I sighed and happily snuggled deeper into the warmth. I loved this cloak to pieces, but I knew it was expensive.
Loch stood. “Consider it a gift,” he said. “Or an investment, if you prefer. I have to keep you alive long enough to get paid, after all.” Despite his gruff words, I thought he was pleased that I liked the cloak.
He pulled on his own cloak and his face dropped into shadow. The cloak did nothing to detract from his size, though. He looked like the kind of man who would shoot first and ask questions never. It was a good look for a mercenary planet.
“Ready?” he asked. When I nodded he continued, “There are mercs literally everywhere once we get to the main part of town. Keep your hood up and stick to me. You’re dressed like them, so as long as you don’t do something stupid, they won’t pay any attention to you.”
This wasn’t my first rodeo. I had long ago perfected the walk that made me just another downtrodden worker bee who was absolutely uninteresting. It was a move that, done correctly, made you invisible in plain sight.
“Let’s go get me a com.”
Chapter 7
Loch opened the door then ushered me into the cold twilight. The wind still howled through the streets, but the cloak blocked the worst of it. For the first time since we’d arrived, I was outside and not freezing. Hallelujah.
We walked toward sunset for ten minutes before I saw signs of life. A few buildings had lights and a shadow moved behind one of the windows. Another five minutes and we were skirting around the edge of the central commercial district, such as it was.
Enough people were on the street that we didn’t stand out, but a bustling city this was not. Nearly everyone was on foot and thankfully, many were cloaked and hooded against the cold. At least our hidden faces wouldn’t be cause for suspicion.
I mentally mapped our path in case Loch and I were separated. The com should be doing the same thing, but coms could be lost or stolen. As the number of people increased, I dropped back to trail along behind Loch’s right shoulder. Wearing men’s clothes, cloaked, and with my hair covered, I would pass for a junior merc tagging along with his captain.
The streets got dirtier and the buildings shabbier as we kept going. Even the plastech buildings, which I had thought were basically indestructible, were worn and mudded over with clay bricks. Men with darting eyes slunk through the alleys and a few brave women shivered in high hemlines and plunging necklines.
Loch must’ve been gone this morning for longer than I thought. Either that or he had an innate sense that led him directly to the shadiest of shady districts.
We turned down an alley that stank of urine and worse. A lanky man several centimeters shorter than Loch detached himself from the wall and stepped into our path. He was younger than me but old enough to know better. A smirk twisted what would be a moderately handsome face into something cold and cruel.
“See here,” he said, “this is my alley. And I charge a toll for its use.” Another man, bigger, older, and stronger, stepped out behind us. I half turned so I faced both threats. “A hundred credits each and you can be on your way,” the young man said.
“Move,” Loch said. He seemed completely unconcerned.
“Oh, we’ve got a tough one here, Vance,” the young man said to the bruiser behind us. “What do we do with tough ones?”
“We break their knees, boss,” Vance said. He brandished a half-meter length of pipe in his meaty hands.
Vance would be slow but devastating if he landed a blow. The “boss” would be sneaky and underhanded but would probably break down in a true physical fight. I drew my knife and kept it hidden under the cloak. I didn’t know what Loch’s plan was, but I doubted he’d turn over the credits.
“Do you know what I do to young upstarts who try to shake me down for money?” Loch asked as he rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. His tone was terrifying and I was on his side.
Unfortunately for the young upstart, Loch didn’t wait for an answer. In an incredible flash of speed he spun and punched Vance in the throat, then took his pipe and swung it with sickening force at the young man’s torso.
Vance went down with heaving gasps and the young man crumpled at Loch’s feet. Loch picked him up by the neck. “New deal,” Loch said. “I won’t kill you and you’ll crawl back under whatever rock you came from. Try any revenge bullshit, though, and it’ll be the last thing you do. Understand?”
The young man muttered something that might have been assent.
“What was that?” Loch asked with a shake.
“I understand!”
Loch dropped him on the ground. “Let’s move,” he said. He stalked off, and I followed without comment.
Once I was sure we were alone, I closed the distance between us. “I’m not sure that was wise,” I said. “We need to be invisible, to be overlooked. You put a target on us.”
“Sweetheart,” Loch drawled, “I’ve been running from mercs for far longer than you’ve been slumming it. If I want to know what fork to use at a Consortium dinner, I’ll ask you. If we’re dealing with mercenaries, I’ll handle it.”
I clenched the hilt of the knife and told myself I absolutely, positively was not going to bash Marcus Loch in the head with it. But I imagined it. Oh, I imagined it with great relish. One of these days I was going to take the cocky bastard down a peg or two or twenty and he was going to deserve every second of it.
The fence’s shop was behind an unmarked door in an unmarked alley. We were let into an empty room where Marcus had a quiet conversation with an older woman. After a few minutes we were led through a series of rooms and passageways until I was positive we had left the original building.
Twenty minutes of mind-numbing twists and turns later, we entered the shop. I had a fairly good idea of where we were but wouldn’t be able to confirm until we were outside.
The shop looked like any high-end boutique in the ’verse, with glass counters protecting the valuable merchandise and everything else displayed on shelves. The only difference was that everything of value was placed on cloth rolls or cloth sacks for easy grab-and-go convenience. Portability was essential when the law came to call.
A tall, slender woman with warm brown skin, long black hair, and round, rose-colored spectacles stood behind the far counter. Several guards were scattered around. Clearly the fence didn’t want her own goods stolen.
I started by looking at the knives. I’d dealt with fences before and you never wanted to tip your hand too early. Most of the knives were mediocre combat blades but a nice little stiletto dagger caught my eye. My younger sister Catarina would love it.
I worked my way halfway around the room, spending time looking at things I had no intention of buying. When I got to the com units, I saw that they only had one option that was going to work for me.
The shopkeeper wandered closer, smelling blood. “Do you need a new com?” she asked. Her voice was soft and melodious. I bet she’d talked many a person into spending extra money with that voice.
“Perhaps,” I said. “Do you have anything decent?”
Her lips tipped up in a small smile. “Ah, a woman,” she said. “Women get discounts in my shop. I am Veronica. And to answer your question, yes, I have many decent things, but if you’re looking for the best, this is it. This com just arrived yesterday.”
She pulled out the exact com I knew I needed. It was a top-of-the-line House von Hasenberg model very much like the one I’d left behind on the space station. In fact, there was a chance it was the one I’d left behind.
“May I see it?”
“Of course,” Veronica said. She pulled it out, powered it up, and handed it over. Device locked to Maria Franco was the only thing shown on the screen.
Well, I’ll be damned.
“It seems it is locked,” I said. “And therefore useless.”
Veronica waved her hands. “It is a small matter to unlock it,” she said.
I didn’t have to fake my dubious look. If she could unlock
this device then I would hire her for the House on the spot. “How much?”
“Five thousand credits,” she said.
I laughed. Even new it hadn’t cost that much. “I will give you two thousand if you can unlock it. Otherwise, I will give you two hundred because trying to unlock it might be an interesting challenge. But most likely it will end up a paperweight.”
“You give me too little credit,” she said. “Thirty-five hundred if I can unlock it in the next five minutes, otherwise seven-fifty locked.”
“Three thousand unlocked or five hundred locked,” I countered. “Plus, I will see what other things I might want to purchase from your lovely shop.”
The fence inclined her head. “You drive a hard bargain, madam, but I accept. I will start a timer.”
I glanced at my current com. This room and probably the entire compound blocked the signal, but I could still check the time. I went back to shopping. Loch remained standing by the door. Apparently he was playing silent bodyguard.
I found a bracelet and necklace, a pretty scarf, some clothes, and several other odds and ends. I pointed at the stiletto and an assistant materialized from the back to pull it from the case. A couple of anonymous hard credit chips—ridiculously marked up, naturally—rounded out my purchases.
I’d spent a fortune, but by the way Veronica was frowning at the com, she wasn’t having any success. It had been well over her five-minute allotment at this point.
She sighed in defeat. “I wish you luck, madam,” she said. “This com is locked more thoroughly than any I’ve ever seen. I feel bad selling it to you.”
“No worries, I agreed to purchase it. Plus, I found all of these other lovelies to soothe my frustration when I can’t unlock its secrets.”
“Twelve-fifty for the lot of it,” she said. It was a more than fair price, so I nodded. I tapped my right thumb and pinky finger together under the concealment of my cloak.
“Hard credits?” she asked. When I shook my head, she held out a chip reader. “Then scan here, please,” she said.
I checked the total then modified it to fifteen hundred and scanned the chip embedded in my right arm. The machine beeped, I picked the correct account, and then I handed the reader back to her. “I added a little token of appreciation,” I said. “I do love a woman who barters well.”
Veronica smiled in acknowledgment. She produced a plain white card with a number embossed in a beautiful antique font. She leaned across the display case and tucked the card in my overshirt pocket. “If you need anything, anything at all, call me,” she said. Her smile turned sultry. “Any time, day or night.”
Once we were outside, Loch took the lead. “Do not say anything, and do not return to the house,” I murmured to him. “I need a secure space.”
We walked for ten minutes in a direction I knew was opposite from where we’d spent the night. A few curious eyes followed us at first but soon we were once again in an abandoned part of the city.
Loch stopped outside of a seemingly random plastech building. Now that I wasn’t freezing, I could see what drew him to the buildings he chose. For this one, the walls were solid and dust around the entrance showed no signs of footprints.
He picked the lock in record time and soon we were inside. The living room was right off the entry. I set the bag of items I’d bought, the card the fence had given me, the cloak, and my overshirt in a pile in the middle of the floor. It might be overkill, but I didn’t think so.
“I need your cloak,” I said. Loch added his cloak to the pile. Without the heat field or extra shirt, the temperature in the room was bitingly cold.
“I’ll see about some heat,” Loch said.
I picked up the new com, touched my right thumb to my right ring finger, and held the com up to the chip in my arm.
The highly illegal, highly specialized, highly secret chip in my arm.
Most people were embedded with a single identity chip at birth. I had that one, my main identity chip, in my left arm, but it was dormant most of the time. The chip in my right arm was a House von Hasenberg family specialty, though I had no doubt the other Houses had something similar. The chip could hold multiple identities and each identity could be selected by a series of finger movements.
Designed for spying, the chip also worked great for staying a step ahead of Father’s trackers. Purchase a new identity with untraceable funds, and—voilà!—a clean break. The trackers would eventually find the new identities, but it took time and gave me a chance to escape.
The com unlocked. Some sneaky bastard had stolen the com from my abandoned room on the station, realized it was locked beyond hope, and sold it just in time for me to buy it. And here I thought the universe didn’t love me. Granted, this was the second closest planet to the station, and the shadier of the two, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Not only was this a top-of-the-line communication device, it was also designed especially for von Hasenberg family members, though you would be hard-pressed to notice based on the design. It had a few extra features, too.
I set the com to run a self-diagnostic, and when that came back clean, I turned on scanning mode. Designed to secure a space for communication, this mode would find any trackers or bugs the fence had managed to attach to us. Most coms had some form of bug sweeping functionality, but this one was much more sensitive than standard.
The card and shirt came back clean, much to my surprise. Our cloaks were a different matter. Each had a tiny tracker attached. I used my com to connect to the trackers and reconfigure them. Whoever was monitoring the trackers just saw them go offline. I, however, could now see their locations overlaid on a map. It wasn’t a standard com feature, but it proved useful enough that von Hasenberg family coms always came equipped with it.
I attached the two trackers to Loch’s cloak—one high near the neck and one at the bottom edge. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him . . . but I didn’t trust him.
The rest of the stuff I bought was clean, including the shirt, pants, necklace, and bracelet that were all mine originally. It wasn’t everything I’d left behind, but the com, necklace, and bracelet were definitely the most important bits.
I scanned myself and didn’t find any new trackers. “Loch?” I called. He’d left the room to find heat but hadn’t returned. When he didn’t respond, I put on my overshirt and cloak. I stored the small items in a cargo pocket and then put the clothes and Loch’s cloak back into the bag.
Something felt off, but I wasn’t going to freak out without reason.
The entry was empty, as was the dining room on the other side of the house. A hallway led deeper into the building, much like the house we’d stayed in last night. It was dark and silent.
“Loch?” I tried again. Silence answered.
Normally when presented with a choice between going deeper into a dark, creepy abandoned building or stepping out the front door into the—admittedly low—light, I’d choose the light every time. But Loch had disappeared down this hall and while I didn’t necessarily think he was in trouble, it was weird that he wasn’t responding.
The flashlight built into the com wasn’t great, but it cut through the darkness better than nothing. I drew my knife. If Loch was just in the bathroom, I was going to feel really silly.
An open door on my right led to the empty kitchen. My stomach grumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten enough to cover the calories I’d burned. I ignored it and continued deeper into the house.
The next door was closed. This would be so much easier if I had a gun, because clearing a room with a knife was a terrible idea. Still, I couldn’t leave a room unexplored, not if I wanted a valid retreat option.
I stood on the hinge side of the door and reached across to the handle. It turned easily and I pushed the door open then stepped back so I was hidden by the frame. Silence. I risked a peek and the part of the room I could see was empty. I cleared the other side of the room, including behind the door.
Three mor
e rooms proved to be empty, until only one room remained. I pushed the door open, not sure what to expect. What I did not expect, however, was another empty room. Weak light spilled in through the frosted window, illuminating an empty utility room. A door led out to the backyard. Boot prints in the dust proved Loch—or someone—had been this way recently.
To follow or not to follow.
It had been fifteen minutes since Loch disappeared. He could be out scouting the perimeter because he expected me to take longer. Or he could’ve decided to double-cross me and I’d walk out into an ambush.
Only one way to find out. I turned off my flashlight, pulled up the hood of my cloak, and touched the button next to the window. The windowpane changed from frosted to clear. The backyard was a tiny brown square covered in dead grass and surrounded by a low, broken-down fence. No mob waited for me to appear.
I stood at the edge of the window and let my eyes roam over the scene. If anyone was out there hiding, unless they were trained, they would eventually fidget, and the movement would give them away.
Nothing moved, other than the grass blowing in the wind.
So where was Loch?
Just as I was going to turn away to check the front, something drew my eye to the top of the next house. I froze and focused on the area. Nothing else moved and the low light made it difficult to identify what had caught my attention.
My patience was rewarded as someone moved again, just the slightest shift, but it was enough. Friends generally didn’t linger on in the shadows on top of adjacent buildings, so the only remaining question was: Who was it?
We could’ve picked up a random tail, a random merc squad, the boss from earlier, a tail from Veronica the fence, or the Rockhurst squad. We were collecting enemies faster than I could keep up.
I retreated to the darkened hallway. For now I would give Loch the benefit of the doubt and assume he was out scouting when the other people moved in. That meant he was either captured or holed up somewhere waiting to see what happened.
Polaris Rising Page 8