Heaven's Queen (15 page)

When her lips opened, I winced, bracing for her voice in my head, but nothing came. Maat’s mouth was moving, her expression frantic, but I couldn’t hear a thing. All I could do was stare as her lips made the same shape over and over. By the time I realized what word she was trying to say, it was almost too late.

Run
, Maat mouthed at me, her eyes terrified.
Run!

“Devi?” Rupert asked, pulling back. “What’s wrong?”

I grabbed his arm so hard my fingers hurt. “Run.”

The word was little more than air by the time I got it out, but Rupert didn’t make me repeat it, and he didn’t hesitate. He ran, grabbing my hand and dragging me after him as he darted into the main street, shoving people over to clear a path just as a man in a black suit appeared in the shop directly across from where we’d been hiding from the wind, his arm already shooting out to grab me.

The man’s fingers came so close I felt them brush against my coat. But fast as he was, he was too late. Rupert and I were already charging down the crowded street, running full tilt toward the bustling center of Kessel. I heard angry shouts followed by pained yelps as the man barreled out of the alley after us, but I didn’t dare look back. I kept my eyes on Rupert as he yanked us around a corner and down the ramp leading into the city’s underground.

The upper roads of Kessel were covered, giving the illusion of being closed in, but the underground was the real thing. Down below the surface where the old corp had dug in to keep their machinery from freezing, the now empty factory floors had been taken over by the new industry of Kessel. While the more legitimate businesses huddled together on the frozen surface, the smuggling and fencing and arms dealing that actually kept the planet’s economy ticking thrived in the comparative warm and sheltered comfort of the old ore refineries. This meant that unlike the upper roads, I’d actually been to this part of the city enough times to know where I was going.

When Rupert and I reached the bottom of the icy cement ramp, I let go of his hand and turned left. Rupert adjusted instantly, turning on a pin to follow my lead into the stadium-sized cavern that sheltered Kessel’s main underground market, a maze-like bazaar of tents and tables stacked with all the illicit delights money could buy. Banners advertising everything from sex to counterfeit armor to organ sales fluttered from the ceiling, their colors faded from the sunlight streaming in through the ground-level windows set thirty feet up on the walls.

If we’d had a normal crash team after us, I would have run through the merchant stands since no merc would be dumb enough to pull a gun in this place. But I didn’t need Maat or the man’s black suit to tell me our pursuers were Eyes, and they wouldn’t bother with guns. They’d take us down in the middle of a crowd just as fast as they would in an empty alley, which meant our only hope was to lose them. Fortunately, Port One’s underground was an excellent place to get lost.

My armor case was slowing me down, so I handed it to Rupert as we ran along the bazaar’s outer edge toward the huge tunnel that led to the Pipes, Kessel’s underground residential district. The Pipes were exactly what they sounded like, a huge network of pipes that brought up hot steam from below the planet’s crust to power the generators that had once run the factories and now ran the town. This steam meant the Pipes were also the warmest place on Kessel, and the entire population of the city had built their homes huddled around them like cats around a heater.

I could feel the heat coming over me like a blanket as we ran down the echoing cement tunnel. By the time we reached the Pipes themselves, I was sweating buckets under my heavy coat, but I didn’t dare stop to take it off as I dodged the line of people waiting for the elevator to the lower levels and ran instead for a worn metal ladder leading down.

Originally, this whole area had been a tank big enough to hold the small ocean of water needed to blast usable chemicals out of ore on a planetary scale. The steam pipes had run through the middle, heating the water on their way to the generators above. Now, all that water had been drained away and replaced with a honeycomb of ramshackle housing and repurposed shipping containers held together by chains, beams, and metal ramps stolen from the mines, creating a half-mile-long, hundred-foot-wide, cylindrical shantytown going straight down.

There was no way I could navigate the Pipes properly without my suit’s maps, so I just focused on getting as lost as I could, sliding down the ladder and hopping into the maze of corrugated metal alleys below. Even encumbered by my armor case and his bags, Rupert was right behind me, his eyes flicking around to take careful note of his surroundings as I led us down, down, down until we reached the very bottom.

The base of the old tank was black as pitch. Other than the faint orange glow of the low-energy lights someone had been kind enough to string along the edges and the occasional shaft of light that made it down from the floors above, there was nothing. Since this was where the pipes first left the ground, it was also hot as sin and so humid I could feel the air in my mouth, but worst of all was the smell. Garbage and other refuse from the floors above found its final home down here, and the stench was enough to curl my hair.

“What is this place?” Rupert said, covering his mouth.

“My old commander used to call it Money Town,” I said. “Nine times out of ten, if we were after someone on Kessel, this was where they were hiding. No better place for it, either.” I pointed at our feet. It was hard to tell in the dark, but the huge, grime-covered metal walkway under our feet was actually the now empty water pipe that had once filled the tank. “This pipe goes twenty miles to the sea, so you’ve got warmth, food up top, and a built-in bolt hole.”

I couldn’t see Rupert’s face very well in the dark, but I could hear the horror in his voice. “And you want to hide here?”

“Hell no, this place is disgusting,” I said, grabbing my armor case from him. “We’re just going to lie low for an hour while I scan the channels and try to figure out what the Eyes are doing.”

“Is that why you ran?” Rupert said, going tense. “You saw an Eye?”

“You didn’t?” I asked, hauling my case over to a spot where several smaller pipes running down from the floor above passed right next to our huge one, creating a sheltered place to change.

Rupert shook his head. “You said run, so I did.”

I couldn’t help smiling at his blind trust. The man really would follow me anywhere. “Well, he wasn’t wearing a name tag, but he was grabbing for me fast as crap and Maat was there, so it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.”

He scowled as I spoke. “If you saw her, then there’s a daughter on-planet already.”

“Why do you think I’m hustling?” I said, tearing off my coat and boots. I should have removed the rest as well, but it would have taken too long to peel off my heavy pants and thermal shirt, and I wasn’t going another second without my armor. “How many Eyes do you think we’re dealing with?”

Rupert caught my coat when I tossed it, saving it from hitting the hideous, grime-covered floor. He folded it over his arm without looking, his face grave as he considered my question. “At least four,” he said at last. “That’s all the teams that would be in range to respond to Kessel so quickly. There could be more, though I’m not sure how many on such short notice. In any case, they’ll have already shut down the starport for sure, which means we need to find another way off-world as soon as possible.”

“I know, I know,” I said, popping the locks on my armor case. “But I’m pretty sure we’re safe for now. Not many off-worlders know about this place. We can hole up here until—”

I cut off sharp, listening. I couldn’t even say what I’d heard, but my brain had suddenly gone on high alert. A second later, I heard it again, a faint vibration in the metal pipes behind me, almost like someone was climbing down.

I realized the truth too late. By the time I looked up, the symbiont had already landed on top of me, sliding off the filthy, dirt-covered pipes above us to land feetfirst on my shoulders. The impact sent me to the ground, knocking the breath from my lungs and banging my ribs hard against the metal pipe below. I didn’t even feel it. I was too busy trying to get away, rolling and kicking in an attempt to dislodge the symbiont’s weight from my back.

Fat lot of good it did. I couldn’t even budge the bastard. I also couldn’t see him, positioned as we were, which was why it never crossed my mind that the lead weight on my back wasn’t the man who’d made a grab for me in the alley until a cold, female voice spoke just above my head.

“Nice to see you alive, Charkov.”

I stopped struggling, gritting my teeth against the sudden flash of rage. I recognized that voice. It was the bitch from the bunker on Io5, the wiry, dark-haired one who’d helped Caldswell convince Rupert he was shooting me.

“Maria Natalia,” Rupert said calmly. “What are you doing?”

“Following orders,” Eye Natalia said, her voice scornful. “Something you seem to be having trouble with.”

“Get the hell off me!” I shouted, craning my head from side to side as I tried to find a way to glare at her. “Rupert! Kick her!”

“Be quiet, Morris.”

I went still. Rupert’s voice was cold and sharp as an iced knife. He wasn’t even looking at me anymore. He was watching the woman on my back, and his face was the killer’s cold mask I’d seen on the
Fool
’s bridge. The sight was enough to make me cringe, and I wasn’t alone. The woman on my back went perfectly still, holding her breath, and that was when I realized that this wasn’t just more of Rupert’s coldness. This was the face of Eye Charkov, the cold killer.

“You are interfering, Maria,” Rupert said, his voice soft as frost. “I didn’t keep her alive all this time just so you could damage her now. If you wanted to take her in, all you had to do was ask.”

As he spoke, the tiny part of me that was still waiting for Rupert to sell me out clenched up in a knot. Two days ago, that tension would have been enough to send me into a bitter rage, roaring about betrayal. Now, no rage came, and no one was more surprised by that than I was. But as I lay there, helpless, staring up at Rupert’s cold mask, I realized why.

The tiny voice of doubt, the one screaming that he’d just thrown me to the wolves again, was no longer the voice I believed. Instead, I heard his voice whispering in my ear that I’d given him back his life. I thought of how he’d followed me into Reaper’s arena, of the faith he’d showed me at every opportunity since he’d given me his gun and told me where to shoot back on Montblanc. Every one of those memories was a barrier against doubt, and even though my guns were almost in reach, my armor case a tantalizing half foot away, I stayed perfectly still, trusting Rupert like I’d never trusted anyone in my life as I forced myself to lie beneath my enemy’s boot and wait.

But while my crisis of trust over Rupert had resolved itself quickly, Eye Natalia seemed to be struggling. I felt her lean forward on my shoulder blades, like she was trying to study him. Then her weight shifted as she slipped a hand behind her, and I felt the unmistakable brush of a gun muzzle against the small of my back.

“If you were keeping her for us, why didn’t you call in?” Natalia said suspiciously, her grip tightening on the disrupter pistol I now knew she’d been hiding. “We had a report that you’d gone rogue and stolen a ship.”

“We had an issue with the woman’s ex-lover,” Rupert said, his voice cold and dry, calmly relaying facts. “She can’t be near anything that upsets her, so I had to remove her from the situation. I thought Commander Martin would appreciate me not killing a Home Guard captain, but if I’d known such a thing would be enough to cast doubt on me, I would have brought you his body.”

His disdain was chilling even through hot, humid air, and Natalia began to quiver. “Well, sir,” she said softly. “You have been acting erratically. After Io5—”

“I proved what I was willing to do on Io5,” Rupert said, casually hooking his thumbs through the belt loops of his cargo pants like none of this mattered to him. “I passed my test. Now get off my target before you undo all the work I’ve put in convincing her we’re not monsters, and we’ll go up together to call for a proper pickup. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to get out of this pit.”

That sounded good to me, but Natalia clearly wasn’t buying. “If you wanted a pickup, why did you run?”

“Because my target ran,” Rupert answered testily. “I didn’t know she was running from you. She has a lot of enemies on Kessel.”

“Then why did you take her here at all?” Natalia snapped.

Rupert’s eyes narrowed, and I could almost see the last of his patience evaporating. “I’ll explain later. Now, would you please get off our subject before she infects this entire planet?”

Please or no, the open threat was clear in Rupert’s voice, but Natalia
still
didn’t remove her knee from my back, and she hadn’t put her gun away. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir,” she said. “I have direct orders not to release the subject until she is secured, and, with all due respect, the probability that you have been compromised is too high to ignore.” She threw up her arm, pointing the disrupter pistol at Rupert’s head. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Despite the gun pointed directly between his eyes, Rupert didn’t panic or raise his hands. Instead, he sighed and shook his head, the perfect picture of the put-out officer dealing with an idiot subordinate who was messing up his operation. “It’s on your head, then,” he said. “Make the call.”

At that moment, my newfound trust began to waver. Natalia had shifted on top of me, using her free hand to pull her com out of the pocket of her black combat suit, but Rupert still wasn’t moving. He didn’t even look concerned, just bored and put out, and my heart began to crumble.

Oh god, I thought, I’d done it again. I’d been an idiot
again
. Betrayed again with no one but myself to blame. But just as my faith was teetering, Natalia glanced down at her com, and the moment her attention left him, Rupert moved.

One second he was casually standing a few feet down the pipe, the next he was nearly on top of me, his hand formed in a fist with the first two fingers covered in scales and folded over at the first joint, like he was punching with his knuckles. Natalia stiffened, and I braced for the disrupter pistol’s explosion, but it never came. Before she could squeeze the trigger, Rupert slammed his first two knuckles into her forehead, directly between and slightly above the place where her eyebrows met, exactly where I’d shot him on the
Fool
’s bridge so long ago.