So she knew who was in charge. That was something.
***
A half dozen of the twenty-odd smallish moons orbiting the world were still visible at various points in the sky, like milky marbles behind frosted emerald glass, by the time the hoverbike reached the ridgeline. Finnegan hadn’t said a word for a while now, and though she’d tried to stay upbeat about their chances of making it out of this alive, this was likely the last ride either of them would ever take. If he knew the real story of why she was out here, he’d turn and make for the dams immediately. Leave her here. Maybe even kill her.
But there was something about this big galoot the others hadn’t told her. A vestige of a past life when perhaps money didn’t have the first and last word in his moral vocabulary. She’d seen it lash through his contemptuous gaze like a solar flare last night, awakening an old sense of right and wrong? This thug. This son of a bitch. This cold-blooded killer she’d helped recruit for the near-impossible Iolchian job. He had a code after all, damn it. Deep down inside, a code of honour that wouldn’t leave a wounded woman to die at the roadside.
Had the others known that about him when they’d sent her out here to dupe him?
Shit, of course they had! Why else would they have shot her—
Finnegan’s tired hand slipped on the throttle, accidentally revving the engine. It barked out over the valley. “—by water?” he said.
“Yes?”
He looked at her askance, scowled as he hung his goggles on the handlebar. “Unless that’s your name, lady, I was referring to the fact we’re dead in a day in this heat unless we find something to drink. You said this is a dry lake? Does that mean it’s covered by water for part of the year?”
“Um, yeah, I guess. See that bracken down there, it follows a winding trail in the sand. That’s probably a river in the wet season.”
“So if we dig down, we’ll find water?”
She shrugged. Finnegan walked away, removed his grey duster, and stretched his solid muscular form, one limb at a time. His dark, blood-spattered T-shirt made her wince. He’d been through hell last night. So had she. But seriously, how stupid could a person be—almost giving the game away like that. By water. So close to her maiden name that she’d answered to it without thinking. Words were life and death now. The wrong one at the wrong time and those four strategic bullet holes in her leg would be the least of her worries.
Lindsay Bywater.
That had been her name once. Two marriages and a couple dozen light-years ago. A galaxy of possibilities before her. All of them bright and exciting. None of them remotely leading here...to this. But here she was. And this was Lindsay now. A lifetime of five bad choices for every good one had finally exhausted her right to choose.
Lindsay Polotovsky.
That was her name now. Her legal one anyway. Her ex, Yuri, had maintained she had a habit of shitting on any good thing in her life, shortly before he’d split for Mars with that trophy slut from Ferrer. Maybe he had a point. But she still had his name. A solid one in underworld circles from way back when, from Yuri’s shack-sheik ancestors in the border colonies. It had given her a bit of currency, at least, in applying for off-the-books admin jobs. Lori Malesseur had grudgingly taken her on because there’d been no one else available at short notice to replace her previous assistant who’d “accidentally fallen out of an airlock on her way to the powder room.” Lindsay’s dubious name had given her that dubious opportunity, then.
Only now she didn’t even have that. Lori Malesseur had dropped her, just like her predecessor, out of an airlock. The difference this time was that she’d given Lindsay a parachute, Lori’s expensive gear to wear, Lori’s own name to use, and four bullets in her leg to help convince whoever this asshole was who’d escaped Iolchis with the Fleece, to bring her—and the merchandise—back across the border. They were tracking the Fleece container’s unique code signature from orbit. So, an injured woman, a bribe, a sob story about trying to warn him of the superior forces: these were the tricks designed to persuade Finnegan to fulfil his mission and not do something stupid...like flee on his own.
And he’d fallen for it, the poor, heroic sucker.
He had no idea he was saving Malesseur’s secretary.
After so long sat in one position, and with a leg full of bullet holes and trancs—both courtesy of Lori in low orbit—Lindsay collapsed in a heap as she stepped off the hoverbike. On her way down she caught the pillion bag and dragged it with her. An almighty ruckus flapped about her ears, as if a hundred bats had just woken from a nightmare and were blaming her personally for it.
“Freaking hell is that?” She scrambled away in time to see the huge bird batter its way out of the bag and hop across the bare rock. It opened its wings to a frightening span—maybe eight or ten feet—and looked at them in turn, flexing, moving them up and down slowly, methodically, with such cool intelligence it bordered on supernatural. Its left wing was scarred, ragged, clearly the least flexible. The bird didn’t even attempt to take flight. “Finnegan, what is that thing?”
“A condor. GenMod. It saved my life last night, attacked the Iolchians and took my side.”
“Why?”
“Beats me. But it’s coming with us.”
The idea of being pecked to death one chunk at a time while she rode behind Finnegan only compounded her woes. The pain from her bullet wounds began to flare, so that she could no longer hide her pathetic hisses of discomfort whenever she tried to move.
“Who put those bandages on?” He strode over, crouched beside her, inspected the dressings one of Malesseur’s goons had applied with remorseless efficiency. She saw Finnegan’s full, weatherworn face for the first time. A little craggy around the eyes, which were narrow, blue-grey, and brilliant. He was older than she’d guessed. Early to mid forties. But he was chiselled for an older guy, and had to have been clean-shaven for the mission; last night’s ordeal had begun to draw out his age a little, though, especially the silver in his stubble. His hair was a sand-blasted mess, but might be slightly on the longish side and mousy brown at its best.
It was good to see the man behind the fearsome resume. They somehow didn’t quite fit together. He had the manners of a blunt groin-kick, true, but he didn’t look particularly threatening. Not that she’d trust him as far as she could throw his bike...and his goddamn bird.
But she had no choice.
“I took first aid,” she said lamely.
He undid two bandages. The cumulative release of pressure sent her a little dizzy. “Not bad,” he replied.
“Thanks.”
“Redo them.”
Eh? She squinted at him. What did he know? She couldn’t do a field dressing if her life depended on it. “I—I’m feeling a bit faint.” She lay down, faked a cough. “I must have lost too much blood.”
He rebandaged the wounds for her, then carried her on his shoulder to a cave he’d spotted about thirty feet below the ridgeline. Set her gently on the cold sand inside. It had the gloomy, musty ambience of a windowless anteroom in a church—one very special church in particular she hadn’t thought about in years. And for good reason. It clenched her heart to think of it even now. That soaring music. Those safe, solemn hours waiting for Dad to finish playing...
As refugees from ISPA’s liquidation of the 100z border, the Bywater family had had to rely on Neo Christian charities while being bumped from world to world, colony to colony for over five years when Lindsay had been little. But when they’d finally settled in the carbon mining colony on Rurenabaque, and the colonists had been offered the chance to purchase the mining rights from the controlling corporation for themselves, the overwhelming majority had opted not to co-op the franchise. Within a few years, the corporation had sealed up the mines until galactic demand for carbon increased—but it never did. Jobless, homeless and almost penniless, the colonists who’d inflicted that misery on themselves had no choice but to migrate to other worlds, other colonies, losing their community forever.
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Oh, she knew the price of personal greed. Knew it well. Mum and Dad had been no different. Rather than ante up the capital to ensure their own futures on Rurenabaque, not to mention those of their children and grandchildren, the sanctimonious colonists (and the Bywaters) had chosen to keep their individual savings intact. See how well that turned out.
As well as being a psammeticum drill operator, Dad had become the organist in their local church on Rurenabaque, even though he wasn’t religious. Lindsay, with her mum and three brothers, used to wait in the vaulted anteroom during vespers, and play backgammon and Cydonia Face with the proviso that they pack up the moment Dad’s organ sounded the final hymn, or “exit music”, as she used to call it. The priest did catch them gambling one time and blew his top. Mum called him a “self-righteous toe-rag”, and that was the last time they were ever admitted. But Lindsay had never forgotten how important Dad had seemed, perched on his stool, gazed at adoringly by a full congregation, or his lovely playing as it bled through the walls and the vaulted ceiling with an aching reverence that had always fascinated her because no one in her family regarded religion that way.
She’d had nightmares for years about that empty organ stool, her life that could have been if Mum and Dad had settled there and not drifted apart over years of searching for a better place, a place they never found. Were those other families from Rurenabaque still together? She’d always thought so. Maybe because they had something the Bywaters didn’t.
If she’d been brought up religious, would she be here now, abetting a crime for a criminal’s criminal employer, a few kph ahead of certain death? If those colonists had chosen solidarity over individual wealth, would she have become such an irredeemable loner?
Questions not worth the glob of phlegm she spat out in self-disgust. Nope, this was all her doing, no one else’s.
Soon Finnegan retrieved his bike and the bird, the latter making surprisingly little fuss. It seemed to know he had its best interest at heart. Two invalids, then, nursing their wounds side by side, under the care of one of the deadliest mercenaries in the inner colonies. And he had no idea who or what either of them really were.
“Are you going to look for water?” she asked.
“After I’ve had a lie down.” He curled up on his duster, using the empty pillion bag for a pillow.
“How long are we going to stay here? You do know the Iolchians are still after us.”
“No shit, lady.”
“Then how long—”
“An hour. For Christ’s sake, an hour or so. Just leave me in peace.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
She groaned as she shifted position, mostly for his benefit. “This is uncomfortable, you know.”
“Mm.”
“There are rocks everywhere. How about giving me the coat?”
He kicked a bootload of sand at her. “Get creative.” His grim chuckle quickly gave way to quiet, peaceful snoring that lasted exactly eighteen minutes. The alarm on his hoverbike woke him with a beep, bee-beep, beep forty-two minutes earlier than it should have. Yes, Lindsay had reprogrammed the timer. No, he didn’t suspect a thing as he sleepwalked to his bike and gathered the equipment for collecting water: two six-pint plastic containers, rubber tubing, an emergency distiller. And no, she didn’t feel bad one bit.
The oaf wanted to play rough. She could play rough.
Chapter Two
He only had to dig a couple of feet under the yellow-and-orange bracken before enough water welled up and pooled for him to collect. Tepid and muddy, sure, but he wasn’t about to grumble. The daytime heat in Iolchis sucked water from the body at a rate no barkeep in the galaxy could rectify at sundown. Not that they’d be seeing a bar any time soon. It was therefore critical to take on as much liquid as possible throughout the day, at regular intervals. He set the portable distiller to work at once. Its solar-powered battery boiled the water in one compartment and cooled the pipe leading into the next, at temperatures to perfectly maximise condensation. It wasn’t quick, but it yielded pints of drinkable liquid by the time they had to set off again. He brought along a full container of non-boiled water as well, so they could use the still at their next stop.
That was one load off his mind, at least. As for the other one? She seemed a lot less fidgety now.
“Where are you from again, Finnegan? I haven’t decided between Europa and one of the Nordic asteroid colonies.” She peeled off her smart, expensive scouting jacket that could inflate to cushion the torso and the head in the event of a fall. “Definitely somewhere cold, though. Your skin’s not used to this sun. You’re peeling.” All she had on now were sexy denim shorts over a form-fitting bodysuit that maintained body temperature in any climate up to fifty degrees celsius either side of zero. Designer apparel way out of his price range.
So she had the gear, the attitude, the wounds, and the background knowledge to back up her claims. Yet for some reason his instinct could not translate her murky story into a drinkable one. It all still seemed too outlandish. Too coincidental. That she should run into a random armed patrol in the middle of the desert like that, when his team of seven hadn’t spotted so much as a pisshole in the sand while en route for days; that she’d been intercepted before his team had even breached the facility and triggered the alarm; or that she’d somehow survived that altercation, alone, and crawled to safety undetected with four bullet wounds leaving a trail of blood; or that she’d happened to be waiting at the exact tree he’d aimed for, miles from the direct line between her camp and the facility; or that she hadn’t seemed in the least disappointed when he’d claimed he didn’t have the Fleece. Or that he was somehow disliking her less and less as time went on. That one was the least palatable of all. Lori Malesseur—slipping off his to-be-slaughtered-upon-delivery list? What was wrong with him?
But—the above could all be true and he just hadn’t had chance to factor in his own miraculous escape. Compared to her story, was his any less fantastic? He was paranoid, that was all. Seeing a universe conspire against him in infuriating detail. His perception of the big picture was no longer reliable. What he had to do was stop over-thinking, take this one step at a time, and get clear of Iolchian jurisdiction. They wanted him dead. Lori Malesseur did not.
Yet.
He might still have to kill her.
“You’re not very talkative, Finnegan.”
“I’m all talked out.” He patted his Shelby.
She held out her arms for him to help her up; he hung his coat on one, the pillion bag on the other. She hurled them after him and spat. “What kind of service do you call that?”
“The quadruple kind.”
After hopping to her feet, “I think I liked you better when you were pointing a gun at me.”
“Me too, sweetheart. Me too.”
“So what now?”
“We chase the horizon. Long and hard and fast as we can. We put as much dust between us and those bastards as we can. And Malesseur, you—” Without warning, a shard of an image sliced through his mind’s eye. It jolted him back. Foreign and near, fluid and out-of-body: he’d never experienced anything quite like it, save the flash of orange rain last night. But there was no rain in this vision. It was a vivid tableau, revealing the desert above them. He knew exactly where and when it was—a view from the ridgeline at that precise moment—but he didn’t know how he knew.
“Hmm?”
“Put your jacket back on. Now.”
She grabbed it, hustled it on in record time. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re under attack. We’ll have to go downhill in a hurry.” He lifted her onto the bike, spun round and round in search of the bird, snarled when he couldn’t locate it. “That stupid goddamn—”
“Leave it!” she insisted.
“I can’t. It saved my life.”
“Would you rather we get caught instead? Move your ass, Finnegan!”
He tossed the pillion bag at her, punched his coat o
n, and jump-started Bess into a reckless kamikaze shot at the steep slope leading to the dry river valley below. Slammed the brakes on a split-second before the incline. Malesseur smacked into his back, full body. She screamed in pain, clutching her leg.
But damn it, the condor had just hopped back into the cave. It made a beeline for him, seemed to know the pillion bag was its only chance at a getaway. “You dumb mother...flocker.” He stuffed it none-too-gently into the bag. Winced when it pecked his hand. Then it bit Malesseur’s for good measure, as if to say, I’m the royalty around here—you’ll not abandon me.
Bess wouldn’t restart. He knuckled the throttle. Twice. Again. Tried gently coaxing her into action, and when that didn’t work, several sly revving increments to tickle a bit of traction into her apoplectic parts, just enough to get her warm and sticky again. “Come on, sweetheart. Don’t let me down now.”
“Finnegan?”
“I know.”
“They would have heard my scream from orbit.”
“I know.”
“Quadruple, remember?”
He held his breath. Closed his eyes. Pressed his cheek to the warm, coarse carbon fiber dash, the feel of his beloved Bess now filling all his senses until he could speak to her on some hidden Earthborn channel that remained open to the two of them, and them alone, no matter how far they travelled into the cosmos. Through this private channel he whispered, with infinite affection, “One last time, sweetheart—for me,” and waited.
When that didn’t work he got off and stomped on her until she restarted.
They shot out of the cave at a frightening velocity, amid a hail of pulse blasts from above, from behind, all around. A blitz of rocks and sand quickly enveloped them, made it impossible to see. Metal screeched under him. Finnegan found himself flying through the air attached to nothing and no one, while only one thing he knew for certain: this was going to hurt. A lot.
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