Across the way, Jimmy was leaning back in his rolly chair with his feet up on the table, talking in a robust voice and letting out an occasional vociferous laugh. Probably not talking to anyone. Sometimes Jimmy would make Davin wait a minute or two just to prove himself important. Psychology. The man was smarter than he let on.
Davin turned to the receptionist, an older woman of middling weight with a gray bun and a bored face. Nothing particularly flashy about her. It struck him, made him think.
“Good for you,” he said. “Breaking the stereotype.”
The woman’s face scrunched. “Excuse me?” Her eyes stared holes through him.
Suddenly Davin regretted the decision to open his mouth. Why did he say such stupid things? Why? Luckily, Jimmy strode in and saved him. A wide, frighteningly white grin and a firm handshake later, Davin felt safe again.
“How are ya, you old bastard!” Jimmy exclaimed. “Come on in!”
They wove through desks, past clean-cut businesspeople with equally white teeth. Trim haircuts for the gents, wild and stylish for the ladies. They all seemed to be in their prime, maybe twenties or thirties, but on closer inspection, some unidentifiable factor hinted at more years than Davin initially thought. One square-jawed fellow emitted a hearty, fake laugh even as he squeezed the life out of a stress ball.
“New receptionist?” Davin asked.
“Nance?” Jimmy said. “Nah. Just filling in for Stacy. She’s on vacation down at Oceanfloor Lodge.”
“Whoa, Oceanfloor. You must pay her well.”
Jimmy dropped into his rolly chair, made a gun with his thumb and finger, and clicked his tongue. “We got good reasons to keep her around.”
Davin sat across the translucent desk as Jimmy tapped the tops of his monitor screens to close them. “Would two of those reasons be located on her chest?”
“Two of many.” Jimmy winked. “So tell me,” he said with wide, hungry, gold-flecked eyes, “What was this super-secret find on the yacht?”
Davin leaned back and interlocked his fingers behind his head. “You really haven’t figured it out yet, huh?”
Jimmy ran his hands over his slicked-back hair, mimicking Davin. “We aren’t all as competent as you, Davy Boy. Tell me. Use small words.”
“I’d rather use a big word,” Davin said, leaning forward, preparing to drop a bomb. In a whisper: “Prima . . . filia.” He smiled and sat back, then frowned. “Guess that was two words.”
“Prima filia, as in . . .” Jimmy made a rolling gesture with his hand, prodding Davin to finish. “The prima filia?”
“That’s right. Sierra Falco. Daughter of Elan Falco, Prime Minister of Carina. Ever heard of it?”
Jimmy steepled his fingers, narrowed his eyes, and studied Davin for a long time. Saying nothing. Hardly moving. Brain apparently weighing the possibility Davin was lying. He wasn’t one for wild goose chases.
“Remember that thing in the news about the prima filia’s yacht getting shitblasted?” Davin asked.
“Yeah,” Jimmy replied. “Thought she died from it.”
Davin allowed a slow grin to form on his face and shook his head. “That’s what they’re saying, but it’s not true.” He fished in his pocket for his datahub, tapped a few buttons to pull up a live video feed of the main room of the Fossa, then turned the screen for Jimmy to see. The transparent central screen enabled Davin to watch Strange and Sierra playing cards on the Fossa as well as Jimmy’s widening eyes. The broker sat forward, examining the moving image embedded in the glass.
“No motherfucking way.”
“Yes motherfucking way,” Davin said. “We were in the Owl area when it happened, saw the activity on our scanners, went to check it out. Some crazy shit happened after we picked her up. Ever heard of the Abramists?”
“The Carinian religion?”
“Yeah. They got it out for Old Man Falco for some reason. The Sagittarians too, I think. I’m not super clear on everything that’s going on, but suffice it to say, it’s some serious shit. Think you can find somebody to pay for the prima filia’s safe return?”
Jimmy slouched back, eyes unblinking and face blank as if he’d seen a ghost. He stared into empty space above Davin’s head. “Mother of God . . .”
Davin shrugged. “Hey, if she’ll pay, I’ll take it.”
“There’s no way you’re getting her back into Carina,” Jimmy said. “They closed down all border gates. They’re not allowing any new trade or communication—”
“I know,” Davin interrupted. “We already tried to send a message to Baha’runa. Got stopped at the first border gate.”
“Which means she may not exactly be getting a ‘safe return.’”
Davin sighed. “Yeah. Was afraid of that.”
“But I can find buyers,” Jimmy said, eyes wild and lips curling predaciously, mental cash register ka-chinging in his head. “Easy. I could make ‘em bid up to any number you want.” He paused, then directed his gaze at Davin. “I want fifty percent.”
“What?” Davin recoiled in his chair. “Hell no. I did the work of finding her. I brought her back here. And I had to escape those crazy Abramist guys who almost blew up the Fossa with—”
“Sixty-forty,” Jimmy said. “You keep sixty, I take forty.”
Davin mulled it over, did some quick mental calculations. Sixty percent divided four ways meant fifteen percent for him. But fifteen percent of a very big number still made for a very big number. And he definitely couldn’t get that very big number without Jimmy.
Then again, he saw a fire in Jimmy’s eyes, blazing behind the sparkles of gold. A fire that would consume anything blocking the path between Jimmy and that huge pile of sharecoin. And when Davin thought about it, a seventeen and half percent cut did sound better than a fifteen percent cut.
“Seventy-thirty,” Davin said. “Or I’ll find someone else to broker the deal. Shouldn’t be too hard.”
Jimmy’s jaw worked as he mulled it over. But the fire in his eyes never went away. Instead, it grew, blazing like a wildfire in the night. His wide grin returned to break the tension.
“Deal.”
The Champion
Chapter Thirty-Five
Sagittarius Arm, on the planet Upraad . . .
Kastor’s boots slammed hard on the middle deck of Radovan’s ship. A fully armored Upraadi wheeled around thirty meters down the side balcony, gun snapping to his shoulder. Kastor was quicker, firing three shots from his semiauto. Three bullets punctured the Upraadi’s coal-gray armor, spraying blood against the steel walls.
More of Kastor’s drop troops pounded behind him. Single shots popped from the decks above and below as the noblemen of Sagittarius squared off with those of Upraad. Hardened nanosteel fists crunched armor, dented chestplates. The frontiermen weren’t prepared to fight worthy foes. They’d grown soft from a lifetime of dealing only with commoners, firing their weapons only at target dummies or the occasional criminal.
An Upraadi shuttle growled by overhead, unsettlingly low, dropping exosuited bodies out its rear hatch. They thudded and rolled on the upper deck, surviving from the metallic protection of their exoskeletons. The shuttle didn’t fare as well, breaking apart in the air and plowing through a greenhouse.
One of the exosuited men swung down from the upper deck onto the side balcony of Kastor’s level. An Upraadi nobleman leaped out from a recess in the wall, gun clacking and spraying rounds. The commoner swiped the weapon away with a powerful swing of his arm and charged the noble. Kastor raised his gun, but the two twirled, struggling for the upper hand. Finally, the noble forced the commoner back and landed a kick in the mechanical exotube running down the commoner’s leg. It snapped, and metal thrust into the flesh of the lowborn’s thigh. Blood painted the deck as the commoner howled horrifically, but then the noble’s fist swung up, cratered his chest, and launched him over the railing.
Kastor put three shots in the nobleman’s helmet, ending him quickly. Shame that so many nobles had to die this day.<
br />
A few meters past the body, Kastor crouched beside a closed hatch. The spoked handle in the middle wouldn’t budge. Hendrik and two other drop troops formed up behind him, then another two swung onto the balcony from the deck above, stacking on the opposite side of the door.
“Ready?” Hendrik asked. He placed a hand on Kastor’s shoulder and planted a thermite charge on the base of the handle. Once back in position behind Kastor, he hit the ignition. The charge burst in a hot spray of sparks, burning until the base turned a superheated orange. It slid down and fell to the floor with a heavy clunk.
Kastor rushed in first. Commoner crewmen and women in greasy coveralls clutched flimsy submachine guns, staring wide-eyed at the intruders. Kastor felt something for them, forced to face adversaries practically invincible to them, wielding weapons that couldn’t penetrate the thinnest nanoflex—until he realized his face was exposed. Bullets bounced off him like a child’s punches, but one stray shot would eventually meet his exposed head if he didn’t act, so he fired, one shot after the other, rounds straight to the chest, misting blood into the eyes of the crewmembers behind. Hendrik stepped in and downed the final two with a single round as they attempted to flee.
A few of their bodies still moved, faintly and pathetically, twitching or settling into death. Shouts ricocheted off the walls from down corridors. Hendrik strode ahead, stepping carefully between the clutter of corpses. Everyone followed. The shouting intensified from down the narrow hallways. A woman screamed. Gunshots pealed in the metallic corridors. Yelps and pained, guttural moans signified the commoners were turning on each other. Kastor picked up his pace, thrusting himself through hatch openings as he followed the sounds. Finally, a woman tripped onto her hands about ten meters ahead, directly in his path. She looked back just as a grimy man with a submachine gun peppered her coverall-clad back. She jerked with each hit, struggling to get away, holes ripping in her clothing.
Kastor leaped forward and grabbed the barrel of the gun, tearing it away from the suddenly terrified commoner.
“I-I’m on your side!” he cried with palms up. “I serve Abelard!” The unshaven fellow pointed at the dead woman nervously. “She was trying to stop us! She’s loyal to Radovan!”
Kastor shoved the butt of the submachine gun into the commoner’s head, knocking him unconscious. Other commoner men, crowding in the adjacent hall, crouched to their knees and set down their weapons.
“Where’s Radovan?” Kastor demanded.
They pointed down a parallel corridor, quickly and sheepishly. Even among the most loyal commoners, life often commanded greater allegiance than lords or lumises. Kastor stormed the direction they pointed. A pair of shirtless commoner brutes let out a wail and charged out of a crew quarters stacked with bunkbeds. They fired the same flimsy submachine guns that looked like they could break at any second. Kastor raised a forearm to shield his face and shot his semiauto one-handed, downing both men. Their lack of covering gave the gaping bullet wounds nowhere to hide. A chaotic mess of blood and flesh mottled the floor.
Ahead, a door made of polished wood paneling marked the transition to noble quarters. Kastor lowered his shoulder and smashed it open with a splitting crack.
He found himself in a starkly different place—wide hallways, brown marble floors, dark fauxwood paneling, polished brass railings, intricate tapestries, elegant music trickling from above, and a huddle of noblewomen in light armor and gold jewelry, gasping at him. Kastor blasted a vase beside them, shattering it into a thousand pieces. The ladies froze in place.
“Radovan,” he said. “Where is he?”
“Don’t speak,” one of them whispered.
Kastor picked out the eldest of them and fired at her arm—caused only a flesh wound. She screamed and recoiled, tripping in her immaculate purple dress. Her perfect braids remained in place as she rolled in pain.
“Where is he?” Kastor shouted.
But they could answer, a figure in full, coal-gray armor slid around the corner, already shooting. Bullets ripped through tapestries, tore chunks from the walls. Kastor rolled away, leaped behind the huddle of women, and took potshots around them. Another armored Upraadi showed up. Both kept their weapons trained on the frenzied noblewomen. Kastor didn’t want to have to grab one of them. He didn’t want to use a human shield. A Sagittarian warrior never sacrificed the lives of the innocent to defeat the guilty.
Hendrik saved him from having to. The drop team leader dashed through the busted doorway and put a round into the neck of one Upraadi soldier. Another drop trooper rocketed through the glass wall on the edge of the ship and deposited two rounds into the other Upraadi’s back. The rest of the drop team poured in after them.
Kastor trained his weapon on the noblewomen. “I’ll ask again. Where is Radovan?”
“Don’t say a word,” the wounded woman hissed, hand clasped around her bleeding arm.
Hendrik stepped closer, eyeing her. “I know this woman. She’s no mere nobility. She’s Radovan’s queen matriarch.”
The woman clamped her jaw, features fine and chiseled like Upraadi stone. She denied nothing. Kastor felt a weight drop in his chest. He knew what this meant, what he had to do. The Upraadi royal family needed to be eradicated if the planet would ever be turned over to the commoner revolutionaries—to Abelard.
The queen matriarch ground her teeth and glared her fiery eyes at Kastor. “Your greedy lumis will never command the free people of Upraad. Upraadis are free! We are—”
BANG.
The booming noise startled everyone in the room.
The frontier queen’s head snapped back, spattered blood and lumps of pale, pink brain across the fine red carpeting and sleek marble.
Silence.
Kastor had closed off the part of his mind that considered and deliberated. He thought nothing, felt nothing. His finger had tweaked the trigger without hesitation. How it had to be. He lifted his to the other women, so frozen in shock they didn’t breathe.
“Radovan’s reign has ended. Tell me where he hides or suffer the same fate as your lady.”
The youngest of them stepped forward. “Engine room,” the pretty girl said with averted eyes.
Kastor nodded at Hendrik. The drop leader pointed at a door marked “Stair C.”
* * *
The Sagittarians surged down the compact, winding stairwell, boots clanging in the echo chamber of tile and fauxwood. A door swiped open at the second-lowest deck and armed servants in crisp uniforms streamed out.
Kastor took aim. “Stop!”
They fired reflexively. As did Kastor. Weak bullets pelted his chest, abdomen, and legs, smashing flat like coins and dropping onto the white tile stairs. Hendrik and a few other drop troopers fired along with Kastor, their rounds shredding the commoner servants, blasting ugly, messy holes through their uniformed torsos.
“Wait!” one of them shouted at his comrades between the hail of gunfire. “They’re offworlders! Stop—”
His pleading was cut short by a bullet to the neck, his blood painting a daisy on the wall. Just like that, within seconds, the servants slid down the stairwell in a lifeless pile. Victims of friendly fire.
Kastor leaped over them and into the room from which they had come—a long lounge with a handful of closed doors along the side, two closed double doors at the far end, and a huddle of lady servants crouching in the center of four white couches. Some gasped and whispered as their frightened eyes fixated on Kastor. He lowered his weapon and raised an open palm, a gesture of harmlessness.
The first door Kastor tried was locked. So was the second.
“Who’s in the rooms?” Kastor whispered to the group of servants.
They stared but gave no response. Hendrik leaned through the doorway, aiming his rifle one way, then the other, then lowered it.
“Kastor.” He jerked his head back for the champion to follow. “Engine room is below.”
Kastor went after him. On the bottom deck, the drop troops crept down a long, n
arrow corridor of steel, lined with pipes and status screens. At the end, a thick metal hatch appeared worthy of shielding the engine room.
Then the overhead lights went out. Only the pale blue light of the status screens remained. Kastor threw himself against a wall, heartrate quickening as the darkness settled in.
“Visuals up!” Hendrik whispered in a hoarse voice. The drop troops’ face shields slid back into place.
Soft pats of boots continued down the hall. Kastor followed with caution, glancing at the stairwell every few seconds. They were in a bad position. Ahead, he noticed something odd. As he stepped forward, he caught sight of a screen’s light momentarily distort, as if passing through a prism. It took too long to register—only a second or two, but too long all the same. They had walked into a trap.
“They’re cloaked!” Kastor shouted. “Fire! Fire!”
The corridor erupted in deafening gunfire, muzzle flashes strobing air, illuminating each drop trooper recoil and fall, each cammy-armored Upraadi materialize as a round broke their cloaking. Kastor felt a metallic limb hook his midsection and haul him back toward the stairwell. Once they returned to the light, Hendrik let go and slid back his face shield.
“We’ll be able to see them in the ligh—”
Hendrik yelped and lurched forward, one hand clawing behind his back at wherever the bullet had hit. Kastor grabbed him and pulled him up the stairs, moving slower with each step.
“Drop me,” Hendrik said. “Drop me here!”
Kastor eased him down and leaped up another half-dozen steps to lie among the servants’ bodies. Both warriors aimed their weapons at the doorway. Not two seconds later, the air around the opening below distorted. They fired as fast as their guns allowed, bullets tearing huge holes into the door and splintering the fauxwood paneling. One cloaked soldier materialized as he fell. Another, just behind him, materialized and doubled over, holding a knee that had been blown backwards by a rifle round. More gunshots returned from below, making sudden explosions of tile shards and taking out the ceiling lights.
Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series Page 19
