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CHAPTER EIGHT


We arrived to find the Ruth freshly fueled and ready to go. I fully expected Fulbright to take over the bridge duties, but instead he waved me to the pilot’s chair and took the nav station for himself. Given that he held his Balgren on me the whole time, I was less than overwhelmed by his trust. I ran the launch checklists, signaled the tower, and half an hour later we were boosted up off the ground and headed for space.

Sometime along in there Mottola finally woke up. I wasn’t exactly sure what was said, but even from the bridge I could tell that his part of the conversation was louder than it had to be, while Floyd’s was calm and barely audible. Fortunately, the discussion was over and Mottola had stomped off someplace by the time I finished slicing us into hyperspace and returned to the ship’s living areas.

Floyd told me later that the injured man had been sent back to my cabin to rest and continue healing. More than once I wondered if I would find the place trashed when I was finally allowed back in.

I’d been right about Fulbright keeping Selene and me apart. From the cockpit I was taken straight to the dayroom, where Fulbright settled me onto the couch and left me there under Cole’s watchful eye. From snatches of conversation I heard from the corridor I gathered Selene had asked to do some work in the clean room, and had been allowed to do so, but was otherwise restricted to her own cabin and the bathroom.

With nothing useful or even interesting to do, I settled in for a long, boring trip. I made myself a meal from the dayroom’s larder, traveled to the bathroom as needed, and took a couple of short naps. I awoke from the first to find Floyd carrying a pair of meal trays from the dayroom and Fulbright chomping down on his own meal from one of the fold-down seats across the way. Awakening from my second, I found Cole back on watchdog duty.

Thirty-nine and a half hours after lifting from Marjolaine, I put us down in a small landing field on the southern edge of West Pontus on Brandywine.

I’d been to the planet exactly once in my life, a brief visit to one of the northern hemisphere regions. West Pontus was in the southern hemisphere, and profiled in as one of the planet’s more compact trading and manufacturing hubs. In some ways it reminded me of Varsi’s old headquarters on Xathru, where he would sit in his lofty high-rise overlooking the city, an urbane and rot-hearted spider spinning his invisible webs around the oblivious citizens below.

But while Brandywine’s population and culture were similar to those of Xathru, the planet’s more out-of-the-way location made it somewhat less suitable for some of Varsi’s quieter and more unsavory activities. My best guess was that his trouble with the Patth had convinced him to get off Xathru for a while.

There was a van waiting beside the Ruth’s landing cradle when we emerged. We piled in, Cole taking the wheel this time, and headed out.

I’d assumed we would be going into the center of the city and the urban environment Varsi had preferred on Xathru. Instead, Cole turned us south, heading out through the suburbs and into the industrial region that formed a half ring around West Pontus on the south and east edges. After a forty-minute trip we pulled off onto a private drive leading toward a large, two-story manufacturing-type building set into an open area a kilometer back from the road. From what I could see the building had a single line of windows just below the roof and two heavy-paneled freight doors and a single person-sized door on our side. Everything else looked to be solid reinforced concrete and steel.

A high-rise might be nice for the view and prestige, but when push came to punch there was nothing like a nondescript fortress to offer a man a good night’s sleep.

Especially a well-guarded fortress. Two hundred meters from the road we were stopped at a checkpoint consisting of two armored cars and four combat-suited men hefting Rolfkin over/under plasmic/10mm assault rifles. As we were passed through I spotted the slender strands of fiberwire leading away in both directions from the checkpoint lintels, forming an almost invisible fence around the building and grounds. A second checkpoint awaited us outside the building itself, this one involving four soldiers and a pair of disguised ground-pit sniper nests. As we filed out of the van, I spotted three more armored cars patrolling the open area around the building.

As my father used to say, Beware of anyone who lives in a bunker. If that many people are gunning for him, there’s generally no place nearby where it’s safe to stand.

I’d been in many manufacturing plants over the years, once even having to chase a target through one, and was prepared for bright lights, equipment clusters, overhead cable-trays loaded with power lines and coolant conduits, and lots of busy people. Instead, Selene and I were escorted through the door into what was effectively an indoor ghost town.

The big open floor stretching out in front of us was all but empty, with mountings and concrete slabs showing where equipment used to stand. The cable trays were still in place, and some still had cables lying in them, but they didn’t seem to connect to anything. To the right, a pair of what looked like freshly built walls sectioned off a cube enclosing maybe a tenth of the overall floor space, with a single door leading into it. Possibly storage for Varsi’s special records or merchandise; possibly a heavily armored last-ditch safe room. Off to the left, built against the outer wall, was another rectangular room with large tinted windows looking out onto the empty floor. Unlike the new walls to our right, this structure looked like it had been an original part of the building. There were two doors into it, their positioning suggesting that the room was divided into two separate offices. Crisscrossing the space above us were catwalks and the rails for hoists and rolling cranes, though the equipment that had been suspended there was gone. All in all, the place looked like it had been abandoned for years, making it an ideal place for a private meeting.

“Come on, come on,” Fulbright growled, nudging me toward the structure to our left. There was a fresh tension in his voice that suggested he wasn’t looking forward to this meeting any more than I was. “You don’t want to keep him waiting.”

“Definitely not,” I agreed, looking sideways at Selene. Her nostrils were flaring rhythmically, her long eyelashes fluttering as she sampled the air. I had no idea what she was smelling, but it was apparently pretty interesting.

The right-hand office door opened as we approached, and a large, dead-eyed man stepped out. He looked each of us up and down, made lingering eye contact with Floyd, then moved to the side and gestured us in. Fulbright nudged me again; bracing myself, I walked through the doorway.

At the back of the room, seated behind a desk, was a husky, dark-haired man I’d never seen before. He was dressed in an expensive suit and equally impressive collar pins in much the same style Varsi had usually worn.

The desk, in stark contrast, was boxy and functional, without any extravagance whatsoever, the sort of item that Varsi would have ordered to be dropped into the nearest convenient undersea trench. If this was Varsi’s new headquarters, he was clearly still in the middle of the move.

“This him?” the man at the desk asked as Selene and the others filed in behind me.

“Yes, Mr. Draelon,” Fulbright confirmed. “This is Gregory Roarke.”

“Taller than I expected,” Draelon commented, focusing on me. His eyes, I noted with a shiver, looked somehow even deader than those of the bodyguard he’d sent out of the office to meet us. “I’m told you used to work for Mr. Varsi, Mr. Roarke.”

“Yes, sir, I did,” I confirmed. “As far as I know, I still do.”

“Really,” Draelon said. “It’s been over six months since you contacted him or anyone else in the organization.” He raised his eyebrows. “One might wonder if you’ve been avoiding us.”

“Not at all, sir,” I hastened to assure him. What the hell was going on? “Our agreement with Mr. Varsi was always that when Selene and I found something useful in one of our planetary sweeps we would contact him. Sometimes those discoveries are few and far between.”

“So you’ve found nothing?

I thought about the ampule hidden inside my artificial arm. “No, sir, unfortunately,” I said. “But you can ask Mr. Varsi about our agreement.”

Something seemed to flicker across his eyes. “Perhaps later,” he said. “Tell me, how would you respond to the charge that you betrayed him to the Patth?”

And with that, this whole conversation had gone completely sideways.

“I would say, sir,” I said, picking my words carefully, “that the person who told you that was either wrong or a liar. Mr. Varsi’s generosity was what kept us flying for several years. Why would I do such a thing?”

“Maybe a better offer came along,” Draelon said. “Maybe part of the price of that offer was that you help your new employer clear away some of the less respectable parts of your past.”

“I can’t imagine an offer I would find compelling enough for such a thing,” I protested, a fresh tingle running up my back. In fact, that scenario was uncomfortably close to what had actually happened with our recruitment into the Icarus Group. “Again, all I can say is that you can ask Mr. Varsi about that. Is he here?”

“He won’t be back until the end of next week,” Draelon said. “The question is whether he’ll wish to talk to you, or whether he’ll just leave your punishment to me.”

Behind me, Fulbright cleared his throat. “If I may suggest, Mr. Draelon,” he said hesitantly, “if Roarke has new friends who are out to get us, we might not want them connecting him to this place. If you want, I could—”

“To get us?” Draelon cut him off, his voice glacially calm. “Who is this us, Mr. Fulbright?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Fulbright said, the words stumbling over themselves. “I thought—when Mr. Varsi hired me back on Pinnkus I thought—”

“Mr. Varsi hired you on Pinnkus for a specific job,” Draelon again interrupted. “Did you succeed in that task?”

I didn’t dare turn to look, but I could hear a soft, uncomfortable rumble in Fulbright’s throat. “Not . . . completely, sir,” he admitted. “But I did bring Roarke here just now.”

“Yes, though you required considerable assistance from Mr. Floyd and his men to succeed in that effort,” Draelon said pointedly. “Why are you suggesting you take him elsewhere before he and I have finished our conversation?”

“I was just thinking that we—that you—might not want him connected to—”

“Yes, you said that already,” Draelon said. “Tell me, Mr. Fulbright: Do you think him worth additional money? Would you say he’s worth, say, ten thousand commarks a minute?”

“Uh . . . ” Fulbright floundered, clearly trying to come up with an answer.

I could sympathize, given that I was feeling as confused by the question as he was. Ten thousand commarks a minute?

“I . . . don’t understand, sir,” Fulbright managed at last. “What—?”

Draelon silenced him with a gesture, his eyes flicking over my shoulder. “Bring him in,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” the dead-eyed guard said from behind me. There was the sound of heavy footsteps, then the creak of hinges as the office door opened and closed.

“Excuse me, Mr. Draelon,” Floyd spoke up, his voice respectful but with a hint of perplexity to it. “I was under the impression we were bringing Roarke here for discussion of his Trailblazer work—”

“You were ordered to assist Fulbright in his hunt,” Draelon cut him off. “If my plans for him have changed, that’s none of your business.”

“No, sir,” Floyd said quickly. “My apologies, sir.”

“Accepted.” Draelon looked back at me. “What about you, Roarke? Do you have any idea why you might command such a price?”

“No, sir, not really,” I said, trying to sound sincere even as my heart started thudding like a panicked deer.

Because there was indeed one person who would probably pay that kind of money to get me alone. Especially if he had a few specialized instruments of pain at his disposal.

I’d hoped that sticking with obscure planets in less-desirable parts of the Spiral would keep me off Sub-Director Nask’s radar. Apparently, my luck had run out.

“I am very good at finding useful worlds,” I continued. If Nask was here, it wouldn’t hurt to remind Draelon how much money I’d made for Varsi’s organization over the years. “Maybe someone needs an especially good crockett to find a new development locale.”

“Or possibly a new street drug?” Draelon countered, his eyes flicking to Floyd.

“Yes, I’ve also had some successes in that area,” I confirmed. If that fact had been part of Floyd’s pre-hunt briefing, it would help explain why he’d treated Selene and me with restraint on the flight here, including not letting Mottola take a poke at me. “Both of those make my services invaluable.” The door behind me opened and closed again—

“Excellent. You found him.”

I didn’t recognize the voice. But there was a cold anticipation in those four words that sent a fresh chill up my back. Some bounty hunter I’d pilfered a target from who still held a grudge? A target I’d brought to justice, now out of prison and looking for payback?

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flicker of reaction in Selene’s stance. I turned my head slightly, hoping for a better look at her pupils, but her head was bowed, her eyes focused on the floor.

“Obviously,” Draelon said. “I brought you in to tell you the deal’s off.”

He looked back at me. “I’ve decided to finish with him myself. Right here, right now.

“For his betrayal of Mr. Varsi, he’s going to die.”

“Really,” the newcomer said, the coldness I’d heard there going darker. “A rather drastic reversal of your plans of a few days ago. May I ask what’s changed?”

“Nothing’s changed, Mr. Niles,” Draelon said. “I’ve simply decided I really don’t need his services, and think he’ll be more useful as an object lesson for anyone else who might think about betraying our organization’s trust.”

I opened my mouth to protest, to tell him that I’d never betrayed Varsi or anyone else—

“Such object lessons can be useful,” Niles said, finishing his walk from the door and stopping beside me. He was about as stereotypical a bounty hunter as ever graced a star-thriller drama: medium height, curly pirate-black hair and unkempt beard, prominent nose and cheekbones, and three scars digging through the skin of forehead and cheeks. “Still, you’re at heart a businessman,” he continued, “and it seems wasteful to kill someone who someone else is willing to pay for.” He sent me a glance that seemed both intrigued and contemptuous. “Especially since I’ll be happy to hand him back to you as soon as I’m finished with him.”

“Allowing me to have my cake and eat it, as the saying goes,” Draelon said. “Except that you haven’t explained why you’re offering far more money than Mr. Roarke is worth.”

“In my experience, Mr. Draelon, a target is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for him,” Niles countered. “If my client is offering ten thousand commarks a minute for me to talk with him, I should think that would settle the matter.” He looked at me again, running his eyes up and down. “As for the full payment that will be involved, I don’t anticipate the conversation lasting very long. I’m guessing ten minutes will be all I need. A negligible delay in your program, and you’ll be a hundred thousand commarks richer.”

“And what are you expecting to learn during those ten minutes?”

Niles shook his head. “I’m afraid that comes under bounty hunter confidentiality. Of course, as I’ve already stipulated, the conversation would need to be a private one.”

“Someplace outside this facility, no doubt?” Draelon suggested with deceptive casualness. “Out in the open where you could suddenly call in an aircar and spirit him away?”

“Not at all,” Niles assured him. “An unoccupied corner of this building would do nicely.” He gave a slightly derisive snort. “Really, Mr. Draelon. While I’m committed to completing the job I’ve been hired for, I have no desire to leave a trail of enemies in my wake.”

“Very wise of you,” Draelon said. “Why is Roarke worth that much?”

“As I said, that’s confidential.”

Draelon shook his head. “I’m afraid I must insist.”

And suddenly the room was bristling with guns, one each in the hands of Draelon’s men. All of the weapons pointed at Niles.

The room went silent, and for a moment Niles stood motionless. Then, slowly, he turned his head to the left, then to the right, observing and assessing. Finally, he turned forward to face Draelon again. “What I just said about not leaving a trail of enemies works in both directions, Mr. Draelon,” he said quietly. “I’m not to be trifled with. My client is certainly not to be trifled with.”

“Your client needs to learn the art of compromise, Mr. Niles.”

“And what exactly would this compromise consist of?”

“You tell me why Roarke is so valuable,” Draelon said. “I give you my assistance in accomplishing whatever the job consists of, and we divide the proceeds evenly.”

“We don’t need your help.”

“Every job goes easier when you have help,” Draelon said. “Besides, now that I know Roarke is hiding something, I could ask him about it myself and cut you out completely.”

“Interesting thought,” Niles said. “However, you assume Roarke knows what makes him valuable. He may not, and without that knowledge you could ask questions for days without finding the right one.”

“Mr. Niles—”

“On the other hand, you make some valid points,” Niles went on. “But an even split is out of the question. We could, perhaps, go with an eighty-twenty split. The eighty to us, of course.”

Draelon looked speculatively at me, then turned back to Niles. “Seventy-thirty,” he said. “Along with supplying all the necessary personnel and equipment, I’ll also get you through the various official roadblocks in our way.”

Niles paused, then shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t authorize that high a percentage.”

“Thirty percent is hardly unreasonable,” Draelon said. “Considering that it includes your life.”

For a moment the two men locked eyes. Then, Niles inclined his head. “Let me transmit the offer to my client,” he said, pulling out his phone. “If he agrees—” He broke off, frowning at the phone. “A jamming lock? Really?”

Draelon waved a casual hand. “Outside communication is forbidden right now.”

“I can’t make any deals on behalf of my client without contacting him.”

“Then don’t,” Draelon said, his tone and expression changing subtly. “Make a deal on behalf of yourself. How much is your client paying you to bring in Roarke?”

“Sixty thousand commarks,” Niles said. “Another hundred thousand if Roarke’s information leads him to whatever he’s looking for.”

“I’ll pay you two hundred thousand right here and now,” Draelon said. “Plus thirty percent of whatever pot is at the end of Mr. Roarke’s rainbow.”

“And Roarke?”

Draelon shrugged. “Sadly, you were unable to find him. Not that unusual—bounty hunters miss their targets all the time.”

“That won’t be good for my reputation,” Niles warned. “Especially when he pops up again later.”

“I doubt he’ll be popping up anywhere after we’re done with him,” Draelon assured him. “As I said, Roarke’s going to be an object lesson.”

I cleared my throat. It was about time I joined this conversation. “Before we get too far into the pie-cutting exercise,” I said, “I hope no one’s assuming I’m going to cooperate for free.”

“You think you have a choice?” Draelon asked calmly. “There are lots of ways of prying information out of a person.”

“But all of them take time,” I pointed out. “And they’re vulnerable to lies and misdirection. I’m not sure what Mr. Niles thinks I’ve got to sell, but most things in life come with an expiration date. If I hold out long enough, you may find the pie plate empty.”

Draelon smiled thinly. “What we’ll find is that my people are very persuasive.”

“But since you don’t know the expiration date, you don’t know how much time you have to play with,” I said. “Neither do I, and I doubt Mr. Niles does, either.”

Draelon’s eyes shifted to Selene. “What if we worked on your partner instead?”

My stomach turned into a hard knot. If they tortured Selene— “Actually, that would be the worst of all worlds,” I said, forcing as much indifference into my voice as I could. “She’s a Kadolian. A rare and delicate creature whose tolerance for pain you have no clue about. If you kill her, intentionally or otherwise, not only do you no longer have anything to hold over me, but you’ll have wasted valuable time.”

“So you wouldn’t care if she was tortured to death?”

“Of course I’d care,” I said. “But I also don’t want her starving to death in poverty. All I want is a fair share of the pie you expect me to serve up to you.”

“What would you consider a fair share?” Niles put in.

“Let’s make it fifty thousand up front and twenty percent of the back end,” I said. “And this thing about me dying goes away.”

“No,” Draelon said flatly.

I shrugged. “Then enjoy your thirty percent of nothing.”

“Let’s not be too hasty, Mr. Draelon,” Niles put in. “Mr. Fulbright, you seem concerned.”

I looked over at Fulbright just in time to see him try to erase whatever expression Niles had spotted. “No, no, not at all,” Fulbright said, just a bit too quickly. “I’m just thinking . . . there’s something about all this that seems off to me, Mr. Draelon. What do we really know about Niles? He could be a badgeman, he could be from the people who attacked Mr. Varsi—”

I never saw Draelon’s signal, but suddenly Cole stepped up beside Fulbright and slapped him hard across the back of his head. Fulbright gasped, breaking off in mid-sentence, and the room went silent.

Draelon gave it five more seconds. Then, very deliberately, he turned to face Fulbright. “Mr. Varsi’s current situation is not to be mentioned,” he said, his voice as dead as his eyes. “At all. To anyone. Under any circumstances. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Fulbright said, his breath coming in short bursts. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m just worried. If this is a setup, you could be in danger. Maybe I could . . . I could go with Mr. Niles when he takes Roarke to his ship. Once you’ve made your agreement, I mean. That way there’d be nothing to connect either of them to you.”

“Roarke and his friend won’t be traveling on Mr. Niles’s ship,” Draelon said. “They’ll be traveling with Cole and Floyd on one of mine.”

“Actually, Mr. Draelon, that won’t work,” Niles spoke up. “The man Roarke is meeting probably knows about the Ruth. If Roarke arrives on any other ship—mine or yours—he may be suspicious and call it off.”

“So he’s meeting someone, is he?” Draelon asked. “Who?”

Niles gave a small sigh. “As Mr. Roarke suggested, we have a limited window of opportunity. Very well, I accept your offer. The person of interest is a human male named Easton Dent. Roarke is going to be meeting him on . . . ?” He raised his eyebrows invitingly.

“On a planet I’ll name once Selene and I are back aboard the Ruth,” I said. “You’re welcome to follow us in your own ship if you’d like.”

Draelon seemed to measure me with his eyes. He looked at Niles, then gave a twitch of a smile. “We may do that,” he said. “Floyd, I assume you and your associates can keep Mr. Roarke in line?”

“No problem, sir,” Floyd assured him. “What about Fulbright?”

“Before you say anything, Mr. Draelon,” Fulbright spoke up, “remember that I was the one you hired to bring Roarke in.”

“At your suggestion,” Draelon said.

“Regardless, sir, I’m the bounty hunter of record here,” Fulbright said doggedly. “I have a responsibility to see it through to the end. If Roarke’s going somewhere, I should be along.”

Draelon eyed him a moment, then looked back at Floyd. “Floyd?”

“He did guess that Roarke would go back to Marjolaine,” Floyd said reluctantly. “I suppose he might still be useful.”

“Very well,” Draelon said. “But understand, Mr. Fulbright, that this is Floyd’s mission now, not yours. He’s in charge, and you’ll take orders from him.”

“Yes, Mr. Draelon,” Fulbright said with Floyd’s same lack of enthusiasm.

Not really surprising, on either side. The quiet nickname the Pup was ample indication of what Floyd and the others had thought about Fulbright’s authority over them, and the tense confrontation in the Golden Pyramid showed the animosity worked the other direction as well. Under the circumstances, especially with the now reversed chain of command, if I was Fulbright I’d have taken my payment and waved good-bye.

But then, Fulbright seemed a lot more stubborn and a lot less pragmatic than I was.

“What about you, Mottola?” Draelon continued. “Are you up to continuing?”

“Yes, sir,” Mottola said. His voice was grim, and I could visualize his eyes boring into the back of my head. “I’m ready to see this through.”

“Yes, well, if I may?” I again spoke up, lifting a finger. “The Ruth’s only designed for two people, three at the most. And this will be a much longer trip than the one from Marjolaine, several days at least.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Floyd said with a sort of malicious humor. “I had a good look at the ship, Mr. Draelon. We can easily sleep five.”

“What about the sixth?” I asked.

“I hardly think four men escorting two prisoners will all choose to sleep at the same time,” Niles pointed out.

“Exactly,” Floyd said.

“Then I think that does it,” Draelon said. “Floyd, you and your men escort Roarke and his partner to their ship. You, Mr. Niles, will wait with me until we hear their destination. At that point, we’ll decide on our own course of action.”

“I really should be with them,” Niles said, giving me another brief, speculative look. “But I suppose your men and Fulbright will be an adequate guard.”

“More than adequate.” Draelon smiled faintly, his eyes glittering as he gazed at Niles. “And while we wait, you’ll tell me exactly what Easton Dent has that’s worth this much of my time and effort.”

“As you wish,” Niles said. “Safe travels, Roarke. I’m sure we’ll see you again very soon.”

“Thank you, Mr. Niles,” I managed. The look in his eye . . .  “I’ll look forward to it.”


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