by Rick Partlow
“Most of the workers are little more than indentured servants forced to take jobs here to pay off their debt, or their family’s, and the crews who come here for rest and recreation, or to make deals, are selling to outlaws or are outlaws themselves.”
He eyed her sidelong, without turning his head.
“How are you such an expert on this damned hole in the wall, Laurent?”
“Intelligence analysis of the Periphery was my specialty, sir,” she explained. Once, a lifetime ago, she would have said it enthusiastically. Now, her voice was as lifeless and listless as the faces of the workers. “It’s how I spotted Wholesale Slaughter to begin with.”
“Sir, I checked the security logs,” Lt. Poretti reported stepping out of the Customs office, the jowly little man who ran it floating after him, a Marine’s fist wrapped in the collar of his jacket to guide him.
Poretti’s face was a dark blur inside his visor, but he had come to Laurent’s acquaintance shipboard along the way. He looked as harmless as the delivery boy who’d brought raw food for their kitchen processors when she was a kid, but he was a computer network wizard who could break into anything but government and the very highest end corporate systems.
“It confirms what this one…” He jerked a thumb at the weaselly little man. “…told us before.” He held up a field tablet and showed Grieg and Laurent an image taken here in the docking bay, showing a young man and an even younger woman, both wearing grey utility fatigues she recognized as the field uniform of Wholesale Slaughter, both appearing disheveled and weary. “The male identified himself as Terrin, no last name given; the female gave no name. They obtained Tradenotes to pay the Customs fee at the exchange, using a secure code I already traced back to a Spartan government account.”
“I want to speak to the clerk who issued the funds,” Grieg declared. “And I want to know who they spoke to while they were here.”
“What did they say to you?” Poretti asked the Customs agent, jabbing a gloved finger into the little man’s chest. The Marine had purchase with his magnetic soles anchoring him, but the Customs man had none, and he would have floated backward if the trooper holding him hadn’t tightened his grip. “What did these two tell you?”
“I don’t know, man!” the local insisted, raising his hands palms out, defensively. “It was like four fucking days ago! Do you know how many people we have come through here?”
“Perhaps,” Grieg suggested, “his memory would improve in the interrogation chamber on board ship.” He sneered. “It certainly did wonders for the Ranger Captain, that Cordova fellow. May he rest in peace.”
Laurent winced. She’d been forced to watch what they’d done to Cordova. Intelligence would never be a clean job, but there were lines she’d thought even someone like Grieg wouldn’t cross. She was wrong.
“Wait!” the Customs agent cried out in desperation as the Marine behind him started to hustle him away toward their shuttle. “They…they asked about a broker!”
“What, in this context, is a broker?” Grieg asked him, the footsteps of his magnetic boots echoing through the passageway as he approached the little man. Laurent was impressed how menacing the Intelligence officer made those innocuous sounding words. He hadn’t been asking her and she knew she was risking his wrath for speaking out of turn, but she answered anyway.
“They’re go-betweens. Deal-makers. They arrange meetings, hold sensitive data, facilitate funds transfers.” She shrugged. “The Spartans might have given the data crystals to a broker to safeguard or even try to smuggle them out of here.”
“Who was this broker?” Grieg asked the Customs agent. “Who did you recommend them to?”
“Lana Kane,” the man answered immediately. “She’s small-time, but they seemed like small-time customers so I figured she’d be in their price range. She’s got a storefront down in G-42.”
“We’re going down there,” Grieg decided. “Poretti, bring this man with us so we don’t get lost. Captain Gerhardt!”
The woman appeared at Grieg’s elbow as if she’d materialized from thin air, an armored homunculus awaiting his command.
“First platoon is coming with us to search for this broker,” he told Gerhardt. “You stay here with Second and keep trying to get into that damned ship.” He indicated which damned ship with a jab of his finger back toward the docking umbilical leading out to the courier, the experimental Imperial ship the Spartans had arrived in. “If you can’t access it without destroying it, then I want you to appropriate whatever equipment you need to from the station’s dock-workers and get it loaded into the hangar bay on the Sleipner.”
“Immediately, sir,” Gerhardt assured him.
“No, not immediately, Captain,” Grieg snapped at her, the downward curl at the corner of his mouth giving away his impatience with her fawning. “Keep trying to cut through the airlock with the torch. If we can get into it now, we may be able to get into its computer systems. And while you’re supervising that effort, have Third platoon begin a search starting at the outermost level and working its way back here to the hub. If those Spartans are on this station, your people will find them. And if they aren’t, you’ll find someone who knows where they went.”
“Of course, sir, I’ll get on it.”
Grieg sniffed doubtfully, but let her step away and get to work.
“Come along then, Mister…” Grieg trailed off. “What was your name again?” he asked the Customs official.
“Maduro,” the man told him, licking his lips nervously as if he thought Grieg was some sort of wizard who could use his true name to control him. “Alfonse Maduro.”
“Come along then, Mr. Maduro.” Colonel Grieg motioned impatiently. “Take me to this broker. And don’t dawdle.”
“This is it, I swear!” Maduro insisted, trying in vain to pull away from the Marine who’d been escorting him for the last forty minutes, the same hand still twisted into the man’s collar.
That has to be getting uncomfortable, Laurent mused. Don’t his fingers ever cramp up?
She tried to focus on the details of the chamber, tried to look for clues of where this woman Lana Kane had gone from the spilled coffee staining one of the throw rugs lining the stone floor, or the short-legged, padded stool over on its side. The Marine squad flooded into the room, pushing aside the curtain partitions, hunting for the missing broker or any sign of the data crystals. A Private grabbed one of the partition walls and tried to rip it down off the rod set into the rock wall with bolts, but it was thick and tough and resisted his attempts.
“Leave it, for God’s sake,” she told the man, rolling her eyes.
The Marine hesitated, looking between her and Grieg uncertainly.
“Captain Laurent is your superior officer, is she not?” Grieg asked, an eyebrow going up.
“Yes, sir,” the enlisted man acknowledged. “Sorry, ma’am,” to her.
“She left in a hurry,” Grieg deduced, ignoring the apology and Maduro’s protestations of innocence. “She must have received word we were on our way.”
“It’s not as if we tried to keep it quiet,” Laurent pointed out. She’d advised a more circumspect approach, but Grieg didn’t seem to understand the meaning of subtlety. She shrugged. “There’s no way she’s getting off the station without us noticing.”
“Unless she left before the Sleipner made it within firing range. There were a few outbound shuttles the long-range sensors picked up leaving immediately after we jumped in.” The Colonel paced across the chamber, sweeping curtain partitions out of his way and making a full circuit of the subdivided room, hands clasped behind his back.
“Maduro,” Grieg said, snapping his fingers, then pointing the forefinger between the eyes of the Customs official. “Who are her friends, her allies? Who would help hide her?”
“I ain’t friends with her, sir,” Maduro insisted, spreading his hands in a gesture of helpless ignorance. “I know she has business relationships with a bunch of ships.” Grieg’s lip twisted i
n a snarl, and his right hand tightened into a fist, and Maduro saw it as clearly as Laurent did, and started talking faster. “I know those shuttles you’re talking about, though! They was off the fuel refinery Mirahz and the cargo ship Liahua. I don’t know if she was connected to either of the ships or anyone on them, but you could look at the security logs for their shuttles leaving and see if she was on one of them!”
“Lt. Poretti,” Grieg called the man over from where he was trying to access a data terminal. “Go with Mr. Maduro here back to the Customs offices and check the security logs for twenty-four hours before we arrived, concentrating on anyone who entered either docking bay.” He shot a baleful glance at Maduro. “I assume you know what this Kane looks like? Would you have a still photo of her?”
“There’s a file on her,” Maduro told Grieg. “Just like there is on all the workers from Revelation. But those’d be in Momma Salvaggio’s office and you’d have to get them from her people.”
“Who or what is a ‘Momma Salvaggio?’ It sounds like the sort of restaurant chain I try to avoid.”
“She’s sort of in business with the station’s owners. Well,” he amended, “the current owners. It’s a bit complicated. You see, there’s kind of a shifting ownership based on who can invest the most…”
“I don’t give a shit,” Grieg assured him, taking a step forward, his nose only centimeters from Maduro’s. “Get to the fucking point.”
Laurent smelled the fear coming off Maduro in glints of perspiration on his forehead.
“Well, Momma Salvaggio, she’s like into the strong-arm side of the business,” the weaselly man explained quickly. “She runs security here. Like if anyone causes too much trouble, or gets too hot with the Dominions and is gonna’ cause trouble, she sells them out for the bounty. She got started with a mercenary unit that she used to hire out to Periphery worlds and crime bosses who needed the leverage a few mecha can give you in a fight, but she hasn’t been doing that much since she took over Revelation.”
“She took over what?” Laurent interrupted.
“Revelation. It’s a world just a couple jumps from here. Just a backwater no one cares about. She brought in most of the workers here from Revelation; she has some sort of deal with them where they owe her money and they work it off here.”
“Including Lana Kane?”
“Yeah, I suppose.” Maduro shook his head. “I never asked her, but she talks the same way most of them do. She’s been here a long time, though.”
Grieg gave Poretti a curt nod, then waited for him to escort Maduro out of the room before he turned his attention back to Laurent.
“All right, Laurent, you’ve clearly got something on your mind. What is it?”
She was a bit surprised he’d noticed and even more surprised he cared.
“This is her turf, sir,” she said. “We’re not going to find her here, not unless we bring in another company and spend weeks looking. It’s a maze down here. But this Salvaggio’s a businesswoman….” She shrugged. “Maybe we can do business.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Breckenridge said flatly, elbows braced on his metal desk as if they’d come into his office to ask about having their taxes done.
He had the face, dress and mannerisms of an accountant, which was exactly what he claimed to be. Not yet middle-aged, he nonetheless had the eyes for it, dull and listless and lacking the fire of the youth he otherwise exhibited. He wasn’t Momma Salvaggio, didn’t know where Momma Salvaggio was or when she’d be returning, they’d established that much immediately, and things had gone downhill from there.
“Your boss runs security for this station,” Laurent insisted, casting a subtle glance aside at Grieg, who was seated next to her across the desk from Milo Breckenridge. She expected Grieg to erupt at any moment, but so far, he’d let her do the talking. “Surely you keep tabs on the comings and goings of people who arrive, particularly in a vessel as singular as this one.”
“My security chief, Mr. Brown, has taken a temporary leave of absence,” the accountant said, with the sort of expression that screamed “I know you won’t believe this, but I’m going to say it anyway.” “Without him to access the records, I can’t answer your questions.”
“How fucking convenient,” Grieg murmured, not so much in an angry tone as perhaps an…admiring one? The Colonel pushed himself up in his chair and made sure Breckenridge was meeting his eyes. “Let’s cut through this bullshit, Mr. Breckenridge. I know Momma Salvaggio has the fugitives. They were young, inexperienced, obvious. I can’t imagine they lasted more than a day. Here’s the bottom line: they have something I want, something I’m willing to kill as many people as necessary to retrieve…or pay as much as necessary.” He shrugged. “Either way works for me and, honestly, there’s less reports to file for the killing. I’ll leave it to you to decide which you’d rather I do.”
For the first time since they’d entered the spacious if sparely decorated office, Breckenridge seemed uncomfortable. Just subtle hints, a tightening of the muscles in his face, a shifting of his shoulders. He took Grieg seriously, which was a good decision. He might think the Colonel was bluffing about his preference for killing over negotiating, but he still took him seriously.
“I still can’t give you the data from the security files without approval from Ms. Salvaggio,” Breckenridge said, “but maybe we could arrange something. Perhaps an employment contract between you and our firm?”
“I’m nothing if not reasonable,” Grieg lied. “What did you have in mind?”
Lana Kane couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t enough room to inhale, wasn’t enough space to expand her chest, to spread her shoulders, to take in a full breath. She could feel the wall just in front of her in the utter darkness, could feel her exhalations reflected back at her, and each time she exhaled, it was as if the walls closed in another millimeter.
It’s your imagination, she reassured herself, trying to remember the breathing exercises her great aunt had tried to teach her as a teenager. Just take in air, let it out. Take in air, let it out…
It didn’t help. This particular hidey-hole was concealed beneath the floor of her office on Trinity, but she kept seeing herself in another, one dug into soft dirt instead of asteroid rock, covered with a sheet of plywood and a throw-rug. She hadn’t been alone in that hole; her mother had pushed her baby brother in with her, told her not to make a sound and not to come out, no matter what she heard. He hadn’t been old enough to understand what “pirates” meant, but she’d known and she’d promised.
When the screaming had started, Alec had tried to shout for their mother, and Lana had been forced to hold her hand over his mouth. She’d whispered lies in his ear, told him everything would be all right if he just stopped yelling. They hadn’t left the hole until she’d smelled the smoke and figured out the house was on fire. She hadn’t been able to keep Alec from seeing what was left of Mother’s body.
She shuddered, sucking in air and panicking anew when her shoulders wedged tighter into the space. She wouldn’t be able to smell smoke this time, wouldn’t be able to hear the Starkad Marines when they left—if they left. The trapdoor was sound-proofed so their sensors couldn’t pick up her heartbeat, insulated to prevent her body heat from being detected by thermal imaging equipment.
Airtight, her mind screamed at her. It’s airtight and you’re running out of oxygen…
She’d just black out. Painless. Not a bad way to go. No. Can’t leave Alec alone.
The trapdoor swung open with a startlingly loud creak of ancient hinges and light flooded the little spider-hole, blinding her. She threw up her arms instinctively, as if she’d be able to fight off a squad of Supremacy Marines bare-handed.
“Lana, it’s me.”
The blur of light solidified into the image of a woman, perhaps ten years her junior with a wide-eyed, child-like expression that made her seem even younger. She was dressed in the clothes of a station worker, faded with use and discolored with ol
d stains that would never come clean.
“Mira.” She hissed the word in relief, letting the woman pull her up to her feet. “Thanks be to Lord Mithra.” Her eyes flickered from one curtain partition to another, the furtive glance of a hunted animal. “Are they gone?”
“They’re leaving,” Mira assured her, “but word is, they’ve made a deal with Momma Salvaggio, and her people are going to be coming after you. You need to get out of here.”
“Damn it,” she murmured. Still, it wasn’t more than she’d expected. It just pushed things forward. She leaned back down into the spider-hole and grabbed the box.
The damned box. It was going to get her killed. Or perhaps it would be their salvation. She reached into an interior pocket of her robes and retrieved the money the boy had given her. Counting out half, she handed it to Mira. The younger woman stared at the wad of Tradenotes, uncomprehending.
“Give that to Captain Fujimori. He’ll be staying in the Vista Suites, but if he’s not there, he’ll be at the cargo shuttle for the freighter Ultra in the antipolar docking bay. Tell him it’s time to pay back the favor he owes me and he’ll get the other half once I’m on board.”
Mira nodded, tucking the money away.
“Where will you go, Lana?” she wondered.
“Where else could I go? Home.”
9
“This is a long damned flight for an orbital transfer shuttle,” Valentine Kurtz complained, squirming in his acceleration couch.
“Stop being a whiner,” Commander Kathren Margolis said, craning her head around against the one-gravity boost pushing them back toward the tail of the shuttle. “You spend hours and hours sitting inside a mech cockpit! How is this any worse?”
“I don’t know,” Kurtz admitted. “Maybe because I’m driving my mech and all I’m doin’ in this bird is sittin’ here with my thumb up my…” He hesitated. “…nose.”