Brother Death (19 page)

"See?" Taz said.

They made several more turns, moving deeper into the heart of Mende Town. Bork tried to keep the twists straight in his mind. He had a pretty good sense of direction, but this was starting to look like a maze.

"Just ahead," Taz said. "We're going to a pub and sleepshop called The Hollow Victory."

"Interesting name," Ruul said. "I don't believe I've ever been there."

"It's not on the slumming circuit. Guy who owns it was a trooper during the revolution, in the ten-kay stationed in the Kar System. Part of his unit decided to switch to the winning side early and wound up fighting against those who didn't. The story is, he killed his own twin brother."

"Terrible," Ruul said.

"Worse than that. The fight took place two hours after the surrender. They were out of contact with their commanders, didn't know the revolution was over. There it is, just ahead to the left."

The buildings all looked gray in the dwindling sunlight, some darker, some lighter, but lacking any brightness due to the cheap but durable plastic from which they'd been built.

"I don't see a sign," Ruul said.

"Isn't any. If you don't know where it is, they don't want you wandering in accidentally. This is where Madam Banana has her office. And don't say it, Ruul."

He laughed. "I must need to get some new material. You know me too well."

To Bork, Taz said, "He can be pretty funny when he wants, but he never passes up a cheap shot. He would have said, 'You mean her orfice.' "

Ruul laughed again. But in it, Bork heard a slightly strained tone. The laugh was like the place they were approaching. Hollow.

Taz pulled the flitter off the road until it was nearly touching the blank wall. She set the intrusion alarms, power kill code, and, Bork noted, a hands-off van de graaffer. Those weren't exactly legal most places, Bork knew. Anybody who laid bare hands on the flitter would get zapped enough to knock them sprawling, as well as triggering the other alarms. None of which would stop a skilled and determined thief, of course. Then again, few thieves good enough to bypass a full-rout flitter system would bother to do so just to steal a mid-range police unit; it wasn't worth the effort.

Bork slid out on Taz's side of the flitter. Looked around. The alley seemed quiet, but that didn't always mean anything. He saw Taz scan their surroundings, decide they were safe enough. He smiled a little.

She was pretty good, for somebody who wasn't a matador.

"Let's go see what we can see," she said.

With Ruul between them, Bork followed her to the door.

Things were not going well, Kifo knew.

He sat in his office, a smallish place he seldom used, staring at the Sacred Glyph. The talisman sat upon its plush cushion in the middle of the desk, waiting for his pleasure. Not that he could call what he felt pleasure, not by any means. The loss of two of the Few was regrettable but hardly a telling blow. The loss of one of the Zonn fragments was ever so much more painful. It had been so unexpected. Some kind of fluke, a freak accident, but still, chance had favored the enemies of the gods, and Kifo worried over this as a man might a jagged tooth. His tongue kept going to the rough spot, discovering it anew each time.

He had, he had to admit, panicked when he heard the news. He had shut down all operations immediately to give himself time to think. Now that he had the time, he realized that the loss of the fragment was not the end of the world; still, it might hurry the timetable somewhat. The links were tenuous, probably too thin to support even the weight of a few questions, but given how lucky his opponents had been thus far, one could not be too sure. Best he eliminate any lines that might lead to the wrong places, at least until he was further along in his endeavors. Past a certain point it would not matter, but until then he should not let things get out of hand. The gods hated hubris in their subjects.

Mkono had demonstrated that, had he not?

Kifo nodded. Yes. The two who had failed were dead, and rightly so. Anyone who might connect them to the Few had to lose that ability quickly. And the dead do not tattle. He reached for his com.

Chapter TWENTY

THE HOLLOW VICTORY surprised Ruul, Taz could see that. She didn't know what he expected, but what he saw was a neat, clean, small pub. There were a dozen tables that would seat as many as four each, a long bar with a footrest that ran the length of the main room, backed by a mirror that made the place look larger than it was.

Twenty-five or thirty customers sat at the tables or leaned against the bar when the three of them entered. Flickstick smoke purpled the air, plastic steins clinked, people conversed. The talking continued, there wasn't a hush or anything, but within a few seconds everybody in the place knew they had official company. You could see it in small gestures and quick glances, nothing overtly obvious. Many of these people made their living on the edge, and a slip usually meant blood. They paid attention to what went on around them. Some of them had seen her before, some of them might recognize Ruul from the entcom, but they didn't know Saval. The matador uniform and back-of-the-hand guns would probably get him a clear passage even if he were no larger than a small child; big as he was, he merited a second look.

"One other thing I probably should mention," Taz said. "Guy who runs this place, name is Rugi. He was on the Confed side during the fight that killed his brother. Just so you know."

They approached the bar. "Hello, Rugi."

"Chief. What's your chem?"

"Splash is fine."

The man was tall, lean to the point of being skinny, dark, with light brown curly hair. He wore a sculpted hand wand in a clear plastic appendix holster. The stunner had been molded to look like a stylized lightning bolt, colored a brilliant yellow. Was probably boosted to illegal standards, too, not that Taz cared about that. What he did in his own place was his business.

Rugi set up three steins of the mild liquor. Nodded at Ruul. "I like your stuff," he said.

"Thanks."

He looked at Saval. "This must be your brother."

"Word gets around," Taz said, sipping her splash. "Saval Bork, this is Rugi."

Saval nodded. "Pleasure."

Rugi returned the nod. "I like your work, too. Would have liked it better you'd been on our side." He paused, looked back at Taz. "What can I do for you, Chief?"

"You got a trull who idles here, named Ndizi. We need to talk to her. No trouble, just information."

He nodded. "Southeast corner table, she's the one with shocked green hair."

"Thanks, Rugi." She reached for her credit cube.

"Your stads don't work in here," he said.

Taz nodded, accepted the free drink for what it was worth, a small courtesy.

The woman who specialized in anal pleasures was something of a surprise. Her hair was in an electrostatic swirl, dyed a brilliant green, her clothes either expensive designer silks or a pretty good knock-off in a complementary shade of green, and her face could have been the model for the classic angel. Even features, clean lines, perfect teeth, eyes so clear a dark blue they were probably natural and not lenses. She was petite, wouldn't go more than fifty kilos, and the thin silks did little to hide a very good body. If Taz hadn't read her ID she would have missed her age by ten years. M. Ndizi looked a shining twenty T.S. and she was actually almost thirty-two. She obviously had spent some time under a cosmetic laser lit by somebody who knew how to use it.

She didn't know Taz personally but she knew what she was. "Good evening, Po. You and your friends looking for a party?" She smiled at Saval and Ruul. "Three happens to be my limit at the same time-if two of them aren't overly large, that is."

Funny. She was legal, her license in order, but she was playing with them.

"Mind if we sit?"

"Do."

"It's about your sister."

"I didn't kill her. In fact, I heard it was some cool and her giant brother who did it." She looked at Saval.

"You are big, aren't you?"

"You don't seem overwhelmed with grief."

She turned back to Taz. "I haven't seen Koo in a long time, Po. Years. And we didn't get along all that well before she ran off and joined that cult. She changed her name, called herself 'Sister Misery' or some scat, threw away all her past. She died then, far as I'm concerned."

"Tell us about the cult."

The green-haired woman shrugged. "Nothing to tell. I don't know scat about them. I got a com from her when she signed on. Short and not-so-sweet. She was 'renouncing the world,' she said. I never heard from her again." She glanced at the bar, saw something that made her smile.

"What-?" Taz began.

"Hold up, Po," she said. "My sixteen hundred is here. He's a new client, I don't want to keep him waiting." She stood.

"M. Ndizi-"

"Ten minutes, Po. That's all he's paid for. Time you've finished your splash, he'll be happy and I'll be able to pay my rent." She walked away. She had a very tight and well-shaped rear end, Taz saw, obvious the way the silks clung to it.

Taz sipped her splash, looked at the man who leaned against the bar watching Ndizi walk toward him.

He was nothing special, average, dressed in freight handler's coveralls, a new set without lube or dirt staining them. Must have gotten all dressed up for his little party. Sad. .

She turned and saw Ruul watching the play of buttock muscle as Ndizi walked. Smiled. "Interested?"

He blinked, jerked his gaze away and tried to cover his flushed face with his splash. "Not my type," he said.

There was a door near one end of the bar, and the freight handler and Ndizi moved toward it. She had taken his arm in hers and was smiling at him as they walked.

"He's carrying weapons," Saval said.

Taz didn't get it for a second. "Who is?"

"The guy in handler's cloth.-s. Handgun in a small-of-the-back rig, a knife or short club in his right boot."

Taz looked at the pair moving toward the door. Yeah, now that he mentioned, she could see a bulge under the breakaway cro-tab over the man's spine. She didn't see the boot knife, but if Saval said it was there, she believed it.

"It's a rough neighborhood," she said. "Probably most of the patrons are carrying something or the other."

"The coveralls are brand new and his hands are clean, no stain," Saval said. He came to his feet.

"What are you saying?" Ruul put in.

"Something's wrong here," Saval said.

Taz trusted that instinct, too. She stood. "Go."

The trull and her customer had reached the door. She was opening it with a card she carried. It would register her visit and debit her account for one of the rooms Rugi kept beyond for such transactions as hers.

"Hey," Taz called. "Ndizi! Wait up!"

The woman turned to see who had called her.

The man in coveralls shoved her through the opening.

"Shit!" Taz said, sprinting for the door.

She was fast, always had been pretty good for short distances. Saval was ahead of her, though, and gaining.

The door snicked shut behind the couple, locking automatically. Saval turned and put his right shoulder down, pulled his head back slightly. Hit the door solidly.

It was a good door, heavy cast plastic, designed to keep anybody without a card from passing through.

The door held. The frame around the door did not. It shattered under the impact, hinges and lock pulling from splintered wood and screaming metallically at the sudden assault. The door flew inward.

By the time she got to it, her gun out, Saval's spetsdods had already coughed twice.

Inside the gaping hole Saval had made, Taz got a flash picture of what was going on in that stepped-on slow time that often happened when the guns came out:

The freight handler was falling, one hand wrapped around his throat, the other holding a small pistol pointing at the floor.

On the floor under his gun was Ndizi, face down. The back of her green hair was blotched with bright blood. The long swirl of green silks had risen to reveal her body to the waist. She'd had good legs to match the ass, Taz noted. And "had" was the key word.

Saval reached Ndizi first, squatted, turned her over. Felt for a carotid but was wasting his time. The exit wounds in the dead trull's forehead gaped large enough to admit Taz's thumb and oozed red and pink and gray matter. Three holes, two above the right eye, one below the left that had taken part of the nose with it. Explosive rounds. The best medic in the galaxy wasn't going to be able to bring her back from that.

They might keep the body alive, but Ndizi the personality had moved on.

"Shit," Taz said, lowering her pistol.

Rugi ran into the room, his hand wand held out. Taz thought in that moment that he looked like some comic parody of an avenging god, tiny bolt of lightning held in his hand. Other curious patrons moved just outside the opening, but hesitant to enter.

Taz pulled her com. "This is Bork, at Rugi's pub in Roach Town," she said. "Get a clean-up team over here and a body wagon. And if if you can find a medic who can short-circuit a brainblock, we got another one like the two who died in that truck shootout. Hurry."

"They're worried," Saval said as Taz moved to stand next to him. "She knew something they didn't want us to find out."

Taz bent and pulled the dead woman's com from her shoulder bag. "This is Tazzimi Bork with the Leijona Police," she said. "I want a record of all calls to and from this code uploaded into my flatscreen immediately." She looked at her brother. "If the killer did call her to set this up, maybe we'll get lucky."

"They've been pretty careful so far."

"If we'd been thirty seconds faster she'd have given us the name of the cult her sister joined," Taz said.

"That sounds like they're maybe not as careful as they think."

She turned to Rugi. "Keep everybody out of here until the clean-up team gets here, Rugi. You know this guy?"

"He hasn't been in before, Chief."

"Okay. If there's anybody out front who doesn't want to be intimate with our people, tell them to take off-but I want their names and where to reach them later. Just me."