“That’s Vladimir,” I say. “Eastern European, I think.”
“I know who he is,” Scarlett says.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole. What bounties? It’s just me and my warthen, Cricket, on this ship.”
There’s a pause in the communications. My brain goes to where Vlad’s brain is going. Three signatures on O’Shea’s ship when he arrived, and now only two. Plus, I have the advantage of already knowing the answer. I’m standing beside the answer.
“Shit,” Scarlett says. “You sent them all the scans?”
“I had to,” I say.
“Yeah, but of their ships as well?”
I shrug. I can almost hear the rock hanging around my neck say: Dumbass.
“I’m looking at the scans right now,” O’Shea radios to Vlad. “This don’t make no sense.”
“Of course it does, you spawn of a molested sow. You brought her here.”
“Fuck,” Scarlett says. She fishes into her bag.
“Yeah, let’s read a paperback to them,” I say. I can already see the two of us in jail together. Unless she wants to say she had a blaster on me the entire time. She would do that for me. No point in both of us going to prison.
Scarlett pulls something out of her bag. “I really don’t want to do this, but ending the war is worth more lives than have ever been spilled.”
I see what’s in her hand. It’s a remote detonator. She already has the little clear guard flipped up to expose the silver switch.
“What’re you doing?” I ask.
She steps toward the porthole and peers out at the asteroid field. Her body has gone tense. Her shoulders are riding up around her neck. I step toward her, reach out my one good hand.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I hear a faint click. Out in the debris field, an orange cloud blooms like a flower on high-speed film.
“What did you do?”
I think of that animal in its cage. I think of the way it looked at me, water streaming from its jowls. It’s strange that I think of the animal before I think of O’Shea. Maybe it’s the cage. Maybe I have some affinity for helpless things.
“Vlad was not a good guy,” Scarlett says. “He’s with the mob. Has done horrible things to decent people.”
“Vlad?” I ask. “I thought you came here with O’Shea.”
Scarlett crosses the room and stares at one of my screens. “I did. But I only had one bomb. And I kinda like Mitch. I mean, he’s a dick, and he’s dumb as a sack of sand, but he’s not evil.”
“What about the kid?” I ask, thinking of the boy who looked at me through his bangs. “What about Vlad’s bounty?”
Scarlett turns and looks at me. I can tell she never saw the boy. Probably placed the bomb on the ceiling of Vlad’s airlock, right inside the door while we were in the cockpit. It’s what I would’ve done. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask me about the kid, just swallows this information as she turns back to the monitors.
“Now where’s that other ship?” she asks. “And Mitch is going to be on his way. We’ll have to get ready for that.”
“Beacon 23, Sanity’s Edge. Come in.”
“Shit,” I say. “I’ve got to get that.” I cross over to the HF. Scarlett grabs the mic before I can and squeezes the transmit button to talk to O’Shea. She must’ve already considered the ruse of commandeering the beacon and saving my ass.
“You’ve got two minutes to spin up your drive and scoot,” she says. “In two minutes, I blow your ship.” Narrowing her eyes, she stares out a porthole. “And don’t come any closer, asshole.”
I turn and follow her gaze; I see the bounty hunter’s ship heading our direction.
“Bullshit,” O’Shea says. “You woulda already done it.”
“I’ll kill this beacon operator, then.” She lifts an eyebrow at me. Smiles.
“Fifty million in cold hard cash,” O’Shea says. “I’ll shoot him for you.”
“Motherfucker,” I say. Scarlett cradles the mic. Is obviously thinking. “That blaster of yours is all we got,” I tell her. “There aren’t any weapons here. There are two of them out there. And my lifeboat can’t go hyper.”
“Can we lock them out?” she asks.
“They’ve got warrants. I know how to override the airlocks to open them in an emergency, but no way to keep them closed, not if they have marshal IDs. I mean, if I had a few hours to really dig into it I could figure something out.”
“Then we get the jump on them,” she says. “We get down there and wait.”
I stare at the radio. O’Shea hasn’t said a thing since offering to shoot me dead. I think about that animal on his boat, did he say it was a warthen? He could probably turn that thing loose on us and just smoke a cigar and wait for the screaming to stop. I pull out the bounty sheet and unfold it. Study the fine print. “Fifteen mil just for locating you,” I say. “He doesn’t even have to come in here. He’ll just call it in and wait for the cavalry. You shouldn’t have come for me. What were you thinking?”
Scarlett ignores this last bit. Instead she says, “I know Mitch. For an extra thirty-five mil, he’s coming in. We should get down there.”
She heads toward the ladder. I feel like pointing out that it might take him an extra fifteen minutes to dock. But I see out the porthole that he’s hauling ass our way. And we’ve got fifty-six rungs between us and the lock collars. Before I hurry after Scarlett, I de-energize the two free collars. He should be able to use his credentials for an override, but it’ll take a few moments before he figures out he needs to.
Scarlett is down the first ladder and on to the second before I even get started. I barely feel my sprained ankle thanks to the rush of adrenaline, but the arm is still useless. I go down gingerly, remembering the time I slipped off a rung, caught my chin on the ladder, and nearly bit clear through my tongue. In my living quarters, I grab a blanket and a shirt and throw them down the next ladder. More rungs. I can feel O’Shea getting close. I can hear Scarlett below, calling for me to hurry. In the next module, I grab a roll of duct tape from where I was working on my project earlier that day. Was it just that day? Seems like forever ago. Time flies with company. I toss the blanket, shirt, and tape down the last ladder and start my last descent.
“What’s this?” Scarlett calls out, as the items rain down.
“Didn’t you see that thing on his ship? This is so it doesn’t chew us in half.” I reach the bottom of the ladder, grab the shirt, and try wrapping it around my forearm with my teeth. Scarlett sees what I’m after and does it for me, holstering the blaster. She uses the duct tape to secure the wrap, tearing the tape with her teeth. It’s strange, but I want to kiss her right then. Maybe just in case anything happens.
“I was thinking maybe we could bag it with the blanket,” I say. “If I was him, I’d send it through the door first. Try and scare us shitless.”
There’s a bang against the beacon. Fuck. He’s already here. I hear a screech and a scrape as he tries to get a lock. But without the electromagnets engaged, there’s no grab. It’s taking longer for him to figure that out than I thought.
“You take the blaster,” Scarlett says, pushing the pistol into my left hand. “I’ve got two hands for the blanket. Besides, you’re a better shot.”
“Not with this hand, I’m not.”
But she’s already got the blanket and is positioning herself beside airlock Bravo, which is where the scraping seems to be emanating from. I glance over at my walk suit, wishing I had time to put it on. I feel unprotected. Like a raw and open wound. And then I hear the collar buzz as O’Shea figures out he needs the override. I also see that I’m a criminal now. Without even considering the alternative, I’m sitting here, ready to blast away at a bounty hunter on legal marshal business. There’s a bounty sheet tucked in my waistband. It’s for a girl I had sex with a few times amid the fury of war, someone who just happened to be in my squad for half a tour, who is obviously batshit crazy, and who has probably done a lot of illegal stuff, like hacking into navy databases and tracking me down. And I’m just throwing my life and my career away for her? What the hell am I doing?