by Mima
“You are under arrest for smuggling,” the guard announced with relish.
Joe stood nearby, leaning against one of the loaders with his hands in his pockets.
“Joe!” she called. “Summon the security master.”
Joe shrugged. “He knows.”
She shook her head, unable to understand. The guard reached for her hand and clamped a manacle on it. Strangely, it felt warm. “Tell him what’s happening.”
Joe sighed. “I told you. He knows.”
Over the next week, Becca sat in the jail at London Moon, undergoing a very public trial in a very hideous pumpkin orange bodysuit. There was even spectacular media coverage, although her brother did not show. The captain had set her up. He’d told her the wrong plax-pages to hand off, so that it looked like it was her own incompetence that revealed her own attempt at crime.
He had an explanation for every aspect of her defense: how she’d had sex with him to arrange her placement as the overseer. He had DNA from his trousers to prove it. How she’d arranged to put herself on the morning rotation so she could make illegal contacts. Cal had been the witness who testified to her constant presence there. She claimed Darnell had been killed. They produced a video of him explaining that he was alive on York. She claimed they had a cryo. The ship was searched and nothing was found. She told them she’d been about to go to her brother for help. The bushy-white-haired judge actually laughed.
In the end, the testimony of an ex-con witness and an ex-Syndicate captain hadn’t quite been enough to convict the squeaky-clean, novice sister of a junior admiral of masterminding a smuggling operation. But she was sentenced to jail for nine months for participating. No charges were brought against the Cider Pot’s senior crew.
Listening to her mother cry as the sentence was read, Becca stared across the room at the captain, who had already been fined a measly five thousand credits for failing to manage his crew. He blew her a kiss.
CONGRATULATIONS . . . sort of. You have found the ending called Minnows Get Eaten by Sharks. Click on this link to return to the Choice Index. Dare to decide again!
“Yessss!” she hissed.
Her orgasm followed his, sensation streaming out of her mashed clit and spiraling around her ribs. His grip fell from her wrists, and her legs slid from his waist. They leaned together, exhausted and melted.
“Did you mean it?” he rasped.
She nodded. “You’re right. I’m good at this and it feels great.” She’d keep her family out of it, and her brother could take care of himself, literally. There was no way she wanted to go back to routing wires now.
He chuckled, then she did, and soon they were wrapped in a shivering hug. She was touched and surprised by how long and tight he held her.
“Why’d you pick me? When I came to your office, you hadn’t even met me and you offered me the overseer position.”
“You listed cliff diving as your personal hobby. If that doesn’t say adrenaline addict, I don’t know what does. Plus, you’re smart.” He pulled away and kissed her. “Then there was a photo on your file.” He winked.
“You’re a lecherous old man.”
“I am a smart lecherous old man, and until you, I never fucked my crew.”
She looked at him from under her lashes. “Well, if I’m not your crew anymore . . .”
He picked up his pants and began to dress, so she did too. “Maybe we’ll get together again. I hope so.”
Becca blinked, feeling dismissed. “I assumed we’d still work together. That I’d be your Brotherhood intern or something now.”
Jake shook his head. “The Brotherhood will ask you to be part of a difficult task. They give our newest members some of our hardest, most dangerous plans. Prove yourself, and the next time we meet, you’ll be in.”
She pulled her navy flight suit over her shoulders. The heat from her fingertips sealed the thin plexi-seam together as she coasted her hand up the seal. “Will I . . .” Horrible thoughts of atrocities tumbled in her mind. “Will I have to k-kill?”
He touched her chin with one of his long, spacer fingers. “They won’t ask you to assassinate anyone. Those kinds of jobs go to special players. But the plan is all. You cannot fail your task. Work hard to overthink your options and you’ll never be put in the position of completing your plan with a death.”
She got his message. Yes, she could possibly be expected to kill if it meant the difference between success and failure. She didn’t know if she was up to that.
“I’m not a killer, Jake.”
“The Brotherhood doesn’t want you to fail. They’ll use your strengths. They might push you past barriers to stretch your skills, but they’re not going to set you up, Becca. It’s a great life for clever people with a good work ethic. You’ll see. You’re a natural.”
Swallowing, she thought of beautiful Darnell, with his flight suit hanging off his hips. What had she done?
Everything had been so much fun at Shang-huang. The port was muddy, sparsely populated by fringe types, and independent-minded. She’d been dropped off here with a little weasel named Sot. Literally, Sot was a mink. She’d set herself up in the rough community as a verminator, and Sot had thrived on a steady diet of nasty space rats. Her parents were appalled and confused, but she convinced them she was just stressed out and seduced by space.
Happy Moon Tavern became her preferred roost, with an excellent central location and the benefit of nearly the entire community’s presence. Actually, it was the destination, arrival date unknown, of a particular person named Mindy. The Syndicate’s task to Becca sounded simple: kidnap Mindy with no permanent damage and bring her to coordinates off-planet. Becca had applied all her organization skills and come up with a plan, then settled in to wait. The living stipend was generous, and Becca had enjoyed the range of people and races she’d met. There were whole days where she forgot she wasn’t simply a young verminator just roaming the worlds. But she wasn’t, she was a Brotherhood initiate, determined to sample the possibilities of the Syndicate.
Mindy was her primary goal. Her secondary was to convince her brother—yes, she’d told them about Rex, since they were sure to find out—that she was simply defiant and living a bit wild. Apparently, the Syndicate wanted to stay far away from Rex. That had been surprisingly easy. All she’d had to do was call up a decade of jealousy. She pitched some bitchy diatribes about freedom versus success and he’d backed off on challenging her about throwing away her education.
The drizzly morning had been normal. A job at a local apartment had brought Sot some excitement, his shining black eyes sparkling above his bloody muzzle as he dragged the carcasses of rats over to her feet. Later, she’d posted a vid to Jake and tried to shake off the anxiety of not having one in return from him for over a week now. Taking Sot in his traveling cage down to Happy Moon, she plunked herself down at the bar for lunch.
Heads nodded toward her from around the room. Most of them belonged to men who were on her payroll, waiting for the time when Mindy would arrive with four guards. The only three people not on her payroll left in the afternoon. Her six guys plus the waitress, Sam, and the bartender, Li, were all in.
“Want to play some Hold ’Em?” François slurred from a table in the corner.
“Naw.” He was always an easy take, but she could smell the fumes on him today from across the bar. That was no fun.
Her plax kronged. She glanced at it, and there was her guy at the airbase, Trembling Shep. “Hi Shep.”
Shep’s image pixilated from the force of his tremors. “They’re here and I want out.”
Ice zinged down her spine. “What’s the problem?”
He ended the call.
Juan was next to her at the bar. Becca’s gaze snagged on his dark, weary eyes. He knocked back his beer. “Game’s on, people. We pick a fight before they even sit down. Separate the tweety and get her t
o the ship.”
“That mean we don’t got time for a game?” François all but hiccupped as he slumped near his wine bottle.
Calling her backup team, Becca got their assurance they’d be close if needed. Li started to take down the bottles of premium liquor.
“I’ll do my best to keep the damage down, Li.”
He scowled at her and continued to hide them.
Turning back to the bar, she struggled to pull her gaze off the mirror that ran the length of the room. Tension stung her shoulders. Juan reached over the width of glossy dark wood to the tap and freshened his beer.
And then the stench of the muddy streets rolled into the room as both doors were pushed in by a pair of slick, muscled guards. They were broad faced and broad-chested, and a matched pair entered behind them. At their center, barely visible, was a pair of tawny, feathered arches. Tiny ones.
Becca’s gaze met Juan’s in the mirror. He ground his teeth and took a swallow of his draft. She stared down at her coffee cup. Her heart thundered, sweat sizzled into being near her hairline, and rage rolled in her belly. A child. Mindy was a fucking minor. Those bastards. Those lying-by-omission assholes. She was supposed to drug and kidnap a—one assessing glance at the group told her more—delicate teenager of ethereal beauty.
Anger pumped in Becca’s veins like acid. She knew this was just a small taste of the manipulation she could expect from the Syndicate, and despite being sick at harming a child, she knew that she really had no choice. It was Mindy or a very bad end. She’d already decided on the Brotherhood, and now there was no backing out.
“Oohh, a tweety whore!” François shouted from his corner, right on cue. “Fifty creds says I get an hour with you bouncing on my pretty cock, joli oiseau.”
The guards’ heads swiveled, taking in all nine of the people in the room. There was Becca’s team of six, plus herself and the two employees. Everyone looked completely authentic because they were, but the men stayed alert and watchful. Becca turned on her barstool and watched them openly, because it was natural. The men wore leather jackets of different varieties, and they were thick and generous enough to make her nervous. A lot could be hidden under them. Mindy had huge golden eyes and pale skin—her lashes and brows nearly white, with her hair a tangle of loose golden silk. She looked like a zealot’s idea of a perfect angel, right down to her pale cream wings and the sky-blue dress she wore. Bitterness churned over what she had to do, but Becca banished it.
The tallest, darkest guard pinpointed a corner table at the front of the room and nodded his chin at it. “There.”
“Chantez!” François bellowed, banging his bottle on the table. “Chantez!”
He played his part perfectly. François was to start a fight, joined in solidarity by Abadom from down the bar. From there it would escalate, with Juan and Becca teaming up on Mindy.
Becca’s mind raced, while at the same time her thoughts circled like a tornado around Mindy. She was just a kid. Sixteen, tops, and if so, an innocent sixteen. Maybe fourteen. She kept looking nervously at François, who kept up a stream of crude French demands.
Juan had a sizzle net. He was supposed to throw it over her, keep her from using her wings while allowing her body to remain pliant. Becca felt utterly sick over using it on the girl. Her backup-to-the-backup-team was triton gas. It made people dizzy, slowed thought processes, caused nausea and eventually unconsciousness. It was neural poison but very weak, lasting an hour at the most, and on guys as big as Mindy’s guards, a half hour couldn’t be guaranteed.
François stood, knocking his chair to the ground. He staggered so hard against the table it slid across the floor, but he got himself upright as he maneuvered toward the group. He carried his wine bottle with him.
Becca swallowed. She could release the gas early, taking out her own crew, or she could follow the plan. The girl would be in pain either way. The gas seemed less personal, less traumatic than the cruel net. But it was also less certain and far riskier, since she’d be removing her own men from the equation. Would she let Juan use the sizzle net? Or would she release the gas?
She stretched her neck, struggling to stay calm as she surveyed the carnage. What had she done?
“Discourage visitors,” she ordered the remaining men. “Sam, come with me.” Her voice sounded echo-y in the sleek black gas mask she wore on the lower half of her face.
The muscular female followed Becca into the storeroom the guard had defended. No one was there. She panicked a little, going frantically from room to room, but the tavern wasn’t that big, and finally she found the girl under a desk in the office.
Aware time was ticking until someone came into the bar and exposed the chaos, Becca leaned down to the thin, lovely teen with shivering wings and said, “I didn’t kill your men and I’m not going to hurt you.”
The girl was crying behind a contraption of a bag and tape. “No, please. No.”
Vomit rose in Becca’s throat and a headache bloomed right between her eyes. The gas mask cut into her scalp and pulled her hair. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Listen—”
Sounds of fighting came from the front room, of splintering furniture and heat-pistol shots. Since her men weren’t carrying heat pistols, this was Not Good.
Sam hunkered down next to Becca. “I’m not doing no heat pistols!”
Becca had a mental image of the three of them crammed under the desk, hiding. Working a smuggling op had been a hella lot easier. “Take the girl to my cruiser.”
“Lord, no!” Sam shook her braided head.
“You’re the last one standing out of fifteen, Sam. Their money’s yours.” The men were still fighting out there, but even as she spoke, a loud howl of pain burst out.
Sam glared at Becca. “Bitch. She’s just a kid!”
“I didn’t know!” Becca spat back. “I’m stuck now!”
Sam reached past Becca and pulled the wailing child out. With one jab of Sam’s fist, the girl slumped into unconsciousness.
“You hit her! All you had to do was pull her gas mask off!” Becca was horrified.
“Are you coming?” Sam snapped.
Becca shook her head. “I’ve got to see what’s going on out front.” She’d hired tough guys to fight a tough fight, not to get blown away by heat pistols. She had to see if she could find a way to help them.
“Fuck me! You got a heat pistol?”
“No!”
“Then you’re stupid. What do I do with her if you die?”
Smiling grimly at the poor revenge on the Syndicate, Becca said, “Let her go.”
Sam nodded once, bundled the girl and her wings up in a blanket from the office chair, and hurried out. Becca stared at a cream feather on the floor, then clenched her jaw.
She stood on the desk and pulled herself up into the vent shaft she’d explored with Sot. Poor Sot. Had the fumes killed him in his cage? Tears stung her eyes and she crawled toward the large front dining room.
A team of four soldiers stood spaced around the wrecked tavern. Three were guarding the doors and windows, while the largest, so big he surely must be a treetop-humanoid, rummaged each body methodically. Scanning for her hired fighters, she gagged to see Zeke and Chak were raw messes of meat. Heat pistols were foul weapons. Not that her men lying unconscious from knives and gas couldn’t still die without attention.
She studied the team in black. They screamed military. Well-trained and well-supplied, they had on full masks that hid their faces while supplying personal atmo. Besides the giant, two were lean enough to be androgynous, but the last had a classic male physique. She squinted. Something about him . . .
“These are Amanda’s guards,” the treetop said. “She’s been taken.”
“Check the building,” said Mr. Shoulders.
Becca tensed, expecting them to fan out and begin searching. She’d slip out—
“One life
reading,” said one of the slender soldiers by the door, tapping at a black wrist-plax. He looked up, directly at her. “We’ve got a watcher.”
He raised the heat pistol and fired. Fear clenched so sharply, pain streaked to the soles of her feet. The ceiling beneath her burned and crumpled. She closed her eyes and fell. Her jaw hit the ground harder than her belly. Her elbow jammed. Pain shattered from all three places, and she couldn’t breathe. Blood filled her mouth.
The treetop hauled her up by her shirt and ripped the mask from her face. He was huge, his head less than a meter from the high ceiling. The poison remained in the air. Immediately, nausea cascaded through her belly. Her knees sagged. He shook her and hauled her up again.
“Becca!” Mr. Shoulders strode forward and hugged her, although the treetop kept her shirt collar chokingly tight.
The other slender teammate came forward, yanking his mask off. It was Laurent, her brother’s best friend and assistant, who traveled with him everywhere.
That meant—“Rex?” Becca wheezed.
He shook her. “What are you doing here?” He shook her again and the room spun.
Luckily it seemed enough of the drug had dissipated. She wouldn’t be passing out, just barfing. “Stop,” she gritted. “What are you doing here?”
Rex tore his mask off too, leaving it pooled around his neck. His blond hair had a redder tint than hers, but his blue eyes were so similar. Anger burned bright in his tight face.
“I’m here for two reasons. To find out what you’re up to and to assist Senator Granville with the hiding of his daughter.” He frowned and peered at the blood dripping out of her mouth. “And now I see you at the site of her abduction. This screams Syndicate. That cargo-overseer position you took screamed Syndicate. You placing a confidential lock on your bank account screams Syndicate.”
He let her go and stepped away from her. The big guy stayed at her back, his hand fisted in her shirt, which pulled across her chest.