Rogue-ARC (27 page)

I didn’t want to hurt her, and I didn’t see any way not to.

You know those dogs they rescue from illicit fighting rings, who have to be kept in a cage and only warm up to the person who brings them food every day after a few years? I envy them. They don’t have to think about the philosophy of their past.

***

We found a light industrial area near the regional airport on the west side of town, and called in another car rental. Across the street was a hauler stop with a cheap inn. We checked in with cash, showered, wiped down with enzyme-soaked rags, bundled back out with sealed luggage, walked across the street, grabbed the new rental, and got back on the road.

“South,” I said. “Near the starport is useful, and we already have traces in the area.”

“Got it,” she said.

At a small chain hotel we set up shop. The port was five minutes by car, rail or taxi, we had a nice little kiosk for groceries or franchise food, and good access to civilian communication.

“What now?” Silver asked as she threw her bag on the bed.

“Either find some more forensics, or wait for another kill to track him.”

“How hideous.”

“It’s all we have. Hopefully we can keep narrowing the gap, reduce his options, put him under stress.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Only as an intellectual challenge. Okay, yes. I’m an assassin and this is a tough one.”

“The only moral difference is that you have government sanction.” Her tone had a clear tinge of disgust.

“Yes,” I agreed. “And I don’t like governments. How’s that for irony?”

She said, “I feel frustrated. I wish this would move faster.” She looked around at everything and nothing.

“It’s one of those things we have. Months of boredom, moments of bowel-emptying terror.”

“I know,” she said with a sigh. “How am I doing?” she asked again.

I repeated, “Still great. You’re discreet and professional, and your support is first class. Keep working on your nerves.”

“Thanks,” she said.

I understood the need for feedback. Myself, I either like detailed feedback, or to be left alone. I hate someone asking for regular status updates, but I sometimes preferred to give them. Or I had, before I took on a position that made me a solo artist.

A thought occurred to me.

“If we do trace his money, I could go into competition with him.”

“How?” she asked. She was changing clothes. I kept my gaze elsewhere.

“Put the word out I’m available for kills, boast of a background, work cheaper. Prove to be incompetent and wait for ‘replacement’ by him, because I’ve blabbed a bit. The bad news is, I make our vets look bad. Good news is, that dilutes the market.”

“What if they then just ice you themselves?”

“There is that. I can almost certainly beat them, but that blows my cover spectacularly. Let’s save that one.”

Something else occurred to me.

“He’s hunting us, now.”

“Um, yes,” she agreed.

“Okay, we need a massive DNA distraction, and use vehicles only once.”

“Urine?” she asked.

“Yes. Piss in a bucket, pour it all over the landscape as we drive. Saturate the area.”

She said, “I’ll visit the hardware store.”

I hoped he’d make the amateur mistake of trying to catch up with me. That’s exactly what I wanted. He might manage a clear shot from a hundred meters, but his MO was to get close and personal. While I couldn’t predict what trick he’d use, I was confident of knowing them when I saw them.

Given that, I went out to conduct a reconnaissance. I needed to know the area, so I could look for anything unusual.

You probably don’t see things the way I do. To most people, this was an area of comfortable but basic inns, franchised restaurants, fuel and charge stations, and a few hectares of weed-covered basalt awaiting development.

I saw it as a combat environment.

It would be difficult but not impossible to advance on foot through those weeds. It would work better at night, and take heavy clothing. It would also be too slow. Still, launchers could be hidden in cracks, though they’d be compromised in use.

All these inns could be sniper points on any facing window. Some didn’t open, so that would require drilling a hole. That reduced their efficacy. It would take time to track said hole, but there would be some DNA and probably other evidence. The ones that opened were prime positions. I took some images, so we could assess angles and risks. There were the roofs, of course. A couple of video pans would establish shadow areas and cover.

Trash receptacles and privacy and sound barriers offered locations. There was the power terminal that fed the area. These were easy places to stash gear in discreet package for later use. I’d have to make sure they were stirred up or examined.

There was a slim risk of toxins being slipped into food. We wouldn’t eat in this area.

I walked through the lot, examining the vehicle charge posts. One could be boobytrapped, so I would not take a convenient slot, or the last one left during busy hours.

Just in case, we’d need a distorter on the window of the room, to obscure our conversations from a vibration reader. We’d keep the dark screens down and the window polarized. We’d do our own housekeeping.

I felt comfortable. I knew what threats we could face and how to prevent them. Of course, feeling comfortable indicated I’d missed something. I’d keep studying.

By the time I patrolled the area, just a couple of kilometers by eye and a kilometer radius on foot, and returned to the room, Silver was done. I noted the vehicle’s presence, tapped on the door in code, opened it by key, nodded at the stun wand she held, and closed it.

She pointed to a couple of buckets and some spray bottles. Good. We’d dissipate our scent all over the valley.

“In other news, I have this.” She pointed at a graph, gestured and elaborated.

“This account opened right after the first hit we’ve tracked back to him. It got a large initial deposit. It gets occasional trickles of dividends, other small deposits, then it got another large one here, after his next kill. After that, he got smart. As you said, he started having the funds trickle in, from several alleged contractees. It’s ongoing, but there are noticeable peaks after each job. No way it’s coincidental.”

“Why hasn’t anyone found this before?”

“We may not have been looking. But, there’s not enough here to justify what you speculate. Either he gets paid a lot less, or he has other resources.”

“Other resources,” I said. “He’ll have some in Earth cash cards, some in bullion, some in tools and other infrastructure. He’s likely living high when he can. However, this is his nest egg. How much is it?”

“Currently about eight hundred thousand.”

“That is a not lot of money, really,” I said.

“I have no idea how to seize it, with our laws,” she said.

“We don’t need to. The government will. It’ll be snagged for escrow, put to earning interest, and if the owner comes forth and identifies themselves they get it back. Otherwise, it’ll default to the Freehold along with the interest. It’ll take a Citizen’s signature at the very least, but it’s doable.”

“How is it possibly constitutional?” she asked.

“That one rarely referenced section that prohibits entities from creating local government not respecting of the Constitution, exploiting minors and acts against the Freehold. Easy to prove he’s not the former, all he has to do is ID himself, show up and claim the money.”

“Since he’s doing one of the very few things our government would frown on, he can’t. If he were selling drugs, or pimping widows . . . ”

“Exactly. All legal. But exploitation of minors, espionage or acts against the Freehold, which this is, are proscribed.”

“What do we do?” she said.

“I send a message to the boss and we wave bye-bye to his bank account. I wanted him stressed. This should help.”

So, was he getting less than I thought he was? Failing to save enough? Having a lot of overhead for his gimmicks?

Likely money was not his major motivator. A means to an end, and he’d want a pension. He probably was doing it for the thrill, hence the risk-taking on the jobs.

There was only one way that could end. If he was at all rational, he knew that.

So I guessed he was living for the day. Whatever he enjoyed was the finest he could afford. The savings were to tide him over between jobs only. He didn’t expect to retire.

I understood it, at least. I’d made my career increasingly challenging and exciting. I’d retired because I had a daughter to raise who, despite being an accident, was the most wonderful thing that ever happened.

He didn’t have that. We’d all been loners and social misfits. We barely got along with our own type, and the more we advanced, the less we had in common with others. Those of us on that mission really were in it for the sheer challenge. Most had died, a few had lived.

I needed to find out who else had survived and what they were doing. That would give me insight into Randall.

I could easily see, though, that someone would want to maintain that rush as long as possible. Randall had that type of personality. They’d been trying to admin him out over some silly stuff when I found him. He was loyal in return for fair treatment, aggressive against attacks on his persona—his pride, his intellect, his capabilities. Always edgy and wanting to prove it. Now he was proving it.

I felt sorry for him.

***

Covering our DNA trace was messy and nasty, but just business. We both used the bucket for urine, brushed our hair over it, chopped up underwear into shreds over it, then snuck out with bottles and tubes to splash it over every tire and front deck in the parking lot, along with the exhausts of engined vehicles, so the heat would help disperse the material. She took one side of the lot, I the other, and we wandered around looking foolish whenever someone walked through the area. I should have thought ahead and dressed like scapers.

I had one close call as I bent over and started to spritz the tires on a Mercedes. Someone behind me called, “Excuse me!”

I looked up, feigned confusion, scanned through my memory and said, “Oh, sorry. Mine’s over there. I wondered why the tire looked clean.”

It worked. He assumed I wasn’t a thief, and he was correct. He drove off as I went to vandalize and contaminate another vehicle.

In short order, we could be traced to this lot, and then all over the capital. Our actual location should be lost among the noise, or too dim to place easily. He could verify our instantaneous location if he were in the immediate area and we were outside, but he’d have to get there first. My plan was not to let that happen.

I nodded to Silver when I was down to some puddles in the bottom. A quick look confirmed no one else was within view this late. I slung the bucket underhand into some bushes, where the real scaper could dispose of it later. We walked out of the lot and down the road. Cars passed us, disturbing the fresh air with exhaust or hints of ozone, which also disturbed hints of residue on us. We took hands and strolled as a couple into a Rabbit Hut restaurant. An hour later we’d scrubbed, ordered, eaten and returned to the room. To the best of our knowledge we were clear.

Next was to egress the area and get more discreet.

As soon as we were inside, Silver hit the comm to reserve two other rooms elsewhere. I packed our stuff. Tools, gear, the other comm, my basic slacks, kilt and shirts, shoes and boots, her tunics, unitards, blouses, lingerie. I treated it as any professional task, but I knew it would be a reminder later. I don’t have a problem not treating a female sexually. I do have a problem pretending to be intimate with a sexy, sensual woman while actually being a monk.

I cleared drawers, beds, curtains, for anything incriminating, hosed out the shower and wiped the tub and commode to minimize any traces.

Silver suddenly announced, “Hello.”

I stuck my head into the main room to look.

There was a banker on the news. It seemed someone had spooled the axles of his vehicle with monomolecular wire, even while it was parked in his secure compound. As the car drove, the wire wrapped around its special drum and sliced right through the undercarriage, the seat, and well into him. They noticed when he fell into several pieces and screamed as he bled out.

That was an impressive method, but silly. There were several things that could go wrong with it, such as the wrong victim, a failure of materials, being IDed on entry or exfil, vehicle changes. It certainly was visually outrageous, though. That was the MO.

The problem I faced is that there are just too many thousands of exotic ways to do people in. I couldn’t possibly plan for or even list all of them.

How many jobs did he have lined up here? At what point did he plan to retire, and where?

CHAPTER 17

I wasn’t keen on a house anymore,
given the recent tail and other issues. I wanted to be able to fly in a second, and have the protection, distraction and concealment large crowds of people provided. However, we needed somewhere to fabricate tools. I found a small house in a quiet, lower middle class area just in from the port. It had one bedroom, one common room and services, a starter house for a couple without kids. I left enough cash to cover two months, and called it fair. Then I bought another car, and we repeated the registration scam. That made me nervous.

It had a covered garage, and Silver went to work, as did I. We installed a “barbecue” we could use for disposing of evidence and with a controlled air feed so we could do some basic metal treating. She adjusted, dismantled and modified parts of the car for better chase functions. I worked on some weapons. In between, we followed data and tried to figure who was next. We moved our car into the garage, our few possessions inside, and I made a quick trip to the store for an airbed and some thrift store utensils.

NovRos has some weird laws. They do allow weapons, unlike Earth. Their restrictions are all over the place, the requirements can vary by model, and the difference between a “sporting” arm and a military arm can be purely cosmetic—color or style of stock.