by Steve Perry
“Yeah,” she said, “but I don’t think so. The Supe has made the com controllers take the truth tests. The scans come up clean, shallow and deep.”
“And the Supervisor … ?”
“Un uh. I’ve known him since I’ve been on the force. He’s a good cool, clean as high-voltage vibrowire.
Bet my neck on it.”
“So we consider it a real threat. Anything else I should know?”
“Can’t think of anything offhand.”
“You have a computer running comparisons on the victims?”
“Oh, yeah. We might not be the fastest or the brightest out here in the exhausts but we’re not that stupid.
Got a big unit crunching them, looking for connections. If any of the victims even ate dinner at the same restaurant in a year, somebody is checking the place. So far, nothing solid. If it’s there, we’ll turn it up eventually. Slow grind, but exceedingly fine. Trick will be recognizing it when we see it.
“There’s a dozen uniformed POs with M. Jorine by now, with orders to keep her in sight until we get there; even if she has to go pee somebody will be standing next to her.”
Bork nodded.
“Here’s where you’ll have to start earning your keep, Saval.”
“Why I’m here.”
“We will give them time to put their hired protector into place,” Kifo said.
Mkono nodded.
“Do you think it presents a problem, this matador?”
Mkono cracked a thin smile, something he rarely did. “No, Unique. The Hand of the Gods does not fear any human or mue.”
“I hardly thought otherwise.”
The place was a giant structure, as big as a boxcar service garage, constructed of what appeared to be carbonex tubing and clear plastic plate. Inside, it was a good ten degrees cooler than outside. The term “hothouse” was figurative. Rows and rows of flower bushes filled the building, leaving just enough room to walk between them. There must be thousands of plants, a riot of color that covered nearly all of the visible spectrum. Taz didn’t know a lot about flowers, but these all looked to be roses of one variant or another. Red, pink, orange, white, yellow, blue, green, violet, even purple and black ones. Amazing.
Even though the cool on the door knew her personally, he checked Taz’s ID. He kept his hand on his holstered pistol while the system ran Saval’s code, too. Given Saval’s ability with the spetsdods, this was a waste of the man’s energy, but Taz appreciated his diligence, if not his judgment.
A second uniform led them to where M. Jorine was.
Taz had never met the woman socially, but she had seen her a few times. She was thin, looked frail and grandmotherish, with green-tinted hair worn in a short style. She’d spent a lot of time in the sun unprotected, from the tan and multitude of wrinkles showing on her face. She wore a plain silk coverall dyed to match her hair, and a pair of flexskin gloves. When Taz and Saval arrived at where she stood, the woman was digging around the roots of a rosebush with a pointed trowel. The flowers on this particular bush were the size of Saval’s fist and a blue so bright as to seem almost glowing from within.
No thorns she could see.
Without seeming to look directly at them, the old woman noticed them. “Well?” Her voice was curt, snappish.
“M. Jorine, I am Assistant Chief Bork, this is Saval Bork of the matadors.”
“Yes, yes.” She stopped rearranging the dirt under the bush and looked up. “Hmm. You’re both HG mue-stock, aren’t you? Siblings?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Saval said.
She looked at them as if she were considering breeding them to see what kind of flower they would produce. “Hmm. Well, Po Bork, I am not pleased with all the foomra your organization has created around here. Not pleased at all.”
“We are concerned about your safety,” Taz began.
“Young fem, I was taking care of my own safety before your grandmother was born. I hardly think I need your help at this late date.”
It was the voice of riches speaking, the superior condescension inherited money sometimes took when dealing with the lower classes. It pissed Taz off.
“M. Jorine, I am sure that’s true. On the other hand, you have been threatened by someone who has made similar threats against others and so far been able to carry them off.”
The old lady smiled, sweetly, but with a hint of something hard under it. “Despite what your organization did to try and stop them, too, is this not correct? Got yourself a morgue full of headless bodies for your efforts, haven’t you?”
Taz blinked. Touche, old woman.
“Kiddo, like I said, I’m nobody’s backpack. I have my own resources. What makes you think you can protect me any better than my security, all of whom probably have twice as much training as your average cool?”
Saval grinned, but said nothing.
The old woman lifted her gaze to his face. Chuckled. “Course, that’s probably a tenth as much training and skill as this giant mass of natural testosterone here has,” she said. “I’ve got an order in for one of you guys, but there’s a waiting list, you know. Probably wouldn’t do me much good for him to get here the week after they scattered my ashes over the top of Mount Tikiti.”
Saval gave her a military nod.
She turned back to her digging. “All right. Fine. I’m old, but I’m not ready to slip the bounds just yet. Do whatever you need to do, my staff will cooperate fully. If I die, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing how embarrassed the Supervisor will be. But I’m staying here. I’m not running off to hide anywhere.”
Taz and Saval exchanged glances. Smiled a little. She was a tough old fem, give her that.
“You contracted, sonny? You play around?”
Taz couldn’t stop the laugh.
“Never hurts to ask. I’m not dead yet, you know.” And she smiled as she jabbed at the dirt with her trowel.
Bork ran a full check of the security system. He recoded the house and hothouse computers and installed new programs of his own design. The places were fully rigged with alarms and sensors, and now they worked like Bork wanted them to work. Every outside lock was put on alternating entry codes that shifted frequently and required Bork’s EEG pattern and retinal ID to access. The guards had to ask him when they wanted to come and go.
He dismissed the staff and had cools brought in to replace them. Cooks, maids, gardeners, all of them were vetted officers. He set up overlapping perimeters peopled with the best cools Taz could collect.
Every centimeter of the house and hothouse was gone over with HO sensors, sniffers, electronic detectors and fluoprojic scanners.
All food and other supplies were stopped at the estate gates and examined by the same means before being allowed inside. Water was filtered and scanned, power switched to a secured generator inside the estate, and trained dogs were turned loose inside the fence, along with guard dins programmed to stun anybody who failed to deliver the proper query response.
Airspace over the area was restricted and kept clear by a trio of police hoppers, one of which was kept in the air at all times.
It took Bork only two days to install all his defenses.
When it was done, he stood watching his client putter around in her flowers, knowing he had done what could be done.
“You’ve covered everything,” Taz said.
“Maybe. Best bet would be to take her off somewhere and hide her where nobody knows but me. Given her wishes, this is the best we can manage.”
“Could you get past all this?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe if I had enough time to work on it, but not in a few days.”
“Then that’s all we can do.”
Bork didn’t say anything. If somehow all this security failed to stop an assassin, it would be pretty amazing, all right. But if somebody got past it, they still had to get past him. Nobody had done that in a long time.
Well. He guessed they’d see.
Chapter FIFTEEN
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nbsp; THE KNOWLEDGE of the matadors was extensive and, like the plants in M. Jorine’s greenhouse, continually growing. When a matador went up against a tricky opponent, when some new bit of arcanery was thus learned, often it would be communicated to the computers at Matador Villa. Graduates had access to most of the files and, since information about their profession was most likely to come from others practicing it, it paid to check the updates now and then.
Bork hadn’t been particularly active of late, but he was dutiful about logging into the matador systems and keeping up with new developments. The attacks on Sleel by the toobie who’d kidnapped Kee, well, Bork had heard that story straight from Sleel himself. Such was the reason he had changed the loads in his spetsdods. His dexter darts carried a variant of shocktox, about the same potency but enough changed in formula so somebody immune to the regular version would be real surprised. The sinister gun carried armorpiercing rounds with the same electrochem variant. Sleel had used explosive ammo on his final job as a matador, but Sleel was less worried about killing people than Bork was. The disadvantage to AP was that you could only carry a few shots per magazine, plus if you shot somebody not wearing armor, you might kill them. Even something as small as a spetsdod dart could punch a nasty hole in an organ or vessel at AP speeds; flesh offered less resistance than spiderplate or armorweave.
Bork didn’t want to kill anybody, he could help it.
Then again, he didn’t want anybody to kill his client, either. So, the compromise. Better safe than sorry.
Taz was outside on the ground, his client puttering among her flowers, and all systems were secure. The old lady was right there in plain sight, ten meters away. Still, Bork felt a tiny flutter in his belly, not uncomfortable, but definitely there. Something weird about all this, and it made him a little nervous. He had been in a lot of hassles in his life, some small, some big, and he hadn’t lost one since he’d become a matador. Nor for ten years before that, you didn’t count sparring or shooting matches while training at the villa. He was pretty confident of his abilities. But still.
He moved a few steps closer to his client, his gaze scanning the surrounding rows of rosebushes.
Something was off here. He didn’t want to be caught asleep at the controls when it went down.
Kifo arranged for the Eighth Wall Segment’s hovertruck to be serviced, system harmonics tuned, sufficient fuel onloaded. The mechanics were of the Few, the shop owned by the Temple, but even so, security was paramount.
An hour later, the call came. The Segment’s vehicle was in readiness. As was Mkono.
Here was the other big part of the secret the Few had kept from the rest of the galaxy, the Zonn Wall Segments. There were nine of them, each the size of a door or larger, and though some would cry
“Stolen!” they had been liberated by Kifo’s predecessor when the truth of what the Sacred Glyph might be had been suspected. It had taken daring and a certain amount of risk, for dealing in Zonn artifacts was frowned upon greatly by the fallen Confed and its replacement Republic. Each segment had been acquired with the utmost caution, garnered from four different offworld ruins, not the local ones, and those who might have said where and to whom the artifacts had been delivered were no longer alive to relate the tale. Discovery would have been a major problem for the Temple, the ruination of hopes for the return of the Gods.
Lying upon the bed in his personal cubicle in the temple, Kifo smiled. He had felt full of power the last few days since his visit with the Zonn. Powerful and potent, even to the point of sexual arousal. As he thought this, an erection throbbed against his belly. Sex was for him relatively rare. Mostly he was too busy to think after it, but when it came upon him, he would not allow himself to be distracted by its urgent pressures. Release was the simplest way to deal with it.
He sat up, waved his hand over his com unit.
“Send whichever of the sisters is on tunira to me,” he said.
“At once, Unique,” came the reply.
The founders of the Temple had realized that men and women had certain urges and to deny them was to deny reality. So, lower-rank brothers and sisters were assigned, on a rotating basis, the honorable duty called tunira. The term, of uncertain origin, had come to mean “holy receptacle.” Curious about it, Kifo had once done some research. There had been two likely candidates for the basis word: a Southern Tembonese word, “tchondra,” which meant “servant,” and a Swarussi term, “tundudira,” which meant “hole.” Either, Kifo supposed, was equally useful.
Two minutes later the door to his cube chimed. He called it open, and the sister, draped in her robes, stepped inside. Her cowl was back and her face was flushed. She was young, one of the newer ones, and Kifo could not recall seeing her in tunira before.
“My Unique,” she said. Her voice was soft, with a slight quaver.
Kifo found this caused his erection to grow even more.
He smiled at her. Motioned at her clothing.
She slipped the robe off. Stood naked in front of him. Her breasts were heavy, her mons swathed in thick curly brown. Not so young as he had thought, perhaps, but adequate, adequate. He shucked his own robe, smiled as her eyes widened slightly at the sight of his readiness. He reached out and took her hand in his, placed it on his penis. Then urged her to kneel in front of him.
He groaned slightly when he felt her lips encircle him. He would be quick, he knew. Too, he knew he would not be sated when she had swallowed his seed. When he got this way, it would take much to cause him to flag, four, five, six times. He hoped this woman was well rested. Surely she would be exhausted when he finished with her.
He thrust, and she received him to his base.
Ah! Very talented at this, she!
This was the last reasoned thought the Unique of the Few had for several hours.
Taz patrolled the outside of the hothouse, finding nothing amiss. Saval had indeed thought of everything she would have done, plus a lot more that never would have occurred to her. Filtering the water and putting sensors on it was one. Spike arrestors on all electronic and mechanical gear, even though the power was generated on the grounds, was another. Sniffers that could find oxidation explosives, something she had only heard about but never actually seen. A recognition field that was set to raise an alarm if anybody without a caveat on his or her ID should happen into it. She could see why the matadors had such shining reputations. True, they weren’t infallible, but compared to their success rates, whoever was second ran a fair distance behind.
Despite the earlier failures of the police, Taz felt as if this situation were different. Even if an assassin could somehow manage to slip past all the electronic wards, there was still Saval, and he was stronger, faster and more adept with his weapons than anybody she knew. She wouldn’t want to have at him with a knife. Then again, like the old lady said, they had a morgue full of headless bodies to show for their efforts so far. Best keep alert.
The intruder alarm chirped.
Since Bork was looking at the client and the length of the greenhouse from near one end and didn’t see anything threatening that way, he took a short step and turned to look behind him. This was an old self-defense move, one he’d learned years before sumito training. Somebody sneaks up behind you and you hear them, taking a step away before turning will almost always force them to reset; they plan on punching you when you look to see who’s there.
The step probably saved his life. The tip of the sword cut through the skin of his neck, just below the base of his skull, digging a shallow furrow and doing little damage. Bork spun to his left, left elbow nearly straight, his arm formed into a slightly curved bar, fist knotted tight A giant stood there, bigger than Bork, halfway through his swing with a sword. Flecks of blood sprayed into the air from the blade’s point; Bork could see them clearly. Had on a hooded robe, thin gloves, the big man. He circled the cut to recover
Bork bent his left arm in as he twisted, jammed his right hand out, forefinger pointed at the man’s chest, opened up w
ith his right spetsdod on full auto. Too late, he saw that the way the robe hung heavy meant it was armorweave. The darts tacked themselves into the thick material in a dark bristly blotch but did not penetrate to the man underneath
The sword came around and over the top in a headsplitter cut, and Bork had to use an upward block with his left arm to catch the man’s wrist. Bone smashed into bone; the sword stayed in the larger man’s grip, did not pivot down. It was like blocking a hardwood log
The man wore a skinmask with clear-armored eyecups, Bork saw, blue eyes. His right spetsdod was useless and his left was attached to a hand busy stopping the sword
Bork’s reactions were fast, he could feel the next move, but the bigger man had already lifted his boot in a snap kick. The flexed-back boot sole took Bork under the sternum, slammed his solar plexus harder than anything had ever done before, stole his wind despite the protective sheathing of his bunched muscles
The man dropped the sword and lunged forward, grabbed at Bork’s shoulders; despite all the years of training, the matador’s most basic instincts took over-he locked arms with the attacker. At the bottom of everything he was lay his great physical strength, that which he had been able to depend upon longer than any skill he had. It had never failed him.
They stood like two figures in a holographic statue, straining. Bork, who had never been bested in a contest of strength, put everything he had into tossing the attacker to the floor And the man grunted and threw Bork into the nearest wall.
The surprise was as bad as the impact. Bork’s head slammed against the wall, cracked and starred the heavy plastic. Stunned him. Now the sumito pattern tried to claim him, now Bork would have danced aside and used his skill to defeat the other, but his reactions were crippled, his senses fogged, his brain bruised. As he shifted to the side, hands coming up, the lights went out in the control room of Bork’s mind. He fell, unconscious.
Five seconds had passed since the alarm started.
Taz heard the interior alarm go off. She snatched her spring pistol from its holster and ran for the entrance. She could see vague forms behind the moisture-fogged plastic but couldn’t make them out. She thought she saw Celona Jorine, and two huge figures wrestling a few meters away. Nobody was supposed to be inside but Saval and the old lady! How could anybody have gotten in?
