Thirty-one

 

The ship flew beautifully. Zagrando had never had a ship this new, this expensive, or this well-made. He had used H’Jith’s account, and the transaction had gone through without a blip.

He hadn’t freed H’Jith before he left. Instead, he sent an anonymous message to Goldene Zuflucht’s security that H’Jith was being held prisoner in his own ship. The anonymous message went through dozens of systems so that it couldn’t be traced, and Zagrando timed it so that the message would arrive an hour after he left.

He needed the head start.

He also made sure to file a travel plan with Goldene Zuflucht, like the average traveler would. It made most travelers easy to find. Zagrando submitted detailed travel plans that set up routes for the next week.

When he got on board the ship, he followed the first part of the route until he had established the ship’s new identity. Then he sent one of the life pods with a built-in navigation system out on the route he had registered. He cloned the pod’s navigation system so that it registered as the ship. That would lead someone on a merry chase if they decided to track him, and by then, they wouldn’t be able to find his ship.

He changed the ship’s identity three times in the next hour, and followed a meandering path until he had checked the entire ship for tracking devices to make sure no one could tail him.

He didn’t trust his own systems—they weren’t sophisticated enough to detect some new kind of technology—but they were good enough to get him to the meeting.

First, however, he had to contact his handler. And he had to trust that he had blocked enough of the tracking devices that it would take a lot of work to figure out who he was talking to.

Even so, he went into the large kitchen. Most people would never send important messages from a kitchen, particularly in a luxury ship. The kitchen had been designed to hold a chef and a staff, most of whom would be outside hires. They wouldn’t have clearance to listen to important messages.

Zagrando leaned against one of the wood counters. It was smooth and warm against his back. Then he sent a message along his secure link to his handler.

Ike Jarvis’s face appeared above the grill. Slowly the image rose so that Jarvis’s face would be directly across from Zagrando’s, unlike real life, where Zagrando towered over the bastard.

Generally, Zagrando tried to use other handlers to deal with small matters. Zagrando had done his best to limit contact with Jarvis since Jarvis moved him off Valhalla Basin. Zagrando tried not to think of that day often because it so infuriated him.

Unfortunately, this was not a small matter.

“I have a lead,” Zagrando said, “but I also have a problem.”

Jarvis’s image didn’t extend to his neck. The head was three-dimensional, but clear, so Zagrando could see expensive tile through Jarvis’s skin. It made him look tattooed.

“Problem first,” Jarvis said in his gravelly voice.

“Lead first,” Zagrando said. “I have put a down payment on weapons, but the seller insists on meeting the buyer. He knows I’m just a broker.”

“That’s unusual,” Jarvis said.

“No kidding,” Zagrando said. “But it actually makes sense with these weapons. They’re individually designed.”

Jarvis’s head moved slightly, but Zagrando couldn’t tell if that was deliberate or if the man had shifted in his chair. Zagrando hated it when someone let only their head show and nothing else.

“You sure this is a big enough fish, then?” Jarvis asked. “Individually designed seems like small weaponry.”

“Oh, this isn’t small,” Zagrando said. “This might actually lead us to the Anniversary Day attackers.”

Jarvis blinked, as if surprised. Of course, he could just be reacting to something else being sent across links or maybe he always blinked like that. Zagrando stopped trying to read the man long ago.

“You’re sure?” Jarvis asked.

“Yeah,” Zagrando said. “I think I found the source of the clones.”

Jarvis nodded, his chin dipping in and out of the grill. The tile tattoos slid eerily along his face.

“How come you didn’t just follow through?” he asked. “You need more cash?”

Zagrando slipped his hands behind his back so that he could clench his fists. No surprise, no thank-you, no reaction at all. He had expected a reaction.

“I need a buyer,” Zagrando said.

“Find one,” Jarvis said.

“Within a few hours,” Zagrando said. “I’m heading to the meet now.”

“It doesn’t look like you’re in your ship.”

“My ship is blown,” Zagrando said.

Jarvis frowned, clearly irritated. “A buyer would never show at this kind of meet.”

“Well, I don’t get the sale without one,” Zagrando said. “I don’t get a sale, I can’t follow the money or the source of the weapons. I can’t follow anything, I can’t catch anyone.”

“Where’s the meet?” Jarvis asked.

Zagrando knew better than to answer that. “This isn’t an open line, boss, but I’m not sure how secure this new vehicle is either. How about I meet you somewhere?”

“Me?” Jarvis asked. “I can’t pose as anything. I haven’t been undercover in a generation.”

“Send me someone,” Zagrando said.

Jarvis glanced off to the side. Something reflected in his eyes, and Zagrando realized Jarvis was looking at an exterior screen.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I can meet someone at Javier’s Corner,” Zagrando said. Javier’s Corner was a space station, but a small one. The folks who stopped there needed something from fuel to a meal to a quick-and-dirty hire. “Get him there in two hours.”

“That’s not a lot of time,” Jarvis said.

“It’s what I’ve got,” Zagrando said. “And make sure this is someone impeccable. I may only get one shot at this.”

“I don’t like threats, Iniko,” Jarvis said.

“Not a threat,” Zagrando said. “Fact. We blow this one, we lose a lot of opportunities.”

He severed the link, mostly because he didn’t want to hear Jarvis’s complaints. And Jarvis would complain. The man was never satisfied. It took Zagrando too long to find contacts, or Zagrando wasn’t working hard enough or Zagrando was moving too quickly on something.

Zagrando had actually put in for a new handler every six months or so, but he never got one. He was told that handlers needed to have a long-term relationship with their operatives.

A long-term relationship was one thing; a long-term hatred was another.

But he couldn’t say that, because if he did, then someone would see that as the reason for his complaints, not because Jarvis had killed him.

Not that anyone in Earth Alliance Intelligence saw Jarvis’s actions as anything close to murder. Killing a clone was different from killing the original.

Supposedly, Zagrando understood that.

But in truth, he didn’t. He didn’t understand any of it. He tried not to think about it. But his brain kept returning to that day on Valhalla Basin, the day he had to leave his old job forever.

Someday Jarvis would pay for the cruelty he showed that day. Not just to Zagrando, making him watch his own clone die. But to the clone himself.

Zagrando had a hunch Jarvis liked watching things like that. He also had a hunch that Jarvis refused to step aside as his handler because Jarvis thrived on the hatred.

But Zagrando couldn’t prove any of that.

It wasn’t his job. Just like dealing with the Earth Alliance wasn’t really his job.

His job was tracking weapons back to the biggest suppliers and, with luck, hooking them up to the corporations who funded those suppliers.

He was on a good track for the first time in years.

Maybe if he succeeded, he could get a new assignment—one that took him far away from Jarvis.

One he might actually enjoy.