Picks worked and pins tumbled, and then the lock clicked open. Jan silently slid the door open with steady hands. The only problem, once the door stood open, was the rifle tip a hand’s width from his nose.
“Fuck me,” an enormous chop-haired blonde whispered, pointing a rifle at his head. “Jan?” Polina Rostov stared with wide blue eyes, wearing a low-cut pink nightie that valiantly struggled to contain her beige and herculean frame. “That is you?”
Jan swallowed what would have been a rather undignified scream. “Yes.”
“You’re out?” Pollen was still pointing what looked like a tank-killing rifle between his eyes.
“I am,” Jan said, as he remembered how to breathe. “Hello, Pollen.”
What came next was a very expected but also very painful hug. It left Jan’s ribs screaming with pain and put aside any thoughts of speaking. Fortunately, Pollen didn’t cry out in delight, or shout to the others that Jan was back from orbit.
Jan appreciated her understanding. Given she understood Jan had snuck into the Bowsprit at eight in the fucking morning, Pollen knew better than to scream and wake everyone up. She still hugged him like she was trying to choke him out.
Eventually, Pollen released him and sat back. She put away a rifle as long as he was, slid the door to the guard bunker shut, and beckoned him toward the ladies’ room. That made sense. From the glimpse Jan had managed before Pollen crushed the hello out of him, the other three guards sleeping in the bunker were men.
The ladies’ room wasn’t made to fit more than one person, and with Pollen’s considerable nighty-clad bulk and Jan’s own at least average bulk, it was a tight squeeze that enforced awkward compromises. One of those was Jan staring up at Pollen, who stood a head taller than he was, trying not to stare at a rather monumental display of cleavage.
Under normal circumstances, being jammed into an enclosed space with a half-dressed buxom woman would have been the highlight of Jan’s morning, but he had known Pollen ever since she was a child, when he himself was just a teenager. He just couldn’t think of her like ... whatever was going on now. Ever since Tiana took Pollen in, she’d been like his little sister, and Jan had been her big brother, or at least ... that was how they’d always treated things. Before. There was negligee.
“Time to explain,” Pollen said, showing her absolutely do not fuck with me face. “When did you get back?”
“Yesterday,” Jan said. There was the Pollen he remembered.
“How did you get back?”
“My new employer sprang me from Tantalus. I have a job, though it’s not the paying kind.” He wasn’t going to sully their reunion by lying to Pollen. “It’s more the ‘I pull this off or someone very powerful kills me’ kind of job.”
“Already?” Pollen scoffed. “Who did you fuck over this time, and when do we murder them?”
Jan had missed Pollen’s straightforward approach. “My latest employer is out of reach, for now.” While revenge on Senator Tarack was tempting, Jan would prefer not to bring the wrath of the Supremacy down on his head. “Once the job’s over, we’ll consider our next move. Now, how can I contact Fatima?”
“Oh, fuck me.” Pollen made a face like a bug had just flown into her mouth. “What do you want with her?”
That wasn’t the reply he’d been hoping for. Jan tried to back up, not gaining much other than a countertop jammed into his back. “I take it you and Fatima had a falling-out?”
Pollen snorted. “She did the falling out. She dropped us like hot rock, even after all our history together.” When Pollen got overly emotional, she often dropped words from her vocabulary. “After we lost you.” She sniffled.
Jan was very careful with his next question. “And what, exactly, did Fatima tell you happened to me?”
“The Supremacy ambushed you both,” Pollen said. “Fatima couldn’t stop them. She blamed herself for the whole thing.”
Jan wasn’t surprised that Fatima had lied about selling him out to the Supremacy. He was surprised the others had bought Fatima’s story, but Fatima had always been an extremely talented liar. Pollen looked like she was going to hug him again.
Jan raised his hands to forestall such activity, careful not to touch anything he should not, and relaxed as Pollen sniffled and nodded. Listening. And as Jan wasn’t prepared to unleash a blond thermonuclear warhead on Fatima when finding her required a stiletto, he would keep any revelations involving Fatima’s betrayal quiet until they’d found her and Tarack’s stolen disc.
“This whole job hinges on Fatima,” Jan said. “We need her help.” That was easier to explain than “I need her dead.”
“Well, it’s not like I keep up with her. I call few times, but she never called back.” Pollen’s curled lower lip showed how Fatima’s abandonment hurt her, a feeling Jan knew well.
“I understand.” Jan failed again to find any space in this very enclosed ladies’ room. “What about Emiko? Rafe?”
“Rafe’s retired,” Pollen said.
Jan blinked. “Really?” Rafael Garcia had planned to do many things before he died from overindulging with sex workers, drugs, and/or explosives, but retiring was not among them.
“As for Emiko, she disappeared a year after you went to orbit. Have not seen her since. Without you to make us plans, it was just all ... we just all ...” Pollen sniffled again.
Jan instinctively gripped one of her big rough hands. “I am back now.” He’d run out on his little sister. “And if we wish to pull off this job properly, we will need to become a team
