Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3) Page 2

  Yet.

  Senator Tarack strode into the room at an unconcerned pace, the hem of her robe drifting. She strapped into the chair across from Jan in the bored, unhurried manner of a person who expected the world to run on her timetable. Bharat floated not strapped in by the door, ready to pounce if Jan tried something inappropriate. Bharat also didn’t close the door, which suggested the three of them were alone on this ship. Good.

  Senator Tarack was obviously wealthy, judging from the tailoring of her robe, and obviously paranoid, judging from the body armor she wore beneath it. Given she had a bodyguard in the room with him, and she could probably snap him in half with her Advanced super-strength, body armor seemed ... excessive.

  Tarack crossed her legs and frowned. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sabato, but I prefer honesty, so I won’t begin our prospective relationship by lying to you. I detest thieves.”

  Jan half-floated in his very comfortable chair. “And I detest liars, so honesty is welcome. However, to ensure there is no misunderstanding, I am a smuggler, not a thief.”

  “These are different how?”

  “Thieves steal objects,” Jan said. “I move objects from place to place, discreetly and, often enough, legally.”

  “Fine, whatever.” Tarack waved the matter away. “I don’t care what you call yourself, so long as you deliver results.”

  “This, I do. What result can I deliver for you?”

  “Something priceless has been stolen from me, and Bharat” — Tarack tossed a glance at her impassively standing bodyguard — “has assured me that my item will be all but impossible to recover without the help of someone intimately familiar with Ceto’s criminal underworld.”

  “Ah,” Jan said, as he suddenly felt a whole lot better about not going out an airlock. “I am that.”

  “In short, it takes a thief to catch a thief, and Bharat claims you’re one of the best thieves in the business.”

  “Smuggler.” Jan nodded. “But yes.”

  “And all of this leads me to wonder why the best thief—”

  “Smuggler,” Jan corrected.

  “—ended up rotting in Tantalus prison,” Tarack continued, “instead of whoring it up on a beach at Valor’s Squall.”

  “Whoring is overrated.” Jan allowed himself the smallest of smiles. “Also, beaches.” He leaned forward. “What stolen item would you like me to recover, Senator Tarack?”

  Tarack frowned. “That’s your first question? Not what I’ll be paying you, or who stole it, or where we think it is now?”

  “If you knew where your item was now, you would not have arranged this meeting with me. As to payment, Bharat and I discussed that. Given I am now in your employ ... happily, I might add ... I will not be tossed out an airlock.”

  Bharat didn’t move from his place beside the door.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” Tarack said. “If you’re so good at this, how’d you get caught?”

  Jan pushed aside an unwelcome image of Fatima’s wide, dark eyes. “My poor choice in business associates.”

  “And that’s supposed to reassure me?”

  Jan shrugged. “Even a man as charming and intelligent as I can, in unlucky circumstances, be brought low by traitorous partners who lack both judgment and moral character.”

  Tarack snorted. “You are arrogant.”

  Jan simply inclined his head as a taunting and impossibly appealing possibility slipped inside his mind. “As for who stole your item, would you allow me to hazard a guess?”

  He saw Fatima as clearly as when she’d betrayed him to the authorities: the small yet perfect line above her lips, the curls of dyed platinum-blond hair blowing in the wind, her haunted gaze as he glared daggers and walked away in cuffs. He’d dreamed about catching up with her every day since she’d sent him to orbit, but now ... was this even possible?

  Tarack glanced at Bharat, then returned her gaze to Jan. “Sure. Impress me.”

  “The thief who stole your item is the Golden Widow, yes?”

  Tarack’s audible intake of breath would have been more than enough to confirm his suspicions, though her wide and now murderous eyes helped. “How the fuck do you know that?” Tarack’s eyes narrowed noticeably. “Are you working with her?”

  The rush of dopamine flooding Jan’s silently cheering brain was tempered by Senator Tarack’s ire. One of Bharat’s hands went to the holstered needle pistol on his hip, but his gaze remained on his employer, not Jan. Interesting. Very interesting.

  Jan ignored the butterflies in his stomach, the chance that all he wanted could be snatched away again, and spoke quietly, keeping his expression as pleasant as if they were enjoying tea. “I am simply piecing together all available facts.”

  “What facts?”

  “Purchasing a prisoner of my caliber from Tantalus prison cannot have come cheap, and even a senator of your obvious means would not have done so without a very specific purpose in mind.”

  Tarack gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “Don’t flatter yourself, Sabato. When a space station filled with violent criminals is always a week from flying apart in orbit, a reasonable donation goes a long way.”

  “My obvious value aside,” Jan continued, “my partnership with the Golden Widow was well known. If one wronged by her wished to ensnare her, and one was either unaware of the identities of her current associates or unable to locate them, one’s next logical step would be to interrogate the only remaining associate who could be easily obtained. Providing one had the financial means to purchase them from prison, of course.”

  Tarack released the table and sat back, frown incrementally less murderous. “So you’re not hopeless.” She glanced at Bharat. “You win this one. I expect I’ll earn it back.”

  Jan glanced between Tarack and Bharat. “I am responsible for you losing a bet?”

  Tarack scowled. “I’ve spent more on bedsheets.”

  “Generously threaded, I assume.” Jan missed real beds. “Now, to business. What did the Golden Widow steal from you?”

  A glowing projection of a sandwich-sized data disc snapped into view on the table between them. As with the door, Tarack and Bharat must be controlling the ship’s components using their Personal Brain Assistants, or PBAs: brain-mounted computers that offered wireless control of any number of devices and access to simulations that seemed more real than reality itself.

  This was what Jan had heard, of course. He’d never been willing to install a PBA himself. As a person who made much of his living hacking into computer systems, he knew better than to shove a hackable computer inside his brain.

  “How long will it take you to get this back?” Tarack asked, pointing at her holographic projection.

  Jan regarded the rectangular disc. “If you will forgive me, Senator, I had twenty such data discs stashed inside my yacht before it, er, exploded. I may need a bit ... more?”

  “You won’t, actually.” Tarack swiped two fingers against the projection and spun it around, showing the back side of the disc. “Take a good look.”

  Jan leaned in and spotted something unusual on the disc’s undercarriage: a blue square about the size of an eyepatch. He’d seen it before only in pictures. He whistled and sat back.

  “Impressed?” Tarack might be gloating a bit. “Do you even know what you’re looking at?”

  “I have never actually seen a data disc with a quantum crux drive.” Jan agreed to be impressed. “That drive is worth about the same price as this ship, isn’t it?”

  Tarack smiled like the rich asshole she was. “It’s also impossible to decrypt without the associated cipher key, which the Widow was stupid enough to overlook.”

  “Nothing is truly impossible to decrypt.” Also, Jan really doubted Fatima had overlooked the decryption problem, though he saw no benefit in pointing that out to his latest employer.

  Tarack unleashed a put-upon sigh. “Sure, yes, if you had a thousand years and a planet full of supercomputers, I’
m sure you could get into it eventually. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy arguing semantics?”

  “Your disc is distinctive,” Jan said, “but I would caution that the Golden Widow has already created many convincing facsimiles. Given what I know of her talents and resources, creating a dozen fake discs would be kitten’s play.”

  Tarack frowned. “What the hell is a kitten?”

  Bharat cleared his throat, but Tarack snapped her fingers and pointed backward before he could speak. “Don’t tell me. I don’t care.” She kept her eyes on Jan. “So are you telling me you can’t find the Golden Widow, or you can’t find my disc?”

  “I can find the Golden Widow,” Jan said. “I can also find a disc that looks very much like this one. As to whether it is your disc, well ... without the cipher key for verification ...”

  Tarack snorted. “Right. Of course! I’ll just hand over the one thing protecting my quantum crux drive to the completely trustworthy thief I recently purchased from prison.”

  “Smuggler,” Jan corrected.

  Tarack’s jaw tensed. “Don’t worry your fragile head about verification. Bharat will handle that.”

  Of course he would. “Bharat will be my contact on Ceto?”

  Tarack smiled in a delighted, predatory way that made Jan distinctly uncomfortable. “Bharat will be your partner, Mr. Sabato, and he will remain with you at all times.” She leaned over the table. “Did you honestly believe I would dump you on Ceto, with only your word that you’d find my disc, and expect you to do anything but crawl beneath a rock?”

  A rock wouldn’t have been Jan’s first choice. “I had assumed whatever nanos were in that purple liquid would allow you to track my whereabouts.”

  “Oh,” Tarack said, as she pushed back in her chair. “He thinks we injected him with tracking nanos.” She chuckled in a way that was just a smidge maniacal. “That’s adorable!”

  Bharat didn’t smile when Tarack did, which worried Jan. Bharat should have chuckled. Thugs were supposed to chuckle when their employers chuckled.

  “The nanos inside you aren’t trackers, Sabato.” Tarack looked more delighted than anyone should when saying those words. “They’re so, so much more than that.”

  “Oh?” Jan resisted the urge to catapult himself over the table and try for the bridge.

  Tarack glanced at her bodyguard. “Show him, Bharat.” An eager edge crept into her tone. “He needs to understand why he’s going to be so loyal to me.”

  “Ah,” Jan said, as his spine prickled and fear blossomed in his gut, “you don’t actually need—”

  Agony erupted inside his suddenly paralyzed body. Jan couldn’t scream, couldn’t gasp, couldn’t even twitch. A symphony of exploding planets erupted as shards shredded his lungs, his heart, his mind. This hell ended without warning and flung his upper body onto the table, gasping like a dying fish.

  Tarack smirked as she unstrapped and pushed off toward the door. “Surprise.”

  For his part, Jan merely squeezed the table in two trembling hands and tried not to lose bowel or bladder control. He’d just been given the first pair of clean underwear he’d had in months. He really wanted to enjoy that a bit longer.

  Tarack snapped her boots back onto the flooring and stomped through the open doorway. “In case it wasn’t clear, Sabato, what you experienced lasted ten seconds.”

  Truly? Jan had thought it lasted much longer.

  “That’s the pain you’ll experience until you die of dehydration,” Tarack said, “if Bharat doesn’t reset the nanos now imbedded inside your bones once every twenty-five hours.”

  Ah, Jan thought, an echo of that agony imbedding itself deep into his brain. So he had torture nanos imbedded in his bones now. That was ... bad.

  “If you kill Bharat,” Tarack continued, “or you let him be killed by some gutter-born on your little Ceto adventure, you will enjoy a hundred hours of agony before you choke to death on your tongue. Also, if you disobey us for any reason, we can send you to Hell with our thoughts. So be nice.”

  “Unnecessary,” Jan managed, glaring from the table as he floated in residual agony. “Truly, hideously unnecessary.”

  Tarack rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  Jan focused on breathing. “And when I succeed?”

  “If you do somehow recover my disc, I’ll order Bharat to disable your nanos and free you to fuck off wherever.” Tarack snorted. “Good luck with that.” The door hissed shut.

  The room fell into silence, and Bharat didn’t move. He didn’t have an expression now, which was disconcerting given he could send Jan into a paroxysm of agony with one wireless signal from his PBA. Jan did not enjoy paroxysms of agony.

  Jan didn’t move. He didn’t dare speak until he was sure Bharat wasn’t going to activate the torture nanos again. He wondered if he should go toss himself out the airlock right now.

  “So,” Bharat said, “shall we be off?”

  02: Pollen

  The only way the flight to Ceto could have been more awkward was if Jan weren’t wearing any pants. Jan sat strapped into a jump seat beside Bharat, in silence, in an empty passenger bay that smelled like it had been freshly deloused. The only other features in the shuttle were eighteen empty seats and a single square medpack belted to the wall.

  The impressively bearded Advanced man sitting beside him could torture him, had tortured him, yet Bharat seemed vaguely put off by it. He almost looked guilty. A dozen veiled insults and subtle jabs flowed through Jan’s mind and went unspoken.

  He and Bharat didn’t look at each other and didn’t speak, and why would they? What good would threats or reproach do now? The torture nanos were inside him, and Jan had long ago learned that complaining about one’s fate never changed it.

  Still, at least Jan would have one last shot at Fatima. He’d simply hope Bharat didn’t do something stupid and get himself killed before Jan caught up with her, because if that happened, well ... he could always eat a bullet before the torture nanos kicked in. He certainly wasn’t going back to a cell. Dodging angry convicts and guard beatings got old fast.

  The shuttle rattled quietly, then rattled much less quietly. They were entering Ceto’s atmosphere, and though Jan couldn’t see it, he imagined the curtain of fire surrounding the shuttle’s belly as it plummeted. Tantalus prison was big enough that its rotation provided what approximated Ceto’s standard gravity, but it wasn’t the same as standing on flat earth. The last thing Jan needed when chasing down the best smuggler on Ceto (other than himself, of course) was to get laid out with space sickness.

  Jan had already given Bharat the place they’d start: Duskdale, or rather, its massively dilapidated inner city, one known to the locals as the Sledge. The Sledge had been his and Fatima’s home base before the arrest, along with the rest of their crew, and that was where Jan would pick up her trail.

  The healthy paranoia Jan remembered suggested that, even five years later, Fatima would be using the same professionals they’d both used on jobs. Fatima had no way to know he wasn’t rotting in prison for another thirty-five years, so she had probably used someone Jan knew on her last job. The question was ... why steal something like that disc from someone like Tarack?

  Fatima had her faults, but foolishness was not among them. Other than the jobs they’d pulled for Ceto’s resistance while the Supremacy occupied the planet — for which they’d charged a premium — he and Fatima had always steered their crew clear of any job that targeted anyone powerful. Enemies were bad for business, and powerful enemies were the worst.

  If Senator Tarack had told him the truth, that meant Fatima had made two out-of-character mistakes. First, she’d stolen from a person rich and powerful enough to never stop hunting her. Second, she’d let her mark find out she stole from them.

  Neither of these careless actions fit the Fatima Jan knew, but perhaps she’d grown bold. Perhaps she’d grown desperate. Either way, Jan cared less about the disc she’d stolen than about looking her in the eyes as he forced her
to reveal why she’d betrayed him. Then, of course, he’d shoot her.

  The rattling settled, and Jan heard the faint sound of wind whistling outside. He and Bharat were the only people on the entire shuttle — an autopilot piloted it, as they did — but as Jan closed his eyes and drank in the sound of real wind for the first time in five years, Bharat cleared his throat.

  Damn it all. Bharat probably wanted to talk about what would happen when they landed. Given Bharat’s part in forcing Jan to inject himself with torture nanos, Jan really wasn’t in the mood to talk, but still ... anything was better than that magma-filled hell.

  “Just so you know,” Bharat said, “I don’t care for Senator Tarack’s methods. I’d have done things differently.”

  Jan smiled with his eyes still closed. “Old-fashioned, are you? Prefer the heated poker and drill?”

  “That’s not it at all.” Bharat actually sounded offended. “Torture has been studied by people much smarter than either of us for centuries, and it simply doesn’t work. People will make up any lie to stop the pain, and eventually, the pain itself becomes so much a part of them that it’s no longer effective. We have much more humane ways to get information from a subject who’s not cooperating with the authorities.”

  “You speak, of course, of powerful relaxants.” Jan had learned quite a bit about relaxing compounds during his studies on Tantalus prison. “Truth serum?”

  “We don’t refer to it as that, but yes, we have chemical compounds that approximate the idea suggested by the myth. With those available, inflicting unnecessary pain is pointless.”

  “And you have compounds to enforce loyalty as well?”

  Bharat was quiet beyond Jan’s closed eyelids. Did this Advanced mercenary have any moral instincts left? Those could prove useful if Jan found the right way to manipulate him.

  “You want the Golden Widow,” Bharat said, more confidently than Jan expected. “You want revenge. That alone would have been enough to motivate you to do as Senator Tarack asked, which was the reason I suggested you in the first place.”

  Interesting. “And you informed your fair senator of my enthusiasm?”