Fergus nodded. He’d had a grocery order delivered that morning; much of it was fresh produce. He missed being out roaming the stars, but there were definite upsides to being there. The detective might be less enthusiastic about vegetables, but if so, that was his own problem.
“So, what’s the setup? You said surveillance? I need a lot more information if I’m going to be effective. For starters, exactly who am I watching?”
“Me,” Fergus said.
“Well, I found you. Can I go home now?” Zacker asked.
“You know how I find things?” Fergus said. “Well, I came here looking for something very dangerous, and I got chased by at least two different sets of remotes. I’ll show you the handful I broke so you can form your own conclusions, but as near as I can tell, there are at least three groups looking for the same thing I am, and I need to know who they are. So, I’m going to lure them out. I have a friend arriving in another few hours to help set the trap, but I need a reliable set of eyes outside the target for their safety, and to spot anyone coming around for a look who doesn’t fully take my bait.”
The auto-taxi pulled up in front of Fergus’s McBean apartment and deposited them on the sidewalk. Fergus handed Zacker one of the keycards and grabbed the man’s bag as the detective turned slowly around, studying the street and nearby buildings before following him into the glass-and-brick entry and up to the third floor.
Once inside, Zacker immediately went to the fridge and grabbed an apple. “Whas ’at?” he said, chewing, and pointed to a large box on the floor with his free hand.
Fergus opened the box, and Zacker peered in. His eyebrows shot up. “Whoa,” he said. “That’s some pricey gear.”
“Should be everything you need,” Fergus said. He pointed out the window directly across the street. “That’s where I’m setting up my honeypot.”
Zacker slid open the door to the balcony and leaned over the railing, looking up and down the street before coming back inside. “Great lines of sight,” he said.
“Thanks,” Fergus said. It was as close to a compliment as the detective got, and he took it as such.
“What do you know so far about the bad guys you’re trying to draw in?”
“First is the Alliance—” Fergus started.
“The Alliance has limited terrestrial jurisdiction,” Zacker interrupted. “They won’t operate here.”
When they’d first met, Zacker had been in Glasgow, working a cold case he couldn’t let go of even though he was both retired and had no jurisdiction outside the SCNY. Once they’d sorted out their own mutual antagonisms—enough, anyway, to work together—they’d come up against a rogue Alliance operation on Enceladus. Whatever facial expression Fergus made must have communicated a lot of skepticism, because the man threw his apple core into the flash recycler with more than a little force. “Fine, okay, so Alliance. Rogue?”
“Probably not. The things I’m looking for originated outside of Earth’s orbit, so they have legitimate interest,” Fergus said.
“Who else?”
“An apocalypse cult.”
Zacker laughed. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. You got a handpad; I’ll send you what I’ve got on them,” Fergus said. “So far, they don’t seem competent enough to be genuinely dangerous, but you never know.”
“And you said there was a third group?”
“I know the least about who they are, which is a problem, because I think they’re probably the most dangerous. Had a run-in with one of them in Scotland, and he wasn’t a local. I have evidence they’re here in Australia, too. I got a license number off their van, but it was a rental and I couldn’t get any further.”
“Send that to me, too,” Zacker said. “What’s the stakes here? You blathered something about saving the world.”
“I can’t tell you much, but if any one of them gets their hands on what I’m looking for, the only people who are going to be happy with the outcome—very, very briefly—is the apocalypse cult.” Fergus’s handpad chimed, and he walked over to where he’d left it on the counter. “Ah, my friend is here a bit early. They’re on their way over to the other place. You want to come along and meet them?”
“No. Or not yet,” Zacker said. “I want to eat some food, take a leisurely crap, sort through the equipment you got me, and get a look at your friend’s natural body language when they’re not under stress. Sometimes, small, even subconscious changes in body language are the only warning you get.”
“Okay,” Fergus said, “I’ll leave you to your plans. I’ve already packed what I need, so once I get my friend settled in, I’m out.”
“You mean we’re not gonna be roomies? Imagine my disappointment,” Zacker said.
“You’ll survive somehow,” Fergus said, and took his last mango before he headed for the door.
* * *
—
Bad Yuri arrived by auto-taxi twenty minutes later. He had bright silver hair and was dressed all in black, in a top hat and an old-fashioned tuxedo coat with tails over a T-shirt emblazoned with a silvery skull graphic. As he introduced himself, the skull winked.
Fergus shook his hand. “Thanks for coming, Yuri,” he said.
“Bad Yuri,” the man corrected. “I have worked hard for my adjective. You are indeed as red-headed as Francesco said. I am not looking forward to growing a beard overnight.”
“No, I imagine not. It’s little consolation, but I don’t look forward to losing my own,” Fergus said. He pointed up at the second apartment he’d rented, across the street from the Zacker/McBean lookout. “I rented it under the name Murdoch Maxwell, the alias I was using when I got chased off Burringurrah, so it should get attention soon enough.”
He got his suitcase out of the taxi and handed Bad Yuri a loaded, anonymous credit chit as they took the lift up to the room. “Earth isn’t bad, except for the horrible gravity,” Bad Yuri said as he explored the small apartment. He walked to the window and stared out it for a while. “You have someone watching?”
“Yes. A friend across the street,” Fergus said. “He’s going to be a spotter, and backup if there’s trouble.”
“Hmmmmm. I’ve always wanted an understudy,” Bad Yuri said. “So, is there a script? How many acts? Who plays the villain?”
Fergus gave Yuri the same breakdown of enemies he’d given Zacker.
“So, I play your helium salesman?” Bad Yuri asked. “When do we swap?”
“As soon as you’re up for it,” Fergus said. “The sooner, the better.”
Yuri nodded, grabbed a handful of things out of his bag, and headed off to the bathroom. A few minutes later, Fergus heard loud cursing, and he winced in sympathy. Insta-beards were not for the faint of heart.
When Bad Yuri emerged in a bathrobe, he already had the start of stubble on his chin, and his hair was now close to Fergus’s own shade, if the length was still off; that would be easy enough for Yuri to fix on his own, now that he’d seen Fergus in person. “Your turn,” Yuri said. “I left my clothing for you. I would please like the hat and coat back, eventually.”
Fergus went into the bathroom with the razor, hair nanites, and bottle of scotch, and regarded himself in the mirror. Yer an ugly bastard, he thought, with great fondness, but now you get to be a different ugly bastard for a while.
He picked up the razor, let out what he felt was his crowning glory world-weariest sigh, and got to work on his face. It was disheartening how little time it took to utterly remove all traces of his beard, given how long it had taken him to cultivate it. His chin felt cold and bereft, too naked to process, and a swig of scotch didn’t make him feel any better about it. He set the correct color code on the nanite tubes and broke them open one by one, finishing the necessary transformation. His scalp and eyebrows itched terribly as his hair shifted from his natural red to a close approximation of Bad Yuri’s silver. There was not
much he could do about the length, but given that Yuri had arrived wearing a hat, and he would be leaving wearing same, it shouldn’t be risky.
When he looked in the mirror again, he could hardly recognize himself. And that’s the point, he thought wryly. He put on Yuri’s clothes and left his own folded neatly on the edge of the tub, and went back out into the living room to find a near-copy of himself looking him up and down.
“Not bad,” Bad Yuri said. He gestured around the room. “I opened your suitcase and found your tubes of helium samples and other props for the role. Also, I found this.” Bad Yuri held out his hand, and in it was the piece of inert fragment that Fergus had found in Scotland before finding the live one.
“That’s what they’re looking for,” Fergus said.
Yuri poked the fragment gently with one finger. “So, all hell’s gonna break loose over this?”
“If we’re lucky, it won’t,” Fergus said. “If it comes down to it, let it go. It’s just an odd scrap to you, and Murdoch isn’t a fighter. And anyway, that’s a decoy.”
Whatever the doorkey was, the extraneous fragments had no hum, no life, and when you turned them around, they behaved exactly as they should. Ignatio had said it was the difference between the core of the doorkey and the frame that merely held it. If the live fragments were baby ducklings by Isla’s earlier analogy, these were just leftover bits of shell.
“It’s a fake?” Yuri asked. “Will they be able to tell?”
“It’s real; it’s just not one of the pieces they want,” Fergus said. “They’ll know if—when, I expect—they get their hands on it, and just maybe it’ll throw them off my tracks for a while, thinking I’ve got nothing.”
“Okay,” Bad Yuri said. He moved toward the window again and looked out. “Is the apartment bugged? Eyes, ears, both?”
“I figured I’d let you work that out with my friend across the street,” Fergus said. “Name is Zacker, he’s in 401C, and I’m leaving you a preprogrammed burner nodephone so you two can talk untraced. He’s a very grumpy man and has terrible people skills, but is very good at this and not immune to reasonable arguments. If you go out, coordinate with him so he can shadow you. Other than that, just go about as if you’re having a nice, normal vacation in Perth. My goal is to draw out everyone interested in that piece and get enough information to identify and track them, nothing more. It shouldn’t get dangerous, but I don’t know who we’re up against.”
“What name does your friend know you as?”
“Fergus,” Fergus said.
“That’s an even more ridiculous name than Finnigan,” Bad Yuri said. “Okay, then. Go get on with what you need getting on with. I’ll call if and when trouble finds us.”
Fergus shook his hand again and went down to the waiting auto-taxi. He was already on his way to the train station when Zacker called.
“Shit, is that you?” Zacker asked, eyes narrowing. There was a telescope camera set up now in the half-open door onto the balcony behind Zacker. “That is you. Must feel good to trade up. Your poor friend, though. Can he handle the trouble you’ve sent his way?”
“Yes. Don’t underestimate him,” Fergus said. How could he explain Francesco and his people? They were the Lunar equivalent of Free Marsies, with almost none of the resources that the Marsies had. Their entire street theater troupe was made up of former military commandos. When they hit something, it stung hard, it made the Lunar Authority look incompetent or corrupt, and they never, ever got caught. And they did it in style. The brief time he’d spent working with them were some of the most terrifyingly fun, strange weeks of his life. “He can handle himself, but if everyone comes at him at once . . .”
“Then I get to step in and break some heads,” Zacker said, disappearing from view, then reemerging with a packet of cheese and two slices of bread. “Where are you going?”
“You know how you feel about theft?” Fergus asked.
“Yes,” Zacker said.
“Well, what if I’m stealing something that’s mine?”
Zacker groaned, slapped a thick slice of cheese between the bread, and then gestured at the screen with the sandwich. “You are the most gray-area person I’ve ever met,” he said.
“Thank you,” Fergus said.
“It was not a compliment!” Zacker said sharply.
Fergus blew Zacker a kiss; the detective flashed him the middle finger as he cut the connection.
Chapter 9
Fergus had his full folio of credentials out and ready, including an entirely bona fide document proving Whiro’s shuttle was the legal property of the Shipyard at Pluto, and that he had been retained to locate and secure its safe and swift return. The manager at Vinnie’s took and scanned them all, and studied them with an increasingly sour expression of resignation. “You’re a repo man? So, the shuttle was stolen, then,” the manager said.
“Yes,” Fergus answered. “I’m retrieving it for the owners. This is my mechanic.”
Isla, standing behind Fergus in coveralls with a toolbox that, had the lid been open, would have revealed a half-dozen donuts, gave a short wave. She was still furious, still more than a little hungover, and had barely spoken a dozen words to him since he’d picked her up that morning, but she put on a perfect easy, nonthreatening nonchalance that would have impressed even Francesco.
The manager barely glanced at her, which was the whole point of the act. “And the thief?”
“You can be sure he won’t get away from me,” Fergus said.
“No, I mean . . . there are charges.”
“We are willing to cover them, in anticipation of eventual recovery of damages from the thief,” Fergus said. Sure, he was stealing back his own shuttle, but that didn’t mean he had to cheat the storage facility, which had done nothing wrong. I try to put the honest in dishonesty, he thought proudly.
The manager grumbled under his breath. “Your thief also signed up for our daily dust removal services, at an additional fifty per day.”
Hell, no, I didn’t, Fergus wanted to protest. Instead, he pointed out the window to where his shuttle was being pulled out of the hangar onto the tarmac. “It looks pretty dusty to me,” he said.
“Accumulates fast,” the manager said. As Fergus continued to stare, he typed on his console. “We hadn’t done today’s sweep yet, so I’m removing the last charge.”
Fergus paid him, resenting his own clever honest-dishonesty crack a moment earlier. And there wasn’t anything in the small office worth pocketing for the principle on his way out, even just to see if Isla would notice.
* * *
—
The Shipyard had a berth share in the plane of Earth’s geosynchronous orbit reserved for small industry. It was served by small automated shuttles that took passengers or small cargo back and forth with Kelly Station, the nearest of the six public stations in Earth’s orbit, and the oldest among them. Larger cargo came and went on separate transport directly to and from the surface, and because of the precision required to keep everyone from crashing into everyone else, private craft such as Whiro’s shuttle had to submit to a queue coming in and out. The station-control systems were happy to let ship mindsystems pilot, but everything was strictly bio-hands-off until you were either safely docked or far enough out of the way that any problems you caused were your own damned problem to deal with and not catastrophic to a wide swath of the outersphere.
By the time they got through the line to Whiro, Fergus wasn’t sure if Isla was any less mad at him or just too taken with watching all the zipping traffic around them against the magnificent backdrop of Earth to remember to periodically glare at him. Either way, he was sure that what she still saw as his abandonment of her was not yet behind them.
For his part, Fergus mildly resented that anyone cared enough about him to feel abandoned, when he was just doing what he’d always done.
Ignatio had reset
Whiro’s artificial gravity to forty percent, much to Fergus’s relief; his tumble down the mountain and trek across the desert had not done him any favors. He dumped his stuff in his room, took his time washing up and putting on fresh clothes and his new Dingo Hole T-shirt, then took the new fragment down to engineering for Whiro to scan. That done and out of his hands, he went back up to the kitchenette to scrounge up some lunch. Ignatio was there, eir legs curled up around em on the couch with Mister Feefs asleep beside em, and Isla stood across the table with a cup of coffee in her hands. Above the table a hologram of Earth in blue outlines rotated, a smattering of white dots forming a lopsided caul across half its surface. “—see what you mean,” she was saying. “Weird.”
“Are those the atmospheric entry points?” Fergus asked, hoping he didn’t have too far to catch up.
“Yes,” Ignatio said. “The analysis was done by Whiro, with fast and very, very vast efficiency, so I will let the ship explain.”
Whiro had already told him, when he and Isla were waiting for permission to enter the docking space, that the task of combing through the data was being shared among its ‘party’ of ships. “For this challenge, we are spy detectives, seeking enemy agents among a field of decoys,” Whiro had explained. “It is a more interesting task than our Shipyard quests, which we have temporarily suspended.”
Fergus expected Theo was grateful for that, even if the man had no idea why his stuff kept disappearing. For his own part, he didn’t mind the additional help in the least, as long as he didn’t have to explain it to anyone else or, worse, admit he knew and hadn’t told anyone.
“I believe we can substantially narrow down the focus of where you should concentrate your quests, Mr. Ferguson,” Whiro was saying as Fergus came forward to peer at the holo globe. “Not only was the original data written into the physical structure of your tea set, it included all the metadata around it, especially the timestamps of each data point’s appearance, proliferation, and removal. Some data was new as recently as two weeks ago. We can infer a few things from the metadata patterns and speculate about several more, especially when cross-referenced with public data that was not included in the scrub.”
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