Star Risk - 01 Star Risk, Ltd (7 page)

"I do not intend to fail," Grok said firmly, making the last checks on several small pieces of electronics he'd bought and modified for their mission.

"I am ready," he said, draping bits of weaponry about his frame.

"Then shall we go on about our business?" Baldur said, doing the same.

King started the lim's drive, and the other three clambered in.

The warehouse door slid open, and Jasmine took the lim out at a slow hover, then lifted into the darkening sky.

They flew out of Tormal's capital keeping to traffic lanes, and within specified height/speed limits.

No one in the lim spoke, caught in their own thoughts.

Riss's mouth was dry, as it always was before action.

"Ten minutes to the prison," Jasmine announced.

"My systems are ready," Grok said.

Minutes crawled past.

"Go into your act, Jasmine," Baldur said.

King keyed a mike.

"Anybody� help! Help! My driver's collapsed, and I can't fly this thing! Help! Oh, please, help!"

The com began squawking as various Samaritans tried to cut in. Jasmine ignored them.

"Oh, help! I see� there's some kind of building ahead of me� I'll try to land it on that."

An overriding blare came:

"This is Tormal Citadel! You are entering a forbidden zone. Identify yourself. Over."

"Help me, Tormal! I don't know what my lim number is� but I can't fly, and I'm afraid to crash! Help!"

"This is Tormal Citadel. I repeat, you are entering a forbidden zone, and will be fired upon if you do not change your flight pattern."

"I don't know how to do it!" Jasmine moaned, letting a note of panic creep carefully into her voice. "Oh, please, don't shoot me! I don't want to die!"

"They're ranging on us," Grok said. "Proximity five kilometers."

But Tormal Citadel stayed silent for a moment.

"As I said, robots perplex easily," Baldur said. "But you might want to perplex them a little more, Grok."

"Oh, help me," Jasmine said, artfully playing with the controls, and the lim obediently flopped from side to side, clearly in the hands of an incompetent pilot.

Grok touched three sensors, and a blast of static roared across the standard emergency frequencies, further confusing the situation.

A second device, originally intended to intensify radar imagery, went on. After Grok's fiddling, it now cast three images of the lim toward the prison.

A third, a dopplering device used in model aircraft competition to spoof tracking missiles, now power-jumped, 'cast artificial "window" in their flight path.

"Two minutes, maybe," Jasmine said.

Over the static-wave, they dimly heard Tormal Citadel broadcast something.

But they never knew what it was, as the lim came down fast, dead center over the roof, and banged in for a landing.

Riss, Grok, and Baldur piled out, ran toward the gun turrets. As they'd hoped, the guns�a multiple-barreled auto cannon in each turret�had cutoffs installed, so no eager robot could shoot his fellow turret apart.

Baldur and Grok had small necklace charges around their necks. They flattened against the turrets, and draped a charge around the gun barrel, pulled a fuse. Grok thundered back to the lim as Baldur planted a second necklace charge, then followed him.

Riss had a larger coil of explosives, and wound it around the base of the fourth turret. She, too, set her fuse and doubled back to the lifter.

"Off and keep it very, very close," she said, as she jumped back in the lim, and the door slid down.

Jasmine nodded, intent on the controls. She lifted the lim clear, slid it to the edge of the roof, and over the edge.

A blast of gunfire went overhead as two turrets tried vainly to depress their guns enough to reach her.

M'chel's eyes were on her watch's sweep second.

"And eight� six� four� three� two� bang."

There were actually four bangs, three moderate, the fourth quite impressive.

King, needing no orders, took the lim back to the roof.

The damage was impressive.

Three of the turrets had their gun barrels blown off. The fourth had been torn out of the steel-and-concrete roof, and had vanished somewhere overside.

There were bits of the cannon's breech still intact, and, clearly, stairs leading down into the fortress.

"Just call me ebenemael," Riss said. "Do I know how to open a can, or what?"

No one bothered to answer. King got out of the lim, and crouched behind a ventilator, blaster ready.

The other three pulled on gas masks, slid headsets and throat mikes into place, and ran hard for the hole where a gun turret had been, and down its stairs.

All of them had small charges looped around their necks, guns in hand.

"About here," Riss said, and slapped a charge against a door.

The three went down half a flight, and the charge went off, spinning the door into a hallway.

They ran back up, and into the corridor, ignoring the ENTRANCE FORBIDDEN sign.

They came to a pair of doors. One said: condemned PRISONER SECTION. ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE.

Riss blew the door open, and they ran down another corridor.

At the end of the corridor was a steel capsule, and in it, a man. He was speaking into a microphone.

Riss and Baldur knelt, launchers aimed, and fired at the capsule's window. Grenades arced out, crashed through the not very bulletproof glass, and went off. The guard grabbed his throat, convulsed, went down.

The raiders went down the hall, and Baldur dragged the guard's body out of the control capsule.

"About like other installations I have� hem, read about," he said, fingers flying over sensors.

He pressed his mask close against the microphone the guard had been using, twisted a selector to a position marked cellblock.

"Inmates, get away from your doors," he said. "Goodnight, get moving!"

He jumped back out of the capsule, as a central door opened.

There were rows of cells, their doors sliding open.

Bewildered men and women, some half-dressed, stumbled out.

One of them was the man Riss recognized as Chas Goodnight.

"Let's haul!" she ordered.

"Right. But what about�"

A door came open, and a guard stepped out, gun in hand.

"Shit," Riss muttered, kneeling, blaster up, in two hands.

She shot him in the chest, saw him fall, and she and Goodnight were running back to where Grok and Baldur waited.

"What about them?" Goodnight managed, jerking a thumb at the other prisoners.

"Good confusion factor," Riss said.

They went back down the corridor past the control capsule, reached the door just as a stair door opened and four guards came out.

Very suddenly Chas Goodnight became a blur. Riss's gun was lifted, the guards' blasters were leveled. The blur smashed into one guard; spun, another was down; knocking a third sideways, and a fourth's neck snapped, the crack very loud to Riss's ears.

The blur came back beside them, then resolved into Chas Goodnight.

Riss one-handed a gas grenade off her harness, held one sensor down, pushed the other, and tossed the grenade into the midst of the sprawled men.

They went up the stairs into the shattered turret, were on the roof, pelting toward the waiting lim.

King was up, behind the controls as they rolled in, the lim already lifting clear of the roof.

She sent the lim diving off the roof, down into the valley below, then, at full, burn-out-the-drive-who-gives-a-rat's nostril speed, toward the small city where a well-paid merchant skipper was holding his ship on a ten-minute tick, supposedly awaiting last-minute orders from the ship's owner.

Riss was breathing as if oxygen was a new, delightful experience.

She unclipped her harness, sagged back on the seat, considered their prize.

Chas Goodnight was equally slumped against the jumpseat.

Even bearded and not that clean, Riss had to admit he was one of the more handsome men she'd seen.

He noted her attention, and smiled gently.

"Now, what I could do to a steak or three," he said, and Riss's slightly romantic thoughts died.

Baldur must have been reading her expression, for he chortled.

"Thanks," Goodnight said. "I owe you."

"That is correct," Grok said.

"So what do I do to pay you back?"

"Nothing much," Riss said. "Just give us a good job recommendation."

"This."

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TEN � ^ � Friedrich von Baldur said, "is a hell of a place."

"Little joke?" Grok said. "I think I have read someplace that Sheol equals hell?"

"Little joke," M'chel agreed. "Very little."

Chas Goodnight was staring out at what the Foley-ites, or however they labeled themselves, called the outskirts of a city.

Sheol. Population 5,000, days. Who knew how many, or was sober/straight enough to count nights?

If Sheol ever had a city planning board, they were never among those who were straight. Sheol grew as it grew, and no one cared, since the minute the lodes went dry, the miners would move on. Sheol's population would drop to five senile prostitutes, four bartenders with delirium tremens, three arteriosclerotic retired miners, two historians and one city manager.

Here were shacks, with large signs: LET US ASSAY, SELL YOUR SAMPLES; ADVANCE ON GOOD SAMPLES; GRUBSTAKE YOU AGAINST YOUR NEXT BIG STRIKE; and, as always in any mining town: pawnshop, WE'LL TAKE CARE OF YOUR VALUABLES WHILE YOU'RE PROSPECTING.

There were lots with battered ships, some of which might actually be practical for mining, supply houses with used gear from those who'd guessed wrong, and new supplies for those who hadn't guessed at all yet.

Here and there were houses of the few citizens in service industries not battening off the asteroids.

As their rented lifter got closer to what passed for city center, there were streets entirely devoted to various forms of sin.

In the middle of one such blinking, flashing row of iniquities, some of which were yet to be invented, sat, like a prim maiden with her legs crossed in a whorehouse: miner's aid society.

There appeared to be no one inside.

"Now this," Baldur announced heartily, "is my kind of place." A delicate pink tongue came out, touched his lips. "It smells of credits. Loose credits, just waiting to leap into our pockets."

Reg Goodnight stared in incredulity.

"But I thought you were�"

"Rumors of my execution," Chas said dryly, "were thankfully exaggerated." He looked across the desk, only approximately big enough to land a starship on, then around the paneled suite. "Well, aren't you gonna leap into your brother's arms, or go kill a prodigal sheep or whatever it was?"

Reg came around the desk, and embraced his brother.

M'chel thought it took a bit of study to tell the two men were related. They had the same lank bone structure, the same lean build. But where Chas's face was weatherbeaten, with easy smile lines, Reg clearly didn't get out in the open much, and he'd started to go a bit to fat. He was also balding a bit, and his fingernails were well dined on.

Where Chas wore a shirt and trousers an engineer or outdoorsman might choose, Reg was most carefully tailored and trimmed.

He looked exactly like what he was�a very sharp executive, who was also very harried.

He turned away from his brother, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

"You said," he said to Baldur, "that you had a surprise, and that it was personal. But I never dreamed�"

"That's the best kind of surprise, isn't it?" Riss said.

"Well, yes. Yes, of course," Reg said, almost stammering. He turned back to Chas. "How did you get out?"

"These people were kind enough to rescue me."

"Well, thank you," Reg managed. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I assume you didn't do it for charity, and I'll be happy to meet any fee you want, to the limits of my resources."

"We do not want any credits from you," Baldur said. "Only from Transkootenay."

Goodnight turned suddenly cold, and now M'chel could definitely see the resemblance between the two brothers.

"Go on," he said, voice flat, neutral.

"Should we have been more subtle?" Grok asked.

"Why?" Baldur said. "There were no witnesses, and I was carrying an anti-bug."

"That is not what I meant," Grok said.

"I think what our furred friend means," M'chel said, "is should we have put it less blatantly than 'in return for your brother's ass, we'd like to be at the top of the list for your security contract'?"

"Why?" Baldur asked again. "We do not tart around; we do not expect him to do so either."

M'chel looked at Grok, shrugged.

"Hell if I know if Freddie blew the pitch," she said. "I've never done this kind of business before, either."

"Perhaps we should have let his brother negotiate?" Grok tried.

"That's a terrible idea," M'chel said. "We don't know if Chas has a silver tongue, and, as far as we know, as soon as we give him leave, he'll be off on his galaxy-wide thieving and could give a rat's elbow if we starve."

"Bit of a pity," Baldur said. "We could use someone of his talents."

"Speaking of which," M'chel said, "where is our bouncing young bester tonight?"

"Out," Baldur said. "He asked Jasmine if she wanted to help him find a place where you might not be ptomained to death."

"Just a lonely guy," M'chel said. "Wanting to keep a lonely gal from being lonely."

She snickered. Chas Goodnight, on the flight from Tormal, had made it clear he was interested in Riss, and wouldn't mind waking up next to her at all.

Riss, being a polite sort, hadn't said that she'd had her days of pretty boys, and generally looked for a bit more these days, and had fobbed him off with the excuse she never fooled around on a job.

She also hadn't given her real reason, which was that on the flight she'd talked enough to Goodnight for her initial interest to fade, and to start thinking Chas had the moral makeup of a spider.

"With Jasmine?" Grok said. "Now that might answer a question I've had."