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Authors: T. F. Grant,C. F. Barnes

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BOOK: Xantoverse Shadowkill
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That’s if she could actually carry out the hit.

She pulled a series of levers to work the system and stood back as the grav-plate switching took over to propel her up to the Cauder level. While she waited for the climb, she lamented the lack of computerization and digitally controlled electrical motors.

Although Kina was born on Haven and thus never knew any life outside of the weird physics of Hollow Space, the tales of those who were pulled into the bubble universe often spoke of amazing things that could be done with computers and technology.

But none of that worked here—within or without the station.

The Scholars blamed the dead planet and the dead race they believed had set these strange effects in motion: the Xantonians. A technological race lost to a history no one could access. All the peoples of Hollow Space knew was that when ships were pulled in from their hyperspace jump, their systems failed within minutes.

Some field or particle, emanating from the cold, dead planet atrophied the workings of digital and magnetic devices. Over the centuries of standard time,
Haven
had devolved and subsequently evolved into a mechanical, organic, non-digital soup of scoundrels, thieves, murderers and engineers.

Despite her twenty-four standard years of life on
Haven
, she still didn’t know where she fit in the hierarchy. Even now, on the knife-edge of a career with the Wraiths, she wasn’t sure. Not that she wasn’t capable; but whether she wanted to do it.

In light of her mistake with the MAD device, but considering her exemplary performance in all other aspects, the Wraith’s had given her as clear a path into her future as she had ever received.

If she completed a contract to eliminate one Tairon Cauder. Son of Miriam. Kina’s childhood friend. Her only friend.

The elevator continued its slow rumbling ascent. Her guts twisted with every second. Her daggers felt like tombstones, dragging her down. It could have been anyone but him. Even Miriam would have been preferable. The fallout for killing the Red Cauder, if such a thing were possible, would guaranteed Kina having to persuade a Drift to change her at the cellular level in order to avoid the payback, but she would have taken all that over having to kill Tai.

Granted, he was a scoundrel and had racked up as envious a kill count as any, but he was Tai: the young kid who ran with her through the corridors, stealing relics from salvagers and then selling them to their rivals for half their value just for shits and giggles.

The elevator lurched to a stop. It wasn’t the Cauder level. Kina waited, her muscles tensed ready to act. The door opened… nothing. Shadows moved off from around the corner of the corridor. Two high-pitched sniggers disappeared off into the distance.

Just kids.

She slid the door shut and re-engaged the mechanical grav-plates, rumbling the car back on its slow ascent. Her stomach cramped with anxiety. Was she really going to do this? When it came down to it, even her only friend didn’t match up to a secure future.

Tai had nearly got her killed more times she cared to remember with one of his madcap scams. And for what? A life of struggle, sharing quarters with a bad-tempered dalgef, and an increasing debt with both the Drifts and Miriam Cauder—a principle credit lender and high-percentage extortionist.

If she did complete the contract, her future would be secure. She would be protected by the status that the Wraith’s afforded her. She could pay off Miriam’s debt, and live in a secure quarters on one of the better levels, away from the gangsters, drug peddler and disease-riddled whores of every species.

Finally, the elevator stopped at level forty-five. Tairon’s personal level. The one below contained his secure lock-ups and workshops, but this one had his apartment and a handful of others he rented to various dignitaries depending on what scam he was working at the time. She, and the Wraiths, knew he had no such rental agreements at the moment.

Kina slid the door opened and stepped to the side before peering out. The way was clear. Much like the rest of the station, the corridor’s steel walls showed myriad blast and scorch marks from a wide variety of weapons—most of them no doubt caused by Tai.

She stepped out quickly and sent the elevator back down. She knew Tai monitored this area despite only him, his mother, and a select few others having the elevator codes to access his level.

That of course made the assassination a little more difficult. The number of likely killers would be small due to the access of the elevator. The Wraiths probably knew all this anyway and wanted to see how she would handle the situation.

When she was confident no one or nothing was coming out into the corridor to check, she reached for her daggers and pulled out the one on her right-hand side. She kept it close to her body and stalked forward, one foot in front of the other, slightly crouched and with her back to the wall. She made her way down the gloomy hallway until she reached a door with its own special patina of welded repair plates and black charred surface rust.

A shroud of darkness at this far end of the hallway gave her a degree of security and concealment. She thought about how to do it. She had a special knock—she could use that to get his attention and when he came to the door, do the deed there and then, take him out fast, driving his body back into the apartment where she could finish him off quietly. She would at least give her friend as quick and painless a death as possible.

Her hand shook. She moved it forward slightly to stop the blade vibrating against the steel wall. She closed her eyes. Those damned Wraiths! If they didn’t promise so much, she could have turned this down, but they made it so she had to trade one life for another—Tai’s for hers.

Such is the cruelty of life on
Haven
.

Sweat trickled down her back. Her free hand shook as she reached out for the handle. She had decided to pick the lock instead of bringing Tai to the door. Placing her dagger back in her belt, she pulled her selection of homemade picks from the inner pocket of her jacket.

But when she took the handle in hand, she realized the door wasn’t locked. It wasn’t even closed properly and swung freely on the hinges. She nudged it open a centimeter and brought her eye to the crack. Voices came from somewhere in the apartment.

Dammit. He wasn’t alone. And she recognized the other two voices: Miriam and her head-enforcer Hela. The latter woman had somehow become Kina’s nemesis of late. Apparently, while drinking with Tai in the Gear and Sprocket, Hela overheard Kina insulting the woman’s always serious, and overly abrasive, nature. To be fair, Kina had drunk a lot of kronacian slow-wine that night and her impressions of people weren’t the most subtle.

Another Tai-inspired escapade that had got her into trouble.

And Hela wasn’t anyone you wanted on your case.

If only her contract was for Hela and not Tai… But it wasn’t, and there was no changing that now. The scroll of paper rustled against her chest within her jacket, reminding her of her priorities. With Miriam and Hela in there, there’s no way she could take out Tai—not without also killing the two women and the repercussions from that would not go down well with Dzagnev and Lanat.

Kina placed the picks back inside her jacket. Tai laughed from somewhere within his apartment. His mother responded with a stern reply that Kina couldn’t quite make out. Probably to do with his debt. Despite being his mother, Miriam Cauder had Tai in thrall to her to the tune of nearly thirty thousand credits. A debt she used to manipulate him to run various jobs for her. None of which ever seemed to pay down the debt.

Kina decided she would just enter the apartment as a friend, interrupt their meeting, and wait for the two women to go, leaving her alone with Tai. She had a full cycle to complete the assassination. That was plenty of time to get Tai into a position where she could do the deed and frame someone else. Perhaps someone from his motley crew of salvagers.

On
Haven
, it wasn’t unknown or uncommon for salvagers to turn on each other if they manage to get something valuable off one of the many thousands of decaying hulks out there in the Graveyard of ships.

Before we she could step inside, she felt movement come from her left. Spinning round, she saw the bulky human figure of a fellow salvager and general scumbag extraordinaire. Closing the door, she stepped forward, reaching for her daggers.

“Linus,” she whispered. “What the freck are you doing here?”

He was caught in two minds by the look of his body language. He was leaning toward a gap in the wall, his hands on a panel that he had removed. This was one of Tai’s supposedly secret access points into the dark levels. His eyes however looked to his holster that carried a Napier-design machine pistol. A real nasty piece of kit for a real nasty piece of work.

“I could ask you the same thing, Ki. Does Tai know you’re skulking around outside like a thief?”

“How long have you been there?” Kina asked, making her way slowly toward him. She was instructed to have no collateral damage, but what went into the dark levels would be of no concern to the Wraiths.

“Long enough. Decided to take him out, eh? After all those years of service, thought you’d like to take over his operations?” He raised an eyebrow and smiled a grin that made her want to punch every yellowed, rotten tooth down his fat throat.

She pulled her daggers free. Get the first strike in before he could drop the panel and reach his Napier. The sound would alert the others, but she would say that she tracked him here. Despite being an associate of Tai’s, Linus was a known grade-A bastard and no one would weep for his death.

Before she had chance to launch at him, the voices from Tai’s apartment grew louder. She turned for a brief moment, expecting them to come out into the corridor. When she turned back, she saw Linus’ leg disappear into the dark levels.

Dammit! She couldn’t let him go. He knew what she was going to do. When it got out that Tai was dead, the rumor mill would kick in faster than she could take a breath, and she’d be hauled up in front of Haggard’s Lawkeepers and worse: the Scholars.

And if there was one species on Haven you didn’t want to freck with, it was the Drifts. Though they resemble walking shrubs or small trees, they were the most deadly entity on the station—and virtually immortal, as were their memories.

No, she couldn’t let that happen. She placed her dagger back into its sheath and dashed into the dark levels, pulling the panel back in place as she went.

They didn’t call these spaces dark levels for nothing. The place was almost pitch black. She could just about make out the lines of hallways. But the glow from Linus’ cheap night-vision leaked out from the eyepieces and gave her something to aim for. She set off in pursuit determined to end his miserable life.

 

***

 

Linus was no fool. He led her a merry dance for a full fifteen standard minutes down the various levels before finding an exit point out of the dark levels. Not seeing exactly where it was, Kina lost him as she ran her hands around the dark wall searching for the loose panel. Eventually she found it, and stepped out onto level twelve. The sound of mechanical music blasted out. Kina squinted in the bright light, created by the kronacs special hyperglow bacterial system. Pinks and blues and yellow flashed out from the glass doors of various bars and clubs.

Humans, dalgefs, and even a group of vul—the bipedal wolflike creatures—clogged up the areas outside of the clubs as they vied for entry to the most exclusive places. Everyone looked like they were high on krunk rocks as they nodded their heads in rhythm to the pulsing bass that reverberated through the steel of the station.

Kina grabbed a young human man. “Big guy, scar on his face, mad eyes. You seen him?”

The kid looked up at her with his wild eyes and grinned. Drool fell from his lips as he moved them slowly, trying to form words. Kina pushed him back into the queue of people and moved on. Just as she was beginning to think she would have to search every damned club on the strip, she spotted a familiar face working the door outside a dive owned by the Blackmarks.

She stepped up to the kronac wearing a specially tailored black outfit to accommodate his four arms and bulky torso, and slapped him on one of his upper arms to get his attention. He whirled round, his lizardlike face contorted in a grimace of impending violence. But it soon changed when he saw it was her.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her off her feet, bringing her up to his eye-level. He did that weird kronac grin thing and whistled and clicked his affections to her.

“Hey, Tooize,” Kina said. “You’re holding a little tight there, big fella.”

“Sorry,” he whistled, placing her back down on the floor. He blinked his amusement, only two of his three eyes working—the third one being damaged in a bar fight. Hence the name, besides, Kina had never figured out how to actually pronounce these arboreal creature’s actual names. Far too complicated, but over time the kronacs and other species had learned a kind of middle-language that they all understood to various degrees.

Tooize had worked with Kina and Tai a few times on salvage runs. Always made sense to have the backup of a Kronac in case things got a little heated with any newcomers, or other, more desperate, salvagers.

“What’s up?” Tooize said, looking uncomfortable. He wasn’t cut out for this work, but like everyone on the station, he had to find work wherever he could. Even if it meant bouncing for the Blackmarks’ skeevy little bar.

“You seen Linus come past here?” Kina asked, casually, trying not to hint at anything.

Tooize nodded his head and pointed with two arms across the open space to the clubs on the other side of the arcade. “G and S, Ki. You dealing with him?”

“No, no deals, just need to speak with him.”

“Go carefully, he didn’t seem in the talking mood.”

“I will, no worries. Cheers, big fella, don’t take no shit from those krunked-up fools, you hear?”

Tooize whistled his affirmation and stepped back to guard the door. He raised a hand to say goodbye as she headed toward the Gear and Sprocket in order to deal with Linus. She knew Tooize wouldn’t say anything if Linus just happened to be found dead. In fact, no one here would likely even remember her. Krunk rocks damaged both short and long-term memory.

BOOK: Xantoverse Shadowkill
3.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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