Negative Return: A Durga System Novella (Durga System Series Book 2)

by Jessie Kwak

  “I don’t,” Toshiyo says defensively. “I mean, not the others. But . . .”

  “But I seem nice.” She nods, and Manu gives her his best smile, brushing off the tiniest part of him that feels like shit. “Being friendly’s just the way I get what I want. But you gotta have just as much of a guard up for friendly as you do for mean.”

  “Sorry,” Toshiyo says.

  Manu laughs. “You and me don’t have no debt with each other, but ain’t everybody here’s on the same side.”

  Toshiyo frowns at him. “But aren’t we all working for Jaantzen?”

  “I hope so.”

  Toshiyo just squints back down at her terminal, but Manu looks up to see Gia watching him, unfriendly. He feels Gia’s eyes on him the whole time he saunters to the washroom. Like she knows what he’s thinking. He winks at her, shuts the door behind him. Gonna be a long night, he thinks, baring his teeth to the mirror and rubbing them half-clean with the meat of his index finger.

  Gonna be a long night.

  6

  Fun at the Terminal

  Morning.

  Manu wakes coughing from a dream of thick cigar smoke to a smothering cloud of fabric over his face. He claws at it, gasping, and finds pants. Shirts.

  Across the room, Beni and Oriol are laughing over mugs of coffee. Gia’s standing at the foot of his cot with a faint smile. A pecking order is clearly being established.

  Manu takes a deep breath.

  He doesn’t care about pecking orders. They just keep you from noticing who you should really be paying attention to.

  He examines the garments to find mediocre fabrics, modern styles. Boring colors: grays and blues. “Looks like they’ll fit,” he says. He swings his legs over the side of his cot, makes no note he’s annoyed.

  His foot hits something familiar — his gear bag. He unseals it and paws through the contents. No weapons, what a surprise, but the rest of his stuff is there. It’ll do.

  Manu locks himself in the washroom and checks his comm, but there’s no message from Sylla. No message from his landlady, either, so maybe Sylla hasn’t yet torched his apartment in anger. That’s a good sign.

  For a fraction of a second he thinks of messaging Sylla to see if she’ll water his jadau plant, but the impulse towards self-destruction flames out as soon as it strikes. Don’t push her buttons, Manu. Don’t make her think you’re joking about this job.

  Don’t let on you know how serious the stakes are.

  He can’t get the cloying reek of cigar smoke out of his nostrils, and he sniffs at the clothes Gia brought him to see if it’s something there or if it’s just a trick of the brain, lingering from his dream.

  He knows the smoke — it’s his grandma’s, the brand she used to smoke during the long hours of his childhood he spent under her care. The brand’s old-fashioned, but he still catches whiffs of it sometimes and is transported back to her house in an instant, heart dropped out of his chest like he’s nine again and he and Siggy are tiptoeing through that magical wonderland their grandmother called home.

  He remembers it as a maze: every garment Grandma ever owned folded neatly in teetering piles when her closet became too full; the packaging materials for every item she might want to return someday shoved in the corner, though those items had worn out years before; dusty glass bottles stacked in crates to exchange at a corner store long gone out of business.

  It was stuffed with the fascinating odds and ends she’d brought home, no rhyme or reason but that she might need them someday. She had seven brooms, three electric tea kettles, fourteen obsolete comms. A complete set of a child’s novelty luggage printed with tourist scenes from Indira and slapped with slogans: Visit the Green Planet. No place to sit.

  He understood now that she’d been future-proofing her life, clinging to anything and everything she might need, clinging to her sons and her grandchildren with a death grip. And the same blind eye that meant she couldn’t be convinced to throw out the coat with the torn-off sleeve meant she couldn’t see what her sons were doing to her grandchildren, no matter how Siggy started to vanish and Manu to go surly.

  She couldn’t choose between two broke-down armchairs, let alone choose between her drunk-ass sons and her crimeless grandchildren.

  Manu’s not a hoarder — not of things, not of people.

  You can’t keep hold of anybody. He’d learned that trying to keep hold of Siggy. Trying to keep hold of Marisa. People won’t choose you, so why bother choosing them?

  He washes up in the sink, brushes his teeth, changes into the new clothes. Reapplies his eyeliner, adding a streak of cobalt blue along the upper lash line just to annoy Gia.

  Grins into the mirror until the cut on his cheek cracks faintly.

  Everything about this job feels like a death trap — including the memories it’s dredging up.

  Let’s get this done and get out.

  GIA WAVES him over as he drops his bag on his cot. “You’ll come with me to pick up the gear,” she says.

  Across the room, Beni and Oriol are conferring with Toshiyo. “What’re they up to?” Manu says.

  “Reconnaissance. Toshiyo’s hacked the hotel’s main security feeds, but there’s a secondary system she hasn’t been able to patch into. Needs a man on the ground. C’mere. Let me fix that cheek.”

  “Maybe later.”

  Way she’s watching him, Manu wonders if she knows where he got it. Wonders if she’s in with Kai. Wonders if she got the same threats from Kai and Jaantzen to get her cooperation, or if she joined up willing and able.

  For a moment there’s a hesitation in her expression that borders on genuine compassion, but the moment vanishes. “Yeah, I ain’t walking around the terminal with you looking like that. Come here.”

  And he finds himself sitting on her cot while she rummages through her gear. A cool smear of knitting gel, and he can feel the local anesthetic kicking in to numb the sting as the gel dissolves the scabs. Gia swabs his jawline to catch a rolling bead of new blood.

  “You grew up in Bulari, yeah?” she asks.

  “You tell that by the accent, or my charming disposition?”

  “I can tell by how full you are of yourself. Just like every Bulari boy I ever met.”

  “Glad I live up to expectations.”

  Gia ignores him and pulls a device the size of her thumb out of her bag. She twists it and the end glows blue; it’s soothingly warm when she presses it against the cut. His cheek begins to itch. It’s maddening.

  “How good a surgeon are you?” Manu asks.

  Gia’s fingers are strong and sure, holding his jaw. “Stop talking, Manu.”

  “Like, you can reattach nerves with your eyes closed? Or mostly battle-trained?”

  Battle-trained is his working theory. She’s got a tattoo in the crook of the elbow: two bars across a half circle looks like a setting sun. Redrock Prison. It’s the prison the Indiran Alliance has north of the impassable Jupari Desert belt, where they mostly take terrorists and other riffraff they capture off-planet and don’t want to ship all the way home to Indira. They got the concession from New Sarjun a century ago somehow, and no amount of fuss these days will make them give it back.

  Tattoo like that from Redrock, this Giaconda probably fought in an anti-Alliance skirmish or two. Some slum kid like himself, radicalized against the man.

  But:

  “I trained at Sulila,” Gia says, like it’s nothing. She tilts his head with her fingers, examining her work. “I’ve never tried to reattach nerves with my eyes closed, but given how many times I’ve done it with my eyes open, I’d trust me blindfolded over most anybody else you could find.”

  Manu lets himself look impressed — it isn’t hard, and Gia deserves it.

  Sulila is ridiculously elite and hardcore religious — though the latter is nothing he’s sensing off Gia. There aren’t many who can afford to pay for Sulila Corp.’s medical school on their own, and it’s expensive enough that few of their graduates ever earn out their
indentures. Whoever bought Gia’s could still be looking for her, time spent in Redrock or no.

  At least once a day, Manu finds himself grateful that he dropped out of Hypatia’s Carama Town school and started working for his dad the bookie. God only knows what kind of trouble he’d be in if he’d gotten himself an indenture.

  “I suppose you’ll do in a pinch,” he jokes, and Gia only raises an eyebrow and begins to swab off the wound.

  “The scar’s still visible, but it should heal up to nothing so long as you stay out of the sun and stop pissing people off,” Gia says, stepping back to look at him critically. “Though that seems like a long shot. You need to work on your game with the ladies.”

  “My game with the ladies is just fine,” Manu says.

  “Well then I just ain’t your type.”

  He shoots her a glance. “What, you don’t like guys?”

  “I’m not gullible.”

  “You just ain’t learned to like me yet.”

  Gia pulls her comm out of her pocket, starts typing something in. “Just a sec,” she says. “Gotta make a note to pick up an extra case of bandages. Might need it, you keep annoying me.”

  Manu kicks back and stretches his arms up high overhead; he catches her quick glance at his abs before she turns away.

  “Worthwhile investment,” he says.

  GEORDI JIMENEZ TERMINAL is in a fairly seedy part of town, near the warehouses and the shipping yards. Manu hasn’t spent much time here, apart from the occasional need to get a specialty weapon or two. In fact, the last time he was here was to pick up the gear he used to tear up the Bronze Room.

  Those had been fun.

  “You know what this plan is missing,” he says. “Explosives. We can still get me a dozen of those hornet tags. I know a guy.”

  Gia gives him side-eye. “You know what I really hate doing?” she asks. “Fixing up people who’ve been exploded.”

  “I’ve never gotten myself exploded.”

  “Yeah? In my experience, most idiots haven’t until it happens to them.” She steers him around a drunk passed out in the stairwell.

  “What are we picking up, if not explosives?” Manu asks, acting incredulous.

  Gia shoots him a look. “There are so many other things,” she says. “Besides explosives. Neural stunners, for example. Simple. Effective. Don’t require a lot of cleanup on the doctor’s end.”

  “Neural stunners don’t make a loud bang.”

  “Stealth. Look it up.”

  “Neural stunners are boring.”

  Gia rolls her eyes. “Sometimes boring is a blessing, kid.”

  They’ve gone down to level C, and it’s like a carnival down here: loud and echoey, the sounds of laughter, slamming doors, shouted curses pinging off the high metal walls and cavernous ceiling. Gia says something he can’t hear. Manu leans towards her. “What?” he shouts.

  “I said it’s all the way at the end,” she shouts back.

  He follows her, threading through the throngs of people. It’s the middle of the day, which is one of the better times to do business in level C of the terminal. Get out of the heat and the dust of Bulari’s midday scorchers, get underground where it’s naturally cool.

  And, at midday, the lunch stands are running at full speed. Sizzling fat and clinking silverware, the shouts of vendors hawking fried noodles, samosas, anticuchos. Manu’s stomach grumbles. There’s nothing to eat at the warehouse but a pile of military-grade ration packs and coffee substitute with no sugar. Maybe they’ll have time to sample the food carts afterwards.

  Their destination is almost all the way to the end of the terminal, where you find the businesses that don’t rely on foot traffic. It’s quieter here, the crowd orbiting mainly around the food carts and other services near the entrance.

  Here are the shipping companies, the small cargo brokers, the salvage ops who don’t need a more visible spot in the terminal because their commerce comes from word of mouth spread through Bulari’s underbelly. Most of the stalls at this end are shuttered, metal grates rolled down and locked.

  Gia’s checking numbers on the stalls; she pauses in front of C-746. It’s shuttered, but she knocks on the grate. The silence goes on for too long.

  “We got the right time, yeah?”

  Gia nods, but doesn’t answer. She’s tense, fingers itching towards the holster on her hip. Manu checks his own weapons — she gave him a pair of pistols once they were on the road — then scans the room around them. Yawns.

  “Who are these guys?” He hadn’t bothered asking earlier; he didn’t think she would tell him. But now he can scent her nerves and it’s put her off-balance. Opened up just the slightest chink in her armor against him. It’s times like these when people find him helpful.

  “Contacts I was given.”

  Given. That explains some of her unease. “By Jaantzen?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “I get that a lot,” Manu says.

  A metal snick sounds from the other side of the grate, and the door rolls up with a clatter.

  There’s three people inside. The one who rolled up the grate, and two others, a man and a woman, both casually armed with vicious-looking pulse carbines. Manu smiles and opens his hands, nonthreatening. Gia lifts her chin at them in greeting.

  “Good morning,” she says. “I trust the weapons aren’t necessary.”

  The man who rolled up the grate just shrugs. He’s scrawny, shaved head, metallic-ink tattoos winding around his wrists. “We ain’t met you before. Ain’t gonna take chances.”

  “We’re not here to make trouble,” Gia says. “We already gave you half the money. Soon as we see the goods, the other half is yours.”

  The man purses his lips over his shoulder. “Goods are over there.”

  The other two stand back to let them pass back into the stall. Back into a death trap, Manu thinks.

  He glances at Gia; she’s thinking the same thing. “I’d like to take a look at it here in the light, if you don’t mind.”

  She wins the staring match. The two thugs put down their weapons and bring forward a crate, set it near the entrance to the stall.

  The tattooed man leans forward to type a code into the lock, and the top of the crate slides open. Manu stands back to cover Gia while she checks the contents. She pulls out two empty duffel bags, roots through the rest. “It looks like it’s all here.”

  “Of course it is,” the tattooed man says.

  While Manu keeps an eye on the thugs, Gia piles the contents of the crates into the two duffels. She pulls out her comm. “I’m having the money transferred.”

  The tattooed man nods, waiting. A soft chime; he pulls out his own comm. “I see it.”

  “So we’re good, then,” Gia says. She hands one of the duffels to Manu. Easy way she lifted it, he wasn’t prepared for just how heavy it is. He shoulders it with a huff. Tattoos gives him a smirk; Manu ignores it. Let them think he’s weak. More opportunities that way.

  He shifts the duffel so his hands are free and the weight is good.

  “Of course,” Tattoos says. “Wouldn’t wanna hold you up. I hear you got plans.”

  Gia stills. “What kind of plans have you heard about?”

  Tattoos breaks into a long, slow grin. “Hear you got plans with the queen bee.”

  The queen bee?

  “I haven’t heard anything about that,” Gia says, dismissive, and it’s so casual Manu can’t tell if she’s lying.

  Tattoos just raises an eyebrow. “No worries. May fortune smile on you,” he says, and even before he’s finished the sentence Gia’s dropped her duffel and has him in a headlock, a pistol digging into his temple.

  Manu and the two hired guns are slower to move, but he’s quicker than them both and has his pistols out and pointed before they’ve quite caught on.

  “Gia,” Manu says.

  “What the fuck’s your problem?” Tattoos gasps.

  “Why did you say that?” Gia asks, pistol diggin
g harder. Tattoos puts his hands up. The hired guns have their attention on Manu’s weapons. This is not going well.

  “Gia,” Manu says again. “What is this?”

  “I want to know why he said that.”

  “Just a saying.” Sweat is beading up on Tattoos’ scalp; a trickle runs down his nose and splashes onto the concrete. “Just a thing you say, someone you know’s going into battle.”

  A beat, then Gia slams her pistol back into its holster, lets Tattoos rise. But she keeps hold of his wrist, pushes his sleeve up to see his forearm.

  One of the tattoos glimmers with microscopic opalescent beads embedded in the ink. The bulk of the image is clinging strands of red-blossomed devilweed, drawn so that the thorns seem to pierce his arm and draw blood. Three symbols are scrawled there in among the vines — Manu doesn’t recognize them.

  “‘Money, beauty, death,’” says Gia. She lets go, shoulders her duffel bag again. “Come on,” she says to Manu.

  He covers her until she’s out of the storage unit, then takes a few steps back himself. Tattoos seems mad, yeah, but mostly just confused. He doesn’t look like he’s about to kill them.

  Manu hopes.

  He’s been wrong more than once this week.

  “Sorry about all that, folks,” he says. “Definitely owe you a drink next time.”

  “Get out,” Tattoos spits, and Manu gives him a rueful smile, holsters his right pistol, keeps the dominant left ready to go.

  But Tattoos just slams down the rolling door. Manu breathes a sigh of relief. He’s sweating now, the scent sharp and raw.

  Gia’s on the move.

  “What the fuck was that?” Manu says when he catches up with her. The way Gia is walking, heads are raising in Manu’s peripheral vision, jackals scenting adrenaline on the wind. Manu grabs her arm. “You’re calling attention,” he says, and she glances at him. Slows.

  “Sendera Dathúil,” Gia says, like he should know what that means.

  “What?”