by Jake Elwood
Suddenly that strange familiarity made sense. She had the old man's eyes, without the predatory intensity that had marked him. "You're his daughter?"
She nodded.
"I'm… I'm sorry." He could feel heat rising in his face. "I wasn't able to keep your father safe."
Sandra shrugged, a small, helpless gesture. "Well, there were three people with guns. I don't think it was your fault."
"Your father…" His voice faltered. "Your father's a good man. When those people had him, one of them tried to shoot me." He lowered his eyes. He hadn't told anyone this part of the story, and he didn't want to start now. But she deserved to know.
"He saved me," Chan said at last. "He knocked the gun up, just before the kidnapper could fire. They hit him for it, and they dragged him away. But he saved my life."
He made himself look up. Her eyes were wide, her face bloodless. At last she said, "I came here to ask you leave Crius."
My face must look like hers. Like I've been kicked in the stomach. I'm getting bloody tired of people blaming me for this fiasco. Starting with myself.
"My father saved you," she said. She reached out, and he flinched, but all she did was close a delicate hand around his forearm. "You're like a legacy. In his final moments, he did one last thing. He saved a life. If they don't find him, if he's…" She closed her eyes for a moment, her hand tightening on his arm. Her voice was hoarse as she continued. "If he's gone. If he's gone, then in a way his influence lives on. So long as you live on."
He stared at her, nonplussed. "I'm not sure I understand. Why do you want me to leave?"
"Because you're not safe here," she said. "I'm not sure what's going on, but I think you were supposed to get shot. Or to leave. That's why they picked you. Because you have no ties on Titan, and you have your own ship." She stared up at him, solemn and serious. "You're a rat in the bilges now. They won't just let you run around."
"They," he said. "Who do you mean? Who is 'they'?"
"I wish I knew." Her voice was small and frightened. "Whoever is behind all this. If they get to you, if they harm you, then my father's legacy will be gone." She gave his forearm one last squeeze, then let go. "So keep yourself safe, James Chan. Get off of Titan. Leave Crius before someone decides you're in the way."
"I'm not sure I can do that," he said.
"Then watch your back." She turned and hurried out of the room, leaving him staring after her in mute astonishment.
Chapter 6
The room had once been a work bay of some sort. The floor was filthy, the walls mounted with hooks for tools that were long gone. The lighting was bad, some of the panels burned out, others flickering and buzzing. The air smelled of grease and sweat and something else, a dark, unpleasant scent that Liz couldn't quite place. It was a grubby, overlooked corner of the city, the kind of place where you'd expect to find roaches.
And a roach, sure enough, was in residence.
The man sat in the darkest corner of the room, a blocky, muscular shape in orange coveralls, the light gleaming on the stubbly, shaved expanse of his skull and the backs of his hands, which were decorated with muddy tattoos. His face was in shadow. He looked up as Liz crossed the room, and the bridge of his nose caught the light. She saw a ridge of scar tissue twisting the nose a bit to one side.
"Whaddaya want?" The voice was gravelly and deep, making her think of speakers that needed repair.
She stopped in front of him and crossed her arms. "I'm looking for Ed Kwan."
He leaned back, and the light caught his face for the first time. He had to be close to fifty, with gray showing in the stubble on his cheeks. His eyes were pools of black shadow, his face a collection of hard, flat planes and deep creases. The scar on his nose continued across one cheek and down to the corner of his mouth, giving him a hint of a permanent sneer. He was sitting on a crate of some sort, with a data pad balanced on one thick knee.
"What is it that you want?" he rumbled. "Think carefully before you answer. Not everyone who comes in here gets to leave."
Cheap theatrics, straight out of a gangster vid. She sneered to show how impressed she was, then put a hand in the pocket of her jumpsuit. He tensed, and she brought the laser pistol out, her hand wrapped around the top of the gun, her fingers well away from the trigger.
Some of the tension left him. "Nice gun," he said.
"Not so nice," she told him. "There's a hole in it."
He shrugged. "And?"
"And I think you put it there. I want you to tell me all about it."
He chuckled. "Do you, now? And why would I talk to you?"
She briefly considered her options. She could ask nicely. She could try persuasion, bribery, appealing to his self-interest, appealing to his better nature. She sensed that none of these approaches would work with Ed Kwan.
And she smiled. None of those approaches appealed to Liz, either. "You'll tell me because otherwise I'll use this pistol on you."
His lip curled. "You won't shoot me with—"
She stepped forward and swung her hand up in a short, vicious arc, slamming the butt of the pistol against the ridge of bone just above his left eye. His head snapped back, he cried out, and she said, "Who said anything about shooting?"
He was quick, with the reflexes of a man familiar with violence and pain. He ignored the gash under his eyebrow that was pouring blood into his eye, exploding to his feet just in time to meet Liz's elbow. She slammed her arm across the side of his rising head, feeling the impact jar her to her heels. Kwan crashed back down onto his crate, his head rebounding from the wall behind him.
Then she waited, placid, while he recovered. Combat was about psychology as much as violence. She needed him to see that she didn't take him seriously as a threat.
A lumpy hand started to rise toward his injured eye. Then his feet shot out, slashing toward her ankles. She ignored the kick, swinging the pistol instead, and she was a hair faster. The pistol cracked against his nose, his head hit the wall behind him one more time, and his feet hit her shins. Most of the force was gone from the kick by the time it landed, and she ignored it.
Kwan clapped both hands to his face and she reached down, caught his extended feet by the ankles, and yanked. He tumbled off his crate, his head thumping the wall one more time.
Liz retreated a few steps. Her shins stung and her elbow throbbed, but the pain was distant, unimportant. Kwan glared up at her, then put a hand down to heave himself up. She stepped forward, standing on the back of his hand, and he reached across with his free hand to grab her ankle. That left him badly off-balance, and she gave him a contemptuous shove with her knee. He fell onto his side, and she planted a kick in his stomach before stepping back again.
His next move almost worked. He grunted as her kick landed, and his knees came up toward his chest. He turned a pain-filled face toward her. But it wasn't enough pain to impress a man with scars like his, so she ignored his face, watching his hands instead. His left hand curled around his knees, but his right hand moved to his ankle. She saw a gleam of metal as he drew something from the top of his boot, and she feinted with her foot, faking a kick to his face. Both his arms came up, and she changed directions, driving her kick against the nerve bundle just above his right elbow. He cried out, and a small capacitor pistol sailed out of his hand and clattered against the wall.
She clouted him on the ear with the butt of the laser pistol, and he cried out again, clapping a hand to the ear. She hit him in the same place, the pistol slamming into the small bones in the back of his hand. He shrieked and tried to squirm away from her. She knelt on his right wrist, then caught the fingers of his left hand and twisted them back. He yelped, and she murmured soothingly. "Hush now. It's almost over." She held the laser pistol in front of his eyes, and he flinched.
"I'm not going to hurt you," she said. "Not unless I get bored. So why don't you tell me all about this laser pistol here?" She twisted a little bit harder on his fingers. "And if you lie to me, I'll have to come back and ask
you again. So choose your words carefully."
The men of Saturn Security were much tougher nuts to crack than Hamid had been. It wasn't that the Solar Force officer had lacked professionalism, exactly. It was simply that he was alone, while the Saturn Security people formed a close-knit team. There were eight of them in Crius, a matronly woman who ran the office and seven operatives. Two of the operatives were women. Joss stayed away from them, focussing her attention on the youngest man. He should have been an easy mark, but when she approached him with blushes and smiles he responded with cold suspicion.
After that she had to be careful. If they started talking about her among themselves, she was finished. She approached several more men, making sure the rest of the team was nowhere in sight, and made no progress at all. They were stiffly polite, giving her directions if she asked and smoothly evading every attempt to make small talk.
On her fourth attempt she finally got some traction. She wasn't too optimistic as she positioned herself in the corridor, her arms full of packages that were ready to slip, waiting for Hiram Blodgett to appear. He was old, older than Chan even. Mid-fifties at least, and he wore his wedding ring prominently. Still, you never knew what a man's weaknesses might be.
She had her back to him when she heard his feet in the corridor behind her. She stumbled along, pretending to be oblivious to him, making small sounds of dismay as the parcels in her arms slid back and forth. The top package fell, and a pale blocky hand snagged it out of the air.
"Let me give you a hand, Miss." He was shorter up close. She'd seen him across a wide room, where his perfect posture and air of authority made him seem downright imposing. He was barely taller than she was, a bit shorter than average for a man. He had a round face and a precisely-trimmed mustache, and brown eyes that twinkled a bit as he lifted another parcel from her arms. "Which way are you heading?"
"Oh, thank you so much." She gave him her flirtiest smile, which made him laugh in her face. She was able to blush without trying, and she turned away from him, disconcerted. He followed, carrying two of her parcels.
"Can you tell me where to find Dome Three?" she asked at last. "I'm supposed to meet my shipmate there, but I'm all turned around. I know I'm close, but there are no signs, are there?"
He directed her to the dome in question with quiet good humor, walking beside her, commiserating with her on the confusing array of tunnels and corridors. She found herself liking him. He was like a genial uncle, helpful and friendly. And even though she'd lugged her parcels all the way from the Raven just to engineer this meeting, the parcels really were heavy and awkward, and she was glad of his help.
"This is it," she said, stopping in front of the Sunrise Café. The café consisted of a tiny kiosk set in the wall of a corridor with tiny tables strung along the wall in front, each with an equally tiny chair. "This is where I'm meeting her."
"Great." He stacked two of her parcels beside a table and helped her set down the rest. "Will you be all right from here?"
She began without much hope to try to talk him into joining her for a drink. To her surprise he agreed, and they sat at a little table, watching the people stream past. She played the role of wide-eyed visitor, and he talked about the city and the people going by. His attitude was entirely avuncular, and she stopped trying to flirt with him. He wanted to help her, not bed her.
The conversation was pleasant but not useful to her until she took a chance and mentioned that she was on the crew of the Stark Raven. That made him sit up a bit straighter.
"Is that James Chan's ship?"
She nodded.
"Huh. Does he do bodyguarding work very often?"
Joss grimaced. "No, I think the one time was plenty." She stared into her cup of fruit juice. "They told him it would be easy. Just show up, and your presence will be a deterrence. Nobody expected gunfire."
"Civilians never do," Blodgett said. "That's why there are professionals available." He made a face. "It's a good thing Chan didn't have a gun. He would have only made things worse."
Joss saw no reason to correct him. Instead she said, "Professionals? What do you mean?"
"Funny you should ask." He leaned back in his little chair, frowning as the chair creaked. "If they'd hired professionals, it might have been me at that party instead of your Mr. Chan." He went on to tell her about Saturn Security and his role as an operative, telling her nothing that she couldn't have learned from their advertisements.
"I don't understand," Joss said, wrinkling her nose in confusion. "Why didn't they hire you guys?" She lifted her hands. "Don't get me wrong. Chan's a good guy. He's honest, he's smart, but, like you said, he's not a professional bodyguard."
"Well, they're a strange bunch over at Amalgamated." Blodgett rubbed the side of his nose. "I don't think family and business should really mix."
Joss didn't speak, just lifted her eyebrows.
"I know how I was with my dad," Blodgett said. "He mined asteroids when I was a boy, and I worked for him. It wasn't always about the business with us." The grin he gave her made her suddenly see the boy he'd been four decades before. "Most of the time, when I made a decision, the only thought in my head was, what does Pa want me to do, and how can I get away with doing the opposite?"
She laughed.
"Now, Riverson Junior is almost my age. You'd think he'd have outgrown that sort of foolishness. But I'll let you in on a secret." He leaned in close, and Joss leaned forward as well. "If my old man was running Saturn Security, I'm pretty sure I'd still be trying to twist his tail." He laughed and leaned back.
"That's a scary thought," Joss said. "I mean, they're a huge company."
Blodgett was still smiling. "That's what they have board members for," he said. "So the chairman can't get too out of hand."
"It's hard to picture him as a, what? An overgrown rebellious teen?" She wrinkled her nose, remembering John Riverson as she'd seen him in vid clips, giving speeches and touring Amalgamated Orbital facilities. "He's so … buttoned-down."
Blodgett laughed. "That's just the term for him. The polite term, anyway." He gave her a speculative look, as if deciding whether to speak. "He's not quite the choir boy he seems."
Joss felt her pulse quicken. "He's not?"
Blodgett shook his head. "We do background checks. It's one of our main services. And after the kidnapping, some of us got a little curious. We did some background checks on a few key staff members at Amalgamated."
"And?"
He grinned. "We don't usually gossip about this sort of thing, but Riverson and his assistant Hansard have been a bit rude to us lately, so I'm going to make an exception." The grin left his face. "John Riverson is a gambler. I don’t have any hard numbers, but judging by the time he spends at the tables, either he's very lucky or he's in very deep. I wouldn't hire him to work for my company, and I wouldn't recommend him to any of my clients. He's a security risk."
Joss stared at him, trying to figure out what to ask next.
"I'm telling you this for a reason, Miss. Your Mr. Chan shouldn’t be playing around at being a bodyguard. He hasn't got the skills. But he did his best. You tell him. You tell him it's not his fault. He blundered into the middle of something crooked, and he never had a chance. So if he's blaming himself for what happened, he should stop." Blodgett stood. "It was a pleasure meeting you. Good day."
Joss stared after him as he walked away, her head whirling. Then she gathered up her parcels and headed back to the ship.
The corridor curved gently as it followed the base of Leto Dome. On the inner side the panels were opaque, but on the outside of the curve and on the ceiling of the corridor the panels were transparent, giving a view of swirling orange cloud and the bulk of Asteria Dome to one side. The sun was a distant glowing spot in the clouds, nearly eclipsed by the bulk of Dome Eight, which loomed above Leto.
Chan gave the view an occasional glance, but it was his fellow pedestrians in the tunnel who claimed the bulk of his attention. He'd spent the last of his ca
sh buying drinks for dock workers, and all he had to show for it was a mild hangover and rumors of strange goings-on in Dome Eight. Now his heart was thumping as he approached the dome, scanning the eyes of every person who passed him. He could walk right past one of the kidnappers without recognizing them. His only hint might be a flash of recognition on a stranger's face.
A few people gave his vac suit a curious glance, but no one paid him much attention. Not that it meant anything. Chan told himself repeatedly to relax, that he was in no danger, that he was simply walking through the city's corridors.
It didn't help. His adrenal glands were sure he was walking into the lion's den.
He was about to step into the lift tube that would take him up to Dome Eight when a faint gleam of gold caught his eye. He stepped back from the tube opening, murmuring an apology to a plump woman carrying a basket of vegetables. She rose out of sight and Chan moved around the lift tube. In a dusty corner behind the tube, nearly hidden from sight, he found the black and gold butler robot he'd met a few days before.
"Well, hello there," Chan said.
The robot stood silent, unmoving.
"Oh, knock it off," Chan grumbled. "I know you're not turned off." He gestured at the robot's eyes, which glowed faintly red. "I can see your indicator lights."
"How can I be of service?" the robot said promptly, sounding unperturbed.
Chan planted his hands on his hips. "What is going on with you, robot?"
"I'm sure I don’t know what you mean." The robot's voice was as scratchy as Chan remembered, but devoid of emotion. It was an advantage that robots had, Chan supposed. They could lie without the usual tells. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a number of duties to perform."
Chan shot an arm out, blocking the robot as it tried to move past him. "You're not going anywhere, metal man. You don't have any duties, do you?"
"I'm afraid I don't have time to converse with you further," the robot said. "I am required in Dome—"