allies and enemies 02 - rogues (32 page)

“I’ll be back before you know it.” He claimed a kiss.

She wound a hand through the lapel of his coat, tucking her head against his shoulder. “Don’t make me come after you.”

PART IX

77

The systematic pop of knuckles carried on the tense air. The sounds of the streets above the den seemed unwilling to intrude. Koenii sprawled behind a makeshift desk, a rusted-out overseer’s console from some long-forgotten frigate. His bare feet in their poor hygienic splendor rested on one corner.

Sela had always harbored a particular disgust for bare feet. There was no rational cause. It did nothing to garner respect for the being that owned these particular feet. She suspected in this instance that it was some type of insult.

Well, the feeling’s mutual.

Sela suppressed a sneer. Instead, she rolled her neck, contributing a small chorus of pops to counter the sound of Koenii’s knuckles. She knew the answer to his proposal well before he’d ever made it. But it would not serve to blurt it out. There was nuance to these things.

It should be Jon doing the talking. He could talk anyone into anything. Even me.

Now he stood behind her, a foot to the right. For so long she had existed where he now stood: the subordinate’s position, looking at the backs of heads and never the center of attention, but taking in everything all the same. She would have traded spots with him gladly. He could maneuver the impossible subtleties of such interaction. Such intangibles were mystic devices to her.

The soldier part of Sela knew the cold facts: there were six well-armed hostiles in the space. One visible exit. Judging from the bundles of wire mounted around the threshold, there was a deadlock magseal that would require a personal ident to open said exit.

Now she had to talk a way out of here.

Ironic did not come close to covering this.

“The job’s a generous offer. Lucky I heard of your…team.” His eyes flicked over her shoulder to Jon before he continued. “Minimal risk. Good cred,” Koenii added with a derelict smile. “Quick work with some handsome lads, no less.”

This generated a low round of chuckles from the Heavy Gravs lingering in the room’s shadows. It did not dispel the anxious vibe. Not one of them under six feet tall, wide bodies thick with muscles but little brains to match. What he suggested as luck, she knew as an inevitability. They’d struggled to keep off his sensory horizon in Brojos. There was only so much you could do before you got noticed.

The job would be far from what was described. She knew this implicitly.

For all of Koenii’s assurances that the job was an easy one, she knew it as a lie. He wanted an inventory destroyed. The details were vague. On the surface, it was a simple deal: someone owed him “due restoration” but had failed to do this in a timely fashion. This behavior required a correction. In this instance it was a cargo vessel full of “various and sundries,” which could mean just about anything. It begged the obvious question:

“You can do this yourself. You don’t need us.”

“Savvy as she’s pretty to vid.” His tone was anything but complimentary. “Let Koenii worry on the details. Needs to look the hand of other parties at play. You can flit in and out like ghosts. No one the wiser. It could easily be an act of the Fates.” He spread a thick-fingered hand in a conjuring gesture.

Koenii was an opportunistic parasite, like everything else in this port city founded by castoff Regime and Fleet. The souls abandoned here when the Treaty of Ashes created the Reaches had tried to carry on at first. Even the best intentions become corrupt over time. Koenii seemed an embodiment of that. His thick frame was clad in a decades-old Fleet officer’s tunic, beneath that a bone-breaker’s squadron vest strained to cover his paunch. Stringy wisps of yellowing white hair crowned his scalp.

He raised a scraggly brow at her. His eyes, the dangerous deep maroon of a full-blooded Binait, moved over her up and down in an appraising manner. It did not intend lust, but measure. She was not worried about him guessing her thoughts. The male Binaits were not empathic like the females of their kind. Those, she avoided.

Some of the males, however, were good intuits. It explained Koenii’s position of power.

“You and your…retainer…are new here, Tyron.” Koenii’s gaze drifted to Jon, who had remained blessedly mute. “So I’ll give you the grace of time to ’sider my generous terms. Got to the shut of the day, even.”

“The answer will still be no.” Jon’s curled High-Eugenes accent hung bright in the tense air.

Sela shut her eyes.
Now? Now he does this?

Hadelia—Brojos specifically—held no love for Kindred, even those from ruined castes. Fisk had been telling the truth about that. Where the ever-mixing populace of Obscrum was too busy to garner such petty hatreds, Brojos was insular. Their heritage called from conscripts, Volunteers, discarded techs—all those who once felt the boot of Kindred on their neck. They blamed Kindred for the Treaty of Ashes, the Collapse…all the reasons the Reaches were abandoned by Origin. Entire rooms would glare in silence the moment Jon opened his mouth and his crester accent rolled out. He knew this, too.

Sela threw him a glance over her shoulder. She was not surprised by what she saw: that same defiant set of jaw, the posture and bearing of a military officer even though that captain’s uniform was long discarded.

This place had forced that role change—an event that he claimed was amusing. It had to sting. To know that you were considered a lesser being, just by virtue of your birth and laden with sins you never committed but were blamed for nonetheless. And considering his true heritage as Human, even doubly so.

Ignoring her, Jon did not shift his challenging stare from Koenii, another mistake. Done on purpose. Hiding her left hand behind her back, she signed at him:
Quiet.

Was he trying to get them killed?

“You like where your tongue currently resides, boy?” Koenii growled.

In response, there was the shift of bodies, the rub of leather as the Heavy Gravs tensed.

Sela had avoided them ever since that first encounter in the tavern. To them, she was a true soldier of the Regime, a “prime” purpose-bred, trained since birth. Their awestruck expressions were too much like worship. It made her distinctly uncomfortable. Perhaps Koenii feared the influence she might have over his men. All the better reason for him to find a means to be rid of her.

She snapped her attention back to the mob boss, stepping into his stare-down with Jon.

“We’ll do it. I require payment: half up front. Guild credit,” she answered in Regimental. In front of the Heavy Gravs, it was a demonstration of respect, courtesy. “The remainder upon completion.”

The speech provoked a ripple of whispers from the Heavy Gravs. To them a mythic creature had spoken words of rapture. It was a hollow bluff to keep herself and the man she loved alive long enough to get out of the room. A man who right now was probably staring incredulous holes into the back of her skull.

It was enough to flatter Koenii’s ego and divert his growing ire. His attention crept back to Sela. “Big ask, girl. Considering the sitrep.”

“You want this done right. Clean. Quiet.” She watched something shift behind those maroon eyes. “And, because you’ve got no one else.”

Koenii dropped his feet to the floor. He leaned forward in his chair. His jaw worked back and forth, as he no doubt calculated a means to screw them over.

“Well met then,” he replied finally, using Regimental as well. The accent corrupted his pronunciation. His eyes still on Sela, he held a hand out over his shoulder, expectant. A frail, hunched-over man wearing a stained smock handed him a slim black case.

“The other half on completion.” Koenii pondered the device, then jabbed a thumb on its surface. There was a responsive bleat. He tossed the device at her. She caught it left-handed, careful to keep her gun hand free.

Sela glanced at the glowing font on the tiny screen of the e-cred. It seemed an unreal amount.
It has to be enough. Please let it be enough.

“Dex, get the door for our guests.”

The door, a giant metal slab on rollers that was once a blast plate, dominated one wall. Dex scrambled to open the heavy piece of metal.

Sela gave a curt nod to Jon. He fell in place behind her with a recalcitrant grind of boots against gravel.

Before they hit the hallway, Koenii’s voice echoed out to them: “Next time, leave your crester bitch behind, Tyron. Can’t stand his stench.”

Behind her, she heard a break in Jon’s stride.

Sela clenched her jaw. Her hand went to the stock of the A6 in her holster.

His footsteps continued. Blessedly, Jon remained silent until they hit the jarring grime of the street.

78

“You know we can’t take that deal. What are you thinking?”

At least Jon had waited until they were at the top of the rickety stairs that led to the market street. “Market” was a loose term. Carts laden with barely presentable pieces of scavenged junk and decommissioned tech wove through foot traffic. Vendors grilled something with the dubious title of “meat” over fires in alcoves. All of it vat grown. There was very little in the way of produce. The weakling sun of this climate saw to that. Those that did have such things had tents under the observant eye of a guard (likely provided by Koenii for a “fee”).

An ancient atmo ship blatted overhead on a wobbly tangent. Sela cringed. No one else seemed to notice the flying death traps. For her, it had taken some getting used to. From her experience, movement in the air meant you were about to be fired upon. That familiar itch wormed into the spot between her shoulder blades. She tried to ignore it.

She paused long enough to pull the resp-shield up over her nose and mouth, making sure the seal was good.

Jon thundered up behind her. “Ty, are you even listening?”

Any number of Koenii’s spies could still be nearby. She eyed the derelicts lounging in doorways and the pickpocket children darting through the crowds. There was a flash of flame-red hair between the stalls: Bix. The girl caught her attention, gave a shallow nod, then slinked into the shadows of an alley.

Trusting Jon to follow, Sela wove through the crowd. Their progress halted as the crowd congealed.

“Out of the way, skews! Back!” A coarse shout dragged over the sea of heads and shoulders.

An armed cadre shoved aside patrons, cutting a path for a flock of Poisoncry acolytes. Unmistakable in their purple garb, the women wore the Eye of Nyxa as a waxy pink scar on their foreheads. At the end of the group, four scrawny-looking men bore a litter over their shoulders. A withered hand parted the curtains of the canopy. Sela glimpsed a cragged face. Only Imperators traveled in such a way. Other than Fisk, Sela had never seen a male among the Poisoncry that appeared to hold any station.

If you’re not Guild, you’re nobody.
That’s what Fisk had told her.
How true.

Strange how her thoughts lingered on the disquieting man. It was as if she sensed him hiding, just out of view, lurking in the periphery of her vision. She would turn another corner and see him, fixing her with that hungry expression. Her own safety did not matter, but he had alluded to a threat to Jon. That would not serve.

First Fisk. Now Koenii. The faster they could get off this decayed world, the better.

Finally, they had the means. She secured Koenii’s cred-dat inside the lining of her shipsuit. It was enough to bribe a way through the Poisoncry picket of Hadelia’s flexer. Technically, this was theft. However, she was certain the Guild credit now residing in her account was ill-gotten in the first place. Swindling a swindler was less damaging to her conscience.

The hard part was yet to come: convincing Jon to leave.

“You know why he wants us for the job.” Jon stood abreast with her. “No one else is stupid enough. He’ll double-cross us.”

“Enough!” Sela whirled on him. Her voice rose over the ambient babble of the dirt market. He drew back, surprised, as she clutched a handful of his jacket. “Perhaps Koenii was right. I should leave you behind.”

It didn’t matter if she felt like she was overselling it. It mattered only that Koenii’s people saw this and were suitably convinced.

Jon arched an eyebrow down at her fist. “You’re the boss…apparently.”

As she released him, his lopsided smirk threatened to surface. She gestured to the resp-shield hanging forgotten around his neck. With an irritated eye-roll, he pulled it into place.

Sela gave an exaggerated huff and resumed her course through the crowd, careful to make her moves sure and unhurried. She denied the urge to flee or give any other outward sign that this was a retreat. This was enemy territory. They were heavily outnumbered and this was their only play. Koenii’s people had not yet found out where they’d berthed the Cassandra, as of now, their only asset.

The crowd thinned as they approached the remains of a smelting plant. Its once-great machines now decayed to rust under the flat gray sky. She was vaguely surprised no one had stripped these ancient metal beasts further.

Give it time. Nothing went unscavenged for long—provided it wasn’t nailed down or on fire.

She ducked into a narrow passage between outbuildings. The space was barely wide enough for two persons to stand shoulder to shoulder. It reeked of unbathed bodies; likely someone had been using it as a den. Broken glass crunched on the cracked pavement. She pulled him into the space with her.

“I think it’s clear.” She leaned out and scanned the area. No sign of the Heavy Gravs. If Koenii had spies nearby, she could not tell.

“If they want to find us, they will,” Jon replied.

She watched a waster trundle past. The skeletal young woman was oblivious to the world and everything in it.

“I had to improvise.”

“I’d say you were enjoying that.” He touched the back of her neck. A hint of laughter in his voice.

“What were you thinking? Speaking like that to—”