Escape (12 page)

A hulking man in a black masser-hide vest and a white, short-sleeved shirt shoved past Kieran, nearly sending him sprawling into the side of the bulkhead. Kieran indignantly took a few hurried steps toward the man who had shoved him. He was about to make an issue out of it, but then he caught a glimpse of the dripping black skull inked onto the man’s bare arm, and Kieran let the larger man duck through the bulkhead and into the marketplace undisturbed. That was one clan marking that Kieran could recognize. The Carloni Clan. Even union patrollers wouldn't mess with them in frontier space. So long as old man Carloni kept his boys from doing anything too outrageous, the patrollers gladly looked the other way. Get killed by one of the Carloni and the investigation would run into a dead end before long, but kill one of the Carloni and you’d be dead inside a week.

Frowning, Kieran set foot into the marketplace and wove his way through the bustling, noisy crowd. Air filtration systems weren't keeping up. The market had the peculiar odor of too many unwashed bodies crammed into too small a space. Kieran's nose wrinkled as he elbowed past a fat bald man whose face was glistening with sweat and smeared black with engine grease.

Delightful.

After almost five minutes of fighting his way through the crowds, Kieran caught a glimpse of what he was looking for over a bobbing sea of bald and hairy heads
—
a glowing blue neon sign, crafted into a perfect circle, shining valiantly through the greasy gloom with one of the o’s in “loop” dark and cold. The Infinite Lo p.

An infinite loop with a breakpoint.
Kieran chuckled softly to himself. It was a joke only a coder could appreciate. No doubt appreciating the irony, the proprietor had probably left his sign broken on purpose.

When he finally arrived to the counter of the Infinite Loop, Kieran discovered that no one was tending the storefront. He looked around briefly, located a buzzer, pressed it a couple of times, and then waited. He was the only customer waiting.

Kieran kept his gaze fixed on the back right corner of the storefront. In that corner was a dark corridor with muted green light spilling wanly into the barely brighter marketplace. The corridor probably led to the proprietor’s workshop/residence.

After a moment, a lanky boy with greasy black hair emerged. He had a triangular wedge of cheesy Fretalian flatbread in one hand and a leak-proof, reusable can of Fizzy Tricola in the other. Frowning briefly at Kieran, the boy took a healthy bite of his flatbread, wiped a string of cheese off his chin with the back of his hand, and washed it down with a swig of Tricola. He walked up to the counter, set his Tricola down and propped his elbows on the counter to pay better attention to his flatbread.

Looking up briefly from his flatbread, the boy said: “You look like you're lost.”

Kieran was staring at the boy through speculatively narrowed eyes. “And you look like you're too young to be owner of this shop. Perhaps you'd like to get him for me.”

The boy took another bite of his flatbread and flashed him a cheesy grin. Before bothering to swallow, he replied: “Suppose you tell me why you're here before we disturb him?”

“I have a dangerous slicing job with the potential to pay off big.”

“How big?”

Kieran looked around to make sure that no one was paying them any attention. Everyone passing by the store appeared to be intent on his or her own business, but just in case, Kieran leaned forward and whispered: “Half a million tokens.” That was probably a 10th of what the Shadow-class corvette was worth, but he would have to sell it for half price to an unscrupulous dealer just to get it off his hands. It was a pity he couldn't keep it, but it would be marked as stolen property, and Kieran still wanted to see if he could avoid being marked as an outlaw.

The boy's red, sleep-deprived eyes were wide and staring. His flatbread was dripping cheese onto the counter, and his lower jaw hung gapingly from his face.

“Step into my office,” the boy whispered back, gesturing to a section of the counter which was hinged like a gate.

“
You
are the owner of the shop?”

“Appearances can be deceiving. Like you, for example, I took to be another brainless cretitch looking for a way to get back at his girlfriend for cheating on him by peppering the net with embarrassing pictures.”

Frowning, Kieran vaulted over the counter, not bothering to use the gate. The boy smirked at him, snagged his Tricola from the counter and gestured for Kieran to follow him into the green-lit corridor.

After just a few steps, the corridor turned left and emerged in a dark, domed room which gave the impression of an endlessly open space. The ceiling was aglow with stars, the walls displayed an endless plain of purple grasses, flowing and rippling in a wind that Kieran could see but not feel.
Holograms. An expensive decor.
On one side of the room, a green-swirled gas giant hung against the horizon, casting a gloomy, green glow throughout the room.

“Pretty spectral, huh?”

Kieran nodded mutely, his eyes skipping around the room
—
360° of holographic screens. For furniture there was an unmade couch bed, scattered chairs, a large wraparound desk, a kitchen and bar counter to one side.
A messy, but mostly unadorned space.
“Yeah, pretty
 
.
 
.
 
.
spectral,
kid.”

The boy snorted and made his way to the center of the room where the wraparound desk sat, with four holographic displays arrayed in a semicircle around a cushy, black chair. The boy took a seat there and swiveled around to face Kieran.

“You're not so old yourself,” he said, and then squeezed the remainder of his flatbread into his mouth.

Kieran smiled. “Let's get to business. My name is Kieran, and we'll leave it at that.”

“Well, so long as we are being mysterious
 
.
 
.
 
.
” The boy’s voice was muffled from speaking with his mouth full. He spared a moment to lick his greasy fingers. “You can call me Mister X.”

Kieran smirked. Casting his eyes around the room, he located another chair to one side of the boy's desk. Dragging it in front of the young coder, he took a seat.

Kieran opened his mouth to continue, but the boy spoke first. “So what's the job?”

“I need you to disable the emergency lockdown protocols for an UBER facility.”

The boy's eyebrows elevated, but to his credit, his voice was steady when he spoke: “No wonder the pay is so good.”

“The people I'm working with are almost definitely criminals of some kind. I suspect they are terrorists.”

“Wait, you don't even know them, and you want me to help you help them? Are you crazy?”

“They’re in a tight spot. Somehow they triggered the lockdown on a secret UBER facility, and now they can't turn it off. They've promised a shadow-class corvette as payment.”

Mister X. was shaking his head. “Forget it. They're not going to give it to you. They'll wait until you're done helping them, and then they'll kill you. No one would offer an entire ship as payment for slicing job. Especially not such an expensive ship.”

“So program in some safety protocols for us. You can conditionally disable the lockdown, and set it up so that it will only be completely disabled once we’re safely away in the corvette.”

The boy snorted. “Even if I do something clever like that, what's stopping them from holding us hostage or torturing us until we do what they want for free? We're going to need some serious muscle to come along. Just in case things go to the infernal. And you can bet they will.”

Kieran pursed his lips, considering. “You know some guys we can trust not to turn on us?”
—
Or just on me,
he thought.

“I might. But if you're getting a shadow-class corvette as payment, I'm going to need more than half a million tokies for this. You want my help, I want one million.”

“Fine.”

“And the help is going to require another hundred thousand a piece.”

Kieran's eyes narrowed. “How many are you thinking of hiring?”

“A team of three. I've worked with them before, so I know I can trust them.”

“You're sure about that.”

“Don't get your balls crossed, my cowardly friend. If you don't show them which part of your back to stick the knife, I'm quite certain they won't find it on their own.”

“In other words
—
trust them as far as I can jettison them out the airlock.”

Mister X. grinned and reached out with a spindly arm to slap Kieran on the back. “Exactly.”

Kieran nodded. “I'll keep our interests covered.”

“As will I. Now come on.” Mister X. stood up from his chair and started toward the short, green-lit corridor which led back to the storefront. “Let's go meet the lower life forms we're going to be working with. You can explain the rest of this cretich’s quest to me along the way.”

Chapter 6

K
ieran felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle as he heard footsteps coming from behind him.
Clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp.
Someone was approaching the cockpit. He kept his eyes forward, studying the
Interloper’s
displays as he carefully navigated the rented Dashlow Transport through the tunnel from the asteroid's surface to the secret UBER facility within. He couldn't see the man coming down the corridor to the cockpit, but Kieran didn’t need to see him to know that it was Brathus
—
with his heavy, booted feet. Brathus was the de facto leader of the three drifters Kieran had agreed to bring along in case things went “to the infernal” as Mister X. had predicted they would.

“Can't this bucket go any faster?” Brathus asked. Kieran felt hands on the back of his flight chair as Brathus leaned heavily on it.

“If I go any faster, we risk a collision. This ship isn't exactly an interceptor.”

Brathus snorted. “A fine getaway ship you picked.”

“We won't need it to get away, remember? We're flying out of here in a corvette.”

Kieran heard Brathus snort again and then clomp away, back down the corridor from the cockpit to the cabin.
Good riddance,
he thought. Kieran didn't think much of Mister X.'s compatriots. They were all twitchy trigger fingers and bulging biceps with no brains attached. But that was actually the point of hiring them. They were too stupid to be underhanded.
Mister X. on the other hand, is someone to watch.

Yanking the flight stick hard to starboard and applying port lateral thrusters to tighten the turn, Kieran brought the ship around another slow bend in the tunnel. The
Interloper
was a beast to maneuver, but it had been cheap to rent. Cheap as it was, he'd still had to sell his mining buoys to pay for it. His flitter would never have had room for the five of them.
Well, if everything goes according to plan, I'm never going to need another mining buoy again.

As the transport came around the bend in the tunnel, Kieran saw a hazy white glow begin to illuminate the tunnel walls ahead. Then he saw the swirling colors of the TLS gate begin peeking around the corner.

The station came into view, and Kieran aimed for the airlocks. As he drew near, he saw something which sent dread skittering down his spine. Apart from the three ships he'd seen docked to the station a few hours ago, there was now another
—
a flitter, like his. Kieran only needed one guess to figure out whose it was.

So you came to investigate, after all, Cardian.

Kieran frowned, aiming for the one remaining airlock and wondering how the terrorists had greeted their unexpected visitor.
I hope they haven't killed him
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
Cardian was pure weaslin, but he didn’t deserve to die for it. But if they didn't kill him, he would become a loose end for both Kieran and the terrorists
—
an unwanted witness who had nothing to gain by staying silent.

As the station loomed over Kieran’s rented transport, the superstructure began blocking the light from the wormhole and casting flickering shadows over the ship. He decided he'd better announce his presence. Switching to the station's comm frequency, Kieran spoke aloud into the relative silence of the cockpit: “This is Kieran Hawker, piloting the transport,
Interloper
, requesting permission to dock.”

There was a long, hissing pause on the other end of the comm, then came the whisper of a reply: “Get. Help!” It was so softly spoken against the background of static, that at first Kieran had trouble making out the words, and he wondered if maybe his mind was playing tricks on him.

“Say again, control? You're not coming through very clearly. This is Kieran Hawker of the
Interloper
, requesting permission to dock
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
”