I walked over to him, putting my ungloved hand on his shoulder, my finger touching his neck. “Better luck next time,” I said, calming him unconscious. He had no idea how close he had come to dying. Shaq scaled my leg and then my arm, scampering along my shoulder to slip back under my scarf as we exited the bathroom.

  The ruckus had caused semi-chaos across the club. The band had stopped playing and fled with most of the patrons who were slowly catching wind of someone dying in the bathroom. I quickly scanned the area, searching for Jumpsuits and PD, surprised to find neither. Instead, Emerald and Quasar were making a beeline toward me.

  “Did you get it?” Quasar asked as they approached.

  I held up Artun’s slab. “Mission accomplished.”

  “We need to get out of here. There’s a secret exit that way.” She pointed to the abandoned stage.

  “How do you know that?”

  “It cost Gia another quarter million electro, but Fraque told me.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  We ran for the stage, scrambling up on it and rushing through the entrance to backstage, where we headed for a trap door in the floor. I heard the rear doors to the club slam open at the other side of backstage and then the sound of pounding boots of what had to be a PD Exo Squad. They were coming down the corridor past the dressing rooms, headed straight for us.

  Quasar jerked up the trap door with her neural link.

  A whiff of the dark tunnel below rose up and hit me. "Great. The sewer."

  “I’m afraid so,” she replied. “The good news is that Bushara has one of the cleanest sewer systems in the Spiral.”

  “That isn’t saying much.”

  “You’d rather fight one of PD’s Exo squads?”

  I answered the question by jumping into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 27

  It wasn’t much of a jump to the bottom of the sewer tunnel. I landed with my head barely a foot below the hidden opening. After catching Emerald and setting her aside, I moved out of the way so Quasar could jump down. Standing there, her head barely cleared the tiled top of the tunnel, which from its size suggested it wasn’t one of the main lines. The smell wafted in from further away. I could hear the trickle of water in that direction as well.

  Quasar pulled the door closed with the attached chain. A few seconds later, the PD Exo Squad pounded over the closed door and out onto the stage. I raised my ungloved my hand, light from my glowing veins enough to illuminate the handle on the bottom of the door. Zar turned it, locking it. Relieved we hadn't been seen, I released a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

  We hurried down the tunnel, guided by the glow of my hand. In about a hundred feet, we came to the tunnel's junction with the mainline and a twenty-foot drop into a flow of stinky sludge. The toxic gas rising from it burned my eyes, and the last thing I wanted to do was jump into the muck. Fortunately, we found a ladder affixed to the wall.

  “I assume Fraque gave you directions out of here?” I asked, peering down at the sewer flow, the edges thick with rats.

  “Of course,” Quasar replied, taking the lead. “Come on.”

  “I can’t believe rats made it all the way to Bushara,” I said, following her down the ladder, Emerald close behind me.

  “Rats are on every human-settled planet,” Quasar replied, stepping down off the ladder's last rung." You can still find them on starships that aren’t kept up to snuff.”

  “They’re the real colonizers,” Emerald agreed, the rats scurrying ahead of us as we walked along one edge of the flow. “We’re just along for the ride.”

  It definitely felt that way as we continued deeper into the sewer system. While my nose adjusted to the smell, it quickly became impossible to avoid stepping in the sludge. In spots, we waded through the brown ankle deep glop, ruining our brand new magboots.

  We finally reached an adjoining tunnel, taking it about four hundred feet to where we came across a ladder leading up to a street-level cover.

  “This is it,” Quasar said. “Not too bad, right?”

  “I think I’ll need three or four showers to get this smell off my skin,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Emerald agreed. “Oh, I have an idea to save water!”

  “Not now,” I said, getting ahead of her before she could suggest we all shower together.

  “Spoilsport,” she replied.

  “You’re getting too predictable.”

  “That might be a good thing,” Quasar said. “Maybe you’re getting less wonky, Em.”

  “I resemble that accusation,” Emerald quipped.

  “Let’s keep moving,” I said, grabbing onto a rung of the ladder. I climbed to the top, until my head was just below the cover. Pushing it gently, I lifted it a couple inches from the street and peered out, revealing a dark alley between a pair of tall buildings. “We’re clear.”

  I manually shoved the cover aside and climbed out, helping Emerald up to the street before Quasar emerged, putting the cover back in place. I quickly identified the direction of the Dare Devil by the flashing lights of the PD drones at one end of the alley. The other end was clear, the view out to the main thoroughfare obstructed only by pedestrians walking past.

  “We made it,” Quasar agreed, turning slowing in the alley. She stopped and pointed at the wall beside us. “This is Mushari. We just need to go around to the front door.”

  Buzzing suddenly caught our attention as a drone appeared at what had been the clear end of the alley, red and blue lights flashing. It slowed and turned toward us, a red beam in its face activating. Before it could get much of a look at us, Emerald sent a handful of energy blasts into it, knocking it out of the sky like she had on Merton.

  “I hate those things,” she said, the drone spewing smoke and making far too much noise as it crashed at the end of the alley.

  “Come on,” I said, waving them in the other direction, "before PD arrives to investigate." I took two steps and froze.

  Emerald bumped into me, her hands flattening on my back before she peered around me. “What is it?”

  "Just a little clean up." I quickly used pull and absorb to swipe the muck off my boots and then did the same for Emerald and Zar. Hopefully, it would remove most of the smell, and I knew just what I wanted to do with the offal. I gathered it into a softball-sized sphere before launching it toward the corner where I expected the first PD officer to appear, though I didn’t wait for it to make contact before sprinting the other way. Quasar and Emerald trailed behind me, Em skipping and tittering with malicious glee.

  Both Emerald and I looked back when we reached the end of the alley. My shitball missed the PD unit that turned the corner, but I didn’t think they saw us before we made it out of there. I'd forgotten to reglove up my right hand, so I shoved both hands into my jacket pockets to hide the glow as we slowed to a walk and entered traffic. Continuing half a block to the entrance to Mushari Technical’s primary office supertower, I leaned close to peer through the huge glass doors. The lobby lights were on, but at this hour there was no one there, not even a night guard sprawled lazily in the chair at the front desk.

  I pulled out Artun’s phone with the ID still open and held it up to the access pad. The door slid aside, allowing me to enter. Quasar and Emerald remained behind, waiting for the door to close before using their stolen identifiers to get in.

  We crossed the lobby to the bank of elevators on the other side of the reception area, where a pair of bots like the one on Windfall station sat motionless, offline and charging for the night. We had no trouble calling an elevator or boarding with our stolen passes. I was sure PD had rescued Artun from his predicament by now, but I doubted they would go to the pains Emerald had to wake the officers in the hospital, keeping him unconscious for the next few hours.

  Quasar directed us not up, but down, into subterranean levels where I assumed the company’s mainframe was held. The numbers on the counter ticked down from minus one, and we came to a stop at minus twenty.

  “Almost there,” she said, guiding us out of the elevator, the hallway deserted. Since she knew exactly where to go, I figured Gia was feeding her directions.

  “I’m surprised the neural link has a remote connection down here,” I said.

  “It doesn’t, exactly,” she replied. “Gia’s piping the signal through Mushari’s intranet, which reaches everywhere in the building.”

  “Encrypted, I assume?”

  “Highly. But given enough time they’ll be able to crack it. If they even notice it’s there.”

  “How much time is enough?”

  “A year or two.”

  I smiled. “We should be out of here by then.”

  We hurried down the long corridor to a blast door. I didn’t need to touch it to feel the cold emanating from the surface. Like before, we each scanned our IDs to gain entry. Only this time, Quasar and Emerald went in first. I followed behind, shocked when I entered and got a good look at the room.

  The mainframe was a tall cylinder resting in the center of a tri-level transparent toroid completely surrounded by water. An abundance of alien sea life drifted around outside the enclosure, from schools of tiny fishes to larger tentacled monsters that stared in at us with intelligent-looking eyes. I was so mesmerized by them that I didn’t immediately notice how frigid the air was, or that Quasar had taken a metal stairwell down to the bottom floor.

  I hurried to catch up, rushing to the stairs and looking over the edge. Quasar stood in front of a control kiosk no doubt connected to the mainframe, its multitude of lights flickering and flashing as it accessed data. She didn’t type on the available touchpad, but rather bent over to put her eye level with the display.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted down to her. There was no point for me to descend to the bottom. As near as I could tell, there was only one way in or out, and someone needed to be ready to defend it.

  “Gia’s using the neural to create a direct link. She said we bypassed six levels of security by coming here. We've got incoming.”

  “ETA?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Maybe we can play hide and seek,” Emerald suggested, looking up at me. “You hide. I’ll seek.”

  I looked around my level. Even if I had any intention of playing, which I didn’t, there was hardly anywhere to hide. A few control stations lined the inner core of the room facing the mainframe, but there were no workstations or other obstacles on the narrow outer rim. “How about you help me guard the door?” I suggested instead.

  “Boring,” she complained. “But fine. I’ll help.” She returned to the third level while Quasar, or rather Gia, continued working below. I turned back toward the blast door, sending Shaq to camp right beside it. If anyone came through it, Shaq could bite them before they knew what happened.

  The five minutes passed uneventfully, though it took an additional three minutes before Quasar left the station and quickly returned to our position.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “We got here just in time. The bankruptcy sale was set to finalize tomorrow. One more day, and all the intel Gia just uploaded to the neural link would have been gone.”

  “Did you find out who bought the blueburn ship?”

  She nodded. “Carlton Usari.”

  “You say it like I should know who that is.”

  “He’s a wealthy recluse who inherited his fortune from his great-grandfather, who wrote the hyperspace navigation software used in ninety-nine percent of starships flown today.” She shook her head. “According to Gia, he’s never been involved with much of anything illegal, nevermind something of this magnitude. She can’t imagine why he might have abducted or aided in the abduction of the prince.”

  “I guess we’ll have to go ask him.” I pulled out my phone to contact Matt, but of course I had no signal so far underground. “Gia, can you tell Matt we’re just about ready for pickup? Give him the coordinates for the top of this tower. We’ll meet him there.”

  “She’s on it,” Quasar replied, returning to ascend the stairs.

  Tucking my phone back in my pocket, I pivoted toward the blast door. I had only taken two steps toward it when the other side of the door began bending inward as if a battering ram had struck it.

  “Get down!” I shouted, dropping to my stomach as the door broke free of its moorings, launching toward us like a huge metal bullet. The projectile screamed overhead and slammed into the transparency outside the mainframe. The force of the blow sent a web of cracks spreading from the impact site.

  It wouldn’t be long before the enclosure lost its integrity and we all drowned.

  CHAPTER 28

  Drowning when and if the cracks in the transparency around the mainframe gave way and flooded the room wasn’t my most immediate concern. The asshole who had thrown the blast door at us took precedence.

  He stood on the other side of the threshold with more Jumpsuits piled up behind him. Their hate-filled expressions suggested just one thing. They were ready for a fight. The archon’s smug smile ignited fury in me, his raised hand and moving lips a signal that a second attack was coming. Or would have been if I hadn’t positioned Shaq by the door. He landed on the archon’s hand and bit down, drawing blood and a scream before Shaq's toxins penetrated the man’s nervous system. His breathing shut down and he dropped to the floor. Dead.

  From where she stood at the top of the stairs, Quasar’s blaster fire cut into the others as they took aim with plasma rifles. She dropped two before they could shoot back. Six more were about to get shots off. I knew Zar, unaware of the incoming firestorm, was a sitting duck. I pushed her over the edge of the stairwell, sending her tumbling over the banister to the floor below before I ducked to avoid more bolts. They sizzled overhead, adding additional cracks to the failing transparency.

  “Oh, my head,” Emerald groaned as she sat down hard on the top step. I stole a quick glance at her; a wide plasma burn had grazed her head. I raised an absorb shield, capturing the bolts still whizzing by us, much too close for comfort. Without missing a beat, the Jumpsuits dropped their rifles and reached into the half-open front of their uniform coats to pull out swords.

  This had to be a joke.

  I was going to release the ball of collected plasma into them until I realized that a miss might tear through the tunnel beyond the door and bring whatever was above it down, blocking our escape. Wincing at my mistake and forced to keep holding the plasma, I set my aim as they charged toward me.

  Emerald was on her knees beside me, looking peaked. What I didn't realize until the first of the Jumpsuits reached her was that her posture was all an act. She lunged up at him unarmed, raking his eyes with her fingernails while throwing her knee into his groin. He stumbled, and she grabbed him around the neck, dropping to her rear and bringing him with her. His head slammed into one of the control boards, smashing it as his neck audibly cracked.

  Emerald rolled off the Jumpsuit and away from a sword strike, surging up to kick the blade out of its wielder's hand at the end of his swing. She grabbed his arm and pivoted, throwing him up and over her shoulder with a strength that belied her lean frame. She picked up his sword as he slammed into the transparency and ran him through.

  She ducked under another blade as I readied for the attackers coming at me, swords raised. Turning, I shifted the plasma ball toward them. They paused, momentarily uncertain what to do against it until they realized what was behind them. Spotting Shaq, the lead Jumpsuit charged toward me despite the plasma, ducking under it as I swung it at him. He came up leading with his blade. Jumping back to avoid it, I nearly tumbled down the steps, landing instead at the edge of the bottom step. I swung back out of the way of the man's next strike, losing my balance and butt-planting on the next step up before trying again to take a swipe at him with the plasma ball I hadn't yet let go of. He ducked below it a second time, my gaze catching for an instant on Emerald, who was suddenly struggling against too many attackers.

  And I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I couldn’t release the plasma ball for fear of collapsing the tunnel or finishing off the transparency preventing the underground sea from pouring in. And I couldn’t hold it indefinitely without draining what little chaos energy I had left. Only bad things would happen once it ran out. For starters, I would lose control of absorb and the ball would be released anyway.

  I ducked under another strike, forced to step back as a third blade stabbed toward me. Already at the edge of the stairs, I stumbled and fell back, colliding with Quasar, who'd recovered from her fall and was sending more energy blasts back at our attackers. She took out the one closest to killing me before Shaq had cut down a few more at the rear.

  Zar and I crashed down in a heap on the floor, the plasma ball floating inches from her face. After dealing with the Jumpsuits and Artun in the club, I had gotten a little too cocky. A little overconfident. Leave it to fate to humble me.

  “Ben!” Emerald shouted. Four more Jumpsuits were racing down the steps toward Quasar and me. Those remaining from the first group were on the verge of overpowering Emerald. She did her best to keep them from slicing her into mincemeat with their swords, but there was no way she could hold out much longer. And with two of the men fending off Shaq with well placed rifle shots, he had his little hands full dancing around just to keep from getting hit. There was no way any of us could hold out much longer. Even without their archon, there were too many of them for us, and I was too weak to fight them all off. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, I prepared to give in.

  Then I caught sight of one of the large tentacled creatures floating overhead in the water surrounding the toroid. Its large eyes met mine, looking at me as though it knew I was toast. Behind me, the transparency crackled again, the shattered web expanding, the imminence of its failure increasing exponentially.

  If we were going to die anyway, why not take out some more bad guys with us?