Devana Files: Chapter 27

Worth Fighting For, Part 2

This is a long chapter…but I decided not to break it in two. 🩵

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This is the Twenty-seventh chapter.

You may find earlier chapters here:

Kate Devana Files: Table of Contents

Space 2074: The lunar colony is the new Wild West. Sheriff Kate Devana goes off-colony to wrangle a fugitive con artist who bilked retirees for billions and is trying to escape to Mars on a deep space supply shuttle. But back home, robots are glitching, killing people, and she is the target of a corrupt Federal Agent looking to avenge the death of his former partner. Bodies are piling up faster than she can get home.

On the moon, Kate Devana is the law.

While this is the 3rd novel in the series, each is designed to be read independently.

For accessibility, there is a voiceover for each chapter.

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APRIL 11, 2074

PROCELLARIUM IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT, LUNAR COLONY, U.S.A.

“Where’s your partner?” Eric asked Agent Lindsay.

He’d quit slurping his disgusting brown muscle milk and now held his cup low, like a punching weapon, ready to follow up with a sharp metal straw to the eye socket.

Not that Agent Lindsay had done anything to deserve a jab to the face, except be a Fed, alone on the lunar colony, with her partner wandering around in violation of their thirteen-page agreement. Devana called it the Memorandum of Misunderstanding. She predicted the Feds would ignore it because they couldn’t help themselves, and then excuse it as One Big Ole Misunderstanding.

The morgue hallway was empty in both directions. Forward, it stretched to stairs and an elevator. Rearward to a wall. Her eyesight and hearing were perfect. Better than perfect. The docbot rated her audiogram A+ and her eyesight 20/10. She’d blown her eardrum surfing, and her mother handed down nearsightedness, but surgery corrected both.

The magic of medicine. So she was confident that between the hum of fans and the faint flushing of a toilet one floor up, she neither saw nor heard any rats in the hall. Nor the stairwell. Nor any making the elevator machinery buzz with anticipation.

There were no rats anywhere, certainly not human-sized rats disguised as Feds, which meant Agent Lindsay’s partner and whoever else she brought as help was off somewhere cooking up trouble.

Leyna was suddenly very aware of the phone in her pocket, and that it might jingle at any second. Low-high-low, the sound of a Priority One call. Assault in progress by a Fed. Although, they’d call it a routine interrogation.

“Where is your partner?” Eric asked again.

Agent Lindsay ignored him. She didn’t even acknowledge his existence with a glance. Instead, she put her phone in her pocket and then shot Leyna a pompous, impatient look. Feds were not used to being told no.

She wasn’t going to be bullied by a Fed. Not in her own territory. “Eric asked where your partner is. Did you bring a team? Where are they now?”

“Your office was locked. I came here looking for Dr. Torres but I found you.”

“Enthralling story,” Eric said.

“Evading,” Leyna added.

Leyna nodded to Eric for them to go. She rudely brushed past, intentionally digging her knee against Agent Lindsay’s bad leg. A test. Limps can be faked, but core stability can’t, something she learned surfing. The human brain works overtime to keep an inherently unstable bipedal upright. A little unexpected shove and your pupils contract, arms flail, legs tense, and if you are lucky, all the flapping stops you from tumbling down the stairs and cracking your skull. Three million years of instinct. Impossible to fake.

Of course, she’d feel bad if she toppled Agent Lindsay. But only a little. Agent Lindsay had done nothing except be a Fed. The woman in front of her, on the other hand, Agent Faker, was feigning a limp and actively misunderstanding their Memorandum.

Unsurprisingly, Agent Faker didn’t topple over. In fact, when Leyna brushed her knee against Agent Faker’s knee, she was sure it resisted like a prosthetic.

“I’m here to pick up my prisoners,” Agent Lindsay yelled after them.

“You Feds are great conversationalists,” Leyna yelled back. “We should do this again. I’m free at the turn of the century.”

Leyna darted for the stairwell, Eric in tow.

“I am just here for my prisoners,” Agent Lindsay repeated.

They didn’t slow down or look back. Eric held the stairwell door open.

“Where is your partner?” Leyna asked, halfway through the door.

“It’s classified.”

The door whooshed closed behind her, and he raced ahead. With the Fed behind her and his fumes rising away from her, her nausea receded.

Her office was one flight up, down a hall, and up two more flights. A side benefit of her boss being married to the colony’s Medical Examiner: their offices were in the same wing of the lunar colony, in connecting buildings. So that sickening fresh space mummy smell was never more than a quick sprint away.

Honestly, the space mummies didn’t bother her. They smelled like overcooked jerky and she was craving something salty. What was sickening her right now was Eric’s dirty toilet water flavored muscle shake.

“She’s a fraud.”

“When a Fed’s mouth is talking, they’re lying,” Eric agreed. “Whaddya wanna bet she beats us to your office.”

“She’d have to run. The elevator takes longer.”

“Hard to fit those cheap Fed pantsuits over a brace or a cast.”

Eric caught the fake limp, too.

“I brushed her hard enough to topple her.”

He pulled the door open for her. Leyna looked down the stairs. No Agent Lindsay. They exited the stairwell to another hospital-oatmeal hallway.

“Obviously not. Next time, let me try,” he grinned.

“If she beats us, she outs herself as a fake.”

“You already outed her. She knows you know. Now it’s a game to see who calls who’s bluff first.”

They entered the next stairwell, Eric holding the door. He rushed up the stairs. She lingered. There was a cool breeze coming from a ceiling vent.

“Think I can get away with the dumb blonde routine? Pretend not to know? Maybe I’m clumsy?”

Eric stopped at the landing, took a pull from his metal cup, and looked her over. “I can’t see you as a blonde.”

She should have shrugged it off, but his off-handed comment hit her hard. She couldn’t dye her hair, at least until she was sure. Red hair, fair skin, baby blue eyes. There was no way around it. She’d see her mother every day in the mirror.

He stood there like a doofus, sipping his whatever. She could feel tears building. Christ, not now. She squished her face to try to hold them. She was not going to cry. Not in a stairwell.

Eric mulled something over, sipping, and then descended on her. She turned away. He shifted his drink to his other hand and put his arm around her. She let herself be pulled into a side hug.

“Don’t be sad, sweet cheeks. They’ll be other chances to topple a Fed.”

She wanted to punch him. He was so cavalier about everything. And he called her sweet cheeks. He knew how much she hated that.

But he cracked a smile, and she laughed. “You are such a jackass.”

He side-squeezed her shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“This is so silly.”

“You are worried about Jin?”

She decided to force herself to wipe her face and swallow. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go, but since when did her life go the way she planned?

“I got a note from Jin.” She explained how she received it and hadn’t had time to decode it. “These last two lines, ‘In the code we find our love. in bytes we send.’ It means he encrypted something in the data.”

“I’m confused, he got a message out?”

“I’m not explaining this very well. This line, ‘I accepted a nap,’ is kind of a weird way to say he took a nap. I think it means he was drugged. Like he didn’t accept the nap, it was forced on him.”

“Ahh, I see.” He sipped. “No I don’t.”

“Every line is like a clue.” She pushed away and read the entire first paragraph from her phone. “Dearest Leyna. I have arrived safely. I miss your voice, a melody of bliss. I miss stroking your auburn hair. I accepted a nap. I dreamt of you. We were at Grouppa Six for your twenty-ninth birthday party. We hired a clown magician, and your mother was there. She loved the tricks. When I woke, I was humming our favorite song.”

“Your hair is not auburn.”

“And I sing like a coyote. It’s an opposite gram.”

“Okay. What’s Grouppa Six?”

“Grouppa Six is where Agent Anders’s old partner was gunned down.”

“Agent Anders, as in Agent Faker’s missing partner?”

“The same, but here is where it gets weird. He talks about it like a dream. A clown is how my mother referred to Feds. And she’s…dead, so she couldn’t be at my twenty-ninth birthday, which I haven’t had yet. But I think he’s trying to tell me he saw someone. Someone associated with Grouppa Six.”

“A Fed?”

“That we hired. One my mother would really hate to see, a corrupt one.”

He sipped. “A magician, like he’s in two places at once. You think he saw Agent Anders?”

“Everyone knew Anders was out for revenge. He blamed Devana for his partner’s death. And she suspected he would try to collect the bounty on her head. In fact, she hoped to lure him here.”

“I thought they came for the famous prisoners they lost and let escape Earth.”

“She called it a two-fer. Two criminals, one job.”

Her phone pinged. Low-high-low. The text: PS1. Loc: Your office. P1 meant ‘Priority One.’ The ‘S’ stood for ‘Silent.’ It was from the head of security of the Lunar Sunset Hotel, who was going to meet her at her office. Priority One crimes were homicide, rape, usually anything violent and urgent. ‘Silent’ meant security did not want the colony guests to panic, so they wanted it kept secret. There was no crime in the colony, except that there was, and the marketing robots weren’t going to let a little thing like transparency harsh the Vacation Vibes. Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t worry the guests, trademarked by the Lunar Tourism Board. Almost all crimes, priority one or otherwise, were kept silent.

She started back up the stairs, Eric behind her. She received just the text, no images, notes, or context, nor had she met the head of the Lunar Sunset Hotel. He seemed like the cryptic, silent type.

“Jin is, what, three thousand kilometers away?” Eric asked.

“We don’t know where he is. I think they drugged him and diverted his lunar rover somehow. Maybe he saw Anders doing it, who, by the way, is conveniently missing.”

“Wait—you think the Feds kidnapped Jin? I mean, they’re assholes, but kidnapping?”

“In for a penny in for a pound. It’s a big bounty. Like thirty mil or something. Agent Lindsay is lying. I think she’s in on it.”

They exited to her office hallway. Predictably, Agent Faker was standing at the door waiting for them. Unpredictably, the head of colony security was also standing there, in bloody clothes, holding a kevlar hotel safe bag, the kind guests used to store valuables. His nametag read LUNAR SUNSET BATH. His name was Bath, and it looked like Bath had bathed in blood.

Eric whistled. “I say we go beat the shit out of her, and see what she knows.”

“We won’t do anything until Kate is back. She always says there’s strength in numbers.”

“I can take her.”

“No doubt. You could dissolve her with that disgusting potion in your cup, too. She's hiding a prosthetic leg. We don’t know what else she’s hiding. Or where her team is.”

Leyna marched to the door. It had a big silver badge logo and her likeness in a trio of images, along with Devana and Jin, all three of them sporting dress blues and looking constipated for the camera.

If she opened the door to her office, all the bad air and bad people would drift in.

She nodded to Bath. “Be with you in a second, I need to take out the trash.” To Agent Lindsay, she said, “Where is your partner, Agent Anders?”

“Agent Anders is not here.”

“I see that. Where is he?”

“Classified.”

“Fuck it is,” Eric said. He was back to casually working his straw. Jesus, how much poop could one man swallow?

Agent Lindsay again pretended Eric wasn’t there. Bath handed her the kevlar bag and said, “I see you’re busy. Here. All taken care of.”

“What’s taken care of?”

Bath spun and receded down the hallway, leaving her holding the bag.

“Who’s blood is this?” She yelled, but he ignored her. He opened the stairwell door, tipped his head goodbye, and then disappeared.

“Do you know where Devana is?”

What was in this bag? Who’s blood was this?

“Deputy Darcy? The telemetry on NYS Vega seems to be—”

“Classified,” Eric said. “Its location is classified, like your partner’s.” Maybe the way Eric punctuated his words with his metal straw was brandishing, bordering on assault. Maybe it wasn’t.

“You two want to play this game with me?”

“Deputy Darcy, who is the law around here?” Eric adopted a serious tone, like a lawyer in a show.

“Well, it says right there on the door. Katera Devana, Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the Lunar Colony.”

“And where is she?”

“That’s classified. But I can say she’s not on the colony right now and not taking messages.”

“I see, and so based on this diagram, next in line is Senior Deputy Jinho Knight.” He was pointing to Jin’s picture on the door. “With whom I believe you are having carnal relations?”

He just had to go there. He knew exactly where to stick the knife. She wanted to kick him in the balls. But she wasn’t going to let him get to her, not in front of Agent Faker here.

Agent Lindsay was visibly irritated with Eric, too, shifting on her fake cane, face scowling. Well, that made Eric's jackassery worthwhile, so she decided to lean into it.

“That is not the proper form of a question.”

“Let me rephrase. Where is Jinho Knight currently?”

“Gone, I am afraid. After we’ve been bred, we Darcy’s eat our mates, much like a praying mantis.”

His facade of seriousness cracked a little. He sucked some of his goop, his cheeks and throat working up to some kind of snide comment. It was going to involve shotguns and weddings. No amount of denying anything was going to plug his mouth, either. He was enjoying himself. He got to tease her in front of a Fed, plus he got to irritate Agent Faker at the same time.

He let the knife twist a few gulps. She tensed her thighs, ready to block Agent Faker, who looked like she would whack him with the cane.

“Well, with him eaten, I guess that makes you the girlboss and acting Chief Law Enforcement officer on the colony. Is that right?”

“So I am the law?”

Damn, she should have stated it, not questioned herself.

“Yes, you are the law. So if you ordered me to, say, electrocute a Fed—“

Leyna smiled at Agent Lindsay. “He would be obligated to obey the lawful order of a peace officer.”

“Don’t play this game with me.”

“If it were a game, we’d be enjoying it. There would be power-ups and prizes,” Eric answered.

“Where is your supervisor, Deputy Darcy?”

“Go back to your hotel. Enjoy the sights. Go brush your tail. Polish your horns. Then fuck right the hell off. When your prisoners are ready for pickup, I’ll find you.”

“Such a warm welcome.”

“Feds are as welcome here as a fart at a funeral,” Eric said. He shifted his weight as if getting ready to walk away. “Well, as much fun as this is, Leyna and I have a case. Some poor fuck got a metal rod wedged up his ass maintaining heavy machinery. Stick around, we’ll show you how to get yours out.”

Agent Lindsay looked at Eric, and then back at Leyna. “Are we done with the pissing contest?”

“Doubt it. He’s been drinking that disgusting muscle juice all day. I bet his bladder’s back pressure could put a kidney stone through body armor.”

“Can I?” Eric asked.

“Please.”

“He pulls that little wanker of his out I’ll charge him with indecent exposure.”

“Did she call me a little wanker?”

“Everything about him is indecent, I give you that. Just that smug face of his is probably five felonies. But I am the law, and no, you won’t. Now tell us where your partner is.”

Agent Limp Faker Lindsay shuffled her cane uncomfortably. Then she scrunched up her face as if she were about to shit a brick of paperwork scrawled with galactic secrets. The effort was a little over the top. She shifted and danced, but then her face relaxed as if it were just gas. The show ended with no secrets, only a shrug.

“You know the agreement,” Leyna said. “My boss’s exact words were ‘tight leash,’ and authorized me to choke you off. You two are here for one purpose, the prisoners. Not harassing guests who happen to disagree with the current administration. If—when—I find him trolling around the colony on a fishing expedition, I will lock him up and send him home.”

“I thought this was a new era of cooperation.”

“My theory,” Eric said. “You ate him. Like Deputy Darcy here, you’re a mantid. That’s what you Feds do, right? Or are you more like zombies that gut the living and chew on their rotting flesh?”

Agent Lindsay gave Eric a constipated grimace, threatening twenty-five pages of tedious paperwork.

“You can tell us,” he continued. “This is the safe circle.” He put his hand on his heart, the one not holding his cup. Then he did the silly gorilla thing where he puffed his chest and bulged his pecs and shoulders. Men. So ridiculous and so useful at the same time. “Cross my heart, I can keep a secret. You ate his liver, didn’t you? It’s not a crime to eat Fed liver here, and trust me, I’ve seen worse.”

Agent Lindsay shifted her gaze to Leyna. “Your technician here is a real piece of work.”

“He’s my partner,” Leyna corrected. “This conversation ends in three seconds. Then I go find Anders and trespass you both.”

Agent Lindsay once again shuffled on her cane dramatically, this time as if she was in pain, and then let out a small sigh. “Anders is dead. He fell out of an airlock on Kuipers.”

Eric raised one eyebrow, telegraphing, ‘Can you believe this bullshit?’ Then to Agent Lindsay, he said, “People don’t just fall out of airlocks. There are safety protocols.”

“Well, he did. I was there. It was an accident. But it’s classified. We are keeping it quiet while we investigate.”

“You mean cover your ass.” He underlined his words by waving his straw. If it had been a Katana sword, Agent Lindsay would be in three pieces.

“Some sort of virus?” Leyna asked. Why was she going along with this baloney? She wanted to see how deep a hole Agent Lindsay would dig herself.

“Cybercrime swept it twice but hasn’t found anything. It’s probably just an accident.” Agent Lindsay’s voice softened. The fake limp. The fake story. She was a terrible liar.

If Agent Anders wasn’t on the colony, though, Jin’s message made more sense. Were they holding him on Kuipers? No, Kuipers was in high Earth orbit. Too far. Plus, she’d get an alert if there was an unscheduled rocket launch.

She needed to get rid of Agent Limp Faker and get back to work. She glanced at Eric. He wasn’t the subtle type. In fact, sometimes, he wasn’t the direct type, either. A little obtuse. She hoped he would take the hint.

“Eric and I are just finishing a case. Vega was delayed. Your prisoners will land in a few hours, give or take.”

“What kind of delay?”

“A thrust vector postponement problem.”

“That sounds like horseshit.”

“Horseshit, bullshit, we don’t give a shit, dipshit,” Eric said. “Come back in a few hours after they’ve disembarked. Meet here.”

Leyna smiled at him, grateful. He returned a ‘we got this’ expression. Eric and Jin were different. Jin was her boyfriend. Where Jin was sweet, Eric was crass and an annoying pain in the ass. She’d kissed him once, drunk. It felt awkward and incestuous for them both. With his red hair, Viking beard, and fair complexion, somewhere in the back of her mind, her ancestors and his were related. He was a jackass, but a useful jackass, and she thought of him like a big brother.

“I want to be there when the prisoners land. I will meet you at the spaceport. ”

“No problem,” Leyna said. “But we’ll be using the stairs. It’s seventeen flights.”

“No elevator?”

“We have one, but won’t be using it. Security protocol.” A lie.

Agent Lindsay did some sort of calculation in her head and then said, “Why wasn’t I notified of the delay?”

“Consider yourself notified,” Eric said. He looked at Leyna. “We have a case to button up and not much time. Is that the fenser rod, in that pouch, from the mechanical room?”

Leyna almost forgot she was holding a bloody kevlar security pouch. She was pretty sure ‘fenser rod’ was a made-up term. “Oh, right. Yes, the fenser rod. Hotel security delivered it straight away so we could examine it.”

“Well, let’s scan it and see if it’s a match for the wounds.” To Agent Lindsay, he said, “You are welcome to sit in. We have a real fun one. Industrial accident in the power plant. Traumatic avulsion to the prostate and bladder. Pipes exploded and literally ripped the vic a new asshole. Life insurance wants a complete exam so they can sue the manufacturer, and we need to finish this today.”

Eric smiled at her and guzzled from his straw, making those annoying bubble slurps as the juice ran dry. He belched, clouding the hallway with the smell of his revolting brown stew. She felt woozy again.

“No thanks. I’ll take a raincheck.” Agent Lindsay grimaced and then half-swiveled, pausing as if she had one more thing to say. But she didn’t. Instead, she completed her melodramatic pivot and step-limped down the hall, talking to the ceiling, reciting the name and room number of her hotel.

Days, months, years, whole centuries passed as Agent Limp Faker Lindsay affected a Broadway-quality production of Step-limp Down the Hall.

When the door closed behind Agent Faker, Leyna said, “Thanks for backing me. You are not so bad for a jackass.”

“You are not so bad yourself, sweet cheeks.”

She punched his arm, which practically broke her knuckles. It was like punching a brick wall. “Ow. You need to stop calling me that.”

“So what’s really in the bloody pouch?”

She unzipped it.

Another black cube. This one giving off blue sparks. Charged, like the one from the Comet.

And humming.

No, not humming. A voice. Jin's voice. She wasn’t hearing it with her ears. She felt very warm. A picture opened in her mind, like a heads-up display. She was with Jin. Inside Jin, seeing through his eyes. She heard his heartbeat in her ears as if it were her own. He was in a hotel room with wooden walls. Pictures of constellations everywhere. An image of the Skull Nebula hung over the bed. Its red eyes bore through her as if it could see her soul. It made her shiver. Then, we were nudging open the door. Outside the hotel room, a sandstone yellow hallway. Lots of mahogany doors in both directions. Art everywhere. Ancient cave art on the walls and wedge-shaped writing.

Where were we?

Someone was coming. People were coming. Maybe not people. Humanoid. And she could hear footfalls. Regular, rhythmic, disciplined footfalls, like an army squad.

Someone was here. With her. In her mind.

Come with us.

Who’s voice was that?

She dropped the bag.

The world went black.