The Man Who Never Missed

by Steve Perry

  The Lojtnant nodded, not really interested. He looked around for a table with an empty stool. “Emile, who’s working the sheets tonight? Anybody worth a week’s pay?”

  “Marj is on, Brin, Roj, Davisito, and… let’s see, I think Sister Clamp is on at 1800.”

  “Sister Clamp, huh? I heard she’s something else. Expensive, too.”

  “You can’t take it with you, Subbie. Never know but you might get pulled out of that air-conditioned T-plex and put on the line.”

  “Shee-it, they’ll have to be scraping the walls for that. Still, I might get flattened by a ground-effect tank crossing the street. Eighteen, you said?”

  “I can put in a word, if you like, maybe get her to give you an uprank discount.”

  Lojtnant Subru nodded again. “Yeah. Do that, would you? I’d appreciate it.”

  The soldier wandered off, trailing the smell of cashews.

  “Afternoo’, Chief.”

  Khadaji’s head pubtender stood there, looking grave.

  “Butch. A problem?”

  “We runnin’ low on mid-range sops. Las’ week’s delivery was short two gross and we only got half what we need ‘til next shipment.”

  “What do you think, Butch?”

  “I think we put a limit on and ration them suckers out.”

  Khadaji shook his head. “No. Business as usual and when we run out, offer high-range at the same price.”

  “Jeet, Chief, we lose half a stad every tab!”

  “We can afford it, can’t we? We want to keep the customers happy.”

  Butch shook his head. “I don’ see how you make an’ profit, you keep tryin’ to give it away.”

  “We get by, Butch, we get by.”

  The pubtender left, looking even more grave than before, and Khadaji began to work his way around the octagon, smiling at the customers, listening and watching as he moved.

  “—holes Uplevels wouldn’t know a Scum if it peed on—”

  “—said she’s more fucking sensitive than I am—” “—Jammy’s still knotted in the stretch ward—” “—kid’s nine T.S. but sharp, lemme tell you—” “—couldn’t pull it out of her if you wanted to—” “—the Old Man himself said it, so I hear—”

  The flow of conversation was full of the things which have always been important to soldiers: love, hate, sex, money, family, Uplevels’ stupidity, the campaign. Khadaji knew the talk. He’d only been nineteen when conscripted for his seven and he’d done six years with men and women like these. Most of them were young, but the military had a way of making you grow up quickly. He was thirty-nine T.S. now, he could have fathered most of the soldiers in the octagon. He felt a lot older than that sometimes, an old man among children.

  “—your ass! Get up, elbow-sucker!” Khadaji froze for an instant, then turned. Two troopers were standing next to a table six meters away, squared off in military oppugnate stances, each waiting for the other to make the first stupid move—which both had already done by standing to fight in the Jade Flower. Khadaji wondered who was on this shift—ah. As he watched, Dirisha moved smoothly through the crowded pub toward the two soldiers. Dirisha was a big woman, close to Khadaji’s own 183 cm and eighty-two kilos, but she didn’t look it because she was so well balanced. She had short, dark hair, a winning smile when she was happy—like now—and expert rankings in three class one martial arts. She was about twenty-eight T.S. and in a one-on-one, could probably take either Bork or Sleel, the other two bouncers.

  Dirisha reached the two men and slid between them, her back to the larger one. Khadaji strolled closer.

  “Fighting’s not too bright,” she said. “I mean, make a list: fucking, soak-toke, good wine or cold simshi and where does getting your face smashed fit in?”

  The soldier she was talking to was about eye-level with Dirisha and he was obviously angry. He wasn’t going to let go of his rage that easily. “Yeah? Well, I don’t think dick-nose over there can smash anything!”

  Dirisha’s voice got very quiet, and she smiled, her teeth bright against her dark chocolate skin. People strained to hear her. “I wasn’t talking about him hurting you, Deuce, I’m talking about me. You can sit and smoke your smoke or you can walk, but you can’t fight in here.” Her voice was even and there wasn’t a gram of bluff in it.

  The soldier seemed to wilt a little.

  Khadaji smiled. Dirisha could take the soldier without having to suck a deep breath and the man was perceptive enough to pick up on it, even if he’d never seen her in action. If he had, he would have sat as soon as she approached. He had to get one last shot in, though.

  “What about him?” He pointed at the man behind Dirisha.

  She didn’t bother to turn and look at the second soldier. “He’s got the same options you do, Deuce. So what say you just have a seat and work this out like preachlegals.” It was not a request.

  The tension seemed to drain away suddenly. The larger man behind Dirisha sat on his stool and reached for his mug of splash. The soldier facing Dirisha wiped at the back of his uniform collar with one hand and nodded. “Okay. We don’t want any trouble with the Flower, we can work it out later, maybe.”

  Dirisha’s smile broadened. “Good thinking, Deuce. Tell you what, the house buys the next round for this table, tell the server Dirisha okays it.”

  She turned and walked away quickly, in Khadaji’s direction. He smiled at her and she stopped. The pub noises picked back up around them.

  “Nice work.”

  She nodded. “For a second, it could have gone over and I would have had to thump him. You lose points when you have to thump them.”

  Khadaji nodded. He understood. He had spent much of the fourteen years after Maro studying various fighting disciplines and that had been a point in most of them: to have to use physical technique was a failure of sorts. An expert should be able to project enough ki so that a potential opponent would stop hostility. A real expert could defuse almost any fight situation simply by being there.

  “Ever give any thought to your future, Dirisha?”

  She shrugged. “I take it as it comes.”

  He thought about it for a few seconds. It was no riskier than a lot of other things he’d done. He said, “You ever hear of Renault?”

  “Backwater world in the Shin System,” she said. “I don’t know much about it.”

  “It would be a good place to be in three or four years,” Khadaji said, looking past her around the octagon. “Somebody there might make you an offer you’d find interesting.”

  The big woman looked at him carefully. “What kind of an offer?”

  He shrugged. “It might not happen. A lot of things could get in the way. Let’s just say if situations go as designed, Renault could be a place for you to stretch yourself a little.”

  “Um. Any particular place on Renault?”

  “There’s a small coastal town, Simplex-by-the-Sea.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “But how could I leave you, Emile? You need me here.”

  He smiled, recognizing the fugue in her statement. “I expect to be out of the rec-chem business pretty soon.”

  “And on Renault?”

  He sighed. “No. You won’t see Emile Khadaji on Renault.”

  She considered that, and apparently decided not to ask anything more. “I’d better get back to work,” she said.

  “Good idea. I need to check with Anjue and see how the crowd is building. Later.”

  He watched her move away. She walked with a smooth, rolling motion that bespoke her years of training and excellent physical conditioning. He didn’t really know Dirisha; she kept to herself, spent a lot of time working out in one of the local dojos, and had no lovers, male or female, that he knew of. But there was a strength in her beyond the physical, an essence of something deeper. She could be a piece of it, he felt.

  He walked to the main entrance of the pub, where Anjue and his three assistants were working the line.

  “Anjue. How is it
going?”

  “Ah, Emile, slow. I have only forty on my flat-screen, and three upranks have called on the com to say they are coming at seventeen.” He waved his hands in that typical gesture used by natives of Spandle—a kind of outward loop with each wrist. “The early darkness means a change in guard duty, so fewer troops are free and the eagle doesn’t fly for three days, so some are unlined, what can I say?”

  “Not to worry, Anjue. We get by.”

  Khadaji left and headed toward his private rooms in the basement. He stopped by the dispensing window for a moment to tell Butch. The man sat behind a three-centimeter-thick sheet of densecrystal set into a solid plastcrete wall. The drug room might be a tempting target for thieves and it was well protected. The doors were thick stainless steel with reaper locks, and nothing short of a vacuum bomb would dent the densecris window. Chem was purchased and delivered through the double drawers under the window.

  “I’m going to catch a little sleep, Butch. No calls for an hour or so.”

  “Copy, Chief.” His voice had a metallic ring through the speaker set into the wall over the window. “We’ll try to keep the Scum from takin’ over while you’re nappin’.”

  “Thanks, Butch, I appreciate that.”

  Chapter Three

  KHADAJI’S PRIVATE SPACE was a combination of office and living quarters. It was furnished simply—a desk and comp terminal, a few chairs, a foam-pad bed in one room; a shower, sink and bidet in the second room; a small kitchen in the third and final room. Simple living quarters—on the surface. What didn’t show was the hidden store box set under the floor of his desk, nor the tunnel under the refrigerator in the kitchen. He had dug the tunnel himself, using a “borrowed” cutalong he returned before anyone knew it was missing. It was a short, tight passage, leading from his kitchen into the housing of his receiving transformer in the alley behind the Jade Flower. There was just enough room for a careful man to stand inside the housing, between the ceramic insulators and high voltage grid of the transformer. A careful man could come up through the expanded metal grate over the floor inside the housing and wait until the alley was clear to leave. A careless man could not, for he would be dead, fried by the power circuits.

  Khadaji checked his chronometer. Almost seventeen.

  From the hidden store box, he took a set of black orthoskins, a pair of spetsdods and ammunition magazines for them, and a skinmask. This was going to be a city operation and even though it was dark, he didn’t want to be recognized. He dressed quickly, tabbing the orthoskins on, smoothing the skinmask over his face and ears and allowing the spetsdods to set on the backs of his hands. It took a few seconds for the artificial flesh backing the weapons to warm and mold to his own skin; once set, the spetsdods would be almost as much a part of him as his fingers. The weapons would not shift or move until he triggered the release.

  There were a lot more efficient weapons, he knew. Hand wands sent a fan-shaped pulse which could take half a dozen people out at a single strobe; explosive rocket or bullet throwers could blow through armor which would stop a spetsdod’s flechette; implosion bombs wiped away steel as if it were butter. But it had to be spetsdods. The choice had not been a hard one. Spetsdods were used by the military sometimes, but they were essentially civilian weapons, so that was a necessity. And a Spasm-loaded dart slinger did not kill, that was another point. Finally, a spetsdod required skill to use properly, more than wands or explosive guns or bombs. A man who went after targets in class two armor with a spetsdod was either very good or a fool. A miss and he would likely be dead. That part was as important as any of it, the skill needed. If it was going to be built to work, it had to be built right. He’d had years to think about it and the spetsdod was the right answer. It had taken him more years to become truly expert in the use of the flechette weapon. There were some better, perhaps, but that didn’t matter. He was good enough. He had been so far, at least.

  The spetsdods were ready. He found a set of spookeyes and slipped them on, pushed back on his forehead. He took a sublingual tablet and allowed it to dissolve under his tongue. The chemical had a long and complex name, but it was called Reflex by those who used it. It affected nerves, from peripheral to central nervous system, and its effect was simple enough: the drug speeded up reaction time. The effect varied from person to person, but in Khadaji’s case, he was able to move faster than a bacteria-augmented soldier-of-the-line, for short periods. There were some nasty drawbacks to Reflex—it required top physical conditioning to handle because it increased catabolism and metabolism and left the user exhausted afterward; it caused nightmares; it was addictive. Khadaji only used it when he was doing a particularly risky gambit. He would pay for it later.

  He checked the skinmask in the mirror, took his confounder from the box and snapped it into place on his belt. He took a deep breath and nodded at his image. There was one last item: a photon flare. He hooked it onto his belt. He was ready.

  His shoulders brushed the flexmac lining the walls of the tunnel as he crawled through it. Carefully, he lifted the matched pad covering the tunnel mouth and moved the expanded metal grate inside the transformer station. It was black inside the cover, with only a thin pattern of streetlight showing through the cooling slots next to the radiant fins over his head. He slid the spookeyes down and clicked them on. The place lit up, in that eerie green of multiply-augmented light. He replaced the pad and grate and stood quietly, listening.

  The first rush of Reflex vibrated through him, making him feel warm and slightly itchy. He wanted to move, to run and dance and jump—that was the drug singing to him, urging him to use his body, to do something—anything—fast and hard. But he held still, listening. After a moment, he moved to a slot in the door of the unit and peeped through it into the alley. Empty. No one home. He clicked the spook-eyes off.

  In a second, he was through the door and out, locking it with his thumbprint. He scuttled to the shadows next to the wall of the Jade Flower and flattened himself against the cool plastcrete. He would stay in the shadows for this one. He took a deep breath and moved off, feeling the Reflex dance in his muscles.

  The T-plex was brightly lit, a half-dozen big HT lamps overlapping their pools of daytime around the building. It was standard Confed architecture, squat and ugly, a prefab block of expanded hardfoam with carved door and windows. Right now, whoever was on electronic watch would be getting signals from Khadaji’s confounder and—if they were awake—wondering what the Doppler ghosts were fuzzing the screen. The confounder was the best the Confed could produce—it wasn’t even issued to these troops it was so new—and Khadaji had paid a small fortune for it less than a year ago. It was unlikely the simadam running the scopes would know what the problem was.

  The lights were something else, of course. The quad did have image intensification equipment equal to his own. With spookeyes lit, the quad could see an area framed only in starlight as if it were a bright afternoon. Shorting the lights out, therefore, should not be to his advantage.

  Khadaji grinned. The problem with the military mind was that it tended to be logical only to a point that satisfied it, but no further. The way to out-think the military was to carry its logic one step past.

  He hooked a simple timer-and-popper against the unshielded transformer and set the delay for twenty seconds. He scurried back, keeping to the shadows, until he was in front of the T-plex. The quad was alert and prowling; no virgins, these—they were crack troopers, all Sub-Lojts chosen for skill to form this special unit. The woman on the other side of the door they guarded—visible through the hard plastic window—was a Sub-Befalhavare, one of ten on planet. She commanded a thousand troopers and was, therefore, a valuable person. The Confed had done one intelligent thing with its military and that had been to clean up the old-style ranks found on most worlds. The organization had been streamlined for ground troops: four troopers made a quad, commanded by a Sub-Lojt; twenty-five quads formed a centplex, with a Lojtnant running the show; ten centplexes overseen by a
Sub-Befalhavare made a ten-kay unit; and the commander of ten thousand troopers was a full Befalhavare. That was the size of the unit on Greaves, a ten kay. The next rank was a Systems Marshal, an Over-Befalhavare, then the Supreme Commander of Confederation Ground Forces Himself. Only five ranks between a line trooper and the S.C.

  There was a loud pop and the HT lamps began to fade. Khadaji slid his spookeyes down and flicked them on at minimum, but kept his eyes closed. The intensified light of the dying lamps flashed brilliantly at his closed eyes.

  He heard one of the quad yell, “Amplifiers on!”

  Good. He was counting on their training. These four would be ready for the darkness by the time the last glimmer faded from the lamps.

  Khadaji opened his eyes as the light against them dimmed; he adjusted the spookeyes to compensate for the darkness. Green-on-green images came into ghostly focus. An eye-smiting glare poured from the window of the Sub-Befalhavare’s office and he looked away from it, concentrating on the soldiers. With full-intensification, spookeyes would amplify available light millions of times; the glow of a flickstick butt would seem a bonfire at close range.

  He had been in the shadows with only a little cover. That would effectively be gone, now that the light was only from the stars and the ambient city glow. He had to move quickly. And the timing had to be right. They all had to see him at the same time.

  “Hey!” Khadaji yelled.

  They were superb, the members of this quad. They spun as one, bringing their weapons up.

  Khadaji marked their positions in that instant; he also triggered the photon flare and tossed it toward them. He turned his head and squeezed his eyes shut tightly; even so, the light from the flare reflected from the walls beat upon his eyes through the lids. There was no time to think about what it did to the eyes of the quad. Khadaji ran at a right angle to his left, as fast as he could sprint.

  The quad was blind, but they were firing. A man’s voice began yelling orders over the sound of the .177s and their explosive bullets: “Toomie, take the left, Janie, center front! Jason, to the right!”