The Man Who Never Missed (3 page)

“Not to worry, Anjue. We get by.”

Khadaji left and headed toward his private rooms in the basement. He stopped by the dispensing window for a moment to tell Butch. The man sat behind a three-centimeter-thick sheet of densecrystal set into a solid plastcrete wall. The drug room might be a tempting target for thieves and it was well protected. The doors were thick stainless steel with reaper locks, and nothing short of a vacuum bomb would dent the densecris window. Chem was purchased and delivered through the double drawers under the window.

“I’m going to catch a little sleep, Butch. No calls for an hour or so.”

“Copy, Chief.” His voice had a metallic ring through the speaker set into the wall over the window. “We’ll try to keep the Scum from takin’ over while you’re nappin’.”

“Thanks, Butch, I appreciate that.”

Chapter Three

KHADAJI’S PRIVATE SPACE was a combination of office and living quarters. It was furnished simply—a desk and comp terminal, a few chairs, a foam-pad bed in one room; a shower, sink and bidet in the second room; a small kitchen in the third and final room. Simple living quarters—on the surface. What didn’t show was the hidden store box set under the floor of his desk, nor the tunnel under the refrigerator in the kitchen. He had dug the tunnel himself, using a “borrowed” cutalong he returned before anyone knew it was missing. It was a short, tight passage, leading from his kitchen into the housing of his receiving transformer in the alley behind the Jade Flower. There was just enough room for a careful man to stand inside the housing, between the ceramic insulators and high voltage grid of the transformer. A careful man could come up through the expanded metal grate over the floor inside the housing and wait until the alley was clear to leave. A careless man could not, for he would be dead, fried by the power circuits.

Khadaji checked his chronometer. Almost seventeen.

From the hidden store box, he took a set of black orthoskins, a pair of spetsdods and ammunition magazines for them, and a skinmask. This was going to be a city operation and even though it was dark, he didn’t want to be recognized. He dressed quickly, tabbing the orthoskins on, smoothing the skinmask over his face and ears and allowing the spetsdods to set on the backs of his hands. It took a few seconds for the artificial flesh backing the weapons to warm and mold to his own skin; once set, the spetsdods would be almost as much a part of him as his fingers. The weapons would not shift or move until he triggered the release.

There were a lot more efficient weapons, he knew. Hand wands sent a fan-shaped pulse which could take half a dozen people out at a single strobe; explosive rocket or bullet throwers could blow through armor which would stop a spetsdod’s flechette; implosion bombs wiped away steel as if it were butter. But it had to be spetsdods. The choice had not been a hard one. Spetsdods were used by the military sometimes, but they were essentially civilian weapons, so that was a necessity. And a Spasm-loaded dart slinger did not kill, that was another point. Finally, a spetsdod required skill to use properly, more than wands or explosive guns or bombs. A man who went after targets in class two armor with a spetsdod was either very good or a fool. A miss and he would likely be dead. That part was as important as any of it, the skill needed. If it was going to be built to work, it had to be built right. He’d had years to think about it and the spetsdod was the right answer. It had taken him more years to become truly expert in the use of the flechette weapon. There were some better, perhaps, but that didn’t matter. He was good enough. He had been so far, at least.

The spetsdods were ready. He found a set of spookeyes and slipped them on, pushed back on his forehead. He took a sublingual tablet and allowed it to dissolve under his tongue. The chemical had a long and complex name, but it was called Reflex by those who used it. It affected nerves, from peripheral to central nervous system, and its effect was simple enough: the drug speeded up reaction time. The effect varied from person to person, but in Khadaji’s case, he was able to move faster than a bacteria-augmented soldier-of-the-line, for short periods. There were some nasty drawbacks to Reflex—it required top physical conditioning to handle because it increased catabolism and metabolism and left the user exhausted afterward; it caused nightmares; it was addictive. Khadaji only used it when he was doing a particularly risky gambit. He would pay for it later.

He checked the skinmask in the mirror, took his confounder from the box and snapped it into place on his belt. He took a deep breath and nodded at his image. There was one last item: a photon flare. He hooked it onto his belt. He was ready.

His shoulders brushed the flexmac lining the walls of the tunnel as he crawled through it. Carefully, he lifted the matched pad covering the tunnel mouth and moved the expanded metal grate inside the transformer station. It was black inside the cover, with only a thin pattern of streetlight showing through the cooling slots next to the radiant fins over his head. He slid the spookeyes down and clicked them on. The place lit up, in that eerie green of multiply-augmented light. He replaced the pad and grate and stood quietly, listening.

The first rush of Reflex vibrated through him, making him feel warm and slightly itchy. He wanted to move, to run and dance and jump—that was the drug singing to him, urging him to use his body, to do something—anything—fast and hard. But he held still, listening. After a moment, he moved to a slot in the door of the unit and peeped through it into the alley. Empty. No one home. He clicked the spook-eyes off.

In a second, he was through the door and out, locking it with his thumbprint. He scuttled to the shadows next to the wall of the Jade Flower and flattened himself against the cool plastcrete. He would stay in the shadows for this one. He took a deep breath and moved off, feeling the Reflex dance in his muscles.

The T-plex was brightly lit, a half-dozen big HT lamps overlapping their pools of daytime around the building. It was standard Confed architecture, squat and ugly, a prefab block of expanded hardfoam with carved door and windows. Right now, whoever was on electronic watch would be getting signals from Khadaji’s confounder and—if they were awake—wondering what the Doppler ghosts were fuzzing the screen. The confounder was the best the Confed could produce—it wasn’t even issued to these troops it was so new—and Khadaji had paid a small fortune for it less than a year ago. It was unlikely the simadam running the scopes would know what the problem was.

The lights were something else, of course. The quad did have image intensification equipment equal to his own. With spookeyes lit, the quad could see an area framed only in starlight as if it were a bright afternoon. Shorting the lights out, therefore, should not be to his advantage.

Khadaji grinned. The problem with the military mind was that it tended to be logical only to a point that satisfied it, but no further. The way to out-think the military was to carry its logic one step past.

He hooked a simple timer-and-popper against the unshielded transformer and set the delay for twenty seconds. He scurried back, keeping to the shadows, until he was in front of the T-plex. The quad was alert and prowling; no virgins, these—they were crack troopers, all Sub-Lojts chosen for skill to form this special unit. The woman on the other side of the door they guarded—visible through the hard plastic window—was a Sub-Befalhavare, one of ten on planet. She commanded a thousand troopers and was, therefore, a valuable person. The Confed had done one intelligent thing with its military and that had been to clean up the old-style ranks found on most worlds. The organization had been streamlined for ground troops: four troopers made a quad, commanded by a Sub-Lojt; twenty-five quads formed a centplex, with a Lojtnant running the show; ten centplexes overseen by a Sub-Befalhavare made a ten-kay unit; and the commander of ten thousand troopers was a full Befalhavare. That was the size of the unit on Greaves, a ten kay. The next rank was a Systems Marshal, an Over-Befalhavare, then the Supreme Commander of Confederation Ground Forces Himself. Only five ranks between a line trooper and the S.C.

There was a loud pop and the HT lamps began to fade. Khadaji slid his spookeyes down and flicked them on at minimum, but kept his eyes closed. The intensified light of the dying lamps flashed brilliantly at his closed eyes.

He heard one of the quad yell, “Amplifiers on!”

Good. He was counting on their training. These four would be ready for the darkness by the time the last glimmer faded from the lamps.

Khadaji opened his eyes as the light against them dimmed; he adjusted the spookeyes to compensate for the darkness. Green-on-green images came into ghostly focus. An eye-smiting glare poured from the window of the Sub-Befalhavare’s office and he looked away from it, concentrating on the soldiers. With full-intensification, spookeyes would amplify available light millions of times; the glow of a flickstick butt would seem a bonfire at close range.

He had been in the shadows with only a little cover. That would effectively be gone, now that the light was only from the stars and the ambient city glow. He had to move quickly. And the timing had to be right. They all had to see him at the same time.

“Hey!” Khadaji yelled.

They were superb, the members of this quad. They spun as one, bringing their weapons up.

Khadaji marked their positions in that instant; he also triggered the photon flare and tossed it toward them. He turned his head and squeezed his eyes shut tightly; even so, the light from the flare reflected from the walls beat upon his eyes through the lids. There was no time to think about what it did to the eyes of the quad. Khadaji ran at a right angle to his left, as fast as he could sprint.

The quad was blind, but they were firing. A man’s voice began yelling orders over the sound of the .177s and their explosive bullets: “Toomie, take the left, Janie, center front! Jason, to the right!”

Khadaji circled before Jason managed to get his carbine out to cover his assigned field of fire and raised both spetsdods. He fired twice, caught Jason and the quad leader with the first two rounds, then fired both his handguns again. He got Janie, but missed Toomie, who was still covering his quadrant with short bursts of the Parker, his back to Khadaji. Before the man could realize his team wasn’t shooting, Khadaji snapped off a final round into Toomie’s neck. He went down, the Parker silenced.

No time. Khadaji sprinted for the door, tugging the spookeyes from his face as he ran. He didn’t slow, only twisted so that he hit the pressed plastic with his left shoulder. The cheap material tore away from its sliding frame in a shower of gray shards and Khadaji dived for the floor as he went through.

The double boom of a smoothbore pistol filled the air and the charge of brass shot sleeted against the wall and through the open doorway. Khadaji rolled up and fired toward the woman standing behind her desk. The dart hit her square on the chest, but she managed to trigger another twin shot of the smoothbore as she went backwards. The gun was pointed at the ceiling and blew a binocular-shaped pattern in the white hardfoam.

The Sub-Befalhavare went into poison contractions; the strength distribution of her muscles causing her to sit back in her chair, her fists drawn up to her shoulders and her face clenched into a snarl. She held onto the smoothbore pistol at an almost classic port-arms position, pointed by her right ear.

It should not have been funny, but it struck Khadaji that way. He laughed, thought about it for a few seconds, and decided to add a touch more. There was a flower arrangement on the woman’s desk and he pulled a long-stemmed green rose from the vase and stuck it into the barrel of the smoothbore. One had to keep one’s sense of humor, after all. And it could be a clue for a wise man. A green rose—a jade flower… He doubted the Sub-Befalhavare would think it funny, but humor always depended upon one’s viewpoint, whether you were the one who stepped on the banana peel or an observer.

Time to leave. Khadaji sprinted from the office and into the street. Other troops would be coming and he wanted to be back at the Jade Flower by the time somebody started a net working in the city.

He jumped the downed figure of a quad member near the door and started down the street. Another easy station, he thought, as he ran. He shook his head a little. He had to watch that, the feeling of invincibility, the sense of rightness which made him feel as if he could not fail. That was dangerous, that kind of thinking. Just because he knew who he was and what he was doing, there was no guarantee he’d succeed. Overconfidence had ruined more than one man, especially men with grand plans who let the big vision cloud the details of the smaller workings. The tendency was to feel as if there was some kind of benevolent spirit backing him, the hand of Fate guiding and protecting him because he was its instrument, and that was dangerous. He was fourteen years past his Realization and he still had to fight the sense of superiority it had given him.

He heard voices approaching from a side street and slid to a halt in the shadow of a trash-recycle hopper. A pair of quads ran by, heading back toward the T-plex. Close.

Yes. It could happen at any time. A stray bullet triggered by a falling trooper could do it, a slip while running from pursuers, any one of a hundred things. For nearly six months he’d been careful and lucky.

He ran back toward the Jade Flower. He recognized that his worry meant the time for the end was getting nearer. It gave him a fluttery stomach to think about it, a tingle in the muscles of his buttocks even as he ran.

“Have a nice nap, Chief?”

“I feel much better, Butch. How’s business?”

“Goin’ pretty good, now. I heard Anjue on the com a few minutes ago, he said when Sister Clamp came in, fifteen troopers joined the line.”

Khadaji nodded and strolled into the octagon. The place was at capacity, save for the spaces saved for upranks. He smiled a little to himself. At least one Sub-Befal wouldn’t be dropping by tonight.

There was a man drinking splash alone at one of the spare tables. Khadaji walked to the table and nodded down at the man. He was a quad leader, a Sub-Lojt, and he looked familiar, though Khadaji couldn’t place him. “Evening,” Khadaji said.