CHAPTER FOUR
The light was extremely dim in the long, steel tunnel of Metifilli orbital station’s freight marshaling section. Consequently, the three men walking down its center lane could not even see the curved walls a dozen meters to either side of them. Various leaks from the tankage baffles beyond those walls produced a discordant symphony of echoing drips. Well ahead, five figures seated at a card table glanced up in unison as the largest of the three approaching men stepped in a puddle. Two of the figures at the table rose; each one let a hand drift toward the small of their backs.
As the three newcomers approached, one of the three men who remained seated raised his chin. “Can I do sumthin’ for you guys?”
“That depends,” answered the newcomer who was walking point. “Are you the freight yard clerk?”
“One of ’em. Who wants to know?”
“Call me Ossian.”
“Sure. And you can call me Ishmael.”
“No, really,” said Ossian as he approached the table with an affable smile. “Ossian is my real name.” He reflected that in this unsavory backwater establishment, using one’s own name was probably unheard of.
“Suit yourself.” The guy who had been doing the talking shrugged. “So what can we do for you, ‘Ossian’?” The two figures who’d risen from the table—one a burly middle-aged man with an oft-broken nose and the other a thin young woman whose eyes were open just a bit too wide—drifted further to either flank. Ossian’s two space-suited companions either didn’t notice the maneuver or didn’t care. Their closed helmet visors reflected the light panels that made this the brightest spot for over a hundred meters in either direction.
“Well,” Ossian explained, “I’d like you to locate some cargo for me. It’s somewhere in storage here.”
Ishmael snickered; his companions affected broad, sardonic smiles. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, Ossian. See any containers that look familiar?” The smiles became derisive chortles. Stacked ranks of mostly uniform modular freight containers hemmed them in on both sides. The few that had started as something other than basic gray had long since surrendered their distinctive paint schemes to the fading of time and coatings of dust.
Ossian smiled sheepishly. “Well, I’ve never actually seen the container I’m looking for. Which is why I came to you. The stationmaster told me that you’re the person to talk to when it comes to locating hard-to-find items, who keeps track of freight that goes astray. If you get my drift.”
Ishmael’s smile fell away, partly at the knowing tone with which Ossian had underscored his last sentence, partly because of Ossian’s slightly widened stance. “I’m not sure I do get your drift, Ossian.” Ishmael glanced at his companions. The burly man and the thin woman each took a further flanking step. Another man rose from the table; the other retained his seat but hunched closer to the table: his arms were now concealed from the upper bicep on down.
Ossian, on the other hand, was smiling more widely. “I’m sorry about the confusion, Ishmael. I was pretty certain you would get my drift. The stationmaster expressly said you know how to take a hint, how to keep a secret, and how to make cargos disappear and then reappear later on. But since she seems to have been mistaken, why don’t I just give you the container’s locator code?” Ossian took out a bulky hand computer. “I can download it to your system, if you like.”
Ishmael shook his head, rose. “I doubt I can help you. A lot of the containers we manage get inventoried the old-fashioned way.” He patted a notepad in his breast pocket. “But if you give me a hardcopy of the bill of lading, I’ll see what I can do.” Ishmael stayed back far enough that he’d just be able to reach whatever Ossian held out toward him.
Ossian shook his head, but never took his eyes off Ishmael. “Sorry, no hardcopy. I’ve only got a locator code.”
“Why? Did you lose the bill of lading?”
“No. The package I’m looking for never had one. It’s not commercial freight. It’s a government item.”
Ishmael swallowed. “Then you are in the wrong place, no matter what the stationmaster said. We don’t handle government shipments. Just commercial. Look around you. You see any government modulars in here?”
Ossian’s two escorts took a step out to either side. “No,” Ossian admitted. “I don’t. But I didn’t say the item I’m looking for arrived in a government container. In fact, I’m pretty sure it didn’t arrive in a container at all. And the stationmaster agreed with my conjecture. After all, data cores for automated warp point courier drones are too valuable and too sensitive to be moved as freight anyway—even on official craft.”
Ishmael took a step back, may have glanced at a nearby utility locker with its door slightly ajar. “Then like I told you already, you’re in the wrong place. I can’t help you.”
“That’s a shame, Ishmael. Because the stationmaster repeatedly assured me that you could. In fact, she was certain that you’d want to help me.”
Ishmael’s next half step brought him abreast of the locker. “Let’s drop the charades. I don’t help errand boys from Customs, Ossian.” He didn’t quite sneer when he added the name.
“Oh, I’m not from Customs, Ishmael. If I was, I doubt your stationmaster would have been so eager to make me happy.”
“Eager to make you happy?” Now Ishmael did sneer. “Since when has Ramona ever been eager to make anyone happy but herself?”
“I can’t tell you that, but Ramona did genuinely seem eager to help. Or maybe she just didn’t want us to get angry.”
“Oh, and why is that?”
“Because if we had gotten angry, we’d have thrown her in the deepest, darkest hole that Naval Intelligence has.”
The words “Naval Intelligence” worked like a starter’s gun commencing a sprint. Ishmael and his fellow freight hands began dodging toward the cover of nearby containers, several producing small pistols from their pockets or waistbands.
But Ossian’s two spacesuited companions were both much quicker and much smoother in their actions. With a surety of movement that marked them as seasoned professionals, the two drew handguns from the large, thigh-side utility pockets of their suits. As they dropped to their knees, the thugs’ small handguns began popping fitfully—and inexpertly—in their direction. The two men both aimed the muzzles of their much more powerful (and expensive) coil pistols at the freight hand who was still seated at the table and seemed to be manipulating something beneath it.
A flurry of 4.5 mm lead-cored tungsten darts from the two special-issue naval sidearms tracked a pattern of red ruin across the seated man’s chest just as his machine-pistol began stuttering underneath the tabletop. Its arc of fire rose as he fell backward in his chair, cutting a ragged perforation through the cheap pressboard slab beneath which he’d been hiding the weapon.
Several pistol bullets hit Ossian’s space-suited escorts: the low-mass, low-velocity caseless rounds spatted harmlessly against the form-fitting ballistic armor they wore under their outsized suits.
Ishmael, reaching the open locker, pulled out a waiting shotgun—archaic but serviceable—and spun around to put a spread of single-aught buckshot into Ossian—
—who, dropping to one knee, had popped open the false frame of his apparent hand computer, revealing a large-bore caseless automatic. That snub-nosed weapon nowblasted five times before Ishmael was able to even bring the shotgun around; two red divots jetted out of the black marketeer’s left leg, one just above the knee. The shotgun fired wild—as much a pain-induced trigger reflex as an expression of lethal intent—and Ishmael went down, howling.
At roughly the same moment, his three standing lackeys were realizing that their gunfire was not having any discernable effect upon the two spacesuited figures. One kept shooting; the other two turned and fled into the darkness of the farther tunnel. Whether the one who kept firing was more brave, more dense, or both did not change his fate: he was hit multiply by the concentrated fire of the two kneeling men, his entire torso a pockmarked red ruin by the time he hit the deck.
The taller of the two spacesuited figures stood, pulled off his helmet, shook sweat out of a thick red shock of hair. “Clear,” shouted Marine Captain Alessandro Magee.
The smaller slapped his faceplate up. “The hell you say,” muttered Lieutenant Harry “Lighthorse” Li as he launched up out of his kneeling posture into a surprisingly swift pursuit of the two fleeing felons.
“Play nice,” Ossian shouted after him.
“I always do,” came the dwindling reply.
’Sandro McGee came to stand beside Ossian, looked down at Ishmael. “He’s bleeding pretty badly, sir.”
Ossian craned his neck to get a better look. “Why, you’re right. He is. Would you like us to help you, Ishmael? Throw a stitch or two across that crater in your leg?”
Ishmael vociferously ordered Ossian to perform a biologically impossible act. ’Sandro started to move forward.
Ossian put out a restraining hand. “Captain, no need to get irritated. I suspect Ishmael will begin to see the many errors of his ways when the blood loss and shock starts settling in, starts getting through that noradrenal combat rush. Tell me, Ishmael, are you starting to feel a little chilly? You’re not looking too well—not unless you’re usually gray-faced and covered in cold sweat.”
Ishmael groaned. “You bastard, you damn near shot my leg off.”
Ossian crouched down. “Well, if I hadn’t, you’d have shot off both my legs—and possibly more, besides. But let’s not quibble about almost-lost body parts, yeh? Let’s talk about what I need from you before the doctors arrive. Well, if the doctors arrive. Seems like you’ve disabled the monitors in this old drop tank that some genius decided to convert into the system’s orbital freight-holding facility. So who knows if this altercation even registered on the security screens in the stationmaster’s office?” As Ishmael gritted his teeth and rolled his face into the deck to stifle his blinding agony, Ossian nodded sharply at ’Sandro. The big Marine captain touched a paging circuit on his collarcom: the combination medical and forensic team that had been waiting on the far side of the main freight doors was now cleared to enter the area.
“I didn’t disable the sensors,” Ishmael panted through his shivers. “They’re just shitty sensors, is all. Everything is always breaking in this dump.” He ended his assertion with another piteous groan and profound shudder.
“Hmm. I guess those sensors are so shitty that they somehow severed their own wires. Because, you see, we checked them before we strolled down here to make your acquaintance, Ishmael. And if you keep lying to me, it might take longer for the doctors to get here. Longer than might be safe for you.”
Ishmael’s face was a ghostlike mask of quivering hatred, but he said, “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know how you and the others work it.”
“Work what?”
“See? There you go again, Ishmael, wasting valuable time—”
“Okay, okay. Somebody further down the warp line toward Zephrain delivers the warp courier data cores to us here. They leave. We hold on to the cores: there’s plenty of places for something as small as that to get…lost. Then, maybe a week later, someone from further up the warp line—up toward Orion space—pays us a visit and taps the data in the cores. They go away. Then a third group comes and takes the core back toward Zephrain. I think they return it to Sulzan, maybe. There’s a courier repair base there, where technicians pull drones off-line for complete data-wipes and routine maintenance.”
“Hmm. When the second bunch of visitors taps the core, are they just skimming the general data it’s carrying, or are they digging down into its programming, where confidential files are embedded?”
“Confidential files? What do you mean?”
’Sandro pushed the toe of his boot into the black marketeer’s uninjured thigh. “You know. Are they accessing any official data that was uploaded to the drone?”
“I don’t know. But I think so. The group that came in to tap the core needed a government-issue crypto machine of some kind to get the data out and then record it. You wouldn’t need that for regular commercial datafeed. Regular commo traffic might be coded, but you’d still be able to tap it. But if it’s milspec or diplomatic signals, you can’t even get the box to talk to your computer unless you—”
“Yes. We have a passing familiarity with the safeguards.” Ossian stood. “I need identities of all these groups, of course.”
“You can have them, but they’re all bullshit anyhow. Which you’ve gotta know. We don’t use real names in the small package trade…‘Ossian.’”
Ossian sighed. “You know, Ishmael, you’re just not a quick learner. My real name is Ossian Wethermere, and every time you annoy me, things will just get worse for you. Now you’re going to tell me where you keep the recordings you made of all your backroom transactions. And also, where you keep the duct tape that you appear to throw away after you’ve used it to secure each group of your visitors.”
“Secure them?”
“Yes, secure them. As in, their hands are immobilized, and their eyes are covered so they can’t guide anyone back to your initial meeting site. Where you arrange the time and protocols for how you’re going to conduct your ‘business’ here.”
Ishmael’s brief unconcealed pulse of surprise was evident even through his rictus of pain. “What do you mean? I don’t do anything like that—”
’Sandro leaned in. “Don’t play dumb. You’re not the only one who uses that little trick, Ishmael. You use duct tape to cover their eyes, bind their hands. Nice nasty rip when it comes off. Gets the other side bitching at you about your rough methods. You bitch back. But everyone settles down after getting the surliness out of their systems—and the idiots never stop and think how they’ve left hairs stuck to the tape. Usually with some follicles still attached. With which, should the need arise, you slimeballs can ID them for purposes of tracking, blackmail, insurance against your getting disappeared by their friends, or for just sheer, malicious fun.”
Ishmael became even whiter than could be explained by the blood loss. “I’ll show you where we keep ’em, all the—the follicle biosamples. Just…just fix me up.”
“Oh, we will,” Ossian said with a grin. “We will. We want you healthy and alert for the debriefings back on Bellerophon.”
Ishmael started, more at the name of the planet than at the sudden appearance of the medtechs who came rushing around the near corner of the stacked cargo containers. “Bellerophon? Why there?”
Ossian’s grin transmogrified into a grim line turned up at the corners. “Because that’s where we handle intelligence matters that involve both humans and Arduans. And we insist, during your stay with us, that you remain well-fed and safe in our high-security facility. After all, any criminals who were willing to go to all this trouble to surreptitiously tap the contents of a selnarmic warp-point courier drone probably won’t be too pleased if they learn that we are debriefing you in detail. They might decide they need to shoot you, too—except I suspect they’d aim a bit higher than I did.”
Ishmael swallowed as a medtech slapped an auto-tourniquet on his savaged leg. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he whispered.
Ossian nodded. “I know,” he answered.