Human After All (18 page)

“Let’s never do that again,” Jaymes said.

“You could have stayed.”

“Now you tell me.”

Mino smiled.

“I was wondering if you knew how to smile,” Jaymes said as Mino climbed into the pilot hatch of the taxi. “What are you doing?”

“Resetting it to manual. So why did you come with me? If you’d stayed, I’d bet you’d be cleared and made a hero of the Bioware civil rights movement.”

“That would take too long, and I want to see Drue.”

“Maybe you should get one of those bracelets with the portrait pendants. Then you can see him anytime you like.”

“I want to do more than look at him.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Mino said as the cab’s jets whirred to life. “Get in, and I’ll take you to your slank.”

“He’s not a slank.”

Mino smiled again.

“All right,” Jaymes said as he buckled the seat harness. “He’s a bit of a slank, but I love him.”

“Slanks are more fun anyway,” Mino said as he pulled back on the control stick.

As the teardrop-shaped vehicle rose from the parking pad, a screen in the dash bloomed with light, and a simucaster began talking at a rapid clip. When they were away from the cab company building without an alarm being raised, Mino stabbed a finger at the screen, cutting off the newsbabble in mid-sentence.

“If the first thing we heard wasn’t about an explosion in the WEC headquarters, then it didn’t happen,” he said. “How does it feel to save the P.G.’s life?”

“Maybe we did, and maybe we didn’t. We’ll never know.”

“That’s life.” Mino steered the cab away from the middle of the Cloister and headed for Jaymes’s apartment building. “What will you do now?”

“I’m touched by your curiosity, but honestly, I have no clear idea what I’m going to do… beyond spending as much time as possible with Drue.”

“If you stay in the Cloister, the govs will find you, and you’ll be lionized or crucified, depending on public sentiment. This
is
an election year, you know.”

“This is my home,” Jaymes said. “If it’s fragged up, shouldn’t I stay and help fix it?”

“You’ve changed, Prince. The first time I saw you, you were a typical, naïve, arrogant T-bred. Now look at you.”

“What am I now?”

“Aware.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

Mino glanced at Jaymes. “Yeah, it’s good. Painful sometimes, but better than ignorance.”

“Sometimes you talk more like a philosopher than a mercenary.”

“Can’t I be both?”

Jaymes chuckled. “It’s bizarre, considering the circumstances, but I feel amazingly… unburdened… by anything. I should be worried, but I’m not. I’m just happy to be.”

“Hold on to that feeling.” Mino tilted the stick right and forward and hovered in front of the garage port of Jaymes’s building. “Care to key in the code?”

“I don’t own a vehicle, so I never—”

“The general entry code should work.”

“How do you know more about my building than I do?” Jaymes asked as he typed the code into the cab’s dashboard holopad.

“Because when I take a job, I do my research. I visited you right after Lady Alvera booked you and had a look around your place to learn what I could. That was the first time I watched you while you were sleeping. The Lady’s majordomo reprimanded me the next day for looking tired on the job, and she told him to have more compassion.”

“You killed her.”

“She was pointing a plasma pistol at me.”

“Oh,” Jaymes said as a light flashed over the garage entrance. “I couldn’t see it from my angle.”

“And you were scared out of your wits.”

“Yes, I was. And you contributed in no small part to that fear.”

“I did my best to stop you from fleeing, and then I chased you all over the Grange to bring you back. It’s been a long time since I was that entertained.”

“It entertained you to kill Lochler and his pack?”

“I couldn’t let them keep you. You would’ve been Lochler’s bitch inside of a week. I saved you from that.”

“So your story is that you were protecting me?”

“Partly.” Mino pulled the cab smoothly into an empty berth. “I’m as sorry as I can be that I had to kill those lobos. They got a raw deal all the way around.”

“It almost sounds like you care,” Jaymes said as the wing door swung upward. “Don’t you make all your decisions based on logic and personal gain?”

Mino pushed the autopilot homing button and got out of the vehicle. “I care about you,” he said. “To my surprise. There were at least two times when I could have killed you in your sleep, but each time I left you alone and went after other prey. I told myself it was because you were too valuable to waste, but that was a lie. I actually considered keeping you for myself.”

“Why would you care about me?”

“I’m not sure. It’s against all my conditioning, but there it is.” Mino paused. “I
could
make myself kill you. I just don’t want to.”

“I’ll try to stay on your good side.”

“If things fall out the way I think they will, you’ll never hear from me again.”

“And I was just starting to like you,” Jaymes said sarcastically.

“You sounded like the Zot just then.”

“He’s bound to have some influence on me.”

“Try and keep it to a minimum.”

“Why don’t you come and say good-bye to him?”

“Why?”

“Because it would annoy him and amuse me.”

When Jaymes moved away to the lift, Mino followed. At the apartment, Jaymes tapped a code on the blank surface of the door, and it opened. One step into the room, and he knew it was empty.

Mino picked up the subtle vibration of unease from Jaymes and looked warily around.

“Drue,” Jaymes called out, though he knew Drue wouldn’t answer.

“I should have expected this,” Mino said. “But I didn’t think the Pygs knew that Drue was here.”

“Do you have any idea where they would have taken him?”

“Look around. They must’ve left you a message.”

Jaymes went to the bedroom and found his earring on the nightstand. As he picked it up, he saw a holopad halfway under a pillow. “In here,” he called.

Mino took a long look at the holopad before he picked it up. When nothing happened, he held it out to Jaymes. “It’s likely keyed to your prints or the oil in your skin.”

Jaymes took the holopad, and the lumafield screen floated up to hover a slight distance above the smooth black surface. As Mino moved out of the line of sight, a man’s image formed on the screen.

“Hi, Jaymes,” Arkay said. “Linus tells me that the plan failed. I’m sorry, but I had to take the Fox to make sure you’d continue to support us. You’ll be contacted by some of our people in the Cloister about the new mission. That’s all for now, but someday I want to hear how you got out of the Attorney Exec’s office alive.”

The screen sank back into the rectangle of silica/carbon alloy, and Jaymes looked up at Mino.

“Let’s go get him,” the murk said.

J
AYMES
looked around nervously as Mino worked on the opsys of a diamond black Luxaero armored coach. It was in the mechvalet area of the parking garage, and there were regular camera sweeps.

“Score,” Mino said under his breath, and Jaymes hurried to the passenger side of the long, shark-shaped vehicle.

Mino disengaged all the locks, and Jaymes got in. As the T-bred buckled the safety harness, Mino opened a compartment under the dash.

“Score!” the murk said again as he gazed at the small arsenal. “These are going to come in handy.”

“The owner is the legal rep for a loan bank.”

“That explains his fear of murder.” Mino backed the coach out of its berth, and a light flashed on the control panel. “Murd! I thought I found all the disconnects. Hold on.”

Jaymes braced himself as Mino threw the throttle all the way forward, and the coach leaped down the corridor lined with equally expensive vehicles. The murk blipped the atmobrakes at the corner, and the back end slewed around. With the snout pointed toward daylight, Mino opened the throttle to full again. More lights flashed on the panel and over the exit, but they were through the opening before the gate slammed down.

“Where are we going?” Jaymes asked as they dove at a steep angle.

“To get your slank.”

“Good,” Jaymes said with exaggerated calm. “But I was hoping for a physical location.”

“Am I making you nervous?” Mino asked as he guided the coach through a barrel roll.

“This thing’s a bit large for close-quarter aerobatics.”

“Relax. This buggy is designed for maximum maneuverability. The brakes and the stabilizers are tweaked for evasive tactics.”

“It’s still big. You’re coming awfully close to tolerance on the starboard side.”

Mino leveled the coach out and sat back in the well-padded seat. “We’re going to the Cloister’s Pyg enclave. They keep the location secret, so they’ll probably hold the Zot there. It’s exactly the kind of thing they’d do.”

Jaymes watched the city flash past and did his best not to think about what might be happening to Drue. He was falling into a kind of trance when the murk’s voice startled him.

“It was the way you treated the lobo.”

“What?”

“You wanted to know why I care about you.”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s not because you’re beautiful, even though you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And it’s not because I want to prong you ’til I drop from exhaustion. I do… but that’s not what put the hook so deep in me. It was the way you treated the lobo. You didn’t use him and forget about him. You honored him and that touched something in me that the military tried to burn out.”

“You actually sound sentimental.”

“Yeah, I think IndMilCorps fragged it when they decided to take emotions out of the equation. They wage war for profit, and they forgot that most soldiers fight for other reasons. I don’t want to offend, but someone like you….” Mino cleared his throat. “People like you are why people like me have been going to war since the beginning of time. To me, you represent something worth fighting for… if that makes any sense.”

“It does, and I’m flattered. I shouldn’t be. You’re a cryo-cold killer and you scramble my circuits.”

“Well, shake it off, boychick. We’re here.”

Mino put the coach in a stationary configuration in a line of massive, boxy cargo floats.

“Where are we?” Jaymes asked, looking around at the unfamiliar clumps of low buildings and queues of livery vehicles. “I didn’t know a place like this existed in the Cloister.”

“You see? If I’d told you where we were going, you wouldn’t have been any wiser.”

“I’m becoming more certain by the second that you and Drue are somehow related. You even have similar bone structure, though you’re much larger. If you had hair, I bet it’d be red.”

“You’d win that bet, but if you compare me to the Zot again, I’ll—”

“No need to strain yourself coming up with creative threats. Tell me how we’re going to get Drue back.”

“We’re going to go into that building and blast anyone who tries to stop us getting to Drue.”

Jaymes swallowed. “All right.”

“I know you have hand-to-hand skills, but have you ever fired a weapon?”

“Yeah.” Jaymes swallowed again. “My throat is really dry.”

Mino got a skwib of water from the refrigerated console and handed it to Jaymes.

Jaymes bit the end off the skwib and swallowed the piece of edible packaging. After taking a few drinks of water, he spoke again. “For a few months, I was Companion to a real prince from the place where the pyramids are. I don’t know what they’re calling it this week. He liked to go out into the desert and shoot antique weapons. His arms master showed me how to use a lot of different weapons.”

“Were you any good with any of them?”

“I don’t know. He just showed me how they worked for safety’s sake.”

“You’re awfully cute,” Mino said as he handed Jaymes a lightweight hand weapon.

Jaymes slid his hand into the basket grip and wrapped the strap around his wrist. He ran his forefinger over the firing stud and found the frequency slide with his thumb. Mino reached over and rubbed a fingertip over a lume strip.

“Safety’s off,” the murk said. “So don’t point it anywhere near me. Ready?”

Jaymes nodded, and Mino disengaged the coach’s lock. The murk climbed onto the roof of the vehicle, and Jaymes followed him. They jumped from the roof to the top of a cargo float and continued down the line until they reached the edge of the Pygmalion compound. Inside the fenced area looked like a collection of warehouses, crisscrossed by wide lanes to accommodate freight vehicles, but there was no activity.

“If the Pygs were smart, they’d run a lejit biz out of this place,” Mino said as he shouldered the long weapon he carried. “Think you can jump over that fence from here?”

Jaymes measured the distance with his eyes. “Yes, but I’m more worried about the landing.”

“Watch me.” Mino backed several steps and then ran to the edge of the float. He dove headfirst, clearing the fence and going into a tucked position. Hitting the ground, he rolled and popped to his feet. Gesturing to Jaymes to follow, he moved into the shadow of the nearest building.

Jaymes did exactly as Mino had done and made it safely over the fence. He joined the murk by the wall and took his weapon back out of its holster.

“If you don’t want to kill anyone, stay behind me,” Mino said.

“I don’t want to kill anyone, but if anyone tries to kill me or Drue, I’ll do it.”

“And me?”

“Well, of course you. Present company is always excepted.”

“I didn’t know that little rule of conversation.” Mino looked around the corner of the building. “No guards, so we can assume the area is under defensive surveillance. Chances are they already know we’re on the grounds.”

“Then we should probably hurry.” Jaymes’s dark brows drew together as he concentrated. “Drue’s in a building in the row opposite us.”

“I like your style, boychick,” Mino said as he moved around the corner and blew open the door of the only building with wire over the windows.

Jaymes followed Mino inside, flinching each time the murk fired his weapon. Armed men and women were thrown several feet by the impact of the rounds, hitting the floor with smoking craters in their chests. Hearing a noise behind him, Jaymes turned and fired without thinking. A Pygmalion fell to the ground, and her weapon flew from her hand. Jaymes tried not to look at her as he ran to the door and locked it.