Tempered

by Britt Ringel

  “Now what?” Teki asked as she slid her new Ani-10 pistol closer on the bench seat. Kat’s utility belt lay on the floor near her feet.

  “We wait.”

  Both women stared at the station two blocks away. Teki continued to shift nervously. “You know, I’d expect a little more chaos around the station after what just happened.”

  “Right now, every available officer is searching all of Waytown and Shantytown for me. They’d never think to look just a couple blocks away. The sergeants and lieutenants in the station are reviewing the security videos and probably forwarding footage of my push to Northport Corp-Sec.”

  Teki grunted. “The Society will intercept that footage. They probably already know what you did.”

  Kat smiled as she thought of her message to Parker. “I’m counting on that.”

  “Knowing that you just hit the station, will they delay Mr. Wess’ interrogation?”

  Kat crossed her arms over her chest as she pondered the question. “It depends on who’s making the decision. If it’s Bowen, he’ll carry on with the transfer. In fact, he’ll probably push the timetable forward. On the other hand, if a field supervisor makes the call, his people will start their own surveillance around the station, looking for us.”

  The statement made Teki’s eyes bulge. She began twisting in place, searching the alley behind them.

  “Relax. We’d be dead by now if they’d done that.”

  The pair watched and waited. Kat could feel her partner tense at every pedestrian’s pass by the mouth of the alley. She felt her own body stir at each car rolling by the station or flying overhead.

  “Why are we risking this?” Teki asked. “If Sadler Wess is such a liability, we have the rifles. Couldn’t we just remove him as soon as he steps outside?”

  Kat glared at her partner. “Sadler is not a liability. Good God, is that really how you’d take care of things?”

  “I wouldn’t.” Teki’s hands flexed on the vehicle’s steering controls. “Kat, I’m willing to believe that you’ve changed but you have to help me understand. You said that you didn’t want to ruin Wess’ future. Why do you care about one citizen all of a sudden?”

  Kat opened her mouth to respond but vacillated. I’m mixing business with pleasure. This is exactly why we weren’t allowed to have romantic entanglements in the Society. One of the few, good rules they tried to enforce.

  Teki pressed. “Tell me why we’re risking our lives for this man.”

  Kat returned her attention to the distant police station. “Because I love him.” She immediately felt Teki’s intense stare. She refused to face the woman, knowing that she’d see a smirk on Teki’s face and want to punch it.

  Teki’s scrutiny lasted decades. “Maybe you really have changed.”

  After half an hour of building anxiety, a dirty, silver four-door aircar swept in low to land near the security gate.

  Kat jerked upright. “Here we go.” Teki began the flatbed’s startup sequence.

  The silver vehicle rolled forward to the gate and stopped. After a short wait, the gate lifted and the car moved into the covered driveway.

  The flatbed’s turbines wound up gradually. Kat reached for a rifle and checked that the safety was engaged. She placed the stock on the floorboard between them and leaned the barrel against the seat. She grabbed the second rifle and opened the door. “Get as close as you can without being too obvious. Surprise is key,” Kat reminded Teki before jumping out of her seat. She skirted down the length of the vehicle to its back and hopped onto the full-sized bed behind the cab. She set her rifle on the alloy deck and peered back through the cab, down the alley at the station.

  Three Society agents exited the aircar and walked toward the obscured double doors connecting to the motor pool. A corp-sec officer greeted them halfway and the group disappeared. Kat settled onto the bed, sitting cross-legged, and fidgeted. She estimated it would take twenty minutes to process the formwork necessary to clear Sadler for transfer to whichever dummy corporation the agents fed Waytown corp-sec. Worry distorted her sense of time, giving her a seemingly infinite span to consider her rescue plan. This wasn’t an elementary snatch-and-grab operation where she only had to worry about herself. This was a half-assed, half-baked rescue attempt of the person she loved. She was gambling with his life. Kat rubbed sweaty palms down her pants. It felt as if the agents had been inside for hours. Are they conducting the interrogation inside the station? No, Em isn’t with them. Plus, corp-sec would object to murdering a citizen who’s officially in their custody. She freed the magazine in her rifle and rechecked. Still loaded. She rocked the magazine back into place and thumbed the selector switch two toggles, from safe to auto.

  Movement caught her eye. The agents were exiting the station with a prisoner in tow. Sadler’s brown hair was unmistakable even from the distance. He wore his regular clothes instead of a red jumpsuit, more evidence that the Society had cleared his local charges. Corp-sec would insist on his return to their custody otherwise. His arms were bound awkwardly behind his back and Kat cursed as she watched an agent shove him carelessly into the aircar’s back seat. The agent followed him in while the other two entered the front.

  The flatbed lifted off the muddy alley and hovered patiently. Kat ducked lower but kept her eyes on her target. The aircar rolled slowly past the gate. When it turned onto the secondary street, it lifted off the pavement and rapidly gained altitude. She watched the escaping vehicle climb and grew frustrated when her flatbed stayed in place. Her heart clenched at the thought of losing Sadler. Let’s go! She raised her hand to pound on the rear window just as the vehicle lurched into motion. Satisfied, Kat grabbed the edge of the flatbed and hung on. Relax, she told herself. Teki knows what she’s doing. Kat looked at the white knuckles of her hands. She forced them to relax and breathed slowly.

  Wind thrashed around her as Teki pursued the aircar ahead. Dawn had given way to midmorning and commuting traffic was heavy for the small town. The rented flatbed paced its silver quarry at a respectful distance before accelerating rapidly to pull even with the craft, ten meters off its right.

  From her perch, Kat saw the agent in the back seat give a casual glance to the passing vehicle. Next to the man, she saw Sadler’s anxious expression as he also turned toward the utility vehicle passing by a little too closely. His eyes locked on Kat. She winked at him.

  Teki urged the flatbed forward slowly. Kat raised her rifle and assumed a kneeling firing position, resting her left elbow on her left knee. The airflow rushing around her tore at the rifle but she locked in her stance and kept her aim true.

  Kat pushed aside any revulsion about the imminent execution with a technician’s ease. She told herself these men were to be the willing instruments of Sadler’s death and that her actions were in defense of a loved one. The unsuspecting agents in the front seat had no chance at this range. Brown eyes narrowed and without further thought, her index finger pressed smoothly against the trigger.

  The rifle roared half a dozen times before Kat ceased her fire. The front seat of the aircar exploded in alloy, glass and gore. She realigned her aim and squeezed again, then repeated the process a third time. Kat kept her aim locked on the front occupants, using careful bursts to annihilate the delicate flesh operating the vehicle without damaging the mechanical flight controls in the dashboard. The grisly task took less than four seconds and, without an active pilot, Kat’s reward was an aircar settling into auto-hover. Her flatbed lurched ahead at first but Teki compensated, bringing her larger craft to a stop in front of its prey. The commuting traffic reacted to the midair slaughter by flying over, under and around the hovering pair, speeding away from the mayhem.

  Kat pointed her rifle at the remaining agent in the back seat. The man’s left arm was wrapped tightly around Sadler while his right pressed a Jamison pistol to his prisoner’s temple. Kat toggled her rifle’s selector from auto to semi. The agent was screaming at her, practically frothing at the mouth, but the words were lost in
the space between them. She searched for an opening, a clear lane where her shot at the agent wouldn’t penetrate through him and into Sadler. Teki seemed to nudge the flatbed up to create an advantage until Kat settled for a point just above the agent’s right hip. She worked to bundle psionic energy while zeroing in on her mark.

  Kat pushed at the agent’s Jamison and erased it from the present. An instant later, she delivered a single shot through the man’s liver. The agent recoiled in pain and Kat blanched at her work. He doubled over, clutching at the mortal wound. A second shot ended his suffering. Kat let her rifle drop to the bed and watched it tremble on the vibrating alloy surface. She found she had trouble looking at Sadler after what she had just done. What would she see in his eyes?

  Pain in her head overrode the question. Her ears popped with the return of the Jamison and knocked her out of her fugue. She looked up and gestured for Sadler to turn around while screaming the same command. It took a moment for him to understand but he eventually twisted in his seat and revealed his handcuffs.

  His bonds disappeared moments later and his hands flung apart. Sadler looked eagerly at Kat and raised his hands in a shrug. “What now?” he mouthed.

  Both vehicles hovered a hundred meters above the ground as traffic raced around them. It would be only a matter of minutes before corp-sec investigated the curiosity over Waytown. She motioned for Sadler to hop into the front seat and fly.

  Sadler took one look at the butchery in the front seat and blinked back at her. She glowered at him in response. His distaste was easily seen through the shattered windows as he awkwardly slid onto the front seat and pushed grisly remains aside to make room behind the controls.

  Kat couldn’t blame him for his reticence. Even from her position, meters away, the inside of the aircar looked… messy. She gritted through the pain as the handcuffs returned while Sadler took the vehicle out of auto-hover. Kat shook herself before slapping the rear window of her flatbed. “Let’s go!”

  The vehicle dipped forward, throwing her off balance and onto her butt. She let herself fall against the cab, laid back and let the stress drain away. The adrenaline dump left her shaking but relieved. Sadler was okay.

  Eventually, she sat up and stared at his aircar despite knowing that her job was to watch for corp-sec or Society pursuers. Yet, her eyes refused to move off Sadler as if he might be swept away if she dared lose sight of him. Sadler seemed to be having the same problem.

  Minutes later, both vehicles landed in The Blight, several kilometers east of Waytown. As soon as they touched down, Kat sprang from the flatbed and dashed toward Sadler. He met her halfway on the desert floor and they clung to each other fiercely.

  “I was so scared,” Kat breathed into his ear. “I’m sorry you got caught up in all this.” She was afraid to let him go.

  “I knew you’d come for me.” Sadler’s tone held his usual optimism. “I shouldn’t have run after Tabby but I just couldn’t let her be gunned down.” Kat felt the man’s arms sag. “I guess it happened anyway.”

  “No,” Kat corrected. “She survived and Maggie got Waytown Standard to send a response vehicle for her.” She softened her hold on Sadler and rocked back slightly to look at him. Dark circles under his eyes belied his earlier optimism. An irrepressible smile lifted her expression as she lost herself in the forest of green. “Maggie said she’d recover.”

  Sadler exhaled a day’s worth of breath. “That’s a relief.” He rested his forehead to hers. “You know I never loved her and she can be a shit but she wouldn’t have deserved to die like that.” He gave Kat another squeeze before releasing his embrace and staring at the flatbed. “That was quite the midair heroics.”

  Teki called out from the cab. “Kat, they just sent out a BOLO for our cars over the corp-sec general channel.”

  Sadler shifted his gaze to the flatbed’s driver and jumped as recognition set in. “Isn’t that one of the agents after you?”

  “Operatives,” Kat corrected. “We’re called operatives.” She pointed to the carnage in the aircar. “Those are agents.” Were agents, she revised inwardly and with a wave of guilt.

  “What’s she doing helping us?”

  “She’s on our side. She’s a defector like Tess.” Kat’s face fell. “Tess is dead. She sacrificed herself so we could escape the Beggar’s Market. She saved me yesterday.”

  Sadler squeezed her hands. “I think she saved you before yesterday.”

  She let his words sink in before Teki called out from her vehicle. “We need to get moving!”

  Kat dropped Sadler’s hands and looked to the cerulean sky. Yesterday’s storm had passed and taken every cloud with it. The sky’s piercing blue heralded a brighter day. “Teki,” she called, “get out of the flatbed. We’re ditching it.” She started to walk toward the flatbed but directed a request behind her. “Sadler, grab the agent’s Jamison out of the back seat, okay?”

  After circling around the flatbed to the passenger side, she opened the door, pulled out the utility belt and slung it over her shoulder. “We’re walking, Teki. There’s not enough traffic in the air now for us to blend in with during an active search for this vehicle. Corp-sec will spot us before we can find a place to land in town.” She slammed the door shut and looked over the roof of the cab to the Society aircar. Sadler was hurrying away from it, jogging toward her. “Let me see your FLAT, Teki.”

  Teki grabbed her own weapons and hopped from the cab. She moved next to Kat and surrendered her device.

  Kat tucked it into the pocket over her right thigh as she considered the long gun in Teki’s hands. “We’ll have to leave the rifles. They’re too conspicuous.” She hated abandoning them but they’d served their purpose. She could secure more weapons if they needed them. When we need them.

  The trio formed up abreast and began the long march toward Shantytown. Their shoes crunched over the parched ground and their heels kicked up dust. Not even yesterday’s deluge had quenched the earth’s thirst in the open desert.

  They walked in silence before Sadler stuck a hand toward Teki. “Sadler Wess,” he greeted with a smile. “Average citizen.”

  Teki chuckled lightly. “Vala Jahnke, but call me Teki.” She shook his hand and then tucked her hair behind her ear. She sighed audibly while looking at the settlement on the distant horizon.

  The group hiked several more minutes in quiet before Sadler looked up to the sky. All three of them were beginning to sweat under the sun’s glare.

  “Lovely morning for a walk.”

  Chapter 31

  The desert wind blew in memories of Kat’s herb runs during her first week in The Blight. She’d had nothing back then, just the clothes on her back. Each day’s survival was earned only through resourcefulness and wits. Surprise took hold of her when she realized she was smiling faintly at the recollections. They seemed like simpler times. Things have gotten a lot more complicated, she told herself. But you’re still surviving on your wits.

  The group trekked toward the edge of Shantytown under the brutal sun, thankful when they finally crossed into the town’s domain. Even though it was only late morning, the temperature had climbed at an alarming rate. During their return to the settlement, Sadler had confirmed that the Society agents taking custody of him had first cleared his corp-sec charges from the day before. They’d even removed his “under watch” status, ensuring that any permanent absence after his interrogation with Em would go unnoticed by local authorities.

  “At least Mom will be happy,” Sadler concluded optimistically as they left a constricted, dusty street for the broken pavement of the Strip.

  Teki’s eyes followed the wider road leading into the heart of Shantytown before looking back to the slum’s edge. “We’re not going back to your friend’s tent? Or the doctor’s clinic?”

  The trio stopped at a corner and Kat leaned wearily against a streetlamp. Her toes still ached as profoundly as her right shoulder and her throat was parched from the walk. Her stomach growled loudly for goo
d measure. “No, I want to keep Reneta and Maggie out of this.” She pushed off the post and trudged forward. A terrifying thought occurred to her. “Sadler, did corp-sec return your FLAT to you?”

  He pulled out his handheld and waved it with a smile.

  Kat quickly ensured the device was powered off.

  “So where are we headed?” Teki asked.

  “I suppose it’s crazy to pick up my aircar and go back home?” Sadler mused.

  Kat grimaced through her apology. “Sorry, baby, but the Society will still think they can find me through you.” She slipped her hand into his. “You’re stuck with me.”

  “Then where?” Teki pressed. She gestured around her. “Waytown is too small to stay hidden for long.”

  “You’re right about that,” Kat agreed. “We’re leaving Waytown.” She looked at Sadler as they walked and said steadfastly, “We tried hoping the Society would let me slip away. It’s clear now that if we want a future, we’ll have to deal with them. We can’t do that here.”

  “Then where?” Sadler echoed Teki’s question. “And how?”

  Kat released her grip and raised a hand. She wasn’t sure it was even an option but still had to ask him, had to give him the opportunity to leave. “You almost lost your life today. Don’t you think you’ve risked enough?”

  “Bullshit,” he spat. “I’m in your corner, Kat.”

  “Kat,” Teki interrupted.

  Kat ignored her and raised her voice over Sadler’s protest. “This isn’t a game. They were going to kill you this morning.”