by Rick Partlow
Lyta Randell snorted a laugh from the seat ahead of him and to the left, not looking back but he still saw the mocking grin on her face.
“I find it hard to believe someone who works with Mandy Ford and Aliyah Hernandez could be watching his language because Katy and I are females,” she said, still chuckling.
“It’s just old habit,” he allowed, shrugging it away.
“Val’s from Buckskin Holler,” Logan put in, laughing softly. “They do things differently out on the fringes.” No, I should call him Jonathan again now that we’re under cover. Or Colonel Slaughter. Don’t fuck up and forget while we’re on the station.
“It’s Buckland Vale,” he corrected his commanding officer, grinning at the old dig. Marc Langella had first used it and it had caught on. He didn’t mind too much. “And yeah, we’re a bit more reserved with our language in front of females out there. And children, and older people. It’s called bein’ respectful. Though I know you fancy city folks on Sparta or Nike wouldn’t understand that.”
Plus, though he never would have admitted it to any of them, he respected the hell out of Logan Conner, or Logan Brannigan, or Jonathan Slaughter, or whatever he wanted to call himself; and where he was from, you didn’t use bad language in front of the loved ones of people you respected. Even if those loved ones could blow you out of the sky without breaking a sweat.
“Anyway,” Logan —Jonathan, dammit—went on, “we launched this far away because we didn’t want them to get too close a look at the Shakak II. We had to keep that rock between us and them, and asteroids aren’t nearly as close as they look in those adventure stories you like to watch at the Tri-D shows.”
“I thought the whole idea of putting all that ugly shit on top of the girl was to make her look normal so we could hang out around civilians without being noticed.”
“Theoretically,” Katy answered, still turned partway. Not as if there’s anything for her to hit if she takes her hands off the stick. And we’re pointed backwards anyway, since we started the deceleration burn. “But it’s her first time out and we didn’t want to take any chances.”
Since she’d been promoted and they’d headed off on this rescue mission, Katy had become more involved in the operational decisions for the ship as well as the auxiliary craft. He’d noticed the change in her; she’d always been competent and confident within her own area, but it seemed like the area was growing, and her confidence with it.
She might captain her own ship someday. If we all live long enough.
“We’re coming up on their Traffic Control net,” Katy announced after a few minutes more. “Time to cut braking boost and cruise on in.”
Damn. If there was anything he liked less than being stuck in a tiny lander for six hours, it was being stuck in a tiny lander in free-fall.
“Hey boss,” he said to Jonathan, mostly to avoid saying his name so he wouldn’t screw it up. “I know the plan, but why’d you bring me along instead of one of Colonel Randell’s leg-breakers?”
“You ever been in a bar fight, Captain Kurtz?” Lyta asked him, stepping in to answer his question with a question. “Maybe a go-round with one of the boys back home when you were on leave?”
“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “Who hasn’t?”
“None of my Rangers get into bar fights,” Lyta declared. “You know why? Because I don’t teach them how to win a fist-fight, I teach them how to disable and kill as quickly and efficiently as possible. Trinity…” She nodded toward the image projected on the front display. “…is a rough place, but if we go into every confrontation leaving bodies piled behind us, we’re going to attract attention and get ourselves a bullet in the head pretty damn quick.”
“We wanted someone who could take a punch without ripping someone’s throat out as their first response,” Jonathan summarized.
“Glad I’m good for something,” Kurtz murmured.
“Holy shit, glad we’re working on a government expense account,” the copilot said and whistled softly. Kurtz didn’t know him too well, but he thought his name was Acosta. Acosta tapped his headphones, indicating the transmission he was getting over the comms channel. “Damned station is charging us 300 credits just to dock, and Mithra only knows what they’ll ask per day.”
“Don’t haggle,” Lyta warned him. “They won’t appreciate it.”
Kurtz had imagined the place would be so primitive, they’d have to exit the shuttle in vacuum suits, but docking turned out to be fairly routine. Katy made every docking seem smooth, of course. The woman could fly a shuttle like nobody’s business.
He waited his turn at the airlock while Lyta Randell retrieved her sidearm from the utility locker and strapped it on, then handed holstered weapons back to him and the others, letting the gunbelts float across the ship like angels of the Spenta Mainyu were guiding them to each of them. Everyone got one; they’d decided earlier they wouldn’t be leaving anyone behind with the shuttle, and he wondered if that was because they needed everyone along or because Katy had objected to being left to drive the getaway car.
Kurtz strapped the belt around his waist, cinching it tight. He liked the feel of the solid weight of a reliable weapon at his hip, but he wasn’t feeling it now; he had to strap the damn thing down to his thigh to keep it from flapping around in the microgravity.
“Ain’t never been on a space station before where they let you go heeled,” he commented, pulling the service pistol from his holster and quickly checking its load. “Not even military stations.”
“Well, this place isn’t like any other station you’ve been to,” Lyta warned him. “But like I said, try not to use that thing unless there’s no other choice. The less attention we attract, the better.”
She pulled open the outer airlock and they all filed out through the docking umbilical…and into the yawning muzzles of half a dozen ugly, practical-looking flechette guns, held in the hands of ugly, practical-looking armored security.
“Don’t fucking move!” someone was yelling, but he hadn’t planned on it.
“I think we attracted some attention,” he commented drily, keeping his hands away from his sides.
“You’re mercenaries, huh?” The woman asked, pacing back and forth through the gap between their chairs.
She wore leather, real leather he thought rather than the expensive, vat-grown kind you bought in the big cities. Out in the Periphery, the cheapest way to get leather was to kill a damned cow and skin it. The smell of the black leather was thick and pleasant, nearly offsetting the overpowering scent of whatever perfume she’d sprayed over it.
Logan—he’d been working hard on making the mental transition from Logan Conner, officer in the Sparta Guard, to Jonathan Slaughter, mercenary commander, on the trip from Sparta, and it hadn’t quite taken hold yet—waved a hand across his face when he thought she wasn’t looking, trying to clear the air in front of his nose for a clean breath. Maybe water was rationed on Trinity, or maybe it was a personal thing, because Security Chief Chica Lopes didn’t seem to take too many baths. Instead, she tried to cover her body odor with thick leather and thicker fragrance. The combination was more intimidating than her size, her muscles, or even the nearly featureless, grey holding cell where he and Kurtz had spent the last three hours.
Most of it had been just stewing, making them wait in a locked room to show how little control they had over the situation. Security had taken their weapons and put them under guard in separate rooms, he and Kurtz together while Katy, Acosta and Lyta were in a neighboring compartment. He was grateful he’d used the head on the shuttle ride, because the Security guards had not been polite enough to offer trips to the bathroom.
“Is that a question?” he wondered, finally responding to Lopes after she stopped her pacing and fixed him with a hard stare. “Because you know what we are, and you know who I am. It’s all in my registration documents and I sent those over before we docked. So, what’s the problem?”
He wanted to swear more. Lopes looked like
someone who appreciated a good foul-mouthed rant. But she also looked like someone who’d have him handcuffed and then slap him around a little just to show who was in charge, and he didn’t have time for the games.
“The problem is,” she said, leaning down to put her scarred, hard-edged face into his, “we don’t need hired guns in here trying to push their way into our arrangement. Momma Salvaggio runs this place and you and your fucking Wholesale Slaughter better not forget that.”
“That’s what this is about?” Logan’s eyes went wide and he began laughing. He hadn’t meant to, knew it was probably a bad idea, but he couldn’t hold it back. “You think we’re coming in here to take this place over and cut you out?” He shook his head in disbelief. “You think we want this fucking place? It’s a cave, lady! We’re here to do business, just like everyone else who comes here.” He scowled. “At least, that’s what I had heard about Trinity, that people came here to do business. Maybe you should ask your boss if that’s how she wants to keep it, because if we spread the word around that this is how you treat your visitors, maybe everyone’ll find somewhere else to take their money.”
He leaned forward in his chair, not getting up but bringing his face even closer to hers, defiant and not the least bit afraid of her attempts at badassery.
“Is that what she wants? Because if you know who I am, then you know our reputation. Wholesale Slaughter doesn’t need your station to get work.”
Kurtz eyed him doubtfully, and he knew why. He was talking out of his ass; he had no idea whether they’d heard of Wholesale Slaughter and their grand total of two successful jobs way out here. But he knew General Constantine had done his best to spread the word about them in an effort to improve the depth of their cover, and if it hadn’t spread this far…well, as Lyta always said, attitude was everything.
Lopes drew in a breath, silent, jaw clenching, and he knew he had her. She straightened, tugging her jacket down and smoothing it, a nervous tic to buy time.
“You have to understand,” she said, her tone shifting gradually from hostile and in command to slightly more conciliatory, “we’ve had some trouble here lately. Starkad bully boys coming in here with their Marines and trying to push everyone around a few days ago, thinking they’re back in the Core.” The hackles stood on the back of Logan’s neck. They were too late…Starkad had already been here. But he couldn’t let the shock show on his face, couldn’t let her see it mattered to him.
Lopes made a face, probably much braver than she’d considered when she’d been nose to nose with the Supremacy Marines. “That shit’s bad for business and we had to make sure it wasn’t happening again, you know?”
“I understand that,” Logan assured her. Damn it, he was still having trouble thinking of himself as “Jonathan,” having trouble getting his game face on. Maybe it was the fear for his brother twisting inside his guts, or maybe so much time away from this life had left him too far away from Jonathan Slaughter to come back to him. “What the hell did Starkad want all the way out here? I didn’t think they gave a shit about what happened in the Periphery.”
She looked as if she wanted to tell him, but reconsidered before she could blurt it out.
“That’s between them and Momma Salvaggio,” Lopes grumbled. “What’s your business here?” she asked him.
He thought about telling her that his business was none of hers but the question had the sound of a prelude to it, of her searching for a way to save face and still let them go on their way. What story to give her, though? The cover they’d come up with was a scheduled meeting with one of their agents who’d come to scope out a client; but if Starkad had already come searching for Terrin, it might not be a good idea to be associated with him.
“We were supposed to meet a potential customer here,” he said, improvising quickly. “Though I don’t even know if they’re going to show with all the shit happening. They were squirrelly to begin with, and this might have scared them out of even coming here.”
“This client have a name?”
“They sure do,” he replied, deciding he’d been forthcoming enough. “And an interest in not sharing it.”
She grunted at the answer, as if she’d expected it. Then she jerked her head toward the door.
“All right, you’re free to go. My people will return your weapons once you’re outside the secure area.”
The guards moved aside at her words, their flechette guns dangling loosely on their slings as they relaxed. He had a passing thought they were letting their guard down too early, of how easily he could take them down, grab their guns and shoot his way out, but he shook it off, shook off the disdain he felt when he heard Kurtz sigh a breath of relief on the way to the door. He’d been hanging around with Lyta too much; he was starting to think like a Ranger.
The gravity here was slightly heavier than standard. Security was located far out on the rim likely for just that reason, to put confined miscreants at a disadvantage, as well as to keep them isolated from the more heavily populated levels, and Logan felt his joints creaking from being seated for so long. He shook them out as he walked, stepping into the corridor just behind Valentine Kurtz. The others were filing out of the next door down, and Katy looked as if she wanted to ask him a million questions, but Lyta restrained her with a glance.
“It’s just a misunderstanding,” he assured them. “Everything’s fine and we can get back to business.”
They took the hint and lined up a few steps behind the guards leading them out toward the lift bank, Katy keeping pace beside him. The walls were white and antiseptic here, a plastic lining over bare rock, cheap and ugly. The doors were sturdier, thick metal mounted deeper into the asteroid’s nickel-iron, impossible to break down, unlikely to be taken out even with high explosives. You didn’t want to get on these people’s bad side without a company of Supremacy Marines behind you…or maybe a company of Spartan Rangers.
At the lift station, one of the guards began returning their gun belts and the flechette gun muzzles tracked back to them, the other Security troops alert again as they fastened them on.
“Leave ‘em in their holsters until the lift doors close,” one of the guards instructed. “I see a gun in anyone’s hand before that, I unload on them.”
“No problem,” Logan assured him, but didn’t stop buckling on the holster. He didn’t want to provoke the guards, but he also didn’t want to seem like a pushover. Reputation might sound like a stupid reason to risk a confrontation, but he was playing the part of a merc; and for a merc, reputation was everything.
The elevator arrived after almost a minute of the tense, paranoid, utterly ridiculous stare-down and Logan hesitated at the control panel, eyeing the guards just outside the doors, their fingers still on the triggers of their weapons.
“Where do you go to find someone to broker a deal in this place?”
He thought they might not answer, as worried about losing face as he was, but one of them surprised him. A woman, naturally. Women were as concerned about image as men, but they expressed it differently.
“Most of them,” she told him, “are on G level.”
“G level it is, then,” he said, smiling in gratitude and hitting the control.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Acosta—he still couldn’t think of the man as Bray, which he supposed, was the point of having a cover—exploded the instant the car went into motion.
“Aren’t you worried the car is bugged?” Lyta asked, cocking a wry eyebrow at the Intelligence officer.
“Well, I fucking would be,” he snapped back at her, “if I didn’t have a jammer field sewn into the lining of my jacket.”
“Why the hell do you have a jammer sewn into your jacket?” Kurtz demanded. He stared at Acosta as if the other man had grown an extra head.
“He’s Military Intelligence,” Logan told him. Acosta glared at him and he rolled his eyes. “Sorry. Valentine, don’t tell anyone.”
“Oh yeah,” Kurtz said, nodding dumbfounded agreeme
nt. “Who would I tell?”
Acosta still didn’t seem happy about it, but he sighed and turned back to Logan. “Now, what happened and do they know who we are?”
“As far as I know,” Logan said, “our cover is still intact.” He was calm, mostly as a reaction to Acosta’s lack of it. “The bad news is, Starkad was already here and gone.”
“Oh, shit,” Katy spat the words out. “Did they get him?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m fairly sure they got the ship he came in on.” When they hadn’t seen it coming into the bay, he’d just thought it was in the antipolar docking hub; but if Starkad had already been here, they’d have grabbed it.
“That’s why you asked about a broker,” Lyta guessed, eyes narrowing with a penetrating discernment that had made so many of her enemies uncomfortable over the years. The others were staring at her and Logan in confusion and Logan wondered if he’d have to explain, but Lyta took pity on them. “Brokers are just what they sound like. They make deals, exchange favors. If Terrin was thinking straight when he got here, he might have gone to one to try to get passage off the station.”
“If they didn’t sell him out,” Logan added, hand going involuntarily to the butt of his holstered handgun.
“We’ll get him back,” Katy said softly beside his ear.
He nodded gratefully, but wasn’t comforted. He’d made the call to leave Terrin behind on Terminus. If he’d gotten him killed, he wasn’t sure if their father would ever forgive him.
“I want him back, too,” Lyta said into the silence that had fallen over the car. “But there’s something else to consider.”
“The data he was carrying,” Acosta added, a little heat behind his words telling Logan he was annoyed at how quickly they’d forgotten what he considered the crux of their mission. “If he was captured, did he have it on him?”
“That’s why you’re along, Major Bray,” Logan told him, his voice going cold. “General Constantine sent you to find and secure the data. Me, I have a mission directly from the Guardian.” His eyes bored into the Intelligence agent’s. “I’m here to save my brother.”
