Rebels and Lovers (9 page)

“Now!” she yelled, jerking harder on his arm. That got him moving as the boot steps pounded louder.

The whine of high-powered laser fire hummed through the air just as she yanked him through the stairwell entrance. Why was it only the good guys who set their weapons to low stun per station regs? She shoved Trip ahead of her. “Down!” She had to lose their pursuers before heading for her ship.

But judging from the clatter of boots, their pursuers liked
down
too. So she pushed Trip through the stairwell doorway at the next landing and out into the corridor again. They needed someplace busy, a crowd to
blend into—a crowd that knew her and would defend her. And she could think of no place busier—and more craving a good bar fight—than Trouble’s Brewing.

If they could get there without the kid passing out on her. Or their being shot in the back. Whichever came first.

Kaidee never liked Yellow Level on Dock Five. Years ago, someone had spray-painted
Welcome to Pisstown
on a bulkhead near the main lifts, and though the paint had faded, it was still legible. She didn’t need to see the words. The sharp odor from the freighter bay waste-recycling system one deck below engulfed her as she and Trippy Guthrie barreled out of the stairwell and into the corridor.

Trip was coughing as they stepped quickly sideways, almost knocking over a trio of dockworkers.

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” she called.
Keep moving. Keep moving
.

Trip coughed again, then dragged his sleeve under his nose, blood staining the tan fabric of his jacket.

“We’ll fix that in a minute,” she told him. She still had her fingers locked around his wrist, though he was trotting pretty well now, darting through the crowds and around the occasional wobbling servobot as easily as she did. She wanted to move quickly without running. Running attracted all kinds of attention. They needed to blend in, then disappear.

“Keep your head down,” she added. His height wasn’t an advantage at the moment—not unless she could insert them both into a trio of Takas. But with Frinks’s friend on the loose, that held trouble too. A group of Stolorths, maybe …

“This way!” She dragged him abruptly into a side corridor, took the first left, then the next right into a service alley. She had to be careful she didn’t double
back and run into their pursuers. Dock Five—which had grown out of several enormous mining barges—wasn’t unlike a large rectangular maze.

Now, if they could get
behind
their pursuers …

“Any idea who’s trying to kill you, Master Trip?”

He snuffled. “Not sure.”

Not sure or not willing to admit it? She thought of all the trouble she’d gotten into—and
could have
gotten into—when she was nineteen. Filching kegs of ale and joyriding in station maintenance flitters were the least of it. “You do something to piss off the local stripers? Or,” and it sounded crazy but she had to ask, “ImpSec?” Stripers she could likely outsmart. ImpSec would take a lot more work. “Someone after your family’s money?”

“Not stripers.”

Footsteps banged loudly against the decking behind them. She shot a quick glance over her shoulder. “Shit.” Fuzz-face and friends. Running noisily. Attracting attention.

Stationers filled the corridors left and right. She and Trip could play duck-and-hide, but if their pursuers got smart and came at them from opposite sides, they were dead. And so were a lot of other people who just happened to be in Pisstown at the wrong time.

A flash of white light caught her attention. Lifts, off to their left. The blinking light meant a car was arriving. There was a line waiting …

Fuck the line.

“Trip, when I tell you, groan really loud. Like you’re going to die, got it?”

“But I’m not—”

“Do it, or you
will
be dead.” She shoved him toward the lift banks.

“Got it,” he said over his shoulder.

“And don’t wipe any more blood away! Lean on me.” She snaked her left arm around his waist as if she held him on his feet. “Now!” she said as they neared the end of the line.

“Owww,” Trip moaned. “Ohhhh.”

“Medical emergency!” Kaidee shouted. “Clear the way!”

“Owww! Ohhhh!”

The line shifted slowly—except one woman, with eyes narrowed. “He don’t look like—”

“Body-fluid biohazard!” Kaidee barked at her. “He’s got the red scum. Move or—”

The woman jerked back. Trip moaned again, thrashing his head left and right as the lift doors opened.

“Medical emergency! Biohazard!” Kaidee bellowed, glancing over her shoulder. Fuzz-face and two others were at the edge of the corridor, pistols in hands, surging toward her and Trip. The lift emptied quickly. Kaidee pushed Trip inside. “Against the side wall!” she hissed, slapping blindly at the pad to close the doors. He was too big of a target.

Through the slowly closing doors, she saw Fuzz-face elbow an elderly man aside, then claw his way past more people toward the lift. Heart pounding, Kaidee punched the
Close Door
pad again, then jabbed the icons for Violet, Pink, and Black Levels. Anything up, away from here, quickly.

C’mon, c’mon! Close, damn you!

The doors sealed and the lift shuddered, hard. She could hear someone shouting on the other side of the doors, then she and Trip were moving up. Away from Fuzz-face. Relief cascaded through her, forcing Kaidee to drop her hands to her thighs and bend over at the waist. She sucked in gulps of air as she looked up to
study Trip, who leaned against the opposite wall, his face pale, blood-streaked. But he was grinning.

“That was full apex, Captain Makaiden! Um, I mean, Captain Griggs.”

“That was …?” She shook her head in disbelief as she straightened. “Wipe your face. It’s not over yet. We still have a ways to go.”

And Jonathan Macy “Trippy” Guthrie III better have a damned good explanation of just what in hell was going on when they got there.

Two lumpy beds with threadbare green coverlets, a narrow black desk, and two matching black metal chairs did not, by any stretch of the imagination, qualify as the “luxury” hotel room promised by the ’droid clerk behind The Celestian’s lobby desk. But all Devin cared was that he had a place to work. And this was, if nothing else, that.

Part of him wanted to bolt back out into the grimy corridors of Dock Five and locate Trip. But Barty was right—the place was a maze of cross-connecting corridors, many of which dead-ended without warning because that particular section of the dock had ceased to exist, either from neglect or by accident.

An ore tanker with a drunken captain at the controls could put a fairly large hole in the side of any station, and Dock Five had had more than its share of those.

They needed to define locales and establishments where Trippy had been or was likely to be, based on his credit usage or withdrawals. That meant Devin had to sit in their “luxury” hotel room for now and confine his investigations to dock- and banking-computer pathways via his Rada. Its highly sophisticated sensors
poked holes into the local datagrid while its thermal-sensitive holographic screen—an adjunct to the unit’s embedded main one—floated in front of Devin’s eyes like a square green-tinged cloud.

He was peripherally aware of Barty prowling about the small white-walled room, poking his bald head into the closet, thunking and clunking something around in the lav. He was just as aware when, with a sigh, Barty pulled up the remaining hard-backed chair and sat at the other side of the narrow desk, tapping on his own microcomp.

Then there was silence again, broken only by the breathing of two men working and the occasional grunt or stomach growl. At some point they would need to track down a restaurant that wouldn’t fatally poison them. But right now … Devin jerked his hand back from the Rada’s holographic screen as a series of numbers flashed in the upper right corner and then was gone. “Shit!”

“Something?” Barty looked up from the DRECU.

“Not something.
Someone
. Someone else is looking at Trip’s accounts.”

“Someone from GGS security—”

“Not like that. This is someone hacking, like I am.” And damn it, he should have expected that. He should have taken more precautions. Or had a trap running for just this situation.

“Did they see you?”

He pulled up two more filters, ran a bit of code that had worked for him in the past. “Not unless they’re better than I am.”

Barty coughed lightly. “Which means …?”

“Likely not, but we can’t rule it out.” Damn it, whoever it was was gone now. It could be they saw him. But it could also be that they’d tripped one of the
bank’s alarms he’d deftly avoided. Either way, he shouldn’t hang around. This was part of Dock Five’s data pathways. He had no idea of the overall level of security of the system. He had to assume it was less than he’d like and more problematic than he wanted to consider.

He dumped out of the system with a bit less grace than he’d have normally used, but speed at that moment was more important than skill. Getting caught wasn’t the issue. Getting flagged was. He didn’t want the account locked down and more people watching for intruders.

Mouth pursed, he reviewed the data he was able to save. He could feel Barty watching him, impatience hanging in the air as strongly as the musty metallic odor that he was already associating with Dock Five. But this was not something he could rush, even though he wanted to.

Trip’s life hung in the balance. Accuracy was essential. Especially because now Devin had proof that others were tracking the Guthrie heir. He had to locate Trip before they did. He damned the fact that the entries had to be screened chronologically, oldest first, or else the data would skew and he’d lose it all.

And lose the only clues they had to Trip’s whereabouts.

“It looks as if he arrived about fourteen hours ago,” he said after several minutes of intense focus. “I’m guessing whatever transport he used disembarked him in Orange, because that’s where his initial purchases for food and drink were.” He brought up a diagram and angled the floating screen so Barty could see it. “I’m not showing any lodging charges. That could indicate he’s staying with someone.”

“Someone he met in transit?” Barty suggested. “Or
someone who convinced him to leave the university campus—either through persuasion or force?”

“And is using Trip’s credit chips to throw us off track? I can’t discount that.” But he didn’t like it; it made his jaw tense and his stomach sour. It also kept him from sending a message to Port Palmero that they’d found Trip. They hadn’t. Yet. They’d only found usage of his financial account.

“Did he ever mention associating with any political groups on campus? Blaine’s Justice Wardens have had underground meetings there for years.”

Devin nodded. “They were there when I was on campus too. But, no, Trip didn’t seem to go for that kind of thing.”

“Reports of Admiral Guthrie’s death could have changed his thinking.”

Devin sucked in a slow breath. Reports of Philip’s death had changed a lot of things. “He idolizes Philip. And I know he felt Philip believed Blaine and his group are dangerous. Were you in the library when Max said Trippy ran off to join the Alliance? As crazy as it sounds, it makes the most sense.”

“Thana and Max told me first. I was the one who suggested they bring that information to their father.”

The fact that the children trusted Barthol more than their own parents didn’t surprise Devin. He remembered feeling that way when he was younger. Hell, he still felt that way.

“I didn’t know,” Barthol continued, “if Master Trip gave you any further insight into his feelings.”

Devin shook his head. “You know Guthrie men don’t discuss feelings,” he said absently, moving down the data again as quickly as he safely could. Small expenditures. His nephew hadn’t sat down for a meal but was buying small foodstuffs. Eating on the run?
Or just cautious when it came to Dock Five’s sanitary procedures? He couldn’t blame him if it was the latter. He—

“Wait, we have a small credit transaction seven minutes ago. But, damn it! I lost half that string when I had to dump out.”

Barthol stood, leaning over Devin’s shoulder. “Blue Corridor Twelve. Tidymart Pro?”

The vendor name made no sense to him either, especially without a more specific location code. “That’s all I could get.”

“That’s enough. Grab your jacket and your Carver. I fear we’re not the only ones with that information.”

Devin shoved the Carver into his shoulder holster, then snagged his jacket from the bed, praying he and Barty got to Trippy first.

Kaidee waited outside the door to the male-gender lavatory in the far corner of Trouble’s Brewing, arms folded across her chest, and endured the disparaging glances from the various males striding by.

The similar facility for female gender was on the other side of the bar. So there was only one reason she’d be on guard here.

“Can’t trust him out of your sight, eh?” she heard one brown-suited dockworker say with a snicker.

She smiled wanly in return and played the part of the overpossessive lover, knowing the dockworker had no idea that the center of her impatience was a runaway nineteen-year-old. But, no, she couldn’t completely trust Trip to wash the blood off his face and make some attempt to clean the stains from his shirt without doing hell-only-knew what else. Nor could she trust that Fuzz-face and his friends might not have
tracked them here—even though she’d pushed Trip out of the lift at Violet Level, then dragged him through two different stairwells to Blue and
then
came into the bar through a service-alley supply-room entrance.