Chapter 23
Every Quiet Girl Is One Smuggler Away from Violence
Lily
“The IMPERIUM tolerates smuggling rings, to a point. Small outfits can even serve a perverse utility, imposing a code of conduct on criminals who would otherwise drain enforcement resources. But once a ring grows into a significant actor, it becomes a target. At that point, it must either launder itself into tax-paying legitimacy or face the Intergalactic Legion’s wrath.
Cynics claim the IMPERIUM machine moves, if for nothing else, then for tax credits. ”
Politics, the IMPERIUM’s most-read news hub
She did not know how much time had passed when the door opened again and Horos appeared, carrying a basketful of gear in one hand and a plasma weapon in the other.
He kept the barrel trained on Lily as he moved quickly to the magnetic sphere that controlled her restraints, forcing her flat to the floor.
From where she lay, Lily couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but she felt it clearly: something cold and metallic slid around her throat and locked with a loud click.
It was not as smooth as the cuffs on her wrists and ankles, and one section blinked red.
As far as she could tell, this wasn’t something Horos had ordered or synthesized through Vitro. He’d cobbled it together himself.
Horos cleared his throat. Loudly. For far too long. When he finally spoke, his voice was a rasping whisper. If he had been human, Lily would have said he had smoked his life away on hand-rolled, unfiltered cigarettes.
“I’m taking your cuffs off,” he said. “Do not think you are escaping. I put an explosive collar on you. I can arm it anytime. And if my life signs drop, it detonates automatically. Do not even dream of taking it off, because surprise, it detonates then too.”
He fiddled with the control sphere. The cuffs released.
Lily slid her tiny weapon up into her sleeve, back into the wrist-strap hiding place, and got to her feet, facing him.
Horos looked terrible. Hollow-eyed, overstretched, like someone who had not slept in chrono-cycles and had survived on stimulants and spite.
Good.
Tired people made mistakes.
And when Horos made a mistake near her, the path to payback finally opened.
“Put this on and move,” Horos said. “Vitro’s buyers are here. If they see I’m alone, they might get the idiotic idea that it’s easier to overpower me than to pay. You will keep them in check. And remember, if anything happens to me, you’re done too, so you’d better do your job properly.”
He jabbed at the black cloth he had thrown onto the bed.
Lily said nothing as she pulled on the oversized, layered shroud.
It hung off her like an ink-dipped ghost. The fabric was rough, but sheer around her head so she could see through it, and she was sure she was unrecognizable.
Her hands slipped out through two narrow slits.
It stank, and she hated the thought that she was wearing something that felt like Horos’s own clothing.
“Come on. They’ll land in Hangar One. Here.” He tossed her a VoidBrace. “You can use it to communicate with me and access Vitro’s basic functions, but no outgoing signal. You have no chance of contacting the outside.”
Lily slid the console onto her forearm and followed him. The touch of it yanked her straight into an earlier life, when that familiar weight almost never left her wrist. During captivity she had felt nearly naked without it.
In the hangar, Horos ordered Lily up to a high vantage point and pressed a low-power plasma weapon into her hands. With his own, much stronger version, he went to the central panel, never taking his eyes off her.
Lily toyed with the idea of shooting Horos in the leg and testing whether his collar threat was real.
Then she forced herself into patience. Her moment would come.
Soon. It might even be better if the smugglers took over.
In the end, it did not matter. The only thing that mattered was that Horos suffered.
“All right,” Horos called. “Come in. I’m dropping the shields while you approach, but one suspicious move and I’ll blast you into scrap.”
Through her console, Lily watched the smugglers’ ship mate with Vitro. The hangar door rose in a smooth, elegant arc to admit them.
Ten heavily armed strangers marched in. The last two pushed antigrav cargo carts, one carrying a massive crate, the other an even larger golden sphere.
Horos’s voice was too weak to shout at them, so he used Vitro’s speakers.
“Stop there. Did you bring what I asked for?”
A squat figure stepped forward, green-yellow skinned, with four arms and four legs. Each hand held a plasma pistol. Its stalked eyes tracked everything, as if no motion could escape it.
“The credits are in the crate. Check if you want. Our ship’s security key is in there too. And as requested, two new identity documents for you and your partner.”
Horos gestured for the cart to be brought to him.
The smuggler pushing it was small, and Lily could not help thinking of a cockroach, not only in appearance but in the quick, skittering way it moved.
It darted to the center of the hangar, shoved the crate closer to Horos, then retreated back behind the others.
Horos opened the crate and hummed, satisfied.
“This will do.” His gaze slid to the golden sphere. “Before we begin, what is that?”
The roach-like creature had returned to stand beside the orb.
“Do not worry about it,” the green-yellow leader said. “Just a little insurance. So you don’t throw us into vacuum once you get what you want.”
Horos clearly did not like it, but he did not dare argue.
“As long as it stays away from me, it can stay.” He lifted his chin. “Now. One by one, come here. I’ll add you to the system like we agreed, but only as guests. Once I’m safely on the other ship with my partner, I’ll switch you all to administrator access at the same time.”
The smuggler boss sent one of his men forward with a low growl.
The newcomer was tall, with skin like rock, golem-like. Lily found herself fantasizing about how neatly those massive fists could flatten Horos. As he approached, Horos seemed to have the same thought. He shot Lily a warning look and gestured for her to keep the plasma weapon trained on the golem.
Lily lifted the gun and aimed, just enough to satisfy him, and Horos turned to work at Vitro’s control panel.
Because Vitro was a valuable, rare cruiser, registration ran through multiple security steps and time locks.
Most guests sent biometrics ahead of docking to avoid delays, but Horos was not taking even that risk with smugglers.
When he finally managed to scan the giant’s data and the ship accepted it, both sides visibly relaxed.
Then the rest followed, one by one. Horos processed only a single registration at a time, and the procedure dragged on painfully.
Lily watched every figure in the hangar, cataloguing weaknesses, when Vitro’s alert sounded on her wrist, on Horos’s, and on the consoles of the three smugglers already registered.
“Cradle take it,” Horos rasped. “Intruders in Cargo Bay Two!”
Horos and the green-yellow boss stared at each other, frozen, both assuming the other had sprung a trap. But unlike Horos, the smuggler commander radiated calm, as if he had dealt with a hundred situations like this. Horos shook like a leaf.
“Saxum,” the leader said. “Go check.”
The golem moved at once, as if the order was law.
“Wait,” Horos snapped, trying to sound commanding and failing. “I’m not letting you wander alone while we’re not finished. Lily, go with him.”
Lily only shrugged and climbed down from her perch. The golem waited while she approached at her unhurried pace, then they set off side by side toward the cargo bay.
The hangar door slid shut behind her, and Horos’s voice crackled in her ear through the comm bead.
“Don’t forget, Lily, my life is your life. Don’t let those trash pull any tricks.”
“Even if I did,” Lily said, “that lovely gift around my neck would remind me.”
Horos grunted. He did not have the luxury of arguing. As he cut the line, Lily caught the smugglers shouting angrily at him, probably offended by being called trash.
The more he has to focus on them, the better.
As they neared Cargo Bay Two, Lily yanked a ballistic vest from the security wall locker, the same one Khar had shoved onto her the first time they lived through an attack on Vitro together. She gave a bitter little smile at the irony of it.
The golem watched in silence as she stepped to the display beside the cargo bay entrance and scanned the signals.
Lily frowned when she realized what she was seeing.
“Horos. Thermal reads vukri. What do you want us to do? Neutralize them?”
A beat of silence, then obvious shouting, and the smuggler boss’s harsh roar blasted through Horos’s console.
“No, invite them to dinner. Of course you kill them, and fast. I’m paying a fortune for this metal, and vukri chew through everything. Move!”
Saxum slapped the door control, but Lily raised the plasma weapon and stopped him before he could rush in.
“Not so eager. You take cover behind the first row of lockers. I’ll cover you from the back.”
The golem grunted agreement as if it made no difference either way and charged in.
The vukri stared at the massive rushing shape for one startled moment, then attacked.
Lily sprinted along the wall into cover, with no intention of getting pulled into the melee. She headed straight for the tool section and skidded to a stop beside a storage shelf hard enough that her boots slid on the deck.
With the locker rows between her and the fight, she was certain she had a minute or two before anything found her, so she got to work.