"Get in, sit down, don't fuss while I zip tie your wrists, knees, and ankles, and if you try to bite me when I gag you I'll throw you in the cargo hold." Markov shoved Irene onto the ship. Ursula and Selandra followed him on board and headed to their respective bunks to change.
"Authoritative and feisty today, I like it." Irene ran her foot along the inside of Markov's thigh.
Markov batted her foot away and finished tying Irene up. "None of that! Okay, now you're on the ship, tell me where the plant is programmed to go."
Irene grinned up at him. "Show me some skin, sweetheart. That'll refresh my memory."
Markov drew his pistol and leaned it against Irene's temple. "Enough games. Tell me. Now."
"Do you really think you could do it? After all we've been through together, you and I?"
"General Siderus himself couldn't pull the trigger on the virus we used to massacre the AI. He turned to me and I did not hesitate. Let's not find out today whether I think your life is worth more than an entire civilization," Markov said slowly and with great force.
Irene sighed happily. "Times like this are what make it so hard to steal from you, you know that? Who else can say they've ended another species competing with us for dominance of the galaxy? There are no other men like you, Markov, that's why I actually care about you. Telisan."
Markov's eyes bulged. "Telisan? You sent them to Telisan?"
"Is that a problem? Oh wait! Isn't that where your idiot sister lives?" Irene smirked evilly.
Markov shoved the gag in her mouth and she bit him before he could get his fingers clear. "Dammit! You drew blood!" He turned away and punched the intercom. "Qadira! Get us to Telisan as quickly as you can!"
"Are we visiting Marigold?" Qadira asked.
"Just get me there now!" Markov stormed towards the bridge, but the deck started swaying beneath his feet and his head started spinning. "The hell?" He looked down at his hand where Irene had bitten him.
Markov collapsed. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was Irene winking at him.
*
"We should just kill her," Qadira declared grouchily.
"We can't. The poison could be fatal and based on what Selandra and Ursula told us, we don't have time for me to run a full battery of tests to find out what she gave him," Liam reminded her.
"So we just give her whatever the hell she wants?" Qadira's nostrils flared angrily.
"If we're smart we do. This is Irene we're talking about here. She is tied up in that loading bay because she wants to be, don't ever let yourself think otherwise." Liam glanced anxiously at the door leading from the mess hall back to where Irene was being held.
"So who's going in with you? Can it be me? I'll be the bad cop, I've always wanted to hit get right in her smug face!" Qadira asked eagerly.
Liam shook his head. "I'm going to talk to her alone. I don't want get getting into any of your heads."
"And she won't get into yours?" Qadira arched a skeptical eyebrow.
"She's already in mine," Ursula muttered from where she was rocking back and forth on top of a counter, her knees tucked against her chest. "Rooted around for a good long while, she did. Scrambled things around and stole my best indigo chess pieces."
Liam frowned. Ursula tended to get extra unstable when Markov was injured. "No one else hates her and respects her enough to keep their cool with her," Liam explained.
"Honestly, I'm a little disappointed in you people. General Siderus told me you were the best, but you've all got your panties in a bunch because of one woman," Selandra said snidely.
"No, Siderus was wrong," Liam told her as he left the mess hall to face Irene, "she is the best."
Liam pinched Irene's nose and extracted her gag with a set of salad tongs. "How are we feeling?" He tossed the gag aside just in case it had some trace of poison on it.
"About as mediocre as I always feel when I have to deal with you," Irene replied blandly.
"Then why don't you tell me what antidote to give your beloved Markov to revive him? Then you can deal with him the way everyone involved prefers."
Irene chuckled to herself. "Because there isn't time. We need to get to Telisan immediately."
Liam sighed. "Really? Do we have to go through this whole song and dance every time? I know you want something or you wouldn't put me in a position to pretend to bargain with you. Give me the antidote and then I'll untie you and give you whatever other insane demand you may make, because I'm tired of pretending to be on equal footing with you so spit it out."
Irene put on her pouty face. "Such a stick in the mud. You never change. The antidote is tyrifan. He won't wake up in time to extract Marigold though." She craned her neck to the side so that it popped quietly and Liam watched as a tiny robot skittered out from her leather getup and sliced the zip ties for her. When she saw the look of consternation on his face Irene smiled. "Oh, you thought I needed help getting free? Silly Liam, I just needed a ride to Telisan."
Liam stood, mouth agape as she walked away. Then his wits came back to him and he hit the intercom. "We got the antidote, take us to Telisan, Qadira. And everyone, please be advised that Irene has freedom of the ship and she is not to be trusted under any circumstances!"
*
Ursula pressed her back against the corner of her room and hugged her knees tight against her chest. “When we were young and full of hope, the world was filled with blood and soap,” she whispered to herself over and over again as the FTL drive warmed up. She could feel the universe humming around her and she tried not to scream. This was the time that her atoms didn’t get put back together in the right order after the jump, she could sense it deep down in her bones. Ursula didn’t want to die that way, stuck in some nook or cranny of the cosmos.
“Hello there. I don’t mean to intrude, but you look like you could use a friend.” A voice broke through Ursula’s litany and now she did scream.
The ship jumped and Ursula didn’t realize who she had stabbed until she saw Wilson’s idiot nephew lying on the deck with blood spurting out of his chest.
“Oh shit.” Doctor Monroe hit the intercom and calmly said, “Liam please get up to the crew quarters as quickly as you can, Ursula has stabbed Andrew.”
“Stabbed Andrew?” Wilson rumbled drunkenly.
“Get off the comm so Liam can talk," Qadira barked irritably.
“But he’s been stabbed! I’m supposed to be parental and such! Do parents usually get upset when -” Qadira must have cut the engine room intercom because Wilson’s slurred speech ended abruptly.
“Is he dead?” Liam finally got the chance to ask.
Doctor Monroe knelt to feel Andrew’s pulse. “No, I don’t think she hit anything too vital, but there’s a lot of blood.”
“And soap,” Ursula added.
“What? Nevermind.” Doctor Monroe glared at her. “What did you stab him for anyway?”
“I didn’t think all my pieces would get rearranged properly after the jump and then he startled me. It was an honest mistake.” Ursula felt much calmer after stabbing someone, just like she always did.
“Right. Well why don’t you go chat with your little friend Qadira up in the cockpit while Liam and I clean this up,” Doctor Monroe suggested.
“No thanks, Qadira gets emotional when the captain’s been shot.”
Monroe sighed. “Yes, I see how that could be obnoxious.”
Liam arrived with his medical bag. “Jesus, Ursula!” He knelt and began patching Andrew up.
“She said he startled her,” Doctor Monroe explained.
“Startled me when the jump was about to scramble all my molecules and then not reassemble them correctly,” Ursula clarified.
“You do know that’s a myth, right?” Doctor Monroe asked. “It’s literally never happened.”
Liam groaned. “Don’t engage her.”
“How do you know it’s never happened? What if when you get scrambled improperly they replace you with a copy from another dimension? Did you ever think of that, smart lady?” Ursula tapped her skull to show she’d put a great deal of thought into this hypothesis. “What if you’ve been replaced dozens of times and have no idea?”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“That’s exactly what they want you to think!” Ursula insisted.
Doctor Monroe arched one of her dark eyebrows. “And who, precisely, are ‘they’ in this little delusion of yours?”
“Not sure yet. Say, are you and Liam going to sleep together soon? I have a bet I’d like to win.” Ursula got the supreme pleasure of watching Doctor Monroe’s mouth hang open for a good five seconds before she realized what she was doing and finally shut it.
Then the snotty science lady stood and left without another word.
Ursula snickered and turned to Liam. “How much angrier do you think she would have been if I’d told her the bet was with you?”
Liam smiled as he worked. “I think we’d have had a second stabbing on our hands and it wouldn’t have been you she went after.”
“Good thing I kept that to myself, then. There’s going to be a different sort of stabbing going on between you two and it ain’t going to take no Goddamn month to happen either.”
“Don’t be crude,” Liam chided. “And I could say the same of you and Andrew here. I saw you tormenting him when you first came on board.”
“Who, Boring-Vanilla-Boy? Yuck. He is going to live though, right?” Ursula leaned over to watch Liam finish bandaging the boy’s wound.
“Of course. What kind of battle medic would I be if a simple knife wound stymied me?” Liam asked.
A feral gleam lit up Ursula’s bright blue eyes. “The kind that could help me get away with so many murders!”
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