Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

Paroti growled. “Can we bring ’em down?”

Talbott shook his head. “Assuming they’re heading back toward the city, it would take maybe fifteen minutes to intercept.” He looked up at the colonel. “They’ll be in patrolled airspace by then—”

Paroti swore. “We can’t , then. Too much chance of being seen.”

“No shit. Wait a sec’…” Talbott paged back in the satellite imagery; the replay took a few seconds to load. “There.” He pointed. “Yeah, there’s the woman and Legroeder getting into the flyer. I wonder if McGinnis sent them away.”

Paroti smacked a fist into his hand in fury. “ Damn it to shit! ” He swung back to the screen. “Did they get away with any information? Or did it all go up in that house?”

Talbott yanked off his headset and sat back angrily. All the equipment they’d gathered, all the organization, the men, the ships ready to go when the call came—and they couldn’t fucking stop an unarmed flyer. “How would I know? But I’m guessing they took the records. The implant logs are garbled pretty bad, but I’m thinking McGinnis was planning to hand the records over.”

“What a fuckup! How could this happen? Christ, Jenk—what made McGinnis do it? Did he do anything we told him to?” Paroti clawed at his sideburns in agitation. Finally he moaned, “We’re gonna have to tell Command. And I suppose North, too.”

Another risk of exposure. And who’s gonna take the heat? Not Command. Not North . Talbott scowled up and down the console. God, he wanted a drink right now.

“What do you think about picking them off in the city?” Paroti asked.

Talbott glared up at him. Why is this idiot in charge? He drew a breath. “We can’t take chances like that, Colonel. Going after them out in the wilderness was risky enough. This is supposed to be an undercover operation, remember?” And now we screwed it up royally .

“Don’t be a wise ass. Give me some options. What about that other rigger, or whatever the hell she is. Legroeder’s woman. Can we do something with her? She probably knows some things that would be useful.”

Talbott rocked back in his chair, surprised by his commander. “There’s a thought now. That rigger might not be so eager to spill his guts if we’ve got his girl. We’d probably have to have Command pass on it first. And I suppose we’ll need to see what Hizhonor North has to say. But grabbing her just might be a way to pull our nuts out of the fire on this one.”

“Then get on it…”

“You know,” Legroeder said, between glances at the instruments and the autopilot, “we’re flying what could easily be construed as a stolen craft. Plus, we’ve got a box full of documents that were probably known to have been in his archives. We might want to do some thinking about how that’s going to look.”

“I have been thinking,” she said softly. “And I don’t like what I’m hearing.”

“You think they’re going to come after us?”

“I think the police will probably want to have some words with us.”

“Which raises the next question. Are they in on this frame-up business?”

Harriet bit her lip. “Maybe not. Whatever’s going on at the RiggerGuild—and whoever they’re colluding with—I haven’t seen a reason yet to suspect the police.”

“But do we trust them enough to go back to Elmira? Will we be safe there?” They were flying on a southerly heading at the moment; Elmira was to the southeast.

Harriet scowled in concentration. Clearly matters had gone beyond anything in her experience. “Seems to me, if anything, we’re probably safer in the city. At least there we have some control, and we can use the legal system. Peter has good security, and whoever these people are, they don’t seem eager to reveal themselves.”

“They might not have to, if they can frame us for McGinnis’s house burning.”

“Yes, but we were shot at before we landed there.”

“Which will be hard to prove, until someone gets through the forcefield and looks at the rental flyer.”

“Well, nothing’s easy,” Harriet said. “You know, McGinnis knew more than he told us. I think he was expecting us.”

“Why do you say that?”

“For one thing, he knew who we were. Remember his remark about whoever shot at us not liking lawyers? Only I didn’t tell him I was a lawyer?”

Legroeder grunted. “I was wondering about his reconstructive surgery. I didn’t see any datachip markers on him, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have implants.”

“Meaning—? What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know.” Legroeder rubbed his jaw. His guess was, anyone with implants was suspect on this world; but that didn’t mean he was guilty of anything. “I’m just thinking Jakus had them, and gave every sign of being under their influence. And we know where he got his implants.”

Harriet was watching him over her glasses. “Golen Space?”

Legroeder nodded. Implants made him uneasy enough in and of themselves; but in the pirate culture, they were designed without safeguards, and were used for control as much as for enhancement. He shuddered, remembering how close he had come to having them in his own head.

With a deep breath, he set a new course for Elmira.

They landed at the edge of the city shortly after sunset, in a driving rainstorm. They sat in the grounded flyer, listening to the rain pound on the roof, while Harriet called for Peter to send a car to meet them, and made arrangements for the flyer to be garaged outside the city. Then they piled into Peter’s associate’s car with the box of documents. It was a gloomy ride to Harriet’s office, in the rain and the darkness. They were greeted outside by another of the PI’s men, already on watch.

When they walked into the office, shaking off the raindrops, Legroeder was surprised to see a woman sitting at Harriet’s desk, poring over Harriet’s com-console. The woman’s face looked familiar. “Hi, Mom,” she said. “I was starting to worry.”

“We had a few problems, dear,” Harriet answered, showing Legroeder where to put the box. “Like someone trying to shoot us out of the sky, and then a house burning down. Legroeder, this is my daughter Morgan. Morgan, Rigger Legroeder.”

They shook hands. Morgan appeared to be in her mid thirties, a good-looking woman with a narrower and more angular face than Harriet’s, but with her mother’s greenish eyes and intensity of expression. She looked alarmed as her mother bustled around the office, turning down lights and closing shades. Then Harriet told her about the visit with McGinnis.

“Christ, Mother! You need to get some security. Do you think they’ll attack you here in the city?”

Harriet sank into an overstuffed chair with a heartfelt sigh. “I don’t think so. But Peter’s on his way over now. We’ll do whatever he says.”

“But what about Mr. McGinnis? Do you have any idea what’s happened to him?”

Harriet looked grim. “I have a pretty good idea, yes, though I hope I’m wrong. I’ll ask Peter to send someone up there as soon as possible. But in the meantime, McGinnis gave us some extremely sensitive materials to safeguard. This stuff could be major armament for Legroeder in his case with the Guild and the Spacing Authority. What else it will do, I don’t know.” Harriet got up with a groan and pried the lid off the box. “Somebody is awfully afraid of what’s in there. So let’s get busy making backup copies. We’ll want one in a bank vault, one in free-float storage on the net, and maybe a couple in other places. Let’s copy the cube first, then scan in all the hardcopy.”