Jinx stepped out into the furnace of Tirus 7's surface. Hundreds of ship engines roared overhead. The goggles on her suddenly sweat-beaded face adjusted to the harsh light, revealing a warren of blast walls, plex domes, and covered alleyways. Environmental systems whined, their fans and industrial-sized filters on nearly every wall. Cabling and vent networks ran over surfaces like vines. Behind her, the mammoth, mindboggling structure of the spaceport loomed, giving her and the surrounding ghetto, Level Zero, the precious gift of shadow.
Adjusting the respirator settings on her com, she took her first breath of native air. It was hot enough to desiccate her lungs. The budget breather strapped to her nose and mouth did the bare minimum to keep her alive, upping the O2 and adding a miserly percentage of H2O to stop her tongue cracking off and choking her.
Tugging the hood of her therm-pro low over her eyes, she didn't waste time setting tracks in the red earth. She had one hour of supplementary respiratory gases and a severe itch between her shoulder blades.
She kept her hand on the stunner strapped to her thigh as she dodged refuse and hanging wires, staying to the main street. An eclectic collection of individuals watched from doorways and alcoves, a few not even close to human. Naturally armoured Ha'Vokoeans, or 'Vok', reminiscent of Earth armadillos. Lizard-like Throls—Throleans—colourful, scaled aliens who walked upright and dressed like humans. But regardless of their origins, none looked happy to be on the surface. Pissy gazes gleamed behind tinted masks and goggles. Reflective coats and ponchos draped hunched forms, garments designed for the heat and unnervingly perfect when it came to concealing weapons.
The itch at the top of her spine crawled down her back along with perspiration. A glance behind her confirmed some of Zero's grime was sticking to her.
Getting to her destination would be her best defence.
At the end of the main street, sandblasted domes gave way to partially buried junk and dead spacecraft: the port's Boneyard. Between two jimmied scrubbers, she found what she was looking for: an old, class two void raider. Tatty tarpaulins covered the vessel's ravaged external systems, including a few drooping gun turrets.
Jinx eyed them as she approached. Numerous times in the course of her work, she'd intercepted illegal goods ordered in by the dwelling's owner. If half of what the bastard acquired on the black market was for personal use, most of the tech strapped to the old carcass would be operational.
She was proved right. The second she stepped up to the dwelling's hatch and reached for the door's dangling intercom, one of the turrets overhead squealed, angling toward her.
"Fuck off, port piglet." A voice as course as the planet's dirt scraped out of shorting speakers. "Ten seconds, then you're crispy fucking bacon."
Careful not to dislodge any exposed wires, Jinx lifted the com unit and glowered into what she assumed was its camera. "I catch you at a bad time, skeezoid?" She jerked up a hand. "No—don't tell me. Just put your damn pants back on or whatever."
"Bad time, good time... Try no fucking time. Not for your kind." A second turret adjusted its angle. "Got plenty of room in my recyce for your corpse, though, CI. Get off my fucking doorstep."
"Yeah, yeah. My dead body, your next bio-meal pack. Can we do this inside?" She glanced back to the shadows lurking at the ghetto's edges. "Or do I order an Enforcement raid to get this door open?"
"You got no basis for a warrant and fuck-all authority, baby pig."
"You're right. So, I'll do you a favour instead. I'll check on any equipment you've ordered recently, talk to your suppliers, and make sure all the correct forms have been filed. It's the least I can do. I wouldn't like you to accidentally—and for the third time this month—receive illegal goods, or anything."
The static on the com went dead. The next second, the pressure seals gave on the hatch.
A retrofitted airlock opened up before her. A modified lavatory unit from some dead vessel. Trashtech genius at work. Wrinkling her nose, she stepped inside—and regretted it the instant the door slid closed.
Unwanted recall surged up: thick black air; a sense of suffocation—straight from her nightmares. The disorientation and feeling of disconnection she'd felt since regaining consciousness swelled like a void inside her. But the screams that had haunted her for the past month stayed silent.
When the interior door finally opened ten uncomfortable seconds later, she exhaled on a curse.
Then immediately froze.
A twin-barrelled weapon hovered a few centimetres from her nose. The bastardised tech had multiple gauges and whined faintly like an accelerating turbine.
She lifted her gaze to the skinny arsehole holding it. One brown eye and one damaged white orb stared out of a mass of tight scar tissue. Sparse grey hair plastered a pale skull with next to no ears. The man's lips were drool-dampened ruins. If he looked like he was smiling, it was only because the puckered flesh of his cheeks needed moisturising.
Jinx yanked down her goggles and breather. "Piss off, Cryver." She glanced past him to the cancer-like growths of tech cluttering the room. "I'm here to play with your Frankenstein lab, not you."
"My lab?" His voice rasped, the damage done to him in his criminal past going far deeper than his epidermis. "What's a CI want with a privately run analysis facility? You got a zirconium mine I don't know about on this dehydrated turd?"
She held out the evidence bag containing the scrap of her shirt. "I'm here to get a report on this, not some rock. And don't try and tell me your only clients are mining operations and prospectors. That tech of yours sees organics regularly enough to need screening for STIs."
The criminal didn't lower his weapon. "You got a warrant? I'm assuming it's not the low-grade woven synthetic you want analysed, but that crap on it."
"Blood analysis, including tox screen and DNA report."
Cracked lips twitched—a sleazy smile aborted. "You got yourself a boyfriend, Slim?"
Jinx gave him the same look she gave faecal matter when it ended up underfoot. There were some good reasons for her needing a warrant to run the analysis she'd requested. Invasion of privacy could go to the molecular level with the right tech. It wasn't uncommon for people to pay for an illegal bio report prior to committing to a cohabitation or procreation agreement. Cryver had a boutique sideline in that shit, along with an extracurricular pharma business. That's why she was there, sweating her arse off on Zero. She needed an ethically challenged arsehole with serious tech.
"Just run the report, Cryver."
"Legal forms?"
"In your e-drop box any second now. If they're not, it's most likely a coms issue. Everything's fragged today."
"You know what the penalty is for analysing a person's biomaterial without their consent?" A near-bald eyebrow slid upward.
"Is it as bad as listening to a middle-aged, ex-con junkhead trying to give someone life and legal advice?"
"Fuck you." Cryver snatched the bag from her hand and lowered his weapon. "You in a hurry?"
"Yeah. That a problem?"
"You got money?"
"Sure. Won the lottery just the other day. That's why I'm still on this shit-pit planet."
Cryver gave her a look that said she wasn't funny. "You don't want to owe me a favour, CI."
"I don't want to even know you, skeezoid, but a girl doesn't always get what she wants."
"A skinny wise-arse like you wouldn't last five minutes in this starsec's prison system."
"Blood analysis for personal, nondistributing use is a class C infraction. They'd give me home detention and a fine."
"Don't count on it." The ex-con's eyes burned with unpleasant knowledge. "You don't have money or come from it like most who get away with that crap. You're a low-tier port employee, your mother's a tweaker waitressing in a titty bar, and your father once liked to claim he was a long-haul pilot, but is now just another addled arsehole drooling in some unsanitary corner."
The blunt, unexpected summary of her origins left her cold. But it wasn't the first time one of the port's lowlifes had brought up her loser parents in an attempt to irritate her. None of the idiots had the full story. Sylus 3 was far enough away that data updates from its public archives were rare. Thank God.
"Been peeking in my diary, Cryver?" She gave him a bored look. The sad bastard was probably more messed up than she was.
"Every CI's background is made general knowledge around the docks their first day. Makes for efficient business."
"Effective bribery, you mean."
"The only reason you haven't been successfully targeted, Slim, is because you don't seem to give a fuck about anything except being a pain in everyone's arse."
"Uh-huh." She forced back her misgivings. If the lowlife thought he had leverage now, he was kidding himself. If there was a locked cell in her future, it'd be a padded one. "Run the damn analysis, Cryver."
"It'll take a couple of hours." He limped towards his chaotic lab setup—finally. "Use that time to drum up some credits. Three hundred and fifty, plus a rush charge of another three hundred."
"The results go to my personal drop box." She turned back to his trashtech airlock, dragging her goggles back on. "Your payment comes in the form of me not sending Enforcement out here for a tan." She had a few credits saved, but damned if she'd hand them to a junkhead. And she'd most likely need the cash herself. When the dock backlog had cleared in a day or so, after tying up loose ends, she'd book a public shuttle to—
The exit's lock engaged as she reached it. Biting back an oath, she swung back to glare at Cryver. "Seriously? You're that desperate for company?"
The old criminal looked up from his workstation to flash broken teeth. "The price just went up by three thousand credits."
"I heard you made good stims, Cryver. Clearly, you're high on your own shit."
"And you're neck deep in your own." He tapped his screen, enlarging what looked to be the catalogue of a porn site. "That three thousand is what I'll miss out on when I let you walk out that door. An abduction contract for your scrawny hide has just gone live on the local bounty board."
She stared at him—flinched when the airlock clunked, unlocking behind her. "Tell me you're kidding."
The criminal's two-tone gaze hardened even as his smile grew. "Run, little piggy."