Page 120 of Throwing Fire

“I can tell you that. Same as she’s always wanted. Credits, lots of credits, and she doesn’t care who she hurts to get them.”

I nod. I don’t doubt that Kez is right. She knows her sister. But I need to know how deep the rabbit-hole goes. “After she tells me that, you think I should waste her?” I ask.

“Yes,” Kez says firmly. “I should have known she was behind this. Itstinksof her. Just like when we were kids.Do notgive her another chance to shoot you.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it,” she says, looking up at me. Her big blues have gone hard and glassy. Her killing stare, which I’ve only seen a few times. “If you let her hurt you, I’ll kill you myself.”

I let my lips twitch. For a moment there, I thought my kitten had lost her sense of humor.

“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” I say. “Acker, inefficient and insubordinate here’s all yours.” I withdraw the katana, wipe the tip on my pants leg and sheathe it.

Acker takes out one of the kukris I’ve made him and motions B over to the corner furthest from where Payton’s working. When B reaches the corner, Acker makes him kneel and face the corner. I lift an eyebrow at the rat-man who shrugs. “I didn’t think to bring restraints. Did you?”

“Nope.”

“Dav,” Exeter says. The merc moves over to B and secures his hands behind him with a plaz tie.

“Now you’re just showin’ off,” I say to Exeter.

He gives me a wide, white grin.

“Back in five,” I tell Kez. She nods and rejoins Payton at the monitors.

As I head towards the door, B cranes his head over his shoulder. “Mister Snow, do I really have to kneel? I’m not going anywhere until this matter is resolved. As I’m sure it will be, to everyone’s satisfaction.” When I don’t say anything, he whines, “I have bad knees.”

“Ask him,” I say, cocking my thumb at Acker.

Acker lifts one edge of his muzzle to show a wickedly sharp canine. “I don’t speak to monsters.”

“There you go,” I say and gesture at Mech Tyng and then the door. Whatever’s kept her from being promoted beyond greeter, it ain’t perception. She moves immediately, opening the door and beckoning me through.

“Where’s Erin?” I ask her.

“Miz Agosante is overseeing the final sign-off on the shipment, sir.”

“What shipment?”

“The shipment to the Clouds.”

Jaxon’s sweetener. “When’s it scheduled to go?”

“Twenty-two minutes, sir.”

Not if I have anything to say about it.

Mech Tyng leads us back up to ground level, through the showy lobby and out onto the loading platform. The outer shield doors are closed, but a breeze still circulates through the platform. It carries the unmistakable stink of brine from the hypersaline ponds winking in the morning sun beyond the shield.

The platform’s busy, particularly given how early it is. Massive plaz containers are being checked and double-checked by a dozen techs before they’re loaded onto the industrial-sized skimmer I saw coming in. I’m more than familiar with those containers: they’re desalinated water of various grades: standard up to T-White. The grade is holoprinted on the side of each container. They’ll be decanted at the other end of wherever this shipment is going and sold off bulb by bulb. Standard carries a ten percent profit margin, while the margin on T-White is nineteen percent.

Too bad they’re nothing like the seventy percent profit the companysees on Hex.

I don’t see any Hex containers at all. They’re not specialized; you can ship Hex in anything so long as it stays dry. But the crystal shit dissolves in water, so it’s not in the big plaz containers.

Guess I was wrong about how they’re shipping the Hex.

I’m not wrong about the woman who looks up at my entrance. She flips the long, blonde banner of her hair over her shoulder and hands her palmtop to a tech. Her blue eyes, a shade paler and several layers of Hell colder than Kez’s, hold mine as she saunters across the dusty permacrete loading dock.