by Chris Bunch
Now von Baldur gave Grok a glare as good as the one he got.
“Sorry,” Grok said. “I became too used to explaining the basics to admirals and their like and it’s become a habit.”
“Lose the habit,” von Baldur growled, and looked at the printout:
XXXX XXXX PROBABLE ID TWO INQUIRED. NOT FOOLS BUT STRRSK ON PREVIOUSLY WARNED UNDERCOVER OP. XXXX (NEED) MORE THAN A LESSON. STAY CLEAR OF THEM. TERMINATION XXXX ON WAY. PROVIDE COVER AND SUPPORT
“That’s all I have so far,” Grok said.
“That is enough,” von Baldur said. “Have you alerted Goodnight and Riss?”
“I attempted to message them, but their ship is not replying. Nor is any recorder active. We’ve had no com from them since their first report from 47 Alpha.”
“Wonderful,” von Baldur muttered. “And they are about — ?”
“About four E-days distant.”
“Not good at all,” von Baldur said. “Just like professionals under deep cover. Or idiots on a spree. This is something we need to establish an SOP for, when all this is over.
“Where is Spada?”
“On standby.”
“Get him on the way with three … no, four … P-boats. Tell him to chance jumping closer to the belt than he would normally. Tell him … oh, hell. I shall contact him myself.”
FIFTY-TWO
“Boy, have I miscalled this one,” Chas Goodnight grumbled. “We go out and spit in ol’ Soupy’s soup, and what happens? I expected contract killers, bombs, mobs, confrontations. What do I get?”
“Rest and relaxation,” M’chel said, from where she was curled up on Goodnight’s couch, halfway through A Treatise on Fifth-Dimensional Math, or a Position Paper on the Possibility of Time Travel as an Inter-dimensional Reality.
“Time enough for relaxation when you’re dead,” Goodnight said.
“Poor choice of words.”
“Bah,” Goodnight said. “Put on your dancing shoes, girl. Let’s go stir things up some.”
• • •
“So,” Redon Spada mused, looking from screen to screen, “assuming that Murgatroyd’s boys are here, which is something we’d best not accept as an absolute certainty, how in hell do we know where to look, or even if we’ve got cause to panic?”
“I think we can take going into panic as a fairly dead cert,” his weapons officer, Lopez, said. “Look.”
Nestled to a mooring, next to two archaic and abandoned-looking converted minekillers, was a very sleek, very dangerous-looking runabout.
“Nice, unobtrusive little yacht, that. Somebody told me once that the only reason there’s crooks in jail is because the cops are even stupider,” Lopez said.
“Why, you little anarchic son of a bitch,” Spada said. “Are you trying to hint that putter down there isn’t exactly what a miner uses to visit his claim?”
“Not anarchic,” the officer said. “Realistic.”
“What next?”
“Park this pig,” Lopez said, “or better yet, turn it over to the engineer, and you and me go looking for our bosses in a bit of a hurry is my suggestion.”
“I guess so,” Spada said. “I guess we can start with that hotel they said they were at, and work outward. Can’t be more than five or six thousand people on 47 Alpha.
“Damn, but sometimes I wish I knew more about soldiering and spying and such instead of just being a ship driver.”
He caught himself.
“No. Second is going to that hotel. First is we set that cute little ship down there to sing to us.”
• • •
There were three men. Schmid considered them, and hid a shiver. He’d killed, of course. But it had generally been in a fight, or at any rate in the heat of passion.
These three had cold, dead eyes, and Schmid knew it didn’t matter at all, if you were in their way, whether it was easier to say “excuse me,” or just pull a trigger.
The three ran and reran the standard security vids of M’chel and Chas as they’d entered Soupy’s three “nights” earlier.
“Got them?” the leader said.
The other two nodded.
“Do we take them at their hotel?” one asked.
“Probably easiest,” the third said.
There was a hurried rap at the door to Schmid’s office. His maitre d’ came in.
“Those two … the ones who were here three nights ago,” the man said breathlessly. “They’re back.”
“What was I saying about easiest?” one of the killers said.
“You don’t mean you’re going to take them here?” Schmid asked, incredulously. The trio’s leader thought.
“Why not? Nobody’ll ever think you had someone chilled in your own place. Don’t worry, Mr. Schmid. We’ll try not to leave blood on your tablecloth … or murder any of your cash customers.”
• • •
“Now,” M’chel said. “What can we order that isn’t easily poisoned? You’ve noticed, I imagine, all those little heads peeping out of the kitchen to look at us.”
“Any of them Soupy’s?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Hmm. Tonight I’ll have steak,” Goodnight said. “Two of them. Blood raw, to put me in the mood.”
“You think something’s going to happen?”
“I hope so. If not here … maybe you’ll let me hold your hand later.”
“That could only lead to something promiscuous,” M’chel said. “Like dancing.”
“Oh brother. Maybe I’ll get drunk.”
“No, you won’t. I’m going to have the spiced pork, with a big platter of noodles.”
“What about a cocktail?”
“Cold tea.”
“Do we at least get a glass of wine with dinner?” Goodnight asked.
“We do. One with our salad, one with the main course.”
“Damn, but you’re profligate,” Goodnight said.
• • •
“We’re going to move to that table that just cleared, two levels above the targets,” the assassin leader told his partners. “We’ll start shooting when I signal.
“Take the bester out first. He’s the most dangerous.”
• • •
Spada and his weapons officer, both with blasters ready under the jackets over their arms, came into Soupy’s, eyes scanning the crowd.
“That goddamned old fart at the hotel had better have been right,” Lopez grumbled.
“Don’t worry about it,” Spada said. “If they’re not here, we’ll grab a bite and then — hey! There they are!”
He waved.
Riss saw them from her seat in the booth on an upper level. She waved back, and the two fliers pushed their way through the crowd up the ramp toward them.
• • •
“Who the hell are they?” one of the killers asked.
“Who cares?” the leader said. “That changes the odds. Take these two now, those other two if they get in the way, then out the way we planned.”
Blasters came out of hidden holsters, and the leader stood, aiming, gun in a two-hand grip, down at Goodnight, about fifteen meters away.
• • •
“Hey!” the weapons officer said. “Look at those bastards up there!”
“Goodnight! Get down!” Spada shouted.
• • •
The waiter approached Riss’s and Goodnight’s table.
“Would either of you care for a cocktail before — ” The leader of the killers fired. The blast caught the waiter as he moved between the trio and Goodnight. The man gasped, hurled his tray high in the air, fell.
Riss spun out of her seat, gun coming up. She shot, hit the second killer in the head, blowing the top of his skull off.
Spada and Lopez were running up the ramp. The weapons officer aimed, shot, and hit a little old lady in mid-scream in her back.
A second later, he was hit by a bolt from the third killer, slumped.
“Screw this!” the third killer said, diving to the f
loor in a roll, coming up, firing three rounds at random.
A very fat man in the middle of his soup course grunted, put his face down in the plate liquidly.
The killers’ leader went after his teammate, running back the way they’d entered, toward the kitchen.
Spada fired, blew a gilt statue off its stand, swore.
Goodnight was out of the booth, hand touching the switch at the base of his spine, and the world slowed, and sound went down the spectrum, and he was a moving blur.
Gun out, he ran after the two killers as they went through the swinging doors into the kitchen.
A chef turned from basting her roast.
“Here now! What’s this non — ”
The lead killer shot her in the stomach before she could finish her complaint, ran toward a service door at the rear.
A blur that was Chas Goodnight hurtled through the door, snapped a shot after the running killer that missed and spanged off the tile floor, blew a hanging rack of pots to clatter across the room.
There were screams, shouts, and Riss and Spada came into the kitchen behind Goodnight, who was going after the pair of assassins.
Spada braced against an oven, swore at its heat, jerked away as he fired.
The blast took an enormous roast, just being seasoned by a sous-chef, and blood and red wine sprayed across the kitchen.
The third killer stopped, halfway through the door, aimed carefully, and Goodnight shot him in the throat.
Chas pelted after the leader, jumped over the third killer’s body, ran out into a corridor. Two dozen meters away, the leader ran into a lifter, and the door slid closed behind him.
Goodnight, still in bester, went downstairs, slammed into a kitchen helper carrying a case of fruit up, sent him spinning, the fruit bouncing down the stairs with Chas.
He paused at the lift door, heard the platform inside hum on down, went after it.
Goodnight went down two more flights, but the lifter was faster than he was.
The door was just sliding closed as he reached the bottom of the stairs, and a nearby sliding door crashed shut.
Blaster bolts slammed against the door on the other side, and it buckled and jammed.
Goodnight punched the open button, and machinery whined, but nothing happened.
He shot the door off its hinges, came into a huge loading dock, with three small ships parked in it.
One of the three ships’ airlocks banged closed, and the ship lifted on antigrav, reversed into the lock entrance. It started cycling, and then the ship was out, into space beyond.
Goodnight touched his cheek, came out of bester.
“Goddamnit, goddamnit, goddamnit, and I didn’t get a chance to put one of Grok’s bugs on his frigging ship!”
“I did,” Spada said calmly behind him. “Before we came looking for you two.”
He and Riss were panting hard. “And I’ve got three ships out there to track it.”
Adrenaline was burning down in Goodnight. He only managed a nod.
“But I still lost Lopez,” Spada went on. “And I want somebody’s ass for that.”
“There’s a whole restaurant upstairs to work out on.”
“Let’s go.”
They went back up the stairs, through the kitchen, and into the dining room.
“Everybody out!” Goodnight shouted, firing a bolt into the ceiling. “This place is for the wrecking yard!”
He switched the blaster to full automatic, chattered a burst across the ceiling. Light fixtures exploded, and chemical extinguishers sprayed.
The screams were getting louder again.
A service door opened, and Soupy Schmid came out. His face was purple in rage, and he was bubbling obscenities.
He carried a heavy Alliance blast rifle in his hands, lifted it, just as Riss shot him in the chest, and Spada put another bolt into him as he folded to the deck.
“Good,” Goodnight approved. He spotted a wine rack, and sent rounds into that, grinning as he saw old-fashioned glass shatter and wine spray.
Spada saw two men with guns come through a door, didn’t bother asking before he killed one.
Riss got his partner.
Goodnight had a tight grin on his face.
“I think we’d best be going,” he said, then spotted a large steak on the carpet that’d been knocked from a serving platter.
He grabbed and looked at it.
“Not too dusty,” he said, took an enormous bite.
“Let’s get out of town before the sheriff shows up,” he managed through a very full mouth.
FIFTY-THREE
“The fox appears to be running out of dens,” Friedrich von Baldur said, trying to keep from gleefully rubbing his hands together.
“It appears that way,” Grok said. He pointed to a screen.
“The fleeing killer made one jump away from the asteroids, which Spada was able to track. Then a second jump, which emerged out here near this ice giant … Ice Four, it’s known as.
“The pilot was too clever to send out a call for help, possibly being aware of what was done to his confrères earlier.
“He homed very steadily on the fifth satellite, and landed on it. Spada was close enough to pinpoint its landing site, didn’t get any closer.
“He’s on return here … ETA tomorrow sometime, with Riss and Goodnight.”
“Very good,” von Baldur said. “I think it is now about time to put together an expeditionary force, or at any rate a good strafing expedition, find and destroy that damned cruiser, and then we should be in the endgame.”
“Maybe,” Jasmine King said, coming in from one of the computer compartments.
“Maybe?” von Baldur asked.
“I’ve gotten interested in things that are missing, missing in a way that’s very convenient for Murgatroyd,” she said.
“The Foley government still hasn’t provided us with the location of those abandoned research bases. I’m starting to wonder if we ever will be, or if one of Murgatroyd’s crew on Glace hasn’t arranged to have those records purged.”
“That is all right,” von Baldur said, refusing to shed his cheeriness. “We can do a reccie and see what we have got before hitting them.”
“We have worse problems,” King went on.
“After M’chel found her rock, I started wondering about what other precious metals had been found, and how Transkootenay is handling them.
“There was a miner named Dmitri Herndon that the late L. C. Doe told me about. He supposedly found significant traces leading toward another diamond pipe before he was killed by raiders.
“His claim records were destroyed when Murgatroyd’s raiders blew up the Transkootenay claims office.
“But there is no civilized or even semicivilized system of government I can think of that doesn’t keep records in at least duplicate.
“So I did a little searching by com, and sure enough, on Glace, there is a central office that records all, repeat all, mineral claims in the Foley System.
“I approached them, and asked.
“I think that office is manned entirely by musty old farts,” King went on. “Because none of them had noticed there are no claims from the asteroid belt that have been filed with them for the past five years.”
“What?” von Baldur’s cheerful mood was gone.
“Yes. Such claims would have been required to have been filed for the miners by Transkootenay Mining, or in the name of Transkootenay if the miners were contract workers or had sold their claim.
“Nothing, nothing, nothing.
“I did a little checking here in Sheol, and found it curious that Transkootenay has never reopened its claims office after the old one was destroyed. And no one seems to know where those claims have been filed.”
“Son of a bitch,” von Baldur said, “two sons of bitches, in fact.
“I think I am a dunderbrain. In fact, I am sure of it.
“First there’s the contradiction that Reg Goodnight says Transkootenay didn�
�t do business with our Miss Winlund and her company. Contradicted by Miss Winlund, verified by paperwork in her possession.
“Second is that Tan Whitley, who is Minister of Offworld Development, wants to cancel the contract with Transkootenay. Is she one of Murgatroyd’s agents?
“With no claims filed on the asteroid belt, once Transkootenay’s contract is voided, those poor damned miners won’t even be able to take anyone to court, without any records.”
“Third,” Grok broke in, “if I may interrupt, is my curiosity on how those killers twigged … I think that’s a word … to Chas and M’chel’s recent wanderings out to the asteroids to investigate that area where no raiders had struck.
“You may recall that Chas was very proud of having gotten some high-grade ore to use as part of his cover, rather than having to do the physical work of hacking out the rock himself.
“Said high-grade ore was procured from …”
“From Reg Goodnight,” King said. “His brother.”
“But why in all of Loki’s hells did Reg Goodnight give us the contract in the first place? Oh,” von Baldur said. “We showed up, having rescued his brother. Which would make it very simple for Mr. Goodnight to choose a small, new, possibly inept company for security, assuming that we would screw up, rather than picking an established firm.
“The worst he could be accused of, in the event of a collapse, would be being soft-hearted. Enough to get him fired, but not prosecuted.
“The question mark is Cerberus. I do not know if they’re waiting in the wings, or if they’re already linked with Cerberus or what. Nowotny looked puzzled when I mentioned Mar Trac’s name, but that may have been playacting.
“Reg was betraying Transkootenay for what reason?” King asked.
Von Baldur shook his head.
“Once again, I do not know. But I rather imagine Reg might tell us if we, say, plugged his great toe into an electric socket for a while.”
“Why don’t you com him,” Grok said. “And let’s set a meeting.”
“Not a bad idea,” von Baldur said. “Even if he will not confess, we can surely find a way to keep him incommunicado until we take out that cruiser and a good helping of the raiders.”
