by David Ryker
Mac stopped and turned his HAM around. The last snowflakes fell around us. “A lead? Where the hell did you get a lead, eh?”
“I was doing some digging,” I started, realizing now that I was having to pitch it to the others that it was paper-thin. “And, it’s not much — but there’s a warehouse a little way from here with a direct run to a spaceport. There’ve been no arrests by the Civil Guard between the two in the last few weeks — total blank spot — straight line. I’m thinking maybe—”
“The Guard aren’t arresting there because they’re avoiding it?” It was Alice’s voice in my ear, terse, like she was thinking. “Because they’re being paid to by whoever’s moving the Iskcara?” The inflection at the end said she was asking herself as much as us.
Mac piped up. “Volchec?”
“I’m here,” Volchec said over the airwaves.
“What do you think?” Mac asked. He was leading us on the ground it seemed — it only made sense. He had seniority.
She sighed after a second. “I dunno, maybe it’s a leap, but we haven’t really got anything else to go on at this point.” She groaned and I could hear her rubbing her forehead.
“I’ll go,” I said quietly. “Check it out. If it looks off, I’ll call you guys in. It won’t take four of us to search Barva’s apartment.”
“Alright,” Volchec said after a second. “Maddox, you check out the warehouse.”
“Okay.”
“And Kepler, you go with him,” she added.
“What?” we both asked at the same time.
“But—” Kepler started.
“No buts. We’re on the clock here, people. Mac and Fish have been working together for a long time — they know how to look out for one another. You and Maddox came up through the academy together, too.”
“I hardly think—” Kepler started.
“I’m not asking you to think, Kepler. This is an order.”
She fell quiet, and even though she was across the road in her rig, I could tell it was a sullen silence. If anything I wasn’t really happy about it either.
I swallowed. “Alright, we’ll head over, then.”
There was silence from Alice, but she turned and stepped slowly toward me.
“We’ll get up to Barva’s, see what’s what, and then radio in. If anything goes sideways, call and we’ll come running,” Mac said.
“Thanks,” I replied.
His HAM faced me for a moment, and then turned away and sidled off up the street, bow-legged and squat like a gorilla.
I had Greg plot a course to the warehouse and beam the route over to Alice’s rig. She’d not said a word, and even when I spoke into the air, I couldn’t hear her breathe, so I guessed she’d killed the link. I toggled it off behind my ear and sighed. The walk wasn’t far, but it wasn’t going to be any fun.
The warehouse was in an industrial section wedged between a mineral refinery and a steel mill. We backtracked a little into the cold side of the city and made our way down, with the temperature hanging at around minus six by the time we reached it. It was accessible via an entry road that was gated about a hundred meters from the doors, which were large enough to accommodate a transport, driven by something pretty sizeable.
I turned and stared down the dirt road stretching away from the gates. It peeled off left and right at intersections, but otherwise, it was a straight shot to a colossal domed structure in the distance — Sazaaron Spaceport.
All they’d have to do is roll it out of the gate and head straight there. Hell, wouldn’t take more than a few minutes. I chewed my tongue thinking it over. There was no such thing as day and night on Telmareen, but there was a global schedule — the whole planet ran on Federation standard time, thirty equal chunks, to give everyone some sort of semblance of normality.
It was getting on in the day, but the refinery was still churning. The mill had shut up, it seemed, and the warehouse was dead.
“Greg, can you run a scan for me? Infrared, sonic, whatever you think?” I asked, walking over next to Alice. The gate was rusted, but heavy duty. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a while, but maybe it was supposed to. I glanced left and then right. Hinges made it swing out. I gritted my teeth and backed up, kneeling down.
“What are you doing?” Alice asked suddenly, turning to face me.
I brushed some of the snow away from the roadway and ran my finger along a groove I’d exposed that arced from the gate. “Drag marks,” I mumbled.
“Maddox?”
I touched behind my ear. “Sorry. Drag marks, look.” I pointed to the grooves. “This gate’s been opened recently. Think it’s just meant to look like it hasn’t.”
“Yeah, and it’s not just any gate, either. It’s a pretty high-grade carbide tungsten alloy. Not your run of the mill crap, and it certainly didn’t come from there.” She swung her arm toward the steel mill. “It’s been tarnished intentionally to look like it’s been here for years. And look at this — the locking mechanism. It’s an electronic deadlock. Biometric, too. No handle — this thing’s meant to keep people out, and I’d bet that if we tried to put it through, we’d have some company very quickly.”
I pursed my lips and stood up. It was good to have something to talk about. “Greg, anything on those scans?”
“Negative. It appears that there is some sort of resistant cladding on the inner surface of the walls that’s preventing my scans from penetrating,” he said carefully.
I heard Alice click her tongue against her teeth. “Iskcara’s a pretty radioactive element and throws a lot of radiation, even when it’s shelled. Can you tell what the cladding is made of?”
“Greg?” I asked.
“I would only be speculating, but most Iskcara transports use an osmium-lead alloy to line their cargo holds and crates.”
“Can you check if there have been any large purchases of that in the last few months? Enough to line a warehouse this size?”
“It will take a while, but there is no guarantee that my speculation is correct about the material. Furthermore, it would be a poor decision on the part of the person stealing the Iskcara to purchase large quantities of the material used to prevent radiation leakage.”
I sighed. “Can you just do it?”
“Yes.” He went quiet and started searching, but he was right. It was a needle in a thousand haystacks. If I was skimming off the Federation, I wouldn’t be so stupid as to buy a whole load of that stuff — or even associate with anyone who had. I slipped my hand out of the glove and pushed my helmet against my forehead, rubbing it back and forth to scratch an itch.
“Well, we can’t just break in,” Alice said airily. “Whether it’s suspicious or not, we’ve got no probable cause, no jurisdiction, and no protection. You heard Volchec, we’re supposed to be keeping a low profile. And, if this is the right place, and we do bust in there, and even if we find any Iskcara, which I doubt we will, because who the hell leaves stolen hyperdrive fuel just lying around — and we don’t get killed by whoever shows up to protect it, that’s if they’re not already in there, watching us right now, fingers on triggers, ready to—”
“Can you get to the point?” I cut in.
“They’d just bolt. They’d disappear and we’d never find them. And then in a few months, or years, they’d set up the operation again — probably on the other side of the planet. And it’d all be for nothing. I just checked — the warehouse is registered to a company that operates on about a million planets, and owns a few of its own. They’re a galactic shipping company. They own forty other warehouses in this zone alone — and more than nine hundred around the planet.” She drew a slow breath, maybe deciding if she wanted to say the next thing or not. “It was a good lead — but it didn’t pan out. Let’s head back and meet up with Mac and Fish, and go from there.”
I swallowed. “Or… we could get a drink?”
“Excuse me?” She sounded genuinely pissed off.
“I didn’t want to say it before, because it
was even thinner than the warehouse, but there’s a bar — not far from here — could be another lead.” It sounded stupid when I said it out loud.
“And how exactly is a bar a lead?” she scoffed.
“Well, I figure that the sellers are going to have to meet the buyers somewhere — a bar is public, it’s nearby, there’s a direct route from there to here, and there aren’t any arrests on that line either. Look, I’m not saying it’s perfect, but…”
She breathed quietly, thinking about it. “So what’s your plan? We just waltz in there, ask if anyone’s selling any Iskcara and then what, flash our badges when we find our man?”
“You got a badge?”
“It’s just an expression.”
“No — I don’t know. I mean, I thought we’d just take a look, see what’s going on. We can set Greg up on one end of the buildings, and — wait, does your rig have a name?”
She groaned. “No. Now, get back to this stupid explanation so I can tell you how stupid it is and then we can get out of here.”
“Alright, well you leave yours on the other side, and then they can both run sonic scans — pick up some chatter maybe, clean it up between them and feed it to us inside. If anything comes out in the wash, we’ll report back. Simple as that.” I realized my voice sounded just a little more pathetic than I meant it to.
“This isn’t some ploy to—”
“No, it’s not. I swear.” It really wasn’t.
She dragged it out for as long as she could, and then opened a comm link. “Major?”
“Kepler.”
“What do you think?”
“MacAlister just radioed in saying that Barva’s apartment was a bust, but they found some paperwork that said he’d rented a garage about a click east of where you guys are right now,” she said. “Don’t know what it’ll amount to, though. I’d say go for it. We haven’t got much else to go on at this point.”
Alice’s line went dead suddenly. She’d taken herself off comms. Maybe she was asking her rig if it was soundproof, too.
12
The bar was a shithole.
The building was an ex-industrial block of concrete and steel just over the dawn line. The entrance was through an old loading dock. A concrete plinth jutted onto the dirty roadway and was covered by a corrugated metal awning.
A set of steps led onto it and through a sliding doorway big enough to accommodate our mech, four humans stacked up, or any of the other huge species we’d seen trotting around. It was easy to forget just how small humans were in comparison to most species in the galaxy.
We parked our rigs around the corner and hopped out, instructing them to head to opposite ends of the building and keep an ear out.
On the way over, I’d quizzed Greg on something, and now that Alice and I were heading over on foot, I was contemplating doing something stupid. I bit my lip, eyeing her, trying to gauge her demeanor. I would have gone with icy, but I was still pretty sure I was going to go ahead with what I had planned.
We headed up the steps, which required us to climb each one, and onto the plinth in front of the door. I didn’t know what the hell was going to be waiting for us inside, so it had to be now.
“Alice,” I said quietly, stopping short of the door.
“What?” she said, turning to me.
I reached out before she could do anything and put my hand around the nape of her neck. My other found her cheek and I pushed my face toward hers. Our foreheads touched for just a second before she gripped my wrist and twisted hard.
I felt my ribs twinge as my body crooked at a weird angle and I stared up at her raised fist, clenched and hanging over my head, ready to whack me in the face. Her nostrils flared and she curled her mouth into a cruel grimace. She ground her teeth and then shook her head, throwing my wrist back to me and dropping her hand. Her eyes met mine for a few seconds and then she looked away and walked toward the door. She didn’t say anything, but the message was pretty clear. Whether she thought I was trying to kiss her or not, which I wasn’t, I could tell I’d very nearly gotten a bloodied nose. I hoped it was worth it.
I headed after her, helping heave the door aside — a huge steel thing on rollers that creaked open and then clanged shut behind us. It must have weighed a ton.
A bar that wasn’t designed for humans is a weird thing. We were on a raised platform that ran around the outside walls — on it were tables and chairs designed for humanoids. Across the far wall were booths, and a round section of bar met each side of the raised platform, dropping down on the other side a good four meters to the ground so the bartender, who was a Wint, could serve comfortably. They were large hair-covered things with huge heads and noses like elephant seals. It just so happened this one was wearing a long smock and an apron, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen a stranger sight.
I looked at Alice and then dipped my head toward the side of the room that didn’t have the booths. We circled on the platform, keeping our eyes down and away from the massive creatures moving around below us.
The side of the room we’d stuck to was empty except for us. On the other side, there were a few groups of humanoids occupying the booths and standing and talking over the drone of the electronic music playing.
We walked up to the bar and pulled up two stools, neither of us wanting to call the bartender over, just in case he decided to squash us. It turned out he was actually pretty friendly.. “Welcome,” he said, his modulated speech ringing inside my ear. “What can I get you?”
“Two beers,” I said holding fingers up.
“I’ll have water,” Alice added.
The Wint looked at me, and then her, and then back. “Alright — a beer, and a water for the lady.”
He turned on a faucet the size of a hydrant and filled a big metal cup before teasing open a normal-sized fridge with two fingers and pulling out a bottle like he was threading a needle. He placed them on the counter for us.
“Credit okay?” I asked, rolling up my sleeve.
“Sure.” He pulled a scanner out of the pouch on his apron and held it over the bar. I twisted my arm over to show the barcode there and the scanner took the credit out of my account. I stared at the beer for a second and wondered how much it’d cost me. I didn’t know how much anything cost on Telmareen. I shook it off — I could recoup it later.
“So,” I said nonchalantly as the bartender walked away.
Alice rolled her eyes. “Really?” She didn’t look at me as she spoke.
I took a sheepish swig from the beer and cleared my throat, eyeing the room from our perch, hoping my silence would be enough of an answer. The species below seemed to be doing a universal after-work thing — hanging out and drinking a couple of beers.
“This is stupid,” Alice muttered, pulling her huge steel cup of water toward her.
“Well, I mean if it was any smaller it would be practically impossible for him to pick up.”
“I don’t mean the cup, idiot. I mean being here.” She gestured around. “We’re not going to find anything. We should just leave and meet up with Mac and Fish.”
“We just got here. You think people are going to be selling Iskcara in the middle of the day?”
“I don’t think people are going to be selling Iskcara in a bar at all,” she grumbled.
I bit my lip and waved my hand at the bartender. “Hey,” I called as politely as I could. I wasn’t really sure if it was a he or a she, or if that was how gender even worked for Wints, so I didn’t want to assume.
“Is something wrong with your drink?” he asked as he approached, the voice oddly human in my ear. The chip was working wonders.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” I smiled. “Just wanted to ask you something. We don’t get to Telmareen much,” I started, nodding to Alice.
She closed her eyes, obviously resisting the urge to push back from the bar and leave.
“I couldn’t tell,” the Wint said. I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not, so I ignored it.
“And ther
e’s no denying what we are, right?” I grinned and dipped my shoulder, so he couldn’t miss the mercenary patch there.
“Hey, I don’t judge — we get all sorts.”
“Right, that’s what I figured. We just follow the trail of credits. And we heard some whispers,” I said casually, “that there’s some work around this part of Telmareen for a couple of ambitious mercs who don’t hold the Federation in the highest regard.” I dropped a couple of decibels. “In fact, we’re kind of taking a risk even being here, if you know what I mean.” I winked at the Wint, hoping that the gesture was universal enough for him to get it.
“Do I?” he said back.
“Look, man, I don’t want to get you into any trouble here. I’m just saying that we’re looking for some work, and we don’t much mind what kind — we’ve got a good crew, and some heavy-duty steel, should the work require that sort of thing.”
I could hear Alice muttering under her breath. “Jesus Christ.”
The Wint stared at me for a few seconds. “And what makes you think I know anything about any work?”
“I’m not saying you do. Just thinking that people like to talk when they’ve had a couple of drinks. Just asking, friend to friend, if you’ve heard anything?”
“About what?”
“About stolen Iskcara,” I said flatly.
He looked at me dead-eyed for a long time. I measured his gaze and returned it as stonily as I could. “You two look a little young to be mercs,” he said in a low voice, eyes narrowed.
I shrugged. “Yeah? Well, the Federation’s no goddamn picnic. We got out of that firing line as quickly as we could. Soon as our boots hit the ground on our first deployment,” I spat, moving my hand through the air like a ship, “we turned and made for the hills.”
“So you’re Free, then?” He cocked his head a little.
“We’re not anything, except looking for work,” I retorted, putting a little bite in the words.
He smirked after a few seconds. “There such a thing as tipping where you come from?”
I let myself smile. “Sure. And I’ll take another beer.” I rolled up my sleeve and offered him my arm. He pulled the scanner back out and fiddled with it a little. He turned it over for me to see and I almost choked when I saw the figure on the screen.