by Chris Bunch
On the approach, Helleu appeared a most welcoming city. It nestled in the crook of a large bay, against a range of spectacular mountains. The respectable-sized city, if not a metropolis, looked well laid out, and included several of the offshore islands.
The buildings gleamed white and lovely under the sun.
But the closer the former Star Risk team came to the landing field, the more they saw things that were missing.
Such as the upper half of a skyscraper, jaggedly smashed off by a heavy missile impact;
Such as unscarred lifters — most of the ones they saw darting above roads were heavily armed and armored;
Such as any sign of traffic direction;
Such as shopping districts that didn’t have sandbagged bunkers, here and there, and whose shop fronts weren’t heavily reinforced;
Such as strolling pedestrians — those they saw scurried about quickly, and M’chel thought most of them were armed;
Such as a normal-looking landing field. Half of the ships had been badly shot up, and others were warships, either by design or modification.
“Wonderful,” Riss said.
“Be it ever so humble,” Goodnight added, “there’s no place like this.”
They landed, and were hurried with their baggage into a customs shed. The lighter didn’t wait for more than a few moments before taking off again.
The customs shed was sandbagged, with the sandbags holed by small arms fire, and the customs officers all wore body armor.
“It would appear,” Friedrich murmured, “as if the political situation might have worsened since anyone last surveyed the situation.”
The customs official didn’t give their passports more than a perfunctory check, and ignored their baggage.
Riss thought she could have had a small howitzer in her suitcase for all the officials cared.
Looking at the holed buildings beyond the terminal, she thought more than a few passengers might’ve had just that sort of weapon stashed away — or higher calibers.
“I can barely wait to see what our hotel looks like,” Goodnight said.
Their cab had steel plates welded around the passenger compartment, and the driver’s cockpit was also armored.
The cabby, a slender, wiry-haired man, was quite friendly, and helped them load their gear.
The last bag was in the trunk when an unholy screeching tore the air.
Riss involuntarily shouted “incoming,” and the three Star Risk operatives flattened, beaten to the ground by the cabby.
A few hundred meters away, a small building lifted off the ground and disassembled itself into dust as the rocket barrage exploded.
The cabby picked himself up, checked a watch finger.
“A little early today,” was his comment.
“Does this go on all the time?” was Goodnight’s rather incredulous question.
“Oh, no,” the cabby said. “It’s a good deal more exciting these days. Elections were two weeks ago, and they’re still deciding who really won.”
“Interesting,” von Baldur said. “The Excelsior Hotel, please.”
“Ah,” the cabby said. “You are going to be some of our movers and shakers.”
“What makes you say that?” Friedrich said. “We picked the Excelsior from a guide fiche.”
“Of course, of course,” the cabby said, clearly not believing a word. “For your information, sir, the Excelsior is where those who, shall we say, wish to have a voice in the future of our system stay.”
Riss made a face, leaned over to Goodnight.
“Maybe it’s not a good idea to hang our hats there.”
“Or maybe it is,” Chas said. “We can’t expect to do business without meeting businessmen.”
Riss grinned.
They reached a checkpoint, set up in the middle of an otherwise ordinary street. It was a sandbagged position in the center of the street, with a crew-served autocannon, an alert gunner, and two sentries outside. M’chel also saw a recoilless rifle hidden in a storefront. Half were men, half women. All were in clean, tailored, dark green uniforms, without rank or unit badges.
One sentry checked a metal plate the cabby held out with a small bill wrapped around it. The other squinted at the passengers suspiciously, a blaster in his hand, then waved them on.
“Our new president’s men,” the cabby said. “Sharp-looking, aren’t they?”
Friedrich grunted noncommittally.
There was another checkpoint a few blocks on. These guards weren’t as flashily dressed, their uniform was a little shabbier, and their weaponry wasn’t as new.
But they were just as alert.
“And who do they belong to?” M’chel asked.
“Our prime minister,” the cabby said carelessly. “He’s on the outs. This week.”
He pointed down a road. “Now, there’s an avenue you want to stay off of. There’s a new post about half a klick down there, set up by the People, and they don’t like anybody.
“Bastards. Not only are they swarming the Marons, but they breed like rats, and are gonna crowd us off our own worlds if we — or somebody — doesn’t stop them.”
He turned into a lane that led to a high-rise just off the beach.
Another set of security guards checked the cab, waved to the door.
Obsequious men wearing the same uniform as the security team unloaded them, and took their baggage inside.
Friedrich took out a decent-sized bill, rolled it, and handed it to the cabby.
“Oh, thank you, sir! Will there be anything else? I hope.”
“We might need a driver on an irregular basis,” Friedrich said.
“Always available, sir. Safest, fastest transport in Helleu. I know everybody, everybody knows me, and I know who not to know. My name’s Jorkens, sir. Tell the concierge to call Breakside 438 for me. Anytime, anywhere.”
They checked in to the hotel.
“You’ll be on the tenth floor,” the congenial clerk said. “High enough so any, umm, loud noises, explosions, like that, will be softened, but not high enough to be a target for the crazies to aim at.”
They were escorted to their, as always, suite, then standard procedure cut in:
Goodnight used a couple of innocuous-looking devices in their luggage to check for bugs, found three. Two were audio, one was visual. He carefully starred the lens of the visual pickup as if something accidental had happened to crack it, so it would show nothing important.
Of the two bugs, one he judged ancient, and not worth worrying about. On the other he put a small distorter that would mar whatever was transmitted enough to be indecipherable, but still kept ‘casting.
Friedrich checked the suite’s alternate exits, where they would lead, and the location of fire exits and other emergency back doors.
Riss, with a collection of smallish bills, hunted down the floor’s maids, and made very good friends with them, with the promise of more, larger payments if they told her anything interesting or if anyone became curious about them.
It wasn’t that they were expecting any trouble.
But it wasn’t that they weren’t expecting any trouble, either.
There’d been no message from Spada, so he evidently hadn’t arrived yet.
Riss dug another innocent-looking little box out that supposedly played background music, keyed a code message into it on the frequency Spada’s ship would be monitoring when it arrived.
There being nothing else to do before dinner, M’chel went wandering along a nearby arcade.
Being near the Excelsior, it was, naturally, a collection of expensive shops, with everything up to and including Earth imports.
Life, Riss decided, went on. Even in a war zone, rich bitches and bastards still had to flaunt it.
After a fashion.
A couple of the shops had been rocketed out of business, and were boarded up. But the others kept on with business as usual.
Riss admired a store selling designer holsters, plus grenade and ammo
cases to fit most of the currently popular smaller blasters, in an interesting assortment of colors.
She weakened and bought a small thigh holster with what looked like black lace that wouldn’t get in the way of a rapid draw.
After a quiet consultation with the sales clerk, she paid an only slightly out of line amount for a matching, quite lethal, hideout gun to go with it.
She went on along the promenade. She saw several obvious mercenaries — a little too loud, a little too swaggering, their eyes a little too hungry — and their chosen partners, clearly looking for work.
She spotted one that she’d hired a couple or three assignments ago. She didn’t think the woman would recognize her, but she ducked into a store specializing in seductive undergarments and body armor that was promised to be “comfortable for any occasion,” until the mercenary passed.
As she came out, she heard the howl of a lifter under power and backed into the storefront as the lifter with men hanging out shooting back at a second lifter, also with gunnies at full tilt, roared past.
It turned out this was the payoff-in-progress of that month’s particular pastime: kidnapping — for either immediate profit or for political advancement. Generally, no one got hurt, and there was an amicable exchange. Frequently this week’s kidnapper became next week’s kidnappee. Only when things went distinctly sour did the guns come out.
After a fashion …
Another evening, Goodnight — feeling either bulletproof, cat-dead curious, or inordinately full of bravado — paid a very reluctant Jorkens to take the crew down “that street” to see what the People were made of.
“If we go and get grabbed, sir,” he said, “I’m depending on you to ransom me out. M’ old woman surely won’t pay a damned disme.”
Goodnight agreed.
The People’s quarter was a blaze of color and noise. The stores were mostly open-air bazaars packed with tiny booths.
No one seemed to discuss anything below a shout or a shrill. But the food was good, if spiced into the pain level, the costumery was equally breathtaking, the people were striking, and the artistry singular.
The People seemed to laugh a lot, but Riss noted that most of the men, and a near majority of the women, carried knives. Some of them were quite elaborately worked, but all were worn in very functional sheathes. M’chel inquired about the custom, and was told that a woman or man was given a knife when she or he was considered a full citizen, and they only gave them up when they decided to bear children or to otherwise practice nonviolence. Duels, either “to the blood” or “to the death,” were fairly common.
Children swarmed everywhere.
M’chel and Chas ended up in a small amphitheater, with a band that seemed made up of “run what you brung” musicians.
“It looks almost civilized here,” Chas told M’chel, his impression confirmed by his first taste of what the hostile, but terribly efficient, waiter called a Slammer.
He offered a taste to Riss, who had barely that, and had trouble speaking for the next few minutes.
Chas didn’t notice — he was watching a dance that had begun on the floor that seemed to be little more than people coming onto the floor, spinning around from person to person, then ricocheting back into the audience.
The waiter, somewhat superciliously, explained that this was one of the People’s Great Dances, symbolizing how they had been ejected by invaders in their own homes, which were beautiful beyond words or even music. They were driven out, but sooner or later — and this was signified by all of the dancers suddenly rushing back onto the floor — they would return and claim their heritage.
“A sad story,” he told Riss.
“If it’s true,” she said cynically.
“Why should it not be?”
“I’ve never heard of any refugee, anywhere, who didn’t claim he was unjustly driven from his wonderful home … or else he fled a tyranny.”
“You should have more faith and trust in people,” Chas said, trying to sound pacifistic as he signaled for another Slammer.
“Why?”
Chas had no answer to that.
• • •
One night they went down to dinner, stopping at one of the hotel bars for a cocktail. It was appropriately dark, with nooks and crannies and snugs galore.
Two rather goonish sorts who had obviously been drinking for a while got into an argument about who was going to pay, each insisting it was his turn.
Knives came out, and flashed silver for an instant in the light from the light-bowls on the tables.
The bar’s conversation slackened and mild curiosity turned to the floor show.
Both the mercenaries went down, clutching themselves, and writhed about.
Waiters dragged the casualties out, and the murmur of conversation picked up again.
The three of them went in to dinner, and when they got back to their suite, a message waited.
Redon Spada, Grok, and Jasmine were on the ground.
They could start looking for trouble.
And work.
TWENTY-TWO
The coordination with Redon Spada, Grok, and Jasmine took only a little while. Grok was pretty well trapped in Spada’s ship, at least until Star Risk was able to come into the open. Jasmine slept in the ship one night and in the hotel the next, and again Riss wondered about her arrangement with Grok, but said nothing.
Spada was a little more complicated for M’chel. He made calves’ eyes at Riss, clearly wanting to resume their former romantic relationship, but M’chel held back, at least for the moment. She wasn’t, she told herself, in this for romance.
First was to find out who Cerberus’s client was, and, hopefully, what they were hoping to gain from this backing.
That was a bit easier than they’d figured it would be in the beginning, even though things got a little complicated thereafter.
A beginning assumption was made that Cerberus was backing the new president, considering his militia’s flashy new gear and all, not to mention the Dog from Hell’s love of always backing someone on top.
So, an unobtrusive electronic net was put around the presidential palace and set to transmit on a frequency Grok decided no one else on the planet was using.
Star Risk had rapidly expanded beyond one suite at the Excelsior. One room of one suite was set up as a purported laboratory, and the maids had been banned from it. In the room were all of Star Risk’s necessary electronics. In another larger and equally well-sealed room, was stored the part of their weaponry not aboard the yacht.
“All that we have to do now,” Goodnight told Riss, “is watch the monitors and see who crops up that looks Cerberus-y.”
“Which means?” M’chel asked.
“A certain air of complacency, crookedness, amorality, and such.”
“Be careful,” Riss warned, “you’re not looking in a mirror, Chas.”
But it was actually quite simple.
Jasmine was skimming fiches of the bug planted on the main entrance, and suddenly she started gurgling.
At first, Grok thought she was choking, and was trying to remember the first aid techniques he’d been taught for use on humans, then realized King was combining growls of rage and spatters of obscenity.
She finally pointed to the monitor.
“That is he,” Jasmine said quite calmly.
“Not quite, at least as I understand the language, my dear,” Grok corrected. “That is — holy shit! as you beings say, it is him!”
M’chel, who’d been at another console, looked utterly perplexed.
“That,” Grok managed, “and please forgive my overly human excitement, is one Frabord Held, of Cerberus Systems.”
“Ah-hah,” Riss gloated. “The liaison!”
“Probably a great deal more than that,” Grok said. “He is a very high level operative.”
Jasmine recovered. “He is also the person who decided it would be a feather in his cap if I were declared a robot, not human, and one of Cerberus�
�s possessions.”
“Oh, dear,” Riss said.
“Oh, no,” Jasmine said. “Not oh, dear. Maybe oh, pity the fool. He is now in my — sorry, our — frigging web.”
“Your language,” Riss said. “You’re talking like Goodnight, now.”
King caught herself.
“I am, aren’t I? But Held’s the one who … who ruined me!”
“No,” Grok corrected. “Having read some rather amusing early Earth Vickytorian works of the imagination, as I believe the period was called, being ruined is what would have happened, as I understand it, if he had plans to cozen or bludgeon you into his bedchamber, and work his lack of will on you.
“As for any other sense of the word, the best thing that ever happened to you was being cast out of Cerberus.”
Jasmine caught herself, grinned a bit sheepishly.
“I’m sorry. I was making a production out of it, wasn’t I?”
“A production out of what?” Friedrich said, wandering into the room.
“Jasmine’s found our scumbucket,” M’chel said.
Grok explained further, and ran the playback. Von Baldur studied the image carefully.
“He looks somewhat self-satisfied as well as self-assured, does he not?”
“He’s that,” King said fiercely. “The bastard is all of that.”
Riss shook her head.
“You’re still taking this too seriously, kid. Come on. I’ll buy you a drink. I found a new bar that nobody but artists drink in. Guaranteed nothing but trouble, but not the kind we give much of a damn about.
“And we can plot the demise of Mister Held and the ruination of Cerberus.”
• • •
The bar, Minnie’s Home, was a prize — if you liked things a little on the rowdy side.
M’chel figured that Minnie must have been raised in either a carnival or a gladiatorial arena.
Minnie might have been the rather modish, very soft-spoken woman whom Riss had seen walk up to a trio of obnoxious drunks, sucker punch one, offer the second a drink, kick him well below the belt when he smiled acceptance, and then club the third with a candelabra, but M’chel would never be able to ask, since she was instinctively terrified of her.
