by Mike Brooks
“Precisely,” Drift said, snapping his fingers and pointing at the Uragan. “The big payoff to Chief Han is supposed to take place next seventhday, and you can pretty much guarantee that she’s going to be gambling her way into money at about the same time that A and I are supposed to be at the Two Trees Arena doing a little dance for the Triax.” He threw his hands up in frustration. “So first of all, that means that the rest of you are going to need to get the money without us. Secondly, it means we’re going to have to be even more careful about everything, because there’s no way to be sure of when we’re all going to be able to take off.”
“Perhaps we need to prioritise,” Muradov said. “If we manage to secure the funds but there is a risk of us being apprehended, should we not leave the planet? You and Apirana could follow us on commercial shipping and meet us at a prearranged rendezvous.”
There was a moment of silence while everyone, Drift included, looked at the former security chief. Kuai had to admit, the suggestion made a certain kind of sense: Supposing the rest of them had managed to pull off the job and get the money—and exactly how they’d do that he’d no idea, especially without Drift and Apirana—he didn’t want to be sitting around in the spaceport waiting for the security forces to show up and arrest them. The trouble was, Muradov was still a relatively unknown quantity, and neither Kuai, Jia, nor Jenna were exactly fighters. If the Chief decided he wanted to commandeer the Jonah and the Keiko, along with the half a million stars they were hoping to have raised, Kuai wasn’t sure they’d be up to stopping him. Of course, there was no saying that Muradov would be able to pilot either ship, but there was also nothing to say he couldn’t. The crew knew he’d been a security chief on Uragan and a sniper in the Red Star armed forces, and that was about it.
Besides, from what Kuai understood, interstellar travel was actually relatively simple since it just involved programming the navigation console. You needed a bit of training to do that, certainly, but it only required some study. Jia’s unusual level of talent lay in manual atmospheric shuttle flying, both in terms of delicate close manoeuvring and the sort of breakneck, hair-raising, and often downright illegal stunts she had to pull to get them into places unnoticed, and out of them fast and in one piece. If Muradov waited until they’d docked with the Keiko, and knew how to program the nav console to get to a void station or waystation somewhere that had an assisted docking system, then he’d never have to take the Jonah down into atmosphere. . . .
“Fine,” Drift said with a grimace, breaking the silence. “I don’t like it, but it might be the only option. We’re going to be cutting it fine to get the money back to Orlov anyway, since we have to wait until next seventhday before we can make the score. It could be that you just have to head for New Samara and meet up with A and me once Rourke’s back with you.” He scratched at the skin around his mechanical eye for a second. “Jenna, you’re in charge of making that call.”
“I . . . What?” Jenna looked stunned, which Kuai couldn’t blame her for. “Why me?”
“Because I know how badly you want to get Rourke back, but since I don’t imagine you want to leave A behind, I think you should be able to take a balanced view of things,” the Captain answered with a shrug. “Besides, the Chief is new, Kuai’s a coward, and Jia’s insane.”
“Hey!” Kuai shouted, getting to his feet and glaring angrily at Drift. “I am not a coward!” How dare he? Kuai wasn’t a good fighter, and he wasn’t a good shot: He recognised that and didn’t try to get involved when there was violence in the offing, but that was just good sense. Just because he did most of his work in the engine room didn’t mean he was a coward!
“You’re not?” Drift asked, looking skeptical.
“Damn right I’m not!” Kuai snapped. “You want to think what would have happened to me if that damned superheavyweight fighter had found out I was trying to dope him? He’d have pounded me!”
“I thought he pounded you anyway,” Jia laughed in Mandarin.
“Envy is a terrible thing,” Kuai said, leering at her. “Also, shut up. Also, you’re insane!”
“Who the fuck are you calling insane, you damned asshole?” his sister demanded, getting to her feet in turn.
“He called you insane!” Kuai shouted in frustration, pointing at Drift.
“He did? Huh. I wasn’t listening.” Jia turned a suspicious glare on the Captain and switched to English. “Hey, idiot, I’m not insane!”
Drift had been watching their exchange in apparent bewilderment, and now sighed. “You’re not insane?”
“No!”
The Captain looked at Kuai. “And you’re not a coward?”
“No!” Kuai snapped. Drift smiled in response, and suddenly, Kuai got the nasty feeling that he’d been suckered into a trap.
“Good,” the Captain said, “because in that case I’ve got a very important job for both of you. The sort of job I couldn’t give to anyone who was insane or a coward. . . .”
And that was how Kuai found himself sauntering into Northside Laundry as though he owned it, with his sister trailing behind him doing her best impression of a Triax enforcer. Guangming Alpha had dipped below the horizon a couple of hours ago. That hadn’t had much effect on the businesses in Zhuchengshi, but the streets outside were at least a bit darker than they were in daytime despite the presence of artificial lighting and Guangming Beta in the sky. Kuai took what comfort he could from that, since if they ended up having to run for it, there might at least be a few more shadows to hide in.
Northside Laundry had some public-use machines that were churning around, providing a useful amount of covering noise, but so far as the Jonah’s crew knew, the contract work—such as security uniforms that might need an additional packet in the pocket—was done in the back. The shop was empty when the Changs entered, barring a bored-looking male youth in his late teens behind the counter wearing a much-washed and slightly faded uniform, and an old woman near the door who appeared to be defying the background noise by sleeping in her chair.
“Good evening,” the kid said, barely glancing up from whatever he was scrolling through on his pad as Kuai approached. “Can I help you?”
Kuai leaned in close, a little closer than was really necessary for him to be heard clearly. The kid took notice of this and automatically moved his head back a little. Kuai saw his eyes flicker slightly to the side where, judging by the chomping sounds, Jia was aggressively chewing her gum.
“Question for you, friend,” Kuai said in a low voice. “You know who Gao Dongfeng is?”
The kid’s face froze. “Uh, yeah?”
Thank the heavens for that. “You ever met him?” Kuai continued. He’d never really done this before, and he’d been desperately trying to work out how to go about it. He didn’t have the physical presence of Apirana or the freewheeling charm of the Captain, so in desperation he’d plumped for trying to imitate Rourke’s ice-cold demeanour. If getting her back means I don’t have to do this again, that’s worth half a million.
“Uh, no?” the kid said, his eyes widening slightly in apparent alarm.
Kuai moved his lips in a way that he hoped looked like the sort of smile Rourke gave when something wasn’t particularly funny. “Do you want to keep it that way?”
The kid’s mouth opened to frame another “uh,” but then he stopped without making a noise as his eyes were drawn sideways. Kuai frowned and followed his gaze to see that Jia had pulled out what looked to be a switchblade and was casually cleaning under her nails with it.
“Will you put that away?!” Kuai hissed desperately, and entirely genuinely, he cast a glance towards the shopfront. There didn’t seem to be anyone walking past, but that could change at any moment, and there was also the sleeping beauty by the door to worry about. The blade might be hidden from the street by Jia’s body, but what the hell was his sister thinking?
“You wanted to try talking.” Jia shrugged without looking up. “So talk to him.”
Kuai glared at her, try
ing to get across without words exactly how aggravating her impromptu and undiscussed method acting was, then turned back to the counter. If the kid had any sense, he’d have probably bolted, but he seemed to have been rooted to the spot by the joint threats of Gao Dongfeng’s name and Jia’s blade-based antics.
“Look, this doesn’t need to go badly for you,” Kuai said, trying to sound as earnest as possible. He dug into his pocket, and as smoothly as he could, brought a roll of notes into view. It was one thousand stars, ten bills of one hundred each, and the kid’s eyes locked on to it like the Captain seeing a bottle of whiskey. “We just need a favour from you.”
“What sort of favour?” the kid said immediately, apparently transfixed. It seemed that night-shift workers in a laundry didn’t get paid well. Who’d have thought it?
Here goes nothing. “The sort of favour,” Kuai said, dropping his voice even lower, just in case the woman by the door had woken up and had some sort of supernatural hearing capability, “where a couple of security uniforms go missing.”
“Go missing . . . in what way?” the kid asked, tearing his eyes from the money for a moment to look up at Kuai’s face.
Kuai shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. Maybe a machine shreds them. Maybe they get bleached to fuck. Maybe they just simply go missing. But you tell your boss some story about why there’re two less uniforms than there should be, and what actually happens is they come to me.”
The kid cast a fearful glance at the door behind him that must have led to the back rooms where the rest of the staff would be. “I dunno, man. That’s kind of big.”
Kuai snorted. “These cops—they’ve each got however many uniforms so they can wear a clean one every day. So the laundry messes one up; what’s the big deal? It’s going to happen sometimes. All I need is two: One to fit my sister, and one to fit me. More or less: I don’t need exact measurements.” He’d already decided not to pretend that he and Jia weren’t related, since apparently, it was pretty obvious from their faces. He couldn’t see it himself.
“Mr. Song’ll take it out of my pay,” the kid whined. Kuai knew he was angling for more money, and was sorely tempted to reach over the counter and slap the kid around the face. But that wouldn’t help them. Instead, he pulled the roll of notes back into his fist.
“Listen, friend, I’m trying to make this easy for everyone,” he said sternly. “You know who runs this place, right? Really runs it? And don’t give me any of this ‘Mr. Song’ crap.”
“Yeah, I know,” the kid muttered, looking down.
“So ask yourself, why aren’t I talking to Mr. Song about this?” Kuai said, then continued before the kid could get a word in. “I’ll tell you why: He’s unreliable. He talks too much. And he’s greedy.”
The kid looked up at the emphasis on that last word, and Kuai was pretty sure the message hadn’t been lost on him.
“So here’s what I’ll offer you,” Kuai said, pulling two more rolls of notes out of his pocket. He set them down one at a time on the counter, along with the original, trying to look casual but feeling like a vein was about to burst in his forehead, because if one of the other staff came out of the back now, then this was all going to go to hell. “This is for doing me the favour. This is to cover what’ll get taken out of your pay. And this is to make sure that you don’t tell anyone what actually happened to those uniforms,” Kuai said, pointing to each in turn. “Are we clear?”
The kid looked at the three thousand stars in used notes laid out on the counter, his expression an agony of indecision.
“And don’t you go bragging about this,” Kuai added, as though it was already a done deal. “Anyone who needs to know how you helped us will know. If it turns out you suffer from a loose tongue, you’ll get to find out exactly how quietly my sister can sneak up behind people.”
The kid swallowed, swiped the notes off the counter, and crammed them into his pocket, stealing a glance over his shoulder at the staff door as he did so. “Okay, look, I’ll take some garbage to the Dumpster out back before I finish my shift, and I’ll leave the uniforms on the ground beside it, wrapped up in something. I don’t know exactly when I’ll be able to do it; it’ll be whenever I get a chance, okay?”
Kuai nodded, trying not to collapse in relief. “Good call, friend. Don’t worry; this won’t be a regular thing. And we’ll remember you helped us.”
Beside him, Jia folded her blade closed again with what sounded like a genuine sigh of disappointment.
NEW DAWN
The knock at her room door brought Rourke awake. Old habits bred into her in the GIA and maintained during her years of life on the edge of the law with the Keiko meant that she rarely struggled through the haze of post-sleep confusion that snared so many people, and she immediately slipped out of the wide, too-soft bed and into the clothes she’d cast off the previous night. She cinched the pants as tightly as she could, pulled on her stolen shoes, and padded to the door. The holo-screen in the back of it activated at the touch of her fingers, shimmering into a full-length, full-width display of the corridor on the other side, as though the door itself had simply ceased to exist. However, the bellhop standing on the other side was still looking at an opaque, wood-effect surface. The Grand House disdained such archaic concepts as spyholes, and instead, every suite’s door had tiny fibre-optic threads embedded in it to give the guest a clear picture of the area outside, should they need it.
She looked the bellhop up and down. There was no sign of any weapon bulges beneath his tightly buttoned uniform, and both his hands were clutching an irregularly shaped bundle in white plaswrap. She didn’t really think Orlov would send someone to kill her having put her up in his best hotel for the night, but she hadn’t lived this long by being overburdened with a sense of trust. Still, the bellhop seemed harmless, so she pulled the door open. “Yes?”
“Mr. Orlov sends his regards,” the man said, proffering the bundle, “and requests you meet him in fifteen minutes in the foyer.” His tone was neutral, but his face unmistakeably curious at what his boss could possibly want with this small North American woman in the oversized clothes.
She took the package. “Thank you.” She shut the door on him and turned the holo-screen off. Bellhops normally wanted tipping for the slightest thing, but he’d just run a message for the hotel owner. And besides, she had no cash.
She tapped the control unit next to the bathroom door, and the external wall faded out, replaced by the majestic view across New Samara. Rassvet, a star with a slightly blue tinge, was rising, and the tall buildings of the capital city threw long shadows over the streets. Here and there between the glittering towers, she could see distant splashes of green: New Samara’s almost endless crop fields, a globe-spanning patchwork of agriculture that left only the baking deserts and the howling polar regions untouched.
She tore the plaswrap open and found familiar, dark-green material beneath. It was her bodysuit, freshly laundered. She found herself surprisingly relieved that it had been kept: She had others back on the Keiko, of course, but right here and now, she welcomed the chance to dress in something familiar, not to mention the right size. Further investigation showed that her boots had also been returned to her, and she shucked off the maid’s stolen flats gratefully.
First things first. Orlov had requested that she meet him in fifteen minutes, and only a fool would take it as an actual request. He would expect her to be on time.
She dialled a protein bar from the room’s dispenser, pulled off her clothes, and headed for the shower suite.
Twelve minutes later, feeling clean and refreshed and with her hair still slightly damp, she was taking the elevator down to the main foyer along with two respectable-looking women in their midthirties. They were dressed sensibly and somewhat soberly, their clothes nothing at all like the flamboyant sartorial pieces worn to the Grand House’s casino in the evenings by the well-to-do, and certainly a world apart from her utilitarian bodysuit. Rourke amused herself for a moment as they step
ped out into the foyer together by imagining that they were her bodyguards.
It didn’t last, of course. The couple veered to the left, towards the restaurant where the paying guests would be served freshly cooked breakfasts prepared from Samaran ingredients, instead of the prepackaged snack she’d just finished chewing. Rourke kept straight on, heading for the comfortable chairs spaced around the lobby, where she could see two figures in dark suits. One of them, his head shaved bald, casually intercepted her before she could approach too close.
She eyed him briefly. Six feet tall, two hundred pounds, firearm under his right armpit, so almost certainly left-handed. Smart enough to keep me at enough of a distance that I can’t grab his gun without warning, even though I’m supposed to be employed by his boss now. Finally, someone who knows what he’s doing.
She nodded to him, one professional acknowledging another. “You must be Roman,” she said in English.
His brow furrowed. “We have not met.”
“No, but Ichabod mentioned you from when you escorted him to see Mr. Orlov.” She glanced over at the other guard, a stocky woman with short hair that was a fiery red and spiked outwards, as though to give her the appearance of a small explosion. Five foot eight but probably weighs more than Roman, mostly muscle by the looks of it. Right-handed. Weightlifter’s shoulders. Almost certainly strong, but the mass would probably slow her down. “And your partner?”
“Larysa,” the woman volunteered. The top of what looked like a spiderweb tattoo was just visible above her collar on the left side of her neck, and she had a curved bar through her septum.
Sergei Orlov rose into view out of a chair and turned to greet her. He was wearing a dark-green suit the same shade as the exterior of his building, and he’d shaved his chin smooth that morning. “Ms. Rourke. Thank you for being so prompt.”
“Under the circumstances, sir, I think we can dispense with the ‘Ms.,’ ” Rourke told him crisply. “My first or last name will do fine.”