“Sir Anders mentioned trapping the usurper’s army, didn’t he? We have certain weapons that aren’t public knowledge. I’d rather not disclose the precise details, my lord, until we’re ready to deploy them, but if we can locate the usurper I am certain they will make the job of ending his rampage easier. But for that, we need to know where the pretender is. And we need to get out of this mousetrap.” She smiled happily. “None of which should be particularly hard.”
“But we’re doppelgangered—”
“Not in New Britain.” She tried not to laugh at his expression. “And that’s where we’re all going, just as soon as the mail arrives.”
It was late in the day: The sun had already set, and the evening rush of homebound commuters was well under way. Business was beginning to slacken off, which was fine by Jason. The sooner they all went home, the sooner the boss would shut up shop and he could go home. But for now . . .
The store was mostly empty: a couple of tired guys with handbaskets down by the discount stationery, a harried suburban mom riding herd on two preteens round the aisle of laptops; nothing much to do. Jason waited by the cash register, trying to look attentive. It’d be just like Bill to hang out in back and watch him on the CCTV, then jump on anything he did wrong. That was the trouble with this job—with a busybody like Bill minding the floor, you just couldn’t fart without him noticing. One of the fluorescents overhead was flickering, its strobing glow reflecting off the glass cabinets. He shifted from foot to foot—sore as usual, after a day of pacing the aisles.
The doors opened. A few seconds later Jason glanced up, registered the two weirdly dressed men. “Can I help you?” he mumbled, taken aback.
“Yes.” The younger of the two grinned. “We’ve got a shopping list. And we’re in a real hurry.” He held up a sheet of paper in one gloved hand.
That’s armor, isn’t it? Jason blinked. The glove was made out of ringlets of metal, knitted together as if by machine—dull gray metal, hundreds of ringlets. Both men were wearing chain mail suits under loose tunics. The tunics were speckled with camouflage dye, like army fatigues. The older man had a full beard and a livid scar drew an emphatic frownline across his brow. “Uh, I can’t leave the register, sir—”
The old guy—middle-aged, by the gray hairs speckling his beard—shook his head. “Call your manager, son. We do not have much time.” His voice was heavily accented.
“Uh, I can’t—”
“What seems to be the problem?”
Jason gritted his teeth as Bill materialized somewhere behind him. “These folks need a personal shopper.”
“Well, you’d better look after them.” He could practically hear Bill’s shit-eating grin. “I’ll mind the register for you.”
“Let me see that list.”
The young guy handed it over. Jason squinted. “A Hewlett-Packard 4550N? I don’t know if we’ve got one of those in stock—”
“Please check.” The young guy shrugged. “If you’ve got one, we want it right now. And the other items. If you do not have that precise model, we’ll discuss alternatives. Whatever you’ve got.”
“Okay, let me have a look.”
Jason scanned the list. A laptop, a heavy laser printer, a scanner, software—all big-ticket items. Some cheaper stuff: a badge laminator, paper, spare toner cartridges, a paper cutter. And some stuff that didn’t make sense: an uninterruptible power supply and a gas-fueled generator? He didn’t bother to glance at his watch, he already knew the time: three minutes to closing. Shit. I’ll be here all evening. But the stuff on this list was worth close to ten big ones; the commission on it was close to a day’s wages. Plus, Bill would have his guts if he let these fish go. Jesus. “I’ll get the big stuff out of the stockroom if we’ve got it, sir. Do you want to pick up the software? It’s over on that aisle—”
“Hurry up, we don’t have all night.” That was Bill, grinning humorlessly at him from behind the register.
Jason shoved through the doors into the stockroom, grabbed a cart, and went hunting. Yet another fucked-up job to add to his list of eccentrics and weirdos who passed through the shop on a daily basis: Did you hear the one about the two guys in chain mail and camo who came in to buy a DTP system at three minutes to closing? They did have the printer in stock, and just his luck, the fucking thing weighed more than a hundred pounds. No scanner, so he picked the next model up. Laptop, check.
It took him just five minutes to rush round the stockroom and grab the big ticket stuff on the list. Finally, impatient to get them the hell out of the shop and cash up and go home, Jason shoved the trolley back out onto the floor. Bill slouched behind the cash register, evidently chatting with the older customer. As he followed the cart out, Bill glared at him. “I wanna take this sale,” he said.
“No you don’t.” Bill laid one hand on the trolley as the younger guy appeared round the end of an aisle, carrying a full basket. “You want to go home, kid, that’s the only reason you were so fast. Go on, shove off.”
“But I—”Now he got it: Bill would log himself in and process the sale and claim the commission, while Jason did all the heavy lifting.
“Think I’m stupid? Think I don’t see you watching the clock? Shove off, Jason.” Bill leaned towards him, menacing. “Unless you want me to notice your timekeeping.”
The younger of the two customers glanced at Bill. “What is your problem?” he asked, placing his basket on the counter.
“We get a commission on each sale,” mumbled Jason. “He’s my supervisor.”
“I see.” The older customer looked at Jason, then at the trolley, then back at Jason. “Well, thank you for your fast work.” He held out his hand, a couple of notes rolled between his fingers; Jason took them. He turned back to Bill. “Put the purchases on this card. We will need help loading them.”
Jason nodded and headed for the back room to grab his coat. Fucking Bill, he thought disgustedly, then glanced at the banknotes before he slid them into his pocket.
There were five of them, and they were all fifties.
“I am sorry, but that’s impossible, sir.”
Rudi paused to buy himself time to find the words he needed. Standing up in front of the CO to brief him on a tool they’d never used before was hard work: How to explain? “The Saber 16 is an ultralight. It has to be—that’s the only way I could carry it over here on my own. The wing weighs about a hundred pounds, and the trike weighs close to two hundred and fifty; maximum takeoff weight is nine hundred pounds, including fifty gallons of fuel and a pilot. You—I, whoever’s flying the thing—steer it with your body. It’s a sport trike, not a general aviation vehicle.”
Earl Riordan raised an eyebrow. “I thought you could carry a passenger, or cargo?”
The question, paradoxically, made it easier to keep going. “It’s true I can lift a passenger or maybe a hundred pounds of cargo, sir, but dropping stuff—anything I drop means taking a hand off the controls and changing the center of gravity, and that’s just asking for trouble. I can dump a well-packaged box of paper off the passenger seat and hit a courtyard, sure, but a two-hundred-pound bomb? That’s a different matter. Even if I could figure out a way to rig it so I could drop it without tearing the wing off or stalling, I’d have to be high enough up that the shrapnel doesn’t reach me, and fast enough to clear the blast radius, and the Saber’s got a top speed of only fifty-five, so I’d have to drop it from high up, so I’d need some kind of bombsight—and they don’t sell them down at Wal-Mart. Sorry. I can drop grenades or flares, and given a tool shop and some help we might even be able to bolt an M249 to the trike, but that’s all. In terms of military aviation we’re somewhere round about 1913, unless you’ve got something squirreled away somewhere that I don’t know about.”