“Very,” Holly said, suddenly concerned that she was getting something dreadfully wrong, based on the behaviors of everyone at the table.
“We’ve been out of port for a while. So unless you plan to throw me out into the vacuum of space, you’re out of luck, Holly,” Voss said.
Panic seized Holly. She looked for the nearest window and found it near the bar. They were right. Kota was nowhere to be seen. Somehow she had neither seen the giant mechanical arms detach from the ship, nor heard the creaking of the struts as the sails unfurled and caught the aetheric winds that pushed them along.
“An improvement, Ms. Drake?” Shiro asked, his attention miraculously moving away from Voss. “You weren’t even aware of it.”
Was it? The black pit in her chest opened up and began sucking the calm from the reaches within her. Something touched the top of her thigh, and a measure of panic subsided. Odeon’s hand rested on her leg.
“It’s OK, Holly. You’ll be OK.” He left his hand there, benign and nonthreatening and she breathed deep.
Voss shifted in her seat uncomfortably and glanced at the others. “Is she all right?”
“I’m fine and I’m right here, and I can hear you.”
“Well you don’t seem fine,” Voss said.
Holly had to give her that. She picked up her beer and drank two full swallows.
“What’s on Po for you, then?” Shiro asked as their server paused at the table to take Charly’s drink order. Voss ordered as well, which meant she was staying. A mild irritant and one Holly would live with to keep tabs on the sneaky woman.
After Voss ordered her drink, her dark eyes alighted on Shiro and remained there. “Top secret, Jace, I’m afraid.”
“Shiro, please,” Shiro said.
Well, cat was out of the bag. Not that it mattered because Voss knew Charly’s name and she would soon know Odeon’s.
“Shiro. Shiro Oahu. I should have guessed,” Voss remarked.
Shiro articulated an elaborate meal order to the server, who then left for the kitchen. No one else seemed interested in food at the moment, but there would be meal service even once the band began performing. Shiro had so far shown that he preferred to listen to music without distraction.
“You’ve heard of me?” Shiro asked, his eyes softening as he smiled.
“Your fame precedes you,” Voss answered. “I know of your exploits. The priceless orrery.”
“He did that with me for a client,” Charly said, interrupting.
Voss ignored Charly. “The staff and ancient aether gun of the Space Pirate Marco De Leon. The painting of Ko Lapsong’s mother in the Yasoan ampitheater, dressed as Macbeth’s wife.”
“Ah, that was a lovely project. Gorgeous painting as well. Lapsong’s mother—a brilliant actress.”
Voss lowered her eyelids and leaned forward. Her voice dropped an octave to a hush that barely traveled across the round table to be heard over the din of passengers filling up the dining room. “Whatever happened to it?”
“I shall never reveal its whereabouts. If, that is, I even know them.” He winked.
Despite Odeon’s touch and the relaxation happening in her body from the beer, Holly recoiled at the way they interacted. She was at once compelled to both return to her cabin to avoid the terrible sight and stay to protect her team from the woman’s clutches.
Holly exchanged a look with Charly, who seemed to see the conflict happening in Holly.
Charly laughed, loudly. “Shiro? Famous.” She roared louder.
Voss sat back abruptly and her gaze swept to Charly, where her expression turned to a scowl.
Charly went on. “We call him butterfingers. You know? Butterfingers? Because he’s so inept? Every job you’re referencing he had a team that covered for him.”
Shiro sputtered, his face turning as red as the velvet curtains at the fringes of the stage. “What? Charly, I refute this. You know perfectly well that the only job I didn’t do alone was the orrery.”
“Sure, in your dreams, Shiro,” Charly said.
Holly knew what Charly was doing. It was a kind gesture from her oldest friend. But she’d made up her mind. Holly downed the rest of her beer. She leaned close to Odeon and whispered in his ear, “Please stay here with Shiro. Don’t let him accidentally tell Voss all our secrets. Will you?”
“Of course,” Odeon muttered. His brilliant eyes studied her face.
“I’m going back to my room, to sleep this trip away.”
“Charly, please help Holly back to her rooms?” Odeon said.
“Sure thing.”
Holly rose, hoping to beat the alcohol back to her cabin before it made her too woozy. Charly came to her side and together they wandered out of the dining room. The band had started warming up. The soft tones of instruments being plinked and plucked accompanied them out into the corridor and followed them almost all the way back to Holly’s cabin.
SIXTEEN
THE moon known as Po was a place of wind and sand. The surface itself was smooth like glass. But it was riddled with veins and arteries of canyons etched out of the stoney surface by wind and water.
Within the canyons, vast cities were hewn from the rock. Complex irrigation systems delivered water from the rivers at the bottom of the canyons so that the facades of the canyon were adorned with the vines and hanging gardens of trailing flowers. When the wind storms came, often at regular intervals, the flowers and vines were drawn inside away from the ravaging wind.
Out on the plains the few cities that survived there hunkered low to the ground in aerodynamic domes. And because of the constant, dangerous wind, Po did not have a space elevator, so they were taxied to the surface by space ferry and from the ship platform, they went to the city.
Holly and her crew strolled through the largest canyon city on Po, Tabodi.
“The drop will happen in six hours,” Darius said on their comms. “Oh and how was the space zeppelin ride?”
“Glad you asked,” Shiro said, where he walked beside Holly through the street that wound alongside the river at the bottom of the canyon. The sun was directly overhead and shone down on the vast slow-moving river that churned along silently in the center of the canyon. Buildings carved from the rock rose up in relief on both sides of the cliff walls, intricately stacked. Constellations, humans, and Druiviin filled the streets on foot and in the quiet running automobiles. The bottom floors of most of the buildings were shops, while out in front of the shops on the sidewalks, brightly colored tents were erected to hold small sidewalk bazaars. The inhabitants themselves wore bright robes and veils to protect their faces from the sand that pelted and stung against naked skin. Shiro swung his cane, and held it out in front of himself to create a berth amidst the mass of bodies. “Yes, the trip was lovely, Darius. Where were you during our dinner service? Aimee Voss was there.”
“Shiro,” Darius said, clearing is throat. “Wait a minute. Did you just say that Aimee Voss was on the zeppelin with you?”
“I did.”
Darius made a grunting noise. “The same zeppelin, and so on her way to Po?”
“Precisely,” Shiro said.
“And no one is worried about that?”
Shiro scoffed. “Of course we are, Darius. Charly even caught her snooping around our rooms.”
“Well why didn’t anyone let me know?”
“You sound a bit whiny, Darius,” Holly said.
“And what exactly would you have done, old chap?”
“I don’t know,” Darius said. “Looked into it, something like that.”
“Well, great news,” Holly said, wanting to move the conversation forward. “I slept most of the flight, Darius.”
“Hey that’s good to hear, Drake. So it wasn’t as bad this time?”
“It was only slightly awful. And now that you know, it would be helpful if you looked into Voss and why she’d be here. Then, please give us the exact coordinates of the drop. Can you tell what sort of location it will be?”
&nb
sp; “Get this. It’s a warehouse.”
“Of course it is.”
Holly caught herself staring in awe at the sites as they moved through the city. She knew what Po was, having picked up the knowledge just through being alive. But it was one thing to know of it, and another to be walking through its ravines, with the canyon walls shooting up around her, surely as tall as the spires of her own city, but naturally grown and transformed by the engineering ingenuity of the Centau.
“And what have you been doing instead of paying attention to us, Darius?” Charly asked.
“Taking care of the Bird’s Nest, fielding Torden’s grievances for being dumped on, building new devices to help our work, maybe gambling a bit to let off steam,” Darius answered, sounding distracted.
“Yeah, you let Torden vent to you, he needs that. The boob. If he hates bartending so much, he could—I don’t know—take the stage. Right Odeon?” Charly said as they came to the hotel that Darius had booked for them.
Odeon laughed. “Charly that’s funny because you are implying that all Druiviin are artists.”
“Exactly, Odeon,” Charly said, grinning.
They checked into their hotel, having booked two rooms because that looked standard—two to a room.
“Let’s take stock in my room,” Holly said as they rode the elevator up to the 105th floor. The elevator deposited them on their floor. The hotel went into the canyon wall four rooms deep, with an exterior wall cut from the stone, with windows that faced the building next door in the interior canyon street. But Holly paid for a canyon view room that let the sunlight stream in as it arched across the pale Po sky.
The hotel floor was a colorful blue and yellow tile. The beds were large, a fireplace filled one wall, and the vast bathroom took up a third of the room. Holly opened the curtains. The view was magnificent. The top of the canyon was visible on the far side. Small tornadoes of dust spun across the surface as the wind whipped across the plains.
Odeon had set up a v-screen from several small panels that unfolded and clicked together. Turned on, it showed Darius back in the Bird’s Nest on Kota.
“What’s going, team?” Darius said, laughing when they checked in.
“Trying to get our heads around this fucking insane city,” Charly said.
“You’ve never been to Po?”
Charly scoffed. “You know we haven’t. Who comes to Po?”
“Criminals. People hiding vast sums of money. Traders in hydrantium. Lots of people have reasons to be there. We have a reason.”
Holly exchanged a look with Charly. “That just came up. But otherwise, we’d have no reason otherwise.”
“The hydrantium refineries are on Po, Drake. Did you not know that?”
“I’d probably learned about it at some point. But the knowledge is useless, so it slipped away.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re here—the Shadow Coalition. For hydrantium,” Shiro said. He stood at the window, spinning his cane and staring out the large window. “They have to be doing more than just kidnapping children.”
“So here’s the schematic of the location where the drop will be happening,” Darius said. The screen turned into a blueprint of the warehouse. “It looks like a hydrantium storage facility, so you could be right, Shiro.”
“This is beginning to sound dangerous.”
“The hydrantium is unrefined, Drake, so it’s not as dangerous as the aether.”
“Thank god for small favors. They’ll probably be there already—in fact, this might be a base of operations, guys. And in that case, there’s no way for us to get in before they show up to drop the cash. Darius? Ideas? Shiro? Charly?”
Shiro paced over to stand beside Charly. “What do you think, Charly? The pincer move?”
“Pincer move?” Holly repeated.
“It could work, because we would wait till the drop is happening, both parties are there already. We drop an obscuring smoke in, maybe one that also knocks out the baddies. Move in with gas masks on, take the money, and leave.”
“Sounds simple enough.” She shrugged and bit her lip.
Darius cleared his throat. “Deceptively simple enough. They could be expecting it.”
“Yes, this drop is likely a trap. That’s why we should do it and use the smoke,” Shiro said.
“Darius, you have a better plan?” Holly asked.
“Move in, shoot everyone.” He laughed.
“Leaves us too exposed,” Holly said. “Anyone know where to get the smoke for cover? We need a place like Le Tissier’s.”
“I can get you one, Drake. I have contacts everywhere.”
“As do I, Ms. Drake.”
“Come on guys, who doesn’t? I do too, Holly.”
“Odeon?”
“Sorry, Holly Drake. No, I do not.”
They split up. Holly and Shiro headed to a place called the Pit that Darius told them about to obtain the smoke screen. Odeon and Charly scouted the location where the drop would happen.
Unlike Le Tissier’s, the Pit did not seem to care about its activities being concealed from anyone. It wasn’t buried beneath layers of security and secret passageways and tunnels like the basement of Le Tissier’s. The Pit was in an area of Tabodi that had many items that would be difficult to purchase on Kota because of the presence of the Centau.
However, like Le Tissier’s back in the City of Jade Spires, the Pit was surrounded by the economic capitalization of vice. Brothels, drug dens, fight rings, and trade in goods that landed in a bit of a gray area all contended openly for the attention and novas of the patrons of Tabodi.
“Vibrant, isn’t it?” Shiro observed as he and Holly pushed into the crowds at the foot of warehouse district in the city, where the ugly side of the city clustered.
“That’s definitely one word for it,” Holly said.
“And which word would you use for it, Ms. Drake?” Shiro said, thrusting his cane out to stop a man who was violently pushing through the crowd from crashing into Holly.
“I have a few that would fit. Disgusting. Uncouth. Grotesque. Reveling in filth.”
“This part of society will always persist. Would it be so ugly if it wasn’t pushed to the fringes, into the poorer economic areas?”
“The rich would simply try to dress it up.”
“Yes, lass, I tend to agree with you. It’s what the rich currently do.”
“Poor or rich, people are the same whatever stratosphere they dwell in.”
Shiro studied her face as they strode through the crowd, his eyes thoughtful. “Yes. Very true.”
“Here it is,” Holly said as a steel door opened automatically for them.
Inside, the shopkeeper greeted them with a casual indifference, as though he moved so much product, he didn’t give two flying fucks if Shiro and Holly bought anything from him. A nod. That was it. He was a Constie—pale white, with a shaved head—and seated next to a counter full of discount weapons and gear. His attention was riveted on what looked like a list of items on a v-screen. He checked boxes as his eyes scrolled down the list.
“I could spend a fortune here,” Shiro muttered, his eyes dancing around the shop.
“But then we’d have to move it all back to Kota.”
“That would be a nuisance.”
“Let’s just pay the premium prices at Le Tissier’s so we don’t have to haul a suitcase full of illegal or gray goods back on a zeppelin.”
“Yes, we’ll let Beatrice take care of the zeppelin.” Shiro grinned, pausing in front of a selection of smoke grenades. “Shall we get one that makes them choke or just a smoke screen?”
“It’d be nice if they were a bit incapacitated. To prevent collateral damage.” Holly moved to stand beside him.
“Yes, that would be lovely, wouldn’t it?” Shiro agreed. He picked up a grenade that induced coughing as well as giving off a concealing smoke.”
“And we’ll need these,” Holly said, picking up four masks with goggles and breathing filters.
; “Those will be perfect,” Shiro said.
Holly took them to the man with v-screen. “Would love to purchase these items.”
“Five hundred novas,” he said without looking up.
“That’s it?” Holly asked. He hadn’t even seen what they’d picked up.
“Correct,” he said. He had a soft accent, like he’d only learned the universal language recently. Maybe he’d just arrived from the Constellation home planet.
“Seems a fair price to me, Ms. Drake,” Shiro said.
She pulled her wallet out of the leg and hip pouch she’d brought to keep her hands free. Lighter five one hundred nova notes and they were back out on the street.
“You two have the materials?” Charly asked suddenly in Holly’s earpiece.
“Sure thing, Char,” Holly answered.
“We’ve got a game plan for when you get to the drop location.”
“We’ll be there soon,” Holly said.
“You give any more thought to what sort of trap they have planned?” Shiro asked.
“If it is a trap.”
“What are the odds?” He stepped over a man curled and sleeping against the wall.
“Very high.”
“Yes. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Well, you will have your cane.”
“I always have my cane.”
“And we have the smoke and the masks.”
“Yes we do.”
Holly held out her hand to demonstrate a casualness about their plans that she did not actually feel. “So, even if it’s a trap, we should be ok. Unless they somehow know precisely what we’re thinking—that it’s a trap. And we’re bringing a backup plan in case it’s a trap, and they plan to have a way to not be caught up in coughing fits when the smoke goes off.”
“Right. What are the odds of that?”
“Not quite so high. But still not low enough to feel comfortable. That’s when the Equalizer comes in.”
“That’s what I love about you, Ms. Drake,” Shiro said, pushing through the crowd with his cane.
She laughed uncomfortably, feeling her cheeks go hot. “What?”
“That you have a gun. And you’re not afraid to use it.”
Hands of the Colossus Page 11
