by R. M. Olson
Contents
The Ungovernable series
Dedication
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
ENJOYED THE BOOK?
The Ungovernable series:
Zero Day Threat
Jailbreak
Time Bomb
Insider Threat
Firewall
Trojan Horse (coming November 2020)
To my kids, who all want to grow up to be Jez, despite my best efforts.
FIREWALL
Book 5 in The Ungovernable series
R.M. OLSON
Copyright (c) 2020
R.M. Olson
All rights reserved
FIREWALL:
A security device designed to block unauthorized access to or from a system.
CHAPTER ONE
“JEZ SOLOKOV.” THE man’s face was twisted in an ugly sneer, his breath puffing out in cold white clouds in the early morning Prasvishoni air. “You have a lot of gall coming back here. Guess you didn’t expect we’d get word of it.”
Jez gave him an easy smile, even though every muscle in her body was tight with adrenalin. “Figured you’d miss me, Dima.”
Behind her, down the narrow, dirty port street, the grungy city gate was just visible.
The man’s eyebrows lowered. Beside him, easily visible against the dark walls of the alleyway that led onto the street, his companions, a woman and another man, wore similar expressions. Jez wasn’t entirely certain she recognized either of them.
“Never thought you’d be back, Jez,” said the woman. “Figured that once you’d run off on Dima and on me both, you’d know better than to try that.” She pulled a heat-pistol from her belt in an easy motion that was suddenly familiar—
“Alina!” Jez said with delight. “It’s been a while. Didn’t know you knew Dima.”
Alina stared at her for a moment. Jez grinned.
“Come on, it’s been a long time. Can’t blame me for not recognizing you right away. Anyways, you always said I was a good kisser. Thought you’d at least want to try it out again before you shot me.”
“You weren’t that good of a kisser,” the woman muttered sourly.
Jez shrugged. “If you wanted to practice—”
Dima glared at her in exasperation, then at Alina. “I was under the impression,” he said icily, “that we’re here to kill this idiot, not plaguing flirt with her!”
“Sorry,” said Jez, sounding not even a little bit sorry.
“You’re going to be a hell of a lot sorrier,” he growled, and levelled his pistol.
Jez didn’t wait for him to aim. She dived forward, the heat from the blast searing the air over her shoulder and the blow-by heat almost scorching her skin. Dima managed only a half-bitten-off curse before she’d landed him on the ground. She managed one very satisfying punch right in the middle of his mouth before Alina and the other man—she was actually pretty sure she didn’t recognize him, although if she’d been drunk enough at the time it was possible she was wrong—yanked her off Dima.
Alina’s pistol was coming up, and Jez rolled out of her grip, grabbing for Dima, who was still on the ground, and jerking him around between her and the pistol. He twisted in her grasp, trying to bring his own heat pistol to bear, and she grabbed for it, trying to yank it from his hand before he could actually kill her with it. He tightened his grip and swore, lunging to his feet, then grabbed her by the shoulder of her jacket, hauling her up after him.
“You’re damn well going to regret messing with me, Jez Solokov,” he gritted out through his teeth. “You think you can—”
She bit down hard on his wrist, and he yelped and dropped her. She landed on her side, rolled, and kicked out with both feet. There was a delightful crunch as the heel of her boot connected with his kneecap, then he grabbed her ankle and twisted hard. She lost her balance and fell hard, landing face-first on the dirty concrete of the alley.
“Tae,” she muttered into her com, “you could hurry it up, you know.” She twisted violently, rolling over and letting her momentum and body weight jerk her ankle free of Dima’s grip. She jumped to her feet and kicked again, and this time she connected with his stomach. He cursed, losing his balance and falling hard into the wall, his heat-gun skittering away down the alley, and Jez spun just in time to knock Alina’s wrist up so that the heat-blast aimed for her chest left a round blackened mark on the dirty pre-fab walls of the building behind her.
“I though we’d got along fine,” she grunted, dodging Alina’s knee to her stomach. “I mean, sure we didn’t exactly see eye to eye, but—”
“You plaguing idiot,” Alina snarled. “You took off, told me you’d be back when you were done your run. And you never showed, and here I was worried about you and waiting around. And then what happens? The cops show up, they’re looking for a Jez Solokov who’s wanted for smuggling, and then I spend the next ten months being hauled into the station twice a week to be questioned, and the whole time I’m worried sick about you. And then I find out you just took off because you felt like it.”
“Oh.” Jez frowned slightly. “Yeah, guess that’s fair.” She paused a moment. “Why does Dima want to kill me?”
“Just give me a minute,” Tae’s voice hissed in her earpiece. “I’m getting hooked in as quickly as I can.” He paused. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s working. The guards are all watching the alley. I think I could march a parade through the gates and they wouldn’t look up.”
“Same reason, except you also cost him half his damn fortune.”
She shrugged, and ducked out of the way as Dima’s fist missed her jaw by millimetres. “Hey now, not my fault the load wasn’t worth what he thought it was. I pulled the job for him fair and square, just like he paid me to.”
“Before I met you, you plaguer, I had plenty of credits and good prospects,” Dima gritted through his teeth. “After you left, I had nothing.”
“Not my fault. You were a worthless bastard before I slept with you, figure that wouldn’t change afterwards. I mean, I’m hot, but I’m not that hot.”
He snarled and lunged for her. She sidestepped, and caught a fist in the ribs. She gasped, spun, and managed to deflect the blow the third man had aimed at her jaw.
“What the hell’s your problem?” she gasped at the stranger. “Pretty sure I never slept with you. Or else I was really damn drunk.”
He feinted, and she ducked, and then a fist caught her from behind, sending her staggering up against the filthy wall of the alley. The man gave her a nasty grin.
“Nothing. They’re just paying me enough to make it worth my while.”
Dima grabbed her by the collar, and as she tried to twist free, he shoved her back into the wall, his eyes boring into hers.
“You dirty plaguer,” he growled softly. “You filthy bastard. You think you can just show up here again without consequences?”
She attempted a shrug. “That’s what I usually do. Didn’t notice until now? I mean, you always were a bit slow
on the uptake, but—”
He slammed her backwards into the wall, and she winced. She’d have a bruise for sure this time.
“You—” she began, and then she stopped abruptly.
There was no mistaking the feel of the small, snub-nosed pistol shoved up under her ribs.
She cut her eyes away from Dima. Alina stood beside him, smiling, but it wasn’t a friendly smile.
Why the hell had she got together with this girl anyways? Probably not one of her smartest moves, in hindsight. Still, at least Alina was hot. She had no idea what she’d ever seen in Dima.
“Jez Solokov,” said Alina softly. “I’ve waited a long damn time for this. You’re going to give me all the credits on your credit chip, you’re going to pass them over right now. And then I want to see you beg for your life. I want you to beg me and Dima to forgive you for all the crap you pulled. And maybe, just maybe, if you have enough credits and you put on a good enough act, we’ll just beat the living hell out of you and let you crawl away home. But I promise you, when we’re done, there won’t be anyone in Prasvishoni who’ll want to sleep with your dirty carcass.”
Jez grinned at her absently, tapping her com inconspicuously against the wall behind her.
Pilot’s code.
Tae had damn well better be paying attention.
Tae. How long is this going to take?
His voice hissed through her earpiece. “Got it. You better get out of there.”
“Jez?” Alina’s voice had taken on its familiar tone of fury mingled with complete exasperation. “Are you even bloody listening?”
Jez took a deep breath and gave Alina a beatific smile.
Then she threw herself to one side, wrenching free of Dima’s grip on her collar, and knocking the muzzle of the gun away from her with one hand as it went off, scorching a smouldering black mark into the wall beside her. With her other, she reached into her jacket pocket and yanked out a small, deadly-looking weapon. She grinned, pointed it at her momentarily-stunned attackers, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Dima smiled.
Jez swore, turned, and ran for her life.
She slapped her com as she ducked around a corner, a heat-blast scorching the air behind her.
“Ysbel! What the hell? Your gun didn’t work!”
“My guns always work,” Ysbel responded, in her thick outer-rim accent. “I don’t make mistakes with my guns.”
“Yeah, well unless you made this one as a decorative piece—”
“You took the gun I told you to take, right?”
She shrugged, and ducked around another corner. Her ribs throbbed where she’d been hit, and she could already feel a bump rising on the back of her head where Dima had slammed her into the wall. “I grabbed the one on the damn table.”
Through her earpiece, she could hear Ysbel’s heavy sigh. “There were two guns on the table, you idiot. I told you that. And I told you to take the one with the black grip.”
Another heat blast, and Jez yelped and dodged to one side, the corner of her jacket smouldering.
“Dammit Ysbel, you knew bloody well I wasn’t actually listening to what you were saying!”
“Fair enough,” said Ysbel. “I suppose I should have seen that coming.”
“Jez. Are you alright?” Tae cut in, his voice tight with worry.
“Define ‘alright,’” she gasped.
Ahead of her, the alley she was running down narrowed and turned. She slipped around the corner, but the sound of her pursuers’ boots on the concrete were much too close for comfort.
“Are they shooting at you?”
“What the hell do you think, Tae?”
“Alright, listen.” Ysbel’s voice was tight now as well. “The gun you have, I think it has all the components, it’s just not hooked up yet. What you’ll need to do is take the panel off the side of the heat sink. Can you do that?”
The alley turned again. It was narrowing further.
“Jez.” Lev’s voice over the com was cold, but there was an undercurrent of worry in it. “I grabbed your location from your com. The city’s boarded that alley up. You’re going to hit a dead end in about thirty seconds.”
“Would have been nice to know that five minutes ago,” she muttered.
“Hold tight, Jez,” said Tae. “Ysbel and I are on our way. We’ll be there as quick as we can.”
She slapped her com off. No way in hell they were going to get here before Dima and Alina did.
Ahead, at the end of another tight turn, she saw the dead end Lev had warned her about.
“Listen, Jez. Can you get the heat sink panel off?” Ysbel’s voice came through her earpiece, sounding more worried than ever.
There was no way she was getting past that barricade, not with a defective gun.
“Hate to tell you this, Ysbel, but I’m basically crap at putting heat guns together. For the record.”
“Well, Jez, perhaps this would be a very good time to learn.” Masha was clearly speaking through her teeth. Jez skidded to a stop, and shoved herself up against the wall of the alley, dropping her hands to her knees and bending over to catch her breath. Footsteps pounded down the alley behind her. They’d be there in just a couple seconds.
She grinned to herself and straightened, pushing even farther back against the wall.
Dima pelted around the corner, and she stuck out one leg. He hit it, tripped, and went down, his heat-gun spinning off across the cement. Alina was only seconds behind him, not in time to stop, and as she rounded the corner, Jez was already swinging. She brought the butt of the useless heat gun down sharply across Alina’s temple, stepped back, and, as she collapsed, landed an elbow in the centre of the stranger’s forehead as he rounded the corner. He stopped, staggering slightly from the blow, and she dropped him with the butt of the pistol, which was actually coming in a lot more handy than she’d expected. Dima had staggered to hands and knees, and she kicked him hard. His jaw snapped shut, and he crumpled back to the ground. Jez glanced around, sprinted for the dropped heat pistol, and yanked it up as Alina blinked and stirred.
“Alright, you bastards,” she said, grinning like a maniac. “Guess you’re going to have to find someone else hot enough to shoot at. I mean, guess I never got off on shooting at people with heat guns, but—”
“Jez,” Alina growled. “Believe me, this has nothing to do with—”
“Ah, just keep telling yourself that,” Jez said with a grin. “Anyways, hate to disappoint you, but—”
Two skybikes rounded the corner, and Tae slid off his almost before it came to a stop. His dark, wavy hair was falling across his face, like always, and his ragged street-kid clothing made him look even younger than his twenty years, but his heat gun was steady.
“Jez, are you—” He was breathless.
“All good, tech-head,” she said, shooting a grin at him over her shoulder. He frowned.
“Looks like you got a little more beat up than ‘all good,’” he said.
She shrugged. “Part of the job.”
“Get on, you idiot,” Ysbel said. “We’d better get back.” Honestly, Ysbel, with her shaved head and flat expression and very impressive muscles, could probably have scared the hell out of these bastards even if she hadn’t been carrying a modded weapon that could probably burn holes in concrete.
But she was.
“Nice to see you again, Dima, Alina,” said Jez with a cocky grin. “And, you other bastard, not sure I enjoyed meeting you, but wait until I get a damn stun gun that works.”
She swung up behind Ysbel, and Tae, still holding his heat pistol steady, mounted his own bike, and Jez sighed in satisfaction as her erstwhile attackers’ angry curses followed them down the alley.
CHAPTER TWO
LEV TOOK A deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment.
“Lev?”
He looked up across the Ungovernable’s conference table at the calm, competent-looking woman sitting across from him, and tr
ied not to think about the spike of sick, desperate panic that had jolted through him when he’d heard the heat-blasts over Jez’s com, pulled her location and seen she was going to hit a dead end.
“Yes, Masha?”
She’d be fine. She was always fine, and besides, she’d made it very clear that it was none of his damn business.
Masha studied him wryly for a moment. “I’m quite confident that they would have mentioned it if Jez had been killed, Lev. And further, if you don’t start to pay attention to what you’re doing, it’s entirely possible that not only Jez, but every one of us, won’t live through the next week.”
He gave her a flat look and turned back to the holoscreen in front of him, trying to force his mind to focus on the lines of text.
Boots sounded in the corridor a few minutes later. And despite everything, his damn heart almost stopped beating when he didn’t see Jez, and then restarted again when she sauntered in behind Tae. She was sporting a bruise along her jaw, an angry red against her tawny skin, and her short, dishevelled black hair was cut through with dirt and gravel, but she wore the same cocky grin she always did.
He shoved down the urge to jump to his feet and grab her by the shoulders, look her over for injuries, pull her into a tight, relieved embrace.
He took a deep breath.
It was fine. She was fine, and he’d be fine, he and Jez had had a discussion, like adults, and they’d mutually decided that—well, whatever it was that they’d been before was a mistake, and the best thing possible to do was to get on with their own separate lives. He’d explained it to her in as logical a way as possible, and she’d agreed, and that had been that.
“Strap down, kids,” she drawled over her shoulder as she disappeared into the cockpit.
Tae gritted his teeth and grabbed for the nearest restraint, and a moment later the ship rose delicately into the air, then shot through the open doors of the hangar bay at a speed that made Lev wish he’d skipped breakfast that morning.