Counterweight (15 page)

Callum nodded. Was his home world…?

“Planet 3428. That’s what the old Imperial database called
it. I suppose it’s really 3479, though, as near as I can figure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, our people didn’t find it on purpose,” the young man
explained. “They were just stopping to take on water and it was the closest
match in the database. I think something must have happened to the real 3428 –
a big asteroid or maybe it went rogue. Anyway, we figured a clerk at the
Imperial database must have been bribed by the monks to doctor the records.

“They would have realized the value of the trees that grew
there and they protected their wealth by hiding the truth – they were on the
wrong world.”

“So, your world is the original source of spicewood?” A nod.
“And anyone who went looking for it would have been searching the coordinates
for 3428?” Callum laughed. “Not bad, for a bunch of monastics.”

“Not clever enough to stay alive.” The subject
grinned.  “There’s some pretty horrific wildlife on that world and they
didn’t even put up a palisade. They constructed a beautiful monastic enclave
and dedicated themselves to the contemplation of nature.”

“And?” Callum raised an eyebrow.

“And – Nature contemplated
them
. Nature decided they
were delicious.”

“Your people decided to live there anyway?”

A shrug. “It’s not without its charm and, besides, we’re
military, not monks. We paid a little more attention to the dangers than they
did.”

This was the best possible news. Callum had hoped to find
the source of the wood but finding out it was already inhabited by Humans was
an incredible stroke of luck. Any force sent to bring the planet into the Alliance
fold could be portrayed as protection for a lost enclave. It added a veneer of
legitimacy that should help to muddle any Republic reaction.

“I need to get you off this planet and safely into Alliance
hands,” he told the young man. “You represent an incredibly valuable resource
and I don’t want anything happening to you on this fringe ball of water.” He
paused. “How would your people react to the arrival of an Alliance garrison?”

“You want me to go back there?” the subject asked,
scratching at the back of his head “It was bad enough being a pariah, but to
add ‘collaborator’ to the mix... And there’s still the matter of several people
wanting me dead…”

“Pariah?” Cal frowned at him. “You’re back with the Alliance
now; we don’t consider folks who tried to keep faith with us to be pariahs.” He
stepped in a little closer, lowering his voice. “Your ancestors tried to stay
with the fleet?”

A nod.

“Then you’re one of us,” Cal insisted. “And as soon as you
take our people there, the folks who used to lord it over you will be the
pariahs.” He started to turn away but suddenly stopped and turned back at a
sudden thought.

“Any Midgaard on 3428?”

“Eight of them,” the young man answered gravely. “And
they’re the only reason I’m even sane. They remember everything that happened
during the mutiny and they show folks like me some common decency.”

Cal grinned. “That’s good to hear. I think I know just the
folks to help us sort this out.” He nodded toward the pedway. “Let’s take a
walk. I need to speak with my handler but we need to find the right spot first.
Once I break contact, we’ll need to get moving quickly. The enemy can locate
the origin of any link that breaches the surface shielding.”

“Sounds risky.”

Callum grinned as they headed for the pedway. “Believe me, my
young friend, this is worth the risk but, first, we need to find you some
clothes.”

“OK. By the way, my name is…”

“No names,” Cal insisted.

Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic

G
raadt
jumped from his vehicle onto the roof of a medium-sized passenger carrier and
slid off onto the debarkation platform. Kaans landed beside him.

“It’s a big area to search,” Kaans grumbled. “Especially for
just the two of us.” Nid had to stay with the vehicle, since this platform was
far too congested for them to dock.

Graadt pointed straight ahead. “You take this side and I’ll
go over to the other side of the tracks.”

He made good progress through the crowds. Most people knew
enough to stay out of a Stoner’s way. As he walked, he tried to understand his
target’s motivations. Why pick this location to risk establishing a
micro-wormhole link? There were numerous exits, both lateral and vertical, but
what had led the Human to choose this particular site?

He shoved a tall Krorian out of the way in his hurry to
cross the tracks and he grinned at the angry outburst aimed at his back. He
stopped and turned, relishing the dawning of fear on the Krorian’s face just
before the train blurred by between them.

There was a good chance he’d melt into the crowd while
obscured by the train, not that Graadt cared.

Then he finally realized what he was missing about this
site. The train! He cursed – fluently and shockingly.

He activated his comms. “Kaans, get back to the carrier.
Follow that gods-cursed train.”

Of course this was the reason for sending a signal from this
plaza. The train gave the Human a rapid exit from the site but, once that was
understood, it was merely a moving trap. Graadt didn’t want Nid to wait for
him. By the time the train passed and he made his way back to the carrier, the
train could have gone anywhere and they still had no idea what module the
target was in.

The modules each had their own motive power and they
routinely shifted between dozens of trains in their wanderings. Kaans and Nid
had to get close to that train and figure out which one held a target they had
yet to set eyes on. It was a nearly impossible task and they had come here with
little hope anyway.

Still, it was galling to be outmaneuvered.

Graadt couldn’t jump aboard the train because it was moving
too fast but he stepped into the gap as the last car rolled past. The receding
vehicle left a scar in the pedestrian flow that quickly began to heal itself
and Graadt ran along its length, shoving the passengers as the gap transformed
back into regular flow.

It was easy enough to move through the crowd at a walking
pace but there wasn’t time for pedestrians to notice and evade the big Stoner
when he was running at full tilt. He finally ground to a halt near a stairway
leading to the next level. Not far away, the last of the train cars was at the
edge of the atrium, transitioning from horizontal to vertical travel with
enough violent inertia to kill its passengers if the gravity compensators were
to fail.

It was up to Kaans and Nid now.

He realized he wasn’t the only one paying attention to the
train. Half-way up the stairs was a young man in an orange jacket, possibly
Tauhentan or Oaxian, who was staring at the disappearing train. As Graadt
watched, another man put a hand on the first’s shoulder, chivvying him along.

Nobody down here paid attention to the trains. Nobody but
the new arrivals, and the target had been posting operators at the tether
station. It was a long shot but instinct told him he was right. He activated
his comms unit. “Nid, get back here. I have the target.”

The plaza had been chosen because of the train but not for
egress. It was intended as a distraction. Not for the first time, he had to
admit to a certain admiration for his Human target. He’d made Graadt look a
fool on 8792, leading to his exile from Oudtstone. He wanted to hate the Human
for that, for keeping him from seeing his son, but it wasn’t in him to hate
someone for competence.

That didn’t mean he’d let the Human go, however. He
represented redemption for Graadt and his three friends.

“I need to recover Kaans first,” Nid advised.

“What the devil is he doing?”

“He jumped onto the train,” Nid replied calmly. “He’s
checking through the windows and we have to wait till they come out of the
conduit trace.” The trace was a framework of carbon girders that supported a
vast array of water, data and power conduits, along with several lines of
track. Jumping from it at high speed was a guaranteed death sentence.

Graadt would have to do this alone. He pushed his way onto
the stairs and began to weave his way through the crowd, quietly closing the
distance. He slid a hand into his pocket and brought out a stun ball.

The Stoners had cut open a scatter-canister so each could
have a pocket full of the efficient little shockers. His index finger slid over
the round surface of the thumb-sized device, finding the small button that
activated a single shock probe.

The two-headed prong snapped out just as a gap opened
between him and the Human. He only had to touch the prong to the target and he’d
have his prey. He knew the other would run but he didn’t care. The Human agent
was the prize. His ticket home.

He frowned as a strong hand clamped around his right wrist.
Before he could react, the secondary target, still holding his wrist, rotated to
put his right foot behind Graadt’s right foot and hooked his right arm under
Graadt’s right armpit and flexed, pinching the Stoner’s arm.

His opponent had amazingly strong muscles, even from a
Stoner’s perspective. Graadt’s wrist was pulled down and outward as he rotated
over his opponent’s leg and went down.

He realized, too late, that there was more to this maneuver.
His hand was rotated and jabbed into his own groin, the prong making contact
with one of the most highly innervated parts of his body.

His vision went red as his consciousness retreated inside
his skull, trying in vain to hide from the false signals running through his
nervous system. He curled up in a twitching ball of agony.

Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic

“
T
hat
was a little dramatic, don’t you think?” The agent cast Rick a wry look. “A
little more difficult trying to slip away, after all those gymnastics.”

“He was about to stun you,” Rick protested. “You had no idea
he was even back there.”

“I knew he was there, same way you did,” the agent answered,
waving Rick down a side corridor.

Rick frowned. Did he have pre-cognitive ability? Did every
Human? All this time, generations of his people had thought they owed their
ability to their planet but what if it was something else?

“The folks approaching us were alarmed,” the agent
explained, “shifting out of the way as quickly as they could.” He grinned. “I
don’t cause that kind of reaction, so it had to mean a Stoner.”

Rick was surprised at the man’s ability to function without
pre-cog. Back on 3428, there was a young woman, Sarah, who’d lost her sight a
few years back. She got around the ship as easily as anyone else, having a
nine-second warning of any accident or collision she might have been about to
have.

She used her pre-cog ability to compensate for the loss of
her sight but this man used his
sight
to compensate for the absence of
pre-cog. He had no way of knowing what he was missing, of course, so perhaps it
wasn’t really compensation.

Still, Rick would rather lose his vision than his
pre-vision
.

He followed the man around a corner and up a ramp to the
next level, stopping half way to talk to some filthy-looking vagrants. To
Rick’s surprise, the agent took off his coat, nodding for him to do the same.
He had just finished buying the brightly colored jacket and now he was giving
it away?

They handed over their jackets and continued up the ramp.
Rick probed his guide, learning the importance of adaptive camouflage. He also
realized the man was expecting the question. He took smug satisfaction in not
asking.

They boarded a pair of small vehicles, barely large enough
for the driver and a passenger to straddle. The agent gave both operators
directions and they lurched into motion, accelerating hard. Pedestrians blurred
past them, inches away, and then they were out in the open space of the atrium.
They rolled over to dive toward the mist and Rick could feel the pull of
artificial gravity on his feet.

Even though the engineer in him understood the relative
safety of his situation, he still had no intention of removing his
white-knuckled hands from the grab bars. It turned out to be a good decision.
The operators were absolute maniacs, weaving their way through narrow gaps with
maneuvers extreme enough to overcome the vehicles’ restraint systems.

After a few near-misses and several years off Rick’s life,
they slid to a halt next to a railing thirty levels down and a couple of
kilometers north of where they’d started. After the ride, Rick hardly even
registered the danger of climbing from the vehicle to the pedway.

They were standing at the edge of a large crowd.

“Foolish,” the agent muttered.

“What’s going on?”

“One of them has an educated child but no money to buy a
lift ticket.” He nodded at the group. “They’re donating money so the child can
get off world and pledge at a monastery or convent.”

“So, why’s that foolish?”

“Because they’re laborers – all of ‘em – and the company
doesn’t like it when laborers gather in large groups, especially when they’re
skulking around down here.” He gave Rick a gentle push. “C’mon, we need to get
away from here. If a magister gets wind of this, it’ll get ugly fast.”

They started moving away. Rick resisted the urge to look
back over his shoulder. Then he remembered he had problems of his own. “What
did your boss tell you, when you called in?”

“He told me to keep you alive for a few days and then get
you up to the hotel on the counterweight. We’ve got a long-range patrol in the
area and they’re being tasked to swing by and pick you up.”

“Why don’t I just go back up there now?”

The agent shook his head. “More places to hide down here and
they get suspicious of anyone who wants to spend a week sitting in that
fleabag.”