The Space Opera MEGAPACK ®. Jay Lake
The short form was: Help this person, he has a right to it. The person in question might be a retired sector boss, an assassin on the way to or from a run—or the whole charade could simply be a test of loyalty.
“What do you need to know?” asked the boss. “What’s the aim?”
“Everything you know. I am, let us say, a specialist in people. I can hide them and I can find them. As may be required. I’ll need the background as deep as it goes.”
The boss man gave a snort.
“I bet you can hide ’em. Standing in my own front room with a whole bag of equipment like you own the place and my guards probably can’t tell me the color of your hair or what kind of shoes you wear. Damn smooth…” He shook his head in admiration, sighed, and went on, looking straight at Daav.
“Where we are is that there’s been—a change of administration. Some of this is official and some’s not…”
Daav looked on with polite interest, no change on his face.
The boss nodded. “Right. He was asking for it if anyone was, but anyhow, politics aside, we have a Chairman Pro Tem right now, seeing how the Chairman was knifed in his own office by a Clutch turtle.”
Daav leaned forward a bit, cocking his head to one side in respectful query.
“Me too! Not what somebody’d expect. A bomb maybe, poison, even just a quiet step-down ’cause somebody had the best of him after all—but no. A pair of Clutch turtles waltzed into his office, had an argument with him, and took him out.”
The man’s gaze had strayed to his desktop; he looked up, frowning.
“The official thing is—straight from Chair Pro Tem!—that there was a busted deal, resulting from a misunderstanding, and that the former Chairman had made the mistake of threatening a T’carais with a shell-buster.”
“With the result that, in defense of his or her superior, a minion used a knife,” Daav murmured into the short silence.
The boss looked impressed, but Daav continued. “Perhaps better for all concerned: Most turtles would merely have bitten his head off, or crushed his spine…”
The boss blanched, but waved a hand and went on.
“Yeah, well, could have been. Unofficial news is that this turtle crew had come to visit twice; got themselves locked into the Chairman’s office and cut their way out through the blast wall with a knife after busting about a thousand gems, and then he had the nerve to try a fast one. Apparently these turtles are the knife clan or something—famous. And by the time the blood’s cleaned up, the Chairman Pro Tem finds out the fuss is all about two people.”
“That would be the individuals mentioned in the whisper for all worlds…” Daav suggested.
The boss smiled wanly.
“Yes, that’s them. The turtles—this is official!—claim them to be ‘a brother and sister of the Spearmaker’s Den’ who must be returned unharmed or self-declared free and safe.”
Daav looked into the ceiling, momentarily lost in thought. When he looked back, the boss was reaching into a desk drawer for a candy.
“What, may I ask, is the or?”
The boss looked grim.
“The or is that if they don’t turn up safe the Juntavas will be wiped out, starting at the top. This is a promise.”
Daav leaned forward, raised his hand to his chin and rubbed it thoughtfully.
“This is,” he said after a moment, “a very, very serious problem. No one has ever heard of a Clutch turtle lying. Certainly no one has ever heard of a Clutch turtle or clan breaking a promise. Even I might not be able to hide well enough if the Clutch knew me for an enemy.”
The boss snorted again, apparently swallowing his candy whole.
“Right. And so what I have going on, starting about the time you walk out the front door here, is a block-by-block search of every Juntavas holding on Delgado, looking for two of the damnedest trouble-makers you’ve ever heard of.”
Daav, very interested, waved his hand, asking for more information.
“Yeah, OK. One is a First-In Scout Commander! Good, right? Get in the face of somebody who can talk Clutch to the Clutch and just happens to have saved one from a dragon. You know, a nobody, a pushover. Then the other one is a Merc-turned-bodyguard, lived through Klamath and got on—and off!—Cloud.”
Daav let out a low whistle. “Do you know how many people lived through Klamath?”
The boss shrugged, tapped his desk. “That’s probably in my notes. I got more notes than you can stuff in a garbage can already about this.” He broke, searched his desktop, pulled up a flimsy image-flat, and flipped it, casually and quite accurately, to the man in the chair.
Daav listened with half-an-ear as the boss went on—the while eyes measured the photos of his son and his son’s companion.
“Getting off Klamath earns you a lifetime ‘I’m tough’ badge or something. But—this is where we come in—these two started a firefight, in broad daylight, I guess!—between the local Juntavas and the city police in Econsey, back there on Lufkit, just to cover their getaway after they robbed the boyfriend of the local boss’ daughter. Then, they managed to get off-planet while the place was under total lock-down, with everybody from the chief of planetary police down to the nightclub bouncer looking for them, and make a leisurely departure from Prime Station in a Clutch spaceship.”
Daav continued to look interested, slowly shaking his head as he listened, still taking in the no-nonsense, rather ordinary appearance of both of the missing. A master mercenary who had survived Klamath might be just the person to balance a Scout Commander, he thought.
“Story gets muddled about here,” the boss was continuing, “but somehow the local capo managed to grab them. Then he gets the news he can’t do anything to them. So he sets them off in a spaceship that’s been in some kind of a fight and can’t go nowhere. Word comes down to make sure these two are really in one piece and to hold ’em, pending the Chairman Pro Tem’s personal visit. He goes back…”
Daav didn’t have to fake the laugh.
“What could he have been thinking?” he asked. “To leave a—what was it, First-In Scout Commander?—in a spaceship and expect it not to go away?”
The boss was nodding now and gestured with the piece of candy in his left hand.
“You got it. Exactly how it was. They were gone, the ship was gone and ain’t nobody heard nothing about any of ’em since. So now I got to check Delgado and…”
Daav raised a palm.
“Please,” he said gently. “You mustn’t be overly concerned. You’ll want to do standard checks on passenger lists and such; but the people you are hunting are not likely to hide out on Delgado. Even if they’ve been here do you think a hardened merc and a First-In Scout are going to set themselves up as shopkeepers or bean-farmers?”
Before the boss could answer Daav stood, demanding a suppleness from his body he did not feel.
“I’ll need the name of the new Chairman, copies of whatever transmissions you may have, details of the former location of the missing ship—dupes of your images, as well—and I’ll be on my way. Also, I have some things for you…” He waved toward the back wall of the office and the bar beyond.
“First, the taller of your security guards stole several of your bartender’s tips, and was helping herself to the packaged snacks. That can’t be good for your business.”
The boss snorted. “Just color them gone. Hey, you’re good at what you do—but that don’t mean they shouldn’t have seen you!”
Daav nodded agreeably. “Also, you’ll want to get