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  I rub the purple scar on my temple and wonder if it’s true. Is Vienne waiting for me? Does she really like scars? “Hope Rosa Lynn can manage that crate alone.”

  “Would you like me to calculate the probability of a successful completion of her plan?” Mimi asks.

  “You’re programmed to do that?”

  “My initial programming allowed for the calculations of variables to indicate the success rate of military tactics,” Mimi says. “It is a simple permutation to change the formula to calculate non-military variables.”

  “Righteous,” I say. “Sure, go ahead. Let me know when you’re done.”

  “The calculation is already complete. The entity known as Rosa Lynn Malinche has a ninety-four percent chance of successfully completing her plan.”

  “That was fast.”

  “I previously calculated the variables, in anticipation of your agreement.”

  “So you guessed that I’d agree?”

  “I am incapable of guessing,” she says. “I store information as data and then perform calculations based on the data at hand. In time, I will be able to forecast your responses with a high success rate.”

  “You’re saying that you’ll be able to read my mind?”

  Mimi says, “By any definition, I am your mind.”

  “What?”

  Bing.

  The door opens.

  “Wait one carking min—” I say, then stop short.

  Where there was one clerk, there are now three, all of them unconscious, bound hand and foot with zip ties and gagged. Vienne stands with one foot on their hindquarters, armalite resting on her hip.

  I whistle. “You’ve added to your collection.”

  “Two more workers showed up,” Vienne says. “And you took longer than ten minutes.”

  “Ros—Malinche was liberating her lab equipment.” I check the clerks’ pulses. They are alive. Lucky for them. Vienne isn’t known for being merciful.

  “It is unnecessary for you to examine their heart rates,” Mimi says. “I can monitor the vital signs of any organic entity within the immediate proximity.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Affirmative, Cowboy,” she says. “By using the nanobots to control the telemetry functions in your symbiarmor.”

  “And Rosa Lynn thought she had the best toys,” I say. “While you’re at it, can you do something about these hunger pangs? My stomach is gnawing on me like an industrial ripsaw.”

  “Negative,” Mimi says. “Your body needs nourishment. Quelling your desire for food will have a deleterious effect on your system function. The hunger will just have to gnaw at you.”

  “Ahem.” Vienne clears her throat. “Before I took the last clerk out, he set off a silent alarm. The Rangers will be here really, really soon. As in, less than one minute soon.”

  “Lead on, MacDuff,” I say, and bow.

  “More precisely,” Mimi says. “The line is ‘Lay on, MacDuff.’”

  “Lay off my duff,” I say, and take off after Vienne.

  She runs to the dock and jumps down. “Nice armor, by the way,” Vienne says. “You look very pretty.”

  Pretty? Not handsome? Crud. “You know,” I say to Vienne when we reach the deliver the lorry, “busting me out and then breaking into a CorpCom facility, those are felonies. You’re going to be a fugitive like me.”

  “I’m a Regulator. I follow the Tenets, not stupid CorpCom laws.” She tosses me the keys. “Let’s go. There’s a long drive ahead, and our client will be getting antsy.”

  I catch the keys. “You’re letting me drive?”

  “There’ll be Rangers patrolling the highway,” she says. “A jackrabbit like me will attract too much attention.”

  I start the engine and back up. Then hit the brakes. “Wait a minute. If you’re the jackrabbit, what’s that make me, the turtle?”

  “If the combat boot fits . . .”

  “To hell with that. I’m nobody’s carking turtle.”

  “Turtle,” she says. “It fits you.”

  “How about you call me by my name?”

  “Stringfellow? Not a good idea, all things considered.”

  “No, by that name Mimi gave me—Durango.”

  She shakes her head. “You never struck me as a Durango.”

  I start forward and sideswipe the dock as I muscle the steering wheel through the turn. The lorry lurches forward, sputters, and then dies, as the sound of sirens begins to fill the air.

  “Yeah,” she says, smirking as I restart the engine, “you’re definitely more turtle than cowboy.”

  Chapter 2

  Ares Pub

  Jaisalmer District, New Eden

  ANNOS MARTIS 238. 2. 3. 13:18

  The sun has set and risen again by the time Vienne and I reach our destination, the old town area of Jaisalmer District in New Eden. There are more dangerous and disgusting places than this on Mars, but they all are surrounded by razor wire and security fences.

  We dump the Noriker near a Ranger station and continue on foot through the city. We stop when we reach a prefab metal building. A sign bolted to the wall reads ARES PUB in faded script.

  This is the real New Eden, a fetid swamp of decaying buildings, rotting infrastructure, and atrophied people. Crime is a way of life here, and the only people you won’t find are constables and Rangers, who let New Eden police itself.

  Vienne and I ease between the patrons sitting at wrought-iron tables on the patio, wearing only our symbiarmor and toting armalites. All eyes are on us. The whispers start. Dalit, dalit, dalit. Filthy. Nasty. Unclean. Their insults sting me, and I fight the urge to lash out, but Vienne walks through them like she owns the place.

  That is, until a fat man dressed in a velvet gown says, too loudly, “Chocha.”

  Vienne stops. Cracks her neck. Turns slowly toward the fat man, reaching for handle of the combat knife that every Regulator keeps stuffed in a boot.

  “Not a good idea,” I say, and put a hand on her shoulder. It’s a risky move—Vienne doesn’t like being touched any more than she likes being insulted.

  She shrugs me off. “Mind your own business.”

  “Sorry, but it is my business.” Under my breath, I say, “You lost that finger because of me.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.” She straightens her shoulders and walks past the fat man, acting like she’s not heard a peep out of him.

  She’s great at acting.

  I’m not.

  The fat man wags his tongue at her, then makes a hand gesture that I can’t let pass. “Hey, chocha, don’t go away mad.”

  Growling, I pull my combat knife. Reach across the table and drag him out of his seat, tipping the table and rolling him to the cement. His eyeballs pop like ball bearings, and he gags on his own spit as he makes nonsense guttural noises.

  I press the flat of the knife against his neck. “It’s all fun and games until somebody loses a tongue, isn’t it?”

  It’s hard to believe, but his eyes get even wider. He looks wildly around at his tablemates, but nobody’s coming to his rescue. Dalit or not, they know what a Regulator can do to them.

  I put a knee on his belly. “The next time you call somebody a chocha, remember that the person you’re calling scum and filth once protected useless pieces of guanite like you for no other reason than they had sworn to do it. And I promise you, if I ever hear you use that nasty word in my presence again, I’ll split your tongue clear to the back of your throat. Capiche?”

  Face red as transmission fluid, he nods.

  “Righteous,” I say, and haul him to his feet, then drop him in his chair. “Take a load off. You’re looking a little peaked.”

  The patio erupts with noise—a mix of cheers and jeers. I start up the metal stairs to the pub entrance, but Vienne is waiting for me on the first landing.

  “You said it wasn’t worth it,” she says.

  “It wasn’t,” I say, “the first time.”

  “I can find my own battles,” she wa
rns me. “I don’t need you to defend me.”

  “Defend you?” I say. “I was defending him. I just threatened to cut off his tongue. You would’ve done it.”

  “I would not!” She pinches her lip, rethinking it. “Well, maybe I would’ve.”

  “No maybe to it,” I say as we reach the entrance on the second floor.

  A chemically enhanced bouncer stops us at the door with a beefy hand.

  “What’s it to you two?” he demands. “Ares is a private pub.”

  Vienne pushes his hand aside. “Move. We have business.”

  “What she means is,” I say, stepping between them, “we’re meeting a couple of friends inside for a drink of aqua pura, and we’re not looking for trouble, right?”

  “Wrong,” Vienne says to him. “What I meant was, step aside before I hurt you.”

  The bouncer laughs. He pushes me aside, looming over Vienne, his head as big as a cement block, his face just as flat and hard. “I saw what your boyfriend did to our customer down there. Your kind ain’t allowed in the pub, right?”

  “Wrong again,” Vienne says, and tries to step around him.

  He grabs her by the upper arm, which is his first mistake.

  Then he tries to push her against the wall, which is his second mistake.

  Vienne spins free and stomps the arch of his foot.

  He cries out in a high-pitched voice, then growls and throws a haymaker, which is his third mistake.

  He doesn’t get the chance for a fourth.

  With the grace of a dancer, Vienne ducks the punch and hammers an elbow into his lower spine. When his knees buckle, she slips behind him and uses his momentum to drive him forward. His gut slams into the rail, and he teeters on the brink.

  She grabs his leg and flips him over.

  With the sound of breaking glass and metal, he crashes on the tables below. I peek over the railing. He’s spread-eagled atop a table, out cold. The fat man with the hurt tongue looks up at me, then starts running as fast as his stumpy legs can carry him.

  “Sorry for the mess!” I call, saluting the bouncer, then turning back to Vienne. “You haven’t lost your touch.”

  “At least nobody got hurt.”

  “He did.”

  “Nobody who didn’t deserve it got hurt.”

  That’s Vienne’s logic in a nutshell. I open the door. “After you.”

  Vienne gives me the stink eye but accepts the invitation. I follow her through the door and step from the gray sunlight into darkness. Seated around the U-shaped bar is a ragtag collection of mercenaries, most of them Regulators, a few of them dalit like Vienne and me. Three Regulators are gathered at a table in the back corner. Their table is a steel cable roll turned on its side, and the chairs look too rickety to hold their own weight.

  “That’s my davos,” Vienne says, which for some reason feels like someone took a rasp to my heart. She points to the back corner. Two males. One female. “Follow me. I’ll introduce you.”

  Before we reach the table, one of the Regulators stands. He’s shorter than me, but older and more muscular, as if he’s been carved out of pig iron. His jaw is hard and square and covered with stubble. He makes the sign of the Regulator by placing a fist in an open palm, then bowing slightly, and I return the greeting.

  “Protocol suggests that you bow lower than the chief,” Mimi says.

  “I did,” I reply.

  “Negative,” she says. “You were six centimeters higher.”

  “Shh!” I say.

  “This must be our new recruit,” the Regulator says.

  “This is our chief, Aziz,” Vienne says. “Aziz, this is Turtle.”

  Turtle? Seriously? “I’m Durango,” I say, and glare at her, which she pretends not to notice.

  “I recognize your face but not your name,” Aziz says. “That’s good. We don’t want to attract attention.”

  He motions for us to sit.

  I pull up a chair and try to look like I belong.

  “Durango,” Aziz says, “meet Pinch and Sarge, the rest of my davos.”

  “Having a gawk at me, mate?” Sarge raises a glass and downs it in one swallow. “Fancy symbiarmor. Clean rifle. Pretty face. You’re a Battle School fanny, if I ain’t wrong.”

  “He does not like you, Cowboy,” Mimi says.

  “Didn’t need an AI to tell that,” I reply. “Pipe down for a few, Mimi. I need to concentrate without interruptions.”

  “Affirmative,” she says. “Piping down.”

  Pinch extends a small hand. Her sleeves are long, covering her wrist. Her thumb is pushed through a hole cut through the cuff, giving the illusion of a glove. “Bugger that blighter, right? Sarge acts like somebody’s piddled in his aminos, but he never realizes that it’s self-inflicted.”

  I immediately like this Pinch. “That makes five of us,” I say. “A davos is supposed to be ten Regulators.”

  “True, but in times like these,” Aziz says, “we make do with what we have. Now straight to business. We’re meeting a client named Medici. He’s not said what the job is or how much it pays, but we split the costs and the pay equally among the five of us. Is that copacetic?”

  “Fair enough.” I lean back and put my boots on the table. “So what’s my part in this? You’re the chief. Vienne’s the sniper. Pinch will be recon and guerrilla tactics, and Sarge is either subterfuge or comic relief. What job do I get?”

  “You will be our strategist,” he says.

  “Come again?” I ask.

  “We’re in need of a jack with a mind for big-picture thinking,” he says. “Vienne speaks highly of your abilities.”

  My jaw drops. “She does?”

  “You said we needed more warm bodies,” Vienne says, “and I said I knew of one. That’s not high praise.”

  I disregard her disclaimer. “She spoke highly of me?”

  “Twice, in fact,” Aziz says. “Which is good, because once you meet our client, you’ll understand why we need someone with your background.”

  “So how long before this mystery client makes an appearance?” I say.

  Aziz points at the bar, where a tall, thin man with a head full of salt-and-pepper curls and an oiled beard is talking to the bartender. The bartender gestures, and the man turns toward us, sniffs like he’s smiling something rotten, and walks our way.

  “An Orthocrat?” I say. “We’re doing mercenary work for an aristocrat?”

  “It’s good work if you can get it,” Pinch says.

  “And if you can tolerate the egg-sucking, long-nosed collywobbles long enough,” Sarge adds. “But that’s not hard for the likes of you, is it? You speaking his language and all.”

  Now it dawns on me—they brought me along to negotiate the deal. I look hard at Vienne. “Strategist, huh? Is that why I’m here, one rich bastard talking to another rich bastard?”

  Vienne shakes her head. “That’s not what Aziz meant.”

  “I don’t care what he meant,” I say. “What did you mean?”

  “I—” Vienne begins before the Orthocrat’s grand entrance cuts her short.

  “Aziz!” Medici booms. He pounces on me, grabs my shoulders, and plants a kiss on both cheeks. “Pleasure to meet you. I would know a Regulator chief anywhere.”

  For a second, I’m almost too stunned to speak. “I’m not, um, the chief.”

  Sarge slaps the table and horse laughs. Vienne clears her throat, and Medici looks at me, stupefied.

  Pinch takes Medici’s shoulders and air kisses his cheeks. “Pleasure to meet you. I go by Pinch, and that handsome jack behind me is Aziz. He’s the chief.”

  “He’s the one,” I say, “you should be pashing.”

  Medici blinks twice, then clears his throat. “Obviously the stress I’ve been under is affecting my judgment.”

  Aziz makes the sign of the Regulator and bows. Medici faces him and bows so slightly, it’s little more than a nod. They exchange pleasantries, and everyone takes a seat, except for Vienne, who stands behin
d Aziz, leaning against the wall. Her eyes are on the other patrons, but I know she’s listening.

  “Can we get you a drink, Medici?” Aziz says.

  “From this place?” His nose crinkles. “No, thank you. Their water is festooned with contaminants. In fact, the less time I spend in this sewer the better, so I will get straight to the heart of the matter, and the matter is this. As I told you, a member of my household has been kidnapped, taken in broad daylight from my personal orchard.” Medici pulls a folder from his gown. He places it deliberately on the table and opens it. He pulls out a digigraph of a man with a square chin and a white-hot scar running from his hairline to his gullet. “The man is called the Razor. He sent a ransom demand with one of his cronies. Information on him is minimal; however, my sources indicate that he is dalit.”

  Vienne and I trade looks.

  “Which of course means that he is little more than an animal. He has been implicated in a variety of crimes in the surrounding areas, and my contacts believe that he has a hideout close by.”

  “Your contacts suck the salve, eh?” Sarge says. “I know the Razor. Served with him for two years. He’s a good man.”

  Medici shifts uneasily, clearly intimidated by Sarge’s bluster. Aziz sticks out his jaw, the tendons working in his temples, but Pinch calms him with a light touch on his arm.

  “Stand down, Sarge,” Aziz says quietly but firmly. “Let the gentleman speak.”

  “Thank you.” Hands shaking, Medici puts the digigraph of Razor on the table. Then he places one of the victim beside it. “Her name is Charlotte. Charlotte du Save.”

  Sarge picks up the graph. He whistles. “That’s your daughter?”

  Medici sniffs. “I have no daughters.”

  “Your wife’s a susie?” Sarge says. “Cheers to ya, mate. She’s a ripper, except for the blue face paint. I like my bonnies au naturel.”

  “Give me that.” Pinch snatches the graph away from him. “You’re such a slimer.”

  Sarge oinks.

  Ignoring him, I ask, “Why not just pay the ransom?”

  “Excuse me?” Medici says.

  “This Razor wants coin, you want your concubine,” I say. “It’s a simple business transaction.”

  “I never said anything about a concubine,” Medici says.