by David Drake
He obviously didn’t want to look like a mother desperate to check her child after the first day of school. Equally obviously, that was how he felt about having handed his equipment over to somebody else, however apparently trustworthy.
“Johann and I are going out,” Coke said. “I’d like to hear about your trip when we get back, though.”
He reached for the door again.
“Just a moment, sir,” Barbour said. “Let me find Peres for you. He’s left Astra headquarters.”
Coke blinked at the intelligence officer. “You were listening in on all this while you were gone?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” Barbour said. “Through the console. Ah—perhaps I should have asked your permission?”
He looked up in sudden concern. Barbour’s sandy hair and unlined face gave him the appearance of being a boy at least a decade younger than he really was.
“I won’t tell you how to do your job,” Coke said. “I just—well, I didn’t know you could do that from a remote location. Without special equipment.”
“Yes sir,” Barbour said. He grinned suddenly, unexpectedly. “Commo helmets are more special than most people realize. If you know how to program them, which isn’t any great trick.”
Right, thought Coke. He’d heard exceptional cooks talk the same way, in absolute honesty. Oh, there was nothing to it. Nor was there, for them. As opposed to 99.7 percent of the people who might have attempted the same dish, with results ranging from mediocre to disastrous.
The console display shifted fluidly as Barbour spoke. It locked into a section of streetscape five hundred meters west of Astra HQ. “Here’s where he’s gone, sir,” Barbour explained. “I think he’s on the third floor.”
Coke hooked a finger to Evie Hathaway to join the group about the display. “How in blazes did you determine that?” he asked. “How did you even know Peres had left the building?”
“Voice print,” Niko Daun said/guessed.
“Right in one,” Barbour agreed. “I told the software to analyze audio inputs and track Peres through it. He’d gone out past the bug at the courtyard gate a few minutes after you’d left, telling the guards he was going to the Bucket.”
“The Bucket of Blood,” Mistress Hathaway said. “Yes, it’s in that building all right. It’s an Astra bar. No worse than most places, not really.”
“I tracked him through the external sensors here on Hathaway House,” Barbour said in obvious—and justifiable—pride. “He was traveling with three companions, talking frequently enough that I could follow the audio after I lost video . . . though even with enhancement, I’ll admit that there was a lot of guesswork at the end, sir.”
“Your guesswork is what laymen call genius,” Coke said. “You don’t need to be modest with me, Bob. And Via! Call me Matthew, all right?”
“We need to place more sensors up and down the road,” Daun said. “Visual, too. I’ll get on that right now.”
“Would you prefer to find Roberson, ah, Matthew?” Barbour asked. “Mistress Guzman hasn’t left the building.”
“No, no,” Coke said. “Master Peres is the choice for this approach.” He smiled tightly. “He’s a gambler. That’s what we need.”
Niko Daun opened his case. He sorted through it with practiced fingers, pulling out items from several different pockets.
“Let me get something to drink,” Margulies said, “and I’ll give you some backup, kid. No rest for the wicked, hey?”
She walked toward the saloon, rubbing the shoulder where the strap of her sub-machine gun had hung during the jitney ride. At the archway she turned and said, “When we all get back, Matthew, I’d like to talk to you about L’Escorial. I don’t know how important it is.”
Coke nodded. “Sure,” he said.
“Shall we visit the Bucket of Blood, Matthew?” Vierziger said. “I wonder if the ambiance is as high-toned as the name.”
He giggled as he opened the door.
The shill for the Bucket of Blood was a woman in pirate costume on whose shoulder perched either an aviform or a bird-featured robot (the thing/creature certainly wasn’t a Terran parrot). She was bare-breasted, overweight, and seemed desperately tired.
From the way she kept trying to wipe invisible cobwebs from her face, Coke suspected that the woman had already overloaded on gage. Additional cones could no longer stave off the crash into near-coma that was due in an hour at the latest; they could only prolong its duration.
The outside stairs serving the third-floor tavern were wide enough for two to pass if they were careful. The burly Astra who came out while the pair of Frisians were midway above the second landing was deliberately clumsy. He lurched toward Vierziger, in the lead, in an obvious attempt to crush the smaller man against the railing for a joke.
Vierziger shifted stance and dodged past the Astra, right shoulder to right. Vierziger’s hand moved too, probably with something in it, though even Coke couldn’t be sure. Hand or object made the Astra’s head tunk like a hammered melon. The man slid bonelessly down the stairs to the landing, where he sprawled.
The woman who’d accompanied the Astra out of the bar stared at the Frisians without speaking. Coke politely lifted his commo helmet as he passed her on the stairs.
The Bucket’s waiters were husky, and the man in a protective cage by the door carried a beanbag gun. The big-bore weapon fired bagged shot at low velocity, giving the projectile an impact like the fist of the most powerful boxer who ever lived.
The beanbag gun could break bones, but it wasn’t generally fatal. Coke presumed the intention was to avoid dangerous penetrations rather than to spare troublemakers’ lives, however.
All the bar’s staff and most of the clientele wore blue, though some of the patrons were obvious sailors who’d simply tied on a neckerchief of the correct color as a temporary measure. The music was loud and there was a life-sized holographic sex show going on in one corner, but the place wasn’t exceptionally bad for its type.
Exceptionally tough was another matter. Most of the people, staff and patrons alike, carried guns. One wrong word and the bar would sound like Settlers’ Day celebrations on a frontier planet.
Peres wore black, not blue. He and the three men with whom he’d left Astra HQ were in a corner booth with three women and a boy. Stim cones stood to attention on the table, with empties littering the stained floor beneath. Peres groped the crotch of one of the women beneath her dress, but his heart didn’t seem to be in the activity.
Coke approached, Vierziger a pace behind to his leader’s off side. An Astra with Peres looked up and grabbed for the machine pistol he carried in a shoulder holster.
There wasn’t enough elbow room on the banquette seats for the fellow to draw. Peres saw the attempt, glanced blank-faced toward the oncoming Frisians, and broke into an oily smile.
“My friend Master Coke!” Peres called over the glass-edged music. The gigolo reached across the girl he’d been fondling to lay a finger of restraint on the wrist of the henchman with the machine pistol. “And Master Vierziger as well! Can I hope that you’re here for pleasure?”
“Business first, Master Peres,” Coke said. “But if it goes well, then in a couple months we’ll all have both time and a reason to celebrate. Is there a place you and we could. . . ?”
“Here,” Peres said without hesitation. He chucked the girl under the chin. “You lot, get out of here. We need the space.”
“Hey!” said the girl. “You told us that—”
Peres’ three henchmen stood up. The boy and the other two women were leaving the booth without objection. Peres hit the protesting woman with the same hand that had been between her legs a moment before. Her head snapped back and she sprawled across the banquette.
The guard with the beanbag gun turned at the commotion. When he saw Peres was involved—and that Peres didn’t need further help—he looked away.
One of the Astras with Peres carried gloves thrust through the epaulette loops of his sleeveless blue sh
irt. He took the pair out and pulled one of them on. It had fishhooks sewn into the back, points forward.
The other two women shrieked and grabbed their fellow. They dragged her out of the booth before the Astra was ready to punch her. He aimed a kick, but she was too groggy to react.
No bones broken, just a bruise or two.
Coke smiled at Peres. The escorts sat down again.
Coke thought of the ruck of blood and offal the mines had left of the L’Escorial cordon. This time he fantasized that the uniforms were blue, and that some of the pellet-torn faces were those of the men before him.
He sat on one end of the semi-circular banquette; Vierziger took the other end, across from his leader, so that they both had a way out of the booth. In a room full of guns and blue garb, that wasn’t a free ticket home, but it was better than having to ask permission of Peres and his thugs before getting to your feet.
“What I was thinking, Master Peres . . .” Coke said.
“Adolpho, please,” the gigolo said. “And Matthew and—”
He cocked an eyebrow toward Vierziger and smirked.
Vierziger smirked back, for the Lord’s sake! “Johann, and of course you may,” the little killer said.
“We realize that you’re doubtful about committing so much money without certainty of the result, Adolpho,” Coke resumed. “I’d like to show you that quite apart from armed force, we can help you through planning and—data collection.”
He’d almost said “intelligence,” meaning it in the military sense. Peres might have misunderstood by taking the word at its general meaning. That would have been correct also; but the wrong thing for Coke to have said aloud.
“What do you have in mind, then?” the gigolo said. Peres wasn’t as stupid as Vierziger claimed while listening to the bugged conversation. Rather, he had no experience of the world outside Cantilucca, and he was too young to realize that Cantilucca was a very small pond.
“Your competitors warehouse their gage,” Coke said. “With the information my colleagues and I provide, you can snatch the whole amount without any alarm being given. That’s pure profit, a good quarter of the cost of the FDF’s services.”
“We could never do that!” said the Astra holding the hooked gloves. He looked as though Coke had told him to walk on water.
“Besides which,” Vierziger said with a smile, “that will leave your L’Escorial friends with severe liquidity problems. They won’t be able to bid for comparable services for several months.”
Peres looked from one Frisian to the other. His right index finger sorted out one of the unused stim cones in the pile before him. He flicked it across the table to Vierziger. “Try this,” he directed.
Vierziger rotated the thumbnail-sized gray cone. The casing didn’t have the usual markings, lines, or spots to indicate the contents. “Gage?” he asked.
“Gage and,” the gigolo said. “Go on, try it.”
Vierziger shrugged and set the injector to his left wrist.
Peres wheeled and looked at Coke again. “Why are you offering me suggestions that’ll handicap you in getting the Lurias to jack up your price?” he demanded
Coke smiled. “I’m not on Cantilucca to raise the price,” he said. “I’m here to deal on the terms my superiors set me.”
The smile broadened and grew as terrible as the one that played over Vierziger’s lips in the aftermath of the mine blasts. “It may be that your L’Escorial friends think the way they greeted me cost them only a dozen dead. They would be wrong. It’s cost them everything they have—so long as the Widow is willing to meet our minimum demands.”
“The Widow is willing to do whatever I tell her,” Peres sneered. “But how can I be sure you’re not playing a double game? Let’s you and him fight, hey? Astra and L’Escorial . . . and your troops land to loot the ruins.”
A shudder rolled through Vierziger’s frame. Coke looked at his companion with unexpressed concern. The little gunman waved a negligent hand when the spasm passed.
“What is it?” he asked Peres.
“Gage,” the gigolo said. He smiled. “But cut with first-distillation tailings. Are you afraid now?”
Vierziger laughed. “Afraid of what? Dying? No, Master Peres, not me.”
Vierziger flexed his hands above the table, showing that the nerves and muscles all responded normally. He laughed again. His voice sounded like snake scales scraping on rock. The nearest gunman groped toward his hip holster, then caught himself.
“There won’t be a fight,” Coke said to Peres. The pulse of the music overrode the discussion anywhere beyond the booth itself. The gigolo’s decision to negotiate here had been a reasonable one. “There’s only a few watchmen in the warehouse. I can show you how to get through the walls, and how to disconnect all the alarms before you start the operation.”
“Are you afraid of a fight, Master Peres?” Vierziger asked in a voice too soft to be a gibe . . . and with a grin that could have sharpened knives.
“No,” the Astra leader snapped. He looked at Coke. “Money in my purse so that there can be money in yours, hey? Very reasonable. So we’ll do it—but you’ll come along, Matthew, so that we can be sure the deal is that reasonable.”
“All right,” Coke agreed. “We’ll go to your headquarters now and I’ll brief you. I’ll need a hologram projector—or I can get one from the hotel.”
Peres’ lips tightened. “We have projectors. We’re civilized here, not some backwater, you know!”
Coke didn’t laugh in the gigolo’s face. Again, it wouldn’t have been politic.
“Then let’s go,” he said, rising. “After I brief you, I’ll send a message capsule to my superiors to update them. The operation itself will take place tonight, if you can get your end together that quickly.”
“Yes, of course we can!” Peres snapped. He looked at Vierziger, rising also. “Are you going?”
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” said Johann Vierziger, stroking the inside of his left wrist with his right index finger, his trigger finger.
Coke viewed his surroundings from a cool vantage point above his flesh and prickling nerves. He would see Pilar when he routed the message capsule toward Nieuw Friesland. There would be time for dinner afterward, and other things.
And it might be the last time Matthew Coke had.
Sten Moden emerged from the alley between a pair of six-story structures. Washed clothes hung by an arm or leg from poles thrust out of windows on the upper floors. The washing was the first sign of domesticity the Frisian had seen on Cantilucca.
The area behind the buildings along Potosi’s single street was given over to garbage, storage, and living quarters. In a few places the forest had been cleared. Generally the trees had died when human activities stripped their bark or poisoned their roots. Derelicts used dead limbs for firewood and sheltered beneath the fallen boles.
This ten-by-twenty-meter space equidistant from the two syndicate headquarters was one of the formal exceptions. Four large trees had been left at the corners to support a roof of structural plastic. A metal post peaked the center of one end; the sheeting was rectangular, while the area it covered was a rough trapezoid. One of the corner trees was dead, but for the moment it seemed steady enough.
The fenced area under the rigid marquee garaged vehicles ranging from jitneys to the elaborate aircar beneath which projected the legs of a man in multi-pocket overalls. The four lift fans whined in different keys. They were spinning out of synchrony, obvious even to ears less trained than Moden’s.
A boy of twelve or so was in the driver’s seat, adjusting controls in obedience to orders which the man under the chassis shouted. The boy saw Moden and chopped the car’s throttles. “Father!” he called. “A man is here. A big man!”
Moden waved to show that he was friendly. The fence around the garage was a combination of woven wire, barbed wire, and the body panels of wrecked vehicles welded to metal posts.
The chained and locked gate was
metal plating on a tubular frame. Judging from the power cables, it could be electrified. Moden didn’t feel a prickle when he passed the back of his hand close, but he didn’t actually touch the panel to be sure that the power was off either.
The man who pushed himself into sight from beneath the aircar was dark-skinned and solid-looking; in his late thirties or maybe forty standard years, though Moden didn’t consider himself any judge of age.
“Yes sir?” the mechanic called.
“I want to rent a vehicle,” Moden replied. “Maybe several, there’s six of us. We landed from Nieuw Friesland yesterday on business.”
The man relaxed slightly. He wiped his hands carefully on a rag, giving himself time to consider both the request and the stranger making it.
“My name’s Moden,” the logistics officer went on, adding reassurance. “Besides, I’ve worked maintenance myself and I wanted to see what your operation was like. Who decided to bring a Stellarflow to Cantilucca?”
He gestured toward the aircar, its fans now at idle.
The mechanic’s face changed again, this time to an expression of interest and even hope. “I am Esteban Rojo,” he said. “I am the owner here, though not of the aircar.”
He glanced over his shoulder and called to the boy, “Pito? Go on back to the house now. It’s time for your lessons.”
He unlocked the chain. Moden stepped aside so that Esteban could swing the gate outward. The boy darted through, following the one-armed stranger with his eyes until disappearing into the alley.
Esteban gestured Moden into the enclosure before chaining and relocking the gate. “You’re familiar with the Stellarflow, then?” he asked.
“There’s people who swear by them,” Moden said, looking critically at the ornate aircar. “Not the people responsible for maintenance, though. And I wouldn’t have thought you could get parts for one closer than Earth. Are there many aircars on Cantilucca?”
“This one,” the mechanic said glumly. “Adolpho Peres, a friend of the Widow Guzman, bought it on Delos and shipped it here. He’s given me a tennight to get it running properly.”
