Kris
‘You look rough.’ Kris was understating the case, but dealing with Idris in this kind of state was always hard. Honestly, he looked like he’d been disinterred, standing in the close-walled orbital dock outside the Dark Joan with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders bowed. His skin looked pallid and clammy as he used his slate as a mirror, propped against the curve of the Partheni ship’s hull. He was lasering away a shadow of stubble, which would be back within a few hours.
‘Where have you brought us, my boy?’ Rollo stretched and rolled his shoulders. Olli was having the Scorpion lift her into its cradle.
‘Some kind of Partheni channel opened up, when we quit unspace,’ Idris mumbled. ‘Set a beacon for us to dock here. I mean, Tarekuma’s not the safest place to just hang about in orbit.’
‘This is our safehouse.’ Solace had unpacked new armour and was adjusting the fit of individual sections, using an interface on her slate. The gear was devoid of company badges this time. She had a new accelerator weapon, too; Tarekuma had no interest whatsoever in restricting the arms its visitors carried. ‘There’s no embassy here, but there are groups we just about trust to do business with us.’
‘Even the great Parthenon gets its fingers dirty, eh?’ Olli remarked. Kris shot her a look. Back when Solace had first showed, everyone had been prickly with her, but Olli seemed determined to carry on the feud, even though they were relying on Solace bending the rules for their benefit. Kris wasn’t sure why, but something about Solace had got under the woman’s skin.
The Partheni just shrugged. ‘From here, it’s your play.’
‘On our own now, is it?’ Rollo chewed at his moustache. ‘Well, you’ve done right by us, my friend. We owe you—’
‘No,’ Solace broke in. ‘You don’t understand. I will continue to back you. I just don’t know what should come next. I don’t know how this place works.’
‘Leave that to me,’ Kris broke in. ‘Me and Kit, anyway. Ready to spend some credits?’
The Hannilambra threw up some obscene human images from his library, showing exactly what he thought of that. But he displayed their Largesse account anyway. ‘All spending kept to a minimum!’ came the translation, after some fiddling of his arms. ‘Do not negatively impact my retirement fund!’ Which sounded funny but really was a matter of life and death to the Hanni.
They were docked at one of the elevator orbitals that ringed Tarekuma’s equator. The planet’s actual surface was harsh: scoured by radiation, high winds and without enough atmospheric pressure for unprotected humans. Ancient geological tumult had left Tarekuma riven with chasms, some up to five kilometres deep. The air was thicker there and conditions were more conducive to both native and visiting life. A dozen cities across the planet were built into the walls of these rifts, extending deep into the rock for vast vertical distances. Each habitation was home to millions of humans and other species, living like termites in constant close proximity. They were linked over the surface to the various elevator cables where the ground-based factions jealously controlled access to orbit. All real business had to be done planetside, no matter how inconvenient that was for anyone up above. It was just about the only thing every gang leader and petty overlord agreed upon. Orbitals that tried to cheat them were disciplined with extreme prejudice.
What Kris could do from here in orbit was research her quarry. She could also make some initial overtures, and for that she’d need to spend a little of Kit’s ‘retirement fund’。 Nobody here was going to help her out of the goodness of their hearts. Not even Prosecutor Thrennikos, who was practically an old friend. She’d crashed out of Scintilla’s Inns of Court, barely snagging her credentials as she ran out of the door. But Livvo Thrennikos hadn’t even managed to qualify, after they’d caught him stuffing bribes into his pockets with both hands. However, Tarekuma didn’t care about official credentials – only malign ability. The place was a weird sort of meritocracy like that. So it was that her old friend had somehow ended up here, with a hastily conferred practising certificate from a Tarekuman law school that probably hadn’t existed five minutes beforehand. Then Thrennikos had been put to work to magically transform the underhand into the legitimate.
He took her comms call readily enough. She was expecting . . . she didn’t know what, to be honest. It had been years. Would he have grown bloated and corrupt with over-fine living, or maybe have an eyepatch and a cybernetic hand? As it happened, Prosecutor Livvo Thrennikos looked far better than she expected. His long-chinned, dark face had grown prosperously fleshy without losing its strength, and he was sporting a moustache of remarkable curling richness. His eyes lit up when he saw her, which was reassuring. Maybe he wouldn’t fleece them too much for his services.