“Hold, my friends! We dare not go in there!” Marquis gesticulated at the Bowsprit before crossing his armored arms across his armored chest. “The reason I’ve come early is dire indeed. It seems you, Jan Sabato, have been flagged by the CSD!”
“What?” Emiko blurted.
“Their official government contract reached the Network not twenty minutes ago!” Marquis pitched his voice down for dramatic effect. “Bounty! Jan Sabato! Four hundred thousand dollars, captured alive!”
“That’s a decent number,” Kinsley said.
“It sure is.” Pollen hefted her tank-killing rifle. “Want to try me?”
Marquis raised one empty hand. “Peace, m’lady! Your fair Emiko and I have already signed our contract, and I’d not dream of violating that sacred oath!” The glistening X in the center of Marquis’s yellow helmet fixed on Jan. “Nor would I dream of harming the man who saved my life!”
Kinsley looked between them. “You saved his life?”
Jan grunted. “Into the alley, now.” He moved out of the street, and the sound of multiple boots and some very clanky armor assured him the others followed. Once they were all crammed into a more discreet location, Jan turned on Marquis. “If you already knew about my bounty, why come meet us?”
“To warn you, of course!” Marquis sounded surprised Jan would even ask. “You must depart these premises for a secure location of your choosing. Once I know you’re safe, I will fulfill my contract with Miss Emiko. I will find Bharat!”
Jan glanced past Marquis at the ominously empty street, resisting the urge to grab the throwing knives concealed beneath his vest. “Fine. Let’s go.” Tiana would take them in and hide them if they asked, but ten out of ten patrons in the Greasy Bowsprit would sell Jan out for beer money. They’d blow up Tiana’s bar for four hundred thousand dollars.
“Go where, precisely?” Kinsley asked sternly. “Not back home. I will not lead the CSD to my home, Jan.”
Jan understood Kinsley’s hesitance. If anyone from Ceto’s government discovered the horde of illegal weapons, computers, and mods Kinsley had stashed in her back room, they’d seize her livelihood. Also, given that the work she did for contract killers violated at least a dozen local and planetary laws, they’d send her to the same orbital prison where Jan had spent the last five years.
“We’ll divert to the safe house on the east side,” Jan said, after a moment’s internal debate. “If whoever took Rafe last night knows about it, we’re fucked anyway, and if they don’t, it’s the safest place for me that’s not the Hole.”
“That’s a big risk,” Kinsley warned.
“Can you put me in a coma there?”
“If I leave to grab my gear and meet you, yes.”
“Then we’ll split up. You go back to the Hole; I head to the warehouse; you show up in time to make me sleepy.” Jan nodded to himself. “If Bharat did fight his way free of those Truthers last night, that safe house is the one place he knows to start looking. He may even be there now.”
“Agreed!” Marquis declared.
Jan scowled his way. “Was not asking.” He pushed past Marquis, careful not to trip over the bounty hunter’s stupid cloak, and strode toward the street. “Em! Call a taxi!”
For some reason, everything about Marquis — from his colorful body armor to his dramatic speech — annoyed the living shit out of Jan. Even the man’s immaculate sense of honor bugged Jan to hell and back.
Everyone who knew bounty hunters knew Marquis would never betray an employer, and Marquis had almost died many times fulfilling the stupidest contracts. Which was how, quite by accident, Jan had saved his life six years ago.
A gloved hand grasped Jan’s shoulder without warning, and Jan spun and batted himself free. “Hands off!”
Marquis pointed ominously to the sky. “We cannot wait for a taxi. We have incoming, my friend. My drones prophesize doom!”
Jan only now remembered that Marquis kept a small fleet of private drones on call at all times, feeding intel to his helmet and giving him an edge that somehow kept him from getting killed ironically. “Who’s coming?”
“I see two columns of armored vehicles with CSD markings rolling up from either side of this street.” Marquis tilted his helmet. “Their advance appears coordinated. Ground forces will cordon off this area in under three minutes.”
“They’ve got drones too.” Kinsley leaned against the wall of the Bowsprit with some sort of complicated-looking tablet in her hand. “I’ve already pulled their feeds and obscured our location, but once they put real eyes on us, they’ll know I’ve hacked in.” Kinsley shrugged. “Can’t hack eyeballs.”
So the CSD was already coming after him? Fuck. At this point, Jan would simply have to make a run for it. He wasn’t about to risk having his friends arrested by the CSD.
The side door to the Bowsprit slammed open, and Tiana Johnson stepped out wearing thick pants, a plush blue sweater, and a chef’s apron. As her eyes locked with Jan’s, her dark, weathered face crinkled into a smile. She lowered the massive shotgun she had pointed at his chest. “Well, damn.”
Jan swallowed against an unexpected lump. “Tiana.” This woman was the closest thing he and Pollen had to a mother.
“I thought Pollen was shitting me,” Tiana proclaimed, “but you really are out. Goddamn, boy, it’s good to see you.” Her dreadlocks were grayer than they’d been when Jan went to orbit.
Pollen placed a hand on Tiana’s shoulder. “CSD incoming. Get back inside.”
“Fuck no.” Tiana pushed the door open with one hand as she held her shotgun with the other. “You think I’ll let my boy go back to prison a day after he got out?”
“They will storm your tavern,” Jan warned, as even the thought made him ill. “The damage will be considerable.” He needed to run, now, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate.
“Ha!” Tiana chuckled. “This place has survived worse than Ceto Security Division, but if we do this right, those federal fuckers won’t even know you were here. C’mon. Inside. We’ll send you out the back way.”
Jan looked around at the narrow alley and the empty street. “The back way?” He didn’t know the Bowsprit had a back way, and he’d practically grown up inside it.
Pollen’s face lit up. “She’s right. It is the best thought, but we must go now.”
Kinsley dodged around Tiana to step inside the Bowsprit. “I’ll keep blocking their drones.”
Jan turned to face the most annoying bounty hunter on the planet. “Marquis—”
“Say no more, my friend!” Marquis slapped both hands on Jan’s upper arms. “I share your sorrow. Our reunion was too brief! Yet I cannot take this journey with you.”
“Correct.” Jan knocked Marquis’s gloved hands off his arms. “You can’t.”
“Fear not for me! I’ll depart another way! The CSD shall never detect me, and I’ll ... hey, where’re you going?”
Jan was already inside the Bowsprit, with Emiko right behind him. Once Jan heard the door slam, he assumed Pollen was inside too. Kinsley waited ahead, beside Tiana.
“Goodness,” Kinsley said. “That man is something.”
“I warned you,” Jan groused.
“He is unusual,” Kinsley agreed thoughtfully. “Undistilled heroic nonsense. How has he survived this long?”
“We have no idea,” Emiko said.
“I like Marquis,” Pollen declared. “He is a good man.”
“Shush now.” Tiana moved past Kinsley and beckoned them all forward. “We got no time to chat. Let’s get you below.”
“What do you mean, below?” Despite his confusion, Jan followed Tiana without hesitation. If his own foster mother would willingly sell him out to the CSD, he was fucked anyway. “Their drones and soldiers have Wi-Vi. Once they get a scanner on this place, they’ll find us in the basement.”
“You’re not going to the basement.” Tiana passed a wicked grin over her shoulder as she led them down the hallway Jan and Bharat had crept through earlie
r, then entered her kitchen. “You’re going way deeper than that.” She pointed at one of the walk-in freezers. “Door’s triggered off a keypad in the back.”
“Took two years to dig,” Pollen agreed. “Many long hours.”
“Dig what?” Emiko asked. “An escape tunnel? Once the CSD realizes we’ve slipped their ambush, they’ll block the entire sector off. Roadblocks and checkpoints everywhere.”
“They can put up all the checkpoints they want.” Tiana pulled open the big freezer door. “You’ll see.”
She led them into a freezer with frigid metal shelves stacked with all sorts of meat and protein vats, most of which, Jan assumed, were past their expiration dates. Goosebumps rose on Jan’s flesh. His breath misted.
Tiana stopped at a metal shelf stacked with vats and glanced at Pollen. “Put your back into it, big girl.”
Pollen gripped the side of the shelf and pushed. The considerable muscles in her big arms bulged visibly. The sound of Pollen’s grunting, and the screeching of metal legs against biocrete floor, told Jan just how heavy that shelf was. How had Tiana planned to move it if she needed to escape?
Yet move that shelf Pollen did, revealing a one-meter-tall hatch in the bottom of the wall. Tiana knelt before a small keypad and punched in a combination. The hatch popped open, just a bit, and Tiana stood up and stepped aside.
“Main entry’s in my room upstairs,” Tiana said. “This is the backup door, known only to me and mine.”
“Where’s it go?” Kinsley said, then sucked in a breath. “The maglev tunnels. You dug a tunnel beneath the street and into the old maglev terminal, didn’t you?”
“Smart girl.” Tiana’s wicked grin returned. “You want an escape tunnel the size of the Sledge, you’d best dig into one that’s already been dug down there.”
“But,” Emiko asked, now a bit pale, “what about the trains?”
“Maglev trains no longer run through these particular tunnels,” Kinsley declared confidently. “There’s far better maintained tunnels to either side of the Sledge. All tunnels beneath the Sledge have likely been out of service for some time now.”
“Just tell me one thing before you go.” Tiana stepped toward Jan. “Why’s the CSD after you?”
Jan shrugged in genuine frustration. “Honestly, I have no idea.” Just over three hours until he hopped into a coma.
“Well, it’s not like the feds ever needed a reason to take a man.” Tiana opened her arms wide. “Come here.”
Jan smiled despite the ugly situation. He hugged Tiana tight, resting his chin on the gray hair bunched atop her head. This woman had raised him since age eight, when a skinny orphan snuck into her tavern and stole a week’s worth of army rations.
“Thank you,” Jan said.
“Aww,” Pollen added.
Tiana slapped Jan on the hip and stepped back. “Don’t ever thank me for saving your ass. Just try not to die before we talk again. I’d be cross with you.”
Kinsley knelt and pulled open the hatch. “How will you move the shelf back in front of the door, after we go inside?”
“I won’t.” Tiana grinned at Pollen. “She will.”
Jan grimaced. “There’s no other choice?”
Pollen thumped her chest. “CSD is not hunting me. I work here.” She pointed commandingly at the little door. “Now go, before I lose patience.”
From outside the bar, a magnified voice blasted through the interior. “Attention, denizens of the Bowsprit!” The volume rattled the silverware in the kitchen. “We’ve tracked a fugitive to this location! We believe he’s inside this tavern!”
“Well, that’s stupid,” Jan muttered as Kinsley crawled into the tunnel. “Everyone in this tavern is a fugitive.”
“His name is Jan Sabato!” the CSD commander continued. “We’re broadcasting a recent image on wideband to all devices! We’re offering a four-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to his capture, provided he’s alive!”
“That’s not stupid,” Emiko pointed out as she, too, crept into the tunnel after Kinsley.
Tiana hurried to the entry to the walk-in freezer and closed its big metal door. “Now, son. Move that ass.”
It was time to flee his family. Once again, Jan had failed to save anyone, and once again his predicament had grown worse. Perhaps his years in Tantalus prison had ruined him for this type of work. Perhaps he had lost his touch.
Still, at least he had an escape tunnel.
09: Underground
Tiana Johnson was true to her word. While the tunnel was low enough that Jan had to crawl on hands and knees, small lights placed conveniently along their buried escape route made it easy to see. The thickly padded floor also made crawling on hands and knees a lot more comfortable than crawling on hands and knees should be. It was obvious Tiana, Pollen, and whoever else they’d roped into digging this tunnel had put a lot of love into it.
As Jan crawled after Emiko, gaze not quite fixed on the attractive ass in dark slacks ahead, he couldn’t stop thinking about everything that simply didn’t make any fucking sense. That was, even by his standards, an awful lot.
First, there was Fatima’s attempt to contact him back at the library, in the Luxury District. Garbled as her reply to his accusation had been, he had understood what little he heard.
“You sent me to orbit.”
“I didn’t, actually.”
Jan knew Fatima had betrayed him five years ago. It had been her text message that led him to his doom, and he had literally glared into her eyes as Captain Varik led him away in cuffs. So why would Fatima claim, now, that she hadn’t sold him out?
Was he missing something? What could he have possibly missed? The chain of events could not be more simple: Fatima summoned him to the starport, Fatima betrayed him, and Fatima walked away without being arrested. Yet was it possible Fatima, like Emiko with Elena Ryke, had been forced to betray Jan by someone he didn’t know about?
Next, of course, there was the entire fucking CSD hunting him. There was a remote chance that Sheriff Cross, back in Cliffside, had tipped off the CSD after all, but why wait almost two days before doing so? And why would both Cross and Mayor Solace risk Jan retaliating? They had as much to lose as Jan did if their secrets became public, if not more.
Even if Cross had fucked him over, the charge of impersonating a Ceto senator wouldn’t rate two full platoons of CSD soldiers. Given how thin the CSD was stretched these days, they reserved that sort of manpower for actual terrorists. So why send such a large force to bring him in? Why offer such an impressive bounty, yet specifically request him alive?
Every step Jan took toward Fatima got him knocked two steps back, and getting answers to any of his questions seemed about as likely as getting invited to Senator Tarack’s next birthday party. A coma was looking more appealing by the moment. At least, in a coma, he wouldn’t have to deal with Marquis.
“Clear!” Kinsley shouted from ahead. They had at least five floors of dirt and rock between them and the street above, and even the most powerful Wi-Vi couldn’t penetrate this deep. “Tiana left flashlights!”
Emiko scrambled out of the tunnel ahead of Jan and rose, looking around. “Well, this is a whole new world of ew.”
Jan emerged into what was obviously an ancient men’s room. Dust choked its urinals, now filled with unidentified sludge. The dirty mirror on the wall, in the light of Kinsley’s flashlight, showed three people as dusty and annoyed as Jan felt.
Kinsley clutched one heavy-duty flashlight in addition to her own. At least Tiana had planned ahead. Kinsley handed the other flashlight to Jan, and it was then that a rather terrifying thought hit him.
“So.” As Jan took the flashlight, he did his best to keep his voice casual. “How long, by your estimate, will it take to walk from here to the Hole?”
“To the gear that’s going to put you in a coma?” Kinsley flashed her light around, counting urinals. “Four hours.”
“Shit,” Jan said.
He
didn’t have a gun on him. All he had were knives. Could he stab himself to death with just knives? What if he didn’t kill himself in time, and the nanos paralyzed him? No, he’d just cut his own throat. Nobody survived a cut throat.
“That’s assuming the tunnel schematic I pulled from the library is accurate,” Kinsley continued, “assuming we do not encounter collapsed sections, and assuming we are not attacked by giant lizards. If we detour, it could take longer.”
“I won’t be detouring at all if I’m busy chewing off my own tongue,” Jan growled, but then he frowned and almost missed a step. “And when did lizards move into the maglev tunnels?”
Kinsley pushed open the door. “Just a rumor I heard.”
Jan followed her out of the men’s room onto what looked to be an underground maglev platform. He swept his flashlight around the darkened interior with trepidation to match the thought of chewing off his own tongue. Many colorful tiles remained on the station’s walls, but there were plenty of holes there as well. Anything could be hiding in those.
“Kinsley,” Jan said, choosing his words carefully, “someone informed you there are now giant lizards nesting in the maglev tunnels?”
“Well, not in the active tunnels.”
“You’re making that up.” Emiko was now standing almost on top of Jan. “This is not the time to fuck with us!”
“Not doing that.” Kinsley walked to the edge of the platform and pointed her flashlight down, highlighting a dusty but otherwise intact single rail. “Lacerta giganteus have been adjusting to human settlement for decades now. It was inevitable they’d move out of their desert caves and find succor in our lovely underground tunnels, or so the report I read claimed.”
“So just how big are these lizards?” Emiko demanded. She never really had gotten out of the city much.
Kinsley hopped down onto the track, flashlight aimed back toward the Prospector’s District. “What data the maintenance division has puts them about a half-meter high.”
“Oh,” Jan said.
“And maybe two meters long.”
“That’s a human-sized lizard!” Emiko shouted.
Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3) Page 13