Starbreaker

by Amanda Bouchet

  Tess glanced at me, her blue eyes a silent question. I dipped my chin in answer. I was as satisfied as I could be that they wouldn’t spring anything else on us.

  “Free Shade. Unbind his wrists,” she ordered.

  “I want those cure-alls first,” Raquel said.

  “You think I’m stupid? You got me once with your Let’s have a fair fight crap. I’m over that. You do as I say now.” Tess separated one of the vials from the other two and held it out over the pavement. “I want Shade, or I drop this.”

  “Wait.” Wariness spiked in Solan’s hasty plea. Tess was a wild card he didn’t know how to deal with. “We don’t have a bargain yet. What are those? What’s in them, and where did you get them?”

  “First, answer this.” Tess swung the vial like a pendulum. “What did your black-market dealer say about his cure-all?”

  Solan glanced at Raquel. She nodded.

  “That it would do more than just heal the body,” he answered. “That it would increase height, strength, speed, and overall immunity. He also said there might be negative side-effects, like increased aggressiveness and anger. Possibly lifelong hallucinations.”

  Tess’s eyes bored into mine. The dealer had obviously gotten ahold of one of the Overseer’s enhancers. Merrick definitely had the increased height, strength, speed, and healing. I hadn’t seen any evidence of hallucinations or anger issues, but there would almost certainly have been different test batches and experiments. Merrick had only gotten captured and shot up recently, possibly as a test subject for the final product. This black-market “cure-all” could be an older version of the serum.

  “He also said that administering it would be incredibly painful for the subject,” Raquel added, looking at the ground for a moment.

  Tess stopped dangling the test tube. “I know what he has, and this is different.”

  “How do you know?” Raquel’s gaze shot back to her, suspicious.

  “That’s none of your business,” Tess said. “But I know this is a hell of a lot better and a hell of a lot safer. I truly believe it will heal your daughter and cause her no pain or harmful side effects. One might be enough, but I’m offering you three because no child should have to suffer. I’d administer them intravenously with two days in between and monitor Maya’s progress. This will attack the bad blood cells and then gradually leave her system. Keep it cool in the meantime, and I wouldn’t waste any on tests or experiments.”

  Solan stepped forward, his hand outstretched for the cure-alls. Tess shook her head along with the test tubes in a double negative that made him stop dead in his tracks.

  “I don’t think so. Not yet. Untie Shade and unchip him. Then swear on your daughter’s life that you won’t tell anyone where we are, where we have been, or anything about this”—she tilted her head toward the vials—“ever. Not family. Not friends. Not other bounty hunters. Not the Dark Watch. No one. Even if the price stays on Shade’s head forever, you will not come after him again. Or me, for that matter.”

  Neither of them immediately took her up on that offer.

  “Too bad.” Tess shrugged and tossed one of the test tubes into the air.

  “Wait!” Raquel cried.

  Tess caught it. She arched her brows, waiting.

  “Fucking unchip him!” Raquel snarled to Solan, throwing an impatient hand in my direction.

  Solan took a thumb-sized remote from his pocket, squatted, and swept it over my right calf. It beeped, and he hit the flashing button. A small pain flared in my leg, almost like the jab of a needle. The remote went dark and quiet. Solan dropped it on the ground and stepped on it. He left the broken remains on the blacktop. “The chip’s still in there, but I destroyed it. We all set now?”

  “No,” Tess answered. “Swear on your daughter’s life. Both of you. Agree to my terms, or I smash these.” The test tubes glinted in the sunlight, the liquid inside a shocking bright-red against Tess’s black jacket.

  Solan and Raquel quickly agreed this time, swearing on Maya’s health and safety. Solan cut through the cuff, freeing my wrists from the plastic binding and shoving me forward. I turned, facing them as I walked backward. I rolled my shoulders and rubbed my wrists, trying to work the kinks out of them. I gave them both a frosty once-over.

  Tess met me halfway and placed her blood on the ground. We both backed away from the vials. “You got a cooler?” she asked.

  Solan nodded. “What if it doesn’t work?” He moved forward to retrieve what he thought were cure-alls.

  “If that doesn’t work, then nothing will cure your daughter.” Tess offered them a smile they didn’t deserve from her. “I hope she lives. And when she does, tell her the Incorruptible have helped her.”

  Raquel took the vials from Solan’s hands and carefully put them in her pockets. “The Incorruptible?”

  Solan frowned in my direction, as if I had answers. I was as clueless as he was—and didn’t like it.

  “Let’s go,” Tess said, looking at her watch. The alarm she’d set ten days ago would beep any second.

  “I want to see them take off.” I hoped their priority was getting the cure-alls to Maya, and they’d given Tess their word to leave us alone after this. They’d also proven to be underhanded people, and I didn’t want them following us.

  Tess nodded and waited beside me. If she was impatient, she didn’t show it.

  Gruffly, I said, “I hope Maya gets better.” I’d probably never know one way or the other, which left an ache inside me.

  Solan and Raquel both just looked at me before walking away without a backward glance. No goodbye. No thank-you. No have a nice life, or don’t get killed. Nothing. The ache grew, surprising me. We hadn’t been exactly friends lately, but we’d still been something.

  The meeting-day alarm went off. Tess stopped it after three beeps and didn’t pressure me to leave yet.

  A cruiser I recognized finally took off in the distance, heading straight up into the atmosphere. And that was that. The last chunk of my old life—gone.

  Briskly, I turned to Tess. “First things first. Let’s pick up those weapons and sweep the cruiser for bugs.”

  We gathered Raquel’s belt and the discarded guns and bullets. I pulled two search wands from my utility chest, and Tess checked the inside of the cruiser for tracking bugs while I covered the exterior of the ship. Neither of us got a hit. We swept each other for good measure and came up clean.

  Satisfied, I fired up the cruiser and we took off, heading for the Grand Temple. Neither of us suggested the resort shuttle at this point. We had another unfortunate meeting to get through today—and we might already be late.

  Chapter 7

  TESS

  As if the morning hadn’t already been terrifying enough. Cyclodiles having their breakfast. Suspended bridges over murky rivers. Draakwings that couldn’t fly away from human heads. A sneak attack by a pair of nasty bounty hunters. I had to face my uncle now? Great.

  It took us a while to find him. The sanctuary was huge and not well lit except for intermittent spotlights shining down on garish relics. The constant throng of people filtering in and out of the different sections didn’t help. A tall man with broad shoulders finally caught my attention, mainly because he wasn’t shuffling along with the rest of the slow-moving crowd.

  Nathaniel Bridgebane stood under a representation of the Sky Mother suspended in an alcove near the east entrance. The Great Star hovered above him, her five points forming an abstract human figure, the arms and legs outstretched and her elongated head rising from them. Several rotating rings of smaller stars orbited her in gyroscopic circles. A soft radiance emanated from somewhere within the statue and reflected off the smaller stars—Her Powers.

  The alcove’s lighting threw Bridgebane into alternating patterns of brightness and shadow, making him harder to spot than he already would have been in the dimly lit temple. H
e also wasn’t in uniform and looked a lot like everyone else here, dressed in predominantly dark colors. My uncle wasn’t alone, which violated our deal. Then again, neither was I. Shade was with me. A black woman I didn’t recognize stood beside Bridgebane. She wasn’t in uniform, either, but I could tell she was military just from the way she held herself, alert and fighting ready.

  In a low voice, I pointed them out to Shade. We veered in their direction. They hadn’t seen us yet, and Bridgebane’s hand tapped against his thigh, his posture stiff and his searching gaze impatient.

  Coming at them from an angle gave me a chance to study my uncle in a way I hadn’t gotten to during our previous encounter. Towering, strong, fit, and handsome, he looked a decade or more younger than his actual age of sixty. The silver strands glinting in his short dark hair were his only outward sign of aging. Piercing blue eyes, a long, straight nose, and a firm jawline made him striking in a severe fashion. He didn’t look like he smiled much—if ever. Life as the Overseer’s right-hand man was clearly a barrel of laughs. All that fun hunting down and enforcing.

  All in all, I couldn’t find the entertaining, generous, smiling man I remembered from my childhood anywhere in the person we were approaching. Nathaniel Bridgebane had obviously buried whatever humor and integrity he had left in him deep in my mother’s grave on Alpha Sambian eighteen years ago, right alongside her.

  Bridgebane’s restless, scowling face blanked the moment he saw me. While he appeared to experience an emotional shutdown, an explosion of feelings detonated in me. Heat. Fury. Incomprehension. His eyes narrowed to blue slits when he saw Shade—the one man the Dark Watch general had called for backup when he cornered me on Starway 8. That hadn’t worked out as expected.

  So here we were, all of us betraying the people and ideals we fought for.

  I took in my uncle’s companion as we came to a standstill—although standoff might have been the better word for it. I couldn’t tell if she was curious or suspicious. I only knew that her intense stare seemed to penetrate straight through to my internal organs, which wasn’t a sensation I cared for.

  Bridgebane looked Shade up and down as if he were a piece of space garbage. Shade wasn’t his favorite flunky anymore. My uncle liked skilled, intelligent people—unless they turned on him.

  “He’s still alive?” Impressive. Bridgebane could say something so tightly his mouth barely moved.

  “No, he’s the Ghost of Bounty Hunters Past,” I shot back, certain Uncle Nate would remember the crumbling book we’d read together. Only now, he was the coldhearted bastard who needed to wake up and see the error of his ways.

  That scraped the contempt off his face. He definitely remembered those parchment-like pages with illustrations that made little sense to us and references to things we could only guess at. We’d had fun trying to figure them out. The rest was easy. It was a story about people and how they could change.

  Too bad my uncle hadn’t changed for the better.

  Bridgebane rallied, forcing out a clipped “Maybe I should double his bounty.”

  “Or maybe you should cancel it. We’re late because we had to avoid complications—complications that almost got me captured.” That wasn’t a lie exactly. Raquel had captured me. And if my uncle understood that he was hurting me by trying to hurt Shade, it might solve one of our major problems.

  Bridgebane ran a critical eye over Shade’s scratched jaw and swollen cheekbone. A bruise blossomed like a purple and blue flower around his left eye, which no longer fully opened. Shade was a mess, and I was still slightly nauseated from the tranquilizer and its antidote in quick succession. I’d had to sit in the cruiser and fight the urge to vomit before I could even think about preparing those “cure-alls” for the bounty hunters. I’d been stupid to lower my weapon. Raquel had put hers down, too. I just didn’t know she had another.

  Crossing my arms, I stared at my uncle. “Well? Are you going to call off the bounty, or are you going to continue putting me in danger?”

  Bridgebane had one hell of a poker face. He looked like a wax statue, stiff and emotionless. Something in his eyes still gave him away this time, at least to me. In them, I saw the man who’d tried to keep me out of a black hole, who’d shot at Shade but not once at me, who’d pointed a gun at his own head—because he wanted my forgiveness.

  I knew I’d won before my uncle realized it. The unclenching in my stomach told me so.

  Scowling, Bridgebane turned to his companion. “Lieutenant Mwende. My tablet, please.”

  My mouth puckered. “I thought we agreed: no goons.”

  His eyes cut back to me. “She’s my personal bodyguard. There’s no one else with me.” He swept a dismissive glance over Shade. “You obviously brought your guard also, although he doesn’t look very effective.”

  “We’re here, aren’t we?” Shade sounded prickly. Did my uncle’s opinion matter to him?

  “My niece doesn’t have a scratch on her, so I’m assuming she came to your rescue.”

  “She did.” Shade’s flat answer seemed to startle Bridgebane. “But she wouldn’t have needed to if you weren’t pissed off that we’re together.”

  “It was a mutual rescuing,” I corrected. “And you should be happy I have Shade looking out for me. Wasn’t he your favorite? The best of the best? The guy you called when you wanted something accomplished?”

  “That’s the problem, Quin,” Bridgebane ground out. “He has no conscience. He turned on me; he’ll turn on you. He’s bagged people without asking a single question.”

  “On your orders,” I flung back. “Any dirt on Shade is shit-layered mud on you, General Bridgebane.”

  I was expecting my uncle’s expression to deaden again, to shut like a door in my face. Instead, his color rose.

  “I would die before I turned on Tess.” Shade glanced at a passing couple and lowered his voice. “I had no idea you were related. Or protecting her—in your way, at least. I betrayed you for her. Don’t you get that?”

  Bridgebane was listening, but he was hard to read. So was Lieutenant Mwende, who stood beside him holding a small tablet. She didn’t take her midnight stare off us. An angular chin, high forehead, and wide, prominent cheekbones gave her an elegant, almost diamond-shaped face. She’d slicked her black hair into a tight bun. If charisma and deadliness were to be mixed into one person, I had a feeling she was it. I wanted to look at her almost as much as I wanted to study my uncle. No part of her was soft or gave the impression she could be molded by anyone’s design but her own. Tall and poised, she exuded command. She also looked like a sleek, gleaming bullet marked for a precise target. You wouldn’t see her coming until you were already bleeding out and done.

  My uncle finally took the tablet. “Thank you, Sanaa.” His politeness with her made me wonder how he could be so awful to everyone else.

  A moment later, Bridgebane flashed the tablet at us, showing us some kind of database with listings on it. He tapped a line, calling up Shade’s description, picture, and astronomical bounty. A header reading DEAD OR ALIVE prefaced the whole thing in big block letters and scared the crap out of me. My uncle scrolled to the button that said Cancel and pressed it.

  Shade and I looked at each other. Could it really be this easy? One click, and we were free of the bounty?

  The page refreshed to show the database menu again. Bridgebane handed the tablet back to Mwende. “I don’t approve of your association, but I don’t want it putting my niece in additional danger, either.”

  “First of all, I don’t give a damn about your approval,” I announced, incredulous. “Second, how about your choice of associates? You know, that mass murderer?” Grief surged up my throat so fast I choked on it. “The one who killed my friend? Who killed my mother?” My breath hitched, and I clamped my mouth shut.

  Bridgebane went back to looking like a rock-faced asshole. “I’ve given you something you wanted—
something that wasn’t even part of the deal. Now, do you have what I need for the Overseer?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got what you need.” I jerked my pack off my shoulder and swung it in front of me. Unzipping it, I pulled out the insulated carrier case inside. I unzipped that also and showed him the six full bags of A1 blood.

  “How do I know it’s yours?” he asked.

  “Do you really think I’d risk them?” He’d threatened to haul either Mareeka or Surral off to prison, leaving Starway 8 with half its leadership missing and everyone’s hearts in tatters. If he tested this blood and it wasn’t what he wanted, he would make good on his dark promise. I knew that. I shoved the bag at him.

  He didn’t touch it. “Give it to Lieutenant Mwende.”

  “Whatever.” I handed her the cooler and then zipped my pack closed again, shouldering it. “Are we done here?”

  A muscle in Bridgebane’s jaw tightened. “Do you have any questions you want to ask me?”

  I frowned. I’d just handed over enough of my blood to make dozens of enhancers. I had plenty of questions, but I hadn’t expected him to offer—or be willing—to share information. “Yeah. How badly is that going to come back to haunt me?” I glanced at the bag Mwende was closing.

  “That’s not the kind of question I meant.” Bridgebane pinched his forehead as though he had a headache. Or was maybe frustrated.

  I scoffed. “Oh, is this the moment when you tell me ‘everything’? Like you offered on Starway 8 if I came with you and let the Overseer use me as a science experiment for the rest of my life? I thought that deal was off, and this was the replacement.”

  “Quin—”

  “Tess,” I hissed. “Quin died in space, after being floated from your air lock, Uncle Nate.”

  Shit. I glanced at Mwende. Her ebony features didn’t change at all, so she was either unshockable or she already knew everything—and probably a lot more than I did.

  “And I know he’s not my father,” I added. “He told me.”

  That got a reaction from Bridgebane. He paled, his eyes shining an almost inhuman azure in a face suddenly gone as gray as ash. “He’s hunting you. You’re in danger.”