That only left option three, titled “Open the Cargo Door.” He hated option three.
There had to be some other way, some method that didn’t end with Ramona plunging to the ground two hundred meters below, every bone in her body broken. She was an enemy, but it was a truly horrible way to die. If she fell to her death while he was piloting the aerial, nobody would believe that he wasn’t complicit in her death. It would plunge their families into a war.
Ramona took a deep breath . . .
He thumbed the cargo door release. Wind tore into the aerial, but he was ready for it, and the craft barely trembled.
She sprinted, a streak of white, and dived, her arms raised above her head. Her seco blades tore out of her forearms, splaying out like two pieces of radiant red silk. For a fraction of a second, she looked like an angel in white, soaring on glowing bloodred wings, and then the seco field snapped into rigid blades, and she sliced through the solar window and dropped into the hole.
Chunks of amber glass rained down.
He activated the autopilot course he’d programed a few minutes ago, jumped out of his seat, sprinted to the cargo bay, and leaped across the gap. The ground yawned at him, far below, and then he landed on the luxurious Solean pine floor of Haider’s office.
Ramona stood with her back to the office door. A gash smoked lightly behind her—she’d cut the alarm wires running through the door, triggering a lockdown. Haider struck at her, a lethal whirlwind with a short sword gripped in each hand. The Davenport family produced offspring with enhanced speed and coordination, and Haider’s flurry of attacks was so fast Matias could barely follow it with his naked eye.
Ramona had reshaped her seco blades into circular shields, fifty centimeters wide, and glided away from Haider, parrying his furious strikes in a controlled frenzy. Her shields stretched and shifted with her will, creating an impenetrable barrier between her and her attacker.
Matias charged across the office.
Haider spun to him, alerted by his combat implant, slashing as he turned, but it was too late. Matias dropped under the strike and kicked, sweeping Haider’s legs from under him. Haider landed well, flexed, and sprang to his feet to find Matias’s right blade pointed at his neck. The tip stopped five centimeters short of Haider’s throat.
Ramona plucked the sword from Haider’s right hand. “Don’t move.” Her voice was calm and reassuring. “We just want to talk.”
Haider tossed his remaining sword onto the desk, crossed his arms, and leaned against it. The desk quaked and slid apart. The right half thudded to the floor, sliced on the diagonal.
Haider spun around to look at it and turned back, his face twisted by disgust. “Damn it.”
Ramona hid a smile.
Matias glanced at her. “When did you even cut this?”
“On my way to the door. I wanted to slow him down.”
Haider stared at the two of them. Slightly below average height, he was built like a gymnast, compact, strong, with powerful arms and broad shoulders. He came from an old family, and the planet had put its stamp on him before he was even born. He was a classic Dahlia blond, with golden hair and skin almost as bronze as hers. No matter what your ancestors looked like, once you made your home in the province of Dahlia, it saturated you with sunlight.
He was also truly fast with those blades, and he’d reacted instantly, going from completely asleep into full assault in a blink. It had taken all her concentration and skill to parry.
“Am I seeing things?” Haider pondered, almost as if talking to himself. “Clearly this is just a weirdly specific bad dream, one where two people who hate each other team up to bust into my office and destroy my prized furniture.”
“Bill me,” Matias said.
Ha!
Haider knocked on the still-standing half of the wooden desk. “It’s old, you savage. Three hundred years old, brought to this planet by my great-great, however many greats, grandfather. It’s irreplaceable.”
Ramona felt a slight tinge of guilt. “It’s a clean cut,” she offered. “It can be fixed.”
A screen on the wall came to life. A harried woman with dark hair and worried eyes appeared. Derra Lee, Davenport’s chief of security. “Are you . . .”
“I’m fine,” Haider snapped. “Meeting with the new redecorating team.”
Derra squinted at the two of them. “Would you like me to send up some tea for everybody?”
A bit obvious for a code phrase.
“I said I’m fine. Keep your goons downstairs. I will expect a full report after this.”
Haider dismissed the screen with a flick of his fingers, sighed, and looked at the two of them. “Fine. You have my undivided attention. What the hell was so important?”
If he knew, he was a great actor. She’d have to approach this carefully, choosing just the right words . . .
“Did you pay my wife and her husband to steal from us?” Matias asked.
Damn it.
Silence claimed the office.
Haider blinked a few times and looked at her. “Is he serious?”
She shrugged. “I’ve never seen him smile, in person or in an image.”
More silence.
Haider opened his mouth and laughed.
“Is that a yes or a no?” Matias growled.
Haider shook, bent forward, and held his hand out.
“I think he needs a moment,” Ramona told Matias. “I don’t think he’s involved.”
“I can see that, but I still need to hear it.”
Haider choked a little bit and kept laughing.
There was no point in standing. This would clearly take a while. Ramona walked over to an elegant couch and sat. Matias remained standing, looming over Haider like some dark shadow.
Finally, Haider straightened. “Worth it. Do you know how long it’s been since I laughed like that? It was an ugly desk, anyway.”
“I need an answer,” Matias demanded. His voice was cold enough to freeze the marrow in one’s bones.
“No,” Haider said. “I wasn’t involved in any shenanigans with your spouses. Let me open a window into my life. My company is on the verge of bankruptcy. I’m reduced to borrowing money from distant relatives I hate and swore to never talk to again. Our precious son, who is now four months old, somehow inherited the Tarim mutation, despite numerous assurances by the best genetic firm on the planet that nothing of the sort could ever happen. That means he could simply stop breathing at any moment until he clears his first year. My husband is the carrier. He blames himself, no matter how many times I explain that it’s patently absurd, and he obsessively watches our son every waking moment, and when he should be sleeping, he takes boosters to keep himself awake to watch him some more, because he doesn’t trust the best medical personnel our dwindling money can buy. In the past four months, I had to watch Damien, the calmest, most rational being I know, turn into a paranoid, anxious ghost. He doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t eat, he barely lets me take care of him. I worry about our baby. I worry about my husband. I worry about my five-year-old sister, whom I adopted after my parents passed, because she keeps asking us every five minutes if her nephew is going to die. I worry about keeping the food on our table and salvaging the legacy my family has built. The only time I get any peace is at work, here in my office, when my brain gives out, exhausted by my frantic efforts to keep us afloat, and I shut down into a blissful stupor, which the two of you so rudely interrupted with your unnecessary acrobatics. Have you forgotten how to place a call? Have you considered the painfully obvious method of having your people contact my people, so all of us could peacefully meet in a nice neutral setting? What is wrong with the two of you?”