‘Nalsvyssnir Orbital, no less?’ he exclaimed, seeing where she was transmitting from. ‘What brings you to my humble hemisphere, Kerry?’ Because back on Scintilla they’d put the stress on the first syllable of Keristina, so the name had worn down differently on repeated use.
‘Information, introductions . . .’
‘Setting up business here?’ He raised an eyebrow and flashed brilliantly white teeth.
‘Would it threaten you if I did?’ Despite herself, she smiled back at him. He’d always been utterly amoral, and she guessed that hadn’t changed. He’d definitely been more fun than her fellow students . . . in a variety of interesting ways. Wouldn’t bring the price down, but she found herself wondering if he’d make a nice diversion, once the current problems were sorted out?
‘Come work with me,’ he said, apparently sincere and without hesitation. Kris found herself genuinely touched.
‘Tempting,’ she replied. ‘But my ship’s captain has a Tarekuman issue . . . and we’re here to sort it out.’
‘That covers a lot of ground. Is this the sort of issue that leaves bodies?’
‘God, I hope not,’ she said honestly enough. No more than we’ve had already. ‘We need contacts, and we need an introduction. Beyond that we’ll sort ourselves out, no dirt on your doorstep, Liv. Can you help?’
‘Let me look at you.’ And he did for a while, and she wondered about him. Was he married? With children? How much of a life could you carve out, on a planet splintered into gang territories and ruled by criminal fiefdoms? Probably quite a good one, if you were careful. At last he smiled, a little sadly. ‘Who are you in the shit with, Kerry?’
‘Hopefully, nobody. But we need to talk to Broken Harvest.’
His face went into professionally blank mode as he thought about that. Likely Thrennikos had no direct links with the Harvest, given how many factions had a stake on Tarekuma. But he’d know someone, or someone who knew someone. Or he’d sell Kris and her crew out to them. She was banking a lot on their old association.
‘That should be possible.’ His professional face was still on, but he was nodding. ‘They’re Hegemonic, which makes it hard to get to them directly. But I can scare up a minister to make the necessary introductions. That do you?’
‘That would be perfect.’
‘There’s the small matter of—’
‘Our factor will liaise on the fee, both yours and this minister’s.’
‘You’re fine with coming down the line for the meeting? They like their face-to-face contact here . . .’
‘I know,’ she confirmed. ‘It’ll be good to see you again, Liv.’
After that, the crew had a near-ludicrous argument about who was going to the surface. Kris said it would be just her and Kit, but Rollo said if he didn’t get to save his own ship, no one was going. Then Rollo wanted Solace along in case it was a trap. Olli said that she wasn’t going to just wait around with Idris. Even Idris was riled by then, and said he’d just been alone in unspace and wouldn’t repeat the experience in orbit. Kris brought the whole business full circle, saying that if they appeared on Thrennikos’s doorstep mob-handed he’d probably call the authorities. And given this was Tarekuma, those would basically be trigger-happy criminals. So Kris decreed that she, Rollo and Kit would go, and everyone else could loiter in the neighbourhood.
Thrennikos’s offices were a quarter of the way across the planet in Coaster City, so they all piled back into the ship. Kittering took over the comms and fielded what must have been twenty different demands for ID and tolls, from whichever groups controlled individual slices of sky. Some were paid and some weren’t, based on what Kit could glean about their relative status.
Thrennikos had recommended a planetside dock where they could be relatively sure the ship would still be there on their return. On arrival, Solace activated all the security the Dark Joan had, though Kris reckoned that Tarekuma’s best ship-thieves could outplay the order-loving Parthenon’s locking systems. Kit grudgingly pledged some Largesse to the dock owner for added surveillance, and Olli left a camera remote on watch. Other than that, they’d just have to hope that Thrennikos was as good as his word.
On Tarekuma, the poorest districts were closest to the inhospitable surface. High-speed elevators conducted the better class of criminal into the chasm, where radiation was less of a threat and the air actually filled the lungs. So it was, in that first trip, they didn’t see much of Coaster City’s worst side. In fact, the law and order of the docks and the glitzy retail outlets they passed were as civilized as anything Kris had seen.