“I’m just misunderstood.”
“It’s why I believe your interest
is genuine, but my little gathering is full.”
“No it isn’t, or you wouldn’t be
here.”
“Or I might just want to know how
you heard about my auction?”
“Jie Kang Li hired me to
represent him. He didn’t tell me how he knew or what I was buying, he just told
me to win.”
When you lie, lie big. Jie Kang
Li was the supreme head of the Yiwu, the largest and most powerful Chinese
crime syndicate in Mapped Space. That made him one of the ten richest humans
alive and the only one not an Earth resident. Li was also the People’s
Federation of Asia’s most wanted criminal, and considering how long he’d evaded
them, their biggest embarrassment. Even the Earth Intelligence Service couldn’t
find him, which meant he was either a ghost or a genius – probably both.
“You don’t know what the
merchandise is?” Sarat asked.
“Not a clue,” I said, hoping
Sarat would volunteer the information.
Sarat reflected on my lies
briefly. “Li is at least a thousand light years from here, which makes your
story impossible to check.”
That’s why Lena had picked Jie
Kang Li as my cover story. “I can prove it.”
“How?”
Lena had given me an Earth Bank digital-vault
with sufficient funds to play the game. It was DNA coded for my personal use
and was as good as cash anywhere in Mapped Space. Digital-vaults were the only way
to transfer funds between star systems that had no way of accessing a central
data repository on Earth. Global banking systems may have been highly
centralized in the days before interstellar travel – because distances were
negligible – but interstellar banking was exactly the opposite. Distance and
time dictated it. It had made Earth Bank as much an idea as an institution, and
had created the most splintered, decentralized use of data in human history.
Billions of digital-vaults scattered across thousands of light years – each a
tiny piece of the Bank’s central repository – allowed anyone access to their
funds no matter how many months or years they were away from Earth. You didn’t
contact the bank – you couldn’t! – you carried it with you, wherever you went.
I retrieved the small rectangular
device from the ship’s safe and swept it over my desk scanner. The credit stick
checked my DNA before revealing the balance to the ship’s processing core,
which then replaced my view screen’s window sim with an obscenely large number.
If I was inclined to steal from the EIS, I could have taken the money and lived
like a potentate for the rest of my life. Fortunately for Lena, the
Silver Lining
was enough for me.
Sarat took one look at the king’s
ransom locked inside my credit stick and sat back, convinced. Money really does
talk, in any system, in any century, particularly to men like Sarat.
“Why would Jie Kang Li trust you
with so much money? Why not send one of his own people?” Sarat asked.
“Maybe he trusts me more than his
own people. Or maybe he doesn’t want them knowing what he’s doing.”
Sarat sucked on his putrid
fume-stick thoughtfully. “I’ve heard your word is good, Kade.”
“So is Jie Kang Li’s money.”
“You really don’t know what
you’re bidding on?”
As soon as he said it, I knew he
was hooked! “I’m just a hired gun with a fast ship. I get the stuff. I take it
to him. He pays me a huge commission and we are done. That’s all I care about.”
“You could steal his money. It’s
more than all the commissions you’ll ever earn.”
“Where would I go with it? I’m
already at the ass end of Mapped Space. If I stole from Jie Kang Li, I’d be
dead within a year. This way, I’m rich and alive.”
“A most desirable combination,” Sarat
mused as he blew smoke across the room, his mind made up. “Welcome to the deal
of the millennium, Captain Kade.” He stood and dropped a data chip on my desk.
“We meet in ten days. This is the location. Be on time.”
He walked to the hatch, “Remember,
if you bring the authorities with you, it won’t just be me you’ll have to deal
with. The other bidders represent the richest and most powerful organizations
known to man. If you expose them to unnecessary risk, being hunted by Jie Kang
Li will be nothing compared to what they will do to you.”
“I’m sure Jie Kang Li feels the
same. That’s why he hired me. I’m discreet.”
“Then we understand each other.” Sarat
turned to leave.
“Do you want to tell me what I’m
bidding on?”
“Ask Jie Kang Li,” Sarat said
slyly before slipping out into the corridor.
I hurried after him, thinking I
should escort him down to the airlock in case Izin ambushed him, but found the passageway
was empty. There were Earth-tech stealth suits, shadow suits and chameleon
suits, all devised to make a man harder to see. I know, I’d worn them all, but
the one thing we still hadn’t mastered was perfect invisibility.
It was simply more proof that Sarat
was using alien-tech – a lot of it – although whose it was and how he got it
was a mystery.
* * * *
Izin’s large blue-green eyes slid back and
forth, scanning horizontally. He did that when he was irritated, as if he was
constantly searching his surrounds for the source of his annoyance. It was one
of the few tamph mannerisms I’d learned to read on his otherwise impenetrable
amphibian face.
“Jase accessed the airlock last
night at two-oh-five, ship’s time,” Izin said as he studied the security logs
in engineering. “He then left the ship at two-fifty.”
“It wasn’t Jase,” I said.
“The pressure bridge’s gate and
our own airlock sensor both scanned his DNA before opening, although the hull
sensors near the airlock were still being repaired.”
“It was a man called Mukul Sarat,
using alien-tech.”
“Which tech?” Izin’s synthesized
voice was typically calm, but the way he fixed his gaze on me made me feel uncomfortably
like prey.
“I don’t know, but I intend to
find out.”
The alien-tech could have come
from any of the Orion Arm Local Powers, or even one of the more distant
civilizations we had sporadic contact with. They all had the technology to pick
our pockets, starting with the Ascellans who were a mere ten thousand years
ahead of us. They were the nearest in development to mankind, but there were
thousands of others, all far more advanced than the humble Ascellans. The
Matarons had the motivation to scheme against us, but they were so extremely xenophobic
they didn’t trust anyone, especially not human defectors. Or was Sarat a dupe
rather than a defector?
“Did you get anything from the minidrone
you blasted near the airlock?” I asked.
“No, Captain. It didn’t conform
to any known human device, although its technology was within human limits.”
“What about the components?”
“They were all constructed of
Earth sourced materials.”
“All of them?” I asked suspiciously.
“My metallurgical analysis was
very thorough, Captain.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as
strange?” After three thousand years of industrialization, Earth’s industries
were now increasingly dependent on off world resources.
Izin hesitated, surprised at his
oversight. “It is statistically improbable that every component would be
constructed from Earth sourced minerals.”
Someone had gone to a great deal
of trouble to hide who they were, down to obtaining raw materials from Earth
itself to use in manufacturing the equipment they’d given Sarat.
“Slice into the city’s surveillance
system. Find Jase.” If Sarat was using alien-tech to fool the airlock’s DNA
scanner, the one thing he couldn’t know was my copilot’s DNA code. He could
have only gotten that from the source, which meant he’d gone after Jase.
“It will take time, if you don’t
want them to know what I’ve done.”
I had no doubt Izin could sneak
in without being detected, but if Jase was in trouble, I didn’t have time for
him to go tiptoeing around. I summoned the access key to the city’s
surveillance system from Lena’s download and wrote it down. “Use that.”
“How did you get this security
code, Captain?”
“Everything’s for sale in Hades
City.”
He didn’t believed me, but he put
the code to use immediately. In less than two minutes, he found Jase and I was
on my way back to the Slot.
* * * *
The Cerberus Hotel in the middle of the
Slot’s well lit Grand Boulevard was the third largest casino complex in Hades
City. It was filled with gambling machines and beautiful woman, both adept at
separating a man from his credits with ruthless efficiency. It was exactly the
kind of place Jase couldn’t resist. His room was on the thirtieth floor, a
suite with all the trimmings; views of the Slot’s bright lights, a spa, richly
upholstered lounges, red carpets and mirrors everywhere.
When I arrived, the door was closed,
the ‘do not disturb’ indicator was glowing and a pin sized hole in the door
surrounded by black scoring revealed the locking mechanism had been melted. I
slipped quietly inside, finding the room lit only by light spilling in from the
street below. It was almost five AM local time and Jase could have been making
up for lonely weeks in space with female company in another suite, but as I
started towards the bedroom, my threading picked up a thermal signature and a kaleidoscope
of chemical residues.
I found two attractive young
woman lying either side of Jase on an enormous bed. All three were naked,
although only Jase was showing anything like normal thermal readings. I reached
down to move one of the girls aside. As soon as my hand touched her skin, my
threading got a detailed read on her vitals, instantly informing me that she
was almost room temperature and had been dead at least five hours.
My threading analyzed the oil and
sweat on my hand from her skin, warning me that a toxic mix of Blue Dream and
Screamer had been pumped into her in doses that would have killed an Askeeri
thunderbeast. The first was an hallucinogenic, the second a notorious sex drug,
but together in those doses, they were poison.
I didn’t bother checking the
other girl. One look told me she was also dead.
“Jase!” I shouted, slapping his
face. He moaned incomprehensibly, but his eyelids barely moved. I shook him
roughly. “Jase! Can you hear me?”
“Skipper?” he slurred as his head
rolled sideways without opening his eyes.
My threading used my eyes to optically
scan his naked body, looking for unnatural marks, but found nothing. It wasn’t
until I examined the soles of his feet that a target indicator appeared in my
mind, highlighting a tiny circular abrasion two millimeters across. That was
where Sarat had lifted Jase’s DNA code. Whatever tech he was using to beat the
spaceport locking systems, it still needed a tissue sample to work. My sniffer
could take a proximity scan of a suspect’s code without contact, but it
couldn’t use it to trick DNA locking systems, just track the signature.
Like the dead girl, his skin was secreting
Screamer, although at a much lower rate. Fortunately, he was sweating only a
hint of Blue Dream. They’d given him enough to knock him out, but not kill him.
I guess Sarat knew killing Jase would have made it personal, obliging me to
seek revenge, whereas linking him to the deaths of two girls would just get him
locked up long enough that I’d have to leave him behind.
I dragged Jase into the shower
and turned the cold water on full. He shuddered from the shock of freezing
water, partially opening his eyes.
“Snap out of it!” I yelled, “we
have to get out of here.”
“What . . . are you . . . doing
here?”
“You were drugged. Blood stims.”
His face contorted in confusion. “No
stims . . . I . . . paced . . . myself.”
“I know. Get dressed!”
“The . . . girls . . . ?”
“They’re dead.”
“What?”
“It’s not your fault.” It was my
fault – for letting him out. I hadn’t realized Sarat would go after him to
weaken me.
Jase rolled sideways and vomited while
I returned to the bedroom and placed the first girl close to her companion, making
it appear they were together. I put Jase’s key in one of their purses and
filled their hand bags with Jase’s casino chips, making it appear as if he’d
given them his key and money to wait for him. There were Blue Dream and
Screamer stim tabs in Jase’s bags, enough to make him look like a dealer. I
transferred several shots to the girl’s handbags and flushed the rest. If we
were lucky, they were hookers and UniPol would assume it was self inflicted. His
biotraces
were everywhere, but if we left his bag and
spare clothes in the room, UniPol might think he was coming back.
Jase staggered into the bedroom, clumsily
toweling himself off. I helped him dress, then guided him to the door, leaving the
‘do not disturb’ indicator on, hoping we had at least ten hours before cleaners
entered the room. By the time the local authorities started looking for Jase, I
planned to be far outside the system.