Defender (The Vigilante Chronicles Book 6) Read online

  “We are Hieto,” said the smaller one. “I am Tik’ta, and this is Zinqued.”

  “Hi,” Aliana said with a nod. Hieto. She’d vaguely heard of them, but she didn’t think she’d ever seen one. “I’m Aliana.”

  “We know,” said the one known as Zinqued. Her implanted scanners told her that it was probably male. “We asked the bartender.”

  Aliana wrapped her fingers around the now-empty mug and leaned forward, smiling a bit too politely. “And what was so interesting about me that you asked the bartender?”

  Tik’ta seemed to sense the threat in those words and looked like she (the scanners again) wanted to leave, but Zinqued didn’t seem inclined to go. He shook his head and waved both hands slightly.

  “My apologies if I offended, Captain Waters.” He pronounced the human title carefully. “That is how I should address you to show respect, yes? My apologies. Humans are rare here, and I have some interest in human matters.”

  Aliana fought the urge to groan. This was an entire steaming pile of topics she didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole.

  “It’s a fine title, but please don’t use it again.” It was even technically accurate. She had a ship, so she was a captain. The fact that she had no crew and no home, and that her ship was falling apart at the seams, just made it more of a cruel mockery than anything else—even if Zinqued clearly hadn’t meant it that way.

  He stumbled over a few apologies, which she waved away.

  “I’m really not interested in talking about the Federation,” she said plainly. “I know it’s interesting to everyone out here, but there’s a lot of news on the subject, so if you could just read that—”

  “Perhaps I should be more specific,” the Hieto interrupted. “I do not mean the business of all humans out here in this sector—”

  “Good, because we don’t have just one set of business.” She tried not to sound too bitter. “It’s not like we’re all allies.”

  The two Hieto probably didn’t know much about human emotions, but they knew enough not to ask any more questions on this point. A person would have to be a robot not to hear the anger and hurt in her tone.

  But Zinqued clearly wasn’t intending to be put off. Indeed, he seemed almost intrigued by her admission. He leaned in slightly and asked, “Do you know anything about a human named Barnabas?”

  “No.” Aliana shook her head wearily. “I don’t. If he owes you money, I have zero interest in helping you collect it.” No way in hell was she planning to become a debt collector.

  “Ah, you misunderstand. He does not so much owe us money,” Zinqued spread his hands, “as… Let us say that he has things we want.”

  This, oddly, seemed to spur Tik’ta from annoyance to outright rebellion. “Zinqued, this is a bad idea.”

  He shot her a look that clearly meant, “Shut up.”

  But now Aliana was interested. “What’s a bad idea?” she asked, not even bothering to hide her knowing look. She was in the reckless sort of bad mood to make very poor decisions, but if someone else was going to do so, she could probably settle for just watching. Like a train wreck, she thought contemplatively.

  The beer seemed to be kicking in. Some humans were apparently upgraded to the point where they couldn’t get drunk anymore, but she wasn’t. She just had the standard life-enhancing, good-healing, aren’t-we-clever assortment that almost every human out here had.

  All that meant, in her opinion, was that she’d survived things she shouldn’t and had memories she didn’t want. She pitied the ones with even more upgrades. Hers hadn’t worked out for her.

  She watched Zinqued and Tik’ta and waited. It was that or start a bar fight.

  Zinqued considered carefully and then said, “We’ve had several run-ins with Barnabas, and we’re attempting to construct a team to…interact with him again.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means,” said Tik’ta, annoyance dripping from her tone, “that Zinqued’s tried to steal the Shinigami several times, has only survived the attempts by Barnabas’ mercy, and he’s determined to keep trying.”

  Aliana looked down into her mug and wished she had more beer. Since she didn’t, she settled for asking Tik’ta, “Why are you here, then? You don’t seem to think it’s a good idea.”

  “I don’t,” Tik’ta said bluntly, “but my old captain ran up enough of a record that I can’t get hired anywhere good, and if I leave this idiot—” she jerked her head at Zinqued “he’ll get himself killed in a week.” To Zinqued, she said, “She doesn’t know anything about him. She won’t help you.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Aliana said recklessly.

  Zinqued, who had started to stand with a defeated expression, looked almost hopeful.

  Tik’ta sighed. “What?” she asked, like someone who really hoped she’d misheard.

  “You want to steal a ship?” Aliana asked. “That sounds fun.” Hell, if they could teach her how to steal ships, maybe she could get hers back. Not the bucket of bolts she presently owned, of course. That was only her ship in terms of legality.

  No, her ship, her actual ship. She wanted her damned ship back, and this chance encounter was showing that she’d been going about it all wrong. Lawrence had made it all nice and neat on paper, so there was no getting it back without him selling it, and he’d just love to charge her way too much. He’d cleaned her out, too, bank accounts and all.

  Aliana had thought she was finished. She’d been taking courier jobs and patching her ship with scrap metal and glue.

  But if she could steal the ship back from Lawrence...

  Yeah, she liked this plan more every second. She grinned at the two Hieto. “Here’s the deal: you teach me how to steal ships, I help you steal this human’s ship, and then you help me steal a ship.”

  Both Hieto sat back down. They were, she noticed, looking at her like she was insane. She didn’t care, though. This was the happiest she’d been in months. She had something warm and tantalizing in her chest that felt very much like hope. A small part of her told her that hope was dangerous and likely to clobber her on the way out, but she was tired of being so damned sad all the time.

  She’d take the hope and the clobbering, just for the change of pace.

  “So?” Aliana asked. “Tell me.”

  Zinqued opened his mouth, but Tik’ta cut him off. “I’ll tell you,” she said firmly, “because he won’t be honest about how crazy this whole idea is.”

  Crazy was good, Aliana decided. Crazy sounded just like what she wanted right now.

  Damn, what had been in that beer? Whatever it was, another one appeared in front of her the next minute. Zinqued gave her a small nod. My treat, he seemed to be saying. It was Persuasion 101, but Aliana didn’t mind. She lifted the mug to him, took a sip, and choked.

  It was just as bad now as it had been the first time. She decided to wait for a moment before chugging it.

  “You said you don’t know who Barnabas is,” Tik’ta said, distracting her from the taste, “so let’s start there. He was something called a Ranger, apparently.”

  It was a good thing Aliana hadn’t been drinking then, because if she had, she would have gotten beer up her nose. As it was, her jaw dropped open, and she gave Tik’ta an absolutely stunned look.

  “A…Ranger. Like an Empress’ Ranger?”

  “Yes,” Tik’ta said precisely. She gave Zinqued a look. “I could have told you she’d think better of it once she knew what she was getting into.”

  “You want to steal a ship,” Aliana said, “from an Empress’ Ranger.” Even if she’d been a lot drunker than this, she’d have known that was a terrible plan. And then she remembered where she’d heard the name Barnabas before. “Oh, my God, and he was Ranger One.”

  “Yes,” Tik’ta said serenely, “he was.”

  Aliana sank her head into her hands.

  She wouldn’t have thought Zinqued had a hope in hell of persuading her at this point, but he was smarter than
she’d given him credit for.

  “If you can steal the Shinigami,” he said quietly, “you can steal any ship. Having the Shinigami to work with would make it child’s play. Whatever ship you want.”

  Aliana picked her head up slowly.

  He swept an arm around the bar to indicate the various ship’s captains. “Pick one. We won’t have any problems taking it.”

  This was a bad idea. It was a bad, bad, very bad idea.

  But she’d already made her decision. Lawrence had screwed her over eight ways to Sunday, as her Great-uncle Carter would say—she wondered what Carter was up to these days, since he’d been almost as much of a black sheep as she was—and Aliana fully intended to make her scheming husband sorry.

  He’d taken her ship, her trust, and all her money, and she swore that she was going to take twice as much from him as he’d taken from her.

  “Deal,” she said.

  Chapter Three

  On the lowest level of the Shinigami was the room that served as the gym, with mats set out for the members of the crew to spar on. Various other equipment sat unused, as Barnabas’ upgrades meant he did not need to spend time honing his muscles, and the rest of the crew were various iterations of not human.

  Gar had tried a few of the machines, but it had gone embarrassingly wrong in some way, and he’d somehow persuaded Shinigami not to show the videos to Barnabas. Gar had focused on sparring since then, and had recently been helping Shinigami learn how to use her new cybernetic body.

  This morning, she’d decided to try sparring with Barnabas.

  “I hate this,” she complained. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it...”

  “If you spent less time focusing on how much you hated it,” Barnabas said patiently, “and more time focusing on doing it, you’d—oof!”

  “That’ll teach you to be so superior.” Shinigami, whose body could move incredibly quickly when she wanted it to, had managed to kick him halfway across the room into a wall. Now she stood with one hip jutting out and her arms crossed, a pose that would have been regal if she wasn’t sticking her tongue out at him.

  “So we’re not going to wait for matches to start now?” Barnabas asked as he picked himself up. A rib had cracked when he hit the wall, but by the time he got to his feet it was already healed, the nanites in his blood putting it back together in a matter of seconds.

  “Not if you’re going to be like that,” Shinigami said. She looked at Gar, laughing. “He thinks he’s so—oof!”

  “Turnabout’s fair play,” Barnabas warned as Shinigami went flying and hit a wall. He cracked his neck and bounced on the balls of his feet. “What were you saying? Something about me being so...”

  Shinigami picked herself up with great dignity. “So dead,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

  Barnabas gave her a grin. “Bring it on.”

  “I think we might want to leave,” Gar said to Tafa.

  “No, no,” Barnabas said as Shinigami launched herself at him. “Don’t leave on our account.” He slid just out of the way of her attempted tackle and lashed out with one foot to catch her on her way down to the floor. “Balance, Shinigami. It’s important.”

  “Oh, now you’re just trying to piss me off.”

  “What gave it away?” Barnabas asked innocently.

  “I’ll tell you,” Shinigami said, grabbing his leg and wrenching him over her head onto the mats, “when you’re dead.”

  “Well, that seems counterproductive.”

  Gar and Tafa had started edging toward the door, holding themselves as close to the wall as they could. Both of them seemed determined not to make the faintest noise. When Shinigami went flying past them to hit the wall with a thud and a creak, they froze.

  “Really,” she said brightly, picking herself up off the floor and shaking out her joints, “you don’t have to go. We wouldn’t want to be rude.” As Barnabas followed up his throw with a tackle, she raised her foot and planted it directly in his midsection. “Besides,” she added as she threw him over one shoulder and slammed him onto the floor, “we need to discuss our next steps on the Jotun front. I had an idea, speaking of which.”

  “Oh?” Barnabas hooked one foot around her ankles and yanked sharply, causing her to collapse in a heap.

  “Yes.” By the time she was upright, he was across the room and bouncing on the balls of his feet. She gave him a glare. “A good idea, too. We’re going to sneak into the Jotun Senate and get all of their data directly from there.”

  Barnabas stared at her, so flabbergasted that he barely made it out of the way when she came hurtling toward him again.

  “That’s insane,” he said, as she recovered and whirled around. He ducked under her foot as she spun in a back hook kick, and then lashed out with one arm to strike her with the top of his fist. “The Jotun Senate is extremely well-guarded, just as well protected regarding surveillance, and… What’s the other thing? Hmmm… We don’t look at all like Jotuns.”

  “Details,” Shinigami said carelessly.

  “You have got to be kidding me with that attitude.”

  “I am not, and if you’d stop punching me, I could explain.”

  “I thought you were the one who wanted to have this discussion while sparring,” Barnabas taunted with a grin. He stopped punching, however, at which point she flipped him onto the mats and followed up with an armbar he wouldn’t be able to get out of without dislocating his shoulder. “This is highly dishonorable.”

  “Boo hoo.” Shinigami cranked on his arm slightly and grinned when he tapped out. “Where are you two going? We were going to plan, right?”

  Gar and Tafa had nearly made it out the door, and now stood frozen with deer-in-the-headlights expressions.

  “We were just, um...” Tafa’s voice trailed off.

  “We had a thing,” Gar interjected.

  “Yes,” Tafa agreed, nodding deeply.

  “Oh?” Barnabas, who had made his way to his feet again and picked an imaginary speck of dust off his arm. “What thing?”

  “Well, you know, it was a…personal thing.”

  “Yeah,” Tafa picked up again. “Personal,” she added, clearly under the deeply mistaken impression that this would stop them from asking questions.

  “Oh, no,” Shinigami said, playing along with Barnabas. “I hope it isn’t serious.”

  “Oh, no, no, not serious, no.” Gar stared at them. “No,” he added again, lamely. “Not, uh, not serious.”

  “Then you could probably stay to do planning with us,” Shinigami suggested.

  “Right?” Barnabas added, coming to stand next to her. He punched her sideways into a wall the next moment, then grinned at her. “Sorry, last one. Couldn't let you get the last hit in.”

  “Just you wait until we spar again,” Shinigami said philosophically from the floor. “You’ll break bones you didn’t know you had.”

  “I look forward to it,” Barnabas said, with a respectful nod, helping her up from the floor.

  “We don’t have to be there for that, do we?” Tafa sounded pained.

  “I assume you’ll use that time to take care of your personal thing,” Barnabas said innocently.

  Both of them stared at him for a moment.

  “Right,” Gar said finally. His double-pupiled eyes narrowed slightly as he tried to decide if Barnabas was mocking him.

  Barnabas saw no reason to clear things up. “So, Shinigami…how were you thinking we’d get into the Senate buildings?”

  Shinigami sat up and started diagnostics on one of her forearms. She was so realistic-looking that it was a bit jarring to see her pop a patch of unremarkable skin open and begin fiddling with display panels and metal struts.

  “Fake suits,” she said, as she worked. She looked up with a grin. “Jotuns wear suits, so can we.”

  “We have stuff in our midsections that isn’t a tank with a Jotun in it, though.”

  “Yeah, I was working on that part,” she said contemplatively.

&nb
sp; “So you don’t actually have a plan.”

  “I said I had an idea. But…no, I do not have a plan.”

  “I wondered.” Barnabas leaned against the wall and thought. “My first instinct is that it’s too risky by far. What’s the benefit of doing it this way?”

  “Thought you might ask that,” Shinigami said with satisfaction. “The benefit is that we get to it before Jeltor thinks to, and then he doesn’t have that on his record.”

  “Ahhh.” Barnabas understood now. “Why didn’t you lead with that?” All of them had been worried about Jeltor since he’d been accused of treason. Although the charges were in the process of being cleared—Barnabas having essentially blackmailed the entire Senate—it would hardly look good for Jeltor to have more on his record.

  Especially since he had been with them a week ago when they killed a senator. That hadn’t been the plan, it was just the way things had shaken out. On the other hand, “it was just the way things shook out” wasn’t a stellar legal defense.

  So it made good sense to keep him out of this operation.

  Barnabas tapped his fingers on his arm as he thought. Not only was he human, which was noteworthy enough in this sector, but he was also, well, him. He wouldn’t be surprised if the Jotuns had alarms keyed to his biosignature somehow.

  “Send me,” Tafa said suddenly.

  Everyone’s head swiveled, and for a moment no one could think of anything to say.

  “I’m sorry?” Barnabas said at last, politely.

  Tafa rolled her eyes. “Yofu are often mechanics. I can pretend to be a mechanic and carry a case that includes part of Shinigami—a communications hub that would allow her to tap into their systems remotely. And I don’t think the Jotun know who I am, unlike you and possibly Gar.”

  “They don’t know who I am, either,” Shinigami pointed out.

  “They might,” Tafa argued. “Who knows if anyone was watching the fight between you and Biset? They might recognize you—and, again, Yofu are often mechanics. It wouldn’t be out of the question for a Yofu to be fixing something in a random hallway. It would for a human.”