The paired cops just inside the entrance glanced at them, identified the trio as an urban peasant, his wife, and a friend or distant relative and of no interest. Kilgour led Sten and Cind on a circuitous route through the huge building. Benches were filled with beings who, it appeared, had been waiting endlessly. Some slept. Some ate. Some read. Some stared at the blurry entertainment or transport-status screens. More just stared. On Rurik, being able to wait in line without going mad from screaming boredom was more than an art form. It was a necessity.
They stopped beside a refreshment stand. There were no hot drinks available, but three varieties of summer ices could be purchased. The only food for sale that Sten could see was a thin broth made from tubers, and the tureens were filthy. Rancid fat floated on top of the soup.
Cind, still considering herself a student in espionage, studied the other two as they, in turn, studied the people around them without seeming to pay attention.
So far, the run appeared clean, although Sten knew there was little possibility of detecting a full-scale effort to track them, with each tracker following only momentarily before passing them along to the next agent.
Finally Kilgour shrugged hopelessly, pointing up at one line on a transport status screen that was blinking: service suspended indefinitely due to weather. Muttering inaudibly like a proper peasant who had just been told he could not go home again, he led them toward an exit.
They were passing a door marked official only when Alex's head jerked a signal and he darted sideways through the door. Cind was caught by surprise, but Sten had her by the shoulder, and they were following Kilgour. The door closed behind them, Alex booted a jamming wedge into the jamb, and they were in an echoing dank stairwell with an open gate and rain below.
Hand signals from Kilgour. You, Cind. On point. Down the stairs, outside, secure the exit.
Cind flowed silently down the stairs like mercury, cloak opening slightly, gun hand on her weapon's grip, finger carefully near but not on trigger, ready to pull the gun into firing position. She slipped out into the night and went instantly flat against the wall.
She found a moment to admire Sten and Kilgour. Again, she was learning from these two. She had never been around combat teams where the order-giver was the one most familiar with the conditions and immediate problem, not the one with the highest rank.
Sten came out the door and was flat against the wall on the other side. Alex followed.
He, too, found spare brain for a personnel evaluation: Th' lass fits, dinnae she? She dinnae ken, but she'd fit wi' th' best ae Mantis noo. Ah reck Ah'll hae t' tell Sten Ah gie m'blessing.
Then he, too, was out in the pelt of rain, and they were moving at the double down a maintenance access road and into the slum streets behind the terminal. A block away they took cover in a doorway and held, waiting to see if they were pursued.
The street stayed rain-dark and empty. Kilgour nodded with satisfaction. He took a bug sensor from his vest and quickly swept all three of them. Nobody had planted them as they went through the terminal.
"How did you know that terminal door would be unlocked?" Cind asked.
"Ah, lass," Kilgour said. "Ah thought brighter ae y't Who d'y' think unlocked it? Who do y' think hung that 'official' sign? Dinnae y' gie me credit fr m' craft?"
He didn't wait for an answer. "Noo. Straight t' meet our new friend."
They moved on, staying close to the buildings. They went unnoticed—in this area, everyone moved as if he either had a secret or a stash, or was a footpad.
The slum they were moving through was a vertical desolation row, monstrously huge, as was everything else on Jochi. The buildings had been constructed over a hundred E-years earlier as high-rise flats for administration workers, fitted with enough conveniences and luxuries to prevent those who greased the Khaqan's wheels from being too unhappy. Time had passed. The buildings deteriorated. The government workers found cleaner, safer, newer quarters. The poor moved in. The McLean lifts stopped, and there were many, many flights of stairs to climb. The building supervisors were afraid or venal. And one of the curses of Jochi struck—Jochians were good at building things, but never seemed to consider that buildings, roads, or monuments needed maintenance.
Now, windows were shattered or boarded. The upper stories of the buildings were mostly dark. There was only the occasional flicker of light from a squatter's fatlamp or a thieves' lair.
The buildings' facings had been intended to look like stone. Now they hung, peeling, or lay in great slippery sheets across the cracked paving. Garbage littered the streets and was piled high in the buildings' service lanes.
Their route led them near one of the rivers that ran through Rurik. It was less a river than a moving slough, shallow and filled with junk and abandoned vehicles that had been pushed off the high bridge that spidered overhead.
Probably years earlier the embankment had been a nice place to stroll on holidays or on summer evenings. Not now. Sten decided he was not fond of this situation whatsoever—assuming this was where the meet with the agent had been set. If it was on that bridge, that was an excellent place for a trap. And under the bridge, next to the river? Sten shuddered. Not even Alex, with his supreme and usually justified confidence in his cunning, his heavyworld muscles and his experience, would go into that midnight nightmare.
Or so Sten hoped.
"Here's the drill," Kilgour explained. "Ah tol' this wee agent Ah was noo a dumber, an' was bringin't backup. Thae's you, Cind. Ah dinnae say where y'd be, so Ah'd be apprec'tive i' y'd vanish into yon shadows, an track wi' me as Ah hike.
"Ah'm to stroll doon th' bank, an' th' finkette's t' make the meet. Ah dinnae like th' plan, but th' lad wae skitterish. Boss, i' y' agree, y'll be th' invisible fly i' th' haggis. Hie y' doon noo o'erth' retain't wall, an' gie me cover. Frae in front, i' y' please."
"Thanks, Kilgour. I flog it through river mud, and I've got to move faster than you?''
"Aye. An' quieter. Thae's whae y're a wee admiral, an' Ah'm noo but a puir agent-runner.''
Sten checked his gun. It was ready.
"I' y' feel aroon i' th' vest, y'll find a wee corn'copia ae grenades. Bester, flare, frag, blast."
"What's the prog for trouble?" Cind whispered.
"Nae bad. Or Ah'd hae wee Sten carry a howitzer. Nae more'n seventy percent. Enow talk. Go."
Watching the embankment closely, one might have seen a shadow. A shadow that moved. But it was a trick of the light from the bridge, light dimly seen through the slashing rain. The shadow that was Sten oozed over the retaining wall onto the river's "beach."
Pure mire. Sten's foot sank into something that probably had been sentient a bit more recently than the muck. His nose wrinkled. Getting soft, son. Remember, back in Mantis training when they had you low-crawl for half a kilometer through an open sewer line—and then announced the freshers were off limits when your training patrol returned to base? A sickener, it was correctly termed in Mantis slang.
Sten realized he was a bit stiff, a bit out of practice at snoopery, as he lurked on, a wharf rat looking for carrion. Behind him, through the hiss of the rain, he dimly heard Alex's deliberately slammed boot heels on the embankment's paving.
Cind held close in to the shuttered buildings across from the embankment, flitting from shadow to shadow, about fifty meters behind Alex the Target.
Kilgour shivered, but not from the cold rain sheeting down. How many times had he skulked toward a meeting with some local agent? Scores, Laird Kilgour, he thought. An' hae y' e'er not felt th' chill crawl 'tween y'r shoulder blades, waitin' for the sights to cross an' th' round t' slam home?