The Scoundrel Worlds: Book Two of the Star Risk Series

by Chris Bunch

  Now the screams were louder, and soldiers were pelting away, shouting the alarm.

  Grok lobbed a pair of grenades after them, thrown very high, very far, landing in front of the fleeing soldiers.

  Other troops heard the screaming, and were up, fear spraying adrenaline through their system.

  M’chel Riss opened fire from the lifter, the chaingun spraying lines of fire through the night. Other gunners opened up, firing at they knew not what.

  Panic washed over the half-trained soldiers, and they trampled their officers and the Masked Ones who’d brought them into this forest. They ran, not sure which way led toward safety, but anywhere that might be away from this nightmare.

  “Come on,” Grok shouted, and the Sufyerds ran toward him.

  Riss had the hatch of the lifter open. “Let’s go visiting,” she said, and the Sufyerds piled aboard. Other ships were taking off blindly into the night.

  “You know how to fly this pig?” Riss called.

  “I think so,” Grok said.

  “Good. I’m not through killing assholes yet.”

  “M’chel,” Cahamla said. “It is ill to kill more, and will not bring back Elder Bracken.”

  “No offense, Sister Sufyerd,” Riss snarled. “You mourn Bracken your way, I’ll mourn him mine.”

  She slid back behind the controls of the chaingun, found a target, and sent cannon fire chattering into a crowd of frenzied soldiers trying to cram themselves aboard a troop lifter.

  • • •

  “Of course we’ll take care of the good Sufyerd’s family,” Fra Diavolo said. “They’ll be content here, or wherever we choose to conceal them … well, as content as they can be, knowing Maen Sufyerd’s troubles.

  “Perhaps they can even teach me something of the Jilanis faith,” he went on. “I’ve always been intensely curious about their practices, and now might be an opportune time to learn.”

  “Good,” Riss said. “Also, Grok and I would like to hide out with your people. I think there’s a good chance we’re very, very hot, and might need to call in a certain ship we’ve got standing by in orbit and make our getaway.”

  “It would be a pity to lose you and your friend,” Diavolo said. “Particularly when things appear to be warming up.”

  “I agree,” Grok said. “I am thoroughly enjoying all the scoundrels that we have been meeting of late.”

  • • •

  But there was no hue and cry. M’chel never knew how the casualties were buried on the army’s rolls. There was no mention of the firefight in the forest, nor was there any arrest warrant for Riss or Grok.

  Riss and Grok said goodbye to the Sufyerds, M’chel reminding Abihu of her promise to grow up like Elder Bracken.

  “Quite an admirable pair of offspring,” Grok said as they flew back toward the capital.

  “They are, aren’t they,” M’chel said, secretly very glad of her solitary state. “But being around kids … anybody’s kids … for more than an hour makes me nervous.”

  “That’s interesting,” Grok said. “I have never mated for progeny, so have no idea what my opinion might be.”

  They returned to the mansion and a riotous welcome from von Baldur and the others.

  “With you safe, and still operational, we are moving on to the next stage,” von Baldur told them. “Which shall begin with our Chas attending a masked ball.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Chas Goodnight stopped at the top of the steps, catching a reflection of his dapper self in a window glass. He took a moment to admire the way he looked — immaculate in formal whites, clawhammer jacket, pants, and black cummerbund with a matching neck scarf.

  His pack of burglar tools showed not at all. Nor a smallish, fairly harmless bomb stuffed down the back of his pants, or the small gun holstered inside the cummerbund.

  He also admired his plan.

  Goodnight desperately wanted to see that pack of love letters between the Universalists’ Premier Ladier and Hyla Adrianopole, his mistress, whose murder trial had begun the day before, since there was supposedly information about Sufyerd in them.

  The problem was, where were they?

  The Tuletian Pacifist kept promising to run them, so unless it was a total fraud, that meant somebody involved with the paper had those letters. Or rather, Goodnight corrected himself, several somebodies, since King had been told there had been copies made.

  The question was, who had the goodies?

  Goodnight figured the Pacifist’s boss must have a copy. The holo’s publisher was named Bernt Shiprite. From all reports, he was a rather arrogant shitheel, third-generation rich, who’d managed to convince himself that the rich and powerful of the Dampier System really liked him around.

  Even Goodnight, hardly a communications expert, knew said rich and powerful of any system thought all members of the press about as attractive as a good case of scabies, and only tolerated publishers and editors as long as they could play them like fish on the line.

  So it had been with Shiprite, who’d been a staunch Universalist until he had complained in print about a particularly juicy piece of trough-feeding. Driven into the outer darkness for his sin, he swore revenge. Although, strangely enough, he never got in bed with Reynard’s Independents, nor Fra Diavolo’s wreckers.

  He sulked in the political wilderness, using his publications to sling darts in all directions. Probably he hoped the Universalists would someday let him back into their midst, although going after the current premier wasn’t exactly the first step toward redemption.

  Shiprite owned a dozen holos. Most were free advertisers scattered throughout the Dampier System, which were ignored but hugely profitable. One was Tuletia’s favored entertainment holo. Two more were puzzle holos. Then there was the Analyst, a sober, vaguely reactionary holo, and finally, the Pacifist, which until two years ago had been the Tuletian Conservative. After Shiprite was declared anathema by the Universalists he’d purged the existing staff and brought in a crew of fairly radical hotheads, with the late Met Fall in charge.

  Goodnight had puzzled at a way to get into Shiprite’s vast estate to look for those letters.

  He found out as much as he could about the publisher, found that his hobbies included restoring old racing lifters, lifting weights, collecting spectacular and significantly younger wives, and formal parties.

  Goodnight commed Reynard, asked him to arrange an invite to Shiprite’s next affair, not under his own name, nor in any way involved with the Independents.

  “You plan on wreaking havoc, I assume,” Reynard said. “Which is fine with me. That man is as dependable as … as a Torguth. Don’t give me details. I’ll arrange everything.”

  And so, invitation in hand, Chas Goodnight nee Charanga Guessendo had formal evening wear tailored, rented a lim, and went to Shiprite’s mansion.

  The parking area outside was a dazzle of the rich. Bodyguards and armed chauffeurs surrounded the area, lifters swooped in and out. Just on the edges of the floodlights, armed guards and automated sniffers patrolled the grounds.

  Just inside the door a woman in her thirties, wearing an extraordinarily low cut gown in spangled silver and a matching feather headdress she should have had sense enough to leave on the birds, beamed at him.

  “A new face! You’re …?” she said.

  “Charanga Guessendo,” Goodnight said. He liked picking false names no one could pronounce, in the theory that no one would be suspicious of a clanger.

  “Yes,” the woman said vaguely. “Glad to meet you, Mr…. ummm … yes. I’m Dorothy Shiprite. You can call me Buffy.”

  “My pleasure, Buffy.”

  Her eyes ran up and down Goodnight’s body. He felt suddenly naked, vowed he’d never leer at a woman again.

  “Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “Very pleased. I hope that you’ll become a close friend of mine. And,” she added quickly, “of my husband, of course.”

  Goodnight had been warned by one of Reynard’s people not to let Buffy get him int
o a corner. He looked around hastily, saw a rather vapid-looking young woman, barely more than a girl.

  “Yes, yes indeed,” Goodnight said. “Excuse me. There’s the woman I’ve been looking for.”

  He stepped away, grabbed the woman by the arm. “There you are!”

  “Oh … yes … here I am,” the woman said in a rather perplexed monotone.

  “We were just going to dance,” Goodnight said.

  “Oh … yes … yes, I guess we were.”

  Goodnight led her toward the dance floor.

  The woman grabbed two glasses of some sparkling wine from a tray, handed one to Goodnight. He pretended to drink, set the drink on a table, and took her in his arms. Chas Goodnight didn’t believe in drinking on the job.

  This season’s musical arrangements for the hoi polloi were evidently strolling musicians, all playing the same melody, coordinated through tiny transceivers clipped to their instruments. They weren’t very good, being more intent on not stumbling into their masters than playing.

  But dancing to their sounds was better than being chased by Buffy.

  • • •

  After a time, after deciding the food was pretty fine, and that the daughters and wives of the very rich could be more boring than he could tolerate, and having had the man pointed out to him, he drifted over and “happened” to catch Bernt Shiprite as he circulated.

  Shiprite was in his early sixties, tall, athletically built, with longish, clearly transplanted hair in a style twenty years too young for him.

  Goodnight introduced himself, said that he was new to Montrois, and was a speculative writer, specializing in travel pieces.

  Shiprite said, without meaning it, that Guessendo might be interested in doing a piece for the Pacifist on what he thought of Tuletia, then eyed Goodnight in a rather interested manner. Chas was reminded of Buffy’s recent evaluation.

  “I see by your build that you work out.”

  “When I get ambitious,” Goodnight said. “I’m afraid I’m a bit too lazy to have regular habits.”

  “So am I,” Shiprite said. “What keeps me honest is having a partner to work out with.”

  Again that curious look, and Goodnight wondered if he’d heard of all of Shiprite’s hobbies.

  “You might be interested in coming out here in the daylight sometime, and I’ll show you my gym.”

  Right, Goodnight thought. And the golden rivet and the bosun’s whistle, as well. He made meaningless agreeable noises, then said, “Actually, Mr. Shiprite, what I’ve been wondering is when you plan to start running the letters between the unfortunate Miss Adrianopole and Premier Ladier.”

  “Unfortunate my ass,” Shiprite said. “She murdered one of the best journalists in the Dampier System!”

  “I apologize for misspeaking,” Goodnight said.

  “I … or rather the Pacifist … will begin running excerpts from those letters sometime during the trial,” Shiprite said. “I haven’t decided on the timing as yet.”

  “Ah,” Goodnight said. “You said excerpts?”

  “Of course,” Shiprite said. “We’ll only run bits of concern to my readers.”

  “Something else that has interested me,” Goodnight said, “is this Sufyerd case. I understand there are some things in the letters that pertain to that man’s crime.”

  “Perhaps,” Shiprite said. “I confess I haven’t read every word of them. But if there are mentions of the traitor, I see no reason to upset things by running anything about Sufyerd that might bring into question a verdict that’s already been justly decided.”

  Goodnight smiled politely, and was glad someone else came up to Shiprite and began asking him an involved question about old lifters.

  That was that for Shiprite’s ass.

  Goodnight drifted on.

  Half an hour later, a bit after midnight, he found himself upstairs, in a deserted hallway that led, he’d been told, to Shiprite’s private quarters and home office. Goodnight tried one of the doors, found it to be unlocked and a closet. He slid his bomb out of his waistband, spun the timer to fifteen minutes, activated it, put the bomb in the closet, and went back downstairs.

  He treated himself to his first alcoholic drink of the evening, waited.

  A dull thud came from upstairs as the bomb went off, and someone screamed. Someone else shouted fire.

  Goodnight was watching Shiprite carefully. The man looked about wildly, darted upstairs, and Goodnight went after him, down a corridor, and into a room at the end. His office. That was predictable.

  About then, the smoke bomb went out.

  Smoke boiled through the house, then, as the manufacturer promised, combined with the air and dissipated. The case itself was supposed to be consumed in providing material for the smoke, and the bomb was guaranteed not to leave scorch marks. Goodnight didn’t care — there were so many closets in the house it’d take a lifetime before anyone opened that particular one.

  Goodnight wasn’t paying attention anyway. He was crouched, looking under the smoke into the office, watching Shiprite move a rather grotesque painting of a lifter at speed out of the way, and start fiddling with the dial of a safe.

  That was enough for Chas.

  It was, in fact, very very good. Goodnight had learned, years ago, that when a fire starts, people will either panic and grab a fishbowl and run out, leaving their children to fry, or instinctively go for their most precious.

  Goodnight had figured those letters between Ladier and Adrianopole might qualify as precious, and now he knew Shiprite’s hiding place. He went back and joined the party, which, recovering from the momentary shock, started getting louder, in giddy relief.

  • • •

  Things started breaking up about three. Goodnight had found a small storage room near the back of the ballroom, slipped inside, and found stacks of towels. They made a comfortable seat, and he shoved a wedge under the door to lock it, and waited.

  He smiled reminiscently. This was feeling more and more like the old days, when it was just him against the universe. The legit universe, he corrected.

  It took another hour for silence to set in and for the lights to go out.

  Goodnight put on skintight ultra-thin gloves, pulled the wedge free, went silently out into the ballroom, across it, to the stairs. He saw a couple of snoring drunks sprawled here and there, and grinned.

  That would provide his alibi.

  Goodnight went upstairs into the office area and down the hall to Shiprite’s office door. It was locked. Two minutes with old-fashioned picks, and it was unlocked.

  Goodnight closed the door behind him, used the wedge to block the door shut, and took out a small light, which he set on a stand next to the painting of the lifter. He took the painting down, examined the safe, and sneered. Nothing better than a twenty-year-old Willig model Twelve.

  One reason — besides the fact that that was where the jewels were — that Goodnight had started robbing the rich was his discovery that they put their faith in showy guards, and robots, and guard animals, and then put their riches behind tinfoil.

  He attached an ear to the safe next to the locking sensor, put a listening bud in his ear, and an ultrasensitive pickup on the other side.

  Then he started touching buttons on the sensor.

  He heard nothing, no clicks, no muffled thuds, which was what he’d expected from a Willig, which was old and simple, but relatively efficient. But the pickup twitched on a certain number.

  Goodnight went through the same ritual again, got a second number, then a third and a fourth. That was all the settings a Willig allowed.

  He hit the keys in sequence.

  The safe stayed locked.

  He tried again, then a third and fourth time, varying the number sequence each time. There weren’t that many possibilities.

  On the fifth attempt, there was an almost inaudible click.

  Now he had all the time in the world — fifteen seconds — to lift the latch and open the door.

 
Goodnight brought up the light, looked in the safe.

  Inside were papers. He sorted through them quickly, but they gave him nothing. There was also a small box with some very interesting unset jewels, probably theones, he guessed. These he pocketed. They’d go to the fence whose name he’d gotten from the “King of Thieves” for walking-about money. There was no particular need to tell Star Risk about them.

  Besides, the missing gems would provide a bit of cover for his other theft, which was a tiny storage device, the only thing in the safe that could contain the letters. That went into a tiny pocket hidden in the tail of his coat.

  Also in the safe were Shiprite’s passport, a pocket dex with com numbers on it, and a small-caliber, elaborately engraved pistol. The dex, which might provide some sort of info for Grok or King, and the gun, which Chas rather fancied, also went into his pocket.

  Goodnight closed and locked the safe and went back out, cleaning up all traces of his visit. On the landing before he reached the main floor, he stopped.

  Now was the time to take care of the details of his getaway, distasteful though they were. Goodnight stuck a finger down his throat and threw up all over himself, quite silently. The odor was disgusting.

  He went toward the main door, stumbling artistically. There were two guards just inside.

  “Home …” Goodnight mumbled. “Go … home … go my place … sick …” He started to retch again.

  “You have a lifter, sir?” one of the guards said, trying to hide his repugnance.

  “Got lim,” Goodnight managed. “Stay … told to stay … fire the bastard if … got to go home. Home.”

  The guards helped him out to his lim, which was sitting with ten others, their pilots patiently waiting for their drunken employers to wake up.

  Goodnight kept the drunk act going until the lim driver dropped him off, three blocks away from the mansion.

  The streets were deserted, except for a pair of street-sweepers. Goodnight crouched behind a parked lifter until they went past, then trotted on toward home.

  In spite of the stink, he was feeling good. Very good, with the mission accomplished, no discovery, no casualties, and what had to be those scandalous love letters secure in his hidden pouch.