Thirteen had died at the hands of the quetzals. Port Authority hadn’t lost so many to a quetzal raid since the early days nearly thirty years ago.
And then had come news about Trish Monagan.
The other draw that night was Allison. She looked radiant as she moved between the tables in her silver form-fitting dress. Not that she hadn’t always walked with a slinky grace, but tonight she did so with a self-confidence Dan had never seen before.
Men crowded around her, offering to buy her a drink, to do her any service. The women in attendance offered Ali any courtesy, gave her that slight nod of respect that he wasn’t used to seeing from them.
So, she’s the fucking hero of the moment.
It didn’t hurt that she had bandages on her left arm and leg where Raya Turnienko had dug shrapnel out of her. She’d barely avoided the brunt of Benteen’s nasty little grenade.
Allison Chomko had been the person who’d dared to sneak in and unlock the captives’ chains. She was the one who had reached over, took a deep breath, and pulled the detonator out of a little block of magtex that Benteen had left as a final fuck you if things went off the rails. She’d been the one to drop it into the jar of acid Yvette kept in her office to analyze minerals.
And now she’s home. Which means what for me?
That was the question. As the night had progressed, she’d shot him the occasional glance, sometimes accompanied by a slight smile. The way she looked at him now? He wasn’t sure that he didn’t prefer the old days when he’d kept her drugged on blue nasty.
Whatever she had in store for him, he’d find out. For the moment, the money and plunder were rolling in. “New shooter!” he called as Lawson crapped out on the table and Shin Wang raked in a stack of gold SDRs.
Fourteen people, including Dube Dushku, were dead. It lent a curious solemnity, and at the same time a sense of strength to the celebration. Calls for toasts were made. “Here’s to Dube!” or “Let’s drink to good old Willy!” And the cups were raised.
Nor was it just to the dead: “To Talina Perez!”
“Hooraw!” “To Tal!” “God bless Tal!” “Steaks and leather!” the shouts would come.
Sometimes Dan wondered about what motivated him. He stepped over to the bar, had Vik pour him a whiskey. Climbing onto a chair, he called, “Your attention!”
It took a couple of tries, but the room stilled, all eyes going his way.
“You all know that Officer Monagan had it in her heart to put me in my grave.” Dan cataloged the various reactions to his remarks. “Fact is, ladies and gentlemen, her sudden death has left me with the realization that my life will be a lot less interesting. Here’s to Trish Monagan. God bless you, girl, and ride the stars!”
“Ride the stars!” the voices cried in unison as glasses were raised and drained.
As he climbed down again, people slapped his back, shook his hand, heads were inclined in his direction.
“You surprise me sometimes,” Allison said when he’d finally escaped the well-wishers and made his way back to the cage. She was giving him that look again. The new one. The one he hadn’t been able to fathom.
For the love of pus, she wasn’t going to make herself into some sort of adversary, was she? It would be a shame to have to take . . .
“Trish was a friend, you know.” Allison smiled sadly, reliving something long ago in her past.
“Yeah. Little younger than you.”
“You really sad that she’s dead?”
“I don’t do sad. Never have, never will. That doesn’t mean I won’t miss her. The kid had spunk.” He gave her his boyish grin with the dimples. “And for an added benefit, all those marks out there drained their glasses and headed back to the bar.”
“Forever practical?” She arched a blond eyebrow.
“Fucking A. What about you?”
“I do sad. Always have. Always will. But I do practical, too.”
“So what does the hero of the hour think is practical now?”
“Forty-nine percent of The Jewel.”
“Why the fuck would I give you forty-nine?”
“Because I want to be a player, not just one of the played. I’m not challenging you. You’d cut my throat in the middle of the night if I did. I want a contract for a bigger share of the responsibility and earnings. Pursue some of my own investments and projects.”
“And what do I get out of it?”
“More of what you’re getting now. And I shoulder part of the burden of running things.” She ended with a knowing smile.
“You think I’m going to agree to this?”
“You will if I make it worth your while.” She scanned the busy room, eyes on the marks as they gambled and drank. Angelina was leading Dan Morgan back to her room for a quick fuck. Dalia should be finishing off her john and back on the floor trolling for a trick any time now. Vik had a line in front of the bar. Roulette and craps were crowded.
“Worth my while how?”
“I think I’ll take you back to the office, maybe sweep the desk clean of papers, and screw you like you haven’t been screwed in years.”
“Practical, huh?”
“Can’t think of a better way to celebrate a new partnership.”
He grinned in appreciation, wondering the whole time, Yeah, Ali, but what does it mean?
83
Trish’s hand was cold, limp. The rigor had passed. She’d have to go into the ground soon. Another in the long and beloved line up on cemetery hill. Once again Talina would have to help lower someone she loved into the unforgiving red dirt. Try and still her tears as she shoveled soil onto a corpse who’d once filled her with joy.
Talina sat beside the gurney. It stood in a hospital room. The morgue was full. Not all of the quetzal victims had been eaten. Turned out that quetzals could only hold so much.
She held Trish’s hand and stared down at her friend’s pale face. A stranger’s face, cold as it was and so different in Talina’s enhanced infrared vision. The expression was slack, the sprinkling of freckles on Trish’s nose in marked contrast to the washed-out tones of her bloodless cheeks.
Yes, a stranger’s face. Someone Talina no longer knew. Not the precocious twelve-year-old Trish who’d come to her wide-eyed and hurting all those years ago. Not the wounded teen who’d shared her house through the long and questing years as she searched for a way forward in the wake of her mother’s rape and murder.
“Never told you the truth about that,” Talina told the corpse. “You really didn’t need to know. Sometimes it would be better if we kept our secrets.”
Better if Tal had gone to her own grave without knowing Trish’s role in Cap’s death.
With her free hand, Talina rubbed her brow, tried to make sense of it. Trish had been the one who dialed the drug feed wide open. Did it to keep Talina from a life of bondage where she’d struggle to care for a cripple?
“Love, Trish? Really?”
But the inert and decomposing flesh offered up no defense.
“I want to be in security with you.” Trish’s assertion echoed in Talina’s ears. What had that been? Four years ago? Three? Trish had stood defiantly, arms crossed under her breasts, one leg forward.
“Someone’s got to have your back. Who else can you trust after Clemenceau?”
“What you did to Cap? Is that having my back? Cutting my feet out from under me over the Rocket thing?” Getting yourself shot by accident because you let some insanely stupid piece of soft meat get a hold of your pistol?
Or was it sharing cherries in this same hospital? Having Talina’s back in the bush, putting her life on the line when Talina showed no more sense than God gave a rock with Whitey? Or hauling Talina’s senseless and broken body out of that canyon?
The pain and grief rose to hollow out Talina’s stomach and tie a knot at the base of her throat as Tr
ish’s grin floated in Talina’s memory. All that passion and spirit, gone. Flicked off. Lost forever.
Maybe it was the time Trish had her first taste of coffee. Made a face, and said, “And this is what all the fuss is about?”
“Yeah, kid. That’s the girl I knew.” She squeezed the cold and limp hand. “For the record, you should know. You never lost me to any quetzal. I lost myself.”
She sniffed, fought tears. “Should be me laying on the slab. Shouldn’t have left you to carry all the weight. If I’d been here . . .”
What? She’d have shot this Benteen down? Been in her right mind without having the time to put herself back together? Become Whitey’s molecularly programmed murderer?
Whatever. Trish would still be alive, that devilish gleam in her green eyes, her quick brain churning out quips. She’d have the promise of life before her—a chance at the compassionate lover she always wanted to meet, but never quite seemed to find. Hell, maybe she’d even manage to finally bring Dan Wirth down.
Not now. Not after Dortmund Weisbacher’s bullet.
“Ah, hell, Trish.” And the hole inside grew, ached, tried to overwhelm. Talina swallowed hard, feeling Demon squirm in her gut. Felt Rocket’s invisible weight shift on her shoulders.
“I shouldn’t have let things get so strained between us. My fault.”
The bloodless lips remained still, damning Talina of any hope of redemption.
Reluctantly Talina released Trish’s hand, carefully replaced it next to the dead woman’s side. Stood.
Again she battled back the tears, tried to loosen the grief-knot at the base of her throat, and took a deep breath.
“You all right?” Shig asked from the doorway.
“Fuck no.” Talina exhaled wearily. “After burying all the people I’ve loved, why the hell does it still hurt so much? You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”
“Remember what you asked me? How you worried that you might be something else? Alien? No longer trustworthy in human company? As long as you still grieve, as long as you weep for those you love, you are still our Talina. In your center, whatever your Tao now, that single fact remains a shining light.”
“Glad you’ve got faith. You don’t know how I’m tempted to treat that son of a bitch professor. In my book that kind of stupidity and irresponsibility is a death sentence.”
“One newcomer at a time. Right now we’ve got another problem that needs your attention: Benteen. He might have been careless enough to pull the guards off the gates and arrogant enough to blow a hole in the fence, but unlike Weisbacher, he may be the deadliest man you’ve ever faced.”
“I want him. Made a promise to Trish. You understand that, don’t you, Shig?”
“After what he did here that might be asking—”
“I mean it. Don’t buck me on this.”
Shig’s eyes shone with worry as he shrugged in response.
“My word on that, Trish,” Talina promised the cold corpse on the gurney. Then she turned and pushed past Shig, her heart like lead in her chest.
84
So, where the hell was the shuttle? Tamarland crouched in his hiding place, having waited out a whole day and a second night. He was hungry. He’d been able to slake his thirst by creeping around after dark and sucking up rain water where it pooled atop the shipping crates.
Everything hinged on that shuttle. He had worked out the permutations. Most likely scenario? Port Authority had radioed up that they had a mess on their hands trying to fix the gaping hole in their fence. It wouldn’t have been unreasonable to have waved off Vixen’s usual crew rotation until the town could be brought back to some sense of normalcy.
Another explanation was that Torgussen had been appraised of Tam’s escape. That the captain had chosen not to land planet-side until Tam was captured. Which put a definite kink in the plans.
So, he’d begun working out the details on plan B. Sitting right across the way, gleaming in the morning light, was the Port Authority shuttle. The thing was occasionally piloted by a Turalon crewman named Manny Bateman. Tam had downloaded all the relevant personnel data into his implants during his short tenure as Director. All he needed was for Bateman to appear and head for the shuttle. Tam would manage to intercept the man and his crew as they approached the ramp. Bateman was the key. The guy was Corporate down in his bones, from Turalon after all. He’d fly the thing if a pistol was put to his head.
Plan C—should it come to that—would be the arrival of the Supervisor’s shuttle from Corporate Mine. Tam hadn’t a clue as to who the pilot might be, or what unknown hurdles taking that ship might entail. Not that it mattered. If he had to leave dead people in his wake, that was the cost of getting up to Vixen.
Short of armored marines, no collection of local security could stop him once he got on board. His implants, skills, and ruthless dedication to the task made any attempt at resistance hopeless.
He’d been in considerably tighter shit than this and survived, much to his adversaries’ dismay.
A grim smile played across his lips. Paybacks were a bitch. He had a final gesture for Port Authority. He imagined the satisfaction he’d feel during those last moments when he sent Freelander plummeting out of the heavens trailing atmospheric fire. He’d threaten, cajole, or beat Seesil Vacquillas into programming it to impact in the middle of Port Authority.
“Artollia? I swear in your name that I will see that sight before Vixen inverts symmetry for Solar System.”
Movement caught his eye. Three people. A man and two women. They emerged through the man gate and started across the shuttle field. Tam only needed to watch for a few moments before one of the cargo techs working a loader on the other side of the field called, “Hey, Manny? Where you headed?”
“Corporate Mine. They’ve got cable there we can use to fix the fence.”
“Just like clockwork,” Tam whispered to himself, straightening. “Torgussen, you son of a whore, I’m going to be knocking on your hatch within the hour.”
Tam took a moment to dust the last of the dried mud from his cuffs. His shoes he’d carefully scraped clean over the intervening time.
He timed his exit perfectly, strolling along, pace as lazy as that of a man out for an afternoon stroll. To his amusement, the three seemed locked in a conversation, gesticulating, not paying the slightest heed to their surroundings.
From Tam’s angle of approach and speed, he was coming in just behind them.
“. . . Can hold together the sections of blasted wire,” the man was saying.
“Thank God Kalico was gracious enough to loan us the materials until we can manufacture more on Freelander,” the taller woman said.
Like a wolf behind sheep, he closed the distance.
Tamarland was behind them now, unconsciously matching steps with theirs. Something about Bateman bothered him. The way the man walked, he seemed to have a muscular roll to his stride. Not what Tam expected from a shuttle pilot and space dog.
The taller of the women had short hair, broad shoulders, a spring to her step. She wore a heavy quetzal-hide coat. The other woman was still a good five-foot-seven, her thick black hair streaming down almost to her waist. Only on Donovan. Any spacing regs back in Solar System would have insisted her head be shaven.
Tam enjoyed that surge of incipient success as he reached into his coat and laced his fingers around the Talon’s grip.
Instead of reaching up for ramp control Bateman stopped, asking, “You ready, Tal?”
“Let’s do this,” the slim woman said.
Tam had his pistol out, leveled. “Please don’t do anything rash. I need you to lower the shuttle ramp.”
The three turned as if on pivots.
Tam started, stunned by the black-haired woman’s eyes. Large, dark, and like nothing human that he’d ever seen. He might have been staring into pits of midnight that belied
the laws of time and space.
“So you’re Benteen,” the black-haired woman said. “They say you’re as heartless as a scorpion.”
He caught himself, forced the old confidence back. “No sense in anyone dying. Open the ramp.”
The woman called Tal actually stepped forward, closing the distance between them to less than a pace. Staring into her eyes was mesmerizing. “Far enough. Any closer, and I’ll blow your guts out.”
“It’s been tried,” she told him, a weary smile on her lips. Some part of him realized that even with the weird eyes, she was a handsome woman. Her face well-featured.
Tam was still absorbing her presence, had the flash of insight that here was a woman even more awe-inspiring than Shayne. That tickle of immediate danger barely had time to form before she blurred into movement.
His arm was wrenched sideways so violently the bone snapped under the impact. His Talon flew off to the side. She had him, lifting, pivoting. The world spun sideways. The twisting of Tam’s body felt like a physical blow. He was clawing for balance, turning in midair.
The impact on rock-hard clay stunned him.
Breathless, his nerves and senses in heterodyne, he couldn’t breathe. Panic—electric in its intensity—paralyzed him. Pain wracked his body.
He couldn’t so much as draw breath to scream as his coat was pulled off. His pockets were searched. His grenades, knives, and stun equipment stripped away. And then his arms were wrenched behind him and his own restraints used to bind them tight despite the agony of his broken arm.
The raven-haired beauty was leaning down, her alien eyes seeming to suck at his very soul. “You’re in luck. People are feeling sorry for me. Most wanted to just put a bullet in your head. It was one of Trish’s last requests that has a more just and fitting punishment.”
“Whaaa . . .” He finally managed to gulp a breath as the world was closing down like a tunnel of darkness around his vision. It took all of his will to keep focus.
“What? Why, a little ride with me. But first, I’ve got business out west at Rork Springs.”
Pariah Page 47