Pirates of the Outrigger Rift (8 page)

The man put
his hands up and slowly turned around. She read the name tape on his coveralls.
“Radje? Mind telling me what you’re doing?”

“Sorry, Your
Lordship, milady, but … well … I figured it was better than them
pirates getting it.”

Helen sighed
and shook her head. “Fool, let’s just get out of here before they find us. The
gold won’t do you any good if you’re dead.” She waved him forward with the gun
barrel.

Radje lifted
the bag. “Can I keep it then?”

“I don’t
care. Just hurry!”

The escape
pods were just ahead at the next intersection. Six pods with open doors
awaited. Helen headed toward the first open pod door.

“Hold it!” a
voice commanded. Helen turned to look and saw a man armed with a pulse rifle
taking aim. She moved to fire and would have made the shot, but Radje bumped
against her as he dove into the open pod.

Her shot
went wild as the pod door closed with Radje inside. The pod immediately
launched.

The pirate
with the pulse rifle didn’t miss. The shot took her in the chest.

CHAPTER SEVEN

W
hy did you attack my men?”

“I told you,” Chandler said. “I walked toward the bar to get
a refill and some guy pulled a blaster on me. What would you have done?”

Chandler sat restrained in an interrogation chair being
worked over by Nebulaco’s finest. After he was patched up from being blindsided
in the bar, they brought him to the detention center for questioning. That was
at least three hours ago. He was tired, thirsty, hungry, and he thought he had
a mild concussion.

The room was a gray box, and he sat in the middle of it under
a lamp hot enough to bake cookies. The lead interrogator, a dark man with one
eyebrow named Sergeant Cox, had the personality of a hemorrhoid.

“They were Nebulaco Security men on special assignment. You
blew an important operation.”

“They didn’t identify themselves. I had no idea what was
going on. Besides, I was in the free zone. Corporate Security isn’t even
supposed to be there.”

Sergeant Cox sighed and massaged his temples. “Why did you
help the girl?”

“What girl? You keep talking about a girl. I don’t know any
girls on this stinking planet.”

Cox got up in his face. His breath smelled like old cheese. “Don’t
play games with me, Chandler. I want answers or you’re going to spend the rest
of your life in a deep, dark hole that smells like your own shit.”

There was a knock on the door. Cox walked over, opened the
door, and spoke briefly with another man. He returned white.

“Mr. Chandler. I am very sorry for the misunderstanding,”
Cox said. “There has been a mistake. I apologize, and I am to express my
regrets and extend to you every courtesy of the Nebulaco Corporation.” His
hands shook as he removed the restraints from Chandler and helped him up from
the hot seat. “I hope you’ll have it in your heart to forgive us.”

Chandler shook his head. “What?”

“I had no idea who you were. Those field officers gave us
misleading information. We’ll have you out of here immediately.”

Chandler grinned through his bruises. The ass-kissing
continued for another ten minutes, all the way out the door, where he found a
limo waiting for him. He looked behind him and wondered how many people had
left the place in style, not counting those who left in a box, of course.

The door to the limo hissed open and Randol nodded to
Chandler. “Get in.”

Chandler slid into the seat beside him. The limo smelled
like it had just come off the showroom floor. It had a fully stocked bar and a
plush interior. He looked at the old man for a moment, then raised his arm and
moved it backward through Randol’s body. The image flickered, then re-formed as
Chandler pulled his arm back from the holo. “Didn’t think so.”

“Somebody talked,” Randol said.

“No shit. What do you need me for? You should be the
detective.”

The limo pulled away from the detention center and rose in a
lazy circle toward the traffic flow.

Sai trudged through the rainy streets, past the shanties and
closed shops of the dilapidated West Side. It may have been risky to walk those
streets, but there were fewer people to dodge, and this way she could sneak
back into Starman’s Quarter and possibly avoid detection. Nebulaco Security had
no doubt alerted the taxi companies and public transports by this time.

She glanced upward and saw the beacon lights of the starport
through the mist of falling rain. The lights cut sharply through the darkness,
radiating into multiple spectrums. They beckoned wandering starcraft home to
port, back to a safe haven. The Silver Dollar wasn’t too far away now. Hopefully,
she could find Jensen, leave quickly, and try to find a safe haven of her own.

She heard something behind and above her. She whirled
around. Movement up high. The hum of flywires cut through the white noise of
the rain. Three men flew toward her out of the darkness, each clad in black and
red. It was a street gang. Sai recognized the colors: Tenel’s bunch—the
Flyboyz.

They glided gracefully toward Sai. Each man had devices
grafted to his forearms that shot molecular wire-lines with static hooks on the
ends. They fired the hooks ahead to lock onto an array of anchor points the
gang had mounted throughout their territory, then glided forward on the wires. As
they approached the end of their lines, they released and retracted the
trailing hooks and shot them forward again for another great step. Fire, glide,
release, fire—they flew toward her like angels of doom.

Sai crouched low and tried to disappear into the shadows,
but one of the Flyboyz let out a shrill whistle and Sai knew she’d been
spotted.

She ran for it, hoping to find someplace where she could
more easily defend herself. Here on the street, she was wide open. To make a
stand would be suicide.

This just wasn’t her day.

Sai looked back to check their proximity, but she could no
longer see them. Before she could turn forward again, a booted foot shot out
from nowhere and kicked her in the back, driving her face-first into the curb.

The three men laughed. Sai pushed herself to her feet. She
spit blood and wiped her split lip with her hand, glancing briefly at the
crimson stain on her fingers.

The Flyboyz landed, surrounding her.

“Nice night for a swing,” she said.

The smallest of the three kicked Sai full force in the
stomach. She doubled over, retching in pain.

“That’s it, Tork!” the second Flyboy said. “Give it to her!”

The third, clearly the leader, stood well back from the
others, saying nothing—only watching.

Little Tork strutted before Sai. “Who are you, bitch? What
are you doing in our sector?”

Sai looked up, rubbing her stomach with one arm as she tried
to catch her breath.

“I’m Taj,” Sai lied. “Tenel knows me.”

“Tenel knows everybody so that don’t mean shit to us. You
got caught in our space so you gotta pay. You got credits? Or,” the little man
smiled, “do we take it out in pain?”

Tork released his flywire like a whip and cracked it down on
the pavement beside Sai. He arced a loop of the molecular wire, and it sliced
cleanly through the curb. Sai glanced down and watched the curb slide into the
gutter.

Her eyes glazed for an instant as she reached out with her
mind toward the trio. Her cyber-psi senses traveled the twisted paths of the
circuits that tied them to their flywires. She could see the psychedelic fire
of electrical impulses at the bases of their brains and the electro-neural
pathways to the flywire bands. She readied a data command. Already, she could
see the second Flyboy standing by, command sequences poised to attack.

Tork kicked her again, this time in the face.

“Speak up!” he said. “What’s it gonna be, babe?”

Sai rode out the wave of agony. Strange, she thought, how
the smallest assholes always have the biggest mouths.

“I don’t have any money. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t
be sitting out here in the rain.” She rubbed along her bruised ribcage again,
this time grasping the whisperblade, hidden out of their sight.

Tork grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. His hand
slipped under her jacket as he yanked her close. “I guess that means tonight’s
your lucky night!”

Sai stared deep into the Flyboy’s eyes.

“Could be,” she said smiling, “but not yours!” She whipped
the bright, humming blade out of her jacket in a cross draw, and Tork’s severed
hand flopped to the ground.

He screamed.

Sai dove to the right and mentally sent the command
sequence.

“Whisperblade!” shouted the third Flyboy, who had kept his
distance. He backed farther away to get full use of his flywires and tried to
fire, but couldn’t.

Sai threw the whisperblade at the second, who still hadn’t
grasped what was happening. The whisperblade flew like an angry hornet.

The Flyboy saw it coming and tried to duck behind a waste
disposal unit. The whisperblade hissed and whipped around the corner to its
victim.

Sai heard the shriek but didn’t see the blow. In an instant,
the knife flew back to her. The blade gleamed, but the handle was covered in
blood.

The final Flyboy stood on the curb across from Sai. They
stared each other down, thirty paces apart.

Tork still screamed unintelligible prayers as he clutched
his stump.

Sai relaxed her combat stance. “All I want is to be on my
way,” Sai said.

“Then go,” the leader said.

“I’m sorry about your friends. I didn’t choose this fight. I
didn’t want any of this to happen.”

“It could have gone the other way.” The man gave her a
sweeping gesture indicating she was free to pass.

Sai relinquished her control of the flywires and gave the
man a small salute.

He gave her a nod, then moved toward his fallen comrades. Tork
wasn’t screaming anymore. Sai looked over and saw that he had passed out from
shock and loss of blood. His body lay in a heap. The rain washed his rich red
blood down the sidewalk into the gutter.

She continued toward the docks of the Starman’s Quarter. A
few blocks down the road the comlink vibrated on her wrist. It was the status
update on Chandler that Dirion had set up. The man had been released. Sai cut
into an alcove and keyed in the com number Dirion had obtained for the man. She
might be able to make the delivery after all.

“I understand how you feel, Mr. Chandler,” Randol said.

“No, you don’t. Let me hit you in the head with a chair and
have some asshole yell at you for a few hours. Then you’ll begin to have an
idea about how I feel. Only I don’t have a mansion where I can go home to feel
sorry for myself.”

“At least you’re getting to go home.”

“Sorry,” Chandler said with a sigh. “It’s been a long day. Thanks.
I do appreciate you saving my skin. But you know this is a stupid move if you
want to keep your name out of this mess,” Chandler said.

“I hired you because you had the integrity to keep my
secrets. I assume you didn’t reveal anything to your interrogators?”

“I am the most pitiful victim of circumstance that you can
imagine.”

“Well, had I not acted when I did, you would’ve eventually
been taken in for a deconstructive scan and they would have discovered every
detail of your mission. As it is, they can suspect and surmise all they wish,
but that’s far preferable to solid evidence.”

“Not to mention that I would’ve been an empty husk at the
end of it.”

“In any event, the situation has changed. The courier is no
longer my primary concern. My private yacht, the
Aurelius
, was attacked
by pirates a few hours ago. My daughter, Helen, was aboard. It can’t be a
coincidence.”

“Is she all right?”

“Shortly after I learned of the distress call and the attack
I got a simple anonymous message: ‘We have her.’ Nothing else.”

“Listen,” Chandler said, “couriers, security teams, pirates,
and kidnapping. I want to help you, but I can’t work in the dark. Tell me what’s
going on. If you’re not prepared to do that, drop me off here. I’ll help myself
to a pocket full of these little bottles of booze and I’ll be on my way.”