Panic flashed momentarily across the younger man’s face before good breeding took over and a bored expression smothered it, “All right what do you want?”
“Oh please,” Haynes said disdainfully, “I am so far past scams like that. Just watch that door there for a commotion and join in with the fun.” Just before moving off, he added, “and see if you can find a canapé to sober her up.”
The guard on the door was discreet, which in a crowd of super-rich hedonists meant he stood out like the before picture in a thumb surgery catalogue. He intercepted Haynes and Lyssa before they reached the door with a smoothness that genetically enhanced angora would have envied.
“I’m sorry sir, but that area is private.”
“And I’m sorry, but my wife is about to be violently ill,” Haynes told him, holding up Lyssa’s nearly-prone form with one arm.
“If the lady is feeling unwell...”
“Unwell?” Haynes replied in stark amazement. “They’re serving Marthurian lungfish here. Do you even know what that is?”
“Rare delicacy from the swamps of Marthur Six?” the doorman answered surprisingly. “It’s rare because of export quotas punishable by prolonged life in a torture centre.”
Haynes was impressed, but didn’t let it throw him off his stride, “As you know all about it you’ll no doubt be aware that one person in 750 million is allergic to it and that person, if contaminated, is likely to projectile vomit anything up to 27 feet in all directions. Now I understand that these furnishings are only Polaran silk, but that smell is never coming out.”
The guard hesitated, clearly weighing up the current market price of Polaran silk against the trouble he was going to get in for letting them pass.
“If she was to vomit directly in the face of, say, the wife of the Arcturan ambassador...”
The doorman’s resolve crumbled. He opened the door and ushered them through, “I’ll summon the medical team. Please don’t touch anything.”
Haynes looked at the new room disdainfully, “Why would I want to?”
The guard turned to go to be confronted by Keely trying to enter. “I’m sorry miss, but...”
“That’s my mother!” Keely declared, pointing at Lyssa. “You’re going to keep me from my mother?”
The guard reluctantly granted her entry and then was faced by Gervais, trailing behind her.
“Brother?” the noble offered hopefully.
The guard just shrugged resignedly and went out, shutting the door behind him.
“Well that went easier than I thought,” Lyssa said in wonder.
“Very easy,” a new voice agreed. “Too easy.”
A large chair whose picture could have been used in the dictionary to illustrate the word ‘comfortable’ slowly revolved in a fashion that could have also illustrated the word ‘melodramatic’ to reveal...
“You’re Abner Millward!” Lyssa exclaimed both in excitement and awe. Millward was neither big nor handsome enough to generate awe, but his kind of money could generate awe on behalf of the ugliest, shortest troll in the universe. “I recognise you from the vidcasts.”
“I’m gratified,” Millward replied with a smug smile. “And I know who all of you are,” he frowned for a moment, “except you young man, which allows us to dispense with tedious introductions.”
“You do?” Keely was surprised.
“You’ve been expecting us?” Lyssa added, starting to add two and two to come up with a non-numerical answer that she wasn’t liking very much.
“And very welcome you are,” Millward inclined his head in greeting. Anything more might have been considered vulgar.
“But how is that possible?” Keely wondered, struggling to catch up, “Unless this is a...oh!”
“Trap?” Millward offered, finishing off the question. “Of course it’s a trap, but then you knew that all along didn’t you? The androids looking after the Professor notified me immediately of the return of my old friend, Haynes you’re calling yourself now aren’t you?, as soon as you showed up, so how could you possibly believe that you had gotten so far without being caught unless you were walking into a trap?”
Keely looked accusingly at Haynes.
“Ah,” Millward continued with obvious delight, “ I see that you have been sharing the usual amount of information with your partners. And such lovely partners too.”
“Is this true?” Keely demanded.
“That I knew it was a trap?” Haynes said, “Yes. That you’re both lovely? Equally so.”
“Yet you made us walk into it anyway?” she shouted hotly ignoring his compliment. “Without even warning us?”
“You have never been in any danger,” Haynes pointed out, still watching Millward. “That’s never been his style, or mine.”
“So he’s just going to let us go?” Keely asked in amazement and disbelief.
“More likely make you a proposition,” Haynes corrected.
“A very profitable one,” Millward confirmed.
“He could have just blown us out of the sky,” Lyssa pointed out.
“No, he couldn’t do that,” Haynes corrected her.
“Why not?”
“Because then he wouldn’t know.”
“Wouldn’t know what?” Lyssa asked, remaining remarkably calm whilst Keely visibly seethed behind her.
“Why I was willing to walk into what I so clearly knew to be a trap,” Haynes revealed.
Millward applauded lightly from his seat in appreciation. “No-one has ever been better able to judge a person’s motivations.”
“All the better to manipulate them with,” Haynes agreed.
There was a long and uncomfortable silence that grew into unbearable until Gervais interrupted, “Well aren’t you going to tell him then?”
“What?”
“I don’t begin to understand even a part of what’s going on here,” the noble continued in a rush of words all set on freedom, “but that seems to be the next step.”
“Quite right,” Millward agreed. “And who are you?”
“All right,” Haynes relented. “I walked into the trap, knowing it was a trap because you have to be inside the trap in order to outwit the trap.”
“That’s a load of trap,” Gervais joked weakly.
Everyone ignored him.
“So that begs a new question,” Lyssa suggested.
“It does?” Keely asked, quickly getting left behind.
“Aren’t you going to ask it?” Lyssa challenged Millward.
“You’re doing so well my dear why don’t you ask it for me?” Millward steepled his fingers in front of his chin, the self-satisfied smile still playing around his lips.
“Is this all just about you two seeing which of you can piss the furthest into the wind?” Keely demanded suddenly, looking from Millward’s face to Haynes’s.
“So crudely put,” Millward chided gently, “but in essence so correct.”
“Well then why don’t you both just whip them out onto the desk and we’ll measure which of you has got the biggest.”
Everyone stared at her in silence.
“Well, it’ll save a lot of time and psychobabble,” she muttered defensively.
“Your rather remarkable young lady has a point,” Millward said at length. “The trap has been sprung so either you have outwitted it or you have not. Either way you may as well reveal all.”
“All right,” Haynes allowed, “I came here for my money. To get that I need the access codes to your accounts.”
“I don’t keep them here,” Millward said, opening his arms wide to encompass the finely-decorated room, “and surely wouldn’t let you anywhere near them.”
“No,” agreed Haynes, “they are all in your head, so I would either have to torture you or persuade you with my considerable conversational skills to give them to me.”
“I am surrounded by an exclusion force shield that would render you unconscious were you to touch it,” Millward revealed, “and I am familiar enough wit
h your techniques to ensure that I would not reveal anything.”
“Quite so,” Haynes nodded, “but the moment that I mentioned the codes you will involuntarily have thought of them, so all it would take would be the presence of a telepath to catch those stray thoughts and relay them through a standard subcutaneous communicator to one of the most powerful and morally corrupt computer systems ever developed so that it could hack directly into the banking system and transfer the money through so many different places that you would never track it down.”
Millward looked at Lyssa, his eyes widening in realisation as he saw that her lips were moving very, very slightly. “No!”
“Yes,” Haynes contradicted him.
“You may have succeeded there, but you can’t escape. There’s no way out of this house that isn’t already being sealed.”
Haynes took Lyssa and Keely by the hand and wandered over to the balcony where he paused to savour the view. “This house is floating in mid-air,” he pointed out. “There’s always one way off.”
He scooped Keely up and threw her screaming over the edge.
“I hope that you’re right about this,” Lyssa told him sincerely and then launched herself over the edge as well.
“Stop!” Millward shouted, leaping out of his seat and into the exclusion force shield. He slumped back into the chair.
Haynes prepared to jump, but a hand grabbed his arm. He had Gervais by the throat before he even realised who it was.
“I just want to know she’s OK,” the noble gargled.
Haynes considered him for a moment before answering. “We have a net. Perhaps you should come along.”
“I am just an innocent bystander, I’ll be fine,” Gervais demurred. “Besides which, I still have a job to do here.”
“Good luck,” Haynes said and threw himself off the balcony.
Gervais peered after him, muttering, “Must be a bloody big net.”
The most immediate impression that Haynes had about free falling through the sky towards certain death was how noisy it was. The air rushing past him made a hell of a racket. Of course, technically, the air was still and he was the one doing the rushing but we are all the centre of our perceptions. He scanned the area below him and was relieved to find it clear. He wasn’t about to plunge headlong through the roof of a financially inferior neighbour. He also couldn’t see the girls, which made him feel much more confident. Unfortunately, the only other thing that he could see was the great wide and deep blue ocean rising rapidly towards him, which made him feel a lot less confident. He scanned towards the horizons, but could make out only the houses of the rich and famous rapidly ascending away from him.
He tried to reach the dormant communicator in his pocket, but the movement sent him tumbling end over end and he lost valuable seconds managing to right himself so that he was once again facing the blue surface that he was soon to get smeared against. This wasn’t the first time that he had plunged headlong from a great altitude, but it was looking like it might be his last. He wouldn’t miss the sensation of falling, though he rather thought he would miss all the other sensations he would no longer be having.
The sea was now close enough for him to make out shadows beneath the surface that suspiciously resembled giant marine predators waiting impatiently for a surprise meal. Perhaps if he was able to align his body to the precise angle of entry into the water the impact would only push his skull halfway down his spine.
Before he could test the theory, a dark shape raced below him and he hit it very hard.
The dark-on-darker spaceship slowed as it approached the edge of the star system. As the home of a large proportion of the Republic’s great and good (though only because they hadn’t been found out yet) it was one of the most closely monitored volumes of space in the whole galaxy.
Finding a way in was easy, but finding a way in without leaving a complete record of his visit would be much more difficult.
Close to impossible, in fact.
Suddenly, the threat assessment panel turned bright red and screamed. It had never detected quite so many targeting systems in the same place at one time. They had all been activated at once and the only reason that they didn’t spot him was because they were looking the wrong way.
Haynes came back to conscious thought with the same abruptness that he had left it. Both Lyssa and Keely were staring down at him with concerned expressions. Behind them, the sky raced past in streaks of blue and white.
“Are you all right?” Keely asked in a voice as worried as her expression.
“Only if I’m not dead,” he replied and sat upright. He wished he hadn’t done that immediately as his back complained at its recent abuse by inserting several hot needles into the pain centres of his brain. Through the red mist he saw the dorsal access hatch of the ship close above him and four plain metal walls around him. If this was the afterlife then he was going to really complain about false advertising.
“You’re not dead,” Lyssa assured him, “although you did fall a lot further than us and we only just managed to get the acceleration couch in here in time to cushion your fall.”
“Thank you, both,” he said with, for him, extreme sincerity, “and very good work.”
“You lied to us,” Lyssa pointed out, an edge returning to her voice.
“Omitted to enlighten you as to certain aspects of the plan, perhaps,” Haynes hedged.
“Same thing, more words,” Lyssa shrugged dismissively.
“This is all very interesting,” the computer interrupted with a tone that showed just how interesting it considered this not to be, “but we still have a few issues here.”
“Define ‘issues’,” Haynes forced his still complaining back to let him stand up through a hail of hot pain centre needles.
“Shall we start with the sixty or so security skimmers that are currently converging on this position?” the computer responded. “They’re all weapons hot.”
“I think that Mr Millward might be a little pissed off with us,” Keely surmised.
“Can you get us out of here?” Haynes demanded, starting to make his way towards the flight deck.
“Absolutely,” the computer reported with glee.
“Without vaporising anybody?” Haynes added.
“I suppose,” the computer replied sulkily.
“Then evasive action and get us out of here,” Haynes ordered and then grabbed the doorway as the whole ship turned over and initiated a power climb through the atmosphere, breaking every piece of glass within a sixty mile radius in the process.
They made their way along the ceiling and into the flight deck where the screen was showing an empty blue sky giving way to the blackness of orbital space.
“Artificial gravity on,” the computer reported and the three of them plummeted onto the suddenly right way up floor.
“You did that deliberately,” Keely said from somewhere within the struggling pile of arms and legs.
“Don’t have time to consider the comfort of passengers,” the computer said smugly. “I have a getaway to try and organise.”
“Where are we on that?” Haynes asked.
“The skimmers were all atmospheric vessels only and are currently arguing over who’s going to take the blame for not getting to us in time,” the computer reported.
“Then we actually made it,” Keely said in astonishment.
“I think you might be forgetting something,” Lyssa suggested, extracting herself from the pile and crawling over to the remaining acceleration couch.
“Such as?”
“The three thousand laser cannon detectors that just went active,” the computer pointed out.
“Time to be elsewhere,” Haynes said.
“Glad somebody thought of that,” the computer said sharply. “Hang on because this is going to take some seriously fancy flying.”
Haynes and Keely barely made it to join Lyssa on the acceleration couch before the evasive manoeuvres the ship was being called upon to make became
severe enough to overcome the effects of the inertial dampers.
On the viewscreen, the planetary system whirled around in all directions, the darkness of space being filled with fast-moving bolts of visible death. The energy bolts didn’t need to be visible, of course, considering that their main purpose was to cause the sudden and catastrophic existence failure of whatever they hit. In the earliest years of the development and use of energy weapons, however, it became clear that not all targets would be hit and the highly efficient bolts of energy that missed would continue to travel through space losing very little of their potency until they hit something else, possibly light years away. Having invisible bolts of destructive energy whizzing about the galaxy was deemed to be a bad thing and so, rather than just outlawing the weapons, it was decided that making the bolts visible at the cost of a couple of percent loss in destructive capability was an acceptable compromise.
“What do we do now?” Keely asked as another coruscating display of death swirled across the screen. “Just sit here and wait to die?”
“You have a suggestion?” Haynes queried. “Anyone?” he added when she remained silent.
“Well there’s a call coming in that you could answer if you want to be distracted,” the computer suggested.
“Call? You mean a video call?” Keely asked in surprise.
“No, a call of the wild,” the computer shot back sharply. “Of course a video call. The ID is Abner Millward.”
“I’ve been expecting him to call,” Haynes admitted as the view on the screen again canted through a bewildering array of changes of course and orientation. “Put him through.”
Millward’s face abruptly filled the screen, causing the trio to recoil instinctively.
“Whoa, severe close up,” Keely commented, adding, “Someone ought to tell him to do something about that nasal hair.”
“The sound is on,” Haynes reminded her.
“Sorry, but you could fit a lawnmower up there,” she continued unabated.
“Abner,” Haynes greeted the caller with false joviality. “To what do we owe the pleasure of this call?”
“That’s quite some light show that you folks are causing up there,” Millward said conversationally. “What does it feel like to be on the receiving end of more firepower than half of the combined star fleet?”
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