Mutiny on Outstation Zori (3 page)

"Surely, he must have told you something about his past," the businessman said evenly.

"There's nothing in the Imperial data banks except Janssen's place of birth and his pilot's registration out in FZ5. We need get a better handle on him. What is he like?"

Jamie felt his right eyebrow rise. "He is… was… a quiet, determined, hard-working Paethor. I don't know. I can't believe he'd be involved in stealing a dozen FTL ships."

"That's not true," Bright charged. "You
know
Janssen is capable of committing a theft; experienced it, yourself. Tell us where he is."

"That… I don't know."

"Then tell us where think he
might
be," Werch said, "and I'll pay to send you there to find out if you're correct. I'm forming several search teams to follow up leads on this case. I want you to be part of one."

Jamie concentrated. The idea that Cast might still be alive was still new. Before his "death", his old partner had once mentioned wanting to go somewhere special, if he ever had enough money. Where was it that the little yellow pilot had wanted to retire to? Someplace out..."I don't know," Jamie said. "You might try FZ13, but if you want anything more specific, I'll have to think it through."

Both Werch and Bright Law looked glum, but resigned. The businessman stabbed a button on his desk and spoke into the air. "Come in, Zaxt."

Jamie stood up, not knowing what to expect, but not expecting what came through the double doors.

A silver male humanoid bot stepped into the room. Its smiling, vid-star features looked out from beneath a full head of flowing golden polyhair. The data screen on its chest glowed a crisp blue, but presented no image or data.

"Zaxt," Werch said, "meet Clamber."

The bot put out its right hand—more like a three-fingered glove—and bowed slightly from mid-waist. "We were expecting you, sir.

Jamie shook the hand and stifled a laugh. "Well, I certainly wasn't expecting you." He turned back to Werch. "What is this? My bodyguard?"

Bright stepped forward and patted affectionately one the slim pouches that lined the bot's shoulders. "He's more of a trainer and teacher than a spy, Mr. Clamber."

Zaxt raised his right, mitten-like hand. "I never spy."

Jamie turned back to Werch. "I'm afraid I don't…. Why do I need it… him?"

Werch laced his fingers on his desktop. "I'm assuming, of course, that you'll accept my proposal to join one of the teams I'm assembling."

"Perhaps..."

"Zaxt here will introduce you to the other members of your group and instruct you through a brief training operation designed to get your team working together at max efficiency. Does that bother you?"

Jamie looked askance at the silver bot. "No. I guess not…

Bright began moving Jamie toward the doors. "Good. Zaxt, take Mr. Clamber down to the training area and introduce him to his teammates. See that he—"

"Wait a minute," Jamie interrupted. "We haven't discussed my fee. I don't intend to go off searching the backnet without some sort of compensation."

"Of course not," Bright answered. "The manufacturer will pay you half a million Eldeits if you are successful in locating the missing ships. We'll pay three times that, if you can retrieve them."

"And what if I can't find them at all?"

From behind them, Werch grumbled, "Then you will have had an interesting vacation courtesy of PANIC, Inc."

"Can I have that in writing and filed with the trade association?"

Werch tapped a series of keys on his desk and a printout issued from beneath the screen on Zaxt's chest. Smiling, the bot tore it off and handed it to Jamie. The print was tiny and there was plenty of it.

Jamie folded the document and slipped it into a pocket in his jacket. "I'll get back to you on this."

"Fine," Bright nodded. "Now, please go with Zaxt. And try to see if you can pinpoint where Janssen might be; it'll make a difference regarding where your team is sent."

"I said I'd think about it."

"Good," the woman said, as Jamie and the bot walked back into the hall. "There's a lot riding on your memory, Mr. Clamber."

* * *

Jamie was pretty sure he remembered where Cast wanted to go.

The two pilots had been lounging in a pleasure bar on Thomastation, soaking up too much good leisure and bad wine. Cast had sat hunched over, elbows on the checkered table, chewing a straw down to a glob of mangled plastic, and recounting adventures from his misspent youth.

"You see my point, right?" Cast had asked earnestly. "A person can't begin to know what they want out of life until they're at least forty." He held up four pale, webbed fingers. "Everything before that age is influenced what other people want you to be. Sooner or later, you realize that there's more to life than they'd have you believe, and you start looking around for what's in it for you."

Jamie had stretched his legs out across an empty chair and tilted his head back to stare at the paddle-fan rotating far above their heads. He asked casually, "Are you speaking from experience, or is that just the wine talking?"

"I'm serious, you lout," Cast claimed indignantly. He kicked at the chair that held Jamie's legs. "When you get to be my age, you'll start trying to get some importance in your life. You'll see all the empty promises and decide that you'll do almost anything—any old thing—to satisfy your yearning for happiness."

"I'm happy right here," Jamie said dreamily, and gestured for another round of whatever they were drinking.

"I can see that," Cast shrugged. "And I'd expect that sort of comment from a third-rate circuit-jockey like you. But I know a place that would be far better than this dive."

"Great. Let's go."

Cast laughed. "Not so fast, partner. I'm talking about an Outstation in FZ13; you'd be sober by the time got there."

"Then to hell with that!" Jamie received his drink from the serving droid. He had downed it without a breath, and the room began to tilt, as if he were seated on a long sliding ramp.

"But I'm going there someday," Cast had continued to speak through Jamie's mellow haze. "I owe it to myself."

"Fine. Fine. Just help me get a firm hold on the table before you go."

The rest of the evening had been a blur. The conversation hadn't seemed important at the time, but now Jamie thought there might have been more significance to it than just bold bar talk.

The only problem now was that Jamie felt unsure about telling any of this to employees of PANIC, Inc. There was something about the organization that bothered him. For that matter, he mused while walking along the seemingly endless corridors, there's something about all big organizations and corps that bothers me. Must be why I like working alone so much out in the frontier zones.

He followed the bot through a maze of hallways, arriving at last before a small vator which they rode to a sub-basement. When the doors slid open, Jamie thought they were entering a large gymnasium, the kind he'd viewed on tactical adventure vids.

The room was paneled with hundreds of hatches and access doors, several of which were in operation above, under and around the two combatants who were confronting each other with electro-staffs. Beneath the bright lights, one of the hatches thrust forward a series of buzz-saw tentacles, while another belched a stream of cloying red smoke.

To the right of the two battling figures, a panel fired randomly spaced and timed thermal pulses that ricocheted off the floor. Both combatants bounded and dodged, making only occasional but forceful contact with each other.

Zaxt observed offhandedly, "Low level child's play," and stepped over to a blinking control console. He thumbed in a sequence with remarkable speed and the activity in the room multiplied and accelerated until the two combatants howled and yelped in protest.

"Hey! Knock off the damn floorshow!" shouted a deep bass voice. The man who spoke wore fur knee boots and the tunic of an Imperial Admiral, cut ragged at the armpits. His white spiked hair shot out and up ten centimeters from his head like a snowy halo. His thin lips pulled back, exposing clenched teeth through which he snarled, "You unwiped asshole! I'll kick your head in!"

His sparring partner swirled her long cape and caught the man in the face with its edge.

He tumbled back, dropping his staff, as Zaxt shut down obstacle programming.

"I win," the woman called. She approached Jamie and the bot with confidence, her smile flashing exhilaration. "Even if he did cheat by trying to spit in my face."

She wore her light violet hair long and full in a shape similar to that of her cloak. Her green eyes danced with the afterglow of exertion and triumph. There were laugh lines at the corners of those eyes, and a dimple on the left—but not the right—side of the woman's face.

Jamie watched as she clamped her staff into a rack along the wall next to the vator and moved with a minimum of effort like a mature and experienced feline. He decided she must be a replicate.

"I declare a foul!" The fuzzy-headed man jumped back to his feet. "Nobody said anything about interference from a diplobot. And what about those weights you've got hidden in the corners of your cape, Devor? I claim the right of a rematch without hidden weapons."

"Look who's talking, Karr," the woman breathed softly; her green eyes still dancing. "What about the partial absorption screen you used to protect your left side from my excellent thrusts with the electro-staff?"

"You want to see excellent thrusts? I'll give you—"

"Please!" Zaxt stepped between the quarreling figures.

"Who's this," Karr wanted to know, gesturing at Jamie. "Another pushy Panic Inker?"

Jamie began to seriously wonder what he had gotten himself into.

"This," the silver bot answered, "is Clamber, co-pilot and scout."

"Co-pilot?" Karr said in surprise.

"Scout?" Jamie asked at the same moment.

Zaxt explained. "For security purposes, the team is to be broken up into a balance of power. Kleg Karr's ship,
The Silver Dagger
, will be used for transport, but manned by Aura Devor's Qestan crewmen."

"Now wait one juicy minute," Karr warned.

The bot cut him off. "Surely, you didn't expect Mr. Werch to fund this mission, leaving you in control?"

"Of course I did. What's with that?"

Aura laughed, "Thought you'd get away with something, didn't you, Kleg?"

"What exactly does a scout do?" Jamie wanted to know.

The bot shrugged. "Navigate. Identify the team's destination. Look out for possible trouble."

"I already see plenty of that."

"What do you mean?" Kleg asked, suspiciously.

"This isn't a team," Jamie said. "It's a...a miscellaneous collection of lone wolves. How are we supposed to function as a team, when there isn't even a clear leader?"

"I'm the leader," Kleg insisted.

"Not of my people," Aura replied dryly.

"You see?" Jamie asked the glimmering robot.

Zaxt uttered what passed as a bot chuckle. "Exactly, sir. Which is why the company requires a shakedown mission. Come, I'll show you." He, it, or h/it turned and walked across the paneled room to a plexed area where three HAVENset chairs sat wired to a makeshift control console.

"We're going to play a HAVENset?" Aura asked, inspecting the familiar, yet modified device. "I thought that was addictive."

"Only mildly," Jamie told her, from experience. She seemed to notice him for the first time, said nothing in response to his comment, and returned to examining the complex tangle of equipment.

The HAVENset looked much like the one Jamie had used on Idyllis, except the three chairs were linked together by cables leading to the back of the programming unit.

"I don't like it," Kleg said, crossing his arms.

Zaxt snapped the system to life. "There's absolutely no cause for alarm, sir. Panic's techs have modified these units to minimize the addictive qualities. At the same time, they've inter-woven the game so you'll experience the psychic contributions made by each of you. A one-hour training mission will help you learn to work better as a team, without any actual physical danger. It's perfectly safe."

"I still don't like it," Kleg said. "How do we know you're telling the truth?"

"I never lie," the bot stated, flatly.

Aura slid into one of the reclining chairs and tested the cushions. "Come on, Kleg. Don't tell me the great pirate captain is afraid of a little mental schooling." She inspected the derminals and finger caps.

Kleg pointed at the silver bot. "How do we know he won't mess with our minds while we're in there?"

Jamie was beginning to think that was a little paranoid. After all, what purpose would the bot, or Werch, or anyone have in affecting their consciousness before the mission began? This was just a HAVENset, and a damn clever way to see how well the three of them would work together. He had to admire the corp's personnel evaluation technique. He also looked forward to sharing a dream with the purple-haired woman. There were worse jobs in the universe.