by Chris Ward
‘My programming says—’
‘Quiet.’
Lia sighed. ‘Those Dust Devils—I think they were after the chip.’
‘Robot, you didn’t happen to hack Louis Town’s radar towers while you were down there, did you?’
‘I did.’
‘Really?’
Lia smiled at the way Caladan seemed genuinely pleased.
‘And did you get a source location for those Dust Devils?’
‘No. I searched only for routine information.’
‘Well, next time the waste disposal unit breaks down, we’ll know where to find parts.’
‘My programming says I should be offended at that statement.’
‘No, no, your programming is malfunctioning.’
Lia would have punched Caladan’s arm, but she was on the wrong side. Instead she gave the stump a squeeze through his jacket.
‘Don’t tease him. He got us out of there.’
Caladan looked about to retort, but a light began to flash on the control panel. ‘Ah, problem.’
‘What?’
Caladan pressed some buttons on the computer terminal, and lines of code began to appear. ‘We’ve been flagged for leaving without clearance,’ he said.
‘So? Another fine. So what? I imagine they have bigger problems about now.’
‘Makes us look guilty,’ Caladan said.
Lia sighed. ‘Then let’s at least do something to feel guilty about. Jump it.’
Caladan laughed. ‘Strap in.’
Lia climbed into her seat, while Harlan5 took up a brace position in the cabin’s rear.
‘Anywhere in particular?’
‘Trill System.’
Caladan pressed a button to activate an automatic stasis-ultraspace sequence. ‘Well, it was a flying visit, Iris,’ he said, tapping the receding ball on the rearview screen. ‘Not sure we’ll be back any time soon, but, for now, goodnight.’
The glittering star field outside become a rainbow of color. Lia winced, pissed at Caladan for leaving the screens open as the ship entered stasis-ultraspace, something which, if done too close to a star, would either blind them or burn up the inside of the bridge. As she opened her mouth to say something, Harlan5 murmured, ‘Oh, my programming tells me I should find that pretty.’
Lia turned the chip over in her fingers, wondering if the Tolgier had discovered the ruse yet. Somewhere, halfway across the galaxy, he was perhaps loading what he thought were stolen invasion plans and finding nothing but a blank screen.
She had gone into the meeting with good intentions, with both the original chip and the counterfeit she had instructed Harlan5 to make secreted away on her body, but something Caladan had said had rankled, and when she looked at it objectively, the fee was far too high for a simple recovery mission. Whoever Leon-Ar worked for, they desperately wanted the chip and had the kind of wealth to ensure it happened that made Lia nervous.
Leon-Ar’s commission had been to recover the item from the hijacked Grun freighter during an attack by Barelaon mercenaries designed to hide the infiltration by Lia’s team. The item—allegedly plans of some kind—would allow an uprising on one of the Trill System’s outer planets to be crushed before it gained too much momentum.
Yet something about the operation’s expense disturbed her. It felt like a cover for something bigger, more deadly. She had instructed Harlan to check the political situation on each of Trill’s planets, and he had found nothing other than the usual squabbling and backbiting—nothing to suggest a major offensive was imminent.
So, she had done the only sensible thing: have Harlan5 check the chip’s contents, but the droid had found it inaccessible, locked tight.
Instead, he had copied the encrypted information and made a counterfeit, and Lia had gambled that Leon-Ar would not have the means to check.
Most contacts would have made certain they weren’t being duped. It wasn’t the first time Lia had disarmed someone with her body, and while her looks held, she doubted it would be the last. She was hunted now, she knew it, and not just because the Dust Devils had come out of nowhere to attack her.
Dust Devils, which offered significant firepower at a low price, were a favorite of the warlords that had sprung up in most systems in the absence of a solid intergalactic council. Leon-Ar, she suspected, had let it slip that he was making a deal for a warlord, and another warlord had decided to make it his business.
Whatever information the chip contained, it was no doubt of immense value, and something that valuable couldn’t be just handed over.
‘Five Earth-hours,’ Caladan said. ‘Which planet do you want?’
‘Cable,’ Lia said. ‘We need to find someone who can tell us what’s on this chip.’
‘Can’t the robot do it?’
Lia shook her head. ‘He’s too old,’ he said. ‘A positive antique.’
Caladan lifted an eyebrow. ‘It surprises me that there is an item of technology older than your robot.’
‘I’m listening,’ Harlan5 said from his berth behind them. ‘My programming tells me to begin feeling an affront toward your behaviour.’
‘Go back into hibernation mode,’ Caladan said. ‘Just don’t forget to wake up. We might need you to carry some boxes or oil the landing gear.’
Harlan5 paused a moment, then obeyed the first command, his body shutting down with a hum as the flickering light in his eyepieces went out.
‘Ah, peace,’ Caladan said. ‘So. What’s the plan?’
Lia shrugged. ‘We find out what’s on this chip, and then we sell it to the highest bidder.’
Caladan grinned. ‘Come on, you can’t fool me. You’ll hand it over to whichever government is nearest. Once GMP, always GMP. For the record, I’m proud of you. Partly. I don’t approve of everything you did, but I think you might have just saved some lives. Not ours, of course. We’re screwed. But some people will thank you without ever knowing it.’
‘Thanks … I think.’
‘Welcome. Now, let me take a look at that thing.’
Lia handed over the tiny chip. It was a small rectangle that nestled neatly in the palm of a hand, but compared to the digital wavelength technology that ran most ships, it was a brick.
‘We should be able to find a machine that’ll run it in a junk shop on Cable. Easy.’
Lia grimaced. ‘And that’s what worries me. I have a feeling we need to be very careful with this thing.’
‘Got you. So, tell me where we’re going, and we’ll see what can be done.’
Cable, the second largest of the three inhabited planets in the Trill System, had been barren and lifeless within the memory of some creatures Lia had come across during her travels, but now, some Earth-centuries after a race known as the Trill had terra-formed it, providing it with a breathable atmosphere, leaving behind only the system’s name before vanishing into the galaxy and effectively out of the annuls of intergalactic history, it was a thriving planet of two billion people.
The vast majority resided on the main continent, Argilli, and of those, most lived within the hundred-Earth-mile wide city of Seen.
Seen had developed like many oxygen-breathing cities had: a mixture of super-rich and super-poor with everything in between. It was a hedonist’s dream, but also a criminals’ paradise, particularly in the middle-areas where security was either lax or under-maintained. Most intergalactic trading companies had offices here. The population was sixty percent human and subspecies, with the rest being made up of a motley assortment of off-world traders and investors.
It had been Caladan’s idea to ground the ship some way outside the city in one of the great open grasslands that made up much of Argilli. They found a dip between hills on an open moor, then engaged the oft-misfiring camouflage function to bring the Matilda down unnoticed. Once on the ground, the color-sensitive panels in her body armor adjusted—theoretically, at least—to blend into her surroundings.
Of course, were someone to stumble across the Matilda, no amount of
camouflage could disguise a ramshackle but functioning rogue hunter assault craft, which was why Caladan offered to stay behind. With Harlan5 to accompany her, Lia took their only functioning quad buggy, and headed for Seen.
Three times they were stopped by police patrols, and twice ordered to pay a fine for using an unregistered vehicle. Lia knew they were being scammed, but grimaced and handed over the money in both cases. The second group offered to take the droid in exchange, but Lia politely declined, keeping one hand near her blaster in case things got heated. Luckily, the group moved off without incident.
They found themselves in the midst of Seen’s suburbs without even noticing how the city had sneaked up upon them. Empty streets lined by widely spaced houses soon gave way to narrow, busy streets lined by apartments, which then became great towers and domes and silver office buildings that reached for the sky.
‘Would you like a map drawn?’ Harlan5 asked as they doubled back for the fifth time. ‘It will only take a moment to compute if I log in with a tracking satellite.’
Lia shook her head. ‘It’ll leave a trace signal. I’m concerned about this. When I agreed to this job, I was naïve.’
‘My programming tells me to inform you that you were almost certainly drunk,’ Harlan5 said.
Lia scowled. ‘And my programming tells me that even though you’re probably right, it might be time to solder your voice circuits.’
‘Touché,’ the robot said.
After another half an hour of meandering through increasingly cluttered streets, Lia jumped up from her seat. ‘Here, this is it. I recognise this place.’
Lia jumped down from the quad bike and looked around, shaking dust off ancient memories of a time long ago when she had been much younger than now.
‘I’ll take it alone from here,’ she said, patting Harlan5 on the shoulder. ‘You should go back to the ship and help Caladan with whatever needs fixing. I’ll be in touch when I need to be picked up.’
Harlan nodded, and headed off, the quad buggy leaving a cloud of stinking smoke in its wake. Lia continued on foot into a narrow, covered warren of shops and bars. Due to the stasis-ultraspace routes, she was unsure how much real time had passed since her last visit to Trina, but it felt like years.
The ancient bric-a-brac shop looked like something out of a fairytale. Boxes of junk spilled out on to the streets, some of them literally tipping over, hundreds of ancient components of various sizes knocked across the floor. Lia nudged aside old radios, computers, intercoms, implants, satellite tracing beacons, and all manner of other junk as she made her way up to the door.
Thanks to a large, square object pushed into a space behind it, the door only opened halfway, but Lia managed to squeeze through the opening and immediately felt as though she had travelled back in time as she moved among heaps of retro equipment, all poorly illuminated by strip lighting battling against the grime that covered the windows.
‘Is anyone here?’
A bell announced the opening of an inside door. ‘I’m coming,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘Just wait a minute. Don’t you know how it hurts to get around these days?’
A plump, grey-haired woman appeared between two stacks of junk. Her hair frizzed out around her face as though caught in a constant mesh of static, while the old pinafore she wore was smudged with grease. Her face, kindly, was deeply lined.
‘Hello, again. It’s been a long time, Trina.’
‘Do I … oh.’ The woman stopped. ‘Lianetta. Oh my.’
Lia smiled. ‘Or should I say, Mum. I didn’t want to spoil the surprise.’
RAYLAN
Raylan Climlee’s arm shook as he held the blaster to Leon-Ar’s head. Even kneeling, the Tolgier towered over him, but Raylan pressed his toes into the ground and raised himself on tip-toe to ensure the weapon’s barrel left an imprint on the Tolgier’s skin. ‘You will tell me again how you failed to retrieve the shipment you were sent to collect.’
‘There was an attack—’
‘I don’t care about that. Other warlords in the Trill System make it their business to disrupt mine as best they can. It’s being dealt with. What I want to know is why you brought me what is effectively a worthless piece of plastic.’
‘The drive was a perfect copy. Without the means to test it I was unable to know the ruse. Had I been able to run a test—’
‘Silence.’
Raylan lifted the weapon and brought the heavy butt down across Leon-Ar’s face. The Tolgier grunted, crashing face-first into the stone floor. He looked up, blood trickling down his cheek, his eyes desperate.
‘Your contact … explain.’
‘Lianetta Jansen … disgraced former Galactic Military Police, later mercenary, smuggler, space mule. She came with a reputation, but her record for success was the best of anyone I could find who was still alive. And I know she collected the shipment. There was no other way she could have engineered a fake of such exact likeness.’
‘Then she still has it.’
‘Yes.’
‘You will recover it. And you will find out why you were tricked.’
‘My lord….’
Raylan turned away. He clasped his hands behind his back and strolled across the room, humming lightly to himself. ‘You have disappointed me, and as a result, I have sent a platoon of my men to your home moon, where they will await further orders. Should you fail to recover my shipment in its original form within one Earth-month … I will order them to attack your home village. Every member of your family, every one of your friends … the people who you grew up with, went to school with—I will have my men massacre them one by one. Their screams will haunt you, literally. I will have them recorded, and you will be consigned to a cell in my moonbase, a headset strapped to your face, where you will listen to your loved ones die on an endless loop until you are driven so mad that you will not feel the rats gnawing through your feet. Is that understood?’
Leon-Ar nodded. ‘Completely.’
‘Good. Now get out of my sight before I humiliate you further. I am beginning to feel the need to defecate.’
As the Tolgier stumbled from the room, Raylan holstered his blaster and tugged on the braids of his beard.
‘Worthless asshole.’
‘You were a little harsh on him, were you not?’
In the doorway to his bed chamber, Lady Julienne leaned with one foot resting against the other. Her skin, as dark as the night, was like a fine sauce waiting to be lapped up.
‘Was my fee not great enough?’ Raylan said. ‘Was I not generous?’
‘I fear his error of judgment was one that you underestimate,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Perhaps I ought to teach you?’
Raylan growled under his breath. He had paid too much for her too; she was almost convincing.
‘I will punish you for doubting me,’ he said. ‘Return to my bed.’
‘I cannot spend another minute there alone.’
‘Close your whore’s mouth and open your whore’s legs. I will decide when I am ready.’
Lady Julienne rolled her eyes but smiled at the same time to negate his anger. He hated the way she treated him like a little boy even without words. He was as old as some starships, an unstoppable force of nature, yet this woman born of night, and a master of it, had him wrapped around a finger just large enough to—
‘I have business to attend to,’ he snapped, turning away from her as she began to lick her lips.
From his command centre, Raylan went through the data coming in from his outposts across the Fire Quarter. Squadrons of the many thousands of mercenaries in his employ were moving into place, and within a few Earth-days he could be the overlord of an entire system.
The setback was the loss of the shipment.
The Barelaon had done their part. Their assault had allowed Leon-Ar’s contact to slip in unnoticed and steal the chip.
That the Tolgier’s contact would turncoat was unexpected, but nothing could repair a mistake like a desperate man.
&nb
sp; Leon-Ar would come through; it was a given.
Raylan took a shuttle out to the trioxyglobin mine half a curve around the moon’s surface. From the air, ground operations looked in good shape, but reports had told him otherwise. Production ratio of trioxyglobin was at one hundred to one, hopelessly inefficient.
He needed another source.
At an angle of seventy degrees from the horizon, the distant dot of Abalon 3 twinkled in the night sky.
‘There you are,’ Raylan muttered. ‘You elusive bastard.’
A duty officer met him at the entrance. ‘Welcome, sir.’
It angered Raylan the way everyone looked down on him, even children. Years of therapy as a child had only made him angrier, until the day he cut his counselor’s throat with a broken plastic ruler, climbed out of the consultation chamber’s window and escaped into the world.
Fifty years of working his way up through every criminal organization he could find by whatever means necessary, and now his reputation was a thousand feet tall, even if his body was a stump.
It wasn’t enough, but it was something at least.
‘You have bled the mine dry?’
‘We will soon be running at a loss,’ the duty officer said. ‘It is my professional opinion that this mine, and indeed this entire moon, is no longer of economic value.’
‘As I thought. You will commence the ceasing of all operations. Have all equipment boarded onto a transport freighter ready for your next assignment.’
‘What timeframe?’
‘Immediately. I anticipate a fantastic new market will soon open up for us.’
He left the mining operation behind and returned to his command centre, the pinprick of Abalon 3 taunting him. Soon, soon … it would be decimated by trioxyglobin mines. There was just the simple matter of removing the local population and making the land of no value to anyone.
It should be enacted by now, but Leon-Ar’s failing had set his plans back some Earth-weeks. It would still happen. After decades of being the underling, the pretender, the stain upon which taller men stood, he was within touching distance of being the most powerful warlord in the Fire Quarter, and from there, he would take revenge on those who had wronged him.