by JC Hay
Yashilla fumed at herself, the heat rising up the back of her neck unrelated to the warmth in the air. She could feel him watching as she crossed the street to the gate, and she hated the fact that she wanted to show off for him by making the break-in look easier than it would be. The momentary weakness frustrated her, even as it left her off balance. She didn't need people in her life. People went away. He was going away as soon as the gig was over.
And then there was the cyberarm—she had suspected the replacement after watching him fight at Venkat's. The right arm had been too fast, too strong, to be natural. When she'd touched him, it only confirmed her suspicions—solid and unyielding. Power and brute strength under rigid control.
If she was honest with herself, part of her wondered what it would be like to see that control snap, just a little.
Maybe that was it—her inherent desire to break things back down, see what made them tick. It served her well with the code and systems that were her playthings, but she hadn't applied that desire to a person in a long time. She set her jaw as she crossed to the dockyard's crew gate. That had to be the reason he infected her thoughts. It was all that made sense.
She plugged the mimic into one of her ports and called up the options. The dock systems were older, so the RFID on the card scanner would be primitive. The feed from the security cameras displayed in the lower right corner of her vision, giving her the weird déjà vu of seeing herself approach the gate from multiple angles. A few quick taps on her forearm and she fed the camera back its own information from an hour earlier, showing an empty street and an unoccupied entrance.
As expected, the mimic sliced through the defenses on the gate in less than two heartbeats. With a beep and green light, the gate unlocked and popped open. She offloaded the working door code and saved it. After all, there were plenty of people who would pay good money for that information; no sense in letting it go to waste.
He followed her, and she resisted the urge to use the cameras to check out his ass. Despite his size, Zar moved with a sense of lethal grace. His fighting skills had been earned, not wired in, and it showed in the ease with which he carried himself. It made her feel gangly and uncomfortable in her own skin.
"Well that worked better than expected," he whispered as soon as the gate was closed behind them.
Yashilla restarted the camera's actual feed as soon as they were out of its viewing area. "As far as you know, sure." She grinned. "Or I've accidentally triggered a series of silent alarms that will bring CorpServ and State Police down on our heads." She doubted it, of course, but his optimism flustered her. This whole job teetered on the edge of catastrophe, and he didn't seem to stop smiling.
"I trust you to get us in without that happening."
She blinked at him. "How about you accept that I want the paycheck badly enough to not screw it up. Trusting people is a sucker's bet."
He gave her a sad smile, and for a moment she thought he might put a hand on her shoulder for a reassuring squeeze. She hated that her skin ached for him to do exactly that. "Trust," he said quietly, "isn't a bet at all. It's just something you have or you don't."
Yashilla snorted. "Our ship is in the loading cradle to the left." She scanned the camera feed. "There's still the matter of the CorpServ detail guarding the crew gangplank."
"I thought you said you had a plan to get past them."
"I have a plan to get me past them. I'm less certain it would work for you." It wasn't entirely likely to work for her, but at least she had a shot. "So the question is how do we move you?"
"I'm not worried about me. You just keep the goods dry." He peeled out of his jacket and handed it to her, then passed her his backpack. Because apparently she didn't have enough to carry. "I'll meet you topside in thirty minutes."
Without his jacket, the tight cotton of his shirt highlighted the unyielding ridges of his cyberarm, making it even more apparent. She indicated it with a nod. "You've had a full limb replacement."
Zar's shrug was noncommittal. "Upgrades are upgrades. Where'm I headed?"
"First loading dock to the left," she repeated, and he jogged to the water's edge and slipped in. Swimming aboard was suicidal. But the company didn't guard for it, largely because the water was badly fouled with petrochemicals and worse.
Not that she cared. As long as he was healthy enough to keep her safe onboard the Bulwark, whatever happened to him after wasn't any of her business. She stuffed his backpack into her bolt bag, surprised at how little room it took up, and then pulled on his jacket. The fabric was loose and baggy around her, but it wasn't an uncommon look for a computer technician.
After a deep breath to steady herself, Yashilla walked up to the gangway and the two guards standing there. She made a conscious effort not to stare at the CorpServ logo on their ballistic armor. One soldier casually rested a hand on her pistol while the other offered a tight-lipped smile and held out his scanner. "ID?"
"Sure. Lemme set this stuff down." Yashilla used the moment to change the readout on her ID chip. It wouldn't pass a prolonged check but ought to fool a scanner. Once the suitcases were on the ground, she shoved out her wrist. "Any word about the ship-out time? I got called last minute to do a firmware upgrade."
The guard ran the scanner over the chip in her wrist, and it beeped. After glancing at the screen, he nodded. "Mm-hmm. You'd better hurry. You've got an hour."
"That's bullshit!" she replied. "You need at least three to do this right." Yashilla shook her head. The female guard gave her a sympathetic smile and a "what can you do" shrug, then let her pass. Yashilla maintained the role by muttering disparaging remarks about the shipping company's leading family as she climbed. Once she'd cleared herself through the midpoint gate with the mimic, she dropped the act and picked up the pace. It wasn't perfect, but she was aboard.
Now she just had to hope that the swim didn't kill Zar before he reached the ship.
The water, like most industrial boatyards, was vile. Too warm from engines, slicked with swirls of chemical runoff, and littered with things Zar would rather not think about, it clung to his skin and tugged at his limbs as he cut through it in a head-high crawl. The idea of what it might do to his skin was bad enough, there was no way he'd let his head dip below and risk any of it getting into his mouth or lungs. Fortunately the important systems in his cyberarm were sealed tight.
He stopped, treading the surface for a moment to get his bearings and easing a half-eaten fish carcass away from him in the process. At least he was unlikely to encounter any large predators in the bay—the noise and heat meant that jellyfish would be his biggest concern.
Not that those weren't bad enough.
He eased himself around the back of the container ship, to where the hawsers held it in place alongside the pier for loading. It was an arduous climb, partly because he had to navigate past the same cones designed to make the route difficult for rats and other vermin who might use it. Still, it beat trying to talk his way past the guards. Fast talking wasn't his specialty.
He chuckled at the sense of understatement in his thoughts. Despite Yashilla's dismissive assessment, he did have a tendency to punch first and ask questions later. Gut instinct and action served him well at keeping people safe. It didn't work to get past alert guards.
Yashilla would slip right past them, he assumed. Of course, in his experience, security teams tended to underestimate women in the first place. He doubted a pair of bored guards would think twice. Even with Yashilla's tattoos and shaved head, they wouldn't look past her gender.
The cathole was still well below the ship's rail, to prevent the very thing he planned to attempt. He twisted around until he could kneel on top of the foot-thick rope, stopping to balance himself in the process. The upside to all those years in the ring and the gym—his natural proprioception rivaled that of even the top-line cyborgs.
The shift from his knees to getting his feet under him in a squat was easier than getting on top of the rope in the first place, but that d
idn't ease his mind. He checked the angle and distance to the ship's rail again; there would be only one chance at this, and failure meant a punishing drop followed by a splash loud enough to bring the guards running, which would end this little field trip in a hurry.
Zar tensed, then shoved himself up with all the energy he could muster. As he'd expected, the hawser bowed, absorbing some of the force, but he had plenty left over to propel him up. His vertical jump carried him up towards the ship's rail, but split second in, he'd already calculated he wasn't going to make it the full distance. He stretched out his right arm at the apex of his leap, and caught the edge of the rail with his fingertips.
It was enough.
He locked his hand down, the joints of his fingers ratcheting into place and curling around the rail. The metal crumpled slightly under the pressure, but he couldn't do anything about that. He relaxed the rest of his body as the force of gravity pulled him down, and the shock of his sudden stop jolted through him. A quick readout from the arm flashed across his field of vision, letting him know that the stress on the neurocybernetic interface was high. In case the pain in his shoulder wasn't a dead giveaway.
Zar took a couple of breaths to recover, then pulled himself up to the rail. Once he could get his other hand in play, getting over the rail became a matter of seconds, and he collapsed to the deck to catch his breath and take stock of his surroundings.
Containers formed a cityscape of buildings around the rear of the ship, with the bridge nestled in amongst and above them like a protective bird. No footsteps. No one coming to find him. He'd made it.
A heartbeat later his thoughts changed—no one waiting. No Yashilla. A chill rushed through him that made his pulse speed in response. Had she been caught? Were there guards coming for him even now, or waiting just beyond for him to reveal himself? He rescanned the area, thankful that the close alleys between the containers would limit fields of fire and provide an advantage to someone who preferred close-in fighting.
Someone like him.
"You said far side." Yashilla stepped out of the alley closest to the bridge, and he caught the moment when her expression of relief turned into annoyance. "I'm pretty sure this is the stern."
"I hadn't realized that I was dealing with an experienced seaman. I meant the farthest edge from where we were when I went into the water. Which is where I am. Should I have said amidships?"
"No. That's the middle." She didn't have to say dumbass aloud for him to hear it at the end of the sentence.
He looked down to hide his grin. Needling her was too fun, too natural. It reminded him of Liza, and that cooled his amusement quickly. He didn't get involved with his clients. Didn't get involved with anyone. It was a weakness that others could exploit. He swallowed past the rush of emotion. "I see that you made it past the guards. What's the story?"
"You want the good news or the bad news?"
"What's the bad news?" Always the bad news first, then he could temper his responses before he heard the good news. He squeezed the water out of his shirt and tried not to think about the damage the chemicals might be doing to his skin.
Yashilla stepped back, making sure none of the water splashed onto her. "The ship is running perfectly on schedule, which means that the port crew is going to be coming aboard in the next quarter- to half-hour."
He blinked. "Do we have hiding places while they're aboard? How extensive is the scanning?"
"It's not going to be great. Best bet will be to find a container that's hauling cars. We'll have room in there." She took a deep breath. "If we're lucky."
"And if we're not?"
She snorted. "If we're not, we'll be caught out in the open and arrested. Or forced to give away our location, which will amount to the same thing once Corporate Services gets wind of us."
"Okay." He nodded. He checked the two closest containers, but with no manifest to refer to, he had no idea what they might be carrying. It could be anything. "You said there was good news?"
Her vision had gone to the middle ground as she referenced something in the readouts from her cybereyes. She walked down to the next to last row and stood below a stack of crates. "If you lift me up, I can pick the lock on this second one." She pointed for emphasis. "The manifest indicates that there's room inside."
"That's the good news?" He walked over and held out his cupped hands for her to step into. She weighed nothing; even less than he'd guessed from watching her. Lifting her over his head wasn't any problem at all. Ignoring the weight of her, the feel of her in his hands, was far more difficult.
She patched into the keypad on the container and had it open within seconds. "Hardly." She twisted the level and opened one side of the crate enough that she could pull herself into the darkness beyond. After a moment her head popped back out. "The good news is that the ship's a retrofit from pre-automation. That means crew quarters. So once we're out of port and the crew has left, you can take a shower."
Chapter Three
T
he jacket smelled like leather and him. Out in the open she hadn't noticed it, but in the shipping container, in the dark, she couldn't miss the sense of being enveloped in him. Yashilla kept her arms crossed tight across her chest, trying to be as small as possible as she sat on the hood of the stored car. It kept her from reaching out to touch him. She didn't need the reassurance—she could sense the slight dip in the suspension created by his weight—but part of her wanted it all the same. Wanted to know he was still in the tiny space the container afforded them, and for him to know she was there.
She contented herself with listening to him breathe.
It was too easy to visualize him as she'd seen him on the deck outside. The way his wet clothes clung to him like a second skin, accenting every broad plane and muscular curve of his body. The contrast between the flowing musculature of one arm and the intimidating mechanical angles of the other. Without seeing it uncovered, she couldn't guess the model, but the shape hinted at custom work. And the strength in it. He'd lifted her without straining, barely even bending. The power of him had been breathtaking, almost literally. He'd raised her so fast she'd been giddy from it.
"So what did they do to you?" She kept her voice quiet, as much to convince herself it was just small talk as to keep from being overheard.
"Hm?"
"CorpServ. You've got a history with them. I saw it in your face when Venkat brought them up."
Near as she could tell, that had been the moment that changed his mind and brought him on board for the job. She could have been projecting, of course. People weren't as easy to read as systems.
She couldn't see his expression, but she felt the air move as he shifted. "Things happened. A person I cared about got hurt."
"Revenge is a poor motivation," she said flatly. "It makes you sloppy."
She couldn't miss the taut sound of his voice when he replied. "I'll keep that in mind."
"I didn't mean to tell you how to do your job. I just—"
"My job's about keeping you safe. From Corporate Services or anyone else who crosses our path and tries to hurt you. My feelings about CorpServ don't enter into it."
Yashilla nodded, even though he couldn't see it. Or maybe he could. For all she knew he was rocking IR vision or a light-amplification suite on his cybereyes. She didn't, but that was because she tried not to leave the safety of her apartment. She reached into her bag for the drug inhaler she'd packed, relying on the dark to hide her actions. He'd hear the hiss of the delivery, but a heartbeat after that she wouldn't care—the pressure of being close to him, of not knowing how to talk to him without offending him, had become too much.
She took the hit, and easy warmth radiated from her lungs. The tension that been building in her chest melted away, replaced with a feeling of loose ease that dulled her senses and made her feel as though she'd been soaking in a hot bath for hours.
She felt him shift, felt the air change as he moved away from her, and part of her wanted him to come back. The rest of
her enjoyed the high too much to be concerned. With her next breath, the warmth reached her feet, and she lay back against the hood of the car. She spread her arms to ground herself and minimize the sense of flight as well as the slight vertigo that tended to ride shotgun with the hit.
"Revenge is sloppy, but somehow drugs aren't." He voiced it as a statement, not a question.
"I'm not working right now. When we're in the Bulwark, I'll be sharp." The idea that she'd disappointed him gnawed at her uncomfortably, cutting through the bliss of her buzz. "I'm not about to go in there compromised."
"They find what compromises you. Even when you think it's hidden." He took a deep breath in the darkness and rested his hand on her ankle. "That's how CorpServ works. They know what you'll sell out for. It's an easy concept, but so very insidious."
His hand was warm, and she tried to will it to slide higher, onto her calf. Her thigh. That his touch would somehow admit that he had forgiven her missteps and didn't hate her for them. When he didn't, she crossed her ankles, trapping his fingers between them. "That sounds like the voice of experience."
"Like I said, there were complications with a person I was guarding. Corporate Services figured out how to use that to their advantage, and the person was hurt." The pain in his voice weighed heavy in the quiet, and she was sorry for having ripped open his scars.
"Hurt hurt? Or killed hurt?" She sat up and splayed her fingers over his shoulder, wishing she could transfer some of the ease the drugs had laced her with. Thankful she had an excuse to touch him in the dark.
"They were killed. And Corporate Services got what they wanted anyway, so it didn't matter."
Getting information should have felt like a triumph; hacking a person wasn't that different from hacking a system, it just took identifying the places you needed to apply pressure. Instead she felt dirty for it. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. You didn't do it."
"No. But I know how it feels to lose someone you're close to." Her brain conjured up the wash of heat too easily, the arms that kept her from charging into the blaze, the terrible silence beneath the roar of flame. In the lightless container, the drugs could fill in all the details her brain worked so hard to keep locked away. A shiver wracked through her as she failed to clamp down on the emotion. She scrambled back up the car hood, the metal bowing and popping into place as she moved. The noise in the container was loud; someone would hear. Someone would investigate. She'd ruined everything, again.