The Complete Razia Series, page 78
"You know, I wouldn't believe half of the stuff that's come out if it weren't for everyone dropping like flies. It's creepy how many guys are spooked now. Reminds me of after Tauron died." He shook his head. "We had a wave of retirements after that fiasco too. But now it's like… I don't even know anybody in the top twenty anymore."
"Who's left?"
"Protestor's got a few guys. Contestant's still got Relleck."
Razia snorted. Relleck's ego was so big and his compass so skewed, it would take a very big secret indeed to have him run for cover.
"Insurgent is hurting. The only guy he's got left who's worth his salt is…well…" Harms shrugged. "VJ."
"He's worthless," Razia said with a roll of her eyes. "After that fluke with Eamon's, he hasn't done jack."
"And Dissident has you and Sage, though Sage… man, Sage has been a ghost lately. First, he just flat-out disappears for weeks, and now he's giving you his crew to manage? I'm a little worried. I wonder if the whole prison incident spooked him. Or if Opli's gotten to him."
"I'm sure he's fine—wait, what do you mean he gave me his crew to manage?"
"Ganon stopped by and said he was now detailed to you for some indeterminate amount of time," Harms said, leaning closer to the screen. "News to you?"
"I mean…" She pursed her lips. "I didn't realize that Sage was… I'm not… I don't need…" She banged her hand on the chair. "Asshole."
"You really got nothing else going on?" Harms asked, pressing his chin onto his hand. "Nothing else you want to share?"
"Nope." A pause. "Gotta run."
She barely let the call end with Harms before she was angrily dialing Sage's mini-computer.
"Yeeees?" The son of a bitch looked smug, like he knew why she was calling him. It just infuriated her more.
"What in Leveman's Vortex are you telling people? And where are you? And where have you been? And—"
"Slow down, Lyss," Sage said with a laugh. He was much more tan than usual, and the tops of his nose and cheeks were red with sunburn. A wind was blowing, and she heard voices and hammering behind him. "First of all, if you were so concerned about me, why haven't you returned any of my calls?"
She scowled.
"Second of all, Lizbeth told me you were too big to be seen on D-882 anymore, so I made a contingency plan. I told Dissident you had an idea who was taking down the pirates, which meant he didn't expect you to bounty hunt for a while. And now, I told Ganon and the guys to help you out while you're off saving piracy again."
She realized her mouth was open and closed it quickly.
"Ganon is expecting your call any day now. Until I get back, they're yours." Sage smiled. "It'll be good for them to have something to do again. They've gotten lazy."
"I didn't ask you to—"
"I told you I'd take care of you while you're pregnant, and I meant it." The sincerity on his face was nerve-wracking, and she had to look away. "I'm sorry I can't be there, but I hope that this is a suitable alternative until I can be."
She glanced at the screen behind him. Nothing but blue sky.
"Unless, of course, you want to come visit me here?" Sage asked. "I'd love to see you."
She desperately wanted to ask where he was, and what he was doing that was more important than her, but said, "I'll call Ganon. Bye."
***
"So, we get to work for you now?" Ganon sounded none-too-pleased about this relationship. "Joy."
"Don't think I like this any more than you do," Lyssa snapped. "But Sage went blabbing to Harms, which means that Dissident will find out soon, and I don't want to hear a whole bunch of bullshit from him. So you're going to go take care of a few pirates for me to keep him off my back."
Ganon snorted. "Listen here, I'm only doing this until Sage gives me the go-ahead, then he says this ship and her crew are mine."
"What?"
"Yeah, he said that if I suffered through a few months of you, he'd step aside and let me take over for him."
Lyssa sat back, stunned. Now he was giving up his ship and his crew? She shook her head and plastered a disinterested look on her face.
"I need you to go after Zolet Obalone." She'd tried to capture Obalone a few years back, but Relleck had gotten in the way. It had taken the kid a few years to rise back to prominence, and he seemed a bit wiser than before, focusing more on hijacking ships than on bounty hunting and bragging into D-882. She had found him by sheer luck; she'd been refueling her ship at G-279 and saw him and his crew. When she traced his alias information, it showed he'd been spending time on the transport station between jobs.
"So where am I supposed to find him on G-279?" Ganon drawled after she explained her plan. "It's kind of a large station. And what if he doesn't come back? And—"
"Did Sage not say you were working for me?" she snapped. "This is what I need you to do!"
Ganon leaned into the screen and glared at her. "Don't misunderstand. I am helping you as a favor to Sage. Because, for some reason, he thinks you're worth helping, whereas I think you're just an immature little brat."
"Are you done?" Razia said. "Get to G-279. And if you backtalk again—"
"Calm down, princess. It's not like we got a whole lot of other shit to do."
She paused. "So you really have no idea what Sage is up to? And he really promised you his ship?"
"He's got a special project he keeps going on and on about. If you ask me, I think Opli's got hold of him and he's trying to mitigate the damage before the secret comes out."
She rubbed her stomach. Opli said he didn't have anything on Sage, but what if he did? Still, Sage hadn't looked worried about anything. Though she'd been too angry with his long-distance puppet-mastering to really pay attention.
"How bad is it there? With Opli?" she asked.
"Bad. Good thing I'm an open book. I have no secrets I'm ashamed of. Not like somebody who's Jukin Peate's sister."
She furrowed her brow. Ganon brought up a good point. Opli could very easily make life worse for her with one simple announcement, and yet…six months had passed since the break-out and not a peep. Why hadn't Opli ruined her life the same way he was ruining the others?
"Well?" Ganon drawled. "Is there anything else you would like to share?"
"Just get going."
Pregnant or not, Razia was never one to sit back and let others do her work for her. She wanted to be nearby to make sure Ganon didn't screw up. Besides, her eyes were starting to cross from the list of names for the Opli investigation.
She parked her ship at G-247 and waited, marking Obalone and his crew for a few hours until Ganon and the crew showed up. The transport station was heavily populated, so she was in no danger of being spotted. Even so, she'd bought a hat and sunglasses at one of the small sundries shops while she waited.
When she saw Sage's ship had requested access to dock, she left Obalone eating lunch and ventured down a few levels to the docking station. Sage's ship was in the back. The hatch was open and Ganon, Sobal, Keal, and the three meatheads milled out front talking to the dock hands.
She scowled when Ganon waved goodbye to the crew, obviously intending to take on Obalone by himself. She hissed and yanked out her mini-computer, trying to figure out how she could direct him without him knowing. After a moment, she yanked off her hat and sunglasses, trying to look nonchalant as she called him.
"What?" he drawled, looking bored.
"What's your plan?" she asked.
"Oh, I was thinking I might just arrest him. Wasn't sure, only did this a few hundred times before."
She cleared her throat. "How many guys are you taking with you?"
"Five," Ganon said. Razia glanced behind him; the rest of the crew was still on the ship. "Are you gonna babysit me the whole time or can I do the job your boyfriend is paying me to do?"
The line went dark, and Razia angrily redialed the number.
"You'll need more than one guy," Razia said. "And don't lie to me. I know you're going by yourself. You'll get your ass handed to you."
"And how, pray tell, do you know that I'm going by myself?" Ganon drawled.
"Because I know. So go get the rest of them, and I'll message you the coordinates." She paused and scowled. "And he's not my boyfriend."
She ended the call and watched Ganon curse something filthy at her. But he turned and barked for the rest of Sage's bodyguards and Sobal, the youngest on the crew, to come with him for back-up. She yanked her cap and sunglasses back on as they passed, and she heard him complaining about her.
"Because I know. That little bitch. I can't believe we have to work for her," Ganon was saying to Sobal.
"Yeah, but Sage asked," Sobal said. "You think he's okay? He's been acting odd lately."
"I don't give a shit. I'm about done with both their asses," Ganon said, and their conversation died as they blended into the crowd. Razia kept her distance but followed close enough to keep Nalton's dark scraggly hair in view.
Her mini-computer buzzed again and she answered it.
"He's not here, O Great Bounty Hunter."
Razia cursed and glanced up—Obalone and his crew had finished eating and left. She murmured a quick goodbye to Ganon then pulled on her hat and sunglasses, sauntering up to another patron of the diner.
"Hey, did you see a group of pirates walking by here?" she asked. "Small, scrawny kid with a bunch of thick guys?"
The man pointed to the right and Razia quickly thanked him, rushing in that direction. She spotted Obalone at a small shop, deciding which of the icing-covered desserts he wanted to take with them. She called Ganon back.
"Okay, he's down the hall," Razia said. "At a dessert shop. Hurry up."
Ganon rolled his eyes and ended the call. She sat down at a nearby table and waited, chewing her lip. She dipped her hat lower in an attempt to avoid their attention as Ganon and the crew walked by, jawing loudly and scanning the room for Obalone.
She glanced down the hall again—Obalone had moved on, which Ganon told her when he called her a moment later.
Ganon clicked his tongue against his teeth. "I'm having so much fun wandering around this station to your wildly inaccurate directions."
"Then move faster and you'll catch him," she snapped. "Give me a second." She ended the call and glanced around. Ganon and the crew were still standing in front of the shop, and Sobal was salivating while he stared at the cupcakes. While they were distracted, she pulled the lid of her hat lower and breezed by them, praying neither of them would see her. When she passed, she hurried forward, coming to the large terminal where most of the shuttles came and went.
In the distance, she spotted Obalone walking toward the lift. She sent a message to Ganon without any further explanation, then sat down on one of the terminal seats to wait for the fireworks. Not a moment later, Ganon and Sage's crew sauntered by her. Sobal pointed and waved to the rest of them, running forward.
Sage's crew approached Obalone's and Razia compared Sage's five to Obalone's four. Obalone's might have won on size alone, but Razia wouldn't bet against Ganon. Too far away to hear the repartee between Ganon and Obalone, she read the latter's face as Ganon presumably told him he was there on behalf of her. Obalone's face darkened, and his bodyguards moved forward to begin their fight.
She watched the melee with mixed emotions. On the one hand, she rather missed fighting her own fights and taking down her own people. But on the other—she winced as Sobal took the brunt of a fist in his jaw—it wasn't completely terrible to have someone else get all the bruises.
After a few moments, it became clear that Obalone was in a losing battle and he held his hands up in surrender. Nalton slapped on the cuffs and began chatting with the rest of the crew, who grinned as they wiped their bloody noses. In fact, if Razia hadn't witnessed their brawl mere seconds before, she would have assumed they were all old friends.
She shook her head. "Pirates."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
With Ganon and crew taking care of her dirty work, Lyssa was able to take out four pirates in four weeks. Since most of the pirates were on D-882, she forced herself to stay away from the action, although she called Ganon every few seconds to check on his progress.
After the fifth pirate, she received the following message from Sage:
Stop micromanaging my guys.
Then,
And call me. I want to show you something.
She was most assuredly not going to call him, nor was she going to answer when he called her at the same time every day.
After several weeks of painstaking, distracted work, she had nearly gone through the entire list of names Lizbeth had given her as she tried to figure out why Opli was so concerned with eradicating piracy. The birth certificate data included all the identifying information—height, weight, fingerprints, blood type, even a newborn photo. Lyssa was having to open and sort through the files one by one. Once she reached the end of her search, she figured she'd dive deeper into the fifty or so that had piqued her interest, searching for patterns or transactions that would clue her into who they really were.
She opened the list and scrolled through until she found the next profile.
Sage Alejandro Teon
There were his tiny fingerprints, his height and weight (eight pounds, seven ounces, twenty inches), and the photo of him at birth.
She stared at the squalling bald baby, and imagined it as Sage today. Against her better judgment, she bent down and unlocked the hatch of the secret compartment under her dashboard where she kept her most prized possessions. A half-empty bottle of whiskey Tauron had given her and that she and Lizbeth had partaken of one night during their first investigation; a black, leather-bound journal that contained the formula for entry and exit into Leveman's Vortex; and her ultrasounds. She pulled out the latest one, the one where Bianco had given her a full view of the little face. Her heart twisted every time she laid eyes on it.
Curious, she placed it next to the photo of Sage. She cocked her head to the side and compared the two, deciding that the bug had his nose and maybe his chin, but it was hard to tell—
"What am I doing?" she said, nearly dropping the ultrasound photo.
Quickly, she stashed it away and locked her hidden compartment, sitting back in her chair and rubbing her stomach to soothe herself. She glanced up at Sage's birth certificate again and was about to close it, when she noticed the line denoting his mother.
Isabel Teon
Sage, of course, had a mother. And a father, too, perhaps. She'd never asked.
"That's the problem with you Peates. You're all so absorbed in your own family dramas that you don't see how your spats affect the rest of the universe. You don't look at the big picture until it comes careening into your worldview. Then you make it all about you."
Opli was right, at least, about that. But perhaps now that she was aware of it, she might be able to change it. She could ask about Sage's mother, which might give her insight into why he was so eager to—
Another thought popped into her head.
"The mothers…"
She pulled up her list of fifty babies that had piqued her interest and opened the first one, again, displaying the fingerprints, height, weight, and photo. But this time, her eyes drew to the mother field. If she were to search on the mothers, they would theoretically be active with their UBU-given names. And through the mothers, she would be able to find the sons.
Including Opli.
***
Rejuvenated by her new direction, she breezed through the final names on her original list of four hundred. Once that task was complete, she put together the names of all the mothers and their last known locations and transactions. Forty of those names she sent over to Ganon with orders to split them amongst the crew and report their findings back to her, in-between hunting down her bounties, that was.
But the ten she kept for herself were the ones that had tingled her bounty hunter senses. Not that it meant a whole lot, but she wanted to pretend it did. More than anything, she wanted to be the one to make the big discovery about Opli, if only to prove to herself that she was still herself.
Herself plus six months of pregnancy.
Even with the black tank top and black jacket, she looked big. She was taking a huge risk by going to D-882; not only could her pregnancy secret be discovered, but she could also run into someone with an inkling to capture her. She was having a hard time even walking fast—fleeing was out of the question.
But damn, she missed the thrill of it.
As if on cue, the now-familiar fluttering sensation rumbled from the bulge, and she placed her hand over the spot.
"Quiet down in there," she muttered. Under her palm, she felt the smallest of thumps against the inside of her stomach. The bug had become quite active in the past few days, especially when she had been focused most intently on pairing vital records with Universal Bank aliases.
The bug moved again, and she smiled even though she poked at her stomach. "What do you want to do, Bug?" Another thump against her hand meant nothing to her.
She tapped her feet against the metal floor of her bedroom and considered her options. It was night in the pirate city. Most pirates would be in a bar or already drunk. If anyone said they'd seen her, she could simply tell Harms that it was the alcohol, that she was actually far away, hunting down leads on S-864 or something.
Bianco did say that more walking might ease some of her hip pain.
She stood and marched out of her bedroom. The baby seemingly agreed with this movement, as it thumped against her ribcage.
"Okay, I am not your punching bag!" Lyssa bellowed. She immediately felt guilty for yelling at the bug and rubbed the side of her belly. "Sorry, Bug. I hear you in there. We should go investigate. After all, this is my thing."
She waited for confirmation from the bug and felt none.
"Well, that's it then. We're going."
