Jason King: Agent to the Stars 1: The Enclaves of Sylox (10 page)

Chapter 13

I wrote up a brief containing the little I knew about Miranda Moore and took it over to Cyrus’s office at the U.S. Consulate on Monday morning. Afterwards, I drove over to the apartment building on Executive Row, just on the off chance that she might still there.

The building had security, yet at this time of day, the front door was open. I went in and took the elevator to the sixth floor.

The hallway was quiet and deserted as I left the elevator. I walked up to the first door on the left and knocked.

A few moments later the door swung open.

“What the hell do you want?”

I recognized the person instantly. It was Franklin Smart, star of TV and the silver screen. He looked annoyed.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Smart, but I was wondering if Miranda’s here?”

The chiseled, tanned face of the movie star frowned. “Miranda, ain’t no Miranda here, buddy. And I didn’t know just anyone could come up here?”

“I’m with the Mission. I was here about three weeks ago with a woman named Miranda Moore. Do you know anything about that?”

“Dude, I’ve been here for the last couple of months, ever since we’ve been filming down along the river. No one’s been here that I didn’t personally invite, and no one named Miranda. There was a Tiffany … and a Diane, but no Miranda. And there was also a Monica, and I think two Heathers, but still no Miranda. You say you were here, in
this
apartment?”

“Yeah, I was.” I drew out the sentence as I let my exasperation become vocal. “On the fourteenth of last month to be precise.”

Smart frowned again and cast his eyes upwards and to the left. “The fourteenth, I think we were in the mountains around that time, shooting a big fight scene.” And then he frowned. “So you and your girlfriend crashed my crib when I was gone?”

“Sorry, man, I didn’t have anything to do with it. I just went along for the ride, if you know what I mean.”

This evoked a wicked smile from the sex-crazed actor. “So I guess it’s a good thing that I get the sheets changed every day. Now if there’s nothin’ else, why don’t you get the hell outta here?”

I smiled at the movie star, even though I preferred to plant my right palm straight into the larynx of this obnoxious rube. But I controlled myself, deciding to save whatever anger I had building for the next time I saw the conniving Miranda Moore.

As I entered the elevator, I decided it was about time I came clean with Jennifer Wilson. I didn’t give a damn if it blew Miranda’s cover or not. After all, she probably wasn’t even Jennifer’s real cousin. And if she did work for one of the conglomerates, then outing her wasn’t really that serious of a thing.

I was actually excited about telling Jennifer all I knew, along with my suspicions. Unfortunately, I never got the chance.

All I remember when the elevator door slid open was the brilliant flash of light and the excruciating pain in my chest. After that I welcomed the darkness that followed….

**********

When I came to I was strapped to a cot in a dimly-lit room with dirty concrete walls. The scene was almost too cliché as to be laughable – if it didn’t involve
me
tied to a cot in a dimly-lit room with dirty concrete walls.

The pain in my chest was from a Level-2 flash bolt. It hadn’t meant to kill – at least not a Human – only to stun. But whatever its stated purpose, it still hurt like hell.

So Miranda’s people didn’t like me snooping around, up to and including the point where they’d resort to kidnapping to make their point. Kidnapping – or Unlawful Detainment as it was called here – was a serious crime on Sylox, as it was on Earth, so this made me think these people were a little more serious than I’d first thought.

Now, as I looked around the room, I wasn’t really scared. I’d been trained to handle things a lot worse than this. Besides, I didn’t know anything. Miranda was a mystery to me, and if her people wanted me to back off trying to find her, well, you didn’t have to ask me twice. I wasn’t anxious to find her in the first place.

I was alone in the room and growing more impatient by the second. I had things to do today, including a closing at three. I just wished whoever abducted me would come in and get this over with.

“Hey, I’m awake!” I yelled out. “And I’m ready to answer your questions! Can anyone hear me?”

Silence was my answer.

Even though I was strapped to the cot, I was still able to see the dial on my watch. It was Mid-0:32, or twelve thirty-two. I was sure I would need a change of clothes and to put some ointment on the flash burn before the closing, so I figured I had to be out of here by one, one-fifteen at the latest.

I called out again. “Hey, dickwad, I don’t have all day! Let’s get this interrogation going. I can’t wait to spill my guts, tell ya everything I know, and then some!”

Finally the door to the cold room opened and two men entered, who were clichés themselves. Both had dark complexions, with coarse black beards. They wore functional khaki-colored pants and short-sleeve shirts, and each carried a compact MK-24 flash-repeater weapon.

“Why don’t you shut up, big-mouth.” The taller and fatter of the pair said.

“But if I shut up, how can you get any information out me? I’m ready to talk. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

My two captors exchanged confused looks.

“We don’t want to know anything, at least not yet,” said the second kidnapper.

“If not now, then when?” I asked, truly concerned. “C’mon, ask me anything. I’m an open book.”

My two guards looked at each other again.

“I have nothing to hide, so you’re just delaying the enviable. The sooner you get to the questioning, the sooner we can all go home, both kidnappers and kidnappee.”

Just then another being entered the room. This one was an alien. I’d seen his kind before on the streets, but I didn’t know the name of the species. He was a typical Prime, almost to the point of being a Human clone. But the hard-looking plates growing along each side of his face, along with the excessive amount of gray-colored hair on his head and arms, definitely classified this thing as an alien, and an old one at that. I watched as the two Human thugs deferred to his leadership.

“Lift him up.”

The Human lackeys untied my restraints, allowing me to sit up on the cot. My hands were still bound at the wrist in front of me but my legs were free. Obviously, these wannabes thugs hadn’t read the gangster manual on how to secure a potentially dangerous captive. I gauged the distance and relative positions of the each of my kidnappers, just in case I ran into a time crunch for my closing.

“You have been searching for a Human called Miranda Moore,” the alien stated.

“That’s right, but not anymore. I can tell that you guys mean business, so from this moment on, I’m done. No more looking for Miranda.”

“You do not know where she is?”

I pulled my head back a little. “If I knew where she was, I wouldn’t be looking for her, right?” I looked at the two Humans. They just shrugged.

“Have you acquired any information on where she might be located?”

“You’re looking for her, too? Why?”

“It is because she has taken the—”

One of the other Humans reached out his hand and grasped the arm of the alien. The fat thug shook his head at old plate-head. The alien turned back to me. “That is of no concern to you. Just tell us all you know and you will not be harmed.”

“Well, this is going to be a short conversation, because I don’t know nothin’.” I knew this was a double negative, but it did sound like something out of an old gangster movie. “She was here a couple of weeks ago, and now she isn’t. She said she was a spy, but all my sources say she doesn’t work for any of the agencies. So beyond that, I don’t know shit.”

Just then, a wild idea began to percolate in my mind. “However, if you guys know anything about
me
, then you know I’m a businessman. Offer me enough money and I’ll do just about anything – without you having to go through all this gangster-shit. Having said that, what would it be worth to you if I found her?”

“Worth?”

The leader-thug leaned over a little closer to his boss. “He wants to know how much you’ll pay him to find her for us.”

The alien’s face lit up and he nodded emphatically. “I see! Well, we would be in a position to pay … forty thousand credits to bring her to us.”

I’m sorry, but I just had to laugh; even the thugs looked embarrassed. “That’s barely sixteen thousand in Human money,” I pointed out. “Haven’t you guys done your homework? I’m Jason King; I don’t do shit for sixteen thousand dollars.”

“How much would you require?”

“Well, let’s see: Miranda’s taken off with something that you want to get back pretty badly, enough that you would resort to unlawful detainment – which is a capital offense here on Sylox by the way.” I said that for the benefit of the thugs. “I’d say a million would be fair. A million
dollars
.”

I swear the alien gangster nearly fainted. “We cannot pay you that! That is nearly two-and-one-half million Union credits. No, your fee is exorbitant.”

“Well, I’m willing to negotiate, but you should be aware that I have contacts all over Sylox, even within the Council itself. If anyone can find this bitc – this Human – it would be me.”

The alien looked to the two thugs. They nodded.

“I will have to consult.”

The alien boss walked to the other end of the room and placed a communicator to his ear. After a couple of minutes, he returned.

“The most we could offer you would be two hundred fifty thousand credits – I mean dollars.”

A quarter mil … not bad.
I pursed my lips and nodded. “That sounds fair. Now how about you guys cut me loose?”

My wrists were bound in a thick tape of some kind. The smaller Human thug stepped forward, produced a black-bladed Ka-Bar Becker combat knife – which told me a little more about who these guys were – and sliced my bindings away. Much of the hair on my wrists came with the tape when I ripped it from my skin.

“Now tell me what she took.”

Finally the lead thug took over the conversation, having lost patience with his alien boss. “You don’t need to know that, King. Just find the girl and get her back to us.”

“What do you know about where she
might
be?”

“If we knew we wouldn’t be talking to you. But there’s possibility she’s gone off to a place called Hyben. There’s a group there who would find what she has to be valuable.”

“How valuable?” I said with a wide grin.

The thug shook his head and frowned.

“Is Hyben a city or a planet?”

“It’s a planet, and in the city of Lioren-Cur, if she’s there. You can take your fancy new spaceship over there in nothing flat,” the thug said, his voice thick with sarcasm – and jealousy.

So they
had
done their homework.

“And how will I contact you when I get her?”

“Don’t worry about that; we’ll contact you. And one last thing – the object she has with her comes back, too, and in one piece, or you don’t get a dime. Is that understood?”

“But you won’t tell me what she has?”

“That’s right, but you’ll know it when you see it.”

“So why not just tell me?