“You what?” Duster whirled around.
“I couldn’t risk her getting injected with Baka, so I turned the luller off.”
“You made that poor girl think—”
“That her life hung by a thread.” Michael grimaced. “Stop looking at me like that. If I hadn’t, she would have constantly challenged me. I had to find some way to make her consider the consequences.”
“By screwing with her head.” Duster sighed out several choice expletives.
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Sure, it worked. Mary didn’t fight you directly, but she found a way to run. Happy now?”
“Not at all.” Michael pinched the bridge of his nose, ashamed of how he’d tricked her about the Baka, not to mention his identity.
“You asked for this,” Duster said. “Shoot me where I stand, but I swear, you deserve this.”
“I’m a real hero.” Michael felt hollow inside.
“At this point, you’re such an unbelievable bastard, I think I’d go out of my way to help Mary escape.”
Michael gave serious weight to the threat.
Duster cast a glance to the guards by the doors. “You may have forgotten your roots, but I haven’t forgotten mine.” He lowered his voice. “I’ll find her if you swear to let her go.”
“Are you challenging me?” Michael bristled, and the swelling void inside swirled with rage. “If I remember correctly, we’ve been here before.”
“More than once.” Duster stood tall. “If you’ll remember, I won the first time, but this isn’t about the moral issues of the flesh trade. This is about a woman named Mary. If I let you harm her, I might as well go back to my old life.”
Duster’s scent confused him, but Michael was too agitated to pinpoint the meaning. “This isn’t the time.”
“To review the past? I think it is.” Duster took a stand with his voice and the metallic note of his scent.
“We need to find—”
“Mary is every woman we ever smuggled.” Duster barely met Michael’s eyes. “Mary puts a face to every desperate cry we drowned out on the Damn You. Remember when that ship belonged to us? Six cells crammed with thirty women.” Duster delivered the words in his matter-of-fact tone but hung his head. “I’ll bet you told Mary books built this world of yours. You couldn’t admit it was built on the backs, buttocks and breasts of women. Women we sold.”
Michael could now identify the scent. Shame. The stench made him itch to plow his fist into Duster’s knowing face. Not for a lie, but because of truth. Kraft hadn’t kicked him loose on a whim.
“You trade in humans,” Kraft said. “Like cattle. Tell you what, the money may be good, but I can’t look at you, and I don’t know how the hell you can look at yourself.”
When he’d tried to explain, Kraft had said, “Damn you,” as she strode away. In a fit of pique, he’d named his ship the Damn You and continued with his plans. He’d regretted his decision ever since. Obsessed with the script of smuggling flesh, Michael ignored the truth and drowned out the stench of misery with expensive whisky.
“I stopped, didn’t I?” A pathetic defense, but the only one he had. “I gave up the flesh trade for books, and I’ve done my best to right the wrong.” His guilt and shame made him long for the biggest glass of whisky in the Void, even though he knew alcohol would never wipe the self-loathing away.
“Do you think funneling money to Network Thirteen makes up for what we did?” Duster asked.
Michael gave millions to the anti-slavery group. “I’ve done more than that.” Again, a pathetic excuse. He thought of Clara, and how he’d saved her entire family from slavery. “I’ve tried to find all those people and make it right.” A sudden thought gripped him. “What have you done?”
Duster refused to be sidetracked. “You still treat women like property.”
“What?” A need to express his anger physically built. He couldn’t let Duster push him that far, and he clenched his fists to hold himself at bay.
“You offered Jace Lawless 15Mil for Kraft, but he wouldn’t sell. And I don’t know what you’ve done to Mary except jerk the poor girl around until she’s so confused, she doesn’t know which end is up. All she knows is she wants out.”
“She’s not a girl.”
“That’s not my point!” Duster bellowed, his hands balling into fists at his sides. “Maybe I haven’t done enough to right my wrong, but I’m not about to commit the same wrong again, especially on Mary. I’m not going to stand by while you torment her to amuse yourself.”
Seething with fury, Michael felt tension coil around every muscle in his body until he was tight as a compressed spring. If he didn’t act fast, he feared he would launch himself at Duster. He snapped his fingers at the two guards by the door and pointed.
Without hesitation, the two guards grabbed Duster, slapped cuffs on him, then retreated to the main doors. Duster didn’t bother to struggle. They’d all done this before.
“You’ll never find her.” Duster didn’t say more, but Michael smelled the threat anyway; not without me, his scent said.
“I’ll find her.”
Duster refused to back down. “You’ll regret this.”
His words echoed what Kraft had said about the slavery, and Michael swallowed hard. “I won’t.”
“You kill everything you touch,” Duster said.
“Stop goading me.”
“How apt you named your moon Midas. Everything he touched turned to gold, including his daughter. She died for his greed.”
“You say another word, Duster, and I promise, I’ll—”
“Kill me? You’re gonna have to. I won’t stand by and watch you destroy another human being, especially not Mary.”
“You didn’t have a problem all those years ago.” Michael wanted the comment to wound, but it didn’t.
“Sure. Fling it in my face. I traded in humans for money. I stifled the voice that nagged at me by falling in love, while you stifled the stench of it by drinking.” Duster hung his head in shame. “We started out with mostly men, ended up with nothing but women, then along came Diane.”
A ripe smell of fresh bread rolled from Duster. He always smelled like that when he thought of Diane, and Michael had come to loathe that scent.
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Tough.” Duster met his gaze. “Now along comes Mary.”
The smell of bread deepened, took on a cinnamon edge, like sweet pastry. Was there more to Duster’s care than he’d suspected? As Duster continued to talk, Michael leaned near to get a better smell of him.
“Paltry, what Mary took. 20K over five years doesn’t wash your toilets, Michael. I don’t know her motives, but she didn’t hurt innocents, not like we did.” Duster winced his eyes closed. “Mary isn’t a game. You hurt her, it’s like I asked you to. This whole damn thing was my idea.”
Duster’s smell changed. Bread and cinnamon gave way to intense shame mixed with a cold, dead fury strong enough to choke him. Michael cast a longing glance to the hidden bar.
“Would you believe me if I said I love her?” Michael had no idea where the words had come from and, in a way, he felt as if he were asking himself.
“Overlord falls in love with Remarkably Average Mary?” Duster laughed and shook his head. “Don’t even try to play me like you played her.”
Initially, he’d welcomed the challenge of seducing Mary for information, but now he realized she had seduced him. The wily Bandit of Taiga had stolen his heart.
“Find Mary, bring her back to me, and I will let her go.” He heard the desperate tone in his own voice.
“You lie. Like one of your fancy rugs.” Duster straightened. “I’m finished being your boot-licking toady.”
The realization that Duster would die to defend Mary so shocked Michael he stood immobile.
Mary slipped from the shuttle and slunk away into the dark shadows cast by the array of ships that huddled together on the base tarmac. She’d love to
hide right here. Problem was, as soon as morning broke, Commander would have his minions out in force.
Not a single good place to hide near the ships. She couldn’t hide in the ships, either; they thoroughly checked all ships before they took off, even the shuttle. Also, they wouldn’t take off tonight. With her breach in security, no way were they letting anything get off the ground tonight. She had to wait for when they sent out search parties.
“First things first.”
The fence around the tarmac was at least twelve feet high. Climbing it wouldn’t be a problem, but she could hear it humming from where she stood. Electric. Definitely a problem, not as much as a laser fence would be, but still, she didn’t think the fence would have a convenient hole, so she had to find a way around.
“What if I went over?”
A pair of wings would come in handy right about now. Alas and alack, she’d have to improvise. After considering all the ships, her eyes lit up when she noticed the butt-end of Whisper nestled only fifteen feet from the edge of the electric fence.
Kraft’s ship lay like a needle at the farthest end of the tarmac, far from the entrance of House and the guard post. The layout seemed so perfect she got paranoid as she dodged and darted her way toward the ship, looking for guards and cameras, which she didn’t find.
How did Commander and Duster miss this obvious flaw? She considered that they probably thought more about keeping people out than they did people getting out.
Using the nooks and crannies, she climbed her way atop Whisper, checked again for guards, then ran and took a flying leap off the back end. Clearing the fence, she grinned for half a second before the gravel-strewn ground rushed up. She stifled a scream.
Her body went one way, her ankle another. Pop!
Ignoring the pain as best she could, she limped into the scrub brush. Cursing silently, she struggled to the top of a small hill that would afford her a view of the entire compound.
Pain flared up her leg from her ankle. Her boot tightened unbearably. In the end, she had to scream into Commander’s borrowed jacket as she pulled off the boot.
“No, no, no!” She didn’t need a doctor to tell her what the swelling, sudden dark bruising, and excruciating pain meant. This wasn’t at all a part of her plan. She rubbed her temples as she tried to focus on something other than the throbbing pain in her right leg.
“How the hell can I run away on a broken ankle?”
Chapter Fifteen
“Release him,” Michael ordered, “then stand outside.”
The two guards let Duster loose and left the office.
“I’m sorry.” Michael offered his hand, which hung there for so long he almost retracted it.
Duster sighed and captured his hand. “Me too.”
After a hard squeeze, Michael let go. He was ashamed that he had to bind Duster to remind himself not to lash out. “I acted like a prime bastard.” His comment elicited a small smile.
“Maybe we should name the planet back.”
“Windmere has a certain je ne sais quoi.”
“A certain I-don’t-know-what,” Duster echoed, translating the French to Universal.
“Besides, I’d hate for you to have to go around introducing yourself to the ladies as Duster Jennings of Prime Bastard.”
Duster laughed. “You said Windmere sounded poofy.”
“Granted. But you won the right to the naming. If I could only compel you to the explaining.”
Duster laughed again, a bit more genuine. “You get Mary to fess up and maybe I will too.”
“We’ll have to find her first.”
“Michael,” Duster said, dread clear in his voice, “I won’t let you hurt her.”
“I know.” Michael turned away. “My behavior has been despicable. Not only to Mary, but you. I just—” He didn’t know how to put his feelings into words. He’d let his own wants override his concern for anyone else, like a selfish bastard. “I’m worried about her.”
“So am I.” Cinnamon swirled as Duster turned to the op-pans. “Let me get the word out that she’s at large. We don’t want anyone to accidentally shoot her.”
While Duster informed every guard on the planet, Michael printed out a map of the area where he’d last seen her. He drew concentric rings, trying to determine how big of an area they had to search.
She wouldn’t be running in a treacherous and unfamiliar terrain. She’d be going methodically toward…what?
“Toward a ship.” He measured the distance from their picnic area back to base. Thirty miles by air but easily fifty by foot. Knowing that cut the area to be searched down by seventy percent.
“Since everything with infrared is on Sangfroid, we’ll have to wait until daybreak before launching an all-out search.”
“Six hours from now?” Michael tried not to sound petulant, but he did anyway. Mary could be anywhere within an eighteen-mile radius of their picnic site. If she ran, she could be within thirty. Tapping the map, he tried to put himself in her battered boots.
Inspired, he cut the area down even more, since she wouldn’t be traveling along any prominent ridges, or by any of the guard posts. That left a manageable area.
“You think she’s coming this way?” Duster leaned over his shoulder to consider the map.
“She needs to get airborne. The only place she can steal a ship from is base.”
“You don’t think she’d try to take one of the shuttles at the guard posts? If I were her, that’s what I’d do.”
“No. Too small. If she was going to try it, she’d have taken my shuttle.” Michael considered the map again.
“You mean my shuttle,” Duster said.
Michael readied a nasty retort but realized Duster only needled him a bit. “A minor point.” He laughed. “Mary would have swiped the shuttle I took her out in. She didn’t.”
“Is there any way she could have gotten the bracelet off?”
“If she did, we’d still be able to track it.” Michael again eyed his hidden bar. “Somehow, she’s managed to block the signal. For the life of me, I can’t fathom how.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “We should be able to read that thing through two hundred miles of solid durosteel.”
Duster snickered.
Michael whirled around. “Just what the hell is so funny?”
“Her name.” Duster scratched his chin. “Remarkably Average Mary.” He rolled his eyes and laughed. “You ought to sue her for false advertising.”
“Actually, I did think of tossing Harper in a locked room with her. He’s the one who filed the report that said she had average intelligence.”
“Average my ass.” Duster laughed again. “How the hell did she get that pathetic nickname?”
“Idiots at Pine Glenn pinned it on her.” Anger surged every time Michael remembered the story he’d read in one of the reports.
“Why?” Duster asked.
“When she enrolled for grammar school, the administrators tested the students. On a list, beside each name, everyone had something like ‘high verbal skills’ or ‘shows promise in mathematics’—everyone but Mary. Across from her name it said remarkably average. Some cruel bastard posted the list at a local tavern so the whole town could see. Mary all of seven. A little kid.”
“Harsh.” Duster winced.
“It didn’t stop there.” Michael sighed and leaned back in his chair with his hands laced behind his head.
“I’m afraid to ask.” Duster pulled a chair back, flipped it around and straddled it, his arms looped across the back.
“Since she was abandoned, a foundling on the courthouse steps, they also said she had no last name.” He lowered his hands to his sides and clenched them to fists.
“Remarkably Average Mary No-last-name.” Duster sighed. “She’s had to put up with that crap her whole life?”
Michael nodded and let out a long, frustrated sigh. Her background explained a lot of her hostility and her suspicious nature. She expected to be mocked and rejected, but the har
sh treatment hadn’t broken her.
Mary didn’t care what anyone thought of her, because she knew herself. He admired that quality and wished he had more of it himself. Reputation mattered a great deal to him, but Mary didn’t give a rat’s ass. In fact, she turned her disparaging nickname to her advantage by using it to waylay people into not expecting anything from her.
“Why did she stay there?” Duster asked. “Hey, maybe that’s why she stole from you, so she could get away from Taiga.”
“I don’t think so. All she wants is to go home. For the life of me, I don’t know why.” Michael thought of the reams of nasty reports. “If I were her, I’d want to go home with a fully loaded Gatewin Gusher and take out the whole malicious town. Twice. Just to make sure I’d wiped them all.”
Duster pulled back, clearly shocked. “Care to explain that?”
“I could bury you in scornful tales of her.” Michael pointed to a stack of reports on his desk. “That’s what her own people, the folks of Pine Glenn, have said about her.”
Wide-eyed, Duster reached for the two-inch-deep stack of reports but hesitated. “All of that’s about her?”
“And all nasty.” Michael nodded. “Think of the worst falsehood ever spread about you, now think of that exponentially. Just so big and nasty it never ended. That’s what she’s been subjected to her whole life.” Michael let his sympathy bleed into his voice. He wanted Duster to understand why he cared so much about Mary.
“Then why does she want to go back there?” Duster fished some seeds from a vest pocket.
“Good question.” Michael pinched the bridge of his nose. “I doubt she’ll answer. She won’t even tell me why she liberated my goods.”
“Maybe she has something to prove to them.” Duster kept his gaze on the stack of reports.
“What? That she can put up with more of their abuse?” Every time he thought of how badly she’d been treated, he wanted to stomp his way into Pine Glenn and start bashing heads together.
“Dunno.” Duster considered the map. “Did you mean it?”
“What?” Michael felt jittery and out-of-sorts. He wanted to be angry with Mary, but he was more worried about her than anything.
Overlord: The Fringe, Book 2 Page 13