Molehunt (10 page)

‘Done.' He showed her the account numbers plus coding for secure access to the Task Force's findings, and she locked them into her hardwired memory enhancements.

‘Falstaff?'

‘It's Shakespeare.'

‘I know who it is. Didn't he write a lot of tragedies?'

‘He wrote a bit of everything. Like a good agent, he had lots of fallbacks in case anything failed. So what's your first step?'

‘Getting a good night's sleep.'

‘Don't stay the same place two nights running.'

She gave him a look.

‘Okay, okay, but remember that mine-under-the-rug that you fell for. You can't afford any lapses now.'

‘I'm going to analyse the Task Force data, look for patterns. Then I'm going to –'

She paused. Her surveillance unit beeped. One of the eyes had picked up something that met her suspicion criteria. She didn't stop to find out what. She jumped up, grabbed her uncle's hand, and hurried him out to the rear exit. They raced through a steamy kitchen and burst into a covered alleyway. Anneke didn't stop. She went straight across the alleyway and into the back of a hairdresser's, rushing past the open-mouthed owner, droids with cutters and spray-on hairstyling gene therapies, and customers who didn't have time to protest.

Then they were in another street, smaller than the one the café was in. Anneke led them diagonally to the other side and entered a large mall. They took a slideway to the first floor. Anneke stopped and studied the surveillance unit.

Viktus was puffing. ‘Was all that necessary?' he asked.

‘Better safe than … Oh, drat!' She had seen something on the left-hand screen. Her voice went up in pitch. ‘A kill-tracker!'

Viktus went pale. ‘Kill-trackers hardly ever fail. Come on, we need to muffle your signature.' He dragged her into a nearby electronics store and switched on every device he could find – flipping switches, turning knobs, hitting buttons – till the store was deafening, drowning out Anneke's heartbeat, breathing, walking rhythm, and her residual radio signature. The shop owner tried to protest, but Viktus flashed his Rimmer's badge at him and the man backed off.

Viktus cupped his mouth over Anneke's ear. ‘We need to call in a cleaner. Only way to get rid of a kill-tracker…'

Anneke shook her head and pulled out her zip gun. She was going to trust good old-fashioned human reflex.

‘It won't find us in this,' said Viktus, but Anneke shook her head. She knew the latest kill-trackers were designed to home in on unusual ‘blind spots' if they lost their targets. That was what they had just created here in the electronics store.

Then everything happened at once.

The storefront window imploded. People screamed. Anneke caught a glimpse of burnished gunmetal grey, as it blurred towards them – seemingly sucking the very oxygen from the room. She took a shot and missed – missed
because it was not coming at her
!

Anneke screamed, ‘No!' as the kill-tracker tore into Viktus's abdomen, exploding out in a welter of blood and intestines. As it veered back for another attack her next shot blew it apart.

Anneke was kneeling beside her stricken uncle. The shop owner killed the noise and in the sudden silence all she could hear were Viktus's choked gasps.

‘Uncle Viktus!'

Viktus's eyes swivelled, focused on Anneke. He managed a half smile, reaching up. Wincing with pain, he placed the palm of his hand against her cheek. ‘My daughter … how vain of me … if I could outthink your pinheads, then so could the mole.' Then the smile faded. He murmured something and died.

Anneke stared in disbelief. It had all happened so fast. Why did she feel nothing? Where were her tears? She felt numb, as if the store's owners had switched something off in her as well. For a moment she wondered if she was dead, too.

She looked around. People had gathered, gawking, murmuring. She took off her short cloak and laid it over her uncle's face. She knew she had to get out of there. There could be another kill-tracker, and certainly there would be hunkies and Rimmers on the way already.

And maybe one Rimmer in particular.

She leant back against the counter for a second, took a deep breath. Time to grieve later, she decided.

Pushing through the crowd, she left the shop, wondering all the while what her uncle had meant by his dying word, ‘Cygnus'.

T
HE news was all over RIM headquarters. Old Man Viktus was dead. Murdered. Rumour had it that a gang of highly paid exporters had cornered him in a grocery store. Another said that a band of ex-mercs had detonated a bomb under his car, and then shot it out with Viktus, who had been tough enough to survive the blast.

Maximus was in the mess hall eating crème brûlée, his favourite dessert. He noticed a pale-faced cadet charging across the mess hall and skidding to a stop at the table where a high-ranking officer sat. The cadet whispered in the man's ear. The officer exclaimed, ‘What?' and leapt to his feet, knocking his chair over backwards. Both raced from the room. A groundswell of murmurings filled the hall as they left.

Maximus was too smart to even smile into his dessert bowl. ‘It begins,' he said softly to himself.

‘What begins?'

Maximus stiffened, just slightly, then turned the action into a casual movement, swivelling languidly in his chair to eye the questioner. It was a cadet he knew vaguely from the Task Force, a research assistant. Unfortunately, the cadet was from Fessian stock, his large ears the only indicator that he had abnormally sensitive hearing.

‘Bentick, isn't it?' said Maximus lazily.

‘Bentick. That's right. What did you mean, it begins?'

Maximus raised an eyebrow. ‘My favourite show is starting on the viewer but I just can't tear myself away from my dessert. Terrible sweet tooth.'

Bentick nodded. ‘I prefer good old apple pie. Hey, did you see Manfred bolt out of here? I mean, I've never seen him move so fast. Something's up.'

Maximus shrugged. ‘I guess we'll find out.'

‘Well, see you around.'

‘See you.'

Bentick crossed to another table, joining some cadets he knew there. Maximus watched him without appearing to. Bloody bad luck, having a Fessian nearby. Somebody should lop the bastard's lobes off. Had his cover line worked? Was Bentick fooled? It was a pretty lame line. He looked up casually, caught the other youth staring at him. He smiled, finished off his crème brûlée, and pushed his chair back.

As he did so another cadet raced in, homed in on two officers who were chatting, and blurted out his message. He was too far away for Maximus to overhear, but the officers reacted with shock and rushed out.

From the corner of his eye, Maximus noted how Bentick watched the officers leave then glance over at him. He stood, glanced about is if puzzled by the tide of whispering, and then headed off for his new apartment.

Maximus's promotion had come through. He was now a Grade 4 Cadet Agent. A rising star, some said. Of course, Viktus had been his mentor and under normal circumstances his death would have meant swift descent, but Maximus had made himself indispensable on the Task Force. On top of that, any death of a senior meant promotions.

By the time he reached his apartment he had been stopped five times and told that Viktus had been assassinated. He was also given five different versions of the man's death, none of them accurate.

Maximus stepped inside his apartment and locked the door. He removed a sweeper from his pocket and scanned the place, making sure that the only surveillance devices were his own.

Satisfied at last, he changed into civvies and left by an emergency exit. No telltale blip would show up on some geek's console. Geeks always thought of physical tricks last.

Once outside the station he hurried to the Draco Quarter, taking a different path to his previous trip. Being unpredictable was a matter of pride for him.

His destination was a crudely furnished room behind a tailor's shop. Without window or fireplace, it had two doors. One led in from the back of the tailor's automated workshop and another gave access to a reekin. alley, where a broken sewer pipe had made it a local landmark for years. Nobody went there unless they really had to.

Maximus pondered the stench. The bowels of a thousand people regularly emptied themselves into this narrow trench. All that was rotten and nasty ended up outside the door to his left. Humanity at its most basic.

A solitary tallow candle, a thing so primitive it was exotic and unexpected, lighted the room. Maximus realised he was pacing and stopped himself. If only there were a chair … but the room had only an old chest and a table with the candle. He pulled the hood tighter about his head.

The alley door opened and a hooded figure slipped in, a gust of wind nearly extinguishing the candle. When the door shut, the candle flame flared up, bouncing exaggerated shadows across the floor and walls.

‘You're the Envoy?' asked Maximus.

The other nodded. Maximus held out a digitalised tablet. The envoy placed his palm on it. It scanned his palm and beeped that the ID was confirmed.

‘It is unwise to meet like this,' said the Envoy.

His voice was strange and unsettling, a kind of slimy hiss that grated on the nerves. Maximus realised that he was addressing an alien, someone not of remotely human stock.

Aliens rarely entered human society or did business with humans except through mutated and neurally suppressed intermediaries, such as the Etarks, a race of clerks and bureaucrats. They were one of the few alien races that seemed genuinely indifferent to humans, and even traced their heritage back to Old Earth. Most others were paranoid, hence the general lack of ETs wandering around.

‘Not wise, no, but necessary,' Maximus said firmly. ‘Too many ways for communications to be tapped. Your last arms shipment was late.'

The Envoy shrugged, or seemed to. Did a shrug mean the same thing to an alien?

‘Your last “payment” was dubious.'

‘The information I supplied was solid.'

‘Two of the codes were changed.'

‘I told you they would change. If you don't act on my information when I give it to you …' Now Maximus shrugged, exaggeratedly, so that even an alien would get it. ‘Intelligence is always time-sensitive, Envoy.'

‘My master grows impatient.'

‘He also grows with power and knowledge. Soon his wealth will grow.'

‘He does not seek wealth as you know it.'

‘He seeks the only kind of wealth there is in the galaxy today. Power. Military power. I can give him that, but wealth is always involved.'

‘Always a price.'

‘Am I a charity? If your master groans at the cost, I could align myself with another.'

The Envoy hissed. ‘There is no other. There is now only one.'

‘Ah, so I was right. A
Majoris Corporata
. Dear, oh dear, the Sentinels would love to know about this.'

A cold silence emanated from the Envoy's cowl. ‘You threaten us?'

‘Never.'

‘Then give us the defence files for the entire sector.'

‘Have patience, Envoy. All in good time.'

‘We want the dreadnoughts. We
must
have them.'

Maximus eyed the shadowed cowl. ‘And what would you do with a fleet of Old Empire battleships, Envoy?'

‘What does RIM want with them?'

‘RIM elevates hypocrisy to a new art. On the one hand, it stands for the scrapping of such relics of the Empire Wars and the protection of subject races. But on the other, those relics provide its power, the iron fist in the diplomatic glove.'

‘Then we must empty that glove whilst the other hand is busy.'

'
If
the myths are true. No one has seen a dreadnought in nearly a thousand years.'

The Envoy ignored this and said in a soft hiss, ‘And you? What is it you seek?'

‘Me? A trifle.'

Maximus could feel the Envoy's eyes boring into him but he fought his emotions down. He couldn't afford to even blush with anger. The Envoy could probably see in the infrared.

‘Such trifles destroy galaxies,' said the alien.

‘Fragile things, galaxies.'