So they drifted in over the deserted quays like a ghost through mist. According to the information Liatris had hacked from the invaders’ network, several paramilitary squads had been deployed around the perimeter of the docks, supported by ten armed capsules, to secure their immediate footprint. Nobody was watching the dock’s long river frontage.
Beckia McKratz had infiltrated the dock’s original commercial network, skillfully manipulating the nodes with software that opened up channels without the management monitors being aware of anything untoward. Even before they reached land, she’d assumed complete command of a giant cargo warehouse belonging to the Bootel & Leicester import agency. As they passed above an empty barge repair bay just outside, she opened one of the plyplastic doors, and the starship slipped into the dark enclosed space beyond, dripping cold rain onto the enzyme-bonded concrete floor. The door shut silently behind them, and five rounded pedestal legs swelled out from the base of the hull. Oscar landed them next to a tall stack of yellow and green cargo crates containing civil engineering excavators manufactured off-world.
“Down and safe,” Oscar said, letting out a long breath of relief.
“We’re safe,” Tomansio said cheerfully. “I don’t fancy anyone else’s chances.”
When the Mellanie’s Redemption dropped out of hyperspace four thousand kilometers above Sholapur, Troblum looked down on a continent rolling slowly into the dawn. The bright new light illuminated a wide monsoon building just off the subtropical coast where the city-state of Ikeo squatted amid the spectacularly craggy landscape. He studied the weather with interest. There weren’t many monsoons on Sholapur, but those that did materialize tended toward the fierce. It would reach land in less than two hours.
On the chair opposite him in the starship’s cabin, the solido of Catriona Saleeb lounged back, smiling contentedly. She pushed a hand through her curly black hair, a languid movement he always found sensual. “That storm could help us,” she said in her husky voice.
Trisha Marina Halgarth’s solido walked across the small floor space to Catriona. She wore a pair of tight black leather jeans and a small pure white T-shirt that showed off a nicely athletic body. Green butterfly-wing OCtattoos quivered slowly across her cheeks as she wriggled herself onto the cushioning beside Catriona. The two girls put their arms comfortably around each other, and Trisha flexed her bare toes. “Do you think so?” she asked Catriona.
“It’s going to take hours to pass across Ikeo. That’ll mess up sensors no matter how sophisticated they are. There will be force fields over most estates, which will block a lot of low-angle scanning. That’s to our advantage, isn’t it, Troblum, darling?”
“Could be,” he admitted. What he would have liked was Isabella Halgarth’s opinion on the situation, but he’d lost her I-sentient personality program when he’d left the Accelerator Faction station, using it in a projector to convince the sensors his starship was still sitting passively in the docking bay. Isabella had an altogether more devious outlook than the other girls, which would have made her ideal to analyze forthcoming events.
“Not if you try to arrive during the storm,” Trisha said. “Even with this ship’s ingrav, you’ll be struggling to hold level in the winds. Best you leave it to provide cover if you have to leave in a hurry.”
Troblum accessed the external sensor imagery again. It was a large storm. Even from this height he could see flashes of sheet lightning ripping through the dark clouds. At his request the smartcore overlaid the sensor patterns guarding Ikeo from uninvited intruders. The Mellanie’s Redemption could sneak through unnoticed—probably— but it would be a closely fought electronic battle. And Trisha was right; the storm would produce a particularly difficult environment to fly through. He ran a passive scan for orbiting ships, but there was no inbound or outbound traffic that he could detect, just Sholapur’s small band of geosynchronous satellites. “Activate our full stealth suite and take us down,” he told the smartcore, then pulled up a map of the city and designated a small valley five miles from Stubsy Florac’s home, just outside the estate’s official boundary.
Troblum was sweating with worry as they descended through the last levels of cloud. Then they were past the cold vapor, and the rugged land was only two kilometers below. In the wan predawn light the starship blended perfectly into the gray overcast sky as it sank fast through the clear air. He landed it next to some tall palm-equivalent trees that were starting to wave about as the wind built up.
To visit Stubsy Florac he selected an armored fabric one-piece he could wear under his toga suit. Then he ran a fast check on the biononics that produced his integral force field to make sure of their functionality. In combination, the armor and shielding should be able to stop a great many weapons, but he didn’t delude himself about their ultimate ability if a fully enriched Advancer agent cornered him. For a moment he considered taking a weapon. There were two jelly guns stashed away in a locker, both of which would need charging. But he didn’t have any experience in physical combat. His biononics could produce a respectable distortion pulse if pushed, and besides, Stubsy wouldn’t like him carrying that kind of hardware into his home. It was going to be bad enough turning up unannounced and then asking for a further favor. He left the guns in the locker and went into the airlock.
There was a one-man regrav scooter stowed in a midship cargo hold. Troblum gave it a suspicious stare as it floated out to hover a couple of centimeters above the thick blue-tinged grass. He hadn’t used it in decades. It looked uncomfortably small now, and it bobbed about alarmingly under his weight as he tried to lift his leg over the saddle. It took three attempts, but he eventually managed to sit astride it, wincing at what he was sure was a pulled muscle just above his hip. Biononics went to work tracking down and repairing the cells in his overstrained flesh. A transparent plyplastic visor unfurled from the front of the scooter, producing a streamlined hemisphere to shield the rider from the slipstream, though it had to curve outward to enclose Troblum. He directed the little craft toward Stubsy’s grand villa just outside the valley, keeping his speed to a prudent fifty kilometers an hour at a three-meter altitude.
While he was traveling, his u-shadow analyzed all the spaceports whose networks were connected to the sparse planetary cybersphere. It produced a list of starships currently on the ground, none of which were Earth-registered. Hardly complete, he acknowledged, but he was fairly sure that Paula Myo wouldn’t draw attention to herself here, which was undoubtedly what an Earth registration would do. Nor was there a ship that fit the profile of an Accelerator agent. If people were here for him, they weren’t out in the open.
His scooter arrived at the line of slim silver pillars that marked the boundary of Stubsy’s estate. His field functions reported several sensors locking on as he slowed. He called Stubsy’s code. It took a disconcertingly long time for the dealer to answer.
“Troblum, man, is that you out there?”
“Of course it’s me. Will you let me through your perimeter, please.”
“I didn’t know you were on Sholapur. You didn’t land at Ikeo spaceport.”
“I told you I needed discretion for our last transaction.”
“Yeah, yeah, right.”
Troblum gave the silver pillars an uneasy glance. He was feeling very alone and exposed out there. “Are you going to let me in?”
“Right. Yeah. Sure. I’ve cleared you through the defense systems. Come on in.”
The top of the two pillars in front of him turned green. Troblum eased the scooter forward between them, tensing as he passed over the line. When nothing happened, he breathed easier.
Beyond the big white villa, a dense curtain of rain was heading in across the steel-gray sea. As he settled in front of the high glass doors, Troblum looked down the long slope to the lovely little cove below. There was no sign of Stubsy’s glide boat anchored offshore.
Stubsy opened the door and gave Troblum a nervous grin. “Hey, big man, how’s it going, huh?”
&nbs
p; “No change,” Troblum said. His gaze swept across Stubsy, who was hanging on to the side of the door, preventing any glimpse of the big hallway beyond. The man was wearing his usual expensive and tasteless garb: too-tight gold sports trousers and a shirt with a vivid black and orange flower pattern, open to the waist. But his face looked haggard, as if he were suffering the mother of all hangovers, with dark circles under his eyes and at least two days of stubble. He looked flushed as well, his skin hot and sweaty.
“I’m here to pick up my collection.”
“Yeah,” Stubsy said, scratching the base of his neck. “Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. You are.” Somewhere in the house behind him was the sound of bare feet running on tiles.
Troblum had to consult his social interaction program. “Can I get them now, please?” he read off his exovision script.
“Okay,” Stubsy said reluctantly. He swung the door open and stood aside.
The open area in the middle of the house was exactly as before, with waterfalls bubbling swiftly down the surrounding boulders to top up the pool. Green and yellow flowering plants twice Troblum’s height waved in the gusts that were starting to spill over the low roof. Nobody was swimming. Three of Stubsy’s Olympic warrior woman companions were waiting in the patio area, one lying on a sun lounger while the other two stood motionless beside the long bar. Troblum’s mild field scan showed him that all their enrichments were inactive.
The sound of thunder rolled through the sky. All three companions looked up at the noise.
“Are you going to put up a force field?” Troblum asked Stubsy as he sank his bulk into a sun lounger. The wood and fabric creaked as it accepted his full weight. He’d chosen the one next to the companion in the emerald-green bikini. She was gripping the edges of her own sun lounger very tightly, as if she were holding herself down against a gravity inversion. “That storm looked big.”
“Force field,” Stubsy said. “Yeah. Good idea, man. Uh, yeah, we can do that, sure.”
“Did my collection arrive okay?”
Stubsy nodded his head and perched himself on a sun lounger beside the companion in the green bikini. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “It’s here. We ferried it over from the freighter as agreed. The captain was very curious, you know. I had to slot some extra cash his way. I’ve got it all downstairs. Man, I wasn’t expecting so much junk, you know.”
“I have been collecting for a long time. And it is not junk.” Troblum glanced up as a force field came on above the villa. The sound of the wind shrank to nothing. “I’d like to get it loaded on my starship today.”
“Where is your starship, man?”
“Close,” Troblum said. He wasn’t going to give anything away until he’d sorted out payment and the collection was ready to be moved. “Do you have a cargo capsule?”
“Sure, sure.”
“There’s something else I need from you if you don’t mind. I’ll pay for the trouble, of course.”
Stubsy drew down a loud breath, as if he was having trouble swallowing. “What’s that, then, man?”
“I want to meet someone here in private. Someone you wouldn’t ordinarily have at your house. You’ll have to clear them with the city’s defense system.”
“Who?”
“Think of her as a police officer.”
“Police?” Stubsy grimaced a smile. “Ho, boy. Well, what the hell, we’re all going to die in the Void boundary anyway, right?”
“Possibly,” Troblum said. He didn’t know what to make of the expansion phase yet. If it really couldn’t be stopped, fleeing to a colony world was going to be no use at all. He’d have to travel all the way to another galaxy, as Nigel Sheldon was rumored to have done. It would be a huge challenge for the Mellanie’s Redemption. Fortunately, the hardware he’d taken from the Accelerator station should make such a flight achievable if he could ever assemble the myriad components and make it work. “So I can call her and arrange a meeting?”
Stubsy produced a strange little laugh, and his eyes crinkled. “Sure.”
“Thank you,” Troblum said. He used the secure link he was maintaining to his starship to call ANA: Governance’s security division.
“Yes, Troblum,” ANA: Governance said.
“Connect me to Paula Myo, please.”
“As you wish.”
Paula Myo came online. “Are you ready to meet?”
“I told you not to stealth your ship.”
“I haven’t.”
“Then where are you?”
“Close to Sholapur.”
“All right. I’m at Ikeo city, Florac’s villa. I’ve arranged for him to let you through the city’s defenses. How long will it take you to reach me?”
“I can be there within a couple of hours.”
“Fine, I’ll be waiting.” Troblum ended the call. He glanced over at Stubsy, who hadn’t moved. “She’ll be here in two hours.” That wasn’t exactly what she’d said, a pedantic section of his mind acknowledged. Paula would never lie, but there were a lot of ambiguities in the way she’d phrased it.
“Cool,” Stubsy said.
“Can I see the collection?”
“Sure thing, man. It’s downstairs.”
Stubsy led the way back into the villa. The three companions stayed beside the pool, though their eyes followed Troblum like targeting sensors as he walked after Stubsy.
One of the arching doors in the hallway opened to a set of concrete stairs leading down. Stubsy stood at the top as the polyphoto strips came on. He seemed reluctant to go down.
“Down here?” Troblum asked.
“Yeah,” Stubsy whispered.
The dealer was sweating again, Troblum saw. Whatever excess he’d indulged in the previous night must have been substantial for his body to take so long to flush the effects out.
Stubsy started down the stairs. Troblum was right behind him, keen to make sure his precious collection of Starflyer War memorabilia was unharmed. Everything had been in individual cases with a stabilizer field, but he’d had to rely on chartered commercial carriers to get it all to Sholapur without any supervision on his part; it was the only way to avoid Marius’s attention. So much could have gone wrong.
There was a broad passage at the bottom of the stairs, carved into the naked rock, with smaller corridors branching off every few meters. They were lined with malmetal doors. Stubsy’s vaults were a lot larger than the villa above.
Troblum nearly asked, What do you keep down here? But his social interaction program told him that Stubsy was likely to get upset by that kind of question.
Stubsy turned off into one of the side passages. A malmetal door opened for him. Lights came on in the chamber beyond. Troblum walked into a large circular chamber filled with low tables. His collection was there waiting for him. Every priceless case shimmered with protective shielding. It was going to be tough squeezing everything into Mellanie’s Redemption, he acknowledged; some of the larger items might have to be discarded. His u-shadow performed a fast inventory, checking case logs. They’d been banged around more than Troblum liked, but the cases had protected their contents perfectly. Smiling, he ran his hand over the case containing the handheld array with a foxory casing; the expensive unit had belonged to Mellanie Rescorai herself, a gift from her lover Morton before his trial. Troblum could just discern its outline below the shimmering.
“Thank you,” Troblum said. “I know you didn’t have to do this.” When he glanced up at Stubsy Florac, he saw an expression his emotional context program interpreted as anger and contempt.
The villa nodes relaying his secure link to Mellanie’s Redemption went dead.
“All this makes me feel quite at home,” the Cat said.
Shock ran through Troblum’s body in the same way as physical pain. His knees almost gave way, forcing him to clutch at the table. She stepped out from behind a huge casing containing the blunt nose cone belonging to a Wessex-based exospheric combat aerobot. Her lean body was dressed in a simple white suit that emitted a hazy
glow as if she were a historical saint. It was wreathed in black bands that undulated slowly; ten of them formed a bizarre cage around her head. Troblum knew the suit had to be some kind of armor. Even now, with fear so strong that it threatened to reduce him to tears, he acknowledged that she looked quite magnificent.
“Troblum, my dear,” she said brightly, as if she’d only just caught sight of him. “How lovely to see you again. You’re really a lot of fun. It was a brilliant game we played. Well, I thought so.”
“Game?” he said weakly. His integral force field had come on instantly, though he knew it would be no use against her.
The Cat took a few paces toward him. Troblum lurched backward in near panic. Even now he couldn’t resist admiring her movements; they really were feline.
“Why, yes, darling,” the Cat said. “How funny you couldn’t work it out. Marius was right, wasn’t he? You don’t connect with humans on an emotional level. You marched in here completely oblivious to dear old Stubsy and his naughty little posse. Didn’t you see their faces, Troblum? Take a look now.”
Troblum gave Stubsy a wild glance. The dealer’s face was a rigid mask, teeth clamped together so hard that his lips were quivering. Two of the companions appeared at the chamber door, tall and powerful. Troblum recognized them from his last visit: Simonie was wearing a scarlet dress with a high hem, while Alcinda’s taut muscles stretched her shiny black bikini fabric nearly to the bursting point.
The Cat let out a mocking wolf whistle. “Aren’t they gorgeous, and they play nasty, too, which is really fun.” She cocked her head at Troblum. “You still don’t get it, do you? Fantastic. You are interesting. Run an emotional context recognition program, my dear. It’ll tell you they’re all very, very pissed off. They were when you came through the front door, and sadly they still are. All because of little old me.”
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle Page 71