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

Bharat’s suspicions were confirmed when a big shadow stumbled out of the dust, the woman on her shoulder coughing as furiously as Bharat. Fatima was awake! Pollen was coughing too and, also, struggling to stop Fatima from clawing off her face.

Even as Bharat moved to help, Fatima slammed the side of her palm into Pollen’s gut. Pollen rolled Fatima off her shoulder like a discarded rug. Fatima slammed into the floor and scrambled away. She then stood, trembling, with fists raised.

“GO NOW!” Marquis’s booming voice ended the standoff before it could start again. “DOWN THE STAIRS AND ON TO ADVENTURE!” His headlamp glittered off the narrow walls, casting a massive shadow from Pollen’s form. “WE MUST SAVE JAN SABATO!”

Bharat tapped Fatima’s shoulder. She glanced at him, eyes watery and furious, but didn’t punch him in the face. Bharat pointed behind himself and mouthed, “Help Jan.”

Fatima pushed past him. Pollen stormed after her, and Bharat slammed his back against the wall to avoid being trampled. Marquis strode from the cloud of dust and smoke, then motioned grandly with one hand.

Bharat hurried after Pollen, still coughing. The next time Marquis decided to blow up a wall in a small enclosed space, Bharat was going to be well away from it. At least a kilometer.

They descended eight flights of metal stairs, leaving the dust and smoke behind. Bharat’s eyes still burned when they reached the bottom of the stairwell. He caught a hint of Fatima’s shadow, followed by Pollen’s larger shadow, striding toward what looked like a fenced-off deck against a sea of darkness.

Then Marquis and his blazing headlamp finished descending, and Bharat’s shadow zoomed across the metal deck to terminate at a fence guarding a huge tunnel. Bands of bluish tile glistening on its curved walls. Bharat advanced quickly, hoping to stave off yet another confrontation between, well, anyone.

Soon all four of them stood at the guardrail, looking down onto an open flat section about a meter below. A large rail split the surface, intended to guide the magnetic levitation train that gave this tunnel its name. There was no one else in sight, and this maintenance alcove looked abandoned.

Pollen turned to face Marquis. “Where’s Jan?” Bharat could hear her voice now, but it remained muffled. He was probably going to get tinnitus from that explosion.

“On his way,” Marquis said.

“And how do you know that?”

Marquis placed hands on hips, proudly. “I placed a tracker on him outside the Bowsprit!”

At the looks everyone then gave him, he raised both hands.

“I wished only to ensure Jan’s safety! He will be along in ...” Marquis paused. “Six minutes and forty-two seconds!”

“So, Pollen.” Fatima glared as she rubbed her purpled neck. “I did not betray Jan.”

“Jan says you did.”

“And he truly believes that,” Fatima said, with a heavy sigh. “But that’s not my fault. It’s Mastermind’s.”

Pollen glanced at Marquis, then at Bharat. Then back at Fatima. “Who?”

“A ruthless hacker with eyes and ears everywhere.” Fatima pointed up. “It was Mastermind who sent Jan to orbit, after he stole our Mercy Plaza score, and he made me promise never to tell a soul. He warned me that if I revealed anything about what he did to us, he’d murder your families and your pets.”

Marquis gasped. “He threatened innocent animals?”

“Say this again,” Pollen said. “Make it make sense.”

“I just did, you thick-headed bronto!” Fatima glared up at Pollen. “I left you behind to keep you safe. I needed time to slip off Mastermind’s surveillance, discover where the Supremacy had taken Jan, and find a way to free him.”

“Yet Jan did not go free.”

“And yet I have been trying! By the time I knew I’d evaded Mastermind’s listening devices, Jan was already in orbit.”

“The Supremacy seized Jan from Ceto Security Division when the arrest warrant came down,” Bharat added. “They wanted to make an example of the leader of the gang who embarrassed them. You did make off with four trucks full of regeneration drugs.”

“So why does Jan say you betrayed him?” Pollen asked.

“Mastermind likely spoofed a text to Jan, too, from me,” Fatima said, “which is why he showed up to meet me at a hangar in Star’s Landing. I thought he’d called me to warn me about a traitor in our crew. He probably thought the same about me.”

“What traitor?” Pollen demanded. “We have no traitors!”

“That is precisely what I said! I accepted the meeting to talk Jan out of his delusion, but I fell into the same trap. CSD snatched me up the moment I arrived, and then an Advanced officer in a black uniform arrived and took over from there.”

“Captain Karus Varik,” Bharat added. “At the time, he worked for Supremacy President Peter Mullen. This was before Argus Tostow took power and the Supremacy returned Ceto to—”

“Do not care.” Pollen showed Bharat a raised palm, but kept her eyes on Fatima. “You think to tell me the Supremacy took Jan, but did not take you? This is bullshit.”

“They did not take me because the CSD took me! I don’t know why the Supremacy seized Jan! Perhaps Mastermind had some particular animosity toward him. I don’t know!”

“Three minutes,” Marquis intoned. “Jan and the others are moving at an impressive velocity, so we must assume they have obtained a vehicle. I shall flag them down as they arrive!”

Fatima waved him off. “Yes, do that.”

“Continue your discussion!” Marquis boomed. “You are making wonderful progress!” He leapt over the guardrail and landed gracefully on the tracks, turning his headlamp on the tunnel. It left the platform in near dusk.

“So Jan thought, all this time, you betrayed him.” Pollen looked marginally less murderous.