Dirty Job

by Felix R. Savage

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know that.” I was in too much pain to bother explaining how I’d rationalized to myself that it would be OK. I just said, “Figure if even you don’t know she’s there, they don’t, either.”

  “We can hope. We can hope, but we have intelligence that they’re active in the Hurtworlds—”

  I laughed at that. Active in the Hurtworlds? No shit. The Iron Triangle may not know everything, after all.

  “—and it may only be a matter of time before they find her.” Smith towered over us. “You have a fast ship. You left her there; you go back there and fucking find her again. Now.”

  Dolph dared to say, “Why us?”

  “She trusts you. Doesn’t she?”

  Yes. Pippa trusted us. So much the worse for her.

  “Oh, and that little pendant she wears? Find that, too.”

  “What is it, anyway?” I directed the disingenuous question to Rafael Ijiuto, who just shook his head gloomily. His hand clutched the edge of his collar, as if lonely for the TrZam 008 that used to hang around his neck.

  “Don’t bother asking him. He doesn’t know.” Smith clearly had nothing but contempt for the Darkworlder prince. “And you don’t need to know, either. When you find it, you will destroy it, film the act of destruction, and return the debris to us. Clear?”

  I nodded. Dolph nodded.

  “Then that is your mission, if you choose to accept it. You haven’t actually got any fucking choice.” Smith’s eyes glittered. “If you fail, little Lucy might be kidnapped again. Such a shame. Everyone would blame her mother. You would know the truth … but no one would ever believe you.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll do it! Whatever you want!”

  “I’ll do it,” Dolph said. “You sadistic motherfucker.”

  Smith was facing Dolph, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “Good dog.”

  He knelt over us, touching us in all the wrong places, and used his brass nails to slice through the whipcords. I fell forward onto my face, unable to catch myself, as my hands were still cuffed.

  D’Alencon gently removed the cuffs. Even then, I did not stand up. I did not fight them. I did not Shift.

  I just said, “What happens if we run into the Travellers out there?”

  “Then you kill them,” Smith said.

  “Hell,” I said, “you don’t need to force me to do that.”

  The van descended. We landed, not in Mag-Ingat, but at the Fleet base in Cascaville. Dolph and I endured an intrusive strip-search and had all our details taken, from fingerprints to DNA. At the end of that we both had to sign a letter of marque, which certified that we were Fleet subcontractors. There was no mention of pay.

  We got a ride back to the city in a Fleet bus, along with cleaners and cooks going home after the late shift. All the way, we leaned separately against the windows without saying a word.

  44

  The bus dropped us at the turn-off for the range. Just another reminder that they knew all about us. It was a little after midnight. The jungle made noises. We walked along the track, stumbling in the meager starlight that filtered through the trees.

  Dolph ducked to avoid a branch, and bumped into my chest. I grunted. The cuts weren’t deep but they still throbbed painfully.

  “Guy’s a fucking pervert,” Dolph said.

  “Yeah.”

  “He was getting off on cutting you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “I’m gonna do what he wants. You could probably get clear. Use your savings; go to San D.”

  “That’s what he hopes we’ll do,” Dolph said. “If it isn’t completely fucking clear to you by this time, they would love to have an excuse to turn San Damiano into a Hurtworld.”

  “They? He’s just one guy.”

  “It’s the Iron fucking Triangle, man.”

  “And that’s why I’m not gonna go against them.” I knew Dolph was aching for me to make some declaration of defiance, even if it was only words, to reclaim my pride. But I had none left. All that remained was my bedrock need to protect Lucy from my mistakes.

  We came to the trestle barricade and went around it. Wolves shimmered out of the darkness, growling. “It’s just us,” Dolph said, rubbing gray-furred heads.

  Alec’s house was dark. The camp slumbered. We climbed the ramps to the lairs in the cliff. Dolph Shifted into jackal form and slunk off to curl up in a corner. I also Shifted, into a form that Lucy liked: my ordinary, non-sabertooth tiger. I located my daughter by her unique scent. She was sleeping next to Mia and some of the camp children. I pawed her loose from the kid pile. Without waking up, she turned to face me and snuggled into my belly fur.

  I lay awake for a long time, thinking about all the people I needed to revenge myself on, and in what order. It was the first night in a long time I hadn’t drunk myself to sleep.

  *

  Come morning, we located Irene. She had been sleeping with Rex and Kit in an outlying lair, a mere hollow in the cliff, damp and littered with bones. Kit had had another episode last night. We tramped over to Alec’s house in silence. I used the satellite connection to call Martin, and while we waited for him in Alec’s rustic kitchen, Dolph and I told them all about yesterday’s events.

  Alec took it badly. He pulled a gun on us—that kind of badly. He pointed it at me, while Laura, in wolf form, stalked around us, growling.

  “Are you a snitch, Starrunner? Are you the kind of mutt that informs on your own kind?”

  I thought of d’Alencon, to whom I had confided all my secrets. D’Alencon, who had betrayed me to the Iron Triangle. I pictured my teeth sinking into his throat and ripping his jugular open. “No,” I said. Ironically, my conscience was clear with regard to d’Alencon now. “I’m no more of a snitch than you are.”

  Alec shoved his gun in my face. Dolph said, “Cool it, Macaulay! They’ve been surveilling you all along. They’ve got you on satellite. They can track your movements, your data access logs, everything. Mike didn’t tell them anything, nor did I. They zeroed in on us, and you’re standing in the blast zone. That’s how it fucking breaks, man.”

  Irene chimed in. “Mike is no snitch. He wouldn’t even snitch on Parsec, his worst enemy, so what does that say to you?”

  “What Parsec has done is gonna blow back on all of us,” Alec said. “And so is this. What is it with you spaceship captains?”

  At that moment Martin entered the kitchen, bike helmet under his arm. He caught the last part of what Alec said, and he saw the gun, me backed up against the kitchen island, the snarling wolf corralling the other three.

  He said, “Yeah, what is it with spaceship captains? I often ask that question myself. I’ve worked for a bunch of’ em. My first bid was in the majors. Star Trax. Drug tests every week, no dirtside leave if you got even one black mark for conduct, which meant I never got any dirtside leave, ever. Well, I don’t mind. I like spaceships. The sound of the engines. All those cozy crawl-spaces. But that captain, my sweet Lord. He used to spy on the female crew in the shower, and he put THC in our food for kicks. Then there was the captain I crewed for in the Techworlds, after Star Trax fired me for eating the drive engineer’s assistant. She was a normie, of course. Independent passenger boat. She used to make me Shift to entertain the customers. I had to do tricks and shit. That was more than I could take, even though the tips were good. I ended up eating her. After that, I figured I was done. No one would ever hire me again.”

  He bowed to me, twirling his bike helmet like a hat.

  “I was wrong. Mike Starrunner took me on. He pays on time, he picks his jobs carefully, and he gives me my space. Most importantly, he wouldn’t talk to the police if his life depended on it. I would die for the guy.”

  He plonked his helmet down on the counter, picked up the coffee carafe, and sniffed.

  “Oh, this smells good. Mind?”

  Alec holstered his gun, saying ruefully. “That’s one heck of a character witness
you got there, Starrunner.”

  I had not known any of those details about Martin’s past. I wasn’t sure if it was true, or if he’d made it all up. I clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Did you eat Cecilia yet?”

  Martin added cream to his coffee with an injured frown. “I wouldn’t dream of it. She’s interesting. She lived in the Cloudworlds for a spell, before she married Parsec, you know that? We stayed up late drinking wine and reminiscing.” Anticipating my next question, he added, “Got a couple of friends staying with her right now. I think she’s starting to appreciate reptilian hospitality.”

  “OK,” Alec said. “That’s one less thing to worry about. Meaning we still got to worry about the Iron Triangle.”

  “Nuh uh,” I said tiredly. “You don’t have to worry about that, because I’m gonna do what they want. So nothing’s gonna happen to you at all.”

  Alec’s eyes burned. “All the same, everyone needs to be informed about this. Come over to the camp and tell them what you just told me.”

  It went against my instincts, but I agreed. I spoke for half an hour, in the morning shade of the great hall, to all the jungle wolves—fidgety children, pale and bearded men, fierce women. Most all of them had Shifted back into human form. It was interesting to note that this was their reaction to a crisis.

  I did not mention the TrZam 008. I hadn’t mentioned it to Alec, either. That was the key to the whole business, and maybe that’s why Alec had got so upset—he sensed I was holding something back. But even without that, it added up to a familiar scenario, the same bedtime story these folks had been telling themselves for years. The authorities were poised to crack down on them just for being Shifters.

  Alec held up a hand to cut me off as I tersely apologized for involving them in my mess.

  “If it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t now, it would be someone else, and it might have come without warning.” Alec took over the audience. “Thanks to Mike Starrunner, we know our enemy. There’s nothing more important than that … except knowing your friends.” He and I were standing, while everyone else sat or squatted on the ground. He looked slowly around at his people. I was shocked to see tears of sentimental love standing in his eyes. He flung his arm around my shoulders and said hoarsely, “We’re all in this together.”

  The jungle wolves applauded, while I stood thinking: He’s getting them ready to go out in a blaze of glory.

  But I had forgotten the most important of the San Damiano rules they lived by: never, never say die.

  “Lucy Starrunner, folks.” Alec raised her to her feet and set his hands on her shoulders. “She will be staying with us while her dad is battling the enemies of our people.”

  I had told him that the Iron Triangle had ordered me to go after a fugitive on the Hurtworlds. He had reinterpreted that on the fly to make it sound better to his people. He had enough pride for both of us. I thanked him for it in my heart when I saw the grin tugging at Lucy’s mouth.

  “She is one of us, and we will defend her the same way that Mike is defending our homes and our families.”

  I hugged him. It was basically required at that moment, with emotions surging high. He gripped me in a powerful clinch that aggravated the cuts on my chest, and muttered in my ear, “Don’t fuck it up. And bring your ship back!”

  I muttered back, “Even if I have to shoot my way through the entire Fleet.” It’s the kind of thing you have to say.

  Amidst the bedlam of talk that followed, I saw Dolph leaving the great hall. I looked for Irene. She, too, had vanished.

  I signaled to Martin. We extricated ourselves and walked along the riverbank. “By the way,” I said. “Did you really eat the Star Trax drive engineer’s assistant?”

  “Yes,” Martin said. “It was a hamster. She loved that thing so much she called it her assistant. But to me, it smelled like food. I just couldn’t resist. Bad snake.”

  I smiled. “And what about the other one? The indie cruiser captain?”

  “Uhm, I ate her … in a different sense.” Martin smoothed his mustache. “She fired me in revenge when we broke up. Goes to show that shipboard relationships always lead to trouble.”

  I snickered. “MF would love that story.”

  “I already told it to him. He was pissed I didn’t have pictures.”

  Nothing had gone right, I thought, since MF deserted us. I looked down the trail ahead—no footprints on the mud. “I don’t think they came this way. Let’s try around the waterfall.”

  You could get behind the waterfall. The water shot over a rocky lip. Brush choked the space beneath the overhang. But Alec’s people had cut it away to make a sort of tunnel, one side rock, the other side leafy tendrils waggling in the spray.

  Dolph and Irene stood in this green tunnel. She had her back to the rock. He was facing her. A little ping of wrongness went off in my mind: he was standing too close to her, one arm braced on the rock beside her head. He had no right to loom over her in that way.

  The noise of the falls covered our approach. We got close enough to hear Dolph say, in a loud, angry voice, “Don’t give me that,” before they saw us.

  Dolph stepped back, scowling. Irene glared.

  “What’s this about?” I said.

  “Smith,” Dolph said to Irene. “When he came aboard the St. Clare, Mike went to meet him. We were on the bridge. We were watching the whole thing on the internal feed. You recognized him.”

  “I did not,” Irene said. “Can’t you tell the difference between generalized and specific loathing?”

  “Actually, I can,” Dolph said. “Because of that look of specific loathing you give me all the time.”

  Martin chuckled. I did not.

  “She clearly recognized him,” Dolph repeated. “But I didn’t say anything, because she flat-out denied it. So I thought I must be wrong. But now—now I’m wondering …”

  I had slept badly. I had been abused in custody last night. I’d had a gun shoved in my face this morning. I was already considering kicking Irene off the crew, for a mix of principled and pragmatic reasons. I said harshly, “If you got history with that fucker, Irene, tell us about it, or we’re done here.”

  She looked this way and that. Her jaw gritted. “All right. I know him. Not to speak to. Just by sight. He was at Bull Rock—”

  She broke off abruptly. Squeezed her eyes shut. Whispered, “Darn.”

  “Boom, there it is,” Dolph said softly. “You were at Bull Rock.”

  Irene said nothing.

  “That’s what the bears have on you,” I said. “Oh boy.”

  Martin said, “Feeling kinda dumb here. What’s Bull Rock?”

  “It was a military prison on Tech Duinn,” I said. “Where we kept the important Necros we captured. The political prisoners, I guess. I never went there. It was on the other side of the planet from where we were deployed. But after the war, there was a huge scandal. It turned out that the prisoners at Bull Rock had been abused, systematically, for years.”

  “Oh, now I remember hearing about that,” Martin said. “Didn’t they try out different combinations of experimental drugs on the prisoners? Used them as human guinea pigs?”

  “Yeah,” Dolph said. “They also sodomized them and carved graffiti onto their bodies with knives.”

  Irene, lips and eyes squeezed shut, let out a soft moan of protest.

  “They did,” I said. “There was holo evidence. Hours and hours of recordings. It was proved to be authentic.” I felt the same way I had when the scandal broke, disgusted and stunned that the actions of a few lousy sadists in uniform were tainting the whole war, overshadowing the bravery of the men and women I had fought with.

  Had one of those lousy sadists been … Irene?

  Hundreds of people had gone to jail for the Bull Rock atrocities, from civilian contractors all the way up to a two-star general. But it was only to be expected that more would have slipped through the net, their involvement never revealed.

  Until now.

  �
�You worked there?”

  A nod.

  “And Smith was there, too?” Him, I could believe it of.

  Another nod.

  “What was he,” Dolph said, “an assistant torturer? Like you?”

  Irene slapped him. If she had planned it, she would’ve knocked him into the waterfall. It was a simple loss of control, and her hand only grazed his face. He stepped back, holding his nose.

  “Don’t kick me off the crew, Mike,” she said. “I’ve been waiting twenty years to get a shot at that bastard. This could be it.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “He’s untouchable. Irene, did you really … do those things?”

  “If I say I didn’t,” she said, “you won’t believe me. If I say I did, you’ll kick me off the crew. So I’m screwed either way. Thanks a lot, Hardlander.” She pushed Dolph with vicious force. He fell backwards, crashed through the bushes, and vanished into the sun-kissed curtain of water. Martin grabbed for Irene and missed. She darted between me and the wall. I caught her around the middle. Her momentum pulled us both down to the path.

  We rolled against the wall, wrestling. She was the better fighter, but I was stronger and heavier. I pinned her on her back. “The truth, Irene,” I pleaded. “Did you do those things?”

  She lay still, spray from the waterfall sparkling on her blonde hair, face closed up like a fist. “No. I just worked security. Do you believe me?”

  All our history together flashed before my eyes. All the close calls, the ship fights, and the lazy times hanging out with the kids. We were more than colleagues. We were family. And yet, had I ever really known her? Could I trust that she wasn’t lying to me now? After a long moment, I said, “No.”

  “I figured,” she said. “I wouldn’t, either, if I were you.”

  I let her go. Stood up and brushed the dirt off. “You’re fired.” The words felt like novocaine in my mouth. “I still owe you back pay. We can subtract that from the half a million Rex took.”

  She nodded. “I won’t let this affect the kids.”