The creature was close to three meters tall, and if Mallory had to guess, he’d estimate mass at close to five hundred kilos, all muscle. It had a feline skull and striped fur and moved with a grace that reminded Mallory of a very well-trained martial artist. It wore only a gun belt.
“Never seen a moreau before?” Parvi asked.
Mallory realized he’d been staring and turned away from the giant cat. “No.”
“Get used to it. If you stick around Bakunin, you’ll see more.”
Hearing the tone in Parvi’s voice, Mallory turned toward her. “You sound like you don’t approve.”
Instead of answering him, she led him to one of the kiosks that dotted the floor here, on the opposite corner of the floor from the moreau.
“This ties into the closed BMU database,” she told him. “You can see live queries entered by anyone in the system, on-planet or off.”
“Off?”
“We have tach-transmit updates on an hourly basis—with a transmission delay, of course.”
“Of course.” It was disconcerting to think that a completely extra-legal entity like the BMU had outposts on other planets with enough resources to run a tach-transmitter. Mallory faced the kiosk and started running a few searches. The interface was familiar, like searching the want ads anywhere else—except the ads here were “team experienced with infiltration and underwater demolition,” “EVA-rated flight crew for Lancer-class drop ship, experience handling pulse cannon/ plasma weapon repair/maint a plus,” “IW hackers needed, good pay/benefits for low-risk industrial espionage . . .”
For the sake of his cover story, Mallory really looked though the ads searching for positions that resembled anything that might interest Staff Sergeant Fitzpatrick. He’d gather a list of contacts that he could take back to the hotel. He hoped that his search for discreet off-planet transport would bear fruit before he ran into Parvi again and she asked him about his job search. With all the positions available, the longer he went without signing on with someone, the more obvious it would be that he was looking for something more then a source of income.
He went though a series of random sorts when he caught his breath.
Parvi had been staring at the tiger moreau, but she turned to face him. “Is something wrong?”
Mallory shook his head. “No.”
He didn’t even sound convincing to himself. The deceptions he had trained for with the Marines had involved not being seen by the enemy.
“Just.” He stumbled for words as he composed himself. “It just struck me, looking at all these listings . . .” He turned to look at her and the distress on his face was honest, even if his words weren’t. “And it hit me that my old life’s over. I’m really no longer part of the Marines . . .”
Parvi nodded. “I wish I could say you’d get over that.” She turned back to look at the crowd. The tiger moreau was gone now. “Everyone on Bakunin is running from something.”
Mallory nodded, turning back to face the kiosk. It was hard not to breathe a sigh of relief that she had bought his little improvised speech.
On the display, floating near the top of the holo, was a small listing waiting for him to touch it to see greater detail. The current sort was by job location, so various place names glowed brightest, the most common—filling most of the holo—being “undisclosed location.”
Of course that made sense. If you were preparing military action, where you were sending the mercenaries was a valuable piece of intel you wouldn’t release, even to an allegedly closed database run by the BMU. After all, the members of BMU only owed loyalty to you after they were hired.
However, a few ads did give that sort of information, where it wasn’t obviously mission critical to keep it secret. Most of those were prosaic things like jobs as trainers, cargo escorts and security, some of the Information Warfare jobs where geography was irrelevant, jobs as bodyguards or security where the show of force was of more deterrence value, and the one listing that captured Mallory’s attention—
“Team needed to protect scientific expedition to vicinity of Xi Virginis.”
CHAPTER TEN
