by Rick Partlow
Borges waved around them. “He named the planet and this city in honor of places in his home of Morocco, and once he and I began to organize our business, we decided we would call it also after a region near his home: the Rif. It was not Muhammed’s intention nor my own, originally, for us to compete with the other business operations that had been set up in what people came to call ‘the Pirate Worlds.’ We just wanted a place to be free, to conduct ourselves and our lives and our business as we saw fit.” He shook his head. “Men like Jordi Abdullah and the Sung Brothers and the leaders of the Novya Moscva bratva have other ideas. They wish to take what we have built by force, to make it their own without doing the work we have done to establish it.
“Twenty years ago, even ten perhaps, we would have had no need nor desire for armed ships or military-grade weapons. Things have changed, as my dear friend Muhammed discovered when he fell to La Sombra assassins only four years ago, in a brutal and merciless attack that also took the life of his wife and my own.” This part might have been rehearsed, but she could see the real emotion begin to surface as he spoke of his late wife. It took him a moment to bring it under control and submerge back into his role as a presenter.
“I will not have such be my fate, or my daughter’s, and what you have brought us will do much to preserve what Muhammed and I built here, to keep it as a trust for the future. For this, you have my sincere thanks.”
He nodded to them, grinning with patriarchal beneficence.
“As much as my daughter and I appreciate the results you achieved for us, however,” Borges went on, still smiling, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you be honest with us.”
“What do you mean?” Sandi asked cautiously, a pit opening up in her stomach. She felt Ash’s weight shift subtly next to her, getting ready to run, as hopeless an option as that was. “We told…”
“Please,” he interrupted, holding up a hand to stop her. “Don’t bother to deny.”
“I’m sorry, Ash, Sandi.” The voice came from behind them, familiar and yet unexpected. She turned and cursed under her breath as she saw Tomlinson stepping into the room. The look on his face was even more downcast and regretful than usual. “But when the boss asked, I couldn’t lie.”
“Motherfucker,” Ash murmured under his breath, close enough to her ear that she could just make it out.
Tomlinson took up a spot just to the rear of Brunner, trying to make himself as small and inconspicuous as a 120-kilo high-gravity troll could. His look of sorrow was so heartfelt and forlorn that Sandi could almost forgive him…almost.
“Yeah, okay, it was a trap,” Sandi admitted, her voice sounding harsh in her own ears. “They ambushed us and we were lucky to get out alive.”
“Mostly thanks to your own excellent skills in the cockpit,” Borges allowed graciously.
“Why did you lie to us?” Brunner wanted to know. There was something about the way she asked it that reminded Sandi of a lawyer cross-examining a witness, something that made her think the other woman knew the answer before she asked the question.
“Because we didn’t want to give away for free,” Ash told them, “something that had cost us so much to get.”
“The data you stole,” Borges supplied, “about Admiral Krieger and the weapons he’s supplying for La Sombra.”
Sandi nodded silently and reluctantly. She knew where this was going.
“We’re going to need the files,” Brunner said flatly, in a tone that would brook no argument.
“But of course,” Borges put in soothingly, “we aren’t asking you to give them away. You’ve proven your usefulness, and in return for what you’ve supplied for us, we’re prepared to bring both of you into the family.” He frowned deeply, eyes cast to the floor for just a moment. “There’s just one other thing we need to take care of first.”
There’s the other shoe I’ve been waiting for, Sandi thought.
“You were led into a trap,” Brunner explained. “That means our intelligence sources are compromised.” She nodded to Tomlinson and he paced quickly out of the den.
Sandi could hear the heavy-worlder yelling something. She and Ash stood, looking at the door, waiting; she could feel that Borges had risen from his chair behind them. Two large, armored and helmeted guards dragged a third, smaller, weaker man between them through the door, his dress shoes scraping against the wood flooring as they held him under his armpits. His hands were bound behind him with the same sort of utility tape that fastened his ankles together; more strips of it covered his mouth, and she could see stains on it from the blood leaking out of his nose. His eyes were blackened and a pressure cut ran across his cheek, which was already bruising.
It took her a few seconds to realize that the bound, beaten man was Hector Garces.
“What the hell?” Ash exclaimed. He started to take a step forward, but Sandi stopped him with a hand on his arm.
He glanced at her sharply and she shook her head. She could see where this was going, too…and it was even uglier than having to give up the data files.
“We’re faced with two possibilities,” Borges paced over to where the guards were holding the man. He shooed them away and Garces nearly stumbled, barely keeping his balance. “Either Hector’s sources are compromised, or Hector himself is compromised. Either way, he’s useless to us, even to interrogate.” He smiled, an almost friendly expression, and ran a finger across the tape over Garces’ mouth. “If his sources are bad, he knows nothing; if he’s a traitor, they wouldn’t have left him here if he knew anything worth hearing.” The boss reached under his jacket and pulled out a heavy, forged-metal handgun. “He needs to be disposed of, and since you were the ones who suffered from his treason, or possibly his incompetence…”
He reversed the gun in his hand and offered it grip-first to Ash. The pilot blinked, mouth opening slightly, caught off-guard.
“I’ll do it,” Sandi said, stepping forward, knowing it wouldn’t do any good to beg for Garces’ life. Someone was going to kill him, and if it wasn’t them, they’d lose Borges’ trust and this would all have been for nothing. She tried to take the gun, but Borges lifted it away from her hand, shaking his head.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, frowning thoughtfully. “I’m a fairly good judge of people, Ms. Hollande, and you strike me as a killer, at need. I’d be willing to stake this house that you’ve killed humans, face to face before.” He nodded towards Ash. “Commander Carpenter here, however, he’s a different animal. Aren’t you?” He directed that to Ash. “I think I need to see that you’re capable of doing what needs to be done before I bring you into our inner circle, Commander.”
Sandi watched Ash’s face, wanting to say something, wanting to tell him he didn’t have to do this. Nothing would come out. There was nothing to say, nothing that wouldn’t get them both killed. Ash looked pale in the firelight, his lips skinned away from his teeth. Slowly, almost painfully, he reached out his hand and grasped the butt of the gun.
She thought for a frozen, panicked moment that he would try to shoot his way out of the room. He hefted the weight of the weapon, looking it over and finding what seemed to be the safety and flicking it off with his thumb. Garce’s eyes were wide, and sweat was running down his brow, dripping off his face.
He was a weaselly traitor, a cartel mole, a piece of shit. She told herself that, and believed it, but all she could see was the fear in his eyes, the abject and total fear of death.
The gunshot was different from the rocket rounds the others here used; it was an explosion of pressure and sound and a ball of flame, and it backed her up a step with the shock and the report. The top half of Garces’ head was gone, blasted back across the wooden floor in a spray of blood and things she was glad that it was too dim to see. The guards tensed slightly, hands going towards the carbines slung over their shoulders, but Ash just re-engaged the safety and tossed the gun down on the sofa. A haze of smoke drifted up from the muzzle and she thought she heard a slight hiss as the
barrel burned a scorch mark into the leather.
His face was cold, blank, emotionless. It scared the shit out of her.
“Is that it?” Ash asked. His tone was as flat and dark as his eyes.
“Yes, I think that will do nicely,” Borges said, reaching down and picking up the gun. He popped the magazine, and she saw that it was empty, then he yanked back the slide and no chambered round popped out. He hadn’t been taking any chances, Sandi thought with bitter admiration.
Borges tucked the handgun back into the holster under his jacket, then he turned to them, beaming, his hands spread wide.
“Welcome to the Rif, my friends. What is ours is yours, and you need not pay for a meal nor a drink nor a stitch of clothing as long as you are in one of our cities.” He looked past them to Brunner, who stood waiting and watching, her evaluating gaze still on Ash. “Lena, please arrange for rooms for our new associates. Make it somewhere nice; they deserve it.”
He glanced behind her and the corner of his mouth turned down, as if he were noticing Garces’ body for the first time, noticing the remains of everything that used to be a living, thinking human being spread across his polished, hardwood floor.
“Oh, and please stop on your way out and tell Katya and Michel to come clean up this mess.”
Chapter Thirteen
“We should just run.”
Ash was sitting in the pilot’s seat, powered back all the way, his feet propped on the cold, dark control console. Brunner had told them that it would take till tomorrow to prepare their rooms in town, and they’d returned to the Acheron, refusing her offer of a temporary spot in the Chambre Verte. You didn’t know where those bedsheets had been or how well cleaned they were between guests.
Besides, they couldn’t speak freely in town.
“I was wrong,” he repeated. “We should never have come here, we should have just run.”
Sandi was sitting on the console at the copilot’s position, her feet pressed against the acceleration couch there, eyes cast downward, hooded and unreadable. He half-expected her to say “I told you so,” because she most certainly had. And he’d been too pig-headed and stubborn to believe her.
“We’d be hunted for the rest of our lives,” she pointed out, finally. “I’m going to turn myself in.” The declaration was decisive and firm.
“To the Patrol?” He asked, shaking his head. Was she playing him, trying to make him feel guilty? “Didn’t we try that already?”
“To Singh,” she clarified, finally looking up at him. “The bounty hunter. I can make him a deal, give myself up peacefully in exchange for him letting you go. It wouldn’t get the charges dropped with the Patrol or the military, but at least then you could still make a life for yourself without worrying about a price on your head.”
He searched her face, trying to decide if she meant it. She’d been a user, of alcohol and people, back when he’d known her in the military, but a lot had happened between then and now.
“No,” he decided. “I won’t let you do that.”
“For Christ’s sake, why not?” She exploded, fairly leaping off the console and leaning over him where he sat. “I’ve done nothing but destroy your fucking life, Ash!” She was trying to sound angry, but it was an act, and Ash could see through it easily. There was agony on her face, guilt and pain and despair over what she thought she’d done to him. “Just let me do this! Why the hell won’t you just cut me loose?”
She was only a half a meter from him, her face so close he could smell a subtle hint of strawberries from whatever she used to wash her hair, so close he could see the hint of a tear in the corner of her eye. He knew she wanted him to get angry, wanted him to blame everything on her and her selfishness and irresponsibility, but how could he? What would he have done if he’d been in her position, desperate for help and down to just one friend, one person she could count on? Besides, he just didn’t have the energy left for outrage.
“Because I love you, Sandi,” he admitted tiredly, not caring how pitiful it sounded. “I guess I’ve never stopped. I’ve been trying to run away from it ever since you came back, but I just don’t have the energy to fight it anymore.”
She collapsed back on the console in front of him, burying her face in her hands, and he could hear the quiet sobbing wracking her, see the shake of her shoulders through her flight jacket.
“You can’t,” she moaned, fingers knotting in her hair. “I don’t deserve it…”
He folded her into his arms, pulling her tight and stroking her hair gently, riding out the shudders of her sobs until her shoulders relaxed and she looked up at him, tears streaking her face. He wiped them away with the back of his hand, smiling sadly down into her face.
“Since when did deserving it have anything to do with who you loved?” He asked her.
Something passed across her face, perhaps a decision, perhaps a surrender, and she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. It felt different. It was passionate, but that was nothing new. Sandi had always had passion. No, the difference was the feeling behind it, the feeling of letting go. He and Sandi had shared physical closeness before, but she’d always seemed to be holding back, having fun but never willing to commit to anything beyond that.
He wanted to rip away her jacket, wanted to carry her back to the cabin, but he paused, pulling back and looking into her eyes, waiting.
“I love you, too, Ash,” she said. “I have since that first night on Deimos station.”
It should have sounded romantic, but that wasn’t Sandi. Instead, it sounded like a lament, like she’d made the biggest mistake of her life and couldn’t think of a way out of it.
“I’m sorry I fucked things up this badly.”
“Don’t be,” he said with a sigh of resignation. “If you didn’t fuck things up, I wouldn’t know how to handle it.”
She laughed at that, leaning her head into his chest.
“What the hell did you do to deserve me, Ashton Carpenter?”
“I must have been a real son of a bitch in another life, because I can’t think of anything bad enough in this one.”
She stood up, eyes on his as she pulled off her flight jacket and tossed it into the copilot’s chair. Then she grabbed him by the collars of his own jacket and hauled him up from his seat. She wasn’t quite strong enough for that, not in this gravity, so he helped. Then she was kissing him again, peeling off his clothes and her own, and he helped her with that, too.
They didn’t make it to the cabin, not the first time. The first time, she was sitting on the console of the pilot’s station and everything was a frenetic, urgent rush, as if it was a signature on a contract. After, he did carry her back to one of the cabins, leaving their clothes scattered carelessly over the cockpit. The cots in the compartments were small, but they’d squeezed into smaller before, and the second time was more sedate, more like old lovers reunited, which was what they were.
I’m making a huge mistake, he told himself, but it wasn’t one he could stop, no matter how much he tried to argue himself out of it. This was a long time overdue, and if it killed him, well, he could think of worse ways to go.
He didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he woke up, he was tangled with Sandi, the warmth of her flesh and the closeness of the small cabin overcoming the sub-zero cold outside the ship into a combination that seemed just slightly chilly. He didn’t know what time it was, but he felt rested and whole and so much more at peace than he had any time in the last five years.
That was when he realized that he’d woken up to a notification from the ship’s intercom.
“Carpenter, Hollande, are you there?”
It was Brunner’s voice, impatient and getting more annoyed by the minute.
“Yeah,” he rasped, his throat dry. He felt Sandi stirring next to him, her head coming up to stare around into the utter darkness of the cabin. He felt around and touched the control for the light, squinting against it as it lit up the small space. Sandi was naked and alluring e
ven with that confused look on her face, but he forced himself to business. “I’m here. What is it?”
“About time you woke up,” the Rif enforcer sniffed. “I’m sending a car out to the field for you. Be ready in a half an hour. We have another job for you.”
He was about to answer her but the intercom chimed softly to let him know the connection had been cut.
“We’d better get cleaned up,” Sandi said, regret in her voice and smoldering embers in her eyes.
“Yeah,” he acknowledged. Then he pulled her against him and kissed her. “Don’t forget this though, okay?” He said, running a palm down her arm. “This happened, and you don’t get to pretend it didn’t.”
“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” she assured him, again with that hint of sadness. “You’re stuck with me.”
She made it sound like a sentence, and maybe it was. He pushed at her shoulder.
“Go get a shower. We need to get back to work.”
***
They weren’t taken to the den this time. Upstairs, off in a corner of the castle-like house, there was a situation room, or as close to one as anyone could come on this backward settlement. There weren’t the holographic displays and quantum-computer simulations that Ash would be used to, but the two-dimensional flat-screens affixed to the walls were the best you could do, locally.
It was late in the evening, not that it mattered to Sandi’s sense of time; she was still operating on three planets ago and was feeling like it was morning. The room was windowless and lit by the bland, impersonal glare of office lights and she could pretend it was any time of day that felt right.
That’s the only thing I can pretend feels right, she thought, looking over at Ash. He was such an idiot; the smart thing for him to do was to leave her and not look back, try to salvage whatever of his life he could. But the big dummy loved her, and because she screwed up everything she touched, she loved him, too, and now that he knew it, there was no way she could get him to do the smart thing.