“True,” said March, thinking it over. “I want to have a look at Bay 156.” He pulled out his phone and looked at the map of the station. “The Tiger’s at Bay 93, and it’s only a walk of about two kilometers from there. Maybe I can meet the Vindex twins when they land, walk them to the Tiger, and get out of here as soon as possible.”
“Efficient,” said Bishop. “But you’ll have a hell of a job convincing the nobles to follow you.”
“I can be very persuasive,” said March.
Bishop raised an eyebrow.
March sighed. “I’ll tie them up if I have to. Censor said to get them to Antioch Station alive and in one piece. He didn’t say that they had to like me when I’m done.”
“As ever, your optimism cheers me, my friend,” said Bishop, lifting his bottle in a mock salute.
“I’m not an optimist.”
“Your optimism is matched only by your sense of humor,” said Bishop.
March shrugged and dropped both his bottles into the bin next to Bishop’s desk. It was already three-quarters of the way full. Bishop seemed to enjoy his own inventory quite a bit. “I can’t argue with that. Want to show me Bay 156? Better to do it now before they start prepping it for the Fisher's arrival.”
“A good idea,” said Bishop. He unlocked a drawer in his desk, produced a small pistol, and tucked it into the interior pocket of his jacket. “Always good to have a stroll after a drink or two, isn’t it?”
March nodded and followed Bishop out of the office, through the storeroom, and back to the restaurant floor. Anne looked up as they passed and flashed a wicked smile in March’s direction.
“Captain March has delivered our inventory for the next three months,” said Bishop. “You’re in charge until I get back.”
Anne laughed. “Well, don’t I feel special.” She looked back at March again. “You’re dressed funny for a debt collector.”
“Whatever gets the job done,” said March.
It wasn’t a joke, but she laughed anyway.
They left the restaurant and entered the concourse.
“I think she likes you,” said Bishop.
March snorted. “Running a brothel now, are you?”
“Certainly not,” said Bishop. “One must have some standards, you know. I do not hire prostitutes, and throw out any customers who attempt to harass my workers.”
“And that gains you a trustworthy workforce?” said March.
“Rustbelt Station is something of a harsh place for women with no money,” said Bishop, “and the brothels are always hiring. None of my employees know my true business, of course, but within certain bounds they are trustworthy. And I do think Anne likes you.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said March. Bishop led them towards a waiting cab drone, which looked like a plastic cart with four seats and no roof. March dropped into the back, the plastic cushion creaking beneath him. “I don’t like distractions while I am working.”
“A night with Anne,” said Bishop, “and you would be much less distracted. And if that seems like too much work, you could visit one of the brothels and hire an android for an hour.” He tapped the drone’s panel. “Bay 156.”
“A waste of good money,” said March. The drone’s electric motor whirred, and it pulled into the flow of pedestrians, the computer display showing ads for various local businesses.
“You need a woman, March,” said Bishop.
“You say that every time we work together.”
“That is because your need clearly has not lessened.”
March rolled his eyes and let Bishop talk as the drone headed towards Bay 156, grunting from time to time and nodding when appropriate. Constantine Bishop did like to talk, but March tolerated it. They had been on numerous missions together, and Bishop had saved his life several times.
The cab drone reached the cargo corridor, and after a drive of a few moments came to a stop in front of a massive airlock labeled Bay 156. March got out as Bishop paid the cab, and the vehicle rolled away on another call. Bishop went to the airlock’s control panel, tapped in a code, and the double steel doors slid open with a metallic groan.
Bay 156 was a big pit dug from the side of the asteroid, large enough to accommodate a mid-sized passenger liner. The Tiger was only seventy-five meters long, and a dozen of March’s ship could have landed in the pit. Right now, the bay was mostly empty. He looked overhead and saw the stars beyond the flickering of the atmosphere barrier. There was a heavy repair gantry bolted to the rock wall, currently retracted, and a pile of metal crates and barrels against one wall. There were fuel lines across the floor, and a set of four stalls held repair drones.
“Bay 156,” said Bishop. “What a pit.”
“Literally,” said March, looking around. There were possibilities here.
“So,” said Bishop, “if you were going to kill someone in here and you didn’t care about casualties, how would you do it?”
“Bomb would be the easiest,” said March. “I’d hide it in those access points on the floor. Blowing out the atmosphere barrier would be another way to do it, but I’d have to sabotage the airlocks as well, make sure they couldn’t get away. Setting fire to the fuel lines would kill a lot of people if I timed it right.” March looked towards the stacked creates. “I suppose there is likely a service corridor there, isn’t there?”
“There is,” said Bishop. “It runs through all the landing bays, hooking up to the atmosphere barrier generators and the other equipment.”
March nodded. “That’s how I would do it. Those damned crates shouldn’t be stacked there. What kind of ship is the Fisher? An Olympic-class passenger liner?”
“That's what the flight record said, yeah,” said Bishop. “Old model the Mercator yards churned out a few decades back. The Fisher is independently owned, still ferries people around the outer reaches of the Kingdom. Not a lot of money in that, so I bet the operators pad their profit margin with a little smuggling here and there.”
March took three steps to the left. “They would disembark from the main passenger ramp, and it would be right about here.” He glanced at Bishop, and then back at the crates. “If I hid behind the crates, I would have a perfect line of fire at the passenger ramp. I would just sit there, wait until I saw the Vindex twins, and shoot them. There aren’t any security cameras in here, and I doubt there are any in those service corridors. I could get away clean. So long as I disposed of the gun properly afterward, no one would ever catch me.” He saw it all like a map in his head, the training of both the Final Consciousness and the Silent Order showing him the possibilities. “I would…”
He froze, a burst of intuition cutting into his thoughts.
If he wanted to set an ambush for someone, those crates would be the perfect place to do it. And if he had been a hired thug of the Machinists, sent to kill a pair of nobles, then the sensible thing to do would be to remove any obstacles.
Such as killing any operatives of the Silent Order that might interfere.
There was a glint of light behind the crates.
“Down!” snapped March, throwing himself to the left. Bishop might have been a restaurant owner, but he was still an operative of the Silent Order, and he moved with alacrity, hitting the ground and rolling as he snatched his gun from within his jacket.
Two plasma bolts hit the ground where they had been standing, blasting chunks of hot stone from the floor, and March heard the ricochet of a bullet. He sprinted forward, yanking his gun from his holster and leveling the weapon, spraying shots at the stack of crates. He glimpsed three men crouched behind the crates, guns in hand. March’s reckless charge had forced them onto the defensive, but in a moment, they would recover and shoot him dead.
March’s left arm drew back and then shot forward with all its cybernetic strength driving the metal limb forward. His palm slammed into one of the crates. It had to weigh at least a hundred pounds, but the power of the blow hurled the crate as if it had been made of paper.
The stack o
f crates collapsed backward with a series of deafening clangs, followed by a furious barrage of curses from the men. March seized one of the remaining crates with his left hand and heaved, pulling himself up with a single fluid motion as he leveled his pistol at the stunned men.
“Drop them!” he snarled.
Two of the men had the look of starship crewers, both wearing blue coveralls, shocked expressions on their faces. The third man was wearing nondescript clothes beneath a leather overcoat, his face twisted with fury beneath a prominent scar.
It was Simon Lorre.
March took aim at Lorre’s head and squeezed the trigger.
Lorre, however, was already moving. March’s plasma bolt missed his head by half an inch, blasting splinters of hot rock from the wall. Lorre darted into the entrance of the service corridor behind the crates. March fired again, but door clanged down behind Lorre, and the plasma bolt carved a molten groove into the metal.
He almost pursued, but the two men on the floor started to raise their weapons, and March swung his gun down to point at them.
“I said to drop them,” said March. “Now.”
His tone left no room for argument. Both men dropped their weapons and raised their hands over their heads.
“Gentlemen,” said Bishop with a wide smile, strolling towards the downed gunmen, his own weapon pointed in their direction. “You did just try to kill us, but there is no reason to hold a grudge. Business is business, right? Let’s all be reasonable. You tell my friend and me what we want to know, and there is no reason at all you can’t simply walk out of here.” He sighed and shook his head. “Of course, if you don’t want to be reasonable, my friend and I shall take the sensible course and shoot you both in your head and feed your bodies into the hydroponics recyclers.”
As it turned out, both men were reasonable.
The first one was named Marco Clarkson, and the second Damian Thompson. Their names matched the ID cards in the wallets March dug out of their pockets, and their other cards identified them as crewers aboard a freighter called the Nominson. Both Clarkson and Thompson said they had been hired by a man who called himself Torres, which was no doubt the alias Simon Lorre had used. He had promised them five thousand credits each in exchange for helping to kill two men in Bay 156. Neither Clarkson nor Thompson seemed all that bright, and they had believed the promises of “Torres” that he would dispose of the bodies and take care of destroying the evidence. March had no doubt Lorre would have killed his hired help alongside the two agents of the Silent Order.
Unfortunately, Lorre’s reputation proved justified. He had told nothing useful to either men, and all their meetings had taken place in a bar several kilometers away in one of the station's habitat domes. Bishop checked a few pieces of information on his phone, nodded, and then handed their wallets back.
“Very well, gentlemen,” said Bishop, kicking their guns towards March. “I am glad you have chosen to be reasonable. Always good to be polite, eh?” He offered them a sunny smile. “Run along, now. The Nominson is leaving later today, and you won’t want to miss it. I trust you’ve learned your lesson?”
“Yes, sir,” said Clarkson, rubbing his legs where the crate had landed on them.
“This really isn’t your line of work,” said Bishop. “You got lucky. And if you have any ideas of trying again…” He looked at March.
March stooped, picked up one of the pistols in his left fist, and squeezed.
Metal squealed, and plastic cracked, and the shattered remnants of the gun clattered against the rock floor.
Clarkson and Thompson gaped at him.
“Best to head out, gentlemen,” said Bishop. “You don’t want to be late for the Nominson’s departure. Have a good flight.”
The two crewers needed no further prompting. They all but ran from Bay 156, and March watched as they vanished into the cargo corridor.
“They got lucky?” snorted Bishop. “I got lucky. I’m a damned idiot. I walked right into that ambush. If you hadn’t been here, I would be dead. How did you know?”
“I got lucky, too,” said March, flexing the fingers of his gloved left hand. His left shoulder always ached after he used his cybernetic arm in a fight. “That was how I would kill someone in here. And if I could figure out the best way to kill someone, then so could Lorre. Any chance we can track him down?”
“Doubtful,” said Bishop. “There aren’t any cameras in there, and the only sensors are for equipment failure. No, our good friend Mr. Lorre planned this well.”
“The reason he did this,” said March, “is because he’s going after Roanna and Thomas Vindex tomorrow. Whatever he’s got planned, he didn’t want us in the way.”
“Then what does he have planned?” said Bishop.
“I don’t know,” said March. “But whatever it is, we’re going to stop it.”
Chapter 3: The Noblewoman
March spent the rest of the day preparing.
Bishop called in favors and applied bribe money liberally. March rigged a surveillance system and placed the cameras on the service gantry in Bay 156, setting them to transmit to the Tiger. Vigil took control of the feeds and sent the images to March’s phone and Bishop’s office computer. Bishop also set up a tap for Vigil, connecting the Tiger’s computer to the computer monitoring Bay 156. That way, hopefully, they could keep Lorre from venting the atmosphere or inserting toxins into the local environmental system.
Bishop’s bribes arranged for extra Ronstadt Security personnel to guard the cargo corridor and the bay. March hoped that Lorre and the Machinists did not have any agents among the Ronstadt men, but Bishop thought they were clean. One of Bishop’s bribes also got Vigil a tap into Rustbelt Station’s weapon systems. That would let Vigil take control of the station’s weapons for one shot. The station’s pseudointelligence would lock her out after that, but if necessary, it would let March shoot down any ships attempting to fire on the Fisher. For that matter, if Lorre had hacked into the station’s systems (and knowing the Machinists’ expertise with AIs and cybernetics, that was a possibility), Vigil could shut down any attempt of the station’s weapons to shoot down the Fisher.
“This is getting expensive,” said Bishop after he finished tallying up the bribe money in his office.
March grunted. “No one got rich in the Silent Order.”
“Yes, I’m beginning to see why,” said Bishop, rubbing his face. “I can’t think of anything else. Can you?”
“No,” said March. They had taken every precaution he could think of, given the resources they available. “All that’s left to do is to wait for the Fisher to arrive.”
“Yeah,” said Bishop. “The ship’s scheduled to land at 12:00 hours tomorrow.” He squinted at his computer. “04:00 now. You might as well get some sleep. Your ship is monitoring the video feeds, and will send an alert if anyone sets foot in the bay.”
“Suppose so,” said March, setting the alarm on his phone for 10:00 hours.
“There’s a cot in the storeroom,” said Bishop.
“Height of luxury,” said March.
Bishop grinned. “You’re the one who said we don’t join the Silent Order to get rich. Besides, this is a restaurant, not a hotel.”
The cot was fine. March had slept in far more uncomfortable places, and he fell asleep at once.
He had bad dreams most of the time, but the night before a Silent Order operation, the dreams became especially vivid. Most of the time he dreamed about the week the surgeons of the Final Consciousness had taken him and transformed him into an Iron Hand. There had been no anesthetic. It was a final test. The Iron Hands were the elite force of the Machinists, the best of the best, and surviving the surgeries without dying or going insane was the last trial. March had survived, but he remembered the lasers slicing into his flesh, the metal grafting against his muscles, the waves of blinding pain – and through it all the thundering chorus of the Final Consciousness filling his thoughts through the hive implant in his skull. The Machinists
believed that the Final Consciousness, all humanity joined together in a single cybernetic hive mind, would allow mankind to become God and rule the universe, and listening to the voices in his head, March had believed it.
Other times he dreamed about the missions he had undertaken as an Iron Hand, all the death he had inflicted until that final mission on Martel’s World had broken the Final Consciousness’s hold upon him.
The alarm went off at 10:00 hours, and March awoke rested and in a calm, tranquil rage for what had been done to him. Ever since he had left the Machinists and joined the Kingdom of Calaskar and the Silent Order, he had vowed to make the Final Consciousness pay in whatever way he could, and today he would have another opportunity.
The thought put him in a good mood.
Then he put aside all emotion because emotion was a hindrance in his line of work. He used the bathroom in Bishop’s office, washed his face, and walked into the main floor of the restaurant. It was crowded with crewers and cargo handlers having breakfast, and Bishop leaned against the bar, chatting with some of his customers. March looked around for Anne and then realized that she would have the morning shift off, and then rebuked himself for allowing his attention to wander.
“Captain March, good morning,” said Bishop, pushing away from the bar. The only sign of the late night was a bloodshot tinge to his eyes. Other than that, he wore a crisp suit, his beard trimmed and his blond hair styled. He did not look out of place as the owner of a overpriced restaurant, but the businesses on Rustbelt Station tended towards showmanship if their garish ads were any indication. “Thank you for delivering my inventory.”
“Pleasure,” said March. Bishop held out his right hand, and March shook it.
The cool plastic of an earpiece pressed against his palm.
March left the restaurant and stepped into the morning crowds upon the concourse, slipping the bit of plastic into his left ear. He heard a crackling noise, and then a chime from his phone as it synced to the little device.
Silent Order: Iron Hand Page 5
