Gestapo Mars (4 page)

The slugs hit in perfect groupings, three each across their chests. The muted metal
tunks
of armor beneath skin told the story. They flinched, but kept coming for me. These guys had the works. Not just augmentation for speed and strength, but armored skin, too.

I picked one of the goons, aimed at an eye and pulled the trigger. Blood sprayed from the socket, and the back of his head exploded with bone and brain. He came to a screeching halt like somebody had jerked his leash, and then went down.

No time for the other one. He knocked the gun away and wrapped his arms around me, got me in a bear hug. I felt the breath wheeze out of me, little black spots dancing in front of my eyes. It was probably three seconds before the lights went out.

I fumbled in my jacket pocket, my hand closing around the little beamer. I didn’t bother to take it out, the angle was awkward anyway. I aimed it best I could, squeezed the trigger. The red beam burned instantly through my jacket pocket and into the guy’s hip. At this range it wouldn’t matter how he was armored.

He screamed and dropped me.

I crawled away, shaking my head, trying to make the hot buzzing in my ears go away. I blinked my eyes, focused, looked at my attacker.

He lay two feet away, pale and dazed, his leg sliced off at the hip.

“Oh,
Christ.
Oh, man, my leg.”

I staggered to him, aimed the beamer. “Forget the leg. You’re not going to need it anymore.”

The killer inside me knew the job.
No hesitation
was the first thing they programmed into you. The beam sliced across his throat, and the head came off cleanly and rolled away.

I went back to my first attacker, who was trying to crawl away, dragging the leg with the shattered knee.

“Not so fast, sport.” I knelt, grabbed him by the lapel, and shoved the beamer in his face. “You’re not augmented like the other two. So give.”

“I was supposed to brace you for information,” he said quickly. “The other two were backup in case it got rough.”

“Well, it got rough, and here you are on the ground,” I replied. “Who do you work for?”

“Go suck a dick, Nazi faggot.”

I whacked the beamer’s barrel across his cheek, and that took the sass out of him. I fished around in his pockets until I found his I.D.

Luna Security. Strictly local and very amateur. It sort of made sense. St. Armstrong was always playing the rebels and the empire against one another. It was part of their strategy for maintaining a precarious neutral state.

If these guys had made me as an imperial operative, then that meant Mars had a security leak somewhere. I’d need to relay that bit of information back through channels, at my next opportunity.

Sooner or later these goons would fail to report in, and that would crank up the heat on me. I needed to complete my business and get off Luna fast.

I pointed the beamer at his face.

“You know what happens now, right?”

“Do your worst, you cowardly Gestapo shit.”

ZAP
.

M
y first contact was a priest six levels down who operated a parish kiosk. I figured this was a good risk. If anyone saw me, nobody would think much of one priest visiting another. I kept my eyes peeled and used only busy passageways, moving in and out of the crowd.

Father Aju was an alien, a squat orange creature with rubbery skin and eyes on the end of short stalks that protruded from the head. Aliens were scarce this close to old Earth, but it made sense in a way. Even the least ambitious priest wanted to do more than operate an automated confessional kiosk on Luna, so they dumped the shit job onto the aliens. Typical.

Aju was flat on his back under one of the automated confessionals, wires dangling down on both sides. He worked on the unit with two hands, and occasionally scratched himself with a third.

I stood over him, and cleared my throat.

“Use the other booth, my child,” Aju said without looking up. His voice was low, and vibrated roughly. “Satan has rendered this unit out of order.”

“I need to speak with you, Father Aju,” I said. “I’m Father Argus. I arrived this morning from Vatican Five.”

Aju scooted quickly from under the machine, eyes bulging at the ends of his stalks. “Is this a surprise inspection? My prayer log is up to date.” His eyes swiveled, and he looked at the broken confessional. “It has only been out of order for two days. I expect to have it operational by tonight.”

“I’m from the Jesuit Corps,” I said.

If possible, Aju’s eyes grew wider still.

“I have done nothing wrong.”

“We just need to talk. In private.”

His eyes swiveled around again, scanning the chapel like he expected a Jesuit hunter squad to pop out of thin air and slap the cuffs on him. He meekly led me into a cramped little office filled with spare parts for the kiosks. He removed a half-full box of prayer books from the seat across from his desk and motioned that I should be comfortable. We sat.

“I need your help,” I said.

“I am ever at the beck and call of the church,” Aju said.

“Not the church,” I said. “Me—Mars secret police. Activation code 45456.”

Without hesitation Aju stood and shoved aside a painting of St. Sebastian getting his ass filled with arrows, revealing the small safe behind. He entered the code I’d just given him and didn’t seem surprised at all when the little door popped open with a sucking sound.

“This is the first time I have been activated,” Aju said without emotion.

“Must be a thrill for you.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what to feel. I am somehow relieved you are not actually with the church.”

“Who says I’m not?”

The eyes at the top of the stalks went even wider than I thought possible, as if they might pop like little balloons.

“You are secret police
and
Jesuit Corps?”

“Relax,” I said. “The collar is just a cover.”

Some of the tension went out of him as he reached into the safe and came out with the decoder relay. He set it on his desk, then hardwire-plugged it into his computer. It was a compact device, but highly sophisticated. It would send and receive coded signals from Mars without the possibility of having them intercepted or traced. It was as secure as anything in the galaxy.

“It’s routing through the orbital array,” Aju said. “Just another few seconds… Okay, here we go. Identity confirmed, Major Ernst. Top priority, render all assistance. Full clearance. What can I do for you today, Major?”

Major.
Last time I’d pretended to be secret police, I was a captain. I hoped the fake promotion represented a real pay raise. A guy can dream.

“I need guidance on a possible enemy contact,” I told him. “I have a list of names, but no local knowledge. That’s where you come in.”

“Infiltration?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What’s the end purpose?”

I hesitated.

Aju tried to make a placating gesture, but he was doing it wrong and it ended up looking like he was groping invisible breasts in midair. “I understand this information is likely very sensitive, Major,” he said, “but if you tell me what you can, it might help me advise you more precisely.”

“I need to contact the resistance, so they can transport me off-world,” I said.

He nodded slowly, scratching the little nub that passed for his chin. “Difficult. But doable.”

“I have a list of potential candidates. Morris Sherman is senior supervisor of baggage handling at the spaceport. I thought he might be able to sneak me aboard an outbound freighter.”

“A reasonable thought,” Aju said. “But Sherman was caught in a roundup of… ah… the usual suspects, yesterday morning. There has been a push for added security lately, likely connected to the recent saber rattling in the Coriandon Quadrant.”

“Coriandon?” Before I’d been shoved into deep freeze, humanity had indulged a brief war with the warlike but generally inept Coriandons, an alien people that looked like four-foot tall piles of snot and moved around like snails. It seemed ridiculous. So much had happened while I was sleeping.

“Yes, the Coriandons have invaded some of the frontier systems,” Aju said, “but this appears to be more than one of their insignificant border raids. Reports are fuzzy, but they appear to be coming across the Demarcation Zone in force, multiple waves of attack corsairs followed by larger support vessels.”

Damn.
I made a mental note to read up on the Coriandon and intergalactic politics. But that didn’t change my current need.

“Do you have any suggestions?”

“Meredith Capulet,” Aju said.

“She’s not on my list.”

“She would not be, sir,” Aju said. “She is not an agent of the resistance, but rather a sympathizer. She is the heiress to the Bowel Fragrance line of products.”

“The what?” I asked.

“Pills that make a person’s bowel movements smell pleasant,” Aju explained. “I understand Garden Meadow is quite popular.”

“For Christ’s sake.”

“As one of the idle rich, Miss Capulet has thrown her energy into supporting the resistance via society fundraisers and sponsorship of several resistance-friendly political candidates. Many in her socioeconomic circle have turned their backs on her for this, but progressives throughout the system have flocked to her banner… figuratively speaking.”

“What draws her to the plight of the resistance?”

“Publicly, she claims sympathy for the oppressed.” Aju made that odd alien gesture again which passed for a shrug. “My belief is that she is bored and spoiled and enjoys minor flirtations with danger and controversy.”

“And how does that help us?” I asked.

“I believe helping a champion of the resistance…” Aju gestured to me, “…would appeal to her sense of vanity and adventure. She has money and influence and could certainly get you off Luna. As I have stated, however, she is not an agent. We must contrive a way to approach her. The name Eliot Swank is on your list, I would guess.”

“Yes.” In fact, Swank was labeled dangerous. I’d planned to avoid him.

“Through him, you can approach Capulet,” Aju said. “He is well placed with the resistance here on Luna.”

“I don’t suppose he’s an easy man to find.”

“Indeed not, especially with the recent crackdown. I suggest you search for him at Bottom Bob’s. It is a likely place to start anyway.”

“Bottom Bob’s?”

“A dank and disreputable saloon on the bottom level,” Aju said. “Be warned. Local authorities do not patrol the bottom level.”

“Good,” I said. “The local authorities and I aren’t exactly bosom pals.”

T
he elevators stopped at level eighty. I zig-zagged down rusting metal stairwells to level eighty-four, where there was no longer any power. Chemical lanterns hung at irregular intervals, casting everything in eerie green light.

A seedy man with cheap replacement eyes stumbled at me from a cross-corridor. The red lights in his pupils were startling at first. Probably a war vet gone bad.

“Hey, man,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You want blow, smack, harsh, grab, stunk. I can get you anything you want if you got the cred. You want girls?” He glanced at my priest’s collar. “Boys?”

“Beat it.” Something in my voice made him listen.

He turned, walked away fast.

The corridor opened up into a wide chamber, a kind of makeshift market with people selling meat on a stick over an open flame. A mix of torches and chemical lanterns lit the place. The air circulation system, thankfully, seemed to be one of the few utilities that still functioned down here, so the closely packed, unwashed population produced merely a stench rather than a toxic fume. I passed one woman who looked like a fairy tale witch with oozing sores on her face. She stooped over a huge boiling pot, stirring the contents. Might have been soup. Could have been laundry.

Across the market a flickering blue neon sign buzzed the words
BOTTOM BOB’S
. I walked through the chaos, dodging people trying to sell me secondhand crap, various narcotics, and merchandise that had to have been stolen—digi-readers still in the plastic, medical devices that gleamed new, and a whole stack of those electronic cats that tell the future if you feed them a credit coin.

Finally reaching the other side, I entered Bottom Bob’s saloon and scanned the room.

It was dimly lit. People hunched at tables. The stink of sweat and old beer. The low murmur eased a moment while everyone stopped and gawked at me. All they saw was some dumbass priest. They turned back to their drinks, and the murmur rose again.

I walked up to the bar, and a fat bartender with a five-day beard slouched my way, looked me up and down.

“Yeah?”

“Gin martini, shaken, two olives.”

“No.”

I blinked. “No? Why no?”

“No vermouth,” he said. “And no olives.”

“Then I’ll have gin on the rocks.”

“No.”

I glared at him.

He shrugged. “No ice.”

“Then pour me whatever you have that passes for gin in a reasonably clean glass,” I said.

He thought about that, decided he could pull it off, and walked away. He returned five seconds later with a tumbler half-full of what
looked
like gin, set it in front of me. I pulled out a hundred-credit bill, set it on the counter but kept my hand on it.

“Do you keep the change?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I dunno. Do I?”

“I’m looking for Eliot Swank.”

The bartender’s upper lip curled like he just sniffed a turd left out in the sun too long. “Oh, yeah? Well, I’m looking for a tall redhead with a third tit on her back for dancing.”

“You want the cash or not?”

“Fuck you.”

I made the bill vanish back into my pocket.

“Your loss.”

“It’s half a cred for the drink,” he said.

“Or what?” I used the voice again.

He put up his hands and backed away. “Hey, you know what? On the house. Enjoy your drink, motherfucker.”

I drank it, but I didn’t enjoy it.

Then I leaned against the bar, looked around the saloon. Patrons pretended not to look back at me, but I could tell. They were curious. A priest getting pushy in Bottom Bob’s? It didn’t compute.