Deuces Wild Boxed Set: Books 1-4: Beyond the Frontiers, Rampage, Labyrinth, Birthright

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  “While Hirotoshi tries to turn Ranger Two into a lady,” Terrence explained, coming back with his hands full of glasses. He set them down carefully and looked back at the bar. “See? I got them all!”

  “You always say that,” Lilah called from behind the group somewhere. “But it’s only a matter of time until you drop one!”

  “She has no faith,” Terrence explained to Angie. He set another drink in front of her. “Best keep drinking. You’re falling behind.”

  Angie laughed and took a sip of her beer.

  “So the Tontos and I were together for a while back on Earth, but not so much here in Yollin space,” Tabitha explained. “We came upon some Skaine ships—slavers. They knew I was looking for slavers. They knew they weren’t supposed to be there. We lured them onto another ship from the Achronyx. The Tontos were on it, and they were able to keep the Skaines from sensing them on scanners—one of the benefits of their set of ‘upgrades.’”

  She smiled wryly. The profusion of nanites on Earth hadn’t been at all controlled or deliberate. It had been a hacked-together process, and Michael had developed the best rules he could to cope with it. There had been many drawbacks, such as the inability to tolerate sunlight for most who had the vampiric version of the nanos.

  And while some, like the Tontos, had come out of the changes with their minds intact, the Nosferatu had been more plentiful, and a menace.

  It was fascinating to know the changes and be able to control the process. What had once been close to torture was now painless and could be directed to produce specific results.

  It was what gave Tabitha her abilities, and sometimes she wondered if she would have been able to withstand the conversion in the way Michael and many of the others had been forced to endure it.

  Barnabas wouldn’t even speak of it. When Tabitha thought of the fortitude it would have taken to withstand the whispers that spoke of an end to the pain, a release from agony…

  It gave her more of an appreciation for Shin, and she felt her grief well up again.

  “The Tontos fought well,” she swallowed her bit of pain, “but the captain panicked and undocked the ships, and the gravity went nuts. Shin was crushed by debris during the fight.” Her hands tightened, and the glass in her hands cracked. Tabitha swore, moving a hand so the glass didn’t cut it. “That always happens.” Tabitha looked toward the bar. “Lilah?”

  “Not again.” But Lilah sounded good-natured as she brought another beer and swept the glass and spilled beer away with expert speed. “Keep talking. And don’t break any more glasses!”

  “I won’t,” Tabitha called, moving a hand down and then across her chest. “Promise.”

  She took a long pause as she tried to find the fortitude to tell the rest of the story, and the others waited patiently. Tabitha had told it a fair number of times, but only when there was someone who needed to hear it. Anyone who saw her tell it knew how much it cost her.

  Lilah was right that Tabitha was not done grieving this loss. In some ways, she had come to terms with the fact that she would never stop, but she did not fear that as much as she once had.

  She hoped that was the lesson Angie would take from the story.

  “When I came back,” Tabitha continued finally, “I was in a black hole of grief. The rest of my friends, my Tontos, supported me as best they could, but how do you get support from five Japanese vampires who’ve seen centuries of life when you are less than fifty years old yourself? I was such a baby then.”

  Angie, who at twenty-five was thinking she was very old and worldly, blinked in surprise. How could anyone who was fifty think they were a baby?

  Angie leaned forward. “What did the Tontos say about grieving, given that they were so old? I mean, they must have lost people before. What did they say the best way to get through it was?”

  “Hmm.” Tabitha considered Angie’s question.

  The truthful answer, of course, was that the Tontos had given her a lot of sensible advice about how what happened to Shin wasn’t her fault, and how sometimes people died in battle, and how Shin had been glad to have the life he had.

  The even more truthful answer was that none of that advice had helped at all. To lose someone so suddenly was something that the mind couldn’t make sense of, and grief wasn’t something that followed any rules about how to behave.

  The advice had been useless. In the end, it had been their companionship and accountability that helped—the fact that they cared enough to try to make her feel better, and they stuck with her after it happened.

  That, and grieving in her own way. Nothing Tabitha could say would make things better for Angie.

  “Why don’t I tell the story first,” she suggested, “and then if you still have questions, we’ll go over any lost wisdom from the Tontos? Hopefully, between my fuck-ups and what they did to help me, you’ll be all set.”

  Angie nodded. Tabitha sounded halfway between exasperated and fond when she talked about the Japanese vampires, as if they were troublesome older brothers who were a pile of annoyances but still deeply loved.

  She nodded and settled in to listen.

  “Now, the problem, of course,” Tabitha confided, “is that my nanites clean up my blood, and it is terribly hard to get drunk…”

  “Yeah,” Lilah called from at the bar. “Not that she didn’t try!”

  The others chuckled, and some knowing looks between them suggested that there had been a lot of nights of drinking games—fairly epic ones if it was nearly impossible for Tabitha to get drunk.

  “So, if drinking didn’t work.” Angie looked around, seeking confirmation, “and the Tontos’ help didn’t work, how did you deal with it? What did you do?”

  “Killed a lot of Skaines,” Terrence answered succinctly.

  “Spoiler alert.”

  “Ow!” He rubbed the back of his head.

  Tabitha had slapped Terrence on the back of the head. She clearly wasn’t trying to hurt him, but damn, Tabitha was lightning-fast, and he hadn’t gotten out of the way in time.

  “Serves you right.” Tabitha took a sip of her beer and glared at him.

  “She’s here for the journey, not the destination. I’m just setting the stage. It’s the movie’s trailer, if you will.” Terrence leaned in to grin at Angie, raising his eyebrows as he made a rectangle with his fingers. “Picture it: Tabitha in skintight armor, two Jean Dukes pistols holstered on her legs, knives sheathed next to them.” He spread his hands apart, looking both ways. “Blood everywhere.”

  Surprised, Angie gave a snort of laughter.

  “That’s pretty accurate, actually.” Tabitha tapped a finger on the table. “I punched a lot of them to death.”

  Angie stopped mid-drink. She looked at all of them, trying to decide if Tabitha was serious.

  The beer started talking. Well, Angie hoped it was the beer. “So you want me to kill a lot of Skaines to get over Manny?” she asked finally.

  Tabitha looked wistful for a moment. “That would be great.” She nodded. “But no. It was wrong, and I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “But I thought the Skaines… I thought you… I’m confused.” Angie shook her head. “These were Skaine slavers, right? I mean. They were Skaines. Why shouldn’t you deal with them?”

  Tabitha sighed. “When you are a Ranger, it’s more complicated than just killing slavers. Bethany Anne has never been one for meaningless bureaucracy and paperwork, but there are reasons to be discerning about who you kill.”

  Terrence leaned in once more to stage-whisper, “It’s good to hear our resident Ranger admit that there might be reasons for not engaging in wanton murder.” He looked from her to Tabitha and back.

  Angie shot him a grin, and even Tabitha smiled in a distracted way.

  “You see, I set out to teach the Skaines a lesson,” the Ranger admitted finally, “and since I have a long life, I intended to personally teach them all a lesson.” She lifted her drink. “I was a bit of a loose cannon.”

 
“What happens when…well, when that happens?” Angie asked. “Did Ranger One intervene?”

  Tabitha glared at Terrence, who had his glass up and was drinking, so she answered the question. “Not exactly. He’d seen it all before.” Tabitha rolled her glass on the table, lost in thought. “The first thing we have to learn is to be patient with ourselves. None of my friends, with centuries or a millennium on their side, told me to just tough it out. They were there to pick up the pieces and help me—while making sure I didn’t do anything too stupid.”

  “Like the time you told that Skaine battleship to fuck off,” Terrence piped up, his glass just touching the table.

  “That’s a story for another time,” Tabitha retorted. “So, I decide I’m going to take down the Skaines in a one-Ranger effort to clean up the Universe…”

  “How did that work?” Angie asked. She looked around at all of them, still wide-eyed.

  “About as well as one would think. One Ranger versus a whole race of people on multiple planets breeding like bunnies.” Tabitha looked up a moment, her lips folded between her teeth. “I consider it a tie,” Tabitha finally answered with a smile. “Since they hate my ass, we are on an even footing.”

  “They respect you, not hate you,” Lilah interjected. She was clearing up glasses, and she paused, considering. ”No, that’s not right. They hate you, too.”

  Everyone chuckled once more.

  “Speak softly and carry a large stick?” Angie asked.

  “Oh, hell no!” Tabitha shook her head. “Yell at those sonsabitches and have a big-assed Etheric Empire superdreadnought behind you.”

  “Tabitha doesn’t do quiet,” Terrence told Angie. He smiled at her as the rest murmured in agreement.

  “Never,” Tabitha agreed. “So, I decided the first thing I needed to do, was find some snitches—”

  Angie was confused. She really wished she had more of her mental faculties. “What’s a snitch?”

  Tabitha blinked. “What, you… Wow, what are they teaching you young’uns nowadays? A snitch is a person who will give you information on the side. They will ‘snitch’ on their friends for a price. An informant. No one likes snitches, but in this case, I had a feeling they might be useful.”

  Tabitha leaned forward with a conspiratorial grin. Now that she had gotten past speaking directly about Shin’s death, she was able to look back on the story with more humor.

  After all, one’s misadventures are always viewed with better humor from a distance.

  “So I decide to find some snitches,” she repeated. “We were going to use them to track down the Skaines—any we could find—and, well, make an example of them. I was done playing nice. I wasn’t going to let them get away with what they’d done to Shin…”

  Memory took over, and though she could still hear her voice speaking in the back corner of the bar, she was far away, both in years and distance, in the landing bay of Farha Station, far out in the Imdali system, two Gates away from the Etheric Empire…

  “This…is just fucking weird,” Tabitha commented. She tapped the holster of her Jean Dukes and looked around, her face showing both confusion and repulsion simultaneously.

  Farha Station hadn’t been designed for humans. Everything was slightly, subtly proportioned wrong, so that you began to feel like your whole reality was off. It was like being a doll in the wrong-sized dollhouse.

  “I agree, Kemosabe.” Hirotoshi looked around, eyes alert. “Perhaps we should find another location. Somewhere more suited to…reliable people.”

  “You mean we should find another plan,” Tabitha retorted, her arms crossed on her chest. “You don’t think snitches are a good place to start.”

  “No.” Hirotoshi shook his head. “I do not. Snitches, by their very nature, lack honor and loyalty. How are we to trust what they say?”

  Tabitha smiled sweetly as she lifted a finger. “One, we need to find Skaines, and two, Skaines don’t have honor or loyalty, so it makes sense that the people who snitch on them wouldn’t either.”

  Hirotoshi considered this and sighed. “That doesn’t make any damned sense.”

  Tabitha looked at Hirotoshi, shocked that he had cursed, before replying with the appropriate amount of respect. At least, appropriate coming from her. “Shut up and stop informing me why this amazing idea is possibly a bit short,” she answered grumpily. “I say we’re sticking around until we find a snitch and find some Skaines.”

  Hirotoshi raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Kemosabe.”

  Her face looked like she had just bitten into a lemon and found it way too tart. “Don’t say ‘Yes, Kemosabe’ in that disapproving way. That’s just not nice.”

  He raised his eyebrow again. “Of course not, Kemosabe.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Tabitha threw up her hands, wanting to bitch to the ceiling, for all of the good it would do. She pointed to the two of them. “You know what? We’re going to go find a bar because bars are where there are a lot of people, and we can probably find a snitch. Even if we can’t, we can find a drink, and I’ll have another shot at getting drunk.”

  “This isn’t going to work,” Ryu interjected. “However, I will support the idea wholeheartedly if you can think of a way we can bet on this.” He followed Tabitha. “What about we bet you can’t get drunk? You try drinking like you are a fish, and then—”

  “NO!” Tabitha waved a hand, remembering the last time Ryu had pulled this trick on her. “No Hilashin rum. Those fucking impurities gave me a damned headache for half an hour before the nanos finally kicked in.” She looked back to see Ryu smiling. “Damn, sometimes you can be such a dick.”

  “Nickie, time to shake a leg!” Meredith’s call in her audio implant jolted Nickie out of the account her aunt was painting from the past.

  What is it?

  We’re docking at the spaceport. Thought you might like to know.

  With a dramatic sigh, Nickie shuffled off the undersize bed still with her boots on and stretched, closing the file for now. Moments later she emerged from the room and headed for the bridge to meet Grim.

  Rebus Quadrant, Minerva Trading Outpost

  Docking at the outpost went smoothly enough. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, and the docking officers seemed disinclined to ask any questions other than the basics—ship’s name, captain, docking requirements, reason for docking at the outpost—and it went smoothly.

  It seemed somewhat impossible, considering how unsmoothly everything else had gone recently. Nickie was willing to assume it was Meredith’s doing, but the EI offered no indication either way.

  Nickie and Grim stepped optimistically from the airlock into the docking tube, and they followed the gritty gray tube to some stairs. It was a few models old, and it creaked as they walked. Nickie had seen even older models in worse condition stand up to cannon fire. Still, she suppressed the urge to jump just to get the tube to sway.

  They stepped down the stairs at the end of the tube, and they both spared a moment to glance around. Nickie could already see navigation notes appearing in the corner of her eye, though they faded into visual white noise as she let her attention slide past them for the time being.

  Even from the distance of the docking bay, the noise and the bustle of the rest of the outpost was still audible. Nickie could hear shouting, even if she couldn’t make out most of the words.

  She was willing to bet, though, that most of the shouting wasn’t swearing like it would have been back on the ship.

  But they were there to fix that! Maybe. Possibly. It wasn’t her top priority.

  “You go in whatever direction you need to go,” she instructed Grim after a moment as she turned toward him. He paused, already a few steps away, as if he had already been in the process of doing just that. Nickie carried on, regardless. “I’ll go this way. We’ll meet back here once we’ve got everything we need. Two-and-a-half hours. Or sooner, if you really want to be a good friend.”

  “Bossy,” Grim deadpanned, but he flashed a brief thumb
s-up in agreement before he started walking away in earnest. He disappeared into the crowd in just a few seconds.

  Finally, Nickie actually turned her attention to the data being fed to her. She took a moment to figure out where she was in relation to the details Meredith was giving her before she started moving at a spritely jog. Her boots thumped on the corrugated metal that made up the floor of the docking bay.

  Maybe she would find a replacement for her shoes while she was there.

  Keep dreaming, Meredith informed her blandly.

  If she cared at all about Nickie’s ruined shoes—astoundingly unlikely, admittedly—she was hiding it very well.

  You are such a buzzkill.

  Nickie would not admit to pouting, but it was all right. She didn’t actually need to admit to it for it to be obvious.

  Chapter 4

  Nickie

  The Minerva Outpost might as well have been paradise, compared to what Nickie had become accustomed to recently.

  She felt like she had been thrown into a bakery after becoming used to eating only dry crusts. A chain bakery where everything just tasted sweet instead of having any sort of flavor, maybe, but a bakery nonetheless. It was an upgrade.

  I’m fairly sure someone who only ate bread but suddenly switched to cupcakes would get sick, Meredith reported flatly.

  Nickie found it hard to tell if she was serious.

  That much sugar all at once would be horrible for someone whose body was unaccustomed to it.

  Nickie was willing to assume she wasn't. So much for EI logic.

  No one likes a pedant, Nickie informed her.

  Meredith didn’t have a response ready for that, so Nickie ignored her. Because really, if Meredith wanted to pick apart every single metaphor she came up with, Nickie didn’t need to play along.

  Nickie picked up the pace, weaving around people and ducking under stray arms. She kept up her speed until she got to one of the main shopping areas. It was lit in every shade of neon, the signs of the shops that lined the walls almost entirely drowning out the lighting on the ceiling that loomed far above the cavernous area.