The Serrano Connection (88 page)

"You don't have a clue what's coming to you," the young man said. He was very young, and very drunk. Terakian ignored him, and ordered for himself and Basil. Perhaps the young fool would go back to talking to himself.

But he didn't. When Terakian moved to the far end of the bar with Basil, the young man followed.

"The blow is about to fall," the young man said. He had an accent you could slice for baklava. "And yet you walk in darkness, unaware."

"Go away," Basil said.

"You will not give the orders then," the young man said. "It will be too late for you, then."

Terakian looked past him at Sandor, who rolled his eyes but said nothing. Drunks are drunks, an occupational hazard. But the Terakians were old customers, so he approached the young man. "Are you drinking or talking?" he asked.

"Gimme another," the young man said. He swayed slightly but he wasn't out yet, and Terakian figured he wouldn't remember anything anyway.

"About the Vortenya contract," he said to Basil, turning his back on the drunk. "What I heard from Gabe on the
Serenity Gradient
is that they're planning—"

The drunk tapped his shoulder, and Terakian turned angrily. The drunk shook a finger in his face. "You don't know what's coming to you," he said again.

"What are you talking about?" Terakian said, more than a little annoyed. "All I know that's coming to me is a half share in the ship when my uncle dies." He grinned at his cousin, who grinned back.

"Issa secret," the young man said. "But you'll know. You'll
all
know."

"Sounds like a threat," Basil said. "Oooh . . . I'm so scared . . ."

"You better be," the young man said. His bleary gaze focussed again. "All you . . . abominations."

"Egglayer!" Terakian's cousin said. He had a temper, and the scars to prove it.

But the young drunk didn't rise to that insult. He smiled an ugly smile. "You'll be sorry. When the stations blow, and the wrath of God smites—"

"Here now," Sandor said. "No god-talk in this bar. If you want to fight over religion, do it somewhere else."

The young man pushed himself back from the bar, took a few unlevel steps, then folded over and vomited copiously.

"I hate righteous drinkers," Sandor said, reaching for the vacuum nozzle racked behind the bar. "They can't hold their liquor." He looked at Terakian and his cousin. "You ever seen him before?"

"No," Terakian said. "But there's been a few of those patches around the last day or so, over in D-dock."

"Well, stick your head out and see if you spot any station security while I clean up. Don't want any trouble with the law for having served to a minor or something." Sandor yanked on the vacuum hose, and hauled it around the end of the bar toward the mess.

Terakian, who came through this station every two months, regular as clockwork, knew most of the station employees. He glanced down toward Friendly Mac's Exchange & Financing, and saw Jilly Merovic on her beat. He waved; Jilly waved back, and crossed the corridor, moving at her usual quick walk.

"Jilly's coming," he told the bartender.

"Good." Sandor had already sucked up most of the vomit, but the young man was sprawled unconscious. "Help me turn him over, will you?"

"Leave 'em face down, our ship medic says," Basil said.

"Well, then, pick up his head so I can suck up the rest of the puddle." Basil grimaced, but pulled the young man's head up by the hair as Sandor passed the vacuum intake under his face.

"What's going on?" Jilly asked from the doorway.

"New customer—he drank too much, threw up, and passed out on me."

"Um. You get his ID?"

"It
said
he was twenty-seven."

"All right, Sandor, I'm not accusing you of selling to minors. I just wanted to know if he had any medicals."

"Nothing stamped."

Jilly squatted beside the sprawled figure, then glanced up at Terakian and his cousin. "Either of you know him? Did he seem distressed?"

"No, we didn't know him, and he seemed drunk," Basil said. Terakian gave him a warning look; Basil was the kind to resent the interference of fate. They could always do their business later, if he didn't cause enough trouble to get them noticed.

"He was making threats," Terakian said. "Called us abominations, and said we'd get what was coming to us."

Jilly had opened the man's ID packet but she looked up at that. "Abominations? Are you sure that's what he said?"

"Yeah. And something about stations blowing up. Typical mean drunk, is what I thought. Probably his captain told him off, or his station molly took up with someone else."

"Ever hear of a ship called the
Mockingbird Hill
?" Jilly asked.

Terakian shook his head. "No . . . what is it?"

"An unaffiliated trader. This is Spacer First Class Todd Grew." She scanned the ship patch on the man's arm, then looked at the readout on her handcomp. "
Mockingbird Hill
all right, and she's berthed in D-dock. Paid up a thirty-day docking fee, and her cargo is listed as light manufactory."

"Aren't you going to call his ship for transport back?"

Jilly gave Basil a look that chilled Terakian to the bone, though he got only the edge of it. "No. Ser Grew deserves only the best medical treatment. You two keep watch on the door—if you see anyone looking for Mr. Grew, go cause trouble. Whatever you do, don't let them in here." Then, to the bartender. "I'll need your comjack."

"But you have your—"

"Now," Jilly said, with sufficient force that the bartender stepped back. Terakian was glad to see another man react the way he felt. He nodded at Basil and they went to the door as Jilly had ordered. He couldn't hear what she said . . . but a long life in Familias spaceways left him no doubt as to the identity of the men in unremarkable clothes who came through the bar's back door and bundled Todd Grew into a gurney before he woke up. Even as they were taking him out the back, one of them approached Terakian.

"May I see your ID please?" It was not really a request. Terakian pulled out his folder; the man glanced at it, and without looking up said, "Officer Merovic says she knows you—has for years."

"That's right," Terakian said. Cold sweat trickled down his back, and he hadn't even done anything wrong. That he knew of. "Off the
Terakian Blessing
, Terakian and Sons, Limited."

"And you?" the man said, looking at Basil.

"Basil Terakian-Junos. Off the
Terakian Bounty.
"

"Cousins," the man said. "You're the brawler, aren't you?"

"I can fight," Basil said.

"Basil—"

"It doesn't bother me," the man said. "Just wanted to be sure I had the right Terakian cousins. Now let me give you some advice." Orders, he meant. "This never happened, right?"

"What?" asked Basil.

Terakian elbowed Basil. "We just came in here for a little family chat—"

"Right. And you saw Officer Merovic and bought her a drink."

"Yessir. And nobody saw anything?"

"That's it. I know how you people are with your families, but I'm telling you, this is not a story to tell, and there's no profit to be made off it."

Terakian doubted that—anything Fleet security cared about this much usually involved plenty of profit—but he was willing to concede that he couldn't make anything off it.

"And how long should our family conference continue?" he asked.

"Another fifteen minutes should about do it," the man said pleasantly.

Fifteen minutes. They still had time to deal with the Vortenya contract negotiations, if Jilly didn't insist on sitting with them for her drink.

Aragon Station, Sector VII HQ

"Thanks to an alert security force on Zenebra, we now have both proof of planned terrorist attacks, and some more specific information about Sera Meager's most probable location."

"And that is?"

"An unaffiliated trader,
Mockingbird Hill
, bought used from Allsystems Salvage four years ago . . . showed up at Zenebra Main Station, and paid thirty days' docking fee upfront. That in itself was a bit surprising, but the stationmaster just listed it in the log, and didn't specifically alert Fleet; we hadn't given out a list of warning signs, because we didn't want to cause widespread panic. One of the crew, however, got drunk in a spacer bar, spewed his guts out, and had said something to the locals which alerted security. They called Fleet, and when we interrogated him, we found he was one of that cult, and the trader was stuffed with explosive, designed to blow any station they chose. They hadn't intended to blow Zenebra, particularly, but they were sited there in case called on to act somewhere in that sector."

"And Sera Meager?"

"According to one of the others, the Ranger Bowie on the vid from
Elias Madero
is from the branch known as Our Texas; this group was from Native Texas, who are apparently allied with them at present."

"And the Guernesi have agents in place on . . . let's see here. Home Texas, Texas True, and . . . what do you know? Our Texas."

"Yes . . . and that agent should be able to confirm whether they still have a Ranger Bowie, and whether we've got the right man—and planet."

Caradin University, Department of Antique Studies

Waltraude Meyerson, peering through the eyepiece of the low-power microscope at an exceedingly rare photograph which might—if she was lucky—finally answer the question of whether a certain Old Earth politician was male or female, ignored the comunit's chime until it racked up into an angry buzz. She reached out blindly, and felt around on her desk until she found the button and pushed it.

"Yes!"

"It's Dean Marondin . . . we have an urgent request for a specialty consult in your field."

"Nothing in my field is urgent," Waltraude said. "It's all been dead for centuries." Nonetheless she sat back and flicked off the microscope's light.

"It's a request from the highest authorities . . ."

"About ancient history? Is it another antiquities scam?"

"No . . . I'm not even sure why, but they want to know about Old Earth politics, North American . . . so of course I thought of you."

Of course. She was the only North Americanist on the faculty, but chances were that some idiot bureaucrat wanted to know the exchange rate of QuebeÁois francs to Mexican pesos in a decade she knew nothing about . . .

"So what's the question?"

"They want to talk to you."

Interruptions, always interruptions. She had taken the term off, no classes, so she could finally put together the book she had been working on for the past eight years, and now she had to answer silly questions. "Fine," she said. "I'll give them fifteen minutes."

"I think they need longer," the dean said. "They're on their way."

Great. Waltraude stood up and stretched, working out the kinks that hours over the microscope had put in her back, and looked vaguely around her office. "They" implied more than one—they would want to sit down, and both chairs were piled with papers. Some people thought it was old-fashioned to have so much paper around, but she was—as she insisted—old-fashioned herself. That's why she'd gone into antique studies in the first place. She had just picked up one stack, and was looking for a place to put it, when the knock came at her door. "Come in," she said, and turned to find herself facing two men and two women who scared her into immobility. They looked as if they should all be in uniform, though they weren't.

"I'm sorry if we startled you," said one of the women. "But—do you know anything about Texas?"

Three hours later she was still talking, and they were still recording it and asking more questions. She was no longer scared, but still confused about why they'd come.

"But you really should ask Professor Lemon about that," she said finally. "He's the one who's done the most work on North American gender relations in that period."

"Professor Lemon died last week in a traffic accident," the woman said. "You're the next best."

"Oh. Well—" Waltraude fixed the other woman with a gaze that usually got the truth from undergraduates. "When are you planning to tell me what's going on?"

"When we get you to Sector VII Headquarters," the woman said with a smile that was not at all reassuring. "You're now our best expert on Texas history, and we want to keep you alive."

"My sources—" Waltraude said, waving at the chaos of her office. "My book—"

"We'll bring everything," the woman promised. "And you'll have access to Professor Lemon's as well."