The Wind After Time: Book One of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy (17 page)

“Perhaps another time,” Sutro said indifferently.

“Messieurs, faites vas jeux,”
the dapper little man said once more.

Sutro sipped champagne, considered the wheel.

“Dernière douzaine,”
he decided.

• • •

Thetis slipped thin gloves on, put a coin in the vid, touched sensors. She fitted a round filter over the vid’s mike. As the screen swirled into life, she blanked her own pickup with a square of plas.

• • •

Wolfe stepped out of his coveralls and was wearing a skintight black plas suit. Libanos stood beside him, holding a very large, very antique projectile weapon.

“Put it away,” Wolfe advised. “Nobody needs to see you waving that cannon around.”

Libanos muttered, obeyed.

Wolfe took a dart gun from a small pack, clipped the gun to a catch on the suit, put the pack on, pulled the suit’s hood over his head, and went down the ladder into the water.

He entered it without a splash and swam slowly, effortlessly, across the dark harbor, hands never coming above the water’s surface. He swam to the rear of the lifter and then clung to the still-warm drive outlet.

Breathe in … deep, deep, diaphragm deep … out … in again …

His heart was a slow, steady metronome.

• • •

He reached out,
felt
the man lounging behind the controls of the ship,
breathe … breathe … found
the thin man at the port, eyes watching the dock.

A shadow came out of the water and pulled itself onto the narrow step at the lighter’s stern. Wolfe eyed a pickup mounted above him, decided it wasn’t turned on, and found the emergency hatch. It was latched shut on the inside. Wolfe pried at it, tore a nail, flinched. He took a thin-bladed knife from its sheath at his waist and gently probed between the hatch and the hull, eyes closed.

The blade met resistance, and Joshua pushed. The latch’s
click
was crashingly loud, but only to him.

He looked behind, saw nothing in the harbor that would outline him, and lifted the hatch.

Baines grunted. “Your turn. My eyes are bleedin’.” There was no response.

Baines turned away from the port, frowning, saw Pare’s body slumped in the seat, and black blurred at him; a finger speared, touching his forehead, and the thin man folded to the deck.

Wolfe put plas ties on both men’s hands and feet, took a red-shielded flash from his pack, and blinked it once, twice toward the wharf where Libanos was waiting.

• • •

“Calm down, Dorothy. What is it?”

“A bomb, Mister Samothrake! Somebody planted a bomb here!”

“Don’t get excited. No matter what’s going to happen, you won’t make it any easier if you get hysterical. How do you know?”

“Someone just called. They wouldn’t give me a picture. They said there was a bomb — bombs — and we were all going to die for our wickedness!”

Samothrake’s voice remained calm. “You’re new here. We get those kind of things all the time. They’re either fruitbars or kids. What did the voice sound like?”

“I couldn’t tell. It sounded synthed. Flat. Maybe a woman.”

“What
exactly
did it say? Try to remember.”

“I can remember.” The woman shuddered. “I’ll never forget it. ‘Ye …’ That’s what the voice said — ye. ‘… are the spawn of evil, wallowing in your degeneracy. Ye have been called, and there is no escape. I have set bombs to destroy your works unutterably. There shall be one for a warning, then others to destroy everything.’ That’s exactly what was said. I was trained to remember things like that.”

“That’s why we hired you on the switchboard,” Samothrake said.

“What do we do?”

Samothrake considered, looking at the thronged gaming floor.

• • •

The glowing hand swept across the top of Wolfe’s watch, and his thumb touched a sensor.

• • •

The “relay box” exploded, sending metal shattering across the empty attic, the blast tearing lifts, ropes, cascading them down through the false ceiling onto the still-vacant stage below.

Screams knifed from the tourists just beginning to crowd into the theater.

Dorothy squeaked as she heard the detonation, then ran hard for the exit.

Samothrake took a com from his tuxedo’s inner pocket and touched a single sensor.

“All stations, all stations. Begin immediate evacuation of the casino. This is not a drill! Security … alert the police, advise them bombs have been planted in the casino. I repeat, this is not a drill!”

His voice was still unruffled.

• • •

Candia pelted down the dock and jumped down into the
Dolphin.

Thetis already had the drive on. She cast off the single mooring, reversed away from the dock, and at quarter speed pulled out into the harbor.

• • •

Sutro’s security element retreated toward the only place they knew to be safe slowly, carefully, skilled combat veterans.

As before, four of the biggest surrounded the fence, while the others leapfrogged each other’s movements, guns in their hands, ready.

An old woman saw them, squealed in fear, and limped out of the way.

The men with the guns paid her no mind.

They reached the dock, ran down it. As they did, the lighter’s side hatch opened. A man stuck his head out.

“Get the drive started! Some asshole set off a — ” Rosser flattened as a metal cylinder tumbled through the air from the lighter. It hit a foot away, bounced, and went off. A thin mist hissed out.

Rosser came to his knees, lifted a gun that was suddenly too heavy, tried to aim at the man in the lighter hatch, and collapsed.

There were other gas grenades rolling around the dock, and men were falling, squirming, then lying motionless.

The two men at the landward end of the dock, rear security, outside the gas’s influence, dropped into a kneeling stance. One pulled a wire stock from inside his coat, clipped it to his gun, then went down as a wisp of gas took him.

The other fired, sending a blast of green energy smashing into the empty night, the noise burying the tiny twang of Wolfe’s dart gun.

The guard clutched at his throat, tried to find words, half rose, then went down.

Wolfe leapt onto the dock, Libanos behind him, and went to where five men lay. Three were faceup, and he paid them no mind. He rolled the fourth over onto his back and saw the heavy beard. He took out the light and blinked once into the harbor.

He and Libanos dragged the other eight to the lifter, tied them hand and foot, and dumped them into the cargo compartment. Libanos got behind the lighter’s controls and keyed switches; the drive surged, and the lifter moved against its moorings.

A few seconds later the
Dolphin
cruised in.

Wolfe picked up Sutro’s body, seemingly without effort, carried it to the boat, and slid it down into the stern seat.

He waved to Libanos, who brought the cargo lighter up just clear of the water, spun it, and at half speed headed out of the harbor toward Thrinacia. Wolfe jumped down into the
Dolphin.

“Any time you’re ready,” he said.

Thetis gunned the boat away, and the dock was bare and empty, the last gas mist fading against the glare from the casino as firefighters and police vehicles swarmed toward it from ground and air.

Edet Sutro’s body was strapped to a door that had been removed from its hinges and laid across two stone benches in the mansion’s wine cellar. Wolfe touched the tip of a spray to Sutro’s neck and pressed a stud.

“He’ll be back with us shortly,” Joshua said. “Candia, would you pack our stuff. We’ll be leaving as soon as we finish our chat and Mister Libanos comes back with the lighter.”

“How long do we have?” Candia asked.

“You mean before we have to worry about the law? Probably almost forever. Sutro’s boys, being illegals, will take a long time to decide it’s okay to go legal and holler for help.

“As for the heat themselves — first somebody with the casino will have to make the connection between me and that bomb, which should take three or four days. About that time they’ll start checking everybody who has anything to do with the place, and you’ll be the only one who turns up missing. Then they’ll play connect-the-dots.

“By then we’ll be on our third jump out of here, and the Libanoses will have gone to ground wherever they wish.

“Ah. Mister Sutro has returned,” he said, seeing the bearded man’s eyelids flutter. “Now, if you’ll excuse us.”

Thetis had been staring fascinatedly at the bound figure. “What are you going to do to him?”

Joshua half smiled. “Very little. Mister Sutro is no fool, and so he’ll be more than willing to share a bit of his tawdry past with me.”

The girl hesitated and then, at Candia’s frown, followed the older woman out and up the stairs. The door closed with a thud.

Sutro’s eyes were open, sentience returning.

“Edet, my name is Joshua Wolfe. I know who you are, what you are,” the warrant hunter said without preamble.

“You’re the gambler that was looking for me,” Sutro said.

“I was looking for you. But I’m not a gambler.”

“What, then? Law? FI?”

“Let’s say … freelance talent.”

“Who are you working for?”

“Since I’m the one who isn’t tied up,” Wolfe said, “I prefer to ask the questions.”

“You won’t get any answers.”

“Oh, but I shall.” Joshua pulled up two empty crates and sat on one. He reached in his pocket, took out the Lumina, put it on the other crate between the two. Sutro started and then tried to cover it.

“You remember a thief named Innokenty Khodyan?”

Sutro clamped his lips shut. Joshua put a hand on the Lumina, waited until it flamed high, and fixed his stare on Sutro. The man squirmed.

“I do,” he said. “He got killed before I could meet him.”

“I killed him.”

“Ben Greet said he’d been taken by a warrant hunter.”

“That’s one of my trades.”

“There aren’t any warrants on me.”

“I know that. At least not under the name of Sutro. And I don’t have much interest in knowing what your parents tagged you with.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Innokenty Khodyan was a pro. He’d hit ten, a dozen worlds, then go to his fence — I don’t know if he always used you or if there were others — to dump what he had.

“I’m guessing he mostly worked off tips and the obvious targets.

“He did that on his last run. With one exception. This stone.”

“How do you know that?”

“Sutro, I’m not a fool. You’re big, you’re good, but I don’t think even you would know just where to fence an Al’ar Lumina.”

Sutro didn’t answer.

“You know of a man named Malcolm Penruddock? A retired judge on Mandodari III. Crooked, the word had it. He owned this Lumina, and Innokenty Khodyan took it from him.”

“Never heard of him,” Sutro said. “I bought from Innokenty, bought almost anything he had. He knew what to steal and what it was worth. He never said anything about that Al’ar rock when he messaged me and said he was ready to sell some things.”

“Don’t lie, Edet,” Wolfe said, his tone mild. “You will not be rewarded in the afterlife.

“Who came to you, told you about Penruddock’s Lumina, and said they wanted it?”

Sutro shook his head.

“There’s two ways I could go,” Wolfe said. “Three, come to think about it. The messy way, which could get bloody and take a while. The Al’ar way …”

He picked up the Lumina and held it in front of Sutro’s eyes. The man squirmed, trying to pull away from it.

“Let me remind you of something, Edet,” Wolfe went on. “I spent six years with the Al’ar. Three as their prisoner … and three more before that. Studying their ways.

“Sometimes the Al’ar needed information. Then they’d decide to take a prisoner. You know how often he talked? All the time, Edet. One hundred percent. Of course, he wasn’t worth much afterward. The mind didn’t come back like it should’ve.

“Mostly the Al’ar did the merciful thing and killed them. But a few lived. I guess, somewhere back in the Federation, there’s probably still a couple of wards full of those people, rotting, dead except their chests move every now and again. We could do it like that, Edet.

“But I’m not as good as the Al’ar. I might get a little sloppy.”

He paused. “That’s another way. Then there’s the sensible way.” He set the Lumina to the side. “You tell me what I want to know, and I’ll give you something that’ll maybe keep
you
alive for a while.”

“Right.” Sutro sneered. “I go first, of course.”

“No,” Joshua said. “I’ll tell you right now. As I said, this is the sensible way. Penruddock’s dead. So’s his wife. I was with them when they got killed.”

“Why do I care about a couple of bodies I’ve never even heard of?”

“Lying again, Sutro. Don’t do that.” Wolfe reached out with a finger and ran it caressingly down behind Sutro’s ear and along his jaw line. The bearded man bellowed in agony, his eyes going wide in shock like a poleaxed steer.

Wolfe waited until the man’s moans subsided.

“They were killed in sort of an unusual way. Two cargo lighters full of gunsels came in at full tilt, strafed their house, then hauled to the spaceport where their ship was waiting. From there, they vanished like they’d never been.

“I thought that was a little exotic a way to do paybacks for a little malfeasance in office.

“Now, the interesting thing, and the reason I think he was killed, was I’d shown up on Mandodari III. I was using my real name, which was a mistake. I’m guessing somebody knew who I was, maybe had an ear on Penruddock’s com, and didn’t want us to get too friendly.

“It takes money to hire a ship and hitters who don’t give a shit if they scatter a few bodies around the landscape.

“I’d be a little concerned if I were you, Sutro, that maybe your client might want to police up the other end of the connection.

“Now you know what I was going to tell you. You return the favor, I unstrap you, and before we lift I’ll drop a call to your goons to come get you.