by Eric Thomson
*
The freight docks took up a full third of station, alternating between cavernous inner docks for large bulk carriers and smaller outside moorings, for ships like Demetria.
Zack took a rim corridor to the wide feeder passage that led to station's core. The passage, fifteen meters wide and ten meters high, showed heavy use. Arc lights at regular intervals banished all shadows though their intensity hurt Zack's eyes at first.
Conduits ran along the unpainted ceiling and walls, color-coded in a system that only the designers could understand. Warning signs in a dozen languages were the only decoration. The passage was permeated by the smell of hot lubricants, cold metal, and honest sweat.
Zack kept to a pedestrian strip marked off by a double yellow line on the deck, merging with the flow of stevedores, technicians and merchant sailors. High-speed container carriers caromed by on repulser fields, transferring goods from deep space haulers to cargo shuttles headed for the surface.
The pedestrian strip eventually split in two, the left half continuing with the cargo strip to the other side of the station, and the right half rising on a shallow ramp to a funnel-like area whose narrow end was shut by a string of security gates. Zack headed for a booth marked 'new arrivals' and slipped his ID into the reader slot beneath a flat screen displaying the logo of Deveaux station, a crowing rooster wearing a red Phrygian bonnet.
The face of a strikingly beautiful blonde woman replaced the capped fowl. She smiled at Decker, and he smiled back even though he knew she was just a computer sim.
“Ship?” She asked in a softly accented Anglic.
“Demetria.”
“Thank you, Mister Decker. I must inform you that the Merchant Guild register still shows you as a warrant officer on the MV Shokoten.”
“I changed ships on Pacifica and haven't changed my status.”
“Be sure to visit the Guildhall then, Mister Decker, and have your files updated. It's to your advantage. The Guildhall is on level fifty-two green.” Zack's ID card popped out of the slot, followed by a blue gate pass. “Have a pleasant stay on Deveaux Station.”
“Thanks.” The beautiful apparition vanished, leaving the holographic rooster to pose in its ridiculous manner.
Zack had no intention of visiting the Guildhall on Deveaux, or on Dordogne. The fewer people who knew where he was, the better. Except that now, to exit the docking area, his name was swimming in the station's data banks, but that couldn't be helped. He could rig guns and sensors beyond their legal limits, but he couldn't forge ID.
A bank of lifts and a holo map of the station beckoned a few steps from the gate. Zack called up the location of the passenger transport brokers. It was on level forty-six red, right beside the station's shop district. He stepped into a lift and punched in his destination. It disgorged him on level forty-six within moments.
The shop district was humming with activity, even though it was late in the station's night watch. Nothing commercial ever closed on Deveaux, which, like all other busy stations, lived twenty-four hours a standard day. He let the crowd flow by on either side of him for a few moments as he took his bearings, then set off to the right.
The variety of bars, stores, and restaurants was huge, catering to all budgets and tastes. Tantalizing smells hovered over the broad avenue and Zack's stomach rumbled with sudden hunger. Dordogne was renowned for its superb food, and even the blatantly commercial Deveaux was said to monitor the high standards of its restaurants.
The gunner lingered in front of a few shop windows, both to admire the elegant fashions and to look for a tail. Several stunning dresses caught his eye, and he wondered how Avril would look in them. But the prices kept him from speculating too much. That wasn't the case when he passed a lingerie shop, and it took a certain amount of willpower to corral his wandering thoughts.
At that moment, he had the eerie feeling of being watched again. It had been a while since the last time and now, with the memory of the recent past still fresh, he felt the small hairs on the back of his neck stand up straight.
Zack angled off the main concourse into a smaller boulevard on his left, intent on either spotting or shaking his tail. The crowds were much thinner here as the shops catered to a more specialized clientele, those with money burning in their pockets and tastes far removed from the mainstream. His worn leather jacket and plain black trousers made him stand out like a sore thumb among the richly dressed pleasure sailors looking for a good time.
He came to a bend in the corridor, where a floor to ceiling safety mirror had been set at an angle to prevent traffic accidents. Zack's eyes met his own worried reflection, and then he saw a man and a woman coming up behind him fast, pistols only half-hidden inside their jackets.
When they saw they'd been spotted, the man drew his gun and fired. Zack's finely honed reflexes saved him as he jumped aside and searched for a way out. The guns made no noise. A tinkle, like broken glass, drew his eyes back to the mirror. Small shards tumbled to the floor after hitting the hardened glass.
Needlers, his mind absently registered, shooting thin slivers of polymer ice. Silent and deadly. Assassins' weapons.
He sprinted down the corridor, shoving protesting merrymakers out of the way. Though he didn't dare look back, Zack knew his assailants were following him, and gaining. There was little doubt in his mind that these were Sécurité Spéciale agents. How they had found him so fast raised ugly questions about the organization's reach and resources. His name had surfaced in the data banks only minutes earlier, yet they had found him on a crowded commercial level, one level among fifty open to the public, within that time.
He veered around another corner and headed for a broad staircase leading downwards. The further he went, the fewer people he saw, which was bad, very bad. His feet rang on the fake marble steps as he took them two at a time.
The stairs abruptly ended on a grassy surface. Zack looked around, feeling worried for the first time. He had managed to go to the one place he should have avoided at all costs: the terrarium.
A cavernous chamber filled with vegetation, the terrarium was a fixture on most stations, to give spacers and station dwellers alike a taste of nature. To make it more natural, the light cycle in the terrarium followed that of the station's notional day and night watches, which meant it was dark right now, with only a smattering of fake 'stars' covering the ceiling.
There was another stairway at the opposite end, and Zack jogged down a flagstone path towards it, ears straining for the sound of his pursuers. He breathed in the fresh smells of nature: cut grass, flowers in bloom, apple trees. Muted moans came from a cluster of shrubs to his right and Decker grinned briefly.
Then, a figure suddenly appeared in his path. Though he couldn't make out features, he knew it was the woman who'd pursued him earlier with her male friend, who seemed conspicuously absent.
“Hide and seek time is over, Mister Decker,” she said, her voice rough and husky.
Zack gathered himself for a desperate lunge at the woman, but she and her companion were pros. While the man had followed him, she had taken a shortcut. Now he was caught between the two.
“Good night, Mister Decker,” an amused male voice softly chimed in from behind.
He felt the sting of a dozen mosquitoes on his neck and numbness filled his body with frightening speed until his legs gave out.
Zack Decker crumpled to the ground in an untidy heap, unable to do more than grunt. After that, his universe turned black.
Fifteen
Decker slowly opened his eyes and closed them again when pain lanced through his brain. It hurt enough that he decided he was still in this universe, and not in some mythical hell.
He remained still for a few heartbeats and took stock of his situation. For one thing, he was alive, still wearing his own clothes and lying on a bunk. A quick test proved that he had the use of his limbs though any movement made his head pound. He sensed an all too familiar subliminal vibration —hyperdrives pushing a ship in its ow
n FTL bubble.
Zack remained still and kept his eyes shut as he reconstructed his last memories. He saw the pursuit in Deveaux station's commercial district, the wrong turn into the night-time terrarium, a woman popping out of the shadows in front of him, barring his way, and dozens of pinpricks as she, and the man behind him, emptied their needlers. Not poison but sedatives. His last memory was of falling on the cultured grass.
He opened his eyes again and sat up, wincing in pain. After a few heartbeats, he swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, simultaneously wishing he hadn't done so. Nausea rushed up his throat, making him retch. His breathing became labored as he fought the sickness. Whatever sedative they had used, it left nasty after-effects.
In time, the compartment stopped spinning, and his stomach settled down in an uneasy truce with his brain. The cabin was small, bare and not unlike the one Avril Ducote had given him on Demetria. A small ship then, perhaps a space yacht or a courier. Squinting against the glare, he looked around and quickly spotted the video pickup in one corner.
Next question, how long had he been out? Zack glanced at his wrist, but it was bare: they had taken his timepiece.
Standard procedure. Never give a prisoner something that could help him order his life. Zack absently rubbed his chin and encountered stubble. His last shave had been four or five hours before docking, and this seemed like a full day's growth. That meant he'd been out fifteen to eighteen hours. Time enough to leave orbit and jump. His bladder suddenly sent him urgent signals and confirmed his estimate.
He stood on unsteady legs and staggered to the small toilet, sighing as he relieved himself. That business taken care of, the beginnings of hunger gnawed at his insides. He grinned again. Zachary T. Decker didn't stay down for long. He glanced up at the surveillance module on the ceiling and waved.
“If it isn't too much trouble, guys, I wouldn't mind a bit of grub and some water.”
Then, he settled on the bunk again and put his hands behind his head. A few minutes later, the cabin door vanished with a whisper, and a mean looking blaster filled the opening. Behind the blaster, Zack recognized the male part of the deadly duo that had netted him like a rookie. He looked as bland and unassuming as before, someone you wouldn't notice in a crowd, as long as he wasn't pointing a gun at you. Come to think of it, he and the inspector on Santa Theresa had that blandness in common. Maybe it was a requirement to join the Sécurité Spéciale. Two small objects sailed into the cabin and landed with a thunk on the deck beside the bunk.
“Enjoy, Mister Decker.” His Anglic was accent-free, his voice unremarkable. The door closed again before the gunner could ask any of the questions burning on his lips.
Sitting up slowly this time, Zack leaned down and picked up the two packages: a military-issue emergency ratpack and a zero-gee water skin. He couldn't repress an automatic grimace at the sight of the ratpack. Nourishing and life sustaining, but unappetizing, the slab of protein, vitamins and minerals tasted salty-sweet and gooey. It was the subject of more jokes and put-downs among ground pounders than any other matter, including the General Staff. But right now, it was food for a big man who hadn't eaten in almost a standard day.
Zack unwrapped the bar and sniffed, nodding. It smelled just the same whether hidden in a cave on Hispaniola or on an assault shuttle skimming the treetops on Ganesh. He briefly considered the possibility that it had been adulterated or poisoned. There were ways of doing it without leaving traces on the vacuum-tight wrapper. He knew of at least a dozen and had tried several himself, giving hungry guerrillas a bad case of gastroenteritis on New-Tasman. The results hadn't been fun to watch, but it had worked.
On the other hand, if his hosts had wanted to poison him, they could just as well have killed him on Deveaux and dumped his body into the garbage compactor. It didn't take a genius with four years at the Academy to figure that one out. He took a bite of the ratpack and chewed as he considered his situation.
First, he was on his way back to Pacifica, to Amali's hideaway. That was so sure a bet, he was willing to use his left nut as collateral. Second, the reason they were taking him back instead of just killing him was that they wanted to find out how much he knew, and who he had told. Third, once they'd squeezed the information out of him, Zack Decker would vanish forever.
He had no illusions that he'd resist interrogation. Everyone talked, eventually. The only ones who didn't were those with conditioning, and they died instead. But while he was alive, he had a chance. Never count a Pathfinder as dead until you've seen the body, and even then make damn sure.
Another thought occurred to him, and he almost choked on his last bite. One way or the other, they'd find out Avril knew, and that meant she would die too if it wasn't already too late. Nothing kept another team of Sécurité Spéciale agents from snatching her off Demetria.
He emptied the water skin and stretched out on the bunk again. The hours passed, but he felt no ill effects from the food. Which either meant it wasn't tainted, or they had given him something slow acting, like tailored biologicals, that would kill him at a predetermined time when he least expected it. Nothing inconvenient happened to him either, like artificially induced diarrhea or nausea, just for fun and games. Perhaps the Sécurité Spéciale didn't go for laughs.
The trip, judging by his beard growth, took four ratpack-filled days with no chance at a shave and a shower. By the time the usual, momentary emergence nausea overcame him, he was going out of his skull with boredom and strongly suspected he smelled like a goat.
Ratpacks, with their highly concentrated proteins, gave a human body flavoring and aroma than would repel a hungry tiger. Only man-eating Tasman targos found it appetizing and used to home-in on Marines who'd been eating the stuff for days. New-Tasman was the one campaign where the brass had given them decent food to eat, and that only after a few troopers had become late-night ratpack-flavored snacks.
He sensed rather than heard the changeover from sublight drives to atmospheric thrusters and somehow knew they hadn't spent the usual time in orbit waiting for a landing window. When you're working for the Amalis, who owned Pacifica as if they were medieval dukes, you didn't have to go through the same procedures as ordinary mortals.
His fight-or-flight adrenaline dispenser keyed up his system to prepare for whatever lay ahead, quite uselessly, a more rational part of his mind remarked. The guards he'd seen the last time would not let him simply walk away from the ship. Not that he'd have anywhere to go. Amali's island was thousands of kilometers from the nearest mainland. And even that probably belonged to the motherless shit.
Zack Decker, though having no particular religious beliefs, seriously contemplated the need for a miracle, like the ability to walk on water, or be raised to the heavens on a beam of divine light. The thought made him grin, but to any observer, it would have looked more like a rictus.
The pressure of gravity increased as the yacht decelerated through the final hundred meters of descent. He felt as if someone had placed a heavy slab of plascrete on his chest. Then with a muffled thump, the downwards motion stopped, and the pressure lifted. They had arrived.
He listened to the ship's groaning and pinging as the superheated hull cooled down after re-entry. Another low hum signaled the opening of the belly ramp. Zack stood, straightened his clothes, hand absently brushing the spot where he'd worn the duplicate Master Gunner badge before his abduction. They'd taken that from him, along with everything in his pockets, before he woke.
The door whooshed open again, as it had every day since leaving Dordogne, and the same blaster, held by the same face, replaced it.
“The trip is over, Mister Decker. I recommend that you avoid doing anything stupid. Mister Amali's mercenary guards are good shots and have orders to kill you the moment you try to escape. Not that you'll get past me, of course. Come.”
The barrel of the gun pointed aft and Zack had no choice but to comply. He gave the man one of his patented grins, satisfied at the brief look of distaste on the othe
r's face as he wrinkled his nose, courtesy of Zack's five days without washing. They walked down the steep ramp into the Pacifica sunshine.
The heat and light of the tropical sun hit him hard after weeks in an artificial environment, and he stopped, momentarily blinded. An impatient prod from the blaster had him moving again.
As his eyes adjusted to the glare, he saw that they had indeed landed on Amali's island and that the same competent looking guards patrolled the property, carbines carried at the ready. A six-man patrol met them halfway across the tarmac and formed a box around Decker. Amali wasn't taking any chances, and Zack didn't know whether to be flattered.
The gunner perspired freely, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead before they could run into his eyes. Dense, sweet flower smells assaulted his nose and reminded him of jungle patrols on a dozen planets. The path they followed was familiar. It branched off towards the manicured lawn richly planted with flowery shrubs fronting the black, opulent mansion.
“Off to see the head man himself, eh?” Zack asked, turning his head towards the agent with the blaster.
“If I were you, Mister Decker, and thankfully I am not, I would find nothing to smile about.”
“Hey, isn't that great? You can speak in full sentences.”
The sarcasm earned him a painful jab in the ribs with the blaster, but the man's face didn't lose its blank expression.
“Mister Amali has asked to see you. He did not specify whether you should get there on your own two feet.”
“No sense of humor, eh?”
“No.” But this time, the agent grinned, a cruel grin that did more to worry Decker than anything else so far. Throughout the exchange, the six guards had remained stone-faced and alert, ignoring the tense banter. They might have been mercs, but that didn't mean they were stupid. Not with the sort of money Amali could pay.
They took him to Amali's manor and through the plush hallway to the enclosed patio. As they approached the gurgling fountain in the center, Walker Amali, looking as urbane and polished as ever, stood. The attractive peroxide blonde who'd been climbing all over him moments earlier rose at a flick of his fingers and walked away, bare breasts bouncing. She glanced back at the new arrivals before vanishing and Zack gave her his best Marine leer, just for form's sake. After all, old Pathfinder noncoms had a reputation to uphold.