Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

“Even flaked. I thought you’d better stay mobile. I hear a cobben’s been activated.”

“Pointed at me?”

“Pointed at your client. I don’t touch that kind of negotiation, so I don’t know who paid the price. There’s a lot of chat in the underways, I’m hearing this and that…” His dust lids slid slowly over his eyes, then retreated beneath the outer lids; he waited. Gossip bought gossip in his view and he had his own reputation to consider; he was supposed to know everything going by on Helvetia and a long way beyond.

“Trade you something that’s not for chatting yet.”

“What for what?”

“A packet giving chapter and verse, signatured and attested by me and the client, set in Escrow pending release to someone with a passpartout for that account. And a verbal outline of what’s inside for your ears only.”

“For…”

“For a squirt link. I want the Seven warned of trouble, who it’s from and what’s behind it.” I tapped a finger on the packet, watched it wobble, then tucked it into a beltslit. “If this works out like I think, Slancy ’s coming in with a heavy load and a fragile one. I want a welcome waiting.”

Vnok rubbed his wrists together again, the skrikk like the purring of a sated cat; odd how many different inflections he could get out of that idiot sound. “There are two names on that list. Leda Zag. Ilvinin Taivas. They are… um… of special interest to the Seven. If you can find them and let me know you have them, I guarantee a vigorous welcome.”

I looked round; I didn’t spot anything, but Vnok wouldn’t be talking this freely without his own distorter making mishmash of our words. I swung around so I was facing the back wall just in case someone was out there flaking this. “Distorter on?” I said. Logic was all very well, but what I had to say, well, I wasn’t going to take any chances I could avoid.

“On,” he said. His antennas wriggled his surprise.

“When you hear, you’ll see why.” I rested my arms on the table and leaned in close as I sketched out what was in that packet, everything Adelaar had found out about Bolodo, dates and the data she’d flaked from the mainBrain on Spotchals, what I thought had probably happened to the disappeared on the list he’d given me.

By the time I got back to the trucetel, Adelaar and the others were waiting for me. There was a burn on one of Adelaar’s arms, the tip of Pels’ left ear was flat instead of round, but Kumari looked cool as mountain water. “Crawler,” she said. “We stayed in the bright instead of taking the tube run, put his timing off.”

“Business finished?”

“All done.”

“We paid up here?”

“More than paid, if you count the deposit.”

“Good. Order dinner for…” I frowned at my ringchron, surprised to find it was barely the third hour past noon. Seemed like it should’ve been closer to sundown. “Eighth hour. What’s the shuttle schedule like?”

“Midday, it’s usually fairly light. You want to take a chance?”

“Yeh. The paperwork’s done, the squirt link’s set up and Vnok is primed, better we leave before Bolodo thinks up something new.”

“Terminal,” Adelaar said suddenly; she’d been listening and looking peeved at being left out of things. Couldn’t help that, I wasn’t going to tell her about Vnok’s list until I had to and that wasn’t till we got wherever it was we were going. “The dinner ploy’s so old it stinks, it won’t fool anyone.”

“No problem. Remember Barker and his friends? I hired them to hang around the transfer point until we showed up. Gave us a discount, they did. Don’t like Crawlers any better than I do.”

Maybe it was Vnok pulling strings, maybe it was Luck coming round to kiss us sweet, but we got loose from Helvetia Perimeter in half the usual time and dipped into the insplit clean and lonesome.

We made Weersyll three weeks later. Security at the port was a joke; getting into the holding pens might have been a problem, but we weren’t going near the place. There was only one ship down and they kept searchlights sweeping the metacrete around it, the flickering light and shadow making ideal conditions for Pels. The guards at the gates had obviously been warned to look out for intruders, but they weren’t really interested in anything except giving the haulers a hard time, making them unload crates and open them up so the contents could be inspected. One time, just for the hell of it, seemed to me, they shot up some crates of frozen poults to the vast and vocal annoyance of the cargomaster waiting for them. No bloodoons or sniffoons, no heatseekers. A joke. Pels put a packet of ticks in his mouth, turned on his camouflage and walked through the gate, then climbed on a flat as it trundled through after him and rode in comfort to the ship. He set the ticks and rode the flat out again, ignored by one and all. And that was that.

1. Eight months std. after Adelaar hired Quale.

Asteroid Belt/Horgul system/Swardheld Quale et al. With Slancy Orza tucked neatly out of sight on a large stone asteroid.

Pels scratched at his healing ear. “Four and Five are inhabited. Five looked to me like a penal colony, I saw an insystem ship eject half a dozen pods and leave orbit before they were down; obviously no one cared whether they landed in one piece or not or what happened to the people in them. The Transport went down on Four, so I thought better not send EYEs there yet, I didn’t want Bolodo techs picking up search traces and following them back to us. There’s another reason, but I’ll get to that in a minute. I’ve had EYEs poking about Five since we got here, I figured I could get some idea what we’re facing from the convicts, if that’s what they were. They are. The place has evidently been a dumping ground for quite a while, some of the buildings down there are old enough to have great-grandpups. What we’re facing, mm. Good news and bad news. The good is we’ve got a fair version of the local language in MEMORY. A little updating and we’re home free on that. Remember Hordaradda? You picked up some plants there, the ones you delivered to University the time we met.”

“I remember. Yes. Hordar?”

“Looks like.”

“And the bad news?”

“The bad news. Bolodo landed on Four. Which means the head whosis is there, government records will be there, including the list of the two-legged cargo Bolodo’s been supplying the past however many years, their names and whereabouts. We need that list.” He dug his claws into the fur under his chin. “Which means we’ve got to go there and get it.” He sucked in a long breath, let it trickle through his blunt black nose. “You know what’s orbiting that mudball, Swar? Riding in synchronous orbit over what’s probably the capital city? A Monarch class Warmaster,” he was speaking slowly, enunciating his words with much care, “and it’s working just fine, far as I can tell; I didn’t hang about long after I saw what she was and felt her start sniffing after who it was making waves around her. She’s old, but those things were built to last. I wouldn’t want to try sneaking Slancy down past her.”

Quale slumped in his chair, crossed his legs at the ankles and contemplated the screen with its schematic of the system, green dots marking the location of the two worlds they were interested in and some slowly shifting red dots that were insystem ships traveling between those worlds. He ruffled his fingers through the short hairs of his beard, stroked his mustache. Watching him, Adelaar felt like screaming: shave that fungus off if that’s all you can do, sit there fondling it. There were things going on here she didn’t understand, more to getting that list than finding out where Aslan was. I’m paying you, I own you for the next few months, she told herself, but it didn’t help, she was a passenger and he was running the game. I could have done all this myself, she thought, I wouldn’t need him if I had a ship of my own… She swore under her breath, she’d put off and put off buying her own ship, it seemed such an unnecessary expense, what with upkeep and fuel and crew and most of all mooring fees, so much easier to buy space on a freighter or a Worldship. What’s going on here? I won’t be a passenger. I won’t be pushed into a closet and left out of things…