Entropy

by Jess Anastasi

  Rian didn’t reply, and neither of them attempted any more small talk as they headed down into the bottom of the station. When they arrived, they got waylaid by some of Rajak’s goons, and Mat used his name and some creds to get them in, not mentioning Rian. Probably a good idea. For all he knew, if Rajak heard he was coming, he’d arrange to have him jettisoned out the nearest hatch.

  They ended up in a room where Rajak was overseeing the packaging of synth drugs alongside augmented bio quantum-wave implants.

  “Mr. Sokolov, to what do I owe this unexpected visit?” Rajak turned from whatever he’d been doing, but his eyes didn’t land on Mat, they stopped dead on Rian.

  “Rajak,” he greeted with a slow nod.

  Rajak crossed his arms with a considering look, probably already calculating what he was going to get out of this visit. “The high and mighty Rian Sherron. I might be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure the last time I saw you, your parting words to me were something along the lines of get frecked you piece of shite.”

  “Those might not have been my exact words, but it was definitely the sentiment I was hoping to convey at the time.” Rian settled a hard look on Rajak to make sure the guy knew he wasn’t intimidated. “Of course, you had just double-crossed me on a few crates of plasma lasers for Uzair. I had to kill a dozen assholes to get them back.”

  Rajak shrugged. “I got double pay, and you still came through for Uzair. No hard feelings.”

  No hard feelings? More like Rajak was lucky Rian hadn’t come back to pay him in kind for his trouble. Only because Mae Petros had found him and kicked his ass all the way back into the IPC military.

  “So.” Rajak made an expansive sweeping gesture with his hands. “What can I do for you today?”

  Just like that? No request for payment? No demand for something of value to put on the table before he even gave his reasons for being here? It wasn’t like Rajak to be so forthcoming, and it got Rian’s suspicions up.

  He glanced at Mat. “I’ve got it from here. You head back up. I’ll drop by later.”

  Mat cast a subtle glance at Rajak as if he was considering whether it was a good idea to leave to two of them alone. But if things were going to turn to shite, then he wanted Mat out of the way. The guy didn’t deserve to get dead in return for helping him. Mat sent him a tight nod and hurried off without saying anything else.

  Once Rian was sure he’d left, he returned his attention to Rajak.

  “I just need some information confirmed, that’s all. And it’s not going to cost me anything, because we both know you owe me a shite-load more than you could ever repay.”

  By the tightening of Rajak’s expression, it seemed he didn’t believe that at all.

  “So, what do you need to know?”

  “Alvar Galton. I heard he purchased a Nirali Classer with delta shielding.”

  Rajak sent him a smug grin. “You mean the Imojenna?”

  Prickly antagonism rippled under his skin. Rajak knew. Of course he did. The guy was a cockroach, but he kept himself informed of all kinds of underhanded shite going on in the universe.

  “That was my guess, but I wasn’t sure until right now.” His hand had landed on the butt of his pulse pistol without him even noticing. It was the comforting feel of the familiar grip against his palm that registered.

  “Galton bought the Imojenna and made no secret of it. Seems he was looking to get your attention.”

  “Well he’s frecking got it.” That was it. All he needed to know to take the Ebony Winter to Lander and blow a giant hole right through the middle of Galton’s compound. There was every possibility this was a trap—Rajak had offered the information way too easily. He was probably getting paid by Galton. Tempting just to put a bullet through the guy before he walked out of here. He’d probably be doing the universe a favor.

  “Now, about payment.” Rajak shifted over to lean casually on one of the nearby benches.

  “I told you, this isn’t going to cost me anything.” His grip on the pulse pistol in its holster tightened.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean from you.” Rajak whistled and a dozen men melted from out of the surrounding shadows, all with weapons aimed at him. “Rian Sherron, you stupid asshole. Do you know how many creds I’m going to get for you?”

  Rajak pushed up and strolled over to stand in front of him. “Seems you finally pissed off enough of the wrong people. There’s a black-market bounty out for you. Ten million hard creds straight-up for your capture. Ten million frecking creds. I couldn’t spend that in four lifetimes. It’s obscene.”

  “Who put out the bounty?” he asked through a tight jaw. This wasn’t the worst situation he’d found himself in. He wasn’t too worried. However, he sure as shite didn’t have the patience to be dealing with assholes like Rajak when he could be burning the engines of the Ebony Winter to get to Lander.

  “Some stuffed-shirt, multi-galactic CEO. Baden Niels. Can’t imagine what you did to piss him off enough to warrant this kind of takedown. But whatever. Not my problem when I’ll be swimming in all those creds.”

  Frecking Baden Niels, aka the Reidar. He should have known that at some point, Niels was going to get in his way yet again. Didn’t the guy ever get sick of failing to capture Ella and him?

  Rian tightened his hand on his weapons. “Rajak, get frecked you piece of shite.”

  It seemed poetic to repeat his previous parting words before he yanked out his guns and lit up, even as he dropped to the floor to avoid the return fire. He kicked himself into a roll and impacted Rajak’s legs, sending him crashing to the floor. He’d already put down four of the twelve surrounding him, but the rest went for cover.

  “They said you might be hard to take out.” Rajak had struggled upright with a maniacal grin on his face. He was holding something in his palm, and being in close quarters with both guns in hand, Rian couldn’t stop Rajak as he fell on top of him and slammed the device into his neck.

  It pierced his skin with an unforgiving razor-sharp sting. A numbing wave expanded through him, sending him collapsing boneless to the deck, weapons slipping out of his paralyzed hands.

  Rajak pushed to his feet with a feral smile. “Synth nerve blocker. My own special recipe. Very effective. Lasts about twelve hours. Oh, and I added a touch of a new experimental drug coming out of the central systems. It’s got compounds I’ve never seen before. No idea what they are, but they give you one hell of a bad trip. Affects the same parts of your brain that deals in fears and nightmares. You’ll be starting to feel that any second now.”

  Burning rage exploded through him, smoldering in every limb he couldn’t move. He might be down for the moment, but in twelve hours when this shite started wearing off, there would be nowhere safe Rajak could go where Rian wouldn’t hunt him down and slit him from crotch to neck.

  Rajak looked over at one of his goons. “I want every single person on the Ebony Winter dead. Bring me their heads. I’m going to pile them up in front of Rian so he’s got some company while he’s waiting for Niels’s people to come and get him.”

  No. No frecking way. He didn’t care what Rajak did to him, but the bastard did not get to touch any of his people. He had to warn them, had to find some way of stopping him—

  There was only one way. And it might not even work. He didn’t begin to understand it, but he was linked to both Ella and Varean. Ella had once projected her thoughts directly into his mind, like speaking telepathically to him. If he could send them a warning through that link somehow—

  Except the edges of his mind were starting to get fuzzy and the room around him was morphing to look more like a lab. Like the lab on Cassius where he’d spent years being tortured and experimented on. No. It wasn’t real. It was the drugs. He closed his eyes and shook his head, but when he opened his eyes and tried to focus, everything had gone blurry. The men standing around pointing their guns at him looked like Reidar.

  Wasn’t real. Not real. Just the drugs.

  Or was it? Maybe they reall
y were Reidar. Cold, dragging fear, the likes of which he hadn’t felt in years, started welling up from the depths of him. He’d promised himself he’d never feel that again. Never let himself be so helpless. He tried to grab onto the burning rage like a lifeline, but the icy dread was drowning everything else. Because it was going to happen all over again. He’d end up in a lab. The Reidar would do unspeakable things to him. They’d burn away his humanity and his soul, turn him back into the perfect weapon, and then they’d unleash him on the universe.

  And the first thing he’d do was kill everyone he cared about.

  No, not him. Rajak.

  Rajak was going to have everyone on the Ebony Winter killed right now.

  Struggling to hold onto the last threads of lucidity while the nightmares were doing everything in their power to drag him under into a hellish oblivion, Rian found the gossamer threads in his mind of both Ella and Varean. He locked onto them and with every fiber of his being, sent out a desperate yell that they would hear him and know they were in danger. The echo of it reverberated back at him, filling his head, eclipsing his mind with noise and light, making his entire body convulse despite the nerve blocker still jammed into his neck.

  When the blast receded, Rian sprawled weakly to the deck.

  His mind was no longer his own.

  Chapter Twelve

  Qae had woken up next to Cami—not snuggling this time. He couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or bad thing. Rolling out of bed, he’d gone into the privy, and by the time he’d come out, Cami had also woken up. He told her he was heading for the bridge as she sleepily headed for the shower.

  The Ebony Winter was mostly silent as he went up, the engines quiet, which meant Rian had berthed them on the Black Docks while they’d all been sleeping, just like he’d promised. When he got to the upper level, he found Lianna and Varean already awake and discussing some media feed displayed across the viewport. As Qae helped himself to the coffee, Jase appeared, requested a cup, and then set about preparing to cook breakfast like he always did.

  Although Qae had never asked him to cook a single thing, Jase had a knack for it—like he had a knack for a lot of things—and had pretty much taken it upon himself to feed them all. In fact, Jase had somehow become indispensable over the past year. The ship ran much more smoothly with Jase quietly overseeing and double-checking things in the background. Truthfully, Qae had started wondering how he’d ever gotten anything done without the guy.

  One by one, the crew all made their way up for breakfast. Everyone except Rian, who he assumed was off sleeping somewhere.

  When the food was ready, Qae loaded up two plates and took one over to Cami, who was sitting at the long bench running along the viewport on the far side of the communal room. She thanked him as he sat on the stool next to her.

  “We should head out after we’ve finished eating to see if we can line up a job or two for those creds,” she said as she pulled the plate in front of herself.

  No doubt Rian would want to immediately follow up on the information about the Imojenna as soon as he woke, and leave finding any jobs as a second priority. In fact, he was kind of surprised Rian had even gone to catch a few hours’ sleep. He would have thought the guy would be kicking down his door and demanding they get boots on the station to find answers as soon as they’d docked. But Rian didn’t need him to go along with the whole knocking-heads-together thing. He could easily take Varean for that. Besides, if Cami and he chased up some possible leads on getting the creds while Rian got his information about Alvar Galton confirmed, then they could get off the Black Docks quicker.

  “I’ll have to let Rian know what we’re up to, but yeah, we can go straight after breakfast and see what we can turn over.”

  Cami opened her mouth to say something, but a sudden loud crash cut her off.

  Qae whipped around to see Varean standing in the middle of the room, smashed cup and plate by his feet, hands pressed against his head.

  “Oh god!” Ella exclaimed. At first, Qae thought she was talking about whatever was going on with Varean. But when he looked at her, she had her eyes closed, expression pinched and fine, rippling flashes of bluish-white energy were rolling over her. He’d been told bits and pieces about Ella’s Arynian abilities, but he’d never seen anything like that.

  “What the hell is going on with the two of you?” he demanded into the shocked silence.

  “It’s Rian.” Varean opened his eyes, yellowish-white energy sparking in the atmosphere around him, similar to Ella, but not quite as obvious.

  “He’s asleep in one of the bunks, isn’t he?”

  “No, he’s in trouble.” Ella’s voice held a thread of absolute fury he’d never heard before. It actually freaked his shite out. “Someone is hurting him.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  Varean yanked out two of his guns. “Never mind that. I’m going to kill whoever the freck thought it was a good idea to touch him.”

  “Varean!” Kira exclaimed as the commando stalked toward the stairs leading down into the cargo bay. Ella went after him, her face set in a determined mask. With the power rippling around her, she looked like some avenging angel.

  For a full second after the pair left, the rest of them stood there staring at each other like morons trying to comprehend what had just gone down.

  “What the hell just happened?” It was Cami who finally broke the silence and got his brain working again. Rian wasn’t on the ship, apparently. Then where the hell was he? He was all but indestructible. If someone had got to him, it could only mean—

  “Holy shite on a crap stick!” He launched himself after Varean and Ella, clattering down his steps and catching up to them as the hatchway opened. The others came after him, but Qae paid them no mind, because as soon as the ramp lowered, all hell broke loose.

  Varean and Ella stepped onto the station and clasped hands. A wave of energy pulsed outward, sending every single person within a five-hundred-foot radius to the ground. People beyond the reach of the wave started panicking. Some tried to run, while others opened fire. Qae ducked, but none of the ammo reached them. It was like an invisible forcefield had sprung up between them and the rest of the station.

  Varean still had one gun in hand and started forward, putting down the people firing at them as he went. Ella followed in his wake, apparently holding his other gun, but not firing it. Qae didn’t think he’d ever seen her hold a weapon.

  He turned to look back at the others fanned out behind him watching on in confusion and shock. “Cami, with me. The rest of you, stay here and lock up behind me. If we’re not back in an hour, you get the hell off this shitehole of a station and don’t look back. Got it?”

  Jase agreed on everyone’s behalf and backed up to hit the hatchway controls, forcing the others to retreat up the ramp or risk getting shut outside.

  “You locked and loaded?” he asked Cami, who’d stepped up beside him.

  “Always,” she answered with a confident nod. He had no idea why he’d instinctively ordered her to back him up when he just as easily could have requested Lianna, Zahli, Tannin, or Jase. But it felt right having Cami at his side. Anyway, she’d been here before, she knew what to expect. He couldn’t say the same for the others.

  Qae sent her a nod and they ran after Varean and Ella, deeper into the station. After a while, people stopped getting in their way and simply cleared a path for them. They went down into the bowels of the station, meeting more resistance, but none of the thugs had any hope against Varean and Ella. The pair of them were unstoppable. He’d never seen anything like it.

  Rian had mentioned once the Reidar wanted to turn Ella into a weapon, and he’d never really believed it. Not when she was so serene. Such a typical priestess. Words and wisdom were her weapons of choice. He couldn’t imagine her physically standing up to anyone.

  Except now he didn’t have to imagine. He had the visual. And it was awe-inspiring.

  They came out in a room that seemed
to be some kind of processing or packing space for drugs.

  “What the freck is this?” A man was standing by a bench, wavering gun in his hand, backed up by eight other armed men. Rian was on the ground, down for the count. Only unconscious, Qae hoped. Surely if the guy was dead—again—Varean or Ella would have said something, since apparently they all had some psychic-connection thing happening.

  “What did you do to him?” Varean’s tone was ice cold and menacing.

  “Who, Rian?” The man actually gave a short laugh, obviously not realizing the danger he was in. Of course, he hadn’t just witnessed Varean and Ella literally cut their way through the Black Docks like knocking down a field of daisies.

  “I hit him up with the good stuff. He’s having a great time.” The man thumbed the charge on his nucleon gun and it buzzed to arm the ammo. “He’s waiting for a ride. Got other places to be. I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but right now you’re standing between me and a ten-million-cred bounty. And that’s a place you won’t survive, asshole.”

  “He’s in hell,” Ella whispered, gaze fixed on Rian, her expression contorting with anguish.

  Varean’s expression wavered, like he was struggling to hold it together as well. Whatever energy the pair of them had been wielding seemed to have disappeared, which Qae was guessing meant no more forcefield to stop the ammo. He brought up his gun and shifted forward, Cami flanking him.

  “Game’s up, cockwit,” he said, gaining the man’s attention. “If you’ve got even one speck of intelligence behind that ass you call a face, then tell your men to lower their weapons and back the freck off before things get messy.”

  Nope, the guy was officially a moron because he spent a long moment laughing.

  “You think you can walk in here, into my house, and make demands of me? You have no idea who I am.”

  “I know you’re a mouth-breathing imbecile, and that’s about all I need to know.” Qae shot a look at Cami, who nodded almost imperceptibly, as if she could read his mind. “Ella! Cover Rian.”