Read The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

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BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
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Beka drained the last of the wine, and set down the empty glass. A stray drop slid down the stem to stain the white tablecloth. She pushed back her chair, stood, and was obscurely pleased to find that she was taller than the stranger by a head or more.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Come on, Professor.”
“No,” said the contact hurriedly. “My principal wishes to deal with Captain Portree alone.”
Beka glanced over at her copilot. He looked concerned—he’ d told her many times, during the past few months of training and practice, that splitting up a team was not a good idea. But the meeting upstairs sounded important, maybe even bigger than the data banks at FIL, and she couldn’t afford to let the chance go by.
“Good enough,” she said to the beefy type. “Professor, you wait here. Buy yourself some more wine—I’ll be back to help you finish the next bottle.”
She followed the contact up the Palace’s broad curving staircase to a bank of lifts on the second level. The lift took them up to a penthouse office: plush-carpeted, wood-paneled, and soundproof. A closed door set into the paneling behind the desk led to somewhere deeper within the office complex.
A quick, automatic count showed her six men lounging about the room. One or two had the slab-jawed look of hirelings who only thought when the boss told them to think, but the others had the quick, dangerous air of freelance operatives. Few of them carried blasters openly, but she knew that appearances meant nothing.
The banker or lawyer or whatever who rose from behind the desk had a smile like a holovid hero. “Well, Captain Portree—it’s a pleasure to see you in the flesh at last.”
He held out his hand, and Beka met it with hers. The holovid hero’s grip turned out to be firmer than she’d anticipated, but that was all right. Hours of work at
Warhammer
’s control’s, or helping the dockworkers shift cargo, had put more strength into her own long fingers than most people expected, whether from Beka Rosselin-Metadi or Tarnekep Portree.
“The pleasure is all mine, Gentlesir,” she said. “How can I be of assistance?”
The holovid hero sat down again and waved her to a chair opposite. “To be quite candid, a certain young officer in the Space Force has recently come to our attention.”
Beka leaned back in her chair, and placed her fingertips together. The dandy’s ruffles cascading over her wrists in a froth of pure white spidersilk hid the hilt of the dagger, but her right hand knew in sinew and bone the quick, smooth motion that would bring it into view like a snake striking.
“An entanglement of that kind is likely to draw more attention than the average,” she said aloud. “I suppose you’re prepared to set the price accordingly.”
“We are, indeed,” said the holovid hero, with a smile that dazzled. “My principals have authorized me to offer you five hundred thousand—half in advance, and the other half upon fulfillment of the contract.”
Oily bastard
, Beka thought, and smiled back at him over her steepled hands.
“Excellent,” she said. “And the name, Gentlesir?”
“Ari Rosselin-Metadi,” he said. “A Medical Service officer, and a man impossible to mistake once you have his description. Unfortunately, the lieutenant has proved difficult for my principals to deal with unaided.”
Ari, you big idiot
, thought Beka, still smiling across her hands at the man behind the desk.
What have you gotten into?
“I take it you want him dealt with more or less permanently, then,” she said.
“Permanently,” agreed the other. “You’d have to use the utmost discretion, of course, because of the, ah, previous incident.”
Beka forced herself to keep her voice level and disinterested. “Don’t worry. Blaster-work in full view of the entire Grand Council and the lady’s husband isn’t my style.”
“That whole affair should have been better-managed,” said the holovid hero. “Vosebil was good enough to change the antiseptic at the Medical Center, and smart enough to subcontract out to the best. He could have poisoned the Domina any day of the week with less publicity.”
“The way the holovids plastered that affair all over the civilized galaxy, I’d have said ‘publicity’ was the whole idea.”
“Trust me, Captain Portree. Publicity is the last thing that Dahl&Dahl are looking for. We were not pleased with Gentlesir Vosebil’s handling of his assignment.” The holovid hero’s sculpted lips narrowed in disdain. “We hope, Captain, that you can manage something less flamboyant for the Rosselin-Metadi contract.”
Beka’s fingers ached where she pressed them together.
Only a few more minutes of this
, she promised herself.
Then you can be sick to your stomach in decent privacy.
“My methods are my own choice,” she said. “Or hire a different man to do your killing for you.”
“No, no,” said the banker-or-whatever, smiling yet again, all flashing white teeth and practiced sincerity. “We make it a rule not to dictate to our professional contractors. The choice of techniques is entirely at your own pleasure.”
“That’s better.”
“Then you’ll take the contract, Captain Portree?”
She nodded. “I’ll take it.”
The man from Dahl&Dahl rose and held out his hand for the ritual handclasp that would seal the bargain.
Beka stood up and reached across the desk to return the grip.
Don’t flinch, girl. You’re Tarnekep Portree, and you’ve done a lot worse than shaking hands with a smooth-faced, smiling son of a bitch who just hired you to kill your own brother.
The man from Dahl&Dahl was saying something, and she forced herself to keep on listening.
“We’ll send you the background material and the initial payment through the General Delivery drop by thirty-three hundred, Captain Portree, and it’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”
Beka let go his hand. “That’s it, then.”
“One more thing …”
She paused, tensing. “Yes?”
“There will be an additional payment, of course, equal to that we have already agreed on—but first, there is someone else for you to kill.”
Oh, damn,
she thought.
How am I going to get out of this one without blowing Tarnekep’s entire reputation sky-high? They’re going to drag in some poor idiot they’ve already decided needs to be dead, and solve three problems for the price of one—check me out, and get rid of the idiot, and give themselves a crime they can put into the data net with my name on it any time they get tired of working with me. Damn, damn, damn.
The Professor, she felt certain, could handle such an execution without a qualm. Whoever these people had on hand for sacrifice was marked for death already, and a full-power blaster bolt was quick and merciful compared to some of the things an ingenious mind could devise.
But the Prof’s been doing this for more years than I’ve been alive, and I’m still new. I don’t know …
Then the door behind the desk opened, and her uncertainty became a purely academic matter. Two more men emerged from the inner chamber, dragging her brother Owen between them.
“Kill this man for us,” said the lawyer, or whatever he really was. “Now.”
She couldn’t tell if Owen was unconscious, or just deeply drugged; he hung limp in the grasp of his captors, and his head drooped too low for her to see his face. He still wore the dirty coverall he’d worn at the port. She looked away from her brother, and gave the lawyer her best Tarnekep sneer.
“Where the hell’s the challenge in something like this?” she demanded. “Any schoolkid could do the job.”
“You’re being paid,” said the man from Dahl&Dahl. He leaned back in his chair. “Call it a sign of good faith.”
The two men propped Owen up against the wall. Bereft of support, he slid down and collapsed in a sitting position on the floor, his chin resting on his chest. The two men backed away. They were well trained; neither one crossed between Beka and her designated victim.
Slowly, she pulled her blaster, and pointed it at the slumped form of her brother. She could feel the other occupants of the room watching her, waiting to see if the notorious Captain Tarnekep Portree could perform as advertised.
“Take care,” said the holovid hero. “We don’t want any accidents.”
Beka glanced in his direction. The handsome lawyer or whatever he really was wore an expression of anticipation—bright—eyed and wet-lipped. No matter what happened next, this one was going to enjoy watching it.
“Accidents,
hell
,” snarled Beka. Her right foot lashed out in a move the Professor had taught her, catching the nearest of Owen’s two guards in the kneecap. He gave a grunt of pain and collapsed. Beka twisted around and shot his companion in the gut. “I’m doing this
on purpose
.”
The sound of the blaster echoed in the closed room. She saw Owen push himself to his feet, stumbling a little but definitely not unconscious, and she tossed him her blaster as he came up.
Without waiting to see if he caught it, she yanked out her double-edge blade from its forearm sheath and launched herself across the lawyer’s desk in a low, flat dive. A blaster bolt heated up the air behind her. The man from Dahl&Dahl was standing up and reaching for something as she came at him; she slashed the knife across his throat.
Blood from the cut artery sprayed everywhere. She dropped behind the desk as another blaster bolt seared the polished wood. More blasters fired, the bolts passing close overhead. Then, suddenly, the room was quiet again. Only two men remained standing, one by the wall—her brother—and, by the door through which she had entered, the Professor.
“I took the liberty of following you upstairs,” the Professor said calmly, reholstering his blaster. “When I heard firing, I made what haste I could to lend assistance.”
Beka pulled herself up to her feet. There was blood on her knife, and more blood covering the ruffled front of her shirt; she stood for a moment, uncertain, then wiped the blade clean against her sleeve.
She put the knife back in its sheath and turned to her brother. Owen stood leaning against the wood paneling, with the blaster she’d thrown him hanging loosely from one hand.
“Are you all right?” she said.
He shook his head as if to clear it. “Well enough.” He pushed himself away from the wall and held out the blaster. “Here. You’ll need this before long.”
“You don’t sound all that well.” She took the blaster, checked the charge, and slid the weapon into its holster. “What happened?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “It was a trap. I knew that from the beginning, of course, but I thought it was for you.” He gave a faint, shaky laugh. “I was wrong. But they waited a bit too long to spring it—I found what you were looking for.”
Owen fumbled in a pocket of his coverall. “They missed it when they searched me. I was almost all the way under by then, but I held together long enough to make sure of that.”
He held out a plastic disk no bigger than a gaming chip. “Take it,” he said. “It’s got everything you wanted.”
“Thanks,” said Beka. She pocketed the datachip. “You coming with us to High Station?”
Her brother shook his head. “No. I have some unfinished business to take care of first. But if you can draw away the people with blasters—”
“‘The people with blasters?’ Who the hell are they?”
“Better if you don’t know,” he said. “I can get away from them, though, if I don’t have to worry about getting my head blown off at the same time.”
She bit her lip. “If I didn’t owe you a big one for getting me that berth on the
Sidh
… all right. Give me and the Prof five minutes. I’ll make certain they spot us leaving by the front door.”
 
L
IEUTENANT COMMANDER Nyls Jessan ran a hand through his straight blond hair and turned off the desk comp with a satisfied sigh. “Another day, another eight-point-six-five credits. Everything taken care of in back, Namron?”
“All secure, Commander.”
“How about that spacer off the
Stellar Cloud
?”
“Sent him home at eighteen-thirty with capsules and a prescription, sir,” said Namron. “Unless somebody rings our doorbell during the night, we’re empty.”
Jessan pushed his chair away from the desk and leaned back to look at Namron. Seen from that angle, with the light of the setting sun glinting off a row of service medals that went back to the Magewar, the petty officer made an impressive sight. Jessan wondered yet again whether Space Force had assigned the older man to Pleyver with an eye toward offsetting his own distinctly unheroic appearance.
But looking like a recruiting poster come to life didn’t stop Namron from being an efficient corpsman as well as good company with his limits. Jessan leaned his chair even further back, and propped his boots up on the edge of the desk.
“If I had the choice,” he said, “I’d put the clinic on an outpatient-only basis indefinitely. Right now, if we have a medical disaster bad enough to fill all the beds, I don’t know where we’ll find the staff to handle it.”
Namron nodded. “Any word on when Space Force is going to send us a few more people?”
“They’re still trying to work out the allowance list,” said Jessan. “But even a reservist would help.” He sighed, and contemplated the toes of his boots with dissatisfaction. “I’ll put through the request for more personnel again in the morning. Maybe somebody will read it this time.”
“Like they did the one for the healing pods?”
Jessan gave a theatrical shudder. “Don’t remind me about that,” he said.
The clinic’s accelerated healing setup had been scheduled to arrive via the Space Force shuttle from High Station six months ago. So far, the supply shipments had included any number of improbable items, but the pods remained undelivered.
He stretched and yawned. “Oh, well. Time to pack it in and get some sleep, just in case the dawn flight comes in at midnight again.”
Namron shook his head indulgently. “The pilot hasn’t been hatched who likes to show up in town after the bars are closed.”
“Let’s hear it for Flatlands and its exciting nightlife,” said Jessan, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Pleyverans liked to think of their planet’s only spaceport as a wide-open den of iniquity, but the Portcity’s tawdry fleshpots held few attractions for a native of Khesat. As Jessan had written to Ari Rosselin-Metadi shortly after arriving on-planet and taking stock of the situation, “Flatlands is the sort of place that gives decadence a bad name.”
Footsteps from the back of the clinic heralded the arrival of Clerk/Comptech Second Class Peyte with a folder of printout flimsies. “Comps and comm links all secure, Commander. Got anything else for me?”
Jessan reached up an arm and snagged the folder. “Nothing before the supply shuttle gets here. Check with Petty Officer Namron before you turn in.”
“Roger out, Doc.” Peyte disappeared again into the back of the clinic.
Jessan riffled through the printouts, trying to decide whether taking them to his quarters would really put him ahead of tomorrow’s workload, or only keep him from getting to sleep.
Without warning, the buzzer at the clinic’s front door broke the late-hours quiet.
“So much for a restful evening,” Jessan said with a sigh. He swung his feet back down to the floor and brought his chair upright. Across the room, Namron was already toggling the clinic door open.
Two men—one slight and grey-haired, the other tall and much younger, his narrow face disfigured by an ugly red eye patch—waited on the threshold with blasters in their hands. The panels had barely reached full dilation before the pair shoved past Namron and flattened themselves against the walls to either side of the entry. The younger man slapped the toggle switch with his free hand.
Mandeynan
, thought Jessan, taking in the man’s ruffled shirt and queued-back brown hair. His heavy blaster, and the dried blood stiffening the front of his expensive shirt, said something more: this particular Mandeynan was dangerous, and already in bad trouble.
The door shut with a click. Jessan came to his feet. “Do you need medical assistance?”
The older man’s left arm hung motionless in the way that spelled “broken” to a trained eye, but he shook his head. “No time. Do you have a comm link here?”
“Of course,” said Jessan.
“Get on it, then,” said the Mandeynan. “Call Space Force, and tell them to come in heavy.”
Jessan looked from the grey-haired gentleman to the beardless dandy in the bloodstained shirt. “Mind telling me what’s going on first?”
“Later,” snapped the Mandeynan. He edged over to one of the front room’s tall, narrow windows and peered out at the darkening street, blaster at the ready. “Make that call while you still have the chance—they’ll be here any minute now.”
“‘They’?”
The Mandeynan gave Jessan an angry glance. “Damn it, will you stop asking questions and make that call?” As he spoke, a blaster bolt flashed into the interior of the office, melting a curly-edged hole through the windowpane next to the Mandeynan’s head and scorching the material of the far wall.
The older man shook his head. “Too late, I’m afraid.”
The Mandeynan fired twice out the broken window. “We’re not dead yet, Professor. For the last time, Commander—where do you keep the comm room in this place?”
That accent’s pure Galcenian
, thought Jessan.
He’s more than just Mandeynan, no matter how he dresses.
“Through the door to the back and make a right,” he said. “Who are you people?”
“I’m Tarnekep,” the young man said, and snapped another shot out the window. “And that’s the Professor.”
The Mandeynan fired one more time, and sprinted for the interior of the clinic. Then Jessan heard a muffled
whump
from somewhere outside, and all the lights went out.
“What the hell?” came a shout from deeper inside the building. Peyte, that would be, seeing one of his beloved comps go down.
Tarnekep’s voice came from near the back door. “Just how many people are in here?”
“Three,” said Jessan. “Me and Namron, and that was Peyte you heard in the back.”
“Where’s your weapons locker?”
“This,” said Jessan, feeling his urbanity starting to wear thin, “is a walk-in clinic and recruiting center. We don’t have a weapons locker.”
His eyes were adjusting to the twilight filtering in from the street. A bar of light from a hand-torch swept across the room as Peyte walked into the office.
“Hey, Doc! We lost power!”
“Turn that off!” snapped Jessan and Namron together. Peyte turned the light off, so that only the grey light from outside remained, and asked in plaintive tones, “What’s going on around here, Doc?”
“Visitors,” said Jessan. “That’s Tarnekep there by you. He wants to use the comm setup. Go show him how.”
“Whatever you say, Doc. C’mon, you.”
The two men vanished into the back. After a moment, Peyte’s voice said, “Damn. The relays are out.”
Tarnekep’s voice said something brief and nasty.
So he dresses like a Mandeynan,
thought Jessan,
and talks like a Galcen-born aristocrat … and swears like a spacer in back-alley Gyfferan. Not your usual mix, at all.
Peyte and Tarnekep reappeared. “Somebody’s taken out our communications,” said the comptech.
“I heard,” said Jessan. He looked over to where the Mandeynan’s pale face made a lighter blur against the twilight. “What’s going on here, anyhow?”
“Our ship’s docked up at High Station,” said the Mandeynan. “And the locals have closed the commercial shuttle port.”
Jessan shook his head. “If Security’s after you, I can’t do anything to help.”
Tarnekep snorted. “Do Security Enforcers fire into Space Force installations without talking first—even on Pleyver?”
Jessan knew that the Mandeynan was right, which meant the men shooting at them were somebody’s private troops.
And in that case,
he thought,
I can’t solve my problems by handing these two over to the folks outside.
The Professor’s quiet voice cut into the conversation. “If need be, Commander, Captain Portree and I will surrender ourselves into Space Force custody.”
“No,” Jessan told him. “Consider yourselves under Space Force protection instead. You wouldn’t be the first spacers to bite off more trouble dirtside than they could handle. And let’s wait until Security gets into the act before we start talking about surrender. Peyte!”
“Sir?”
“Is the comm set in the hovercar back in working order?”
“Fixed it yesterday, Doc. You want me to make a dash for it and get a call patched through to High Station?”
“I’d better do that part,” said Namron. “Those guys out there don’t seem too particular who they’re shooting at, and your coverall’s going to look like civvies in a dim light. That goes for you, too, Commander.”
Jessan had to agree. His working uniform, like Peyte’s, lacked flash—but Namron’s glittering splendor, meant to impress potential recruits, would mark the petty officer as Space Force from the moment he came into view.
“Get the patch through to High Station,” he said. “Tell them we’ve got a bit of trouble down here with somebody’s private army, and ask them to send the shuttle down stat. Then get in touch with local Security.”
“Yes, sir!”
Namron saluted and headed for the door. The Professor toggled the panels open and Namron stepped through, the last of the fading light reflecting from the heavy gold braid of his dress uniform. Seconds later, a blaster bolt came zinging out of a window across the street. The scarlet beam caught Namron in the chest, just above his impressive row of service ribbons.
The petty officer staggered backward and fell against the building’s outer wall to the left of the door. A second later he twitched and tried to rise.
Jessan ran for the doorway. “He’s alive,” the Khesatan called over his shoulder to Peyte. “Go get a shock set.”
“Sure, Doc,” said Peyte. “I’ll be right with you.” The clerk/comptech vanished into the back.
As soon as Jessan reached the door, he dropped to his belly and crawled the last few feet toward the injured man. He grabbed Namron’s right arm, but neither his first nor his second try got him enough leverage to move the man inside. A blaster bolt scorched a line into the pavement ahead of him as he inched himself farther out.
Suddenly, a long-legged figure sprinted past him. It was the Mandeynan. Without saying a word, the youth ran forward, took hold of Namron’s left shoulder, and heaved the bigger man sideways. Jessan caught Namron under the armpits and started dragging the petty officer inside. He heard the high whine of a blaster going off nearby. Then he was inside with his patient, and the door was cycling closed.
The petty officer groaned—under the circumstances, a beautiful noise. Peyte reentered the room, a medical kit in his hand.
“Let’s get Namron bedded down,” said Jessan. “I don’t know how long it’s going to be before we can get him out of here and into a healing pod.”
As he finished speaking, a white flash lit up the entire front row of windows, and the building rocked with an explosion.
Peyte stared out at the street. “Those bastards blew up the hovercar!”
Moments later, the room’s remaining unbroken windows bulged and deformed inward, then shattered onto the floor. Dark shapes filled the window frames, clambering in and firing blasters as they came. Tarnekep and the Professor fired back until the room was filled with crossing streamers of colored fire. As suddenly as it had begun, the assault ended, leaving behind a only a deafening silence and a couple of bodies on the floor.
Funny
, thought Jessan, straightening up from where he’d flung himself across Namron when the glass started flying.
You’d have thought there’d been more of them, from the racket they made coming in.
Now all he could hear was a scrabbling sound. He looked, and saw one of the bodies moving, trying to crawl toward a blaster lying on the tiles. Tarnekep must have caught, the same faint noise; before Jessan could shout a warning, the Mandeynan turned away from the windows and swung one boot in a short, fast arc that connected with the crawling man’s head. Jessan heard a snapping noise, and the body lay still. Tarnekep stooped for the weapon and stuck it into the waistband of his trousers.
BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
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