Shadowkill sq-3, page 30
part #3 of Shadith's quest Series
His eyes laughed at her, his teeth were very white between the black beard and mustache. “Be my guest,” he said. “My fee is large enough to embarrass even me.”
“I doubt that, but I’ll take your offer.”
“No no, this is a win that will make legends, Autumn Rose. There’ll be stories about it after we’re both dead.” He sobered. “You have your credit bracelet with you?”
“Naturally. When the count is finished, wake me. I want to transfer a third of the net to Helvetia, the rest I’ll bank here. I have to pay my backers.”
“Ah. I see. It will be several hours. Sleep well, you’ve earned it.” He left.
Hadluk winked at her, followed him out.
##
Kikun wiggled his ears.
Rose snorted. “All right, so I was exaggerating a little. It’s nice to have and I don’t like being cheated. And I knew about the credit-link when I said all that-so what? I meant it. In essence. If the credit-link weren’t available, I’d walk away without a quiver.”
“All right.”
She yawned. “Let’s get some sleep. We’ve got a few hours while they finish the count.”
“I think we ought to talk about…”
“Later, Kuna, later. Plenty of time.”
19
Autumn Rose pulled the door shut, came in sliding the credit bracelet back on her wrist. “That’s done.” She flung herself into a chair. “Clearing up out there. Getting ready to put all that metal away.” She checked her ringchron. “Two hours till dawn.” She held out her arm. “Mark me, Kuna. I need to know where you are.”
“Why?”
“Just do it, hmm? I’ll explain in a minute. Hurry, we haven’t got much time.”
He widened his eyes, flicked his ears. If she wasn’t going to talk, nothing he could do to make her. He looked past her.
Grandmother Ghost the Lael-Lenox was in the corner sitting on Otter’s back, giggling in a way she had when something was about to hit him in the face. She wasn’t going to talk either.
Sighing with exasperation, he nuzzled Rose’s arm, felt her heat up and tremble. That wasn’t something he wanted to think about so he didn’t.
“All right, that’s done. What now?”
“Hadluk and juhFeyn should still be out there. Take a look and see, hmm?”
He looked at Grandmother Ghost. She nodded. “I don’t have to look,” he said. “They are.”
“Good. Kuna, stun them and tuck them away under one of those benches. We can’t let juhFeyn button up this place, we need to leave without a major fuss. I have to get ready for Barracuda, so I can’t do it.”
“Barracuda?”
“Uh-huh. Second break, he made his move. Came on to me, strong.” She grinned. “Annoyed Sunhawk which I wasn’t unhappy about, you better believe. I made like I was fluttered and flattered by his… um… masculine force. Made an assignation with him for after the count. He wouldn’t come here, the jerk, so. I’m supposed to go across and knock at his door. Twenty minutes on. See?”
“Nice when they do it to themselves.”
“Uh-huh. Got your stunner?”
“Rose.”
“Sorry. So go, will you?”
##
Hadluk was stacking the last of the gold coins on the second cart when Kikun stepped into the Gameroom; juhFeyn was moving around the room, straightening a pillow or two, checking to make sure the maids had swept properly and all the glass straws, spoons, forks, napkins and other paraphernalia had been cleared away.
Kikun stood in the shallow recess of the doorway, waited until both had their backs to him, lifted the stunner. For a moment he couldn’t touch the sensor, all he could see was Sai falling and falling, hitting the floor, hitting the wharf, falling into the water. His hand shook. Grandmother Ghost slid a hand through the door, pinched him hard. He moved his thumb, hit juhFeyn first, then Hadluk. Then scooted across to them to make sure they were still alive, Grandmother Ghost clucking after him.
The pulse was strong under his fingers. He closed his eyes.
Grandmother Ghost patted him gently, he could feel her soft hands touching him:
All right, baby, all right. Cum-ya, cum-ya, Gramma’s chile.
He got to his feet, began moving the bodies under the nearest bench.
19
Rose turned slowly. “How do I look?”
She’d washed the coloring agent from her hair; it was blonde and shining, hanging loose about her shoulders like a spill of liquid gold. Her face was fair and flushed with excitement, her eyes were blue again, sparkling with glee and malice. The shining black dress clung to her torso, swirled about her ankles.
“Barracuda will be enchanted.”
She laughed, it was a wild sound, rather like the cough of a cat on the hunt, big cat, lion lady, golden and ready. Kikun’s ears twitched and he was very glad he was dinhast and too alien to be her prey.
She looked at her ringchron. “Time. Let’s go.”
##
Barracuda opened the door. “Lovely,” he said. “You surprise me.”
“I hope so,” she said and moved toward him, forcing him to step aside.
Kikun tapped the trigger sensor, caught the man as he fell.
“Right.” Rose straightened. “Get that tray, Kuna, faster we move, the better.”
##
By the time he got back from the kitchen, Rose had stripped out of the dress, changed into tunic and trousers. She’d gone through Barracuda’s suite, cleaned the place, including the case with the shielded com. “I thought I’d leave most of my stuff and clear him out. Might confuse folks about who did what to whom. For a while anyway. Anything moving out there?”
“No. Nothing till we hit the, pad out back.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
20
Thirty hours later, tired and grimy, but with everything they’d gone in for, they were in their ship on the isthmus and Autumn Rose was talking with Digby.
“We’ve got some strong leads and a prisoner. He’s Omphalos, Kikun says, though his papers say Mimishay Foundation. Kikun thinks the oof’narc knows where Shadith is and the Dyslaera. We’re going to talk to him in a little bit.”
“Wait. If he’s really Omphalos, you won’t be able to touch him with what you’ve got on that ship. Bring him here.”
“Now?”
“Fast as you can kick it. You can do stasis?”
“There’s a box on board.”
“Good, Keep him under, you don’t want him suiciding.”
“That oof’narc? He wouldn’t…”
“Listen, Rose. I don’t care what kind of jerk he is or how much he loves himself, if he’s pushed to the wall, he’ll be dead before you know what’s happening.”
“Right. I didn’t go to all this trouble to waste him. See you soon.”
Unprisoner 1: First Leg On The Shadow Hunt
1
Weersyll 2 was a small rocky world inhabited by lichen and worms.
Weersyll the star was a hot greenish-yellow dwarf out in the middle of nowhere like a spark that popped from a fire into the middle of a black rug.
After the slavetrading debacle, when Omphalos acquired Bolodo Neyuregg Ltd. through heavily insulated surrogates, the reconstituted Company set up headquarters at the Bolodo substation on Weersyll-there wasn’t a populated world in Known Space that would have them and they couldn’t operate out of a Clandestine Hole.
The new set of Execs made the best of what they had; it wasn’t bad. Weersyll might be in the middle of nowhere, but it was also equidistant from three clusters thick with planetbearing stars, clusters undergoing an explosion of development and lusting for cheap labor they could kick out once the job was done. Ships buzzed in and out every hour of the day and night, customers looking for specific types of laborers, transports bringing in cadres who’d finished their stints, taking other cadres from the domes to the worlds who’d bought their services, still more bringing in new contractees-surplus men and women who preferred the security of the cadres to starving, convicts dumped into bondservice by one world or another, people on the run from some danger or other, seeking safety in the anonymity of a labor cadre. Names didn’t count here. There weren’t even numbers. They were listed by cell prints and vended that way.
Omphalos hadn’t bothered themselves about what happened to Shadith once they stripped what they thought were her memories and handed her over to the Contract market. All his annoying them got Ginny no farther than that. It did get him her cell print-and sneers behind their privacy shields, he didn’t have to see their ugly faces to know that.
After he’d collected a Pilot, a pair of mercs, and a Sikkul Paem for drive crew at Ilkabahar Pit, Ginny headed for Weersyll and the Records of Bolodo Neyuregg Ltd. He spent the insplit time laboring in the workshop, retooling a number of the EYEs, constructing and programming specialized ticks and borers. He had everything he needed for the work, all the tools and materiel. The Omphalites at Mimishay had spread themselves on this ship; they drooled when they thought of Bol Mutiar.
On the fifteenth day the ship surfaced at Teegah’s Limit and began moving sublight toward Weersyll 2.
2
A gnat among the swarming transports, the ship slid into one of the outermost slots of the orbitpark and settled to wait.
Three hours later there was a tentative flicker on his screen, then a harried face appeared in the center cell. “You haven’t logged in.”
Ginny waved the Pilot to silence and answered himself. “This is the Caprisi Kumar out of Blagn. I claim emergency status, glitch in the splitter. My engine crew are working on it at the moment. The chief is sure the matter can be rectified without outside help, so I have no reason at the moment to bother you down there. I just want a place to perch until the repairs are effected. You may have noticed there aren’t that many systems about.” He rambled on for several minutes longer repeating in other words and a dull monotone what he’d just said, watching the Controller’s eyes glaze over.
Pushed to desperation, the man interrupted him. “Right. Emergency. Be sure you let us know if you’re going to move again.” The screen went gray.
Ginny smiled.
The Pilot raised her blonde brows. “That was easy.”
He slid out of the Captain’s Chair, stood with his hands on the arm. “It is all Traffic Control can do to keep the incoming and outgoing ships apart and at the same time juggle the shuttle slots. They are not about to challenge anyone who provides a reasonable excuse. I will be busy the next few hours, Mertoyl, same story for anyone who gets bothered by our presence.”
3
He transferred to the workstation, watched the shuttle traffic carefully, chose a moment when the confusion gave even him a headache and dropped a shell to the surface, its tiny fields lost in the soup. It curved through the thin cold air, went to ground over the horizon from the headquarters complex and the clustered mud-colored domes of the Levy Pens.
He shut it down and waited. One hour. Three. No reaction.
He cracked the shell, sent the EYEs flitting toward the Complex, ticks and borers piggy-backed on them.
The EYEs were tiny and relatively slow. It was nine days before they reached their target.
He spent a day exploring the outside of the massive headquarters building and another day insinuating the EYEs through outvents.
Down and down he sent them until they reached the memory banks of the Company kephalos.
For four more days he explored the hardware until he was sure he knew the configuration, then he flew the EYEs where he wanted them and offloaded the ticks and the borers.
And waited.
Nine hours later data began flowing into his kephalos, keyed by Shadith’s cell print. A few clucks and a click and the flow stopped.
He triggered the secondary programs in his tiny vermin army, shifted to the Captain’s Chair and called the Pilot to the bridge. “Be ready,” he said. “Say nothing, just take us out on the route I planned.”
He called Control. “Glitch repaired. Departing now.” The screen lit again. “Wait. What sector?”
“Take grid?”
“Send.”
He tapped the sensor that sent his proposed exit route. He’d worked it out with considerable care, keeping to the least busy sector. It meant he headed nearly straight up, hitting the Limit at a wide angle from the orbital plane. Made navigation difficult once he was in the ’split, but it was more likely to be approved without argument.
“Path approved. Do not deviate, three transport convoys will be surfacing within the next five hours; approach the ecliptic and you will be warned then blown away.”
“Information received. Will not deviate.”
4
Ginbiryol Seyirshi sat in the Captain’s Chair and smiled at the image of the world dropping away behind him.
In about thirty hours Bolodo Neyuregg Ltd would be out of business again. And Helvetia would be most annoyed if Weersyll accessed it at any time during that thirty hours-which was more than likely considering how busy the place was.
There is a disease about, he thought as he watched the sphere shrink, warn your sexpartners, you posy whore.
Miralys / Digby 2
1
Miralys stormed into the room, threw the flake on a table that appeared at her side, politely provided by the naked man lolling in the bubble hanging under the dome.
Digby stretched out on his stomach among flurries of bright cushions, propped his chin on his palms, and contemplated the Dyslaerin. “That’s a major snit, Miralee, meluv.”
“Read that!” She slapped the table hard enough to make the flake bounce.
As a concession to public form, Digby closed his eyes a moment and pretended to scan what he already knew, then opened them wide. “So? Isn’t it about what we expected? Except, perhaps, their rather excessive optimism as to the sum they’re prepared to accept.”
Miralys snorted, looked round for a place to sit. “I’m in no mood for your games, Digby.”
“All right.” His exaggerated sigh blew like a gale through the veils undulating about the room. “A good host honors his guest’s grouches, even when said guest is self-invited.”
Miralys gave the chair that appeared a hefty nudge with her thigh, then sat, lowering herself with undiminished wariness. “Better adjust your acid levels, Dig, you’re beginning to sound bitchy. What do I do? That lot threw in so many cutouts, it’d take a century to trace them back.”
He acquired clothing and sat up. “I assume you don’t intend to pay the ransom.”
“No. Only to eat the bastards raw.” She curled her lips up and back, baring her tearing teeth in the Dyslaera threat-grin.
“Would you be willing to stall for a while, go through the motions of getting the cash together?”
“Why?”
“Late last night I got a call from Autumn Rose. No no, she doesn’t know where your Ciocan is, but she’s got her hands on someone who may.”
“I thought she was…”
“No, Kikun got them both clear. Seems they overlooked him.”
She scowled at him. “How long have you know this?”
“A while.”
“And you didn’t bother telling me.”
“No.”
Her ears flattened against her skull, she started to get up, then, with visible effort she controlled her anger and resettled herself in the chair. “Why?”
“Kikun identified the enemy. Omphalos.”
“And?”
“Omphalos has ties in places even I can’t reach. Until this moment no one here knew but me.”
“I see. And?”
“One. Don’t talk about this. Two. Rose is bringing a package for me; when it’s unraveled, I should know a lot more. A good possibility, I should have the location of Rohant and the others. Travel time’s around four weeks, so you’ll need to stall. Five million Helvetian gelders, could you raise that if you wanted to?”
“Not from Voallts Korlach. If I went to the Family…” She extruded her claws, sheathed them. “We don’t pay ransom.” Her ears flattened against her head, she brought her claws out again, sank them into the simul-sides of the chair. “If I were serious about this, I’d have to take the Korlach public, bring outsiders in. No!”
“Tss, Mira-lili, you could start negotiations. Make it look right, but they don’t have to go anywhere. Send off your reply, say you’re going to need time, then start looking for buyers.”
“Don’t have to look.”
“What?” Digby snapped his eyes wide. “Someone has approached you. I hadn’t heard…”
Her ears came up, twitched. “I am shocked, Digby all-knowing. Sssah!”
“Don’t tease, Miree me-luv.” He brooded a moment, then smiled. “Omphalos. It has to be.”
“I couldn’t say. The approach was through brokers, Vidloeg Gavinda of Helvetia.”
“Hmm. Using Rohant as a lever into Voallts Korlach. Right. That gives the answer to how you’re going to stall. Start talking with Vidloeg Gavinda.”
Miralys’ ears flattened again, her lips curled back, baring her tearing teeth. She hissed with rage.
“Restrain your instincts, Toerfeles. Go home and get ready to ride and make sure none of your people so much as sneezes beyond your compound walls. You don’t want outsiders noticing, hmm?”
She stared at him, gold eyes blind with fury, then she bounded to her feet, scooped up the flake, and stalked out.
Digby clicked tongue against teeth, then faded from the bubble, sinking into the circuits of his kephalos as he began to ready his House for the Peeling of the Chom.
Shadow Running
1
