And that had just been the beginning, of course. He’d seen a lot of death on small ships. Just never in quite such an odd manner as the three deaths on the Presidio.
He had argued that the Presidio shouldn’t stop until it got to Commons Space Station, which had a security team and was in a sector with a real government, one that would actually look into the killings. There was no government here, even though technically, Vaadum was in the same sector as Commons. Vaadum was too far off the beaten path and too small to have so much as a leader, let alone some kind of official who would report back to the various governments presiding over the Commons System.
The captain had listened too, even though the three murders had terrified him—nothing like that had ever happened to the man, and of course Richard hadn’t confessed his own history. Richard was only working the Presidio to gain passage across the sector. He was out of money and out of options, something that hadn’t happened to him before. So he took one of his identities and used it to get work on the first ship that would take him.
Of course, that ship had to be the Presidio.
If the fire hadn’t happened, if the ship hadn’t had to stop here, Richard would’ve quit when they reached the Commons Station. He would have cited the killings as a hostile work environment and no one would have had second thoughts about his departure.
He couldn’t leave here, now. There was no reason to stay on this station, since ships rarely stopped here, and he did need to keep moving. But he really didn’t want to get back on that ship, provided the people in maintenance could actually fix the thing.
He let himself out of the “resort,” through the double doors, past the restaurant. The smell of simmering beef—or was it lamb?—made his stomach growl. He wasn’t sure when he last had a real meal.
Although he wasn’t sure how anyone could serve real food here, either. He doubted supply ships made a huge profit coming in and out of Vaadum. But they probably got paid well to stop.
He hurried down the corridor toward the maintenance area. Clearly, the maintenance area had once been the entire station. The corridor proved it. The corridor was grafted on, little more than a tube with an environmental system, leading to the second part of the station, the resort, which someone had built on at least a century ago—and not from the best materials.
This part of the station felt very fragile. He could almost feel the corridor bounce with each of his footsteps, even though he knew that the thing wasn’t built that way. It was his very active imagination, something he had failed to shut off for years now.
Finally, he got out of the corridor and into the maintenance area. It seemed huge, although it wasn’t. He knew the sense of vastness was an optical illusion caused by the emptiness. The maintenance area was the oldest part of Vaadum, built two centuries ago to house at least six large ships in various states of disrepair.
Apparently, the station’s owners throughout the years hadn’t wanted to chop up the area, imagining, probably, that there might come a time when all seven repair bays were being used.
The Presidio had the center bay. It looked odd in here, since the ship wasn’t built to be inside any kind of bay. Once it had been assembled, it remained outside buildings. But the station’s tiny ring made it impossible to repair ships docked to it.
Richard was glad he hadn’t been onboard when the captain had had to maneuver the Presidio in here. That must’ve taken some white-knuckle flying, particularly since the ship was so damaged.
Richard could see the damage from the entry. The fire had burned its way through one entire wing of the ship. The wing had remained intact, but here someone had knocked the exterior off. Through the hole—large enough to hold at least five men—he could see the scorch marked interior.
He shuddered.
He’d been afraid on ships before, starting with that cruise with his father, when the assassin had stood up, a laser rifle in his hands. He’d aimed it at Richard, and Richard hadn’t cringed. He’d been twelve, too young to understand—too sheltered to understand—that the man who aimed the laser rifle at him meant to kill him.
Only the assassin hadn’t meant to kill him. He’d left Richard—who was then known as Misha—alive, as a warning to Richard’s mother, who had worked as some kind of double agent. Richard had never tried to understand the politics of it. All he ever knew was that his father and so many others had died because one government hired an assassin to warn his mother away from some job.
He wasn’t even sure she had felt guilty about it, although she had been angry. And angrier at him when he had gotten his revenge on the assassin. She had wanted the assassin alive—for what reason Richard never knew.
He never tried to understand his mother. But her life, her decisions, had caused him to be here now, decades later, on the run for half a dozen killings, all of them he could say—he would have once said—justified.
Especially that first one.
“Help you?”
One of the maintenance guys came over. He was holding some fancy tools that Richard had never seen before. The maintenance guy was the first person that Richard had seen on this station who looked like he belonged. Whip thin, angular, sharp dark eyes and hair cropped close to the skull. He had a smudge along one cheek.
“I work on the Presidio,” Richard said. “I was wondering if you’d found a cause for the fire yet.”
“Why?” the maintenance guy asked.
Richard studied him for a moment. The maintenance guy seemed solid enough, although Richard wasn’t the kind of man who trusted easily. Hell, Richard wasn’t the kind of man who trusted at all.
But the maintenance guy had been on this station for a long time, and he would have had no involvement in the fire or the deaths. Not even Agatha Kantswinkle’s death.
“I want to know if it was deliberately set,” Richard said.
“What’s it to you?” the maintenance guy asked.
Richard blinked at him, and nearly snapped, What’s it to me? If this outpost hadn’t been nearby, I would have died on that ship. Murdered, if the fire was set. No one would have survived.
“Three passengers were murdered on that ship,” Richard said, “and another just died here.”
The maintenance guy started. He hadn’t heard about Kantswinkle then.
“So I want to know if that fire was a coincidence or deliberately set. Because I’m not getting back on that ship with someone who sets fires in space.”
“But you’d get back on the ship if it had design flaws that made it catch fire?” the maintenance guy asked.
Richard almost smiled. He hadn’t thought of that. Which showed that he was someone who didn’t know much about ship mechanics, and knew too much about killers.
“Does it have design flaws?” Richard asked.
“All ships have design flaws,” the maintenance guy said. “Some are deadlier than others.”
“And this ship?” Richard asked, beginning to feel annoyed.
“This ship had some weaknesses that were easy to exploit,” the maintenance guy said. “If you asked me to prove that someone deliberately set a fire, I can’t. At least, not right now. If you asked me to guess how the fire started, I’d say that someone encouraged it. And I’d say you all were damn lucky to survive.”
Richard felt a shiver run down his back. Two lucky survivals. If he were superstitious, he’d think that there was a third in his future.
“Can the ship be repaired?”
“It’ll take us a few days,” the maintenance guy