The Jack's Story (BRIGAND Book 2) (6 page)

We docked in the morning, local time, not like morning meant much in the Belt. The main dome of Mundus is huge, so big it has a real atmosphere, with weather. Unfortunately, the trade guilds that run the place are big on saving energy (for themselves mostly), so Mundus is perpetually cold. Like frosty breath and ice on the walls cold. Kill you in an hour cold.

I wanted to leave Trig on the ship, but the boat would have to stay drives-hot to keep life support up and I didn’t want to spend the fuel. I told her to get ready and meet me in the lock. A minute later she showed up wearing the same tight black outfit, with that little skirt, that I’d seen her in for the last week, at which point I realized what a dumbshit I’d been. It wasn’t like she’d brought luggage with her.

"You’ll freeze in about thirty minutes, dressed like that." I popped open the airlock’s storage bin.

She threw me a little shrug and flipped up the skirt up over her head like a shawl.

"Yeah. That’s not gonna help."

I grabbed a couple of unmarked military parkas from the bin and thrust one her way. She shrugged out of the wrap and draped the heavy coat over her shoulders.

"That’s ballistic cloth over some very expensive nanite environment control layers. It’ll keep you warm without making you sweat. Stops most small arms too."

I explained the temperatures and the need for her to stay covered. What I didn’t say was that I also wanted to camouflage that body of hers. Mundus was a hardassed place and there were plenty of hardassed Belters who likely hadn’t seen a woman at all for a very long time, much less one who looked like Trig. I didn’t need a riot on my hands.

"I can barely move in this thing" She groused as I pulled the parka’s hood up over her glossy hair, burying her face in shadow. But now she might pass for just another transient, bundled against the cold. That made me feel a little better.

Trig grumbled that her clothes were fine. That she could handle the cold. Something about conscious metabolic regulation. I had no doubt she could, but then that wasn’t really the point.

I tugged her hood down over her forehead. "You still stand out. Your eyes. You still look too, I don’t know... Wraith."

With that she closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them, the irises appeared duller, normal almost.

"How’d you do that?"

She stepped out of the ship into the docking corridor. I followed close behind her.

"Just an adjustment."

Simple enough, but it was a reminder of what she was, what she could do. Given how little time had elapsed between my ‘retirement’ and her appearance, it didn’t seem all that likely Trig had been sent to find me. And, if she had, there’d been plenty of opportunity for her to just take me out. But then a Wraith would make a pretty formidable bounty hunter. How much would the Confed pay to get me back alive? That thought made me feel a little sick.

I wanted to trust her, even though that could be a mistake. If it was, I’d end badly, in blood and pain. But then again that had been my fate for a very long time. Didn’t matter much how I came to it. I shook off the thought and led the way. She had to jog to catch up with me.

She fell in step beside me and her shoulder brushed my bicep. I wondered what would happen if I did have to fight her. Would I be able to crush that slender throat? Smash that delicate nose? Gouge those hypnotic eyes?

I was doomed.

As I mused, the ship’s servbot whizzed past our heads.

Trig ducked and watched it fly past. "Bot’s coming?"

"Yeah." I followed the little machine into a waiting shuttle, one of a fleet of self – driving electric vans that crews use to get from the docks into Mundus proper.

"Why do we need a person? Why can’t we just get another bot? That seems... less complicated."

It probably would be. Fewer people, fewer entanglements, fewer mouths to feed, fewer histories like mine – and Trig’s. But bots aren’t very adaptable. You buy them. They do what they do and that’s pretty much it. People might be more trouble, but they were a hell of a lot more flexible.

"You want to spend your hard earned cads on a bot?" I knew she was carrying that scrip tucked safely into the small of her back. She would never leave so much money on an unmonitored ship. Me either. Mine was shoved in my boots.

Trig raised an eyebrow. "Split the cost?" It was warmer in the shuttle and she pushed back her hood..

"Nope. You want it, you buy it."

She sighed, "Fine. But you have to help me pick it out."

"That I can do. This is the Belt. The place is crawling with bots."

She looked at me quizzically.

"Air and water are expensive out here. There’s a lot that bots can do cheaper and safer. So, even in the big habs like Mundus, the bot to human ratio is ten times what you’d find anywhere else in the System."

The shuttle stopped and we emerged into a cavernous space that seemed to be a study in monochrome. Low steel-colored buildings stepped into the distance beneath a massive transparent dome. The black sky was alive with bright, hard points of light that crawled slowly overhead as Ceres rotated. The sun was rising, a small yellow-white disk that threw weak shadows in the freezing atmosphere.

Trig seemed to be developing an attachment to our bot. The stupid little bucket whizzed around her hooded head as we walked through the frigid air into the heart of the city. I’d been on Ceres before and I knew a guy. Trand’s shop was a bit of a hike, but he didn’t like to be too close to the ports. I’d met him a while back when I was in Mundus for a priv. There were things I knew he wanted. Things that were hard to get in the Belt. Things I had. He’d pay well and maybe we’d buy a new bot to tend to the boat. Then we could be off this frozen-ass rock.

Easy.

The gravity field felt heavy, but that was because it was a full gee. I kept the ship at .75 to save power. I could see Trig was surprised by the cold. The ambient temperature was probably around minus 20. You could feel it seeping into your feet, your legs. Just walking created a wind chill. With the parkas, the cold was relentless. Without them, we wouldn’t have lasted the day.

Trig’s breath clouded in front of her and, even with her hood up, her cheeks were slightly flushed. I bit down on the urge to tug her hood closer around her. What the fuck? A couple of days with this girl and suddenly I was all chivalrous? Like that made any kind of sense at all.

I hunched into my own coat and led the way.

Trand’s shop was way too far for my taste. Man, there was nothing about this rock I didn’t hate. But Trand was well connected and, unlike most Belters, he wasn’t stingy. We’d have what we needed to sustain us for a long while. So I didn’t think too hard about the deal we’d make and focused on navigating the endless maze of identical fused iron-silicate buildings. Funny. I hadn’t thought much about it before, but the upside of the cold was the emptiness of the streets. We only saw a few people about, all of them seemingly intent on getting to their destinations as quickly as they could. After the crush of Marajo, it felt strange, almost eerie.

We found the place and our bot zipped up to the door, tapping the entry panel with one of its extensibles. The door slid open, washing us in light and heat. A voice called from within, "Get inside before you let the chill in!"

I grabbed Trig’s arm and hauled her through the doorway as the bot circled around behind her. The door thumped shut as soon as we crossed the threshold, sealing out the brutal cold.

Inside, buzzes and clicks filled the air as a menagerie of small bots whirled through the air, tending a jumble of fabricators, decomposers and various bits of machinery that meant absolutely nothing to me. Bots and pieces of bots were scattered on workbenches, their vitals spilling from disassembled bellies. Little multi-legged machines seemed to scurry on every surface. Their zeal was obvious, their purpose utterly incomprehensible.

In the center of the workshop was a particle furnace where scrap materials were ripped down to their component atoms to be reassembled into whatever was required. The business end of the thing was carefully shielded, to avoid vaporizing everything in a hundred meters, but it still generated waste-heat like crazy. Even with its radiator fins coupled to thermal conduits that drew energy back into storage banks, the thing threw off IR like a flamer. Why the hell did Trand want the door
closed
?

It must have been well over 35, hotter near the furnace. Our self-regulating parkas did their best, but they were made for keeping heat in. Trig and I both stripped off our coats and I could feel sweat forming under my arms.

Belters are mostly small in stature, with big heads and spindly limbs. Their dependence on hardware for survival has made them more accepting of body modification than most. It’s not unusual for a Belter to be half machine. The figure in front of us was no exception. He was crouched atop a tall stool, at one of the workbenches near the furnace, sticking a couple of gleaming pieces of hardware together into what might be an appendage. He looked up for a second and stared right at me, but it took several seconds before he seemed to register my presence, as if he wasn’t so much looking at me as near me. Then his attention shifted to Trig and his eyes widened slightly before he abruptly dropped his head and turned back to whatever it was he was tinkering with. He wasn’t looking at us, but he was definitely watching.

After a moment, he reached down under the workbench and my reflexes took hold, guiding my hand automatically to the concealed sidearm I wasn’t supposed to be carrying in the small of my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trig stepping smoothly to her right, putting the hulk of some decommissioned workbot between her and the Belter. A palm-sized flechette pistol appeared, as if by magic, in her hand. Where the hell had she been hiding
that
in her skin tight outfit? The Belter glanced at us, clipped the microadjuster he’d retrieved into one of his extensibles, and went back to work.

"This looks like where bots come to die." I muttered as Trig put her weapon away.

A loud voice boomed out from the corner. "Not to die. Reborn!" Trand stepped over a stack of pitted exo panels and strode forward to greet us. He was a caricature. His left eye, an implant that he didn’t bother to camouflage, flicked over us, first me then Trig. He scanned the length of her with predatory interest. At first, I thought it was just creepy Belter lechery. But there was something more calculating in his appraisal. Something that put me on edge. Suddenly, I wanted us out of there as soon as possible.

"Trand!" I reached out and we clasped each other’s forearms, which caused our wrist ports to touch. The handshake of Confed Marines. "
Mortem, Jack
," I intoned. "Been a while."

"
Fear me, bitch.
" he grinned out the ritual response. "Fuckin’-A. Been way too long."

Trand clasped my shoulder with his left hand while we shook. It was the gesture of a comrade, but I felt the subtle tingle of a neutralizer and instantly registered that my body had just been scanned for weapons. Newts used a short-range quantum effect that could shut down anything more sophisticated than a pointy stick. We'd just been disarmed.

Uh oh...

"Who’s the pretty slitty?"

Shit. He wanted Trig.

I tried to sound dismissive. "Just some entertainment I picked up in the Inner." I winked at Trand as I snaked my right arm around Trig’s waist. I could feel her body tense and hoped she’d get the gambit and follow my lead. If Trand was up to something he might know what she was. He might be prepared. Maybe even with an energy thief on tap.

Energy thieves were something relatively new. The technique was based on technologies the Confed had lifted from the Belt and blended with something they’d learned from the Irezi. I had no idea how it worked, but in the Technicians we’d had a briefing on a project called Crossover.

Ninety-six percent of the energy in the universe is out of reach. Or at least it used to be. But there were things being learned, methods developed. Wraiths were part of that. Now, so were energy thieves. An energy thief could block a Wraith’s ability to slip into the spacetime pockets some of them used to move in impossible ways. Without the pockets, their most effective means of escape was closed to them. They wouldn’t be helpless, but they’d certainly be hampered.

I took another look around the workshop. With that furnace and the amount of gear he had here, he was using a tremendous amount of power. Which made me wonder where all that energy was coming from. The guilds were notoriously stingy when it came to resources, so how was Trand paying for all this? Unless...

Trand had been a friend to the Confed. I’d figured him for an independent, but Crossover depended on Belter tech and Mundus was the only free trade zone in the Belt.

Which meant I’d just stepped us on the mother of all land mines.

I slid my hand possessively down Trig’s hip where Trand wouldn’t be able to see it, tapping a quick sequence onto her buttock. Standard prisoner tap-code. The one we were all taught in SERE. Using my index finger, I spelled out ‘DANGER’.

I could feel her body start to shift as my hand clasped her ass – and then she froze. Message received. I held what I hoped was an easy smile and pulled her closer. Trig exhaled silently and leaned into me, placing a possessive hand on my abdomen. "Yeah, just hanging with Roy as long as he’s not too boring."

Trand smiled too. A shark’s smile.

I tried simple deflection. "So, hey, we need a bot. Ship maintenance. Nothing fancy. Figured you might cut an old buddy a deal. You selling?"

The Belter stood, moving slowly around his workbench. I couldn’t tell if he was just getting a better vantage point on his project or he had something else in mind. I noticed some of the little insect-looking bots clustering, their legs clicking together. Belters have lots of ways of communicating with bots. It felt like something was getting ready to happen.

Probably nothing good.

"Not today... old buddy." Trand grinned his shark grin and made a beckoning motion. The Belter scurried to his side, with a swarm of little bots at his heel.