The Icarus Hunt (30 page)

“You say they just want the ship?” Tera spoke up.
She had picked up the flyer now and was looking at it, and in the admittedly inadequate light I thought her face had gone a little pale.

“They want the ship and crew both,” Jennifer said, still gazing at me. “What, can’t you read?”

“What for?” Tera persisted, handing the flyer off to Nicabar. “What do they want them for?”

Reluctantly, Jennifer leaned back again and looked at Tera over her shoulder. “I don’t know,” she growled, clearly annoyed at the interruption in her sales pitch. “And I don’t care, either. The point is that there’s money to be made, and we could be the ones who make it.”

“And how would you propose we split it?” I asked.

She smiled at me again. The seductress role was apparently all she knew how to play. “All I want is passage back to Earth and a couple thousand to help me get set up there,” she breathed, leaning toward me again. “That’s all—you’d get all the rest. Just for one little StarrComm call. I’d even pay you back for the call.”

“Why do we need you at all?” Nicabar put in, looking up from the flyer. “Why can’t we just call this number ourselves?”

“Because I know how to get you an extra fifty thousand,” the woman said, breathing her words into my face again. “Private money. Revenge money. See those three in the back?”

I turned my head. The three robed figures were still hunched over their table; but as we all looked that direction, as if on cue, one of them stirred, rolling his shoulders to the sides as if adjusting them in his sleep, then falling silent and still again. But the movement had been enough to drop his hood partially back, revealing his face.

It was another of the Lumpy Clan.

From my left, from Nicabar’s direction, came a faint but sharp intake of air. I turned to look at him, but by
the time I got there he had his usual stolid expression back in place.

But the stifled gasp alone was very enlightening. Clearly, somewhere along the line, Nicabar had run into these lads before.

“They passed the word that they were putting another fifty thousand into the pot,” Jennifer continued. Like Chort’s reaction earlier to the name of the hunted ship, she’d apparently also missed Nicabar’s reaction to the Lumpies. Either she was drunker than I’d thought, or else she was putting so much effort into her attempted seduction of me that she didn’t have any attention to spare for anyone else. “I hear the guy on the flyer smoked a couple of their pals.”

“Not a very friendly thing to do,” I said, peering with some difficulty into her face, not because she was unpleasant to look at but because she’d once again moved to a position bare centimeters away from me. Maybe she was counting on her perfume to seal this deal for her.

Inside my jacket, my phone vibrated. “Excuse me,” I said, half turning away from her and digging into my pocket, glad for an excuse to break away from that gaze, even temporarily.

It was, as I’d expected, Ixil. “Everything all right?” he asked.

“Just fine,” I told him as Nurptric returned to our table with our drinks. “We found out why everyone else is gone.”

“Good,” he said. “Whatever the reason, they’re coming back.”

“It seems—” I broke off. “What?”

“I’m reading fifteen ships on landing-approach vectors,” he said. “At least five of them are heading for our spaceport.”

I looked up at the Ulkomaal. “Nurptric, do the Balthee ever actually land to pick up prisoners?”

He seemed shocked. “Of course not. They wouldn’t dare—this is Ulko sovereign territory.”

“Then you’re right, they’re coming back,” I confirmed to Ixil, trying to keep the sudden tension out of my voice. A whole crowd of returning pirates, smugglers, and cutthroats; and probably every one of them with a Patth sketch of me folded neatly in his pocket. Just what we needed. “What’s the fueling status?”

“About half-done,” he said. “We should be topped off by the time the first wave arrives. I presume we’d like to be buttoned down and ready to fly by then?”

“If not sooner,” I told him. Whatever Uncle Arthur had cooked up for us, he’d better hit the road with it, and fast. “We’re on our way.”

I clicked off and returned the phone to my pocket. “Trouble?” Jennifer asked.

“Just the opposite,” I assured her, lifting my glass to my lips but not drinking any of it. The barkeep might have recognized me and slipped in something special, and I didn’t want to find out about it the hard way. If I hadn’t been a raving paranoid before, I reflected, this trip would very likely do the trick. “Our ship’s almost fueled up, and it looks like we can be out of here before the rest of your clientele start tying up all the perimeter grav beams.”

Her face fell, just a bit. All that effort, and now we were about to leave without letting her finish her presentation. “Think about my offer, okay?” she said, a note of pleading in her voice. “There could be extra benefits, too, not just the money.”

“Oh?” I said, resisting the temptation to look suggestively up and down her tight-fitting outfit. It would have been a cheap shot, and I imagined she got enough of that from the Baker’s Dozen’s usual denizens. “Such as?”

Cheap shots, apparently, were Jennifer’s stock-in-trade. Putting her right hand behind my head, the corners of her ring catching momentarily on my hair, she
pulled me the last thirty centimeters still separating us and kissed me.

There was nothing tentative or perfunctory about it, either. It was a full-mouth, full-pressure lip dock, with all the desperate strength of someone facing her absolute last chance. I thought about how she’d spoken of being stuck here, of how she’d asked for passage to Earth for putting us onto the Patth hunt, and for the first time since we’d met I actually felt a little sorry for her. Of all of us at that table, I could empathize most strongly with the feeling of being caught inside an ever-shrinking box.

And then the tip of her tongue pushed between my lips; and abruptly, my twinge of sympathy vanished in a sudden flush of surprise and cautious excitement.

It seemed like a long time before the pressures fore and aft slackened off and she pulled away, though it was probably no more than a few seconds. As her head moved out of my line of sight, I saw that Tera was looking at me with a cast-granite expression on her face. Irreverently, I found myself wondering how many other expressions of surprise, outrage, or disgust she’d gone through while I wasn’t looking. Even a scoundrel as low-class as I was shouldn’t act that way in the presence of a lady.

“Just remember, there’s a lot more where that came from,” Jennifer said, using her seductive voice again as she rose leisurely to her feet. Clearly, she was feeling very pleased with herself. “If you spot the
Icarus
, call the Morsh Pon StarrComm exchange and leave a message for Jennifer at Shick Place.” With one last smile all around, plus a smirk for Tera, she sauntered away.

The others were all looking at me, varying degrees of expectation on their faces. “Well, don’t just sit there,” I said. To my perhaps hypersensitive ears my voice sounded a little slurred. “Drink up, and let’s get out of here.”

They did so without comment. I let my own cola sit
where it was, keeping a surreptitious eye on Jennifer as I sorted out the proper number of small-denomination coins. She returned to her table and spoke briefly with her friend there; but as the four of us stood up she left that table and wandered off again, this time heading in the general direction of the three Lumpies. “Let’s go,” I told the others, putting a hand on Tera’s back to encourage her forward, a friendly gesture I instantly abandoned at the glare she flashed me.

We headed to the door; and as I ushered the others through, I took one final look behind us. The pirates were looking back at us, with the universal suspicious expressions of men permanently on the run. Nurptric the barkeep was busily puttering around the bar, his eyebrow crest fairly glowing with the eager anticipation of customers on their way in. Jennifer’s friend had a small mirror out and was checking her makeup, with much the same air of anticipation.

And Jennifer herself was at the back table leaning over one of the Lumpies, speaking solicitously to him as if trying to wake him up, her ring again catching the light as she patted him soothingly on the back of his neck. Her eyes caught mine; and though she didn’t smile, I knew we understood each other.

The trip back was very quiet. After what had happened back at the taverno, no one seemed interested in talking to me, and I certainly wasn’t going to start any conversations myself.

We reached the
Icarus
to find Ixil in the process of paying off the fuelers. I ordered everyone to their stations, then waited in the wraparound until Ixil was finished so that I could personally retract the ladder and seal the hatch. Heading up the now deserted mid-deck corridor to the bridge, I sealed the door behind me and sat down in the command chair.

And only then, with no one around to see, I pulled from its resting place between my gum and cheek the poker-chip-sized object that Jennifer had transferred
from her mouth to mine during our kiss. Unscrewing the top, I carefully extracted the folded microprint document nestled inside, and the six small borandis tablets that had been packed tightly together beneath it.

Uncle Arthur had come through.

The document, annoyingly but not surprisingly, was written in Kalixiri.

“I hate it when he does that,” I sighed, handing the reader over to Ixil and flopping onto my back on my bunk. “Here, you do it. I’m not up to deciphering Kalixiri right now.”

“Certainly,” Ixil said, resettling himself comfortably against the door of my cabin and showing the good sense not to lecture me yet again as to why Uncle Arthur did things this way. Kalixiri was probably one of the least-known languages in the Spiral, which made for automatic security if the wrong person happened across one of his missives, though it was surprisingly easy for non-Kalixiri to learn. Furthermore, the way the alphabet was laid out, the words themselves were generally much shorter than the English equivalents, which meant he could cram in more text per square centimeter.

And from what I’d seen of this one, he had those square centimeters very well crammed indeed.

“We start with Almont Nicabar,” Ixil said. “We have a photo. Slightly out-of-date … but yes, it does appear to be him. Certificate in starship drive and unofficial training in mechanics—the dates and details are here; you’ll want to look them over later. Ten years in the EarthGuard Marines, just as he said, achieving rank of master sergeant … Interesting. Had you ever heard of an attempt six years ago by EarthGuard to get hold of a Patth Talariac Drive?”

“I hadn’t until Uncle Arthur mentioned it,” I told
him, wondering why the mention of six years sounded familiar. “Was Nicabar involved with that?”

“I would say so,” Ixil said dryly. “He was on the commando team that penetrated the Patthaaunutth Star Transport Industries plant on Oigren.”

I turned my head to look at him. “You’re kidding.
Our
Almont Nicabar?”

“So it says,” Ixil assured me. “Furthermore, from the listed dates, it appears he resigned from the service barely three months after the mission’s failure.”

A funny sensation began to dig into my stomach. That was when I remembered six years being mentioned: Nicabar had said that was how long ago he’d resigned from the Marines. “Is there any mention of why the mission failed?”

Ixil gave me an odd look. “As a matter of fact, there’s a note that suggests inside information might have been leaked to the Patth. Are you seeing a connection?”

“Could be,” I said grimly. “Three months is just the right length for a private confidential court-martial.”

“You sure?”

“Trust me,” I assured him. “I went through one, remember? One other thing. I told you about seeing three more of the Lumpy Clan back in that taverno. What I didn’t tell you was that Nicabar reacted rather strongly when we got our first glimpse of one of them. Strongly for Nicabar, anyway.”

For a moment Ixil digested that in silence. “Still, there must not have been a real case against him, or he wouldn’t have been allowed to resign and leave gracefully.”

“But there must have been enough of one for them to hold him for court-martial in the first place,” I pointed out.

“Unless there was no court-martial involved,” Ixil also pointed out. “It might have just been three months of general debriefing.”

“And he then picked up and left a promising ten-year career just for the hell of it?” I shrugged. “Well, maybe. Still, bad feelings might explain why he jumped his last ship just because they were mask-shilling for the Patth. Is there anything else?”

“Various details of his life,” Ixil said, scanning down the text. “Nothing all that interesting, though again you’ll want to look them over when you’re up to deciphering Kalixiri again. Mostly public and official-record material—Uncle Arthur must not have had time to have anyone dig deeper than that.”

“I’m sure he’ll have the really juicy details later,” I said. Uncle Arthur’s knack for getting his hands on supposedly confidential information was legendary. “The trick will be how we get hold of it. Who’s next?”

“Hayden Everett,” he said. “He was indeed a professional throw-boxer for two years, leaving the ring twenty-two years ago.”

“Was he any good?”

Ixil shrugged. “His win/loss record would say no. Still, he
did
last two years on the circuit, so he must at least have had stamina.”

“Or was just a glutton for punishment,” I said. “I wonder if the circuit back then went into Patth space.”

“I don’t know,” Ixil said. “However, you might be interested in knowing that his last fight was a contested loss to Donson DiHammer. That name sound familiar?”

“It certainly does,” I said, frowning. Twenty years ago DiHammer had been at the epicenter of one of the biggest scandals ever to hit organized throw-boxing. “He was wholly owned and operated by one of the partners in the Tr’darmish Spiracia shipping conglomerate, wasn’t he?”

“You have a good memory,” Ixil confirmed. “We have the highlights listed here. Plus the interesting fact that Tr’darmish Spiracia was one of the first companies
to go bankrupt when the Talariac came onto the scene.”