The Colossus Collection : A Space Opera Adventure (Books 1-7 + Bonus Material)

by Nicole Grotepas

  Holly moved to his side and kicked him, letting out a fraction of the rage she felt at them for what they were doing with the kids. “I should kill you. Right now, without remorse,” she said crouching down beside him. She looked up at her friends. Odeon was already moving to find something to tie them up. Shiro’s cane-sword was drawn and leveled between the other two smugglers, who were also stirring.

  “Search the others for weapons,” she told Odeon as he returned carrying a spare coil of webbing rope, the kind used to secure the containers. He approached the men Shiro was guarding.

  Holly grabbed the gun that was just out of the man’s reach and tossed it to Shiro. He put it in his coat pocket and kept his sword out.

  “Tell me who you work for,” Holly said to the man on the ground.

  He groaned, but wouldn’t speak.

  “Where did these children come from?” She tried again.

  Nothing.

  “I should kill you,” she said.

  He laughed. “Go ahead.”

  “What kind of monster would hurt a kid? Shiro, what do you think? Kill him?”

  “I wouldn’t feel bad about it,” Shiro said. “They’re a scourge. The worlds would be better without them.”

  The man lunged at Holly, grabbing her leg and yanking hard. Shiro shouted her name as she fell backwards onto her arm and side, jarring her shoulder, as he rose and ran for the container. Holly cursed and rolled to her feet. “I’m OK. Stay with them,” she said to Shiro, as she charged after the man. He was inside the container, the children were screaming in fright, and he leapt for the tracking device, trying to dislodge it from the ceiling.

  “Odeon,” she shouted over her shoulder, “Get in here, please!” She wanted to send the kids out of the container, but remembered that the men had called others in to help them before Odeon had taken them down.

  Holly kept her gun leveled at him as she approached. He was unpredictable and she didn’t want to risk him hurting the kids, he’d already knocked down some of the boys. The older one who had mutely helped her, lunged at the man to tackle him. The kidnapper twisted in the boy’s grasp and elbowed the child hard in the jaw. The boy crumpled to the ground.

  Holly shouted in rage, leaping at the man herself and tackling him. He was apparently not ready for the force of a larger person and was slammed hard into the wall of the container. Her advantage only lasted for a minute as he pushed hard back against her, his fist connecting with her chin. She saw stars as she fell backwards from being struck. The children screamed and scattered. Her guts lurched for fear that she’d hurt them, but Odeon had come into the container and corralled them away from the fight between Holly and and the child-trafficker. The man fell upon her, and began punching her face. Her hand still held tight to her gun, but he’d pinned that arm. The smell of human refuse pierced her nose. She roared, knowing what the odor meant for the kids—being trapped so long in the container, treated like animals, no, animals were treated better than that.

  She brought her knee hard up against the man’s back. He fell forward, but that was all. He was bigger. Stronger, and Holly was losing the fight. She swung her free hand at him, but he swatted it aside easily. He continued to bludgeon her in the face. One more hit and she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stay conscious. In desperation, she clawed at his chest, then at his face as he lifted his hand to hit her again. Her finger connected with his eyeball and he cried in pain, his hand the held her gun-arm reflexively drawing back to protect his face and make his wound better.

  Holly leveled her gun and pulled the trigger. The aether-projectile shredded through his shoulder, which was what she wanted. Not to kill. To maim. To teach him a lesson he’d never forget. He screamed and fell backwards. Holly rolled to her side quickly, her face throbbing in pain, her hands touching the ground of the container and coming away dirty.

  The child-trafficker held his arm, whimpering and breathing raggedly. “You won’t get away with this,” he said in a hoarse voice.

  “Be glad I didn’t kill you,” she said. “Shiro! Come get this monster, please. Tie him up with the others.” Shiro entered the container, his sword still drawn and glinting in the cold blue light from the container. Holly motioned to Odeon who had clustered with the children at the other end of it.

  Odeon hurried to her side as Shiro helped the other child trafficker to his feet and led him out of the container.

  “Let’s get that tracker. Can you reach it?” She pointed with her gun.

  “Give me a boost,” he said.

  He stepped onto her outstretched hands so he could grab the blinking little disc.

  “Let’s get out of here. As soon as possible. You got the key?”

  He nodded. “Yes. But what about these children?”

  “We’ll wait for the police to get here. Then leave with the tracker and the key.”

  Holly glanced around that end of the container, disliking everything she saw about it, especially the signs of what conditions the children had endured as they were passed around like goods. A corner with a bucket in it for shit. Dirty towels on the ground. Her stomach lurched. She walked away, moving in the direction of the opening and the area where the kids were huddled together.

  They reflexively migrated away from her, keeping packed together tightly like they could form a super human, able to withstand all dangers if they moved as one.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that, kids,” Holly addressed them. “The police are coming, and you will be returned home safely.” The boy who had tried to stop the trafficker from getting the disc watched her warily, his cheek cut and bloodied where he’d taken an elbow. She went up to him. “That was a heroic thing you did,” she said to him. “I’m impressed with your bravery.”

  He looked away and said nothing.

  There was a commotion just outside the opening as someone approached. Holly peeked out and saw the uniforms of police. Thank god, she breathed, relieved it wasn’t more of the traffickers. She wasn’t sure she’d let any more of them off as easily as she’d let the first three.

  36

  “I cannot believe it,” Charly said, bringing an espresso and kasè machine into the room. She began setting it up on the empty desk as Holly reclined on one of the sofas and put her feet up on the low coffee table. Though she was trying to relax, nothing inside her felt that way. They only had three days left before the jewels were moved. She and the others had gotten into Kota around midnight the night before, and she hadn’t been able to sleep, thinking about the docks back on Paradise. A thought that she hadn’t done enough to help the children rotated in her mind like a spinning, glowing sign on the edge of a building in the neon district. No one else had come in yet—Holly had arrived just minutes before, opting to give up on sleep, grab some breakfast on the way over, and pop in to see if she could get started.

  “You weren’t even on the comms—where were you when it was happening?”

  “Kasè or espresso?” Charly asked as the machine beeped.

  “Kasè, please,” Holly said.

  “Want anything in it?”

  “Not today, thanks.”

  Charly filled two small mugs with the white liquid, topped one of them with the sugar and almond milk and brought the plain one to Holly.

  Holly sat up and took hers. “You’re such a dear. Thanks.”

  “I know. I am.”

  “So? Where were you when it was happening? Were you listening?”

  “The partners showed up, unannounced. We were meeting and so I turned off my earpiece—I honestly didn’t think anything crazy like that was going to happen to you. I’m so sorry. Children?” she sipped her drink. “Insane. I’d probably have just killed the traffickers.”

  “I wanted to. Trust me. But I didn’t want to do that in front of the children.” She put her drink on the coffee table and rubbed her face. “I feel awful about even having to shoot the one who attacked me.”

  “But it was just in the shoulder?”

  �
�Right. It didn’t kill him. But he was going to kill me.”

  “So what’s the problem? It was kill or be killed. You did the right thing.”

  “Charly, I did this totally violent thing in front of those kids. That seems questionable.”

  “And the stuff they were going through before all that wasn’t messed up? Kidnapping? Living in terrible conditions?”

  Holly stared at her friend. Was she being serious? “Yes, of course it was bad as well.”

  “Then what’s the problem? I don’t see how it’s worse than what had already happened to them. In fact,” Charly said, raising a finger and putting her own mug on the coffee table. Tendrils of steam rose from the white liquid. She sat back and pursed her lips thoughtfully before going on. “I would argue that it was good for them to see someone willing to fight to the death for them. Don’t you wonder what they were feeling? Do you think, maybe, that anything you might have done to their captors was exactly the kind of stuff they’d been imagining doing themselves, but couldn’t, because they were weaker? Call me crazy, if it were me, I’d have been fantasizing a whole hell of a lot about all the shit I would want to do to the goddamn monsters and to see someone capable and willing to do it . . . well that would have been damn liberating.”

  Holly stared. Can she possibly be right? “Maybe. Maybe, yes.” She tried to imagine how it would have felt to have someone—anyone, Gabe, Meg, one of Graf’s police buddies—come into their home as Graf repeatedly hit her one day, and just beat the shit out of him. At first she would have been embarrassed. She probably would have said, “I’m not worth it.” If the person who fought for her had said, “Yes, you are.” Would she have listened? “Oh my god,” Holly whispered, putting her head in her hands.

  “What? What is it?” Charly asked, sitting forward, looking alarmed.

  Holly groaned. “God, I didn’t—” she began. “I didn’t do enough.”

  “What? Woman, what the hell are you saying?”

  “I should have done more. You’re right. I probably should have killed them. I should have told the kids, ‘No one has the right to treat you this way.’ Then killed the bastards, then told the kids, ‘you are worth this. You’re worth more than what they made you feel.’”

  “OK, OK, that’s not what I was saying. I’m saying you did the right moves. You didn’t unmercifully slaughter the assholes. You kept control. You saved the kids. They saw someone fight for them. They saw someone do what they likely wanted to do themselves. They know there are strong, good people in the world, and it’ll have a good impact on them. So I was telling you to stop second-guessing yourself.” Charly leaned across the coffee table and grabbed Holly’s forearms and pulled on them until Holly lifted her face out of her hands and looked at her. “Stop second-guessing yourself. You did the right thing.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Shiro said from the doorway, startling both of them. “Mrs. Drake, are you having second thoughts about what you did on Paradise?”

  Holly jerked away from Charly and stood up, feeling her face flush hot. “No.”

  Charly coughed, looked away from Holly like she had been about respond otherwise, and said, “Right then.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, since that’s not what she was concerned over, I supposed I won’t say what I’d been about to say, about how she—and therefore we—did all the right things. Most of the right things. I do wonder if we should have just killed all those cretins. The dregs of society. Ick, it’s creatures like them that make me regret my humanoid nature.”

  Holly caught Charly using her hand to make a neck-slicing gesture in Shiro’s direction while trying to conceal it from Holly.

  Holly scoffed as she moved to the window overlooking the bar area. “You’re right, Shiro. We should have killed them.”

  “God, Shiro, that’s what I was—” Charly threw her hands in the air.

  Shiro looked back and forth between them, his eyes wide. “What? That’s what I’m saying, we probably should have killed them. What did I say?”

  “Holly regrets not killing them. She’s wondering if she should have done more and, of course, in true Holly style, she’s beating herself up about it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Holly asked.

  “Exactly what I said—you always find something about what you’ve done to regret,” Charly said in an exasperated tone. “You never think, ‘Damn, I did good. Would not change a thing about that!’”

  The three of them stood there in silence. Holly by the windows looking out on the bar, Shiro on the other side of the lounge area, and Charly with her mug of kasè in her hand between the coffee table and the sofa. They exchanged looks, the awkward air as thick as a fog rolling in from the hot, volcanic sea to the north of the Sliver.

  Charly held out her hand in a stopping gesture. “Don’t say sorry.”

  Holly felt her cheeks turn hot again. She’d been about to say exactly that.

  “Er,” Shiro managed.

  Finally, Holly cleared her throat. “Well, alright then. Great.”

  “Did someone die?” Darius asked, entering the room but stopping just inside the door. His voice broke the spell of awkward that had descended upon the small group, strangling it. Holly let out a long sigh, and heard Shiro and Charly doing the same thing. Darius laughed. “Right then.”

  “No, no one died, Darius,” Holly said, taking her now-empty mug to the table and placing it beside the kasè maker. “Though I wish some people had. So, anyone else want a drink?”

  “I’ll have some,” Shiro said, coming to stand beside her. He swung his cane once and set it on the table as he prepared himself a mug. “Sorry about that,” he muttered in a low-whisper.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Holly shrugged. Darius and Charly began laughing on the other side of the room. Holly glanced at them and saw Darius pantomiming something to her like he was imitating someone. They seemed to have become good friends.

  “Though I said that, about offing the traffickers, I do want you to know, Holly, that I think you did the right thing. We all did. We did the best that we could in a surprising situation that would be trying for even the most hardened police officer”

  “Thanks, Shiro.”

  Odeon strolled in looking refreshed. Holly smiled at her Druiviin friend from across the room.

  “Hey, Odeon,” Charly said. “I hear you finally pulled your weight.”

  Odeon laughed. “It is surprising that there was ever a doubt that I would.”

  “Everyone’s here. Let’s get started. We have two days left after today. We’re cutting it close,” Holly said, taking charge. She put her waffling emotions about whether or not she’d done enough back on Paradise behind her and plowed ahead. Charly’s words about doing for the weak what they couldn’t do for themselves had wormed their way deep into her heart. Her subconscious turned them over and hardened into a resolve that would help her overcome hesitation in the future.

  They settled into planning mode, which was easier now that they had the Skelty key.

  * * *

  “It’s fine, Meg. I’ve got her,” Holly said into her regular communicator. She glanced down at Lucy who walked beside her through the streets of the Lavender Jade district. “Sure. We’ll wait for you at home.”

  Holly clicked her communicator off.

  “Mom always worries about me.”

  “She’s your mom. That’s her job.” Holly let the doorman push the front door to the tower open and waited for Lucy to go in before following her.

  “I think I’m old enough to take care of myself,” Lucy said as they got on the elevator.

  Holly laughed. “Maybe you think that. Eleven is pretty old. But your mom’s a detective. She sees the worst part of everything all the time, every day.”

  “I know. I’m not dumb.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “You were laughing.”

  “More at the frustrating part of having a cop for a mom than at you.”

  �
�It is frustrating,” Lucy said. “She never lets me do anything.”

  “Right. That’s what I mean. Here’s what you have to do, Luce. You have to be so responsible, so mature, and follow all the rules, until Meg notices. Then she’ll start to think things like, ‘Lucy can take care of herself. I’ll let her do more. I’ll let her walk home from school by herself.’ And things like that.”

  Lucy groaned. “That sounds terrible.”

  “I know.”

  “You haven’t even had a kid. So how do you know?” They got out on the 117th floor and went down the tiled corridor to #1712.

  Holly nodded to the door. “Open it. Show me how mature you are.”

  “Opening the door? For reals?” Lucy laughed.

  “Yes,” Holly grinned. “And also, I forgot my key.”

  “Oh my heck, that’s so immature. So irresponsible!” Lucy got out her key and inserted it into the scanner lock and opened the door. “Is that why you didn’t have a kid?”

  “No, I wanted to have a kid,” Holly said, once they were inside. Lucy dropped her backpack in the middle of the floor just inside the door and kicked off her shoes. Holly followed her in and collapsed on the couch. “But I couldn’t.”

  Lucy was already in the kitchen, rooting through the fridge. She found a bag of carrots and straightened and shut the door. “What does that mean?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. “Couldn’t? I thought it was either you did or didn’t.”

  “It sort of is that. But it’s also what your body can do or can’t do. Some people want to have kids, but their body can’t do it.”

  “Why?” Lucy asked around a mouthful of food.

  Holly sighed and sat down on the couch. She still hadn’t recovered from the trip to Itzcap and then Paradise, including what had happened on Paradise, not just the space-lag. “Hey, clever girl.”

  “What?” Lucy looked up from her food, her eyes wide.

  “That is one hundred percent something your mom needs to talk to you about.”

  “Is it because you were in jail?”