“Not right now. But if someone comes asking …” He let his voice trail off, and she could see troubled thoughts clouding his gaze as his eyes narrowed. Yeah, she was broke, and yeah, it was tough admitting that. But Pops wasn’t the type to dole out pity.
“You know where to find me. Thanks.”
“They’ll open the lanes soon, Kaid. Hang in there.”
“Working on it,” she replied with a halfhearted salute as she turned away. Soon. It was always soon. She just didn’t know if soon would be soon enough.
Devin Guthrie had never been to Dock Five.
He’d heard stories—some from the various GGS pilots over the years, and some from Philip—and all had highlighted the aging station’s decrepit condition, unsavory denizens, and general air of impending peril. Along with any number of other things that defied identification.
In Devin’s estimation—as he and Barty threaded their way through the bedraggled, unkempt stationers and the whirring, blinking, barely functioning servobots filling the corridor on Green Level—the stories paled in comparison to the actual experience.
It wasn’t the acrid tang of sweat or the torn and greasy coveralls that made him itch. Dirt didn’t bother Devin. Like the rest of his brothers, he loved competitive sports. Handball was his choice, but he’d spent years on basketball courts and ice rinks. He’d taken his spills in the mud and dropped his gloves on and away from the blue line. But even the worst locker room didn’t have a fragrance quite like Dock Five.
“The air recyclers,” Barthol said, as Devin again raised his hand to his nose, far less discreetly than he thought, “aren’t one of Dock Five’s strong points.”
Neither was the shuttle flight here—a very long two and a half shipdays, even in first class, or what passed for first class on a spaceliner that serviced Dock Five. Devin slept through the six hours in jumpspace, though dreams of a woman with short, tousled pale hair kept intruding. During the time in realspace, he grabbed what data he could from whatever Imperial data beacons’ frequencies he could snag with his Rada and tracked Trippy’s financial withdrawals—which were all small amounts so as not to raise any alarms.
Except that Devin knew what he was looking for.
Dock Five was where he’d thought Trip would head, anyway, based on his previous conversations with his nephew. Plus, if one wanted to get somewhere illegally, Dock Five—a convenient distance from the Calth and Stol borders—was the most logical port of embarkation in Baris.
Chances were good that whoever was trailing the Guthrie heir knew that too. All Devin could hope was that he and Barthol got to Trippy first.
“It appears accommodations might be a bit difficult to come by with the current trader embargo in effect,” Barthol said, glancing at his microcomp as they threaded through the crowd. “My first two hotel queries have come back negative.” Barty’s microcomp wasn’t a Rada like Devin’s but a military-issue DRECU. Given Barthol’s ImpSec background, Devin suspected Barthol’s microcomp might be as sophisticated as his own, but he could never remember what the acronym stood for other than Decode, Reception, and Covert.
Traveling by GGS transport that included the usual elegant cabins would have solved the lodging problem, but they hadn’t traveled by GGS transport. That was one of the many Guthrie rules already broken. Devin adjusted the weight of his duffel on his shoulder. Another Guthrie rule to fall by the wayside. He was carrying his own luggage, despite the fact that Barthol wasn’t happy about it. “If we find Trip quickly enough, that won’t matter.”
Barthol shot him a sideways glance. “Do you have any idea how large and convoluted Dock Five is?”
He’d looked over the schematics—and, yes, they were highly irregular—but not yet committed them to memory. “I know it ranges from six to ten levels, all coded by color. And it utilizes numbered corridors in an odd–even sequence. But it’s a station, essentially. How many places—”
“Dozens, Mr. Devin. And all are equally within play. Yes, I know you’re used to thinking city, region. A station’s contained environment seems more manageable. But consider Mr. Ethan’s twin girls chasing each other around the main living area of your parents’ estate, going in concentric circles—or, in this case, rectangles—each never quite catching up to the other. Then imagine that there’s a bank of elevators on either side, so that they’re now not only going in continuous rectangles but on different levels. That’s not unlike what we have here.”
A bark of laughter followed by a high-pitched squeal halted Devin’s response. He turned toward the sound and saw a squat, balding man and a taller woman with bright yellow hair leaning against an area of gray bulkheading next to what appeared to be a bar or dining establishment, judging from a flashing menu on the right of the doorway. The woman’s pink shirt dangled from her fingers; the man’s hands massaged her bare breasts. The woman giggled. Devin, embarrassed by the crude display, looked away.
“Nor can we,” Barthol continued, “expect assistance from the local authorities.”
The groping man wore brown pants with a stripe down the side and a gun belt. Those facts surfaced in Devin’s mind as he followed Barthol down the corridor. Security striper. No, the local authorities seemed to have their hands full.
“At the very least we need a hotel room,” Barthol said. “Someplace we can secure. When we find Master Trip, we may not be able to book passage back to Aldan immediately. I would not want to wander these corridors with him until transport becomes available.”
They’d be targets, likely more than they were now. Devin didn’t miss some of the appraising—as in, your clothing is worth far more than mine—glances sent his way. He’d already pulled down the cuff of his sweater to cover his wristwatch. It wasn’t that he felt he couldn’t defend his person or his property. It was just that he didn’t want to be in a position where he had to do so.
A soft pinging sound came from Barthol’s DRECU. “Ah, good,” Barthol said after a moment. “We’ve acquired rooms. One level up on Blue. If memory serves me, there should be an escalator around the corner here … Well. Something of one.”
It was an escalator, Devin noted. Only it no longer moved, and more than a few stair treads were missing. People hurried up and down it anyway—human people and nonhuman people. Tall, furred Takans in grimy coveralls. Almost as tall bluish-skinned Stolorths in nondescript shipsuits.
GGS had been considering a trade deal with a respected Stolorth merchant clan as recently as four months ago. Devin exchanged messages with their senior financial officer. But he couldn’t remember the last time he was in the same vicinity as a live Stolorth—no, he could. He was twelve years old and felt distinctly queasy upon realizing the imposing woman’s neck was ringed with gills and her fingers connected with webbing. The fact that she was his aunt’s friend and colleague at the university did little to reassure him. When he was twelve, his aunt Pelagia—Dr. Pelagia Lang Javeiro, head of his family’s multisentient Harmony-One Project—had the ability to disconcert him too.
He’d thought he’d outgrown that. But as he approached Dock Five’s version of an escalator, a female Taka in dockworker’s coveralls leered down at him, her thin smile revealing a row of sharp, pointed, and very stained teeth.
Devin tightened his grip on his duffel. Maybe not. “Lead the way,” he said, with far more enthusiasm than he felt.
What little enthusiasm he had left died when he saw the entrance to the hotel, which could easily be mistaken for a cargo bay, in Devin’s estimation. In fact, as he stood before it, inspecting the wide double doors and the triple-thick plating over which The Celestian was stenciled in three Imperial languages, it looked—and smelled in an oily, musty way—as if it had at one time been a cargo bay.
Wonderful.
An antigrav pallet loaded with small duro-hards blocked their way. The pallet was malfunctioning, a painful whirring noise coming from underneath as two human workers—dockworkers or hotel employees, Devin didn’t know—pushed and pulled on the p
allet’s arched handles.
“Goddamned slag-headed piece of shit!” the taller worker rasped loudly.
“The primary differential regulator’s jammed,” Devin said, stepping closer, recognizing the pitch of an AG unit in distress. “It—”
“You here to fix it?” The frizzy-haired woman on the other side of the pallet barked out the question.
“No, but I—”
“Then get the hell out of the way.” She lifted her chin toward the man. “Sergey, push!”
“Mr. Devin.” Barthol touched his shoulder. “It’s probably best if you don’t—”
The high whine of laser fire interrupted Barthol’s words. Devin jerked around as a scream sounded somewhere behind him, back in the direction of the escalator. A few people reversed course, heading for the commotion, but most kept walking away, intent on their own business and not interested in anyone else’s.
“Don’t,” Barthol repeated, his grip tightening on Devin’s shoulder.
Devin shrugged him off. Any commotion could potentially center on Trippy—or draw his nephew’s interest, just as it drew his own. “I’ll be right back.” He strode forward, breaking into a trot as a knot of stationers near the top of the escalator came into view. There were voices, hard shouts, and someone speaking rapidly in a clipped, odd-sounding language. A Stolorth male and two Takan women stood heads above the rest of the crowd, the Stolorth hanging back, the Takans—in dockworker brown coveralls—pressing forward.
Devin craned his neck, scanning the crowd, hoping to see his nephew’s dark head but also discerning the crowd’s focus. He didn’t see Trip, and almost everyone was glancing down. Except for a staggering, wrinkle-faced man who, as Devin watched, tried to slip his long fingers into the back pocket of a shorter man’s sagging coveralls.
The short guy spun. “Hey!” He grabbed the old man’s arm. A creased green wallet fell to the decking, and now there was a new commotion—new shouting, new shoving and pushing.
Devin sidled his way through the raucous crowd until he leaned against the metal railing overlooking the open area around the escalator. Two stripers stood on either side of the body of a red-haired woman who was sprawled facedown, her left arm bent at an angle human arms didn’t bend. A third striper was locking cuffs on another woman, whose short black hair held a wide streak of white on the left. Both women were in what appeared to be black leathers—typical spacer attire. A battered cylindrical security servobot circled the scene’s perimeter about four feet off the decking, orange warning lights flashing around its middle.
“Looks like Nula finally caught up with Gudrin,” the man standing next to Devin told the woman on his left.
“Drugs or weapons?” the woman asked.
The man shrugged. “Probably both. Or could be gambling again. Nula’s done work for Orvis before.”
The woman said something low and harsh that Devin couldn’t hear, then the pair moved away.
Barthol took their place. “Any sign of Master Trip?”
Devin shook his head.
“Chances are good,” Barthol said, dropping his voice, “that whoever is after him will not chance a public confrontation. Master Trip is not like them.” He jerked his chin to the scene below. “People here know who belongs here and who doesn’t. In that lies one of our best chances of finding him.”
“We don’t belong here either.”
“In that lies one of our biggest problems.” He touched Devin’s arm. “We should return to the hotel now, before the price for accommodations climbs any higher. Or before that rather unsavory fellow leaning against the pylon—no, please don’t look—erroneously decides we’re easy marks and tries to relieve us of our duffels. I believe this area has had enough excitement for one day.”
Devin had a feeling the kind of excitement he’d just witnessed happened more than once a day on Dock Five. He followed Barthol. It was time to check Trip’s accounts again and try to pin down where his nephew was accessing his money. That would mean hacking into the bank’s datagrids—something he’d never done.
But he had designed security programs to prevent exactly what it was he would attempt to do, so all he had to do was outsmart someone like himself. And pray that someone smarter than he was wasn’t watching.
As she moved around the edges of the crowd gathered at the escalator, Kaidee caught a glimpse of the morgue personnel in their light-blue biohaz suits, sealing the shiny black body bag around Gudrin’s corpse. A chill ran up her spine like a warning. She didn’t know Gudrin Vere personally, but she’d heard of the itinerant navigator—and her gambling problem—only because any mention of that kind of thing caught her attention these days. She didn’t know Nula either. At least, she didn’t know the name. Not everyone on Dock Five used their real name, though, and as the reported shooter was no longer on the scene, Kaidee didn’t know if her face might be familiar. But Kaidee heard enough in the conversations around her to note that Frinks’s and Orvis’s names were mentioned along with Gudrin’s and Nula’s.
That made her close her fingers around her L7 and quicken her pace past the crowd, including a pair of robed Englarian nuns whose heads were bowed in prayer—for the dead, she guessed with fair accuracy. The Englarians had been busy lately. Orvis was collecting his debts, and she could feel her name rapidly inching its way to the top of his list. It made her palms sweat and the back of her neck prickle.
And made her rethink the wisdom of trying to find Trip Guthrie. Being associated with Captain Makaiden Griggs, ex-wife of Captain Kiler Griggs, might not be the safest option for him at the moment.
Better she get back to the Rider and see what else she could sell. A galley table and chairs, maybe. They were in decent condition and deck-locked with only a latch system, not bolted. She loved the small overstuffed couch in the captain’s cabin, but, hell, maybe she could get a few hundred for it.
After a quick check over her shoulder to be sure her Takan shadow wasn’t following, she cut down a side service alley. At its end was a set of lesser-used stairs that led to freighter docks two levels down on Orange.
Two human women in yellow shipsuits were leaning against the bulkhead by an open office door, talking and laughing. They glanced disinterestedly as she passed, their voices fading as a coverall-clad balding man and a wheezing AG pallet approached.
Kaidee sidestepped out of the way, her mind refusing to let go of the problem of Trip Guthrie. She could at least send his father a transmit that she’d seen the kid on dock. She still had Jonathan Guthrie’s office comm code. Devin Guthrie’s too—somewhere. If not, there was always the main GGS office comm code. She could leave a message—
A loud thud, then another, then a hard grunt slowed her steps. A fight in a cross corridor just before the stairwell, or another of Orvis’s henchmen doing his job? She palmed her L7, flicking it to low stun as more grunts and thuds echoed. She’d make a dash for the stairwell doorway but at least be able to counter anything that might come her way—without incurring a fine if she had to defend herself. Stripers let you off with a warning if you zapped someone with low stun. Full stun meant fines and jailtime.
If that’s Orvis, it might almost be worth it.
She bolted through the intersection, skittering to a halt at the last moment—heart leaping to her throat—because she saw Trip Guthrie and he saw her. Just as he delivered one hell of a good punch to some bearded guy’s face.
Fuzz-face staggered back, slamming against the bulkhead. But Fuzz-face had a friend—big and bald—who even now reached for Trip’s shoulder.
She fired the L7.
“Trippy!” she called, as the guy next to him hit the decking like a bucket of bricks in max-G. Even low stun put you flat out, though not for long.
“Captain?” Trip’s blue eyes were wide in surprise. A thin trail of blood leaked from his nose. He swayed slightly.
She lunged the three steps it took to reach him, grabbed his wrist, and tugged. “This way!” Fuzz-face was straightening, shaking h
is head, reaching for a pistol holstered to his thigh. … But there was another sound coming closer. Boot steps. Stripers or backup, she didn’t know. Either was big trouble, and with a dazed, bleeding kid by her side, she didn’t want to wait around to find out.
“Now!” she yelled, jerking harder on his arm. That got him moving as the boot steps pounded louder.
The whine of high-powered laser fire hummed through the air just as she yanked him through the stairwell entrance. Why was it only the good guys who set their weapons to low stun per station regs? She shoved Trip ahead of her. “Down!” She had to lose their pursuers before heading for her ship.
But judging from the clatter of boots, their pursuers liked down too. So she pushed Trip through the stairwell doorway at the next landing and out into the corridor again. They needed someplace busy, a crowd to blend into—a crowd that knew her and would defend her. And she could think of no place busier—and more craving a good bar fight—than Trouble’s Brewing.
If they could get there without the kid passing out on her. Or their being shot in the back. Whichever came first.
Kaidee never liked Yellow Level on Dock Five. Years ago, someone had spray-painted Welcome to Pisstown on a bulkhead near the main lifts, and though the paint had faded, it was still legible. She didn’t need to see the words. The sharp odor from the freighter bay waste-recycling system one deck below engulfed her as she and Trippy Guthrie barreled out of the stairwell and into the corridor.
Trip was coughing as they stepped quickly sideways, almost knocking over a trio of dockworkers.
“Hey!”
“Sorry,” she called. Keep moving. Keep moving.
Trip coughed again, then dragged his sleeve under his nose, blood staining the tan fabric of his jacket.
“We’ll fix that in a minute,” she told him. She still had her fingers locked around his wrist, though he was trotting pretty well now, darting through the crowds and around the occasional wobbling servobot as easily as she did. She wanted to move quickly without running. Running attracted all kinds of attention. They needed to blend in, then disappear.
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