“Huh,” said Nate. He glanced forward, taking in the cityscape running past them. “How we doing, El?”
“Peachy, Cap. Everyone wants you dead. I think that includes everyone on this ship, too.” She didn’t turn around. “You said this was a milk run. While I agree we’re doing our fair share of running, there’s no fucking milk.”
“The plan,” said Kohl. “The plan needs you to leave me in the Bloom by myself.”
“Huh,” said Nate again. “Any particular reason you want to go up against a gang by yourself? You’re already half-crippled.”
“You’re all the way crippled,” said Kohl. He frowned. “I mean, the hand. Anyway. This is personal business.” Nate gave him a long stare, which would have been full of meaning if Kohl was someone else. As it was, Kohl was tired, pissed off, hungry, thirsty, and angry. With that many dials in the red on his console, his patience was running on empty. “Look,” he said. “I can see you’re about to break into some kind of spiel. Best save that for the people who still have fucks to give.”
“No problem,” said Nate. He turned back to his Helm. “El?”
“Cap.”
“How far?”
“Forty seconds,” she said. Kohl liked the way she talked, all professionalism and crisp tones. He figured maybe she looked all right too, and under different circumstances he might try a play. He’d want to make sure both his arms worked first though. “I’m getting chatter from the local boys. Seems they want us to set down and prepare to be boarded.”
“What did you tell ‘em?” said Nate.
“Go fuck ‘emselves,” she said. “I took a little initiative with that one.”
“Good,” said Nate. “I want you to core a hole in the roof, just like we discussed. I’ll toss Kohl through the hole, then we’re punching the city limits.”
“Copy that,” she said. “Delivery of one worthless package, coming up.”
Kohl watched the holo in the middle of the flight deck as they approached the Sugar Bloom. The ship had all kinds of tech on it that didn’t look in any way civilian. Civilian ships didn’t paint their targets with RADAR and LIDAR, taking a peak inside and counting the bodies. This ship did, the holo alight with a wireframe of the Bloom, location of people inside, and the skeleton of an interior map. A piece of wall on the exterior flashed red, a room inside empty of people. “There,” said El. “I’ll put a hole there,” and she looked back at Kohl, squinting a moment, “about two by two meters.”
“You’re up,” said Nate. “Last chance.”
“Nah,” said Kohl. He wished he’d asked if there was underwear going spare on this ship as he adjusted his pants again. “Let’s go.”
• • •
When Kohl jumped out of the Tyche’s cargo airlock, something twinged in his back and he almost didn’t make it. Fingers that already hurt scrabbled at the still-hot edges of the hole punched right through the ceramicrete exterior of the Bloom. His plasma carbine tumbled away, clattering on the street below. A rush of heat and noise, and the Tyche was gone, drives bright against the sky as she flew. Kohl pulled himself inside the Bloom, taking stock.
The room he found himself in was a ruin. The floor’s rich shag pile was matted. There was a bunch of kindling that might have been a bed. Everything was wet, because the fire suppression system — this one using ol’ fashioned water — had kicked in, no doubt because tungsten rain from PDC cannons was hot as hell. There were no bodies. And nothing that looked like a blaster.
Still, with the pain meds inside him, he felt like a blaster would be overkill for a little roach like Dale/Bevan. He started towards the door, and made about five paces before the floor gave way underneath him. Kohl tried to arrest his fall on something, anything, but everything within clawing range was descending with him. He landed in a shower of dust the next level down. Screams accompanied his landing, two working girls in here in process with a customer. The room was full of the usual finery, silks, and a bed, currently in use. He paused, taking in the sights, then shook himself. Later. You’ve got a job to do. Personal business. “Say,” he said. The two girls were beside a man on the bed, a middle-aged guy who looked like he was about to piss himself. “Where are this guy’s clothes?”
One woman pointed to a closet, which Kohl opened. Inside, clothes were hung on a rack with care. He pulled them out, tossing them to the ground. There. A belt with a small blaster. He pulled the blaster out, checking the charge. The blaster was the kind you could buy at any dilettante’s store, all show and no go. Shiny metal. Short barrel, tiny cartridge. It’d have to do. It wouldn’t be anything like what he’d dropped on the street outside, but it was better than words or fists.
Kohl gave a nod to the bed’s occupants, then let himself out. A house guard, some kind of ridiculous beige armor with goddamn tassles on the shoulders, was running up the stairs. He had a taser out, looking like he meant to use it, and Kohl had already been tased once today. He leveled the blaster and fired, the small weapon giving an unsatisfactory discharge fzzzt-crack. Despite the lack of noise and brilliance, it did its job, the house guard slamming back against the wall and then tumbling below, his body in flames.
Down seemed to be the order of the day. Kohl stood at the top of the stairs, the smell of charred flesh rising with the smoke from below. The fire suppression systems on this floor kicked in, dousing the rich pile carpet with water. It also doused Kohl with water, which didn’t improve his mood. His pants stuck to his legs, and the whole setup rode up the crack of his ass, which pretty much flatlined any positivity in his life. Kohl checked the little blaster again, surprised at the single shot having sucked a quarter of its charge away. He descended the stairs, carpet squelching under his boots.
Blaster fire crackled, turning the bannister railing into wooden splinters. Kohl tossed himself aside, slipped, and then fell the rest of the way down. Compared to what had happened earlier in the day, it didn’t hurt too bad, but it didn’t hurt good either. The small blaster slipped from his hand on the way down, and in between his view of earth/sky/earth/sky he saw it arc up, and away. While he was falling, whoever was firing at him kept up the hard work, but missed every shot, pieces of railing and carpet blowing apart in Kohl’s wake.
He landed on his back at the foot of the stairs. Another house guard stood ready, blaster pointed at Kohl. The little blaster landed a couple meters away, discharging a bolt of plasma into the guard’s side. Kohl was sprayed with burning human chunks, quickly doused by the fire suppression system.
As Kohl lay on the ground catching his breath, he thought, that was lucky. A man like you doesn’t get luck like that. Three strokes, if we’re keeping score. First up, you slipped and didn’t get shot. Second, that pissant blaster managed the luckiest hoop shot in the universe, nothing but net without a hand on the trigger. And third, that guard dropped a real blaster you can use.
Kohl eased himself upright with a sigh that had a little too much groan in it. His clothes leaked water as he retrieved the guard’s blaster. A couple more levels down and he’d be at the front desk. The front desk was where he’d last seen that asshole Dale/Bevan.
Squelch, squelch. His boots kept his feet dry, small mercies and all, but the carpet was sodden. A woman — a worker, if her minimal clothing was any sign — burst out of a room on this floor, took sight of him, and ducked back inside. Kohl walked down the next flight of steps, and then the next. He reached the main foyer, lights off. Last time he’d been here, sure, there had been mood lighting, but this went well beyond that. Kohl plastered his back to a wall, trying to minimize his profile. Being a silhouette was the same thing as being a target.
The low glow of an empty holo stage at the front desk was the only illumination. No sign of any people, aside from the body stretched out on the floor. Looked like a customer, blaster in hand. Might have got uppity when the action started, and someone like Dale/Bevan had put him down. Kohl cleared his throat. “Dale?”
“It’s Bevan.”
“
I don’t give a fuck,” said Kohl. He crept further forward, keeping his back to the wall. “I want the case.”
“I want my ten million coins,” said Dale/Bevan. “It’s nice to want things.”
That made Kohl pause. People kept talking about these vast sums of money like they were realistic goals. “Ten million?”
“For the Engineer,” said Dale/Bevan. His voice sounded like it was coming from behind the front desk, so Kohl tacked to a new wind and started in that direction. “The Engineer owes the Republic a lot of coins. Do you like cash, Kohl?”
“I like coins well enough,” said Kohl. Asshole was definitely behind the front desk. Kohl readied his blaster, charge lights glowing a solid, comforting green. “I don’t like people taking my stuff and shooting at me, though.”
“Here’s the deal,” said Dale/Bevan. “You get us the Engineer, you can have your case back.”
“Why does everyone think I have access to this Engineer?” said Kohl. “That fucker Plastic Wrap thought I had access to her as well.”
“Plastic Wrap?” There was a pause. “Doesn’t matter. You don’t know?”
“No fucking clue,” admitted Kohl.
“She’s the Engineer aboard the Tyche,” said Dale/Bevan. “The ship that Captain Chevell owns. A free trader. Blew out of Triton Station with a fugitive aboard. Now, it could be a hell of a mix-up. The ship that left Triton Station was a common enough design. Old war heavy lifter. No transponder. So there’s no way to be sure. But if that Engineer shows her face on a crust? October Kohl, there’s a hell of a bounty.”
Kohl paused in his approach to the front desk. He was a couple meters away, and that couple meters could wait while his brain processed a few things. Life was a jumbled mess, and Kohl admitted he didn’t handle confusion well. “You’re saying if I bring you this Engineer, you’ll give me the case?”
“That’s the deal,” said Dale/Bevan. “You give us the Engineer, you get the case back. The case means the Yakuza won’t be a monkey on your back.”
The gears in Kohl’s head tried to whir, but things were sludgy on account of the day he’d had. “You want to blackmail me into capturing a person for you?”
“Blackmail is a harsh word.”
It was, but a harsher outcome was turning over someone who’d saved Kohl’s ass from a torture chamber. The ship had come because the Engineer had said where to look. She didn’t know Kohl, but that didn’t stop him from owing her one, much as she was a criminal, and had caused him a powerful world of hurt today. The sludge moved around and around Kohl’s mind, no clear path forward.
When in doubt, shoot an asshole. A mantra that had served Kohl well. He stepped around the corner of the front desk, seeing Dale/Bevan crouched on the ground. The gloom made details hard to pick out, so Kohl went for a center mass shot, blowing pieces of the Bulldog across the floor. Kohl frowned. Two problems. No case — Dale/Bevan wasn’t with the Mithril — and the man had looked pretty surprised before Kohl shot him. Kohl’s brain tried to pry the lid off that, working with of course he was surprised, you shot him warring with surprise says he expected something else to happen.
Well, fuck. All of that was secondary to finding the case. Not a problem yet, but Kohl would need to locate it. At least he had one less problem with that faux Irish clown gone.
There was a door set behind the front desk, a red light solid on the lock. Kohl rooted through Dale/Bevan’s remains, looking for an access card, but coming up empty. The Bloom was a higher class place though, and people often had that kind of thing under their skin. Dale/Bevan looked like a right-hander. Kohl fetched the remains of the man’s right arm, ignoring the charred, smoldering stump, and held it up to the access reader. The security light on the door blinked from red, to red, to red, and then to green with a soft chime. Kohl dropped the limb, pushing the door open with his shoulder — damn bicep. He let his blaster nose the way ahead, bright light seeping out to pool at his ankles.
“Freeze, motherfucker.” There was a way the Irish said motherfucker that made the word sound special, full of meaning and substance. Kohl froze. The voice belonged to Clea, who was inside a small office, behind a desk, blaster poking over the top. Behind Clea, there was a high-end coffee machine, all electronics and readouts. Next to that was Kohl’s case, carbon scored but otherwise no worse for wear.
“Uh,” said Kohl. His brain was still trying to move on about ten percent of the reaction mass it needed to turn, but he thought, why is she hiding behind a desk? Desk won’t do shit against a blaster.
“I said don’t move,” said Clea.
“No,” said Kohl. “You said freeze. You said—”
“I know what I fucking said,” said Clea. She wasn’t providing much of a target for Kohl. He could see more of her blaster than her head. With his best sidearm he might have made the shot, but with the borrowed blaster the proposition was iffy. Kohl wondered why he didn’t just shoot through the desk. That seemed the simple path, but his fingers felt weak. “Just fucking stay there.”
“Okay.” Kohl closed his eyes for a second, because he felt tired, and he figured that closing his eyes wasn’t moving. After a couple heartbeats, he opened them again and said, “I’m confused.”
“About what? About the case, and what’s in it? About the bounty, and all the might of the Republic behind it? About how my partner came to be dead at your feet?” Kohl winced a little at partner. “What about the starship you blew a hole in my business with? That confusing you? Or is it working with the Yak that’s got you in a spin?”
“That’s a lot of questions.” Kohl thought it through. “Yeah, all of that, but something else too.” She narrowed her eyes at him, but didn’t shoot him so he continued. “I’m confused about why you haven’t gunned me down.”
“Oh, that,” said Clea. “I need a ride.”
“A ride,” repeated Kohl.
“Yes, a ride,” said Clea. “Off this rock, and off this world.”
“You could buy a ticket,” suggested Kohl. “It’s what regular people do.”
“Do I look like regular people?” she screamed at him, gesturing with the blaster. “I’m wanted on twenty worlds! I can’t just buy a ticket like you’d buy an ice cream. There’s permits to be forged. Palms to grease. And here you are, with a ready-made starship.”
“Hmm,” said Kohl. “But, why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to get off this world?” said Kohl. “I mean, being wanted here is as bad as being wanted elsewhere.” He leaned against the door, feeling more tired than was useful at a time like this. A bunch of her questions whirled around in his head, and with a click he thought might have been audible outside his skull, he said, “Huh.”
“That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“No, I’ve worked it out,” said Kohl. “The Yak know you’ve got the case. You want to get away from the Yak. The Republic think you’ve got the Engineer. You want to get away from the Republic. The only people you don’t want to get away from are the people with the Engineer, who also need the case. Right?”
“Could be,” she said. Her tone was evasive, which rang green across the board to Kohl’s logic.
“Okay,” said Kohl. “Let’s go.”
“You’ll give me a ride?” she said, standing.
Kohl shot her with the blaster, the plasma going right through her to destroy the coffee machine behind her. The slap-slop of what used to be a person falling to the ground was lost over the hiss of escaping steam from the dying machine. “No,” said Kohl. “It’s not my ship.” He stepped around her remains, finding what he expected: a small device on the ground. It was a sphere about the size of a baseball, with fine mesh like a speaker covering it. Devices like that could be used to deploy toxins into the air. Clea and Dale/Bevan would have taken an anti-toxin before deployment.
No wonder that asshole Dale/Bevan was so surprised when Kohl shot him. Kohl would put a stack of coins as high as he was on the gas released by the sphere
being a compliance drug. Something to make him sluggish. Malleable. He blasted the sphere into pieces of burning plastic and melted metal, then grabbed the case. He wiped the worst of the gore off it, then went to find a ride. Kohl hoped that by the time he made it off this rock the drug wore off. He hoped no one would ask him to do something he didn’t want to do before then. Kohl also hoped his blaster had enough of a charge, because the day didn’t feel over yet.
• • •
When up was fucked, the best way to go was down. Kohl hammered on the elevator controls until the stupid machinery responded, bringing a car to the foyer. He stepped inside, punching basement on the panel control. His finger left a bloody smear against the polished elegance of the console.
The car descended, and Kohl closed his eyes for a second. He had the case tucked under his bad arm, blaster still held ready in his good arm. When the chime from the elevator sounded, Kohl opened his eyes about the same speed as the elevator doors opened. Outside the elevator stood a guard, who Kohl shot on general principle, because letting him open his mouth wouldn’t end well. Stepping over the burning remains, he looked around. Ceramicrete. Cleaned, well-maintained: a customer parking facility for air and ground cars.
He checked around for anything that might open a vehicle, but no luck. Most of the machinery around here would be biometrically controlled. Best he could hope for was a cascade failure in security. Someone with an older vehicle that still used iris recognition. That someone then being arrogant enough to get someone else to park his vehicle. That auxiliary person being a house guard, whose eyeball would be registered with the vehicle’s security systems. Not that parking a vehicle was hard, but if you were the kind of asshole who didn’t want to get your leather shoes dirty in the garage, you’d skip that step. Hell, Kohl didn’t mind. People like that paid people like him to keep their things safe.
Tyche's Fury Page 5