Rath's Gambit (The Janus Group Book 2) (6 page)

He stood up, leaving the drones flying in a random security screen pattern, and walked down into the facility, his steps echoing on the damp concrete. The mines were still there, undisturbed, at each intersection along the tunnel, leading him onward. He heard the rush of water ahead, and soon the tunnel brightened, opening out on the spillway. Rath took a deep breath and stepped out into the light. The spillway was empty.

Rath spent the rest of the day searching the abandoned facility, but he found no sign of 339 –
Paisen,
Rath corrected himself,
her real name is Paisen
– either in the tunnels below the dam, or anywhere nearby. He cooked a light dinner sitting up on the lip of the dam, looking out over the valley below, and ate it as night fell. It was a moonless night, and the stars were spectacular. Rath lay on his back and studied them for a while, then sat up and triggered the counter bracelet on his wrist, watching the golden
50
spin and then wink out.

Where are you, Paisen?

The bracelet was hers – she had swapped their bracelets back during their confrontation in the spillway, several years before.

She should be wearing my bracelet; it would show her that I reached fifty, too.

Rath picked a pebble up and tossed it idly off the dam, watching it tumble through the air and eventually disappear in the gathering darkness below.

So where is she?

Rath had not planned beyond escaping from the Group, and then linking up with Paisen – the other contractor had seemed so driven, so sure of herself.

She has a plan. ‘We’re going to make them pay,’ that’s what she said.

He lay back down, eyes reflecting the starlight above.

Rath fell asleep on top of the dam, but hours later he started awake, gasping for air. In his dream, he had been trapped in a frozen river, under a sheet of ice, while the bodies of his victims floated by, grasping at him. Rath shivered, despite the heat, shaking his head as if to clear it of the images.

I’m never going to get rid of the memories. Not without that money. And I need Paisen to get that money. Hell, the Group is going to find me again soon enough – I need her just to stay alive.

Rath lay back on his side, pillowing his head on the Forge. He drew his knees to his chest and hugged them. He could feel sleep taking hold already, his heartbeat slowing as his body relaxed again. He shivered again, grimacing as he submitted to the dreams.

Damn it, Paisen. Where are you!?

* * *

He stayed at the dam for two weeks, spending each day scouring the facility for any small clue as to where 339 had gone, or whether she had been there since their initial encounter. At night he slept fitfully, but the respite allowed his wounds some time to heal. On the morning of the fourteenth day, he made a final, thorough search of the entire area, and came up empty again. He left one of the micro-drones attached to a wall in the spillway, broadcasting its feed. Then he pulled his Forge on and hiked back through the woods to the road, eventually hitching a lift with a farmer back to the closest town.

“You want me to drop you off at the rental center?” the farmer asked him.

“Hm?” Rath had been lost in thought.

“The rental center, so you can get yourself a car,” the farmer prompted.

“No,” Rath shook his head. “Wait – yes. The rental center would be perfect,” he said.

Paisen had an air car and a hoverbike when I saw her last. Maybe she rented them, and they have some kind of record of that.

In town, Rath thanked the farmer, gifting him two of the micro-drones, before pushing open the door of the rental center.

“Need a vehicle?” the woman behind the counter asked, looking up from an ancient paper crossword puzzle book.

“Uh, no,” Rath told her. “I’m a private investigator, trying to track down a woman that might have been here some years back and rented a car from you. I was hoping you might let me check your records …?”

“Oh,” she said. “I’ve never done that before, so let me check with my manager.”

She made a quick phone call, and explained the situation. Then the woman hung up and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, but he says we only share our customer data with the police, and we’d need to see a warrant first.”

“Ah,” Rath said. “Right. Do you rent hoverbikes?”

“Mostly air cars and moving vans, but we have a couple bikes, yes.”

Rath dug through his memories, dredging up the report he had filed after the assignment, to find the make and model of the bike Paisen had left at the spillway during their first encounter. “Do you have any Ryuko SkyStreamers? The medium-range model?”

She frowned. “Don’t think so. Our bikes are all Steeplechasers.”

Rath sighed. “Okay, thanks for your time.”

“No problem. Good luck finding her!”

Rath rode a public bus back to Lakeworld’s largest city, then spent the afternoon auctioning off his auto-pistol and grenades via a black market website. They didn’t net him much in the way of cash, but it would be enough for another few space flights, if he was careful. He was reluctant to build more – his Forge’s supply canisters were nearly half depleted, and once gone, replacing them would be prohibitively expensive.

And the Group is probably keeping tabs on anywhere that sells Forge canisters.

When the funds deposited to his account, he walked across town to the spaceport, stopping inside to stand in front of the massive departures board and scan the options available to him.

Where now? I don’t have a clue. I could go back to the rental center and pose as a cop, but I don’t know what a warrant looks like. It’s probably electronic. Even if I got their data, there’s an excellent chance Paisen didn’t rent from them, and even if she did, she would have just left a cover identity on file … the name and home address would all be bogus. How do you find a missing contractor, who can take on any appearance she wishes, and has spent years successfully hiding from both the galaxy’s most powerful criminal organization, and the Interstellar Police?

Above him, the departures board flickered through a set of changes, letters and numbers cascading and rearranging to show the flights that were now available. A planet caught his eye.
Yeah. That’s the last place I should go right now.

But slowly, his smile faded.

Well … why not? I’m not going to find her on my own: I need help. From someone who has found contractors before …

6

“Good morning, Miss Dartae,” the security guard said.

The young woman looked up from rifling through her messenger bag and smiled back. “Good morning! How are you today?”

“I’m good, thanks, ma’am. And you?”

“Been better,” she admitted. “I think I left my badge at home.”

“No problem,” he said. “We’ll just sign you in with bio-signatures.” He pressed a button at his station, and a retractable arm extended from the security gate. “Fingerprint on the scanner as usual, and then the eye scanner will confirm it.”

“You got it,” she said. She placed her finger on the scanner and waited while the arm aligned its lens with her eye.

“Hey, weren’t you taking vacation?” the guard asked, as they waited.

“Yup,” she agreed. “Just dropping by quickly, I left something in my office I need to pick up.”

“One more time with the eye scan,” he said. “It came back fuzzy, probably because I was talking to you – sorry, Miss Dartae!”

“No problem,” she said.

“There we go! You’re all set,” he told her. She stepped through the gate; he met her on the far side, holding out a temporary badge. “This will work for today, get you through the internal gates in your department.”

“Thanks,” she said, flashing him another smile.

She made her way deeper into the building, passing through two more security gates – unmanned this time – before entering a long hallway. On her right was a locker room; on her left an observation window looked into a laboratory, where a group of engineers in clean room garb were assembling a device on a table. One looked up and saw her, and waved. She smiled and waved back, then headed down the hall until she found an office labeled
Ongela Dartae, PhD. – Tactical Applications Development
. She ducked into the office, set the messenger bag on the desk, and booted up the computer, using her fingerprint to log on.

She searched through several folders until she found what she was looking for, and then plugged a small data drive into the machine. A warning message popped up immediately, reminding her that external drives were not permitted, per security policy. The woman waited patiently as the drive ran a script, and then the message disappeared, and she copied the files across with several quick commands.

* * *

The security guard looked up from his monitors as the woman entered the building. He frowned. “Spill something on your shirt?” he asked her over the intercom.

“Morning, Jacksin,” she replied, then looked down at her shirt. “Oh, did I spill something? Where?”

“No, not that shirt, Miss Dartae – the one you were wearing when you first came in,” he replied.

She frowned. “Jacksin, are you confusing me with somebody else?”

He shook his head, “No, ma’am.” He typed on his computer for a few seconds. “You checked in this morning already, just ten minutes ago. I have it right here on the screen. You said you came back from vacation early because you had to get something in your office, but you forgot your badge.”

“I came back from vacation early because Dr. Goodpren called and asked me to. And I have my badge.” She held it up, and their eyes met. “Jacksin, sound the alarm.”

* * *

You have got to be kidding,
Paisen thought, as the alarm klaxons blared through the office’s PA system. The data had finished copying, so she ran one more program from the drive, deleting the computer’s short term memory to erase any trace of her recent activity, before shutting it back down. She pulled the data drive out of the researcher’s computer, and slipped it into a pocket on her Forge’s messenger bag.

“Attention, all personnel: internal and external gates are on lock-down while security conducts a building search. Please remain in your designated areas and comply with all security requests. This is not a drill.”

She pulled up the building’s schematic on her heads-up display, but knew already it was a futile gesture – once locked down, the lab was designed to be completely sealed.

I can stash the evidence, though.

She looked around the office quickly, searching for a place to hide the bag. The air conditioning vent she deemed too obvious a solution, and the ceiling was solid, with no removable tiles or utility pipes. Finally her eyes lit on a small tree in a deep planter in the corner of the room.

When she was done, she walked down the hall to the locker room, where she dumped a small trash can filled with potting soil into one of the toilets, watching to make sure it flushed cleanly. She sloughed off Ongela Dartae’s face, darkening her skin tone and hair at the same time, and adopting a neutral identity she had crafted some years back. She was washing the dirt off her hands at the sink when the security team found her.

She eyed them in the mirror. “Hello, gentlemen.”

* * *

Paisen stood in line behind another defendant, largely ignoring the proceedings. Like the building it was situated in, the courtroom itself was showing its age acutely, with paint flaking off the pre-fabricated walls and a myriad of stains on the carpeted floor. Paisen wondered how many of the stains were from blood.

“Next,” the judge sighed. Paisen felt the bailiff push her forward until she stood on a set of white footprints painted on the carpet. She waited in silence as the judge reviewed the case on his datascroll.

“What were you doing inside the building?” he asked her, not bothering to look up.

“Trespassing.”

The judge snorted. “Apparently.”

“Don’t I get a lawyer?”

“Do you see anyone else getting a lawyer?” the judge asked, rhetorically. “I don’t know where you’re from, but out here we don’t really bother with them. Faster and easier if I just handle it all. Is there something you’d like to say in your defense?”

“I didn’t steal anything,” Paisen said.

“Anything that we know of,” he agreed. “But the report says breaking and entering, and identity theft. Did you do that?”

Paisen cocked her head to one side. “If I plead guilty, will you cut my sentence down?”

The judge shrugged. “Can’t hurt.”

She considered for a second, then nodded. “I broke into the lab.”

“Five years, hard labor,” he decided, tapping on his datascroll. “Eligible for parole in eighteen months. Next!”

The bailiff ushered her out a side door into a small anteroom, where an armed guard was waiting. The guard checked her name against his datascroll, scanned the tracker cuff around her ankle to ensure it was still active, and tested that her handcuffs were still firmly in place. Then he nodded to the bailiff.

“I have custody,” he confirmed. He took Paisen by the elbow and led her out a side door onto the street. A large wheeled bus with fencing welded on over the windows stood idling at the curb.

“Get in.” The guard handed her a ration bar and a bottle of water. “Bus leaves at sunset.”

He palmed the door switch and it slid open. Paisen climbed onto the bus, and found an empty seat toward the back. On impulse, as she did every day, she checked the counter bracelet she had taken from Rath, sliding it clear of the handcuffs and tapping on the device’s button. To her surprise, a golden
50
appeared, rotating slowly in the air over her wrist. She turned it off quickly.

He made it. I wait four years for him, and he makes fifty the same day I get busted earning some cash on a freelance job. Well, I hope he escaped. And I hope he just lays low and waits on Lakeworld … and doesn’t try something stupid.