by Marque
He had wolfed down another roll already and was looking at the rest of the tray, despite the layer of congealed fat on the blob that might be meat.
“Don’t,” Stella said. “If you haven’t been eating, let your stomach get used to the rolls first.”
“But you asked for hot sandwiches.”
“I asked for time alone, but in different words,” Stella said.
He looked at her curiously. “You’re—not like . . . like the captain.”
“No. I’m not. I’m not a spacer. I’m administration—” When she was anything. When she was not just “that idiot Stella,” the permanent example of what could go wrong. The petty little position she’d held until her pregnancy was only “administration” to someone aboard a ship. What she’d done since, no one knew about.
“But to lie . . .”
“Misdirect,” Stella said. “Similar, but different.”
“I don’t think it’s right to lie,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s right to end up dead just because it’s convenient for someone else,” Stella said. “Now—can you stand up yet?”
He could, just, though he wavered a bit. Stella handed him the sack. “Put those on. I’ll turn my back.”
“You’re not going to leave?”
That terrified modesty—she remembered that, from her own adolescence. “No,” she said, turning her back. “I’m not. I’m also not interested in your skinny little body, except in keeping it alive. Change.”
Behind her, the indignant rustles of an annoyed teen. Good. It would keep him from fainting, if he was angry enough with her. She focused her attention outward. The guard should be back by now. Why wasn’t he? Why wasn’t anyone coming? Why wasn’t she hearing the routine noises that she had hardly noticed coming in? She queried her implant just as it pinged her, warning of chemical contamination. She held her breath, reached into her pocket, slapped a full-face membrane onto herself, then pulled out another and whirled to see Toby opening his mouth to gasp.
“No!” she said, and tossed the mask. Thank all the gods, the boy had been properly trained—he knew what it was, didn’t breathe until he had it on. His new outfit—the one-piece gray suit—was half fastened. He fumbled at the closure, and then picked up the jacket, eyes wide.
“Can you use a weapon?” Stella asked. He shook his head. “Stay behind me then,” she said. She drew her own. For all the good that would do if their enemies had the weapons she suspected.
Out in the corridor, nothing stirred. She saw, just at the corner, the guard who should have brought sandwiches—and there were the sandwiches, on the floor beside his outstretched hand. The other way . . . deeper into the jail . . . she paused a moment to slip a highly illegal dataprobe into the ’port on the wall, at the guard’s duty station, and suck out the plans for the police station. Every space on a station had at least two exits. This one had four: the main one to the passage, two rear entrances, and one to the side, through a smaller office.
No time to ponder; she led Toby to the right, toward the cellblock rear exit. If the enemies trusted their gas, they might not have someone outside, or he might be careless.
The outer door was locked, of course. She had expected that. Toby’s eyes widened farther when she pulled her tools from her pocket. Picking locks both mechanical and electronic wasn’t the usual skill set of a Vatta daughter, but Stella had seen no reason not to learn from later acquaintances—or to tell her father all she’d learned.
Outside, the passage appeared to be a service corridor, set with trash containers neatly labeled with the type of trash each should contain. To the right, she saw the open back door of what, by the smell, was a café of some kind, itsBIOLOGICALS trash bin overflowing. She remembered that Huntari Café had been next to the police station . . . probably a favorite hangout of the police, and thus not a good back door to enter. Farther down, a bakery and a greengrocer . . . she hurried Toby that way.
“Can we take off—?” he began.
“No,” Stella said over her shoulder. “We may not have any warning next time.”
She turned back in time to see someone glance down the passage and quickly turn away. Not good. They were opposite Murchison Books and Antiquities, whose bin contained packing materials. The door seemed ajar. Stella yanked; it came open. She pushed Toby in, slid in herself, pulled it closed, and leaned on the locking bar until it caught firmly.
They were in a cluttered back room with more packing materials and open containers piled on a cluttered desk and on the floor. A closed door in front of them suggested that the actual shop lay beyond. To the right, a narrow staircase rose toward the ceiling where another door was labeledPRIVATE . Stella heard nothing from any direction; she boosted her implant’s sensitivity and heard something from outside—footsteps, probably—and the rise and fall of voices from the other side of the closed door. Two voices? Three? She could not make out what they were saying.
From outside another set of footsteps, this time coming closer. She looked around again. No place to hide, really, but up the stairs. She motioned to Toby, finger to lips. If the owner had the private office on an alarm system, they were out of luck, but otherwise . . .
They were almost to the door when the pounding began on the back door. Stella tried the door of the private office—open, and no alarm sounded when she opened it and she and Toby went in. She closed it behind them as her enhanced hearing picked up the sound of the shop door opening and footsteps coming through.
“What is it?” asked the shopkeeper.
“Open up,” a voice outside said.
“The shop entrance is 3214 Scurry Lane. This entrance is secured,” the shopkeeper said.
“Open up, damn it! We think fugitives got in!”
“Not through this door. Who are you, anyway? You don’t sound like—” A scuffling noise. “You aren’t the police!” Another noise Stella couldn’t identify, a sort of metallic grumble, then a loud clang. A mutter, clear enough with the augmented hearing: “What kind of idiot do they think I am, anyway?” Then, more clearly, “Sam, it’s Rafe. Something’s happening over here; you’d better check the substation on Fourth Blue East. Some yobbos are trying to get in the back door of my shop claiming to be after fugitives but they aren’t any of yours.” Click and another click, then, “Hardy—this is Rafe. Block trouble behind me now, probably coming around front. Police not responding. Could be the bunch we’re looking for.”
Stella blinked. Yobbos? The last time she’d heard that word in a very similar voice had been two years back somewhere very far from here. Rafe? That Rafe?
“Ahh . . . no answer, eh? Well, I’ve got to close up shop before they come in the front. Ta.” Brisk footsteps, fading into the distance; no sound of the door closing between shop and office.
Stella looked around the office. Neater than that below, a desk with ordinary data hookups and displays, a bunk covered with a striped blanket, a small synthesizer and meal prep center, a curtain across—she glanced in—a tiny but very clean toilet–shower combo. Cabinets above and below the desk, along the walls. A secondary screen, on which movement caught her eye—the display of a security system, now showing the back of someone she assumed was the proprietor, as he pulled down louvered screens across the shop displays. The door, she noticed, was already closed and barred. The man looked to be of medium height, slender, with thinning gray hair pulled back to a braid tied with a ribbon. He had the second display covered now, and turned.
Stella caught her breath. That Rafe, indeed. He glanced up into the security system’s scan, and smiled. Winked. Well, that cinched it. He knew. Naturally he would. Naturally he would have video pickups in his inner office, as well as downstairs, and naturally he would have checked them. He walked back to the store’s service desk without looking up again. That, too, was Rafe; he had made his point. Now he would wait around for whatever help he’d called in. Stella glanced at Toby, wishing she could spirit him away somehow. He was too young for this, and she
couldn’t explain; Rafe would have audio pickups everywhere.
If he knew they were there, if he knew who they were—who she was—then she might as well use his systems. Stella found the security system controls for the interior scan and re-aimed the pickup so that she could watch Rafe. He was just standing there, entering something in the computer—a list of books, she saw when she zoomed in, from the stack of books on the counter. Old books, antiques, real paper. She couldn’t quite focus on the titles, but she could, from up here, link into the computer he was using.
She did that, first returning the surveillance vid to a scan that included the shop’s front door. Under the day’s date, a list of titles sufficiently odd that Stella paused, scrolling down, and tried to think what scam he was up to now. Some historical society’s volumes thirty-two through forty-seven? Estate rolls of places she’d never heard of? Three cookbooks? A book of instructions for butlers? Surely no one actually bought these things to read . . .
Toby tapped her arm and pointed at the toilet cubicle. Stella shook her head. It would make a sound anyone could hear—though she suspected that Rafe had the upstairs soundproofed and scanproofed as well as he could, gurgling and whooshing in pipes was one sound that no soundproofing really damped.
Something moved on the surveillance vid, catching her peripheral vision. She glanced up. Rafe was moving toward the door, holding a weapon she didn’t recognize. She turned up the sound. A loud clang, followed by a whistle . . . Rafe swept an arm down, to a pocket, then to his face. Stella checked the chemscan sidebar: nothing yet, he was just being cautious. Light blossomed in the middle of the door; the attackers were trying to burn through. Then a confusion of noises from outside: voices, thumps, crackles, small explosive cracks, and the cloth-ripping sound of rapid-fire small arms loaded with station-safe frangibles. Silence.
Rafe, standing alert beside the door, said, “Block party?”
“Got ’em, Rafe,” came a voice from outside. “Ten of ’em. Pollies aren’t here yet—wait . . . there they come.”
“Any chem stain, Hardy?”
“No. You can open up, if your door’s not too damaged. Security screen has a hole as big as I am melted through.”
“Right.” Rafe tucked his weapon behind a display and hit the door controls. The outer louvered screen slid aside slowly, then stopped halfway, and he opened the inner door. Stella touched the controls, aiming the vidscan at the outer door. Now she could see the melted section—another sidebar gave its probable temperature on the basis of thermal radiation—and beyond it a scatter of bodies and some men holding weapons, already walking away. Others appeared in uniform: the arriving police, she presumed.
“Looks like you had a problem,” the first of these said.
“We all do,” Rafe said. “Did you find out why station Fourth Blue East didn’t respond?”
“Chemstunned,” the man said. “We think the attackers were after the Vatta kid. Must’ve got him, too, because he’s not there. Why were they after you, Rafe?”
“They said, escaping fugitives. Tried to get in my back door, claimed they were pollies. Luckily I keep it locked. So I’m guessing that somehow the kid got away. After all, you’d had us all warned off to shelter him—somebody must’ve taken him in.”
“Not you?”
“Not that I know of,” Rafe said. “Like I said, my back door’s locked except when I’m putting out stuff to recycle or going over to Huntari for lunch—and then I lock it behind me. Nobody’s reported them?”
“Not yet.” The policeman shrugged. “Could be anywhere if the attackers didn’t get him. We’d better find him, in case there’s more bad guys. By the way . . . you do know that vigilante action is illegal?”
“I was inside the whole time, Fred.”
“Right. Your close friends and neighbors just showed up fully armed and chem-protected by chance . . .”
“The whole station’s jumpy, Fred. If they choose to help me out when the police have been immobilized . . . I’d say that’s a good thing.”
“I’m not complaining,” the policeman said. “Just pointing out the law, which is my duty. If the violation of ordinance has ceased, then . . . that’s all I have to do.”
“Thank you,” Rafe said, in a tone that Stella recognized. Rafe had always had a gift for irony.
“Want us to check out the store?”
“If you wish, but as I said I was locked in back when they came, and you can see they didn’t get through the front. Almost, though.”
“If you’re sure—we do have other things to do. I’ll have a new roster in that substation within the hour—our people there are all headed for hospital—and we’ll add patrols. Forensics have to check out these bods and see if they can identify them. If you see any sign of the Vatta kid, let me know. Oh, and there’s a Vatta family representative around somewhere—was supposed to be headed for the police station, but we don’t know if she got there.”
“She?”
“Yeah, a woman. I’ll flash you the picture. Not a Vatta herself, apparently, but a family retainer. S. M. Constantin. Probably a lawyer. Came in on an ISC courier.”
“I should report her, too?”
“If you see her. Let’s hope these scum didn’t get her.”
“Let’s hope,” Rafe said. “Look—I’ve got to call Maintenance to get a repair crew over here. Talk later?”
“Right.” The policeman turned away.
Rafe shut the inner door, picked up the weapon behind the display, and came back to the shop counter, with another grin for the camera. At the counter he made what seemed to be a perfectly straightforward call to Station Maintenance, requesting repair or replacement of the security grille and inner door of the shop on an urgent priority basis. “And I may be up in my back office—just give me a call before you arrive.” Then with a final glance at the camera, he headed toward the back of the store.
Stella turned down the sound augmentation on her implant and turned to Toby. “We’re about to have company, it looks like. Remember—we’re trespassing, and we have no rights.”
“Yes . . .” Toby looked pale again. Stella slid her own weapon back into its holster. She heard the footsteps come into the stockroom, pause, and then come up the stairs. The door opened.
Rafe stood there, lips pursed, and shook his head. “Stella, Stella, Stella . . . do you have to be so dramatic?”
“Me?” It was all she could say; as always, he took her breath away, and memories crowded her mind.
“My dear, if you just wanted to see me again, all you had to do was give me a call . . . though I suppose with the ansibles down that might have been difficult.” He glanced aside at Toby. “Vatta kid, I suppose? Escaped from custody? You’d better go use the toilet, boy; you look ready to puke on my floor, and I wouldn’t like that.”
Toby gave Stella a desperate look; she nodded and he fled to the toilet cubicle.
“Nice work, Stella,” Rafe said, ignoring the sounds from that direction. “Spurn my invitation, ignore me for years, then break into my shop and bring down gods only know what on my head . . . I suppose you’d rather I didn’t tell the pollies where you were?”
“When and if the personnel from that station wake up, they’ll explain,” Stella said. “I went there to authorize handling the remains of the others, and they told me about Toby, wanted me to take him. Then it got very quiet, and when I looked out . . . they were down. I took him out the back—”
“Which you just happened to know about, and how to open the door,” Rafe said, nodding.
“I still have the picklocks,” Stella said.
“And the dataprobe, I’ll bet,” Rafe said, this time with approval. “I always said you were more like me than you wanted to admit.”
“And your door was ajar,” Stella said.
“Luckily for you,” Rafe said. “Since your picklocks would have set off a stunblast. I heard the front bell just as I came back in and didn’t make sure it closed all the way. Foolish of me. C
ould’ve been fatal if the others had made it here first. I suppose you think I should thank you for that?”
“No,” Stella said. “But I’ll take thanks if you’re offering them.”
Rafe laughed. The same laugh. Warm tingles ran over her. Damn the man. Legend said it was your first love that always held some power over you, but in her case the first love was an unpleasant memory—how could she have fallen for that toad?—and Rafe a constant temptation.
Toby came out of the toilet cubicle looking pale, but less strained. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Fear does that,” Rafe said. His grin at the boy was entirely comradely, with none of the rakehell glint he gave Stella. “You look half starved, boy; didn’t they feed you over at the station?”
“Couldn’t eat,” Toby muttered. “Now—”
“Now you could eat a whole rationpak in one bite, eh? Stella, it’s up to you—I can feed you here, or we can play lost-and-found and let the police know where you are, then take the lad to Huntari for a good meal.”
“I want to get him to safety—which I suspect means on a ship with no Vatta connections, out into space—as soon as possible. What do you think—are there still assassins out there?”
“Mmm. Could be. Finding a ship’s not going to be easy, either. Most of ’em won’t take anyone with Vatta connections, or anyone from Slotter Key, just in case. You’ll need other ID, if that’s your plan. Where’d you want to go? Back to Slotter Key?”
“No. Lastway, I’m thinking. Nobody’d expect us to go there, and it’s right out on the fringes.”
He tilted his head. “Lastway. But Vatta trades there, don’t they?”
Stella cursed silently. Of course he would know that. Rafe had an information network galaxywide.
“Sometimes,” she said. “No regular schedule that I know of, though I’m not in on all the family business.”
“Your checkered past,” Rafe said, feigning sympathy. Stella wanted to hit him.
“My checkered past,” she said instead. “So . . . I suppose you could arrange alternative IDs?”
