The Darkness of God: Book Three of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy (22 page)

He was empty, drained, half-stunned.

“You see,” Kakara gloated. “You see? Now here’s the way things are going to work. You’ve gotten a preliminary dosage. So right now you’re suggestible. I’m programming you now, just like a frigging computer.” He turned to his aide. “Hit him with the rest of the dose.”

The man obeyed.

“Good,” Kakara said. “Now I can tell you to kill yourself, if I wanted to. But I don’t. We need you, Wolfe. Go to sleep! Sleep!”

Wolfe’s eyelids drooped, he sagged, fell forward.

“Catch him,” Kakara ordered, and two of the suited men had Wolfe’s suit by the utility belt.

“Good,” Kakara said. “Very, very good. Move him into the lab, strip him, and body-search him. Check his body cavities, make sure the son of a bitch doesn’t have any surprises. If there are any, it’ll be your asses.”

“What about his ship?” one of the suited men asked.

“Destroy it,” Kakara ordered.

Somewhere, deep in some distant ocean, Wolfe’s mind stirred, felt red panic, horror. Somehow he pulled himself up, pushed toward the surface miles away.

Somehow he
reached
out …

Or perhaps the Lumina
reached
for him.

“Never mind,” Kakara said. “I changed my mind. Don’t waste the energy. Let the ship rust with the others.”

• • •

Joshua heard words, repeated over and over.

“Wake up, wake up, come on, man, wake up. Dammit, something’s wrong!”

Wolfe floated toward the sea’s surface.

“Nothing is wrong,” a calm, sterile voice said. “We possibly gave him too much HypnoDec, and he’s taking some time to come back to awareness.

“Do not fret, Kakara. All worry does is shorten your life.”

Wolfe heard an inarticulate snarl of rage, was just below the surface.

“Yeah,” Kakara said. “Yeah, he’s back with us. I saw his eyes flicker. Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you,” Wolfe said.

“Can you understand me?”

“I can understand you.”

“Is he telling the truth?”

“He is,” the calm voice said. “Perhaps he’s not fully able to analyze what you say, but your speech, your orders are absorbed, and will be retained in his memory.”

“Good,” Kakara said. “I want to give him something that’ll eat at him. Listen to me, Wolfe. I know who you are, I know everything about you. Joshua Wolfe, prisoner of the Al’ar, commando hotshot during the war, worked for Federation Intelligence, fell on hard times like most soldiers when there’s no public tit to suck on, ended up in the Outlaw Worlds as no more’n a bounty hunter. Freelanced for FI, got on their wrong side, is currently hotter’n hell, though there aren’t any wanted posters up yet.

“How about that shit?

“When you stole Rita — I don’t know why, but you’re going to tell me — I told you not to make any long-range investments, didn’t I? Jalon Kakara gets what he wants.
Always.
So I started looking for you. I started by backtracking. There’s some dead people around, thanks to you. I started with that bitch at the employment agency who sent you to me. She didn’t know shit — that resume you mickeyed up fooled her good. But she’s dead. I don’t like people who play games with me.

“But then I had a dead end. I figured I’d been had by a pro, and there aren’t many slick ones. So I had my security people — I’ve got real good ones, you know — start looking in the sewers people like you live in. One name kept coming up. Joshua Wolfe. But the holo I got didn’t match the one on your employment record, so I set it aside.

“But your damned name kept appearing again and again. And most of your compatriots could be accounted for: dead, working, or with good alibis. And this Joshua Wolfe liked working as either a gambler or a barkeep when he was undercover.

“So I took a chance. I play poker like that, too. Get a feeling about things — and I’m damned seldom wrong. And I remembered the number of crooks who’ve had their faces rebuilt when the heat was on. I went looking for you. Looked hard. Posted a big reward. Real big.

“Nothing for a while, and I was starting to think I was wrong, when I got a call from somebody you know. He said you were doing a job for him, but he’d be willing to hand you over for a price I was willing to pay, if you got out alive. He even left a message for you. ‘Like I said, it’s only business,’ he told me to tell you. Nice friends you got, Wolfe. I would’ve cleaned up his loose end, but he’s a very cagey player and hard to locate. Sooner or later, though, I’ll get a lead, and wrap him up, too. Doesn’t all that make whatever brain’s not doped up squirm, Wolfe? Make you finally realize who you went up against?

“Now I’ll tell you what I want you for, but I bet if your mind was working you would’ve figured it out by now. You’re going to tell me where Rita is, and, since I assume you didn’t take her for yourself, who the bastard is who’s got her.”

Wolfe’s breathing came fast, and his fingers clawed.

“No, you fool!” the sterile voice came. “You just alerted one of his compulsion modes. Continue and he’s not unlikely to have a brain hemorrhage or even suicide!”

“All right, all right,” Kakara’s voice went. “Forget what I just said about Rita.”

Wolfe’s breathing eased.

“This is like walking through a minefield,” Kakara complained. “All right, Brandt, what do I do now? And don’t ever call me a fool again. I only give people but one warning.”

“My apologies,” the voice said, undisturbed. “Tell him to come fully awake.”

“Wolfe, wake up. See, hear, feel,” Kakara said.

Wolfe surfaced. He felt the table he was lying on, and the restraining straps. He opened his eyes.

Standing next to Kakara was a slender, balding rather friendly-looking man in his early sixties, wearing old-fashioned glasses. He was dressed a bit formally, in an expensive lapel-less jacket and pants and tip-collared shirt.

“Joshua Wolfe,” the man said, “I am Doctor Carl Brandt. Have you ever heard of me?”

“No,” Wolfe said.

“That is good,” Brandt said. “For I’ve always despised the limelight.” He surveyed Wolfe with a smile. “You must forgive my pride, but I consider you my creation. For quite some time I worked for Federation Intelligence. I am the one who devised the various mindblocks and suicide programs that you’ve been conditioned with so you wouldn’t have to worry about torture, drugs, or prolonged interrogation. Very seldom have I had the chance to examine one of my field operatives, particularly one who’s been through as much stress as you. While you were unconscious, I ran a battery of mechanical tests, and I am certainly impressed with your mental stability, at least as far as physiological means could determine. I would dearly like to have some time with you, and perform a complete analysis, but Kakara said that’s impossible. Since I’m now working for him, I’ll just have to watch from the sidelines, I’m afraid.”

“You see, Wolfe?” Kakara said. “You can’t even escape by dying. Somebody warned me all of you hotshot spooks were loaded for bear, and if anybody fooled around with your mind, tried to interrogate you or use heavy drugs, you’d kill yourself. Shut your brain off permanently, cause a heart seizure — they said there could be a dozen ways you’d been modified to suicide. So I went looking for a good headsplitter, and got lucky. I’ve found the harder you work, the luckier you get. I ended up with the guy who put you — or anyway the people like you — together.

“Another precaution I took. I kept hearing stories about how you could do things other people couldn’t, and I remembered how you managed to hypnotize me, and some other people so we thought you were invisible. Or maybe you even
can
make yourself invisible. The reality doesn’t matter much. A couple of people my men talked to said it was because you spent so much time with the Al’ar. They said you were about half Al’ar yourself. Jesus, no wonder I get the skincrawls around you. You’re a goddamned monster like they were. That gave me some problems. Then Doctor Brandt told me about something you probably never heard of.”

“The Federation was well aware of the Al’ar’s mental abilities,” Brandt said. “They mounted a crash program to find a way to keep the Al’ar from exerting their powers against men. They tested several versions in combat, but none seemed to work, except for those helmets you saw Mister Kakara’s men wearing. They were tried out in a raid just before the Grand Offensive, and appeared to make men invisible to the Al’ar, or at any rate the postaction report said the Al’ar were confused at their appearance. There wasn’t time to put the helmets into production before the Grand Offensive, and then, when the Al’ar vanished, there wasn’t any need for them. I had read the preliminary reports, and was able to find a handful of the experimental models. It would appear the reports were correct, wouldn’t it? You certainly weren’t about to do anything to prevent your capture.”

“You see?” Kakara said, “we’ve got you fore and aft, as they used to say. All right, Doctor. Enough talk. How do we get this bastard to do what we want?”

“Quite simple,” Brandt said. “You cannot ask him to reveal his secrets. But you can order him to take us to wherever your wife is. And you can order him to make sure she expects friends, not enemies. Ask simple, direct questions, and you’ll receive a direct answer. Don’t ask for any interpretations or extrapolations. Even with the drug, he has enough free will to avoid answering those. Or else his avoidance mechanisms will be activated.”

A slow, dirty smile spread across Kakara’s broad, battered face. “All right, then. Take me to Rita.”

The sea was a tempest above. Wolfe sank deeper, deeper.

“Set your nav coordinates for the deep space settlement known as Malabar, in the Outlaw Worlds,” he told Kakara.

• • •

Kakara poured himself another drink, lifted it in a toast to the rigid figure of Joshua Wolfe. They were alone in the ship’s luxurious captain’s suite. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen,” he said, “once I get Rita. First, I’ll kill you, because I don’t want any chance of a slipup, and I’m still not sure what you are, a man or an Al’ar. But you won’t die easy.

“I thought I’d kill this man, whoever he is, next. But then I considered … I think I’ll have some fun with Rita first. Show that bastard what I used to like to do to her. But this time, I’ll let it go further than I did. Then I’ll kill him. Slower than you died.

“As for Rita … I thought for a while I’d kill her last,” Kakara said, breathing heavily. “But there’s worse things than death. After I finish with her, maybe let some of my men have their fun too, I’ll leave her alive. Maybe I’ll drop her on a world I can think of, with some supplies. Put a bird with a camera on her, and watch what happens. There’s — things, I’ve never been sure what they are, might be interested in her … I’d like that.”

Kakara wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah,” he repeated. “I’d like that.” He sat for a time, just staring at Wolfe. There was a tap at the door. “Come in.”

A man wearing Kakara’s jagged crimson flare on a uniform tunic came in, with a sheaf of printout. “I have some preliminary data on Malabar, sir.”

“Give me a verbal,” Kakara ordered. “Wolfe, this is Pak, one of my analysts. He’s helped make Kakara Transport what it is. I use him for the cute details that I’d just as soon nobody know I need. Like what shipping line president likes to hire cute young men for traveling companions, or who grafted who during the war. I set him to work finding out about Malabar. Go ahead, Pak.”

“Malabar’s the name for the biggest planetoid,” the man said. “It’s not much more than a moonlet in an asteroid belt, system bap-bap-bap, coordinates thus-and-so, one-time Special Operations Naval Base during the war. After the war it was turned into a parking place for parts of the mothballed fleet.”

“Huh! We ever arrange to get a ship from there, back when we were getting started?”

“No, sir. It’s pretty well on the fringes of nowhere. It’s got a reputation for being a smuggler’s base, an illegal shipyard, a transshipment point, and so forth. Not much shows on the surface — most everything’s underground. No estimates on current population. Somehow it’s been converted to private property, even though the mothballed ships are evidently still there.”

“Any government?”

“None I could find. The official caretaker for the scrapheap is someone named Cormac. An ex-Spec Ops pilot, highly decorated, frequently reprimanded. That’s the only name he uses now, but his full name is Cormac Pearse. Discharged with the rank of commander.”

“Rita was a pilot during the war,” Kakara said. “I got the idea she was involved with that stupid commando shit, too. Wolfe, is he the one?”

Joshua said nothing.

“Shitfire,” Kakara said in exasperation. “Do you know this man Cormac?”

“Yes.”

“Did he know Rita Sidamo?”

“Yes.”

“Well, well. So Malabar’s where we’re going, and it’s a real den of thieves, eh? Pak, is that something for us to worry about?”

“Negative, sir,” the brown-skinned man with the calm face said. “I’ve never known criminals, or anyone on the wrong side of the law, to stick up for anyone other than themselves … or possibly for an immediate gain.”

“And there surely isn’t an advantage going up against Jalon Kakara. Still … Send in Captain Ives. I think we’ll visit Malabar with a little muscle.”

• • •

Five ships broke out of N-space. One was Kakara’s liner, two were converted troop transports, two more were scoutships. All wore the jagged crimson insignia.

About three E-diameters distant floated dead starships, warships, liners, freighters, and yachts, orbiting close to the largest planetoid in a scattered asteroid belt.

In the liner’s main salon and in the two troopship holds, armed men stared at tall screens, listening to Jalon Kakara:

“ … the bastards have been very happy here on Malabar, taking a ship of mine here, a cargo there, for five or six years. It’s taken us that long to track them down, but finally we’ve found their little den of thieves. The Federation doesn’t seem interested in intervening, although I’ve requested support half a dozen times or more.

“Most of you know Jalon Kakara, and know he doesn’t stand interference, and if pressed he has a way of taking care of things in the most effective way possible, if maybe not the way bleeding hearts would prefer.