“Doesn’t matter if he is. He says he can get through the last layer on his own. You said the station medic needs organs ...”
Cho’s foot connected with his ribs. Craig slammed down on his side, gasping for breath. The way he felt right now, they could take his brain. He wouldn’t miss it.
“While breaking him down for parts . . .”
Oh, fukking hell. Craig tensed, sending muscles into painful spasms. They weren’t kidding about the organs.
“. . . would bring us a tidy profit,” Doc agreed, “consider two things.” Even through the pain, Doc sounded terrifyingly reasonable. Craig tried to crawl away, but another kick from Cho dropped him flat on the deck. “All right, three points. One, stop bruising the merchandise. And two, at this point in the proceedings, I have to reiterate that Nadayki could be talking out of his ass. He says he can get through the last layer on his own, but you have no reason to trust that and every reason to believe it’s what he wants you to believe to maintain his place in the crew. It might be wise to keep Mr. Ryder around until the job is done.”
Cho snorted. “In case Nadayki is, as you say, talking out of his ass.”
“As far as his organs are concerned, a few more hours will make no difference.”
“And your third point?”
“Ryder’s crew. No one gives a shit if you kill a prisoner, but you can’t kill a member of the crew for puking.”
“Doc’s right, Captain.” Huirre sounded pretty much exactly the way Craig imagined a man caught between a rock and a hard place would sound. “I mean, you’ve got to keep discipline, sure, but if puking’s a killing offense, whole crew’d be dead a couple of times by now.”
“I can kill anyone I want to!”
“Yeah, but ...”
Craig cracked the eye again. Huirre was looking to Doc for support. Surprisingly, he got it.
“You can kill anyone you want to,” Doc agreed. “But that’s not a philosophy people will follow, and you need a minimum of four crew to keep the Heart of Stone profitable.”
Huirre shifted nervously back and forth, toes flexing against the deck, but it seemed that Cho was actually thinking about what Doc had said. From anyone else, the observation would have sounded like a threat, but it hadn’t taken Craig long to learn that Doc didn’t make threats.
Breathing shallowly, one arm wrapped around the newly rebruised ribs, Craig began to relax. He didn’t want to die and now, it seemed as if he might get through this little adventure in one piece. Not counting the pieces of his gut he’d already hurled to the deck down in the pod.
“You’re right,” Cho said at last. “If Ryder’s crew, he gets treated like crew. Nadayki could be full of shit about his chances of getting through that last bit of code, and he could be bullshitting about Ryder doing this ...”
The toe of his boot jabbed the bruise rising from the earlier kicks. Pain surged out from the contact like waves of flame. In its wake, his body felt burned.
“. . . to himself, but maybe he isn’t. Maybe Ryder’s worried that once he gets me into that armory we won’t need him anymore, so he’s fukking around. Fukking around delays the payout to the crew. We can’t have that.” Cho sounded pleased with himself.
“No, we can’t.” Doc still sounded reasonable.
“He needs to be taught that the crew comes first. That we don’t fuk around and delay payouts. Take a toe.”
Huirre had him held down before Craig realized what take a toe meant. He got an elbow up, Huirre grunted, then Huirre’s foot closed around his forehead and slammed the back of his head into the deck. Struggling to escape became weak flopping between the four points Huirre had locked down.
Doc got his boot off with terrifying efficiency.
He felt cold air against his sole.
A strong hand closed around his ankle, grinding the small bones together.
Metal pried the smallest toe on his left foot out from the one next to it.
Given the spikes of pain in his head, it wasn’t the new pain that dragged the cry out of him. It was the crunch of the blades going through the bone.
The salt-copper smell of blood.
Closely followed by the crunch of Huirre’s jaws.
Then the new pain hit.
Over the years, the squatters had made very few changes to the layout of the station. Outside of the additional docking arms, most changes seemed to