Chapter 4
Gezi Wutala lifted the hem of her cloak as she carefully picked her way through the debris to the center of the narrow, thick-walled building. She tracked the path the accelerant had left. Sodding amateurs.
But good news for her, because it meant that under the soot and slagged fixtures, the bones of the building were sound. The burned caustic chemical stench was strong enough to get past her nasal filters, but a new fireproof interior coating would cure that problem.
She nudged aside a loose block of melted glass with her booted foot. “Any trouble with the ownership registry?”
“No,” said Khenzan as he trailed close behind her. “Usual fee, usual tip, no questions.” Her deputy chief’s stunning intersex beauty distracted people into thinking he was an attention-addicted, dimwitted joytoy. Maleness was his latest identity experiment.
“Good.” Despite her carefully nurtured reputation for enjoying a fight, she preferred things to run smoothly.
Five people stood near the door. The two enforcers watched for trouble. Gezi was telepath-immune, but her enforcer-shielders could bottle up any asshole minders with other talents who wanted to start something.
She turned to her two new prospective employees. “How soon can we be up and running?”
The tall laboratory manager shrugged. “Assuming nothing exotic, we can start production in three weeks, give or take.” He waved toward the mess. “Two days for demolition and infrastructure tie-in, a ten-day to get supplies and the equipment installed and calibrated, and a week of test runs.”
The short chemist crossed her arms. “That’s if you have production-ready formulas. If we have to refine them, that’s a longer path.” Her clear privacy mask gave her face the look of a crystalline doll.
Gezi flicked a look at Khenzan, who twitched one eye twice. She turned to the pair. “It’s an Iaslogirepan Salidyo XM3 reverse.”
A disgruntled expression settled on the tall lab manager’s face. “Better add a ten-day to the ramp-up. You’ll need supernova security. Kensabanakan Pharma is ruthless. They’ll hunt you down and send mercs to frag the lab. Especially for a hot new minder drug they just sold to the CPS.”
The short chemist smiled for the first time. “He’s right, but if your formula is legit and we skim the market before K-Pharm’s mercs or the CPS auditors find us, we’ll make a flux-load of profit.”
Gezi smiled back, happy to have confirmed the chemist’s prime motivator. “That’s the idea.”
Gezi hung her bulky gray rain cloak on the hook by the office’s main door and toed on the solardry. Pain in the ass to wear, but the cloak’s built-in tech suppressors and distortion hood had warded off trouble more than once.
Khenzan followed her in and shed his similar cloak. “I hate this thing. Too heavy.”
She laughed. “You mean it’s too concealing.”
He stroked his hands down his small breasts to his gently rounded stomach that accentuated his flared hips.
“I paid a lot for this gender-plus makeover. Something for everyone. People deserve to see it.” He frowned at the damp, muddy hems of his pant legs.
“I still don’t know why we had to go out in the rain to another filthy, gutted warehouse full of dead rats and roaches. We already vetted the candidates.”
She wouldn’t have tolerated the implied criticism from anyone else in her crew, but she and Khenzan had come up together decades ago from the same joyhouse.
She loved him like the sibling she should have had, not the older brother who’d sold her to a sodding twist house when she was six.
“New lines of business demand hands-on attention.”
The first lab was doing surprisingly well.
When the first flush of leaked Minder Corps veteran health data hit the nets a couple of seasons ago, she’d been struck by the high percentage of minders still using the drugs long after they left the CPS.
It made sense that the pharmas made them addictive; that was just smart business practice.
But she’d discovered a lucrative market in selling antidotes to veterans — and, surprisingly, active-duty Minder Corps — who wanted off the enhancers.
They’d pay five to ten times the street value of the minder drugs themselves.
She’d chosen a reverse of an older minder drug with relatively low sales volume so her crew could learn by splashing in the shallows before swimming with the sharks.
Ordinarily, she’d have ramped up slowly, but the new reverse formula had fallen into her lap in lieu of payment of a heavy debt. Besides, the local economy was sinking like a weighted corpse in the Shoruz swamp, despite the barrage of “glitter days ahead” ratshit the city government kept spinning.
“Hands-on attention?” Khenzan’s mouth and eyebrow quirked sardonically. “Like you did with the military surplus business?” He kicked off his boots onto the solardry and stripped off the rest of his clothes. The near-transparent iridescent kaftan he pulled on showed off his perfectly sculpted shape.
“That was just letting off steam. Lost four good crew to one lethal minder, plus the chief shithead threw me out of a second-floor window.” She grinned. “Besides, who wouldn’t want to shoot off a hellrail in Terro District?”
It had been exciting, but the profit margin was too low and the military too diligent about recovering their property. She did reserve one or two toys for herself before she offloaded the rest.
A smart-ass grin lit Khenzan’s face. “We should apply for an urban renewal license from the city planners.” He snapped his fingers.
“Speaking of the city, before I forget, we shouldn’t use Quint Core again for the build-out.
I got it from the city clerk that they’re paying twice the usual tips to inspectors. ”
Khenzan’s circumspect phrasing amused her.
He used his sneaky telepathy talent without compunction, as he’d done with the lab manager and chemist. He’d undoubtedly browsed through the clerk’s mind while paying the fees in person.
Offering extra tips — bribes — meant Quint Core was using shoddy materials or worse.
The city’s economy was in decline, but the local construction economy had bottomed out like a black hole.
She’d had the foresight to diversify her crew’s lines of business away from construction security a few years ago, so they were weathering the downturn better than some. But none of her crew would be buying paradise-planet vacation estates anytime soon.
Before she made it halfway to her custom-printed glass desk, the office door chimed. The security monitor showed Tycall, one of her muscle-modded enforcers, teeth bared in anger.
Khenzan confirmed Tycall’s identity, then waved the door open.
Tycall entered, dragging a skinny, bloodied, silver-haired man behind her by a power whip around his chest. Tycall slid him forward on the smooth floor, then put her cleated boot on his shoulder.
“Sewer slime been multi-cribbing with the Daringos and the Ridrats. Pro’ly others.
” Tycall, a mid-level shielder and a ramper, favored the popular feline look, with golden skin and a tawny lion’s mane on her head and wide shoulders.
Her pointed predator teeth gave her speech a distinct whistling accompaniment.
The man on the floor squirmed. “Lies! It was her! She set me up!” His mottled purple skin suggested a botched makeover or an exotic chems habit.
Gezi caught Khenzan’s brief eye twitch, then gave Tycall and the squirming man a gleeful grin. “Bohat’s blue balls, I love it when they squeal.”
Her first independent business had been delivering pain to people who liked it, such as the unlamented late chief of her present crew. She’d broadened her horizons since then, but kept the skills in her repertoire for sentimental reasons.
Tycall rocked her weight onto the man’s shoulder until he cried out.
“Slime skimmin’ too. Thinks I don’t ken he collected our delivery money from the customer, resold the package to the Ridrats for top bounty, then sold the Daringos the coords so they could steal and resell the package to our customer.
” She leaned in and sneered at him. “Thinks he’s clever. ”
Khenzan looked like he’d just swallowed putrid pond sludge. “He chems Canals and Gatesea street kids to sell to twists at the spaceport.”
The man thrashed violently. “Subbin’ minder! Get outta my head!”
Tycall triggered the power whip, making the man’s body jitter like a puppet. “Seal it!”
The odor of sour urine permeated the room.
Gezi blew out a long, calming breath. In her younger days, she’d have killed him herself and left a bloody, stinking mess on her beautiful synth-sapphire floor. “Recover the funds, make sure he doesn’t have any merch waiting for a buyer, flatline his memory, and sell him for bio parts.”
They’d probably have to issue refunds and pay off the Ridrats, otherwise known as the Ridderth police, but they could at least make a profit on the slime. Blackmarket cloners were always interested in untraceable DNA sources.
“It was Tycall’s orders!” wailed the man.
Tycall roared and raked his chest with the curved claws she wore on her knuckles. Blood welled and soaked his tunic. The man squealed loud and long as Tycall dragged him out of the room.
Gezi let the smile drop from her face with a sigh. “See who the package was, and make sure we priced the hostile pickup correctly. If we’re handling dangerous targets with beaucoup enemies, we deserve higher compensation.”
Khenzan tapped the earwire he always wore and subvocalized, then listened for several moments.
“Package was an illusionist, Minder Corps veteran, ex-Minder Corps contractor, did kill jobs on the side. Nearly made it off planet. Customer was one of Hujuru’s CPS cutout corps, for the usual rate.
They forgot to mention the package was also a teke.
Extra stunner shots took care of the problem. ”
“Very well,” said Gezi. “Refund the delivery fee to the customer, less twenty percent for withholding safety intel. Split that between Tycall and the pickup team as a bonus. Contribute to the Ridrats’ sex-toy fund or something so we stay off their undesirables list. Ask Daringo politely to pay an inconvenience fee, or make them wish they’d never dreamed of dusting our starlane. ”
Khenzan subvocalized her instructions.
Some crews had trouble working with the CPS, but Gezi had found the Covert Ops chief Hujuru to be a fair-dealing customer. Hujuru undoubtedly suspected they’d traced all her cover corporations back to her, but appearances had to be maintained.
As far as Gezi was concerned, the CPS’s funds were as good as anyone else’s. Paradise vacation villas didn’t come cheap.