Chapter 4

“So is there anybody you want us to notify?” Captain Panderyn asked. “Next of kin?”

Len didn't know how long he had been in alien custody before he staggered out onto the catwalk and leaned against the railing. He heard the familiar hum of the force field crackling back into place over the aperture in the bulkhead. Then he felt a gauntleted hand – one of the Vanguard soldiers – pressing on his shoulder. His thoughts were still scattered as the soldier guided him across the platform to the waiting ramp of the Unfettered. He felt sore where the alien probes and knives had poked and sliced, but he could find no signs of scars when he lifted his shirt to inspect his flesh.

A few minutes later, with a steaming cup of black coffee on the tray in front of him in the passenger compartment, he explained to his fellow prisoners that the captors had injected him with a toxin that would kill him in six hours if they refused to help the Hivers – the Minders, as they fashioned themselves – in their war against another alien race. Naturally, he expected that the others aboard the Unfettered would do everything in their power to save the famous Leonard Dixon. Unfortunately, it seemed, he was wrong.

“It's not that we don't sympathize with your situation,” the Vanguard officer continued. He was a middle-aged man with dark hair streaked silver at the temples. He had maybe a decade on Len. “However, we've got some things working against support for that ultimatum. First, the Stellar Consortium doesn't have a dog in this fight. We're not under orders to strike against the – B'hiri, you called them? Second -”

Dixon didn't wait for the second. He snapped: “Fuck your orders! We're a long way from home, Captain! I know my life might not mean shit to you, but do you REALLY think the Minders are going to stop making this demand after I die? Are you willing to sacrifice everybody else on this ship? Even yourself?”

Panderyn shrugged. “We're all expendable. Look, Dixon, we don't know who we're up against. That's number two on the list of reasons why we don't agree to their terms. The B'hiri might outnumber us mightily. Think about it. This ship that captured us, it's huge. Bigger than anything we've ever seen. The technology is far beyond our expertise. And if THESE guys need help to take on the B'hiri, well, I think they might need to keep looking. Hell, the Unfettered isn't even kitted out for weapons. All we've got are the portable guns that the soldiers keep in the lockers.”

“So that's it, then? I'm a dead man?”

Meghan Falkenberg sighed, placing a hand on Len's wrist. “If there was some other way, the captain would do it.”

The commanding officer knit his brow, then motioned for Falkenberg to step aside so he could move into position beside the neurojournalist. “We might be able to do something about the poison pellet.” He looked past Adelman to another soldier, the one who had met Dixon on the catwalk. His lapel bore a gleaming red metal pin in the shape of a cross, above the name patch. “Dokes,” the captain said. “Fetch a medscanner and a No. 3 laser scalpel.”

“Aye, sir,” Dokes responded. He then vanished beyond Dixon's field of view into a utility hatch that led back to a small infirmary.

“I don't know what you've got in mind,” Len told Panderyn, “but it's just liable to kill me faster.”

“Maybe,” the captain agreed. “So what's the point of waiting?”

Dixon scowled. “What's the point of rushing?”

The public relations worker frowned, looking from Dixon to Panderyn. “Captain, something to keep in mind: even if you manage to disable the poison pellet inside Mr. Dixon, the Minders will still have us as captives. They won't just give up on using this ship – or your soldiers – in this war they're waging.”

“In which case,” Dixon added, “you might as well let the poison pill kill me first. I don't want to see what the Minders come up with as Plan B.”

Dokes returned, a black plastic cylinder in one hand and a scanner in the other. He offered the scanner to Panderyn, who switched it on and immediately swept the device over Dixon's arms, down his legs, and then over the back of his neck. The captain shoved the scanner into Dixon's field of view so that he could see the information on the display. “Small pellet, just a couple of millimeters across, right under the skin behind your left ear. Are you certain that you don't want it removed?”

“What if they tamper-proofed it?” Falkenberg asked.

“That's definitely a risk,” Panderyn agreed. He turned to regard the journalist again, raising the laser scalpel. “Last chance, Dixon. Leave it in or take it out?”

Dixon opened his mouth to reply, but Dokes interjected: “Captain, there might be another option.” The captain looked to Dokes. “Time's the problem, so let's stop time. At least for Mr. Dixon. The infirmary has one stasis unit and it appears functional.”

The journalist shook his head, sighing. “Not much point in delaying the inevitable, Dokes. It's not like you'd be buying time to get me to a state-of-the art medlab on Mars. In six hours, whether I'm in the cooler or not, the pellet's still going to be a problem and the Minders are still going to want to throw us into that war of theirs.” He scratched his chin, then looked toward Meghan. “If we want to carry this through to the logical premise that Captain Panderyn is suggesting, then someone oughta fucking give me a gun. I can put a blast in each of you and then the pellet can kill me.”

Meghan gaped, astonished at the suggestion. “Murder-suicide. Really, Mr. Dixon?”

He shrugged. “If we're all dead, well, I guess that shows the Minders that they can't boss us around, right?”

“No one's giving you a gun, Dixon,” the captain said. “But I like the direction that thought's going.” He looked toward a man behind him, to the left – a squat, crewcut man in his early thirties with smudges of grease on his hands and cheeks. The name patch on his Vanguard uniform read “BRECHTMAN.” “Corporal, get to work rigging the reactor to blow. Let's see how the Minders like having their own poison pill to worry about.”