by Mike Brooks
She reached the ground floor in less than twenty seconds (her old instructor had used to say that only two sorts of people were intelligent enough to realise that sliding down bannisters was quicker than using stairs: children and agents), wrenched open the front door and ran out into the rain, which had settled down from its thunderous beginnings into the kind of solid drenching which could keep up its steady precipitation through the night and well into the next day. She headed south-east for the nearest rail station as fast as she could, hoping that Císa r˘ would decide the paperwork involved with arranging the detention of a GIA agent simply wasn’t worth it. As she ran, she activated her comm.
+Go.+ Drift sounded like he’d recovered a little from whatever had been causing him problems earlier, but he clearly wasn’t in the mood for chatting. Which was good; perhaps for once he’d adhere to proper communications protocol.
‘No deal,’ Rourke said, trying not to puff as she turned a corner. ‘It’s up to the girl now.’
GLASS CITY
Hroza Major was Perun IV’s largest moon and it glittered when viewed from space, as though someone had washed large parts of its surface with diamonds. In reality the effect was caused by the extensive transparent roofs of the miles of biodomes which sheltered the human populace,containing the oxygen they needed and trapping the weak rays of the Perun star to bring the temperature up into an acceptable range, much like greenhouses on Old Earth. Drift thought it was unusually beautiful for something so practical.
‘I’m still amazed you and Jenna didn’t get grabbed boarding the flight out of Europa,’ he said to Rourke, who was standing in the cockpit doorway.
‘It’s not how these things tend to work,’ the former agent replied with a shrug. ‘The USNA and the Europans are on pretty good terms, and I was polite. It’s the sort of incident that will get the softly-softly treatment, because the Europans won’t want to admit publicly that a GIA agent just swanned into a Minister’s flat. So they’ll drop hints in diplomatic language that they’re not pleased, and then the GIA will take time to interpret those, and then they’ll do an internal investigation to find out if any agent matching my description had been authorised to be there, and then they’ll have to convince the Europans of that . . .’ She snorted. ‘It probably took a week or two for both parties to stop dancing and work out that I wasn’t there under orders from anyone.’
‘That seems remarkably inefficient,’ Drift noted. ‘Welcome to the thrill-a-minute world of intergalactic espionage,’ Rourke said dryly.‘It was an awful lot of doing nothing for a very long time while everyone worked out what was happening, and then doing everything very quickly and in something of a panic.’
That sounded familiar to Drift. Thankfully it had only taken two days for the USNA to break ranks and open the skies above their shores to traffic again, at which point a whole slew of delayed craft had gone spacewards as fast as possible, including the Carcharodon-class shuttle currently known as the Tamsin’s Wake. Alex Cruz had studiously avoided any contact with Drift, but the fact that their bay door had opened mere minutes after the lockdown had finished was hint enough that the portmaster wanted them gone post-haste. They’d broken atmo with every apparent intention of heading to the asteroid belt to take on some minerals for shipping, before turning aside to rejoin the Keiko at its waystation above Mars instead. Jia had plotted them the fastest possible course to the Perun System as soon as they’d got back aboard the freighter and they’d taken off as though all the hounds of hell had been behind them.
And then they’d done nothing for three-and-a-half weeks while the Alcubierre drive had bent space-time around them.
It hadn’t been easy. The usual bored atmosphere of a starship in transit had been replaced with the quiet tension of seven people who were used to moving in the shadows but were now being forced to step out of them. Jenna had busied herself in fiddling with her wrist console, Rourke and Micah sparred on mats in the cargo bay, and Kuai effectively quarantined himself in the engine room after a third explosive quarrel with his sister. By the time they got to their destination, Drift was so eager for action he wasn’t really sure if he’d have cared if the entire Europan starfleet was waiting to arrest them.
They weren’t, of course, which meant it was time for the next piece of outrageously ballsy chicanery.
‘You’re sure these codes are still legitimate?’ Drift asked Rourke, his finger poised over the transmission button.
‘They were legitimate, and that’s the important thing,’ Rourke told him firmly. ‘It’s a GIA ident code. I wouldn’t like to try using it in a USNA system, but for a foreign government?’ She shrugged. ‘It should be fine. Especially since it’s not the only piece to the puzzle.’
‘Well, here goes nothing,’ Drift said, and started the transmission. It wasn’t like they had much of an option, anyway.
It couldn’t have been thirty seconds before the comm crackled into life. +This is Glass City Starport Control to shuttle Jonah, please come in, over.+
‘Glass City Control, this is the Jonah,’ Drift answered crisply, ‘go ahead, over.’
+Shuttle Jonah, you are broadcasting a USNA government ident code. Please confirm your identity and purpose, over.+
‘Control, we cannot discuss this over an open channel,’ Drift replied, ‘but we believe your security forces should be expecting us. Please advise on how to proceed, over.’
There was a pause.
+Shuttle Jonah, you are cleared to begin atmospheric entry to make landfall at Glass City. Hold at thirty thousand feet for an escort, over.+
‘Roger that, Control,’ Drift acknowledged, giving Rourke a thumbs-up, ‘Jonah out.’ He looked over at Jia. ‘You heard the lady, take us down.’
‘No stunts, either,’ Rourke added firmly. ‘It’s going to be hard enough convincing anyone that you’re all GIA specialist contractors without you going all thrusterhead over the capital.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Jia muttered, angling the Jonah nominally downwards, ‘whatever.’
Drift blew his cheeks out and turned in his seat to look at Rourke. ‘Taking orders from you is going to be weird. And you’re sure they’re not going to think it’s odd that there’s only one actual GIA agent in the whole lot of us?’
‘I’m not sure, no,’ Rourke replied, with strained patience. Admittedly, Drift had been asking variations of that question since they started putting the plan together. ‘But it’s general practice. There’s an awful lot of galaxy to cover and only limited resources available, so an agent with a long-term brief will often need to put their own team together out of whoever they can find.’
‘So it’s just a case of whether the Europans know that?’ Jenna asked.
‘Pretty much,’ Rourke admitted. She grimaced. ‘Let’s hope they’re open-minded about my slightly eccentric hiring policy.’
‘Just blame me,’ Drift grinned, ‘I’m a far more believable eccentric than you.’
Hroza Major’s atmosphere was naturally occurring, unbreathable and thin, that last meaning there was little resistance to their descent surfacewards. Jia brought them down with a minimum of turbulence until Glass City was stretched out beneath them, then hit the retros to keep them hovering.
‘Glass City Control, this is the Jonah,’ Drift broadcast, ‘we are holding position and awaiting escort, over.’
+Roger, shuttle Jonah, escort is approaching now.+
‘Boss, we got two fighters on intercept,’ Jia reported, unable to keep a hint of nervousness from her voice. Drift couldn’t blame her; it ran against all his instincts to sit still and wait for official attention, but the die was now well and truly cast. The only thing left to do was see how their gamble paid out.
+Shuttle Jonah, this is Escort 1,+ a new voice announced. +We are sending coordinates for your landing point now, please keep yourself between us at all times, over.+
‘Roger that, Escort 1,’ Drift replied, trying to keep his voice calm. The coordinates flashed up and he slid them ov
er to Jia’s read-out. ‘We’ll follow you down, over.’
The two sleek, slate-blue Europan patrol ships led them over Glass City and past the commercial spaceports to the red stone hills at the conurbation’s northern edge. Here they peeled away to each side and left Jia to take the Jonah down onto a landing pad decorated with the circle-of-stars emblem of the Europan Commonwealth.
‘And now,’ Rourke said, unhooking her rebreather mask from her belt, ‘let’s see if we’ve flown into a trap.’
They assembled in the cargo bay, masks on and comms activated. If they’d been planning to spend any significant time outside in Hroza’s sub-zero temperatures or if the atmosphere had been toxic, corrosive or completely absent, then the crew would have donned heated full-body suits. As it was they could handle being a bit chilly, although Drift made sure to zip up the thermojacket he’d worn in Old New York.
‘Remember,’ Rourke said, standing by the ramp control, ‘let me do the talking where possible and don’t make things up or improvise unless you absolutely have to. We’re using real names and real identification because we can’t afford to be caught in any falsehoods, so stick as close as you can to your real history if you’re asked about when you joined the crew, where you joined the crew, anything like that. If they get suspicious, that’s it for us.’
‘No pressure, then,’ Micah grunted as Rourke flipped the switch to lower the ramp.
They started down the ramp as soon as it had reached horizontal, by which time the welcoming committee was already in place. Drift counted half a dozen void-suited soldiers with alarmingly efficientlooking rifles, and while the barrels were not pointed at the Jonah’s crew they weren’t shouldered ceremonially, either. Standing in the middle of that loose semicircle was a woman with the three pips of a captain in the Europan Armed Forces on her shoulder.
Rourke didn’t let the other woman speak first. Instead, she peeled off her glove and held up her hand while they were still walking, presumably willing her electat into existence. ‘I’m Agent Rourke of the United States of North America’s Galactic Intelligence Agency, and this is my team.’ Her tone was businesslike and almost bored, the voice of someone getting a necessary formality over with.
‘Captain Rybak of the Perun System Defence Force,’ came the response. ‘We received a message from the Minister for Defence advising us to expect you.’
Drift held his breath. This was where they found out if Jenna’s backup plan had worked.
Captain Rybak inclined her helmeted head in a slight nod. ‘We’ve been instructed to act in accordance with you in an attempt to apprehend the terrorist Nicolas Kelsier. Please, come inside.’
TAKING THE BAIT
‘I’m starting to hate this place,’ Micah muttered from behind Drift’s left shoulder. The Dutch mercenary was fiddling with the straps on his armavest and scowling as the Jonah descended towards the surface of Hroza Major again. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ Drift asked mildly.
‘I hate it because we shouldn’t be here,’ Micah growled. ‘We should be in the Olorun System trying to find Kelsier, not messing around in Glass City like a bunch of toeristen. You said we’d be looking for the old bastard, not waiting for him to come find us.’
‘You want to go hunting through the Olorun System for a “big asteroid”?’ Drift demanded. ‘We wouldn’t even know where to start. We know he’s there—’
‘According to some old woman underneath Old New York,’ Micah muttered.
‘—so someone somewhere nearby will have had some sort of contact with him or his operation,’ Drift finished. ‘He needs to get supplies, and common sense would say from nearby. If we ask enough questions, we’ll find a lead sooner or later.’
‘You remember that we might not have much “later” to play with, right?’ Micah said. ‘Rybak might have bought our schtick but you know she’ll send a message to Old Earth at some point, a progress report or something, and when they get a reply this whole house of cards is going to collapse around our ears.’
Drift sighed. ‘Just go and get ready to move the cargo.’ He watched Micah leave the cockpit, the mercenary muttering under his breath in Dutch, then cast a glance at the back of Jia’s head. ‘You’re uncommonly quiet.’
‘He’s right, you know,’ Jia replied without looking round from her controls. ‘We’re on borrowed time. We need to get something soon, or running and hiding is all we’ve got left.’
‘I’ve been living on borrowed time for the last couple of decades,’ Drift told her grimly, ‘and no one’s managed to collect the interest yet. Bring us down into the Low Docks; we’ll offload this lot and see if we’ve had any bites since we’ve been away.’
The Low Docks were a large area of metal grillwork, open to the skies and capable of taking several dozen atmo-capable shuttles at once. Jia piloted the Jonah down into an empty bay, engaging the mags and gradually killing the thrusters as they descended the last distance vertically. Drift pulled his rebreather mask on and activated the comm, wedging a plug into his other ear to avoid discomfort from the low atmospheric pressure.
+I can’t believe you took us off on a five-day ore run.+ Micah’s voice was just as sullen over the commnet.
+I can’t believe I’m hearing you complain about earning money,+ Apirana put in.
Drift sighed as he came through the doorway into the cargo bay and took the steps down to the floor of the hold, which was filled with large shipping containers of copper and nickel ore mined from the considerably warmer inner planet of Perun II. He still had hope that they could track Kelsier down, but he needed his crew to keep the rather fragile faith he’d apparently managed to reignite. The significance of Micah’s grumbling – well, grumbling more than usual – was not lost on him.
+You can’t spend money when you’re dead,+ Micah was arguing, +and I’m not planning to retire into a grave. We should have been—+
‘Earning money for bribes?’ Drift cut in sharply, feeling the warm puff of his own breath reflected onto his face by the rebreather. ‘Allowing time for word to get around? Letting Tamara and Jenna see what goes on while we’re out of the picture? Because that’s what we’ve done, Micah. Besides which, if this does go south and we do need to get out in a hurry then we’re going to need all the cash we can scrape together.’ He looked up to see Jia appearing from the cockpit and sealing the door behind her, rebreather already in place. Kuai’s masked visage appeared from the direction of the engine room a few moments later so Drift hit the button which would pull the breathable air from the cargo bay.
When most of their air had been removed Drift lowered the gang ramp to reveal mechanical loaders already waiting to retrieve the goods, piloted by operators who were unmasked and presumably snug in their sealed, heated cabins. The forewoman approached, a stern-faced lady with a blunt fringe and hair darker than the night sky, and handed Drift a credit chip without preamble. He slotted it into his pad and nodded as the numbers flashed up: seven thousand Europan was hardly a fortune but was still a decent wage for short-range cargo haulage.
It took barely two minutes for the ore containers to be unloaded, although Drift’s ears and fingers were already complaining about the cold by the time the work was done. He sealed the Jonah behind him and threaded his way through the docks towards where the rest of the crew were already waiting for him on the other side of a pedestrian airlock. The gust of warm air which hit him when the inner doors opened practically brought him out in a sweat.
Glass City was in some ways very similar to the underground warrens of Carmella II, yet totally unlike. Both consisted of townships constructed inside arcing roofs, but the Hrozan settlement lacked the claustrophobic, dank atmosphere. Instead, the views of open sky above lent it a feeling of space despite the constraining glass structure. There were no atmo-scrapers here either, as the architects behind Glass City had envisaged a relatively lowlevel, low-density settlement. In short, the entire place felt like a middle-class suburb and Drift kept finding himself fighting the urg
e to track down something valuable to steal.
‘All okay?’ Apirana asked as Drift removed his mask and they headed for the nearest tram terminal, which would take them through the city to where Rourke was waiting for them.
‘Fine,’ he replied, patting a pocket: not the one where he’d actually concealed the credit chip, as he had no illusions that the crowd around them wouldn’t conceal pickpockets despite the city’s genteel appearance. ‘Say what you will about honest work, at least you rarely have to shake anyone down for your wage. Given recent events, it’s almost enough to make me consider registering as a haulage ship and becoming . . . respectable.’
‘You’d get bored,’ Jia sniffed.
‘I’d get bored,’ Drift admitted.
‘An’ too easy to find,’ Apirana added.
‘Also that.’
The Low Docks tram stop was busy, despite the spaceport being only one of three in Glass City: Hroza Major’s three cities were tourist attractions for those with the money to travel and an interest in eclectic architecture which blended function with aesthetics. The crew of the Jonah joined the throng to wait for the maglev, a silver, bullet-nosed affair with enclosing walls and roof, not to protect passengers from the non-existent elements but for the rather more mundane purpose of preventing people jumping on and off between stops.
They’d rented a small suite of rooms in the grandly named Lakeview Royale, which succeeded in having a view of one of Glass City’s artificial bodies of water but utterly failed in providing anything other than decidedly standard accommodation for what was still a substantial price: Hroza Major was not a place for those of limited means. Drift and his crew would normally have stayed in their bunks aboard the Jonah, for the security of the ship as much as to save money, but the hunt they were on required them to be somewhere more immediately approachable than behind a couple of feet of metal and surrounded by an unbreathable atmosphere.
