by Paul Collins
‘I’d think twice before doing that in future,’ she whispered in his ear.
The man squirmed. ‘She is my property!’ he gasped. ‘You do not interfere!’
Anneke pressed harder, digging the whip further into the man’s skin until his Adam’s apple bobbed. She released the whip and the man fell to his knees, gagging. ‘The kid’s no longer yours,’ she said.
Anneke went to the girl who was cowering on the floor, curled up tight so as to present the smallest area of flesh possible. Hunkering down beside her, Anneke stroked her hair.
‘It’s all right now. He isn’t going to hurt you. My name’s Anneke. I want you to come with me, okay?’
The girl risked a quick look at Anneke, then looked again, as if she couldn’t quite fit Anneke’s appearance into this place and time or indeed into her world at all.
‘It’s okay. I’ll protect you.’
The girl’s eyes suddenly widened and she ducked her head. Anneke had been expecting it. She flung herself sideways and spun, kicking out her left leg as she did so, sweeping the man off his feet. He had been holding a hunter’s knife. As he fell, he twisted round, his head smacking into the cobblestones.
Anneke picked up the knife. Noise at the entrance to the alleyway made her look up. Several people had gathered there. Ugly murmurs were starting up around her. Two men pushed their way through the small crowd. When they saw the comatose man and Anneke standing there with the knife they cried out, reaching for weapons in their tunics. Anneke didn’t wait to find out what kind.
She sprang at them, a blur of motion. She dropped one with a palm strike to his solar plexus, leaving him gasping for air on the ground, and disarmed the second man as his needler came whipping out. A moment later Anneke had the man’s weapon pointing at him. He made an odd sucking noise with his open mouth.
‘Back off,’ Anneke warned. The man took a stumbling step backwards. No one argued with a needler. Anneke jabbed a thumb at the comatose man. ‘He passed out. No stomach for fighting. If you want trouble, you’ve found it.’
The man shook his head slowly, his eyes not leaving hers.
Anneke returned to the girl’s side. ‘I’m taking the girl with me. Spoils of combat.’
The girl was still in shock and quaking with fear. Anneke picked her up bodily and got out fast, taking care not to turn her back on anyone. She still had the needler, a persuasive argument in her favour.
She found a medical centre for the girl and paid a stiff fee to see a doctor immediately. The doctor was a woman in her middle years with greying hair and a clucking maternal manner. The girl slowly uncurled her little fist of a body when she realised nobody wanted to hurt her. She now sat on the edge of the examining table. It was clear she had never been to a medic before, giggling when the doctor inserted an ultrasound scanner in her mouth.
After having performed a detailed examination of the girl and running her blood through the DNA scanner, the doctor concluded the girl was in good health – just malnourished, lacerated and bruised.
Anneke took the girl to her hotel, bathed her, ordered clothes from a local shop and had food sent in.
‘What’s your name?’ Anneke asked when the girl, now clean and wearing a neat outfit, had licked her plate clean.
The girl looked at Anneke with large almond-shaped eyes, the colour of polished jade. ‘Deema,’ she said. She seemed surprised that anyone would want to know her name. ‘Are you my new master?’
‘No,’ said Anneke, ‘I’m not.’
Deema’s eyes dropped and her lower lip quivered. Anneke reached out and gently lifted the child’s face so she could look into Deema’s eyes. ‘Listen to me, Deema. You don’t have a master anymore. You’re free. I’ll look after you until we can sort out a guardian for you.’
‘Can’t I stay with you?’
‘With me?’ Anneke stared at the girl, startled, not knowing what to say. Obviously, Anneke couldn’t take responsibility for a child. She had enough trouble looking after herself.
‘We’ll see. I think for now you need to get some sleep.’ She gave the girl a small dose of n-doze and put her in the main bed. When she was sure the girl was asleep she set up a protector field around the bed, one that only she could unlock. Satisfied, Anneke hit the streets. She still wanted to find Jinks Heller though he had probably already departed the station.
She reached dock 88, main bay, twenty minutes after Heller’s ship had left. She cursed softly, trying to decide what to do next. Maybe Mobus had more contacts.
As she emerged from the main bay two black-robed figures stepped in front of her. One raised his voice and shouted in a sing-song voice, ‘Bear witness, that on this day a challenge is made to one Anneke Longshadow who stands before me now.’ He repeated this three times then bowed to Anneke, handing her a parchment-like sheet. On it was the formal challenge from the Assassins’ Clan.
A security guard wandered up and Anneke handed him the parchment. He read it carefully, asked to see the assassins’ IDs, and then shrugged.
‘It’s legit, miss. Fully paid up. All nice and airtight. Says here you’re also known as Astrid Eleto?’
Anneke ignored the question. ‘They’re allowed to do this?’
He shrugged again. ‘They got kill-rights.’ He studied the parchment again. ‘Seems you owe them some stolen property, namely a slave child. That’s what they’re claimin’ anyhow. Yep, it’s all legal. Nothin’ I can do, miss. Good luck.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Anneke said, turning to the two cloaked men, ‘when do we … do it?’
‘As the target, you get to choose. Only it’s gotta be in the next twenty-four hours.’ They stared at her from under their hoods.
‘So any time starting from now?’ Anneke considered her options.
‘You got it.’
‘Okay,’ she said.
She struck like a snake, twist-snapping the neck of the man who had sung the challenge, and then she spun, pile-driving her foot into the throat of the other. Both flat-lined within six seconds.
‘Is that it?’ she asked the open-mouthed guard. ‘Can I go now?’
The guard blinked several times, then nodded slowly.
As Anneke walked off he finally found his voice. ‘Oh, miss?’
Anneke turned. ‘Yes?’ she asked, expecting a sudden change of heart.
‘About that stolen property …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, it’s yours now. You just inherited a girl.’
Anneke stared. It was her turn to be speechless.
Back at the hotel she found Deema sitting on the edge of the bed, wide awake and hyperventilating. Anneke voice-deactivated the stasis field and sat down next to her, putting an arm around her. The child flinched away instinctively.
‘It’s all right, Deema,’ Anneke crooned, stroking her hair. ‘I’m going to look after you.’ Even as she spoke the words Anneke knew it was true. She could hear Uncle Viktus’s voice in a recess of her brain: Life is messy, Anneke. So embrace it. Never walk away from responsibility. If you do, you’ll remain a perpetual child …
MAXIMUS was a marked man. He knew he was. If he’d appraised Lotang correctly, then as he sat in this out-of-the-way bar, his life was in jeopardy. He had no doubt that assassins were now targeting him, but not for immediate kill. Oh, no. Lotang would be more discreet than that. He assumed Maximus had ‘insurance’, which could embarrass Lotang if anything untoward happened to him. No. Right now, Lotang’s hired attack dogs were taking measurements of Maximus’s body heat, brain wave signature, physical dimensions, and other subtle parameters from which lethal precision weapons could be designed. They would already have his DNA from his visit to their headquarters.
Ah, what an age we live in, thought Maximus. The age of weapons designed to kill one specific human being.
What the attack dogs did not realise was that Maximus was sitting there solely for their benefit. The dermal reconstruction had caused his physical statistics to be altered significantly a
nd had activated an array of expensive devices to alter his brain wave signature, body temperature and internal bioscans. He had also shed false DNA traces in Lotang’s presence.
Maximus smiled as he sipped his spiced kaf. His fine-tuned nose detected a range of Arachnorian esthers. He filed away this piece of information. He imagined Quag chortling to himself and crowing to his master about how that dumb bastard ‘Nathaniel’ had sat in a bar for thirty-five minutes while they remote-scanned him! Dumb as a hunkie, he would say.
Lotang would not join in the mirth. His mercurial mind would analyse the data, then ask the pertinent question: why would ‘Nathaniel’ expose himself? This could create doubt in Lotang’s mind. He would, however, know that the neutralisers Maximus was wearing would have foiled any measurements made when Maximus visited him. Maximus wanted Lotang to know that he knew.
But there he was, relaxing, having some downtime. Letting his guard down. Or so they thought.
Suddenly he froze.
He forced himself to act naturally. Raising the steaming kaf cup to his lips, he blew on it softly, and then sipped the brew while he gazed across the rim of the cup at Anneke Longshadow.
The young girl she had come in with was emaciated and frail. They ordered meals and spiced kaf. Anneke glanced around at the other patrons, her eyes flicking from Maximus to an arguing husband and wife at the end of the bar. She smiled in recollection. Then she turned her focus to the girl.
Maximus breathed out. Anneke hadn’t penetrated his disguise; she was blissfully unaware that her archenemy was sitting only a few metres away. Maximus chuckled. This was an insane coincidence with galactic ramifications.
Discreetly, Maximus studied her. Seldom did a hunter see his prey going about its normal business. Maximus chided himself. He ought to finish his drink and get out of there. Rule number one of the predator’s game: never meet your prey in their territory – or any territory – if you’re unprepared. Still, he could not tear himself away from the bar. This was too good an opportunity to miss.
He watched how Anneke lifted her cup, how she held eating utensils, the order in which she used them. For Maximus, who made enemies readily, profiling opponents was essential. Usually missing from raw data was the minutiae of everyday-ness: the gestures that betrayed planetary and class origins, the body language that revealed profound psychological traits, the reactions and expressions that told unspoken stories.
Maximus was drunk on the data, glorying in the heady rush of information. Anneke was a true professional. It was evident in her body language, her dress, that she was impersonating a far less confident person. Someone perhaps who was compensating for her childhood inferiority, trying to prove herself to her parents. It was as though she had to be the best, no matter what. But Maximus wasn’t fooled for one second. Beneath that camouflage was an agent every bit as good as he would expect from her reputation.
Maximus finished his drink and sauntered back to his hotel. His mind was on Anneke, but he was also aware of Lotang’s attack dogs, never far away, still tracking and measuring him. Maximus speculated that later they would try to kill him, but their precision weapon would backfire. Quag would not be popular then. Maximus smiled, wondering how he could turn this situation to his advantage.
Locked in his hotel room Maximus ran a scan, ensuring no one had been there in his absence. He then turned his attention back to Anneke. Who was that child with her? What was their relationship? He would find out. Since the exporter’s attack on her had failed, and he wasn’t sure he could count on Lotang’s self-interest to deal with the RIM agent, he started to formulate a plan for her permanent removal.
There was also Lotang, but he had him well in hand.
Sighing, he shelved thoughts of Anneke and fetched a metal briefcase from the in-room security vault. Gazing down at the vials, he felt excitement course through him like electricity. Such innocent-looking things – and yet their contents could plunge the galaxy into chaos …
If he could find a way to harness their power.
But he would have to wait till he returned to civilisation. A backwater dump like Reema’s End was unlikely to have the highly specialised facilities he needed to analyse the macro-virus in colloidal suspension in the vials – much less establish its genetic fingerprint.
Then again, maybe he was wrong. Perhaps this place could provide him with interesting data after all. He would think about that. Meanwhile, he had another job to do.
Maximus’s thin lips compressed into a line of white as he suppressed the pain. When the operator finished with the recalcifier, he grunted. The operator, an elderly Reeman with tiny wisps of thin white hair, nodded, impressed.
‘No pain, no gain,’ he said. ‘You want a break?’
‘No breaks,’ Maximus said tightly, sweat beading his forehead. ‘No breaks. Just get on with it.’
‘You’re paying.’
Maximus’s eyes widened as the man selected another medical instrument of torture from a stainless steel tray. He had found the specialist through his network of informants, though none of them knew Maximus was the recipient of the information. He had asked for the best body renovator, and supplied pictures and the DNA of the source.
Renovators were different to dermal reconstructors. They could mimic living or dead people with a host of alterations – body weight, height, voice, eye colour, skin tone and more. Reconstructors were glorified makeover specialists; renovators were true artists. And the cost was astronomical.
After several hours of work, Maximus rose unsteadily to his feet, shaking with the fatigue and the body-memory of pain. White-faced and drawn, he gazed into the full-length mirror field activated on the wall.
The face of Quag stared back at him.
Maximus stepped cautiously into the street, his hood shadowing his face. His target was a hundred metres up the walkway, gazing into storefront windows. The fool had no idea he was being followed nor that the minutes he had left on this satellite were coming to an end.
Maximus hung back, pretending to study a café menu, but in reality he was studying his prey. Quag, who had stopped to admire shape-changing trinkets in a jeweller’s window, moved on, turning into a lane where most businesses were fronts for contraband.
Maximus kept him in sight. Fortunately, there was plenty of foot traffic, despite the late hour and the dimming of the orbital station’s internal lights, simulating night.
Suddenly Quag staggered, and then steadied himself. Maximus realised that he’d spent the evening drinking with friends, some of whom would be of interest to Lotang. It appeared as though Quag fraternised with members of a rival Company, Imperial Standard, Lotang’s arch rival. Somehow, Maximus doubted that any nascent Majoris Corporata had quelled the century-long feud that existed between these two corporations.
Quag moved from the lane into a maze of narrow access corridors no wider than ships’ passageways. Maximus’s retracer told him that Quag was heading in the direction of Lotang’s base. So much the better.
Maximus waited till Quag entered a dimly lit, crooked corridor. Then, moving like lightning, he was behind Quag, pulling out his needler. The man, though drunk and bleary-eyed, nevertheless sensed something. Turning, he lost his balance and crashed into a wall.
His eyes bulged as they focused on the needler that was pointed at his forehead.
‘I ain’t got no money!’ he squealed.
‘That’s good,’ said Maximus. ‘Because I don’t want any.’
‘W-w-what do yer want?’
Stepping into the light, Maximus threw back his hood. Quag flinched as he saw himself. Making a gesture that was so ancient that now few on this satellite would understand, he crossed himself.
Maximus laughed. ‘I want you, Quag. More to the point, I want to be you. Consider it a kind of flattery.’
The needler hissed.
The guards outside Lotang’s headquarters turned at the noise, then relaxed. Renada, in charge of the security squad for the first time, scowled. Wh
y did the fool have to get drunk on his watch? Now what was he supposed to do? He could ask others but he was boss tonight. If he was ever going to advance up the ranks, he needed to make his own decisions.
‘Rykis,’ he snapped. ‘Get that bastard inside! Be quick will you?!’
Rykis hid his grin. They all knew Renada was uneasy about being in charge. Why, only yesterday he’d been an affiliate. Then Pitkin, the former squad boss, had gotten himself killed in a duel over a comfort girl. Furious, Lotang had forbidden duelling.
Rykis nodded at one of his comrades to help him escort the drunken Quag to his quarters, where they tossed him unceremoniously on to his bed. By the time they left, Quag was snoring heavily.
Rykis laughed. ‘Boss won’t like this. Won’t like it one little bit.’
As soon as they were gone, Maximus sat up, studying his surroundings. Quag’s quarters were well furnished and gaudy, befitting the right-hand man of the boss. He even had a view window into starry space. It was a pity Quag would never gaze out of it again.
Maximus went to the sink, stuck his finger down his throat, and regurgitated several silvery capsules. He opened them with a tiny sonic device secreted in the artificial body pocket created by the body renovator. Then, with the contents laid out in front of him, he went to work.
Forty minutes later he stepped quietly into a narrow corridor, checking left and right for signs of life. At this hour, as he expected, he found none. Now he had to test the accuracy of his intelligence. Apparently Lotang’s real bedroom was situated three levels down, behind the galley. There were six decoy rooms. This was not where you’d look for the bedroom of an underworld king.
Maximus moved openly, with the kind of swagger the real Quag would have on his home turf. His plan was simple, yet bold. Why else would he bother with the elaborate disguise and the appalling pain of an accelerated renovation?