CHAPTER 38

“Commonwealth credits?” Nat repeated blankly. It didn’t compute somehow, like Sayers had said that the boxes were full of containers of peanut butter. That a criminal organization – even one on an Illyrican-occupied world – might deal in Commonwealth credits was no surprise; the Illyrican mark had become increasingly shaky in recent years. But half a billion? Where the hell would they even get that much hard currency?

Nat pressed her hands to her temples. None of this made any sense. What should have been a simple snatch-and-grab was starting to feel like they’d pulled the thread of an extremely complicated carpet that was now unraveling beneath them.

She was supposed to be the analyst, the one who took in all the information and found the pattern, the signal amongst the noise. But weighed against every other consideration buffeting her – the safety of her team, Simon’s fate – it all just felt like noise.

One clear note cut through that cacophony, like a bell tolling midnight. Illyrican marks were one thing: to be mercenary, if the Coire Ansic wanted to mess around on Imperium worlds, that was the Illyricans’ problem.

But half a billion in Commonwealth credits sure felt like it justified Xi’s fears that Flores was trying to expand to other worlds. Even if Nat’s own footing with the Commonwealth was shaky at present, that was something she couldn’t just stand by and watch. Half a billion could cause a lot of trouble in the Commonwealth; they couldn’t afford to let Roche Flores hold onto that much hard currency.

And the same went double for Ofeibia Xi. Flores might be trouble for Caledonia, but Xi was already the head of one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the galaxy. The White Star Syndicate already had their fingers in smuggling, extortion, and arms dealing – an infusion of this much cash could make them unstoppable.

But with Xi and her people on their comms, there was no way for Nat to communicate that sentiment to the rest of the team.

She could change the plan unilaterally. It was an option. All they had to do was not detach the storage car and they’d keep barreling their way into Stranraer, avoiding the welcoming committee Xi had waiting for them in Fort Mull. It wouldn’t be the first time her team had to adjust to a fluid situation; Nat trusted them to adapt.

But what then? They’d still be trapped with not just the Coire Ansic, but Xi and her goons, who would be all too aware that the plan was not going according to, well, plan. They’d be lucky to make it to Stranraer. And she might as well be shooting Brody herself.

No, they needed another way off this train – with the money.

“Boss?” came Tapper’s voice over the comm. “What’s the play?” Nat blinked – for as long as she could remember, he’d reserved the term of address for Simon. But the sergeant knew when to light a fire; she could practically hear him cracking his knuckles over the connection.

The chronometer on Nat’s wrist was still counting down. Thirty minutes. Not a lot of time, especially with the number of pieces in play. Normally she’d be considering all the angles, waiting until the perfect moment, but they just didn’t have that kind of time. She took a breath; this was going to be tricky.

“We continue as planned,” said Nat. “I know we were trying to soften up the Coire Ansic’s muscle instead of taking them head-on, but that ship has sailed, and we need to regroup with Sayers before we detach the cars. Sergeant, can you find something to even the odds a bit?”

“You’re playing my song,” said Tapper, his grin practically audible. “Any requests?”

Nat turned a chuckle into a cough. “Surprise me, sergeant.”

“Copy that. Gwen, care to join me?”

“It’d be my pleasure, old man. Got some scores of my own to settle there.”

“I’ll meet you in a few minutes,” said Nat. “Hold off on breaching until I arrive.”

With that, she disconnected her terminal from the train’s console and spun to find the communications station. In a normal environment, passengers would be able to rely on their sleeves’ connection to the global network, but the sandstorm raging outside would play havoc with any external comm connections.

Still, you couldn’t just send an entire gravtrain through the uninhabited wilderness without some way of contacting the outside world. So some clever engineer had come up with a method that functionally turned the entire length of the train itself into an antenna, using it to boost the signal and cut through the sandstorm’s interference. That wasn’t without its own downsides – it drained a lot of power that the train needed for other systems like life support and, well, propulsion. Which meant that it couldn’t just act as a passthrough for all onboard communications requests, lest the train end up stranded in the Burns Expanse, so access to the array was strictly limited to essential needs only.

Fortunately, it was all managed from inside the control center.

Nat jacked her terminal into the comm system and tapped a few keys, then pulled out the slip of flimsy Sayers had handed her and punched in the series of numbers printed on it.

Here went nothing.

“Lieutenant, I hope you’re copying this, because we’re going to need a pickup in about… fifteen minutes. I’m going to leave this data channel open and updating with our coordinates. Hope you can make it, because if you can’t, we’re all going to be in a lot of trouble.”

She held her breath, waiting for any acknowledgement. The note from Sayers had been terse: EB 3720.80. A comm frequency; EB had to be Eli Brody. Nat wasn’t sure where Addy had gotten it or how Brody had comms, but she had an inkling that Gwen must have been involved somehow.

Still there were plenty of other what ifs to account for: What if Xi had been bluffing and Brody was already dead? Or what if he wasn’t actually on the Cavalier? What if he was under armed guard? Too many variables, and she couldn’t account for all of them. This was high-level algebra at its worst.

Time to take another page from the Simon Kovalic playbook and trust in her team.

After a minute with no response, she gave up and slid the terminal underneath the comm panel, hopefully out of sight. Then she set off with determination towards the rear of the train.

As before, the first car behind the control center was empty, but the moment she set foot in the next car, her heart sank. The same two security officers she’d seen on the way in were still lounging around, doing a fairly bad job of looking inconspicuous. She’d really hoped they’d have found somewhere else to be.

The one who’d asked her for coffee lit up when he spotted her, and she thought she detected his partner rolling their eyes at the same time. Her would-be admirer straightened up, donning what he clearly thought was a charming grin.

“Well, hello again,” he said, as she closed the distance. “Reconsidering my offer?”

The idea of smiling back at him didn’t appeal to Nat, but she also knew it would be the easiest and safest way out of this conversation. Even as she was starting to open her mouth to issue a polite demurral, the other security officer once again gave his partner a hard look.

“You’re still on duty.” His gaze shifted to her, then sharpened suddenly. “Hey… didn’t you have a terminal before?”

Shit.

“Oh,” she said, her mind scrambling as she tried to maintain her calm demeanor. “I left it in my compartment.”

“I thought you were going to do work.” His voice had taken on a suspicious tone, even as one hand drifted towards the inside of his jacket.

“Go easy,” muttered the first officer, his befuddled look darting back and forth between the two of them. “It’s just a terminal.”

“Oh shut up, Garrett, you idiot,” said the other man, exasperated. “If you don’t stop trying to hit on every pretty face…”

His attention had shifted to his partner for a moment, hand still hovering near the opening of his jacket; Nat wasn’t sure she wanted to wait to find out what was in there.

So she moved.

The corridor in the train car was narrow, which worked to her advantage. She darted forward at the suspicious security officer, pinning his arm against his own chest and making it impossible for him to get his weapon clear.

At the same time, she shifted her weight and stomped down hard on Garrett’s foot. Probably not hard enough to break his toes, but enough to hurt like hell. And when he doubled over in pain, she bounced her knee directly up into his startled face.

That might have broken his nose.

The first man was so distracted with struggling to get his weapon hand free that it took him a moment to remember he had a second, unencumbered arm. He brought it around to take a swing at Nat, but it was clearly his non-dominant arm, so she ducked the clumsy hook and drove her own right hand into the man’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him with a gasp.

She kept her momentum going, trying to slam him against the nearest wall, but even in his stunned state he was considerably heavier than she was; it was like trying to move a tree. She rebounded off him, widening the gap between the two of them to a couple feet.

The man stumbled backwards but held his ground even as he tried to catch his breath. He had just enough presence of mind to realize that she was far enough away that he could get to his weapon.

But his hand was shaky and even as he brought out the knockout gun, Nat was sliding sideways past him, careful to stay on the outside of his arm, away from the weapon’s business end. She used all her weight to shove him sideways into the corridor’s wall, then seized his weapon arm with both hands and wrestled his aim towards his partner, who was still doubled over, wheezing like he’d just run the hundred meter dash after a year of sitting on the couch.

“Goddamnit it,” grunted the man, “let go.” He tried to physically shake her off, but Nat held tight, wrapping one arm around the man’s wrist while using her other hand to reach for the finger that was already on the trigger.

Garrett looked up, eyes crossing at the sight of a KO gun pointed in his direction, and tried to half-slide, half-fall out of the way. Nat stuck her own finger inside the trigger guard and used it to yank the security officer’s finger back, firing the weapon.

The ripple of the stun field caught Garrett point blank and he crumpled to the ground with the sigh of air escaping a balloon.

With a growl, his partner shoved Nat, sending her sprawling to the floor. To her surprise, instead of shooting her, he raised his free hand to his ear, tapping it. “Status Falcon. Repeat, we are status Falcon,” he said in a rasp, not quite recovered from the blow to his sternum. “Collapse on the cargo.” Only then did he start raising the weapon toward her.

Nat wasn’t about to look a gift opportunity in the mouth; from the floor, she lashed out in a snap kick at his ankles, even as she tried to roll out of the line of fire.

It mostly worked. His aim wavered as he pulled the trigger and she felt the edge of the stun field catch her in one side – head-on it would have immediately rendered her unconscious, but instead it just doused her right arm, leg, and that side of her torso in the unpleasant pins-and-needles sensation of having been slept on.

Not good.

Nat levered herself up on her good arm, just in time to see the man swinging the weapon back in her direction. This time he couldn’t miss, and there was nowhere for her to run – her mind gave a bitter laugh, pointing out that with a numb leg, it wasn’t as if she could run anyway.

“I don’t know who the fuck you are,” the man said, “but you’ve made a big mistake.”

Behind Nat, the door to the next train car whispered open suddenly, and the man’s eyes darted upward, widening in surprise.

“She’s not the only one,” said a mellifluous voice, followed by the soft thwip of a flechette pistol’s three-round burst. The man looked down in bewildered shock as a perfect trio of red spots bloomed on his chest. With a tottering wheeze, he took a step forward, then face-planted into the carpet.

Rolling over, Nat found herself looking up at Ofeibia Xi. The crime lord’s purple gaze was hard, and for a moment Nat wondered if she was about to suffer the same fate as the security officer. But it wasn’t the flechette pistol that got extended in her direction; it was the other woman’s free hand, helping her to her feet.

“I see everything’s going according to plan,” said Xi, her voice paper dry.

Nat stumbled to her feet, her right side still an uncomfortable mass of tingling and numbness. “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. What are you doing here?”

Xi cocked her head to one side. “I couldn’t raise Deng or Stack on comms. And I don’t trust any of the rest of you. Which is why I disregarded your advice about bribing train security to look the other way about my… industrial equipment.” She hefted the flechette pistol, this time pointed loosely in Nat’s direction, making the implicit threat clear. “But I still need this job done.”

An armed Xi hadn’t been on Nat’s bingo card, but there was nothing to do about it now. “Fair enough. In which case, we should get moving, because they know we’re here. Which reminds me…” She toggled her comms. “Sayers, heads up. You’re probably about to have company.”