by Jo Clayton
If Agregossa sowed breakout beepers in a globe inside the Limit and kept a dozen interceptors ready to move when one of the alarms was triggered, they might be able to slow the smuggling to a trickle.
Even pulling the patrol back until it didn’t activate a clutter warning on the incoming ships might work. A nose to tail procession hard up against the Limit-like the one she’d just avoided-looked more like punishment detail than guard duty.
Passive receptors as wide and sensitive as she could crank them to prevent other, possibly fatal surprises, worrying about having to drag Lylunda’s ship along beside;her, she slipped into the shadow of a gas giant, then went scooting toward the asteroid belt, the sublight shield drawn tight about the twinned ships, though the hot tail on the Backhoe was impossible to camouflage completely; all the field-sculptors could do was extend the emanation block backward in a slightly flared tube to narrow the chances of detection.
After a few hours of heavy sweating, she edged the linked ships into the Belt, crept along it according to the plan she’d worked out on her way here. When she reached the point closest to Sauva Kutets, she settled into the shadow of a large rock, locked onto it with fore and aft lines, then reconfigured the shield, turning the ships into a craggy node of the asteroid, both to the eye and to most detec systems. The locals were most likely to choose a meeting place that gave them the least possible exposure to Agregossan patrols.
“Spla! I need a bath. That was a bit more sweat-making than I expected. First, though, I see if I figured right about how to locate our happy arms dealer.”
According to her data file, Sauva was the larger twin, the one with the most people. There was no mthing or heavy industry because the world was expected to produce food for the homeworld and nothing was allowed to distract from that task. Sauva was divided into huge salashi owned by the Families that ran Agregossa and by their friends; the salasheri rented the land they worked from those Families and paid taxes to the colonial government. They also had to buy hardware and machinery from the owners at what they knew were inflated prices. In spite of this triple drain, the salasheri prospered-to no small degree by growing speciality crops of various kinds and smuggling the harvest offworld.
The rebellion came with the last increases in the rent and in the tax laid on the salasheri by the homeworld, which convinced them that the absentee owners would squeeze them dry in their greed and ignorance. They sent a delegation across to Kutets to protest. The members of that delegation were arrested, convicted on the spot of insurrection and signed into Contract Labor, their families were thrown off the land they thought of as their own. Outsiders were brought in to work it. It didn’t take much deliberation for the rest to figure out where that road led.
Most of Kutets’ population belonged to one of three groups-the Agregossa colonial government with its mix of politicians, police, land agents, and bureaucrats; security forces; the Contract Labor used in the mines and factories. No rebellion there according to the report.
“Dumb system all around. Almost guaranteed to generate dissatisfaction on Sauva. I expect Agregossa figured it had the high ground here and the Sauvese would follow orders, like it or lump it. Hm. High ground in this case depends on who’s got the most bang in hand. Hence Harmon. Gods be blessed, I don’t have to plunge into that mess, just locate old Harmon and squeeze out of him where he dumped Lylunda Elang.”
Her chosen rock was on the inner side of the Belt and in good viewing range. Sauva Kutets was between her and the sun,, the dark side toward her with similar crescents of daylit world on the trailing edge. No city lights shone in the larger of those velvet black ovoids, but here and there she saw the flashes from explosions and in several places wide swathes of fire. All so very pretty from way out here even with amplification, and nicely silent, no screams from the burned and dying. She shivered and blanked the screen, though she left the pickups working and transferring data to memory cells.
“From the lack of fooforrah, I got here first,” she said. “Well, I was closer, if I did start later. Digby said Harmon left The Accord with a nicely vicious assortment of their products three days before I ’splitted from University. Interesting that he could get that kind of information. Spooky. Digby as a virus in the corn system. I’m starting to wonder more than a little where he’s aiming. More stuff to think about later.
“So where’s Harmon? At a guess his ship’s not all that much faster than this one. If he came directly from The Accord… and I’d say that’s likely with the load he has… and if he had no more problems than I did getting here, then he may have arrived around six hours ago. So it’s just possible he could have dumped his cargo and got away before I stuck my nose through. Not likely, though; he’d have to spend some time making contact with his buyers. It’d go faster if he grounded the ship on planet, but setting down in the middle of a war is a gamble. Me, I’d do the trade up here. Let the buyers dance with the Agregossan patrols. Get your pay and get out. So if you’re around here like you should be, you little weasel, you’re doing just what I’m doing, playing least in sight and waiting for the Sauvese to signal their arrival.”
She tapped the screen on again, pulled most of the receptors away from Sauva Kutets and set them mapping the local asteroid configurations. She get more precise data once Digby’s pooter moles were deployed, giving her a delicate web out there collecting data about everything that happened in this area of the Belt.
She smiled as she watched the moles creep away from the ship. When she was testing out the abilities packed into Digby’s fleet, she asked the tech why they were called that. He told her to watch the screen. She did and saw this nebulous little object doing a quick odd jig across the space between the ship and the rock that was its target. Yog see? he said. Like it’s farting its way across. Slow enough to get you chewing on your elbows, but they don’t trigger alarms and when they’ve got their paint on they don’t show up on most search screens, so they’re useful little buggers. And you can pickaback them if you have to show some speed, let the carriers draw the fire after the moles have dropped.
Twenty minutes later when she was scrolling through the data from the mole web, examining hundreds of medium-to large-sized rocks floating in the middle of nothing, the alarm beeped at her and threw the readout off the screen. She found herself looking at an insystem ship that seemed to be coming straight for her. When it passed one of the larger asteroids, though, she saw the nose begin to turn away; the battered craft was creeping along-very slowly, almost as if it were tiptoeing across a creaky floor. It nestled up against that rock with a delicacy of increment that suggested the pilot was probably a smuggler or perhaps an asteroid miner recruited to the cause. Hm. Close enough to be handy, far enough to be safe.
As she watched it power down and set its mooring lines, Shadith played with the controls, pinning the location and maneuvering the pooter moles into a mosaic for a beacon watch. No need to go looking for Harmon; there was the bait to draw him here. “There’s an ego booster-setting my piece on the board just right.”
Bmmmp cwmmp, the beacon watch told her, then went silent. Bwnunmb. Very short-range signal-faint and so low it was a basso mutter rather, than the usual beep.
“Lovely. Now we wait for him to come to the call. And sit here sweating till I know if I was careless and he spotted me or if he was focused insystem and not worrying about the Belt. University says he’s missed the last two drops he set up, barely got away with his life and no cash. Reduced to ferrying cargo to pay expenses and burning the papers on his ship for this load., Only way to get them back is make good on the sale. He’ll come. Oh, yes. Sweet if he can. Nasty if he has to.”
She waited.
The beacon did its pattern every twenty minutes. And she waited.
Nothing else to do. Her gear was in the lock, ready to go, the plan was made during the trip here, tweaked a little to suit local conditions, no need to go over that again.
Two hours. Three. Four.
Bmmmp cwmmp
. Bwmmmb.
Thwop thweep. Thwop thweep thweep.
She shook herself out of her half doze, began watching the screen intently. At first she saw nothing; then she noticed that the glimmer of the Belt dust was occluded by a roughly spherical object moving counter to the general direction of rotation. “Hello, Harmon.”
6
As Shadith eased from the sled and used a sticktight to moor it to the side of Harmon’s ship, she caught flickers of light from the cargo transfer that was moving at frantic speed on the other side of the bulge. As she crossed to the ship, she’d seen Harmon’s ’bots handling much of the work, with the men from the insystem ship adding their muscle to the process, stowing the sealed bundles in their own hold with the care of men who knew they had little leeway with much of the stuff they were hauling.
She slid the probe over the latch of the maintenance lock, raised her brows as the reading remained null. No juice, through the latch. Burning paper, all right. Nothing drawing except what is absolutely necessary. Nice of you to make things easy for me, li’l Harmon.
Before she did anything to the latch, she pulled herself against the side of the ship and reached inside, searching for life fires.
Three men. One nearby, probably in the hold overseeing the ’bot loading. Stranger. The second was Harmon, faint, much farther away. On the Bridge. With the third. Another stranger, probably the paymaster waiting till the transfer was complete before handing over the cash. Hm. Don’t underestimate the little man, Shadow. He hasn’t survived this long by being stupid…
She focused her reach on Harmon so she could act the moment she felt him go tense, inserted the mutator key at the end of suit glove’s fifth finger into the slot and started the attack on the latch.
Five minutes later she was inside and climbing cautiously along the catwalk in the space between the walls, working toward the Bridge, using her reach to give her an estimate of how close she was getting. Twice she came on interior maintenance locks, but they were too far from her goal; she noted the locations and the areas they gave access to and kept moving. The third lock was on the Bridge level; she used her suit arm to wipe dust from the small bronze plate, read dichio komugan. Aux Corn. Good. Running on the cheap, he’s probably closed this one down. So, li’l key, do your tiny thing and get me in there clean.
She emerged from the lock into the secondary corn room, found the screens and sensor boards sheathed in a skin of crashwebbing and a layer of fine gray dust on every surface, dust that came floating up as her steps disturbed it. The wrist readouts on her gauntlets told her that the air in the room was stale, barely breathable, impregnated with slough from every surface in the place. She grimaced and moved to the door. Again there was no power through the latch. He was conserving to the point of absurdity. Or necessity. She was beginning to feel sorry for the man, though she loathed arms dealers. This was death by inches and the thought revolted her.
Harmon was still tense; this close she could read an overlay of forced cheerfulness that confused but didn’t worry her. She slid the door open and moved through as quickly as she could, clicking her tongue against her teeth at the in-gust of air as the pressure on two sides sought to equalize. Nothing she could do about that but hope Harmon was too busy with his conversation to notice the blink of a telltale.
She checked her own telltale. Air. Thin, but breathable. She unzipped the gauntlets, clipped them to her belt, removed the stunner from its pouch, and ran on her toes past a dark access that from the smell of stale food led to the galley, then past two closed cabin entries; she stopped just outside the door to the Bridge, dropped to her knees and crept close enough to look in.
Harmon sat with his chair turned slightly away from the controls, though he glanced at the readouts now and then. He was smiling at a burly man who stood beside the Co chair, a locked case at his feet. “… come up with the cash, I know where I can get some out-of-date cpe at a big discount.”
“Out of date?” The burly man’s hands closed into fists-briefly-until he forced them open. Anger and the effort he was making to hold it in grated in his voice.
“Oh, it’s still plenty potent. Tricky to handle, I’ll grant you that, but also going at one-tenth the price.” Harmon leaned forward, fixed his eyes on the other man’s face and spoke with an apparent candor, beneath which Shadith could hear his desperation, “Look, I live by my reputation. I sell you worthless, word goes out, nobody buys from me. You’ve got techs who know how to handle it, see what they say, they’ll tell you it’s a good deal. Scrape up the coin and give me a call.”
…” He broke off at a ting from his wristcom. “Blue leader here.”
“Stowed and sewed up. Let’s get.”
Shadith eased back, got to her feet, and ran back the way she’d come until she reached the galley accessway and plunged into the darkness, where she pressed herself against the wall and waited. She was a bit surprised that Harmon was leaving his Bridge; then it occurred to her that the man in the hold wasn’t crew but one of the locals and Harmon was operating the ship solo.
The two men were still talking deal as they marched along the corridor. She heard a soft hiss and smiled to herself. Face. That’s what that sound meant. He fed enough juice to run a lift tube. Keeping up the prosperous image in front of his customers.
She left the accessway, moved into the Bridge, and waited for him to come back.
7
Eyes mean as snake’s if still a touch blurry from the stunner, Harmon twisted his wrists against the comealong tapes. “You’re dead. I’ll find you…”
“That’s a stupid thing to say.” The distorter in the suit hood deepened and roughed her voice. “Gives me a good reason not to want you healthy or whole.”
“If you’re after the money, why didn’t you just take it and go? You want my ship?”
“Only one thing I want and that’s the girl.”
“Huh?” His face went totally blank for an instant. “What girl?”
She ground her teeth together, his body shouted to her what she didn’t want to hear. He didn’t know what she was talking about-which meant she’d spent months of travel and a year’s worth of computer time on University for nothing. Less than nothing. Clinging to a last sliver of hope, she said, “Three months ago you landed a cargo on a world called Hutsarte. The Chief of Security put a young woman in your custody and told you to take her somewhere. I want to know where.”
“You’ve got mold in your head. Yeah, I dropped off cargo all right and picked up some, too, but no femme. Don’t like femmes on my ship. Bad luck.” He blinked at her a moment. “What femme’s this and how come you want to know?”
“The Kliu bounty, fool. Ten thousand gelders alive, zip dead.” She didn’t try to disguise her disgust with the situation and could hear it even in the gravelly tones of the distorter. All she could do now was getout of there as clean as she could. “Reason I’m telling you, is you’d pick it up anyway the first Pit you tie-down at.” She swore as she glanced at a readout she kept concealed in the palm of her gauntlet so he wouldn’t see it was an ordinary air sniffer. “Li’l Henry here says you truthspeaking so hail and farewell, I’m off.”
“Ee! Don’t leave me tied like this.”
‘Time keyed, Harmon. So contemplate your sins and cultivate the virtue of patience and in around twenty minutes the ties fall off.” She backed from the Bridge, and went running for the maintenance hatch and the sled.
8
Drone: Shadith to Excavations Ltd/Digby
… no question he was telling the truth. Spla! he was perfect for the part, everything I would have postulated were I creating him. Well, enough self-justification. I thought the Jilitera the next most likely, but I’ve gone off pride in my logic right at the moment. Also pride in what you delight in calling my ingenuity. So. I’ve reread the data collected so far and twisted it every way I can think of. Grinder Jiraba was convinced the woman was taken offworld and I see no reason to dispute that. He wasn’t a man to make th
at kind of mistake or one to bring in strangers to do something he could handle himself. So, the Jilitera are it. If you’ve got a way to pry information out of them, now’s the time to use it. If not, locate the Jherada for me and I’ll see what babble can do.
Drone: Digby to Shadith aboard Backhoe One. Install enclosed Shriek ID on ship. Take name Drina acMorah, use enclosed materials for the role. Meet one Jaskara at the Crowndome, The Tricky Deacon Pit. Ninth hour of the Pit diurn. Week’s window, so don’t linger on the way. Ask him no questions other than the location of Lylunda Elang. If he says he doesn’t know, believe him. Tell him nothing about yourself.
Shadith finished the terse message, raised her brows. “Curiosity up. Slap curiosity down. For the moment. Anyone want to wager Jaskarah is as phony as Drina acMorah? No? Wise. Deacon, hm? More travel. I’m getting really tired of all this crawling about in the ’split. After I quit, maybe I should drop over to Vrithian and vegetate in Harskari’s garden.” She sighed. “I’d like that, I think, mucking about with plants and trading lies with Willow and ol’ Beetle Bodri and watching Sunchild airdance. For a while, anyway.”
9
A blue-black woman with eyes that glowed like yellow fire above a discreet breathing mask strolled across the lobby of the Crowndome. She wore a skintight sheath of garnet avrishum, a silver turban that completely covered her hair, and silver, elbow-length gloves. Shadith blinked as she glimpsed herself in one of the mirrored walls; she still hadn’t got used to the guise Digby’d thought up for her.
A little man with a yellowish, wrinkled pseudoskin mask left the shadows where he’d been standing and met her near one of the carved pillars of colored marble that were scattered about and connected to a complex play of arches as if they were really loadbearing instead of freeform art pieces. “Drina acMorah?”