Like a Boss (32 page)

Bingo. “You went through all the trouble to Breach. You pulled your little sister with you before she signed an Indenture Contract. You didn’t want her to do the same shit you did in Security Services. You wanted to get her away from all that.”

The taser shook, the leads bobbling at the edges of my vision. I kept my eyes open as The Fear snickered,
This is either the biggest gamble or the stupidest thing you’ve ever done
.

“What’s in it for you?”

Jennifer backed away and put the taser in her belt. “She knows where our little sister is.” Her voice was flat, and she stared off into a corner of the lorry. “I was the first, something that came out of LiaoCon’s Advanced Armaments. All three of us are prototypes, fast-tanked to grow and learn quickly.” She looked at me. “How old do you think I am?”

“About my age.”

She shook her head. “I’m twenty-six. I went from decanting to adulthood in three years. My younger sister is about nineteen months old.”

I swallowed. “What about your other sister?”

She worked her jaw. “She looks about twelve, but she’s only eight months old. Or was, I guess.”

“What happened to her?”

“The two of us, we tried to bring her with us. We got popped at the anchor on Luminous. You know the planet?”

I nodded. “It’s where LiaoCon execs go when they think the Life Corporate isn’t indulgent enough, right?”

“That’s that one,” she said, her voice now a whisper. “I faked a work order to bring them along on an assignment because I thought Luminous would be the perfect place for us to Breach. All those ships coming and going, and Security Services would be so busy making sure the wrong people didn’t get in they wouldn’t care who tried to get out. We were at a berth, waiting for a fueling crew to finish. We were going in through the main reactor coolant lines, see? Our skin could handle it. Two of us got in before fifty goons showed up. We reached back for Jennifer, but they got her by the legs. We pulled, and they pulled, and…” She shook her head, then let the weight of her skull carry her gaze to the ground. “She made us let go. Raked our wrists, jabbed at nerve points. We couldn’t hold on. She let us go. Letty knows how to find her.”

“How?”

“She could get the entire Union to look for her. All of it. Through all of Occupied Space. She gets priority spots on the burst couriers. She showed us.”

“What, your sister?”

“No, how it worked.” Her throat caught once. “I believe her. She has the reach. She has the power. I miss our sister. She let us go so we could live free.” She looked at me, and I thought my heart would break from the way her perfect face and perfect eyes now looked as weathered and beaten as a hardcore dockworker’s. “You can’t do that. Not you, not your Union.”

“
Our
Union.” I nodded at the fist on her face. “You joined. You became one of us.”

“Because it was
convenient
.” Her sadness turned to a sneer. “There’s no solidarity. There’s no great big circle looking out for each other. Maybe there’s families that do that, but not here. Not anywhere. The Union is worthless.”

“It’s worth what you put into it,” I said. “I put in my work, my time, my life. Lots of others do, too. We all get lost, we all lose focus, but we don’t let go of that bond, Jennifer. Five fingers make a fist, and a lot of fists make things happen. You help me get out of this alive, and I will find your sister.”

She snorted. “You can’t deliver on that.”

“I can sure as shit try,” I said. “Letty may be the Prez, but I’m the Sky Queen of Justice, remember? People sing my song all over Occupied Space.”

“Like a washed-up Ward Chair can do anything.”

“I got people to stop beating the crap out of each other and start talking. Has Letty done that?”

The lorry came to quick halt. I skidded toward the front of the cabin, but Jennifer stayed planted, like her shoes were magnetized. The back slid open, and Jennifer’s twin stepped in. They both picked me up like I was a sack of potatoes and hauled me into the middle of a cane field. It was mid-afternoon, and the air was thick with water and heat. I started to sweat right away, though that may have been from terror when I saw Letty standing in the middle of a small clearing. She held a lit blowtorch.

I fought against the Jennifers as best I could, kicking and thrashing. They just tightened their grip, one of them squeezing my lungs until I gasped for air. They threw me at Letty’s feet. “Really?” I yelled at her. “I knew you were bad news, Letty, but I didn’t think you were a sadist.”

She looked at the torch and laughed. “I’m not going to use this on
you
, Padma.”

I allowed myself a small breath.

“No.” She shook her head as she adjusted the flame. “That would be too obvious. Someone’s going to find your corpse, and someone back in Brushhead will demand an inquest. If it looks like you were tortured, it would make things difficult.” She nodded to the younger Jennifer, who tossed something in front of my face. The sun glinted off the bumpy sea-green glass. “But I don’t think anyone’s going to make a fuss over a drunk, despondent distillery owner wandering into the middle of an unsanctioned cane burn. I mean, Soni will, probably, but she’s going to be too busy fighting for her job, what with the tuk-tuk bombings and all.”

I lunged for her ankles. I had no real balance or leverage, so I just got a faceful of dirt. “Why?” I spat.

“Because it works,” said Letty. “There isn’t enough cash to go around. You know that by now, what with your cute presentation and all. Accusing me of running everything like I’m some Big Three CEO, pulling strings and letting people starve just so everything balances out.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

She
tsk
ed. “You’ll never know.” She hopped over me, kicking the bottle as she went. She scooped it up and unscrewed the top, pouring the rum all over me. “You make good stuff. I wonder what kind of prescription Dr Ropata would write for you now? You think he’d tell you to drink two fingers of rum? Light a bigger candle?” She smiled as she held up the torch. “I got that covered.”

Letty walked to the edge of the clearing and lit the cane on fire. The stalks began to smolder, then burn like sweet, sticky torches. She walked around me, igniting the cane until we were in the middle of a ring of fire. I got my knees to my chest and rolled on them, my shoulder complaining as I got upright.

“How did you know about Ropata?” I asked. “Give me that, at least.”

Letty turned off the torch and tapped her temple. “Remember those Ghosts? The little old ladies? It’s amazing the kinds of backdoors they could access.”

“Weren’t you supposed to close them?”

She shrugged. “I don’t like destroying useful tools. If I’d known about it when I was in the FOC, I’d have skipped the bombing vote and pushed for hacking into everyone’s heads instead. It’s a lot more convenient. Which reminds me.”

She reached into her jacket, pulled out a handheld bolt driver, and shot both of the Jennifers in the chest. They crumpled to the ground before they could cry out. I could see the older Jennifer’s face curled in pain as she gasped for breath, her eyes locked on Letty as she fell to her knees. Letty wrestled Jennifer’s limp arms behind her back and snapped a zip tie around her wrists. She did the same to the other Jennifer.

“What are you doing?” I yelled.

Letty pointed the bolt driver at my head. “I am doing my job, Padma. I am making the hard decisions that no one wants to. I am going to steer us out of this crisis, and if it takes a whole lot of dead people to do it, well. At least none of you were from where I grew up.”

“Except Onanefe.”

“And he’ll get his pretty soon.” She shook her head, her aim not wavering. “I always questioned his loyalty to the rest of us. The way he spoke about not bombing the ever-loving shit out of you Inks, you’d think he loved you.” She lowered the bolt driver. “But you can’t use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. You’ve got to make your own, even if it means blowing everything up. We’re going to have a better world, Padma, but you won’t be there to see it. Not after your tragic demise.”

“Fuck you, Letty.”

“Absolutely tragic,” said Letty, tossing the bolt driver in my direction. “A drunk, despondent distillery owner who took two Union stalwarts hostage and executed them. She started a cane fire to cover her tracks, but, since she had zero actual experience in the fields, she was done in by her own cover-up. When word gets back to town, everything you’ve said will be discredited. And when your role in the tuk-tuk bombings is revealed…” She gave a mocking moue and covered her mouth with her free hand. “Oops. Said too much.”

I held up my bound hands. “Don’t you think someone would notice
this
?”

She shrugged and gave the cane one more blast with the blow torch before tossing it toward me. “Details are for conspiracy theorists. Good-bye, Padma. Thanks for the vote.”

I didn’t watch her get in the lorry; I was too busy struggling to get my hands free. Letty had used a good, local-pressed zip tie, not the crappy Big Three kind that snapped if you looked at them funny. All I got was skin burns from trying to flex my way free. A stand of dried cane exploded as the flames touched it; sparks stung my cheek. I buried my face in my shoulder as the heat grew and grew. I was now in the middle of an ever-encroaching ring of fire, and I was so fucking angry about that I could only lie on my back and kick at the ground.

You’re going to die here
, whispered The Fear.

I stopped struggling against the zip tie and hissed, “No.”

No, I was not going to fucking die here. No, I was not going to give in to The Fear. No, I was not going to let Leticia Arbusto Smythe win, not when I could find a way out so I could march back into town and kick her ass all the way into the ocean. No, I would get out of here and kick Letty’s ass all the way past the Red Line.

Of course, that meant escaping a ten-meter-tall ring of fire. The afternoon winds had started, and the flames roared higher with every gust. The smoke grew so thick I could barely see the orange of the fire. For once, being stuck on the ground gave me a small advantage. The air stayed clear down here. That gave me a little bit of time.

If I couldn’t break the zip tie, I’d have to cut it. I tried reaching for the multi-tool I always kept in my cargo pocket, but I didn’t have the reach, of course. So, I’d have to get some reach. That meant getting my arms in front of me.

I hunched over as far as my spine would allow and scootched my ass through the loop of my arms. My back began to holler as I pushed my chest towards my hips. What kind of horrible yoga move would those freaks at the Mermaid’s Kick have called this? Buddha Contemplating Her Navel? Inner Facing Idiot? I pushed my shoulders out, sucked my gut in, willed my body to get through the hoop…

I had my arms just far enough before my back flexed. My wrists caught on my hamstrings, and I could move no farther. I was stuck on my back, looking like a trussed-up hog. Another cane stalk exploded into fireworks, and a hundred white-hot needle-points stabbed my neck and face. The fire was getting hotter and closer, and I was going to melt like a caneplas bottle…

That was it. I didn’t have to break the zip tie. I just had to weaken it.

I rolled side-over-side toward the flames, getting a faceful of dirt with every rotation. Sweat poured down my face as I got closer to the fire, and ash now mixed with the soil, hot and soft. I coughed and spat the whole way, half-blind until I couldn’t get any closer to the heat. I held my wrists at the crackling flames, pulling at the zip tie and praying it would move enough.

I strained, and my wrists burned, both from the heat and the bite of the caneplas. My whole body was slick with sweat, and my face felt like a mud mask. I pulled my arms as far apart as I could, hoping for just enough room to slip my legs through. I could tell the zip tie wasn’t budging. Hot as it was, it wouldn’t melt the caneplas. I had to get closer.
You can’t do it
, cackled The Fear.
You can’t get out of this, because you’re not willing to sacrifice. You’d rather hide in your miserable hole in the sewer, clutching your rum and letting the universe spin on without you. You’re nothing, and you’re going to die–

“Fuck
you
,” I said and plunged backward into the fire.

It hurt. Sweet Working Christ, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done anything that hurt like the fire. It wasn’t like getting punched or stabbed or tased; it was waves of pain flashing over my neck and wrists, cutting through my trousers and deck jacket. I could feel blisters forming on my hands, but I held the zip tie in the fire until I felt it give. I screamed as I brought my arms up past my knees, to my ankles, over my boots. I flopped out of the fire, rolling and rolling until the flames on my jacket and trousers were out.

My hands were tomato red, and the stench of burning hair (Jesus,
my
hair) filled my nose. I got to my feet, only to take in a noseful of smoke. Down I went, flopping over the older Jennifer’s legs. She gave a tiny cry, and I gave one back. I scrambled off her, then knelt by her head. “Hold still, okay? Just–”

She coughed blood. Blood dripped from her nostrils and her mouth. The front of her shirt was a red, sodden mess. The bolt, a twenty-centimeter coral steel shank, stuck out her sternum. She swatted at me as I tried to gather her shirt to press into a bandage. “Useless,” she hissed, a little more blood dribbling from her lips.

“Shut up. We’ll get out of here, and we’ll all kick Letty’s ass.”

She snorted and winced. “So stupid. Believing… stupid.” Jennifer gurgled, and I pulled her into my arms. Bleeding out was bad enough, but drowning in her own blood… that was no way to go.

“Is she going to set off more bombs? Jennifer, I need to know.”

Her head bobbled, like a newborn’s. Her eyes lost focus and closed.

I gripped her hard. “Jennifer, I will find your sister. I will find her. But you have to help me.”

She opened her eyes long enough to sneer. “Useless. Too soft.” She coughed again, and she died. I set her down and checked on the other Jennifer. She had taken a bolt right through the heart.