CHAPTER TWO—THE FEEDBACK TRACE

“Dude!” Kyle exclaimed. “May’s calling.”

It’s about time, John thought as he moved the frying pan off of the stove. Their steaks had just finished at a nice medium well. Of course, they’d keep cooking in the pan so Kyle and John would just have to settle for well done.

It was too bad. It was real meat, too!

John ran to his secure computer at the table and flicked on the feedback trace software while his communications device pinged on the screen.

May’s illustrated face—or avatar rather—appeared on the projector in the middle of the table. And as always, she her first question of business was, “Is this line secure?”

“Yes,” John said.

“Why are you answering from your mobile computer?” she asked. “You usually use your secure wristlets we’ve supplied you.”

“Uh—“ John began, but Kyle cut him off.

“Broke.”

“What do you mean ‘broke’?”

“John and I—uh—ran into some trouble just a hot minute ago and we got zapped with a short range EMP.”

There was a long pause.

Then May spoke. “One of your own devising, no doubt?”

“You could say that,” John added to the lie.

“Cute.”

“You think so?” Kyle asked as he glanced toward John with a questioning look.

John shrugged.

May said, “Not the EMP.”

“What?” John asked.

“Nice try,” she said, “but the feedback trace you’re currently trying to run on me won’t work.”

Damn, John thought. How does she know?

“Oh, it won’t?” Kyle asked. “Because we just pinged your location.”

John glanced toward Kyle with wide eyes then stuck his face in the computer screen and rolled his eyes. Kyle was lying! The trace had pinged ninety three locations and was split into multiple interpolator signals that got so scrambled a super computer couldn’t figure out the right sequence to find her real location.

“You’re full of shit, Kyle Harrowitz.”

It wasn’t lost on John that she had just used Kyle’s full name. His real name. May had always known who they both were, but her use of the full name implies a subtle threat that John didn’t like.

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Kyle chuckled. “Scared you though, right?”

“Fuck off.”

“Oh,” Kyle said. “Are you flirting with me, May?”

“Can we get to the business at hand?” she asked. “We have information for you concerning the Chylaxium.”

“Yeah,” Kyle said nonchalantly, “why do you want us to board a freakin’ space yacht? A hundred ways we could do this thing for you without so much damn risk.”

John frowned.

He’s already pissed her off. What in the hells are you doing, Kyle?

He shook his head, indicating to Kyle that he should leave off, but the shorter man waved a dismissive hand at him.

“Hess came to us for help,” she said and John noted the mild hint of frustration in her tone. “She’s boarding that Yacht in an hour with Laiwyn Scorr. We don’t know what his plans are. We need to intervene before it’s too late.”

“How hot do you want us to go in?” John asked. It was a relevant question.

“We don’t care,” May said. “So long as you don’t cause any casualties and you get Kelly Hess out of Scorr’s hands.”

“So,” Kyle said, “gotta get out Hussy Hess without killing anybody. What about the Overlord Douche?”

“Our client doesn’t want any casualties—“ May began.

“Your client?” Kyle barked. “WHAT THE FUCK, MAY!”

Holy shit, John thought, turning to regard Kyle go full bullets on May’s ass.

“You think we’re a couple o’ fuckin’ mercenaries? Deal’s off!”

“I misspoke,” May said, her voice ultra-clear but bearing a note of harried agitation. “Hess is in trouble and he needs our help.”

“Fuck that,” Kyle said.

“Listen,” John said, “why don’t Kyle and I have a moment and you can contact us again?”

“No.”

Kyle flung his hand at the air and did a one-eighty and stalked off.

“What do you mean ‘no’?”

“The Chylaxium leaves the space port in just under two hours,” May said. “Listen. I misspoke. I’m not a robot—do you understand?”

“Yeah, I understand.”

“Are Max and Staxx in our out?”

John looked up. Kyle was standing ten feet away. He said nothing for a moment.

“John?”

John said nothing as he continued looking to Kyle for an answer. He sighed visibly and nodded. Then he walked out of the dining room.

“John!”

“Yeah—yeah, we’re in. Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of the situation and get Kelly Hess out of there alive with no casualties.”

“Good,” May said. “I’m going to send you the rest of the details—suggestions on infil and exfil, but as always, the choice is up to you.”

“All right,” John said. “Thanks, May.”

She clicked off without another word.

Shit, John thought, still sitting in his chair. He glanced after Kyle, but he wasn’t in the living room.

He found Kyle rocking out to some of his favorite metal bands in the entertainment room. When Kyle noticed him standing there, he looked up and shut it off.

“What’s up?”

“Maybe I should be the one to be asking you that,” John said. “I mean… you just flipped out on May.”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause between them, but John finally said, “Well?”

“I’ve had far too many people I care about become the victims of this tyrannical world we live in, John.”

John looked at him. He didn’t like what he was seeing. Max and Staxx—they were larger than life. They weren’t morose, hateful men. That wasn’t their style.

Sure, they were anarchists, against an oppressive system of tyranny where elite billionaires and corrupt politicians reaped all the benefits and squashed the little people under their religion of incessant consumerism, rampant acceptance of anything harmful or dangerous so long as it could be used to turn a profit.

“You can’t let it get to you.”

“Yeah?” he asked. “Maybe I am.”

“No you’re not,” he said, coming further into the room. “When we started doing this, we acknowledged that we live in a pretty fucked up world, sure, but we laugh in the face of it all while we break the system—pull it all down. Because laughing our asses off while fucking them over is worth living for.”

It wasn’t a pact, but it might as well have been.

It’s a little childish.

Kyle smiled. “One job at a time.”

“Exactly.”

“Now let’s do this Chylaxium job for May. Then maybe we can do something more fun.”

“I thought I was the one that convinced you about this one, John?”

Once he chose to do something, he went for it. He didn’t change his mind back and forth. Kyle didn’t either, but he was far more chaotic than John was.

He shrugged.

“Shit,” Kyle said. “All right, let’s go look at the package May sent us.”