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CHAPTER ONE


As my father used to say, The best strategy in a barroom fight is to stay completely out of it. I’d always considered that wise advice.

Of course, as he also used to say, That probably won’t work if you’re the one who started it.

Which technically I hadn’t. All I’d done was show up in the same taverno as a man named Oberon, bounty hunter and all-around nasty person, who typically came here for his evening pick-me-up. I hadn’t even had to remind him why he was nurturing a long and simmering grudge against me. He’d picked up on that all by himself.

“We don’t have to do this,” I protested as I backed slowly but steadily across the taverno floor, hoping that I wasn’t about to back into a chair.

Or, worse, into a person. If Oberon had friends in here watching the show, the whole thing could quickly degenerate into very unfavorable odds.

Still, I figured that was unlikely. It was true that bounty hunters as a group tended to stick together against the hard and uncaring Spiral, and while I once again had my license I was mostly retired from the business. Given there were probably at least a couple more hunters in a place like this, that mutual support attitude might lead to trouble.

But Oberon’s lovely little niche market of organizing slave-on-slave and prisoner-on-prisoner death battles to amuse the more degenerate of the wealthy class hadn’t exactly endeared him to the general hunter population. It was a good bet that anyone in here who knew him well enough to stick their neck out for him probably wouldn’t bother. More likely they would settle back and enjoy the show.

Still, as my father used to say, The only sure bet is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. If I didn’t wrap this up quickly, I could still end up unpleasantly surprised.

“Oh, yeah, we gotta do this,” Oberon snarled back, half turning and throwing a roundhouse kick at me that I was just barely able to dodge. “You cost me a good two hundred thousand commarks back on Pinnkus, and I’m going to take it out of your skin.”

“I think you have to be a media celebrity for your body to be worth that much,” I corrected. “Or maybe you have to be a couple of Ulkomaal slaves.”

His hand had been drifting toward the Golden 6mm belted at his waist. Now, abruptly, the hand came back up to personal combat position. At a guess, he’d started wondering whether it would be less trouble to just shoot me, but the dig about his lost Ulkomaals had repersuaded him that he really, really wanted to kill me with his own hands.

As my father used to say, Never make someone madder at you than they already are unless it’s already working in your favor.

Still, I was the one backing up in the face of his attack, and at the speed I was going I’d run out of floor in another twenty seconds. I passed a couple of burly freight-handler types who were watching us with idle interest—apparently fights weren’t all that uncommon here—and then a pleasant-looking young man gazing down into his drink like he was hoping to find the meaning of life in there. A couple more steps and I’d be right beside a group of rowdies who had looked like they might be inclined to join in the fun if the opportunity presented itself.

And as I deflected a straight-in punch, the pleasant-looking loner slipped out of his chair, moved silently up behind Oberon, and did a quick double kick into the backs of his knees that sent him crashing to the floor. Oberon bellowed, twisting around onto his back, and grabbed for his holstered Golden.

His hand stopped short of its goal, the fingers just touching the weapon’s grip, the glare he’d started to direct at his attacker now transferred to the black Libra 3mm pointed steadily down at him. “I wouldn’t,” the gun’s owner said mildly. In his free hand, held high for everyone in the taverno to see, was a bounty hunter ID. “Sebastian Trent, licensed bounty hunter,” he called, just in case anyone was still unclear on the whole thing. “This man is officially in my custody.”

He slipped the ID back into his pocket, his gun never wavering from Oberon’s face. “Hands on your head, please,” he said lowering his volume to a more conversational level. “Then over onto your stomach.”

For a long moment I thought Oberon might decide he’d rather have his face splattered across the floor than suffer the humiliation of getting caught. A lot of the criminal types I’d run into over the years seemed to have ego where they needed brains. But he took another look into his attacker’s eyes, and with reluctance and impotent fury he complied. Trent glanced at me, as if wondering if he should offer to let me do the honors, then crouched down, pulled Oberon’s arms one by one from his head down to the small of his back, and used a set of quick-cuffs to secure his wrists. Only then did he holster his Libra and give me a satisfied nod. “Nicely done, Roarke,” he said, his voice as pleasant as his face. “Thanks for the assist. I think the Spiral will rest easier with this one off the streets.”

“Actually, I doubt most of the Spiral even knows he exists,” I said. “But you’re welcome. So what now?”

“Now my colleagues take him to the badgemen—ah,” he interrupted himself as two large men strode through the door. “Package for delivery, gentlemen,” he called, beckoning them over. “Tell the station chief I’ll be there shortly to collect the arrest documentation.” He smiled at me. “My new colleague and I first have another matter or two to discuss.”

I cocked an eyebrow at that. I did indeed have another few questions to ask him, and in fact had been wondering how I was going to talk him into having a celebratory drink with me. Apparently, he had an agenda of his own.

Which could either be very helpful or very ominous.

He and I stood together and watched as the two men got Oberon back on his feet and hauled him out into the night. Then, Trent gestured to the server at the bar. “A puff adder for me, my good woman, and a—?”

“Small Dewar’s,” I supplied.

“Large Dewar’s for my friend,” Trent corrected. He sent me a small and slightly lopsided grin. “I’m the generous type, and I’m buying. Come on, let’s sit.”

“There’s a nicely private spot over there,” I said, pointing to an isolated table near the side wall.

“You expect a need for privacy for our little chat?” he asked.

“Don’t you?”

He smiled in a friendly sort of way that I suspected most people would foolishly take at face value. But I could see the subtle contradiction between lips and eyes. Trent was definitely not a man to take lightly. “Touché,” he said. “Lead on, Macduff.”

Whoever Macduff was. I led the way across to the table. The rest of the patrons, I noted, had gone back to their drinks and conversation. Apparently, like a stray barroom fight or two, a bounty hunter popping in to nail a target was just another Tuesday here.

“First things first,” he said, digging into his pocket as we sat down. “The five hundred commarks I promised for your assistance.”

“I’m glad we could make it work,” I said, taking the five bills he handed across the table. “Just out of curiosity, who finally got tired enough of Oberon to put a bounty on him?”

“Ah-ah-ah,” he said, wagging a finger reprovingly. “You know we’re not supposed to kiss and tell.”

“Just curious,” I said. Confidentiality was indeed a major part of bounty hunters’ protocol, but we’d been known to bend the rules on occasion. “He must have led you on a merry chase, though.”

“Oh, that he did,” Trent said, shaking his head in memory. “Two days ago we both came in from Niskea—nearly nailed him there, but he ducked out early. Before that was Bardeenia, before that was Hopstead, before that was Kelsim, before that—well, you get the picture.”

“But now you’ve got him,” I said, tucking the four planetary names into my memory for future reference.

The server appeared at Trent’s side, set our glasses in front of us, and smiled thanks as he put a hundred-commark bill on her tray and waved away her offer of change.

“Some days I’m a millionaire,” he explained, taking a sip of his drink as he watched her head back to the bar. “Millionaires tip well, I’m told.”

“Well, if they don’t they should,” I agreed. “Wait a minute. Oberon was on Kelsim? I’d have thought an Ihmis world would be a terrible place for a human to try to hide.”

“Maybe he wasn’t hiding,” Trent said, his voice and expression changing subtly. “Maybe he was doing a job. I assume you heard about the ship hijacking there a few weeks ago.”

“No, actually, I hadn’t,” I said, frowning. Hijackings—successful ones, anyway—were pretty rare birds, which should have made such a thing the talk of the Spiral, at least for the ancient rule of fifteen minutes. “Who got hit?”

“The ship was Saffnic registry, but there were no details on who had cargoes aboard,” Trent said. “You ever hear of Oberon going in for that sort of thing?”

I shook my head. “Far as I know, he stuck with hunting and his sordid little death matches.”

“Oh, this was a death match, all right,” Trent said grimly. “They left thirty dead behind them.”

I stared at him. “Thirty? What the hell did they do, roll a bunch of hellspawns down the corridors?”

“No, they just came in with a team and shot everyone in sight,” Trent growled. “Funny, really.”

“I’d hardly put that in the funny category.”

“No, I mean I’d actually been thinking about trying to find a hijack crew for a job when I heard about this one.”

I frowned at him. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he assured me. “A good job, great pay, and no less than four solid bounties to split up afterward. Whoever came up with the Kelsim plan would be perfect to lead it.”

“Not if his endgame usually comes down to mass murder,” I said. A hijacking with thirty dead—why the hell hadn’t I heard about this?

“That part may not have been his idea,” Trent said. “I mostly put that down to having a few trigger-happy psychopaths in his crew. But the planner himself . . . ” He shrugged.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “But as my father used to say, If your boss’s Plan A involves death, your Plan A should be to find a new boss.

“I suppose,” Trent said. “Pity, really. I guess now I’ll just have to nail the four of them one at a time. So much less efficient.” He cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in joining me. Like I said, great pay.”

“I appreciate the offer,” I said. “But like I told you before, I mostly work as a crockett these days.”

“Money’s not nearly as good,” he pointed out.

“Neither are the chances of getting shot at.”

“There is that,” he conceded. “Well, I appreciate you coming out of retirement long enough to help me out here. Moving on someone with Oberon’s reputation is a lot easier if he’s busy looking somewhere else.” He looked at his watch. “Speaking of moving, I’d better. Don’t want the badgemen deciding Oberon wandered into the station all by himself and figuring they can split the bounty. See you around, Roarke.” He stood up, gave me a final friendly smile, and left the taverno.

I gave him a count of sixty, just to make sure he wasn’t coming back. Then, picking up my drink, I crossed to the white-haired woman sitting quietly at a table by the door. “Did you enjoy the show?” I asked.

The delicate features of Kadolian faces didn’t lend themselves to emotional expression nearly as well as human faces did. But the pupils of Selene’s deep-set gray cat’s eyes more than made up for it. Right now, they were showing a nice mix of relief and dry humor. “I still don’t know why you agreed to decoy Oberon like that in the first place,” she said. “We could have found another way to talk to Trent.”

“But it wouldn’t have been nearly so entertaining,” I pointed out.

“Or as dangerous.”

“Or as productive,” I said. “You saw how reserved he was earlier tonight. I’ve seen men like that get positively chatty once the job’s finished and the tension’s gone.”

“He certainly seemed to be relieved,” she agreed. “You say your talk was productive?”

“Very,” I said. “The four worlds he most recently visited were, in order, Niskea, Bardeenia, Hopstead, and Kelsim. The server interrupted before he could go any further back, and then he was on to another topic.”

“That should be more than enough,” Selene said, her pupils going thoughtful. “The portal scent was faint enough. It couldn’t have been on him more than a few weeks.”

I scowled down at my drink. The outer hulls of the alien star portals that our Icarus Group bosses were so hot to locate and acquire gave off a faint but distinctive scent, a subtle marker that would be picked up by anyone who touched one or was even in reasonably close proximity. Unfortunately, not even the finest sensing devices on the market could pick up on anything that faint.

Fortunately, the hypersensitive Kadolian sense of smell could.

“What about the two bruisers who carried out the garbage?” I asked. “Anything from them?”

Selene shook her head. “There was a vague hint, but that was probably just from casual contact with Trent.”

“Or from the commarks he paid them in,” I said, nodding. “I assume you didn’t smell any significant or guilty-conscience changes when he ran down his list of planets?”

“Actually, there was something,” Selene said, her pupils now showing a sort of vague dread. “But it wasn’t . . . it was anger, Gregory. Anger and suspicion and . . . it was almost a bloodlust.”

“Really,” I said, frowning. “Are you sure you weren’t misreading him? I mean, we only had, what, three hours with him for you to establish his baseline.”

“It’s possible,” Selene said. But her pupils still held quiet fear. “But there was definitely something there. I’m thinking we should take the long way back to the Ruth in case he has something planned for us along the way.”

I looked over at the table where Trent and I had been sitting a few minutes ago. I’d picked that table specifically because the taverno’s gentle airflow would send our scents directly toward Selene. Even with my pathetically limited human senses I could smell the bourbon in the puff adder he’d abandoned. With that kind of information flowing across her nose and eyelashes, Selene could match our moods to our scents half asleep and with her eyes closed.

Still, without a really good baseline to work from there was always the chance she might misread one emotion for another.

“Actually,” she added reluctantly, “I almost wish . . . ” The words faded away.

“You wish I’d drugged him?” I prompted gently.

She lowered her eyes to the table, but not before I saw the embarrassment in her pupils. “Yes,” she admitted.

I looked at the other table again, this time focusing on the abandoned glass. I’d lost my left arm below the elbow during our final official bounty hunt six years ago, and when I got my artificial replacement I’d made room for a couple of hidden compartments. One of those, the one at the inner wrist, was just the right size for half a dozen knockout pills, a secret cache I’d found useful many times in the years since then. A full set of the pills was nestled in there right now, which I could have easily and invisibly introduced into Trent’s drink.

But aside from Selene’s subjective and admittedly vague impressions, I had no real justification for drugging the man. Not now, certainly not then. And if he didn’t hate me before, leaving him passed out and helpless in a marginal place like this would have certainly advanced me to that lofty position.

Still, as my father used to say, Never bet against someone who’s been right ten times in a row unless he’s running a pyramid scam.

“The long way back it is,” I agreed. “Actually, we should head over to the StarrComm center before we leave anyway. The admiral loves getting new data to feed his minions.”

I stood up and offered her my hand. “And given the usual wait for a booth, even if Trent’s waiting at the Ruth there’s a good chance he’ll get bored and go home.”

* * *

In my admittedly limited experience I’d seldom found Admiral Sir Graym-Barker, the head of the Icarus Group, to be happy with anything in life. Still, he seemed pleased enough with the four new system names I’d gotten from Trent and promised to look into them. I could tell that Selene was waiting for me to mention that Trent also might be wanting to kill me, but I didn’t see any point to that. As my father used to say, Don’t bother stirring the soup until you’re sure there’s an actual fire going beneath the pot. We said our good-byes, and I called my Xathru mail drop to see if there were any new messages.

To my surprise, there was.

“This is Floyd, Roarke,” the familiar voice came from the screen. “I need to talk to you about a special business deal. Can you meet me on Xathru in six days? If you can’t get there, message me with where you are right now, and I’ll see if there’s somewhere else that’ll work. This thing is time-sensitive, so don’t drag your feet.”

The message ended, and for a moment Selene and I looked at each other. “I thought we were done with him forever,” she said, her pupils showing distaste and reluctance.

“So did I,” I said, feeling a pretty good level of reluctance myself. Floyd was one of the top enforcers for the criminal organization that economic realities had once forced Selene and me to work for. Those days were thankfully over and done with, but though Floyd and I had parted on reasonably good terms, that wasn’t to say I wanted to renew acquaintances. I certainly wasn’t interested in hearing about any deal he wanted to pitch.

But he and his colleagues had had a chance to kill us—actually, I was pretty sure he’d had specific orders to do so—and he hadn’t. I supposed that bought him at least the courtesy of a hearing.

Forever apparently isn’t as long as it used to be,” I continued, checking the timestamp on Floyd’s message. Thirty-two hours ago, about the time Selene and I had arrived here on Nua Corcaigh. And yes, we could make it to Xathru in time for his proposed meeting. “But Floyd’s the persistent type. If we ignore him, he’ll just pop up again somewhere else.”

“The admiral might not like us meeting with him,” Selene warned.

“There’s that,” I conceded. A severe understatement—the admiral had been furious that I’d let Floyd and his friends off Fidelio without letting him read the riot act to them as to what would happen if they talked to anyone about the Gemini portal we’d dug out of the Erymant Temple grounds.

Though knowing the sort of people Floyd worked for, I doubted even the admiral’s impressive repertoire of threats would have made much of an impact on him.

“But what the admiral doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” I said, pulling out some bills to feed into the slot. “We’ll meet, we’ll listen to his proposal, we’ll say good-bye, and that’ll be the end of it.”

“We thought it was the end of it last time.”

“Yes, we did,” I conceded. “And we’ll keep saying it until it comes true. So where exactly would you suggest we invite him?”

* * *

There were half a dozen restaurants Selene and I liked to patronize whenever we were on Xathru, along with about a dozen tavernos. We settled on one of the latter, a place that had a large selection of spirits and some of the best barbequed ribs and baked-bread pizza I’d ever found.

Floyd was right on time, strolling in with a casual air that nicely masked his panther-like global awareness of his surroundings. I waved him over, and as he neared the table I stood up and offered him my seat, the one against the wall with a clear view of the patrons, servers, and doors. As my father used to say, Never disrespect the other fellow’s paranoia, especially when the other fellow is armed.

“I appreciate you meeting me like this,” Floyd said. “I know that friend of yours—McKell?—wasn’t exactly happy with us running off without getting to deliver whatever threats he had on tap.”

“He got over it,” I said. Actually, knowing Jordan McKell, he probably hadn’t. “How was your own homecoming?”

“You mean to Huihuang?” He shrugged. “I have to tell you, I was a little concerned about going to Mr. Gaheen and telling him Cole, Mottola, and I had had orders to kill him.”

“You told him about that?” I asked, staring. “I’d have thought that was something better dropped into a deep hole under a no death, no foul sign.”

“We thought about doing that,” he said. “But there were others who knew. Mr. Gaheen appreciates honesty, especially when the honesty gets to him before the rumors.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I conceded. “I gather you’re not working directly under him at the moment?”

He eyed me closely. “Why do you say that?”

“Because Huihuang isn’t within six days of Xathru,” I said. “That means you must have called from somewhere else, and the time-sensitive aspect of this proposed deal suggests you called from wherever you were at the time.”

His lips twitched in a small smile. “Not bad,” he said. “Yes, Mr. Gaheen has sent me to work temporarily with Mr. Cherno, one of his regional lieutenants. He’s the one making the proposal on Mr. Gaheen’s behalf.”

“I assume Mr. Gaheen knows all about it?” I asked.

Floyd frowned. “Of course,” he said, as if that was obvious.

“Right,” I said, suppressing a sigh. Meet, listen, say good-bye. “Silly of me. I don’t think Mr. Varsi ever mentioned Mr. Cherno.”

“Why would he?” Floyd said, frowning some more. “You weren’t exactly high up in the organization.”

“No, of course not.”

“But if you had been, you’d have heard plenty about him,” Floyd continued. “Been with us for a long time, working his way up through the ranks. Don’t worry, he knows what he’s doing. Mr. Gaheen wouldn’t have put him on this if he didn’t.”

“Well, that makes me feel better,” I said. “So what exactly is this offer?”

“It’s pretty simple,” Floyd said. “Mr. Cherno has a passenger he wants you to take from one planet to another. Unspecified for now, but shouldn’t be anything drastic. Single person, no contraband, nothing illegal about it.”

I looked at Selene, sitting quietly and sifting through Floyd’s scent. We’d spent enough time with him that if he started lying, she’d know it. “Does Mr. Cherno not realize there are public and chartered transports that can do that job?”

“Sure,” Floyd said. “But none of them would be interested in the payment he’s offering.”

He paused, giving the taverno a slow, careful visual scan. “Mr. Cherno’s found something,” he continued, lowering his voice to a volume barely above a whisper. “One of those things from Fidelio.”

I stared at him, my earlier reluctance to this conversation abruptly vanishing. “You mean a portal?”

“Yeah, a portal,” he said. “You take his passenger where she needs to go, and it’s yours.”


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Framed