Tek Kill (25 page)

Harsh wind came rushing in, too.

Next, two men leaped in through the fresh-made opening.

“What a happy occasion, Sis,” said one of them. “I imagine you thought, you conniving bitch, that I'd gone on to my reward after you destroyed the goddamn Tek laboratory. You figured we'd never meet again in this world.”

Taking a step back from her brother, Rebecca said, “I was sure as hell hoping you were dead, Rollo.”

“Let go the gun.” The bald man with the piping voice was prodding Kacey with the barrel of his lazrifle.

She complied, glaring at the man.

Burdon bowed in her direction. “What a pleasant surprise to find you at our party, Miss Bascom,” he said. “My fondness for any member of the Bascom family is almost as strong as my feelings for my dear sister.” He walked closer to Rebecca and, with the hand that wasn't holding the lazgun, slapped her across the face. Hard, three times.

“Your pop hired lousy help to guard you,” Summerson told Kacey. “Really easy to take out. A snap, actually, too easy to be much fun.”

Burdon hit his sister twice more. As she fell back onto a low white sofa, he told her, “I never have much liked you, Becky. But, Jesus, now that you've developed this rudimentary moral sense, you're impossible.”

“Rollo, you're not going to be able to salvage a damned thing,” Rebecca said, rubbing at her bleeding cheek. “The Tek plant is done for. Out in NorCal they're probably already closing in on Zack Excoffon—and your name is starting to show up on a lot of police shit lists, dear.”

“Plus which,” added Kacey, “the SoCal cops are just about convinced you, and not my father, are responsible for the death of Dwight Grossman.”

Rowland laughed. “You ladies don't understand the nature of revenge—the pure unadulterated kind,” he said. “I didn't track you down and drop in tonight because I want to revive my fortunes.”

The wind was even stronger now. It was invading the room, rattling everything, howling.

Burdon laughed again. “No, I'm here simply to kill you both.”

THE WIND CAUGHT Gomez and gave him an immense shove.

He went sprawling and rolling down the hillside and came to rest close to where Jake was crouching and waiting for him.

“
Chihuahua
,” he said as Jake helped him get to a kneeling position.

“Are we set?” asked Jake.

“
Sí
. I just stungunned the last of the opposition guards. This damned wind makes it easy to sneak up on lunkheads and louts.”

“Then we can move on up to the villa.”

“Might as well, now that we've played our little game. They stun our guards, we arrive and stun theirs.” Gomez rose up. “Inefficient, if you think about it. If there was a moratorium on guards, then we'd both save a lot of—”

“Onward and upward,” suggested Jake, starting to climb the windswept hillside toward the beleaguered Villa Sombra.

THE WIND RUSHED into the living room, slapping at a floor lamp and toppling it.

Kacey dodged to keep from being hit by it.

She tried, as she lunged, to chop the lazrifle out of Summerson's grip.

“No chance, honey.” He laughed a fluty laugh and easily avoided her.

She fell, her knee slamming into the carpeted floor.

As she started to get up, Kacey caught a flash of movement just outside the high, wide broken window.

Instead of continuing her rise, she dropped to the floor again and cried out in pain.

“What the hell's bothering you?” Summerson wanted to know.

“My ribs.” She hugged herself, writhing on the floor and moaning. “I broke a couple of the damned things when I fell.”

Bending, the bald man grabbed the back of her jacket and yanked. “Get your butt up off there.”

At that same instant Gomez came diving into the room through the big opening where the window had been.

He landed on his side, went rolling across the floor, and came to his feet facing Burdon and with his stungun in his hand. He fired.

The first shot didn't connect.

Jake arrived then, tackling the distracted Summerson from behind.

Getting an armlock on the big bald man, Jake jerked him back and away from Kacey.

As Burdon swung his lazgun up to use on Gomez, Rebecca jumped from the sofa and threw herself into him. Her left shoulder hit him in the chest.

Burdon's lazgun went swinging way up in his hand, and the sizzling beam cut a sooty rut up the wall and partway across the ceiling.

Planting his legs wide, Gomez used his stungun again.

This time the beam took Burdon in the side. He gasped, staggered backwards. A strong blast of wind hit him in the back, shoving him forward again.

He seemed to freeze all at once, dropping his lazgun and falling over into a sparkling scatter of broken plastiglass.

Rebecca dived, grabbed up the lazgun, and aimed it at her brother.

“Don't,” advised Gomez. “Not worth the trouble,
señorita
.”

She looked over at him, her mouth a thin angry line. Sighing, she said, “No, it isn't.” She dropped the gun into her pocket.

Jake and Summerson meantime had ended up outside the living room. They were wrestling out in the brush on the hillside.

Summerson brought up his knee but failed to connect with Jake's chin.

Jake spun clear, stood, grabbed up the bald man, and hit him in the face. He did that three more times.

“This is for hurting my son,” he said, hitting him yet again, hard, square in the face.

Summerson groaned, went slack.

Jake hit him twice more.

He let go and the big bald man dropped down into the high grass and the wind came roaring at him.

“You about finished up out there,
amigo?
” called Gomez from inside.

“Yeah. You?”

“Burdon's down and out.”

Jake, none too carefully, dragged Summerson back into the living room and dropped him on the floor. “We can get out of here as soon as we dispose of these fellows.”

Kacey, smiling, came over to him. “You were very impressive, Jake,” she said, putting her arms around him and kissing him on the cheek. “Despite your narrow-minded views on politics, you're not a bad guy.”

“Ah, then this was all worth it,” he said, grinning.

“What say,” put in Gomez, “we pack up and get off this island before the hurricane gets any worse?”

45

JAKE, alone, set his skycar down in the landing area of the Nutmeg Nature Preserve as twilight was beginning to fill the twenty-acre spread. It was an hour beyond closing time and there were no other vehicles on the lot.

He eased out of the car and went hurrying up a twisting gravel path that wound through a forest that was a blend of real and holographic trees, brush, and plants. Upon the branch of a real tree, a robot bird was singing.

“Welcome back to Connecticut, Mr. Cardigan,” said a long, lean man in a plaid jacket and gray trousers who was standing at the side of the path with a double-barreled lazrifle cradled in his arms.

“Evening, Jason.”

The caretaker nodded up the path. “Miss Pennoyer's been expecting you.”

Nodding, Jake continued on his way.

There was a rural cabin at the path's end, and sitting on the porch was a woman. She was a shade over four feet tall and when she, smiling, left the low rocker, you saw that on her left foot she wore a built-up shoe. “Jake, it's been a while since you've dropped in on your lopsided friend.”

“Three years, Maggie.” He came up the real wood steps, took hold of both her hands, and bent to kiss her on the cheek. “You're looking fine.”

“Fine as I'll ever look.” Maggie Pennoyer led him into the front room of the cabin, where a real fire burned in a real fireplace. “Let me get rid of the basic stuff first off. My business is still thriving and the government doinks I used to work for still don't know where I'm based. Right at the moment I've got four other customers in residence in my rural sanitarium here. And I'm still dedicated to renovating people who've been mindwiped, brainwashed, and otherwise neurologically diddled with.” She got herself seated on a plaid sofa. “Now you can ask me your questions.”

He grinned. “How's my son?”

“That ham-handed Dr. Stolzer, you know, is a long way from being at the top of his class.” Maggie rested her hands on her knees. “I've worked on a few of his victims over the years. He's a second-rate mindwiper, if that.”

“Meaning?”

“Suppose you give your son a call,” she suggested. “He's a lot cuter than you, by the way. Of course, if he lives a few more decades of the life you lead, he may turn out as weather-beaten and woebegone as you.”

Jake crossed to the open doorway she was pointing at across the room. Stopping on the threshold, he called out, “Dan? It's me.”

Dan appeared in the doorway. He hesitated, then came into the warm room. “It's okay,” he said, smiling. “I know who I am, I know who you are. Maggie got me back.”

Jake put his arms around his son and hugged him. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Over his shoulder, Jake said, “Thanks, Maggie.”

Turn the page to continue reading from the TekWar series

1

Just before they caught up with her on the grounds of the Hollywood Starwalk Park that night—less than five minutes before, actually—she made the call.

Not to her current husband, or her current lover.

On that chill, foggy evening in the late spring of the year 2122, Jill Bernardino vidphoned Sid Gomez. She hadn't seen him or even talked to him in over three years, but she felt he was one of the few people in all of Greater Los Angeles who could help her.

A dark-haired woman in her late thirties, Jill wasn't quite ready to turn to the SoCal Police. She had a couple of good reasons.

“But maybe I'll have to anyway,” she told herself as she made her way, cautiously and uneasily, along the quirky, seemingly tree-lined passways of the mist-shrouded and nearly deserted park.

She'd initially expected to meet someone here tonight. An informant, a man who could supply her with information for the vidwall movie she was working on.

“Not so,” she'd realized a few moments ago.

This was a setup, just something to lure her here.

“So, obviously, somebody knows about what I know.”

Suddenly off to her right a row of holographic palm trees began sputtering. The noise made Jill flinch and dodge to her left, shivering.

The tall trees, over a dozen of them, crackled and vanished. The fog took their place.

Up ahead, beneath a large floating litesign that urged
Walk Thru Movieland's Past
, stood three rusty androids. They represented famed Hollywood movie stars from an earlier century. The only one Jill recognized was, she was nearly certain, Clark Gable.

The andy was in need of repairs and the lazy salute he gave her as she approached was jerky. His grin was more a grimace and it locked into place and wouldn't fade. “Welcome to bygone Hollywood, sweetheart,” he told her in a rattling, raspy voice.

When the blonde actress on Gable's left winked at Jill, her plastiglass eyeball fell out. It hit the simulated white gravel of the path and bounced once. “Hiya, kiddo.”

The third mechanical actor, a lanky cowboy, lifted his pearl-white Stetson, bowing to the unknown blonde. He bent to retrieve the eyeball. “Allow me, ma'am.”

Losing his balance in the process, the long, lean cowboy fell flat out on the ground. His long legs twitched a few times and then he was still and the night fog came rolling in over him.

Jill hurried on, glancing back.

She was certain she was being followed. Back there in the thickening fog, there were at least two people on her trail. She'd caught glimpses of them in the swirling mist. A small, bald man and a larger, broader figure.

“Might be an andy, that second one.”

Jill increased her pace, then went running up the steps of what looked to be an old Southern mansion from several centuries ago. Another Clark Gable was there on the wide verandah, dressed as some kind of Southern gentleman this time. This android wasn't quite as weather-worn and his grin was warmer.

“Good evening, my dear,” he greeted, tipping his Mississippi gambler's hat.

She pushed through the door, shut it behind her and found herself in an immense drawing room. Some of the simulated furniture was flickering and more than one of the hidden holoprojectors was making odd humming sounds.

Crouching behind an ornate love seat, Jill yanked her palmphone out of her jacket pocket and, hurriedly, punched out Gomez' number.

The curly-haired detective's smiling face popped up on the tiny screen after the third buzz. “
Buenas noches
,” he said.

“Sid, listen—I'm in danger.”

He recognized her now, frowning. “You've got the wrong
hombre
, Jill. I'm your
erstwhile
husband,” he told her. “Erstwhile, a word often misused, means former. I no longer—”