The jets were firing. The shuttle was ready to take off.
Thank goodness.
“Now we’re safe,” Snow said.
Even as he spoke, the shuttle lifted from the tarmac in front of them.
10
JOSUNE ARRIOLA
A cargo of fresh food was waiting when their shuttle landed. Josune had just finished loading that when two pallets of engineering goods arrived, followed by three crates of modding goods.
Josune smiled. Nika was stocking up. Judging by the insurance on one of the loads, there were some transurides in there. Good. Surely all this would help Roystan.
She stopped smiling.
This had to work.
There was no point worrying about the things she couldn’t control. Worry about what she could.
Nika linked in to let her know they’d arrived at Songyan Engineering. An hour to get there, another to get back.
Josune called Roystan. “I’m going to grab something to eat.”
“I’ll tell Jacques he should have packed a picnic box. Take care.”
“Believe me, I will.”
It would be nice to hope that one day they’d be on a ship where you didn’t have to watch your back all the time. What must it have been like to be Roystan, with eighty years of hiding, eighty years looking over your shoulder. Never able to say who you really were. Always worried someone would find you.
She chose a place to eat where she could see out onto the tarmac and where she could face the direction of Another Road’s shuttle. She had the screens, but machines could be hacked.
The food place sold everything from sandwiches to a full meal, from water to alcohol. Josune took a seat at the shared table at the window and ordered coffee and a sandwich. Her own shuttle was at the back—they weren’t paying premium rates—but she could see it. She could see it even better on the small handheld she put discreetly beside her plate. Not that she needed the handheld, or the view. The shuttle was wired to warn her if anyone went near it. She could start the launch sequence from the handheld if she needed to. Not that she planned to, but if anything went wrong, it was always nice to have a ship ready to take off the moment you entered it. Or, for that matter, a shuttle that could take itself off if, say, Nika and Snow were on board and couldn’t pilot it. It could lift off and take itself back to Another Road, where it would autopilot itself into the hold.
The table was crowded. There was something about spacers. They liked to see the ships. Half the people eating wore business suits, the other half coveralls.
A flower seller came into the bar. “Scented flowers. The Kitimat rose. Native to this world.” She thrust the basket forward. “Here. Smell the roses. Take life back to your ship.”
The scent rose, hot and pungent.
It reminded Josune of a flower the crew of her original ship, the Hassim, had found on Sassia. She blinked, shook her head. Sometimes she didn’t think of the Hassim crew for days, but the occasional memory still welled up, overwhelming her.
She loved being on Roystan’s ship, but she missed the crew of the Hassim too.
The woman next to Josune—her face permanently burned, as if she spent more time looking sunward than most humans—bought one. She touched a petal reverently. “We don’t appreciate them enough. It’s the one thing I miss in space.”
“You don’t grow your own?” Josune asked. Another Road grew herbs Jacques claimed he couldn’t do without. Jacques hated tending them, though, so it was a task Roystan allocated out on rotation. Jacques had been throwing out hints that since modders liked growing things, they might like to grow vegetables as well.
Nika had replied, “Sure. We could do that, Jacques. Although, we’ll probably mod them. What do you think, Snow?”
After which Jacques and Carlos had taken over Nika and Snow’s gardening tasks for the next week, just in case they got ideas.
The woman beside Josune shook her head. “On our ship aeroponics is for protein. Edible only.”
“That’s sad.” Even the Hassim had grown flowers.
A shuttle landed. The Justice Department logo was emblazoned across the side, half the height of the shuttle.
Josune hid a shiver. It wasn’t after them. She was stupid to worry.
A woman in an immaculate cream suit with the distinctive collar of the Justice Department came out to stand at the entry, almost before the ground was cool enough. The soles of her feet must have been burning.
Figures dressed in suits branded with a symbol Josune didn’t recognize moved up to stand on either side of her.
Interest around the table sharpened. Josune heard a few murmured “Paola Tekes” and “Honesty Leagues.” Even those who hadn’t been looking outside before looked up.
“Who’s Paola Teke?” Josune asked her companion.
“A Justice Department higher-up. She reports directly to the board.” The woman leaned forward, as interested as anyone else. “This must be those agents they caught.” She looked back at Josune. “Justice Department agents. They were on the make.”
That sounded like every Justice Department agent Josune knew.
“The Honesty League got hold of it.”
“The Honesty League?” She’d never heard of them. Or maybe she had. They’d been on the news vids recently.
“The Justice Department is taking the agents to trial. If they don’t, they’ll prove the Honesty League is right, and the Justice Department is corrupt through and through.”
“And so they are,” a spacer from midway down the table said. “They do terrible things.”
“There are some bad apples,” the woman next to Josune conceded. “And it’s getting worse, but they’re cleaning them up.”
Josune would bet she had never worked on the rim, or far away from the main populated worlds.
“It has to be bad if the Justice Department are hauling them in,” the spacer from down the table said. “Lucky we’ve got the Honesty League is all I can say.”
Josune was going to find out more about the Honesty League. Maybe she could send them vids of their own recent clashes with the Justice Department. If they were any good, maybe even the vids from the Hassim.
Paola Teke entered the shuttle. Not long after that an aircar dropped down, hovered at the entry. The Honesty League followed.
Everyone groaned.
“I wanted to see those lying scum,” the woman next to Josune said.
“Not going to show their own,” the spacer from down the table said. “They’ve probably bought a couple of contractors from a cattle ship, and they’re pretending to be Justice Department people. Wouldn’t surprise me to find they haven’t arrested anyone at all.”
He might even be right.
“Wouldn’t be too bad,” the woman beside Josune said. “They’d be in jail, then, eating at the Justice Department’s expense.”
“Lady, do you know what the jails do with their prisoners? They hire them out to merc ships.”
“Not going to be an option much longer,” another spacer said. A company man, but he’d nodded emphatically at everything the other man had said, so Josune thought he had a better idea of how the Justice Department really worked than the woman beside her did. “The war at Merkle is finished. So is the one at Newest Hebrides. Hard pickings if you’re a merc ship nowadays. Or so I’ve heard.”
“They won’t care. They’ll just make up another war.”
Josune wouldn’t put it past the companies to manufacture a war just to get rid of people they didn’t want. Although, why would they bother? They could murder them and the Justice Department would turn a blind eye. Might even help with the killing, for a fee.
Her jaw-link buzzed. Nika, to say the Songyan wasn’t there and that they’d probably walked into a trap.
She lost track of the conversation around the table. Nika and Snow were
an hour away. What could she do to help? Find out where their enemies were.
She ran a quick check of the media for Leonard Wickmore. The media always reported on executive whereabouts.
He’d arrived on Kitimat three days ago.
Surprise.
Josune called Nika.
There was no answer.
She called Snow.
No answer there either.
* * *
• • •
Josune found a quiet spot to call Another Road. “I can’t contact Nika or Snow. Neither are answering my calls, and they’re an hour away by aircar.”
“Stay put for the moment,” Roystan said. “If they’re on their way, you might need to escape quickly.”
Would they have the Songyan with them?
“Wickmore’s on Kitimat. I haven’t checked the whereabouts of the Boost.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Thanks.”
Josune’s security alert buzzed. She opened a screen. Figures moved around the base of the shuttle. She pushed it up to Roystan. “I need to check this out.”
“We’ll watch from here.”
Josune left the link open as she made her way rapidly across the tarmac. She paused in the shadow of the recently landed Justice Department ship, but two armed Justice Department agents moved her on.
“Nothing to see here, go back inside.”
“I’m heading for my shuttle,” Josune said.
“Well head on, then.”
They watched her go.
All the while Roystan kept up a monologue in her ear. “Three people in combat gear walking around the shuttle. One of them has just tried the entry. He’s moved away. Don’t go too close.”
Carlos’s voice came in over Roystan’s. “We checked the Boost, Josune. They’re at Kitimat.”
Surprise on that one too. She’d bet money the people walking around the shuttle were from the Boost.
Josune risked a glance over her shoulder. The two Justice Department agents still watched.
Nearly there. She veered sideways, to a smaller shuttle than hers, and was finally out of sight of the agents. She slowed, edged around the shuttle.
“Still only the three people,” Roystan murmured in her ear.
“I can’t get any closer.” Maybe she should walk up to them and ask what they were doing?
“I know what you’re thinking, Josune. Don’t. They’ll be armed.”
She was armed too. She had her sparker. Except if she used that, she’d destroy the electricals in the shuttle—and in those around it—which would achieve nothing. Maybe she could sic the Justice Department agents on them. Which would do exactly nothing except draw attention to them. Even if she fought and won, she still had to wait for Nika and Snow to arrive. Longer if they didn’t.
“I’m going back inside. Let me know if the Boost takes off. If it does, we know they’ll have Nika and Snow. If Wickmore leaves, we know they are with him. There is no point in me heading out yet.” There was nothing she could do for the moment except keep watch on the situation.
“Good.”
She went back to the same eatery she’d left from. A new batch of spacers occupied the long table. Josune put the handheld down and watched the three intruders at the shuttle while she checked up on the aircar Nika had hired. That was a dead end.
She frowned down at the screen in front of her. One of the intruders leaned against the shuttle lock. The other two stayed around the back. Presumably so that the rightful owners of the shuttle wouldn’t see them until they were at the door.
She linked in to Another Road every five minutes to let them know she was still safe.
The sun set with a suddenness that reminded her Dartigan Capitol was on the equator.
“Should we turn on the external lights?” she asked Roystan during the next call.
“I think we’ll have to,” Roystan said. “If we want to see what they’re doing.”
“Next time I’m putting infrared lights and cameras on the outside.” You couldn’t be prepared for everything, but while on the Hassim, she’d learned that once you found a vulnerability, you needed to fix it.
Roystan sighed. “I’d give anything for us not to have to run.”
So would Josune. Just to go exploring without forever looking over your shoulder would be bliss.
She spent the time setting up a request for takeoff, saved the request, and left it ready to send. She then programmed the shuttle so it was ready to take off automatically. They would have to leave in a hurry, and possibly fight their way into the shuttle. Time spent starting the engines would be time one person didn’t have to fight.
Maybe next time they’d buy one of those newer engines that stayed warm all the time.
Forty-five minutes after Josune had lost Nika’s signal, a shuttle landed between the Justice Department and Another Road’s shuttle. Ten people in combat uniform piled out.
This time Roystan called her. “Are you seeing this?”
“I wish I wasn’t.”
“Time to abandon the shuttle, do you think?”
All Nika’s supplies, including the heavily insured pack that was probably transurides, were on board. She’d need that for Roystan. “Jacques ordered lavaberries. He says they’re a local delicacy and you must eat them fresh. It’d be a shame to dump them just because some mercs got in the way.”
“You can’t take on ten—thirteen—armed mercenaries, Josune.”
“If we wait long enough, the spaceport authorities will question why the mercs are there.” It had to be worrying them.
“You think you can wait it out?”
“Maybe. But it shouldn’t stop us delivering the goods.” Josune pushed through the request for takeoff. “I’ll send this one up on auto, hire a separate shuttle for us.”
“I’m not sure—”
“Already done, Roystan.”
Clearance took fifteen minutes. She’d have to remember that, factor it into any future escapes.
In that time the mercs spread out, covered the area. There was one positive to this. The gathering implied Snow was still free, given he was the Boost’s target.
Two of the mercs joined the guard at the door. One of them started to pick the lock. This might turn out badly.
Josune linked in to Roystan again. “I am sending the shuttle up before they get in. Even if we don’t have clearance.”
But blessedly, then, clearance came through.
She pressed for auto-takeoff.
“Watch them scramble,” Carlos said gleefully, through Roystan’s link, as the mercs moved back.
Right now Josune would prefer the blast to take them out. That would make fewer people to worry about later.
The mercs scrambled for their own shuttle. She smiled. They weren’t going to catch it. They might violate the clearance, but by the time their shuttle had warmed up, it would be too late.
As they did so, two people stopped in the shadow of the shuttle Josune had loitered around earlier. Nika and Snow.
“Call you back,” she told Roystan, and ran out of the eatery.
She slowed when she got outside—she wanted to run—forced herself to walk naturally, albeit briskly, toward the shuttle the two now sheltered near. Just like any spacer heading for their own shuttle.
“But we’re not on it,” Snow said as she got close enough.
“There’ll be a reason.”
Nika understood. She always did.
But Josune wished they’d both move back. Out of sight of the camouflaged mercenaries entering the shuttle not far from them. They’d both been so busy watching Another Road’s shuttle they hadn’t seen what was going on around them.
She pitched her voice to reach them. “Keep moving.”
They didn’t hear her. Or didn’t reali
ze she was talking to them.
“Nika. Snow.”
She had to call them three times before they heard her.
“Veer left.”
They veered left, but it was too late. Someone in the shuttle would have been watching. “Do they know what you look like?”
“Unfortunately.”
Josune kept pace with them but didn’t join them. She called up an aircar. Naturally, it refused to come anywhere near the shuttles. “We have to go back to the cab pickup. That’s to your left.”
“We just came from there,” Snow said.
A pity Josune hadn’t known that. She could have met them there. “What happened to your links?”
“Fried.”
That would make communication difficult. Josune glanced behind. Nothing. “Maybe quicken your pace.”
They did.
A mercenary ran out in front of them.
Josune raised her blaster. Fired.
The merc went down.
They started to run.
Two more mercenaries ran in, one either side. Snow turned to one of them and pulled out a blaster. They veered away.
“I think they heard about the sparker,” Nika said.
Josune fired two quick sparks from her own sparker. “They haven’t heard about mine.”
“I hope our aircar still works,” Snow said. “You’ve probably shorted everything out for miles.”
“Come, Snow. I’m not that bad.”
They reached the aircab pickup.
“I am.”
“Behind you,” Josune said as another merc came close. She fired her blaster this time.
The aircar dropped.
They flung themselves into it. The door took forever to close. At least three seconds. Josune ID’d herself and told the aircar to take them straight up.
Hot blaster fire made the door glow.
The aircar, thank goodness, wasn’t damaged enough to not take off.
Josune switched on every screen she could. A thin rod was in the hand of one of the mercenaries behind. “They have a sparker too.” They wouldn’t even have thought of using it if Snow hadn’t used one first.
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