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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


I slept through until my alarm, with no loud voices or bright lights to indicate that Ixil or Pax had been spotted or that any of the local thugs had quietly disappeared into the night. Certainly no large men with guns intruded on my slumber. I showered and dressed, then built myself a nice breakfast from the nook’s supplies. At three minutes to noon Yimm came to collect me, and with my go bag dangling from the big man’s fist we walked to Cherno’s office.

Cherno and Floyd were waiting when Yimm ushered me inside. “Mr. Roarke,” Cherno greeted me. “I trust you slept well.”

“I did, sir, very much so,” I said, nodding to him and then doing likewise to Floyd. “Hello, Floyd. You’re looking good. What have you been doing with yourself these past few weeks?”

“Working,” he said. The word and tone conveyed absolutely zero information, as they were undoubtedly meant to. “You ready to go get Piper?”

“Yes, I’m ready to go,” I said. “No, we’re not getting Piper, at least not right away.”

“That twelve-hour waiting period?” Cherno asked.

“Actually, after this second transit we’ll probably be able to drop the cooling period to three hours, maybe even less,” I said. “I’ll give the techs a call when we get there and confirm that.”

“Just make sure you don’t push too hard and disable it,” Cherno warned. “I don’t want your people claiming I sold them damaged goods.”

“That won’t be a problem,” I assured him, eyeing Floyd’s expression and the slight puzzlement there. Clearly, there was still a part of this job that he hadn’t been read into. “Anyway, if anything happens to it, I’m sure the techs can put it right again. As long as we have possession of the portals, that’s all that matters.”

“Glad to hear it,” Cherno said. “Yimm, see them to the elevator. I’ll expect to see the two of you again soon.”

“And Piper,” I said.

Cherno’s lip twitched in a smile. “And Piper.”

Yimm took us to the elevator, handed me back my go bag, and pushed the call button. The door opened without delay, indicating the car was already waiting.

Which didn’t necessarily mean there weren’t thugs lurking in the tunnel or by the portal. If Cherno had any lingering doubts about me or my slightly contrived overnight stay he’d have made sure the car was waiting when I was ready to use it, if only to leave me with the impression that I was totally in the clear.

Still, there was nothing in Floyd’s body language to indicate I was under any special scrutiny. If I was being offered hanging rope, my traveling companion probably wasn’t in on it.

If Selene had been here I could have been a hundred percent certain of that. In her absence, I’d just have to do the best I could.

The elevator reached the bottom and we headed off down the tunnel. I noted in passing that the grille Pax had used earlier was in its proper position, hopefully indicating Ixil had been able to meet him here and take him back to the portal. Unless, again, Cherno was playing things cute.

The tunnel and warehouse building were empty when Floyd and I arrived. “So how does this work?” he asked as we rolled our individual ways into the receiver module.

“We go into the launch module, we ride the extension arm, we touch the weird luminous gray part, and we end up in the receiver module at the other end,” I said. “Nothing to it.”

He grunted as we walked around the inside of the big sphere. “I still don’t see why we needed this damn thing. We could have brought Piper in without anyone knowing anything about it.”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” I said. “When we were just talking about using the Ruth, I assumed Mr. Gaheen wanted us to bring Piper because we don’t have any connection with him for the badgemen to pounce on.”

“Except that you used to work for Mr. Varsi.”

“Oh,” I said lamely. “Right.” It had been so long since I’d done anything for the organization that I’d tucked those memories into the back corners of my mind. “So . . . why?”

“I don’t know,” Floyd said as we stopped at the opening into the launch module. “Maybe you can ask Mr. Gaheen about it later. After you.”

“More likely you can ask him.” I lay down and rolled into the other sphere. I waited until Floyd had done the same, and together we walked around the sphere to the extension arm. “Mr. Gaheen and I don’t really travel in the same social circles. Definitely not circles that include greedy and conniving senators.”

“For the next couple of days you do,” Floyd said as we stepped up to the extension arm. “We just grab here?”

“Right here,” I said, closing my hand lightly around the arm. “Gravity will reverse—yep, there it goes,” I added as we started floating up along the arm. “Just relax and let the module do all the work.”

“So how do you know about the senator?” Floyd asked. “Better question: What do you know about him?”

“Just that he’s trying to close down independent drug operations in the area except those who are willing to bribe him,” I said. “But since we’re on the subject, how many people know about this thing?”

“Which thing?” Floyd asked. “The senator’s plan, or Mr. Gaheen’s?”

“The latter,” I said. “Seems to me that if someone loudly proclaims he’s against something, and the originator of that something suddenly pops up dead, the loud someone will be pretty high on the badgemen’s unpleasant-questions list.”

“Come on, Roarke, give us a break,” Floyd said scornfully. “We may not be all fancy-pants like you and your friends—”

We reached the luminescent gray section. I felt the usual tingle and was enveloped in the usual black shroud, and a couple of seconds later we were through.

“Whoa!” Floyd huffed. “What the hell?”

“Welcome to Meima,” I said. “You were saying something about fancy-pants?”

It took him a couple of seconds of jerkily looking around as we started to drift toward the inside hull before he found his voice again. “Yeah,” he said. “Damn. Yeah. I said we might not be all fancy, but we’re not stupid. Only a few people know what the job is.” He frowned suddenly at me. “Wait a second. Mr. Cherno told you?”

“Yes, which was why I asked who knows about it,” I said. “I’d have thought I was pretty far down Mr. Gaheen’s need-to-know list.”

“You shouldn’t be on it at all,” Floyd said tersely. “Mr. Cherno just told you?”

“It wasn’t quite that random,” I assured him. “I told him I needed to know the details so that I could calculate how long Selene and I would need to go to ground. He apparently thought that was a reasonable request.”

“Yeah,” Floyd said, still frowning. “I guess. Mr. Cherno usually plays things closer to the chest than that. Mr. Gaheen definitely does. This thing have the same landing speed-up I saw when you came in through the one on Fidelio?”

“Yes, but it’s not as violent as it looks,” I said. “Just relax and keep your knees bent to absorb the impact.”

For his first portal landing, he did pretty well. I had the feeling that in his younger days as one of Varsi’s street-level enforcers he’d done his fair share of jumping off things. To my mild surprise the receiver module hatch was open, with nothing but dirt showing. “We underground?” Floyd asked as we walked over to it.

“Yes, but the dirt sitting there is new,” I said, frowning. Surely McKell and Ixil hadn’t had to fill in the hole, had they? If so, getting out of here was going to be a problem.

They hadn’t, and it wasn’t. Five seconds’ experimentation showed that the dirt was merely a two-centimeter layer, held floating in place in the opening by the competing gravity fields of the portal and Meima itself. “I did something like this once myself,” I said as I scooped up a handful of dirt and let it fall again. “See, the dirt tries to fall through into the module, but once it’s here it tries to fall back through to the other side, and so ends up kind of spread out in the middle.”

“Yeah,” Floyd said, looking dubiously at the dirt. “You say you did this before?”

“Just the once,” I said. “Though my barrier was made of burning alcohol instead of dirt. Pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. So I guess we just roll through the dirt.”

There wasn’t anyone visible nearby as we climbed out of the hole. But about fifty meters away was something that hadn’t been there the previous day: a large marquee tent of the sort I’d seen field teams use as portable command centers and weather shelters. “I’m guessing that’s our next stop,” I told Floyd. “Odds are good we’ll find Piper in there.”

The tent was roomy, big enough to accommodate at least twenty people in reasonable comfort, which made the four folding chairs, large drinks cooler, and single occupant look rather lost amidst all that empty space.

And the odds I’d confidently professed to Floyd went snake-eye on me.

There you are,” McKell said from one of the chairs, raising a can of cola in greeting. “I was starting to wonder where you were. Hello, Floyd. Nice to see you again.”

“Likewise,” Floyd said, in a tone that was friendly enough but made it clear that he knew both of them were being more polite than strictly honest. “Where’s Piper?”

“I just talked to her,” McKell said. “She called earlier to say she had an errand to run, but now says she’s on her way and will be here in about an hour.”

“That give the portal enough time to rest up?” Floyd asked.

“It should,” McKell said. “The techs will take a look while we wait for Piper, but they’re pretty confident that the shakedown transit was ten by ten.”

“Good,” Floyd said. “Mr. Cherno won’t want to sit on his hands for hours every time waiting for this thing to come up to speed.”

“Considering that he’s getting a whole bunch of light-years in a single gulp, I would think a short delay wouldn’t be an unreasonable price,” McKell said, a little stiffly.

“You want Roarke to tell him that?” Floyd countered, just as stiffly.

“The point is that the portal is working,” I interrupted. I knew McKell had a less than pleasant history with criminal organizations, but there was no point in dumping any of that latent animosity on Floyd. “As soon as Piper arrives and we’ve run the cooling period we can head straight back.”

“The sooner the better,” Floyd muttered.

McKell made like he was going to answer, seemed to think better of it, and instead turned to me. “Selene left a message for you to call her when you arrived.”

“Great,” I said. “I was going to ask if you’d heard from her. Any idea where she is?”

“Somewhere northeast of here, last I knew,” McKell said, frowning. “She said to call, not visit.”

“I’d love to,” I said, heading toward the tent’s door. “Unfortunately, Mr. Cherno still has my phone. Don’t worry, I’ll be back before Piper gets here.”

* * *

Privately, I wondered if I was going to end up fudging on that promise. It was only about half a kilometer to the area where I’d told Selene to start her search, but with all the low hills and dips obstructing the view I would need to be practically on top of her before I saw her.

Maybe Selene had anticipated that, or else McKell had gotten a two-for-one deal on tents. From the top of the very first hill I climbed I spotted a small patch of white in the right direction. I went back down, circled the handful of other intervening hills, and came to a smaller version of the tent I’d just left. I looked around the area as I walked up to it, but there was no one in sight. “Selene?” I called softly.

“In here,” her voice came from inside.

I pulled the flap aside. Selene was kneeling on a padded mat, a chisel and small brush in her hands, other tools laid out to either side. Directly in front of her was a two-meter-long shallow trench that she’d dug in the ground.

Inside the trench was an alien skeleton.

Not a whole skeleton, I saw as I stepped forward. It was only a partial set, possibly a torso, the bones lying in loose formation. One arm was visible, composed of either a lot of small bones or bones that had originally been longer before being broken in half a dozen places. There were no fingers; whatever had shattered the arm had apparently torn them away or pounded them into dust.

Above the torso, on top of the spot where the head had presumably been, was a large, squarish block of stone half buried in the ground.

“I think there are three or four more of them nearby,” Selene said quietly. “It looks like the ceiling collapsed on them. At least it would have been quick.”

I looked at her, and at the mix of regret, sadness, and revulsion swirling through her pupils. “Thousands of years ago,” I reminded her.

“I know.” She touched the chisel to the ground at the edge of the trench. “It’s here, Gregory.”

I felt my stomach tighten. “You’re sure?”

“I can smell a different type of Icari metal buried under here,” she said. “Not portal or armband, but something in between.”

Not as indestructible as a portal, but stronger than decorative status or rank symbols. Yes, that could indeed be what I was hoping for. “Keep at it,” I told her. “I’d stay to help, but I need to get back to—any idea where I’m going back to yet?”

“Yes,” Selene said. “The admiral’s people figured it out last night. Ixil says it’s Kanaloa. The pollen samples put Cherno’s mansion in the northern hemisphere, probably the Conflor Forest region.”

I pulled up a mental image of that part of the Spiral. Kanaloa was a middle-of-the-road colony planet, neither luxurious nor poverty-stricken. Its location made it a convenient gathering spot for that sector’s conferences and professional get-togethers.

And if I was remembering right, it was indeed a nine-day journey from Xathru.

“Great,” I said. “There’s something I need you to do for me. I need you to go to the StarrComm center—right now—and call this number.” I rattled off the contact number Nask had given me. “Do I need to write that down?”

“No,” she said, her pupils taking on that wary look again. “Nask?”

“Nask,” I confirmed. “Tell him his portal’s somewhere in the Conflor Forest on Kanaloa. Also tell him the current owner is planning to use it—somehow—in a political assassination in three or four days. Not sure where or when. If he wants to get hold of it before that, he’ll need to hunt it down on his own. Oh, and tell him not to bother looking for lists of Cherno’s properties. The mansion he’s using is borrowed.”

“Really? How do you know?”

“No security cameras in the guest suite,” I said. “It finally occurred to me that Cherno might not want his name associated with what’s about to happen, so he found some idle-rich type who was spending a few months galivanting around the Spiral and just moved into his vacant property.”

Selene’s pupils twitched. “Or else killed him.”

“Actually, I don’t think so,” I said. She’d had to focus on enough death for one day. She didn’t need more ghostly images in her imagination. “If he wasn’t planning to leave at some point and hand the place back to his oblivious host, there’d be no reason not to put a whole surveillance system in there.”

“I understand,” Selene said, uncertainly in her pupils. “Gregory, are you sure you want to do this?”

“We’ve been through this,” I said. “Giving the Gemini back to the Patth is the only way to convince them that Icarus had nothing to do with the theft.”

“I know, and I don’t disagree,” she said. “But you’re here, and McKell and Ixil are here. Couldn’t you go through to Kanaloa and capture the portal yourselves? Then you could stop the assassination and give it to Nask directly.”

I shook my head. “Wouldn’t work. First of all, I have no idea how many men and how much firepower Cherno has on tap.”

“I only smelled four of them when we were there.”

“Which was almost six weeks ago,” I reminded her. “However many were there then, you can probably triple or quadruple it now that the job is almost on us. There’s also Nikki, and with a half-million contract to fulfill I doubt she’d be on our side.”

“No, I suppose not,” Selene conceded.

“More to the point,” I said, “if McKell and Ixil had the Kanaloa portal, do you honestly think they’d agree to hand it over to the Patth?”

“But it’s the only way.”

I agree,” I said. “But the admiral probably wouldn’t. I think he’d say damn the torpedoes and invite Nask to take his best shot. How do you think that would end?”

“Very badly,” Selene said, her pupils cringing. “You know what he’s going to say to us when he learns what we’ve done, don’t you?”

“I can guess,” I said soberly. I’d thought about that a lot over the past few weeks. “I’m guessing we’ll get his full repertoire of past and current naval vulgarities. We’ll just have to hope we’re too valuable to drop in a hole somewhere. Anyway, the die is cast, as they say.”

“Yes,” she said. “There’s one other thing you need to know. When we brought Nikki back to the Ruth after Trent captured her, there was a new smell in the ship, something I’ve never smelled before. I’m not entirely certain, but I believe it came from Nikki’s cabin.”

“Interesting,” I said, visualizing the cabin and the objects in it. Something to do with Nikki’s clothing? Her toiletries? Her implants?

Her weapons?

“You think McKell might have been able to work some magic on her new Ausmacher?”

“That was my thought, too,” Selene said. “But I don’t know what it was, or whether Nikki found and corrected it.”

I scowled. There was an easy way to check on the latter question, I knew. All I had to do was take Selene back to McKell’s tent and wait until Nikki showed up. If the smell was still there, Nikki probably hadn’t removed McKell’s sabotage.

But if I did that, Floyd would probably insist on bringing her back to Kanaloa with us. Right now, I needed her here on Meima. “I’ll see if I can find out anything,” I told her. “Meanwhile, I need to get back to Kanaloa, and you need to get that message to Nask.”

“Yes,” she said. “Be careful, Gregory.”

“Always,” I assured her. “You, too.”

* * *

I returned to McKell’s tent well within the hour I’d promised. But Nikki was also ahead of schedule, and was already waiting inside with McKell and Floyd when I arrived, a small go bag and her long carry case on the ground beside her.

“Sorry—took me a bit to find her,” I apologized as I looked over the group. Nikki was dressed in another of her black-and-green outfits with the hat and veil in place, the kind Floyd had seen when he first brought her to the ship.

Only he hadn’t brought Nikki there. He’d brought Piper, and the reason for that bizarre switch was still a mystery.

“No problem,” McKell assured me. “Ms. Piper was also running early.”

“My errand took less time than anticipated,” Nikki said.

I felt my eyes narrow as I took a closer look. Her outfit was indeed like her first one . . . except for the long tear in the wrap’s side just under her left arm. The kind of tear made by a very sharp knife. “Glad to hear it,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “Any trouble?”

“None to speak of.” She reached inside the robe and pulled out a small, flat object. “Here,” she said, tossing it to me. “Souvenir.”

I caught it, and found myself holding a plain bifold wallet. I looked up at Nikki, saw with a sudden sense of unease that she was watching me closely. Bracing myself, I opened it.

It was Trent’s.

I gazed at the ID in the left-hand window, the card every Commonwealth citizen was required to carry, the one that included Trent’s name, face, and official information. In the other display window, the one facing it from the wallet’s other side, was his bounty hunter license.

Hidden away behind the license was the card that identified him as a Patth Expediter.

I looked back at Nikki. “He tried to kill me,” she said simply.

“Yes,” I murmured. “I’ll bet he’s sorry now.”

“I’m sure he is,” she agreed.

I looked at McKell. “Are we ready?”

I am,” he said. I could see the questions hovering behind his eyes, along with the patience to leave them for another time. “Just waiting on the three of you.”

“Then I believe the waiting is over,” I said. “Can I carry your bag, Ms. Piper?”

“Thank you,” Nikki said. Picking up both pieces of luggage, she handed me the go bag. “I’m looking forward to seeing how this portal of yours operates.”


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