Authors: Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Tags: #Fiction
But her eyes were twinkling. She couldn’t hide that. Mention money, and people always became reckless. Even people who thought they were experienced at negotiation.
He shrugged. “My office, my rules.”
She made a slight “humph” sound, but he saw that as a victory. She clearly understood, and there was no way she was going stop the negotiation now.
He kept his expression impassive.
“Well,” she said. “You’re willing to invest a lot of money to—what? Cause chaos?”
And the negotiations continued. She had just conceded a point. Maybe several points.
All the tension left his body, even though he hadn’t moved from his position against the desk.
“I didn’t say I was going to invest,” he said.
She blinked, clearly surprised. “But…”
Then she stopped herself. That single word had revealed her surprise. It cost her. Both of them knew it.
So he decided to pretend he was playing nice. He “explained” himself, which he had been planning to do anyway.
“I don’t make money by getting my hands dirty,” he said. “The fact that I’m even meeting with you is a risk for me.”
That last sounded like a revelation, something he would normally keep secret, even though it wasn’t. He wanted her to feel like she had won a point in return.
“Why would this meeting be risky for you?” she asked, taking the bait. “Because we’re the Black Fleet? Everyone knows what you are, Deshin.”
She meant that as an insult, but he didn’t take it that way. Still, he had to be cautious with her. The smile had left her face. Her expression hardened. She finally looked as dangerous as he had heard she was.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I forgot. ‘Everyone’ is always right. Since you know what I am, and you don’t seem to respect that, I see no point in doing business with you. You can leave now.”
She opened her mouth, probably to emit another “but.” She didn’t. She had that much control, at least.
“I’d like to talk with you about this venture that you’re proposing,” she said. “But it’s my policy not to do so with links.”
“Yes, you’ve made that clear.” He kept his voice calm, although he was truly beginning to hate this woman. Maybe part of that was the backdrop. It almost looked like she was superimposed over the twenty assassins.
He shrugged again. “You don’t want to do business my way. That makes things quite simple for me. I don’t need you. You’re convenient. I’ll find another way to get this project done.”
She glanced at the men. One of them—the one with the fake muscles—shrugged. Maybe Deshin had underestimated them. Maybe they were more than body guards. Maybe they were the ones in charge, and she was just the spokesperson.
“I suppose I could make an exception for you,” she said.
Deshin smiled, even though he knew the look didn’t reach his eyes. “Kind of you,” he said. “However, in the course of this conversation, I realized that dealing with you is not worth my time.”
Her gaze shot to the men again. Two spots of color rose in her cheeks. The money meant something to her. Or maybe his business did.
His reputation—his bad reputation—certainly did.
“We entered the building. People know we came here. People will think we dealt,” she said, sounding a bit panicked.
“Yes, I’m sure they will,” Deshin said. “And that will add to my much-vaunted reputation. The one you already told me about. I’m sure
everyone
will know that we do business now.”
He pushed off the desk, and walked around it, turning his back on her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the words hitching a little. Apparently she didn’t say them very often. “We got off on the wrong foot.”
He stopped, stared ahead, as if he were thinking about what she had said. Instead, he was feeling a bit surprised that she was as easy to manipulate as she was. These basic negotiation tactics should have been familiar to a weapons’ broker.
Maybe “everyone” was so afraid of the Black Fleet that they gave in to her every request.
Or maybe she was playing him.
“I was prepared to have a good-faith discussion with you,” he said, as he turned toward her. “Apparently, you don’t do business that way. My mistake.”
She nodded, then glanced at the men. They started to leave.
Deshin had sounded harsh. He hadn’t meant to sound that harsh, but his dislike was showing. Now, he had to pretend to give in. A shudder ran through him that he hoped her partners hadn’t seen.
“However,” he said, “if you’re ready to start over, so am I. Shall we pretend that the first few minutes hadn’t happened?”
“They’ve been recorded,” the muscular man said. “We can’t pretend anything.”
Deshin gave him a withering look. “Is this one of your partners? Because we haven’t been introduced. I thought I was dealing with you, Hildegard, and that these were your body guards. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
He kept his gaze on the other man. That man watched him in return. No body guard, then. Someone important. So important, in fact, that they didn’t want to introduce him.
Deshin had heard about this with the Black Fleet, that they had nameless negotiators, people who were all the more terrifying because they were impossible to read and know.
Iban glanced at the other man. Her expression hardened, her eyes glazed, telling Deshin that she was concentrating more on communicating through her links than on what was going on around her.
If Deshin had been a slightly different man, he would have smiled. He had gotten her to forget that she was in someone else’s office, around someone else’s technology.
Technology that was as sophisticated, if not more sophisticated, than the technology of the Black Fleet.
“Ms. Iban?” Deshin said, deciding he had let her lose focus long enough. “Does this man speak for you?”
Her eyes focused on Deshin.
“He’s part of my team,” she said. “He’s—”
“If you’re going to make an introduction,” Deshin said, “I really don’t care. Did you want to talk business or not?”
She gave the man a sideways glance, probably accompanied by yet another chastising link comment, and said, “I thought you weren’t interested in working with us.”
“You told me that you can get clones,” Deshin said, ignoring her challenge. “I’m assuming you mean designer criminal clones.”
“Anyone can get designer criminal clones,” she said. “You can get them without us, and you have, at least according to the records I saw.”
He didn’t smile, even though he wanted to. His people had planted that information over a week ago, just for this moment. Before the second attacks on Armstrong, which had given him a bit of concern. He hadn’t wanted to be accused of working with clones, at least not from the Armstrong side of things.
So far, the law enforcement community had its hands full, with the attempted bombings. He hoped that by the time they got to a search of the records of people who had asked for designer criminal clones, his name would be scrubbed from the list as if he had never put it there.
“These twenty men,” she said, waving a hand at the image, “aren’t designer criminal clones, and you know it. I don’t appreciate being played, Mr. Deshin.”
Oh, he had just begun to play with her. He smiled, just a little.
“I’m not playing you,” he lied. “I’m waiting for you to talk with me.”
She raised her head, as if he had surprised her. Then she again swept her hand toward the images on that clear wall.
“Those men weren’t just grown,” she said. “They weren’t just ‘designed.’ They were trained, honed, tested, and ultimately chosen to do that job. They were picked based not just on their physical traits, but also on their willingness to complete the job no matter what.”
“A few didn’t finish,” Deshin said, trying to keep his tone neutral. He was grateful that several were unsuccessful with at least part of their mission; it saved a few lives, albeit not enough.
“A few didn’t,” she said. “In the field, you never know what a man will do.”
“Sounds like an excuse to me,” he said.
She raised her chin. He had offended her.
“It’s not an excuse. If you want predictable behavior, get an android. See if it can infiltrate the places that these clones infiltrated. Or, for that matter, the Peyti clones. Good Lord, they were embedded in the system for
years
, and no one suspected a thing. That’s useful. The fact that there’s a bit of a failure rate is to be
expected
, not criticized.”
She had a point. A chilling point, but a good one.
“You’re sensitive,” he said.
“You’re critical,” she said.
“I’m trying to buy a product,” he said, mentally wincing. “Of course I’m going to be critical.”
She started to glance at the men again, then stopped herself. She kept her gaze focused on Deshin. “What kind of job is this for?”
“Something similar to the Anniversary Day attacks,” he said.
“With humans?” she asked.
“With humans,” he said.
“How similar?” she asked.
“I’m not telling you that,” he said.
She sighed. “Then I can’t help you. Because I need specifics. Otherwise, I can’t place an order.”
He put his hands on the chair behind his desk, as if he were going to sit down. Instead, he used the desk to shield himself from the view of the three Black Fleet members. He didn’t want an involuntary twitch to give anything away.
He didn’t say anything. He was beginning to learn that was the best way to handle this woman, because she would keep talking.
And she did.
“I ask for a couple of reasons,” she said. “The first is pretty simple. With last week’s failed attack, the Moon’s authorities are going to monitor clones heavily. There’s already legislation being proposed by the Earth Alliance that would make use of multiple clones of the same individual illegal and subject to huge penalties. The legislation would also allow for what most of us would consider a huge invasion of privacy if those same actions were directed at us.”
He hadn’t been aware of any legislation. He made a mental note to check up on her sources, to see if she was actually right about this.
“The second reason I’m telling you this is that a group of specialized clones, like those twenty men, don’t come cheap, and they certainly aren’t something you can order up today for a job next week. Those men were all thirty years in the making, and they were the cream of a very important crop. Hundreds of other clones were rejected for that same job.” She crossed her arms. “Anyone who buys clones for a mission like that one will have to pay for a dozen failed clones for every viable clone. And not just a small fee, but creation, maintenance, and training. We’re talking a million per clone minimum.”
He felt momentarily dizzy, and realized he hadn’t taken a breath since she said that. If she was correct about the cost of the clones, then whoever had authorized the first attack on the Moon had easily spent a quarter of a billion on that one attack alone, maybe more.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. That was a lot of money on a malicious event. The kind of money that made him think less of revenge or opportunism, and more about some kind of coup.
Deshin suddenly felt out of his depth. For the first time since he started to pursue this, he wanted to consult with someone. Maybe Miles Flint.
Deshin had been using Flint to his own ends, to find out information and plant seeds to get the official investigation moving, but Deshin also respected Flint.
Flint was one of the few people Deshin had met in the last two decades who couldn’t be bought and didn’t have an agenda that Deshin could find. People like that were too rare in Deshin’s universe; he found he needed them so that he didn’t become so cynical that he couldn’t function.
All of which made Flint a good person to bounce some of these ideas off on, particularly when it came to coups and other things outside of Deshin’s realm.
“Are you still interested, Mr. Deshin?” Iban asked.
Had she seen something cross his face? A bit of a calculation, perhaps? Something a bit more conniving?
If so, he hoped that she misinterpreted it.
“As I said.” He kept his voice calm, making sure his words were deliberate. “I’m authorized to spend up to one billion on this project. I’m more concerned about the timing. Do we really have to wait thirty years for the clones?”
“It depends on what you want them for,” she said. “There are various human clones of the assassin type that might be perfect for the job. Some of them will be ready in five years, some in ten, and some in twenty. If you want your own clones from an original of your choosing, then you’ll have to wait at least twenty-five years, maybe more.”
Deshin nodded. “I will need to inspect facilities, talk with other customers, look at the operation, before I ever commit to this kind of money.”
“You said you’re the middleman,” she said. “Why don’t you just let me speak to the buyer.”
He gave her a dismissive smile. “No.”
“But you’re asking me to go through you,” she said. “Surely, you can go through me.”