by Mel Keegan
“Flamenco Rosado. It sounds a little lurid. I’ve no doubt Halfway will live up to its reputation.”
Travers’s big arms draped about him from behind, drew him into an embrace and held him, back to chest. “Dancing boys in pink jockstraps? Don’t knock it – well, not before you’ve tried it.”
“And you’ve tried it?” Marin leaned back heavily against him. “Or are you trying to tell me you’re not getting enough?”
“After last night?” Travers whispered against his ear. “Well, I can handle a little more, but … seriously, it sounds like a Fleet furlough club. I saw the insides of way too many of them. You didn’t?”
“I was studying most of the time.” Marin set aside the mug and turned into his arms. “Furlough came up, and you’d more likely find me somewhere quiet, jacked in and reading.” He shrugged off the ambition which had driven his early years. “If I’d stayed in Fleet, I’d have been the XO of a carrier by now, and I shudder to confess, there was a time I thought that’s what I was working for.”
“Thank gods you changed direction,” Travers said honestly. He leaned down the hand’s span that separated them in height, and set his mouth on Marin’s.
The eight day voyage out from Borushek was the longest break they had enjoyed since the assignment to Omaru, and the rest had gone a long way to healing old wounds. They were in better physical condition, and Bill Grant was quite satisfied with the results of tests which never stopped. A little flesh had begun to accumulate on Marin’s bones, and it suited him. Travers approved. It was a rare pleasure to have the hard, solid curves of a healthy young body to hold onto, and he might have said so, but Greenstein chose that moment to unlink from the system.
The pilot left Etienne to monitor the ship and negotiate with Halfway’s much more primitive AI. The mainframe from a freighter had been installed as the brains of the colony, and it was barely adequate for the task. Etienne was idling, waiting for it to spare a moment of its precious processor time.
Here, there was no customs routine, no immigration to clear or quarantine procedures to be observed. Halfway was so far beyond an authority recognized by any colonial government, there were no actual laws enforcing the weapons one could carry, the substances one could bring in and out, the characteristics of the hustlers in the bars and clubs around the rink. And if a dead body should be discovered in the shadows, it was put on ice until someone claimed it if there was space, and jettisoned if there was not.
“Be advised,” Etienne said quietly into the loop, “the attempted deep system scan of this vessel has resumed.”
Travers lifted his head from a kiss that had begun in the vicinity of Marin’s throat and ended in a leisurely sharing of breath. “You have the source yet?”
“The mainframe is on Halfway, but it is not the colony’s own AI,” Etienne reported.
“The scan won’t be hacking through your firewall, though,” Marin mused, “so whoever launched it must be getting mad enough to spit. Brief Richard … and do not let the bastards in, Etienne.”
“Captain Vaurien has already been briefed, and my firewalls are quite secure.” The AI’s voice was enviably calm. “Docking procedures are complete. Drive engines are shut down. Technical crews are standing down. Computer core activities are reassigned to the laboratory.”
It meant, Jazinsky had just commandeered every spare erg of processor power and memory Etienne could find, and Travers was unsurprised. The work she was doing was so far over his head, he could grasp only the concepts. She, Mark Sherratt and Tonio Teniko were inventing, or reinventing the science day by day, and they were scrambling both for time and for answers.
The Zunshu technology was slippery, elusive as a wraith, dancing on the periphery of any understanding humans or Resalq yet possessed. But like the will-o’the-wisp it would lead them into forbidden waters where great prices would be paid for learning, and great rewards might be earned for courage.
The notion brought Mick Vidal to Travers’s mind, and he felt the grief of loss keenly. Marin frowned at him, too close to him to be unaware of the twist of emotion, but Travers shook his head and laid one fingertip on Marin’s lips to forestall the question.
“If we’re going clubbing,” Marin said instead, in a caustic tone, “we probably want to get changed.”
He made a good point. If they were going to walk into Flamenco Rosado, face to face with van Donne, heavily but not obviously armed, the normal style of dress aboard the Wastrel was hardly suitable. Travers was comfortable in black silk slacks and a teeshirt several sizes too large; Marin was barefoot, in Tai Chi pants and a pale blue webshirt that displayed more of his torso than it concealed. In uptown Sark the dress would have been seductively chic. In the snakepits of Halfway, it was just dangerous.
Two Zamphir 40s, the heavier Chiyoda machine pistol and a palmgun lay in the gun cases in the bottom of the closet in their quarters. Marin set them out on the workstation by the threedee, checked them over with complete professionalism, while Travers threw a selection of clothes across the bed. For himself, the soft bluejeans, the leather jacket, full enough through the shoulders to conceal several weapons. For Marin, the black denim and red leather jacket, still seductively chic, but much more practical than the uptown faux variety.
He was looking good, Travers thought as he watched Curtis dress. The therapy after Omaru had been a trial for them both, but the color was back in his face, his muscles were hard, his spine was straight, and in bed he was the lover Travers remembered. He was sliding one of the matched pair of Zamphirs into the holster against his left ribs when he looked up, met Travers’s eyes in the long dressing mirror, and lifted a brow in question.
“Just admiring you,” Travers told him honestly. “I’m allowed.”
“You’re allowed.” Marin turned toward him, set a hand on his chest. “Don’t take your eyes off van Donne. I don’t trust him not to take a crack at Richard while he has the chance.”
“Or at us,” Travers added. He caught Marin’s hand, lifted it and kissed the palm. “You think he isn’t still smarting after Oberon? I would be, and van Donne isn’t the kind to forgive or forget.”
The red leather jacket settled over the Zamphir and Marin slipped the palmgun into the holster at the small of his back. “Flamenco Rosado,” he said, on his way to the door. “How long since you indulged in a little nightlife?”
The question intrigued Travers. It was so long since Harrison Shapiro’s schedule had allowed them downtime, he could barely recall the last time he walked into a club for simple recreation. He and Marin could hardly complain, because Shapiro had spread himself so thin and was working so hard, he had only the most tenuous contact with the lover he had met on Ulrand. Jon Kim must be constantly on Shapiro’s mind, Travers thought, but at least the man was out and running.
In the confusion after the Battle of Ulrand, Kim had grabbed his cash, cards and the dogs, packed a bag and fled before he could be arrested. Too many innocent people were being picked up. Few would be executed or imprisoned for long terms, but for Jon Kim to prove himself innocent of complicity would take months or years, and resources he did not possess. It was easier to subtract himself from the political muddle, and sheer luck had put Mick Vidal in Shapiro’s office when he called.
As far as Travers knew, Kim was still en route to Velcastra on a tramp freighter which could take months to get there. But when he got into any Velcastran port he had a number to call – Daku contacts who would get him out of harm’s way. Shapiro must fret every day about Kim, yet he never allowed so much as a frown to show.
Until this war was over, individuals and personal relationships would come second or last. Travers was thinking of the few days he and Marin had spent in Elstrom City, when they had met Robert Chandra Liang to inform him of the death of Sergeant Roy Neville, when Barb Jazinsky’s strident voice cut across the memories.
“Think again, Richard,” she was saying as she and Vaurien, Marin and Travers converged in the loading bay just
inside the docking rings.
“I’m serious, Barb.” Vaurien was tall, broad, angular, in black from head to foot with two sidearms Travers could actually see, which meant he was carrying another two more surreptitiously. “You’re far too valuable to just walk into some Halfway club, where a bullet could put an end to you. The work you’re doing is critical. If Shapiro were here –”
“Harrison Shapiro is not my commanding officer, Richard, and neither are you. I’m not military, and you’re my partner, not my superior.” She was in a pale yellow skinsuit, a bronze silk jacket, and the white-blond hair was clasped back. She had just walked out of the lab, but Travers saw the outline of a sidearm under the jacket.
Vaurien was exasperated. “This is pure self indulgence. You can’t afford to put yourself at risk.”
“Who says I’m at risk?” Jazinsky demanded. “You, Neil, Curtis, all carrying enough firepower to start a small war, and the Wastrel right here, close as a yell. If you’re worried, task a few security drones. Just tell Etienne to keep them out of Sergei’s face, or you’ll get him pissed enough to forget why he wants to talk to us.”
“Me,” Vaurien corrected. “He said he wanted to talk to me.”
“Same difference,” she retorted. “You, me, this ship, this tech – it’s all the same to Sergei. And for what it’s worth, you’re no more safe than I am. Probably less.”
“But the colonial war, and the bloody Zunshu war, don’t pivot around me,” Vaurien said tersely. “Stay aboard, Barb.”
She hesitated for one moment and then stepped out through the docking rings. “If Sergei wants to talk to you – or me! – it means he needs something. He’s not going to shoot on sight, and I want to look him right in those cold, calculating eyes of his when he says what he wants.” She looked back over her shoulder. “ Flamenco Rosado.”
“Well … shit,” Vaurien sighed, and hung one long arm over Travers’s shoulders as they followed. “Security assignment, Neil.”
“You mean, tag, we’re it?” Travers allowed a chuckle. “So, what is this club, anyway?”
“Just a club. Down six decks, closer to the bottom of the rink. As you go down, it gets colder, darker, harder. This is your first time out here in Halfway, isn’t it?” Travers answered with a nod. “Then get your bearings.” Richard pointed to left and right. “The big rocks … that’s your Brightlights, your uptown. That’s where you find the big money, the elite, the best of everything. Here on the old Rotterdam Explorer, you’re close to the bottom end, and the lower you go, the rougher it gets. This is the rink. Ten or twelve big ships docked together, gutted, claims staked on their space. The whole place is a maze. Nobody knows how many people live where, doing what – living, dying, who cares? This is Halfway. But up in Brightlights, now … well, you’ll see.”
He had led them to a big service elevator, and Jazinsky punched for a car headed down. The old ship was cavernous, and so comprehensively gutted that a cold wind stirred restlessly through it. Travers could almost believe he was close to an alleyway, just off a street in the citybottom of some major town like Sark or Elstrom. From the inside, it was hard to believe that all of Halfway was artificial, hulls, platforms and mined-out asteroids, welded together into a single whole which nobody owned or commanded. Halfway simply was.
The service elevators did not seem to have been serviced in an eon. This one ground and shook, trembling on an Arago cushion which brought Travers’s heart into his mouth twice in less than two hundred meters, between the dorsal docking pylons and the mid-body deck where Flamenco Rosado and several clubs like it were nestled cheek by jowl with the utilities conduits. Power, air, water and data threaded their way through the old asteroid miner, from the rock at the bow to the one at the stern. Few people seemed to notice, much less to care, that enough current to flash-fry half the colony’s population was carried via ancient, unserviced mains, just inside a patched, taped-over fascia.
“These people are crazy,” Marin muttered as the lift’s cage doors opened onto a cold, dim, breezy promenade.
Music issuing from several clubs overlapped into gibberish, and the bass rhythm of the air pumps underscored the din, a heavy vibration through the legs and spine. The sub-etherics got into a man’s bones, reached his glands and wreaked havoc there. Travers swore softly as he fell into step with Marin and Vaurien, a pace behind Jazinsky.
She knew where she was headed. The club van Donne preferred was at the end of the half-lit promenade. Neon strobed out through its doors; noise barely classifying as music issued from within. Little wonder van Donne had chosen the place. It was so chaotic, human senses were confused. The instincts of the predator were useless here.
Three meters short of the frontage, Vaurien set light fingers on Jazinsky’s arm and produced a handy. She stood back to let him scan the interior, and Travers gave a low whistle as he peered over Richard’s shoulder at the display.
“The place is fairly toxic,” Vaurien said disgustedly. “There’s airborne levels of gryphon, chimera, angelino, that would be two, three times over the limit on Borushek or Velcastra. I’m reading thirty or so individuals. All of them armed … some of them carrying heavy-duty pieces. Five look stoned or drunk, or both … one’s face down in the back, dying. Six more are too busy screwing to even notice we’re walking in. Comm signals bouncing between three of these idiots and various ships docked around the rink. They’re drinking something strong, young and … indeterminate. Probably manufactured on the premises. God knows what it is, but take pity on your liver! And then there’s the EM field leaks from the mains, and the background rad-count, which is way over anything you’d find acceptable on any ship of yours or mine – and that’s the same all over Halfway.”
“You see van Donne?” Marin wondered.
“Oh, yes.” Vaurien fine-tuned the handy. “He’s easy to pick out. He’s the only guy in the club with enough body mass to be Sergei. There’s some big guys here, but no other Pakrani, Kuchini, or the hybrids like Sergei.” He turned the handy to share data. “Holstered gun, another in his right boot. A knife in his left boot, another in his left back pocket. Comm in his left breast pocket – and it’s open, transmitting.”
“Which means someone’s monitoring him,” Travers mused. “He’s sitting on his own, you notice.”
“Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a half dozen friends hovering close by.” Jazinsky reached in below her jacket and eased the sidearm in its holster. “The first thing I want to do is look for faces. If I recognize more than two in this fleapit, we’re gone. Richard?”
“Yes.” Vaurien slid the handy back into the inside pocket of his jacket and glanced at Travers and Marin. “Security is your business. Shapiro’s come to trust the pair of you before he trusts anybody with the possible exception of that beau of his – what’s his name?”
“Jon Kim,” Marin said, sighing. “And yes, he trusts Kim. The two of them work well together, and Kim connected with Harrison Shapiro by choice, not because he was press ganged, like Neil and me!”
“Press ganged or not,” Vaurien said acidly, “Shapiro trusts you because you’re the best there is, and that’s good enough for me.”
Marin made negative noises. “But we’ve never set foot in this madhouse before. We don’t know the faces Barb’s talking about.”
“I do.” Vaurien gave the club a dark look, and flexed his fingers deliberately before heading on inside.
Flamenco Rosado was bubblegum pink, from the floor to the bar, the prefabricated walls, even the furniture. Travers had never realized how hideous the color could be. Enormous plastex flamingos stood guard to either side of the door; the walls were hand-painted with unlikely frescoes in which obnoxiously pink fowl entwined in courtship dances with long-limbed, willowy humans of all genders. The art seemed to make no sense, until the human lungs had taken in three, four breaths of the hazardous mix of chemicals on the air, and then any kind of sensuality became reasonable. If a scrawny guy with his whole body painted pink
wanted to dance with waterfowl, who was going to tell him no?
Inside, the music was loud enough to rupture the eardrums. Travers saw the pained look on Marin’s face, the compressed mouth. Curtis was acutely aware of the airborne drugs, the overload of sound, the low light levels and strobing neon, all of which could be used as weapons.
This was dangerous, and Travers had set a hand on Vaurien’s arm, about to tell him enough was enough, when Jazinsky shouted over the music,
“I’m seeing three faces I know, Richard, and Sergei’s is one of them. I also see his copilot, pretty little Rafe Byrne himself – too good for Sergei, if you were asking me, but there’s no accounting for taste. And if that isn’t Fernie Wang’s man, Ramon, I need my eyes checked.”
“You don’t,” Vaurien said against her ear, to make himself heard over the noise. “That’s Ramon. Which tells you Fernie Wang won’t be too far away. The Krait is here, as well as the Mako.” His eyes were still moving, roving around the rest of the club’s patrons, but he was satisfied.
And Sergei van Donne had seen them. He was sitting in the far corner with his back against the most solid wall and his eyes on the door. The Mako’s copilot, Byrne, was on the club’s left, apparently lounging by the bar but also intent on the door, and Fernando Wang’s company shooter, Ramon, was opposite, standing back in the shadows by the low podium where a live band would perform, half-hidden by the artistes’ threedee posters, right hand already in the left side of his green silk jacket.
Carefully, with exaggerated slowness, van Donne rose to his feet. He held his hands well away from his sides and gave Vaurien a nod of acknowledgment. Without being asked, Travers turned slightly to cover Ramon and Marin had a direct line on Rafe Byrne. It was easy to pick them out. They were the only people aside from van Donne who were watching the door; they were on their toes, alert – sober; and they were far more attractive than the Companions working this club.