Radko stepped forward, and the spear crackled hot against her cheek.
“No sudden moves,” Vilhjalmsson said.
It was more, she thought, to ensure they all respected the spear than from any worry about her moving. She touched her finger to her face. He’d gone close, but he hadn’t burned her. Even she couldn’t shoot that accurately. Especially not with a weapon that had been on a store shelf fifteen minutes ago.
“You’re very jumpy,” Han said.
“One needs to be with a soldier like her. Especially since, as Chaudry here has noted, I am a little sore at present. Right now, I intend to shoot first, before anyone gets near enough to harm me.”
It was a warning. And a threat. Radko moved back.
Vilhjalmsson glanced over to where Callista OneLane waited. “Let’s see this famous report.”
OneLane was calm. Either she’d been held at weapon point often enough to realize she was in no danger for the moment, or she had a secondary protective system, and backup was already on its way. Radko hoped it was the latter.
“I don’t give things away for free,” she said. “If you want it, you’ll have to pay for it. In fact, I would have preferred you steal it after my client left. Not here. This is bad for business.”
“I did plan on stealing it afterward,” Vilhjalmsson admitted. “Until I recognized Spacer ‘Chen,’ here.” He waved the spear at OneLane, but he spoke to Radko, “You’re not minding people anymore?”
Radko didn’t answer.
OneLane said, “I am taking a comms out of the drawer.” She’d definitely had a weapon trained on her before. “Incidentally, your own comms won’t work in this room. You can’t record. This is the only copy you will get.”
Han moved his hand to scratch his back. He was going for his weapon. Radko caught his eye and shook her head. Not yet. As Stellan Vilhjalmsson had just illustrated, Han wouldn’t stand a chance.
OneLane held up the comms, then turned it on and pushed the data through onto the larger screen in the center of the wall behind her. “The report.”
There were two logos on the title page. Redmond Fleet Military Service and TwoPaths Engineering.
So, a combined military-commercial exercise.
Radko had come across TwoPaths Engineering before. They built spaceships based around the original line ship, the Havortian. They’d had the plans for over ten years now. Line ships. Linesmen. How coincidental was that?
She crossed her arms and watched as OneLane moved the report on to the next page, which contained a list of names associated with the report. She recognized one. “Hold it.”
OneLane stopped scrolling.
The second name down. Latoya Jemsin, currently sequestered in a New Alliance prison on Haladea III, after an early incident where she’d tried to question Jordan Rossi, and failed.
“You said this was new data. Dr. Jemsin has been in prison for months. If she wrote the report, it’s old.”
“This report has been ten years in the writing. Dr. Jemsin was part of the team.” OneLane pointed to a line farther down. “You will see as we scroll through that none of the later reports are hers. Dr. Adam EightFields has taken over her work.”
If she knew this much about every illegal item she sold, then no wonder she asked so much money. Radko nodded and let her continue to scroll through the pages.
OneLane scrolled through the first ten pages of the report slowly, then flicked through others, faster, and again slowed at the end. “It’s a massive report. Ten years of data here, and their conclusions.”
“How much?” Radko asked. And how did she buy it and keep it out of Vilhjalmsson’s hands.
Movement caught her eye, and she looked up to the screens. On the screen depicting outside, soldiers jogged into view. Five in at the front. Four at the back. A full team, dressed in military uniform. Redmond soldiers.
Callista OneLane smiled.
There had to be an emergency button here in this room. OneLane must have pushed it when she’d entered. Although it had only taken five minutes to respond. With such a quick response, one could almost think the whole thing was a setup.
For Chen? Or for Vilhjalmsson?
It didn’t matter who it was for. Radko couldn’t let herself or her team be caught or questioned by Redmond soldiers.
The soldiers in the back alley had to break the lock. Good. They’d arrive a minute after the ones who came in the front.
“Chaudry, Han. Get down behind the desk. Use it to cover yourselves while you cover me.” And Radko watched carefully—one eye on the screens—to see what Vilhjalmsson would do.
He inclined his head toward the office door. Maybe, today, they were on the same side. She’d soon find out.
She nodded and pulled her blaster from the holster at her back. It was good to be armed. She took a position to the left of the door. Vilhjalmsson took the right.
The door blasted open.
OneLane’s reinforcements had arrived.
“These people are—” OneLane said, as the lead soldier glanced around quickly.
The soldier turned his weapon toward OneLane and blew her away.
Radko’s answering blast went straight to his heart. Beside him, his companion went down. She and Vilhjalmsson seemed to share the same enemies. For the moment.
They downed two more before the Redmond soldiers realized they were a threat. A blaster fired over her left shoulder took down the final soldier in the first group. Han, as accurate and reliable as Vega claimed him to be.
The soldiers hadn’t been expecting trouble, so why a full team? To prevent a back-door escape? Or to remove all witnesses?
The soldiers from the alley arrived then. They expected victory, and the battle to be over before they got there. They were seconds too slow. Radko and Vilhjalmsson stepped out and took down two each before they even knew they’d lost.
NINE
DOMINIQUE RADKO
RADKO CALCULATED THEY had less than five minutes before Redmond sent reinforcements. There was no one in sight yet.
She waved to Han and Chaudry. “Go, go. Before the next lot get here.”
They scrambled out in an awkward run.
Radko snatched OneLane’s comms a second before Vilhjalmsson did, and the two of them ran out together.
Her comms started beeping as soon as they were outside. Van Heel. Radko flicked it on as they ran.
“I’ve been trying to call for five minutes,” van Heel said. “A team of Redmond soldiers went in there.”
“We found them.”
“There’s a backup team waiting one street south.”
They were headed south. Radko beckoned to the others and veered east. “How close can you get the aircar?”
“I’ll need at least two blocks if you think they’ll come after us.”
“Meet us two blocks east then.”
“Wait,” Vilhjalmsson said. “Maybe we could work together a bit longer. You have transport out. I have codes that should get us past Redmond military.”
His face was gray, covered in a film of perspiration. He couldn’t run far, or fast. He’d get caught quickly. Given the number of Redmond soldiers in the area—more when they saw the carnage inside the shop—they would find it hard enough to escape themselves.
He was Gate Union, Markan’s man, so he was likely to have codes he mentioned. Redmond and Gate Union weren’t working together at present, but they were still, officially, allies. They’d honor their ally’s codes.
“Give me the spear and we’ll drop you off on the other side of the city.” Radko hoped she’d made the correct decision.
He hesitated, then stumbled, winced, and tossed the spear to her. “It’s all yours.”
She covered him while he ran. From the way his back twitched, he didn’t like it any more than she did. Good.
&nb
sp; They reached the aircar as the first soldiers came running around the corner.
“Go, go,” Radko said, and van Heel took off in a straight lift that pushed them all to the floor.
Vilhjalmsson grunted, the sound quickly cut off.
Radko pulled herself up, blaster trained on him. “Han, Chaudry. Cover him. If he moves—even a twitch—shoot him.” She didn’t look away as she backed across to van Heel. “How soon can we dump him?”
“It’s hard not to twitch,” Vilhjalmsson said to Han and Chaudry. “Not when I know she’s ready to shoot me.”
The two blasters were close together. Chaudry’s left arm against Han’s right. All Vilhjalmsson had to do was reach out, and he could grab them both.
Why did a left-handed linesman hold his blaster in his right hand?
“Move away from him,” Radko said. “Make him work if he’s going to take the weapon off you. A blaster set to burn is as deadly at two meters as it is at one.”
“Who is he?” Han asked. “Why so leery of him?”
“He’s a professional assassin. Reports personally to Admiral Markan.”
“So why help him?”
“He helped us,” Chaudry said.
If Chaudry thought like that about one of Gate Union’s best assassins, Vilhjalmsson would walk all over him. “He has codes he can use to get us past Redmond security,” Radko said. “We have an aircar. Mutual benefit, Chaudry.”
“We’re being pursued,” van Heel said. “I can drop him, or I can run, but I can’t do both.”
These were Redmond soldiers on their home territory. They couldn’t outrun them. How long would it take for Redmond to identify the aircar?
Radko looked at Vilhjalmsson. “Those codes you promised.” If he was working with Redmond, surely he would have let the soldiers capture them back at OneLane’s shop.
Vilhjalmsson stood up carefully.
“You should get your back seen to,” Chaudry said. “You shouldn’t be doing strenuous physical movement yet.”
Chaudry was never going to make a decent soldier. He didn’t have the personality for it.
The speaker crackled. “Aircar D-J-12351. This is Redmond Fleet. Please land in the nearest available landing space.”
“I need to call base over the aircar’s comms,” Vilhjalmsson said.
Radko nodded and held her blaster close to his back while he used the comms system on the aircar to call base. She didn’t relax even when an irate Redmond voice came through, demanding to know what was going on.
Vilhjalmsson explained—in Redmond as good as hers—that the attack on OneLane’s premises had interrupted a sting, and the team following them should remove themselves before they totally ruined it. He provided further codes, good enough that the Redmond carrier climbed high with a burst of speed and disappeared over the city.
“It won’t hold them long,” Vilhjalmsson said. “Redmond doesn’t share information about lines or line experiments.”
It was long enough for Radko. “We’ll find somewhere public to drop you off. The parking lot at SevenWays Plaza,” to van Heel. It was the largest shopping center in the city.
Van Heel set the controls.
Radko motioned Vilhjalmsson’s hands away from the controls with her blaster. He put them on the table, facing up. Empty. “I’ll buy the report off you.”
She laughed at him.
“Shopping center coming up.” Van Heel landed the aircar neatly.
“No?” Vilhjalmsson turned for the door. “I appreciate your not killing me this time.”
He winced and almost fell. Radko let him right himself. “Young Chaudry is right. I would have liked more leave.” He climbed out of the car like an old man.
“Vilhjalmsson. Catch.” She tossed him the spear. “You’ll need a weapon.” She didn’t trust Vilhjalmsson not to have put a tracer on it somewhere, and she didn’t have time to investigate, which was a pity because Vega would have liked that weapon. She turned to van Heel. “Go, before he shoots us all.”
Van Heel took off in a vertical lift.
They were five minutes in the air when Radko realized the comms she thought she’d rescued from OneLane’s dead hands was a military-style comms. The brand favored by Roscracian military.
* * *
BACK in their rooms, Radko tossed the comms across to van Heel. “See if you can hack into that.”
Vilhjalmsson’s comms would be like their own. Provided especially for the mission and nothing personal on it.
“He seemed so nice,” Chaudry said. “And he was injured.”
Radko couldn’t work out if the niceness was supposed to prevent an assassin from stealing things, or if his injury was. She didn’t care. She wanted to shoot him.
“He must have swapped as we picked it up.” OneLane’s comms hadn’t been out of Radko’s pocket since. Or the comms she thought was OneLane’s.
She had to admire the cleverness of it. If she’d known he had picked up the comms first, she would have demanded it from him at blaster point. Instead, he’d offered to swap his comms for this one. She should have taken him up on his offer and seen him wriggle out of it.
“We didn’t see him swap it,” van Heel said. “Are you sure this isn’t the report?”
“Hack it and see, van Heel.”
Half an hour later, van Heel admitted, “There isn’t much on here. A code I can’t read. A ship booking from Roscracia to here. A restaurant payment for last night. He ate at a place called Sahini’s. He’s staying at the Grande Hotel.”
Radko would bet he wasn’t staying there anymore.
Like her own comms, there’d be deeper information if van Heel hacked further, but nothing to incriminate Vilhjalmsson, and it would wipe itself if they tried to discover more. One thing was certain. The comms with the report on in wouldn’t have last night’s dinner bill on it.
She dug into the tools on her belt. A tiny screwdriver. A metal knife. Some wire. She unscrewed that back of the comms, pressed the knife into the wiring, and wound the wire around the knife. She wound the other end of the wire around the screwdriver.
She was about to jam the screwdriver into the other end when she stopped. This would short the comms. There was a tiny piece of line five in each comms. She was about to destroy a line. Or a piece of one.
Could she do it?
She looked up to see all three of them looking at her.
“Are you okay?” Han asked. “You look green.”
Comms lines weren’t intelligent like a ten-line ship, but all the same. Was it murder?
“I’m fine,” Radko said, and jabbed the screwdriver down.
Ean would have told her the line had disappeared. All she got was the smell of burned plastic and hot metal. And a tiny wisp of black smoke.
When did lines become sentient, anyway. Surely all the small pieces of equipment weren’t. They didn’t seem to think until there were ten of them together and they were much larger than a single sliver. Maybe she should think of the tiny piece of line in a comms as like regenerated skin, being grown to match a human DNA. Not alive in a sentient way.
She tossed the comms away. Vilhjalmsson wouldn’t be able to track it anymore. Although it would be like him to bug something else.
“What if you were wrong about which comms it was?” Han asked.
“Then I’ve destroyed plans we were prepared to pay a lot of credits for.”
The trick to a successful operation, covert or otherwise, was not to think about what-ifs like that until after the operation, when you worked out what you could do better next time.
There were other what-ifs she had to think about now. Like, what if Vilhjalmsson had bugged them?
“We should all change,” she said. “Everything. Even our shoes if we have others. We may be bugged.”
Han followed her into
the room she shared with van Heel. She didn’t see any signals, but van Heel lingered outside. “It’s not such a big deal,” he said. “Losing the comms, I mean. They can’t expect newbies like us to be a hundred percent successful first time around.”
What was he trying to tell her? “Han, with that kind of attitude you’ll never make it in covert ops.”
“I never planned for covert ops.”
Neither had she.
“I like my job. I like that I can go home every break.”
“I like my job, too,” Radko said. She missed her job. She missed Ean. And she didn’t have time for the small talk. “Tell me what you’re trying to say. I like honesty.”
Han looked at her.
“We don’t have time for you to muck around.”
He hesitated. She waited.
“Maybe you shouldn’t take it so hard. Losing the report. It’s okay to destroy his comms, but don’t you think this bugged business might be going too far.”
No wonder Vega liked him, but the Yves Han who’d burned his tutor’s arm wouldn’t ever offer advice like that.
“Humor my paranoia this once, Han. I know this man.” A lot better than she had two months ago. “Let’s all get changed and see if he has planted any bugs. I hear what you’re saying, but I am your team leader in this. I’m not doing it because I’m upset he stole the comms from me. I’m doing it because I think he’s bugged us.”
“And that business with the comms before?”
“That is a totally different thing. I don’t like destroying lines. Not even comms lines.” She pushed him out. “Go and get changed.”
Afterward, she checked their clothes. On the back collar of the business jacket she had worn as Tiana Chen was a tiny receiver.
Van Heel took it from her fingers. “Finest grade,” she said approvingly. “Do you know how much a device like this costs?”
Radko was sure Vilhjalmsson hadn’t worried about the price.
She tossed her jacket into the recycler, and got the others to dump their jackets as well. She sent the bug down with it.
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