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

by Nicole Grotepas

  The Surge Club wasn’t too far from Glassini. Holly finished weighing the options, and knew that her best bet was to get the hell away.

  She waited for a gap to open up in the pedestrians in front of her. Finally the cluster of mostly Druiviin parted and Holly sprinted for it. What she would have given to have Shiro’s lionhead cane to pry the crowd apart. She pushed and maneuvered around their bodies until she had separated them, hearing behind her as she continued the muttered cursing from the people she’d just plowed through. After that she ran without looking to see if the thugs followed her, to even corroborate her fears that she had been followed.

  19

  Holly made it back to the Surge Club just as the rain began to fall. They were entering the rainy season in the Sliver. The doors to the Surge club shut behind her just as a peal of thunder shook the city and fat, city-cleansing drops began spattering against her back. Her blazer wasn’t great protection against the rain, especially not the sort of storms that afflicted the city during monsoon season.

  She hurried past Torden, dropping him a quick hello, and then took the stairs up to the Bird’s Nest two at a time. She suddenly felt that finding Charm was urgent. Like things were whirling out of control and if she didn’t grab hold of the reins quickly and jerk back on them till they stopped, she’d have no hope of finding her way at all.

  Charly was upstairs at her desk, flipping through files on her v-screen. Darius was also at his screens, hunched over the desk in front of them, a headphone cup pressed to his ear.

  “We’ve got to figure something out,” Holly announced to the room when neither Charly nor Darius said anything to her.

  “Hey Drake,” Darius said over his shoulder, keeping most of his attention on whatever he was doing.

  “What’d you say, Holly?” Charly asked.

  “We need to do something. Xadrian says not to. But Charm isn’t going to rescue herself.”

  Charly stood and stretched, putting her v-screen down. “Sorry. I was just going over the club’s finances,” she said, sighing and walking around the desk to stretch. She went to the bottles of whiskey she’d set up next to the kasé machine and poured two fingers of bourbon. “So what did Xadrian say?”

  “Where’s everyone?” she asked, trying to catch her breath.

  “Did you ask them? You’re still wearing your earpiece, right?”

  “Of course I am. Just thought, you know, that you’d know.” She was wearing her earpiece. And she’d forgotten to use it during her mad run from the SC thugs (or figments of her imagination?), she’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts about her meeting with Xadrian, the fate of Charm, and the oppressive sense of being followed.

  Charly threw back a swallow of whiskey, then said, “I think Odeon decided to go busking or something. I didn’t know he did that.”

  “Neither did I.” Holly glanced out the back windows where rain streamed across them, casting the world outside in rivulets like a painting. “It’s raining now, so maybe he’ll come back. But, he hasn’t been able to schedule performances lately at Glassini. Maybe he just needed a chance to play for an audience.”

  Charly stood at the window near her desk and glanced down at the few people in the club. It was the middle of the day, the only people in it were the diehards who came in for a lunchtime drink and perhaps a quick game of dice or bones.

  “And I have no clue where Shiro is,” Charly admitted. “Let’s hope not with Voss, right?”

  “That woman. I’m afraid she’s going to ruin everything.”

  “It definitely seems like she’s trying to. So what did Xadrian say? How are we going to get tips now for jobs?”

  Holly relayed to Charly and a half-listening Darius what Xadrian had said about doing nothing. And how she’d fought against him. Darius put down his set of headphones and listened to Holly.

  “Well, Drake, I’ve been listening to the chatter from the Shadow Coalition communications. It’s the same as before, but now we have no idea what’s real and what’s a set up. They’re flooding it with lots of information about drops, as though their plan is to give us so many options that we can’t interrupt all of them. So Xadrian’s at least right that we can’t do much until we have a better idea of what’s actually happening.”

  “I was hoping you’d have a solution Xadrian hadn’t thought of. I don’t do well sitting around while a little girl is being shuttled around the moon-system, being forced to do Ixion knows what.” Holly wanted a drink. She flexed her fingers over and over, pacing first in front of the windows into the bar, and then crossing the room to pace at the windows where, outside, the rain fell and people huddled beneath umbrellas on the street in front of the club. She’d had a drink. There was no sense in having another. But her hands itched to feel the pleasant weight of a glass or a bottle in her fingers, to do something, to be occupied.

  “Well, Drake, there might be another way to tap into the comms of the Coalition,” he admitted, moving to stand next to her. Charly had picked up her v-screen again and was flipping through pages, her lips moving like she was reading to herself.

  “How?” A glimmer of hope flared in her chest like a torch had been lit.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  * * *

  Darius went to the big v-screen by his desk. He pulled up an image of the 6-moons with a stylus tapping softly against the glass.

  “So Drake, in the 6-moon system, all the communications between the different moons are yes, bounced between the moons via satellites and transponders on small rocks like the one you and the team tapped.” He pulled up another image of a building that looked like it was somewhere in the City of Jade Spires and pointed at it. “But once it hits the moon, it’s dispersed through a receiving bay where everything is filtered and sent where it’s destined. We can hack in and get all the incoming and outgoing messages.”

  Holly pursed her lips as she listened. “So why didn’t we do that before? Why go clear to that moon like we did?”

  “This only snags material meant for Kota, not the other moons. It was easier to just go to the source by hitting the SC transponder. We got all their messages, not the messages for every single person on the moon. When we tap into this, it’ll be like connecting a watering hose to the vast waterfalls of Itzcap. It’s going to require a sophisticated system that filters through every communication and pulls out the stuff we need, that can take hours, days maybe.”

  “But it’s pretty much our only option?”

  “One of them. We have another.”

  She sighed. “Thank Ixion. Please say it’s easier than this gigantic tap.”

  “It’ll be hard in its own way,” Darius admitted. “Because I’m not sure if the SC has their own receiving station on Kota, we’ll want to do both. This one is an idea I just came up with, as we were talking.”

  “That doesn’t sound promising,” Holly teased.

  “Communications give off signals, right? For messages sent between devices in the city, they send it out into the air, essentially—tiny signals. We can basically suck all those messages up with a vacuum.”

  “Sounds like a fantasy. How do we do that?”

  “I’m thinking I get a small blimp that I can program to fly on a certain path, over the city. Maybe I put out two. I connect to them here, control them from here. Once they’re aloft, they suck up all the communication happening in the city, and it comes back here to my v-screens. Then I run a program that decrypts the messages, and we look for specific words—the system snags them any time it hits a message with a certain term. Say, Druiviin, moon, Charm, something like that.”

  “This one sounds harder,” Holly observed.

  “They’re both hard. But if we run them both, we’ll protect ourselves against what happened on this last mission—no false leads.”

  “Let’s do it, Darius. I can’t sit here and wait for Dave,” she said, making quotations with her fingers when she said his alias. “Who knows how long
he’ll take to get us what we need.”

  “On it, Drake. I might need some novas to pay for it.”

  “You got it. Just let me know how much.”

  20

  “Ah, Darius, is this the part I wouldn’t like?” Holly whispered.

  “It’s obvious you don’t like Aimee Voss. So, yes,” Darius said. “But she’s done this before. And she’s got the Skelty Key.”

  He was right. And that was slightly annoying.

  They were in The Earl’s Crown Bookstore again. Not that Holly had anything against the bookstore, in fact, it was one of her favorite places in all of the city. It wasn’t seedy like some of the other places she’d gone for the job. And it wasn’t a club where she thought things like just one more drink. And it wasn’t a damn space zeppelin.

  It was a place where she could breathe in the odor of pages and history and feel a connection to old Earth. It was full of stripped sunlight to protect the pages and perhaps some long forgotten knowledge or insight into the human race.

  She loved it.

  But truth be told, Aimee Voss was like a fly in a beer. She kind of spoiled things.

  And she was there, sitting in a secluded alcove between the impossible towering shelves laden with books. She wasn’t alone. A Centau dressed in human styles, reclining casually in an armchair, his leg crossed over his knee, wearing a pink shirt, a white blazer, black trousers, and knee-high dark blue velvet boots.

  Darius, Odeon, and Holly moved into the alcove and took their own seats. Voss held a book in her hands like she’d been thumbing through it. Holly doubted the woman had ever read a book in her life. She was calculated and deceptive, knowing what image she wanted to project and doing it when she needed to. At least, that was what Holly had observed about Voss. Maybe she did read books after all, and Holly was perfectly willing to admit that she’d never quite gotten over the sense that Voss played both sides—whichever one suited her best.

  “Holly, Darius, Odeon,” Voss said, greeting them. “This is my colleague Jude Obscure.”

  “I expected you to be alone, Voss,” Holly said, sighing inwardly. Centaus who took human-style names always picked the most idiotic types. Jude Obscure? What sort of reference was that? It rang a bell, but Holly couldn’t place it at the moment.

  “That’s usually a good idea,” Voss said. “But sometimes I bring Jude along with me.”

  “Yes, well it’s lovely to meet you, Holly Drake,” Jude said. “And you, Odeon Starlight. And Darius Jackson.”

  Holly smiled at the Centau. “So, are you also a thief? A corrupt Centau? Something I never thought I’d see.” Cutting to the chase seemed best. Voss was sneaky. Holly wanted to disarm her early on with the sharp edge of her honesty.

  “Ah, Ms. Holly Drake. I am not corrupt. I prefer to think of life as constantly moving thresholds. The more you push them, the more allowances you can find. They will creep in whatever direction gives them the least friction.”

  “Thresholds. That’s a good one, Drake. I think Jude is right.” Darius grinned, apparently liking the Centau immediately. He was likable, Holly had to admit.

  Odeon was busy watching both Voss and Jude with his multi-hued brilliant eyes. His gaze flicked to Holly for a moment, and a faint grin touched the corners of his mouth.

  “I am right—wouldn’t you say?” Jude said, leaning forward. “For example. A drink. A harmless drink of alcohol. The next day another drink. And so on, until one drink is not enough, right Ms. Holly? Of course, it could go the other direction as well, begin to cut back on the drinks and you may soon only want one every three days.”

  Holly bristled at the example. Why not use sugary, unhealthy foods? Why not how much a person lied?

  “So you’re telling me that corruption is as simple as what you’re willing to do and get away with? Good and evil are just matters of whatever a person feels inside is OK or not?”

  Jude shrugged. “Most Centaus move their thresholds very slowly, so they appear to never change and to choose things that are always ultimately beneficial to all Centaus, but not usually beneficial to just one Centau.”

  Holly watched the Centau. “And what do you choose, Jude?”

  “I choose things that may benefit me first. Perhaps Aimee. Perhaps all Centaus everywhere. But I do not by default choose to subvert my own desires for that of the common good.”

  “OK, fine,” Holly said. “But then why are you here now?”

  “Top secret,” Jude said, grinning. “I’m proud of it, however, and would love to scream about it at the tops of the spires.”

  Darius cleared his throat as though he were about to change the subject, but then Odeon interrupted. “A corrupt Centau must be very corrupt.”

  “Not corrupt,” Jude said, smiling at Odeon. “Capable of complex thinking. Parallel thinking.”

  Odeon tilted his head to one side. “That is what every corruption believes of itself.”

  Jude looked fiercely at Odeon. “Are you a corrupt Yasoan?”

  “No,” Odeon responded, leaning back casually. “I save lives. So far Voss has been saved by us and only saves herself.”

  “Still,” Jude waved his fingers, “not following the traditions of the Yasoan. What do your people think of your clothing? Your hairstyle?”

  “There are others like me, and I do not care what other Yasoan think of me. I have never fit in with the majority of the Yasoan. My parents the least of all. I am an outlier, and I do not mind it,” Odeon said, then he went back to seeming bored with the conversation as he watched with that look on his face like he might fall asleep. He was alert, it was just the way Odeon appeared, and Holly was used to it by now.

  “You seem to have found your equilibrium, Odeon,” Jude said, leaning back in his armchair.

  “So Darius, what is it you need? What’s the point of this meeting?” Voss asked, studying the book in her hands.

  “Holly?” Darius asked, raising one eyebrow at Holly.

  “Go ahead.” She nodded at the crew’s tech-wizard.

  Darius cleared his throat and then began. “As you know from your own dealings on Po, that was a trap. Our method of getting intel on the actions of the SC is suspect. So we need to tap the main hub.”

  Voss frowned. “The big, massive hub? The main hub, hub?”

  “So you know of it,” Darius said.

  “Of course I know of it,” Voss laughed. “That’s an ambitious goal, exploiting their main-line.”

  “Er, can we talk about this in front of—” Darius nodded toward Jude.

  Jude laughed. “Did we not just discuss this?”

  “Yes, we did, and you maintain that you’re not a corrupt Centau.”

  “I’m not,” he smiled as he spoke. He hadn’t stopped grinning since they’d arrived. It was unusual to see a Centau smile that much, it was unnerving.

  Darius shrugged. “Then I’m not going to talk about missions to exploit weaknesses in the infrastructure the Centau built for us.”

  Voss gestured for them to calm down, making placating motions with her hands. “Right, right. Let’s relax for a minute.”

  “Why would I say anything incriminating in front of a Centau?” Darius asked. “So that I can be caught and then thrown into prison?”

  “It’s really OK,” Voss said. “Jude has committed his own crimes.”

  Jude looked away, shaking his head. “They were hardly crimes,” he muttered. “Is it a crime if you don’t get caught? Is it a crime if you give the spoils of war to the poor?”

  Darius laughed. “So he’s committed crimes?”

  “Just a few,” Voss said, holding her hand up to demonstrate with her thumb and forefinger held very close together.

  “More than a few,” Jude said, seeming to consider his crimes markers of achievement.

  “Alright then,” Darius said. “So, what we need to do is break into the main hub and tap it. Because our tap on the SC’s transponder was found out, we’ve got no way to follow up on the drops they’re maki
ng.”

  “That’s a lot of information to weed through,” Voss said. “Why is it so important to you? Can’t you just do some traditional jobs—steal a painting? Rob the central bank?”

  Holly sighed, feeling she should contribute. “If you’ll recall, someone we know was kidnapped by the SC. We need to get her back.”

  “Ah, that’s right. I’d forgotten. Who?”

  “A little girl. Doesn’t matter, you don’t know her. But she’s a child.” Holly clenched her fists thinking of it.

  “What does the Shadow Coalition want with children?” Voss had said the same thing on the zeppelin. Apparently she hadn’t figured it out.

  Holly watched Jude. Perhaps he knew. But she wasn’t adept at reading the body language or facial expressions of the Centaus. She understood them even less than she understood the Druiviin.

  “What is it you need from me, Darius?” Voss asked, her grin betraying the fact that she knew.

  Darius laughed. “Come on Voss. You know what I need. The Skelty Key. To get into the main hub.”

  “Of course, of course.” Voss leaned back and pressed her fingertips together and tapped them against her lips. “And I will help you, but only because of the child.”

  “No, we don’t want your help,” Holly said, envisioning Voss messing up their work again and then the inevitable irritation of watching Shiro moon over the woman. Actually, she wasn’t so bad with Shiro not around behaving like a total idiot.

  “But you won’t be able to do it without me,” Voss said, looking indignant.

  “Why not?” Holly cocked her head to the side. If Voss gave them the key, they didn’t need her.

  “The Skelty Key, Holly. I’m not letting it out of my sight this time.”

  Holly held in a sigh. Could they convince the blonde woman to loan them the key again? If they couldn’t, would Holly be willing let Voss join then? Was the mission worth the irritation of having Voss around?