“Need some help?” I asked. Aisling flinched slightly at my sudden presence at the helm, but quickly recovered and shook her head. She was more than used to me making myself known like this by now. She’d just been lost in thought.

  She gave a small nod and muttered, “You and I both know I don’t want to kill her. She’s a good one. Joel’s probably even had time to rethink it himself by now. Mars is special to him, and whatever she did in her past, she’s a rebel.”

  That made sense. He did seem way more hesitant than he usually did when he suggested murder. “Hmm, someone with their heart in the right place, abandoned by society with nowhere to go and nothing to lose...” I pondered out loud.

  “She’s not joining the crew,” Aisling shot me down immediately.

  “Why not?” I asked. It’d solve everything if she just became one of us. And she seemed like she belonged here. “She’s capable. She survived a ship imploding, and stayed sane after like, at least two weeks in the void without an implant. Excusing the whole six month coma thing, anyway. She’s got a memory like a vault, that’s something. And she hates the corps. She’d fit right in.”

  Aisling grumbled, looking to the side and pondering something else. “My intuition says no. Something doesn’t seem to click about it. Like she’s not quite... right, despite all evidence to the contrary.”

  “So you’re gonna kill her over a gut feeling?” I asked as flatly as I could get my synthesized voice to be.

  She sighed. “Do you think this is helping, Meryll? At best, I give her transport to Luna once the way is clear. Then she won’t get accosted by corpos who might have gotten curious about us, and she can probably sign on with another ship if she needs to. It doesn’t feel right to bring her on, so I’m listening to my gut, yeah.”

  “Okay, so we take her in for a while, then. We can manage that now, right? Since we don’t have Foundation breathing down our necks, and Theseus isn’t half-wrecked?” I asked hopefully.

  Aisling groaned quietly, “Technically, yes, we could. But that’s more bodies to feed, and more tension for another month-long journey. We may have a sketchy psych profile and a decent idea of her motivations, but who knows if the chemistry is there? And while she’s loyal to Mars, we don’t know if she holds that same loyalty to a certain starship core’s secret. If she sells that info, Foundation might decide it’s worth their time to hunt you down again.”

  “Well, we trust Shaw with that info,” I countered. I got the distinct impression that Shaw would rather have us as business partners than to sell us out for a quick payday.

  “Shaw is... probably leaving the ship before we return to Luna, and all he’ll be able to say then is that we took off into wild space,” Aisling reminded me. “He won’t be able to report on our location. I suppose we could just leave her here, on Io, but that leaves her alone and desperate in a place where she can’t utilize her skillset.”

  “Which might be more cruel than just... ending it now.” I sighed. This was a hard dilemma. “Hey Aisling... I know you said we have to be careful about this stuff, but she already knows about me, anyway. Do you think I should have a talk with her?”

  Aisling shook her head, leaning over her terminal again and tapping at the new header she’d made a few times. “What if...” she mumbled quietly, then shook her head. “This is a... terrible idea. It’ll never work.”

  “I mean, that seems like it’s all the ideas we have right now,” I offered. “Let’s hear it.” I noticed, at this juncture, that Shaw had walked out of the restroom nearby, and was lingering a little longer than was natural in the hallway, obviously eavesdropping on the conversation. I hoped he would just move on after another moment, but I’d have to alert Aisling if he hovered too much longer.

  Aisling stared at the list for a few moments, ignorant to the other listening in. Aisling wasn’t often the type to share her thoughts and plans until they were solidified, least of all her bad ones. “We keep her as a prisoner. Keep pretending we’re trying to get her to turn on her comrades. You join the act, though. You’re the owner of this ship, since it’s... you know, you. You’ve been commandeered, but are sympathetic to the rebellion. We fly to Mars, and you engineer a scenario that allows her to ‘escape’ while you take care of the rest of us. You have to get away before more corpos come to investigate, and send her a message letting her know you got out okay, and look forward to working with the rebellion again.”

  “She ends up in a place where she has contacts and can rejoin her fight. She thinks I’m an asset to her cause, so she won’t betray me.” I nodded along to the idea, but she was absolutely right in the first place. “That is a way too convoluted long-con, and doesn’t really guarantee much. If she finds out, she’ll just trust us even less. We might as well just give her the benefit of the doubt instead.”

  “You’re right. Too complicated.” Shaw paused for dramatic effect as Aisling whipped her head around to give the man an unimpressed glare. He continued, unfazed by her look, “The best deceptions are simple. So what if the lie you’re trying to sell is... just the truth?”

  The silence that followed was deafening. What the hell did that even mean? As if to echo my thoughts, Aisling let out a weary sigh and asked, “I don’t remember inviting you to this meeting, but I suppose to humor you, what the fuck does that mean?”

  Shaw held up his hands in that defensive mockery of surrender he so often employed when confronted, and mumbled out, “Well, it sounds as if I was supposed to schedule a meeting on the matter.” He gave a smarmy smirk and Aisling rolled her eyes, giving him a hand motion to continue. “Captain, I will concede that you have a masterful understanding of people, but you occasionally have trouble thinking outside of the box. Tell me, what is your first instinct when you hear something far-fetched that seems too good to be true on the surface?”

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  Aisling stared at the man skeptically, but she turned her chair to face him and crossed her arms to answer, “That someone’s lying through their teeth, of course. A good lie has to emulate reality. If it’s too convenient, or you can’t find the upside for them, then they’re hiding something from you.”

  “Precisely.” Shaw nodded. “Anyone who’s savvy with politics, contracts, and the like is very aware of that principle, it’s negotiation 101. Some might even say it’s the all too uncommon common sense. But that makes a very dangerous assumption that you’re neglecting in this little con you’re trying to pull...”

  Aisling waited in silence, glaring him down until she let out another annoyed sigh and asked with an irritated monotone, “and what might that assumption be, o master of lies?”

  “That the goal is to make your opponent believe you.” Shaw chuckled. “What if, instead, you mean to make them disbelieve the truth?”

  Aisling stared at him, her expression gradually softening as she pondered his words. Meanwhile, I was lost and asked, “So... you’re saying we tell her the truth... but make her think we’re lying?”

  “I can’t believe that’s the most sound idea I’ve heard.” Aisling muttered. “We tell her the truth... or mostly the truth anyway, but in such a way that she thinks we’re trying to sell her something. She leaves the ship, writing us off as con artists, and she throws away the whole thing as a narrowly-avoided scam rather than the bizarre reality that it is.”

  “Now you’re getting it,” Shaw nodded quickly. “You just need to change the goal. You don’t need to lie very much at all, you just need to convince her that you’re lying. Tell the truth, badly.”

  “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” I asked, suspicious that this was something straight out of Shaw’s playbook and not a unique solution.

  Shaw shrugged. “Whatever works to get what one wants out of a deal, hm?” He gave a quiet laugh. “Your goal isn’t to tell the good captain a lie, it’s to make her believe what you want her to believe.”

  Aisling took in a deep breath and spoke begrudgingly, “Well, thank you for your input, Shaw, unwelcome as it was. I think I have an idea where I want to take this now. I just need to iron out the details and make a lot more plans. Incidentally, I need you for something else while you’re here.”

  Shaw looked surprised, and stepped inside the room, leaning up against the wall opposite her desk. “Well, I didn’t think that you were interested in me that way, Captain.”

  “Nobody is interested in you in that way, Shaw.” Aisling said flatly, continuing before he had an opportunity to act hurt, “I don’t doubt you’ve had your ear to the ground lately. That’s your nature. So I’m sure you’ve heard the big news.”

  “Which big news?” Shaw mumbled, “I can think of a few ‘big news’es.”

  “That Foundation is withdrawing from Luna.” Aisling gave him a quizzical look, “What am I missing? There’s other big news?”

  “Why would they withdraw?” I asked, and they both looked to the intercom, like they weren’t expecting me to still be there. “Why don’t they just fully take over the inner colonies, anyway? They have like... infinite money.”

  “Believe it or not, the masses still hold some power in this system.” Shaw smiled as he explained. “Luna is a loose affiliation of pirates that have developed an independent military stronghold built specifically to withstand and frustrate an all-out assault, so they would need to start a prolonged war to actually take it over. And if they make a move on it now, with Mars still fresh on everyone’s minds, they’re going to get their very long supply line made much shorter very quickly by a newly bolstered Martian rebellion. And maybe they could deal with that, yes, but it’d be career suicide for whoever pulled the trigger on the operation.”

  “Think about it like this. Even the most powerful corps will always have an army of bloodthirsty competitors nipping at their heels, ready to take any power they can from them by any means necessary. Invading the inner colonies would require a huge investment of all kinds of resources, and if their competitors see a chance to swoop in while they have all their attention focused in on the inner colonies, they’re going to get gutted back at home by the next biggest asshole that gets the opportunity to take advantage.”

  So the corps weren’t all-powerful throughout all of humanity after all. “So they’d destroy each other just as soon as they would the common people,” I made an amused comment.

  “Their uniform ruthlessness can work against them sometimes. They may all be oppressing the populace, but they’re by no means allies to each other.” Aisling leaned forward toward Shaw. “The other news?”

  Shaw gave her a quizzical look, caught off guard by her eagerness. “Well, Foundation have decided that they’re going to hold a big conference on Europa in a week or so. So I suppose they’ll be distracted in a few ways, reigning in their fleet and hosting some kind of showcase for something they’ve been working on.”

  I froze for a moment. Newly announced technology? “Are there any rumors on it, yet?” I asked.

  Shaw looked between Aisling and the intercom for a long moment. “I mean, without access to my usual networks, it’s not easy to say... but from the rumor mill, people are saying it’s something in aerospace. My gut says they’re going live with whatever new engine tech they developed for Lily’s ship.”

  I gave a quick sigh of relief, then asked to be certain, “So there’s no chance they’re going to spring the Arthausen Project on the public now, right?”

  Aisling nodded toward the sensor array this time. “That would be concerning, since that would blow away any plans we have with our captive captain here, not to mention putting a potential spotlight on you by making the existence of sapient psychics public. But I don’t know why they would do that. They’re hardly in a position to mass-produce Arthausen units for sale, and even giving a hint at it would send all the clone tech companies into an R&D frenzy to follow suit. No, they won’t be dropping that into the media so soon.” She turned back to Shaw and asked again, “Anything else?”

  Shaw shrugged “Lots of little things, market’s always buzzing with new miracles and disasters. Though nothing that concerns us or any of our other...” He gave a vague gesture to the room around him and a derisive snort, “Arch-nemeses.”

  Aisling nodded along slowly. “Alright. I’ve already ordered a large amount of non-perishable supplies as well as some materials for trade, hidden away a little nest-egg for finances, and started a rumor about our cover company pushing out toward Saturn to cover our tracks.” She turned her seat toward the navigation terminal and stared at the system’s orbital chart for a moment with a smile. “Once we’ve got our guest all sorted, I think it’s about time we discuss the details of our homecoming.”

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  The Nothing Child. It's an urban fantasy about three reluctant college students and a shapeshifting alien monster thrust into a campaign to defeat an all-consuming horror from another world that they accidentally unleashed upon their city.