by M. D. Cooper
Strong arms caught her around her midsection and righted her. She got her feet under her and straightened as they turned toward Kippy, drawing in a breath of relief.
She realized he hadn’t dropped his arms, so they stood on the sidewalk with his arms around her, and her face inches from his.
It felt…really good. Not funny or awkward or embarrassing. Just really good.
He was looking at her, and seeing her, like no one else ever saw her. Reece was looking right back, and not pulling away.
Why was he so ridiculously good looking? Tonight, especially, he seemed better looking than he had ever been in his life, with his short, tousled curls and the way the light made his eyes look golden.
Yeah, it was probably the perihelion light.
Except his lips looked really nice, too, and the light seemed unlikely to have any input on that.
It was Kippy, so it should probably feel weird, but it didn’t. It felt like everything was perfect. So she closed the distance between them and when he didn’t pull away either, she kissed him in broad daylight on a downtown avenue, with the heat of the hot season making them melt together.
The taxi engine cycled to a hibernation phase, having sat idling for so long. The sound made her realize they were undoubtedly being watched, and she had no idea how much time had passed.
She drew back slightly, then peeked at him.
He wasn’t smiling, like he usually did. He looked dead serious, but he still hadn’t let her go.
Awkwardness arrived, making up for its missed opportunity earlier. “I’ll…see you tomorrow.” As she said it, it sounded like more of a promise than a casual goodbye.
He let his arms slide away to his sides. “Okay.”
She got into the taxi and he closed the door for her. Reece watched Kippy until he was out of view, then sank into the seat.
Oh.
Wow.
COMBINE
DATE: 05.15.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Ohiyo, Akonwara
REGION: Machete System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
“You okay?” Trey asked Reece the next morning.
She finished pouring her third cup of coffee. “Yeah. I didn’t sleep well. Kept having weird dreams.”
“Keyed up about Operation Pineapple?”
“Operation what?” She paused in the middle of adding cream to her cup.
“That’s what I decided to call it. It has a certain…ring…to it. Get it?”
She gulped her coffee, even though it was a little too hot. “Pineapple rings. I get it. Good one.”
He looked disappointed. “What time will Sage be in?”
“According to his assistant, in two hours. I’ll ambush him before his first meeting.”
“Assuming he agrees, you’ll meet me at H&P with the supplies?” He set his coffee cup in the autowash.
“Yep.” Thankfully, the coffee had started to kick in and Reece felt its energy running through her veins.
“Okay, then. I’m going to get ready. Nizhoni mentioned meeting Dex, so I’m going to take him with me.”
“In his crate?” she wasn’t sure how people on the metro would react to the monkey.
“I’ll bring it just in case, but I’m going to try letting him sit on my shoulder. I need to train him to be okay with going out in public. He just gets too lonely when he’s on his own.”
“Okay. Good luck with that.”
He eyed her suspiciously.
“I mean it,” she said. “I hope it works out. He does get lonely. If he could go out with you, it would be good for him.”
“Do you think people will object?”
She hesitated. “Well, it’s weird, but to the people here, you’re weird. So maybe it will just make sense?”
He smiled. “Maybe. We won’t know until we try.”
“I like your enterprising spirit,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. You almost never say anything nice about me.”
She gave him a warning look. “Keep making a big deal about it, and I’ll make that the rule.”
He held his hands up in front of him. “Nope! No big deal! Leaving now to get ready!”
He hurried out of the room.
* * * * *
“It’s fraud.” Sage frowned at her.
Not exactly the reaction she was hoping for. Sitting across from him in his office, she tried reframing his statement.
“It’s fraud for the greater good.”
“Explain that to me.”
She took a breath and launched into her pitch. “All you have to do is agree to let us use your name, while you admit to some wrongdoing you didn’t do in a sealed settlement. You’ll face no consequences—we’ll stipulate that you and the victim of the wrongdoing have agreed to settle things between yourselves, and that will be the end of it. We’ll have the papers signed and recognized before we even do anything.”
“When will I get those papers, then?”
She’d come prepared. She looked quickly to her right and activated a send function. “Right now.”
“You just sent them, didn’t you?” he asked.
“I did.”
He shook his head. “A Link like that is so creepy.”
“Maybe. But it’s convenient as hell.” She smiled brightly.
He continued to eye her uneasily, and Reece had the briefest glimpse of what it might be like to be Trey.
“So are you in?” she prompted.
“You’ll cut your security design fee by half and agree to do periodic checkups to ensure that standards are being maintained?”
“Yep. And you get all that for doing just about nothing at all, with zero liability.”
He nodded slowly. “As long as the contract is in order, I’ll agree. Though I find your methods…unusual.”
Reece grinned. “That’s why I’m the best.”
“Maybe I should have you train a fixer for me, too.”
She laughed. “Security’s one thing. Having me train a fixer is not something you could afford. Besides, I don’t have that kind of free time.”
Rather than be insulted, Sage smiled. “We’ll see. Maybe in time.”
“You never know.” Reece stood to leave.
“Where are you going?”
“I have things to put into place.”
Sage gave her a calculating look. “This isn’t just a bit of paperwork, is it? There’s something else in the mix.”
“Oh, yeah,” she agreed. “Big things. It’ll all be outlined in the settlement, don’t worry.”
She waved cheerily, then ducked out.
* * * * *
There was nothing that quite compared to the feeling of using explosives.
Real ones, not the pretend kind.
Reece didn’t consider herself to be a pyromaniac. She just had a deep appreciation for the power of incendiary devices, but as a fixer, had almost no opportunity to work with them.
Today was a special day. Project Pineapple was underway.
“You wired that wrong,” Trey said from behind her.
“I did not!”
“Well, not wrong, exactly. But it would be better like this.” He moved a relay’s trigger lead and added another ignitor.
“Oh. Well, that is more efficient for destructive capacity, but it will make less of a kaboom.”
He grinned. “Oh, I see. You want to watch the fireworks.”
He changed the blasting configuration back to its original layout.
“Well, I mean…why not?”
“Sure.” He nodded “Fair argument.”
He was humoring her, but she knew that deep down, somewhere inside him, he wanted to see how big of a bang they could make too. She just knew it.
“Okay. You’ve got the remote logistics programmed in?”
“Of course, I do. That’s kind of my main part of all this.” He threw her a look of disdain.
“Yeah, I knew you did. It’s j
ust good to confirm this kind of thing as many times as possible. And that’s not your only part here. Don’t sell yourself short.” She gave him a light punch in the shoulder.
“Good to know I’m a valued member of the team. Are we ready to do this?”
She blew out a breath. “I am. Are you?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll call up to the house and let them know we’re on our way.” She started in that direction.
Trey walked beside her. “Can it properly be called a house? I mean, there’s a whole distillery and bottling plant inside.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. There are house-like aspects inside, and that’s where we’re going. If you have a better word, we can use it.”
“Oh, I see. You’re too good to spend time worrying about using precise words.” He nodded, as if this revelation didn’t surprise him at all.
Reece gave him a long look as they walked up the path toward the house/distillery/whatever. “You need a hobby. Something to occupy your thoughts sometimes. You spend entirely too much time needling me for nonexistent things.”
“That is my hobby,” he assured her.
“That’s it. I quit. Find yourself a new partner.” She delivered it in Trey’s signature deadpan style.
He snorted, and a moment later, she did, too.
“It looks really different out here with all the barley cut down, doesn’t it?” She looked over the land, which had once swayed in the breeze with kilometers of tall barley. Now, the fields had been clipped short, as if they’d been given a crew cut.
“Yep. It feels bigger somehow, but less pretty.”
They arrived at the distillery-house, which she now had a hard time referring to, thanks to him—which had probably been his purpose all along.
Inside, Petal, Hamil, and Gus stood at the windows, their bodies tight with tension. Nizhoni stood on the other side of the room, looking as unimpressed as always.
“Everything’s set,” Trey announced. “Are we ready?”
They all nodded. Petal and Gus did so reluctantly, while Hamil bobbed his head eagerly. Nizhoni, for her part, looked resigned, but resolute.
“And this will end your campout in my distillery, right? Everyone will get the hell out of here, and Rexcare will leave me alone?” Nizhoni stood, hands on hips.
“Yep,” Reece assured her. “You’ll even get a nice payout, and a brand-new, upgraded combine.”
Nizhoni nodded. “All right. But if all that doesn’t happen exactly as you promised, in a timely fashion, I’m taking it out of your ass.”
Nizhoni glared long and hard at Reece.
Reece didn’t even bother asking why she was being singled out, while Trey’s ass would, theoretically, remain unscathed.
Not everything in life was fair. In fact, most things were anything but.
“Okay,” Nizhoni said. “Let’s do this.”
“Pineapple!” Trey shouted.
Everyone but Reece stared at him.
“It’s our mantra,” Trey explained. “To get us all pumped up. A solidarity thing.”
No one else repeated it, but Trey didn’t seem to mind.
“I’ll be activating my recording mode,” Reece said. “Remember. As far as you’re concerned, a loud noise has put us all on alert. I’ll switch on my recording due to that, and we will proceed with investigating the cause of the ruckus.”
She looked around the room to make sure everyone understood and was ready. Gus left the room, to play his part. When they made their reports, he’d say he’d been awakened by the noise.
“Activating in three…two…one.” Reece sat at a table and began recording.
“What was that?” she asked, standing again and whirling her view from person to person, establishing who was there at the time. That would help with corroborating their story later.
Petal and Hamil ran in opposite directions, toward the exits, giving them an excellent opportunity to show Rexcare how perfectly they did their job in the event of a crisis.
Reece grinned, only because the video wouldn’t see it. As a reward for giving Rexcare a fiction that would allow it to continue business as usual, everyone here would get some sort of professional bonus.
Just as they should.
Hamil arrived, looking disheveled, but determined. “What was that?”
“Don’t know,” Reece answered tersely. “Gus and Petal went out. Trey is looking at the security cameras. You stay with Nizhoni. Her safety is your responsibility.”
Hamil nodded, looking tense.
Nizhoni arrived from downstairs in the distillery, carrying a flamethrower and running straight for the door to the outside.
Reece hadn’t known about the flamethrower. She’d have to ask about that later.
She caught Nizhoni’s arm. “Wait. We don’t know what the situation is. We need to hear back from Petal and Gus.”
Nizhoni played her part well. “Fuck that! Those assholes have come back, and they’re not going to get away this time.”
“Give us two minutes,” Reece said. “We need to know what we’re looking at before we do something.”
“We’re looking at me kicking some asses, is what we’re looking it,” Nizhoni growled, but she remained inside.
“Got something,” Trey said. “North side of the building. We should be able to see it from here. Nizhoni, stay back. They might be trying to flush you out into the open.”
Nizhoni treated him to a spectacular string of filthy words that Reece was glad she’d recorded. But Nizhoni moved to follow the rest of them, wearing a look of murder.
Damn, she was good. Actually, all of them were doing a bang-up job. Reece hoped they could all keep this up.
They edged outside, and beheld the piece de resistance—a huge, flaming combine coming right at them.
“My combine! I’ll kill them!” Nizhoni screamed.
In the distance, they heard shouting.
“Sounds like Petal and Gus have found them. Trey, go help apprehend them. We’ll handle this.” Reece gestured at the combine.
“Way to take the fun job,” Trey muttered as he ran off in the direction of the shouts.
He wasn’t just saying that for show. They’d had a spirited debate about who should handle the only real danger on the property—the huge, flaming metal monster.
As the senior employee, Reece had won.
She shucked off her jacket as she said, “We need everything you have for fire control. Quickly!”
She and Trey had planned out how far away to start the machine, how fast to have it travel, and how long she’d have to handle it.
Unfortunately, it appeared that something in the formula had gone awry because the heavy combine was closer to the building than she’d expected.
Reece wondered how Nizhoni would handle having more damage done to her home and business.
Probably not well.
She didn’t have time to wait for the fire extinguishers and retardants. She took off running toward the combine.
It continued to burn and slowly roll toward her.
Reece jumped onto the machine’s ladder. The metal had already gotten hot enough to burn, but she had no choice but to hold on. She hoped the soles of her boots didn’t melt.
The flames were mostly in the front, something they’d done on purpose, since the fuel tank was in the back. Reece and Trey had planned to have way more than enough time to handle all this before they even had to consider the possibility of a fuel tank explosion.
That part looked to be in order, at least. She hoped, anyway.
She got to the driver’s seat and wrenched the wheel to the left, then yanked her hands away as a shudder of pain went through her entire body.
The vehicle turned slightly, and with a sense of relief, she mashed a finger into the power button.
Except the thing kept going, then the combine hit a bump and the wheels turned back to the right.
“Oh, what the hell.”
The soles of her feet
began to cook. They hadn’t considered how fast the metal would heat up. What kind of moron used such a conductive alloy on farm equipment that was designed to operate in the Akon’s extreme heat?
Reece grabbed the wheel again and tried to turn it, but this time it wouldn’t spin—something in the steering column must have melted.
Wait.
This thing was designed to operate in the heat! There had to be a cooling mechanism, or it would become too hot for a person to operate it.
Reece searched the dials and switches, most of which were covered in a variety of symbols for managing the process of swathing and unloading the grain. Glancing up, she saw that she was now approaching the building at a forty-five-degree angle, which would increase as she got closer, but wouldn’t be enough to stop the machine from ramming into the distillery.
She was almost prepared to jump off and let the combine crash. The damage could be repaired within a week, she could not.
But Reece couldn’t stop thinking about the whiskey that could potentially get wasted as a result.
Not on my watch.
Reece found the climate control and switched it on, praying it would work.
It did. The heat under her heels immediately eased, and a cold blast of air hit her in the face so violently that for a split second, her eyelids stuck to her eyeballs.
Which kind of sucked. Now she was riding a burning combine headed into a building with her eyelids frozen to her eyes.
Dammit.
She turned from the blast of air, blinking, and her eyes opened normally again.
The blasting air had quite literally fed the flames, which now shot straight out from the combine like a dragon that was breathing fire.
Reece couldn’t believe how spectacularly she’d screwed up, not that she’d expected the machine’s steering column to seize up, but usually her plans went off a bit better than this.
As she wondered how much Nizhoni would beat her for this, the distillery’s proprieter and Hamil ran up carrying large tanks and began blasting the combine with fountains of foam.
“Oh, hell,” Reece muttered, aware of what was about to happen, but utterly helpless to stop it. She clamped her mouth and eyes shut and held her breath.