Merkiaari Wars: 02 - What Price Honour (13 page)

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Fairhead said. “Are you carrying?”

“Carrying?”

“I won’t ask you again.”

Kate saw the decision forming in his eyes. She glanced down to her left and turned that hip toward him. “Left pocket,” she said finally dropping Cherry from her voice. “Safety is off.”

The warning made him hesitate for a fraction of a second before his hand went into her pants. When he felt the weapon, he pause to look into her eyes. She smiled sweetly at him when he withdrew the pulser and held it up.

“A toy for a child. It doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

Fool. Kate felt the sneer forming on her lips, but managed to compose herself before Fairhead noticed. Millard’s pulser was a fine weapon. Easily good enough to kill these idiots, and it was easy to conceal. The huge pistols the mercs carried might look impressive and have a longer range, but she believed in using the right tool for the right job. If she wanted longer range, she would use a rifle not a pistol.

“Follow me,” Fairhead said and turned to leave.

Did she have a choice? One look at the merc gesturing at her with his pistol made it plain she didn’t.

Fairhead led Kate out of the club, but instead of escorting her outside and into a vehicle as she had assumed he would, he turned deeper into the hotel. Their destination was the manager’s office. Kate entered first, closely followed by Fairhead. Sheldrake and the pistol wielding merc remained outside. The office was empty but for one man sitting behind a desk. He had thinning hair and a skeletally thin face. Kate guessed his age to be in excess of a century. His fever-bright eyes studied her intensely as she walked, making her very uncomfortable. Those eyes burned with something she was tempted to call madness, but he did nothing else to lend credence to her judgment. He didn’t speak, and after a moment he returned his attention to the inhaler he was loading. Kate stood before the desk quietly watching as he dosed himself. The fancy gold inhaler he used proclaimed him as a wealthy man, but to her he was still just another doper.

The doper looked up and smiled. “Please take a seat, Miss Richmond.”

“Who?” Kate said with a suddenly dry mouth. “My name is Cherry Jackson. I’ve never heard of—”

“Please credit me with some intelligence. You are Katherine Richmond, late of Bethany’s World—a spy and an assassin for hire. I had the Major bring you to me so that I might ask you some questions. My name is Maximilian Skinner… have you heard of me?”

Kate shook her head.

“A pity.”

“Why?”

Skinner shrugged. “If you had known of me, you wouldn’t have tried lying. My time here is limited. Please do me the courtesy of answering my questions truthfully.”

Kate glanced at Fairhead. He was standing to one side covering her with her own pulser. “What do you want to know?”

Skinner nodded in satisfaction. “You were hired to do a job. Is it complete?”

Hired to do a job? No one hired her, she wasn’t for rent. “What do you know of why I’m here?” she said trying to hedge until she had more information.

Skinner sighed. “I thought we had an understanding you and I. It seems I was mistaken.”

“I understood you well enough, but my…
clients
demand absolute secrecy.”

“
I
am your client,” Skinner roared completely out of the blue. “I represent President Sanderson you fool. I would have thought that was obvious by now.” He gestured at the Major’s presence as proof.

Whatever Skinner had doped himself with, it had obviously made him unpredictable. Kate was betting on some kind of mood enhancer, which was bad. The drug would amplify whatever emotions he was feeling, and he was obviously feeling annoyed with her evasions. How much had he taken? She had only see him trigger the inhaler once, so maybe he wouldn’t get completely out of control. She could hope.

Kate figuratively crossed her fingers. “But I can’t know that for sure. You are not my contact… I don’t know you.”

Skinner brightened. The change had taken something like a microsecond and Kate shivered at this fresh evidence of his mental state.

“That’s very true. I commend you on your discretion, but I must insist you tell me what I want to know.”

“Perhaps…” she licked her lips. “Perhaps if you named the target and my contact?”

“Oh very well,” Skinner said testily. “If that will get this over with the quicker. Your contact’s name is Gerald Whitby, and the target is a man styling himself as General Millard. Satisfied?”

Kate nodded. Gerald Whitby, the head of Whitby Corp, and current holder of the Whitby seat on Bethany’s ruling council. She was more than satisfied; she was elated. Her handler would be much more amenable when she told him she knew who was paying him. Maybe she could even get him to give her a discount on the data she needed.

“Very satisfied. Millard is dead, Mister Skinner. I executed him late last night while he slept. Do you want the details?”

Skinner sat back and nodded in satisfaction. “In your opinion, could those he led mount an effective attack on President Sanderson?”

Kate snorted. “Not a chance. They’re a bunch of amateurs. They couldn’t mount a raid on my piggybank let alone something the size of the Assembly Building.”

Skinner beamed. “Excellent. What else have you to report?”

Kate scrambled for an answer, and her thoughts flashed to the APCs outside Millard’s house. “I saw three brand new APCs but not much else… lost any?”

Skinner glanced at Fairhead.

He nodded and lowered the pulser. “They were stolen not long ago from the port.”

“From under his very nose,” Skinner said with a glare at Fairhead. “They cost us a lot of money, and Millard took them just like that. He had to have inside help of course. I did send my people to round up the obvious suspects, but none of them talked.”

“You knew Millard had them?” Kate said in surprise.

“I knew. I wanted to be sure you did.”

Kate nodded, a test then. “You wanted to be sure I’d been to his base.”

Skinner nodded and stood. “Well, I think that’s about everything.”

Kate got ready to lunge for her pulser.

“Not quite,” Fairhead said. “If the job is done, why is she still here?”

Skinner raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

Kate shrugged. “My ship doesn’t leave until tomorrow. I thought I would take the opportunity to have a little fun.”

“Hmmm. Major?”

Fairhead weighed the pulser in his hand and frowned, but after a moment he shrugged. “I see no problem with that. I’ll make sure she doesn’t leave the hotel, and I’ll have a couple of my men escort her to the port when the time comes.”

“Excellent again,” Skinner said and pulled on the coat he retrieved from the back of his chair. “I have a meeting with the President in an hour, so I’ll say my goodbyes.”

Kate watched him leave and turned back to Fairhead. “So that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

She eyed the pulser in his hand. “Not going to kill me are you?”

“I’m a soldier not an assassin,” Fairhead said looking at her in disgust. “Unlike some, I do not murder unarmed men and women.”

“No?” She bet he would like to make an exception in her case. She could see it in his face. “You don’t like me much do you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

She ignored his sarcasm. “You don’t like Skinner either.”

“What’s your point?”

“No point. Just wondering why you didn’t take out Millard yourself if you knew where he was. You must have known. How else did you know to use the APCs as a test?”

“Of course I knew,” Fairhead said angrily. “What do you think my men and I do all day—sit around with our thumbs up our arses?”

Kate didn’t get the chance to answer that.

“I didn’t want Millard killed; he was serving a useful purpose out there in the jungle. Shit girl, I could have taken out his entire base with a single barrage any time I wanted. Know why I didn’t?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Because I wasn’t ready, that’s why. Millard was my hothead magnet. Get it?”

Kate nodded. “You were using him to draw out the troublemakers.”

“And now Millard’s dead and his followers have scattered into hiding. I told that idiot Sanderson to let Millard rally the malcontents behind him—I knew where to find him, but no, he had to go behind my back and get his partner involved. Bloody Whitby. He’s so used to knocking off rivals that his first thought was assassination. So he sent you to take care of business.”

Kate smiled grimly. “You’ll just have to start again. Wait for another leader to arise.”

Fairhead glared. “Exactly. That will take months, the riots will get worse, and even more innocent people will die.”

“I shouldn’t think that would worry you. You’ll still get paid. In fact, killing Millard has probably increased the term of your contract.”

Fairhead’s face reddened and he raised the pulser. “You think because I run a mercenary company I would condone the murder of innocents? You, an assassin, a common murderer, have the utter gall to judge me? Let me tell you something: I spent fifteen years of my life in the army moving from post to post—wherever the Alliance sent me. I’ve seen people die in every way imaginable, and for every stupid reason under the suns. Dying in a riot, because a stupid man raised tariffs so high that his people would rather sit idle and starve than bother harvesting, has got to be one of the stupidest.”

“So leave.”

Fairhead sighed and his shoulders slumped. “My contract with Sanderson is airtight. I wish it weren’t. If I break the code, the Guild will pillory my company. My men and I would lose everything.”

He was right. The Mercenary Guild was well known for lacking a sense of humour. The guild, and the merc companies it served, survived only as long as they obeyed the rules. The guild enforced those rules rigidly. The Alliance tolerated their existence, even welcomed it in some instances, but it wouldn’t take much for the Council to review the situation and pull the plug. Broken contracts, war crimes… anything might be enough to set that review process in motion.

Kate nodded thoughtfully. “You’re screwed. I’d fire your lawyers if I was you.”

Fairhead hung his head for a moment then he shook it and began to laugh. Kate watched his shoulders heaving with the force of his hilarity, and shook her head a little. He had obviously been here way too long. Finally he calmed enough to explain.

“I fired them years ago.” He looked at the pulser in his hand then tossed it to Kate. “You wanted some fun you said. Better get to it.”

Relief flooded through Kate—enough to make her go weak at the knees. Until that moment, she hadn’t dared to believe that he wouldn’t kill her. Being armed again left her almost gasping. She quickly flicked on the safety, and dropped the weapon back into her pocket before opening the door to leave. Fairhead had one thing more to say. She paused on the threshold to listen.

“Have your fun, but don’t try to leave the hotel. My men will have orders to kill you should you try. I’ll have Captain Sheldrake drive you to the port in time to catch your flight up to the station. Understood?”

Kate nodded and left.

Kate’s meeting with Skinner focused her attention like nothing else could have. It had the effect of making her even more determined to punish the Whitbys and one in particular. Gerald Whitby, the head of his family and the one ultimately responsible for her father’s suicide. Fairhead’s threats didn’t concern her. She was confident she could find her way out of the hotel when the time came, and she had a way off planet already arranged, so that was no problem. Tyco had been well paid to wait for her. His little insystem runner would get her to the ship. No, she had no concerns about Fairhead. Her problem was that she was no closer to a location for the President’s retreat than she had been. There was no personal information about Sanderson on Tigris’ Infonet. None at all, which was a neat trick considering how nosy people were, and how easy Infonet seemed to fill up with such trivia. No doubt he had his security people sanitise it and keep it that way. All she knew was the most basic of information about him. She knew what he looked like, that he had remarried after the death of his first wife, and that he had one grown daughter from that time. She knew more about the members of his cabinet than she did about him.

So, it was back to the club to sniff out a lead.

“Everything all right?” The barkeep yelled over the music. She filled Kate’s glass with water and dropped some ice into it. “Didn’t expect to see you back so soon. We get soldiers in here a lot, but they don’t usually bring their guns with them.”

Kate made a face. “Scared me a bit, but everything’s fine now.”

“Glad to hear it. What did they want?”

“Wanted to check my papers. They said the station had a warrant out for me, but it turned out to be someone else. I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes. Soldier Boy was really pissed off when he realised I wasn’t the right girl. If I was her, I’d flit quick.”

The barkeep nodded in agreement.

Kate noticed a sudden parting in the crowd. Two women entered the club with their arms around each other. They kissed briefly and parted ways. One went off toward the restrooms while the other aimed for the bar. Kate watched as the dancers moved out of the woman’s path. It was fascinating to watch. They didn’t even stop dancing or fondling each other. They simply drifted out of her way and back again after she passed. Who was this girl to receive that reaction? She had obviously been drinking, though she might not be drunk. She was weaving on her feet a little and was obviously different in some way. Men were tracking her with their eyes, but far from being lecherous, they were full of loathing.