The Vastalimi Gambit

by Steve Perry

  What was left of it. Still had wisps of smoke rising from the shattered vehicle, which looked as if somebody had fired a high-velocity bullet into a pressurized plastic container and it had peeled apart in the ensuing explosion.

  “Casualties?”

  “Six killed outright, another dozen or so seriously wounded, a few more with minor injuries. All civilians. The carrier was full, so the cargo was a total loss.”

  Jo nodded. The laws regarding civilian deaths in corporate conflicts were tricky, varied from world to world, but interstellar corporate policies had evolved over decades to cover such things. Local authorities might not like it, but they had to live with it. Sometimes.

  He continued: “Looks like they got attractant nanos into the reactant for the fuel cells. These big suckers burn that up pretty good. Somebody topped off the tank, the catalyst was small enough to squeeze through the filters, kaboom.”

  Jo nodded. Attractant nanos were great for sabotage. There were usually two or three varieties, none of which would do anything alone but which would seek each other once introduced into a fluid medium. When they combined, they made something else altogether, and the timing of that combination could be calculated in advance. “The growers assured us they had enough security on the fuel depots.”

  He gave her a tiny shrug. “They were mistaken.”

  Jo sighed. “Get our engineers out there and show them the error of their ways. And backwalk the employees on-site and in the fuel chain. I’d bet on social engineering over secret ops skulking through the yards unless they were really good.”

  “Yep. I’m on it.”

  Rags came out of his office, shaking his head.

  “Can’t win ’em all,” Jo said.

  “Maybe not, but they don’t pay us to lose them.”

  “We have ears out. We should get some intel we can follow up on pretty quick.”

  “Before they blow up any more of our client’s trucks, I hope.”

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  Gunny had spent too much of her life in pubs and bars around the galaxy, but at least these days she got paid to go. There was a shitload of information to be had when people gathered together and got drunk or stoned; asking the right one the right question could be of great value.

  To be honest, it could also be dried-up rat shit, but you never knew until you got there which it would be. If you were part of any military group, good intel was worth its weight in platinum, and if you were in a unit as small as the Cutters, everybody was liable to be pressed into duties other than pointing and shooting. Kay usually got to hunt down and find out things from aliens; Formentara did tech; Gramps followed the money; Wink was the medical guy; and Gunny wound up in the local watering holes trolling for street scat. Each according to his or her ability, and what did that say about her?

  Knowing who your enemy was, where they were staying, how adept and how many of them there were? That could be the difference between kicking ass or getting yours kicked. Knowledge was truly power in any kind of war, from a planetwide shoot-out to a local set-to.

  There were some perks to the bar scene. On Ananda, there had been this handsome young bouncer who had filled her ear—and other things, too—and that was a win-win encounter. Good intel, good times, a nice memory to have in the vault.

  This pub? It didn’t look so promising. The place was called The Mole Hole, in the mining city of Adit, and it was fairly full of hard-ass miners, off shift and looking to get plastered, laid, and in a fight, not necessarily in that order.

  It was a ramshackle, rough place, heavy plastic walls overlaid with spongy soundproofing, a tile floor with a drain in the center, furniture bolted down and built to withstand a hundred-kilo miner being slammed into it. Stools, tables, that was it.

  There was a small stage at one end, but no band in attendance. The music was recorded, Rototope Retro, which she could take or leave, not so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think or talk but not much quieter than that.

  The pubtenders—there were three of them—looked like weight lifters, heads shaved, wearing sleeveless tunics. Their skin showed lots of pulse-ink tattoos, more than a few unrevised scars on them, heads, faces, shoulders, arms, and some of them obviously knife wounds or zap burns. Hard men, willing to mix it up, and obvious they had done so.

  They were drawing a lot of beer from taps and shoving foamy steins at waiters and waitresses.

  The mirror behind the bar was scratched and stained and had a bullet hole spidering one end; unbreakable, but never meant to be pretty and only going to get uglier with age.

  The bottles and combustibles were behind sliding, heavy, kleerplast panels under the mirror. Closed, you could throw rocks at ’em and not do any damage to the hootch or toke supply.

  Exhaust fans on the ceiling sucked the thick smoke up and out, but they were working hard to keep ahead of the fragrant cloud that hung a meter or so over the tabletops.

  Gunny figured they came in with a hose after everybody left and blasted the whole place, letting the water drain into the big grate in the center of the slightly depressed floor. Utilitarian. A place to get stupid, pass out, thrown out, and no frills.

  She’d been in worse, though not lately.

  Apparently, the miners didn’t mind the decor or lack of it.

  She was glad she had dressed down from her previous trip for pub work: She wore a loose tunic that fell halfway down her butt, baggy pants, both of standard gray-on-black synthetics, definitely not cut to show off her figure. Her precharged air pistol was SOB-carry, 4mm shocktox darts. She wore dotic boots to midcalf, but the plain pair, not her good faux ostrich leathers. She had a short dagger in the right boot and a swand in the left. The four-finger ring of fake emeralds on her right hand was actually a pretty good knuckle-duster. Sometimes there wasn’t time to reach for a weapon, and a hundred grams of hard stone and metal thumping into somebody’s temple could do wonders as an attitude adjuster.

  There was a bouncer on the door big enough to make the three tugs behind the bar look small, but he didn’t do a weapons check when she arrived, just took five New Dollars and waved her in. No e-tags spray or ink stamps for her hand. Either the bouncer would remember you if you went out, or you had to pay again.

  She worked her way to the crowded bar, found an empty spot, and nodded at the tender. “Beer, whatever dark is on tap.”

  He nodded, sloshed a chocolate-colored ale into a big stein, and set it in front of her.

  “Two noodle.”

  She put a five coin on the counter. “Keep it,” she said.

  That got her a lopsided grin. “Thankee, fem. Enjoy the brew, enjoy the view.”

  He moved off to serve another customer.

  Gunny felt the man to her left start to move as she sipped the ale. Pretty good, the beer, but she put it down quickly because she could tell by his shoulder motion what he was going to do. She bent slightly, caught the handle of the dagger, and pulled it from its sheath in her boot just as he put his hand on her left ass cheek.

  “Nice ’n’ tight—urk!”

  The point of the dagger under his chin drew a spot of blood as he tried to pull back.

  “Don’t even twitch. Yes, it is nice and tight and it is mine. You touch it again, and Ah will open you up from ear to ear just to watch you bleed out.”

  He was about her height, maybe half again as wide, and built like a brick. Not bad-looking, actually, and he smiled. “Got to like a fem with a knife that fast,” he said. “Mea culpa, sorry.” He held his hands wide.

  She gave him credit for the smile, given the knife digging into his throat. She pulled the blade back.

  “I’m Stuude,” he said. “First-Shift Drill Pusher, Adit-One.”

  Like they were being formally introduced. She had to smile at that.

  “You can call me Gunny,” she said. She lifted her right foot and
resheathed the dagger without looking.

  The tender who’d served her nodded. “Nice,” he said, appreciating the knife work.

  “You aren’t from around here, are you?” Stuude said.

  “Nope.”

  “Didn’t expect so. Fems come in here, a hand on the ass doesn’t usually merit even a fuck-off look. Mostly they know that, or they’d go somewhere else. But you aren’t your run-of-the-shift barflit, are you? Military, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Let me buy you another of whatever you are drinking, apologize for my presumptuousness.”

  “You talk more like a professor than a tool pusher.”

  He regarded her for a moment. “That’s pretty good, Gunny.”

  She waited.

  “As it happens, I used to be a professor. Comparative Alien Literature, University of San Basho.”

  “Long way from there to here. How did you wind up working the mines?”

  “Well, the classic answer is, ‘Just lucky, I guess.’”

  “What’s the real answer?”

  “Truth is, I was unlucky. I had a gambling addiction, it blew through me like a force-six hurricane, took everything wasn’t nailed down. I woke up one day in debt to my hairline, spouse gone, job down the toilet despite my tenure. I looked around; working here was the most money I could make honestly. Another year, debts are paid, I can maybe find another teaching position.

  “Assuming, of course, a touchy fem doesn’t skewer me for playing grab-ass.”

  She laughed. Men. Never knew what you’d run into.

  “And what, might I ask, brings you to this armpit of a pub in the bad section of a town that has no particularly good sections?”

  Sometimes, you played your cards close, didn’t tell anybody anything. Sometimes, depending on the feel of a situation, you could be a little more forthright. If Stuude here was a tool pusher who could fake being a college professor, he was smart enough to have been one anyway. She said, “Ah’m working for a private military unit. We were sent here to protect some local farmers from hijackers.”

  He smiled. “Reminds me of an old joke: ‘My father drives a freight roller without any wheels.’

  “And you say, ‘Really? What holds it up?’

  “And I say, ‘Bandits . . .’”

  She smiled. “You take off points on your students’ grades if they didn’t laugh at your jokes?”

  “Only a few. So you are protecting the farmers. How does that get you into the Mole Hole? You think the bandits hang out here?”

  “Maybe. There is a lot of information flow goes along with the drinks or smoke. Sometimes somebody knows somebody who knows somebody if you get my drift.”

  He nodded. Sipped at his beer. “Intel run.”

  “Yep.”

  “And right now, you are trying to decide if I’m worth your time?”

  “Got to love a professor-turned-drill-pusher that quick.”

  “I haven’t heard about this, but I know a lot of people who know a lot of people. I can maybe find out. Tell you what, meet me here tomorrow off shift, same time, you can buy the beer, and we can talk.”

  “Why would you bother?”

  He smiled. “Not every day I meet a woman like you. Lot more fun than powdering rock all day. Although probably more dangerous.”

  “Done,” she said. “Ah’ll see you tomorrow, Professor.”

  “You can stay long enough to finish your beer, right?”

  Behind them, somebody cursed in Basic, and there came the sound of impacts, fists on flesh. A few people at the bar glanced that way, then back at their drinks or smoke.

  “Stop,” came a deep voice.

  She turned in time to see the giant bouncer plowing through patrons like an icebreaker through a couple centimeters of surface slush. Didn’t even slow him down.

  The two men fighting didn’t notice him until he arrived and grabbed each one of them by the neck and peeled them apart.

  “What part of ‘Stop’ didn’t you understand?”

  He slammed the two men into each other; their heads colliding made enough noise to be heard over the background walla of the patrons.

  He let go of the two stunned fighters. “Leave. Two days before I see you here again.”

  He turned and walked away.

  “Maybe you know another pub a little less rowdy?” Gunny said.

  “As it happens, I do. Follow me and I’ll show you; we can meet there instead of here.”

  “Good deal.”

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  Follow the money.

  It was amazing how often those three words would show you what you needed to know. Of course, it wasn’t always easy, but there were ways to get there, and early on, Gramps had shown a talent for things related to money. This was why he handled it for CFI, and having the ability to wave some of it around did wonders to loosen tongues—if he waved it at the right time and person.

  In the branch office of the Bank del Galaxico, the somewhat unctuous manager seated across from him seemed to be exactly the fellow for whom he was looking. The man’s name was Wentferth, and his hair was a fine, pale brown cloud, electrostatically held in place.

  Gramps immediately thought of him as “Fluffy.”

  “So, how may we assist you, M. Demonde?”

  There were only a few humans in the place, most of it being given over to din-stations, and it had a cold feel to it. Not much cash in the building, Gramps would guess, just another electronic transfer point. Long way since people traded grain for eggs . . .

  “Well, I represent Cutter Force Initiative, an A-Class Small Military Corporation. We have an engagement here on Far Bundaloh, and we would like a bank for our operation. Salaries, procurement, the usual.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “We could simply use our main bank, GFY, but we have found that it is better to have a local contact who can provide services the bigger banks sometimes can’t be bothered to deal with.”

  “We at the FB branch consider service one of the bulwarks of our business.”

  Bulwark? Who used words like that? He said, “Good to hear. We aren’t talking about major money, only a few million.”

  Fluffy almost drooled at that. Only a few million?

  “Let me call up a deposit contract—”

  “Well, here’s the thing. I must confess I have spoken to representatives of the Bundaloh Miners Association, and they have offered a generous interest rate if we use their credit union.”

  “BMA is a fine organization, to be sure, but they don’t have our resources, M. Demonde. You would be better served by BG across the board.”

  Gramps allowed himself to look indecisive. “BMA is smaller, but they are eager for our business. They’ve offered some sweeteners.”

  “Which BG will match and exceed. They can’t beat our interest rate on short-term-yield CoDs.”

  “There is one thing they seemed somewhat reluctant to do.”

  “Name it.”

  “There is another SMC operating on-planet. As it happens, they are the opposition to CFI on our current assignment. I would very much like all available information on them. Nothing illegal, of course, no confidences broken, nothing untoward. A man in your position would surely have access to such information.”

  “I confess I have not heard about this competing military corporation,” Fluffy said. “Certainly, they are not depositors here.”

  “But you could find out where they are keeping their money? And perhaps some, ah . . . background information?”

  “For a client who is willing to put a few million New Dollars into my bank? I am certain I can.”

  “I was hoping that you would say that. Why don’t we transfer, say, a million or so into a new account to get things rolling, and the rest when you have something for me?
”

  “I’ll punch up the deposit agreement, M. Demonde.”

  “Call me ‘Gramps.’”

  Fluffy smiled.

  Gramps returned the smile. “Always a pleasure to do business with a man of the galaxy,” he said. He almost added “Fluffy,” but fortunately managed to hold off on that.

  NINE

  Wink sat in a chair outside Droc’s office, waiting for Kay and Droc, playing with his knife. He spun and twirled the stubby-bladed weapon this way and that, rolling it from hand to hand.

  The knife was a spearpoint design, dropped just a hair, with a short, thick blade. It was single-edged, Damascus, four kinds of tool steel blended and hammered until there were 416 layers. The metal had been acid-etched to showcase the folded pattern; the steel was darkened to shades of gray and black and thus would not reflect light to draw attention in the night.

  That helped it function, and it also made it pretty.

  Hammer-forging made for a strong, pliable steel, and the temper gave it a hardness that held a razored edge. The handle was also fat, a cylinder longer than the blade, stabilized maple burl, pressure-stained a deep red. The guard was a sculpted oval, the same steel as the blade. It was a functional, useful knife, and Wink was most comfortable using it. He was, after all, a surgeon, at ease with sharps, be they steel, vibratos, or obsidian. When your main tool is a knife, best you learn how to use it well.

  This was something he tended to do when there wasn’t anything else to occupy him, and he’d had this particular knife long enough so that it had become a well-practiced and smooth activity.

  In a fight where he had to use it, he’d never risk dropping the weapon by dicking around with such moves. Wink knew guys like that. Somebody threatened them, a knife would appear magically, they’d give it a few showy spins to let whoever it was see they were good, and not to be fucked with, and apparently such would draw the “Oh, shit!” reaction often enough to short-circuit trouble.

  There was something to be said for this. A big cat flashing its teeth might scare off lesser predators.