Songs of Love & Death (42 page)

“Serri, I’m sorry,” he said as she wedged herself between a fake redsprout tree on her right and a tall blinking advert pillar on her left.

She brushed a synth-frond off her head. “I’m okay.”

“No. About Rez and his affair with Janna. It was Rez I wanted to hurt. Not you. Never you.” He didn’t know why it was so important to tell her that now, but it was. He suddenly had a bad feeling about this mission, and about what exactly he’d have to do to make sure Serri and Quin got off station alive and in possession of their ship.

Emotions played over her face, her eyes darkening, her mouth parting slightly. He had to force himself to look away from all that, from what it made him want to do, because they now had forty-three minutes to get up four more levels, pull the plug on station defenses, and get back down to the
Pandea
before alarms started wailing. And before Filar’s Breffan Bruisers figured out just what he’d wanted that extra hour for.

Suddenly, she grasped his forearms, pulling him closer. Nic was very aware that he had three minutes to spare, and that three minutes wasn’t nearly
time enough to kiss Serri like he wanted to. People in hell want ice water, his grandfather always used to say. He’d take what he could get.

But her face didn’t hold a look of passion but concern. “A pair of Bruisers just came in.”

Nic shot a quick glance over his shoulder. Time to disappear. “Side exit. Go.”

She threaded her way through the crowd of bank patrons. He took one last look at guards—the Breffans hadn’t seen them, he was sure—and then followed on her heels, cursing silently. He should have demanded more time.

There was a maintenance storage room about fifty feet to the left of the bank. At least, there had been two years ago, which was the last time Nic was on Jabo Station. But when they came around the curve in the corridor, something else had been added: two more red-uniformed Bruisers. One leaned against the bulkhead, checking something on a transcomm in his upper left hand; the other watched the crowd through narrowed eyes.

He pulled Serri behind a pylon.

“They’re looking for us,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“They’re also blocking access to the maintenance core.” Where they would have been able to continue with much less chance of being seen.

“There must be others.”

“That’s the closest workable one on this level that I have the code for.”

“Since when do you need a code for a lock?”

“Since we only have forty minutes to do what we have to and get back.”

One of the Breffan guards raised his face, peering over the crowd of stationers. Spotting them? Nic couldn’t take the chance. The guard was already heading toward them. Nic put his arm around her shoulders, aware now of movement to their left. A deep voice, shouting. Then a sharp trill of high laughter.

“Looks like someone’s on his way to a party,” he told her, turning her quickly toward the group of drunken revelers. “Let’s go crash it.”

....

T
HEY STANK. SOMEONE
—more than one someone, Serri guessed with fair accuracy, wrinkling her nose—had spilled sour ale on his clothes, and another someone standing far too close to her and Nic had pissed on himself. Or herself. Crammed into the small lift as they were—a nonstop to Level Ten—there was nowhere to get away from the stench and the harsh laughter and—

Vakare-be-damned, if that bastard behind her patted her ass one more time she was going to ignore Nic’s admonition to “blend in,” and clock the drunk
right across his drooling face.

She inched closer to Nic, regretting that too because he smelled clean like soap and leather and, well, like the Nic Talligar she remembered.

It was Rez I wanted to hurt. Not you.

She played his words over in her mind as she listened to Nic ramble on in an unintelligible conversation with several of the drunks, his newfound friends. There was no escape, not from the drunken dockworkers headed for the Crimson Flask on Level Ten, and not from Nic Talligar who never wanted to hurt her.

So he said.

He never hurt you before. He was your best friend.

But how in hell was helping Rez cover his affair with Janna hurting
Rez
? If she lived through this, she was going to sit Nic down and demand an answer. And have Quin there to make sure Nic didn’t lie.

Though she might suffocate from the noxious fumes before that happened. She gave up and leaned her face against Nic’s jacket. And was surprised when his arms came tightly around her. And even more surprised to feel his mouth brush the side of her forehead.

He’s playacting. We’re just another pair of drunks headed for someone’s party.

But being held by Nic felt good. And it wasn’t just because he smelled good. It was because… he was Nic. Her onetime closest friend she never wanted to see again. Ever.

This was definitely not good.

The lift shimmied to a stop, doors opening. The whooping and laughing increased, along with general mayhem as the partygoers stumbled toward the bar’s entrance.

She and Nic stumbled along with them. Suddenly he yanked her sideways.

“Hey, party’s this way!” someone called out.

“Be righ’ there,” Nic called back, words slurred as he swayed against her. “Gotta puke.”

That elicited a chorus of groans and epithets as Nic bent over, one hand braced against the wall.

“Arm around my shoulder. Block their view.” His voice was low, urgent.

She steadied him and realized he didn’t want his new friends to see the tiny decoder in his hand. He was picking the lock on a door clearly marked “No Admittance.”

“I really don’t think they care,” she said quietly, meaning that he was accessing the door, not that he was pretending to be sick.

“Anyone watching?”

She turned slightly. The line of dockworkers in the corridor had dwindled. “Nope.”

He shoved the door open and pulled her inside. “They care,” he said, closing the door, extinguishing all light. Then light flared. Nic, with a small handbeam. They were in a storage closet.

“They care,” he repeated. “You ever know a Jabo dockworker who could afford drinks on the house for fifty people at the first bar, and now a second party here?”

“Someone’s rich relative died?”

He shook his head and played the beam around the room. “The woman with the long white braids on the lift with us is our hostess. Got paid good money for doing something interestingly illegal. And it involves filched cargo and bogus tariffs.”

“She works for Filar.”

“No. Rez Jonas.” He focused the beam on another door on the left wall. “This way.”

Her mind frantically processed the information and refused to let her feet move. “But why would he risk his own cargo? He’s working with you, isn’t he?”

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward. “I don’t know, and no, he’s not,” he said, putting the decoder against the door. “Jonas had no idea we’re tracking his cargo. Yours is one of several shipments the DIA tagged at the source. Some ended up at Able-Trade, some went to Fortune Exports, and some to Widestar.” The door unlocked with a low pinging sound. “We didn’t know where the problem was. Now I think we do.”

“But why would he want his own cargo stolen?”

He ushered her through the door into a dimly lit room that wasn’t a room at all, but an open, hangarlike area crisscrossed with catwalks, ladders, maintenance tunnels, and accessways that comprised the station’s core.

“I can think of a dozen reasons ranging from kickbacks to idiotic corporate backstabbing,” Nic said, shoving his handbeam and decoder back onto his utility belt. “But what worries me more is whether Jonas knew you were piloting the
Pandea
.”

She followed him toward a descending catwalk that she hoped was sturdier than it looked. “He was at the depot when we took consignment. But he didn’t stay long. I thought he was still uncomfortable around me.”

“My guess is he was uncomfortable with your Skoggi partner, who might sense something was wrong. Like the fact Jonas was targeting you.”

Targeting?
She grasped the handrail on the catwalk to steady herself. “Why would he target us?”

“We need to keep moving.” He touched her shoulder gently. “Again, I don’t know. It could be he’s still pissed because you walked out in the middle of his fancy engagement party.”

After she’d tossed photos around the party of Rez and Janna writhing on top of a Widestar boardroom conference table. She’d heard later he almost lost his job. And she never did figure out who to thank for sending her the damning images.

“And yours is the only ship under threat of impound,” Nic was saying.

“That could be Filar’s doing.”

“All our intelligence to date shows that Filar is just the front end. Rez wanted you and Quin to do the Jabo run. He wanted you here today.”

Serri saw that so clearly. “Filar had the seizure papers waiting for me.”

“My point. Rez knows you’d fight forfeiting your ship, and also knows you don’t have the money to pay Filar’s ransom. The banks were probably told to deny you a loan. Our mistake—and it was a big one—was that we didn’t even try to get the funds. Filar now knows you have no intention of paying. So he’s wondering if you’re going to break dock and take a chance the ion cannons just might miss.” He hesitated, then: “Or maybe that’s exactly what Jonas wants you to do.”

“Rez wants me dead?” Her voice sounded suddenly hollow.

He turned and looked back at her, his eyes dark. “I have no intention of letting that happen.”

She realized that she’d stopped again. She quickened her steps to catch up to him, her boots clanging dully on the metal gridwork. Saints help them. Quin. What if Filar or whoever Rez had here on station made a move against the
Pandea
? But Quin could sense anyone entering the bay, sense their intentions. Granted, only in a general capacity: He was Skoggi, not some magical, mystical creature. But Serri had to believe that someone intent on killing
would be broadcasting very intense emotions. Still… “I need to warn Quin.”

“If they’re monitoring transmissions you might be endangering—”

A sudden clanking sounded above them. Serri’s heart rate spiked. Nic shoved her to her knees, then dropped down beside her, pistol out. She drew hers and stared up toward the sound, peripherally aware of Nic checking all around them.

He was right. This was far more dangerous than Scout-and-Snipe. And immeasurably more important. The security training Widestar put all their pilots through seemed woefully insufficient.

A few more clanks and pings, punctuated by bootsteps. Through the uneven lighting dotting the stairlike catwalks, Serri could discern a form moving on a platform about two levels above. She didn’t know whether to hunker down and make herself appear smaller, or tense her body and get ready to run.

After another series of pings, Nic leaned toward her, mouth against her ear, “Repair worker. Should leave—”

A loud clang.

“Now.” He rose, one hand on her arm, bringing her with him. “If you’re going to contact Quin, make it quick.”

She pulled out her transcomm as Nick trotted carefully back down the catwalk. She moved as he did, and kept her voice low. “Quintrek, Captain Beck here. Ran into Thuk-zik. I think you’ve locked up the market on gossip. You were dead-on right about those rumors.” She cut the transmission, praying Quin would pick out the keywords in her unlikely and uncharacteristic message.

Praying he was still alive and on board to even receive it.

T
HREE MINUTES. WELL
, maybe five, but no more than that. Nic had five minutes to open the auxiliary maintenance compartment without setting off any alarms. He went down on one knee, running the small decoder over the door’s
locking mechanism, which was housed about six inches below the palm pad and ident reader.

“Anything?” Serri asked softly behind him.

“It’s a Drammond Six-K-One.” He swept the decoder in an arc. “Good antipick deterrents, double-back code verifier. Nice.”

“Nic, we’ve got twenty minutes.”

“We have four. If I can’t get this open in four, the rest of those minutes won’t matter.” He brought up a sequence but the 6K-1 wasn’t interested. Damn it. He tried a second, then a third. He could feel Serri’s concern and impatience. She was worried about Quin.

He was worried because he was working blind, and not just because he couldn’t get a damned code fix on the damned 6K-1. It was because he had no clear concept of what Rez Jonas was up to. Only that it wasn’t what either he or his boss had expected. But without filing a sitrep, he couldn’t get answers from agency intel.

Of course, filing a sitrep now would set off more alarms than sloppily picking the damned lock would.

Pay attention, Nicandro.

“Reverse those two parameters.”

He glanced to his right and almost bumped noses with Serri. “What—”

“Those two.” She pointed to the small screen. “Have you forgotten what you taught me back at Widestar? That’s a loop created by an inaccessible exit command.”

He wasted another second to stare at her in amazement—and admiration—then reversed the two parameters and got to work.

“We’re in.” The
snick-click
of a well-picked lock never sounded so good. He would have kissed her, but there was no time. Plus, she was angry enough at him as it was. “Ten minutes, max.”

The room was little more than a dimly lit narrow closet, about twelve feet wide. It wasn’t the usual auxiliary control system, but an unmanned maintenance substation that serviced nonenvironmental systems. Newer stations no longer used them because of their potential overall vulnerability, but Jabo had been here for more than a half a century, and Filar and his predecessors were kept busy with rival pirate factions zapping each other in the corridors. The fact that someone might be able to compromise a few of the station’s nonenvironmental systems was farther down on the list of concerns.

Nic hoped.

Serri had already angled a console screen around that displayed system status. “Three intruder traps.”

“I see them. Can you—”