gravel.
The bakkie slid clean off the road.
For a long, hopeful moment, she thought she’d be all right. But as she braked and twisted the wheel, she saw she wasn’t going to avoid the big tree in front of her.
The bakkie smashed into the oak hybrid with a loud, wet crunch: a giant crushed melon. Bugs exploded from the hood. A rain of leaves dropped onto the windshield. Nyx’s torso thumped into the steering wheel, knocking the breath from her.
The sound of hissing beetles and spitting fluid filled her ears.
Adrenaline flooded her body. Nyx pushed at the door but couldn’t find the handle for some reason. She leaned over and reached for one of the bursts on the floor.
The barrel of a very large gun pointed in at her through the passenger side window.
“Don’t fucking move,” Dahab said.
14
Nyx didn’t move. She was still trying to get her breath. Her fingers clutched empty air.
Dahab’s two squirts were opening up the driver’s side door.
“Let her out,” Dahab said. “Watch her hands.”
Dahab was an imposing woman—not just tall, but broad and fat. She could bench about a hundred twenty kilos, if Nyx remembered right. She’d lost an arm at the front, so her right arm was a lighter color than the left, courtesy of some dead foreigner. She had a wide flat-cheeked face and piercing eyes. Her teeth were stained red.
Dahab gestured with the gun. “Out, Nyx.”
The squirts each took one of Nyx’s arms and hauled her out of the cab. The council had moved a lot faster than Nyx anticipated, but she didn’t know yet what the decision was. Dahab hadn’t blasted her face off in the cab, so they probably wanted her alive. But there was a lot you could do to a woman and keep her breathing.
And she still wasn’t sure where Rasheeda fit.
Nyx’s chest hurt—a dull, throbbing ache. She hadn’t heard anything break, but what would she have heard above the crunch of the bakkie?
She loved that fucking bakkie.
Beetles crawled over her feet.
While the women held Nyx, Dahab reached into the cab and pulled out Nyx’s pack. Nyx hadn’t brought anything with her relating to the off-worlder, but then, Dahab likely knew more than she did about Nikodem Jordan.
“Rasheeda and Luce told you to fuck off, Nyx,” Dahab said.
Nyx sized up the women next to her. One was a stocky battle-scarred runt who looked like she’d just come off the front. The other one was a pretty half-breed woman who could have sold blood to bel dames. What was she doing collecting notes? She could have been a radio star.
Something buzzed at Dahab’s hip. She grabbed at it, shook it, and put the transceiver to her ear. “Yeah,” she said. “Uh-huh. We’ll be there.” She put it away,
said, “Put her in the trunk of the bakkie. We’re late for a meeting.”
“Leave her here?” the pretty one said.
“You’re staying with her. Suha and I will meet up with you in an hour. I can’t have her going where we’re going. They’ll check our rig. Get her weapons off first.”
The women took off Nyx’s pistols, took her extra ammunition, took her whip, found the dagger and pistol strapped to either thigh.
Then they dragged her to the trunk and popped it open.
Nyx thought about trying an escape. Instead, she looked down the barrel of Dahab’s rifle and got in.
It was a tight fit. Nyx lay curled up on one side. They shut the trunk. It all went dark except for a rusted-out patch in the floor near her head. She pulled at the blanket covering the rest of the hole and peered through. She couldn’t see anything but the churned soil around her bakkie’s tires.
A sharp edge dug into her shoulder from behind. She twisted around so that she faced the rear of the trunk. She pulled back the blankets and kicked the toolkits down around her feet. Sometimes Anneke’s manic obsession for collecting guns did more than empty Nyx’s bank account.
Nyx felt a jabbing pain in her sternum and stopped and took a deep breath.
Dahab had known Nyx when she was a skinny little bel dame without any idea of how to arm herself. Dahab had cleared her of the obvious weapons, the sort of stuff some young kid would carry, but Nyx had learned a thing or two since then.
Nyx brought her heels up behind her and reached her hands back. She worked one of the razor blades out of the sole of her sandal and used it to cut open the package.
She heard the other bakkie start up, heard muffled voices.
She pulled open the package and reached inside. Her fingers met cold metal. She unwrapped the gun and ran her hands over it to get a feel for what it was.
X80 scattergun, dual organic acid barrels.
Tirhani made, if she guessed right. Those fucking sheet-wearing martyrs had claimed neutrality for more than a century and still sold the best firearms on the planet.
Nyx checked to see if it was loaded. No, but when she shook it, she could hear liquid in the barrels. The acid part worked, anyway.
She held the gun to her chest and waited until she heard the bakkie pull away. When it was well gone, she got to work shifting both her body and the gun toward the other side of the trunk.
The squirt pounded on the trunk. She froze.
“You’re kinda quiet!” the girl yelled.
Nyx didn’t answer.
Nyx waited and listened. When nothing else came, she went back to moving.
Organic acid wasn’t a fun thing to use in a tight space. She pulled her burnous over her face and torso. She took a deep breath and wedged her feet up against the trunk.
She pressed the barrel of the gun against the trunk lock. The other end got stuck on the trunk hinge in the back.
Nyx flipped the trigger mechanism to what she hoped was acid-only and squeezed.
The gun went off.
Fluid from both barrels hit the trunk and hissed as the compounds came together.
The blast sent a splatter of fluid back at her. She kicked at the trunk. Kicked again. Acid was eating through her burnous.
“Goddammit!” Nyx yelled, and kicked again.
The trunk popped open, and she came out gun first, tossing away her burnous as she did.
The girl had her gun out.
Nyx shot first.
The girl squealed and clawed at her face.
Nyx grabbed the girl’s discarded gun and shot her in the face again, this time with bullets. It was red and messy.
Nyx pulled out her toolkits and wiped them down. She wiped the trunk clean too. She took out the other mystery package and found a second weapon, a 42.40 sniper rifle. No ammunition, though.
She searched the dead squirt and came up with some change and some extra rounds for the gun. No paperwork, no transmissions. Dahab wouldn’t have left that sort of thing on a squirt. Nyx wiped the blood off her sandals.
She put the bakkie in neutral and pushed it away from the tree and surveyed the damage. There were a couple of broken hoses and a giant red gash in the cistern that bled bug juice and lube. She could work a temporary
