Authors: Ross Harrison
‘Why are you
telling me now?’
I took a deep
breath and tried to bring my mind back to the present. ‘Like I said. It’s about
time. But there is more.’
‘What?’ He couldn’t
keep the hesitation out of his voice. I was sure he wanted nothing more than to
shout down the phone, ‘I’ve got you!’
‘I have DeMartino.’
It felt strange finally telling the truth about Lucy and then lying about that.
‘If you want him back, and you want me, you’ll have to come yourself. You’ve
traced the call by now. I’d recommend arming yourself.’
I sent through the
image I’d been looking at. Then disconnected the call.
Well that was that.
I wasn’t sure what was going to happen now, but I knew my next move. I had to
get to DeMartino. Help get those girls free. I forced myself to concentrate on
that.
I squelched back to
the bike. Heaved it up and climbed on. On the way back, I stopped at the
train’s wreckage. I could hear crying from the nearest car. It was lying on its
side. There was no banging, but the girls probably knew there was no point. I
doubted it would be the off-worlders trapped inside crying.
I laid the bike
down again and pulled myself up onto the top of the car. Or, technically, the
left side of it. There was a sliding door halfway along that was chained up and
padlocked. I bashed the padlock off with my gun, which prompted screams and
more crying. After pulling the chain off, I set about trying to pull the door
open without falling in. It wasn’t easy and I decided that as long as it was
wide enough for them to climb out one by one then that was good enough.
When I looked
inside, the first face I saw in the shaft of slightly less dark darkness was
familiar. It was the girl who’d stuck her fingers up at me through the glass
floor. She looked scared but defiant. I didn’t like to think what would happen
to a girl like that if these people were allowed to get back to business.
‘Come on,’ I said.
Reached my hand down for her. She stared at the hand for a few seconds. Didn’t
take it. ‘Okay, well, these guys have nearly finished mopping up Webster’s men.
Then they’ll come back for you. Put you in cages. Do unpleasant things to you.
Then sell you. So you just wait for them here.’
I went to pull my
hand back out, but another hand grabbed it. Out of the shadows stepped another
familiar face. It was the beautiful waitress the gorilla had come here for. I
heaved her out. She was heavier than she looked and it hurt my shoulder. But
eventually, with the other girls pushing her up, she was free. She helped me
pull up the next girl and then I decided they could take it from there.
‘Get to that
flyer,’ I told the waitress and pointed. ‘There are more girls over at the
shipping containers. We’ll get them free and then get you all out in that. There’s
at least two guns on board, but I’d just shut the doors and wait if I were you.
Can any of the girls fly it?’
She stuck her head
back through the door and asked, but shook her head when she stood up again.
‘Then you better
hope your friend from the club keeps himself alive. Otherwise you’ll be walking
back to the city.’
I climbed back down
to the bike. Pulled it up and got on. As I revved the engine, I looked back up
at the girls. The waitress gave a little nod of thanks. Then turned back to
help get the others out.
There was still
some gunfire in the distance, but a lot less now. My guess was the last of
Webster’s men had been cornered somewhere by the last of the off-worlders. But
whichever side won, there wouldn’t be many men left. So, really, whichever side
won this battle, the off-worlders still won the war. They’d just send more
people and take over whatever was left.
The way back to
where I’d left the gorilla was straight and easy enough. The bike slid around a
little in the mud, but at least I wasn’t being shot at. I decided to leave it
where he had. Walk the rest of the way to the containers. Perhaps I was being
overly cautious, but I didn’t want to announce my arrival. I realised the comm
device was still stuck to my head. DeMartino wouldn’t need the sound of a
bike’s engine to tell him where I was. He could pinpoint me anyway. I didn’t
need it any more. I dropped it into the mud.
I didn’t know how
far the walk to the containers was. Perhaps a half mile. It was an unpleasant
half mile. The soft, squelching mud wasn’t easy to walk through even as shallow
as it was, and the rain had soaked me through long ago.
Lucy’s eyes were
staring at me again. They hadn’t really left me since I’d been sat in that
interrogation room this morning. Watching me. She knew what I’d done. What I
was doing now. How it would end. How it had to end. I thought I could see how
it would end too, but I didn’t want to think about it.
Eventually I
reached the containers. I wondered if Sixteen and the gorilla were still alive.
Had they met up with DeMartino? By now, they should have freed the girls. Why
hadn’t I seen them? I guessed there was no reason for them to come back out to
where I was. They didn’t know there was a flyer on the other side of the train.
Maybe they’d found another somewhere further in.
I pulled the
automatic from my pocket. Checked the clip and chamber. Sixteen plus one. I
smiled at that. Some kind of poetry.
I
slipped between two of the rusting containers. Most of them were old. Some were
rusted so badly that there was more hole than metal. Others were newer. I
wondered what Webster used them for. Other than girls. There were no oceans to
cross here. And there were easier methods anyway. Maybe he just got them cheap.
I didn’t care.
Hoping I wouldn’t
be taken by surprise by Sixteen or the gorilla, I flicked the safety off.
Gripped the gun tightly. It was even darker in the midst of the containers. I
could barely see more than five feet. The rain didn’t help. It echoed off the
hollow metal husks. Made everything seem deceptively peaceful. But it hid my
footsteps.
Any minute now,
that peace was going to be violently broken.
In the dark, moving
as slowly as I was, it took about two minutes. The first sign I saw was a
slight haze. It rose over one of the black rectangles ahead in a gentle, fuzzy
dome. Then it moved about a foot. It was a flashlight. I worked out which way
it was facing and went the other way around the container.
The rippling
puddles in the mud began to glitter as I drew closer. I heard a sniff. I’d
reached them. The light creeping round the container wasn’t direct. The
flashlight was pointed the other way. I took a deep breath and gripped the
pistol even tighter. Then I slowly moved my face to the edge of the container. Peeked
around it, trying to keep as much of my head concealed as I could.
A couple of seconds
was enough. I pulled my head back, unseen. Three men. Two of them wore heavy
armour. There were two flashlights, in fact. Both attached to those men’s
shoulders. The man in the middle was faced in my direction.
I thought for a
moment. Then reached inside my coat. Unclipped the badge from my pocket. Hoping
the light metal wouldn’t immediately arc back down into the ground in front of
me, I took aim over the container and threw it hard. A couple of seconds later,
I heard a light tap. It seemed to have gone far enough.
Around the side of
the container, I heard movement. Squelching in the mud. The light fluctuated a
little. I peeked around the side again. All three were looking the other way.
Expecting someone to come from there.
I looked up to let
the rain splash my face for a second. Then took a deep breath and stepped out.
The armoured men
flanked the third. I shot the one on the left first. Because they hadn’t seen
me, I was able to aim carefully. I hit him in the small open space between his
helmet and neck armour. As he dropped, the other spun and dropped to one knee
at the same time. I’d expected that, so it didn’t work. I used the time to aim
properly again and shot him through the cheek.
Two shots, two
kills. I wasn’t a bad shot when bullets weren’t flying back at me.
The first
flashlight was buried in the mud, but the second shone at an angle into the
air. Bounced off one of the containers and lit the twenty-foot-square open area.
Perfectly illuminated the gun pointed at me. The fancy suit. The out of place
cigar.
‘You made it,’
DeMartino said. ‘When you didn’t show, I thought something had happened. Good
to see you’re okay.’
‘I stopped off at
Webster’s mansion on the way,’ I said. Kept my gun level with his chest and
stepped further out into the open.
‘Oh? And what did Mr.
Webster have to say?’
‘Not a lot. He was
already dead. The off-worlders got to Holt. Turned him. He shot the old man in
the back.’
‘You were right
about Officer Holt, then. Dirty. Easy to turn.’
DeMartino took the
stubby cigar out of his mouth and dropped it in the mud. Under the pattering of
the rain, I heard it hiss for a second.
‘So what now?’ he
asked.
‘Now you answer a
couple of questions.’
‘Oh. Playing
detective again?’
‘Why is it that I
saw a familiar face outside the mansion? A man who tried to kill me in club
WET. A man who ran. A man who didn’t use the front door, so had to have gone
for the back. Where you were. You remember telling me you killed him, right?’
‘Well, I thought it
might seem suspicious if I told you I’d let him go. And I couldn’t very well kill
a man who owes me six hundred credits from last week’s poker game, could I?’
‘This is just a
guess,’ I said, trying not to let the anger overtake me. ‘But the UPSF teams
aren’t coming, are they?’
‘No. That would be
somewhat counterproductive to our taking over operations here, wouldn’t you
say?’
I took a moment to
take a deep, steady breath and swallow the pricking heat back down.
‘You did a good job
with their armour,’ I nodded at the dead men. ‘And the flyer.’
‘Good enough,’ he dismissed.
‘Good enough to fool backwater… That is, fine colonials such as yourself, who
are sorely out of touch with modernity. You know, not even Lawrence thought to
check my credentials with the UPSF. One call could have made things a lot
harder for us. But we just turn up in a convincing flyer and show them shiny
plastic ID cards, and they think their gods have landed.’
‘All this deception
for that data chip?’
‘We couldn’t let
Webster use it against us. We had to get it first, before he realised we were
done with him. It can incriminate us. And besides, there’s a lot of valuable information
on there we can use.’
‘And you thought I
had the chip. You thought that was why Webster wanted me.’
‘Partly. Our
sources had seen you hanging around Webster junior. Like you were stalking him.
They found out that you fancied yourself a private detective. We thought you
might be useful. You were, eventually.’
‘So who are you
really? The boss? Webster’s Orion contact?’ Not that it particularly mattered.
‘I’m just the guy
they sent to shut Webster down. His legitimate mining got in the way of business.
It didn’t need to be this ugly.’
‘And the girl?’ He
looked at me blankly. ‘She had a revolver. I should have registered sooner. She
said she killed one of Webster’s guys and took his gun. But they all carry
these.’ I waved the automatic.
He smiled. ‘Not bad
for average. This was my first stop after I arrived.’ He idly waved his hand
around the clearing. ‘I thought if I freed one of Webster’s girls, she’d have a
better chance of finding the data chip than us. She’d know things. She’d have
heard things. She’d know people. And of course, her hatred of Webster should
have made her easy to use. She also helped out in getting my other little agent
free.’ He smiled again.
‘You gave her that recording,’
I said. Then I laughed.
‘Yes. Hilarious.’
His smile wasn’t so sincere this time. ‘Webster junior arrived just after she
came out of your apartment… But am I right in assuming now that she took the
data chip out of the barmaid?’ I nodded. ‘Yeah. When you told me she’d been an
experiment, there was a click, but I couldn’t quite place it. And she told me
the girl didn’t have anything… If only I’d looked in Lawrence’s evidence box,
I’d have seen the knife I gave her and I’d have known right then. She took the
chip to Van Graaf because she didn’t trust me, and thought he could do more
with it.’ He snorted, with little humour.
‘Maybe you’re more
transparent than you think. She’s smart.’
‘Well it doesn’t
matter now. It’s all a mess of an operation, but the fact of the matter is that
the data chip is now in our possession.’
‘And where is she
now?’
‘Dead. Rotting in
the mud over there somewhere.’ He flipped his hand off the side. ‘I found her
snooping around the containers. Trying to find the ones with the girls. It all
looks the same, I suppose. She didn’t notice me. So I stepped up and slid my
gun all the way into that pretty mouth.’
The anger was again
in danger of overcoming me. My vision was becoming tinted with red. It was what
he was pushing for. I did my best to calm down, if only for that reason.
‘I liked the way
she tried to fight back,’ he continued. He noticed the anger. ‘Oh, and those big
round eyes looking up at me when I pulled the trigger…’
‘I’m going to kill
you, DeMartino,’ I told him as calmly as I could.
‘I like you, Mr.
Mason. You could have worked for us.’
‘Jack has a prior
engagement,’ said a voice from the shadows. The man with a first name for a
last name stepped into the open. ‘He’s got a cell waiting in Anshan.’
DeMartino clearly
wasn’t sure what to do.
‘Detective,’ he
said simply.
‘No need to keep
playing your little game, DeMartino,’ Lawrence said. ‘Even if I hadn’t heard
enough from your own mouth, there is protocol. I may have neglected it when you
arrived, but when Jack told me he had you hostage, I had to inform the UPSF.
Imagine my surprise when they told me they had no such agent.’