by Rick Partlow
I was still trying to scan for more targets when I heard the alarms start sounding and saw a squad of security troops jetting towards me using maneuvering packs built into their stolidly grey body armor. Their helmets were faceless and intimidating, sealed against vacuum and implacably pitiless, and the muzzles of their sonic stunners yawned broadly at me.
“Toss the pistol away and put your hands on your head,” one of them demanded over his helmet’s public address speakers.
I felt absurd, still spinning slowly and unable to arrest my motion, and I certainly wasn’t going to start a firefight with station security, so I did as I was told. I tossed the pulse pistol away in the opposite direction from my spin and felt myself begin to slow as I put my hands behind my head, interlacing my fingers. I was a cop, I knew the drill.
One of them grabbed me with the strength of a powered exoskeleton behind his grip, and as he was putting the restraints on, all I could hope was that Rachel had got that warning to Trint in time.
Chapter Seven
Pete:
Pete Mitchell’s head was swimming. He’d only been off of Canaan once before, and that was for a brief visit to the Fleet base on Inferno and then an even briefer drop into the Corporate outpost on the uninhabitable rock called Petra. Nothing in his life had prepared him for Belial. The sights and sounds assaulted his senses and his sensibilities in a way that threatened to overwhelm his ability to process, and he was constantly seeing things that almost slid away from his vision because he couldn’t quite believe what his senses were telling him.
He loved it.
Since the war, there had been so much offworld programming available via the Corporate nets, and it had called to the younger generation of Canaanites, luring them away from the traditions of the NeoQuaker society that had settled that world a century ago. Pete had tried not to let it sway him from the faith his parents had died defending, but there was just so much out there and Canaan was so damned boring by comparison…
The Glass Fountain was the ne plus ultra of everything he’d seen thus far. The casino offered gaming of every conceivable variety, but it wasn’t the gambling that fascinated Pete; it was the women. The women he’d seen on Belial were so incredibly different than the ones at home. It wasn’t just the clothing---or lack of clothing in many cases, it was how tall and skinny they all were. Canaan bred short, stocky people thanks to gravity over half again Earth normal. Many of the people on Belial had spent most of their lives in low gravity and they towered over him, some over two meters tall.
Then there were the body mods, the holographic tattoos that danced on their heads, the damn wings that one woman had folded across her back…
“Mr. Mitchell,” Trint’s well-modulated and surprisingly pleasant voice cut through Pete’s thoughts. “Focus please.”
Pete felt a surge of annoyance but then had to chuckle. At least Trint wasn’t showing constant deference to everyone. The fact that he felt comfortable enough around them to criticize was progress. And he was right: Pete was drifting, losing focus. But how could he not? They were only there as a distraction. It wasn’t as if any of the sex workers or casino employees were going to tell them anything…or hell, even remember anything.
Certainly no one else had. They’d hit three of the bars that Murdock had frequented and while some of the employees had recognized him, no one had remembered seeing him recently. Or maybe they just wouldn’t admit to it. He didn’t have his brother’s implanted stress analyzers to see if they were lying.
He stifled a sigh and nodded to Trint. “All right,” he said, “let’s get on with it.” He glanced around, checking out the casino’s layout. “You take the tables,” he decided. “I’ll go to the bar.”
He didn’t wait for an acknowledgement, just headed through an arched gateway between the casino floor and the lounge. The crowd thinned out as he left the gaming tables behind---apparently, people didn’t come to this place for the food. A few desultory gamblers sat alone at tables, nursing their losses with free steaks fashioned from soy protein and peppered with enough spice to disguise the taste. Cal had told him that they only served the more expensive cloned cuts of meat at the high-end restaurants.
He ignored the lone diners, heading instead to the bar, where a live human bartender stood in anachronistic splendor. He didn’t know why people liked having a real person tending bar instead of an automated system, but then bars weren’t a big thing on Canaan. Sale of intoxicants for consumption in public was illegal, so people drank in the privacy of their own homes and avoided the embarrassment of being drunk in public. Well, locals anyway…you couldn’t really legislate that sort of thing for Offworlders.
But Cal had assured him that all the best clubs and casinos had live bartenders and this place was apparently no exception. The woman tending bar at the moment was unremarkable: pleasant looking and mildly pretty but unexceptional compared to those on display in the casino. She was shorter than most of the people he’d seen, though still tall and slender compared to Canaanite women, and dressed conservatively in a beige suit that nicely set off her café-au-lait skin and dark eyes.
She smiled as Pete approached the bar, currently vacant but for him.
“Can I get you something, sir?” she offered pleasantly.
“You have any lagers?” Pete asked her, fishing out a wad of tradenotes that Cal had given him. There were several small breweries in Harristown and Pete had developed a taste for lagers.
The bartender rattled off a list several brands long, most of which he’d never heard of, and Pete picked one at random, hoping he would get lucky. She quoted him a price that was about twice what he expected and he counted off three times that in tradenotes and held it up for her.
She raised an eyebrow as he held onto the bills lightly with two fingers.
“You wouldn’t happen to know this guy, would you?” he asked her, holding up Murdock’s picture displayed on the screen of a flimsy he’d pulled out of his jacket pocket.
She frowned, but took a moment to look at the still picture.
“He comes here sometimes,” she confirmed with a nod. “I think…” She chewed on her lip. “I think he was in here a few days ago, actually.”
Pete felt his heart rate go up. This was the first lead they’d had. He fumbled for the next question he should ask, finally coming up with: “Do you remember if he was with anyone?”
“I think so,” she said hesitantly. “I remember it was a woman, but I don’t recall much about her.”
“No ‘Memory Dump’ you could check?” Pete asked, hoping she might have the personal body cam and recorder setup that was popular with some people. He considered the whole thing a bit creepy, but it would sure come in handy about now.
“Those are completely forbidden by station regulations,” she told him, shaking her head, eyes widening slightly. “I’d never work here again if I were caught with any sort of recording device.”
Pete wasn’t as experienced as his big brother or that spooky DSI lady who’d dumped all this shit on his family, but he had been a cop for several years…long enough to recognize when someone wasn’t answering a question. He let the bills slip from his fingers and watched her pocket them. He took the glass of beer and downed it in one long swallow. It was good, but too expensive for that small a glass.
“I’d like another,” he said, reaching into his pocket again. This time the wad of bills was twice as thick. The bartender blinked at what had to be a week’s pay for her.
“What…,” she began, but he stopped her with an upheld palm.
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Pete told her. “I don’t need to know where the information comes from, you understand?”
She seemed to consider it, then nodded slowly and snatched the bills from his hand.
“Give me a minute,” she said, then slipped out from behind the bar and disappeared through a door half-concealed by a curtain.
Distraction, huh? Pete thought with a satisfied grin.
“Trint,” he said into the pickup for his comlink. “I’m at the bar…I think I might have something.”
He waited, but there was no response. He shrugged. Maybe the cyborg was talking to someone; or maybe the casino had dampened EM signals inside to keep people from cheating or something. He idly glanced back through the archway out onto the casino floor, wondering if they’d be on the station long enough for him to ask the bartender if she’d like to hook up…
Then a body flew across the casino floor and slammed into one of the archway supports with bone-crushing finality, trailed closely by a high-pitched scream. Pete jumped, mouth opening involuntarily as he nearly cried out himself, eyes wide as he stared at the man’s broken form sliding down the curved archway support, blood trailing from his fractured skull and a pair of vibro-knives falling limply from lifeless hands.
“What the fuck?” he managed to blurt before the sound of the fight reached him and he knew immediately what was going on.
The distraction had worked: someone had attacked Trint in the secure zone of the station, where guns weren’t allowed.
Poor dumb bastards, he thought, reaching inside his jacket and pulling out the stun baton he’d taken off the ship. He zipped up the thick, insulated jacket and sprinted toward the casino. Wonder if he’ll leave any for me…
The casino floor had turned from a carnival atmosphere to a scene from a nightmare. The colorful, brightly-clad chimerical creatures Pete had been admiring only minutes before were now running---and, in one case, flying---towards the exit, yelling and screaming in panic. At least a couple people had been trampled in the panic and lay on the floor injured, moaning loudly and crying for help---but no one was listening, not even the employees, who were also headed for safety.
In the center of the chaos was the Tahni cyborg Trint, surrounded by five men. At least Pete thought they were men---a couple of them were heavily modified to the point where they could have started out as either sex. As Pete ran up on them, one of the biggest of the group---two meters tall and massing at least 150 kilos, most of it augmented muscle---was circling Trint, looking for an opening while the other three watched carefully, probably spooked by the ease with which the Tahni had disposed of the man he’d tossed across the room.
Pete decided on a target between one step and the next. There were two of the five that were average size, and one of those two seemed almost normal. You couldn’t judge by looks---Cal is proof of that---but he seemed as good a target as any. Pete knew he had an advantage due to the light rotational gravity on this level of the station, and he decided to make use of it. The man he’d chosen still hadn’t seen him as he came within ten meters of the group: he was watching Trint, looking for an opening as he held a vibro-shiv at the ready. He was dressed like a spacer, like your typical freighter crewman, but Pete knew that was a disguise. The guy was a trained hitter and he had to be careful.
Finally, he came about as close as he thought he could without being noticed and launched himself into the air, soaring over the top of an advertising display. He felt a roiling in his stomach as the floor dropped away beneath him and finally a chill of fear shot through his veins as he realized he was at the point of no return. He could die here…
The man looked up just before Pete came down on top of him and Pete got an uncomfortably close look at his face as it twisted in surprise and anger. It was a carefully average face, and Pete was sure that was on purpose; there was nothing about it that you would find memorable or remarkable. But there was nothing average about the fury in those dark eyes just before the stun baton smashed into his neck with the full mass of Pete’s 110 kilos.
Pete felt the jolt of impact travel up his elbows and into his shoulders, knocking the breath from him, but he kept his grip on the baton and kept the trigger depressed even as he and the hitter both crashed to the floor. The man’s body convulsed as the electric shock coursed through him and Pete could feel a tingle of the charge from where his legs touched the other man’s. Working on adrenaline and instinct, he put all of his weight into the handle of the stun baton and forced himself off the man’s body, forcing his face into the floor while Pete rose into a crouch.
Something, a glance out of the corner of his eye or a sound or maybe just a gut feeling, made Pete jump up and away from the prone form beneath him just in time to see one of the remaining four attackers heading his way. This one wasn’t Normal, Pete could tell that immediately. His frame had the look of someone born in near Earth gravity, but his musculature was outsized, obviously augmented, and he carried a pair of blades with the confidence of someone who knew how to use them.
This was very, very bad.
Pete had gone through the annual course Cal had made mandatory for all Constabulary deputies and one thing he remembered from it---at the moment, perhaps the only thing he remembered---was that, in combat, movement was life. With that in mind, he moved: he jumped backwards out of the crouch, arms flailing to keep himself from flipping over. He felt a flash of panic as he passed through a holographic projection and his vision was clouded with hazy, multicolored images, but then he was through and coming down on top of a gaming table.
Pete had the sickening feeling that he wasn’t going to be able to stick the landing; that he was going to sprawl backwards and wind up helpless on the floor. He made a gut-level decision and pushed off as he touched the table, hitting high on his shoulders and rolling backwards. Had he tried that on Canaan, he would have broken his neck; but in the lighter gravity of the station the move worked. He came to his feet still facing the charging assassin, but now almost ten meters away, wishing for a gun and still having no clue what to do next.
I’m going to fucking die here, Pete thought with a sense of calm that surprised him. Everything that I’ve been through and I’m going to die in a fucking casino.
Pete was so focused on the assassin bearing down on him that he didn’t notice the body flying through the air until it slammed into the man with a crunch of shattering bones. Pete stumbled backwards, imagining through an adrenaline haze that both assailants were rushing him until he saw both men tumble to the ground almost at his feet in a tangle of limbs.
He looked from the prone men to where Trint was standing, facing off the remaining two opponents, the ones who were massively augmented and hardly recognizable as human. The cyborg’s clothes were in bloody tatters, but he didn’t seem fazed by the superficial injuries and the blades in his hands wove a complex pattern through the air, trailing droplets of red. A chill went through Pete as he realized just how far above his weight he was punching, and he quickly shifted his attention to the two assailants lying at his feet.
The one Trint had thrown was clearly dead, his throat ripped out and bare spinal cord visible and visibly snapped through the massive wound. The other one was not only alive but struggling to rise, his squared-off face set in resolute determination. Pete felt a surge of near-panic go through him and he swung the stun baton like a club, smashing it into the man’s temple over and over until his hand and his shoulder ached and blood spattered across his face.
He felt an emptiness in his stomach as he saw that the man’s skull had caved in and he was no longer breathing. Pete had killed men once or twice before in the line of duty as a deputy, and he’d killed many Tahni soldiers during the occupation of Canaan, but this felt different somehow. He shook himself and rose up to check on Trint.
The cyborg was a blur of motion now, moving so fast he made the heavily-augmented assassins fighting him seem as if they were slogging through mud. Pete couldn’t possibly follow his movement, except for heartbeat-long pauses when he could see single-frame images of one of Trint’s vibroblades stuck into the bones or muscles of one of the assassins before he pulled it free. Blood dotted the floor and the nearby walls with each swing of his weapons and the two assassins were gradually being sliced to pieces.
He knew he should try to help, but he wasn’t sure how. Watching the Tahni Imperial Guard cyborg was like
watching a god do battle and he thought he would only distract the alien warrior if he tried to interfere. But he couldn’t just stand by. Maybe if nothing else, he could make himself a distraction for the assassins.
He reached down and grabbed one of the vibroshivs that the man he’d killed had been carrying. It had deactivated automatically when the assassin dropped it and lay inert, a simple knife without the intense vibration that turned it into a weapon that could cut through bone and armor. He considered switching it on and trying to attack one of the two remaining hitters from behind but decided that would just get in the way and he’d probably get killed.
Instead, he waited till one of the pauses where all three of the combatants were moving slow enough to be seen, then wound up and threw the knife as hard as he could. He wasn’t particularly good at it, but the knife flew true and struck the smaller of the two augmented humans in the side of the head. Not point-first---that would have been too much to ask given his lack of skill---but even the ceramic hilt of the weapon hit pretty hard. The long face with its extended jaws and blood-stained metal teeth turned towards Pete with murder in its eyes…
Then one of those eyes was pierced by the business end of a broad-bladed combat knife and the assassin jerked as his brain short-circuited. Pete saw the knife in the hand of Trint, still for just a moment, and he felt his blood chill at the calm, matter-of-fact expression on the cyborg’s face. Then the knife yanked free and Trint turned back to the last of the group of hitters, moving slower now that he didn’t need the speed to avoid attacks from multiple opponents.
Trint's clothes were sliced open in a dozen places over his chest and shoulders and drenched with blood, but he still looked better than the remaining assassin. The human was over two meters tall and packed with augmented muscle and implanted plates of subdermal armor, and he’d been wearing an armored jacket on top of it all. Now…after perhaps two minutes of fighting Trint, the jacket was in shreds and several of the plates of subdermal armor had been ripped right through the man’s skin. Blood ran down over what was left of his clothes, the red stains hiding the original color, but he was still upright and holding onto his weapons and looked pretty damned formidable to Pete.