Death Drop (72 page)

“’Sat right?” Simon said. “Then how do you feel ‘bout drawin’ down on yourself?” Dezmara looked from Feleon to Simon with confusion and then turned back to get the pirate’s take on the strange question. But as she twisted her head to look in front of her again, an unfamiliar movement reached her eyes from the periphery. It was like the movement of liquid color, and the motion was so foreign to her that Dezmara forgot about her predicament for a moment and turned her full attention to uncovering its source. To her absolute bewilderment, Simon wasn’t standing there anymore—it was Four Guns Feleon himself!

There were now two villainous pirates in the room, and they were squaring off with each other in the type of surreal showdown that was too odd even for dreams. The Feleon to her right was rapping his claws on his gun handles in the same taunting, cocksure way the other had used just seconds ago. The Feleon in front of her was struggling to make sense of it all. He was teetering on the edge of standing down and admitting defeat or pulling leather and letting hellfire and hot metal decide his fate; the epic struggle was written all over his scowling face.

“How fast are you?” the Feleon closest to her said. It
had
to be Simon, but the uncanny exactness of his voice to the real Feleon’s made her wonder. “If you are the fastest in the universe, then you and I will just draw at the same time and kill each other. That would suit me just fine. I figure I owe you for all the trouble you’ve caused, and I’ll die happy knowing I got Dezmara here out of the mess I helped make. My conscience will be clear. How about yours?”

The real Feleon didn’t say anything. He just growled in frustration as a small trace of white froth roiled up from inside his mouth and crept slowly around his bottom lip. His skin flashed from its brilliant green tone to blood red, and all four of his hands were trembling with fury above his guns. Dezmara knew they had to get out of there now, and Simon must’ve recognized it too, as he motioned with his head to the opposite side of the table.

“Move, my dear!” he said as he backed up slowly. Dezmara trotted around the table with the Feleon clone following behind her, sidestepping so he was square with the real Feleon at all times as they traversed the room. She slid past the sagging remains of Leonardo Fellini and punched the button in the table to open the doors. She scooped up his gun, turned from the table, and then jogged the few steps to the ingress before spinning around. Simon-turned-Feleon had stopped at Fellini’s body, and he carefully reached out and touched the corpse on the neck with one clawed pincer.

“That bastard’s dead, and you will be soon, too—I promise!” Feleon growled.

“Yes, I’m quite aware he’s dead, thank you,” Simon said and then slowly backed from the room. “The doors, luv, if you please!” Simon said, his own voice sounding odd coming from scaly, Feleon lips. As he stood in the opening facing the pirate, Dezmara touched the console on the wall to cover their exit. There was still a sliver of light passing between the doors when a hail of bullets slammed into them from the other side. Simon darted all four of his arms around his face and flinched wildly as the two halves of the barrier latched closed. Dezmara aimed her newly begotten firearm at the control panel and pulled the trigger, and a shower of sparks fell to the plush carpet below.

“That won’t hold him for very long,” she said and then turned quickly and ran across the room. She skirted around the corner of a desk and proceeded to rifle through it. Odds and ends clattered as Dezmara pulled each drawer hard to its stops and then mussed through the contents. The doors jumped with a rhythmic boom-boom-boom as Feleon worked at breaking them down. “Shit, it’s not here!” she hollered. She looked up to see if Simon had any ideas, but he was no longer in front of her. He was standing at Fellini’s private elevator to the Gamorotta dockyard, and his clawed, Feleon fingers were zipping over the face of an access box plugged into the ports.

“You sonofabitch! You had that the whole time?”

“Lifted it off Fellini’s body.”

CRUNCH! The doors were flexing wildly and beginning to give way, and Dezmara wondered if Feleon was smashing them with his fists, shoulders, a chair, or maybe even his powerful, barbed tongue. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Gunfire ripped holes through the doors, and large splinters of wood peppered the penthouse around them.

“He’s getting through! Move your ass, Simon!”

“Sorry, luv, but it’s encrypted an’ if I make so much as one lit’le flub, you an’ I are gonna be stuck spendin’ the rest of our short lives with our ill-tempered chum there!”

CRACK! CRACK! CRUNCH! CRUNCH! “He’s almost through!”

“Nearly there, luv!” Simon said; and then the door caved in.

Captain Four Guns Feleon Gulkar—the genuine article—crashed into the room in a spray of chipped wood and shattered metal latches. His momentum carried him forward in a wild, unstable rumble and he fell forward onto his hands and knees on the floor behind them.

“Got it!” cried Simon. Dezmara slipped through the small opening between the elevator doors. She reached out, grabbed Simon by the vest, and yanked him into the lift. He squirmed away, leaning back into the room and snatching the access box from its outlet.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Dezmara screamed, gripping him with both hands and pulling him back just as Feleon’s tongue slammed into the wall beside his head. The doors weren’t all the way closed just yet, and bullets flew through the gap, scarring the tolocnium plated wall between them. The seal was finally made, but before the elevator could hum to life and speed them to the dockyard and their freedom, a vicious, growling yell from the other side sliced through the exterior of the carriage and reminded them both they weren’t out of Trillis just yet.

“Thanks, luv,” Simon said as the visage of Feleon Gulkar melted into the big, yellow eyes and pointy ears Dezmara was used to. “I s’pose I owe you” SMACK!

Dezmara hit him hard—a left hook—and Simon took it better than she expected. He didn’t go down, but he slid along the wall until his shoulder reached the corner. He stood there for a moment on wobbly legs, shaking his head as he blinked to clear his eyes. “’Course any other time, I’d say you were off your nut, but I s’pose I had that one comin’.”

“Apology
not
accepted, you asshole, and I
don’t
forgive you, and if anything’s happened to Diodojo, you can goddam be sure I never will! Now, get your pirate costume back on so we can get the hell out of here!” There were a million curses she wanted to scream at him and even more questions she wanted to ask, but she didn’t know where to begin. She checked the ammo on the Turillian pistol; all the cylinders were full but one, and the sight calmed her down enough to at least state her intentions. “And as soon as this is over, you and I are gonna have that little pow-wow we talked about before this shit-storm started, got it? No details left out, no secrets. I wanna know who the hell you are, where you’re from, and how the hell you got into this clusterfuck in the first place! Am I clear?”

“Right, luv,” Simon said, “anythin’ you want.” His eyes seemed much bigger without the mechanic’s goggles she was so used to seeing perched on his brow, and now they looked ready to burst with regret.

“Good,” Dezmara said flatly. “Now get back into character!”

“Right you are, luv, but I think this act calls for a different role.” Simon’s body rippled—not like waves of water, but like something between a solid form and liquid—and she found herself staring at the spitting image of Leonardo Fellini.

“All right, for the record, you don’t get to say anything about the kranos giving you the creeps anymore!”

“Noted,” said Simon.

“Goddamit,” Dezmara cursed into the bullet riddled compartment. “I’ve got nothing left. No ship, no helmet, no guns, no blades—we are totally screwed!”

“No, my dear Ghost,” Simon said in Fellini’s Turillian accented voice, “you have Leonardo Fellini as your host, and my influence in this city is well known.” He pulled the access box from inside his suit jacket and swept a hand over it. “And with my clearance, we will soon be aboard my ship and far away from Trillis.” Dezmara cracked a small smirk.

“Okay, now
that
is creepy! But I still don’t have my weapons, the kranos, the
Ghost!
”

“Don’t forget,” Simon said in his own voice, “this model of Leo Fellini comes equipped with its very own master mechanic an’ gadget maker extraordinaire!” He winked a huge, dark eye at her, and Dezmara’s anger wasn’t fierce enough to keep her smirk from blossoming into a full-blown smile.

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she said as the hum of the elevator decreased in pitch, and the change in acceleration pushed at them through the floor. Dezmara twirled the pistol around her finger and slipped it into her right holster as the door slid open. She doubted a man like Fellini would let anyone in his company walk in front of him, and she let Simon step into the dockyard first. She tried her best to wipe her face of all the emotion she was feeling and put on an air of snobbery that a woman might have if she were being led around by
the
ringer in Trillis, but Dezmara wished desperately that her face was hidden behind the kranos and her guns and blades were with her.

The dockyard was just like any other: wide, flat planks of grated alloy stuck out into the air like the tines of a broad fork with blunted tips, and ships drifted lazily back and forth against their mooring lines beside them. Of course, this being the Gamorotta’s private dockyard, the ships hovering there weren’t your average, run-of-the-mill, banged-up cruisers or freighters. None of the craft had the sooty build-up of spent fuel in its fairings, and almost every hull gleamed like it had never seen one particle of space grit outside the walls of Trillis.

“More for show than go, this lot,” Simon said softly over his shoulder.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Dezmara said under her breath. “Now shut up and get back into character!”

“Right, luv!”

They walked at a steady pace from the elevator up to two Gamorotta thugs guarding the stairs down to the main thoroughfare connecting all the docks, and ironically, Dezmara thanked her lucky stars she didn’t have the kranos.
“Security must be on a regular rotation,”
she thought as they stopped in front of Jomo and the tiny-headed goon from the Tolocnium Palace. She doubted she could’ve gotten them to buy a story about an elevator mechanic from the Hub, whose face had been eaten by the Durax, hanging around with Leonardo Fellini in the private Gamorotta docks without alarm bells going off.

“Well, Mr. Fellini, which of these amazing vessels is yours?” Dezmara said in a flattering, loud voice as she pretended not to pay the guards any attention.

“I’ll let you guess,” Simon said, “but first, I’ll give you a little clue, my dear.” He pulled the access box from his inside pocket and tapped the screen. Several docks down, and midway to the end, the running lights on a Turillian model Silverhawk came to life with a drowsy, dark emerald glow and then warmed to a brilliant green. The throaty engines could be heard starting their pre-flight sequence as they rumbled in the distance.

“A
Silverhawk
, my-my!” Dezmara said. “Aren’t those supposed to be
really
fast?”

“You’re about to find out!” Simon said and they both laughed.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fellini,” the small-headed goon said, “but I’ll need to verify your access.”

“Hmph,” Simon said, giving him an irritated glare. If they asked for Dezmara’s pass, the game was up, and Simon played the only card he could think of. “Make it fast,” he said as he handed over Fellini’s access box, “we’ve got…
business
to take care of.” He cracked a creepy grin, and Dezmara, following his lead, ran her hand up over his shoulder and leaned into the back of him to sell the ploy. The thug handed the box to Simon and gave a knowing smile, and Jomo’s lips were skittering up and down in amusement like the frenzied legs of a giant insect; a sight that required Dezmara to quietly force down the bile rising in her throat. Simon brushed past them with Dezmara in tow, and they walked down the steps, onto the thoroughfare, and made for the Silverhawk.

They moved quickly down the main passage. There didn’t appear to be any guards down on the docks themselves, and Dezmara’s spirits lifted, lightening her feet as they sped along. The docks stretched out to their left, and a series of protrusions, several stories high, stuck out on the right. The nodules, made of riveted sheets of alloy, were flush with the top level and had a double-barred railing that followed their wedged outlines and kept onlookers from falling to the docks below. As they passed the bulky tail end of an opulent pleasure cruiser, they both froze in their tracks.

“Oh, shit!” they said in unison as they stared at the silvery shape of the
Triton
hovering only three docks down from Fellini’s Silverhawk. There was an extensive network of scaffolding around its tail end where Rilek and Dezmara had shot her engines to hell and more along the side where
The
Firebug
had launched a cannon shell through a partially jammed nautilus door. Crew hung in the air around her sleek body, and sparks cascaded down to the dock as they hammered and welded new pieces of liquid-like skin into place. Dezmara admired the ship’s exotic beauty and prayed she wouldn’t have to meet it in battle again anytime soon—there was obviously more to the
Triton
than met the eye. Two figures appeared on the dock next to the pirate ship and made their way up toward the main passage.

“Feleon’s told them we’re here—we’re in the shit!” Dezmara said as she tensed her leg muscles and prepared for the mad dash. She reached for the button on the vambrace to activate the shield when Simon stopped her.

“Not yet, luv! ‘And me your gun an’ then move beside me with your arms up!”