Kill by Numbers: In the Wake of the Templars Book Two (27 page)

“Nothing. Not even places where it had been removed. Their gear was as new and unmarked as mine.”

“They weren’t bound by law either,” he said. “The network checked into it, after I asked them to.”

“So they’re still out there, probably still looking for you,” Raena said.

“Well, yes.”

“You may wish I killed them,” Raena observed.

“They’d only hire more,” he said wearily. “They were corporate, weren’t they?”

“You’d know better than me,” she said.

He considered it, then said, “For the moment, there’s been a suspicious dearth of news about the assault. Capital City blames terrorists. They have released footage of the exterior damage to the station and word has gone out that I’m safe and unharmed, but apparently the exterior cameras on that side of Capital City were offline for maintenance.”

Mykah laughed.

“And,” Mellix continued, “the soldiers on duty inside the station—the ones who were so eager to confiscate your provisions—didn’t know anything was going on until the hull breach klaxons went off.”

“Bribes have been paid?” Raena asked.

“Of course. But it’s all a distraction from the tesseract flaw.”

“There are going to be a lot of distractions,” Mykah predicted. “People who are sheltering in place need their entertainments.”

Mellix nodded, his mouth full of nut-covered noodles. “This is really wonderful,” he said. “Do you eat like this all the time?”

Before Mykah could respond, Raena said, “All the time. He spoils us.”

“You’re feeling better?”

“Yes, thank you.” She considered adding that Coni was right, all she had needed was some company while she slept. She glanced at Mykah, then at Vezali, but kept her thoughts to herself. Raena realized she must be feeling better if her sense of humor had returned.

After lunch, Raena retreated to her cabin. She opened up her journal and began to list the strange dreams she’d had in chronological order.

Haoun tapped on her door again. “Want a distraction?”

“Yes, please.” Raena closed the journaling program she’d been scowling at. “I’m tired of my own company.”

She slid over on the bed to make room for the lizard pilot, but he curled up on the floor instead. She had to agree that the bunk looked awfully narrow for the two of them to sit on. “What’s going on outside my cabin?”

“Coni got in touch with your friend Kavanaugh. He’s going to meet us on Tengri this evening.”

“Shore leave for everyone?” Raena tried not to feel envious. It wasn’t like she had anything she needed to do on the ground, only that she was feeling cooped up.

“Mellix is staying onboard. He doesn’t want anyone to connect him to the
Veracity
, so he figures it’s safer that no one sees him traveling with us.”

“Did you promise him you’d lock me in?”

“Actually, Mykah did, yes.”

“Good.”

Haoun changed the subject by pulling a handheld from the pouch slung across his chest. “Coni got me some new games on Capital City. Want to play?”

“Sure.” Anything to pass the time, she thought. “I’m not a great pilot, though.”

“What makes you think I only play piloting games?”

Raena laughed. “What have you got, then?”

“There’s one called Typhoon. It’s about surviving a storm disaster. One’s called Dare. It’s a puzzle adventure. And there’s a human game called Go.”

“Your choice,” Raena said. “Show me how it’s done.”

It felt like they played for hours, working from one of Haoun’s games to the next. Raena found she was very comfortable in his company, that he actually had an amusingly dry sense of humor. The hiss of his natural voice bothered her less over time.

She stretched out on her bunk, head pillowed on her arms, so she could look over his shoulder as he played. After a while, she found her eyelids drooping.

“Do you want to rest?” he asked.

“Actually,” she said sleepily, “I was thinking about having you anesthetize me, so I can try sleeping without dreams for a change.”

“I left your drug with Coni, so she could research how to administer it.” He climbed off the floor. Before he made it to the door, Coni opened it.

It could have been coincidence, but Raena thought not. It didn’t surprise her that Coni really was monitoring her. If she had another seizure, she would probably be grateful to have someone watching over her. She looked up at Coni, but was unable to read anything like guilt in the girl’s lavender eyes.

“This is a short-term surgical anesthetic,” Coni said. “It’s designed to wear off naturally after a set length of time. Vezali raided the Thallians’ stores and put together a nebulizer and a breather, so we have a way to administer it, but we don’t know how to calculate the dosage.”

“I can do that, if you’ve got a drug description. It’s just a matter of cross-referencing dosage and mass.”

“I don’t want to know how you can do that,” Coni said.

“You know how I can do it,” Raena corrected. “I could have built the dispenser, too, but Vezali’s undoubtedly done a more elegant job. Do you think it will get me off to sleep safely?”

“I don’t know how we will know until we test it.”

“I’m game,” Raena said. “But you don’t have to sit up with me. Just keep an ear out.”

That time, Coni did duck her head enough that Raena knew she’d been understood. She smiled at the blue girl, to show she hadn’t taken offense.

As it had before, when Raena remembered how she’d gotten the scar across her eye, the anesthesia brought back a memory.

Somehow she’d let herself get stranded on Nizarrh. Imperial troops lurked everywhere she looked. The spaceport crawled with them.

Raena had been running for so long that it was hard to think of doing anything else. She was almost out of money and there seemed to be no prospect of getting more. On Nizarrh, no one walked out in its toxic atmosphere. She had no opportunity to get someone alone to rob him. Any sort of illegal activity seemed a dangerous prospect, since she was sure that planetary detention would lead directly to Imperial custody.

Unfortunately, even legitimate ways of earning money seemed tightly controlled. Prostitution was legal on Nizarrh, but she needed a state ID card and a med card and transactions were made in the local credit, so the government could get its cut three ways.

Unless she could find someone with a ship and the skills to fly under the radar who was also willing to take payment out of her hide, she was stuck.

It didn’t help that she couldn’t remember the last time she slept. Sleeping space was extremely expensive on Nizarrh, as well as being carefully monitored. She’d found a couple of promising dark, vacant niches, but both times while she was scoping them out, the rightful renters had shown up. She’d gotten rousted by the local constabulary after falling asleep on the lev train. She was so tired now that she was afraid she’d doze off if she walked very far.

She must have nodded over the drink she was trying to stretch out to fill the evening. Suddenly a man stood over her. He had a hunted look in his muddy green eyes, which didn’t inspire her with confidence.

“You ready to get out of here?” he asked.

“That’s the first time a bounty hunter has put it to me like that,” she answered.

Sounding almost as tired as she felt, he said, “I’m not a bounty hunter.”

“That’s not the first time one has told me
that.”
Raena was too tired to leap over the table and kill him. Let him come closer, she thought, fingering the stone knife she had tucked inside her sleeve.

He rounded the table abruptly and slid in beside her, then snuggled up against her to whisper into her hair, “Coalition Command sent me. He’s closing in on you. They want me to get you out first.”

Goose prickles shivered up over Raena’s skin. She didn’t need to ask who “he” was. As much as she didn’t want to be tried for war crimes by the Coalition, she also didn’t want to wait around on Nizarrh for Thallian to catch her.

The man grunted, nodding ever so slightly toward the bartender. Raena peered through the long black hair that shrouded her face. Several men looked back toward her. One wore a diplomatic corps uniform.

The man from the Coalition suddenly hauled Raena into his lap. He dipped her backward and gave her a long, hungry kiss. Shocked by his behavior and terrified by the soldiers coming across the bar, Raena let herself melt into the kiss, trying to match the Coalition man’s hunger as convincingly as possible. It really felt like he meant it.

“Nice,” the Imperial officer sneered. “Haven’t seen that dodge used before.”

He thought he had her pinned down, but there were advantages to being so small. Raena slipped under the table, taking the Coalition man’s gun with her as she vanished.

She started shooting from beneath the table, dropping the officer and his pair of guards as the Coalition man rolled under the table after her.

“What are you doing with my gun?”

“Mine needs charging.”

Raena scrambled forward, out from under the table, alert for any more soldiers coming her way. A quartet at the entry headed over, but the other patrons provided the cover she needed as they struggled toward the door to get out of the way of the coming firefight.

The Coalition man grabbed Raena’s arm and dragged her in the opposite direction. “This way. They’ll have the front covered.”

He was right. Raena followed him into the storeroom. He stopped to peel open the heavy round cover over a subterranean tunnel.

Claustrophobia washed over her in a wave. She found herself rooted to the scratched metal floor.

“Come on,” her savior ordered. He was already halfway down the hatch into the tunnel below. “You’re gonna die if you stay up there.”

Feeling certain that she was going to die in the tunnel, Raena jumped down after the bounty hunter, landing nimbly on her high-heeled boots. She was relieved when he started to run, so she could run, too.

Before long, the chilly air in the tunnel improved her queasy stomach. Raena began to feel more awake, but adrenaline wouldn’t keep her going forever. She’d need to make her move soon. Although the top of her head barely reached his shoulder, she knew she could take the Coalition man.

“Gavin Sloane,” he said, by way of introduction. “Can I have my gun back, Raena?”

She considered giving him the business end, but she had no idea where she was or how to get out. She wasn’t even sure she could find her way back to the bar. Dying alone, lost in an underground labyrinth: while it wasn’t her worst fear, it ranked in the top ten. She handed the pistol to him, grip first. He jammed it back into his holster, but left the peace bonding off.

They dodged through the tunnels until the liquor and the maze had thoroughly confused Raena. Sloane halted before a trash-strewn stair.

“Just follow. Don’t talk to him. He doesn’t need to know who you are and you don’t want to know anything about him.” Sloane took the stairs two at a time, making plenty of noise. Raena followed silently.

The half-rotted door at the top squealed as Sloane shoved it aside. The smell of stale bodies rushed out of the basement at them. Raena wanted to cough, but didn’t. Into the dim room, Sloane called, “Outrider?”

“Hush, my friend. The house is full now. The others are just returning from their dreams. Perhaps, if you will wait … Oh.” A moon-faced man entered from another room, dressed in a rumpled rust-colored suit. “Nice to see you again,” he said to Sloane. The pistol in his hand swiveled to point at Raena. “Who’s your date?”

“Apprentice,” Sloane corrected. “I thought you’d like to meet her.”

Outrider lunged at Raena, raising his pistol as if to crack her temple with the barrel. Raena caught his wrist and straightened her arms, forcing the gun to point up toward the ceiling.

The drug dealer was stronger than he looked. She couldn’t break his grip on the gun. Instead, he shook her off. Raena rolled to her feet, fully expecting to be shot, but he holstered the pistol instead.

“I’m not paying you double just because there are two of you,” Outrider warned.

Sloane nodded roughly. A granite edge forced any trace of good humor out of his voice. “We’re ready to get off this rock. Do you want us to run this for you or not?”

“Deliver this as we agreed and I’ll pay you on the other end,” Outrider said as he scuttled from sight.

“Velocity?” Raena asked. That was exactly what she needed to keep herself on her feet and running.

Sloane wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Messiah.”

The Messiah drug. Raena had thought it was a myth. Messiah had been blamed in several border systems where the planetary governments abruptly collapsed. The Empire swept into the vacuum. Often, it faced extended battles with the Coalition, which drove the Empire from one atrocity to the next in order to keep control.

Rumor pinned the governmental destabilization on a small number of terrorists addicted to Messiah. Raena assumed the drug was like Rage or Velocity or some similar kind of stimulant that fed the users with the energy or eloquence to provoke foot soldiers into attacking the government.

Curiosity pulled her farther into the room. Eight horizontal cubicles lined the walls. In each lay an ancient body, shriveled, gray, contorted. Extra skin hung off their bones as if their bodies had deflated. Their heads seemed too large for their spindly necks. Their mouths collapsed inward over missing teeth. Without exception, they lay entirely still.

She couldn’t have guessed what species they were, until one of them opened an eye as she passed. It had a rheumy brown iris that was distinctively human.

When Outrider returned, he passed several swollen plastic pouches to Sloane, who stuffed them into the lining of his jacket.