Lasers, Lies and Money Read online

  “Ah, you must be our guest!” he said. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance! I'm Doctor Wolff.” His booming voice stretched the definition of inside voice to its limit.

  “Yes,” she said, smilingly shyly.

  Wolff turned to the window, still beaming. Cantor was beginning to shrink as the Outsider accelerated away. “I've seen it more times than I can count,” he said. “But still I think there is no sight more beautiful than a living planet from orbit. Not to disparage Ms. LaBelle's artworks, of course.”

  Together, they went through the cupboards. Wolff pointed her to the cutlery drawer and the human-suitable foods.

  She took out a knife and fork and a silver box filled, according to its label, with steak in peppercorn sauce. She twisted a dial on the side and set the box down on the table. A couple of moments later, she could feel the heat radiating from it. The lip peeled back automatically, and a rich smell filled the lounge.

  Wolff got his own food. For a while they sat looking out the window while Wolff told her a few amusing anecdotes about the festival.

  “Who else is on the crew?” Olivia asked.

  “Well, let's see now,” said Wolff. “Mr. Rurthk is the captain. It's not often you see an independent Glaber, so he always catches attention. In reality, both he and Ms. LaBelle own the ship. You wouldn't think they were friends, would you?”

  Olivia shook her head. “It's a bit unexpected.”

  “Then there's our pilot, Mr. Iskultine. Mero.” Wolff frowned briefly. “You shouldn't have too much to do with him.” A moment later, he had recovered his mood. “I'm the doctor here, so if all goes well, you shouldn't see too much of me either! Then there's Mr. Kaivon. He's our engineer, and he shares piloting duties if Mr. Iskultine is occupied. And that's all of us. We're not a large crew, but we manage to keep things running.”

  Cantor had become a tiny white dot.

  The intercom fuzzed into life. “Prepare for jump,” came Mero's voice. The ship's hum changed pitched as the jump engines ramped up.

  Olivia and Wolff both rolled the lids back over their food and held their cutlery down.

  The sound of the jump engines changed pitch suddenly. Olivia felt everything squeezing together. The ship creaked. Through the window she saw the stars ripple distort as a wormhole mouth swept past. As it did, the effect reversed, and everything tried to expand.

  And then they were through. Cantor was gone, and they were looking out into interstellar space. Olivia waited a few moments for the queasiness to pass, then opened the lid of her food pack again.

  *

  The man lounged back in his chair. Everything was cloaked in darkness. The only light came from the screen in front of him. He gestured at it with a repetitive motion, flicking through images of crowds.

  “That's obviously not her, you idiot machine,” he muttered.

  The facial recognition software took this insult stoically.

  That was the problem. Set the parameters too high, and it might miss someone is disguise. Set them lower, and you had to wade through a sea of false positives. Even if the software flagged one out of a million scenes, that still left thousands for him to look through.

  He froze and sat up suddenly. His hand went the other way, going back to the previous image.

  He stared at it for a few moments. There, in the black coat, amid a crowd of revellers on Cantor.

  He split the screen and in the new window sent a call through.

  “Sir? We've found her.”

  Chapter 4: The Knives Are Out

  Olivia sat on the edge of her cabin's tiny bed. Her tablet, generating an adhesive surface, was stuck to the wall in front of her. She flicked through pictures.

  Scenes of Earth. The grinning, cheerful faces of various people.

  Her friends.

  She stopped at a group picture. A dozen people, including herself, standing in front of a car that wasn't theirs.

  She smiled briefly, then faltered.

  Her former friends.

  Well, there was no going back now. She supposed she should start researching Hagbard and planning what to do there, but right now she didn't have the energy.

  A lump formed in her throat. She curled up on the bed, hugging her knees.

  There was a confident but gentle tap at the door.

  Olivia was silent for a second. Then she gestured at her tablet, turning it off. “Hello?” she said.

  “Just checking you're still alive,” said Eloise. “You've been in there since the first jump.” She paused for a moment. “Also, can you play dominoes? We're having a game.”

  Olivia scrambled off the bed and opened the door. “What game?”

  “Pool, Iona style.”

  Olivia smiled. “Okay.”

  There were four of them seated at the table in the observation lounge. Eloise's chair had her pink balloon tied to the back. Beside it sat Rurthk and Dr. Wolff. Mero hung from the ceiling with one foot.

  Rurthk grunted an acknowledgement, and Wolff shook Olivia's hand. “Aha, a new player! Glad to see you out and about at last, my girl!” he said.

  On the other side of the table was an Albascene. Its robotic-looking suit was made of three dodecahedrons stacked on top of one another, standing about five feet tall. Each segment could rotate independently. The surface was studded with ports, LEDs, effector field generators, and cameras.

  Olivia knew, of course, that the suit was, in reality, a sort of fish tank. Albascene were group minds, consisting of a thousand or so brightly-coloured fishlike creatures, each about the size of a human's thumb. The suit allowed them to stay together and to operate effectively in the air.

  This particular suit followed the same design aesthetic as the Outsider. Stainless steel silver gave way to copper-toned or dark grey carbon fibre sections. It was patched and modded in multiple places, though Olivia couldn't guess what the additions did.

  “This is Kaivon,” Eloise said. “He's our engineer and occasional pilot.”

  “It is a pleasure to meet you,” Kaivon said, his synthesised voice calm, polite, with just a hint of character.

  He didn't have anything resembling a hand to shake, so Olivia just smiled at him. “Hello,” she said, taking a seat at the table.

  Eloise slid the top off a wooden box and dropped a collection of hand-painted tiles on the tabletop. “You're a passenger,” she said as she distributed them. “So we're not playing for stakes.”

  Olivia looked around the four crewmembers. They'd know her less than a day, but they were doing this just to accommodate her.

  Her remaining funds were running low, and she had no idea whether she could take these people. It wasn't particularly sensible. But since when had she run her life according to sensible? She looked at Eloise with a sly grin. “Where would the fun be in that?” she said. “I've got a hundred cryptcred in my room.”

  Rurthk, who had been mostly silent until this point, laughed. It sounded like grinding millstones. “I like you,” he said, and added to Eloise, “You chose well.”

  “I always do,” said Eloise. She looked at Olivia. “You sure?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Olivia, taking her tiles. “You're gonna regret inviting me to this game.”

  “That's big talk coming from such a small girl,” Eloise said. “Let's see how you play. Alright ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.”

  She handed out the rest of the tiles. Red effector fields snaked out from Kaivon's suit to handle the tiles. Bets passed back and forth, aided by taunting and laughter. Olivia wasn't sure of the last time she'd had so much fun.

  “Well, Kaivon?” asked Rurthk, two rounds in. “Are you in?”

  “I believe so, Captain,” said Kaivon. “But for the stakes, I want a detour to Kalbraica to pick up new Alfvén Coils.”

  “Hmph,” said Rurthk. “Alright.”

  “And,” continued Kaivon, in the same neutral tone, “since the installation of new coils will improve the whole ship, you may consider me most generous.”
/>   “Hey, if we're going beyond cash,” Mero said, “I'll offer you all my pilot shifts for the next month.”

  Kaivon considered. “Make me an offer,” he said.

  “And you, cap!” continued Mero, “Ten percent of everything we get from the Twins, straight off the top.”

  Eloise rolled her eyes.

  “Mero, as soon as I'm ready to take that bet, I'll give you a sign,” said Rurthk. “The sign will be me getting institutionalised.”

  “That, I await with great eagerness,” said Mero.

  Dr. Wolff snorted. “I believe we are getting away from the point here. Ms. LaBelle, fifty credits, if you please.”

  “By all means, Doctor,” said Eloise with a grin. “And what about you Olivia? Think you can fight your way back, or are you going to slink off with your tail between your legs?”

  “I am so in,” said Olivia.

  Two hours later, she walked away, laughing, with an extra hundred cryptcreds.

  *

  Felix Zino stood in his office, his nose a few inches from a giant poster, his eyes flicking back and forth, his brow creased in concentration. He was immaculately dressed: A two-thousand-credit tailored white suit, white leather shoes, black shirt, white bow tie.

  The poster covered one entire wall of his office. It showed a life-size Varanid. Varanids resembled giant monitor lizards with six limbs. Each hand was big enough to encircle a human's head, and strong enough to tear it off. With a single bite they could take off a human's arm. The Varanid in this poster was covered with anatomical cutaways and labels. In a few places, it was peppered with tiny holes.

  There was a knock on the door. “Sir?”

  Zino's hand went into his suit jacket to grasp a pistol hidden there. He stepped back a few paces so he had the cover of a table. “Come in,” he said.

  The young man, a mid level flunky whose name Zino had not bothered to learn, entered. He closed the door behind him and stepped into the middle of the room.

  Only then did Zino release the pistol. He knew the man, of course, and he had no reason to expect an attack. Someone had once called him overly paranoid. That someone was now dead.

  The man looked at the poster. “Didn't know you had an interest in biology, sir.”

  Zino laughed. “Of course I do!” He took the man's shoulder and turned him so they were both facing the poster. “Varanids have a reputation for being difficult to kill. If you're facing an unarmed Varanid with an assault rifle in your hands, you're at a disadvantage, they say. Do you know why that is?”

  “Uh … because they're difficult to kill?” offered the flunky.

  “Yes. But why?” Zino gave a small smile and pointed towards the poster. “Beneath the scales, hundreds of armoured plates protecting every major organ and artery. A sheath of silk links them. Very hard to do any significant damage. But not impossible. There are a few holes.”

  Zino looked over at the man and grinned. He opened the drawer on the desk beside them and took out a set of stiletto knives. They seemed to be made out of black glass, a foot long and less than a quarter of an inch wide, ending in a wicked point.

  He threw the first knife, where it hit the Varanid's neck and embedded most of its length in the wall behind. Glee crept into his voice. “Primary carotid and backup. Six seconds to bleed out.” A second knife was already in his hand. He threw it. “Nephritic artery. Nine seconds!”

  And again.

  And again.

  As he continued, his voice grew more and more excited until he was practically shouting with excitement. “Femoral. Eleven seconds! Secondary lung. Fifteen seconds! Anterior shoulder opening. Permanent limb paralysis! Eye. Death in three seconds if it goes deep enough!

  As Zino announced this last bit of knowledge, his eyes were wild, his other hand clenched. He stood for a moment, breathing heavily as he calmed himself down.

  He leaned in to check his work, and when he spoke again, he had regained a more measured tone of voice. “Six out of six. Of course, a moving Varanid is slightly harder to hit.” He strode over to the poster and began to pull the knives out. “Anyway, what can I do for you?”

  “We just got the confirmation,” said the flunky. “It's time for your job.”

  “Wonderful,” said Zino. He examined the knives with a loving glance, then took them back to the desk and carefully sheathed them. Safety first, he thought. The tips, a single atom thick, could take your hand off before you noticed what was going on. “Well, then, let's go.”

  Chapter 5: The Twins

  It was late evening in Hagbard's capital when the Outsider jumped in. The ship left orbit immediately and began to descend. The air rushing past them lit up to a gentle orange as they aerobraked.

  Rurthk stood in the cockpit, one hand resting on Mero's chair. Eloise waited on the other side, holding a pink balloon. Kaivon waited further back, his suit resting by the door.

  “Soon as we land, we get the goods off the ship and stash them,” said Rurthk. “I've got a location picked out. Mero, you keep an eye on it, make sure no one goes sniffing around.”

  “Lovely,” said Mero.

  “Eloise and me will go and meet with the Twins. When we arrange a meeting point, I'll come and help you to bring the goods.”

  Mero nodded. “Gotcha.”

  Rurthk turned round. “Kaivon, I want someone in the cockpit while Mero's out. Think you can handle it?”

  “Yes, Captain,” said Kaivon.

  “What about our passenger?” said Eloise.

  “Our business with her is finished as soon as we land,” said Rurthk. “We've got an hour before we meet the Twins. Take out, point her in the direction of a nice hotel or something, and send her on her way.”

  The sheath of superheated air diminished, leaving the shuttle in the silvery light of Hagbard's rings. Below them, a blanket of bruised-looking rainclouds obscured the ground. A few holes showed the neon lights of the city.

  “We're be there in five minutes,” Mero said.

  Rurthk nodded. “Right, Let's get to work.”

  *

  Hagbard's early colonists had been a romantic sort. Faced with a planet where, even in the best climates, it rained two-thirds of the time, they had decided to work with the style.

  LED signs lit up the night in lurid colours, advertising bars and clubs, barbershops and brothels. Their light reflected off the slick, irregular cobblestones of the main road. Music and chatter bubbled up from within. Rain clattered against everything. Stained glass awnings protected the sidewalks and the clumps of revellers enjoying the night. A car floating on a glowing cushion of effector fields slid past.

  All of this was lost on Rurthk, who stood away from the awnings, rain cascading off his thick, wrinkled skin and splashing around his boots. This was yet another supposed discomfort that he was all but immune to. But he was also immune to the supposed beauty of the cobbles and lights. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to be sensitive to beauty and discomfort both. To feel the world as Eloise did, in other words. And though he would never admit it, there were times when he would willingly make the trade.

  Eloise came sauntering up towards him, holding her balloon and an umbrella. “Alright, our passenger's out of the way. Shame, really. I liked her.”

  Rurthk grunted an acknowledgement. “Let's go.”

  The jazz bar was dark and warm. A dozen types of perfumed smoke hung in the air. On the stage, a saxophone played against some oversized Varanid string instrument. Neither of the players seemed particularly talented.

  Eloise shucked off her coat immediately and slung it over her shoulder. Rurthk looked over the bar for his contact, then strode forward to one of the bays where two women in fur coats with platinum blonde hair were sitting.

  He nodded at each of them as he sat down. “Cora. Dora.” He had no trouble telling them apart – he could smell the difference.

  The two women returned identical smiles.

  “Captain Rurthk. It's been a while,” said Cora.
/>
  “Do you have our seeds?” said Dora.

  Rurthk took a small plastic bottle out of his coat and slid it across the table.

  Cora opened it to reveal some seeds, and Dora put a bioscanner inside.

  “Do you have my money?” Rurthk said.

  Dora gave him a slip of metal. He checked it with his tablet. Half the payment, as they'd agreed. He put it in his jacket.

  “Where do you want to make the transfer?” he asked.

  “Alley behind this building,” said Cora.

  “Nice and quiet. No prying eyes,” said Dora.

  “Alright,” said Rurthk, standing. “I'll go get the goods. See you in ten.”

  “Aw, Rurthk, all business. No time to chat?” said Cora, pouting.

  Rurthk grunted, and strode out of the bay.

  Eloise watched him go, then turned back to the twins. “So, uh … does Dora always sit on the left?” she asked.

  The twins cocked their heads, then turned to look at each other.

  Chapter 6: No Survivors

  Felix Zino sat smoking a cigar on the roof of an abandoned shipyard workshop outside Liberty, Cantor. It was an ugly, hulking, three-floor prefab structure from the colony's early days, when teams of Petaur engineers put their considerable talents to use in putting working ships together from little more than salvaged jump engines and sheet metal.

  Not that Zino cared about any of that, of course. Right now he only cared about the job.

  He checked his watch. It was nearly time. Okay then. He crushed his cigar on the dull grey corrugated steel, then dropped it alongside the remains of two previous cigars in a plastic bag. He slipped the plastic bag inside his white blazer, trotted over a tear in the steel, and swung inside the workshop.

  A few gutted shuttles lay in one corner of the space amid piles of other detritus. Zino popped off the end of one cylindrical engine to reveal an empty cavity. He had already pulled out the innards and scattered them, leaving just enough space for him to squeeze inside. A tiny hole, hidden from view, gave him enough air to breathe. With everything in place, he settled down to wait.