by Ian Whates
Then she was around the corner, at the side of the big house, with solid brick between her and the sniper. Her wound pulsed with pain and blood flowed freely down her left arm, its sticky warmth coating the back of her hand and running around to work into the creases of her palm, but she couldn't stop to patch the wound, not yet. A window. She fired three shots on the run and then leapt through the shower of shattering glass, bringing renewed agony to her already throbbing arm.
Beyond was a formal dining room which might have been lifted straight from some stately home. Very retro-classical - high ceilings and everything crafted out of polished rosewood, from the ornate round-cornered table that took centre stage to its attendant twelve disciples - the matching high-backed chairs that clustered around it - and the twin sideboards that stood against the walls. If that didn't provide enough of a clue, then the large heavy framed canvases above, depicting hunting scenes and the portrait of a regal-looking man, told you instantly that this was not your average slice of suburbia.
Boulton loaded a fresh clip of ammo and headed for the room's open doorway. Neither of the gun-toting goons beyond stood a chance, mown down in the hail of bullets that heralded her arrival. The sweeping stairway and the high-ceilinged entrance hall itself might have been impressive if she'd had the time to consider them properly. Instead her attention focussed unerringly on the solid wooden front door, which stood to her right as she burst from the dining room. Somebody yelled from behind her, words she didn't catch as she lunged at the door, her hands closing around its gleaming brass handle.
The instant her hand clasped the cold metal the simulation faded, winking out as if it had never been, to leave her standing in the vast warehouse-like space of the honeycomb's sim room. She was breathing heavily, having pushed her body hard in this one, but at least the agony of her injured arm faded with the rest.
Somebody clapped and a tall figure stepped forward from the shadows: Pavel Benson. "Very clever," he said, "coming at the door from the inside like that."
She shrugged. "You told me that reaching the door was the goal; nobody said anything about which side I had to reach. It struck me that you'd probably have some nasty surprises lying in wait if I'd gone for the direct approach."
"We did."
"Well" - now came the moment of truth - "did I pass?"
She had been exonerated of any blame for what went down at the habitat, at least officially, and nobody was referring to the operation as a fiasco, not in public. After all, the principle objective had been to eliminate the habitat as a threat, and they'd achieved that, no question. Yet when the specialists moved in to pick over the corpse of their enemy, they'd found hundreds of dead in a facility that was clearly capable of accommodating thousands, just as her gun had suggested, and the bald facts were that ULAW had lost one of its precious eyegees, while of the one hundred and eighty marines she and Case had led between them, only four had come back alive. Those four owed their survival not to any brilliance on her part but to the lightning-quick response of the retrieval drones, much as she herself did. No, nobody was calling this a debacle in public.
She'd gone through the mission a hundred times in her head, wondering if she could have done anything differently. The only thing she might have changed was the automated weapon placements. If she'd stopped to take them out when the gun first identified them, lives might have been saved there if not in the long run, but she'd counted on the gun's assurance that they weren't a threat. That was what this latest exercise was all about, she suddenly realised, to gauge just how dependant on the weapon and its guiding AI she'd become.
Benson was nodding and smiling. That had to be a good sign. "You did okay."
Coming from him, that was high praise indeed, and Boulton was amazed at quite how relieved she felt on hearing those words.
"Well enough that I'm sending you out again."
"Oh?" She hadn't expected a full reprieve that quickly.
"We've got a potential lead on Jim Leyton."
She stared into Benson's eyes, saw him smile and knew that her reaction had given her away. He now knew beyond any doubt how much she wanted this.
"The needle ship squadron recently engaged a habitat ship - the one we've identified as being responsible for the raid on Sheol, the one that Leyton is almost certainly on. After careful study of the intel gathered during the attack, we're confident that the rebel's engines took substantial damage. There was also a deal of collateral damage to the sections of the ship adjacent to the drive. Our best guess is that we've crippled her engines and taken out most if not all her engineering personnel."
"That's a heck of an assumption," Boulton couldn't help but comment.
"Taken on its own, perhaps, but hear me out. One of our monitoring stations picked up a hack into ULAW security systems. An apparently trivial thing that would normally have been noted and added to a list of thousands of things 'to be looked at later,' but some bright spark made a connection. The hack was designed to ferret out information on a particular individual, an ex-navy engineer by the name of Kyle, who happens to have been the first human recruited by The Noise Within and is, as far as we know, the only human to have ever worked with Byrzaen engines.
"Knowing my connection to the Byrzaen operation at New Paris, our friendly bright spark made sure the information was passed up the line to me.
"We're pretty sure that this hack was carried out by the habitat, and why else would they be interested in an engineer unless they needed someone who might just be able to fix their ship?"
Boulton frowned. There was a gaping hole at the heart of Benson's argument, and as far as she could see only one thing could fill it; something that made no sense at all. "All right," she said carefully, "but why? Are you trying to tell me that the habitat have Byrzaen technology?"
He shrugged. "Habitat ships can jump without using wormholes. So can the Byrzaens. Now somebody is trying to track down the only man in ULAW space with firsthand knowledge of alien engine systems at a time when we know the habitat needs a mechanic. You tell me."
The bastard knew far more than he was saying. Benson had one of those faces that might as well have been carved from granite. He never gave anything away, but right now she knew he was holding out on her, despite his deadpan expression. He was also her boss, though, and after recent events she was walking on eggshells, which meant her options were pretty limited at present, so she turned her attention back to what he had said rather than what he'd so studiously left out.
"So if Leyton is on that ship, if its engines were sufficiently damaged, if enough of their specialists were killed and if they have a means of tracking down this engineer... they might be going after him."
Benson's smile had grown markedly thin-lipped. "I did stress that this was only a potential lead."
Sod the eggshells. She felt them grind to dust beneath her feet as she said, "Sounds like a long shot to me."
"Which is better than no shot at all."
Barely, in Boulton's opinion.
Benson was still speaking. "We've tracked down this 'Kyle.' He recently signed on as crew to an old trader-cum-smuggler called The Peridon. The ship's currently bound for a backwater planet called Arcadia. We've diverted a courier ship and have it waiting to take you directly there. If you leave now you should arrive a little ahead of The Peridon, and will have full authority to co-opt whatever local support you require."
Boulton knew she ought to feel delighted. After all, up until a few moments ago her very future as an eyegee had been in doubt, and now here she was being handed an assignment. Yet she couldn't escape the feeling that this was a wild goose chase, and that while she was dispatched to some forgotten corner of the galaxy on a pointless waste of time, a genuine lead would come in and be handed to somebody else. That was her greatest concern, that somebody other than her would be granted the pleasure of taking down that bastard Leyton. The prospect gnawed at her innards like a festering ulcer.
Not that she had a choice here, and
the sooner she left the sooner she could be back. So Boulton made no further complaint but instead simply nodded and said, "Sir!" with only a hint of irony, before hurrying away to prepare for her imminent trip.
PART TWO
Chapter Twelve
Kyle had visited a fair few worlds in his time but never Arcadia, as far as he could recall. Once, the prospect of landing on a new planet would have thrilled him, but not anymore. Too many new places had disappointed by being anything but. He might not know this particular town but he knew plenty like it. Cramped bars and narrow streets, cheap rooms, doss houses, narc-dens, quickthrill booths and seedy gaming halls, dealers on the prowl, whores on the hustle and bum-boys on the make; hawkers, fixers, pimps, thieves, contractors, pedlars and opportunists, all on the lookout for a mark. Spaceports attracted them like flies to a dung heap. All it took was for some forgotten patch of open ground to be designated a landing area and before you knew it a town sprung up, or existing, formerly-sleepy surburban streets would be overflowing with gaudy souvenirs, knocked-off cyber gadgets, cheap leather goods and sweat-shop clothing outlets sandwiched between fast food stalls and bootleg booze stands. Everything your average spacer, starved of life's little luxuries, could possibly wish for. Freshly released from the confinement of their star-flitting metal tubes with credits in their pockets - and even for those a little short on credit but still long on urges - this was exactly the sort of place most of them would be dreaming of.
Normally, you could have counted Kyle among them; this would have been home from home, but right now 'normal' didn't come into it. There'd been nothing normal about his life since he jumped ship to join a pirate crew, only to discover that he was the only human on board.
As far as he could determine, he'd barely escaped a lengthy stay in a ULAW jail following that fiasco, thanks to the intervention of the government man, Leyton; Jim, as he'd originally introduced himself. Since then, Kyle's life had gone into freefall, with one disaster following hot on the heels of another, this most recent career move merely the latest entry in a sorry catalogue of misfortunes.
Buchan had seemed a decent enough sort; Captain and owner of a small trade vessel, a scavenger, pootling around the fringes of ULAW space picking up cargo here and delivering it there - surviving on the jobs that were too small or where the margins were too tight to interest the corporate boys - and Buchan was short of an engineer. Perfect; the sort of venture which would never make you rich but where a decent living could be eked out, if you were savvy enough.
Kyle had taken the job with every expectation of revisiting his past. He'd assumed this would be much like life aboard The Star Witch, his first civilian position after leaving the navy - a period which he remembered with great fondness. However, he soon discovered that nostalgia wasn't all it's cracked up to be. True, The Peridon had seen better days, much like the earlier ship, but there all similarity ended. As soon as he stepped aboard The Star Witch he'd been welcomed with open arms, made to feel part of the family, and had soon found himself an accepted member of a tight-knit crew. The Peridon's crew also seemed pretty tight, but they were far from welcoming. Instead, Kyle found himself excluded, treated with suspicion that fell just short of outright hostility. Conversations would stop as he entered a room, and smiles were few and far between. The longer this first trip went on, the firmer his conviction grew that the others were hiding something, that it was more than mere camaraderie that bound them together and cast him as the outsider, but rather a sense of shared guilt.
Kyle had never been so grateful to get off a ship in his life, not even The Noise Within. He determined to use the time in port to try and hustle up a berth on another ship as quickly as possible - on any other ship - and the scene that unfolded on the dockside as they disembarked did nothing to change his mind.
The five of them - with him lagging slightly behind the four regular crewmembers - were just leaving the docking arm when three figures came striding towards them.
"Buchan!" yelled the first - a short, grizzled man who was clearly livid and spoiling for a fight. The other three members of The Peridon's crew tensed and drew a little closer to their captain. Hands strayed towards weapons.
"Heard you were coming in," the short man said, stopping before them an arm's reach away.
"Low, what a pleasure," Buchan replied. If a smile could ever imply a sneer, this was it.
"You owe me, you bastard." The pointed finger stabbed out, a hair's breadth away from Buchan's chest.
The Peridon's captain didn't flinch. From the look on his face and those of the other crew members, Kyle guessed he was finally catching a glimpse of whatever guilty secret they were hiding. At least, that was his hope.
"You weren't the only one to get burned, Low, we lost our engineer, remember?" Eyes flickered briefly in Kyle's direction, while he berated himself for not asking more about his predecessor. What had it been, this incident that had developed into a festering sore on the collective conscience of The Peridon's crew? Robbery, smuggling, narcotics, illicit tech, passage for a wanted felon, what? Something high risk, high gain and highly illegal, that much was obvious.
"Your engineer? I lost my fucking son!"
"Yeah, I heard. Sorry and all that, but everybody knew the risks going in."
"What risks? There were no risks. Not until you tried to muscle in on my operation."
"Bullshit! The whole thing was obviously a scam from day one. Tech like that doesn't suddenly pop up out of nowhere onto the open market."
Ah, so that was it. Illicit tech; weapons system or AI interface, most likely. They seemed to be the two hot topics these days.
"No, no," Low was shaking his head, his fury unabated. "I'm not letting you slither out of it that easily. Everything was sweet as a nut until you came blundering in with your greed and your half-assed crew. Three men I lost, one of them Jamie; not to mention the damage to the ship." Low was literally shaking with anger, and Kyle wouldn't have been surprised to see the smaller man launch himself at Buchan there and then, but he controlled himself with evident difficulty, and actually took a step back. "And you're going to pay for what happened, all of you." He swept a pointed finger, taking in the group of them.
Kyle considered himself a bystander in this, no more than an interested observer, but of course he wasn't, he was a part of The Peridon's crew. He felt Low's glare sweep over him, and knew that in this man's eyes at least they were well and truly united. Low had clocked each and every one of them, as if to lodge their faces indelibly in his mind's eye. Kyle was now guilty by association and Low didn't seem the sort to concern himself with technicalities, such as the fact that all this had happened before Kyle even signed on.
"By the time I'm through with you, you'll wish you'd never even heard of The Peridon."
There was a flurry of movement behind Buchan. Kent, tall, swarthy Kent, moved more quickly than Kyle would have believed he could, sweeping up an arm and producing a gun from somewhere; a brutal looking rifle. Nothing fancy and all business, it pointed straight at Low.
The docks were quiet, at least this section was. Their altercation had drawn little attention and Kyle didn't imagine the presence of a gun was going to alter that. Somehow, he doubted this was the first weapon to ever be drawn here.
"Fuck off, Low," Buchan drawled. "You're beginning to annoy us."
Low didn't appear to be intimidated. In fact he guffawed, as if this was exactly the sort of contemptible response he'd expect from the likes of Buchan and his crew. "This isn't over. Don't think for one moment that it is." With a final glare, he swivelled around and stalked off, flanked by his two men.
A melodramatic oaf, no question, but that didn't mean he wasn't dangerous.
The gun disappeared back inside the long coat Kent was wearing. Buchan and his three cronies exchanged glances. Kyle didn't feel remotely reassured by the uncertainty he saw there.
"Don't take no notice," Cully, the navigator, advised, directing the comment at his captain. "Now that
he's got that little outburst off his chest, he'll leave us alone."
Buchan grunted. "Yeah, most likely you're right." Although he sounded as if he were trying to convince himself rather than anyone else. "All the same, everyone watch your backs while we're here. There are a lot more of them than us."
Great. Just the sort of thing Kyle wanted to hear. "Is someone going to tell me what that was all about?" he ventured.
"No," Cully replied, which hardly came as a surprise.
"Best you don't know," Buchan added.
Perhaps he was right. Best for whom, though?
Kyle suspected that all those present realised he wasn't going to be around for much longer, one way or another.
They left the port facility without further challenge, and stepped forth into bedlam. The mass of people came as a shock after so long spent in an environment populated by just the five of them. Kids were the first thing, flocking to them the moment they emerged into the street, trying to tempt the new arrivals with everything from gaudy trinkets to guaranteed aphrodisiacs, from bootleg drugs to their own scrawny bodies.
They walked on unheeding, soon shedding the posse of young entrepreneurs, who slid away one by one, drifting back to haunt the port entrance, waiting for the next batch of freshly docked spacers. The kids were only the first irritation, though. Maybe this was Market Day, or even 'Get in the Way of a Spacer Day,' Kyle wasn't sure. All he knew was that the streets were heaving, with most folk evidently not in a hurry to be anywhere except in his path.
