Flashpoint (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  There, he stopped the playback and gave Travers and Marin a dark look. “It could be bounty hunters or the Ulrish secret service. Either way, they’re operating on Velcastra without any official authority, and they’ll be trying to keep a low profile themselves. If they make any kind of scene, they’ll be arrested. Jon could also be arrested in the affray, but Robert assures me, Velcastra has no extradition contract with Ulrand, and the law here has no interest in any fancied charges issued in Marak. Robert?”

  “Correct,” Liang affirmed. “As far as Velcastra is concerned, these insurgents are the characters on the wrong side of the law!”

  “So they would have waited for night,” Marin mused, “or the early hours of the morning, when the motel settles down and it’s just hustlers and trade on the prowl while everyone else is asleep. That would have been the plan, until they monitored this call.” He flicked a glance at Shapiro. “You heard the comm distortion. They heard every word.”

  “And we,” Travers said bleakly, “don’t have the luxury of time to stand here talking about it! General?”

  Shapiro was already touching his combug. “Mercury 101, do you copy?”

  As Travers would have predicted, Perlman was online. “Standing by, General.”

  “Start her up, Lieutenant,” Shapiro said tersely. “Travers and Marin are on their way. Break out small arms, and then wait for instructions.”

  “Mercury 101, on ignition procedures,” Perlman reported, always the professional. “You there, Travers?”

  While Shapiro was still speaking, Travers and Marin had left the study and were jogging out through the courtyards. They turned left around the gardens and quickened their pace. “Right here,” Travers told her. “It’s a fast shot over to Scott’s Harbor. Clear it with ATC, and tell them to standby to cycle the hangar.”

  “Will do,” Perlman assured him.

  It was Fargo in Travers’s ear then. “Some kind of trouble, boss? Shooting party?”

  “Probably,” Travers told her. “But for chrissakes keep it simple. It’s probably bounty hunters. With any luck they’ll scatter, and if they do – let them.”

  He and Marin were through the gardens now, and slithering to a halt where the executive elevators were tucked in behind the reception kiosk. Marin keyed for the lift, and the car opened at once. Travers looked at two grim faces in the mirrored interior.

  “The Ulrish Secret Service,” Marin warned, “has a bad reputation for being staffed by buffoons. Don’t count on them scattering.”

  “Dumbass agents on one side, the best of Bravo Company on the other,” Travers mused. “Now, let me think this through.” He gave Marin a wink. “You’ve only seen my kids in the field once, on Kjorin. They were the best, on the Intrepid. They know what they’re doing.”

  “I’m sure they do,” Marin agreed. “I’m just not used to going into this kind of scene with a – a crowd. I always worked alone.”

  “Dendra Shemiji,” Travers observed as the elevator opened, and they jogged out into the cold air and harsh neon of the hangar.

  The Aragos were already hot, wreathing the Montenegro in a haze of its own heat. The ramp was down, and as Travers followed Marin in through the hatch, he smacked the ‘lock’ control. It was whining up while Perlman said, “StarCity ATC, this is Mercury 101, we are clear to leave.”

  Right behind the pilots’ seats, Fargo was waiting with a Chiyoda 60 in each hand and a face full of questions. Travers took one of the weapons, stepped aside to let Marin take the other, and said baldly, “Shapiro has a man groundside, pinned down by insurgents. It’s just an extraction, people, and the last thing we want is shots fired, because the place is full of civilians.”

  “Oh, great,” Fargo muttered.

  “Civilians,” Inosanto moaned.

  “So you’ll take a full scan series,” Travers said sharply, “and you’ll mind where you’re bloody shooting, if you have to shoot at all.”

  Fargo accorded him a crisp salute, which looked somehow like an insult, and as the Montenegro dropped out of the hangar she was already configuring the threedee.

  From the altitude of StarCity, all Perlman had to do was swing the nose of the Rand lander through seventy degrees, angle it down and let the ship fall on the storm of its repulsion. Marin leaned on the back of the seat where Shapiro had sat, intent on the threedee while he said into the loop, “We’re in the air. Three minutes, General. Do you want to call Kim, tell him his ride’s coming in? If the call is monitored, which it ought to be, there’s a good chance the insurgents will avoid a confrontation, vanish into the woodwork with the rest of the roaches.”

  “Or it’ll give them plenty of early warning of what we’re doing,” Travers added.

  “Doesn’t make any difference.” Marin gestured at the town, which was framed in the threedee, a grainy longshot at the extreme resolution of the lander’s imaging system. “Look at the size of the place. As soon as they hear heavy lift engines, they’re going to know who it is, what it’s about … and they’re going to hear us coming in about two minutes.”

  “Call him,” Travers suggested, “with one minute to spare.”

  “No shooting,” Shapiro warned. “One civilian casualty, one broken window, and questions will be asked which no one wants to answer, myself least of all.”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” Marin said in an evasive tone which said clearly, ‘no promises.’ He looked up and back at Travers and mouthed, “No shooting?”

  Travers’s head shook minutely as he moved in and around to see the threedee. Scott’s Harbor was imaged at better resolution now, with several scans overlaid on the outlines of the buildings. Twenty assorted structures were connected by power and comm conduits; over a hundred thermal signatures of people showed in and around the buildings. Travers counted twenty small vehicles, cars or planes, and one spaceplane, an old Volvo in electric blue. It was parked on the common ground at the south side of the town, where the cove curved around in an elbow of white sand and the boat ramps were quiet in the evening light.

  “If they bugged the motel’s comm lines,” Marin said quietly, “and they know they can’t try to take Kim before dark, they should either be on that ship, or in the bar.”

  “But since they heard Kim talking to Shapiro –” Travers glanced at his chrono “—eleven minutes ago, they have a decision to make. Pull their heads in and let him go, or force their hand.” He deferred to Marin now. “This is more your line of work. Dendra Shemiji. What’s your guess?”

  A whisper over the open loop, Shapiro was talking to Kim as Marin said, “It all depends on several factors.” The lander was dropping in over the town now, and his eyes remained on the threedee. “Bounty hunters would cut and run before government agents. Agents, especially stupid ones, could follow orders to the letter … then again, bounty hunters might take the risk, if the paycheck were fat enough.”

  “So,” Fargo wondered, “what’s Shapiro’s man worth?”

  “General?” Marin prompted. “Do we know?”

  And Shapiro: “Five million in Ulrish dollars, which isn’t a lot of buying power in anyone else’s currency, but it’s a fortune in Marak City.”

  “Which tells us something,” Marin said as the lander dropped right in at the south end of the town’s single main street, and Perlman parked it there, effectively blocking through traffic and cutting off the Volvo. “It tells us, whoever has Kim under surveillance is from Marak itself, because the paycheck wouldn’t make offworld bountymen even lift an eyebrow.”

  The Montenegro settled in a miniature sandstorm, and Perlman opened up at once. A waft of ocean air entered the cab, smelling of ozone, wrack and boats. Travers would have said it smelt like a vacation, if he did not have a Chiyoda machine pistol in his right hand while he stuffed two spare magazines into his pocket with the other.

  The motel was three buildings up the street, with a service garage and a bait-and-tackle store on the south side, and the bar and general produce market opposite.
A marine engine dealership was beyond the bar, and Travers could see no further. The street was wide, and the sidewalk was confused with the umbrella-shaded tables outside the bar, gaudy with the logos and colors of Redondo and Martini and Schultz.

  Data reorganized itself in the threedee, and Travers stabbed a finger at the graphic of a second-floor room, where three figures were detailed in thermo. “One human, two dogs. That’s Kim. Got him … and there’s no other figures on his level. Eight downstairs, all bunched together. Dining room? Perlman, you see our man?”

  “I see him.” She was intent on the pilot’s threedee. “I’ll monitor him, if you guys want to take a stroll.”

  “Do that,” Travers said quietly. “Judith, Tim, you’re going to go check out the Volvo. If there’s any sign of life, nail it to the spot and tell it not to twitch a muscle till it’s told to.”

  Fargo and Inosanto were moving at once, and Marin took one last glance at the datastream. Then he very deliberately knocked the safety off the Chiyoda before he slid it back into the holster beneath his zipped-down jacket, and headed down the ramp into the ocean air.

  It would have been the perfect place, perfect weather, for a vacation, Travers thought. He had forgotten the last time he had smelt the sea air or the sun on his back, heavy as a hand pressing him down. Tanning under a lamp on the Wastrel was no real substitute. The light was bright, glittering off the ocean as the big, yellow sun of Velcastra headed down into evening.

  Scott’s Harbor was quiet. The loudest sound was a low thrum of engine noise from the distance, the hoarse voices of gulls squabbling over refuse where fishermen had recently gutted their catch, a thin thread of music issuing from the bar.

  Over the loop, Jon Kim said, “Any time you’re ready, Harry.”

  “My people are on their way in,” Shapiro told him. “Stay right where you are, don’t even move.”

  The faded plascrete was dusted with sand, and the end walls of the street’s last buildings were painted up with gaudy, fanciful murals. A fishing boat sprouted wide gull’s wings and headed up to orbit, where some massive sea creature described a great arc around the sun. Travers’s eyes narrowed against the glare as they made their way across an empty lot and into the deep shadow of the street.

  The motel was thirty yards ahead and on their right, closest to the shoreline, when Perlman warned, “Got movement. Three figures just started up the stairs. Can’t tell yet if they’re anything to do with your man … standby.”

  Marin’s voice was a bare murmur. “Tell us if they turn in Kim’s direction at the top of the stairs – but remember, they could be residents. There’s eight rooms on Kim’s side of the building.”

  “Do you read weapons signatures?” Travers asked as he and Marin quickened their pace.

  “Tough to be certain,” Perlman mused. “They could be using something like the Kolya 9mm Taina. On scans, it’s going to look about as much like a weapon as a kid’s bucket and spade … give me a second. I’ll recalibrate, see if I can squeeze out some more info.”

  They were in the forecourt of the service garage now, and Travers’s nose wrinkled on the reek of lubricants, fuels. A marine engine was on the bench, just inside the rolled-up doors, its handler drone still parked right beside it.

  “They turned right,” Perlman said quietly. “Signs of metal on them, but they look like rods and tackle boxes, that kind of gear. This is a damn’ fishing town, right? People come here to murder fish.”

  The bait-and-tackle store was open, with a frond curtain fluttering in the afternoon wind, discouraging the flying insects which buzzed around any trash barrel and any exposed area of human skin. Travers waved them away from his face as he glanced at the heavy-duty rods and reels, high-tech fish finders, hats and teeshirts with the ‘U gotta luv Scott’s Harbor’ logo.

  They were under the Blue Lagoon motel sign, stepping into the dim, cool interior, when Perlman said, “Pick it up, Neil. I think you just ran out of time. They’re not heading into the other rooms. They’re on your man.”

  Without a comment, Travers and Marin bolted through the foyer and took the stairs three at a time. Faces turned toward them, a man’s voice shouted from the reception desk, but Travers ignored them. The Chiyoda was balanced between both hands as he and Marin stopped with two stairs remaining.

  Marin went down flat and peeked around to the right, and Travers flattened out against the near wall. He slid out just far enough to see, and swore beneath his breath. Three figures – two men and a woman – all dressed like vacationers in shorts, sandals, silly teeshirts, jackets tied on – were grouped around Kim’s door. Three bait boxes lay open and discarded at their feet, and Perlman was right.

  Three matching Kolya pistols glistened in the subdued passage lighting – plastex bodies, plastex rounds driven by compressed air delivered from kevlex gas cartridges. They were almost silent and deadly over very short distances, and almost impossible to identify on sensors, which made them the assassin’s weapon of choice.

  “Drop them,” Marin barked. “You’re busted – guns down, hands up, right where you are!”

  The three figures spun, and Travers held his breath. His right index finger held a feather’s pressure on the trigger as he watched the figures turn in Marin’s direction. Secret Service or bounty hunters? Either way, they would know they were so far on the wrong side of Velcastra law, they were in trouble. Ulrish agents would probably surrender to the authorities and leave it to their government to negotiate the terms of their release.

  But the Kolyas were coming up, dragging into line, and Marin had barely finished the mandatory warning when he squeezed off the first round. Locked on single shot mode, the Chiyoda gave a quiet, low-pitched cough, and it would cycle as fast as the hair-sensitive trigger could be stroked.

  Long familiarity with Marin, many hours on the shooting range, told Travers he would take the middle target and then go left, and he was already intent on the right-side target, a blond man with big shoulders and long, stringy legs.

  Two needle-sharp plastex rounds, more like darts than bullets, spat out of the Kolyas, raising dust and flecks of paint in the wall by Travers’s head and in the woodwork just above Marin’s shoulder. At a range of twenty meters, the Kolya was not known for its accuracy, and the Chiyoda was infinitely superior.

  A distinctive chemical tang sharpened the air as both Travers and Marin fired. The woman and the man with the stringy legs stumbled back against Jon Kim’s door, leaving one target up, mobile, dangerous. He had targeted Marin when Travers squeezed a second round into him – Marin had marked this one first – a big Pakrani, too big for a single round to put him down. The second shot spun him around, and his feet snagged in the tangle of legs under him. He went down hard, sprawling over the other two, and it was the woman who bellowed, in a thick Marak accent,

  “All right, all right! Busted, we got the fuckin’ message, for chrissakes, enough!”

  “Not the Ulrish Secret Service,” Travers said with dry humor.

  Shapiro was on the comm, voice taut and raw. “Travers, I thought I said no shooting!”

  “You said you didn’t want civilian casualties and broken windows,” Marin argued, on his way to his feet. “And those, you don’t have. You have what looks like three bounty hunters. One’s certainly Ulrish, the other two … give us a minute. You might like to get a doctor in here. You want them arrested?”

  For a moment Shapiro said nothing, and then, “Frankly, no. The less fuss we make, the easier it’ll be to sweep the dust back into place over this. Severe injuries?”

  “Minimal,” Travers told him as he and Marin made their way down the passage. “Curtis and I are fine – thanks for asking. These idiots are smarting. Flesh wounds, gun arms, one shoulder. Fargo!”

  She was there at once. “Right here, boss. No sign of movement on the ship. I think you got ’em all right there. Perlman ran an ID on the Volvo. It’s registered in Marak City, got into Velcastra four days ago.”

  “Th
anks,” Travers acknowledged. “Makes sense.”

  The three intruders had untangled themselves, and sat in various degrees of pain, anger and humiliation, around Jon Kim’s door. The woman glared up at Marin with a twisted, furious face. Her left hand was clenched into her right shoulder, cutting off some of the pain of a wound in the upper arm which was bleeding profusely. “Fleet,” she accused. “Fucking Fleet, it had to be Fleet, it’s always bloody Fleet. We bugged the phones.”

  “We know.” Marin held the Chiyoda loosely on the whole group as he looked from wound to wound, checking for dire injuries. Only the big man, who had drawn two shots, was in real difficulties. The second round was high in his shoulder – much too high to puncture his lung, though it had hit the bone. He was glassy eyed with concussion, after the shock of the impact transmitted through his bones to his brain.

  Travers was looking at faces, and thrust out his hand. “Credentials. Come on. Secret Service, bounty bastards, what are you?” With a maximum of wincing, groaning and cursing, three warrant cards were slapped into his palm, and he held them to the light. “Benson, Kapel and Ghetty. Licensed in Marak. What a shock.”

  “You bozos are dead lucky. You’re off the hook,” Marin was saying to them. “Get yourselves a doctor, and then get lost. Crawl back under your rock. Show your faces again, and you won’t see daylight for a very long time, understand?”I

  “Fleet bastards,” the big man was groaning as he cradled his right arm and shoulder, breath whistling in his throat with real pain.

  “Whatever. Get yourself a doctor.” Marin leaned over him and rapped his knuckled on the door. “Jon Kim? It’s time to leave.”

  Over the comm loop Shapiro’s voice murmured, “That’s Major Marin and Major Travers. Mercury 101 is standing a hundred meters due south of your position. You’re safe, Jon.”

  Travers tossed the warrant cards onto the floor between the woman and the big man. He backed off two measured paces as the door rattled, opened, and the first sign of Jon Kim was the bared fangs of two dogs. A cream German shepherd and an Australian sheepdog strained on short leashes, so eager to get their teeth into any flesh they could reach, they were foaming at the lips. Kim was not about to call them back. He had on a rucksack, and he shortened both chains to just a few links, struggling to hold the dogs as he picked his way through the Oleander bushes.