Men crumpling like cans to powerHammers.
Ozone and burning flesh as the Gold skins my team alive.
My hands shake harder.
The ship is upside down and black inside. It looks like a party gone wild, all the revelers having drunk themselves to insentience right where they stood. Bodies, still buckled in their crash webbing, hang upside down in chairs from a ceiling that was once the floor. Others are sprawled atop each other in a living carpet with eyes that shine like fountain coins up at me. We pick our way through the arms of servants and leather-faced killers in tuxedos. The anacene-17 has made the muscles in their bodies, including their eyelids, unresponsive. Only their lungs and hearts still work, allowing them breaths so shallow they look dead.
There’s no movement.
My heart slams in my chest. We push for the forward passenger compartment in search of the prizes. As Dano bounces around the ship with a gymnast’s ease, Volga and I climb over the body of a titanic Gold with a red beard and almost step on a fox the size of a large child. It lurches up at us, snarling. I shout in surprise and kick it as it lunges. It flies down the aisle and onto Dano’s leg as he hangs with one hand from one of the upside-down passenger headrests. He screams and falls down.
“Get off me. Get it off!”
He flails, falling to his back, and points his gun at the animal’s skull, ready to blow its head off. Volga pushes the weapon aside and pries the fox’s jaw open to free Dano’s leg. “I’m gonna kill it!” Volga ignores him and grabs the flailing fox by the scruff of its red coat and locks it in the cockpit. We hear it slamming against the door as I haul Dano up.
“What the hell was that?” Dano shouts into his com. Blood dribbles down his leg.
“Shut up. Work.”
Amidst a thick human shield of bodyguards and Golds, we find the prize.
“He’s here,” Dano says triumphantly as he limps forward. “The little shit is bloodywell here!”
He says it like he doubted it. He’s not the only one. The intelligence was too good. The plan too big. The stakes too high. The players far too nasty. Yet it’s all slick and clean. Even I smile when I see the prize.
The boy hangs suspended upside down, paralyzed and wrapped to his seat in crash webbing. Blood leaks into his hairline from a long gash on his forehead. He’s smaller than I expected, no giant like his father, but still at ten he’s almost Dano’s size. He’s dressed in a tuxedo with a gold lion clasp at his neck instead of a tie. His eyes stare at us in terror. Limping and muttering curses to himself, Dano roughly cuts the clasp off, pockets it for a trophy, and then starts cutting the crash webbing as Volga keeps her gun on the paralyzed bodyguards. We pull the boy from the seat. Dano hoists him over his shoulder and carries him out of the ship as Volga and I find the secondary prize three seats up. The slender Gold girl has a hatchet face and deep-set, angry eyes. Unlike the boy, she shows no fear, just absolute, unmitigated hatred. She’s promising me a slow death with that look as I cut her free of her crash webbing and cut the bleeding sun brooch from her jacket. I can’t resist patting her on the head. Volga puts her over a shoulder and departs the ship.
I stand alone in the dark vessel, listening to the thunder of their escorts against the blast door. Littered around me are the powerful and mighty who thought themselves untouchable. Thought themselves gods. A dark, unexpected thrill shoots through me as I realize I’ve humbled the lot of them.
I step atop the giant who the fox was protecting. The massive man has big iron on his hip. A razor just like Aja’s. My boots smudge dirt and biker blood into his tuxedo. A Telemanus. I recognize him now. I turn to regard the cluttered cabin, wishing they could see my face and know that a lowly Gray has driven them to their knees.
“Reap what you sow,” I say in a thick Red Martian accent. “Give my regards to your masters, my goodmen.”
With a deep and courtly bow, paying all homage to Gold manners, I hop off the Telemanus and dip my gloved hand in a pool of blood gathered around the head of a wounded bodyguard. I press the hand into the wall, leaving a blood-red handprint.
Blame placed, I walk toward the passenger compartment.
Time for the part I’ve been dreading.
I find Lyria lying amongst three other servants who had the misfortune of being unbuckled from their crash webbing. One has a broken neck. Lyria stares up at me in the darkness. To her I’ll be a masked shadow, unrecognizable, with a glint of metal in hand. But I feel as if she and she alone can see through the mask. She’ll know that Philippe did this to her. And she’ll tell them. I can’t have them piecing it all together. My life will be over.
Make it clean.
I point the Omnivore at her head.
My hand shakes. Sweat trickles into my eyes inside the humid helmet. She looks up at me blankly. Even in the darkness, she can see the gun. She accepts it. There’s no wild fear in her eyes, just sadness. Resignation. Pull the trigger. Pull it, you son of a bitch.
What is wrong with me? I’ve killed men in cold blood before. I was all professional when I explained the plan to the others. It needs to be done.
“I’ll wrap it up nice and neat,” I said.
You can’t pull a testimony from a corpse.
Pull the trigger.
It will be quick. She’ll feel nothing. I told myself I’d do it without the zoladone. That I’d sack up. I’d own this.
I close my eyes and see her little smile to herself back in that restaurant as she ordered that last flight of oysters. It was like seeing a child laugh at an adult’s joke. So proud to feel accepted, but still self-conscious, wondering if their ignorance will be found out.
Why did she have to smile like that?
Like him.
Fuck it.
I pull the trigger.
Nothing happens. I look down at my gun. The safety is still on. I almost throw up. I’m shaking, backing away from her, my stomach all tied up in knots, disgusted with myself. Idiot. Shoot her. Shoot her.
I can’t. Not twice. I holster the Omnivore and turn to leave.
I’m halfway out the door when I stop. I’m a bastard to leave her here alive. It’s worse than shooting her. The Lionheart will peel Lyria apart. They’ll think she’s a traitor.
What are you doing, Eph?
What are you doing?
I watch myself from a distance as I rush back toward her. She’s light as child. I carry her out of the ship and join my friends at the bottom of the ramp, where our junker hovercar waits. Dano sits on the hood with a pistol in hand.
“What the hell is that?” he says. I ignore him. He blocks my way. “This isn’t part of the plan.”
“Shut up and get in the car.”
“The hell’s your damage, you old flit? Lose your stones?” Dano reaches for his pistol. “I’ll do it for you. Wait in the car like a good little—”