The thug glanced to the door, then back to Preethy. “Look, Ramses would kill me if I helped you.”
“If you did a good enough job of it, he wouldn’t live long enough to try. This could be your opportunity to exit this enterprise before it kills you. I’m always looking for good people to help with the league. Unlike your present position, it comes with a retirement plan.”
The thug glanced to the corridor again. “That only helps me if this plan goes wrong,” she said, her resolve teetering.
“I assure you. You would be far healthier and happier outside of this organization than in it, regardless of how successful this caper is. But if you are worried that you are quitting a winning team, let me lay this out for you. Victory for you requires all of the people on your team to succeed in manipulating the systems of this station without setting off an alarm and without anyone in orbit or on the surface becoming curious about its lack of responsiveness, as well as the cooperation or subversion of surface crews, which must be done without alerting anyone during that process. And even then, you need to succeed to such a degree that no one connected to me or my uncle ever decides to launch a caper of their own to get petty revenge upon those responsible for this one. If any one of those potential pitfalls causes you or anyone else on your team to stumble, you will find yourself in a tight spot with no way out. Meanwhile, all you need to do is let me free, help me get word to my people on the surface, and keep us safe until they arrive to assure yourself of a life of ease in the corporate sector.”
“… That’s an awful lot to ask for,” she said.
“We only need to get to my ship.”
“Your ship is bricked. We tried to access the system, and there was some sort of security wipe. It’s toast.”
“It can be restored. My pilot will have the proper procedures.”
“Your pilot won’t be talking anytime soon.”
Preethy didn’t allow herself to show a visible reaction to the news of the potential murder of one of her employees. It was to be expected, once this entire attack unfolded, and it wouldn’t help her or the others escape.
“You came here in a ship, didn’t you?”
“We did, obviously.”
“Then all it really takes is getting us there. In it we will have safety, communication, and a way out.”
“I don’t know…”
“Then take your chances with Hatch. He seems the stable, rational sort who wouldn’t dream of selling you and the rest of the crew out if it meant saving his own skin.”
The thug considered the words for a moment longer, then darted forward and started working at the straps.
“I want a corner office, you understand? Lots of windows.”
“Of course.”
One of the four straps had been loosened when there was, of all things, a knock at the door. The thug cursed under her breath and pulled the strap tight again.
“Sit tight and keep your mouth shut,” she ordered.
Preethy nodded. The thug approached the door and put her hand on the grip of her gun.
“That you, Streep?” she called. “Don’t tell me you’re done with the transmitters already.”
There was no answer. She tapped the button for the door. It hissed open to reveal the corridor behind with dimmed lights. She couldn’t see much farther than the space around the door where the light from the snack room shined out.
“Who shut off the lights?” she said warily, now sliding the gun from its holster.
The answer came in the form of a figure launching at her from the far wall. It was Michella, driving herself like a torpedo into the thug. The pair bowled backward into the snack room. The gun twirled into the corner and bounced around the walls. Each time it struck something, Preethy flinched, fearing it might discharge. After a brief struggle, the thug began convulsing, then went still.
Michella breathlessly steadied herself with one of the wall straps and tapped the recharge button on the stunner in her other hand. Her first act, wisely, was to fetch the gun and radio that had been dislodged during the struggle. After that she dragged herself to the door to close and lock it.
“Preethy,” she said with a nod, floating over to the column to start unstrapping Preethy.
“Ms. Modane,” Preethy replied, face steady but eyes practically smoldering. “Not that I am not grateful for your act of heroism, but would you permit me a question or two?”
“Make them quick. I don’t know how much time we have.”
“I’ll be very brief,” Preethy said.
Michella freed her left hand, allowing Preethy to remove her glasses and glare properly.
“How the hell did you get here and what the hell are you doing here!?”
#
“What do you mean we lost her!? We’ve got the whole crew locked up!” Hatch barked over his radio to Crick.
“Don’t blame me. I’ve been up to my neck in fiber cabling and patch cords. This is on the enforcer who was watching her.”
“It shouldn’t matter. She was tied up, and she’s Patel’s precious little niece. She doesn’t have the skills to topple one of our crew. Do we even know what happened to the idiot on watch?”
“You need me to say it again? I’ve been rooting around in the station internals. Talk to the enforcers.”
Hatch darted into the snack room that should have held his precious hostage. There was little sign of struggle. Two of his crew were lingering in the area, trying to work out what had happened.
“Who was on the watch? It was that new chick, wasn’t it?” he barked.
The underlings muttered noncommittal replies.
“Idiots. Idiots. I had you watching a secretary, and that was too much for you.”
“She’s an executive now,” Crick reported over the radio.
“Oh, yeah, because if there’s one thing we know about corporate fat cats, it’s that when you lock them in a room, they turn into full-fledged commandos.” He scanned the room and spotted the camera node. “They’ve got security, right? Do we have someone on that? Do we have someone who can pull video?”
“Do you want me to stop working on the control system to see if we’ve got footage?” Crick’s voice squawked.
“We might have an infiltrator aboard, and thus we might have a serious problem, so yes, I want you to check the damn security feed.”
“Give me a minute.”
Hatch squeezed his brass knuckles and thumped them angrily into a wall panel. “We get the whole crew bound, gagged, and stashed in their quarters, no problem. But this we can’t do. I tell you. Someone somewhere up the hierarchy is trying to take me out. Sabotaging me with the B-squad of dunces and mooks.”
“Okay. One of our guys has security access. Well… feed access.”
“What’s the difference?”
“He can watch feeds, he can’t get to the metadata level, so—”
“Fine, don’t waste my time with pointless details. What do we have?”
“We have a big black screen for that room. No history, either.”
“What? Why?”
“The power outage could have screwed with stuff. We’ve got cameras on and off all over this place. Maybe that’s it.”
“Maybe? You’re giving me maybe? What else could it be?”
“Could be someone turning off the cameras. Could be someone deleting camera history. Could be an automated trash collection wiping low-priority videos.”
“I don’t want ‘could be.’ I want to know what’s going on.”
“If you hadn’t interrupted me, you would have heard me say I don’t have metadata available, so I don’t know who did what.”
“Well how do we get metadata?”
“You were supposed to get full access from Misra. That’s how.”
“So you’re saying this is my fault?”
“Certainly looks that way. Now are you done grinding this whole operation to a halt? Can I get back to bypassi
ng the system you were supposed to have the keys to by now?”
He gritted his teeth. “You better pray you do your job right, because your mouth is this close to getting you pitched out an air lock. Now get back to work.”
Hatch angrily snapped the radio back to his holster and wrapped his fist around a strap on the wall of the snack room. Veins bulged on his forehead and neck as he tried to swallow the rage over the incompetence of his own crew.
“I will not let you idiots cost me this caper!” he growled, slamming his fist into the hatch repeatedly.
On the third blow, the hatch popped open, and the unconscious, tightly bound form of the woman in charge of watching Preethy tumbled out.
“Ha!” he roared. “You see? That’s how it’s done! That’s called intuition.”
He gave her face a pat, hoping to rouse her, but the stunner had done a remarkably good job of putting her under.
“Her radio is gone. Access card is still here. Someone kick her radio from the trusted group. And I want people searching. Now. We’ve got at least two people on the loose. I want them caught. This is a space station. It can’t be that hard to find them.”
Chapter 6
Lex guided his hovercar toward the estate of Nick Patel. Since hovercars had become efficient enough to run and simple enough to pilot to completely replace wheeled vehicles, the structure of planets had started to change. Most of the larger cities, out of habit and a few basic navigation conveniences, still formed with vestigial roads and streets tracing out grids along the surface. Universally accessible rapid transit independent of the terrain meant that there were other more interesting options available for newer or less traditional environments. Until very recently, Operlo had largely ignored the concept of cities altogether. There was concentrated industry, maybe a few clusters of businesses, and then everyone simply picked a place to build their home. Sometimes that led to communities. Sometimes it hearkened back to pioneer-era homesteads. Operlo had more than enough room to go around. If he or she felt compelled, the poorest miner or most debt-laden student could plop a prefab into the middle of a vast expanse of sprawling dunes and act as though they had a ten-thousand-acre back yard. Nick Patel being Nick Patel, he’d gone with something a bit flashier.
Operlo’s utter lack of precipitation meant that all the erosion was thanks to wind and sun. This made for some interesting rock formations. There were bizarre contrasts of jagged spires and wind-smoothed mounds. Veins of bright color wove through them, exposed by sun and wind to sparkle and glow in the light of day. Even now, well into the night, they caught the glow of the hovercar’s repulsors and headlights to glitter like jewels as he passed.
Right in the middle of one of the more impressive expanses of spires, natural bridges, and wind-polished stone was a plateau. Lex was tempted to call it a mesa, but there was probably a pedantic geological reason why you couldn’t call something that on a planet without rivers. The Patel Estate—or at least the current and most impressive Patel Estate—was a luxurious, state-of-the-art mansion right in the center of that plateau. He could see it in the distance, subtly illuminated from within.
“Some people have topiary gardens or hedge mazes. This guy has Monument Valley,” Lex muttered.
The hovercar’s radio chirped, and a voice came through. It had the crackly, distorted quality of something intended for short-range communication being used for long range.
“Hovercar, license number 775EFB dash—” the voice droned.
“No sense wasting your time on the whole number. I’m the only one out here,” Lex replied.
“Lex, that you?”
“Who else?”
Any formality dropped from the voice. “I won forty thousand credits on your last preliminary!”
“Glad to be of service.”
“Hey, what do you think your odds are in the inaugural—”
“Sorry, but I’m going to stop you right there. Considering my history with gambling, I’d really rather not talk too much about it.”
“Oh, heh. Right, right. You’re not heading to Mr. Patel’s place, are you?”
“It is literally the only thing for two hundred kilometers. I’d better be.”
“You should know better than to make an unannounced visit to someone who doesn’t like unannounced visits.”
“I’d have called ahead, but the network is still acting funky.”
“Can it wait until morning? Mr. Patel has concluded business for the evening.”
“Tell him it’s Lex and I’m here because his niece missed an appointment.”
“Who, Preethy?”
“That’s right.”
“That never happens.”
“Hence my concern.”
The voice sighed. “I’ll let him know you’re coming. Park in the east courtyard.”
The communicator clicked off. It briefly struck Lex that he should have found it odd that what amounted to a personal security officer was able to use the law enforcement override in his hovercar’s system. Then again, the sheer amount of oddness in his life had thrown off his calibration a bit. When you end up with a two-of-a-kind genetic cross between fox and skunk as your house pet, “normal” starts to seem more like a charming concept than a reality.
A few layers of security passed by beneath him as he approached the estate grounds. The courtyard he was instructed to park in was practically the size of an airfield and made from local masonry. He parked as near to the estate as he could manage. All the while, he kept his maneuvers slow enough to avoid worrying what may or may not have been a sniper hanging out atop a nearby guard tower. The fortification matched the aesthetic of the estate so well that one would think spotlights and patrols were just a standard part of Operlo architecture.
Squee sprang from the car and trotted in wide circles as Lex approached the front door.
“Easy. Why is it you could be in the SOB for three days straight or a hovercar for fifteen minutes and you react the same way when the door opens?” Lex called.
“Lex! There’s my poster boy,” called a voice from the door.
Lex got Squee under control and hustled to the stoop where Nick Patel was awaiting him. The man who was officially a construction and mining magnate and unofficially a ruthless criminal mastermind simply oozed style. His hair was slicked back, black with threads of gray giving him the distinguished look of a politician. The white smoking jacket he wore slid the whole look a few steps closer to nightclub singer. The straight white teeth and confident smile practically elevated him to movie-star levels of flashiness.
Squee squirmed under Lex’s arm, but he held firm. As adorable as she could be, Lex was not interested in finding out what happens when you cover the white jacket of a “legitimate businessman” with black pet hair. This left Lex’s shoulders free for Patel to put his arm over.
“You know something? I’ve known it from day one. That first time you gave me a ride to the transit hub back on Golana. I said, ‘Here’s a guy with fortitude.’ Say hello to Vince.”
Lex briefly caught eyes with an intimidating fellow standing beside the door.
“Vince is head of the night shift here on the estate. And Vince has never had to deal with a visitor after I’ve donned the smoking jacket. When my perimeter watchman asked if I wanted a visit from you, and that you were already on your way in, Vince said… oh, I can’t do it justice, what’d you say, Vince?”
“I said he had more balls than brains,” Vince said with the precise level of gruffness Lex expected from him.
Patel slapped Lex on the back. “More balls than brains. He says balls, I say fortitude. The point is, you’ve got it, and that’s what I like about you.” He stepped away, leading Lex forward through the impeccably decorated foyer. “How else would someone be willing to visit the guy holding the purse strings of the racing league after totaling—what is it, four hoversleds?”
“Right, see, I’m supposed to be testing them, so—” Lex bega
n to explain.
“Relax, Lex. I’m busting your chops. This league’s a great big omelet, and you’re the guy in charge of breaking the eggs. But we’re not here to talk business, are we? You’re here to talk about Preethy.”
“That’s right.”
“She no-showed on an appointment tonight, am I correct?”
“That’s right.”
Patel made his way to a bar and poured himself a drink. “I’d offer you a drink, but you won’t be staying long. See, most days, Preethy would treat that calendar of hers like every line on the schedule was doctor’s orders, and if she missed it, she’d keel over. But tonight I happen to know she had a pressing engagement that had a strong possibility to run long.”
“She didn’t tell me that.”
“You’re the big-money draw for the league, but you’re still an employee. She doesn’t have to tell you everything.” He took a sip. “Me, on the other hand, I like to know everything, and now you’ve got me curious. What exactly did you and Preethy have planned?”
“She was going to have a drink with me and Mitch.”
Patel swirled the liquor in the glass. “Michella Modane. Not a name I like hearing in this house. Vince, why is it that so many people with such promise end up falling for ladies who complicate matters?”
“He’s thinking with his—”
“Vince!” Patel raised a hand. “You’ve got a way with words, but the man is still a guest in my house. And as evidence of his good judgment, he was smart enough not to bring the enterprising young reporter tonight.”
“As it happens, she stood me up too. I haven’t gotten very lucky with the ladies tonight. That’s why I’m wondering where Preethy might be.”
“Lex, I want to make a few things clear. Stop me if I’m stating the obvious. First, I really don’t want to hear you come so close to using the phrase ‘get lucky’ with reference to my niece. Especially not when you’ve already got a lady. And I really don’t want to hear you talk about that lady, since her pointless little investigation into alleged money laundering cost me a hell of a lot more than those sleds you smashed up. Now Preethy has as good a head on her shoulders as anybody I’ve met—runs in the family, after all—but all the same, it doesn’t break my heart that she missed an appointment that would have put her in the same room as Little Miss Vendetta. That’s one less chance I’ll wake up tomorrow to find some headline full of speculation about what she may or may not be doing wrong with this league.”
Indra Station Page 12
