by Steve Perry
Cinch grabbed his carbine and circled around behind the shed while the popper continued its work. The drive shaft was too hard to be affected by this relatively low heat device, but the casing around it was vulnerable.
A minute later the melting material must have started dripping. The generator’s circuit breaker clicked and the unit’s high whine dropped to a groan, then a growl as it shut down. The shed went dark.
Cinch slipped his wolfears on in time to hear a voice from inside the shed: “–fucker! What the hell happened?”
A second voice said, “Obviously the power source has rnalfunctioned.”
“But we had a call corning in from the boss.”
“And we shall resume it when and if the power is restored. Take a flashlight and go attend to it.”
“”I ain’t no mechanic, I’m a guard.”
“We are going to sit here in the dark unable to answer M. Tuluk’s com unless somebody sees to the generator. Given that there are only two of us, it must be you or me, and for all we know it could be a burglar, so it’s your job.”
“Well, shit.”
Cinch laid his carbine on the ground and rolled his shoulders a little to loosen them. There were people who would use the carbine to whack the guard on the head, but that was a terrible way to treat a fine weapon. Heads were hard, you could crack the stock or something.
A flashlight would blind him if he used the spookeyes. The flare shield would kick in and stay on as long as there were too many lumens hitting the lenses, but the ears would help him locate the guard.
Only two of them, that was good.
He heard the man coming, tromping his way along, and the beam of the light splashed over the interior of the shack, some of it filtering through the blue Everlast. He shut the wolf ears off when the guard got to within a couple of meters.
“Shit, Doc,” the man yelled. “Looks like some kinda short, it’s all burned up, stinks like hell. I’m thinking major repair here–”
The guard shut up suddenly as Cinch slipped up behind him and snapped his right arm around the startled man’s neck, applying a pressure hold with his biceps and forearm to the carotid arteries.
The flow of blood to the guard’s brain was effectively shut off.
The man struggled for five seconds, tried to yell and managed a croak, then started to go limp. Cinch held on until he was sure the man was out cold, then let him fall.
“What was that last you said?” came the yell from inside the shack. “After the major repair part?”
Cinch grinned, plucked the guard’s weapons away and tossed them into the blueweed, then used the cuff tape he’d brought to bind the man’s hands and ankles. He wouldn’t be going anywhere immediately when he, woke up.
Cinch nodded at his work, then collected his carbine and went to meet the man inside.
Hello-o-o, Doc. What’s up?
* * *
“No response,” Lobang said.
“Damn. Damn! Threaten the engine, would you?”
“I got the throttle squeezed tight now, boss. Top speed.”
“Shit! It’s the ranger. He’s at the Twist shack.”
“I dunno, boss, maybe it’s just a coincidence or something.”
“Maybe if you had a curly tail and a snout you’d be a mud-rooting babi. It’s him, I know it. Get whoever you can get out there, now.”
Lobang opened his com and started talking, but Tuluk didn’t have a lot of hope. Most of his men were wandering around at the burst pipeline, just as the damned ranger had wanted. Maybe if they hurried they could catch him, but if they didn’t, they were going to have to find him, fast, before he could carry tales. And they were going to have to kill him. Even if that meant other rangers would come. He could dismantle the operation if he must; it would be a set-back but it was better than the alternative.
God damn the fucking Stellar Rangers!
* * *
“Wh–Who are you?”
“Evening. I’m Cinch Carsten, Stellar Rangers. And you?”
“Uh–uh, I–I’m, I’m Dr, Picobe. I–I’m in charge of blueweed operations.”
“And not a very good liar, either,” Cinch said. “Dr, Picobe, why would you need an armed guard here? Stealing blueweed wouldn’t be all that easy, now, would it?”
“l–we, that is to say, we are working on an experimental strain of the weed; it–it is potentially very valuable.”
“I see. And why might this strain of weed be so valuable?”
Picobe licked dry lips.
Cinch looked around. There was a bunch of chemistry stuff here, burners, tubes, some kind of reduction cooker, boxes of finely chopped and rendered weed.
“Dr. Picobe?”
“I–I am not at liberty to reveal my research. You understand.”
Cinch grinned. “Oh, I understand. I think perhaps you ought to come along with me where we can discuss this at length, Doctor.”
“Wh–Why? Why can’t we talk here?”
“I think we might have company coming who might interrupt our conversation. Come along.”
“I would rather not.”
“I’m afraid I must insist.” Cinch waved the carbine.
“This–This is kidnapping!”
“Not really. I’m exercising my authority as a ranger and arresting you.”
“What for?”
“Well, I don’t exactly know what the charge is yet, but I’m sure we’ll find something. Move.”
Picobe obeyed.
Cinch would have liked to have had a couple of hours to explore this place, to see if he could figure out what was going on. He moved to a rack of small vials and collected two of them, slipped them into his pocket as he marched Picobe out. The man would tell him what was going on, he was fairly certain he could persuade him of that. But they had to move out; he didn’t think Tuluk was stupid, and it wouldn’t take him long to realize the raj’s attack had been a trick. By the time he got his men here, Cinch wanted to be well away with his prize. A live one who would tell him everything he wanted to know.
TULUK’S limo fanned down into the clearing and he and Lobang jumped out of the vehicle before it settled fully onto the ground.
The area was lit by several portable HT lamps on spindly stands, a garish glow whose effect was lessened somewhat by swarms of flying insects hurling themselves against the lights. Four members of his security team had already arrived. A man carrying a plasma rifle ran over to them.
“What’s the situation here?” Lobanz demanded.
“We found Bretél taped up out by the power shack. The generator housing is partially melted, generator’s safetied out. Nobody else around, nothing missing, far as we can tell.”
Lobang led Tuluk to where the guard Bretél stood, rubbing his wrists. “What the hell happened?” Lobang asked.
Bretél shook his head. “I dunno. Me ‘n Picobe, we was in the shed and the power went out. I came out to check it, that’s all I remember. I woke up taped in the dark and the team found me when I started yelling.”
“Where is Picobe?” Tuluk said.
The man shook his head. “I dunno.”
“Who did it?”
“I didn’t see ‘im. I don’t even know what happened. My neck is sore.”
Tuluk turned to Lobang.The bigger man said, “Choke hold. He stopped the blood from getting to his brain–not that much gets there on a good day, I bet.”
“He has Picobe,” Tuluk said.
“Yeah. Looks like.”
Tuluk sighed. “Come on. We need to get the limo into the air.”
“Huh?”
“Just do it.”
Lobang- followed him to the limo, talking. “Maybe we can track him. He couldn’t have walked in so fast, you know. He’s got to have a flier of some kind–hopper, flitter, softwing, somethin
g.?
“Nobody saw it come in,” Tuluk said. “Why would we see it leaving?”
They reached the limo. Tuluk slid into the back and opened the Iockbox built into the seat in front of him. Lobang started the engine and took the limo up.
“Get to a thousand meters,” Tuluk said, as he found the transmitter he wanted. He tapped a code into the device using the tiny keyboard, checked the numbers and letters on the thing’s little screen to be certain it was the right one.
“How come?” Lobang said. “I mean, what good is going up to a thousand meters gonna do us? We’ll never see him if he’s hugging the ground.”
“Just fly the car, Lobang, and let me do the thinking.”
Lobang glanced into the rearview mirror, shrugged.
Tuluk stared into space. Once, when he’d been a young man of forty or so, he had gotten into a deal with a piratical dealer in pornographic sculpture. The man, Jenson Blanco Stone, had a double-dip racket going. First he would sell you a piece of erotica, usually obtained illegally or immorally or both, then he would blackmail you. Pay additional money or the word will get out that you collect such things. Naturally, he seldom stung the same client twice, but he was reputed to have made millions. This was revealed after his sudden and unexpected death from a fall off a balcony belonging to a mistress in Nanoc City’s famed Red Thighs District. Fortunately for his clients, the bulk of his blackmail material vanished somehow. Unfortunately for Stone, he had chosen to try his game on Manis Tuluk, who didn’t give a mouse turd if anybody knew he collected exotic erotica but who would not be held up by somebody he trusted, however slightly.
Tuluk had seldom enjoyed an expression on someone’s face as he had that on Stone’s as he shoved the blackmailer off the balcony.
Since then, Tuluk had taken pains to make sure those people who weren’t within his personal grasp and who might be able to cause him irreparable damage were unlikely to do so.
“How high are we?” he asked Lobang.
“About seven hundred meters–uh oh.”
“What?”
“I’m getting a yellow on my board here. Looks like something wrong with the left repellor equalizer. Maybe we better put back down and check it out, boss.”
“Never mind. We’re probably high enough. We don’t want to wait until he’s out of range.”
Before Lobang could ask what that meant, Tuluk pushed the transmit button on the device he held, tapped it quickly four times.
“Boss?”
“Go ahead and land. I’m done here.”
* * *
Cinch and his reluctant passenger sped through the dwindling night, ten meters high and at two hundred and fifty klicks an hour. The little flitter carried the two of them as easily as it had Cinch alone, and they were already fifty kilometers away from the blueweed shed where they’d met only fifteen minutes before.
“You okay back there?” Cinch yelled. He glanced at Picobe to be sure. The man was snugged into place with thigh straps and he clutched tightly at the passenger handle grips that jutted up in front of him.
Picobe said, “I don’t care for this! I want a legal!”
Cinch grinned. But before he could look back at the air ahead of him, Picobe screamed. He groaned, his face contorted in a way Cinch would not have thought possible, mouth twisted, tongue stuck out, eyes wide and bulging.
“Picobe?”
The man’s face went blank, just like that, and he slumped forward.
“Oh, shit!’ Cinch said.
* * *
At the rendezvous point, Cinch watched as the raj, triumphant in their night’s work, pulled the van to a halt. Pan jumped out, grinning, and came to where Cinch stood next to the flitter and the prone form of Picobe on the ground.
“Who’s your friend?”
“That was Picobe, one of Tuluk’s scientists.”
“Was?”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh, man. What happened?”
“I don’t know. Looks like he had a major stroke.”
The other members of the raj drifted over and Iooked at the corpse.
“I don’t think it was a natural death,” Cinch said. “That would be real coincidental, happening when it did.”
“So, what was it?”
“I don’t know for sure. You have a medic you can trust?”
“Yeah. Lu’prezo, from Dry Springs, he doesn’t have any love for TuIuk.”
“Let’s pay him a visit.”
They loaded the van, putting Picobe’s body in first. The raj avoided sitting close to it.
Cinch couldn’t blame them. For them, this had all been a game so far, nobody had gotten killed. Picobe had been murdered, though. Cinch was pretty sure of that. He didn’t know how, just yet, but he was going to find out.
* * *
“Now what?” Lobang asked. “The ranger’s got Picobe, we’re in trouble here.”
“Picobe won’t be telling any tales,” TuIuk said. “But this place has got to be clean to the quantum level. Have everything broken down. Count the full-strength Twist vials and get them to UIang. Tell him to stretch them because we are going to be a little behind schedule for the next delivery. Harvest the remaining Twist and bum it.”
“Jesus, boss–”
“Do it. I’ve got the genetic encoders in my flash safe, nobody can open it but me without frying themselves and the contents. We are going to put this on hold until things cool down.
“Find the ranger, whatever it takes. Bring him to me, alive. We have to find out what he’s said and to whom. After we know that, we’ll get rid of him.”
“Uh–”
“Listen, with the ranger dead and the operation cleaned out, nobody will be able to prove anything, even if they know what we had going, understand? A year from now, eighteen months, we start over.”
Lobang nodded. “Okay. What about Picobe?”
“Picobe is dead, idiot.”
Lobang blinked at him. “Dead? But–how?”
* * *
The medic was a gnarled old man, ninety-five if he was a day, and not bothered at all by the call from the raj in the early morning hours. “Hell,” he said, “I don’t sleep more than twenty minutes at a stretch anymore. Couple catnaps in the afternoon, couple at night, that’s all I need. Lemme see the body.”
Lu’prezo’s office was in front of his house in Dry Springs. The town was an hour or so away from anywhere, the population maybe a hundred people, to judge by the number of houses, assuming there were a couple in each structure.
They put Picobe on the exam table and the medic went to work.
“We’re not exactly state-of-the-art here,” Lu’prezo said, “but we have a few toys.”
He attached sensors to the body, wireless plugs and stikcaps, and went to his computer console. The unit was an old-style hand reader, and the medic waved his fingers at it expertly, giving it instructions. After a few moments, he nodded and turned to look at Cinch and Pan.
“Somebody blew his brain up,” Lu’prezo said.
Pan blinked. “Huh? How?”
“You warit to tell him or shall I?” the medic asked. Cinch sighed. “Nano-implants. A biochem explosive injected into or sometimes ingested by a victim, made specific for nervous tissue. It accretes in the cerebellum and cerebrum. Somebody gave Picobe the stuff, a no-sting popper or maybe in his tea or something; he probably never knew he had it. Hit it with a certain frequency electromagnetic pulse and the explosive triggers. Enough to destroy a lot of very sensitive tissue.”
“Christo!”
“Yeah. It is expensive, tricky to work with, hard to come by legally. I couldn’t afford to buy it if I saved all my salary for three years. But it is perfect insurance for somebody who wants to make sure the recipient doesn’t go telling tales.”
“Tuluk,” Pan said.”
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“Yeah. Picobe knew too much to be allowed to speak of it,” Cinch said.
“He killed him, just like that.”
“Yeah. It’s getting really ugly.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it. He’s got something he doesn’t want us to know about.”
“What? What could be so valuable?”
Cinch pulled the two small vials he had collected at the blueweed shack. “We’re going to find out. Doc, you have a chem scanner?”
“What do look like, a witch doctor? Of course I have a scanner. It might not be good enough for the whites at a big medical center but it will sniff out just about anything anybody out here might be taking. What are you talking about here?”
Cinch waved the vials at the medic. “These.”
He looked at Pan. “Let’s see if we can find out what Tuluk has killed to keep hidden.”
* * *
But before the medic could run the test, Cinch’s com cheeped at him. Great, just what he needed.
“Yes?”
“Ranger, this is Gus Kohl. It’s Baji. She’s gone.”
Cinch stared at the com.
Damn. It never rained but it fucking poured.
GIVEN WHAT he’d seen about Baji’s behavior, Cinch wasn’t all that alarmed; Pan, on the other hand, appeared to be disturbed greatly by her sudden disappearance.
“We’ve got to go find her!” he said.
Cinch looked at him. “It’s a big planet. Where would you suggest we start looking? The two of us are supposed to crisscross the whole world and do that? Call her name?” He was a little irritated with Baji at the moment. It came out in his voice.
Pan ignored the sarcasm. “Town, for one, Maybe she was kidnapped by Tuluk!”