Ariel froze the image to study it. Among the security detail lay a couple of figures in gray uniforms. Their mirrored helmets made them as anonymous as Planetary Security, but something about them caught Ariel’s attention. Which side had they been on during the confrontation?
They didn’t match up with the scruffy hunters, one of whom was Chale. Ariel recognized the metal-armed giant from the Coalition days. Chale was reasonably honorable, as bounty hunters went. He didn’t mistreat his prisoners—at least, he didn’t used to. And he wasn’t interested in girls, so he and Raena shouldn’t get into a confrontation over that.
Ariel put out some feelers. Maybe she could reach Chale, make an offer to buy Raena back.
The Shaad Family Foundation would still have to face the charges on Kai, but if Raena could go into the trial as a free woman, she’d be a whole lot happier.
Besides, Ariel thought with a grim smile, Kai had picked this fight. Ariel had every intention of ending it.
*
Raena jerked awake. The sound of the bounty hunters’ engine had changed. No longer a basso drone, it had shifted to a higher pitch. She’d never flown on a tesseract-powered ship before, so she didn’t know if the change meant they were coming out of tesseract space or getting stranded in it.
Not much she could do about either one, locked in her cabin. She decided to hope it meant they were nearing Kai. If that was the case, the bounty hunters would gas her soon. She would know, because they’d turn on her lights so they could watch her pass out.
She crawled up onto the bunk, stretched out on her back, and crossed her ankles demurely. She had whiled away much of her imprisonment in the Templar tomb lying that way. It was also the best position from which to greet the hunters when they finally unlocked her door.
The lights came on in her cabin. Raena lay still, breathed shallowly, and kept her eyes shut.
*
Ariel found Eilif down in the range with Kavanaugh. He’d gotten a pistol into her hands again, but the little woman still just held it, arms extended in front of her, elbows locked. The target advanced toward her, but she didn’t fire. Ariel suspected Eilif’s eyes were closed.
“Let’s start her with bull’s-eyes,” Ariel suggested. “Once she gets used to firing the gun, we can worry about targeting her shots.”
Eilif lowered the gun abruptly. When she turned toward Ariel’s voice, Ariel drew, aimed, fired, and re-holstered her pistol in a single breath. The holographic man on the range froze in place, pierced through the forehead with a small black hole.
“Now you’re showing off,” Kavanaugh said.
“Yes.”
Ariel came down into the range as Kavanaugh took the pistol back from Eilif.
“I don’t know if I can kill anyone,” Eilif said softly.
“You don’t have to,” Kavanaugh reminded.
“You might just want to slow someone down,” Ariel said. “Sometimes, seeing someone holding a gun, even if that gun is shaking in her hands, will make a person think twice.”
Kavanaugh caught Ariel’s eye, but he held his tongue. No shaking gun would slow a Thallian down.
“Raena’s been arrested,” Ariel said. “She was taken off Lautan by some bounty hunters last night.”
“She okay?” Kavanaugh asked.
“Don’t know. She’s charged with kidnapping one of the Thallian boys on Kai.”
Eilif would have stumbled, except that Kavanaugh caught her elbow. “She captured Jain on Kai,” Eilif said. “She brought him home to die with the others.”
Ariel nodded. “Are you angry at her for that?”
Eilif’s eyes flickered up to meet Ariel’s, but no, of all the complicated emotions in Eilif’s face, Ariel did not see anger there. “He chose to die at home,” Eilif said. “Jain was Jonan’s favorite son. He was Raena’s favorite, too.”
Ariel changed the subject abruptly. “How did Jimi find you?”
“Through my messages to potential adoptive families, he said. The boys spent a lot of time on the grid, searching for Raena. Jimi must know searches I can’t imagine.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Jimi was never like the others,” Eilif said immediately. “He wasn’t a warrior. Revan told me that when the family still lived on the planet’s surface, when there were many of the clones, some were scientists and some were engineers. Some were artists. But after the Templar plague, after the galaxy attacked and the family fled to the ocean floor, all that survived were warriors. Jonan had a special antipathy for Jimi. He saw him as a throwback. Jonan would have killed him, except that the cloning process was breaking down and fewer and fewer children survived to be born. Jonan’s brothers argued to keep Jimi alive. He was precious to the family, even if Jonan loathed him.”
It was a longer speech than Ariel had heard Eilif make before.
Kavanaugh busied himself picking up the range and putting things away, shutting the holographs down. Ariel was glad he hadn’t found an excuse to leave. She planned to draw him back into the conversation before long.
First, though, she had to ask: “What did you think of the boy?”
“Jimi could have been a poet,” Eilif said unexpectedly. “His mind was different from the others’. Since he wasn’t allowed to express his soul in words, he did it in machinery. He understood how things worked. He could fix anything.”
Ariel wanted to ask if Eilif had loved him. How could she ask that of a woman who understood her role had been to die for her keepers if someone tried to poison them? She had been cast as the boys’ mother, but they weren’t her flesh. She’d had no choice but to nurture them. Thallian would have killed her if she’d done anything less.
Ariel fell back on asking again, “Do you trust him? Jimi betrayed his whole family.”
“I would have done it,” Eilif argued softly, “if I’d had any idea how.”
“But you might have been killed when Raena came,” Ariel argued. “She could have killed you with the others.”
Eilif’s smile was complex. “I think Raena saw herself reflected in me.”
“I wouldn’t have counted on that for protection,” Ariel answered, “and I’ve known her a long time.” When they were teenagers, Raena’s self-loathing had sometimes sunk to frightening depths. Ariel found it easy to imagine that Raena might have thought killing Eilif would be a mercy, as killing her own clones had seemed.
“I was ready to die with the rest,” Eilif said. “I couldn’t envision any other life. My purpose was over. Raena wouldn’t allow me to give up.”
Somehow they’d gotten off the subject. Ariel shook her head. Trying to imagine herself in Eilif’s place was just too painful.
“I have an idea for Raena’s defense,” Ariel said. “It hinges on Jimi. Can we rely on him?”
“He is as indebted to her as I am,” Eilif said. “He will be honored if you ask him.”
“Perfect. Let’s take a little vacation.” Ariel turned to Kavanaugh. “Tarik, I need to hire a ship to get to Kai. Are you interested in the job?”
*
There was a whole lot of cursing outside her cabin. Raena didn’t understand the words, but the tone was clear.
She kept her face blank, in case anyone wanted to peek in on her. It sounded like blocking up the ventilation to her cabin had had consequences elsewhere on the ship. Oops. She hoped she hadn’t knocked out the one hunter who knew how to land the ship.
The door unlocked and a plasma rifle poked through the gap. Raena lay still, eyes slitted, until the white-furred bounty hunter stood over her. Then she exploded upward, knocking the rifle’s muzzle away from her body.
Skip was too professional to fire on her or release his hold on the gun, but now she was too close for the weapon to serve as anything other than a club. That, she could work with.
He was wiry and strong, with prehensile big toes, so fighting him was a whole lot more fun than she had expected. Raena couldn’t remember the last time she’d fought someone for real, someone
just as well trained and serious as she was.
Eventually, he lost his temper and gave her an opening. He leapt up to use the wall to change directions and launched the crown of his head straight into her fist. He hit her so hard that she felt it all the way to her shoulder.
He dropped at her feet.
Shaking her hand to get the feeling back, Raena snatched up his rifle with her free hand and slung it across her back. When she peeled off his gas mask, he was breathing, but his pupils were uneven. At least, he hadn’t cracked his own skull open, silly thing. She dragged him over to the crash web and got him secured.
When she tried to get out of the cabin, she found the door still sealed. The lock didn’t need a combination, just an electronic key. Raena went back to search the furry hunter. The key must be on one of the chain bracelets around his wrists. She removed all of them and brought them back to the door, trying each until one keyed open the lock.
The air in the corridor stung her eyes. She pulled the bounty hunter’s breather over her face and switched it on. It smelled funky inside. She hoped he preferred a concentration of oxygen similar to humans. If she got giddy, this would be the shortest escape attempt ever.
She found Chale snoring in the pilot’s chair. Raena dragged him over into the copilot’s seat and locked him into the crash web. She braced the plasma rifle against the console and rigged the trigger so that if one of Chale’s metal arms moved, the gun would fire over his head. The plasma rifle probably wouldn’t do the bulkhead any harm, but the sound would alert her when he woke up.
She checked the nav comp: yes, they were coming up fast on Kai. That much of the console readouts she could understand. Unfortunately, the controls were completely unfamiliar, not at all similar to human tech. Clearly, she should have played a whole lot more piloting games with Haoun. She couldn’t land this ship without help.
Time to pick up the pace. She found extra breathers stashed by the main hatch. She looped one over her elbow, but the air looked less murky now. She hoped that meant that whatever they’d tried to dose her with was finished pumping into the air system.
Also near the hatch she found their gun locker. Luckily, one of the keys she’d already stolen opened it. She made herself a knapsack full of weapons and left it in the locker where the breathers lived. Then she tossed the key to the gun locker in with the rest of the weapons and closed its door. Likely it wasn’t the only gun locker key on board, but not having it would slow at least one of the hunters down.
She kept opening hatches until she found Bihn’s cabin. He sprawled face down on the deck. She grabbed some clothes out of his cupboard and swam into a shirt that hung practically to her knees. That was better than the damn dress she’d been wearing for the last several days. She wadded the dress into the breast pocket. Then she dragged Bihn up to the cockpit.
Once she got him settled in the pilot’s seat, she slipped a breather over his face and switched it on. She retrieved the plasma rifle and arranged herself on the other side of Chale.
The breather helped counteract the gas. Bihn roused with a groan. When he opened his eyes, he actually jumped at the sight of Kai filling up the view screen.
Raena peeled off her mask so she could talk to him. “You do know how to land us, right?”
“Fuck.” He drew the word out until it was several syllables long. “You are your mother’s daughter, ain’t you?”
“Nobody’s dead yet,” Raena pointed out.
He leaned forward and started slapping the controls into place. She got the feeling he put on a show for her, that he really did have things more under control than it appeared.
Kai’s Flight Control hailed them.
“On the speaker,” Raena directed. Bihn complied.
“Repeat: Khangho, we have been expecting you. Do you have the Business Council’s prisoner onboard?”
Bihn was smart enough to look to her to answer. “Yes,” Raena said. “She’s still onboard. We will be ready to collect our bounty when we turn her over to you.”
Bihn glared at her, but Raena made the slightest motion of the plasma rifle toward Chale’s head. The bounty hunter settled back.
“Standing by for the landing coordinates,” Raena said.
She gave Flight Control time to send them through, then switched off the speaker and smiled at Bihn. “You know that’s not where you’re letting me off, right?”
“Look,” he said, completely exasperated, “I’m a businessman. I’m just trying to do a job …”
“And pay off your ship. Right. I get that,” Raena said. “I’m in your debt, since you rescued me from those creeps in the gray uniforms, but I don’t appreciate being kidnapped. So you’re gonna drop me off, out in the desert. You’re gonna leave me a transmitter, so I can contact my ship. And I’m gonna let you go your own way.”
“How do I know you haven’t booby-trapped the ship while we were all conked out?”
“You don’t. Except that I’m not my mom and I’ve got no reason to kill you, until you give me one.”
“You gonna strap yourself down before we hit atmo?” he snarled at her.
“Wasn’t planning on it.” She climbed into Chale’s lap and wound her free hand in his crash web, resting the barrel of the rifle up under his chin. “Fly careful, okay?”
“When Kai’s done with you, I am so going to kill you.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
*
Mykah took the records from the dockmaster and his handheld down to the jailhouse, where he managed to claim Raena’s things. In addition to the Stinger, its holster, and a couple of spare power packs, all of which he expected—he got back three knives that he hadn’t known she carried. One looked like an antique that had been sharpened many times. The other two were some kind of chipped stone. He wondered if she could carry them through metal detectors. Also in the lot were her brand-new gargoyle shades, her barely worn boots—one of which had blood on its shiny silver heel—and her wallet. Other than some odds and ends of local currency, it was empty.
The last thing to be returned was Raena’s comm bracelet. Mykah wrapped it around his wrist, but found it too small to clasp. He ended up hooking it around a tool loop on his pants.
Raena didn’t carry a handheld and didn’t wear jewelry, so her life boiled down to weapons. Mykah hesitated to think how much junk he wore stuffed into the pockets of his cargo pants or hidden inside his jacket. When he wore a jacket, that is. At the moment, his jacket was being towed across the galaxy aboard the Veracity.
Somehow Raena survived with only the clothes on her back and what she could tuck into her boot-tops or carry around in her head. It made him sad.
He packed everything of Raena’s into a single disposable shopping bag. When he returned to the street, Coni handed him the Stinger Vezali had bought him.
“Haoun called,” Coni reported. “He’s found a Na’ash passenger ship bound for Kai.”
“When do they leave?”
“As soon as we get there.”
“Let’s go.”
*
When the Khangho diverted from the flight plan, the comm screeched at them. Raena switched it off again.
“You don’t know nothing about Kai, do you?” Bihn accused. “The whole planet is desert, except for Kai City. It’s a rock, nothing but abandoned Templar ghost towns. Soon as you contact your ship, Planetary Security will know exactly where you are.”
“Then I better do it now.” She signed into her online scrambler. Once the computer had connected, she keyed in the Veracity’s comm code and said simply, “I’m on Kai. Come and get me.”
No one answered right away, but she would have been startled if they’d been on the ship, waiting for her call. They were probably still on Lautan, trying to figure out where she’d gone.
While she was at it, she put in Ariel’s code, too. “Hey, I’m never going to forgive you for dragging me to Kai.”
Then she signed out of the scrambler and shut the comm off again.
“Somebody’s following us,” Bihn said.
“Planetary Security?”
Bihn gave her a look that expressed his contempt for Kai’s Planetary Security.
“You think it’s the guys in gray?”
“Watch Chale’s head,” he ordered, before banking the ship sharply starboard. Raena clutched the crash webbing and hoped she wouldn’t be thrown to the deck.
“What’d you do to piss these guys off?” Bihn demanded.
“I honestly do not know. They attacked Mellix on Capital City and I kneecapped five or six of them.”
“Should’ve killed them,” he grumbled.
“You don’t think that would have pissed the rest off more?”
He didn’t answer and she didn’t push it. She’d seen people flying for their lives before.
The comm screeched again. Raena leaned forward to slap the channel open. “We are under attack,” she said through gritted teeth. “If you want your prisoner, you’re going to have to come to our aid.”
Bihn went into a steep climb that pressed Raena away from the comm.
“You have escape pods?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“All right, I’m outta here. They should let you go after that, right?”
“Who knows?” he answered. “At least it will split their fire.”
“Good enough.” She pitched the plasma rifle down the hall. Since they were climbing almost straight up, Raena wasn’t sure where it would end up, other than a long way from Bihn’s reach. She struggled up out of Chale’s lap to the arm of the copilot’s chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and jumped, plummeting down through the ship, bare feet first, knees slightly bent to absorb the shock of whatever was going to stop her fall.
*
The Na’ash ship was a large yacht apparently hauled out of mothballs to make the pleasure planet circuit. Although the captain and her crew were Na’ash like Haoun, the twelve passengers ran a gamut.
Mykah sent Coni off to their cabin with Raena’s shopping bags, which were practically all the luggage they had. He hoped that when they saw the prices on Kai, they wouldn’t wish they’d done more shopping on Lautan. He and Coni, at least, would need clothes for attending the trial. Vezali never wore much, because she didn’t like anything to impede her tentacles, and Haoun wasn’t picky about what he wore, as long as it was baggy enough.
No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three Page 10
