by Robyn Bachar
Her face heated as she imagined Ryder naked and glistening with sweat, his head thrown back as he howled with ecstasy. She coughed and banished the thought—he was her friend and shipmate and it was completely inappropriate to objectify him. Unfortunately it was also difficult to avoid objectifying him. A person could make a fortune if they figured out how to bottle Ryder’s natural sexual charisma.
“All right, I have one left,” Ryder said. “Never have I ever killed a man just to watch him die. Bonus drink if you did it in Reno.”
“Which Reno?”
“Any Reno counts, though I feel you should get a second bonus drink if you did it in the original Earth Reno.”
Jiang smiled. “Can’t say that I have.”
“Me either.” Ryder shrugged. “We could add it to our itinerary. Visit New Reno, go on a crime spree, live like pirate royalty.”
“I’ll pass, thanks. That’s from an Earther ballad, right? You listen to it when you lift.” Ryder had a deep love for old Earther culture, particularly music and vids. Jiang had learned more than she ever wanted to know about twentieth-century Western cinema thanks to him.
Ryder grinned. “Country music is good for the soul.”
“You should try listening to the crimson jazz they play on Orleans Prime. Gets the blood pumping.”
“I’ll try it. Okay, your turn. Last question.”
Jiang scanned the crowd. “He’s late.”
“I noticed. Lots of possible reasons for that. Traffic. Got stuck at work. Sick pet.”
Jiang’s brow furrowed. “Sick pet?”
“You never had a sick pet?”
“I don’t remember any pets, sick or otherwise.”
Ryder shook his head with a mournful expression. “That’s tragic. I’ve tried to talk the captain into letting us adopt one of those Russian space dogs, but she won’t go for it. I think you’re a cat person, though.”
“Oh?” Some ships kept a mascot—pirates in particular tended to have parrots or monkeys as nods to their ancient predecessors, but Captain Nyota had never seemed the sort. Her brother occasionally teased her about bringing a goat aboard as the Mombasa’s mascot, and the joke had recently taken a strange turn when the survivors of the attack on New Nairobi came aboard the ship, livestock and all.
“Cats are aloof,” Ryder explained. “Mysterious. Graceful. A cat can be napping one moment and can claw your hand off the next. They’re small but deadly. Like you.”
Jiang snorted and shook her head as her good mood evaporated. Deadly. True enough. “Never have I ever been responsible for the death of a crew member.” She raised her glass in a grim salute, and she frowned as Ryder did the same. “But you haven’t—”
“Haven’t what? Sent team members to their deaths? I’m chief of security, unless you forgot that, too.”
She scowled. “Of course not. I just meant—”
“You meant to beat yourself up again over Erik’s death. Well, stop it. His death isn’t your fault.”
“It’s completely my fault.” Jiang slammed her glass down and whiskey sloshed over the sides. “I tanked that mission. If I hadn’t leaked our intel, he would still be alive.”
“You didn’t tank that mission, the chip in your thick skull did.” Ryder motioned to her head and then downed his drink in one long gulp. “You’re not responsible for that. The person who chipped you is. And the person who spiked your tea with spy shit is. Not you.”
Jiang’s jaw clenched. It would be too easy to shift the blame to a shadowy other organization. She was responsible for her own actions—her hands had built the transmitter and her voice had spoken the intel that betrayed her crew. It didn’t matter that she didn’t remember doing any of that. The moment she learned about the implant, the blank areas of her memory stopped being an inconvenience and became a serious threat to her and everyone around her.
Why was she the only one who understood that?
Ryder rose. “Come on. Tourney’s starting. Time to win us some cold, hard cash.”
He slid his empty glass into the receptacle and swaggered away. Jiang frowned at her drink—still more than half full. If the liquor had been decent she would have downed the rest, but this swill tasted like it had been brewed with old engine oil. She dumped it and followed Ryder.
In Jiang’s opinion, arm wrestling was an Earther sport that didn’t need to be exported off world, but the enthusiastic crowd gathering in the back of the bar seemed to think otherwise. Several local champions were participating in the spectacle—big, burly men like Ryder. The captain liked to joke that Ryder was the Mombasa’s chief battering ram, and there was a grain of truth to that statement. Ryder was tall and broad-shouldered, and he made a point of bulking up his physique to intimidate their marks. Since he joined her on this trip, Jiang had been living in much closer quarters with Ryder than usual, and she had to admit, he was a pleasure to look at. He whipped his shirt off and tossed it to her. Jiang caught it out of reflex and glared at him.
Typical Ryder behavior, displaying his allergy to clothing, as Captain Nyota referred to it.
Shit. She missed her crew. They were the only family she had, and she had put them all in grave danger.
Uncertain of what to do with Ryder’s T-shirt, Jiang finally shrugged it on over her own clothing. The damn thing was several sizes too big for her, but she wanted to have her hands free and didn’t want to leave the garment behind if they needed to make a quick exit. If nothing else, they couldn’t afford to keep buying Ryder new shirts. She wrinkled her nose—was this what her clothes smelled like after several days spent in their pirate-scented shuttle? They should save some of their liquor budget and spend it on laundry services instead. At least the shower worked.
“Looks good on you.” Ryder shouted to be heard over the noise of the growing crowd, and Jiang smiled and flipped him off.
Her skin itched and her hands clenched into fists as the crowd pressed in around her. Drunken spectators crammed into a small area, frantically placing bets and exchanging money. While the extra money would be a blessing in their current situation it wasn’t the goal of their mission. Their contact might take one look at this mess and walk away; she would, if their places were reversed.
With a roar Ryder raised his fists to pump up the crowd, who cheered in response. Jiang bit her bottom lip but kept her mouth shut—it wasn’t honorable to compete with a cybernetic arm, but they needed the money. After all, they were pirates now, and pirates weren’t concerned with fair play. The Mombasa’s privateer mark had been revoked, making its crew members wanted criminals whose crimes were no longer state-sanctioned. There was an element of danger in drawing attention in a dive like this while they had bounties on their heads, but no one was looking for them on New Hong Kong. Really no one should be looking for them within C3 territory at all, considering that their bounties were Alliance issued. And Soviet issued, thanks to their involvement in rescuing the Soviet pirate queen Red Raiya. The C3 was the only faction not actively hunting them, so they should be marginally safe on New Hong Kong.
Not that Jiang felt safe anywhere anymore when one doctored drink could turn her into some sort of zombified Soviet intel agent. Or at least she assumed she had been a Soviet agent. Maybe—
“Round one!”
Jiang blinked and focused as Ryder took a seat across from his opponent. The man facing Ryder was every bit as muscular, but definitely not as attractive. His nose had been broken far more often than Ryder’s—Ryder enjoyed the benefits of having a doctor as his best friend, who always set Ryder’s nose to near perfection.
Ryder offered his opponent his left arm, and a knot eased in Jiang’s chest—he’d chosen a left-handed opponent and forgone the advantage of his cybernetic arm.
Well, then.
The blast of a horn signaled the start of the match, and Ryder bared his
teeth and threw himself into the battle. The two men snarled as Ryder struggled with his opponent, and Jiang wondered how much was real effort and how much was showmanship. Ryder always had a flair for the dramatic—he was quick to start bar fights for entertainment. His face flushed and his veins bulged, and a new knot of anxiety formed in Jiang’s stomach. What if he injured his good arm? What if he broke it? They couldn’t afford a trip to a med center.
She cleared her throat and looked away, taking the opportunity of the crowd’s distraction to study the faces around her. They had an image of the man they were supposed to meet, but it was an old ID photo from a personnel file. He had insisted on a voice-only call when they contacted him, which never boded well. Ryder had been more worried about that than she was, because she recognized the paranoia endemic to someone who had lived in a Soviet state. As the old saying went, you weren’t really paranoid if everyone was out to get you, and in a Soviet state everyone was always out to get you.
Even the security detail was distracted by the spectacle. Jiang scowled. Amateurs. An event like this was the perfect opportunity for—
She caught the metallic flash of a raised rifle, and she ducked and shouted, “Gun!”
The crowd didn’t react until the report of the rifle cracked their focus, and then the screaming started. A rush of air ruffled her unbound hair as the bullet zinged by her head, but she didn’t turn to see where the projectile stopped. Her gut clenched—had Ryder been hit? Were they shooting at him, or at her?
Jiang dodged and weaved between frightened spectators as her adrenaline surged, and she launched herself toward the shooter as he fired a second shot. The bullet struck a man to her right and he dropped with a sharp scream. Her jaw clenched as she headed for her target—tall, maybe six feet, wearing a dark duster and a cap pulled low to obscure his face as he stowed his weapon and booked it out of the bar.
She glanced back and spotted Ryder. “I’m green,” he shouted. “Go!”
Jiang rushed out of the bar and into the street in hot pursuit. A cargo transport blared its horn as it narrowly missed flattening the shooter, and Jiang twisted out of the way of a hover bike. Brakes screeched and drivers shouted insults at the interruption. Traffic was heavy near the spaceport and the bastard was fast, slipping through groups of pedestrians like an eel through kelp.
She struggled to focus through the chaos around her—flashing signs trying to lure in tourist dollars, blaring music, loud conversations, and the hum of transport engines. It was the noise and drama of the cockpit during battle, multiplied to heart-pounding levels.
The shooter vaulted over a stack of cargo pods, and when she tried to do the same her heel caught the topmost pod and scattered its contents into the street. She stumbled and lost a few steps as she struggled to keep the shooter in sight. A flash of a man in a dark coat darting around a corner caught her eye, and her muscles burned as she sprinted after him. She trained hard to keep in shape, but life on a spaceship was mostly sedentary. It was easy to let one’s muscles go to fat when you spent most of your time at a terminal. Erik had been particularly roly-poly—
A wave of grief and shame crashed over her. My fault. Erik is dead and it is my fault because I betrayed my family. Jiang tripped, lost her balance and hit the ground hard, scraping her palms against the new pavement as she tried to break her fall. When she lurched to her feet she looked frantically for signs of the shooter, but he was gone, swallowed by the teeming crowd.
“You okay?” Ryder pulled up beside her and placed a steadying hand on her shoulder, which she promptly shrugged away.
“Damn it! I lost him.”
“Too much interference. He could duck into any of these buildings or grab a vehicle. It’s not your fault.”
All. My. Fault. Her throat tightened, and she tasted blood as she swallowed hard—she’d bitten her tongue when she fell, and the tang of copper added a metallic edge to the sourness of failure.
“Besides, we have other problems.” Ryder held up his right arm and revealed a bullet wound in his forearm. “I think I’m gonna need a hand.”
Chapter Two
People were staring at them, so Ryder herded Jiang off the pedway and into a nearby alley for cover. He wrinkled his nose at the stink of garbage rotting in the summer heat—bet this spot wasn’t on any tours.
Ryder flexed his fingers—or at least he tried to flex them, but the command was lost somewhere between his brain and the prosthetic. The bullet was lodged in the middle of his right forearm, and the entry wound slowly leaked neon-green lubricant. The sight was surreal—a wound like that should be gushing blood.
“It’s not bad,” he said.
“Does it hurt?” Jiang asked.
“Nah. The pain receptors are designed to shut down in case of severe damage like this.” Ryder was all too familiar with the pain of being shot, and the numbness of the damaged prosthetic was almost comforting in comparison. Besides, he was beating himself up more than enough to compensate for the lack of pain. Some security officer he was—three steps behind and unable to keep his eye on the target.
“I’m good to go,” he said. “You think he was a bounty hunter?”
Jiang squared her shoulders, gathered her composure and settled into command mode. Ryder admired her ability to shake off drama and focus—a civilian would fall apart after being shot at, but Jiang had a soldier’s spirit. He followed her lead and refocused on the mission—he would analyze his failures later.
“Could be,” she said. “Someone could connect me to this colony if they went through my financials, same as I did. He’d have to be a pretty shitty hunter to open fire in a crowd of civilians like that. I don’t like it. We need to follow up on the contact. He never showed, and I need to know if he sold us out. Do we have a location for him?”
“Yeah, let me...” Ryder reached for his data tablet and sighed when his unresponsive fingers refused to grab it from his front right pants pocket. “Little help here?”
Jiang reached into his pocket. “Don’t even think about it, Kalani.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied dutifully.
But he did think about it, and had been for...damn, months now. Maybe even years. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on, but when she first joined the Mombasa’s crew it had been clear that she was in mourning, and he respected that. He’d lost loved ones, and everyone healed at a different rate. But traveling together in the small shuttle these past few days had made keeping that respectful distance more difficult.
He hated seeing her suffer, but Jiang was too proud to accept comfort. Instead, he did everything he could to make her smile, including shamelessly flirting with her. She rarely smiled, but when she did it was like the whole room lit up.
Jiang frowned at Ryder’s tablet. “Is that a...shark sticker?”
“Tiger shark,” he said.
“You put stickers on your tablet? What are you, twelve years old?”
“It’s not a sticker. It’s a decal,” he deadpanned. Jiang continued to frown until he grinned. “Tiger sharks are great. Sleek, deadly, beautiful. Like you.” Jiang sighed, but Ryder was certain that he saw the corners of her mouth twitch. “The landlord’s vitals are in the mission folder.”
“Got it.” Jiang accessed the file and nodded. “I’m plugging the location into the GPS. He lives on the other side of town. We’ll need to take the tram.”
“Aye, boss. Can I have my shirt back?”
Jiang blushed, stripped off the oversized garment and handed it to him. Ryder pulled it over his head and nearly sighed in contentment. Jasmine. She used a jasmine-scented soap, and the fragrance was the only pleasant smell in the shuttle. It had even worked its way into his dreads, tormenting his sleep at every toss and turn.
“Should we bandage that?” Jiang motioned to his right arm.
“Don’t
suppose you brought a med kit?”
“No.”
Ryder shrugged. “It’s fine. I’ll just put my arm around you on the tram. Keeps the focus on you, so no one will notice.”
“No, you won’t. Let’s go.”
“Yes, boss.”
Ryder followed a step behind, reading the directions over her shoulder. She kept her head down like a tourist glued to a travel program spewing sightseeing tips, and her focus bothered him. Usually she would be scanning the crowd, looking for possible dangers and surveying the surroundings. Was she afraid of recognizing someone who had known her? Or worse, not recognizing someone from her past?
Ryder straightened—she was off her game, and he was determined to protect her if the shooter returned. It wasn’t likely, because any merc worth his salt would either be long gone or lying in wait for them back at the docking bay. But shooting into a crowd and missing twice was a rookie move, so clearly this wasn’t an A-grade assassin. There were cleaner ways to kill someone, and Ryder was well versed in many of them. After all, it was what they paid him for.
Not that he was getting paid for this mission. Which was a good thing, considering that being shot at twice and then losing the shooter in a foot pursuit was also a rookie move, and he didn’t want it on his resumé.
Their contact lived on the outskirts of the settlement, where the buildings were smaller and less flashy. This area was an afterthought—the unsightly sprawl that spawned outside of the slick, well-planned city center. It was quiet at this hour with most of the residents busy at work elsewhere. Ryder would have felt at home in the area, because shiny was never his thing, but something about the place seemed to raise Jiang’s hackles.
“You all right?” he asked.
She nodded, her jaw clenched. “Let’s get this over with.”
They followed a resident into the building and bypassed the sad, simple security system. Too easy. If he was a resident he’d have words with the building manager.
