Bring Me the Dead, page 7
Beau coughed into his hand. “Show-off.”
“I’m a show-off? Who did a backflip during the semifinals in ‘75?”
“You gotta admit, that was badass.”
“It was ridiculous.” Ridiculous maybe, but he’d still won that match, to face Ki-tae in the final. And beaten him. Something Ki-tae made sure didn’t happen in ‘76.
“Ridiculous maybe, badass definite—Ow, shit!” He dropped to one knee, staff falling from his hand. Instantly Ki-tae suspected a trick. He’d approach and be attacked.
“What’s wrong?”
“Calf cramp.” Beau sat back on his ass and rubbed his left leg, groaning. “Dammit. Ow, fucking ow.”
Ki-tae approached cautiously and nudged Beau’s staff away with his foot, trying to look as if he only cared about tripping on it.
“Didn’t you warm up properly?”
Beau looked up at him, strain showing around his eyes. “Clearly not, Doctor Know-It-All.”
“I was only asking. You should stand. You need to get your foot flat.”
“Yeah yeah, give me a second.”
“Now.” Ki-tae reached for his arm and hauled. Beau came up with a look of surprise replacing the look of pain for a moment.
“Damn, you’re strong.” He thickened his Southern drawl. “My heart’s all aflutter, sir.” He put an arm around Ki-tae’s shoulders to keep his balance.
“Put your foot down,” Ki-tae said, ignoring Beau’s nonsense. “Stretch the muscle. Slowly.”
“I love it when you get all authoritative.” He swore some more but forced the heel down until his left foot was flat on the floor. And sighed. “Oh yeah, there it is.”
“Better?”
“Losing the cramp. Give me a second.”
Ki-tae stayed where he was, letting Beau lean on him, until Beau nodded. “Okay. I’m okay.” He let go of Ki-tae, stepped away from him. “I can’t go on sparring, though.”
“Of course not.” Ki-tae picked up Beau’s staff and handed it to him. Beau leaned on it like a hiking pole.
“I think I’m going to go get a massage,” Beau said. “Assuming they’ve got someone on duty. If not, feel free to volunteer.” He winked.
“Yes, I’ll do that sometime after hell freezes over.”
“Then maybe the hot tub.” He sighed. “You finish up your workout and come join me in that. Maybe I’ll see if they have a private one.” Another wink.
“If you wink at me again, then injury or not, I’ll take you to the mat.”
“I think I’d—”
“And if you’re going to say you’d enjoy that, I’m going to arrest you on the spot.”
“You’re out of your jurisdiction.” He seemed to deliberately linger on the dic sound in the word.
“You’re becoming quite predictable, Johnson. You haven’t updated your material since the Institute. You should spend that time in the hot tub thinking us some new jokes.”
“Adding insult to injury. Classy, Agent Park, classy.” He gave up the verbal sparring then and limped off the mats, using his staff as support.
“Call me,” he said. “We’ll pick this up tomorrow.”
Ki-tae watched him go, then bent to pick up his staff again. Irritation was churning in him. Why did he let Beau get to him? And yet warring with it was a hint of disappointment. Solo practice was not the same. Whatever else Beau did to him, he always gave him a good workout.
* * * *
As soon as Beau was in the changing area, he stopped limping. The room was empty—this was an evening workout and most people were out having fun in bars and clubs. Beau wished he could be doing the same. But the sacrifice would be worth it.
He found his locker and tapped in the code he’d programmed into it. From inside he took a couple of small devices. He used one of them to scan his hand. The hand that had rested on bare skin when he leaned on Ki-tae for support. He quickly dismissed the readings for his own DNA and set it to sniff for the other pattern it found there in trace amounts. He worked his way around the lockers quickly, and locker number 47 made his device peep softly as it found matching DNA traces on the door.
Bingo. He pocketed the scanner and brought out another item from his pocket. He stuck it over the code pad on the locker. Gym lockers. Hardly something that required top security. The device threw code guesses at the pad, and in seconds the light above it went green. Unlocked. Beau grabbed the device back off the locker and put it into his pocket.
He found what he was looking for—Ki-tae’s portable terminal—in the gym bag. He donned a pair of thin gloves that practically molded to his hands, and lifted out the terminal. He tapped it on, but it was encrypted with a password. Official issue. Naturally, it was. And naturally, that encryption had been broken by the busy little bees in the organized-crime community. Beau took out the third and final device Marz had given him from her stash of goodies. The one that could get him not only arrested for possessing, like the lock pick, but five to ten in a prison colony. Which would be embarrassing for the family. Not that there weren’t a few jailbirds on both sides of the family, but they usually went away for something more high stakes than possession of a code cracker. Old Gramps Johnson had done eight years for his part in some kind of international banking shenanigans Beau still didn’t quite understand.
He plugged the cracker into the data port of Ki-tae’s terminal and kept a nervous eye on the door as the device did its thing. It didn’t do anything as tricky as unlocking the device—it would take hours to break that encryption. But the cracker had a back-door entrance into the operating system, allowing everything on the terminal to be copied to be cracked into later. He smiled to see the words ACCESS GRANTED. COPYING on the screen on the cracker. Yes!
Just a matter of time. A progress bar crawled across the screen at what felt like one percent every couple of years. “C’mon, c’mon,” Beau muttered at it. “Bet he’s got a stack of porn vids on here.” Unlikely, not on an Institute device. But the idea made him smirk, imagining that button-down little pest getting his jollies. Beau would happily give him the real thing again anytime.
COPY COMPLETED flashed up on the screen. Quickly Beau yanked the wire out and shoved the cracker in his pocket. He needed to get all this stuff back into the locker and then relock it with the same code Ki-tae had used. And somehow make it look like nobody else had been messing with it. He was right in the middle of stuffing the terminal back into the pocket it came from, when the door from the practice room opened.
Ki-tae. Fuck.
There was literally nothing to say, Beau knew that. Ki-tae took the situation in fast and sprang. Beau scrambled back, but he didn’t have his staff and was quickly in an arm bar and forced to his knees. No sparring here. Ki-tae stopped short of breaking his arm, but if he pushed it another inch, Beau’s humerus would snap like a dry twig. A few minutes ago it had given Beau a little thrill of pleasure to imagine pushing against Ki-tae’s strength in bed, not in the sparring room. Now he feared Ki-tae was mad enough to push the staff that extra inch.
“Ease up, man,” Beau cried, hating to have to beg for mercy that way.
“What the hell were you doing in my bag? How did you get into my locker?”
“What the hell do you think I was doing? Trying to get a look at your terminal.” No sense in denying it. But he certainly wasn’t revealing that he’d managed to access and copy it. “Let me go, dammit!”
“You broke into a locker. You’ve tried to access my terminal. You’re under arrest.”
“You don’t have any jurisdiction here,” Beau reminded him. “In fact, you’d better let me the hell up before I sue you for false arrest and assault.” After the first shock of being caught, his confidence was returning.
“You can try.”
“Yeah, I can. My aunt Clara is a senior partner at the biggest law firm in New Orleans. She was lead counsel on a class-action suit that took down three banks and an insurance company. She’d eat you for breakfast, Kitty Cat. And have the Institute’s lawyers as a side dish.” For a second, the pressure on his arm increased, and he groaned through gritted teeth, but then it eased and Ki-tae stepped back. He scowled down at Beau.
“You think your family money can get you out of anything, don’t you?” he asked, his voice harsh, filled with contempt.
Beau stood up slowly, rubbing his arm. “That’s how it’s always worked before,” he said. “Privilege. You know what that word means, right?”
“Yes. Private law.”
Beau raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Didn’t know you were a Latin scholar.”
“You disgust me,” Ki-tae said. Nearly snarled. He still gripped his staff and looked as if he were itching to use it on Beau’s skull.
“Yeah yeah. Look, I busted into your locker. I tried to take a look at your terminal, but you caught me, so forget that. You can drag me off to the ship’s police station if you want, and I’ll post bail and in a few months maybe I’ll get fined. But there’s nothing else you can get me on, is there? There are no cameras in here. Why don’t we call it part of the game and say no more about it?”
“Game? This is not a game! You’re a criminal, Johnson. And I will put you in jail, however many lawyer aunts you have.”
“Yeah, but not today. And rifling gym lockers isn’t what you want to nail me for, is it? So why waste your time with such trivia?”
He looked thoughtful at that. He wanted to nail Beau on something to do with artifact smuggling. Something he could do serious jail time for. Not petty theft. If Ki-tae did take him to the ship’s cops right now, they’d find the illegal devices in his pocket, but Ki-tae wasn’t to know that. And even that might not give him the satisfaction he wanted. It wasn’t the right crime to put Beau away for. He’d also get little credit for it, since he was out of his jurisdiction, as Beau liked to keep reminding him. And Ki-tae was all about getting credit. Not in a vainglorious way. He just wanted to be taken seriously.
He had him. Ki-tae dropped his gaze, and his grip on his staff loosened.
“All right, go,” he said. “But your days are numbered, Johnson. I know you’re a criminal. I will take you in. Sooner than you think.”
Beau avoided grinning because he didn’t want to provoke Ki-tae into changing his mind. He bowed slightly, as he would when they ended a sparring session, picked up his staff, grabbed his gear from his locker, and legged it.
* * * *
Ki-tae gave Beau a few minutes to get far away before he grabbed his things, put on his shoes, and stormed off to his room. He couldn’t have stayed in there any longer, because the rage bubbling inside him would cause him to do something drastic.
When he reached his room, he took his terminal from his bag and tossed the bag aside. He unlocked the terminal and began to take a look around. There wasn’t any obvious evidence of tampering. He studied the logs of all the activity on the device. Nothing. It hadn’t even had an incorrect code entered, never mind a correct one. He must have caught Johnson before he could do anything.
Finally satisfied it hadn’t been accessed, he placed it on his nightstand, stripped off his sweaty clothes, and headed into the bathroom. He nudged the shower temperature higher than usual, feeling the need to wash away more than the sweat from the practice session. He felt covered in a film of dirt. He’d let Johnson go, when he should have marched his ass to the police station and let them take care of him. But he’d been both threatened and seduced by Beau’s words. The idea of getting Beau on a better charge than breaking into lockers had swung it. Was that vanity? He wanted the glory of putting Johnson away himself. He couldn’t deny the satisfaction he knew he’d feel.
Ki-tae finished the long hot shower and dried himself off briskly. He should go to bed, he decided, sleep off his anger, then in the morning get back to thinking about how he’d make Johnson pay for this. He was closer to extracting that payment than Beau knew. Ki-tae had even hinted as such in the changing room and wished he hadn’t. He didn’t want to risk tipping his hand.
He put on his short white robe and made himself a cup of tea—which might not help him sleep, but would calm his nerves. His restless pacing eventually ended when he sat at his desk terminal to check his messages.
One caught his eye at once. It came from the ship’s admin office, advising they were in range of communications relays to send messages on ahead to the Imperial sector.
Interesting. He thought for a while, then smirked and began to type a message. He gave his Institute Agent identity number and requested expedited processing through customs on his arrival. This was something private individuals had to pay for, but law enforcement had special privileges. One privilege he had that Johnson didn’t. The answer came back quickly. They were happy to oblige and would have him through and on his way as quickly as possible.
So far so good. He replied to the message with his thanks—and also with some information for them. A little tip-off about the ship belonging to a certain person and his motley crew.
Chapter 9
Beau refilled his coffee cup and brought it to the mess table on the Istrouma, which right now was the situation table as they went over their final plans.
“We should be through customs by 18:30,” he said. “But Park will be fast-tracked too, as a cop, so don’t imagine we’re going to get ahead of him.” He’d paid for expedited customs, so they’d be one of the first ships to leave the transporter after a routine scan and inspection. In the past, those had taken three hours at most—and that included giving the customs officers coffee and cake. It always paid to keep officials sweet. If they could get through as fast as possible, they might be able to shake Ki-tae. Or lose him in the crowd of ships coming off the transport, some of them the same class as the Istrouma.
“What’s the latest estimate on flight time to Thut, Doug?” Marz asked the engineer.
“Forty-one hours, give or take fifteen minutes. The reactor is refueled and ready. We’re at full power.”
“Get the engines hot, Chief,” Beau said. “I want us ready to fly as soon as we pass customs.”
Doug stood, still carrying his coffee mug. “I’ll go start the prep right away.” Beau nodded his approval, and the engineer strolled out the door. Reinitializing the engines after they’d been fully shut down would take a couple of hours.
“Dev,” he said to their medic. “I hope we won’t need them, but do you have all your supplies?”
“Yes, boss,” Devlin said. “Fully stocked. Good to go.”
“Great. As always, I hope you have literally nothing to do on this trip except help out in the galley.”
“No work is always my goal,” he said, lifting his coffee cup. “I’ve got some new recipes to try out.”
“Are you a demi-doc or a chef?”
“It’s always good to have another string to your bow.”
Marz raised her eyebrows. “Bow? Was that a pun? I hate puns.”
“That’s because you hate fun,” Beau said.
“Go boil your head,” she told him amiably.
“How’s that decryption coming?” Beau asked, and the smirk dropped off her face.
“It’s still running. I’m sure it won’t be long now.”
“You said that two days ago,” Beau reminded her.
“Is it my fault the Institute upgraded their encryption?”
Beau sighed. That whole scene in the locker room—his arm still hurt from it—might have been pointless. Though some of the data had been quickly decrypted, most of that was useless stuff, like Ki-tae’s day planner and to-do list. Strangely he had no entry for get this stick out of my ass on his to-do list, which should have been a high-priority task for him. But the Institute had apparently updated to better encryption shortly before Ki-tae left, and given him a new terminal. The decryption software Marz had would work eventually, but it was going to be a longer grind than they’d expected.
“It’s just a matter of time,” she said. “We’ll get there.”
“By which time he might already be arresting us.”
“Maybe he isn’t even after us,” Devlin said. Always the optimist. “It could have been a coincidence he was on the transporter.”
“Maybe. But I don’t believe it.”
“If we’re going to assume he’s after us anyway, then do you need confirmation?” Devlin asked.
“That’s a fair point,” Marz said.
“Yeah, well, maybe there’s other useful stuff on there. We’ll see.”
Devlin pushed away from the table and went and placed his mug in the dishwasher. “Okay, I’m going to go unpack the last supplies I bought. See you later.”
Which left Beau, Marz, and Professor Reynolds. And now they could get down to the important stuff. Joy looked up from her terminal and put it aside. “Right,” she said. “You take me to Thut, and I think I can find what we need.”
Beau hoped so. King’s information said there was a clue there to the location of the Enivakara. He doubted it would lead to anything, because the Enivakara was a myth. But maybe they’d pick up something interesting along the way and make some extra cash.
* * * *
They’d been at it for a couple of hours, poring over plans of the ruins on Thut, when a chime sounded that told them there was someone at the hatch.
“That will be customs,” Beau said. “I’ll go let them in. Do we have that cake ready?”
“Yep, Dev made it yesterday,” Marz said. “I’ll put a fresh pot of coffee on.”
“Great. I’ll go let them in. I look much less scary than you.”
“No cake for you.”
Beau hurried to the hatch as the chime sounded again. He opened the hatch with a big smile—and knew at once they were in trouble. Most fast-track customs inspections were carried out by two officers making a visual sweep and some pinpoint scanning in case the general scan of the ship performed from outside had missed anything. Beau opened the door to a squad of at least ten customs officers.
“Guess we’re gonna need a bigger cake.”
