They stayed steadily on the move once they put Chasper and the T'i Yara system behind them, pausing only long enough for Ilsa to unearth more of Abigail's trail of financial breadcrumbs. They had to make three separate stops before reaching Ravelle. All three layovers were small ports, with few travelers and even fewer tourists, but at every stop Ilsa was able to dig deeper. She did what she could on the road, but most ships—all the ships on which they managed to arrange their short-notice accommodations—offered only limited access to communication linkups. The crew had access to more reliable tools, but passengers weren't afforded the same resources, and Ilsa wasn't so ungrateful as to patch her way in illegally.
The limitations posed no great difficulty. She found ample information during their brief layovers, and slowly she assembled the strands of a web even more complex than she had first predicted.
They stayed constantly on the move, spending only a night or two in each port, even less time if there was transport available and Ilsa could complete her work more quickly.
She preferred to be on the move. The transports they found on short notice offered berths even smaller than those available on the most crowded stations, but Ilsa still preferred them to the alternative. She found a vessel in transit less claustrophobic simply because she was bound somewhere, not sitting stationary in space. Contradictory reasoning, perhaps, but the knowledge that they were moving helped her settle just the same.
On arriving at Ravelle, Kai drew her aside and said, "Someone is following us."
Ilsa's spine chilled at the thought. It certainly wouldn't be the first time they'd dealt with someone dogging their steps, but instinct told her this situation was different. Last time it had been a second investigator hired by their own client, a suspicious and mistrustful Vrean with more money than sense. Surely that couldn't be the case now. Not with Eleazar Dantes himself along for the ride on his own insistence.
"Are you sure?" The question felt foolish on her tongue. Of course Kai was sure. "Who?" Ilsa amended before he could answer.
"A small Gaiminn. Kri, I think." That last meant little to Ilsa. She couldn't have described the relevant features, let alone told at a glance which continent or colony a particular Gaiminn was from. But she could conjure a general image clearly enough, of faintly iridescent hide and two parallel pairs of eyes, a thin mouth tucked so near the chin it would be easy to miss entirely. Patchy hair, or something like it—Ilsa wasn't sure; she had never been a student of biology.
"How long has he been following us?" Ilsa asked quietly.
"She," Kai corrected. "And I first saw her on the frigate we caught out of Magre. There were at least a dozen commercial passengers on that flight. I didn't pay her any real mind until I saw her at both of our last two stops."
"It could still be a coincidence," Ilsa said, both unconvincing and unconvinced. "Is she here now?"
Ravelle was an enormous port, built like scrawling script across the only desert plateau of an otherwise hospitable planet. It was the largest of three different docking facilities positioned across the planet's surface, and partner to a twin base on the moon orbiting immediately overhead. If coincidence were a viable explanation, there was no reason their paths should cross here.
"I saw her on the lower concourse," Kai said, blowing the faint hope away like so much debris.
"We need to tell Dantes." Ilsa glanced behind her now, towards the customs gate she and Kai had just emerged through. She could see Dantes at one of the nearer kiosks, impatiently concluding his business with a bored customs official.
"Yes," Kai agreed. "And we need to stay alert. I can't be sure the Gaiminn is alone. My gut says she brought backup."
They remained at Ravelle only a day and a half, cutting short Ilsa's efforts to unearth the data she needed. They departed early, and as discreetly as they could manage. From there they hopped in quick succession between smaller way stations along the Allis Belt. Ilsa focused on her own work and trusted Kai to watch for danger.
"She's not alone," he announced to Dantes and Ilsa both when they arrived at the eerily quiet Depsis dock—a nearly defunct facility beside a failing mining operation. "And whoever she's traveling with, I think there are more of them now. I don't like it, especially not here."
"You think they intend to try something?" Dantes's eyes darted about the silent corridor, though of course, there was nothing to see. No one in sight. There was an unnatural stillness to the empty hall, and Ilsa didn't like it one bit.
"You don't call that many hands on deck unless you're looking for a fight," Kai answered dully. Ilsa was already fishing in her rucksack for the discreet firearm she carried. The weapon was a small, subtle affair that packed a heavy wallop. It wouldn't punch through bulkheads even on its highest setting; the design was meant to be wielded both within an atmosphere and in more transient locales. The charge could be set low enough that it might not kill, but the discharge—energy packed into bullet-sized blasts that could tear through flesh at higher settings—could still cause heart failure in most Alliance races.
"Where did you see them?" she asked as she checked the power reserves on her gun. The weapon was fully charged. She'd been doubly careful since Kai first caught sight of their suspicious shadows.
"They disembarked a ways behind us, but I lost sight of them before the arrivals gate."
Ilsa cursed under her breath. The arrivals gate had been a veritable dead zone, a dozen passengers threading narrow halls away from the main docks. If the Gaiminn and her friends had disappeared so abruptly, they must have an alternate way past the security crews. They could be anywhere by now. Chances were damn high that they were close.
She glanced to her left and saw that Dantes had drawn a gun from somewhere as well. Dantes's weapon was larger, nothing discreet about it, bulky and gray. The metal was so clean Ilsa would swear it had never been fired. She recognized the make only vaguely, and had never seen the model before. If she had to, based solely on its size and the fact that Dantes was the one carrying it, she'd guess the gun was both flashy and overkill. She doubted the thing even had a low-power setting.
"We can't avoid them if we don't know where they are," Ilsa pointed out, glancing between her companions and doing her best to keep a cool head. She tried to think her way past the trap she could suddenly smell closing in around them, but it was difficult to strategize with so little information to work with.
"Maybe we can—" Kai began, but cut himself off when the corridor went abruptly dark.
Ilsa clenched her teeth to keep down the startled curse that threatened to crawl up her throat. To her left, Dantes went perfectly still. To her right, Kai was already turning, eyes darting forward along the darkened hall.
The blackness wasn't pitch, Ilsa realized as her eyes adjusted. There were occasional panels of faint light, the glow of power conduits glinting behind the walls at nearly regular intervals. There were also windows—tiny, narrow things tucked near the ceiling—offering scant illumination from outside. It was night on this side of the planet, but two moons shared the sky, and the ambient light was better than having none at all. Ilsa shrugged her rucksack off her shoulder, maneuvering in complete silence as she set it on the floor. It tucked almost invisible into a shallow inset in a corner of one wall, and Ilsa cocked her head, wordlessly urging Kai to do the same with his bag. She crept forward while he obeyed. Her eyes reluctantly adjusted to the gloom, and she peered down the hall, towards where the corridor narrowed and turned.
By the time Ilsa risked shifting her attention behind her, Dantes's travel case was also out of sight, as well as Kai's worn jacket.
Kai was rolling up his shirtsleeves and watching Ilsa with sharp focus.
"What do we do?" Dantes asked, his voice pitched so low Ilsa strained to hear him.
"You stay here," Kai ordered, soft steel in his voice as he turned to look Dantes directly in the eye. "Ilsa and I will move up the corridor and see what's ahead."
Ilsa wanted to order Kai to stay back and keep his head down too, but she could already see Dantes rankling, ruffling himself up to protest. The last thing Kai needed was Ilsa arguing tactics in front of their contentious employer; they needed to present a united front if they were going to keep Dantes from throwing himself into the line of fire. He was a client, an uninvited tagalong and a liability, and he had no place at their backs if they were walking into something messy.
So instead of countering Kai's assertion, Ilsa leveled a steady stare at Dantes in turn. "Seriously. Stay put. We need to check this out, and we don't have time to teach you our shorthand. We'll hurry back."
Reluctantly—angrily—Dantes subsided. Kai nodded to him, then turned to follow Ilsa straight ahead. Whether he let her take the lead as thanks for backing his play, or simply because he himself was maneuvering empty-handed, Ilsa didn't care.
She moved as silently as she could, reaching the corner at the narrow end of the hall and crouching low to peer around it.
There was only another empty hallway ahead, but she still straightened and inched forward with all possible caution.
"You lied to him," Kai murmured in her ear, keeping close but also moving with measured vigilance.
"About what?"
"We haven't rehearsed any shorthand." There was laughter in Kai's voice, despite the fact that his words were barely audible—despite the danger and severity of the situation—and Ilsa found herself reluctantly smiling.
"Near enough. Anyway, our standard contract has a clause that covers lying to clients for their own good." She wanted to say more, maybe tell him to be careful, goddamn it, but they were halfway through the smaller corridor now, and there was an open hatch directly ahead. It was a large door, wide and tall, and from the handful of crate-shaped silhouettes cluttered near it, Ilsa guessed it was the sigma-side loading bay they had to cross to reach the main complex. She fell quiet, keeping her footfalls soft as she passed the first of the skinny crates.
Ilsa stopped when she reached the door. She plastered herself to the frame and waited as Kai mirrored her position on the opposite side. Again she crouched, her heart hammering so noisily in her chest that it was a shock the entire port couldn't hear her. She felt lightheaded, but her hands were steady as she peered with one eye into the space beyond the door.
Inside her head was a wild mantra of curses, a violent mix of anger and fear. She and Kai weren't prepared for this. They weren't trained for this. They'd come out all right from situations that smelled just as awful, but luck and perfect aim couldn't carry them forever.
Luck and perfect aim were all they had going for them, though. Ilsa could see no one in the dim expanse of the room beyond the open doorframe. It was a fraction brighter than the corridor at least, a space with irregular windows spanning most of one wall and a skylight at the farthest end. There was still no artificial light—whoever had deactivated the system had clearly done it for this entire section of the docking grid—but the two moons were visible and their light slanted brightly across the floor.
As she'd suspected, the room itself was a long loading bay. The wall opposite the windows looked to be one enormous apparatus that must open to accommodate cargo ramps from heavily stocked ships. Huge cargo containers stood throughout the vast space, looking much the same in the gray darkness. Rectangular blobs of shadow. At least they could provide solid cover, Ilsa thought, for whatever that might prove worth.
The ceiling stretched at least two stories high, and catwalks ran above the two walls Ilsa could see from her limited vantage. She had to assume those paths extended directly above the doorframe that was momentarily shielding her and Kai. If there were armed enemies waiting up there, they would be directly above and out of sight. Ilsa saw nobody at all from her current position.
She subsided, drawing back from the frame and watching Kai do the same opposite her. He met her eyes through the murky gloom. As he rose from his crouch, he had the distinct look of a trap ready to spring.
Ilsa rose too, checking her gun. She considered only briefly before tapping in the sequence that would set every shot she fired to lethal force. She had no qualms about killing those who meant her harm, and no doubt at all that whoever was waiting to ambush them meant to kill without remorse.
She met Kai's eyes with determined warmth and gestured with her free hand, indicating the mechanical wall opposite the windows. It wasn't a rehearsed signal. It meant nothing more complicated than that way, go fast, just in case he hadn't seen the catwalk and its looming promise of hidden attackers.
Kai nodded his understanding, and they waited. Breathed in unison, out and then in. Perfect silence. Perfect stillness. Perfect understanding passed between them, and in a single instant they came to life and charged forward.
They moved together through the door and darted for cover near the shadowed wall.
Gunfire erupted around them, staccato bursts of heat and light blasting noisily through the air. Surprise was a fleeting advantage, but it kept Ilsa and Kai one step ahead of the barrage as they barreled across open ground. It felt like an eternity before they finally reached cover behind the smooth metal of an enormous cargo crate. Ilsa hit the ground harder than she intended, and her knees protested the impact. She was already moving again, craning around the far side of the crate.
She spotted two figures scrambling across the catwalk, exactly where she had expected. They were rushing now towards the nearest flimsy ladder. For the moment they were entirely exposed, and Ilsa took careful aim before the flicker of opportunity passed. She couldn't afford to miss.
Ilsa breathed through the roar of adrenaline in her ears, steadied her weapon with both hands, and fired.
One of the two figures—the one in the lead—went down, his choked shout carrying loudly through the vast bay. He didn't slip from the catwalk but instead crumpled directly forward onto the narrow metal path.
The second figure stumbled over the fallen shadow. Ilsa's next shot landed just as surely as the first, and the second shadow fell.
There was shouting then, close by, in at least two languages—Gaime and something Ilsa didn't recognize—and then sparks ignited against the crate just above her head. Those shots sliced through the corner of the crate where there wasn't enough mass to deflect the energy, and Ilsa cursed aloud just as gravity seemed to yank her back out of harm's way.
Except it wasn't gravity saving her. It was Kai, his hands clutching her arms with bruising force, his bulk landing beneath her as she fell. They both scrambled upright and pressed flat against smooth metal as gunfire thudded, noisy and ugly, against the far side of the crate. Head-on, the container was large enough to absorb the impacts and burning charges, but it wouldn't hold forever. And it wouldn't protect them when the enemy finally circled around and flanked them.
"There are only three more of them out there." Kai's words were a cautious hiss in Ilsa's ear.
"You're sure?" she whispered back.
Kai nodded.
"Can you get to them?" She glanced downward and fussed by feel with the settings of her weapon. Wider bursts would require more energy—she would drain her weapon faster, would have only a few minutes of power left—but a wider range would also distract and blind, at least momentarily. Kai would never get close enough if she didn't draw and keep the enemy's attention.
"I think so," Kai said. Then he said her name in a tone she'd never heard before. He sounded almost hesitant, and confusion caught at Ilsa's insides as she raised her eyes.
She could barely see him now beyond his silhouette and the reflective glint of his eyes. She could make out no hint of his expression, and the tension in his shoulders told her nothing, considering they were actively under attack.
"Kai?"
He moved forward all at once, a surge of shadows closing the slim distance that separated them. He paid no heed at all to the weapon in Ilsa's hand as he cupped the back of her head in one huge palm and pressed a hard kiss to her mouth. The kiss was hurried and desperate, and over in an uncomfortable instant. Ilsa didn't even try to process what had just happened. Kai was already creeping towards the far corner of the crate, and she needed to be ready to make the first move.
"Let me get into position," she whispered over her shoulder, watched for the quick nod of assent that told her he'd heard the instruction. Then she threw herself into the open, running with all the speed her legs could summon.
She covered twenty paces in a protracted instant, viscerally aware of the singeing cannonade of weapon fire too close on her heels. She ducked and rolled low as she reached the next piece of cover. Not one large crate this time, but a sturdy stack of smaller containers. These were dull, dark metal, piled deeply enough that even the most powerful impacts lost momentum before they could burst through to Ilsa's protected position.
Ilsa gave herself no time to cower, or to think, or even to breathe. She ducked for the far side of her new hiding place and fired, angling for the corner from which most of the incoming attacks had come. She wasn't bothering to aim any longer, though she tried to give the illusion of it as she discharged her weapon.
She fired. Paused. Let the worst of the returning gunfire fade. Twisted and fired again. She had to keep them focused on her until—
Yes, there was noticeably less speed to the answering bombardment a moment later. Ilsa tilted her own aim further off target—the last thing she wanted to do was catch Kai in an unlucky shot—and slowed her finger on the trigger of her gun.
When she stopped shooting and was met with only silence, she tentatively peered around the edge of her hiding place. The stack of crates wobbled beneath her hand—not so sturdy after the prolonged assault—but Ilsa could see nothing in the darkened bay. Nothing in the shadows, nothing on the catwalks.
Nothing until Kai warily appeared in a patch of moonlight. He stood upright, glancing stiffly around himself as he crossed the open space. For all his caution, Ilsa realized he had already backtracked and double checked his work. Kai must have been sure he'd gotten everyone, or he wouldn't be moving out in the open. Ilsa glimpsed no bodies in the heavy darkness. The only dead she could see were her first two victims, the barely visible forms on the catwalk above the door.
Kai was holding his shoulder too tightly, and as Ilsa emerged into moonlight she saw why.
"Goddamn it, Kai."
He was bleeding. His dark shirt might not show it, but his pale skin certainly did where the fabric was torn beneath his hand. When she got close enough to set her gun down and draw his hand away from the wound, his palm was soaked. The red of his blood looked black in the moonlight.
"It's not that bad," Kai protested, but Ilsa only glared at him.
"It's bad enough." She tried to be gentle as she prodded at his shoulder around the wound, but Kai still flinched and bit his lower lip. Ilsa's medical training was little more than basic wartime first aid, but it was enough to tell her this was a deeper wound than Kai was admitting. It wasn't singed around the edges or cauterized the way gunfire from those weapons should have been, which meant one of Kai's hand-to-hand opponents must have drawn a knife on him. Ilsa scowled. Her rucksack had bandages tucked in one of the side pockets, but Kai would need an actual physician. She certainly wasn't skilled enough to stitch him up herself.
"Come on. Bandages." She finally stepped back, picked up her gun, and moved for the door that had brought them. Kai immediately covered the gash with his hand as he followed her, pressing hard despite the amount of discomfort his efforts obviously caused him. Struggling to staunch the bleeding.
They needed to collect Dantes, but he was barely a footnote to Ilsa's awareness at the moment. Dantes would still be in the previous corridor, in the general proximity of Ilsa's limited first aid supplies. That was good enough for the time being.
"This is why you need a fucking gun," Ilsa muttered, moving quickly but still with wary caution through the dark hall.
"Can we not have this argument right now?" Kai was audibly winded, but otherwise his low voice gave no hint that he was hurt. If anything, he sounded exasperated, and well he might. They had certainly disagreed on this point often enough in seven years of partnership, and Ilsa had yet to win the debate.
"Now seems like the perfect time to me," she retorted quietly, more to settle her own nerves than because she really thought this was the time or the place to harp on Kai's stubbornness. Over half the length of their partnership had been dedicated to surviving a war. If she couldn't convince him to carry a proper weapon then, she had no hope of managing the trick now.
"I don't like guns. I've got terrible aim."
"Aim improves with practice." Ilsa stopped and glanced about herself. They had already rounded the narrow corner into the wider stretch of corridor, and she'd been sure this was where they'd parted from Dantes. Was it possible they'd found some wrong turn to follow? It seemed unlikely in such a short distance, and she didn't remember any unexpected doorways or passages.
When she glanced downward, she found her rucksack wedged right where she'd left it. This was the place.
Adrenaline rushed beneath her skin in a renewed surge, but she crouched beside the bag and unfastened the side flap. She had to dig beneath a supply of ration bars and a hand light to reach the small first-aid pack, and she nearly fumbled the entire lot as she tore open a clean bandage.
They didn't have time to properly clean or disinfect the wound. If Dantes wasn't here, then there could still be hostiles to contend with. Ilsa rose to find Kai had already let go of his shoulder and torn his demolished sleeve open wider to give her space to work. The bandage affixed easily, sealing to the intact skin around the wound despite the slick and drying mess of blood already spilled. It would have to do for the moment.
Crouching again, Ilsa picked up the hand light that she'd dropped in her haste to reach the bandages. She hesitated a moment, not yet activating the light, and glanced down the long corridor to take stock in the dimness. The hall branched in several directions at the far end, including down. Ilsa saw no movement, no sign of life at all, and when she glanced to Kai for confirmation, he shook his head. He could see no threat either.
The hand light was a small, focused thing, and it gave off almost no ambient glare when she turned it on. It lit only a square patch of ground directly where she aimed it. Ilsa swept the floor quickly but methodically, not entirely sure what she was looking for.
She stopped when she found it. Dantes's gun lay abandoned not far from where Ilsa remembered leaving him. It was equipped and active, and the barrel was warm to the touch. He must have been shooting when he dropped it. If it weren't for the deafening assault of more immediate gunfire, Kai and Ilsa would have heard the sounds of combat.
There was blood two feet from the fallen weapon, slicked across the hard ground.
"Red," Ilsa reported in low, cautious tones. There was enough of it to make the puddle impossible to mistake, but not enough to indicate a mortal wound. She hoped not, anyway. It was difficult to be sure.
"Probably his." Kai was a short distance from her, peering at the walls despite the dimness of the hall. "I didn't see any humans in the posse on our tail." He paused, peered closer at a stretch of wall that looked not at all special at a distance, and then announced in the same low voice, "There are half a dozen scorch marks here, and at least one shot went clean through the wall. Looks like Dantes went down fighting."
"Of course he did." Ilsa tried to picture the man meekly surrendering, even for his own good, and couldn't conjure a convincing image. "I suppose we'd better find him and make sure he's alive."
"And rescue him," Kai agreed. He sounded lighthearted enough, but there was grimness tucked beneath the words. Ilsa picked up her own weapon, secured and deactivated it, and slipped it into the pocket of her long coat. She kept the coat on—it was dark and discreet, and she didn't need the same maneuverability that Kai required—and she didn't want to leave her weapon behind despite the fact that it was running fatally low on power. She'd rather have those two or three remaining shots in a pinch, and even an empty gun could work as a bluff.
Before she stood, she took Dantes's gun in hand, gauging the balance in her grip. It was a bulky weapon, heavier than it looked, but she had practiced on bigger monstrosities. She felt confident her aim would hold true.
"Here." Ilsa handed the light to Kai. She would need both hands to manage Dantes's gun. "We'll need it to follow his trail." Assuming he had left them one.
He had left a trail. The infrequent patches of blood became scanter with every turn and corridor, but they were enough to guide Kai and Ilsa along a steady course. Dantes was still bleeding as his captors directed him... Where? Ilsa wasn't familiar enough with Depsis to know where they were going without the advantage of a map, and they were well beyond the commercial portions of the facility. There were no directional kiosks here. And they were only moving deeper, into dull-sided corridors where doors were labeled only with strings of numbers. They were underground too, Ilsa realized. They had descended more than one flight of stairs along the way, and the air had grown cooler. There were no more windows offering illumination from outside.
There was other light now, though. Not just safety lights, but the occasional overhead panel set to a default night setting. This wasn't the deliberate gloom of sabotaged halls. These were simply corridors disused at so late an hour, minimal lighting designed to save power. It was enough for Kai to put the hand light away, and Ilsa immediately felt less exposed.
She caught sight of brighter light ahead before she heard any voices, but in a few more paces, she could make out words—Terran standard—in angry conversation.
"—the hell are you doing with that thing?" Dantes's unmistakable voice cut through the quiet with surprising calm. "Is that a recording device? Can't we just get this over with, clean and quick?"
Ilsa and Kai exchanged a look, eyebrows high. They had reached the source of the light, an empty door frame midway down the spartan hall. Ilsa reached the door first and crouched beside it, Dantes's gun held steady in both hands. She leaned just far enough to get a look inside, praying their quarry was overconfident enough to not be watching the door too closely.
There were only three figures in the room besides Dantes, and none of them seemed to notice her. Two were feathered fellows, round and disconcertingly pillow-like. They wore matching gray bodysuits that looked uncomfortable over their dark feathers, and each held a shock rifle in hand as they stood at stiff attention. They loomed behind Dantes, where he knelt with wrists bound before him.
Execution style.
The third figure was almost certainly the Gaiminn female Kai had first spotted. She was shorter than average, her skin loose and sleek and faintly purple. She stood directly in front of Dantes, fussing with a small piece of equipment that hovered on a blurry sheen of air. Ilsa didn't need a good look to be sure Dantes was right. That was some sort of recording-and-transmission device.
"Cease talking," the Gaiminn snapped. At last she stepped away from the tripod, clearly finished with her work.
Dantes surprised no one—clearly not even his captors—by continuing to speak instead. "Bad enough you intend to blow my brains across the floor. Do you really need to document the event for posterity?"
The Gaiminn made a clucking noise with her tongue. It sounded eerily like laughter. "Sir Iain Merck insists on proof the job is done. Therefore proof he shall have. You do not have any say in the matter."
"Iain Merck, eh?" Dantes sounded unimpressed. "And here I'd hoped you were working for someone with a legitimate grudge."
Whatever else Ilsa might have hoped to glean from the conversation, she realized her time was fast running out. The Gaiminn was moving away, presumably out of range to let her feathered companions work, and the two toughs were beginning to raise their weapons. Ilsa hefted Dantes's gun. She sent a quick, silent prayer to gods she'd never bothered to believe in, and then pulled the trigger.
She dropped the first tough more by luck than skill. Dantes's gun erred to the left, and she was damn lucky to still catch her target high in the chest. A weaker gun or lower setting might have left her target alive from such a glancing blow, but the residual charge packed too much kick. The figure fell hard, convulsing just long enough to give the appearance of pain before falling permanently still.
The second tough squawked in startled protest. He whirled for the door, searching her out, but Ilsa dropped him too, efficiently and without remorse. Unlike the first, her second shot landed with cold accuracy.
She searched, found that the Gaiminn had retreated to the far side of the room and was now struggling with a locked door. It was more practicality than pity that made Ilsa aim for the wall beside instead of the Gaiminn's head, a warning shot across the enemy bough. If they took the ringleader alive, perhaps they could get further answers. At minimum they would have someone to turn over to the authorities rather than having to hit the road in order to avoid an ugly cleanup.
But the Gaiminn didn't surrender at the violent warning. Instead she dropped to one knee and pivoted, drawing a compact weapon from beneath her vest.
Ilsa recognized the gun as a Mirror Line 56G—a gun Ilsa was partial to herself—before she had to duck behind the doorframe to avoid the shot that scorched past her face. Ilsa swung forward once more, leading with Dantes's weapon and exhaling as she moved, taking quick, deadly aim. She pulled the trigger and the Gaiminn fell, leaving the room empty but for Dantes himself and the guilty dead.
It was Kai who darted into the room to cut Dantes loose, leaving Ilsa to destroy the recording device before it could catch their faces. They vacated the premises in a hurry, retracing their steps in grim silence. As far as Ilsa could tell, Dantes wasn't bleeding anymore. At the very least he was well enough to keep his mouth shut, and that suited her just fine for the moment.
It wasn't until they had recovered their belongings and reached a more populated district that Kai turned to Dantes and asked, "Who is Sir Iain Merck?" Kai's voice was strained and tired. With his coat on, there was no visible sign of his injury, but Ilsa knew he was beginning to bleed through the bandage. She was carrying both her own bag and Kai's, despite Kai's attempt to insist otherwise. He looked too pale, unsteady on his feet, and Ilsa refused to let him push his luck. She barely listened now as Kai questioned Dantes. She was too busy looking for an open clinic as they moved from dockside to more of a market plaza, where merchants were just beginning to prepare for the morning.
"Iain Merck was a competitor of mine," Dantes answered without apparent evasion. "He exercised many of the same leveraging tactics as I did during the war, but he did it on my turf. He lacked the capital to back up his maneuvering. When I drove him out of the system, I absorbed all his holdings. I suppose he harbors some bad feelings."
Kai laughed, a strained sound that was more dry than amused. "And this you don't call a legitimate grudge?"
In her peripheral vision, Ilsa saw Dantes shrug. "I don't make kind choices, Mr. Othen. A successful man accumulates enemies."
Ilsa snorted, but didn't comment beyond asserting, "We'll need to book a flight straight out of here once we find someone to mend Kai. There's too much chance authorities will connect us to the mess if we stay."
"What about the local data stream?" Kai asked, speeding his steps to walk beside her.
"I'll manage with the next one. It's not a static trail we're following. I know what I'm looking for now. It's no disaster if I don't get access to one link in the chain." It could make her work more difficult, but only for a short while. She'd rather have to manage digital gymnastics to fill in some blanks than get them all arrested by insisting they stay.
"There." Kai pointed to a pale blue sign bearing an empty circle—the universal symbol for Alliance-licensed medical care. The door beside the sign was shut; the doctor clearly wasn't open for business yet. Ilsa altered course anyway, making straight for the sign.
She didn't care what time of day it was. She would bang on that door until someone answered, and then she would pay whatever tender was required. She had no intention of watching Kai bleed to death.
"Relax," Kai murmured for Ilsa's ears only. "I'll be fine."
"You goddamn better be," Ilsa retorted and pounded on the door.