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CHAPTER SIX


Like CR-207-T, Marjolaine hadn’t changed much since we’d last been here. We set up a new ID for the Ruth, just in case the locals were paying close enough attention to InterSpiral Law Enforcement reports to have noticed an angry fugitive-ship report out of New Kyiv. Then, we once again rolled a die to see which StarrComm center we would use, and came up with the one at the southern edge of a city named Khayelitsha. The two closest landing fields were full, but the controller was able to get us into one about an hour’s drive away. I put down, set up a refueling, and snagged us a runaround.

We arrived at the StarrComm center half an hour past local noon, apparently an especially busy time of day in this part of Marjolaine. I had to park three blocks from the main entrance, and I could see a steady flow of people going through the wide double doors as we walked toward the building. “This could take a while,” I warned Selene. I turned to her, saw a suddenly stricken look in her pupils—

“Not as long as you might think,” a quiet voice said from behind me as a hard object the size of a gun muzzle pressed briefly into the small of my back before withdrawing.

I came to a smooth, controlled stop, with none of the jerkiness that might make our assailant think I was about to try something stupid. “This one of them?” I asked Selene casually.

“Yes,” she said, her voice low and edged with shame. “I’m sorry, Gregory. I didn’t—”

“It’s all right,” I interrupted her. If our new playmate didn’t already know about her extraordinary sense of smell, I didn’t want to enlighten him. “I gather we’re not supposed to make any StarrComm calls right now?”

“Maybe later,” he said. “We’ll see what the Pup has to say. Come on—across the street and down that alley over there.”

“Which alley?” I asked.

“Just walk.” The muzzle touched my back again, this time nudging me in the direction of a service lane a half block away on the other side of the street.

“Oh, that alley,” I said as I checked both ways for traffic and confirmed we were clear. This area was supposed to be one of Khayelitsha’s main tourist centers, but aside from the foot traffic into the StarrComm center this particular couple of blocks seemed pretty empty. “I assume the Pup’s waiting for us?” I asked as I started angling across the street.

“He’s supposedly on his way,” the other said, his tone strongly suggesting he wasn’t all that thrilled about being kept waiting, either. “He thought you might show up at one of the other StarrComm centers.”

“Only you’re the one who pulled the lucky straw,” I said, nodding. “Congratulations.”

“Yeah, I’m thrilled,” he said sourly. “Come on, pick it up.”

“You parked over here somewhere?” I asked as we passed the street’s center line. “I just ask because we had trouble finding a space, too. Hope it’s not too far. Leg’s been bothering me.”

“It’s just a couple of blocks,” he said. “We’ll get a room and you can put your leg up or whatever you need.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Hope the room’s nice.”

“They’re all nice there,” he said, starting to sound a little testy. Maybe he’d expected more fear and groveling on my part.

“Don’t suppose you can upgrade us to a swirl tub,” I went on as we neared the walkway on the other side. “It’s all on the Pup’s tab, right?”

Again, the gun jabbed into my back, a little harder this time. “Look, Roarke—”

“Hey,” I complained, looking partway over my left shoulder as if to give him an irritated look. I let my eyes suddenly refocus on the street behind him and widen in shock— “Watch it!” I snapped. I swung my left arm up and back, pointing at the oncoming vehicle supposedly barreling down on us.

And as he reflexively looked that direction I just kept the arm moving, slamming my forearm hard against the side of his neck as I simultaneously pivoted on my left foot to rotate myself out of his line of fire. He was just starting to turn back when I completed my spin, my left hand getting a grip on the back of his head as my right hand swung into position to grab the barrel of his gun. A quick pull downward with my left hand, an equally quick pull upward with my right, and I slammed his gun hard into his face.

He was too tough to go down quite that easily. But the blow was strong enough to loosen his grip on his weapon. I twisted it out of his grip, shoved his head a little closer to the ground, and smashed the barrel against the side of his head.

This time he went down and stayed there.

I handed his gun to Selene—it was a Skripka 4mm, I noted—and got a grip under his arms. “Gregory, they’re all watching,” Selene warned tensely, nodding behind me at the people heading into the StarrComm building.

“I know,” I said. “I’m just getting him off the street.” I pulled him onto the walkway, then knelt beside him as if I was checking to make sure he was all right. He had the look of an experienced street tough, I saw, but was far older than I’d expected. Somewhere in his midfifties, I estimated, possibly even crowding sixty, at least twenty years past the prime age for this kind of work.

Still, whatever his story, the same response applied. As I leaned close, I slid one of my knockout pills from its left wrist cubby and pushed it between his lips and into his mouth. The pills were designed to be dissolved in someone’s drink, but I saw no reason it couldn’t do so in someone’s residual saliva as well.

At any rate, it was worth a try. The last thing we wanted was for him to wake up and start screaming to someone on his phone.

Speaking of which . . . 

His phone was snugged away in the leftmost of his jacket’s inner pockets. I slipped it out, hoping he’d been careless enough or rushed enough to have left it unlocked since its last use. If we could find out who he’d called to announce our arrival, we might be able to figure out who he was working for.

No such luck. It was locked down solid.

“Is that an extra emergency call button?” Selene asked, pointing.

“Sure looks like one,” I agreed, looking closely at the display. Emergency call buttons were standard on every phone sold in the Spiral, a way of quickly summoning badgemen or medics. They were standard, they were universal, and there was absolutely no reason to install an additional one.

Unless it was to summon a rather different type of assistance. That had all sorts of possible implications, none of them good.

It was also way too tempting a chance to pass up.

Selene must have smelled my sudden change in mood. “What are you doing?” she asked warily.

“A little experiment,” I said. With only a slight hesitation I pushed the secondary emergency button, replaced the phone in his pocket, and straightened up. “Time to make ourselves scarce.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“First job is to get out of sight,” I said, taking her arm and steering her into the alley we’d been aiming for. It was pretty much what I’d expected: a narrow lane wide enough for small transport and garbage vehicles but too narrow for full-size runarounds. There were access doorways and small windows to the street-level stores on either side, with compact ladder lines to the two floors above. No one was visible, but I nevertheless hurried us along. Getting caught on the street had been bad enough. Getting caught in here would be worse.

“Second job is to park you somewhere out of sight,” I continued, picking up our pace a bit. “Third job is for me to come back and watch what happens to our playmate back there.”

“Gregory—”

“Because your lovely face and white hair are a little too distinctive to blend into the background,” I continued. “Don’t worry, I’ll find you some place that’s safe.”

“What if I wear my head scarf?” she offered. “I could draw up the sides to cover my face.”

I hesitated. Hiding her face that way would certainly help protect her from prying eyes.

The problem was that the scarf also unavoidably blocked off some of the airflow to her nose and eyelashes, which was the equivalent of a human wearing extra-dark sunglasses indoors. It seriously restricted her senses, and I knew that always made her feel vulnerable.

“I appreciate the offer,” I said. “And you will need to use the scarf, at least over your hair. But you’ll be using it in there.” I pointed to the nearest of the hotels, and the impressive slip-luminescent sign over the grand entrance that identified it as the Golden Pyramid. “Find a spot in the lobby where you can watch the street, wait for whoever comes to collect Sleeping Beauty to show up, and see where he goes.”

“What if he doesn’t come here at all?”

“Then we’re out of luck,” I said. “But he said he’d called for a room, so I’m hoping his backups are already here. Speak of the devil . . . ”

A black eight-passenger van had just emerged from the side street between two of the hotels, keeping up with the rest of the traffic but displaying the impatience and twitchy sense of urgency I’d seen a hundred times back when I was a bounty hunter. “I’m guessing that’s them now,” I said, nodding her toward the hotel. “As soon as they’re out of sight, go.”

“All right,” she said. She still sounded a little uncertain, but was ready to trust me. “You’re not going back through the alley, are you?”

“Walking straight into their arms would probably save time,” I said, “but overall it would be a tad counterproductive. No, I’ll head over to the street at the end of the block and approach the crime scene from the other end. Stay out of sight as best you can, and call or text if there’s any trouble.”

“I will. Be careful.”

“Count on it.”

I headed to the street and joined with the pedestrian flow heading from the busy entertainment hub to the slightly less garish—and probably slightly less expensive—neighborhood where StarrComm had chosen to set up its facility. I kept pace with the general mass of humans and aliens strolling along, wanting to hurry but knowing better than to make myself stand out in any way, until we reached the corner.

A lot of the people who talked about sparking a reaction—and I’d known my share of them—didn’t really understand how much of an acquired skill it was. Push too gently and nothing happened; push too hard and you could wind up in the middle of a firestorm. Or as my father used to say, The difference between a cozy fire and arson is how much kerosene you dump on it. Staying close to my fellow pedestrians, I headed across the street and sent a casual look to the side.

For once, it appeared I’d hit the sweet spot dead center.

There were three vehicles grouped together by the walkway: a medvan, a badgeman patrol car, and the black van I’d seen scorching the pavement one block over. Our playmate was lying on a rolling stretcher in the middle of the group, still sound asleep, while two medics, two badgemen, and three men in gray suits stood gathered around him. All of them were paying their full attention to each other and ignoring the knots of gawking onlookers.

And while their conversation was too faint for me to hear over the distance and the city noises, it was pretty clear that they were arguing about which of them got to keep Sleeping Beauty.

Turning down the street toward the StarrComm entrance would get me into eavesdropping range of the discussion, and for a moment I was tempted. But there might still be people in the vicinity who’d witnessed the brief altercation and would remember me. Instead, I finished crossing to the corner, then stepped into the nearest shop. A bakery, as it turned out, with a nice selection inside the display window that I could pretend to be studying as I watched the drama half a block away.

I had assumed from Sleeping Beauty’s manner of accosting us that he wasn’t anyone official, either a badgeman or some government rep, and that whoever showed up in response to the emergency call would be similarly unconnected. The fact that everyone was still arguing supported that theory, since someone with higher rank than the locals would have already flashed their credentials and bundled the unconscious man into their vehicle.

But the fact they were still arguing also meant that the Gray Suits had a fair amount of informal clout, else the badgemen would have already told them to get lost and let the medics get on with their jobs.

Meanwhile, a couple of other bakery customers were wandering into my vicinity. I pulled out my phone and keyed for Selene.

“It’s me,” I said when she answered. “You there?”

“Yes. No sign of the car yet.”

“I know,” I said. “Okay. They have lemon and raspberry tarts, rhubarb and apple and bigglebern strudel, horns, dragon claws, and a whole bunch of different breads and cookies.”

“You’re in the bakery at the corner?”

“That’s right,” I confirmed. “Don’t know exactly what would be best for everyone.”

“The badgemen are arguing with the van people?”

“Yep,” I said. “What do you think?”

“I don’t smell our attacker anywhere in here,” she said. “That would suggest he was on the ship that followed us.”

“Agreed,” I said. I’d already tentatively concluded that from our brief conversation about the mysterious Pup. “Which raises the question of timing.”

“You mean how he got to the StarrComm center ahead of us?”

“Right.” The browsing customers had now wandered back out of earshot. “He’s clearly got friends in high places. Wait a second. Looks like . . . yes. The Gray Suits have won,” I told her as one of them began unstrapping Sleeping Beauty from his stretcher. “They’re getting him ready to put in the van—looks like the badgemen have confiscated his gun, though.”

“How do the badgemen look?”

“Not happy,” I said. “Okay, he’s in. Badgemen glaring at them . . . and there they go. Down the street . . . turning the corner . . . headed your way.”

“I’m ready,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“Get back to you,” I said, frowning. “What else would I do?”

“It might be a good time to call the admiral,” she said. “You’re already there.”

“He can wait,” I said firmly, heading for the shop door. “This is more important.”

“Gregory, I can watch and see where the car goes all by myself,” Selene said, her tone mildly chiding. “You need to let the admiral know what’s happened, and get him started on tracking down our attacker.”

I winced. With my thoughts distracted by the fancy emergency button on the man’s phone, I’d completely forgotten to get his picture. “Yeah. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to get his picture.”

“I did,” Selene said. “Here.”

I looked at my phone as a dij of my sparring partner appeared. “Got it,” I said, pushing open the shop door. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

“Of course. Call me when you’re done.”

The crowd lined up at the StarrComm entrance had thinned a bit during the street drama. Some of the people had probably needed to get back to work, others had decided it was taking too long, while others had perhaps been unwilling to stand there with their faces hanging out all visible with a couple of badgemen standing a dozen meters away. I didn’t recognize any of the remaining group; more importantly, none of them seemed to recognize me.

Even with the reduced clientele it was still nearly twenty minutes before I got a booth. I fed in the bills, punched in the Icarus Group’s number, and waited for Admiral Graym-Barker’s perennially glaring visage to grace the screen.

Once again, those expectations were dashed.

“Good to see you,” Tera said briskly. “I presume this call means you’ve talked to Dent?”

“Not yet,” I said. “We had a couple of side trips to make first. Where’s the admiral? On vacation again?”

“He does have duties other than answering your calls,” Tera pointed out archly. “I trust these side trips were at least relevant to the task at hand?”

“Aren’t they always?”

“Mmm,” she said in a noncommittal tone. She settled back in her chair. “Okay. Impress me.”

I gave her a detailed summary of our trip to CR-207-T and our second encounter with the mysterious poacher, adding Selene’s analysis of the aromas we’d captured, and then described the attack here outside the Khayelitsha StarrComm center and the interesting tug-of-war between the badgemen and our assailant’s friends. “Here’s what he looks like,” I finished, transmitting the dij Selene had taken. “He was carrying a Skripka 4mm, incidentally. Decent weapon, and pricey enough to suggest he’s with someone important.”

“Russian for violin,” Tera commented thoughtfully as she gazed at the dij. “Okay, I’ll get this to the analysis section and see if anyone can tag it. What’s your next move?”

“Selene’s watching for the car and Sleeping Beauty to go to ground,” I said. “Once it does, I’ll see if I can get a handle on who he’s working for. What’s funny?”

“Sorry,” she said, smoothing away her brief twitch of a smile. “Jordan once used the name Sleeping Beauty on a fake ship’s ID for his Stormy Banks. He might still have that ID lying around, actually.”

“He should probably leave it where it is,” I warned. “Freki and Geri had the same name on a fake ID they used for the Ruth at Pinnkus. Interesting coincidence.”

“Or not so much coincidence as a not-so-subtle throwback to when the Patth were first hunting us.”

“Or a way to make sure McKell doesn’t use the ID again,” I said, thinking back to the circumstances of that temporary name change. Now that Tera pointed that out, I was pretty sure she was right. “Our old playmates do have a warped sense of humor, don’t they?”

“If you want to call it that.”

Warped sense of humor is easier to pronounce than petty vicious vindictiveness,” I said. “But getting back to our current playmates and that comment about seeing what the Pup has to say. You don’t happen to know any shady characters who use that title, do you?”

“Sounds more like a name someone else would give an unliked colleague,” Tera said. “Or an unliked boss, given the subservience implied in the phrasing.”

“Camaraderie at its finest,” I said. “Though if it comes to that, I can’t see the Pup being all that thrilled with his man’s performance today, either.”

I certainly wouldn’t be,” Tera agreed. “All right. Go ahead and check your mail drop and see whether or not Dent has responded to your message. Either way, call me right back.”

“Got it. Back in a minute.” I signed off, fed in more bills, and called my mail drop on Xathru.

Dent had indeed responded, though with a text and not a voice message.

Last chance. Roastmeat Bar, South Joapa, Gremon, ten days from now, seven o’clock pm local time. Don’t be late.

I scowled as I copied the note onto a data stick. As Tera herself had underscored with the setup preceding my first meeting with Dent, if you had someone’s coding information and access to his or her mail drop you could send all the fake messages you wanted without anyone at the other end being the wiser.

Which meant this was either genuinely from Dent, or else someone was setting a trap. Or possibly both.

But the only two options were to bail on the whole thing or else continue following the bread crumbs, and I was pretty sure Tera wouldn’t let us bail. Pumping in a few more bills, making a mental note to restock my cash supply as soon as we were back aboard the Ruth, I again punched in the Icarus Group’s number. The intricate StarrComm logo appeared and began swirling in its “contacting” indicator, and I settled back to wait.

And kept waiting. The logo finished its usual ten-second loop, then started up again. And again. And again.

By the time it started its fifth repetition a cold feeling was starting to settle between my shoulder blades. Tera had been right there at the comm station, and she’d known I’d be calling back as soon as I finished checking my messages. She wouldn’t have just wandered off to do something else.

Not unless she had a hell of a good reason to do so.

As my father used to say, Stalling is an art form. Don’t try it unless you can—you know, that reminds me of an interesting story.

Finally, the logo cleared and Tera was back. “Was it something I said?” I asked, filtering most of the sarcasm out of my voice.

“It was something you sent,” she corrected, her face and voice even more serious than usual. “We found your friend in the ISLE listings.”

I sat up a little straighter. Among its other duties, InterSpiral Law Enforcement was tasked with keeping tabs on the Spiral’s most notorious criminals. But even badgemen with ISLE’s resources had to prioritize, and for Tera to have found him this fast meant he must be pretty high up in their stack of Bad Guys To Keep An Eye On. “And?”

“His name’s Eziji Mottola,” she said, her eyes steady on me. “He’s a senior enforcer for Luko Varsi.”

I had learned curses for every occasion from my father, though it hadn’t exactly been a formal course on the subject. For this particular situation, none of them seemed quite adequate. “You’re sure?”

“Very sure,” Tera said. “The ISLE data suggest that he basically grew up in the Varsi organization.”

“So what’s he doing on Marjolaine chasing down crocketts?”

“No idea,” Tera said. “But if Varsi sent him, he must really want to see you.”

“Do we know where Varsi is right now?”

“As far as we can tell, he dropped off the edge of the map about three months ago.” Tera raised her eyebrows. “I don’t suppose he might be the forgiving type?”

I huffed out a breath. The forgiving type. Forgiving the man who’d caught on to his private little deal with the Patth and called him on it. Forgiving the man who’d apparently shined enough official light on his organization that he’d been forced to scurry underground for the past few months. Forgiving the man who’d ruined his plan to kidnap and kill Tera. “In general, I doubt it,” I told her. “In my case, not a chance in hell.”

“I assumed as much,” she said. “Okay, you’re officially off the case. Grab Selene—”

“Whoa,” I cut her off. “What do you mean, off the case? Whatever happened to we’re the only ones who can deal with Dent?”

“That was before Varsi popped up on your tail,” Tera said. “You and Selene are too valuable to risk.”

“The admiral might disagree,” I said, thinking back to our spotless zero-zero record over the past six months. “Anyway, pulling us means handing Dent to the wolves. The Patth are on to him, and if he really does know something . . . ” I left the sentence unfinished.

I’d expected Tera to be able to fill in the blank, and from the expression on her face I saw she’d had no trouble doing so. “It’s still too dangerous,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “It didn’t sound like Mottola bothered to call it in before our little fight, and I gave him a knockout pill afterward to make sure he stayed down. It’ll be a few more hours before he can tell them what happened. We’ve got at least that long to retreat to the Ruth and get back on Dent’s trail before they’re even on the same page.”

“But they must know you’re here,” Tera pointed out. “They followed you in, right?”

“Probably,” I said. “But there’s a fair amount of traffic in and out, and we came in under one of your handy little fake IDs. If we’re out before they figure out who we are, they’ll have lost us and we can go to Gremon without Mottola or Varsi the wiser.”

Tera’s eyes narrowed. “To Gremon? As in—?”

“As in Dent’s home planet, yes,” I confirmed. “That’s where he wants to meet ten days from now.”

“He said that?”

“Well, no, it was a text,” I admitted. “And yes, I know that means it could be a fraud.”

“Or a trap,” she said bluntly. “Or both.”

“Probably,” I said. “But we have to at least try. If we get to Gremon and Varsi’s thugs are still on our tail, I promise we’ll bail and Dent will be officially on his own. If not, I think we should give this one last shot.”

Tera stared at me, little muscles of uncertainty working under her skin. “All right,” she said at last. “But watch your backs. And if you have any doubts—any doubts—you run and we find another way to lasso Dent. Clear?”

“Clear,” I said. “We’ll call you again from Gremon.”

“All right,” she said. “Just bear in mind that if there’s trouble, I can’t get you any backup. I believe Jordan and Ixil told you they were on assignment, and I can’t get anyone else to Gremon ahead of you.”

“We’ve been on our own before,” I soothed. “We’ll manage.”

I could see in her face that she wanted to remind me how well we’d managed on New Kyiv before McKell and Ixil arrived. But she passed over the obvious and simply nodded. “All right,” she said. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Give the admiral our best, will you? And remind him he needs to sign off on a new pair of bioprobes.”

There was a message waiting on my phone when I left the StarrComm building and headed back up the cross street toward the hotel where I’d left Selene. I looked around as I walked, confirmed that no one seemed to be particularly interested in me, then keyed for it.

Golden Pyramid Suite 2005.

I frowned. Selene was only supposed to have watched to see where Mottola and his new friends went. She wasn’t supposed to have tracked them all the way to a room. Talked to Tera, I messaged back. Is 2005 them, or you?

Them. Wait.

I got another half block before my phone signaled her incoming call. I ducked into an unoccupied doorway and keyed it on. “You all right?”

“Yes,” she murmured, her voice barely loud enough for me to make out. “For the moment.”

“For the moment? What does that mean?”

She gave a soft, frustrated sigh. “I’m sorry, Gregory. I think I’m trapped.”


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