Jandi pushed the cube into her hands. “I can give you two days’ head start. Go and see, but don’t touch. And don’t come back! The danger that they linked us together will be too great. On that cube is a list of scholars you can trust. Send them the results of your investigation by parcel post, and then abandon us to our fate. It is no more than we deserve.”
She left that night. No point in trying to find a cargo. Altair had stopped all outgoing shipping. The planet had become a black hole of commerce. Goods poured in, but the only thing that could escape the pull of the government’s gravity was that mass-less, ephemeral substance known as debt. Theoretically it was self-regulating. The physicist Hawking had proven that the virtual particles that leaked out of the event horizon of a black hole would eventually evaporate it. But physicists were not known for their financial acumen.
She had to kick a dent in Garcia’s door to wake him. He was too drunk to understand the dangerous course she was setting, but he refused to leave the ship. It was a choice, of sorts. As much as she could give him at the moment.
Melvin’s network contact was now listed as “unregistered.” When she went to his stateroom, intending to pack his belongings into storage at the spaceport, she discovered it was already empty.
“Yeah,” Garcia mumbled, when she confronted him again. “I forgot. Melvin bailed on us. Bastard didn’t have the guts to face you. He waited for days for you to leave the ship so he could clean out his locker. Don’t know why. He won’t need any of those surfer clothes now.”
“Why not?” she asked, wondering what terrible fate she had consigned her crewman to when she had chosen to land on Kassa, instead of running away.
“He enlisted. Can you believe it? Fleet took him. Him! Earth-fire, he even tried to get me to enlist.”
This war was sucking her clean. Credits, crew, cargo—everything she had that wasn’t nailed to the deck. They only left her with the broken bits, the simpleminded Jorgun and the incurably dishonest Garcia.
No, she thought, not even the broken were hers to keep. Kyle Daspar had been something she might have repaired, an old cracked vase that she might have found value in, but the League had taken him too.
In the early hours of the morning, when Fleet finally gave her clearance to approach the node, she felt something warm on her feet. The shoes had melted, turning dull gray and soft. They were no longer pretty.
FOURTEEN
Stakeout
He exploited the kid shamelessly.
The company gave Kyle a few days off to recover. He spent the time hatching a plan. To get outside the dome, you needed official documents. To do anything on this cursed planet required documents, because then they could charge a fee for it. Kyle began to miss simple bribery. At least it generated less paperwork.
The only open ticket for wandering around the planet’s surface was a prospector’s license. Money wasn’t enough, though: you had to pass exams to qualify. Kyle’s employment card got him past the pressure-suit exam, and his Altair documents let him waive the driving test for an explorer buggy, but there was no way he was going to learn enough about mining in the next few days to get a prospector’s license.
That’s where the kid came in.
The day after the accident, Kyle ambushed him after work, falling in step beside him outside the RDC complex.
“You coming back soon?” the kid asked hopefully, clearly still blaming himself. That made Kyle feel guilty for what he was about to do, but he reminded himself he was doing it for Kassa, too. If he could tell the truth about what was going on, the kid would volunteer anyway. So really, it wasn’t trickery, just basic security procedure —“need to know” and all that.
“I got a better idea,” Kyle answered. “Here, let me buy you a beer.”
Three drinks later, Kyle had him convinced. Now that they were partners, Kyle decided he should start thinking of the kid by name, instead of as that gangly young idiot.
“Bobby, right? My friends call me Kyle. It’s a nickname.” Kyle was still using his fake identification from the storage locker, but he felt Bobby deserved to know his real name.
They shook hands and agreed to meet tomorrow. Then the kid went home to study some more. Kyle spent the rest of the evening trying not to feel dirty. Since everything on Baharain was perpetually dirty, he failed.
Bobby was waiting for him when he got to the examination office. Kyle had come early; Bobby had come even earlier. He looked nervous.
“Worried about passing?” Kyle was. He needed this kid’s help.
“Nah,” Bobby said. “I can do it.”
Kyle shrugged questioningly.
“I didn’t tell my parents. Sent a letter last night, but I didn’t tell them.” Bobby was morose. At the end of the week there wouldn’t be a paycheck to forward to them.
Kyle forced himself to grin. “Don’t worry, it takes days for a letter to get there and back. By the time they can ask, we’ll be staking our own claim.”
“Sure,” Bobby said, but he still looked green.
Kyle took him inside and paid the fee. It cost half the credits he had left. Then he went to spend the rest of his money renting equipment.
“You didn’t get a plasma torch?”
Kyle pointed at the camera in the cargo bay of the buggy. “I figured we’d just take pictures, for our first trip.”
Bobby shook his head. The prospecting license had stiffened his backbone. Now that he had a piece of paper, he seemed to think he was in charge.
“We need a plasma torch, too. Look, there’s a rental store right next to vehicle air lock twenty-seven. We can stop on the way out.”
Bobby hadn’t questioned why they were leaving for a field trip in the middle of the afternoon. The kid was too eager to get his new career started. Kyle pulled over when they got to the equipment store, and shelled out some more credits. For now, he needed to keep Bobby fooled.
They swiped their papers and the air lock let them through. Once you got your documents, the government seemed to lose interest. Probably because there weren’t any more fees to be paid.
Outside, in the harsh light, Kyle accelerated, putting distance between themselves and the dome. Not giving the kid a chance to get cold feet.
Bobby spoke first, shouting over the noise of the buggy and the rattle of equipment. He wasn’t using a radio link. “We’re not really prospecting for metals, are we.” It wasn’t a question.
“No,” Kyle admitted. “I’m after something else. But I needed you to get me out here. Look, you can go back to work in a few days. They’ll still need you.”
“How do I know you aren’t bringing me out here to kill me?”
Kyle laughed, a short bark that was more anger than humor. “A little late to worry about that, isn’t it?”
“That’s why I made you get the plasma torch.”
Kyle noticed that Bobby had the fuel tank on the floor between his knees. His right hand rose up out of concealment, holding the nozzle.
“If I wanted you dead,” Kyle explained, “I wouldn’t have left in the same vehicle through the same air lock.”
“Maybe you were gonna fake an accident. You know, some kind of karmic revenge.”
“Then all I had to do was leave you alone. A kid as stupid as you, somebody is going to clean you out sooner or later. You told me your life story before you knew my name.”
Bobby was silent for a minute.
“Well … I’m learning.” He hefted the plasma nozzle again.
