Where had it come from? Where was it going?
Another ran by, then another. He counted six bounding blue giants, each containing the same sparkling viscous anatomy that stretched and reconstituted with movement the way muscles of pure energy might function if modelled on those of a swift locomotive animal and bathed in visible light. Finnegan imagined these superbeings keeping pace with comets across aeons of space, for sport, or to prove their manhood in a kind of system-hopping rite of passage, or maybe they were on some sort of galactic pilgrimage and the comets were their deities.
Or maybe he should just admit his mind was back in kindergarten right now, along with the rest of humanity. First the Fleece, then a telepathic bird, now this: the universe held infinite surprises. Inifinite. As he watched the titans sprint away like humanoid streaks of St. Elmo’s Fire over the horizon, and recalled the magical lightshow of the Fleece in action, he stumbled on what his fumbling, reeling brain might call an idea.
It was all c-o-n-n-e-c-t-e-d. Somehow. “Their sparkles were sentient,” he said aloud without meaning to.
“What was what?” Her parched, breathless voice reminded him of their first encounter, under the Aguarbor tree.
“Those things we just saw, they were made up of some weird energy plasma, right?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, the Fleece came to life through those millions of microscopic particles inside the fluid. They sparkled.”
“And?”
“Those things we just saw...sparkled too. And that must mean...um, I mean they...I mean it means that...hell, I’m so freaking tired, I don’t know which way is up anymore. But did we really see what we just saw? I mean did we?”
“I was gonna ask you the same thing.”
“Ever hear of anything like that?”
“Never.”
Finnegan rubbed his eyes, glanced up at the comet. “You don’t suppose the Iolchians met those things before? I mean the ancient inhabitants: they observed them, deified them, built the statues across the desert to commemorate their passage, designed their whole civilization around the fact that these gods reappear whenever this particular comet passes overhead. And maybe the recent human settlers made some sort of contact. Y’know, to get the Fleece technology. Maybe the last time the blue titans passed through, one of them accidentally sublimed a few energy particles, and we found them, and it’s opened up this whole new branch of science.”
“Whatever you say.”
“I’m babbling, huh?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Ah, hell. Just excited is all. I mean if I don’t say this stuff out loud, it’ll drill holes in my head, ya know?”
“Finnegan, I hate to say this but we need to focus on what’s coming. Blank out the rest. I know it’s hard after what we’ve just seen. Can you do that?”
“Yep.” And heeding her voice of reason was suddenly as natural as heeding his own—he and Malesseur had a rapport, a shorthand he hadn’t seen coming. Any other time and he’d have told her to go screw herself—alien gods were in town—hel-lo!—but she was in his head. Not sweetly persuasive like Megan, but curt and honest, and like Megan, a step ahead of him. How the hell had that happened? Oh yeah, he was three days sleep-deprived. “I’ve stopped hallucinating, at least.”
“Good. Hold that thought,” she replied.
They bounced over a series of narrow chasms that appeared to have no bottom. On the far side, flat, uncluttered terrain all the way to the border. No more than two miles away now. The freakish and freakishly well-preserved stone statues lining the boundary of Iolchis loomed imperious and equidistant, a testament to the grandeur of that old, old civilization long departed from the planet. The laser fence joining the statues was invisible until touched; even the slightest contact provoked its ire, and at several points gusts of sand did exactly that, flaring the beams to a bright pink hue. The combination of ancient myth and newfangled tech was a potent one. No wonder no one fucked with the Iolchians.
No one with any sense, that was.
He kept Bess’s heading, half a mile east of the tunnel. Just as he’d hoped, the waiting forces began to converge. He slowed down a tad, giving the assholes chance to throw all in on this one vector. Leaning in to Bess’s dash, he whispered, “One last time, sweetheart, for Malesseur and me. One last time. Be the legend.”
“Good luck,” Malesseur spoke gently in his ear as she hugged his waist ready for the final maneuver. He felt like a prick for untying her hands and lifting her off him, but he hadn’t had the Fleece treatment—a clutch of icepicks knocked into his ribs at even the slightest touch.
“Just hold tight, Lori. I’ll make it up to you later, I promise.” Exactly what he meant by that was anyone’s guess, but it felt good to have said it, even through his foggy slipstream of adrenaline. And had he just called her Lori?
“Deal.”
Close to thirty Hover-APCs bullied forward in ram-horns formation, the points of the horns really barrelling on either flank, effectively cutting off his opportunity to veer either way. Or so they thought. He’d slowed down for precisely this reason, to throw off their predictive calculations. At this current speed they had him snared, yes, but they didn’t know about Bess’s shocking turn of pace when in a jam. It had saved his sorry ass more times than he cared to admit. And it was highly illegal, a custom-built pyro jet concealed between the rear flaps—over a thousand clips per burn, pyro was that expensive.
“Here we go.” He flipped the speedometer up on its hinge, pressed the hidden PYRO BOOST button underneath, and clenched himself. “Umm...” He hit it again.
“Any time now, Finnegan.”
“But—but I topped up the pyro myself. She should burn. She has to—” He levered all his weight onto the press of his thumb, “—burn!” Nothing. Nowhere. And they were almost locked inside those ram horns curling in for the kill.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Malesseur splashed over his shoulders, wrenched the handlebars hard to the left, then straightened them. “Choke it to the max and don’t stop for anything. Leap over them if you have to. Just don’t slow down until we’re there. Got it?”
He shrugged her off, fuming at his own fuck up and because she was right. Again.
A blast of sand and bedrock in his path forced him to swerve further left. And another. And another, so that he’d done a one-eighty by the time he saw where the shots had come from. From the chasing force, at the end of its days-long pursuit from Iolchis Core. They were pissed. And Jesus, he’d slowed down too much, paced himself too leisurely on the final leg, forgetting all about the bigger threat—upward of a hundred hover vehicles of various shapes and sizes, each with enough firepower to crater the world.
He was trapped. It was all over.
Yet—the lady had insisted. And that phrase, ‘to the max’, was nothing if not this whole insane, shit-off-a-shovel, hell-for-leather effort encapsulated in glorious ‘fuck-you’ style. Her style. His style. Bess’s style.
He yanked her around by the horns and aimed straight for the line of Hover-APCs barring the way northwest. Pulse cannons swivelled on gun turrets from every direction, a hundred or more trained in perfect sync. At first he thought they were firing mortar rounds of some kind, blazing orange projectiles that thumped the ground in between. But the missiles didn’t really explode. Didn’t even reach half way to the bike.
More appeared. Not rising but falling, splatting clear liquid on impact. Dozens hit the armoured cars in rapid succession, the heavy clank, clank, clank denoting more weight and force than he’d realised. But what the hell were they? Where had this orange rain come from?
Orange rain.
He gasped, looked skyward. It was as though streams of night and day had merged somehow into one molten shadowy aerial rivercourse that fed from the sun. A neverending flock of birds poured overhead from the west, clutching in their talons an arsenal of orange bulbs from the Aguarbor trees—the oil-giving kind, not the drinking kind. This had t
o be the condor’s work! This was why it had flown west after the steeler hollow, to summon all the birds from the aviary, birds from a hundred different worlds, and many, many more from this one, to unleash an orange monsoon on their captors, the Iolchians.
Soon he couldn’t even see the vehicles in any direction. A thunderous ring of fiery rain surrounded him, and he was strangely in the eye of the storm—or maybe not so strange—he had an ally up there, a powerful ally orchestrating this surprise retribution.
He kept going. The orange curtain opened for him. The desert was awash with frothy liquid and littered with the hard broken shells of the epiphyte bulbs. He kept going. Bombs rained down either side of him, the noise of their collective impacts louder than a pyro drill holing a mountain.
Through the deluge poked the barrel of a APC’s cannon to his right. Finnegan squirmed, clutched at his Shelby as he glimpsed a pair of white bulging eyes gazing at him through the polymer glass under the turret. Shit-eater. Had Bess in his sights. A perfect shot in a few seconds’ time and they’d be a memory. His gun wouldn’t even dent the tank.
In desperation, he flipped the speedometer casing up and tried the PYRO BOOST one last time.
The jolt threw him back into Malesseur. She caught him but had to mash the heels of her hands into his ribs. It hurt like hell. Ignited, Bess powered out of the rain in seconds, leaving behind a giant, flaming...
OhmyGod.
She’d done more than escape. Her pyro flame had ignited the entire oily deluge—in no time at all it was a blazing colosseum. The birds veered away to avoid the pluming cloud of black smoke, while explosion after explosion ripped out from the inferno, signalling the end of the Iolchian army.
He kept going until he reached the open tunnel in the boulder field half a click west. Malesseur’s cronies had unblocked it ready for them. How nice. Bess’s overheated engine echoed like a wonky buzzsaw all the way through the low-ceilinged tunnel to the other side. Crossing the border—their only goal for so long now, longer than he could remember—didn’t register in any measurable way. Not by machine. Not in his gut.
Bigger things had happened today, things he might never understand.
He let his tired shoulders droop. If there was a part of his body that didn’t ache, it was a lonely fucker. He indulged a long-overdue yawn. Reached behind him, clasped Malesseur’s moist fingers, chuckled relief through splintering ribs when she kissed the topside of his hand. How their roles had changed since that night at the Aguarbor. He blinked into daylight once more. Only half-aware of the reception committee waiting for them in front of one fine-looking, expensive shuttle.
A woman strutted into view, tall and thin and decked in a form-fitting beige suit. The diamond dial on her wristband pie-sliced coloured sunlight at him as she walked. “Unbelievable,” she said. Her accent, smart, sharp, and a little French, seemed to fit her appearance. “You two are my new heroes. Seriously. To survive that and still be, well, alive. Can I kiss you both?”
“Later, sweetheart.” Finnegan dragged himself off the bike, held the men coming to assist him at arm’s length. “I can handle this part on my own.”
“Oh, which part is that?” asked Diamond Girl.
“My dick, if you really must know. Been dying for a leak all morning.”
***
“Please be quick,” Lindsay’s boss hollered to Finnegan—since when had Lori used the word ‘please’—as he lumbered around the front of the shuttle. “Our launch window expires soon.” Then to Lindsay in a curt, low voice, “What does he know?”
“Nothing. I bribed him and he bought it.”
“How much?”
“Quadruple.”
She snorted. “Dumber than I thought. He still thinks you’re me?” Lori cocked an immaculately plucked black eyebrow, held it with appalled fascination as she waited for an answer, looking Lindsay up and down several times.
“He still calls me Malesseur, yes,” Lindsay replied.
“Yes what?”
Yes, you preening, venereal-riddled hag rag, he’s more of a man than anyone you’ve ever met. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Interesting. I see you’ve got some spit left in you, Polo.” Lori’s nickname for Lindsay, because Polotovsky demanded altogether too much mouth-time for someone so far beneath her. “And the leg—” She bent down, began to peel up the blood-caked fabric of Lindsay’s suit, “—doesn’t seem too worse for wear, considering how we—”
Lindsay knocked her away in a panic, realising how Lori would react to finding out the Fleece had been used already—that multi-billion credit commodity, that miraculous coveted prize of the galaxy—on a secretary she’d dumped in the desert. “Ow, that hurts.” She hopped a few steps, pretended to suck up the pain, all the while resolving in her mind that she had to do something, and soon, if she wanted to see another dawn.
But it didn’t have to end like that, did it? Maybe if she pretended to treat the wounds herself, limped around for a few weeks, Lori might not notice. For chrissakes, this wasn’t some uppity office supervisor she was talking about, it was Simon freaking Malesseur’s only daughter. Getting on her wrong side would also put her on the wrong side of his entire criminal empire, and that was altogether too much wrong side for one superfluous PA with barely a clip to her name.
Nope, when it came to it, Lindsay Polotovsky, secretary, would just have to go with the flow like she’d always done, plan out Lori’s monthly itinerary, launder and embezzle and donate to dubious interstellar charities, all to keep the Malesseurs doing what the Malesseurs did best—leeching off the hard-fought-for colonies of human-occupied space.
But—she was no longer that secretary. Not while Finnegan was around.
“Polo, Polo, going it solo.” Dropping her bored-amused expression, Lori made a circular hand gesture to her guards. “I’ll want a full briefing later,” she whispered to Lindsay. “For now, just keep playing me. We’ll pay this asshole what’s owed him and then we’ll be on our way.”
“Yes, ma’am—Polo.”
Lori flashed her a sneer in reply, just as Finnegan walked into view. “Mr. Finnegan, I’ve been advised by Ms. Malesseur that we’ll be settling acounts now. I hope that’s all right.”
He looked askance at the guards waiting at the shuttle as he started toward Bess. “Actually, I’m sort of anxious to get my bike out of this heat. Do you mind? She’s been through hell. Miss Malesseur will attest to that.”
“Absolutely.” Lindsay didn’t like where this was going. But for the moment, at least, she was Malesseur. What she said went. Biting her lip didn’t help, nor did thinking about patting her leg—no, warning Finnegan to draw his cannon would be the surest way to kill them both. What then? Was he even aware of the tension in the camp? Did Lori intend to pay him off as per her word, or double-cross him as usual? Right now Lindsay’s agony had a name, and it was Not Knowing Shit.
“Have those men make some room on board.” He eased Bess forward off her stabilizers. “And we’ll settle up inside. I’m guessing we don’t want to wait around out here.”
Lindsay turned to her boss, still in character. “Polo, what’s the word on hostile reinforcements arriving?”
“None that we can see, ma’am. The whole planet’s gone crazy over those big blue interlopers—the satellites have shut down all comms everywhere, locked everything down until ISPA can figure out the alien breach. It’s a good job we have friends in high places to hack the orbital net, to give us this launch window. Now, shall we go on board, ma’am?”
“Yes, let’s. And good work, by the way—” But as Lindsay limped past the guards toward the shuttle, all three of them drew their sidearms and rushed out to surround Finnegan. Oh God. Not like this. Not now. His palm had barely touched his cannon when he chose to relent—six against one was too many, even for him.
So this was Lori’s idea of settling accounts. The family tradition. Queen bitch by name...
“I have to hand it to you, Finnegan, you and your little circus
bike certainly know how to plough the dust.” Spot the real Malesseur. No points. No prizes. “We had fun monitoring your progress. You really exceeded my expectations.”
He cast Lindsay an inscrutable squinty look that sliced right through the bond between them. Every treacherous word she’d said to lure him here broiled in her gut.
“Oh, yes,” added Lori, “we knew you had the Fleece this whole time. The odds against the whole team escaping the Core were almost nil, but we figured a couple of you might make it out. You were all handpicked for that reason, for being notoriously hard to kill. And hey, can I pick ‘em or can I? Secretaries, too. Miss Polo here—I mean Miss Polotovsky—not only fit the physical description of Megan Finnegan close enough to hook you, she came from a suck-bait colony, too, so she speaks your grid-licker language. Her cover story was my idea, but the rest was pure Polo. Man, I wish I’d seen it: hiding the parachute, surprising you at the tree, pushing your buttons like that to get you to change heading, lying through her teeth mile after mile, at over hundred-and-twenty; un-fricking-believeable; I should have had her record the whole thing on omnicam.”
She raked her talons through her shortish auburn hair, mentally putting together the pieces of Lindsay’s ordeal like it was something she—Queen Bitch—was taking credit for, as if she’d masterminded the whole show. “Polo, Polo, just you wait till I tell Papa about what we did here. He’ll snap you up for a promotion on the spot, I’m not kidding. So did you screw the biker, pretending to be me? That must have helped. There’s not a merc alive who wouldn’t go for that—Lori Malesseur needing rescuing, eager to give it up in exchange for a ride someplace...remote.”
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