“We’re through, Captain,” reported Sybutu over Fitz’s earpiece. “Though I’d advise giving our ex-Militia troopers a crash course on basic concealment.”
The waiter hovering by the opposite corridor wore a slight frown of concentration on her delightful green face. She reminded him of Izza.
But she wasn’t. Fitz would happily wager a million credits that this Zhoogene was one of the Department 9 operatives working the event. They were closing in on him, and while he doubted they could decrypt his link to Sybutu, the sharp-eared Zhoogene would be able to hear his side of the conversation.
“Your complaining makes you sound like Lynx, Sergeant. And our passenger?”
“Colonel Lantosh is with us.”
“Good. Standby, if you please.”
Fitz marched over to a pair of women deep in discussion about ten yards away.
They looked up in surprise at his approach and then blushed a little at the unexpected attention from the hero of the moment.
“Hold that for me, will you?” Fitz thrust his glass at one of the women’s hands. “Got a case of the galloping trots. Be right back.”
The woman took his glass and called after him as he hurried away. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. The trots?”
Fitz halted. “I picked up something in the jungle. It’s demanding an urgent visit to the restroom.”
Leaving behind a flurry of sympathetic noises, he resisted the temptation to wink at the Zhoogene waiter and the other people he suspected were about to spring a Department 9 trap.
He bypassed the nearest restroom, favoring one instead with an exterior facing wall.
Luckily, there were no civilians inside, which made his exfil less messy.
He activated his comm. “Sybutu, begin pre-flight checks.”
“But we don’t know how.”
“Ignore Sergeant Jack,” said Lily. “We’ve just found the manual.”
“Excellent work,” said Fitz as he ditched his heavy robes and pressed the breach charge to the window. “Do the best you can. I have a suspicion we’ll be making a hot exit.”
He took cover in the farthest corner of the restroom.
The explosion rocked the building, spraying splintering glass onto the street twenty feet below. Using his robes as protection from the shattered portal, he lifted himself up and was halfway through, his butt wriggling for the final push, when the enemy finally made their move.
“Stay there, Fitzwilliam,” shouted the Zhoogene waiter. “We want a word before you die.”
Fitz looked back and saw that the Zhoogene was accompanied by one of the musicians, a young human girl. He was disappointed; he hadn’t clocked that operative.
“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Fitz told the Department 9 waiter. “This is a gentlemen-only amenity. If you wouldn’t mind leaving and coming back with a male killer to make the threats, I would feel so much more comfortable.”
The Zhoogene put a bullet through the window. It passed a fraction of an inch from Fitz’s face.
“Your only warning,” she said. “We can kill you hard, or we can do it easy. Which is it to be?”
“I’m disappointed,” Fitz replied. “In Naval Intelligence, we never gave warnings.”
Two suppressed blaster bolts shot out from one of the cubicles—the one with the door that had silently opened while the two women were concentrating on Fitz. The bolts burned through their necks, cutting the connection between their brains and their trigger fingers.
The two would-be assassins died messily, pumping fountains of blood over the pristine tiles of the restroom facility.
“I don’t think those suppressors work,” said Fitz. “My ears hurt.”
“Suppressors work fine,” said Bronze, walking out of the cubicle. “Your bomb was too powerful. You were only supposed to blow the window out. Typical Naval Intelligence.”
Both men laughed, then got on with the business of jumping out of the building and driving to the spaceport.
* * * * *
Chapter 60: Tavistock Fitzwilliam
“Let’s get this bucket of rust and bolts up into the black,” Fitz announced the moment he entered the flight deck. “Better strap in. There’s no knowing whether this old tub has been maintained properly.” He took the pilot’s station and rubbed his hands with glee as he tried the controls.
Far from a rust bucket, the ship they’d stolen had been In’Nalla’s luxury space yacht, a heavily customized Hitomi-class racer with jump capability, opulent berthing, and, from what his people had reported so far, lavishly equipped drinks cabinets.
But it was tradition for a new pilot to treat a ship with cynicism until their first shakedown flight. So rust bucket it would remain for the time being, though as he spooled the main engines and felt the ship throb with power, he didn’t think he’d be calling it that for long.
“Where are we headed?” asked Lily, narrowly beating everyone to the question.
“Away is good enough for now,” Fitz replied. And that might not be easy if Department 9 still retained as much influence as he suspected.
“Signal intercept,” said Zavage. “Militia fighter craft have scrambled from polar airbase to the north.”
“Militia, eh?” Fitz lifted off from the landing pad. “I wonder whose side they’re on today?”
Not theirs, that was for sure. After In’Nalla’s death, the Militia in Kaylingen had negotiated a ceasefire with Gzeiter’s surviving troops, which allowed the remaining Panhandlers to leave the city unmolested. Since then, the Militia had heavily reinforced their presence in the capital but had declined to take a view on the ‘internal matter’ of who should rule Eiylah-Bremah, so long as they followed the requirements of federal law. The long war with RevRec was over. For now, at least.
With those fighters scrambling, though, it looked as if Chimera Company’s war with Department 9 was anything but over.
Bronze looked up from the navigator’s position, where Izza should rightfully be. “There are several pre-calculated courses for jumps initiated from the L5 point in Eiylah-Bremah’s interaction with its primary moon.”
Fitz engaged the primary drives and soared for the black. He gave Bronze a searching look. Although the man didn’t have the pretty green face or the beautiful marbled eyes of the one he dearly wanted sitting beside him, he was nonetheless turning out to be an asset. “Very good. Pick one at random. L5, here we come.”
“Militia fighters are ordering us to land,” said Zavage.
“Tell them something suitably rude.”
A holographic tactical display emerged automatically. “Belay that.” The screen showed that the fighters had launched a fan of missiles. “And hold tight.”
The engines roared as Fitz pushed the throttles to the stops.
More screens appeared, feeding him data that made his eyes pop.
The air was rolling freely past her bows, having been charged and deflected by a front shield projector.
The speed was on par with the atmospheric fighter craft trying to kill them, which made this one glorious racing boat.
“My goodness,” he muttered in awe. “I think I’m in love.”
* * * * *
Chapter 61: Vetch Arunsen
Once, it had been a great temple.
In its heyday, the air had been pungent with lit censers, its cloisters patrolled by bloated holy priests carried on the shoulders of acolytes, who would not allow the holy feet of the priests to be sullied by contact with the stone floors. Allied groups of these elevated great ones would patrol in formation like fighter craft, trapping opponents from rival religious schools and engaging them from all sides in unrestrained theological debate.
That’s what Fitz had told them when he landed on the deserted planet of Milsungamka in their stolen luxury space yacht, a ship Fitz had renamed Ghost Shark.
Vetch hadn’t paid much attention at the time. He’d had something far more pressing on his mind.
Whatever its past glorie
s, the temple was deserted now, just a single tower of cracked stone poking out from a mound of fine red desert sand.
With Vetch accompanying him, Fitz had climbed down into the dark bowels of the temple complex, making use of ropes and tunnel borers where the stairwells and passageways were blocked by sand or broken masonry and, in one case, by a huge mound of bones that reached the ceiling. Twists of sinew were still attached to some of the bones. Eyeballs stared from skull sockets. The place gave Vetch the creeps.
Fitz had insisted Vetch bring Lucerne with him, and after seeing this mound of death, he gripped his hammer tighter and sharpened his eyes.
A short distance farther, they’d encountered an ornate fireplace with a hearth mostly filled with sand.
“Keep watch,” Fitz had ordered, “while I dig.”
And so, Vetch patrolled the ancient corridor lit by a perimeter of glow globes and imagined what stories the stone walls could tell.
“Won’t Nyluga-Ree kill you and take the data?” Vetch asked after a few minutes of silence, mostly to hear the comforting sound of his own voice. He didn’t expect a straight answer to the question they had asked many times, but it was a matter that had been uppermost on everyone’s mind since Ghost Shark landed. Everyone’s except, apparently, Fitz’s.
They were here to make a data pickup and then conduct an exchange with Nyluga-Ree, the crime boss Fitz had been running from ever since Vetch had met him.
“Oh, don’t you worry,” Fitz replied cheerfully, “all this talk of murder is overblown nonsense.”
“Are you saying she doesn’t want you dead?”
Fitz paused his digging. “The Outer Torellian Commerce Guild is like a big, happy family. We have occasional family disagreements, but we always come together. Trust me.”
“Trust me.” Vetch laughed. “Do we have any choice?”
Fitz stood and gave him a comradely slap on the shoulder. “Good man.” He held up his prize—a small metal box displaying the logo of a popular brand of fruit-flavored sweets. “When she gets her sweaty hands on this, Ree will love us. C’mon, let’s get topside. She’ll be waiting for us.”
* * * * *
Chapter 62: Vetch Arunsen
“Payment, ma’am.”
Fitz handed over the sweet tin to Maycey or Kaycey, the two Kayrissan bodyguards who were indistinguishable as far as Vetch was concerned. Both cat-women had sleek fur, striped in shades of bronze and verdigris, and were armed with power lances.
The Kayrissan opened the tin and sniffed its contents.
Fitz had told Vetch it contained data on the ancient mystery ship they’d chased from Rho-Torkis. Who had uncovered the info and how? He’d refused to answer. Maybe it was Kanha-Wei or, perhaps, Izza Zan Fey was still working with her estranged husband. It was difficult to be sure of anything with his new CO.
The cat-woman handed the box over to her mistress who was glaring at Fitz from her floating basket.
Unlike her svelte bodyguards, who moved with the grace of ninja ballet dancers, Nyluga-Ree looked like a fat, sweaty baby in a loincloth. A shocking pink baby.
Vetch had never seen a Glaenwi before, but Fitz had explained the species came from a frigid world, which meant Nyluga-Ree’s people generated enormous internal body heat.
He had also said to never, ever call Nyluga-Ree a flamingo.
Or to stare at the array of brooding pouches that coated her belly, especially at any which were in use.
But most important of all, Fitz had warned them to remember that Nyluga-Ree was not a direct physical threat. The cat sisters were the deadliest assassins in the sector, so Fitz’s Chimera Company escort of Vetch, Lily, and Darant focused on them.
Nyluga-Ree looked at Fitz the way Vetch liked to look at a glass of cold beer next to a plate of hot meat pie. “Down payment,” she said in a voice that sounded like a pressure leak. “This is a first installment only. I require more.”
“Of course,” said Fitz. “But…well, I seem to have many masters and mistresses at present. There’s one in particular—a rather peculiar old man—that I don’t like to keep waiting. Maybe I should make him happy next.”
“Lord Khallini is a force to be reckoned with,” Ree conceded, “but he doesn’t own you. I do.”
“Own? I think that’s putting it a little strongly.”
“Never forget, I hold the key to your heart, human.”
Fitz frowned, apparently confused “Do you mean that old green girl I used to hang around with? Hah! I think not.”
“Zan Fey loves you still,” Ree hissed. “And no matter what you tell yourself about her, I know she will always be a lever to control you.”
“Hey, I thought we were friends now?”
Nyluga-Ree shook her body, spraying Fitz with sweat. What that meant in a Glaenwi, Vetch didn’t know, but he took his cue from the Kayrissan cat-women. They appeared as calmly aloof as ever.
Vetch wanted to know what it would feel like to stroke that beautiful fur.
Laughing from deep within her belly, Ree held out a glossy pink hand whose fingers were adorned with chunky rings.
Fitz bowed before kissing the proffered hand.
“Our rift is healed,” said Ree. “Temporarily. You may conduct your business with Lord Khallini before returning to me for further instructions.”
The cool desert air shimmered. Suddenly, ten armed Zhoogenes drew back their cloaks and stepped out of nowhere, blasters at the low ready. They surrounded Fitz and his escort.
Stealth cloaks.
Vetch lifted his hammer.
Darant and Lily set their blasters free, the charge packs humming with threat.
“I remind you that I can reach you anywhere, should I choose,” said Ree.
“Don’t underestimate Chimera Company,” announced Sybutu. He shimmered into existence atop a dune fifty feet away to one flank, aiming a tripod-mounted SFG gun at Ree. Zavage knelt beside him, ready to serve the plentiful ammo drums. Their appearance surprised the hell out of Vetch. When the two jacks had activated the stealth box they found waiting for them when they landed, they had been in a completely different position.
Different tech from that of the Zhoogenes in the stealth cloaks but similar outcome.
“We have many surprises,” added Lantosh, who stayed hidden in her stealth box with Bronze, but her voice appeared to whisper through the air from every direction at once.
“I shall take your inventiveness under advisement,” said Ree, who appeared delighted by this display, unlike the Kayrissans, whose fur stood on end. “You humans continue to amuse me. Such an exciting species to outwit. It is what keeps you alive. Don’t ever make the mistake of becoming predictable, Fitzwilliam. The day I tire of you is the day you die.”
* * * * *
Chapter 63: Vetch Arunsen
“Hold 1 is secure, Captain. Proceeding to Hold 2.”
“Copy that,” Fitz responded over the intercom.
Fitz had sent everyone to scour Ghost Shark for any signs of Nyluga-Ree shenanigans. Vetch suspected the exercise was just as much about deflecting questions about why they were dealing with the crime boss. But for now, at least, he was still treating Fitz as his commanding officer.
As he was walking out of the hold, Vetch stopped and sniffed the air.
He’d been a scrawler as a kid, spray painting tags and wry commentary on public buildings. He would recognize the odor of quick dry paint anywhere. Even here.
Following his nose, he walked over to a bulkhead panel.
It looked the same as the others—dirty, bare metal. Unlike the fancier parts of Ghost Shark, the hold obviously hadn’t warranted valet treatment.
Then his eyes took in what they were really seeing.
The panel had been painted to look like the others, but something about it was different.
He heard a faint noise behind him and turned to see one of Ree’s cat-women swinging her power lance at his head.
Vetch ducked, but he wasn’t quite fast enough. The
lance struck a glancing blow on top of his head, which was bad enough, but it also set lightning bolts buzzing around the inside of his skull.
Instinctively, he flung his arms out as he fought to stay conscious, only to have them grabbed and pinned behind him.
He tried to fight free, but his head was still buzzing with static from the power lance, and his muscles were refusing to obey orders.
“We had planned on seizing one of the human females,” whispered the cat-woman just behind his left ear.
“But then you volunteered yourself for the role,” said her sister into his right.
Two of them! Vetch didn’t think he was getting out of this.
They pushed him through the bulkhead. Vetch was too confused to be sure what was happening, but it seemed the assassins had attached an airlock to Ghost Shark’s hull and cut through into the hold without raising an alarm.
Together, they cycled through the airlock and into a tiny bubble-craft on the far side. It detached and sped away into space.
Leaving her sister to pilot the craft, the other Kayrissan regarded Vetch through green, slitted eyes. “Our mistress is far too indulgent with her favorite human,” she said, “but even Nyluga-Ree realizes Fitzwilliam is headstrong. As her hostage, you will help bring him to heel.”
“And if you don’t,” said the pilot, “she’ll have you stuffed and mounted in her trophy room. One hundred credits says the bearded human will be a taxidermy display before the year is out.”
The other sister purred as she again inspected Vetch. “Unacceptable. I counter-wager he will still be alive and have all his limbs one hundred standard days from now.”
“One hundred and twenty days and two hundred credits.”
“Agreed.”
The Kayrissan caressed Vetch’s cheek with the back of her hand. Her touch was so smooth, it made puppies and freshly changed babies feel like wire wool and sandpaper. “Don’t give me cause to dislike you, human. You must stay alive for a few months. After that, you are free to die.”
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