Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3) by T.E. Bakutis (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📗

“Tarack told her.”

It was such a blindingly obvious assertion that Bharat quietly cursed himself. Of course Senator Tarack had told Elena Ryke details about Bharat’s wife and child, because that was exactly the sort of shit she’d do to make a deal with Ryke.

It was smart, tactically. Giving Ryke leverage against the people she’d be dealing with would leave her confident enough to dominate her meeting with Bharat and Cole, just like psych had assured them Ryke longed to do. It would build trust between Tarack and Ryke, showing Ryke that Tarack saw her as an equal. It was the perfect bonding moment for two perfectly ruthless women.

“See?” the Widow said, though she wasn’t smiling now. “We’d make excellent partners. We have complementary skill sets.”

The fact that Senator Tarack had just gifted the identities of Bharat’s family to a ruthless crime lord told him Tarack’s goals on Ceto stretched far beyond selling one blackmail disc to one crime lord. It seemed obvious, now, that this negotiation was simply the first move in Tarack’s attempt to entwine Ryke’s vast criminal enterprises with her own. What the deal was likely mattered less than a deal being struck.

None of that mattered to Bharat. What mattered was his family, and the fact that Tarack had just tossed their safety and Bharat’s away like the pawns she believed they were. Bharat was not half so valuable to Tarack as she’d led him to believe — she could always get another security chief — and that made it all the more vital he get his family somewhere safe soon.

The Widow leaned back in her seat, arms resting on the backrest. “I understand your hesitance. If two exceedingly dangerous women were threatening my family, I’d be wary of any risk. Yet you know as well as I that your situation is untenable.” She paused, frowned, and spoke again. “I understand your fears because I share them. Jan is part of my family, and I won’t leave anyone in my family rotting in jail.”

The guilt in the Widow’s tone sounded genuine. Jan nodded with appropriate sympathy. “How long has he been up there?”

“Far too long.”

“And you can really do it?” The thought of buying into this woman’s claims terrified Bharat, but he was almost as terrified of not hearing her out. “You can sneak my family off Phorcys, to Ceto, and get us new identities?”

“I’m a smuggler, Bharat,” the Widow said, and now she cracked another, more confident grin. “Smuggling cargo discreetly, from planet to shining planet, is what I do.”

Bharat narrowed his eyes. “My wife and child aren’t cargo.”

“I heartily agree. Once you agree to work with me, I’ll walk you through every step of how I plan to get them out.” And with that, the Widow slid one arm directly through the table, revealing herself as an incredibly realistic holo-projection. “After all, I smuggled all this into the club, didn’t I?”

Bharat found he could believe the Golden Widow. He might not have to spend the rest of his life doing shitty things for a shitty senator, hoping he did well enough to keep her from murdering his family. This was a way out for those he loved.

If, of course, neither of them spectacularly fucked up.

11: Diplomacy

Jan gave the last of the big red beasts a hard kick to make sure it was actually dead, then sat down hard on the metal rail at the center of the track. His leg throbbed where one of the creatures had chomped down on his pants, breaking skin and bruising muscle. He hoped the animals weren’t poisonous, but it was a little late to worry about that now.

“God,” Emiko said, as she pulled yet another strand of grayish goo from the mess now festooning her head. “I effing hate lizards.” She shuddered. “Why do they have to spit?”

“It’s a defense mechanism,” Kinsley said. “Be glad you closed your eyes when you did. Otherwise, you’d be blind.”

Three dead lizards lay nearby, alternately impaled, cut open, and crushed beneath a slide of rocks. They’d chewed a nasty-looking nest into the side of the tunnel, filled with what looked to be masticated rock, metal scraps, and dried snot. It smelled like the floor of the Greasy Bowsprit after an orgy.

“This stuff is toxic, isn’t it?” Emiko pulled off another droopy tendril of snot and flung the whole string, underhanded, at the nest. “I’m going to get face cancer.”

“Actually,” Kinsley said, rubbing a damp cloth across the tip of the makeshift spear she’d somehow found in the melee, “all studies currently indicate these lizards are not poisonous, at least not to humans. They mostly eat small animals and crunchy plants, hence their dull teeth.”

Jan rubbed his aching shin as he balanced on the rather uncomfortable rail. “They did not feel dull to me. I think the beast fractured something.” His leg ached like he’d broken a chair leg over his shin, and that ache was getting worse.

“Yes, it’s too bad it bit you on the leg,” Kinsley said. “We have a long way to walk. Anyway, up you go!”

Jan pushed up, winced at the pain shooting from his shin up to his hip, and took a few experimental steps. He made three before he sat heavily. His shin hurt too much to walk.

So it was over. Finally. Given all the heat he now faced — the agony of Senator Tarack’s impending torture nanos, Elena Ryke’s impending torture followed by death, the CSD’s random desire to arrest him, and one last random fuck you from a bunch of giant lizards — it almost felt good to give the whole situation the finger and simply concede.

It would have been nice to