“Like I could give a shit.” Regers examined the silver pellet, the size of his thumbnail, with a grunt of acknowledgement. Vincent craned his neck to get a better look. “Anything else I should be buying here?”
The man cleared his throat. Smoothing his small goatee, he gave a salesman’s nod. “There are poison pills over there. Heavy duty…if that’s what you’re looking for.” He eyed Regers with an inquisitive glare.
Regers dipped hands in an open crate, rummaged about. “I am. What of these thumb charges here? What’s the latency?”
The salesman paused before answering. “A second to two. On sale now. Army surplus. Probably a 1 in 50 chance one of them’s a dud so you’re better off taking two or more.”
Regers shrugged. “If I double my weapons with my boys here that halves the odds.”
“You know your business.” The man screwed up his eyes in a frown. “Can I ask—”
“No, you may not ask. Just play the dutiful salesman, please. Keep showing us the good stuff.” Regers turned his back on him, then continued to sift through the explosive stock at his leisure. He frowned at one oblong deformed piece and rejected others out of hand. “I’ll take five of these cadmium flares. Plus three poison pills. No, wait make that four and throw in a couple of sniffers.”
The vendor beamed with appreciation. “Good choice. How many spinners? This bag is on sale, four of them for fifty yols.
“We’ll take ’em all.”
“Shall I bag ’em up?”
“No need. We got hands here. Nobody around your grubby yard’s going to get wise to us.” He stuffed the bag in his pocket, distributed the excess flares to Deakes and Vincent. After paying the 212 yols, Regers, Vincent, and the others left.
They walked some more in the rising heat, another mile before Ramra huffed out a complaint. “Seems a waste of time, Regers. All this walking about. We’re going to hoof our way into town? It’s twenty miles. Isn’t there a better way?”
“You got something against a little exercise and fresh air, Ramra?”
“I mean—”
“There’s a method to this madness. I don’t want the ship anywhere near the city core. Too many damn gendarmes and cops, and I don’t know Phallanor well enough to know her rhythms. You got to be smart about this. We could hire an air car, but I don’t want a paper trail. We do it the simple way, and the slow and right way. Cash transactions. We take our time.”
Ramra grunted and gave a silent nod. “What’s the big deal, Regers? You’re going all cautious on us. Aren’t you just going to ask Mr. bigshot Cybercore for the payout and then scram? Why all the sneaking about?”
Deakes gave a coarse laugh. “Where’ve you been the last hour, Jakru? Head up your ass?”
Regers chuckled. “It’s always a big deal, Ramra—when Uncle Regers is on the job.”
They caught the first feeder tram heading into the city. Not much of a wait, half an hour, no more, but enough to keep Regers restless. By the time the four got closer to the city center, the traffic had thickened considerably.
The middle carriage was full, brimming with passengers, all at the height of the day’s kerfuffle. Folks of all denominations—rich, poor, loud, quiet—business people, chatty types, students, office employees and the odd blue collar worker taking a time out for a kebab or donut, whatever they ate on this tinsel-town world.
Magno trams raced everywhere, crisscrossing each other on levels up to eight stories high. Regers craned his neck to look through the tinted glass. Blue streaks of light whisked people off to their destinations. Always in a rush. Busy world with nobody having the time for anybody or anything. So unaware these people were of the menace lurking in the background, those perilous squids and bugs, waiting to ravage and enslave a privileged planet like this.
At Armington station they debarked and emerged into Monastria’s bustling square with four stone statues commemorating the planet’s ‘terra-forming-fathers’ in some distant century. Regers gave a devil-may-care shrug and herded Ramra and the others on. They had taken no firearms with them. Useless. They’d never get past Cyber Corp security anyway. He had other plans in mind. The sniffers and spinners could come in handy. Then again they might not. He’d memorized the city’s layout, essentially a dense grid with a wide oval roundabout sweeping the central core around the tallest buildings.
The mile-high sky towers soared above like things of fantasy. Past the inner circle down a few side streets, they strode, pushing past milling folks, then to an old brick and steel building, showing its signs of age. Part of the old quarter. More heritage shops and apartments rose overtop. The magno trams continued to rumble overhead.
Aside from the brief heritage architecture, the streets were cold, sterile, and clean. Lots of activity here but everybody just going through the motions, blinking, speaking, gesturing like a mechanical horde of robots. He guessed this conformity is what cities bred and birthed these days. Good old Regers’d take a starship with a working light drive and the open universe any day.
The impossibly high sky towers glinted in the harsh sunlight: chrome, glass, plexicene. One of those massive towers had a sprawling green and white logo pasted to its side, that of an eagle and robot with a bright yellow halo over them. Cyber Corp.
Regers exhaled a sharp breath. How long had he waited for this moment?
He motioned his men inside the lobby of the giant corporate headquarters. Exotic plants with leafy ferns ranged around the
