Fool Me Once (Privateer Tales) Read online

  “I’ll take her,” the mostly silent older one offered. He hadn’t said more than five words the entire time we’d been there.

  “They’re not supposed to be on the ship.”

  “It’s not a problem. I think I can watch one little girl.” His leer wasn’t overt but I caught it.

  “Fine. Let’s get this done already,” Jep complained.

  Tali and the older guard walked over to a ladder leading to a ceiling hatch. She scrambled up in front of him, opened the hatch and slithered through. I walked over to the built-in ladder and watched them move through the ceiling.

  I heard Tali say, “Geez, it stinks in here. You guys have some rotten food?”

  The guard said something I didn’t quite catch.

  Jep and I waited in silence for better than five minutes.

  “What’s taking them so long?” He asked.

  Tali’s legs came through the ceiling as she lowered herself down the ladder.

  “There they are,” I said cheerfully. “Time to finish up.” I picked up the tablet and walked over to the waiting robot.

  Jep looked at Tali’s descending figure and hesitated, but his impatience got the better of him. He followed me to check off the container.

  Tali dropped him with a quick punch to the kidneys. He wasn’t unconscious but he was in too much pain to do anything but fall to his knees.

  “Shut the door,” Tali instructed calmly.

  I found the panel and depressed it. It didn’t do anything. “Probably need a crew member.”

  Tali pulled Jep to his feet by brutally twisting his arm up behind his back, bringing it up just under the back of his skull. She shoved him to the bay door and placed his hand on the panel. The door lowered, leaving us in the low light of the closed cargo hold.

  “There are pens in the fifth hold,” she said.

  “Pens. Like animal pens?” Then it hit me. I sprinted for the ladder and climbed. I was breathing hard when I finally pulled up through the ceiling. I pulled the nano-blade out and extended it to full length. The stench was overwhelming, a smell I immediately recognized. I had lived in that stench, it was part of me. I felt sick.

  I rushed around a wall of containers and saw the pens. There were more than twenty stacked along opposite sides of the hold. I counted eight girls. The youngest appeared to be less than ten. The bile rose in my throat and I wanted to hurt someone. I ran to the first pen and instinctively put my hand in. The girl reached for me. I tried to open the door, but the lock panel wasn’t budging.

  “Don’t touch that!” Tali yelled from across the hold. I turned and saw Jep stumble before her.

  I moved between the pens, saying Jenny’s name to each of the inhabitants. I already knew she wasn’t here. I had gotten a good enough look at them.

  “Take cover!” Tali exclaimed.

  I spun around to blaster fire. Tali had positioned herself behind Jep and was dragging him backwards. She was firing at the small corridor between the stacks of containers that separated the back of the hold and the section we were in with the girls.

  “Open the door!”

  “Here. Cover me!” She threw a blaster to me. It slid along the floor, not far from my reach. I scooped it up and fired randomly at the containers.

  Return fire lanced in my direction. It wasn’t well aimed, but I could die just the same. I dove to the ground and crawled behind a crate. Blaster fire blew the crate apart and I felt something enter my shoulder. It spurred me on and I ran for new cover. I refused to go in the direction of the girls in the pens. I fired wildly, still not finding a good target.

  The hold door started rising and made it a meter before stopping.

  “All the way, Tali!” I yelled.

  “It stopped. Someone is overriding it.”

  Open urgent comm Bit Coffman.

  “Bit, help. We need you now!”

  Bit’s high voice came over, “Who is this?”

  “I’m with Tali. We met two days ago. Can you forward my vid recording?”

  “Who? Sure, no problem.”

  “Do it now! We’re being fired on. Forward it to the police. They have slaves on board!”

  “Oh crap! Okay. Wait. Don’t make me nervous.”

  I looked around so that I captured the girls in the pens. The door of the hold started lowering.

  “Get out, Lena!” Tali yelled. “It’s closing!”

  “Not without them.”

  The gunfire stopped.

  “Where’d they go?”

  The hold door closed completely.

  “They have us trapped,” Tali explained. “They’re going to space us all. You should have gotten out.”

  “Right. How about you, Jep? They going to space you too?”

  Jep was holding his arm gingerly. I suspected Tali had dislocated it, given the angle it was hanging. “Frak you! I knew there was something off about you.”

  “Look, dumbass, we’re all going to die in twenty minutes if we don't come up with something. If you don’t think they’ll space you, you’re crazy.”

  He thought about that for a moment. “You’ve killed us all. You crazy assholes!”

  “Any escape pods on the cargo levels?” Tali asked.

  “For cargo? No.” Jep was sullen.

  “Try the door again. They can’t take off with an open door.”

  Jep tried the panel but it flashed red.

  “Open the cages then. We need to get the girls out.” I said

  “Focus on something useful,” Jep retorted.

  I leveled my blaster at him. “That’s your one chance. Open the cages or I’ll waste you.”

  Jep grumbled and opened them. The ship vibrated as the engines fired up.

  “Try the hatch. See if we can get out.”

  The ship started lifting and Tali scrambled up the ladder. She tried the hatch but it was closed tight. I looked back, the girls were huddled together. I wasn’t sure if we had saved them from a worse fate. I very well could have killed us all. They deserved better. I had failed them.

  Tali slid down and grabbed the blaster from me. At first I thought she was going to shoot Jep out of frustration, but she was more focused than that. She took aim on the panel next to the hatch and opened fire. She fired constantly, peeling back layers of steel. We continued to lift.

  We heard a new sound. Heavy blaster fire from outside and the ship started dropping back down.

  “On the ground, Jep,” Tali said. “Get the girls behind the crates. They might still try to come down and clean up.”

  I pulled the clump of girls over to a more defensible position and held my nano-blade in front of us defensively. I would die before I allowed anyone to get to these girls, Jenny or not.

  The ship settled on the ground with a final bump.

  We waited an hour before the hold door opened. I repositioned myself so I was between the door and the girls. The youngest, whose name ironically was Grace, held my hand behind my back.

  We heard a commanding voice. “This is Puskar Police, everyone on the ground. Hands behind your heads.”

  I looked to Tali. She punched Jep in the kidneys again and he fell in a heap. She gave me a sly smile and then kneeled down, placing her hands behind her head. I did the same.

  FINALE

  “Natalia Liszt! I shoulda known you were involved in this.” Half a dozen police in black armored suits entered the cargo bay in a synchronized dance. Long-barreled blasters were pulled snugly against their cheeks and tight against their shoulders. The speaker was a lanky man, not armored, but wearing jeans and a clean white short-sleeved shirt with pockets on both sides. He was tanned and very muscular.

  “Polk. You guys sure got here fast,” Tali replied. I wasn’t sure if she was serious or not. We had been on the ground for better than an hour, cooped up and wondering what was going on.

  Polk must not have been clear on what she meant either.

  “Seriously? It’s not like we didn’t have seven other decks to clear.”


  Tali seemed to have a knack for pushing buttons.

  “Easy big fella,” she said. “Any chance we can stand up? This level is clear and you’re frightening the girls.”

  “Lieutenant, take the stiff on the ground into custody and clear the rest of this level.”

  Wordlessly, the armored team spread out and worked their way around the containers. One of them broke off from the team and pulled Jep’s arms behind his back. Jep howled in pain as his previously dislocated shoulder was wrenched around. White zip ties were pulled onto his wrists.

  “Okay Liszt, you can get up.” Polk walked over to us. He wore a brown belt around his waist with a holster hung on it. A white handled blaster pistol sat in it comfortably.

  “My sister,” I said as he approached. “Jennifer. Did you find her?”

  He looked appraisingly at me. “Come again?”

  “My sister, she was here. Did you find her?”

  “Don’t think so, ma’am. Not unless she was regular crew. We have two women in custody. One really old and one my age.”

  “No. She’s only sixteen.”

  “Well. You’ll need to come down to the station and we’ll get all this sorted out.”

  “They took her,” a voice behind me said.

  I turned around to find the littlest girl in the group had stepped forward. Her big brown eyes were smudged with tears and her clothes were filthy. She let go of the hand of an older girl and moved toward me. My heart broke seeing her in such poor condition. I dropped to my knees and held my arms out. She climbed into my arms.

  “What is it, Grace? Do you know what happened to Jenny?”

  “They took her.”

  “Do you remember when they took her, sweetie?”

  “Not really. It’s so dark.”

  “Were you on the ground when they took her?”

  “Yes.”

  Bingo! Jenny was on Puskar Stellar.

  “Thank you, you’ve been very brave.”

  “Do I get to go home now?”

  “We’ll get you home, kiddo.” Polk had walked up behind me. His previously commanding voice was soft.

  I stood up and turned to him. “I want to help.”

  “I get that, but it’s not up to me. I’ll be doing the investigation, but Family Services will ultimately be responsible for their disposition. Believe me, we’ll do everything we can. When we're finished, I can put you in touch with the case worker. Before that, I have some questions that need answers.”

  “Can I at least stay here with them until Family Services arrive?”

  “They’re already here. Agent Pilzner caught their case and he knows his way around the block on reintegration.” I just stared at him. He made it sound so normal - almost sterile. I could feel my face flush.

  “Hey, look,” His voice was soft again, no longer a cop giving instructions. “I don’t mean anything by it.”

  A chubby man broke in. “Detective Polk. I see you’re now the one in need of a rescue.” The man was almost completely bald and had more than one chin. Where Polk was chiseled and clean, Agent Pilzner was soft and rumpled. He gave a warm smile and held his hand out. I had no option but to shake it.

  “Terrible thing these girls are going through. We’d love to have your help. It’d do the girls some good to see you once they get cleaned up. Help bring some closure. Would that work?”

  “How’d you know?” I asked. He hadn’t been anywhere near Polk and me when the conversation started.

  “What, that you wanted to get into it with Detective Polk? It’s human nature, Miss …”

  “Dontal. Celina Dontal.”

  “You’re being protective. It’s a basic instinct. Good people want to protect the innocent. Maybe you could introduce me to your new friends? It would go a long way to transferring some of that trust you’ve established.”

  I looked guiltily at Polk. He shook his head at me and chuckled. We both knew we were being handled by a pro and I, for one, appreciated it.

  Pilzner got right to business and approached the girls. His team spread out, wrapped them in soft blankets, and sheltered them from the active investigation. They were slowly extricated from the scene with a minimum of fuss.

  Polk was the only member of his team left in the hold and with all of the girls gone and loaded onto a transport, he waved Tali and me over.

  “What in the heck were you doing, Liszt? Do you have a death wish? You should have called us in on this.”

  “It all happened too quickly,” Tali replied.

  “Bullshit. You could have dialed us in.”

  “Okay. You’re right. I wasn’t expecting this to go south, but I have to admit I had a feeling about it. Next time, I’ll give you a heads up.”

  “Too easy. What’re you angling for?”

  If Tali didn’t have Polk’s full attention before, she certainly did now.

  “You wound me.”

  “Out with it.”

  “There’s a missing girl.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s why we’re here. We had a tip that another girl was on the ship.”

  “The girl you mentioned earlier? What kind of tip? Frak Tali, you have to give us this information when you get it. This is what we do!”

  “Seriously Steve, we got the information at lunch and the ship landed an hour later. We didn’t have time.”

  “I don’t suppose that information came from Berta Coffman?”

  “Bit.”

  “Bit?”

  “Berta goes by Bit, and yes, we got the information from her. She’s creative but very rarely wrong.”

  “Yeah. You can add persuasive to that list. She rang every comm at SWAT and forwarded the video of the slave pens. She could go to jail for hijacking secure comms like that.”

  “That gonna be a problem?” Tali asked.

  “No. Witnessing a crime in progress like that with young girls, the biggest problem we had was stopping the entire department from coming. So what about this other girl?”

  “The girl we’re looking for is Celina’s younger sister. She was on the ship when it landed.”

  “Celina? As in …” Polk looked at me and then back at Tali. “Why is it always so hard when you’re involved, Liszt? So why are you telling me this now?”

  “You have trust issues, Polk.”

  “Agreed.”

  “We need to find her. I’m guessing they had someplace for her to go if they took her off right away. They must have had a buyer lined up.”

  My veins turned to ice and my heart hammered in my chest. I was about to be sick.

  “I know who.”

  Polk and Tali both turned to me at the same time and asked, “Who?”

  “Alexander Boyarov. He’s not dead. It’s him. I know it. He said he’d get to her first.”

  “Can’t be,” Tali replied.

  “How sure are you?” I asked.

  “Who’s Boyarov?” Polk interrupted.

  “Wait.” Tali held her hand up to Polk.

  Open priority comm Jordy Keltie.

  “Hey, I’m with Polk. Remember the other night, you cleaned up after dinner. What’d you run into?”

  I couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation.

  “You sure? Okay, thanks.”

  “It might be Boyarov,” Tali replied.

  “Cleaned up after dinner? Do I want to know? Who’s Boyarov?” Polk asked.

  “You most definitely don’t want to know and it’s a long story.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Lena, it’s really your story to tell.” Tali looked at me.

  I gave it to him straight. Everything from my parent’s deaths to being taken prisoner on the Red Houzi base.

  “I wish that was the first time I’d heard a story like that, Celina. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” Polk’s eyes were soft and glistened. “We can launch a city-wide Trojan search. Do you have any video?”

  “Yes,” Tali answered. “Bit can forwar
d it to you.”

  “What’s a Trojan search?” I asked.

  “We have the capability to require all AI’s in the city to do facial matching for the next forty eight hours as long as those AI’s are not inside a building. We also scan all satellite and building vids. We aren’t allowed to look for criminals with all that, but we can look for missing children. She shows her face for more than three seconds outside or through a window and we’ll drop a tactical squad on her location in less than five minutes. Give me a sec to set it up.”

  Polk stepped away from us to arrange for the search.

  “What do you want to do, Lena?” Tali asked.

  “I have to talk to Alexander. I’ll trade myself for her.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “It has to. He’ll kill her. I have money, Tali. At least I have a way to get money. I have eight crates of high value property, has to be worth at least fifty or sixty thousand. You could get Jenny set up with that money. Please. You have to help me.”

  “He’ll kill you both.”

  “She’ll die without me.”

  “I get that.”

  Polk rejoined us so we had to cut off the conversation.

  “The search will be up within a few minutes,” he said.

  “Let us come by tomorrow for a statement?” Tali asked.

  “Anyone else, Liszt, I’d say no. Don’t make me regret it.”

  “You’re the best, Polk.”

  “If we get anything from the Trojan, Ms. Dontal, we’ll be in contact.”

  I hoped I was wrong about how this was going to play out, but knew I wasn’t. “Thank you, Detective Polk.”

  I was surprised by the sheer number of police vehicles that surrounded Domiva’s Grace. Reporter drone cameras buzzed like angry birds and I started getting pings asking for permission to use my face on news feeds. I told my AI to turn them all down.

  “Just keep your head down. Anyone asks, we got trapped in a closet and didn’t see anything,” Tali said.

  We took her bike back to Kathryne’s boutique.