Seth turned into a narrow alley lined with dilapidated businesses and residences for hire. Most were housed in identical, box-shaped pre-fabs, stacked three or four high, festooned with elaborate artwork, signage, lights and flags to catch the attention of passersby. The garish lights and colors only seemed to emphasize the orbiting harbor’s pervasive shades of gray.
They cruised by a shop offering engine and generator repairs. Not very profitably, judging by the state of the shop front. He pulled around the back of the building next to this one, out of sight of the people crowding the narrow street, and walked back.
Mildly bothered by the smell of sewage, he paused and listened. Through the surging, ceaseless sound of the city, he heard voices, shouts, laughter; none of it worrisome. Something thumped a slow rhythm somewhere and he guessed it to be a part of the ventilation system, obviously not doing a very good job. He fancied it as some massive, lumbering creature looming over them all and wondered why this place was putting such morbid thoughts in his head.
He entered the shop. Khoe moved ahead of him to look around the cluttered interior.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
“Being a person. Doing person-things. There are people upstairs, according to your scanner. They have what I’m looking for.” She froze, then cocked her head to the side. “Turn around.”
“What? Why?” He turned to the window. There was nothing to see outside as most of the shop’s interior was reflected by the glass.
She studied his reflection through his eyes. “You’re handsome.”
A smile tugged on his lips. “How would you know?”
“From your literature. Stories. Some of your traits are admired.”
“Just some?” he said in mock dejection.
“Hello?” An elder Human shuffled into the shop from a hallway, regarding Seth with curiosity and a considerable amount of suspicion.
“You don’t have to talk out loud to me,” Khoe said.
Now you tell me. Seth walked over to the rack of engines where the man took shelter as if about to be physically attacked. “Looking for some friends that might have come by here,” he said meaningfully and handed over a vial containing a few grains of ordium.
“What’s that?” Khoe asked.
Around here that’s money.
The shopkeeper’s expression changed immediately. “You need to get out. Three Vanguard agents showed up just a bit ago. Went upstairs. No idea why.”
Seth’s eyes went to the ceiling. “Just the one staircase?”
“Yes. You people are nothing but trouble. Nobody said anything about Air Command sticking their noses in. I’m closing up.”
Seth allowed himself to be hustled out onto the street. Instead of returning to his sled, he sauntered along the shop front, nodded pleasantly at a trio of hookers, and then slipped into the service gap between the buildings. Keeping his head down to obscure the telltale glow of his Centauri eyes, he scaled a metal fence to reach the second floor. It only took a few moments to pry a window and slip into the building, using years of experience and a handy tool acquired on Feron.
Gun in hand, he crept through gray and empty rooms, his steps muffled by the compounds used to encase the sheets of metal and plastics of which the city was built. He circled around a hoist used to move machinery for repair or cleaning or whatever it was that happened up here. There were voices ahead, not sounding very friendly.
Once as close as he was likely to get, fished a crawler from his pocket and set it on the ground. The insect-size device, another of his favorite tools, scurried along the wall, guided by Seth’s neural implant, into a partitioned area at the rear of the building. He inserted a small speaker into his ear and then tilted the crawler’s minute sensor upward to study the people that now appeared on the monitor of his data sleeve.
“I could have done that.”
Seth flattened himself against the wall, catching his breath after these words nearly startled him into pulling the trigger of his pistol. “Don’t do that!” he gasped.
She put a finger to her lips. “Shh. They’ll hear you.”
Look, just because you can’t get your head shot off doesn’t mean I can’t. So please be quiet and quit jumping out at me when I’m trying to concentrate.
“Actually, if you get your head shot off I’m in a whole lot of trouble,” she said. “You’re not used to having people around, are you? I just wanted to point out that I can ride that thingie you’re using and show you what I see in there.”
Don’t get involved. That crawler is working just fine.
She sighed dramatically as she stalked away and he wondered where she had learned that trick. Thingie? What else was she digging up in his database?
He returned his attention to his crawler. It actually wasn’t working just fine as the electromagnetic interference in this part of town turned things into a bleary haze over there. He wondered if more significant radiation was currently working on reducing his lifespan. Getting off this orbiter as soon as he had something that satisfied the alien seemed like a sensible strategy.
Things weren’t going so well in that room. Two Centauri civilians sat on the floor in what seemed to be a squatter’s hideaway. The three Vanguard officers loomed over them, weapons drawn. Unlike the Eagle-class cruiser they had left on the air field, none of the agents hid the fact that Air Command had arrived. Although dressed in a mix of civilian clothing from a number of distant worlds, their weapons were high-grade military issue and the small badge at their shoulder was something that lesser beings were supposed to heed. The calculated arrogance borne by Vanguard usually served well to intimidate and prompt compliance. Their authority was absolute on Union planets and not trifled with in more neutral areas.
Seth raised the sound level for his earpiece. How did Air Command get mixed up in this?
“You sort of have a choice, Pirate,” one of the Vanguard officers, a powerfully-built Centauri woman, said to one of the men. “We can arrest you and lose you somewhere along the way, or you can just tell us where you were taking this thing.”
“That’s it,” Khoe said. “That wheel in that man’s hand.”
What about it?
“That’s what I need to get back.”
Your person is inside that? Seth shifted the crawler’s focus to the Human officer standing nearby. The man was studying the thick, disk-shaped object curiously as he hefted it from one hand to the other. It was thinner along the edge and the prongs extending from it seemed to connect to something else.
“Go get it, please.”
Did you notice those guns? What makes you think they’ll hand it over?
“It doesn’t belong to them.”
You’re sweet. In a naïve sort of way. He turned his attention back to the Centauri soldier and her captives.
“We’re traders,” the man accused of being a pirate told her sullenly.
“Smugglers.”
“Telling you nothing. You’re going to off us anyway.”
She raised a foot and tipped him over. His hands were bound behind him and his head met the floor with a bang. She put her boot on his shoulder and, judging by his expression, a lot of her weight, too. “What gave you such a low opinion of us?” she said amicably. “How about we just lock you up until we can get there? Deal?”
“We don’t know where it’s going! We deployed it during the jump and get paid for doing that. Some kind of experiment. No law against that, is there? Just trying to make a living and you come down heavy. Get your foot off me.”
“Seth?” Khoe said. “Not trying to get involved here, but there’s someone downstairs.”
Seth crouched deeper into the shadows. The shopkeeper had left his cluttered lair when Seth had, so who was down there now? When Khoe boosted his scanner’s signal he saw someone, several someones, approaching with stealth. Belatedly, he felt the gentle buzz of the alarm on his skin beneath the data sleeve.
“Who’s that?” Khoe said when he peered down
into the stairwell.
A beam of light stabbed through the dusty gloom as a tracer came looking for him. The silent shot that followed burned a ragged scratch into the plastic wall behind him. Seth spun around, debating only for a second between racing for the window where he had entered and the room at the end of the hall.
He burst through the door. “Incoming!” he shouted and shoved the Centauri out of the way. Only moments behind him, four armed men and women stormed the hallway, firing without prejudice. Seth lurched aside and saw the bound smugglers and one of the officers turn into a bullet-riddled mass of gore. He returned the fire, the Centauri at his side, but then the second soldier fell, his body crisscrossed by laser fire. They were driven back behind a tiled partition at the rear of the loft. Khoe hovered wide-eyed in the room and he had to restrain himself from pulling her to safety.
The Centauri officer, still standing but with a bullet wound to the thigh, shoved him against the wall. “Who the hell are you,” she snapped, violet eyes blazing with fury, and punched her gun under his chin.
“No!” Seth felt Khoe’s scream stab into his brain more than he heard it. It seemed to reverberate through his mind and body, filling him with a strange, electric sensation racing like a swarm of insects through his veins. He gripped the woman’s arm, ready to defend himself, but she suddenly went rigid under his hands and her eyes widened in pain and fear. A mighty thunderclap ripped through his chest and the officer crumpled to the ground.
He, too, slumped to the floor, gasping, trying to comprehend what had just happened. The massive burst of energy surging through his body ebbed as quickly as it had begun and he felt himself fading along with it.
“Seth? Are you awake?”
Seth groaned as he sat up, taking a quick inventory of his body parts. There was a pain in his head that wasn’t there before, but he seemed undamaged. “What the..?” Bodies on the floor. Blood. Nobody moving. Especially not the Centauri officer lying beneath him. He took a closer look, squinting through the gloom and his headache. “Dead. Gods, Khoe, what happened here?”
“Dead?”
“What did you do? To me? To her!”
“I don’t know! I was scared. I thought she was hurting you.”
He heaved himself upright. A laser had scorched the side of his jacket but not his skin. Among the dead were the two smugglers, their hands still tied behind their backs. “We better get out of here.” The officers’ Eagle would have sent an emergency message as soon as their neural implant failed to transmit their unique cerebral signature. Air Command would soon descend upon Rishabel in full force and he wanted to be long gone before that happened.
“They took it. The disk. Seth, they’re gone!”
“I can see that.” Besides missing the disk, none of the bodies seemed looted of valuables. Seth removed the Centauri’s data sleeve and used his gun to destroy those of the other officers. He made his way back to the window and out onto the fence which creaked alarmingly under his weight. It seemed forever before he was on his sled and racing back to his ship.
“You’re angry,” Khoe said after a while.
“That about describes it.” He kept his eyes on the mapper while he took a small detour and varied his speed. None of the vehicles moving between this quarter and the docks seemed to be in pursuit of him.
“Why?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. I don’t know how, but you killed someone today. You damn well understand what that means. And not just anyone. A Vanguard officer.”
“But they’re Union people. Air Command. You don’t like them.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You’re a rebel, aren’t you?”
“What? No, I’m not a rebel.” He lowered the skimmer when they entered the airfield tunnels. There were fewer people around here now. The turbulence whipped refuse across the tarmac, making sounds like whispers in the dark. He shivered despite the cloying humidity, wanting only to be back inside his ship and a long way from here.
“Maybe you could have told me that before you sneak up on Air Command officers,” she said and the voice in his head sounded clearly on the brink of tears. “There is nothing about you in your own database. How am I supposed to know? I thought she was going to kill you.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. She was right. The Vanguard officer hadn’t known, the attacking rebels hadn’t known. Because they weren’t supposed to. How would Khoe have known?
He moved across the lower concourse of the small-craft docks and came to a halt by the Vanguard’s Eagle parked there.
“That’s not your ship.”
“No. It belongs to that Vanguard team back there.” He pulled the officer’s data sleeve from a pocket. “You’re going to get some info for me. This should get you into there.”
“Me? You told me not to get involved. I don’t want to be involved.” She paused. “You saw what happened when I do.”
“Are you going to snivel or are you going to help me?”
Another pause. “How?”
“Get into that ship and download anything that mentions Rishabel to my data sleeve. And anything else from the last few days. Conversations, records, messages sent and received.” He turned when a buzzing sound alerted him to the arrival of a small sentinel, sent by whoever found his presence on the docks interesting.
“Evening,” Seth said politely. He pulled a square of flavored gum from a pocket and chewed it slowly. The air here tasted as dirty as it looked.
The floating camera circled him once before halting in front of his face. He swatted it and it backed off.
“Is there something you need?” a tinny voice reached him from the speaker of his data sleeve.
“No.”
There was a brief pause. “Then why are you out there?” the air field guard finally said.
“Waiting for a date.”
“You have no business near that ship. Move along.”
“Thinking of making an offer for this one,” Seth nodded toward the Eagle. “Any idea who it belongs to?’
“It’s not for sale,” he was told after a moment.
“Everything is for sale.” Seth swung a long leg over the back of the sled and then ambled to the plane. The sentinel followed close enough to whip his hair into his face.
“Tough protocols in place,” Khoe said. “Too tough for your transmitter, with this interference. Try touching the ship. The keyplate by the door.”
Seth leaned toward the guard bot as if taking a closer look at it. “You’ve got something on your lens. Let me get that for you.” He snatched the sentinel out of the air before its sensors could react. Carefully, he pasted his gum over its single eye. “There you go.” He released it and watched it spin away.
“Clear that visor immediately!” the guard’s voice rose several notches.
“All right, all right. You need to grow a sense of humor.” Seth pretended to chase the disoriented drone, moving close enough to touch the stolen sleeve to the Eagle’s key plate. Khoe’s image wavered momentarily as she shifted her attention to the plane’s system. A series of lights flashed on the key panel but the ship remained quiet.
With hopefully enough information gathered about the ship, Seth strode back to his sled and climbed aboard. A door on the guardhouse at the edge of the concourse opened to release a rather capable-looking Centauri, apparently less than pleased with the situation. “Sorry, it’s too quick for me,” Seth said to the sentinel. “I’m late for my date. Have a nice evening.”
Soon back aboard the Dutchman, now fully supplied with fresh coolant, Seth wasted no time in requesting clearance for departure. He set course for the nearest jumpsite, back the way he had come. He flew manually for a while, brooding in silence. Khoe also seemed uneager to communicate.
Finally, he engaged the autopilot and moved into the main cabin. Khoe appeared as if he had called to her, but she curled up in one of the bucket chairs and did not look at him. He regarded her silen
tly for a moment, wondering if she struck that pose because of what she had learned from his files or if the image she presented to him was beginning to correspond to her mood on its own.
He sat down on the lounger, again aware that he was unqualified to deal with this first contact situation. This stranger had reacted to a threat in ways no one, including she, could have foreseen. Obviously, Khoe was not as harmless as she appeared and that discovery had cost someone’s life. The xenobiologists on Targon would probably trade their first-born for a chance to study this individual.
“Can you tell me what happened back there?” he said without making the question sound like an accusation.
She lifted her shoulders. “I told you. I was scared. Maybe angry. I just meant to… to weaken her I guess. Push her away from you.”
“I believe you.” He recalled the pain of a whole lot of power surging through him. “You took her… her energy somehow? Neural energy? Through me? You said before that you can take that from me.”
She didn’t reply for a while. “I think so. I didn’t know that would happen. I was just so scared. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Or her.”
“Your next dip into my archives is going to be physiology. Try to figure out how you affect us out here.”
She finally lifted her head. Her haunted expression seemed far too pained to be anything but genuine and Seth felt a stab of compassion for his visitor. “You want me to go away,” she said.
He looked into that sad face, that pleasing assembly of whatever traits she had come to like among his species, and found himself entirely unsure of what he wanted. There was something undeniably fascinating about this creature and he, a lifelong scholar of the races inhabiting Trans-Targon’s many worlds, yearned to learn more about it.
What he was not prepared to admit to himself was that this unique person, evolving by the hour, also held considerable appeal. He spent much of his time alone here on the Dutchman. And when among people he was often in the rough company of felons and rebels or the fleeting comfort of women he never knew long enough to care for. Khoe’s unpredictable and vexing presence here felt like a little sunlight in the night.
Rogue Stars Page 55
