She raised her hands slowly. Whoever stood behind her eased the Stinger from the holster on her thigh.
“Raena Zacari,” an unfamiliar voice said, “I am arresting you for charges filed on …”
She didn’t wait for him to get the rest of the speech out. She kicked back hard with her new sharp silver heel, felt it connect in the most satisfying way. At the same time, she ducked sideways, toward the pistol he was stealing from her.
The stranger’s gun put a nice round hole in the artwork behind the register.
Raena turned, raising one hand to catch his gun arm before he could re-aim. She slammed her other elbow hard up into his wizened monkey face.
She snatched her own Stinger back, tossed it to Coni, and said, “Out.” The blue-furred girl didn’t argue. The two salesgirls minced after her.
Raena got behind the bounty hunter, kicked him in the knee, then jumped onto his back to add her weight to his head as it struck the shoe counter. That took him out. She would have pounded his head down a second time, just to be certain, but the counter didn’t look very sturdy. No sense in getting arrested for vandalism.
She plucked his gun from his hand, ejected its charge pack and pocketed it. Then she snatched up her shopping bag with one hand and dragged the unconscious Saimiri bounty hunter out to the street. She dropped him beside the garbage incinerator on the curb. She banged the gun hard against the incinerator to disable it, then flung it down on his chest.
Coni handed Raena’s Stinger back. “Who is that?”
“Bounty hunter,” Raena said.
“But the charges were dropped on Capital City.”
“They never arrested me,” Raena pointed out, “only you, Mykah, and Vezali. This is something else.”
Raena scanned the street. Other than the people immediately nearby reacting to the unconscious bounty hunter, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
“What do we do?”
“I need to get back to the ship and get myself armed up. Then we need to figure out who put a bounty on me and if there’s a way to settle it. I should’ve let him tell me what I was charged with, but his gun was too jittery against my head. I thought he’d shoot me before he spit it out.”
“What can I do?” Coni asked.
“Comm everyone. Keep them off the ship. If anyone’s looking for me on Lautan, they’ll loiter around the Veracity. I want you all to be safe. Why don’t you set us a meeting somewhere for a late lunch, so we can discuss whether we’re getting out of here all together or if I’m finding my own way forward.”
Raena stuck out her arm so suddenly that Coni jumped. A taxi pulled up in front of them.
Coni followed her into the car. “I’m coming back to the ship with you,” she said. “I’d feel better if I got armed up, too.”
Raena considered arguing, but Coni was mature enough to understand what she was getting into. She relented. “If I tell you to run, don’t look back.”
“I trust you,” Coni said. Raena hoped that would keep the blue girl safe.
*
Haoun wasn’t surprised to wake and find Raena gone. He knew she suffered from insomnia. Still, he felt disappointed to be alone. Already he had gotten used to having her warmth pressed up against him.
He crawled out of the nest of blankets and stretched. He had a little shopping left to do, some games he wanted to pick up for the Veracity, some snacks he wanted to stock up on. Who knew how long it might be before they made planetfall again? Wouldn’t hurt to be prepared.
As he looked for breakfast, he passed a shop that seemed to sell nothing but scarves. A hundred or so fluttered in the breeze blowing off the ocean. Must be a storm coming in, he thought.
He nearly passed the shop by before a scarf caught his eye. It mimicked the green of his scales, shot through with gold thread. The way the semi-sheer fabric flashed and floated on the breeze made him halt.
It was certainly too early in their relationship to be buying Raena gifts. Still, the color seemed so perfect that Haoun couldn’t resist.
As he paid the stick creature who owned the shop, a herd of Planetary Security tromped by. Both Haoun and the clerk turned to watch them go.
“Starting early today,” the shopkeeper muttered.
“What’s that?” Haoun wondered.
“Bullies flexing their muscles.” The stick creature folded the scarf into an elaborate bird, which lay flat and weighed almost nothing in Haoun’s hand. “Everyone’s tense about the lack of visitors, but Planetary Security has decided to stomp around ‘keeping order’ by intimidating anyone who’s left.”
Haoun’s comm bracelet chirped.
“Sorry,” the creature said brightly, changing the subject. “What I mean to say is: Enjoy your visit to Lautan.”
Haoun nodded, distracted. “Thanks.”
CHAPTER 4
During the course of their taxi ride to the spaceport, Lautan’s skies opened up. Rain beat down in sheets, punctuated by great tearing rumbles of thunder. Raena’s plan had been to find a way up onto the spaceport’s roof and go in over the top, avoiding anyone looking for her on the ground. Thunder put an end to that. She didn’t want to be a target for lightning up on the roof. She’d have to walk in at street level like everyone else.
Actually, a good hard rain could be useful. It would drive most creatures under cover to wait it out. There might be more people standing around than usual, but fewer would be moving around out in the wet. That would limit the number of moving pieces she needed to track.
She directed the taxi to pull over at the edge of the spaceport. This would be the worst part, she suspected. Plenty of watchers loitered under awnings or overhangs, but no one seemed immediately suspicious. Raena climbed out of the car, ready for a fight. Nothing materialized.
Coni peered out of the taxi’s doorway at the downpour. Raena thought she could read dismay on the blue-furred girl’s face. “Go wait somewhere dry,” Raena advised. “I’ll bring you those supplies from the ship.”
Coni shook her head and pushed herself out of the car into the rain.
Lautan’s spaceport was arranged like a Mandelbrot set. The docking bays were grouped roughly by size, smaller ships ganged around larger ones. The Veracity was parked toward the ocean side of the port.
Raena had to take two strides for each of Coni’s, but they moved along at a good clip through the rainstorm.
*
As they neared the correct docking slip, Raena turned to Coni. “Hang out here,” she said, scarcely louder than the rain. “Let me make sure it’s clear.”
Coni found a place to shelter from the storm. Her fur had doubled in weight. Heavens, she hated rain.
She was too far away to hear what triggered it, but Raena spun suddenly, crouching low.
Then the loudspeaker over Coni’s head boomed, “On the ground now. Face down. Arms out.”
Coni stared around, panicked. She didn’t know what to do. She wished Mykah was with her.
What seemed like a whole squadron of Planetary Security encircled Raena, rifles trained on her. She looked them over calmly, then knelt, set down her pink shopping bag, and stuck her arms out at shoulder height.
“Face down,” the speaker repeated.
From where Coni was standing, she could see that the tarmac had flooded. Raena didn’t want to lie down in that.
The woman looked so small that it was hard not to think of her as harmless. Coni wanted to race to her rescue, demand to know the charges, protect Raena—but it made more sense logically to keep from being arrested, to work to get the charges dropped from outside the jail. Coni hated herself for being a coward.
As Coni struggled to decide what to do, she saw Haoun galloping down the common way toward the Veracity. The Security squadron hadn’t seen him yet, but he was going to get himself shot down … Coni flung herself into his path. “Stop!”
Haoun crashed into her. They skidded on the wet walkway and landed in a heap. “What are you doing?” he growled, shoving her
away.
Coni struggled to hold him down. “Don’t get yourself killed in front of her,” she commanded.
When they looked back, Raena had complied with the soldiers’ orders. She lay in the puddle, spread-eagled. Security agents surrounded her with rifles at point-blank range.
Coni expected to see Raena spring up, snatch one of those rifles, and beat the security corps off with it, but she didn’t. She lay meekly in the water, let them restrain her and haul her up to her ridiculous boot heels.
Coni scrambled to her feet and pulled Haoun up after her.
“What’s happened?” he demanded.
“Raena and I were shopping when a bounty hunter attacked her this morning. We came back here to get some weapons … Didn’t you get my message to stay away from the ship?”
“Yeah, but Mykah sent another message that we had to get off Lautan right away,” Haoun argued.
Coni glanced at her comm bracelet to see it flashing. “What’s happened?” she echoed.
“I don’t know.”
The Security detail marched Raena past them. She didn’t turn her head or acknowledge her crewmates at all. The rain had washed her ragged black hair into her face, but with her arms bound, she couldn’t wipe it away.
Coni thought: Raena shackled and sodden, surrounded by Security, may be the worst thing I’ve seen in my life. Then she thought over the things Raena had seen and realized how sheltered her own life had been.
Once Security left, people crept out of the nooks in which they’d hidden. Vezali retrieved Raena’s shopping bag as Mykah leaped over the puddles to join Haoun and Coni.
“The Veracity has been impounded,” Mykah panted. Coni hugged him, desperate for comfort. He kept one arm around her waist and held her close.
“Why?” Haoun demanded.
“It’s related to Raena’s arrest somehow,” he said. “Those same agents locked the docking slip just before you came.”
“You’re lucky you weren’t on the ship,” Coni said.
“I was off paying our docking fees so we could get out of here.”
“How did you know they were coming?” Vezali asked.
“I didn’t. We got a message for Raena from one of the Thallian kids. Someone has apparently started up the cloning machinery on his homeworld again. The kid wanted Raena to go check it out.”
Stunned silence greeted that news.
“One of the Thallians invited Raena back to his homeworld,” Haoun echoed. “That’s why you called us to leave?”
“Yeah, but we can’t go now ’til we find out what’s going on with Raena and the ship.”
“Planetary Security didn’t seem to be looking for us,” Vezali observed. “Just Raena.”
Mykah nodded at the shopping bag in Vezali’s tentacle. “Did she steal something again?”
“Not with me,” Coni said. “We were doing a little legitimate boot shopping when a bounty hunter jumped her.”
“What happened?”
“Exactly what you’d expect when someone jumps Raena.”
Mykah’s smile flashed past, but he said more seriously, “We need to find out what she’s been charged with.”
Haoun volunteered, “I’ll go to the jail.”
“Not yet. If there’s a bounty on her, let’s find out what it’s for. She won’t like waiting it out, but they want her alive or the bounty hunter would have shot her instead of engaging her.”
“Got a plan?” Coni asked.
“We need to commandeer a public computer so the search can’t be traced to us.”
“Would the business office at a big hotel do?”
“Perfect. Haoun, can you find us a hotel?”
“On it.” He lumbered off.
“What do you want me to do, Captain?” Vezali sketched a salute with one tentacle.
“Get us some walking-around weapons? I didn’t have a chance to get anything out of the lockers. I didn’t even grab my jacket. My Stinger’s still in it.”
“Sure. Meet you for lunch?”
“Yeah, let’s stick to that plan.”
After she left, Mykah turned to Coni. “Did you get a chance to install that kill-switch on the Veracity’s brain?”
Rather than answer, Coni pulled the handheld’s case out of her shoulder bag and handed it to Mykah. “I’m too wet to do it. Can you sign me in?”
Mykah wiped the handheld case on his T-shirt before he opened it. Once it booted up, he typed in her passwords and brought the Veracity online. Coni gave him a string of characters in six different languages. He dutifully typed them in. Coni checked over his shoulder to make sure they were right.
“You’re sure about this?” she asked.
“Raena’s journal is in there. All your recordings of her. The stories she told the Thallian boy … We can’t let anyone get those things. They will destroy her.”
Coni nodded. She had encrypted some of the early stuff, backed it up in a coded info dump off the Veracity. Mellix had other bits of the Veracity’s recordings as research about the Messiah drug. But all Coni’s work on understanding humans, her studies of Imperial history, the book she was writing: it made her sick to think so much would be lost. Still, deleting it was the right thing to do. It was her own damn fault for not backing the Veracity’s memory up somewhere off the ship.
“Tell it to execute,” Coni said. “Then don’t turn off the handheld until it’s done running.”
From this point forward, the Veracity would have new memories. They wouldn’t include going to Mellix’s haven in the asteroid belt. They wouldn’t include the days Jain Thallian spent onboard. There wouldn’t be anything that connected Raena to the Imperial assassin she used to be. It was for the best, Coni knew.
“Now you need a drink,” Mykah said.
“I need to get dry,” Coni said. “Stay here.”
The rain had given way to a steamy overcast. Coni stepped out into the passage and gave herself a hearty shake. She would be all up in frizz after this, but at least the weight was off of her skin.
Haoun commed Mykah. “Here are the coordinates of the Avah Lodge, at the city edge of the spaceport. You have a reservation for two as Filla Saileish. I’ll meet you there with a key.”
“Thanks, Haoun.” As an afterthought, Mykah added, “She’ll be okay.”
The Na’ash laughed. “I never thought I’d see her go so tamely.”
“She was protecting us,” Coni said.
“Which is why we’re going to get her out,” Mykah promised.
*
In the Avah’s unoccupied business office, Coni attached the scrambler to her handheld before she cabled it to the hotel monitor. She had been carrying the device around in her bag for weeks, but this was the first time she’d ever found a use for it.
She searched on Raena’s name and found a bounty hunters’ carousel. A blurry security photo of Raena in a bright blue dress and sunglasses showed her standing outside the Veracity. She seemed in the process of shooting out the camera as it captured her image.
“Sloppy,” Mykah said. “She must have been in a hurry.”
Coni noticed the date. “That was the day we left Kai. Raena was waiting for us to come take control of the Veracity.”
The next photo down showed Raena at the beach yesterday, dragging the Walosi out of the surf after the fight.
“That’s how the bounty hunter knew she was here.” Coni didn’t know what to make of the price on Raena’s head. It wasn’t as high as she expected. Wanted alive, the poster said.
“What’s she charged with?” Mykah asked.
Coni opened the poster up. “Kidnapping. Theft of an Imperial-era diplomatic transport called the Raptor.”
Mykah rocked back in the uncomfortable business office chair. The seat was too deep for him to get his feet on the floor. He imagined how Raena felt, with her short legs, in a galaxy where everything had been made for bigger creatures.
“We forgot to pay the docking fees on Kai,” he said. “I’ll bet they
don’t really care that we stole the ship; they just care that we didn’t pay up before we left.”
“So her arrest is our fault,” Coni said.
Mykah didn’t deny it. They had been so giddy about their good fortune when Raena offered them the chance to become pirates. She’d been focused on preparing for her showdown with Thallian, which she hadn’t expected to survive. The rest of them had been exploring the parameters of their new ship. Nobody thought about the open account they left behind.
“Maybe we can settle the Raptor’s docking fees from here without admitting it’s the same ship,” he said.
“I’ll check.”
“Do they plan to take her back to Kai?”
“At least to stand trial for the kidnapping.”
“I don’t know if you and I can go back to Kai, after we disrupted the jetpack race,” Mykah said. “Are they likely to charge us for that, too?”
“I don’t know,” Coni said. “I’ll find out.”
*
When the jailers processed her into the local hoosegow, they took her Stinger and its holster without comment, but her stone knives puzzled them. That kind of low-tech weaponry was apparently a new thing on this pleasure planet. Raena had to surrender her brand-new boots, too.
After that, they ran all the standard identification tests. Raena hadn’t been arrested since the Imperial days, but she had faith her new identity would hold up, since it had gotten her in and out of Capital City. Once they ran the medical scanners and found out her body was only twenty, no one would believe that she really was the Imperial assassin who shared her name.
Security in Lautan’s planetary jail was adequate, if you weren’t used to busting out of Imperial prisons. Raena played with the idea, but her new ID was clear so far. She decided to wait to see what she’d be charged with. Had they reconsidered her defense of Mykah on the beach yesterday? Had one of the attackers died? Or was she being charged with beating up the bounty hunter? That used to be considered self-defense.
Jail guards escorted her to a holding cell. It seemed surprisingly full. Maybe Lautan was having a crime wave as things got tough—or maybe the government had decided to raise funds by increasing arrests. As much as she’d been enjoying her vacation, Raena wondered if it had been worth getting off the ship.
No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three Page 6
