Inquisitor (22 page)

Strelmach scampered over to the box trundling toward the door. He clutched at the loader, which didn’t stop, eventually scuttling in front of it so its collision sensors halted its progress. “Wait, wait!” he almost screeched, voice cracking. He took a breath and wiped his forehead. “A misunderstanding—”

“I’m sure,” replied Angel.

“No need to take this merchandise somewhere else. I’ll give you a good price.”

Charlotte, standing to the side and doing her best to look inconspicuous, shook her head.

“No,” Angel said. “Commission only. A three day pre-auction period.” They’d decided three days was enough time for the Genevolve to hear about the auction and come running.

Strelmach looked thoughtful, then nodded. “Twenty-seven percent commission is industry standard.”

This time, Angel shook her head. “I believe it’s fifteen.”

“Well, aren’t you a smart young miss.”

It had been some time since someone had called Angel young. “Yes.”

Strelmach sighed. “Fifteen percent it is, then.”

His implants and Angel’s exchanged contracts, and after perusing the wording, Angel signed them. Another exchange, and it was settled.

“Done, then.” Strelmach smiled.

“We’ll be on our ship,” said Angel. “We’d like to be notified of every pre-offer.”

“Of course, of course. Now, if you’d just hand the loader over to me, I’ll—”

“We’ll hang on to the merchandise, if you don’t mind.”

Strelmach’s smile slipped. “As you wish. But it’s industry standard procedure for the agent to hold onto the merchandise.”

“Was that specified in the contract?” asked Angel, knowing the answer.

“Well, no, but—”

“Then we’re holding onto it. Let’s go.”

Chapter 14

“Are you all right?” asked Angel as the serving automaton left with their order.

They were seated at a secluded private table overlooking the auction arena. It must have been costly to reserve, but Charlotte had paid without a quibble. The food on the menu was exotic, and the drinks even more so. Their box had generated a lot of buzz around Sercan, and the restaurant overlooking the auction arena was booked out.

Charlotte’s face was pale. “I just need to see her.”

“I told you this was a bad idea.”

“Please, Angel. She’s willing to kill you, and at the very least imprison me. If she has to, she’ll kill me as well, rather than let me escape again.”

“We shouldn’t be here,” insisted Angel. “We should be out in the asteroid belt, waiting for her to leave.”

“We have time for that.”

Angel sat back in her chair with an annoyed sigh, shaking her head. She’d only agreed to this as she thought she might be able to get her hands on more equipment without Charlotte noticing. A booster for her emergency beacon was high on her list, along with sturdier programs to resist Charlotte infiltrating her implants.

An automaton appeared with their drinks and food. Charlotte had ordered a large glass of what looked like orange juice with pieces of fruit in it. The drink came with a long plastic straw bent into loops. Angel sipped at her bubbling violet concoction, savoring the taste of lychees and grapefruit along with honey and spices imbued in the strong liquor.

The automaton deposited seven different dishes on the table along with an insulated container filled with steaming egg noodles. Angel dished for both of them, giving Charlotte a pass on the spiced, raw sea slug.

The girl ate distractedly, keeping her eyes on the auctions in progress. Angel’s ears pricked up when she heard an announcement for the auction of a piece of alien technology. She did a quick search and found it was the three hundred and seventeenth alien artifact to be sold. A scan of the lot revealed it to be a thin membrane sheet. Normally the item wouldn’t be of interest to her, but for some reason it was.

Angel realized she was sharp and ready. Everything was on the line.

They finished eating, and a serving automaton cleaned the dishes from the table. They were on their second drinks when their lot came up.

Seated atop a polished steel loader, it trundled out to the center of the auction arena. At the edges of the area, standing behind barricades, were suited men and women surrounded by lab-coated and overalled technicians. They lugged expensive analysis equipment and waited patiently. A few bidders weren’t the usual corporation types: several representatives of Houses were there, dressed in obscenely expensive fabrics and surrounded by chattering advisors and minions.

Strelmach appeared from a side door and made his way to the middle of the arena. He nodded to the automaton auction master, and a high-pitched beep sounded three times.

“I don’t see her,” Angel said.

“She has to bid. And win. She can’t let that box fall into anyone else’s hands.”

“Maybe she’s using a proxy? She’ll bid and win, then collect the box from a secure location.” Except Angel hadn’t received a ping from her bug in Summer’s ship. If she were close, she should have.

Another chime sounded, and the barriers between the bidders and the merchandise dissolved. Technicians and scientists rushed toward the box, sensors extended in front of them, as if it were a race to be first with their results. They touched and probed, analyzing the box’s technology as best they could from the outside. Auctions like these were a gamble. The bidders wouldn’t truly know what they had in their possession until the object was back in their laboratories and scrutinized, a process which could take months, if not years. Careers had been ruined because someone hadn’t bid on an object that turned out to be a gold mine; and careers had been lost because someone spent too much on something that turned out to be worthless. It was almost a game between the participants: a high-stakes game of chance and calculated guesses, where bids were made according to the analysis as much as on the behavior of the other bidders.

Abruptly, the auction automaton barked a command, and the technicians and scientists reluctantly scattered back to their masters. Above the box, a holographic array appeared, displaying the integer zero in red.

It turned orange, then yellow, then green.

Nothing happened, and after a few moments, Angel hissed.

“Patience,” said Charlotte.

“She’s not here. She could be trying to break into our ship.”

Charlotte said nothing for a few seconds, then, “The ship is secure. There have been no unwarranted entry attempts.”

Angel tilted her glass and swallowed the rest of her violet scotch.

“She’ll be here,” affirmed Charlotte.

The holo-display flickered, and the number changed to seven million.

“Whoo,” Angel said. That was enough to set her up for life. In fact, she’d probably be able to live like a spendthrift playboy in a private ship, cruising from one planet to the next, extending her life with the best gene therapy credits could buy. If only she placed a value on money.

The figure jumped to eight, then nine million. Angel ordered another drink.

Soon, it reached thirteen million.

Angel couldn’t see how the bids were being communicated. Possibly a twitch here, an eye movement there. Each one was confirmed through the bidder’s implants to the auction master, but the initial bid was conducted old style: physically. Part of the game, she assumed.

At thirteen, the display paused. A number of suited buyers were arguing loudly with their entourage. One woman turned and walked out, hangers-on trailing after her. Another of the bidders, a haughty thin woman, was beaming. A scientist standing next to her patted another on the back. A timer appeared beside the thirteen, counting down from ten.

At one, it paused. A bell chimed, and the holo-display clicked over to fifteen million.

The bidders looked around them angrily, and one of them shouted in disgust.

“What’s happening?” Charlotte asked Angel.

“Someone bid after the auction was officially over. I don’t know how.” It had to have been Summer.

The auction master automaton moved to a central position close to the box. It raised spindly arms high in an effort to calm the crowd. It didn’t seem to be working. The woman Angel thought had the winning bid was red-faced. She screamed at the auction automaton, words unintelligible through the glass.

“Sercan Orbital Governance has the final winning bid,” announced the auctioneer. “My condolences to all who lost on this item. We rarely have the opportunity to offer such merchandise for competitive sale.”

“Shit, shit,” hissed Angel. “We have to get out of here!”

“Why? She isn’t here—oh.”

“Yes. The only way this could have happened is if the Genevolves have their hooks into the Sercan Governance. Come on!”

Angel leapt to her feet, the chair clattering over behind her. She grabbed Charlotte’s hand, and together they raced out of the restaurant. As Angel flew past the exit, she squirted credits to cover their bill. It wouldn’t do for the local law enforcement to come after them, assuming they hadn’t already been notified to detain them. They had to leave the orbital as quickly as they could.

Angel ran past the elevator and into the emergency stairwell. Together, she and Charlotte practically tumbled down the stairs and out onto the main concourse. She looked around frantically, drawing curious stares.

“Service corridors,” said Charlotte quietly. “There’s one over there.” She pointed across the street.

“Good idea.”

They hurried between foot and loader traffic, and shoved open swinging doors into a waste treatment plant. Charlotte pinched her nose once they were through the negative-pressure atmospheric seal.

“Phew. That’s bad.”

Angel breathed through her mouth. “I know. Here. This way.”

She tugged Charlotte along behind her, and they commandeered a service cleaning machine. Angel sat in one of the seats and punched in the docking bay coordinates of the
Endurance
. With a whirr, the machine rolled along a corridor and headed toward their ship as fast as it could, which wasn’t fast at all.

“Damn it, we should have realized,” Angel cursed.

“You couldn’t have known. The Genevolves are supposed to have been broken, their power scattered.”

“Yeah.” Angel chewed a thumbnail. “But this means they’re regaining a foothold. Where else do they wield influence? The Inquisitors?”

“That’s… unlikely.”

“But not impossible.”

“No.”

“Fuck.”

Angel sat in silence, fuming. The erroneous assumption they would only have to deal with the one Genevolve had landed them in a dangerous situation. They maneuvered along narrow corridors and intersections that remained hidden behind the shops and warehouses in the traders’ section of the orbital. Angel spent the time checking and rechecking her hand-cannon.

When the machine jerked to a halt, she leapt out. Another waste treatment plant, the foul air of this overlaid with the metallic and sharp chemical odors of spaceship waste. She hastened to the entrance of the plant, making sure Charlotte followed. There was a small grubby window, which Angel peered through.

“Shit.”

Sercan Orbital Law Enforcement were outside in numbers, along with black, sharp-edged proxies. They formed a ring around the
Endurance
, preventing anyone coming within fifty meters. The usual spaceport traffic of engineers and supply loaders that typically passed through that area was being diverted in a wide arc.

“There’s no way through them,” Angel said. “And they’ll scan and search any loader approaching our ship. That’s if they don’t fire on it first. We need a plan. We can’t sit this one out and hope they’ll lose interest and go away. We need to get on board without being noticed. Maybe we can order and hide inside some regular supplies.”

“They’ll search them.”

“Do you have any ideas?”

Charlotte grinned at her. “Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.”

•

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” said Angel.

“If you have a better one, then now’s the time to speak up. We can’t go through the law enforcement; we have to go around. And in this case, around means over.”

Angel clamped her mouth shut before she could swear again. She looked up at the vaulted spaceport ceiling and then down at the Sercan Orbital Law Enforcement and their proxies, who at this height were as small as ants. Ants in combat armor, carrying displacement cannons. Never mind how it looked, the distance was no object to their effectiveness.

With a clunk, the massive hook of the loading crane bumped into the platform they were standing on. It wobbled around before eventually steadying. Strong enough and large enough to carry substantial pieces of machinery that made up the essential starship systems, the cranes traveled along giant girders that crisscrossed the spaceport ceiling. The plan was to ride the crane’s hook to the top of their ship and enter through a maintenance hatch.

Angel sidled up to Charlotte, who was examining the three-pronged hook. “We can’t hover above our ship and wait while it lowers us down. It’s suicide. They’ll spot us for sure.”

“You’re right,” Charlotte said. “Lowering the hook will be too slow. Which means we have to lower ourselves to the correct height here.”

“But the cranes are slow. We’ll be almost sitting targets while we cross between here and the top of the ship.”

“They’re only slow when they’re carrying a heavy load. Haven’t you seen them zip along when they’re not carrying anything heavy? No? Well, they do.”

Charlotte had taken over this particular crane’s operating system, shunting its regular jobs to other cranes and rescheduling them so as not to arouse suspicion.

The three-pronged hook—claw, really—was four times Angel’s height. She backed away as it rose to clear the edge of the platform.

Charlotte stepped blithely onto one of the prongs and wrapped her arms around it. “Hop on,” she said.

Angel followed Charlotte’s example and stepped onto a prong. Likewise, she hugged the cold steel alloy.

The claw jerked into motion, slowly lowering them. The ants grew slightly larger, but not alarmingly so. Spaceships were huge, and they only needed to descend so they were level with the top. Except by Angel’s judgment, they’d just passed that height and were still descending.