Rebels and Lovers

by Linnea Sinclair

  “Side entrance.” Barthol pointed to a dimly lit, narrow corridor on Devin’s left. “Less likely to be in the direct line of fire.”

  “Trip knows better than to—” Devin pivoted on his heels. He kept pace with Barthol, but his protestation halted. Trip might not seek out a place known for violent encounters, but someone had killed Halsey. Someone who was also after Trip. And that someone was no stranger to violence.

  The side entrance to Trouble’s Brewing was a similar rectangular hatchlock design but with only a single doorway, over which illuminated letters proclaiming the pub’s name blinked sporadically. This entrance was only slightly less in the direct line of fire. Bottles and glasses flew, crashing against tables. Voices shouted, bellowed, groaned, and swore. Devin stood trans fixed for a few seconds by the frenzy and sheer cacophony filling the cavernous bar. It was like nothing he’d ever seen—at least, not outside of an action vid or sim game. The bar—judging from the ceiling height, rickety overhead metal-grid walkways from which an odd assortment of light fixtures dangled, and round hanging maws of exhaust-fan ducts—had obviously at one time been a docking bay. Faded berth numbers were still stenciled in red on the far wall, along with the perfunctory open flame and fume warnings in all three languages.

  In between or on top of all that were lighted advertisements for a variety of alcoholic drinks.

  With a determined shrug, Barthol pushed into the fray. Devin caught up, ducking as something round and silver—a tray?—flew by. He readjusted his glasses as he straightened. “Damn it, Barty. If he’s in here, there’s no way we’ll—Shit! Trip!” He raised his voice over the din, shouting his nephew’s name as his adrenaline kicked into overtime.

  He’d been right. God and stars, his analysis, his hunch, had been right. Trip was on Dock Five.

  “Where?”

  It had been a glance, half a glance; that was all Devin had been able to see and process through the jumble of forms careening through the bar. More of an impression of height and gait and profile. But it was Trippy. Devin was positive. More than that, he recognized his nephew’s expensive leather backpack tucked under one arm. He’d already come to know that you didn’t see very many of those on Dock Five. “In the back. Bar area, right side,” Devin called out over his shoulder. He doggedly pushed past people—his brain didn’t bother to register sex or species—because when he’d spied Trip, he’d spied something else: weapons. Including one in the hand of a wide-shouldered man using tabletops as a walkway. Most of those in the bar—well, those who weren’t punching someone—were heading for the exits. This guy was heading for the far corner of the bar. Just where Trip was.

  Devin stepped over an upended chair as he unlatched the safety strap that held his Carver securely in his shoulder holster.

  But when he scanned the area again, Trip had disappeared—ducked under a table or slipped out a secret doorway. Devin didn’t know which and wouldn’t until he reached the other side of the bar—because of a ’droid server wobbling back and forth, two male Takans arguing, and a drunk woman laughing hysterically, all blocking his view. He had to get to where he saw Trip before the armed guy did.

  He had no idea if his nephew was the cause of the commotion or was the armed guy’s target. But given his determined direction, he couldn’t rule out the possibility.

  He also had no idea where Barty was. Nor could he risk turning around to look for him. He had to maneuver through the mob to where he last saw Trip and trust that Barty hadn’t lied about his own expertise and training and could hold his own in a bar fight—or whatever else this turned out to be.

  Devin pushed past two men in brown coveralls slugging it out and caught a glimpse of figures disappearing around the far end of the bar; he was certain one was Trip. The others … It was too quick, too jumbled, too much going on in front of him, behind him, on his left—

  “This way!”

  He heard Barty’s command over the grunts and groans and saw the lanky, black-clad form a few feet behind where Trip and three humans of various sizes—his memory kicked out a clearer image now—had vanished.

  Devin nodded his acknowledgment, grimly recognizing that one of those who’d vanished was the table-climbing armed thug. “Keep Trip in sight!” he called back as he shoved his way past a scuffle, then pushed himself up and over the bar, landing a few feet behind Barty’s retreating form.

  The movement skewed his glasses. He pushed them back up as he darted around the back of the bar into a narrow service corridor. The oily smell of frying foods mixing with something like a cheap perfume assailed him. The passageway led to a small kitchen through one opening on his left and what appeared to be a storeroom farther down. He quickly followed sounds of thuds and something slamming, metal on metal, and realized what it was when he surged into the empty storeroom: an emergency blast door opening and closing. He shoved against the crash bar and stepped quickly out into an unfamiliar cross corridor, just in time to see Trip plant his fist in the middle of a bald guy’s face. The guy’s gun flew from his hand and skittered across the decking, disappearing and reappearing in patches of dark and light from nonworking overheads. Devin lunged for it at the same time that another attacker appeared, as if from nowhere, on his left. He collided with the shorter guy, knocking him to the decking, and shoved his knee hard in the guy’s back—a move he’d practiced many times with Philip. Confident that his attacker was pinned against the decking, he reached over the guy’s head for the bald guy’s gun: a Stinger laser pistol. But the guy bucked and squirmed, throwing Devin off balance and making him suddenly realize two things.

  The guy wasn’t strong enough to dislodge Devin’s weight.

  And the guy wasn’t a guy but a woman, with narrow shoulders and a well-padded … hindquarters.

  Real manly, Dev. Pick on a girl, sounded in his mind, making Devin’s conscience and, okay, his ego squirm almost as much as the female in the threadbare gray spacer’s jacket and flight suit was squirming underneath him. His conscience flinched, but the hard ugly fact was this female wanted the Stinger, wanted to hurt Trip. Devin was not going to grant her either luxury. He shoved the Carver’s muzzle through the wisps of unruly blond hair sticking out under the edge of her cap and against the back of her neck. “Move and you’re dead.”

  It was a lie. Aside from the fact that Devin had never killed anyone, he wanted her alive and talking. He wanted to know what happened back at Montgomery University, who killed Halsey. Who wanted Trip Guthrie and why?

  But the woman underneath him didn’t know all that. She went suddenly still.

  Devin snatched the Stinger with his left hand, then shoved it into his pants pocket. “Trip!” he shouted, as his nephew pounded a right cross into the bald man’s solar plexus. Baldy hunched over, sucking wind noisily. Trip jerked his face toward Devin, eyes widening, mouth opening in amazement.

  “Uncle Devin?”

  There wasn’t time to answer. Off to Devin’s left, Barthol wrestled in the shadows with a curly-haired man in a dark-gray jacket. The man wrenched around and jammed his elbow into Barthol’s midsection. Barthol doubled over with a hard groan, clutching his stomach. The man pushed past him, heading for Trip.

  Fuck. Devin swung the pistol at Barty’s attacker. “Freeze, asshole!”

  The asshole froze. Devin reached in his pocket for the Stinger. Trip knew how to use it. But before he could toss it to his nephew, Trip’s balding thug kicked Trip’s feet out from under him, then bolted toward the main corridor in a shambling run. Swearing, Trip scrambled to his feet, clearly wanting to follow the guy.

  “Trip, stay here!” Devin swung his Carver toward the thug’s retreating form but checked fire as Trip spun, unknowingly stepping directly into Devin’s line. By the time Devin shifted position, the thug had reached the crowded main corridor, easily blending in and using stationers for cover.

  Shit.

  A hard thud sounded behind him. Devin whipped around to his left, but he was too late. Barty’s attacker had ta
ken off in the opposite direction down the dim corridor, boots pounding on the decking.

  They still had one attacker left, under Devin’s knee. He didn’t know if he’d trust station stripers to interrogate the woman, but there was always GGS security. Or Barthol, who had been with ImpSec but was now down on all fours, wheezing.

  Trip stepped toward Devin. “Uncle Dev—”

  “Not now.” He tossed the Stinger to Trip. “Check on Barty.”

  “But—”

  “Help Barty now!” Whatever explanations his nephew had, whatever excuses he wanted to offer for this crazy scheme that put him on Dock Five, could wait.

  Keeping the Carver’s muzzle against the back of the woman’s head, Devin removed his knee and grabbed her left arm. “Up!”

  He lifted the woman easily, then spun her. Her filthy cap tumbled off as Devin pushed her against the bulkhead and, in a move he’d learned from Philip, shoved the Carver under her chin. He glared down at her.

  Makaiden Griggs, eyes narrowed, face smeared with grime from Dock Five’s decking, stared back up.

  “Makaiden?” He was surprised by the hoarseness of his own voice, suddenly thick with emotion. Makaiden was trying to hurt Trip? Questions—damning, horrible questions—raced through his mind and constricted his heart with an unexpected pain. There’d been whispers of some kind of trouble after she and her husband left GGS, but nothing he could trace. He’d never have believed them, anyway. Not about Makaiden Griggs.

  “Mr. Devin,” Makaiden said, her voice soft but noticeably tense. Understandably so. He held a gun under her chin. “I’m not the problem here.”

  He frowned. He didn’t like this, not one bit. He was suddenly without explanations, without information. And if Makaiden was here, where was her hus—

  The high-pitched whine was the only warning. It lasted a second—half a second—but it was enough for Devin to flatten Makaiden against a recessed area in the bulkhead as someone took a shot at them from down the corridor on his left, beyond the bar’s storeroom exit. The bad guys hadn’t run away. They’d regrouped and come back with a vengeance.

  He punched out two shots with his Carver, peripherally aware that, off to his left, Barthol had yanked Trip down and then rolled to one side behind the wide protective arch of a bulkhead support, dragging Trip with him. Then Barty, too, was returning fire.

  “Shit!” That from Makaiden, wriggling against him. She ran one hand between their bodies, which—for another brief second—sent shocks through his system that had nothing to do with ordinary electricity. She’s a married woman, surfaced briefly in his mind, as her hand came up with an L7 pistol he didn’t know she had and hadn’t thought to check for. Philip would have a lecture for that. “Fuzz-face has reinforcements,” she said tersely. “We need out of here now!”

  “Captain Griggs! We’ll cover you!” That was from Trip, who evidently was far less surprised by Makaiden Griggs’s appearance than Devin was.

  Devin glanced down at her, returned her quick nod with his own. “Go!” Questions as to what Makaiden Griggs was doing with his nephew and where Kiler Griggs was would wait. Survival was more important.

  He’d found Trip. He’d found Makaiden. He didn’t want to think about why the latter made him inexplicably happy.

  He was too busy trying to keep from being shot in the ass.

  When they reached Barty, the older man was rising, waving one hand. “Main corridor!” Barty fired off another round of shots, the last one hitting a seesawing servobot following a preprogrammed course that unfortunately brought it into the fracas. It exploded, sending metal fragments pinging off the bulkheads and decking. Buying them some precious time.

  Trip raced ahead of Devin, skittering around the corner just as Makaiden pushed by. “This way,” she said, waving toward the bar’s main entrance.

  Back into Trouble’s Brewing? But there was no time to question. She had Trip by the arm and was propelling him along with her, and Devin had no intention of losing sight of Trip.

  For a fleeting moment, the thought that she and Kiler were working with the thugs, that she was leading them into a trap, surfaced in Devin’s mind. He shook it off but kept the safety off his Carver.

  He hated not having complete data.

  He and Barty slipped through the pub’s wide hatchway behind Trip and Makaiden, stepping quickly to the right to shove past a trio of cleaning ’droids mopping the floor and locking chairs and tables back into the decking. Makaiden moved behind them, glancing around the bar.

  “Why—” Devin started, but she was shaking her head.

  “Blue’s blocked up a ways, due to a water main break.”

  “I know.”

  “We go around it. There’s a back access to the CFTC docking bay through here.” She spoke rapidly, her gaze still zigzagging over the twenty or so patrons now milling about, drinking what others had left behind. Looking for her husband? “Fuzz-face will be checking for us at the escalators or lifts. But we need to move now.”

  “Where’s—”

  “Let’s go.” Makaiden sidled past a stack of chairs toward the corner of the bar, stopping at a panel on the bulkhead where faded letters appeared to spell out Recycler Maintenance in red. A recessed keypad was on the left. She tapped at it as Barty came to stand next to her, his narrowed gaze searching the bar. A short square section of bulkhead swung inward, creaking. Makaiden waved her L7. “Now!”

  Trip ducked in—the panel was little more than four feet in height—and Barty followed. Devin found himself staring at Makaiden Griggs—a former GGS captain who apparently knew about some very odd ways of getting around Dock Five.

  “Now, Mr. Devin!”

  He crouched down and stepped through, aware of the sudden warmth of Makaiden’s hand on his back. He angled around to look at her as the panel shut. His world went black, his grip on the Carver tightened. His heart rate spiked. Then a small green glow flared between them, brightening and turning to white.

  “Be careful standing—”

  “Ow. Shit!” That was Trip.

  “Up,” she said, raising her voice slightly. “Low ceiling.”

  “I thought Dockmaster Stulesk closed off this access ten years ago.” Barty’s voice was low but audible. He hunkered down next to Trip, who was rubbing the top of his head.

  Makaiden snorted out a short laugh. “Welcome to Dock Five.”

  “It’s good to see you, Captain Griggs.”

  “Good to see you, too, Mr. Barthol.”

  “Captain Griggs knows a lot of back ways around this place,” Trip said.

  And had already shown Trip a few? Devin glanced at Makaiden, waiting for her comment but hearing only tense silence.

  “Spent some time here as a kid,” Makaiden said finally, and waved her small handbeam down the passage. “Once we hit the secondary tunnel you’ll be able to stand up.”

  Devin couldn’t remember any mention of Dock Five during his study of the personnel jackets on Makaiden Griggs. “You grew up here?”

  She had already shuffled away from him. “Relatives had a concession here,” she answered without turning around. “Let’s keep moving. We have a long way down to Orange. Or wherever you docked your ship.”

  “We don’t have a ship. We arrived by commercial transport.”

  She stopped, switching a quick glance from him to Barty and back to him again. “Commercial transport?”

  She knew the Guthrie fleet as well as he did. More than that, she knew Guthries never traveled by commercial transport. That was written in the slight parting of her lips, in the slight dip of her brows. Even with the dim, uneven lighting and sweat smears on his glasses, he could see her surprise.

  “We have a room at The Celestian,” Barty said. “If memory serves me, we should be able to get access through these same tunnels. Unless anyone has a better idea, I suggest that we head there now. I think we all have a lot of questions.”

  Devin knew he had questions. He just had an increasingly bad feeling ab
out the answers.

  Kaidee didn’t know what shocked her more: Devin Guthrie’s appearance on Dock Five or Devin Guthrie’s appearance on Dock Five without the usual luxury yacht and GGS pilot in tow. She would never have let him wander around a place like Dock Five when she’d been his pilot, unless he had a security escort—and even then, she would have been with him, because, well … she usually was.

  She understood why at the spaceports—Devin had a penchant for exploring local cuisine, and she knew where not to eat or drink. But more than that, there were times when she sensed Devin Guthrie was a loner who was simply lonely. When the detail work of whatever business meeting she’d flown him to was done—detail work that kept his mind absorbed and occupied—he’d end up on the Triumph’s bridge, pressing her for stories—“hangar flying,” as the old-timers called it—until she’d nudge him toward a game of Zentauri to distract him.

  Because there was only so much of her past she could talk about, including how she knew about these tunnels, which had prompted Devin’s You grew up here?

  Where and how she grew up was a question she didn’t want to answer—especially not to Devin Guthrie. With luck, she wouldn’t have to.

  She quickened her pace down the shadowy maintenance tunnel, handbeam off, Devin, Trip, and Barthol trotting behind her in an enforced silence. This part of the access tunnel had airflow grids on one side, which were the source of the weak and intermittent lighting but also a potential liability. She could clearly hear the rumble of voices and thudding of boot steps from Blue Corridor through the grids and knew well that, at certain points, someone next to a grid might be able to hear them. These old maintenance access tunnels weren’t well known, but they were known. She didn’t want anyone out there to suspect they were in here.

  And it wasn’t just Fuzz-face she was worried about. It was that Fuzz-face might somehow know Frinks and that Devin Guthrie’s appearance might be somehow, some way, tied in to it all.