Seduction is always about composure.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to do your upper body next,” my guard says apologetically. I wink at him.
“Not a problem, though I’m not sure where I’d be hiding anything. With this dress, I might as well be naked.”
He slips behind me, cheeks blushing, and I want to slap my forehead. Why is it that every guy thinks a woman flirting means he’s going to get laid? This underling knows he’s only here to keep his boss safe, yet in his mind, he’s imagining us fucking like wild animals. It’d be depressing if it wasn’t so useful. I glance over at Wind, who lets her lip drift slightly upward in our prearranged signal. Step one complete.
The guard finishes patting me down and turns to the autocab, heading for Slend, who’s busy pulling duffel bags out of the trunk. The other guard finishes with Wind and joins him.
“We’re going to get on board if you don’t mind,” I call out, and they nod absentmindedly, furrowing their brows at the bags. Wind and I set off at a quick walk for the stairs.
“What are these for?” I hear from behind, one of the guards poking at a bag. Slend steps closer to him.
“Tools. To party.”
Our heels click up the stairs in staccato pulses.
“Okay, well we’ll need to take a look inside. That’s a lot of tools.”
“Lot of party. Unload first.”
The voices fade away, cut off by the shuttle’s interior. An open cockpit door to our left reveals a single pilot going through his preflight checklist, hands touching invisible switches and comparing virtual readouts. To the right, a luxurious tube, three plush seats and a couch in close proximity to each other, roof not quite low enough to make me duck. An olive-skinned man clearly used to the luxuries his status affords him lounges on the couch, white robes spilling to either side, bright blue lenses covering his eyes, his expression bored and indolent—likely an Industan petroboy looking to have a good time on daddy’s dime. Another guard sits across from him, hapgloved fingers busy with something only he can see, omnipresent pistol bulge under his unbuttoned coat. I caress my right hand across the back of his neck as I pass, coming to a halt in front of the swarthy man. He extends his hand, a languid gesture.
I take it, bending my head as if to kiss his fingers, catching Wind standing behind me in bare feet, her heels kicked off to the side. Good. Everyone’s in position. I tap out a message to the others with my free hand.
<<Go.>>
Several things happen at once. The guard convulses, eyes rolling wildly, a cornucopia of drugs boiling into his bloodstream from the dermal patch I placed on his neck, triggered by Johnny’s remote command. In my glasses, I see one of the guards outside doing the same, slumped against the autocab, while Slend knocks out the other, his hand just barely clearing his jacket before her fist drives him unconscious, not waiting for the drugs to finish kicking in. Wind dashes into the cockpit, looping her fluttering lengths of dress around the pilot’s mouth and throat, choking him into insensibility, and I jerk the petroboy forward, sliding my arm around his neck and bracing it against my other arm, forcing his head to the side, his glasses seeing nothing but the couch. I can feel his pulse jumping beneath my forearm, his panicky breaths hot and scratchy, and then I squeeze until he goes limp, one slippered foot slightly twitching, pulse now weak and thready. Anyone monitoring his biosigns probably thinks he just had the blowjob of his life. I carefully remove his glasses and tuck them into his robes, making sure not to reveal the other guard or myself.
<<Clear.>>
Wind emerges from the cockpit, followed by the sounds of a dragging body.
<<Clear.>>
I kick off my heels and heave the petroboy to the entrance, stacking him on top of the pilot. Below, Slend finishes putting the second guard into the autocab and hustles over with two of the duffel bags and a backpack. She throws the duffels into the cabin, hands me the backpack, and then grabs the last guard in a fireman’s carry, taking him back to the autocab. Wind pushes past me and grabs the petroboy by the feet, dragging him down the stairs, giggling as his head thumps on each step. He’s going to wake up with one hell of a headache, that’s for sure.
I move into the cockpit, pulling out the small box Jase put together in his workshop.
<<Jase, you getting my feed?>>
<<Clear as Glassbridge. Look underneath the central console, there should be a panel there you can pry out.>>
A section of the cockpit highlights red in my vision, and I duck down. Sure enough, there’s a small panel with several screws holding it shut. I grab a multitool from the backpack and seconds later it’s open, revealing a tangled mass of colored wires. In Johnny’s feed I can see Wind and Slend loading the pilot into the autocab and returning with the last piece of gear, a large and sturdy case about the size of a coffin.
<<Okay, now what?>>
<<Strip these three wires and hook them into the appropriate ports.>>
Three of the wires start glowing—orange, blue, and yellow—along with three slots on the box. Three snips of the multitool later, Jase’s box is hooked into the shuttle. An amber light appears on its surface, then turns a blinking green.
<<I’m in. You’re done here, Ash. Just leave the box somewhere in the console.>>
I shove the small rectangle in among the rest of the wires, then stand up to join Wind and Slend, who are busy changing into combat gear—compression bodysuits first, followed by tactical harnesses, then ballistic panels for body, legs, and arms, tacboots for their feet. I shimmy out of my dress and race to catch up. We should have some time before anyone realizes something’s wrong, but there’s no reason to waste it.
<<I’m through the firewalls. Isolating navigation protocols. Got it. Rewriting destination. Done. Locking out remote takeover. Done. Ready when you are.>>
A simple-looking red button appears in my glasses. I ignore it for now and finish strapping the last piece of ballistic armor to my shin, then move over to the coffin-sized crate. Wind and Slend are already hauling out pieces of the high-altitude suits: bulky gauntlets, helmets, and boots trailing thin fabric sleeves, a stiff backplated torso with circular connection seals at the hips, shoulders, and neck. The overall impression is of an old deep sea diving suit. We help each other with the connections, then pull out three metal tanks and hook them up to the suit fronts, threading the nozzle connection into the port at the bottom of each helmet. Air hisses into my ears, and the suit slowly puffs out, stopping at one atmosphere. A countdown appears on the inside of the helmet—ninety minutes before tank failure. The final piece is a parachute knapsack screwed into the backplate. I can already feel the sweat starting to drip down my skin.
<<Everything okay, Ash?>>
<<Almost done. Just need to load the gear.>>
We toss the duffels containing our weapons into the crate with clumsy suited hands, then reattach the lid. Slend hits a code on the control panel—assuming no malfunctions, a web of restraining harnesses will keep the contents from moving more than a centimeter or two in any direction. Another code pops out three tethers with hooks on the end, which we quickly lash around the seat stanchions and winch tight. No sense in having a hundred-kilogram pinball bouncing through the cabin on takeoff. Wind and Slend each take a seat, awkwardly wrapping restraining belts around their bulky forms. I waddle up to the cockpit and wedge myself into the pilot’s chair, the last rays of the setting sun lancing through the front window.