Sunscapes Trilogy Book 1: Last Chance

by Michelle O'Leary

  "Well, this is disappointing,” she said thoughtfully as she studied the red stain on her skin. “Forgot rule number one already, did you?"

  Del couldn't see her face, but something in it caused Tracer's eyes to widen perceptibly. Then Sin moved, her body twisting sinuously as she drove a fist into Tracer's solar plexus and lashed out with one foot at the same time, sending the stinger skittering out of Stan's hand and into the darkness.

  It was enough for Del. Sin was still moving, but he paid her no attention, all his focus on the man who'd dared to lay his hand on her. Tracer was clutching his stomach and trying to straighten with slow agony. Baring down on the pirate, Del drove a powerful fist into his face with enough force to knock him off of his feet—and out cold, much to Del's disappointment. A hard kick to the bandit's ribs got him no response, and he turned away to pick another target.

  Except there were no other targets to pick. Sin was pacing slowly back and forth, shaking one hand idly as if it stung. At her feet, one man sprawled in an untidy heap, blood on his unconscious face. Next to him, the last hijacker crouched on hands and knees with his head lowered, his breath rattling in wrenching coughs.

  "Deep breaths, Stan. In and out, that's it,” Sin instructed in a distant voice.

  "Sin—” Del began roughly, but she held up a hand without looking at him.

  "Give him a minute. He's got a couple of sore spots."

  Wheezing, the man looked up at her, and the hate that twisted his face made Del tense warily. He said something, but it was too garbled for Del to catch.

  "Now, that's not very nice,” Sin said, her voice reverting to its former gaiety while her eyes shone with a predatory light. “Does that mean you want to play some more?"

  He shook his head hurriedly and hunched away from her.

  "That's what I thought,” she murmured, and went smoothly down into a crouch next to the laboring man. “I'm pretty sure you'd love to see the last of me, so I propose we get this business over with. I'm willing to let you take the Abantium from the Cortecans. But there's a price. Are you paying attention, Stan?"

  The man gave a ragged cough and nodded, looking up at her through his straggling hair. Seeing the rabid gleam in the man's eyes, Del shifted closer.

  "That's good, because this is a little tricky. My price is information. But my price is also silence, though I'll be paying for your silence. How, you ask?” The man stared at her dumbly, and she grinned like a shark. “Excellent question. You take the Abantium like a good little thief and turn it over to the Core. The Core gives you my asking price for the Abantium and—are you listening, Stan?—if you give me the information I want and tell no one that you gave it to me, you get to keep the entire amount. That sounds good, doesn't it?"

  He shifted a little before rocking back on his heels slowly, clutching his arms around his chest in a pained gesture. But the greed on his face spoke volumes. “They find out we turned a deal on ‘em and we're fried,” he croaked.

  "And that's why your silence is so important. It protects both of us, you see?"

  Del could see the man mulling it over. His own mind was racing over the possibilities. What the hell was she up to?

  "What's the info?” the man finally rasped.

  "Glad you asked,” she said with a brilliant smile. “The Core has a secret facility in this area of space. Do you know of it?"

  The man shook his head, but he did it too quickly and his eyes darted away from her. “Don't know nuthin'..."

  "Ah, well, that's too bad,” she sighed and rose to her feet. “Deal's off, then."

  "Wait! Wait. Guess I've heard of a place. Don't know that it's Core, but I ‘spect it is. That big Blue factory what you're after, then?"

  "Yes,” she said simply, and Del stared at her.

  "I tell you where to find it and we get full price, that the deal?"

  "That's the deal.” Sin's face was coolly expressionless as she watched the man at her feet.

  The pirate chewed on the inside of his cheek as he struggled to decide. Finally, he made a gurgling cough into one grimy fist and nodded. “Done,” he rasped and rattled off a set of coordinates.

  Sin nodded, giving the man a faint smile. “Thank you,” she said softly, and then crouched in front of him again. “One more thing, thief. The Abantium cargo that I brought to this facility—you will take only half.” A thunderous frown began to form on the man's face, but Sin held up a warning hand, her tone hardening. “Half, or I hunt down every one of your skippers skulking about this system and destroy them all. I won't have my courier reputation trashed just because you got greedy. The other half can be found at the second Cortecan mining facility. I brought more than enough to satisfy your buyers, so don't disappoint me, Stan."

  He subsided with a sullen expression and nodded.

  "That's a good boy,” she said and rose to her feet again, this time sending an inquiring look at Del. “Shall we leave these gentlemen to their business, then?"

  Del clenched his jaw against a sharp retort, suppressing the urge to shake her. He might need answers, and badly, but he knew it would be dangerous to show weakness in front of these men.

  He gave her a short nod and saw by the measuring look in her eyes that she could read the angry violence still thrumming along his muscles. She didn't comment, though, turning and walking towards the exit with Del on her heels. On her way, she made a quick detour to pick up the stinger.

  Catching his accusing stare, she gave him a small shrug as they passed through the canisters. “They expected me to be carrying. If I hadn't brought it, they'd have been much more nervous. Giving it to them was supposed to calm them down and give them something to focus on. It would have worked, too, if you hadn't shown up."

  He caught the faint accusation in her tone and snarled silently. The woman was crazy if she thought he was going to take any blame for what had happened. He waited to say it, though. He waited until they'd left the storage room and had passed the bars, waited until they were in a quiet passage with no witnesses.

  Then he grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her smooth flesh. “I want answers, and I want ‘em now,” he said in a low voice that shook at the edges with the effort not to shout.

  She frowned down at his brutal grip, but didn't try to remove it. “I'll tell you what you need to know when we get to the hauler—"

  "Now!” he snarled, shaking her once, hard. “What the hell are you up to and why in the name of the Suns did you have to drag me into it?"

  "It's not safe to talk here—"

  "Tough shit, Lady Shadow, because I'm not goin’ back there with you without a damned good reason!"

  She lifted her chin, eyes meeting his with a steady directness that sent a shiver of longing down his spine even through his bitter anger. “Del, you're hurting me,” she said, her tone calm and patient.

  Even though he knew she was no better than the Core, that she used people as ruthlessly as they did, that he meant as little to her as a pawn, he still couldn't help the flush of shame that climbed his neck. He let her go abruptly, clenching his hands into fists. Controlling his tone with an effort, he said, “You're in bed with the Core, Sin. I can't be part of that."

  "So they believe,” she murmured in return, gaze not faltering for a second. She tipped her dark head back the way they'd come. “So they all believe. But surely your brother told you about the gift?"

  He didn't hesitate. “Twisted version of ‘love thy enemy.’”

  She smiled faintly and shook her head. “Your brother saw less than I thought. Come back with me to the hauler and I'll tell you everything. I'll answer every question, Del."

  He would have continued arguing if it hadn't been for her eyes. Their calm green depths were filled with intimate sincerity, with Sun damned honesty, but he was too hurt and wary to buy it. He stopped arguing and gave her a stiff nod of assent, not because he believed her, but because those eyes touched him in places he couldn't defend. It filled him with a desperate kind of despai
r to know that she could probably lead him down the throat of a black hole with just that look in her eyes.

  And Suns save him, he would go.

  Chapter 18

  Besides, Del rationalized as they made their way back to the Tank in silence, there are the others to think of. He didn't think Jinx had any idea what Sin was really doing out here, and he felt a kind of wincing responsibility for the boy. The crimes of the others might give the Shays some kind of hold over them, but Jinx's crime was a self-inflicted one.

  They reached the Tank, and Sin touched the outer com. “Cass."

  "It's open,” was Cassie's immediate response. “Everything okay?"

  "Right as rain,” Sin answered, and if Cassie heard the faint sarcasm in her voice, she didn't let on.

  "Good. All's well here, too."

  Under Sin's touch, the hatch slid open, and Del followed her slim form inside the hauler with a mild sense of claustrophobia. Here he was, allowing himself to be dragged back into that special hell the Core had found for him. How long would it be before the Shays asked him to do what the Core had wanted him to do? How long before he was stealing from and brutalizing those who couldn't defend themselves? How long before they asked him to kill?

  Sin shot him a quick glance over her shoulder as if she'd heard his thought, the green of her eyes grave. But she said nothing, leading the way to the commons room. Once inside, she moved to the kitchen area and pulled out a couple of mugs, filling them with coffee. “It's been a long night, and I suspect it's going to get a lot longer,” she explained under his stare.

  He waited, taking his mug without comment and easing himself onto a seat at the dining table. When she lowered herself to a seat opposite him and sipped at her drink, he said, “All right, we're here. So tell me. Tell me about the Abantium. Tell me what you want with the Blue factory. Thinking of getting Jinx back into his old business, are you?"

  She flashed him a look that burned, but sipped at her drink again before she spoke. “It's best if I start at the beginning. It'll be easier for you to understand that way."

  He waited, but when she did nothing but stare down into her mug, he made a rude noise in the back of his throat. “So begin already."

  With a sigh, she raised her eyes to his and he winced at the weary pain in them. “Beginning is always hard. And it's harder than usual tonight.” Looking down again, she took another sip and then touched tentative fingers to her wounded lip. It was starting to swell and bruise, and Del felt his gut clench in response.

  "My grandfather started this company. I never met him, but I'm told he was a formidable man, much like my father. No surprise, I guess—he raised my father in his image, strong, fearless, ruthless..."

  She paused to take another sip and Del was uneasy to see that her hand shook slightly. “Shay Enterprises was still a rising company when my father took control of it. He had to fight for every advance, for every concession, for his very survival. But Grandpa Shay had taught him well. He was more than capable of handling the competition, of dealing with them without mercy, no holds barred."

  Bitterness had crept into her tone, and Del shifted in his seat, feeling a frown begin to form between his eyes. What did this have to do with dealing with the Core? He waited, though, and watched her as she rubbed her eyes.

  "Back then, there was one company that rivaled ours, that mirrored many of our products. It was one of many, but it stood out from the others by being one of the few companies strong enough to cause my father real trouble. They thwarted his every effort to overpower them, his every maneuver to cause their downfall, to push them out of his road to success. His every legal effort. But Grandpa Shay had taught him that failure was not an option. That all was fair in war, and to him business was war."

  Abruptly, she stood and began pacing the room, shrugging off her jacket as she went and carelessly tossing it over the couch. Even in his wary and bitter state, Del couldn't keep from watching her sleek limbs as she prowled the room, the bare skin of her shoulders and chest gleaming like soft alabaster against the black of her sleeveless shirt.

  "There were lots of different crime syndicates in those days—the Core didn't exist then. They warred with each other, those gangs and cartels and mafias, mostly keeping themselves in check by their endless feuding. The FPA didn't have much trouble with them, then."

  "Sin—” Del tried to interrupt, confused by this strange turn in the conversation, but she shook her head fiercely without looking at him.

  "Let me tell it. From the beginning, I said."

  He subsided, but for a moment she didn't continue. Pausing with her profile to him, she stared down at the ground with a thoughtful expression on her face. Then she reached up and started to undo her braid with slow, preoccupied fingers.

  "Griffin was in control of one of those syndicates, just one more rat in the garbage heap. His group was more disciplined and more merciless than most of the others, but he was still just one among many. My father went to see him."

  Her fingers untangled the dark strands with dexterous ease, but Del watched her face become pinched with emotion, and his chest tightened in foreboding.

  "He offered his worst rival up to Griffin on a silver platter. He gave Griffin information that would allow him complete access to their systems, to their products. He expected Griffin to destroy them, you see. He knew Griffin was a clever Krell, but he expected him to act like a Krell all the same. To take, to be greedy, and suck the life out of that rival."

  The braid was undone, and Sin raked her fingers through the long strands of blue-black hair in punishing strokes, her mouth twisting in a grimace.

  "He didn't know Griffin then. He had no idea of the depth of cold ambition that lies at that man's heart. Griffin took the access information, but instead of consuming that company, he made it his. And so, Quasicore was born."

  Del stopped breathing as a spasm of shock went through him, freezing him from head to toe, though there was a molten lump in his chest that beat with misery. He watched Sin return to the table, her eyes downcast as she sank into the seat across from him. “You...” he tried, but his voice was strengthless. “That's...” Insane, he wanted to cry. Impossible!

  But the truth was in the tautness of her lovely features, in the black sweep of her lashes against her too pale skin. “My father, Ezekiel Shay, was responsible for the birth of the most terrible force of our age. The Core didn't just grow—it devoured. All the crime syndicates merged with Griffin's or died under him until the only underground was Core, the only black deeds were Core, the only atrocities were Core. And my father ... my father caused this."

  She finally looked up at him, but one glance into the tortured depths of her eyes made him wish she hadn't. “Sins of our fathers, Del. You've been trapped and tormented by the sin of yours for ten long years. But Del, my father's sin was the source of yours. We're responsible for every horrible thing that's happened to you. For every horrible thing you've ever done in the Core's name."

  In a distant corner of his mind, Del supposed that he should curse Ezekiel Shay, that he should hate him for being a greedy, unethical bastard, but the pain on Sin's face was too immediate and the responsibility she was claiming too large for him to grasp. He denied it with a slow shake of his head. “You aren't responsible for what your father did,” he rasped.

  She laughed, and it wasn't a pleasant sound. “This from the man who allowed the Core to swallow him whole on the basis of his father's tattered honor."

  That hurt too much for him to ignore. “It's not like they gave me a choice,” he snarled and shot to his feet, taking his turn to pace around the room.

  The silence between them vibrated with tension for several long moments before Sin began speaking again. Del continued to pace, refusing to look at her.

  "My father discovered his mistake too late, of course. Too late to stop the takeover and the consumption of the other syndicates. Or at least, that's what he thought then. If he'd known what the Core would become, I'm sure
he would have fought harder to kill it, but I think he was still expecting Griffin to revert to form. I think he was just biding his time until Griffin devoured himself along with everything else. By the time he really understood Webster Griffin, it was much too late to stop it."

  She paused for a moment, and Del contained his bitterness behind compressed lips as he paced. “It was a bit of a wake-up call for Dad,” she continued in a musing tone that made Del glance at her. She was watching him with darkened eyes and he looked away again in a spasm of discomfort and misery. Those eyes, he thought with distant despair.

  "As the Core grew and my father realized the true depth of his mistake, he became determined to put it right. Grandpa Shay may have lacked a certain amount of humanity, but my father couldn't discard what he'd ingrained in him—Shays don't quit. Failure is not an option. He didn't stop trying to fix his mistake until the day he died. Along the way, he met my mother, fell in love, got married, and sired two precocious children."

  Del had slowed to a stop next to the couch, unable to keep his eyes from finding her. She was smiling painfully into the distance, her hands clasped in a white-knuckled grip in front of her.

  "And along the way, my mother discovered what he'd done and despaired at the vastness of the responsibility. She finally killed herself when I was fourteen, but before that she dwindled, as if the Core was wearing her away. I discovered all this later, of course. Children know only what they want to know and see only what they want to see. After our mother's funeral, my father sat us down and explained why. That was our wake-up call."

  "Sin,” he rasped, unable to stand the terrible emptiness on her face, but she blinked and waved a hand as if dismissing old ghosts. Rising to her feet, she rounded the table and came to stand before him, hands on her hips as she studied his face.

  "Old news. I think you'll be more interested in the new stuff."

  He shook his head, unable to articulate the misery that welled in his chest like a gray cloud of poisonous smoke. The sheer number of things that fed that misery rendered him mute.