James Axler - Janus Trap

The two ex-Mags turned and rushed down the staircase, one after another, their heads kept low as bullets whizzed all about them. Ahead of them, Brigid stood beside Ohio Blue in the dart-shaped boat, swiftly assessing the vessel’s dashboard controls.

Grant stepped into the boat with Kane just behind him. A moment later, the boat roared away, engine howling as Brigid powered it out of the boathouse across the undulating waves. A wall of water cascaded around them as the boat turned sharply and arrowed down the choppy waters of the Tennessee. Behind them, gunmen in the boathouse were blasting shot after shot at the rapidly disappearing boat, but they were already out of range.

As Brigid manned the wheel, Ohio Blue rubbed at her face and looked at the three Cerberus teammates. “I can’t thank you enough,” she said breathlessly.

“Who were they?” Grant asked.

Ohio Blue shrugged her pale shoulders. “Competition?” she suggested, a note of query in her tone.

“See,” Kane told her angrily, “this is what you get when you jack up the price at the last minute.”

In reply, Ohio Blue just gave him a cold smile as the boat carved a path through the waves away from the boathouse. “I guess my brother’s not quite as dead as I thought,” she muttered to herself.

At the wheel, Brigid glanced across to the passengers before addressing the black marketer. “Do you have somewhere else we can go?”

Ohio Blue laughed, pushing her blond hair—now damp from the spray of the river—back over her shoulders. “That place was an empty shell, just for show,” she said. “Do you think I’m foolish enough to invite interested parties to my stock?”

Kane’s jaw was set firm as he looked at the woman. “I figure you just lost maybe twenty men back there,” he said.

“Men can be replaced,” she told him. “They were slow and stupid, so they died.”

Kane’s finger snapped up, jabbing toward Ohio’s face in accusation. “You very nearly died, too, sister,” he snapped.

“Ah, but you saved me, O handsome prince.” Blue sighed. Her visible eyelid fluttered as though swooning, and she clutched her hands together before her breasts. She was mocking Kane and he knew it.

Brigid powered down the engine and the boat slowed to a crawl as she steered it toward the muddy bank. They were over a klick away from the boathouse already, and no one was chasing them as far as Brigid could tell—they didn’t need to keep running. When Kane looked at her quizzically, she nodded toward the verdant slopes in the distance: the redoubt was nearby, its mat-trans unit their quickest way home.

Brigid spoke briefly to the trader before exiting the boat, with Grant leading the way. Kane was the last to leave, his senses on high alert once more in case they ran into further trouble on their way back.

“Well, it’s been a blast,” Kane told Ohio as he stepped up onto the edge of the boat, “but this is our stop.”

“Ohh,” Ohio drawled. “Leaving so soon? How will I ever take care of myself, O handsome prince?”

“You’ll manage,” Kane growled. “And I’m not your handsome prince.”

A wide smile crossed Ohio Blue’s cerulean lips then, that playful fire back in her visible blue eye. “But what else would I call you?” she challenged. “I never did learn your name.”

“Kane,” he told her as he stepped from the boat.

Ohio Blue reached out and pulled him back by the arm. Then she inclined her head, her mouth close to Kane’s ear, and whispered, “I owe you, Kane. Tell Ms. Baptiste that she will get her meds, and at the original price.”

Kane’s steely blue-gray eyes looked at her and a lopsided grin crossed his mouth for a moment. “That’s a very noble gesture,” he acknowledged.

Ohio Blue looked at him through the drooping curtain of her damp blond bangs. “I remember who my friends are, Kane,” she told him, squeezing his arm tightly for just a moment before letting him go.

In a few moments, Kane joined Grant and Brigid on the banks of the Tennessee as Ohio Blue powered the boat away. When he told them that they were getting the booster shots after all, Grant laughed.

“You do have a way with the ladies,” Grant said, slapping his friend on the back.

Kane wasn’t so sure. Friends like Ohio Blue almost always turned out to be more trouble than they were worth.

SHIZUKA SAT CROSS-LEGGED upon the ground on the empty plateau outside the entrance to the Cerberus redoubt. She had dressed in casual clothes, a loose-fitting cotton blouse in a pink so pale as to be almost white, black trousers and flat, open sandals. She sat there, breathing deeply as the midmorning sun played across the exposed skin of her arms, her throat and face, letting her mind fall silent with stillness.

Shizuka had brought two items with her that seemed, because she was dressed so casually, very much out of place: a katana blade, twenty-five inches of sharpened steel, held within a dark scabbard beautifully decorated with gold filigree, and a small wooden casket, just six inches by three, like a musical box. The sword and box rested on an open blanket that she had laid out on the dusty ground before sitting on it.

She had been thinking of Grant, that aching need to be in his company, to share nothing more important than the simplest of moments. But between his commitments to Cerberus and hers to the Tigers of Heaven at New Edo, the couple never quite seemed to have enough time together. Indeed, some of their most significant shared moments had been during the heat of raging battle. This day, for the first time in months, it seemed, Shizuka finally had a free day, the demands of her role as leader of the Tigers of Heaven quiet for once. And, with typical bad timing, Grant was required on a mission halfway across the country.

What had he said? A simple pickup, won’t take long. Her breath slow and calm, Shizuka reached forward and flipped open the brass catch on the little wooden box. She would wait for Grant, so that they might yet spend the afternoon together, with no distractions but for each other.

Shizuka’s delicate hands pushed open the lid and reached inside the box. Its contents had been placed carefully inside specific compartments, a masterpiece of simple design and economic use of space. There were sheets of thin rice paper, a soft square of cotton, a lightly chalked powder ball and a small bottle of oil. Along the front of the compartmentalized box rested a tiny brass hammer, held separate from the other items in the cleaning kit.

Shizuka reached forward, taking the sheathed katana from where it lay on the blanket. Gripping the hilt of the sword with her right hand, she pulled at the scabbard with her left, drawing the blade into the open where its polished steel surface reflected the rays of the sun. The graceful movement was automatic, an unconscious thing for her, practiced so many times as to be a part of her muscle memory, the weight of the sword like just another segment of her body. She looked at the blade for a moment, her eyes scanning its length, observing the grain of the steel, checking for flaws. Then, careful to hold the sharp edge of the blade away from her, Shizuka took a single sheet of the crackling, wafer-thin rice paper and began to slowly stroke the blade with it.

This was a necessary process, a chore that every samurai going back to the days of feudal Japan had performed to ensure that his katana—often referred to as the soul of the samurai—remained strong and clean, free from defects that might hinder a warrior in battle. But it was also a ritual, one that served to fill and calm Shizuka’s mind as she awaited her lover’s return.

As Shizuka sat there, the rice paper now discarded, tapping the length of the finely honed blade with the powder ball, she became aware that someone had approached and was standing behind her. She tilted the sword just slightly, looking in its reflective surface between the dustings of chalk, to see who it was who had come upon her with such stealth.