by Dan Moren
He charged.
The two men were probably about thirty feet away, a distance that Kovalic covered surprisingly quickly; Shen was still fumbling to extricate whatever was in his jacket when Kovalic’s fist hit him in the upper abdomen. With a wheezing groan, he doubled over—but before Kovalic could take him down, a flicker in his peripheral vision told him that the second man, Kingsley, was already swinging at his head.
Normally he would have ducked, but there wasn’t any time, so he put up an arm to block, wincing at the impact. Closing his hand around the other man’s arm, he gripped it tightly and twisted it around and under, using it to pull himself closer and knee him in the groin. It may not have been the honorable thing to do, but it sure got the job done.
Kingsley crumpled to the floor, buying Kovalic enough time to check on the other man. He’d found what he was looking for, finally—a comm, as it turned out, not a gun—but he hadn’t quite gotten his wind back. Kovalic reached down and clapped his hands on both sides of the man’s head, hard, and his eyes rolled back. He hit the ground with slightly less force than his companion, the comm falling out of his hand and onto the concrete floor with a crack.
Straightening up, Kovalic surveyed his handiwork.
“Geez,” said Tapper, coming up behind him. “You couldn’t have saved me one?”
“Well, you can have them now if you like.”
“You’re all heart. Oh, and next time, consider turning your comm off when you’re sneaking around.”
“I’m not going to live that one down, am I?”
“Better not living it down than not living at all.”
Kovalic grimaced, thinking of Wallace. Bending over, he scooped up the fallen comm unit. It was a shoddy one and the impact had shattered the screen. Slipping it into his pocket, he quickly frisked them; as he’d suspected, neither was carrying a weapon. Shen had a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, as well as an ID card that gave his name as Shenobi Dunne; the other, whose ID said Frank Kingsley, was carrying a comm locked with a passcode. Kovalic took that along with Shen’s comm; Page might be able to do something with them if they had time, but it was starting to look like demand was outstripping their supply of that particular resource.
“What the hell do you want to do with them?” Tapper asked. “We can’t leave ’em here and we’re sure as hell not going to get ’em out with your new best friend outside.”
“Yeah,” said Kovalic slowly, looking around the warehouse. Sometimes—all too often, really—you had to make do with what you had.
In this case, that was a lot of crates. And sometimes one good turn deserved another.
He turned to Tapper. “Grab an arm.”
They found a crate big enough to hold both men, and even left it cracked open so they wouldn’t suffocate—a consideration that clearly hadn’t been given to Wallace.
Over the body of the deceased operative, they took a quick moment of silence, and Tapper muttered a few words about the man. It wasn’t much as memorial services went, but it was better than what a lot of folks in their line of work got.
With Wallace’s soul hopefully laid to some sort of rest, Kovalic pulled out the data chip he’d recovered from the operative’s apartment. If nothing else, he was going to make damn well sure that the man’s death hadn’t been in vain.
It took four tries to land on the finger Wallace had used to encrypt the data chip—fortunately this particular model didn’t require that the finger’s owner had a pulse—but when they did a wealth of information scrolled across the comm in Kovalic’s hand. He’d have been lying to say it wasn’t accompanied by a sense of relief: they were finally getting somewhere. Puzzles were fine by Kovalic, but he didn’t much care for ones where you didn’t have enough information to reason out a solution.
They sealed Wallace back up in the crate—it made as good a coffin as any—and wiped down their own prints. No sense in giving anyone a chance to pin the man’s murder on them; not that the local constabulary would be likely to shake down this place.
Within ten minutes they had slipped out the back door and rearmed the security system.
“Well, at least we got the right place,” said Tapper.
“They mentioned a trip of some sort.” Kovalic frowned at his comm. It had been Page who had called while they were in the warehouse, but he hadn’t left a message or called again. He debated calling him back, then hesitated; Page was smart enough to turn his own comm off in a sensitive situation, but Kovalic wasn’t taking any more chances today.
“A nice pleasant beach vacation, maybe?”
“Right. But I think—” His sentence was interrupted by the comm unit vibrating in his hand. Page. He held up a hand at Tapper and answered it.
“You find him?”
“No, sir.” There was a pause before Page continued, and when he did Kovalic had no trouble hearing the regret in the man’s voice. “Target is in the wind.”
Kovalic let out a long sigh and stared into the distance. There wasn’t much more to be gained from Page staying down in Berwick. Brody wouldn’t be holed up there, and if he was, it was getting to be a secondary concern at this point. “You’re recalled,” he said finally. “See you at the rendezvous.”
“Roger that.”
Flipping the comm closed, Kovalic lapsed into silence. They had some time before Page would make it back up here, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were on someone else’s clock. What exactly that clock was counting down to, now, that was the mystery. But he didn’t fancy being stuck out in the cold while the main event was happening somewhere else.
“What’re you thinking, boss?”
Kovalic frowned. “I’m thinking, sergeant, that it’s about goddamned time we started putting some pieces together.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The trip back to Raleigh City was so long that when Eamon opened the door to the flat, Eli plodded over to the bed and flung himself on it, boots and all. Eamon flipped on the light and Eli grumbled, squeezed his eyes shut, and burrowed deeper into the cool sheets.
“Juswanna sleep.”
“So much for whatever basic training you ever had, huh?”
Eli rolled over, one arm flopping lazily across the bed like a dead fish. “Basic training? We just spent the better part of a day getting back here—what time is it, anyway?”
“Four.”
“In the morning? Christ, Eamon, we could have been back in two hours if we’d just taken the train.”
Eamon didn’t deign to respond, just closed the door and locked it behind him. Of course, Eamon hadn’t wanted to take the train, a fact he’d been only too happy to relay to Eli right after they’d slipped out of the back door of Ms. Munroe’s house.
Only the “back door” was actually a cramped twenty-meter tunnel underneath the backyard that exited in a small garden shed on the adjacent property. Built during the initial occupation, Eamon had explained, much like the one that linked the Pig and Thistle to the Black Watch’s warehouse. Apparently Sui Munroe and her husband—rest his soul—had been rather prominent freedom fighters during the first years of the resistance. Mr. Munroe had eventually been rounded up in a wave of Illyrican crackdowns and condemned to hard labor in the mines, a sentence from which he’d never returned. The authorities had attributed his death to a cave-in, but by that point the mining corporations had come under Illyrican control and the line between accident and assassination had to be navigated by tiptoe. Sui, meanwhile, had carried on her work for the cause in her own way. But she’d kept the tunnel well maintained, because you just never knew.
From the terminus of Ms. Munroe’s tunnel, Eamon and Eli exited into the street behind the Munroes’ house, where a groundcar was waiting for them.
Trains were out of the question, Eamon had explained. They were bottlenecks: once you got on one, you were trapped—not to mention they were closely watched by the authorities. Buses were a little better, but not enough that Eamon was willing to take one directly back to Ral
eigh City. That left the smaller conveyances.
The groundcar’s driver was one of Eamon’s associates—the unpleasant gentleman with the scar whom Eli had encountered in the warehouse. He was no more polite than he’d been during the interrogation, merely grunting assent when the two of them got in and then peeling off down the road toward the highway.
“Highway” was kind of a joke. The long ribbon of blacktop was interrupted all too frequently by sun-baked cracks from which weeds sprawled like grasping tentacles.
With high-speed rail lines linking the rapidly growing cities to the mining settlements where much of Caledonia’s population worked, there was little need for personal ground transportation—and even fewer colonists who could actually afford such a thing. Plus, most groundcars ran on batteries these days, which were more suited for travel within a city than between them.
A fact that Eli brought up out of curiosity once they had cleared the city limits and were bumping along the road.
“This is a long-range model,” Eamon explained. “We can get about a thousand miles out of it before recharging.”
But the scar-faced man hadn’t recharged the car in Berwick, apparently, because the estimated mileage on the dashboard only showed about half of that. Eli frowned, the vestigial pilot part of his brain automatically—if rustily—kicking into mental calculations of fuel to distance. “That still leaves us a couple hundred miles short of Raleigh City.”
“I hope you brought your hiking boots,” said the scar-faced man, who Eamon had addressed as “Kelly.” Eli’s initial impression had been one of dislike—the guy had threatened to kill him and dump his body. But, after spending more time with the man, his second and third impressions concurred completely: Kelly seemed like a nasty piece of work, and the fact that Eamon voluntarily associated with him left Eli with a distinct feeling of unease.
“Don’t worry,” said Eamon, with a tight smile, “I’ve got it all taken care of.”
“Oh. Great.”
As it turned out, “taken care of” meant that they were met by a heavy hauler en route from the MacAulay mine to Raleigh City. Eamon, Eli, and Kelly were unceremoniously bundled into the back of the truck, where they were given uncomfortable seats on a load of bauxite and iron ore which, Eamon assured him, would foil any conventional scanner. Just in case, though, they’d all been handed insulating wraps that would shield them from thermal detectors, on which they’d normally light up like fireworks on the Emperor’s Birthday.
That ride was a lot shorter than the first leg in the groundcar, but infinitely more unpleasant. There was a very good reason that rock had never been the material of choice for furniture construction, and as the back of the truck had not been designed for passengers the three of them were jostled around like a makeshift baby rattle. Eli quickly discovered that the one thing worse than sitting on cold, hard, pointy rock was repeatedly finding yourself bounced into the air, only to land on cold, hard, pointy rock. Ten minutes into the trip, Eli had vowed he would never take sofas for granted ever again. I wonder if De Valera gives his people hazard pay?
Right before it entered the transport company’s lot, the truck pulled over and the three of them slipped out. Eamon thanked the driver—a burly, bearded man whose red cheeks Eli queasily recognized as a clear sign of being at least one or two sheets to the wind—and shook his hand.
The lot was on the far southeastern outskirts of Raleigh City, as far as you could get from the northern reaches of Upham—a solid twenty-five kilometers. While Eli hobbled around, trying to work some feeling back into his now numb tailbone, he looked around for the next ingenious form of travel that Eamon had no doubt summoned. A motorbike with a sidecar? Had they rustled up a horse from one of the area’s paltry farms and harnessed it to a buggy?
His heart sank when he saw Eamon zip up his jacket and begin trudging in the direction of the purple glow on the horizon that marked the nighttime aura of Raleigh City. It might have been pretty if it weren’t so damn far away.
“We’re walking?” he asked, his jaw dropping.
There was a rough shove from Kelly behind him and Eli stumbled to the ground. The dirt and gravel dug into his palms, scraping them raw. Getting to his feet, he brushed himself off and tamped down the anger and frustration that had been building since the morning.
Kelly was giving him an appraising stare, arms folded across his chest. He made a tch of disgust. “Say what you will about the crims, I never thought they made a soft soldier. What a fucking joke.”
Eli’s scraped hands balled into fists and he felt his temper rising. “Let’s just get this out of the way then, shall we?”
Kelly shrugged off his jacket, revealing arms that were about as thick around as the hams that Eli’s mother had cooked for holiday dinners. Uh, shit. He put up his hands anyway, wondering if maybe Kelly would at least respect him after turning his skin colorful shades of purple and black.
Fortunately, they didn’t have to find out, as strong hands interceded, pushing them away from each other. Eamon Brody stood between them, his expression a familiar stony cold that Eli recognized all too well, though he’d never before seen it on his brother’s face.
“Cut it the fuck out.” He didn’t yell or shout—his voice wasn’t even all that loud—but something about it resonated on an almost molecular level.
Kelly’s voice shifted into a sneer. “What, you want us to all just get along?”
“I could give a shit if you get along. This isn’t about settling personal vendettas, Kelly.” The edge on that statement was sharp enough that the scarred man’s face contorted in fury and Eli could swear he saw the man’s hand twitch, but no response came. “We’ve got work to do and I’ll ask you to, at the bare minimum, keep things professional. Now shut the fuck up and let’s move. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before sunrise.”
Kelly gave Eli a dark look and muttered something under his breath, but he snatched his jacket up from the ground and yanked it on as he walked toward the city lights.
“I could have handled him,” said Eli.
“In a dogfight, sure,” said Eamon. “Sadly, we don’t have a starfighter to offer you. Down here, it’s just fist versus fist—well, until Kelly pulls his knife anyway.” He shrugged and started walking toward Raleigh City.
Eli shook his head. Just another normal night with my self-righteous big brother and a violent psychopath. I never thought I’d miss the social scene at Davidson Base.
With a sigh, he followed in his brother’s footsteps. They threaded between the dark, looming giants of warehouses and industrial buildings that were the only things lining the roads in this part of town. There was no need to stick to the shadows—pretty much everything was shadow around here. Not to mention that, if there were any cameras, they could likely see in the dark better than any person could. But as long as Eamon wasn’t planning to break into any of the buildings, they ought to be fine.
They made it back to the city proper about four hours later. About a half an hour after that, they reached Eamon’s flat … well, Eli wasn’t sure it actually belonged to his brother, but the accoutrements scattered around the room suggested that it was where he was currently staying. Kelly had peeled off before that point; he ignored Eli, but said something about meeting up with Eamon in the morning.
No sooner had Eli gotten comfortable on the bed than he heard the sound of a comm ringing. Forcing one eye open, he saw Eamon pull out the device and answer it.
Closing his eye again, he let himself start to drift off to sleep. There were pleasant things there—pleasant and warm, like a blanket wrapped around him on a cold night. He could just let himself go, like he was floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by nothing but—
“What?” Eamon’s voice was quiet but sharp and it dragged Eli up and away from his peaceful almost-sleep. Without rolling over, he shifted slightly so that his head was facing his brother, who was talking intently into the comm while pacing up and down the room. Th
e look on his face was anything but soporific.
“What do you mean he’s ‘gone?’ I sent him and Kingsley to the warehouse this afternoon.” He paused as he waited for the person on the other end of the line. “It’s not done? Christ. I couldn’t have made it any easier if I’d doused the whole place in kerosene.” His cheeks puffed out as he released a long breath and leaned against the room’s low desk.
Eli peered at him through one half-lidded eye, but Eamon’s attention seemed more on the floor in front of him.
“Fine. No, it doesn’t matter.” He waved his free hand in disgust. “Without Shen we’ve got nobody to fl—” His eyes drifted over Eli and stopped mid-sentence. “McKenna? Let me call you back.” He paused. “Just a minute or two. Trust me.” He flipped the comm off. Eli screwed his eyes shut but felt the pressure of Eamon sitting down on the bed.
“Lije.”
He wasn’t quite confident enough to risk a snore, but he kept his eyes closed and tried to keep the lids from fluttering. Maybe if he tried hard enough he could just fall asleep and Eamon would go away, and tomorrow this would all be over with.
“Lije, I know you’re faking. We used to do the same thing to mom and dad all the time. Come on.” He reached over and shook one of Eli’s boots.
“Jesus, what?” said Eli. Opening his eyes, he glanced at Eamon who was regarding him thoughtfully.
“I’ve had a slight … bump … in my plans.”
“Shame. Oh, wait, you basically kidnapped me. Never mind, I don’t give a shit about your plans.” He rolled over, away from his brother.
Eamon sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. You’re my brother; I just wanted to keep you out of harm’s way.”
“Harm? From who?” he said, turning back toward his brother and waving his hands at the otherwise empty room. “You’re the one with the gun—who’s keeping me out of your way?”
“Lije, look. I need your help. This is important.”
“Important? Great. What is it?”
“I … well, I need a pilot.”
