Kerry was on the com link, calling backup, as Addy moved to Solomon’s side, her fingers reaching involuntarily for his body. She jerked her hand back. “That armor is still hot. How can you wear it?”
Solomon shrugged, his weapon never leaving the living killer on the floor. “This is a prototype. There’s a thin layer of polymer insulation on the inside so I don’t get cooked in the event of an energy strike.”
She looked at the ribbon of blood that ran from his nose to drip on the hot armor with an audible hiss. “Whatever you say.”
“Backup should be here in three minutes.” Kerry stopped beside Addilyn to stare at the assassins. “If we had tried to pull this off ourselves…” His face twisted in a grimace. “You have better toys than we do, Draxx.”
Solomon thumbed off the energy weapon as their backup crowded into the room. “Your department owes me some new clothes.” He fingered the ruined jacket and snuffed a still smoldering seam between his fingers.
Addy touched his cheek. “Are you all right?” she asked in a low voice.
He holstered his weapon, noting that the custom leather shoulder holster was spattered with gore. “I’ll survive.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “We need to talk tonight, over dinner.” He grinned at her look of surprise. “Something has come up that could be a game-changer for us, and I will finally be able to keep a promise I made to you a long time ago.”
Her eyes seemed to grow even wider. “Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?” she whispered.
“Probably.” He laughed. “We’ll go to the Chaufourier, and I’ll pick you up at 19:00.”
Kerry went to slap Solomon on the back, stopping when he noted the man’s battered appearance. “Good job, Solomon,” he rumbled. “The department could use a man of your caliber.”
Solomon laughed as he turned to the door. “Nah, it’s too dangerous.”
Behind his back, the Boston detective snorted a laugh. Outside, the sleet had finally turned to light snow.
The Chaufourier was located in what had once been the observation floor of the historic John Hancock Tower in downtown Boston. Totally rebuilt and sheathed with tough transparent steel one hundred years earlier, during the height of the terrorist years, the Tower was still the queen of the Boston skyline, and the Chaufourier was reputed to have the best food on the east coast of the North American continent. Solomon leaned back in his comfortable chair, sipping his Remy Martin Louis XIII Cognac as the waiter cleared the last of the dessert dishes. Addy sipped her coffee, regarding him over the top of the steaming cup.
“This is going to be a doozy,” she murmured in her husky voice, shooting Solomon a wry smile. “You’re usually tighter with your money than the bark on a tree.” She sipped again. “Let me ask you one question.”
He nodded for her to continue.
“How much is this new job paying?”
His eyes never left her face. “Eight digits,” he said quietly.
Her face paled. “Is this a bodyguard job or something a little… wetter?” she asked, still whispering. She, like Solomon, had come to her current position from military and Special Forces ranks, and knew that there was often more to a bodyguard position than being a simple guard.
“I’ve been assured that it’s strictly bodyguard.” His smile never wavered. He and Addy played the same version of twenty questions whenever he had a major announcement. She usually guessed what he was going to say in three questions.
She frowned. “It has to be a job in Luna City,” she commented, mostly to herself. “For that kind of money.”
Solomon set down his empty glass. “A bit farther north, my dear.” He watched her figure it out.
“Farther north? All the miners on Ceres, and in the asteroid belt put together couldn’t come up with that sort of money, and that leaves…” Her eyes widened as they locked on his face. “Mars.”
He could barely hear her voice.
Her eyes widened even more as she figured out the last pieces. “You’re going to be working for the Beast, Giuseppe Fontaine himself. Do you remember the stories about the Beast when we were kids?” Addy was only a year younger than Solomon. “All those supposed grisly murders on Mars? This could easily turn into a very high-risk job, you know—and I don’t want to lose you.”
His smile turned slightly sour. “You realize that I can’t remember anything earlier than my sixteenth birthday, Addy.”
She flushed. “Oh, I forgot. Sorry.” She gave him a long look. “You woke up at sixteen in a hospital with amnesia after a train wreck,” she said, recalling the story of Solomon’s life. “You were in foster homes for a year before you went into the marines. You were medically discharged after ten years for wounds received in battle, and you received the Purple Heart and Silver Star. Your legs were shattered, and you were never expected to walk again, let alone work.” She gave him an impish grin. “As usual, you proved them all wrong. At twenty-nine, you went to work for Luciano Vento Detective Agency, and at thirty-five, you had made enough money to buy him out and let Luciano step gracefully into retirement. In the past four years, you’ve built a solid reputation as an honest operator in the protection business, with high moral standards. While not wealthy, you can be considered comfortably well off.” She folded her slim hands in her lap.
“You’ve done your homework.” He gave her a little bow, and his face turned serious. “My plan is to marry you the day I step off the ship returning from Mars.” His eyes sparkled. “You also went into the marines at seventeen for four years, and then to work for the Boston PD at twenty-one while attending night school at Boston College. When I get back, you’ll be within the retirement window. We can both run the protection company until we want to sell out and buy a small Caribbean island to raise mangoes and children.” He casually slid a diamond ring across the table to her. “If you’re willing, of course.”
“I was wondering when you would finally get around to this.” Her voice was level, but her hazel eyes filled with tears as she touched the ring with a finger. “And for the longest time, I wondered what I would say.” She made a quick motion, and the ring was suddenly on the ring finger of her left hand. “I accept, but I’m not crazy about this trip to Mars of yours because I won’t be there to watch out for you.”
Without saying another word, Solomon leaned across the table and kissed her.
~~~
Solomon leaned back in the wide first-class seat and studied the dossier on the screen of the data pad before him. Outside the hull of the sleek white delta-winged ship, Mars loomed ever nearer. The moon Phobos, just off their port wing, was so close Solomon could have seen the silver forest of communications antennae covering the rocky surface had he looked, but his eyes were on the pad.
“The Beast, Giuseppe Fontaine,” the voice of the pad newsbot was saying, “is the infamous but unproven drug lord and murderer who is reputed to run the Mars underworld, slaughtering those who cross him like cattle.” Solomon recalled reading the stories of the many cruel and horrid deaths laid at Fontaine’s feet. According to the numbers bandied about by the news agencies, Giuseppe Fontaine should have totally depopulated Mars four years earlier. “With over a dozen children calling Giuseppe Fontaine father, it now appears that someone is killing the offspring one by one, leaving the grizzly bodies where the others can find them.”
The implication is obvious, Solomon thought glumly. Giuseppe will be the last to go after he sees all his children and finally his wife killed. When Solomon had called the number to accept the job, he’d discovered that Giuseppe’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Elora Fontaine, had hired him as her private bodyguard. Fontaine had insisted that each of the children hire their own personal protection.
Solomon thumbed the pad off and leaned back in his seat. The month-long trip from Earth had been excruciating. Still, it was far quicker than the trip the original travelers had taken to the red planet, spending months cramped in a small spacecraft just to get to Mars. He stood
and stretched, floating aft toward the small gym and the microgravity treadmill.
He had been more than a little surprised when, once he’d formally accepted the job, his new employer had asked him to report to a private launch facility in Colorado, where a commercial heavy-lift vehicle carried him into orbit and deposited him in the new Space Station Galileo. Fontaine Industries owned an entire wing of the station, where he’d boarded his current transport, the GFS Daedalus, GFS standing for Giuseppe Fontaine Ship. To Solomon’s surprise, the ship, a combination passenger and freight hauler, carried only six passengers. The others were tight-lipped Fontaine employees, three of whom were probably paid bodyguards like himself.
Showered, such as it was on the spacecraft, and wearing clean clothes, Solomon sat back down to watch the sleek delta-winged craft slide into the thin Martian atmosphere. He was surprised to note patches of green on the red surface, a testament to man’s ingenuity in conquering the impossible. Forty minutes later, the craft’s tires squawked once, and he was on Mars.
Solomon hadn’t known what to expect on his arrival, but the small ramp slid out of the side of the Daedalus as the door opened, and people began to exit with no other fanfare. Since customs and immigration seemed nonexistent, Solomon assumed the craft had landed on a private Fontaine airfield. Making his way down the ramp, Solomon guessed the time at about noon, judging from the position of the sun. Other than a slight scent of scorched asphalt, the chill air smelled fresh and… familiar.
A slim flight attendant in a navy Fontaine uniform was standing at the bottom of the ramp, handing out small respirators to the new arrivals. When Solomon smiled and declined, the girl gave him a strange look. Behind him, a slab of beef that outweighed him by three or four stone and stood a hand taller glared at Solomon and also declined the mask. Solomon just smiled. He knew, thanks to tests in the military, that his own tolerance to hypoxia was phenomenal.
Ten meters from the ramp, Solomon caught the other bodyguard as he stumbled and fell. Lowering the unconscious man’s head to the tarmac, Solomon frowned just as the young flight attendant rushed over, a mask in her hand and concern on her face. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the unconscious man just didn’t smell right. It wasn’t an odor so much as a feeling of suppressed malevolence that raised Solomon’s hackles.
Looking incongruous in the bleak Martian landscape, two black limousines waited by a small terminal. Behind Solomon, cargo was already being unloaded from wide cargo doors in the Daedalus’s hull. On the other side of the craft, a refueling truck topped off the spacecraft’s fuel tanks for the turbojet and scramjet engines. Once in orbit, the Daedalus would be refueled again for the long trip back to Earth. Solomon watched the ground vehicles for a moment before getting into the limo with a thin man wearing an out-of-date suit. He guessed that his limo companion was probably an attorney or an accountant. This man smelled just fine, and Solomon attributed his earlier concern to prejob jitters. The fifty-kilometer drive was long and bumpy, but Solomon leaned back in the seat and relaxed. The wait was over and the new job was beginning. The sooner it started, the sooner it would be over, and the sooner he would be on his way back to Earth… and Addy. Leaving her had been difficult. Thinking of her, he winced. By now, she had probably gotten the letter assigning her as the co-owner of Draxx Protection Services in the event of his death. She wouldn’t be happy about that, but it was a done deal. She could shout at him when he got home. Being a bodyguard was a nervous business, and he had to take certain… precautions. He smiled. It was kind of like wearing his body armor—uncomfortable but necessary.
At first, Solomon thought that they were approaching a small settlement on the edge of the Martian desert. As they drew closer, however, he realized that the fifteen buildings he could count were all part of the Fontaine Estate. The main house with no exterior windows reminded him of an Arabic caravanserai. Square and one hundred meters on a side, the structure stood a full fifteen meters tall, with eight heavy crenelated turrets standing at the corners and midway on each wall, rising another ten meters above the main house. A clear airtight dome sealed the top of the building without covering the turrets, while the front gates would have given even a main battle tank pause. Every turret was manned, and when the vehicle he was traveling in rolled to a stop, a squad of guards just happened by, all armed with the latest heavy-infantry weapons.
As Solomon stepped out of the limousine, a low rumble shook the air, and he turned just in time to see the white shuttle leap into the air, engines shrieking as it clawed for altitude. He sighed. It was too late to take Addy’s suggestion. The sound of a step made him turn back.
Two and a quarter meters tall, the man who met them was a mountain of muscle and sinew. Dressed in snug black leather, he wore a military-grade energy pistol in a custom shoulder holster like others might wear a badge of office. As he looked over each of them critically, his face seemed chiseled from stone, and his eyes were dark and without warmth. His minimalist respirator was no more than a tube coming up from beneath his collar that fed oxygen to small twin nose inserts Solomon had last seen in a hospital back on Earth.
“My name is Rolf, and I am the chief of security for the Fontaine Estate.” The voice was sepulchral and sounded like a small earthquake. “New guards will come with me,” he said bluntly, turning away.
Solomon picked up his one duffel bag, slung it over his shoulder, and followed, leaving the rest to flounder for their belongings.
Rolf didn’t slow or even look back until they’d reached a small personnel door set beside the main gate. The big man’s eyes flicked over Solomon, pausing only briefly on the faded USMC letters stenciled on the side of Solomon’s duffel bag. “Another jarhead,” he rumbled. “It figures.” He swung open the door and motioned Solomon inside.
Solomon raised an eyebrow as he stepped through the door. “You’re not waiting for the others?”
“They were late. They can wait.”
To that, Solomon said nothing, but thought to himself that it could be a very long job.
“Follow me.” Rolf strode down the long hallway, stopped in a modest office, and pointed to a blocky metal machine sitting on a desk. There was a dark fifteen-centimeter round hole in the side, with several controls on a panel on the top. “Put your hand in the hole and grip the bar with the top of your hand turned up. Push the bar forward until it stops and then don’t move. The machine will implant a small microchip under your skin, while tattooing the back of your hand with a unique barcode. This will give you unescorted access to the majority of the estate and grounds. It works better than a badge, is keyed to your DNA, and cannot be stolen.”
Solomon gave him a dry look as he followed the grim directions. He felt a sharp sting and a burning in the back of his hand, but it was gone quickly.
Rolf nodded. “Good. You can take your hand out now.”
Solomon withdrew his hand and started at the small barcode set in a rectangular lump under his skin. “Peachy,” he growled.
Rolf snorted a laugh. “Grab your bag. Your employer would like to meet you, Mr. Draxx. After that, I will show you to your room, and then I will go after the others.”
Solomon smiled without warmth. “You might be careful with the others.”
Rolf snorted again. “The others are pussycats, Mr. Draxx. I’ve gone over their files. You were the one that kept me up at night, however.”
“Oh?” Solomon raised an eyebrow.
“Winners of the Silver Star aren’t pussycats, Mr. Draxx,” Rolf said evenly.
“Call me Solomon, or Sol, and remember, the sabre-tooth tiger was also a pussycat, kind of.”
“I’ll remember that, Solomon.” His face almost broke into a smile as he passed under a wide archway and out into a fifty-square-meter courtyard, where a baroque Victorian fountain gurgled happily.
Iridescent flowers spilled from elaborate wooden boxes, filling the air with their sweet scent, and for a moment, he thought he heard the call of a songbird. Ornate ston
e staircases flowed up from the courtyard to overlooking balconies on the second and third floors. Rolf stopped at a wide stone bench and nodded to a young woman. “Miss Fontaine, this is Solomon Draxx. Mr. Draxx, I’d like to introduce you to your new employer, Elora Fontaine.”
When the pretty young woman stood, Solomon noted with a little surprise that her height was almost equal to his own one hundred eighty-five centimeters, and she had wide shoulders for a woman and a small waist. Auburn hair cascaded over her shoulders to hang halfway down her back, held away from her face by a simple golden clasp. Her eyes were a clear emerald green, and her skin held a slight olive tint slightly lighter than Solomon’s own, thanks to Giuseppe’s Italian heritage Solomon supposed.
Beast Page 2
