Marquis pointed ominously to the sky. “We cannot wait for a taxi. We have incoming, my friend. My drones prophesize doom!”
Jan only now remembered that Marquis kept a small fleet of private drones on call at all times, feeding intel to his helmet and giving him an edge that somehow kept him from getting killed ironically. “Who’s coming?”
“I see two columns of armored vehicles with CSD markings rolling up from either side of this street.” Marquis tilted his helmet. “Their advance appears coordinated. Ground forces will cordon off this area in under three minutes.”
“They’ve got drones too.” Kinsley leaned against the wall of the Bowsprit with some sort of complicated-looking tablet in her hand. “I’ve already pulled their feeds and obscured our location, but once they put real eyes on us, they’ll know I’ve hacked in.” Kinsley shrugged. “Can’t hack eyeballs.”
So the CSD was already coming after him? Fuck. At this point, Jan would simply have to make a run for it. He wasn’t about to risk having his friends arrested by the CSD.
The side door to the Bowsprit slammed open, and Tiana Johnson stepped out wearing thick pants, a plush blue sweater, and a chef’s apron. As her eyes locked with Jan’s, her dark, weathered face crinkled into a smile. She lowered the massive shotgun she had pointed at his chest. “Well, damn.”
Jan swallowed against an unexpected lump. “Tiana.” This woman was the closest thing he and Pollen had to a mother.
“I thought Pollen was shitting me,” Tiana proclaimed, “but you really are out. Goddamn, boy, it’s good to see you.” Her dreadlocks were grayer than they’d been when Jan went to orbit.
Pollen placed a hand on Tiana’s shoulder. “CSD incoming. Get back inside.”
“Fuck no.” Tiana pushed the door open with one hand as she held her shotgun with the other. “You think I’ll let my boy go back to prison a day after he got out?”
“They will storm your tavern,” Jan warned, as even the thought made him ill. “The damage will be considerable.” He needed to run, now, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate.
“Ha!” Tiana chuckled. “This place has survived worse than Ceto Security Division, but if we do this right, those federal fuckers won’t even know you were here. C’mon. Inside. We’ll send you out the back way.”
Jan looked around at the narrow alley and the empty street. “The back way?” He didn’t know the Bowsprit had a back way, and he’d practically grown up inside it.
Pollen’s face lit up. “She’s right. It is the best thought, but we must go now.”
Kinsley dodged around Tiana to step inside the Bowsprit. “I’ll keep blocking their drones.”
Jan turned to face the most annoying bounty hunter on the planet. “Marquis—”
“Say no more, my friend!” Marquis slapped both hands on Jan’s upper arms. “I share your sorrow. Our reunion was too brief! Yet I cannot take this journey with you.”
“Correct.” Jan knocked Marquis’s gloved hands off his arms. “You can’t.”
“Fear not for me! I’ll depart another way! The CSD shall never detect me, and I’ll ... hey, where’re you going?”
Jan was already inside the Bowsprit, with Emiko right behind him. Once Jan heard the door slam, he assumed Pollen was inside too. Kinsley waited ahead, beside Tiana.
“Goodness,” Kinsley said. “That man is something.”
“I warned you,” Jan groused.
“He is unusual,” Kinsley agreed thoughtfully. “Undistilled heroic nonsense. How has he survived this long?”
“We have no idea,” Emiko said.
“I like Marquis,” Pollen declared. “He is a good man.”
“Shush now.” Tiana moved past Kinsley and beckoned them all forward. “We got no time to chat. Let’s get you below.”
“What do you mean, below?” Despite his confusion, Jan followed Tiana without hesitation. If his own foster mother would willingly sell him out to the CSD, he was fucked anyway. “Their drones and soldiers have Wi-Vi. Once they get a scanner on this place, they’ll find us in the basement.”
“You’re not going to the basement.” Tiana passed a wicked grin over her shoulder as she led them down the hallway Jan and Bharat had crept through earlier, then entered her kitchen. “You’re going way deeper than that.” She pointed at one of the walk-in freezers. “Door’s triggered off a keypad in the back.”
“Took two years to dig,” Pollen agreed. “Many long hours.”
“Dig what?” Emiko asked. “An escape tunnel? Once the CSD realizes we’ve slipped their ambush, they’ll block the entire sector off. Roadblocks and checkpoints everywhere.”
“They can put up all the checkpoints they want.” Tiana pulled open the big freezer door. “You’ll see.”
She led them into a freezer with frigid metal shelves stacked with all sorts of meat and protein vats, most of which, Jan assumed, were past their expiration dates. Goosebumps rose on Jan’s flesh. His breath misted.
Tiana stopped at a metal shelf stacked with vats and glanced at Pollen. “Put your back into it, big girl.”
Pollen gripped the side of the shelf and pushed. The considerable muscles in her big arms bulged visibly. The sound of Pollen’s grunting, and the screeching of metal legs against biocrete floor, told Jan just how heavy that shelf was. How had Tiana planned to move it if she needed to escape?
Yet move that shelf Pollen did, revealing a one-meter-tall hatch in the bottom of the wall. Tiana knelt before a small keypad and punched in a combination. The hatch popped open, just a bit, and Tiana stood up and stepped aside.
“Main entry’s in my room upstairs,” Tiana said. “This is the backup door, known only to me and mine.”
“Where’s it go?” Kinsley said, then sucked in a breath. “The maglev
