“How are we going to make him talk?” Dr. Delecta asked, staring at Aslam through the window of the interrogation cell. Catching him had been easy enough, the unsuspecting man not even realizing what was happening until they were in the enormous entrance hallway of his compound with their weapons out, and he had given up without a fight. But he had protested his innocence all the way to the cells, and maintained it now, a slim dark-haired young man in an expensive silk house robe, his spitting rage contrasting with his perfumed, effete appearance.

  “You can’t hold me here on hearsay and rumours!” He yelled at the one-way glass, even as the evidence of his crimes flicked across the terminal in front of him.

  “No comms,” Siladan announced, bursting into the monitoring room with Saqr behind him. They had been checking his ship for any secret communications channels while the rest of the team dragged him here, and now the whole crew, with the exception of Lavim Tamm, were gathered in the small monitoring room. Abraham and Inge were also there, staring in disgust at the man who had betrayed their colony.

  “Abraham and Inge, why don’t you try?” Olivia suggested sweetly. “We’ll watch from here. Maybe he reacted badly to unusual faces. If that doesn’t work maybe Ilthid can convince him.”

  “Doubtful,” Abraham muttered, but agreed anyway, and he and Inge were soon in the cell, trying to get Aslam to listen to reason.

  As soon as they sat down opposite the young man Olivia turned to Al Hamra. “You can make him confess, captain,” she said. “With a twist of your …” she gestured with her finger to the heavens. “You know…”

  “I could, but …” Al Hamra gestured to Abraham and Inge.

  “They’ll be in a different room,” Olivia pointed out. “If you’re in there, they won’t put it together. And it doesn’t register on a camera … does it?”

  “We could distract them when you do it,” Dr. Delecta added helpfully. “You might need to do it more than once, but we can keep them talking.”

  “I don’t like to do it too often at a time,” Al Hamra warned them. “It gets … unpleasant. Tiring. I might not be able to make it work tomorrow if I use it too much today.”

  “Interesting,” Olivia observed, watching her captain closely. “You didn’t tell us that before.”

  “Well, you didn’t ask, did you?” Al Hamra replied testily. “Okay, I’ll do it, but let’s get one of them away from here. Siladan can you ask Inge to go to the Foundation with you? To check it?” Seeing Olivia’s quizzical look he added, “If they doubt themselves it’s one thing, but if they both feel something and check with each other later they’ll realize something happened.”

  As soon as Inge and Abraham returned Siladan asked Inge to help him, and the two of them left for Aslam’s compound. Dr. Delecta suggested to Abraham that Al Hamra try talking to their prisoner, because “He can be very scary, even if he doesn’t look it,” and when Abraham agreed Al Hamra went into the cell. They turned on the audio as he sat down, Saqr checking to make sure the video was recording, and Al Hamra started talking. At first he was quiet, attempting standard persuasion, and after a few minutes of performance solely for Abraham’s sake, he snapped,

  “Confess!”

  They all recognized the same brief sense of a shadow gathering around them, the quick rush of terror and the sudden panic at the faint sound of imagined monsters clawing through space and time. Then it was gone, with just a small gasp from Abraham, and Aslam gave a small yelp and began babbling his confession.

  “I did it! I sabotaged the life support systems and the generators!” Then he stopped in confusion, realizing that he had signed his death warrant.

  Al Hamra looked back at the window, then reached out to touch Aslam’s hand. “Good, Aslam, good. The Judge looks favourably on those who confess their crimes. Now, tell us everything. You don’t want to make me angry again, do you?”

  Aslam began to visibly shake, either with realization of the terrible justice he could expect for what he had done, or out of fear of the Mystic’s powers suddenly revealed to him. For a moment he looked like he was going to resist the request, but then the mask of his limited courage slipped and he gave in.

  “I wanted to take over,” he said in a small voice. “I made contact with the … with some pirates. They were going to come here and offer to give us the supplies we need, if we did what they wanted.”

  “Which was?” Abraham clicked the speaker button and asked the question through the in-room speakers.

  “They would make me the sole authority of the station, and you would all work and live under my command.” With a sudden, brief flash of rage, he added, “As it should be! My family founded this place!” But then he went silent, sullen and desperate.

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  “And what were these … pirates … going to get from this?” Al Hamra asked him.

  “They would have a permanent squad here, who would monitor communications and ship activities in the system, and occasionally use the colony for raiding.”

  Abraham gasped, but Olivia just grunted acknowledgement. Mining colonies in asteroid belts were sometimes known to cut deals with pirates as raiding platforms, either for a share of the profits or to protect themselves. No one had ever heard of such an audacious method for establishing such a relationship, though.

  “So really it was going to be their base, with you in charge of the people here?” Al Hamra asked, and when he nodded agreement, pushed on with, “Is this the reward you promised Ilthid? You would take over the base and make him your paramour?”

  Aslam nodded again, but Olivia sneered and said, “Not likely. Once he was in charge here he was going to work his way through anyone he wanted. He was planning servitude, after all.”

  “You called them again yesterday,” Al Hamra pointed out. “They will be here tomorrow. Can you tell us about their ship, the Host of Avernum?” But Aslam shook his head.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” he told them. “I only met their agents on Coriolis. I don’t know their ships. All I know is it’s coming to seal the deal.”

  “You mean, to board the station and kill anyone who resists,” Al Hamra pointed out, keeping his voice level and quiet, as if he were talking about changing a light tube. “Then install you as commander of the survivors like a slave lord.”

  Aslam nodded, looking miserable, and Al Hamra left him there, returning to the monitoring room. “There you go,” he said to Abraham, in response to the inquiring look the old man was giving him. “Dr. Delecta is right, I can be persuasive.” He looked around at them. “We need to decide how to defend the station,” he said.

  “We aren’t leaving now?” Saqr asked, looking crestfallen.

  “I think we should stay and help,” Al Hamra replied, looking around for agreement. “I think there is a way to turn this to your advantage, Abraham.”

  “Why not just send a distress call?” Abraham asked, but Al Hamra shook his head.

  “They’ll likely intercept it, and if they do they’ll blow this place to dust. It will take the fastest Legion ship at least two days to get here, and they’ll be gone by then. It’s impossible to find anyone in the asteroid belt if they want to hide, so they’ll give the Legion the slip and you’ll all be dead.”

  Abraham nodded at the logic of it, sighed and sat down. “We should wait for Inge’s return,” he suggested. “Maybe the Colonial Agency can help.”

  “No,” Al Hamra said flatly. “They’ll use it to their own advantage, somehow, or make you bait.” He gestured to Aslam. “If we can get him to cooperate we can make sure they don’t know their plans have been discovered. Then when they land, we ambush them, kill them, and take their ship.”

  “That’s ambitious,” Saqr said.

  “Captain!” Olivia almost shouted. “We don’t know how big their ship is. They could have hundreds of troops!”

  “I don’t think so,” Saqr objected, and when Olivia looked at her askance added, “They must have the schematics of the station, so they know the size of the docks, and they’ll need to dock to offload their troops, which means their ship has to be no bigger than ours. It’s a class 4 or a class 3. And we know it had a hangar for at least two fighters, and it must have a cargo hold for the supplies they were bringing. Plus, I would bet it’s got a big complement of weapons. So I think that means it can’t have too much space for troops.” She paused to do some calculations in her head. “I’d say a maximum of a hundred or so troops. And can there be that many pirates in the whole galaxy?”

  “She’s got a point,” Adam agreed with the tiny pilot. “If we mobilize the colonists and they aren’t expecting it, we can beat them.”

  “What if they put a missile into our dock?” Delecta asked, but Saqr dismissed the suggestion with a wave of her hand.

  “Nobody does that!” She told her. “Too much risk of a reactor meltdown. You only do that if you want to destroy the station.”

  “But they could take off and do that if they realize they’ve been ambushed,” she replied. “Then we lose everything.”

  “We can stop that,” Adam said, but Abraham objected.

  “We don’t have any heavy weapons!”

  “But you have drones and enough explosives to break a planet,” he pointed out. “Strap some explosives to a few drones, send them into the ship when the troops come out. They’ll probably come out of the cargo bay. You can blow the cargo bay doors, send one inside to blow the interior doors, then send another one at the air locks.” He looked around at everyone with a sharp grin. “Air locks are always the weakness on a grounded ship. Once you blow those access points they can’t evacuate until everyone has an exo-suit on, which takes time. If we keep Saqr in the Phoenix, she can leave the station when they do, and shoot them down before they can do anything serious.”

  “Sounds risky,” Abraham said slowly. “And for dubious rewards.”

  “Not really,” Al Hamra told him. “You’ll get their ship, for starters. If it’s a class 3 or 4 it’ll replace your lost vessel and then some.”

  “And what do you want in exchange for your help?” Abraham asked him.

  “We’ve already got plenty,” Al Hamra answered, shaking his head. “We’ll leave you the ship and take a large share of their weapons and gear, a share of any birr we can salvage from their bodies, and any small ship’s vehicles. How’s that?” He looked around to the others, who all nodded agreement to his terms, and then back to Abraham.

  “Agreed,” Abraham said, and gestured at Aslam. “The last question, though, is how to make him cooperate. We’ll need him to act normal for the night, if he drops them even the smallest clue …”

  “You’re going to space him aren’t you?” Olivia asked, tone surprisingly light for the gravity of the topic. “That’s the usual punishment, isn’t it?” When Abraham nodded she continued, “Why not offer him a deal? Tell him he can leave with his ship if he cooperates, and signs his portion of his family’s shares in the station over to your collective?”

  Abraham chuckled, rubbing his chin in appreciation of the stratagem. “That would be … helpful. For our future.”

  “As would a new ship,” Al Hamra reminded him. “I think we can do it, Abraham. You make our little traitor the offer, and we’ll set to work on the ambush with your colonists. Give us a couple of drones, all the weapons you’ve got, and some time to set up a few barricades, and I think we can beat these gandu.”

  “By the Grace of the Icons,” Adam finished, “I want to murder them all.”