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  “You can go ahead and touch the corner of the switch plate, Drez,” I told him. “That was the first one I found. Located the other silent alarms over an hour after we arrived. You might have more, but I don’t think so.”

  I hadn’t the time to check everything, because we had no clue when he’d be arriving. I was afraid to ask any of the neighbors about him, as you couldn’t trust the people who lived in that dump.

  “You think you’re so smart,” Drez snapped at me. “How do you know I didn’t come here with a bunch of my own crew? They could be waiting for me outside right now.”

  “I don’t buy that one bit,” I tossed back. “You’re not the type to run with a group. You’re like me, Drez. You like to work alone. No, don’t move your hand to the waistline. I can see that gun showing behind your belt. I don’t have mine out, but I bet I can get to it faster than you.” There was also my esper ability, which allowed me to anticipate his next move. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave me an edge he didn’t possess.

  “So, why did you come here?” he asked. I watched him relax a bit. Perhaps this might go down well, after all.

  “I’m thinking you might help,” I mentioned to him. “Why don’t you come over to the chair next to us and sit down? After all, this is your place, isn’t it?”

  He grumbled and walked over to the table. After he’d glanced over the rest of the room to ensure there was nothing out of place, he sat down next to us. I already had a cup of coffee ready for him, which Drez didn’t touch. He leaned back and looked at me.

  “Why the hell would I want to help you?” he asked me. “Hell, I might get into the shit with Korth just for having you here.” He looked at the floor and avoided my eyes.

  “Why don’t you use your head for a change,” I snapped at him. “Think about it, Genius. If Korth can’t find us, you’ll do. He’ll assume you had some connection on account of your sister. It might not happen right away, but soon, he’ll look at you and decide there had to be a link because of the blood ties. So, go ahead and hope this won’t pull you into it, because we both know it will sooner or later.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” he grumbled. Drez picked up the coffee cup, but didn’t do anything with it, other than set it back down.

  “You can come over to Korth’s casino with your sister and me and get this mess resolved,” I responded. “We talk sense to him, and he lets us all go.”

  “That didn’t work out so well the last time,” he tossed back. “It’s why Korth’s upped the bounty. He wants your ass in the worst way possible.”

  “Then, help me get out of this,” I responded. “That way, you don’t have to get caught up in it later. Come on, between the three of us, we should be able to plan something.”

  I think I might’ve been able to pull it off. I came very close to him seeing my way, but then, something happened.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “I wasn’t expecting anyone,” Drez claimed, but neither Zilpha nor I believed him.

  The outside door was at the end of a long hallway. The only way to keep an eye on him was to be right behind Drez when he went up to the door. I didn’t have much of an option and stood up.

  “All right, Drez,” I began,. “you go to that door and keep your hands in view. I’ve got a piece on me in case you have any ideas. Say, don’t you have a security camera?”

  “I did," he confirmed. "But it’s busted. What, you didn’t see the blinking screen in the back of the kitchen?”

  Truth, I had never got that far when I went through the apartment. I found all the obvious alarms and gun conceal spots, but lacked the time to even go through his bedroom. Right now, he’d figured out I’d missed some things. But there wasn’t much of a way he could take advantage of it.

  “Just walk slowly,” I ordered as we went down the hallway. I’d spotted Zilpha opening her purse before we stood up. She’d have that naginata ready if needed. She also kicked her heels off in advance.

  Drez walked up to the door and unlatched it. I found it funny that he lacked even a peephole through the door, but this place wasn’t built with security in mind.

  “Just a minute," Drez called out to the other side. “I’ve got some company.”

  He swung the door wide. And then, it hit me that the word “company” allowed the goons on the other side to know I was in the apartment.

  More two-bit thugs were out there. They tried to run in the moment Drez opened the door, but I opened fire and took the first one out when he entered the hall. He went down in a rain of blood, and his gun fell with him.

  By now, Zilpha was behind me with her naginata ready. Somehow, Drez rolled around thug number two as she stabbed upward and struck the goon in the neck. He went down too, which left us with one more.

  I fired three more shots at him. He and Drez managed to avoid them by diving to the hallway floor. I swung the gun down at Drez, who lay there in fear.

  “No!" Zilpha yelled and pulled my arm down while he and the remaining thug jumped up and fled. It was too late. They’d be out on the street by now, and someone would be on the phone to the militia.

  We stepped back over the bodies on the way into the apartment. I’d found the hidden key toward the front entrance and had it with me. It surprised me that Drez kept a physical key since he was heavy into electronic trip alarms. I wondered if he’d be back or if he’d gone straight to Korth’s place and let him know what happened. It wouldn’t make him look good, that was for sure, but Drez wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box.

  A thought hit me as we stood there. “He knew we would come here,” I concluded. “Those goons were supposed to knock on the door after we’d been here a while and he had a chance to come in and size the situation up. This whole thing was planned out. Did you say anything to Dentata about Drez last night?”

  “No," Zilpha replied, as she folded up her blade. “Other than what we talked about in bed. You didn’t tell her that we’d head this way after leaving. I thought you gave her the impression we were going back to the hotel today.”

  I shoved the gun in my shoulder holster. It had performed as advertised by Pops. Not once had I needed to reload it. Even the metal felt cool after it was fired several times. It wasn’t super loud, but the gun did make a retort when fired. No smoke for some reason. I needed to find out where it came from; Pops hadn’t told me anything about that part.

  “I didn’t say anything to her,” I let Zilpha know. “Not a damn word. I was busy doing other things with the both of you. Too busy to interview her. And she didn’t slip anything.”

  I looked down at the goons who were dumb enough to be the first into a room in a firefight. Idiots. They’d paid for their stupidity. Maybe this was evolution at work, but it never struck me that the overall intelligence of the beings around me went up in my lifetime. Or many more. Hundreds of years ago, our ancestors went to the stars for this? Did people get dumb when they left their planetary system? At least, I remembered to say the quick prayer for the fallen.

  “It’s still a possibility,” I mentioned as I sat back down on the couch. “I could see Drez and her pulling a set-up. Still think it was just too convenient finding her in that bar.”

  Zilpha sat across from me, opened the purse she’d left on the floor, and dropped her folded-up pig-sticker into it. She snapped the purse shut and slipped her heels back on. She wanted to be ready in case we needed to flee.

  It always impressed me how feminine Zilpha could be every day. Even after a long shift on her feet at the diner, she would return home looking like a million credits. I’ve never seen a woman of any planetary origin who could pull that off. It caused plenty of men to put their defense down. Even at a grocery store, I’d seen men follow her form down the aisles. More than once, I’d watched an angry wife pull her husband out of a store after he’d taken too much interest in Zilpha.

  People were surprised I gave her so much trust. But it was my policy that Zilpha could leave any time she wanted. I mad
e enough to take care of all the expenses, and I wanted her to put her hard-earned money away so that she could get off this bottom-feeder world. Nyx Station was no place for someone with talent and ambition. I wanted Zilpha go somewhere else. Some place where people would appreciate her.

  She reminded me of one of those ancient gods in a painting from Old Earth. Minus the silks, pearls, and bangles, Zilpha bore a striking resemblance to the old gods who created the cosmos. At least, that was what we had been taught in religious class every day.

  We hadn’t received much in the way of extensive education in the Janissaries. Our officers told us that we were an elite unit created and authorized by the gods to cleanse the universe of all those who stood in the way of the Divine Light of The Sultan. We were told His Majesty descended from the primal men who were created to serve the gods at the beginning of time. Most of us simply parroted what they wanted us to say at the end of religious instruction. After that, it was the occasional temple visit and a pinch of incense burned to the protector saint of our unit. You might invent new prayers to help if pinned down under enemy fire, but most of us merely repeated the ones we were taught. The one I’d used for the dead was an old one that our instructors had taught us at the beginning.

  “So, what do we do next?” Zilpha asked me. She placed one stockinged leg on the couch and leaned back. Right now, there was all manner of things I wanted to do to and with her, but we had no way of knowing whether Zilpha’s brother was headed back to this apartment. Plus, there was the matter of the dead bodies in the hallway. Somehow, I didn’t think Drez was the type to use a removal service for anyone who broke into his place. Mine came with the security system I’d installed. His apartment manager was going to give him hell.

  Zilpha looked down at the couch. “One of these ate Haley’s nose ring,” she commented in a casual manner.

  “Could you please repeat and explain what you just said?” I asked her.

  “I mean that this kind of couch ate Haley’s nose ring,” she said. “You remember Haley. We had her over for a few nights. Terran girl who made those barking sounds when she-”

  “I remember her. So, how does a couch eat a nose ring?”

  “We came in one night, back when I dated her, to my place all hot and ready to go at it. Couldn’t make it to the bedroom. I ended up striping her down and did her over the couch. We were both so tired that we fell asleep on it. Next morning, she couldn’t find her nose ring, so I figured the couch ate it.”

  I shook my head. Zilpha went through men and women every week after she left home, or so Drez once told me. She calmed down a lot since moving in with me. Sometimes, I was astonished at the things she’d casually mention.

  One time, she’d brought home a bottle and told me it contained blood for someone. I was shocked, as she didn’t have an unprovoked violent bone in her body. It turned out that the blood was fake blood and that a former boyfriend needed it for an insurance scam he ran. I made sure she delivered the bottle and then, made her promise me she’d never have a thing to do with that bum again. The militia would toss her in a maximum-level prison for taking part in a fraud.

  I was about to get up from the couch and see if there was anything in Drez’s fridge we could eat for lunch when I heard a sound in the back. I looked at Zilpha and had my pistol out in seconds. For her part, Zilpha once again kicked off her heels and had the blade out of her purse, unfolded and ready for action. And in the same amount of time.

  We both turned to the source of the sound.

  I was still for a few minutes and waited for the noise to come again. What we heard had to have intelligent origin. This was not one of the many rats that came to the station with the first Fathers. Those were a problem, but what we heard wasn’t a scattering or chewing sound. It was big and made a definite thump.

  Then, the sound repeated two more times. Now, I knew where it originated.

  The sound had to come from one of the closets in the back room. Drez had a kitchen back there, but behind it was a storage area that terminated on a closed window. I meant to explore the kitchen for traps and hidden weapons before he’d appeared, but I quit when I decided I’d found enough in the front areas to take care of anything coming through the door.

  I nodded to Zilpha, and we both walked to the back room. I went first, with her to my right and back a bit. If anything came roaring out of that room, she could move out of the way and go to work with the blade. In a closed area, she was formidable, no matter what other weapon her opponent might have.

  We made our way back there and stopped at the closet where the sound emerged. The thump happened two more times and, pistol out and leveled, I crept up to the door. Zilpha moved off to the right side of it. The hinges were opposite her. When the door opened, it was my idea to have her where the blade would be most effective.

  I reached down with my free hand and turned the knob. It wasn’t latched, and it rotated without trouble. I heard the lock assembly slide back and tugged on the knob. The door swayed open, and Zilpha, with her naginata, aimed down for a quick strike.

  Chapter Twelve

  The door slid open to reveal a figure tied up and bound. It was on the floor. The bumping sound came from the bound legs, which were still pushing against the space where the door was before I opened it.

  Both Zilpha and I relaxed. At least, we knew what caused the noise.

  I walked to the light switch in the closet and turned it on. The faint light from a low-power source showed the captive in better form.

  From where I could see, our captive was very much a woman. She was bound with her hands behind her and legs out front. A gag kept her from saying anything. She was also stark naked for some reason.

  Then, I looked again. She was light, with white hair and the trace of small wings on her back.

  Our captive was Angelika, the same as the kids I’d turned over to the Irunians from the captured Byzantium.

  I pulled out a utility knife I’d taken from one of Drez’s hiding places and used it to cut the gag off her mouth.

  “Don’t worry,” I told the gasping woman. “You’re safe with us.” Well, she was safe for the time being.

  Next, I cut the binding off the rest of her body. Drez, or someone, had used cheap polymer ties to bind her, and I sliced through them with no effort.

  By now, Zilpha was next to us with a cup of water that she’d brought from the kitchen. I helped the captive up and walked her out into the back room. Zilpha gave her the cup, and our captive drank it in huge gulps. I had no idea how long she’d been in that closet, but she was thirsty enough to drink fast. Why hadn’t she made a sound when we were first there?

  “You help her into the bathroom,” I told Zilpha. “I’ll go into your brother’s room and see if he has anything we can put on her.”

  While Zilpha took her away, I made a line for the bedroom and tore through the clothes Drez had on hangers. He was much too big for our Angelika, who was slight and no more than five feet in height. I tossed useless clothes on the floor until I found something that would fit anyone: a bathrobe.

  Zilpha had her by the shoulders when I came around the corner and held out the bathrobe. “This works,” I announced. “Couldn’t find anything else, but it will do for now.”

  Zilpha, her blade folded and tucked under one arm, draped the robe over the Angelika woman. She tied the fabric around her slender waist and adjusted it. I could tell Zilpha didn’t mind touching her. Our captive had a shimmering aspect to her skin that made me realize why so many people thought Angelikans were holy. Satisfied the robe was in place, Zilpha sat her down on the couch and went to refill the cup.

  “Are you all right?” I asked the woman after I’d sat down on the other side of the couch. I assumed she spoke Galactic.

  “I’m fine now that you rescued me,” her tiny voice came. It was a soft sound that reminded me of the laughter of young children. At which point, it hit me that I’d never heard an adult Angelika speak in person. The kids I’d di
scovered on the Byzantium were the first I’d ever encountered.

  “I’m Rashina,” the Angelika woman told me as Zilpha came back with the refilled cup. Zilpha handed it to her and sat down next to the woman.

  “I’m Zilpha,” she said. “This is Stefan next to you. How long were you in that closet?” It was a good question. I wanted to know as well.

  “I don’t know,” Rashina gasped. I made a mental note to check her vitals later. I assumed they weren’t that different from mine, and there were ways to check up on that without alerting the wrong people.

  “He brought me here last night,” Rashina continued. “A man who looked a lot like you. He locked me in the closet. This morning, he tied me up and locked me back there again.”

  “Why didn’t you make a sound when we were first here?” I demanded. “You were gagged, but you waited until just now to make a noise. Why?”

  “I didn’t know who you were,” she replied. “I heard the noise when those men tried to break in and stayed quiet.” She nodded toward the bodies in the hallway. I really needed to get that mess cleaned up.

  I esper probed her the moment we found her but drew a complete blank. The structure of Rashina’s mind was so different from anything I’d ever encountered before that I couldn’t get a read at all. Even the Angelika kids radiated basic emotions. This woman? Not a thing.

  “Did the man who brought you here,” Zilpha said very slowly, “do anything to you?” I could see her hand tighten up on the arm of the couch. She knew her brother Drez better than anyone else.

  “No," Rashina answered. “I think he was waiting for tonight for some reason. He bought me from a place down by the docks. No one wanted to use me, and the owner of the place wanted to get rid of me.”

  What the hell? How did an Angelika end up at a whorehouse? It sure sounded like one from her description. Granted, there’s a fetish for everything, but no one with an ounce of morality would do a thing to her. I didn’t even want to know how she ended up there. No, I wasn’t surprised the owner of the place wanted to be rid of Rashina when he came to his senses.