Black Steel (28 page)

Cierto swept his right arm hand in a semicircle and smashed the edge of his hand into the delicate artwork. The rare crystal shattered into thousands of pieces.

He screamed wordlessly. Damn that woman! He would have killed her a dozen times were she not dedicated to bearing his son!

And yet, even in his anger, the Master of the House of Black Steel found a glimmer of admiration for her. In her position, how well would he have fared compared to how she had done?

He sighed and allowed much of his anger to escape with the used air. Time was on his side, was it not?

He had more than nine months to break her, and break her he would.

And after that, she would die.

For three days Sleel and the others studied the material, posed hypothetical solutions and problems to be solved, and worked their way toward the path they would take. Sleel directed the operation.

"Once more," Sleel said. "Communications?"

Bork said, "Scanners on the four main open channels. A com-ferret set to catch the three coded opchans; we've already broken those scramble codes, they're in the comp. He's got two hardwired voice-only lines buried under the ground and both are tapped. If he talks to anybody outside, electronically or vocally, we got him."

"Transportation?"

Geneva said, "He has forty-six registered vehicles, twenty-five of which are stationed at his compound permanently. Sixteen six-passenger flitters, four ten-passenger hoppers, two orbital boxcars, two airbikes and one medical transport, a four-passenger full-ride ambulance. Repairs are done in the compound in his own shop, but repellor harmonic standards inspection must be done yearly at official stations. One of the hoppers and two of the flitters are due to be inspected this month. We have the location outside the compound where the inspections are normally made."

"Defenses?"

Dirisha's turn. "The estate's perimeter fence is electric, four meters tall, and buried two more meters under the ground. Motion sensors set for human-sized masses every fifth post. It's a big fence, so that's not cheap.

"Inside the estate the main buildings are surrounded by another fence, come-see-me zap-rigged, also with sensors. All gates in both fences are manned with human guards backed by deadman dins set to scream and start shooting if the live guard doesn't deactivate them within ten seconds of the gate's opening."

Sleel said. "We have the codes for the dins yet?"

"No."

"Go on."

"They've got doppler spikes for unwanted air traffic, automatic shoot-down if the vehicle doesn't put out the right pulse. Computer, hologram six."

The holoproj flowered with an overhead view of the estate. Dirisha pulled a transponder from her belt and pointed it at the map. "Perimeter missile silos are here, here and here." The pulsing red dot from her transponder lit on the map and caused little purple rockets to strobe to life where she pointed. "There are also four launchers in the inner compound, here, here, here . . . and here."

Sleel and the others nodded.

Dirisha continued. "The main house is protected by door zappers, carbonex doors and full-frame bolts. Windows are class-two denscris where they are externally exposed, except in one place. The walls are ferroconcrete with internal overlapping plates. Computer, hologram eight."

The image altered, fading from that of the estate into an overhead schematic of the main building of the compound. There was a central courtyard, an octagonal design completely surrounded by the house itself. "The windows facing into the courtyard aren't armored; however, there is a rollover roof that can be electrically motored into place to cover the courtyard, from bad weather or attack. The roof is carbonex with denscris skylights. "

Sleel looked at the holoproj, then at Dirisha. "So if he hears us coming, he can bottle himself up real tight."

"Like an Aquanian turtle inside its shell. It would take heavy military hardware to dig him out."

And if they threw that kind of weaponry at him, even if they had it, it could easily kill everybody inside.

"Power supplies?"

Bork said, "He's on the 'cast, plus he's got three backup generators, one for the exterior fence, one for the interior fence, one for the house. Missiles and such are all selfpowered. You want to see the holo?"

"No, I remember where they are."

So, that was the layout. The bottom drill was plain. They either went in quiet, so nobody noticed them until it was too later, or they didn't go in at all. Simple.

Well. Easy to say, anyway. But Sleel had an idea; it had flown with Dirisha, and it could work. More, there was a certain amount of irony in it, given that it was only a slight variation on the way that Cierto had come at Sleel when Jersey Reason had been killed.

"All right," Sleel said. "We go with my idea for the alpha. The beta will be what Bork suggested yesterday. Let's lay out some grids and timings. Give me the interior of the house."

Cierto was calling his art supplier to arrange for a replacement for the sculpture he had shattered.

Something grander, he thought. And more expensive.

A priority beep interrupted the call. Cierto discommed the art dealer.

"Yes?"

It was one of the men who had been working on Koji to set up Wu's abduction, but not the head spy.

"Patron," the man said.

"Where is Verdimez?"

"Dead, Patron. Killed in the attack on the matador."

Cierto shrugged. So? "Why are you calling me?"

"The assassination of the matador apparently did not go exactly as planned. We have only just learned of this."

Cierto sat up straighter. "Meaning what?"

"Verdimez and the other three are all dead, Patron. But the matador, he-of him there is no sign."

"What? You mean he got away?"

"I cannot say for certain. Only that his body was not among those the local police found with Verdimez and his team."

"Perhaps you think one of the neighbors came out and stole the matador's corpse, eh? To use as a garden decoration? Or a conversation piece for company!"

"Patron-''

"Idiot! Find him!" Cierto broke the connection.

Damn. It seemed as if the matador had a charmed life. Cierto would have thought him dead at least three times since they had met and yet, somehow, he had survived.

He called up the file on the matador. There, there was a good view of him. Cierto put in a com to the Chief of the Planetary Police, an official securely in his pocket.

"Ah, Patron. How may I assist you?"

"Chief. I am told that an offworld assassin has been hired to kill me. I am hardly worried, but it would probably be wise for an alert for this man to be issued via the Planetary Police force immediately. "

Cierto touched a control and sent the hologram to the official's computer. "If he makes planetfall, have the port cools detain him. He is to be considered armed, and deadly force is authorized against him."

"Immediately, Patron," the Chief said.

Cierto sundered the connection and leaned back in his chair. Though the machineries within hummed and tried to soothe him, they did not manage it. This matador was suffused with luck, and such a thing was sometimes better than skill. Perhaps he had been gravely wounded on Koji and had crawled away somewhere to die unseen. Or perhaps he had recognized his mortal danger even if unhurt and fled, knowing he could not prevail against an opponent such as he faced.

Or, perhaps he was at this very moment on his way to assassinate the head of the House of Black Steel as Cierto had told the Chief of the Planetary Police. Worse, perhaps Cierto had underestimated this man.

Such mistakes could be fatal, and best if he took steps to correct himself. If this matador showed up knocking at his door, he would soon regret it.

Cierto smiled. Another contest, eh? Break the woman and kill her tame matador, two chores instead of the one. Both had proven more formidable than he had expected, but that was fine with him. Better a valiant enemy than not. Victory was much sweeter when the contest required that a man work for it.

This victory would be like nectar of the gods to him, the culmination of a life already steeped in winning. A touch of bitterness in that thought. What would a man do for an encore? A question to disturb one, to be sure.

Ah, well. Something would occur to him. It always had.

Geneva said, "Sleel?"

Sleel looked away from the house plans he was studying.

"Looks like Cierto figured out you aren't dead. He's called the local cools and put out an alert for you. Look here."

Steel glanced at the holoproj over her station.

"Nice picture, Sleel," Bork said from behind him.

Sleel shrugged. "They don't know I'm here yet for sure. I'll stay skinmasked."

"Might make things a little harder. He'll be sharper," Dirisha said.

"So the impossible takes us a little longer," Geneva said. "Right, Sleel?"

"Right," Sleel said. But he felt that cold pit-of-the-stomach rush he got in free-fall. Kee was what was important here. Not Cierto. "Let's keep working, folks. We don't know how much time we have to get this right and-"

Geneva waved Sleel to silence. After a moment of watching her computer and listening to something coming in through her earpiece, she grinned tightly. "That was the transportation chief in Cierto's compound. They're bringing one of the hoppers to the inspection station tomorrow for the repellor check. Tomorrow morning."

Sleel felt his breath catch in his throat, and the coldness in his belly turned to liquid helium. Well. Now they knew how much time they had to get ready.

Until tomorrow morning.

Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

THE VEHICLE INSPECTION Station was in Riftville, the small town bordering Cierto's estate to the southeast. The place was little more than an open-ended and squarish box full of harmonic scanners and calibration gear. It was in the warehouse district that made up nearly half the town.

The building was set back off the road in a large empty patch of paint-lined plastcrete, and there were three lanes leading into the front of the station, all of which also exited from the back. It was fairly busy, with two of the lanes crowded nose-to-tail with maybe eighteen or twenty flitters and a hopper or two; the third lane was blocked by red flashers.

The appearance of Cierto's vehicles here was, as Geneva explained, merely pro forma.

Geneva and Sleel sat in one rental flitter, Bork and Dirisha in the other, both parked so they could watch the inspection station. The blonde said, "Nobody would be so stupid as to offend the richest man on the planet by denying him the codes that say his equipment meets the standards. His mechanics are probably the best for a thousand klicks anyhow, and their equipment is at least as good as anything the government has. What happens is, one of Cierto's drivers brings the flitter or hopper in, one of the inspectors smiles and puts the current magnetic number on the inspection strip. If any of the local enforcement people-a traffic cool or truck regulator-happens to be stupid enough to stop and pull the codes from something registered to Cierto, then it will be found to be in compliance. It wouldn't matter if half the dogs in the city howled their lungs out or the thing shattered windows every time it went by, it would be officially covered."

Sleel just shook his head.

"Hey, power is privilege," Geneva said. "What you want if you're one of the little people is to have some of it run down the walls of the big house where you can lick it off like honey. Maybe if you smile and bow deeply enough it will."

"You think this is gonna work, Geneva?"

She looked at him. "Sure. Why wouldn't it? Because you thought of it and not Dirisha?"

Sleel said nothing.

"You've changed, Sleel. For the better, I think."

"I wish I could be sure of that."

"Whups. Looky here."

The hopper, a late-model ten-passenger Aerodynamatronic Lancer, was gliding into a soft landing in front of the inspection station. The ship had a lot of windows, most of which were photogray thincris and opaqued. Where it wasn't gray it was jet, with a soft gleam that was more like satin than metal or plastic. The vessel was heading for the blocked inspection lane. The lane had been kept so just for Cierto's hopper, according to what Geneva had learned. As the hopper settled, the red flashers went off.

Sleel bit down on the new dentcom lightly. "Bork? Dirisha?"

"We see," Bork said.

This next part was tricky. They couldn't risk jumping the driver where anybody might see it and give a warning. They had to get him out of the hopper and, since he didn't plan to be there any longer than it took for somebody to tap his inspection strip with a magnetic imprinter, he probably did not intend to get out.

"Good luck," Sleel said to Bork.

"Thanks. And to you."

Geneva and Sleel watched as Bork kicked his flitter into the air, made a fairly risky parabola across the street, twisted the craft into a tight turn, and brought it down in the empty lane just as the hopper started to turn in.

The hopper driver hit his warbler and it screeched loud enough to make Sleel's ears ring across the street.

Geneva grinned and said, "Man must have been a bird in his last life."

An inspector hurried out of the kiosk to tell the fool driver of the flitter that he could not land there. He leaned against the flitter and said something Sleel could not quite hear on Bork's dentcom. But he heard Bork's reply okay. "Excuse me? You turned the flashers off, so I figured the lane was open."

The inspector mumbled something angrily.

"Okay. I'm gone," Sleel said. He alighted from the flitter and started walking toward Cierto's hopper.

"Yeah, well, I got here first so he can just wait his turn," Bork said.

Rumble mumble mumble.

"No, I don't see how that is."

Rumble mumble.

"Or else what?" Bork said. "Are you threatening mè? Step out of the flitter? Why, sure, I'll be happy to."

Sleel saw Bork glide smoothly out of the flitter. He would not wish to be the inspector, suddenly staring up at a man who was nearly two meters tall and wide enough to cause a partial eclipse of the local sun.