Death Match, page 82
part #3 of Sten Omnibus Series
He slept for many hours. It was a dreamless sleep.
Chapter Thirty-two
HOTSCO LET HER number two run her ship and the surreptitious movements toward Prime World. She had smuggled things on and off Prime so many times it wasn’t a challenge anymore. And her exec had already been making noises about getting her own ship, once this absurd commitment Jon Wild had made to social justice and drakh like that was over.
The third reason was, Hotsco had better things to do. As did Marl. As did Alex. He was most glad, by the time they closed on the Empire’s capital, that he stayed in something near shape and that he was a heavy-worlder.
Hotsco had been right—Marl’s culture had some very, sometimes even excessively, interesting customs. She was a beaut, he thought fondly. As was Hotsco. He wondered what his wee mum would think if he brought them home and introduced them to her. Hmm. That might require some preparation.
Besides, he was going to die on Prime, he reminded himself.
When Hotsco’s ship, the Rum Row, closed on the first of Prime’s elaborate screens, Hotsco took the bridge.
Sten may have needed an elaborate diversion to slither the Victory onto Prime to rescue Haines and the others. Hotsco did not. She ghosted down, past mechanicals that seemed rusted solid, past patrol patterns that seemed loose-weave, even once past a patrolling Imperial destroyer within visual range.
She brought the ship down in atmosphere, and slipped toward a midnight landing, in one of the deepest spots of the River Wye that ran through the center of the green, protected Valley Wye. If the landing had been witnessed by one of the fanatic fishermen who considered the River Wye as their Mecca, Sten and his minions would have been considered fiends incarnate, and the worst punishment the Eternal Emperor could wreak on them considered corporal. Kilgour—who’d been known to cast a bit of feather and fur to assuage the savage salmon gods without ever landing one of the three-meter monsters—felt a little ashamed. But only a little.
He slid out of the ship’s airlock in a spacesuit and swam to the bank. The Rum Row was under about seven meters of water, resting on the bottom. Not very much, but the dark anodizing would hopefully camouflage the ship against the river’s bottom. Of course, if the Wye was overflown by a patrolcraft with sensors, the quality of the camouflage or the depth of the water wouldn’t matter.
But why think about trouble?
He buried the suit under a layer of turf for quick retrieval, and headed directly for Ashley-on-Wye, the small town in the valley’s center, where he hoped to set up his RV/safehouse. The town appeared abandoned. Quiet, deserted cobbled streets. There was a sign of life in one bar, where, long past closing, songs were being sung, barmaids being pinched and pints poured. Kilgour ignored his thirst and moved on.
The Blue Bhor was dark.
Kilgour settled down to wait for dawn, unobtrusively, under a bush. Either his friend was gone, bankrupt, or conceivably arrested for past sins by IS or the gamekeepers; was out poaching; or else would be out.
Just at dawn Chris Frye, ex-Mantis, proprietor of the Blue Bhor Inn, fanatic fisherman and skilled cook and drinker, came out the side door of his inn carrying a rod and creel.
He strolled past a bush, and stiffened. He stopped. Puzzled a bit, then dug into his creel as if to make sure he had not forgotten something.
“V c’n drop th’ charade,” Alex advised. “Ah wonder’d i’ y’ still hae y’r moves, an w’d spot m’ marker.”
Frye took the tiny colored metal clip that could’ve been a flower from a twig and pocketed it as Alex stepped out.
“Sod off, Kilgour. I had those reflexes as a poacher long before I took the clottin’ Emp’s shilling. What’re you doing on Prime? You and your traitorous friend’re supposed to be dead, according to the lies I’ve heard from the drakh-for-brains propaganda mill.”
“Rumors ae m’ passin’ bein’t overrated an’ thae. Din’t figure you’d put up wi’ the drakh comin’t doon ae late. How bad is it?”
“Clottin’ clotted,” Frye said quietly. “Anybody who had anything to do with Mercury or Mantis, even way back then, isn’t exactly thought of as the best citizen. Nobody’s gotten boxed yet, but you’re watched pretty close.
“Or so I’ve heard from friends who drop by. Most folks here in the valley don’t remember what kind of sojering I did, and wouldn’t cough if they did. Gotta tell you, Alex, I don’t know what the hell happened to the Emperor, when he wasn’t around—but something sure as hell did.
“Tell you the truth, when they shot Mahoney, and then Sten ran up the black flag, I clotting near nailed the door shut and took off to join you clowns. Only thing that stopped me was a strong feeling of cowardice and old age.”
The two eyed each other. It had been a lot of years, indeed, since Mantis, and almost as many since Frye’s Blue Bhor had been used as a safehouse when Sten was investigating the attempted murder of the Eternal Emperor.
“You look a bit older, a bit fatter, and a bit grayer,” Frye observed.
“Dinnae we all, mate,” Alex said. “An’ how’s th’ life ae a publican?”
“The doors stay open,” Frye’s business, offering meals, teds, packed lunches, ghillie-ing, and alk to the dedicated rod-wranglers who came to the Blue Bhor, brought credits in—and Frye’s love of good food, drink, and not letting friends pay for anything poured them out just as rapidly.
“I assume you want something?”
“Not much. Just a place for some friends of mine to stay.”
“How many?”
“Twelve.”
“About the crew size of a small spaceship,” Frye said. “I thought I heard something around midnight. Well, welcome to the king’s enemies and all that. Clottin’ Emperor. Just one question, so I can shriek quietly and wake up the whole clotting town. Is Sten one of them?”
“No. Ah’m th’ hottest ae th’ lot, an’ Ah’ll noo be stayin’t.”
“Well, bring ’em in, then. I knew there was something lacking in my life lately. Listenin’ for the tread of the hangman, the knock on the door, and the clap on the shoulder. Damn, but I love getting back into harness, particularly if it’s something that sounds a lot like high treason. I can’t say how nice it is to see you, Sergeant Kilgour.”
Since the citizens of Ashley-on-Wye slept late as a habit, there was no problem moving Marl, Hotsco, and the rest of the smugglers into the inn without notice.
Then they waited until nightfall. Frye fed them sumptuously and kept asking if there wasn’t something he could help with. Transport? Credits? Frye had some interesting things that went bang buried around somewhere. Phony ID? Hell, did Alex need backup?
No to all of them. What Alex didn’t have, he could steal.
He kissed Hotsco and Marl good-bye.
“Y’ hae th’ orders, noo? I’ y’ dinnae hear frae me wi’in th’ week, or i’ y’ hae reason to suss thae Ah’m blown or y’re under’s’picion, y’ promise’t’ haul oot like y’ hae a Campbell a’ter y’r skirts?”
The two women promised.
They watched Alex disappear into the darkness, just another casual laborer headed for towncenter and transport to somewhere on Prime.
They looked at each other.
“How long?” Marl asked.
“We’ll wait till there’s frost on Sheol,” Hotsco said.
“Good. And if Alex gets nailed?”
“We’ll go in after him,” Hotsco said softly. “If we have to take him out of Arundel itself.”
They touched palms. The compact was made.
Chapter Thirty-three
THIS IS ANOTHER fine fix you’ve gotten me into, Sten. Here I was, Cind thought, a nice, innocent young sniper. All I ever needed was a bit of adrenaline every now and then when a bullet came too close, a chance to prove I could outsneak whoever sent that bullet in my general direction, and perhaps a small medal and a bonus for encouraging that being on to the next metensomatosis.
But no. Sten had to come along and encourage me to larger endeavors. Shouting charge, and letting other people go out there and find out if the enemy believes in reincarnation. Sneak down dark alleys that have an absence of the rules of land warfare but a strong presence of thuggery. Declare intent of treason to history’s most powerful ruler. Spy, cheat, steal, and assassinate, down in the muck and the mire.
Tsk, she thought.
All because you looked at that reputed demigod of a war chief and thought he looked lonely and had a nice butt.
However, there were, she realized, preening slightly in the mirror, some compensatory factors in irregular warfare.
Such as the way she looked at the moment. Nose to toes, she oozed wealth from every centimeter. All her clothes and accessories had been custom-made after her surreptitious landing in a city halfway across the world of Prestonpas.
Kilgour had told her, when you’re playing a role, become it, from the mind out. So I settled for the skin out, she thought. Four months’ pay for what Sten would, being a man, probably admire as a nice, simple little outfit and pay little real attention to. And as far as the skin? She’d indulged herself with a complete derm treatment, massage, and hairstyling. She noted with amusement that even though her military close-crop didn’t give the stylist much room to create, it hadn’t affected the size of his bill. But that was one of the prices of being a richbitch.
Cind lifted her rented Stewart/Henry sporter from where it’d been parked out of the mansion’s line of sight, and headed for the entrance to the gates.
This being rich, she thought—smelling the sporter’s creature-hide seats and admiring the hand-rubbed interior of what appeared to be real wood—could become addictive.
Although there were drawbacks, she admitted. Such as the tiny purse beside her. Once you put in your com, some necessary tools, a recorder, and a handgun, there wasn’t room for anything else, really. She guessed one reason the very rich surrounded themselves with retainers was to have someone carry the makeup kit and the gravcar keys.
She grounded the gravcar in front of the mansion’s closed gates. Heavy steel, with stone portals. The annunciator on the post beside it lit.
“May we be of assistance?”
“Brett of Mowatt,” she said. “Plath Architectural Society. I am expected.”
“We welcome you,” the voice smoothed. “Please proceed directly to the main entrance. Someone will be waiting.”
The gates opened, and she sent the gravcar down the long, winding gravelled road, past the freshly polished sign that read SHAHRYAR, past manicured lawns, past perfect topiary, past stone fountains, to the great rearing mansion in the middle of the estate.
She marveled.
Not the least of her marvel was the knowledge that this was one of the Eternal Emperor’s connecting points. Kyes’s computer data, and Mahoney’s limited information, said this mansion, and others like it, were dotted around the universe, to serve one purpose and only one:
When the Eternal Emperor “rose from the dead”—and she shivered slightly, not believing in but still remembering Bhor legends of those who’d passed beyond life—this mansion would be his first stop. Here, assuming Kyes’s analysis was correct, he would be brought current with whatever had happened in the Empire during the years since his death/assassination.
A further marvel to her, and this one in anger, was that once the Emperor felt himself properly briefed, he would leave the mansion—and it would be razed to the ground. What a bastard, she thought. So what if the grounds would be donated to the locals as a park? Sarla, it’s just like what Sten told me the clot’s done to the province of Oregon on Earth. Okay, everybody away from the river. Abandon your homes, your businesses, your lives. Here. Take money, and don’t bother the Emperor. He wants to go fishing.
She turned her mind back to the task at hand.
Finding this station, given the initial data, had not been that difficult. Profile: a constantly staffed mansion or its equivalent that purportedly belonged to a family/someone who seldom used it. Yet the mansion would be equipped with a state-of-the-art library computer and personnel, and would receive almost every techno/military/scientific publication.
Interesting, Cind thought, and the basic thinking is worth study. This is an almost-totally-secure path he’s designed. Secure because, just as Alex has said, no one looks at the rich too closely. He said that Ian Mahoney had put it best: “You want to run a safehouse, run a drop, have a team on standby—or anything else nefarious? You don’t find a warehouse in the slum, unless you’re an amateur or a criminal. Find yourself a nice, rich, bohemian, if possible, neighborhood, where nobody knows or cares who’s coming or going…”
That gave total security. It was totally secure because, to consider the possibility of something like this mansion even existing, you have to accept the premise that a dead man can come back.
This was only the third mansion that had come close to Cind’s profile, and, whereas the first two had a prob of less than 50 percent, this one touched 93 percent. The cover story was—and it was a curiosa item every now and then on the Prestonpas livies—the Shahryar family were ex-traders, who were eccentrically devoted to wandering ways. They would buy an estate on some world they had only heard about, fully equip it, and maybe not visit it for a generation or even longer. And when—or if—they visited it, they would demand complete secrecy.
A woman was waiting for Cind outside the huge entrance to the central house. Either the portal was counterbalanced or else the woman had a Bhor or a heavy-worlder on standby just to open and shut the clotting thing, Cind thought. The woman, Ms. Analiza Ochio, as expected from Kyes’s analysis, was the estate’s librarian. She would be an innocent, absolutely believing the Shahryar cover story, and had been recruited for her technical skills, her liking for a semisolitary life, and probably a certain naivete.
She was familiar with the Plath Institute and its fiches. Would, umm, what is the correct way to refer to you, m’lady?
“Just Brett.” Cind smiled. “Titles are something that get you a better table at an overpriced restaurant, and that’s it. Sometimes.”
Ms. Ochio, asked her in. Refreshments? Of course. We have almost everything. It may be a solitary life, but it’s a very comfortable one. Perhaps some caff. No, I had lunch before I left my hotel. They chatted for a while, then:
Now, if you’ll give me the details, Brett? I’m very curious as to what your interest is in this estate.
Cind explained. The newest series Plath was publishing was to be on the residents of the fabulously wealthy. Not just the flash and filigree of how large the dining hall is, or how many worlds the crystalline chandelier came from, or what rare mineral the swimming pool is surfaced with—although that will be in them, and probably what will make the hoi polloi buy the fiches—but how practical are these grand palaces? Each fiche would contain not only a full floor plan, but livie-portrayals of each room. On a B-track, the occupants or staff of the mansion would discuss how well planned and laid out the mansion was, and on a C-track, one of Plath’s resident architects would provide an analysis.
Ms. Ochio’s smile had vanished.
“Every room?”
“Well,” Cind said, “I don’t think we would be interested in all the bathrooms, unless they’re something unique.”
“Sorrow,” the woman said. “That just won’t be possible. The grounds…some of the outbuildings…the first and most of the second floor, and the library are quite open. We had one of the local garden societies tour a portion of the house just three weeks gone. You would be welcome to record them.
“But the rest of the building, particularly the residential areas upstairs? No. The Shahryar family is very protective of their privacy, I was told when I accepted my contract, and was given quite explicit instructions. So…if those are your plans, I fear you may have wasted your trip.”
“Could you communicate with the family? To make sure?” Cind asked. “Oh yes. I forgot. Most reclusive. Oh well. Thank the powers I’m not working on piece rates.”
She stood.
“Might I refresh myself? Then, perhaps, you’ll show me, just for my own personal curiosity, the parts of the house that the public is allowed to see?”
“Pleasure. The facilities are just beyond the library doors,” Ms. Ochio said.
Cind opened the door and stepped through. As she did, she flicked a small object back, onto the table, in front of the librarian, closed her eyes, and ducked, shielding her face against the blueflash.
Ochio had time to puzzle at the tiny ovoid—and then the bester grenade went off. She slumped. Two E-hours would pass before she came back to the world, completely unaware of the time loss.
Cind patted the woman down. No vital-signs indicator that would set off an alarm—she had bumped Ochio a couple of times entering the room and had been pretty sure she was clean. No com, no panic button, no nothing. Cind dragged her behind one of the sitting room’s small couches.
Two hours.
Gun out, but half-concealed, she slipped out the door into the great house.
She looked at the library’s doors. Maybe. According to the input on Kyes’s computer, gotten from the debriefing of another of the Emperor’s librarians, there’d be two sysop stations for it. One would be the central station for the library, the other was code-sealed and could access certain unknown files. Files privy to the Emperor-to-be.
If she had time, and wasn’t blown by then, she would take a stab at a little intrusion. But that wasn’t the intent of her mission.
She went up the stairs, ignoring a gravlift for fear it’d alert someone there was an interloper loose in the house, and headed for the top floor. From what Ochio had said, that would be the most likely place for what she wanted.
There had been nothing on the roof her preliminary overflight suggested might be a ’cast antenna. So it would either be in a room or—she grimaced—tucked away somewhere under the mansion’s eaves. Oh well. It would not be the first set of creepy attic critters she’d crawled through. If she still struck out, she would have to chance combing through the outbuildings. Which would mean a good shot at encountering security—in her overflight she’d seen uniformed guards walking the grounds.
