Grand Cross

by Merethe Walther

  Aralyn opened her mouth and closed it again. It was a sound plan, clearly one he’d put a lot of thought into, but all she could think of at the moment was rescuing Kragg and returning him to the garden he loved so well.

  “I hate to agree, Ari, but it makes sense,” Kita said, rubbing nervously at the back of her neck. “And it might be our only way to reach what’s in there. If everything goes well, we’ll leave here with something of Eladia’s and with Kragg.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” Aralyn asked.

  Neither of them had an answer for that.

  Aralyn sighed. Internally, it was clear to see it was the only way to go. And by deliberating any further, she was just eating away at whatever time they had to actually get into the safe. She nodded before she could convince herself to argue further. They needed things to go smoothly to get out of there.

  “Let’s do it then,” she said.

  Apollo, looking relieved, knocked on the inner door three times. With a soft hiss of air, the seal released and the hatch was opened to let them inside. Two guards stood in a small entry room on the other side and looked them over with barely concealed apathy. One of the large men scanned each of their weapons and logged something into a thin glass tablet in his hand. As he did this, the other guard patted each of them down professionally, then gave a slight nod of consent to his associate.

  “Put your weapons on locked status,” he told them, still staring at his screen as 3D images of the guns popped up on it. Once Kita and Aralyn had resecured their firearms, little green checkmarks popped up next to each of them on his monitor. “If at any time your guns are placed into active status, the system alert will sound, and lockdown will go into effect.”

  They were waved onward through the door into the next room with little effort, and the men resumed talking the moment they stepped away, their voices falling silent the minute the door closed behind them.

  Aralyn cast a wide-glance around the long room they found themselves in, which had ditched any effort to instill more of the “nautical” theme decorating the stairs. Dark, hardwood planks ran the length of the enormous chamber with plush white rugs that muffled their steps as they walked. Huge white sectional couches sat beside large tables with trays of champagne flutes and an unopened bottle. A large cherry wood bar was against the wall to their right beside the seating area, and a blank-eyed bartender in a red vest stared at the counter, barely blinking.

  Oracal slave, Aralyn thought. Had she seen this on any planet or other station in the world, would she have even given two shits? Shame welled in the pit of her stomach and threatened to empty its contents.

  His eyes roaming the room as he approached the bar, Apollo put his hands on the counter and said, “Three soda waters.”

  The bartender, not speaking, took one of the taps and filled three glasses with ice and then soda water, placing them on the counter onto cocktail napkins. He wiped down the drips, dried his hands, and returned to staring balefully into space.

  “Drink,” said Apollo, picking up the two glasses and handing them to the women before raising his own. He forced a smile onto his face, cheers’d them by clinking glasses, and took a sip before nonchalantly talking about Redux and how well it was doing.

  Aralyn raised a brow but joined him in drinking some of the soda water, and watched as Kita did the same, a clear question in her face, too. As much as she wanted to ask what was going on, Apollo’s sudden turn in behavior suggested that something was wrong. Add to that the fact they were deep in the proverbial belly of the beast, and it took everything inside of her to play along and not draw her weapon.

  After a minute or two of casual discussion in which Kita and Aralyn did none of the talking and merely exchanged nervous glances, Apollo put his drink on the counter and muttered, “Ya sharmouta. Madha faealt!”

  “Uh, what?” Kita asked, frowning over her glass.

  “I need to think,” Apollo muttered. “She’s changed the locks. I don’t recognize these doors now.”

  “That was your plan? Hoping the door locks were the same?” Aralyn demanded in a sharp whisper.

  “Hey, it’s an honest mistake,” Kita said with a sniff. “What’s wrong with the lock?”

  Aralyn looked over to the rear of the room. There were two doors to the right beyond them, near a large glass enclosed fireplace with purple-tinted holo-fire burning inside of it, around which was a sunken area with mounds of cushions and fur rugs. On the other side was a large set of double doors with an electronic panel beside it. There were no doorknobs or locks, and no hinges either.

  “It’s an electronic door,” Kita said with a shrug. “Is that what you’re worried about?” She downed her drink and started to wander over, but Apollo grabbed hold of her arm.

  “There’s a camera in it,” he hissed. “Look.”

  A small area on the top of the panel had a long red bar along it, suggesting that it was set to record.

  Kita rolled her eyes. “It didn’t come up in my system metrics for the main security cameras.” She pulled the tablet out once more. “Which means it’s probably on a closed circuit to somewhere on this ship where someone’s monitoring it.”

  Kita made her way over like she was going to sit on the couch but put herself within a five-foot-radius of the doorway.

  “We should be able to loop it and…” She clicked the screen one more time and then turned to look at the panel.

  The red light flickered once, then steadied again, but the pocket doors slid open to reveal a low-lit bedroom that looked like something out of a palace. An enormous four-poster bed dominated the far wall, velvet curtains draped around the sides. Plush rugs covered the floor, and there was a sitting area at the far left side of the room, where arm chairs rested beneath huge windows looking out into the darkness and blinking stars.

  There was a bathroom off of that to the left that positively shined with rich, modern décor, and to their right was a large walk-in closet housing dresses, shoes, and other expensive accessories Aralyn wouldn’t picture Eladia wearing in a million years. Those weren’t the kind of frills she expected to find on a shark like that.

  “The clothes in this closet alone probably cost more than our ship did,” Kita said, staring down the line of fine clothes.

  “Pick one then,” said Apollo. “She never wears the damn things.”

  On a foot trunk at the end of the bed opposite a large dresser with an attached mirror sat a tray filled with more drugs than Aralyn had ever seen in her life, arranged in neat little piles per type. She leaned closer and selected a few perfectly rolled joints and slid them into her pocket.

  “For later,” she told herself, before joining the others in the humongous walk-in.

  Apollo walked the length of the closet, which was almost as large as the room they’d just left, and went to the back wall, feeling around behind a conspicuously empty shelf in the otherwise well-stocked room.

  “This is where she keeps her safe,” Apollo explained as the entire middle section of floor-to-ceiling shelving slid forward to reveal an opaque holo-safe with only a key panel and a micro port for access.

  “You know how to get into this thing?” Aralyn asked.

  Despite her misgivings at accomplishing the thievery first, she was hopeful they would find more proof linking Eladia―and Proctor, of course―to the slavery operation. For once, she wanted to make the law work for them rather than against them. The last time they’d seen Eladia before she slipped off into the sky, she’d mentioned having backups of her complete files in her “safe house.” And Aralyn could think of nothing safer than a massive, well-guarded ship flying an unknown route through space to keep your secrets in.

  Apollo nodded and pressed a few buttons on his wrist module, then sat back with a sigh. “We bought ourselves extra time with the door,” he said, “but I’ll still probably need at least twelve to fifteen minutes to crack this safe.” The first of the six-digit code lit up green, and the rest of the cracker continued to run.
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  “I thought something like this might happen.” Kita rolled her eyes and grabbed Aralyn’s arm―the one with the wrist module―and shoved her closer to Apollo. “That’s so primitive. Just use this.”

  Apollo and Aralyn eyed each other in abject confusion before he said, “You want me to use… her?”

  “Her module, dummy,” Kita told them, exasperated. “I installed a backup of Eladia’s module onto hers a couple months back. It’s got a record of her passwords and codes in it. I figured it was likely to operate her ship, but it’s more than that. We just never got to test it out before.”

  Kita yanked Aralyn over to the dark purple safe and waved her arm in front of it. When nothing happened, she pulled a connecting wire out of the module and plugged it in to the small port near the keypad. It beeped and a thick clunk told them the lock had released inside of it. Apollo goggled at the hacker.

  “You would have come in handy many, many… excursions in the past,” he said. “We will have to discuss business opportunities once we―”

  “Apollo,” Aralyn interjected. “We’re kind of short on time, here, yeah? Plus, head-hunt someone else’s hacker.”

  He smiled devilishly and opened the safe, revealing several piles of hard credits, a couple stacks of small datasticks, many of which were nearly identical to the one Aralyn had been carrying that had gotten them into the mess, and a couple vials of the strange, clear orachal they’d recently had impounded by the UDA. Next to that, of course, was an even larger pile of a white powder in a clear container. For the first time, Aralyn noticed there was also a small mirror and some of the hard creds had powder along their edges as well.

  Kita eye-balled it and shook her head. “No wonder Eladia doesn’t use this room. That woman must never sleep at all.”

  “Whatever you need, get it quick, runner,” said Apollo, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder. “I’m still not sure about this.”

  “How do you know about all of this stuff, anyway?” Aralyn asked, gathering the datasticks and several of the hard credits and cramming them into a small bag she’d sewn into the back of her jacket near her belt the night before. For good measure, she grabbed a couple of the vials of orachal. “You seem to have some insider knowledge of this place.”

  “Maybe that’s why she’s so cranky!” Kita exclaimed, completely ignoring them. “She just never comes down.”

  Apollo’s mouth drew down ever so slightly at the corners. “I was a… frequent visitor for a while,” he said.

  Aralyn smiled as she stood and he closed the safe. “You clearly got to a level of comfort around here that most ‘visitors’ don’t get to see, I’m certain. I don’t think Eladia would have shown you her safe if she didn’t trust you.”

  Apollo actually blushed; a shock of red through the olive of his face. “We don’t have time to reminisce, unfortunately,” he said, ushering them forward to the door and effectively changing the subject.

  Aralyn wasn’t sure what to make of this. She couldn’t get a read on him, and it intrigued her. One minute, he was finding unique ways to leak the various people he’d slept with, and the next he blushed when she questioned him about a particular encounter.

  Maybe there are more layers to this guy than I originally thought.

  They threw open the door and stepped back into the lounge area, the drugged bartender paying them no heed.

  Kita came out behind them, her finger on her chin deep in thought. “I bet she just sleeps really quick, like in blinks or something.”

  Apollo glanced behind them at the young runner and turned to Aralyn with a puzzled look. “Is she always like this?” he asked.

  Aralyn shrugged. “I’d give it about three seconds until she gets bored and forgets what she was talking about.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Eight

  Apollo opened the door at the very back of the lounge with a gentle press of his finger against the electronic pad beside it. The door lifted upward to reveal a brightly lit hall in the same modern dark-wood-and-white style. Though there were several doors to pick from, he casually guided the group to the one in the middle, going through the same fingerprint identifying process, his swagger fully in place once more by the time the door lifted into the wall pocket above them.

  The room was almost more exquisite than the outer areas had been. The carpet seemed to swallow all walking noise, and there were overstuffed chairs resting on the right side near a wall with a painting of what must have been a scene on Earth; a field of lavender and some ruinous columns and urns in the foreground overtaken by vines and colorful flowers. The pale blue sky above the field held darkened clouds against mountains in the distance that actually panned across the sky, sending a virtual scattering of light through the room in gentle waves.

  On the large, slightly C-shaped couches across from the painting were the frail old man and DeMarch’s bodyguard and son, Nialls. He had his legs propped up on the table in the middle of the seating area and didn’t so much as acknowledge their presence when they entered. To their right was a door with a large electronic keypad Aralyn assumed was the exit Apollo told them they’d be leaving through. At the back of the room, framed by a window looking out into space that must have been ten feet in either direction, stood the Madame herself, arms crossed with a pursed look on her already pinched features.

  “My good lady,” said Apollo, charm oozing off of him like slime as he stretched his arms out, “I hope we did not keep you waiting long.”

  Aralyn looked around the room but didn’t see Kragg anywhere. Alarm ate at her insides. She’d never been to something like this before, but even she could tell that something was wrong. Apollo had said this was for the “inspection” of the purchased slaves. But Kragg was nowhere in sight. She resisted the urge to rest her hand on her holster, settling instead for crossing her arms and fighting to keep her expression neutral.

  “No,” said Madame DeMarch coldly. “I suppose you had enough time to gather everything you were looking for in Eladia’s room?”

  How…?

  Aralyn stiffened and Apollo’s smile faltered.

  “Come now, Madame, it’s not like that at all,” he said, his voice suggesting that what she said was nonsensical.

  At the large wooden desk, DeMarch turned a small surveillance screen around, and there, plain as day, were the three of them drinking at the bar, breaking into the bedroom, and walking out a few short minutes later. Aralyn peered at the footage incredulously and closed her eyes in irritation. The bartender’s vest; the buttons. There had been a tiny camera embedded in his clothing, and it had caught the entire caper. Aralyn noted with some relief, however, that there was no audio accompanying the footage.

  “Why would you do this, Apollo?” asked DeMarch, sounding genuinely distraught. “I trusted you. I assumed the troubles between you and Eladia were over, and now this?” She scoffed.

  Aralyn felt disbelieving laughter fighting its way up her throat. This woman sold people for a living but was honestly heartbroken by Apollo’s betrayal? She bit her tongue to keep quiet.

  “Madame, I can explain,” said Apollo, dropping his arms to his sides like a naughty child.

  “Then you should do so. Quickly,” said DeMarch.

  “There were some rather… compromising… photos in there,” he began. “Of me.” DeMarch looked nonplussed by this information, so he continued. “You know how fickle Eladia can be. She refused to give them back. So I took them.”

  Aralyn found herself impressed with his ability to think on his feet, but a look at DeMarch’s frown told her that the woman wasn’t quite convinced as to his authenticity.

  “Compromising?” she repeated, smoothing down the bodice of her ugly green dress.

  “Of things that I would rather not offend your ears… or eyes with, Madame.” Apollo cast his eyes to the ground like it brought him great shame.

  Had Aralyn not been in on the heist to begin with, she might even have been
convinced enough to believe him.

  Unbelievably, DeMarch’s face softened. “Well…” She hesitated. “I still can’t let you break into Eladia’s private quarters without consequence. I’ll need to update her on the situation… unfortunately, none of you may leave until then.”

  Apollo nodded his head. “Of course,” he said with a bow.

  The situation felt surreal. This was how Eladia’s people reacted when they found someone stealing from the head of the entire orachal operation in the Milky Way? Like a matron punishing a naughty child? And she couldn’t tell if Apollo was still bluffing or if he had another plan up his sleeve to distract DeMarch or keep her confused. Either way, the wrinkly old woman simply couldn’t tell Eladia that they’d been caught stealing from her. One look at who was aboard her private pleasure ship and Eladia would probably just blow the whole thing up without ever even setting foot in their quadrant of space.

  DeMarch gave Apollo a deeply disappointed frown and reached onto the desk to access the satellite comm. Her finger only inches from the button that would ruin not only their plans but likely their lives, Aralyn reached for her gun and undid the holster strap.

  Before she could pull the weapon from her side, Apollo stepped forward in a delicate dancer’s spin, drew a knife from his belt, and flipped it almost casually toward the old woman. The knife landed with a sickening squish as it entered her eye; the Madame’s head snapped backward, and after a second of what appeared to be her contemplating if she had really just died, she collapsed to the floor in a puddle of cheap green fabric and blood.

  Nialls leapt from his seat, jaw hanging open, eyes brimming with disbelief. “Mother!” he screamed, turning to face Apollo. “You killed her.” His pale face became mottled with red splotches as he cried. “You killed her!”

  “I’m sorry, Nialls,” said Apollo, sounding sincere.

  Nialls, drawing himself up, lifted his gun, aimed it at Apollo, and fired.