Nika said to Josune, “Look after him. Please. And feed Roystan. He’ll need constant replenishment until he builds up some reserve.”
Josune nodded. There was nothing she could do right now, but that didn’t mean she planned to do nothing.
Benedict unlocked the door.
Nika stepped out and he locked the door behind her.
Alejandro took out his blaster, turned, and took aim.
Leonard Wickmore pushed the nozzle to the floor.
Josune rolled Snow away. The blaster melted the bar at the bottom.
“Are you a complete idiot?” Wickmore demanded. “If she has no one to protect, she won’t cooperate.”
The handsome features scowled. Even the scowl was attractive. How much of that was Nika’s work?
Wickmore smiled. “Alejandro will take you back to your studio.” Nika’s hands trembled, but that was the only outward sign. “Enjoy the journey. And Alejandro.”
“Executive?”
“I want her capable of operating that machine when I get there.”
“That won’t be a problem, sir.” Alejandro smiled at Nika.
The smile made Josune shiver. Crouched by Snow, she watched them walk out. She’d never felt so helpless.
* * *
• • •
Wickmore turned to Benedict. “Is Roystan talking yet?”
“He refuses to say anything until he sees his crew.” He looked at Snow. “We should take that one to the doctor if you want Roystan to cooperate.”
“We only need him long enough to tell us what he knows. I’m not happy with the time it’s taking to get that information.”
“We might need him longer than a few answers. Taki Feyodor was on to something. She was excited. That day on Pisces III she claimed to have the final piece she needed to lead us to the Goberling find. That piece was Roystan.” Benedict looked into the cell. “Feyodor was obsessed, but she did not believe indiscriminately.”
“Mmmh.” Wickmore looked back at Snow. “Leave this one. It’s time Roystan learned what will happen if he doesn’t cooperate. Get me answers. Have them for me before I am forced to return.”
* * *
• • •
Snow could breathe, at least, with difficulty. Josune knelt beside him. “What can I do?”
“She should have told me who she was.” It came out as a hoarse sob. She had to listen closely to decipher it. “She let me say all those things.” Snow looked up at Josune. “She knew what I thought of her.”
“Snow, is your throat going to bruise anymore?” How much swelling could it take before he couldn’t breathe?
“I want to die.”
She bit back the urge to tell him to pull himself together. “What can I do for your arm, then?”
Snow shrugged.
“Snow.”
His hoarse whisper didn’t stop. “She’s still crazy, you know.”
“Should you be talking?” Or should he keep talking, to continue getting air into his lungs?
“She might be a genius.” The whisper went high and his voice faded. She had to lip-read. “But she’s still crazy.”
Nika was Nika, and Snow would come to appreciate her in time.
The prison door opened. Josune moved in front of Snow to shield him.
Pol sidled in.
Some people didn’t realize the best way to be furtive was to act naturally.
“They’re bringing Roystan down. He won’t cooperate until he sees you in person.” Pol slipped a small blaster through the bars. “Be ready.”
She froze as Benedict and a guard entered with Roystan. The blaster dropped from her hands. Josune caught it.
Roystan was all skeletal bones and angles. Josune wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t smiled. That same crooked smile she knew so well.
“Gods,” Carlos said.
“You’re spending too much time down here, Pol.” Benedict looked at the guard with him. “She gave them something. Find out what it was.”
They were out of time.
Josune held the blaster out to the guard and hoped it was loaded. She wouldn’t put it past Pol to set them up. She raised her other hand to her head, offering surrender. Her fingers closed around the sparker in her hair. She aimed it at Benedict. Aimed at his eye, hit his leg instead. Damn. She jumped left, blasted the guard, and aimed again for Benedict.
Benedict spun sideways, ignoring his injury. His weapon was out, aimed at Josune.
Roystan kicked Benedict’s damaged leg, unbalancing him. The blast from Benedict’s weapon hit the ceiling. Roystan was tossed aside. Benedict aimed again and went down as Roystan flung himself back into the fight. Benedict’s blast burned the top of Josune’s arm. Roystan grabbed the blaster and forced it up. Benedict shook him loose.
Josune fired at the lock and kicked the door. It opened. She exited with a rush of relief—and adrenaline—and grabbed Benedict’s arm. She couldn’t use her blaster. Roystan was too close.
“Behind you,” Jacques yelled, and Josune swung around, pulling the sparker from her hair. Another guard. She fired. Sparker and blaster sent a molten stream of lightning the guard’s way.
She swung back to Benedict, who grabbed Roystan and pulled him in front for a shield. Roystan struggled to get free, but he had no strength left. Benedict lined up his weapon again.
Josune aimed her sparker at his eye and fired. Benedict went down, hand spasming. The blaster missed Roystan by a finger’s width.
She jammed the sparker into Benedict’s enhanced eye, raised herself so she wouldn’t be caught by the feedback, and pressed the button. Then she grabbed the hand holding the blaster and turned on him while he still convulsed. Roystan broke free. Josune turned both blaster and sparker on Benedict, until he stilled permanently.
This was for her crewmates.
“Josune,” Roystan said, insistent behind her. “He’s dead. And your sparker will short the whole station any moment.” He sounded as if he’d said it more than once.
It was done.
Roystan put a hand on her shoulder. “Better?”
“It is, actually.” The heaviness that had weighed her down since the Hassim had nullspaced in front of her was gone, the noise in her head, silenced. Avenged.
“Good.”
“Are you okay?”
“I haven’t felt this good in years.” He glanced at the door. “We should go.”
She nodded and picked up Benedict’s blaster as she stood. “Jacques, Carlos, help Roystan. Snow, can you get up?”
Snow hardly seemed to realize what had happened, but after a moment he pulled himself up with his good arm.
“You can’t be Josune,” Pol said. “You lied to me.”
Pol held a weapon. Had she picked it up from the dead guard? Pol might use it on her soon, given she’d been so keen to find Josune Arriola.
“How can we get off this station?”
“We’re not trusting her,” Carlos said.
Josune trusted Pol to look out for herself, and right now Pol was in as much danger as they were.
“A shuttle leaves every hour to Burnley Hub.”
Snow gave a hoarse laugh. “The Hub? We’d be welcomed with open arms, I don’t think.”
At least, that was what Josune thought he said.
“We can still ship out from there,” Roystan said. “A quick in and out. If Pol books the fares.”
“No way. She’s not welcome.”
“After what she’s done?”
Jacques and Carlos spoke together. Josune wanted to protest as well, but Roystan’s plan was sound. They were wanted on the Hub.
“I can—”
She almost missed the slight shake of Roystan’s head.
Pol looked at Josune, looked at her weapon. It wasn’t hard to
guess what she was thinking. “We’ll go to Pisces III.”
What did she think was there? Feyodor had left Pisces III, moved on to The Road. But Josune didn’t care if it got them off this station.
Roystan rubbed his nose. “We could do that. Yes.”
Snow mangled his words getting them out. “We have to rescue—”
“Not the direct route, though,” Roystan said, over the top of him. “If Benedict talked to his boss, that’s where they’ll expect us to go.”
“But we—”
Carlos put a hand to Snow’s shoulder. There was pressure behind it, judging from Snow’s wince.
“If you come along, Pol, you have to pay,” Roystan said. “You took all our funds. And you’re the only one not on a wanted list.”
Pol looked at Josune, then looked away, her gaze sliding down to the blaster in her hand and the sparker in Josune’s. “Sure.”
Jacques growled, low in his chest.
Roystan waved Pol in front of him. “Lead the way.” He followed her out the door, walking like a man who’d run a marathon.
Josune pocketed her sparker and pushed past Carlos and Jacques to support him, though she knew she should have been on guard. “You two, keep watch.” It was good to hold him, even for a moment.
She could feel every rib. “What did Nika do to him, Snow?” He was alive. That was important.
Snow enunciated every word carefully. “She cannibalizes bodies.”
Roystan’s stomach growled then. Everyone looked at him. He looked back sheepishly. “I confess, I’m a little hungry right now.”
37
NIKA RIK TERRI
The walk through the station to Alejandro’s private yacht gave Nika time to think. To remember the first rule. Never show Alejandro how frightened she was. He liked that too much.
She glanced at a trader as they passed. He turned away, avoided eye contact. An enforcement officer approached. Alejandro raised his head, eyes narrowed. The officer nodded and turned away. No one lingered.
The yacht they boarded was nothing like Roystan’s The Road. The passage walls were celadon blue, the carpet a luxurious light charcoal. Nika missed The Road already. She should have told Josune how old Roystan was. It was important, somehow.
The vibration under her feet changed subtly as the ship started to move. Not long after, they nullspaced. Nika shivered. Her friends were too far away now to help. And she was too far away to help them.
Alejandro smiled at the shiver. “Worried?”
“Cold.” She wasn’t. She was hot, if anything. Sweating under her pretended indifference.
The room they entered was a stark contrast to the luxury they had walked through. White walls. White light. A single white table. Two white chairs. There was no other furniture.
Nika hadn’t expected an interrogation room on a luxury yacht.
Alejandro pushed her into a chair, stepped back to look at her, then came forward to wind a lock of hair around his finger.
“You must have been desperate to go so far to disguise yourself. A Dietel, no less.”
Nika shrugged.
He jerked her head back by pulling on the hair. “Although—your eyes are amazing.”
The whole of her had been amazing, before the Dietel.
He ran a hand over her face. A gentle caress. She’d loved it once. Now it jangled on her nerves as she waited for what was to follow.
“But then, your eyes always are.”
Alejandro touched a finger to her nose. “I should have known you from that. But there are so many copies nowadays, aren’t there.”
He moved his hand back to her cheek, then slapped her. Hard.
“You gave Tamati my body.”
Of course she’d shown him the design. She’d been proud of it. Still was.
“You let him use the exchanger, use your body?”
“It’s not as if I had a choice.”
He grabbed her arm, twisted it. “Don’t get smart.”
Nika wasn’t going to scream. She wasn’t going to beg. In the early days she had done that, to stop the pain. But that only encouraged him. “Don’t forget your boss wants me to unlock the exchanger. I can’t do that with a broken arm.”
For a minute, she thought Alejandro would break her arm regardless. He eased off at the last minute. He always knew the breaking point. Nika was tempted to push it, to get him in trouble with his boss. But if she wasn’t whole she wouldn’t be able to run.
He stepped away, started to pace. His walk—the elegant, animal grace—was the first thing she’d noticed about him.
“Executive Wickmore visited your studio last week. Now I know why.”
How did he know who did and didn’t visit the studio? Was he watching it?
“Tamati told him about the exchanger.” He turned to Nika. “You should have denied it.”
As if she could have done that with a weapon in her face. “You shouldn’t have told Tamati about it in the first place.”
Alejandro leaned close, his beautiful eyes hard. “You put me in a difficult situation with the executive, because I hadn’t mentioned it.” He kicked her chair over. “If you hadn’t run, no one would have known. You’d be dead and I wouldn’t be out of favor, would I?”
The pendant slipped out from Nika’s coverall. She closed her hand around it.
Alejandro kicked her. “Get up.”
Nika got up.
“Chair.”
She righted the chair, glanced at Alejandro, who was pacing again, slipped the pendant back under her coverall, and sat down.
“You instigated my disgrace.”
If she took Alejandro out now, she wouldn’t get out the door alive, let alone off the ship. But if by some miracle she did escape, there was still Tamati. He would wait forever. And Snow had given away her name. All that angst and planning, useless in a matter of weeks.
Roystan, Josune, and Snow were probably all dead by now. And Carlos and Jacques. Or on one of the cattle ships Snow dreaded so much.
Don’t think about that. Think of a plan. What would Josune do? She’d wait to do the most damage possible. That would be when Tamati, Wickmore, and Alejandro were all together at her studio.
She could last that long. No one here knew she had a weapon. She would take out as many as she could.
The chair smashed to the floor again. Her head smacked against the table leg. Alejandro loomed over her. “You’re not listening to me.”
She looked up at him. She had learned—the hard way—that tuning out when Alejandro was about to teach her a lesson was the worst thing she could do.
“Thank you.” Alejandro smiled. He moved his hands around her face in a gentle caress. “You shouldn’t have gotten me into trouble with my boss.”
38
JOSUNE ARRIOLA
They caught the shuttle with time to spare, and an hour later they were at the Hub.
“Remember,” Roystan said, as Pol ordered tickets, “not the direct route. They’ll be waiting for us.”
Pol said, “There’s one here that goes to Lesser Sirius. Then to Cambon, Achilles, and on to Pisces III.”
Josune wasn’t the only one frowning to hide her smile.
“I suppose it’s enough delay,” Roystan said.
“Good.”
Pol booked a four-berth cabin for the men. “Josune and I will share.”
“I think we should—”
“I’ll be fine,” Josune said. Not that she had any intention of staying in a room with Pol. “Let’s grab some food and take it back to the boys’ cabin.”
There was no dining room, only a row of vending machines down one corridor. Pol certainly hadn’t wasted money on luxury tickets.
Josune stopped at the vending machines, coded for purchase, and started hitting buttons randomly. “Jacques
, what can Roystan eat?”
“Corasbread,” Jacques said. “That grain porridge.”
She hit those buttons, too.
Two noisy construction workers queued behind them. “Someone’s hungry.”
She hoped they were construction workers. “We won’t be long.”
“I know how you feel,” one of the workers said. “I’m starved myself.”
“I’ll wait. Take the fast shuttle down to Lesser Sirius,” the other said. “Get a decent meal before we have to catch the transport.”
“At a hundred credits. You’ve got to be desperate.”
“I am. I want real food and I’ve nothing else to spend my credits on.”
Josune gathered their packages—some hot, some cold—and dumped them into Jacques’s arms. “All yours.”
Roystan said something quiet to the worker who wanted a better meal. She rolled her eyes. “Not me.”
Every second they delayed was one more second someone could recognize them.
Roystan shared a final laugh with the worker and moved on. Josune’s back itched all the way down to the cabin.
Pol came with them.
Josune wasn’t the only one who heaved a sigh of relief as the door closed. Roystan leaned back and took the food package Jacques pushed toward him.
“I don’t know what that modder did to you,” Pol said to Roystan. “But she certainly made a mess.”
“She saved his life.” Snow still spoke in a hoarse whisper, but he looked to be breathing more easily.
“He doesn’t look very saved,” Pol said.
“You have no idea how hard that was.” Snow’s whisper was a cross between reverence and disbelief.
Roystan laughed. “I feel better than I have in years. My skin.” He flexed his free hand, held it up. “Look. She’s a miracle worker.”
Josune looked at the hand. She couldn’t see what he meant.
Roystan closed his fingers around hers. “And to recognize—” He faded away. Josune thought it was discretion that silenced him.
Snow turned to Roystan. “Giwari has been dead eighty years.”
“Yes, he has.”
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