Spaceport: Forget Me Not Page 2

  His body had thrilled at the sight of her as it did each time he saw her on the vid. He was a compulsive viewer of her news reports, but like so many other males on Adana, it wasn't for the news. He had, he admitted freely to himself, become obsessed with her during his short time in the spaceport. With those big iridescent blue eyes, she was a blinding light outshining even the most kaleidoscopic denizens of the spaceport. He'd often imagine her bucking beneath him as he fucked her into, into what ... submission?

  Not likely. She wouldn't be one to submit to anyone, and that was something else that appealed to him. If she was with you, it would be on her own terms, and once she decided you were it, he figured, you would know she was yours forever.

  She was the opposite of Kasamee Kee, the new judge assigned to the Gitto treason case. Now there was a real piece of work. Cool to the point of frigidity, and beautiful in a crafty sort of way. Blonde hair, green eyes that shone with a piercing light of their own and ivory skin that was whiter than white. She looked at everyone as if they were an insect on a mounting pin, skewered through the spine and wriggling helplessly beneath her amused gaze. She belonged to no one, and he guessed, if you got too involved with her, it would be a case of you belonging to her not the other way round.

  "You come highly recommended,” the judge had said to him that morning in her new office, her silent but ever watchful bodyguard standing at the door. Silas could feel his baleful gaze fixed on the back of his head.

  The summons to meet her had come as a surprise, being the last thing he expected, given his mission. Her arrival on Adana had been secret, as was her new role. That would change soon, he figured. The trial was not going well, too many delays, and she'd been sent, he knew, to put it back on track. She was certainly the one to do it.

  "Your reputation precedes you,” he countered.

  "Then you know I am beyond reproach."

  That's what everyone said about her. All of his sources had been in agreement. She was as clean as a whistle; whiter than white, purer than the snows of Pelladon, and that made him suspicious. No one could be that clean.

  She was the best of the current flock of judges and was soon to become the Chief Justice of the IAC, arguably the most important role in the government. She would become the sole arbiter of the law. She would advise the government on every aspect of galactic life, interpreting the law to accommodate the unexpected scenarios that in a dynamic galactic civilization came up on a daily basis, but she'd be the one calling the shots. Absolute power would reside with her and everyone knew what that does to people. “I hope your research showed you that I do not tolerate fools."

  "Not in so many words, but someone in your exalted position didn't get there by relying on the advice of idiots."

  A hint of a smile curled the corners of her ruby hued lips. He had a flash fantasy of kissing those lips just before she sucked his cock. He wondered how close a copy her mouth was to the lips between her thighs.

  "You've been in my office three minutes,” she said unexpectedly, her green eyes sticking him to the mounting board.

  "I can't contradict your timekeeping,” he said, uncertain of her meaning.

  "You're male, which means you've had your first fantasy about fucking me by now."

  He laughed. He couldn't help himself. “You're female,” he said. “I've noted you've glanced at my thighs twice, my mouth six times and my crotch seven."

  She cocked her head to the side slightly, her jade eyes glistening in amusement. “Eight, but who's counting?"

  "Please excuse my imperfect powers of observation. They were no doubt blinded by my lustful fantasies."

  His cock was hard in his pants; she'd already seen that, he knew. Usually at this point with a pretty woman, he'd be pouring on the charm, but not with this one. She was far too dangerous. But what was all this about? Could she just be flirting with him for flirting's sake? She was too clean to have called him here to have sex; that's what the bodyguard was really for. The guard was handsome and his athletic build was hardly disguised by his justice department uniform. Kasamee Kee, it seemed, liked her eye candy and a lot more besides.

  "I need someone of the highest principles to conduct some research for me."

  He stood up. “I think you have the wrong guy."

  She waved him back into his seat. “No false modesty. I've read your dossier. You've been valuable to the Justice Department in the past and you will be to me.” The unspoken “or else” was clear in her voice.

  He sat back down. He hoped she'd read his sanitized service record and not his real CV, otherwise he was dead meat. “What do you have in mind?"

  "Holly Barberossa. What do you know of her?"

  That was from left field. “The reporter? She's a typical newshound but not so typical, if you get what I mean. She loves the limelight, has become the Adanan poster girl. She has the gumshuck approach to investigative journalism."

  "Gumshuck?"

  "It's a small mammal that lives in the jungles of Eskillion IV. It hunts a much larger predator, the ranquord, by shaking the tree in which it lives. When the angry ranquord comes down to see what the racket is about, the gumshuck strikes. It has a tongue which is coated with rows of sharp incisors and tears the hapless ranquord to strips. Holly Barberossa is like that. She latches onto a hint of a story, gives the branch a shake and sees what falls out. That's how she got Riz Gitto."

  Kasamee Kee cocked an appraising eye at him. “She has principles?"

  "She has a naïve but strong sense of what's right and what's not. Don't get me wrong, she's intelligent and can smell a hypocrite a mile away. When she has the scent, she's vicious and she'll cut them to pieces with just a single innocent question. Anyone with anything to hide and any sense refuses to talk to her. She's a real terror, especially to government officials. When she was the subject of a bet on her being assassinated, she's believed to have secretly organized bets to be placed on every member of the Council and Chamber of Commerce. They changed the laws and made such betting illegal; the quickest example of legislative action in human history."

  A knowing smile creased her lips. “You admire her?"

  "There's a lot to admire. She brought down the coup, after all."

  "Is she pliable?"

  "I'd say she'd be un-buyable."

  "I didn't say I want to buy her. Can she be manipulated?"

  Silas saw what was coming. He didn't like it one little bit. “She's too smart for that."

  "All you need do is nudge her in the right direction."

  "And what direction would that be?"

  "I'll let you know."

  He studied her for a moment, trying to see behind the inscrutable gaze. She doesn't trust me, yet. Does she know why I'm really here? “And when will that be?” he asked, feeling all the more like that insect pinned to the table.

  "Soon. Have you met her?"

  "I've only just arrived on Adana myself."

  "Yet you know so much about her.” She silenced his response with a wave of her hand. “Arrange to meet her on some pretext, get to know her, get her measure. Report back to me—give me your judgment of her character, not her hype, mind, I want to know the real Holly Barberossa."

  "Is that all?"

  "For the moment.” Her eyes dropped to his crotch.

  "That's nine,” he said.

  "If your report is helpful, we may get into double figures."

  "That makes me feel a whole lot better,” he said from the door, aware that the dark gaze of the bodyguard was on him. “Now I have some incentive."

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  Chapter Two

  Holly didn't want to be here. A Mendovian funeral ceremony was long, twelve hours, and replete with dozens of little rituals designed to allow the loved ones to say farewell and move on. All very well if you believed your loved one was dead.

  The last weeks had been a nightmare. When Felis had delivered his terrible news, she insisted on interrogating him, getting him to describe
his actions from the moment they returned to normal space to find the pirate vessels making ready to depart the scene of the crime.

  As Peridae, Maxim's sister-in-law, sang a heart-crushing Mendovian lament for the dead, Holly went over what he had told her for what seemed like the millionth time.

  Felis had been adamant that they were attacked the split second they appeared in normal space. The pirates were no doubt on the lookout for any naval response to the SOS and had fired off their torpedoes as soon as they had registered a disturbance in the normal space-time continuum. Felis said he had luckily dodged the first torpedo but the second one had struck one of his engine nacelles, and when he recovered he went after his attacker. He'd been too busy staying alive to see what had happened to Maxim until he returned to the battle scene. Maxim's ship, the Vesper, was a twisted hulk, fused metal still glowing red from the energy blast from the quantum torpedo.

  By then the navy and some other ships who had responded to the SOS had arrived. Some had given chase but the pirates were long gone. They had taken over a hundred captives, the poor devils bound for slavery if their families could not buy them back. Among them were some rich daughters of mining magnates on a galactic tour, a couple of holo-vid actors and, of all things, a college marching band.

  Felis had climbed into his spacesuit and, risking a high dose of residual radiation, searched the wreckage of Maxim's ship but could find nothing of the cockpit that was recognizable. “He's gone, Holly,” he repeated. “No one could survive that."

  She had refused to believe him, insisting that Maxim must have escaped. “Did he eject? Did you search for him?"

  Felis said that he and other Scavenger Guild ships had scoured the battle area looking for Maxim, hoping as she had, that he had ejected from the ship in time. But there had been nothing but the wreckage from the Euripides and the usual detritus of deep space; rocks and dust.

  It wasn't until the remains of Maxim's ship, which Felis had returned to Adana, had been dismantled that they recovered Maxim's left thumb. To everyone else this confirmed Maxim was dead. It was not, however, enough to convince Holly he was gone. It just wasn't possible. It was as simple as that. She insisted that he'd been taken by the pirates, losing his thumb in the struggle. Felis said there had not been time for Maxim to be taken prisoner. He had only been gone from the scene for thirty minutes and the pirates had left the scene very smartly.

  Holly had made loud and very public demands that the navy search for the pirates, to track them down and for once in their history actually capture them. That had not made her popular with the military, but she didn't care. She just wanted Maxim back.

  Meanwhile the whole of Adana had gone into mourning for one of their best. Maxim had twice saved the spaceport, once from a meteor shower and then from Riz Gitto's coup. Even though he was a clone, they had adopted him as their hero and now he was gone.

  Peridae finished her lament and Zweep, the first of Maxim's brothers, commenced his eulogy, surrounded by twenty of his brothers, the famous Dollavera clones, all saying farewell to a part of themselves.

  Holly could hardly bear it. She had refused to wear mourning clothes; she would not betray Maxim that way. She respected his brothers. After all, they shared his DNA and were ninety-nine point nine percent Maxim, but she could not accept the way they had so easily given up on him.

  She had expected a Dollavera vendetta against the pirates, but they had done nothing. Zweep Dollavera, head of the Amalgamated Spaceport Guild of Scavengers had explained to her that the family had a code, a rule devised after one of their own was murdered, that said that they would never, by their actions, bring disaster down upon each other, and that included revenge.

  And now it was the turn of Felis to say farewell to his friend and lover. She loved Felis as Maxim had done, and she respected his need to say goodbye, but she didn't have to go along with it. In her refusal to accept his death, Holly had distanced herself from the family and Maxim's friends, Felis included. Not being able to share their grief, she had instead enhanced it and made their grieving worse by her obsessive belief that Maxim was still alive.

  Her refusal to take part in the ceremony was the only way she could say her piece without overtly insulting the feelings of others any more than she had done. It hurt her to be so distant from the ones she loved, but they were wrong. It was as simple as that.

  At last the ceremony was over, followed by the wake at the Haze Bar and Grill which proved to be an even worse ordeal comprised, as it was, by interminable speeches by drunken people who hardly knew him, followed by three cheers and another toast.

  This was not the way she wanted it. She made her exit and was just getting to the turbo lift when a voice called out to her. “Holly Barberossa?"

  "Who wants to know?"

  He was tall and good looking. Sandy hair fell untidily over his forehead, brushing his dark brown eyes. He possessed a warm and genuine smile, the corner of his mouth and his eyes crinkled by mirth lines. He had a languid alertness about him that spoke of supreme self-assuredness. “I'm sorry for your loss,” the stranger said.

  "Do I know you?"

  "You do now.” He gave a slight bow and held out his hand. “Silas Archimedes at your service."

  His grip was firm and warm. “The private dick,” she said, finally placing him. He'd been running an ad for his business, The Eureka Detective Agency, in the Observer the last few weeks.

  "Investigator, it says on my license, but hey, whatever the local lingo."

  Holly forced a smile. “Is there something I can do for you?"

  "I hope we can help each other out."

  "How so?"

  "I'm on a couple of missing person cases, young tear-a-ways, thugs really, but their mothers are worried."

  She smelled the possibility of a story and wanted to know more. At the very least it would clear her mind of the gloom of Maxim's farewell. “Go on."

  "Disappeared,” he continued. “You know how difficult that is in a closed environment like Adana."

  She did indeed. “Shipped off station?"

  "Always a possibility. However, there are no official records of them leaving. Bribery will get you anywhere, I guess, but neither strikes me as particularly smart or cashed up enough to afford a bribe of those proportions—corrupt ‘Port officials don't come cheap. Besides, they had no pressing necessity to scarper."

  "Scarper?"

  "Run and hide."

  "What do you think happened to them?"

  "I've been tracing their movements and they both disappeared at the same time."

  "So?"

  "At the time they were on a job for their gang lord."

  She rolled her eyes. “Jeng Hu, Felicity Bragg or Bobby Earlobe?"

  "Earlobe. Now there's a piece of work for you."

  Holly nodded in agreement. This was now becoming interesting. “Can I buy you a caffee?"

  "Thought you'd never ask."

  * * * *

  "So, you found there are other missing people as well as the two you started with?” They were seated in one of the many Level Six caffee houses. Holly gazed at Silas Archimedes through the steam rising off her cup, not sure what to make of the private dick. He seemed straight enough, ruggedly handsome. His broken nose suggested he wasn't reluctant to get amongst the rough stuff, and that he wasn't vain enough to get some cosmetic surgery to correct it. His brown eyes were bright and inquisitive, searching her face eagerly for something.

  "Six in all. Minor crims ... criminals, that is, lowest members of organized crime gangs, the bottom feeders. They seemed evenly spread throughout the three crime families."

  "You think there's a gang war brewing?"

  He shook his head in the negative. “They had a meeting, the three crime families."

  "Very civilized of them.” She wondered at his methods. He'd only been on Adana a short while but already he was knee deep in the underworld. “And what did they decide at this meeting?"

  "That they are the v
ictims of vigilantes."

  "Victims? That's an interesting use of semantics."

  "Isn't it? They think it's either some citizen on a mission of retribution for some wrong they've suffered, which in their view is unlikely, or they suspect the ‘Port Authority of running death squads which have started at the lower rungs to send a signal."

  Holly took a sip of her caffee to give her time to ponder what he'd just said. She wouldn't put such a scheme beyond ‘Port Security or the Council. Though what their purpose could be, she couldn't guess. The crime families had traditionally bribed their way to impunity. Had they fallen short or had they somehow overstepped the mark and this was an attempt to bring them to heel? “Who are your sources?"

  His lips curled into a smile. “They're good enough."

  She respected the confidentiality of sources, but the fact that he was ethical created problems in verification. She didn't know Silas Archimedes from a ju-ju bar so she wasn't about to trust the veracity of his unidentified sources. “I need something to go on."

  "I was hoping you knew something."

  "Sorry to disappoint."

  "Do you have any insiders you can go to?"

  She did, but she wasn't going to say so. Besides, the families had been quiet of late. After the Riz Gitto affair, crime had been at an all time low. No one wanted to attract the attention of the super sensitive authorities, but if what Silas was saying was right, then they'd failed badly. “There is a third option,” she said.

  "What's that?"

  "Another gang muscling in."

  "From outside?"

  "I haven't heard of any other internal gangs on the rise."

  "Surely outsiders would stick out like a sore thumb."

  She giggled at his turn of phrase and wondered from what planet he originated. “How about I run a story on your two missing tear-a-ways and see what that attracts."

  He reached into his pocket and produced a data slice. “Here's what I have on them. There's not much to go on apart from names, date of birth and ID numbers. They dropped out of official sight as soon as they got out of diapers."