The Transporter's Favor

by C. M. Simpson

  “State your business, Shady Marie.”

  “We believe two of your agents have been included on a capture contract.”

  “Your reasons?”

  “Captain Mackenzie Star, Tenser, myself and the entire crew of the Shady Marie are also included on the contract, and we have traced the source to Depredides. There is only one incident that could have drawn ire from someone on that planet.”

  “Switching to a more secure node.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  And I sure as shit hoped the node we’d been on had been secure to start with.

  “It was,” Abby confirmed, but the Odyssey spokesman was back.

  “Do you have any other reason to believe the contract is in connection to that incident?”

  That incident? I hadn’t thought I was important enough for the retrieval to be so easily remembered. Abby cut across me before I could respond.

  “Because Dasojin is being targeted, also,” she said.

  “We believe that is a separate matter.”

  “Interesting that you have not shared your thoughts with me.”

  “Abeona?”

  “The same.”

  “We have not been able to find you.”

  “I had need to go dark.”

  “With your pardon, Abeona, but we still cannot find you.”

  “I am the target of a Star Shadow hunt, as is the Shady Marie and her crew. Tell me you cannot find the Marie.”

  Case straightened up behind her console, and I schooled my face to blankness. Abby hadn’t told me she was choking the Marie’s ident broadcaster.

  There was silence on the other end, and we waited. The answer, when it came, was reluctant.

  “Shady Marie your squawker is strangled. We cannot find you.”

  “Not even with the other gear you have on board?” Abby pressed, and I glanced over at Case.

  Yeah, that was news to her, as well.

  The Odyssey spokesman cleared his throat, but he did not deny Odyssey had other ways of tracking the Marie.

  “No.”

  “Then we might stay free a little longer.”

  The Odyssey man cleared his throat, again.

  “Can you tell me, Marie, if it was you who destroyed Repair Hangar Five at Rigel’s Banter?”

  “We can neither confirm nor deny,” Abby broke in. “Your point?”

  “The Star Shadows have a secondary contract in play, one to be enacted parallel to this one.”

  Well, damn. Talk about your party killer. Abby did not let it slow her down.

  “Details?”

  “Dasojin ships attract an extra bounty, particularly if their HMT is intact when the ship is brought in—intact and unharmed.”

  That was bad.

  “The Shady Marie and her crew—and you might warn your people that their names and descriptions have been circulated through the systems known—also attract a bounty, provided they are delivered to a Star Shadow representative, alive and functional.”

  “Alive and functional?” Case asked.

  The Odyssey rep shifted his attention to her.

  “That is the contractual wording, yes.”

  “Does the new contract extend beyond the life of the first?” I asked.

  “Not that we can ascertain, no.”

  “Delight and Pritchard,” I said, and waited.

  The Odyssey rep glanced to one side, but I couldn’t see who they were talking to—because they were talking to someone, I could see that from the look on his face. I suppressed a smile, and waited.

  Gotcha.

  When he returned his attention to the screen, he was all business.

  “I am authorized to reveal that Agents Delight and Pritchard have gone dark. We do not know if they have been compromised or harmed, but I am authorized to put you on a tentative contract for payment for their retrieval, if it is needed, or any assistance you render them, if they ask. Duration of the offer is for the duration of the contract you are currently under. Agents Delight and Pritchard will be notified of your availability, as soon as they make contact.”

  He paused, glanced to his right, again, and then looked back to the screen.

  “I am also authorized to offer the Shady Marie and all that are on her, Odyssey’s protection at minimal charge, should you require it.”

  Minimal charge? I’d never been involved in the negotiation of Mack’s contract.

  “May I?” Case asked, and I nodded.

  “State the minimum, and the level of assistance you are offering in return,” the pilot said drawing the representative’s attention, and the dickering began.

  From the start, it was clear that Case knew exactly what Mack would pay, and for what, and that she could not be enticed beyond it. When the deal was closed, Abby spoke.

  “Dasojin will match that offer—and for no cost.” When she continued, her tone suggested she was smiling as sweetly as a child. “We appreciate all those who come to our assistance unbidden.”

  The Odyssey spokesman paled, and he reached towards the comms controls.

  “We’ll be in touch,” he said, and the screen went dark.

  “Are they gone?” Case asked, and Abby’s reply was smug.

  “Oh, yes.”

  And Case burst out laughing.

  “That was classy, girl,” she said, before letting her laughter fade, and focusing on her console.

  “We’re almost there,” she added, and then swore.

  I looked at her, half expecting her to highlight a wolf battle cruiser on the forward screen, but she just shook her head.

  “Sorry, Cutter. I just remembered Mack was supposed to sign off on a deal, yesterday. I just checked, and he didn’t. Mishamblin took it, instead.”

  “Mishamblin?” Abby asked. “Do they do that often?”

  “Just recently,” Case said, and shrugged. “They’re expanding, and they think we’re easy prey.”

  She smiled.

  “Or they did.”

  “What did you do?” Abby asked.

  “We took five of their clients, as a warning to show that we could.”

  A low whistle came through the intercom.

  “Mack doesn’t play games, does he?”

  “He said we had to show teeth, or they would roll over us like a PZ105 on the plains of Arumgito.”

  I made a note to look it up. It didn’t sound good, whatever it was.

  “Do you think they’re biting back?”

  “It’s a bit of a coincidence if they’re not.”

  “I’ll do some digging,” Abby said.

  “We’ve got one more jump, and we’ll be at Baskent.”

  I looked at her.

  “You need me?”

  Case shook her head.

  “Not for this leg. Maybe once we’re in-system.”

  I headed for the door.

  “I’ll be in the research centre.”

  “See you in there,” Abby said, and I knew she’d find me in the net.

  She might not be able to follow me through the research centre, but the net was as open to her as all the stars in space, and she probably knew how to navigate it much better than I did.

  “Sure thing, Abs.”

  She was true to her world. We met outside the official site of the Mishamblin HQ.

  I’d taken a circuitous route through one of the quieter patches of the Underweb, and surfaced through the virtual sidewalk in front of Mishamblin’s front gates. The site was huge.

  Abby popped in beside me, and we stood together, admiring the façade.

  “Care to join me?” Abby asked, offering me a virtual arm.

  I slid my arm through it, and we passed through the gates together.

  Have to admit, the company’s public pages were something to be admired. We wandered through them, inspecting services and noting that the prices were only available on application…and that there’d be a consultation fee in
volved.

  “Interesting.”

  “Stops them being undercut, and lets them background-check potential clients, without the client knowing.”

  “Nice.”

  “I’m certain Mack does the same thing.”

  That was food for thought. Tens never had said what his specialty was—and Mack had never mentioned it.

  “Need to know,” Abby told me, as though that should explain everything, which, I suppose, it did.

  We walked through the site, and then back out the gates. Abby led the way through a couple of fast-food and entertainment sites, as well as a server hub, and I didn’t ask her why. I could see the shadowy figures that trailed after us, before evaporating as we slid through the private connection of someone’s way-too-open communications link.

  After that, we slipped into the Underweb spyware connection we found there, breaking it loose after us, as a sort of secret thank you. It didn’t take us long to double back to take a look at Mishamblin from the underside.

  “Well,” Abby said, satisfaction giving her mental voice a smug tone. “How unexpected.”

  Which meant she’d expected to see what we were seeing, all along.

  Numerous connections ran from Mishamblin’s underside into the Undernet. Abby and I just hovered, studying the layout, trying to get an aerial view of the nodes and routers we were seeing.

  “This could take a while…”

  “We just need to spot a connection to a Sharovan server.”

  “Down here?”

  “No. Up there.”

  And I got it. I kicked myself. It was something I should have thought of, despite the Undernet not being a big part of Basic Training.

  “Think of it as a form of specialist Advanced training. I’m pretty sure Tens could show you, if you asked.”

  I wondered if he would.

  “Multiple redundancies are a good thing to have,” Abby told me. “Mack knows that—and Tens would see the point.”

  I was sure he would, but how much of Mack’s ‘persuasion’ would be required, was entirely another question.

  Abby snickered.

  “You don’t have faith in anybody, do you?”

  “I try.”

  She shifted her focus, looking ‘up’ in our virtual world, and I followed her gaze.

  “There?”

  “It’s one possibility.”

  “Uh, Abby?”

  “Yeah, I see them.”

  “You reckon its wolf territory, over there.”

  “That, or Sharovan. I’m still not sure who you kicked, this morning…or who they talked to, when you left.”

  She had a good point.

  “Tell you what. I’m going to run a search that puts Sharovan and Mishamblin in the same string, and I’ll chase that down. What are you thinking of doing?”

  And the air around me crackled with purpose and threat.

  “Me?” Abby asked. “I’m thinking, I might give these boys a run for their money, kick their asses, and then rip every piece of data out of their memory that I can reach.”

  Back in the cubicle, I knew my face was echoing the tight, warlike smile her construct was wearing. She pushed me.

  “Let your search string loose. I can take care of these guys.”

  “Call me, if you need back-up.”

  She reached out and did the virtual equivalent of ruffling my hair.

  “Get going. I have work to do.”

  From the way she said it, she didn’t think of it as work. More like fun, with a little bit of sin thrown in. I left her to it. My search threw up the company structure of one multi-squillionaire, Terrence Costoganzi, showing Mishamblin and Sharovan Protective Services as two distant arms of a corporate empire. I took a copy of it, and tried to find communications between the two.

  No surprise that there was nothing direct, so I ran a second search, using the map of Costoganzi’s corporate structure to guide me. It took a little bit, but I eventually found the trail Sharovan’s comms took to reach Mishamblin. Those sneaky sons-of-bitches!

  I pulled the most recent message, unscrambled it, and thanked the Stars that Sharovan’s encryption was nowhere near as good as its actual defense measures. I took enough time to copy the message, and then snuck out of Mishamblin’s in-box, wondering how Abby was going.

  “Doing fine, kiddo,” she said, grabbing me by my virtual collar and hauling me out of the Mishamblin router. “Gotta go.”

  We did?

  “Yes. Because, you, young lady, are as subtle as the proverbial brick in the face.”

  She pulled me back to the Undernet and threw me into the link between that and the terminal in the research centre.

  “Catch you on deck. We have a lot of debriefing to do.”

  I had just enough time to register that her net construct was carrying a backpack that looked stuffed to the max, and then she ripped the link free, and started shredding.

  Well, damn. I guess I’d been in more trouble than I’d known. I scrambled back into the terminal’s buffer and then into my head, and unplugged. As I did the computer made a vicious crackling sound, followed by a small series of pops and the expensive brown smell of burning circuitry. Double damn.

  I pulled the power, and pushed my seat back. I’d locked the cubicle again, so it was no surprise to find Hella waiting on the other side.

  “Case says you missed lunch, Ma’am, and she’ll see you and Abs in the caf.”

  “I’ve just got to print…”

  “Case also says that if you touch another computer on the way up to the caf, she’ll break your fingers.” Hella stopped, and her face turned scarlet. “I… I’m sorry, but that’s what she told me to say.”

  I eyed her thoughtfully.

  “And did Case tell you what would happen if you did not deliver her message exactly as she said it.”

  The red faded from the girl’s face, and she went an odd shade of grey, and nodded. I decided not to make her repeat Case’s threat.

  “I guess we’d better go, then. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting long.”

  And she shook her head, hurrying swiftly through the rec room, and out into the corridors of the ship proper. I wondered what she’d done to deserve the task of fetching me.

  “Never you mind!” Case’s voice was gun-shot sharp as I stepped into the corridor, and, before I could respond to that, she’d reached into my skull and pulled the message copy and the map of Costoganzi’s corporate structure from my mind.

  “Nice work,” and she passed them over to Abby. “Abs?”

  “I will forward those to Odyssey for their files, and to my colleagues for their reference. We will come at him from all sides.”

  “So, he’s the one we have to take down to get the contract lifted?” I asked, and was hushed from two sides.

  “You are a menace of the first order,” Abby told me. “I can’t believe Odyssey’s training is so lacking—and I will be recommending a retraining intensive to Mack.”

  What the fuck had I done?

  “You waltzed past a half dozen tripwires, and rang his front doorbell,” Case told me. “And you failed to realize the buffer you walked through was a trap, even if the router itself was the real deal.” Abby didn’t quite add ‘amateur’ to the end of that, but she might as well have. Her tone said it all.

  Shit.

  “Rookie mistake,” Case said. “You’ll know for next time.”

  So there was going to be a next time. Well, that was good to know.

  Case snorted.

  “Hella, we need coffee and lunch, and the captain’s mess.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Hella gestured towards the officer’s mess Mack used to discuss things out of hearing of the rest of the caf. “I’ll bring it shortly.”

  We headed through, me in Case’s wake, and Abby in my head. I felt like an awkward teenager who’d been caught sneaking out.

  “Don’t sweat it, Cutter.” Case soun
ded almost impatient, and I realized she’d pulled the thought out of my head.

  “Not you, too?”

  Case took Mack’s seat and gestured at the seat Mack usually had me take.

  “Captain’s privilege…or so Abby says.”

  I decided Abby knew far too much about the way Mack ran his ship, and wondered where she was getting her information.

  “Trade secret, sweetie.”

  Case pulled our attention back to the problem at hand, and Abby laid out most of what she’d found by ransacking her opponent’s connections. Not all of those shapes had been programs launched in the site’s defense. Some of them had been real people.

  “They’ll live,” Abby told me. “I don’t kill lackeys.”

  She highlighted the message and corporate structure.

  “Not when I know who the real culprit is.”

  Case cleared her throat, and I got the impression Mack’s assassin-pilot, wanted Abby to come clean.

  “Fine. I did kill one. That kind of predator shouldn’t be tolerated, not even if he’s small and unimportant. And I sent Odyssey to fetch his toys before his friends got wind he was out of the picture.”

  “Toys?”

  “People had debts,” Case said. “Some of them paid with whatever they had to hand—their children, if they didn’t hide them fast enough. We got them out. Odyssey will put them back together.”

  “And Odyssey and Dasojin will go hunting,” Abby declared. “There are enough predators in the universe, without humans preying on what they should protect.”

  “Easy, girl,” Case said. “It’s done, we’re fixing it, and we have much bigger fish to fry.”

  She tapped the table, but in my head, she tapped the picture of Terrence Costoganzi.

  “Him, for example. We’re going to have to take him out of the equation.”

  “We can’t kill him!” The thought of cold-bloodedly murdering a man just because he’d contracted a hit on us, didn’t seem right, and Case rolled her eyes at the ceiling.

  “I suppose you’re going to do a Mack on me, and tell me we have to give him the chance to withdraw the contract on his own.”

  Mack would ask that?

  “Kid, that man is a white knight in black armor. He just can’t forget where he came from, or accept that the universe doesn’t work the way he wants it to.”

  “But he keeps you on board.” I hesitated, then added, “and Stepyan.”