FORT LIBERTY: VOLUME ONE (19 page)

There’s a soft ping of boots on floor grates, the approach of someone… curt words exchanged with the guard outside. Then the door screeches, swivels open, and Voss enters, dressed one of the tech suits, seeming to fill up all the space.

The door closes behind him.

“You here to gloat?” she asks.

He sighs, taking a seat on the opposite bunk.

“I should hate you for arresting me,” she says, refusing to look at him. “But I can’t because you did it with such miraculous ability. Never seen anyone fight a Sentinel, I thought… ”

It goes quiet.

She glares at the ceiling.

He waits.

“You do this,” she says. “I hate this.”

“Hate what?”

“You just let me talk myself into a hole, every time. It’s some damn Assaulter interrogation technique.”

“No,” he says. “It’s not.”

“Just let them talk themselves into a hole they can’t get out of, make them admit all the ways they were wrong.”

“No.”

“Get out,” she hisses, worn too thin to hide the hurt. “You got me. Wexler’s wanted me under his thumb for years, and I fucked up big now… so he’s got his excuse, doesn’t he? Not enough that he’s got the power to say who belongs on this planet and who doesn’t. Not enough that he’s got the power to make fortunes, and destroy lives, but he’s got to put me in the middle of his scheming, and lock me up when I slip. Of course, that’ll cost—years of incarceration—so maybe a convenient accident, and just so. Better that then no vodka, and pissing for cameras for the rest of what remains. No decent smuggler would accept such.”

“Are you done yet?” he asks. “Because that hole just gets bigger.”

She pushes up from the bunk, facing him on her feet. Of course, he’s made her too mad to lie still, like he was always going to. Everything’s gone. Fear and exhaustion have taken their toll, and anger’s too much for what she’s got left. She wants to push him, beat those shoulders, smack that scarred up beard, but she clenches her teeth instead, jabbing her finger at the door. “Said it all.”

“You have,” he replies, watching her from the bunk. “But I haven’t. I don’t want you in a cell, Petra. I want your help.”

She glares at him. “What?”

“Someone you know is trying to kill us.”

“
What?
”

“You know all the power players in Red Filter. You know what they buy and how they buy it. You know what their capabilities are and what sympathies they have. You know what they do behind Wexler’s back.”

She laughs, bitter. “You want a snitch?”

“An advisor.”

“No.”

“You’ll be at Fort Liberty. Not in a cage. Not in a prison, I promise you that. You’ll work with me, give me names, leads, help make sense of new intel. You’ll be safe. Your people will be safe.”

“Which means prison.”

He draws a frustrated breath. “What do you think your options are here?”

“Not helping you to destroy my business, for one.”

“What business? The people who attacked you aren’t going away. Even if they don’t end up killing you, they’ll succeed in killing Niri eventually, and I thought you cared about that.”

“Don’t you dare—”

“And they might just drag this planet into war while they’re at it… and neither Earth, nor Mars, can afford that. The last blow to advanced human civilization… that would be bad for business, don’t you think?”

It goes quiet again, only it’s a different kind of quiet this time. She looks away. “You don’t understand. People like me can’t live in Fort Liberty, and no one would tolerate you keeping me there unless it’s in a prison cell. I get disguised to walk through those airlocks—not because people don’t know who I am, but because they don’t like seeing me passing through those halls. It makes everyone nervous. They tell me their secrets, desires, fetishes, because I’m good smuggler, impossible to shock, the daughter of a willow house girl… a whore with blood on her hands. They trust me to do good business, to be a good thief and good liar when it comes to protecting what I know. You march me through those doors as your advisor, and they’ll turn against both of us.”

“It doesn’t have to be public.”

“It will get public,” she replies. “The elite know everything. And what they don’t know, they find out. They know you. They know you’re a hero. They trust that, an’ so do I, because I’ve seen you shining like a god, near invincible… but not even a god can have a lawless whore on his arm… not in Red Filter.”

“When did we go from smuggler to whore?”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know you better than that,” he says, reminding her of words spoken in the dark, of what’s been learned and shared between them, vodka-laced and windblown. “You’ve done bad things. I understand that. So have I. You have ghosts. I have ghosts. You lost your daughter. I’ve lost a dozen kids who felt like sons, and more who were my brothers, good men and women who died under my command. I’ve bled, and I’ve lost, and I’ve raged, and I’ve hurt people, and broken things… I don’t know who you think is invincible, but I’m no hero, and certainly no god, and I might just know what a willow house Geisha kisses like.”

She lost her breath somewhere in the middle of that, and stares at him now as if he’s changed dimensions in front of her.

“You don’t know me.” He throws it back at her.

And he’s right. Never has he been more right.

He rises from the bunk, leaving her no choice but to face him, because he’s close… and because he’s Voss. “You’ve done nothing but lose money, tell the truth, and fuck up trying to do the right thing since we met. I’ve never seen anyone fail so spectacularly at not caring. I’d have to assume, at this point, that if one of your many lives involved being a coldhearted mistress, you were awful at it.”

“Just trying to make me like you,” she whispers.

“You already like me.”

He’s pressed up against her, daring her to move and prove him wrong.

She doesn’t, because she can’t. It feels too good.

Petra wets her lips, and he doesn’t ask for further permission. He leans in to kiss her, starting off gentle and becoming less so. It’s thinly disguised dominance, all Voss, all man, all solid mass, the same fire that faces monsters and rips panels off drones, always closer under the surface than what he allows to show.

His arms draw her up like she’s barely there, his mouth seeking her approval, parting lips, teeth, teasing her, and gratified by the catch in her breath.

A reward for him, a hint of triumph… and a slow descent for her, wanting him in the most urgent way, a way that comes from knowing who he is, from being drunk on his skin.

“I want you,” she whispers. “Like this.”

“Like this… ” he murmurs.

Petra reaches up and pulls the zipper of his suit down, smoothing her hand underneath the fabric. She strokes her fingers over the tattoos under his collar bone, crisp whorls of hair, his skin hot to the touch.

Then she kisses him there, and he tastes like salt, like mech armor and sweat, when no drug could possibly be more intoxicating.

His hands slip into her hair, the burden of responsibility slipping through his fingers, his breath hungered as she sinks lower.

It’s both surrender and attack, the need now mutual, raw, bodies lost in the heat. At some point, he’s no longer gentle because it’s no longer what she’s asking for, and his harshness brings release, her nails buried in his back, her body arching underneath his, eager for his violence and rocked into oblivion.

The fluorescent light in the compartment flickers. Air and water hiss through the pipes. Minutes slip by, each a reminder of what cannot last. They lie together, old enough to be good at it, to fit in just the right way and warm each other, drift in those circular currents that slip between lovers and strangers. Voss is patient, doesn’t attempt to end it, which she takes for the gesture that it is.

Still…

“Best thing you can do is let me go,” she says.

“Is that what this was about?” he asks, amused.

“You know it wasn’t. This was a straight transaction.”

“
A transaction?
” He strokes her shoulder. “Ah, woman… there is something so
wrong
about you.”

“You must like it.”

“I must,” he admits. “You’ll get killed if I let you go.”

“No, I won’t. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means I’ll help you,” she says. “By now, the word is out that I tried to steal Niri for myself. Everyone will assume I did so for profit, and I can use that to my advantage. That will make it easier for me to find your plotters.”

“Like I said, you’ll get killed.”

“No. I know what to do. I know how to spin this. I know who to tell, and what to tell them. I won’t get touched. If you take me back to Fort Liberty, you’ll be throwing it all away… your best source of information.”

Voss goes silent. His fingers stop their slow circling on her skin. She can sense the distance growing between them, him getting colder by degrees, which she takes as a sign that he can’t argue with the logic.

“I’ll help you,” she says. “But I need my freedom.”

“And what guarantees do I have?”

“None.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“Citizenship, and the freedom to live wherever I please, a merchant license for rare trade, immunity from prosecution from all previous adventures, and protection of my wealth, for my lifetime… if I help you to find your plotters and stop them from killing that girl.”

“Nothing much then,” he says, frustration sharpening the words.

“Fair, for changing sides, putting myself at risk for a planet that has never acknowledged me and now wants to lock me away.”

It’s true, and he knows it. Still, it takes him a moment.

He touches her again, slipping his fingers along the nape of her neck, as if committing it to memory. “I’ll get you what you want.”

The words are resigned. This is a risk he didn’t want to take, with an outcome he can’t predict, and he disapproves. Part of her does too. Maybe it would have been good at Fort Liberty, with him… ruin everything she’s done, but walk away better for it, richer in the possibility of this… whatever this is.

It feels good, but it also feels wrong.

He’s not the only one accustomed to distance.

He shifts, disengaging from her, rising from the bunk and reaching for his tech suit. “You’ll need to communicate with me using a secure application, which Gojo will give you before I leave. Your messages will be sub-routed through existing networks, with encryption that refreshes its protocol every thirty nanoseconds. You will be talking to me and only to me. You will give me a situation report every eight hours, and before and after all contact with potential leads. And you’ll wear a disguised locator. I want to know where you are… always.”

“That’s restrictive.”

“You want to play this game? We do it my way.”

She nods, thinking maybe yes, maybe no. “Understood.”

“Better be.”

He’s dressed already, so she lifts her own suit from the bunk and forces her feet through the pant legs. It zips up fine, fits the same, though it’s not exactly the same Petra on the inside, a bit sore from his good work, tiny breasts rubbed pink from the brush of a silver beard.

“Transport ship is coming,” he says, back to being Voss. “I’ll be needed. You stay in here until we’re gone. You have a way to leave the station?”

“We have a good track in the station bay.”

“Wait until night, then go.”

She nods, holds his gaze. “And that’s that?”

“No,” he says, letting all meanings of the word stand.

He waits a minute, as if there might be something else to say.

Only there isn’t.

So he moves past her, opening the hatch to glare at the NRM guard on the other side. “Find me First Sergeant Wyatt.”

“Here, sir,” the other Assaulter appears from down the corridor, grinning. “That was a long talk.”

“ETA on the transport?”

“Any minute now,” Wyatt replies. “We’re packing up the evidence.”

“Get everyone out of the station.”

“Yes, sir.”

The NRM guard glances at Petra. “So I should put her in a suit and then… handcuffs?”

“She escaped,” Voss says. “All of them did, except for the girl.”

The guard’s mouth drops open, his eyes darting from Petra to Voss. “What? But…she’s right there.”

Wyatt erupts. “Are you fucking deaf, skinny? Didn’t you hear what the Colonel just said?”

“Yes… I… ”

“YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”

“Yes, First Sergeant!” The guard straightens, eyes forward, staring into the empty space over the Assaulter’s shoulder. “I’ve never seen anyone run that fast, sir! She took off and slipped through a hatch, sir!”

“With your weapon,” Voss adds.

The guard swallows, cheeks flushed with color. “With my weapon, sir!”

Wyatt grins. “Fuck, skinny! That blows! Get your suit on.”

The guard places his gun down on the floor grate and leaves.

Voss watches him go, then turns to Wyatt, lowering his voice. “I need Gojo to equip her with a comm her before we leave.”

“Really?” Wyatt grants her an amused look. “Outstanding.”

“Enough,” Voss says.