Thompson shook it off, changing the subject. “I heard a rumor,” she said in a low voice. She must have held her tongue until she felt they were out of earshot of anyone important. “About where they took the prisoners.”
“Heard from who?”
“It’s a rumor, Dava. There is no who.”
“Then what?” She tried to keep her voice low, but it wanted to leap out of her chest. She clutched the handholds tighter as they drifted in the low gravity. “Where?”
“The Pollies have that new lockup. The zero-G place. In the outer belt.”
She took this in. It made sense, except for the fact that there weren’t Pollies on the ModPol transport, they were all Fenders. Military, not police. “Must be the Fenders didn’t want to deal with the prisoners.”
“Or they had a deal, made a trade or something.”
“Aren’t they all ModPol?”
Thompson laughed. “Yeah, but they’re like factions, you know?”
Dava couldn’t draw those boundaries in her mind, couldn’t fathom what the cops and the soldiers would trade for. “This rumor – it’s making its way around the base?”
“Of course.”
“Anyone asking why we’re not hitting the prison?”
They stopped, and Dava realized they’d reached the hatch of Thompson’s chamber. “Of course,” she said again. “But RJ is saying they might be expecting that.”
“RJ,” Dava muttered. He was probably right about that. Or he was right in the words he was feeding to the grunts. Spinning the rumors to tell the story his way. Was he capable of that level of manipulation? He’d fooled Moses.
She could kill him. He was probably well guarded and plenty paranoid at this point, but she was the best. She could find a way.
It was strange to admit, but she’d never killed without being on the job. She’d never taken it on her own volition to assassinate. Although Basil Roy might count. No one had ordered to spill his blood.
What would Moses want her to do? She was so certain of Jansen’s deceit. She didn’t need hard evidence. She didn’t need a confession from the late Basil Roy. She just knew it. If Moses knew something as strongly as she did, would he order the hit?
He would weigh it out. He would lay all the cards on the table, flip them over into proper piles, see all the players, the moves, the outcomes. She couldn’t see any of that. She couldn’t see the consequences. She never had to before, but now that she had the option to take things into her own hands, she was stuck. How was she supposed to predict the consequences of assassinating the underboss of Space Waste?
Every one of those empty faces she’d passed drifting through the empty base. They burned her. They fled, those that lived, those that were uncaptured – they were all guilty of leaving the rest behind. But in the end, Dava had fled as well. Those faces, she hated them for being so stupid, for being used, but then Dava had been used as well. Those faces were mirrors. Reflecting what she hated about herself.
“Who can we get to go with us?” Dava said, barely in control of the words as they came out.
“Go where?”
“I don’t know yet.” She just knew she needed a crew. That was the first step. Mutiny against Jansen wasn’t going to pay off, and she had no idea what might happen if she managed to kill him. Who was loyal to him? It was a sure bet the newly arrived Misters were. No, before she could do anything, she needed to find out who could stand with her. “It doesn’t matter where we’re going or what we’re doing. Who can we trust to join us?”
“How many do we need?”
Dava bit her lip. “A small crew. They have to be solid. If you’re not sure, they don’t make the cut. I only want ringers.”
Thompson nodded and pulled open her hatch. “Give me a couple of hours. I’ll send you a message and we’ll meet.”
*
By the time they gathered together in the dark shadows behind the tanks in the recycling pod, the seed in Dava’s mind had grown into a full-blown plan. She looked around at her posse.
“Alright, Tommy. Who are these piece-of-shit bastards?”
Thompson-Gun’s face twisted into a snarling smile. She slapped a lean, muscular woman on the arm and nodded. “This here’s Seven-Pack. Close-combat specialist. She and I used to run under Professor One-Shot.” She frowned. “Until Poligart.”
Dava had heard the story about Poligart, though she hadn’t paid much attention. The one habitable moon of Sirius-7 and location of a small but strong colony. The incident was one of the first encounters with some Misters. A small crew of Wasters, lead by One-Shot, got into some kind of shootout. They’d been outnumbered and came out on top, but One-Shot didn’t make it. “Yeah, Seven-Pack,” Dava said, looking the woman up and down, recognizing her from around the base. She had blood-red skin and matching red hair and had probably been born on Poligart. “I heard you took out a bunch of those bastards yourself.”
“She did,” Thompson said. “Got her leg all fucked up in the process. Missed the attack in Eridani, but now she’s good to go.”
Dava nodded. “Close-combat specialist. And what does Seven-Pack mean?”
With a quiet shudder, a revolver appeared in the woman’s hands, the barrel pointing skyward. She flipped open the cylinder, spun it with a flick. “Six,” she said, then flicked it closed and triggered an unseen switch. With a tiny pop, a blade as long as her hand sprang from the side of the barrel. “And number seven, never runs out of ammo.”
Dava watched the gun slide back into its holster and noted that Seven-Pack’s belt was well stocked with cartridges. She definitely approved of the blade, but was glad to see the shooter wasn’t going to run short on ammo. They would need every bullet.
“Next up.” Thompson reached up to thump the chest of a tall and lanky baby-faced man. “This is Half-Shot. Younger brother of Professor One-Shot.”
“Half-Shot.” Dava snorted. “Z’at mean you’re half as good?”
The boy slowly unslung a long and expensive-looking rifle from his back and hefted its barrel across the front of his chest. “Raymond’s specialty was sniping. Headshots, when he could get them. Vital organs when he couldn’t. One bullet, one kill.” He raised the gun an inch. “Fuck those old-fashioned bullets. These motherfuckers cut through everything. One shot, at least two kills.”
Dava reached out and touched the gun, felt the heat coming through the casing even while it was powered down. Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “Sorry about your brother. He was a good capo. He didn’t deserve to get shot by some piece-of-shit Mister.”
Half-Shot’s eyes narrowed, and she could see his pupils jitter. Like they wanted to shoot glares elsewhere, but he was keeping them in check. “Yeah, well. It was a lucky shot.”
“Uh. Sorry about that.”
Dava turned to see Lucky Jerk behind her, tipping sheepishly from side to side. The Poligart story was coming back to her. Lucky had once been a Mister. Press-ganged into their crew, if she were to believe his story. In any case, he’d found himself as one of the few left alive. Thompson would have liquidated him, except that he could fly a ship and she needed a pilot.
Half-Shot grunted. “Was he shooting at you?”
“Well, yeah,” Lucky said.
“Then what’s done is done,” he said. Dava looked at him for a long moment to try to decide whether what was done really was done. The burn of her stare stirred him to speak again. “Tommy-Gun brung him on. I ain’t gonna cross her.”
“Good. There’s few of us here and we need to be solid.” Against the far wall, there leaned a massive figure with ghost-white skin. “Who’s the big guy?”
“That’s Polar Gary.”
“What, like a polar bear?” Lucky said with a knowing nod. “All big and white.”
“A polar bear?” Thompson flared at him, causing him to flinch. “No one has seen a fucking polar bear in four hundred years, asshole. We call him Polar Gary because he’s bipolar. So don’t piss him off.”
“Sorry, Tommy.” Lucky straightened up to give a nod in the direction of the big man. “Sorry, Polar Gary.”
“Whatever.” Gary’s deep voice was more vibration than sound.
