by K. B. Wagers
“The thing about the TLF is that most habbies support them because they want to make things right. We’re at risk all the time out here and some of it is because of the terrain, but some is because Earth is frequently clueless when it comes to setting policy for us. They don’t know what we need. They don’t know when we need it. People die because the leadership on Earth can’t admit that. I want my people to have the best lives they can. They don’t really want to separate from Earth, they want to be treated with equity. Just because we’re habbies doesn’t mean we don’t deserve the same protections and guarantees that Earth dwellers have.
“I know these people. They’re scared. But they’re angry, too, and willing to fight. We don’t need the NeoG to save us. We just want the chance to save ourselves.”
Max blinked and then nodded. “I appreciate that perspective, Chae.”
“Anytime, LT.”
“But I think this time, we should let the NeoGs kick some ass,” Jenks said.
“Totally.”
Nika woke to the ping of a new message on his DD. He read it and rolled out of bed, dressing quickly and heading out of his room in search of Stephan. He found him in the kitchen, looking like he’d been awake for a while despite the early hour, chatting with Scott, Jenks, and D’Arcy.
“Morning.” Scott pointed at the counter on the far side. “There’s breakfast.”
“I just got a message from Melanie,” Nika said. “Meeting time and place—this evening in downtown Amanave.” He shared it with the others.
“Smart of her,” Stephan said, frowning as he read the brief note. “That’s an area where the NeoG isn’t very welcome and that bar is too small for us to be able to blend in well. You walk in in uniform there’s bound to be a fight with the locals.”
“I can get with Chae and their fathers, we’ll be able to at least put some outfits together for me and Nik that won’t out us as NeoG,” Jenks said. “And I’m sure there are plenty of out-of-towners in the area.”
“I’m more concerned about your backup,” Stephan replied. “If we were outside of town we could set things up easily with some air support. Here we’ll have to stay on the ground and work around the civilians.”
“You’re going to have to stay here, Doge,” Jenks said to the dog lying behind her. “You’ll draw too much attention.”
“I don’t like it.”
Nika raised an eyebrow at the ROVER’s flat tone but grabbed his breakfast and joined the others at the table. “We can manage it,” he said to Stephan. “Melanie’s not going to try anything in public, either.”
“Don’t put it past her,” D’Arcy said. “This is the woman who set explosives on our station, remember.”
“Fair point,” Nika conceded. He pulled up a map. “Let’s take a look at what we’re working with.”
The answer to that question was “not much,” but as more people woke up and wandered into the kitchen, they managed to put a game plan in place that would at least allow the backup teams quick access to the bar in question to move in and arrest Melanie as soon as Nika gave the signal.
The day passed faster than he’d expected it to and as the sun set, Nika found himself alone with Max.
“I wish I could be in there with you,” she said, smoothing a hand down the rust-colored jacket he was wearing.
“Who’d be there to watch my back outside if you weren’t?”
“I know.” Max forced a smile. “Don’t trust her for a second, Nika, okay?”
“Of course not. But there’s more, right? What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Max, if you think we should call this off, I’ll back you.” He saw the surprise before she buried it and smiled ruefully. “I know, but I mean it. I trust your gut.”
“I’m not sure I do,” she whispered. “I want to call this off, but we can’t pass up this chance, and I know sometimes I truly need a better reason than my instinct pinging funny. I hate that we’re going to cut her a deal to get Tieg, even though I did the same thing with Julia. I just—”
“Want this to be more definitively ‘bad guys get their due’?”
“Yeah.”
“I hear you.” Nika nodded. “Try to remember that she’s not getting away with anything. Whatever deals we make, she’s responsible for the deaths of a lot of people, and the CHN doesn’t take that sort of thing lightly.”
Max was silent for a long moment before she nodded.
“You two ready?” Jenks asked from the doorway. Tivo and Luis were behind her, the pair wearing identical grim looks.
Nika took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
Jenks looked at Max. “You got my back,” she said.
“You got mine.” Max leaned in and pressed her forehead to Jenks’s after finishing the handshake. “Be careful.”
“I will,” she replied.
The ride into Amanave with Chae’s other father, Gun, was quiet until he pulled the transport to a stop near the downtown area. “Bar’s up ahead three streets and to your right.”
“Thanks,” Nika replied.
Jenks slipped her arm through his as they headed down the street. His sister was dressed in the same rusty coat with a darker brown hat pulled down over her distinctive hair. Sapphi had doctored their handshakes, removing the NeoG designations, so that to the untrained eye they didn’t look like anything more than a pair of locals out enjoying the evening.
“Try to smile some, Nik,” Jenks murmured before they hit the doorway of the bar. “That expression says you want to murder someone.”
“Might be a good idea in this place,” he muttered back as they stepped through into the dimly lit bar.
Jenks just laughed and slipped her hand down to take his, pulling him through the crowd to a nearby empty table as though she’d been here a hundred times. “Hey, couple of beers?” she called to the waiter, who responded with a wave of their hand.
As Nika settled at the table, Jenks leaned in. “Two men at the bar talking about us. Don’t quote me, but one looks a lot like the guy I dropped with a crotch shot when Grant confronted me and Tamago.”
“What did they say?” Sapphi asked over the coms.
“Nothing beyond ‘The NeoG is here.’ Now, it could just be locals making us. But I doubt it.” She kicked a foot up on a free chair and smiled at the waiter when they returned. “Thank you,” she said, taking the beers with a wink that had them blushing.
“Really?” Nika asked with a raised eyebrow. “Can you control yourself for one minute?”
She grinned. “What?” And then reached a hand out, laying it on his arm with a tiny shake of her head before he could take a drink. “I wouldn’t, just to be safe.”
They sat and watched the crowd, chatting about inconsequential things as Jenks occasionally mentioned over the live coms when she spotted another person who could have been sent by Grant.
“That’s eight you’ve tagged so far,” Luis said. “Still no sign of Melanie.”
“Grant’s here, though,” Nika replied as the man appeared from behind a group and headed for their table.
“I didn’t see him come in, did anyone else?” Stephan demanded.
“No, shifting for a better position on the back door now,” Tivo replied. “Can I—”
The coms cut out with a suddenness that could only indicate interference and Nika noted Jenks’s fingers flexing on her beer mug as Grant stopped in front of the table, three men behind him.
“Two behind us, Nik,” Jenks murmured, turning slightly in her chair so they were back-to-back.
“Where’s Melanie?” Nika asked Grant.
“Waiting for you elsewhere. Come with us.”
Without coms Nika wasn’t willing to go anywhere, plus he could bet that whatever was interfering with the systems included their locators. “No, I agreed to meet her here. Tell her we’ll wait for her to show up or no deal.”
“You walk out or we carry you out,” Grant replied.
“You do remember what
happened last time?” Jenks asked.
The smile that appeared on Grant’s face was cold. “Nowhere for you to run now, little rabbit.”
“Who’s running, asshole?”
Before Grant could respond, one of the men behind them grabbed for Jenks and dragged her out of her seat. She managed to get a booted foot up and kicked the table, sending it slamming into Grant and the other three goons, knocking one of them over. The man staggered back into an innocent bystander, who predictably objected by bringing a massive fist down on his head.
“I want it on record that I did not start this bar fight!” Jenks shouted as she elbowed her attacker in the stomach and wriggled free. She dodged the man’s wild punch and countered with a brutal uppercut that dropped him like an asteroid.
“Noted!” Nika hollered back, ducking down and putting his shoulder into the chest of the man who’d rushed him, flipping him over his back. He hit the floor hard, the air leaving him, and Nika gestured at Grant. “Come on then, you want to carry us out you’re going to have to work for it.”
Come on, Stephan, what is taking so long with that backup?
Grant moved in, and Nika had only a heartbeat to think that the man was almost as fast as Jenks before he blocked the punch and threw one of his own. Grant staggered back, clutching at his face, blood streaming from between his fingers. The next man surged in, but Nika caught him by the arm, locking onto his biceps and digging his thumb into the ulnar nerve, pressing in until the man gasped in pain.
Nika spotted the knife too late, and even though he twisted out of the way the edge bit deep into his side, and he could feel it scrape along a rib. Pain flared and he cursed loud enough to be heard over the chaos.
“Nika!” The distraction cost her. Jenks missed a block and her opponent grabbed her by the throat, flinging her hard across the room. She hit the wall and slid limply to the floor.
Nika started forward but a hard arm around his throat stopped him. “Should have just come with us when we asked,” Grant snarled in his ear, and dragged him out the back door.
Thirty-Seven
Jenks woke with a groan, tried to rub her face, and realized her hands were cuffed above her head. She found her footing, wincing as the motion released the tension on her shoulders and the feeling flooded back with painful swiftness. “All I need now is some guy with a bloodstained machete and I could be in the movies,” she said, looking up at the cuffs.
She was chained to a pulley of some sort and she didn’t want to think about just how far up that ceiling was. A memory of being hoisted so that her feet dangled helplessly tried to assert itself and she pushed it away through sheer force of will.
“Jenks?”
She turned her head to see Nika next to her, similarly bound. “What happened?”
“You got thrown into a wall.”
“That explains the headache. Hey, look at me.” Nika was too pale and she spotted the bloodstain on the right side of his shirt as the events of the fight came flooding back to her. “Nika, how bad are you hurt?”
The door crashed open before he could reply. All eight people who came inside had their handshakes turned on, which didn’t bode well at all.
Melanie Karenina’s blond hair was perfectly done and her attempt to blend in on the surface of a habitat world was a laughable pair of fancy slacks tucked into a pair of obviously borrowed boots. Her white shirt already bore several orange smudges of the dirt of Trappist-1d.
“Goddamned rich people,” Jenks muttered loud enough for only Nika to hear.
Grant was at Melanie’s side, his hand on the gun at his hip. The other six people were evenly split, three men and three women.
“They’re all armed with guns,” Nika murmured. “Except for Karenina.”
Jenks could see the sword hanging at Melanie’s side. “Can you get loose?”
“Unlikely. You?”
“Not at the moment.” Jenks shot a bright smile at the group as they approached. “That looks like it hurts, Vince. You go see a doctor about it?” Grant currently bore a pair of angry-looking black eyes and a swollen nose, courtesy of her brother.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Vincent.” Melanie lifted her hand and smiled at Jenks. “Commander Vagin. Chief Khan, I am Melanie Karenina. I’m disappointed you didn’t just come with my people.”
“I don’t like it when people change venues on me,” Nika replied. “If you wanted to do this exchange under the radar, your people made a mistake starting a fight and kidnapping us.”
“Ah yes, this exchange. Did you really think I was going to buy into your ruse, Commander?”
“‘Ruse’? Who talks like that?” Jenks kept her face blank even as she cursed loudly in her head. No one else could hear it anyway; she couldn’t get even a hint of coms on her DD, no chat, no emails. They were being jammed and good.
“It got you here, didn’t it?” Nika replied with a smile.
“True, but I figured it was worth the trip. Let’s have a conversation.”
Jenks rattled her cuffs. “Take these off, we can chat.”
“I’m smarter than that, Chief Khan,” Melanie replied.
“Couldn’t be too smart if you’ve gotten in bed with that idiot,” she said, jutting her chin out at Grant. He moved to strike her, but Melanie put her hand out.
“Enough. This thing has escalated far beyond where it should have. I’m hoping we can settle it like civilized people.”
“Sweetheart, I grew up on the streets,” Jenks replied with a grin. “And you killed my friends. We’re way beyond civilized. So let’s try this instead: you take off my cuffs, and I’ll shove those fancy boots up your—”
Grant moved from his spot at Melanie’s side, hitting Jenks in the stomach with a brutal punch. All the breath rushed out of her, and through her own hacking sobs Jenks could hear Nika spitting curses.
The throbbing pain wasn’t anything new, though, and she pushed off and up from the ledge behind her, managing a shot to his face with the crown of her head. There was a satisfying crack as she broke his nose a second time and Grant staggered back, blood streaming down his face.
He surged forward again, grabbing her by the throat. “You fucking bitch, I am going to cut you to pieces.”
“No you won’t,” Jenks gasped. “Because she’s in charge and if she wanted us dead, we’d already be dead. So get out of my face before I decide to make you stop breathing. The adults are having a conversation.”
“Grant, stop.” Melanie’s order rang out before he could hit Jenks again. She waved a hand. “Leave her alone. Go clean yourself up.”
For a second Jenks was sure the man was going to ignore Melanie and crush her throat, but she made herself keep her eyes on his until he let go and backed away.
“Fine.” Grant marched off.
Jenks watched him go, then shared a look with Nika. It was a relief that she’d been right about Melanie wanting them alive, but there was no telling how long that luck would last. They needed to buy the others as much time as possible to find and rescue them.
Because Jenks knew they would.
She smiled her warmest smile at Melanie. “I’d say he’s charming, but we both know that’s a lie.”
“He has his uses.” Melanie lifted a shoulder. “You know what that’s like, Chief Khan. Every good team needs the ones who can hit hard, but don’t bother thinking of much else.”
“Are you talking about me? Listen, you bougie piece of—”
“Jenks, she’s just trying to get under your skin,” Nika murmured.
“Oh, I know that. Like I told Grant, this is just two adults talking. At least she knows what she’s dealing with. I hate uninformed opponents.” Jenks let the smile on her face slide from warm to vicious. “Cut to the fun stuff, Melanie. What do you want from us?”
“You have proof, supposedly, of everything that’s gone on in this operation, and you can keep it. However, in exchange, you’re going to let me walk away from this. You can have Senat
or Tieg and anyone else involved in this rapidly collapsing scheme.” She gestured behind her. “You’ll leave me and these six people out of it.”
“Grant’s not on the list?” Nika asked.
“No.” Melanie smiled, shaking her head, and Jenks caught a glimpse of the cunning the woman had been hiding behind her pleasant demeanor. “Grant is worth something to you, and if I’m crossing him and Tieg, I figure it’s better if you take care of him. I don’t like the idea of spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”
“You seem awfully sanguine about all this.”
Jenks glanced at her brother. There were lines of pain etched on Nika’s face and it looked like the bloodstain on his shirt was spreading.
“I am a businesswoman, Commander. All good things come to an end eventually and only fools try to stay longer than they should. A lesson I learned on Mars. Senator Tieg is unwilling to listen to reason about the shift in opinion concerning the TLF. And how it will only get worse if we continue to mine these habitats for money.
“Senator Carmichael has managed to convince a number of his key supporters to change their votes on an upcoming bill. If that bill passes, he’ll lose his seat on the Habitats Committee.”
“And he’ll lose his ability to control this operation,” Nika said.
“Precisely. I’ve known men like this my whole life. He’s already spooked by that possibility and thought that having Grant attack the NeoG would help turn the tide.”
Jenks gritted her teeth against the lie but stayed silent. Julia had told them Melanie ordered the attack and had the recordings to prove it.
“You have to let us go,” Nika said.
A smile briefly peeked out at the corner of Melanie’s mouth, then disappeared. “I don’t think that’s quite the case, Commander, but I’ll let you contact your team and tell them where to meet us. We’ll do the exchange. You two get to live, I get to walk.”
“In exchange for keeping the shit ton of money you made off this scheme.” Jenks snorted. “Okay, Hans. Try not to fall off a tower.”
Melanie frowned at her. “Hicks, shoot them both if they try anything.” She moved forward, not toward Jenks but to Nika.
