by Natalie Grey
Jodu slipped it into the pocket of his coat with a smile. “I will tell your sister that I believe your return to the Yennai Corporation will cause no undue problems.”
“Do that.” Uleq snarled, and he pushed his way back out of the room with Crallus at his heels.
“Please, let us offer you refreshment while the ship is readied.” Jodu must have brass balls, Crallus thought, to engage with Uleq again. Far safer just to let him leave. But the Brakalon didn’t flinch as Uleq looked back at him. “It will be only a few minutes, but space travel is so uncivilized. A nice meal, perhaps?”
Uleq paused, and Crallus prayed.
Then Uleq nodded. He allowed himself to be shown to a table and sat in silence as food and drinks were brought and the servers melted away. Then he looked at Crallus and said simply,
“I’m going to enjoy watching them die.”
12
“I hate stations.” Jeltor sounded pained as he looked around at the interior of Virtue Station. “It’s always the very worst sorts that try to take shelter in places like this. And no matter what they do with the decor, one can never forget how unnatural it is to be making a permanent home in space.”
Tafa thought this was more than a bit ridiculous, given the fact that the Jotun couldn’t leave their home planet’s seas without their robotic power suits, but she didn’t mention that.
“Are you coming, or aren’t you?” She braced a hand on one hip.
“I’ll come,” Jeltor confirmed, with the put-upon tone of someone who is only doing a favor for a friend. But I won’t like it, his voice indicated.
Tafa was in too good of a mood to care. She set off at a quick pace—well, for her short legs—and climbed four levels from the glitz and soft music of the banks. Barnabas had transferred money into an account she could access and told her to buy whatever she wished for the next few weeks on the ship. He’d advised her that if for some reason the Shinigami had to leave suddenly, she should find lodging and he would pay for it when he returned.
Why he would have to leave suddenly…he hadn’t said.
Tafa planned to get clothes and toiletries—her one set of clothing needed to be washed. She’d looked like a child playing dress-up in human clothes the last time she washed hers. Plus, human toothbrushes just did not work in Yofu mouths, and there were a few things even the Shinigami couldn’t synthesize.
But first, she wanted to look at art supplies.
She’d done her research, and she knew there was a shop on this level that had paints and brushes. It was quieter up here. The first couple of levels on either side of the main banking level had to do with Yennai Corporation business in all its forms: parts, information, mercenaries, money. The rest of the station was only tangentially related.
She liked this level. Someone was playing the flute, and the hallways were clearer. Shopkeepers chatted with one another and were sharing tea, and a few called out greetings. Jeltor seemed to take this as a personal insult, but Tafa only smiled and shook her head at him.
Her family was dead. This should trouble her, but all she felt was relief. Her parents should have died long ago, before their years of torment—and after that ordeal, death was a mercy. She mourned their passing and welcomed it in equal measure.
And Mustafee had deserved to die. When Tafa asked, the ship confirmed that Barnabas was hunting down the remaining members of the Boreir Group and that they would face Justice. That made her happy. Between the ones who had used her as an example, and the ones who had not intervened, she had no warm feelings for any of them.
She was free now. She could do anything she wanted, and her mind was full of paintings in a riot of colors. She wanted to make beautiful art. She’d figure out the rest later.
She found the shop quickly and took her time as she poured over the materials available. There were notebooks with thick paper, good for watery paints, and boards that would take thicker paints nicely. Some brushes were so soft, she could hardly believe they were real.
And the paints…
They were here in every color she could imagine and more, and when she opened the lids surreptitiously, the smell brought her back to some of the happiest times in her life. When she painted, she found she could accept the universe as it was. Her own story faded into a larger universe that still held beauty. The smell brought all of that back.
Even though she’d been rich, she had tried to use as little of her family’s wealth as possible. She’d never bought good paints or brushes, in part because she didn’t want to feel gratitude to Mustafee for anything, but also because she superstitiously feared that if she cared too much for her paintings, Mustafee would have used that against her, too.
She didn’t have to fear that now. Recklessly, she bought everything she wanted from the shop and loaded herself up with bags that Jeltor offered to carry—and then complained about as they made their way back down the stairs to the clothing boutiques.
There weren’t many clothes here that fit Yofu, but she cared less about that. Tafa selected things in plain blacks and greys, reminiscent of the clothes Barnabas wore around the ship—it was an elegant look without too much effort, which appealed to her—and then bought some toiletries.
“What do you need?” she asked Jeltor.
“Oh, are you done?” His tone was acid. “Or would you like to load me up with some more bags?”
“You’re not even carrying them,” Tafa pointed out. “The suit is.”
“And it’s straining at the joints. I need oil and fittings. They’re one level down from the main floor.”
“Well, let’s go, then.” Tafa rolled her eyes as the Jotun stomped past her. Jeltor really just liked to complain. He’d been nicer to her over the past few days, and she guessed that part of it was that Barnabas had promised to return him to the Jotun fleet, where Jeltor’s family still lived. He’d been on a work trip when he was captured.
Her smiled faded when she thought of the people on their ship who hadn’t survived the attack. She and Jeltor had been lucky. If Drakuz’d had the chance to sell them, their lives would be very different right now.
They’d just passed the main floor when there was a shout. Several figures raced across the main room, and a few moments later, they heard shots fired.
The people screamed and cowered, but she only crossed her arms and watched as the figures ran to the far end of the level and disappeared.
“Oh, good,” Jeltor said sarcastically. “We’ll be imprisoned as part of Barnabas’ crew.”
“He’s not in jail yet,” Tafa pointed out. “It seems like he does this everywhere he goes. So we’re probably fine. We should get back to the ship, though.”
“Leaving my supplies unpurchased. Of course.”
“Yeah, yeah. They gave you a tune-up, and you’ve been running better than ever. No complaining.”
Crallus had tried his very best to forget Barnabas, the Yennai Corporation, and even Uleq.
The food helped. It was some of the best he’d ever eaten. The meat was tender. The drinks were paired perfectly. The vegetables were fresh. Who got to eat like this on a station, much less for free? He devoted all his attention to it and pretended this was a celebration of a successful job.
You know, rather than remember that his whole team died, and he was sitting with a cold-blooded murderer who might get Crallus killed.
He’d just finished when Uleq’s head jerked up, and Crallus felt his stomach drop. He looked around with a sense of deep misgiving.
Barnabas was staring at them with a small smile on his face.
Crallus didn’t hesitate.
“Run.” He grabbed Uleq’s arm and yanked him out of his seat.
The Torcellan hissed in anger at being hurt this way, but it was more for form’s sake than anything else. He’d frozen in surprise, but like Crallus, he knew that if they got caught they were going to die.
“Stop him!” Crallus yelled at the guards. He pointed at Barnabas. “He’s trying to assassinate o
ne of the Yennai Corporation’s heirs!”
“I’m not an heir!” Uleq yelled as they sprinted across the main floor. Gunshots rang out behind them.
“They don’t need to know that!” Crallus called back.
Rich people. It was like they were born without common sense.
His shoulder ached, but he pushed the thought away. He had to keep running. They had to get to the ship before Barnabas caught them.
He’d seen some of the security footage from the syndicate base, and it had made his blood run cold. This human was a creature of nightmares and Crallus was terrified to die as painfully as his soldiers had.
He felt guilty for leaving them. But not guilty enough to accept retribution from a monster with glowing red eyes.
Guards swarmed out of nowhere, and Barnabas’ eyes narrowed.
“My quarrel is not with you. Step aside.”
They thought they had seen everything, the idiots. All of them reached for their weapons in an obvious display of force.
“Sir,” the guard captain started. “We’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
Barnabas took a moment to sigh. Then he launched himself into their midst, dispatching them with brutal efficiency. “Gar, keep an eye on Crallus and Uleq.”
Gar started to run after them, only to get lifted over a guard’s head and brought down hard on the floor. He yelped, and Barnabas tried to refrain from sighing again.
Tunnel vision was common in a fight—focusing on one enemy to the exclusion of others. Gar knew he was lucky that his lesson had been in the form of pain because quite often, the consequences of tunnel vision were fatal.
Barnabas knocked out as many of the guards as he could, but they weren’t making it easy. They charged him with impressive technique and tactics. They’d clearly been trained to take on elite assassins, which Barnabas supposed made sense given the nature of their business. None of their training had been for combatants enhanced with Kurtherian DNA and technology, however, and they fell one and two at a time until Barnabas faced down the last of them: the guard captain.
“Stand aside,” he said again.
The guard captain’s eyes narrowed, and a feral yell burst from his lips. He charged at Barnabas in a fury, snarling either insults or threats in his native language. Probably some combination of both. Barnabas didn’t understand the words, but the general meaning behind them was clear.
Barnabas’ intentions were just as clear. He’d readied his knives when the guard captain was tackled sideways. Gar slammed into him and carried him down, following up with a flurry of punches at the Shrillexian’s head.
In fairness to the Shrillexian, Barnabas would have to say that shock probably did part of Gar’s job for him. The guard captain must have thought he was hallucinating when he saw that it was a Luvendi who had tackled him and was presently beating the living shit out of him.
That said, Gar acquitted himself nicely. In a footnote to what would become a legendary day on Virtue Station, he proceeded to completely incapacitate the guard captain. He stood up, chest heaving, and then—as the battered, bruised captain reached for his gun—shot the Shrillexian.
“Good job.” Barnabas was already on the move. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder.
Gar raced after him. Crallus and Uleq had just reached the far side of the main floor, heading toward the ramps that led to the docking bays, when Barnabas put on a burst of speed that left Gar in the dust.
“Shinigami, stop any ships from leaving!”
“I’m trying.” Shinigami’s voice betrayed her worry. “They’ve got another system I didn’t know about, though. Probably just for Yennai higher-ups. It’s on a completely different encryption system and—"
“Less talking, more hacking!” Barnabas burst through the doors with his guns already out and skidded into cover as a hail of gunfire shot overhead. He could hear screams behind him as some of the bullets went through the open doors, and he felt a wave of fury. The people on the banking floor might generally be scum, but they didn’t deserve a random death from a stray bullet. That wasn’t Justice. “Shinigami, the ship is pulling away. Follow it!”
“I’m trying! They’ve got manual clamps locked down on every other ship in the station. If I try to pull away, I’ll tear the hull—or vent the docking bay.”
“Goddammit!” Barnabas grabbed Gar as the Luvendi came through the doors and pulled him down. Only three guards were shooting, and he picked them off methodically before standing.
“We lost them.” Gar looked incredulous. “We fought, but they got away.”
Barnabas reached out to clasp his shoulder and was about to say a few words about best efforts and frustration when one of the dock workers laughed.
“You’re a Luvendi,” the dockworker told Gar. “If you were fighting, that’s the reason they got away.”
Gar’s face went cold, and he turned slowly. “Take. That. Back.”
Uh-oh, Barnabas murmured privately to Shinigami.
Uh-oh? No, this gon’ be gooood. Her frustration forgotten, Shinigami brought up all the feeds she could find of the docking bay. Get some popcorn. There’s gonna be a fight.
13
“Gar.” Barnabas’ voice was deep and even. “This isn’t worth fighting about.”
It’s totally worth fighting about.
Shinigami!
What? He got insulted.
Gar could hardly hear them through the pounding of his blood in his ears. He narrowed his eyes at the dockworker, a stupid-looking Hieto with piggy eyes and a crooked snout. He was still laughing at Gar, and he nodded in Barnabas’ direction.
“You should listen to your friend, Luvendi.” He turned away, clearly having decided that neither of them was going to shoot him, but that Barnabas also wasn’t going to make a big deal of the insult.
He should have just kept walking. Everyone agreed on that point later. Gar might have been talked down if he’d shut up and gone away.
On the other hand, it made such a good story that everyone decided it was better the Hieto hadn’t resisted getting one last shot in. “Where’d you find someone to make you armor, anyway? They were laughing at you the whole time, you skinny bastard. You paid them for nothing.”
“Shut. Up.” The words came out as a snarl.
“Oooh, good one.” The Hieto looked back and forth between Barnabas and Gar. “You see this, human? Is he actually on your team? What’d he say to get you to—”
Gar’s punch caught him on the side of the head, and the Hieto dropped in a heap. All across the docking bay, workers who’d pretended not to watch stopped pretending. A sea of faces turned in their direction.
“I think you showed him,” Barnabas said gently.
“No, you didn’t. Make an example, Gar.”
Shinigami, if you don’t shut up—
What, you’ll turn this ship around? I fly the ship.
As the dockworkers edged closer, Gar sank into a crouch and watched the Hieto’s unconscious form. When at last he came to, shaking his head muzzily and pushing himself up on his hands and knees, Gar stood and kicked him in his plated stomach.
Ohhhhhhh. Did you get popcorn yet? Because I reiterate: this gon’ be good.
I can’t decide if I’m worried or…
Or you really, really want to see this? Shinigami asked slyly.
Barnabas sighed. Yes.
I knew it. Sit back and enjoy, Big B.
From the look of surprise as he tipped over, no one had ever kicked the Hieto hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Given his armored scales, he could certainly be forgiven for not being used to the experience.
The larger surprise, however, was almost certain that a Luvendi had done it.
“Get up,” Gar spat. “You want to say I can’t fight? Fight me, then. I think you can see from those two hits that I have what it takes.”
“Exactly,” Barnabas started. “So we should really—”
So help me, God, if you get him to leave inste
ad of fighting I will never forgive you.
The last thing we need is to start some sort of legend.
Tooooo late.
It was indeed too late. The Hieto stood up, gave a nervous laugh, and must have decided that his memory of Gar’s punch simply hadn’t happened. He looked around, assumed that the hits must have come from Barnabas, and tried to charge him.
Gar tackled him before he got two steps. He stood, hauled the Hieto off the floor, and slammed him back down again. From the sound of it, more than one scale cracked.
Everyone flinched, even Barnabas.
“I was the one who punched you. I was the one who kicked you.” Gar narrowed his eyes. “I was the one who killed the guard captain back there.”
Oh, no, Barnabas said.
Yeah, I think it’s safe to say we’re not going to be welcome here anymore. Of course, it’s not like they don’t have facial recognition cameras.
Well, I suppose that’s true.
But I am warming up the engines now that the manual locks are off.
Good call. Barnabas cleared his throat. “Gar, we should go.”
“In a moment.” Gar’s eyes were narrowed. “He tried to shame me.”
“And you know that he’s not correct about you,” Barnabas retorted.
For the record, I don’t think that’s going to work.
Why not?
How many centuries did it take before you stopped responding when people questioned your manliness?
Do you think that often happens in monasteries?
You weren’t always in monasteries!
Yes, I see your point. Barnabas sighed. I wish we weren’t drawing attention to him yet. A Luvendi who can fight? That’s noteworthy.
Between you being you and the name of this ship, I think the boat has already sailed on us being low-key.
The Hieto struggled up and gave Gar an unfriendly look. “So you can fight,” he sneered. “Maybe. But you can’t expect people to—” His voice broke off in a squawk as Gar clamped a hand around his throat.
