by Rhys Ford
“Who is that?” Ryder shifted in his seat and turned toward me, seemingly undisturbed by the crater-like pothole the centipede just rolled over. “And you’re already on a job. Why would he think you want another one?”
“That’s Mink. He is a dracologist at the University of San Diego.” I reached over to answer the call and switched it over to a private line. “And he’s a massive pain in the ass.”
“So then he’s in good company knowing you,” Kerrick slid in.
“I really regret promising you that I wouldn’t stab him,” I muttered at Ryder. Then I turned the line to speaker and answered Mink. “I’m already on a job. I don’t need—”
“I’ve got most of the third quadrant mapped out and ready to upload into a terrain system. I’ve gone all the way to four exit points down near the border, as well as to drop-offs into the river and a solid span bridge crossing over it, wide enough and stable enough to hold two tanks.” Mink sliced through my argument before it even began. “It’s a very small job. I just need help to get some bearded flyer eggs out of a nest so I can relocate them to a sanctuary. Won’t take more than a couple of hours of your time, and depending upon where you’re going, the maps could cut a day or two off of your run. I’ve gotten the verification but haven’t loaded them in for distribution. Rights to the lines are still mine to give.”
“Hold on.” I muted the line and edged the centipede over to the side, leaving the trail of cars following in the wake of a slow-moving bus. I put the transport in Park and turned my chair to face Cari. She leaned forward, a contemplative look on her face. “A couple of hours, and that’s a hell of a payment.”
“Third quadrant would probably drop us off closer to the rendezvous point. We wouldn’t have to cut across so much open land or skirt the Diablo Canyons, assuming the exits drop off to the left of those.” She pulled at her lower lip, thinking. “Probably cut off two or three days. If he could prove verification….”
I switched the comm on. “Mink, give your verification code.”
It wasn’t hard to hear the unbridled glee in his voice as he rattled off the string of numbers. I muted the line again and quickly double-checked on the university’s system. Cari crowded into the space between me and Ryder and scanned the screen as the data rolled down. It looked legit. Mink had filed enough verification points and geology readings to back up his boast of mapping out an underground quadrant. All that remained for him to do was upload the rendered maps into the system, where they would be locked down and only accessible by purchasing them through the university—something normally outside of a common Stalker’s reach.
What he was offering me was pre-upload access and legacy rights to the information, all tied to my account with the university and my Stalker license through the Post.
It was a hell of a payout for just a couple hours of work.
“Something’s off,” Cari and I said at the same time.
“If this map is very important, I can just pay for it,” Ryder interjected and then visibly started when both Cari and I shot him filthy looks. “Really? It’s a map. How dear can it be?”
“One tenth of a quadrant costs more than your sports car,” I informed him. “Besides, you don’t pay for something if you can get it through a bit of haggling and work. I swear to Pele, I’m going to get that through your head before I die. Besides, he can’t take money for it, because if he does, then he violates any payment structure he would get through the university. It has to hit the system as a virgin upload, no transactions on it. It’s how their contract works. Prevents people from pulling a huge profit on something under the table, then uploading it to the university, where it’s practically useless because everybody already has it.”
“There’s got to be a catch.” Cari shook her head, then glanced back at Kerrick when he shifted in his seat. “If it’s on the way, then I say yes, but I want to know what that catch is.”
“You can’t possibly think of derailing this enterprise simply for a map, no matter how much time it might cut off from the trip,” he drawled. “I agree with Ryder. Let him upload it and we pay for it. That’s my say on the matter.”
Ryder gave a short burst of sardonic chuckles. “The fact that you think we have a say in any of this, cousin, is a reality you will quickly be disabused of. We go where Kai leads us. That’s the condition of attending these runs. We forfeit any influence we have on our direction or what we do.”
“First off, you can always speak your mind. I just might not listen to it. Thing is, it will be two to three weeks before it cycles through the university’s system. No good to us then.” I opened the comm, still debating my options. “You there, Mink?”
“I’m all ears, Gracen.” He caught himself before his guffaw reached full throat. “Okay, that was accidental. I promise. It wasn’t an elfin joke. But you’ve gotta admit, it was funny.”
“Yeah, hilarious. Okay, two things. First, you issue legacy rights to Cari Brent too.” I cut off Cari’s hissing protest with a wave of my hand. “And what’s the catch?”
“He does like counting,” Kerrick commented to Ryder in a whisper loud enough for all of us to hear. “Intelligent as well as pretty. He’s a fine asset to the court, cousin.”
I ignored him. “What’s the catch, Mink?”
“Small catch. About four or five feet long.” He stumbled over his words and slurred them together. “There’s an albino Scolopendra maxima at the base of the gulch where the nest’s at, and well, I seem to have pissed it off.”
“SO IT’S a centipede? Is that what it’s called?” Kerrick frowned as he tried to make sense of our conversation. “Isn’t that what we’re driving? A centipede? We’re going to go fight a transport vehicle?”
I understood his confusion. Hell, I was confused myself. But then this was Mink, and wherever the nutty professor went, chaos followed.
Mink had crossed my path a few years back when I found him in a ditch out by Lakeside. I’d been coming home from a successful black dog cull and was heading to Dempsey’s to prep the skins for bounty when I noticed an orange bubble-style VW Bug sitting on the side of the road near the main turnoff. It was an unfamiliar car and seemed to be stuck in one of the deep trenches SoCalGov dug on the sides of country roads to deal with flooding during the heavy rains.
Come to find out, investigating the Bug was only the beginning of an increasingly annoying relationship with a dracologist named Mink who’d somehow gotten his car stuck in a ditch, tried to climb out of the window, and ended up lodged in an underground gulch. I heard his shouts for help and rappelled down into the newly opened crevice, where I could see him standing on a thin ledge with an all-consuming darkness beneath him. I resigned myself to dragging a little kid up to the surface while I tried to figure out a way to tell him I was not going to go look for the driver of the Bug—Mink was that short. He resembled a twelve-year-old, and at times kind of acted like one. He gave up driving cars following the gulch incident, but his work took him to dangerous places, so he now rode an old Triumph motorcycle with bulging saddlebags filled with things I didn’t want to contemplate.
We’d agreed to meet in a scrapyard not far from where Jonas and I fought the cuttlefish. The guard dog on the premises was a farce—a mean-looking Rottie mix that could have doubled as an ainmhi dubh if his spittle was acidic but who rolled over and showed belly as soon as anyone with fingers walked past him. I crouched over the canine and scratched at his exposed stomach while his owner, a short Chinese woman with gold teeth, beamed proudly at our praise of her useless junkyard dog. Then she extracted a promise from Mink that he would load his motorcycle into our transport and not leave it behind, and she went back inside and left us to our business.
Mink mumbled a promise of something under his breath, his Cantonese more closely resembling Pig Latin than anything recognizable, but she smiled at me and told us to send her dog inside once he was done attacking us with his vicious licking. I complimented her on his disciplined training and told h
er if I had a dog, I would want one exactly like him.
To her credit, it was a great dog—slobbery, gleeful, and sweet. Probably had poops the size of a three-year-old human child, but a great dog.
“Kai calling our transport a centipede is in reference to how it looks. It’s an Earth insect with mandibles, but I did not think they grew to be that large. Perhaps at the most, the length of a man’s hand?” Ryder cocked his head at the dog and tentatively scratched him behind his ears. The mutt drooled, and his eyes rolled back in pleasure. Then he scooted over to sit on Ryder’s foot and leaned against his leg. “But then this is a dog like Shiro, and they look nothing alike, so perhaps I have the insects confused.”
“Shiro?” Cari whispered behind me. “Wait, the white puffball that the pink-haired Sidhe has? Lea’s fur ball is a dog?”
“Yeah, the dog is from one of Sparky’s litters from before she spayed her females. I brought it home, thinking the girls might like it, and then Lea fell in love with it, and Kai reminded him the girls wouldn’t even be able to play with the dog for a couple of years.” Ryder smiled at the drooling canine that wiggled against him. “It seemed cruel to separate Shiro from Lea after they bonded, so he’s now Lea’s.”
“I thought that was some kind of Sidhe pet. It’s just white fur and a black nose.” She huffed. “Seriously, it doesn’t even bark.”
“Could we talk less about the wild animals you have roaming around the court and more about this insect this small man cannot get past?” Kerrick interrupted.
Mink bristled. “Look, just because a guy’s short doesn’t mean you go and point it out to everyone. It’s not like they can’t see I’m this tall.”
“Kerrick, it’s rude to point out things about a human’s appearance.” Ryder’s heavy sigh lifted up at the end. “But he is right. Why do you need our help to take care of a small insect?”
“An albino Scolopendra maxima is a hell of a lot bigger than your hand,” I informed Ryder. “Their eggs are about the size of the dog on your foot. Biggest one I’ve ever seen was four feet long, but I’ve heard they get bigger. How big is this one, Mink?”
He shifted his feet back and forth and rolled his eyes up to look at the sky as though he were trying to remember exactly how large the creature he’d encountered was. “I’d say about four feet. I didn’t see any eggs or hatchlings, so I think it’s a male. But it’s definitely territorial, so I can’t get past it.”
“And you didn’t think to just shoot it?” Cari asked.
“He’s not allowed to have a gun,” I informed her as Mink began to unravel all of his excuses about why he didn’t carry a weapon. “Convicted felons aren’t allowed weapons, remember? And Mink hasn’t quite gotten SoCalGov to wipe his record from the time he pillaged a stone dragon’s clutch.”
If I listened carefully, I could’ve heard Ryder and Kerrick gasping in horror, but the dog’s enthusiastic panting wiped out anything so subtle.
“It was an understandable mistake,” he protested loudly and pressed his hand to his chest as though acting out a Regency romance drama. “I thought they were dinosaur fossils. They look very similar.”
“Let me see the mapping so I can decide if I’m going to take this job of yours.” I held my hand out for the viewing pad he held aside. “You say it’s only a couple hours in, right? Is that marked on the map? Because I’m not going to go hours off course for a bunch of bearded flyer eggs, no matter how endangered they are.”
“Here, I’ve marked it.” Mink sidled up to me, and Cari peered over his shoulder with a smug look on her face, probably because, for the first time in forever, she was taller than somebody else. He pulled up the maps, showing me the extent of the caverns he’d triangulated and verified. A glowing red dot pulsed off a tunnel that skewed from the main third-quadrant cavern. “If you see the distance markers here, you can tell it’s not even two hours in. I just need help to get the eggs out. They’re located next to a hot spring, so I know they’re active… or at least one of them has to be. I’ve got thermal packs in my saddlebags, so I won’t need you to bring me back. I can ride my bike out, and you can continue on your way.”
“I want to see the rest of the map,” Cari murmured. “I want to see the exit points.”
“No way. Not with Gracen standing here.” Mink shook his head. “I know how his mind works. He sees that once and it’ll stick there in that crazy brain of his, and he won’t need the maps. You agree to do the job, I give you both the maps.”
“We’re wasting time here talking about this,” Ryder interjected softly. “As much as I enjoy the company of this canine, we have a rendezvous to make, and if this way gets us there sooner, I think spending two hours to cut off days is a good idea.”
I studied Mink. He was an ends-justify-the-means kind of guy, and I couldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but I could probably throw him pretty far. He really was that short. Mink stood as tall as he could and tried to look as innocent as he could as he widened his green eyes and clearly hoped his youthful features would work on me like they worked on the food-truck guy in front of the university who always slipped him extra cheese on his loaded nachos.
“It’s a win-win, Gracen.” Mink had a thread of pleading in his voice—not enough to take it to plaintive, but right on the edge. “You know these maps are worth a hell of a lot more than two hours of your time. It’s all I’ve got to bargain with, and I really want to save these flyers. I think the Scolopendra got their mother, or she wasn’t able to get back to her nest. I watched it for five days, and other than that damned white monster, it was just me and the glow worms down there. If I can get them to the university’s sanctuary, we can—”
“Okay, just stop. Please.” I held up my hand to shut Mink up. “We’ll go get your damn eggs, but I’m only going to give you four hours of our time. If we don’t get in there and back out by then, the job’s done, and we still get the maps.”
“Five,” Mink countered, “and you take me back to the main cavern.”
“Five and the cavern.” I calculated the risks and hedged the time it would take us and how much time we would gain with a clear shot through the third quadrant. It was a good deal, but I couldn’t let Mink have the final volley. I had a reputation to uphold. “And if you finish mapping out the rest of the quadrant, you back-load the information into our access. Agree to that and we’ve got a deal.”
“Deal,” Mink said gleefully, his hand shooting out for me to shake.
As I took it and sealed our agreement, Cari muttered into my ear, “That was way too fucking easy. There’s got to be a catch.”
Twelve
“THIS DAMNED thing is not four feet long!” I screamed at no one in particular as I wrapped my arms around Ryder’s waist, rolled us behind a large boulder, and skidded across a bed of damp moss. The abused moist filaments excreted a filmy white paste, and the smear burned where it touched my bare arm.
We were five minutes into the fight and things were going badly—really badly.
The third quadrant started off as a ten-foot-wide, thirty-foot-high passageway that eventually led to the initial great chamber. It was this passageway we veered off to one of the smaller chambers, where Mink served us up as dinner to an Angolan death worm.
“I take it that is not the Scolopendra Mink promised us.” Ryder grunted as he pulled up his knees and squeezed himself into the tight space. “And yes, I agree. That is not four feet long. This brings to question any of the measurements that man has taken, including this shortcut map.”
The creature’s massive mandibles snapped above us, its triangular head too broad and wide to fit into the crevice we were huddled in. Acid dripped from one of its fangs, and I raised my already smarting arm up to block it from hitting Ryder. My flesh sizzled where the liquid struck, and a welt bubbled up quickly along my wrist.
“Motherf—” I bit back my profanity, mostly to throw myself over Ryder’s folded-up body. Acid poured down on us in dribbles, but my shirt caught m
ost of it. My skin beneath the fabric wasn’t very appreciative about the heat, but I’d been through worse.
“Are you all right?” Ryder mumbled. “Let me—”
“Stay down. This thing’s stubborn.” I grinned into Ryder’s hair. “Kind of like you.”
“You’re one to talk.” He snorted. “And I don’t know why humans feel the need to rename everything. What did you call it? A worm? It has legs. Worms don’t have legs. Wyrms have legs, and that is a—”
I stopped listening to the burble of Sidhe nearly as soon as Ryder began to rattle it off. I’d broken the hold the language had on me—or rather the spell my father laid down into my bones to compel me to obey certain words spoken in my native tongue—but it still made me nauseous. Or nauseated. I was not always really sure which applied, but I was certain that Ryder would have an answer—just not one for the problem we were currently dealing with… the Angolan death worm.
The creature’s fangs were getting closer, its incessant jabs chipping away at the rock face we were huddled against. Its hard shell proved to be impossible to penetrate. My guns were useless, Cari’s shotgun blast to its chest only sprayed us with shrapnel, and the few shots I’d gotten in on its head created ricochets with crazy angles. Mink, being the coward that he was, ran back inside of the transport and shut the door behind him, leaving us outside to contend with the monster. Cari yelled at him for about half a second while he struggled to reopen the main cabin and set off its alarms so the chamber rang with klaxons.
So much for a quick job, in and out.
We’d come out of the passageway into a medium-size cavern, about thirty feet up. There were enough mica flecks and luminescence to see its ceiling, but I’d left the spotlight lines running around the roof of the centipede transport, brightening the chamber. Like most of the underground spaces layered beneath Southern California’s now-stable lower strata, the cave was rich with speleothems and rings of columns, and stalagmites and stalactites bristled out from every direction. These chambers hadn’t existed before the Merge, but nature didn’t respect or care for any restrictions, and there were as many earthen creatures throughout the tunnels as there were elfin.