by Chris Bunch
Spada nodded.
They went out of the patrol ship, moving in careful bounds toward the wreckage.
It was just as Doe had said. The crew compartment, the forward ball, had been cut open almost surgically, probably with a heavy-duty laser.
Riss clambered through a hole.
There were half a dozen bodies scattered about the compartment.
“Five of t’em should be t’e crew,” Doe said into her interphone. “T’at ot’er, over t’ere, he’s one of t’e raiders.”
Riss went close, knelt. The raider was a woman, killed when a section of steel plating had sliced her almost in half.
“They hit the ore collector with a missile, then cut this pod open,” Reg said, explaining the obvious. “They must’ve killed one of their own, rescuing the other two.
“Goddammit, but I wish we’d gotten here earlier!” M’chel went through the woman’s suit pouches, found nothing, then opened the suit up. It was very gory, and Riss was very glad she was breathing canned air.
“Oh, m’god,” she heard, turned, saw Reg Goodnight with a hand over his faceplate.
“Swallow fast,” she ordered. “Puke in your suit and you could strangle.”
She heard convulsive swallowing, felt her own gorge rise. King was beside Goodnight, turning his interphone off.
Grok had paid no attention to the sideshow, but was dragging the corpse out of the suit, trying to keep it from coming apart.
He went deftly, in spite of his gauntlets, through the pouches of the shipsuit she wore.
“Nothing,” he reported. “Except a tattoo saying ‘Lucius.’ And a pair of plain gold earrings. The body’s just like the others. They went out from their base … wherever that is … with no ID, no clues. I’ll wager that, when we check the wreckage of the other ship, it’s just as sanitized as this body. Murgatroyd runs a taut ship.”
There was a sound like an old-fashioned teakettle steaming. Doe was making it, standing, arms folded, over a pair of bodies.
“The bastards went an’ made sure,” she said. “Shot ‘em in the faceplate when t’ey busted in.
“I ain’t gonna protest no more if some of t’ese asswipes get t’eir necks stretched. Not no more I won’t.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“Nice-looking yacht, that,” Chas Goodnight observed.
“Yeah,” the stevedore said. “Guess it belongs to some pol or richie with a guilty conscience.”
“How you figure?”
“There’s a two-man crew on duty around the clock. And there’s a bull walking security, too.”
“Hey,” Goodnight said. “Haven’t we all needed to get out of town fast sometime?”
The stevedore laughed.
• • •
“ID,” the cop demanded.
Goodnight took out papers, handed them over. The policeman looked at them carefully, handed them back.
“Sorry, Mr. Atherton. But there’s a pair of fugitives we’re after, and don’t have a good description of.”
Goodnight smiled politely, went on into his hotel, wondering if the cop had been telling the truth, or if somebody was interested in keeping tabs on a man who was interested in weaponry.
• • •
“Sorry, Chack,” the doorman said, calling him by what was the evident generic nickname on this planet. “I don’t know you, you don’t got a card from somebody I know, you ain’t that beautiful a people, you don’t get into Suckers.”
“You know me,” Goodnight said, holding a hundred-credit note like a tube. “Real well.”
The man took it, grinned.
“Now I think you’re my long-lost brother. G’wan in. You just looking for talent, or you got a meet?”
“Now, that’d be telling, wouldn’t it?” Goodnight said.
The doorman slid the door open.
“Got to compliment you,” Goodnight said, “for honesty in labeling your joint.”
“Hey,” the man said. “No need to lie when you’ve got all the action.”
“Guess not,” Chas said.
Suckers was built on three levels, the floors and walls iridescing in rainbow colors. There was different music on each floor, kept separate by baffle fingers on the ceilings.
Goodnight went up a slideway to the top level.
There were two men at the head of the stairs, paying no attention to the dancers weaving their way through the tables. The big room was about a quarter full.
“You looking for someone?”
“Got a meet with somebody named Thatch,” Goodnight said.
The men looked impressed.
“Over there.”
Thatch was a biggish man, carefully going to seed. He sat at a table with two young women, with big eyes and smiles and tiny minds. There was a crystal container between them, fumes roilling over the top.
As Goodnight went over, two men sitting at another table shifted their attention to him.
He held out his hands in the unarmed signal, and they relaxed, very slightly.
The big man looked up at him, stone faced.
“Thatch?” Goodnight said. “I’m Atherton.”
Thatch gestured with his chin, and the two women, smiles not moving, got up and slunk to another table.
Goodnight sat down.
“Want a drink?” Thatch asked.
“I drink when the business is taken care of.”
“Good policy,” Thatch said, and poured himself another glassful from the container.
“I understand you got some artillery to move,” he said.
Goodnight didn’t answer, but took out a small black tube from inside his jacket. Thatch jerked, and at the other table the two men’s hands went to their belts.
Then Thatch realized what Goodnight held, relaxed. His gun guards did the same.
Goodnight turned on the anti-bug, pointed it in Thatch’s direction, then ran it under the table, and the chairs.
The device didn’t buzz.
Goodnight turned it off, put it away.
“Yeah. Now we can talk, since we’re both clean. I’ve got stuff for sale.”
“Like what?”
“Current-issue Alliance small arms, Krupp antimissile systems, a lot of stuff, as new as you want, as used and cheap as you can afford. I’ve got just about anything short of ships. And if the price is right, I can probably arrange for those, too.”
“How legit is the paperwork?”
“The end use certificate’s genuine. But you can’t check it with the supposed user. That’s snide.”
“Not a factor,” Thatch said. “What about delivery?”
“I’d rather do a transfer in space,” Goodnight said. “But if you can’t handle that action … I’ll deliver. I assume Mitidja?”
“Right.”
“The Alliance has a blockade going,” Goodnight said.
“Yeah.”
“We can probably slide through,” Goodnight said. “But it’ll be double the price if you want planetside delivery.”
“Too high.”
Goodnight shrugged. “Somebody willing to chance eating an Alliance missile ought to be compensated.”
“I’ll think about that,” Thatch said. “Meantime, let’s take a walk, and discuss some details.”
“Why not?”
Thatch and Goodnight, the two thugs trailing them, went out of Suckers, down the brightly lit boulevard. Thatch turned and went down into a dark side street, where a lim waited.
“Now, let’s go for a little ride,” Thatch said. His voice was just a little gloating.
“Bad move, my friend,” Goodnight said. “You shouldn’t ever sell the lion’s skin while the lion yet lives.”
“Huh?”
One of Thatch’s bodyguards heard the sudden alarm in his boss’s voice, went for a gun.
Goodnight’s hand came up, brushed his jawbone, and the world got very slow. Thatch was shouting something, but his voice was an incomprehensible squeak.
Goodnight had a tiny, flat
gun in his hand.
He shot the first guard, following the first rule of close-quarter combat — the first one to move, no matter whether he’s closest or not, is the first one you take care of.
He shifted his aim, put two small bolts into the second man’s throat.
Thatch was turning, trying to run.
Goodnight shot him in the back of the head, then shut off his bester unit.
There was a man behind the wheel of the lim.
Goodnight jerked the door open, yanked the man out, shot him as he tumbled to the ground.
He was behind the controls of the lim, lifting it away.
“Now, I wonder just who those idiots were, trying to kill me? Guess I’ll never know.
“And I guess that’s it for being subtle. Time for the direct approach.”
• • •
Goodnight crept up behind the bored policeman, hit him hard with a knuckle punch in the side of the neck, eased him to the ground.
He went up the ramp to the yacht, touched its lock sensor, and was inside. The inner door yawned open.
Goodnight moved silently through the ship, down the main passageway, glancing into luxurious bedrooms, kitchens, toward the nose of the ship.
There were two people in uniform in the yacht’s wardroom, yawning over a screen game.
One started to get up, froze when she saw Goodnight’s gun.
“Excellent,” he approved. “Just stay like that.”
He went past them, turning to keep the gun leveled, to the control room door, and slid it open.
“One-man operation,” he said approvingly, went back to the two crewmen.
“Who’s the pilot?”
The woman, a sturdy-looking brunette, set her jaw.
“Fine,” Goodnight said. “And you’re the engineer, right?”
The man nodded imperceptibly.
“I assume this tub can run for a while without anyone in the power room,” Goodnight said. “So you’re going for a hike.”
“The hell he is,” the woman snapped.
“He can either walk off, or I’ll drag his frigging corpse off,” Goodnight said calmly. “His choice.”
“I’m going, mister.”
“Good.”
“And, believe me, I won’t tell anybody what you looked like or anything. Please don’t shoot me.”
“I’ve no intentions of that,” Goodnight said. “But let’s hike. I’ve got klicks to go before I sleep. You can come along with me, sister. I want to make sure you don’t get in trouble while I’m out of the room.”
The man went down the ramp, looked back at Goodnight, then started running.
Goodnight touched studs, and the ramp slid closed, and the lock closed.
“Now, let’s lift.”
“Without a flight plan?” the pilot said.
“You’re making a test flight.”
“At this time of night?”
“You’ve got a weird owner. Come on, woman. If it comes to that, I can boost this pig out without you.”
The woman looked at him, at the gun, nodded jerkily.
“And while we’re going,” Goodnight said, “I’ll see if there aren’t a couple or three steaks worth thawing out. I’m ti-red, and need me some calories.”
• • •
“Nice docking job,” Goodnight complimented.
“Thanks.”
“That makes seven words you’ve said to me in the last four days,” Chas said. “Are you starting to fall in love?”
The woman just glared.
“Now, if you’ll hold out your arm, please?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a wee syringe.”
“You’re going to kill me.”
“Lady, if I wanted to kill you, I would’ve shot you back on Puchert. You’re just going to sleep for, oh, about two E-days. Then you’re welcome to do anything you want.”
She started to pull her arm back. Goodnight touched the syringe’s stud, and it hissed. She jolted, slid out of her chair. Goodnight eased her down to the carpet.
He went to the lock, checked the readout.
“I love nice civilized satellites like this one,” he said. “No suiting up, no floating through vacuum, just a nice transition onward.”
The lock door slid open, and he went through it, down a long tube into the space station.
• • •
The station wound here there and back on itself like a vast intestinal tract. It sat in the middle of a great deal of nothing. But it was very busy, the hub connection between a dozen systems.
Chas Goodnight, carrying a real-leather valise full of clothes that’d been just purchased, laundered, and the price tags torn off, went up to a ticket counter.
“You wish, sir?”
“Passage to Seaworld II, then a cross-connect to Seth V.”
The woman touched keys.
“We can do that, sir. But it’ll be a little close … the Seaworld II ship departs in an E-hour, and it’ll only give you about four E-hours on the ground before the Seth V flight.”
“Very good,” Goodnight said, handing over the Atherton ID. “My boss wants me out there in a hurry.”
The ID went through the machine without a fuss.
Now, Goodnight thought, supposing I’d used the Atherton identity to get my ass offworld back on Puchert, instead of that third ID? Would that have worked? Or did Riss figure the only reason I wanted it was to be able to skate on Star Risk?
He decided somehow Riss must have had some kind of booby trap set on the Atherton ID if he’d tried to get cute, even if he couldn’t figure out what it might have been.
Not that it mattered now. He’d done his villainy on Puchert, and made a nice, fairly loud, quite illegitimate exit that should be remembered.
When that pilot woke up, she’d hopefully sing like a bird. The authorities on Puchert, even if Thatch had been the undercover assassin for one or another of Mitidja’s rebels, instead of working for the government or for Puchert itself, still wouldn’t be happy with somebody leaving at least four bodies scattered around to irritate the citizenry.
It wasn’t likely they’d chase him beyond the station. But anyone checking Goodnight/Atherton’s credentials on Puchert should be satisfied with his scumbucketry.
“Your tickets, sir.”
“Thank you.”
“Have a nice flight.”
TWENTY-FIVE
“My poor last surviving bishop to King’s rook one and check,” Redon Spada said.
“Uh … King to Queen three,” Friedrich von Baldur said.
“You can’t move there,” Spada said. “You’re in check by my knight.”
“Damn it,” Baldur said. “I lost my visualization. Wait a moment.”
He leaned back in the chair, stared up at the patrol ship’s overhead.
“It won’t matter,” Spada said. “Wherever you go, it’s my mate next move.”
Baldur’s lips moved soundlessly.
“I cannot believe,” Grok said from where he crouched behind an improvised array that looked like an exploded vermicelli factory, “that humans could ever have been bright enough to devise chess, but never to learn to play it properly. Either of you two should have been mated half a dozen moves ago.
“Let alone the way you stumble through keeping a mere two-dimensional board in your mind.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” Spada said. “Why don’t you go comb your fur for fleas or something?”
“I have never had any such … ah. We have some indicators,” Grok said.
Their ship and two others hung “above” a convoy of four medium-sized freighters, escorted by half a dozen Star Risk patrol ships.
The convoy had been formed loudly and slowly, with just about every known frequency used to inform the world that there was a big cargo heading for Mfir, and any miner who wanted to make sure his riches wouldn’t be stolen should get them to one of the three pickup points inside the belt.
“Blip …
blip … blip. Three of them.”
A trio of warships had come out of hyperspace, on an intercept orbit for the convoy.
“Broadcasting on two, no four frequencies,” Grok said. “Recorded. Ah. Now a fifth frequency. They’ve seen the escort and are hopefully signaling back into N-space.”
Baldur moved a throat pickup into position.
“All ships,” he ‘cast. “Stand by for jump.”
“And here are three more, and three behind them. We’re outnumbered,” Spada said. He opened his own mike.
“Get ready,” he ‘cast to his two mates. “On command, we’ll be going down to play patsy.”
“Wait … wait … ah-hah,” Grok said. “They aren’t taking any chances.”
Onscreen, a large echo appeared.
“And here is our cruiser,” Baldur said. “The cast is all onstage, and now the play shall commence.” Into his mike: “On the count of three … one, two, jump!”
The convoy vanished into hyperspace.
“Now, with any luck, they took off before anyone could put a tracer on them,” Baldur said. “Very good.”
“And I’ve got the frequency that cruiser’s using,” Grok said. “Very, very good.”
“Maybe better,” Spada said. “Let’s get some, team.”
The three patrol ships, now alone in space with ten raiders, went to full drive, and set an intersection orbit on the cruiser.
“Start tracking,” Spada said calmly. “Nobody fires until my command or I’ll have you hung by your thumbs. We’re out of range….” He looked at his weapons officer, who shook his head.
“Tracking … tracking … remember, one launch, then jump,” Spada ordered. He could have been requesting a glass of water.
“In range,” Lopez said.
“Wait … wait … the idiots don’t appear to have ‘seen’ us,” Spada said.
“Closing nicely … I think we’ve pushed our luck … all ships, launch!”
Three shipkillers spat from their tubes on three patrol ships, flashed in and out of hyperspace, homed on the cruiser.
“Let’s go home,” Spada ordered, not waiting to see what happened with the missiles.
“Transmitter dropped …” and then they were in the blurry colors of N-space.
“My curiosity is killing me,” Spada announced suddenly into his mike. “You other two … we’ll see you on Sheol. Let’s jump back to where we were, grab whatever the transmitter’s got, and then out of there.”
