And I certainly hadn’t imagined Arno Cameron, amateur archaeologist and head of one of the largest and most influential industrial combines in the Spiral, sitting in a grimy Vyssiluyan taverno and all but begging me to fly the Icarus to Earth for him.
No, the facts were there, at least some of them. What they meant, though, I didn’t have the foggiest idea.
But a small group of unclearly related facts can chase each other around a single overtired brain for only so long. Eventually, I fell asleep.
CHAPTER
6
The port facilities on Xathru had been a couple of steps above those on Meima. The single commercial port on Dorscind’s World, in contrast, was at least five steps back down again.
Not that the equipment itself was a problem. On the contrary, the landing cradle was the best the Icarus had seen yet, with the kind of peripheral and support equipment that a place like Meima could only dream of. It was, rather, the port’s clientele that put Dorscind’s World well below the standards set by the Spiral’s tour cruise directors. Planned by its developers as a high-class gambling resort, things hadn’t quite worked out that way for the colony. It had been slipping since roughly day two, with the big money and high-spinners fading equally rapidly into the sunset.
The only thing that had kept the place from vanishing from the map altogether was its gradual and reluctant transformation into the sort of place where questionable papers and shady cargoes were generally winked at. With the Patth shipping domination, the shady-cargo slice of the pie chart had been steadily growing among non-Patth carriers.
And as a result, business at the Dorscind’s World port was booming.
There was of course no record of a freighter named the Second Banana having filed a flight plan for Dorscind’s World. But as I’d expected, minor technicalities of that sort didn’t even raise an eyebrow here. The usual docking fee, plus a few more of Cameron’s hundred-commark bills, and we had our landing cradle. I paid off the port official who came to the ramp to collect, made arrangements for refueling, and ordered delivery of replacement foodstuffs and some more of Chort’s magic hull-repair goo.
And after that, it was time for me to venture out into the dubious charm of the port city. Leaving the rest of the Icarus’s crew behind.
The rest of the crew wasn’t happy about that. Not one bit. “This is insane,” Shawn snarled as I faced down the pack of them at the forward wraparound pressure door, a task made all that harder psychologically by the upward tilt of the Icarus’s decks that had them all looming over me. “I’ve been to a dozen places like this—it’s no more dangerous than downtown Tokyo as long as you mind your own business.”
“It would be nice to get out into the open air,” Everett seconded. “Medically speaking, recycled air starts wearing on a person after a while. Besides, the exercise would do us good.”
“The exercise could also get you killed,” I told him bluntly, charitably passing up the obvious comment about how his bulk hardly indicated that exercise would be his top priority out there. “Or weren’t any of you listening to what I said about what happened to me on Xathru?”
“We were all listening, McKell,” Tera said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s a reason for you to stay out of sight, not us.”
“Believe me, I wish I could,” I said with one hundred percent honesty. The last thing I wanted to do was face down more of the Lumpy Clan and their coronal-discharge weapons. Though to be honest, without having a flight schedule to guide them, the chances they could have tracked me here were vanishingly small. “Unfortunately, I have an errand to take care of out there. One which I have to do personally.”
Which wasn’t quite as hundred-percent honest as the first part had been. Ixil could make the long-overdue call to Uncle Arthur as well as I could. But Ixil had made it abundantly clear that he really didn’t want to field that one; more to the point, I wanted him and the ferrets here to watch over the Icarus. “But none of that matters,” I went on. “What matters is that as pilot, I’m also the captain. And I say you’re staying here.”
“So that’s where the pig stick goes, huh?” Shawn snarled, his face working as he glared at me with blazing eyes. Once again, as it had when we’d first met, Shawn’s veneer of civility had cracked badly, revealing the callously rude young brat underneath. “You little tin-plate dictator—you love this, don’t you? Well, forget it—just forget it. I’m not sitting here staring at the walls while you’re out having fun. Neither is anyone else.”
“That’s enough, Shawn,” Nicabar said quietly. Quietly, but with the full weight of all those years as an EarthGuard Marine in his voice.
Shawn either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Well, runny muck to you, too,” he bit out at Nicabar. His whole body was trembling now, his fists opening and closing like relays in an unstable feedback loop, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Ixil ease a little closer beside him. “I’m not staying cooped up in here—I’m not.”
“Look, son, I understand how you feel,” Everett said, laying a hand on Shawn’s shoulder. “But he is our captain—”
“I don’t care,” Shawn snapped, shrugging off the hand. “I’m going out. Now!”
And with that, he bunched his hands into fists and dived straight toward me.
He didn’t get very far. Ixil was ready on his right and Nicabar on his left, and each of them grabbed an arm right in mid-leap. For a moment Shawn struggled in their grip, mouthing obscenities and threats mixed liberally with snarls in an alien language I didn’t understand. But he might as well have tried to walk away with the Icarus resting on his foot. Ixil and Nicabar held on; and without warning, Shawn suddenly collapsed in their grip, whimpering softly under his breath.
“Bring him back here,” Everett said quietly, gesturing as he backed down the corridor toward the sick bay. “I’ll give him something.”
Ixil caught Nicabar’s eye; the tall man nodded understanding and shifted around behind Shawn, taking his other arm from Ixil and half guiding, half carrying the moaning kid down the corridor behind Everett. They all disappeared inside, the door closed behind them, and Ixil looked back at me. “That was interesting,” he said.
“Is he ill?” Chort asked, his alien face as usual impossible to read. “Perhaps we should take him to a full-service medical center.”
“Let’s see what Everett can do with him first,” I said, throwing a glance at Tera. Her face, too, was unreadable. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Go ahead,” Ixil said. “We’ll handle things here.”
I headed down the ramp—as on Xathru, the landing cradle here was concave, putting part of the Icarus’s bulk beneath ground level and making a long climb unnecessary—and crossed to the edge of our landing square. A high-speed slideway ran past two landing squares over, with two short layers of lower-speed transfer slideway beside it, and in a minute I was being carried briskly westward toward the edge of the spaceport where the map had said the StarrComm building was located.
The port was busy today, I noticed with some concern as I studied my fellow slideway travelers with the same casual and nonintrusive glances they were using back on me. The extra anonymity provided by a crowd was always useful, but crowded slideways also often meant crowded StarrComm booths. Even before we’d landed I had wanted to make this stop as brief as possible. Now, after Shawn’s performance back there, I wanted it even more.
It took me nearly fifteen minutes to reach the StarrComm building, only to find my fears had been realized. The entire place was in use, with estimated waiting times for a booth hovering around half an hour.
I tried to talk my way higher on the waiting list, but on a place like Dorscind’s World the operators were used to much more serious threats and bullying than I was willing to try and wouldn’t budge. Conceding defeat, I accepted the numbered card they handed me—no one asked for or gave out names here—and retreated across the lobby to the waiting-room taverno. Not surprisingly, it
, too, was doing a brisk business, but I was lucky enough to arrive just as a pair of Mastanni were leaving a small table near the entrance and was able to grab it. I glanced at the menu, punched up the cheapest drink they had, and sat back to glower at the large display over the bar indicating which customers were currently next in line for the booths.
It wasn’t an encouraging sight. At the leisurely rate the numbers were crawling upward, I decided darkly, the operator’s estimation of thirty minutes was entirely too optimistic. I hadn’t wanted to make this call to Uncle Arthur, but being forced to sit here and wait for the chance to have myself verbally flensed was just adding insult to injury. I tried to come up with a clever way to circumvent the system, but it was really only mental steam-venting. On Dorscind’s World, the people I’d be cutting in line in front of would not be the sort to greet such attempts with genial smiles. I had enough trouble in my life already without going out and finding more.
A shadow passed over me; and to my annoyance a thin, wiry man with dark hair and a scraggly beard plopped himself down in the chair across from me. “Hey, old buddy,” he greeted me expansively. “How’s it going?”
“It’s going just fine,” I told him automatically, frowning. His tone and expression implied we knew each other, and he did indeed look vaguely familiar, but for the life of me I couldn’t place him.
He apparently picked up on my uncertainty. “Aw, come on, Jordie old buddy,” he said, sounding hurt. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember your old drinking pal.”
And in that moment, it all came disgustingly back. James Fulbright, small-time gunrunner and smuggler, the only person I’d ever met who was either too stupid or too stubborn for me to break of using the hated nickname Jordie. I’d been trying to negotiate a deal with his group when Uncle Arthur had fixed me up with Brother John instead. The drinking bouts that had been a centerpiece of Fulbright’s negotiations had been one of the definite low points in my life. “Hello, James,” I sighed. “Small Spiral, isn’t it?”
“Small as you’d ever want,” he agreed, grinning with a mouthful of uneven teeth. Rumor had it they’d started out perfectly straight, but that every time one was knocked out during a brawl he’d had it put back crooked just to make himself look meaner. “Waiting to make a call, huh?”
“Yes,” I said, bowing to the inevitable. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Oh, I think you can do better than one measly drink,” he said. “How much cash you got on you?”
I stared at him, warning bells belatedly going off in the back of my mind. Fulbright was still smiling, but I could now see the hard edge beneath the grin. He was definitely not here just to cadge drinks. “What are you talking about?” I demanded quietly.
“I’m talking about a shakedown,” he said, lowering his voice to match mine. “What’d you think? All for your own good, of course. So. You got ten grand on you? That’s what it’s gonna take, you know. At least ten grand.”
For a good three seconds I just stared at him, wondering what in hell was going on. There he sat, alone, both hands on the table, his right casually holding a folded piece of paper, his left open and empty. His sleeves were too tight to be concealing a quick-throw gun or knife, and there was no way he could beat me to a standard draw with his jacket zipped and mine half-open. It was possible he had a backup somewhere in the room already targeting me; but even drawing a weapon in here would be begging for trouble, and starting a firefight would be even worse. And why pick on me in the first place? “Maybe you don’t know I’m not running independent anymore,” I said at last. “I’m connected with a pretty big organization. They wouldn’t think much of this.”
His smile went a bit more brittle. “Yeah, well, whoever they are, I can guarantee they won’t lift a finger to help you on this one,” he said. “Believe it or not, Jordie, I’m your only friend in this room right now.” With a smooth motion, he flipped open the paper in his hand and swiveled it around to face me.
I glanced down. And found myself looking at my own Mercantile Authority file photo.
I looked up at Fulbright, startled. “Go ahead,” he said encouragingly. “Read it.”
I looked back down at the flyer. It was an urgent request for information about the current location of one Jordan McKell, pilot/captain of the Orion-class freighter Icarus, registry and configuration unknown. It didn’t say why McKell was being sought, but included two contact numbers, a local Dorscind’s World phone number and a StarrComm vid connect—the latter, like Brother John’s number, one of the anonymous types that gave no indication of which world it was connected to.
It also promised a reward to the one who fingered me. A straight five thousand commarks.
“I don’t know what you’ve done now, Jordie,” Fulbright said softly, “but you’re in one hell of a lot of trouble. Everyone in this place probably has one of these things by now—the guy was passing them out like free fruit sticks. The only reason you’re still walking around is that that’s such a lousy picture.”
He grinned. “That, plus no one figured you’d come to a sleazepit like this. I’d guess that’s what’s tying up the StarrComm lines—everyone’s calling their buddies to pass the word.”
“Probably,” I murmured. But someone thought I might come to a sleazepit like this; whoever was at the other end of that phone number, at the very least. Someone was very intent here about covering all the bases, and from all indications he was covering them very well. And unlike the Lumpy Brothers, that same someone knew the name of the ship I was flying. “Tell me, was this walking fruit-stick tray a bipedal alien with long arms and lumpy skin?”
Fulbright’s forehead creased slightly. “Naw, he was a human. Short and kind of wimpish—your basic accountant type.”
“Doesn’t sound like he really belongs in a place like this,” I suggested. “You sure it’s not a scam of some sort?”
“At a hundred commarks a crack?” Fulbright scoffed. “Who cares?”
I frowned. “A hundred? The flyer says five thousand.”
“That’s the finder’s fee,” Fulbright said. “The guy’s been handing out a hundred with each flyer. Just to make sure it gets read, I guess.”
I felt cold all over. Five thousand commarks to find me—that could be anything, from anywhere. But for the hunter to be passing out additional thousands of commarks in cash just to generate interest meant something very big indeed was going on.
And the only thing that had saved me so far was that abominably poor photo in my Mercantile file. That, and the fact that the one person here who did recognize me was angling for a higher bounty. “Okay,” I said to Fulbright. “Ten thousand it is. But I don’t have it on me. We’ll have to go back to the ship.”
His eyes narrowed, and in the twitching of his eyebrows and lips I could practically read his line of reasoning: that if he was able to get a good look at the Icarus, he might be able to peddle the description for another few thousand from the unidentified accountant type. “Okay,” he said, unzipping his jacket and stuffing the flyer into an inside pocket. He stood up, giving me a glimpse of a gray handgun holstered at the left side of his belt, and nodded toward the door. “Sure. Let’s go.”
We headed out of the taverno, crossed the lobby, and out the StarrComm-building door. Halfway across the lobby he surreptitiously pulled his gun from its holster and stuffed it and his right hand into his side jacket pocket. Former drinking buddies or not, he obviously didn’t trust me very far. “Which landing cradle are you in?” he asked as I headed toward the nearest slideway, which happened to be headed north.
“You can read the number for yourself when we get there,” I grunted, looking surreptitiously around for inspiration. This particular slideway didn’t seem well populated, and it didn’t take a genius to see why: instead of being taken to the main bulk of the docking squares, we were headed toward what appeared to be a maintenance area.
A fact which wasn’t lost on Fulbright. “I hope you’re not trying to pull something
on your old pal, Jordie,” he warned, stepping up close behind me and pressing the muzzle of his gun into my back. Even through the concealing jacket material I imagined it felt very cold. “Because I wouldn’t like that. I wouldn’t like that at all.”
“You don’t think I’d put a hot ship down in one of the regular cradles, do you?” I countered, looking down at my feet. The slideway was mainly solid, but just ahead on our right was one of a number of holes where small patches of the material had worn off or torn away at the edge of the moving belt. This particular tear was roughly triangular, leaving a gap about ten centimeters long and five wide through which I could see the grillwork of the underlying support and drive system zipping past. Every half second or so a bright blue light winked past, probably a glow that helped mark the edge of the slideway at night.
“So where is it?” Fulbright demanded.
“Patience, James, patience,” I said, gazing down at the triangular tear and the grillwork underneath and doing a quick mental calculation. It would be tight, not to mention destructive, but it should work.
I half turned my head and gestured toward my jacket. “My phone’s vibing,” I told him. “Okay if I answer it?”
Out of the corner of my eye I caught his frown. “Leave it,” he ordered.
“Not recommended,” I told him mildly. “My partner will come looking for me if I don’t answer. You don’t want to mess with him. Certainly not for a measly five thousand commarks.”
Once again, I could almost watch the gears turning in his head. He’d never actually met Ixil—we’d always been careful to keep Ixil in a low-profile position when dealing with gangs and their antialien biases—but I’d planted enough hints with Fulbright that he had a pretty good idea of my partner’s capabilities. I waited patiently, letting him work it out for himself, not in any particular hurry. We were starting to get into the maintenance and supply areas now, where the only people around were generally working inside the various buildings. Working, moreover, with the kind of heavy machinery that would effectively drown out the sounds of trouble, up to and including gunshots. The deeper we got into this area, the better I liked it.