Death World (Undying Mercenaries Series Book 5) (37 page)

He looked at Della in concern. For me, it was all in a day’s work, but I could tell Claver was spooked by her. It did my heart good to see it.

“You keep strange company, McGill,” he said.

“Della’s always been a free spirit,” I explained.

“That’s what you call this murderess?”

“Normally, I’d be offended,” I said. “But she has killed me several times in the past, so…”

“Are you coming with me or not?” Claver asked. “Time is wasting.”

“Take me too, James,” Della said. Since letting Claver onto his feet, she’d kept her knife aimed at his left eyeball, with her arm cocked back for a thrust. He didn’t dare pull a weapon.

“Nah,” I said. “Why don’t you stay here and protect my folks for me? Just in case this is all some kind of scheme to lure me away from home?”

Della glanced at me with a fresh worry on her face. “Do you think that’s possible?”

“Anything’s possible when you’re dealing with Claver.”

“Thanks for that vote of confidence,” Claver said, grinning.

A few minutes later, I climbed into Claver’s air car and was whisked away into the skies. I had no idea what was really in store for me. I figured I’d just have to play it by ear when we got to Central.

-49-

Claver knew that Winslade wouldn’t just let us march up to his office in Central and start chewing him out. So, he used what he always did in these situations: money.

In my era, unfortunately, Hegemony had more than its share of corruption. The core of the problem seemed to stem from the flow of too much credit through too few hands. When the government awarded a trillion credits to Hegemony and ordered them to build a fleet, it was damned near certain that a few hundred billion of that digital currency ended up in questionable places.

There were the small time grifters: Tribunes and the like who bought their family members fancy new air cars and paid for them with bribes offered by contractors. Then there was the big kind of thievery: sectors paying off officials to place new facilities in their territory rather than the other guy’s. It was my guess that this kind of thing had always gone on in large organizations throughout time.

With all that wealth flying around, you’d think people would have had an easy time finding honest work—but they didn’t. In my world, every mistake a person made was tracked by some computer or another. Vids were stored in the data cores forever and universally available on the net. That meant there were a lot of people who couldn’t get jobs—so they had to survive by other means.

Claver had found such a person. An ex-hegemony veteran by the name of Jonathan Sloane. He’d done something wrong that he couldn’t erase, and he’d been kicked out of the service by none other than Primus Winslade himself. We picked him up in Wilmington then pressed on toward Central.

“You’re sure you can fix the security systems?” Sloane asked Claver for about the tenth time.

I kept my mouth shut, partly because I didn’t really know what Claver was capable of. I’d seen him perform some pretty amazing stunts before—but then again, we were talking about Central itself this time. I couldn’t blame Sloane for having doubts.

“Of course I can,” scoffed Claver with absolute certainty in his voice. He sounded like he was offended that Sloane would even dare to doubt him.

We glided in on a regulated approach-corridor toward a mammoth building. Central was as impressive a sight as ever. The three of us dropped lightly onto a spur of puff-crete that stuck out from the side of the mountainous structure. The landing pad looked like a hand lifted palm-up toward heaven.

Sloane was sitting in the passenger seat with his arms crossed. He was becoming nervous now that we were actually here, I could tell.

“I don’t like this,” he said.

“Look,” Claver said, “I told Winslade I’m flying in to show him how to use a new piece of hardware he’s acquired. You’ll just have to wear the belt, and it will make you look like me. When you get in there, do your business and get out fast.”

“And why, again, should I trust you?”

Claver grunted in annoyance and tapped at the belt Sloane was wearing. “Turn it on. Let’s test it.”

Sloane looked at the belt suspiciously. He thumbed the button, but didn’t push it.

“Come on,” Claver said. “What do you think? It’s a bomb? I’m not trying to blow us all up!”

Reluctantly, Sloane pushed the button.

The effect was immediate and amazing. He transformed into the spitting image of Claver himself. Even the clothes were right—everything.

Claver chuckled. “Check the passenger-side mirrors.”

Sloane did so, and he whistled long and loud. “I
do
look exactly like you!” he said, marveling.

The belt and the box were, of course, from Tech World. The people known as the Tau on that planet wore these devices instead of clothing. They could project imagery that made a person look like they were dressed in any color or fashion they liked. Claver had clearly tampered with the box to make it project his own face on top of Sloane’s.

“I’m impressed,” Sloane said. “This will get me into his office—but why don’t you just march up there and shoot him yourself if you hate him as much as I do?”

“Hold on,” I said from the back seat. “Who said anything about shooting Winslade? I thought we were going to shake him down, to get him to return—”

“You thought wrong,” Claver said, throwing me a glare over his shoulder. He shook his head at me slowly, indicating I should shut up.

My lips twisted up in disgust. Claver was schemer, and I’d been caught up in his crooked plans before. He clearly didn’t want me to talk about the Galactic key in front of Sloane. I fell silent, deciding to wait to see how things played out. The idea of having Winslade running around with the key in his possession worried me a good deal. He was worse that Turov, in my opinion.

When I shut up, Claver’s face transformed into a sly smile. He turned back to Sloane, who was eyeing the two of us suspiciously.

“Think about it,” he said. “We all want this man dead, but none of us want to pay for the crime. By wearing my face, you shield yourself from the vid cameras.”

“And why won’t they just arrest you?” Sloane asked.

Claver pointed at me at this point. “You see McGill, here? He’s another Winslade-hater from way back.”

I nodded, because it was pretty much true. Winslade and I had never gotten along.

“He’s my alibi. He and I will parade ourselves in front of as many cameras as we can over the next ten minutes. You see? That way you’re covered, I’m covered, and he’s covered. We three are the most likely suspects—the cops will know that. But when they investigate, they’ll realize
none
of us could have committed the crime because we weren’t here.”

Sloane squinted at each of us in turn. He pointed a finger at me.

“Why don’t you have him do it?”

Claver laughed. “Debts are so quickly forgotten! Did that little matter of six hundred thousand much-needed credits slip your mind already, Sloane?”

Claver handed him a gun then. It was a weird-looking thing, fashioned into the shape of a bar of soap. You’d never know it was a weapon, except for the black, oval button on the back of it.

“This thing contains almost no metal. The outer shell is organic, inert material. All their scanners will be fooled.”

Sloane eyed the weapon, hesitating.

“Not interested?” Claver said. He made a tsking sound. “I thought you had it all, Sloane: motive, guts and a healthy desire for easy credit. I guess I was wrong. You can play McGill’s part. It only pays a hundredth of the fee, but it’s a lot safer.”

Claver turned toward me, passing the disguised weapon in my direction. “McGill, I guess you’re getting rich today. Could you hand McGill the belt, Sloane?”

Sloane licked his lips, then reached out suddenly and took the gun from Claver’s hand.

“Changed your mind, eh?” Claver asked. “Okay then…go!”

Still looking like Claver, Sloane climbed out of the air car and walked quickly toward the guard post that oversaw the landing site. It was technically a violation to land here unless you were on official Hegemony business, but the guards didn’t usually check IDs until someone tried to enter the building.

Claver watched his twin hustle toward security. There was a worrisome pause as they IDed him—but he passed.

Claver’s smile was an evil thing to witness. It gave me pause. His plan seemed elaborate, but it appeared to be well thought-out. That didn’t completely put my mind at ease, though. Claver’s schemes routinely resulted in disaster for everyone but him.

I watched Sloane disappear on his mission of assassination. I’d come to feel sorry for the guy over the brief time I’d known him. He was just a fellow down on his luck and there were countless examples of his kind in the world.

“Come on,” Claver said, rapping his knuckles on the dash. “Let’s move. He’s inside.”

“Move?” I asked. “Where are we going? To find some cameras to parade in front of?”

Claver looked at me like I was the biggest dummy this side of a ventriloquist’s knee.

“You
bought
that crap?” he asked, laughing. “Sometimes, McGill, I wonder how lonely your brains must be inside that big skull of yours. Come on, we don’t have much time.”

I felt like belting him one, but I climbed out of the air car and followed him toward the waiting guards.

“Tell me what’s going on, Claver,” I said, “or I’m tipping off security right here, right now.”

Claver looked at me. “You won’t do that.”

“You want to try me?”

Claver gave me that evil smile again. “You’re not the same man any longer, McGill. I’ve got your number. You’ve got a kid, a woman—she’s nuts, but she’s still a woman. Then there’re your folks. They seem nice. Did you know that before I came to your door, I knocked on theirs and had a nice little chat with your mom?”

That was it. I hit him. A sucker punch from a man that outweighed him by thirty kilos—that’s never an easy thing to shrug off.

Claver spun around and fell to the ground.

“Don’t you ever—” I began, but I was interrupted from my intimidating speech.

The guards were running toward us now. They had their hands on their pistols and blood in their eyes. They’d been watching us act weird out here on the puff-crete landing zone for a long while, I guess, and they’d had enough.

“McGill,” Claver said, not bothering to get up. “You’re determined to screw up everything, aren’t you?”

“I’m known for that.”

The pounding feet of the MPs came closer, and I looked up at them. When I looked back down at Claver again, I blinked, and my face registered shock.

The man at my feet wasn’t Claver. Not anymore. It was Winslade.

But then he smiled, and I knew that evil smile too well. It
was
Claver. It had to be. He must have used another one of his boxes to change his appearance.

When the guards arrived, they recognized Winslade.

“Arrest this man for striking an officer!” Claver said, doing a fair imitation of Winslade’s voice.

They grabbed me, and the Winslade look-alike got up, dusting himself off. He followed along behind me looking stern while I was hustled toward the entrance to Central.

I consoled myself with the knowledge that I’d at least gotten to punch Claver one more time.

-50-

We headed directly to Winslade’s office. I don’t mind saying I was a little freaked out. What was Claver’s plan? I’d decided to play it cool. Trying to convince the guards Winslade wasn’t Winslade wasn’t going to wash. They’d seen me punch him, and they were all business at this point.

What didn’t help was that I was from Legion Varus, a known band of ruffians, while Winslade was from Hegemony. Hogs and independent legion people rarely saw eye-to-eye. From the point of view of the police, it was extremely believable that a noncom from a disreputable outfit would take a poke at a Hog officer. It happened frequently enough.

“Could you open my door?” Winslade asked one of the guards. “I seem to have dropped my fob during this buffoon’s clumsy assault.”

“Certainly, Primus,” the man said, touching his hand to the lock plate. The door shot open, and a very shocked looking figure that looked like Claver stood there, staring at us.

Only it wasn’t Claver. It had to be the hapless Sloane.

I could see the surprise in Sloane’s eyes. Maybe he’d been lying in wait for Winslade, but he hadn’t planned on him coming with the cavalry and me too.

Sloane looked at me, and I could see understanding flood into him.

“They caught you, huh, McGill?” he asked. “Well, I still say it was worth it.”

He raised his bar of soap and aimed it at Claver, I guess he thought it was Winslade. I could hardly blame him for that.

Claver knew he was in trouble and dove behind one of the confused guards.

The guards were slow to react. As far as they could tell, a lunatic was aiming something resembling a bar of soap at them.

An invisible beam struck the guard that was shielding Claver. The man’s eyes widened, and he fell to his knees then flat on his face. I never even saw an injury, so I wasn’t sure how he died. The weapon was clearly one of those alien-made specials that killed in devious ways. Maybe his neurons had stopped firing, or maybe his blood had congealed all at once. There was no way to tell without an autopsy.

The second guard caught on when his buddy went down. He drew his pistol, side-stepped so he was partly obscured by the doorway, and fired three sizzling bolts into the room. I heard an alarm go off somewhere. The weapon’s discharge had tripped it.

Sloane caught two of the three bolts. The last one splashed the slanting glass behind him, causing it to smoke and create a melted divot. As testimony to the strength of Central’s construction, it didn’t cut all the way through.

“Got him!” the guard said proudly.

“Well done,” Claver said, still acting the part of Winslade. He quickly stepped past the guard and into the office.

When he got behind the desk, Claver did a double-take. Frowning, he stepped back to Sloane who was being looked over by the man who’d shot him.

“This man is—sir, there’s some kind of field around him. A projection of some kind. I’m—”

While the guard had been speaking, Claver had stooped and picked up the soap bar. He pressed it to guard’s neck and activated it.

The guard pitched forward.

“What the hell—?” I demanded, stepping forward. “What did you do that for?”

“Bah, don’t be a baby, McGill. He’ll pop out of the oven downstairs in an hour. Would you rather be interrogated?”

“No,” I admitted.

Claver grinned with Winslade’s lips. It was a strange sight to see. To me, it was like Winslade was standing there, imitating Claver’s mannerisms.

“What are you so happy about?” I asked.

He lifted up an object. It was the Galactic key.

“Where the heck did that come from?”

“Take a look behind the good Primus’ desk.”

I stepped around the desk and saw the real Winslade lying there. Claver began to work quickly while I gaped.

First, he stepped to Winslade’s computer terminal and accessed the data core for the whole facility. He used the key to bypass every log in and biometric identification system. He quickly began shutting things off. Alarms began to go off on every floor then fall silent again as each was shut down in turn.

The cameras died, then fail-safe systems activated to back them up. The fail-safes quickly faulted as well. It was amazing, really. I’d never really thought about what the Galactic key could do to a place like Central, which was full of the best equipment that credits could buy—in other words, alien-made gizmos. In this case, it was the all-important data core that was purchased off-world and therefore had to have breakable security to be legal on the frontier.

Two more confused guards arrived with their weapons drawn before Claver could finish his dirty work. They were breathing hard. They looked at the body-choked office in horror.

“Primus, are you all right?”

“Yes, fortunately,” Claver said. “But the attackers have escaped. Would you be so kind as to pursue them?”

“Which way, sir?”

“You don’t know?”

“The whole building is off-grid. I’m sorry, Primus. We can’t even raise dispatch.”

“Unacceptable. I’ll be making a report later. Go to fourth level, B section. I believe that’s where they’re headed.”

“Fourth and B? Isn’t that the kitchen, sir? I—”

“Veteran. Are you questioning my information or my intelligence?”

“Uh…neither sir. Glad you’re all right…”

Claver made a dismissive wave. When the guards were gone, I whistled long and low.

“Wow, I’m impressed,” I said. “You sound and act just like Winslade. If this trading game doesn’t work out for you, there’s always the theater.”

He looked up from the terminal, distracted. “We’re not done yet,” he said.

“No?”

He knelt and went to work on Winslade’s tapper next. I walked around the desk and watched, frowning. I saw he had the Galactic key in his hand.

“What are you doing to the Primus, exactly?” I demanded.

“I’m perming him, of course. What else? Did you expect me to give him mouth-to-mouth?”

I grabbed him and pulled him away from Winslade. “There’s no need for that. He’s dead already. Leave well enough alone.”

“He’s going to explain what happened here to the authorities. We’ve erased the vid data and damaged the core, but that’s not enough to keep any of these men from testifying against us later.”

My eyes crawled over the bodies on the floor. Two guards, Sloane and Winslade. Killing them was one thing, but perming them? That was too much.

“You want to get arrested, is that it, boy?” Claver said in a snake-like voice. “We’re on a purge, in case you hadn’t noticed. A clean-up mission for our team.”

“Our team? Who’s our team leader? You?”

“No, my muscle-brained friend. Turov is our leader, naturally. She’s going to be elevated to equestrian after all the evidence is in against Nagata.”

Looking from Winslade to Claver and back again, I didn’t know what to think.

“Nagata?” I asked.

“Like I said, we’re not done yet.”

“What evidence?” I asked.

“The evidence I’m busy planting with Winslade’s computer,” he said laughing. “Is there any other kind?”

“Okay,” I said. “I know Turov is ambitious. I get that. I know Winslade stole the key, and she wants it back. But why are you perming him?”

“He’s got to go. Not because he stole the key, but because he knows of its existence and how to operate it.”

“Is that all?” I asked. “I can fix that. Give it to me.”

Claver stared at me.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re one hundred percent sure you can get away with perming a primus in the middle of Central? That is ballsy, my man. A crime like that is a hard one to cover up. People have memories, you know, that go beyond what’s in the data core. They’ll never stop investigating this. Give me the key, and I’ll fix it right.”

My big hand was parked in his face, palm up, waiting. After counting to three—maybe it was four—he finally handed it over.

I went to work on Winslade’s tapper. I broke through security effortlessly with the key. Essentially, whenever a screen came up asking for a code or a password or a fingerprint, a touch of the key caused the data to fill itself in correctly. Within seconds, I was deeper into the menus than any normal person could go.

There, I found Winslade’s memory backups. Going back a few weeks, I found they weren’t held locally. They were stored on a server in Central. Again, the passwords and security checks fell one by one. I was soon able to access his core data.

There it all was. His mind, his body, stored in computers down to the DNA and synaptic connections. Riffling through his past like anyone handling a folder full of files, I erased them one by one. His mind was being destroyed—but only the most recent accumulative backups of it. The system worked by storing changes over time rather than full copies of the entire thing.

I left his body alone, but I erased a month’s worth of his mind. It was a strange feeling, like I was playing God. To make myself feel better, I kept reminding myself that Winslade’s only other option was nonexistence.

Claver watched me closely and talked over my shoulder about the key.

“Are you sure this will work?” he asked.

“Yeah, I told you. I’ve done it before more than once. Haven’t you ever wondered how I get out of things?”

“Maybe you know what you’re doing sometimes,” he admitted reluctantly. It was still strange to me to hear Claver’s voice coming out of Winslade. “Just make sure he doesn’t remember the key. We’ve already got three people who know about the treasure you’re wielding in your hand right now, McGill. You, me and Turov. That’s about two over the limit, if you ask me. You can’t keep a secret so big with four people—it’s not possible. Someone is bound to blab or to attempt to eliminate the others. Winslade took it upon himself to demonstrate this today.”

It occurred to me that Claver and I were busy doing exactly what Claver had said Winslade might do at this very moment. But I was too busy to argue about that.

“I got your point,” I said. “You still haven’t explained why we have to take sides. And if we do, why should we take Turov’s side?”

Claver straightened up and put his hands on his hips. “You aren’t suggesting we strike out on our own, are you?”

“Hell no. I just don’t want to align myself with someone I disagree with.”

“Ah,” he said loudly. “I see the problem now—you’re an idiot. I should’ve seen that one coming a mile off. Boy, let me explain the ways of the universe to you as some critical realities seem to have slipped by that fine mind of yours.”

He was pissing me off, but I just kept working on Winslade’s memories. If you could get past enough bullshit and insults, Claver often said something interesting.

“You remember when the Galactic battle fleet showed up in Earth orbit?” he asked. “Back when they filled the sky with alien ships?”

“I wasn’t there personally—wait, you’re not telling me you’re
that
old, are you?”

He chuckled. “I was young, but I was there. Anyway, at that point, Earth had to make a choice. We could suck it up and play ball with these pushy aliens—or we could die. We made the choice we did because there really
wasn’t
any choice.”

“All right,” I said. “But what’s that got to do with choosing sides now? We don’t have to work for Nagata or Turov.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. You see, people in power don’t understand men like us, McGill. They think we’re just assholes. We’re problems desperately in need of a solution—and the solution is an obvious one.”

To make his point, he directed a finger toward the mess on the floor. I looked at Winslade’s twisted corpse. I had to admit, Claver was right. When you played with fire, you often got burned.

“So,” Claver continued, “nosy, irritating individuals like us need to sign on with the powerful in order to keep existing.”

I nodded, understanding his point but not agreeing with it entirely. “What’s to keep a ruthless woman like Turov from doing the same thing to you and me later?”

“Nothing,” he admitted. “Nothing, that is, if we don’t prepare for that eventuality.”

“What can we possibly do? She keeps climbing in rank. She keeps becoming more powerful. Hell, she might even be the ruler of the world someday.”

He gave me a tight look.

“Don’t talk like that,” he said. “To answer your question practically, there is a way to keep breathing no matter what in these situations.”

“Really?” I asked, honestly interested. “Tell me. I’m all ears.”

“Knowledge, my boy, that’s the key to a long existence. Learn secrets and keep them to yourself. And always have another secret up your sleeve if the last one gets out.”

“Secrets? You’ve got to be kidding. Secrets can get a man killed. Just look at Winslade.”

He shook his head. “He didn’t keep his secrets. He tried to exploit them. Winslade, here, he got big ideas and went up against someone more experienced and dangerous than himself. That’s not what I’m suggesting you should do.”