Incursion (2 page)

"Kyle Juenger. I'm expected."

"Let's disable your access countdown first. Your ID, please." Kyle handed it over, and breathed a little easier when the invisible countdown was no longer ticking his life away. Yet, he didn't doubt that he was now under even tighter security, since he was getting close to the heart of the Commissariat.

"Please be advised to stay on the red areas of the carpet." The receptionist gave him a bloodless smile as he confirmed Kyle's suspicion. "The shocks would fry every piece of technology on you, and we're not offering damages."

You're offering plenty of damage, though.
Kyle nodded. "Not that I'd be in a state to file a claim, right?"

"You said it, sir." The receptionist slid his ID over a scanner and handed it back to him. "Just a moment, sir."

A door to the back opened and two guards stepped out and approached him.

"Your escort, sir. Have a nice day," the receptionist said.

Kyle followed one of the women, while the other walked behind him. They moved swiftly, and he made sure to stay exactly between them in the center of the red carpet. When the carpet ended in front of a large sliding door, a muscle in his neck twitched with apprehension, but the guard opened the door after typing in a long security code. "Please don't leave that room without authorization. After you." She motioned, and he stepped into an indoor garden.

The sudden onslaught of humidity made him relax. A stupid reflex, especially as the place was otherwise nothing like home. But his lungs breathed easier, and he could smell the chlorophyll in the air. Amid the tightly entangled Tamenean hardwoods he even spotted the red and orange seedpods of blinker flowers. He moved further onto the clearing, which looked like a place where high-ranking officials might retreat to enjoy the humidity and possibly a lunch or packed dinner.

"Kyle Juenger. Please have a seat." A broad-shouldered woman stepped into view from between the vegetation, holding a pink and white flower in her fingers. She sat opposite him at a table placed between the trees, dropped the flower on the table, and folded her hands over it. "I assumed these surroundings would put you at ease."

"It's appreciated." He sat down, steadying himself with his arms against the table.

"How long since the accident?"

"Six weeks."
Not that it was an accident.

"How far along are you on the road to recovery?"

"This is as good as it's going to get." He eased his weight fully on his ass and leaned back in the chair. "Did they tell you something else?"

"I read your file, of course." She frowned. "I assume there's a disconnect between seeing what it did and reading about it in your file."

"Disconnect is exactly what happened," he scoffed.

She smiled. "Yes, it rather is, isn't it." She leaned forward. "Well, thank you for coming here, Kyle. Your profile was flagged in an extended search for personnel for a delicate task."

"I've been retired."

"And your petitions to the Military High Court, the High Commission, the Professional Court, the Space Naval Court, and a number of smaller authorities clearly show that you were happy to be retired."

"Copy and paste job."

"Perhaps, but you still fought."

"Force of habit." He reached down and adjusted the position of his left leg. "I protested because I wasn't ready to accept the luxurious lifestyle I now enjoy as a crippled veteran of the Commonwealth."

She pulled a pad from her trouser pocket and tapped a few buttons on it. He recognized his own image on the screen, but the photo was woefully out of date. He'd been clean-shaven then, all over, to give any skin parasites less to work with. "You're running low on credits."

"Yes, I'm broke."

"I'm sorry to hear." She tapped a few fields and read quickly, if indeed she could read all the entries with just a glance or two. "You could be reinstated into your old privileges upon completion of the mission. Also, Commanders tend to have better retirement packages than Squadron Leaders."

"Most likely." Nothing a Sector Commissar couldn't do, even beef up his rank in retirement and put him right at the top of the social benefits queue. With a swipe of her fingers, she could assign him unlimited credits for anything she felt like giving him. Credits for the finest whorehouses, spacious accommodation, natural food, space travel—all in her power.

She smiled wryly. "There's also a larger budget for medical intervention. You could most likely afford full cybernetic replacements."

Most likely? As if she hadn't checked that beforehand. "What makes you think I'm your man?"

"Your past as Hunter Five."

"Oh." He exhaled sharply. "Listen, Commissar, that's fifteen years ago now. All I did was collect deserters at their mothers' houses. I wasn't exactly hunter-killer commando material."

"I don't need a hunter-killer. But I do need a hunter. I'd like the quarry alive."

That didn't sound good. Pity she'd already baited him. Cybernetic legs sure would make getting around easier. Movement was supposedly completely natural, too, which meant he wouldn't stand out anymore. He could blend back into a normal life, unremarked, all but invisible. Which was really all he wanted. Why else did anybody join the military? To blend in, to become part of something bigger. To cease to exist as an individual.

"How dangerous is the target?"

"If alerted, dangerous. You'll have to get close without alerting him."

Right. These things never worked out as planned. "How much force am I allowed to use?"

"If at all possible, bring him in alive, but we're happy to accept his dead body. Check him for stolen data. Retrieve it. This may mean looking inside his skull for storage implants."

"Or wherever else he's keeping his data."

"If you have a minute with the dead body, dig wherever you see recent operation scars or fresh wounds." She smiled without irony. "Or wherever else men store a data chip. I'm sure I can trust you with the details."

Employer called the shots. Finding a soft tissue scanner shouldn't be a big problem. He could even rig one out of a generic diagnostics pad. "I'll need gear."

"I'll transfer the necessary credits." No questions asked. She'd likely even approve intelligent bullets in that mood. Whatever the target had done, he'd pissed her off royally.

"Who's the target?"

She tapped on her pad. "He's calling himself Kshar. He's a Glyrinny double-agent."

"I didn't know they do double-agents."

"Of course. Nobody admits to them in the first place. Kshar has something I want back, and I don't care what it takes. If you have to kill his associates, helpers, or other Glyrinny, I'll even recommend you for a bonus."

Yeah, this here was a raging hard-on of employer wrath. He nodded. "I needed to get out more anyway." One question he didn't even have to ask. If Kshar had walked away with her data, she couldn't send one of her usual agents after him—chances were, he'd walked out with the ID files and identities of whatever more suitable hunter she had on the roster. He didn't want to piss her off more by asking that out loud, but it was clear enough. "Can I see a photo?" Of course, a photo wasn't helpful at all in this case, but it made the threat somewhat less anonymous.

She turned the pad around, zoomed a small icon larger, and a face filled the screen. Kshar, despite his name, had anything but a royal appearance. He looked average, on the pale side, eyes awake and perceptive, intelligent, forehead lined already, even though he didn't look older than thirty. Hair was short and light brown, eyes lighter. Pleasant, the type people asked for directions in a busy shopping center and forgot five minutes later. A very good face for espionage. If he was still wearing it.

"Where's he headed?"

"Back into Glyrinny space to deliver what he's pilfered."

"Do we know the mode of transportation?"

"Yes, we do."

The spaceport was busy as usual, especially in the charter terminal. The functionaries maximized profits by very nearly stacking ships on top of each other, and renting out what space remained to various shopkeepers and hustlers. There were plenty of unlicensed freelancers about, too. Prostitutes who plied their trades behind the atmospheric wing of a landing shuttle, standing up or barely bending over. Snake charm dealers who dealt in drugs and secrets and treasure maps and general desires, from everlasting virility to unfading beauty. Some offered a two-for-one deal on both.

He found the
Scorpion
in one of the departure bays, getting ready for launch. She was a heavily modified Morning Star–class ship. Instead of two thrusters, she had four, which should ring alarm bells in the heads of anybody involved in law enforcement. The structural changes that allowed her to use all that power and not be ripped apart meant there was precious little Morning Star left and she was trying very hard to be a Comet-class ship. Except, of course, that the military decommissioned Comets rather than resell them on the open market.

That military-grade shield projector under her nose had most definitely started life in the Space Navy. It was complemented rather fetchingly with four rad blasters at the front and the same number of sonic blasters, all of which were cursorily camouflaged with a sensor panel.

This little ship certainly lived up to its name. Kyle wouldn't want to be on board a raider whose crew mistook this "simple" Morning Star for easy quarry. But his hands itched to fly her. He'd loved his Comets back in the day; he'd preferred them even to the heavy war frigates he'd flown toward the end of his career.

Time to gather more information. When he played the outraged passenger of a shuttle two berths down, the port crew told him that the
Scorpion
wasn't scheduled to leave before midnight. He stomped off, and went in search of her crew. Somebody was most likely on board, but he didn't want to push too hard—they'd only get suspicious. Also, if he could grab and bag Kshar while still on-planet, getting him back would be easier.

Beyond the protective barrier, where permanent structures had a chance to survive the radiation blast from the thrusters, people sat densely packed in rows, grabbing a fast meal from a mobile kitchen. Large soup bowls were filled to the brim with broth, vegetables, and noodles. Clouds of steam rose from large pots at the back, where five people worked to prepare the food just a little faster than it was eaten. This was the busiest eatery on the concourse, which meant that, usually, it was also the best. If he'd learned one thing in the Space Navy, it was to eat at places that served so much food so fast it couldn't possibly get rancid.

Prices were reasonable, too, he discovered as he walked closer.

We Don't Serve Meat
declared a board dangling overhead. He paid a couple credits for a bowl and scanned the rows upon rows of eaters. They ranged from scantily clad prostitutes of every possible gender to soldiers, but no smooth spy face among them. Toward the back sat a crew of what looked like rough-and-ready mercenaries, wearing matching dark gray jumpsuits and darker gray multi-pocketed flak vests. They carried enough personal weaponry to slaughter everybody in sight. Among the other diners, there were a couple weapons here and there, but not another unit like this one.

"By their ship ye shall know them," he said under his breath, bastardizing a Space Navy slogan from a recruitment poster, and went to pick up his food at the counter.

When he'd been served, he found a place near one of the men, set his bowl down, and navigated the bench. In such a constricted space, that was easier thought than fucking done. His leg caught the bench and he very nearly fell, face first, into his bowl. A hand shot out and steadied him by the scruff of his neck, as though he were the runt of the litter.

"Careful, mate," the mercenary said.

Kyle gritted his teeth and steadied himself on the table, then tried again to get his feet under it. "Fuck."

The mercenary glanced toward the end of the row. "Hey, Winter, you going to change places with this guy? Has trouble sitting down."

A large woman stood at the very end of the table. "And sit next to you?"

"If you can bear it." The mercenary made a stupid kissy face and laughed.

Winter gathered her bowl and came around to where Kyle stood. Shockingly, her skin was cement gray, unhealthy, worse than a radiation poisoning patient in a hospital's death ward. She was also completely hairless.

"Sit down over there," Winter said. "Got shot up?"

"Yeah."

Winter nodded with what looked like understanding. From her skin tone, the woman should be getting a blood transfusion at the very least, right now. "Served?"

"Yeah."

Winter nodded again. "Sit. Eat in peace."

It was the friendliest anybody but the shrink had been in what felt like months.
Eat in peace
—Spacer code that made meal times very nearly holy. Food was too scarce and too expensive to squander on any fight, and even rivals and enemies accepted that rule. "Thanks." He stalked over to the end of the row, which put him into the odd position of having taken the "seat of honor" at their table, like their officer. Winter didn't seem to be their leader though, or was she?