The Philosopher Gambit

  Lisle / THE PHILOSOPHER GAMBIT / 84

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CATCHING UP?

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Acknowledgments

  Sneak Peek at Episode 4: The Vipers’ Nest

  Afterword

  About the Author

  More by Holly Lisle

  Tales from The Longview

  Episode 3

  The Philosopher Gambit

  HOLLY LISLE

  Published by OneMoreWord Books

  Tales from The Longview, Episode 3: The Philosopher Gambit

  Cover Design: Holly Lisle & Matthew Turano

  Cover Art: © Forgiss, 3000AD, from BigStockPhoto.com

  Holly’s Author Photo: © Holly Lisle

  Copyright © 2015 by Holly Lisle

  Editor: Matthew Turano

  Copy Editor: SilverJayMedia.com

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTICE

  This is a work of fiction. Seriously. Resemblances to real characters, real solar systems, real spaceships, and real faster-than-light travel are entirely coincidental. Names, characters, places, and tech are products of the author’s imagination, and any brilliant guy who appears halfway through the story is not your cousin Bob, no matter how much he insists otherwise.

  For Matthew

  Catching Up?

  The TALES FROM THE LONGVIEW Series Overview

  Inhabited by a crew of misfits fleeing nightmare pasts, with a cargo of Condemned slated to die at the hands of the highest bidders, and with a passenger roster made up exclusively of people not who they claim to be, The Longview serves the hidden agenda of an eccentric recluse bent on playing puppetmaster to all of Settled Space.

  IN EPISODE 1: Born From Fire (originally Enter the Death Circus)

  When love is crime, who will save the guilty?

  After falling in love and fathering a child, a young criminal refuses to voluntarily throw himself into a lake of fire to gain his community's forgiveness. So he's sentenced to death and sold to the owner of a spaceship that buys criminals like him. But the ship and its crew are not quite what they appear to be.

  IN EPISODE 2: The Selling of Suzee Delight

  When slavery is virtue, who will fight for vice?

  When Suzee Delight, famous Cheegoth courtesan, murders the five most powerful Pact Worlds' Administrators during a private summit, the owner of The Longview Death Circus struggles against conspiracy to win the bidding for her execution. Meanwhile, Suzee’s powerless supporters race to save her, while the leaders of worlds pull strings to guarantee her death.

  WELCOME TO EPISODE 3: The Philosopher Gambit

  When the mighty are monsters, what will monsters become?

  An exiled philosopher buys a pretty girl a dress for her execution, by doing so becoming a hunted, wanted man with a death sentence on his own head and killers on his trail. The secretive owner of The Longview intervenes, putting his crew in harm's way to bring the condemned into his inner circle — but the hunters are close behind.

  COMING IN EPISODE 4: The Vipers’ Nest

  When betrayal comes home, where does home hide?

  The Longview’s owner tasks his crew with solving the murders and disappearances at Bailey’s Irish Space Station, but by doing so endangers all his own people and the citizens of a hidden city, and draws deadly attention toward ship secrets that need to remain hidden.

  CHAPTER 1

  Bashtyk Nokyd

  “AS A GESTURE OF RAGE AND PROTEST, I recently bought a pretty girl a fancy dress for her execution. In retrospect, that was an error.” I keep my voice down when I say it.

  Across the booth from me, a curvaceous green-eyed redhead gives me the smallest of smiles. “Everyone makes mistakes. For a man in your situation, that was a breathtakingly public one, though.”

  Her gaze flicks around the crowded room, filled with rough men and dangerous women, pauses at something back of my left shoulder. I see her eyes narrow, and then she’s looking at me again.

  “But if you hadn’t bought that dress, we wouldn’t be meeting now.” She arches an eyebrow. “That gesture bought you… friends.”

  I nod. Try to smile, but fear is a tight knot in my gut. That idiot gesture bought me enemies, too. I have twice managed to escape bounty hunters, and now there are rumors the Pact Worlds Administrators have changed the rules. “Latest word through the ping is that the Administrators have contracted with assassins. I’ve been lucky twice, but…” I shrug. “Can you help me?”

  At the bar to my left, a fight breaks out — not some rolling, swaggering fight of drunken punches by two men, but two angry women with knives, moving fast at each other. I have never seen women fight before, and hope never to again. There are no screams, no shouts, just the flash of knives, cries of pain, the thud of flesh against flesh. Blood spatters on our table, an elbow grazes my head.

  Bar patrons scramble out of the way as one woman falls dying to the floor while the other stands above her, bleeding, gut-stabbed, swearing under her breath. It is over in seconds. Both women might live if someone tosses them into Medixes, but the bartender and a couple of bouncers are dragging both out into the space station corridor.

  My contact isn’t smiling anymore. “Place is going to be crawling with sporcs in a minute. My contact said you want transport, that you can pay.”

  “I can pay. But I want to get to…” I almost say the name, and catch myself just in time. “I heard that your ship contacts a certain city.” Those are the words I was told to use. Certain city. That if I were to book passage, I might be able to get there.

  She shakes her head. “Our ship never leaves its route. Can’t. Our movements are public record, tracked. We have never been to the certain city.”

  “But…” I have traveled under assumed names, met with other strangers, paid thousands to get to this one place, this one moment, for this one meeting. I came here believing that this would be the end of my journey. That after this I would be on my way to safety and to true freedom.

  I am risking my life just to sit across a table from this woman my gut tells me is as dangerous as everyone else in this dark and noisy bar. And this is not, as my last contact had promised me, my answer. This is simply one more middle point.

  “You can book passage with us — no names, no records. I don’t know how you got to us, I don’t know who mistook us for something other than what we are… but we’ll take you aboard.” Her eyes are staring into mine. “We cannot take you where you want to go, but we will not stand in the way of you getting there. You understand?”

  I don’t, but I say, “Yes.” Because I have no place else to go.

  I don’t doubt the rumors of assassins. I slapped my name, my presence, and my protest across the faces of every friend I’d ever had in the top tier of Meileonese society when I bought Suzee Delight a designer dress to wear to her execution — and then had a contact slip a copy of the receipt with my signature on it to Danyal Travers. I wanted to let my old friends know that I had not forgotten about them and their criminal actions against their own people. They’d already sentenced me to death. It was only after I rubbed my continuing freedom in their faces that they got serious about seeing me dead.

  I am not going where I want, but I have nowhere else to go.

  “Whatever you need from me,” I tell her.

  “Passage is two thousand cash,” she says. “Rucets only.”

  I nod. I hand her the chit, she scans it and validates it. “Let’s go. Once we’re outside this bar, do not say a word to me or anyone, keep your head down and your eyes on the floor at all times, and stay to my right. Got that?”

  I nod. I follow her out the door, down the corridor, realizing that I am entrusting my fate to a stranger vouched for by other strangers — that she could be anyone. Her shipsuit is nondescript — no crew markings, no ship’s name, nothing. She could be an assassin herself. She moves the way I imagine cold-blooded killers move. But I keep my head down, my eyes on the floor. I have come this far. I cannot know that I will be safe, or that I have made the right choice. I can only know that this is the chance I have bought and paid for, and this is the chance I cannot permit myself to lose.

  The corridor is crowded, and I am pressed close to the right wall of it. The thin layer of moleibond that stands between me and the death of vacuum is flawlessly clear, and I cannot help but see the black beyond, the splash of stars spreading beneath my feet. For a moment, I see once again the strellita-lit arch of false sky above Oldcity, and I feel a pang of loss. Meileone, my home, is lost to me forever.

  I don’t know what my future holds. I only know that it will be far from my past.

  Danyal Travers

  “THIS IS DANYAL TRAVERS, VOICE of the Furies, with Twenty Points: News for the freedom seekers trapped inside the Pact Worlds Alliance.

  “Item One: The little men of the Pact Worlds Administration have met again. Minutes leaked to this inve
stigator from their last meeting confirm that the criminals who rule the Pact Worlds are seeking to break another contract, this time with the owner of The Longview.

  “Remember, The Longview is the Death Circus ship that carried Suzee Delight to her execution, and that, when the universe screamed for her pardon, let the universe know the Administrators demanded in their contract that if Suzee Delight was not executed, the ship’s owner, all its crew, and all subcontractors for her execution would be executed in her place.

  “Now these Administrators have engaged the law firm of Fenga, Ruttquivt, and Challs to lay claim to The Longview, all of Mado Keyr’s incomes and possessions, and all rights to products related to Suzee Delight’s life and execution…”

  —

  “Item Eight: If you are still trapped inside the Pact Worlds system, be wary of strangers offering to sell you weapons. Rebel sources have proof that slavers are using this tactic to capture new slaves — though how these slavers are managing to travel through Pact-Worlds-guarded origami points without being apprehended remains a mystery…”

  —

  “Item Fourteen: Well down our list, here’s some good news for a change. The Madrigal system, previously a Pact Worlds Covenant signee, has revoked its Pact Worlds charter and declared its independence…”

  —

  “Item Seventeen: Slaver pirates appear to be targeting systems with worlds newly independent from the Pact Worlds Alliance…”

  —

  “Item Twenty: In spite of the ever-increasing bounty on his head, Liberation Philosopher Bashtyk Nokyd has not yet been apprehended — and The Voice of the Furies cheers him on in his fight for individual freedom and rights for every human being…”

  —

  “…And that’s the Twenty Points. If you have proof of corruption, collusion, or criminality from those who hold power in the Pact Worlds Alliance, start fighting for your freedom. Send your proof securely to Ping Eighty-Eighty-Five, Danyal Travers, The Voice of the Furies.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Shay

  HER LUNGS FELT TIGHT AND THE AIR seemed far too thin until she passed through the last airlock to The Devil’s Dilemma.

  But once the moleibond hatch sealed behind her, Shay exhaled and her knees went weak. She sagged and leaned against the deck.

  Bashtyk Nokyd studied her, a puzzled expression on his face. “Are you… unwell?”

  Tears were starting in her eyes, and her throat tightened. She shook her head and managed to say, “I did it. I actually got you.”

  “I… don’t understand.” She saw fear in the philosopher’s eyes. She rested a hand on his shoulder and said, “I’m not some random flesh-mover, Mado Nokyd. My name is Shay — just Shay, and I’m the representative for Mado Werix Keyr of the Longview. He has been trying to get you aboard since the first announcement that you’d been given a Death Sentence in absentia and had a bounty on your head. As for me, you have been my hero since I was in —” She stopped herself. There were parts of her life she did not discuss. Not even with her hero.

  So she changed the subject. “I told you most of the truth back in the bar — the Longview doesn’t go to the City of Furies. Not directly. But we can still get you there eventually.”

  She could feel his emotions pouring off of him, washing over her. Elation. Hope. He whispered, “I’m… safe?”

  She pointed to the seat behind the captain’s chair, and held up one finger. He nodded and settled into the seat she’d indicated, and waited while it conformed around him.

  Shay, meanwhile, locked herself into the command seat and said, “Shipcom — connect to Station Control. Notification Shuttle Fellows T-38 from Fellows Moon debarking from Dock 42.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then WheatRun Station com said, “Shuttle T-38, station-com has your signal. Follow your shipcom lock-on until you’re outside of station traffic. Break lock on our mark, and proceed to exit point.”

  “Course set, com ackked. We are breaking seals and lock on… your… mark…” She separated from the station dock and peeled into traffic, carefully following the route set for the shuttle whose codes she had purchased.

  The real Fellows T-38 would show up at the WheatRun Station in two months, just as if it were running its regular route, and had not missed one trip entirely. Mado Keyr’s money had purchased that cover — that and the fact that Bashtyk Nokyd had friends in places he could not yet imagine.

  She picked up her conversation by answering the question Nokyd had asked before they left the station.

  “You’re not safe yet. Something was off at our pickup point. Someone was following me, or watching our meeting. If it had been anyone but you, I would have dropped the pickup.

  “But we’re headed to safety. You and I are going to follow the shuttle route until we’re out of WheatRun’s range. Then we’re going to change the ship ident codes, get to this system’s origami point as quickly as possible, do several highly illegal things, and by doing them, meet up with Longview on its way to its next Death Circus. As far as the universe is concerned, though, once we’re inside the origami fold, you will cease to exist. We’re going to hide you aboard the Longview for a while. Mado Keyr wants your help on a — a project of his.”

  “Wait… we’re going through the fold in this shuttle?”

  She glanced over her shoulder and grinned at him. “This is not a shuttle. This is a one-of-a-kind vehicle. It is, as far as I know, the smallest fully capable TFN sidewinder ship in existence. Mado Keyr paid a fortune to have it built — and it has proven useful for him on a number of occasions.”

  “Such as this one…”

  “Especially this one,” she agreed.

  The philosopher shivered. “I have been told that going through an origami point unprotected can destroy the mind.”

  “You’ll been told correctly, but you’re not going through unprotected. You’re going to be in a jump berth,” she said. “We have four full-Medix jump berths in the back. I’ll be unshielded during the trip, but I have a high resilience rating — I deal well with the stresses of the folds.”

  He nodded and changed the subject. “So you know Mado Keyr.”

  “Probably better than anyone, for what that’s worth.”

  “He is quite a mystery. I’ve been fascinated by him for several years now, since he first came to my attention when various friends of mine began noticing how rich he was and how many different industries he traded in. According to them, he’s one of the ten or fifteen richest men alive, but there are no pictures of him, no public events that he attends, not a single leaked holo of him anywhere doing anything. He has no apparent past, and not much of a provable present except for the trail of money and disruption that flow in his wake.”

  “As I said, I probably know him better than anyone. But I can’t shed much light on the mystery. What I can tell you is this: He hired me to work for him about fifteen years ago. Wherever he is, I must also be. My primary job has always been to be his interface with people with whom he wishes to do business. I have a number of different physical guises he requires I take when doing this — the body design I’m wearing now is what he calls Trouble Girl. In this guise I go into the sorts of places where I meet with people like you.

  “My secondary job is to help him stay healthy. Mado Keyr has severe health problems that apparently are unfixable by any known means, including by Medix. I cannot even begin to guess what sort of health problems these might be. I am not permitted to ask — all I can do is follow the steps he gives me to get him into and out of his pressurization chambers, locate and keep in stock various chemicals he needs, and other activities of that nature.