by Blaze Ward
Stack of bearer bonds. Walk into any civilized bank and turn into money. Lots of money.
How many zeroes?
The evil conscience on his left shoulder giggled madly and then fell over dead as the good conscience on the right quick-drew a six gun and shot him.
“You don’t even need to listen to that fool,” the good angel said.
Javier agreed. None of this was what he wanted.
And if he took it, wouldn’t that make him just another pirate? Like the crazy bitch behind him?
No. Not going there. Not for you, lady. Not for anyone.
He carefully restored it, closed the box, and stuffed it back into place.
The second box was harder to access. Five tries on the spinner before it bit.
Javier chalked that one up to nerves and adrenaline.
Inside was what appeared to be a manuscript. A big one. Printed on real paper. Hundreds of pages of what looked like some sort of lurid, historical romance, set in the Gas-Sailors Era of Old Earth, just before starflight.
Weird.
Javier had half a mind to find the owner and ask why it had never been published. But then he remembered where he was. These people had so much money that it became oxygen, only noticeable by a sudden absence. And few of them had the courage to face the sort of intellectual rejection that publishing your inner secrets carried.
Javier wondered how many Hemingways might be hiding out behind all the booze and complex pharmaceuticals in this place.
Four-Two and…there it was.
Oh, crap.
A small block carved from a white stone lit through with red threads. No bigger than two of his fingers.
A Baiwen seal. With a small woman’s compact he just knew was filled with silk seal paste in a red so bright as to be impossible.
Talk about ancient.
Javier wondered how many millennia old that stone was. Had it originated on Earth?
He popped the cover open to quick scan the face. It was Traditional Chinese, the ancient’est tongue.
These people were serious.
He must have muttered something. Or stopped breathing.
Sykora was suddenly lurking over him.
“Is that it?” she asked in a near-whisper. “How does it work?”
“Give me your hand,” Javier nearly giggled, pulling out the compact and twisting it open.
He dabbed the face of the Baiwen into the paste, just enough, and looked up expectantly.
She glowered down at him for a moment, but then curiosity apparently got the better of her. The left hand came down.
Javier grabbed it, turned it over, and pressed the chop onto the inner portion of her forearm, right where he usually got nightclub stamps after paying the cover.
“Technically, this might make you his property,” Javier said.
She tried to jerk her arm back, but he was prepared and had all his weight into the grip. She barely moved.
“Bastard,” she hissed.
Javier shrugged with an evil grin. Not like she didn’t have it coming.
He put the stone away with all the care of a holy relic, wrapping it back up and stowing it and the paste compact into his bag.
The next document was a birth certificate in a leather satchel, two and a half centuries old, annotated with dates and subsequent births to the eighth generation, a boy who would be about thirty now. It was sealed with each addition.
Legally binding. And probably the kid’s death sentence, were it found. Were he found.
Javier wondered about the people paying to destroy the evidence. At least they were willing to let the kid be.
Unless this was all some machination to have the guy killed or kidnapped later, when he was just a commoner, and no longer the true Emperor of Changzhuo, hiding from the people who held the planet and the government now.
Or someone had hired Navarre and expected an entirely different outcome from this.
This is not my circus. These are not my monkeys.
Javier took about half the papers with him. All the legal stuff. The boring identification went back into the box. He left the bank statements alone, and the bonds, and the jewelry. The kid would need them, tomorrow.
Carefully, he stowed the box back into the wall and locked it up.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“You’re leaving the helmet?” she asked, incredulous.
“That’s right,” he said. “Hopefully, she’ll see it as a peace offering when she reviews the tapes and realizes how much damage we could have done.”
“You’re insane, Navarre,” Hadiiye muttered at him.
How much of it was roleplay, he had no idea. They were long past that point.
Now they just had to get out of here alive.
Part Six
Djamila found it educational, watching Aritza work. She could appreciate the rare moments when the man exhibited professional care and sensibilities. She just wished he would act more like a grown-up, more of the time.
She might even be able to respect him, if he did that. However long those odds might be.
He opened the boxes with ease. Never a wasted movement.
And left behind, literally, a king’s ransom in the first of two boxes.
From the third box, only the stone stamp, the crimson ink, and a handful of official-looking papers.
Nothing more.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“You’re leaving the helmet?” she was shocked.
All that effort to find the metal, craft it. Everything. And just leave it here. What was the value, even if it wasn’t a priceless antique?
“That’s right,” the man replied brusquely. “Hopefully, she’ll see it as a peace offering, when she reviews the tapes and realizes how much damage we could have done.”
“You’re insane, Navarre,” Djamila growled at him.
But she couldn’t really blame him.
Javier Aritza operated by his own code. Navarre had inherited the tendencies, if not the patterns.
Djamila blinked at herself, happy that Aritza was already to the door and leaving. He hadn’t seen her face.
Was it possible to understand that code, and respect the man for it?
Wilhelmina Teague had suggested that just because not everyone approached life with the same focused ferocity she did, didn’t mean there wasn’t value in what they did.
For anybody but Aritza, Djamila was willing to understand.
He needed to get his shit together. Grow up.
Act like management.
She shook her head and followed him through the door with one last look around. But for the video of their adventures, and the faintest hint of machine oil, nobody would know they had been in here.
Out past the security trussed-up security guard, into the main hall. Just another two crew members coming off their shift, although she was trailing Aritza by about four meters.
Javier stopped cold, hands in the air.
“What are you doing now?” she hissed.
Djamila was on top of Aritza before she saw the other figure step out from a doorway.
Armed. Competent. Aimed.
Angry.
Farouz.
One strong hand held a pistol identical to the one on her hip. It had been centered on Aritza. Now it was aimed at her heart.
They were a simple model. Pump a great deal of energy into the target at something less than ten meters, watch them fall over.
It wasn’t even a beam like a laser. More like a shotgun, impacting a target just under half a meter across at ten meters.
Nothing she could easily avoid, even with her reflexes.
“Thief in the night, Captain Navarre?” he asked in a quiet, deep voice.
“You don’t know the half of it, pal,” Javier growled back.
How had Farouz managed to evade the probe?
She remembered the elegant way the man had walked. How he had stalked her in the clothing closet.
/> Precise. Controlled. Compact.
Something like she had done. Did. Was.
Special Operations.
Not Neu Berne, but something similar. Someplace that required the efforts of a dangerous few when the applications of mass would not work.
Diamond cutter.
A killer.
“What have you done, Navarre?” Farouz continued.
“Removed a player from the board,” Navarra sneered.
“Who have you assassinated, now?”
Djamila could see Farouz growing angry.
Angrier.
Short of temper.
“Nobody, Farouz,” she interjected, careful not to move.
He might fire on movement. The blade was that finely balanced.
“Nobody?” the bantam sneered. “Captain Navarre and his lethal moll Hadiiye? Nobody?”
“One guard with a mild concussion,” she said evenly. “The rest are papers to be destroyed.”
“Papers?” Farouz asked.
She could see confusion begin in his eyes. Eyes previously a warm brown gone coldly lethal with anger.
He was not undressing her with those eyes now, appreciating her for her muscles where other men were disappointed by the lack of ponderous breasts.
No, he was measuring her for a coffin.
“Legal papers,” Aritza said.
Javier’s voice was less Navarre, now.
Less killer. More Science Officer.
“I do not understand.”
“Birth certificates,” Javier continued. “Proof of identity. Genetics registry. The works. So yeah, maybe an assassination, depending on how you want to measure it. Tomorrow, he has to become the person he’s been pretending to be, all these years.”
“Why?”
Djamila could measure the confusion in those eyes. She had seen her soul reflected in them before.
They were turbid.
“Because I’m more than just a mass casualty incident waiting to happen, pal,” Javier growled. “Sometimes, it’s possible to split a diamond with a single tap, and not a bucket of nitroglycerin.”
“And you, Hadiiye?” Farouz asked. “All that to get access to the system?”
The gun never wavered from the spot exactly between her breasts. Farouz might consider Navarre dangerous, but he was taking no chances with her.
She was angry. Torn.
Not insulted at the implications. That was the cost of being in this business.
The lies that went with it.
No, this anger was for that look. That touch, standing in the tiny closet, considering kissing this man when he asked politely, rather than all the other the men who had demanded it as some right.
The loss.
She could lie now.
The emotional break would be better.
Cleaner.
Final.
And wrong.
“That had been my mission, Farouz,” she replied simply. “We went well beyond mission parameters, you and I.”
“And had we gone to bed?” he snarled.
She nodded.
“That would have been of the body, Farouz,” she said. “Nothing else. Nothing more.”
He stood there, perfectly still.
Seconds passed.
She wanted to say something. Anything.
There was nothing else that needed saying.
Farouz realized that as well. Doubt disappeared from his eyes. Sadness crept in to replace it.
He nodded.
“Yes,” he agreed. “You are correct.”
Djamila let a small sigh escape her soul.
“So now we’ve got a problem, buddy,” Javier said sharply. “You’re not taking us in.”
Djamila watched Aritza lower his hands slowly, peacefully.
“No?” Farouz asked. “And why would that be, Captain Navarre?”
“Because your boss will kill us for this,” the man known as Navarre declared. “I’m not interested in that outcome.”
“I’m sorry, Captain Navarre,” Farouz said in a polite tone. “You no longer have a choice in the matter.”
“I have lots of options, punk,” Navarre rasped.
Djamila watched him take a small step to his left. Not charging directly at Farouz. Not even really threatening him.
Just moving.
She held perfectly still.
Navarre took a second step, this one closer towards Farouz.
“And you don’t get to stop me,” Navarre continued.
Farouz turned to point the pistol at Navarre.
Perhaps it was a threat. Perhaps a statement. Perhaps he forgot his foe.
Later, perhaps, she considered that perhaps it hadn’t been an accident.
Djamila drew, aimed, and fired at a nerve speed that nobody she had ever met, and only the most expensive training robots, could match.
The Ballerina of Death.
Aritza had told crew members of Storm Gauntlet that she actively worshipped the Goddess of Destruction.
But he had no clue what made a woman like Djamila Sykora tick.
Farouz’s eyes flickered back to track her faster than the pistol could follow.
It wouldn’t have mattered.
No human could have reversed course and gotten off a shot.
Even Farouz only came close.
This model of pistol was nearly silent, save for the faintest pop in the air, mostly static electricity bleeding off the target as every nerve overloaded and everything inside went to white noise.
It didn’t even have the physical kick of a small chuck of lead slamming into someone at the speed of sound. Nothing to knock a man back. Nothing to indicate success.
Farouz just crumpled silently to the ground.
Only his pistol made a sound, clattering loudly as it tumbled into a corner from nerveless hands.
Djamila ranted in several languages in her head.
Nothing showed on the outside.
Neu Berne.
Navarre turned a cold eye on her.
No, not Navarre.
Aritza.
“I will say this exactly once,” he said in a quiet voice. “If asked later, I will deny everything. Do we need to kidnap this man and take him with us?”
Djamila stared daggers at the man. Wished she could strangle him with her bare hands.
He had seen weakness. Identified it. Could exploit it later.
And yet…
He was offering to do something for her, rather than to her.
Farouz might never forgive her. Either way. And the chances of them ever meeting again were pitifully low, unless one sought out the other.
And she did not dare.
For that way lay weakness. Fallible flesh.
Wilhelmina Teague appeared in her vision for a split second. Perhaps her memory.
“No, Djamila,” Dr. Teague replied calmly. “We call that humanity.”
Djamila growled. Mostly under her breath.
Took a deep breath. Held it.
Let it go.
“No,” she finally said, after an eternal heartbeat. “He will understand.”
She grabbed the tiny man and lifted him carefully, almost lovingly.
The door to the security room was closed. Locked.
“Open it,” she commanded Aritza, trailing in her wake.
He did and stepped quickly aside as she entered.
Farouz would be out for a while. Long enough.
They could still make their escape.
Most of her would.
A small part of her soul, she knew she would leave on this deck.
Part Seven
The Land Leviathan had not changed, except to roll perhaps a thousand miles forward in time and space.
Javier found the desert air dry and nasty. It fit his mood.
Two months had passed. Four since he had first landed on the big ion whale. Sokolov and Storm Gauntlet had been up to minor jobs, but nothing particularly profitable.
Keeping the ligh
ts on and the crew in socks and cream.
It was the same limo flying them in, with the same blemish in the right armrest. Zakhar had napped again.
They landed on the same last platform and disembarked to the same hard man in the nice suit. The two killers were different, but they were the same.
Javier wore the same Navarre outfit from before. Boots, britches, doublet, headband.
The only difference was the satchel he held in one hand. An old, leather and canvas job he had found in Storm Gauntlet’s Lost and Found, left over from some Barrister that had been through.
And the belt with the sword and the pulse pistol.
Unlike last time, it was charged.
The hard man held out a hand, expecting Javier to hand over his weapons.
“No,” Navarre snarled back.
The man blinked, reconsidered, and survived the day.
Javier paid more attention as he walked. They were aboard the fourth car, having crossed from each on a catwalk to the next.
She was there. Like before.
Stewart Lace. Banker to pirates. Fixer for people needing things fixed.
Still well dressed. Still proper. Still fadingly beautiful.
Tea. Cheese and garlic scones. Antipasti plate.
Civilized.
Javier sat between her and Captain Sokolov.
Pinkies were out.
Javier decided he had played enough. He sat down his tea mug and saucer and reached for the satchel. Inside, a smaller leather carryall that Kianoush had whipped up to transport the priceless artifacts.
That came out. Madame Lace quickly rested her tea in order to take the prize from him.
She shared a secret smile with him as their fingers touched.
“My backer was surprised at the outcome, Captain Navarre,” she purred.
“That’s because you work for a moron,” Javier barked back at her.
It had taken nearly a month to get Navarre to finally shut up. This woman had the potential to mess with his wa.
Unacceptable.
“Were you expecting a marine assault?” he sneered. “Perhaps a full ambush with pulse cannons and ship-killing missiles? Abraam Tamaz?”
“I believe that was more in keeping with their expectations, yes,” she said, a trifle on defense.
Obviously, she hadn’t been immune to that line of logic, either.
Fool.