Eva struggled, but Armida only tightened her tentacles further. To one side, her ship’s airlock; to the other, continued chaos.
Maybe Garg was right. Maybe this was the right thing to do. The station shields were weakening, who knew how many ships outside had been reduced to shrapnel, and this guy clearly wasn’t going to stop until she was under his thumb, figuratively speaking. Maybe The Fridge would even let Mari go if Eva was out of the picture. All she had to do was give up, give in, and let Glorious win.
But there was Vakar, flanked by mercs, holding his ridiculous box.
She didn’t even know what was inside. That made her angry. He had never bought her a present before—one just for her, not for a holiday or birthdate celebration when present-giving was a social expectation—and she wanted it. Maybe she was broke, and The Fridge owned her ass, and she was hanging upside down in the grip of a psychic alien’s myriad tentacles, and a crazy megalomaniac was killing people because she laughed at him, but she wasn’t going to sit around fanning her privates while there was a chance she could find out what was in that box.
That small, black and, most importantly, indestructible metal box.
Once more, with feeling, she thought. “Vakar, throw the box at the ship!”
He stared at her, blinking both sets of eyelids as if wondering what on earth she was thinking. Then, without a word, he wrestled free of the goons holding him and did as she asked.
It arced beautifully, right toward the airlock behind Armida. The mercs raised their guns but hesitated, unsure what it was. Eva powered on her boots and prayed to the Virgin for luck.
One boot pulled some of Armida’s tentacles up, while the other snagged Armida’s helmet as well as the box as it began to fall. It rushed toward her, but Armida’s helmet container was in the way, so it hit the glass like a missile as it tried to reach her boot. A tiny spiderweb of a crack formed.
“You wretched smuggler,” Armida boomed in her mind, whipping up some tentacles to pry the box away. “I should come out there and destroy you myself.”
The pressure on the glass increased as the boot kept pulling at the box.
“Your fate is sealed, craven defiers of—” the Glorious Apotheosis said, but Eva didn’t hear the rest, because Armida’s helmet shattered into thick fragments that rained on Eva as she fell to the ground. The tentacles collapsed, and Eva immediately reached for her gun.
“Please, fool,” Armida said. “You can’t shoot me. I have no physical form.”
Not shooting you, Eva thought, inching backward toward a broken pipe. The air shimmered in front of it.
Bean farts.
She shot the pipe, and the methane inside rushed out in a gout of flame. Armida’s scream echoed in Eva’s mind as her mingled gases burned.
Eva crawled toward the airlock while Garg and the other mercs struggled to put out the fire and deal with whatever other crap that jerk of a galactic emperor had been spewing. The station rocked again, and Vakar’s box slid toward her a few meters away.
Vakar was past it, sprawled on the ground. The angles of his head and limbs suggested he was unconscious. Fallen? Shot?
Her anger flared again, but this time it burned cold.
She crouched and dove, rolling as she landed, her momentum taking her to within arm’s reach of the box. One more step and she had it, cradling it under her arm. She ducked behind a dislodged sheet of metal to avoid shots from the mercs who were once more after her ass.
And, more importantly, between her and Vakar.
((One minute,)) she pinged to her crew.
((Maglock!)) came the reply.
((I know!)) she thought back. But she had to get Vakar on board first.
The mercs charged. Unfortunately for them, they were easier to pick off that way, and her hand was steady with purpose. She darted past their writhing forms to Vakar, whose inner lids were closed, giving his gray-blue eyes a filmy look.
“Stupid stinkbug,” she whispered. With a groan, Eva maneuvered her arm under his back and strained to pull him up, but he was half again as heavy as she was. Gritting her teeth, she slammed the box onto his stomach. Right in the ol’ cloaca.
He gasped, eyes opening, and gave off a pained rusty smell.
“Sorry,” she said, firing a few cover shots at mercs who had spotted her again. “I’ll buy you dinner next time.”
With her help, he staggered to his feet, and they limped through the umbilicus to the airlock of La Sirena Negra. Min opened it just wide enough to let Pink and Leroy pull the two of them inside. Pink immediately began examining Vakar, flipping up her eye patch so her implant could scan for injuries.
“Fix him,” Eva said. “I’m getting the maglock off.”
“How?” Pink asked. “I tried to cut the cord, but it’s thick as your stubborn-ass skull.”
“I have a plan.”
Pink took a good, long look at Eva with her cybernetic eye.
“I have components of a plan,” Eva said.
“Ingredients are not a cake, Eva.”
“Be ready to jump when the maglock is off,” Eva said. “Fix him!”
With a wave and a thought, she reopened the door and headed back out to the station. Garg had reformed enough of a squad that when she emerged, a dozen guns were trained on her. He was holding four of them. She walked to the end of the umbilicus, arms raised.
“Here I am,” she said, voice magnified by her helmet. “I’ve seen the error of my selfish ways. Sorry about the mess.”
Garg lowered one of his guns. “That is the second most ridiculous thing I have heard this cycle. The first being that anyone would consider you worth the trouble of destroying an entire space station.”
“Some people like to set your toys on fire when you won’t share them,” Eva said. She inched sideways, gaze flicking from Garg to the other mercs, looking for the mag knocker. If they didn’t have it, this plan was dead on arrival.
“And some people share their toys in the first place,” Garg said.
Eva snorted. “Bad analogy, since I’m the toy here.”
“Your analogy, not mine.” He held out an isosphere. “Let us finish this, Captain.”
“What about my crew?”
“None of your concern. Your ship will be commandeered for any necessary repair efforts.” He sneered, as much as someone without lips could. “Likely broken down for scrap.”
“On second thought, I’m rather attached to her.” Eva turned and dove off the edge of the platform, toward the grav barrier that separated breathable air from the vacuum of space. Cursing behind her, Garg activated the isosphere, its shimmering blue bubble surrounding her as she clicked on her gravboots.
With a clang that vibrated through her feet, she landed on the side of her ship, waving merrily at the mercs as their shots hit the field around her and fizzled or bounced off. She prayed to every saint she could think of that he had the mag knocker, that he was distracted enough to use it without thinking . . .
Garg gestured at one of his men, who brought the device forward.
This would work. It had to work. Except for one tiny problem: the isofield. She was attached to the ship now, sure, but when the mag knocker hit, she’d be screwed.
But her ship would be free, at least. Her people would escape. They still had to get away from the Glorious Pain in the Ass, but Min could handle that. And with any luck, The Fridge would give up on Mari and let her go since their newest involuntary recruit was no longer available.
If Eva had known it would end this way, she might as well have just gone with that jerk in the first place and saved the whole station a big fat plate of arroz con mango.
No, Glorious didn’t deserve the satisfaction. The station didn’t deserve this, either, but she wasn’t the whiny baby firing plasma cannons, so anyone with grievances could take it up with him.
Keep telling yourself that, she thought, and maybe you won’t feel guilty later. Assuming there is a later.
Eva patted the side of L
a Sirena Negra. Then the mag knocker hit and she drifted off, back toward Garg and the isosphere he held, as her ship lurched and began to reverse. For the longest moment of her life, she watched it go.
“Adiós, my friend,” she whispered, her hand reaching out as if she could catch it.
“I always preferred ‘see you soon,’” a voice said in her helmet comm. Standing in the open airlock was Vakar, his head bandaged, his hands clutching something she couldn’t see.
Another isofield surrounded her, white as a pearl, and the blue isofield shorted out and vanished. Vakar reeled her in as she let out a string of curses that would have made even her mother blush. He would never let her live this down. She could practically smell his smugness already.
Eva took one last look at Garg and his mercs; for what it was worth, she hoped they’d make it out of this alive. She still flipped them off, though.
Once Eva was inside, Pink escorted Vakar back to the med bay and Eva made her way to the bridge. Min was in the pilot’s chair, her pale skin speckled with lights from the instrument panel.
“I assume you can outmaneuver this idiot?” Eva asked.
“Faster than you can do twenty push-ups,” Min replied, her voice coming through the speakers.
They slid out of the dock, debris pinging their shields, and Eva finally got a good look at the might of the Glorious Apotheosis. It was . . . substantial.
“That is one serious manhood joke waiting to happen,” she said.
They dropped as if they’d fallen off a cliff, Min angling La Sirena Negra to put the station between them and the emperor’s ship. A shot from the plasma cannon cut another line through Omicron, and more things exploded behind them. In a few seconds, they’d be clear to power up the FTL drive.
“Incoming transmission,” Min said.
Eva closed her eyes. “Let’s hear it.”
“Eva the Innocent,” said Glorious. “You will not escape from me. I will bend you to my will.”
“Not happening, guy, so move along,” she replied, imagining his furious needle-toothed smile.
“I will pursue you to the ends of the universe if I must!” he shrieked.
“Then it’s a good thing the universe is expanding,” she said. “Jump, Min.”
In a streak of red light, they did.
If only every problem were so easy to run away from, Eva thought as they sped off into the black. For particularly loose definitions of “easy” that she’d have nightmares about. As if she didn’t have enough nightmare fuel in the tank already.
Now came the harder part: dealing with The Fridge. And for that problem, there really was nowhere to run.
Chapter 4
De Tal Palo, Tal Astilla
La Sirena Negra didn’t slow down until it came up on the nearest Gate. Eva stared at the huge metal ring on the bridge screens, wondering not for the first time at the mystery of an ancient alien device that could open holes in space, that people used every cycle to get from one end of the universe to the other, and that nobody knew a damn thing about.
Except how to operate them, of course. Which was its own brand of uncomfortable, since the Proarkhe hadn’t exactly left instructions for their tech before they disappeared to nobody knew where eons earlier. Still, the Gates worked, and that was what mattered.
“Where to, Cap?” Min asked.
“Stand by for now. Did a message come for me while I was out?”
“Yes, sorry, everything was all woo-woo, pew-pew, so I forgot. You got one about the cats, and another one on your private—”
“Send it to my cabin.” Her lips curled into a scowl as she walked to her quarters on the starboard side, across from the med bay.
No doubt the message was the instructions for her first assignment. Sounded more like schoolwork than blackmail, but she doubted it was going to be simple deliveries. Not that her line of work had ever been simple; back when she’d navigated the dark spaces between the points of light that were law and order in this galaxy, things tended to get complicated in a hurry. But she had promised the crew stability, and safety, as much as anything could be safe out in space. She couldn’t jeopardize that.
She had to cut them loose.
Or did she? She didn’t relish the idea of finding a new crew to pilot her ship, keep it in good repair—keep Eva from being alone and going space-mad, if she was honest. She needed people she could trust.
But she couldn’t tell them about Mari. The Fridge agent had said they would kill her sister if she said anything. How would they even know, though? She didn’t think they were monitoring her commlink, and they couldn’t have a bug on board—Min would feel it. It would come down to whether she or one of the others said something in a place where The Fridge had eyes, ears, or some other sensory appendage. That meant not only Eva lying, but everyone else, every time they left the ship, maybe even every time they made an outgoing comms connection.
Was it a chance she was willing to take when Mari’s life was at stake? She thought back to her father’s warning, to the story about his client who sold their stuff and ran away. She thought about her mother crying over the casket of her favorite daughter, just because Eva couldn’t bring herself to lie about this one thing.
So she wouldn’t tell them about The Fridge. The irony of lying to the people she trusted was not lost on her. Nor did it escape her notice that she’d struck out on her own seven years earlier because she was sick of dishonesty. Working for her dad, running with Tito, had been one long stretch of peddling bullshit to clients, enemies, friends, even family.
She had been good at it. It had made her feel smart, confident, powerful. Until it didn’t. Then she and Pink had left, and here they were, trying to prove to themselves that they could do better. That the galaxy wasn’t a scattered collection of sentient races dedicated to fucking each other over at every opportunity.
This cycle, that all sounded like a shitty motivational ad in a public toilet, and Eva was about ready to flush. She took slow, deep breaths.
With luck, she’d have The Fridge’s debt paid off within a few dozen cycles and her sister would be free. And then things would go back to normal. She wished she felt luckier. As it was, she felt like she’d just escaped from an insane egomaniac with more power than sense, and if her heart weren’t mechanical, it would probably be pounding like a conga.
((Vakar?)) she pinged at Pink.
((Resting,)) Pink replied. ((Fine soon.))
Eva sighed in relief. She pulled up The Fridge’s instructions, the opaque image seeming to float a foot in front of her.
CAPTAIN EVA-BENITA CARIDAD LARSEN ALVAREZ Y COIPEL DE INNOCENTE. PROCEED TO SPECIFIED COORDINATES. OBTAIN PASSENGER MILES ERCK. DELIVER TO SECONDARY SPECIFIED COORDINATES. PAYMENT UPON COMPLETION.
This was followed by details about the passenger and pay. It sounded simple enough. Pick up dude, deliver dude, collect money. A lot of money, really, for what they were doing; she’d expected them to cheap out on her. For a moment, she felt more chipper at the prospect of not having to leave her crew behind, and then she mentally slapped herself.
Her sister was in danger. This wasn’t some stupid chicken run, this was Mari’s life at stake, and her crew’s. This was a group of criminals with absurdly vast resources, some of which were around to provide the muscle for the organization. She needed to get in, get out, and get paid.
Keeping your crew together is only delaying the inevitable, the voice in her head whispered. She mentally gave it the finger and checked the cat message next.
Greetings Gato Tuerto seller identity. Can your product operate heavy machinery and can it tolerate zero-grav environments?
Probably yes on the first, she thought, given how they’d tried to take over the ship. A quick codex search on the q-net told her the second was a definite no, including uncomfortable video evidence. With a scowl, she closed that message and headed for the mess, sending a mass ping for everyone to meet her there.
Leroy was mid–food prep when she arri
ved, turning protein powder into a slurry that was supposed to taste like scrambled chicken eggs when cooked. Pink sat next to Vakar, who looked better, but moved more stiffly than usual, clutching his abdomen in a way that made her wince.
“So, that happened,” Eva said, pouring bullshit instant coffee powder into a mug. “In other news, I’m giving up alcohol, and you’re all getting a raise.”
Leroy cheered for a moment, petering out when no one joined him. He returned to his not-eggs, his freckled face turning pink.
Pink put her feet up and crossed her arms, leaning back in her chair. Vakar stared at her in silence, but his smell said it all. Even Min gave a short, nervous laugh through the speakers.
“Eva, the fuck is going on?” Pink asked.
Eva smiled at them like she hadn’t just dragged them halfway across the galaxy for no apparent reason. Like her stomach wasn’t full of rocks and acid fighting for supremacy.
“Gato Tuerto Enterprises has a new job,” she said. “A new regular client, in fact. We’re being put on retainer.” It sounded so reasonable. So abysmally fucking possible.
The best lies were the kind people wanted to believe.
Pink sucked on her teeth. “I meant that whole Omicron thing, but okay.”
Eva’s smile melted. “Short answer: asshole won’t take no for an answer, asshole gets kicked in the teeth, asshole escalates because he’s an asshole.” And people died. And it was her fault because she— No, it was his fault. He threatened her, she reacted, he escalated beyond reason. She didn’t make him do what he did.
“Should have kicked him twice,” Pink said.
“The Gmaargitz Fedorach is known for holding grudges,” Vakar said. Underneath the rusty tang of his pain was a mild burning smell. Anger. Yeah, she was pretty pissed about it herself.
“It was either a grudge or my ass, so I guess I’ll have to sleep with one eye open.” Eva stared into her mug as if that would make the powder dissolve faster. She remembered the coffee on Omicron and scowled.
“Where are we going now?” Min asked.
Chilling Effect_A Novel Page 5
