Josune had taken the aircar up as soon as she saw the mercenaries outside the Songyan office. She took it four blocks away, just in case they watched her, then circled back and landed a block over.
She made her way silently to the end of the street, keeping away from any streetlights.
The orange flare of blaster fire, and the crackling blue-white light of something that sounded like a sparker but wasn’t, stopped her. A familiar voice—Captain Norris, from the Boost—yelled, “Don’t kill anyone. I want that weapon. I want to know where he got it.” She saw him lurch to his feet. He’d been injured. “And if anyone has killed Arriola, I’ll personally find them and kill them too.”
Josune stayed frozen. Did they know where she was?
There were mercenaries everywhere.
“Load them into the aircar. Take the big guy too. I have questions for him about this weapon.” Norris picked up a tube that was like no weapon Josune had seen before. “Now move, before someone comes to see what the problem is.”
There were too many for Josune to take on.
Snow saw her as the mercenaries dragged him past. He’d been watching for her. But he didn’t look to her for help. Instead he glanced away, quickly, to a dark object floating on an antigrav trolley. It had been pushed into a recess, wasn’t part of the fighting.
She got it. Modders and their Songyans. It was the least she could do. She would have nodded, but the movement would have drawn attention.
At least they didn’t plan to kill Nika and Snow just yet. It gave them time. But how did a small group of people take on a mercenary ship? They’d work it out.
They had to.
Josune waited ten minutes after they’d gone before she moved.
The carnage was sickening. Bodies everywhere.
“Please.”
It was a whisper of sound. She almost missed it. Dark eyes stared up at her from a body fallen too awkwardly to be anything but damaged.
She couldn’t leave them to die.
She called emergency while collecting the antigrav trolley. “There’s been a shooting at Songyan Engineering. People are hurt. One man looks as if he’s dying.”
Without the modders it was the only thing she could do to keep them alive.
“You’ll be fine,” Josune said. “An ambulance will be here soon.”
She heard the clop of the big rotary blades that signified a heavy-duty engine. “Here it comes now,” and ran for her own aircar, guiding the Songyan in front of her.
She took off horizontally, the way she’d arrived, and exited four streets over.
Now to get back to Another Road, where they could come up with a plan to rescue Nika and Snow.
Back on ship Roystan greeted her with a hug. She could feel the heat of him, felt his bones through her jacket. He’d had more flesh than that before, she was sure of it.
“We’re tracking the Boost. They’re moving, but they’ve requested a flight path for the moment, so they’re not planning to nullspace soon. We’ll get them.”
Provided they didn’t nullspace away. If that happened, they’d have to rely on Nika or Snow to let them know where the Boost had gone.
“Good.” She leaned back from Roystan to look at him properly. “You look terrible.” He’d lost weight. How much weight could a body lose in such a short time?
“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Jacques said. “And he brings his food back up. All the time.”
“Too much detail, Jacques. I haven’t—”
“You don’t have to say. We know.” Jacques threw his hands out theatrically. “Years of working with the man, and he still thinks we don’t know him. You’re starving.”
Jacques had made it his mission to keep Roystan healthy.
Looking at Roystan, Josune thought he was right to be worried. “How fast did Nika speed up your metabolism?”
“Nika didn’t speed it up, I did.”
“We’re not laying blame, Roystan,” Josune said. “If we did, we’d lay it fair and square at Brand and Norris’s feet.” She brightened. “It looks like Brand did one dirty job too many, anyway. She’s in jail.”
“This is a tale I want to hear.”
“Let me tell you what happened.”
All four settled around the crew table, with some of Jacques’s spicy flatbread. It would have been comfortable if Nika and Snow had been there.
“Well, we got to the Songyan factory—”
Roystan’s eyes rolled up, and he fell facedown onto the table.