A security guard walked into view, glanced at the light fixture over Viktor’s head, then looked over his shoulder. “I think you’re mistaken. He looked perfectly hale balancing on the pot.”
The second figure who walked into sight, his assassin Sergei Zharkov, was one of the last people Viktor would have expected to show up for a visit. Had the quarantine been lifted?
Sergei gazed blandly at him, then nodded to the guard. “You’re mistaken. It’s true that such a non-taxing task would not faze him, but as you can see, he’s grown wan.”
“Wan?” Viktor didn’t growl, not quite, but he did narrow his eyes. Being accused of a weakness or illness rankled, but he kept himself from objecting further. This had to be some ruse, one he immediately suspected Ankari of concocting.
“My soldier hides his medical issues well,” Sergei said.
My soldier? Medical issues? Viktor continued to keep his mouth shut, though curiosity tempted his tongue.
“Yes, yes, go ahead and examine him,” the guard said, “but you’ll do it from this side of the barrier. Nobody is allowed inside.”
“Yes, of course.” Sergei cupped his chin and contemplated Viktor.
He had been allowed in under pretense of being the ship’s doctor, had he? Viktor supposed the guards might have objected to having the ship’s assassin wandering their facility, but he refused to look sickly or wan.
“Do you have news from the ship, Zharkov?” He wanted to ask, Do you have news from Ankari? but the guard hadn’t left.
“I do,” a new voice said from up the corridor.
Commander Borage, also accompanied by a guard, walked into view with Azarov at his heels. Azarov gave Sergei a wary look, but said nothing. He stood with his back to the empty cell across the way.
“How did you get off the ship?” Borage asked Sergei.
The guard glanced at Sergei, and Viktor clenched his jaw. If he had someone breaking the quarantine to help him—or to help Jamie and Ankari, which was the most likely case with Sergei—Viktor did not want his engineer tattling on him while Security was within earshot.
“I walked,” was all Sergei said.
Borage frowned and lifted his hand, as if he meant to dismiss him.
“What is it, Borage?” Viktor asked. Since Sergei had not yet spoken of why he was there, Viktor didn’t want to send him away. At the least, he hoped for information about Ankari.
“After our mission last month—” Borage glanced at the guards, clearly intending to keep this vague, “—Commander Parsons turned in his resignation en route to headquarters. From what I’ve been able to ferret out, he disappeared off everyone’s tracking system after that. I’ve been trying to figure out if he’s still got the engine and holo-projector or not, but nothing’s come up. I sent a message to Thomlin—I thought he might have heard something. But they’re off the grid somewhere. Either that, or he was disinterested in speaking with me.” Borage frowned down at his rumpled shirt, as if he believed this a distinct possibility. “I can’t find any sign out there of the engine Thomlin and Blackwell kept either. I had assumed they sold it, but it’s disappeared into someone’s top-secret facility if that’s the case.”
“Which explains why Fleet is so eager to get its hands on information about these items.” Viktor rubbed his jaw, noting the stubble and wishing the guards would let him shower and shave, mostly so he wouldn’t look like a wild beast the next time he saw Ankari. Whenever that ended up being. “Though I’m still not positive why having me locked up would help them learn more.”
“There is an arrest warrant out for Ankari,” Sergei murmured, his back to the guard, as he tried to make the words for Viktor alone.
Viktor frowned. That sounded excessive for her pick-pocketing indiscretion. Could someone want her captured, so that her welfare might be used as a bargaining chip—or blackmail strategy—with him? Would the Fleet want to trade her for the information they wanted? And if he didn’t give it to them, would they make her disappear? His jaw tightened at the thought.
“The first of a dozen Fleet ships is due to arrive tonight,” Borage said. “I expect you’ll have an answer to your questions one way or another then.”
Viktor grunted. All the more reason for him to get out of here sooner rather than later. He wanted his questions answered, yes, but on his own terms. Preferably while he held a dagger to the throat of the person who knew the answers.
“Borage, I have one more task for you tonight,” Viktor said. “Talk to Sequoia. Have him pull up some of Thomlin’s internal monitoring programs. I want to know if anyone on the crew has been in touch with anyone from the Fleet in the last month. I don’t care if it’s a brother, sister, or third cousin. I want to know. Everyone should have been so busy with Nimbus that there wasn’t time for personal communications, but if someone made time...”
Borage’s gray brows lifted. “You suspect a betrayal from within?”
“It doesn’t hurt to check for the possibility. Maybe someone who wouldn’t be brave enough to turn on the ship with me aboard would be willing to do so with me in jail here.” It was a stretch, but the more checking Viktor had people doing, the more chance he had of someone stumbling across something.
“I’ll take care of it, sir.” Borage nodded for Azarov to follow, then headed out.
“Azarov,” Viktor said softly. “Light a fire under someone’s ass, eh?” He did not say anything else to reference the earlier conversation—not with guards still standing around—and that message alone was probably enough to alert Security if someone had taken note of the fire information Azarov had delivered. He could only hope his people were good enough to get him out, even if the security was heightened tonight.
Azarov’s eyes widened.
Viktor looked from him to Sergei and back, hoping to imply that they should trade notes and work together. Azarov nodded curtly, then strode after Borage.
“You trust him?” Sergei asked quietly before leaving. His guard had started down the corridor, so they had a moment unmonitored—at least unmonitored by humans, since the cameras were always running.
“I have to in this.” Viktor didn’t know Azarov well enough to trust him fully, not the way he did Borage and Sergei, but so far, the sergeant hadn’t disappointed, and he had offered up that information on the fire safety built into the security system. Yes, he might have provided the information in the hope that Viktor would hang himself—or burn himself—but he didn’t have the nervous twitchiness of someone who was afraid Viktor would find out he was up to something. Viktor hoped his instincts were correct.
“Very well.” Sergei, too, disappeared from view, leaving Viktor alone with nothing more engaging than the stubborn light fixture.
* * *
Ankari leaned close to Lauren, trying to hear over the jangling and ringing of the casino machines. People padded through the warm room from the steam baths, pools, and water slides, some with nothing more than a towel around their waists as they slid into seats to play the games. Ankari, Lauren, and Jamie stood at the end of an aisle of Reality Rush games with potted palm trees at their backs. The people wore holo-helmets as they interacted with the shoot-and-chase realities stretched out before their eyes, and none of them were paying attention to Ankari and the others. They were concentrating on winning tokens that could be exchanged for cash or tacky prizes at a booth near the door. An alarming number of people chose the prizes, as evinced by patrons wandering past wearing inflatable pool rings in flamingo pink around their waists or fluffy hats with even fluffier blue dice dangling about their ears.
“Look.” Lauren’s hand shook as she held up her tablet, showing images of the graffiti-riddled shuttle. Everything from penises to skulls with daggers through them had been painted onto the sides.
“I suppose Viktor will charge us extra for this month’s lease payment if we can’t get that off,” Ankari said, not as rattled about the vandalism as Lauren. It might be alarming, but compared to being shot at, it ranked low on her
list of woes for the day. If she had to guess, she would blame that Sherkov. She doubted the Fleet would have lowered itself to this level, but it seemed a level that mercenary captain might traipse about on often. “Or refuse to return our damage deposit,” she added.
“He made you give him a damage deposit?” Jamie asked.
“Oh, yes. For someone who is happy to let the system think of him as a brutish mercenary, he has savvy business instincts.” Ankari thought of the way he had stepped around her attempt at manipulation and gotten her to pay for rooms for his men, and she smiled, a surge of warm emotion flowing through her. She reminded herself that this was the time for calculation, not emotion. She wished she could extricate him from his cell without resorting to a jailbreak. They would both end up leaving Midway 5 with criminal records. She hoped he would still appreciate her efforts, even if they turned out to be less effective than she wished.
“We’ll worry about it later,” Ankari said to Lauren—a concerned furrow wrinkled her brow. “For now, I have a gift I’d like you to analyze.” She nodded to Jamie. She had felt somewhat cowardly for making her carry that syringe of blood, but the damned thing made Ankari twitchy. What if it broke? What if there was a legitimate virus? What if it was already swimming through her blood stream, attacking her immune system?
Stop, she told herself. Hadn’t she just decided this wasn’t the time for emotion? It certainly wasn’t the time for mindless panicking.
Jamie handed the syringe to Lauren.
“I’ve sent you the pictures Sergei took of the corpses, too,” Ankari said. “And the coroner’s and doctor’s notes.”
“Pictures of corpses?” Lauren gingerly took the syringe. “Why don’t you keep those, and I’ll just look at the blood?”
“Whatever helps you. I’m hoping that with your experience and intelligence, you’ll be able to come up with the answer that’s eluding the station’s medical people.”
“While I appreciate flattery, I’d appreciate a lab even more. Where do you expect me to set up? Perhaps on that roulette table over there? And what tools shall I use? I don’t even have a microscope to look at this blood.”
The easiest thing would be to send her back to the shuttle, but Ankari doubted Lauren would go, especially alone, and Ankari had another task to undertake, to search for that shop owner who might have footage of the mafia men threatening her. She kept wondering if she should abandon this self-imposed quest, but she had no idea how she could clear her name—or Viktor’s—and this was a problem where she could make progress. And she hoped that somehow, in getting to the bottom of everything and making the station aware of what was going on, she could end up with... something good. Exoneration. She would probably have to blackmail those news people to get them to share the truth with the galaxy, though. Could one earn exoneration while extorting someone? That didn’t seem quite right.
“Maybe a lab on the station?” Jamie suggested when Ankari didn’t answer right away. “We’re almost to the end of the day shift here. We might find something empty.”
“Yes, good idea,” Ankari said. “Will you see what you can find? I’m going to find out if that prize hut has a wig or hat that I can buy to hide my face while we roam around, since it’s adorning arrest warrants on the tablets of security officers all over the station now.”
“Just don’t get one of the pink ones.” Jamie pulled up a search on her tablet. “Or a fluorescent green one. Or a purple one. Those are all garish.”
“You’ve seen a hat here that isn’t garish?”
Jamie stood on her tiptoes to peer over the rows of game machines. “Uhm.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Ankari left their aisle, glancing toward the entrance to make sure there weren’t any security officers lurking nearby, then walked up to the robot behind the clear walls of the booth. Prizes sat on small floating platters that flew in rising and descending circles all around it. All that motion would have driven a human nuts, but the flat-faced robot gazed at her with the typical placidness of a mechanical construct.
“I’ll take the glasses and that hat, please.” Ankari pointed to a synthetic leather hat with a broad brim that should shade her features nicely. The purple dye would ensure it would become something for the mercenaries to snipe at on firearms practice day, but it wasn’t so bright and obnoxious that it would draw attention.
“Seventy tokens, please,” the robot said, pointing to a receptacle that one could drop them in.
“Can I pay in aurums?” Ankari waved her finger, intending to pay with her chip, though as soon as she did it, she wondered if she should. Did security want her badly enough that people were actively tracking her? And looking for uses of her personal data or financial information? Or were the guards simply keeping an eye out for her? On one of the GalCon-run inner-core stations, the police could track her by her banking chip, but based on the fact that she hadn’t been found quickly after leaving the hospital, she doubted the corporation that ran Midway 5 paid for access to the system-wide citizen database.
“Seventy tokens, please,” the robot repeated.
Grumbling, Ankari took a slow walk back down the aisle to Lauren and Jamie. Though she hated using her pick-pocketing skills for dubious gain, she lightened a few of the token bins along the way, taking the most from a woman wearing a dice hat and a pink pool float ring around her waist. Ankari told herself that she was doing the gambler a favor.
“That’s going to have to do,” Jamie was saying. “Look, it’s an extension of the library system, and public access is allowed. I bet it won’t have a sophisticated lock.”
“You call that a lab?” Lauren pointed to an image of the interior. “That looks like something you would find in a children’s school for dissecting frogs.”
“But it’s not anywhere near a security station, and look: no graffiti.”
Lauren sighed dramatically.
“You’ll be fine.” Ankari led her friends out of the casino, using her ill-gained tokens to acquire the hat and glasses on the way out.
* * *
Ankari waved at the door-chime sensor while Jamie pressed her back to the wall and watched the hallway in both directions. In this residential area of the station, illusionary wood paneling, intricate ceiling tiles, and occasional flower baskets offered a warmer, homier feel than in the public corridors. Intermittent holosigns tried to tempt passersby to visit the spas and casinos, but at least these did not come with an obnoxious announcer.
“Doesn’t look like she’s home,” Jamie said.
Ankari rechecked her tablet to make sure they were at the right address, then tried knocking. “Where else would she be? These are shop hours, and all of the shops are closed.”
“Maybe she’s enjoying her enforced vacation by dining out or relaxing at the spa. Or having randy times with an acquaintance.”
“You never used to throw mentions of randy times onto your lists before you met Sergei.” Ankari knocked again.
“Didn’t I? Odd.” Jamie shrugged casually, though her cheeks grew pink.
Ankari contemplated the closed door for a moment as she tapped the Lock Master device that Sergei had refused to take. It was still nestled in her pocket. She had already used it to open the lab for Lauren, whom they had left fuming and grumbling about the primitiveness of the workspace they had ushered her into. Ankari had almost left Jamie with her to stand guard, since Lauren was so uncomfortable away from her clinic and her familiar lab, but Jamie wouldn’t have had much to do. Lauren rarely asked for help when she was working, probably because she rarely realized other people were in the room when she was working. Besides, Ankari selfishly wanted someone along with her who might relay to the mercenaries what had happened, if her meager disguise failed and Security caught up with her. She only hoped Jamie wouldn’t be caught, as well.
A woman came out of an elevator at the end of the hall, a carry-cart of groceries floating after her. She stopped at an apartment a few meters away and waited f
or the door to slide open.
“Pardon me, but do you know if Li Yanping has been around today?” Ankari had verified the name with the virtual store directory, and it hadn’t taken much searching to find the address.
“Ahh.” The neighbor drew out the syllable as she assessed them, her eyes half-closed with suspicion or wariness.
“We came all the way from Gora, hoping to buy some of her heirloom tomato seeds,” Ankari said, glad she had looked up what the shop next to the pet store sold. “And some of her specialty grow beds, since even though we get a lot of sun, our winters are harsh.” Or so she remembered from a brief research trip to Gora. She decided not to fib further, lest the woman end up being a Goran native herself or a gardening expert. “I was hoping we might purchase a few items from her by finding her here,” Ankari finished.
“I haven’t seen her for a couple of days,” the neighbor said and hustled into her apartment with her groceries. The door shut behind her.
“She seemed mistrustful of strangers.” Ankari wondered if that was the woman’s personality or if something might have happened here recently. Maybe the mafia thugs had been bothering store owners at home too.
“Maybe she didn’t believe your story,” Jamie said. “You don’t look much like a gardener.”
Ankari frowned down at her nails. They might not have dirt under them, but they were short and natural; no long stick-ons that might suggest she never did physical labor. “I suppose you’re the farm expert, but what does a gardener traveling to a space station look like?”
“Less... purple.” Jamie flicked the brim of Ankari’s hat, then pointed at the sparkling rims of her glasses. They were not subtle, but at least Ankari had turned off the tiny displays inside the lenses that showed games or videos before her eyes.
“I’m sure gardeners like to gamble and buy ludicrous prizes while on vacation too.”
“Nobody in our farm community ever went on fancy vacations like this. Space fare is expensive. That’s why I had to seek you out for a free ride off the planet.”
Mandrake Company- The Complete Series Page 125