Flashpoint (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  For a moment the man hesitated, and Travers held his breath. Then, “I’m on 27 West,” Reanie said slowly, “opposite the clubs. Look for a blue sign, you can’t miss me. I’ll be in the office for an hour, and then I’m gone, understand?”

  “We’re on our way.” Vaurien waved a hand into the control field, and the connection broke. He lifted one brow at Jazinsky.

  “Cockroach,” she said succinctly. “He’s been dealing in live cargo, no doubt about it.”

  “But there’s a lot he’s not saying,” Marin added.

  “Not on open comm, man.” Ramon beckoned the buggy closer and swung into it. “You want every man and his uncle knowing your shit?”

  “In this place?” Vaurien demanded. “You think it’s possible to keep secrets?”

  “From you,” Ramon mused. “Like the cockroach said, you went legit. You fly on a Fleet contract. You’re not even welcome in Halfway. They’ll let you dock, take your money, but you’re not welcome here.”

  Vaurien’s lip curled, an expression of distaste. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t snivel in grief.”

  Fully loaded, the buggy lifted reluctantly and the motors howled with strain until it jetted into the light gravity fields. 27 was one of the upper levels; West was on the opposite side of the habitat from the docks. Travers leaned over the rail to watch the floor drop out under them, and then looked up – or was it down? – at the structures dead overhead. Even his middle ear, which had been trained in a Marines combat simulator, protested.

  The buggy was no more than a platform riding a very old, very battered Arago sled. The handrail was new, glossy with fresh paint, but Vaurien winced as he heard the repulsion generator spluttering, and twice on the way to the fractional-G field, Travers felt the momentary falling sensation in the pit of his belly as the grav-resist fluctuated, like the beginning and end of a fast elevator ride.

  Scores of similar buggies and multicolored kites flitted through the habitat. Laughter, music and inebriated voices seemed to fill the very air. Xanadu might have been worlds away from the lower levels. Travers could scarcely believe that the pit of Gemini was no more than two thousand meters away, as a maintenance drone would fly it. He settled against the rail with Marin, content to watch Curtis watching the odd life forms which thronged Halfway – all of them human, none of them familiar.

  “27 coming up,” Jazinsky warned, “and I’m seeing several clubs. You ever been up here, Ramon?”

  “Only drinking and screwing,” Ramon said. “There’s a few safe clubs up here. Fernie’s been to Halfway three, four times in the last few months. After a while you get bored out of your gourd. If you’re interested, I know a place where the females have the biggest superstructure you ever saw, and the titrings light up in the dark and play reggae blues.”

  “Oh, bliss,” Vaurien intoned.

  “I also know a place where the boys have the biggest dicks you ever saw, just this side of your actual donkey stud,” Ramon said blithely, “and you can bet on the target-shooting events. Accuracy and distance. True.”

  “We believe you,” Travers assured him. “God knows, would you lie to us? And there’s your blue sign.” He touched Richard’s shoulder to draw his attention. “Outbound Salvage Brokers. Has to be Reanie.”

  It was a hole in the wall, a tiny property in some of the most upmarket levels on Halfway. A doorway, a single tall, narrow window, six assorted sensor probes and vid lenses, a pale green fascia set over the construction of an original prefabricated blockhouse. Travers had seen such buildings many times, on mining colonies and in the citybottom warrens of old, old cities. The glamour clubs opposite Reanie’s premises were new and literally floating in the air on grav-resist, but the original structures in Xanadu had been broken out of the Explorer’s storage holds.

  Incredible courtesans reclined in the big, bowed windows of a club called Kuro Neko. Travers wondered about their pricetag, and Marin leaned closer. “If you have to ask what it costs –”

  “You can’t afford it,” Travers finished. “Out of my league.”

  “But not mine,” Marin reminded. “If you’re interested.”

  Travers gave him a sidelong look, speculative and amused, then cast a glance back at the outrageous exotics in the display windows, and shook his head. “They’re not real. You might as well do a VR hookup and save the money … and even if they were real – not my scene.”

  “Philistine,” Ramon remarked with a certain glee as the buggy drifted in against the promenade between the clubs and the much older structures. He stepped off the platform and ogled the Companions with overt delight. Several boys were beckoning. They looked like cousins, with pale gold hair and dark ebony skin, and impossibly blue eyes. Ramon whistled, and was already moving in their direction. “You guys are on for your meeting,” he said over his shoulder, “and I got better things to do, so I’ll see you later.”

  “We shove off tomorrow,” Vaurien said pointedly, “with or without you.”

  “I’ll be there,” Ramon promised, one moment before he stepped into the embrace of the cousins and the garish, noisy throng on the promenade swallowed them all up.

  The Outbound Salvage Brokers sign was discreet. To one side of the frontage was a repair bay – closed up, with wire gates locked for the night – offering to fix or replace anything from coffee pots to biocyber limbs. To the other side was a noodle bar with monochrome decor and an obnoxious barker trying to scare up business with the promise of prize vouchers in the fortune cookies.

  Lights burned in Ronald Joaquin Reanie’s office, but the door was locked. A lens panned to examine all four faces before a bolt snapped back and a shape moved inside. Travers had expected to see Reanie there, and was surprised to find a tall, angular woman in their path. A mane of red and black hair spilled from the side of her head which was not shaved; the tattoos and body art followed her bones and curves. The knives sheathed against both her calves were not steel but kevlex, equally as deadly, and unlikely to trip the security systems.

  Pale blue eyes looked them over, and Vaurien held both hands out from his sides. “We’re not looking for trouble, lady. Its business, like I told Reanie. Nothing else would bring me here.”

  She stood aside, and the door slid fully open. “In the back. And you’re on surveillance. There’s ten drones in the building. You can be up close and personal with any five, faster than you can pull a gun.”

  “I’m not carrying,” Vaurien assured her.

  The woman seemed unimpressed. “Whatever. Ron!” Her voice rose, piercing. The accent was backwoods, perhaps Mawson or one of the lesser ports of the Shackleton Void. “They check out, Ron! I know this one by sight … Vaurien. Every bastard in Halfway knows him, and Jazinsky. The other two, I don’t know, but they smell like goons.” She lifted one shaved and penciled brow at Travers and Marin.

  “What sort of idiots would we be,” Jazinsky demanded, “if we walked in here naked? Your boss already told us, we’re not welcome. You people seem to think we had some choice about flying for Shapiro.”

  “He’s not my boss,” the woman said tartly, “and I don’t know nothing about Fleet, and Shapiro, and all that. Hey, Ron! You want to get out here?”

  The front office was tiny, cramped, half-lit and claustrophobic. Travers felt the press of too-close walls, and the prickle of survival instincts as old as the species. Movement in the back drew his eyes, and through a draped arch he caught a glimpse of a great cavern cut back into the parent rock of the planetoid itself. Shapes loomed in the shadows there; crates, barrels, palletized goods, dormant drones, unidentifiable equipment. And out of the morass stepped a man.

  He was small, unconcernedly balding, with curiously blurred features and restless hands. He dressed in a tunic over baggy slacks; and he was casually barefoot, but the shape of a weapon bulged the tunic at his left side. The voice was like gravel rolling in a pail.

  “All right, Vaurien, you wanted to talk. What can I do you for?”

  “Or
else get the hell out of your place,” Richard guessed.

  “I can smell Fleet on you.” Ron Reanie looked him up and down, and then transferred the rude scrutiny to Travers and Marin. “And on them.”

  “In that case,” Jazinsky said brusquely, “you’ll probably already know why we’re here. You’re down so low, Reanie, you deal in human beings. Don’t bother denying it.”

  “I wasn’t going to.” Reanie crossed both arms over his chest, a defensive posture. “I deal in scum, Jazinsky. Fleet goons who came out to the Deep Sky to climb all over us, and who wound up shit outta luck on the losing side before they could cut us to pieces. Sending them to hell is a sacred act. They’re fresh meat for the mines, if they’ve got the muscle, and the sexshops if they’ve got the looks. The price of muscle and ass is about the same, and after they’re sold, it ain’t for me to decide where they finish up. What’s it to you?”

  Travers saw a muscle in Vaurien’s jaw twitching, betraying his grinding teeth. “Harrison Shapiro wants to buy them.”

  For a moment Reanie blinked at him, as if he suspected a joke. “You’re serious.”

  “Absolutely serious. Whatever the top bid is, or was, we’ll beat it by a decent enough margin to make it worth your while.”

  “Well, Jesus Christ, why didn’t you get your asses in here three days ago?” Reanie looked at the woman, his partner, and rolled his eyes. “You hear that, Stella? I let that bastard take the whole cargo for prices we bloody knew were robbery. I told you they were worth more, especially the lookers, with the good bodies. You know what chicken like that’ll bring, in the sexshops. Didn’t I tell you they were worth twice that bid?”

  “You told me,” Stella agreed, “but at the time you were griping about feed, water, sewerage and medical. You can’t keep labor locked up for long before you start burying your investment.” She gave Vaurien a mildly apologetic look. “You’re too late. They shipped out.”

  For a moment Vaurien’s brown eyes closed, and then he took a deep breath and nailed Reanie with a glare. “Where to?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “You want information? What’s it worth to you? See, if I turn you loose on my client, the bastards’ll come looking for me. Course, I can feed ’em a fine line of bullshit, but the aggravation factor’s going to cost you, Vaurien. Make it worth my while, or shove off and stop wasting my time.”

  “Name your price.” Vaurien thrust a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Gelemeralds, right here, right now. And if we find out you lied to us, fed us a bad steer, you’re dead meat, Reanie. If Jazinsky doesn’t break off both your arms and feed them to you, you’ll be riding the top of Harrison Shapiro’s most-wanted list, along with Boden Zwerner.”

  Now Reanie made a face. “There’s no need to insult me.”

  Jazinsky’s white-blond head swiveled toward him. “You don’t like to be filed in the same folder as Zwerner?”

  “Zwerner is worse scum than the goons I just sold through for half the price they were worth.” Reanie spat into the shadows. “He’s an Earther. He’s only here to screw a fortune out of the Deep Sky, and when some fat-assed sleazoid back in some office on Earth or Mars offers him bundles of money to kill Omaru, and maybe all of Hydralis – well, now, Boden’s their boy, isn’t he?” His eyes were gimlet hard as he glared at Travers and Marin. “These two, they’re Shapiro’s goons? You, Vaurien, you came here to buy the Shanghai prisoners. Fair enough. But what about these two? They came here to itemize Zwerner?”

  The speculation was uncomfortably close to the truth, and Travers felt the pit of his belly ravel up. It was Marin who said, “If we did, it’s none of your business. All you need to do is set your price for the info we need, and then forget we were ever here.”

  “Eighty thousand,” Reanie said brashly, “colonial dollars, not your Confederate credit crap. And if you’re here to flush Zwerner out of an airlock, I might just be able to overlook the fact I can smell Fleet all over you.”

  The gelemeralds were worth between five and twenty-five thousand colonial dollars each. From his inside pocket, Vaurien had produced a small brown velvet pouch. He tipped the stones into his palm one at a time, until he judged the amount fair, and turned them to the light. They were absolutely perfect, ancient, the classic Resalq ‘cut.’ Reanie knew a little about gelemeralds, and he murmured as he saw them.

  “They look like Saraine stones, right out of the ruined city.” He looked up at Vaurien and Jazinsky, filled with suspicion. “Hot?”

  “No. Would it bother you if they were?” Jazinsky demanded.

  “Nope.” Reanie held out his hand.

  Vaurien’s fingers closed over the stones. “Data.”

  “Your laborers and whores went to Celeste.” Reanie jerked one thumb over his shoulder. “You know it? It’s the ass-end of space, three, maybe five days on the free side of the frontier, depending on what you’re flying.”

  From the look on Vaurien’s face, he knew a great deal about Celeste, but to Travers it was just a speck on a chart of realms so distant, the DeepSky Fleet did not deploy there. “Your contact?” Richard was asking.

  “I look like I’m ready to suicide?” Reanie demanded. “You know where the human trash went. That’s good enough.”

  “All right.” Vaurien turned his hand, let the stones pour into Reanie’s palm. “How many labor units and whores did you ship?”

  With business essentially concluded, Stella became bored and drifted away to smoke. The door onto the promenade was open. Music wafted from three competing clubs in a dense wall of sound, and mauve lights strobed through a thin curtain of dust as she leaned on the door frame and flicked a gold lighter. The sweet smell of roses and kipgrass reached Travers’s nostrils, odd against the acrid scents of old machinery.

  “I shipped 280 live.” Reanie was preoccupied with the stones, holding them to the light one by one while he groped for a handy to scan them. “I buried three before the buyer took delivery. They were busted up pretty good when I got ’em. The medics took a look at ’em, but they were too bad to fix. Even if they’d been halfway fixable, how long d’you think they’d have lasted on Celeste?”

  “It’s rough?” Travers wondered.

  “Understatement,” Reanie said, fixated on the handy. “It’s high gravity, not too much oh-two in the air, short rations, crappy food, because they eat what they grow, and you can’t grow much. But there’s more ores in the ground than you could mine in fifty lifetimes … and one big problem. No tech support. So when your drones get busted, they stay busted. Live labor goes further, costs less and lasts longer.”

  “And when manned ships wreck in Hellgate,” Marin finished, “the crew complement vanishes into Freespace.”

  “Fleet crews.” Reanie’s lip curled. “And you better believe me, nobody out here gives a cuss about the buggers. They’d cut us up for dog meat if they could. What they get on Celeste, and places like it, they got coming. It’s not easy work in the mines, and it’s just as rough in the sexshops. Labor units last a year, maybe two. Whores last a while longer if they’re young, strong, and good enough to score the good clients. It’s the same as anywhere else. Give your boss a hard time, and you’ll be retired the hard way, soon as he’s had your value out of you. The smart ones learn the ropes fast. I’ve heard that one or two actually made friends there, got out of the sexshops and went to households as indentured Companions.” He folded down the handy and gave Vaurien an appreciative look. “These are damn’ nice rocks. Old enough to be original Resalq, which only makes ’em more valuable.”

  “You’re welcome,” Jazinsky said acidly. She was already restless, eager to leave, now they had secured all they were going to get. “Richard, you want to –”

  Stella’s voice was sharp. “Have you guys got Boden freakin’ Zwerner gunning for you? Jesus bloody Christ, did you bring Zwerner’s heavies right here, right down on top of us?”

  “Say what?” Vaurien swung toward her.

  She was still framed in the
door. “I’m seein’ Zwerner’s shooters. I know these faces.”

  “You sure?” Marin demanded. “How would you know them?”

  “Because I still hustle occasionally – yeah, even at my age – and when Zwerner’s entertaining he hires on all the Companions he can find who still have the looks and the skills. You think I’m well past it, but by two in the morning, after enough booze and gryphon, all cats look gray, believe me.” She nodded at faces she had picked out of the crowd on the far side of the promenade. “That’s Cary Oram, with the skin like pizza and the limp in the right leg. Got shot last year, never healed right, and he’s too gutless to get it fixed. Just in back of him, that’s Luciano – don’t know his last name, but that bald head and those beady little eyes, I’d know anywhere. And the woman, the copper-top in the leather lingerie, calls herself Rosaline. I’ve seen her target shooting. Man, she must have trick eyesight or maybe even a biocyber eye or something.” Stella turned back into the office and frowned at Vaurien’s people. “Were you followed here?”

  “No,” Marin said softly, “we were not. But we did call you from the public access just inside the rinks. Which means Zwerner has the whole place under surveillance … and we,” he said resignedly, “have been tumbled.”

  “Shit,” Reanie whispered. “Shitshitshit, why me, why always me?”

  “Because you deal in human bodies,” Jazinsky said tersely as she joined Vaurien and Stella in the doorway. She dropped her voice, speaking close to Vaurien’s ear. “Richard, the only reason they haven’t made a movie on us already is that it’s a narrow doorway and they expect us to be armed.”

  “Are you?” Stella’s eyes were wide. The pupils were a little dilated with the kipgrass. “Armed?”

  “Of course we’re armed.” Marin set a hand on Travers’s arm. “Call the ship while I take a look at this place. It’s a maze in the back, more shoot holes than Zwerner’s goons want to know about.”

  “Christ, don’t kill them here!” Reanie’s voice was high, shrill. “You kill ’em here, Zwerner’s going to have my balls on toast. Stella? Stella!”