by R. M. Olson
“Masha!”
Lev frowned. The voice came from the lobby.
There shouldn’t be anyone in the lobby, except for Olyessa’s guards.
“Masha?”
Masha came to the door, glancing around. She tapped her com to the guards’ line. “I’m here. Did you need something?”
“Someone to see you downstairs,” the guard replied, still calling up the stairs.
Lev frowned at the tone in his voice. It was off, somehow, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” said Masha, after a pause.
Lev glanced down at his holoscreen again.
Still nothing.
He bit the inside of his cheek, and refrained from looking back at Tae.
Masha closed the door to the conference room carefully behind her, and walked briskly to the stairs. Watching her, he could see the faint tension in her posture, but honestly, he hadn’t spent enough time around her in the past weeks to know whether this was new or if it had been there for a while.
Stupid. He should have been watching her more closely.
But somehow, since his conversation with Vitali, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to, even in the few brief meeting he’d had with her since then.
In the back of his mind he heard her footsteps echoing off the high ceiling of the lobby as he turned back to his com.
He sucked in a quick breath, feeling suddenly dizzy with relief.
“What—” Ysbel began.
“Something’s happening,” he said in a low voice. “The funds coming through, I think.”
Ysbel let out a short breath. “It’s about time for something to go right,” she grunted, the strain of the last few days clear in her voice. Lev closed his eyes for a moment, letting his own shoulders slump in relief. He hadn’t realized how tense he’d been.
“Lev.”
He opened his eyes, frowning. It was Masha’s voice, coming through his com. He turned towards where she’d disappeared down the stairs.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need you down here, Lev. The others too, please. Quickly.”
There was a strained urgency to her tone. Lev and Ysbel looked at each other, and Ysbel’s face was pinched with sudden worry.
Lev gritted his teeth and shut down his holoscreen. “Masha wants all of us downstairs,” he said over his shoulder into the conference room.
“Why?” asked Tae quickly.
Lev shook his head. “I don’t know. But she said to hurry.
They stood, casting worried glances at each other, and started down the stairwell.
It wasn’t until he was half-way down that Lev noticed the fact that Olyessa’s guards were not where they normally were, standing in front of the entrance.
Instead, the six guards were gathered around a small group in one corner of the lobby. He couldn’t make out the figures who were seated on the chairs, but he recognized the back of Masha’s unmistakable pilot’s coat.
He frowned, something niggling at the back of his mind. Something about the guards …
And then Tanya hissed in a breath, and he glanced up, and realized what had been bothering him.
They were dressed the same as Olyessa’s guards had been. But these weren’t Olyessa’s guards.
And three more of them were on the landing, not too far from where he’d been standing, half-concealed behind the curve of the hallway. Their laser guns were in their hands, held loose, but they looked like they were ready to use them.
Olyessa’s guards, the six who’d been on duty this morning—
When he first caught sight of them, draped over the balcony ahead of them, he wondered, for a brief, disconnected moment, if perhaps they were drunk, or playing some sort of prank. And then his mind made sense of the limp droop of their bodies, the faint scent of burnt flesh, the slow, monotonous drip … drip … of blood, spattering and pooling on the polished stone floor two stories below, the sound so regular and so quiet that his brain had filtered it out.
He’d seen death, more times than he cared to think about. But still, he had to look away quickly, bile rising in his throat.
The guards behind them had come closer, following them at a safe distance as they walked down the stairs.
Masha. She’d finally done it, she’d finally betrayed them all that one final time—
But it didn’t make sense. Not when they hadn’t got what they were looking for yet. What could she possibly gain by selling them out now?
He’d heard the strain in her voice when she called them. It could have been guilt, but more likely this was as much of a surprise to her as it was to him.
They’d reached the bottom of the stairway by now, huddled together instinctively. Jez’s pistol was in her hand, and Ysbel had something half-hidden in her palm that was almost certainly capable of transforming this entire place and everything inside it to rubble. But Olya was beside her, walking so close that Ysbel almost tripped over her at every step, and Misko was clinging to her trouser leg, and both their faces were pale and terrified, their eyes fixed on the bodies hanging over the balcony.
Ysbel wouldn’t use her explosive, and Jez wouldn’t start anything, not unless there was no other option.
They crossed the floor to where Masha was sitting. As they got closer, he could see her wrists were cuffed behind her back, but she turned and gave them a wan, strained smile over her shoulder.
“Lev. I apologize for not explaining what had happened more fully. However, I was informed that if anyone tried to put up a fight, there would be shooting, and I was confident that was an outcome that none of us wanted, considering—” Her eyes flicked briefly to the children.
Lev gave her a tight nod. “I understand,” he said. Then he looked up across the circle of chairs that had been set up.
Somehow, he already knew what he’d see.
“Lev,” said Grigory. There was a vicious, triumphant smile on his face, the same smile that Lev had seen once before, right before Grigory gave instructions for his boyeviki to torture a man to death in front of them.
“Hello Grigory,” Lev said quietly, pulling up a chair. His legs were trembling slightly, and he was glad for the chance to sit down before it became apparent. There was a cold knot in his chest, and a dread weakening his joints.
“I’m glad you came without an argument,” Grigory said, still smiling. “I wanted to see you dead. I wanted that very, very much. But knowing all of you, you’d have set off an explosive or something, and I wanted to enjoy this.”
“What do you want?” asked Ysbel, her voice emotionless. “Why are you here?”
“Have a seat, all of you,” said Grigory, gesturing expansively with one arm. “We can talk better if we’re all relaxed.”
“I’m sure you’re smart enough to have guessed,” said Ysbel, making no move to comply. “I’m holding the control down on the explosive in my hand right now, but the moment my fingers loosen on the control, everyone dies. You included. Give me one reason why I don’t take my finger off it right now.”
“I’ll give you two,” said Grigory. He gestured to the children clinging to Ysbel’s legs.
“You’re going to kill them anyways.” Ysbel’s voice was flat and dangerous.
Grigory chuckled. “No. That isn’t my plan at the moment. Why don’t you sit, and you can keep your hand on your explosive, and we can talk this over.”
Ysbel and Tanya exchanged glances, and then, slowly, they sat. The rest of the crew followed suit.
Grigory leaned back in his chair, watching them. “I’m impressed with what you did in such a short time,” he said. “You almost had me fooled with your little con. I’d put in money, because I’d think I could call in all the debts, ruin her, turn Olyessa against her because she couldn’t pull off what she promised she would. But you forget. I’ve been following your careers, ever since you came out of nowhere and destroyed my alliance with the government. Perhaps I underestimated you on the casino ship, but not a sec
ond time.”
“What do you want?” asked Lev quietly.
Grigory smiled again. “I want, Lev, to convince you that there is no point in resisting. I want to explain to you how thoroughly you’ve lost.”
“Not sure why you think we care, you bastard,” drawled Jez. She was leaning back in her chair, posture mirroring Grigory’s, but every muscle in her wiry body was tensed, and she was holding the heat-pistol loosely on her lap. “Figure if we’re all going to die, doesn’t really matter, and I’ll be honest, I’m getting pretty bored right now.”
Grigory raised an eyebrow, but Lev saw the brief flash of annoyance that crossed his features. “That assumes I’m going to kill you.”
Jez snorted. “What, found religion? Decided that the Lady doesn’t like it when you murder a bunch of people? Was that before or after you killed those six guards up there?”
Grigory’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I’m not stupid, Jez,” he snapped. “I knew there was no way Ysbel wouldn’t have a way to kill us all if I took you.”
“You need to kill us,” said Lev softly. “You explained that to me.”
“You’re right,” said Grigory, the harshness grating in his voice. “But Ysbel would always pose a problem. And—” he gave a slight, brutal smile. “I’m not quite ready to take on Olyessa at the moment. And so I think I found a solution.” He leaned back. “I’ve taken you at your own con. I’ve ruined you. Lev, look at your com, if you would.”
Cautiously, Lev pulled up the holoscreen.
The bank account details were displayed on it, in full view of everyone. And—
He sucked in a quick breath and closed his eyes for a moment.
And it was empty. Every last credit, gone.
“Your tech boy did an excellent job of setting that up,” said Grigory. “If I hadn’t been suspicious, I’d never have told the difference between that and the real thing. You wanted me to put in my money, leverage my properties. That’s why you put the limit on the account so high. And once you had my money, you’d simply close down the false account and disappear, and I’d be a broken man. But this isn’t the first time someone’s tried to pull a con on me.”
His cruel smile had returned. “Would you like to know what happened to the account, Lev? I’ve already explained it to Masha. The transfer was bugged. As soon as my credits went into the account, it triggered a sequence that emptied every last credit out of your fake account, and into a real account of my own. Everything you put into that account, along with everything Olyessa put in. I was watching the numbers just before you came down. I’m afraid she’s not going to be very happy about how this turned out.” He paused a moment, enjoying the looks on their faces. “Especially with her money gone, and her guards dead, and the eight of you disappeared.”
Something like ice was forming in Lev’s chest.
“You think she doesn’t have tracking on us?” asked Masha calmly. “She’ll be able to tell the instant we die.”
Grigory smiled. “Oh, you’re not going to die, not yet. You’ll head off-planet. I’ll order one of my pilots to take you somewhere in the outer rim, and you can do whatever you’d like after that. Until Olyessa catches up with you, I assume. Jez here can get a job as a pilot, if she’d like. Maybe one day she’ll earn enough to buy her own ship again. Lev could be a university professor. There are plenty of outer-rim planets with small universities who would love someone of his calibre. The rest of you can live out your lives however you’d like. Maybe you’ll even stay alive for a while. And what do you have to lose? You really think you could have changed anything in the long run?” he leaned forward. “So yes. I’m letting you go. But believe me, I haven’t forgiven you. What I did will come out eventually, of course, but after a few months it won’t be worth the risk she’d take to try to get revenge on me, instead of you, and that’s worth enough for me to let you live. But you try to get involved again, in anything at all, it will be worth my while to hunt you down. Besides—” he smiled. “I think Tae here has some friends he’d hate to see hurt. I won’t touch a hair on their heads, as long as you don’t give me cause.”
Lev just watched him. He wasn’t afraid. He didn’t even feel the despair he probably should be feeling. He just felt—numb.
Grigory put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. “I’d stay, but I’m a busy man. You’ve given me a very large gift, with all of Olyessa’s savings, and I don’t want to waste it.”
He turned, and five bodyguards detached themselves from the wall and followed him out the door.
The other guards—the ones dressed to look like Olyessa’s—stood back a little, postures relaxed, guns levelled.
Finally, Lev allowed himself to look at Masha.
Her face was drawn with strain, her jaw clenched. With an effort, she raised her head and met his eyes.
“It wasn’t you this time, was it?” he said quietly.
She gave him a quick, tight smile. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to try to convince you of that. Grigory told me that I could convince you to come, or he’d take his chances with a shootout. And despite my faith in your respective abilities, I didn’t have confidence that you would emerge wholly unscathed.”
Lev nodded.
His brain was still trying to figure out logically how to deal with the situation without any input whatsoever from his emotions. Still, perhaps at this juncture that was for the best. Because if for one moment he let himself think about what this meant, let himself feel anything at all, the despair might crush him.
Ysbel looked around at the others.
Jez’s eyes were closed, her posture slumped, expression haunted.
Of course. The Ungovernable would be destroyed the moment Olyessa got word that they’d disappeared.
There were other things to worry about, too many to count, but for some reason the sight of the blank hopelessness on the pilot’s face hurt her.
Olya was clinging to her leg, and she put an arm around the girl’s shoulders and pulled her close. Olya was very pale, and her lip was trembling slightly, her small body shivering under Ysbel’s arm. Ysbel managed to give her a small smile, even though she knew Olya was far too intelligent to be fooled by something like that.
“Well,” she said at last, turning to Tanya. “I suppose it could have been a lot worse. We’re all alive.”
Tanya’s shoulders were tensed, and Ysbel could see the strain in her face. “Alive? Perhaps. But—” she gestured helplessly around them. “The rest of them here? They’re marked now. Olyessa will kill them.”
One of the guards stepped closer, gesturing with his gun. “Go on. Grigory’s ship is just outside the city forcefield. You have twenty standard minutes. If you want to bring anything with you, best start packing.”
Masha got to her feet at last, her face bearing the same bland expression she’d worn almost since Ysbel had met her. “Well,” she said quietly, “I suppose we’d best get going. Twenty standard minutes isn’t long.”
The guards moved forward, guns still at the ready. “We’ll escort you back to the rooms,” said one of them. “One at a time.” He gestured at Masha with a jerk of his head. She hesitated, glancing back at them, then nodded and walked briskly to the staircase, two guards following. The other guards stayed where they were, guns trained on their little group.
Jez stood suddenly, quickly enough that she almost overturned her chair.
“Damn it to hell, we can’t just leave.”
The guards stepped closer at the movement, but Jez wasn’t holding her heat gun. There were tears in her eyes, and something desperate and hopeless in her voice. “We can’t just—there are people on this damn planet who are getting hurt, and we were going to—we were—” She stopped, choking on the words, and dropped her head to her chest, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.
Ysbel watched her, something tightening her chest.
“Jez.” Lev’s voice was gentle. He hesitated, then stood and rested a hand on her arm.
&nb
sp; She spun on him. “I know, shut up, Jez, right? We can’t bloody change anything anyways, so why the hell even try? We’re just trying to keep our damn selves alive. Yeah, so we did it. Good for us. But you know what? I don’t care about that right now!”
“No, Jez,” said Lev quietly. “That’s not what I was going to say. I was only going to say, I’m sorry. I’m sorry this is how things ended up. I’m sorry I didn’t see this coming.”
She swallowed hard and brushed her arm across her face. Her whole posture was slumped in defeat.
Ysbel turned away, unable for the moment to look at her.
It was like she’d told Tanya. This wasn’t so bad. They were alive, after all.
She wasn’t sure why she felt sick, instead of relieved.
“Aunty Jez?”
Ysbel frowned and glanced down.
Olya’s face was fixed in determination, her eyes hard. “Aunty Jez, it’s going to be alright,” she said fiercely.
Jez turned, and tried to smile. “Yeah, Olya?”
“Yes,” said Olya firmly. “Because my mama told me we were going to stop this stuff from happening. She promised. So—” she shrugged.
For a moment, there was silence.
Something clutched at Ysbel’s chest.
“Olya,” she said gently, although the words caught in her throat. “I’m sorry. Sometimes—well, sometimes your mama has to decide between keeping you safe, or helping out other people. And you’re very special to me, Olyeshka, you and Misko.”
Olya looked up at her, face stubborn, and there was a glint of tears in her eyes. “Mama. But remember how you said you trust me? Remember how you said I was smart, and brave? You don’t have to worry about me, mama. I—I want you to stop the bad things happening here.”
“Olya—” she began.
“You will. Right, mama? You—you promised.”
“I—” she looked up helplessly, unable to meet her daughter’s gaze.