Jessa didn’t blink. “And?”
“It’s also a fact that Mia Felaris, an Iradian native, relocated to Nova Angeles years ago. She has a son whose father she claims is dead, killed in the siege of Arlinais.” Still Jessa’s expression didn’t change, and he began to feel a little impatient. After all, it had begun to seem glaringly obvious to him. “But what if Jerem Felaris’ father isn’t really dead? What if he’s actually Eryk Thorn?”
At that Jessa gave an unbelieving little laugh. “That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”
“Is it?” Whenever he got nervous or excited about something, Creel had a tendency to run his hands through his hair. He’d lifted a hand halfway there before realizing that he probably didn’t want to look quite so distracted in front of the apparently imperturbable Jessa Kodd. He settled for fishing inside his pocket for his pack of caffeinated chewing gum, then popped a piece inside his mouth. “Gum?” he asked politely.
“No, thanks.” Her full lips curved slightly in amusement.
“Anyhow,” he said, realizing that while he probably could use the caffeine, chewing the gum also had the unfortunate side affect of making him look like a ruminating cow, “as far as I can tell, both Thorn and Mia Felaris—or Miala Fels, if you want to use her real name—were on Iradia at about the same time. He was working for Mast when the crime lord was killed. And Ms. Felaris comes from the closest settlement to Mast’s compound. I couldn’t get much from her records, but one thing I was able to discover was that she was dirt poor. I doubt she could have come up with enough cash to book passage off-world, let alone set herself up in style the way she did here. But our records show that she bought the house only a few standard months after she emigrated here, long before she set up her security business. So where did the money come from?”
“I have no idea,” Jessa replied, but a wicked glint in her eyes seemed to indicate she had begun to pick up on his train of thought.
“Mast had a lot of money lying around, or so the stories go. But I wasn’t able to get any information on what happened to it after he departed this mortal coil. Far as I can tell, no one knows what happened to his treasure—which leads me to believe that someone must have made off with it.”
“That someone being Mia Felaris, I presume.”
“Exactly. And who better to assist her in such an enterprise than Thorn—who was known to be in the vicinity at the time?”
“I can’t imagine,” said Jessa. Then she shook her head. “From what I know, Thorn’s a pretty mercenary customer. I can’t really imagine him splitting a treasure with someone, no matter how attractive she might be. That’s not really his style.”
“True,” Creel admitted. “I think there’s something I’m still missing here. But it does explain the identity of the mystery man who accompanied her to the bank, and since Ms. Felaris’ own company records show that she just returned from a business trip to Iradia, it doesn’t exactly take a genius to put two and two together.”
At that moment Jessa opened her mouth to reply. She didn’t get the chance to do much more than that, however, since a green pulse bolt whizzed past her left ear, only to bounce harmlessly off the hull of the mercenary’s ship.
Although both of them had been manning desks for several years, the reactions drummed into them during their cadet days immediately took over. They dropped to the ground, Creel scrabbling to pull the gun out of his shoulder holster, Jessa no doubt doing the same.
The shot had come from behind them, and so Creel immediately pointed his pistol in that direction and fired, even though he really couldn’t see who he was shooting at. Still, it never hurt to let your opponent know you were armed.
There were a couple of packing crates less than a meter away from where they had stood, and on instinct he and Jessa had both rolled in that direction. He wasn’t sure how much protection the crates would offer if the firing got really intense, but anything was better than lying out there on the open ground of the docking bay.
“You all right?” he asked her.
“Fine,” she said. “A few centimeters to the right, and I would have had a new haircut, but I’m okay.”
She sounded ferociously cheerful, which didn’t bode too well for whoever their attackers might be. Creel risked a quick glance over the top of the packing crates but couldn’t see much of anything. The attackers hadn’t returned his fire; maybe they hadn’t expected to come up against armed opponents.
Even as he did so, he heard the sound of another gun going off, this time from the opposite side of the docking bay. The bolts echoed off the concrete walls and made his ears ring.
“I’m calling for backup,” Jessa said, pulling the handheld out of her jacket pocket.
“Good idea,” Creel replied, then ducked down behind the crate once more. “Sounds like we’ve got two sets of interested parties out there.”
“Well, you know how I love a party.” The handheld made a chirping sound, and she said, in brisk, businesslike tones, “Dispatch, this is Detective Kodd. I’m at Rilsport spaceport, landing pad eighteen-twenty, with Detective Creel. We are pinned down under hostile fire. Requesting backup units.”
“Right away,” came the reply, from a kid who sounded so young they must have just decanted him from the academy the week before. “ETA is five minutes.”
“Oh, don’t rush on my account,” Jessa snapped, then turned off the handheld. Giving Creel a direct look, she asked, “Can we hold them off that long?”
“Probably,” he said.
She raised an unbelieving eyebrow.
He shot her a wicked grin of his own. “They’re not shooting at us,” he went on, and jerked a thumb in the direction of their unknown assailants. Pulse bolts in varying hues were being traded in a dazzling display of rainbow-colored death. Even as Jessa looked on, unbelieving, he began to laugh. “They’re shooting at each other.”
XXVI
I really wish Thorn had warned me that we were walking into a firefight, Miala thought, huddling behind a pillar as the mercenary traded potshots with their unidentified assailants. I would have stopped to put on some flats.
She risked a quick glance past Thorn’s shoulder but could see nothing except three shadowy figures, two human-sized, the other a good deal larger. In a direction roughly forty-five degrees off from where she and Thorn stood, a second set of combatants traded fire with the attackers as well. Miala couldn’t be sure, but she thought they might be the police she had seen on Thorn’s video surveillance unit. She spotted a quick glint of pale blonde hair before the smaller of the two people—who had only the dubious protection of a couple of packing crates to stave off the pulse fire—ducked out of view once more.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked, taking advantage of the fact that the three men or aliens had paused to return fire with the two police officers.
“I need to take one of them alive,” Thorn replied. “The cops complicate things a bit, though.”
“Do tell,” Miala said, and felt a sudden absurd impulse to laugh. Jerem had been kidnapped, the dregs of the galaxy were shooting at them, and her house had been burned to the ground, but somehow she hadn’t felt so alive in years. Maybe it was just standing here shoulder to shoulder with Thorn, feeling the muscles of his back shift as he returned their attackers’ fire. On the way over to the spaceport he’d discarded the proper suit jacket and now wore a close-fitting, short-sleeved black knit shirt that did marvelous things for his biceps. That’s a hell of a thing to be thinking about at a time like this, she reflected, but she grinned anyway. It was hard not to feel invincible when Eryk Thorn had your back.
Then the mercenary lifted his gun once again, and Miala saw the largest of their three attackers slump to the concrete floor of the landing pad. Two to go. Of course, she still had no idea what Thorn was going to do about the cops, but she supposed that, as always, he had some sort of plan up his sleeve.
The kidnappers’ goons began to fire even more wildly, with great enthusiasm if not much accuracy
. Thorn stoically waited out the volley in the shelter of the pillar, then got off another deadly shot as the two attackers who were left met with a fresh assault from the two police officers. This time the man caught the pulse bolt square in the neck, and he pitched forward over the prone form of his fallen companion. A few more erratic shots from the one assailant remaining flew in their direction, but he’d obviously decided that he didn’t have much going for him, outflanked and outnumbered as he was. A quavering plea emerged from the shadows where he’d been hiding.
“Don’t shoot—I give up!”
“Step out here,” Thorn ordered. “Hands where I can see them.”
A nondescript-looking human male, probably around thirty standard, emerged from the corridor where he’d been lurking. He held his hands up at shoulder height, his gaze darting nervously from Thorn, who walked out from behind the pillar with his pistol still leveled at the man’s chest, to the hiding place of the two RilSec officers.
“Stop right there,” came a crisp, business-like voice, and Miala turned to see the police, a man and a woman, come out from behind their packing crate. It was the man who had spoken.
Only the slightest movement of Thorn’s dark eyes showed that he acknowledged their presence. Miala remained silent. She was certainly out of her league here, and she figured the best thing to do would be to wait and see what, if anything, the mercenary needed from her.
He continued to hold his gun on the man who had surrendered. “Who are you working for?”
The man went a sickly yellowish color. “I—I can’t tell you that.”
“Sir, I’ll have to ask you to lower your weapon,” the RilSec officer said. He wore civilian clothing, but the gleaming badge affixed to his collar was enough to identify him. Not a regular beat cop, obviously.
His partner, a strikingly beautiful woman probably a year or so older than Miala, came up behind him. “I’m sorry, but this is our jurisdiction. We can get this hashed out when you all come in to make your statements.”
“Sorry,” said Thorn, “but the only statement I’m concerned with is the one I’m going to get from him.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of their captive, who looked positively miserable.
Miala almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
The male police officer didn’t seem particularly concerned. Lanky and tall, with a face Miala would have called pleasant rather than handsome, he smiled and said, “Around these parts, we take a dim view of those who take the law into their own hands, Captain Marr...or should I say Eryk Thorn?”
Miala couldn’t help letting out a little gasp of shock at the officer’s words, even though Thorn didn’t blink. “‘Captain Marr’ is fine,” he replied. “This man has information I need. I don’t think you’ll be able to get it out of him in time.”
“Time for what?” asked the female cop, her green eyes narrowing slightly. Even with her plain synth-silk shirt smudged with dirt and her hair starting to slip out of the clasp that held it away from her face, she had the sort of looks that would stop most men in their tracks.
Thorn, however, wasn’t most men. Barely giving her a glance, he said only, “This doesn’t concern you.”
“Oh, yes, it does,” said the male officer. “Engaging in a firefight on Rilsport public property? Piloting a ship here under a false I.D.? And we haven’t yet begun to discuss what happened to Ms. Fels’ house.”
For a second Miala wondered how the hell the cop could have figured out who she was. But she realized if he had guessed at Thorn’s true identity, then he must have been investigating the case thoroughly enough that he’d begun to make some disturbing connections.
“You forgot one,” Thorn answered. His expression never changed, but Miala caught the sudden glint in his dark eyes and thought, Uh-oh...
“What’s that?” the cop asked.
“Assaulting a police officer,” the mercenary replied. From a clip on his belt, he suddenly grasped a small device only a few centimeters square. Before Miala could even blink, a thin, self-propelled line shot out and wrapped itself around both the RilSec officer and his partner, pulling them against each other and continuing to wrap itself around them until they were securely bound, their guns caught uselessly at their sides. Thorn stepped up to them, retrieved the weapons, and gave them a quick shove. Unable to balance, they toppled over, with the female cop pinned beneath her bulkier partner.
Miala heard the woman gasp, and the other RilSec officer grunted and uttered a breathless curse—he’d probably had the wind knocked out of him.
“You kids have fun,” Thorn said. “I’ve got work to do.” And with that he pointed his pistol at the surviving attacker. “You. You got a vehicle?”
“Out—out back,” the man faltered, staring down at the trussed-up forms of the police officers. He looked as if he would have dearly preferred for them to come out ahead in this particular confrontation.
“Let’s go,” the mercenary commanded, and the man led them down the corridor, away from the two fallen RilSec cops. All Miala could do was glance over her shoulder and mouth “I’m sorry” before hurrying after Thorn. Neither one of them looked particularly thrilled with her...not that she could blame them.
Whatever happens, she thought, as she trotted after Eryk Thorn and his captive, I have a funny feeling I’m not going to be welcome on Nova Angeles for much longer...
“If you ever tell one person at the station about this, I’m going to give you hell for the rest of your natural life,” Jessa gritted, after struggling against the slender but impossibly strong line that bound the two of them together.
The movement of her body against his was distracting, to say the least. Creel forced himself to take a breath, then another. About the last thing he needed right now was for certain parts of his anatomy to signal her that he might be enjoying this far more than she was. Once he thought he had things more or less in order, Creel replied, “You think I want to brag about how I got outmaneuvered by Eryk Thorn?”
“I don’t know,” she shot back. “This kind of story could keep you in free drinks for quite a while, couldn’t it?”
Well, he had to admit that could be true, but he wasn’t about to tell Jessa that. Besides, what really mattered right now was getting free somehow so they could try to catch up with their elusive quarry. “I won’t say a thing,” Creel told her. “Let’s just try to see if we can get out of this thing. Maybe if I slip out of the top loop—”
And he attempted to slide downward, hoping that maybe his bonds would hold tight around her as he shifted his body weight. Unfortunately, all he accomplished was to come dangerously close to dislocating his shoulder. He stopped before it popped completely out of joint, but he knew that particular ploy wasn’t going to work.
“Let me try,” Jessa offered. “I’m smaller than you are.” She wriggled again, struggling first to free her shoulders and then her legs, but nothing seemed to work. After a minute she stopped and made a disgusted sound. “Well, this is getting ridiculous.”
“We’ll have to cut it,” Creel said.
“With what?” Jessa asked, managing to sound both worried and scornful. “I’m afraid I’m fresh out of molecular blades and laser cutters.”
“There’s got to be something sharp around here we can use,” he said, eyes scanning the deserted hangar. Then his gaze rested on the two dead men at the entrance to the hallway. “Maybe one of them’s got something.”
A good four or five meters separated them, and since they couldn’t walk, he and Jessa were forced to hitch themselves along the grimy concrete until they finally reached the inert forms of the two dead men.
Jessa made a sound of muffled disgust.
“What?” Creel asked, fighting a sudden stab of alarm.
“Nothing,” she replied. “Except that I’m sitting in a pool of blood. Lovely.”
“I’m sure the department will reimburse you for those pants,” he said. “Can you reach into any of their pockets?”
“Maybe. I think
I’ve got a little more movement below my elbow than you do. Hang on.” Creel could feel his bonds cut more closely into his skin as Jessa strained to get her fingers moving freely enough to reach into the closer of the dead men’s pockets. He winced but made no sound—no point in distracting her.
“I think I have something,” she said, after a few agonizing seconds. “Can you shift this way just a little more?”
In reply he hitched himself a few centimeters closer to the body of the dead alien. Again the thin, unyielding line cut into his flesh. Creel knew if he hadn’t been wearing long sleeves, the mercenary’s evil rope probably would have broken his skin.
Another agonizing second, and Jessa said, “Got it. Nice little pocket m-blade. Hang on.” Then came the low-level hum of a molecular blade, and suddenly one coil of the line that bound them was cut, then another. Creel flexed his fingers as the blood began to return to his hands. Within a moment they were free.
He stood, but didn’t offer to help Jessa up—he got the feeling any such gesture would have been rebuffed. After shutting off the m-blade, she rose as well, brushing at her hopelessly begrimed pants.
“Now what?” she asked.
Well, that was a good question. For a few seconds Creel looked past Jessa to the arrowhead shape of the mercenary’s vessel. Although he itched to get inside it, he knew that Thorn must have safeguards in place to keep unwanted intruders away from his precious ship.
“Let’s take a look outside,” he answered, even though by now Thorn, his captive, and Mia Felaris were probably kilometers away.
Sure enough, after they had emerged from the short corridor that led out of the landing pad, all that met their eyes was the stretch of tarmac which backed up to the bay. No vehicle, no sign of the mercenary and his companions. A cool breeze, smelling of salt and night air, ruffled at his hair.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” Jessa inquired. Although only a few dim sconces illuminated the exit from the docking bay, Creel didn’t have any trouble recognizing the wry look she gave him.
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