederation fool," Vorsin sneered. "Always meddling in the affairs of others. You would do well to learn from me, human. Perhaps those wretches were meant to be slaves, did you ever think of that? Perhaps they were destined to be nothing more than servants of greater beings. We'll add them along with the sale of the cargo and see if it brings us any extra money. Unless of course you want to keep a few for yourself. I know I will be keeping a few."

  The Yuruk laughed and Knox felt his stomach clench like a fist.

  "We might even find a few of those pink-skinned Rothian females you covet so desperately. I'll let you have your pick of them, after I sample them, of course. I've heard the same stories you have."

  Knox pressed his gun to the back of the Yuruk's head and fired.

  Vorsin's lifeless body slumped over the communications console, bent over it with his arms outstretched, twitching violently. The Yuruk's shattered mask went scattering across the bridge, covered in the remains of his face.

  Knox tossed the weapon aside in disgust and headed for the hold. He walked the length of the ship until he'd reached the dark room, bracing himself for the sight of Dolon's dead body. But as he rounded the corner, the floor was empty. All he could see was the container holding the cargo and the area where Vorsin had stationed himself to stare at it.

  No signs of struggle. No blood.

  "That lying bastard," Knox said. Now he was going to have to search the ship for wherever Vorsin had murdered the Gorohai and stashed the body. Probably got him from behind while he was going to the bathroom, Knox thought bitterly.

  He stopped in front of the container and activated the display screen, moving his finger to select the unlock sequence. Instead of the hiss of depressurizing air as the container's sides opening, he heard a synthetic voice from the panel. "Final protocol confirm: What is the cargo?" the voice said.

  "Don't tell me there's a password," Knox said.

  "Final protocol confirm: What is the cargo?" it repeated.

  "Weapons."

  "Final protocol confirm: What is the cargo?"

  "Ah … Guns. Money. Drugs. Junk. Technology. Information. Plans. Secrets."

  "Final protocol confirm: What is the cargo?"

  "Oh, come on," said Knox, running his hands through his hair. The only person on the ship who could have provided the answer was sitting on the bridge with half his head blown off.

  He backed up to the farthest wall and raised his pistol, aiming for one of the joints on the container's casing, and fired. Sparks went spiraling out of the container where his round struck, and the side of it cracked open, followed by the familiar hiss of escaping air.

  Knox aimed for the other side and fired again, peeling a massive chunk of casing off and revealing the dark interior. He grabbed a hold of the front panel and pulled, yanking and kicking at the thick material until it finally came loose.

  He bent down and triumphantly peered inside the container. There was nothing but a small table inside, and a tablet propped upright on it. As Knox leaned forward, the tablet's display flickered to life, and Axalis appeared on the screen.

  "The others said that there was no need for me to provide you with any kind of message," she said. "But I didn't want to think that you'd died without understanding how and why you'd brought this upon yourselves. Permit me this conceit."

  "Axalis," Knox said quickly. "It's not my fault. We had a ˗ "

  "I am not a kind woman," she continued, and Knox realized that he was being addressed by a recorded message. "I am a person who does the unthinkable. Who does the things that need to be done, but which must remain hidden. And I need people who can go out and do those things for me. To be my hands in dark places. I'd hoped that we might work together, you and I. I'd hoped that the three of you might be able to somehow make something better of yourselves, or at least, better than the pathetic
wastes of life you were when I found you. Unfortunately, that is not the case. You may not have realized it, but this was your one chance for redemption. A habitual liar. A war criminal. And a runaway soldier. Alas, by the time this video ends, you and everything on board the Fool's Gambit will have been destroyed. Goodbye."

  In a tower office, many systems away, sat a woman. She was fifty years old, with hair like steel, and she wore a plain black tunic with the kind of high collar that had been more fashionable in her youth. She sat in darkness save for the blue light that fluoresced from the three displays on her desk, and this sharpened her features such that she almost appeared artificial.

  "Project: Axalis," she said aloud, in a voice barely more than whisper. She had had many names, but she decided that she liked this one. At the sound of her voice, there was a chirping noise in her ear, and a secure channel opened.

  "Status," said a man's voice.

  "Three in training," she said. "Twenty-one under review, thirty-three fail."

  "When will the three be ready to begin active duty?"

  "A month. Maybe less."

  A red light appeared at the periphery of her display.

  "Hold on," she said. She selected it and a report bloomed in her vision. There were three names, and next to the each of the names was a large red cross. Knox: X. Vorsin: X. Dolon: X. The status of the report read "FAIL" in brutal capital letters. She dismissed it without reading the detail.

  "Status update," she said. "Eighteen under review, thirty-six fail."

  "I don't want to have to remind you that we're counting on you," the man said.

  "I know."

  Thirty-six had failed. Thirty-three bodies had either been recovered from ships that had become their tombs, or were now floating around the cosmos in specks of charred dust. Now, three others would join them. Only one team had so far proven worthy of induction into the group known as Consequent.

  "Keep me informed of developments," the man said, and the channel closed with a click.

  The woman who was Axalis, but who also was not, leaned back in her chair and watched silent streams of data trickle across her displays. She scrolled to a confidential intelligence file and smiled sadly at the fit-looking young man dressed in a Confederation Officer's uniform. "Oh, Knox," she said softly. "I had such high hopes for you."

  She sighed. She had made so many mistakes. She wondered briefly whether her judgment might be failing her; whether the endeavor to which she had dedicated herself justified in the end the blood that was on her hands. She drummed her fingernails on the desk.

  "I am the person who does the unthinkable," she whispered, liking that phrase. She couldn't remember whether she'd come up with it herself, or whether a friend or a colleague had applied it to her. More likely a colleague. There were fewer and fewer friends these days.

  At the side of her vision the red icon disappeared and the column of amber icons beneath it shifted upwards to replace it. She took a deep breath. There would be others, she reminded herself. Perhaps, even one as promising as Knox.

  About the Authors

  Simon John Cox was born in Tunbridge Wells, has a degree in chemistry, a job in marketing and a black belt in Taekwon-Do. He has been writing fiction for as long as he can remember, and his short stories have won competitions and have been published in a number of places, both in print and online. Simon has completed one novel and is seeking representation for it whilst working on a second.

  Published works include:

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  Totentanz: A Macabre Triptych

  The Slender Man

  A Quantum Leap

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  Bernard Schaffer is the author of multiple books that span a wide variety of genres. He has worked with famous literary figures such as Harlan Ellison, Alan Dean Foster, and Bill Thompson (the editor who discovered Stephen King and John Grisham).

  Recently, he collaborated with J.A. Konrath on two books that feature Konrath's best-selling Lt. Jack Daniels characters, and ones from Schaffer's own Superbia series.

  A lifelong resident of the Philadelphia area, he is the proud father of two children.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. No reference to any real person, living or dead, should be inferred.