Oily liquid pooled here and there, covered over with some kind of algae that was a dark purple and vivid orange.
They threaded their way through the narrow space around stacked piles of debris. When he looked up, he saw Oberon’s green-tinted sky above, just visible between the buildings.
At last, Quince stopped, climbing off her bike and palming an unassuming door. It looked new—strangely out of place in this run-down district. It slid open, wide enough for her cycle to pass through, and she slipped inside with the bike, gesturing for Xander to follow her. They climbed off his cycle, and Xander pulled it inside after them.
As the door slid closed behind them, the room lit up, revealing a large, white space. Jameson felt Xander’s body stiffen. Following his gaze, he saw the group of men standing on the edge of the room, waiting for them.
The building was an old warehouse, but it had been cleaned up and modernized inside. Plas pallets were neatly stacked in one corner, and the building boasted a wide-open floor plan with new cement floors and a large roll-up door on the far end.
He returned his gaze to the four men. They were all sharply dressed. Like mafia guys in the Old Earth serials.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Xander hissed as his bike settled to the ground. He glared at the man across the room, his whole body tense.
“Relax, Xander.” Quince put a hand on his shoulder. “We need him.”
Xander spat. “I don’t like it.”
Quince gestured at him to stay put and strolled alone toward the group of men. “Gentlemen, thank you for meeting us here.”
The biggest of the men, a giant guy with red hair and a full bushy beard, stepped forward to shake Quince’s hand. “Your message said you had something of interest to us. I had no idea it was something so valuable.” His brown, close-set eyes looked directly at Xander. He looked hungry. “I’ve missed that one.”
Quince shook her head. “I’m sorry, Rogan, but he’s not on offer.” She ignored his muted growl. “I’ve got something even better for you.”
Rogan’s eyebrow arched. “It would have to be much more valuable to make up for such a loss.” His gaze remained fixed on Xander, who squirmed.
Jameson wondered what exactly this man had done to Xander to make the self-confident ass act so squirrelly.
Quince glanced back at them and grinned. “Yes, he is quite a catch,” she acknowledged. “But what if I could get you back in on the pith trade instead?”
Rogan’s attention snapped back to her. “Don’t play games with me,” he growled. “Pith is dead. No one’s run any in the last three months.”
His men shifted as one, reaching for what Jameson assumed were weapons. “Oh crap,” he whispered and looked around wildly. There was nowhere to run.
“Correction.” Quince put her hands on her hips, looking as confident as Jameson didn’t feel. “It was dead. Things are going to change soon, and someone’s going to make a helluva lot of money when they do.”
Xander was looking at Quince as if he’d never seen her before.
Rogan registered a flicker of interest. His men put their hands back in their pockets. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because I brought this for you.” Very slowly, she reached into her own pocket and pulled out a small plastic box about a hand’s width wide. She placed her palm on the surface, and the device hummed and split open. She took out a sealed vial filled with an inky black liquid and handed it to Rogan.
He took it reverently, looking down at it, his mouth dropping open.
“What is it?” Jameson whispered. It was small, dwarfed by the size of Rogan’s hand.
“About a quarter million crits’ worth of pith.” Xander whistled softly, staring at Quince. “Who are you?” he asked, low enough that only Jameson could hear him.
“That’s yours, with plenty more to come,” Quince said. “But only if the three of us walk out of here alive, with anonymous transportation out of the city.”
Rogan stared down at the pith for a moment more, seeming transfixed. Then he looked up, nodding slowly. “Whatever you need.” He didn’t even look at Xander. He turned to one of his men, a short gentleman who looked more like a majordomo than a common thug. “Dawson, make sure this woman gets everything she asks for.” He nodded at Quince.
“Your assistance is much appreciated.” She flashed him an insolent grin.
Rogan held up his meaty fist in her face. “I warn you. Fuck with me and I’ll string you all up and bleed you dry. Even that one.” He pointed at Xander, who paled. Then Rogan turned and beckoned for the rest of his men to follow him out the door.
“So what can I get for you?” Dawson asked. The man was short, with carefully trimmed graying hair and a sharp, rat-like face. Probably an accountant.
“I have a list.” They touched wrists, and she slitted the information over to him.
He closed his eyes to review her requests. He blinked and nodded. “I’ll see to it.” Then he followed the others out of the room.
Quince turned back to find Xander and Jameson staring at her with mouths open wide. “What?” she asked, frowning.
“What the hell was that about?” Xander asked, dismounting from his bike.
“We needed a safe way out of here, so I made a deal.”
“We couldn’t just ride out? You had to go to him?” Xander looked like he was ready to spit. “We were just attacked by a Syndicate hoversport. Or maybe they were OberCorp? This is fucking insane.”
Quince shook her head. “Just a minute.” She rummaged through her saddlebags and pulled out a little black ball about the size of her thumb. She rubbed it between her palms and then threw it into the air. It bobbed about a foot and then stopped, hovering above them, spinning and giving off a flickering silver light. “Okay, now it’s safe to talk. No one can listen in on us under the distortion field,” she explained to Jameson. “Those men who attacked you weren’t Syndicate—they were OberCorp. We need a way to slip out of the city that won’t trigger any of their alarms, and the Syndicate can provide that for us.”
Jameson was confused. “OberCorp brought me in to investigate the pith shortage. They sent Xander to meet me. Why would they attack us?”
Quince shook her head. “OberCorp didn’t bring you in. I did.”
Xander frowned. “So there never was a ‘job’?”
Jameson watched them go back and forth, a frown on his face.
“Not in the sense that you mean, no.”
“And how did you come across so much pith? I know you don’t make that much crit in a year.”
“Let’s just say I have my sources.”
Jameson grew tired of waiting to ask his own question. He pushed them apart. “Enough! I think I’m entitled to ask what the hell is going on here too. I arrive on-planet, and you”—he jabbed a finger at Xander’s chest—“pick me up at the immigration station, claiming to be an OberCorp representative. Then you take me on a wild ride to some storage unit in a godforsaken part of this crap town.”
“I thought—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” He dismissed Xander with a wave. “In no time, we are besieged by a bunch of armed hoodlums shooting at us with pulse pistols.”
“Actually, I was the one with the pulse pistol—”
“Shut the f….” He took a deep breath and recovered his composure, straightening his missing jacket out of habit and dismayed to find it wasn’t there. “Just. Let. Me. Finish. Then you—” He spun around to face Quince. “—come riding in like an old-fashioned cowboy posse and take out an entire freaking hoversport like it’s no big fucking deal. Now you tell us you orchestrated this whole thing? Who the hell were those people, and why did one of them look like he wanted to eat poor Xander alive?”
“You done?” Xander asked, his voice sharp.
“Yeah, I guess so.” It had felt good to blow off a little steam. He never let himself go off like that. Once when he’d tried at home, his father had given him forty lashes with a ridin
g crop. He’d bottled up his emotions ever since.
“First off, I’m here because I was told that OberCorp had sent me to pick up your sorry ass.” He glared at Quince as he poked Jameson in the chest, pushing him backward. “You’re damn lucky you got me.
“And second, you should be down on your knees thanking this woman for saving both of our asses out there.” He gave Jameson a withering look and turned back to their aforementioned savior. “Quince, seriously, what the hell was that?” He waved at the door, where Rogan and his men had made their exit.
“Xander and I go way back,” Quince said with a wink to Jameson. “I knew him when he was just a babe in swaddling clothes.”
There was a mental image Jameson couldn’t un-see.
“That,” she said to Xander, “will get us out of here alive, with everything we need to help Jameson on his little quest.”
“So there is a quest?” Jameson asked. “I thought you made this whole thing up out of thin air.” He frowned. “How did you know my name? We just met.”
Quince smiled her infuriating grin once again. “Oh, this isn’t the first time that we’ve met, little Jameson, but we don’t have time to go into that right now. Suffice it to say that you and I have a history of our own.”
Xander and Jameson shared a perplexed look.
Jameson decided that Xander looked pretty damned good when he was angry.
AS THEY waited for Rogan’s man to return, Xander went back over the contents of his saddlebags.
Quince handed them each a bottle of water from her own bags. “Drink up. Don’t want you getting dehydrated out there.”
Xander was sure that was meant mostly for their little off-world friend, who didn’t look like he had much wilderness experience, but he drank his anyway to set a good example.
After looking uncertainly at the two of them, Jameson shrugged and drank his own.
He’d been rushed back at his storage unit, with the attack and all, so he’d missed a few things he would’ve preferred to take. He rearranged everything to his liking, aware the whole time that Jameson was staring at him.
The man was cute when he was angry. A pompous ass, for sure, but still adorable.
“What are you looking at?” he asked finally, without bothering to turn around.
“I’ve never seen anyone with wings before.” There was a hint of awe in Jameson’s voice.
“Haven’t traveled much, then, have you?” Xander put everything back into the bags as compactly as possible and sealed them up.
He was used to being an object of derision because of his wings, which he’d had since he’d hit puberty—like a really bad case of acne that you could never hide. He couldn’t remember his parents, or even if they’d had wings themselves. Surely at least one of the must have. There had to be first-wave colonists in his family tree, somewhere. “So what do you want to know?” He turned around and leaned back on the bike, spreading his wings out behind him dramatically.
Jameson was quiet for a minute, apparently considering what he wanted to say. “Do they ever, you know, get in the way?” he asked, finally.
“What do you mean? Like when I go through a doorway?”
Jameson nodded. “Or other things….”
“When I have sex?” He stepped toward Jameson, who scrambled backward.
“Hey, I didn’t mean….”
“Are you wondering what it feels like to fuck someone with wings?” He was right in Jameson’s face now. He wrapped his black wings around the other man’s back, preventing further retreat. He cocked his head sideways. “Is that what you wanted to ask me?”
Jameson shook his head, blushing all the way to the tips of his hair. “No. I mean… I have a fiancée. I’m an upstanding Beta Tau citizen….”
Xander could practically smell the lust on him. He snorted.
“Break it up, boys,” Quince called.
Xander glared at Jameson, then reluctantly stepped backward. The little shit would have to learn not to mess with him.
“You guys about ready to get out of here? Our ride’ll be here shortly.”
Xander stared at the woman who had been like a mother to him, wondering what else she might be hiding. It seemed as if he’d always known her. Quince’s beautiful white wings were a counterpoint to his own black ones, and she’d always seemed like an angel to him.
He’d never seen her so overtly aggressive, and she had ties to Oberon City’s criminal underworld.
How had she found them at just the right time, out there in the city?
Those were questions for later. There was clearly more she wasn’t telling them.
QUINCE SENT Xander and Jameson to opposite sides of the warehouse while they waited for their ride. They were acting like hormonal teenagers, and she didn’t have time to deal with them. First things first.
She had to get them out of the city, and fast. Despite her best efforts, someone at OberCorp had apparently figured out that Xander was key to the whole pith shortage mess. She only hoped that they didn’t know about Jameson yet. She’d planned to catch up with them outside the city, but plans had a way of getting scrambled. She’d had to make the best of it.
The faint rumbling of an engine came from just outside the big roll-up door. “We have company,” she announced, glancing over at her two charges.
The back door swung open, and Dawson reappeared. “Your transportation is here,” he said with a sneer, putting his palm against the wall. The roll-up door lifted slowly, revealing a narrow street outside. There was a big ground truck parked there, waiting for them.
She had to take it on faith that Rogan would keep his word. She had seen the greed in his eyes when she had handed him the vial of pith. If he truly believed she could bring him more of it, they would be safe. But if he thought she was lying….
There was no other way forward. “Okay, boys, let’s go. Our ride’s here.”
Dawson pulled down a loading ramp from the back of the truck. “Your requested supplies are inside.” Quince climbed on her bike, starting the engine, and rode it out of the warehouse door. She drove up the ramp into the back of the truck, and climbed off the bike to secure it to the wall.
Xander followed her, with Jameson walking behind. Within a minute, they were all inside and ready to go.
Xander attached a solar power cell to the back of the truck and connected it to one of his pulse pistols in his saddlebag. “Just in case.”
Quince nodded. She peered down at Dawson, standing in the street. “We’ll be gone a week, maybe ten days in the Outland. Tell your boss that once we get back, I’ll contact him with details about the pith supply.”
“You might have Rogan fooled, but I think you’re full of shit.” Dawson glared up at her. “Don’t fuck with him. He’ll track you down to the Split if need be, and cut you and your friends into little pieces for the wereveren to eat.”
Quince jumped down from the truck, her wings spreading with a whoosh to slow her fall. She took Dawson by his collar and pushed him up against the wall of the warehouse. “Don’t threaten me, little man.” He tried to push her off, but she just pushed back harder, forcing him up against the rough concrete wall of the warehouse. “You’re not Rogan, and he’s not here to protect you. I’ll keep my word. I always do. Not because some little shit like you told me to.” She let him go and climbed back up into the truck.
Dawson looked shaken. He didn’t say anything more, just put up the ramp and closed the door to the truck.
Quince grinned. That had felt good. She needed to work out her nerves from time to time.
This motor-driven transport truck was a lot more primitive than what she was used to, but they had a better chance of flying under the radar in it. Trucks like this came in and out of the city all the time, laden with merchandise bound for the other cities along the coast or the outer suburbs, and no one gave them a second glance.
She pulled a glow sphere out of her pocket and spun it up, hanging it in the air in the middle of the truck�
��s cargo hold. The engine of the petrochemical-fueled truck started up, and the vehicle began to rumble forward through the city streets.
“Where are they taking us?” Xander asked.
“Out of the city. I made arrangements for them to drop us at the edge of the Outland, where we’re least likely to be seen and tracked.” She set about transferring the supplies from their crates in the back of the truck into her saddlebags.
“By OberCorp?” Jameson asked.
Quince looked at Jameson, really looked at him for the first time since she’d caught up to the two of them. This man, who she had known as a small child so many years ago.
He didn’t even remember. How could he?
Now he was grown to adulthood, sturdy and handsome, if a bit bookish and stuffy. The next few days would shake most of that out of him. “Yes, OberCorp. Or other parts of the Syndicate.”
“They seem to be after Xander in particular.” Jameson glanced at his rival.
Quince nodded. “For reasons which I’ll explain later. Right now we need to deactivate anything they might use to track us.”
Xander frowned. “What do you mean?”
“This.” She pulled out a disruptor tool from her saddlebags. She charged it and applied it to her right wrist.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jameson said. He reached to stop her, but he was too slow. She activated the disruptor, and pain seared through her arm. The circuits fried under her skin, and a puff of acrid smoke rose from her wrist.
When she opened her eyes, she was sitting on the bed of the truck. Pain still pulsed through her arm, but it had subsided a little bit.
“Are you insane?” Jameson asked, his eyes wide. “There is no way I am going to let you short out my interface or my PA.”
She could see he was trying to get a message out onto the grid. “Won’t work. I’ve had you blocked from grid access since you landed.”
Jameson’s face turned red. “You had no right.”
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