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“Security's pretty tight,” Kiwanuka commented. She knelt down only a short distance from Sage.

“On the surface, yeah,” Sage agreed, “but I'm not picking up anything in the river.”

“
Jasulild
live in this river,” Jahup said. “I know we can walk across the river bottom in the hardsuits, but if we chance upon a
jasulild
while we're down there, things could go badly. This is the spawning season and they're even more aggressive now than they normally are.”

“The hardsuits have sonar capabilities,” Sage countered, “and the
jasulild
aren't going to pick up a scent trace from us.”

“
Jasulild
hunt based on movement.” Noojin sounded pessimistic. “Not scent.”

“We're crossing. The answers we need are over there.” Sage pulled his cloak off, put it into his equipment pack, then closed the watertight seals on the Roley and shoved the Smith and Wesson .500 Magnum into an expandable waterproof thigh pouch. “Jahup, let's go.”

Jahup nodded, stored his cloak in his pack, and remained crouched down under overhanging branches as he eased into the river. In seconds he was submerged. No trace marred the river to show his passing.

Sage started forward, but Noojin intercepted him.

“Wait,” she ordered. “I need to be over there with Jahup.” Without waiting for a reply, she stepped into the water and disappeared as well.

Sage let thirty seconds tick off the chronometer on his faceshield and started down into the river. His boots sank several centimeters into the mud and grew heavy with accumulated mass. The hardsuit's skeletal system quickly adjusted for the weight of the mud and the restriction of the water.

Right before his helmet sank beneath the river, Sage heard the whisper of the seals closing and saw the air supply indicator form in a soft glowing blue line, marking the time he could be submerged. Provided he didn't overexert himself underwater, the hardsuit could filter oxygen from the river water to extend the oxygen in the reservoir.

Darkness and sediment restricted visibility in the river. Night vision was only slightly better, and thermographic vision was problematic. Sage used echolocation, bouncing sound waves off his immediate surroundings. The sonar provided a reliable image of the riverbed and surrounding water, but didn't reveal the soft areas covered by a thin layer of mud. Sage sank three times, once up to his hip, and had to extricate himself with care so he didn't sink deeper.

Echolocation revealed another hardsuit behind him when he reached the midpoint of the river. A discreet ping identified Kiwanuka.

Ten meters from the opposite bank, on the slow rise toward the surface, the echolocation beeped a warning and revealed a huge mass coming toward him from sixty meters away and closing rapidly.

At first, Sage thought someone had a small submersible in the water. The object was seven meters long and three meters in diameter. Then its tail flicked in a movement that was too organic for a marine vehicle.

“Kiwanuka,” Sage called out in warning over a short-­range comm frequency.

“I see it.” Kiwanuka hunkered down till she was lying in the mud.

Sage did the same thing. He gazed up at the surface of the river as the current swept silt and debris over him. If neither of them had a profile and there was no scent, whatever the creature was should pass them by without noticing them.

Instead, the creature came at him, closing swiftly. The echolocation revealed the
jasulild
in limited terms. Sage knew the creatures were usually covered in blue and purple scales and looked like Terran cuttlefish, only uglier and with teeth like a piranha.

The
jasulild
swam over to Sage, held its position with its fins, and scraped at the hardsuit with its teeth in an effort to pluck him from the muddy river bottom. The sound echoed inside the armor because there was no way to filter that noise.

Swimming backward a short distance, the
jasulild
approached Sage again and once more tried to dig him out of the mud. Reaching up with his left hand to touch the
jasulild's
massive underjaw, Sage blasted the creature with a short burst of electricity that flared for only a second.

The
jasulild
shivered and only moved weakly afterward. The gills still worked, so Sage knew he hadn't killed the thing, but it was stunned. He pulled himself up from the mud with difficulty and continued toward the opposite bank.

He came out under low hanging branches and remained within the shadows. After confirming Noojin's and Jahup's positions farther up the bank at the ridgeline, Sage knelt and watched as Kiwanuka surfaced and came out as well while he readied his weapons.

After Culpepper and Pingasa and the other two soldiers crossed and there were no more incidents, Sage gave the order to continue to Cheapdock. The answers to the weapon supplies lay ahead of them.

 

TWENTY-­SEVEN

Cheapdock

North of Makaum Sprawl

6123 Akej (Phrenorian Prime)

S
how me your pass.” The Green Dragon bashhound was blunt and direct. All four limbs were cyber replacements and whatever was left of his original flesh and blood had been enhanced by steroids. His armor was olive green, almost black in the night. A yellow Chinese dragon reared proudly on his chest plate. He carried a double-­barreled plasma blaster on a sling at his side. He had not put in an appearance till after the retractable bridge had clanked back across the river.

Mato sat behind the controls of the Phrenorian aircar and extended his PAD to the bashhound. The five warriors that accompanied Zhoh and Mato sat in the two backseats of the vehicle.

In the passenger seat, Zhoh remained calm and assumed a look of disinterest, but his eight eyes took in everything around them. Three other bashhounds worked the outpost and they were connected to a team inside the Cheapdock sec offices. If anything happened on the bridge, automated defense systems would pop up and reinforcements would be on the way in seconds.

The gate just ahead of the aircar was a pair of massive tungsten rectangles four meters tall by eight meters wide.

The bashhound flicked on the PAD and scanned it into his own reader. The information contained on the PAD Mato had given him contained well-­entrenched lies. There was a Captain Achsul Oretas, who served on General Rangha's personal staff and who had sometimes been a go-­between for the general and Erque Ettor, the Voroughan black marketer, but he had not given permission for anyone to visit the storage bay tonight.

So far, news of Ettor's death had not reached the Phrenorian embassy. Mato had flagged the being's name so they would know if anyone picked up that news in the media, or if the name was searched for through Phrenorian channels.

Zhoh was certain the general would be searching for word of Ettor before long. The visit to the storage bay in Cheapdock would guarantee that.

“Your pass is accepted, Captain Oretas,” the bashhound said, returning the PAD, “and your presence has been logged.”

Mato took the PAD and stored it between the seats.

The bashhound passed over a small beacon. “Clip this to your outerwear and keep it on your person at all times. Keep your group with you. If your group separates, anyone not with you will be arrested or killed. If you lose the beacon or stray from the areas you have been cleared for, you will be arrested or killed. Do you understand this?”

The security was much more strict than Zhoh had expected, but it was nothing he had not eluded before. Not only that, but he intended to comply with the rules. All he needed was proof of General Rangha's extracurricular activities.

“I understand.” Mato clipped the two-­centimeter-­square blue beacon badge to his armor. A small ruby light winked as the security system pinged the badge.

“Do you require any assistance?” The bashhound didn't sound interested.

“I know the way,” Mato said. Ettor had given them the location of the storage bay where he had arranged for Rangha's weapons to be kept secure.

The bashhound stepped back and the massive gates to the starport swung open soundlessly.

Mato engaged the magnetic drive and the aircar lifted a half meter from the ground. He eased forward. As soon as they had cleared the area, the gates swung closed behind them.

The plascrete road that led to the starport had been refinished lately, but not replaced. Another layer had been positioned over the top of the one already in place, but it had been so thinly done that the cracks and imperfections that had scored the previous one remained as irregularities. The aircar passed smoothly over the road, but a large cargo crawler in the other lane bumped and rocked as it approached. The aircar's windshield tinted automatically as the crawler's high beams flickered across the surface.

Warbur traders clung to the crawler's sides. Their wide skulls, large mouths, blue fur, and arms that were longer than their legs identified them easily. They wore savage tribal markings that scarred their broad faces and had only flaring slits for nostrils. All of them carried assault rifles and bandoliers of extra charge magazines.

Mato swore as the trade crawler rumbled past. The bitter, salty stench of the Warburs hit Zhoh like a physical blow. He held his breath until they were gone.

“Those creatures are filthy,” Mato declared.

“They're also dangerous,” Zhoh reminded him as he studied the rows of storage units ahead. The Warburs didn't wear their scars as decoration. They had a reputation for being low-­end transport for cargo, but they fought to defend their business. “They probably got trade rights for air or water and are supplying the mining colonies out in the asteroid belt.”

Once Makaum was secure, Zhoh intended to take over Lodestone and the surrounding asteroids. The large planetoid drew in a lot of wayward meteors rich in ores that could be used to build Phrenorian ships. Getting control of that would be a good thing. Zhoh had already been planning on depriving the miners of their limited spacecraft and opening negotiations with them. If they objected to working for the Phrenorians for air, water, and food, Zhoh would cut those things off as he had before in similar situations. In days, everyone in those rocks would be dead. Removing the bodies could be easily done as the miners were replaced from the slave population left on Makaum.

Knowing the Warbur were out there changed the dynamics of the situation in the asteroids. The Warbur worked for credits. They could be bought off, but if they couldn't be, cutting off their source of income would send them on their way.

Either way would serve.

6189 Akej (Phrenorian Prime)

Mato drove through the rows of storage bays. The one Ettor had given them the number to was located in the back north row and halfway down. Drones maintained security but the jungle encroached on the units more than Zhoh would have permitted had he been in charge.

Someone had been through the area recently in an effort to clear away the jungle. Ash, charred roots and branches, and soot shadows on the broken plascrete offered mute testimony that the Green Dragon Corp had tried to fight back the jungle. Only a few meters away, huge burn pits showed where more trees and brush had been shoved in and burned.

The smoky residue choked Zhoh as he climbed from the settled aircar. He was conscious of eyes on him as he approached the storage bay. The line of units stood twenty meters tall and was at least forty meters deep, judging from what he had seen during their approach. Ettor had stated that several weapons of varying origins were inside.

Drones cycled on rounds overhead while armed Green Dragon bashhounds occupied rooftops with sniper rifles.

The dull metal lock face was programmed in Brootan, the language of one of the dead worlds the Empire had left in its wake as it conquered its enemies. That in itself pointed to a Phrenorian renting the storage bay because the symbols were used only in the Empire these days, and then only for mathematical research regarding plasma engines. The Brootans had excelled in math and music.

Mato joined Zhoh at the door and set a bag of tech gear on the plascrete at their feet. Mato knelt, opened the bag, and withdrew a small, sophisticated unit that fit neatly into his lesser hand. He checked it briefly, powering it up so that an amber light glowed strongly, then extinguished.

“This will tell us if any surprises were left in the lock mechanism.” Mato removed the lock cover and attached four leads to the circuitry within.

“You will find any potential traps with this?” Zhoh didn't like snooper tech like the device Mato used. He preferred a battlefield, a plasma rifle, and his
patimong
for close fighting. He would win back his honor and his place among the Empire with those. But he appreciated Mato's knowledge.

“If I do not find them,
triarr
, you will be the first to know.”

Zhoh smelled the sweet pheromones from Mato that told him the warrior was pleased with himself. Zhoh was not amused. He did not want to die tarnished in the eyes of his family.

Mato punched in the code Ettor had given them with one of his lesser hands.

Although he did not wish to experience any anxiety, Zhoh felt himself grow tense as Mato entered the last symbol.

The locking mechanism cycled, clicked hollowly, and ratcheted as it opened. The recessed handle popped out. Carefully, Mato took the handle in one of his lesser hands and pulled. The three-­meter door opened, grinding in the grooved tracks in front of the bay. Ash and bits of bark popped and snapped as the door cut through them.

“Wait.” Mato knelt again, put the first device away, and took another from the bag.

The new device was cube-­shaped and threw out a light spectrum that Zhoh could scarcely see. Mato eased into the room with the device extended before him and a maze of lights the size of Zhoh's
chelicerae
created an interwoven pattern throughout the bay.

“This is a trap.” Mato's scent changed dramatically. The pleasant pheromones disappeared, replaced at once by the dry, bitter stink of concern.

“What kind of trap?” Zhoh asked.

“What would you put in a place you did not want anyone to find out about?” Mato countered.

“A plasma charge. Something that would get rid of everything I did not want seen.”

Mato moved the cube around and took care not to break any of the light beams. He picked up his bag and slowly walked to the left. After a moment spent examining the wall, he took out a device that activated with a hum, and a section of the wall slid away to reveal another keypad.

Mato looked at Zhoh. “Ettor only gave us one code.”

“Perhaps it was for both keypads.”

“Should I enter it?”

“Can you bypass it as you did the other?”

“This one is more complicated. It will take longer.”

“Bypass it. As much pain as Ettor was in, I do not see how he could keep from telling me everything, but it is possible.” If Zhoh had been about to die and had knowledge that would ensure his killer would die with him, he would have made sure that happened.

Mato took the first device out again and set to work. Almost as soon as he started, a red light flashed on the keypad and a digital viewscreen opened up.

Cursing, Mato stared at the keypad. “It's counting down.”