Eternity's End (7 page)

He told her, and she relayed the information. Her eyebrows went up once, as she listened to a reply. Finally she shrugged. "It's okay, I guess. He's in the, what do you call it, sim'lator three, out back." She hooked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating a door behind her. "Don't touch nothin', though, 'cause you probably shouldn't be in here." She muttered under her breath for a moment before adding, "and be quick, eh? I don't want to get in no trouble."

"I'll be careful," Legroeder assured her. "Thank you." He passed through the door into the hangar and paused to let his eyes adapt to the gloom. There were several modest-sized spacecraft in the hangar, with various bays and panels open for servicing. One small craft was in an advanced stage of disassembly. Legroeder had to skirt around the front of the first ship just to find a path back through the hangar. Two ship-lengths back, against the righthand wall, he saw three giant grey eggs. They were rigger-station simulators, used for testing repairs to the flux-reactors and rigger-net equipment. As he walked back alongside the ships, Legroeder saw a flicker of actinic light on the far side of the hangar. Someone was working with a photonic torch on the underside of a third ship.

The door was slightly ajar on simulator three, letting light escape. As he approached, he could see a full bank of controls and monitors—and the back of someone's head. Suddenly the door slid the rest of the way open, and the couch rotated, and his old comrade Jakus Bark blinked up at him from beneath the brim of a battered duckbilled cap. "Legroeder," he said, rubbing his left temple. An implant glittered beneath his fingertip. "Wha'd'ya know?"

Legroeder's voice caught. "Hi... Jakus."

Jakus squinted. "Shit, man—good to see you. I heard somethin' on the news that you got out. Man, I didn't think
anybody
would ever get out of there. Way to go!" His voice trembled as he peered up at his former crewmate.

Legroeder had to reach to find his own voice. A host of feelings were welling up inside him, most of them violent. "
You
made it out," he said finally. "Imagine my surprise to hear about it."

Jakus's eyebrows went up a fraction of an instant, and then he laughed—a nervous bark that echoed in the little chamber.

"They didn't seem to remember it at the RiggerGuild," Legroeder said, with forced evenness. "About you coming back."

"Well, heh—that's the RiggerGuild for you."

"Yeah," Legroeder said. "So how'd you get out?"

Jakus shrugged. "I was on a raider ship that blew up, a couple of years ago. I was the only one to get out alive. How about you?"

"Escaped," Legroeder said. "Not a fun story."

"I bet not." Jakus gave another nervous laugh. He gestured at the simulator panel. "You like my new job?"

"Yeah, real nice place here." Legroeder looked around at the hangar, then back at Jakus. "I get the feeling you're not too happy to see me—if you don't mind my saying so."

"Well—no, it's not that, man. Shit—let me get out of here—" Jakus lurched forward out of the reclining seat of the rigger-sim and grabbed the edges of the doorway "—I been sittin' awhile." He hauled himself out of the giant egg and stood upright, towering over Legroeder by half a dozen centimeters. His hair looked thinner than when Legroeder had last seen him, and his face more chiseled. "I just wasn't expectin' you to turn up here out of the blue, that's all. How the hell'd you find me, anyway?"

Legroeder ignored the question and glanced around again. "What is it you do here, anyway?"

"Pretty much what it looks like." Jakus shrugged. "Refit ships, test 'em out for the customers. It's not too fancy a shop, but it's better than some places we've seen, right?"

Legroeder didn't argue. No doubt it was better than the raider outpost, where every moment was a battle between fear and despair. But how had a rigger like Jakus wound up in a place like this? He'd been a good rigger in his time. Before the pirates...

"So what's up, Renwald?" Jakus leaned back against the simulator shell. "You didn't drop in just to say hi, I guess."

Legroeder felt his gaze narrow. "No. I didn't." A knot was tightening in his stomach. "I came, actually, to ask you about your testimony before the RiggerGuild."

"Testimony?" Jakus grunted.

"Yeah. Testimony. About the
L.A
. You want to tell me about that? About why you lied to the Guild about what happened to the
L.A
.?"

Jakus looked away. "Don't know what you're talkin' about," he said, rubbing his nose. "I didn't give no testimony."

Legroeder snapped, "I saw the recording of it, Jakus. You blamed
me
for what happened to the
L.A
."

Jakus gave that nervous laugh again. "Nah, I didn't really. I remember now. I didn't know what you were talking about at first."

Legroeder drew his lips back. "You said you and the captain tried to tell me that
Impris
wasn't real—and that
I
was the one who put the ship in danger."

Jakus looked down at the floor. "Yeah, well—isn't that what happened?"

"You sonofabitch!"
Legroeder slammed the side of his fist against the shell of the simulator. "You saw that ship just the same as I did! And it was Captain Hyutu who gave the order to move in, and you backed me up when I made the identification!"

Jakus's eyebrows went up. "Did I?"

"Yes. You damn well did." Legroeder let his breath out with a hiss. "What'd those pirates do to you, Jake? Back then, I could've trusted you to tell the truth. Instead of lying to protect your own little ass—"

Jakus jerked a little.

"—or whatever the hell it is you're protecting."

Jakus said nothing. His right eye had begun to twitch, and he rubbed at the tic with his finger. As Jakus shifted his head, Legroeder noticed that a second implant behind the man's right ear was alive with a tiny, erratic red flicker. Was Jakus connected to something or someone right now? Or was he just thinking?

"The
truth
," Jakus said slowly. "Easy word for you to use. What exactly do you mean by it?"

Legroeder snorted. "Do I have to explain the word 'truth' to you?"

Jakus worked his mouth for a moment, then cocked his head toward the glowing interior of the rigger-sim. "Well, hell, Renwald, we're both riggers, right? We both know that half the time there's no way you can tell what's real and what isn't, in the Flux."

"Don't bullshit me, Jakus. Is that thing whispering so loud in your ear you can't even hear yourself think anymore? You and I know what we saw."

"Not real," Jakus said, with a shake of his head. "Not real."

"You know it was real!"
Legroeder shouted. "You heard the distress call. Hyutu wasn't even in the net, and
he
heard it! If anyone was responsible, it was him."

"Show some respect," Jakus said, with a shiver. "A little respect for the dead, okay?"

Legroeder was drawn up short. "Who's dead?"

"Hyutu." Jakus make a throat-slitting motion with his finger. "The pirates did 'im. You and me, we were lucky to get out with our skins."

Legroeder scowled. "How do you know? Did you see it happen?"

Jakus shrugged. He tapped the silver disk on his temple. "You had one of these Kyber things, you'd be able to see things a whole lot better. Understand stuff you don't know now."

Legroeder felt a chill at Jakus's words.
Kyber things?
"Is that it?" he whispered. "Is that what took your—" he struggled for the right word "—
integrity
from you? The implants?"

That brought a sharp laugh from the other man. "We gonna talk about
my
integrity now? Oh, yeah, Renwald—you must've had loads of integrity, the whole time you were pilotin' pirate ships, burning innocent people. Oh, yeah."

Legroeder's face grew hot with bitterness and shame. "I did what I had to, to survive. I don't deny that I rigged ships for them." There had been no choice, if he'd wanted to live. And it was only his exceptional skill as a rigger that had kept him free of an implant; he'd persuaded his captors that he could rig better without those things in his head.

"Yeah, Renwald, that's right. We did what we had to to survive. You and me both. Maybe if you'd taken a chip you wouldn't be so high and mighty about it now." Jakus sneered. "Listen, it was sure nice of you to stop by, but I've got work to do."

Legroeder realized he had allowed Jakus to derail him from his point. "You lied to the Guild, Jake. Thanks to you, I'm losing my certificate and getting framed for what happened to the
L.A
."

"I'm real sorry about that," Jakus said.

"Sorry enough to go back and tell the truth? Tell them we both saw
Impris?
Tell them it was real?"

Jakus shook his head. "I told you already—there's no way to know what was real and what wasn't. You thought it was real, and I didn't. Neither did the captain. I ain't gonna change my story about that."

"The pirates were real enough, weren't they?" Legroeder growled.

"Oh yeah, they were real." Jakus glanced over his shoulder, as though worried that someone might overhear. "Listen—we're both damned lucky to have gotten away at all. Maybe you're losing your certificate—not that I have one anymore, either—but at least you got away alive. Isn't that more important than your certificate? You can still work."

"Work? More likely, they'll lock me away for life. If they don't mindwipe me instead."

Jakus shrugged. "Whatever."

Legroeder glared into the oppressive gloom of the hangar, his thoughts burning. "So that's it? You're going to let them frame me?"

Jakus shrugged. "If you want to put it that way. Now, like I told you, I gotta get back to work."

"Yeah." Legroeder made no attempt to hide his disgust. "You get back to work. See you around, Jake." He turned away.

"You don't know what the truth
is!
" Jakus called after him. His words were punctuated by a loud metallic slam.

Legroeder glanced back; Jakus had climbed back into the sim and slammed the door shut. Legroeder angrily strode away, alongside the half-assembled spaceships. What the hell was going on here? Why was it so important to
someone
that he take the fall for the
L.A
.? It was obvious this wasn't just Jakus's doing. It seemed to be coming from somewhere in the Spacing Authority. But what conceivable connection could there be between the Spacing Authority and a lowlife like Jakus?

As he made his way back toward the front of the hangar, he also began wondering what sort of a shipping firm would use the services of a place like this. He couldn't
imagine
a respectable company letting a contract here. He stared at the ships for a moment, then realized what was bothering him. They looked... armored. A glint of light from a single overhead lamp reflected off the hull plates with a greenish sheen, almost the color of oxidized copper. It wasn't obvious, and he might not have noticed if he hadn't just spent seven years around raider warships. But that looked like arnidium hull armor, very hard and resistant to radiation. With a surreptitious glance around, Legroeder crouched to peer beneath the nearest ship.

Not much to see—a number of closed bays on the underbelly of the craft. He looked beyond, to the next vessel; he could see the feet of a worker moving around with a work light. With a mechanical hiss, a bay door opened beneath the far ship. Legroeder squatted lower, trying to get a good look. The feet moved left, then right. The light flickered. For an instant, he caught a glimpse into the just-opened bay.
A weapons compartment
. He caught sight of three slim shapes—dark, sleek and oily-looking. Then the light moved away, leaving darkness. He heard the hiss of the bay door closing.

Legroeder rocked back on his haunches, letting his breath out slowly. Those were flux-torpedoes, he was nearly certain. Now, what the hell was a ship like that, in a place like this, doing with flux-torpedoes? The vessel bore no markings of police or navy. So what was it? Undercover? Criminal? Right here at the main spaceport? How could the Spacing Authority let that kind of thing slip by their security... unless they knew?

Legroeder rose silently from his crouch. The sooner he got out of here the better. As he started walking again, he saw the worker with the photonic torch moving between the two ships; that must have been the man who'd opened and shut the weapons bay. The man looked at him without friendliness, and stared as Legroeder walked on, heart pounding, toward the front exit.

As he paused near the office door, Legroeder heard footsteps, then a bang of metal. An unfamiliar voice shouted Jakus's name; Jakus shouted back. Legroeder stood in the darkness, listening. As the voices rose in heated argument, he bit his lip.
What have I done?
Without quite knowing why, he started edging back the way he had just come. Moving alongside the nearer ship, he tried to make out the conversation. He caught his own name—then Jakus yelling, "—didn't tell him anything!" The voices became more muffled. He strained to hear the rest of the argument, thought he heard the word
Impris
. The anger in the voices was unmistakable, and made the speech hard to understand. Then... there was a bone-jarring thump and a prolonged moan. That was followed by a third voice in a language Legroeder didn't understand—Veti Alphan, maybe. There was another thump, and the cry of pain cut off. Then footsteps, moving away. What the hell was going on?

Stay out of it, Legroeder
.

But he couldn't just walk away, could he? Someone had obviously overheard his argument with Jakus.

God damn it
. He looked around for something, anything, that he might use to defend himself. Nothing. Cursing silently, he crept back toward the simulator pods. The door to the third sim was open, light pouring out. He pressed his lips together. Maybe he could act as if he'd come back for something he forgot. "Jakus, you still there?" he called softly. No answer; but a door slammed shut way in the back of the hangar.

"Jakus?" He peered into the sim pod. It was empty, but the controls were still on, the screens flickering with a simulation in progress. On the floor was Jakus's hat, its brim bent. Legroeder picked it up and examined it in the light of the sim chamber. There was a dark, wet stain along the headband. Blood, it looked like.