Chapter Eleven
GDAT 3241.265
Bethnee was so distracted that she almost didn’t notice the first sign that someone had breached her perimeter. The gossamer lengths of fiberet cable trailed down to the ground instead of invisibly spanning between the trees. An air vehicle had flown through and broken them, triggering the chemical reaction that made them faintly glow.
She veered off north into the trees and turned off the board’s light, flying by terrain sensors alone. She slowed to almost a hover, a meter above the forest floor, maneuvering around the trees and boulders.
She heard voices. A man and a woman.
“What the hell is this stuff?” The man sounded outraged.
“Move slow. Grab my hand.”
Bethnee grounded her board quietly behind a tree and buried it in the snow, fighting hard against instincts compelling her to run. The animals needed her to stay.
She sent threads of her talent to her animals and Axur’s to tell them all to hide in the caves.
She heard squelching sounds as the intruders walked through her moat that had a mix of yak dung, mineral salts, and scrap glass road glue, kept warm by a geothermally heated grid at the bottom. Cold air would turn the mixture glass-hard.
Bethnee took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then peeked around the tree trunk. Two figures in one-piece blue snowsuits and transparent snow hoods trudged through the snow, away from the moat. She opened her talent senses, but as usual, the humans felt like ghosts. She extended further and felt two more ghosts, clustered near the front of her cabin. That was nearly half the auditor team.
She limped as fast as she dared to the edge of the trees. The interlopers were using both flying and hand lights. They’d see her crossing the main path.
She coaxed a nearby wild owl into looking at the front yard. Three men and a woman, all in one-piece snowsuits, stood at her front door.
“...haven’t got all day. Let’s go in and look, get the hell out of here. I don’t like being restricted to stunners and tranqs.” The woman sounded impatient.
“That’s ’cause you’ll shoot anything that moves.”
“Like you’re any better.” The woman turned to one of the men, who held a display. “What does the scanner say?”
“House has powered security, but nothing outside... No, wait. One double-tech signature. That way, and close.” The owl’s vision showed her an image of a man pointing into the woods.
Ice flooded Bethnee’s veins as she frantically powered down her earwire and comms bracelet, berating herself for stupidity.
“If it’s the vet, she can let us in. Keeps us on schedule.”
They must have figured out where she lived from homestead records. They hadn’t asked permission to land, but it didn’t pay to piss off auditors, if that’s what they were. Especially auditors with weapons.
Her only hope was to lure them into the woods. None of her security measures were fatal, just strong deterrents for the uninvited. She switched her battery-powered wrist light to low-power green and risked brief flashes to tell her where to step over rocks and duck under the branches. Learning every meter of her property in light and dark had helped her feel safe. She skirted around the fifteen-meter clearing. On the far side, she switched her comms bracelet on and off, mimicking an intermittent signal.
Two interlopers came through the trees, their lights marking their progress. She backed further into the shadows. They plunged into the virgin snow of the clearing. A faint whipping sound whistled in the air.
“Son of a bitch!”
“Who the hell leaves coiled spikewire in the middle of farking nowhere?”
Bethnee took advantage of their noise to make her way down the hill. An empty flitter occupied her gravel landing pad. She limped behind it and down into trees to the southeast. Adrenaline jacked up her tension and turned her stomach sour. Her thigh spasmed.
The sound of another approaching flitter echoed against the rocks.
She scrambled under nearby shrubs. A smaller flitter landed behind the first. Two people exited and walked toward her house.
“...enforcers are coming to investigate.” A woman’s voice with a Mandarin accent. “Trummler wants us out by local dawn.”
“I thought the auditor was supposed to intercept any calls from the area. We paid her enough.” A man’s voice, muffled by a high collar.
“Call came from an ex-Jumper, so the dispatcher took it seriously.” The woman didn’t sound happy.
Bethnee would have smiled if she weren’t so scared. Clever Axur had found help.
Their words confirmed they weren’t auditors, which meant they were after something or someone else. She didn’t know what to do besides distract them so they’d leave her house alone, and delay them long enough so they’d run out of time and leave.
She’d never imagined she’d be wishing for a speedy visit by the Del’Arche Planetary Enforcers.
Bethnee had crammed herself into a rock hollow, wracking her brain for ideas. She was exhausted, and out of options, because dawn was coming.
The intruders failed to breach her house’s security, and had grown increasingly irritated about not catching her.
She reached out to the animals again to make sure they were safe, and discovered Trouble, the e-dog, was outside the cave and headed toward her. His fleeting thoughts listened to the controller in his head with Axur’s order to find Bethnee and protect her. She refused to put any of the animals in jeopardy for her.
“Got her!” said a male voice. “Scanner says she’s moving twenty-three meters south. I’ll send lights.”
Trouble’s controller was permanently on, meaning the intruders were keying on him. She’d promised Axur she’d keep his animals safe.
With trembling fingers, she powered on both her higher-powered comms bracelets and her earwire, then pinged Axur. She subvocalized as she slid out of the hollow and stood. “I hope you hear this soon. Six people are at my place. They can’t get into my house. They’ve been chasing me. I’m going to let them catch me, or they’ll hurt Trouble. Send the enforcers here if you can.”
She limped her way out from under the trees. She didn’t have to go far before lights flew close and a black-haired man and a blonde woman, both with blood spots on their pant legs, came toward her at a fast walk. She turned and ran away, exaggerating her limp so it looked like her top speed.
“Get her!”
The blonde woman ran, then launched herself at Bethnee to take them both down into the snow. The blonde woman got to her knees and roughly pulled off Bethnee’s comm bracelets and earwire and threw them away. “You won’t be needing these.” She grinned like a shark. “I heard something bad happened to the town’s satellite uplink.” She grabbed Bethnee’s arm and hauled her to her feet, then jabbed Bethnee’s shoulder with an unpowered shockstick. “Where is it? Where’s the shipment?”
“Wait,” the black-haired man said. “Bring her to the cabin.” He tilted his head toward her house.
Bethnee limped as slowly as she dared, using the time trudging through the snow to touch the strong, trusting minds of her animal family to keep herself from falling into a fog of fear. Her thigh muscle cramped once, then quieted. A small victory.
Three more people stood near her front door, all wearing the same new-looking blue snowsuits. They must have sent the man with the ruined one back to the flitter to stay warm. An Asian woman stood and watched, arms crossed and toe tapping, as a dark-skinned man with an upright crest of flame-red hair folded and pocketed a scanner. The third, a noticeably shorter man, pulled down his collar and stepped closer. He stared at her legs, then looked intently at her face. “Well, well, the God of the Gaps has finally answered my prayers. It’s Bakonin.”
She knew that face and voice from her worst nightmares. Kanaway, the guard with chems and perversions. The pieces fell into place. They weren’t a freelance theft crew raiding the town, or CPS operatives looking for Axur. They were mercenaries after the bounty for
a lost shipment of valuable designer pets. The shaking started, and coherent thought began to disintegrate. She desperately sent her talent out to every animal she could reach with the imperative to stay hidden. She forced herself to focus on the Asian woman’s combat boots, counting toe taps. The animals depended on her to buy time for whoever was responding to Axur’s call for help.
“What’s wrong with her?” asked the black-haired man.
Kanaway grinned. “Oh, the little subbin’ bitch wants me so bad she’s trembling. Did you miss me?”
She shuddered, but somehow found the courage to look at him straight in the eye. “I hope Breitenbahn liked the record of what you did.” She glanced down at his crotch. “Cured your soft and tiny problem yet?”
The blonde woman guffawed.
Rage flared in Kanaway’s eyes as he slapped Bethnee. “That fake vid got me blacklisted.” He slapped her again, harder. She staggered with the impact. She straightened up and spat blood. At least her time in Breitenbahn’s circus had taught her how to take a hit.
The Asian woman gave Kanaway a hard look. “Enough. Domaki, find out where the shipment is and let’s go.”
Kanaway’s lip curled in hatred, but stepped back. In Bethnee’s jagged memories, he was big and impossibly strong, but seeing him now made her realize he was actually shorter than she was.
The red-haired man moved closer. “She’s hard to read.” He took off his glove. “I need to touch her.”
The blonde woman grabbed Bethnee’s arm, stripped off her glove, and forced her to hold out her hand. Domaki grabbed Bethnee’s trembling fingers.
Bethnee felt the man’s telepathic talent questing for her mind and memories. She plunged her mind into Jynx’s and focused on the snow leopard’s alien thoughts.
Distantly, she heard words, but Bethnee-the-leopard ignored them as unimportant.
Domaki pushed a succession of images of pet-trade animals at her mind. She didn’t recognize any of them until he got to a foo dog and six-legged creature with two tails. She pulled out of Jynx’s mind, because snow leopards didn’t know how to lie. Bethnee shot Domaki a memory of when she’d treated Kivo for the near-fatal illness and his breathing had stopped. Dead.
All of them? demanded Domaki.
She felt him nibbling away at the corners of her mind, trying to access other memories. She called up image after image of animals she’d raised on Breitenbahn’s ship, and let Domaki feel her deep sadness for each one she’d lost.
How do you know Kanaway?
The question took her by surprise, leaving her vulnerable to Domaki’s probe into her darker memories. When he touched the worst of them, she felt the first wave of the familiar deep tremors.
Frelling hell! Domaki apparently didn’t like her memories any more than she did.
She spitefully sent him the image of how she’d looked after Kanaway finished, with a swollen face, and bruises and blood everywhere. How he’d shoved her half-conscious body into a ship’s autodoc to heal away evidence of the assault, unaware that security monitors recorded his actions.
Domaki hastily withdrew from Bethnee’s mind. She collapsed to her knees, gasping for breath, unable to control her shudders.
Domaki backed away. “The research chimera died some time back. She hasn’t seen any of the other animals.”
“Bullshit,” snarled Kanaway. “She’s the only small-animal vet on the planet. She’s a stubborn, lying bitch.”
Domaki gave Kanaway a disgusted look. “Don’t tell me how to do my job, you warped little twist.” Domaki pulled on his glove. “It’s been eleven months since the bounty was posted for that shipment, and the active tracers are in a herd of goats, not high-end pets. She doesn’t know anything.” He looked to the orange-tinged eastern sky. “If we leave now, we can meet Blue team at Point Exeter before it gets light.”
“She’ll have animals in her house.” Kanaway could sound very reasonable when he wanted to. “If any of them are valuable, we can at least show a profit.”
Domaki crossed his arms. “Ain’t gonna be me that compels her to let us in.” He cast another disgusted look at Kanaway. “Too many bad memories.”
The Asian woman shook her head. “No more fishing. Trummler okayed this mission because Kanaway’s intel pointed to Del’Arche for where the high-value shipment ended up, and it’d be a quick in-and-out to question the only two veterinarians. This is a bust.” She waved a hand to encompass everyone. “Flitters airborne in five. Let’s go.” She pointed to Domaki. “Ride with Kanaway.”
With the Asian woman leading, they walked purposefully down the path toward the flitters. Bethnee pivoted on her knees to watch them go. She tried to follow them with her talent, but it was like trying to follow phantoms.
She sent her talent out to search for Trouble. He was appallingly close, under a tree, and an easy target if one of the mercs had seen him. She collapsed onto her heels and let the muddy yellow dog come to her, even though it wouldn’t be truly safe until the flitters took off.
Trouble allowed her to put an arm around him and hug him close. She wished the blonde woman hadn’t stripped her Axur-net earwire, so she could hear his voice again.
Inexplicably, Trouble pulled away and stared intently at the path, growling softly.
“Come on, Domaki.” Kanaway’s voice. “The sooner we find my pet-tracer scanner, the sooner we get off this ice ball.”
Bethnee sent a panicked imperative to Trouble to run, but it was too late. Kanaway and Domaki strode into view, their flying lights illuminating her and Trouble.
Kanaway looked triumphant. “This really is my lucky day.” He pulled a stunner out of his pocket and casually shot Domaki twice. Domaki’s body jolted like he’d been struck by lightning, then crumpled.
Kanaway aimed the stunner at her. “You’re worth ten times the bounty of that research shipment.” Avarice lit his face. “And I know just the buyer. He’s been looking for you for three years.”
Chapter Twelve
GDATt 3241.265
Axur landed the runabout on the flat rocks above Bethnee’s cave just as the sun crept over the mountaintops, burnishing their white tops with gold. She’d pointed out the path the first day he’d been there to meet Jynx. He loaded his gear and started down the steep trail. He sped up when one of the mercs said he’d forgotten a scanner and would catch up to the others soon. Merc companies weren’t usually that disorganized.
Bethnee was likely paying the price for his mistakes, not the least of which was forgetting that the experimental tech in his cybernetics wasn’t the only thing of value in the frozen north. He’d already been loading his runabout when he’d received her ping that she was planning to protect Trouble by letting the mercs catch her. He should have taken into account her willingness to sacrifice herself to protect the animals she loved. Her pet-trade captors had taught her she had no value, and he hadn’t found the right time or words to tell her how much she meant to him.
At least the Del’Arche Planetary Enforcers were on their way. He’d lucked into an ex-Jumper answering his ping, and she’d believed him. Then he’d used his experimental tech to crack the raiders’ temporary comms net.
They were a mercenary company specializing in freelance bounty hunts. While a southern squad went after a trio of brothers whose capture would bring a big payday back in the Concordance, a smaller northern squad went north for a stolen shipment of designer pets and anything else they could steal.
They’d only intended to disable the town’s satellite uplink, but the cheaply made building had collapsed. The three culprits had joined their two teammates at Nuñez’s vet clinic, where they’d been attacked by pissed-off geese and nearly been gored by an enraged yak. That team beat a hasty retreat to rendezvous with the main squad to the south. The remaining six went after veterinarian Bethnee because they knew the coordinates of her homestead.
The same homestead to which he, like the flatliner he was, had sent her and his animals, thinking to keep them out of harm
’s way.
From the trees near her cabin, he heard a man’s voice but couldn’t make out the words, and he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. He wished he had hearing like a dog’s… but he did, sort of. He tuned his experimental tech to Trouble’s command processor, and pulled the auditory feeds.
“...the door right now, your filthy dog dies in front of you.” A man’s baritone but nasal voice, full of menace. “And you know I’ll do it, too.”
“It’s open.” Bethnee’s ordinarily expressive voice sounded flat, defeated. Axur clenched his jaw.
“You first. No surprises.”
Axur crept closer.
“Are you going to leave Domaki down on the path? He’ll freeze.” Her tone said she didn’t care if he did.
“That’s his problem. He was going to tell Na Ming lies about me, just like you did with that fake surveillance vid you sent Breitenbahn. He blamed me for your escape.”
Axur eased westward, close enough to see a red-haired man down, blocking the path to the flitter pad. He ruthlessly stripped the unconscious man’s weapons, percomp, and earwire, then zip-tied his wrists and ankles and rolled him off the path into the ditch full of snow. The heated snowsuit would protect him from the cold for a while.
“Turn on the lights,” said the man with Bethnee and Trouble. “Where are the other animals?”
Axur ran down the path to the flitter, which they’d obligingly left unlocked. He pried open the control panel and used his homemade shockstick to good effect.
“I only have one other. This house is too small for him. Axur mostly lives in his den up the mountain, but he’s closer today.”
Axur smiled and let relief take some of his tension as he exited the flitter. Bethnee knew he was there, and was buying time. He sobered quickly, because she was playing a dangerous game.