“We are aware that you were invited to speak with the Prime as an honored guest,” Felsira said, clasping her hands in front of her again. “Our contacts within the Watchers suggest they are extremely concerned with your whereabouts and actions, and are diligently attempting to accommodate you despite some who believe it would be more prudent to require that you leave the planet.”
Eva had wondered about that; if they were spending so much time chasing after her, why not just kick her out? Certainly she wouldn’t be able to refuse, and it would be a huge pain in the ass to figure out how to sneak back onto the planet. Assuming it was even necessary; they still hadn’t been able to establish that Josh was there at all.
“You have any thoughts on that?” Eva asked, staring directly into Felsira’s large, dark eyes.
Felsira turned slightly, so that she was gazing out through the wall at the starlit farmland. “We are uncertain, but we believe there may be a way to utilize your . . . relationship with the Prime to aid the resistance.”
“How, exactly?” Eva asked. “And what’s in it for me?” Vakar still smelled mostly like cigarettes and suspicion, but there was the smallest hint of jasmine in there, so he wasn’t entirely put off these people.
“You are searching for someone,” Dr. Lucien said, pausing in his work. “Joshua Zafone.”
And there was the sound of the other shoe dropping, heavy as a gravboot. “How did you hear about that?” Eva asked. She hadn’t even told Damaal, though Sue had let enough slip that presumably the xana might have figured it out, if she got past the layers of identity fluff Eva tried to maintain between her crew and shady places like Garilia.
“I told them,” Nara said, and Eva mentally cursed herself for being a comemierda. Of course the bounty hunter knew; they’d more or less told Miles fucking Erck the whole story to get him to give up his intel, that sinvergüenza.
“Did you tell them I wiped the floor with your sorry ass in that bot fight?” Eva said.
“No, because you’re the one who stepped on the ball there, anus,” Nara replied coolly. She still hadn’t turned around.
Eva rolled her eyes. “So yes, great, looking for Josh,” she said. “And you can help with that?”
“Joshua is currently employed by the Sylfe Company in the development of their robotic Attuned,” Felsira said quietly. “Dr. Lucien worked with him briefly before leaving the project.”
Me cago en diez, Eva thought. He had been here the whole time. And if he was working on the Ball Buddies, that meant Damaal knew exactly who he was, any nebulous ideas of being old college friends aside. But that raised a whole new set of questions.
“He’s not being held here against his will?” Eva asked the doctor.
“He did not appear to be,” Dr. Lucien replied. “In fact, he was quite eager to join our team. I was only acquainted with him for a few cycles, but in that time he toured the facilities and took extensive notes, occasionally conferring with the Prime about changes he hoped to make in the design and production of the robots.”
Right, he and Sue were two peas in a pod that way. A chill ran up Eva’s back; could Josh have stolen some of the Proarkhe tech he’d been working on with The Fridge? That would explain why Sue thought some of the mechanisms of the bots were strange, and why they seemed to be able to defy the laws of physics. Those mysterious ancients were worse than humans the way they popped up in random places to turn a normal planet into an arroz con mango.
Eva pursed her lips. “So I help you do whatever, and you help me get to Josh, is that right?”
“Correct,” Felsira replied.
“And if I don’t want to help you?” Eva asked.
Sapri burst with psychic revulsion. “I warned you that the Butcher could not be trusted. We should end her now, while she is—”
“Easy there, Papito,” Eva said, readying the command to activate her sonic knuckles. “You haven’t told me what you want me to do, and for all I know, it’s a big pile of mierda that I don’t feel like touching.” Vakar hadn’t moved, but he smelled just as on edge as she was, and Mala’s purring had stopped.
“Do you intend to betray us?” Dr. Lucien asked, his tone mild, his expression carefully neutral. His dark eyes studied Eva like she was a robot whose guts he could dig into, given the right tools.
“No,” Eva said. “I’m not here to start problems for anyone. I have enough of my own.”
Now it was Jei who spoke up, almost as hostile as Sapri. “This was a waste of time. Anyone who would do what she did isn’t worth dealing with.” To Dr. Lucien, he said, “Why would you take the word of that bounty hunter anyway? She’s no better.”
Eva raised an eyebrow and glanced at Nara. “Qué rayo, Sumas?” she asked. What had Nara said to them?
“I vouched for you,” Nara said. She looked sideways at Eva, her green hair touched with red from the wall behind her. “Me, I’m loyal to my bank account, and whoever feeds it. You saved those hostages on Pupillae and you didn’t get paid for it. You didn’t even take the credit.” She turned away again. “I think you’re a fool, but you’re the same kind of fool as these people.”
Nara had been here when Eva killed all those xana, had held her at gunpoint until it was clear that her employers would no longer be able to afford Nara’s services. They’d crossed paths here and there since then, but mostly they ran in different circles; Eva’s hustle was delivering shit, while Nara’s was capturing or protecting people.
And as far as Eva knew, Nara would take any job she was offered, for the right price. Hell, she’d worked for Eva’s father, Pete, when he’d stolen La Sirena Negra out from under Eva’s crew, which Eva had never understood, given that Pete had nothing to pay with at the time. Ethics didn’t enter into it; odds, maybe, though Nara had a reputation for beating bad ones, hence her outrageous prices. If stories were to be believed, she’d single-handedly cleared an entire planet of space pirates once.
Eva didn’t believe that, but then again, she had trouble believing some of the shit she herself had done.
“Joshua is kept with the other scientists working on the project,” Dr. Lucien said quietly. “We all but lived in the laboratories in order to meet the requested production schedule. To stop the Prime’s plan, we must infiltrate those facilities and destroy them. If you aided us, you would be able to reach Joshua and do whatever you must.”
Which will be a lot harder if he isn’t interested in leaving, Eva thought. Hopefully Sue would be able to convince him, or he’d take the bait that Mari and The Forge were dangling in terms of working with their own Proarkhe tech and secret project. Maybe their “save the universe” talk would resonate with him; Eva certainly felt the allure of being a big damn hero, even if it was never as simple as people made it sound.
She had to admit, the thought of undoing some of the damage she had done on Garilia was tempting. The Watchers were shady as hell, Damaal was worse, and the whole new government reeked of an oppression that Eva felt in her bones needed fighting. Maybe the resistance was the wrong way to do it, but maybe not. It was worth finding out.
“I have to consult with the rest of my crew,” Eva said. “But this is the best chance we’ve had yet to do what we came here for. So . . .” She looked at Vakar, who shrugged in the quennian equivalent of a nod.