Perhaps he would enjoy himself in Paranith. Goss had given him some throwaway money. He could lose himself in a few gambling games and the pleasure of a few women. Casinos and night life would be a welcome release from his predicament.
With a grim smile, Yul rejected the plan. The sooner he concluded this dull task, the better.
He would have thought Mathias could have provided at least a shuttle to take him down to the planet’s surface. Once again, Yul thought of bucking Mathias. No—an inner intuition told him it was the wrong move. Implants or no, one day his enforcers would catch up with him. It would take only a single slip. First things first: when he finished this job, his number one priority would be to excise the wretched nano-implants, no matter what the pain or cost.
Mathias’s words at the debrief echoed hollowly in Yul’s head. “Remember, try to run and we will fry you, Vrean, and deal with the consequences later. Anywhere you go, near a radio tower or some light drive system, we will track you. Unless you wish to steer clear of every civilization completely?” It was an option, but not a pleasant one. He could always take refuge on some uncharted planet.
Yul bit his lip with moody unease. It was not an option that he was willing to take at this time.
Aboard the transfer shuttle that slowly edged away from the space station, he watched the blue-grey world of Namith materialize in a wash of bright colour. The surface blossomed in a surreal rush—an underpopulated world, one of the more recent human colonies, terraformed partly by the financing of a few ultra-rich investors. Tall oxygen convection pumps, noisy behemoths, installed at strategic places on the surface, comprised the main workhorses, running 24-7 to pump oxygen into the atmosphere. Similarly, flora transplanted from Earth and like worlds made it possible for whole towns and cities, assembled from bottom to top, to bloom overnight. Three mining companies had lent engineering input and raw materials from what he had gleaned; lumber and coal had been transferred at mega costs, all absorbed by investors. An ideal place for a man such as Hresh to set up shop, Yul suspected, if Mathias was to be believed. Namith was approaching a fully terraformed world providing low costs for avid business entrepreneurs.
Yul considered hiring a surface car to take him to the designated warehouse, but he discarded the idea. He wanted to leave no obvious trail. Instead he decided to hunker down in the city at Parson’s Pub, waiting for dusk to arrive. His boots gripped the oily streets slick with rain. The air, warm, scented and humid, soothed his lungs, being richer in oxygen than what he was used to. Low buildings peered down at him. The pedestrians, moving shiftily, were mostly a multi-racial mix of itinerant workers. Near the bar, a lone keyboardist played a modern hypno beat, entertaining the regular mix of barflies whom Yul expected in such a lowbrow spaceport town. It seemed the space station Pegasus had more action than the city planetside. Yul didn’t mind. The chronograph on the wall showed mid-evening. Time to go. He quaffed his ale, took the air tram from the city terminal to the farthest line east, preparing to walk the remaining five miles to the warehouse that blinked clearly on his GPS.
* * *
Aboard his private N-Juen, Mathias sped to the world Rdelnar for a deal-closer with ambassador Chagin of the Upper Colonies, member of the World Planetary Society. The merger between Cyscox Machine Exports and Cybernetics Corp. would increase his profits by 30%, also facilitate the flow of wholesale machine parts and AI systems needed for his new line of bots, to his own labs. How he relished this deal! Of course, he had ruthlessly squeezed the Rdelnarian bureaucrats to smooth the way for a speedy resoluation of all legalities and paperwork crucial to pulling off such a coup. Threats to Chagin’s family and a veiled hint to courier his kidnapped daughter’s finger to him had been the final convincer. He disliked resorting to such tactics, but they proved unavoidable to prevent an exorbitant personal payout and a serious loss of business to widespread, competitive markets. Business was business. How else had he survived thus far?
Kaymis, his financial advisor, sauntered into the ship’s briefing room with an officious air. “The Rdelnarian representatives are ready to sign, sir, offering a not insignificant token of their good faith. An extra thousand Rangenkro-cloned circuits and as many robot-lens eyes. Chagin personally gift-wrapped these extra containers for you.”
“Just what I want to hear, Kaymis. The Rdelnarians are wise to humour me.”
Kaymis’s hands peaked under his chin. “There’s another matter you should know about. The Zikri have been busy. My sources indicate that they’ve been launching intelligence probes on you.”
Mathias grew thoughtful, his eyes flicking over the lemon wax gleam on the polished mahogany of the bar in his private space yacht. “I’ll broach that matter when the threat becomes real. I’ve had many threats in my day. I still blame Goss for that loose end. Idiot.”
“Well, the problem does not go away by blaming Goss.”
Mathias twitched his nose in anger, an indication that the topic was closed. Already his mind was fast-forwarding to the next problem. How to requisition torso parts as cheaply as possible and undercut
