“I’m willing to pay any price,” Jeften said in a soft voice. “Any price.”
“That’s odd for a Central Security Agent to say,” DeMann remarked.
“He did something to me,” Jeften said wearily, waving a hand in my direction. “I know what I am now, and I don’t like it.”
I sat still wondering just what was going on around me. Why was Jeften so sorry, and what was that talk about a geneticist? I had a glimmering of an idea, but it was so astonishing, I shoved it out of my mind.
“Walim,” DeMann ordered, “take the Agent to our special room. The one designed to hold persons with his . . . ahh . . . peculiar talents.”
Walim pulled his needle-laze and Jeften walked out of the library meekly. His head was down, and I thought I could see tears in his eyes. What had Fla’shh done to him? I tried to pull my mind back from the speculating mode it had been in to concentrate upon DeMann.
DeMann turned his attention to me. “You’re Enos?”
I nodded. I swallowed hard.
“I suppose you’re owed an explanation,” DeMann said. He reached into one of his tunic pockets and pulled out a smoker. He pressed its tip and drew in a deep lungful of acrid smoke as the smoker flamed to life. He let the smoke escape from his nostrils slowly. “My daughter is a replicate.”
Renate was a genetic duplicate of someone, but who? It surely couldn’t be DeMann. His hair and eyes were all wrong.
“My wife died during a terrible accident on Terra,” DeMann said softly. His eyes were glazed, and he was seeing something that had occurred a number of years ago. “We didn’t have any children, and I dearly loved her. I had a replicate made, which is possible if you have enough money. And I’ve always had enough money,” He paused and looked hard at me. “My business was handed down from my father.”
I didn’t know what to do or say, so I sat mute and nodded my head.
“I owe her life to you, Enos,” he said, looking at me. “But you know why she doesn’t want to see you. She doesn’t even know about her . . . condition.”
“She won’t hear a thing about it from me,” I assured him.
“What was with Jeften?” DeMann asked me. “What did you do to him?”
“He was in a state of Fla’shh,” I said, using the world. It felt natural rolling off my tongue.
DeMann looked positively shocked. He stared at me hard, and then compressed his lips tightly together. He rose from his chair with a curt nod to Misth, who leveled his needle-laze in my direction. I sat as DeMann quickly walked to a far I corner of the library and pulled down a film case. He slid it into the video, and with practiced ease read whatever it was. He nodded to himself, put the film in the case, the case back on the shelf, and stalked back to his chair. He sat down and picked up his smoker.
“Do you realize what you’ve just said?” he asked.
“I don’t completely understand the term,” I said, “but I know.” I didn’t feel it would be a good idea to lie to him unless absolutely necessary.
“It’s an ancient word,” he said. “It’s mentioned in a text written by Golden Age Philosophers on FarAway. And it was an ancient word to them.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but decided against it. My mind was completely baffled. The Golden Age of FarAway was about six centuries before the Golden Age of Terra. I couldn’t conceive of how long ago it was. “What can I say?” I blurted.
“Where did you hear the word?” he asked.
“I heard it... in my head,” I said. I held up my right hand and showed him the ring. “It occurred after I found this ring.”
Her jerked forward in his chair and stared at the ring. He took my hand and examined the stone carefully and slowly. He finally smiled broadly and released my hand. I sat back in my chair. Did he know something about the ring? If so, what?
“If I had the power,” he said softly, “I’d give you half of all the wealth I have for that ring. But I know it doesn’t come off.”
“You know something about the ring?” I asked. “What?”
“There was one found in a wreck in the wasteland,” he said. “The man who found it still doesn’t look a day older, and he’s well over 600 Standard Years old. He’s never been renewed.”
“What?” I gasped. “Not renewed? But no one can unless ...”
“Precisely,” DeMann said. “The ring is exactly like the one you’re wearing, and it does not come off. Where they come from, no one knows. No one knows where the wrecks of the Wasteland came from, either.”
“Some battle,” I said, recalling all I knew about the Wasteland. “A battle so long ago the disabled ships have slowly come together to form the Wasteland by simple attraction.”
“That’s all anyone knows about the Wasteland,” DeMann nodded. “Where did you find the ring?”
I lied, “I found it on Firelight.”
“Where?” he asked.
“Near the Strip. In a little jewelry store. I was walking along,” I said, recalling the Strip area. I remembered the store near the bus stop. “I saw it and brought it. It liked it.”
“You’re very fortunate,” DeMann commented. “Very fortunate, indeed.”
I felt my stomach churning as he stared at me. He would eventually find out I was lying, but before then, I wanted to be off the planet. There were too many things happening that I didn’t understand. I knew DeMann would send a team to Firelight as soon as he could. He would want to know where the jeweler had found the ring I was wearing. I pitied the poor man, but I didn’t want DeMann ripping apart the ruins I’d found on Green. If I could, I would want to visit them again.
“What can I do for you?” DeMann asked. The ring and Flashh were dismissed, but I knew it was only for now.
“Two things,” I said. “I’d like to sell our cargo, and get my friend out of jail.”
“Do you know which prison he’s being held?” DeMann asked.
“No,” I said. “But Jeften does. He was the one who told me he was being held in one.”
“Interesting,” DeMann said. “If he has indeed been in a Flashh coma, then he’ll tell us what we need to know. I’ll buy your cargo. What is it?”
“Medicals,” I said. ’
DeMann nodded and reached into his other pocket. He put down his smoker, and it stopped burning. The little ashtray was worth well over a thousand credits. The stack of bills he pulled out of his pocket were as thick as his fist. He peeled off two and handed them to me.
I smiled sickly as I noticed the numbers on the bills: each one was a million credit. I’d never known they made them that large. I slit open a pocket in my jumpsuit and put the bills in there. I ran my thumb over the seal and it was closed again. I didn’t think I’d be opening that pocket any time soon.
“We’ll see if we can get your ship repaired,” DeMann said. “But first, follow me.”
I got out of the chair and followed him out of the library. He led me down another corridor to a small dining room. The table was laden with high protein foods and lots of liquids. I could feel my stomach churning as
I merely looked at the food. When the odors wafted against my nose, my mouth filled with saliva.
“Eat,” DeMann said. “Eat and refresh yourself. We may have to use a little force to free your friend. Would you like to go along?”
I turned to him, though it was hard turning from the food. “Yes,” I said with a nod. “I want to be there. I could be of some use.”
“Perhaps,” he said with a soft smile. “I’ll leave you here with Virzi. After you’ve eaten, he will notify me. I’ll be with Renate.”
I said, “I wish there was some way I could ...”
DeMann looked at me with sad eyes. “There is no way. There are many things about myself I cannot tell her. She saw your anger.”
I nodded to myself. He was right, of course. Renate wouldn’t be able to handle the scene she would see each time she saw me. It was still odd that now that I had delivered her to her father, this mess wasn’t
over with yet. I just hoped nothing had happened to Kohn. If anything had, I would personally hunt Heuser down and kill him. But slowly. Ever so slowly.
I then sat down at the table and began to eat.
12
After I’d eaten my fill, Virzi used an intercom to let DeMann know. He was down in a minute, and he was all smiles. He seemed pleased to see me. I guess Renate had filled him in a little more in detail what I’d done. I hoped she still liked me. It was hard to think that one moment could erase so much. But that one lapse ... I didn’t want to think about it.
“Have you had your fill?” DeMann asked as he led me back to the library.
I assured him I had. Virzi and Misth followed behind us. I had no idea what had happened to Walim, but I assumed he was guarding Jeften. After we had sat down in the library, DeMann began to make some inquiries at the prison, trying to get Kohn out legally. It didn’t work. He tried some bribes, big ones, but no one bit. I was surprised at that, since the police really didn’t believe Kohn was all that dangerous.
It finally sunk in after DeMann received a call from his lawyer saying the police wouldn’t release Kohn. Central. They were hoping we would try a frontal attack or something and they could capture all of us. Actually, they could only be assured of capturing me. Perhaps they wanted to teach me a lesson or something.
DeMann said he was sorry, but there was only one thing he could do. He could outfit a flitter with a troop of men, and we could try to smash our way into the prison. I agreed, but he insisted that Misth be put in charge of the operation. I said that was fine, and before I was quite ready, we were in another section of the dome, putting on body armor. It was very light weight, and wasn’t stiff. It fit like a soft silk cloth over our jumpsuits, but DeMann assured me it could stop a needle-laze last at point blank range. I was impressed.
The entire company consisted of eight people, including Virzi, Misth, and me. The flitter was stripped of everything except a place to sit and a comp defensive system. It was rather long for a flitter, being over ten yards long, but it was also sleek looking. The groundhogs sometimes had nice machines. Flitters are smooth looking, with tiny, stub wings and needle nose. We all climbed aboard and Misth took over the controls. He made a sign before he took off, one of the arcane hand symbols of the D’ler sect. It was curt and brusque, just like the man. A hole in the roof of the dome appeared, and we were off.
We flew low, avoiding all the defense and flight sensors. At least, that was the theory. The flight itself was boring. Virzi didn’t say a word, and the other men didn’t know me. I didn’t bother to try to talk with Misth. He was too busy flying the flitter. He was using the manual controls, but he had assured me before we took off that when when the guards at the prison started firing at us, he’d switch over to the defensive comp. DeMann had told us that most of the guards were not going to fight all out when we breached the walls. I hoped we could at least breach the walls.
I hadn’t mentioned my modifications to the other men, but Misth and Virza knew. They had known Jeften was, and I had obviously fought him to a standstill when they had come into the hotel room. What the other men didn’t know, the better I liked it. I was sitting in the back of the flitter, glancing out through the length of the place to see a bit of blue sky through the pilot’s window.
Flitter flying is fun, for a time. But it doesn’t have the danger, or the excitement of flying in Free Space nor Warp. Or course, nothing is quite like Warp. But I could see how a groundhog could get quite enamored of a flitter. It was the closest thing to Warping they could get.
Misth called out that the prison was in sight. I had glanced out the side windows, now and then, and noted we were fairly close to a city, and from the way it soared up from the ground, I had the feeling it was the capital, Steel. The Strip would have to be nearby. I asked if I could sit in the co-pilot’s chair, and Misth agreed. He didn’t dislike me, but he surely didn’t like me.
I unfastened my seat belt and walked up the length of the flitter. I sat down in the co-pilot’s chair and glanced out the window as I strapped in. The prison was a horrible box. It sprawled over an acre of land, and the walls surrounding it were well over twenty feet tall. At each of the four comers of the walls surrounding the building, there were guard towers, and I felt an icy finger of fear tickle my stomach. Mounted on those towers were laze cannons. They all seemed to be pointing to us.
The prison itself was coated with a dull gray coating, and I held my breath for a second. Nothing happened except the guards in the control room of the prison must have noticed our approach. They asked us what our mission was. Misth didn’t answer. I didn’t blame him. Things would get exciting enough without him getting them primed. I bent down and removed my boots. Misth noted my movement and nodded to himself when I glanced at him. He was getting warnings from the guards now. They were telling him he would have to pull away. He still kept the flitter going in a straight line.
They fired a warning blast across our bow. The blue beam roared past us, and we all heard the crackling it made through our tiny earphones. All the men in the back compartment seemed to stiffen at the sound. Misth turned on the defensive comp. The next blast was aimed at our lateral side. The comp maneuvered the ship quickly enough, but the seat belts made a bruise on my hip when we jerked.
The gray walls of the fence went past us, under our keel, and then we were aimed straight at the walls of the prison. Misth had programmed the comp to smash through a wall, where no prisoner was being kept. It could detect them via their body heat. I hoped the hull had been reinforced, otherwise Misth and I would be nothing but smashed pulp when we hit.
The comp was good. The guards didn’t fire at us when we were inside their fences. I imagined all sorts of sirens and alarms were going off. I hoped there wasn’t any Central flunkies running around, or DeMann would get more than he bargained for if any of them got hurt. Central is very touchy about its personnel.
The wall crumpled, and we quickly bailed out of the flitter, except Virzi, who was told to guard it. He held a rifle needle-laze cradled in his arms, and I knew he wouldn’t hesitate about using it. I told Misth I’d activate and see if I could find Kohn’s name on the comp list. He agreed, and the rest of the men spread out.
One of the men rounded a far corner, and was flung back in our direction by a blast from a needle-laze. The force of the blast smashed him against the wall, but he got up and fired several slugs from his barker pistol. The guards seemed to fade away. Barkers are such nasty weapons. The slugs travel extremely fast, and they tumble in their flight. They leave big holes in anything they hit.
I activated, and after the vertigo, I rushed down the main corridor, toward the main section of the prison. I reasoned the comp terminals would be near the control area, and that would be in the center of the prison. The corridors were never very long, and there were only about six cells to each side. I turned several corners, knowing I was getting closer to the center.
As I rounded one corner, I came face-to-face with a squad of Central Troops. They were regular Troops, and they were rolling a portable laze cannon down the corridor. They were more than likely going to use it on the flitter and cut off our escape. The breeching of their walls hadn’t occurred that long ago, and what with the confusion Misth and his men were creating, the anarchy of releasing prisoners and their random firing down corridors, the Troops more than likely thought it was some sort of major break-in. Or break-out. Whatever. Anyway, I deactivated and told the six Troopers to stop and not try anything. I was fairly certain they wouldn’t be silly. Goes to show you just how wrong a person can be.
They reached for their pistols, and when one of them cleared his holster, I activated. The one who had drawn his pistol first fired at me, but I was no longer where he’d last seen me. I rushed toward them, and the blue beam of the needle-laze flashed against a wall, startling one of the prisoners in his cell. I reached the cannon. I jumped on top of it, and as I was maintaining my balance on its squat, bulky
form, I chopped the wrists of two of the Troopers, sending their needle-lazes to the floor. They had broken wrists and would be out of action for the time being. The other four Troopers turned in my directions, determined to do me in. I jumped from the cannon and snap-kicked two in the chest, sending them bouncing against the far walls, and down in a crumpled sleep. They were out. I twisted in midair and as I flew over the heads of the other two, who were moving like slow-motion mannequins, I tapped them on the top of their skulls. I deactivated when I landed on my feet. The two Troopers with the broken wrists were holding their arms and running away from me. The others were out.
I nodded to myself and reached out to the cannon. I pulled its power pack, and used one of their needle-lazes to fuse the power box. They would have to replace the thing before they could use it, and we would either be long gone by then, or we’d be prisoners ourselves.
I didn’t like the appearance of the Troopers, however. That was a bad sign. That meant a Troop ship had landed on Steel. DeMann was getting into more of a confrontation than he wanted. I wondered, briefly, why Central had waited so long before directly using force on him. If they hadn’t bungled their kidnapping caper, they would have had him under their thumb, like they had almost everyone else in the Spheres. I shook my head, re-activated, and rushed down the corridor again.
The two guards at the terminal room were easily disposed of, and as they lay on the floor unconscious, I tapped on Kohn’s code. The comp answered my question, and I relayed the message to Misth. He told me I had to get back to the flitter. Virzi was under attack. He was calling for help, and I was the closest person. It would take Misth and his men several minutes to free Kohn and bring him back to the flitter.
I ran down the corridor back to the flitter, hoping no one else had brought up laze cannons. The cannon was still where I had wrecked it, but the Troopers were all gone. Someone must have come along and taken them to the infirmary. I knew they’d all be okay. I hadn’t done anything to them to permanently hurt them. They had been just young Troopers.
The Space Mavericks Page 14
