One Jump Ahead-ARC Page 21

Chapter 20

  We invested the next several hours in the tiresome but vital job of getting lost. With Chung stripped and strapped into a medbed that secured and sedated him, his possessions in a drawer in the medic area, and both Lim and me tucked into acceleration couches, Lobo took over. We rocketed out of the hot zone at tree level into the least populated of the nearby areas, then straight up into orbit, where we first wove among some of the busier sats, then came to an abrupt halt behind a large comm hub whose orbit we quietly mirrored for long enough to make me nervous. We then hopped up to a higher orbit, down and back up again a few times, pogoing across orbital loops, until we finally settled into one and eased our way slowly to the other side of the planet. Early on, Lobo identified himself as a Xychek comm sat. He changed his electronic identity half a dozen more times before he went transmission-silent behind a meteorological data-gathering sat.

  With little chance of any of the estate's video sensors having captured Lobo or us, we were probably being overly cautious; after all, Xychek security had no reason to guess a space-ready PCAV was involved. Still, I didn't want to take any risks, because we were at the most exposed point in the mission: We had Chung, but not his confession, so neither the Saw nor the FC could or would back us.

  After another hour passed with no signs of unusual orbital or earth-to-space activity within a few thousand klicks of us, Lim and I took turns cleaning up, then ate. I wanted to be calm before interrogating Chung, and the food helped consume some of the post-action hormones my body still had to digest.

  Lim and Lobo monitored Lobo's tiny medic area, a room with the medbed in the center and an aisle around it so narrow that I had to walk sideways to fit. Chung obviously knew me well enough to put the bounty on me, so I saw no point in hiding my identity. Per my deal with her, Lim stayed back so Chung wouldn't ever see her.

  Lobo kept two images running for Lim: a video feed of the room, and a display of Chung's vital signs. The latter also played on the wall behind Chung's head, where I could see it but he couldn't. Like so much in Lobo or anything of military origin, the room served multiple functions, both a place to heal the wounded and an interrogation chamber for the captured. Simple cleaning arms had wiped Chung's face and ears. Restraints over his waist, chest, neck, head, arms, and legs bound him securely to the bed. He'd be able to move his eyes to follow me, and he could wiggle his fingers and toes if he wanted to make sure they still functioned, but that was all; I didn't want to risk either of us doing something stupid. When I entered the room, Lobo instructed the medbed to inject Chung with a blend of a slight physical stimulant to wake him and a mood stabilizer to level his vitals. Deviations from the norms on the display would let us all know when he was lying.

  I stood near Chung's head, leaned against the wall, and watched the display. As the stimulant brought him around, his pulse rose, and his respiratory rate climbed a tiny bit, but he didn't open his eyes. He quickly controlled the rhythm of his breath, kept it even, and neither moved nor opened his eyes. I smiled a bit in admiration. He was playing it like a pro, taking time to collect himself, gathering what data he could before he decided to let on that he was awake. If we were amateurs who'd kidnapped him for a ransom, the tactic might have bought him some potentially useful time and information.

  "Jose," I said, using his first name both to annoy him and to show him we weren't going to abide by the usual corporate rules, "we both know you're awake, so we might as well talk." He continued faking sleep. I wasn't in the mood to waste time, so I added some positive motivation for him. "The sooner I get the information I want and we reach an understanding, the sooner you go home."

  He opened his eyes and tried to move his head.

  After he realized he couldn't, I stepped closer so he could see my face.

  "Who are you," he said, "and what do you want?"

  I opened my mouth to remind him again not to waste time but stopped when the wall display caught my eye: Nothing had changed. He didn't know my face. That meant he'd placed the bounty on my name alone, probably using information the Gardeners on Macken had somehow gotten out of Barnes. I should have erred on the side of caution and not let him see me. I'd made a mistake, but I reminded myself that it changed nothing. My predicament remained the same: I needed him to remove the bounty.

  "I'm the man," I said, "you placed a bounty on, and I'm also the man who knows about your illegal arms deals with Osterlad. You're going to remove the bounty and tell the FC about the arms deal. You'll probably lose your job, and Xychek will certainly pay heavy fines, but you'll walk away unharmed . . ." I paused a second. ". . . provided you don't make me hurt you."

  "What are you talking about?" he said. This time, his vitals jumped, but consistently across the board, a pattern of agitation, not of attempted deceit. Maybe bounties were more common among the executive set than I'd realized, and he genuinely didn't remember all of the ones he'd set. That seemed unlikely but possible, so I decided to fill in the blanks for him.

  "I called you once before," I said, "but you wouldn't talk to me then, so I had to arrange this conversation. I'm the guy who ruined your bid on Macken by returning Slake's daughter, Jasmine, to him. Remember me now?"

  The calming drug Lobo had chosen must not have been very strong, because this time Chung's vitals raced up the display, every indicator elevated beyond the yellow caution lines the medbed had computed for him. His face turned red, and for a moment he shook with the effort of trying to move. "You're the one who gave him Jasmine again?" he screamed. "I'll kill you."

  "All I did," I said, "was return her to her father."

  "You're either a fan of sick games," he said, his body relaxing as he realized there was no point in struggling against the restraints, "or truly stupid."

  I was getting annoyed at his attempts to distract me, but I did my best to keep the feeling out of my voice as I leaned over him and said, "You're wasting time again. Let's get back to the bounty and the arms deal."

  He stared directly at me as he said, "Do you really not know what you did?" He looked at me intently for a few more seconds, then closed his eyes. "Jasmine is my daughter. I had no idea she'd ever escaped from Slake until you called."

  This was a strange tactic, and I had no more patience for games. "Last warning," I said. "Stop playing games."

  "Check my wallet," he said. "I had it when you kidnapped me." When I didn't move, he said, "Check it. What can that cost you?"

  The sincere look on his face caused a pit to open in my stomach, and all my elation at the successful mission tumbled into it. I pushed back all feeling, opened the medic room drawer, and pulled out the wallet. I put it in his right hand, temporarily removed the restraint on that hand, and stepped away from his reach. "Open it," I said.

  He thumbed it, tapped a security code, and held it out to me. I took it with my right hand, while with my left I forced his arm back down and snapped on the restraint; no point in taking chances.

  I opened the wallet, found two microthin photo displays, and pulled out the first. It unfolded as I flicked it, and images of Jasmine blazed into life: Jasmine posing on the front steps of Chung's estate, Jasmine laughing and holding a woman I didn't recognize, Jasmine much younger and in Chung's arms, Jasmine with her eyes shut as she kissed Chung on the cheek. Jasmine, Jasmine, Jasmine.

  I was breathing hard, the air pounding roughly in and out of me, loud enough that Chung must have heard it.

  "Slake's people kidnapped her," he said. "He used her to force me to withdraw our bid for the Macken development project and for the new aperture there."

  None of Chung's vitals showed the slightest sign of a lie. He was telling the truth.

  I had returned an innocent girl to the man who'd arranged her kidnapping. An innocent girl, and I'd failed her.

  I could clearly picture her face.

  "The FC has no jurisdiction over intercorporate issues, so I couldn't go to them."

  Her face as she awoke briefly in the cart, the fear as she spoke, a fear I
mistakenly thought she felt toward the Gardeners.

  "I couldn't afford to go to war with Kelco locally, because our board would never have granted me the budget."

  Her face, which reminded me so much of Jennie.

  "Besides, we knew Slake was dealing off the books with Osterlad and was better armed in this region than we were—but we couldn't prove it."

  Jennie, another innocent girl I'd failed.

  "So I abandoned the bid before the board could learn of the kidnapping. They would have sacrificed her if I hadn't. Instead, I stalled them with a flawed analysis that demonstrated that the bid would be unprofitable for us."

  Just as I'd failed to see that Osterlad was playing me for a fool, claiming what I now realized was a bounty from Slake had come from Chung, sending me to do more of Slake's work by hurting Xychek further.

  "Slake promised he'd give her back as soon as they'd completed the deal, but something happened to delay it a month."

  Slake, who was holding Jasmine prisoner right now because my deal with Barnes had delayed the signing of Kelco's Macken bid by a month.

  "I've hidden the kidnapping as long as I could by claiming she was with her other parents on vacation, but the board is bound to learn the truth soon. When they do, they'll fire me. I could live with that, though, if I could just get her back."

  Slake, who'd recommended I go to Osterlad in the first place.

  A catch in Chung's voice and the tears in his eyes dragged me out of my thoughts and back into the moment.

  "If I could just get her back," he repeated.

  Anger flushed through me with a purifying coldness that straightened me, focused me, directed me. I hadn't been able to save Jennie when I was young and they took her. I hadn't even been able to think of saving her. They took her, and her loss was at that time as inevitable and unstoppable as the wind. In the more than a century since then, I've learned a great deal, and I've tried not to fail others, but sometimes I inevitably have, and each time it hurt, hurt a great deal. This time, though, I hadn't merely failed; I'd let Slake use me to actively harm this young woman, this girl.

  I've spent much of my life fighting to shove anger to the side, to keep it at arm's length until it could dissipate and become just so much more heat rising away from me. Not this time. This time, I didn't fight the anger. I welcomed it, I embraced it, I consumed it, I enjoyed the rich, purifying power of it.

  I stepped to the med room's door, afraid to be near anyone until I could find my way back out of the rage that was, in this moment, all I wanted or needed. I said, as much to myself as to Chung, "You will get her back. You will."

  Chapter 21

  I stood outside the med room for several minutes, afraid to go up front and face Lim. The problem wasn't that I cared that she knew Slake had played me and used me; I've been a fool before and almost certainly will be again. What worried me was me, my own reactions. As angry as I was, anything she did, no matter how well-intentioned, might set me off, even though she wasn't the target of my rage. So I stood as still as I could manage, worked on slowing and controlling my breathing, and struggled to regain control. I didn't want to entirely abandon the anger—I knew I'd want it and need it to do everything I'd have to do to deal with Slake—but I had to harness it, to process it into fuel for action.

  I slid down the wall and sat, wanting to stay alone and feeling I had nowhere else to safely go.

  I realized then that I was letting my pain get the best of me, and that wasn't acceptable. Sometimes pain is necessary, and when it is, you should accept it and get on with the task at hand. I'd wasted enough time. I had work to do.

  I got up, walked into the command area, and sat opposite Lim. "If it isn't obvious," I said, "the fact that Slake used me to hurt an innocent girl . . ." I paused, groping for words and finally realizing that saying the least I could manage would be best. ". . . upsets me a great deal. I intend to make this right, or, more accurately, as right as I can make it given what I did. I also intend to make Slake pay, and pay dearly, for all of this."

  She nodded. I was glad she didn't say anything.

  "You don't have to participate," I said. "I'll get you the fee we agreed on, and you can go."

  "No way," she said. "You held out the hope of big money for this deal, and I still believe that's possible. Plus, I signed on to complete a mission, and it's not done. I'm in to the end."

  "Fair enough," I said. I owed her the chance at more money. Staring at her, though, I also had to accept that she wasn't staying only for the money. I'd underestimated her loyalty, and consequently underestimated her. "Thank you. I appreciate this. The rules stay the same, though: You get to help with all the planning, and we'll do our best to agree before we proceed, but if we can't agree, the final call is mine. And, of course, I run all fieldwork."

  "Understood and agreed," she said.

  A black and sad weariness settled on me like night falling. As accommodating as Lim was being, I still found it wearying to deal with her. The problem wasn't her; it was me. I needed to get out, be alone, sort this out on my own without having to talk to anyone. "I need some time to think," I said, "time off Lobo. I'm going to have Lobo drop me outside Queen's Bar at a landing and storage area we've used. You guys can pick me up later; we'll set a time. While I'm gone, you take care of Chung and come up with some options for letting him go without getting us caught. We'll review the options when I'm back."

  She nodded her head, studying me. "Okay."

  "Lobo," I said, knowing he monitored everything that happened inside him, "plot an evasive path and take me there."

  At Lim's urging I'd released Chung from the medbed. I returned his clothing and belongings, blindfolded him, moved him to a slightly larger but still locked holding area, and gave him some food. I reassured him we'd return him soon, then left.

  I shouldn't have needed Lim to remind me to take care of him. I was making mistakes, being careless, and that had to stop. I'd kidnapped Chung to get him to remove the bounty and to make him confess to the FC so I could make some money in the bargain. The bounty remained, but at least now I knew its true source. The prospect of money from the FC also remained. This was a job, possibly a lucrative job, and I was behaving unprofessionally. I understood that what I'd done to Jasmine, the fact that I'd caused such harm to this young woman, was affecting me, but I also knew my best hope for success was to plan and execute her rescue carefully and professionally.

  When I get lost inside the double helix of anger and self-loathing that to this day exercises such immense gene-level control over me, throwing myself into solitary work is the best remedy. It's why I've gravitated to confidential courier assignments. I couldn't go forward with this job, however, without planning, planning that would unavoidably involve both Lim and Lobo, and right now I couldn't trust myself to spend significant time with anyone.

  That left me my backup option: losing myself in a city. Walking the streets, weaving through and around crowds of other people but never being part of them, eating alone, sitting outside humanity and studying it: A busy city afforded me a set of distractions and a form of solitude that would help me regain my focus.

  Lobo was too small to be able to move at any useful speed without Chung being able to figure out that he was on a ship, so we abandoned any attempt to convince him otherwise. When Lobo could find no indication we were being tracked, he headed for the landing area at the highest speed we agreed wouldn't attract attention. We touched down in the middle of the morning of the day after the attack. I exited via the rear hatch, moving as casually as I could manage, and Lobo immediately took off again. We'd agreed to rendezvous a little after sunset.

  I hadn't slept since the attack, but I was too wired to relax, so I hired a taxi and had it drop me a couple of blocks away from the Busted Heart; that way, the taxi wouldn't have a record of my exact destination should someone later try to reconstruct my path.

  The image of Jasmine lying on the cart and waking in fear kept playing across my m
ental display. I walked slowly, aware I wasn't paying full attention and compensating with the slower pace.