by Sara King
“So could I,” Jeanne agreed.
The general nodded. “Then I’ll have the clerk deliver all seven thousand, nine hundred and thirty two bags of Yolk from the reserve starting now.”
Joel forgot to breathe.
For her part, Jeanne didn’t even seem fazed. “Instead of what, seven thousand nine hundred forty-four?”
“That’s what we’ve got in our reserve,” the general replied. “Easy enough for a few bags to go missing, don’t you think?”
Joel felt Jeanne give a cool nod. He, himself, was squirming, trying not to pee himself. “Did he say seven thousand bags?” he blurted. “He must be totally confused somehow.”
“Where you want them delivered?” Jeanne said. “And how do I get my cut? How do I know you’re not just gonna take the Yolk and run?”
“Oooh, that’s good,” Joel said. “Put him on the spot. Well done!”
“We want this to be as lucrative as possible, you understand?” the general said. “We’ll give you coordinates to a…regular…drop off point out in the jungle along your course back to the Orbital. You arrange to get yourself on pick-up duty more often, and each time you do, we’ll set a bag or two aside.”
“He wants to start a smuggling operation!” Joel howled. “Aanaho, did I tell you I was lucky or what?! How many bags is he about to hand us? Ask him again. I wanna hear him say it out loud!” He started cackling wildly.
“Sounds doable,” Jeanne said, totally calm.
The general glanced at his crew of thugs, then pulled out a folded yellow piece of paper from a chest pocket and handed it to her. Jeanne opened it, and Joel saw a brief flash of numbers before she put it away and said, “The Five-Thirty-One’s got a reputation. We don’t deal with smugglers. Smugglers are the scum of life.”
“Oh no,” Joel said, grabbing a palladium ingot and slapping it to his skull. “No, no, no, no, no…”
“Don’t think of it as smuggling,” the general said. “Think of it as expanding your paycheck.” He gave Jeanne a decidedly sleazy smile. “The government’s got so much of this shit they won’t notice a few bags go missing, and it’s our government, you know? Don’t see why they should make all the big bucks just to pour it back into bureaucracy. Think of it—instead of the government funding some new travel-restriction program on Ovania, you get to buy yourself a nice house when you get home. Hell, buy yourself some Ne’vanthi whores to staff the place.”
“That what you plan to do with it?” Jeanne demanded, her pitch rising. Jeanne, after getting sold on Ne’vanth as a child, was touchy about the subject of slavery and whoring in general.
“Jeanne, honey,” Joel said, “he just said seven thousand bags. I think you can just smile and nod for seven thousand bags, can’t you baby?”
The general mistook her touchy behavior as something else. “Hey, look, we’re all under a lot of pressure, here. Maako’s gonna have the Nephyrs skin us from the head down if a peep of this gets out, so you can be damn sure everyone in this room is going to keep to the plan. Ten mil for each of us. That’s as good an incentive as I can think of to just go with the flow, right?”
“You’re talking to a sage,” Joel said. “Just go with the flow, Jeanne. Stop antagonizing him and take his money!”
“Sounds good to me,” Jeanne muttered.
“Okay then,” the man said, grinning. “Then it’s settled. Once our Nephs put down the dogs and throw their pups to the mines, the five of us will go out to the drop-off zone, pick up the Yolk, and go our separate ways…until next month. Lots o’ money to be made, here. Just gotta stick to the plan.”
“Hey now honey,” Joel said, noticing the way Jeanne’s fists started to tighten, “just take his money. Say, ‘Sounds good,’ and take his money. You can do it. You need to do it, Jeanne. You get pissed, it’s a dead giveaway you’re colonial, not Coalition. You’ve already got a little bit of that collie accent that’s so hard to kick.”
“Speaking of collies,” the general said, frowning, “you have a bit of an accent.”
“My parents spent a couple years here in between duty stations when I was a kid,” Joel coached her. “Haven’t been able to knock it since.”
“So what if I do?” Jeanne growled. Like she was challenging him to a gunfight over a gambling table.
“Aanaho!” Joel cried. “Aanaho Ineriho, Jeanne!”
The general raised both hands and said, “None of my business, really. Just curious.”
“Not a problem,” Joel said. “I get asked about it a lot.”
“Well, get fucking curious on someone else’s dime,” Jeanne snapped. “We done here?”
Joel proceeded to beat himself to death against another palladium bar.
“We’re done,” the general said. “Just drop those off on your way. Your ship’s log won’t show any course deviation, and you could say you landed to take a leak, or to hide out from collies.”
“Because they obviously couldn’t see a three hundred foot skiff squatting in the middle of the jungle. Too stupid for that,” Jeanne growled.
“Jeaaaanne,” Joel warned, “you have to think really hard about what you want in life. Do you want to punch this guy in the face and get thrown in jail until the Nephyrs start peeling off skin, or do you want to do exactly as I say and end up filthy rich?”
The general laughed uncomfortably.
“Laugh,” Joel said. “Now.”
Jeanne, to his relief, laughed.
“Yeah, uh,” the general said, “the Five-Thirty-One has a reputation for being a bunch of crazy bastards. If we’re all in agreement, though, we can get you back to your ship and get you out of here before those colonists hit.”
“Sounds good,” Joel said.
“I want a copy of that tape,” Jeanne said. “As insurance.”
“Are you nuts?!” Joel cried. “You work for Admiral Maako. He gives you that tape, you’ll hold all the cards!”
The general laughed. “Uh, starbug, you must be new at this. That’s not how this works.”
Again, Joel was left under the impression Jeanne was about to start shooting things. “Jeanne,” Joel said, “keep your cool and think about it! We aren’t planning on going along with his little deal, so what do you need the tape for?”
Then he knew. To expose Coalition corruption on Fortune, since that was one of her private wars in life. “Okay, Jeanne, honey,” Joel said, “from here on, all you’re allowed to do is smile and nod. Okay?”
“I guess I am,” Jeanne muttered. “All right, fine. Sounds doable. I’m gonna make sure it’s not traceable to me, though.”
“Of course,” the general offered. “We’ll be doing the same. How or why a few bags show up in the jungle each month, we’ve got no idea.”
“Yes sir,” Joel said.
“Yeah, okay,” Jeanne said.
“Then let’s get you back to your ship!” the general said. “Boys, get her back to her ship and assist in the loading. We’ve got a schedule to keep.”
“Yes,” Joel giggled. “Yes we do.”
A few minutes later, Jeanne was once again standing like a voluptuous, arms-crossed statue in her cargo bay, watching dozens of burly men load eighty-five-pound bags of Yolk onto her ship like a reigning raptor watching mice in an aviary.
“Wow,” Joel commented, as the dollies and carts of bags kept coming. He had begun rearranging the palladium ingots around himself out of boredom. “They were serious. You gonna be able to fit all that in your hold?” Seven thousand was a lot, even for Belle, which was built to harvest entire bellies-full of trade goods from Coalition freighters.
The answer was, it turned out, no. They filled the cargo bay to brimming, blocking off the ship’s cameras, leaving only a small, head-high corridor through the stacks of bags to the cockpit—not, Joel thought, the best way to stack them in preparation for a dogfight, but he was dealing with meatheaded grunts, his balls were itching from the heat and humidity, and he was pretty sure he was running out of oxygen. At this
point, he didn’t care if they stuffed the remaining sacks in the composter—he just wanted them to do it fast so he could breathe some good ol’ stale ship air again, rather than suffocatingly damp, somebody-died-here-an-indeterminate-amount-of-time-ago air.
After they had the cargo bay loaded, the grunts took the last two hundred bags and stacked them in Jeanne’s bedroom, her bathroom, her copilot’s seat, and, to Joel’s horror, against the wall where he was trapped.
“Hey, Jeanne, baby?” Joel said. “It would be a real shame to mar these beautiful palladium bars with decaying meat.”
“Palladium is a platinum-group metal,” Jeanne said from the pilot’s seat, watching the last bags of Yolk being packed into the crammed space behind her. “Its bulk material is inert. Body fluids don’t even mar the finish.” When one of the grunts delivering the final sacks gave her a funny look, she smiled. “Memorizing my continuing education chemistry course. Test this week.”
The grunt grunted and disappeared. A few minutes later, the final sack had been delivered and someone called down the tunnel of Yolk with the go-ahead for departure.
“Seriously, Jeanne, peach?” Joel said. “You’re not gonna leave me to die in here.” He swallowed and, tentatively, added, “Are you?”
“You are the only one who knows of my deviancy,” Jeanne told him. She hit the button on the captain’s console to seal the cargo bay door.
“Yeah, but I’m making you rich,” Joel managed.
“Joel, baby,” Jeanne said, “I made myself rich. I think I could get used to this smuggling thing.” She started initiating the takeoff procedures.
“Hey, now!” Joel cried. “I helped!”
“You helped do…what, exactly?” Jeanne demanded. “You were stuck in a box commenting on my shapely ass the whole time.”
“That was only at the end,” Joel cried, “and because I was bored.” Indeed, he had been blessed with enough time to rearrange the entire pile of palladium around him, piece-by-piece, into a glorious throne.
“Mmm-hmm.” Joel heard thumps as the ship began to lift off and pull its landing gear in.
“Jeanne, if this is about that time in the desert…” Joel hesitated, watching her face closely on his datapad. “Is this about that time in the desert?”
“What do you think, Joel?”
“I already said I was sorry!” Joel cried.
“I was a virgin, you prick.”
Joel winced. “Weeeelll, what better way to introduce yourself to the wonders of good lovin’?”
“Hmm. And here I thought you wanted to get out of the sweatbox. Ah, well.” She went on fiddling with flying her ship.
“Jeanne!” Joel cried. “I really am sorry. I felt horrible.”
He watched her stiffen at the console. Lifting her head to look at the camera, she said, “For like, what, a whole minute? From what I heard afterwards, you were livin’ it up at a casino, four women clinging to your arms only three days later.”
He winced. Well, there was that.
“Okay,” Joel said, “so I got a little drunk.”
“On my money,” Jeanne told him. “I haven’t had another heist like that since…” She cocked her head. “Well, since this one, Joel.”
A cold tingle of fear crept down through Joel’s core. “Jeanne, you’re gonna let me outta here, right?”
“Depends,” Jeanne said. She was flying them out of Rath, towards some unknown destination probably bristling with pirates ready to unload the Yolk, rip Joel out of his secret compartment, and slit his throat. She had changed, a lot, since that night in the desert, and Joel had the sudden realization that a good portion of it might have been because of him.
“Depends on what?” Joel asked hoarsely. She hadn’t taken to wearing the necklace until after Joel had abandoned her. She’d become bitter, harder, and more likely to shoot people. Hell, he wasn’t sure she had shot people before the desert heist. It had seemed to him that she was well on her way to becoming a great smuggler, which was part of the reason why Joel had betrayed her. He had, in a deep, mentoring sort of way, thought maybe it would help harden her to the facts of life, to teach her not to leave her heart lying around for someone to stomp on when there was money to be made, and to therefore live longer.
Oh fuck me, Joel thought.
“Depends,” Jeanne said, “on whether or not you can satisfactorily explain to me just what went through that lizard brain of yours back in the desert, when you roofied me, sabotaged my ship, and stole my loot.”
“I’ve reformed,” Joel cried.
“What, that ‘Ferryman Joel’ crap?” Jeanne demanded. “Because you helped a few hundred eggers?”
“It was a couple thousand,” Joel retorted. “And yes. Because I saved some eggers, Jeanne. I didn’t need to do that, and I got perforated for it.” He still had pain in his chest when he breathed, and his last several sleepless nights had been filled with nightmares of trigger-happy hijackers shooting him in the chest. He hadn’t been that psychologically traumatized since Geo had stabbed him in the leg with flesh-rotting nannites and left him in Yolk Factory 14 to die. The Deaddrunk doctors had tried to mend the leg wound when they’d patched up his chest, but even then, despite the medical nanotape he religiously applied, his thigh ached and stank like toe cheese. “I made a sacrifice, Jeanne,” Joel went on. “And I almost died for it.”
“Of anyone I know,” Jeanne laughed, “I am the only one who seems to be able to see through your bullshit, Joel. Why is that?”
Joel swallowed. He’d wondered that himself.
“Could that be,” Jeanne went on, “because you left me to die after wining and dining me and making me feel as if we were destined to be together?”
“Look, Jeanne, I’m really sorry,” Joel began.
“I tried to call,” she growled. “Tried to leave messages. Tried to write, Joel.”
Joel winced. He’d deleted most of them without opening, without listening.
“So just how sorry are you, Joel?” She looked up into the camera, looking at him directly. Her face was as cold as ice, her green eyes like glittering emeralds. “Think you can actually make me believe it?”
And, in that moment, Joel realized that repentance was his key to survival. “Jeanne, look, it was over fourteen years ago. I was young and stupid—”
“Shut up, Joel. There’s something I’ve waited thirteen years and seven months to tell you.” She took a deep breath, then let it out through her teeth. Joel waited, frowning. He had been sure it had been at least fourteen years. Maybe even fifteen.
“That night in the desert,” Jeanne said. “You didn’t use a condom.”
CHAPTER 3: Distress Call
Independence Day, 17th of May, 3006
North Tear
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
“Hey knucker.” Tatiana poked the sleeping colonist, eyes fixed on the bushes down by her soldier. “Knucker,” she whispered again.
Milar moaned and rolled his head to the side to open his beautiful golden eyes and look at her. “Huh?” He was still naked, his red and black dragon tattoos rolling delightfully against his skin as he moved.
Tatiana pointed down the hill. “There’s something down there.” She shoved one of his Laserats at the colonist and patted him on his naked ass. “Go get it.”
Milar squinted at her, then lifted his head off the sleeping bag to squint down the mountainside at her folded-up soldier. “Like what?”
“I dunno,” Tatiana said. “But I hear it thinking, and it’s thinking things like, ‘They’re asleep,’ and ‘wait for the others to get into position,’ and ‘orders to take them alive.’”
Milar was off the sleeping bag in a single heartbeat, grabbing the gun as he rolled into a crouch. “Where?” he growled.
Tatiana frowned. “How the hell am I supposed to know?” She gestured vaguely at her soldier. “Down there somewhere.”
Nonetheless, Milar glanced at the outcropping above them. “We’re movi
ng, coaler. Right now. He snagged his clothes and grabbed her by the wrist, obviously intending to tug her away from their nice, warm sleeping bag and into the icky, sap-riddled jungle.
“Hey, hold on!” Tatiana cried, remembering the last time she’d taken a hike through the alien forest. She’d been scrubbing resin from her hands for days afterwards. The thought of getting that stuff in a node was just… Eww. She’d rather bathe in cat piss. “I don’t wanna leave my soldier. Can’t you just go kill them while I watch?” She reclined into the blanket, for his clarification.
Milar stopped, gave her a really long look, and Tatiana cringed. She had assumed the big brute could just go kill them and then they could go back to sleep, seeing how he was a badass and she’d just undergone traumatic brain surgery and was recovering from great collie sex and everything. The look he was giving her, however, made it pretty clear she would follow him, naked, into the jungle, or get dragged, naked, into the jungle. “At least let me go get my jumpsuit,” she said, motioning at the storage compartment on the soldier down the hill.
Milar turned and started dragging her, naked, into the jungle. As he moved, he shot at the bushes down by her soldier, then up at the ridge above them, and in both places, someone screamed.
“Dammit, Milar!” she hissed, following him. “This is so not how I wanted to spend a perfectly good case of afterglow.”
“Keep your voice down,” he growled.
“Why?” she whined, as sticky alien plants began sliding against her naked skin. “Milar, ew! This is so gros—”
A beam seared the tree beside her head, followed by six of its friends. Tatiana blinked at the burned, steaming holes in the resinous bark. So much for trying to take us alive… Tatiana scrambled closer to the naked beefcake with the gun.
“They’re following us,” Milar whispered, peering over the glistening roots at their backtrail. He charged a big, badass-looking energy gun and waited in silence. Tatiana took the moment to examine the amazing collie stud that had offered himself up to her on a platter of kidnapping, firefights, escapes, and mind-sizzling collie sex. Even bare-assed naked, cowering in the brush, he still looked like a total hunk. A back that rolled as he moved, rippling pecs, biceps that could squish watermelons, a glorious full-body dual red-and-black dragons tattoo… Tatiana decided she could definitely get used to having that on tap.