Drifters' Alliance, Book 3

by Elle Casey

  “You wouldn’t,” he says, stepping closer, looking down that aquiline nose at me.

  I show him my teeth and then snap them really hard together near his face, making him jump back. I’m still smiling when I wave my hand over the keypad and push on the door. My body bounces up against it, making a loud banging noise.

  “Smooth.” Baebong snorts.

  “Shut up.” I turn my thumb inward and talk near my hand. “Knock, knock.”

  Digitized locks turn and the portal opens on hinges. Alana is standing just inside the doorway.

  “Hurry,” she says. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Why? What did you do?” I assume she means the guy’s half dead, but when I enter the main living area of the unit, he’s sitting in a chair in the middle of the room and he looks fine; there’s no blood and no signs he’s been touched. He’s got his arms tied behind his back and his legs are trussed up, but he’s smiling. One of Alana’s crewmates is standing behind him.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t little miss somethin’ somethin’ here to teach old Zed a lesson.” He laughs and then his smile falls away. “You’re outta your league, girly. Better go back to where you came from and call it a day.”

  I look over at Alana at the same time that the cold mask I crafted in my OSG training slides over my features to turn me into the cold-blooded killer I was taught to be. I’m no longer the happy captain of the DS Anarchy; I am the warrior who will extract information from this serpent and end his life if necessary. Whatever it takes to accomplish this mission is what I’m going to do.

  I recognize the surprise in Alana’s expression, but ignore it. She’ll learn soon enough that you can take the girl out of the OSG, but it’s a lot harder to take the OSG out of the girl. I’m going to get my answers from this dirtbag tonight, and if she says we’re in a hurry, then I’m going to start with the hard way and let him figure out the easy way through the veil of pain I’m about to drop in front of his face.

  She speaks up, her voice not nearly as confident as I remember it being before. “He managed to send a signal out to someone, we’re not sure to whom or how detailed it was.”

  “Oh, it was detailed,” he says, laughing. Then he spits on the floor near my feet.

  “What have you gotten from him?” I ask, drawing my knife out of its sheath.

  She shrugs. “Not much. He’s not in a talking mood.”

  I nod. “We’ll see about that.” I step up in front of him, out of range for kicking, but a great big target for another glob of spit. I almost hope he tries it.

  “Hello, Tremblay.” I take the tip of my knife and touch it to the tip of my finger, turning it a little and breaking the skin there.

  He watches me, his expression going from cocky to slightly confused.

  I smile inside, knowing this is already headed in the direction I want it to go. Yes, Tremblay. Be scared. Be very scared. I stop digging into my flesh when I know the blood flow will be impressive yet not anything for me to worry about.

  As I walk closer, his eyes refuse to leave my knife and finger. I let the weapon fall to my thigh, but my finger now dripping my blood comes up and hovers right in front of his face.

  “What the …,” he starts to say, but I cut him off before he can go any further with his interrogation.

  “I like to mark up my projects before I start. That way I don’t waste any time getting to the heart of the matter.” I reach out and draw a bloody line down his cheek. “I’ll start here.”

  His eyes roll down and over to look at the dark crimson that now marks his face. His mouth drops open as he turns his attention back to my finger. It’s headed for his chest where I move the material of his disgusting flightsuit out of the way and leave an X right in the center.

  “This’ll be my next cut. Do you know how thin the skin is over the breast bone?” I smile. “Very thin, Tremblay. Very, very thin. Stings like a bitch when it’s laid open, trust me.”

  His gaze falls to my chest, probably looking for scars. And if it hadn’t been for the overly enthusiastic MI team on the DS Huna, there’d be plenty for him to see, too.

  I smile, knowing it won’t matter that I no longer have the scars to intimidate him with. He’s going to talk very soon.

  My bloody finger goes lower. Then I look over my shoulder. “How much time did you say we have?” I move my hand to the left, over to his thigh, and lift a brow at Alana, making sure Tremblay can see my questioning look.

  “Not that much time,” she says, seemingly mesmerized by my process. She’s staring at my finger like it’s about to turn into a ray pistol and blow the guy’s leg off.

  I move my finger to the left so it’s pointed at his crotch. “Alrighty, then. Cut number three will be here.” I lean down to mark an X on his junk, but he pushes the chair back with a mighty shove and then gathers his legs together as tightly as he can.

  “You crazy bitch! Keep your bloody finger away from my manhood!”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Oh, don’t worry, old man. You can keep your manhood.” The word in relation to his person almost makes me barf, but I hold the reaction in. “Just tell me what I want to know and you’ll walk out of here whole.” I hold my finger up where he can see it. Blood drips down my hand and falls to the floor.

  His face twists up in anger and hatred, and he spits again, off to the side though, which is lucky for him, because if he’d gotten any of that slobber on my new flightsuit, he’d have to pay with at least one body part.

  “I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’. You ain’t got no call to be orderin’ me about what I gotta do and ain’t gonna do.” He jerks his chin up at me. “You go ahead and draw your pretty red pictures. You don’t scare me. You’re just a little girl who needs her daddy to throw her over his knee and wallop some sense into her.” His gaze turns decidedly slimy. “Why don’t you untie me and come on over, girlie? I’d be happy to wallop your bottom until it turns as red as a rose.”

  I shake my head. “Wrong answer, scumbag.”

  Baebong lifts a hand and looks like he’s about to intervene, but it’s too late and he’s too slow. My knife flies over from my left to my right hand and slashes out, catching Tremblay in the cheek, leaving a nice clean line right down the center of my previously drawn blood trail. Now his vein is open and flowing freely, mixing his blood with mine and washing it down the front of him.

  “You cut me!” he screeches, drawing his head as far away from me as he can. “You actually cut me!”

  Alana backs away, all the way to the door. The girl who was standing behind Tremblay walks backward until she hits her legs on a couch and falls down onto it. She grabs a nearby pillow and hugs it to her chest, her eyes as big as fritter cakes.

  “This is gonna be messy,” Baebong says. “Mind if I …”

  I shake my head. “Do what you’ve gotta do.” I turn my attention to the man who’d better start talking or my knife is going to do some more damage. “Tremblay, that was me being nice.” I poke my knife in Alana’s direction. “The whore tells me I don’t have a lot of time. I’m thinking about skipping cut number two and going right for the sack, so if I were you, I’d start talking.”

  I look over my shoulder to shoot my friend an apologetic look for calling her a whore, trying to let her know I’m doing it to make sure Tremblay doesn’t realize we’re actually friends, but she’s too busy staring at my bloody knife to pay any attention to my words.

  I go back to Tremblay. “So … here’s what I need to know.” I step closer and point my knife at his junk. “How did you hear about the disk and what were you planning on doing with it? And if it was so important to you, why’d you leave it on my ship?”

  He looks up really fast. “That’s it?”

  Now it’s my turn to look confused. “What do you mean, that’s it?”

  “That’s all you want to know?” He shakes his head with his eyes closed for a second and then he opens them again.

  He’s laughing at me, I kno
w he is, but I cannot figure out why. Dammit! I hate being in the dark with a guy like him in charge of the lights.

  “Well, hell, why didn’t you say so, girlie? I’ll tell you what you wanna know. I heard about that disk from that kid. Germanic twerp. Can’t keep his damn trap shut, know what I mean?” His tone goes high as he mimics Jens. “I’m an engineer. Youngest engineer in the galaxy. Best one you ever saw. I’ve got a technology that can control the entire OSG.” He laughs. “I’ll tell you what … I wasn’t listening to a damn thing he was saying until that little nugget filtered in, know what I mean?” He shrugs. “Dumbass kid. All it took was a few drinks and a dare and he was flashing that thing all over the place. It was like taking candy from a baby.”

  “What was your plan, Tremblay? What were you going to do with it?”

  He shrugs. “Sell it.”

  “To whom?”

  He shrugs again. “Highest bidder.”

  “Have anyone in mind?”

  He purses his lips before he answers, so I know before he even opens his mouth that he’s bullshitting me. “Don’t know. Figured I’d find someone.”

  I take in a deep breath and let it out. I’m opening my mouth to ask another question when a sound comes over my receiver.

  “We’ve got OSG in the house,” Gus says, speaking quickly and low, like he’s hiding while he talks. “Do you hear me, Captain Kickass? OSG is boarding our boat. I tried to keep ‘em off, but they’re saying they have to do an inspection. They won’t say what they’re looking for, though, bloody bastards.”

  I look over at Baebong who’s in the alcove by the portal to make sure he heard it too. He nods.

  “Go take care of it,” I say to him.

  Baebong leaves, but not before shooting me a totally confused look. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to explain to him what I meant — that I want him on that ship and handling things. I hope he figures it out because I have a feeling we’re going to be leaving this station in a hurry.

  I go back to Tremblay. “What about Macon? What part of the plan did he play?”

  “Bacon?” Tremblay narrows his eyes at me. “What’s bacon got to do with anything?”

  I hiss out my frustration. “Rollo, dammit. The guy Rollo you were working with. And Captain Bob.”

  He shakes his head. “Nobodies. Dummies, obviously, since you’re standing here and not floatin’ and bloatin’.” He chuckles at his lame poetry.

  “We need to go,” Alana says.

  I take another step toward Tremblay, knowing this is my last shot to get any information out of him. I just wish I knew what that information was … the thing he was so worried about telling me.

  “Was the game fixed?” I ask, moving the knife ever lower, until it’s touching the edge of his pants that cover his most precious jewels.

  His voice comes out in puffs of worried breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He looks from the knife to my face and back to the knife again. He tries to shrink away, but he’s got nowhere to go.

  “Make no mistake,” I say, pressing my blade into the material of his pants a little. “I will cut you and feel not a single moment of regret. I will leave you nutless and not spare a single second of worry for you, bleeding between your legs like a stuck pig and tied to this chair, all alone in this room.” I glance up at the girls before I fix him with my empty, assassin’s stare. “I’m taking these whores with me, old man. They aren’t going to help you.”

  A weird animal noise comes out of his throat and then he talks through tears. “I’m afraid you’re really gonna do it.”

  I push the blade in until it touches skin. I know exactly when I prick him because he screams like a little girl.

  “Okay! Okay! It’s Redmond, alright? Redmond! Redmond fixed it! I don’t know why!”

  A banging sound comes from the door behind me. Alana rushes over, checks who it is, and throws it open. Jeffers is there looking like some kind of avenging angel with his arms held out and his long linen sleeves hanging below. “We have to go now. Now, Cass, now!”

  I lean into Tremblay’s face and yell, “Who’s Redmond?!”

  He looks up at me with tears in his eyes, his face bright red. “You really are a crazy bitch, aren’t you?”

  I punch him in the jaw, knocking him out cold, and let Jeffers drag me away.

  The last thing I see is Alana watching me stumble out the door, a mix of revulsion and admiration all over her face.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “YOU HAD TO CUT HIM?” Jeffers is running, his hand on my elbow as he drags me along.

  “I didn’t like doing it. It was necessary.” I’m coming back from the fog that was enveloping me — the thing making it possible for me to watch what I was doing almost as a bystander. “He said something about Redmond fixing the givit game. Does that name ring a bell with you?”

  “Redmond? No. I don’t know any Redmond. Is it a first name or a last?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Down here,” Jeffers says, pulling me toward a stairway that angles steeply down to the fourth level.

  “Where are we going?” I pull my arm from his grasp so I can run properly. The corridors are starting to fill with people, making it harder to be side-by-side.

  “Back to the dock. But we’re going to use the service entrances utilized by catering to get closer to our spot.”

  “Where’s Baebong?” I ask, hoping he and Jeffers have been in communication.

  “Hopefully at the ship. Wasn’t he with you?”

  “Yes, but he left when we got the message that the ship was being boarded by the OSG.”

  “The comm went down after that. I haven’t gotten anything since,” Jeffers says. “But if they’re coming onto the ship, that means they’re looking for you.”

  “They could be just doing an inspection,” I say, my excuse sounding lame to my own ears.

  “Doubtful.”

  We reach a door that’s marked as catering staff only. The hallway is empty. “Where do we go from here?” I ask, suddenly nervous. The weird high I was on while getting info from Tremblay is completely gone as I consider that I could have gone through all of this only to find myself arrested at the station by OSG officials who want to know how I managed to knock an entire warship on its ass in one fell swoop. Goodbye frying pan, hello fire.

  “Through the center of the kitchens, out the main door, through the attached restaurant, and then to the southern hub. Take the third spoke from the right and follow it to the dock. Don’t stop, don’t talk to anyone, and don’t draw attention to yourself.”

  “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

  He sighs. “Do your best to be invisible.”

  “Aren’t you going with me?” I grab onto Jeffers’s arm, suddenly desperate about losing him.

  “I think we’ll have a better chance of getting to where we need to be if we split up. Two people moving call more attention than individuals.”

  I know he’s right, but it doesn’t stop me from panicking. “Jeffers, I just want you to know that it’s been a pleasure having you on my crew.”

  He smiles. “Does this mean you’re saying goodbye? I hope not, because I signed that blood contract just today.”

  “What if they grab you? Or me?”

  He pats my cheek. “I’m not going to go down that easy, and I can’t imagine you are either.”

  I nod, holding his hand to my face for just two seconds before letting it go. “Good luck, Jeffers. See you at the ship.”

  “Yes. See you at the ship.” He pushes me through the door and it slams shut behind me.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  AT FIRST I DON’T REGISTER the familiarity of the face before me. I’m not two steps into the kitchen, and suddenly he’s there. Staring at me, less than a meter away.

  “Well, well, well, look who we have here.”

  I frown at the voice. Then it hits me. “Langlade?”

  His arms lower to his sides, and I see the
gesture for the battle-ready stance that it is. “Yes. And you’re the little bitch who stole my ship.”

  I move to go around him. I don’t have time for sore losers right now. I’ll teach him a lesson another day. “Get out of my way, asshole.”

  He grabs me by the shoulder as I try to walk by. “Not so fast. I have a few things to say to you.”

  “Not now, I said.” I grab his hand off my shoulder and twist his arm up behind him. Shoving him into the nearest prep table causes all kinds of pots and pans to crash to the floor. So much for being invisible. Several people turn around to see what’s going on and then just as quickly go back to what they’re doing. Smart. Don’t get involved. The first rule of survival out in the Dark, lucky for me.

  “Let go of me,” he growls, trying to twist out of my grip.

  Each time he attempts it, though, he makes it worse for himself. I increase the angle of attack and whisper loudly in his ear. “I’d really love to have this conversation with you right now, sore loser, but unfortunately, I have the OSG up my ass and a few other little messes to clean up, so it’s going to have to wait for another time and another place.”

  “I’m not a sore loser! You rigged that game! I want my ship back!”

  I jerk his arm up higher, making him cry out in pain. “No, I didn’t! I never cheat! Ever. Someone else might have rigged it, though. Ask your friend Tremblay.” I shove him away from me, and he falls to his knees. He slouches over as he cradles his arm to his chest.

  “Tremblay?” he asks, looking over his shoulder at me. “What’s he got to do with the game?”

  “I wish I knew,” I say, glancing back at him one more time before I leave him there. “Ask him about Redmond. Maybe that’ll clear it up.”

  I only catch a confused expression on his face before I’m running out of there.

  “Redmond who?” he shouts. “Redmond Kennedy?”

  I trip as the name hits my ears, but I right myself and keep going rather than stop to ask for more detail. People jump to get out of my way and more than a few trays of food hit the dirt before I’m out in the restaurant proper. Did he really say Kennedy? Holy shit. What in the hell does that mean?