Soldier of Fortune (2nd ed)

by Kathleen McClure

  “An appalling lack of composting in the inner city?” Gideon asked.

  Mia rolled her eyes at the unseen soldier because, even if he weren’t facing an angry woman with a live weapon, it was a silly statement to make. Keeper waste bins were the crystal standard of composting, so why…

  “No,” the woman was saying, apparently in response to Gideon’s suggestion. “What is going around lately is pain.”

  Which was when Mia, who understood Gideon even better than she herself knew, put her shoulder to the corner of the bin, and her feet to the wall, and pushed.

  Gideon, standing with his hands out to his sides, Elvis tensed on his shoulder, and facing an armed and angry woman, had no idea if the dodger had gotten his hint until he heard the telltale groan of the compost bin’s wheels.

  So, thankfully, did Rey, who instinctively turned her weapon towards the new threat.

  She got the hint! he thought, right before the reality of a crushingly heavy receptacle bearing down on him registered.

  He spun behind the rolling blockade, Elvis flattening himself to hold onto his perch, just before it squashed the both of them between itself and the neighboring building.

  The gauge the metal dug into the brick had him wincing in relief as he turned to the dodger. “You got the hint!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got the hint. Now can we scarper?”

  “One second.” He put his Elvis-free shoulder to the bin and gave it another, granite-scraping, shove, just to make sure the alley was well and truly blocked.

  From behind the wall of compost, he could hear Rey’s curses, interspersed with the occasional blast from her shooter. He shook his head at the waste of power.

  “Now we can scarper,” he said, making sure the dodger remained ahead of him as they made their escape.

  “How’d you know the trash bin was wide enough to block her off?” she asked as they turned onto Bard Street.

  “I didn’t.” He almost laughed at her expression of affront. “I figured it’d be enough to have a mammoth-sized composter bearing down on her. The blockade was just luck.”

  “You’re a right nutter, you are.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Gideon glanced around. Despite the cessation of rain, the street still wasn’t as populated as he’d like, and they didn’t have much of a lead. “They’ll be past, or over, that bin soon enough. We have to get out of sight.”

  “That way.” The girl pointed to a brightly lit pleasure emporium on the other side of the street.

  Gideon didn’t have to read the sign to know it was the Shakespeare Circus—Nike’s cultural claim to fame, and one of Dani’s favorite places.

  Some cities had theaters, others went so far as to dedicate entire districts to live productions, both new and classical, but Nike… Nike had Shakespeare’s Circus, a sprawling, multi-level ode to the theatre.

  Built during the first expansion, right after the first agri-centers had been staked for preservation, the Circus was, from its basement black boxes to its open air atrium stage in the center, a place of worship for all things dramatical.

  Stages varied in size and shape, intimate cabarets for twenty, or auditoriums to hold two hundred.

  Likewise varied were the performances on offer. Earth classics were the most popular—Macbeth and Buffy the Demon Killer were frequently staged—and the smaller houses offered everything from vaudeville to kabuki to bellydancing.

  Such was the Circus’ popularity that tonight, despite the weather, the place was doing brisk business. The stage nearest the open gates had a placard announcing that tonight’s performance was “A Comedy of Errors”.

  “It’s a sign,” Gideon said, catching sight of the placard.

  “Yeah, I can see it’s a sign,” she said. “I ain’t blind.”

  “No, I meant because it’s the Comedy of Errors and tonight’s sort of a—forget it.”

  “Gladly.”

  As they crossed the street, he told Elvis to take the high road and the draco, with a bitter hiss, jumped off Gideon’s shoulder, flapping his way to the peak of the Circus building.

  Without the draco to draw attention, it was just possible anyone spying them would assume Gideon was nothing more than a corpsman on leave, taking his daughter out for an evening of entertainment, and easily forgotten.

  What neither Gideon nor Mia took into account was Fagin Ellison, currently lurking in the bowels of the Circus, where he could keep watch over his dodgers, and enjoy a cup of tea.

  He’d taken a table between the tea stall and the pantomime’s venue, where he could watch the crowds, and his two dippers working the crowds, at his ease.

  He’d just taken a sip of heartily spiked tea when he spied the tall Corpsman he’d set Mia on over two hours past.

  The man appeared alert—eyes everywhere, as if searching for something.

  He also was without his draco. Ellison took this to mean Mia had succeeded in the challenge of stealing the beast and, in that moment, he utterly forgot the plans he’d made for her future.

  Surely, he thought, the girl was the finest dodger he’d raised up. A credit to the shadow trade, a queen amongst the drones, a dodger worthy of the hive of Ellison.

  He toasted the air and took a hefty sip.

  And then he saw Mia on the far side of the mark, walking with him—and not a draco in sight.

  The spit take which followed this revelation struck one half of a couple approaching the panto’s door.

  This led to Ellison having to apologize to the doused man, though it was the woman (had to be a sister, from the looks of ‘em), who seemed most offended.

  Both were quite the specimens (fit for the Adidas cages, a small, larcenous portion of Ellison’s brain noted, even as he groveled), and armed as well, forcing Ellison to waste precious seconds placating the angry siblings, and thereby losing sight of Mia.

  Mia, he thought, that wretched excuse for a dodger, that rotten comb, spoiling the rest of the hive.

  Once free from the offended couple, Ellison started off in the direction the pair had been headed when he first saw them.

  “This Quinn is troublesome,” Nahmin pronounced some time later, sniffing the air near Ronan, who had a definite eau de cheap whiskey about him.

  “An understatement,” said Rey, her face dark with unspent fury.

  It was a little over an hour after Rey had lost Quinn in the alley, and she, her brother Ronan, and Nahmin had just met up with their employer at the front gate of the Shakespeare Circus.

  “It would have been more troublesome had he died,” the employer said, surveying Nahmin from beneath the hood.

  “Who,” the green-clad assassin countered, “eats their dinner in the bathtub?”

  “Troublesome sorts?” Ronan guessed. He was, truth be told, enjoying a hit of Ease, as his wrenched elbow ached fiercely, despite the expert wrapping his sister had given it.

  “Come,” their employer turned and crossed Bard Street, to the waiting Rolls.

  “Where?” Nahmin asked, as all three followed.

  “You and I,” the cloaked figure said, “are required elsewhere—friends in high places will be expecting us. You two…” And now a hand emerged, indicating the twins, “… will be paying a visit to friends in low places. Those in the shadow trade have eyes and ears everywhere. They will be able to locate Quinn, for the right price.”

  Nahmin, thinking his employer’s definition of friends was not the same as other people’s, simply nodded and opened the carriage door.

  Rey, who wondered what could be lower than Nahmin, bowed her head.

  Ronan, who was on the lovely edge of feeling no pain, smiled.

  Their employer, looking at the lot, began to feel the first teasings of doubt.

  Or, rather, the second teasings.

  The first teasings had made themselves known when news of Gideon Quinn’s release interrupted a quiet night at home.

  14

  Just shy of ten o’clock, Gideon scanned Marlowe Street as the girl
(apparently she didn’t consider them on a first—or any—name basis, as yet), opened the door of Kit’s Place, the joint she’d suggested two hours and eight tram stops ago.

  It would have been only one hour and three tram stops, but it seemed the lovely Rey and her accomplices didn’t take being ditched in the Circus lightly, and had called in a few favors from other players.

  Gideon discovered this when, upon stepping down from the tram at its third stop (one avenue away from their current location), he caught a high-shrieked keen of warning from the rooftops, where Elvis had just perched.

  Instinct had him ducking, and shoving the girl back onto the already-departing tram, thus barely avoiding a blast of plasma from some street tough’s shooter.

  “Does every street drone in Nike have a gun?” he’d asked, frustrated.

  “Only them as wants to work,” she’d said, with a hood bouncing shrug.

  Fortunately, there had been a dearth of street drones at the Canterbury Avenue stop where, even if there had been any of the criminal class waiting, they’d have had a tough time getting to Gideon through the throngs of university students pouring out of the closing library towards home or, more likely, the pubs.

  From there, they’d hiked to the Virgin Avenue station and caught the Twining Circle tram, which eventually brought them to Tempest Park, from which they hoofed it back to Marlowe Street, and Kit’s.

  Halfway through Tempest Park, the girl had looked at Gideon oddly. “What are you counting?”

  Gideon, who’d just reached 2,218, came to a halt. “Nothing,” he said, then gestured for her to continue on.

  Shortly after (another seventy-two steps), they turned onto Marlowe, and ninety steps after that, they reached their destination.

  After a thorough scan of the street, and an all clear from Elvis, now perched on the diner’s awning, Gideon was pleased to discover that no one had followed them.

  Fortunately, the rain continued to hold off as well, so Gideon didn’t feel too guilty about leaving Elvis outside.

  “It’s for your own safety,” he explained, looking up.

  Elvis glared down from the top of the awning, unconvinced.

  “Fine, I’ll bring you a little draco bag,” Gideon promised, then followed his young guide into the diner, where the warm air was redolent of oats, cinnamon, butter, and the sharp slash of bacon.

  His mouth commenced watering while his eyes skimmed the place.

  Kit’s wasn’t large, having room for no more than five booths running along the left-hand wall, a handful of four tops in the middle and a counter fronted by well-worn, red-cushioned stools on the right. The kitchen was open to the dining area via a long pass-through, though he couldn’t see anyone inside the kitchen.

  He wondered if the place served pie. He seemed to recall, in the distant past, having a fondness for pies. Not the gooey ones, though. He liked real fruit in his pastries.

  “You comin’ in or what?”

  Gideon shook off the whimsy of desserts past and followed the girl into the diner present.

  She’d explained, during tram connection six, that Kit’s tended to slow down after the early dinner rush, and that by this point in the evening, the working folk who frequented the place would have come and gone.

  “We’ll be able to watch for any trouble coming, no problem,” she’d promised.

  The way she’d said it told Gideon the girl was accustomed to watching trouble approach. Certainly the way she’d handled herself thus far—both as a medic in his room and backup in the alley— indicated the kid kept a cool head in a crisis.

  She was also spot on about the diner. The joint was empty but for one lone soul, a young man with tousled gold brown hair, and wearing a UCF Air Corps jacket that had seen better days.

  The airman looked up, and Gideon watched him acknowledge Gideon’s Infantry coat which, to be fair, had also seen better days.

  The two shared a brief look, a short nod, and then the younger man’s brown eyes returned to the cup of tea he was nursing. There was an empty plate in front of him, all but licked clean, which gave Gideon a certain optimism about the fare.

  A kettle began to whistle and Gideon turned towards the sound in time to see a red-headed woman appear through the open arch between the kitchen and counter area.

  She was young, pretty, and visibly pregnant beneath the bib apron she wore over the brown kimono blouse and trousers she wore, and was carrying a stack of clean plates in her hands.

  Upon spying new customers at the door, she assayed a tired smile, one that became genuine the moment they fell on the girl at his side.

  “Honey from the keepers,” the young woman called in greeting, surprising Gideon with a Fordian accent. She set the plates down and pulled the copper kettle from the mini-stovetop set in front of the kitchen pass-through. “I haven’t seen you in, what, two weeks?”

  “Been busy,” Gideon’s guide dodger replied with a shrug. “You look—bigger.”

  “Yeah, part of the process. Millions of years of evolution, and this is the best we can do.” The red-head leaned on her side of the counter where the girl, after a brief hesitation, joined her, gesturing Gideon to follow. The red-head gave Gideon a sharp look as he approached. “And who’s your friend? A little tall for a dodger, isn’t he?”

  “I was shorter when I started,” Gideon said, and was rewarded by a sharper look than the first. So sharp, in fact, he felt a bit as if he were being dissected by the keen gray eyes.

  “Another Ford native,” she observed, studying him. “Far from home, aren’t you, soldier?”

  “Likewise, ma’am.”

  “Don’t call me ma’am,” she countered from behind the counter, “I work for a living.”

  “This here’s Gideon,” the girl jerked her chin his way. “Gideon, this is Jinna. She’s okay, for a citizen.”

  “High praise from Mia,” Jinna murmured.

  “Your name is Mia?” he asked, glancing at the girl who, of course, shrugged.

  He then turned back to Jinna who, on second glance, was younger even than he’d thought. It was her gaze, keen, assessing and, in his case, utterly dispassionate, that made her seem older.

  It also told him that, young or not, this Jinna was a formidable person.

  Their eyes held one another’s, each acknowledging a mutual summing up before Jinna broke off relations by looking away to gesture towards the tables. “You’re welcome to take a seat anywhere,” she said. “I’m not sure Mia told you but this near to closing we’re down to whatever’s left over from the day, and today what’s left over is griddle cakes and bacon.”

  “If those cakes taste half as good as they smell, I’ll die happy,” Gideon assured her.

  “Please, don’t die on my account,” Jinna said dryly. “Take a table and I’ll get your tea going.” Already, she was turning back to pour water from the kettle into a waiting teapot.

  Feeling very much dismissed, Gideon followed Mia to a booth at the rear of the diner, past the airman, who nodded and greeted Mia by name, indicating both were regulars at Kit’s.

  Also, if Gideon were to judge from the glances the young man occasionally sent Jinna’s way, he wasn’t just there for the food.

  There was no doubt a story in those looks, but Gideon was too far stuck in his own tangled narrative to put much effort into sussing it out. Nor was it a story likely to play out tonight because, just as Jinna came by with the teapot, the young man rose from the booth, leaving a small pile of bills on the table.

  “No more tea, then?” she asked as he passed her on the way out.

  “Thanks, but no,” he declined, with the distinct brogue of the Campbell Isles.

  “Hold on, Rory,” Jinna said.

  The airman turned to face her. “Is there a problem?”

  “You left too much money. Again.”

  “I did nae such thing.” And now Rory was stuffing his hands in his pockets so he couldn’t accept the cash Jinna was trying to foist back on him. It
made an absurd picture, the tall scarecrow of the airman dancing back from the curvy, fire-haired sprite.

  Despite his preoccupations, Gideon wanted to cheer Rory on.

  “It’s twice what you owe.” She waved the bills at him.

  “Consider it a downpayment on my next meal,” he said, grinning.

  “Rory…”

  “Ach, will you look at the time! Best be off, Pitte’ll be pacing at the gangplank, he will.”

  Pitte? At the name, one he’d not heard spoken aloud in over six years, Gideon felt himself go cold.

  Couldn’t be, he told himself. There had to be more than one Pitte in the Colonies.

  “You’re using John as your excuse?” Jinna was trying not to laugh by now.

  Okay, more than one John Pitte, he thought with desperation. Because what sick twist of fate would put both John Pitte, Jessup Rand and Gideon Quinn in the same city at the same time?

  “Oy, what’s wrong?” Mia hissed, reminding Gideon he wasn’t alone here.

  He shook his head, not important.

  But it was.

  Of course it was.

  “It’s still your money,” Jinna was insisting.

  But Rory was still backing up, brown eyes sparkling with mischief. “Best keep it for me, then,” he told her, “until I’ve need of it.” Then, before Jinna could protest further, Rory spun around to make a dashing exit.

  Or, what would have been a dashing exit, if he hadn’t misjudged the distance and pulled the door straight into his face.

  “That’ll leave a mark,” Mia muttered.

  “I’m all right!” Rory called out before stumbling outside.

  “Nutter,” Jinna said with a fond sigh as she turned to her two remaining customers, one of whom felt as if he, too, had been smacked by a door.

  “Sorry about that,” Jinna said, joining them to pour the tea. “Rory’s something of a regular and—oh!” She stepped back as Gideon popped from the booth like a child’s bounce ball. “What—”

  “What’s his story?” Gideon asked, looming over her.

  “Who? Rory?” She glanced back at the door. “There isn’t any—”