“Next,” another bored recruiter called.
“We should be set,” Sergei murmured from behind Jamie’s shoulder.
She jumped—she had just looked in that direction and he hadn’t been there. “Practicing your sneaking already?” she murmured.
“It’s a habit.”
He had shaved his beard for the new identity, and his hair was now a dusty blond. Like Jamie, he had also used a theater kit to change his features. His nose, brow, and jaw all seemed wider, though the change hadn’t stolen his handsomeness. Jamie felt like an old maid, thanks to faint crease lines on her forehead, a bulbous nose, and chubby cheeks, though Sergei assured her she didn’t look much older than thirty, a logical age for someone who had robot-repairing experience. But his eyes had gleamed with amusement as he had helped her glue on a couple of moles.
“Want to give me some of those tools?” Sergei asked. “So I can hand them to you convincingly?”
Jamie gave him the multitool she had used to electrocute those thugs on the day she had met Sergei. It was a little scraped and charred from the experience, and the drill had a hitch at faster speeds, so it now rated as a second-string tool.
He smiled as he accepted it. “If I throw it in a puddle at Laframboise’s feet, will it zap her?”
“Only if you remove the safety and cross a few circuits.” Jamie hoped his assassination plan involved more finesse, though she wasn’t sure what he would use to accomplish the job, since he had left most of his weapons in the shuttle, suspecting they would be searched before being allowed to prowl Laframboise’s premises. As far as Jamie knew, he had kept only a utility knife and a laser scalpel, believable tools for a repairman. Lieutenant Calendula, the pilot who had been brought in to fly while Jamie was busy, had watched with bemusement as Sergei piled laser pistols, grenades, smoke bombs, daggers, exploding cuff links, throwing knives, a garrote, and other weapons Jamie couldn’t name onto the control console, promising he would retrieve them later. Neither Mandrake nor his fighters had batted an eye.
“Next,” the recruiter called.
“This is us.” Jamie walked to the table with Sergei at her side. Ankari’s words about the appeal of men being manly and fierce at one’s back floated through her mind. She agreed, but she hoped Sergei could manage to appear meek for this. Or at least suitably entry-level.
“Name?” The recruiter frowned at Sergei and looked like he might object to the fact that he had cut the line and come up with her.
“Melissa and Dustin Strongbow,” she told the man. She hadn’t asked Ankari’s friend to make them a couple, but had decided it worked, since it would make sense that married people would want to work in the same city and live together.
The recruiter’s frown didn’t diminish, but he read something off his tablet. The back of the holodisplay was blurred for privacy, but Jamie assumed it was a list. She had sent over their names that morning, so they should be there.
“Domestic robot maintenance,” the recruiter said. “Good. I was wondering if we’d get any applicants.”
Sergei said nothing, though his expression grew extremely bland.
“You know anything about repairs, Mrs. Strongbow?” the recruit asked. “Lady Laframboise doesn’t pay people to be married.”
Jamie lifted her chin, biting back a reply that would suggest he was an ignorant, sexist prick if he assumed a woman couldn’t know how to use a tool. All right, her reply would have done more than suggest it. Fortunately, Sergei touched her back gently before she could spit out something that wouldn’t be meek. And entry-level.
“I can, and I would be happy to show you.” She realized the prick’s assumptions might actually serve their purposes, since he might give “Dustin” a free pass, so long as she proved her capability.
The recruiter gestured to the robot. “Find three things wrong with that unit.”
Jamie had been eyeing the slumping thirty- or forty-year-old Floor Dervish 2000 from the line and could probably give him a list without getting any closer. “Just three?” she asked a little more tartly than was necessary.
“Three,” the recruiter said, showing no sign that he appreciated her sarcasm.
Jamie walked over, picked up a diagnostic tool almost as old as the robot, plugged it into the download port and flicked it on. While she waited for the readout, she peeked into the open panel. “The battery wires are connected backwards; this power supply is corroded; and there’s something smudgy and brown on the network antennae so it probably can’t communicate with the base station.” She wiped off the goop, sniffed her finger, and added, “Something organic.”
“Ew,” Sergei said. “Make sure you wash that finger.”
“It’s not crap,” the recruiter said dryly, showing the first hint that he had a sense of humor.
“Is it close to it?” Jamie asked.
“It came out of the kitchen disposal.”
“That’s a yes,” Sergei murmured and handed her a rag.
The recruiter was tapping something into his tablet, so Jamie checked the diagnostic readout, such as it was. “Uh, do you want a list of things wrong with this too?”
“No, it’s not supposed to work. You’re supposed to be able to troubleshoot without the help of computers. You’ve passed the first phase of the test. Now fix something. Your choice.”
“I wouldn’t touch that brown sludge,” Sergei said.
Jamie elbowed him and swapped out the battery wires. “Just one thing?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s fine. Come here.”
They returned to the table. The recruiter didn’t point out the only expertise Sergei had shown was in rag holding.
“You’re on the short list. You can board that shuttle where those other two women are waiting now.” The recruiter waved vaguely at a silver bullet-shaped craft resting behind the pavilion. The two women he had mentioned had the rundown look of people who had been through countless jobs, each worse than the last. They were sucking on cigarettes as if they were the only things keeping them upright. “Dobb will check you out in a minute. You can come back and get your belongings if you pass the head mechanic’s interview over there.”
“Check you out?” Sergei asked as they walked toward the shuttle. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but I’d be more worried about this second interview. The head mechanic might want you to do more than hold a rag.”
“I plan to disappear before that becomes a problem.”
“So I’ll have to hold my own rags? Dustin, I was expecting more support from my loyal husband of ten years.”
He bumped her with his hip and grinned at her, the smile all his, even with the cosmetics. “You know you have grease on your cheek, right? How do you always manage that?”
“Pretty simply. I touch things. And then I touch myself.”
His grin widened. “I must confess I’m having dirty thoughts. All this talk of self-touching.”
“You’re a naughty man, Mr. Strongbow.” They were within hearing range of the two smoking women, so Jamie didn’t add anything else.
Sergei murmured, “Yes, and I’m glad you don’t seem to mind now that the truth has come out.”
She gave him a swat on the butt, but then clasped her hands in front of her, since the beleaguered women had turned to face them. Actually they were facing Sergei.
“A man?” one asked.
Sergei looked down. “I’m fairly certain that’s the case, yes.”
“You’re either brave or you like being dominated.”
They shared snickers.
Jamie frowned, not understanding the joke. Something sexual, she knew that much, but they had just met Sergei. What could he have done to elicit that comment?
“I’ll go with brave,” Sergei said, though he didn’t look any more enlightened than Jamie. “Something we should know?”
The women’s snickers faded.
“You don’t know about Laframboise’s preferences?” the talkative one asked
while her buddy looked Sergei up and down and took another puff from the cigarette. Smoke lingered in the air around them and smelled of more bracing narcotics than tobacco or adrenocharge. “You must not be from around here. You didn’t think it odd that there were so few men in the line?”
“I thought it odd,” Jamie said, not that the women were talking to her. They seemed to be enjoying the view Sergei provided while they spoke to him. The quiet one’s gaze was particularly intrusive. Not that Sergei wasn’t pleasant to look at, but Jamie got the impression that they had both escaped from some all-female prison and hadn’t seen a man in a long time.
“Laframboise doesn’t like men?” Sergei asked.
“Oh, she likes them fine. Why don’t you go ask the recruiter about working there, before it’s too late? He’s one of the lucky ones—he got stationed over here.”
Sergei looked toward the pavilion, but he didn’t move. “Job’s a job,” he said.
“It’s your cock,” the silent one said.
Jamie blinked at the blunt language. Maybe her prison guess had been accurate. Jamie touched the back of Sergei’s hand, though she couldn’t imagine him being worried about some woman who was old enough to be his mother.
He nodded at her and squeezed her hand, though the earlier humor had disappeared from his eyes. He wasn’t thinking dirty thoughts now. Jamie hoped nothing from his past came back to haunt him on this mission for the captain. With luck, he would be able to get to Laframboise before she even knew he existed.
Another bored-looking man walked in their direction, wearing a shirt that read Tritech Security.
“This it for Laframboise?” he asked.
The women shrugged at him.
“Probably,” the recruiter called from the pavilion. “Confirm their backgrounds, then send them inside. The pilot will be too drunk to fly in another twenty minutes if that shuttle doesn’t take off.”
“That’s reassuring,” Jamie muttered.
The talkative woman snorted, smoke coming out of her nostrils. “I heard he’s one of Laframboise’s favorites.”
“Chip,” the security man grunted.
Jamie held up her finger, her nerves attacking her belly for the first time. She hadn’t been worried about passing the repair test, but this? They were about to find out if Ankari’s friend did good work.
The security man held out a small scanner, and Jamie placed her finger on it, so it could read the id/banking chip she had had since she was old enough to have an account of her own. Ankari’s friend had sent a program through the network that camouflaged her existing information with a new identity. It wasn’t supposed to delete any of her current data, and he would be able to remove the cover later. That was what she had been promised, anyway. If she had more money in her bank account, she might be more worried about the operation.
A bleep sounded from the reader. Before she could wonder if that was promising or not, something stabbed her finger.
“Ouch, what was that?” Jamie yanked her hand back.
Sergei leaned closer, his eyes hard as he regarded the scanner and the person holding it.
“Blood sample,” the security man said in his same bored monotone. “It’ll run it against the planet database. Laframboise doesn’t hire outsiders or downsiders.”
“Yeah, she likes her meat local,” the talkative woman said with another snicker.
The security man held the scanner out to her. “Next.”
She stuck her finger into it without hesitation.
Jamie met Sergei’s eyes, fearing they were in trouble. Did this mean that their fancy fake identifications wouldn’t mean a thing if the planet blood bank didn’t have a match?
He nodded grimly.
“Clear.” The security man waved the smokers inside. He held up a hand toward Jamie, though she hadn’t moved to follow yet. “Still waiting on yours. You from the northern hemisphere?”
“Yes,” Jamie said, though her identity had her place of residence as less than a hundred miles away. She could have been born on the other side of the planet, right?
Sergei was examining their surroundings attentively as the security man scanned his finger. Did he expect a squad of policemen to come trotting in their direction at any second? Maybe he was thinking of calling the captain. Except that he hadn’t brought his comm-patch along. He had promised he did not intend to be captured, but in case it happened, he hadn’t wanted to implicate Mandrake Company. He only had a cheap local device suitable for planetary communication. For the same reason, Jamie had her private and unmarked unit, the one she used to communicate with Ankari and Lauren. She could call them if needed, and they would get the word out to the company, but Jamie didn’t see what the captain could do at this point. Mow down a field full of job hunters?
A bleep came from the scanner. “No match found,” the security man said. “You, either.”
Jamie half-expected him to pull out the laser pistol he wore at his belt, and from the way Sergei lowered a couple of inches, poised to spring, he did too. But the man was part of a third-party security service and apparently didn’t care much whether people cleared or not.
“You’ll have to talk to the recruiter,” he told them, then turned, opening his mouth, as if to call out to the pavilion.
Sergei moved so quickly, Jamie was barely aware of it. He slapped his hand over the man’s mouth at the same time as he grabbed his neck, digging a thumb into his throat and forcing him backward.
A faint gagging sound was all the security guard managed as he was pushed through a hatch and into the silver shuttle. The recruiter was facing the last couple of people in line and didn’t notice any of this. Jamie jumped inside after Sergei and closed the hatch. Hadn’t the recruiter said the shuttle was set to take off soon? Maybe he wouldn’t notice if it left before waiting for those last couple of applicants to make it through their interviews.
Two steps into the craft, Jamie almost tripped over the security man, who was lying on the deck, his eyes shut. The compact shuttle held four rows of four seats each, with an aisle down the middle. The smoking women were sitting in the back, their cigarettes dangling from their lips, their eyes wide as they stared past Jamie, to the front of the craft where Sergei had already removed the pilot from the chair. He appeared to be unconscious too. At least, Jamie hoped the men were only unconscious. Sergei’s rapid efficiency didn’t surprise her, exactly, but seeing him downing people so quickly reminded her of what his occupation was in a very real way.
“Got any rope in your pockets?” he asked, glancing at her, or maybe making sure the two women weren’t doing anything threatening. Their cigarettes were still dangling.
“I have quick-bind glue.” Jamie dug out the small tube. She doubted it was what he had in mind, but she read the label, regardless. “Guaranteed to make anything stick to anything else. Dissolves in alcohol solutions.”
Sergei picked up a flask on the floor by the pilot’s chair, jumped over the rows of seats to bypass Jamie, and opened the hatch to throw it out. He immediately shut the hatch again and turned to Jamie. “Let’s have it.”
She handed him the tube. “It’s self-extracting. Just push the dot there.”
Sergei returned to the pilot’s side. Jamie stepped past both of them and sat at the controls, assuming Sergei would want her to fly them to the island, or at least out of the stadium before that squad of policemen with rifles showed up.
The pilot groaned when Sergei rolled him onto his face to glue his hands behind his back. At least that meant he was still alive. Sergei dragged him to a pair of seats, flung the glue around liberally, then spread the man across them.
The women shifted uneasily when he approached them.
“I apologize, ladies, but we can’t have you wandering away to tell people about this.”
“You’re not going to glue us, are you?”
“The alternative is death.”
Eyes bulging, they stared at each other, then back at him. “Glue isn’t so bad
.”
“The handsome ones never treat you right,” the quiet one sighed.
“Jamie?” Sergei asked as he attended to them. “Have you ever flown this model of shuttle before?”
“No, but I already have the technical manual out.” She waved to a holodisplay she had brought up above the control panel. She didn’t look back to see how concerned his expression was—though his long pause did make her wonder.
“All right. I’m going to need you to fly us to Laframboise’s island, then see if there’s some kind of programmable autopilot, so we can send these three on a sightseeing trip around the planet after we get out. Oh, and if you could disable the comm system, that would be helpful. In case these three figure out how to unglue themselves, we don’t want anyone sending warnings back to Laframboise’s people.”
“You don’t want much, do you?” Jamie had looked at the map before coming down and knew it was only a half-hour flight to Laframboise’s private island. She might be able to dawdle to buy time, but too much would be suspicious. Maybe they could wait here a while before leaving.
A banging came at the hatch door.
Maybe not.
“Time to go.” Sergei jogged up and strapped himself into the co-pilot’s seat. This early change to their plan had her concerned, but he leaned back and didn’t appear worried.
“So I gathered.” Jamie fired up the engines and ran a quick pre-flight check. The craft reminded her of a simpler version of Mandrake Company’s combat shuttles. She left the technical manual up—she would need to look up the limitations of the autopilot feature—but soon had them ready to go.
“You think they’ll let us land?” she asked. “Without the pilot here to supply codes or whatever they might request?”
“The pilot is here.”
“Well, yes, but he might not want to supply us with anything.” Jamie glanced back, though the man’s head wasn’t visible above the row of seats in front of him. She hoped Sergei hadn’t glued his skin to the material. Having accidentally bound her fingers together with the stuff before, she knew it wasn’t pleasant. An alcohol solution might loosen the goop, but it had a tendency to take a lot of skin off with it.
The Assassin's Salvation (Mandrake Company) Page 22