2954-01-21 – Tales from the Inbox: The Swan’s Compassion
Sara Swan threw back her camouflage net just as the wiry figure ambled past her. He heard the whisper of the material, but by the time he turned, reaching for the gun hanging from his belt, Sara’s scatter pistol was already aimed right at his heart, at a range that made it nearly impossible to miss.
“Toss the gun over there.” Sara smirked.
The man scowled as he unhooked his gun-belt. “You work for the Swan, right?”
“Always.” Sara winked. The man was younger than she’d thought on first watching him – probably not more than twenty-two or twenty-three T-years – but he had that hard, suspicious look of someone who’d been running with a bad crowd since childhood. Sara knew that look only too well; it had once been her mask, too. God, had she ever been that young? It seemed like lifetimes ago. “Play nice, and I’ll let you live to tell your boss what happened here.”
“All right.” The man flipped his gun-belt off to one side – not as far as Sara would have liked, though. “What do you want?”
She gestured with her free hand for him to step away from it, and once he had, she lowered the gun a bit. “Tell me about your boss.”
A dark look passed over the youth’s face. “That scumsucker Mardh?” He gestured back the way he had come. “Not worth your time or mine.”
“Well, he is stopping me from doing my job.” Sara arched one eyebrow. “But I wasn’t talking about him. Who put you lot here, and when is he coming back?”
There was a moment of wide-eyed terror on the other’s face, but only a moment. Sara could almost read his mind; how did she know they had a greater master who was coming back? What sort of lie would be the most useful? “Um. Well...” He looked around, then lowered his voice. You really don’t want to mess with Captain Shinoda, lady.”
Sara arched one eyebrow, saying nothing.
“The way I hear it, he got over here on a merc contract with the Navy, but went rogue with his ship, dropped most of his crew on some mining station, and has been running on his own ever since. Big ship, well-equipped. Capital-grade weapons, strike squadron, nearly a thousand of us toughs for ground-side work.”
Sara still waited silently. Getting information from renegades was always more haggling than interrogation; they opened with a big, bold lie, and it was up to her to persuade them to get close enough to the truth for her purposes. Torture, always a temptation, was worse than useless; the natural environment of men like him was a sea of lies, and into that sea he’d flee at the slightest provocation.
“He, ah.” The young man seemed to sense Sara wasn’t buying his explanation. “Said he’d be back tomorrow. Maybe sooner if he could manage it.”
Sara made a show of checking that the safety on her scatter pistol was disengaged. “He’s not coming back for a long time, then?”
“That’s not what I-” The young man cringed as Sara suddenly raised her gun to point at him again. “I said he’s coming back tomorrow.”
“So this Shinoda is such an idiot that he executes anyone who brings him bad news?” Sara shrugged. “I suppose if he does, then me shooting you for lying isn’t much of a punishment.”
“Lady, believe what you want to believe. I’m just telling you what I been told. Mardh always says the Captain is coming back tomorrow.”
Sara smiled coldly. “I see. How many days has he been saying this?”
The man’s shoulders slumped. “Three weeks or so. Since a couple days after Shinoda left.”
“So even that red-faced lunker up on the hill doesn’t know.” Sara nodded. “What about the clods who cleared out yesterday?”
“They’re following Kulikov, who isn’t any smarter than Mardh.” The youth’s face again grew hard and dark; he clearly had a rather negative relationship with everyone who was his self-appointed better. “But he did insist on taking a week’s worth of supplies. He’ll come slinking back when those run low and he remembers there’s nearly nothing you can eat on this rock.”
“He’s smarter than you.” Sara knew this barb wasn’t necessary, but she couldn’t help it. “After all, he left at the first sign of trouble. He’s not going to die. At least, I’m not going to kill him as long as he’s off camping somewhere.”
“And I decided I wasn’t going to die for Mardh either.” The young man balled his fists. “Damn them all. Brainless clods.”
Sara felt, despite everything, a pang of sympathy for the young man. Once upon a time, when the galaxy had been much younger, she’d been not too different from him. She’d learned some hard lessons, and got straight – well, straight-er – and found a way out of the scum-tier of society, because someone had given her a chance. “You hate them, eh? Damned lot of good that’s doing you. What’s your name?”
Once again, she saw the hesitation in his face, the calculation of whether a lie would be beneficial. “Moon. Hector Moon.”
Tell you what, Moon.” It probably wasn’t his real name, but then, Sara nearly never gave anyone her own legal name either. “You tell me exactly how many there are and what surprises they have for me, and you’ve got a berth on my ship when it’s all over, and a visit with a friend of mine who can make your name clean, or at least make a new clean name stick to you.”
He frowned, likely trying to find out how this could be a trick to his disadvantage. “Why would you do that?”
“Because you’re right. You’re a little cleverer than the lot you’re stuck with here.” Sara smirked. “Maybe even clever enough to have a future. That part’s up to you, though.”
Moon was silent for half a minute, and Sara had just about given up on him, when at last he spoke again. “Mardh has thirteen with him still, and plenty of guns. Most of them are decent shots, but they’re not military trained. Demolition explosives too, but I don’t know how he thinks he’ll use them.”
Sara smiled broadly, reaching into her pocket for a tracker-token, one of the magnetic ones she usually attached to aircars to track their occupants “Grenades? Personnel mines? Heavy weapons?”
“Never saw any. Don’t think Shinoda would trust Mardh with any of that anyway.”
“Anything else you want to tell me to earn that ride out of here?” Sara held up the tracker in her left hand.
“I’d bet a few thousand credits that most of the rest would scatter if Mardh were out of the picture.” Moon shook his head. “They aren’t cowards, but this was supposed to be a boring watch-job, not a last stand.”
Sara flicked the tracker into the air. Moon caught it neatly, then looked at it carefully. “What’s this?”
“Keep it on you and go that way.” Sara pointed away from the hill. “I’ll pick you up when the messy business is done. Get going, I’ve got work to do.”
Moon turned to follow her finger, then stopped. “Wait a tick. You don’t have a team, do you? You’re doing this all by your lonesome.”
Sara smiled, side-stepping until she was standing over Moon’s gun. “Things are usually faster that way. If you come within a klick of that hill before I’m done, by the way, you’re dead.” She nudged his weapon with her toe. “And I’ll keep this safe for you.”
Moon winced, then shuddered, then, oddly, smiled. With a sloppy mock-salute, he ambled off in the direction she’d pointed, rounding a low rise and vanishing from sight.
Sara waited for a minute after he’d gone before stooping to grab his holstered pistol, then turned back toward the hill with its valuable Survey installation. Fourteen goons would probably only take her a few hours at the longest, and there was plenty of daylight left for the task.
[N.T.B.] Sara Swan sent this story in as a boast, but I find her snap decision to try to lift one of her erstwhile foes out of his situation very telling. Sara is a hard sort of person who has lived a hard sort of life, but still has compassion for those who have been dealt a bad hand. For all her faults – even she would admit there are many – it is only too like her to always be trying to rescue good talent from a bad life and a worse death.
I am not saying she is unique in this regard, but it is in this she earned my respect years ago. Well, in this and in her ability to take down a charging Ravi Songbird in its full mating-season fury. That’s pretty respectable too. But in a different way.
