by R. M. Olson
Jez half turned and grinned over her shoulder. “Come on, you bastard, I never get into trouble.”
She pulled the door open and slipped out before she could hear Masha’s response.
CHAPTER SIX
THE FEEL OF sunlight on her face, and of finally being able to move after standing still for what seemed like a million years, combined with the nervous unease that still lingered in the back of Jez’s brain every time she thought of Olyessa’s damn lock plugged into her sleek, lovely ship, made stepping outside feel like drawing in a first breath of air after almost drowning.
The streets outside were busy, foot traffic and skybikes mingling on the narrow, cobbled streets. The outsides of the buildings were painted bright colours, and the people walking past wore clothing cut in the latest style, colours a million years away from the drab practicality of Prasvishoni. Jez took a deep breath and stepped out into the bustle.
She wandered down the street, making cheerfully rude gestures at skybike drivers who cursed her for getting in front of them, and looked around curiously as she walked.
When she’d come here last time, they’d come in on the other side of the city, into the pleasure district. It had been crowded with foot traffic as well, but there it had been the rich scum-sucking bastards who were the customers, and their damn bodyguards and hangers on. These people looked like the kind of people who lived here, worked here, made a living on the streets. Alleys were packed with crates, and people dressed in practical working gear unloading them from ships or loading them into buildings, and in the skyways under the city forcefield, small short-run in-atmosphere cargo haulers crossed the skies in a packed jam of ships and passengers. Some of the pilots shouted curses out the open cockpit windows at the other drivers, and she smiled at the comfort of the familiar sound. The smell of sunlight on stone and too many people packed into too small of a space mingled with the city smells of ships and food and cooking and engine oil.
Might look like a stretch, getting the high-class bastards out here to a pleasure house, but honestly, Masha’s idea hadn’t been that bad. There wasn’t any ID in the forcefield gates, probably because no one who came here wanted anyone to know about it, and there was that cut in the field just a street or two down from their new place of business. Easy to slip down a street without attracting too much attention, if that’s what you were after, and the streets themselves were wide enough that a whole group of bodyguards could follow you if they wanted to.
She passed a stairway at street level leading down to a dimly-lit doorway. From the darkened entrance, she caught the sharp scent of alcohol, and the sweet, sticky scent of something distilled from manka-leaf, and a slightly-mangled tune filtered through the cracks in the door.
She paused, and drew in a long, satisfied breath.
Looked like this damn city had places a person could entertain themselves even if they weren’t a messed up scum-sucking plaguer.
She turned down a slightly narrower street. There were more of the street-level entrances here, and the smell of alcohol and manka-leaf was thicker in the air, mixed with the smell of stronger drugs.
She could feel her grin widening, and she placed a hand on the heat pistol at her belt.
This was more like her kind of place, honestly.
Someone cursed from behind her, and she glanced back to see a skybike barreling towards her.
“Get out of the way, you plaguer,” the driver shouted.
“Learn how to drive, mud-eater!” she shouted back with a grin.
She barely had time to notice the small sound before instinct made her throw herself against the wall. Three more bikes whipped past, and as she scrambled to her feet and dived into the nearest alley, one of the riders drew a long heat gun, raised it, and fired a long spray of heat at the bike in front of him. The man riding it caught a blast squarely in the back just before he rounded the corner a few metres ahead of Jez. He screamed and jerked the handles of the bike wildly as the air above him and around him blistered with heat, then slumped, falling hard and rolling to come face-up in the mouth of the alley where Jez had taken refuge. His bike hit the wall of a building with a sickening crunch as the three pursuing skybikes shot past.
Jez rolled to her feet and peered out the entrance to the alley.
The three skybikes pulled up hard at the end of the street, and the man who seemed to be the leader drew his heat pistol, a grim, satisfied look on his face.
The man on the ground groaned weakly, blood running down his face. He blinked, his eyes rolling in panic, then focused on Jez.
“Please,” he whispered. “Help me.”
It was a bad idea. Honestly, it was a terrible idea, because they’d just got here, and she was pretty damn sure Masha didn’t want to get into any fights with the street gangs.
Still—
Three to one wasn’t very fair odds.
And hell, bad ideas were kind of her specialty.
She grabbed the man by the sleeve, and he gave a strangled scream as she yanked him into the alley.
“Can you walk?” she hissed.
He groaned and shook his head.
“Then you’d damn well better learn how to fly,” she whispered, tucking his arm over her shoulder and starting off down the alley as fast as she could manage.
The three on skybikes hadn’t seen her grab him, she was pretty sure, but she was also pretty sure they’d put two and two together quickly enough.
The damn plaguer she’d rescued was heavy, and he wasn’t helping much, but she managed to get him through the alley and out into the next street, just as she heard the sound of skybikes idling past the alley’s far entrance.
“They’re going to come after us,” the man groaned.
Jez rolled her eyes. “Figured that out already. Come on!” She glanced around quickly, then dragged him into a stairwell set into the street, shoving him down so neither of them could be seen from street level.
The skybikes idled past a few moments later.
“Where the hell did he get to?” the leader growled.
Jez chanced a quick glance up over the railing.
He had his pistol drawn, and he didn’t look happy.
“There was someone in the alley when we hit him,” snapped the woman riding on the bike behind his. “Must have been one of Katya’s people. She probably dragged him clear.”
“Boss isn’t going to like that he survived the hit,” the leader said, and then they were out of hearing range.
Jez ducked back down into the stairwell.
The man she’d rescued slumped back against the wall, eyes half-closed, and Jez winced in sympathy.
Honestly, he didn’t look good.
Then, from behind her, a hand slipped around her arm. “What have we here?” a voice crooned.
Slowly, Jez straightened. Her heart was pounding loudly in her chest, and honestly, she’d been wanting a fight for so damn long that her hands were practically aching for it.
She took a long, blissful breath, and in one quick move, jerked her arm free of her assailant’s hand and drew her pistol as she spun and shoved him backwards. He took a staggering step back, missed his footing on the stairs, and put out a hand to stop his fall. She grabbed his elbow, spun him around, and shoved him up against the wall, her pistol pressed hard into the hollow under his chin.
“Hey now,” she whispered. “Careful who you talk to on the street. Not all of them are as nice as I am.”
He was a little shorter than she was, muscular, but not bulky, and a thin beard covered his chin. His dark brown skin had gone an unhealthy colour, and his eyes were crossing to see the tip of the gun.
She smiled at him. “Hey you plaguer, just realized you shouldn’t pick a fight with someone if you don’t know who they are? Don’t feel bad, we all have to learn sometime.”
“I—” His voice was blustery, but there was fear under it. She pushed him harder against the wall and shoved the muzzle of her pistol harder under his chin, so that it wobbled when he swallo
wed.
“So,” she said, in a conversational whisper, “here’s what we’ll do. You’re going to shut up. And you’re not going to move so much as your damn eyeballs until I tell you to. And if you do that well enough, you might just be able to walk out of this without your insides cooked to well-done. Deal?”
The gun was digging too far into his throat to allow him to speak, but he nodded frantically.
“Good,” she said, letting the pressure off the pistol slightly. “Always nice to deal with a reasonable person.” She glanced around quickly.
The stairway they were in was narrow, and if he hadn’t figured out how to signal to the people inside for help, he would soon. If he did, her options were a bit limited, seeing as she was on foot.
Still, she’d think of something if it came to it. Usually did.
From the corner of her eye, she could see the man she’d rescued whispering something frantically into his com.
Possibly another ambush—hell, whoever he was might have plenty of reasons to kill anyone who saw that crap in the street—but then again, what was life without a few chances?
“Alright,” she said to the man in front of her. “You’re going to walk back down those stairs and close the door behind you, and you’re going to forget you ever saw me, OK?”
He gave a quick, nervous nod, but she noticed how his eyes flicked to the door.
She grinned wider. “Figure someone’s coming out of there to save you? Because they could try, sure. It would just depend if they could get through that door and fire off a shot faster than I could pull the trigger. And I’ll be honest, I’m pretty damn fast.”
He swallowed. “I—don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Good,” she said. “So—”
Abruptly his face tensed, and he hooked the toe of his high boot around her ankle and jerked it forward, just as the door slammed open and two figures appeared in the doorway.
It would have knocked her off balance and shoved her into their guns, but then she’d been expecting something like this. She threw herself to one side, her hip connecting painfully with the hard prefab stairs, and used her momentum to pull her captive around between her and the heat guns. One of them went off, and the man screamed as the sleeve of his white shirt turned to ash, then she shoved him backwards. One of the armed figures stepped back to avoid the tumbling body, and the other stepped forward to catch him, and in the confusion Jez scrambled to her feet, pulled the man she’d saved up after her despite his whimper of protest, and took the stairs two at a time, hauling him after her. Heat rippled the air over her head as they reached street level, and the man beside her stumbled, pulling her to one side.
She swore through her teeth, dropped him against the wall, and yanked out her own heat pistol, aiming for the first head to show above the stairwell.
And then three other bikes burst out of an alley, and as the first of her pursuers scrambled up the stairwell, the air crackled and hissed as the three on the bikes fired.
The man abruptly dropped back down, and a moment later, Jez heard a door slam hard.
She grinned to herself, and turned to face the new players.
The bikes that had appeared from the alley surrounded the fallen man, and one of the bikers jumped down and knelt beside him.
“He’s alive,” she reported, her voice grim. “Barely.”
“Get him back to the boss,” snapped one of the men still on his bike. “She’s going to want to know about this. Those were Adric’s thugs.”
Then she stood and turned to Jez, face cold, heat pistol steady. “And who are you?” she asked, ice in her voice.
“She’s crazy, whoever she is,” the fallen man said weakly. “Pulled me out of the way of Adric’s people and almost got both of us shot.”
The woman turned back to Jez, expression thoughtful. “I assume you’re looking for a reward?” she asked at last.
Jez shrugged, still grinning. “Dunno. What you offering?”
The woman narrowed her eyes, and Jez gave her a wink. “Hey now. Maybe I just figured three on one wasn’t great odds.” She paused a moment. “What the hell was that all about anyways?”
The woman gave her an odd look.
Jez shrugged. “New in town.”
“We’re Rims,” the woman said at last. “The Blood Riots are trying to take this street, but it’s our territory.”
Jez raised an eyebrow. “OK, but I thought Grigory Korzhekov and Olyessa Janovik ran this place.”
The woman scowled at her. “You think they run the streets? The Rims break for Olyessa, the Blood Riots go for Grigory.”
Jez grinned at her. “Well. Figure that’s a stroke of luck. Guess I do have a favour to ask after all.”
By the time she got back to the pleasure house, she felt about a million times better.
You just needed something like that every so often, honestly. And, she figured having a street gang who’d agreed to watch out for Grigory’s people and pass on the word would be something even Masha would be happy about.
But she almost forgot her coup when she stepped through the broken-down door of the pleasure house.
A hoard of construction workers had descended on the place like a plague of rodents, and the dust of something long abandoned had been completely replaced with dust from prefab and cut wood. The noise was almost enough to make her put her hands over her ears.
Galina stood beside Masha, directing the workers, and Jez watched her for a moment, a fond smile on her face.
OK, so maybe she’d gotten together with Galya because she was damn hot, and in fairness, she was. But—well, but it felt good to see her like this. She looked like she was in her element, giving orders, shouting out instructions, consulting her holoscreen every now and then and calling out a correction.
She looked like she’d been born for this.
It had been a while since Jez had actually wanted to know the life story of the person she was sleeping with. Wasn’t usually all that relevant, to be honest. But—well, for some reason, she was looking forward to a quiet talk in Galina’s room almost as much as she was looking forward to what would hopefully come afterwards.
Galina looked up and noticed her. She said something to Masha, then closed down her holoscreen and crossed the wide open room to Jez.
“Jez!” she shouted over the noise. “Is everything alright?”
“Yep!” Jez shouted back. “Just learning about the place a little.”
Galina nodded, opened her mouth, then shook her head. “Our rooms should be ready by tonight. We’ll talk then.” She paused a moment and glanced down, a hint of sharpness to her expression. “And I want to hear about how you got hurt. Do you need a first aid kit?”
“Nah, just a bruise,” Jez shouted back. She paused a moment. “You—look like you’re enjoying yourself.”
Galina cocked her head to one side, then laughed and squeezed Jez’s arm. “I suppose we each have our thing. Yours apparently is getting into fights, mine is yelling at construction workers.”
Jez was still smiling as she watched Galina cross briskly back over to Masha.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TAE SCOWLED DOWN at the list of names on his holoscreen.
It was a compilation of everyone any of them could think of who might be willing to help out in this crazy scheme of theirs, which meant most of it was comprised of people Ivan or Tanya knew who they’d broken out of prison.
He was acutely aware of Ivan, sitting beside him and leaning to see over his shoulder.
“There,” said Ivan quietly, reaching out to touch a name on the screen. “I think I can figure out a way to contact her. She’d come, I’m sure of it. And I have a handful of other friends who were arrested with me at the protests. She’ll know how to get a hold of them.”
His arm brushed Tae’s as he drew it back, and Tae bit the inside of his cheek hard.
There was absolutely no reason why every damn time Ivan was sitting this close to him, his mind shou
ld keep going back to that moment on Grigory’s ship, where the mafia boyevik had stepped into the room and Ivan had pulled Tae onto the couch and leaned him backwards, the warmth of Ivan’s lips on his, the feel of his hands, the way the world had gone slightly hazy …
He gave a quick shake of his head.
That had been a distraction. Nothing else. He knew better.
Anyways … anyways, last time he’d let himself fall for someone, it had just about broken his damn heart. And between Dmitri and Masha, he wasn’t sure if he could handle having his heart broken again.
It didn’t matter. They had plenty to do, and no time to do it, as usual, and the absolute last thing in the world he needed to be thinking about right now was how close Ivan was sitting, and how, if he closed his eyes, he’d still know exactly where Ivan was by the warm tingling awareness of his presence that flooded Tae’s entire body every time they were in the same room.
He couldn’t bloody afford any distractions, he’d thought he’d finally learned that lesson. People he cared about seemed to always get hurt, and he wasn’t ready to let that happen again.
He gritted his teeth and tried to bring his focus back to the holoscreen in front of him.
“What about Radic?” asked Lev, from across the table. “Would he come?”
Tanya looked up and caught Ivan’s eye, then turned to Lev with a wry smile. “I don’t think we could stop him from coming. Even if we wanted to.”
It was late, and they’d turned on the artificial lights after pulling down and fastening the the heavy blackout blinds. When you were being hunted by the krestnaya of one of the most powerful mafia organizations in the system, making yourself a silhouette against a window wasn’t the wisest plan.
A week into their stay on the pleasure planet, and between Galina and Masha, they had a small suite of rooms that, if not comfortable, were at least livable. The floors were still bare prefab blocks, as were the walls, but the doors were solid, and they’d set up makeshift cots for everyone, as well as a slightly rickety table and chairs in the main room. They were gathered around the rickety table, all except for Masha, who was doing whatever it was she did in the hours she spent pouring over her holoscreen, Ysbel, who was with the children, and Jez and Galina. They’d been here until about an hour ago, when Jez had stood and informed everyone in no uncertain terms that she and Galina hadn’t had any time alone for the past five days, and now that they had doors on the rooms, they intended to remedy that.
