Light shone from beneath a similar door on the main floor landing. Footsteps and shadows moved beneath it and I crept past, following the stairs down one more level. No guards lurked in this backstage area—it must not be that well known to Melardis’s house guests. The walls changed from wood to concrete. The air grew chill and I smelled damp earth.
One final door.
I cracked it open. An armed man lounged in the hallway across from a barred wooden door. He looked bored out of his mind.
I offered a fervent prayer to the secrecy gods that I’d found Jak—if Melardis had some other poor schmuck locked up in there then things were going to get messy. I didn’t have time to piss around. It was only a matter of time before various and sundry Guild peons discovered I wasn’t enjoying the view of the back yard from that guest room. Alarm bells could go off any second.
I took a deep breath and fired from my hiding place. The guard dropped to his knees and fell onto his face, silently, thank god. I slipped out and hurried forward, keeping one eye open for reinforcements, and poked him with my foot. No movement. I checked his pulse. There wasn’t one. I relieved him of his blaster and searched his body quickly, coming up with two recharge clips that I stuffed into my pockets. I slid the bolt back on the cell door and pushed it open.
Jak sat huddled against the far wall. His right eye was swollen almost shut, and he looked at me like I offered him a gift that might, or might not, be poisonous. “What’re you doin’ here?”
“Saving your ass, are you coming or not?”
I didn’t have to ask him twice.
I dragged the dead guard into the room and shut the door, sliding the bolt back into place.
The corridor branched to the right up ahead, and a short flight of concrete steps led to another door. If the gods were good it would take us outside. Or close to outside. I tried the handle, pushing it open a crack. A cool draft touched my face and I smelled the faint scent of hover-car fuel cells.
A garage.
A garage meant vehicles.
Things were looking up.
We moved carefully in the dark. I didn’t want to trip over anything that would alert the guards outside to our presence, but I didn’t dare turn on the lights. At least three vehicles took up space in the huge room. I approached the nearest, a long, black limo, my hand brushing the door tentatively. Melardis thought of himself as a big shot—every big shot I ever knew had at least one armored vehicle. Hopefully, this one was his. I held my breath, waiting for the sirens to go off.
Nothing.
I let my breath out slowly. My questing hand brushed the vehicle’s door sensor and the driver side door slid open with an almost inaudible whoosh. I motioned Jak in ahead of me before climbing in behind him. The partition separating the driver from the passenger section was open, and the car smelled faintly of leather and brandy; a wealthy, privileged smell. I hit the automatic ignition, and the vehicle hummed to life.
“Down on the floor,” I said to Jak as I strapped myself in. He slid onto the floor under the dash.
“Keep your head down, we’re going to run the gate. If I’m hit, I want you to bail and run your skinny ass off, understand?”
He nodded. I disengaged the auto-drive and shifted the car into reverse, crashing through the garage doors amid a shower of glass and splintered wood. Slamming the car into forward, I accelerated toward the front gate about five hundred meters away. The limo whined as I coaxed all the power I could from her engine. The speedometer climbed as we sped forward and laser fire bounced off the hood, ricocheting off the tinted windows.
Thank fucking god. Maybe we’d survive this fiasco after all.
I glanced down at Jak. He sat huddled on the floor with his head down and his arms wrapped around his knees. All curled up like that, he made a very small target.
Smart kid.
A brief orange flash erupted to my left, and I swerved hard right to avoid the RPG launched at us. Armor was great, but I didn’t much care to test its defensive strength just now. The grenade missed us, but not by much. The car rocked and the explosion momentarily blinded me as dirt and desert grass showered across the windshield.
The main gate stood less than a hundred meters away. The engine shrieked as we crashed through it at almost a hundred kilometers an hour. A body bounced off the hood and away. Then the windshield cleared and we screamed down a moonlit highway with the lights of Dasrajhi flickering in the distance.
We were out and in one piece. Hallelujah.
Jak climbed onto the seat once we were safely away. “Thanks. I thought they was gonna kill me.”
“You’re welcome. How did they get hold of you in the first place? I told you to be careful.”
“That bitch of a barmaid, Dalla. Her old man is some kind of runner for the Guilds; he’s got all kinds of connections in the Iron District. I showed him the picture of yer woman, thinkin’ he might know where to find her. Instead he was more interested in hearin’ about you.”
“What did you tell him?”
Jak shrugged. “I said if he was that curious about yer business, he could ask you himself.”
Good answer.
I glanced in the rearview mirror. Whatever pursuit the Guilds might have had time to organize hadn’t materialized yet. Of course, Melardis still had agents in the city and I had no doubt he’d be on the com-link to them as soon as his grunts told him Jak and I were gone.
Oren, the skinny Sorrellian, had my palm laser, and the blaster I’d liberated at Melardis’s estate wasn’t as powerful as my rifle. Or my fire-lance for that matter. I didn’t like shedding my weapons, they were expensive and difficult to replace, and I’d done a lot of it lately.
My bag was back at the hotel and I couldn’t afford to leave it there. It held not only my remaining weapons, but my forged ID’s. I wasn’t about to leave those behind for the Rigian authorities to discover and pass along to the Galactic Federation or the Doranis. Not again. Besides, my present mission came before everything else. Once I’d cleaned up my current mess, I’d have to find a place to lay low for a while until I could resume my search for Corin Raas.
“You musta done something pretty major to piss the Guilds off,” mused Jak. “I heard Dalla’s old man say you screwed them outa some serious cash.”
“You always listen to stuff that’s none of your business?”
He shrugged. “Hangin’ out in the bar, I hear all kinds of shit. Some of it’s true, most of it ain’t. Folks pay for it all the same. What’re you gonna do now?”
“You still want to work for me?”
“Might be I do. You saved my ass; I guess that means I owe ya. What did you have in mind?”
“I need a place to hide out for a while. Know anyplace like that?”
“Sure, a coupla places spring to mind.”
“Good enough. I have a stop to make then you can show me one of them.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“Then I think we’ll go back to the bar and see if we can get your money back.”
◆◆◆
I circled the block a few times, watching the street in front of the hotel. The doorman and his assistant were involved in the unloading of a stack of luggage from the back of an air taxi, and the lobby looked fairly busy from what I could see on my way past. I parked across the street and sat for a few minutes watching the doors. It wouldn’t take me long to run in and grab my stuff, but I didn’t want any surprises—it had taken the better part of an hour to drive back from Melardis’s estate; I had to assume his goons would be watching for us.
I kept the engine running and opened the door. “Stay in the car and keep the doors locked. And don’t talk to anybody.”
Jak nodded, and I crossed the street to the hotel.
In and out. That was the plan. Grab my shit and go. My instincts hummed as I scanned the lobby.
People milled about waiting to check in, bellhops and hotel messengers scurried past pulling luggage carriers or carrying packages. There didn�
�t appear to be anyone loitering; everyone looked like they were busy doing something.
I took the elevator to the fortieth floor then ducked into a stairwell and walked down eight flights. A housekeeping trolley sat about midway down the corridor, and voices came from the room across from mine. Women—they chatted and laughed as they made up the beds.
I paused at the door to my room and listened. I couldn’t hear anything, but that didn’t mean much. If anyone was in there waiting to jump me, they wouldn’t be stretched out on the bed watching the Holo-hockey finals.
Come on, Gage, you can’t stand in the hallway forever.
I drew my blaster and slid the key card through the lock. A soft beep, the light flashed green, and I pushed the door open. The room was empty and my bag sat on the bed where I’d left it.
I grabbed it and ran. There would be time to do an inventory later.
I made it back to the lobby without incident and hurried across the street to the limo, slipping back inside, tossing my bag on the floor at Jak’s feet and pulling out into the morning traffic.
“Okay. Where’s this safe place you said you knew about.”
◆◆◆
We ditched the car in the government district. It was now one more, albeit slightly damaged, limo parked in front of one more consulate. Jak led me through a twisting maze of alleys and narrow streets, and within a few minutes I was utterly lost. Hopefully our pursuers would be as directionally challenged as I was.
We finally came to a block of warehouses on the very eastern edge of the city. There was nothing beyond but desert and rock and the distant crumbling spire of an abandoned radio tower. Jak led me to a rusted metal door at the back of the building farthest from the street. Despite the air of neglect that permeated the place and the outward condition of the door, the hinges were well oiled. Apparently the place wasn’t as abandoned as it looked. Jak pulled the door closed and it shut with a satisfying thud.
Pale morning sunlight filtered through grime encrusted windows as he led me through a maze of crates and boxes toward the back of the warehouse. The air felt still and close and the dust made my nose itch. Something scrabbled in the shadows between the crates and a scaled lizard scampered behind a box.
“Sand graak,” said Jak, by way of explanation. “They’re harmless. You can eat ’em in a pinch, but they taste like crap, and they’re kinda tough to catch.”
“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”
He shrugged. “I’ve caught my share.”
He led me into a narrow room that ran the width of the building. Four metal chairs sat around a scarred wooden table and a barrel, half full of clean water, sat in the far corner. Two bunks were separated from the rest of the room by a stained and battered portable divider. A knit blanket, in orange and yellow, covered one, the other had a red woolen army blanket folded at the foot.
“Make yerself at home,” said Jak as he pulled a chair over to a high cupboard.
He unlatched the door and pulled down a metal box. Jumping off the chair, he carried the box to the table and flipped the lid open revealing a box of crackers, some canned meat, three packages of dehydrated soup, and an assortment of other rations that I didn’t recognize.
“You seem to know your way around this place pretty well,” I said as he opened the crackers and passed some to me.
“I stay here sometimes. When my da gets drunk and smacks the shit out of me.”
“He does that a lot?”
“More often than not.”
“What about your mother?”
Jak snorted. “She escaped last year. My da hit her one too many times and she ran off with some Soldian bounty hunter.”
“She didn’t take you with her?”
“Said she’d come back fer me, but....” he shrugged.
Right. Once gone, she’d be gone forever. “So, who lives here?”
“My friend, Kyr. I don’t think she’ll mind you stayin’.”
“Where is she now?”
“Scavengin’. It’s safer at night. During the day the Cartel has scouts watchin’ fer strays.”
Strays. That’s what the Cartel called the homeless they scooped up to work in the mines.
“What about Kyr’s parents?”
“Her ma died when she was born. When she was ten, her da traded her to some Lyrian pervert for a hundred credits worth of bliss. He ran a brothel in the Iron District until some crystal-head burned it down. She escaped in all the confusion. Far as I know, she ain’t been back.”
I heard the distant sound of a door opening.
Jak shot me a warning glance. “Let me talk to her.”
I nodded, and Jak left the room.
“Your da did that?” said a female voice from outside. Suppressed fury laced with disgust spilled into the voice. She’d noticed the damage to Jak’s face.
“Nah,” said Jak. “Not this time. It’s a long story. I got a friend needs a place to crash for a while. Can he stay here?”
“You vouch for him?” Doubt and caution tinged the voice.
“He saved my ass. He’s got money. He can pay.”
“Where is he? This friend.”
A moment passed, then Jak came back in trailed by a Rigian girl of seventeen or eighteen.
She was slender and muscular, her skin the color of sand, her pale yellow hair cut boyishly short. She wore faded Terran jeans, ripped at the knees, and a gray hooded sweatshirt. Her feet were covered with sturdy, black boots. She carried a canvas backpack slung over her shoulder, and a wicked looking desert knife was stuck in her belt.
Her yellow-gold eyes studied me warily. “You’re Jak’s friend?”
I nodded.
“He says you saved his ass.”
“Yeah, well. Seeing as how I was responsible for getting it tossed into the fire, it seemed the least I could do.”
She smiled faintly. “You got a name?”
“Gage.”
“I’m Kyr. Jak says you got money.”
“Some.” Okay, lots.
“Most stuff I can scavenge, but some things I haveta buy. Soap. Salt. Tea. Might be you can stay, but you gotta pay your way. Deal?”
“Deal.”
She slipped off her backpack and hefted it onto the table. Zipping it open, she pulled out three loaves of dark bread, a small bag of wild onions, a round white cheese, and a bottle of Terran wine. She tossed the now empty backpack under the table and used her knife to slice one of the loaves of bread into three sections. One she passed to Jak, the other she passed to me. She carved off three large chunks of cheese and distributed those as well, then she placed the rest of the food into the metal box and closed the lid.
“There are cups in there,” she said, nodding to the cabinet that held the food box.
I went over and took down three glazed clay mugs, returning with them to the table. One had only a partial handle and the edges of the other two were cracked and chipped.
She opened the wine and poured us each a cupful. “Not the best vintage,” she said with a shy smile, “but I guess it’ll do.”
Jak grinned as he stuffed a piece of cheese into his mouth.
I was more tired than hungry, but it was no small thing for Kyr to share her meager rations with me; I couldn’t insult her by not eating. I worked away at the bread and cheese and had a sip of the wine. It was warm and too sweet, but I drank it all. The adrenaline I’d run on for the past day and a half was wearing off, leaving exhaustion in its wake. I sat back, running a hand across my weary eyes.
“The bed with the yellow blanket is mine,” said Kyr. “You’re welcome to the other one.”
I looked to Jak. “What about you? Where do you sleep?”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry ’bout me. I’ll curl up on the floor someplace.”
I nodded and got up, feeling the weariness in my bones as I headed for the bed with the army blanket. I kicked off my boots and lay down, not even bothering to cover myself. I was asleep within minutes.
> ◆◆◆
I woke to flickering darkness, and for one brief, disoriented moment I didn’t know where the hell I was. Soft light and murmured voices spilled from the other side of the divider.
Dasrajhi. Warehouse. Kyr and Jak.
Right.
I sat up, scrubbing my fingers through my hair as I willed my brain to work—I needed a shower desperately. I got to my feet and wandered into the other room. Kyr and Jak sat at the table, a stubby red candle burned in an empty sardine tin in the center.
“I made tea,” said Kyr “Want some?”
“Sure.” I pulled up a chair. She rinsed out one of the mugs and poured me a cup of tea from a pot on the burner of an old army cook stove. “Is that propane?”
“Yes,” she said. “Jak found it for me.” She smiled fondly as she ruffled the Rigian boy’s hair. “He’s good at fixing things, and he’s almost a better scavenger than me.”
Jak flushed with embarrassed pleasure and shrugged. “I found it in the alley behind the bar. Wasn’t nothin’ wrong with it except fer plugged valves. I cleaned it up and gave it to Kyr. Figured she could use it.”
“Where do you get the fuel?” I asked.
“I trade for it from a junk dealer in the Iron District,” said Kyr, lowering her eyes. I didn’t have to ask her what she traded.
She sat at the table. “Jak told me about your woman.”
“I don’t have the picture anymore,” muttered Jak. “Dalla’s man kept it, the bastard.”
“She’s not my woman,” I said, “but it’s important that I find her.”
“Might be I can help,” offered Kyr. “I know many people on the fringes of society. I can ask about this woman, might be someone has heard of her. What’s her name?”
“Corin Raas. Or Wynn Delaren. They’re the same person.”
Kyr frowned. “Delaren. She’s related to the president?”
“His wife.”
“I didn’t know he had a wife. The government news agency hasn’t reported such a thing, and if it were true, they would have.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t think it’s something he wants the world to know.”
“But why would he keep such a simple thing a secret?”
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