Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3) Read online

  Ryke laughed again and snatched Bharat’s hand, drawing it toward her. “Now don’t look so scandalized, Mr. Ember. I know you’re quite taken. Your wife, Nadia, keeps such a lovely garden on Tarack’s private island in the Glacial sea, and Gray? He makes such darling little boats.”

  Very real fear jolted Bharat’s spine as he ripped his hand away. How did Elena Ryke know the location of Senator Tarack’s private island? How did she know his little boy made boats?

  Ryke’s casual bombshell had knocked Cole off his game too — Bharat could see that now — and he wondered if his partner was thinking about snapping Ryke’s neck. Like Bharat was. And if Elena Ryke did know the names and location of Bharat’s family, snapping her neck would get his family brutally murdered.

  “Ten million,” Ryke said, as Bharat fought to keep his expression neutral, “for all thirty-four.”

  Cole recovered first, probably because it wasn’t his family this woman had just casually threatened. “The price is twenty.”

  Ryke dismissed him with another wave of her hand. “I never pay full price.” She paused then, pursing her lips. “Thirteen.”

  “Eighteen,” Bharat growled. He’d expected that number to sound calmer, but a woman who enjoyed cutting people into little pieces now knew where his wife and child lived. That casual revelation had not been in psych’s playbook.

  “Mmm, no.” Elena slid out of the booth, stood up, and smoothed her dress. “Fourteen million, gentlemen. Take it, or as your colleague suggested, peddle your package somewhere else.”

  Ryke strode off, heels clicking, then stopped right beside Bharat. Bharat willed himself not to look as she turned, but he saw her smile at Cole out of the corner of his vision. “Oh, and Mr. Ash? Tell Ava I adore her wedding dress.”

  Ava had only gotten engaged last week. Ryke had seen surveillance on Cole’s sister at least as recently as last week. Ryke strolled off before either Cole or Bharat could kill her.

  The two of them sat in silence until Cole’s watchful gaze and Bharat’s sensitive ears confirmed Ryke and her reluctant bodyguard had left the party. Then, and only then, did Cole lean across the table and press both hands flat against it.

  “How,” Cole said, keeping his breathing even, “did some dirt-sucking gutter-born learn all that?”

  Bharat let Cole’s racist epithets slide as he tried to reason it out. Both his and Cole’s families lived on Senator Tarack’s private island paradise on Phorcys, just like all the families of Tarack’s contractors did. That way, Tarack could punish those families if anyone who worked for her betrayed her.

  That way, she could murder them.

  It was a shitty situation all around, but Tarack kept the island’s security tighter than the seams on one of the Supremacy’s bulwark cruisers. Yes, Senator Tarack threatened to kill Bharat’s family, but she’d also kill anyone else who threatened Bharat’s family. Any outside threat to her contractors’ families was a threat to her.

  There was no way Ryke could have obtained footage of the small home where they lived, the garden Nadia made out back, the little river down which Gray floated paper boats. Unless, of course ... Ryke had turned someone else in Tarack’s organization. That made Elena Ryke a far more dangerous adversary than psych or Senator Tarack had led him to believe.

  After he and Cole got back to Phorcys, Bharat was damn well going to question them about how they’d missed this little nugget. He would find Ryke’s mole and deal with them.

  Or he’d simply take the desperate plunge he’d always dreaded, and go on the run with Nadia and Gray. Even though there was every chance they’d get caught. And if they did get caught trying to escape, Bharat would kill his own family quickly, painlessly, and without warning, before he’d let them be subjected to whatever horrors Tarack had in mind.

  “Shit,” Cole said, with a shake of his head. “Maybe I do need that drink.” He looked past Bharat. “We could still track her down and kill her.”

  “No,” Bharat said.

  “I know,” Cole said, with a sigh. “Can’t move against her unless we’re sure she can’t retaliate. Fucking waste of time down here, wasn’t it? No way Tarack takes fourteen.”

  Bharat shrugged. He didn’t particularly care what amount of money Senator Tarack would accept for information that would let Elena Ryke blackmail thirty-four sitting Ceto senators. He cared about finding out how Ryke knew where to find his family, and ending the life of whoever had made that possible.

  He motioned casually with his head.

  Cole slipped out of the booth. They would head back to the Star’s Landing starport separately, per protocol, to ensure Ryke’s people couldn’t ambush both of them. The moment one of them got attacked, their linked PBAs would warn the other, so short of a perfectly executed ambush that simultaneously killed them both, Senator Tarack would know someone had shot at her operatives. She would take vengeance. Vengeance was about the only thing Bharat trusted Senator Tarack to take.

  Bharat sat in silence after Cole left. He even pondered ordering a drink. Finally, he slipped out of his booth.

  To find a tall, tawny brown woman with platinum-blond curls leaning against the wall beside his booth. She had both thumbs tucked into her belt. She wore striped slacks, a dark blazer, and a leather flight jacket. She absolutely should not have been able to sneak up on him like that.

  Bharat had his concealed pistol pointed at her about the same time she had her own pistol pointed at him.

  “So that’s how you greet a fit woman in a club?” The woman smiled in a much friendlier manner than Ryke. “Where are your manners?”

  Was this woman one of Ryke’s enforcers, here to threaten him or negotiate further? She didn’t look like one of Ryke’s people. Everything about this woman oozed confidence, but more importantly, elegance. She could even pass for an Advanced.

  All the people he’d met down here — at least those working with Ryke — had the rough look of those who’d grown up fighting for everything they had. This woman, by comparison, could have stepped out of any prestigious academy on Phorcys. She’d obviously spent time on Bharat’s home planet.

  “Can I help you?” Bharat said.

  He didn’t try to escape. He might get the first shot off, but he might not. Also, gunfire would bring Ceto Security Division and a hundred panicked clubgoers down on his head, and while he’d make it out, that sort of scene would very much anger Senator Tarack. She expected her ops on Ceto to run quietly.

  “You can help by pointing that gun somewhere else,” the woman said. “Sit down. Order a drink. I’m here on our business, not Ryke’s, and I have no quarrel with you.”

  “We don’t have business,” Bharat said, not sitting down.

  “Of course we do.” The woman holstered her weapon. “And as a gesture of goodwill, I’ve put my gun down first.” She spread her open hands. “See? Look how generous I am.”

  Bharat pondered shooting her, but only for a moment. He wouldn’t shoot an unarmed person whose worst crime, so far, was making him look like an idiot. He didn’t know where this woman had come from, and he didn’t know what she wanted, but Senator Tarack would want to know. She’d review the archive from his PBA when he got back, and she’d want to see where this went.

  Bharat sat back down and motioned the platinum-haired woman over. “Who are you?”

  “No idle threats or small talk.” The woman grinned again. “How refreshing.” She settled into the booth across from him. “You may call me the Golden Widow.”

  Bharat had never heard of her, but he didn’t keep a dossier on every small-time criminal on Ceto. He’d look her up later, when he got back home — or Senator Tarack would. “Make it quick. I’ve got a shuttle to catch.”

  “I’d like you to help me free Jan Sabato.”

  Another name Bharat had never heard. “And what gave you the impression I could do that?”

  The Widow leaned forward, curls dangling. “I’m referring, specifically, to your employer. Senator Tarack has
hooks in Tantalus prison. That is where Jan is currently incarcerated.”

  This woman shouldn’t know about Senator Tarack’s connections to the warden of Tantalus prison, but people on Ceto were turning out to know a lot of stuff they shouldn’t know. Bharat had been foolish to underestimate the natural-born, who’d thrown off a ten-year Supremacy occupation with nothing but a few bombs.

  Still, he saw no upside for him or his employer in helping this Golden Widow free her friend. “I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but I don’t know anything about Tantalus prison.”

  “And here I thought we were past the preliminary bullshit.” The Widow rapped her knuckles on the table. “We are going to run a job together, Mr. Ember, because we both have much to gain by doing so. Let’s not bother ourselves with lies.”

  “What sort of job?” Bharat asked. Tarack would review every moment of this conversation.

  “Check your archive,” the Widow said.

  Bharat took a moment. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “The archive on your PBA,” the Widow continued, her sly smirk returning to her face. “The continuously running program that would normally be recording this conversation. Check your feed. Tell me what you see and hear.”

  Was she serious? More out of curiosity than anything more urgent, Bharat brought up an augmented reality window showing the real-time recording his PBA was engaged in right now.

  The booth across from him was empty. No Golden Widow sat there. No one sat there at all. Bharat toggled the window away to find the Widow sitting right in front of him, yet for some reason, the archiver on his PBA couldn’t see her.

  The Widow’s smirk only grew. “Interesting, yes?”

  Bharat felt what might be the first inkling of genuine dread. “How are you doing this?”

  If what he was seeing was accurate, someone, somewhere, had hacked into his PBA. That shouldn’t be possible with his level of encryption, but if it was, if someone had gained access to his functions ... he was so absolutely fucked.

  “For now, don’t worry about my parlor tricks.” The Widow held his gaze. “I’ll pull the curtain away later, once we’ve negotiated. Now, listen to my deal. Together, we will free Jan Sabato from Tantalus prison, and then, together, we will rescue your family from Senator Tarack’s private island.”

  The spike of fear Bharat felt earlier was replaced with a spike of white-hot rage. “And what do you know about my family?” Nothing prevented him from killing this woman.

  “Only what I just overheard,” the Widow said, “while eavesdropping on your negotiations with Miss Ryke. To be honest, after your meeting, I pulled this offer out of my ass.”

  Bharat frowned. That was candid.

  “Originally, I’d simply planned to offer you money to enlist your services, but saving your family from Senator Tarack seems a far more noble cause. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Bharat’s rage cooled, just a little. So the Golden Widow wasn’t threatening his family directly. Yet.

  “From what I’ve just learned about how Tarack keeps her people loyal,” the Widow continued, “you must be desperate to get your family off her island. I can easily spirit them to safety after you help me free Jan. Doesn’t this pique your interest?”

  This lunatic actually sounded like she believed she could do it. “Who is this person? This ... Jan Sabato?”

  “Someone I very much care about.”

  Was Jan just a friend, then? Or more? It was difficult to intuit from the woman’s expression. What was obvious, however, was the Golden Widow was deadly serious about getting Jan Sabato freed. That still didn’t explain why she thought Bharat could help her. How had she even learned he’d be here tonight?

  “Assuming I’m actually buying into this,” Bharat said, even though he absolutely wasn’t, “how would it even work?”

  “I know only how my end would work,” the woman said. “I expect you to figure out how to free Jan. We’ll compare plans, and then I’ll smuggle your family safely to Ceto.”

  Ceto? Really? “And what makes you think we would want to live here?”

  “This is the one place Senator Tarack cannot touch you.”

  The Widow was right — mostly — though Bharat didn’t trust this. “No place is safe from her.” He wouldn’t put it past Tarack to send a hit squad and risk an interplanetary incident. What if Tarack had sent this woman to test his loyalty?

  “I’ll get all of you new identities,” the Widow said. “I’ll secure you a house, a job, and even pleasant neighbors. Tarack will never find you unless you do something truly incompetent, and you don’t strike me as the incompetent sort.”

  Bharat would certainly like to think so. Though at this point, he was as far out of his element as he could be without getting shot. Could this woman actually get his family away from Senator Tarack? Could he ever believe something so foolish?

  “Oh, and I can offer one more favor for free,” the Widow said. “I can tell you how Elena Ryke learned about your family.”

  Bharat would very much like to hear that. “How?”

  “Tarack told her.”

  It was such a blindingly obvious assertion that Bharat quietly cursed himself. Of course Senator Tarack had told Elena Ryke details about Bharat’s wife and child, because that was exactly the sort of shit she’d do to make a deal with Ryke.

  It was smart, tactically. Giving Ryke leverage against the people she’d be dealing with would leave her confident enough to dominate her meeting with Bharat and Cole, just like psych had assured them Ryke longed to do. It would build trust between Tarack and Ryke, showing Ryke that Tarack saw her as an equal. It was the perfect bonding moment for two perfectly ruthless women.

  “See?” the Widow said, though she wasn’t smiling now. “We’d make excellent partners. We have complementary skill sets.”

  The fact that Senator Tarack had just gifted the identities of Bharat’s family to a ruthless crime lord told him Tarack’s goals on Ceto stretched far beyond selling one blackmail disc to one crime lord. It seemed obvious, now, that this negotiation was simply the first move in Tarack’s attempt to entwine Ryke’s vast criminal enterprises with her own. What the deal was likely mattered less than a deal being struck.

  None of that mattered to Bharat. What mattered was his family, and the fact that Tarack had just tossed their safety and Bharat’s away like the pawns she believed they were. Bharat was not half so valuable to Tarack as she’d led him to believe — she could always get another security chief — and that made it all the more vital he get his family somewhere safe soon.

  The Widow leaned back in her seat, arms resting on the backrest. “I understand your hesitance. If two exceedingly dangerous women were threatening my family, I’d be wary of any risk. Yet you know as well as I that your situation is untenable.” She paused, frowned, and spoke again. “I understand your fears because I share them. Jan is part of my family, and I won’t leave anyone in my family rotting in jail.”

  The guilt in the Widow’s tone sounded genuine. Jan nodded with appropriate sympathy. “How long has he been up there?”

  “Far too long.”

  “And you can really do it?” The thought of buying into this woman’s claims terrified Bharat, but he was almost as terrified of not hearing her out. “You can sneak my family off Phorcys, to Ceto, and get us new identities?”

  “I’m a smuggler, Bharat,” the Widow said, and now she cracked another, more confident grin. “Smuggling cargo discreetly, from planet to shining planet, is what I do.”

  Bharat narrowed his eyes. “My wife and child aren’t cargo.”

  “I heartily agree. Once you agree to work with me, I’ll walk you through every step of how I plan to get them out.” And with that, the Widow slid one arm directly through the table, revealing herself as an incredibly realistic holo-projection. “After all, I smuggled all this into the club, didn’t I?”

  Bharat found he could believe the Golden Widow. He might not have to spend the rest of his life do
ing shitty things for a shitty senator, hoping he did well enough to keep her from murdering his family. This was a way out for those he loved.

  If, of course, neither of them spectacularly fucked up.

  11: Diplomacy

  Jan gave the last of the big red beasts a hard kick to make sure it was actually dead, then sat down hard on the metal rail at the center of the track. His leg throbbed where one of the creatures had chomped down on his pants, breaking skin and bruising muscle. He hoped the animals weren’t poisonous, but it was a little late to worry about that now.

  “God,” Emiko said, as she pulled yet another strand of grayish goo from the mess now festooning her head. “I effing hate lizards.” She shuddered. “Why do they have to spit?”

  “It’s a defense mechanism,” Kinsley said. “Be glad you closed your eyes when you did. Otherwise, you’d be blind.”

  Three dead lizards lay nearby, alternately impaled, cut open, and crushed beneath a slide of rocks. They’d chewed a nasty-looking nest into the side of the tunnel, filled with what looked to be masticated rock, metal scraps, and dried snot. It smelled like the floor of the Greasy Bowsprit after an orgy.

  “This stuff is toxic, isn’t it?” Emiko pulled off another droopy tendril of snot and flung the whole string, underhanded, at the nest. “I’m going to get face cancer.”

  “Actually,” Kinsley said, rubbing a damp cloth across the tip of the makeshift spear she’d somehow found in the melee, “all studies currently indicate these lizards are not poisonous, at least not to humans. They mostly eat small animals and crunchy plants, hence their dull teeth.”

  Jan rubbed his aching shin as he balanced on the rather uncomfortable rail. “They did not feel dull to me. I think the beast fractured something.” His leg ached like he’d broken a chair leg over his shin, and that ache was getting worse.

  “Yes, it’s too bad it bit you on the leg,” Kinsley said. “We have a long way to walk. Anyway, up you go!”