He and Bharat didn’t look at each other and didn’t speak, and why would they? What good would threats or reproach do now? The torture nanos were inside him, and Jan had long ago learned that complaining about one’s fate never changed it.
Still, at least Jan would have one last shot at Fatima. He’d simply hope Bharat didn’t do something stupid and get himself killed before Jan caught up with her, because if that happened, well ... he could always eat a bullet before the torture nanos kicked in. He certainly wasn’t going back to a cell. Dodging angry convicts and guard beatings got old fast.
The shuttle rattled quietly, then rattled much less quietly. They were entering Ceto’s atmosphere, and though Jan couldn’t see it, he imagined the curtain of fire surrounding the shuttle’s belly as it plummeted. Tantalus prison was big enough that its rotation provided what approximated Ceto’s standard gravity, but it wasn’t the same as standing on flat earth. The last thing Jan needed when chasing down the best smuggler on Ceto (other than himself, of course) was to get laid out with space sickness.
Jan had already given Bharat the place they’d start: Duskdale, or rather, its massively dilapidated inner city, one known to the locals as the Sledge. The Sledge had been his and Fatima’s home base before the arrest, along with the rest of their crew, and that was where Jan would pick up her trail.
The healthy paranoia Jan remembered suggested that, even five years later, Fatima would be using the same professionals they’d both used on jobs. Fatima had no way to know he wasn’t rotting in prison for another thirty-five years, so she had probably used someone Jan knew on her last job. The question was ... why steal something like that disc from someone like Tarack?
Fatima had her faults, but foolishness was not among them. Other than the jobs they’d pulled for Ceto’s resistance while the Supremacy occupied the planet — for which they’d charged a premium — he and Fatima had always steered their crew clear of any job that targeted anyone powerful. Enemies were bad for business, and powerful enemies were the worst.
If Senator Tarack had told him the truth, that meant Fatima had made two out-of-character mistakes. First, she’d stolen from a person rich and powerful enough to never stop hunting her. Second, she’d let her mark find out she stole from them.
Neither of these careless actions fit the Fatima Jan knew, but perhaps she’d grown bold. Perhaps she’d grown desperate. Either way, Jan cared less about the disc she’d stolen than about looking her in the eyes as he forced her to reveal why she’d betrayed him. Then, of course, he’d shoot her.
The rattling settled, and Jan heard the faint sound of wind whistling outside. He and Bharat were the only people on the entire shuttle — an autopilot piloted it, as they did — but as Jan closed his eyes and drank in the sound of real wind for the first time in five years, Bharat cleared his throat.
Damn it all. Bharat probably wanted to talk about what would happen when they landed. Given Bharat’s part in forcing Jan to inject himself with torture nanos, Jan really wasn’t in the mood to talk, but still ... anything was better than that magma-filled hell.
“Just so you know,” Bharat said, “I don’t care for Senator Tarack’s methods. I’d have done things differently.”
Jan smiled with his eyes still closed. “Old-fashioned, are you? Prefer the heated poker and drill?”
“That’s not it at all.” Bharat actually sounded offended. “Torture has been studied by people much smarter than either of us for centuries, and it simply doesn’t work. People will make up any lie to stop the pain, and eventually, the pain itself becomes so much a part of them that it’s no longer effective. We have much more humane ways to get information from a subject who’s not cooperating with the authorities.”
“You speak, of course, of powerful relaxants.” Jan had learned quite a bit about relaxing compounds during his studies on Tantalus prison. “Truth serum?”
“We don’t refer to it as that, but yes, we have chemical compounds that approximate the idea suggested by the myth. With those available, inflicting unnecessary pain is pointless.”
“And you have compounds to enforce loyalty as well?”
Bharat was quiet beyond Jan’s closed eyelids. Did this Advanced mercenary have any moral instincts left? Those could prove useful if Jan found the right way to manipulate him.
“You want the Golden Widow,” Bharat said, more confidently than Jan expected. “You want revenge. That alone would have been enough to motivate you to do as Senator Tarack asked, which was the reason I suggested you in the first place.”
Interesting. “And you informed your fair senator of my enthusiasm?”
“I did. She didn’t feel it was sufficient. I told her the nanos were not necessary, but she didn’t really care.”
Jan nodded with professional respect. His new employers were going with the old classic: “good cop, bad cop.” Senator Tarack, obviously bad, had forced Jan to inject himself with torture nanos, but Bharat, obviously good, didn’t approve.
Naturally, the good cop would be his partner in this endeavor. Assuming Tarack actually kept her word after Jan found her data disc, he and Bharat would amicably part ways after Bharat disabled Jan’s torture nanos. And assuming Tarack didn’t keep her word, Bharat probably had orders to kill him.
Jan set their impending struggle to the death aside. First, he’d find Tarack’s disc. Then he’d speak to Fatima and shoot her in the head. Everything after that was a pair of rolling dice, but at least he’d
