The City Who Fought (77 page)

The punch was so unexpected that it almost connected. His hand snapped up to catch her fist, moving automatically to clench and stab at a nerve junction. Joat sprang to her feet then, putting the coiled strength of her body behind a head-butt aimed at his jaw and strong enough to shatter bone. Bros yanked her off balance and spun her around, twisting her captured hand up behind her back.

But gently, he didn't want to hurt her and he sure didn't need to add to her hostility. That nearly cost him a broken pubic bone as her heel drove backward. He staggered away, curling around the pain in his lower gut, and Joat writhed free like an eel.

Is she on drugs?
he thought, breath wheezing out behind clenched teeth. Blank ferocity met his eyes, and he forced himself into the ready position.

* * *

Bros had assured him that Joat was on their side: He glanced at the screen where she'd been sitting and his attention was caught by a familiar symbol. Ah, yes, he knew this one.

Flexing his fingers to loosen them up, Seg took Joat's seat and began to work.

query; identity.

He entered it and continued, all twelve fingertips hitting the board microseconds apart. Yes, it was the program—and very neatly tied up in mid-operation, if in an unorthodox way. But it was all there, ready to come out the minute the AI's own defense program relaxed. Better to deactivate it completely . . .

"Thank you."

Seg looked up, blinking each pair of eyes in sequence. A voice-program too; very good, perhaps a little flat on the intonations.

"You're welcome," he said. "That ought to do it. And
this
will set it to eating itself. You can let it go, now."

* * *

"
Will
you stop trying to kill me, please?" Bros said in her ear.

"When you stop trying to break my arm."

They rolled free and stared at each other warily. "Spook," Joat muttered, disgust in her tone.

"Maniac," Bros Sperin replied, then smiled at her. The grin caught her unawares, and she found herself smiling back. It was crooked, but genuine.

"Is that another spook?" she said, moving towards her control couch. "And what the fardling void is et doing with my AI?"

"Yes, I am a spook," the Sondee said. "Seg !T'sel, male, weapons development specialist. I'm clearing up this infiltration program. I helped design it, it was stolen—it's all on a need to know basis."

Bros smothered a snort at the sound of the phrase.

"I do, really, really, need to know," Joat began dangerously.

"Yes, I think we do," another voice said from the entranceway.

Joat and Bros turned. Joseph stood there, arms crossed; in his right hand was a compact, chunky-looking weapon. Bros recognized it; chemical-energy sliver gun. Messy, but very effective; the length of duramet tubing Alvec was holding in one hand and tapping into the palm of the other probably would be, too.

"How long have you been there?" Joat asked.

"A few minutes."

"And you just stood there?" she demanded in disbelief.

"Watching you, as long as you were winning," Joseph said. "Mr. Sperin is, in a sense, our employer . . . and has valuable information. About a man who may well have dealings with the Kolnari."

"Right," Joat said. "You can tell—"

The com chimed and the three of them looked up in quick surprise at the forward screen. The
respond
yes/no
blinked on for a second, then the screen went to two-way in a manner supposedly impossible.

A thickset man in late middle age was staring back at them.
I've seen corpses with more expression,
she thought.

"Good evening Mr. Sperin," the stranger said in a mellow, cultured tone. The small hairs bristled on the back of her neck.

"Good evening," Bros said pleasantly. "Joat, this is Chief Family Enforcer Vand Yoered."

Vand nodded, his heavy face wearing a neutral expression.

"Captain," he said quietly. "And Mr. !T'sel. I'm a great admirer of your work, sir," he told the young Sondee. "It's a pleasure to have you as our guest."

Seg turned to Bros and whispered, "See! I told you I'd be recognized."

Vand stared at him for just a moment, as though put off his stride by that simple statement, then he turned to Bros and Joat.

"You're all friends, I take it?" he asked with a raised eyebrow and a sardonic glance at Alvec's club and Joseph's sliver gun.

Joat blushed and shrugged, moving herself out of Bros's vicinity.

"I've never met Mr. !T'sel before," she said, "but Bros and I are well acquainted and any friend of his, as they say."

"Mr. Sperin broke into your ship, Captain. With a device so illegal that I believe CenSec is the sole owner of the remaining few. We don't allow that on Rohan."

"That's a sort of challenge we've made to each other," Joat said, laughing nervously. "He, uh, breaks into my place, I break into his and we try to keep our security arrangements ahead of our creativity."

She couldn't seem to figure out what to do with her hands when she was through speaking. She wanted to cross her arms, but was afraid that would look too defensive. She dropped them to her hips, then settled for clasping them behind her back.

Oh, Ghu, a Family Enforcer.
No, make that the
Chief
Family Enforcer. Sperin had been back in her life under ten minutes and already she was looking death in the face and lying like a trooper on his behalf.

CenSec Intelligence was building up a heavy account of favors owing.

* * *

"Actually," Bros said, "we've known each other for some time. I first met Joat on SSS-900-C, just after we drove off the Kolnari."

The Enforcer's eyes lit. "Ah!" he said, "how very interesting. The Kolnari."

That was a clear request for information, one to be denied at Bros's peril. He decided to take a chance and ignore it, offering only part of the truth.

"I'm here on a personal mission," he said. "I heard about Joat's trouble on New Destinies and came to offer her my assistance. I'm hoping she'll go back there with me so that we can get this thing straightened out."

"And . . . the presence of Joseph ben Said on her ship . . . ? This is an accident? The Bethelite head of security comes to Rohan, visits Nomik Ciety, this is unrelated to you in any way."

"That is between Joat and Mr. ben Said," Bros said grimly. "I assumed he'd returned to Bethel as I had strongly urged him to do."

"What about this evening's attempt to break into Nomik Ciety's comp?" Vand asked, his face closed now.

"That
is
personal," Joat declared vehemently. "Very. A
family
matter." She stressed the word "family,"

and the Enforcer raised a brow.

"I'm inclined to believe
that
at least," he said smoothly. "Only family can provoke that degree of bitterness." He paused and sat considering them for a time. "All right," he said at last. "I'll let the matter drop. For now. But I warn you, do not interfere with our respected citizens."

Only a slight pause drew a line of irony under the phrase. "Nomik Ciety enjoys the Family's protection while he is our guest on Rohan. None of you will in any way interfere with his business here."

He looked directly at Joat. "There will be no further attempts to break into his comp. Is that understood?"

The three of them nodded.
And be good children,
Joat thought to herself sarcastically. It was a while since she'd been scolded; she'd forgotten how unpleasant the sensation could be.

"Excellent, then this interview is at an end. Don't stay on Rohan too long, Mr. Sperin. You're liable to prove too great a temptation to some of our more impulsive guests. And frankly, as my staff is somewhat overextended at the moment, we might not be able to adequately protect you." He reached out and cut the contact.

The three of them drooped as though someone had cut their strings. Breath went out in a communal sigh.

"Rand!" Joat called.

"Sssshhhhh!" Seg whispered, waving his hands, palms out, at her and Bros. "Ssshh, ssshhh, ssshh!" Then for good measure he placed one upraised finger against his suckerlike mouth and turned to the com. His fingers flew over the controls and then, following a graceful whirl of his wrist, he pressed his forefinger with dramatic finality on the cutoff switch.

"Now," he said, "we may talk."

Joat stared at him for a moment, then turned to Bros.

Bros was staring at Seg with a speculative glint in his eye. "You're sure he's gone?" he asked.

"Oh, absolutely," Seg said comfortably. "And locked out too. That is until the next time we access the com . . . or someone calls in. But then, we can just lock 'em out again." He folded his arms across his chest and looked smug. "Can't we?"

"Rand?" Joat called, her voice tight with anxiety.

"Present." Its voice was flat and abstracted.

Joat frowned. "Are you all right? You sound different."

"Regrettably, I am different. Several sections of my memory were infected by the worm program and partially destroyed. I decided to simply erase those sections and reboot them from storage. I've lost a great deal of my personality and a small amount of vocal inflection. On the plus side, I was able to erase the infected sections without tripping any eggs. A worm program this aggressively vicious often leaves a small bundle of encryption that can start the whole business over again."

"I took care of that," Seg volunteered, raising his hand.

"Thank you," Rand said. "Joat, I was able to find and hold onto a transmission from Ciety's files before the worm's attack became too overwhelming. If you like, I can concentrate on decoding it before repairing my other programs."

"Yes," she said fervently, "please." Then Joat turned to Seg, where he still sat at the com. She took his hand in both of hers and looked him in the eyes, two of them anyway. "I'm in your debt," she said softly.

"If there is ever any way that I can be of service to you, you have only to ask."

Seg's face and ear whorls suffused with color and he began to stammer in embarrassment.

"You-yer-you're p-perfectly welcome, Captain. I'm a uh, a weapons specialist and as an adjunct to m-my usual interests, I-I-I sometimes develop worm programs like this one. That one rather, since it's gone." He laughed inanely and hurried on. "I helped to develop it, in fact. That's how I recognized it so fast and knew how to neutralize it."

Joat blinked, a little taken aback by that revelation.

"Yes," Rand said, "I thought it had a certain Sondee subtlety to it. Almost a rhythm."

"Precisely!" Seg exclaimed and began an earnest conversation with Rand.

* * *

Joat turned to Bros. He stood with his feet apart, arms folded across his chest, watching her with an unfathomable expression in his dark eyes.

"Thank you for bringing him," she said, indicating Seg.

Bros smiled. "You'll have to excuse him, he's not at his best. We did a pub crawl halfway across the docks looking for you or your crew and my young friend imbibed pretty heavily."

"If I can forgive him for writing the fardling worm in the first place, I can forgive him for anything, I suppose." She turned to smile fondly at the young Sondee. Then she glanced at Bros from the comers of her eyes. "So, what are you doing here?"

One of the things I like about you is that you don't beat around the bush, Joat. He fought the urge to smile, knowing she'd think he was being condescending.

"I've come to call you back," he said. "Your part in this mission is canceled."

"Oh?" she raised her brows. "Perhaps I'd better bring you up to date."

"As I've already indicated, I know about your debt to New Destinies. Twenty thousand credits, Joat!

How in blazes did you manage that?"

Joat studied him. His face expressed annoyance, but his eyes were amused. She wondered if he'd found out about her relationship to Ciety or if he was recalling her because of the debt. Though he'd gotten the amount wrong. Sperin was really gonna squeak when he found out it was
one hundred
twenty thousand.

She suppressed a wistful sigh.
Irrelevant now,
she thought.

"I'm afraid the situation has grown just a liiitttle more complicated," she said. Holding up her hand with the thumb and forefinger almost joined to indicate a tiny amount. "Nomik Ciety bought my debt from New Destinies. I can't leave until I work it off."

Bros felt his jaw start to drop and clenched his teeth so tightly that tendons danced in his face and neck.

"And . . ." she flinched from admitting it, but forced herself to continue. "I lost my temper and knocked him on his ass."

Bros closed his eyes and sighed. "Oh, well, it could be worse. You might have killed him."

Joat began to shift her weight from foot to foot, not sure if she was embarrassed or annoyed.

"So I can't just leave," she said with a shrug.

"No," he agreed in a voice gone leaden. It went without saying that CenSec could hardly buy her debt from Ciety without blowing the operation completely.

Damn.
It wasn't the first time he'd thrown an agent in much deeper than he intended. These things happened; but they always bothered him, and this time more than most. Meanwhile, the Benisur Amos remained lost and the Kolnari were still at large, and it was going from a probability to a certainty that they had the Sondee bio-weapons. There were larger issues at stake than his highly personal concern for one woman.

Whoa, boy! Bros thought, startled. No more complications. Admiration, that's all. Avuncular admiration, that's all you feel.

Rand broke in: "How will we answer Nomik Ciety when he asks us why we were trying to break into his comp?"

Joat shrugged and, with some relief, broke eye contact with Sperin. "I'll tell him that I was looking for the debt contract to erase it."