The Genevian Queen: The Complete Series, page 19
“Yeah, that’s for sure. The PD in Jague isn’t sure what to do now that we don’t have the Niets barking orders. Taking a lot of headspace to make the adjustment.”
“I can imagine. So, if Arla was a bigwig in a multi-system resistance, that means she’s going to have a lot of loyalists—and we might have just pissed off the people who’d be our best allies.”
“I’m going to try to suss that out,” Kora said. “I’ve got a few contacts who might be able to put me in touch with the resistance members that brought her insystem.”
“I’ll get you in touch with Gary and Annie,” Tremon added. “Annie has been working insystem for some time, she might have known some other operatives. Gary worked top-side security at the Refuge, so he had to have been privy to a lot of the comings and goings there. If there’s a larger resistance network across the nearby stars, we’re going to need to know who to work with when we show up to rescue them.”
“How’s that going?”
“Well, you’ll be happy to know that Captain Travis is leading a seven-ship battlegroup to Gerra, and we’re prepping fleets to jump to Burroughs, Oran, and Morres. Nothing huge, but hopefully enough to scare off the Niets before they make too big a mess.”
“What about Genevia?” Kora asked. “I heard that we were worried the Niets would do a drive-by on the outer system if we depleted our forces here too much.”
Tremon glanced at Kora, impressed that she seemed to know everything that was going on—or nearly everything.
“There’s a surprise waiting for them if they try that, but Rika’s ordered me to keep it hush-hush.”
The detective laughed. “Well, far be it from me to run afoul of our new queen.”
“You know she hates that, right?”
Kora snorted. “ ‘Queen’ is a thousand times better than ‘magnus’. She should be thanking us.”
“I’ll be sure to let her know that,” Tremon replied, surprised at how certain he felt that Rika would survive whatever was going on around Babylon. “I’ve sent a message to Gary. He’s here at the estate, if you want to meet him. Annie’s on her way out to the heliopause jump gates, so might take a bit longer to hear back from her.”
Kora nodded and turned to walk away. “Thanks for the intros. I’ll get the intel we need, don’t worry.”
The chancellor snorted. “What’s there to worry about?”
THE RIGHT CHOICE
STELLAR DATE: 06.03.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Corinth City, Chad
REGION: Burroughs System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
The engineer made a sound like he was sucking in a nervous breath.
There was no response, and the captain closed his eyes for a moment, begging the stars to give him patience.
That was about the furthest thing from the truth, but Rajiz didn’t push the issue.
Avi snorted.
“I’d never do something like that.”
“If by ‘never’, you’re using an alternate definition that means always….”
Avi placed a hand over her chest. “You malign me, Captain,”
“Occupational hazard,” Rajiz said absently as a mechanic came out of the shop and handed him a tablet.
The captain authed with it and passed a secure token indicating acknowledgment of transfer to the repair shop.
“Breaking groundcars is a hazard?” the mechanic asked with a quirked eyebrow.
“Could be,” Rajiz gave a noncommittal shrug. “Depends on where they break.”
The mechanic grunted in response and then waved to the tow driver to drop the groundcar next to two others.
The pair of thieves turned and walked down the street toward the rendezvous, keeping their movements casual as they passed by the few pedestrians in the commercial area that lay to the north of the spaceport.
“Oh, now that smells good,” Avi said as they walked past a small coffee shop. “I haven’t eaten all day.”
“Whose fault is that?” Rajiz asked. “We’re on a schedule here. No time for donuts.”
Avi gave him a measuring look. “It’s like I don’t even know you! We have a seven-minute buffer, we can get donuts.”
He switched to the Link.
Rajiz groaned as Avi made a hard right and walked into the donut shop.
“I’ll take two glazed,” Rajiz said to Avi before responding to Betty.
Five minutes later, the pair was approaching the rendezvous, a four-story automated carpark, with a bag of donuts and a tray of coffees. As annoyed as Rajiz was with Avi and her never-ending need for carbs and caffeine, he had to admit that the stop would allay any suspicion, should the Niets review surveillance when the theft was noticed—if it ever was.
As they approached the building, Avi glanced his way. “Admit it, Captain, these are good donuts.”
He looked down at the half-eaten glazed in his hand. “OK…yeah, they’re not bad.”
“Not bad? It’s like heaven in a little circle.”
Rajiz only laughed in response as he passed a command to the carpark to have their vehicle brought down to the ground level.
Betty’s tone carried a heavy dose of concern, and Rajiz tensed, his gaze sweeping across the intersection, noting two groundcars, one aircar, and four pedestrians all alone.
The captain turned and saw Betty come into view, her large frame and loping stride giving her away—something that was unavoidable with her four legs.
Other ship captains regularly questioned his sanity for bringing a literal centaur on as crew. As often as not, he questioned his own sanity right along with them. But when push came to shove, no one kicked ass in a fight like Betty.
The horse part of her body was a combination of cybernetic and organic—mostly machine underneath and skin on top, though a second set of organs operated inside to keep blood clean and flowing through her hide.
From the waist up, she appeared to be a normal woman…if you didn’t count the mane that grew down her back. She rarely wore clothing of any sort, though on Chad, modesty laws demanded that she cover her breasts, which she did with cups that magnetically attached to mount points on her chest.
If he were honest with himself, the fact that she was both majestic and beautiful fed into Rajiz’s decision to hire her—even if it did cost a fortune to buy the specialized armor and EV gear she required.
A sling hung across her back, and he could see the case’s profile inside as it bounced against her flank. The captain breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that if he could get it to the buyer, he’d be flush with food and fuel for the foreseeable future.
The roofless groundcar with a wide open bed in the back settled down next to Avi, and she got in the driver’s seat.
“Slide over,” he directed, and she shook her head.
“You shoot better than you drive, Captain.”
He jumped into the back and then slid into the front passenger seat. “I don’t know about that, but I sure shoot better than you do.”
“Guns are under the seat.” Avi activated manual driving mode and pulled out onto the street, driving at a leisurely pace toward Betty.
Betty replied.
The centaur was twenty meters away from the car, and as the vehicle approached, she reached into the pouch on her back and grabbed the case, casually tossing it into the back of the groundcar as it passed.
A second after it landed in the vehicle’s bed, two large men rounded the corner.
“She needs to work on her definition of ‘kinda small’,” Avi muttered. “Their biceps are the size of my waist.”
Rajiz shrugged. “When you’re three meters tall, you tend to see things differently.”
“I suppose,” Avi muttered as she drove past the two men tailing Betty. “The real question is why I haven’t mentally adjusted to how she describes people yet.”
“Yeah, she’s been crew for three years now. More than enough ti—”
One of the two thugs following Betty glanced at the back of the groundcar as they passed, and his eyes widened as he spotted the case.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Stop!”
“Your mom!” Avi yelled back and punched the accelerator.
“ ‘Your mom’?” Rajiz asked as he lifted his rifle, training it on the two men as the car sped away.
One of the thugs pulled a pistol from inside his jacket, and Rajiz fired a pulse blast, the concussive wave only causing the man to stagger slightly.
That’s all the delay they needed.
A second later, a voice screamed “Yeeehaw!” and Betty smashed into the thug, a hind hoof flashing out and catching the other in the gut as she ran past.
“Suckers!” she added while galloping toward the groundcar.
One of the men was back on his feet in a second, but Betty pulled a pair of pistols from her pouch and opened fire on him, a focused pulse blast driving the thug to his knees.
Then the groundcar rounded the corner, and he lost sight of the thugs and Betty.
“Slow down.” He waved a hand at Avi.
“She can run almost as fast as this thing’s top speed,” the first mate replied, maintaining her pace.
Sure enough, a second later, Betty rounded the corner, half twisted with both guns firing, a gleeful laugh filling the air.
“Oh hell yeah!”
“Just get in the car already,” Rajiz said, but the centaur shook her head.
“No way!” She galloped closer and tossed her two pistols into the car’s bed, and pulled a rifle from her pouch, opening fire on the corner just as the two men came around it.
The weapon spewed small pellets that dissolved in the air while flying toward their target, turning into viscous balls of liquid. They were non-lethal, but hit with enough force to leave serious welts.
One of the men went down, and the other ducked back around the corner.
“Shoot, I think I hit him in the eye,” Betty said as she drew even with the car.
“Now will you get in?” he demanded.
“Fiiiiiine.” With surprising grace for someone her size, the centaur hopped into the back of the vehicle and crouched down as best she could.
“Why are they chasing you?” Avi asked as they turned onto another street, this one busier, allowing them to blend in with traffic.
“Other than the fact that we used their truck to mule something for us, or maybe it’s that they probably didn’t even know that and think we stole from them?” Betty asked.
Rajiz shared a look with Avi, and she picked up the pace, moving onto an expressway that led to the spaceport’s main entrance. For all the usefulness of having Betty on the crew, she was easy to ID and not at all hard to track back to the ViperTalon.
Rajiz considered the contingency plans he’d put together. One involved getting Betty to a waiting shipping container, another involved getting the whole team to shipping containers, and the third involved just driving right up to the ship and flying off.
Granted, that was the plan for when the people chasing them were not part of one of the most powerful crime rings on Chad.
“Just had to be the PLI,” he muttered.
“Should have gone with my seduction plan,” Avi said. “It’s not failed us yet.”
“Maybe I should have,” the captain said, glancing back at the case that sat next to Betty. “Live and learn.”
The first mate banked onto an off-ramp and then took the first exit on the next road, skirting the passenger terminals, and angling toward the long rows of commercial cradles.
The rows of ships went on for three kilometers, and the group was halfway to theirs when a message hit Rajiz’s Link. He didn’t recognize the person reaching out, and considered ignoring it, but the message was tagged urgent by the spaceport’s routing system, so he grudgingly accepted.
the voice said.
The message came with no ident, not even a pseudonym accompanying it. A knot began to form in the captain’s stomach.
he said.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“What is it?” Avi asked.
“PLI connected the dots. Probably going to have to pay them off.”
“With what?” she gave him a worried glance.
“I’ll think of something.” He drew in a steadying breath and released it slowly before replying.
Rajiz resisted letting out a long groan.
Rajiz’s sarcastic tone seemed to catch the gangster by surprise.
The words crossed the Link, and a leaden silence followed.
Rajiz couldn’t help but laugh, both aloud and over the Link.
