Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1) (15 page)

The elevator lurched to a stop and Knile stumbled, caught off guard.

Damn, these things are quicker than they used to be.

Then he saw that the elevator had in fact only reached Level Seven.

“Oh, shit.”

The doors opened and an Enforcer stood waiting, his hand tightly wound through the hair of a woman gasping at his side.  He started upon seeing Knile and the woman cried out as he took an inadvertent step backward.

“Who the fuck are you?” the Enforcer said.

12

Knile stood still and calm, fighting to remain relaxed even though his instincts were screaming at him to do the opposite.

“Good morning, Constable,” he said evenly.  “Going up?”

The Enforcer glanced at the woman struggling by his side, aware of how awkward the two of them must have looked.

“Show me your ID,” the constable said.  He was a tall and muscular man with a square jaw, and he held the tearful woman with one hand easily.  The woman, for her part, seemed afraid to speak, but Knile could see by the look in her eyes that she was in desperate need of help.

“Right here,” Knile said, offering up his fingertips for inspection.  The constable made no effort to scan him.  “I’m just part of the maintenance crew around here.”

“Then why are you dressed like that?  That’s not maintenance gear.”

“It’s laundry day.”

The Enforcer sneered and then thrust the woman away angrily.  She cried out as she thumped heavily against the wall and then lay in a heap on the floor, dazed.

“Fuckin’ smartass,” the Enforcer growled.  He pointed at his feet.  “Get out here.”

Knile complied, taking slow and deliberate steps forward.  In those few precious seconds he weighed up his options.

He knew that once the Enforcer scanned his ID and took a closer look at him, he’d see that the faces didn’t match.  The game would be up.  Knile couldn’t let that happen.

The guy was bigger than Knile and in good shape, and Knile was unlikely to overpower him by brute force.  There was a pistol holstered on the Enforcer’s up
per thigh, a standard issue .40-cal, and from his demeanour, Knile concluded that he was the type who wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

The constable was wearing a rugged version of Enforcer gear that was fitted out with layers of woven fibre and ceramic plates.  Knile could see faded slash and scrape marks around the ribs where the suit had taken a beating.  This guy had seen some action.

Knile also knew that movement inside a suit like that was somewhat restricted.  He’d found that out through personal experience a few years back, after trying to disguise himself as an Enforcer in a misguided attempt to infiltrate a data centre.  Now that knowledge might be the only advantage he had.

“You know what?” Knile said, pulling up short.  “Why don’t you just let Unger know I’m here?”

“What?” the constable said, baffled.

“Hey, dude.  You don’t have to play dumb.  Just lead me to Unger and I’ll make the transaction.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Yo, do I have to draw you a diagram, here?  Unger!  Take me to him and we’ll straighten this out,” Knile said.

“There’s no Unger here, asshole.  Now–”

“Inspector Unger?”

The Enforcer paused.  “Inspector Unger shipped out over a year ago.  He’s off-world.”

Knile gave the man the most shocked look he could manage.  “No!  The lucky bastard.  Can you believe that?”

The Enforcer glared at him.  “What do you want him for, anyway?”

“Dammit.  I had an arrangement with that guy,” Knile said, winking at the Enforcer companionably.  “If you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Okay, let me break it down for you.  I have a product that’s worth… well, a lot of creds.  I’m talking major bank here.  Whenever I needed to offload one of these babies, Unger would uh… assist with the transaction.”

“Sounds illegal,” the Enforcer said doubtfully.

Not the sharpest tool in the shed, this one
, Knile thought.

“Hey, it’s all untraceable.  Nothing to worry about,” Knile said.  He made an exaggerated sigh.  “I guess I should have known Unger would get out of here.  Since he was making so much cash out of this little agreement and all.  He’s probably sipping piña coladas on Enceladus right now.”  The Enforcer stared at him blankly.  “It’s one of Saturn’s moons,” Knile added.

“I know that,” the Enforcer said, clearly lying.

“So, since my old friend Unger isn’t around anymore, maybe you’d like to see what I’ve got to offer?”

The Enforcer glanced over his shoulder, then back at the woman lying prone on the floor.

“I don’t think so.”

“You think you’re going to get off-world on constable pay?  C’mon, man, that’ll take forever.  The world will go under completely before that happens.”

The Enforcer’s seemed to consider.  “What is it you’ve got?”

Knile reached slowly for his belt, then looked over his shoulder.

“I can’t show it to you here.  Someone could come up one of these elevators any second.”

“Forget this.  I don’t want it.”  The Enforcer’s patience gave out, and he reached out angrily for Knile’s collar.

Knile moved like lightning, swaying under the outstretched hand of the Enforcer and lunging for the .40-
cal on his thigh.  The constable responded by swinging his other arm downward protectively, knocking the weapon away as Knile plucked it from the holster.  The gun flew through the air and clattered to the floor.

Knile twisted his body and kicked out, trying to stay out of the Enforcer’s grasp.  The man gripped a handful of Knile’s shirt and swung his fist, delivering a glancing blow to the side of Knile’s face.  The impact of it was like being hit by a sledgehammer.  Knile reeled and somehow pulled free of his grasp.

He turned to see the Enforcer bearing down on him, a ball of angry muscle.  Knile danced out of reach in the nick of time.  The Enforcer tried
unsuccessfully to snare him twice more before coming to a standstill, re-evaluating his plan as he stood panting and pushing back the hair from his brow.

Knile motioned with his hands.  “C’mon.  Come and get me.”

The Enforcer sneered again and reached for the radio at his belt instead to call for backup.  Knile
saw his chance to claim the .40-
cal and got moving, scampering across the floor to where it lay, and the Enforcer responded in kind, lumbering forward to intercept him.  The two collided and the gun was kicked away again by an errant boot.  The Enforcer swung a fist at him and Knile evaded it easily.  With the man overbalanced, Knile swung around behind the Enforcer and slipped his arm around his neck.  With the other hand he drew a shiv adroitly from his belt and pressed it firmly against the Enforcer’s exposed neck.

The Enforcer grunted in surprise, then went still and rigid, his hands held in the air to show his compliance.

“That’s right, don’t fucking move a muscle,” Knile warned coolly.  “You know why?  Because this here is one of my favourite things in this world.  It’s a shiv I made myself.  Just a piece of shaped bone, mind you, but it cuts.  Cuts real nice, right through whatever I need – wires and ropes, skin.  Muscle.”  He drew the edge of the shiv closer to the man’s neck, letting him feel the sharpness of it.  “Doesn’t set off metal detectors, either.”

“Yeah, okay,” the Enforcer gasped.  “You got me.”

“So here’s what we’re going to do.  You and me–”

Knile stopped at the booming sound of a door closing somewhere deeper inside the level.  It reverberated through the dimly lit corridors ominously.

“Company,” the Enforcer said, a note of satisfaction in his voice.

Knile glanced back at the elevator, but the doors had shut and it was currently descending to the lower levels again.  There was no time to wait for another.  He also noted that the woman had disappeared during the melee, and for a moment he wondered if it had been her who had closed the door deeper inside the level as she made her escape.

Then he heard footsteps.  Heavy boots.  They were coming this way.

Knile slipped his free hand down and twisted the Enforcer’s arm painfully behind his back, manoeuvring him across the corridor and into the toilet block across the other side.  He pulled the constable past the urinals and the three stalls along the wall, into the narrow space behind the last partition.  As the footsteps grew louder Knile pressed the shiv even tighter.

“You make even one sound and I’ll bury this thing in your neck so far it’ll disappear,” he hissed.

A moment later the toilet door opened and a group of men entered.  From the sound of the voices, Knile figured there was at least two of them, possibly three.  They stopped a short distance away, unseen behind the stalls.

Knile’s grip tightened and the Enforcer tensed under him.

“You need to get yourself on bumpkin patrol,” one of the men said.  There was the sound of a zipper and then he began to empty his bladder noisily into the urinal.

“Yeah?” a second man said.  “What the hell is that?”

“You just stand there and watch as the Grovers unload their goodies downstairs.  Make sure no one flogs anything.  If you’re smart about it, you can bag yourself some sweet nosh.”

“Really?”

“Oh, hell yeah.  I scored a few oranges a week or two back.  Tastes better than anything they grow up in the greenhouses, man.  I can guarantee you that.”

“I haven’t eaten an orange in years.”

“Tell me about it.  And you know what would be even better?  If you could actually get a job as one of the gardeners.  Fuckers must eat like kings.”

“Nah, forget about it.  I bet you have to be real smart to get a job like that.”

One of the men zipped up and waited for the other to finish.

“You kidding me?  Damn green thumbs are dumber than a sack of watermelons.”

“Hah, really?”

“Shit, yeah.  You just have to know someone who can get you in.”

“Count me out,
then, man.  I’ve got no one.”  The splashing slowed to a dribble and then stopped, and the men began to walk away.

“Say, what’s a watermelon?”

The men raised their voices over the sound of the faucets as they washed their hands.

“You for real?”

The Enforcer under Knile’s grip struggled for an instant before Knile dug the blade in deeper at his throat, signalling his intentions loud and clear.  The Enforcer went still, breathing heavily.  Sweat from his neck was making Knile’s grip on the blade slippery.

“Yeah, I’m for real.  Is it some kind of container for carrying water?”

“It’s a vegetable, numbnuts, like an oversized potato.  Or at least it was, until they went extinct.  You can’t find ’e
m anymore.”

“So did they grow in the ocean or something?  Where’s the water part come into it…?”

They banged through the door and left, their voices receding to nothing a few moments later, but the sound of their boots continued for another thirty seconds or so.  Then the door boomed shut in the distance again and Knile breathed a sigh of relief.

“Let me go,” the Enforcer said hoarsely.  “I… I won’t tell anyone.”

“Get moving,” Knile said, pushing away from the wall.  He marched the man toward the door, trying to figure out how he was going to neutralise him.  He didn’t want to kill him, of that much he was certain.  If he could find some rope or some cable he would be able to tie him up, and then–

They pushed through the door and were greeted by a deafening roar, the muzzle of a gun flashing and snarling like a thunderclap.  The round took the Enforcer in his armoured chest and Knile fell away with a startled cry, landing on the tiled floor in front of the urinals.  There was another blast, then another and another.  Knile covered his face protectively with his arms, curling into a fetal position as the barrage continued, the noise so loud that he was certain the mirrors above the basins would shatter.  The Enforcer fell backward and landed heavily beside him, where he lay motionless with a bullet hole in his cheek.  Blood oozed from the wound and began to pool on the tiles.

Knile looked back toward the door to see the woman standing in the threshold, the .40-
cal held at her side.  She stared at the Enforcer numbly.

“You won’t ever touch me again, you piece of shit,” she said, her voice quavering.

Knile held up his hand, palm outward.  “I’m not with him.”

She seemed to notice Knile for the first time, her eyes drifting over to him as if she were in some sort of fugue state.

“You should go,” she said distantly.  She brushed a strand of straggly brown hair away from her cheek, and Knile could see a fresh bruise there.

“They’re going to be here any second,” Knile warned, replacing the shiv into a secret sheath under his belt as he got up
.  “You can’t stay here.”

“You should go,” she said again, and then she walked calmly outside and stood in the corridor, staring down as if waiting for someone.  “They won’t touch me again, either.  None of them.”