Caitlyn Morcos Read online

  Smith, for her part, looked as radiant as ever. Her dark hair was perfectly straight and gracefully held in a pony tail that flowed out from under her cap. Her eyes were sharp and bright, and her shoulders were set and her chin straight. If she was any worse for the trip, she hid it flawlessly. Even her uniform looked like it had been recently pressed and not thrown on in the half minute they had to change before leaving the academy. Smith’s hand held her own duffle bag tightly, the knuckles slightly red from the strength of her grip.

  “I’ll trade cute boys and good coffee for the ability to help thousands of people,” Morcos smiled. “There will always be luxuries back home. Out here, it’s us, and the darkness. That means something.”

  “I suppose. Although you make it sound far more romantic than I think it will really be.” Smith shook her head darkly. “Stacks of paperwork punctuated by toothless yokels demanding we chase down the space-pirate that ‘rustled’ their cattle-equivalents. Or whatever the correct verb is for when people steal livestock.”

  Morcos chuckled softly as she ran a hand through her messy short blonde hair before putting her cap back in place. She knew she must look like a total mess, her shirt wrinkled in their haste.

  “Marshals!”

  The two women looked over at the friendly call, turning to see a tall Japanese man, one hand raised in the air and waving at them, approach from the starport exit. Smith raised an eyebrow and let out a low whistle.

  “Okay, now I just need good coffee.”

  Morcos punched Smith’s shoulder playfully. The deputy wore his uniform well, the cut of the shirt accenting a slender but athletic build, and his face handsome even if he looked younger than he probably was.

  He jogged up, a broad smile on his face. “Welcome to Scorpii station, Marshal Morcos and Marshal Smith!” He saluted, two fingers placed precisely on the right side of his cap’s brim. “Sorry for not being here to greet you immediately.”

  Morcos and Smith both snapped to attention and saluted back.

  Smith spoke first. “No need to apologize, deputy. We were both caught a little off-guard with the pace of our departure too, so you couldn’t have found out we were on our way long ago either.”

  “No, sir. The message drone jumped in only about fifteen minutes before you two.” He gestured towards their luggage and both women shook their heads at his offer. “I’m Deputy Edward Kobayashi. It’s a pleasure. This way, please.” He gestured towards the exit, and the three walked towards the doors with Kobayashi falling in step between the two marshals.

  “How was the trip?” Kobayashi asked warmly. He fiddled for a moment with a silver ring on the pinky finger of his right hand.

  “Don’t ask, deputy.” Morcos smiled back. “Twenty-one jumps in a little less than as many hours tends to rattle the brain a bit.”

  Smith chuckled. “That’s putting it mildly. By the last jump I was about ready to kill somebody.”

  Kobayashi nodded and smiled at the two women. “I can imagine. I’ve heard the experience is… unpleasant.”

  “You’ve never gone superluminal, deputy?” Smith asked, saluting a passing soldier in a moment of cross-service respect. The soldier nodded respectfully, his face all nerves and poorly-hidden fear.

  “No, sir.” Kobayashi blushed, trying to hide it by adjusting his cap. “Born and raised planet-side. My parents are both in the planetary government. It’s how I got placed in the Service. I’ve been up and down in shuttles more times than I care to admit, but never left the system.”

  “Nothing to be ashamed of, deputy.” Morcos said easily. “And, I’ll be honest, I’m not a big fan of the gender-neutral ‘sir’ the Service is so fond of. Just ‘Marshal’ will do, since we’re going to be working together.”

  “Si… uh… Marshal.” Kobayashi stumbled. The sidearm slung under his left arm was adjusted poorly, obviously not a standard compliment to his uniform, and slapped against his side as he adjusted his stride again.

  “Oh come now, Edward,” Smith said with a smile. “You’ve obviously been sent because you’re going to be on the staff of one of our ships. I’m guessing from the way that you tilt your head to the left when you’re listening that you’re a comm tech.”

  Morcos glanced over the deputy again. “A bit tall for a comm tech, don’t you think, Kristen? Computer tech would be my guess. Look at his hands.”

  “True. Maybe both. Comm/comp tech it is.” Smith nodded. “And based on the fact you chose to walk next to Caitlyn means either you find her more attractive… which, let’s be honest, is ridiculous…” Smith flipped her hair coyly and smiled as Morcos rolled her eyes and Kobayashi’s blush deepened “or you’ve been assigned to her ship.”

  Kobayashi looked back and forth between the two smiling women. “Uhh…”

  “Wait!” Morcos held up a hand. “I refuse to be outdone. Two sisters.”

  Smith stopped walking, and the three stood near the exit to the terminal for a moment while she bit her lip and looked at Kobayashi. “Father was a… teacher.”

  “Oh come on, I didn’t know we were stating obvious things.” Morcos smiled. “Mother is the career politician.”

  “And now who’s being obvious?” Smith snorted. “Unmarried, has an off-again-on-again girlf… yes, girlfriend.”

  “Three cats.” Morcos held up her hand for a moment. “And… a turtle.”

  “A turtle?” Smith snorted. “Okay, I call bluff.”

  Morcos smiled, and Kobayashi continued to gape. “Uh…”

  “Just a little game we play sometimes, deputy. My apologies.” Morcos said. “So?”

  Kobayashi swallowed. “My father was a professor at the university, but my mother was a campaign manager and not really a politician herself.”

  “Damn.” Morcos snapped her fingers as Smith did a quick fist pump.

  “You were right about my two sisters. Ayaka and Shiho. But I don’t have a girlfriend.” Kobayashi shrugged. “Haven’t for about four months now.”

  “Ha!” Morcos clenched her fist triumphantly as Smith cursed softly. “And the pets?”

  “Three cats.” Kobayashi smiled. “No others.”

  “Ha back at you!” Smith nodded, but Kobayashi shook his head, smiling. “What? You said no other pets!”

  “Yes… but my cats? They’re named ‘Donut’, ‘Sphinx’, and ‘Turtle’.”

  There was a half beat of silence, and then all three burst out in laughter.

  “Come this way, marshals.” Kobayashi smiled as he gestured towards a waiting hover. “You ladies can explain to me how you did that on the way to headquarters.”

  The hover was a beaten up old thing, faded paint and bare metal on the outside, and the gentle whine of the antigrav engine still audible from inside. Kobayashi tapped in directions into the screen mounted to the side of the drive section, his seat in between Smith and Morcos.

  “It’s not as hard as it sounds, deputy.” Morcos said. “You just look for little cues, and extrapolate as best you can from those.”

  “You father being a teacher was from the way you walk.” Smith explained. She sat up straight, tilting her shoulders forward and backwards for a moment. “Your shoulders never dip. No up and down, just forward and back. That means either a military education, or somebody who is particularly strict on such things. Private school teachers are often those kinds of people, and since you wear your holster incorrectly, I assumed it wasn’t a military background.”

  “This… this isn’t correct?” Kobayashi blushed as he tugged at the holster awkwardly.

  Smith, eyes glinting, smiled. “Let me help, Kobayashi.” She reached around him with both arms, carefully tugging at straps. She continued speaking as she adjusted his holster. “Two sisters was deduced by your habit of walking between us, and the easy pace you adjusted to. You’ve dealt with two powerful women at the same time and are used to matching the stride of shorter people than you.”

  “Huh. We did used to walk together frequently.”

  �
�Girlfriend was from the ring,” Morcos said, pointing at the band of silver on his right hand. “Serious enough for gifts, but you adjusted it a few times since we’ve been on the walk. It’s not comfortable, which made us think that you only wear it occasionally.”

  Kobayashi nodded, adjusting the ring again.

  “The pet things was a bit of a lucky guess,” Morcos admitted. “Your trousers have a significant amount of fur on them, even though you’ve obviously gone to some lengths to clean them. That implies a certain degree of shame about your cats, which I read to mean you think you have too many, and most people would consider three to be too many.”

  “Well, I don’t want them to get lonely.”

  “I’m not judging, deputy. As for the turtle guess, that was even more of a stretch.” Morcos paused. “Your ring has small images of cats and turtles engraved on it. Could’ve been a nickname for your partner, but I took a shot in the dark on it being something meaningful for you independently from your girlfriend.”

  “Ex-girlfriend.” Kobayashi’s smile was bashful. “She had the names of my cats engraved on the ring, and it was a pretty thoughtful gift, even if she…” he blinked a few times. “Even if we weren’t a good fit for each other.”

  “Ex-girlfriend,” Morcos corrected herself with a smile. “Why is your cat named ‘Turtle’, anyway?”

  “She’s a tortoiseshell.” Kobayashi shrugged. “And she likes to huddle up in a little ball, kinda like a turtle. It fit. When you meet her, you’ll understand.”

  “I look forward to it, deputy,” Smith said, smiling as she patted his holster a few times. “There we go. All done.”

  Kobayashi bobbed his head at Smith in thanks. “It feels much better, thank you.” He coughed gently. “Also, I should point out that I haven’t technically been assigned to either of you. We’ve been assigned to starships. I think I’m probably on your ship, Marshal Smith. But we haven’t been told that either. I’m sure the Vice-Senior Marshal will be able to fill you in.”

  “We look forward to it, deputy.” Morcos smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Welcome to Scorpii, Marshal Morcos. Marshal Smith.” Vice-Senior Marshal St. Clair saluted and then shook the hands of both women. “I can’t tell you how good it is to have both of you here.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Smith smiled at the old man. St. Clair was an imposing figure, his bald head and short-cropped grey-white goatee contrasting with the thick muscles of his neck and broad barrel chest.

  The briefing room was dark, with the majority of the overhead lights dimmed and the room itself cast in shadows. The central holodisplay was a slowly rotating image of Delta Sector, each star and the known jumplanes between them highlighted in soft yellow. There were a few slowly pulsing red stars, and countless pinpricks of light that drifted slowly across the various jumplanes with numbers displaying the ship registration and estimated arrival time at their terminal jump point. Overall it was a jumbled, chaotic mess of moving lights, and it was every bit as inspiring and terrifying as St. Clair obviously hoped it would be.

  “Marshals, I’ll cut right to the chase. The situation in Delta has gone from bad to worse over the last three years. Colonization of new borderland worlds has exploded, and I have far, far too few officers to cover an area that’s increasing faster than we can track.” St. Clair gestured with one hand to the huge spinning display dominating the center of the room. “Most of these citizens are good folks. Honest, hardworking, looking for a better life away from the pressures and expenses of the inner systems. A lot of them have spent every last credit to get out to Delta.”

  At a gesture and a few taps on his datapad, the display zoomed to display Scorpii station. There was a constant stream of dozens of green dots, each representing a starliner carrying anywhere from dozens to thousands of passengers, linking the station to the two closest jump points. “But there are always a few that come to get away from the Interplanetary Government and our laws. Outlaws, bandits, conmen, warlords, and every imaginable variety of smuggler known to man. Weapons, drugs, slaves… if it’s banned somewhere else, there’s a dozen people selling it somewhere in the sector.”

  The image panned back out, shifting to show a cluster of five stars several jumps away from Scorpii. “This area has recently come under almost constant pirate attack. A gang of brothers named the O’Tooles, flying rigged up merchant vessels with meson cannons and guided rockets. A single navy destroyer would wipe out the lot of them, and even your marshal vessels are more than a match, but we can’t just leave a ship in the area, and by the time we get out there they’re long gone.”

  The image again shifted to a different star system. “We have suspicions that Freeport Station here is being used as a cover for a massive slave trade, both into and out of Delta, but haven’t been able to pin anything down yet.”

  The image shifted back out to show the entire sector. St. Clair pointed at a star system, and it started to slowly glow and pulse red.

  “Tar runners.”

  He pointed again and another system glowed red.

  “Biological weapons testing.”

  Another system glowed red.

  “A local warlord.”

  Another.

  “A serial killer targeting Martians.”

  Another.

  “A system that is attempting to declare itself a tax haven from the Interplanetary Government.”

  Another.

  “Counterfeit credit and illegal gambling, possibly involving gladiatorial combat to the death.”

  Another.

  “Reports of unmarked starships claiming to be members of an alien species.”

  This continued for long minutes. By the time St. Clair paused, almost half the sector was glowing red, and both Smith and Morcos’s eyes were wide.

  “And, just so we’re all on the same page, here are the marshals I currently have out in the field.”

  A few bright blue pinpricks appeared. There were several, but they seemed completely swamped by the oceans of red surrounding them.

  “So…” Smith swallowed, trying to absorb the enormity of the situation. “Which of these is my first assignment?”

  St. Clair sat back and sighed, interlacing his fingers in front of him. “For tonight, none. I’m going to introduce you to your ships and your crew, and tomorrow you’re being sent out into the black to bring the law to these people. But I need both of you to understand this: you’re bringing these folks, these good, hardworking, and utterly terrified people, something more than simple justice. You’re bringing them hope, and reminding them that we’re here to help them. That there are people like us out here, fighting to keep everybody safe.” St. Clair smiled. “I expect great things from both of you.”

  Smith and Morcos both stood and saluted. Smith, still looking slightly overwhelmed, headed out first.

  Morcos stood in place for a long moment before she cleared her throat gently.

  “Yes, Marshal Morcos?”

  “Sir, if I may ask, how many officers transfer out of Delta in an average year?”

  St. Clair narrowed his eyes. “You’re not planning on leaving us already, are you Morcos?”

  “Not at all sir. But I would still like to know.”

  “No more than one a year, and only for exceptional situations. We need every person we can get.”

  “So, that means in general, between five and six marshals are killed every year?” Morcos swallowed, trying to move the lump in her throat that had suddenly appeared.

  “An interesting hypothesis, Marshal Morcos.” St. Clair tilted his head slightly to the left. “And pretty quickly formed.”

  Morcos gestured at the holodisplay. “About 20 or so active marshals, according to your display. Delta gets assigned four new graduates every year, and has done so for the last ten years with this year being the only exception. Factoring on a retirement rate of about one a year, that still means there’s a dropping number of marshals. And I’m guess they’re not on vacation.”

 
St. Clair was silent for a long moment. “Will it change how you do your job to know the exact number, Marshal Morcos?”

  Morcos, feeling slightly lightheaded, shook her head. “No, sir. Just trying to get a better idea of what we’re walking into.”

  St. Clair gestured again to the massive, mostly red starchart. “You’re walking into hell, Morcos. Welcome to Delta sector.”

  Chapter 4: New Rides and Old Warhorses

  St. Clair settled into the thick black seat of the hover across from Smith and Morcos. Although both marshals were sitting ramrod straight, St. Clair could easily see the exhaustion worn into their faces.

  “I asked Jules to grab us some lunch,” St. Clair said, passing a small tray to the two marshals. “Just some local staples. Ham and cheese on rye, local watercress with sliced orange pearl, and pita with crustacean salad.”

  Morcos took the tray and placed it on the seat between her and Smith. They both nibbled politely, but their attention was firmly elsewhere.

  The hover took off slowly, the engine humming softly.

  “I took the liberty to plan a somewhat circuitous route to the docks,” St. Clair explained. “Scorpii station is definitely too large for me to give you a full tour, but I can point out some of the more interesting landmarks at least.”

  “Very thoughtful, sir,” Smith said around a mouthful of food. If it weren’t for the tension in her jaw, St. Clair would believe she was completely calm.

  “That building there,” St. Clair pointed to his left at a massive rock and steel façade built out of the asteroid itself, “houses the government offices. Affectionately referred to as ‘The Rock’, if you need to get a hold of a politician, that’s the place to go.”

  “Do we have a lot of business with the politicians in Delta?” Morcos asked, squinting at the gray-on-gray building.

  “You? No. Me? Oh yes,” St. Clair chuckled. “But hopefully that’s a problem you two won’t need to deal with until you’re promoted six or seven times.”