Starfishers Volume 2: Starfishers (11 page)

“How come you’re grinning?”

“That’s no grin, lady. That’s what they call a rictus. Of fear. I’m Old Earther. You know how hard it would be for me to walk down a street without at least fifty guys to back me up?”

“I forgot. But there’s nothing to worry about here, Gun.”

“You know it. I know it here in my head. But down here in my guts there’s a caveman who says we’re both liars.”

“If it’s really that hard . . . ”

“No, don’t get upset. I didn’t say I wouldn’t try. I’ve got to get used to it. Hell, I force myself to get out as much as I can. I just wanted to warn you so you won’t think it’s your fault if I get a little jumpy and quiet.”

“You’ll settle down. You’ll see. This is just about the dullest, least dangerous city in The Arm.”

A few hours later, shortly after The Broken Wings’ early night had fallen, Niven snarled, “What did you say back at the hospital? Something about the safest streets in the galaxy?”

The darkness of the alley pressed in. His frightened eyes probed the shadows for movement. The lase-bolt had missed his cheek by a centimeter. He still felt the heat of it. “Even my toenails are shaking, lady.”

Marya fingered her hair. A bolt had crisped it while they were running. Niven’s nostrils twitched as they caught the sharp burnt hair odor.

Marya’s face was pallid in the glow of a distant streetlight. She was shaking too. And apparently too angry to respond.

“You got a jealous boyfriend?”

She shook her head, gasped, “This isn’t Old Earth. People don’t do things like this out here.”

Niven dropped to all fours and crawled to the alley mouth.

Heavy work was not his province, but he had had the basic programs given all field agents. He could make a show if he had to.

He had to do something now. The alley was a cul-de-sac. And the rifleman might be teamed. A deathtrap could be closing.

A bolt scarred brick above his head. He rolled away, growling, “Starscope. Damn!” But he had spotted the triggerman. The bolt had come from atop a warehouse across the street.

“Can’t be much of a shot,” Niven mumbled. “That isn’t fifty meters.”

If he could survive the sprint across the street . . . 

There was a startled exclamation from the gunman’s position, then a choked wail of fear and pain. A body plunged off the warehouse roof and thumped into the street.

Niven was across in an instant, shoving himself into the warehouse wall while he studied the corpse.

The weak light revealed the limper from the Marcos lobby. His windpipe had been crushed.

Every man’s signature is unique. And an assassin leaves a grim sort of signature on his victims. Niven knew this one. He peered upward.

Why would Mouse be shadowing him?

Not that he objected. Not right now.

Marya arrived. She averted her eyes. “You must have a guardian angel.”

“One of us does.” He stared at her. Something clicked. It was nothing he could define, just a tweak of uneasiness because she had not asked him why anyone would want to kill him. A civilian would have asked that right away.

He looked for the assassin’s weapon, did not see it. “I’m going to try to get onto that roof.”

“Why? Shouldn’t we get out of here?”

Another click. Civilians started screaming for the police. Outworlds civilians, anyway.

“Yeah, I guess. If he had anybody with him we would have heard from them by now.” But where to go? he wondered. Not the hotel. Not with the number officially on. Not with the war rules proclaimed. And not to a safehouse. He did not yet know what Mouse had arranged. And he could not make the fallbacks to find out with Marya tagging along.

The death threat had alerted the professional in him. Had raised barriers that would wall off the whole universe till he had sorted the friends from enemies and noncombatants.

“We could go to my place,” Marya suggested.

Memories of countless spy and detective dramas battled for Niven’s attention. Was it all a setup? Three misses at fifty meters seemed unlikely for even a clumsy assassin. But he did not want to believe that Marya was involved. She was such a magnetic, animal woman . . . 

Believe it or not, only a cretin would have ignored the possibility completely. Survival had become the stake on the board.

He dared not let her know he was suspicious. “All right.” He looked around fearfully, having no trouble projecting shakiness and confusion. “But I’ve got to do a couple of things first.”

Their eyes met. And he knew. He did not want it to be, but it was true. She was the enemy. Right now she was trying to find an excuse to stay close to him that would not arouse his suspicions.

She was not a good actress. Under stress she could not control the body language signals that betrayed her thoughts.

He felt betrayed and hurt, though he had known her just one day.

He had always needed to be wanted. Not for whom or what he was, but just as a human being.

Human. Was she even human? There was no sure way of telling without complicated tests. Geneticists were certain that humanity and the Sangaree shared a prehistoric ancestry.

She might even be the new Sangaree Resident. The last one had been a woman.

“Where do you stay?” he asked.

She chose not to push. She explained how he could get to her apartment.

“You don’t have to do this,” he told her, then cursed silently. By saying that, he had tacitly admitted being the sniper’s target. But sometimes it was necessary to take chances. He could at least feed her belief in his lack of suspicion. “It might be dangerous.”

“That’s all right. I’ve never been involved in anything like this.” Feigned excitement illuminated her face. “What have I gotten myself into, Gun?”

It was smoke screen time. “Sweetheart, I don’t know. I really don’t. This is the second time I’ve been jumped, but nobody bothered to tell me why last time either. They tried it right in the Marcos before. The day we got here. And we don’t even know anybody here. But people have been following me all the time, and . . . If you’re an Old Earther, you sense things like that.”

“Maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s your friend.”

“John? I never thought of that. I guess it’s possible. I don’t really know anything about him. The Corporation sent him. Anyway, whatever’s going on, I mean to find out.”

He had yielded just enough distorted truth, he hoped, to leave her with doubts. A lot depended on whether or not the opposition had been able to evade Mouse’s bug-scans.

“Will you be all right, Marya? Should I walk you home?”

“I’ll manage.”

“Probably be safer without me, anyway. See you in a while.” He glanced at the dead man, then the streets. Not a soul was stirring.

It was odd how people sensed a gathering storm, then stayed inside where they would witness nothing and run no risks. Though this was a warehouse district, there should have been some traffic. Hell. Where were the security patrols? Where were the police cruisers?

He had seen the same thing happen on Old Earth, where the gangs went to their guns at the slightest provocation. Citizens and enforcers always kept a low profile till the stink of gunsmoke left the air.

Mouse was not at the first fallback, nor had he left a message. Niven did find a hastily scribbled message at the second. It told him that Marya was the new Sangaree Resident. And, as if in afterthought, Mouse went on to say that he was on the run from a dozen men who had gotten onto him after the incident at the warehouse.

Niven scratched a reply, explaining where he would be. The drop was large, so he left the notes he had taken at the Med Center.

Those had to be salvaged no matter what. Maybe by Chief Navy Recruiter for The Broken Wings. He was the Bureau Angel City station chief.

Niven began drifting, killing time in order to give Marya a chance to make a move that would illuminate the outfit’s current thinking. After an hour he picked up a sticktight.

His shadow was a sleepy-faced thug pretending to be a derelict. A not-too-bright offworlder, Niven decided. Angel City was too young and thoroughly ordered to sustain even a one-man Bowery.

The man did not move in. They were hoping he would lead them to Mouse.

He observed his shadow’s tradecraft more out of curiosity than concern. The man was a professional but unaccustomed to this kind of work. He was probably a shooter or runner grabbed simply because he was available. He could be shaken at leisure. Niven shifted him to the back burner of awareness.

He drifted toward Marya’s apartment. His nerves settled. He decided what he was going to do.

He did not relax completely. They might catch Mouse. Then his life would be worthless. But while Mouse remained at large, he was sure, they would not harm him.

He shook the sticktight, found a public comm, woke the Angel City station chief, explained where the Med Center information was hidden. He used a word code the other side would need hours to unravel—assuming they were tapping at all.

He reached Marya’s apartment as dawn began coloring the dome. The molecularly stacked plastic glimmered redly. As the sunlight changed its angle of incidence, the plastic would alternate between transparency and a progression up an iridescent spectrum.

He was tired but still alert, and exhilarated because he had handled himself well.

Marya responded to his knock instantly. “Where have you been? she demanded. “I’ve been worried sick.” She peered over his shoulder, along the second floor hallway.

Checking for Mouse? For her backup?

“Somebody started following me around. I didn’t know what to do, so I just walked around till he gave up. Or I lost him.”

“Gun, I don’t understand all this. Why? . . . ”

“Honey, I don’t know. And I’ve been thinking hard. All I can figure is maybe one of Ubichi’s competitors thinks I’m after something besides that research data . . . ” He paused, pretending to have been startled by a thought. “Hey! They never did tell me why they want the data. I just assumed . . . Maybe it’s for a project that’s stepping on somebody’s toes.”

Had he been what he claimed, the possibility would have been real. Ubichi maintained its own armed forces. The frontier corporations played rough.

Uncertainty filled Marya’s eyes for a moment.

Bureau miscalculated
, he thought. He could have convinced her had he looked like a social psychologist. His cover could be checked all the way back to his birth. The Bureau was thorough that way. Especially Beckhart’s section.

But Niven looked like an Old Earth heavy. And that was the death of any other credential a man could present.

“Mom? What’s going on?” A dark-haired girl of seven or eight stumbled into the room. She ground sleepy eyes with the backs of her fists. She was small for her age, a breastless miniature of her mother.

“Brandy, this is my friend Dr. Niven. I told you about him.”

“Oh.”

Less than enthusiastic, Niven thought. In fact, her expression said he was a threat to her world.

She was a beautiful child. Straight out of a toy ad.

Niven could not frame a compliment that did not sound inane. “Hi, Brandy. You can call me Gun. It’s short for Gundaker.”

“Gundaker? What kind of name is that?”

“Old Earth.”

“Oh.” She wrinkled her lip. “Mom called you Doctor. Michael’s sick.”

He turned to Marya. The woman still stood at the door. “My son. Brandy’s younger brother. He’s got some kind of bug. Looks like flu.”

“I’m not that kind of doctor, Brandy. But if there’s anything I can do . . . ”

“Do you know any good stories? Michael don’t like the ones I make up. And Mom’s never here.” She glanced at her mother accusingly.

She was good, Niven thought. Better than Marya. “What kind of stories? Pirates? Olden days? War stories? Richard Hawksblood and Gneaus Julius Storm? Did you know they fought a war right here on The Broken Wings?”

He mentioned it casually, conversationally, fishing for a reaction. The war in the Shadowline, the last great mercenary war, had taken place on Blackworld not long after the encounter on The Broken Wings.

Sangaree interests had taken a beating because of the Shadowline. But one or two Families had begun recouping here before the shock-waves from Blackworld had died.

Getting caught with their hands in there had cost them control of numerous legitimate corporations and the lives of several Family chieftains. The disaster had been so huge and widespread that it had become Sangaree legend.

The girl just shrugged, implying that Blackworld meant nothing to her. “Pirates, probably.” She seemed to lose interest.

She left the room. Cooking sounds followed her departure.

Must not have heard about the Shadowline
, Niven thought. What Family did Marya represent? A minor one crowding the First Families because of their loss of face on Blackworld? Surely not one that had been involved there.

“She’s a doll,” he told Marya. “You thought about getting her into modeling?”

“No. She wouldn’t. Sit down. Relax. Ill fix you something to eat. Then I’ll move Michael in here. You can sleep in the kids’ bed.”

Brandy brought coffee. It was real.

He discovered what Marya had meant about Brandy. He had not caught it earlier because she had not looked his way.

The girl’s one eye trained wildly walleyed and appeared blind.

He showed no reaction to her pained, defiant stare. Her sensitivity screamed at him. He supposed the damage was recent.

Niven indulged in tradecraft during the few seconds when Brandy had returned to the kitchen and Marya had not yet returned. He examined his surroundings critically.

The time would come when he would have to report, accurately, where every speck of dust had lain.

The apartment was cramped. That was typical of dome city living quarters. It was sparsely populated by ragged second-hand furniture. That was to be expected of poor folks. And Marya, clearly, was not an obsessive housekeeper. Cobwebs hung in the ceiling corners. Junk cluttered the chairs and floors.

Her sloppiness had nothing to do with poverty or lack of time, only with habit. Sangaree at home had animal servants who picked up after them.