Final Protocol

by J. C. Daniels

  “You can always smuggle yourself in.” He shrugged, looking bored.

  Sure. I could. But he’d given me little time. I had a small window to get this done, and most of the smugglers I knew avoided Ver. The system was more trouble than it was worth. Smugglers who were caught would wish for death, but it wouldn’t come quick or easy.

  Plus, the majority of my smuggler contacts had females on their crew. They wouldn’t travel through Ver without doing some serious preparation. Good smugglers protected their crew. Smuggling came with risks, and females caught in the act were treated badly in Ver. And that was putting it mildly. Yet another reason most smugglers avoided that route.

  Setting my jaw, I stared at the schematics. There was a lunar base not too far from Ver where I had contacts. I could fly in there, fuel up and then somehow get into Ver on my own. It would be trickier and I’d have to rely on the cloaking fields, which weren’t one hundred percent foolproof, but I’d used them before to get in and out of tight spots. I was a good pilot. I could do it. And if I screwed up, I’d only be putting myself in danger.

  Considering the ticking time bomb I had in my head, I wouldn’t even have much time in their…tender care to suffer, either.

  “Exactly who am I supposed to be going after?”

  Gold’s voice was bored. “There is a delegation traveling to discuss some civil rights violations—namely the treatment of females on the planet Hsain. One of the delegates is the target. He rarely leaves his home and taking him out there has proven to be problematic.”

  I shot him a look. “So people have tried before?”

  Gold’s lids drooped, shielding his eyes. “He’s been a target for some years. And yes, several others have failed…spectacularly. He killed two of my best, including Reshel. She died the day after I sent you to Aris. We were unable to recover her remains.”

  My gut went icy. “A delegate killed Reshel,” I said slowly, thinking of the reptilian assassin. I had known her, and if I could have called anybody a friend, it would have been her. Both of us had been stolen away from our lives, forced into this. Both of us hated Gold, even as he managed to pull us into his awful spell.

  “He’s not your typical delegate. He didn’t live a soft politician’s life and he isn’t a man to be trifled with.” He passed a hand over the panel in front of him and the schematics disappeared. “This job is top priority and the reward, if you complete it, is higher than anything you’ve ever known.”

  I lifted a brow. “Money doesn’t interest me.”

  “It never has.” He crossed his arms over his chest. The intense look on his face unsettled me, so very badly.

  Bracing my hands on the panel in front of me, I eyed him narrowly. “Why don’t you just tell me what you have in mind, Gold? I’m tired, I’m hungry and I’ve got a job to plan. There is little time for games.”

  “There’s always time for games,” he murmured. His gaze locked on my face as he came around the comm center and stopped in front of me. He was so close I could smell the subtle scent he liked to wear, so close I could see the striations of dark brown spiking out from his irises. So close, I could draw my blade and shove it into his gut, feel the hot pulse of his blood spilling over my hands.

  A smile canted up one side of his mouth. “You’ll be free, Silence.”

  I stared at him, hardly daring to blink.

  He leaned in closer and put his mouth against my ear. “This one task, this nearly impossible task. Complete it and I’ll deactivate your seal. You will be free. Of me. Of everything. That debt fulfilled.”

  “It was never my debt,” I said, my voice a ragged snarl as I jerked away from him.

  “A debt is a debt.” He shrugged, unperturbed. “And it must be paid. This one, final task and you’re free.”

  He was lying. He was fucking with me, toying with me. He had to be. Slowly, I lifted my head, studied his eyes.

  But the look in them was serious, almost deadly so.

  My gut went tight and hot and something that might have been anticipation burned inside me.

  Free…

  I eyed the orders he’d programmed in my link. The communications link was my one connection to him—and the outside world—but I chose to deactivate it for now.

  I needed to think.

  He was out of his mind. Out of his mind and riding high on the power he held over me. Just like always.

  I was going dark, flying completely under the radar and without assistance, without any guidance other than the routes I’d pulled up on my own. I left in less than six hours, just enough time for me to finish laying in the supplies and gear I’d need. But had he provided me with all the information I’d need?

  No.

  He had given me the coordinates where he wanted me to touch down, and he would send more information once I landed.

  His reasoning? I was traveling through Ver. If I was stopped, I’d have my hands full just escaping, and he didn’t want to risk me…using information to try and buy my freedom. He worried I’d sell him out.

  The bastard.

  I wanted to hurt him.

  I wanted to tear into him and rip him apart.

  Once I didn’t have the seal in me, once he didn’t have the ability to end my life with just a simple command, then I was going to see about doing just that.

  I wanted him dead. That had been my dream for so many years. Maybe it would take years to accomplish, but once that seal was out, I had nothing but time and no other goal.

  I could wait, forever if I had to.

  But for now, I didn’t have time to worry about him. I had—

  A bulky shadow separated itself from the wall. I went still, watching as he came toward me, graceful despite his bulk, the wind bringing to me the scent of thunderstorms and rain-drenched leaves. The creature was a Toral. His kind were mostly passive, when they lived among their own.

  This one had been cast out. Offworlders—b’istc in their tongue—had killed his mate and their children. They’d landed on Torali in search of the precious metals the planet was famed for. They’d needed shelter and instead of seeking it, they’d just taken.

  And Gnari had taken vengeance as viciously as they’d taken the lives of his family.

  I didn’t blame him.

  If I had family out there, I likely would have done something just as bloody, just as brutal. Sadly, the government of his planet frowned upon the violent ending of a life. They’d cast Gnari out and he couldn’t return unless he went through what I considered brainwashing—seclusion for a year, where he went through meditation, indoctrination, “cleansing” to remove the violent act from the soul…only then could he go back to his life.

  Gnari didn’t want his life back. He’d told me his life on Torali ended when he found the butchered bodies of his mate and their two young.

  He made a living now crafting weapons. Many weapons weren’t made of metal, as it wasn’t easy to come by and very expensive. But sometimes a job called for it. I didn’t know what would be needed for my upcoming job, so I was going in prepared for everything.

  “Your thoughts are heavy,” Gnari said, the feathers on his crest rising as he bent in to study me. His wings snapped open, mantling out from his massive body, something I’d come to associate with concern or agitation.

  “My thoughts are bitchy,” I corrected.

  “Hmmm.” He angled his large head, blinking in that odd way birdlike creatures do. He continued to watch me. If I were any smaller, I might have wondered if he was thinking about eating me for a snack. Finally, he clacked his beak and stepped back, a shudder going through him, his feathers rippling before they settled in place.

  “You should stop working for that perverse monster,” he told me. “You would be less…bitchy.”

  “The time is coming. If I make it out alive.” I shrugged.

  “Make it out a
live,” he suggested. Then he held out a hand-like claw, the bag swinging from it. “All you asked for. A few other things I thought you could use. You didn’t mention where you’re going.”

  “No. I didn’t.” Nor would I. He’d give me too much grief if I did. I accepted the bag. It was a sign of how much I trusted Gnari that I didn’t look inside. I didn’t need to. With everybody else, I checked. Gnari, though, he’d earned my faith. He was likely the only being who ever would.

  Swinging the strap over my shoulder, I reached into my pocket. Most transactions in this age were made via creds, but there were many, many times when a person didn’t want a record of the transaction to ever appear. Like, oh, say…a weapons purchase between an assassin and her weapons dealer. This was one of those times. This was why I dealt heavily in precious metals, favors or gems. I might not be around to pay him a favor, so I’d brought metals. Nudging the bag at my feet, I met his gaze. “You might have fun making something with this.”

  Gnari caught it with a claw and lifted it, checking the contents with one golden eye. His pupil dilated as he stared inside and then he gave me a Toral version of a smile, his beak open as he met my gaze. “Oh, I can make many pretty things. Make it back, and I’ll save something for you.”

  “Don’t worry. I have every intention of making it back. I have at least one debt to settle.”

  I slid out of the alley and back into the chaos of Mihor, the dirtiest, filthiest quadrant of Jakor. I didn’t want to be here any longer than I had to. The weapons were the last thing I needed. Everything else had already been done.

  Now I just needed to get to my transport.

  A prickling sensation tightened my spine as I reached the end of the street. Looking back, I found myself staring into Garner’s eyes. He must have caught sight of me and decided to wait me out. He hadn’t been following me. I would have known. I thought about just looking through him, past him.

  Instead, I stared him down and watched as he dropped his eyes, ran them over me like I was nothing but a thing. There for pleasure or pain, whichever he thought would amuse him the most at the time.

  When he looked back at me, I did the same. But I stared at him like he was nothing but a target. Something I had to kill.

  Something I would kill.

  Only one thing had kept him alive all these years—once I killed him, I’d have to be ready to face down Gold.

  I hadn’t been ready to do it. But the next time I returned, Garner would be first…the opening act.

  My transport didn’t look like much.

  That was protection number one. If you shot through space in speedy, sexy little transpos, you were just that much more appealing to the pirates and jumpers out there. A hunk of junk like mine—or what appeared to be a hunk of junk—didn’t catch the eye of most of them. Looking like it did, it wouldn’t fetch a decent price in any of the black market auctions, not unless they spent some serious money rehabbing the exterior.

  That battered exterior was all a façade though. Under it, that transpo was one serious piece of equipment. Every year, I upgraded, and this time around, I’d gone all out, investing some of the money I rarely touched. She had a cloaking system that was practically unparalleled. The only kind of tech that could pick up on it would be the kind of tech used by one of the psychic races.

  And the Ver system didn’t trust psychics. Just like they didn’t trust women.

  It was one of the most backward systems in the entire galaxy, but in this matter, it would serve my needs rather well.

  The more advanced cloaking systems were undetectable to any scanner out there except those linked to a psychic. Psychics could amp up their abilities when connected and do a basic scan for brain activity. They didn’t have to understand the activity, just feel it. If they picked up a random thought when there wasn’t supposed to be anything but meteors, or there were random thoughts but no ship in sight, well, they knew there was a problem.

  The cloaking system I used was a hybrid of thermo panels to block any scanner that tried to scan for a heat signature, and crys that worked to bend light. There was more tech to it than that, but my skills lay in weapons, not space travel. I knew enough to fix the transpo if I went down, assuming I didn’t die. But I couldn’t explain exactly how my ship managed to evade being seen by scanners. I just knew it worked.

  The riskiest time was going to be getting offplanet, because interplanetary security did have psy-scanners.

  I waited, watching the time and my own scanners until I knew there would be a heavy stream of traffic, always right at twilight or dawn. I’d chosen twilight. Our three suns made air detail a bitch in this quadrant, and even the most advanced solar shields couldn’t fight the power of nature. I squinted against the suns, well used to dealing with such situations, and activated the cloaking before I even cleared the ground.

  I went behind a pleasure transpo, ferrying people to the vacation moon near Heba. Off to gamble, drink and screw until they couldn’t see straight. The erratic, boisterous level of their thoughts would cover my own, and it was the best plan I could come up with in this short amount of time.

  This should work.

  It should.

  But I’d had plans go wrong before.

  I had a backup plan. I always did.

  The backup plan was to incriminate Gold in what I was heading out to do. Whether or not he was involved in the actual kill, he was the one who gave the order, and even if they couldn’t prove it, it would make things uncomfortable for him. All I had to do was punch a code on the comm panel and every sec officer onplanet who had a grudge against Gold would get a detailed report of our last meeting.

  And I’d jettison myself into the surreal, endless blue of space. Sans protective gear. Dead in moments.

  Painful. Quick. Done.

  He always told us to avoid getting caught at all costs.

  I couldn’t tell if I felt regret or relief once I hit clear airspace.

  The clenched muscles in my neck slowly relaxed and I made myself pull up what little data I had for this so-called delegation. Gold had given me precious little, but I’d take that and see what I could unearth on my own.

  A two-week jaunt in a transpo as small as mine was akin to hell.

  It had just the basics, enough to get you from one system to the next, provided the systems weren’t on opposite ends of the galaxy.

  These two weren’t. Ver was the next system over and my transpo was a dark-speeder, relying on dark matter, the energy behind the ever-expanding universe. Every species had a new word for it and some still struggled to manipulate it. Fortunately, I had friends—or rather, acquaintances—who were artists when it came to manipulating all forms of energy. My transpo could cut through space like a blade.

  Going into animation sleep wasn’t necessary in a dark-speeder, but I’d do it for short periods of time just to avoid space sickness. I didn’t need to touch down on Hsain without a scratch only to have to spend three days recovering.

  Once I hit free airspace, I had little to do except that hated sleep and study up on the current events on Hsain and see if I couldn’t figure out what had happened to draw the attention of the so-called delegation.

  There was…plenty.

  An ambassador had been traveling through with his wife and daughter. They registered their passage, as safety, sanity and courtesy required. Their transpo had maintenance problems, and rather than try to make it to the next system over—mine—they’d touched down on Hsain. The daughter had been on the balcony of the inn, reading.

  Not acceptable in the eyes of security personal on Hsain. They arrested her on sight, dragging her off even as her father went after them, threatening to kill every last one of them.

  It had taken the threats of an interstellar incident—war—to convince them they didn’t want to infringe upon that seventeen-year-old child any longer.

 
The girl was still in seclusion, struggling to deal with the trauma. There were few scans of her from the days immediately after her release, but what little I unearthed showed a girl with pale, bruised skin and a shaved head.

  Monsters.

  A second family had been reported missing in the airspace near there.

  Hsain reported there was no family by that name who had registered a flight path, so naturally they couldn’t help.

  But the final comms had been traced to an area just two hundred miles outside their airspace.

  When interplanetary personnel landed to search for them, they’d visited the prisons, despite the protests from the governments. The reports from those visits were enough to turn my stomach.

  I’d settled into my sleep pod after going through the reports—a stupid thing to do.

  I had neither the sweet, peaceful dreams that sometimes found me, nor the blank slate that greeted me all too often.

  No. I found myself in a nightmare, in one of those miniscule holes on Hsain, barely large enough to hold two or three bodies, begging for help.

  A shadow appeared in that orb of light.

  I’ll take this one, a voice said from over me. I knew that voice.

  It was Gold.

  He’d led me into a trap.

  He’d take me again. He’d bought me from the slavers who slid into the Hsain prisons. Bought me. Owned me. Outright.

  I’d never be free—

  The alarm blared a warning in my ear, ripping me from the nightmare. The med-system began to pump the stims into my system, clearing the fog caused by suspension.

  I didn’t give myself the standard twenty minutes before I moved. I barely waited two before I was upright and mobile, my limbs awkward, stiff, my vision somewhat blurry. It would pass. The more I moved, the quicker it would happen too. I knew it from experience.

  Stumbling to the comm panels, I rubbed my eyes and forced my brain into action.

  The alarm wasn’t the urgent one, but it wasn’t the you just need to watch one, either.

  So there was a problem.

  My eyes watered, my head throbbed.