Chilling Effect_A Novel

by Valerie Valdes

  Eva checked for escape routes. The only one that wasn’t being blocked was the opening in the ceiling that the pirates had come through. She could walk up there using her gravboots, but it would take so long she’d probably be shot down before she got halfway. She needed a diversion, and not the kind that would get foolish people killed.

  “Vakar, do you think you can get control over the audio-visual equipment from here?” Eva asked.

  “Not from here,” he said. “But if I can get to one of the tech nodes in the columns in the back, then probably.”

  “I need you to kill the lights,” she said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Climb through the ceiling and scout out the situation outside. We don’t know where Pholise is, but I’m hoping they’re nowhere near this mess.”

  “They could be in here somewhere.”

  She nodded. “If they don’t come forward, it will take time for the mercs to find them. Time I can use to plot an escape route once I find out how much of the ship the mercs have taken.”

  Ania leaned over again, her emerald eyes glistening. “Is there nothing I can do? I would love to be able to tell my partner I participated in the show.”

  Possible plans bifurcated in Eva’s mind like a map of branching possibilities. The woman could be a distraction to let Vakar reach the back unimpeded.

  Someone in the audience made a break for the door and was immediately shot by a merc. Eva cringed and looked away.

  “No, it’s best if you stay here,” Eva said. “Leave the stunt work to the professionals.”

  As it was, only one merc was covering the wing where they were seated. He paced back and forth along the row at the bottom of the section, black eyes scanning the crowd for signs of movement—and any tuann, no doubt. Eva waited for him to reach the farthest point from where they sat, then ducked below their seats and crawled toward the exit aisle.

  Down on the stage, the merc leader shouted, “The first hostage will be killed in one minute if Pholise is not brought forward!” Despite herself, Eva began to count down.

  “What are you doing?” someone hissed as she passed. “You will get us shot, foolish human!”

  “We’re security,” she said. “Stay seated. Act casual.” But the murmur had already gone up along the row, and now the merc’s doglike ears had perked up and he was facing their direction.

  Eva cursed under her breath, and Vakar smelled like incense. The merc stepped into the aisle and climbed toward them.

  “New plan; follow my lead,” Eva whispered.

  “That is not really a plan, by definition,” Vakar said.

  “No jodas tanto.”

  The merc was almost to their row. The people around her clutched the arms of their chairs, leaning away from his gun as if it weren’t a projectile weapon that could hit them anyway.

  Eva pulled out her vibroblade and handed it to Vakar, then leaned backward, one leg crossed over the other knee so her foot was elevated.

  “What are you—” The merc was interrupted by Eva clicking on her gravboot, which yanked his gun away from him, then Vakar leaping over her to bury the knife in his chest, knocking him down. In the time it took the truateg to grab the handle with one hand and Vakar with the other, Eva had retrieved the gun and shot him in the head.

  Ania clapped. “Well done! Good show!”

  Eva resisted the urge to bow, because killing wasn’t a cause for celebration, and because other mercs had heard the shot and were rushing up to their area.

  “Everybody down,” Eva shouted at her fellow audience members. She ran down the aisle to the bottom row, Vakar in a crouch behind her, vibroblade in hand. A merc appeared at the foot of the ramp and she shot at him, ducking behind the wall for cover when he returned fire.

  So much for sneaking out, she thought.

  A few more shots and the merc was down, just as another was coming up the ramp on the other side of the wing.

  Vakar retrieved the dead merc’s gun, tucking the vibroblade into his belt. “So is this the violence part of opera?”

  “I guess so. Hopefully we’ll get to the sex later.”

  She got a good view of the stage, where apparently the pirate captain and the kloshian kidnapper had also gotten tired of standing around. The one had pulled an anchor line from their belt and was holding it like a garrote, sneaking up on the merc leader, who was distracted by the other taunting him from behind the ualan in the isosphere.

  The rest of the pirate crew drew their secondary weapons—they hadn’t disarmed—and went after the closest mercs, alone or in pairs. Only the security guards in that fight must have been actors, Eva thought, because these guys certainly knew what they were doing.

  The exit was one level down. The mercs were split now, with some heading for the stage and others still circling toward her up the ramps. She sent a few cover shots in their direction, trying to plot the quickest route down. But then what? She’d have to make it past the ones guarding the doors, and then through whatever lay beyond. And then find Pholise.

  And to think this cycle had started so nicely.

  “Shortest distance between two points,” she muttered. “Vakar, cover me.”

  “What are you—”

  She vaulted over the edge of the balcony, trailing the smell of licorice with a spicy edge. She was surprised she could identify it within the cloud of other scents coming from the assembled quennians. Most of them smelled scared, or excited, or confused.

  An eternity later, she hit the ground and rolled, coming to a stop at the base of a fight between merc and pirate. They paused in confusion and she fired at the merc, earning her a ragged salute from the buasyr. She got to her feet and edged past the lip of the balcony, pinging Vakar with a terse ((Come.))

  Only one merc was watching them, so she fired at him until Vakar got down. His legs were built to absorb shocks better, so he landed with a thud and they both ducked behind a row of seats. Now all they had to do was make it to the door.

  Which was being guarded by three guys in full body armor.

  “Me cago en la hora que yo nací,” she muttered. “Vakar, did you bring your isosphere?”

  He pulled it out. “It will only work on one person, though.”

  “Can you get the door open behind them?”

  With a low hum of frustration, he took out the vibroblade and dug it into the wall, tearing off chunks of crystal to reveal circuitry behind. With a few deft moves, he had the door opening and closing at regular intervals.

  “That’s the best I can do,” he said, smelling apologetic.

  “Good enough. Use the isosphere on me when I say go, then come after me.”

  “What?”

  She watched the timing of the door. Open. Shut. Open. Shut. Open . . .

  “Go!” She leaped around the corner, dropped onto her back and clicked on her gravboots, shooting like a missile toward the three guards. For a long moment, she thought Vakar was frozen. The guards raised their weapons and took aim at her.

  Then she was surrounded by a shimmering field of force and rammed into them like a snowball with a rock in it.

  The one in the middle went down as the others flanking him slid sideways, away from the door. And because she had timed it right, the one she hit fell straight back into the doorway, the panels sliding open and closed around him, leaving a gap big enough to squeeze through.

  Unless you were surrounded by a big isofield, which she was.

  Until she wasn’t, because it disappeared as Vakar slammed into her from behind and knocked her outside.

  They landed in a heap, each rolling sideways quickly, but unfortunately in the same direction, so they got even more tangled up as they struggled to stand.

  A small contingent of security guards pointed guns at them.

  Eva immediately dropped her weapon and raised her hands. So did Vakar.

  “Get down!” someone shouted.

  She hit the floor, taking Vakar with her, in time to avoid being
blown apart as the guards fired at the open door.

  “Someone fix that dung heap!” said the same voice. Immediately there was a flurry of movement and the door closed with a sigh.

  The owner of the voice stomped over, leaning down to glare at Eva and Vakar. A heavily armored quennian lady with a rank insignia on her chest. “Nice stunt. Who the stench are you?”

  “Beni Alvarez,” Eva said, putting a nervous tremor into her voice. “Thank goodness you’re here! There are men inside with—”

  “Cut the nonsense.” Icy blue eyes bored into hers. “I am not talking to you.” She turned the gaze to Vakar, who smelled downright steely.

  “I am Vakar,” he said.

  “Vakar what?”

  “Tremonis san Jaigodaris.”

  She hunkered down in front of him. “Do I know you?”

  He paused. “Were we in basic training together?” he asked finally. “Meulia?”

  “No, I trained on Boundless Progress. I am Second Squad Leader Laetia Proculus san Aridonis.” She stood. “Now, if you will excuse us, we were about to take back that room.”

  Eva got to her feet, nudging the gun with her toe. “It seemed like the pirates were gaining the upper hand. Maybe you should let them all fight it out until they’ve culled some of the mercs.”

  “We cannot risk it. There is a sensitive target in that room and we need to get them out.”

  Eva’s lip curled. Probably Pholise. Mierda.

  Laetia gestured at her squad, who took up their previous positions around the door. “Stay here, and we will deal with you when we return.”

  “Yeah, right,” Eva muttered.

  Either the quennian didn’t register the sarcasm, or she didn’t care.

  As soon as Laetia’s team busted through the door, Eva stuck a toe under the now-unattended assault rifle and kicked it up into her hands. “Come on, Vakar, we need to get back in there and get to Pholise first. We may never get the chance again.”

  Vakar smelled uncertain. “What makes you think we will be able to find them now, when we could not before?”

  “Now we can watch the guards and see where they’re going. Cover me.”

  Screams ensued as the audience finally got the memo that things were rotten in the state of the Justified Confidence. The guards by the door had been electrocuted, it looked like, and lay twitching on the floor. Other mercs were using guests as human shields, firing at Laetia’s team, who were hiding behind walls and trying to limit the collateral damage.

  Laetia had charged up the aisle and was exchanging shots with the merc leader, who had at some point retreated behind a pillar on the stage. The pirate captain and the kloshian wannabe-kidnapper were behind the matching pillar on the opposite side of the stage, with the kloshian nursing a wound to his stomach and the pirate clutching their left arm, pink hair streaked with blood.

  Eva watched the placement of the guards, the ebb and flow of their movements, and especially the attention of the second squad leader. Pholise had to be in the bottom tier, obviously not the front few rows or they would have been found already by the mercs. Two of the guards were circling around the back of the rear right quadrant, one more providing cover fire as another backed toward the wall . . .

  Middle right quadrant, had to be. Eva darted behind a merc, diving into a roll that took her to the second row from the back of that section. She slid into the row, which had been vacated for the most part as the audience members had crawled toward the wall or hidden under their floating chairs. No Pholise.

  Under the seats, a few faces stared back at her, unreadable. But their smells told a whole other story, and spoiler alert, it was utter terror. She caught a glimpse of tuann legs and grabbed the seat, sliding underneath, pushing herself along as the sound of gunfire cracked and pew-pewed around her.

  It wasn’t Pholise, it was some other tuann. “Where’s Pravo?” she asked the person.

  “The honored guest?”

  “Yes!”

  The tuann inclined their head toward the wings of the stage, just as two of the security guards arrived and grabbed them, dragging them to relative safety. Either they didn’t realize they had the wrong person, or this one had been in Pholise’s party, too.

  A merc raced up and opened fire, so Eva fired back, then slid to the next row down. More quennian faces peered at her in surprise and fear. She tried to ignore their smells.

  Vakar jumped into the row at her back, firing at another merc she couldn’t see. His posture was near-perfect military reg, which looked pretty absurd with his tight suit and boob window.

  “Pholise is over there,” she told him, pointing. “Still got that sphere?”

  “It was damaged after your last exciting maneuver.”

  “Then we do it the fun way.” She fired a few rounds at the merc, who had finally found them, then scanned the undersides of the seats for a clear path. Not this set of seats, but the next. She crawled over, lay on her back, and turned on her gravboots.

  Eva shot down toward the stage, clutching the assault rifle to her chest. She slammed to a stop at the bottom of the stage, where Laetia was still crouched down and taking potshots at the merc leader. The squad leader glanced over her shoulder, pointing two fingers at her eyes and then at Eva before returning her attention to the mercs.

  Good enough for me, Eva thought. She turned off her boots and crouch-walked to the wings, where Pholise was decidedly not visible.

  “Pholise?” she called out in a stage whisper. “It’s Eva. I’m here to rescue you.” That was mostly true, if not for entirely altruistic reasons.

  No answer. She listened for any hint of a noise, but the sound of gunfire rang in her ears. Why did tuann have to be so damn quiet?

  “Pholise?” she called again. This time there was a rustling under the stage. If this were a human theater, there would be some kind of trapdoor, some way to get down there for future grand entrances, but this wasn’t a human stage. And now that she thought about it, Pholise probably had bodyguards or handlers of their own.

  Eva jumped out of the way just in time to avoid a flurry of shots from an eye laser. “Are your translators damaged?” she hissed. “I said ‘rescue,’ comemierda.”

  A smell like hot cooking oil answered her. Quennian guard, of course. Between the scent and the angle of that laser shot, she now had a decent idea of where exactly they were located.

  Unfortunately, that was the moment a pair of mercs found her.

  She had just enough time to drop one with a head shot while thinking, This blaze is insufficiently glorious for me to go out in, when the dead one crashed into the other and fell, because Vakar had thrown himself at the pair.

  Eva stopped shooting so she wouldn’t hit him. In one swift stroke, he slit the remaining truateg’s neck with his vibroblade.

  His smell was a heady mix that her translators struggled to interpret, but rage was in there along with licorice. The rage dissolved into dismay as he watched a bleeding merc become a corpse.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  He didn’t respond. As far as she knew, he’d never killed anyone in close quarters like this. If they hadn’t spent so much time sparring back on the ship, she wouldn’t have expected him to know how.

  “Pholise is in here. How do things look now?”

  Still nothing.

  “Vakar? Status report!”

  He shook himself out of his reverie. “Reinforcements have arrived. The mercenaries are cornered, surrendering or dying. The second squad leader will be along in a moment, I am sure.”

  Eva knocked on the wall. “Pholise, I said it’s Eva. Captain Eva Innocente. I really need to speak with you in a hurry. Please?”

  A panel slid open, and a quennian poked his head out. He wore an eye laser and a scowl. “The honored guest is unconscious, you dung pit. And I am not moving until my superior officer tells me to.”

  “Good,” said a voice behind Eva. “Next time do not open the door to say so, either.”

  Laeti
a stomped grimly forward, flanked by guards with their weapons aimed at Eva. Vakar was already being held by another guard, who slipped a manacle belt around his waist and locked it.

  Eva dropped her weapon for the second time and slowly got to her feet. For this, she earned her own set of manacles and a rough shove in Vakar’s direction.

  “Secure the honored guest,” Laetia said. “And get these two to the brig with the others. I will be down to question them after we have finished cleaning up this mess.”

  Eva let herself be guided out of the wings and up the aisle, toward the door. Some audience members had left; others were still paralyzed with fear or were being carefully herded by the guards back to their rooms.

  Just outside the door, Ania was being nuzzled by someone who must have been her partner. “Look,” she said, pointing at Eva. “That is the one who—” She noticed the manacles and stopped. “Wait,” she said slowly. “So this was not all part of the . . .”

  Eva laughed, the kind of laughter that bubbles up from the inside and won’t stop coming, all the way down to the brig.

  Chapter 16

  No Hay Peor Cuña que La del Mismo Palo

  Behold, the brig of the luxury cruise starship Justified Confidence. Its walls were soft but impermeable, the color of nutrient paste. Its floors were more of the same, as was its ceiling. But because it was a luxury ship, it featured hard, light furniture that conformed to a variety of body types while being effectively useless as tools for escape. Guards were posted outside the transparent entry wall, which was designed to lightly shock anyone who touched it without proper protective gear, and strongly shock anyone who continued to touch it after the initial warning zap.

  The pirates had been thrown in there, along with Eva, Vakar and the kloshian who had tried to kidnap the ualan singer. She was surprised he hadn’t escaped, even with all his injuries, which had been treated by a sour-smelling medic who’d only recently released him into the guards’ custody.