by Kelly Jensen
“Fuck off, Julian.”
Zed straightened as Emma’s voice, gruff but wavery, reverberated through the bridge. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted Flick did the same.
“We’re here, Emma.” Zed tried to keep his voice unconcerned, but he couldn’t help the thread of tension in it.
“Hi.” Emma chuckled weakly. “Well, this is fucking fantastic, isn’t it?”
“Why’d you leave, Em?” Flick asked, shifting forward in his seat.
“Oh, you know. A freak out.” She sighed. “Agrius grabbed me at my apartment. They knew I’d gone with you and they’re pissed at you, at all of you. Something happened on Dardanos Station?”
Elias leveled a glare at Zed, and Zed glared back. “Yeah.”
“Great.” Ragged breath came across the comm for a few seconds. “They said they’re gonna kill me—”
“That’s enough, sweetheart.”
“Emma!” Flick shouted, rising out of his chair.
“We will send you a location and a time,” said the other voice, Julian. “You will meet us and we will discuss reparation.”
“And if we refuse?” Elias demanded.
“Then we will take Ms. Katze apart one piece at a time. Her training is exquisite, no? It will keep her alive much longer than a normal person.”
Zed’s gut clenched at the truth of that statement. The Zone would keep pain at bay, but it sure as hell wouldn’t keep Emma from dying...eventually. Goddamn it.
“We’ll be there,” Flick said through gritted teeth.
“Excellent.” The comm clicked off. A moment later, another ping announced the arrival of the meeting coordinates.
“It is clearly a trap,” Qek said into the sudden silence.
“Duh.” Elias sighed. “So we’re going to rescue her just to hand her over the AEF?”
“Only as a last resort,” Zed growled. “And the AEF won’t take her apart piece by piece.”
The captain lifted his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. A rescue mission it is. Where’s the meet, Qek?”
“It is in a warehouse near one of the manufacturing facilities on the far end of the docks. We must be there in one hour.”
“Not a lot of time to plan.” Flick tugged at one of his curls. “Should we get Anatolius Security involved?”
The idea of getting more people involved in this shit turned Zed’s stomach. Hell, he hated the thought of the crew of the Chaos being neck-deep in it. But maybe...
“I should go alone,” he said.
“No fucking way, Zed—”
He lifted a hand. “Hear me out. Agrius is pissed about the bodies on Dardanos. That’s my responsibility.”
“You’re not the one who cheated them out of their profits on the drug shipment,” Elias pointed out.
“No, but that’s just money, right? It’s a sting to their ego, sure, but it’s not the slap I delivered by killing their guys.”
Flick grimaced and looked away, as though he didn’t appreciate the reminder of Zed’s skills. Zed couldn’t blame him. But he had a plan...a plan he was sure would work. And if it didn’t...
Well, it would just be him and Emma at ground zero, and their time was almost up anyway.
* * *
Felix input the code Zed had given him and waited for the happy click of the lock.
“We could clean this place out with access like that.”
“Shame on you, Eli,” Nessa hissed.
Felix pushed the door open and turned to wave them through. “They know every time we open a door. You do realize that. We’re using Zed’s codes.”
“Don’t they wonder what he’s doing?”
“Sure, but he’s an Anatolius. He owns this station. He can suit up and take a walk across the dome of Sector D if he wants. No one is going to question him.”
If Felix walked anywhere outside, it would be Sector D, over the shielded botanic gardens and agriculture bays. The view from up there would be outstanding. Zed would probably prefer to walk through the actual trees and plants, under the dome. Because Zed was weird like that, and he hated heights.
Felix tapped his bracelet, activating a display. A marked-up schematic unfurled across the dim passageway. He poked a symbol in the corner and a big green dot blinked into being near the center. “That’s us.”
They were in a disused office complex behind the Agrius warehouse. Someone had purchased the space three months ago, but a business hadn’t been registered. The dimmed hallway lights and row of closed doors indicated Zed had been right: the offices were a buffer. An alternate entrance and exit to the warehouse, a layer of insulation between the cartel and its neighbors.
Elias and Ness had their wallets out, displays open. All three of them had their own set of secondary markers.
“We good to go?” Felix asked.
“Almost.” Elias deactivated his display and pulled a device from his pocket. “Now would be a good time to explain exactly what we’re supposed to do with these.”
“The Imps?” Felix plucked the Imp from Elias’s fingers and turned it over so that the small cross on the front showed. “Get this as close to the mark as you can. Match the number—” he tapped the engraved digit with one finger, “—to your map. That’s the most important thing. If you’re a centimeter off, it will still work. Put the wrong Imp in the wrong spot and we’ll have sprinklers going off and airlocks exploding.”
“Riiight,” Nessa said.
Elias’s troubled expression cleared. “Oh, very funny.” He put his hand out for the Imp. “What systems am I messing with?”
“You? A door alarm and two camera feeds. If our schematic is up-to-date. Ness is on sprinklers and airlocks.”
A wry smile plucked at Nessa’s lips.
Elias shoved the Imp back into his pocket. “Got it.” He raised a hand to his brow in mock salute. “See you in a few.”
Elias went one way, Nessa the other. Felix followed Elias for a hundred meters and turned down another corridor toward his set of coordinates. He didn’t like being separated from his crew, but they didn’t have time to move together. Zed would be entering the warehouse in a minute or two, if he hadn’t already, and in ten minutes, Felix intended to begin extraction. He didn’t trust Agrius—none of them did.
Felix had placed two of the small charges when a shadow fell across his hand. He turned with an elbow cocked and ready to crack a jaw, relaxed as Elias’s dark face poked into his alcove.
“That’s the last one.” Felix stepped back, checking the corridor for unwelcome visitors.
Elias unfolded his wallet. “Ness?”
“Here.”
“We’re done here. Are you—”
Nessa appeared at the end of the corridor. She waved her wallet, then folded it shut and tucked it into her pocket. At a casual stride, it took her less than a minute to reach their corner. Felix watched Elias watch Nessa, obvious concern in his dark eyes. Did he look at Zed like that? Were his feelings as obvious? Drawing in a deep breath, Felix tried to will the tension out of his hunched shoulders. He had to trust that Zed hadn’t already gotten himself killed by insisting on going in alone. Trust the plan Zed had laid out.
Slender fingers wrapped around his arm. “Breathe, Fix.”
“I did.”
“Breathe out again.”
His cheeks puffed out as he did so.
Nessa let go of his arm and made her report. “Three Imps installed.”
Felix called them up on his schematic. “Okay. That’s exit B. You’ve both got the new Anatolius access code? If we get separated—”
“We know the plan.”
Felix looked up to meet Elias’s dark gaze. “I’m just—”
“We’ll get him out. We’ll get both of them out.”
“Okay.” What else could he say, really? That he wouldn’t leave Chloris without Zed? Elias and Nessa both knew that. They also knew that he would push hard, here. That he would do everything—anything—to get his friends to safety. Elias and Nessa w
ould too. Felix breathed out again. “Okay.” He checked the time on his wallet. “Four minutes.”
Elias and Nessa took the opportunity to secure their weapons. A stunner each and a selection of hypo-syringes for the doctor. Nessa looked armed to take on a plague. Elias had his serious business face on. Felix rocked his ankle in his boot, felt his knife...and didn’t relax. He confirmed the placement of the Imps again, mentally ticking off each system they planned to disable. Internal surveillance, door alarms, lights, air pumps.
He checked the time again. Two minutes.
* * *
It was an effort not to reach for the Zone as he approached the Agrius meeting point. Nerves danced in his stomach, up, down and sideways. His palms were sweaty too. Christ, it was like he’d never been on a high-stakes mission before—though he hadn’t, not like this. Not to save a friend.
He couldn’t let this get personal in his head—even though it was, God, it was. If he let it get personal, he’d get angry, and anger might help in the middle of combat, but not here. Not now. He needed to stay frosty, as the guys on the teams would say. Still, he figured he deserved a medal for not reacting when a couple of moth-inked goons emerged from the shadow of the building in front of him, armed with projectile rifles.
“I’m expected.” He raised his hands, slowly, when one of the Agrius flunkies waved his weapon.
He expected the frisk and having his wallet removed. He didn’t expect the bald, muscular goon to go back for a second round of feeling up his butt.
“What, man, do you like my ass or something?”
The goon grunted, his brown eyes narrowed in consideration. “Not unless you got a weapon shoved up there.”
“Honey, I’m not the one with a stick up my butt.”
The goon’s partner—younger, with a scar slashing across his forehead—snickered. Shooting a glare in his direction, the bald guy stepped back from Zed. “He’s clean.”
They escorted him to the warehouse. A large door bearing the distinctive outline of the Agrius moth rolled back to reveal a cavernous space—three linked warehouses, at first glance. Zed felt vindicated—and relieved—that the layout matched what he’d been able to retrieve in the more detailed schematics for the station. To the left, metal stairs switched back and forth between upper-level catwalks. A row of offices idled beneath, each glass-fronted space aglow with light and activity. No one paid any attention to the small party marching through their midst. Seeing someone escorted at gunpoint was probably an everyday occurrence with this group.
Zed examined the space surreptitiously as they walked, orienting himself against the specs in his head and cataloguing the most likely sniper locations, where reinforcements might come from, and how far away the closest exit into the buffer building was. By the time the goons stopped at a door with a frosted glass insert and the label Conference One, Zed had a contingency route planned for him and Emma. Just in case something fucked with Flick’s gadgets.
The room held Emma, bruised but alive, and a powerfully built man dressed in an absurd electric-blue suit as bright as one of the holo-signs belonging to the lower-level dive bars. The deep vee of his shiny SFT blouse revealed a thatch of dark chest hair. Nestled in the curls was a golden medallion in the shape of a cocoon. His gaze slipped from Zed to the door behind Zed, obviously expecting the rest of the Chaos crew. Disappointment flashed across his features, quickly replaced by a sardonic smile.
“You came alone. How very heroic.”
Zed ignored Mr. Holo and took a step toward Emma. The goons immediately brought their rifles to bear, so he relented. “You okay?” he asked her, his voice soft.
She lifted a defiant gaze to him, her eyes glittering with malice. “Fuck you, Anatolius, I’m not a damsel in distress.”
“You’re doing a pretty good impression of one.”
Emma grimaced and stuck out her tongue.
“Charming.” Mr. Holo arched a brow. Zed figured he had to be high up in the ranks, because if there was anyone above him, surely they’d tell him his outfit was an embarrassment to criminals everywhere. “Shouldn’t you be upstairs somewhere, sipping champagne and rarified air, Mr. Anatolius?”
“You got the wrong Anatolius. I’m right where I need to be.”
The guy’s second brow rose to join the first. “Is that so?”
The bald goon stepped forward and tossed Zed’s wallet on the table. “This was all he had on him.”
“Unless the crew of that ugly little ship is going to pop out of it—”
“There are five hundred thousand unhooked credits on there,” Zed pointed out. “More than enough to make up for the misunderstanding with the Chaos.”
Emma let out a low whistle. “Holy fuck, Zed.”
“So you want to pay us off?” Mr. Holo tilted his head. “And are you going to pay us for the men you killed on Dardanos?”
“I wouldn’t be so crass.”
“So you’re...what? Offering yourself up as some sort of sacrificial goat in the hopes that I’ll forget what a pain in the ass the Chaos has been?”
“Julian, it’s five hundred k,” Emma said.
Before Julian, the Agrius leader—commander? Head moth?—could answer her, his wallet pinged. After reading the ripmail, Julian jerked his chin at the two guards. “On the door,” he ordered.
Zed kept his expression even as Julian marched out of the room without any explanation. One of Flick’s distractions at work, no doubt. The click of the door lock sounded loud in the space, but Zed didn’t worry about it.
“You got a plan?” Emma asked without moving her lips.
“Oh yeah,” Zed assured her. He tucked the wallet with the creds back in his pocket, seeing as Agrius didn’t want it. Grinning, he hoisted one hip against the conference table and waited.
Chapter Eighteen
Felix didn’t flinch when the Anatolius access code failed; he’d expected Agrius to have updated the lock. They had, but not to anything he couldn’t hack, particularly with the alarm disabled. Felix grasped the door handle. “Ready?”
If his distraction had gone off as planned, a door alarm would be summoning Agrius to one corner of the warehouse and a failed internal camera feed would pull a few more guards to another corner, hopefully leaving their ingress point unguarded. Without detailed reconnaissance, they had no way to anticipate how Agrius would cover the inside of the warehouse—how many people they had, what sort of patrols they might have set up. But they had Zed. Years of covert ops and no small amount of natural brilliance had him marking up every corner of the warehouse with likely scenarios. Stepping through, Elias and Nessa on his heels, Felix discovered Best Case Scenario Triple A Plus: no guard waiting, stunner in hand.
Felix tapped his bracelet, opening a quick call to Qek. “We’re in.”
“Starting the clock.”
If no one made contact with the Chaos in an hour, Qek would call Anatolius Security. They had discussed a call to the AEF, but Felix had voiced a rather loud objection. He still wasn’t comfortable with handing Emma over because he suspected the AEF would want to take Zed as well. And that wasn’t fucking happening.
A row of tall containers obscured any view of the interior of the warehouse. Felix eased his back against them, sidled up to the nearest edge and stuck his nose around the corner. He saw another row of containers and stacked crates. A low ceiling pressed down claustrophobically. Felix tucked that particular fear into a deep box as he motioned the crew to follow him into the next aisle. He padded quietly to the end and eased around another corner. From there, he got a glimpse of a good portion of the warehouse.
The low ceiling was a balcony that ringed the massive space. Catwalks intersected the upper half at regular intervals. The lower level was a maze of stacked containers and crates. Guards armed with rifles patrolled two of the catwalks. The other four were empty. Felix could not determine the make of their weapons at a distance, but if he had to guess, he’d say projectile. The barrel appeared rounded—and the cri
minal element loved their illegal weapons. He couldn’t guess at what type of rounds they had loaded, but he doubted they’d be using rubber bullets. The stocks and triggers were likely bio-mapped, though. The weapons would be keyed to their handler, making them useless once they were dropped.
The AEF had overrides for that sort of thing. Five years discharged, Felix did not have access to that sort of hack and Marnie wouldn’t send him one. He wouldn’t ask her to.
“Man, Zed is good.”
Felix glanced at Elias. “Yeah?”
“It’s like he saw the inside of this place in a dream or something.”
Maybe he had. Who knew what other powers the super soldiers had been granted?
Drawing back from the edge of the crates, Felix activated his wallet again. A discreet display flickered into being. He tapped one of the symbols he’d hot-keyed to the bottom corner of the window. Zed would have been searched, all weapons and tech removed. An organization that had already linked the bodies on Dardanos and Chloris might conduct a cavity search as well. They wouldn’t trust Zed as far as they could throw him—which wouldn’t be very far. So Felix had given him something to swallow, a tracker that would remain active for about an hour before his stomach ate it. A blue blip bloomed on the map.
“There he is.” Felix pointed through the crates. Zed was close, only a hundred meters away. Was he out in the open or secured somewhere? Did he have Emma with him? Pulling his stunner from his belt, Felix slipped around the edge of the crates and into the next row, flattening himself against hard plasmix to avoid detection from above. Over the next row of stacked crates, he could see the last catwalk, which served as a balcony to a row of lit offices. Felix guessed there were offices on the lower level as well...and Zed was in the one in the far corner.
A guard entered the row of crates. She didn’t look into the shadows, she simply pressed her back to a stack, pulled something from her pocket and stuck it into her mouth. It could be a simple wad of nicotine, second oldest drug in the galaxy, or it could be something more psychoactive. The fact she hadn’t noticed three people leaning against the opposite row of crates about twenty meters away tended to indicate the latter.