Drifter's War (3 page)

"What'll it be, honey?"

Dee ignored the bartender's leer. "A beer plus some information."

The bartender frowned. His eyebrows came together into a straight line. He ran a rag over the spot in front of him. "What kind of information?"

Dee smiled reassuringly. "Nothing complicated. Take a look at this."

For the sixteenth time that day Dee slipped the holo cube out of her pocket and placed it on the bar. The bartender lifted the device up to eye level and gave it a squeeze. A man appeared. He had bushy eyebrows, a long straight nose, and a tight thin-lipped mouth. His eyes were bright blue and stared out from cavernous sockets. An alkie or a wire-head. The bartender saw them every day.

"So you're a bounty hunter. What'd he do? Walk away from his bar tab?"

Dee shook her head. "Nothing like that. He's a friend of mine. Have you seen him?"

A calculating grin stole over the bartender's face. "And what if I have? What would you give me?"

Dee shrugged. "Ten credits and a sincere 'thank you.'"

The bartender leaned forward, closing the distance between them to a foot or so. "How 'bout something a little more personal? Something you'd enjoy as much as I would?"

Dee sighed. She forced herself to be patient. "I've got a headache. The offer stands. Have you seen this man or not?"

The bartender shrugged. He nodded toward the far side of the lounge. "He's over there. In the side room. Playing it big with some drunks."

Dee felt her spirits leap. Finally! She slapped some currency on the bar. "Thanks."

"What about your beer?"

A roid miner had passed out at the nearest table. Dee gestured in her direction. "Give it to her when she wakes up."

The bartender nodded and turned away.

Dee felt eyes follow her as she walked across the room. The sensation was nothing new. Some were curious, some wanted her body, and some were afraid.

They were like rabbits crouched in their burrows as the fox strolled by. They saw past the cloud of bright red hair, past the pretty face, all the way to the slug gun with reactive grips. They saw the way she moved, the way her eyes slid over their faces, and knew exactly what she was. A huntress, a self-employed killer, a bounty hunter.

They had nothing to fear however since Dee's attention was focused on other things. She had been sitting face-to-face with the Imperial consul when Cap spilled his guts to the media.

The consul had been interested,
very
interested, especially in the drifter. And why not? The ship was loaded with advanced technology, stuff years ahead of anything the Il Ronn had, and worth millions of credits.

The consul had studied the holo pix, viewed the vid tapes, and was just about to say something when an aide had slipped into the room. Words were whispered and a wall-sized vid screen appeared.

The consul was a small man, very dapper, and carefully manicured. He smiled. "Bear with us for a moment, Citizen Dee. It seems that channel twenty-three has some news of interest to us both."

So Dee had been forced to sit there, squirming in her seat, as Cap spilled everything he knew to a man with a carefully arranged smile. Everything but the actual location of the drifter. Somehow, some way, Cap had retained enough brains to keep mum about that.

But the damage was considerable. The consul was no fool. Why pay for something you can get for free? All he had to do was send some people after Cap, sweat him a bit, and wait for the information to pop out. And failing that he could reopen negotiations with Dee.

So Dee had left the consulate with two humans and a robot on her tail. It had taken a full hour to ditch all three of them, and by the time she called channel twenty-three, Cap had slipped away. She got the impression that they were looking for him too.

And then, about two bars back—or was it three?—Dee had seen the special report. She'd been back in a corner, talking to a four-armed cyborg, when the feed came on-screen. A weird-looking camera shot that lurched up out of the sea, swept back and forth, and focused on Pik Lando. Dee saw Lando get to his feet, saw Melissa run, and knew that a bad situation had just turned worse.

Dee felt a troubling emptiness in the pit of her stomach. She'd gone after Pik herself a few months before, and had caught him too, but lost him in an ambush. She'd been wounded, and had nearly died, but Pik had pulled her through. Pik,

Melissa, the strange little cyborg who called himself "Cy Borg," and, yes, Cap. Without trying, without meaning to, she'd become part of a family.

So she cared about them and that made her stomach feel empty. That's the problem with loving people. It makes you vulnerable. Life or death can take them away.

Dee thought about Pik, thought about losing him, and knew it would hurt. If ever there had been a chance for a relationship it was with him. With a man who, in spite of his profession, was basically honest. With a man who fought for lost causes, took little girls under his wing, and was willing to risk his life for a bounty hunter he didn't even know.

She forced the thought away. Never mind Pik. If there was a way to reach Brisco City, he'd find it. Her job was to find Cap, put him under wraps, and be ready to lift when Pik arrived.

The door sensed her presence and slid open. The room was small and thick with smoke. Light came from a single source in the ceiling. It bathed Cap in a hard white glare. He lay on the tabletop with his pockets turned inside out. His hair was in disarray, and he had a two-day growth of beard, but she could still see signs of the man he'd once been. The high forehead, the firm jaw, and the thin-lipped mouth had been handsome once. Just right for a promising young officer.

Dee thought Cap was dead at first, but then she saw his chest move and found a pulse. He smelled of sour alcohol.

Dee shook her head sadly, grabbed one of Cap's arms, and pulled him into a fireman's carry. She was strong, and like many alcoholics, Sorenson was light. The door opened at her approach.

"Come on, Cap. Let's go home."

3

The Rothmonian security center was a quiet, almost cloistered place. There was the gentle hum of air-conditioning, the muted mumble of radio traffic, and the occasional sound of a buzzer. Row after row of vid monitors blinked through a preprogrammed sequence of security cams, some of which hopped, crawled, or flew through air, while others remained stationary and captured whatever happened to take place in front of them. Some of these were mounted in locations that guests would object to but didn't know about.

Technicians moved here and there, attending the machines like priests at the altar, speaking to each other in tones of hushed solemnity.

Nathan Izzo slammed the door open, dropped his portacomp onto a countertop, and looked for someone to abuse. Five or six technicians were present. All did their best to disappear. "Rister! Get your butt out here!"

"My butt
is
out here." The voice came from right next to Izzo and made him jump. Carolyn Rister, chief of security, saw her superior's expression and smiled. "Welcome to the security center."

Izzo scowled. His hair was black. He wore it short and flat on top. That, plus the hard, determined eyes and the formally cut business suit, gave him a military air. Just right for the man everybody called "The General."

"Don't give me any of that 'welcome to the security center' crap, Rister. Save it for the headquarters types. What the hell's going on? Your people are too damned visible. Some of the guests are getting nervous."

Rister was a long, lean woman who moved with a sort of sinewy grace. She had been places and done things that Izzo couldn't even imagine. The executive didn't scare her a bit.

"Well, let me see… we've got a killer on the loose, we're trying to keep about twenty bounty hunters off prem, and someone's in the process of stealing your skimmer. Which one would you like to discuss first?"

Blood rushed to Izzo's face. "Stealing my skimmer?"

Rister nodded agreeably. "That's right. Take a look over there. You'll get a robo-sentry's eye view of your boat on its way out of the harbor."

Izzo looked. The picture jerked right and left as the robo-sentry stalked along the top of the breakwater. Rain fell in sheets, visibility had been reduced to a few hundred yards, and sure enough, there was the
Nadia
making for the open sea.

The executive grabbed the back of a chair. He owed more than a hundred thousand credits on the skimmer. None of them were insured.

"Stop them! Stop them right now!"

Rister nodded sympathetically. "Yes, sir. That's what we're trying to do. And if the robo-sentry beats them to the entrance, we might even succeed."

"'Might'? You
might
succeed? The robo-sentry has an energy cannon. Burn them down!"

Rister lifted an eyebrow. "If you say so, sir… but what about your skimmer?"

Rister's words were like a bucket of ice water. Izzo felt stupid and tried to hide it.

"How could something like this happen?"

Rister shrugged noncommittally. "Bad luck, that's all. It turns out that the guy in villa fourteen is wanted for murder. Channel twenty-three learned he was here, told everyone on the planet, and the bounty hunters arrived shortly thereafter. The guest tried to run, couldn't use the causeway, and stole your boat. It's as simple as that."

Izzo looked from Rister to the monitors. "No it isn't," he said resentfully. "You should've neutralized him back on land."

"Not unless policy has changed," Rister said evenly. "Think about it. I watched the tapes of this guy putting on his clothes. He has a slug gun stuck down the back of his pants and a mini-launcher strapped to his right arm. We fire at him and he fires back. Presto, the lodge becomes a free-fire zone. Dead guests all over the place. Get my drift?"

Izzo knew when he was beat. He stared at the monitor. The rain made it hard to see. The robo-sentry was close but the
Nadia
seemed even closer. "Shit."

"Yeah," Rister agreed calmly. "That pretty well sums it up."

Lando was soaked to the skin. Rain drummed on the deck around him. Melissa was below changing her clothes. For reasons known only to Mr. Izzo the
Nadia
came equipped with a wide array of female apparel.

The robo-sentry was closer now, a towering presence only forty yards away, its podlike feet pulverizing smaller chunks of rock as they hit the top of the breakwater.

Lando felt the deck shift slightly as the boat's NAVCOMP made a slight correction to the skimmer's course. A breeze touched his right cheek. The entrance to the harbor lay directly ahead. It was narrow, no more than fifty feet across, and would be impossible to negotiate if the robo-sentry arrived first.

Lando took a quick look around. Most of the pleasure craft had already made it to the docks, but those that hadn't hurried to do so. He saw no possibility of escape, no alternative to the upcoming confrontation, so he turned toward the robo-sentry.

Lando's blood ran cold as the gangly monster reached the end of the breakwater, tried to step down into the water, and slipped. Servos whined as the machine caught itself and made another attempt. The robo-sentry's pods found firmer footing this time and it waded out into the water.

Lando wrapped his left arm around the skimmer's mast and pointed his right hand toward the robo-sentry's head. That's where the machine's sensors should be. Maybe he could disable them.

The mini-missiles had no guidance systems of their own so Lando took careful aim. The trick would be to lead the machine by just the right amount, compensate for the wind, and hit a relatively small target.

Lando flexed his muscles just so and a mini-missile left the launcher. It missed the robo-sentry's insectoid head by inches and headed out to sea.

Lando swore and waited to die. The burp of blue light never came. The robo-sentry was knee deep in the water by now and reaching for the
Nadia's
bow.

Why? Why were they still alive? What had the attendant said? Something about the manager's boat? So that was it! The security types were reluctant to destroy Mr. Izzo's toy.

Lando aimed his second and last missile. He fired. This missile ran straight and true, hit the robo-sentry right between its electronic eyes, and blew up. Hot shrapnel flew in every direction. Pieces pinged against the skimmer's wing and others hissed into the water.

Izzo slammed his fist onto a tabletop as the monitor went dead. He was furious. "Stop them! Never mind the skimmer! Just stop them!"

A technician looked at Rister. The robo-sentry's energy cannon had been destroyed but the rest of the machine was still functional. The security chief nodded her head.

The technician turned to his console. The robo-sentry might be blind but
he
wasn't. A security cam had been mounted on the north side of the breakwater. By turning it to the left the tech could see the robo-sentry's back and the skimmer beyond.

Now for the next step. The robo-sentry's primary voice-recognition sub-processor had been destroyed along with its head. There was a second-rate backup located in the machine's chest cavity. The technician spoke slowly so the processor would have time to understand.

Metal screeched as the
Nadia
scraped along the robo-sentry's right leg. Completely blind, the machine flailed right and left. A metal pincer hit the boat's wing with a loud bang. Lando held on as the boat rocked back and forth.

Water churned as the skimmer's auxiliary power unit pushed it forward. The robo-sentry dropped into a crouch and prepared to jump. The impact of its two-ton weight would crush the
Nadia
like an egg shell. Lando thought about Melissa, thought about telling her to dive overboard, but knew there wasn't enough time.

The robo-sentry made its headless leap. Lando watched in numb fascination as the machine fell, missed the skimmer by inches, and splashed chest down into the bay. Spray spattered the deck, the
Nadia
rocked back and forth, and the breakwater passed to either side. Bubbles boiled up from the point where the robo-sentry had disappeared.