Ghost Legion (22 page)

"Yes, we know," said Cynthia, watching numbers flash past
her; XJ meekly provided the required information. "A real shame,
too. Oh, not that she's pregnant. Congratulations and all that. But
the timing was bad. You see, we have a high regard for your wife. She
was on our list of recruits, but the pregnancy forced us to cross her
off."

"There'll still be a spot open for her, if she wants to go back
to work after the kids come," said Don, relaxing in the
copilot's chair.

"Uh, thanks, but I think she saw enough 'work' during the
counter-revolution to last her the rest of her life. Same with me, if
you take my meaning," Tusk added, but either they didn't or they
were deliberately ignoring him or it didn't make any difference to
them one way or the other.

Cynthia told XJ to prepare for the Jump. Don leaned back in his
chair, put his feet up on the console—thereby breaking one of
the computer's most inviolable laws, second only to leaving wet
towels on deck.

Tusk glanced at XJ, saw its light flare. The computer made a sort of
electronic, strangled, choking sound, but at that moment Mrs. Mopup
emitted a short, sharp buzz. XJ's lights flickered in a moment of
wild indecision, then blinked dismally and went out.

"That call?" Tusk urged. "Before we hit hyperspace? My
wife's gonna be real worried. . . ."

"No, she won't," said Cynthia. "We already prepared a
message to send to Nola, recorded in your voice, saying that you've
had trouble with the Scimitar and that you'll be stranded on Akara
until you can raise the money for spare parts."

"Recorded? My voice?" Tusk gaped. "When'd you do
that?"

"The same time we got all the rest of the information on you
that we fed into Mrs. Mopup," said Don. "Fix me another,
will you?" He held out his empty glass to Tusk. "I'll take
bourbon, since you ran out of scotch."

Gloomily, Tusk took the glass and stomped sullenly over to the liquor
dispenser, his fleeting hope of getting a message to Admiral Dixter
gone. The moment she heard his voice—his real voice—Nola
would have known immediately something was wrong and Tusk, with a few
well-chosen words, could have given his wife a pretty good idea what.
She would have put in a call to Dixter and, while Tusk couldn't think
of a whole hell of a lot the Lord of the Admiralty could do to help,
still, he'd have known where Tusk was and maybe what was going on—
even if Tusk didn't.

But now . . . Yeah, they'd done their homework. Tusk was always
having to lay over on some planet or another to make repairs. Nola
wouldn't think to question it. She probably wouldn't even call;
interplanetary communication cost money and she wasn't the insecure
type of wife who needed to hear her husband's voice every night
before she went to sleep. Nor was she the least bit jealous.

All of which made for a fine marriage, Tusk thought, but is damn
inconvenient when you've been hijacked.

He resolved then and there to work out a series of coded
communications with Nola when—and if—he made it back.
This wouldn't do him a lot of good now, but devising them kept him
busy during the Jump, after which he could do nothing but lie on his
uncomfortable bed and fume and try to think of some way of tricking
Don into dropping a wet towel on the deck.

"You ever been to Hell's Outpost?" Tusk asked Link during
one of the few times during the day they were permitted to talk
together. (Cynthia referred to it as the "happy hour.")

"Nope," said Link. "Got more sense."

Tusk could have debated that one. Considering the fact that, from
what he'd heard, there were no gambling casinos on Hell's Outpost, he
decided Link was probably telling the truth.

"You?" Link asked.

Tusk shook his head. "Never any reason to." He cast a
mean-ingful glance at Don. "I've never been
that
desperate. And I don't intend to start."

"You guys got the wrong idea," said Don. He always joined
them during happy hour, along with Mrs. Mopup, who planted herself in
between the three of them and held their drinks on a tray. "Sure,
I know Hell's Outpost has a bad rep, but in reality it's a
convenient, quiet, and safe place to do business. There are only two
prerequisites: If you go expecting to be hired, you've got to be the
best, and if you go expecting to hire the best, you've got to have
cash."

"Hire to do what, though?" Tusk grunted.

"Whatever needs to be done," Don said, shrugging. "Nothing
all that bad. Cynthia and I—we don't look like shady
characters, do we?"

Cynthia, relaxing in the pilot's seat, reading a fashion mag, looked
up at Tusk and smiled in a warm and friendly manner.

"Naw." Tusk waved a hand. "Just damn near murdered us.
Not to mention kidnapping, hijacking, and God knows what else you
have in mind."

"More bourbon?"

Tusk handed over his glass. Don filled it, helped himself. Sitting
back down, he rested his glass on top of Mrs. Mopup, grinned.

"I swear. You got us all wrong. What've you lost? A week's time.
You've had a nice little paid vacation. You're rested, relaxed—"

"Wait a minute. What was that again?
Paid?
" Link
perked up.

"Well, sure. We intend to make this worth your while."

"
If
we play the game. . . ."

"Tusk, my friend"—Don leaned forward, earnest,
sincere, honest as any vacuum cleaner salesman—"you don't
even have to roll the dice. We just want you to listen to us. We want
the chance to make you an offer."

Make you an offer.

Words Tusk was to hear again, almost exactly twenty-four hours later,
on Hell's Outpost, in the Exile Cafe.

Tusk wasn't certain what he'd expected Hell's Outpost to be like, but
on arrival he was disappointed. He'd been imagining (no matter what
good old Don said to the contrary) a sin city similar to Laskar,
where anything or anyone could be had for a price and every morning
when you woke up you checked to make certain someone hadn't stuck a
knife in your ribs the night before.

Hell's Outpost, located on the fringes of the galaxy, was as Don had
said, a quiet, safe, and convenient place to conduct business. People
went there on business—serious business. They didn't have the
time for nonsense.

The main structure located on the cold, gray, and atmosphereless moon
was a building known as the Exile Cafe. Shaped like half a giant egg
upended on the moon's surface, the cafe was a collection of
rooms—also shaped like half-eggs—built around a central
large bar area. The rooms were private—extremely private.
People paid a lot of money to conduct business in these rooms in
private. -

In the bar area sat other people, who were there for various private
reasons of their own. Some of them were looking for work. Others had
work and were looking for the means to complete it. Still others were
just resting. People in the rooms could view the people in the bar by
means of vidscreens. Different colored lights on the tables indicated
whether or not the person being viewed was available for hire or
merely passing time between jobs.

Weapons were permitted inside the Exile Cafe—a person had the
right to advertise his/her skills. But the weapons were not to be
used. That was the law and it was broken on penalty of immediate
death. As far as anyone knew, the law had never been broken.

Aware of this, Tusk toyed with the idea of giving Don and Cynthia the
slip once they got into the cafe. How could they stop him? But he was
forced to abandon the idea. First the law was good only
inside
the cafe and it was a long and lonely walk there and back.

"A lot could happen to a guy," said Cynthia.

Second, Don and Mrs. Mopup were staying on board Tusk's Scimitar.

"We'll keep an eye on it for you. I'd hate like hell for you to
come back and find out something'd happened to your spaceplane,"
said Don, settling into the pilot's seat, his feet on the console, a
glass of scotch (he'd restocked in the Exile Cafe) in his hand. "Mrs.
Mopup and I'll take good care of it. Don't worry about a thing. Enjoy
yourself."

"Thanks," Tusk muttered, and exchanged glances with Link,
who shrugged and shook his head.

So much for that idea.

As they entered the atmosphere dome, shed their pressurized suits,
and stored them in lockers, Tusk had to admit he wasn't certain he'd
have gone through with ducking out anyway. By now he was damn curious
to know what was going on. And he was even beginning to get the
feeling he might not only live through it, but maybe even profit by
it.

All comers to the Exile Cafe entered through the lobby—a small
room decorated in red velvet with a long, curved blond-wood desk, an
android greeter who probably doubled as bouncer, and banks of
vidscreens and cams. The vidscreens showed those who were inside the
bar to those outside; the cams showed those who were outside to those
inside. Those in the private rooms remained private.

Cynthia and the 'droid clerk exchanged greetings and she was informed
of the house rules, which she apparently knew already. She had her
eyeball scanned, and the 'droid made a call, and then they were all
invited to walk inside. Tusk, listening with one ear, heard nothing
to make him nervous.

He and Link, escorted by Cynthia, walked into a sensory deprivation
chamber that effectively mixed him up so thoroughly once he was
inside that he had no notion of how to find his way back out. He
wondered what would happen if he tried to exit through the entrance,
and decided that the chamber might well deprive him of more than his
senses.

An android waiter, built to resemble a human male down to the last
detail—which could be determined by the bulge in his
G-string—approached Cynthia and greeted her by name.

"Well-programmed," said Link to Tusk.

"Yeah, but for what?" Tusk returned.

"You name it" said Cynthia, smiling. She arched a friendly
eyebrow. "This way, gentlemen "

The waiter led them through the bar, with its crowds of humans and
aliens and bright multicolored globes that seemed to illuminate
everything until yon wanted to see something. Faces were distorted by
the weird play of light against shadow. Tusk wouldn't have recognized
Nola if she'd been sitting at the table across from him, so there was
no point in searching the place for someone he knew. The tables were
arranged in a maze. The flickering lights made him almost dizzy, but
not quite; the shad-ows disoriented him completely. He had no idea
which way was front, back, up, or down.

"No such thing as a fast getaway in this joint," said Link
in Tusk's ear.

Tusk grunted.

The android—whose body was thoughtfully and tastefully-painted
with luminous paint, or they would have lost him completely—led
the way to an anti-gravator. Cynthia stepped inside, was immediately
floated upward. Tusk sailed up after her, Link drifting up beside
him. The waiter ascended after them either keeping an eye on them or
on Cynthia.

She caught hold of a ring on what Tusk counted as the eighth floor,
pulled herself over to a door. She motioned. They followed. Emerging
from the lift, they entered a long, narrow corridor flanked by
innumerable locked doors. She marched them down the corridor. Coming
to a door, she stopped, waited.

A cam mounted over the door scanned her eyeball. The door slid open,
revealing what looked like a room in an expensive hotel, except that
it had no bed, only a desk with several chairs around it, a vidscreen
on the desk, a couch, a table. Another closed door led to what was
probably a bathroom. A tall and handsome dark-haired man in uniform
stood by a large window, staring down at the bar about eight floors
beneath. At the sound of the door, he turned, smiled.

"Mendaharin Tusca," said Cynthia. "Captain Richard
Dhure. Go right on in," she added. "I'll be back to pick
you up when the interview's over."

"This is Captain Link," said Tusk, getting a firm grip on
Link's arm. "Captain Link, meet Captain . . . what was that?"

"Dhure," said the captain, smiling in a warm and friendly
manner. "Glad to meet you, Captain Link. Just come on in, will
you, Tusca? Cynthia will escort Captain Link to his interview—"

"Sorry," said Link, his arm draped over Tusk's shoulder.
"But we can't be separated. We're twins. It wouldn't be good for
us. Upsets our psyche."

"Twins?" said Captain Dhure, eyeing them.

"Mom was white, dad was black," explained Tusk. "They
wanted one each—to match."

"I see." Dhure grinned, playing along. "Well, you
gentlemen won't be apart for long. Cynthia, Captain Link is going to
be late for his interview." The smile was still there, but the
tone indicated the game was over.

Link shrugged, let his arm fall. "See you, bro."

"Yeah," said Tusk, with a grim glance at Dhure. "If I
don't, I'll come looking for you."

"Same here. Well, I guess it's you and me, sweetheart,"
said Link, sauntering on down the corridor after Cynthia. "Couldn't
wait to get me alone, eh?"

Tusk stood in the doorway, determined to be as uncooperative as
possible, curious to see what the captain would do. Instead of
pulling a lasgun and threatening to blast him—which is what
Tusk had expected—Dhure left his post by the window, crossed
over to Tusk, shook hands.

"Really glad to meet you at last, Tusca," he said. "Come
in."

With gentle pressure, he led Tusk into the room, steered him over to
the desk, and indicated a chair. The door automatically shut and
locked behind them.

"Please, be seated. Can I get you anything? Something to eat,
drink? It's on our tab, of course."

"And you know what you can do with it," said Tusk, refusing
to sit down. "What the hell is going on?"

"Thirty minutes," said Dhure, spreading his hands. "That's
all I ask. Surely, since you came this far—"