Kill Ratio

by David Drake

  She'd never fainted in her life, but she wasn't sure this wouldn't be the first time. Suddenly, in the aftermath of the horror in the suit room, she was debilitated, enervated, devastated, and lost. She wanted to bury her head against the big man's chest and hold on tight; she wanted him to be what he said - her friend, her protector - not what she feared. . . .

  She said, “For all I know, you and your girlfriend Yesilkov will kill me like you killed that poor man in the suit room - so nobody will find out about . . . about . . . M-M and the shooting and - “

  “Whoa, whoa,” he said, and she didn't understand how he'd closed the distance between them so quickly without her seeing him, except that she'd begun to cry.

  Then she was leaning against his chest and he was telling her, “Ssh, don't be afraid. You've been doin' fine so far. We all have. We'll beat this thing, I promise.”

  But she was more conscious of his hands on her back and his lips in her hair. And of her own urge to melt against him, to make sure he was on her side, to make it worth it to him to be.

  Otherwise she was lost. She had no illusions that Taylor McLeod's office could protect her from some horrendous plot called the Plan and the maniacs who were carrying it out. People willing to slaughter wholesale, to eradicate entire bloodlines, to loose bioengineered viruses upon an unsuspecting world, weren't going to show mercy to an NYU anthropolgist named Bradley because she was nice, or well bred, or promised she wouldn't say a word about what she knew.

  Such people would kill her out of hand without even a pause for reflection. In Yates' arms, weeping softly while her body trembled uncontrollably and his palms ran up and down her spine, she reasoned that if Yates and Yesilkov were going to kill her, they'd have done it in the suit room. Because, if she didn't believe that, she couldn't justify the way she was feeling.

  She raised her head to Yates and said through her tears, “What about Yesilkov?”

  “Ssh,” he replied. “Don't worry, I told you. Just let me handle this - it's what I know how to do.”

  His hands were on her shoulders now. One slid up her neck to cup the back of her head and guide her lips to his. The other slid down to her breast. When it made contact, all the tension she'd been feeling - the doubts, fears, uncertainty, and even the clear knowledge that Yates and Yesilkov were an item - transmuted into something else.

  That something was as alien to Ella Bradley as the firefight on MM corridor or the interrogation she'd witnessed in the suit room. It was passion, and she'd never succumbed to it before.

  The world went fuzzy around the edges, and its center was a diamond-sharp core: her body, its lips, its breasts, its crotch; and his, every rough-hewn inch of him.

  All the differences between them - of class, of education, of avocation, vocation, style, and content, didn't add up to one single cogent objection strong enough to dam the feelings she felt.

  Not only did she meet the thrust of his hips with her own, but she fumbled with his clothing as desperately and boldly as he did hers.

  By the time he pulled her by the buttocks up and onto him, still standing in a pile of their discarded clothes, she wasn't thinking about any of the myriad reasons that she shouldn't let Sam Yates make love to her.

  Even if she had been, it wouldn't have mattered. Ella Bradley had just ventured into uncharted territory and it was too late to turn back.

  Chapter 19 - TURN-AROUND

  Jan de Kuyper, the tall, thin right-hand man of Karel Pretorius - and right now the most important single cog in the Club's wheel - stepped off the inbound shuttle from Sky Devon and immediately inhaled brandied tobacco through his cigar-shaped dispenser.

  Around him was the automated docking area that served as both embarkation and debarkation lounge for lunar flights to Devon, at which de Kuyper was Air System Maintenance supervisor. And so much, so very much more.

  He'd hated to leave Spenser, who was getting skittish. But de Kuyper had his official responsibilities to tend to, still. His “routine” meeting here at the lunar colony with Lunar Air Systems officials was something that would only become a problem if he broke that routine and thus drew attention to himself.

  For the Plan to work, everything must be normal. It was normal for the lunar brass to want de Kuyper's expertise on call regularly; more than ever now, when they worried that some of the evanescent virus might be breeding in the lunar colony's ventilation system - a supercharged Legionaires' Disease with an eye for color.

  So he was here on schedule, and damn the Club if it took offense: some Club members, he'd heard from Pretorius (or at least gathered from a drunken innuendo Pretorius had made one night, a single slip), might not be as white as the driven snow themselves. Another reason to balance off against any later criticism that he should have stayed by Spenser, now when they were so close and Spenser was becoming so predictably difficult.

  The thing was, de Kuyper knew, to make Spenser dispensable. He grinned around his inhaler, pleased at his play on words, and followed the straggling line toward the baggage wheel where he'd pick up his luggage.

  And stopped in his tracks. There, before his eyes, was Ella Bradley. Ella Bradley, whose fate should have been sealed. Steeks, Trimen, and some few others, under the leadership of Piet van Zell, had been ordered to deal with this woman: to take her into custody, to question her, then to dispatch her.

  When de Kuyper had given that order, he'd assumed it would be carried out. It was not so difficult for so many men to deal with a single woman. He'd not heard from van Zell before he'd had to leave Sky Devon, but that meant nothing. . . .

  Nothing, until now. His brain nearly frozen with panic, de Kuyper watched the woman closely, only cognizant enough not to stare, paused in his tracks like videotape on freeze-frame.

  This was the same woman whose hologram he'd gotten through back channels . . . through Arjanian. The likeness Arjanian had provided - for a fee; Arjanian was no part of the Plan - must be put in the hands of someone capable of doing what must be done, and done quickly, if her presence here meant that van Zell's boys had failed.

  For de Kuyper's money failure was what the sight of this woman, now embracing a large man in Security garb, must mean.

  On the excuse of looking for something he might have dropped on the floor, de Kuyper meandered closer to the NYU anthropologist and the big man. Now he noticed another female, a blond woman, also in Security uniform.

  From this distance he could make out that the man was from Entry Division, but not the blond's provenance - she was turned away. And the black-haired woman, Bradley, was again embracing the big man.

  There was nervousness about this embrace, as if its propriety were in question. And Bradley said, if de Kuyper's ears did not deceive him, “Oh, Sam, it's so risky. . . . What if you don't make it back?”

  The man murmured something in a deep, low voice, and Bradley wiped her hands across her eyes and stepped back with a plucky grin. Then she offered her hand to the blond woman, who shook it, and said, “Good luck, Lieutenant Yesilkov. And a safe return.”

  The blond addressed as Yesilkov retorted, “Maybe what I was cut out for all along was farming. Maybe I'll just stay there.”

  All three laughed the nervous, self-conscious laughs of people taking their leave of one another under stress. Then the big man and the blond woman headed into the boarding tube.

  Bradley stood watching, her hand raised.

  De Kuyper had only a moment to make his decision: he could walk up to Ella Bradley, force her to go with him, and begin improvising a job that van Zell should have done by now. Or he could follow the two security types who were on their way to Sky Devon.

  Even if it hadn't been a nonstop flight at the other end of the Devon boarding tube into which the security people had disappeared, de Kuyper would have known where they were bound from what the female lieutenant, Yesilkov, had said about farming.

  Farming meant Sky Devon, all right.

  Jan de Kuyper reached into his vest pocket, got out his re
turn ticket, and strode to the automated teller, where he fed it into a slot. While the machine whirred and clicked, he prayed to some unnamed, silicon god that the flight wouldn't be full - his was an open return, and if luck was against him, he'd be shunted to the next shuttle.

  But luck was with Jan de Kuyper, as it had been all his life. The machine assigned him a seat in coach and as he hurried toward the boarding tube, hearing the loudspeaker call the flight number, he saw Ella Bradley drifting away, a sad and worried look on her face.

  And he saw a black security officer step out of the men's room alcove and fall in beside her.

  Chapter 2O - STRINGS

  When she got back to her apartment, Ella offered the security patrolman some coffee. She wanted company. She didn't want to be alone, to face the confusion left in Sam Yates' wake. And she wanted to be close to him. Somehow, the patrolman represented that - being close to Sam.

  But the patrolman couldn't have coffee, he explained - unless Ella wanted to bring it to him at his post outside her door.

  So she made the coffee, taking the time to steam the milk (steamed, it didn't taste dehydrated), and brought it to the man, who told her, with a bright smile on his pitch-black face, to “ Go back inside, ma' am - you' re safer in there.''

  The patrolman wasn't anything like Sam, and he was probably right. Inside, there was just herself to talk to, and that awkward interval in the transit lounge to remember. Damn Yesilkov - Ella was trying to be nice about everything.

  But it was as easy for Yesilkov to see that Sam had been with Ella as it had been for Ella to intuit what had been going on between Yesilkov and Sam. It always showed; another woman could always see that sort of thing, unless she didn't want to see it.

  And Ella didn't want to see it between Sam and Yesilkov, especially not now. But she wasn't easy with what she'd done either - not with the part of herself she'd discovered, or with the man who'd helped her discover it.

  What would Taylor think, if ever he took her in his arms and she started ripping at his buttons and fumbling with his belt? What had come over her? She still wasn't sure. It was probably a result of all the death around her lately, and little if anything to do with Sam Yates, who certainly wasn't the sort of man she could introduce to her friends.

  Especially not to Taylor. Taylor McLeod was never going to understand, should he find out what had happened, what Ella Bradley saw in Sam Yates. Worse, he'd probably be offended. It was somehow degrading, in retrospect; Taylor would certainly think so. “Couldn't you do better than that?” he'd ask with his eyes, but never, oh never, with his mouth.

  A woman who traveled in Ella's circles could never have an open affair with a man like Yates. Couldn't bring him to a party or introduce him to the right people - he had no business knowing the right people; he'd have no idea what to say or what to do. He'd be bored and they'd be scandalized and it was just no good, no good at all.

  But she kept thinking of what it would be like to bring Sam to a University cocktail party or a USIA mixer . . .

  It would be hell, that's what it would be.

  Everyone would be polite, because she'd brought him and she had the right, of course, to bring whomever she chose to any “plus one” event. But the embarrassment of it all. Could Yates even handle a knife and fork when there were a number of both beside his plate? Did he know enough to turn his knife blade in on the right side of his plate when he wasn't using it, or place his fork below, parallel? Did he even know enough to start with the outermost utensils and work in?

  More important, would he care to learn?

  It was, she told herself as she flopped on the couch, ridiculous to be thinking this way. Taylor McLeod would feel exactly as she herself had when she'd realized that Yates was involved with Yesilkov - people of low degree and questionable repute tainted the party with whom they kept company. And as far as other lovers were concerned, the least one could expect from a lover was other lovers of similar quality ... so one wasn't embarrassed.

  Face it, Bradley, you were slumming. One night, to find out what a man of that sort is like. Now you've found out. You don't have to pretend it was - or could be - more than that. It wasn't. It can't. Even you, my dear, are allowed a one-night stand. As long as no one finds out, of course.

  One night stand. It was so ... cheap. Surely there must be more to what had happened between her and Yates than that. Or must there? She should count herself lucky, and get on with the business of surviving.

  It was clear to both of them now that she didn't need Supervisor Samuel Yates, in the flesh, to do that. He'd left her in competent hands; the same hands he'd have left her in, no doubt, if she hadn't fallen into his arms. And he would have left her.

  That he did leave, while she was so vulnerable, was an act she couldn't fathom. It was, in her terms, an act of betrayal, or at least a devaluation of what they'd shared. In the sorts of novels she read, and the sorts of affairs she'd had, men didn't desert their women in dangerous situations. It wasn't chivalrous.

  Sam Yates probably couldn't even spell chivalrous.

  “So, you've been had. 'Laid,' I believe, is the term your ignoble savage might use. Leave it at that.”

  Talking to oneself wasn't the best of signs. She ought to talk to somebody, though. She sat, chin on fist, legs crossed at the ankles, on her couch and stared at her front door while her living room, so full of Sam Yates, whispered to her of memories that really should have been someone else's. Don't you dare fall in love with that . . . that. . . cop.

  The warning echoed in her inner ear until, to silence it, she reached for her phone. Damn the expense, she was going to call Taylor in Washington. Wake him up, no doubt. But Taylor wouldn't mind.

  He'd listen while she talked around the subject, because she'd promised Yates not to divulge specifics, and she never broke her word. He'd understand that something was wrong, and they'd discuss what they could discuss - the virus, perhaps; their friends, for certain.

  And she'd ask if he could do something about the report she'd requested on Rodney Beaton - the report that NYU should have had in hand by now . . . NYU in the person of herself.

  That was what she'd do. Galvanized because she'd found an excuse to make the call, she began punching phone codes. She'd be careful not to impugn the effectiveness of McLeod's staff, or to seem too urgent. After all, she'd originally asked only that his office boot her request to the head of the data queue. The slug on the request - NYU PRIORITY - ought to have done the rest.

  But it hadn't, and Ella Bradley, as she gave her credit number and waited for Taylor McLeod, in his bed at this hour, Washington time, to pick up, was glad of that.

  “Hello, Taylor? Ella, yes. Yes, yes, I'm still on the Moon. . . .”

  Chapter 21 - A VIEW OF SKY DEVON

  The two Security personnel from UN Headquarters were already drifting in the zero gravity of Sky Devon's docking hub when de Kuyper disembarked from his berth, farther to the rear of the shuttle. The Afrikaner ignored his targets with a studiousness that might itself have been suspicious - if suspicion had already been aroused.

  De Kuyper'd been careful to keep that from happening.

  The docking hub was busy, as usual. Sky Devon was at least ten years short of being self-supporting, and it would be twice as long before the habitat began to turn a profit on the enormous capital investment it represented. Nonetheless, the volume of cargo routed through Sky Devon's docks was equal to that of any port off-Earth - with the possible exception of UN Headquarters.

  The influx needed to feed and clothe UN personnel and their hangers-on probably made up for the fact that the colony produced nothing tangible - and virtually nothing of intangible value either.

  At the moment a huge cargo flat was being loaded with one-meter cubes of frozen meat. Its spidery girderwork was visible through the transparent dome covering the docking hub which, unlike the remainder of Sky Devon, did not rotate. Eyes as trained as those of Jan de Kuyper could resolve a sparkle of light among the st
ars beyond into another cargo flat, hanging in space until its turn to be loaded.

  Two men in tailored clothing wrangled loudly beside the window and access door to the bucket loader which lifted cargo to a vehicle ready to carry it millions of miles to a destination. A third man in coveralls waited impassively by the controls of the bucket loader. The endless belt was motionless within its enclosing tube, sealed off from the hub proper because its further end projected into vacuum. The supervisors were blaming each other for the fact that part of the cargo in the tube was intended for the flat that still waited to dock.

  De Kuyper smiled as he passed the men in an expertly controlled drift. It was sometimes good to be reminded that things went badly wrong for other people also.

  And to remind himself that there was nothing that could not be fixed.

  The Afrikaner had gone to great lengths in order to prevent his eyes from resting on his targets, the man and woman from UN Headquarters, during the two legs of the shuttle flight and the brief stopover at a trans-shipment satellite between. He did not need to watch them to know where they were going or when they would arrive, and he knew from experience that staring at your quarry was almost certain to alert it - to the attention, if not to you personally.

  De Kuyper knew there was a slight chance that he might have overheard the couple discussing something important if he had made an effort to get a berth near them instead of as far away as the shuttle's strait accommodations permitted. Again, the risk outweighed the possible benefits.

  The leisurely interrogation that the Afrikaner planned would elicit all the information the couple had to give.

  The boarding notice at the transfer station gave de Kuyper the names of his quarry, Yates and Yesilkov - their real names, unless they had gone to the length of booking their transport with false ID cards. He would send the names to Arjanian to learn what the data banks in UN Headquarters said about the couple. The bribe was a trivial cost against the chance it would turn up some information affecting the Plan.