Close quarters Page 20

  But the fear inside her would not be stilled. Even her art could not completely calm her, and the Void of meditation escaped her as it had not in years.

  At last she gave up and crawled into bed. Tears overwhelmed her, hot and sudden.

  You're overextended, she tried to tell herself. This is a reaction to physical and mental exhaustion, no more. But she knew that was a lie.

  For years Cassie had been awakening in terror from nightmares in which giant metal men pursued her, destroying everything she loved or ever had. In reaction, she had turned herself into a killing machine as deadly as any Clan OmniMech. Every BattleMech she destroyed won her respite from the terrifying dreams.

  Deep down, she still feared 'Mechs. But she had long since learned to live with that fear—to use it, to mold herself into a consummate weapon, to wield her body and mind and skills as deftly as a kenjutsu master wielding a blade. For all the awesome might of the giant battle machines, they had their weaknesses—and Cassie knew them all, and lived within them, as a rat lives within fortress walls.

  But the red-haired man—he was a killer, and he commanded black legions whose training and technology could negate most of her hard-won skills of stealth. She survived against BattleMechs because they were huge and unwieldy, their pilots insulated from the outside world by tons of armor—and their own MechWarrior arrogance. She defeated them because they could not see her unless she chose to let them.

  But she could not hide from the black-suited agents of DEST; they were as small and alert and agile as she. The red-haired man could use her own weapons against her, a realization that terrified her to the core of her soul.

  Fear for her had a new face. A new name. Ninyu Kerai Indrahar.

  Only then did she realize she was clutching the stuffed bear Kali MacDougall had given her, its pink fur wet from her tears. She made as if to hurl the soft hateful thing across the room, but the fear overcame her again, and she huddled in on herself, clutching the toy and weeping, until at last fatigue drew her downward into sleep.

  20

  Masamori, Hachiman

  Galedon District, Draconis Combine

  21 September 3056

  The scarfaced spacer smiled through a haze of cigar smoke at the diminutive woman in the aerospace jock's jacket as if he didn't mind the port-wine birthmark covering half her face at all.

  "Yeah, I'm sure," he said. She could not place his accent. His clothes gave no hint to his origin, which wasn't unusual in his line of work. "Them was Clanners we brung down to the surface."

  Cassie stared at him. She resisted the impulse to look wildly around the spaceport dive to make sure no one was paying too close attention. She had greased the management well to permit her to install a few telltales of her own to detect bugs. And as the one-eyed woman who ran the place said, Cassie was doing her a favor because it meant being able to guarantee complete privacy to her patrons.

  Of course, in the water trade, loyalty tended to stay bought only until a higher bidder came along. On the other hand, Cassie wasn't too worried; word of the fate of Rikki the pimp had gotten around. People would not trifle with her lightly.

  But lightly did not begin to describe how the red-headed man could lean on a body, either. Cassie realized she was becoming paranoid, but she wasn't going to take anything for granted, either.

  "Are you sure?" she asked. "What were they, warriors? Elementals?"

  He laughed. "Sure I'm sure. Don't know what caste they was from, nor Clan neither, and they wasn't wearing any kinda badges to identify 'em. Only thing I am sure of is that none of 'em was Elementals—no nine-foot mounds of muscle, them. But they were Clanners, right enough, from the cut of their clothes, and that look they have." He shuddered. "Once you see 'em, you don't never forget. Had hold of me and my crew for a while on Twycross, 'til Kai Allard-Liao sprang us. Got a bellyful of 'em then, and more."

  Cassie had spent the last two weeks working the streets and clubs and tending her own intelligence network like a lithe gray-eyed spider. She had even gone back to work her regular shifts at the Kit-Kat, overcoming a terrified conviction that somehow the Sumiyama yaks knew she had been in the godown and were only waiting their chance to grab her and torture her.

  They didn't. They didn't know a damn thing, only that some boxes had fallen from a stack and busted the neck of one of Ninyu Kerai's arrogant, black-clad bully-boys. They got a pretty good laugh from that over their Borstal Boys.

  Beyond that, beyond the fact that the second-in-command for the whole ISF was on-planet and like this with Dai-Ichi Sumiyama, the soldiers down in the Kit-Kat knew nothing. Neither did anyone else with whom the far-flung tentacles of her network came in contact.

  Though frustrating, that didn't surprise her. Ninyu surely wasn't about to discuss his plans with the yaks. He'd tell them what he wanted when the time came, and if they were smart they'd see he got it with a minimum of fuss.

  Cassie did pick up rumors that the red-haired man was staying at Stormhaven, the Fillington estate north along the coast from Masamori, but she hadn't yet penetrated high Hachiman society to any great extent. The geisha houses and gambling establishments that catered to the elite were a little tougher to crack than the Kit-Kat Klub and Torashii Gyaru, where, as a matter of fact, Cassie was dancing every once in a while, to see what she could pick up on. But she was not prepared to call attention to herself by pushing too hard anywhere.

  Ironically, when a nice juicy fly did blunder into her web, it had nothing at all to do with what she was looking for. Or maybe everything.

  "Where'd you pick them up?" Cassie dug into her pocket for her wallet, using the opportunity to skim the room with her eyes. No one seemed to be paying them any attention.

  Not that that was any real surprise. Minding other people's business was a fine way of fetching up dead in Yoshi-Town.

  "Out on the Priff," he said, using spacer's slang for the Periphery, "just across the line from Gravenhage. Too close to Jag territory for comfort, even though the Wolves and the Bears are givin"em most of all they can handle these days. 'Course, that close to Clan space, the Snake patrols got better things to do than look for us."

  "You ran suspected Clanners into the Combine," she said in wonder.

  "Told you we did." He chuckled. "Hey, you don't think we had a license from the Dracs to run out beyond the Fringe, do you? Might as well get hanged for a sheep as a lamb, whatever that means."

  He took a drag on his smoke and shrugged. "Besides, we weren't sure they was Clan to start with. Only that they wanted a ride to Hachiman, and were willing to pay."

  "C-bills?" No spacer Cassie had ever met would even consider risking Kurita anti-smuggler patrols and their summary notions of justice for payment in the unstable H-bills issued by the Inner Sphere's Great Houses. Of course, the C-bills issued by ComStar, once the foundation of Inner Sphere exchange, were also beginning to fray at the edges these days, thanks to pressure from the Word of Blake zanies.

  "Gold."

  Cassie made an appreciative face, nodded.

  She had never intended to get quite so involved in the less-licit water trade as Rikki the late pimp's impulsive nature had led her to become. But here it was paying off big time. It was amazing the things a lonely spacer—or just about anyone, to tell the whole truth—was capable of telling a total stranger, just because they happened to be sharing a table. Or a pillow.

  "Like I said," the spacer was saying, "they didn't identify themselves as Kerenskys or nothin' when we DropShipped 'em aboard the Daisy Belle. It was just—they didn't act quite right, you know, like they wasn't comfortable around people, or at least raggedy-ass Inner Sphere types like us. They was polite enough and all, just—remote. Different."

  "Where'd you take them?"

  This time his colorless eyes made a circuit of the crowded bar, and he rubbed the stubble on his thin cheeks thoughtfully with a palm. It made a rasping noise until Cassie lifted her own hand off the table to reveal a roll of C-bills.

&n
bsp; His eyes lit. The Blakies hadn't yet messed ComStar currency up that much.

  "Took 'em out in the middle of the Aventurine Sea, clear t'other side of the world," he said.

  "How'd you keep from being spotted?"

  He tipped his head and gave her an odd, birdlike look. She realized she had taken a false step. Below the edge of the table, her hand edged toward the bent hilt of her kris.

  "You know how spotty Hachiman traffic control is," he said, "don't you?"

  "I made planetfall as cargo, myself."

  The suspicious crow's-feet smoothed out from around the spacer's mouth and eyes. He nodded. "Well, take it from somebody who knows, their coverage is more hole than net. Piece of cake to do a touch'n'go. Reckon the yak like it that way."

  "Could be," Cassie said. "What about the Clanners?"

  He stubbed his cigarette in a bronze ashtray and immediately lit another. "Dropped 'em at a map reference in a Zodiac boat. Blowin' a gale, waves toppin' ten meters, and they never flinched, just went puttin' off in that Z-bird as if they had never a care in the whole damn world."

  "Any land in range?"

  "Not a chance."

  "Did you spot their pickup ship?"

  The spacer snorted. "Didn't even look. Didn't care. Tell you some truth, I was glad to see the last of 'em. And if they went straight to the bottom of the ocean, so much the better. Not even ISF interrogators can get much out of dead Clanners."

  He stood up. "Reckon I done as much talking as my health can stand," he said. He lifted his right hand, encased in a fingerless glove, and riffled through the stack of C-bills Cassie had slipped him.

  "Easy money, I guess," he said. "Sure you don't wanna help me spend it?"

  Cassie looked up at him and nodded slowly. He shrugged and was gone.

  She sat there, vision unfocused, allowing her senses to gather impressions from the tavern and the throng around her: smell of tobacco and various smokable drugs, sweat, a tang of fear; muttered conversations, spikes of anger, hissed shushings, the tinny Moroccan-roll music currently popular among Inner Sphere spacers; looks of anger and greed and lust and plain despair. Slow, smoke-laden currents of air and the pressure of many presences.

  Guru had taught her to sense the presence of danger simply by allowing her senses free rein and not allowing her conscious mind to interfere; to let her instinct sift the input for nuggets of menace. Of course, it didn't always work. Guru Johann stepped on a glass cobra and died before his spasming brown body hit the ground in front of his shanty on the outskirts of Larsha. Cassie had been so distraught by the death of the one living human in the universe that she cared about that she'd let herself get trolled in by a random street-sweeping police patrol two days later.

  But she'd been through so much since then. Both her senses and her subconscious processing of what they brought her had been sharpened on a score of worlds and in a thousand potentially lethal situations. There was no danger here.

  No immediate danger, she amended mentally. Outside, it was as if the night had become a vast sea of menace; she could feel its pressure, as she always imagined she'd be able to feel the crushing pressure of the ocean in a submersible a thousand meters down.

  She had no idea what significance the presence of Clanners on Hachiman might have, for her, for her employer, for her surrogate family. But she knew in her DNA that it was significant. As significant as the presence of the red-haired man—and as potentially deadly.

  Some of the unattached men in the bar were beginning to slip her sidelong fondling looks. To have to injure or kill somebody would call attention to her. The last thing she wanted was for anyone to remember that the woman with the florid birthmark had been talking intently to the lanky spacer who at one time had had his face opened up from his right eyebrow to the tip of his long chin. She had chosen the port-wine mark because it grabbed attention, was all anyone would recall of her appearance. But she was under no illusion that ISF psych-techs lacked ways to pry a more complete picture from a witness' subconscious.

  Though her instincts were shrilling for her to get out of here, she made herself sit and pretend to smoke a cigarette, to set an interval between her informant's departure and her own. Then she rose and slid casually out through the rowdy crush of drinkers.

  Outside the night was bright with the holographic blandishments of Yoshi-town. Cassie gave the street a quick surveillance. A knot of stevedores made their drunken way toward her, singing a bawdy song in the Rasalhague tongue: have to navigate around them. None of her stable of hookers was in view—she'd picked the meeting-place to be well clear of their turf—and if somebody was lurking in shadow to watch her, they were damned good.

  She put her hands in her pockets. The right closed reassuringly around the black rubber grips of her snub-nosed 10-mm hideout. She began to walk down the street as if she were heading somewhere in particular, but nowhere very urgent.

  * * *

  Uncle Chandy was lolling among his cushions eating spiced fruit when the Mirza escorted Cassie from his private elevator into the CEO's chambers. The Chief was not alone. A pair of his play-pretties lounged with him, clad in skimpy harem garb and with their hair piled on their heads. They watched Cassie like cats whose domain has been invaded by an unknown feline; their eyes tracked her like gunsights, and she could almost see the tails twitch.

  Have no fear, she thought. I wouldn't be where you are for anything in the world. Even if la Dama Muerte thought she was a total slut—and that without knowing that Cassie was dancing naked at Torashii Gyaru.

  "Ladies," Chandy said, "if you'll excuse me ...?"

  They rose, gave Cassie a last if-looks-could-kill-all-that'd-be-left-of-you-is-smoldering-boots glare, and hip-swung out of the chamber.

  Chandy patted the cushions beside him. "Come, sit with me, daughter. Enjoy some fruit"

  Cautiously Cassie sat, but not quite as near his bulk as he had indicated. He picked up a pale green grape. "These are Terran grapes, marinated in a blend of native herbs. Really quite exquisite."

  "Thank you, Lord." Cassie was still too much of a street child to turn down free food. She accepted a serving on a golden plate and began to eat. Despite the fear that simmered inside her, she munched with appetite.

  Chandy nodded approvingly. "You are too thin, daughter; a little more flesh on those fine bones will buffer you against illness, mark my words." He lay back among the pillows. "Now, what have you brought for me?"

  Between mouthfuls of sweet-spiced fruit, she told him what the spacer had said. He pursed his great mouth and sat very still.

  "So. Someone on Hachiman treats with our great enemy." He fingered his chins. "Perhaps the Smiling One suspects their presence; that may be why he has despatched his pet blood-beast here."

  Cassie froze with a slice of unknown purple fruit halfway to her mouth. If the redheaded man thought Uncle Chandy was treating with the Clans ...

  "Mirza."

  "I serve."

  "Put all your resources on this matter. At once."

  "But the matter of Ninyu Kerai Indrahar—"

  "Will wait." A smile. "In the fullness of time, he no doubt will come to us. In the meantime, learn what you can about this Clan business. Lieutenant Suthorn will of course continue her inquiries, which have already proven so fruitful. But we have assets not even our resourceful abtakha can match."

  A chill sizzle ran down Cassie's spine; the use of the Clan loan-word seemed ominous, though it had been her callsign since 3051.

  The Mirza hesitated. "Chief Executive—?"

  "Speak."

  "It seems to me that only one entity on Hachiman would have the resources to smuggle Clan members onto the planet."

  "Tanadi." Uncle Chandy rolled this around in his mouth, then set his great head back and laughed. "That would be choice. The Marquis assists Ninyu Kerai in destroying me for a crime the Marquis himself is committing! Delicious irony indeed."

  He raised a pudgy hand as if delivering his blessing. "Go. We do not
know it is Tanadi. Nor can we act until we have more information."

  Abdulsattah bowed and withdrew. "Must you rush away, Lieutenant?"

  She paused, caught off balance. What's wrong with me?

  This is happening far too much these days. Yet there was no denying that Uncle Chandy was an extraordinary man—an unorthodox Kurita, indeed, but a Kurita.

  "I—" She held her hands up. "I feel the need to do something, Lord."

  "As a scout of your experience," he said, "I should think you understood the uses of patience."

  She bowed her head. "I think I'm out of my depth here, Lord."

  "No." She snapped her head up. "I do not believe you are, child. But that is something you must determine for yourself." He shifted his weight. "Are you sure you won't stay with me a while? I quite enjoy your company."

  She tensed. "You can let that wild-animal look out of your eyes, Lieutenant," Chandy said, grinning abruptly in a way that made him almost boyish. "As you can see, I am quite adequately supplied with bedwarmers. While it's true that you are, in your quiet, underfed way, as lovely as the loveliest of them, I have no interest in seducing you. Nor coercing you, for that matter."

  "Then what does your Excellency wish?"

  "That you would sit with me and tell me marvelous tales of the deeds you've done and the sights you have seen. Why the look of surprise? Do you think I'm some kind of supernatural being, with no need for entertainment? Even the kami love a good story."

  She sighed, sat. Tension flowed out of her. She had no choice, and in a way that was tremendously liberating.

  Like the loss of control she got from alcohol or drugs, it was not a release she cared to permit herself too often.

  "That's better," said Uncle Chandy. "Now, Lieutenant, before you tell me of your exploits, there is one thing I must ask you: do you indeed plan to inform your compatriots of what you have learned this night?"

  She drew a breath deep, let it go. "No, Lord."