The Travels of Scout Shannon: Books 4-6

Chapter 27

27

It was weird how those black explosions could keep happening before her eyes when her eyes were shut. Scout was fairly certain that wasn’t a good sign. Her uninjured hand reached up to close over Shi Jian’s wrist, but there was nothing she could do to stop the choking.

She just hoped her dogs would be okay. Bo said he liked dogs. Surely he would look out for them.

The explosions were starting to overlap, to become one tumultuous inky sea she was sinking down into.

Then the hand was gone, and Scout could finally draw a breath. Not much of one—the swollen flesh of her throat was squeezing almost as tightly as the hand had done and her windpipe felt contracted down to the size of a drinking straw—but it was better than nothing.

Hands closed on her shoulders again, and she batted at them, hurting her injured wrist but desperate not to be touched again.

“Scout!” Bo shouted, and Scout finally opened her eyes. He was looking at her with deep concern, then with relief as he saw her looking back at him. “What is going on here?”

“Your assassins tried to kill me,” Scout said. Her voice was a hoarse wheeze, and every word hurt.

“No,” Bo said, looking at the kids gathered around him. Some of them were still clutching at their ears, and it looked like they had tucked their weapons away along with their murderous intents, but Scout didn’t trust that would last for long. “Scout, these kids are training to be spies. They learn how to fight in case their lives are in danger, but they aren’t assassins.”

Scout couldn’t summon more words through her ravaged throat. She just looked at Bo steadily until he dropped his own eyes.

“Shi Jian?” Scout asked.

“In the brig,” Bo said. “I don’t understand what happened here. She must have had a reason to be choking you like that. But that doesn’t sound like you either. Why would she see you as a threat?”

“I unjammed the marshal channels,” Scout said.

Bo looked confused. Then he looked up at the workstation she was leaning against. He tapped at the screen and seemed to realize she was telling the truth.

“You summoned the tribunal enforcers,” he said. “Why didn’t you come to me first?”

“Tried that,” Scout croaked. “My AI was told you were in the library. You weren’t.”

“I don’t understand this at all,” Bo said. He stood up and pressed a button on the band around his wrist. “You kids stay where you are. You’re going to be confined to quarters until I get to the bottom of this.”

“Yes, sir,” a few of the oldest said. Not sounding at all like they had just tried to kill Scout. They also didn’t sound surprised to be potentially punished, or worried about their missing leader.

They were just biding their time and waiting for the next order. And they didn’t take orders from Bo. Scout had to get off this ship.

“Dogs?” Scout said suddenly, trying to get up from the ground. Bo put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

“They’re here,” he promised her. “Here’s Shadow. Someone bring down the other one. Easy, I don’t think she likes you.”

Scout closed her eyes, the long night of not sleeping catching up with her. Shadow curled up beside her and Gert clamored over both of them the minute she was set down on the pit floor.

Scout dozed as the security team arrived to move the kids to their quarters. She was vaguely aware of the sounds of them being led away but couldn’t muster much interest. Her throat was throbbing and she had to time her breathing around the throbs. It took all her concentration.

“Shi Jian has gone missing, sir,” one of the officers said, and Scout forced her eyes open.

“Missing? She was just here. I pushed her off Scout myself,” Bo said.

“We’ll sweep the ship,” the officer said and turned to give orders to his subordinates.

Scout doubted very much that they would find Shi Jian if she didn’t want to be found.

“Come, Scout,” Bo said, helping her to her feet. “I’ll go with you to sick bay. The tribunal enforcers are on their way. They will be docking shortly, but let’s get you fixed up first.”

“Okay,” Scout croaked, but she let her eyes slide back shut. She felt herself being lifted, placed on a floating cot with the dogs beside her.

She didn’t really snap awake until she heard a soft beep and realized she was lying in a medical pod, a blast of warm air blowing across her face just slowing to a halt. Then the lid opened and she sat up.

“How are you feeling?” Bo asked. An anxious-looking doctor in red scrubs stood behind him.

“Better,” Scout said, her voice as clear as ever. “Did you find Shi Jian?”

“Not yet,” Bo said, his face grim. “The tribunal enforcers have docked. They are setting up a virtual meeting with the Months. It will link up through my own audience chamber. Not a room I ever use,” he said with that little nose wrinkle.

“We haven’t crossed the barricade yet,” Scout guessed, letting Bo help her out of the pod. The dogs had been sitting anxiously near the wall, and both charged forward at once to jump all over her.

“No, and I don’t understand why,” Bo said. “The lawyers can’t see any hang-up, and yet the tribunal enforcers still seem to be waiting for something to happen.” He shrugged. “They communicate amongst themselves handily enough, but when they try to talk to the rest of the human race, that’s where it all breaks down.”

Scout looked around, then found her glasses on the counter by the sink in the little examining room they were in. She slipped them on and said, “Hello, Teacher.”

“Hello, Scout,” Warrior said, appearing in one of the chairs. “Do you need me?”

“I just like having you around,” Scout said. She saw Bo pulling a pair of glasses of his own out of his sleeve. They were round with wire frames, but his lenses were clear. He wrapped the frames around his ears and then looked up at Warrior.

“Interesting,” he said. “Perhaps not surprising, given your history.”

“What do you mean?” Scout asked. Bo gave a little shake of his head, glancing at the doctor standing in the room with them.

“We should get to the audience chamber,” Bo said, putting a hand on her back to guide her out of the room. Despite Rona’s insistence, no one tried to put leashes on the dogs. They were scarcely necessary, as anxious as the dogs were to stay near Scout.

“You don’t know who to trust now,” Scout guessed.

“No, I don’t,” Bo admitted. “I always trusted Shi Jian—since I was half your age I’ve trusted her. But I don’t understand what just happened. And rather than explain, she chose to disappear. I don’t know what to think.”

“She’s the assassin I told you about,” Scout said. “And all those kids—”

“She was training them to be spies,” Bo said. “I didn’t even like that idea, but she insisted they would get more and better intel than a grown-up ever could. And I believed her. She has done a lot of studying on such matters. I’ve always relied on her.”

“Has she always worked for your family?” Scout asked.

“No,” he said, leading her out of the brightly lit medical area into the more familiar warm wood-paneled halls of his ship. “She was a galactic marshal when I met her. She saved me from a kidnapping attempt when I was eight. My father hired her to be my personal bodyguard after that. But she’s more than that. She took the place of my own AI tutor when I outgrew it. She’s shaped all my ways of seeing the world and what I can do in it. More, she’s my right hand. Everything I’ve accomplished, it’s because she knew how to take my ideas and shape them into reality. If I can’t trust her . . . I have to get you off this ship.”

Scout buried her hands deep in her pockets. Half of her stones were gone now, and she found herself a little bit sad about that. Those were Amatheon stones, little pieces of her home that she could carry with her even as she moved further and further across the galaxy. And now half of them were gone.

“Those kids are being trained to kill,” Scout said. “And many people were killed by your people on Amatheon Orbiter 1. If not by your order, then by Shi Jian’s.”

“There will be a thorough investigation,” Bo promised her.

“I don’t know how you’re going to do that,” Scout said. “For all you know, all of your people are really hers.”

Bo gave her a hard look. “You might be right about that. I’ll have my father’s people do it when we get to galactic central.”

“Maybe you should leave with me,” Scout said. “The tribunal enforcers may be the only people you can trust.”

“Tempting,” Bo said. “But no. I made this mess. I have to sort it out.”

The hallway they were walking down ended in a pair of double doors, much less imposing than what the Months had leading into their audience chamber. They opened at Bo’s touch, and Scout saw the ménage of tribunal enforcers assigned to Bo and Bo’s lawyers already gathered there.

“This is unprecedented,” the chief lawyer said the minute Bo stepped into the room. “They won’t even share the content of the message with us. How can we prepare a response?”

“There isn’t going to be a response,” Bo said. “We’re giving Scout everything she wants.”

The lawyer gaped, but before he could summon any words, there was a flicker of light from all around the room. First, the other ménage of tribunal enforcers appeared, hands folded and heads down. Then the Months and their lawyers appeared at the far end of the room.

Then, almost as if an afterthought, Geeta and Emilie appeared in the middle of the room. Scout ran to their holograms, the dogs close at her heels.

“What’s happening?” Emilie asked. She nearly had to shout to be heard over the lawyers converging on either side of them.

“Shut it!” Scout shouted. To her amazement, the lawyers fell silent, all turning to look at her. “There’s nothing to debate. I’ve appealed to the tribunal enforcers for amnesty and passage out of this restricted area. None of you can say a thing about that.”

“This planet and everything within its orbit is property of the Tajaki trade dynasty,” the Months’ lawyer said. “You have no voice in these discussions and no right to call for amnesty.”

“I do, actually,” Scout said. Emilie and Geeta looked as confused as any of the lawyers, but Scout’s eyes were on the young tribunal enforcer, who was once more looking at her with total concentration.

“Warrior,” Scout said. “What is that one saying, can you tell me?”

Emilie’s eyes tracked past Scout to Warrior standing beside her, but Geeta saw nothing.

Warrior watched the tribunal enforcer’s face for a long moment. “It’s a repeating message,” she said at last. “It’s a tricky language, but I believe they are saying this is a matter of justice.”

“A matter of justice?” Emilie repeated.

Geeta looked startled. “Is that the sign?” she asked.

Scout had just been wondering the same thing. Had this tribunal enforcer been waiting for one of them to speak the countersign this whole time?

“We can get off these ships,” Scout whispered to the other two. “We can leave with the tribunal enforcers. It’s safer.”

“I won’t leave my sister,” Geeta said. “The ménage assigned to the Months will keep Seeta and I safe enough.”

Emilie looked deeply torn, but in the end, she took a step closer to Geeta. “I’ll stick with Geeta. But Scout, you go with these tribunal enforcers. Get to the Torreses. We’ll all find each other again at galactic central.”

“Yes,” Scout agreed. “Oh, also, Bo seems like he’s okay, but the woman in black was working for him this whole time, only he didn’t know who she really was or what she was up to right under his nose. She’s disappeared again. Watch out for her; I think she wants to kill us.”

“That seems to be her thing,” Geeta said. “Stay safe.”

“You too,” Scout said, wishing she could give her friends one last hug, but at the moment they were just light and sound, their bodies too far away to be touched.

“If you girls are quite done?” Bo’s lawyer prompted, and Scout realized everyone was glaring at them as they whispered together. She straightened her back, throwing her braid back over her shoulder.

“Oh, and it’s a good look,” Emilie said, her eyes making an exaggerated sweep of Scout from head to toe. Just like Emilie to want to get one last whisper in.

“It suits you,” Geeta agreed. “We’ll see you soon.”

“I hope so,” Scout said. She looked around, made sure her dogs were still close beside her, and looked to the ménages of tribunal enforcers who had all stepped closer around her.

“I ask for amnesty and passage out of this restricted system,” Scout said, looking to the youngest tribunal enforcer. “It’s a matter of justice. But more, it’s a matter of sovereignty. The people of Amatheon do not recognize the Tajaki trade dynasty as their owners, employers, or masters, or as having any power over them.”

The young tribunal enforcer smiled. That expression was clear enough, and Scout returned it.

Jun Tajaki shrieked in rage, a sound abruptly cut off as the transmission ended and Scout was once more in a half-empty audience chamber with Bo and his people.

“I hope we’ll stay in contact,” Bo said as he walked with Scout and the tribunal enforcers back to the airlock. “I’m so very sorry. I did think you’d be safe here.”

“I believe you,” Scout said. “Contact me every day so I know you’re all right.”

“It’s going to be lonely for you, traveling with this crew,” Bo said. “They never speak out loud. Sometimes they get surprised into laughing. It’s . . . not pleasant.”

“I don’t have far to go,” Scout said. “People are waiting for me on the other side.”

She hoped that was true, that the Torreses had made it all the way to the barricade before being unable to continue. That they still waited for her. She wasn’t looking forward to flying in a transparent ship with a crew of people she couldn’t talk with. Hopefully it would be a short trip, followed by another trip across an airlock.

“Come, dogs,” Scout said, summoning her dogs close to her side. Then they stepped out together, into the long white hallway that appeared to open up onto space itself. It was disorienting to look at, and she wasn’t even in it yet. But she didn’t slow her steps, and she didn’t look back.

Time to face the next adventure.

The End