“I rarely get to Freeport 73 nowadays. Been running around the outer planets. What’s up?”
“Been stuck at the station for a while. As a matter of fact, I’ve run into some trouble here recently.”
“Oh,” Randy said guardedly.
“Do you know this guy named Griggs?”
There was a short pause.
“I’ve heard of Griggs,” Randy said finally. He didn’t look scared or upset, but it took some serious shit to make Randy Reid lose his cool. “You get on this motherfucker’s bad side or what?”
“Something like that.” Matt wasn’t about to let Randy in on all the details of his situation. Friend or no friend, smugglers dealt with prized commodities, and information was a commodity like any other.
“We stay out of each other’s way,” Randy said. “But he’s territorial as fuck, and I’ve heard he can be nasty. If you’re planning on staying on the 73, you better not mess around with him. I’ve known people who’ve disappeared there, just like that, and the authorities turned the other way. Nobody cares unless there’s Feds or rich folks involved.”
“Do you know of any legit businesses he owns on the station? Like, if I wanted to stay the hell out of his way, which ones I’d steer clear of?”
Randy gave him a look which said he wasn’t fooled by Matt’s attempts at subterfuge.
“I dunno, man. He has a lot of stuff going on. From what I’ve heard, he has joint ownership in a lot of ventures, mostly in the entertainment sector. Bars, rec rooms, lounges, those kinds of things. Not to mention underground entertainment, of course—brothels and casinos.”
“What about holding companies? Like Paragon Inc.?”
“Yep, that’s his,” Randy said, casually confirming Matt’s suspicions. “Why, you got work for them?”
“No, no. You know, just heard some rumors circulating and trying to stay out of trouble here.” Matt was ready to bounce with excitement at this first major break, but for now, he had to keep his expression neutral, since his negotiations with Randy weren’t over yet.
“Good. If I were you, I’d stay the fuck away from that company. In fact, I’d stay the fuck away from any shady shit going on at the station and focus on my hauls.”
“No kidding,” Matt muttered. It was a damn good piece of advice; unfortunately, like pretty much every other instance of good advice throughout history, it had come too late to be useful. He forced a smile and changed the subject.
“Listen, I sorta have a job offer for you. Have this guy who’s hankering to get off this station by the jumpgate, all quiet-like. I’m a bit tied up right now, so no can do. Could you take him on?”
Randy huffed and stroked his neatly trimmed beard.
“Tell you what, Spears. You’re a nice guy, so I’m gonna help you out. I’m scheduled for a jump to the Salua sector in a few days. If your passenger can wait till then, I’ll pick him up once I get to 73 for the jump. A thousand creds, and you’re all set up.”
A thousand Fed credits were way more than Matt could realistically afford, and it was a steep sum for transporting a single stowaway passenger. No doubt Randy had sensed his desperation and was not above profiting from it. But it wasn’t as if Matt had a lot of choice. His options were limited, and at least with Randy involved, he could be reasonably sure he’d be getting what he was paying for, without the man flapping his mouth to the wrong people.
“It’s a deal,” he said. That would leave them with absolutely no extra cash for luxuries like food and technical upkeep, but other concerns were more pressing. “Send me the details of your jump, and he’ll be waiting for you.”
“Sure thing,” Randy said. “Good luck with…whatever. Make sure you stay alive to pay me.”
“Will do,” Matt said as he disconnected. He sincerely hoped he wasn’t lying on that part.
Chapter Sixteen
“I DON’T LIKE this at all,” Matt said.
“Need I remind you this was your idea?” Tony said and took a sip of her cocktail. They were sitting at the bar in the Broken Stairway Canteen, waiting for Tony’s new friend to arrive. Having splurged on her drink, Matt was nursing the cheapest beer on the menu. It was encroaching on undrinkable territory, but at least it gave him an excuse to keep his place at the bar, even though there weren’t many patrons there. The seat between them was strategically left empty.
“My idea was you cajoling the Medusa’s entry code from the fuel tech guy, not actually go on a date with him.”
“Well, I had to convince him to meet me, didn’t I?” Tony threw her long braid off her shoulder in an annoyed gesture. “If you didn’t want me to do it, you should have been the one doing the leg work and contacting his fuel company in the first place. Besides, it isn’t really a date. All I told him was that I wanted to chat about some stuff over drinks.”
“That’s a date. Trust me, I’ve been on enough of those to know. And when it’s a very good date, you usually end up in—”
“Ew, spare me the details,” Tony said, making a disgusted face.
“It’s a date, is all I’m saying.”
He checked his comm for any messages from Ryce. Now that they’d established a connection between Griggs and the mysterious yacht—even if it was pure hearsay from a source some would call questionable—acquiring the entry code had become imperative. But a lot of other prep work needed to be done, and since Ryce was to use his aerojet again in the upcoming race, he had to make sure it was in perfect working order. Matt wanted him to take all the time he needed for repairs and charge Tex for every little thing which needed replacing after the rough romp.
His inbox was empty, and he went back to crowd watching. The man was running late, and if it had indeed been a real date, Matt’d be in favor of ditching him out of sheer spite. He took a perfunctory swig of his beer, trying to rein in his annoyance.
“Antonia?” a man’s voice said, and a guy in a silver-toned shirt that was almost as blindingly glaring as the luminescent countertop plopped onto the empty stool. It was all Matt could do to keep his eyes on his drink, maintaining the guise of a disinterested stranger. An overly musky scent of cologne wafted off the fellow, making Matt gag. He felt sorry for Tony having to bear the brunt of the all-around sensory assault.
“I’m Dan. Sorry to have made you wait. My boss kept pulling some pointless shit for me to do at the last minute.”
“Yes, bosses can be assholes like that,” Tony agreed with a straight face.
Matt stuck out his tongue at her behind the guy’s back. Come to think of it, for some reason, he’d been doing it a lot lately. He decided to blame it on pent-up nervous energy.
They chatted for a bit about nothing in particular. Matt noted that Tony carefully avoided divulging too much personal information, steering the conversation back to Dan, who didn’t seem to mind. Talking about himself seemed to be his favorite topic anyway. In the course of a few minutes, Matt had learned all about his favorite pastimes, grievances against his current employer, and future aspirations, in what seemed to be random order.
The beer was not going to be enough to get him through this. Tony’s cocktail was definitely not enough to get her through this.
As Dan continued with a lengthy account of his college years and what had led him to choose his current career path, Tony must have come to the same conclusion.
“This is all truly fascinating. But I’d love to hear more about your job here on the station. Like that yacht you’ve been telling me so much about. Is it really that expensive? I’ve never been aboard a luxury yacht before. What’s it like inside?”
Despite his previous chattiness, Matt could sense Dan wasn’t eager to broach this particular subject. If he knew, or at least had an inkling of whom the yacht belonged to, his hesitation was understandable.
“It’s nice and all,” he said evasively. “You know, they don’t usually let us roam around in there. I just deliver the fuel and do a maintenance checkup.”
“But you still would have
seen it,” Tony insisted, putting on her best seductive smile and leaning in toward Dan. “It must be so glamorous. I’d do anything to take a little peek at it.”
Matt couldn’t see Dan’s face, but he could imagine the inner struggle. In the end, however, self-preservation won over the urge to impress a date.
“Sorry,” he said. “Can’t have outsiders on the job. But it’s just a ship, anyway. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
Tony straightened, the disappointment evident on her face. Matt cursed inwardly, but at that moment, he caught a glimpse of Dan’s commlink sticking out of his pants pocket. He made a motion at Tony to keep talking to distract the man while he zeroed in on the comm.
To Tony’s credit, she didn’t bat an eyelash at the prospect of being an accessory to petty theft.
“That’s too bad,” she said smoothly. “But I’m sure it’s not the only exciting thing about your job. Tell me more about that off-station delivery to Dinona you’ve mentioned making. Is the moon really all made of ice?”
Dan launched into the story, which Matt tuned out. He spun around on the stool, holding his beer in one hand and surveying the crowd. Nobody seemed to be looking his way. The bartender was busy fixing drinks for a couple sitting at the far end of the bar. Matt shifted, reaching behind his back with his free hand, and very carefully, very slowly pulled the slim commlink out of Dan’s pocket.
Tony, who must have noticed his maneuver, faked a flirtatious laugh at something Dan said, effectively drawing his attention from Matt’s pilfering. Being too caught up in his one-sided conversation, Dan didn’t catch on to any of it.
Matt hunched over the commlink and tapped the screen. The guy didn’t strike Matt as someone who’d put an extra security layer on his work-related files, so he was hoping he wouldn’t have to deal with any passwords.
Luckily, the comm wasn’t even on lock. Dan and Tony’s voices continued behind Matt, which meant he had at least a few more minutes while Dan remained oblivious to the fact he’d had been pickpocketed. Matt ignored the guy’s personal inbox and pictures—wasn’t gonna touch those with a ten-foot pole—and zoomed in on the folders labeled with the fuel supplier’s brand name.
Sure enough, those weren’t restricted and contained the specs for the ships currently being serviced by Dan’s company. Under any other circumstances, Matt would have scoffed at the breach of confidentiality, but right now Dan’s laxness worked in their favor. Matt quickly searched for Dock B11 and found the Medusa yacht among the spacecraft docked there. The technical specs pertaining to the fuel type and intake were of little interest to him, but the entry code that granted Dan access to the ship certainly was. He memorized the five-digit code and swiped the screen back, erasing all evidence of intrusion.
Turning back on his stool, he shot Tony a meaningful look over Dan’s shoulder. She inclined her head slightly, letting him know she got the message.
Matt wiped the comm screen on his sleeve and dropped the device under Dan’s chair. As the guy glanced down at the sound of it clattering to the floor, Tony rose smoothly from her seat.
“Well, it’s been fun,” she said as Dan’s attention divided between fumbling for his comm and peering up at her. “But I don’t think it’s going to work out between us. Best of luck with everything, though.” She flashed the startled man a grin and strode away purposefully without a backward glance at either him or Matt.
Dan stood and shoved the commlink back in his pocket automatically. His expression was so utterly bewildered that Matt kind of felt sorry for him. The guy wasn’t altogether insufferable, merely tedious. What they’ve done was certainly not fair to poor Dan, but there was a reason for what they said about love and war.
“Don’t let it get to you, mate,” Matt said, slipping off his seat and grabbing his half-finished beer. He didn’t wait for Dan’s mumbled response as he headed to the exit after Tony.
“I GOT A message from Tex earlier,” Ryce said in a low voice.
It was well past midnight, right in the middle of the night shift at the docks. Matt and Ryce made sure to pick a time when none of the ships at Dock B11 were scheduled for departure or a jump, so the area was quiet. Even so, they had to act quickly, getting in and out as fast as they could without anybody spotting them tampering with the dock maintenance terminal which was located close to the lower-level entrance.
“What did she want?” Matt asked, although the answer was pretty clear already.
“The next race is the day after tomorrow,” Ryce said. “Oh, and they’re docking my second-place prize money as exemplary damages.”
“What? Damn, that’s soon. Did she say anything about Val?”
“She implied he was still alive, but refused to let me talk to him, or even say if he was getting medical treatment.”
Matt gritted his teeth. “Not good enough.” Tex certainly knew what she was doing by contacting Ryce instead of him, because he wouldn’t have been able to keep his cool during that conversation.
Ryce shot him a quick look and changed the subject.
“It’s a pretty tight schedule. I’d estimated a week between the races, but now they’re spaced only days apart. I wonder why they’re in such a hurry.”
“Like you’ve said, they might be worried about the flood,” Matt said, but Ryce shook his head, apparently dubious.
They approached the terminal, trying to stay close to the walls and away from the range of the cameras aimed at the docked spacecraft. Matt counted on the nondescript fatigues they were both wearing to help them blend in with the station maintenance crew. So far, however, they hadn’t encountered anyone inside the dock proper.
Ryce knelt in front of the terminal and took out his tool kit. Opening the lower panel below the touch pad revealed a tangle of colorful wires. Matt kept watch, scanning the floor and upper walkways, and the wide, illuminated expanses between the dormant ships. He was tempted to go and take a peek at the Medusa, which was docked some ways off. From here, he could only glimpse its finely tapered bow behind the other, larger ships. But being caught loitering around the yacht was a risk he couldn’t take.
He glanced at Ryce, who was busy attaching a small black box to a bunch of wires.
“How’s it going?”
“This should give me remote control of the Dock B11 camera feed and continuous access to the video data,” Ryce said, methodically sifting through the wires. “I just need a few more minutes to install it properly.”
“Okay,” Matt said. “Wait, there’s someone’s coming.”
He hunkered down next to Ryce, hiding his face from the newcomers and willing them to keep on walking. Nothing to see here, just a couple of tech guys performing routine maintenance. Ryce’s hand tightened on his screwdriver, but he didn’t stop whatever he was doing with that box.
The footsteps receded into the distance, and Matt risked glancing up over his shoulder. From the looks of it, it was just a crewman from one of the ships coming back home after a long night. Matt let out a relieved breath and got to his feet, dusting off his pants.
“Almost done,” Ryce said. He snapped the box shut, tightened the last screws, and pushed the thing as far back as he could, to make it less conspicuous. “There we go.”
“Good. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
They closed the terminal panel carefully and hurried outside the dock. The outer corridor was busier, even so late into the night, but nobody spared them a second glance as they made their way to the service elevators.
“Do you always have pieces of surveillance equipment lying around?” Matt murmured. “That’s handy.”
“No,” Ryce said absently, shoving the toolkit in his backpack. “I assembled it this morning.”
Matt rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“I swear, sometimes I forget how damn smart you are.” He glanced sideways at Ryce. “You know it’s sexy as hell, right?”
Ryce smiled faintly and shouldered his bag with a look that was close to smug.
“Funny. I distinctly remember you finding it extremely annoying.”
“Well, I was wrong. About a lot of things,” Matt added softly. “It would seem I’m all-around prone to bad judgment.”
“I don’t think that’s entirely true,” Ryce said.
“A fool is a fool.”
Ryce shook his head. “I’ve always considered foolishness to be the conscious refusal to employ critical thinking. You have no such problem.”
Matt huffed in amusement but couldn’t help preening just a bit at the offhand compliment.
LADY LISA WAS stationed at Dock C24, which serviced small- to medium-sized haulers. Since cargo vessels, unlike private transport, operated at all hours, the C docks were hubs of activity even in the small hours of the morning, but Lisa was the only ship there at the moment, so their dock was unusually quiet. However, Matt and Ryce didn’t have a chance to reach it.
As they came in the double-door lock-chamber, which separated the entry to the dock itself from the main corridor, the door slid shut behind them, while the dock door remained closed. Usually both doors were open to accommodate the people and goods going in and out, shutting only in cases of emergency, for example, when the air pressure inside the dock was compromised. But now, it seemed, they were facing a different kind of emergency. Three tall and bulky gentlemen stood at the far end of the chamber, apparently waiting for them. One of them, sporting a starburst tattoo on his neck, nodded toward Ryce.
“You Easom?”
“Who’s asking?” Matt stepped forward.
Three against two weren’t terrible odds, but the men might be armed, and, judging from the painstakingly set trap, they probably weren’t inclined to talk things out, whoever they were.
“Been waiting on your ass for a while. Got a message for you from Stahl,” the guy said, clearly not impressed with Matt’s posturing. He advanced on them with a smirk. The other two came at them from the sides, effectively surrounding them.
Ashore Page 14
