"Shit, shit, shit." Jinx stumbled out of Cryver's claustrophobic airlock, her stunner drawn. Her day, already an unsalvageable mess, had got even more screwed.
Some scum-sucker had just taken a contract out on her. Fuck.
And finding out on Zero was icing on the crap cake.
Her breather rasped with her too quick breaths as she watched for movement in the ghetto around her. In Dem's many unhappy vid messages, he'd mentioned the mining VIPs were seriously pissed about the dock shortage and quarantine. An abduction contract would fit the profit-worshiping bastards' MOs: blackmail, threats, and beatings. If a gang leader or other career criminal had targeted her, they'd go for a straight hit.
Or maybe not. Some of the sickos liked to do the mutilation and killing themselves. There was also an active slave trade in the sector. While drinking in the port's bottom-rung bars, she'd met a few body hunters—the scum who sourced fresh merchandise for slavers. They'd told her she'd be worth a "tasty" few credits. Thanks to her aversion to medical procedures, she was "unmodified meat". No body mods. A blank canvas to be tailored to some big-time client's tastes. A couple of the body-snatching idiots had actually thought she should be flattered by the price they could get for her. Uck.
She pulled her therm-pro's hood lower over her goggles and lengthened her stride, eyes skating over the ghetto's sand-mired walkways.
Her com vibrated on her wrist, almost giving her heart failure.
Cursing, she spared the unit the briefest glance. Three priority messages. Dem, Lenton, and Soh all trying to contact her.
They could wait.
She had a feeling she already knew what her friends wanted to tell her.
Her ears buzzed faintly as she hurried forward. She shook her head, trying to clear it. Blood pressure. But the headiness that accompanied the tinnitus kicked up her heartbeat. A brain glitch right now would be—
Three local deadbeats stepped out from a lean-to into her path. All armed. She recognised the tallest. Mort Shimecky, the junkhead son of a small-time dealer and bar owner. The Mohawk of metal spikes decorating his tattooed skull looked idiotic under the hood of his grimy therm-pro, but the illegally amped bolt rifle he pointed at her wasn't so amusing.
"Pu'ta." His skull-shaped breather muffled his weasel voice. "You usually hot property, but today, you is hot. Know what I mean?" His goggle-covered gaze slimed down her body. "We gonna have that party we always talk about. Ten minutes in my crib, making your dreams come true, then you's some other dog's entertainment. Girl, for three large, I'll share them curves. Ain't no doubt."
"Mort, you're an idiot." Jinx didn't back up, even when he and his two tweaker mates stepped closer. They were mutant mutts. Run and they'd chase. "Who's paying you to piss me off? And didn't your maw-maw ban you from playing with her guns after you blasted half your foot off? Shall I let her know you're playing aliens and super heroes again?"
"Fuck, bitch." Mort's sickly skin gained colour. "You got to be such a pain in the arse? Leave my maw-maw out of this here business negotiation. Be professional, yo? Some bankroller just wants to talk with you, is all, and I need the creds. It ain't no thing."
Jinx lowered her stunner. "Talk? That's it? What's the deal exactly?"
Mort shrugged and let his weapon's barrel dip toward the dirt. "Dunno, pu'ta. Just got to bring you to the roof."
"The roof? What? Of the port?"
"Yeah, bitch. Maybe someone wants to hang you over the edge or something, teach you some respect. 'Bout time, no doubt. You is a problem, screwing with people's business, taking their product. That needs sorting." He gestured to a side alley with his weapon. "Come on, freak girl. Move that fine—"
Jinx shot him in the face, her stunner's pale plasma bolt dropping him like a stone. She took out the first of his friends before the fool's addled reactions could kick in. The third guy—
—fell over before she could fire.
A small, black dart protruded from his forehead.
A high-end tranq.
Jinx swung about.
And found a sophisticated piece of projectile weaponry aimed at her. A VP250 Jinn, a firearm on the port's restricted list—permit required.
Variable-projectile weapons were popular among high-end mercs. They could be tailored to target, firing a nasty range of ammunition: standard kinetic ammo, smart bullets, explosives, shock rounds, or chem-shot, which could deliver anything from a harmless tranq to a deadly toxin or biological. Serious tech.
She lifted her gaze to the man holding it.
The deadbeat in the hoodie she'd seen in the public lounge on A-Deck. Except up close, he didn't look anything like a half-conscious loser.
A wolf in tweaker's clothing. Shit.
Like the pistol, the man's dusty flexi-armour pants, boots, and gloves told a contradictory story to the fraying therm-pro hoodie he wore. As did his eyes. Blue-grey, disturbingly clear of broken capillaries, and a good number of centimetres above her own. They narrowed behind the plas of a high-spec facemask.
The blood pressure whine in her ears flared like a stuck insect. Her head went light. Her breather spluttered as her draw rate increased.
Too many arseholes pointing guns at her.
"Drop your weapon." The order came between steady drags of air, the bastard's breather of good enough quality to be almost silent.
Jinx debated whether to comply. The arsehole was tall, fit, and well equipped. A professional. The goddamn mine corps could afford a better class of scum. No doubt, if she got a shot off, the creep's fancy armour would make a mockery of the effort.
She dropped her stunner to the sand. With a glance at her com like she was checking the time, she confirmed she had fifty minutes of O2 left and her locator functions were still inactive.
No one would know where to look for her body.
A pistol barrel two centimetres from her forehead and a gloved hand on her wrist stopped her from reactivating her com's locator settings and triggering her personal alarm.
She looked up, along the gun's short barrel. Beyond gritty plas, intense grey eyes bored into her. The buzz she'd been hearing flared again as her pulse went into overdrive.
The bastard moved his head side to side—a warning—then removed her com with a quick twist. "Save the eyelash batting. The last person who believed that look took a stun bolt to the face."
She slid a look to Mort's sprawled body. "Should I slap him awake? Apologise?" She looked back to her current, bigger—way taller—problem. "You'd appreciate the same, right? After I electrobake your brain?"
The goad earned her another cool look as the man tucked her com into a pouch pocket in his overshirt. "There are five bounty hunters in the vicinity looking to cash in on you, Ms Koel. I, however, don't need the pocket cred and would just like a few words. Cooperate and I'll see you make it back to your colleagues in one piece."
Jinx processed that unexpected offer. Its dust-dry delivery seemed to hint at impatience rather than lies—and that was serious wishful thinking. "And I should believe you why?"
"I could have tranqed you and been halfway to collecting that bounty by now, but here we are—talking." That one word carried the subtext 'wasting time'. He lowered his weapon.
Disbelief crawled through Jinx as he calmly stepped over to the tweaker he'd shot and retrieved the dart from the man's forehead. She forced herself to focus on things beyond his weapon now it wasn't aimed at her.
High-tech gear. Unconscious drug addict—not a dead one. Confidence she'd have called arrogance except it was pretty clearly justified. And an offer to see her back safely to her colleagues. Slowly, as a test, she crouched to retrieve her stunner. He didn't stop her.
Her head went light again, but not because of blood pressure. The man looked and moved like a professional killer, but talked like a whole other breed of arsehole. His manner reminded her of some regulars of a bar she'd worked in just after leaving Sylus 3. The Dog Bowl. A dive on the edge of a military base that served the Space Corps, its name a play on the slang term for space-faring personnel.
"You're Coalition military, a void hound, aren't you?" She flicked a look down his long, long frame. "Some kind of officer maybe, going by the hurry-up-and-obey attitude."
Behind his mask's HUD-enabled plas, his gaze sharpened, feeding the heady buzz in her skull. Exhaling at length, he shook his head. "Your friend Mort was right. You are a problem."