Negative Return: A Durga System Novella (Durga System Series Book 2)

by Jessie Kwak

  Manu takes a deep, shaky breath and goes in to meet his newest new boss.

  9

  Blackheart

  Coeur’s rust-red face is impassive as she surveys the warehouse. Half her jet-black braids are woven into a crown; the tips of the rest are capped with gold and jingle as she turns her head. She’s wearing slim red trousers and a black blouse that looks like real silk, light catching in soft halos where the fabric pools at her elbows and waist. She’s wearing a pair of those silent bioleather training slippers, the kind worn by dancers, or boxers. Or professional thieves.

  It’s a deceptively soft look. Manu’s never seen the woman up close, but she’s famous for joining her crew in the boxing ring where they train — and for coming out on top more often than not.

  The pale skin on the woman on Coeur’s left is the perfect canvas for a tapestry of ink and technology that blend in an unsettling tableau. Gold-coated wires twine from ports in the right side of her shaved scalp, snaking through channels in her metal collar to their terminus in a panel set between her shoulder blades.

  She’s the greenest thing on New Sarjun: tattoos of jungle vines and serpents cover every exposed inch of skin on her right side, long-limbed spiders peeking from behind leaves, a wild-fanged monkey leaping from her shoulder. Her mechanical right eye seems to peer from between lush foliage.

  Oh. And they’re not alone, Manu realizes with a sinking heart. One last depressingly familiar face has followed Coeur in.

  Jaxie. Sylla Mar’s third in command.

  Jaxie catches his eye, grinning.

  Manu swears under his breath, but he knows true danger when he sees it. And Thala Coeur is the most dangerous thing in this room. Jaxie and Sylla will just have to wait their turn.

  Before anyone can say anything, the door opens again, and it’s Beni and Oriol this time, voices raised in the heat of an argument.

  The jungle woman at Thala Coeur’s side puts her hand on her pistol.

  “It’s fine,” Coeur says, her voice a laughing sing-song.

  Oriol lets out a string of curses.

  Manu’s watching the others to see if they were expecting Blackheart. Oriol’s barely muffled profanity marks him as a no. Beni’s jaw’s on the floor — turns out he recognizes someone in the Bulari underground after all. Kai wears his sourest Kai face. Gia’s scowl gets scowlier, but not in surprise. She and Coeur share a measured look, then Coeur looks past, dismissive. Manu’s drama radar pings. Damn, he loves a good feud.

  Toshiyo doesn’t seem to register Blackheart, but she’s biting her lip like she’s barely holding herself back from asking the tattooed girl if she can play with her tech.

  Manu tears his gaze away from Toshiyo, pushing down the sudden, nagging guilt he feels for how he used her to take down Jaantzen’s guard.

  Coeur’s gaze skims past Manu — skims past everyone else in the room, even Jaantzen, like nobody here’s worth caring who they are. He’s heard that about her. You gotta prove to her it’s worth bothering to learn your name.

  Being beneath Blackheart’s attention isn’t the worst thing that could happen, though — getting her attention for the wrong reason is far, far deadlier.

  Getting her attention for the right reason could be gold, though.

  “I wasn’t expecting a skeleton crew, Willem,” she says, finally meeting Jaantzen’s gaze. “Or do you have others hiding in the closet?”

  “This is the crew. They’ll get your job done.”

  Your job, huh? With Coeur in the equation, the sum Jaantzen’s willing to pay makes more sense. Coeur’s an extravagant spender, and her money’s always good.

  She shrugs, and the gold caps on the ends of her braids tinkle softly. “Then it’s a good thing I brought reinforcements,” she says with a half smile, like she thinks the thunderclouds gathering over Jaantzen’s head are funny. She jerks a thumb at each of the new crew in turn. “Jaxie. Sarah.”

  Manu hears Beni’s soft snort. The girl with the tech does not look like a Sarah.

  Jaantzen gives Coeur a measured look. “It would have been nice for them to be here for the initial planning,” he says mildly.

  Coeur just smiles, easy and bright. “Why don’t you show me what you’ve got.”

  “Everybody gather around,” Jaantzen says.

  Manu finds a spot around the big, cheap desk in between Oriol and Beni, away from Toshiyo, and across the table from Jaxie and the other woman so he can watch them less obtrusively. Jaxie slouches into place like a regular thug, but the woman with all the tech has some element of military training to her. Could be the stiff way she holds herself, like maybe her spine is fused with robotics, too. The tattoos, Manu sees now, are there to hide a mass of scars.

  She scans the table, her mechanical right eye whirring slightly as it moves. It skims past Manu, pauses on Oriol, who gives her a slight nod of respect, if not recognition. One soldier saluting another, Manu thinks, and files it away for later.

  Coeur and Jaantzen stand on opposite sides of the desk, and Manu can feel the dominance game crackling through the air between them. Coeur may have hired Jaantzen to crew this job, but Jaantzen won’t be acting like a hired thug.

  Manu makes a mental promise not to step in between these two.

  Kai, Manu notices, is mirroring Coeur’s pose, though he’s locked so stiff he’s practically vibrating, like a mystix player trying too hard to keep from giving away a good hand. At least someone here is happy to see Blackheart.

  “Good to have you all,” Jaantzen says. “Ms. Ravi?”

  A few clicks on the cheap desk, and Toshiyo brings up a schematic of the neighborhood, complete with the new video feeds Oriol got them.

  “We’ve got a better idea of what’s going on in the hotel,” Toshiyo says in her charming country drawl. “With our own cameras set up, we’ll be first to know when the target is moving. Should be first thing tomorrow morning.”

  She zooms in on the hologram map; it freezes in a blur of pixels for a moment, then refreshes. “Normal couriers pick up from the side door,” she says. “Word is, what we’re after is getting hand-delivered out the front.” She sticks a finger in the hologram. “Here.”

  “And where’s it headed?” asks Beni.

  “Along a set route,” Jaantzen says, and Beni scowls at the nonanswer. Toshiyo types in a code and the route blazes green through the miniature cityscape, vanishing off the edge of the desk without revealing its terminus. Manu’s not the only one frowning at the incomplete route line. Who the hell are they stealing from?

  “Beni, you’ll be positioned here to intercept,” Jaantzen says. He sets a location pin in the hologram map, then glances up at Coeur’s two new recruits. “With Manu and Jaxie. Kai will follow the courier with Oriol and Sarah. Basic smash and grab — Beni, you run him off the road. Kai pens him in from behind. Disable the driver, take the goods. Rendezvous back here.”

  “How do we know what to take?” asks Jaxie.

  “There’s only one crate,” says Toshiyo. The hologram sizzles and pops. Toshiyo hits refresh. “Sandstorm’s coming, sorry,” she says as a loading bar appears above the map of the city. She cracks her ring fingers in unison; they sound like gunshots. Manu glances at the high windows, but of course he can see nothing.

  “That’s it,” says Coeur. Or is she asking?

  She’s got an airy way with her words, like every sentence is simultaneously a jab and a challenge, her lips constantly on the edge of smiling. Like she sees what’s funny and the rest of you haven’t got a clue.

  “That’s it,” says Jaantzen.

  Manu expects another dominance game between them, but Coeur just steps back from the cheap desk and rolls her shoulders, nice and relaxed.

  “Go get ’em, team,” she says.

  “Everybody rest up,” Jaantzen says. “The target’s moving early tomorrow, and I want you fresh.”

  The little crew — Manu can’t decide if they’re more or less motley with the addition of Sarah and Jaxie — disso
lves into the vastness of the warehouse. Kai and Sarah stalk off to confer in the corner, Oriol peels off his shirt again and stakes out a section of floor for his martial arts routine, and Jaxie is watching Manu with a bald-faced “gotcha” grin. Manu turns his back on her — he’s not ready to deal with that now.

  “You up for a game, man?” Beni’s got his deck of holocards out, shuffling them in midair with a snap. The colors shift in a rainbow blur as he bridges the deck. “C’mon. Keeps your mind sharp. And your hands.”

  “Not tonight,” Manu says, and Beni’s face falls. “Next time, yeah?” he says apologetically, even though he’d rather spend another night in Jaantzen’s murder dungeon than sit through a card game. Just the thought triggers memories of his grandmother’s cigars, the claustrophobia of her house, Siggy’s gray face, the pointless hours wasted with incomplete decks.

  “Your loss,” Beni says with a shrug. He cuts the deck with one hand, and heads off to corner Gia.

  Toshiyo’s the only one still standing by the desk, staring at the frozen loading bar with her hands braced on the edge. Her knuckles are white.

  “Hey, Tosh.” Manu hovers between staying and leaving when she doesn’t answer. This situation is already tangled enough without getting emotional, and the last thing he needs tonight is to indulge in his guilt. But something about the curve of her neck won’t let him walk away.

  He sighs, and raps his acid-green fingernails against the desk’s surface. “Tosh. You doing all right, kid?”

  She finally breaks eye contact with the loading bar, blinks up at him. “I’m fine,” she lies.

  “This isn’t your type of crowd.”

  “Worse types out in the mines.” Her accent’s stronger when she says it, memory triggering the stamp of the place on her body. She crosses her arms; Manu hears the faint crack of a knuckle out of sight.

  Manu frowns at that. “These are some pretty bad types.”

  “Not all of you. Oriol seems nice.” She’s got a hint of a smile in her eyes — he almost misses that she’s teasing him. He wouldn’t have expected it of her, not with her mind seemingly always in her devices.

  He likes her, but any friendly feelings she has towards him are just going to lead to trouble for her down the road. He wants to tell her to run, to get out of this mess before it gets her killed, or locked up. Or — worse — breaks and misshapes her into any one of them.

  “What are you doing here?” is what he asks instead.

  “My job.” It’s firm. Decisive.

  “You don’t belong with us,” Manu says. “Oriol seems nice, but he’s a mercenary. Just like Gia. Just like me.” He jerks his chin over his shoulder to where Sarah is locked in a menacing match of scowls with Kai. Even Beni’s avoiding them for now. “Just like them.”

  “You’re not all bad. Jaantzen — ”

  “We’re all bad,” Manu cuts in. He doesn’t want to hear what she thinks about Jaantzen; it tightens the knot in his gut to know what it would have done to her if he’d finished the job an hour ago.

  “I feel safe around you,” Toshiyo says. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”

  That stabs straight to the core.

  “Remember what I told you about not trusting anyone here?” Manu asks, and if the words come out harsher than he intended it’s because he’s mad at himself more than anything. “That goes double for me, kid.”

  Her cheeks flame red — whether with anger, with shock, or with sadness he doesn’t wait around to find out.

  He feels the burn of her gaze between his shoulder blades as he walks away. Directly above the spot where the hilt of the stolen knife still digs into his back.

  10

  Professionals

  Manu decides to talk to Oriol. For a break — not business, just conversation. After all, he’s the only one who doesn’t seem to have three agendas at once. Plus, he’s easy on the eyes.

  He doesn’t get ten steps away from Toshiyo before Jaxie catches him on an intercept course. “Fancy meeting you here,” she says.

  He keeps walking — Destination: Out of Earshot — and she follows along beside him. “I found you,” she says, grinning like she’s won first place in an amateur detective contest. Her mass of thin brown dreadlocks is tied in a messy knot at the base of her pale neck; her eyeteeth are lacquered in turquoise and trimmed with gold, filed to have just a bit more point than usual. She’s dressed in casual black fatigues and prickly with her usual collection of weapons handles. Manu wonders if he can get one or two away from her.

  “Surprise for sure,” Manu says.

  Jaxie has the presence of mind to make sure no one’s listening, though her stage glance around the room screams conspiracy. Fortunately, no one’s watching, either. “Word’s got around the boxing gyms that Coeur and Jaantzen were looking for some people for a job. Sylla figured this was where you ended up, and when I saw you with her” — a jerk of the chin at Gia across the room — “I figured that’s what happened.” Jaxie grinned. “So here I am to make sure you finish your job.”

  Manu gives her a look. “How do you know who Gia is?” He’ll stick with polite questions, but really he’s dying to ask how she got to be so stupid. She’d kill Jaantzen now, with Coeur in the picture? Risk bringing that wrath down on Sylla? Blackheart’d burn Sylla’s entire operation to the ground and be back home by dinner to enjoy a nice glass of wine.

  “Nice reward on her head from the Alliance,” Jaxie says, and Manu keeps himself from glancing over his shoulder at Gia right now. “Only reason nobody’s collected it is she’s thick with Jaantzen and he’s tough to get through. And ain’t many people want to work with the Alliance.” She shrugs. “And she’s a tough bitch. Hard to take her in a fight.”

  “That’s three reasons.”

  Jaxie frowns at Manu like she’s not sure if he’s giving her shit or not.

  He is.

  Manu only really knows Jaxie by face and reputation — she is a predator, but slow. Sylla doesn’t have much in her organization by way of brains, and Jaxie certainly doesn’t add to the balance. She’s not just in Sylla’s crew for looks, though: Manu’s seen her fight in a friendly sparring match — “friendly” in quotations. Her opponent had to be carried away.

  “Coeur know you normally work for Sylla Mar?”

  “Course not,” Jaxie says, but Manu doesn’t believe it. Coeur didn’t get to the top by being unobservant. And speaking of, she’s probably observing right now. Noticing that Manu seems awfully friendly with Sylla’s lackey.

  Last thing he needs is for Coeur to think he’s working with Sylla, because he’s not — not anymore. Coeur’s fortuitous arrival at the warehouse didn’t just spare Jaantzen’s life, it gave Manu a second chance.

  Because forget Sylla Mar and her excuse for a crew.

  If Manu does this job right, he could have a shot at joining the best crew in Bulari. Coeur may be scary as hell, but her crew’s known as the tightest family, folks who’ve actually got your back so long as you do your work well. Unlike Sylla’s band of opportunists.

  If he can just ignore that knot in his gut.

  “I’m here to make sure you finish the job,” Jaxie says again, like she can sense he’s slipping and the repetition will help reel him back in.

  “I’ll do it. After this gig is finished.”

  She frowns at him. “Sylla — ”

  “Sylla gonna pay you what this job’s gonna pay?” That twitch in her cheek says no. “Then we do this job, and I make good with Sylla. All right?”

  He doesn’t care if she believes him or not. He leaves her standing in the middle of the room, head cocked and frowning.

  ORIOL IS GLIDING EFFORTLESSLY over his stretch of the warehouse floor, long, lean muscles giving an impressive display as he moves through his poses. Manu crosses his arms and leans against the wall, appreciating.

  Oriol kicks out in a slow, graceful arc, spinning on the ball of one foot, his chiseled abs supporting the stance. “Did you want something?” he asks. He
lunges and holds, wrists snapping into place like a dancer. His skin glistens.

  “You ever get tired of flying solo?” Manu asks.

  Oriol raises an eyebrow and flows into his next form. “What’s there to be tired of? The independence? The not having to do shit you don’t want to do?”

  “The hustling for gigs. The watching your back all the time.”

  “I been watching my back since before you were born, boy.”

  Bullshit. Oriol can’t have more than a decade on Manu. “How old do you think I am?” he asks.

  Oriol holds his new pose just long enough to give Manu a slow smile and an appreciative look. “Old enough.”

  “It’s the eyeliner, isn’t it.” Manu sighs dramatically. Oriol laughs. “Mama said it made me look older.”

  There’s a tiny pause, and Manu almost wants him to ask: Your mama still alive? Your mama know what you do for a living? Your mama a good cook? Anything so Manu can bare a sliver of soul, say, I never knew the old lady.

  But Oriol doesn’t ask.

  Professionals don’t ask.

  “You thinking of joining a crew?” is what Oriol does ask.

  Manu shrugs. “Kinda have to these days. What do you know about Coeur?”

  Oriol gives him a level look; Manu can’t tell if he knows the dramatic adventure tale of how he was press-ganged into this little heist. “Know she prefers her people to call her Blackheart,” Oriol says. “Working for her would be bread and butter.” He drops into a plank, holds it effortlessly with sculpted shoulders and sinewy forearms.

  Working for Coeur would be more than bread and butter — it would be a meal ticket for the rest of Manu’s career. Granted, there wouldn’t be anyplace to go up to, working for her. His career likely wouldn’t be too long.

  But it’s not going to last even another month if he doesn’t find himself some sort of crew. Not with the dust storm he’s been stirring.

  “What are you thinking?” Oriol asks, flowing into another sweeping kick. Manu catches a whiff when he moves: burnt cinnamon and gun solvent.