by Jake Elwood
He glared at her. "Fine. Don't tell me." He flipped the man in the suit onto his face and patted the man's back pockets, then took out a mini-laser and a com band. He pocketed the laser, then slid the com band over his wrist and spoke into it. "Becky. Lock up, then come back here. And turn the security system on. I don't want any more visitors."
"Bounty hunters," said Cassie. "That's just bloody great." She looked at Jimmy. "Are you going to be all right?"
He gave her a grim nod. "That I will. And you won't have to worry about these two again." He prodded the unconscious bounty hunter with a toe, then looked at Cassie. "Thanks for shooting these assholes. I appreciate it. But just the same, it's probably best if you leave now. And don't come back."
She nodded and headed for the back door.
###
"I guess it's The Snake or nothing," she murmured as she jogged through downtown. She was accustomed to a certain level of alertness, to the niggling thought that she could be under police surveillance or be targeted by another thief or an outraged victim. That sort of background stress came with her career choice.
Bounty hunters on her home turf, though, took things to a whole new level. If they were willing to torture Jimmy Lan and incur all the grief that would bring, the bounty had to be huge. So she trotted along, moving quickly, eyes scanning constantly, using reflections to check her back trail and sudden changes of direction to prevent ambush. It was exhausting, physically and mentally, and she was in a foul mood by the time she returned to the mall.
Once inside the steel and concrete world of canned music and recycled air, she found her paranoia hard to maintain. It was impossible to believe that danger could lurk in such a banal environment. Shoppers shuffled around like zombies, staring blank-faced at the displays, and Cassie almost wished bounty hunters would storm in to stir things up.
She approached the staircase to the basement with her hand on the butt of her pistol. The staircase was a choke point, a nice predictable spot for an ambush. There was no other way to reach The Snake's lair. If someone knew she was visiting fences, this was the place to take her down.
No one was in sight near the top of the stairs. She peeked around the corner, saw that the stairs were clear, and bounded down, taking three steps at a time. Nothing happened, and when the door to The Snake's lair came into view she started to relax.
Until she saw the hole in the door.
That front door had always looked good and solid to her. Now she knew that it was steel, and it was a good four centimeters thick. She knew it because someone had melted a meter-wide hole right through it. The hinges and the lock were still intact. The door was, technically, still closed. It just had a huge hole in it.
For twenty long seconds Cassie stood there, gun in hand, wondering what to do. She couldn’t remember drawing the weapon, and it looked puny in her hand. Four centimeters of steel! What in space could melt through that?
Her tortured nerves screamed at her to run, but she made herself wait, made herself consider things. The Snake was no tender novice to be shaken down by whatever thug might happen by. He had weapons, defenses. He might have made short work of whoever had messed up his door. This might be Cassie's best chance to find out what was going on.
She moved closer to the door.
A wave of warm air washed over her face, and she felt her stomach twist and start to rise. There was a stench coming from The Snake's lair, a foul combination of hot metal, burning plastic, and burnt flesh. She could hear flames crackling somewhere inside, and the pop and crackle of electronic components being destroyed by flames.
For a long moment she stared at the hole, trying to imagine a scenario with The Snake alive and well. She couldn't do it. At last she turned, blinking to clear her watering eyes, and ran up the steps. She holstered her gun, picked an exit at random, and ran.
She caught a taxi, took it to the biggest hotel in Cristobal, and ran into the lobby. She left by another exit, jumped in a different taxi, rode to a restaurant, and switched cabs again. She did it all automatically, running on autopilot. At first her attention was entirely focused on watching her back trail, watching the people and vehicles around her, trying hard to watch everywhere at once. By the third taxi, though, she was beginning to calm down. Beginning to think.
A tap of her com opened a connection to Roger. She didn't bother with any preliminaries. "Status?"
"No damage," Roger said promptly. "Fuel adequate. Ready to fly within five minutes."
"Has anyone been poking around?" she asked. "Any suspicious activity?"
Roger was a good enough AI to cope with ambiguous questions. "It's difficult to be certain," he said, "but my exterior cameras show normal activity in the hangar."
"I've got bounty hunters on my trail," she said. "Keep your eyes open." She broke the connection. Well, it looked as if the ship was still available. That was a relief. If she couldn’t get off-planet, she was done for. Cristobal was far too small to hide her for long.
Were the bounty hunters unaware of the Raffles, or were they keeping back, using it as bait to draw her in? If they were, she decided ruefully, it was going to work. She had to get on that ship. Soon, too. A good big bounty would bring in bounty hunters, thugs, and scumbags from all over the sector. Every hour might bring more ships, fresh hunters.
"Turn left here," she said to the taxi. Hours were crucial, she decided, but minutes weren't. There was time for one stop before she fled to the spaceport, one calculated risk. She had an apartment in Cristobal. No one knew where it was, not The Snake, not any of her underworld contacts, no personal friends, no one. She'd gone to great lengths to keep the apartment as her refuge, separate from every unsavory part of her life. It contained some very expensive tools, several sets of high-quality ID, quite a bit of cash, and even a few treasured mementos of better days. All of it would fit in a duffel bag, and she could pack it all up in five minutes, tops. She glanced at the chrono on the dash of the taxi and decided she had the time.
The street in front was clear of suspicious vehicles, and there wasn't a pedestrian in sight. She considered going a block past and returning on foot, but decided that time was her biggest enemy. She stopped the cab in front of her building, told it to wait, and ran inside. She jogged up the steps, peeked into the hallway, and found it clear. Keeping a hand on her pistol, she jogged to her front door and palmed it open.
There was just time to register the sight of a couple of uniformed city cops before a stun blast scorched into her stomach and the universe went dark.
CHAPTER 6
Lark sat in an activity room designed for much younger children and fumed. She felt hurt and betrayed by Cassie's decision to abandon her, but that was nothing compared to what the fat woman was doing. Lark sent a glare at the side of the woman's head. Cassie had dumped her, but the strange thief who'd grabbed her from her home had at least been trying to do the right thing. And what was Lark to Cassie, after all?
The fat woman, though. She was something else entirely. She knew perfectly well what she was doing to Lark. And looking after kids in trouble was supposed to be the fat woman's job!
The woman, Greta was her name, swiveled on her stool and gave Lark a plastic smile. "It'll be fine, sweetie. You'll see. He's your father, after all."
In reply, Lark grabbed the hem of her shirt and hauled it up, exposing the bruises across her stomach and side. Greta blanched a bit, but the phony smile stayed stuck right on her face. "It'll be fine," she repeated, and looked away. "It'll be fine."
There was, it turned out, a reward for Lark's safe return. "Safe" being a sick joke under the circumstances, of course. The reward must have been big, because Greta had let out a squeal when she heard about it. No amount of pleading, no amount of anger, no pleas to her better nature had budged the reward from the forefront of her thoughts. She'd sent a message to Dad's lawyers, and now someone was on the way to pick Lark up.
Dad was going to be furious. Lark thought about what he was like on a good day,
and shivered. This was going to be bad.
A week ago, she would have faced her fate philosophically. It was her life. School, friends, tutors, music lessons, Dad ignoring her most of the time, and his sudden rages a few times a week. She didn't like getting hit, but that was just the way life worked.
Watching Cassie take him down had rocked her world to its foundations. She had never seen anyone stand up to him. She hadn't even been able to enjoy the apology that amazing woman had wrung from him. Lark had been lost in shock.
Now, it was a treasured memory.
The problem was, Dad would remember it too. He would know that Lark remembered it. And he wouldn't like that. Not one bit.
The other problem was, Lark was changing. Two days on the Raffles with Cassie had altered her whole view of life. Here was someone not even remotely afraid of Dad. And this same awesome person was genuinely concerned about Lark's well-being. Sure, she treated Lark as an unwanted problem, a hassle she hadn't asked for that she now had to deal with. But Cassie cared.
The life Lark had been trapped in just two days before was suddenly intolerable. She couldn’t go back. She wouldn't!
She looked down at the stylus in her hand and the random swirls she'd created on the tabletop screen with its coloring program, and indulged herself in a brief fantasy of sneaking up behind Greta and beating her with a stool. Then she scowled and banished the daydream. I have to focus. I can't just sit here waiting for Dad to arrive. What would Cassie do?
Well, Cassie had that pistol, and a faithful AI with a flitter and a spaceship. She'd make short work of Greta, then fly off in some dramatic way. Lark scowled. This wasn't helping.
Well, what would Cassie do if someone took her gun away? Lark glanced at Greta. What would Cassie do, locked up with someone twice her size? She'd find a way to escape, that was for sure, but how?
Lark had one advantage that Cassie lacked, she realized. No one took her seriously. Greta thought of her as a little kid. How can I use that?
Giving her a wide-eyed look and trying for sympathy seemed unlikely to work, not after the way Greta had shrugged off her bruises. Besides, a stubborn core of pride, small but growing, made Lark rebel against the idea of pleading.
I can attack her. She won't expect that. Lark scowled. The miserable woman wouldn't expect an attack because an attack wouldn't work. There was only one door out of the play area, and it was coded to Greta. It didn't open when Lark went past the door. She'd tried it, and gotten nothing more than an impatient order to go back to the coloring table.
A bell chimed, and Lark glanced at Greta. The fat woman was sitting behind a desk near the back wall, and she glanced at a display, then pressed her hand to a panel. The door on the front wall slid open and a man with a briefcase came in. Lark felt her stomach lurch, but he wasn’t here for her. He gave Greta a cheery wave and crossed to her desk.
Lark stood up. If she'd been ready, she realized, she might have escaped right then. She could have waited for Greta to touch the panel, then made a mad dash for the door. She'd have been out before the man even realized she was coming. It wasn't as if fat Greta was ever going to catch up with Lark.
Too late now. The man would see her coming if she tried anything on his way out. But he might represent opportunity of a different kind.
"Hey, mister," she said, walking toward him. Greta gave her an annoyed look, but the man looked her up and down and raised a polite eyebrow.
"She's selling me," Lark said, gesturing to Greta. It was true, she realized, or as good as, and she felt her indignation rising with every word. "She's supposed to be taking care of me, and she's handing me over to the man who—"
"That's enough," Greta interrupted. "Lark, you go play, or sit quietly in the corner." She heaved herself up out of her chair.
"My father beats me horribly," Lark said, letting a plaintive note enter her voice. "I had to run away. I was afraid he would kill me." Well, he probably wouldn't have before, but it was looking like a real possibility now. Especially since Lark was no longer willing to bow her head and take his abuse.
The man gave Greta a commiserating smile, and Lark knew she was losing him. She moved closer, reaching out to pluck at his sleeve, and he backed away. "Now, look," he said, his amiable face suddenly stern.
"Please, mister, you gotta—"
"Molly," Greta said, a note of spiteful triumph in her voice. "Return this child to the play area."
Lark stopped, looking all around for some terrifying enforcer. It took her a moment to spot Molly, a rather small robot rolling out of an alcove near the door. Barely taller than Lark's waist, Molly had three legs with padded wheels on the bottom, a solid torso, three articulated arms, and a friendly face painted onto a big plastic head.
The arms ended in broad, flat pincers, and they stretched toward Lark as the robot came rolling into range.
"It's all right," Lark said hastily, backing away from the man. "You don't have to—"
A mechanical hand closed over her forearm. The pincer was kind of rubbery, but it squeezed hard enough to leave a mark. Lark reached out instinctively with her free hand to pry at it, and another hand closed over her free wrist.
"Please come with me," the robot said in a chirpy voice. Not waiting for a reply, it began to roll backward, dragging Lark along helplessly.
The robot didn't release her until she was seated again at the coloring table. She picked up a stylus and leaned forward, pretending to be interested in the pictures on the table top, hoping her hair would hide the tears of frustrated humiliation.
The urge to cry faded quickly, though, chased out by a rising urgency. The man with the briefcase represented an opportunity. He was the first guest Greta'd had all day. When the door closed behind him, Lark would be stuck. She glanced over. Greta and the man were going through something on a data pad. He still had the briefcase in his hand. He wouldn't be staying long, then.
She rose from the chair, took a single step toward them, and sighed as Molly rolled an inch to the left. Stupid robot! If it was to be her jailer, did it have to have that idiotic painted smirk? There weren't even lenses behind the big blue circles that were supposed to look like eyes. She could see the real optical input, a glass circle on the top of the robot's torso, just under the painted curve of the chin.
Maybe I can bash out its eye. Blind it. Or tip it over. She thought of how easily the robot had dragged her across the room. It won't be easy. I need a weapon.
Her eyes scanned the room, and came to rest on a small toybox against one wall. The odds of finding a weapon inside seemed slight, but maybe the box itself could be a weapon. It was nearly a meter wide. She could bash the stupid machine across its useless plastic head. Even if it didn't work, it would help Lark feel better.
She turned, crossed to the toybox, and gave it a shove.
The box didn't budge.
Muttering under her breath, she flipped open the bright blue plastic lid and started pulling junk out of the box. There were trains and flitters and starships, all of them plastic. Little cows and ducks. Space Rangers in full regalia, none of them bigger than the palm of her hand. And costumes, long coats and baggy pants, all of it sized for five-year-olds. She hauled out a Space Ranger uniform, a top hat and frock coat, and a long black coat with a red lining.
And hit the bottom of the box. There was nothing left. And nothing she had pulled out had been very heavy.
"See you later, little girl. Better luck next time."
She turned. The man had his hands on his hips, a smug little grin on his face as he looked at her. She stuck her tongue out, his grin deepened, and he forgot about her as he turned toward the door.
Lark gave one hopeless tug on the empty box. It didn't budge. Either it was absurdly heavy or they'd stuck it to the floor. She had nothing but a pile of plastic toys and tiny clothes, and she was all out of time.
The black coat twisted in her hands, and she saw a crest on the front. It was a macabre image, a skull and crossed leg bones, and
she grinned in spite of her predicament. She was holding a really lame pirate costume. A few years earlier she would have put it on, too, and swaggered around the room. If she was a fearless pirate she would…
And just like that, she knew what to do. The plan seemed to blossom full-formed in her brain, and she pasted a bored expression on her face as she turned to look at Greta.
When the fat woman's hand started to move toward the panel on her desk, Lark exploded into motion.
The robot was the first to react, metal arms coming up, rolling to the left, ready to move either way to intercept the running child. Lark came straight at the machine, started to dodge to the right, waited for a metal arm to move, and flung the little pirate coat over the robot's painted face. It only took a moment for the robot to pluck the coat away, but in the second it was blind, Lark darted past and dashed at the entrance.
Greta swore, tapping madly at her console, but the big glass door was already swinging open. The man stood frozen, in the way but not moving. At the last second his arms came out in a clumsy attempt to block Lark.
Fine, buddy. You want to be involved? I guess you're involved. Lark hurled herself straight at him.
His arms were out to either side, ready to grab her if she tried to go by. He saw her intention too late, tried to bring his arms back in, and she slammed shoulder-first into his solar plexus. He grunted, a guttural, animal sound, and she zipped around him. The door was swinging shut as she popped through the opening. She kept on running, and she didn't look back.
Terror and exhilaration carried her for a couple of blocks. She laughed as she ran, glancing back from time to time and seeing no pursuit at all. She reached a wide cross-street, turned, and found herself among crowds of pedestrians. Now running made her prominent, so she slowed, doing her best to vanish into a cluster of shoppers.
The rain cooled her off quickly and made her think of her mackinaw, abandoned at Child Services. It was a gift from Cassie, and it gave her a pang to realize it was gone. She touched the fare bracelet on her wrist. One gift remained, and she decided she'd keep it, even when the money ran out.