Rebels and Lovers (11 page)

“I know how to use a gun, if you have a spare,” he told her.

“Only my L7. With luck, we won’t need it.” She nudged him again. “Big group over there is getting ready to leave. When they start moving, so do we. Keep your head down. Don’t run unless I tell you to. Just make for the back of the bar. Then get down to Green Ten. Got it? Green Ten. Popovitch Repairs. Tell Pops I sent you. You can be straight up about who you are. He’ll help you.”

Trip blinked, an emotion flickering through his eyes. She wasn’t sure if he was afraid or affronted. His mouth thinned. “I’m not leaving you here alone.”

Affronted. And with a short memory of who had rescued whom earlier.

“We’re leaving,” she stressed the word,
“together
. But if I don’t tell you where we’re going, and we get separated—”

“Oh. Right.”

“The group’s moving.” But so was the armed trio. “Try to use one of the Takas as cover. I’ll watch our friends. You head for the bar.” She swiveled her chair around, spying something on the decking as she did. A short-brimmed dockworker’s cap under the table. Discarded or forgotten, she didn’t care. She snatched it and, ignoring the grimy stains on the tan material, shoved it over her hair, tugging the brim down. She didn’t know how good a look Fuzz-face and friends had gotten at her, but if they were convinced Trip was again alone, they wouldn’t be watching for her coming up from behind.

Trip swiveled in the opposite direction, pulling himself to his feet as she eased around the table’s edge. Hands shoved in pockets, shoulders hunched with his telltale leather pack stuck under one arm, he plodded parallel to the tall Taka in brown coveralls moving with the group from the table. Kid
was
good, when he wanted to be.

She followed a few paces behind, with the safety off the L7 and her face angled just enough to keep the burly men in her peripheral vision. They were weaving through the crowd, heading for the bar as she was, but she was sure they hadn’t seen Trip. The shorter, curly-haired guy was in the lead, and he was looking quickly left and right in an almost nervous fashion.

She could appreciate nervous. Her palms felt slick and her heart was hammering in her chest. She was a cargo pilot, for God’s sake. Granted, she’d grown up on freighter docks and knew how to fight as dirty as any dock brat did. Dirtier, thanks to some of her father’s crew. But that was more than fifteen years ago. She’d been hauling corporate executives and cargo for seven years now, and neither execs nor cargo ever shot at you. Well, almost never.

Shit
. Baldy was hanging back. Slowing down. And seemed to be watching the Taka—Trip’s cover—with the same sideways method she was using to watch him. But he was six, seven tables away, with a lot of patrons in between.

Then she remembered Fuzz-face elbowing the old man without remorse.
Innocent bystanders
wasn’t in this group’s vocabulary.

The Taka slowed, turning to say something to the human male behind him. Trip slowed, too, but in those few seconds when the Taka angled around, Trip was in
full view. She knew he was, because Baldy suddenly straightened and grabbed Curly’s shoulder.

“Trip! Cover’s blown!” she ground out between clenched teeth. Then Baldy’s hand slid out of his pocket. And his hand wasn’t empty.

She pushed against Trip’s back, hard. “Run!”

Trip lunged, sidling around the stalled and startled Taka.

But Curly was already moving, shoving dockworkers and freighter crew aside, shouts and curses flowing in his wake. Baldy was a few steps behind him. Curly took a different axis, heading for the bar, palming a small laser pistol from his pocket as he went.

Bastard hopes to cut us off, trap us
. She couldn’t let that happen. She scanned the crowd quickly, praying for Pops or one of his techs. Someone to help, someone to cause a diversion long enough for her and Trip to get away—or serious enough to get the crowd to turn against the duo, who were now annoying patrons with their pushing and shoving but not yet doing anything to cause a really workable problem.

This was, after all, Trouble’s Brewing.

Then, in the midst of it all, a solitary ’droid ambled toward her, two capped coffee mugs on its tray. Their coffee.

Kaidee watched, astonished, as Trip grabbed one mug and flung it—no,
pitched
a perfect throw, beaning Curly on the side of his head. The man roared, hot coffee splattering and spilling down his face and neck.

“Look out! He’s got a gun,” Trip yelled.

People dove out of the way, their drinks tumbling, clattering against tabletops. Someone shouted, hard and harsh. A few turned for Trip, but then Baldy jerked his weapon up and fired—a low whine that told her his weapon was set for stun. She doubted it was
compliance with dock regs. It was simply that Baldy wanted Trip Guthrie alive.

With the appearance of the weapon, the focus of the crowd changed. Kaidee hit the deck just behind Trip. She heard more shouts, more thuds. She wasn’t the only one in Trouble’s Brewing who knew the sound of a stunner.

They had their diversion. She also hoped they had the patrons of Trouble’s Brewing on their side. Bar fights were one thing. Guns fired in the bar were another. Although once someone started …

“Stay down but go, go!” She shoved Trip’s ass, getting him crawling forward quickly. She chanced a peek over the top of the table, L7 out. She didn’t have a clear shot. The two laughing women at the bar had separated. One had unlocked a chair and swung it at Baldy. The woman was too far away, missing him by more than inches, but it made Baldy turn and snarl something. It was the distraction Kaidee needed.

“Up! Run!” she yelled.

Trip bolted forward through the obstacle course of tables, chairs, and patrons. Drinks flew. Kaidee’s boots slipped on puddles of frothy ale, and suddenly she was two, three people behind Trip as others moved to join the melee or lunged to get away from it.

Curly, jacket still glistening with coffee, stepped onto an empty chair, then up onto the middle of a table, evidently deciding the decking was a less-useful route. Trip changed course, veering away not only from Curly but from the bar exit.

Damn it!
That move would trap him against the corner bulkhead. It looked as if Trip’s smarts just went down the recyc.

“This way!” she shouted, but he obviously wasn’t listening as he dodged around a small—and unrelated—fight
between two brown-suited mechanics. The taller man reared back to level a punch. Trip ducked under his fist and up again, then ducked again as the opponent lunged, swinging.

If the situation wasn’t so goddamned serious, Kaidee realized, it would be goddamned funny.

Curly jumped to the next table, but before Kaidee could get him in her sights, two ship’s crew clambered up on the table in front of Curly, as they tried to escape from the ruckus. They blocked her shot at Curly.

She swore harshly as she turned to look for Trip. Her heart clenched. He was gone.

Under a table? He had to be, she hoped, crawling toward the bar. She sidled past another chair and the fighting mechanics, shouts, curses, and thuds sounding around her. She raked the decking with her gaze, then looked back at Curly and—

Thwack!
The woman with the chair finally connected, catching Baldy between his shoulder blades. Kaidee watched just long enough to see the man flail and fall forward.

Down but, she was sure, far from out. But it was one less thing she had to worry about for the next five—

Shit
. A familiar form appeared between two ’droid servers standing rigidly behind the bar. Fuzz-face was back.

“Got something.” Devin glanced up from the embedded screen on his microcomp just in time to avoid running into an elderly couple shuffling quickly down the main corridor on Blue. He sidestepped and only then realized that Barthol’s hand already pressed against his shoulder, guiding him away from the near collision and around a zigzagging servobot. “Tidymart Pro is a toiletries dispenser service. Common in public lavatories.”

Barthol nodded. “Makes sense. There is no lack of facilities on station. However—”

“It’s not something Dock Five would necessarily provide for its denizens, yes. I thought of that.” Considering Dock Five barely provided breathable air. “Cross-referenced the corporation with product news feeds. Client base is generally hotels, restaurants.”

“There are a number of possibilities on Blue. Blue Twelve, however, holds a couple of small hostels, a take-out eatery, and—”

Two women and a man suddenly tumbled through an open doorway about fifty feet down the corridor, as if they’d been jammed by a billiards cue. They rolled, flailing, cursing. Another man followed—a brown-furred Takan in dockworker coveralls. He sprinted past them, dodging around a black-and-silver squat servobot on some unknown errand, and kept running, not looking back.

Through that same doorway—more of a double-wide rectangular airlock complete with faded yellow-and-black
safety striping—came the low whine of laser fire in several short bursts. Devin’s adrenaline spiked. In Tal Verdis, that would have stripers and private security converging on the location. Here, it barely garnered more than a few raised eyebrows from passersby.

“Trouble’s Brewing,” Barthol said.

“That’s an understatement.”

“No, that’s where we’re headed. Bring up corridor schematics. You’ll get its merchant codes.”

Devin quickened his pace, poking rapidly at the database queries on his Rada, peripherally aware of a metal chair sailing into the corridor, then skittering across the grimy dark-gray decking with a grinding squeal. “They’re licensed for Tidymart dispensers on premises.” If Tidymart’s on-site distributor wanted to file charges against him later for hacking into their client database, so be it. Right now it was the best lead they had on Trippy. And they were only fifteen or so minutes behind his last credit usage for shampoo or soap or whatever he’d used. They would have been only five minutes behind, but repairs blocking a section of Blue Corridor had forced them down one level to Green, then back up again, all via the damnably slow and erratic lifts and nonfunctional escalators that seemed to be Dock Five’s consistent landmarks.

“Side entrance.” Barthol pointed to a dimly lit, narrow corridor on Devin’s left. “Less likely to be in the direct line of fire.”

“Trip knows better than to—” Devin pivoted on his heels. He kept pace with Barthol, but his protestation halted. Trip might not seek out a place known for violent encounters, but someone had killed Halsey. Someone who was also after Trip. And that someone was no stranger to violence.

The side entrance to Trouble’s Brewing was a similar rectangular hatchlock design but with only a single doorway, over which illuminated letters proclaiming the pub’s name blinked sporadically. This entrance was only slightly less in the direct line of fire. Bottles and glasses flew, crashing against tables. Voices shouted, bellowed, groaned, and swore. Devin stood trans fixed for a few seconds by the frenzy and sheer cacophony filling the cavernous bar. It was like nothing he’d ever seen—at least, not outside of an action vid or sim game. The bar—judging from the ceiling height, rickety overhead metal-grid walkways from which an odd assortment of light fixtures dangled, and round hanging maws of exhaust-fan ducts—had obviously at one time been a docking bay. Faded berth numbers were still stenciled in red on the far wall, along with the perfunctory open flame and fume warnings in all three languages.

In between or on top of all that were lighted advertisements for a variety of alcoholic drinks.

With a determined shrug, Barthol pushed into the fray. Devin caught up, ducking as something round and silver—a tray?—flew by. He readjusted his glasses as he straightened. “Damn it, Barty. If he’s in here, there’s no way we’ll—
Shit!
Trip!” He raised his voice over the din, shouting his nephew’s name as his adrenaline kicked into overtime.

He’d been right. God and stars, his analysis, his hunch, had been right. Trip
was
on Dock Five.

“Where?”

It had been a glance, half a glance; that was all Devin had been able to see and process through the jumble of forms careening through the bar. More of an impression of height and gait and profile. But it was
Trippy. Devin was positive. More than that, he recognized his nephew’s expensive leather backpack tucked under one arm. He’d already come to know that you didn’t see very many of those on Dock Five. “In the back. Bar area, right side,” Devin called out over his shoulder. He doggedly pushed past people—his brain didn’t bother to register sex or species—because when he’d spied Trip, he’d spied something else: weapons. Including one in the hand of a wide-shouldered man using tabletops as a walkway. Most of those in the bar—well, those who weren’t punching someone—were heading for the exits. This guy was heading for the far corner of the bar. Just where Trip was.

Devin stepped over an upended chair as he unlatched the safety strap that held his Carver securely in his shoulder holster.

But when he scanned the area again, Trip had disappeared—ducked under a table or slipped out a secret doorway. Devin didn’t know which and wouldn’t until he reached the other side of the bar—because of a ’droid server wobbling back and forth, two male Takans arguing, and a drunk woman laughing hysterically, all blocking his view. He had to get to where he saw Trip before the armed guy did.