A large staircase dominated the rear right-hand side; the sign over it informed that on the second floor they would find the booking office for the motel and presumably the rooms.
Given the noise, Kai hoped for its paying guests’ sake that they had the rooms sufficiently soundproofed, especially as it was looking likely he and Senaya would stay overnight before their return journey. It would certainly be more comfortable than the shuttle that only berthed one.
They were close, but not that close.
They reached the bar and waited to be served. Senaya caught the eye of the surgically upgraded bar woman and got a smile in return. Like Senaya, the barwoman had a brightly colored mohawk—pink in her case—and small chrome protrusions arcing over one of her eyebrows.
“Hey there," the bar woman said, flapping a cloth over her bare shoulder. "What can I get you?"
“Two spirit waters, if you've got them," Senaya said.
“Sure thing.”
The woman retrieved the two frosted bottles from beneath the bar and placed them in front of Senaya and Kai. “That’ll be two credits, please.”
“I’ll get these,” Kai said, waving his wrist over the payment module embedded into the surface of the bar.
“Anything else I can get you?”
“There is something,” Senaya said, “we were hoping to meet a friend here and wondered if you might have seen him come in.”
The woman looked at her and shrugged her shoulders. "It's a busy night, darling; it's hard to remember everyone. But what's he look like?"
“Rough around the edges,” Senaya said, getting a smile from the bar woman. Kai envied Senaya’s ability to melt the ice with anyone and anything in conversation. “Seriously, though, he’s about my friend here’s height, but a bit bulkier, and older by about ten years or so. Short silver hair, half of his face is chrome prosthetic, as is his left leg, which makes a hissing noise when he walks due to the hydraulics.”
“Sorry, doesn’t ring a bell. Could be one of the runners—there’s a group of them lurking around here somewhere; you might have some luck with them. What’s his name?”
Senaya hesitated and looked to Kai.
“Trace," Kai said, realizing that there was little point in being stealthy about it—they'd either find him or they wouldn't, and they had nothing at all to go on. "Bandar Trace."
The smile on the bar woman's face dropped, and she shook her head. "No, can't help you. Sorry." With that, she turned her back and served a group of girls who were clearly underage but had no problems ordering whatever they wanted.
“Well, that didn’t go to plan,” Senaya said, twisting the top off her spirit water. She took a sip and placed it back on the bar. As she did so, Kai noticed a spot of light glint off the frosted glass surface.
He spun around and caught sight of a small camera drone spinning away from him. The fist-sized sphere altered its exterior to blend in with the surroundings, but it was too late, Kai had already seen its AV laser.
They were being listened to.
“What is it?” Senaya said.
“We’re being monitored by someone,” Kai said, regretting not being able to follow the drone’s path now that it was camouflaged. He reached his hand through his pocket and gripped the hilt of the pistol. “Come on, back me up.”
Kai left their drinks behind and snaked through the crowd, twisting this way and that; all in the hope his direct approach would somehow flush out whoever or whatever was stalking them. He thought back to the short man in the cap and headed to the side of the room where he had last seen him.
“Kai, hold up,” Senaya said as she struggled to keep up with him. He slowed and waited for her to force her way through the throng of people.
They reached the cubicle where he had recognized the man, but it was empty. Hand still on the pistol, he turned around slowly, trying to see any suspicious movement, but the place was too busy now, bodies filling the room, the lights dimming to give the dancers a better ambience.
“Maybe there isn’t anyone following us,” Senaya said.
“No, I saw the sphere. It was right behind us—listening in.”
“Well, what do you propose now?”
Kai thought for a moment and let go of the pistol. "If he's here, we need to make things more visible."
“What do you mean?”
“Just watch my back and follow,” Kai said. He moved from the empty cubicle and pushed his way along the side of the room, staring into each cubicle, receiving various dirty looks, threats, and exclamations as he went.
He eventually came to a cubicle filled with three shifty-looking men and a smarter-appearing woman, who Kai thought was probably the matriarch of their little gang. He asked them, “Any of you seen Bandar Trace tonight?”
It surprised him how people reacted to that name as though he had suggested the devil himself would appear at any moment. After their initial reaction, the three men shook their heads. “No, ain’t seen him, and don’t want to,” the smallest of them said. “And I suggest you don’t want to either.”
“Well, what if I do?” Kai said. “Any of you know where I can find him?”
The woman, who had stayed calm and unmoving, turned to face Kai. She wore her glossy black hair short-cropped and styled around her angular face. Her augmented amber eyes gave the rest of her face a warm glow as if she were standing in front of a fire.
“Do you wish to die?" she said, in a calm, even voice.
“No, quite the opposite. And what about you, have you seen him around here?”
Senaya stepped closer to Kai so that they were back-to-back. She turned her head and whispered into his ear, “Kai, we have a problem.”
Before Kai could turn around entirely, the music in the place had stopped, as had all the conversation. There was not a sound, not even the clink of glasses.
The crowd before them parted and in the space walked a man in a long desert duster blacker than the night. A peaked cap obscured the man’s eyes, and the long blonde hair around his shoulders hid the rest of his face. A red stripe over the right shoulder confirmed that Senaya was correct.
They did have a problem.
An inquisitor problem.
The man had the grip of a shotgun, the firearm hanging by his right leg, only partially covered by the long duster jacket. Kai's heart rate spiked and sweat broke out across his neck. He reached into his pocket and gripped the butt of his weapon.
The inquisitor stepped closer, just a few meters away.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said, in a deep, resonant voice. “Hands out of your pockets. Both of you.”
Kai hesitated, weighing his options. Even with Senaya for support, trying to take on an inquisitor was a death sentence one way or another. He had little choice but to see it through, so he removed his hands and held them palm up.
“Look, man, we’re not here for trouble,” Kai said.
“Yeah, we’ve done nothing wrong,” Senaya added.
“Come with me," the inquisitor said. "We have things to discuss." He turned from Kai and Senaya and headed off back down through the valley of people. Kai felt drawn to follow as though the inquisitor had his own gravity well.
They were led to a private back room of the building. Perhaps a storage unit of some kind. Rusted shelves of various detritus and spare parts lined the walls. An open area in the middle was just large enough for the three of them. A single bulb swung gently from side to side, animating their shadows.
Up close, the man smelled of engine oil—the kind used from the Klipi tree. He’d been out in the jungle, perhaps looking for Kai and Senaya. His face was clearer now. He wore a short scruffy beard, blonde and silver. A cybernetic implant was attached to the skin below his eye like a spider the size of a thumbnail. Probably something to augment his vision.
He had other cybernetic upgrades too, their forms standing out beneath the duster jacket. Kai guessed he probably had a graphadyne exo-armor too, given the stiff nature in the way he moved.
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Senaya spoke first, unable to hold her rebellion. “Well, Mr. Lawman, you’ve got us here. You want to tell us what this is about?”
“Bandar Trace,” the man growled. “And you may call me Bova, Henton Bova.”
“Well, Bova, you’ve certainly made quite the impression,” Kai said. “You want to expand a little? What about Bandar Trace?”
“You’re looking for him. You were in contact with him before.”
Kai was going to ask how he knew, but he was an inquisitor, after all. They had their means, and he saw no reason to lie; they’d done nothing wrong. “Sure, we had an encounter with him recently, and yes, we are looking for him. We’ve got some business to do. That’s not against the law, is it?”
“Depends on the business,” Bova said.
“What about sabotage and damage of private property,” Senaya said, glaring up at the imposing inquisitor. “I bet you don’t want to do anything about that, do you?”
“Not my jurisdiction,” Bova said, leaning his large frame closer toward Senaya. She pushed out her chest to meet his intimidation but then backed down when Bova pulled his duster aside and showed his shotgun. “Report it. Maybe someone in the department with nothing else to do will pick it up, but we’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
“That bigger thing Bandar Trace?” Kai asked.
“You’re a bright boy,” Bova said. “Why don’t you put those smarts to good use and tell me what you want with Trace.”
Kai and Senaya shared a look; she raised an eyebrow and shrugged her shoulders. He decided there was nothing gained from subterfuge at this moment. "Ship parts. My G10 was smashed up. If I'm to race in the Classic tomorrow, I need parts, and Bandar's my last opportunity."
“He gave you a token?”
Again the dilemma arose in Kai’s mind: lie or tell the truth.
So far the truth had kept him alive, so he continued. “Yes, he gave me a token. It’s what led me here. But I don’t know where else to find him.”
“That’s what we were trying to do before you rudely interrupted,” Senaya added.
“No one here can help you," Bova said, leaning closer to them as though making a threat. Then, after a few tense moments, he added, "Except for me."
“What do you mean?" Kai asked after briefly wondering if he could beat the inquisitor to the draw and whether his basic pistol would be enough to wound the man before he retaliated with a shotgun blast to the face.
“I mean I’ll take you to him, but you’ll do what I tell you. You’re going to help me do what no other inquisitor has managed so far—take down Bandar Trace.”
Chapter 9
In the dark of night, the inquisitor led Kai and Senaya out of the bar and across the rocky steppes to a well-hidden cave entrance. Bova explained that he had been watching Trace for a few days but needed help to get to his inner sanctum.
“I don’t see what we can do,” Senaya said as they headed into the cave tunnel.
“We’ll get to that when the time comes,” Bova said. He threw out a light drone that hovered a few meters in front of them, casting soft light to illuminate their way through the maze of tunnels. “Follow the light.”
“What do you want with Trace?” Kai asked, moving forward.
“The one thing all Zarundan inquisitors want with him: his execution. Now move.”
While Kai and Senaya followed his orders, Bova ordered them in front to take point in their small formation.
A further twenty minutes of tunnel crawling went by in silence. Kai tried a few times to get some information from Bova but was shut down each time.
Eventually, they came to an open section with a vaulted ceiling and a shimmering pool of dark water; the surface ripples only picked out by the drone’s light that expanded further to beat back the shadows. On the other side of the pool, a rusted platform and railing appeared to head down into a pit. The temperatures had dropped, and Kai shivered, the cool damp air settling on his face and neck.
“We’re here,” Bova said. “Trace is somewhere down that pit. I couldn’t risk following him down there—I detected a defense network. This is where you two come in.”
Kai turned to face Bova in the dim light. “What? You expect us to go down into the pit?”
“You have a token. It’ll allow passage.”
“Like we’re going to just believe that,” Senaya said. “It could be complete suicide for all we know.”
“It's that, or I judge and execute you both right now. I have the right—given the murder of those innocent people at the wreckage."
“That was self-defense,” Senaya shouted.
Kai reached out instinctively to grab Bova’s lapels, but the inquisitor was too fast.
He stepped back out of Kai’s outstretched hands, ducked to the side, and delivered a hard right cross to his jaw, knocking Kai to the hard stone ground.
Senaya yelled and launched herself at Bova, but again, the big man was faster than his size alluded. He sidestepped Senaya and grabbed her hair, pulling her to him, where he wrapped one meaty arm around her neck and from within his duster jacket brought out a knife and held it to her face.
“This was not wise of you,” he growled. “I wanted to give you two a chance. You could have come out of this well, but I guess I’m just going to have to do this myself after all. Mr. Locke, hand me the token.”
“Don’t give it to him,” Senaya said, squirming uselessly against Bova’s augmented strength.
Kai thought through his options and couldn’t see many choices. “Okay, okay, just don’t do anything rash,” Kai said. “We can still work together on this. We got you wrong. I was stupid, okay—”
“It’s too late for that,” Bova said. “Token. Now.”
Bova pressed the knife into Senaya’s face, causing a tiny bead of blood to well and flow down the wicked edge of the blade. She winced but didn’t give him the satisfaction of screaming.
“Fine, you can have the stinking token,” Kai said, reaching into his pocket to retrieve it, but before he could hand it over, the hovering light drone exploded in a ball of sparks, sending the cave into complete darkness. A boom of a gun blast echoed around the confined space.
Briefly, with the flame light still glowing in his vision, Kai thought he saw a shadow rush behind Bova. He blinked and only saw darkness after that.
There was a brief thump noise, and the atmosphere took on a static quality. Bova grunted once. A heavy thud followed.
Senaya screamed but was cut short.
“Who’s there?” Kai said as he gingerly got to his feet, his arms flailing around in the darkness, trying to find Senaya.
Someone grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward.
“Don’t speak, just follow,” a familiar gruff voice said.
It was Bandar.
In a gloom that resisted visual adaption, Bandar Trace led Kai and Senaya down a steep spiral staircase and through a couple of heavy-sounding doors. A laser defense system flashed on behind them as they made their way through still more corridors and passages until, finally, they stopped, and the lights came back on.
They were standing inside what looked to Kai to be an old repurposed military bunker.
Barely four meters square, the room was painted with gray electro-shielding paint. The place smelled of sweat and canned meat. Rusting shelves lined the rear wall, on which canned and bottled goods were packed tight. On the far side of the room a set of screens covered the entire wall, and below them a console desk with electronics and gadgets Kai couldn’t identify.
Senaya’s eyes grew wide with fascination as she stepped closer and inspected the gear.
Bandar muttered something unintelligible and sat on a stool in front of the console. He manipulated a keyboard, and half of the many screens flickered to life, showing hi-resolution feeds of tunnels, openings, and even entry and exit points to the Rest & Regroup.
“You knew we were coming with Bova,” Kai said.
“This is awesome,” Se
naya exclaimed as she inspected the electronics closer. “Subspace scanners and… what’s that, a decryption decompiler?”
“Don’t touch that,” Bandar growled. “And yes, I saw you coming. I never had you down as stupid enough to hook up with an inquisitor.”
“You must have known he was coming for you. Why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance?” Kai said.
“You can’t kill what isn’t alive to begin with.” Bandar turned on his stool to face Kai. Half of the older man’s face was obscured by the chrome cybernetic prosthetic. Burning blue eyes glared out inscrutably from deep-set sockets. Short silver hair, clearly shaved by himself, told Kai he had likely spent considerable time in the military.
The old surplus army fatigues he wore only added to this impression.
“You mean Bova’s a—”
“A shrain,” Bandar finished for him. “I’ve been tracking him for months. The inquisition doesn’t even know they’ve been infiltrated.”
Kai stumbled forward and slumped onto an empty stool next to Bandar.
Senaya had found a seat to their right. At the sound of the word shrain, she leaned forward toward Bandar, her interest in the gadgets overtaken by something much more compelling.
“You’re serious?” Senaya asked.
“No, I’m making this up for laughs. Of course I’m serious. You saw how strong that thing was. And I bet you didn’t get a good look at its face, either.”
“You're right; we didn't… he had that cap and the long hair. But a shrain, really? This is incredible; I thought they were a myth invented by the Host to scare the coalition children."
“They were,” Bandar said, “but then they made them real. About a century ago, they stumbled on a cache of Navigator technology on one of the Coristile system’s planets. This has only come to light recently.”
“How?” Senaya asked.
“I keep my ears and eyes open for subspace communications. Over the months and weeks, I’ve picked up a lot of chatter amongst the Host planets. It took a while to decrypt them, but when I did, I found out that they’d used the Navigator tech to create shrain entities from third-order humans.”
Blackstar Command 1: Prominence Page 7
