The Dangerous Type

by Loren Rhoads

  “You don’t want to go through the hoops I did to get my position,” she summarized.

  “No lie,” he assured her. He decided to be honest with her. “Look. Coni is kind of freaked by who you are, what you’ve done.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “But we all understand that this Thallian guy is a mass murderer of epic scale. He must have a pretty wicked lair wherever he is. If we just drop the kid off and turn the family over to the authorities, there’s gonna be all-out war prying him out to bring him to justice.”

  Raena didn’t dispute any of that. She smoothed the padding back into place. The escape pod looked as good as new.

  “We believe you can execute him,” Mykah said as she crawled out into the corridor. “We believe you will bring justice to him.”

  “That’s my plan,” she said. “He started this, but I mean to stop it.”

  * * *

  Sloane was asleep when his request to question Thallian’s minions was finally approved. He slapped himself awake, trying to think coherently. He needed a plan.

  Because of Kai’s weapons-free policy, he couldn’t bring anything like a weapon into the prison, not a gun and nothing with an edge. He was certain Thallian had trained his soldiers to withstand a simple beat-down. Sloane needed a quick, easy, and reasonably untraceable way to torture the men into revealing their homeworld.

  That meant a side trip to the pharmacist.

  CHAPTER 15

  “All right, Jain,” Raena said as she flicked on the lights. “Time to go.”

  He woke raggedly, disoriented. “Where are we going?”

  “Escape pods.”

  He pushed himself into sitting up and thrust his feet into his boots, rubbing his face. “What’s happened?”

  “We’re coming to the edge of the satellite field. Time for all the planet-bound members of this crew to disembark.”

  “I’m not a member of your crew.”

  “Of course not,” she agreed easily.

  The attack didn’t come when she expected it: in the cell with the chair at hand to use as a weapon. The boy was cool-headed enough to wait until they had almost reached the pod bay, so that he’d have a shorter distance to drag her body, less chance of being seen by her crew. Jain spun just outside the pod bay’s doors, where the corridor was narrow and she didn’t have much room to dodge.

  Not that she tried to dodge. She caught the elbow he’d aimed at her skull. Wrenched it down behind his back. Slammed his head into bulkhead.

  Jain tangled his leg in hers and threw them both to the deck. While she scrambled off of him, he yanked the Stinger from her holster.

  As he rolled over to take aim, she kicked his wrist hard enough to numb his fingers. The Stinger flipped out of his grasp. Hauling him across the floor with one hand, she coiled the other arm around his throat. He’d seen her break a man’s neck. The fight drained out of him.

  “That was a good attempt, Jain,” she congratulated. “You can be proud of yourself. You got my gun.”

  Then she judiciously applied pressure until he blacked out.

  Once she’d gotten back to her feet, Mykah stepped out of the other escape pod. “How’d that work out for you?” he asked, another Stinger held loosely in his hand.

  “I think it went pretty well.” Raena hoisted the unconscious boy onto her back and dumped him onto the bench seat of the escape pod Vezali had modified. “Oh, good,” she said as she came back out into the hall. “You found him a change of clothes.”

  “I figured what he was wearing was probably getting a little rank.” Mykah offered Raena the Stinger he was holding, hilt first.

  She slipped it into her holster, leaving the disabled one on the floor. “Thank you for everything, Mykah.”

  He nodded, studiously cool. “Thank you again for busting me out of my old life.”

  “Least I could do.” She retrieved the comm bracelet from the locker across from the pods and slipped it back onto her left wrist. Then she strapped on a jet-bike helmet. “You guys know what to do?”

  “Spring the pod, set off the explosives, and run and hide. In that order and no other.”

  She nodded.

  “Everyone else is in the cockpit, waiting to hear I’ve strapped myself down.”

  “Let’s do it, then.”

  He pulled her into a hug. Raena clung to him, enjoying a moment of pure animal comfort. Mykah gave her strength and courage in the only way he felt allowed, the only way she could accept it. Silently.

  Then he stepped back and grinned at her. “Go kill that motherfucker.”

  “I’m on it.” She crouched back into the pod and locked the door behind her. Mykah gave her a few minutes to strap Jain into the crash web. She noticed the boy’s face was developing a nice bruise. That ought to add some verisimilitude to his account. She patted his knee and wedged herself into her hiding place. Then she pulled the panel into place after her and tightened its bolts from the inside. She triggered the comm bracelet on her wrist and said, “I’m set.”

  Outside the pod on the other side of the airlock, Mykah toggled open the outer hatch, then released the explosive bolts, and ejected the pod. Raena was grateful for her helmet as the impact of the escape pod’s rockets shuddered through the minimally padded compartment.

  Before long, gravity took over. She and Jain plummeted toward the planet below, toward their fates.

  * * *

  When he arrived at the prison, Sloane discovered the reason that Kai Planetary Security had delayed in accepting his request to question the prisoners. Of the three in custody, two had attempted suicide. One succeeded. The second had been found only after he’d lapsed into a coma. It was believed that his brain had gone too long without oxygen. If and when he woke, nothing coherent would be learned from him. There was no indication what the thugs had ingested or how they had smuggled it into their cells.

  The Gnik in charge of the prison was mortified. Normally, he dealt with professional gamblers, casual shoplifters, con artists who preyed on tourists, and brawlers now and then. Now, when he felt he was under galactic scrutiny, when he was entrusted with truly dangerous criminals, they’d mocked his custody. He lived in terror that the rest of the galaxy would judge him as inept.

  Sloane fought the smirk off his face as he swore to tell no one. Then he was escorted to a cell and locked inside with the surviving prisoner.

  The middle-aged man had been stripped of his clothing. Face in his hands, he sat on the rough stone bench that served as his bed. Graying curls spiraled across his chest. He was lean, but not dangerously muscled. He hadn’t spoken since he’d woken up from the sleep grenade.

  Sloane pulled a mask up from his collar and over the lower half of his face. The man didn’t look up at him to notice.

  Then Sloane struck the canister of RespirAll hard against the stone wall. The can’s seam cracked. Icy gas numbed his fingers as it whooshed out. He dropped the can and kicked it over toward the prisoner. In small doses, RespirAll mitigated asthma in humans brought on by breathing alien air. Large doses worked as a kind of truth serum. In fact, it was sometimes difficult to shut people up after they’d inhaled too much.

  The sound of the gas got the prisoner’s attention. He grimaced at Sloane, not entirely sane.

  Sloane crossed the room, standing over the man with an image of the unclaimed bodies in Kai City’s morgue in his gloved hand. “Revan Thallian I know.” He held up a still of Raena taken from the news footage of the fight. “Raena Zacari I know.” He shuffled through the others and held up the picture of Thallian’s clone. “Zacari captured the boy and stole the Thallian family’s transport. I want to know where you came from.”

  “We’re not allowed to know that,” the man rasped, still grimacing. “We’re not allowed to know where we live. We might find out how to escape. We might know which direction to run to freedom.”

  Sloane help up the final image, Thallian’s wanted poster.

  The prisoner launched himself off the
stone slab. He bowled Sloane over backward, clawing after the image.

  “Can’t see that! Can’t show it! The galaxy will find him!”

  Sloane’s gas mask got knocked askew in the melee. He tried to crawl out from under the madman, but the prisoner had gone into a frenzy that held no thought for his own safety.

  Sloane hammered at the prisoner with his fists, hoping to beat some sense back into the man. “Where is Thallian?” he demanded. “Where’s he hiding? He’ll come after you if you don’t tell me. I need to get to him first.”

  He didn’t get any coherent answer before the cavalry, however unwelcome, burst through the door and hit them both with stun sticks. Apparently prison guards on Kai were allowed to carry weapons.

  * * *

  When Jain woke, he had been dreaming. In his dream, his mother held him tightly in her arms. He felt safe. He felt loved. He felt unique.

  Then he opened his eyes and found himself cradled in a crash web inside one of the Raptor’s escape pods. Strapped in beside him was a change of clothing—his dress uniform, in fact—some toiletries, and his rucksack. A holster held a Stinger with two shots fired.

  On his other side sprawled the indigo dress he’d found in the closet on Brunzell. As he lifted it to his face to get one last breath of a real girl, a recording sphere rolled out of its folds and onto the floor. Jain scrabbled after it with his foot.

  Raena hadn’t come with him. She’d left the dress as evidence that he’d had her. It was scarcely better than facing his father empty-handed.

  Jain closed his eyes, feeling gentle ocean waves rocking the pod. He must have been out for the whole ride down. He wondered how close Raena had gotten him to home. How much information had his brother given her? Did she know exactly where the city was? What would she do with that knowledge?

  Nothing, it seemed, at this moment.

  Jain unstrapped himself from the crash web. He crouch-walked across the little pod and tried the comm. Unsurprisingly, it was fried. It didn’t really matter. The family would have monitored his descent. Uncle Merin or the boys would be along soon to collect him.

  Using the toiletries, Jain washed up as much as possible and combed his hair. He put on the clean clothes and ejected the garments he’d worn in captivity. He absolutely never wanted to see those things again.

  Then there was nothing to do but wait. Without tools to repair the communications console, he could make no contact with the outside world. He couldn’t even check the time.

  He sat back on the bench seat and tried to relax. After a minute, he picked up the recording sphere. Balancing it in his palm, he stared at his warped reflection on it. The black hair and silver eyes were exactly like his father’s. The only thing to set him apart was the huge bruise purpling his face from hairline to jaw, a souvenir from Raena slamming his head into the bulkhead. He supposed he ought to thank her for that. At least it looked like he had tried to capture her.

  What had Raena recorded on the ball? Was it the video of the interrogation where she shamed him? Was it a message for Jain, or for his father? Jain wished the comm were working, so he could check the ball before he turned it over to the family.

  Funny how she’d taught him to learn as much as possible about a situation before he leapt into action. She’d made him question his father’s motives, his father’s love: things he’d never doubted in his life. If Jain had been engineered to cry, he might have—except for the fear that his rescue party would find him weeping.

  He wondered where Raena was. Had she managed to escape?

  Maybe his father was chasing her even now.

  Jain was ashamed to find himself hoping he’d have some respite before he had to face his father and lie about having lost control of Raena Zacari.

  * * *

  As small as her tomb had been big, the space inside the comm console was surprisingly cozy. Raena listened to Jain rustling around the escape pod, but as long as she kept quiet, there seemed to be no danger that he’d break into the console and discover her.

  The whole pod oscillated, buoyed by the ocean outside. Raena didn’t know much about the Thallian homeworld, not even what they called it among themselves, other than that water covered most of what survived of it. Jimi’s photo of the sabershark had given her enough information to identify the planet. From there, she was able to find its scientific designation, thanks to an old encyclopedia that referenced the environmental devastation rained down on it after the War in retribution for the Thallian family’s crimes. When the criminals themselves couldn’t be located, their homeworld had been executed in their stead. No one seemed to suspect the mass murderers still inhabited the planet.

  Raena didn’t know where on the planet they had hidden. She was relying on the family’s reduced circumstances to have made all their possessions precious. They wouldn’t destroy the pod or abandon it if they thought there was anything they could salvage from it. Besides, she was certain that Jonan would want to analyze the pod’s external recording of the final moments of Revan’s transport. She hoped that Mykah’s crew had been able to pull off the escape sequence as planned.

  If not, she might find herself chasing Thallian across the galaxy after the transport. The thought grimly amused her.

  Although her cubbyhole was dark inside, Vezali had done a good job with the ventilation. The air blowing on Raena’s face felt fresh and slightly cool. All in all, she found it a very comfortable little space. The rocking made her sleepy. Smiling, Raena let her eyes close. This might be the last rest she got for a while.

  * * *

  Voices woke her. The helmet and the mag shielding on her hideaway made the words hard to decipher, but their tones seemed excited and happy. Jain’s homecoming was apparently welcoming. She was glad, for the boy’s sake. Let him enjoy it while he could.

  After the initial gabble of voices, she could not mistake Jonan’s. He stomped into the pod and flung himself down on the bench seat. Raena held her breath and willed her heart to stop bashing its way out of her chest. She wanted to hear what he said.

  “You alone escaped?” Thallian demanded. The sound of Jonan’s voice raised goosebumps on Raena’s skin. Her body remembered how to fear him.

  “Yes, Father,” Jain said. “I’m sorry. I got careless. She attacked me, and when I woke, I was in this pod.”

  “So you don’t know what caused the Raptor to explode?”

  Surprised by the casually dropped news, Jain stuttered, “N-no, sir.”

  “Did you bring me anything of hers?”

  Raena couldn’t make out Jain’s response, but she had the feeling he wouldn’t give his father the recording ball. Kid was learning to be cautious.

  * * *

  “This was hers,” Jain said, pouring the blue dress into his father’s lap. He watched his father rub the silken fabric between his fingers, play with the shimmer of the diamond clips, raise the bodice to his face, and breathe deeply.

  “You had her,” his father sighed.

  “Yes, sir,” Jain said cautiously. “Please forgive me for not bringing her to you.” He realized belatedly that there was no way to lie his way out of this.

  The silence stretched uncomfortably. Jain didn’t dare look up from the toes of his father’s boots. The bruise throbbed across his temple. He hoped it looked as if he’d struck his head hard enough to damage his memory. He didn’t want to admit that Raena sent him away to cover her escape.

  His father stood suddenly, jerking upward like a puppet. “First we must get you home,” he said cheerily. “The boys will certainly have traced the other escape pods by then. Merin can collect them from the meteor belt.”

  * * *

  Raena heard a series of clangs, which sounded as if cables were being clipped to the pod. Shortly afterward, it was winched aboard some kind of oceancraft. It felt like flying to be hoisted into the unseen vessel’s hold. There the pod was lashed to the deck. After the voices went away, the ship began to move. Eyes closed in her private darkness, Raena tr
ied to determine the direction of their movement. They seemed to be going . . . down?

  That would make sense, she supposed. If the surface of the planet had been scraped bare and its atmosphere poisoned—using Templar technology, just to make the justice that much more poetic—then the safest place for the Thallians to hide would be under the sea. Raena wondered if anything else still lived in it. Probably, to provide a cover against ships scanning for life from space.

  Working as quietly as she could, Raena unscrewed the bolts holding the panel of the communications console in place. She eased the panel open to find herself still in total darkness.

  She gently set the panel against the bench seat and felt her way across the pod. Its hatch gaped open. She leaned against the doorframe, listening. It was awfully quiet in the dark hold outside.

  Raena was grateful for the darkness—very conservative, these Thallians—since it meant that they hadn’t felt it necessary to post a guard over the escape pod. They honestly had no idea she’d stowed away. Meeting Vezali through Mykah had been a stroke of the purest luck.

  Raena pulled back the padding on the pod’s walls and armed herself. Her years in the tomb had given her the skills and sensitive fingertips to do the job while completely blind. She quickly discovered she’d taken more from Mykah’s horde than she could carry, which meant more than was probably necessary. She filled her holsters, the sheaths in her boots, the back of her belt, and the rucksack she’d brought along. Anything more than that and she would clank as she walked. Still, one never knew when she’d need concussion grenades or a sharpshooter rifle.

  She collected everything else and stuffed it inside the communication console. It was fairly easy to disassemble a grenade and rig a tripwire. Then she gently replaced the comm console’s plate. Anyone who poked into her hiding place was going to get a surprise.

  She crept out of the pod to explore her immediate surroundings. The cargo hold stood otherwise empty. The tricky part then would be to leave the hold without attracting notice. She’d need to find a hole to hide in somewhere on the submarine until they reached Thallian’s base. And it wouldn’t hurt to find something to eat if she could. No telling when she’d have another opportunity.