by Mel Keegan
“And then he’ll take another shot at you,” Marin observed.
At the door, van Donne stopped and gestured Ramon to go ahead of him. “Why do you think Fernie Wang’s contract shooter is shadowing me? I mean, besides the fact he wants me to shag his little ass raw.”
The door slid open a half meter. Ramon was flat against it, a gun in each hand, eyes wide, almost feral, as he scanned the obnoxiously pink bar and stage area. The noise levels ramped up at once, and Vaurien raised his voice to get over them.
“You’ve buddied up with Wang? I’m surprised.”
“I’ve flown with Fernie a few times,” van Donne admitted, “when there was a profit in it. There’s times when I hate the man’s guts, but he can be useful, and he wants a piece of Zwerner almost as much as I do.” He gestured at the deck. “The Krait’s docked down on J Deck, berth 87, right on the edge of the rink. Fernie likes it cold and dark and stinking. Makes it easier to get away with murder – literally.” He lifted a brow at Ramon as the door opened wider and the shooter slid out. “The kid’s on loan, but he’s damned good. If he’s half as good in the sack as he is at his job, I might keep him.”
“Rafe doesn’t mind?” Jazinsky wondered. “What about it, Rafe? You want Ramon aboard?”
The Irish was piquant in Byrne’s light voice, and he gave Jazinsky a wink. “I … like variety, if you get my drift.”
She chuckled, and the humor was genuine. “Meaning, you like getting on top as well, and your chances of slapping a saddle on Sergei are slim to none.”
“Close. Just drop the slim part,” Byrne affirmed with an eloquent shrug. “Ramon’s okay. Like Sergei said, he’s damn’ good. He’s wasted on Fernie’s crew. Christ, who’d want a berth on the Krait?”
The remark struck close to home, and Travers was thinking about Jo Queneau as he stepped out ahead of Vaurien and Jazinsky. Marin was behind them, and Richard was panning the handy to and fro, looking for the drones van Donne had mentioned.
He found them as they moved out of the club, and pointed – one was high up, among the dead fluorescent tubes; the other was concealed behind the dumpsters outside the narrow door of a pocket-sized diner. The reek of week-old garbage competed with the heavy odors of sizzling oil and frying meat.
“There’s your drones, Sergei,” Vaurien said tersely. “You might want to delete them, let Zwerner know we know he’s keeping tabs on us.”
“Be my guest,” van Donne invited. “I’ve blown away dozens of these things. Five minutes later a couple more show up. In the end, it’s cheaper to save your ammunition.”
“Neil?” Vaurien turned in Travers’s direction.
“Take them, make the statement,” Travers said promptly. “Make Zwerner aware van Donne has allies.”
“Is that wise?” Jazinsky wondered.
“He’s already seen us meet.” Marin drew the Zamphir and primed it. He was gazing up, wide-eyed in the half-light, looking for the first drone. “He’ll be fully aware of the probe into his business, which is the reason he pulled out to Halfway, where he’s harder to reach. He tried to probe Etienne before we docked – and failed. So we have to be high on his list of suspects. He knows we’re on Shapiro’s team … I’d say he already knows why we’re here, and –” he paused to squeeze the trigger once, and was rewarded by a small explosion, a shower of magnesium bright sparks, a fist-sized chunk of wreckage which fell heavily to the deck, still glowing red-hot.
“And what we need,” Travers went on as he slithered along the wall, closer to the reeking dumpsters, “is a way to force his hand. Maybe flush him out. Panic him, so he doesn’t feel safe even sitting inside his fortress.” He snapped off a single shot, and the dumpsters jiggled with the force of the explosion which killed the second drone. He turned back to the group as he slid away the sidearm. “Now he knows what he’s up against, and he’s going to make the next move.”
“Jesus,” van Donne breathed. “You’re insane.”
“Who, us?” Marin joined Travers, shoulder to shoulder with him. “What tipped you off?” He touched the comm clipped to his lapel. “Etienne, status?”
The calm AI voice was surreal in these surroundings. “Level four signal activity issuing from the source of the deep system probe. Comm locators place five recipients all over Halfway. Only one is in your sector. Suggest vigilance. Armed caution is warranted.”
Marin surveyed van Donne critically. “Tells us three things. One, we got Zwerner’s attention. Two, he takes us seriously enough to jump right out of his skin. Three, he has only five operatives deployed at one time, which means he has less than twenty available, probably closer to ten. And those numbers are manageable.”
“Especially since you can subtract one in about two minutes,” Travers said in an acid tone. “Etienne, update.”
“One thermal signature, identified by the comm unit receiving the level four encrypted signal, converging on your position,” Etienne informed him. “Position, cargo elevator access corridor, intersecting with the promenade thirty meters ahead of your position. Estimated time to intercept, seventy seconds.”
“Stay put,” Travers said quietly to Vaurien. He gave Ramon an interested look. “Everybody says you’re one of the best, kid. Do what you do … secure this position, nothing gets through, nobody gets hurt.”
Ramon made a face. “You sure you’re a major? You sound like a freakin’ platoon sergeant.”
The observation was accurate enough to inspire genuine humor, and Travers gave the kid a brash grin. “It’s a long story. Curtis?”
They were moving then, holding to the deep blue pools of shadow in the dark wells where the overhead fluoros were dead. Opposite the juncture of the promenade and the cargo access corridor was the recessed doorway of a dealer in scrap machinery. Every conceivable item was stacked inside and out, from the most antiquated rubbish Mawson would have rejected to military items recently salvaged at Ulrand, most of which were broken but repairable.
Without a word, Travers and Marin ducked into the cover of the stacked machinery and listened as Etienne whispered over the loop. “Ten seconds. Five … three … standby.”
The shooter was not long out of Fleet. The presentation was still all crewdeck bravado, from the unit tattoos to the buzz cut hair, the mock-cammo pants and jacket and the indeterminate gender. Travers had no idea if Zwerner’s shooter was male or female. Too much muscle and too many tattoos confused the kid’s profile. All he was sure of was that it was a kid in his or her early twenties, with a big-cal Chiyoda pistol in one hand and a palmgun in the other.
The shooter slithered to the end of the corridor, pressed flat against the wall and peered around, hunting visually for the group. Marin was muttering in annoyance as he swung the Zamphir down into line and snapped off a shot. The round smacked into the meat and muscle of one big thigh and the shooter spun, grunted, as he or she sprawled on the deck.
“Etienne,” Marin said sharply. “Four more comm idents in the field. Where, doing what?”
“Too far from your position to be germane,” Etienne murmured. “I will track them and report.”
Satisfied, Travers stood up from the cover of the stack of junk and watched as Marin strode closer to the shooter. A second round punched into the kid’s other leg; two more, delicately placed, incapacitated both arms. The limbs were perfectly repairable, but the neural damage would take several days to properly heal after surgery. This one was out of commission for so long, the action would be over before the medics let him get back up on his feet.
With a muttered curse, Marin leaned down over the kid, threw open the cammo jacket and deliberately confiscated three other assorted guns as well as the Chiyoda and the sneak gun. The young face was twisted in pain, teeth bared, eyes red as much with fury as with agony. Marin passed two of the weapons to Travers and thrust the others into his jacket pockets. Before he straightened, he addressed the comm in the kid’s shirt pocket.
He knew it would be open. Radio monitoring was standar
d procedure. “Mister Zwerner,” he said levelly, “you’d best send a crew down here to pick up your wounded. And if you continue to take casual potshots at this company, the next one will require a bodybag.” He stood then. “Neil?”
Travers whispered to his own comm. “Move it. Everybody out. The way’s clear ahead, right back to the elevators. Fall back to the Wastrel. Etienne, are you monitoring Halfway utility systems?”
“Constantly.”
“Do you have override capabilities?”
“Of course,” Etienne said patiently.
“Then override command of the elevator between here and the dorsal docks,” Travers told it. He lifted a brow at Marin. “We don’t want any nasty surprises on the way home … and if Zwerner’s been here so long he literally owns the place, he could have a finger up everything.”
“Sneaky.” Marin favored him with a smile. “You’re learning. These are Dendra Shemiji tricks. Never split your knuckles when you can think spirals around the buggers.”
For months now, while he and Marin had been recovering from the ordeal in the smashed, radiotoxic underground below the University of Omaru, Hydralis, Travers had been reading Mark Sherratt’s texts, watching vids, reviewing old mission reports. In sims, he had been trying his hand at the Resalq martial arts, and a few words of the language had begun to stick in his mind. He knew that Dendra Shemiji meant ‘the silence of knives,’ or, more literally, ‘knife silent.’ He knew that ‘dendra’ was a class of knife, specifically the long knife, or even sword. Denlun was cutlery; denepu was the whole family of carving knives. He knew that ‘shemiji’ was a type of silence. Shemebre’elar was the soft quiet before a storm broke. Shemvin was ‘the quiet of the soul,’ the Resalq term for meditation. Shemiji was the silence of utter extinction. Iji meant ‘nothing,’ in the context of ‘the hollow emptiness left when everything is gone.’
The Resalq way was so old, so deep, Travers often despaired of making sense of more than a fraction of it. After ten years of living and working with them, studying with Mark Sherratt and literally being adopted into his family – perhaps even to fill some void left by Leon’s departure – Marin was still not fluent in the language. But the Resalq triple-think came naturally to him now, while Travers still envied his knowledge of a system of martial arts which had been ancient before humans landed a pilot on their own moon.
With Etienne remote-commanding the elevators in this quadrant of Halfway, Zwerner could not reach them on the ride back up to the Wastrel’s dorsal berth, but before Marin hit the door release he petitioned the AI again.
“The docking facility is clear,” Etienne reported. “I am still tracking the operatives associated by comm ID with the individual, Zwerner, but they have converged on their injured. Encrypted comm traffic continues to pass between them and a secure mainframe in Halfway. Encryption levels have been increased to level five.”
“Doors open. Do we have access to the content of the traffic?” Travers asked.
“Yes, but the gist is unclear,” Etienne warned. “Their use of unit-specific code words complicates the sense of their signals.”
The docking rings were cold, windy, dim. Travers swept the area with a single disapproving look, and went ahead to the Wastrel’s hatch. Marin hung behind the group, and with a glance back, Travers knew what he was doing. He had pried an inspection hatch off the panel at the right of the freight elevator. He was rigging up a manual override, setting keycodes for one more level of security.
The wide, silver-green hatch slid open with a soft shush of equalizing air pressures. Jazinsky went right ahead, but Vaurien blocked the way before van Donne and his people could follow. His face was side-lit by the red emergency lamps, weirdly shadowed, forbidding, as he gave van Donne a glare that might have withered him.
“You’re a guest on my ship, Sergei, and you’re under my protection here. I’ll thank you to mind your manners. If I find one mote of dust out of place, you’re on your own. We can get to Zwerner without you, and you’ll hear about it on whatever this heap of scrap uses for a data circuit.”
Sergei produced a hurt look. “Richard, yet again I’m wounded.”
“You will be,” Vaurien promised, “if Etienne reports anything missing or tampered with. You’re under surveillance, the three of you.”
“You gonna be watching when I take a leak?” van Donne speculated. “I didn’t figure you for a voyeur. If you wanted to check out the merchandise, all you had to do was ask.”
Without another word, Vaurien stood aside and let them pass. Ramon and Byrne were a pace behind the bigger, broader van Donne, and Travers gave a soundless chuckle as Marin joined them in the hatch.
“I never thought I’d see the day,” Marin admitted. “The last time you had van Donne aboard, he tried to make off with any tech that wasn’t bolted to the deck, and Jazinsky offered to break all four of his limbs.”
“Times change,” Travers said philosophically, “for us all. Sergei needs us, and he can save us a lot of time and work. As for the kids, Jazinsky knows Rafe Byrne from somewhere, and Ramon is looking for a better deal. He’s not going to rub you the wrong way, Richard.”
“The deal Ramon wants,” Marin said amusedly, “is anything that gets him between van Donne’s sheets, even if it means giving Byrne what he wants! I set the override on the elevator. We’re secure there. And if van Donne has even half the intel he thinks he does, we’ll have our pipeline to Zwerner.”
“Which leaves me chasing the Shanghai survivors,” Vaurien finished. He stepped into the warmer, brighter interior of his ship, and the hatch slid over. “All right, let’s see what Sergei has to offer.”
“Is anyone but me hungry?” Travers wondered plaintively. His head had begun to clear as his system cycled out the rubbish they had all been breathing in the club, leaving him aware of his belly. The after-effects of gryphon and chimera were always the same. The last time he and Curtis had been subjected to these mild toxins, they were in the custody of Colonel Alec Tarrant’s resistance cell. He had wild memories of that VR session, and from the glitter in Curtis’s eyes, he was recalling the same scenes.
Chapter Two
The schematics of Halfway displayed in the vast threedee, five meters wide, filling the body of Jazinsky’s lab. Etienne had launched a flock of popup drones, scanned and modeled Halfway, while van Donne’s company organized themselves in quarters between Vaurien’s own and the stateroom which had become home to Travers and Marin. Ramon was wearing a smug expression, while Byrne watched the younger man with overt speculation.
Their flirting amused Marin, and he felt the tickle of fascination, the spike in his hormone levels, which might have been the gryphon and chimera, or the sub-etherics down on the lower levels – or it might have been the pheromones generated by van Donne’s companions. Whatever it was, he found himself studying his own partner, seeing Neil Travers with a stranger’s eyes, and looking at his chrono, wondering when he could engineer an hour of downtime.
The autochef in Jazinsky’s lab was set up to cater to her own tastes. The food was hot enough to take the roof off Marin’s mouth, but at least it was human. He had eaten enough Resalq cuisine to inure him to almost anything. Ramon seemed actually to like the Pakrani spices, and to van Donne they were as native as to Jazinsky herself. But Rafe Byrne grumbled bitterly until the ship’s Weimann specialist, Tully Ingersol, showed him the ’chef in the back of the crew lounge. Minutes later Byrne returned to Jazinsky’s lab with a sausage and onions on a bun, and a schooner of beer, which earned him the derision of both crews.
Wading in the threedee display, Vaurien chewed absently on seafood and noodles as he followed the paths of Halfway’s power, air, water and waste conduits. The old Rotterdam Explorer was little more than a hollow cylinder. Of the original fittings, only the generators remained. The bows had been laid wide open, peeled back like a banana skin and fused into the planetoid, and twenty meters ahead of the wide-scale conversion job, Halfway changed.
Pe
ople like Boden Zwerner had invested a great deal in Halfway, for their own comfort and security. The rad-shields were fine-tuned and overlapped; the air cycling systems worked properly; the lights were all functional. Toxicity and noise levels were low, while temperature, humidity and light levels were under constant revision. Live plants grew there; music played at volumes which did not perforate the eardrums. And the accommodations were plush, the entertainments lavish – the docking ports private and secure.
The bow-end community had been nicknamed Xanadu years before, when the modifications began, and the name was accurate. Fifteen decks of opulence were stacked one atop another, and Zwerner commanded the top three. His own docking ports opened there; his corporate army patrolled the deck directly below, and his household was installed in fortress-like security.
“Does he ever come out?” Travers asked shrewdly. He was sitting on the end of a workbench, feet on a stool, hands cradling a bowl of chicken and rice.
“Occasionally,” van Donne said through a mouthful of food. He was in Jazinsky’s recliner, boots crossed on the workspace before him. “But when he does, it’s only to saunter down to a club, or play squash with his own bodyguards.”
“For what it’s worth,” Vaurien observed from his place at the workbench where he was leaning with both elbows on the cluttered surface, “he’s made himself a prisoner.”
“It ain’t worth much.” Travers gestured with his fork at the schematic. “He’s living like an emperor in there. He’ll have the best of everything, from food to Companions to VR, whatever he wants.”
“And,” van Donne said sourly, “scuttlebutt out of Marak City says he’s consolidating. Meaning, the bastard’s rolling every asset he ever possessed into one godalmighty chunk of cash, gems, resources –”
“He’s pulling out,” Marin mused without waiting for van Donne to finish. “He’s probably fitting out a ship. Next stop, the homeworlds, where he’s far beyond the reach of anybody but Dendra Shemiji. And he’ll be making the usual mistake, assuming Dendra Shemiji doesn’t, or can’t, operate that far away.”