Page 13

Zephyr

O lympus station was a mixture of old GUP tech and scavenged add ons that created an odd aesthetic of straight, precise lines on some of the shops, and a riot of cultural graffiti and mismatched upgrades on the others.

It had been a while since I was on a border station, so I’d forgotten how beautifully chaotic it could be.

I adored the sounds of busy commerce in a mixture of languages, the obvious pride everyone took in their store fronts and displays.

Some might think that a border station would be grim and dirty and some of them were.

But Olympus was tidy, much of the chrome and metal surfaces were polished or painted to give the impression of being fresh, even if the whole station was definitely a showing its age a bit.

The lower levels where staff lived along with the entertainers, that included sex workers and fighters, was a maze of corridors that were just as well kept as the above sections of shops and restaurants, though with less flash and color.

Most of them were gray with minimum lighting, the doors sturdy, with bio locks.

I’d wandered down here on the lie that I was a fight agent looking for Varnok, or Konto as he was known here.

I’d been warned that he didn’t like visitors and had thrown more than one agent and fight coordinator down the hall on sight.

“Best to just wait until the reception tonight,” the concierge had told me. “The fight majordomo has graciously added you to the guest list.”

I’d smiled and thanked him, knowing this good fortune was no coincidence. Someone knew I was here, and possibly what I was after. The upgrade of my room and now this was a sign that someone was fucking with my cover. I would have to be extra watchful.

Cypher couldn’t be blind to the fact that I was hunting him.

He’d murdered my team, for fuck’s sake! And I had a deep suspicion that he might’ve had something to do with my uncle’s death as well.

The assassin was never caught and no one knew how the murderer even found him.

There was no way that my uncle’s death and the murder of my team was coincidence, not when they both intersected with where I knew Cypher had been.

I just need to figure out why he wanted that data stick, what’s the connection and cut him off from whatever he’s after. Then, when I’ve got him over a barrel, I’ll end the bastard.

Officially, the GUP didn’t kill.

Unofficially, the GIB did. I hadn’t done much wet work, being a much more valuable asset infiltrating and extracting high level assets.

But I’d done my share of killing within those jobs when it couldn’t be helped.

I was a damn good sniper, and early on in my career I thought maybe that would be my specialty.

But I froze on my first mission for the GIB, memories of the only other time I’d been sent on an assassination had hit me hard and I couldn’t do it.

So I’d been reassigned to logistics and had thrived.

But killing Cypher wouldn’t be some far away hit.

It would be up close and personal. A completely different experience to anything I’d done before. I hoped I was ready for it.

Despite being told to wait until the reception later, I chose to get a move on and found out where Varnok was being housed.

When I rang the call button, however, there was no answer, though I swore I heard something growl inside.

Varnok had never struck me as the pet type.

I tried again and this time there was nothing.

One more time I rang and waited. No growling, no footsteps. Maybe the growl came from next door, these quarters were tightly packed and perhaps one of his neighbors had a pet.

“You lost?” asked a gravelly voice behind me.

I jumped and put on a wide smile, before turning around to face a man in a skin tight mesh suit with a helmet on top that hid his face completely.

He was huge, his head nearly scraping the ceiling and his body wide enough to completely block my escape.

There were tightly fitted plates on his torso, back, thighs and arms with what I was sure were twin mini guns on the gauntlets on his wrist, which had an insignia of a rose wrapped around a star.

I highly doubted he was an employee here, since I never saw anyone, not even the high end boutiques, with this kind of security.

Varnok wouldn’t tolerate a bodyguard, much less need one if he was as good a fighter as everyone said.

And no one that lived down here would be able to afford a body guard this tricked out in custom armor.

So, the only conclusion was that he was here for the same reason I was.

Inside, my systems were attempting to analyze the armor the man wore as well as his voice behind the modulator he was using. Outside I put on a higher pitched voice and made myself smaller, harmless.

“Oh my gosh you scared me!” I said with a nervous laugh and handed him a card. “I’m a fight agent and I was hoping to maybe talk to the defending champion about a multi station contract. Do you know if he’s around?”

“No.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. Well, if you see him, can you give him my card for me? Oh my…I uh…”

The man backed me down the hallway and I stumbled on purpose, falling to my butt on the surprisingly clean floor.

“You don’t have to be all threatening you know,” I said, “I wasn’t doing anything—”

“You shouldn’t be down here.”

“There was no sign or anything saying it was forbidden.”

“You should leave.”

“Look here, if you’re planning on swooping in on my fighter, you’re going to learn real fast that the people I work for don’t take disappointment well.”

“And who would they be?”

The man tilted his head and with the smooth plate over where his face should’ve been, it was chilling.

I had a stiletto holding up my bun of braids, and a small gun that I could shoot out of a case in my forearm. The analysis on his armor was still processing, which meant it was probably a rare mix of metals and there was no guarantee any of my weapons could penetrate it.

“I can’t say,” I said with a toss of my head. “But you don’t want to mess with them.”

“Get out.”

“Or what?”

He grabbed my forearm and yanked me to my feet.

“Let me go,” I struggled against him, dragging my cybernetic hand over his plates to get a feel for them, see if there were weak points.

He didn’t say a word, just hauled me to the lift at the end of the hall as I made all kinds of noise and pummeled his chest. It was an award winning performance that made me seem scared and shallow.

But not only did I get a tactile analysis of his armor, I also planted a tiny bug on him too.

Hopefully he wouldn’t know it right away, I really wanted to know who the hell this guy was working for.

The lift door opened and it was empty. The mystery man tossed me inside and pressed the button.

“Don’t come back,” he ordered.

When the doors to the lift closed, I contacted my ships AI with my internal coms and requested the information on my mystery assailants armor.

“Custom metallic blend,” the AI said, “similar to what was found in the raid on the moon of Varris last year.”

“The syndicate shipment?”

“Affirmative.”

“Fuck.”

Cypher was bad enough, but if the syndicate was also sniffing around whatever Varnok knew than this just got a whole lot more complicated. For the first time since I was a cadet, I had the distinct fear that came with being in over my head.

I closed my eyes and breathed before asking the AI for anything else.

“There was a ship that docked soon after us. The model and mods aren’t all that unusual out here, but the engine composition was similar to one that was also docked on the moon we just left. I think we were followed.”

Sherrod…it has to be.

“Monitor the occupant if you can, report their movements to me.”

“Affirmative.”

I hadn’t had the chance to see my new rooms yet, though I was assured my suitcase had been delivered to my suite.

It had a biometric lock and a backup that only my CPU could access; still it was the first thing I checked when I made it back to the enormous suite.

No one had tampered with the case, and a quick sweep of the room indicated the usual bugs that led back to the station.

I chose to disable them, since I thought it may be more suspicious not to at this point.

I’d just given the impression that I was working for less than reputable people to a man that may, or may not, be working for the worst criminals in the galaxy.

It was actually safer to simply lean into that now than it would be to pass it off as a lie.

I spent the next few hours looking over all the data my AI had found on Varnok and the mystery man that had just man handled me.

Varnok had definitely been one of the more reluctant members of the prince’s circle to become a spy, but had finally agreed when Prince Zireth had asked him directly.

I’d wondered why the reclusive K’Tavi male hadn’t followed his prince to Sanctuary.

He’d disappeared from the fleet at the same time the prince and Althea had escaped.

I had assumed at first that Varnok went with him, but that hadn’t been the case.

His appearance on Olympus was the first time I had confirmation he was even alive since then.

Most of the list of projects Varnok had been involved with at the Empire were scrubbed from the records we had access to. And the ones that remained were weapons we already knew about and had contingencies for. None of these were worth Cypher getting involved, much less the Syndicate.

My alarm beeped at me, indicating that it was time to prepare for the pre-fight reception. I hoped that Varnok would talk to me and shed some light on all this. If he couldn’t tell us what Cypher might be after, then I was back to square one.

I carefully unpacked my outfit for the night’s festivities. I had to look like I belonged in this place, but that I was also not a threat; simply a woman who saw a chance to make some credits for myself and my employers.

The gold pants I chose were loose and high waisted.

The silky fabric flowed over my legs like water, the pleats and folds giving off the illusion of a skirt.

I paired it with a matching gold top that was cropped and fitted just under my breasts, the neckline was a sweetheart and the flowing sleeves gathered at my wrist by black and gold embroidered bands.

The cups of the top were also embroidered with black thread and crystals.

Black heels with gold soles gave me some height, which I had a feeling I would need among all the macho men tonight.

I took a long time with my makeup, lining my one flesh and blood eye and then programing my cyber unit to match.

There was no need to hide my cyber implants here, but they were a bit plain for the persona I was going with.

A simple mesh gave them a glow up with golden accents that matched my outfit.

I gathered my hair up into a high tail and surveyed my arsenal of hair ornaments.

Some were stilettos, some were daggers, others were tiny phase pistols with a single shot or tranq darts.

But the one that caught my eye was the oldest of these, the original.

At the bottom of the box, toward the back was a gold and black bow made of real gold and obsidian. It looked like a hair clip, but the two halves of the bow actually separated into a garrote.

I ran my fingernail over the obsidian detailing, remembering the boy who’d given this to me, how I’d sworn to never forget him.

And yet, I had forgotten him, because I’d had to.

And I had hidden his gift away, because it reminded me of him.

Over the years, I would take it out on occasion, consider wearing it and put it back. But tonight I couldn’t seem to make myself hide it away again. My fingers wouldn’t let it go and my heart thrummed with a rhythm of longing I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Maybe it’s his ghost telling me to wear it tonight, telling me it will keep me safe.

I rolled my eyes with a snort, embarrassed for myself. I didn’t believe in fucking ghosts, and I certainly didn’t think Jacen would be haunting me. It was sentimental bull shit, likely brought on by my uncle’s death. It was coincidence and circumstance, nothing more.

But as I was about to put the hair pin back, a deep sense of dread hit me.

Now this was familiar, this warning my gut sent me. It had saved me more times than I could count and I had learned to trust the mysterious instinct that I could never explain, but always seemed to be right.

“Does it even still work?” I asked myself.

The two halves came apart just as smoothly as they had all those years ago, and the thin wire of the garrote shone in the light of the bathroom.

“You would spoil me huh?”

“I’d give you everything, you’d never want for a single thing if I…”

I took a sharp inhale and closed my eyes against the visceral memory.

Breath by breath, I put all of those ghosts back into the vault of my mind, and became determined to view this as merely a weapon, just like the others.

As I positioned it into the base of my pony tail, I ignored the twinge that went through my chest and the slight tremble of my left hand.

When it was placed, I checked the rest of my weapons.

The single use phase pistol in my lipstick case, the tranquilizing solution in my travel perfume infuser, the slightly larger phase pistol on a belt around my left thigh and the one in my right forearm.

The clock said that it was time to go down for the reception.

I set the tracker in my CPU to max range and instructed the ship’s AI to monitor and record everything, including audio.

It would be scanning coms and the limited amount of chatter around me through my aural implant.

I would be able to hear if the AI needed to alert me to anything.

I was used to working smaller missions this way, but once again my gut was telling me this wasn’t going to be as simple as others.

One last look in the mirror to check my mesh and makeup, purposely avoiding even glancing at the pin in my hair, and I was out the door.