by Jessie Kwak
“Dathúil,” she repeats, like maybe he just hadn’t heard her.
“And what the hell are they?”
“Redrock gang.” She’s walking fast again. Manu catches her arm and forces her back into the moment. “Started in Redrock, at least. Religious nuts. Believe some crazy shit about the end times.”
“And they run weapons, too.”
“Apparently.”
Manu doesn’t know what Jaantzen’s getting them into, but he doesn’t care. Right now, they just need to get out of here with the gear, and without a firefight. Gia’s walking calmer, now, and everyone’s ignoring them. The Sendera-whoever idiots aren’t following them, but he can’t know if they’ve called ahead, so he’s scanning the room for anything he can find. For any body language out of place.
He’s scanning, and he sees a lone woman taking her lunch at a noodle counter, twirling her ramen daintily with a fussy gesture Manu recognizes even before he sees her face.
He whirls, pivoting on his heel to dive deeper in the crowd, but it’s already too late. Those wide, fox-brown eyes meet his in surprise, and she’s fumbling for her comm, sloshing noodles over the bar in her hurry.
Jaxie, Sylla Mar’s third in command.
Manu’s melted into the crowd, but Jaxie spotted him for sure.
This is shaping up into a bad day.
7
Pickup Lines
Back at the ranch, Gia stops the spinner but doesn’t move to get out. Manu gives her a look. The sharp line of her jaw is tense, a cord of muscle taut under her midnight skin. “We getting our stories straight first?” he asks when she doesn’t seem ready to say anything.
Gia gives him a long, slow look. “Let me say my piece about Sendera Dathúil. I’m the one’s got a problem with them. You just stay out of it.”
“If they’re so bad, why haven’t I heard about them?”
Gia’s quiet a minute. “You have,” she says. It’s a long time before she speaks again, but Manu waits.
“You know that ambassador’s kid that got kidnapped last spring?” she asks. “That was them.”
Manu raises an eyebrow. Of course he’d heard about that — everyone had. The kidnappers had taken the ransom, but still nobody’d found the kid.
“You think Jaantzen knew who they were when he set you up with them?”
He’s using “you” deliberately, pushing her buttons. Trying to gauge the depth of her loyalty to Jaantzen. Toshiyo is clearly on the man’s team, Beni and Oriol are clearly in it for the cash. Kai’s in it for the power, but Manu can’t figure out why Gia’s here. She’s putting on that mercenary vibe, same as Beni and Oriol, but there’s something in the way she watches Jaantzen when he’s in the room that makes Manu wonder if she doesn’t owe him something deeper than work for hire.
Maybe she’s got a debt to pay off, just like Manu.
“You think he knew you had a problem with them?”
But she only holds out a hand for his pistols. “I’m not here to think,” Gia says, sharp and angry. And just like that her armor’s back on.
Armor’s on, but the way she slams the spinner into its dock shows he’s hit a nerve. Some core of trust she used to have with Jaantzen has been broken.
A deep one, too, by the way her anger’s got her seeing short, her attention only on what’s in front of her nose — and what’s raging in her mind.
Isn’t that just perfect.
Gia’s got her back to him for only a second, but it’s all Manu needs to slip his hand inside the bag and grab a knife. He sticks it sheath and all down the back of his pants and shrugs his jacket into place before Gia turns around again.
The handle’s awkward, digging painfully into his spine, but he doesn’t care. He has a weapon.
It’s all part of his brilliant plan:
Step One: Find a weapon.
Step Two: Find a way to be alone with Willem Jaantzen.
Step Three: Kill Jaantzen, earning the wrath of the very dangerous people involved with this job.
Step Four: Head home to Sylla Mar, who might be so angry she kills him anyway.
Step Five: Fame and glory.
Or something like that.
Manu shoulders the bag and leads the way towards the door, feeling Gia fall into step behind him. Killing Jaantzen was a terrible idea when Sylla suggested it to him, and it’s an even more terrible idea now.
Manu has a sinking feeling about his plan.
But at least he has a knife.
INSIDE THE WAREHOUSE, Toshiyo’s sitting in front of one of her monitors; she glances in their general direction as Manu and Gia enter, but doesn’t acknowledge them. “That’s it,” she says. “To the left.”
Willem Jaantzen is there, arms crossed, standing over her shoulder. If one of the most notorious criminals in Bulari had been standing over his shoulder like that, Manu would have been jumpy as hell, but Toshiyo’s relaxed. Or just absorbed in her work.
Jaantzen glances over at Manu and Gia. “Success?” he asks.
“All good,” Manu answers. He sets his duffel on the table and stands back as Kai shoulders in to look things over.
“No, to the left,” Toshiyo says.
She and Jaantzen are watching a POV camera on one monitor — it must be Oriol, judging by the ritzy interior of the Blue Falcon’s lobby. On the second monitor, a shaky feed is jostling as Oriol adjusts a miniature camera. On the side of the screen, four of the six camera angles are already turned on, showing them nearly everything that Toshiyo hadn’t been able to hack into.
“Right there,” Toshiyo says, and Oriol clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth twice in acknowledgement. The feed on the second monitor stills as Oriol adheres the miniature camera into place. Toshiyo leans in to study the feed. “Perfect,” she says. She taps a button and the newest feed fills the fifth slot on the side of the screen.
“Last one is the entrance cam,” Toshiyo says. “I need you to position it — right, you see that girl with the purple hair?” Two clicks. “Put the camera under the bartop, just below her elbow.”
“I hope you’ve been practicing your pickup lines, Mr. Sina,” Jaantzen says, and Oriol just sighs.
Manu grins. This oughta be good.
Jaantzen turns, mutes his mic. “And did everything go as planned on your end, Mr. Juric?”
On Oriol’s POV feed, the purple-haired woman’s face fills the monitor. She looks up, annoyed. Oriol’s off to a good start.
“No problems,” Manu says. Depending on your definition of problem, at least — they got away squeaky clean, though who can tell what will come down the pipeline as a result of Gia’s little altercation and Jaxie spotting him.
Doesn’t matter. The knife digs into his back as he shifts. “Got the goods, hit the road.”
“What was your estimation of our contacts?” Jaantzen asks.
Is this a trap? Manu’s working it through. Does Jaantzen know the men were Sendera Dathúil? Would he have cared? Probably not — he’s got a reputation for using the worst and darkest crews.
Anyway, who Jaantzen uses for supply is not his problem. His problem is getting out of here alive and without getting on the shit list of every powerful person in Bulari: Jaantzen, Sylla, this new Sendera gang, whoever.
“Weapons smugglers.” Manu shrugs. “Seedy, but I never met one seemed honest. It’s just the business.”
“Would you use them again?”
“Nah,” Manu says. “Bigger chip on their shoulder than I normally like. Seem the type that business could get personal too quick. And that ain’t my style.”
Jaantzen nods thoughtfully. “Thank you for your input, Mr. Juric.”
“Course.” And because he will never learn to stop nosing around, he adds, “Friends of yours?”
Jaantzen gives him an evaluating look, and Manu assumes he won’t get an answer. But, “No,” Jaantzen finally says. “They came recommended by the financier.”
The financier. Fascinating. Well, at least Gia wouldn�
��t have to be pissed at Jaantzen for picking those assholes to deal with. Not that he should care, he reminds himself.
Oriol’s voice comes soft from the monitors. “Oh, you’re from Arquelle?”
“Shit, she’s from Arquelle,” Manu says. He leans closer to the screen to watch Oriol get destroyed, and to break eye contact with Jaantzen. The man’s giving him a searching look — not like he knows what Manu’s got planned, but something different. Something Manu can’t put his finger on. It’s making him uncomfortable.
“My sister just moved to Arquelle,” Oriol says.
“Nonono,” Toshiyo says. “More to your right.”
Oriol’s POV feed shifts as he leans in; on the screen, the purple-haired woman rolls her eyes, goes back to reading on her comm.
“You on-planet for long?” Oriol asks.
“Please leave me alone,” the woman answers without looking up. “Or I’ll call security.”
“A little back to your left,” says Toshiyo, leaning in to the feed with a frown. “No, left. Left left. There.”
“Supposed to be a dust storm coming tonight,” Oriol says, and Manu groans.
The shaky feed stabilizes at the entrance.
“All right. Get out of there, Oriol,” Toshiyo says.
“Well, it was good talking to you. Enjoy your stay.” Oriol’s feed turns away from the woman just as she gives him another glare.
“Beni, he’s on his way out,” Toshiyo says.
Jaantzen steps back. “That was well done, thank you, Ms. Ravi,” he says. “I’ll be back shortly to go over the rest of the plan.”
The knife is itching in the waistband of Manu’s pants.
“Can I get a word with you, boss?” he asks. As far as pickup lines go, it’s an oldie but a goodie.
Jaantzen turns to him, slow and measured like he sees all the way through the little charade Manu is trying to play.
But he nods. Buttons his suit jacket. Holds an arm out to the balcony.
The same door Kai wasn’t worried he’d escape out of, the one with no exits.
Showtime.
8
Team Player
Last time Manu was alone with Jaantzen, he wasn’t standing on his own two feet like a man. He wasn’t armed. He was at Jaantzen’s entire mercy.
Maybe he still is, but at least he feels like he’s got a better control of his destiny right now.
They walk out onto the balcony. Manu hasn’t had a chance to evaluate it by daylight, but it looks like his initial examination from last night still stands: There’s no way off this balcony without a fifty-foot drop to the pavement below. Kai and Gia are back in the warehouse, and neither of them will hesitate to take him out if they think he killed Jaantzen.
The only way he makes it back through that warehouse and out the door into freedom is by doing Jaantzen’s job, or through some pretty fancy lying.
Fortunately, Manu’s a pretty good liar.
“Mr. Juric.” There’s no follow-up, and Manu assumes that’s Jaantzen’s way of asking him what the hell he wants.
“Just wanted to ask about pay,” Manu says. It’s the first thing that comes to mind. “We never did go over a number.”
“You’ll get a cut, same as the rest of the crew.”
Manu’s making calculations. He’s seen how fast Jaantzen is. Manu thinks he might be faster, but Jaantzen has a gun — and Manu’s not sure he’ll be so fast Jaantzen couldn’t squeeze off a bullet. And even if Manu doesn’t get hit, the second a bullet gets fired, Kai and Gia will be at the door to see what’s going on.
If he wants to make his move, he needs a stronger element of surprise.
“Like a percentage, or what’s the deal?”
“Flat sum,” Jaantzen says. “One hundred thousand marks.”
Manu lets out a low whistle, impressed in spite of himself. His suspicion from studying Jaantzen’s operation has been that Jaantzen’s rates are mediocre at best. The sum must be coming from the mystery financier.
“Will that be sufficient, Mr. Juric?” Jaantzen asks. “I understand it’s not the half million marks you were expecting to collect, but if this job goes well there’s the possibility of ongoing work.”
“Sure thing,” Manu says. All these numbers are meaningless to him anyway — it’s not like he’ll see a dime if his plan goes through. And it wasn’t about the money in the first place. It was about getting into a crew. Even one as shifty as Sylla’s. Had to be better than the increasing risk of getting washed out as an independent.
But the phrase “ongoing work” snags his fancy a moment, and he lets himself consider a future alongside Kai and whatever other Kai-like nasties Jaantzen has in his pocket. Manu’s feeling desperate, but is he desperate enough for that?
Jaantzen still hasn’t given him an opening. Manu looks out over the balcony, tries a casual position he hopes Jaantzen might imitate. The other man is still watching him like a hawk. It’s like Jaantzen doesn’t trust him. Big surprise.
“You aren’t still considering other offers, I trust, Mr. Juric.”
“Course not. But money talks.”
“Are you saying that money can’t buy loyalty?” Jaantzen raises an eyebrow, and in a brief moment of shock Manu realizes the big man’s making a joke. “My faith in humanity is shattered,” Jaantzen says, and then the eyebrow falls, the attempt at humor darkening. “I’ll beat any offer your former employer made you, I promise you that. And I also promise you that if you incite a bidding war, I will kill you and anyone you love.”
A chill down Manu’s spine. He doesn’t have many left, and if Marisa was smart she burned all ties to him once she found out what he really did. “Got it.” He flashes a smile that Jaantzen does not return.
“Who put you up to the hit on me?”
“I told you I was working on my own.”
“What if I told you Sylla Mar is staking out your apartment?”
Then Manu would say she has no sense of self-preservation, spreading their connection around like that. The woman has no brains. “I’d tell you she’s pissed cause she asked me out and I told her no.”
The corner of Jaantzen’s lip quirks upwards; it takes Manu a moment to realize he’s smiling. The expression is alien on Jaantzen’s face, and there’s something else behind it, something Manu doesn’t know how to read. He’s being evaluated, he can feel that. But no longer for his threat level.
“I appreciate loyalty,” Jaantzen says.
Manu doesn’t have a quip for that.
Talking with Willem Jaantzen all up close and personal is disconcerting. Manu’s perception of the man’s been turned on its head — there’s that reputation for viciousness and unfairness, which Kai embodies so well. But the way his people react to him — Manu realizes he’s starting to think of Toshiyo and Gia as Jaantzen’s people, even if the rest are mercenary — is not what Manu expected.
Toshiyo is a mystery of a human being, and her devotion to Jaantzen seems wildly out of character given the man’s reputation. Gia seems the sort of hired tough not to care, but somehow she’s fiercely protective of Jaantzen.
It’s all giving him pause.
Maybe the live-in lady is mellowing the grizzled gangster after all; Manu brushes the thought away. Now isn’t the time to think about Jaantzen’s girlfriend. Or about Toshiyo, or about Gia.
Manu is missing his chance.
Jaantzen is stepping back, out of Manu’s range.
“Hey, can I give you some advice, man?” Manu calls, and it’s probably a bad plan, but Jaantzen turns slowly. “Tosh is good, but she’s not like the rest of us. You’re gonna have to be careful with her, you think she’s worth keeping around.”
“I’ll take your point, Mr. Juric.”
He starts to walk away, and Manu knows he should shut up, but it’s never been a strong point — and in the middle of a job isn’t the time to pick up new habits. Plus, he’s about to lose his chance. “She likes you and respects you,” he says, and in Jaantzen’s profile he
sees a flicker of a confusion. “She’ll be a good crew member.”
Of all the people he’s met, Willem Jaantzen is one of the hardest to read. The man’s face is carved like rock but for a muscle twitching at his jawline. A wash of adrenaline floods Manu’s chest and gut; the handle of the knife is digging into his kidney, and if Jaantzen turns in anger, maybe, his judgement blown by Manu’s overstepping his bounds, Manu might just have the opening he needs.
But Jaantzen just turns back to study him. “Thank you,” he says finally. “And would you?”
“Would I what?” Manu frowns, the moment he was supposed to have struck now lost.
“Make a good crew member.”
“For the right crew, maybe.”
A flurry of activity through the door, and Jaantzen turns to see who’s just entered. Beni and Oriol, probably — they wouldn’t have been very far out.
Jaantzen’s back is broad and open, the perfect target. Manu palms the knife, steels himself to pounce. He’s a heartbeat away when Jaantzen shifts and Manu can see the tall woman who’s just entered the warehouse.
It’s Thala Coeur.
Blackheart herself.
Manu’s crisp, action-oriented adrenaline buzz drains into the high, shaky whine of catastrophe averted.
He slips his sweaty palm off the handle of the knife just as Jaantzen turns back to him. “Well, Mr. Juric. Shall we go meet the financier of this little expedition?”
Blackheart is financing this job.
“Sure thing, boss.” Manu hears himself say the words, feels his face form an automatic smile. But he almost killed Blackheart’s showrunner right before whatever big job she had planned.
He has a long list of people it’d suck to piss off — and a very short list of people it would be fatal to piss off.
That list is Blackheart.
Manu watches Jaantzen’s broad, knife-proof back walk away.
He’s not going to get another chance — and not just because of Blackheart. Manu knows, without putting a finger on exactly when it happened, that he’s lost the ability to do Sylla’s job.
