by G. D. Stark
“Just be glad I don’t play the organ,” the musician laughed. The old guy’s eyes narrowed and he looked like he was going to punch the younger man.
“I fail to see the humor in this situation!” he snapped back.
“The musician’s union made a deal to consider syntars legitimate carry-on, sir,” the musician said, making the “sir” sound like a curse.
“Oh yeah?” the man said. I could see he was about to launch into what promised to be an epic tirade.
“Hey!” I broke in, taking the old guy’s arm in my right hand and grabbing the musician’s arm in my left, then gave them both a little pressure on the nerves. “Let’s just be cool, okay? It’s a long flight and I didn’t pay to sit and listen to you two bitch at each other.” I smiled and squeezed just a little harder. Both looked at me and decided to end their argument. It felt good bringing peace and order to the universe.
We spent two days on Gondola, then jumped and spent another day in transit to Feymanus, where we landed at Pallas International Spaceport for a four-hour layover. That’s where I cracked a guy’s skull open. So much for universal peace.
I’d been sitting in a cafe in the outer rim of the spaceport, about ten gates from where we were going to pick up our ship for the next leg of the trip. Our ultimate destination was the Dom Sevru system, but we had to go through Feymanus, then jump through to Rhysalan, then to Terentulus, over to Merovinge and up through Mosva. Like Park said, it was a pissant planet. Just look up the sector map—you’ll see what I mean. Anyhow, I was sitting outside this cafe, eating a stale pastry and drinking a coffee that wasn’t quite as terrible as I expected, when this guy caught my eye in a bad way. You know how it is when you just feel that someone is off. It’s usually in the eyes, and you can sense it once you’ve dealt with enough bad guys. But I’ve learned to trust my gut over the years, and this thick guy with fleshy lips and a stubbly head was triggering my radar.
He was sitting there poking around on a little tablet, pretending not to be watching Cole and Waterose where they sat at a table inside the cafe. I keyed my com jack to Ward’s channel. “Ward, it’s Falkland. Come to the cafe in Sector 18,” I said, glancing up at the signage. “Be cool and ignore the guys inside. I’m at the outside table.”
“Roger,” he replied. “Be there in five.”
Before he arrived, the thick guy got up and walked past Cole and Waterose, glancing at them again as he passed. He stepped out into the concourse and started walking towards the rest rooms. Once I was sure of his destination, I relaxed. Ward showed up a moment later and I swigged my coffee and chucked the rest of the lackluster pastry into a chute. “Ward—I think we got a spook. He was eyeing the boys over there.”
“Where is he now?” Ward said, looking around.
“Restrooms. Let’s corner him.”
“You got it,” he said. “Want to let Cole and Waterose know?”
I looked over at the two of them, engrossed in a gun site they’d pulled up on the table display. “Nah, you and I are better at this. Change your shirt,” I said, pointing to his purple polo. I was already wearing a regular T-shirt. Ward nodded and pulled a less conspicuous shirt out of his backpack.
We headed to the restroom and stepped inside. Our target was in a stall and another guy was washing his hands. In the corner was a utility closet. I opened it like I belonged there and pulled out a mop, a bucket and a “CAUTION” cone, then nodded to the guy who was now drying his hands. When he left I splashed water all over the floor outside the entrance and put up the cone, then wedged the door shut with the mop. Ward grinned at me, then knocked on the stall door. “Hey buddy, you gonna be in there all day?” he said.
“What’s your problem?” came an angry voice, followed by the sound of the toilet’s incinerator turning on.
“Maybe you,” Ward said. “Come out of there.”
The door latch clicked and the door opened slightly. Ward pulled it open, then came flying backwards as the man caught him unexpectedly with a hard punch to the face. Ward staggered backward, blood welling from a split lip. “You bastard,” he yelled, spitting blood. As the guy exited the stall, I saw he had an object clenched in his fist. He’d hit Ward with something.
“Back off!” he snarled at us and making a move for the main door.
“Stand down,” I said, blocking him. “You’re a little on edge for a civilian, aren’t you?”
“Screw you,” he said, trying to shove past me. Ward grabbed his shoulder and nailed him in the side of the head with his fist, knocking him into the doorjamb. The guy thrashed about but I hit him in the stomach with a rear hand, doubling him over.
“I saw you watching my crew,” I hissed. “Who are you working for?”
The guy grabbed at one of my legs and punched upwards into my crotch. It was only a glancing blow, so it didn’t slow me down any, but it did piss me off. I grabbed behind his head and kneed him hard in the face, then pulled him into another rear hand that knocked him out on his feet. He collapsed backwards onto the tile and hit so hard I heard his skull crack. He jerked and twitched for a second, then lay still. Blood began to spill from the back of his head.
“Geez, Tommy, I think you killed him,” Ward said.
“You think?” I said, a little surprised. I leaned in and put my hand on his neck. At first his pulse was pumping like a machine gun but as I felt his throat, it slowed down, and came to a full stop.
“He pissed me off. And it isn’t like we had the time or the space to interrogate him properly.” I pried open the dead man’s fingers to see what had cut Ward’s lip. It was small metal cylinder. I looked at it close. It was some sort of recording device. Ward went to the sink and washed out his mouth, then dabbed some wet paper towels on the bleeding cut. When he was done fixing his face, I handed him the cylinder. “What do you think?”
“Probably a full-spectrum environmental recorder. Audio, video, etc. Holographic capture. Looks like you made him right.”
“Good thing, too,” I said. “Considering I killed him and all that.”
“Yeah,” Ward said, going over to take a look at the dead man. “I’ll take pics with my retinal cam and we’ll see if we can dig up any details on him.”
“Get a chunk of something for a DNA scan, too.” I said.
The restroom door rattled and I heard an irritated voice outside.
“Let’s stick him back in the stall,” I said. Ward got his shots and took a wad of hair—I didn’t ask from where—then we wrestled him up onto the toilet and got him sitting there. I locked the door from the inside and crawled out underneath. Ward was already mopping up the blood on the tiles. The restroom door rattled again.
“Just hold on,” I yelled. I looked at Ward’s bloody lip and realized that I didn’t have any fuseglue or anything to stick it together. “Better just keep the paper towels on it,” I said. Ward nodded and threw out the first blood-soaked wad and grabbed some fresh ones. I opened the door to discover a line of three waiting outside.
“Hey, buddy—what’s the deal?” an older guy in a suit said as he stepped in, followed by a younger man in a Jonny Torqueband T-shirt and a 12-year old kid. A line had obviously been forming. “This is a public restroom.”
“Apologies,” I said, putting my arm around Ward’s shoulders. “Airport security. This gentleman here had an accident and we didn’t want to alarm anyone.”
“Whoa,” said the guy in the T-shirt. “Looks like he needs a medic.”
“I think you’re right,” I said, walking out. “Thank you for your patience.”
We booked it back to our gate where I found Squid waiting for us.
“What the hell?” he muttered as we walked up. “A spontaneous dojo break out at the cafe?”
“You got something to stop the bleeding?” He nodded and rifled through his carry-on case.
Jock raised his eyebrows at me.
“It’s nothing,” I said, knowing that spaceport security was probably recording everything that happened.
“Ward slipped and fell down. We took care of it.”
“Terran Spaceways Gondola will be departing the system in 2 kiloseconds,” announced the spaceport speakers. “Passengers are advised to board now and prepare for launch.”
Squid put his hand on my arm. “You and Ward better sit next to me.”
Over the first ten minutes of our voyage, Ward and I quietly provided a verbal After-Action Report to Squid in between the mandatory safety lectures from the crew. “You sure he was a spy?” he said. “Recorder doesn’t prove anything. Maybe he was a journalist. Or maybe he wasn’t even spying on us.”
“I’ve got face shots and DNA samples,” Ward said. “Any way we can scan them and send them on?”
“Hmm,” Squid said. “Maybe.” He thought for a moment. “Edgerton is with us. He’s a smart cookie. Has an augment, too.”
“Yeah, he might have an idea.”
“Worth trying,” Squid said. “Though I wish we were on one of our ships right now and had access to the proper gear. This civilian smokescreen is a pain in the ass.” He gnawed at his lip. “Not only don’t we have our digitals, the damn stewardesses won’t let me smoke.”
When we exited atmo and were released from our seats Ward and I found Edgerton sitting in the lounge area, staring off into space, communing with the AI gods.
“Sergeant Edgerton?” I said. He didn’t say anything so I kicked his foot.
“Falkland,” he said, blinking a few times. “Were you and Mr. Ward having differences of opinion earlier?”
“We were on the same page, actually,” I told him. “Is your augment capable of forensics? DNA?”
“Sure, within certain limits,” he said. “Babbage is capable of the basic scans, provided it’s human. Can’t deal with all the exobiological sequencing unless I purchase a module for him.” He paused for a moment. “Yeah, he really wants that module, I don’t know why. He’s an info-junkie. You could download a bazillion terabytes on sea snails and he’d eat it up—it’s not about the info, it’s just the-”
“Great,” Ward said, his voice thick around his swollen lip. “We need Babbage to help us nail down the guy that gave me this lip. Squid said you could probably help.”
“You don’t know who hit you?”
“No,” Ward said. “I saw who hit me before Tommy taught him some manners. But we need an ID. Look into my ocular implant and I’ll pass the images to Babbage.” Edgerton did, then blinked a couple of times.
“Ugly guy,” he said. “Babbage isn’t hooked up to our database, though, so he has no idea who this is.”
“Listen, Sarge,” I said. “Babbage just needs to get the data to the subsector HQ on Rhysalan and have them run the pics. We don’t expect him to work it out on his own.”
“Also, scan this and get the DNA,” Ward said, producing a paper towel-wrapped clump of hairs from his pocket. “Send it on.”
“Hmm, that takes some thought,” Edgerton said. “Oh, yes. Here’s a good idea. Maybe I could hack the next messenger drone the ship sends on ahead. It would simply take one access node, and once I’d corrupted that, I’d just have to-”
“Thanks, Edgerton,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m sure you’ve got it under control.”
“So what happened with Ward?” Zelag asked. We were splitting a cabin for this leg of the flight.
“So you just got a bad feeling and decided to call Ward?” Zelag said after I filled him in. “Then decided it was confirmed by the fact the guy punched someone trying to accost him in a bathroom stall?” He rolled a small medallion back and forth over his metal fingers thoughtfully. “Risky, but I’d say that was a good read, Tommy. You should have worked diplomatic security.”
“Did you miss the part where I cracked his skull?”
“Yeah, they do tend to frown on that, actually.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think the guy was a real pro. It was more than obvious he was keeping an eye on the boys, although he missed me. He could have just recorded everyone quietly and reviewed the tapes at his leisure. The recorder we took wasn’t cheap. It would’ve done the job.”
“It doesn’t take a genius to blow up a ship, though,” Zelag said, setting the medallion on the desk.
“What?” I said. “Who said anything about blowing up ships?”
“Dude, you wouldn’t believe some of the nonsense that took place when I was working diplomacy. Remember that CEO who got poisoned right in front of us? That sort of stuff happens more than you’d think. It can get even weirder. We once caught ourselves a dwarf assassin climbing through an air duct on his way to slit the throat of a Valatestan executive.”
“A dwarf?”
“Yeah, an actual dwarf. Genetically modified. He was small enough to fit through the ducts. They didn’t count on the microfilter installed above the office, though. He was trying to saw through it when the MPs caught him.”
“So you’re saying this guy could have been doing more than just gathering info?”
“Sure,” he said, picking up the medallion again and spinning it on the table. “It’ll be interesting to see what comes back from Rhysalan HQ, if anything. Better to be paranoid than dead.”
“Yeah,” I said, watching the medallion spin to a rattling halt on the table. “Agreed.”
Throughout the two-day journey to Rhysalan I kept my eyes open but didn’t see anyone else who looked suspicious. The passengers were your typical lot. A few aliens, a lot of business people, some families visiting relatives, retirees seeking some excitement in a new system, a few boys from the TA Navy going home to see family, but there was no one that hit me as off, not that I’m some sort of psychic or anything. Squid had passed the word to the other guys to keep their eyes open but we got nothing. Edgerton even hacked the manifest and we pored through it but found nothing interesting.
We docked at Port International outside Rhysalan for a 24-hour refueling and maintenance layover. Two hours before we were supposed to board for the next leg, Squid received a message from the surface and called us in to a private conference room.
“Well boys,” he said, puffing on an e-cigar he’d gotten from somewhere, “we’ve got some interesting news from the intel guys on the surface.”
The faces around the table were attentive.
“I clued you in on Tommy and Ward’s little bathroom incident already. Turns out Falkland was right. The gentlemen in question was indeed an intelligence agent.”
“Whose?” Jock asked.
“Axios. The opfor on Dom Servru. It took longer than expected to run him down since he’d had some facial surgery, but the DNA clinched it. They managed to pull up an old file from a TA list of known corporate spies. He was kicked off Faraday at one point for an unauthorized archive access, then went dark for a while. Later turned up on Pyrrha. Apparently, the Axiosi government caught word that we were on our way to help out their rivals.”
“So they were tracking us,” Zelag said. “For what purpose?”
“Maybe just eyes on the ground,” Park said.
“Maybe,” Squid said, exhaling a cloud of vapor that smelled like the animal skin leather they sell on colony worlds.
“We should cancel the next leg,” I said.
“What?” Jock said. “You kidding? Can the mission?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not. But I’ve been talking with Zelag. He thinks they might be trying to head us off.”
“Talk to me,” Squid said, looking at Zelag.
“Well,” Zelag said, tapping his fingers on the table. “I was thinking that they were just looking to confirm who we were so they can hit the right ship.”
“Hit?” Jock said.
“Yeah,” Zelag said. “Hit. As in, take us out before we reach our destination.”
“Seriously?” Ace chimed in. “Taking out a commercial liner full of people just to kill 24 Wardogs?”
“Wardogs put the fear of God into people,” Edgerton said.
“Yeah,” Jones said, “but so do Starkillian bat spide
rs. I’m with Ace on this one. You’d have to be nuts or desperate to take out a ship full of civilians.”
“No, just ruthless,” Zelag said. “Trust me. I’ve seen crazier stuff than this. There’s a low-level war going on here. Acceptable losses are part and parcel of interstellar diplomacy. Besides, losing a ship in deep space in transit between systems can be explained away. No witnesses if it’s total.”
“Geez,” Cole said.
Multiple Wardogs were shaking their heads. I could see Zelag’s idea wasn’t flying.
“Paranoid,” Jones said. “That’s totally paranoid.”
“How hard is it to just cancel our tickets and take another ship?” I asked. “Seriously, why not do it?”
“Accounting will throw a fit, for one,” Squid said.
“So what?” Zelag said. “There’s maintenance work happening on Gondola right now. You think it would be hard to pay off some mechanic with a few debts and get inside and do a little screwing around with life support—or the reactor core? I’d say we pushed our luck already by taking this last leg after finding a spy.”
“Sure, it would be possible to do. But it’s a civilian ship,” Jones said.
“Yeah, these amateurs don’t scare me,” Ward said. “They may scare Tommy and Cyborg here, but I say we stick with the program. Time is wasting.”
Squid puffed his fake stogie as we pushed back and forth, arguing over the risks and calling each other names. After a few minutes, he rapped his knuckles on the table. “All right, that’s enough,” he growled. “We’ll switch ships and take another flight so Tommy and Zelag can get some sleep.”
“What?” multiple voices burst out, most of them sounding irritated.
“You gotta be kidding!” Jones yelled.
“No,” Squid said. “Tommy was right about the spy, plus Zelag has made his point in my head. It’s only a few thousand credits to cash out our tickets and buy replacements. If the delay is less than a few days, it won’t harm the mission any. HQ will pony up. It may be a slight risk, but it’s a risk and it’s unnecessary. So we won’t take it.”