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

Why the woman as close to him as a sister had betrayed him.

“We didn’t have a lot of time to talk on Tarack’s yacht,” Bharat said. “Do you have any questions before we land?”

Jan had an awful lot of questions, actually, but he kept most to himself. “Why not remotely delete Tarack’s disc?”

Bharat nodded as if relieved Jan had asked. “We tried that. We can’t find it. Whoever took it must have it in a Faraday box, because otherwise, it would have reported home by now.”

“Doesn’t Tarack have a backup?”

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean she wants another copy floating around on Ceto. It’s not that she’s lost the information. It’s that someone might find it, and subsequently not pay her for it.”

“Fair,” Jan said. “So we need not necessarily recover the disc intact, so long as we can verify it has been destroyed.”

“I suppose.” Bharat frowned. “Do you plan to destroy it?”

“Just weighing my options.”

“Right,” Bharat said. “Speaking of options, I don’t plan to micromanage you. I wouldn’t set foot on Ceto unless I was confident you could actually find the Golden Widow.”

The wind outside was a steady whistle now. Jan opened his eyes. “So you will do as I suggest?”

“So long as your suggestions don’t include crossing Senator Tarack, I will follow your lead. Just remember we’re on a timetable. Tarack expects results. If we don’t give those to her quickly enough ...”

“She grows bored.” Jan kept smiling. “We would not want our lovely employer to become bored, yes?”

Bharat stared at the seat across from them as if it had insulted his beard. “You have no idea what she’s capable of.”

That sounded far more truthful than Jan expected, and Jan wondered then if Bharat truly was an aberration among his people: an Advanced who despised Tarack’s casual cruelty. Perhaps jobs on Phorcys were as difficult to find as jobs on Ceto. Perhaps shitty employers were shitty employers on both planets.

Still, good man or not, Bharat was a problem, and no one survived long in Jan’s line of work by ignoring problems. For now, at least, they were allies, and Jan would give his captor every sign that he was cowed, subservient, and loyal.

At least until he found someone capable of cutting that PBA out of Bharat’s head and using it to disable the torture nanos.

Eight hours later, on a surprisingly sunny and cheerful early morning, Jan Sabato stood once again on his home soil, in Duskdale, in the Sledge: where he and Fatima had grown up. It still didn’t seem real. He still couldn’t believe he was back on Ceto again, breathing shitty, dusty Ceto air again.

Over the five years he’d spent in prison, he’d given up on ever standing here again. It was only now, in a run-down slum where the average person would knife you as easily as tell you the time of day, that Jan realized how much he’d missed home. And, more importantly, how much he’d missed taverns.

Even in the Sledge, there were a few decently safe watering holes if one knew where to look. The Dustup, on the main strip. Stacy’s, just off the main strip. Even the Kicking Bronto could be fun if you tipped the bartenders and kept your hands off the waitstaff and didn’t, you know, stab anyone.

The Greasy Bowsprit, by comparison, was about as far from those establishments as any bar that hadn’t literally burned down could be. It was not clean, it was not safe, and the local CSD didn’t bother coming down here for anything less than a multiple homicide or a riot involving, at minimum, thirty people.

That made the Bowsprit precisely the place Polina Rostov — or Pollen, as she happily called herself — would feel at home, which meant soon Jan would either be crushed in a painful bear hug ... or dead. It could go either way in the Greasy Bowsprit.

Bharat looked a bit nonplussed. “So ... this is a tavern?”

Jan admitted it was a fair question. The building across the street looked more like a dilapidated military bunker. Bullet holes pockmarked what biocrete wasn’t covered by armored plates on the Bowsprit’s front wall. In front of that lay a man who was either dead or extremely passed out, slumped against a busted hydrant and covered in dried vomit.

What had probably been glass windows had been shattered and welded over long before Jan had popped out of his mother. There were actual autocars parked out front, if one could call burned-out skeletal husks that had been stripped of everything save their molecular structure cars. The sidewalk was cracked everywhere.

Still, the sign above the door was pleasant, a curvy female silhouette with both long legs wrapped around an extremely phallic wooden pole. The sign was pink and purple neon and one hundred percent holographic, which was the only reason it hadn’t been stolen, pulled down, or shot out by the Bowsprit’s clientele. Its patrons consisted almost exclusively of thieves, drug dealers, hired killers, and, on occasion, a lawyer.

“They do serve drinks,” Jan said. “Shall we?” He looked to Bharat for permission. He didn’t cross the street.

Bharat frowned so hard it furrowed his beard. “You don’t have to clear things with me every time you take a piss, Sabato. I told you, I’ll follow your lead.”

“Ah,” Jan said, allowing himself a smile. “Then please, if you would, try not to kill anyone inside.”

“Why would I ...” Bharat started, but Jan was already walking across the deserted morning street.

Jan savored the feeling of freshly laundered clothes. The first thing he’d had Bharat do after they landed was take him shopping for something that wasn’t