Counterweight (4 page)

If company agents were following him, they certainly
wouldn’t do it while disguised as a backpacker. Too easy to notice. That kind
of thing might work if they were doing static surveillance – each man covering
a zone, handing off the target using coms implants. Static surveillance needed
a lot of manpower to work properly and it wouldn’t work in a public transit
station anyway. Sooner or later, folks would notice that you weren’t going
anywhere.

Cal used a lot of transit stations when running Surveillance
Detection Routes. As an undercover operator, he had to act as though he wasn’t
trying to defeat enemy surveillance. Constantly looking over his shoulder would
have been a dead give-away that he was up to something. An SDR that ran through
a transit station gave him the opportunity to stop and check his surroundings
without being obvious about it. The fake message made it harder for anyone
following him to wait around without becoming obvious.

He exited the station and moved into a medium-sized shopping
district. The place was a rabbit warren of side corridors and it would force
any surveillance team to close up on him. In this environment, it was far too
easy for him to duck down a narrow side alley and disappear.

He stopped to cross the pedestrian traffic, checking behind
him as if choosing the best moment to move across the flow – still no evidence
of a tail. He darted across and into a media shop that he used from time to
time. It had a stair connecting with the next level. He spent a few minutes
looking at the wall screens before selecting an old Tauhentan graphic novel and
sending the file to his account.

He nodded to the attendant and headed up the stairs, pulling
on a welder’s cap and stuffing his jacket into his satchel before reaching the
top step. Anyone handing him off to an agent on the next floor would have
described what he was wearing. Every little change helped.

He quickly passed through the banks of action &
adventure memory screens and exited the store, his chip authenticating the
payment for his novel as he walked under the scanner in the doorway. He waved
down a magbike cab and gave the driver an address close to the café where he
was ultimately headed.

For most of the last century and a half, Cal’s life had been
one long series of SDRs. He’d lived as a ghost on eight worlds, never letting
his guard down. It was as natural as breathing and he often didn’t even notice
when he was doing something purely for the sake of identifying a tail.

He’d definitely had an easier existence back on Earth, but
it was the last place he would want to be noticed. Here, he was just another
Tauhentan expat, his ancestors cut off from home when the Humans had carved
their world out of the Republic.

Back home, if you could even call Earth home anymore, he was
Callum McKinnon, the terrorist who’d almost cost Humanity its freedom. He’d
been convinced the Dactari threat had been a lie. His parents, two former CIA
operators, had become staunchly anti-government and they had taught him
everything they knew.

He’d thought the ‘Alien Invasion’ was a UN plot to take over
the planet. He’d set up a failed attempt to destroy key equipment at Moffet
Field, followed by a spectacular freighter-bomb in the Hudson river that
completely destroyed the UN headquarters.

Then he’d gotten pinched in Calgary where he was lying low
and working on a construction crew. The two soldiers patrolling the bus station
may have claimed he was ‘resisting arrest’ or maybe they didn’t even bother. At
least the long recuperation gave him something to occupy his mind while he lay
in his tiny, windowless cell.

It was a hell of an eye-opener, to say the least, when Agent
Guilderson had brought in a captured Dactari to meet him.

All those people dead in New York and he’d been about as
wrong as a person could be…

Once he was mobile, he’d stood in front of a military
tribunal where he was sentenced to death. Though officially a corpse, he spent
several years working as a carpenter on a small Caribbean research base. The
government had wanted him alive on the off-chance that one of his old cronies
might try to step into his footsteps, so they hid a tracking chip somewhere on
his body and put him to work. He’d helped to build the research facilities that
developed the new pitch drives.

Now, fifteen decades later, Cal was surprised at how much he
missed that warm humid air.

He ducked reflexively as the magbike operator flew them
under a slow delivery unit before weaving through a tangled mess where an
accident had just occurred. The occupants of one of the vehicles were staring down
into the cold foggy depths of the central atrium with ashen faces. A red
pulsing glow indicated an emergency vehicle was down there somewhere.

He was always surprised at the little things that crept up
on him. Why should he be nostalgic about the almost oppressive heat of his
former prison? He could hardly be nostalgic about the people; most of them
would still like to kill him, even though they now made full use of his skills.

He knew if he were ever captured or killed on one of these
worlds, he was completely on his own. Back home they’d probably declare a
holiday.

He grinned as the foot plates increased their restraint
gravity. Magbike operators were notoriously reckless but they were popular
because they were the quickest way to get around in Tsekoh. With the
restraint
field maxed out, the operator threw them into a
right hand roll and nose-dived straight down into the heavy fog that always
filled the lower levels during ore processing shifts.

A massive ore carrier flashed past on their right, filthy
yellow paint slicked with grimy moisture, and Cal whooped with the thrill of
the ride. He knew the operator of the bike had a heads-up display and was just
trying to scare his passenger.

Cal was goading him to try harder.

The operator obliged. He headed for
the
pinch
.
It was a narrow point in this section of the atrium, only two meters wide for
ten levels in either direction and it was the corner of a seventy degree turn.
If anyone was coming in the other direction, the heads up display wouldn’t know
until it was too late.

They entered the pinch at full speed. No vehicles struck
them but a foot grazed off the operator’s helmet as they sped through the
narrowest point. A chorus of cheers and shouts followed them out and Cal looked
back to see the daredevil who had jumped across the two-meter gap. He was
outside the railing, but his friends were holding him by the arms, pulling him
in as they disappeared around the corner.

Definitely no sign of being followed. No sane operator would
be willing to follow a magbike cab down here. They dropped another five levels
and came to a swerving stop at a roughly-cut hole in the railing. It wasn’t a
standard debarkation port, but it was left unrepaired in order to reduce congestion
at the proper stations.

Cal authorized a twenty percent tip for the driver before
hopping over to the pedway – a pretty standard gratuity in return for getting
the passenger to his destination in one piece.

He strolled back toward the pinch for a few hundred yards
before reaching the café. He walked in to the back, his body shuddering
involuntarily from the delicious heat, and he took a table near a rear exit
that opened onto a relatively busy hallway. He ordered a couple of signature
house drinks before pressing his palm to the glass surface of the table,
activating his own little corner of the city’s data hive. He selected the
graphic novel he’d just purchased and lifted the display up into the space
above the table.

He slowly worked his way through the holographic pages while
watching the pedestrians through the café’s open front. He used a spoon to eat
the layer of algae at the top of his drink before taking a sip of the
heavily-caffeinated beverage. The cooking process burst the cell walls of the algae,
releasing their caffeine into the broth. It was a popular post-shift snack that
helped keep body and soul together until the evening meal.

A medium-build Ufangian walked in and headed for the table.
Cal gave a barely-perceptible nod of approval. Five minutes early. The guy took
things seriously and he always made sure he got to a meeting place early to
scope out any potential problems.

“Good story?” the Ufangian – Cal didn’t know his name and
wanted it to stay that way – asked as he sat down and took a big gooey gulp of
the drink that had been waiting for him.

Cal winced. He didn’t mind the algae on its own, and the
remaining beverage was palatable enough, but he just couldn’t bring himself to
consume the two together like the locals. It worked with his cover, as few
Tauhentans followed the local customs.

Cal looked back up at his story and shrugged. “It’s all
right.” He didn’t bother to ask if the Ufangian had been followed. He wouldn’t
be sitting here if that were the case. “What did you find out?”

A long slurp. He leaned back. “There’ve been a lot of
spicewood items showing up in Tsekoh lately. Even down this way, we’ve been
seeing smaller trinkets.” He grinned. “Up in the money-levels, folks are
showing off some pretty expensive items. Boxes, hairpins, slate covers, vehicle
trim…”

Cal nodded. The latest fad among the wealthy corporate elite
was spicewood. The only reason for an expensive product to even exist was that
it allowed the rich to differentiate themselves from those who weren’t. He’d
heard there was even a restaurant up top, near the tether anchor, that had
started grilling fish in thin sheets of spicewood.

It was incredibly extravagant, seeing as there were only a
few plantations in the Republic that could keep spicewood trees alive and they
needed vast amounts of terra-conditioning equipment to eke out a few trunks a
season.

It was the first time he’d ever heard of spicewood being
used as a consumable. “So where is it coming from?”

The man took another deep drink, following it up with a
sigh. “I began tracking it from several different vendors, posing as a backer
who had some credits to invest. I ran into a lot of dead ends, of course, but
you don’t get the grains without the husks…”

Cal held his tongue. He appreciated the Ufangian’s skill at
investigation but the guy had a dramatic streak that was better left
un-encouraged. He loved to play up the difficulties in his assignments.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, he was a complete sleeper. The rare occasions
when Cal had to make use of his abilities were probably the high point of his
dreary existence and he liked to make the most of it.

A chuckle. “All right, on to the harvest.” He leaned in
toward Cal. “The one commonality in all this is a warehouse, five levels up
from here. A place owned by a registered smuggler by the name of G’Maj Tumela.
Folks say he bought up an old supply of whole trunks from an estate sale, which
is complete eel-droppings of course.”

“It is?” Cal raised an eyebrow.

“Of course.” The Ufangian waved off the possibility of any
other answer. “Stuff like that is supposed to be old pre-Republic stock. There
haven’t been any undocumented trunks since the Iimperial days, so we’d be
talking about wood that sat in a warehouse for at least a couple thousand
years.”

Cal shrugged.

“A full, commercial-size trunk loses half its aromatic
compounds every two hundred years,” the investigator explained. “Anything from
the imperial era has some antique appeal but the smell is almost completely
gone. You pretty much only see small boxes made from an Imperial trunk because
they accumulate some odor between openings and the owner can get a decent sniff
of it.”

He nodded back over his shoulder. “The stuff I’ve seen here
in Tsekoh is fresh – damned fresh. It’s not legacy wood – it’s stuff that got
harvested in the last century at the most.”

“So, it has to be coming down on the tether,” Cal mused. “I
don’t imagine there’d be a secret plantation down here.” He closed his graphic
novel. “And it all goes through this Tauhentan’s warehouse – G’Maj was the
name?”

A grin. “Planning on paying a visit to your planetman?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, he’s off world right now. One of his sons is looking
after the place while he’s gone.”

“Then there’s not a second to waste.” Cal stood, his comrade
following his lead. “It’s the perfect time to pay a call and suggest we’re
interested in doing business. With the kid, we probably won’t be expected to
finalize anything so we can just talk our way in the front door, steal their
data and get the hells out.”

Another grin from the Ufangian. First an investigative
assignment and now a field trip with the big guy himself. “I’ve got a sticky.”
He patted his chest pocket. “No need to stop anywhere along the way.”

C’al’s pleased chuckle was all the reward the man needed.

Planet 3428

R
ick
sat in his usual spot, staring down from the top of the ship to where a small
group worked in the vegetable plots. He wished he could change places with any
one of them. They may not be engineering officers, but they were at least
treated with respect.

Rick’s family had kept the ship running for a century and a
half, but they were resented for it. Sandy Heywood’s rare, esoteric knowledge
had been the reason the mutineers couldn’t leave him with the fleet. Without a
proper, distortion-qualified engineer, the
Canal
wouldn’t have made it
very far.

Heywood had possessed the sense to keep that knowledge in
the family and, as the decades went by, the family became the only ones who
could keep the core systems operating. The twisted version of history on 3428
might make them a family of untouchables, but they were still
indispensable
untouchables.

If he were a simple, anonymous harvest worker, would Nell
think better of him? He seriously doubted it. If he weren’t forbidden fruit, he
wouldn’t be a safe, harmless diversion for her. He’d be someone with slightly
less unrealistic expectations. Rick was safe because there was simply no chance
of his being a viable prospect for Nell.