“Because you and your crew are so on the up and up, aye?” Maverick’s eyes glinted with suspicion and a bloodthirsty desire for revenge—he hadn’t proved Kylie had done anything yet, but his rage was right under the surface.
“Oh, Mav!” Kylie ran her fingertips over his arm and leaned into him. “Well, if it were the SSF searching our ship they’d find plenty wrong. But there’s nothing there your guys will have an issue with. Just make sure to leave my crew’s private stashes alone. I have to spend a lot of time with them out there—they bitch if they don’t have their little pleasures.”
Nadine gave a coy laugh, shifted closer to Maverick, and ran her nose along his cheek. Kylie forced down a feeling of jealousy. This was why she had brought Nadine. The woman could seduce a stone. At least Grayson listened and hadn’t stayed aboard the ship—there’s no way he could have pulled off any light conversation with whoever Maverick sent. She hoped the SSF techs were as good at scrubbing the logs as they claimed.
She forced herself to remain calm; if she acted nervously, Maverick wouldn’t let her out of his sight. He seemed antsy and might kill her just on suspicion alone.
“Here I thought you invited us here to party,” Kylie said as casually as possible.
“Business first. Then we party.” Maverick lifted his arms over Kylie and Nadine’s heads and stood. He glanced down at Kylie before walking to the center of the room to grab a handful of octopus tentacles.
Kylie resisted grimacing at the sight of him slurping them into his mouth.
He chewed them noisily as he paced slowly across the room to the window. When his back was turned, Nadine gave Kylie a wide-eyed expression and a head nod toward the back.
Kylie sent a message over their private Link.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said with a wide grin, “you’re two of my favorite girls. The word attractive doesn’t do you justice. You’re sharp. You’ve brought me a lot of business over the years, but if either of you have double-crossed me, I’ll gut you like a pair of fish and wear your skins to my next party.” Maverick reached up and pulled a plasma sword from the wall.
He touched a button on the hilt and the molten star-stuff flowed out into a magnetic field. It wasn’t a terribly effective weapon in real combat, but here, with the pair of them unarmed, it was more than a little threatening.
“I’ll melt your innards, burn you to ash. No one will ever see you again. Like anyone would even bother looking.”
“Rogers and Winter—” Nadine said, but Maverick interrupted her with a laugh.
“Those two will be dealt with swiftly. We’ve already found them. Though, they might not know it yet.” Maverick flicked a piece of dirt from under his fingernail. “But if word comes in that you’ve stolen from me, they’ll be dead before your bodies hit the ground.”
Kylie rose from the sofa. “Maverick, your paranoia is getting the better of you.” She approached him with a smile, but his jaw was set in stone even as her hand slithered up his chest. “Let’s just let this all go. You know I’ve always been loyal. I’ve always—”
“Sit down.” His eyes bored through her like those of an angry father. “Sit down and don’t move until my squad reports in. Don’t move a muscle.” Maverick slammed his first into the wall.
Kylie backed slowly away and sat down next to Nadine. Nothing ever went easy for her, so why was she so surprised that Maverick was suspicious?
Maverick studied them as he leaned against the wall. “Why so nervous, Kylie? Your heart and respiration are off the charts.”
“You did just threaten to gut me like a fish. Excuse me if I like to go around wearing my own skin.”
Maverick crossed his arms. “I watched you as you entered The Shade. You walked around more than usual. Studied the girls. What are you looking for?”
“Nothing,” Nadine answered too quickly. When Maverick’s head swung over to her, she recoiled.
“You misplace something?” Maverick’s eyes narrowed.
Kylie put her hand on Nadine’s lap. “It’s been awhile, Mav. We like to look at your girls the same way you do. You know how we swing.” Kylie blew Nadine a kiss.
Maverick took a heavy step forward. “Bring a few of the girls in here, then. I want to watch while you two have some fun.”
“You can’t be serious,” Kylie said. “You expect us to have sex for your pleasure while we wait for the final word on whether or not you’re going to kill us?”
“Why not? I’m a little bored. Are you a little bored, Kylie? Nadine?” A challenge flashed in his eyes, daring them to claim otherwise. Their window of opportunity was quickly closing around them. Kyle considered her options, such as they were with the two guards in the room.
“Bored doesn’t quite cover it,” Nadine mumbled.
Maverick lunged at her and Nadine shrieked and sunk back into the sofa. Her arms splayed and her legs spread wide. Kylie jumped up and caught Maverick under the throat. “Touch her, and it’s the end for you,” she said. “I don’t care who you are.”
Behind her, the sound of pistols sliding out of holsters echoed through the room. Maverick laughed, and the door behind them slid open. “Aren’t you interested to find out what my squad found out first?”
Kylie glanced around him and saw more of Maverick’s men—all armed to the teeth. She took a chance to send her team a coded message.
Crap.
ON THE RUN
STELLAR DATE: 08.37.8947 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: City of Montral, Jericho
REGION: Gedri System, Silstrand Alliance
Grayson took a left hook to the face. He stumbled backward and slammed into the bar as a full-on brawl broke out around him.
Lifting his hands up, Grayson side-stepped the hulking, angry, jealous girlfriend. “I swear, I didn’t know she had a girlfriend and I promise you, I didn’t touch her.”
< I have confirmation she’s wanted in four different systems for very violent crimes. If I were you, I’d duck.>
Grayson ducked as the woman threw another punch. He grabbled a chair and smashed it across the girlfriend’s head, but the huge woman just kept coming. He glanced around, looking for an assist.
Winter had some guy’s head under his arm and was driving his fist into his face repeatedly. Rogers was just beyond the large albino, fending off a crowd of short, very angry dwarfs whose beards nearly reached the floor. Well, life certainly wasn’t dull around those two.
“My girl,” the girlfriend pointed at herself, “my rules. You touched her and now I get to touch you. That’s my rule.”
“I didn’t know the rules when I walked in here.”
“You cross the Black Crow, they’ll catch up to you.”
Grayson had heard of the pirate organization before and what they were known for. It was just his bad luck to get himself into a mess like this. He pivoted and caught the woman’s fist as it flew toward his face. “I thought you were the Black Crows. Like more than just one crow? But seriously, can we call this off? I really, really don’t want to hurt you.”
The girlfriend sneered and pushed her fist forward, and Grayson’s boots slid backward on the floor. He knew that if he pushed back too hard, he’d lose his footing, and j
ust as he was considering his options, his back foot hit the base of the bar. The girlfriend grunted and strained, but her fist didn’t get any closer to Grayson’s face.
The angry woman’s eyes widened as Grayson pushed her arm down and across her chest. “I told you I didn’t want to hurt you unless it’s necessary.”
The woman grunted with exertion, her face reddening as she tried to win the contest of strength against what appeared to be a much smaller man. In an act of desperation, she launched forward and tried to bite his nose.
“Whoa! Hey! Now…” Grayson grunted as he threw a punch straight across her jaw with his left hand, then kicked the woman backward into a group of tables, “…it’s necessary.”
Rogers grabbed Grayson’s shoulder and yanked him back. “Yo! Loverboy, let’s move it!”
The beast of a girlfriend rose from the ruin of the tables, sneered, and charged at them. Grayson threw a table down in her path, which she tripped over and crashed to the ground. He turned and followed Rogers and Winter around the bar.
Behind a velvet curtain, Betty stood with a wry grin on her red lips. Her plastic features finally showed some color as she flushed from the excitement, and her chest heaved as she took a deep breath. She slid a hidden panel open to reveal a hidden exit. “We use this to bring in the illegal drugs—well…the more illegal ones. You better use it now before the patrols get here.”
Winter and Rogers wasted no time in disappearing inside, but Grayson paused. A gentle stroke of his hand across her chin caused her eyes to flutter shut. “And you, will you be all right?” he asked.
“She’ll calm down.” The waitress gave a cocky smile. “I’ll be fine. It’s not every day I meet a gentlemen.”
“If you’re in trouble—” Grayson began.
“C’mon, Romeo!” Winter’s hand reached out from the hidden passage and yanked Grayson inside. The thundering scream of the jealous girlfriend was enough to get Grayson’s legs pumping after Rogers and Winter.
“What the hell is a Romeo?” Rogers asked as they ran like lightning and dove between two tall, erect buildings.
“Crap, Rogers, you are the most uncultured person I’ve ever met!” Winter said.
The passageway led them out the back of Nancy’s Place, and they raced down an ally across the street, and through a park. After a few minutes of running between buildings without signs of pursuit they ducked into an alley used for waste removal.
Grayson bent over and drew in several deep breaths, his nano working to regulate his oxygen levels and blood pressure. Rogers and Winter had no such modifications but still breathed easily.
It was clear Grayson wasn’t in as good a shape as he thought. It was embarrassing to be bested by the vanilla crew of the Dauntless, but he had been on the general’s staff for a long time. He wasn’t often running for his life. Even when he was younger and in the rank and file, Grayson had always been on an officer’s trajectory.
“You have super strength?” Winter asked with narrowed eyes.
Grayson shrugged. “Not really. I can use my mil-spec nano for bursts of speed and strength, but nothing long-lasting. It breaks protocol to use it on civilians, too. I shouldn’t have, but my face didn’t really see much of a choice.”
“So you’re telling me,” Winter puffed up his chest, “that during the prisoner transfer, when I pulled your gun on you, you could’ve disarmed me at any time?”
“If I chose to, yes. I decided to see how it’d play out.”
Rogers glanced between the two. It looked as though he didn’t get what Winter was driving for, but Grayson knew. It had only been a matter of time before it came out.
Winter shook his head. “You manipulated the situation. You could’ve put me down and you didn’t because of what? Because you wanted leverage on Kylie when talking to your general?”
Grayson let the words sink in while he thought of his best response.
Rogers face cleared like a light had gone off in his head. “Ohh…you did that, Grayson? You were willing to put our lives, Nadine’s life, on the line like that? For a few extra bargaining chips?”
“No. Absolutely not.” Grayson stood up straighter. “I never manipulated you. I didn’t setup what happened. But yes, I took advantage of the situation when it presented itself. No one made you grab my gun to try to shoot your way out of there. But when you did, yes, I used it to my advantage. Besides, I wanted Kylie to trust me. If I took the gun and you went for me, who knows who would’ve ended up hurt—or killed.”
Winter went toe-to-toe with him. Not a good turn of events. “Maybe you should try putting me down now. We’ll see who really will come out on top.”
“I’m not looking for a fight with you, Winter.” Grayson’s calm voice resonated through the alley. “That was the last thing I ever wanted. Even if you can’t see that, it’s true.”
Rogers took a deep breath. “Just wait a second. Winter’s right, you did manipulate the situation. Your actions put Kylie in a position where she couldn’t say no to you or the general. Not if she ever wanted her ship back. You know if it went down like that, she had no choice but to go along with your mission.”
Grayson could see how protective Rogers was of Kylie—it was admirable. Sometime, a long time ago, that would’ve been him. But…
He licked his lips and kept his voice even and steady. “Like I said, I didn’t make it go down the way it did. No one made Winter pull a gun on me. Just like no one made you attempt to do the same. What happened, happened. Can’t we just leave it at that?”
Rogers and Winter glanced at each other. Grayson held his breath as he waited for a response.
“You know what? Bygones,” Rogers said. “We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. Am I right?”
“You’re wrong,” Winter said with his hands balled into fists. “When we get back to the ship, Kylie’s hearing about this. I don’t want you anywhere near me, Grayson. You hear me?”
Grayson avoided his gaze. “All right.”
“But I also need to keep an eye on you,” Winter glowered. “So I guess I’m not going to get everything I want. And when I don’t get everything I want…” Winter slammed his fist into his open palm. “You better be on your best behavior. Am I clear, brother?”
Grayson nodded. “Crystal.”
Rogers and Winter groaned across the Link. Rogers then said,
“Captain’s orders,” Rogers said he peered o
ut of the alley into the street beyond. “We get to the shuttle and take it up to the ship.”
“She might be the captain, but I’m in charge of this mission. We don’t leave Jericho without Kylie,” Grayson said. “Or Nadine.”
Winter snorted. “If you think this is going to get you in my good graces, you’re wrong.”
Grayson opened his mouth to respond but thought better of it, and silently followed Rogers and Winter onto the street. They blended in with the foot traffic, working their way toward the thoroughfare that led outside the dome to the docks, when a voice called out from across the street.
“There, I see them!”
“Aw shit,” Rogers cursed, and broke into a run.
Grayson focused his augmented eyes at the crowd across the street, and he saw a man holding a rather lethal-looking rifle waving to another group of well-armed men. He didn’t pause for a longer look and took off after Rogers and Winter.
A shot ran out from the other side of the street, and a window to his left shattered.
Winter followed Rogers through the door, and Grayson wasn’t far behind.
Inside the restaurant, Rogers and Winter were nowhere in sight, but the trail of overturned tables and angry waitstaff was easy to follow. He burst into the kitchen, past a pair of yelling chefs, and out the back door into another alley.
Rogers and Winter were waiting for him.
“Faster, soldier boy!” Rogers yelled and took off again.
Close Proximity - An Aeon14 Space Opera Adventure (Perilous Alliance) Page 12