Jumper's Hope: Central Galactic Concordance Book 4 Page 16

  He should have terminated her back on Branimir, after she’d gallingly embezzled funds from one of his personal accounts to pay for the deaths of everyone on the Branko Regional Business Council. He admitted he’d let his pride and ambition influence his judgment. In his project reports, he’d painted too rosy a picture of his success, where all the other handlers had failed with their subjects months earlier. He’d been in the middle of cleaning up his records to reflect his careful narrative of Si’in Lai’s abrupt decline when Georgie had gone off the skytrack.

  Dixon had initially planned to bring Si’in Lai with them, so his pets could keep her in line, but Georgie had wailed about certain death, forcing Dixon to leave her behind. He’d reluctantly left her in the care of a local contract shielder and a squad of mercs to keep her iced until he got back. He’d given the merc company permission to bring in sex workers from the three largest joyhouses to keep her busy and distracted for the week he planned to be gone. CPS black-project protocol said her death had to look like an accident, and he only trusted his own pet independent contractors to do it right and not talk about it. The best pet he’d ever had for arranging fatal accidents had been Taliferros Radomir, but he’d also been an out-of-control serial killer who he’d been forced to have Mr. Renner put down not too long ago. Renner lacked Radomir’s artistry and planning skills, but the end result was the same.

  “Red earth and sparks,” murmured Georgie. “The conflagration is coming.”

  Despite the room’s heat, Dixon shivered.

  CHAPTER 18

  * Planet: Mabingion * GDAT: 3242.019 *

  JESS CAST A jaundiced eye at the roiling, blue-gray clouds above the city and resisted the urge to walk faster to avoid the coming rain. One of the tricks to making himself invisible was not to call attention to the ground-eating stride his long legs were capable of, which would call attention to his unusual height. He sat whenever he could, but Ridderth’s metro transports didn’t have many stops in the poorer parts of the city. As “Petero Bo’totunde,” itinerant day laborer with a strong back and sullen attitude, he’d taken an afternoon gig shoveling out a decrepit warehouse in exchange for an anonymous cashflow chip and a cold meat pie so awful even the rats wouldn’t touch it. None of the workers knew the name Tuzan.

  Part of his urge to walk faster owed to Jess-the-bomber’s increasing pressure to move on. Four days in Ridderth was three too many. The longer they stayed, the easier it would be for Kerzanna’s enemies to find her. If they had a telepath interrogate her before killing her, he’d be next on their hit parade. And those were the cheeriest scenarios the bomber came up with.

  The rain came on quickly. Jess pulled his wide hood forward and shoved his hands in his pockets. His deliberately scuffed and stained overcoat was warm and waterproof, but his boots weren’t. The sun was just setting when he got to the building where he’d rented a glorified sleep pod of a room. He paid for one minute’s use of the louder-than-a-flux-engine solardry in the building’s lobby, then trudged up the two flights of stairs to his room and ducked inside, after verifying his physical telltales hadn’t been disturbed. He sat on the foldout, too-short bed and stripped, draping his clothes everywhere so they’d dry. It reminded him of Kerzanna, and made him laugh ruefully. He even missed her bad habits. His body ached for her.

  He wrapped himself in the bedraggled robe he’d salvaged from the recycler and sent a ping to “Erielle Courchesne,” the new ID for Kerzanna. He didn’t control the Ridderth comm nets, so even with his highly customized privacy protocols, they had to use code phrasing, but it was better than nothing.

  J: No luck finding work. You?

  After a long enough time that he’d started to worry, she responded.

  K: I have lead on a real job. Interview tonight.

  Jess stood up so fast he nearly bumped his head on the overhead light dome. “Real job” was their agreed code for contact.

  J: Lucky you. Where?

  K: Forwarding the name and location ref. Favor? Check with your Nordic friend to see if it’s legit.

  He opened another connection to the highly encrypted shared dataspace he’d created for them to use. It had a flat photo of a handwritten note on a slightly wrinkled paper napkin with a time later that evening, coordinates, and a good drawing of a sweeper. It wasn’t Kerzanna’s handwriting. He memorized the data and erased the file, then sent his code snippets to scrub the dataspace clean. A quick net query said the location was a pub called Decknav Green Go that served food and the usual drinks, chems, and alterants. Its name and proximity to the sprawling Ridderth military base suggested it catered to regular gunnin from the Ground and Air divisions.

  J: How did you hear about it?

  K: Canals kid.

  J: Hang on.

  Jess allowed himself to become Jess-the-bomber to weigh the risks. Kerzanna’s enemy hired others to create believable accidents, so luring her to a military bar wasn’t their style. The story about the ship-saving missing cousins had been supplanted by a juicy scandal involving a failed public works project that looked like the tip of a very corrupt iceberg, but not all journalists were so easily distracted. A minder with a finder talent who specialized in missing persons could conceivably have made the correlation between his and Kerzanna’s successive identities. However, anonymous notes and midnight meetings were too twisty for Ridderth journalists, and as far as he remembered, they wouldn’t be welcomed in a military bar.

  City maps and images said the standalone building had a lot of windows, three entrances, a flitter stacker on the roof, and was close to two public transport stops. Jess-the-bomber sourly admired the choice of location as being difficult to contain and easy to get out of—one he would have chosen for a meeting.

  Jess let the bomber slip away and rubbed his left temple to soothe away the incipient headache.

  J: Nordie says okay.

  K: Thanks.

  He’d bet his only pair of dry socks that Kerzanna was already on her way to the pub, and would only have diverted if his “Nordic friend” had given her a good enough reason. She hated inaction even more than the bomber did. He dressed quickly while fishing in his mind for any overlay remnants that would help him blend in with the Decknav Green Go’s regular patrons. Often, it was better to let such requests loiter in the sidelines of his thoughts than make direct demands.

  He let Jess-the-bomber back in for a few minutes to help him choose which weapons to take with him from the collection he’d amassed. He still had the unfortunate Engine Tech Moon’s phaseknife, and the four different beamers that came from the hidden armory he’d discovered on the Faraón Azul, but he’d also made a few more unconventional weapons in his spare time since then.

  In the end, he decided to take everything. It never hurt to be prepared to commit mayhem.

  Jess slipped into the deep shadow of the giant glass pillar, the solitary surviving evidence of the never-replaced overhead pedestrian walkway. Ridderth was full of infrastructure gaps caused by the heavy-handed tactics of the police during the Mabingion Purge and previous riots. He pulled his wide hood forward and hunched into the protection of the overhang, just another civilian waiting for the current torrents to ease up.

  He’d scouted around the neighborhood and watched the pub for an hour. He hadn’t seen Kerzanna enter yet, but he could have missed her. The meeting wasn’t for another two hours, but his feet were growing numb from the miniature icy swamps inside his leaking boots and his pants were soaked. As he walked toward the entrance, he pulled together the military persona he cobbled together from bits and pieces, as he’d done with Cadroy Joffalk, the romantic gambler. He let his instinct guide him, straightening up his posture, as if military marching had been drilled into him, and automatically cataloging his surroundings, sort of like Kerzanna did when she was flying.

  The pub was welcoming, and the enclosed solardry in the vestibule meant he actually felt warm and almost dry for the first time in days. He hung his overcoat and tough waterproof bag on t
he locking anti-theft clamp and pocketed the token. He glanced at the tables and booths as he made his way to the bar, meeting any casual gazes with a friendly but neutral nod. The bar was half full, with maybe twenty-five adult customers, since it was too late for kids to be up. The decor looked homey, with soft, patterned textures and bright splashes of color, a departure from the usual past-glories memorabilia in typical military bars. Perhaps that was the point.

  “Half pint of light ale, whatever’s in the line,” he said to the bartender as he placed a cashflow chip in the slot. It flashed a high enough balance to pay for his evening, but not enough to attract trouble.

  “Any dinner with that?” The bartender had a high tenor voice with accent-free English and perfect diction. Jess tentatively categorized him as presenting male, but wouldn’t want to bet on it. The man had shiny bronze skin, slender musculature, and no visible hair. His shimmery, draped caftan, kohl-lined golden eyes, and multiple heavy gold-chained earrings and bracelets made him look like a wish-granting djinn from classical tales. Jess’s current persona was fanciful.

  Jess smiled. “Got anything that beats a mealpack?” He gave his English a slight lilting accent that went with his current family name of Bo’totunde. Some of his bleedovers had spoken Swahili and left a few fragments of its vocabulary and rhythm.

  The bartender looked amused. “What doesn’t?” He tilted his head toward the menu display on the counter.

  Jess ordered a sandwich and sipped his ale while he waited for a table to open up. All he could see from where he stood was the big common room, but he knew from his research the pub had several smaller meeting rooms along the north side next to the kitchen, plus storerooms and offices. A short, sylph-like server, who looked all of about twelve years old until he saw the front half of him, moved through the tables with ease. He felt himself relax a bit when he realized even the loud, exuberant bunch in the southwest corner didn’t grab or harass him. Behavior like that overrode his objectivity.

  “New in town?” asked the bartender genially.

  “No, but it’s been a while.” He tilted his head toward the silent newstrend holo above them, showing highlights from an armed clash between Ridderth police in riot gear and a Canals street gang in makeshift armor. “That’s new. Used to be bricks.”

  The bartender frowned and shook his head. “After the Purge, the gangs leveled up.”

  Jess could hardly blame them. While the CPS may have fomented the week-long riots so they could round up Kerzanna’s veterans’ group and other so-called “enemies of the peace,” the brutal Ridderth police took advantage of the chaos to inflict serious damage against the “criminal element” in the Canals and other troublesome parts of town, not caring how many innocent people they hurt.

  The inside entry door opened to let three men out and admit two tall women who were laughing together. Jess took a sip of ale to hide his smile. Kerzanna could make friends anywhere. Under the guise of considering the recently vacated table, he looked for anyone taking particular note of their arrival, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  Both women wore their hair short or up and their necklines open enough to display their Jumper tattoos with pride. Jess-the-medic noted that the sea-green-haired woman with Kerzanna had cybernetic eyes and hands. The CPS’s Jumper body shops could never get the eyes to look quite right. Kerzanna’s tanker-gray tunic and newly dark hair and eyebrows made her skin look pale and gaunt, in keeping with her chem-addict cover. Jess assumed the lumpy pockets of her cargo pants contained some of the smaller weapons she’d collected from the Branimir mercs. Both women exhibited the slight movement hesitation symptomatic of waster’s disease. Jess-the-bomber shoved aside Jess-the-man’s distress and watched the women place their chem orders out of his peripheral vision as he pretended to be looking at the news. He settled on one of the adjustable-height barstools so they could take the vacant table.

  An hour later found him and his long legs crammed into one of the tiny, two-person booths, pretending his head didn’t hurt, and nursing a glass of fizzy fruit juice while letting the pub’s pleasant ambiance wash over and through him. The golden-eyed bartender had left thirty minutes ago. His replacement was a big and burly, very alpha male who looked more like a bouncer than a bartender, but he smiled easily and knew his customers.

  Jess took on the appearance of someone mulling over a big decision and who wouldn’t be good company. In part, it was true. If the meeting didn’t pan out, he wanted to get off Mabingion that night, even if he had to buy his own interstellar yacht, but he had Kerzanna to consider.

  Superficial, coded pings gave him no clue as to what she was thinking. He’d only seen her from afar in the past four days, and she’d probably kick his ass if she knew he’d sometimes trailed her around the Canals instead of looking for the “real job.” Not that she needed his help. The previous evening, she’d efficiently and effectively fended off a pair of chemmed, would-be muggers and left them unconscious in an alley. He’d wanted to ask her about it, but then he’d have had to explain how he knew.

  Kerzanna’s green-haired companion, whose name he hadn’t caught, stood and stretched, said something to Kerzanna, then headed toward the front door. Kerzanna idly toyed with her bracelet percomp and stared moodily out the window at the rain.

  Jess’s hidden earwire pinged a message.

  K: Another napkin. Freshers. Now.

  Jess drained his fruit juice and transferred a small tip from his cash flow chip to the server, then threaded through the tables toward the back. The slender server intercepted him and pointed toward the open office door behind him. “Use the employee fresher through there.” He made a face. “I hate wet cleanups.”

  Jess lingered, as if uncertain, until he saw Kerzanna out of the corner of his eye, then trudged slowly toward the door as he listened to the server give Kerzanna the same instructions.

  The lights came on as he stepped into the room. Beyond the nondescript table and chairs and a tiny kitchen area were four closed iris-style doorways. He stopped and looked to Kerzanna, who wordlessly went around him and headed for the second-to-left door. She pulled a napkin out of her pocket and held it up to the lock. The door irised open to reveal a motley collection of cleaning supplies and sweepers. She stepped in, and Jess followed. Her body language said she was confident about where they were going.

  The door irised closed behind him. She held the napkin up to what he’d taken to be a wallcomp, but turned out to be controls for a lift, which took them down.

  Kerzanna caught his hand and stepped closer to speak quietly. “The server is a telepath. He gave me instructions. We’ll take a forty-meter tunnel to the building north of us, then go to the second floor. I’m sorry, but he picked your face out of my mind.” She closed the distance between them and wrapped him in an embrace. His arms went around her of their own volition, and the world stopped for the long moment he held her and soaked in the warm feel of her against him.

  In that moment, he knew he would never leave her again.

  “They’d have had to see me eventually. I have the key.” He drew in her scent, the one that amped his hormones every time. His body stirred for her, even though the timing was terrible. “How are you?”

  “Tired of being cold and wet. Tired of telepaths waltzing through my thoughts at will.” She squeezed him a little tighter, then let him go and stepped back and caught his hand again. “Glad to see you’re all right, though I can’t say I’m fond of the orange stripes.”

  “Bo’totunde has distractingly bad taste in hair color and makeup,” he agreed.

  She snorted and opened her mouth to speak, but the lift stopped and the doors irised open.

  By tacit agreement, they didn’t talk as they walked purposefully through the tunnel. Someone had money to spend, because Ridderth’s shallow water table made subterranean structures difficult to construct and maintain, and the lighted tunnel’s finished interior was warm and dry. Another, almost identical lift, sans cleaning supplies, took
them to a conventional office building hallway. Silence prevailed once the lift irised closed behind them. All the doors were closed and dark except one.

  Jess casually slid his hands in his vest pockets as they walked, and powered on the small beamer as they stepped into the office that had no signage on the door.

  “Greetings, Subcaptain Nevarr. Please don’t shoot me, Mr. Orowitz. Neirra Varemba went to a lot of trouble for us to meet.”

  The distinctive voice belonged to the golden-eyed djinn of a bartender from the Decknav Green Go.

  CHAPTER 19

  * Planet: Mabingion * GDAT: 3242.020 *

  TELEPATHS MADE KERZANNA uncomfortable. A hazy memory from her time with Neirra Varemba said Tuzan, if that was his name, was one. She blanked her expression as she sat in one of the expensive adaptive chairs he’d offered to her and Jess.

  He could have pulled their real names out of her head, but the clandestine contacts and meeting arrangements had taken time, so his claim that Varemba had pinged him about meeting them seemed plausible. More importantly, Jess’s subtly rounded shoulders and eye twitches said his paranoid bomber persona was up front, and so far, he seemed willing to listen.

  “You are very hard people to find.” Instead of sitting behind the desk, Tuzan sat a few meters away in the small office’s third guest chair facing them. It made her think the office was borrowed for the occasion. His bare feet, loose, baggy pants, and long tunic disguised but didn’t diminish his exotic looks and natural charisma. She’d initially thought he was barely thirty, but something in his eyes now said he was far older.

  Jess gave him a thin, humorless smile. “So are you.”

  Tuzan waved graceful fingers. “I had the advantage of knowing when and where to look for you. Even so, it took days for my very good finder to see the pattern of anonymous queries and trace them from Joffalk and Kane, the heroes of the Faraón, then to a joy palace, then to the Anthem district.”