by Rick Partlow
"What, this bar?" Pete asked, uncomprehending as he looked around at the ramshackle watering hole. It was typical for a frontier colony, probably started up by one of the first settlers. Furniture made locally from real wood but walls of buildfoam behind a thin disguise of plaster. Live servers and bartenders not for atmosphere's sake but because they were cheaper than automation in a place where fabricator time was still relatively expensive. Light from the late afternoon primary poured in through the windows, drowning out the pale illumination from the chemical ghostlights built into the ceiling and floor.
Rachel waited till her throat stopped burning to chuckle at him. "No, Pete, I mean the city, Toliara." She shrugged. "Actually everything I've seen of the whole planet. We've been a lot of places these last few years, but Anansi is the only planet besides Canaan that I wouldn't mind living on."
"It's pretty enough," Pete allowed, taking a sip from his own glass then glancing out the big windows that stretched from floor to ceiling in the front. The golden light of late afternoon splashed over the craggy edges of the mountains in the distance and washed the fields of grain that stretched from the edge of Toliara's city limits almost all the way out to those mountains in a soft glow. "It's not home, though."
"What's home anymore?" she said softly. She shrugged the morose thought off, taking another drink and trying to watch the people passing in and out of the place without being obvious about it. It was why they were there, after all.
The crowd this afternoon was working class and mostly local, despite the proximity of the port. Farm workers, maintenance workers, shopkeepers, loader operators and ship mechanics crowded together at tables and complained about their jobs while they ate processed food and drank overpriced beer and liquor. Humans and Tahni mingled freely, consorting with each other by occupation rather than species.
"There's gotta be a better way to do this," Pete muttered to her, sighing softly. "He's not going to just wander by us in here and order a drink." He snorted a chuckle. "If he's even on the damn planet."
"We just got here, Pete," she reminded him. "We have to start somewhere."
In fact, they had arrived last night on the heavy lift cargo shuttle from Keller Savage's contracted freighter, the Cordoba. After spending the night in a port hotel, the two dozen special ops troops posing as his crew had spread out in small groups around the port city, each assigned an area to search; this had been the section of the city she and Pete had drawn, with instructions to act natural and watch for any sign of Kah-Rint or any insurgent activity.
"It just seems like an odd place to start trouble," Pete commented, nodding towards the Tahni workers---all males, of course---seated next to their human counterparts, conversing genially. "Hell, humans and Tahni get along better here than they do on Canaan."
"They probably didn't get occupied by them here," Rachel said flatly, fighting down an image of her little girl's eyes, wide and staring at the Tahni assault shuttles coming over the horizon.
Pete's face screwed up in distaste. "I still think it's creepy the way the males and adult females don't even hang around each other except when they're...well, mating."
"They're aliens, Pete. Just because they're bipedal humanoids doesn't mean they're the same as us." She squinted at him. "You lived in the same house as one for four years."
"Trint was different," Pete said, shrugging. "He was as different from them as he was from us...I guess I just expected him to be weird."
"They do get along with each other here, don't they?" Rachel mused, peering at the Tahni faces. Some of them were unabashedly old, lined and creased and with their shaped crests of hair turned white. Probably veterans of the war, she reflected, remembering the briefing Vontez Slaughter had given them during their week in Transition Space. A lot of them were disillusioned with their government and wanted to get away from home. "It would take some doing to get them behind some kind of uprising."
Pete shrugged assent. "Yeah, I suppose. But you never know what'll set people off, particularly when those people are aliens, like you said."
She frowned. What would set them off? She thought back to the briefing again, taking a moment to pull up the files she'd downloaded into her personal datalink. After a moment, her eyes widened and she rose from the table, touching a button on her 'link to close the bill.
"What is it?" Pete asked, standing and following her as she walked quickly towards the door. "Where are we going?"
"We're only seeing half the picture here, Pete," she explained, half turning back to him as they strode out the double doors into the street. She squinted at the primary star low in the sky and began walking in the direction of the coming sunset. "That's why it's not making sense. We're going to get a look at the other half."
Chapter Fourteen
The music pulsed and throbbed with a beat Cal could feel in his chest, in time with the flashing strobes and holographic storm clouds that covered the Event Horizon's dance floor without concealing it. The men and women on the floor writhed and thrashed inexpertly but with much artificially-stimulated enthusiasm, the styles they wore as out of fashion as the music.
Takes a while for anything new to filter out to the Pirate Worlds, Cal thought, amused that even a backwater like Canaan was more up to date with the latest entertainment.
He and Deke made their way around the periphery of the dance floor, navigating adroitly past the motionless forms of those who'd gone unconscious from alcohol or narcotics when the stimulants they'd taken to counteract them had abruptly run out. Here and there, one of those would stagger to their feet and head sluggishly for the exit, or more frequently be carried out by friends. At least he assumed it was their friends; for all he knew, it could be thieves bent on stripping them of everything down to the nanites in their blood. Kanesh didn't seem to be a forgiving place.
Beyond the dance floor was the bar, tended by humans and guarded by a pair of hulking Tahni with stun batons and soft body armor. Alcohol was served in glasses, narcotics a variety of ways from cigars and styrettes to capsules, and stimulants mostly as patches; and there seemed to be no shortage of customers.
Cal tried not to let his eyes linger as he watched the crowd and the employees, running threat assessments on them. At least one of the bartenders was carrying a gun, and he detected bionics on another, concealed beneath baggy clothes.
And our guns are stuck in a rental locker, he thought ruefully. The Club Event Horizon might be on the ass end of nowhere, but it had first class weapons detection.
Deke shot him a "here goes nothing" glance and then stepped up to the bar, catching the eye of one of the bartenders with a gesture.
"What can I get you?" the short, stocky woman asked, light gleaming off of her depilated scalp, her voice cutting through the din of the music with such clarity that Cal knew it had to be enhanced by some sort of hidden amplification system.
"I need to speak to the manager," Deke told her, deliberately not shouting. Cal knew him well enough to guess that he'd also deduced that there was some sort of audio enhancement built into the bar area. "Business." Cal thought he noted a hesitation for just a split second. "I'm a friend of Lixbed's."
Don't think your friend's going to like having her name dropped like that, Cal told him silently.
Fuck her, Deke replied curtly. She burned that bridge, not me.
The bartender nodded and half-turned, speaking quietly into some sort of throat mike or implant, then listening for a moment before nodding.
"Wait here a second," he told Deke, holding up a hand.
Why couldn't we just shoot our way in and sweat this guy the old-fashioned way? Cal grumbled over his neurolink, trying not to look as impatient as he felt. The whole place made him claustrophobic in a way that even Belial never had; the builders of that more famous asteroid resort had engineered it to maximize the feeling of interior space and make you forget you were inside a giant cave. Kanesh...they didn't seemed to have cared that much about the feelings of the patrons.
&
nbsp; Because, Deke replied, being infuriatingly reasonable, believe it or not, some of these guys are just making a living and I'd rather not have to kill them.
Since when did you become so damn responsible? Cal asked him.
Since some asshole interrupted my poker game almost five years ago and asked me for help, his friend shot back, the edge of his mouth quirking up slightly.
Cal was about to concede that one to him, but his thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of a slim, elegantly dressed man with dark eyes, amber skin and slicked-back dark hair tied into a pony tail. He looked curiously back and forth between Cal and Deke, then waved for them to follow him back through the door behind the bar.
The hallway behind the door was narrow enough that Cal's shoulders barely cleared it by a centimeter on each side, which did nothing to alleviate his mood. Thankfully, it was fairly short and opened up through another doorway into an office. Not a large office, but still lavishly furnished, particularly for a place like Kanesh: furniture of what looked to be real wood, shelves stacked with absurdly antique physical copies of books that were likely more a statement of wealth than an indication of any proclivity towards reading.
The man Cal assumed was Ken Liu turned on them, arms folded. He didn't offer them a seat. His features were slightly pinched, as if he frowned a lot.
"Who are you?" he asked bluntly, his voice slightly raspy. "And what do you want?"
"I'm Deke Conner." He didn't bother to lie; even though their ship's registry and their personal ID's were doctored, they had to assume that the Sung Brothers' people would have access to his biometric patterns and there'd been neither time nor inclination to change those. "I've done some work for the Sung Brothers in the past."
Liu hesitated a moment and Cal was fairly certain he was comparing the name to the files the Sung Brothers maintained, probably via a contact lens connected to the company's servers or to his personal datalink.
"Yes," he said finally, eyes narrowing. "There was some excitement the last time they did business with you, I see. Something about the DSI."
"I was strong-armed into helping the DSI track down some stolen Predecessor tech that the bratva had hired out to hit the Sung Brothers," Deke admitted easily, grinning. "I didn't have to sell anyone out and I avoided the Reformery, so it seemed like a win-win."
"And what win-win proposition are you selling today?" Liu asked, skepticism heavy in his voice. Cal didn't know the man, but he had the sense that he was about ten seconds from calling in his guards and having them tossed out an airlock.
"I'm working for Koji," Deke told him, slipping into the lie as smoothly as he'd told the truth a few seconds early. Koji was the arms dealer on Peboan who had sold Deke and Kara out to the Sung Brothers a few months ago, when they'd been in the Pirate Worlds investigating the Predecessor weapons. Deke had worked for him before and, as the man was notoriously private, there was no way the Sung Brothers would know if he were working for him again. "He has an interest in becoming the primary supplier for the Tahni insurgency." Deke's grin became harder. "It seems to be a growth industry."
"Why would I or my employers care?" Liu demanded, but Cal thought he did seem more interested now. He'd had his fists planted against his hips, but now they dropped down to his sides, relaxing slightly.
"You have an arrangement with a Tahni named Kah-Rint," Deke explained. "Mr. Koji believes that this Kah-Rint and his backer, a minor player on Canaan called 'Cutter,' are working with the Tahni insurgency directly, but strictly small-time." He shrugged. "We want to buy him out, but he's gone pretty far underground to avoid heat from the Commonwealth."
Liu chewed his lower lip thoughtfully, then waved them both toward his desk. He moved around behind it and sat down while they fell into two of the chairs arranged around it. The chair was very well padded, Cal thought.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss our clients or their arrangements with outside parties," Liu said severely, but the look on his face said something different.
"I totally respect that," Deke said earnestly, slipping a dataspike out of his jacket pocket and sliding it unobtrusively across the man's desk.
Liu eyed it with just a hint of a smile, then picked it up and plugged it into a socket on his datalink. Then he did smile and this time it reached all the way to his eyes.
At least the DSI's money spends well, Cal thought.
"However," the Sung Brothers representative went on as if nothing had interrupted him, "I can see that your employer is serious about establishing a relationship with the Sung Brothers. Perhaps we can work something out."
"Perhaps twice that," Deke said, nodding towards the dataspike. "Once every shipment?"
"That seems very reasonable." Liu leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him. "And what exactly would you require from our end?"
"Just some market research," Deke replied, shrugging. "Looking to be cognizant of the customer's needs, you know?"
"What we need," Cal broke in, speaking for the first time because the dancing around was starting to grate on his nerves, "is to know what Kah-Rint was shipping these last few months, and to where." He'd leaned forward, his hands resting lightly on the edge of Liu's desk. The polished wood felt smooth and cool to his touch.
Liu looked at him for a moment and whatever he saw in those blue-grey eyes made him lick a sheen of sweat off his upper lip. He nodded, touching a control on his datalink.
"I'll message you a copy, but it's been mostly shipments into Tahn-Skyyiah: a few hundred sets of Stealth armor, around the same of Tahni combat lasers and cold-gas fire-and-forget missile launchers..."
Seen those, Cal transmitted to Deke, trying to keep from scowling.
"...until a couple weeks ago," the man's tone changed as he saw something curious. "Kah-Rint purchased passenger space as well as cargo space on an outbound freighter. The lading for the cargo wasn't unusual: laser weapons, plasma projectors, armor...but the passengers weren't Tahni, which I would have expected. They were humans: hired guns and fairly rough ones."
Cal frowned, casting a curious glance at Deke, who shrugged.
"They're sending human mercs to Tahn-Skyyiah?" Cal asked, confused.
"Not to Tahn-Skyyiah," Liu clarified, chuckling at the misunderstanding. "That's the interesting part: they're heading for one of the newer colonies. It has a sizable Tahni presence, of course," he said, "but I don't know what he expects a human hit team to do to support a Tahni insurgency..."
Cal heard a faint, distant cracking and realized with a start that his fingers had dug into the surface of the wood on the desktop, leaving eight distinct dimpled impressions near the edge.
"What colony?" he asked, ignoring Liu's wide, horrified stare.
"This desk cost me ten thous..." the elegant man's voice was rising with each syllable, but it strangled off to abrupt squeak as Cal's hand wrapped around his throat, lifting him out of his seat. Cal felt cold fire run through his veins, a laser focus on Liu married with a complete awareness of Deke's restraining hand on his shoulder and the thermal signature of the approaching guards.
"What colony?" he repeated, his voice sounding hoarse and muted in his ears.
"An...Anansi," Liu gasped the answer Cal had been dreading, face starting to turn purple. "The port at Toliara!" Another gasp that dragged in a tortured breath. "They left seventy-two hours ago!"
* * *
"Answer me a question, Kara," Holly Morai said earnestly, "and I want you to be honest."
Kara McIntire looked across her desk at the other woman, who was sitting in a corner of the office, her booted feet propped up on a stack of holographic computer servers.
"Yeah, Holly?" she replied, annoyed at the interruption as she reviewed the surveillance reports from the drones following Tyya-Khin.
"Is your job always this boring or am I just lucky?"
Kara sighed and counted to ten inside her head. She tried to sympathize; after all, since they'd finished the last interview three days ago, there hadn't been
much for the other woman to do.
"I don't particularly like sitting around and waiting either," she reminded the Fleet officer, trying to keep the biting tone out of her voice. "I was trained as a deep cover op, not a desk jockey."
And I'd much rather be working with Deke than you, was left unsaid.
"Having nothing else to do," Holly said dryly, "I've been trying to think big picture on this whole cluster-fuck."
"And what has that led you to?" Kara wondered, trying to insert nonexistent curiosity into her response for the sake of maintaining civility.
"A bunch of questions that no one seems to have answers for," Holly said sharply. "Like who the hell is running this whole thing, and what do they get out of it if us and the Tahni wind up at war again?"
"Motivations are always money, power, love or hate," Kara said, quoting a psychology class she'd taken as part of her DSI training, only half paying attention as she devoted most of her attention to the surveillance report. "Or some combination of those four."
"Okay, let's say it's money," Holly mused, sounding a bit enthused to be doing something other than looking over Kara's shoulder. "Maybe the remaining scions of the old Corporate Council think they can put the band back together if we go back to war."
Kara actually paid attention to that possibility for just a moment before shaking her head.
"Unlikely," she decided. "The Tahni don't have the resources to mount a full-out war anymore. There'd be no need to put together an economic conglomerate to match their output, like we had to do during the war." She cocked her head to the side, pulling up a memory via her headcomp. "Besides, the only Corporate Council board members who didn't get arrested after the business with Andre Damiani were Cameron Weber and Cecilia Huerta, and they're both being watched pretty closely by various government agencies. We would have already come up with some connection between them and Kah-Rint, and we haven't."
Kara looked up, eyes narrowing. "It's the same with power, really. If Gregorian were still around, this would have been right up his alley, but he's dead."
