Her Moc warrior waited in the entrance hall, motionless.
The suite was otherwise empty. After delivering her Pharaohan slaves to Yubere’s stronghold, Remint had planned to recruit more slayers to staff the trap he had set for Ruiz; she had received no communication from him for hours.
When the comm’s chime finally rang, she jumped and swore floridly. Marmo moved toward the comm panel, but she rushed forward and slapped at the receive sensor.
Remint’s cold intense face filled the screen. “I have significant news,” he said in his flat voice.
“What?”
“Ruiz Aw has surfaced at the Spindinny; he bought a half-dozen contracts the night before last and then left in a heavily armed gunboat. He had a lot of money to spend, and he got the best to be found there — such as they were. He revealed little of his purposes during these acquisitions, but from questioning his rejects, I deduce that he has undertaken to perform an assassination.”
Corean was silent, digesting this information. “Who?” she finally asked.
Remint shrugged. “No truly suggestive data exists, but I believe that the target is unlikely to be you — the skills of the personnel he selected would indicate a target of greater importance, much better protected.”
“I see.” She found the notion unpalatable; how could Ruiz Aw have so soon dismissed her and gone on to other concerns? She would make him regret his casual disregard of her capabilities and persistence. Oh yes. “Where did he get the money? And the gunboat?”
“In all likelihood, he is working for someone whose resources are more extensive than yours. This may complicate his capture, should he survive his mission.” Remint seemed unconcerned; he merely reported a possibility, without attaching any emotion to the concept.
But Corean was instantly enraged by the thought that Ruiz might die before she could heal her wounds with his pain. “What can we do?”
“Little, at this point. I’ve hired slayers, and placed them at the site of the trap. I’ve set up a surveillance near the pens. Do you have further instructions?”
“No,” she said. “What of my Pharaohans? Did you make the delivery? Were there any difficulties?”
“No difficulties. However, I did not see my brother. Ordinarily he never misses an opportunity to gloat.” The impassive face kindled with hatred, becoming for an instant a demonic mask. Then the expression guttered out, as if Remint could not long sustain such ferocity, and he once again became the poised killing machine.
“He has other things on his mind, at present,” Corean said.
By the time the sub neared the surface, Publius appeared to have regained all his grandiloquent confidence. “Now we must rendezvous with the gunboat; I will take the controls.”
“No,” said Ruiz. “Not yet, and perhaps never. I’m familiar with this vessel; aboard your gunboat, in the midst of your crew, I’d find it difficult to relax. So we’ll stay below for a while yet.”
Publius seemed about to argue, but then he apparently remembered his dignity, and subsided wordlessly.
Running ten meters below the surface, Ruiz sent the sub at its best speed through the winding channels, toward the Diamond Bob Pens.
When they arrived, he was forced to surface in order to enter the lagoon. He unshuttered the sub’s blast louvers as the murky waters flowed away from the armorglass ports. Immediately he saw that something was wrong. The lagoon was nearly deserted, though a few burned hulks lay awash in the far end. Most of the lights were dark, but several of them had been replaced by jury-rigged glarebulbs, which cast a harsh blue light on the landing and on the phalanx of killmechs that now guarded the entrance. The entrance was a tangle of torn metal around a jagged hole.
Ruiz’s heart jumped up and wedged itself into his throat. Something was terribly wrong. He latched up his armor as the sub slammed roughly into the quay. Before the sub had latched itself to the mooring toggles, he was undogging the dorsal hatch.
“Watch him closely,” he told Albany. “If he does anything you don’t understand immediately, kill him. Don’t worry about me — I’ll be out of range; besides, I may have just lost my best reason for staying alive. If you hesitate, we’ll probably both die anyway, so don’t hesitate.”
He climbed out. As he was lowering himself down the ladder to the quay, he heard Publius start to say something in a brightly inquisitive voice. He hoped Albany was wise enough to keep his mouth shut.
He landed on the quay and raised his empty hands in a gesture of peaceful intent. The nearest killmech blurred across the landing and seized his wrists in padded clamps. “Your business here?” it asked in an unmodulated mechanical voice. It extruded probes, and inventoried the weapons he carried.
“I have property within,” Ruiz said. He noticed that the mech bore the colors of one of the great pirate houses. Glancing about, he saw that most of the lords had sent killmechs to guard the pens. What could have happened?
“Unforeseen events have occurred,” said the mech. “Your property may be damaged or unavailable.”
Ruiz felt his knees wobble; his muscles threatened to turn to water. “What unforeseen events?”
“We are not authorized to discuss these events. You may retrieve your property if it is available. If not, you must speak with the manager.”
It released his wrists and moved aside. He nodded and walked inside, as though in a slow nightmare.
The pens had obviously been the site of a bloody engagement. The corpses of the combatants were gone, but here and there were splashes of brown blood, and everywhere was the smell of recent carnage: an odor of decay, feces, urine, and the persistent reek of discharged energy weapons. Ruiz hurried, faster and faster, until by the time he reached the cells where he had left Nisa and the others, he was running as fast as he could.
The doorways were open and dark, twisted by the same energies that had destroyed the front doors of the pen. Oddly, the doors appeared to have been blasted open from the inside.
He skidded to a stop, gasping for breath, though he shouldn’t have been at all taxed by such a short sprint. He could not immediately force himself to enter her room.
An android stepped from the cell where Ruiz had left Dolmaero; it wore the silver and blue uniform of the Diamond Bob Pens. “These were yours?” it demanded.
“Yes,” Ruiz answered, in a voice that shook slightly.
The android froze for a moment; apparently it was too primitive a model to be capable of smooth transitions between attitudinal modes. Then it smiled, a grotesquely artificial expression. “Come,” it said. “Diamond Bob will want to speak with you.” It pointed down the corridor, deeper into the pens.
“Wait,” said Ruiz. “Where are my properties?”
“Gone. So sorry. Diamond Bob will discuss the matter at greater length.”
Ruiz pushed past the thing into Nisa’s cell. It attempted to bar his way, though with no great determination, plucking ineffectually at his armor. “Please,” it said. “Diamond Bob urgently requests your attention.”
Ruiz ignored it. He roamed around the small room, looking for any indication of Nisa’s fate. The door to the common area was also burned open, but carefully, as if the person who had wielded the graser had not wished to injure the person within. Obviously, the attackers had come from the common area, had broken through the cells and gone on out. Had they taken Nisa and the others with them? Inside her room, he found no bloodstains, nor any sign that lethal weapons had been used — and his heart lifted slightly. He imagined that there still lingered a trace of Nisa’s scent, under the stinks of the ravaged pen. He picked up her pillow, held it to his armored chest. “When did it happen?” he asked the android, who stood in the doorway, wringing its hands in a mechanical approximation of anxiety.