Hellflower (v1.1) (28 page)

And Paladin would be certain dead, and the Office of the Question would be after me, but with Tiggy to back me I might get away.

Or I could stay for Paladin. Slim-to-no chance of getting him out, and certain death for Valijon Starbringer, age fourteen.

I stood there trying to make up my mind, and couldn’t. "Goddamn you sonabitch hellflower-"

"Let me help you,
Kore
. Or kill me now. I cannot leave you."

"Got no idea what you’re saying, hellflower. I’m not one of your dainty-damn risto-bai glitterborn, all fine and nice. I am the criminal element, Noble Val’jon Starbringer, like what your da locks up and the Emperor chops. Farce me no nursery stories about honor. I don’t got none, and you can’t stand that. So you just write me off, an-"

"My honor is loyalty,
Kore
. I will stay."

I tried to stare him down, but it didn’t work.

I owed Paladin my life too many times to count. I owed him a clean quick death at least-and maybe I could save him. But then we’d have to run, and far, and Tiggy. . . .

Tiggy would be dead.

I rubbed my jaws where the RTS was built in. I’d already made my choice.

"Look, bai. I give you fair warning. What I’m gonna do you’ll try to ice me for. I swear on your knife, Val’jon, that I know this for truth. Ask me and I’ll tell you what it is now, and then you’ll know. You’re fast and strong, Tiggy-bai, but I can kill you. And I will. If you want to live, babby, go now and don’t say anything else."

Tiggy reached for his knife, real slow, two fingers.

"My life belongs to you. I was weak once. but you have made me strong. Loyalty is honor, and honor is loyalty. It does not matter what your purpose is. I will die before I harm you or allow you to be harmed.
Dzain’domere. "

Then he handed me the knife. "You will keep this for me now." I stood there and looked at a dead man walking, and realized I was dead too. I died when Errol Lightfoot lifted
Lad
v off Granola twenty years ago with me aboard. I died on Pandora when I took a box of broken glass and turned it back into something alive. I died in the Chullites when I knew what Paladin was and chose him over the Pax Imperador.

And on Wander-web. And on Kiffit. And on Manticore.

Been dead so long, so many times. one more wasn’t going to matter. And Tiggy was old enough to pick out his own real estate and be dead too.

"I’m real sorry. Tiggy-Val’jon, even if you won’t believe it when it’s time to die. You’d of made a lousy darktrader anyway." I tucked his
arthame
in with my blaster. "C’mon, let’s go inside."

Tiggy just smiled. We sat in
Lady
’s upper hold and I told my hellflower partner where to look to find my ship. He didn’t once ask what was on
Firecat
that I didn’t dare let the Office of the Question see.

Honor.

Idiocy.

###

When you know how, you know who,
Tiggy’d said.

And it was simple, once you laid it out. Whoever took
Firecat
had a rolligon crane of his own, since none’d gone missing from the Port and
Firecat
hadn’t been destroyed or cut up on-site. He had a dock, since the ship wasn’t anywhere on the surface. He had to know where to look for her, since a planet’s a big place and we worked out that
Firecat
had only been alone and lonely for maybe three hours at the outside-not long enough for someone to home on beacons and then send their crane.

When you know who, why doesn’t matter bo-diddley.

###

There’s this dockside bar in beautiful MhoneCity called the Blue Wulmish. It’s exactly like every dockside bar, hooch, blind tiger, low dive, and parlor crib that ever was. The bouncer on the door wanted me to leave my heat there until I told him who I worked for. The "no blasters" rule was new since I’d been here last, but so was lots of things. I gave my name to a tronic along with a drink order and asked to see the nighttime man, but it wouldn’t go away until I added a five-credit chip to the message. Eventually the rude mechanical came back with my drink and told me the boss could give mc half-gram of his precious time and would I walk this way please?

It’s an old joke, and instead of doing that I ducked around and lost the tronic in the crush then went nice and quiet up the inert stairs without it to advertise me. Parxifal’s office wasn’t locked. I went in.

Then I saw who it was in Parxifal’s office instead of Parxifal. Lots of things came all of a sudden pellucid.

"Good evening, gentlelizards," I said to Kroon’Vannet-late of Kiffit-and Olione, Parxifal’s ex-lieutenant and full-time turncoat. Parxifal was dead, I bet, and guess who’d iced him‘?

"Where’s my money?" And my ship.

The door hissed shut and I leaned against the wall and didn’t quite draw my blaster. My backup was too damn far away and with orders to stay there. I was on my own, and another piece of the puzzle was staring at me in a place where it shouldn’t of been.

Vannet was as rough, nasty, and ambitious as you could expect a interstellar crime lord to be. I didn’t like him, and not just because he was a double-dealing lizard with anti-mammal prejudices. He was the sonabitch who’d stole my ship.

"Good evening, Captain-Owner St. Cyr," said Vannet in his best wide-open-grave voice. "I hope you are suffering no ill-effects from your most recent misfortune."

There was a number of ways you could take that. "Nothing credit won’t curc."

When in doubt, act natural.

Parxifal had a private dock and cranes, and Vannet had everything Parxifal’d had, looked like. So Vannet had
Firecat
-but from the lack of
Legitimates
here, he didn’t know about Paladin.

Or did he? One count of High Book on Kiffit, Errol darktrading more Old Fed Tech down a pipeline that led straight here. . . .

Had Vannet stole
Firecat
to get
Paladin?

"And playing to a audience makes me nervous," I went on, looking pointedly at Olione.

"I was awaiting your call, Captain St. Cyr. I have been looking forward to this conversation for quite some time," said Vannet. He waved Olione out. I saluted the departing lizard with my free hand. My drink sloshed.

Vannet and me stared at each other for awhiles. "You delivered a load of chobosh here from Manticorc," he said, which was a damnall weak opening gambit and not what I’d expect from a thug of his caliber.

"Picked up legit brokered job on Kiffit. Comptroller accepted cargo and signed out on ticket-of-leave as satisfactory."

There was a real long pause while Vannet sent out for some more brain cells. "Chobosh. The chobosh is here. You have the receipt for the chobosh?"

Now that I’d stared at Vannet for a while there was something funny about him too. The sides of his face didn’t match. He had a big lump on his jaw about the same place Olione did.

The same place I would of if Vonjaa Beofox hadn’t been the best cyberdoc in the Outfar.

Vannet was wearing a RTS.

I waved the receipt for the chobosh at him by reflex action. Vannet paid it down to the nail without checking, and that was all wrong but I didn’t care anymore. I dropped the plaques into my shirt and tactfully broached the other subject of my visit.

"By the way, Vannet-che-bai, someone stole ship
Firecat
this afternoon. What did you do with it?"

Vannet wrinkled his forehead skin and again I got the funny feeling I’d got watching Olione out back on the desert. It was like Vannet wasn’t really here.

Or was listening to something. I felt all of my hackles go up. "Your ship? Your ship is in dock, and has been lot most of the day," he said finally.

"Ship-mine, Vannet-che, was slagged over downside fifty kliks from here. Gig in dock Errol Lightfoot’s, who maybe you know. Maybe he’d like to buy goforth back?"

Vannet communed with the beyond again. I did not want to know what was the mother station for his RTS. "You and I have so much in common. We are erect bipeds of vision. Join me. Captain Lightfoot no longer has any use for a ship. I will-" There was a grinding sound, but it was mostly Vannet trying to talk and not talk at the same time. It was like listening to a scrambled commo signal, which was not a sound Vannet’s B-pop was equipped to produce. He said something that sounded like "The New Creation" and then there was lots of hissing and lizardtalk. I could follow it well enough to tell Vannet was arguing with something that wasn’t there and paying no never-you-mind to me.

I didn’t like the hackles it raised on my neck and I didn’t like Vannet calling me a erect biped of vision. I set my drink down on his desk and left fast and smooth. Nobody jumped me on the stairs, in the bar, or on the street outside.

###

Never mind why the nighttime man of half a sector would ice one of his opposition’s more obscure branch managers to take over a op fully one-quarter the size of the one he was abandoning, and sit there with three High Book warrants in his pocket knowing Mallorum Archangel and mondo high-heat was going to be here in less than ten hours. Or why Vannet paid me full value for the cargo he’d already seen wasn’t worth half that instead of killing me. I didn’t care. I wanted Paladin. And Paladin meant
Firecat
. And Vannet had her.

I had never used to believe in Libraries. Oh, sure, they was the villain in all the credit-dreadfuls, and Paladin was one, but that didn’t make it any easier to believe in other Libraries.

Did Vannet have one? Was the reason Paladin was gone because Vannet was collecting Libraries? And if it was, what could I do about it? Vannet had left Kiffit because of the High Book rap, but he hadn’t run far enough. Imperial Governor-General his Nobly-Bornness Lord TwiceBorn Mallorum Archangel was still going to be here Real Soon Now. All Archangel had to do was drop the whistle on Vannet’s peccadillo, and the upstanding citizens of the Roaq would be falling all over themselves to turn him in for the head-price.

And smash the Libraries.

The Port closed in ten hours. I crossed the street to where my backup was palely loitering.

"You were in there too long," said Tiggy severely.

"Got paid. Kroon’Vannet’s new head of the local racket."

"And your ship, the
Firecat
? He will return it?"

There’s something comforting about the alMayne single-minded lunge for the bottom line.

"No." I thought about Tiggy’s reaction the last time somebody mentioned Libraries and decided not to unburden myself further. "But there’s a private dock at the Rialla hardsite. If Vannet’s got the op, he’s got the dock."

"And he has the
Firecat
." Tiggy thought of something and sighed. "The evil
chaudatu
crimelord Kroon’Vannet is dead, is he not,
alarthme
?"

I ran through the equations for the basic transit to angeltown in the vicinity of a planet of standard mass or less and tried to remember that Tiggy was already dead, it was my fault he was dead, and while he was still walking he could be useful. "Tiggy-bai, if I ice the evil whatsis, every bought hardboy in the Roaq is going to be hungry for me, and I don’t got time to play games, k’en savvy?"

Tiggy nodded sagely. "Sometimes the path of honor is hard,
Kore-alarthme
. Perhaps you will be able to kill him soon."

"Sure."

"But now we will go to the Rialla ‘hardsite’ and reclaim the
Firecat
. And I will take the
chaudatu
reiver Errol Lightfoot from the evil crimelord Kroon’Vannet and kill him. And then-"

"Hold it. ‘We’ are going nowhere. You are going back to the ship. You know damn-all about ME on crimelord’s bolt away from hole, and don’t farce me."

"I will not hide behind your shadow while you wage Beony-war for the honor of your House," Tiggy said.

"Yeah, well you conic along while I’m trying to sneak into Rialla and you’ll just get us both killed. I just know you and your honor couldn’t stand up to that."

"But you are my honor now,
Kore
San’Cyr. I think that the
Kore
refuses to understand how very resilient this ‘hellflower’ is," said Tiggy, wickedly-cheerful.

"Says che-bai made us go back at Wanderweb for a knife."

"It is my
arthame, Kore
-not a ‘knife.’ And no one required you to assist me."

"Jai, you’d be rotting head on a pike somewheres and I’d be free and happy woman."

Chaffering helped, some.

###

Probably I got careless. I had to go back to the
Lady
for some stuff anyway, and Vannet had already passed up enough chances to kill me here that I didn’t think he was going to now. So we walked into the Docking Bay with Tiggy all affectionate lecturing me on the finer points of honor, and up the ramp of the
Light Lady
aka
Silverdagger Legacy,
and into a loaded blaster.

I ducked. Tiggy lunged, but he went for his knife first and I had it not him and that bought the other side time to move.

###

You don’t see in color when everything’s moving that fast, just heat-shapes and dark. Tiggy went by me at the kiddy with the gun. I faded offside, looking for his backup. The backup was something big. I snapped off a shot and had a razor edge in my left hand for when it closed. Behind me someone yelped, and my off-hand skated into flesh with the slippery Uneven tugging that meant hair or fur. I pushed harder and lost the knife; Gruesome slugged me down and there was some dark sleepy moments while I tried to get up and find my blaster.

"When Alcatote hits them, they usually stay down," someone said. The fight was over and we’d lost.

Then there was a sound like two cats fighting-one mine-and somebody else hauled me to my feet.

"Stop shaking her, Rimini-my-sweet, she’s probably got broken bones."

I opened my eyes and looked. In the feeble illumination of Errol’s feeble corridor, Eloi-the-Red was leaning against the hatch, bleeding. Alcatote was wrapped round Tiggy, who was trying to take him apart and snarling in helltongue at someone in my direction. i looked. Behind me, Lalage Rimini was being cruel and unusual and holding a blaster in my general direction. Not a hair out of place, of course. She smole a small smile at me.