Free Sly Mongoose by Tobias S. Buckell

cancel the spin. A defensive measure worked out between Grenada and the captain to make it hard for an infiltrator to move throughout the ship.
    Very solid.
    The heavy feeling of gravity lessened, and then lifted completely away.
    “Okay. We bringing the body to medical.” Grenada grabbed the rail and hauled it up into the air between them.
    “What about contamination?” Marsden still kept his distance.
    “Whatever on its back all in the air now.” She kicked off down the rail with body in tow. “If the League want to kill this whole ship, they already done it. They trying for something else. This man, the specialist: first one off the ship. Now he dead. But why go through all that just to poison we all when they could have just blow the ship up?”

    They moved into the ship’s hub: an empty core that the elevators ran “up” and “down” when under acceleration. Right now it looked like a half-mile-long tunnel with subway cars, lit by patches of emergency lights, that ran through the ship’s center. It depended on orientation and perception, and what the ship was doing.
    No matter which way it felt, with a dead body it became a gloomy traverse. The three of them coasted down its center with the strange corpse.
    Halfway through their journey the full complement of lights returned and one of the track cars zipped down the tube and matched their speed. Grenada pulled herself aboard through sliding doors. “Get in.”
    The tunnel at the heart of the ship narrowed and they entered the drive cylinder: the engine and command center of the ship. They eventually got out, transferred to a spoke of a corridor, and floated their way down past a series of utility rooms.
    Captain Canden met them in the sick bay, sterile lights gleaming off her shaved skull and large dark eyes that matched her skin. After studying Pepper she looked at Grenada. “He got armed.”
    “We was infiltrated, and there ain’t none better. Better he packing than not.”
    “Don’t like no stranger packing no gun on me ship,” Canden snapped. “Strip his ass down.”
    “You just had to ask politely, that’s all.” Pepper pulled everything out, letting the weapons hang in the air in front of him.
    Canden twitched and moved closer. She pushed the grenade launcher out of the way to stare him in the eye. “You a passenger to me, same as the diplomats. This a higgler ship, not some tool of the Dread Council. We independent, you hear? Don’t want no hassle.”
    Pepper held his hands up. “No hassle.” On Canden’s turf, fair enough. He would go back to the passengers.
    A good meal would put this behind him. The issue was dead, literally dead in the air behind him in the form of a corpse. Not his problem. Canden’s. And she had enough stress without some other variable.
    He could behave.
    “Good.” Canden smiled. They understood each other and she liked that. “Grenada, get him down to the hub, we keeping passengers there until we hit Chilo. Everyone in observation in case anything else funny happen. I ain’t jeopardizing that bonus the Dread Council offering.”
    Grenada gave a curt nod.
    Outside, skimming away from the sick bay, Grenada turned in midair. “She stress. Sorry.”
    “It’s no problem,” Pepper said. “Her ship, her rules. I can abide.” Canden sounded like she’d made one too many wormhole transits out into dangerous League territory and back to Ragamuffin safety.
    They hit the central area. Crew floated outside the doors, and they opened them for Pepper and Grenada.
    He floated through—she hit the door frame and stopped in place. She handed him a small wrist bracelet. “Sorry,” she said as they shut the door on him. “Just a temporary thing.”
    Outside the sounds of the door getting dogged shut clanged throughout the room. The wheel spun down and clicked on the outside.
    “Welcome to lockdown,” said a man in an expensive silk dashiki nearby. His graying dreadlocks hovered in place by his cheeks. “The