Star Risk - 02 Scoundrel Worlds (2 page)

"I see you nodding, Grok. It gets worse.

"So we moil here and there, and there's no sign of Purvis, and then it's time for the games to start. It's one-all, then two-all, and game five is gonna settle matters. We get reliable word that our boy is gonna be at the game, and so we show up. We've got prize seats, two ways out, and a big sack to put Purvis in when we find him.

"The stadium, by the way, is�or was, anyway�sort of open air, with the antigravs hung on spidery scaffolding arcing over the top.

"It was a crappy hot day, and the sun was blistering down. I wanted a beer in the worst way, but I knew if I got one and the mucketies found out I was sluicing on the job, I'd get a strip torn off�which would've been a lot better than what happened to all of us when we got back to friendly waters.

"But I'm getting ahead of things. None of us were paying attention to the game, we're busy looking around for our lad. And we spot him, in the last ten minutes. It was kind of hard to see, because all the stands were glittering. The Cheslea fans had programs that were silver foil, and the dazzle was, well, dazzling.

"There's a lot of hollering going on because it's a tight game, and everybody from Cheslea just knows the referees have been bought out by Warick. We're working our way up to the top of the stadium, and the score is tied. Then Cheslea makes a goal, and the officials call it illegal or some such.

"I thought the fans were going to go apeshit, especially when Warick scores a few seconds later, and the clock is running out. Instead, this low muttering starts, and gets louder, and I feel a creep going down my spine. Everybody else with me is looking just as nervous.

"The officials are gathered together, down on the field. Then there's this almighty flash, coming from everywhere, and a gout of smoke, like some kind of silent nuke, and there's no more goddamned referees down there.

"Turns out this was Purvis's ultimate plan if things went awry. Print the programs on this silver reflecting paper. Put a little aiming hole in it�which was disguised as a skyball with an emblem on the cover�and then, if things went wrong, as they just had, hold the program up, catch the sun, and aim it down at the officials.

"The whole stadium was a huge mirror. Fried the refs like steaks�well-done steaks. Barely a few coals here and there. And at that point things went completely berserk, with the fans from Warick trying to get out and back to their transports, and the Cheslea rooters trying to stop them.

"It was a hell of a riot. A hell of a riot," Goodnight repeated.

"What happened to your target, this Purvis?" Riss asked.

"We found out he got dead in the hooraw," Goodnight said blandly. "Which of course none of us had anything to do with. But we still got in a world of shit when we got back to base.

"There's no justice in this world," he concluded, then looked at Grok. "And that's the kind of thing you've dumped us into for a lousy mil and burial expenses."

"Sometimes I wish," Riss said forlornly, "Star Risk didn't have this tradition of never refusing an assignment unless we don't get paid or the client's lied to us more than acceptably. Who made that idiot policy, anyway?"

"I think," Friedrich said, "it was you, m'dear."

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THREE � ^ � The madhouse started at Warick's main spaceport. Fans from Cheslea were cascading off chartered transports, arriving in every shape from unconscious and on stretchers to hungover and fighting to sober and looking for a drink.

The five Star Risk operatives came in on a standard liner, and were able to grab a lim to their hotel by virtue of looking sober and waving a large bill. They overflew improvised parades, street fairs, and marching bands.

"So who'd'ja favor?" the lim driver asked.

"Peace and quiet," von Baldur said.

The driver snorted.

"Damn little of that to be got for the next two weeks. P'raps I best run you back to the port and you can try another system."

"We are where we belong," Riss said.

The driver looked back and almost sideswiped a cargo lifter dripping banners: warick rules, uniteds conquer, and such.

"You folks have something to do with the finals?" He was about to be impressed.

"We're psychologists," Goodnight said. "Specializing in the madness of crowds."

The driver's head snapped forward, and he said no more. As they grounded at the Shelburne�which was not only where the officials were staying but also the most luxurious hotel on Warick�he refused both to help unload their surprisingly heavy luggage, and a tip as well, sitting statuelike behind the controls of his lifter.

"I note they take this skyball most seriously," Grok said. "I have never heard of a cabbie refusing a tip."

"That's a sign and a warning," Riss said. "Let's make sure we don't do anything else to show what we think."

"And, most particularly," von Baldur said, "make sure we do not wear any emblems suggesting we back either the Black Devils or the Uniteds. Nor should we mistakenly wear their colors, which are, naturally, black and red for the Devils, and solid blue for the Uniteds."

"Actually," Weitman said, "we're quite prepared for all normal eventualities."

Six other male and female officials in the hotel suite room nodded agreement.

"First," the referee went on, "note my outer clothing. These black-and-white striped pants and shirt are proof against most solid projectiles�although, of course, the impact must still be accounted for. This is why, under the shirt and extending down over my groin, is a shock-absorbing vest, which is also intended to deal with hurled bottles, rocks, and such.

"My little cap is padded, and will take an impact of a kilo at up to twenty kph. My boots are steel-toed and -soled, and I'm wearing knee and elbow pads in case I get knocked down.

"I'll have gas plugs in my nostrils, and baffled plugs in my ears, in case they try to use any amplified sound devices against us.

"Plus, I'm carrying a small gas projector on my belt, and�you must not breathe a word of this to anyone else�I'm carrying a small aperture blaster here, in my crotch.

"And of course there's stadium security, supposedly one for every twenty-five people in the audience, although we've got to assume some of these guards will be as likely to be partisan as the crowds. Which is why we're depending on you five to get us out of any real problems."

He smiled at the Star Risk operatives.

"Wonderful," Goodnight said. "Simply frigging wonderful. Ah, for the life of a sports fan."

Both the Devils and the Uniteds were at the peak of their performance in the first game. The action swayed back and forth for three quarters, neither side able to score.

Then, halfway through the fourth quarter, with Cheslea having the ball, the Warick team leapt high into the air, trying a drive over the Warick line, going up almost to the roof of the covered stadium, floating for an instant in mock weightlessness, then lobbing the ball hard for the small goal.

The pitch was clear of the antigrav generators and was going straight as hurled, when its gyro came to life and sent the ball spinning into the hands of a Warick end.

He moved instantly, threw hard, under the Cheslea players still coming down from their positions near the roof.

One�nothing.

And that was the only score for the game.

There'd also been no penalties called, even though M'chel Riss, from her position in a skybox, saw at least two kneeings and one punch to a woman's breasts.

The fans were well behaved, and most were fairly sober. Grok saw only twenty or so people grabbed by stadium security for offenses like hurling smuggled bottles at the players, or having a private punch-up in their row.

"If it stays like this," Weitman said, "we'll all be home free."

Star Risk decided they'd spread out through the stadium for the second game, keeping only the most noticeable Grok in the skybox, and a com to their earpieces.

This game was far more open than the first. It seemed both sides had been gauging their opponents, and now, having found weaknesses, they drove for the kill.

And this time the officials seemed to have done the same. Eight penalties were called in the first quarter, six in the second.

The score was 7-3, again with Warick in the lead.

A woman official had just called the first penalty of the third�tripping, which seemed to be one of the few things beyond bludgeons skyball didn't permit.

Von Baldur caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He spun, saw an enormously fat woman dig something out of her oversize handbag and scale it at the referee.

Von Baldur shouted "Down," into his com mike and the official went flat. The something turned out to be a handmade ancient boomerang, and smashed into the turf not a meter from the referee's body.

The obese woman was digging in her handbag once more. Friedrich didn't wait around to see what it was, but swarmed over the high fence separating the fans from the field.

There was a stadium security man who shouted: "You! Hey you! You can't do that!"

Von Baldur paid him no mind, but went up the steps two at a time, then shouldered his way into the row the fat woman was in, just as she pulled out what looked to be a grenade.

A younger man with the same piggy features as the fat woman came up, fists lifting.

Von Baldur snap-kicked him in the chest and let him stumble into his evident relative, then rolled away as the grenade, hissing, dropped to the concrete.

A few seconds later it went off, and a noxious gas sprayed the area. By that time von Baldur was rolling back down the steps, not turning around to see people gagging, on their knees choking and vomiting, until he was halfway back the way he'd come.

He noted with satisfaction that the fat woman and her relative were among the worst hit, then looked down at what had been his rather dapper lounging outfit.

"New suit," he muttered. "Three hundred and twenty-seven credits. Expense."

The end score was 9-4. Two out of two for Warick. The game had been stopped three times when players were taken off on stretchers. One of them didn't appear to be breathing.

The visiting fans from Cheslea were going somewhat berserk, sure that the game was rigged for Warick, that somehow the antigravs or the ball itself had been rigged to favor the home team.

Goodnight was in the Shelburne's bar�the archaically named Heron and Beaver�and he saw one of the Warrick players, surrounded by two prosperous businessmen sporting blue and half a dozen bodyguards�women and men whose eyes never stopped sweeping the crowded bar, and whose hands stayed close to their waistbands.

Goodnight wandered over, and when the player made a joke about a rival team, Goodnight laughed, lifted his glass in a mock toast, grinned wryly.

"You know about the Knights, eh?"

Goodnight had never heard of them. "Of course," he said. "And your story isn't the half of it." He told a story of his own. The original butt of the joke had been an incompetent and unlucky Alliance unit, but now it became the Knights.

One of the businessmen bought him another beer, and Goodnight was suddenly the player's new best friend, although the bodyguards regarded him most suspiciously. Chas wasn't sure what he was looking for, other than more familiarity with the assignment.

The businessmen got drunk, but everyone else stayed sober. Goodnight let it appear that he was becoming wobblier than he was. The evening wasn't producing much, except the probability of a thick head if Goodnight kept drinking. Fortunately, tomorrow was a rest day.

"So tell me, Dov," Chas said, deep in the evening, "I could see today how good you are. But what made you get into skyball in the first place? What else did you consider?"

"Aw," the man said, "I always liked playing. I come from money, so m' da had a yacht, and we could always make up a game somewhere in the asteroids or in one of the system's boneyards.

"Why'd I turn pro?" Dov looked around, making sure no one else was listening. "I got in some trouble, and the magistrate said it was either conditioning, prison, or going offworld. Da had disowned me, so I was thinking about the military.

"But that sounded real dangerous, and so when a semipro team said they needed substitutes, I made damned sure I was there at the head of the line and worked my ass off to play harder and better than anyone else.

"I mean, the Alliance military? You can get actually killed doing that."

Goodnight had nothing to say.

"If you're awake and coherent," Grok said in what he probably thought was a coo, "or at least awake, since you're on your feet, Chas, my friend, I have something of interest for you and for the others."

The Star Risk operatives were assembled for a scanty breakfast in one of the suites' dining rooms.

Riss and Jasmine had little but juice and bran cereal since they were watching their weight. Grok had had four raw eggs and tea, and Freddie von Baldur, also aware of his waistline, had just caff.

Goodnight, who normally shoveled down breakfast platters with both hands, was gingerly putting fruit juice and vitamins down.

"I have acquired," Grok went on, "probably from too long an association with you humans�a time period that can be measured in nanoseconds�a certain distrust for humanity."

"A good thing to have," von Baldur said.

"Over the past four days, I've taken the liberty to plant some devices, listening devices, in our clients' rooms," Grok said.

"Imagine my surprise when I discovered that four of the seven have been in negotiations with various elements to shade their judgments."

"Well, bless my soul," Jasmine said. "And we're supposed to be keeping them alive?"

"Let's bail," Chas said, hangover making him snarly.

"Perhaps we should, perhaps we should not," Grok said. "It is interesting that two of them appear to have taken bribes to favor Cheslea, and two to back Warick in their calls."

"Ah," M'chel said. "That makes it two against two against three. Assuming those three haven't already made their own arrangements."