by Paul Collins
‘I wouldn’t mind seeing those files.’
Viktus stared at his adoptive daughter for several moments then nodded. ‘Makes sense,’ he said at last. ‘Okay, time to act fast and be drastic. I’m going to empower you to act as an outside watchdog. I want you to recruit a handful of people from outside the agency, people you’ve worked with before. I’ll channel Averaged Galactic Currency and supplies to you.’ He got out his comm unit and drafted a tightly encrypted memorandum, including the codename Falstaff for Anneke. It authorised her to draw upon certain secret bank accounts reserved for such purposes. He stared into the retinal reader on the side of the device and passed the scan, then pressed his thumbprint to the scanning screen at the bottom. Pressing Send was almost an anti-climax after that.
‘Done.’ He showed her the account numbers plus coding for secure access to the Task Force’s findings, and she locked them into her hardwired memory enhancements.
‘Falstaff?’
‘It’s Shakespeare.’
‘I know who it is. Didn’t he write a lot of tragedies?’
‘He wrote a bit of everything. Like a good agent, he had lots of fallbacks in case anything failed. So what’s your first step?’
‘Getting a good night’s sleep.’
‘Don’t stay the same place two nights running.’
She gave him a look.
‘Okay, okay, but remember that mine-under-the-rug that you fell for. You can’t afford any lapses now.’
‘I’m going to analyse the Task Force data, look for patterns. Then I’m going to –’
She paused. Her surveillance unit beeped. One of the eyes had picked up something that met her suspicion criteria. She didn’t stop to find out what. She jumped up, grabbed her uncle’s hand, and hurried him out to the rear exit. They raced through a steamy kitchen and burst into a covered alleyway. Anneke didn’t stop. She went straight across the alleyway and into the back of a hairdresser’s, rushing past the open-mouthed owner, droids with cutters and spray-on hairstyling gene therapies, and customers who didn’t have time to protest.
Then they were in another street, smaller than the one the café was in. Anneke led them diagonally to the other side and entered a large mall. They took a slideway to the first floor. Anneke stopped and studied the surveillance unit.
Viktus was puffing. ‘Was all that necessary?’ he asked.
‘Better safe than … Oh, drat!’ She had seen something on the left-hand screen. Her voice went up in pitch. ‘A kill-tracker!’
Viktus went pale. ‘Kill-trackers hardly ever fail. Come on, we need to muffle your signature.’ He dragged her into a nearby electronics store and switched on every device he could find – flipping switches, turning knobs, hitting buttons – till the store was deafening, drowning out Anneke’s heartbeat, breathing, walking rhythm, and her residual radio signature. The shop owner tried to protest, but Viktus flashed his Rimmer’s badge at him and the man backed off.
Viktus cupped his mouth over Anneke’s ear. ‘We need to call in a cleaner. Only way to get rid of a kill-tracker…’
Anneke shook her head and pulled out her zip gun. She was going to trust good old-fashioned human reflex.
‘It won’t find us in this,’ said Viktus, but Anneke shook her head. She knew the latest kill-trackers were designed to home in on unusual ‘blind spots’ if they lost their targets. That was what they had just created here in the electronics store.
Then everything happened at once.
The storefront window imploded. People screamed. Anneke caught a glimpse of burnished gunmetal grey, as it blurred towards them – seemingly sucking the very oxygen from the room. She took a shot and missed – missed because it was not coming at her!
Anneke screamed, ‘No!’ as the kill-tracker tore into Viktus’s abdomen, exploding out in a welter of blood and intestines. As it veered back for another attack her next shot blew it apart.
Anneke was kneeling beside her stricken uncle. The shop owner killed the noise and in the sudden silence all she could hear were Viktus’s choked gasps.
‘Uncle Viktus!’
Viktus’s eyes swivelled, focused on Anneke. He managed a half smile, reaching up. Wincing with pain, he placed the palm of his hand against her cheek. ‘My daughter … how vain of me … if I could outthink your pinheads, then so could the mole.’ Then the smile faded. He murmured something and died.
Anneke stared in disbelief. It had all happened so fast. Why did she feel nothing? Where were her tears? She felt numb, as if the store’s owners had switched something off in her as well. For a moment she wondered if she was dead, too.
She looked around. People had gathered, gawking, murmuring. She took off her short cloak and laid it over her uncle’s face. She knew she had to get out of there. There could be another kill-tracker, and certainly there would be hunkies and Rimmers on the way already.
And maybe one Rimmer in particular.
She leant back against the counter for a second, took a deep breath. Time to grieve later, she decided.
Pushing through the crowd, she left the shop, wondering all the while what her uncle had meant by his dying word, ‘Cygnus’.
THE news was all over RIM headquarters. Old Man Viktus was dead. Murdered. Rumour had it that a gang of highly paid exporters had cornered him in a grocery store. Another said that a band of ex-mercs had detonated a bomb under his car, and then shot it out with Viktus, who had been tough enough to survive the blast.
Maximus was in the mess hall eating crème brûlée, his favourite dessert. He noticed a pale-faced cadet charging across the mess hall and skidding to a stop at the table where a high-ranking officer sat. The cadet whispered in the man’s ear. The officer exclaimed, ‘What?’ and leapt to his feet, knocking his chair over backwards. Both raced from the room. A groundswell of murmurings filled the hall as they left.
Maximus was too smart to even smile into his dessert bowl. ‘It begins,’ he said softly to himself.
‘What begins?’
Maximus stiffened, just slightly, then turned the action into a casual movement, swivelling languidly in his chair to eye the questioner. It was a cadet he knew vaguely from the Task Force, a research assistant. Unfortunately, the cadet was from Fessian stock, his large ears the only indicator that he had abnormally sensitive hearing.
‘Bentick, isn’t it?’ said Maximus lazily.
‘Bentick. That’s right. What did you mean, it begins?’
Maximus raised an eyebrow. ‘My favourite show is starting on the viewer but I just can’t tear myself away from my dessert. Terrible sweet tooth.’
Bentick nodded. ‘I prefer good old apple pie. Hey, did you see Manfred bolt out of here? I mean, I’ve never seen him move so fast. Something’s up.’
Maximus shrugged. ‘I guess we’ll find out.’
‘Well, see you around.’
‘See you.’
Bentick crossed to another table, joining some cadets he knew there. Maximus watched him without appearing to. Bloody bad luck, having a Fessian nearby. Somebody should lop the bastard’s lobes off. Had his cover line worked? Was Bentick fooled? It was a pretty lame line. He looked up casually, caught the other youth staring at him. He smiled, finished off his crème brûlée, and pushed his chair back.
As he did so another cadet raced in, homed in on two officers who were chatting, and blurted out his message. He was too far away for Maximus to overhear, but the officers reacted with shock and rushed out.
From the corner of his eye, Maximus noted how Bentick watched the officers leave then glance over at him. He stood, glanced about is if puzzled by the tide of whispering, and then headed off for his new apartment.
Maximus’s promotion had come through. He was now a Grade 4 Cadet Agent. A rising star, some said. Of course, Viktus had been his mentor and under normal circumstances his death would have meant swift descent, but Maximus had made himself indispensable on the Task Force. On top of that, any death of a senior meant promotions.
By the time he re
ached his apartment he had been stopped five times and told that Viktus had been assassinated. He was also given five different versions of the man’s death, none of them accurate.
Maximus stepped inside his apartment and locked the door. He removed a sweeper from his pocket and scanned the place, making sure that the only surveillance devices were his own.
Satisfied at last, he changed into civvies and left by an emergency exit. No telltale blip would show up on some geek’s console. Geeks always thought of physical tricks last.
Once outside the station he hurried to the Draco Quarter, taking a different path to his previous trip. Being unpredictable was a matter of pride for him.
His destination was a crudely furnished room behind a tailor’s shop. Without window or fireplace, it had two doors. One led in from the back of the tailor’s automated workshop and another gave access to a reekin. alley, where a broken sewer pipe had made it a local landmark for years. Nobody went there unless they really had to.
Maximus pondered the stench. The bowels of a thousand people regularly emptied themselves into this narrow trench. All that was rotten and nasty ended up outside the door to his left. Humanity at its most basic.
A solitary tallow candle, a thing so primitive it was exotic and unexpected, lighted the room. Maximus realised he was pacing and stopped himself. If only there were a chair … but the room had only an old chest and a table with the candle. He pulled the hood tighter about his head.
The alley door opened and a hooded figure slipped in, a gust of wind nearly extinguishing the candle. When the door shut, the candle flame flared up, bouncing exaggerated shadows across the floor and walls.
‘You’re the Envoy?’ asked Maximus.
The other nodded. Maximus held out a digitalised tablet. The envoy placed his palm on it. It scanned his palm and beeped that the ID was confirmed.
‘It is unwise to meet like this,’ said the Envoy.
His voice was strange and unsettling, a kind of slimy hiss that grated on the nerves. Maximus realised that he was addressing an alien, someone not of remotely human stock.
Aliens rarely entered human society or did business with humans except through mutated and neurally suppressed intermediaries, such as the Etarks, a race of clerks and bureaucrats. They were one of the few alien races that seemed genuinely indifferent to humans, and even traced their heritage back to Old Earth. Most others were paranoid, hence the general lack of ETs wandering around.
‘Not wise, no, but necessary,’ Maximus said firmly. ‘Too many ways for communications to be tapped. Your last arms shipment was late.’
The Envoy shrugged, or seemed to. Did a shrug mean the same thing to an alien?
‘Your last “payment” was dubious.’
‘The information I supplied was solid.’
‘Two of the codes were changed.’
‘I told you they would change. If you don’t act on my information when I give it to you …’ Now Maximus shrugged, exaggeratedly, so that even an alien would get it. ‘Intelligence is always time-sensitive, Envoy.’
‘My master grows impatient.’
‘He also grows with power and knowledge. Soon his wealth will grow.’
‘He does not seek wealth as you know it.’
‘He seeks the only kind of wealth there is in the galaxy today. Power. Military power. I can give him that, but wealth is always involved.’
‘Always a price.’
‘Am I a charity? If your master groans at the cost, I could align myself with another.’
The Envoy hissed. ‘There is no other. There is now only one.’
‘Ah, so I was right. A Majoris Corporata. Dear, oh dear, the Sentinels would love to know about this.’
A cold silence emanated from the Envoy’s cowl. ‘You threaten us?’
‘Never.’
‘Then give us the defence files for the entire sector.’
‘Have patience, Envoy. All in good time.’
‘We want the dreadnoughts. We must have them.’
Maximus eyed the shadowed cowl. ‘And what would you do with a fleet of Old Empire battleships, Envoy?’
‘What does RIM want with them?’
‘RIM elevates hypocrisy to a new art. On the one hand, it stands for the scrapping of such relics of the Empire Wars and the protection of subject races. But on the other, those relics provide its power, the iron fist in the diplomatic glove.’
‘Then we must empty that glove whilst the other hand is busy.’
’If the myths are true. No one has seen a dreadnought in nearly a thousand years.’
The Envoy ignored this and said in a soft hiss, ‘And you? What is it you seek?’
‘Me? A trifle.’
Maximus could feel the Envoy’s eyes boring into him but he fought his emotions down. He couldn’t afford to even blush with anger. The Envoy could probably see in the infrared.
‘Such trifles destroy galaxies,’ said the alien.
‘Fragile things, galaxies.’
Maximus had another safe house in the Draco Quarter. It could be entered at seven different points, and exited by over a dozen more.
Shortly after his meeting with the Envoy he met Kilroy in the second refuge. The assassin wasn’t happy.
‘You knew she found the worm,’ the assassin said accusingly, his voice still slurred by his mangled nose and lips.
‘Bright girl.’
‘You let me walk into a trap.’
‘I warned you, Kilroy. But you are a man of experience. Who am I to instruct you?’
‘You would throw away a valuable tool such as I?’
‘If I let you walk into a trap, Kilroy, it was because I knew you would extricate yourself from it, after a number of body bags had been filled. Anyway, it was necessary for my trap to work.’
He told Kilroy about the pressure pad bomb. Kilroy grinned. ‘Nice and simple, yet it failed.’
‘In cadet school they called her the Cat, because she had nine lives.’
‘Nine or nineteen, she’ll die in the end.’
‘Sooner rather than later, I hope.’
‘She’s called you out.’
‘What?’
‘She’s called you out. A duel.’
‘Damn,’ said Maximus. ‘She’s got nerve, I’ll give her that.’
Kilroy placed a cube on the table and activated it. Anneke’s voice filled the room.
‘You signed your death warrant today, Mole. I’m coming for you.’
She then issued a challenge, naming a place and time, and using such language that even Maximus, who prided himself on his self-control precision, felt his face burning. When the message ended he paced the length of the room.
‘So she wants a duel, does she? By damn, I’ll give her a duel.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘What? What did you say?’
‘Don’t be stupid. She’s acting emotionally. Now you are.’
Maximus took a deep breath. Then another. His anger, which had flared swiftly, abated. ‘You’re right. We’ll turn this to our advantage. We must let her have her duel – just not with me.’
Kilroy’s eyes lit up.
‘No, not you either, Kilroy. I need you for something else, an errand concerning a cadet called Bentick. But we need to find one who will champion us.’
Maximus spent a sleepless night organising the duel. He also put into play certain other processes: rumours that Anneke killed Viktus herself, that he had abused her as a child and she had gotten her revenge on him. The irony was that while it condemned her, it exonerated her to some extent. Anyway, for all Maximus knew Viktus hadn’t kept his hands to himself. How strange, if truth were to mimic lies after all?
The duel was to be in a public place: the Neo-Coliseum. Anneke might have been emotionally distraught but she wasn’t insane or incompetent. Public duels were frequent, popular, and officiated by the local hunkies, who collected a commission from both parties for ensuring that ‘clean interfacing’ took plac
e. Celebrity duels were broadcast.
Maximus had announced the duel publicly, using the name of the ‘champion’ he had hired, a renowned merc and assassin with more than seventy-six kills to his name, many in hand-to-hand combat.
When the day of the duel arrived, Maximus found himself feeling true excitement for the first time in years. He woke early, brimming with energy. After a quick breakfast and shower he stepped outside. The sky did not share his bright mood; it was leaden with a slight drizzle, but this did not deflate his mood.
He joined a queue at the Neo-Coliseum, bought a ticket like everybody else, and took his seat high up in the plastistone bleachers. The arena was modelled on the original Coliseum built by the Terran Roman Vespasiano, though few spectators were aware of this.
Maximus bought a drink and snack from a passing vendor, along with a newszine update. He noted, in a small paragraph, the accidental death of a cadet agent named Bentick. The cadet had slipped in the shower and broken his neck.
Bathrooms are the most dangerous place in any house, thought Maximus. Every cadet should remember that.
There were several duels scheduled that day, and Maximus enjoyed himself thoroughly. It was raining but the umbrella field repelled water from the stands so he had a clear view of the kill shots. Although the crowd wasn’t huge, it was loud and rowdy. Maximus joined in wholeheartedly, roaring, and jumping up and shouting when the umpire made a bad call on a foul.
Finally, he saw Anneke Longshadow step onto the field. She was tall, lithe and strikingly beautiful. For a heartbeat Maximus regretted his need to kill her. It was a shame. What couldn’t he do with someone like that at his side? Perhaps he could have her cloned and see to the replicant’s mental and emotional development.
Maximus’s champion entered the field.
Anneke and the merc chose weapons, eyed each other, and backed off a little. The first round would be a gladiatorial fight. If this did not provide a resolution, then a formal duel would take place.
The umpire raised an antiquated gunpowder pistol. There was a puff of smoke followed by a distant pop.
Anneke and the champion stalked each other. Maximus watched hungrily from the stands, running his tongue slowly across his lips. His neuro-cell pinged. He enabled the call reluctantly. ‘What is it?’ he asked sharply.
