Tlalocan Trail, West of the Coatlicue River

Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge

4453.1.25 Interstellar

After an hour and a half of pursuing the thieves through the jungle on foot, Janus’s trousers and sleeves were soaked, and he was really, really grateful for the liquid-cooling garment he’d built into the torso of his suit. Mick was pushing them hard, just short of running, and while Lira spent less time in the bush than either of them, she never complained.

Lira had been working on this trade deal for months and was highly motivated to succeed.

The tracking itself wasn’t that hard. Unlike sun-siders, or even Janus’s team after a year in the wild, coldsiders lived in sealed habitats. They didn’t have the robust immune systems to deal with all the pathological, toxic, venomous, and poisonous “stuff” out here, so they wore sealed suits that filtered and recycled their air. The suits were lighter and less robust than an Irkallan void suit, but since coldside didn’t have to deal with a day cycle, they were also crap at radiating heat. The runaway thieves were blundering through the foliage, leaving clear bootprints even Janus could have followed.

“Hey, Mick?” Janus said.

“What’s up?”

“Is it weird they’ve made it this far?”

Mick and Lira stopped.

Janus took his helmet off, then said, “They’re stumbling down these trails like they’re drunk, but they’re still making good time. Either they planned this…”

“Or they have local help,” Mick said.

“Think it’s an inside job?” Lira asked.

Janus looked at Mick.

“It’s possible,” the Hunter said. “Not the coldsiders—there are eight of them, and no sun-sider is that clumsy—but I’ve been seeing…”

“What?” Janus asked.

“There could be a ninth person with them, but if there is, they either prepped the way a while ago, or they’re a star-blessed ghost.”

“He’s right about the coldsiders,” Lira said. “There were eight of them in the delegation.”

Janus nodded. “Okay. We stick to the brief, but let’s keep an eye out for one or more locals. If things get complicated, we fall back and reassess. As long as the samples are intact and they haven’t reached the river, we can take the time to solve this safely.”

“The river’s only an hour from here,” Lira said, and Mick nodded.

Janus grinned and said, “Then we have a little less time, but that doesn’t mean we rush in blindly.”

“I’ll get us in safe, boss,” Mick said.

Janus slapped his shoulder and put his helmet back on. His hazard warnings were green-yellow-amber. Since that last indicator was environmental, the coldsiders had to be suffering.

Twenty minutes later, they’d gotten close enough to the fleeing thieves to hear them over the intermittent patter of rain. Mick slowed the team down, and then he halted them with a raised fist. “They’re stopped,” the Hunter said over the comm. “Lira, you stay just right of the path. Janus, you go left, cover the downhill egress. That’s the most likely way they’ll run.”

“You don’t think I can stop them from escaping?” Lira asked.

Mick took the challenge the same way he took everything, at face value. “Janus is a walking bioweapon factory. I’d take you one-on-one against anyone but my rangers.”

“Fair enough,” Lira said. “Where will you be?”

“Ahead and uphill of them. Let’s go,” Mick said. “Comm when you’re in position. Non-lethals only. I’ll decide if we need to escalate. Janus, we go on your order.”

“Got it,” Janus said.

“Got it,” Lira said.

“Move,” Mick said.

Lira stepped off the path, and Mick… Mick just melted into the green. Janus shook his head. The whole exchange had been a perfect example of why their team worked. They trusted each other, each had their roles, and they respected each other’s opinions and abilities. When it came down to it, they got stuff done with a minimum of drama.

The next part happened fast. Janus focused on pushing through the green as quietly as he could, which was nowhere near what Mick was doing twice as fast and half as noisily, but it was something. He drew his chem-pistol and thumbed the selector to a neurotoxin that would drop a human fast while being mostly non-lethal. He also prepped a gas grenade so he could turn the area around him into a no-go zone in short order. His helmet was airtight, and he had cures for any agents he carried. There was the problem of the coldsiders’ suits, but the odds were they were using filtration, not recirculation.

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“In position,” Lira said.

“In position,” Mick said, second to get there with farther to go.

“In position,” Janus said, moving forward just enough to see through the leaves.

What he saw was not what he’d been expecting.

***

Janus had line of sight on the thieves from his position in the trees. It was a slightly wider part of the trail, and most of the coldsiders had stopped to sit on logs, rocks, or even on the muddy ground. Janus could see six people in suits—three of those had popped their helmets off, which was unusual and unwise.

“Janus, are we a go?” Mick asked.

“Hold on,” Janus said. He could see the sixth coldsider was on his feet, mask on, amplified voice audible from there as she argued with a tall, lean sun-side woman in Verazlan clan colors. “I’ve got our ghost. I only see six suits.”

“I’ve got a seventh,” Mick said.

“Eighth,” Lira said. “He’s not wearing his suit. He’s… umm… voiding himself rather noisily. Doesn’t look good. Doesn’t smell good, either.”

“Are we a go or not?” Mick asked. “We’re not going to get a better opportunity.”

“Literally caught them with their pants down,” Lira said.

Janus didn’t like it. These were fugitives. They should have been deathly afraid the Motragi clan rangers from Cofan would be coming to kill them all.

They should be terrified of taking their suits off in territory that was hostile in every sense.

They should have been running, not sitting around. They shouldn’t have been out of their suits at all. “Dose up with epi.”

Mick groaned. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Janus said, grabbing his own injector. “Something’s not right.” He stuck himself in the leg.

Epi—or epinephrine, which was another word for adrenaline—had a number of effects on the body. It sped up the heart, broke down glucose, and reduced pain response. It generally got the body ready for a fight. More importantly for the three Irkallans, it kicked immune response into overdrive for twenty-four hours, even though that meant two days of reduced function afterward.

“Go,” Janus said over the comm.

Janus raised his chem-pistol and moved in, neither running nor moving slowly.

“Get down!” Mick barked. “Everyone on your faces!”

“Go on!” Lira snapped, pushing a half-naked man into the clearing.

The thieves groaned and started to comply, or at least most of them did. The one who’d been arguing ran three steps toward Janus before Mick tagged him with a rubber bullet. “That’s enough!” the Hunter said, kicking a small-caliber pistol away from one of the prone thieves.

One of the thieves got down to their hands and knees and promptly vomited on the ground in front of them. Janus tossed his head, allowing them to move over so they weren’t face down in the mess.

“All of you, hands out, don’t move, and you won’t get hurt!” Mick said.

“You too,” Lira said, pointing her tazer at the sun-sider who was standing calmly with her arms crossed. “On the ground.”

“Why should I?” the sun-sider said. “These coldsiders stole samples from Cofan, and now more coldsiders have come to rescue them.”

“Those aren’t coldsiders,” the downed, suited leader of the thieves said.

“The Cofan elders sent us,” Lira said.

“Then they’re weaker than I thought,” the sun-sider said.

Janus’s sense of paranoia ratcheted up a notch. The sun-sider was well-dressed in a poncho, shirt, and trousers that didn’t match Motragi clan colors. Was she Verazlan? Her clothing looked expensive, and her build was that of a warrior, well-muscled and confident.

The coldsiders weren’t resisting or trying to run. Summary justice was the norm on the sun-side, and Clan law, Motragi or otherwise, was harsh. Now that they could see Janus’s team were carrying what appeared to be nonlethal weapons, they should have tried to make a break for it.

“Hey,” he said, nudging the lead coldsider with his boot. “Why aren’t you panicking?”

The thief coughed in his helmet. It sounded wet and unpleasant. “Got sick. Don’t know what’s wrong with us. She told us she’d get us to the river!”

“I said no such thing!” the sun-sider retorted. “They’re coldsiders. They’re weak and sickly, and now they’re lying to save themselves.”

“Get on your knees,” Mick said.

“No,” the sun-sider said.

Janus checked the nearest coldsider. Sweating, which was normal, and shivering, which was not. “They were in suits. It doesn’t matter if they’re weak or sickly. They’re all sick. It doesn’t add up.”

“You’re wearing Verazlan colors,” Lira said to the sun-sider. “Main family, right?”

The sun-sider just sneered.

Lira got in her face. “Because I heard there was someone from the northern clan interfering in the negotiations.”

“I have every right—”

“Lira!” Janus said. “Knock it off! This is a medevac, now. Mick, I need you to get an antenna above the canopy. Lira, secure the prisoners. Make sure they’re on their sides so they can breathe.”

“You got it, boss,” Mick said, slinging his weapon and unclipping this chest strap.

“I’m leaving,” the sun-sider said.

Lira grabbed the Verazlan by the shoulder, and Janus winced as the entirely predictable chain of events unfolded. Sun-siders were prickly about reputation and honor in general, but even more so when it came to the Verazlans’ so-called main families. The tall, well-muscled woman turned, aiming a straight punch at Lira’s face.

Lira ducked her head, blocked the punch with her left elbow, and cracked the Verazlan on the cheek with the butt of her stun gun, dropping her into the mud.

Then she shot her twice. “We’re not all weak and sickly,” Lira said.

Mick looked at Lira with open admiration and a wide grin. “No, we are not.”

Lira flipped him the middle finger.

Janus chuckled and zip-tied a thief’s hands behind their back. Once they were all secure, he needed to assess them, medicate them, and prep them for transport. All of this would have been for nothing if the “delegates” died before they got back to face the music.

As for the samples, the infected thieves, and their Verazlan guest—who was now cuffed, in the mud, and grinning like a psychopath—Janus was pretty sure it was going to be a more complicated pain in the ass than he could even begin to imagine.