“Sally or Jake?”
“Either. Both.”
“Thanks.”
Alia looked around as if checking they were alone. “You’re not the only one looking.”
“For Lowenbrun?”
“Don’t know what his last job was, don’t want to know, but some hard-assed Monitor came sniffing around a couple of days ago.”
“Monitor? Did he have a name?”
“Didn’t stick around for a tea party. Tall chap, iron gray hair. Cold eyes. He’s gone, now. Leastways I haven’t seen him around, but he handed out a contact. Offered a reward. We cut him dead, but there are a few of Solpek’s favored flyers who haven’t gotten any work out of this. They may think again about trying to collect.”
“Thanks, Alia.” Cara turned to go.
“Not going after Jake, are you? I told you that so you’d leave him alone. We need this job. Ain’t gonna get it if you’re in jail.”
“It won’t come to that. Get everyone to the spaceport. Meet us in departures, on the concourse by the big statue.”
“Departures. Right.”
*You need to finish up business fast,* Cara told Ben. *A Monitor’s been here asking questions, looking for a freelance Navigator called Lowenbrun. He’s offered a reward. Don’t trust Solpek.*
*No further than I can throw him.*
*Send Hilde out. I’ve got a lead.*
*Wait for me.*
*Might not be time. Doesn’t sound like he’ll be in much of a state to resist. We’ll be at a joint called Sally’s.*
She met Hilde in the bar and jerked her head toward the door. “Going to get some air. Want a walk?”
“Sure.”
As they left, Alia was gathering the flyers. There were two kids on the doorstep, one a boy of about eight and one a girl of maybe thirteen.
“You Alia’s kids?” she asked them.
They nodded.
“Good, grab your stuff. Your folks have a job.”
“We’ve always got our stuff.” The little one patted a bag at his side.
“Good boy.”
Cara looked up at the sky. Dirty gray clouds, rumpled like an unmade bed, rolled in from the north; beyond them, the dark underbelly of thunderheads, but here on Sunshine Strip it was still too hot to breathe.
The first cool blast, icy in comparison, hit them before they’d got halfway to Sally’s. It was a relief after the heat and humidity, but by the third blast they were shivering.
“Think I’m going to regret trying to blend in,” Hilde said. “Should have worn buddysuits. At least they’re waterproof.”
They picked up the pace, and as the first medallion-sized raindrops fell they sprinted for Sally’s, obvious by the voluptuous girl on the sign flickering on and off haphazardly above the door.
“We’re not taking on, ladies,” an unexpectedly cultured voice said from the shadows. “And we don’t keep boy whores on the premises. Try the Red Snake by the Bellybuster Diner.”
“We’re not looking for action,” Cara said. “Looking for information. Jake Lowenbrun.”
“Who? Never heard of him.”
“Yeah, right, then why did I just hear footsteps running across the floor above?”
Hilde darted for the back door. Cara pushed Sally to one side and took the stairs two at a time. A man stumbled across the landing toward a narrow back stair, bottle in one hand, scrabbling at an empty leg holster with the other.
He didn’t stand a chance against Hilde, who came up from below and took him with a shoulder to the gut. He went down like a sack of potatoes. The bottle flew out of his hand and smashed against the wall.
He groaned, whether from the pain in his gut or the loss of the bottle Cara couldn’t tell. She bent over him, grimacing at the acrid stench of vomit and secondhand alcohol.
“Get away from him.”
A sharp voice behind her made Cara pull back. She stood and turned. A young woman, hardly more than a girl, scantily dressed in a few wisps of silk, held Jake’s missing pistol in a two-handed grip. Her hands were shaking so much it would be touch and go whether she hit Cara, Jake, Hilde, the ceiling, or herself on a ricochet.
“Back off or I’ll shoot.”
It was a projectile weapon, small caliber, potentially lethal. Cara’s buddysuit would have protected her from anything except a lucky shot to face or hands, but this flight suit was no barrier at all to bullets.
Behind her, hidden from the girl’s view, she heard Hilde’s sidearm snick out of its holster. Hilde would shoot to kill if she had to.
Cara raised both hands so the girl could see she hadn’t drawn a weapon. “No need for anyone to get hurt.”
“Yeah? Tell that to Jake. C’mon, honey, this way.” She encouraged Jake to his feet, but Hilde had whomped the breath out of him and though he tried to get to his knees he collapsed onto the floor again.
“Just need to ask your boyfriend a few questions,” Cara said.
“He’s my cousin, but . . . family . . . ya know?”
“You pulled clean-up duty, then?”
“He’s not himself. Leave him alone.”
“Maybe we can help.” Cara pitched her voice into reasonable mode. “We’re not from the Monitors.”
“How do I know who you are?”
“Put the gun down, let’s talk.”
“Uh-uh.” The girl shook her head.
*Duck sideways, I’ll take her as soon as you’re clear,* Hilde said.
*She’s only a kid.*
*A kid with a gun.*
“You don’t want to do this,” Cara said to the girl.
“Oh yeah, I really do. You people have screwed him up enough already.”
“Not us, we just want to talk to him.” Cara tried to sound sincere, burying the thought that if Lowenbrun was responsible for firing thirty thousand settlers into a sun, or losing them in the Folds, it would be a short conversation and it would be unlikely to end well.
A shadow moved behind the girl.
*Get ready,* Cara told Hilde. *Going to drop to the right.*
*Gotcha.*
But the shadow wrapped itself around the girl. Sally turned her toward the wall. The gun cracked out and a chunk of wood flew out of the doorframe.
Ears still ringing, Cara darted forward and grabbed the gun from the girl’s hands.
“Thanks,” she said to Sally.
“I didn’t do it for you. I know what a safety clicking off sounds like. Dree might have taken you if she’d been lucky, but your goon would have taken her out in a heartbeat.”
“Yes, I would’ve,” Hilde said, thumbing the safety back into place and reholstering her sidearm. “Glad I didn’t have to, though.”
Jake groaned again and Hilde hauled him into a sitting position by the scruff of his stained shirt.
“He in trouble?” Sally asked. “Monitors, and now you looking for him. Doesn’t look good.”
“How much do you know about his last job?”
“Nothing, ’cept he came back drunk and got drunker.”
“You?” Cara asked the girl, who was now hugging her arms around herself and shivering.
“Said it was paying enough to set us both up, but wouldn’t say what it was. Something about an insurance job. That guy who came looking for him, though . . . Looked different in a Monitor uniform with a half-helm on, but I’ve got a thing for voices. Could swear it was the same guy who hired Jake in the first place, otherwise how would he have known to look here?”
“What are we going to do with him?” Hilde nudged Jake with her foot.
“Take him with us,” Cara said, shooting a thought to Ben to tell him they’d need an escort with strong arms and weak noses.
“No, you can’t!” Dree started forward, but Sally held her back.
“Is he mix
ed up in anything bad?” Sally asked.
“Could be. Less you know the better.”
“He’s not bad,” Dree said.
“Then he’s got nothing to worry about,” Hilde said.
“And if he is?” Sally asked.
“What’s he told you?”
She shrugged. “Nothing, like I said, but I’ve known Jake since he turned up here with Dree still young enough to need her nose wiping. I’ve never seen him this troubled, or this drunk. I’d have staked my life on him being a decent man. Maybe not law-abiding, but decent.”
Neither Cara nor Hilde spoke.
“I see.” Sally drew a deep breath.
Cara heard Gwala’s voice downstairs. The big merc shouldered past Sally and hauled Lowenbrun to his feet.
“Where are you taking him? Can I come?” Dree asked.
“That would be mighty nice.” Gwala flashed her a broad grin that took in her clothing and what was showing through it.
Cara cleared her throat meaningfully and Hilde managed a light slap around the back of Gwala’s head.
“You’ll be safer here,” Cara said to the girl.
Sally cocked her head sideways, her voice resigned. “Whatever happens, don’t leave us guessing.”
Cara nodded once. “We won’t.”
“Let’s get him to the spaceport and away from here,” Ben said, striding down the street through sheeting rain, which had already penetrated the shoulders of his flight suit. “The pilots are there already.”
“How many did you get?” Cara asked.
“Just the four, counting the Kazan family as one. I’m going to need Gen to train them to handle a jump drive.”
“No.”
Lowenbrun, who’d shown little resistance up to then, tried to pull out of Gwala and Hilde’s grasp. Gwala pulled his arms back and snapped a pair of ferraflex restraints around his wrists.
“Not going back!” Lowenbrun muttered. “Can’t make me.”
He shook his head, spraying water from his hair.
Ben felt a pang of sympathy. He didn’t want to go back into the Folds either. He clenched his jaw. Gen would handle the transit this time. All he had to do was to hang on for the few minutes it took to get through. Though a few minutes could seem like forever.
Lowenbrun found his feet along with his voice. Though he was a shambling mess he kept himself upright. “He made me. Bastard made me. Didn’t want to. Bastard told me it was freight. Insurance job he said. But I know an ark ship when I see one. I know.”
Ben’s stomach roiled.
“What did you do?”
“Bastard told me it was freight.”
“What did you do?”
“Insurance claim.”
They were going around in circles. Ben needed Lowenbrun sober. Better get him aboard Solar Wind as quickly as possible.
As they boarded the shuttle for the spaceport Gwala took off the shackles so as not to attract undue attention. “Try and run and I’ll take both your legs off at the knees,” he said. “Understand?”
Lowenbrun nodded.
The public terminal handled barely a dozen passenger flights a day, mostly mining crews and their families coming and going. Though it wasn’t large, it was bright and comfortable with a blast of cool, dry air meeting them in the entrance. Ben shivered and wiped rain from his face with the back of a hand.
The Magena sisters and Esterhazy stood by the statue of Everyminer with just a single bag each. The Kazan family was missing. He spotted them over by the restrooms, mum, dad, a teenage daughter, and a boy somewhere under ten, plus four big bags and a couple of transit crates. He waved for them to come over, but they didn’t move.
Alia jerked her head to her left just once and that was all the warning they had. A phalanx of Monitors with automatic weapons and armored buddysuits complete with half-helms emerged from opposite sides of the concourse and arrayed themselves between the Navigators and the exit.
“Stand down, Benjamin, you’re bound by law. Place all your weapons on the floor.”
“Sergei, even with a mask on I’d recognize you anywhere.”
*The girl, Lowenbrun’s cousin, thought she recognized the Monitor’s voice,* Cara said. *He was the one who hired Lowenbrun in the first place. There’s something very odd going on. Your old friend is in it up to his neck.*
*Why doesn’t that surprise me?*
“Weapons,” Alexandrov said again.
“All right, Sergei, I get it. Weapons on the floor.” Playing for time, Ben took his sidearm out of its holster slowly and carefully with finger and thumb and dropped it on the floor with a clatter, feeling the comfortable lump of the tiny derri still sitting in his thigh pocket.
“Parrimer blade, Benjamin. I’ve never known you not to carry one.”
“And you know me so well, Sergei, almost as well as I know you. What’s this about? You’re here after Lowenbrun, aren’t you? We’re just a bonus you never expected. What have you been up to? What do you know about thirty thousand missing settlers?”
Ben noticed one of the helmeted Monitors glance toward Alexandrov.
“Is that you, Jess? Did Sergei take some personal time a couple of months back? He did, didn’t he? Would that have been about the time an ark loaded with thirty thousand settlers in cryo went missing? Am I ringing any bells here? Come on, Jess, wake up. Why is he so keen to get Lowenbrun? Is there even a warrant out for him? He’s cleaning up after himself.”
Alexandrov raised his weapon, his finger tightening on the trigger. Ben flung himself sideways and grabbed his dropped gun.
Lowenbrun screeched, “You bastard,” and ran at Alexandrov full tilt, arms outstretched.
Alexandrov’s gun barked. Lowenbrun fell. Ben brought his own weapon up, fired and hit Alexandrov square under the jaw. The man’s head snapped back, a ruin of blood and bone.
Everyone dived for cover as a volley of shots rang out.
Chapter Thirty-Three
VOID DRAGONS
AFTER THE FIRST FLURRY OF SHOTS, SCREAMS of bystanders and deafening cracks as energy bolts slammed into walls, there was a pause. Ben’s ears rang. He blinked, realized he wasn’t hurt and reached for Cara, who’d taken refuge behind Everyminer. All Ben had between him and the Monitors was a row of flimsy seats and someone’s flight bag.
*All right?* he asked.
*Yes. You?*
*So far.*
She linked him to Gwala, Hilde, and the newly appointed pilots. Everyone had found shelter.
“Ben, hold your fire. Give yourself up. We’ve got you outnumbered.” Jessop’s voice cut through the shocked silence.
“Don’t be too sure about that, Monitor man.” Alia Kazan’s voice carried across the concourse.
Over by the washrooms the Kazans had hunkered down behind their transit crates and three muzzles pointed over the top, directly at the Monitors.
“Jess, you don’t want us,” Ben shouted. “Think of the paperwork. I warned you about Alexandrov before. He had something to do with the disappearance of the ark, and I aim to find out what.”
Lowenbrun groaned and rolled over. He was approximately halfway between Ben and Jessop, spattered in blood. How badly was he hurt? Ben needed whatever information he had. Lowenbrun was their last lead.
“Check your warrants,” Ben called. “I’ll bet you won’t find one for Lowenbrun. You’ve been dragged here on false pretenses because Alexandrov wanted to shut him up.”
“Check it.” Jessop spoke to the man on his right. “Come talk to me, Ben. Just you and me.”
Ben raised his head above the seat he was crouching behind.
*Ben!* Cara’s alarm was sharp.
*It’s okay, Jessop’s straight. I worked with him on the Rim. He’s no Alexandrov.*
*Is that what I should carve on your tombstone?*
/> But as Ben stood, so did Jessop. For a tense moment neither moved, but no one fired. Jess pulled off his half-helm and walked forward. They’d been the same age when they worked together, but grizzled hair and the lines on his face said he hadn’t done any cryo. They met in the middle, by Lowenbrun.
“Good to see you again, Jess.”
“I could have wished for better circumstances.”
They shook hands.
Jessop glanced at Alexandrov. He didn’t need a medic to certify death.
“Mind if I check Lowenbrun?” Ben asked and knelt by the fallen man.
“Go ahead. Did you have to kill my boss?”
“You tell me. You’re my witness for the defense.”
“Hell, Ben. You’ve put me in an awkward position. No one liked Alexandrov, but he was one of ours.”
“He was bent. Taking bribes on the Rim years ago and working on the side for van Blaiden if what Lowenbrun said made sense.”
Ben turned Lowenbrun over, relieved to see that the blood appeared to be Alexandrov’s.
Jessop knelt too. “Pshaw! He stinks. You can have him. You’re right. I checked. There’s no warrant.”
“Lowenbrun, where does it hurt?” Ben asked.
“My knee. I twisted it as I fell.”
“You were lucky you did fall. Bloody idiot.”
“Is he dead?”
“Alexandrov? Yes.”
Lowenbrun screwed his eyes up and started to shake, weeping silently.
“What’s going on, Ben?” Jessop sat back on his heels. “Make it quick.” He glanced back at his men. “I can’t keep them standing around all day.”
“Short version? When we found platinum on Olyanda, Crowder tried to wipe out the colonists so the planet would revert to the Trust.”
“Yeah, I saw the vid.”
“Crowder and Ari van Blaiden were hand in glove. Not just Olyanda, Hera-3 before that.”
“Alphacorp’s saying van Blaiden acted on his own. Nothing to do with them. The Trust is saying the vid is a well-staged fake.”
Crossways: A Psi-Tech Novel Page 47