At one time in his career, arrival announcements had triggered an adrenaline rush in anticipation of the mission, but all he felt today was exhaustion.
Exhaustion is acceptable, given the circumstances, Desh reasoned. But it’s still a sign of weakness. His target had canceled his business trip, but Desh had already been en route to the man’s intended destination, and he had wasted nearly two weeks traveling to the wrong planet as a result. Two weeks stuck on spaceliners, with nothing to do but watch the mission clock count down.
But that’s not why I’m tired.
He touched the metal bracelet on his right wrist, his finger sliding over the smooth surface, coming to rest on the button in the center. As he pressed it, a three-dimensional hologram appeared over the bracelet, a spinning golden number 1.
My first kill, fresh out of Training. Strangling a loan shark in his office above a laundromat.
As Desh watched, the numbers changed, counting upwards with increasing speed.
Fourteen: poisoning a minor government functionary on Mars.
Thirty-two: faking the suicide of an unfaithful husband.
Each of his targets’ faces clawed up out of his memory in turn, their eyes full of fear, anger, desperation. And then the numbers stopped, and he watched as the ‘49’ spun slowly, and then winked out. Number fifty would soon have a face, too, but for Desh, the number meant only one thing.
Freedom.
Over the long, tense years, the meaning of those numbers had changed so much. Desh had signed his contract with the Guild to vault his way out of poverty and into the privileged class, like most guildsmen. The Guild’s famous “Fifty for Fifty” deal was the same for each of them: if he completed fifty missions, he would be entitled to fifty percent of the commissions he had earned. He couldn’t choose his missions, and he couldn’t fail to complete those he was assigned—success, or death while trying, were the only acceptable outcomes. Guild training was brutally direct on this matter; Desh still remembered the video they had used to illustrate their point, in which several masked men demonstrated just how long a guildsman who tried to break his contract could be made to suffer before dying. Recalling the images, Desh shuddered involuntarily. The sizable fortune that would soon be deposited to his account was of only marginal interest to Desh; what mattered far more was bringing an end to the missions, the ceaseless trips through the void, and the pleading, desperate faces he found waiting for him with each new assignment.
Desh opened his datascroll and accessed the mission brief for the hundredth time, but instead of reading, he watched the ship’s external footage on his cabin’s viewscreen. Silently, the spaceliner coasted through the navigational satellites, whose yellow lights winked to show the path toward Aleppo. His mission brief stated that the planet’s gravity was slightly less than that of Earth, which of course allowed them to excel at the industrial work Aleppo had become known for. Even a five percent gravity drop could yield significantly higher profit margins, he knew, with less stress on heavy machinery and less fuel to boost the finished products into orbit. Desh shook his head, and forced his gaze away from the viewscreen, concentrating on the mission brief.
His target was an industrial baron who owned several interplanetary conglomerates, and whose draconian employment practices had upset the local unions. The man was wealthy enough that he might have been able to live on Earth, but having been born on Aleppo, he had decided to call it home. Given the barren terrain appearing on his viewscreen, Desh failed to see its appeal entirely. The colonists had begun atmospheric introduction, but they were still decades away from making the atmosphere breathable, and since most of the world’s industrial plants belched out toxic gases anyway, nobody was in a particular hurry. A rocky planet, rich in ore deposits but utterly devoid of indigenous life, Aleppo’s chief terrain feature was a massive canyon nearly encircling the equator, as if a giant claw had torn the planet’s crust. It was in this canyon that the colonists had built their settlements, choosing to remain below ground and inconspicuous in case the planet hid any nasty surprises the early explorers had failed to document. Desh planned to follow their example.
The ship slowed again in final approach, and Desh felt the stabilizers and maneuvering rockets firing. He picked up his backpack and headed for the ship’s docking tubes. The docking process was completed in less than ten minutes, and Desh was one of the first passengers off. Once onto the planet’s orbiting transfer station, he followed the signs for the planetary shuttle terminal.
In the terminal, Desh walked past the mass transit shuttles and found the private shuttle area. Several pilots offered Desh their services, but a slight man kneeling and tightening his boot cords caught Desh’s attention. That’s the signal. One benefit of being in the Guild—though the downsides were many—was that Desh had never been disappointed with the quality of personnel hired to support his missions. The pilot straightened as Desh approached, motioning toward his shuttle and offering to shoulder the bag for him. Desh declined, and the man shrugged.
Desh took a seat in the passenger cabin, closing the privacy door to the cockpit to discourage the pilot from initiating a conversation. The shuttle ride was smooth, no doubt another effect of the planet’s low gravity and thin atmosphere.
Okay, you’ve put it off long enough. Call Headquarters.
He pulled out his holophone, dialed a number from memory, and then punched in a code at the prompt.
“The line is encrypted, you may proceed,” a robotic voice told him.
“Contractor 211, requesting mission update,” he told his phone.
“You exited faster-than-light travel almost twenty-five minutes ago—why have you taken so long to call in?” a supervisor asked him.
“I didn’t think I should call in from a public shuttle terminal,” Desh told the man, exasperated.
“You should have called from your spaceliner,” the supervisor chided him.
“I’m calling now,” Desh said. “What’s the update?”
“The client’s becoming impatient—this was a time sensitive mission, and we’re several weeks behind schedule.”
Desh tapped his fingers against his armrest with impatience. “Did you remind them it was their intelligence that sent me to the wrong planet?”
“Regardless, they’ve opened up the contract to local bidders.”
“They’ve done what?” Desh asked, sitting up in his seat.
“The contract is still valid, but fees will be paid to whichever party completes the assignment first.”
“And if the local guys, if these... amateurs... get there first?” Desh asked.
“That would constitute a failed mission,” the man told him. “And I don’t have to remind you of the consequences of failure.”
Desh swore. “I just got here! I haven’t even made contact with the target yet. I need to do reconnaissance and surveillance, plan the mission—”
“Normally, yes. In the circumstances, I suggest you cut those activities short.”
“How long has the contract been open to locals?”
“Three days.”
“Well, the target’s security team will have caught wind of it by now. They’re going to be expecting an attempt.”
The line stayed silent.
“My last mission, and you’re telling me my only option is to do a hit-and-run on a target that’s expecting me, with local hitmen likely to interfere,” Desh pointed out.