by JC Cassels
Her grip on his arm tightened and she drew comfort from the warm, solid strength beneath her touch. Both brothers were fit, but Chase was more heavily muscled. Bo wasn’t sure whether to worry, or find his bulk reassuring.
“You look beautiful, Marissa,” he said, misreading her hesitation. “You’ve only got some discoloration around your eyes and mouth.”
“Am I – Chase, am I badly scarred?”
He hesitated briefly. “No,” came his gentle voice. “Your skin is red and flaky where you were burned, but other than that you are gorgeous.”
Relief washed over her, lifting the fear that settled around her when his brother had given his reasons for leaving her behind. Taking a deep, cleansing breath, Bo squared her shoulders and nodded. “Thank you.”
Chase covered her hand with his own and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Which way are we going?”
“Edge?”
Edge sighed. “Turn left. I’ll talk you through it.”
“What edge?” Chase asked.
“This way,” Bo said, following her brother’s directions.
Running her hand lightly along the handrail that lined the corridor, she strode briskly along.
“Do you know where we’re going?”
Bo nodded. “More or less. The lift bank should be just ahead.”
“Dev told me that someone wants to kill you…”
“Dev?” she said. “Is that your brother’s name?”
Chase hesitated. “You mean you don’t know?”
Bo shook her head.
“What did he tell you his name was?”
“Darien Roarke,” she said. “But he admitted it was an alias. He never told me his real name.”
The hand rail stopped and Bo knew from the hum and whine behind the wall that they had reached the lift bank. Before Chase could reach for the call panel, the nearest lift doors parted. Bo stepped in, pulling Chase with her.
“What deck?” Chase asked.
Bo shrugged. “Are there any lit?”
“Yeah…” he trailed off.
“We’ll get off at the next stop.” She knew Edge well enough to know that the lift wouldn’t open again until she was on the right deck for Tennova’s state room.
The doors hissed shut and the antigravity field engaged, lifting the capsule in its tube.
“Marissa, you can be as secretive as my brother at times,” Chase said. “Why do I get the feeling that you know a lot more than you’re willing to share?”
“Like your brother? What did you say his name was? Dev?”
“Yeah, Dev. What do you call him when you’re…” Chase broke off.
“Alone together?” She supplied.
“Yeah, let’s go with that.”
“I call him flyboy.” Bo smiled. “It seems to amuse him.”
Chase chuckled. “Flyboy, that’s a good one.”
Neither spoke for a brief moment. The silence in the capsule broken only by the steady hum of the antigrav field.
Chase shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. “Marissa, did you ever get a good look at my brother?”
“Not without the prosthetics.” Bo canted her head at him. “Why? Is there something wrong with him?”
“You never got a good look at him and you don’t know his name and you… Wow!” Chase drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I get it.” He chuckled. “Amazing. No wonder he’s crazy about you.”
“I don’t understand.”
The hum of the field changed pitch and the lift doors parted with a hiss, Bo made no move to exit.
“It’s clear,” Edge said.
“My brother’s name is Dev Fossey,” Chase said, “and he’s nobody from nowhere. We’ve got no family but each other. We grew up in a children’s home.”
“Come out and turn left. There’s a hand rail running along the corridor.”
Bo’s grip on Chase’s arm tightened and they stepped out of the lift. Reaching out, she trailed her left hand along the wall until she found the handrail.
“You’re war orphans?” She focused on keeping pace with him.
She marked her distance traveled by the repeated flashes of overhead lights as she passed under them. Mellow sconces marked the doorways to luxury suites.
“Yep. When we left, Dev went into the Consular Guard and I joined the racing circuit.”
Bo’s eyes narrowed. “He told me he raced.”
“He does,” Chase assured her. “I retired after I won the Catarrh last year. I’m going to be his crew chief. My brother doesn’t have to lie about his accomplishments or his qualifications. Don’t tell him I said so, but he masters pretty much anything he sets his mind to. He’s brilliant, but you didn’t hear it from me. There would be no living with him.”
Bo laughed. “I understand. I have a brilliant brother myself.”
“I love you, too, brat.”
Running her fingertips lightly along the rails, she didn’t break stride as the rails started and stopped for doorways. “He told you he was out of the IC?”
“Yeah. At first, I thought this was a pleasure cruise. Darien Roarke is his gambler persona. This hasn’t been a typical Darien Roarke outing. Those are usually tourneys at some groundside resort, three days max, quick in, quick out, no hanging around. This is different. There are a lot of government agents here – a lot of covert operatives. A lot of people I don’t want to run into in some dark street somewhere. There’s no escape route. Dev always has an out. That makes me think this wasn’t his idea. He doesn’t like it, either. I think they threatened to do something to me to make him take this job.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He brought me with him and he’s been even more paranoid than normal ever since we got here.”
In the distance, a housekeeping drone rattled down the corridor.
“You’re almost there,” Edge said. “Tennova’s suite is on the other side of the corridor, but don’t cross until I tell you.”
Bo nodded her understanding. Ahead of her, a door hissed opened and she heard a woman’s laugh and a man’s low whisper. As they neared, the woman laughed again.
“Rough night dear?” she called out to Bo.
Bo lifted a hand to her forehead and smiled weakly. “Not so loud, please,” she whispered. “My head feels like it’s about to explode.”
“I’ll bet he was worth it!” the other woman giggled as she passed.
Chase made a small noise and jumped in surprise.
The man’s low laughter joined hers. Eventually the sounds of their muted conversation faded.
“She pinched me,” Chase said.
“She has good taste.”
“Okay… slow down and… stop. Turn to your right…”
“We’re here,” Bo said dragging him to a stop.
“Where is here?”
“The state room directly across the corridor.”
“Over there,” Bo pointed.
The door to Tennova’s state room slid open.
“Internal sensor sweep says the suite is clean and you are alone,” her brother told her over her com-implant.
“How did you do that? Marissa, are you IC?”
Bo shook her head and nudged him into motion. She dragged him towards the darker shadow of the open doorway. “No, I’m not IC.”
The lights of the stateroom flared on as the door slid shut behind them.
Bo released her hold on Chase’s arm and peered around the suite struggling to make out anything that would help her find those schematics. “I take it you don’t have eyes in here, do you?”
“I do not,” Edge said. “Security cams end in the corridors. Best I can manage is a sensor sweep.”
“Marissa, who are you talking to?”
Not for the first time, she wished she could see. “I can’t tell you that exactly, Chase.” She made her way carefully around the outer room of the suite.
“Are you crazy, too? Are you hearing voices?”
Bo chuckled.
“It depends on who you ask,” she said. “I’ve got a com-implant and an open line, that’s all I can tell you.”
“Dev said someone wants to kill you. That’s why he asked me to stay with you.”
“He thinks the ditoxicin attack was meant for me,” Bo said. “But like you keep saying, he’s paranoid.”
“I’m starting to think he’s saner than he seems.”
“Good, then you can help me look.”
“What are we looking for?”
“This state room belongs to a man named Tennova. He allegedly has some schematics, plans for constructing a very dangerous new type of weapon. He’s offered it for sale in the Sub-socia. Your brother and other agents are trying to get them before he can sell them to the wrong people.”
“Wait a minute, where do you fit into this?”
“I’m not IC, but my client is. He’s working with your brother.”
“Dev doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”
Bo shook her head.
Chase took a deep breath and released it in a fit of frustration. “He wouldn’t like it if he knew where you were, would he?”
“Probably not.” She smiled. “Are you going to help me look, or are you going to stand there and be disapproving?”
“I can be disapproving while I help you look.”
“Now if you were a set of weapon schematics, where would you hide?” she asked, opening drawers and running her hands over Tennova’s personal effects.
A few minutes passed in silence before Chase spoke again. “You realize the odds of your finding anything are incredibly slim. You can’t see anything. They could be sitting out in plain view and you’d never find them.”
“That’s what I’ve got you for, handsome.”
Chase heaved a sigh. “The things I do for that brother of mine.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was one thing to hunt for a data card when you could see, it was entirely something different to hunt for one when the best you could do was make out fuzzy smears of color. Bo’s fingers ached from rifling carefully through Tennova’s personal effects.
Bo slid the drawer shut and backed away from the cabinet, suddenly disoriented. “Hell, I can’t even remember where the door is,” she muttered.
The door slid open and Bo turned towards the sound.
“What the hell…”
“Chase? What did you find?”
“Do you remember that guy in the yellow methane breather suit that Dev was saying poisoned you?”
“What about him?”
“I think it was Tennova.” He came through the doorway holding something large and yellow in front of him.
“You found the suit?”
“Yep,” Chase said. “Looks like it. So my little brother wasn’t so paranoid after all.”
A small smile curled her lips. “Apparently not.” She pointed at the yellow smear. “Is that all you could find? Nothing that could be schematics or plans or anything like that?”
Chase shook his head. “No, sorry.” He hefted the suit. “This was it. I didn’t even see any more of those ditoxicin squibs Dev was talking about.”
Bo bit her lip. “I’m not sorry about that,” she said. “That stuff is evil.”
“It sure scared my brother,” Chase said. “That says a lot. Look, now that we found this, don’t we have something solid to take to the captain? I mean, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in these cases?”
“Ordinarily, yes,” she said. “But this isn’t about some random assault. This was an assassination attempt.” She bit her lip and cast her blurry gaze around the stateroom. “I’m not leaving here without those schematics. There’s too much at stake.”
“Shit, brat, I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention and he got past me,” Edge said over her implant. “Tennova’s coming.”
“Do we have time to get out?”
In answer, the door to the stateroom slid open. Bo heard the unmistakable whine of an energy pistol set to full.
“Well, well,” Tennova’s voice came from the door.
Bo turned as he entered.
“It would appear I have uninvited guests.”
The dark silhouette that was Tennova turned slightly towards Chase. “I wouldn’t do what you’re thinking about doing if I were you.”
The door slid shut behind him with a solid thump. Tennova moved and gestured with his pistol. “Go stand next to Marissa, please, while I figure out what to do with you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Blade tossed the silver plaques into the center of the table, calling the current bid and raising. Ordinarily, he loved the thrill of matching his skills against other players and the high that came with winning. This time, however, he was over it. The tourney had long since lost its appeal. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made for Bo to remain on the liner, placing herself in danger. It was unlikely that the men who had kidnapped her father had gone to the effort of keeping him alive. He’d spent hours poring over the documents detailing Mondhuic succession.
As the next in line, her uncle Royce had the most to gain. He had been the one to bring Bo into the line of fire. At the first opportunity, he abandoned her to the care of a man he didn’t know while he allegedly pursued leads into her father’s whereabouts. With both Bo and her father neutralized, Royce would wield a great deal of political power in the Second Sector. As a rule, Blade mistrusted IC operatives. In his experience, their motives were seldom straightforward. They did nothing without layers upon layers of reasons, laying the foundation for countless possible courses of action. It was all part of the training.
Settling back in his seat, he studied the faces of the other players. No, he didn’t trust Royce Barron any more than he trusted that the woman tapping her game cards on the edge of the table was going to fold this hand. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that she believed she had the beginnings of a perfect Five-Point. The wagering came around to him again and he tossed another stack of silver pieces into the center of the table. She had always done well in the initial draw, but she had no feel for the randomizing field. No matter her excitement over her hand so far, she would pull her final game cards out of the randomizing field too quickly. She was impatient and excitable.
Behind his sunshades, he glanced around for any sign of Tennova’s return. After the last hand, Tennova had excused himself. Blade held to his seat waiting for him to rejoin the table. As the play stretched on, there had been no sign of Tennova. A vague feeling of unease crept up the back of his neck. Blade’s one comfort was that his brother and Bo were safely in his stateroom.
The randomizing field on the table fluttered in a tiny glitch. Blade glanced around at the other players and other tables to see if anyone else had noticed. No one gave any indication of having seen the glitch. He didn’t like glitches. Something had to cause a glitch. He didn’t believe in random coincidence.
The interface display on his sun shades flickered to life of its own volition. Blade reached into his pocket for the Inner Circle issue data reader finding it active. He keyed the command to switch off the display, but it flashed rudely at him, stubbornly remaining active. The dealer called the countdown on the hand. Turning his attention back to the game cards sitting on the table, he picked them up and held them in the randomizing field, timing his retrieval of them. He plucked them from the field and tucked them in with the rest of his hand.
Fighting back an annoyed twist of his lips, he realized too late that, in his distraction, he’d miscalculated. The Five-Point he’d been counting on failed to materialize. The dealer signaled the end of the hand and the randomizing field faded. Blade moved the hand holding his game cards to the edge of the table. When he did, the game cards flashed and their values changed from a Lowball set to a perfect Five-Point.
Blade studied the faces of the other players, alert for any indication that they, too had been the beneficiaries of a technical glitch.
“Do I have your attention, Agent Devon?�
� The words flashed across his heads up display.
Reaching into his pocket, Blade touched his data reader.
“Yes.” He keyed his response. “Who are you?”
“Never mind that. Tennova has returned to his stateroom. Bo and your brother are in danger. They went to Tennova’s stateroom to search for the schematics.”
“Not likely.”
“You don’t know Bo very well. She had to find out for herself.”
The text faded, only to be replaced by surveillance footage of Bo, holding tightly to Chase’s arm, disappearing into Tennova’s suite. His jaw clenched.
Blade placed his game cards on the table, face up. “I believe that’s a Five-Point,” he said. With a nod to the dealer. “Deal me out and transfer this to my account.”
Without waiting for confirmation, he pushed his chair away from the table and rose. He left the gaming lounge without a backward glance. Once in the corridor outside, he pulled the data reader from his pocket and immediately put a tracer on the signal coming into his sunshades.
“That won’t work.”
“The hell it won’t,” he muttered.
The text once again faded to show him a surveillance image of himself in real time. Blade glanced up at the surveillance camera just ahead of him.
“Where are you?” Blade flipped through streams of data on his reader.
“Not close enough to stop Tennova from killing her. Please stop trying to track me and get moving before he kills them both. You’re running out of time, flyboy!”
His steps faltered with the last word. Flyboy? With a muttered expletive, Blade broke into a run.
***
“Thank you for making this so easy for me,” Tennova said. “They told me you’d come to me willingly. I wasn’t sure what they meant by that, but I’m happy to see they were right.”
“Who are they?” Chase asked. “Why do they want Marissa dead?”
“I don’t know. As long as they’re willing to take care of some particularly nasty gambling debts I’ve racked up, I don’t really care.”
