by Chris Bunch
“When you’re in a hide, waiting for somebody to show up, you have a lot of time to talk,” Goodnight said. “I can fake it.
“But what have I been doing in the … uh, five years since I went MIA?”
“I think,” Riss said, “we want an involvement in weaponry. Gunrunning. That’s a fairly open trade, and something someone with your talents could drift into.”
“All right,” Goodnight said. “Why are we running this operation, which is a long ways from Seth, which is where I’m going, right?”
“Because we’re not going to dump you straight into the crapper without a bit of a verifiable background,” Riss said. “Baldur, Jasmine, and I discussed it. If you start with an operation, then move on to Seth, you’ll be a lot more credible.
“Now, why a gunrunner? You were along when we bought the artillery for this operation, and I don’t recall you introducing yourself to the salesman.”
Goodnight thought. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“So you’re going to do that now, as Atherton.” Riss said.
“And for whom am I gonna ply my semi-nefarious trade?”
“It seems,” King said, “there’s this charming little world named Mitidja. On it there’s the Old Guard, trying to hold on to the government, which is dictatorial. Rebelling against them was one faction. They recently broke in half, so there’s now two forces trying to take over the government.
“All three factions have death squads, guerrillas in the hills, plus there’s the police force and army, which also want a slice of the action.
“The Alliance has declined to get involved, since all this is internal.”
“Wonderful,” Goodnight muttered. “You’re gonna throw me in the middle of that?”
“Worse, actually,” King said cheerfully. “The Alliance may not be getting involved, but it’s put an interdiction on any of the three sides buying guns on the open market.
“Which means they’re even hotter about anything that puts a hole in people or real estate showing up on the black market.
“The nearest world where the Mitidja folks can buy bangsticks is called Puchert.
“The government of Puchert isn’t happy about being Arms Dealer to the Multitudes, but their government, while sort of democratic, is corrupt to the eyebrows.
“So on Puchert, you’ve got all three Mitidja factions, both official and underground killers, shooting at each other, plus terminating any arms dealer who’s selling things to the oppos. Not to mention the Alliance, whose operations are also a bit on the scoundrelly side.”
“Double wonderful.”
“Better,” King went on. “Not only do you have these homicidal folks, but there’s some very large arms dealers who aren’t fond of any competition, and don’t mind putting a bomb in the shorts of said competitors.
“Plus my source says that our friends, Cerberus Systems, are building a presence on Puchert. Nobody seems to know who they’re working for, nor what their ends are yet.”
“Maybe you can find out some data on Cerberus’s plans while you’re there, Chas,” Baldur said. “And we can sell it to the highest bidder. We can always use a few extra credits, you know.”
Chas moaned, leaned back in his chair, ran both hands through his bristling crewcut.
“Why me, God?” he said. “Why me all the time?”
He frowned.
“What are we going to do about paying for these guns I’m to peddle?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Riss said. “The deal won’t get that far. You’ll never make pickup, let alone delivery.”
“That’s not very honorable to our salesman friend,” Goodnight said.
“I looked at what he charged us for the first lot,” Baldur said. “He will get over his chagrin.”
“That’s what I like about us,” Riss said. “Our clear-cut morality.”
“But how am I gonna keep the deal from going that far?” Goodnight asked.
“You’re not,” Riss said with a sweet smile. “We are. When things get interesting, we’ll just nark you out to some shooters and let you get out of town fast for Seth V.”
Goodnight stared in disbelief, then shook his head.
“All right,” he said. “Nobody said ferrets didn’t have to chance getting their paws bloody.” He turned to King.
“You figured out this scheme, these worlds?”
“With the help of some of my sources,” King said. “Yes.”
“Tell me, Jasmine,” Goodnight said. “Is there anything you don’t know … or can’t find out?”
“Certainly,” King said. “For instance, when … or if … you’re ever going to get laid again.”
Goodnight moaned again.
• • •
King smiled at the blank com.
“Still cautious?”
“Of course,” a voice clearly fed through a dehumanizing filter sad. “Why do you think I’m still in business?”
“Because you have the best ID around,” Jasmine said. “Great craftsmen are always desirable.”
“True,” the voice said. “Two ID’s, then. One in the name of this Raff Atherton?”
Goodnight, at the next com, dickering with the arms salesman, told him to hold on, blanked sound and vid, and leaned over to King’s terminal. “Three. Just in case there’s a screwup.”
“You’re the subject?” the voice asked.
“I am.”
“How bulletproof do you want things to be?”
“Solid,” Goodnight said. “Complete to library cards and some unpaid com bills.”
“That can be arranged,” the voice said. “Of course, it’ll cost.”
“Since it’s my ass that’ll be on the line,” Goodnight said, “the cost be damned.”
“I like working for a man with your attitude,” the voice said.
TWENTY-TWO
Chas Goodnight came off the liner’s ramp into the main terminal on Puchert, just as the bomb went off.
Fortunately, it was a building away, and only rocked the world around him.
Goodnight picked himself up from where he’d gone flat, brushed dust from his immaculately expensive casual jacket, and looked about at his fellow passengers.
Several of them had reflexes as fast as his, and were back on their feet, grinning sheepishly, cleaning themselves off, and avoiding others’ eyes. Sure, he thought. We’re all just a fine lot of businessmen.
He picked up his costly bag, and, whistling cheerfully, went on into the terminal, as sirens screamed toward the roiling smoke and screams.
Goodnight started toward a ground transport booth, stopped himself.
A bomb on arrival, he thought. A nice omen. Perhaps you should listen, Chas old boy, and reconsider your plans?
He went back out of the terminal, walked past a couple of buildings, to another liner company’s ticketing offices, went in.
He smiled brightly at the rather attractive woman behind the counter.
“May I help you, sir?”
“You may,” Goodnight said. “My business here finished a day early, and my scheduled flight out isn’t for three days. The company said they can’t change my reservation, so I thought I’d check elsewhere.”
He shrugged. “I’ll let my boss worry about getting the other half of the ticket back.”
“We’ll be glad to try and help, sir,” the woman said. “Where is your destination?”
Goodnight had scanned the Departure board as he walked up.
“There’s a flight to Deneb XII in three hours,” he said. “I can cross-connect for home from there.”
The woman touched sensors. “There’s still several compartments available on that flight. If I could see some ID, please?”
“Of course.” Goodnight reached into an inner pocket, took out the third false ID he’d had made, handed it across.
The smiling woman touched keys. Goodnight yawned, a weary executive who wanted nothing more than a drink and a quiet place to lie down, and off this world.
Just for a second, the woman’s smile slipped, and her eyes flashed up at Goodnight, then down.
“Uh … just a moment, Mr. uh, Hathaway. My terminal’s not behaving at all. I’ll run your ticket again from the main desk.
“I’ll just be a moment.”
Chas Goodnight smiled affably, and the woman went through a door.
Goodnight was moving, walking quickly, as if in a hurry to reach his gate, back out of the building before the police showed up.
So those bastards at Star Risk don’t trust me at all, he thought furiously. My own people set me up if I try to get off this armpit in my own direction, just because I don’t fancy getting blown up.
Or murdered by some back-alley goons because they think I’m going to sell guns to their competition.
What does Star Risk think I am?
Suddenly he grinned, and started laughing.
I guess they know me, after all.
So much for the idea of resuming my career as a dashing jewel thief.
At least for the moment.
I suppose I might as well keep on working for Star Risk.
He wasn’t that angry, actually, knowing that you only gave your ferret as much information as he or she had to have, and didn’t trust him or her any more than you had to. That was the way the Alliance had worked, so that would be the way Riss handled things.
So he’d have to stick to her plan.
No problem. Goodnight could handle that.
He spotted a lifter, waved it down and got in, just as a battered lifter grounded, and two harried-looking men, obviously cops, jumped out, and hurried into the terminal.
I wonder, Goodnight thought still amused, just what kind of a thug that damned Riss made me out to be? She must’ve had a chat with the phony ID man after I stopped paying attention.
Damned sneaky woman, that.
She would have made a good bester, if her frigging morals didn’t keep getting in the way.
“Where to, Chack?” the driver said.
“Whatever the finest hotel around happens to be,” Goodnight said. “A man in my horrible position deserves nothing but the best.”
TWENTY-THREE
“Like that?” M’chel Riss held out her foot.
Jasmine King considered her toes.
“Maybe … a shade darker?”
“All right.” Riss turned the tiny paintgun on, put her foot back in the form, and resprayed her toes.
Jasmine giggled.
“It tickles me, not you,” M’chel said. “What’s so funny?”
“Have you always painted your toes?”
“Since I was old enough to shoplift old-fashioned polish,” Riss said.
“That’s funny.”
“Why?”
“Marines wear boots, right?”
“You got that right. Jump boots, suit boots, running boots, dress boots, climbing boots … you name it, we got it.”
“And here you were, Major Riss, all spiff and proper a Marine, secretly knowing your toes, under all that plas, were nonregulation as all blazes.”
M’chel grinned.
“I guess it was kind of silly … but you don’t get many ways of feeling feminine in the Corps.”
“So why’d you join?”
Riss put the sprayer down, refilled her glass of wine, scanned the various screens in front of her.
“Getting decadent,” she said. “This is my second glass in what, three days?”
King extended her glass, and Riss filled it from the old-fashioned decanter.
“Our Freddie has quite a style on him, doesn’t he? Crystal, leather, silk.”
“You were going to tell me how you got to be a bootneck, and I think you’re evading the issue,” Jasmine said.
“Hey! That’s something we only call ourselves.”
Jasmine didn’t answer.
“Awright,” Riss said. “I was born on this little pissant world, mostly desert. My folks were trying to be farmers, but the only thing they seemed able to produce was kids.
“I was fifth out of nine. Which meant my career options were nil, other than hanging around the farm hoping one of the local yokels’d get sweet on me, and carry me off to the big city.
“Said big city, half a day’s travel, had twenty-K inhabitants. Gosharootie, boys and girls.
“So there I was, as stuck as any girl has ever been.
“And then I saw a poster at school. The univee, in the capital, no less, which was better known for its athletics than scholarship, was offering a full scholarship.
“There was only one slight catch.
“It was in freefall relative work.”
“Which is?” Jasmine asked.
“Migawds and little fishies. Something you don’t know,” M’chel said. “Basically, you get in this lifter, which is open, so you’re breathing off an oxy tank, and it goes straight on up to, oh, anywhere from three to ten thousand meters. Sometimes higher, in balls-out competition.
“You’ve got this antigravity dropper … you know what that is, right … on a harness.
“When you reach altitude, you jump out of the lifter, and start dropping. It feels like you’re flying, once you get away from the lifter so you don’t have anything to see suddenly going upward, but if you watch from the ground, you’re coming straight down at seventy-plus meters per second.
“There’s all sorts of competition — spot-accuracy on landing, team hookups, relative work, which is doing maneuvers with another person with her own dropper … as many things as you can think of to pass the time while falling to your death.
“You use the dropper, flicking it on and off, to adjust your rate of fall. Then, when you’re, say, a couple hundred meters above the ground, you turn it on full.
“That drops your rate of fall to about a meter a second, and you land. Stand-up landings generally get bonus points.”
“That sounds like an outstanding way to get dead.”
“Not really,” M’chel said. “Not unless you screw up, not allowing for ground wind, or maybe you get out of control … that’s called Zeeing out … and get in a tight spin, black out and wake up a couple of meters underground.”
“So you saw this poster,” King said, fascinated, “and you knew how to do this freefalling?”
“Nope,” M’chel said. “But I managed to borrow a dropper from the univee, and my folks had an old lifter they mostly used for crop dusting and going into the coop for supplies.
“I taught myself.”
“And got the scholarship,” King said.
“And got the scholarship,” Riss said. “It didn’t hurt that the coach thought I was the, and I quote, ‘Cutest thing since socks on a hog.’ ”
“What a charming analogy,” King said.
“Yeah. This was also a guy, and there were students on the team who said the same thing, who told me that freefall’s even better than sex.
“Not that I would’ve known at that time,” Riss said, a bit primly.
“So falling out of perfectly good lifters paid your way through the univee?” King asked. “I guess that was a well-earned education.”
Riss grinned, didn’t answer. She didn’t think it was necessary to tell King that in those days, she got violently airsick. So the lifter would take off, and she’d throw up in her helmet, hold it out in the slipstream to clean out the vomit, put it back on, and jump.
“So here you were with a diploma and … how many falls?”
“Somewhere over a thousand. And my degree was quite sensible — business psychology,” Riss continued. “And the idea of going offworld was great, but going to work in some mega-corp in Human Resources, or whatever they’d call it, was right up there with public sodomy.
“And then I saw another poster.”
“For the Marines.”
“For the Marines.” Riss shrugged. “Nobody ever said I was the brightest one in the family.”
“Have you ever gone back home?”
“Once or twic
e,” Riss said. “But I really didn’t fit in.” She shifted, a bit uncomfortable. “Now, it’s your turn to do the bio bit.”
“I was born of poor but dishonest parents,” King started, and an alarm blared.
M’chel was at the Boop-Boop-A-Doop’s control panel, touching sensors. A screen cleared, and showed a happy Reg Goodnight.
“Riss, I just got a com from L. C. Doe. A ship of bandits tried to jump an ore processor, and things didn’t work out for them. We’ve got three prisoners, same as last time, but this time they’re held securely. Doe’s on her way to my office, and we’re coming for you.
“With any luck, the bastards’ll be ready to talk by the time we get out there!”
“We’re on the way,” Riss said, already shrugging into her combat harness.
• • •
“Son of a bitch,” Reg swore softly, looking down at the wreckage.
“It looks like eit’er the baddies had someone keeping track a t’em, or else our code ain’t as tight as we t’ought,” Doe observed.
The ore carrier, an obese collection of globes, connected with open strutting, never intended for atmospheric flight, had been struck hard.
Nearby was the raiders’ ship that had hit the carrier in the first place. Its lock was yawning open, but that was about all that was left of the ship. Carefully set demolition charges had reduced that starship to small untidy piles of junk. That must’ve happened after the backup unit came in for a rescue.
“T’e assholes knew what t’ey was hittin’,” Doe said. “Look. Eit’er t’ey’re readin’ our codes, or fey got a snitch in Transkootenay’s com center or somet’in’.
“Anyway, t’ey heard t’eir boys went an’ screwed up, and were just waitin’ for interrogation, and th’ backup team, not trustin’ anybody, come in to make sure nobody sang.
“T’ey t’rew a missile in, aimin’ back on t’e drive to keep th’ carrier on th’ ground, t’en landed, opened t’e crew spaces up like wit’ a can opener, an’ went in, lookin’ for t’eir own.”
None of the Star Risk people, Riss, King, and Grok, said anything as Redon Spada brought the patrol ship down on the jagged asteroid, not far from the wreckage.
Already suited up, five of them went to the lock.
“Keep an eye on the screens,” Riss said. “They might be back to see if there’s any buzzards picking over the ruins.”