CHAPTER THIRTEEN
South Joapa was the regional capital of Gremon’s Midland Township, as well as being the largest city in an otherwise rural and small-town part of the planet. The Roastmeat Bar was near the center of town, in an area that Cole’s research laid out as one part government workers, one part government influencers and hoping-to-be influencers, and three parts small-business types cashing in on the presence of groups one and two. Seven o’clock on a Thursday evening was apparently the ideal time to find all three groups running at full bore as the government folks looked for one last chance to indulge themselves before heading out for their three-day weekend, and the influencers and restauranteurs stood eagerly by to provide the necessary indulgements.
I wondered if we might also find some kind of festival going on, as we had on New Kyiv, just to make things louder and more chaotic. But nothing had shown up on Cole’s calendar listings. Either Dent had missed a bet or else there just wasn’t anything interesting happening in the area right now.
Of course, any large mix of people, money, and liquor also attracted thieves, pickpockets, and outright armed robbers. That was the thought uppermost in my mind as I pulled open the Roastmeat’s decorated front door and walked into the dim lighting, buzzing conversation, and alcohol-scented atmosphere. Thieves and robbers; and with my main plasmic in police holding on New Kyiv, my backup weapon with Varsi’s people on Marjolaine, and my backup-backup in Gaheen’s office on Huihuang, all I had were Floyd’s blast ribbon, my flashlight, my info pad, and my phone. Clearly, I needed to invest in a backup-backup-backup.
My phone, especially, I didn’t want to lose, given that it was now very much a one-of-a-kind device. Floyd had kept it locked away with our other equipment until we reached Gremon, but Ixil had worked up a specialized plug-in, delivered by Pax a few hours before our arrival, with some exotic programming that I’d now installed into the phone’s location interface.
Unfortunately, we hadn’t had a chance to test it, which meant we would have to do this without rehearsal. Hopefully, Dent would be willing to cooperate.
Hopefully, he also wouldn’t shoot me on sight.
It was still early evening, but the place was already pretty crowded. Most of the tables seemed to be occupied, though not necessarily to full capacity: a lot of couples were sitting at four-person tables, while several singles had laid claim to two-seaters. Floyd, Cole, and Mottola were among the latter group of table hogs, seated at widely spaced positions that together gave them interlocking views of the room, the three official exits, and the bar with its less official doorways into the back. For a minute I thought Fulbright had missed the party, then spotted him sitting at yet another two-seater beside one of the side doors, being even more unobtrusive than the others.
Which made sense. Floyd and his buddies were senior enforcers, their days in the field presumably far behind them. Being a—mostly—former bounty hunter myself, I was painfully aware of how quickly those skills and that mindset could fade.
So why had Varsi sent them on this job in the first place?
Earlier, when I’d assumed I was a person of some value to the organization, it had made sense to send a high-level person like Floyd to hold Fulbright’s leash, especially given how relatively low a physical threat I was likely to present. But based on my conversation with Draelon, it sounded like Varsi had now decided that my future would be more along the lines of graveyard filler.
Maybe Varsi had thought that, harmless though I might be, I was sufficiently clever to run rings around any of his usual thugs. Certainly I could do that with Fulbright.
But that was speculation for another time. Right now, my focus was on finding Dent and learning what he knew, if anything, about Icarus.
And before I did that, I needed to find somewhere to sit down so I wouldn’t be so conspicuous.
Fortunately, there was still a lone unoccupied table available, tucked near the back between a pair of curtained alcoves set into the wall across the room from the bar. It was a four-seater, but unless I wanted to join Floyd or one of the others it was my only option. I maneuvered my way through the tables and chairs, dodging the various waiters and waitresses scurrying around on their appointed rounds, and finally reached my goal.
Only to discover a flat RESERVED plate lying defiantly in the center.
I came to a scowling halt. So much for that. My best chance now was to see if some group looked like they were packing up and try to get to their abandoned table fast enough—
“No, you’re in the right place,” came a quiet voice from behind me. “Go ahead—sit down.”
“Oh, hello, Dent,” I said as cheerfully as I could. This was the second time he’d sneaked up behind me, and I was starting to get tired of it. “I’m rather surprised you actually showed up.”
“Ditto,” he said. “Did you hear me tell you to sit down?”
“Yes, I did, thanks.” I took the last two steps to the table, pulled out one of the chairs, and lowered myself into it. “So what exactly—oh. Nice.”
“Thanks,” he said, looking down at his outfit. Instead of the classy reversible jacket he’d been wearing the last time we met he was now dressed in black shirt and slacks with a dark blue pocket apron cinched around his waist and a round serving tray tucked under his left arm. The same ensemble currently being worn by the Roastmeat’s waiters and waitresses. “A little over the top, you think?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I assured him. “It’s always good to have a second career lined up in case the first one falls through.”
“Actually, this was my first career,” he said as he set the tray on the table and pulled out a small info pad. “I worked here for two years slinging drinks and veg sticks before I decided I could do better elsewhere. You bring just the three friends?”
So he’d spotted Floyd and the others. “They’re more millstones than friends,” I told him, wondering if he’d actually missed Fulbright or if undercounting my entourage was a test. The latter, I decided. “The fourth is over by the east exit, by the way.”
His lip twitched, just enough to show I’d read him correctly. “So what now?” he asked, making notes on his pad as if he was taking an order.
“Ideally, we shake the watchdogs and get out of here,” I said. “The plan is to—”
“Don’t bother,” he cut me off. “My world; my plan. See that talent tank over there?”
“Talent tank?”
“That curtained alcove thing. Not that one,” he added as I started to turn toward the curtain a few meters back from my table. “The other one, over there.”
“Ah,” I said, shifting my attention to the farther alcove. “You called them talent tanks?”
“They’re for the bar’s entertainers,” he said. “Singers, comedians, spiral dancers, whatever. They come on, and if the crowd likes them they push the up buttons to keep them at stage level. If they don’t, they push the down buttons and they get lowered into the basement and their turn’s over. Majority rules.”
“Interesting,” I said. I’d been wondering about the small red and green buttons in the center of the table. “Democracy at its finest.”
“Something like that,” he said. “Here’s the question. Is there one of your babysitters you dislike more than the others?”
“Excuse me?” I asked, frowning. I focused again on the alcove.
And felt my stomach tighten. Visible now, poking a couple of centimeters out from the edge of the curtain, was a thick black cylinder.
The barrel of a gun.
I looked up at Dent. He was watching me closely, still holding his info pad. “You don’t want to do that,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “Neither does your brother.”
His expression didn’t change. “My brother?”
“Weston Dent,” I said. “Yes, we know about him. The point is that all four of my escorts are former criminal enforcers, they’re all armed, and they’re too spread out for him to get all of them before they nail him.”
“You weren’t listening,” Dent said, his voice just as steady as mine. “A single shot—one babysitter down—and the others can waste all the ammo or plasma charges they want while he drops into the basement.” He gave a small twitch of his head toward the talent tank behind me. “Then, while everyone is screaming and falling all over each other trying to get out, we get into the other tank and leave by the basement door.”
“What about the people who’ll be hurt or killed in the stampede?”
He shrugged. “Bars are dangerous. So is life. People who want to be safe can stay home.”
“Just because life carries risks doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to exacerbate them,” I said, fighting back the sudden urge to stand up and give this jerk my best gut punch. Of all the callous, sociopathic—
“Uh-oh,” he muttered, frowning to my right. “I assume these aren’t your friends, either?”
I turned to look. Striding through the west entrance like they owned the place were six Iykams draped in their usual hooded robes. As they cleared the entrance, they split into three pairs, one twosome each angling off toward Floyd, Cole, and Mottola. I looked in the other direction in time to see four more Iykams come in through the east door. One headed toward Fulbright, while the other three made a beeline for Dent and me.
“Damn right they aren’t,” I gritted out, a sinking feeling in my stomach.
And as of right now, it was no longer a question of whether or not we could risk starting a panic. If we didn’t create a diversion, and fast, we would quickly end up dead or Patth prisoners. “We’re going to have to—”
“Thanks; I’ve got this,” Dent interrupted. There was a muffled crack from the direction of the hidden gunman—
One of the two Iykams who’d been heading toward Floyd jerked and collapsed. There was another crack, and his partner joined him on the floor. A third shot, and one of the pair targeting Cole was also out of the game.
But with that, the gunman’s luck ran out. The last Iykam’s partner had his corona gun out and ready, and from the angle of his hood I could tell he’d spotted the barrel. With a hoarse cry, he leveled his weapon and sent a sizzling blue-white blast into the alcove, turning the curtain into a wall of flame. Someone screamed.
And as if that was the signal everyone had been waiting for, the entire crowd rose to their feet and charged for the exits in a flurry of screams, panicked shouts, and crashing chairs.
“Come on,” Dent snapped, starting toward the alcove behind me.
He got one step before I grabbed his arm and pulled both of us under the table. “The hell?” he snarled, trying to pull free. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“Not yet,” I said, tightening my grip. Our table had been near the edge of the crowd, but even so there were plenty of feet thundering past us. “Iykams may be nasty and hateful, but they’re not stupid. They saw the first tank, they saw the second, and they saw us. They’re going to be watching for us to make a move that direction. And with the tank above floor level they’ll have a clear view of us over the crowd.”
“We can’t just sit here,” Dent insisted.
“We aren’t,” I assured him. “Ixil: go.”
“What?”
“Code word,” I told him, pulling out my phone and showing it to him. “See this phone? It’s got a locator that my other four non-friends have figured out how to hack into. They know exactly where we are, and they have a whole barrel full of reasons to get to us before the Iykams do.”
“So what, you’re expecting them to walk us out past them?”
“Not at all,” I assured him. “At this very moment, they’re scrambling like maniacs through the crowd trying to catch up with us.”
Dent’s face had turned into a roiling mass of confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“See, we’re not hiding under a table,” I said. “We’re already outside, and we’re heading north at a high rate of speed.”
For a long moment he just stared at me. The running feet from our vicinity had mostly passed by, but there was still a lot of noise and chaos coming from the directions of the exits. I listened, watching the moving feet, trying to gauge the right moment to make our move.
And then, Dent’s lip curled in a wry smile. “You’ve hacked their hack, haven’t you?”
“Exactly,” I said. “My partner is currently manipulating my phone’s signal to show us charging back toward our ship, exactly the direction everyone will expect us to run.” I lifted a finger for emphasis. “But in about a hundred meters we’re suddenly going to veer off toward one of the runaround stands and head toward the government field where the Northern Lights is parked.”
“How did you know about that?” Dent asked, sending me an odd look.
“Your ship, or its parking place?” I shook my head. “Never mind; doesn’t matter. The point is that when the Iykams see my babysitters heading that direction . . . ?” I paused, raising my eyebrows in silent invitation.
“They’ll all head that same way together,” Dent said sourly. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that you’ve just burned my ship.”
“Probably,” I conceded. “Sorry about that.”
“Never mind the sorry,” he growled. “You could have just let them think we were going to your ship and instead left in mine.”
“Wouldn’t have worked,” I said. “For one thing, my partner’s still stuck on my ship, and we have to get her off. More importantly, your ship only has two fake IDs and you’ve already burned both of them. I, on the other hand, have three that haven’t been touched.”
“Yeah, and how do you know these things about me?” he demanded, his scowl turning into heavy suspicion. “Who are you, anyway?”
“You already know that,” I reminded him. “I’m Gregory Roarke. No one of consequence, but I have friends.”
“A friend named Icarus, maybe?”
“No idea what that means,” I said in the distracted tone of someone who doesn’t have time for irrelevant conversation. It was easy enough to pull off—I’d been expecting a version of that question since Dent first came up behind me. “You certainly have your share of friends, too.”
“What, you mean them?” he growled, nodding back toward the noisy chaos. “They’re looking for you, not me.”
“Actually, they’re looking for both of us,” I told him. “See, your searches for me managed to catch the attention of the Patth. Iykams are their weapon of choice when they decide to stop being subtle. Stay put while I take a look.”
I eased to the edge of the table and cautiously raised my head. There were still a lot of people visible at the exits, but the earlier panic seemed to have faded. A few people were still seated at their various tables, some of them looking dazed while others clutched arms or legs where they’d apparently been injured. But at least there wasn’t anyone lying trampled on the floor. With the center area finally clear, two of the bar staff were hurrying toward the still burning curtain with fire extinguishers in hand. Floyd and my other three handlers had vanished, as had the remaining Iykams.
“Looks clear,” I said, dropping back down. “You said the talent tank had a secret exit?”
“Not all that secret, but at least no one else should be using it.”
“Good enough.” I hesitated, but it had to be asked. “What about your brother?”
“Like I told you, he’s already long gone.”
“Headed to the Northern Lights?”
“Headed to wherever I need him,” Dent said. “So down the rabbit hole, out the basement, and then a runaround trip to your ship and we’re out of here?”
“Basically,” I said. “It’ll probably be a little more complicated, but basically. As my father used to say, If they think you’re stupid, be smart. If they think you’re smart, be smarter.”
“Which of those do they think you are?”
“Not entirely sure,” I admitted. “So let’s go with the being smarter option.” I gestured toward the curtain. “After you.”
* * *
Much of the crowd that had been inside the Roastmeat was still hanging around outside, possibly waiting to see if they were going to be allowed back in. They’d been joined by a fair number of other passersby, some of whom I suspected were hoping to see a major fire or maybe even a few bodies.
At least the Dent brothers had delivered on half of that wish.
We found a runaround and headed toward the Ruth. I’d hoped that Ixil’s little phone gambit would mean the ship would be clear by the time Dent and I arrived, but I wasn’t really expecting it. Accordingly, I made sure to overshoot the Ruth by a couple of ships before pulling the runaround to a halt and covering the last leg of the trip on foot.
Sure enough, as we made our way through the shadows toward the Ruth’s stern we found a pair of Iykams pacing the walkway in front of the Ruth’s main hatch.
“So much for being smarter,” Dent muttered as we backed up into positions behind a pair of shipping crates. “I don’t suppose you’re armed.”
“I’ve got a blast ribbon wrapped around my arm,” I told him. “Not the most versatile weapon in a firefight, unfortunately.”
“I’m not even going to ask,” he said, drawing a ChasArms 4mm. “Well, at least there’s only two of them. Let me give you—”
“Hold it,” I said, putting a restraining hand on his arm and pulling out my phone. “Let’s see if it really is only two.” I cranked down the phone’s volume, keyed for Selene, and pressed the device to my ear.
“Are you all right?” her anxious voice came back promptly.
“We’re fine,” I assured her. “I’ve got Dent with me, and we’re about fifty meters down the walkway from the stern and the two Iykams watchdogging the Ruth’s hatch. Any idea how many other players are in the game?”
“There are three more,” she said. “One between you and the ship, and two hiding near the bow. And one of them is in position to see down the starboard side.”
I scowled. So much for my plan to sneak in via our secret rabbit hole. Even if the Iykam wasn’t actively watching that side of the ship, we couldn’t risk some sound or movement drawing his attention. “What about ship prep?”
“All set,” she said. “It’s all set.”
I nodded to myself, feeling a trickle of relief at the pre-established code phrase. This time, knowing that Mottola would put in another pilot board lock, Ixil had made sure Pix and Pax were in position to witness the code. The Ruth was now fully ours again. “When’s our lift slot?”
“Twenty minutes,” Selene said. “But we can bounce that back if we need to.”
I eyed the ship and the loitering Iykams. “Can you bounce it forward any?” I asked.
“Forward?”
“Our Pied Piper routine isn’t going to fool Floyd and company forever,” I pointed out. “The minute they realize they’re chasing a ghost they’ll be on us like a Texas hurricane. I’d kind of like to be off the ground when that happens.”
“How are you going to get to the hatch?”
“We’re not.”
I gave her a terse rundown of what I wanted her to do. Watching the change in Dent’s expression out of the corner of my eye, I could see he was starting to seriously wonder what kind of lunatics he’d fallen in with. “Can you do it?” I asked when I finished.
“Yes,” Selene said. Her voice was calmer than Dent’s face; but then, she already knew what kind of lunatic I was.
“How soon?”
“Three minutes?”
“Three minutes it is,” I acknowledged. I put away the phone and eased my head up, trying to spot the hidden guard Selene had warned me about.
“There,” Dent murmured, pointing along the side of his crate. “By the herringbone-patterned container.”
“I see him,” I said, nodding. The Iykam was crouched in the shadow of the crate Dent had tagged, corona gun in hand, his hooded face sweeping methodically back and forth as he watched the aft approaches to the ship. “You clear on the plan?”
Dent grunted. “If you call that nonsense you just spouted a plan.”
“One of my finest,” I assured him.
“Somehow, I’m not surprised. Let me know when you want him taken out.”
“Yeah,” I said hesitantly. I certainly had no more reason than anyone else to be nice to Iykams. But it the plan played out as I hoped, Dent taking out this particular guard would mean shooting him in the back. Not a pattern I really wanted to get used to. “Tell you what. Once the show starts, I’ll do whatever taking out is necessary. You stay here, watch for the opening, and when it happens run like hell.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be right behind you,” I promised. In the near distance, I heard the faint sound of a generator ramping up. “Get ready,” I warned, bracing myself.
Five seconds later, the Ruth’s portside grav beam erupted into the night.
I’d seen plenty of spaceport perimeter grav beams blast their way through atmosphere. But they were more powerful and with a much wider focus, and they mostly just lifted their target ship and maybe stirred up a little dust.
Not so the Ruth’s tighter beam. Suddenly, the air around the otherwise invisible line was writhing and twisting, grabbing dust and dirt from the ground and adding it to the whirlwind that blasted toward the projector and then splashed outward as the wind roaring in behind it forced the earlier waves out of the beam. It was awesome and mesmerizing, and even though I’d had at least an inkling of what was coming I was still all but paralyzed by the spectacle. God only knew how the Iykams were reacting. A heartbeat later came a loud and high-pitched creaking.
And from a spot a dozen meters past the Ruth’s bow a large maintenance cart began rolling along the walkway toward the ship.
“Go,” I muttered to Dent. Without waiting for an answer I ducked around the side of my crate and headed toward the Iykam sentry.
I was halfway there when all five aliens opened fire.
I winced as the electrical display joined the windstorm, creating what was essentially our own private mini-thunderstorm. Fortunately, the Iykams weren’t shooting at us but at the cart inexplicably bearing down on the Ruth and, not coincidentally, bearing down on them.
If I’d given them a moment to think, they might have figured it out. Or maybe they wouldn’t have. After all, most civilian ships didn’t come with their own grav beams, and the Iykams had no way of knowing that the cart wasn’t just a normal collection of machinery and parts but might be a deliberate and targeted attack.
Either way, I had no intention of giving them any more thinking time than I had to. They were still firing uselessly at the cart when I reached the sentry and slammed the edge of my hand against the side of his neck. His knees buckled, and he dropped to the ground.
I turned back toward the ship, scooping up his corona gun as I did so and stuffing it into my belt. I didn’t particularly want the damn thing, but I also didn’t want to leave it where it could be pointed at me if the sentry recovered faster than expected.
The maintenance cart was still moving, the remaining Iykams blasting at it for all they were worth. One of the shots struck something critical, and a sudden burst of sparks joined in the rest of the visual chaos. Along the Ruth’s side, about midway between the hatch and the stern, a narrow ovoid opening had now appeared. Even as I ran toward it, a faint haze of light appeared in the gap, indicating that the inner hatch was now also open. Around the edge of our earlier vantage point Dent appeared, running madly toward the ship and the opening.
And as I picked up my own pace he leaped from the edge of the walkway, grabbed the edge of the hatch and pulled himself through into the bioprobe prep room.
Someone shouted, and abruptly the corona attack on the sizzling cart faltered. Clenching my teeth, I covered the last steps toward the ship and launched myself toward the opening.
I damn near didn’t make it. My right hand caught the hatch edge solidly, but my left only got a partial grip. But even as I scrambled for better purchase, Dent was there, grabbing my wrists and pulling me up and in. I glanced to the side as my feet tried for a foothold on the hull, swore under my breath as I saw the Iykams charging toward me. Dent lost his grip on my left wrist, and for a moment I was hanging by one hand. My left hand scrabbled to regain its grip, and I felt my borrowed corona gun pop out of my belt and disappear into the cradle below me.
And from the spot where we’d been hiding came the barks of two quick gunshots.
One of the Iykams running toward us twisted half around with the impacts and dropped to the walkway. The remaining three abandoned their attack in favor of diving for cover. A third shot rang out—
And then Dent was back, leaning out and reestablishing his grip on my wrist. He fell back into the room, his momentum hauling me bodily through the opening. I fell headfirst through the hatch—
“Selene—go!” I shouted.
I was scrambling to get back to my feet when the Ruth lurched upward, the twin bioprobe hatches closing. A moment later the port’s perimeter grav beams kicked in, and I once again sprawled on the floor as the ship lurched toward the stars.
“Shouldn’t we strap in?” Dent called over the sudden roar of the Ruth’s thrusters as he grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet.
“No straps in here,” I called back, brushing past him and dodging out the hatch. “This way!”
Selene was in the pilot’s chair when we reached the bridge, her fingers stiff as they worked the controls. “Strap in,” I ordered Dent, pointing him to the nav station. “Selene?”
“Trouble,” she said, glancing a tense look at me. “An alarm’s been triggered. We’ve been ordered back, and patrol ships are scrambling to intercept.”
“Wow,” Dent muttered. “Your non-friends are persistent.”
“We can compliment them later,” I said tartly, my eyes flicking over the board as I searched for inspiration. Selene already had the thrusters running all the way to redline, and the incoming patrol ship formation was rapidly weaving an impenetrable web around us. Unless Ixil could come up with some tweak of the thrusters or cutter array, we were finished.
“Do you think invoking Mr. Varsi’s name would do any good?” Selene asked quietly.
“I doubt it,” I said. “That would require the badgemen to know who he was, and he’s always tried to keep a low profile. Can you angle us back downward and try to lose them that way?”
“It’ll cost us too much speed.”
“Yeah,” I growled. She was right, unfortunately. Besides, the badgemen probably already knew that one. “Well, then . . . ”
“Are you two done?” Dent spoke up impatiently. “Give me comm and I’ll get us out of here.”
Selene looked at me, and in her pupils I saw that she was as fresh out of ideas as I was. “Fine,” I said, reaching over and keying comm to the nav station. “You’re on.”
“Don’t come any closer,” Dent snarled.
I twitched. The sudden strength, anger, and intensity in his voice was completely unexpected.
“You hear me?” he continued in the same vicious voice. “Don’t come any closer. I have John Foster Brighthunter’s daughter Alicia here. You come any closer and I’ll start cutting off parts of her. You hear me?”
Selene again looked at me, confusion and question in her pupils. I shrugged and lifted my hands in mute agreement.
Still, if she and I had no idea who Alicia Brighthunter and her father were, whoever was in charge of the pursuit apparently recognized the name. “Take it easy, friend,” a soothing voice came back. “No one’s going to hurt you.”
“Don’t give me that,” Dent spat. “You say you’re not going to hurt me? Well, I will hurt Alicia if you don’t back off.” He gestured urgently toward the pilot board. How soon? he mouthed silently.
Twenty seconds, I mouthed back.
He nodded. “Here’s what I want. I’ll send the Honorable Mr. Brighthunter the details, but you might as well get things started. I want five million commarks in certified bank checks, ten thousand commarks each. They’re to be delivered—”
He broke off as a muffled thump came from somewhere near the Ruth’s stern. “What the hell?” Dent shouted. “What the living livid hell—?”
The cutter array indicators went green. Selene hit the control, and Gremon vanished behind us as the Ruth blasted into hyperspace. “That’s it,” I announced.
“Yeah.” Dent slumped in his seat. “Oh, yeah. That’s it, all right.”
“If you’re worried about the tracer they threw at us, don’t be,” I assured him. “We stop somewhere, I spacewalk out and pry it off—”
“It wasn’t a tracer, you idiot,” Dent bit out. “It was glitterpaint. A whole freaking load of glitterpaint.”
I looked at Selene, feeling my stomach tighten. “I didn’t know anyone still used that stuff.”
“Welcome to Gremon,” Dent muttered.
I looked past him at the nav table, feeling like we’d just been attacked by a volley of blunderbusses. Glitterpaint had been all the rage among badgemen fifty years ago, who saw the ability to permanently tag a ship as the ultimate time-delay weapon against fleeing criminals. The paint itself couldn’t be easily removed or covered up, and if the mere sight of it didn’t attract a spaceport’s official attention it also blazed a low-level radiation that the proper detectors could pick up a hundred meters away.
For a while it had worked just fine. But as was always the case in the struggle between order and chaos, the criminals figured out a way around it. Chemicals that could remove the paint were developed, and some shady entrepreneurs set up dark space stations in the outer parts of key systems where fugitives could come and for a hefty fee be scrubbed clean. The glitterpaint fad lasted maybe fifteen years, then slowly faded away.
At least it had in the main parts of the Spiral. Apparently in places like Gremon, it was still alive and well.
Or maybe it was just poised for a revival. After all, with the private cleaning stations long since abandoned or repurposed and the specialized cleaners all but forgotten, glitterpaint could start serving its original purpose again.
In the meantime, the Ruth was now the ultimate in hot potatoes. And if the criminals had forgotten about this gambit, you could bet the badgemen hadn’t.
“We need to find a place where we can hide for a while,” Selene said. “Do you think we could make it to Bonvere Seven?”
I shook my head. “Not without at least one fueling stop. Maybe two.”
“Someplace off the common track, then?” she pressed. “If we can park the Ruth somewhere and get to a StarrComm center we can contact”—her eyes flicked to the side—“our friends and see if they have a solution.”
“Only if no one sees us come in,” I said. “Even if the port command doesn’t recognize glitterpaint, you can bet they’ll still call it in to the badgemen.”
“Fine,” Dent growled.
We both looked at him. “What?” I asked.
“I said fine,” he repeated. “If you two clowns can’t—never mind. Can you make it to Popanilla?”
“No idea,” I said, reaching past him to punch up the name on the nav table. The location came up—
“Fifty-three hours away,” I told Selene, running a quick calculation. “Fuel shouldn’t be a problem.” I raised my eyebrows at Dent. “Landing, on the other hand, might be.”
“It won’t,” he said, looking distinctly unhappy. “Fine. Set course for Popanilla.”
“What’s on Popanilla?” I asked.
“I left a stash of stuff there I need to retrieve,” he said. “Money, equipment, some—” He paused, eyeing me warily. “Well, nothing that concerns you.”
“Things you contracted to smuggle, maybe?” I suggested.
His lip twisted. “Your friends again?”
“The knowledgeable ones, yes,” I confirmed. “Don’t worry, none of us care how you make your living.”
Dent grunted. “Damn decent of you. Fine. Our landing site on Popanilla will be Shiroyama Island.”
His lips compressed briefly. “Also known as the Island of the Dead.”