“If we really did ruin your plans—” he winced, “—maybe I can make it up to you.”
Ying snorted. “How’re you expecting to do that, mercenary?”
“You need a meeting with Wolf, right? What if...” Marat drummed his fingers on the side of his trousers, then his eyes brightened, a hint of a smile stretching his lips. It was a handsome smile, but Ying doubted she should trust it, doubted she should trust anything that came out of these two’s mouths. “What if I, ah, rescued you because I was so... smitten that I couldn’t stand the idea of you going off with another man, and...”
Ying raised her eyebrows, somewhat amused despite this ridiculous predicament. Smitten wasn’t usually the word men used when they approached her with lustful thoughts in mind.
The second man, Striker, leaned a hand against the wall to watch his comrade cogitate. He looked amused too.
“Yeah,” Marat said, “I was smitten and had to rescue you for myself.” He gave her an apologetic wriggle of his fingers at this. “But, as it turns out, or will turn out, you were too much for me to handle.”
“That I’d believe,” Striker said.
Marat shot him a cool look, but continued playing out his scenario, unperturbed. “In my attempt to treat you to my attentive and conscientious but ultimately unwelcome lovemaking, I was...”
Had he truly said lovemaking?
His buddy rolled his eyes.
“I was nearly knocked out when you slammed a lamp over my head. A heavy lamp. And then you lunged for my pistol, and I scarcely wrested it away from you before you shot me.” Marat pointed at Striker. “I see you smirking over there. You can just keep your mouth shut, Sergeant.”
“Oh, I’ll keep it shut, but you better believe that story is going to be incorporated into one of my comic strips.”
Ying didn’t know what he meant, but she didn’t care. She was busy thinking. Could this scheme work? Would someone who had stolen something from the infamous pirate be stupid enough to walk that stolen something back up to his airlock and apologize? Especially a man who was admitting he wasn’t much of a man at all, because a woman had gotten the best of him? She supposed that a man might do such a thing, especially if he realized his prize wasn’t as grand as he thought, and he was worried about a deadly pirate putting a mark on his head. He might show up, hoping to escape retaliation. Either way, it should take the attention—and suspicion—off Ying. In the end, it was a more reliable way to be walked up to Wolf’s ship than her hope that the police might take her there.
“Fine,” she said, lifting her chin. “Let’s go.”
Striker shook his head, but didn’t look like he meant to stop the situation.
Marat took a step toward Ying, but paused. “Er, for my story to work, we’ll have to wait until morning. As, uh, horny as a man buying bedroom slaves probably is, would he jump a woman five minutes after, ah, liberating her?”
Liberating? Who was this joker? He seemed sheltered, like someone who didn’t belong in this part of the system, and that was odd. Mercenaries didn’t necessarily run afoul of the law as openly and often as pirates, smugglers, and the other rough sorts Ying had spent the last few years around, but she wouldn’t have expected a naive one either. Where had he grown up? Probably in some nice family with a loving mother and father in a neighborhood with a house and a yard and kids out front, playing on bicycles and hover boards.
“Perhaps we should agree to meet somewhere in the morning,” Marat went on.
“So I have to spend the night roaming the station, risking the police stumbling across me and tossing me in a cell?” Ying raised her flex-cuffs. The robe would probably give things away, too; there had been stacks of them in the back of the auction house, suggesting every slave who was sold was taken away in one.
“Can’t you get a room?” Marat asked.
“With what gold? I left everything back at my apartment on—well, not here.” She caught herself before telling these men where she lived; it was none of their business, and she didn’t want to confess to that hovel, anyway, especially when she wasn’t that certain it was still hers, since she hadn’t been there to pay the rent this month. “I knew they’d strip me down and take everything from me, so I didn’t bring anything.”
“You don’t have any money at all?” Marat flexed his index finger, the one where most GalCon citizens had their banking and tracking chips embedded as soon as they were old enough for their first jobs. His face wrinkled with doubt, and she found herself on the defensive. Maybe he thought she was simply some slave, who had never been anything but a slave and had no identity in the greater system.
“I live with pirates, you idiot,” Ying snapped, not sure why his opinion mattered. “Pirate clans aren’t on the banking system and certainly don’t sign up to be tracked by the corrupt ass-licking government.”
“Oh,” Marat mouthed. He looked like a man with a thousand questions.
Ying didn’t want to deal with his curiosity. She was beginning to rethink the idea of going along with his plan. Maybe she should leave him and figure things out on her own. Besides, she didn’t like the idea of being beholden to some stranger. Except that he had screwed everything up for her, however grand his intentions might have been, and she couldn’t help but feel that maybe he owed her this favor.
“Look, it’s fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll stay down here somewhere. The police won’t find me. When do you want to meet?”
Marat grimaced at the bleak corridor, with its wires and exposed plumbing snaking everywhere. “No, let me get a room. It’s the least I can do.”
Striker threw his head back and laughed. Ying might have been suspicious all over again, but Marat’s expression was as confused as hers.
After an obnoxiously long minute of laughing, during which Ying and Marat looked at each other as if Striker were nuts, the man let go of his belly and wiped his eyes. “That was so awkward as to almost be smooth, Azarov. You’re trying to get the girl to sleep with you, after all. Oh, man. This volume of my comic is going to be great.”
“I meant to rent the room for her,” Marat said stiffly. “I can sleep on the ship.”
“That doesn’t sound like a very good deal for you,” Striker said, his eyes still twinkling.
“I was going to pay two hundred aurums, at one point today. Rent for a room is a bargain.”
“Uh huh. You’re not really going to go to the ship, are you? You’ll give her that pretty-boy charm of yours and try to slip your way in.” The Neanderthal looked like he was eager to watch this scenario. Ying was starting to fantasize about kneeing him in the groin again, especially since he was talking about her as if she wasn’t standing right there and hearing everything.
“Striker,” Marat growled, “would you do me a favor and run along? I appreciate your help with the android, but I can handle things from here.”
“Oh, I’m sure you think you can. A lamp cracking you in the back of your head will be the least of your worries.”
“Striker.”
The big man lifted his hands again, backing away. “Suit yourself. But I wasn’t joking around earlier. You think you had a problem when Frog pranked you with spiders in your locker? Mandrake will have your head mounted on the wall next to all of his weapons if you get the company wrapped up in a fight with pirates.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Marat looked like he wanted to knee Striker in the groin too.
Ying was beginning to think that everyone who met the man might experience that feeling.
“And you watch out for yourself here too.” Striker had reached the ladder leading back up to the busier corridors, but he paused to frown at Marat. “I know you’ve got this weird, noble streak, but this isn’t the place for it. This station, these people, they’ll shoot you in the back just for blocking their view. Her too.” He pointed at Ying. “Pirate family, God. Don’t let a pretty face get you into something stupid. Stupider than this already is. Whatever her problem with W
olf is, it isn’t your fight.”
This time, Marat didn’t say anything. Ying wondered if the words, an unexpected bit of wisdom from such an uncouth bastard, were sinking in. She would be the first to admit that there had been no logical reason for Marat to get tangled up with her mess. If he changed his mind right now and walked away, she wouldn’t blame him. Hell, she ought to root for it. She was doubtlessly being a fool herself for even thinking of trusting him.
Just because she needed help getting out of these cuffs, she told herself.
After heaving a disappointed sigh, Striker disappeared into the ladder well.
Ying watched Marat, waiting for him to change his mind.
For a moment, he stood there, his face grim as he seemed to wrestle with his thoughts. Then he touched his comm-patch—turning it off?—and smiled at her and said, “How about we find that room, eh? And maybe figure out a way to get those cuffs off?”
3
Marat kept an eye on the passersby as he led Ying back into the busy corridors of the station and toward the lodgings level. He thought it was too soon for Captain Wolf to have figured out what had happened to his slave, especially if Striker had blown that android into as many pieces as he had promised, but that wouldn’t last forever. Some video somewhere had probably captured the incident, and as soon as Wolf could identify the kidnappers...
Marat shook his head, worrying for the fortieth or fiftieth time that he had made a mess, not only for himself but for Mandrake Company, as well. Would he even be welcome back on the ship when he returned? Who knew what Striker would tell the captain? And for what was he risking his new career—and himself? A woman. And not even some innocent victim who had fallen to a slaver’s noose, as he had believed, but the daughter of a pirate, who had knowingly inserted herself into that situation in order to enact some revenge plot. Some plot that had absolutely nothing to do with him.
And yet... the way Wolf had walked into that auction room as if he owned it and everyone there, the way he had looked at the women, touched them, ordered his puppet to hold them so he could get a better feel... The implication that he did much worse to the women he bought. It all made Marat grind his teeth with loathing and with a desire—a need—to do something. If this Ying really could assassinate the man, and if Marat could help her get into the position to do so, would that be so horrible? It wasn’t as if the police on the station or the GalCon law enforcers would come after him for helping to kill a pirate. There were bounties on the heads of most people like that. Bringing in a dead pirate’s head and dumping it in a police office was generally met with money and hearty pats on the back.
Except Ying Wei might have a bounty on her head too. If she could so easily speak of assassinating another pirate, didn’t that imply that she had assassinated other people? As much as he was reluctant to think of a beautiful woman as a stone-hearted killer, the label of pirate seemed to fit her far more than that of damsel-in-distress.
Marat rubbed his face, reminding himself that he was supposed to be watching for trouble, not second-guessing himself.
“If you change your mind, it won’t bother me,” Ying said.
She had been walking behind his shoulder like a silent ghost and hadn’t spoken since Striker left, so he almost jumped in surprise at the sound of her voice.
“No,” Marat said, as if he was confident of his decision, as if he wasn’t wrestling with this very thing. “I was impulsive and did you a disservice. I want to make things right.”
“By helping me kill someone?” Her eyebrow quirked upward, and she smiled slightly. It was a wry smile, but Marat caught himself watching it, intrigued by it. Striker was right; this was all kinds of stupidity, but Marat couldn’t help but wonder what she might be like under the gruffness and, as Wolf had called it, attitude. Might the leopardess mellow? She was already less abrasive than she had been in the corridor when he had first set her down.
“By helping you kill someone like that Captain Wolf, yes.”
“Did you even know who he was before today?” Ying asked, that eyebrow still elevated.
“I... vaguely.”
“So not really, huh? You’re a real genius, you know that?”
So much for mellowing the leopardess.
Marat spread his hand, not sure why she would object to his help if he was offering it. Well, that wasn’t true. She seemed like a proud woman, someone who was used to handling her own problems. Hell, she might even like a challenge.
But even if she had experience assassinating people, she was utterly naked underneath that robe. How could she have known she would get an opportunity to kill Wolf before he inflicted his bedroom fantasies on her? She couldn’t have known that, he realized. She must be willing to endure what could only be pain and humiliation in order for an opportunity to deal with the man. He wasn’t sure whether to respect that or be horrified on her behalf.
“Ten minutes of watching him in that auction room was enough to make me hate him,” Marat said, scanning the concourse again. They were almost to a lift that would take them up to the lodgings level.
Ying took an extra step to catch up, so she could walk at his side. Marat wasn’t sure that was a good idea—he had only seen one other person in a gray robe like that, and a beefy man wearing a pleased grin had been dragging her toward the docks. She had not been going willingly. But Ying seemed to want to scrutinize him. He tried not to feel self-conscious under her stare. He kept scanning the people around them, watching for trouble. When he spotted a pair of policemen on the far side of the concourse, he gripped Ying’s arm lightly, wanting them to think she was with him. Or—he grimaced in distaste at the idea—belonged to him, as was doubtlessly the norm around here.
“I believe you,” Ying said, and it took him a moment to remember what she was responding to. She looked at his hand, then across the concourse at the police, and didn’t try to pull her arm away.
He was glad—and a little impressed—that she had noticed them too. Maybe she hadn’t been scrutinizing him quite as hard as he had thought. Or she had well-trained peripheral vision.
“I doubt that makes me special,” Marat said. “I’m guessing a lot of people want to kill Wolf within minutes of meeting him.”
“That’s a truth. Not many people dare to act on that want though.”
They reached the lift, and Marat tapped the button with a touch of relief. They were close now. Once she was safely in a room, she needn’t venture out until the morning. Before returning to the ship, he would ask her what she needed to succeed at her plan—maybe she wanted to show up with some concealed weapons and he could do some shopping for her.
“To your right, twenty meters,” Ying murmured so softly he almost missed it.
He kept his face forward, toward the lift doors, but looked right out of the corner of his eye. A nondescript man leaned casually against the wall in the shadows of a potted palm tree.
“Someone’s spy?” Marat murmured back.
“That’s my guess. He didn’t seem to take any special notice of us, so I doubt he’s Wolf’s, but...”
“He might be bought later for all that he’s seen today?” The spy might even be an android, silently recording everything that passed in the concourse in front of him. The shadows made it hard to tell if he was human or not.
“Possibly.”
The lift arrived, and Marat shifted his hand to the small of Ying’s back and led her inside. Once the doors closed, he had to remind himself to lower that hand. Strange how it wanted to linger. She wasn’t a woman who had agreed to go on a date with him, and she doubtlessly wouldn’t appreciate any touching on his part. Indeed, she stepped inside and put her back to the wall with a couple of feet between them. Her face wasn’t as standoffish as it had been on the auction block, but she certainly wasn’t giving him come-hither looks.
When they exited on the lodgings level, Marat was relieved not to see anyone lurking behind potted plants. After the main concourse, the foyer seemed tranquil, with
only a couple of people walking out of rooms down the long hallways. He checked the glowing vacancy map on the wall and reached for the first available room.
Ying caught his wrist before he could touch his finger to it to pay. Her grip was light and warm. Pleasant. He raised his eyebrows.
“Not that one,” she said and tapped the top of the map with her other hand. “That one. By the emergency ladder.”
“Of course. I should have thought of that.”
She would want access to an escape route if any trouble came barging out of the lift. He wondered if, when he returned to the ship, he should borrow one of the portable security systems the company kept. He could easily set up a camera to monitor the lift.
Marat raised his arm to press his finger to select the room she had indicated. Her hand fell away from his wrist, and a silly thought jumped into his head, that he wished it hadn’t.
A beam swept out, reading their bodies so the room door would open to them. Marat glanced at her, wondering what she thought of the fact that he would have access to the door; he would have had to punch in some override codes to keep the beam from including him, since he had paid for the room, but he could have done so. It hadn’t occurred to him until too late.
But Ying didn’t say anything. She led the way into the appropriate corridor, only pausing to let him catch up when someone stepped out of a room. She glanced back at him, her mouth twisting wryly. Yeah, she knew what that robe meant and that she shouldn’t be seen wandering off of her own accord.
Marat hurried to catch up and chose the small of her back for his hand, rather than her arm. He wasn’t sure if it was any less possessive than a grip on the arm, but he admitted he liked touching her there.
He shook his head, reminding himself that this wasn’t intended to lead anywhere. If he let himself expect rewards for helping, he wasn’t any better than Striker. Besides, if she was on some revenge mission, she had more important things on her mind than sex.
The man they passed didn’t so much as bat an eye in their direction, and Marat let his hand fall away as soon as they were past him. It was a long walk to the room she had selected, but they made it without trouble. Before going in, Ying jogged a few more meters and opened the hatch to the exit ladder. There wasn’t an emergency-use-only sign on it, and an alarm didn’t sound, at least not one audible or visible from here.
Mandrake Company- The Complete Series Page 139