The L’Escorial cars skidded and stopped on opposite sides of Peres’ vehicle. The roof of the aircar was compressed but not flattened to the level of the car’s body.
A youth crawled from the passenger side. He, wore a blue posing suit, blue sandals, and nothing else. He was crying and the crash had bloodied his forehead.
Pepe Luria pointed his carbine from the hip and triggered a burst. The weapon fired large-bore explosive bullets, rocket-assisted to keep the recoil manageable. The rocket exhausts were red sparks across the night. Two of the projectiles hit the boy in the chest, blowing him backward into the wrecked aircar.
The quartet of L’Escorials from the other four-wheeler dragged open the driver’s side door of the aircar. One of them smashed the warped support pillar with the butt of his 2-cm weapon to make it release.
Peres screamed in terror. Two of the men pulled him out. A third threw a restraint net over the prisoner, and the fourth L’Escorial—the man with the 2-cm weapon—swatted him with the flat of the gun butt to silence the blubbering cries. They tossed Peres facedown into the back of their vehicle and got in themselves.
Mary Margulies stood at the edge of the alley, looking down the street toward Astra headquarters and the jitneys full of gunmen who’d driven that way moments before. The only thing moving in the night was the aircar, quivering on its back like a half-crushed bug.
“Get in!” Pepe Luria called to her.
Margulies glanced aside at him. She waved. “Go on,” she said. “I’ll walk, thank you. You’ve got what you came for.”
The pair of patrol cars made tight low-speed turns and accelerated together up the street. The L’Escorial gunmen shouted to one another in glee.
There was a brief squeal of metal from the underground garage. Somebody was trying to free the door with a prybar. An argument broke out inside, identifiable from the timbre of the voices though the words were inaudible.
Margulies changed her weapon’s magazine for a fresh one. She set off toward Hathaway House, staying close to building fronts and trying to look in all directions. She was nearly home before she heard the wail of sirens from Astra headquarters.
The Roberson & Co. trading post in the hamlet of Veridad was separate from the Astra patrol base there, but loud music from the stockade housing a score of gunmen pulsed through the walls. Roberson shivered, clutched his arms around himself as if against a cold wind.
“He’s not coming,” he said to the Widow Guzman. “It’s some sort of—”
The door at the back of the trading post gave onto a fenced storage area, inaccessible from the outside. The door opened. A tall, nervous-looking Frisian soldier, not a man the Astra leaders had met before, stepped out.
“Barbour?” the Widow said in surprise.
“How did you get there?” Roberson gasped.
“I’m Barbour,” the Frisian said. “And don’t worry about how I got through your fence, I did, that’s all. Did you bring the money?”
The merchant glanced reflexively at the case on the floor beside him, behind the counter. They’d expected Barbour to arrive for the meeting he’d arranged by the post’s front door.
There was a pistol in the case as well. To Roberson’s surprise, the Frisian appeared to be unarmed.
“You claim you can free Adolpho,” said the Widow Guzman. “If you can do that, you’ll have your pay. You’ll have any pay you ask.”
“In open-remitter chips, so there’s no way they can trace back where it came from?” Barbour warned. He looked as skittish as a roach when the lights come on.
“Yes, yes, just as you said,” Roberson snapped. “Now, how are you going to release Peres?”
He couldn’t keep the distaste from his tone as he spoke the gigolo’s name, but he hadn’t even attempted to argue with the Widow when the Frisian made his offer. Barbour had called on what was supposed to be a private direct line between Roberson’s office and Astra HQ. That in itself lent credence to his proposition.
“I didn’t say I’d get him out,” Barbour said defensively. His gaze shifted quickly around the big room, but he didn’t make eye contact with the Astra leaders. “I said you could get him with what I’d give you.”
“Well go on, then, man!” the Widow said. “How? Tell us!”
She stepped close to the Frisian and caught his chin between her right thumb and forefinger. He jerked his face away. Her ornate silver rings traced glittering arcs as she slapped him hard.
“Tell us!” she shouted.
Barbour turned his head away. “Look, they’d kill me if they knew I was doing this,” he whined. “The major would say it was treason!”
“Via, boy!” Roberson cried. “Where—”
“It’s the TST offices, you see?” the Frisian blurted. “They aren’t guarded like L’Escorial bases are. You go in there and pull the core from Suterbilt’s private data bank, you see?”
They didn’t see. Guzman and the merchant looked blankly from Barbour to one another, then back.
Barbour shook his head in disgust. “Don’t you see?” he repeated. “Suterbilt’s cheating both TST and the Confederacy, faking the amount of gage that goes out of here. If the Confederacy learns they’re being done out of port duties, they’ll clean L’Escorial out of here, right? And it’s all there in Suterbilt’s private data bank, it’s got to be!”
The music from the patrol stockade paused. For a moment, the only sound within the trading post was the breathing of the three occupants.
Barbour had chosen the meeting place, an Astra-controlled village twelve klicks from Potosi. He’d demanded that no one be inside the post save himself and the two principals. The Widow agreed and held to her agreement, overruling Roberson on the point. It was now evident to the merchant also that the Frisian would have noticed guards, no matter how well concealed.
“He’ll have the information coded,” Roberson said cautiously. “We won’t be able to read it, will we?”
“What does that matter, you fool?” Barbour snarled. He appeared to be a man clinging to the ragged edge of his sanity. “The Marvelans can decrypt it, can’t they? And anyway, it doesn’t matter—Suterbilt won’t dare take the chance.”
“We’re not using the information,” the Widow Guzman agreed in a distant voice. “We’re trading the information for Adolpho. But if Adolpho’s been harmed or they won’t give him up—”
Her voice had been bleak. Now it became as cold as the heart of a comet.
“—then I will give it all to the Marvelans. And they will gut this planet when they learn how they’ve been cheated.”
“Now, Stella,” Roberson said nervously. “We don’t want that to happen. If the Confederacy really takes direct control here, it’ll put a crimp in our operations too. Or worse.”
The Widow looked at him. “Do you think I care?” she whispered.
“Look, that won’t be necessary,” Barbour said. “Look, I’ve got to get out of here. I’ll give you the codes to get through the TST security system and you give me the money.”
His moods appeared to change as abruptly as a rat’s did. He was whining again.
“No,” said the Widow.
Roberson looked at her in surprise.
“What do you mean?” the Frisian said. “You need the codes or you won’t be able to get into the offices without setting off alarms. If L’Escorial comes in, you’ve got a war!”
“You’ll come with us,” the woman said. Her combs shimmered. Glow-strips covering most of the ceiling illuminated the post’s interior. The light was diffuse but considerable in total, like that of a clear sky as the sun sets.
“I can’t!” Barbour whined. “Via, you’ll have me killed to save the money!”
“We’ll messenger the payment to Hathaway House in your name,” the Widow continued in icy determination. “You understand the security system better than we do. You’ll get us through it with less chance of a mistake.”