by Jody Wallace
Steven laughed. “Not much like us, if they’re stupid enough to get captured.”
Tim was a slave, Pumpkin whispered in Lincoln’s mind. Gullim Vex broke him out.
That explained a few things, but it didn’t make Lincoln any more sympathetic to the men who’d both tried to kill him and Briar at one point or another.
“It ain’t right, but their money’s good.” Tim averted his gaze and hardened his features. “We’ll get more from one of the bigger outfits. I know how to contact them. It ain’t easy because they fly low and fast and don’t want nobody knowing who they are.”
“No time like the present.” Steven rounded the desk and sat at his holo console. “That power converter is burning a hole in the safe.”
“What safe?” Lincoln attempted, hoping Pumpkin could read Steven’s mind and find out where the piece was. There was a small possibility one of the cats could pop into the safe and steal it, though only Mighty had successfully skipped with an object in his mouth. A tiny one, not a Mozim power converter almost as big as the cat himself. But not if the safe was too small for a cat, too airtight, or possessed of other protective measures that a cat’s presence would activate.
Steven glanced up from the console. “How many times have I told you it’s none of your business, you dumbass?”
“A few,” Lincoln muttered.
“Once we have the money from this, we can take things to the next level. If the directors get curious, we’ll handle them the way we did Director Ficus. Splash! Right into the Mire. Now, who should we contact first?”
Lincoln tried to laugh along with Tim and Steven, but instead his stomach lurched. The clock was ticking on Javier’s potion—but now it was really ticking. If slavers descended on Trash Planet, they might want more than the part. And who knew what they’d spot hidden in the sky pile? They had more ways, more technology, than Trash Planet’s citizenry, and could probably pierce the Catamaran’s camouflage.
Tell Briar to make the call, Lincoln said to Pumpkin. And do it fast, before they contact someone else. Someone worse.
Chapter 14
Briar-as-Jenna and the rest of the crew were already at the waystation in the Mire when Pumpkin skipped into the roundabout to relay Lincoln’s message. The waystation had docking for small airships, and a few ground roads led in and around the swampy clime. Before the Express, people had still needed to navigate the Mire, whether to harvest mota or simply get to the other side.
Taking a deep breath, Briar activated her chrono and sought Steven Wat’s personal details, which were filed under Steven Smithson. Mighty, either faking sleep or actually asleep, lolled against her thigh where she sat on the passenger bench. The chrono they’d taken from Jenna Banu was generic, devoid of information that could be harmful to Selectstar in the wrong hands.
Steven answered the audio call almost immediately. “Who is this?”
Briar channeled the combination of sweetness and condescension that characterized Jenna Banu. Or she tried to. Instead, what came out of her mouth on her first ever undercover chrono call was, “Who do you think it is?”
“You missed the drop,” Steven said harshly. Briar knew that voice—the stern voice he used with clients he thought were at his mercy. Yet he could also be grandstanding for the benefit of anyone else listening. Was Lincoln in the same room? Pumpkin hadn’t had time for a chat before he skipped back into the crate to pretend he’d been catnapped.
“It was at an inconvenient time for me, as it turns out.” Briar clasped her hands so she wouldn’t wave them around while talking. It was a particularly bad habit when speaking into a wrist chrono. “The Q-Ship flight was—”
“I know when and where your transport set down,” Steven interrupted. “I also know that you disappeared after you landed, and this is the first I’ve heard from you. If you aren’t taking this sale seriously, why did you come all this way?”
Would he be talking this way to the real Jenna Banu, an employee of a powerful company that could squash Steven, perhaps Trash Planet, into the dust? Not that any number of companies couldn’t squash Trash Planet—Trash Planet’s inhabitants were only equipped to fight each other, not galactic armies. But Selectstar was absolutely one of the companies that could squash them.
Yet Steven was speaking to Jenna as if she were a lowly middle manager at a small union begging for better contract terms during the dark season.
Briar was obviously not exuding enough “evil slaver” vibe.
“I disappeared because I didn’t appreciate the tail, darling,” she drawled. Good to know Steven hadn’t tracked Jenna beyond the space port. None of his chrono messages to her indicated anything but confusion and irritation. “I’ll be paying less than the original amount for the Mozim converter.”
“Where did you go?” he asked rudely. Mighty’s whiskers twitched. “You told me you didn’t know anybody here.”
“Oh, Steven. Turns out that merely breathing on this planet is so unpleasant that my friend and I were forced to retreat to a primitive Resto-spa shortly after landing.”
Steven huffed loud enough for her to hear. “You’re supposed to be alone. What friend?”
“My new little cat friend. Everyone who is anyone in galactic society has a cat. Except on Trash Planet. You aren’t exactly part of galactic society.” Briar gave as Jenna-sounding a laugh as she could and stroked Mighty’s spine, flattening the fur that had become ruffled. The others in the roundabout listened to the conversation while Amatist analyzed Tank Union’s security systems from a mobile console, just in case.
“You have a… We may not be a central hub, but you’re the one here begging for parts,” Steven retorted.
“Hardly begging. I offered you a fair price and you accepted.” Jenna Banu had nine hundred thousand DICs of Selectstar money on a hard-chip. It was a more than fair price.
“I could get more elsewhere,” he complained. “But you promised you’d make this easy and discreet.”
Of course Steven wanted things quiet. Luckily sales negotiations had trained Briar to exploit every detail. “My discretion is why my original offer is now reduced, Steven. This has been very inconvenient for me personally.”
She repeatedly called him by his first name—because she knew he’d rather be called Trader Smithson or Individual Smithson or something respectful. But Jenna Banu would have zero respect for a lowly piece of profiteering slime like Steven. In fact, she seemed to consider him such a nonentity that he was filed under his fake name instead of his real one on the chrono. Surely Selectstar was capable of finding out who he really was.
“Like you changing the drop time isn’t inconvenient for me? The price has gone up. A million DICs,” he said.
She couldn’t tell if this call was going well. By the tense expressions on Su, Wil, and Javier’s faces, it wasn’t. Mighty was still faking sleep. But she was just getting started.
She knew Steven Wat. Knew how to get under his skin and manipulate him.
“I’m available for the appointment now that I’ve been properly refreshed. I’ll be paying a reduced price. Seven-fifty. But it is on an untraceable hard-chip, as you also requested. So discreet, right? Come to this dreadful little train station in the swamp as soon as possible so we can be done with one another,” she suggested. They had crew stationed throughout the large building, ready to rumble in the event Steven attempted to double-cross his buyer. Angering Selectstar seemed like a suicidal move for Steven, but greed could overwhelm common sense.
“Are you there alone?” The location was a public place. Mr. Discretion was less likely to commit homicide in a busy waystation. According to the cats, this was why Jenna had agreed on this setting. Steven had ruled out Yassa Port due to his fear of being recognized.
“My darling kitty is with me,” Jenna said. “And the pilot I hired. I wasn’t about to take the commoners’ train.”
“Meet me without your pilot at the original drop coordinates and pay the hundred thou extra.”
&nbs
p; Paying extra didn’t suit her. She doubted it would suit Jenna, either, and authenticity was crucial. “Oh, that’s not going to happen. I’ll give you another chance to agree to my terms, though, because I’m feeling generous.”
“Look, I don’t need this nonsense,” Steven said angrily. Briar knew that voice, too, but unlike the other one, it wasn’t a tactic. Steven just had a bad temper. “I’ve got other buyers. Your company’s hardly the biggest staffing agency that would pay major DICs for a part like this. I did my research. I’ve even had buyers from Oka Conglomerate interested.”
He was bragging about Lincoln to try to intimidate Jenna Banu? Yet he was still flattering Jenna by calling her employer a staffing agency. Briar would have laughed but instead she heaved an audible sigh.
“Should I meet you somewhere else, then? Your place of employment?”
“What do you mean?” Steven snapped. “I’m a freelance trader, and I don’t have an employer. I don’t answer to anyone.”
If she revealed that she knew he was a liar, it would expose too much. He’d taken pains to hide his identity and occupation, and the real Jenna hadn’t known, or cared to know, anything more than what he’d told her. So Briar tried a different approach.
“If you won’t sell to me at the price I want, I’ll be forced to tell my employers you decided to be difficult. I do have employers. They’re very powerful and they won’t be happy,” she informed him in the saddest ever version of Jenna Banu’s sugary voice. “They might even decide to come hunting here for new staff, starting with you.”
“Empty threat.” In the background of the call, from Steven’s side of the chrono, something clashed and rattled. “You have no idea where I am.”
“Want to bet? Uphold our original agreement or you’ll find out the hard way,” Briar taunted and broke off the call.
She raised her head with a triumphant grin, but her audience was staring at her in horror. Including Mighty, now fully awake.
“You fucked things up way more than I expected,” Su mused.
“I had an inspiration.” She shrugged. Jenna’s breasts were larger than hers, and they bounced. “If I didn’t bully Steven, he wouldn’t respect me.”
“It doesn’t matter if he respects you. It only matters that we get the part.” Su squeezed her forehead as if trying to relieve a headache. “What if he doesn’t call you back? We could use Jenna’s own damn money to cover the increase. You should have taken the deal.”
“He was always going to try to charge me more,” she told them. Jenna Banu’s fingernails were more pampered than Briar’s, so she tested their bendability in case she got the chance to claw Steven in the face. “I got ahead of him.”
He always did—tweaked contracts, changed clauses after agreements had been made, lied about how much fees would be, anything to increase profits and impress the board. If he cowed Jenna now, he’d ask for twice as much when he finally met with her.
“I don’t understand why Pumpkin didn’t push him to agree to your suggestion,” Mighty said, flicking his tail. “What is that orange strutter doing? I can’t allow the human to hurt Lincoln. I may need to pop over there and—”
“It’s okay. He’s going to call back,” she assured them. Several minutes of silence passed. Mighty didn’t purr to break the quiet, even though she was scratching him right between his shoulder blades the way she’d seen Lincoln do.
After ten more minutes, Briar’s stomach fell. Had she screwed it up? If they sent Mighty to check in with Pumpkin, could he get close enough without being spotted? Boson Higgs was, according to the cats, the best at pushing but not that accomplished at skipping. Boson Higgs certainly hadn’t offered to jump into HQ and soften any of their targets, while several of the other cats were poised to skip into place if the need arose.
“He’s not going to call back,” Su stated after she and Wil exchanged a glance. “He thinks you don’t know who he is. Thinks he’s safe. If what you learned from that Tim guy was right, he’s all cocky because he got away with killing the former director.”
“I could tell the rest of the board,” Briar said, “but they’d want proof.”
“And we don’t have time for wrangling. Pumpkin warned us that he’s already latching onto another buyer.”
“How could he be that stupid?” Wil asked. “Pissing off Selectstar.”
“Oh, he is,” Briar assured them regretfully. “He’s that stupid.”
Damn and blast, she’d completely flubbed this negotiation—because Steven was, indeed, stupider than she’d given him credit for. For once, couldn’t he have been a little smarter? Haggling with slavers was one thing, but thinking he could anger and outsmart them?
Stupid. Very, very stupid.
“I’m pulling rank,” Su said. “We have seven hours left before Javier’s deadline, and it’ll be an hour just to get to Yassa Port. Let’s take this fight straight to that cheating fucker. How much firepower does the Tank Union HQ keep around?”
“You want to raid them?” Javier asked, eyebrows raised so high it smoothed out the wrinkles around his eyes. He was on hand in case there were any issues with the DNA mask—or any injuries. “Su, I don’t think that will afford us the anonymity we need to protect the Catamaran.”
Javier was right—raiding wasn’t the answer. But before Briar could respond, Su tossed her hair back in frustration. “We’ll go really fast. In and out. We just have to get our hands on Steven Wat, and I’ll make him give us the fucking part. Then the cats push him to forget.”
Mighty jumped to his feet. “Yes, friend Su! Straight into the lion’s den. The Originals will agree with that plan, and I can arrange a swarm if we—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Briar said hastily. What was a lion’s den? If it was anything like a bristler den, that meant it was a terrible place for a human or a cat to go. It was a place from which it was miraculous to escape alive.
But for the cats, for the sleepers, for Lincoln, she would stomp right in wearing Jenna Banu’s expensive boots and coveralls. “Lincoln and I are set for seven more hours, right? I have an idea that might work, but we’ll need to let Pumpkin and Lincoln know about the change in plans.”
Since Jenna Banu was supposed to be alone, Briar waltzed into the Tank Union HQ with only Mighty Mighty on a breakaway leash to accompany her. Her brown hair was caught in a tight, sensible coil, and the expensive coveralls fit her new proportions well. Every muscle in her body—the Jenna version of her body—was tense, and her stomach fluttered with nerves.
This will be a breeze, Mighty whispered in her mind. Be at ease, cat friend. What an adventure we shall have.
Some of her nervousness dissolved. She knew this building and the people in it. She’d been with them ten years, and Steven was the only one she truly hated. He would cooperate with the sale, quickly and quietly, because Jenna’s presence at his actual place of employment would put the fear of the universe into him.
Clucking to Mighty, she approached Axel at the reception desk. Strange that the robot was here if it had been promoted to a sales associate like Han-Ja had said. Perhaps the bot was forced to do double duty.
Mighty had warned Lincoln and Pumpkin of what was coming, and Lincoln had asked for more time. Pumpkin had been pushing Steven to postpone contacting the other buyers, which was starting to falter, but also to show Vex where the safe was, which hadn’t worked at all. Pumpkin couldn’t skip into the safe and swipe the piece unless they could find it…and verify what type of strongbox it was.
So here she was. Prepped and ready, with a large sum of money on an untraceable credit chip. They had four hours left of Javier’s mask. Her op today put all her fantasies about what it meant to be a corporate mole to shame.
But even more of a shame? She wasn’t enjoying herself. She just wished it was over so everything could go back to normal. Not that she had a normal anymore, but there was too much at stake to enjoy this, or to ever want to do it again.
“Robot, summon Steven Wa
t for me,” she commanded. While they hadn’t seen Jenna interact with AIs, she could guess how a slaver would treat one, considering how they treated humans. “Tell him it’s his friend Jenna.”
Axel stared at her so long that she had to resist the urge to touch her face and hair and see if the DNA mask was wearing off. They had decided she wouldn’t carry a weapon, since Axel was able to detect most of those and confiscate them. The bot would be able to identify the hard-chip with the DICs, her multitool, and her chrono, but not much else of interest.
“Do you have an appointment?” Axel finally asked.
Han-Ja claimed Axel was more observant, and more independent, than anyone realized. What other secrets about Tank Union did it know? “I don’t, but it won’t matter.”
“Director Wat has cancelled all his meetings for the rest of the day and does not want to be disturbed,” Axel said. Then it tilted its head. “That is the second cat to enter this building today, and I do not know this one.”
Lincoln had hidden Pumpkin in a crate, so she wasn’t sure how Axel had figured that out. But Jenna wouldn’t care. “Why would a robot know a cat at all?” she said. “They are animals, and you are a machine. Tell Steven Wat I’m here.”
“Director Wat is no longer in sales.” Axel’s silver hands remained flat on the desk. Sometimes it mimicked humans, and sometimes it was very alien. “I, however, am now authorized to conduct inventory sales, if you care to see our manifest.”
What would Jenna, the all-powerful slaver, do if she were balked by a machine? She’d threaten, but threats wouldn’t work on a robot that had as many security protocols as it did communication protocols. But Steven had to see Briar in this building, in this face, to compel him to behave.
So what would Briar Pandora do?
Roll some dice and hope that what Han-Jan had told her about the bot was true. If it wasn’t, the cats might get their chance to swarm Steven—and probably reveal their presence to everyone in Tank Union. “This is in regards to Steven’s other work. I know you’re aware of it…Axel. I was told by a mutual acquaintance who dresses in a lot of colors.”