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

a flight suit. Jan now wore hiking boots, a pair of weathered cargo pants, a loose cotton shirt, and a brown vest with only a few obvious stains.

Bharat wore frayed jeans, another pair of hiking boots, and a short-sleeved muscle shirt that looked damn good on him. Jan had no expectation of getting laid — as Bharat had pointed out, Jan wasn’t his type — but Bharat’s shirt-straining physique might discourage the casual asshole from trying to take his stuff.

Once Jan reached the Bowsprit’s front door, he waited in silence, searching the shadowed alleys on either side for hungry pickpockets or bored murderers. Neither stirred, which wasn’t surprising for eight in the morning. There was a very good chance the entirety of the Bowsprit was still passed out from whatever shenanigans had occurred last night, which made early morning the best time to slip inside without being shot.

Jan tilted his head, just once, in the direction of the northern alley. Bharat nodded. Jan didn’t actually hear Bharat following, which suggested the man could move in a good approximation of sneakiness. Encouraging.

Once in the shadow of the alley, Jan skirted piles of broken bottles and discarded food containers, stepped right over one passed-out body, and then sidestepped another — no, that one was definitely dead — before stopping by the Bowsprit’s very locked service door. It was thick enough to stop a decent bomb.

There was no keypad beside the door — just a plated-over hole in the wall — but no man who had invested as heavily in the Bowsprit’s bottom line as Jan would ever be turned away. He beckoned for the palm-sized transmitter they’d purchased before coming here, took it from Bharat, and booted it up.

He scanned for local signals until he found the Bowsprit’s data network — appropriately titled Don’t Even Fucking Try, Asshole — and connected. A password prompt appeared.

“So,” Jan said, as his fingers hovered over the projected keyboard. “In one moment, I’ll enter my personal secret passcode. When that happens, one of two things will occur.”

“Right,” Bharat said. “Which things?”

“One. This door will pop quietly open, and the two of us will slip inside, equally as quietly.”

“Sounds good,” Bharat said. “What’s the other thing?”

“We will explode.”

Bharat watched him for a moment. “How the hell are we going to explode, Sabato?”

Jan pointed down. “Antipersonnel mines.”

Bharat’s eyes went very wide. “In the bloody biocrete?”

“Where else would one bury them?”

“And you don’t think it’d be better to try your passcode from, I don’t know, the bloody street?”

“The code must be entered in proximity to the door, here,” Jan explained, as if to a small child, “because any access attempt from farther away than that will alert the very hungover security guards inside, who will, it being far earlier than they are comfortable with, emerge and shoot us.”

Bharat glowered at him. “And you didn’t think I should wait on the street while you tried the code?”

Jan smiled agreeably. “Given your employer forced me to inject myself with torture nanos, I simply enjoy your company.”

“You know—” Bharat started, then flinched as Jan punched in a series of keypresses. “The fuck, man?”

Jan waited. Nothing exploded. After a moment, the Bowsprit’s side door clicked open.

“And we live to drink another day,” Jan said. “Inside.”

“After we get done here,” Bharat whispered, as Jan pushed the door open and slipped inside, “we are going to have a very long talk about acceptable risk threshold.”

Once inside, an audible series of metallic clicks announced the side door locking itself in multiple ways, which was just what it had done the dozens of other times Jan had slipped into the Bowsprit to avoid the authorities. No alarms, no shooting, and no blood. So far, so good, and so dark.

Jan let his eyes adjust to the gloom inside the Bowsprit, as there were no windows in the central hallway. It led straight to the kitchen (or what passed for a kitchen in a bar like the Greasy Bowsprit) and if Tiana Johnson — the Bowsprit’s battle-scarred proprietress — hadn’t remodeled in the last five years, the stairs to the right would lead up to the public sleeping quarters. They were a duo of bunk-filled rooms, which Tiana made available to anyone too drunk to get home without passing out.

Jan heard audible snoring from upstairs — a good sign — but nothing from farther into the bar, which could be good if no one was passed out in there. Unfortunately, they’d have to slip through the kitchen to get to the actual living quarters on the upper floor, where Tiana and her security staff bunked, and that should include Pollen — assuming she hadn’t quit, of course.

Jan started forward and beckoned Bharat after him.

Still, Jan couldn’t imagine Polina Rostov sleeping anywhere but this shithole. Tiana had raised Pollen from a pup after her parents cashed in their chips in a mine collapse, and the only thing more legendary than Pollen’s loyalty to those she loved was her brutality toward those who crossed them. After a boastful gangster made the mistake of battering Tiana’s niece, Jan had watched Pollen pop the man’s eyes out by squeezing his face rather hard ... and that had been one of her nicer murders.

They were almost to the closed kitchen doors when a door slammed loudly in the hallway perpendicular to theirs. Jan slapped himself up against the left wall and found Bharat had mirrored his motion as smoothly as if they’d rehearsed, which was another encouraging sign. Bharat seemed like he’d be useful in a brawl, assuming whatever happened if they ran into someone turned into a brawl and not, instead, attempted murder.

Heavy, unconcerned footsteps creaked in the hallway, and Jan reflexively checked his weapons. Bharat had bought him a brace of slim throwing knives (currently holstered in a