Deadly Ghosts, page 12
“I do,” I said, finishing the beer that I had been working on and gesturing in the direction of some chairs beside the hologram.
“What can you tell me?” he asked.
“Before I start,” I said, “I need to caution you that a lot of this is going to sound absolutely insane. You’re not gonna be inclined to believe it, and I understand that. But all of it is true, and I have evidence.”
“No need for the preamble to tell me what I need to know,” he said. “I’m a busy man.”
“Okay, I won’t mince words: the Enemy AI from the Old War is rebuilding his strength and has an ancient superweapon called Codename: Extinction at his disposal somewhere in the universe.”
“This is a joke?” he asked me, then looked at Imogen, whose face was as deadly serious as my own. “You’re not pulling my leg?”
“Everything he’s saying is true,” Imogen affirmed. “Even the Inquisitor that I was working with had found similar evidence.”
“Then why isn’t it him who’s bringing this to Parliament?” Vince demanded. “You know I am on the Inquisition Oversight Committee, and I have never heard of any of this.”
Imogen let out a pregnant sigh. “We presented almost none of what we did to our superiors, and I know that they shared even less with you. The Inquisitors know that they are above the law and act like the Oversight Committee is little more than an inconvenience since they have to report only to the Triumvirate, and only when they deem it necessary.”
“They will hear about this,” Vince snarled.
“No!” Imogen said more aggressively than was entirely appropriate, given the circumstances. Vince looked at her with narrowed eyes. “Sorry, but for now, you can’t accuse the Inquisition of malfeasance.”
“Why’s that?” he demanded.
“Because we need you to look into this and convince Parliament to take it seriously,” I said, pulling the disk out of my jacket pocket. “We have all the proof on this disk, but more than that, we’ve seen it. I have seen the Enemy AI on an old military space station.”
“And you would testify before Parliament to that effect?” Vince asked.
“I would, but…”
“You’re on the run?” he assessed with a raised eyebrow.
I looked at Imogen. “It’s more than that, Uncle. We met because I was hunting him.”
The man nodded and looked back at me. “Guessing I don’t want to know?”
“Probably better if you don’t,” I said. “But I can assure you it only bolsters our case. And if you can get me out from under the Inquisition’s thumb, I would be happy to present my case to Parliament.”
“Well, I would need to call you as a witness if we would move forward with this, but for the time being, let me see what evidence you’ve got,” he said and took the disk from my hand. He shut off the fight being displayed on the holo and replaced it with my information.
To my surprise, he quickly scanned everything we had gathered, and all that Edwin had put together.
“This is something,” he said when he got to the end. “But not enough.”
I suspected I knew what he meant. “You need some incentivizing to take this threat more seriously?”
He pressed his hands to his heart and looked at me as though I had called him a cheat at the poker table. “You think that’s the kind of man I am?”
I looked to Imogen for help.
“I told him that’s the kind of man you are,” she said unapologetically.
He laughed at that, a high-pitched halting sound. “Okay, I might be that kind of person sometimes, but when it comes to family, I’m always happy to lend a hand. That being said, what you have here is not enough to convince Parliament of anything.”
He pushed off the holo, ejected the disc, and swept a hand in front of himself.
“The Parliamentarians don’t do anything unless they have to,” he explained. “They owe their existence to these people, and these people want to believe that we won the War, and that’s that. What you’ve come to me with is a can of worms on a scale we have never seen, so as I said, I’m going to need more.”
“I understand,” I said solemnly. I was happy that he was even entertaining the notion, but a part of me had hoped that since we would have come this far, he would be willing to take it directly to the government.
Part of me also knew that he was right. To convince a room of people that everything they believed to be true was a lie was gonna be no easy task. Especially given the fact that they weren’t going to be enthusiastic about the prospect of having to then sell this to their constituents.
“What more do you need?” I asked.
“You need to look into these files. It seems like you might have enough information to start actually tracking down this Extinction,” he said. “You bring me direct evidence of the superweapon, I believe I can get some people on board. Might just be a small group at first, but we know how to make noise,” he said, smirking at his own comment.
“Thank you for listening to us and taking us seriously,” I said, and I truly meant it.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said, “I’m only just doing a favor because I love little Gin—”
Before he could finish, the glass beside us erupted, and shards sprayed down on us as Vince was thrown back.
13
Imogen leapt down to her uncle’s side, and the Gubernatorial Guard came rushing into the room.
Another gunshot rang out, this one hitting Vince in the arm and spraying blood into the room.
Screams went up from the stadium, and people began scattering in every direction. I looked for the shooter and saw what looked like the vague shape of a man in all black somewhere in the crowd.
Planting my gloved hands on the frame, I threw myself over the ledge and down into the stands, where I landed on a plastic chair that buckled and cracked under my weight.
I went charging forward, rushing against the surging crowd, leaping over chairs and nearly flying head over heels down the sloped arena seating. Through the crowd, I thought I saw another glimpse of the man, but I couldn’t be sure.
A woman screaming in panic pointed in the direction that I was running. “He’s there, he’s there!” she shouted, and I tried to get a good look at her face in case I needed to ask questions later, but her face was painted in the team colors as so many others were.
I threw a man out of my way and continued forward, rushing to where I thought I had seen the hitman. I reached the backs of a few people and gripped the shoulder of someone, then squeezed between two others and looked at a pile of black clothes beside a rifle now melting against the cement under the stadium seating.
“Where did he go?” I asked, looking at all of the people who were staring in shock at the empty clothes.
“He just vanished,” one of the people said, and everybody else nodded in agreement.
“People can’t just vanish,” I asserted.
A guy holding a half-eaten hot dog looked me right in the eyes. “This guy did.”
I reached down, grabbed the black outfit, and jammed it in the satchel that I used to carry scrap with but left the smoldering remains of the weapon. It looked as though it might’ve been made of some kind of resin and would be little more than goo when it was done burning.
If we had time and resources, Edwin could probably identify what the coat had been made of and try to track down the supplier but that wasn’t realistic.
Instead, I looked up to see if there were security cameras anywhere and spotted one just above me, mounted into the cement underside of the next tier of seating. Ignoring the useless witnesses, I clambered over the seats and was immediately disappointed when I neared the camera. Close inspection showed that it was useless. The obviously fake item was designed to deter bad behavior and was nothing more than a cut off piece of can mounted to a rectangular piece of old computer. The wires that made up the back were duct taped to the cement ceiling, and I couldn’t help but curse Parm once again.
I moved back toward the chairs where I had let myself down, pressed with my feet up against the top of the backrest, and hoisted myself back up into the window where I saw the two gubernatorial guards tending to Vince’s wounds.
Imogen rushed over to me. “Did you catch them?” she asked, shaking her head. “No, obviously you didn’t.”
“No,” I agreed. “I didn’t catch them, and I didn’t get any information at all. All the witnesses said was that he disappeared into thin air and left his clothes.”
“So, we’re looking for some kind of naked assassin?” Imogen asked as one of the Guards approached, their long, purple cape flowing behind their new armor.
“Did I just hear that right?” the woman demanded. “The assailant got away?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I am a bounty hunter, and I would be happy to track down this person,” I said and raised my voice to be heard by Vince across the room. “Free of charge.”
The sectoral governor got up and walked over to me. His shirt was open, revealing a Kevlar vest with a large puncture in the surface.
“I want you to find who did this and bring them to me,” he said, his words like venom.
“Sir, it’s our job,” the guard began, but Vince silenced her with a look.
“Your job is to get the name Hank Spears removed from any wanted list you can and make sure I’m pinged if anyone tries to change that status,” he said, his tone hard and unflinching, his eyes like flaming embers.
To me, he said, “You track down who did this, you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I said.
“Good.” A wicked smile crossed his lips. “I saw how quick you sprang into action just now, and that speaks more to me about your character and what kind of man you are than any of the rigmarole that came before. You find who did this and get me the evidence I need, and I’ll sing your case from the rooftops.”
“Jackpot,” Ned said, sounding as excited as I had ever heard him.
We didn’t have any time to waste, and with Lara sidelined at the moment, this was going to be my first solo bounty hunt.
“I need you to open a private bounty and offer it to me so that I have the full weight of the Conclave behind me,” I said in my most authoritative tone.
Vince waved his hand toward the guard who had been treating his arm and the man nodded his understanding.
“And now I’m going to need you to tell me if you can think of anybody who would want to hurt you,” I said.
Imogen and Vince both chuckled.
“Who wants to hurt me?” he asked through the laugh. “Maybe I should make you a list of who doesn’t since that’ll be a lot shorter. I’m the most important politician on the richest planet in the universe. I have no shortage of enemies.”
“This is gonna be tougher than I thought,” Ned observed.
“Who was your first thought, then?”
“Tony Abate,” he answered without hesitation. “I beat him in the last election, and we are running against each other again.”
“You really think that Tony would try to have you killed?” Imogen asked incredulously. “You two were like brothers.”
“Just because he married my sister doesn’t make him my brother,” he said, wagging his finger in Imogen’s face.
“Sure it does,” Ned whispered. “That’s literally the definition of a brother-in-law.”
“Listen, kid, a lot has happened since you last saw Tony, and him and me don’t get along so good anymore. Politics will do that,” he said.
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Imogen observed.
“I suppose I don’t.”
“Does Tony live here on the planet?” I asked, trying to move the conversation back toward the matter at hand.
Vince looked down his arm where the blood was beginning to seep out from under the quick bandage. “Yeah, he lives here, but hardly on the planet. He’s got a penthouse at the top of the Bank of Parm building.”
Imogen shot me a look that Vince caught.
“The two of you know that place?”
“We were just asked not to return there prior to coming here,” I explained.
“To the penthouse?”
“No, to the bank,” Imogen clarified.
Vince waved that away. “They got nothing to do with each other. I’ll let you take my shuttle straight from here to there, and maybe you can get that rat to tell you who he hired. You have my permission to do whatever you see fit to get the information.”
From where she was working on the other side of the room, the gubernatorial guard shouted over, “I didn’t hear that, and no you don’t.”
“Right, no you don’t,” he said and gave me an exaggerated wink. “Anyway, I get patched up and then head back to my place. Just a few blocks that way.”
He pointed vaguely to his right.
Just at that moment, the door on the far side of the room opened, then all of the men surrounded Vince and began to pepper him with questions and tell him how tough he was.
“That’s our cue,” I said, and Imogen and I made our way toward the door.
“Bye, Uncle Vince,” Imogen called, but he didn’t hear her; he was far too busy basking in the worry of his adoring crowd.
The Gubernatorial Guard stepped in front of us. “You’re no longer a wanted man, Hank Spears,” she informed me. “At least not by the Consortium. But don’t do anything stupid that will force me to put your name right back on that list.”
“The Conclave holds me to a certain standard anyway,” I said. “I couldn’t go kill a political candidate any more than you could.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” she said and reached out to pat me on the cheek.
The other guard stepped over. “I opened the bounty and gave your Falconer the governor’s address should you need it after your investigation. If you’d like to follow me, I can take you to his shuttle.”
“Thank you both,” I said and fell in behind the guard who began marching out the door and back down the hallway, his cape fluttering behind him.
“You okay, Gin-Gin?” I asked, a shit-eating grin plastered across my face.
“No,” she admitted in a quavering voice. “For two reasons. One, don’t ever call me Gin-Gin again. And two, I’m tired of seeing the people that I love have terrible things happen to them.”
I remembered back to Shep activating the nanobots inside Louise, nearly pulling her apart from the inside out. “I can understand that,” I told her.
“Maybe it’s better not to have any family at all, like you,” she said. “That way, nothing bad can happen to them.”
“That’s only because bad things already did happen to them,” I reminded her.
She fell silent for a moment. “I guess we have that in common.”
Feeling like it was better to get away from the subject and return to the task in front of us, I asked, “What do you know about this Tony?”
“He’s a prick,” Imogen answered quickly. “But is also a nice guy.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Ned said, so I simply repeated it to her.
She shrugged as we followed the guard out past the Kyrog and into the stadium that was still clearing out. He turned, and we headed in the direction of the locked metal door, then he inserted a key into it, swinging it open and guiding us up a narrow staircase.
“It means that he’s the kind of guy that thinks it’s funny to give people nicknames about whatever they might be uncomfortable with or make the kind of comments that he thinks are funny and are mostly just him being a dick,” she explained. “But fundamentally, underneath it all, he’s a good guy who got into politics because he wants to help people.”
“I’ve met the type,” I told her. “Honestly, you’re describing half of the people who have scrappers licenses.”
“I don’t have a hard time believing that,” Imogen said. “But I don’t believe that Tony would try to have Vince killed. They might be political adversaries, but I just can’t see Tony doing that kind of thing. Under all his bluster, he’s a teddy bear.”
“People are capable of a lot of things in the quest for power,” I reminded her.
“This I know, but you’ll see what I mean once you meet the man,” she said.
“People have killed for a lot less than a Sectoral governorship.”
14
“Va va voom,” the large bearded man said when we entered his lavish penthouse. The flight over had been quick, and the guard had gotten us past all of Tony’s security without incident. My bounty hunter badge would have done the same, but it undoubtedly would’ve taken longer.
Now we were standing in the middle of the beautiful and massive apartment that was as incongruous with the man as I could imagine. Where he looked slovenly and large in an ill-fitting suit covered in small specks of crusty stain and buttons passing through the wrong loops, the space was an ultramodern pink haven.
Everything was so clean it looked like the showroom of a furniture department store. It glinted bright in the light of the afternoon sun, which poured in from a rear sliding wall that opened onto a balcony overlooking the tall structures of downtown Parm. From here, there was no street noise or squalor, and there were no pushy street thugs or starving animals.
“If you had told me that any daughter of Albert Hush would turn into a sexy young thing like this, I would have laughed you out of the room,” Tony said as he crossed the space, his eyes running over Imogen and then turning on me.
“What’s this, your muscle?” he asked. “I should tell you, sweet thing, you could find better protection than this guy. He looks like something a Junk Rat woulda pulled off the scrap heap.”
Walking over to me, he extended a hand. “Whadda ya say, there, Dusty?”
“Mister Abate, I’m Hunter Spears, and I’m here on official business,” I said as I shook his hand.
“Oh!” he said excitedly. “You mean to tell me that this is the best Vinny could find? Wait till the boys hear about this. And you”—he turned back to Imogen—“you didn’t like being an Inquisitor, so now you’re palling around with this dime store bounty hunter?”
