“Nothing is truly impossible to decrypt.” Also, Jan really doubted Fatima had overlooked the decryption problem, though he saw no benefit in pointing that out to his latest employer.
Tarack unleashed a put-upon sigh. “Sure, yes, if you had a thousand years and a planet full of supercomputers, I’m sure you could get into it eventually. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy arguing semantics?”
“Your disc is distinctive,” Jan said, “but I would caution that the Golden Widow has already created many convincing facsimiles. Given what I know of her talents and resources, creating a dozen fake discs would be kitten’s play.”
Tarack frowned. “What the hell is a kitten?”
Bharat cleared his throat, but Tarack snapped her fingers and pointed backward before he could speak. “Don’t tell me. I don’t care.” She kept her eyes on Jan. “So are you telling me you can’t find the Golden Widow, or you can’t find my disc?”
“I can find the Golden Widow,” Jan said. “I can also find a disc that looks very much like this one. As to whether it is your disc, well ... without the cipher key for verification ...”
Tarack snorted. “Right. Of course! I’ll just hand over the one thing protecting my quantum crux drive to the completely trustworthy thief I recently purchased from prison.”
“Smuggler,” Jan corrected.
Tarack’s jaw tensed. “Don’t worry your fragile head about verification. Bharat will handle that.”
Of course he would. “Bharat will be my contact on Ceto?”
Tarack smiled in a delighted, predatory way that made Jan distinctly uncomfortable. “Bharat will be your partner, Mr. Sabato, and he will remain with you at all times.” She leaned over the table. “Did you honestly believe I would dump you on Ceto, with only your word that you’d find my disc, and expect you to do anything but crawl beneath a rock?”
A rock wouldn’t have been Jan’s first choice. “I had assumed whatever nanos were in that purple liquid would allow you to track my whereabouts.”
“Oh,” Tarack said, as she pushed back in her chair. “He thinks we injected him with tracking nanos.” She chuckled in a way that was just a smidge maniacal. “That’s adorable!”
Bharat didn’t smile when Tarack did, which worried Jan. Bharat should have chuckled. Thugs were supposed to chuckle when their employers chuckled.
“The nanos inside you aren’t trackers, Sabato.” Tarack looked more delighted than anyone should when saying those words. “They’re so, so much more than that.”
“Oh?” Jan resisted the urge to catapult himself over the table and try for the bridge.
Tarack glanced at her bodyguard. “Show him, Bharat.” An eager edge crept into her tone. “He needs to understand why he’s going to be so loyal to me.”
“Ah,” Jan said, as his spine prickled and fear blossomed in his gut, “you don’t actually need—”
Agony erupted inside his suddenly paralyzed body. Jan couldn’t scream, couldn’t gasp, couldn’t even twitch. A symphony of exploding planets erupted as shards shredded his lungs, his heart, his mind. This hell ended without warning and flung his upper body onto the table, gasping like a dying fish.
Tarack smirked as she unstrapped and pushed off toward the door. “Surprise.”
For his part, Jan merely squeezed the table in two trembling hands and tried not to lose bowel or bladder control. He’d just been given the first pair of clean underwear he’d had in months. He really wanted to enjoy that a bit longer.
Tarack snapped her boots back onto the flooring and stomped through the open doorway. “In case it wasn’t clear, Sabato, what you experienced lasted ten seconds.”
Truly? Jan had thought it lasted much longer.
“That’s the pain you’ll experience until you die of dehydration,” Tarack said, “if Bharat doesn’t reset the nanos now imbedded inside your bones once every twenty-five hours.”
Ah, Jan thought, an echo of that agony imbedding itself deep into his brain. So he had torture nanos imbedded in his bones now. That was ... bad.
“If you kill Bharat,” Tarack continued, “or you let him be killed by some gutter-born on your little Ceto adventure, you will enjoy a hundred hours of agony before you choke to death on your tongue. Also, if you disobey us for any reason, we can send you to Hell with our thoughts. So be nice.”
“Unnecessary,” Jan managed, glaring from the table as he floated in residual agony. “Truly, hideously unnecessary.”
Tarack rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
Jan focused on breathing. “And when I succeed?”
“If you do somehow recover my disc, I’ll order Bharat to disable your nanos and free you to fuck off wherever.” Tarack snorted. “Good luck with that.” The door hissed shut.
The room fell into silence, and Bharat didn’t move. He didn’t have an expression now, which was disconcerting given he could send Jan into a paroxysm of agony with one wireless signal from his PBA. Jan did not enjoy paroxysms of agony.
Jan didn’t move. He didn’t dare speak until he was sure Bharat wasn’t going to activate the torture nanos again. He wondered if he should go toss himself out the airlock right now.
“So,” Bharat said, “shall we be off?”
02: Pollen
The only way the flight to Ceto could have been more awkward was if Jan weren’t wearing any pants. Jan sat strapped into a jump seat beside Bharat, in silence, in an empty passenger bay that smelled like it had been freshly deloused. The only other features in the shuttle were eighteen empty seats and a single square medpack belted to the wall.
The impressively bearded Advanced man sitting beside him could torture him, had tortured him, yet Bharat seemed vaguely put off by it. He
