Starhammer (15 page)

"Officer Dahn has Superior Buro on the brain," said one of the intense young men. They had relaxed their hold slightly.

"Shut up, M'Nee, you little bastard," the woman spat back.

"Silence, both of you. In the authority vested in me—" the tall one began.

"Will you space that stuff?" M'Nee snapped. "If I hear about the damned taxpayers one more time I'll scream. Let's kill this creep and get out of here—we're in danger, we must get on!"

The tall one reacted with a vigorous shake of the head. "There'll be no killing. I gave my oath to the board and that's final, do you understand?"

M'Nee rolled his eyes in disgust but refrained from a further retort. The tall man swung back to Jon.

"You probably are a spy for the laowon, but we don't have time to make a proper investigation. You will live and I will even give you a message for your master: Tell them that they missed the Bey; he has already flown to the stars. Tell them they will never find us now, that we are too far ahead."

"We must kill him, Captain," the woman said desperately.

"No. We will incapacitate him and leave him here. But we will not kill him. He has not harmed us and I promised no bloodshed."

"What if he has already called in his masters?"

"We will be gone. They have missed us."

"If I might be allowed to say something," Jon began.

"Do not speak, servant of the laowon. We allow you to live because we are merciful men. We know what you are."

The door opened, another blond woman came in. "Everything is ready, Captain."

The others started to leave. The captain nodded to the young minders with the knives. They shifted position a little more.

"Break his ankles, tie him up, and leave him here. Lock the door."

He turned to go and Iehard felt his guards move again as they prepared to do him violence. Jon acted as taught in the squad combat school.

Summoning energy into his arms and shoulders, he abruptly slammed both elbows out, pushing both men away. Their knives missed him and he somersaulted forward. But his landing was poor and he fell sideways. The men were on him, a boot caught him in the side, but then he had the Taw Taw in his hands.

The sound was deafening in the small room. The first slug took the kicker in his leg. Blood sprayed from the ruined limb. The second man tried to grab the gun but he was too slow and too far away. The Taw Taw boomed again and the unfortunate M'Nee's forearm shattered as he was spun away by the impact.

Iehard sprang out into the dark corridor after the leader. He saw running figures and called out an order to halt. The gun came up. A hiss sounded in his ear and something slammed between his shoulders very hard. He was flung forward, went down in an untidy roll, but came up with his gun in both hands, pointing back toward his assailant.

But he saw nothing to shoot at except something like a dark-green billiard ball with two red dots glowing like malevolent eyes. Then a hammer blow in the chest knocked the air out of his body.

Before he could get his breath back, a man had straddled him and was punching him in the face while screaming, "You filthy bastard!" over and over. Jon managed to get an arm up to ward off the blows, and then struck back, wielding the Taw Taw like a club. On the second try he made contact and the man was gone, but before Jon could climb back to his feet, something hard struck the back of his head. The whole scene turned off with a
click
.

Padzn Birthamb was the last to arrive. The Buro men stiffened to attention at the sight of the laowon chief. The room was a shambles, the computer equipment had been torn loose and pushed against one wall. File modules were scattered over the floor.

"Everything of interest has already been entered on the files aboard
Illustrious
, my lord." The speaker was the section leader, Benks, tall, overbearing, brutal.

"There was nothing in my orders about destroying the suspect's equipment and files."

The section leader's jaw dropped. Wasn't this just another smash-and-liquidate operation? Pull another of these rebels out and deliver her to the Brutality Room. Anyone traced inside laowon military computer files was a legitimate target for liquidation.

"I thought, my lord."

"I know you did, Benks. A bad mistake. Someone in your position should know better. Did you never ask yourself, 'Well, what if we release the suspect?' Did you not imagine the kind of legal trouble she could present us? Did you not even pause to think that the woman might have colleagues who would be extremely upset, who might initiate legal problems for us in Nocanicus courts?"

Of course, Benks had never concerned himself with such thoughts.

"My apologies, Lord," the man stammered. "I will make amends."

"Indeed you will, Benks. You will begin by restoring this disgusting little human pit to exactly the condition it was in when we removed the woman. Do you understand? And you will do it quickly. The deity alone knows what trouble you may have caused us already."

"The woman, Lord?"

Padzn Birthamb turned a freezing glare on the man. "What is it, Benks?"

"Is she coming back here?"

"I don't know, Benks. At the moment I'd say that was rather up to her, if you see what I mean?"

When Jon Iehard returned to wakefulness it was with more than just a splitting headache, and also with a lot less.

He was sore just about everywhere and he was stark naked. He'd been picked clean by the scavengers—everything was gone, air tanks, clothes, boots, the lot.

He coughed, his throat and lungs were sore from breathing the stinking atmosphere of the Unders. The back of his head sported a goose egg and there were painful bruises on his chest.

He'd been hauled into a narrow side alley by the scavengers, and it was almost pitch black.

From far below, beneath the grids, there came a titanic suction sound. The sludge tanks were being refreshed. A few seconds later a stench of stunning strength rose through the Unders adding fresh excremental odors to the reek.

As he contemplated the loss of his credit card, his ID, his gun, and everything else, he realized how serious his problems had suddenly become. Getting out of the Unders might prove pretty damn difficult.

And after he did that, he'd have to explain this mess. The case was blown now. No doubt about that, and the blame was all his. He should've called in the MI right at the start.

Then he remembered! He had a clue. It was pretty slim, but it was all he had to go on. He'd have to hope that if he moved quickly enough he could catch up. It was time to move.

The air at the top of the corridor was unbreathable, it burned the lungs, so he progressed in a crouch. The stink was overpowering. The roaring in the sludge tanks echoed like the cries of some gigantic animal through hot damp air.

The walk through the corridors was a nightmare. He kept stumbling over people, who would rise and assault him furiously for the trespass. Without a light or clothes or shock rod, he was just a breather like the rest.

When he finally found his way back to the main elevator banks it was feedtime in the ventilation chamber. The naked multitudes were lined up in an endless chain to receive their seven-ounce helping of a squishy, yellow-green feed, served in an edible paper cone that contained essential minerals and bran.

The feed was pumped from long nozzles that depended from the ceiling and were controlled by a squad of black-suited guards. The shock rods sparked again and again off the backs of the greediest, keeping them in line, although every time there was a spill a dozen or so wretches would hurl themselves at the precious goop on the floor.

Jon decided to try the guards at the elevators, although he dreaded their likely reaction.

As expected, they looked up with truculence writ large on their faces. They were intent on an erovideo and did not care to be interrupted.

He tried to hold himself upright, to accentuate the difference between himself and the wretched breathers all round. His explanations fell on deaf ears.

"Get off with you, you scrawny breather, go get your feed," said one fellow, lazily waving a shock rod.

There was one young officer, however, who did respond. Not as hardbitten as the others perhaps.

"You say you have an active credit number. Do you know the number? I can check that quite easily."

"Yes, of course I can remember. It's—" But he was not allowed to finish.

"Oh, give it up, Tunx. Can't you see it's just some old gibberer from the grates. Give him a couple of strokes with the rod and send him back to the feed. You're missing the really hot bits."

Another man rose and laid about Iehard with his shock rod, which imparted hefty stings each time it came in contact with his skin.

Smarting and burning, he was driven toward the vents.

In gloomy despair he watched the elevators coming and going every half hour as they brought new arrivals and, much less frequently, took someone away.

He had to get to those elevators, he had to get off Nostramedes.

The guards watched the erotic video for a while longer, laughing uproariously from time to time. Then, with much cheerful banter, the group broke up, and Jon pressed forward again, catching up with the officer named Tunx.

The shock rod came up. Iehard stood his ground.

"You're making a mistake. If you don't believe me, just let me punch in my alarm code. I have gray code for emergency contact with my superior. I assure you, you'll be remembered."

Tunx seemed dubious behind his face mask. "You scutbellies are all the same, always trying stuff out on us. I tell you I'm tired of it."

"Look, I work for the Hyperion Grandee police. For the sake of your own career, let me get to a function box. I'm not asking that much of you, am I?"

The guard swung his shock rod menacingly. "All right, but if this is a game of some kind then I'm going to give you a few licks of the rod to remember me by."

They approached the elevator banks. A battered switchboard and multifunction box module was controlled by a bored Nostramedes Communication Company woman, who looked up from the novella she was watching with considerable annoyance.

She would have sent them away if she could but Officer Tunx was a rising star in the Guard and she didn't want to upset him. "All right, use line seven. But be quick, I haven't all day to be pandering to foolish breathers."

Jon's fingers were fairly shaking as he stabbed out his code. He got it wrong once, and the unit flashed a terminate sign, but he recovered swiftly enough to get the call reaccepted. Of course it took the communications company's computer a full minute to get around to accepting an emergency call from the Unders. Finally it beamed it to Hyperion Grandee.

Tunx was getting impatient. "Look, breather, I told you you were going to get it." The shock rod crackled with energy as he turned it up to the maximum.

The NocanCo woman was grinning. "I hope you're going to give it to him good and solid, Officer Tunx."

"Thanks, you're a big help," Jon told her. She scowled.

The guard started to order him away from the phone, when at long last the little monitor lit up and Coptor Brine's great ugly face filled the screen. "Jon. What the hell are you doing on Nostramedes? And if this call isn't from Jon Iehard, then what the hell are you doing using his code signal?"

"Coptor! It is me, and I am on Nostramedes and I'm in the shit all right, but I'll explain all that later. Just get me out of here, man. I need a credit line. I'm trapped on the Unders."

Officer Tunx pressed forward and yelled into the microphone, "Does this character really have a credit line?"

"Who is that?" snapped Coptor.

"That's one of the elevator guards here on the Unders, Coptor," Iehard said quickly. "It's all right, he just wants to be sure he hasn't made a mistake in letting me make this call."

Coptor took a moment to digest this. "Well, listen to me, Guard Whoever-you-are. Standing next to you you have the best damned operative the Hyperion Grandee Mass Murder Squad has ever had, so you better be damn careful with his behind and get him back to me in perfect shape just as soon as you damn well can, or I will personally see to it that your career will be short and unpleasant. You got that?"

A few minutes later Iehard had a credit line, a new card from Nostramedes Centrobanc, and a one-piece suit he bought with the card at the elevator side stall.

The elevator opened to his card. Inside it smelled fresh and tasted cool. He spent the whole ride just breathing, noticing how wonderful it could be.

Before he could even take a shower, the laowon had him arrested and brought before them. They began a merciless debriefing, with frequent threats of Hypnogen should he not cooperate fully. From the beginning the Lady Blasilab screamed invective.

Iehard did his best to reply calmly, to keep his voice even and polite. His success enraged Blasilab and she was soon purpling at his "impertinence."

Jon also kept back a single name, a crucial name, that for some reason he felt compelled to retain. He wondered at this behavior, felt both guilt and a weird sense of triumph.

"Imbecile! Incompetent!"

The Morgooze behaved as if in laowon "frozen rage." Any movement might become a lethal stroke aimed at an incompetent underling. "Fool, you have let the monster go free!"

They raged on at him and finally left, bodyguards all around them and storm clouds above. The Morgooze threatened most dreadful dooms.

At last Jon was allowed to limp into a shower, get clean, and visit the medical section.

He had black bruises on one side of his face and massive, circular bruises between the shoulder blades and on the left side of the chest. He was pronounced fortunate not to have fractured ribs or skull. When they'd finished he wore medipacks on his biggest bruises and bandages on the rest. Slowly he limped home in an MI exercise suit. It was early evening. He found it hard to believe that less than thirty-six hours before he had started out on his fool's errand.

The 10,000 credits had evaporated, and he had a battle ahead with MI over the Domaine Larose, the flight to Nostramedes, and sundry other expenses. Someone had written LAOMAN OUT! in large blue letters across his door. He looked across to Onliki's place. The corridor was silent, but he had the feeling that attentive ears listened for his reaction.