by Mel Keegan
She was watching the three she knew socially from Zwerner’s territory, but she was listening intently, and Travers saw the combug in her ear, half-hidden by the mane of red-and-black hair on the unshaved side of her head. “Wait, will you, Ron. Just shut up for a minute!” Then she pushed past Travers and hurried to the threedee in the corner of the office.
Even then, Travers was trying to get a voice link back to the Wastrel, but Etienne was not answering. “Too much comm jamming on our frequencies,” he said tersely. “We’re not going to get through till Etienne figures this out and punches in enough power to cut through.”
“Give it a few minutes,” Vaurien advised. “The AI is going to know there’s jamming right where we are, and plumb on our frequencies, which doesn’t happen by accident.” He was intent on the threedee now, watching as Stella brought it alive.
With a wave through the live, glowing field, she transferred the call from her combug to the threedee, and Travers watched a face drift into range of the vid pickup – a very young face, but too similar to Stella’s own for him not to recognize a daughter. The girl was thin, with high cheekbones and black and white makeup, black hair tied up on top of her head and spilling a fan of multicolored fiberoptic lights.
“Tanya, what the hell?” Stella barked. “You still up there?”
The girl’s head was bobbing as she looked this way and that, trying to see in every direction. Behind her was a foyer, blue marble and gold fittings. Figures were hurrying back and forth, and at least three that Travers saw in as many seconds were carrying luggage.
“They’re standing by to bug out,” the girl said breathlessly, “and we didn’t get invited along, poor citybottom whores that we are.”
“Who’s bugging out?” Stella demanded.
“All of ’em. They’re in a panic.” She nodded back across the foyer. “The whole place is emptying out, except for Rosaline and a bunch of the heavies, and they’re out hunting. I overheard one of the big-noises, something about an assassination attempt – they said there’s Dendra Shemiji agents in Halfway! I didn’t even know Dendra Shemiji was real. I thought it was urban legend bullshit, but you know how the big he-bull jumps at his own shadow, and he’s pissing himself.”
With wide eyes, Stella surveyed Vaurien’s group. “Shapiro’s people. You took the contract for Zwerner?” she asked of Vaurien, and then nodded at Travers and Marin. “Or is it them? Dendra Shemiji.”
“If it is us,” Marin said levelly, “the less you know about it, the better. And if you don’t want us to kill Zwerner’s people on your premises, fair enough. But if there isn’t a back way out of here, it’s going to get … interesting.”
“There is – Jesus God, there is,” Reanie muttered. “Look, just get the sweet fuck out of my place, will you? Zwerner’s scared shitless of you people, and that’s good enough for me. Dendra whatever? Fine. If you’ve got Zwerner runnin’ like a rabbit while his shooters are hunting for blood, you’re doing something right, but – for chrissakes, Vaurien, don’t do it here! You drag me into this, I’ll be less welcome here than you are.”
“Reanie,” Vaurien said with mock concern, “you mistake me for someone who cares. But shooting our way out of here wouldn’t be my first choice. If you’ve got a backdoor, we’ll take it.”
Stella was already moving. “Take my Arago sled. Go straight down the cargo ramp, bypass the loading docks. Come back into street level at Bay 19 – that’s the big one, with the holotheater on the corner. Turn right – got it, right! – and you’re maybe two hundred fifty meters from the hangars. Dump my sled anywhere down there, I’ll bring it back on remote later. And if you’re going to blow away half of Zwerner’s goon squad, do it there.”
“They’ll accuse you of aiding us,” Travers warned.
“I’ll tell ’em you held a gun against my head,” Stella snorted. “Go!”
In Travers’s ear was the white-noise crackle of comm jamming – louder now, which told him Etienne was trying to break through, and another AI was trying to blanket comm traffic which was coming in at such power, it was sizzling. Marin raised a brow at him in question, but he shook his head: not yet.
The rear premises were vast, cold, dark and reeking of machines and their chemistry. The side of Stella’s large fist hit the panel by the door, and a dozen fluoros crackled on, casting mauve-white light over the cavern. Travers saw the sled at once, a red and white contraption that looked as deceptively flimsy as most of the buggies in Xanadu. It was parked by the battered yellow loading gates, and at a barked command from Reanie, the office AI opened those gates.
They clattered apart, riding unserviced and whining motors. Beyond, the loading dock was an ice-cold cavity in bare rock, with a black mesh deck, a wide freight ’lock on the other side of which was the vacuum of space, and the cargo ramp itself. The ramp was a fifty-degree slope angling down into uterine darkness punctuated only by occasional red beacons marking the positions of other loading docks similar to Reanie’s.
The sled was almost as flimsy as it looked, but when Travers throttled it up, he heard motors in much better condition than the buggy which had brought them up from the hangar. The contraption would struggle under the weight of four large bodies, but it would hold up long enough.
“For chrissakes, get the molly frock out of here,” Ron Reanie panted. “Me? I’m gonna waltz out the front door and let the bastards come looking. It’ll take ’em a few to get through the loading gates, because they’re code locked, and the AI won’t just hike its skirts for anybody.”
They were already on the sled, and Travers threw the throttle wide to get enough lift to take it through the gates and onto the down-angle of the ramp. Highbeams flicked on automatically; the sled scooted down fast enough to make Jazinsky curse beneath her breath, and behind them the loading gates rattled shut and locked. The air was below freezing in this almost unpowered cavity. A few drones worked here, but humans might come here to service the workings of Halfway once in a year. None of them was dressed for the cold; Jazinsky in particular was underdressed, and pressed between Vaurien and Travers for warmth.
Numbers in red LED shot up out of the darkness as they plummeted from level to level. Travers saw 26, 25, 24, and began to brake. Their descent slowed to a relative crawl, and as he saw the 19 marker come up he brought the sled to a dead stop before rotating it into the access corridor.
The light flared up fast as they came back up onto street level, and human eyes struggled to compensate. Jazinsky was the least affected; those Pakrani eyes, with their nictitating membranes, were much better suited to hazardous conditions. Marin lifted a hand to protect his shriveling irises for a moment, and Travers looked through slitted lids as he took the sled into street level.
He was hunting for the docks at once, while Vaurien and Jazinsky visually scanned behind and overhead, looking for signs of pursuit. Beside him, Marin had a palmgun in each hand, but their range was so short, they would be close to useless. As the sled rocked back onto the street between the holotheater and a tavern-cum-sexshop where the Companions and the booze were the same shade of green, the white-noise in his ear cleared and Etienne’s voice said with infuriating calm,
“Alert. The Wastrel is under attack. Alert. Incoming fire. Captain Vaurien, respond.”
Vaurien was listening, and swore bitterly. “Etienne, can you ID the attacking ship?”
“Two ships,” Etienne told him, “neither of them in the database. Both put out of docks on the Halfway rink less than three minutes ago.”
“Capable of hurting us?” Vaurien’s voice was taut.
“No,” Etienne judged, “but inflicting serious damage does not seem to be their intent. They are trying to force a docking.”
“Trying to get in?” Jazinsky’s brows rose, and her hands clenched on the sled’s rail. “Jesus, Richard, the stuff we’ve got aboard – ”
“Disengage,” Vaurien barked. “Etienne, call Greenstein and Cassals to the flight deck, but do not wait for th
em. Undock from Halfway, take whatever evasive measures you need to keep the buggers out. You are authorized to destroy the harassing ships. And where the hell is van Donne?”
“Captain van Donne and his pilot are prepping the Mako,” Etienne told him. “I am monitoring their comm. He suspects Boden Zwerner is taking action to protect himself and his interests.”
“By attacking us,” Jazinsky said disgustedly. “You know what it means, Richard. We were blown. Zwerner saw us coming, and he knew what we’re here for.”
“I … don’t think so.” Marin seemed to be looking in ten directions at once, watching for incoming trouble as Travers jinked the overloaded and unresponsive sled in the direction of the docks. “Not you, Barb … me. I should have seen this coming. The face that panicked Zwerner is mine. He knew Dendra Shemiji when he saw it. Damn, it’s time I got out of this game. I’m getting so slow, the next thing you get is dead.”
“There’s no way you could have expected –” Travers began.
“Isn’t there?” Marin’s face might have been carved from stone. “Ask Sergei van Donne who he talked to, what he said, after the time he went up against us on the Oberon platform. Damnit, Neil, he knew what I was right then, right there. He could have told fifty people from here to Marak City, and Zwerner has spies on every street corner. He also has surveillance all over Halfway, so it’s a safe bet he saw me not long after we got here. As soon as I showed my smiling face in Xanadu, the whole barrowload hit the fan.” He gave Vaurien an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Richard, it’s my mistake. I really am getting slow.”
“We both are,” Vaurien breathed. One big hand fell on Travers’s shoulder. “Park it here. We’re about fifty meters out, and you know there’s going to be shooters between us and the hangar. Etienne, report!”
The voice answering belonged to Tully Ingersol. “Richard, you’re missing one hell of a show – where are you?”
“Trying to get back to the Capricorn. Are you undocked?” Vaurien stepped down off the sled and pressed against the prefab wall, where Travers had parked it in what concealment he could find.
Faces turned toward them, momentarily interested in the scene, but lawlessness was commonplace on Halfway. No Tactical squad was about to descend, and most people went to ground when it looked as if the shooting was about to begin. Forty meters of curving street – a danceshop belching synthrock and dreamsmoke, a veeree den, a restaurant smelling of deep-fried grease, and a drone service bay – separated the alley Travers had chosen from the passage back to the hangars. No obvious goons were in the street, but with one deliberate finger Marin pointed out eight probable shoot-holes where they could easily be.
“Tully!” Vaurien bellowed into the comm loop, which was still crackling and spitting with attempted jamming. “Tully, did you hear me? Are you undocked?”
To Travers’s surprise, van Donne’s voice cut across the audio chaos like a knife. “We’re out and maneuvering, Vaurien. They’re not going to get close to your precious ship, so stop pissing yourself.”
“Two ships out of Halfway. You know them?” Vaurien insisted.
“Of course I bloody know them,” van Donne scoffed. “They’re Zwerner’s offsiders. They were at Ulrand, came in with a flock of Freespacers to bite off chunks of the carcass when the Shanghai rolled over dead. They’re on Zwerner’s orders, and you know whose blood they want. Mine – and maybe Curtis Marin’s, I’m thinking.”
“So am I,” Marin said under the confusion. “Etienne, any chance you can scan the area between us and the hangars for weapons?”
“None,” the AI told him. “The jamming is wide spectrum. All instruments are intermittent. I can read the several hundred thermal signatures of human bodies and more than a thousand machines, but the data is too partial to allow weapons identification.”
“Damn.” Marin looked up at Travers with a faint, cynical smile. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way, and all we have to play with are these damn palm guns.”
At that moment Travers would have given almost anything he possessed for a Chiyoda AP-90. From his inside pockets he produced two palmguns, and primed them both. Each afforded him ten shots; but the effective range was no more than ten meters, and perhaps only five, if he could not target bare skin.
“Vaurien!” It was van Donne, shouting over the comm. “Vaurien, get your ass back to the Capricorn, goddamn it! I’m reading major heat blooms in Zwerner’s private hangars. He’s leaving!”
“We know that, Sergei,” Jazinsky said in caustic tones. “Why don’t you do something about it, since you’re already out there?”
“Well, shit, why didn’t I think of that?” van Donne spat. “Make it fast, Vaurien. This is about to get ugly. Ramon with you?”
“Nope.” Vaurien had produced his own palmguns, and was eyeballing every crevice, every nook, in the alleyway ahead. “Ramon took off on his own, something about Companions beyond your imagination.”
“Beyond yours, maybe,” van Donne snorted, a moment before the comm sheeted out with white-noise.
The longer they delayed, the more dangerous Zwerner’s shooters were likely to become, and Travers knew it. He also knew that Marin was the consummate professional in this situation, and as much as he rebelled at stepping back and letting Curtis put himself in the firing line, he moved aside, let him do the job for which Mark Sherratt had trained him for almost a decade.
Cursing fluently, Jazinsky lifted the skirt of the gelemerald green gown, and Travers caught a glimpse of long, pale thigh as she took a pair of palmguns from the holsters above her left knee. “Name a god,” she muttered, “and I’ll swear to him – or her! – this is the last time I wear a damned dress! I should’ve known better. Richard!”
“Barb?” He glanced back, dividing his attention between her and Marin, who was at the corner and covering every direction he could as he moved out of concealment.
“Can you reach Etienne?” Jazinsky wanted to know.
“Sometimes,” Vaurien said cautiously. “The ship’s undocked. Tully’s not going to let Zwerner get out, not without a fight.”
“The next time you can reach the AI, have it remote-prep the Capricorn.” Jazinsky primed both the palmguns and moved up to Vaurien’s left shoulder. Travers was at his right. “We’re not going to have time to – ”
A dozen rounds spat out of a doorway on the right, twenty meters ahead. The shooter was out of the effective range of Marin’s darts, but the pistol he was using was under no such handicap. Zwerner’s people were well armed, and they knew this warren intimately.
Lips compressed, Marin ducked swiftly into the cover of the doorway of the drone repair shop, and as Travers joined him he was looking around at the tools, spare parts, machines in various degrees of disrepair. Without a word, he handed over the palmguns. Travers pocketed them, watching as Curtis selected an elpane cylinder and began to shake it vigorously. The gas would soon excite, over-pressurize itself. Marin was still hunting in the harsh worklights, while he agitated the cylinder, and Travers knew what he was doing.
The end of a discarded roll of duct tape and a cigarette lighter lay forgotten on the corner of a workbench between an empty coffee pot and a small drone which had been dismembered. The cylinder was cold enough by now to be frosting over – getting dangerous. The lighter taped to the nozzle end of it, and one of the palmguns taped to the other side.
Movement in the back of the workshop told Travers they were about to have company. A gruff voice called, “I’ll be right with you!”
“Take your time, we’re just looking,” Travers said in the direction of a welding bay which smelt of ozone and burning.
In fact, Marin was already moving and Travers knew he had pinpointed the doorway from which the full-auto fire had issued. The powerful overarm pitch was calculated before he stepped out of cover, and made without any visible preamble. Travers was impressed with the accuracy as well as the explosion.
“Fuel-air,” Marin said acidly as the wave of h
eat scorched their eyes. “Move!”
Plaster dust wafted in the hot air, caught updrafts in the lighter gravity channels, and spiraled away like vast dust devils. A super-fine particulate veil filled the air, smarted the sinuses, as they made their way swiftly out of the drone shop. They had an advantage of seconds, and none of waste.
Marin covered the distance fast. Every meter increased the efficiency of the palmguns, and by the time he saw a target – a face sneaking a peek out of a second-floor window – they were on the fringe of their effective range. They fired almost silently, and the neurotoxin they delivered was as deadly as live ammunition, and almost as fast. Struck in the side of the neck by a needle dart he would not even have felt, Zwerner’s shooter was immobilized in under a second and dead in less than five.
A voice called sharply from around the next corner – a young man, badly shaken up, possibly wounded. “Frankie? Frankie! You there, Frankie?”
The voice answering belonged to a woman, older, more angry than frightened. “The explosion tore him in half, and I heard Schwegler go down like a load of bricks. Clear out while you can, Zac – fuck with these bastards, and you might as well dig a hole and jump in it. I bloody told Zwerner, but you think he’ll listen to me?”
The kid was definitely hurt. The pain was sharp in his voice. “Zwerner’s not going to be too happy if we just bug out and run.”
She made a sound of scorn. It had to be the woman Stella had referred to as Rosaline, Travers thought. A fake redhead in leather lingerie. He cleared his throat of dust and the lingering chemical aftermath of the makeshift explosive. “Is that Rosaline?”
A pause of sheer surprise, and she demanded, “You know me?”
“Know of you,” Travers allowed. “Grab the boy and bug out, lady … you have to know your boss cut and ran. He’s not even on Halfway. You want to die for some bastard who threw you in against Dendra Shemiji to buy himself time to rabbit?”
