Chapter 6
Chapter Six
In no time, Connor had the vehicle at full speed, the padded steering wheel almost throbbing in his hands. There was an almost luxurious quality to the black interior, which had a plush, leathery feel to it.
Typical Umbra.
Turquoise lights flickered along the width of the dashboard console as the system tracked the power the electric motor was sending to the humming driveshaft and everything that affected: heat, braking distance, and maneuverability. Go faster, and heat built up and braking distance increased, while maneuverability dropped.
At that moment, everything was tipping into the red, and he could feel it.
He sucked in a breath to calm himself and got a whiff of the former occupants—their colognes, perfumes, and faint body odors. The interior was stuffy and warm, and he imagined the alleyway grime soaking into the raw flesh of his feet.
There was a map glowing below the console, tracking his location as he sped toward the spiraling ramp that would take him up to Sang.
Lights flashed in the black above, and a long, gold air car flashed by overhead. It hovered above the road a half kilometer ahead.
Connor braked hard and jerked the wheel of the stolen car to the left, letting it drift up the street. The last of the momentum died a not even a meter shy of the air car.
He hopped out, then emptied the rail gun’s magazine into the motor.
As he approached the air car, the dented passenger door rose, revealing a dull, cream cloth interior. The material was stained and torn, and it smelled like a family of wild animals had made their home inside some years before.
A tall, wiry woman with a strong nose sat in the driver’s seat. She shook out her dark brown hair, which was cut in a short shag that tapered to a narrow strip just above her shoulder blades. Her shapely lips twisted in a sneer.
Everything about the moment was signature Selen Erbaykent, boss of Selen’s Devils. Connor’s boss. “Nice driving.”
He climbed in. “Nice parking.”
“Made a few friends, I see?”
“Umbra agents. Splinters.”
“Blades would’ve had gold trim on their cars.”
“Blades would have air cars.” He wrinkled his nose and glanced around the interior of the air car. “Nice ones.”
“Can’t afford nice right now, can we?”
Connor sagged against the door and studied the gloomy street. “I know.”
“So who was she?”
He turned. Of course Selen had been watching him. She had a pair of binoculars hanging off her hip. That was her job this time around: observe from a distance. But there was a note of irritation in her voice. “Someone I knew before Nyango. Shouldn’t we go?”
“Your old girl?”
“She was.”
The wiry woman shrugged. “A little short for you, isn’t she?”
“No.” Had he heard the patter of running feet? He squinted past the ruined Umbra car. “We need to go.”
“Tell me her name.”
“What?”
“We’ll launch when you tell mer Shorty’s name.”
“She’s not—”
Something whistled through the rear window, leaving behind a small hole and the softest fall of glass inside the air car.
Selen tilted her head. “Her name.”
“Those Splinters are shooting at us!”
“And we can get away from them easily. Tell me her name.”
“She was my girlfriend, Selen! Ten years ago, not yesterday!”
A metallic ping drew his attention then—a hole in the roof above. There must be another hole farther back, maybe in the trunk. How could Selen be so stubborn?
The tall woman rubbed long fingers across the steering wheel. “They must be getting closer.”
“Toshiko! Toshiko Asakura! Now, can we go?”
Selen chuckled, then she pulled back on the steering wheel and floored the accelerator. “Out of all the planets, she just so happened to be here, on Mara?”
“She’s good with computers. Apparently, she knows the underground.”
More impacts punched through glass and metal. The passenger’s side of the front windshield cracked, and Connor thought he might have felt the round pass close past his head. Even a lucky shot could kill.
None of that seemed to register with Selen, whose humor had transformed into a withering glare. “You never told me you had an old girl.”
“Does it matter? We broke it off.”
“She gave you a pretty intense kiss back there.”
“A goodbye kiss. She figures I’ll be dead before we get off this planet.”
Selen pursed her lips and leaned her head forward. “This was our best chance of finding a job after the last screw-up.”
“There were plenty of jobs back in Coil Sector.”
“Opportunities are drying up. Word’s getting out about you.”
And there it was—everything was his fault. Their last job had been going great, the mission moving along without a hitch. It would’ve been enough for everyone on the team to walk away with fifty thousand in gold, convertible to wings in Talon Sector or scales in Coil Sector.
Then the scientist they’d extracted from an orbital research station had died while Connor was on watch. She hadn’t been killed. In fact, no one could figure out how she’d died, but she had.
And that left the team out not just the money they should’ve made but all the money they’d spent on the extraction.
Connor squeezed his hands into fists. It had been his fault. Somehow.
Selen’s glare softened. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
“I have to be. I missed something. Someone got to Dr. Litvinenko. Maybe it was poison. Something.”
“There’s not a mercenary company that’s been around as long as mine that hasn’t run into money trouble. We’ll be okay.”
“This is different. This is because of me.”
“You made a mistake. All you can do is not let it happen again.”
They climbed through the murk, rising along the column of composites and metal that formed the spiral ramp. About five kilometers above the heights of Winter, Selen put the air car into hover and turned to Connor.
She narrowed her eyes. “Now, tell me your Toshiko found us some work.”