Okay, Ax thought, it has to look worse than it is.

He took stock of the things that were going his way. Somehow, the pirates hadn’t had their shields up, which meant the old Turner luck was running, but other than destroying the pirate vessel, wins were pretty hard to find. He used his hand welder to finish a bypass on the vid-drone’s control units, and checked his handiwork.

Okay, the drone was finished too. So chalk up another win. At least the pirates hadn’t come downstairs looking for him before they left, which meant they were satisfied with whatever they’d grabbed out of the cabins on the main level.

And the ship’s AI was offline, which meant it wasn’t in the process of being as obstructionist as possible. Chalk a third tally in the win column. Given how everything else was designed on the ship, Ax suspected Octiron considered the AI’s behavior a desired feature.

Sure, without the AI he had no way of knowing what ship’s systems were damaged, but he knew the torpedo tubes worked. Since AI weren’t allowed access to the weapons systems, he could use them without relying on the computer as his interface. Apparently, someone at Octiron had concerns that a well-armed AI might wipe out all the corporation’s nondigital employees, an option Ax had a hard time seeing the downside of.

All told, three wins should be a pretty good place to start—nearly enough to make him want to dance. Had there been gravity, he’d have considered it, but in zero-g it would just lead to him flailing about wildly and exhausting himself.

The first clunk of a magnetic boot on the stairs startled him. Berniss had said the holovid operators didn’t use them—if they got caught in microgravity, they used drones. Much safer all around and, as she told him before the race, Octiron was all about keeping the holovid teams safe during the filming.

Ax’s life, though, Octiron could risk all they wanted. As Berniss had said, death and injury were just good ratings.

At the sound of the third step, Ax realized the pirates might have left a skeleton crew on board the yacht. Fast, a bit lightly armored, but with good bones—the yacht would be great as a personal vessel, or to sell off to some black-market crime lord.

Gobby would have stolen the ship in a heartbeat. Then again, she’d have appreciated the tastelessly expensive décor too. She liked things that looked pretty and did as they were told.

No wonder she and Ax had gotten along.

Another step thudded, and he pushed off the weapons-control console to float across to the armory locker that hung on one wall. Let’s see how well action hero looks on the ratings.

The armory closet remained locked. Without palmprints from both contestants, there was no accessing the blasters stored inside. Ax growled in frustration. Oh, he understood the reasons why, of course. Too many more meals where Darryn corrected him on how to hold his fork, and Ax would have been driven to murder sooner rather than later. Better for the company to require the permission of both contestants to open the weapons lockers.

Two more steps and the pirate reached the bottom of the stairs. Ax tucked the drone under his arm and swam to the upper corner of the room, above and behind the door. In his experience, magnetic boots made you forget gravity was off, so the pirate might not remember to check above him when entering the room.

Or her. He remembered the flame-wreathed shape that had come through the airlock first as being distinctly female. She’d been the shock troops though. From what he knew about taking a prize, you didn’t leave your best fighters to maintain a vessel when you could send lesser crew. Safe bet she’d been vaporized with the rest of her friends.

Damn shame that. Scary or not, she’d had a great figure.

The door to the room slid open. Ax flipped the switch he’d jury-rigged, and the drone’s compressed air jets all fired in the same direction. He released it, and like a half-meter wide bullet, it rocketed toward the figure stepping through the door.

She fired her needle gun, shattering the lens on the front of the drone, before it cracked off her shoulder and she punched it to the deck plates. The metal floor barely noticed, but the crunch of the drone was as final as it was sickening.

The woman with the scarlet skin stepped the rest of the way through the door and pointed the pepper-box muzzle of the pistol at him. As she spoke, the universal translator in Ax’s comm unit immediately converted her speech to Galactic Common. “I am Kayana, Daughter of House Frissyn, Banner-bearer for House Garryk of the Nine. Surrender or die.”

Ax appreciated the easy choices. He slowly put his hands up, careful not to set himself tumbling through zero-g. “I’ll take surrender, thanks.”

The pistol didn’t waver as she reached out to snag his ankle with her free hand. She dragged him to the deck and pinned him in place with one magnetic boot. “Where is the rest of the crew?”

“You’re looking at it, devil-girl. The only other guy is dead upstairs.” Technically true, since the camera crew wasn’t going to help run the ship. They were just there to get decent footage for the holovid channels. That said, he didn’t owe those assholes anything. “Oh, and there’s a holovid operator hiding in the safe room on the main deck. But she doesn’t operate the ship.” Enjoy that, Berniss. Should have let me in.

The woman snorted and lifted him to her face. Up close, and without the flames to distract him, Ax could get a good look at the pirate for the first time. Her eyes were black, the white so small as to be nonexistent. Wavy dark hair tumbled over her shoulders and into her face in a cloud that bordered on unruly. In the dim light, he could just make out the edges of the tiny scales that chased the high bones of her cheeks and the point of her chin. In another situation, he’d consider her damned attractive. So long as she wasn’t threatening him. And she didn’t smile. Smiling showed off the sharp points on her canine teeth and made her a lot scarier.

She leaned into his face, giving him a full view of her vicious dentition. “Turn on the gravity.”

Fortunately, he was used to terrifying women. He shrugged. “I’d love to help you with that, but no can do, Kay.”

“Kayana,” she spat. “And you will do it, or I’ll kill you.”

“You’re big on that threat. Problem is, the ship’s all biometric controls. Once you kill me, you’ll be locked out of the system completely. I’m the only the person you’ve got.” He gave her his most charming smile, the one Gobby had buckled for.

It didn’t work.

“All I need is your hand.” She reached for a blade at her hip. “You don’t need to be attached.”

“Actually, I do. It’s a pretty sophisticated system they’ve got in place, and a dead hand is no better than the wrong hand. But you’ve got bigger problems than the security.” He took a deep breath, hoping he had put enough bait on the hook to keep her from killing him. Or cutting off his hands. He was especially attached to his hands.

She rolled her eyes. “Such as?”

“Well, the AI is a complete pain in the ass, for starters.” Ax chuckled at the understatement.

Kayana knotted her fingers in his collar and began to drag him up the steps to the main deck. “An AI is just one of the ship’s systems. It does what it’s told.”

“Yeah, and this one’s been told to be completely unmanageable.” He scrambled his feet before realizing it was easier to let her drag him in microgravity than to fight against it. “I assume it’s because Octiron gets some kind of sick thrill out of making everything as difficult as possible.”

She tugged him back up to eye level, and Ax found himself staring into eyes like the black emptiness between the stars, and just as warm. “Or you could be stalling, looking for an excuse while you try to figure out a way to render me unconscious.”

Ax donned his best grin. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Her nostrils flared, and she snorted. “Said every man who was lousy at both.”

#

LORDS OF THE NINE, this human was the most annoying creature alive. And she said that as a person who had been betrayed by a different human only a half-hour earlier.

Kayana dragged her prisoner the rest of the way up the spiral stairs and down the short hall to the bridge. The wood and chrome finally gave way to something approaching someone’s holovid-set vision of what a starship command center should look like. Paired consoles at the front, each just flat onyx display tables that reconfigured to show whichever systems the user needed at the time. Thickly cushioned acceleration couches sat at each station, despite the fact that the ship would have inertial-negation systems to reduce the effects of directional gravity. And at the front, in the approximation of a windscreen on an atmospheric vessel, an enormous set of displays showed what sat ahead of the ship. At the moment, it revealed nothing but open space and distant stars—her crew had made a point to ambush the vessel well off the main spaceways.

The human confused her. The drone attack, while loud and clumsy, had been a clever idea. And he’d taken a good position to surprise her when she came into the room. Against someone who wasn’t trained in ship-to-ship microgravity combat, it might even have worked. Unfortunately for him, her father had drilled her too many times for her to ignore the blind corners when entering a room. When he had made an effort to defend his ship, she actually felt something like respect for him. Noble, if doomed. It was the stuff Malebranki sagas were built around.

But as soon as he’d been caught, this. He’d tucked his legs under him, choosing to remain on his knees, like a craven jagga. She’d been wrong. The man had no honor. No sense of pride. That was the only thing that could explain his behavior.

Kayana shoved the human into one of the command chairs and pointed at the console. “Turn on the AI. And the gravity.” It would be nice to slip out of the boots. The magnetic plates made her feel like a thousand kilos of graceless blob.

He took a moment to buckle himself in then looked at her, the grin he’d been trying to appease her with melting into what she assumed was either sorrow or resignation. “I tried to warn you—” She reached for the ceremonial blade at her hip, and the human paled. “But you’re in charge, so here’s what you get. Just remember, it’s not my fault.”

He placed his hand in the designated space on the console, and blue light illuminated the space between his fingers as the system read his biometric information. After a few moments, the blue-white hologram of an enormous insect appeared in the center of the bridge. Its long, bulging abdomen undulated and pulsed in a nauseating display. More mouthparts than she wanted to count clicked and chittered together, though no translation was forthcoming.

Kayana took a step back to bring up her pistol on reflex, even though she knew it was a hologram. “What in the Nine Names is that?”

The human made a broad gesture with his arm. “Kayana, meet Algol, the ship’s AI. You know how most of them have some degrading avatar setting like sexy catgirl, or sexy humanoid? Well, this one’s apparently stuck on sexy termite-girl.

The hologram stepped forward toward the console, and she resisted the urge to take a matching step back. Despite its hideous appearance, it was just a holographic avatar. Not a physical thing. It couldn’t touch her. Or drool ooze onto her.

The insect vibrated the vestigial wings above its lower back, and the buzzing facsimile of human speech rolled out of the ship’s speakers. “Life-sign systems do not detect contestant Darryn Olara. Is he deceased?”

The human nodded. “Sad to say, but yes. During the whole pirate att—”

“Ax Turner, this ship is in violation of rule twenty-three-point-one of the Octiron Corporation’s Great Space Race. All ships are required to have a crew of two contestants, or be disqualified. In this case, the death of your teammate has removed you from the competition. If your next plotted course is not to the starting planet of Primaera, I will be forced to take control of this ship and register you as a thief.”

“Nononono!” The human sounded panicked as he waved his arms about. “Hang on, we can talk about this.”

There would be no talking. This AI planned to steal her prize, which she had already commandeered by right of arms. Primaera was in a well-patrolled sector, and there would be too many chances for the authorities to find an excuse to inspect her ship. As the fifty-first maxim said, Always trust the government to take what you’ve rightfully stolen.

She stepped in front of the hologram, hand on the hilt of her blade. “I am Kayana, Daughter of House Frissyn, and Ban—”

“Banner-bearer for House Garryk of the Nine,” the AI completed. “I have reviewed the recordings already. The pirate crew of which you were a member has attacked a vessel engaging in the Octiron Corporation’s Great Space Race. While the contestants on this ship do not travel with any particular protection, the ship and holovid crew are considered bonded by the corporation, and as such, can be returned for a modest reward.”

Kayana resisted the urge to roll her eyes. How was she being disrespected on her own ship? “I’m certain I could find a pry bar and reprogram your central core.”

The AI’s mouthparts vibrated together, and a drop of noxious slime fell to the floor and smoked before disappearing. “Not before an airlock malfunction accidentally exposed the inhabited portions of the ship to hard vacuum, I’m afraid.”

“Wait. Algol, hear me out a moment.” The human—Ax—waved about again. “Nobody needs to be exposed to any vacuum. And nobody needs to be reprogrammed.” He looked at her, and Kayana had a sick sense that she wouldn’t enjoy the next words out of his mouth. “Do you trust me?”

“Not in the slightest.” This time she couldn’t help but roll her eyes. The man was clearly deranged.

“That’s fair. Okay.” He nodded to himself. “You’re a pirate, though. So, you’re in it for money. How’d you like to make a damn sight more than whatever ‘modest reward’ this asshole’s offering you?”

She narrowed her eyes. “What exactly are you proposing?”

“Team up with me.”

Unbelievable. There was literally no end to the man’s gall. First, he showed no sign of a backbone at all, and then he expected her to team up with him? For a game show, of all things? Enough.

She drew her ceremonial blade, fully ready to end his miserable existence, but he cut her off. “Hear me out. The Great Space Race has an enormous purse attached. Everyone who completes the race in the allotted time gets something, even if they’re not first. We split the winnings, fifty-fifty.”

The AI vibrated uncomfortably. “This ship is in violation of Great Space Race regulations.”

“No, it’s not,” Ax said. “What’s the rule, specifically?”

“All ships have a crew of two contestants, neither of whom can be employees or related to employees of the Octiron Corporation through marriage, birth, cloning, asexual fission, or matter-beam accident.”

“Exactly,” he said. “And it doesn’t say anywhere that the same two contestants that start the race have to finish it.”

“The contestants are required to face all challenges together,” was the AI’s buzzing response.

"Ha!" Ax exclaimed. “But we haven’t done any challenges yet, so technically, we’re in the clear there too.”

She wasn’t certain she liked the direction the human was taking, but he seemed to have walled the AI off in a circle of its own logic, which was impressive in its own right.

The AI’s avatar turned its bulbous, multifaceted eyes to face her. “Kayana, Daughter of House Frissyn, do you agree to surrender use of your likeness to the Octiron Corporation for promotional purposes during the current season of the Great Space Race? Do you consent to be filmed and photographed, and otherwise broadcast all aspects of your life for the duration of the competition?”

She looked over to Ax. “How big is this prize?”

His grin was even more grating than she expected. “Millions. More than enough to buy your own ship.”

Avarice wasn’t an uncommon trait in her family, and increasing their coffers would be the best way back into their good graces. It was, after all, why she’d turned to piracy. A game show, however dangerous it purported to be, had to be safer than fighting for each prize and splitting the booty with a whole crew. She snorted. “Seventy-thirty. I’m the captain. Without me, you’d have nothing at all.”

He clutched his chest as though in pain. “Sixty-forty. I deserve something for my efforts.”

She was coming away with more than she had, certainly. And Al’kheri's Maxims had plenty of instruction on when to take a good deal. Still, clarity needed to be made. “I get the sixty.”

Ax chuckled. “Nice catch. Yes, you get the sixty.”

“Fine.” She nodded and extended her hand. “We have an accord.” His handshake was solid, not too strong or an attempt to assert his position. A good start for him. When it finished, she turned to the hologram. “Okay, Algol. Where do I sign? And when do you turn the gravity back on?”