Moments later, it opened to admit a woman. Her appearance was as unexpected as that of the old man. She wore a thermo-coat and synth-pelt too, still dappled with snow. She had cropped silver hair and a face marked in equal parts by old scars and smile lines.

 She glanced from Henshaw to the old man, then kicked snow from her boots against the doorframe, speaking in the same rough accent as the man.

 “You haven’t killed him, then?”

 “I was about to, but he woke up,” said the old man.

 “Apologies for Torro,” the woman—Myra, Henshaw assumed—said to him with a smile. “He’s spent too long fighting the Hegemony to know a kid when he sees one.”

 “I’m a cadet-pilot of GuardCorps,” Henshaw said without really meaning to. “I’m…not a kid.”

 “If you say so, kid,” Myra said. She dumped the backpack she was carrying on the floor and unstrapped part of it, pulling out a set of tins. She then unscrewed a canteen and poured part of its contents inside each one, then stacked them one atop another above the heating blocks.

 The old man, Torro, said something to Myra in a dialect so guttural Henshaw couldn’t understand it. She responded in kind, both apparently ignoring him now.

 “I won’t tell you anything,” he said in what he hoped was a steely tone.

 “You already told us you’re a cadet-pilot in the GuardCorps,” Myra pointed out. Henshaw glared at her.

 “I’ll only give you my name, rank, and number.”

 ‘“Unless it’s a really weird name, or your rank is ‘corporate-commander-in-chief of GuardCorps,’ then I don’t really care,” Myra said.

 “You won’t break me,” Henshaw snarled. “Or fool me. But if you release me, I can maybe ask Operations to downgrade your status from ‘kill’ to ‘kill/capture.’”

 Myra laughed before speaking again.

 “You’re a prisoner, but you’re not our prisoner. It’s the storm that’s keeping you here. You’re free to go when it blows over.”

 Henshaw frowned. This all had to be a trick, an attempt at getting his guard down. Hidden beneath his blanket, he flexed his fingers, clenched his hands into fists. He felt a little stronger, a little surer of himself than when he had first awoken. The worst of the cold had retreated. A little longer, and maybe he’d be able to take them.

 “Don’t expect me to believe any of your Pact lies,” he said, deciding that maybe continuing the conversation was the best course of action, for the time being.

 This time it was Torro who let out a throaty chuckle, while Myra sighed.

 “We’re not Pact,” she said. “Not anymore.”

 That took Henshaw by surprise, even if it was probably lies.

 “You’re the Ghost, aren’t you?” he asked her. “That makes you the head of the Pact Direct Action Cell on New Khoine. You were deployed here to support the revolution and continue subverting the workers. Our intel was clear on all this.”

 Torro snorted.

 “‘Intel’ is a strong word for a lot of make-believe,” he grumbled.

 “If you’re not Pact, then why are you here?” Henshaw demanded. “Why are you fighting?”

 “Because it’s all we’ve got left,” Torro said.

He and Myra exchanged a few more words in their guttural slang and, after one more baleful, bloodshot glance at Henshaw, the old man turned and left. Henshaw noted he moved with the stiff, lock-legged gait he had seen in a few of his instructors back at the academy, an affliction sometimes suffered by long-standing zeo pilots.

 “Where’s he going?” he asked Myra.

 “To check the bokus,” she replied. “And because he’s tired of retreading old ground.”

 “Bokus” were the Bokugyo Warper Drones that had broken GuardCorps comms and stung him, Henshaw assumed—he hadn’t expected to get intel out of his captors so easily, but then none of his interactions with them so far had gone as expected. They were trying to get him to lower his guard, he was certain.

 “So, it’s just you and him?” he asked Myra as she busied herself with peeling back the foil in the top tin and checking the bubbling contents. The smell of vac-meat and broiled root bulbs caught in Henshaw’s nose, and he realized how hungry he was. Another ploy, surely.

 “Just us, yep,” Myra said, producing a multifork to stir the broth. “Been that way for years now. Just the way we like it.”

 She caught his eye and let out a dry laugh.

 “We’ve known each other since we were scrawny scrapdelvers in the freighter fleets, running Tantalus and the Juno Slip Point. Then we got caught up with the People’s Galactic, on Gurro.”

 “So you are Pact, then,” Henshaw exclaimed, almost triumphantly.

 “‘Were,’” Myra said. “We stopped bothering with the higher directives a while ago. Never really technically left, just drifted away. We’ve been doing our own thing since Torro and I wedded, and at this point I’d rather not try and work out how many cycles ago that was.”

 More unexpected information. Henshaw hadn’t realized the pair were partners in such a literal sense. He decided he had to keep her talking, while she was in a conversational mood.

 “Tell me the real reason you saved me.”

 “Because your Stormer dumped you out, and your so-called GuardCorps brothers and sisters left you to it. Void, they were the ones who hung you out to dry in the first place.”

 “That’s not true,” Henshaw snapped. “There’ll be patrols out looking for me as we speak.”

 “Not looking for you, for your zeo,” Myra corrected. “It’s worth far more to the corporations than you are, little cadet. They won’t find it, though. We’ve got it safely stowed away. We’re going to pick it for parts. Much more useful than the old Soldats we’ve been hunting.”

 “None of that really answered my question,” Henshaw said. “You probably killed Gurny and Brenn. But you didn’t kill me. Why?”

 “You realize they were using you as bait?” Myra asked, looking at him properly for the first time since she had started tending to the tins.

 “No. I was on point, we—”

 “We’ve seen them try that before, though never with a Stormer. Sent out ahead, support far enough back to tempt us to strike. They never expect the second, though. That’s our biggest advantage, for now. And yes, maybe I would’ve left you, but when you were ejected, and I got a look at how damn young you are…” She trailed off.

“I think there’s another reason you’re telling me all this,” Henshaw said. “I know there are two Ghosts, not one. You don’t have to worry about what else I’m going to find out, because you’re planning on killing me, once you’ve interrogated me.”

 Myra didn’t answer immediately, seemingly too busy with her tins. She peeled back more foil and produced a pair of bowls from her rucksack, then poured portions of the bubbling stew into each. Then, adding a metal spoon to one, she passed it to Henshaw.

 “If I was going to kill you, would I be feeding you?” she asked.

 He looked suspiciously at the bowl.

 “Poison?” he demanded.

“Not unless my cooking really is as bad as Torro claims.”

“A sedative?”

“Guess you’ll have to find—”

“A truth serum?”

“I’m not sure that’s actually a thing that exists.”

Henshaw continued to look at the bowl. For standard vac-food, it looked good, and smelled even better. His stomach was aching. How long had he been out for, anyway? Was accepting sustenance from the enemy a betrayal of GuardCorps, of the ideals they represented? Would he be in breach of contract? Would it really matter, given he was fairly sure at least some of Myra’s claims were true? His supposed comrades-in-arms really had used him as expendable bait, and abandoned him when he was down and out.

He took the bowl, cradling its warmth in his blanketed lap.

“So, I take it this is your first deployment?” Myra asked.

“Yes,” Henshaw said. “I graduated from the Pan-Prefecture Academy a bit over one cycle ago.”

“Bet it’s nothing like you imagined, huh? Not quite ‘GuardCorps Heroes’ or ‘Colonel Crabby.’”

“It’s not. Neither are you.”

“What am I supposed to be like?”

“A ruthless revolutionary. The enemy of order.”

Myra laughed.

“Well, I’m flattered, but don’t worry—in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not exactly card-carrying Pact war-zeos, not anymore.”

“Then why are you here, killing GuardCorps? Risking your life in a cause you don’t identify with?” 

“They really locked you in tight back at that academy of yours, huh? You think because we don’t serve the People’s Galactic directly, this isn’t a cause we think is worthy? You think the Spirit of Accord lives only in those sworn directly to the Pact? Do you know anything about how the rulers of this moon treat their workforce?”

Henshaw knew better than to try to debate that point.

“You think getting them killed in an uprising will make things better?” he asked instead.

“Maybe,” Myra said. “Or maybe not. We hope we can convince GuardCorps it isn’t worth it. Force them to pull out. After that, the corporations will have no choice other than to negotiate better terms with the workers. But I admit that’s a long shot.”

“Yet you’re going for it anyway?”

“It’s all we know. We’ve been doing things like this for a long time now, and we wanted to try and make a difference, one last time. We decided to come home.”

The meaning of Myra’s words took a second to register. Henshaw frowned.

“You’re from New Khoine?”

“Yes. Both of us. Born here, but grew up on the freighters. Being back, it’s a lot colder than I remember it. Now for Void’s sake, eat.”

 Henshaw obeyed. He hadn’t tasted anything so good since he had arrived on New Khoine, not that he would admit it.

“You and your partner’s idea of retirement is zeo-fighting in the freezing dark,” he said between mouthfuls. 

“Romantic, isn’t it?” Myra said, sitting cross-legged opposite him and starting to eat her own portion. 

“If you really plan on letting me go, don’t you think I’ll report everything I’ve learned? That’ll make things much harder for you.”

“Trust me, Torro and I have debated that at great length,” Myra said. “Bottom line is, I’m not letting you die, not unless it’s in a straight-up fight between our zeos. I told you, we came here to make a difference. To do something worthwhile. That doesn’t include leaving kids to freeze to death.”

Henshaw was tempted to refute the “kid” part again, but he found his eyelids feeling heavy. He felt tempted to close them, and the realization instead caused him to jolt upright. He looked from the bowl of half-finished stew to Myra.

 “It is drugged,” he said accusingly.

 “I never said it wasn’t,” Myra replied, and this time there was no humor and no warmth in her voice.

 Henshaw tried to get up but found he couldn’t. He felt as though he was falling into a deep, dark pit, one that was swallowing him and closing over the top of him.

 His thoughts blinked off, one by one, until there was nothing but darkness.

Henshaw woke, surprised to find himself still alive.

 He was still in the refuse-littered room, still under the blanket. The heat blocks still smoldered in the center of the floor, though there were no tins or bowls, and no sign of any stew.

 This time, he was alone.

 He looked around suspiciously, still groggy, feeling sick. There was no movement, no sound, even from beyond the sealed windows. The storm had blown over.

 He tossed back the blanket and rose tentatively, fighting back his discomfort. He had to get out, before they came back. He wouldn’t play their games anymore.

 There was one thing in the room that hadn’t been there before, he realized, lying crumpled in front of the closed doorway. It was a discarded thermo-coat, and there was a scrap of paper on top of it.

 He made his way to it and leaned down, carefully picking up the scrap. There was a scrawled note.

 Sorry about the stew, I couldn’t come up with a better way of making sure you didn’t try to follow us. Take the coat and get yourself back to your base. There’s a few more heat blocks and ration bars in the pockets.

 You should be able to secure a nice fat chaser from the Corps when you tell them the intel you’ve learned about us. I’d advise you to use it to buy your way off this iceball. New Khoine isn’t forgiving to those of us born here, let alone offworlder kids serving the big corporates.

 If you don’t fancy my advice, guess we’ll see you in our sights sometime. Until that day comes, good luck.

 Henshaw reread the note twice before pushing it into one of the coat’s pockets. He checked the garment back and front, but it was just a thermo-coat, with a few items in the pocket. No trickery, no deceit.

 GuardCorps wasn’t going to believe this. But that, Henshaw decided, wasn’t going to be his problem.

 He pulled on the coat, sealed it, and stepped out.

‍

END

***

About:

Robbie MacNiven is a Scottish author and historian. His published fiction includes over twenty novels in genres ranging from sci-fi and fantasy to historical fiction. He has also written novellas, short stories, audio dramas, comic scripts and graphic novels, has worked on narrative and character dialogue for a number of digital games, and has written colour text and branching narratives for multiple RPG rulebooks, including the award-winning Undaunted series by Osprey Games. In 2022 his X-Men novel First Team won a Scribe Award for tie-in fiction.