I lean over, sore, catching my breath. The factory is quiet but for the droning of the fire alarm.
Thank god someone came in and distracted the guy.
Who came in? And why?
Keeping an eye on the door, I step across the factory floor to the courier’s gun and pick it up. The display on the clip reads 40/200. Plenty of shots left. I stalk to the swinging doors, stand to the side, and kick one open, ready to fire.
I recognize the man I draw aim on. Brady Kearns.
“You?”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I followed you.”
His presence here could not have been coincidental. “You followed me?”
“What’s happening?” he asks, trembling a bit with fear as I keep the gun trained on him. “Why was that man trying to kill you?”
“You tell me.”
“What?” he asks, nervous. “What, do you think I’m involved in this somehow? I just saved you.”
“Saved me? That’s what you call it?”
“I phoned the police. They’re on the way.”
Either he’s confused and terrified, or he’s the best actor I’ve ever seen. I lower my gun. “Come on. I want to check some things before the cops get here.”
I go back to the factory floor, irrationally afraid that the courier’s body won’t be there. But there he is, still dead. Brady stays back a few meters as I kneel down, check to make sure there’s no pulse, and search the body.
“Shouldn’t you leave that for the police?”
“I should,” I admit. He’s right, but I’m concerned that unless I do my own search, I won’t get the info I need for weeks, if ever.
I find nothing except a tiny transponder, a little gray tube. I return it to the pocket I found it in. I open the dead man’s hand, which is already growing cold. A red prick marks the palm where the tiny needle broke the skin.
“Poison promise,” I say aloud for Kearns’s benefit, “popular weapon on Earth, I’ve read. Small, concealed, electronically triggered syringe, delivers a lethal dose of quick poison on contact. Brush past someone on a crowded public street or in a train, a few seconds later they drop dead, and you’re already gone.”
“Did he deliver the bomb?”
I nod, standing. “He came in with a package. The transponder must be set to range, so that the bomb would blow when he got a safe distance away.”
“And you attacked him after the explosion?”
If Kearns is playing dumb, he’s good at it. How much did he see? “He attacked me. Chased me in here.”
The auditor blinks a few times, lost, and seemingly still shaken. “Why wouldn’t he just leave with everyone else?”
A good question. “You got me.”
The doors burst open, and a uniformed Oasis City police officer leans in, sweeping with his pistol. His aim stops at me. “Police! Put the weapon down!”
I hold the pistol by the barrel, far away from my body. With slow, demonstrative movements, I crouch low and place it on the floor in front of me. “We’ve got one dead here, officer. Watch the right hand.”
9
Knowles leans back in his chair in the conference room, mouth creased in a deep frown, gnarled fingers drumming on the false wood of the table. He hasn’t said a word since I came in, which was probably a full minute ago.
“So,” he says finally, his voice calm in a simmering, about-to-explode way, “you visited an attorney connected to the Marvin Chan case somehow, and immediately after you left, the office blew up, and as everyone fled for the exits, the courier who delivered the bomb attacked you with a concealed poison weapon and an illegal firearm, but you got the upper hand when the Commerce Board auditor, who followed you there, distracted him and you ended up killing him. I got all that right?”
“That’s the short story, Captain.”
“What’s wrong with this picture, Dare?”
“Captain, I—”
“No, no,” he interrupts, raising his voice. “No. I do not want to hear it. You should not have been there.”
“I was on leave. No uniform, no sidearm. I can’t do what I want?”
“Not if it wrecks up an investigation.”
“I didn’t wreck up anything. If anything we’ve got more leads now.”
“Leads? More like problems.”
“What do we have on the bomber, anyhow?” I ask, hoping to distract Knowles by steering the conversation in a different direction.
“Squat,” he huffs. “We know he’s an off-worlder. That’s about it.”
I pause for a second, digesting what that might mean. “An off-worlder. From where?”
“He matches the description of a passenger on a SCAPE transit vessel who missed his connecting ship two days ago. Name listed was Gerald Novaczek, but on closer inspection that looks fabricated.”
This changes the game. If off-world governments are involved, this thing could go dangerously deep. “Where was he headed?”
“Farraway. From Kerwin’s Drop. This is all top secret, by the way. I’m only telling you because it might implicate your safety.”
“Understood,” I answer, absentmindedly. Kerwin’s Drop. A moon of about nine-eighths the mass of Earth, orbiting a cool helium giant slightly off the path between Farraway and Ryland. We don’t get many ships from those parts, but the fact that the courier was from a high-grav world explains why he was so light on his feet. And short—he wasn’t quite my height.
“Let’s focus, Dare. Now’s the time for you to enter protective custody.”
I snap out of it, annoyed. “What? No.”
“You survived this time, Dare. Let’s not push our luck.”
“I need the money, Captain. And I’m getting closer by the minute.”
“Absolutely not.”
Of course Knowles would take this away from me. If the book says anything about it, and it probably does, that’s the way he’ll play it. I can’t afford to be thrown off this, but I can feel my grip on it slipping away. “I was right about the doctor,” I plead, suddenly struggling not to sound desperate, “and you know it.”
“You were,” he nods, “and I apologize for doubting you.”
“So play fucking ball.”
Ignoring my demand, Knowles walks to the door. He steps past two big agents lumbering in. “Have a good weekend, Dare. Make sure and take some time for yourself, will you?”
Dammit.
I lie in bed, brooding and paying half attention to some “new” Hollywood TV show that aired a year and a half ago on Earth. It’s an ad-supported feed, and by now the software is pretty good at guessing what products I might be interested in: lowest-price essentials and goods and services related to space travel. “SCAPE Long Haul,” says a voiceover woman with an exotic off-world lilt I assume to be from somewhere on Earth as glorious exterior footage of interstellar flights plays—a through-the-window angle of a gas giant flyby, an exterior of FTL distortion, panning from back to front of the gleaming hull of a massive starcruiser, only pure black night behind, stars bending in bright long streaks in front. “Specially formulated for nutrition, flavor, and ideal variety for flights of three months or more. Ensure your health and comfort. Request SCAPE Long Haul. Because the voyage is too long for anything less than the best.”
They never seem to show the actual food in those ads. It’s probably not pretty, preserved and prepacked and engineered for efficient digestion and minimization of volume. I wonder what it’s like eating it for two years or longer.
The next ad is a bit less classy. “You are losing money, and you don’t even know it!” announces a male Brinker voice as graphs flash across the screen. Of course it won’t say so directly, but it’s shilling a toilet chem tank. “Invest in Pruden-Chem, the most efficient and cost-effective mineral recapture system on the market. Just seventy units could save you thousands. Order today!” The sad part is, the ad is effective on me; I’m thinking maybe I should buy a more efficient add-on.