Celestial Hit List

by Charles Ingrid

  Amber, curled up in a lounge chair nearby, looked up from her keypad long enough to grin at the tone of exasperation creeping into Colin’s voice. She didn’t like Biggie personally… he oozed. What, she couldn’t put her finger on, but she disliked oozers of all sorts whether it was evil or innocence or anything in between.

  Colin sighed. “Think of yourself as a drip of water and Pepys as a rock. Sooner or later you’re going to etch in your influence.”

  “Yes, your reverence.” Biggie’s image flickered as he turned away and then turned back. “Perhaps I can catch him unawares.”

  Never, Colin thought of his old friend Pepys, but he answered politely, “Perhaps.”

  “The emperor is under a lot of pressure from the Dominion Congress.”

  “Oh?”

  “They’ve doubled their budget and expect the Triad to make up the deficit.”

  Colin tapped a finger on his desk. That would account for a lot of strain in relations.

  “And the Thraks are still mad at him, too. Ambassador Dhurl has requested another audience.”

  “Really? That’ll be the third one this month.”

  Biggie nodded. “So maybe I can catch his highness when he’s distracted.”

  Colin thought, don’t count on it, but he smiled at his secretary. “Just remember, persistence. And logic. Please don’t forget logic, Biggie.”

  “Yes, sir.” The com screen flickered and went dark, buzzing a second longer before going silent.

  “I like the water and rock bit,” Amber said.

  The saint smiled at the girl. “You would,” he said. “I’ve seen you employ the same technique.”

  She shrugged. “Whatever it takes.”

  “Does it work with Jack?”

  She unfolded her legs and looked uneasy. “Sometimes.”

  Colin rocked back in his chair and wondered a moment. Then he said, “How are you sleeping?”

  “In my own apartment!”

  The saint, in spite of his years and sophistication, flushed slightly. Then he rumbled, “That’s not what I meant, young lady, and you know it. I want to know if you’re still having nightmares.”

  “I think so.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I—I can’t seem to remember what I’ve been dreaming anymore. But I wake up, and the bed’s all torn apart, so I know… I know they’re not peaceful.”

  Colin frowned. “I think perhaps I cannot help you any more, Amber. I think you’re going to have to seek—”

  “No one’s going to mess with my mind!”

  “Someone already has,” he pointed out. “And you’re going to be susceptible to whatever NLP Rolf has implanted you with until it’s ferreted out.”

  “I—I can’t. Really. I’m sure if I do that he’s also put in a Trojan Horse.”

  “A what?”

  She looked at him. “A delayed bomb, of sorts, of psychic suggestions. If anyone messes with what he’s set up, I’ll be destroyed, mentally. It’s inside, closed up, until triggered. It would be like him to do that to me. So, I guess…” her voice wavered and faded away.

  Colin crossed the room and took her up in his arms as if she were still a small child. “Oh, my dear,” was all he could think of to say to her.

  Biggie, on the sidelines of the audience room, watched as the Thrakian League’s ambassador strode in. He was always impressed by the Thraks, impressed and horrified in the same breath. He watched the chitin face plates of the alien move into a hardened mask and wondered what it indicated. The expression was horrific, like that of an ancient Kabuki, but he did not have the expertise to know what was meant by it.

  “I demand,” the ambassador said, “immediate retribution. We have fenced long enough, Pepys. The dignity of our peoples requires this.”

  The red-haired emperor leaned forward slightly from his audience chair. Even on the dais, he sat barely taller than the Thrak stood. “Retribution for what, my good ambassador?”

  “Your memory, like your honor, seems to be a frail thing.” Dhurl paused, not unaware of the gasps and the sensation he was creating throughout the hall. “I have a warship and crew destroyed by your guard.”

  “And we have had this discussion before.” Pepys, however, seemed to retreat slightly into his chair. His fingers tapped its right arm thoughtfully. “If I were to offer retribution, what might the Thrakian League be willing to accept?”

  “Money would only seem an insult after what has already taken place.”

  “Naturally. But there must be some redress?”

  The ambassador moved back on his hind legs. Biggie watched in fascination as the face plates moved slightly, and the mask altered. “We wish assurances that an incident of this kind will not happen in the future, or else our very Treaty stands in danger of being destroyed.”

  “I have already given you that assurance, based on your assurance that such actions of yours be tempered as well.”

  Dhurl waved a talon. “And there are other considerations. Lasertown was an outlying fringe territory, where lines of responsibility and obligation blurred. It would be best that other such territories are not placed in a like jeopardy.”

  Oh-oh, Biggie thought as Pepys suddenly leaned forward. Here it comes, whatever it is.

  “And what territories might we be discussing?”

  “Bythia for one, Emperor. As you know, we have received requests through our embassy there that they have asked for secession from Dominion and wish to be sequestered under our guidance.”

  Dhurl might have some of the nuances of the language wrong, but not the impact. Biggie noted that the tension in the room literally hummed.

  Pepys scratched his jaw briefly. “I’ve received no such requests through my embassy,” he said.

  The two beings regarded one another. Dhurl shifted yet again. “Perhaps,” the Thraks suggested, “your representatives hesitate to reveal the truth to you.”

  “And perhaps,” replied Pepys very softly, “you are lying.”

  A gasp. An intake of breath around the room, one that was held.

  The Thrakian guards pulled in closer to their ambassador. Dhurl made a diffident movement. “Then I take it that secession is not to be allowed, as a part of redress, or otherwise.”

  “You take it correctly, Ambassador Dhurl. The Bythians are free planeteers, but we will not allow them to be invaded if we can help it.”

  “So be it,” said Dhurl. He spun on his beetlelike legs and strode out of the audience hall, and Biggie did not need to read the masklike expression to know something of terrible import had just passed between the Thraks and the emperor. He waited until the media had followed the ambassador out and then pressed forward.

  Pepys wore a distracted, unhappy expression, but turned as the secretary approached the foot of the dais. “What is it, Biggie?”

  The Walker raised a solicitous hand. “Perhaps, your highness, on the subject of Bythia, I can now obtain permission for a Walker team to become part of the embassy?”

  Pepys’ green eyes bulged a little, but then he forced a laugh. “Very well, Biggie! There will be little enough left for your team to explore as it is. Go on, get out of here, and tell St. Colin he’s a bigger fool than he thinks he is.”

  “Thank you, your highness!” Biggie bowed with an ecstasy of feeling.

  The emperor waved him away. “You don’t know what you’ve done,” he said. “Now go!” He pushed himself up from his chair and left the audience hall abruptly, his advisers scurrying after him.

  Biggie, his heart full, pushed his way toward the public entrance to the hall. He longed to be the first one to break the news to His Reverence and it would be nice if the young lady were with him also. Biggie had feelings of lust and yearning for the young lady and he had hopes of having her look on him with favor. He had a powerful position as secretary to the saint. Many young women had fawned on him for less.

  Maybe now she would look on him less scornfully.

  Biggie licked his lips
and hurried toward the public com room. He turned down the distant corridor, thinking he was alone, and then stopped suddenly as he found out he was not. “Ah!” he said. “You’re here, after all? Great news I have to tell you. Wait until you hear what I’ve done! Congratulate me!” Flushed with his success, he opened his arms and moved forward in a bold embrace.

  He made a sound of astonishment as his chest flowered crimson, and then he collapsed, but he was dead before he hit the tile floor.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There’s not a kill mark on him,” Jack said, pacing, not looking at either Colin or the girl.

  “I know, I know,” Amber answered him.

  “And forensics is telling us that Scott just exploded. They can’t tell what hit him, there’s no burned flesh or chemical markings. It’s as if the man just decided to… explode. And now Biggie.”

  “I know.”

  Colin raised his eyebrows and gave Jack a look which the other ignored as he continued pacing. When he came to a stop, he said, “You didn’t do that, did you?”

  Amber sat engulfed in a chair, her legs drawn up under her, tawny hair curtaining her face from his survey. She didn’t react visibly, but the older man did.

  “Now see here! She was with me both times, yes, but there’s absolutely no reason to think she would be capable of such a thing!”

  “Not could be, but would be. That’s the key,” Jack returned. “And, unfortunately, we have no way of telling who she’s been programmed for. If there’s a list engraved inside that pretty head, it’s hidden from view… you know it, and I know it. It doesn’t make any difference what you say to Pepys now, the emperor is going to have to consider Amber a suspect.”

  “But why? There’s a perfectly logical reason why we were coming into the public wing… Biggie had called me. He told me about Dhurl’s audience and we decided we wanted to see the show ourselves. Amber’s finding the body was sheer coincidence.”

  “Maybe.” Jack looked down at the chair, at the mane of hair hiding the pale face and mellow golden brown eyes, eyes which were the windows of a soul he valued… and now was growing to fear. “Did you sense he was there? In any way?”

  She shook her head. A miserable sound escaped from her, a sob or a muffled moan. Jack sighed in spite of himself.

  “Go to pieces on us now,” he said, squatting down so his face was roughly on a level with hers, “and we might as well stuff you down the Disposall and save Pepys the trouble.”

  She peered at him. “I’m almost sure I didn’t do it.”

  “What?”

  She turned to Colin’s outrage. “I’m not sure anymore. I didn’t like Biggie, your reverence. He was… greasy. He thought he knew exactly why you liked me and why I’d accompanied you to Lasertown and why I was keeping you company now, and he wanted some of that, too. He would make inferences when you weren’t around. So I might have—I might have killed him—just because I didn’t like him or the way he tried to handle me. Or I might have killed him because he’s an influential man, powerful, like you, and I was programmed to do it.”

  The saint ran a thick, square hand over his balding head, chestnut and white strands ruffling in its wake. “Or you might not have killed him at all! I resent the implication that I could be standing next to a murderer and let it happen without doing anything at all.”

  “What could you do?”

  “Stop you.”

  “Then maybe you’d be dead, too,” Amber said flatly.

  Jack stood back up. “And then, of course, there’s always the chance that the emperor will consider you a suspect,” he said to Colin.

  “Me?”

  “You were there both times and maintaining your position as the head of an empire such as yours has called for drastic measures in the past.”

  The two men looked at one another. Washed out blue eyes in a plain-boned face met angry, deep brown eyes.

  “I hope,” St. Colin said heavily, “You are referring to the historical past.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Ummmm.” The older man moved away, shoving his hands in his pockets. His dark blue tunic robe rippled with the movement and fluttered behind him like a banner as he began to pace. He could not easily forget how he’d first met Jack when Pepys had assigned him to investigate a militaristic movement within the Walker organization. He’d not worked with Jack on the investigation, but when he’d been picked up and taken hostage by the militants, Colin found himself rescued in a very professionally-run maneuver that prevented what could have been a bloodbath. Now, Colin admitted, he was deluding himself if he thought he had rooted out all the dissidence in his fellowship. He found he had completed the circuit of his room and was back in front of Amber, who’d un-curled in her chair and now sat up, watching him, a defiant expression on her gamine face.

  He reached toward her and brushed a tangle of hair from her eyes with a gentle fingertip. “He’s right, you know. Pepys could be after me as a suspect as well as you.” He heaved a great sigh. “That only leaves us one choice, Jack.”

  The Knight stirred as if he’d been waiting for that signal to activate him. He nodded. “I know. I want you to stay with Colin, no matter what happens.”

  She leaned forward in alarm, at the sound of his voice. “What are you two talking about?”

  Colin said gently, “The only way we can prove you’re not suspect is to find out who you’ve been trained to kill. As I understand it, there’s only one man who knows that.”

  Amber stood. “No! You can’t go after Rolf, he’ll kill you this time—Jack!”

  But the man had already gone out the door, leaving Colin to put his arm about the grieving girl.

  Rolf had no illusions about his life in Malthen. He was fast, smart and mean and kept his edge as long as he was all three of them. As long as he had that edge, he had everything he wanted—nearly. Limitations chafed him.

  He strode through the streets in the early morning, scouting the crowds of beggar children who surrounded him like a scummy, early morning fog. He looked for that instinctive quickness, that talent of knowing quarry from predator, that deftness his best pupil had had.

  They scurried out now. One or two slunk back upon spotting him… they knew him, but the others didn’t… there was always a new crop of children from failed farms outside Malthen, or the factory techs, or religious cults gone morally bankrupt overnight. Whatever the cause, they were always there, their eyes gummy with hope and their grubby fingers twitching at his pants pockets. Rolf smiled as he felt their touch now, for he wore his clothes sleek and tight like a pelt, a second skin, and he felt their intimacies as clearly as an electric shock.

  Still smiling, he growled down at the crowd. He grabbed an insolent hand and twisted it back on its pale wrist as the child attached to it cried and went to her knees. Her companions froze in shock. “Get away from me,” he said. “Unless you want to be missing a hand.”

  They fled. Instinctively, they knew the smile to be false and the growl reality.

  Rolf enjoyed frightening children and for a snatch of a moment, the smile grew. Then it faded. Never, it seemed, would he find another child with the talent and potential of Amber, and that was a limitation on his future wealth that he could not tolerate. With Amber, he’d had everything to look forward to, once he’d identified that elusive quality of hers.

  As he strode toward an all-hours bar, he chewed the bitter curds of having lost her—as a roadie to one of the emperor’s mercenaries, no less, which would make taking her back a tangled and difficult proposition. As yet, he’d not figured out how to do it without murdering the mercenary outright. As the months went by, that plan grew in his mind like a dark, but satisfying, fungus. He wanted nothing more than to kill the man, anyway, and if he could convince others it was necessary, he might have allies who could overcome his difficulties. Yes. He might well draw in some very powerful allies to help him.

  He entered the bar. It was dark and quiet, except for a minor discussion in the
far corner. Rolf frowned. He disliked trouble. He had most of the Sweepers in this sector paid off, but it was never wise to attract attention. The discussion chilled quickly, as Rolf found a booth and sat down. He tapped in his order for a fruit and dairy drink, breakfast, and sat back with a flex of shoulder muscles so developed they almost obscured his neck.

  Rolf liked being in shape. It gave him the power to be as cruel as he wished. He liked to hear squeaks of pain and pleading, and to see tears welling in his victim’s eyes. An eye just pooling with a first teardrop of pain or terror was a truly beautiful object, luminous, shimmering with soul that no robot or other animal could reproduce. And he had created it. It was a moment that fled quickly, disintegrating into bloodshot messiness, but he was a true artist and loved his creations.

  Except for Amber, of course. After those first few months, she’d never cried. Tough, like him, or she had been. True gutter slag.

  Rolf swelled uncomfortably with lust just thinking of her. He’d never been able to touch her—no, that’s how he’d found out about her potent defenses—but there’d never been a girl who’d excited him as much as Amber. She’d be grown now. Less desirable, but still alluring.

  When the servo waiter came by, the machine found Rolf in a truly foul mood and suffered a dent for its slowness. It gyroed awkwardly back to the kitchens.

  Rolf took his time with his breakfast, pondering the day’s business. He had little working at the moment, so it pleased him when the com line at his booth rang. He keyed it on.

  “Good morning, Rolf.”

  The monitor, irritatingly, stayed dark. Rolf pursed his lips and shoved aside his beverage. He disliked anonymous callers who knew his name.

  “What is it?”

  “You can’t see my face, but I can see yours—and I would suggest that it would be very wise of you not to show your temper with me. I’m here to help you. I understand that there is a man who took one of your operatives, a man you would like to dispose of, carefully.”