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

  “Fuck me,” an enormous chop-haired blonde whispered, pointing a rifle at his head. “Jan?” Polina Rostov stared with wide blue eyes, wearing a low-cut pink nightie that valiantly struggled to contain her beige and herculean frame. “That is you?”

  Jan swallowed what would have been a rather undignified scream. “Yes.”

  “You’re out?” Pollen was still pointing what looked like a tank-killing rifle between his eyes.

  “I am,” Jan said, as he remembered how to breathe. “Hello, Pollen.”

  What came next was a very expected but also very painful hug. It left Jan’s ribs screaming with pain and put aside any thoughts of speaking. Fortunately, Pollen didn’t cry out in delight, or shout to the others that Jan was back from orbit.

  Jan appreciated her understanding. Given she understood Jan had snuck into the Bowsprit at eight in the fucking morning, Pollen knew better than to scream and wake everyone up. She still hugged him like she was trying to choke him out.

  Eventually, Pollen released him and sat back. She put away a rifle as long as he was, slid the door to the guard bunker shut, and beckoned him toward the ladies’ room. That made sense. From the glimpse Jan had managed before Pollen crushed the hello out of him, the other three guards sleeping in the bunker were men.

  The ladies’ room wasn’t made to fit more than one person, and with Pollen’s considerable nighty-clad bulk and Jan’s own at least average bulk, it was a tight squeeze that enforced awkward compromises. One of those was Jan staring up at Pollen, who stood a head taller than he was, trying not to stare at a rather monumental display of cleavage.

  Under normal circumstances, being jammed into an enclosed space with a half-dressed buxom woman would have been the highlight of Jan’s morning, but he had known Pollen ever since she was a child, when he himself was just a teenager. He just couldn’t think of her like ... whatever was going on now. Ever since Tiana took Pollen in, she’d been like his little sister, and Jan had been her big brother, or at least ... that was how they’d always treated things. Before. There was negligee.

  “Time to explain,” Pollen said, showing her absolutely do not fuck with me face. “When did you get back?”

  “Yesterday,” Jan said. There was the Pollen he remembered.

  “How did you get back?”

  “My new employer sprang me from Tantalus. I have a job, though it’s not the paying kind.” He wasn’t going to sully their reunion by lying to Pollen. “It’s more the ‘I pull this off or someone very powerful kills me’ kind of job.”

  “Already?” Pollen scoffed. “Who did you fuck over this time, and when do we murder them?”

  Jan had missed Pollen’s straightforward approach. “My latest employer is out of reach, for now.” While revenge on Senator Tarack was tempting, Jan would prefer not to bring the wrath of the Supremacy down on his head. “Once the job’s over, we’ll consider our next move. Now, how can I contact Fatima?”

  “Oh, fuck me.” Pollen made a face like a bug had just flown into her mouth. “What do you want with her?”

  That wasn’t the reply he’d been hoping for. Jan tried to back up, not gaining much other than a countertop jammed into his back. “I take it you and Fatima had a falling-out?”

  Pollen snorted. “She did the falling out. She dropped us like hot rock, even after all our history together.” When Pollen got overly emotional, she often dropped words from her vocabulary. “After we lost you.” She sniffled.

  Jan was very careful with his next question. “And what, exactly, did Fatima tell you happened to me?”

  “The Supremacy ambushed you both,” Pollen said. “Fatima couldn’t stop them. She blamed herself for the whole thing.”

  Jan wasn’t surprised that Fatima had lied about selling him out to the Supremacy. He was surprised the others had bought Fatima’s story, but Fatima had always been an extremely talented liar. Pollen looked like she was going to hug him again.

  Jan raised his hands to forestall such activity, careful not to touch anything he should not, and relaxed as Pollen sniffled and nodded. Listening. And as Jan wasn’t prepared to unleash a blond thermonuclear warhead on Fatima when finding her required a stiletto, he would keep any revelations involving Fatima’s betrayal quiet until they’d found her and Tarack’s stolen disc.

  “This whole job hinges on Fatima,” Jan said. “We need her help.” That was easier to explain than “I need her dead.”

  “Well, it’s not like I keep up with her. I call few times, but she never called back.” Pollen’s curled lower lip showed how Fatima’s abandonment hurt her, a feeling Jan knew well.

  “I understand.” Jan failed again to find any space in this very enclosed ladies’ room. “What about Emiko? Rafe?”

  “Rafe’s retired,” Pollen said.

  Jan blinked. “Really?” Rafael Garcia had planned to do many things before he died from overindulging with sex workers, drugs, and/or explosives, but retiring was not among them.

  “As for Emiko, she disappeared a year after you went to orbit. Have not seen her since. Without you to make us plans, it was just all ... we just all ...” Pollen sniffled again.

  Jan instinctively gripped one of her big rough hands. “I am back now.” He’d run out on his little sister. “And if we wish to pull off this job properly, we will need to become a team once more. You would be willing to do this, yes?”

  “Hell yes.” The way Pollen’s smile lit up her face made Jan’s cold smuggler heart melt a bit. It hadn’t occurred to him until just now, what with the implantation of torture nanos, but after he dealt with Fatima, he was going to get his crew back together. He was going to take care of them. And he was going to make them very rich.

  First, however, they had a Golden Widow to hunt down.

  “Good.” Jan released her hand. “Now, you said Rafe’s retired. Where exactly?”

  Pollen shrugged. “Cliffside, maybe? That’s where he said he was going before he burned his way out of town.”

  A remote farming town on the ass end of Ceto didn’t seem like Rafe’s style. “Why Cliffside?”

  “Fuck if I know. You going after him?”

  “You may not have kept tabs on everyone, but Rafe certainly has. So if anyone knows where to find Fatima—”

  “—and Emiko,” Pollen added.

  “—and Emiko,” Jan agreed, “then Rafe will know where to start looking.”

  “If he’s not dead,” Pollen added.

  Jan frowned. “Why would he be dead?”

  “Well, you see, before he retired, he sort of ... blew up a Supremacy refueling pad.”

  “Oh,” Jan said.

  “And half a police station.”

  After a moment, Jan added, “That seems unwise.”

  “Yes, why you think he left in such a hurry?”

  Audible stirring from outside interrupted any further conversation. Jan and Pollen went very quiet as that someone loudly relieved themselves next door. Only after the bar had been quiet for one full minute did Pollen speak again.

  “Have to get back,” Pollen said. “Boss will be up soon.” She watched him with wide eyes. “So ... what happens now?”

  “I’ll call you once I find Rafe,” Jan said. “My financier will get us a safe house. We’ll find Emiko, track down Fatima, and finish this whole unpleasant business before week’s end.”

  “But after we do this one job, we’re staying together again, right? As a team? Like the old days?”

  “Yes,” Jan said. “It will be exactly like the old days, Pollen, assuming we don’t all die.”

  Pollen shrugged. “Least we die together.”

  Jan felt warm inside. “And that’s not so bad, yes?”

  03: Rafe

  For a town on the ass end of Ceto, Cliffside actually looked to be doing well. Jan and Bharat arrived on the afternoon’s maglev train — they’d escaped the Bowsprit without choking out anyone else — and stepped out under a descending sun, on a hot afternoon, on a dusty and abandoned pl
atform. They were the only two passengers to get off the train, which sped off as if it couldn’t wait to get away from here.

  Cliffside sprawled up the shallow hill above the station and out of sight. It was primarily one-story habitation units, or HUes (shipping crates big enough for a one-bedroom apartment) with a few more permanent warehouse structures added to store its crops. There wasn’t a single building over two stories, but Cliffside’s inhabitants had done a good job of adding some color to the place by cultivating furrows of Ceto’s wild grass along its roughly paved roads. Those stalks were among the scratchiest plants imaginable, but at least they weren’t dirt or biocrete.

  The arrival platform was as long as the average maglev train, with eight weathered pillars supporting a skeletal roof of pipes and clear plastic, but a hand-painted mural of smiling farmers brightened the whole thing up. Jan supposed Cliffside’s inhabitants had plenty of time for artistic pursuits when they weren’t farming, racing hoverbikes, or distilling moonshine.

  Jan had done his research on the ride over, using the maglev’s seat-mounted e-reader, so the platform’s lack of population wasn’t a surprise. No one really traveled to Cliffside on the tail end of the afternoon. This town was as quiet and blue-collar as towns came on Ceto, which made it all the more odd when three people who looked to be local cops sped toward the platform in an open-air six-wheeler.

  That six-wheeler skidded to a rather abrupt halt just beyond the maglev platform. All three cops inside it then immediately hopped out and walked right toward them, which wasn’t something cops typically did unless they were about to arrest someone.

  “Those for us?” Bharat asked.

  “No idea.” Jan ignored the tightness clenching in his gut. “Let me handle it.”

  Jan and Bharat stood unmoving on the maglev platform, hands visible, as two tall white men and one short white woman stepped onto the platform and marched Jan’s way. They wore faded blue fatigues under dark gray vests that could probably stop a bullet or two. They had nice boots and carried nice rifles.

  Their leader was an older, muscular man with a head full of matted blond hair, a thick blond beard, and a strong chin. He also wore a sheriff’s badge. The sheriff stopped a good six steps away, scratched his bushy beard, and squinted at Jan.

  “Right, that’s him.” Cliffside’s sheriff glanced at his subordinates. “Sweep the perimeter.”

  Both younger cops saluted as the woman said, “You got it, Chief.” They split up and walked off to either side, with their rifles clutched to their chests.

  “Welcome to Cliffside,” the sheriff said, in a tone that wasn’t welcoming at all. “I’ll be your escort today, because apparently nothing else I need to do is this important.”

  Jan had long ago learned that when a situation didn’t make sense, it was best not to do anything to complicate it until one had a better feel for what, exactly, was happening. Apparently, that was Cliffside’s sheriff squinting at him, offering to escort him somewhere, and having his fellow cops do a perimeter sweep. So ... those were facts.

  The sheriff pointed at Bharat. “Who’s he? Bodyguard?”

  Jan decided to go for it. “Yes.”

  “Sheriff Galloway.” The sheriff stepped forward and offered his hand. “Thanks for the heads-up that you’d be visiting, Senator. Since I knew you were coming ahead of time, I had plenty of time to secure this platform.”

  Jan took Galloway’s outstretched hand and shook it like a politician, firmly but not too firmly, before dropping it. “You knew I was coming?” They thought he was a senator?

  “No.” Galloway’s eyes bored into him as the man stepped back. “That’s what we in the boonies call ‘sarcasm.’ That’s why I had to pull two of my deputies off a domestic disturbance call and race here in an ATV, at a decidedly unsafe speed, to make sure none of my citizens caved your skull in with a shovel.” He scowled. “You realize you’ve made a real mess here, right?”

  “Ah,” Jan said. “Perhaps I should have informed you of my arrival.” What in the world was this?

  “Yeah,” Galloway said. “Also, maybe you shouldn’t have cut our payment for this year’s yield by another twenty percent, on top of the ten the senate cut last year. You folks are down to Supremacy prices now, which seems like a bad idea given, you know, history.” Galloway shrugged. “But what do I know about planetary politics? I’m just a small-town sheriff.”

  “Right,” Jan said. “And so ...”

  Galloway sighed. “You and your bodyguard can ride with me to the administration building.” He cocked an eyebrow. “At least you had the good sense to come in before sundown, when everyone was still out in the fields.”

  “That seemed wise,” Jan agreed. He glanced at Bharat, who offered absolutely no help, and debated options.

  Sheriff Galloway wanted to take him to Cliffside’s administration building, and declining would raise questions Jan wasn’t ready to answer just yet. Impersonating a sitting Ceto senator was the quickest way back to orbital prison short of shooting someone in the head, but what choice did he have?

  It was Rafe. This felt like Rafe. Jan couldn’t say for certain why, but of all the possible explanations for why he’d arrived at a city he’d never visited to be greeted by cops who thought he was a Ceto senator, Rafe seemed the most likely. So if Rafe had done this, why had Rafe done this?

  “Shall we?” Jan asked.

  Galloway grunted and turned. “Carrell!” he shouted in the direction of the male deputy. “Finish securing the platform and call the station for a ride!”

  From the end of the platform, Carell shouted back, “Aw, really, Chief?” So this was that kind of a police department.

  “Miller!” Galloway directed that shout at the short woman, who snapped to attention. “You’re with me! We’ll escort Senator Patterson to the admin building!”

  So they thought Jan was someone named Senator Patterson. If only he had a way to bring up the man’s bio and learn basic facts about his latest false identity. That would be one advantage, Jan admitted, to having a PBA installed.

  Galloway and his female deputy, Miller, hopped into the two bucket seats in the front of the ATV, leaving Jan and Bharat to take those in the back. Four seats explained why Galloway was leaving Deputy Carrell behind — the modest vehicle literally wouldn’t fit another person — and its size said as much about Cliffside PD as the casual way its deputies spoke to its sheriff. Rafe had probably been running circles around them for years.

  As Galloway accelerated away from the maglev platform fast enough to force Jan to grip his seat, Galloway’s deputy twisted in her own seat to watch them. “Sharon Miller.” She smiled wide, seemingly unconcerned by Galloway’s driving. “First time I’ve met a senator. What brings you all the way to Cliffside?”

  Jan had no fucking idea at the moment, so he smiled and inclined his head. “The same as always.” Cliffside’s wide paved streets were empty, but Galloway was driving awfully fast. HUes on both sides bore a range of colorful decorations and other artistic flourishes, but Galloway was driving too fast for Jan to focus on anything other than a rainbow blur.

  Miller watched them both with a half-smile, the wind teasing strands of her short brown hair. “So this is a secret visit?”

  Miller was shorter than most cops he’d met, with healthy curves. She had a soft, unassuming face, brown hair in a tight bun, and a host of freckles Jan found absolutely adorable. He wondered what would happen if Senator Patterson bought her a drink, then reminded himself that was a really bad idea.

  A quiet beep sounded, and Galloway tapped his ear-comm without slowing down. “Go.” After a moment, he added, “Right,” and then, “Of course it is.”

  Miller twisted back around. “Problem, Chief?”

  “This call is for our illustrious senatorial guest, who couldn’t be bothered to bring his own ear-comm.” Sheriff Galloway snapped the comm off his ear and offered it over his shoulder, keeping his other hand on the visibly vibrating wheel. “Sat-call f
or you, sir.” The sir was definitely sarcastic.

  Rafe. Jan took the earpiece and snapped it on. “Yes?”

  “Fuck me with a fucking poker, mate, I can’t believe you’re out!” That was Rafe, all right. “What’d you do up there to get out, blow the warden? You run through the whole staff, mate?”

  Jan kept his face placid as he imagined several painful ways to murder the man on the other end of this comm. “Ah, no.” Galloway and Miller were listening to his end of the call, so he’d have to speak carefully. “I’m in the town and with the sheriff.” He winced involuntarily as Galloway swerved around a stack of crates. “Any word on that other matter?”

  “Right, right, right,” Rafe said. “See, there’s this thing, Jan. I’m over a barrel here. Things got a bit too good and I got a bit careless and, well, there’s these archives on Cliffside’s servers I really need to delete. I needed a fresh face and someone I could trust and, hey, here’s Jan, the smoothest face I know, so you’re a senator now. Senatorial, baby!”

  “Yes,” Jan managed, without grinding his teeth. “I understand that much, at least.” The ATV hit a bump that sent Jan slightly airborne, tossing another log on his annoyance fire. “Could you tell me exactly what the clerk needs me to sign?”

  “Oh, no worries there, mate, I’ll guide you through the deletion once you’re in. I hacked their whole system years ago, cameras in the admin and the bathrooms and even train cams on approach. That’s how I spotted you! Also, what’s with the Advanced bugger you’re hauling around? Hostage?” Rafe’s voice went disturbingly husky. “Boyfriend?”

  “No,” Jan said, “and no. It’s something else.”

  “Right, well, that’s your business, mate. Anyway, do me a solid and keep up the Senator Patterson fake out until Galloway buggers off, all right? Don’t want him thinking about this too much. Man used to be a Special Investigator. He’s married to some scary Advanced lady, and his son’s some sort of child commando. This is a nutty town, mate, chock full of secrets. There’s Patriots of Ceto everywhere, and oh, their explosives!”