CHAPTER FIVE
Selene, as it turned out, had only made it half a block away. But that distance represented a satisfying degree of progress.
“She touched the wall outside the taverno four times after leaving,” she explained when Geri and I were once again with her. “I got a good sense of her odor.”
“So you’ll be able to track her?” I asked.
“Assuming it hasn’t been too long since she’s been through this area, yes.”
“Wait a minute,” Geri put in. “When did she touch the wall?”
“It’s on the video you showed us,” I said, frowning. I’d seen Tera touch the wall once, just as she walked out of range of the camera, which was why I’d left Selene out here while I took Geri into the taverno on a wild goose chase.
But four times? Why would Tera have touched the wall that many times?
The only thing I could think of was that she was fighting to keep her balance. But she hadn’t looked drunk or even tipsy on the video. Drugged, maybe? “Selene, how close together were the touches?” I asked.
“Very close,” Selene said, her pupils giving me a frown. “Perhaps half a meter apart.”
“Like she was leaving a trail?” Geri asked.
“For who?” I countered. “She couldn’t possibly know a Kadolian was going to be on the hunt.”
“There are other scent detectors,” Selene said.
“Not nearly as good at the job as you are.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Geri said, suddenly sounding impatient. “Certainly not worth wasting time on.” Which was rather unfair of him, considering he was the one who’d brought up the subject of a trail in the first place. “You said you can track her. Fine. Start tracking.”
Selene looked at me, her pupils framing a silent question. “You heard the man,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s do it.”
We set off down the walkway, staying close to the storefront walls along the side where the scent that came off Tera as she passed would be more likely to linger. The street we were on was a major thoroughfare, with vehicular traffic and bustling pedestrians sweeping past us in both directions, and Selene didn’t buy herself much good will with her habit of stopping every few steps for a closer examination of the walls before continuing on. A couple of times she stopped dead and dropped to her knees to check out a crack in the pavement, and it required quick deflection work from Geri and me to keep her from causing a citizen pileup. That stunt made her—and us—even less popular.
We reached the first cross street, more of a wide alley than an actual street, and she turned that direction for a few steps, again checking the walls and the walkway. Reversing direction, she took us back across the intersection to the other branch of the side street and repeated the process, sampling the mix of aromas on that side before deciding Tera had stayed with the main avenue.
We crossed back to our original side and continued on. At the next intersection—this street was a little wider and better traveled than the last one—she went through the same routine before continuing on along our original path.
Through it all Geri’s attitude fluctuated between curious, impatient, disbelieving, and suspicious. For once, though, at least the glowering came wrapped in a blanket of silence. It was a nice change from his usual, more verbal expressions of curiosity, impatience, disbelief, or suspicion.
We’d reached the third intersection, and Selene was doing her round-the-corner survey, when one of my casual look-arounds caught something new. Half a block away from the intersection, the other direction along the cross street Selene was currently testing, was Jasper. He was standing in front of a restaurant façade, pretending to look at their menu post, but I could tell by the angle of his head and face that he was actually and very surreptitiously peering down the street in our direction.
Given how slow our progress had been since leaving the taverno, it was highly unlikely he’d been traveling at that same halting speed. That made it pretty obvious that Selene, Geri, and I were the current focus of his attention.
Unless it wasn’t us he was watching, but someone behind us.
I turned back around, looking past Selene at the clumps of people farther down the street. There were three open-air cafés in the next two blocks, each one hosting a scattering of patrons lounging at the tables with drinks or small snack plates. A few loiterers stood clear of the pedestrian traffic, some of them peering at info pads, others chatting idly with each other, others just leaning against the walls and presumably contemplating humanity’s place in the universe.
But no matter how casual they all looked, I could tell every single one of them was paying close attention to what was going on around them. Their eyes drifted across the windows of the apartments above the cafes and shops, coming back down again to linger on everyone who walked or drove past them.
I hissed out a breath. No, they weren’t looking at everyone. Just the women.
They were looking for Tera.
I stepped up close behind Selene, casually confirming first that Geri was waiting for us back at the intersection and out of earshot. “You okay?” I asked quietly. “Do you need a break?”
“No, I’m fine,” she assured me. “I think this is where we need to turn.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea right now,” I said. “So we’re going to turn around, and you’ll tell Geri we need to keep going straight.”
It had been a long time since Selene and I had been professional bounty hunters. Even so, she still remembered how to not react visibly when I dropped something unexpected on her. “Trouble?” she murmured.
“Could be,” I said. Of course, the fact that Kadolians didn’t go in much for facial expression or body language made that lack of reaction a lot easier for her to pull off. “We can check out this area later.”
“Okay.” She knelt down and sniffed at the pavement a moment, making it look good. Then, she stood up again and we headed back together toward Geri. As we walked, I saw that Jasper had abandoned his pretend menu survey and was apparently talking to some unseen person standing out of my view in the doorway.
I didn’t know Jasper all that well. But I did recognize his current posture as the subservient body language of someone talking to their boss or someone equally important.
And finding out who Jasper was working for would probably be worth a little extra exercise. “Change in plans,” I told Selene. “We’re going to cross the street and head up the other side. There’s someone up that way I want to check out.”
“All right.” She craned her neck. “Is that Jasper?”
“Yes, and he was also in the taverno,” I told her. “I want to find out what he’s doing here. Havershem City in general; this street in particular.”
“I’d almost forgotten his scent,” she muttered.
“I’d like to forget everything about him,” I said sourly. “The man’s always been a pain in the butt.”
“Well?” Geri asked as we once again joined him.
“Nothing there,” I told him. “We’ll try up the other way.”
“Really?” Geri asked, his eyes narrowing slightly.
“Really,” I confirmed, frowning at his reaction. “Why?”
He nodded behind us. “Sure looks like a stake-out going on down there.” He nodded his head back, in Jasper’s direction. “Not so much on that side.”
“Interesting logic,” I said. “But as my father used to say, If fifty million people believe a foolish thing, it’s still a foolish thing.”
“You’re saying all those other people are wrong?”
“I wouldn’t dream of impugning the abilities of my fellow bounty hunters,” I assured him. “If you want to go join the crowd, be my guest.” I gave him my best cheerful smile, took Selene’s arm, and headed across the intersection.
We were barely halfway across when Geri caught up with us. “This had better be good,” he warned. “His name’s Jasper, right?”
I winced. Geri didn’t miss much. “Yes,” I said. “Let’s find out what he’s doing here.”
Jasper was still having his one-sided conversation. So far he didn’t seem to have noticed us bearing down on him among the other pedestrians, but I knew that wouldn’t last long. I picked up my pace, hoping to get a look of the mystery man before he slipped back out of sight.
We were fifteen paces from Jasper when I saw the sudden tension that meant we’d been spotted. His lips moved one last time and then stopped, and I had the impression he was getting instructions from his still unseen conversational partner. We were almost in sight of the doorway—
“Excuse me?” a voice came from behind us.
It was a voice I’d only heard once. I’d never expected to hear it again, and with a tantalizing mystery hanging like low fruit in front of me I didn’t want to hear it now. I caught Selene’s upper arm and kept walking, hoping I could pretend long enough that I hadn’t heard him to take the last few steps I needed…
A hand fell on my shoulder, not hard enough to forcibly stop me but hard enough to put an end to my oblivious act. Swearing under my breath, I stopped and turned around.
It was the Kalix from the taverno, his two pet ferrets still crouched on his shoulders like gargoyles on some neo-Gothic mansion. He snatched back his hand as I turned, perhaps suddenly realizing the gesture might have been taken as a threat or, worse, a rudeness. “What?” I snapped.
“Forgive my presumption,” he said, shrinking back from my tone. “But I was in the taverno and saw your InterSpiral badges—”
“Not me—him,” I interrupted, jerking a thumb at Geri. The last thing I needed right now was for someone on a public street to suggest I’d been impersonating a badgeman.
“—and there is someone who appears—” The Kalix broke off, looking back and forth between us. “Oh. Yes. I see now. My apologies.” He made a show of turning toward Geri. “An acquaintance of mine is in danger,” he said. “I hoped you could offer assistance.”
“I’m sorry, but we’re on special assignment,” Geri said, surface politeness mixed with an undercoating of impatience. “You need to call the local badgemen.”
“But this particular young woman is afraid of the locals,” the Kalix objected.
Geri had started to turn back toward Jasper. Now, abruptly, he reversed direction. “A young woman?” he echoed, digging into his inside jacket pocket. “What does she look like?”
“She looks human,” the Kalix said. “I don’t…human faces are difficult to distinguish between.”
“Was her hair black?” I pointed to my jacket. “This color.”
“I understand the meaning of black,” the Kalix said, a little stiffly. “Yes, her hair was that color.
“Did she look like this?” Geri said, producing the picture of Tera C he’d showed me.
The Kalix took the picture and frowned at it.
Selene plucked at my sleeve. “Gregory, he’s here,” she said urgently.
“Who?”
“Mr. Varsi,” she said. “He’s here. He’s very close.”
In a star-thriller that would be the cue for a sudden startled reaction, or at least a dramatic narrowing of the eyes. I passed on both options in favor of keeping my face expressionless. If Selene was right…
Of course she was right. There were plenty of times when she couldn’t identify a particular scent, or lost one that had been buried under a hundred others. But when she made a positive identification she was always on target.
What the hell was the head of a drug cartel from Xathru doing on Pinnkus?
Xathru was Varsi’s home. That was where he always was when we brought back some exotic seed or spore that Selene thought might form the basis for some new drug that Varsi’s organization could exploit. In the three years we’d been working for him he’d never mentioned traveling anywhere off-world.
The Kalix was still studying Tera’s picture. Keeping my movements casual, I gave my left thumbnail the double stroke that would turn it into a mirror and then lifted my left hand to my face to rub at a pretend itch on my forehead. With the thumbnail now in front of my right eye, I focused on Jasper. Now that our backs were turned, maybe his mystery conversationalist would risk a quick peek out of his sheltered position.
He did. And Selene was right.
It was Varsi.
I stared at his image, trying to figure it out. I’d registered with the Pinnkus authorities on our way in, but even if someone there had tagged my name and sent word to Xathru, Varsi couldn’t possibly have made it all the way here in that time. Clearly, he’d known somehow that the Ruth was coming here and that we’d collected some promising seeds for him. But that made even less sense.
Unless he’d been tipped off before we arrived at Pinnkus.
I looked sideways at Geri. I’d assumed he and Freki were on their own, or maybe hunting for the Icarus on behalf of some government or private patron. The possibility that they might be working with Varsi’s organization had never occurred to me.
“I don’t know,” the Kalix conceded, tapping the photo with a large finger. “The hair is the same color. But the face…I don’t know. But it could be her. Does this female fear for her life?”
“Yes, very much,” Geri said, taking the picture back and putting it away.
“Then they may indeed be one and the same,” the Kalix concluded.
“Glad you agree,” Geri said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm. It would have been a waste of time anyway—if human faces were a mystery to the Kalix, verbal nuances probably were, too. “Can you take us to her?”
“Yes, of course,” the Kalix said. “She’s near the spaceport. We shall need to find a cab or a runaround if we’re to arrive before—”
And right in the middle of his sentence all hell broke loose.
The only warning was the faint, high-pitched shriek of a descending mortar shell. Reflexively, I dropped into a crouch, yanking my plasmic from its holster and attempting to do a complete three-sixty scan without twisting my neck off. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted three objects dropping toward the stake-out gang stationed in and around the cafés on the far side of the main thoroughfare and turned to face them.
The stake-out gang had spotted the attack, too. Most of them were already on the move, some diving for the minimal safety of the tables, others trying to reach the more substantial cover of nearby doorways, others just hitting the ground where they stood and hoping for the best. Two of them were fast enough to draw down on the falling objects, firing what looked to be 6mm sniper pistols into the sky. One of the shots actually connected, bouncing the target shell a meter sideways like it had been kicked by an invisible boot. An instant later, the objects hit the ground—
And that whole section of street erupted in billowing clouds of white smoke.
The Kalix gave a startled little squeak. “Oh, my!” he exclaimed, grabbing my wrist in one hand and Selene’s in the other. “Come, please—we must hurry. A runaround—where’s a runaround?”
“Stay put!” Geri snarled. He had a weapon in his hand now, too, not the breakaway dart gun I’d found in his luggage aboard the Ruth, but a muted black Libra 3mm semiauto. He turned to look at the line of cars parked along the curb beside us, his free hand digging into his jacket pocket.
With the cacophony of panic shouts from down the street filling the air, I never even heard the whistling of the mortar shell that slammed to the pavement no more than ten meters away from us.
The Kalix shrieked as the white smoke exploded outward, a longer version of the high-pitched squeak he’d made when the first bombs had started falling the next block over. “We are attacked!” he shouted. “We are attacked!”
“Don’t panic,” Geri ordered, turning a brief warning glare at the three of us. “Just stay there.” He turned back toward the line of parked cars, gun still in hand, and disappeared into the smoke.
“Gregory?” Selene asked, her voice shaking.
“It’s all right,” I said, trying to calm the sudden pounding of my own heart. The cloud was moving way too fast to outrun, even if there hadn’t been another batch of the stuff already flowing toward us from the opposite direction. All we could do was stand our ground and cross our fingers. “You can hear them still shouting, right? Not screaming or gasping for breath, just shouting. This stuff isn’t poisonous—it’s just designed to keep people from seeing what’s happening.”
“I understand,” she said in a small voice.
“So just relax,” I said, wishing I could do the same. The leading edge of the cloud was nearly on us; taking a deep breath, I held it as the smoke rolled over us and the street was swallowed up in white haze.
The breath-holding was pure reflex—I knew I couldn’t maintain it long enough for the cloud to dissipate. More to the point, gas weapons like this were specifically designed to circumvent that tactic. A bit of the gas snuck into my nostrils, bringing with it an aroma of carbonized sugar.
And as it did so, I felt some of my tension disappear into a sense of relief. I knew that smell, and I’d been right: the fog was indeed of the non-lethal, non-incapacitating sort. Slow, steady breaths were the key to making sure enough oxygen got into the lungs. I opened my mouth to reassure Selene and coach her in the necessary breathing pattern—
The shouts of frightened and confused pedestrians were erupting from inside our part of the cloud when Selene gave a heart-wrenching, gasping scream.
“What is it?” the Kalix demanded, his own voice none too calm. “Is she hurt?”
“It’s the smell,” I bit out, cursing myself for not anticipating this. Burnt sugar might bring most people pleasant memories of crème brûlée, but the sheer intensity of the aroma was hitting Selene like a brick to the face. “We have to get her to the ship and the clean room.”
“The what?”
“The—never mind,” I said. His hand was still gripping my wrist; shaking it off, I pulled Selene away from him and wrapped my arms around her to try to steady her shaking body. “Geri knows where it is. The fans and air filters will help clear her lungs and clean off any residue.”
“But there’s no runaround,” the Kalix protested. “How do we get her to your ship?”
“Here!” Geri called out of the blank whiteness, and I felt the puff of stirred air as a car door swung open toward me. “Come on—I’ve got us a van.”
I didn’t pause to wonder how he’d gotten into a presumably locked vehicle. I shifted to a one-armed grip around Selene’s shoulders and headed toward his voice, my other hand waving blindly in front of me. Four steps into my run my palm slammed into something hard, which a couple of exploratory taps confirmed was an open door. I got to the proper side of it, now waving my hand up and down, and two steps later found the top of the doorway. “In here,” I said, putting one hand on each of Selene’s shoulders and guiding her through the doorway into the van. “Kalix?”
“I’m here,” the alien said, and I felt a second puff of air as he opened the door in front of ours. Selene’s shoulders shifted in my grip as she got her hands on the seat backs and pulled herself inside—
And without warning a fumbling hand found my upper left arm, closed tightly around it, and yanked me backward.
“Go!” I shouted toward Geri. Using my last bit of distance and leverage I caught the edge of the door with my right hand and slammed it shut, hoping desperately that I hadn’t caught Selene’s arm or foot. A second hand found my right arm. I had just enough distance left to deliver a double toe-kick to the door with my right foot as I was pulled away. Geri must have gotten the message, because even as I was dragged backward and the cloud swirled with fresh bodies charging toward the van I heard it screech away from the curb and roar off into the smoke.
Selene was safe, or at least as safe as I could make her under the circumstances. Me, not so much.
But I still had one slender chance to remedy that. Mentally crossing my fingers, I let my knees buckle, collapsing my legs out from under me.
A pair of average street assailants probably would have been taken by surprise enough to lose their grip on my arms. This pair weren’t average, or else they knew that if I broke free in the middle of all this smoke I’d be making tracks elsewhere before they could ever find me again.
Still, just because they were strong enough to maintain their hold didn’t mean they were strong enough to catch my weight and suspend me in midair, at least not when that sudden weight had been handed to them without warning. My buckled knees sent me butt-first toward the ground, forcing them to bend toward me as they followed me down.
And as my rear hit the ground, I leaned backward, lifted both legs, and swung them as hard as I could toward the unseen bodies now towering over me.
Without knowing which direction the two men were facing I had no way of knowing whether my slashing feet would land on their heads or shoulders. From the feel of the impacts, I guessed it was one of each. But all that really mattered was that my counterattack jarred both grips loose. Half a second later I’d rolled over onto my stomach, shoved myself up into a hunched-over vertical, and headed as fast as I dared toward the street.
A smart man in my position would probably have bet on the traffic out there having ground to a halt, sprinted across the street, and tried to disappear into the surrounding buildings before the smoke cleared. But I’d seldom been accused of being smart. More than that, assuming it was a set of Varsi’s goons who’d just tried to grab me, maybe some judicious eavesdropping would give me a clue as to what he was doing here.
Still, not being smart enough to run away didn’t mean I was stupid enough to just find a car hood to sit on. At the very least, the two I’d just kicked would want some degree of retribution for their pain and suffering.
Fortunately, there was another option. Just as I knew this kind of smokescreen chemical was non-lethal, I also knew it was a bit heavier than air. That meant it would clear out from the top down, with the stuff floating just over the pavement dissipating last. Right behind the van Geri had stolen, I remembered, was a sedan-type vehicle, smaller than the van but with a similar axle track and ground clearance. My flailing hand found the front bumper, and three seconds later I was flat on my back beneath it, waiting patiently for the smoke to clear out.
I quickly found out that, whatever the normal tranquility quota was for the neighborhood, it had sold out long before Varsi’s thugs got here.
“Damn it, where’d he go?”
“The hell—he kicked me!”
“Hey—your cheek’s bleeding.”
“You think I don’t damn well know that?”
“Oh, damn it all—they got our van!”
I frowned at that last one. From bits and pieces Varsi had dropped during past conversations I’d assumed he and his minions used the Everlock protocol on their vehicles and offices. Even the handful of professional thieves who maintained that Everlock was not, in fact, unhackable conceded that it would take at least ten minutes and a backpack full of specialized equipment to do it.
Yet Geri had gotten the van open in only a handful of seconds. Either I’d been wrong about Varsi’s security standards or Geri was something unique in the world of master thieves.
“How the hell did they—”
“Quiet.”
The voice was Varsi’s, and the word was delivered without inflection, volume, or implied threat. But the escalating ranting instantly died into silence. Even without being in a position to look into Varsi’s face and those cold, dead eyes, that word in that tone sent a chill up my back.
Though speaking of that face and eyes…
Right now, all I could see from my vantage point was a bunch of shoes as Varsi’s men finished whatever brief recon they’d conducted as the smoke cleared and gathered again around their boss. But I still had my thumbnail mirror, and it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity. Cautiously, knowing full well that if any of the thugs out there spotted it I would be instantly dragged onto the slowest, most painful road to death, I eased the thumb toward the edge of the car I was hiding under. A small gust of wind pushed aside the last bit of white smoke, and there they were.
It was a tableau I’d seen many a time at the luxurious lair that was Varsi’s office. There were half a dozen thugs in overcoats and expensive suits standing around, their expensive guns currently half hidden beneath those coats. Two of them were clutching at shoulder and head where my flailing kicks had landed. All the thugs looked nasty, while those two in particular looked murderous. Standing just off the center of the group was Jasper, looking almost frail by comparison with the thugs. His gun was still holstered at his side, and I found myself vaguely surprised they’d let him keep it.
And at the exact center of the ring was Varsi.
He was of only average height and build, several centimeters shorter than his men, possibly even a centimeter shorter than Jasper. He had no visible weapon, and in fact his hands were buried in his coat pockets.
But even the most casual observer would have no trouble recognizing that he was the one in charge. Varsi dominated every meeting, every discussion, every confrontation. I could still vividly remember the first time I’d been escorted into his office, and the complete lack of emotion on his face as he informed me that I would henceforth be working for him.
“Did you call our people at the spaceport?” Varsi asked in that same calm voice.
“Yes, sir,” one of the thugs said. “But with everyone else on encirclement duty—”
“There are two there, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Two of them against three targets incoming plus whoever’s on the ship,” Varsi said, fixing the thug with cold eyes. “Do you still wish to lodge a concern?”
The thug’s shoulders seemed to tense up. “No, sir.”
“Good.” Varsi’s head shifted slightly. “You said he never spoke to the Kalix in the taverno.”
“He didn’t, Mr. Varsi,” Jasper said. “Neither of them did.”
“But you say the one showed a badge?”
“Yes, sir,” Jasper confirmed. “It looked like ISLE, but I wasn’t at the right angle to see it.”
The cold eyes frosted over a little more. “And you didn’t make the effort to correct that deficiency?”
Standing inside the thug circle, there was nowhere Jasper could back up to. But the sudden look on his face told me he really, really wanted to. “I was…I didn’t think…”
Varsi turned away from him toward one of the other thugs, provoking another twitch from Jasper’s expression. “Find out who he is, and who he’s associated with. Now.”
The thug nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Varsi paused, and I could feel the sudden increase in the group’s tension. “There’s a bottle of Roma Blue and a plate of steamers waiting for me at my table,” he said. “I expect the woman to be brought to me in time for us to have her final drink together.”
“Yes, sir,” one of the thugs said. Varsi gave a small nod; and with that silent signal they scattered, a couple heading away up the street, the rest heading down toward the stake-out that had been so badly disrupted by the smoke mortars. Jasper hesitated, apparently unclear as to his role, then hurried to catch up with the latter group. Varsi watched them go, then turned and disappeared back through the doorway he’d emerged from earlier.
And as the crowd of thugs passed by, and I was able to get a better look at their faces and body language, I realized it hadn’t been tension I’d seen in them. Rather, it had been anticipation.
I eased my thumb away from the edge of the car, watching the shoes as the thugs headed off on their mission, trying to figure out what to do. If the woman Varsi had mentioned was Tera C—and it would be the height of absurd coincidence if there was an entirely different woman in his crosshairs—the lady was in serious trouble. So was I, though in a much more limited sense, since I’d already been paid to bring her in.
So what had Varsi meant by Tera having her final drink with him?
Maybe it was just a turn of phrase. Maybe he just meant that he wanted to meet Tera before his goons took her off to sweat the location of the Icarus out of her. She and the ship were clearly valuable properties; he surely wasn’t planning to just kill her.
Unless Geri had lied to me about her. Tera had been valuable once—the bounty that had been put on her and her shipmates six years ago had proved that much.
But things change. Maybe there was no longer any profit to be had here. Maybe all that was left was some kind of revenge.
My left arm gave a twinge of remembered pain. And if revenge was the order of the day, I was definitely aboard.
Unfortunately, there was only one place I might be able to get any of these new details. Varsi had already had his meal interrupted once, and he probably wouldn’t appreciate it if he was interrupted a second time. Still, with the bulk of his force off hunting Tera, this was the best time for us to have a quiet chat.
Though I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be offering me a glass of that Roma Blue.