by Rick Partlow
“That’s all right,” Kara said, shaking her head. “We have our own sources.”
The agent grunted and frowned, then waved at the door. “You can leave, then. Don’t cause any trouble.”
Deke could see Kara smiling thinly as she turned towards the door. He shrugged at the ratty man and followed her back into the storm.
It was nearly a kilometer walk from the spaceport into the city of Shakak. The cold didn’t really bother Deke: even if his clothes hadn’t been made to handle variable climates, his headcomp and other augmentation could simply shut down the input that told his brain it was cold. Kara probably had the same type of clothes but lacked the advanced headcomp. She had augmentation and implants courtesy of the Department of Security and Intelligence, from back when she had been part of the DSI Cadre during the war, but nothing on the same level as Deke or the other members of Omega Group, known to each other as the “Glory Boys.”
The DSI Cadre was a small and elite force, but they were also a conventional unit in that their numbers were ever changing through death, reassignment and recruitment. The Glory Boys were a dozen Academy cadets who happened to be the only survivors of a training mission taking place when the alien Tahni had attacked the Mars base. Officially reported dead, they had been the recipients of experimental, advanced physical augmentation on a level still incredibly rare nearly twenty years later.
Only six of them were still alive, since Roger West had been killed four years back during that dust-up with Andre Damiani and the Corporate Council; and as far as he knew, they weren’t making any replacements. Not that the military couldn’t recreate the procedures, but no one could justify the expense any more. Deke sometimes amused himself by calculating how much he was worth: he had figured out long ago that he cost more than most military cruisers.
Sometimes he wondered whether twelve more cruisers would have meant more to the war effort than the Boys…but then he thought about what Cal had done on Canaan and realized that no cruiser would have won that battle.
“I gotta warn you,” he said to Kara as the lights of the town grew clearer in the darkness, “I haven’t seen or even communicated with this guy in years. I don’t know that he’ll trust me.”
And he sure as hell won’t trust you, he didn’t say.
“We’ll deal with that when the time comes,” she replied curtly, staring resolutely ahead with a determination just to reach somewhere warmer.
Deke suppressed a chuckle at her discomfort, knowing that she’d make him pay for it later if he’d laughed aloud. Instead, he covered his amusement by jabbing a finger at a brightly-lit establishment just at the edge of town.
“That’s the Winter’s Heart,” he told her. “Biggest hang-out on the planet. If he’s not in there, someone will know where he is.” He eyed her dubiously. “Don’t act like a fed, okay? People out here can smell pork a kilometer away.”
“I did spend several years undercover,” she reminded him, irritation in her tone and in the sideways glare she gave him.
“I know,” he said, holding up a placating hand, “but there’s a difference between acting like a mineral scout and acting like a smuggler. A corporate mineral scout can get away with being an antisocial curmudgeon, but a smuggler has to be salesman, a con man, a talker without revealing anything about themselves.”
“Okay,” she said, shrugging assent. “So I’m a former corporate mineral scout---which is what my backstopping says anyway---who’s now in business with you as a smuggler. You do the talking and I’ll be a curmudgeon trying to learn a new trade.”
Deke nodded, satisfied that at least she wasn’t going to charge in guns and mouth blazing. The Winter’s Heart was a low-key joint as these sort of places went. Deke had been part owner of a place on Thunderhead called the Lucky Bastard that was twice as large and had a moving dance floor. The Winter’s Heart lacked any sort of dancing, though it did boast a commercial quality ViR-drama experience with every category from porn to action thriller.
Having lived the action thriller genre, Deke thought with just a touch of cynicism, I’d recommend the porn.
The Heart specialized in illegal ViR streetware that directly stimulated the pleasure centers of the brain and as they stepped inside, he could see the lost souls shambling into the comfortable booths where they could jack in. Deke shuddered a bit at the sight of them, knowing just how easy it would be for him to fall into that trap. With his headcomp and neurolink, he wouldn’t even have to jack in physically, just download the streetware and sit back…
He shook off the thought as he shook off the cold, basking for a moment in the relative warmth of the entrance hallway. Past the ViR isolation booths, the bar proper waited. It wasn’t a warm, homey place and he guessed that was fitting since Peboan wasn’t a warm planet. The floor was a spongy, absorbent material in neutral gray; the furniture was cheap plastic in gaudy colors and there were no live bartenders. Instead, each table had a spigot, a cup dispenser and a cheap touch-screen control. The bar was lined with a dozen of them along with vending kiosks for various mild narcotics and hallucinogens in pill, patch, cigar or cigarette forms.
Too damn impersonal. If he lived here, he’d open up a nicer place and shut the Heart down in a month. But what bothered him about it wasn’t the lack of profit maximization, but rather the fact that the lack of human help made it harder to find their target. Bartenders saw everyone, eventually. The only human staff here were security: large, bulky men---and one woman---in loose clothing that probably hid body armor and weapons. They didn’t look talkative, especially the one that was a Tahni.
That left only one way of getting people to talk that didn’t involve standing on the corner and shouting at passers-by. Deke led Kara through the spacious barroom to a set of stairs that circumscribed a tight spiral up to the building’s second floor. The doors in the narrow hallways at the top of those stairs were unmarked, but Deke knew which one he wanted…it was the only one that would open without a signal from downstairs.
It slid aside with the raspy scratching of a poorly fitted frame and a cheap motor and they stepped through into a small antechamber, almost an airlock, with another featureless door only a meter in front of them. To the right was a blank wall, but to the left was a sturdy-looking metal drawer that could be pulled out of a vault set into the wall. Above it was a small biometric ID reader plate and a hand-lettered sign that read: “deposit all firearms before entry.”
Deke pulled his sidearm loose of its holster and dropped it into the drawer, then stepped aside and made an inviting gesture to Kara. The DSI officer scowled, but did likewise; Deke pushed the drawer shut, then slapped a palm against the ID plate to mark the weapons so he could retrieve them. A moment after his biometric signature was accepted, the inner door opened, revealing a room that must have taken up a full third of the building's second story. A buzz of conversation carried across the space, almost drowning out the cheery sound effects of the dozen gaming stations scattered across the room.
Deke eyed the clusters of gamblers gathered at each station, looking first for familiar faces and, when that failed, looking for locals. He found them where he expected them, at a low-key, low-tech poker game at a cheap plastic table in the corner. There were five of them, scruffy and shabbily dressed, playing the game with the sullen ennui of those who didn’t have anything better to do. He knew the type.
He looked at Kara and signaled with his eyes for her to head for one of the tourist games while he ambled over to the poker table. He waited patiently behind an empty chair until the current game ended, then seated himself, pulling out a credit spike and plugging it into the pot.
None of the locals spoke to Deke, most totally ignoring him except for an older man with a doughy, pale face who offered him a baleful glare. The dealing station spat out his cards and he pretended to study them intently while he thought about how to make his approach.
“I’m in for five,” the woman to Deke’s right said with a sigh of resignation. He was
fairly sure she was dissatisfied with her hand, but it just as easily could have been her life that she found depressing. She was dressed in clothes that had once been brightly colored but were fading with use, and this wasn’t a place where you could pop off to a fabricator and run out a new set in a few minutes.
“Call,” the dour, hatchet-faced man next to her grunted, touching the control in front of him on the dealing station’s pot.
“Give me two” the squat, beefy one at hatchet-face’s side said softly, tossing two cards back into the dealing station and taking two more. He regarded them impassively for a moment and then decided: “Call, and raise you five.”
That drew an antiphonal chorus of sighs and groans among the others, except for Deke, who still kept his peace until the play came to his position. Then he smiled thinly and touched a control on the pot.
“Raise you two hundred,” he said, speaking quietly enough that no one beyond his table would hear it.
“What the fuck?” the hatchet faced man blurted among almost unintelligible comments from the others, who looked ready to throw down their hands.
“Before you fold,” Deke put in quickly, holding up a hand to forestall them, “here’s the thing: I’d be perfectly willing to fold and let you all split the pot.”
“If…” the woman prompted, suspicion in her eyes.
“I’m looking for a guy,” Deke said, casually easing back in his seat. The cheap, plastic chair groaned in protest. “He deals with a certain clientele, moving cargoes that other middlemen won’t touch, and he moves around a lot. I need to talk to him.”
“What makes you think any of us would know where this fella is?” the beefy, short man asked in the same soft, unhurried tone in which he’d asked for two cards.
Deke smiled again, this time more broadly, as he regarded them. “Let’s just say I have a way of reading people.”
“What’s his name?” the beefy man asked.
“Koji,” Deke told him. “Koji Tsukahara.”
They tried to keep their poker faces up, but Deke saw a flash of recognition in the woman and the hatchet faced man. The chunky one frowned at them, seeing it as well.
“He’ll want to see me,” Deke assured him, sensing that he was the group’s alpha dog. “There’s money in it for him too, and less trouble than he’s used to. Just tell him Deke wants to talk to him.”
“All right,” the alpha dog said after a moment’s consideration. “Give me your comlink address and someone will call you.”
Deke looked the man in the eye and held the look for a breath. “There’s another hundred if I get a call.”
He hit the control on the station to fold, then kicked his chair back and stood, hesitating before he turned away.
“If I don’t get a call,” he promised, his smile turning cold, “I’ll be back to find out why.”
With that, he went to find Kara. She probably wouldn’t be happy…
“I’m not happy about this, Conner,” Kara said quietly as they wended through the dim, narrow streets of what one might loosely term Shakak’s industrial district. In actuality, it was more of a collection of warehouses where proscribed items fabricated elsewhere were stored until deals could be brokered for their sale.
It wasn’t a place for tourists, and Deke felt far too much like one with the DSI officer dogging his steps.
“What’s not to be happy about?” he asked, keeping his eyes and other, implanted sensors scanning the doorways and alley entrances around them for any possible threats. “You wanted a meeting with Koji, I got you a meeting.”
“I wanted this kept quiet,” she reminded him. “I wanted us to drop in unannounced and catch him on the defensive. You basically told the whole town we’re looking for him.”
“You don’t surprise Koji,” he told her, shaking his head slightly. “The man’s been in this business for twenty years and he hasn’t stayed alive and out of a reformery by being careless…or easy to find.”
She didn’t respond, which at least meant she wasn’t talking. Icicles hanging from the eaves of the dilapidated warehouses on either side of the street weren’t as cold as the shoulder she’d given him in the four hours they’d waited for the call from the man in the casino. He ignored her baleful glares and kept walking, cutting through an alley barely a meter across and dark as death without the infrared filters implanted in his eyes. Hers too, so he didn’t bother slowing down.
There it was. It was identical to all the other warehouses in the district, which was intentional. No one wanted to stick out. There were no addresses, no guides, no maps. If someone didn’t give you directions, you wouldn’t find a specific location. Luckily, he knew where they were supposed to go.
Deke ignored the large cargo doors and stepped up to a smaller side entrance. The door was streaked with stains and the bottom was caked with frozen mud, but the appearance of disrepair was belied by the thick, quality construction. Nothing short of an anti-armor missile was getting through that door. Deke touched the palm plate next to the door and waited.
Seconds passed and he was sure they were being scanned. He wondered how deeply; his talons and Kara’s implant laser would raise some eyebrows. But the door opened with an audible click, swinging inward to admit them. The interior was dark, even on infrared and thermal, and Deke had to figure that was intentional…and expensive.
He stepped inside and, as Kara moved in behind him, he heard the door slam shut, plunging them into complete darkness.
“Well,” he muttered, “that’s not ominous or anything.”
“Hello Deacon,” a smooth, tenor voice said, seeming to come from everywhere. “It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?”
Deke forced himself not to look around, not wanting to be seen chasing the direction of the voice like a rube. “Almost three years, Koji,” he replied evenly, trying to sound as if all this was work-a-day normal. “How’s life treating you?”
“Oh, I manage,” Koji said, a hint of amusement in his light tone. “Let’s not waste time with trivialities though, Deacon. Given the time and money you and your intriguing companion here spent arranging this meeting, I’m curious as to its purpose.”
“Is it too much to ask,” Kara interjected, “to be able to see who we’re talking to?”
Deke’s jaw muscles clenched as he fought to keep from blurting out a curse.
Why the fuck can’t she keep her mouth shut?
There was a long pause and he was sure they were about to be kicked out…but then a circle of light appeared ten meters or so in front of them, near the center of the warehouse. It was just that one small circle illuminated, sharing its light no further into the gloom even on infrared. More parlor tricks with optics and shielding.
Inside the circle was a tall, slender Asian male, his skin smoothly ageless in a way that demonstrated his wealth: out in the Pirate Worlds, only the upper class could afford the nano injections that staved off senescence. He was entirely hairless and a holographic tattoo illustrated his shaven head as spectral serpents seemed to emerge from and submerge into his skull, endlessly. By contrast, his clothes seemed spartanly plain, an unadorned robe glowing a bright, solid white in the spotlight. Then they began to shift as well, changing in moments to blood red and neon green before geometric patterns began forming and reforming across their surface at an ever-increasing pace.
“Now you see me,” Koji said, smiling closed-mouth as he lounged on a high-backed office chair. “Speak your piece before you stop seeing.”
“We’re here about the Predecessor tech,” Deke jumped in before Kara could open her mouth again. He saw Koji’s right eyebrow rise in curiosity. “We know someone’s been using Predecessor tech out here in the Worlds,” Deke went on, “and we need a line on how to get our hands on it. I thought if anyone knew, it would be you.” He shrugged. “We can pay. Serious money. I have a spike with twenty K in tradenotes right here.” He patted his left jacket pocket. “And I can get you another thirty K in Commonwealth dollars or Cor
porate scrip in twenty-four hours if you give us something solid.”
He saw Kara’s eyes go wide in his peripheral vision, but he silenced her with a slash of his hand. You didn’t nickel-and-dime Koji.
The arms dealer’s jaggedly handsome face creased in thought for a few seconds, then he motioned with his hand. “The spike,” he elaborated.
Deke grinned and fished the credit spike from his jacket, tossing it underhand to the other man. Koji plugged the crystalline matrix into the jack behind his left ear and his eyes glazed over as he reviewed the funds the spike contained. He pulled it out casually, then slipped it into a pocket of his robe.
“These weapons,” he began, frowning thoughtfully. “I can’t tell you where they came from. No one knows. I can tell you when they were used, though. There was a…disagreement between the Sung Cartel and the Novoye Moscva bratva, involving the rights to certain markets.” He shrugged. “These things happen. Usually, there is not much violence involved and when there is, it is brief.”
Deke nodded acknowledgement. He’d made the occasional payday himself, fighting those battles. But it was bad for business to let such things drag on for too long.
“This time, though,” Koji went on with a twist of distaste to the set of his mouth, “the bratva had help. Ships like no one had seen before…except in those videos that the government showed us a few years back, when they said the Predecessors had returned. Glowing green things the shape of one of those horrid cigars you smoke so much, Deacon.” He glanced sharply at Deke. “I did not see this, you understand; this was reported to me by a trusted source within the Sung Cartel, someone who was there. He told me that these things tore through the Sung ships like they were plastic toys.”
“So, we need to talk to the bratva to get to the source of these ships,” Kara surmised.
Koji began to chuckle softly, an odd, almost embarrassed laugh.
