Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 02 (21 page)

“Great, man, really great.” Sin leaned back with a genuine smile on his face. “Nobody deserves better than you.”

“Thanks.” Kip leaned forward conspiratorially. “So, what are you doing in Japan? I heard a rumor that you were seen at a party in Kimpunshima a week ago. I tried to check up on you to see if it was true, but the lead on the flight attendant they said you were with fell through. It’s like she dropped off the edge of the Earth. Same with you.”

“I’m here, Kip, in the flesh. I’m working for Lorica Industries. They hired me on as a consultant in all sorts of things. Right now, the new CEO—everyone calls him Mikie ‘cept to his face—is thinking of buying a chunk of Kimpunshima. He’s sent me over to figure out the lay of the land. He wants to know how much it’s changed since I was here. He wants me to get current with everything our people will run into here.”

“Tall order.”

“True enough, but I’ve got an expense account that will let me reach to the very top.” Sin winked at his friend. “I’ve got to cover everything from the hottest and most chic restaurants to, I don’t know, this Galbro stuff that was being talked about at the party. I figured I could use another opinion, and I value yours.”

Kip leaned back and brought his hands together in a gesture Sin recognized from the past.
Something is
bothering him.
“Spill it, Kip.”

“I’ll be happy to snarf down as much food as you want
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

to point in my direction, my friend, and Lorica will find that I know some truly exotic places to while away your time and their money.”

“But?”

Kip frowned. “I’d leave the Galbro Institute alone.

They’re weird people, and they’re into very strange stuff.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kip pointed off toward the closed door and the secretary beyond it. “Before Mr. Congeniality out there, I had a real secretary. Janny Pigot was her name. Really efficient and had a smashing personality. Wasn’t quite the looker she wanted to be—still had scars from childhood acne—but she was great. I would have dated her after Susan left, but DAC doesn’t allow that and, quite frankly, I valued her more as my secretary.

“Anyway, she accepts an invitation to one of the Galbro weekend retreats in their center here. She was all excited about it and on Monday she returned a bit exhausted, but just brimming full of stuff. She and I normally chatted over coffee in the morning, and that day I couldn’t get her to shut up. It was all sorts of crazy stuff, and I knew it was trouble right away.”

Sin frowned. “What kind of crazy stuff?”

“Real crazy stuff, Sin.” Kip opened his hands in a sign of disbelief. “I can’t remember all of it, but in the middle she dropped a bombshell: My boat had been destroyed because I’d hooked a gray starship on a covert mission to the center at the bottom of the ocean. She told me that good aliens had rescued me and placed me on the shore amid the wreckage of my boat.”

Sin laughed. “And you don’t believe her?”

Kip swung his right leg up onto his desk and pulled up the pant leg. “I dunno. If you ever see an alien that can do this, let me know.” Yanking down his black sock, Kip exposed a puckered circular wound on his leg.

“Sucker mark. Looks like a squid tried to hitch a ride.”

“Big squid. My boat was a 30-footer and my hip was dislocated.” He pulled his sock back up, lowered his pant leg and pulled his foot off the desk. “Those facts didn’t
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

dissuade Janny. She went back for more, and back and back. Then weird things started happening, like files going missing for a day or two and copier counts not matching the numbers of copies ordered. Little stuff, pilfering, you know.”

Sin nodded. “You think she was turning information over to these people?”

“No, but I think she was working on collecting evidence to convince me they were right. She started wandering around in her own dream world. She began to act paranoid, like refusing to answer the phone if it rang at seven minutes after the hour.” He shrugged. “I had to let her go. Galbro hired her. I understand she’s Arrigo El-Leichter’s personal secretary now.”

Sin shook his head. “That’s bizarre.”

“You’d do well to take a pass on it.”

“I agree, but I don’t know that I can.” Sin smiled weakly.

”A man I knew once, Joe Ybarra, said, ‘Always do the hardest part of the job first.’ If I check out one of these seminar things I can give it a big black star, then move on to the easy stuff. You understand, right?”

Kip nodded. “Right. I can pitch you in the direction of a recruiter for them. You can be in this weekend, if you want.”

“Thanks. What are you doing for dinner? Can I take you and Miko out?”

“Not tonight, Sin.” Kip fingered a pile of envelopes on his desk. “She’s in Osaka visiting her mother. I, on the other hand, have tickets for the Daizaimoku Ospreys versus the Honchin Dragons. Want to go?”

“Corporate Basketball?” Sin chuckled lightly. “I haven’t seen a game since I was here last.”

“Ospreys arethehometeam, and they’re being coached by Kevin Johnson. You might remember him; he was a Phoenix Sun.”

“Yeah, I think I saw him play when I was 10. Sounds good. When?”

Kip glanced at his watch and then his schedule book.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

”Meet me here at 6. I’m skipping lunch today so I can go to the game.”

Sin stood and headed toward the door. “Six, got it. I’ll be exploring Kimpunshima until then.”

“Hey, Sin,” Kip called to him.

“Yes?”

“If you see any aliens during your wanderings,” he laughed, “ask them who their insurance agents are so I can make a claim for my boat.”

Rajani decided that Hal Garrett had impressed her.

Despite still needing time to heal up even after what she had done, he had pushed himself to ensure no one followed them from the hospital. On the drive away, he had Will pull up to a “drive-by” pay phone. His call had been short and curt, with codewords being exchanged for less than a half minute. When he hung up, he gave Will some directions, then lay back down in the bed of the truck.

Rajani lost complete track of where they were within the dark world of Eclipse. The ceiling of photovoltaic cells 100

feet above her head transformed the whole undercity into a dirty, forbidding world of perpetual night. Looking up, she could see man-sized nests clinging to the undersides of panels and jury-rigged walkways between buildings.

Bonfires dotted the landscape despite the choking heat and, while she welcomed the warmth, she could see it made Hal very uncomfortable.

Neon signs provided more light than the few unbroken streetlights scattered around the city. A secondary set of roads almost halfway up to the ceiling looked largely untraveled and, when she did see a car up there, it looked sleeker and newer than anything in the thick traffic stream surrounding the pickup truck. Traveling amid the squalor and noise of Eclipse, she wondered if, in fact, Fiddleback had not already won the battle for Phoenix.

Will let them out of the truck at a dark intersection. He
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

offered Garrett the shotgun, but Hal shook his head and leaned heavily against a lamp post. “Not necessary.

Thank you for your help. Now, get out of here.”

Rajani gave George a big hug. “Thank you for believing me and helping.”

The old man winked at her and climbed back into the truck. “Believe in yourself, little sister. Fiddleback doesn’t know it, but his days are numbered and closing fast on single digits.”

As the truck lurched away, a number of individuals seeped out of the shadows and slowly started ambling toward the two of them. Rajani’s night vision let her see that these young men were African-Americans like Hal, but they had been altered in subtle ways. She noticed it first in how their hands swung freely and heavily at their sides.
They have added weight to their hands to aid in
hitting. And their faces, cheeks and browridges are enlarged to protect their eyes.

One of the young men moved away from the pack and toward Hal. He raised a clenched fist, and Rajani almost moved to shield Hal before the young man could blud-geon him, but the waves of amusement coming from Garrett stopped her. “What it is, homey,” the younger man said.

“What it will be, bro,” Hal replied. He raised his own right fist, and their hands met in a gentle, even friendly collision.

”I need a crib to stash her. Look, don’t touch, Jalal.”

“Hey, I’ll be cool, and so will the rest of the posse.” The younger African-American winked at Rajani. “Skin that color, she’s a sister.”

Rajani found she was missing more of the conversation than she was catching, so she relied more on what her feelings were telling her than anything else. She sensed an incredible amount of pride among the young men and a fierce loyalty among them to their leader and Hal. Weakened though he was, Garrett seemed to have the stature of a divinity to them. What Hal requested, Jalal saw as duty, and what Jalal saw as duty the Blood Crips treated as a law of nature.

Jalal led them off through the streets and into an abandoned building. Rajani saw power cables going up to leech power from the cells above, though the hallways
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

had no lights and most of the original paint had been covered in several layers of graffiti. Most of the apartments had no doors on them and had been torn to pieces on the inside.

Jalal rapped twice, waited, then rapped three times on the metal door at the end of the corridor. A small slit opened up, words were exchanged, then the door opened only wide enough for everyone to slip inside. Jalal directed Hal and her into a side room with two chairs, a table and two cots. Before he closed the door, she did see a vast collection of weapons in the outer room, and it struck her that the Blood Crips were better armed than the soldiers at the base from which she had escaped.

Hal sat heavily in one of the chairs. Pain passed over his face, but he forced it away with a brave smile. “Okay, I don’t know what you did to me in the hospital, but I’m mending very fast. Who are you, and why do you need to get Coyote a warning?”

Rajani slipped her leather jacked off and rolled up the sleeve on her fatigue shirt. She turned her left forearm so Hal could see the gold lines running from her gold fingernails up her arm. “You won’t believe me, but what I will tell you is the truth. I was born on your planet in the year 1969. In 1984,Iwas placed in stasis to combat a specific evil.Itis the thing you call Fiddleback.”

The mention of the name caused Hal’s smile to disappear. “I was in the hospital when they dealt with Fiddleback, but they’ve told me about it.” His dark eyes glittered. “So, I guess I do believe you, in part anyway. Now, give me details so I can check you out. If you’re not some sort of trap, then we’ll get you in touch with Coyote.”

Whatever Hal did to run her story down took two days.

During that time, she remained with the Blood Crips.

While they did not let her out of the apartment, various members of the gang took turns entertaining her with everything from the vast selection of shows on their pirated cable feed to timing her in stripping down and reassembling automatic weapons.

Despite having trouble understanding all their slang, Rajani enjoyed spending time with the gangbangers. She sensed from them the same depth of curiosity about her that Chandra and the other researchers had, yet none of them hated her the way Chandra’s aide Nicholas had.

While teaching her how to break down and put back together weapons had reminded her of the various experi-Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

ments Dr. Chandra had performed, neither he nor his assistants had reacted with the gangbangers’ unbridled enthusiasm when she succeeded. Had Jalal not vetoed the idea, a couple of the Blood Crips had intended to let her “make her meat” with an AKM in a drive-by on the Warriors of the Aryan World Alliance.

Afterthe two-day wait, Hal Garrett returned and brought three other people with him. Jalal escorted all of them into the little room, then shut the door and stood with his back against it. “We’ve been taking good care of her, Hal.”

“Thanks.” Hal, looking much better, introduced his associates. “Rajani, these are Natch, Bat and Jytte. If you pass muster here, we will help you get to Coyote.”

Natch stood almost as tall as Rajani and held herself in tightly. Hidden inside a leather jacket, the woman had tucked most of her hair up into a red beret. Rajani felt like a prisoner before a judge as Natch looked her up and down, then the small woman grinned just a bit and Rajani felt her opening up some. “Not from around here, are you, Rajani?”

“No, I’m not.” Rajani returned her grin, then looked up at the tall, hard man standing behind Natch. If Natch had been a judge, then Bat was the executioner. She sensed him evaluating her on an animal-threat level. The surface thoughts she picked up read like tactical battle reports on how best to crack a tank. She realized, as she sifted through his ideas, that the plans were accepted or rejected not on the basis of efficiency or efficacy, but on how much fun he would have in employing each technique.