With nothing better to do, he took a slow inventory of his body: bruised ribs and cheek, swollen eye, abrasions at his wrists where they’d cuffed him. Nothing bad, really. He’d suffered worse, and sometimes at the hands of his friends. Wasn’t like this was the first time he’d been arrested. Not even the first time he’d been arrested for something he didn’t do. It had always been inners that did it before, though.
The more it changes, the more it’s still the same, he thought. He found a comfortable spot in the corner where he could rest his head, close his eyes, and see if the anxiety was enough to keep him awake. It was, mostly, but he did manage a little doze before the door broke seal and swung open. Two guards in armor and sidearms. A higher-up in armor too. All Free Navy colors.
Probably that was good. People didn’t generally dress up for a murder.
“Emil Jacquard Vandercaust?”
“Aquí,” he said.
The higher-up was a thick-faced boy with a brown complexion that matched his eyes. Handsome, in his way, but too young for Vandercaust’s tastes. He’d come to an age when sex was less about who he fell into bed with and more about who he woke up next to, and the set of people he considered children extended to include men in their early thirties. The pretty child scowled, maybe at Vandercaust and maybe at how he’d been treated. For a moment, the silence in the room made him wonder if they’d leave again. Lock the door and stick him in the dark. The idea made him aware of his thirst.
“Agua, yeah?”
“Commst,” the boy said. Vandercaust levered himself up to his feet, his abused muscles shrieking, but not badly enough to stop him. The guards fell in, one ahead and one behind, and the boy leading them all like a sad little parade. The room they took him to was brighter, more comfortable, though not by much. A low metal stool was welded to the deck, short enough that sitting on it made Vandercaust feel like he was in some school for children, expected to take a desk meant for a six-year-old. He’d been questioned by security enough in his life to recognize the little humiliation as the tactic it was. A guard brought him half a bulb of tepid water, watched him drink it, and took it back.
The guards stepped out, the door closing behind them. The boy stood at a desk, looking down at him through a floating display. Seeing the display from behind was like seeing someone through a bright mist.
Vandercaust waited. The boy took a flat yellow lozenge out of his pocket. Focus drugs, or what Vandercaust was supposed to assume were. The b
oy put the lozenge under his tongue, sucked thoughtfully for a moment. Shuddered.
“You missed the battle alert yesterday,” he said.
“I did.”
“Can you explain that?”
Vandercaust shrugged. “Deep sleeper when I’m drunk, me. Didn’t hear it. No se savvy what happened before it was over, yeah?”
“Savvy tú now?”
“Heard some things, yeah.”
“Let’s go over what you heard, then.”
Vandercaust nodded, as much to himself as to the boy. Time to pick his handholds careful. Whatever they were spun up over, this was the time he’d land in it if he spoke the wrong words.
“Was a bunch of ships came from the colonies, what I heard. Fourteen, fifteen ships all through rings at the same time. Fast too. Trying to get to Medina before the rail guns took them out, yeah? Only didn’t so much. What the guns didn’t put holes in, station defenses took out. Some debris hits on the drum hull, aber nothing can’t be fixed.”
The boy nodded, made some notation in the bright air between them. “Fourteen or fifteen?”
“Yeah.”
The boy’s eyes hardened. “Was it fourteen you heard, or fifteen?”
Vandercaust frowned. There was something about the boy’s reaction that didn’t sit right. If they’d been playing poker, he’d wait to see if the boy’s hand was particularly strong or weak, then spend the rest of the night cleaning him out over that hardness. Only there weren’t any cards to come down here.
“Heard fourteen or fifteen. A phrase. Eight or ten. Six or seven. Didn’t hear a number.”
“What rings did they come through?”
“Don’t know.”
“Look at me,” the boy said. Vandercaust looked up into the boy’s light-brown eyes. “What rings did they go through?”
“No savvy. I don’t know.”
The boy’s eyes flickered, looked away. Vandercaust scratched his arm even though it didn’t itch. Just to be doing something.