by Paul Collins
The only weak spot in his scheme was not knowing whether Quag was trusted enough to know which bedroom was the real one. Given this unforgivable lapse in his intel, Maximus decided to play it both ways.
He would move to the area adjacent to three of the most likely bedrooms and start the ball rolling. He hoped that audacity and confusion would do the rest. Fortunately, he did not need to come in actual contact with Lotang. As close as two metres would be sufficient.
What Lotang did not know was that, despite his array of poison snoopers and sniffers, advanced molecular DNA scrutinisers, and human food tasters, he had already been poisoned. Half-poisoned, anyway.
And that was where Maximus’s genius showed its true calibre. On his first visit to Lotang’s headquarters he had seen how paranoid the Quesadan boss had become. Even the butler that directed the personal service robotics wore a stun-proof jumpsuit under his holo-enhanced uniform. Poison was the weapon of choice of corporate assassins, so Lotang was right to be paranoid. But this had presented Maximus with a problem: how to get a co-dependency poison into Lotang’s system?
Any genuine poison would be detected by Lotang’s defences. But then in a crystalline moment of pure insight, Maximus had seen the way. A part poison. A poison that was not a poison until it met other components.
The memory cube contained the first part of the poison, a harmless viroid, similar to the common cold virus; it would have transferred itself to Lotang when he handled it. Quag would also have been infected as was Maximus himself, only he had taken a tailored anti-viral, which had unzipped the viroid’s DNA structure.
Now, hopefully in a few minutes’ time, Maximus would introduce the second part of the poison into Lotang’s lungs. From there it would encounter the viroid and start assembling the complex molecule slave narcotic. A drug that would compel Lotang to take orders from a new master. A hardwired backdoor brain-hack.
By this time tomorrow Maximus would be in charge of Quesada, the most powerful Company in the galaxy.
Maximus cursed himself. He was crouched in a shadowed doorway clutching his bloody hand, listening for sounds of pursuit. This was Quesadan territory. Soon the hue and cry would awaken the locals. Since their loyalty was in no doubt, Maximus had to get out of there. Fast.
It was hard to say why his plan had failed.
He had reached the desired point near the three bedrooms, being closest to the galley. Then he’d taken out his remote control and pressed its switch. In the distance, he heard a muffled explosion, followed by two more in quick succession. Alarms blared. Pneumatic doors snapped open and sleepy-faced men peered out.
‘This way!’ Maximus yelled. ‘There’s been a break-in!’ Other men, pulling on trousers and boots and fumbling for weapons, took up the call. Maximus then activated more explosions, a couple of smoke bombs and some mild nerve-gas grenades. In no time the corridors were in pandemonium.
Quag’s comm link erupted. It was Lotang. ‘What the hell is going on out there?’
Maximus explained that a hit squad from Imperial Standard had downed part of the defence perimeter and penetrated two attack teams. He recommended Lotang evacuate immediately.
‘Where are they now?’
‘Sector Red. Moving inbound and starboard.’
That meant the area where Quag was, was relatively safe. He wanted to encourage Lotang …
‘I’m coming out. Form a protection detail.’
Moments later Lotang emerged from a small unlit corridor that wasn’t the galley bedroom. Maximus was surprised. His intel had been wrong. Intel was lies within lies within lies, and occasionally a kernel of truth if you knew what to look for. Somehow Quag had convincingly lied.
‘Your orders, sir?’ he snapped.
Lotang gave him an odd look. Bad. Maximus had obviously messed up. Better do it now. Maximus raised a hand, finger out, expelling the toxin. Lotang saw his move. His eyes widened, then he suddenly dived aside, yelling orders.
‘Kill Quag! Now!’
Maximus had no chance to finish what he had started; he froze, then turned and ran. Damnation! How had Lotang spotted him? He knew his renovation was perfect, knew his voice was an exact duplicate of Quag’s. Maybe there was a personal code between them.
But he couldn’t worry about that now.
Plunging into a side corridor, he detonated a series of micro stun bombs laced with narcotic spray. Shoving two filters into his nostrils, he ran on. Suddenly two men appeared ahead, guns raised. Maximus dived to the floor, firing. His needler spat, catching the two men full on. They died writhing in pain.
Maximus sprang up and kept going. He needed distance, lots of distance. Hitting a junction, he turned right, took the next left, the right after that, then three lefts in a row. He’d memorised Lotang’s layout, using a memory tattoo imprinted on his neural augments. The upside was that he knew this place like the back of his hand. The downside, he’d still know it eighty or a hundred years from now.
He reached a bend, skidded to a stop, peered around. Checkpoint. Boldness, now was the time for boldness. He swaggered out into full view, calling out the code words. The two men on the checkpoint stared at him.
They knew something was up, but knowing wasn’t the same as believing.
‘Quag?’ one of them said.
‘Who else didja think it was? Me ruddy ghost?’
The other man, quieter, raised a gun. ‘Hold it there, Quag. We got some kind of order. Said you had to be stopped. Said you’d gone renegade. That true, Quag?’
‘Damnation, those orders are from them Imperial bastards! Don’t ya see what their game is? Make us turn on each other. Do their murderin’ for them. You gonna buy them lies?’
The man’s gun wavered. By this time Maximus was only three metres away.
‘Orders is orders, Quag. You know that.’
‘Right you are,’ said Maximus as he tossed a thumb-sized paralysis grenade.
This close, it caught him, too, but he’d trained. Training enabled him to ride the numbing effects of the grenade, but it still made his body feel like lead.
As the two men fell, he moved past them slowly as if wading through thick mud. It took all of his willpower to keep chanting the neutralising phrases planted deep in his subconscious.
They worked. Just.
He reached the heavy bulkhead pressure door, undogged it and yanked it open. He lifted his legs, each like a bag of lead shot, and limped through. An alarm sounded, then the door snapped shut.
Just then the paralysis dispersed, and Maximus felt a burst of pain rip through his hand. He looked down. Two fingers of his right hand were caught in the door’s seal, crushed, oozing blood.
He was trapped. Try as he might he could not get the door open nor release his fingers. Sweat dripped from his heaving chest. He fought to remain conscious.
‘Breathe, Maximus,’ he hissed at himself. ‘Breathe, dammit!’
After several deep breaths his nerves steadied. Lotang’s forces would be there in moments. Drastic situations needed drastic solutions. Reaching down to his trouser leg, he lifted the cuff and drew out a laser knife. Clenching his teeth, he sliced through the mangled fingers. The pain blazed, bright as plasma exhaust. Thrusting the mutilated hand deep into his pocket, he stuck a small plastic button to the open the door, and then fled.
Thirty seconds later there was a deep, booming explosion behind him. His blood and fingers – and their distinctive DNA – had been reduced to a cloud of ionised gas.
As the echoes died behind him Maximus cursed himself again. He had made it out alive; that was something. But he had failed to complete his plan.
All he had needed to do was sneeze.
ANNEKE led Deema into the bar and took a seat where she could watch both the door and the patrons. A waiter came over to take their order.
Once the local spiced kaf arrived she let her eyes drift across the room. This was just a formality. She had performed a Fast Holistic Assessment the moment she walked through the door. By the time she
was seated she knew how many people were in the bar, along with their sex, age, body weight and level of fitness, and had analysed their aggressiveness, relationships and personality types. The big guy at the far end of the bar was left-handed and favoured a straight-up confrontation. The thin, sharp-looking youth was pure slime. Given the chance he would use tricks to avoid head-on collisions.
Now she scanned a download of the local database directory. Most of the locals did not rate a mention on Reema’s End’s records. The automatic program stored in her neural jack flashed a visual overlay over the slimy youth. He had earned a record with the local authorities.
As useful as Anneke’s assessment was, she was barely aware of it. It was as much a part of her as breathing.
She pretended some casual curiosity towards her bar neighbours, noting the husband and wife having the argument. She knew immediately they were not married but were trained agents. A moment later she identified their surveillance target.
The thin youth.
She raised the kaf to her lips. The aroma was heavenly. She closed her eyes, as if in ecstasy. In reality, she was flexing her iris overlay and ramping up the magnification. Now she saw what her intuition had already told her.
This was her mole.
This was the man she had chased into the sewers. The fragment of data had been correct; he was on Reema’s End. The disguise was only to be expected. A lump rose in her throat as she recalled Uncle Viktus’s blood-smeared body, his mouth gasping for breath like a beached fish.
Anneke straightened. This was not the time or place to pay out her blood debt. Though if Deema had not been here …
But Deema was here, and she had experienced enough terror in her short life.
Anneke took a deep mental breath. Okay. He knows me but he doesn’t know I know him. Good. Now who exactly are the fake husband and wife?
Two freelancers perhaps. Quesadans? It was hard to tell, and possibly irrelevant at this point.
Anneke frowned inwardly. On the surface she was giving her attention to the food that had just arrived and to Deema’s question about the meal on her plate. The mole should have known his cover was blown. It did not add up – and then Anneke noticed that the mole had set up his posture and profile to reflect a surveillance point off to his left, somewhere across the street. Got it, she thought. The hover van. Expensive vehicles, hover vans. They used the lightest and strongest materials, the most powerful energy storage devices and optimised computer control systems to give them manoeuvrability and stability. They had ejection chutes, parachutes and expanding sponge-envelopes. Someone important was out there watching him.
Well, well, well. More players. The game is getting crowded. The watchers in the van had to be Lotang’s goons. Fraddo’s intel had placed the mole at Lotang’s base three days earlier. Name, Nathaniel Brown.
That in itself was interesting.
Quesada had to be at the heart of the Majoris Corporata and the mole was meeting their top man, Lob Lotang, CEO and Chairman of the cartel.
Curiouser and curiouser.
You dig into a molehill and you uncover a galactic conspiracy. Great. Just what every girl needs.
A short time later the mole stood up and left. If Fraddo’s intel was correct, the mole was staying at the Cascade Hotel, a six-star place over on Hyministra.
Next question. Were any of these parties aware of her? Was this an elaborate set up? Had she been lured to this particular bar?
It was possible. There were ways to do it; recoil subsonics could be set up at intersections, keyed to the neural signature of the target, and hey presto! The target unknowingly turns left where you want them to turn left, right here, another left there. And then a reverse subsonic, an invitor field, and the target walks into the bar of your choice and sits down. It could be done, yet it was hellishly difficult to get such a perfectly detailed neural profile.
So, it was unlikely.
Anneke finished her meal, watched the couple leave, then she and Deema left.
That evening as Deema slept Anneke set to work on a subsonic neutraliser, wiring the nano-circuitry with a tiny set of micro-miniature waldoes she had brought in her kit. Perhaps she was being paranoid, but she wanted to make sure any decisions she made were her own.
Presently she looked up from the desk where she was working and watched the sleeping girl. Deema had cried out and raised a hand, as if warding off something.
Anneke shook her head, wondering whether she knew what she was doing.
The day before she had sent an anonymous enquiry to RIM Registrations with a copy of the girl’s fingerprints, retinal scans and DNA profile. She had not expected to get a hit. The galaxy was a big place and a lot of worlds never bothered to register their populations. Some refused to, on principle. If Deema had been born in the Cygnus Sector, as seemed likely, there was little chance of learning her true identity or whether her parents were alive.
But Anneke had to try.
Until then, the girl was her responsibility. It was a scary thought, like suddenly having a little sister …
Anneke frowned and glanced over at Deema once more. Maybe that was not so bad, she thought. Maybe having a sister was like having a family.
Family.
She shook the word from her head. Some words were dangerous. They made her feel unbearably alone and tiny. She went back to her wiring. An hour later, after checking on Deema, she went to bed.
When she awoke the girl was gone. In her place was a note.
Go to Gizmo’s.
The Herqurl Sector of Reema’s End was a notorious domain of black marketeers, thieves and other galactic dregs. All this on an asteroid-sized station that was itself the symbol of darkness and deviousness in the galaxy.
Anneke found Gizmo’s without much trouble. Every street kid and beggar knew of it, though they spoke of it nervously.
It had to be the mole. After finding the note, Anneke had raged uselessly, swearing vengeance. Still, hate would not serve her now. She knew that going to Gizmo’s might be a trap, intended to kill her, but that made no sense. Deema’s kidnapper could have done that in her room. Unless …
Unless whoever had taken Deema, had set off a delayed command in her neocortex. The hotel room had not been forced, nor had it been entered. Anneke’s sensors had also picked up the faintest trace of a neural stimulator.
It seemed that Deema had woken up and let herself out. Perhaps the child had been a plant all along. Did the mole have a past that included slavery? Should she add that to her growing profile? She would look into it when she got back.
If she got back.
On the surface Gizmo’s was a run-down emporium that sold semi-legitimate trade goods. The sign above the door described it as an import/export business. Cute. In agent lingo, ‘export’ stood for murder. Deema might already be dead, but Anneke had no choice but to look for her. She felt responsible. As she walked through the door she reflected grimly that someone knew which buttons to push for her as well as Deema.
The thought made her feel naked. Well, I’m most dangerous when I’m naked.
On the inside, Gizmo’s was as run down and shabby as the outside. Gizmo himself was an adenoidal young man who trembled and jerked incessantly, his whole body one giant nervous twitch. He had a lopsided grin, mismatched eyes and a wispy moustache. The pupils of his eyes were pinpoints. He gave Anneke a lingering look, and then hooked a finger towards the rear door.
‘You go in there,’ he said, his high-pitched laughter ending in a series of hiccups.
Anneke went through. She had surrendered all notions of safety by coming here in the first place.
In the back room a man was seated at a table laden with hi-tech devices. He was wearing a hood, his face in deep shadow. Body weight and height suggested he could be the mole; then again he might be just another cog.
He motioned her to sit down.
‘Lotang has the girl.’ The voice was flat, missing the usual subsonics and indicators. It was a highly
trained voice, concealing anything that might be of use to her. Maybe it was the mole after all. She glanced at his hands. They were covered by oddly thick gloves.
‘What does he want with her?’
‘Nothing. He wants you.’
‘You want me to go to Lotang’s.’
‘Perceptive, as ever.’
It was the mole. She had to visibly restrain herself.
‘I’m impressed,’ the mole said. ‘You must want to kill me badly.’
‘Not at all. If I can make you suffer first I’ll take the opportunity.’
‘Talk is cheap. Regardless, pay attention.’
He gave her instructions. It did not take much for her to figure out the whole scenario.
‘You want Lotang dead? He’s too well guarded. Even I know that.’
‘He has a symbiotic poison in his system. The one I have here will trigger it.’
‘Neat.’
‘Thank you.’
‘How close?’
‘Close.’
‘And naturally you don’t mind if I get exported in the process?’
‘Cost of doing business.’
‘If I die, I want the girl redeemed.’
The mole sighed. ‘Agreed.’
‘You will honour this?’
A peculiar note entered the man’s voice. He did not try to hide it. ‘In this case, yes. For my own reasons, you understand?’
‘So I’m to kill Lob Lotang for you?’
‘Oh, you’re to do much more than that for me, Ms Longshadow …’
MAXIMUS flexed his new prosthetic fingers. They were still clumsy. The renovator had assured him they would eventually synchronise with his nerve impulses. Till then, he had to wear special gloves. It would not do to let people know his distinctive identifying mark. He was now back to his usual darkly handsome self.
Pity about the renovator; the man had been good at his job. But one could not leave loose ends lying about.
Maximus eyed his watch, figuring he had only a few hours left. That was how long it would take Lotang’s hunkies to triangulate his position and snatch him.