Bodyguard had picked up on the significance of the information as well. 'Let us waste no time. If it is Reston Jameson we need to speak to, we need to lay our plans. It will not be easy.'
'We could just make an appointment.'
Bodyguard rippled his years. 'I will watch while you try.'
I took out my beltcomp and referenced his office. His secretary answered, a woman as striking as Opal. Evidently Reston liked to surround himself with beauty. It took me under a minute to learn that Reston Jameson was not only not currently available but would remain unavailable to me for the foreseeable future. She managed to convey the message in a manner that combined impeccable style and grace with the warmth and slickness of an iceberg. She was so perfect in her role that I suspected her of being a digital construct, even though I knew a man like Reston Jameson would use a live secretary for the prestige if nothing else.
I snapped the cover shut on my beltcomp. 'Now what?'
Bodyguard showed his teeth. 'Now we attack.' I got the feeling it was the answer he'd been waiting for.
Now we attack. He made it sound simple, logical, inevitable, but I was not a military man, not police trained, nothing. I was a pilot, and all my experience as a smuggler had geared me to avoid conflict, not seek it out. Aggressive action would not be simple, and it certainly didn't seem logical to take on the most powerful man in the Belt. I started to say that but Bodyguard's expression kept me silent. He was a kzin in midleap and wasn't about to brook any argument. For a moment I considered trying to slip away, but the Goldskins would have a tag on my ident and I wouldn't be able to get off Ceres. Running would label me as both dishonorable and guilty in Bodyguard's eyes, and he would track me down and kill me. I was along for what might turn out to be a very uncomfortable ride.
Unlike me, Bodyguard was perfectly comfortable with direct action, and he knew how to carry it out. Phase one of attack is reconnaissance, and our first reconnaissance was to identify where we might intercept Reston Jameson in order to extract a confession from him. It wouldn't be easy. He had his own retinue of bodyguards, human ones, and his own tunnel farm, which would have more than its fair share of electronic sentries. We called up a map and the scope of the problem became clear. There was exactly one entry point to his complex, a private tube station. We couldn't even get a tube car to stop there without an invitation code, and if we somehow managed to clear that hurdle we'd simply be turned around by the guards. We needed another option, and I couldn't see it.
Bodyguard could. He tapped a talon on the map display. 'This tunnel farm is on level one.'
'So?'
'Hrrr. So there will be surface locks.'
'There aren't any marked.'
'I have worked for several wealthy humans. I have learned they are tremendously reticent about every aspect of their lives. There will be much about Reston Jameson which does not appear in the public record. Such a man would not build a lair without a back door. There will be surface locks.'
I hadn't thought of that, but…'They'll be alarmed.'
Bodyguard smiled a feral smile. 'Alarms can be defeated.' I swear he was looking forward to this desperate little venture purely for the challenge.
My vac suit was on board Elektra so I had to rent one. It didn't fit well, and the controls were unfamiliar, an uncomfortable reality for a singleship pilot who was used to intimate and instinctive familiarity with every piece of equipment. Bodyguard had his own suit. The surface of Ceres doesn't offer much more than hard radiation and vacuum, people don't go out on the surface unless they have to, but the lock master asked no questions as he cycled us through and we offered no explanations. It was six kilometers over the surface to the area over Reston Jameson's tunnel farm, four horizons of dead reckoning away. Ceres has no navigational satellites, no magnetic field, and no easy landmarks. The soil has been churned up by the countless tracks of men and vehicles over the centuries so even these are no help. What Ceres does have is a gravity field low enough that you can jump forty meters high. We had a tunnel map that showed surface features like solar arrays and ship locks, and those high slow jumps allowed us to identify enough of them to keep our bearings.
It was vertigo-inducing, but it would have been fun if our mission wasn't so serious. It took us only half an hour to cover the distance, and we hit pay dirt immediately. Bodyguard could get twice as high as I could, so he must have seen it as soon as we left the surface lock. We were maintaining radio silence, on the off chance that we needed to, so he kept his own counsel until we were close enough to see it from the ground.
He waved to get my attention and pointed. I followed his talon. It was a ship lock, and it wasn't on the map. For a moment I thought we were lost and had somehow come back to the main hangars. I turned the map to try and orient myself, and then I realized what I was looking at. Reston Jameson's private ship lock.
That surprised me. I've docked at Ceres many times, cleared in and out through Ceres flight control. I knew the approach funnel cold, I knew the obstacles and the beacons, and I could sketch the three-dimensional traffic- control layer cake blindfolded. This ship lock wasn't in the traffic-control plan. Reston Jameson had clout indeed to keep it off the charts. I looked up and picked up the riding lights of a freighter sliding into the main hangar bay, and visualized the curving low-gee trajectory, wondering how they managed to deconflict the flight paths, and suddenly I understood. Ceres' main hangar is at the equator, and approach and takeoff are both west to east in order to take advantage of Ceres' rotation for velocity matching. A ship coming in to Reston Jameson's lock would use the same approach, offset six kilometers. It would be an open secret in traffic control, but no one else would know the reclusive magnate's comings and goings.
It occurred to me that the crimes I was about to commit in order to clear my name were serious enough to rate to heavy jail time if I was caught. I considered suggesting that we go back, but I thought better of it. If Bodyguard decided I was guilty of killing his client he would track me to the end of the galaxy to put my ears on his belt. I mentally rehearsed throwing myself on the mercy of the court, and followed him toward the lock. The thought crossed my mind that he might have an accident, say with his suit seal. I didn't pursue the idea. I'm not a killer, and that belief had suddenly become important to me.
There was a transpax dome on the surface too, not far from the shiplock, about the same size as Constellation's dome. It seemed Reston Jameson liked to look at the stars himself. I looked up at the star-strewn sky. Watchbird Alpha was sixteen hundred kilometers up there, looking down at me with cameras good enough to pick out an individual in daylight. Somewhere down over the equatorial horizon Delta and Gamma kept their own vigils. I began to wish we'd come at night. I was sweating and couldn't wipe my brow. Dayside Ceres is fifty Celsius, which was enough to make my suit's cooling system run at a steady purr. It was standard night in the tunnels though, and that was what counted. Bodyguard had been unwilling to wait until standard night came into phase with surface night.
I felt dreadfully exposed in the harsh glare on the unrelieved terrain, and I muttered a few choice words about kzinti, after first making sure my transmitter was off. Scream and leap. How they'd ever managed to survive as a species was beyond me. I began to wish more fervently that I'd never taken Opal Stone's contract. Bodyguard seemed completely unconcerned as he took one long, practiced leap to the rectangular outline of a personnel lock. The mechanism was a simple pull bar-it was illegal to have a locking mechanism on an airlock, in case someone got trapped outside. Reston Jameson no doubt could have gotten around that restriction, but it seemed he had chosen not to.
And I knew the reason for that. As soon as the lock cycled, the computer would log it. His security teams would be there in a minute or less. Short of drilling through ten meters of rock and regolith we were no further ahead here than we were trying to access his private tube car station.
Bodyguard had come prepared. He drew a variable sword from his day pack, a highly illegal weapon anywhere in Sol System, and extended the blade. The magnetically stiffened monomolecular wire was invisible. I looked for the telltale marker ball that would let him track the tip but there was none. Instinctively I backed up, just in case he wound up cutting me in half by accident. He paid no attention, and with absolute confidence forced the wire into the heavy metal door of the lock. A fine mist of ice crystals began to jet from the incision, growing larger as, with straining muscles, he dragged the force wire around the inner perimeter of the door. The spray had stopped before he'd gotten halfway around; he'd voided the atmosphere to vacuum. A moment later he had a large, roughly square chunk of the airlock door cut out. I had no idea what he intended to accomplish by doing this. He could get away with cutting open the outer door because the lock itself held little atmosphere, but now it wouldn't seal. Tons of air pressure now held the inner door shut and if he tried to cut through it he would explosively decompress Reston Jameson's entire complex, probably launching himself into orbit in the
