by Paul Collins
If so, their moving ‘discrepancies’ would show up sooner or later. And then the fun would begin.
They found a local alehouse and took a booth in the back corner. It was a relief from the squalor and fear that filled the grey monolithic canyons outside and, worse, the grim mirthless faces of the Kantorian people. Anneke felt a deep sorrow for them, for the ragged homeless children squatting in doorways with great beseeching eyes and the endless flow of ant-like workers who marched to and fro, as if powered by dark clockwork. It was as though the sun never shone here, the hopelessness of living under such a regime almost unbearable. And without hope, what was there?
The booth kept them secluded and allowed Anneke a partial view of the street outside. They had not attracted any undue attention and she preferred to keep it that way. Of course, now they would have to order something. Like most worlds, Kanto Kantoris used a range of languages, but the common galactic tongue was Esperanto - a hybrid old universal language once used on Earth.
A youthful waiter arrived - a real one, rather than an auto waiter. Anneke ordered Ruvian coffee for two.
The boy’s eyes widened. ‘You be aliens?’
Anneke smiled. ‘I guess we are. We’re with the trade delegation from Griffin.’
The boy nodded, like he knew where Griffin was. Perhaps it was safer being an ‘alien’ in a place like Kanto. Political ties and agendas, including sedition, were less likely among those born under other stars.
The boy, who wore ragged clothing and appeared underfed, returned with their coffees. ‘What’s your name?’ Anneke asked.
‘Paginus,’ replied the boy, ‘but I am called Pagin by my friends.’
‘The work here is good?’
Pagin looked over his shoulder at his boss. ‘As good as it can be. I complain not.’
Anneke tipped him a week’s wage, judging by his reaction. ‘Thank you!’ he said, making the money disappear before the alehouse owner could spot it.
‘I’ll be your servant.’
When they were alone again, Anneke activated sonic shields and dampener fields and an array of other camouflaging devices, and then she and Yosira leaned their heads together. ‘What’s the next move?’ Yosira asked her.
‘The next move is for you to get out of here,’ Anneke said.
‘What?’
‘You need to get off Kanto. Get to the civilian spaceport, enter the inter-system section. Once there, you can access a line of credit I have, get a ticket, and take a jump-gate somewhere else. Anywhere.’
‘Why’d we steal the money if you have credit?’
Yosira asked.
‘Entering the inter-system sector is easy, but you need papers to get out again, whether into the departure section or back onto Kantorian soil. So memorise the account number.’
‘You don’t want me here?’ Yosira seemed hurt.
‘Yosira, this isn’t your battle. And I work best alone. If I have to worry about you, or if Brown captures you, then he’s won and I’ve lost. Brown will also be looking for two women. Besides, I’ve got a message I want you to take to Sasume of Myoto.’
‘You want me, a Quesadan, to go see the CEO of
Myoto? Are you crazy?’
‘I never said there weren’t risks.’
Yosira snorted. ‘How about I just have a fire fight with fifty-to-one odds against me instead?’
‘Are you going to do it or are you going to make lousy jokes?’
Yosira huffed. ‘Fine. What’s the account number?’ When Yosira had memorised it, she finished her coffee and eyed Anneke strangely.
‘What’s your next step?’
‘I’ve got to make contact with Josh. Hopefully he’s cracked the rest of the code. Then I go find the second set of lost coordinates before Brown does.’
‘Too easy.’
Just what I was going to say.’
‘And Plan B?’
‘There is no Plan B.’
‘Nothing like a good backup.’
‘Nothing like it,’ Anneke agreed. They both laughed quietly.
‘I’m going to miss you.’
‘Me too.’
Yosira leaned across and kissed Anneke on the lips. No one in the bar saw and Anneke felt it would be churlish not to give the girl that much.
Afterwards, Yosira stood up. ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ she said, misty-eyed.
‘Count on it.’
Yosira left without a backward glance. Anneke sighed and suddenly felt lonely. It had been nice having a partner, albeit briefly. Maybe that’s what a relationship felt like. Warm and wanted.
‘Okay. Time to go to work,’ she murmured to herself. When Pagin returned to see if she wanted anything she gave him another week’s wage. It disappeared faster than the first.
‘I need some help.’
He studied her for a long moment, then nodded.
‘I be off in thirty minutes. Meet me at the black rock end of the plaza north of here. Act like you’re my big sister.’ Anneke raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Give me a hard time or something.’
The boy was right on time. Anneke had been sitting, waiting impatiently. When he showed she told him off, cuffed him lightly, then made him follow behind as she hurried from the plaza. He hung his head all the way. Like a pro.
At some point, as they moved through streets unknown to Anneke, Pagin angled in front of her and started leading the way. She followed, looking purposeful so as to attract less attention.
A short time later, Pagin turned into a side alley in an unpopulated light industrial part of the city. He then veered into another, then another. Soon they were lost in a maze of tiny lanes and alleyways. Finally they stopped at a door and Pagin led her inside.
She followed him down a set of steps to a basement door, which he unlocked using a keypad on the doorframe. The door was solid. Inside was an amazing collection of goods, mostly electronic.
Anneke turned to him. ‘You’re a professional thief’
He bowed low to her. ‘At your service, m’lady.’
‘And an accomplished one,’ Anneke added.
‘Are you hungry?’ Pagin didn’t wait for an answer, but grabbed packs of food from the snapfreeze and heated them with his weapon, which he turned to the field-cooker setting. It was strange how all the advances in food tech had never conquered the human preference for warm food.
As they ate the vat-grown fish protein and neo-kelp - nothing died to feed humanity these days - he asked how he could help her.
‘I need access to ann-space receiver.’
He whistled at the request, but did not ask why. Brow furrowed, he finally said, ‘There’s only one place you can go.’
‘Where?’
‘Customs House, at the port.’
‘And why there?’
‘I have a key.’
‘How come you have a key?’
He grinned and waved his arm at the piles of stolen goods. ‘How do you think I came by all this?’ Anneke’s lips twitched. ‘You know, Pagin, I think it’s going to be a real pleasure doing business with you.’
Two shadows moved quickly and silently through the back ways of the sleeping city, the larger led by the smaller. It was the hour before dawn, a time when the human body is at its groggiest.
Anneke, however, was alert and wary, her sensors scanning the surrounding area, her deflector fields cloaking their biosigns as well as they could. Even so, she kept one hand near the blaster under her tunic, comfortably aware of the vibroblade inside her boot. Pagin seemed harmless, but he was small and, Anneke guessed, hard to catch.
The boy knew his city.
Not once did they come within sensor range of a main street or the towering fortifications that dotted the landscape. Nor did they meet anyone except a pair of drunks returning from revel. Pagin had explained t
hat Qule, at the moment, did not have a curfew, but citizens were expected to be indoors by midnight or else give a good account of themselves.
Maybe drunkenness was self-explanatory, thought
Anneke.
They reached Customs House by a circuitous route, which, as they drew closer, went underground, so that the last leg of the journey was along an old disused and rodent-infested sewer. Mter bashing her head several times against chunks of broken concrete hanging from the ceiling - the boy could walk upright, unlike Anneke - they detoured up a side tunnel and stopped at a metal door.
Here Pagin produced a bunch of antiquated waferkeys, unlocking the door and relocking it after they had passed through. ‘Sometimes the old tech baffies newcomers,’ he said by way of apology at the delay.
Then there were stairs, ramps, corridors, and more doors, to each of which Pagin had the waferkey. Anneke marvelled at the boy’s ingenuity. It must have taken ages to amass the whole set.
‘It’s in the family,’ he explained. ‘Granddad started it. He passed it onto my dad and him to me. It’s the family business, you might say.’
‘Where are your parents now?’
‘Dead,’ the boy said without feeling, as if he were mentioning the day’s weather.
After winding their way through the great mausoleum of Customs House, Pagin finally guided Anneke down the corridor leading to the head office.
‘They got a receiver in there,’ he said. ‘But this is the only door I don’t have a key for.’
Anneke looked at the locking device. It wasn’t complicated. Obviously, they did not expect anyone to be breaking into the main administrative office of Customs House. Probably because it held absolutely nothing of value to anyone but Anneke. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ she said and went to work on the door. Within a minute she had it open.
Pagin was suitably impressed. ‘Do you think I could -’
‘Have the sequence?’ Anneke finished for him.
‘Sure!’ She gave it to him. ‘Watch my back,’ she instructed and went immediately to the receiver. Like most hi-tech devices, it was permanently powered up. She needed to run checks for booby-traps, not wanting to set off alarms.
‘What’s taking so long?’ whispered the boy from the doorway.
Just making sure.’
She deactivated a number of crude anti-intruder sub-routines, cracked the password, and logged on as the sub-Administrator, third class.
She found herself staring at a visicast of Josh. Anneke always had trouble coping with the fact that her eyes were being projected across the light years, instead of the image being transmitted to her.
‘Where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘Everybody here is frantic with worry about you. Wait a minute. Here’s Deema.’ The girl appeared, looking angry and tearful and happy all at the same time. She immediately scolded Anneke for not contacting them. ThenJake Ferren did the same.
‘Okay, enough,’ Anneke finally said. ‘I don’t have much time.’
Jake shook his head. ‘Sorry. Should have known better than to worry. I’ll putJosh back on.’
The young Enigma scientist reappeared. ‘Have you cracked it yet?’ Anneke asked him.
‘Not quite. But we’re close.’ Anneke sighed. ‘How close?’
‘Within the next twenty-four hours. Tops.’
‘Okay. I need you to get the results to me. I may not be able to use an n-space receiver again.’ She set up a commercial messenger system through the local network, agreeing - by using code words they were both familiar with - on an encryption system. It wouldn’t be unbreakable, but hopefully no one would even think to look in the commercial traffic for long-lost galactic secrets.
‘Someone’s coming!’ hissed Pagin.
‘Gotta go, Josh. My love to everyone.’ She broke the connection, wiped the log, and reset the receiver to its default settings.
And got out of there, barely avoiding the head administrator arriving early to chat illicitly with his mistress garrisoned on one of Kantor’s many moons.
Except for a quick detour in which Pagin collected
‘freight’ - ‘Pays for the trip!’ he told her - the boy led Anneke back the way they came, though he used a different exit than the one they had entered.
Outside, it was already morning and the bright sunlight made them both blink. Then shouts arose behind them. ‘Hey, you two! Stop right there!’
Anneke glanced back. Three Kantorian police were hotfooting it towards them. She dragged Pagin into an alleyway, and they fled. For the next twenty minutes they ran down darkened laneways, scaled fences and walls, till they had lost their pursuers. Finally they emerged on a main street in a more respectable sector of town.
Here they split up. Pagin went east and Anneke north, the plan being to meet up again in the same plaza they’d rendezvoused in the day before.
Only it didn’t go quite like that.
Shortly after leaving Pagin, Anneke turned a corner and came face to face with Maximus Black.
BLACK stared at Anneke, speechless. Then he moved - but too late. Anneke launched a spinning sidekick, catching him in the chest and knocking him to the ground. Her gun was on him in a flash.
‘We should stop meeting like this,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Black. ‘Next time, let’s make it in the morgue.’
‘Suits me.’ Black saw her finger hovering over the tab, yet she hesitated. Killing an unarmed man sitting on the ground was a little tough for the morally minded. Black, of course, would not have baulked.
As though reading his mind, she said, ‘I can’t say it’s been nice knowing you, Mr Brown.’
Even as her finger descended, pulse beams stitched the wall beside her head. Her shot went wide.
Black scrambled aside.
Anneke barely had time to duck and return fire on the approaching group of Quesadans and Kantorians, stalling their attack.
She cursed. Assisted by the ancient art form of parkour, she vaulted over a high retaining wall and dropped from sight.
I’m alive, Black thought as he regained his composure. He glanced at the towering wall and knew Anneke would be long gone. It was a shame she was loyal to RIM. What a team they would have made.
Black dusted off his coverall as Riktar instinctively placed himself between his boss and where Anneke had headed - the natural bodyguard. Oddly enough, the Envoy was nowhere to be seen. Black decided not to draw attention to his absence by reacting or by asking anyone about it. The Kantorians, and Roag in particular, had been acting strangely all morning, ever since they had started on the ‘Tour of the Great City’. The Trade Ambassador seemed to be fencing with Black. Why bring a security unit? Was that for Black’s protection or Roag’s? Or something else entirely?
‘Are you all right, Olak?’ Roag asked solicitously.
‘Apart from injured pride, I am unhurt,’ Black replied.
‘Do you know your assailant?’
‘She is the rogue agent I spoke of’
‘Ah. Our investigations appear to have flushed her out,’ said Roag, ‘though not in a judicious way, I might add.’
I doubt your investigations had anything to do with it, thought Black, but he refrained from saying so.
Indeed, he was wondering just what had flushed Anneke out, or if they were all misreading the encounter. The look on her face when she rounded the corner had been surprise, even shock.
Black would have sworn it was genuine. Except he’d been fooled before by Anneke Longshadow. Even now, he burned at the thought.
‘I see you are angry,’ said Roag, getting it wrong again. ‘I will have security scour the area. Roadblocks and other barriers will be in place in minutes. She will not escape.’
‘She is highly trained,’ said Black. ‘It will be difficult to apprehend her.’
Roag sniffed indignantly. ‘You doubt the capabilities of our security forces?’
‘No offence intended, Ambassador, but where Anneke Longshadow is concerned, I doubt the capabilities of all the security forces in all the known worlds.’
The ambassador did not seem assuaged by this. He issued his orders curtly then suggested they head back to the Trade Commission.
‘Ambassador, might I ask a favour?’
Roag pursed his lips, but all he said was, ‘Ask.’
‘Might my men and I join the hunt for this renegade?’
‘My people are more than capable -’
Black held up his hands placatingly. ‘Ambassador, you misunderstand me. I know your security forces are excellent, but we both work at a disadvantage. Your people do not know this agent or her training well. We do not know this city and its ways. Together, we might solve this problem with a minimum of fuss.’ Black’s face was one of subordinate pleading and he made sure his body language reinforced the image, without going too far. He must not appear weak, but boyishly enthusiastic. To a man of Roag’s age, Black must appear childlike, despite the false age his renovation projected. He tried appealing to the man’s vanity, to his need to mentor the young, if only to demonstrate his own superiority.
Roag mulled over Black’s words, and then nodded, breaking out in a grin. ‘I find myself intrigued by the notion, and especially by your use of the word “hunt”. So I agree to your request.’
Black held out his hand and they shook in the way of the old Roman greeting, clasping each other’s wrist, a martial handshake.
Black signalled Riktar to take point and begin a sweep of the area. Black then gave Anneke’s biosign to the Kantorian head of security, a woman named Avula, who transmitted it to the multitudinous towers and Ais that networked the city.
‘Let us begin,’ said Roag, rubbing his hands together in glee. ‘What will she do first?’
‘She will circle back to a spot from where she can observe us. We should assume that she is already watching us.’