Star Risk - 04 The Dog From Hell (5 page)

"And who paid you?"

"Henri did. In cash." By this time, Sims was in tears.

"Did he tell you who he worked for?"

"No. Honestly, he never said a word. Just� friends."

"So she tipped them, which got us our tail and the first attempt on the way down to London," Riss said, her face as hard as Goodnight's.

Another "friend" of Sims's had contacted her aboard the Victory and told her what she should do next.

"All it was was to turn on my com when we reached our next port, no matter where or what it was. I did."

"That let them trail us to the school here on Cygnes," Riss interrupted.

"And then?" Goodnight asked.

"I guess I must have turned it off, or something," Sims said.

"Which is why they didn't zip right inside and grab the girls," Riss added. "They expected to have a roadmap, which was turned off. I don't think old Handsome Hank is very pleased with you right now, Alice."

Goodnight considered.

"If we had six months, and a nice clean psych lab� or three days and a soundproof room and a good collection of knives," Goodnight said, "we could maybe find out if she's lying or not�"

"I'm not! I swear to you!"

"I happen to believe she is speaking the truth," von Baldur said. "Grok, if you'd take her in the next room, and Chas, if you would keep her from getting into any mischief�"

The two obeyed. Grok came back.

"It is not unlikely," von Baldur said, "that whoever the boyfriend is was working a false flag, or that he in fact told her nothing.

"Those apparati are a bit unusual, however. Grok, can you tell anything about them?"

Grok took an amazing number of tools from a belt pouch and set to work on the com. After a few minutes, he grunted, set it aside, and began autopsying the radio.

"Interesting," he said. "Neither device has any maker's marks on it, nor can I find anything on the components themselves. Interesting to find something� somethings� that sterile."

"Maybe," King said coldly, "but not that unusual. Grok, you and I know a company that works like that."

Grok whuffed air in surprise.

"We do. We do. And I should have Goodnight torture me a little for general stupidity."

"Cerberus Systems," Jasmine said, unaware that she was hissing like a cobra.

Cerberus was one of the largest security firms in the known galaxy, known and feared for their complete amorality and ruthlessness. Cerberus was King's ex-employer who'd tried to get out of paying her by accusing her of being a robot. Grok, too, had worked for Cerberus, leaving their employ both out of boredom and because he disapproved of their unwillingness to back their personnel if anything even vaguely catastrophic happened.

The alien had no particular feelings toward Cerberus now, but King hated them with a bleak passion.

"So what does Cerberus want with these girls?" Riss said. "Or maybe, more likely, with Porcellis, Miss Rosewater-Jones, and these girls."

"We do not know, and I would like to very much," von Baldur said.

"The second question becomes," Riss continued, "whether Cerberus wants the girls as a threat to someone, conceivably Rosewater-Jones, or for blackmail purposes; and whether, worst case, they're willing to physically harm them."

"I find that hard to accept," von Baldur said. "They certainly kill adults� look at the numbers of times they've tried to kill me � but children?"

"I think they're capable of anything," King said. "But I freely admit to prejudice."

"I suspect," Grok said, "that we have to operate on the assumption that they'll do anything�and guard ourselves accordingly."

"Confusion and more confusion," Goodnight muttered.

"And it is very damned unlikely we'll get anything from Sims." Jasmine said. "It sounds like they ran a nice, clean operation."

"The question now becomes," M'chel said, "how quickly you can get your spitkit ready to lift, Freddie."

Von Baldur nodded, went to a com, began dialing.

"And," she added, "what we're going to do with Sims."

The Monkey Business was fueled and supplied within the day, and the girls were rushed aboard.

Von Baldur had the lifters take circuitous courses from the hotel to the yacht.

As they loaded aboard, Erin asked where Miss Sims was.

"She got a com from Earth," Goodnight answered. "A family emergency, and she was very sorry she didn't have a chance to say good-bye to you."

"Oh," Erin said, looking puzzled. "I thought she once told me she didn't have any family."

Goodnight made no answer.

M'chel waited until the girls were on the ship, then leaned close to Goodnight.

"So what happened to the idiot? Did you leave her facedown in some back alley?"

"I wouldn't dream of such a thing. In fact, I consulted a map, and found a primitive area not an hour's flight from where we were. I left her in the middle of that, making sure she wasn't tied too tightly and would be able to work herself free and walk back to civilization in a day or so."

Riss looked at him skeptically.

"You're generally not that soft-hearted� or happy with loose ends, Chas. Are you telling me the truth?"

"M'chel, I'm hurt! Would I ever lie to you?" Goodnight said.

He smiled innocently. Riss snorted.

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SEVEN � ^ � This is Cygnes Control� clear for lift, over."

Riss, at the controls of the yacht, glanced back.

"First thing, we get offworld, is to check for bugs."

"No kid," Goodnight said. "But first jump us nice and random, twice."

"A deal," she said, and the Monkey Business lifted from its staging position on antigrav, cleared atmosphere, and went into hyperspace.

Riss touched sensors.

"Jumping again," she said into the intercom, heard a groan from the passenger section's link, then a voice:

"Kel's puking."

"Shit," King murmured. She waited until the Business emerged from the strange whorls of hyperspace into normality, then unstrapped and went back to play medic.

The others helped Grok as he hastily modified receivers on three space suits. He found a standard field scanner in the ship's tiny electronics space, and fitted himself into his custom-ordered suit.

Leaving Riss at the controls, they went out, and floated around the Business, looking for any transmissions.

M'chel kept the ship's scanners on Rove.

Grok's suit radio crackled:

"I find nothing. And this suit I paid too many credits for was not properly fumigated. Reboarding."

The others followed him, also reporting that they found no sign that any tracer had been installed.

"Of course, you realize this proves nothing," Goodnight said. "It's too easy to put in a telltale that doesn't work on any of the usual freqs�or one that, say, would kick in when we jumped or during the time we're in hyperspace."

"Thanks, O cheery one," Riss said, touching controls.

"Jumping," she announced.

They blipped out into normal space�and less than a dozen seconds later, they had company.

"Oh, joy," Riss said.

"I have it ID'd as a standard customs ship," Grok said. "More or less. And it will be armed, I would anticipate."

"Hang on, people," Riss said, as a screen flared. "I have a launch!"

The missile hurtled at them, and Riss's fingers danced across the control board.

The missile blew about a hundred meters distant, and several screens flared, then went dark.

"Jumping!"

Again, the Business went into hyperspace, and, again, within a minute, came back out.

"Well," Goodnight said, "this time the bastards weren't interested in just grabbing the negotiables and negotiating."

The other ship appeared a moment later, and another missile spat out of its tubes.

This one almost hit, and its detonation flash took other sensors down, then they flashed back up on secondary or emergency power.

"Jumping! That was too goddamned close!" Riss announced.

She started to key in a random setting.

"No!" Goodnight said. "Go back where we were before."

"Huh?" Riss asked. But she obeyed.

"Maybe the bastard'll think that he hit us, and put the drive on frammis, so we're stuck," Goodnight explained.

"Gotcha." Again, the Business went into hyperspace.

This time there were several wails from the girls' section, and they heard King swearing.

"I wish," Grok said calmly, "that we had invested in a good, serious, well-armed destroyer."

"Or a battleship," von Baldur tried, as Riss sent the Monkey Business to its previous location.

"Good, good, very good," Chas approved. "Now let's hope they think we're stuck in a groove, and they'll jump back to where we were before, and be waiting to dry-gulch us good.

"M'chel, let's go somewhere new."

Riss, concentrating on her piloting, nodded, and again the Business jumped.

This time, they were not far off an unknown world ringed in deep purple and green.

With no follower.

"Good," Riss said. "It worked. Now let's go where we're going before they catch up to us."

Two jumps later, they were off Porcellis, and gratefully turned themselves over to Landing Central.

Riss insisted that she had to stay at the controls, but it was very all right for the rest of them to go back and help Jasmine clean up the passengers' quarters.

"I'd love to help you," she said piously. "But duty calls."

Lady Ardent Rosewater-Jones was tiny, and wore a floral hat, a print dress to match, and white gloves.

Her mansion�really a series of barely connected houses�stretched for kilometers, and seemed to be decorated in every style of kitsch the galaxy had known.

She cooed over the girls, said that they would have so much fun together and learn so many new things, and it would be just a delight having them around.

Then she shooed them off to a late-afternoon meal composed mainly of desserts, and turned to the Star Risk operatives.

"I understand you had a bit of trouble getting here."

"A bit, yes ma'am," said von Baldur, who was uncomfortably aware of how much Lady Rosewater-Jones reminded him of his own great-aunt. "But nothing we couldn't handle."

"Do you have any idea who the culprits might be?"

"We do," Grok said.

Lady Rosewater-Jones looked a bit surprised, as if astonished that something that primitive-looking could talk.

"An organization called Cerberus Systems," he went on.

"Oh, them," and she laughed in a little, tinkly manner. "They are rascals, aren't they?"

"That's one way to describe them," Riss said. "There are others."

"They never seem to give up," Rosewater-Jones said. "And don't really understand the meaning of the word 'no.' "

"You're, uh, familiar with them?" Goodnight asked, trying to keep incredulity out of his voice.

"Oh, yes. Very," the old woman said. "At one time I made the error of retaining them to manage the security here. There are, would you believe, men and women who seem to think that anything intended to give pleasure to the people should be vulnerable to various schemes, and it takes constant watch to dissuade them.

"At any rate, they made me an offer to keep Porcellis secure, which I accepted on a trial basis. I was most disappointed in their performance. They seemed to think I was a bit of a simpleton, and used false bookkeeping and other forms of what I can refer to only as chicanery to wildly inflate their bill.

"I retained other, more reliable, investigators, and they were of the opinion that not only was Cerberus Systems crooked, but they had actually been behind some of the very schemes that had caused me to hire them.

"They thought me, in short, a fool.

"I may be, but I purely despise being thought such. I might add that the culprits might also have been remote members of my family, who've been most distressed at my not cutting them in on my operation."

She laughed again and waved her hand, dismissing Cerberus.

"But all that is a thing of the past, and you have fulfilled your commitment admirably. I've examined your bill, and approve of it. Your charges are steep, but you deliver, and I've added a significant bonus to your fee. Thank you very much for helping an old woman in her hour of need.

"Now that the girls are safely here, I look forward to what I've been thinking of as my second girlhood, teaching these young women things I've learned the hard way over the years, so they'll have, I hope, none of the grief I've experienced in growing up. I do hope that I'll be able to guide them into professions they'll be happy and successful in."

Jasmine thought Rosewater-Jones deserved a warning.

"Ma'am, one thing you should be aware of, is that the girls are a little, well, high-spirited."

"Prone to high jinks," Goodnight added.

"Aren't we all?" Rosewater-Jones beamed. "I think that I, too, was a high-spirited lass in my day. And I'm sure that none of the girls will step over the bounds of good, safe fun. Or I shall be unhappy with them.

"Most unhappy."

Her smile swept the five Star Risk operatives.

Riss noticed, with a chill, that the smile didn't go above her lips, and her eyes were cold as ice.

She decided there was a reason that a wide-open world like Porcellis was controlled by one person, and that person was someone who could dismiss the thugs of Cerberus as rascals.

And then she thought they'd tried to alert the wrong person.

They should have warned the girls.

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EIGHT � ^ � Eight men, all prosperous-looking, sat around a long table. Four, including the chairman, were there in person, and the others were holo images, projected from various parts of the galaxy.

All of them were experienced in long-range communications, so the various delays from their distant fellows was allowed for reflexively.

They were the division heads of the enormous Cerberus Systems, plus the chairman and chairman emeritus.

Cerberus was headquartered on Alegria IV, one of Alegria 87's multiple worlds. Earth might have been the Alliance's ceremonial home, but Alegria was one of the half dozen planets where the working bureaucracy was located.