Death Sentence (4 page)

"We all have our problems," Kelly said. "If the
Adler
has the key to a War-Starter on board, that
has
to take priority over the details of how an agent died in the line of duty--especially one who sacrificed his life in the act of
getting
that data
to
us."

"Have you made us feel as good as you do yet?" Hannah asked. "Or is there more?"

"No," said Kelly. "That's the whole brief. That's all."

"That's enough," said Jamie.

Kelly smiled. "Do you want to know the real reason the ventilation is so bad in these conference rooms? It's so we'll all have an excuse for sweating so hard in meetings like this one." She checked the time. "They'll have the
Sholto
and the
Adler
prepped for launch in three hours. Be ready by then."

THREE

HURRY AND WAIT

"Okay," said Hannah as she walked up to Jamie's cubicle. "Got your queries done?"

"Yeah, for what they're worth," said Jamie. "Sometimes a job gets easy because it's nearly impossible. We haven't the faintest idea what Wilcox was carrying, or anything else about the case. What was I supposed to ask?"

"Point taken. So what did you do?"

"I queried for all data on Metrannans and the planet Metran, a full bio and service record of Wilcox, a copy of his mission briefing, Vogel's autopsy of Wilcox, plans of the
Irene Adler
, and all logs and records of the ship."

Hannah grinned. "Great minds thinking alike, I guess. I went for all that as well--plus survey information on whatever conflicts the Metrannans have been involved with in the last thousand years or so."

"I should have thought of that one," Jamie said. Standard operating procedure dictated that once BSI Special Agents were summoned from the Bullpen and assigned to a case, they should expect to depart at once. Normally, the standard was an hour. Hannah and Jamie were catching a break; they had three whole hours to work with.

There was logic behind the one-hour standard. The minimum possible travel time between two planets in separate star systems was measured in days or even weeks. But practically every Bullpen case was time-critical--and the mere fact that Wilcox had been dead for months didn't change that in the least. If he had been killed trying to warn them of some danger that was months off back then, they might have mere days or hours left.

The solution to the problem, or at least the BSI doctrine meant to solve it, had been drummed into Jamie's head from the first day of training: Sit in your Bullpen cubicle and bombard the datastores with questions. Scoop up as much raw data as possible and pipe it to the ship you're going to boost out on. Then spend every waking moment available on the outbound trip digging through the gigabytes of data you had generated with your queries, trying to find the one-one-hundredth of a percent of it that would actually be of some use. It wasn't an elegant process, but it worked.

"Well, we've got what we're going to get," Hannah said. "Time to get moving. We've got some special equipment to draw for this mission."

"What kind of equipment?" Jamie asked suspiciously. There had been something in her tone of voice that warned him that the joke, whatever it was, was going to be on him.

"You'll find out soon enough."

"And you're having fun being mysterious, so it won't do me any good to ask 'soon enough' for what, will it?"

"No it won't. Come on, Special Agent Mendez. Quit your stalling and let's move."

Jamie sighed. Whatever it was, Hannah wasn't going to spill the beans until she was good and ready. "Do you ever get used to it?" he asked Hannah as he secured his cubicle, his tone of voice more serious. "Will
I
ever get used to it?"

"Get used to what?" she asked.

He opened up his locker and pulled out the duffel bag hanging there. "This, among other things," he said. "Being packed and ready to go at all times. An hour ago we were hanging around the office shuffling papers and trading rumors--and now we're scheduled to boost out of here in two hours and prevent a war--and we're not even sure who would be fighting whom, or over what. And we've got a few days between now and when we get to Metran to turn into experts on--on
whatever
it is, so we can deal with it all when we get there." He hoisted the duffel bag up, and stepped out of his cubicle, Hannah right beside him, hoisting her own duffel onto her shoulder.

"Look on the bright side," she said. "Our ride isn't quite ready, so today we have two extra hours."

"If that's your idea of a bright side, we're going to have to talk," said Jamie as they headed out of the Bullpen. "But seriously, you didn't answer my question. You've been at this longer than I have. Does it ever get less disorienting?"

Hannah thought it over for a minute. "No," she said. "Not exactly. But you get
used
to being disoriented. At least I have." Her voice went quiet. "Though I can think of a few senior agents that never have."

"Me too." There were a few lost souls among the population of the Bullpen. They did their jobs, and they were good agents--but something in their eyes hinted that they had seen too much, been exposed to a few more completely alien things than they should have. They made Jamie think of jigsaw puzzles that had been put back together with a few pieces missing, holes in the picture that could be guessed at but never known for certain. They coped as best they could--sometimes in ways that were not altogether wise. "Let's hope I don't get that way."

"Agreed," said Hannah. "I don't want to get partnered with Boris Kosolov--or someone twitchy enough to be doing an imitation of him."

BSI Special Agent Boris Kosolov did not so much speak a variety of languages as much as prove himself equally adept at mangling all of them. Somehow, despite work habits that were so haphazard as to be undetectable, he always closed his cases and completed his assignments. But it was far from the first time Jamie had gotten the message
don't wind up like him.

They made their way through the labyrinth of corridors, entered an elevator, and headed down to the outer decks. Jamie punched at the button for the Main Docking Complex, but Hannah pushed the button for the floor above it, marked ARMORY, ADMIN & GENERAL SERVICES. "We've got that special equipment to collect," she said.

"And you're having so much fun not telling me what it is that there's no point in my asking again."

"You know me too well," said Hannah with a grin as the elevator door opened. "The thing is, I've dealt with the Metrannans before," she went on. "That's probably part of the reason Kelly dropped this particular case in our laps." She led him along a corridor full of glass doors with very official placards posted beside them. The first doors they passed were to larger rooms with signs that read ARMORY, ALTERNATE COMM GEAR, ENVIRONMENTAL GEAR, and SPECIALTY TRANSPORT.

"Go out on a case, and you learn a few things that aren't always emphasized enough in the datastores, or aren't even in them at all," Hannah said. "Details get overlooked. Like, maybe, yes, you can eat the local food--but it's normally odorless. If it smells good, it's gone bad. There's a high-gravity planet where you don't dare use an exoskel walker to get around because the walkers resemble a local species of giant carnivorous pseudoarthropod, and it's a deadly insult to the locals. But there's a low-gee planet where the local species
always
use the equivalent of exowalkers or lift chairs, even though they aren't needed. And you better use one too if you don't want to be arrested for devolutionary behavior--walking on your own two feet is considered animalistic and degenerate."

They turned a corner and kept walking. "And then there are the Metrannans," said Hannah. "
Very
concerned with appropriate behavior and appearance. You don't want to appear disrespectful by showing up dressed the wrong way. They don't expect you to wear Metrannan garb. You quite literally don't have the legs for it. Metrannans have four. However, they do expect the
equivalent
dress for your species. And the Metrannans
will
know if you show up in inappropriate clothes. They have a very elaborate database that covers just about every known race and the forms, styles, meanings, and rankings of any piece of clothing or decoration or body paint or whatever any being might use. They're well-versed in the dress of all sort of human cultures. In other words, Special Agent Mendez, you can't just wander around the landscape in your usual flight-suit and flak-jacket outfit. Not on this mission." She stopped in front of a door marked MEN'S TAILOR.

Jamie looked through the glass doors at a vast room in which every sort of costume, from kimonos to tuxedos to academic gowns, was hanging in the racks. "Wait a minute! I've got a business suit in my duffel bag. I'm not going to play dress-up just to keep--"

"Yes you are," she said, "because it's necessary for the case, and because I know for a fact that the suit you keep in that duffel bag has a missing button and a tear in the lining and it stopped being wrinkle-proof about five missions ago, and because there isn't time to argue. Now get in there for your fitting. They have your measurements on file, of course, but it's always best to double-check the fit. So go."

"What are they going to make me wear, exactly?"

"I don't know. The tailor shop has its
own
database of what you ought to wear when."

"So I have to wear whatever the tailors think the Metrannans think humans ought to wear? At whatever sort of occasion it happens to be? Suppose they've got their database wrong and they think I'm supposed to dress like an expatriated Zulu warrior?"

Hannah grinned. "Look on the bright side. The first time I dealt with a Metrannan, he was doing his best to dress like a human--not easy, considering he had four arms and four legs and eyes in the back of his head. But he tried. Believe me, you ought to be glad they don't expect us to dress like them. Anyway, I'll be next door in the women's tailor shop. I'll be as quick as I can. Have fun."

If there was in fact a male shopping aversion gene, forty-five minutes later, Jamie was sure he had it. Not that he had done any actual shopping, in the sense of browsing or selecting or even looking. Instead the staff in the clothier's section had treated him like a poorly designed tailor's dummy, prying him in and out of check-fit garments, slipping shirts and jackets and shoes on and off him with a complete disregard for whether or not he was cooperating. They might not have been pleasant, but they were at least efficient, and they ushered him firmly out of the shop almost before he knew what was happening. He was still carrying nothing but his duffel bag, but the tailor shop manager assured him that everything that had been selected for him would be aboard ship by the time they boosted.

Hannah wasn't there when he came out. He checked the time. Roughly ninety-five minutes until they were cleared to boost--and Commander Kelly would not be much interested in the reason why if they were still on-station in ninety-six minutes. He decided to give Hannah five minutes, then head for the ship. But it only took two minutes of cooling his heels to realize why the time between briefing and boost was so short. It allowed less time for worrying.

By the start of the fourth minute, Jamie was twitchy enough to jump out of his skin. Hannah emerged, looking calm and self-possessed, moving at a pace that could only be described as leisurely. "So," she said, coolly glancing at her wrist display, "it looks like we've got a little time to kill. Let's go see how they're coming on the ship."

She walked away, without looking back to see if he was coming. Jamie stepped lively to catch up, not sure if he wanted to yell at Hannah for teasing him or laugh at himself for worrying too much. Probably Hannah had set the whole prank up to get his mind off larger worries. He
needed
to get the big problems out of his head, if only so he could concentrate on sweating the small stuff.

After all, it was the small stuff that was going to keep them alive--or kill them, if they got it wrong.

He hurried after her.

FOUR

DOWN IS UP

Hannah looked out the viewport of BSI HQ's Main Docking Complex and at the pair of fat cones, docked nose to nose, that hung there in the darkness. A system of bracing pylons held the two little ships firmly to the station, and an access tunnel led from the side air lock of the closer vehicle back toward the station. A tug was coming into view, carrying a booster unit that would add its thrust to the
Sholto
's own propulsion system in order to compensate for the doubled weight of the combined vehicle. Without the booster, the time needed to reach their transit point out of the Center System would have been doubled--and a burn that long would have put dangerous strains on the little ship's own propulsion system.

Another tug was attaching six strain-relief cables between the two vehicles.
Sherlock
-class ships were fitted with a variety of hold-down points--recessed heavy-duty metal rings to which cables could be attached. The hold-downs were normally used to lock the little ships in place when they were being carried on or in larger vehicles. On this mission, they were seeing a different use. One set of six hold-downs was placed around the circumference of each of the cone-shaped ships about halfway up. Cables were being strung between the two ships, each cable strung from a hold-down on one ship to the corresponding hold-down on the other, then pulled taut.