Six
I stepped toward our newly un-crated cargo, and began my walk
around.
She trailed me. ‘‘I thought civilians couldn’t own hovertanks.’’
‘‘They can’t. But they can own historical vehicles.’’ I rapped my knuckles on a rubber block of the left track. ‘‘Before hovertanks, there were crawlers. General Dynamics M1A2 Abrams main battle tank, manufactured Lima, Ohio, United States, Earth, 1998. Frame-off restored by Gustus & Son Forge, Marinus, Bren, 2081. Fully operational.’’
She walked around the prow, then stood on tiptoe to touch the main gun tube. ‘‘Operational?’’
I knelt and peered underneath at the suspension. No visible damage after a nine-jump trip. ‘‘My boss the fool had 120 mm ammunition recreated. Should be very annoying to your grezzen.’’
I clambered across the sponson, peered into the commander’s hatch on the turret, then looked down at her, alongside.
She squinted up at me, a hand visored above her eyes. ‘‘Why?’’
I shrugged. ‘‘Because some of the rounds are depleted uranium penetrators. They used to cut through crawler tank armor like blowtorches through ice cream. Trueborns believe in overkill.’’
‘‘I mean why does your boss want to hunt grezzen?’’
‘‘He’s Trueborn.’’ I shrugged again. ‘‘You can always tell an Earthman, but you can’t tell him much. I’m no mind reader.’’
Kit levered herself up alongside me, and clutched my elbow. ‘‘What’s that supposed to mean?’’
I pushed her hand away. ‘‘Look, his people hired me sight unseen a couple months ago. I know Cutler’s rich. And used to doing what he pleases, like every other Trueborn.’’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘‘Then he’s the Cutler? As in Cutler Communications?’’
Why did people get excited because somebody had money?
It took me an hour to pry open the plasteels piggybacked above the engine, check the tank’s auxiliary machine guns packed inside, and the mechanicals. The three crates of main gun ammunition —practice, canister, armor piercing discarding sabot, and Cutler’s mysterious custom jobs—were also intact.
Kit Born disappeared back into the building, then came back and supervised while the stevedores loaded her cargo onto a trailer. Then she wandered back over to me. My work had earned a cosmoline goop streak on my forearm for my trouble.
I pointed alongside the left track. ‘‘Could you hand me that rag?’’
She passed the rag over, and her fingers touched mine. ‘‘You told me about your boss. But why are you here, Parker?’’
The Tassini say that all a man has is his story, but an Illegal keeps his to himself. ‘‘I joined the Legion to see the worlds. Mostly I saw the inside of transports. Now I’m out. I get to look around.’’
‘‘For your future?’’
While I scrubbed cosmoline off the tattoo on my forearm, I straightened up and stared at the tree line. ‘‘For my past.’’
Which was what Orion had told the Legion recruiting sergeant the day she took me to enlist, at sixteen.
The gray-eyed sergeant had locked his office door behind us, then shook his head. ‘‘I don’t like this, Orion.’’ He pressed my forearm against the laser’s platen, with a hand that was regrown clear back past the wrist.
Orion snorted. ‘‘Your site says a legionnaire can forget his past and discover his future, Frank. And that the Legion pays bonus to Yavis for armored because we fit in small spaces.’’
‘‘We do. But this kid’s as tall as a Trueborn.’’
Orion frowned. ‘‘That’s why I need to get him off Yavet! It’s been tough enough raising an Illegal. Now he stands out.’’
The sergeant sighed, then stared at me. ‘‘You sure about this, son? The tatt burns clear down into the bone, because sometimes that’s all that’s left. It’s indelible. Once it’s on, so’s your obligation. The Legion can get you off Yavet, but you’ll still be an Illegal under Yavet law. If you choose out after your hitch, you’ll earn a year without a bounty, as long as you’re off Yavet. After that any bounty hunter who finds you, anywhere in the Union, can deliver you to any Yavet Consulate, dead or alive, which means dead. And don’t even think about coming back here.’’
Orion rolled her eyes at the Sergeant. ‘‘Save the boogie man lecture. He’s been dodging bounty hunters all his life. Frank, I’ve seen Legion recruiters tatt passed-out drunks on bar floors to meet quota. He’s clean as green and smart as a Trueborn.’’ Her voice softened. ‘‘And you owe me.’’
The flint in the sergeant’s eyes melted, and he took Orion’s hand in his natural one. ‘‘We haven’t forgotten. We never will. It’s not him I worry about, Orion. You’re asking me to take your son from you.’’
Orion covered his hand and my forearm with hers, and whispered, ‘‘Jazen’s not my son, not by blood. But he’s someone’s son. He needs to find his past, and he can’t find it with me. I’m fine.’’ She blinked, then turned away. ‘‘Tatt him before I cry.’’
I patted Orion’s arm, then nodded at the sergeant. The laser crackled and my forearm burned so hot that I bit through my lip.
‘‘Parker?’’ On the Dead End runway, fingers touched my arm, just below my tatt. Kit the Line Wrangler peered up at me, her brow furrowed. ‘‘Your arm okay? You were rubbing it.’’
‘‘S’fine. For a lady who carries a Barrett, you worry a lot about the welfare of strangers and poison spiders. Would anybody on Dead End weep if Cutler managed to kill a grezzen?’’
She smirked as she shook her head. ‘‘If Cutler carpet bombed the grezzen to extinction, they’d rename the planet after him.’’
I climbed down off the Abrams, rubbed my eyes, and stretched. ‘‘As long as Cutler lets me get a meal and a shower within the next three hours, I’ll rename the planet after him.’’
My Handtalk vibrated. I tugged it from my pocket and turned away as I answered.
‘‘Parker?’’ It was Zhondro. ‘‘My darling arrived in good health?’’
‘‘Not a scratch. Even Cutler’s special rounds.’’
He sighed. ‘‘Good. Maybe that will calm him down.’’
I rolled my eyes. ‘‘Cutler? Now what? Fuel?’’
‘‘No. The local kerosene tests quite satisfactorily. Those old turbines were designed to run even on rubbish. The outfitter wishes to discuss the local guide situation.’’
I gripped the Handtalk tighter. ‘‘There’s nothing to discuss. Cutler’s people vetted Bauer months ago. He knows the ground, he knows these grezzen better than anybody alive, and they prepaid the outfitter for him already.’’
They had to make arrangements months in advance and sight unseen, and nobody did it better than Cutler’s people. Cutler’s family built its empire on moving information around the Human Union. Nothing moved through normal space faster than light, and light took decades to move through normal space, even among the inworlds. Human communications, from contracts to Cutlergrams, had to shortcut through jumps. Only C-drive vehicles like cruisers could jump. So information traveled just as slowly as every tourist, legionnaire, or plasti of Coke traveled.
‘‘Apparently that is not what this fellow has just told Cutler. The outfitter has demanded a meeting in person in one hour.’’
Meeting. I smiled. ‘‘Aha!’’ Outworld cultures, despite their differences, shared one hatred. Well, Outworlders didn’t precisely hate Earthlings, but they hated Earthlings’ wealth, privilege, and attitude. Outworlders lived by the maxim that it’s easier to take a Trueborn’s money than it is to take a Trueborn. ‘‘They’re trying to retrade the deal, Zhondro. Tell Cutler to take the board out of his ass and give them five percent more. Arguing will cost us more than that in delay.’’
‘‘No.’’
I rolled my eyes. ‘‘Okay, leave out the board part. But tell him! Blame me if you want to.’’ I swallowed. Cutler was both blue-nose enough and prick enough to do just that, and fire me on the spot.
‘‘I meant no, he’s not meeting the outfitter. Cutler said that is precisely the sort of triviality resolution for which he overpays you.’’
Crap. I sighed. ‘‘I don’t even know where the outfitter is. If I knew, we wouldn’t need a damn guide in the first place.’’
‘‘An excellent point. But it will be lost on Mr. Cutler if it delays us, Jazen. I put my faith in you, my friend, only behind God.’’ Zhondro cut the connection, and I turned back, frowning, toward Kit Born.
Kit shook her head. ‘‘No meal, no shower?’’
I thumbed off on a manifest that a stevedore held out to me, then shook my head at her. ‘‘Maybe no paychip, if I can’t get to a meeting in town in an hour. What are business meetings like here?’’
‘‘If you’re here to kill grezzen and pay cash, everybody will love you.’’
‘‘Does the mag rail to town stop in walking distance of a place called Eden Outfitters?’’
She snorted and rolled her eyes. ‘‘Mag rail. On Dead End. You said your boss was the idiot.’’
She turned her back on me, then walked, shaking her head, toward the exit gate. Palms out, mouth open, I stood alone on the tarmac.
After ten steps, Kit turned back and waved me toward her. ‘‘Move your ass, Parker. With the Cageway closed, Eden’s fifty minutes from here. You’ve already wasted two.’’