The assassin had no business at Ash-Vedal the day he first set eyes on the girl-captain. It was just a stop on his way through the Alphas to his next target in the Indies. A meal, a few drinks, and a good night’s sleep in gravity. As hard as it was for a man like him to be low-profile, that was what he’d intended the stop to be. But that wasn’t always the way, especially on Alpha-Origgi. Of course, he had people on such a major outpost. He did work quite often for the Rexes, so he also had business associates—never to be trusted but always respected. Just as he expected them to respect him. That meant allowing him to move about unbothered unless they had something urgent for him. It wasn’t the Rexes who pinged him on his way down, though.
“Boss, I have something for you from Orranu. It’s quick and lucrative.”
“You know I don’t like quick, Dittra,” the assassin told his contact.
“When I said lucrative, I was underselling the payout a little.”
“Send it to me. I’ll probably say no.”
The file came across.
“A little light on details,” the assassin stated.
“Orranu said the info will be enough to pick her out. Target’s name is an alias, he reckoned. That’s why the specifics are light.”
“Lucrative, though.”
The killer looked at the details. One hundred thousand L-Cr and an assumed name concealing a true identity. A ship’s tag number and bay. A description of her crew and a light description of a blonde woman in her early twenties, trim, pretty.
“There’s nothing here, Dittra. Vella Triere? What do you have on her?”
“The info in the file checks out. They’ve been on the deck now for half a day. I haven’t set eyes on her myself, just on the vessel. Info is solid. An old Letters transport. Story I’ve gotten on the ground is that she ran afoul of trading partners outside the Rexes’ scope. Apparently, she has friends in the Rexes’ circle and was taking advantage. Burned one too many partners who didn’t have such blessings.”
“Orranu doesn’t even have a picture of her?”
“Word is she rarely leaves the ship. I saw the others, though. A pair of mercenaries and a medic, a Harold too.”
“These mercenaries, are they clowns? One would think they’d have to be, running with a girl like that.”
“No. They’re serious fighters. One’s a former rock-hopper. Letters man, half blown to hell and only half repaired. The other’s Etteran, I think. A killer.”
“Orranu sent this through?”
“Yes, boss.”
The assassin was giant. As his ship descended, his bulk was beginning to stress the restraints in his oversized jump seat. He crossed his long arms over his massive torso, thumb and forefinger stroking five days’ stubble from his trip across the inner Lettered Systems.
“All right,” he relayed to his contact. “ID the girl, and if I pick it up, I’ll cut you in at ten percent if the ID’s good. If I get her before I know her name, you get nothing, Dittra.”
“Fair’s fair, boss. I’ll get it.”
“I don’t want to hear from you for any other reason.”
“Understood,” Dittra replied. “Just one added thought. I know you don’t like me thinking, boss, but Orranu didn’t say this was exclusive, so it’s possible he’s got other people on this. Only pays to be first in our business.”
“Does it? Is that what you think?” the assassin replied. “See, Dittra, that’s why I don’t like you thinking. Go get me an ID.”
“Yes, boss. You’ll have it the second I do.”
He’d hardly settled into his suite before Dittra pinged back. It hadn’t even been three hours. He’d barely had a chance to soak and shower.
He was expecting an ID and was growing perturbed each word that came out of his contact’s mouth that wasn’t Captain Vella Triere’s actual identity.
“They’re out to dinner on the ground floor of the merchant outlets near the southwest docking bay. I have a source on their location. You can catch the whole crew if you hurry.”
“No ID?”
“Unfortunately not. Best picture my source could catch without alerting that Etteran was this.”
The assassin laughed when the image came through. “Nice shot.”
Dittra continued. “I’ve never seen those two boys of hers before. None of the Rexes guys know them either. They didn’t seem to know who the girl was. My contact in the market said she’s pretty and awful young to be the captain of a vessel and a crew like that. I know it’s not an ID, so call it a tip and a courtesy, a sign of respect, Murkist.”
“I don’t like to talk to anyone I don’t know, Dittra. I damn sure don’t like killing someone who’s a complete mystery to me.”
“I know. A hundred grand is a hundred grand, though. I’d rather you had the opportunity to turn it down than not know about it.”
“That’s fair,” the assassin said. “If you find out who she is, let me know. I’ll likely let it slide. I have work elsewhere anyway.”
The assassin fully intended to forget about the job. He was hungry, though, and there were plenty of dinner options near that docking bay. If he happened to put eyes on them while he was getting a meal, all the better. There was something about it beyond the mystery that kept him turning the prospect over in his mind—the Etteran and the rock hopper. People like that didn’t usually run with unknowns, especially ones barely old enough to be traveling without her parents—or so this girl-captain looked to be from that low quality image Dittra’s contact sent through.
A hundred grand.
The whole thing became almost as big a curiosity as a business opportunity.
So the Murkist got dressed for dinner.
“Well, friend, you may be tough, but you are not subtle,” the assassin muttered to himself, observing the half-metal rock hopper from a distance. Not only could the Murkist pick his metal face out of a crowd at a hundred meters, he could hear his leg clunking from nearly as far, likely why they unlisted him—a son-of-a-bitch that tough was bound to be useful once the fighting started, though. The Murkist made a point to observe from a distance, from the metal-man’s living side. Who knew what kind of surveillance tech he had embedded in that metal half?
The Etteran was bolts. The Murkist could tell from his walk and his eyes. He was as formidable as military men came.
The medic wasn’t a medic at all. She was a doctor—and not a doctor who’d been pushed up the chain out of necessity or shorthandedness in the military hospital ships near the front. She came from the top down—a top surgeon or researcher by the look of her. She looked sad but content enough in present company.
The girl, Vella Triere—the captain—he couldn’t get a good look at her face because the Etteran kept such a good line of sight. But just from the way the Etteran was watching her, the Murkist could tell she was important, not some legacy in a family of freight runners. Important.
That crew was odd. The whole thing didn’t fit. A mark that big on this kid with a fake name and no picture?
Then he saw movement on the upper causeways when the Letters man stood to take a survey of their exit. Three of them, the Murkist observed, on the second and third decks—yahoos dumb enough to hit this mark for a hundred grand. And as the ship’s crew got up from the table, the assassin caught a quick glimpse of the girl walking out of the plaza. She looked over her shoulder and from that distance, it looked like it could be. The Etteran hadn’t seen the yahoos yet, and the metal-man was too clunky to be observant enough. The women those two mercenaries were guarding, the doctor and the girl-captain, were oblivious to any danger.
The Murkist knew where their ship was parked. He had to see the girl’s face before they walked into something regrettable. Somewhere between, where things got quiet—that’s where those yahoos were going to do it. He could see six of them now. With that Etteran and the rock hopper? The Murkist shook his head. They’d need all of them, those yahoos, but they were just dumb enough to not know it.
Before the crew got hit, the Murkist was able to get ahead of them, and difficult as it was for a man of his size to be inconspicuous, he’d learned enough tricks in his line of work. He got his line of sight on the girl. Confirmation. It was her. One hundred percent with his naked eye and the FR comparison in his eyewear. Whatever the hell she was doing out here, it was rubbing somebody the wrong way. But it also couldn’t happen. Not here in Ash-Vedal. It would turn the Letters upside down, Athos coming out here, all those entitled people and bottomless wealth, bloodthirsty with vengeance. Athosians already had a penchant for taking over everything. This would give them the reason they hardly needed anyway.
Murkist was on the second tier a hundred meters in front of the girl-captain and her crew, watching as they approached. Then he saw the pinch point—the yahoos closing from above, there in the long quiet stretch between the marketplace and the docking bay. That crew was exposed as hell down there. He was searching about for some way to warn them without being too obvious. The Etteran, though, he’d seen something or heard something. He was watching, looking up. Then, he vanished.
The half-metal rock hopper ushered the captain and the doctor to cover. They were there hidden as best they could be in the center of a first-level concourse, tucked behind a tree and its planter. The entire wing went eerily silent for nearly a minute.
Then the shooting started. Second and third level ahead of him. The Murkist moved to eliminate the two shooters on his level. The first didn’t see him coming. Some men get blinders in a gunfight—can’t even see a threat as large as him. He’d grabbed the shooter and popped his neck before the guy even knew he’d been grabbed. From that position, the Murkist could see two of the others. One on the same tier, one on the upper level across the way. They didn’t even see him take out their partner. Blinders. Boom and boom.
Then he saw the Etteran on the far side of the second level. He’d seen. He’d worked a quiet blade into two more of them and was eying their fleeing partner.
Murkist looked over and saw the Etteran calculating. What to make of him? Eyes to him and then back to the girl.
He was smart. He didn’t stick around to ask questions, just made for the girl. That was enough of a window to get her out of there.
That left one yahoo and a whole lot of questions.
The Murkist couldn’t remember hearing of a livelier night in Ash-Vedal in ages. Mirsong Rex would not be happy.
The last survivor of a gunfight tends to blend poorly into a crowd. This one kept looking over the wrong shoulder. By the time he finally looked over the right one, the Murkist already had him by the neck.
There were people around the concourse, so he pulled the man back into a shop entrance. It was shuttered at that hour. The assassin knew how to make an encounter like this look like something different.
“I told you not to go near her again, you pervert. She’s a child!”
All the prying eyes immediately abandoned the man to his fate.
“I don’t know—” the man began.
“Yeah, you don’t,” Murkist said as he squeezed his throat quiet. “I’m going to kill you, but it can be long and painful or quick and painful. Your choice. Don’t bullshit me. That girl you were shooting at, you and your friends. Do you know who she is?”
“Some starship captain,” the man said, his eyes shifting about, looking for an escape.
“Look at me,” the Murkist said, tilting the man’s neck up from the chin. “Her name?”
“Vella something,” he coughed.
“Her real name?”
“That is her name. That’s all I know.”
“Who put out the hit?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know who hired you?”
“Some local contact.”
“Orranu?”
“That sounds right.”
“Where are you from?”
“Montaug.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s a cylinder group, mostly abandoned since the start of the war. In the Indies.”
“You and your boys were mercenaries? Bounty hunters? Hired muscle?”
“Just did jobs, man.”
“Idiots. Just like you looked.”
“Look, my friend—”
“I’m sorry, but you are all out of friends, fool. But I’m feeling charitable, because that shitshow back there went down about as well as it could have. You get a choice. Long and painful or quick and painful?”
The Murkist squeezed his trachea shut, pinning the man against the store’s metal shutter. Most men didn’t like to answer that question and wouldn’t answer until he let them know it was already over. After about thirty seconds of breathlessness, when he knew the man understood fully, he let up his grip just enough so that one remaining amateur assassin understood the purpose of his final breath.
“Quick.”
The Murkist lifted the man by the neck with both hands, took several steps to the third-story railing and tossed the man toward a wide break in the pedestrian traffic on the causeway twenty-five meters below.
He didn’t linger. The Murkist walked quickly but casually down a side corridor. This was the Rexes’ city. Not many people in the Letters could get away with something like that in their marketplace, but he could. He needed a word with the old man anyway.
It didn’t take Dittra long to ping him on his eyewear. He was still walking back to the suite.
“Tell me you didn’t know,” the assassin said.
“Know what?” Dittra asked.
“Fine.”
“I take it you didn’t get the girl, because I just got done talking to the Rexes. Their chief of security in the market said you tossed some guy from the Indies off a third-floor causeway.”
“Where’s Orranu?”
“I don’t think he’s going to want to see you if you let that girl get away.”
“He’s definitely not going to want to see me, no. That girl—the one playing starship captain with those fighters—I got her ID, Dittra, with my own eyes. Her name is Carolina Dreeson. You heard me correctly. Dreeson, as in the same name as the star system. Somebody sent me and a bunch of idiots after Carolina Dreeson thinking that somebody would be ignorant enough to kill her. And you’re in that chain of communication. I’m going after somebody. So you either get me a location on Orranu, and fast, or I’m coming after you.”
“I didn’t know, Murkist, I swear.”
“I figured as much, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“I’ll have his location for you in an hour—less even. Just give me a chance.”
“That’s what this is, Dittra. Your chance.”
“Thank you, boss. Thank you.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“Don’t thank me yet.”
“One of the Dreesons?” Dittra asked. “Who in the Letters would …?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out. And set me a meeting with Mirsong Rex. He’s going to want to know what almost happened in his south causeway.”
“Consider it done, boss.”
Dittra came through. Orranu had a friend running a bar as a front in Ash-Vedal. That friend gave Dittra a location on the far side of Origgi before the Murkist’s man crushed the bar owner’s head under an industrial refrigerator. That, the Murkist thought, was a nice piece of creative flair—the kind of thing that got people talking in the right way. No one who liked his head intact would be tipping off Orranu before the Murkist could get there.
The location was a small, self-contained trading post called Den. It was a glorified airstrip for a mining outpost that Orranu had taken over after bullying the miners into allowing him to stay. Murkist thought it might be tough—an outpost that small. Orranu would see him coming. He’d have people, maybe even bots. Under ordinary circumstances, he’d have had Dittra send some people to do reconnaissance. But if he waited, he knew word would get back to Orranu about what had happened at Ash-Vedal—the firefight, the Dreeson girl getting away.
Word did get to Den. It either came from Orranu’s bar owner’s friends or from Dittra himself, but the word was that he—the Murkist—was coming to Den for Orranu. And apparently, Orranu’s people wanted no part of the trouble their boss had gotten them into.
“We have a package for you,” a ping came from the tiny coms station at the outpost, hardly even a control tower.
He hadn’t even called them to ask for permission to land. He didn’t usually ask for permission, certainly not from peasant miners on the ass side of Origgi, and definitely not from Orranu’s people.
“I’ll pick it up when I come in,” he pinged them back.
“No need to come in, sir,” came the return. “We think you’ll be satisfied and hope that you’ll consider that we saved you time and aggravation. We’ll bring the package to you with our compliments.”
They didn’t have a bay like at Ash-Vedal, so it was a pain in the ass to belt up and walk all the way into the airlock—an exposed position he didn’t care much for.
“That sounds exactly like something I’d consider,” he told them.
“We’ll be right out, sir.”
The Murkist hadn’t been on the surface again for a minute before four men were at his back airlock, carrying a fifth man inside a bodybag wrapped-up tight in vent tape.
“Good to have a reputation,” the assassin muttered to himself, grinning.
They didn’t even step inside, just tossed the package into the airlock and headed back to Den, the hindmost of the four men pausing only long enough to turn and give the camera’s eye a mock salute before departing. They’d zipped up the body bag with enough air around the head that Orranu didn’t completely suffocate in transit. His torso was wrapped mummy-like, so tight the guy could barely breathe.
“Orranu, I presume,” the Murkist stated after pulling the man’s head out of the bag once he’d gotten him inside the ship. His mouth was taped shut as well, so all he could do was nod nervously. “You made a bad decision, Mr. Orranu. We’re going to have a talk with the Rexes. You’re going to want to talk with them.”
He’d hardly strapped the package into the jump seat beside him before Dittra pinged.
“My contact over there said you were happy with the package?”
“Happy’s a strong word to use today, Dittra, but you haven’t disappointed.”
“I have a landing assignment for you at Ash-Vedal. The Rexes are awaiting your arrival. They’ll take care of everything.”
“And even concierge service, Dittra? Amazing how efficient you can be when properly motivated.”
“Yes, sir. I can be.”
The Rexes got the old man out of storage. Mirsong wasn’t happy about being disturbed at home, and his son Kai was even angrier, having his authority undermined by getting the old man called down. The Murkist had met them both, a relationship of mutual respect and openness. They gave him leeway to operate on their grounds, and he gave them options in delicate situations—the ability to keep their hands clean, plausible deniability, efficiency, confidence. And they knew that whenever one of the Murkist’s people called and said there was a situation, there was a situation.
This situation was belted to a chair in Mirsong Rex’s office, still taped inside that body bag up to his neck, vent tape over his mouth, Orranu looking about as miserable as he probably felt. The Murkist was reasonably sure from watching his body language that he still didn’t know what he’d done.
There were two Trasp strikebots at either side of Mirsong’s table; Kai was by the old man’s side, as well as a younger brother the Murkist didn’t know. There were also two fixers—one was an attorney of questionable adherence to the law but unquestioned power; the other was a manager of Mirsong Rex’s considerable army of people.
“This is the problem you brought me down here for, Murkist? This little man? Doesn’t look like much of a problem now, does he?” Mirsong Rex grimaced, looking down at Orranu.
“At worst, until now, this man has been a minor nuisance to you and your operations. Otherwise, no doubt you’d have taken care of the problem already. I could just as easily have disposed of him without bothering you, but out of respect, I thought you should know what he probably doesn’t know.”
“And what is this?” Rex asked the Murkist.
“I’d like to hold off on that for a moment, if you will allow me?”
The Murkist gestured toward Orranu. Mirsong Rex nodded. His fixer ripped the vent tape off Orranu’s mouth. He grimaced and grunted, moving his lips up and down and taking a deep breath. Even he knew better than to speak before he was spoken to.
“The girl captain,” the Murkist began. “I want a list of every person associated with that job—who fronted the money; who your contact was; who you first heard about it from; everyone up the chain from you and below you. Everyone.”
“That’s what this is about?”
“Who put the hit on Vella Triere?”
The Murkist could see his eyes surveying the room, calculating.
“I assure you, whoever you’re afraid of pissing off by betraying their confidence, they’re never getting a crack at you. There are two questions left for you now, Orranu: How bad is my death going to be; and how long is the process going to last?”
“Why should I talk to you, then?”
“This is not a game we are playing, son,” Mirsong Rex’s attorney stated. “Murkist’s man was very thorough relaying your background to us when we talked. You have a girlfriend with two daughters on Alpha-Richard and a sister on Megara who has two boys of her own.”
“We haven’t even begun to dig deep,” Mirsong Rex said. “I do not like it when people I allow to operate in my territory do so … disrespectfully. Right in my face!”
The old man had worked himself into a fury.
“Mazziri,” Orranu stated. “He was my contact. The price for me to facilitate was a half million, no questions asked.”
“Mazziri? That weasel?” the Murkist said, looking over at Mirsong Rex. “Isn’t he an eastern asset?”
“Iophos, yes,” Orranu stated. “He works directly for their intelligence service, mostly moving weapons and information.”
“You ever take a bid on a hit from him before?” the Murkist asked.
“Not him personally. Never.”
“You didn’t think it was odd getting a call for a sum that large on a nobody ship captain?”
“No disrespect. Your reputation precedes you, obviously, or I wouldn’t have called your guy, but most of the contracts people in your line of work take don’t come from sources like Mazziri. It comes from ordinary channels. I’m one of those channels because I know people, including intel operatives. A half million isn’t a rare sum for a government to pay a guy like me to make a problem disappear quietly. I’ve done business with eastern intelligence contacts before—a handful of times. The Iophans always paid when I came through.”
“Iophos?”
“On the girl, yes. Iophos was the source.”
“Did you know who this girl is?” Mirsong Rex asked. “I don’t know myself, but I’m guessing that her name isn’t Vella Triere or whatever you said it was.”
“As I said, sir. A half mil. No questions asked. So I didn’t ask. He knows, though, I’ll bet,” Orranu said, gesturing toward the Murkist with his head.
“You sent me to kill Carolina Dreeson, you dead idiot,” the Murkist stated.
Mirsong Rex looked over at the Murkist wide-eyed. The attorney and the fixer looked at each other in shock. Orranu began to laugh.
“What’s so funny, Mr. Orranu? Not so funny for long, I assure you of that.”
“Hell,” he said. “If you’re going to go down, might as well be in a flaming wreck, right?”
“Is there anything else we should know?” Mirsong Rex asked. “Bear in mind that we can revisit this matter of your relatives at any time in the future should we find a reason.”
Orranu sighed and looked up at the Murkist. “I have a ledger on my cruiser out at Den. It has all my contacts, how to get in touch with them. It’s all in there. I’ll give my guys the encryption sets and have them send you the whole thing. That’s got all the details. The big picture is this. Mazziri is a hard guy to track down. From what I understand, he likes to pop in and out between the Kappas and the Alphas. He keeps a suite on Enuncium—the mobile fleet, fleet city, whatever you want to call it. I have the details in my files. You could probably track him down there, but most of the time he’s traveling. I never call him, he calls me.”
“Called you, Mr. Orranu,” the Murkist said.
“Yeah, called me,” Orranu replied, shaking his head. “Carolina Dreeson. Unbelievable. What the hell would the Iophans want to murder her for? And what the hell is Barnard Dreeson’s daughter doing all the way out here for anyway?”
“Those are very good questions for someone to answer,” Mirsong Rex said. “But since you tried to pay someone to kill this Dreeson girl in my house, which is my responsibility, those are questions somebody else is going to answer, Mr. Orranu. Unfortunately for you, this transgression is so very large. The punishment must be widely known and biblical in proportion, you understand. But, since you have been forthcoming, and if your information on your ledger proves useful, as long as you continue to operate in good faith till the end, then I will honor the line be kept between our business lives and personal lives. You understand me, Mr. Orranu?”
“Yes, sir, I understand.”
“Do not embarrass me or yourself any further. Do I make myself clear.”
“I won’t.”
The elder Rex looked over at the Murkist. “Government actors. This situation with Mazziri may be delicate.”
“Not that delicate,” the Murkist replied. “I will get you your answers, and then I will kill him.”
“Quietly,” Rex said shaking his head. “None of this tossing people off balconies in front of civilians. You’re better than that nonsense. We all are, present company excluded.”
Mirsong Rex looked down at Orranu with disgust.
“As you say,” the Murkist replied.
Before leaving, the assassin stood for a moment at the foot of the chair, looking down at Orranu, shaking his head.
Orranu looked up for a moment before closing his eyes and letting out an audible sigh.
On the way out of Alpha-Origgi, the assassin spoke with Dittra again. Loyalty and efficiency were attributes the Murkist believed in rewarding just as quickly as incompetence or betrayal needed to be snuffed out. It was one of the reasons he was still around while others like him had flamed out. He’d known of quite a few killers who’d risen fast because of their brutality and willingness to take any mark. Most of them had also disappeared overnight because someone like Dittra had taken enough abuse and saw an opportunity out of that abuse. Positive reinforcement wasn’t a hallmark of their business, but he practiced it when warranted. Not only did the Murkist transfer a quarter of the original bounty on the Dreeson girl to Dittra, he also let the Rexes know his part in settling the matter quickly, more or less making Dittra nearly as untouchable on Alpha-Origgi as the Murkist himself.
The Murkist hadn’t even jumped out of the system before Dittra came through again. Jahnnu Soal, Outer Rim North 115, Suite 4481, Enuncium. Alpha-Merced Tag # GB 8774-3142. Less than twelve hours and Dittra had the guy’s alias, his address, and his ship’s tag number. Mazziri, he knew, had to be an arrogant bastard to think he could put out a hit like that in the first place, but to do it and then stay? To stay out in the Letters after that? The Murkist would have risked going after him on Iophos, even. One way or another, Mazziri had to die, not just because he had to die, but because everyone else had to know he was dead. The Rexes couldn’t have it any other way. He couldn’t have it any other way. Government asset, private citizen, corporation? Didn’t matter. You drop a hit like that, trying to sneak it through under a fake name, unleashing hell all over the Letters? And then to keep an address public enough that a single clever, connected contact halfway across the Letters could get your tag number in half a day? It was almost unbelievable—that level of arrogance and stupidity. Mazziri was the type of guy he wished he could kill twice.
Once, though, would have to do. He pinged Dittra back. “Tell the Rexes to let him sit. I’ll take care of him with my compliments. Let Mazziri think he’s slipped out of it. I want to see what he does. I want regular reports on the Dreeson girl’s ship and crew, too—anything you can get, our contacts and all the intel you can pull from the Rexes.”
There was plenty of other work to be done out in the Letters. As much as Mirsong Rex and the Murkist wanted Mazziri dealt with, neither one of them were where they were after so many years because they were impatient. Murkist had eyes all over the Letters, including Enuncium. He wasn’t waiting for Mazziri to pop his head up. He could have his head whenever he wanted it. Tracking Mazziri’s movements in the final months of his life could tell them almost as much as his final moments would—who he was meeting, where he was going, what he was up to. And patience afforded one in the Murkist’s profession choices, especially with an arrogant bastard like Mazziri.
He got regular reports in between jobs—from the Rexes, from Dittra, from his guy on Enuncium, from other sources. Once, months after the initial incident on Alpha-Origgi, the Murkist got a report from his contact on Enuncium that Carolina Dreeson and her crew were out there. Mazziri wasn’t on Enuncium at the time, and the contact seemed to think it was a coincidence—that they had other business there—but it was curious that the two parties almost crossed paths, right on Mazziri’s doorstep.
Coincidence or no, the Murkist wasn’t willing to wait any longer. He told his guy on Enuncium to move and let him know when the trap was set. From then it was another four weeks.
He received a ping with a time and a vector, so he set an intercept course. Yet again, it boggled the mind. How a man like Mazziri could just park his ship and leave the keysets to the drudges and bots there on the station, without a care in the world. Every time, it felt like a lesson that needed to get taught.
Oh, the hard way. How he enjoyed the hard way.
When Mazziri’s eyes finally popped open again, the Murkist could see that familiar range of emotions in them—from faint recognition of consciousness to confusion, to sudden wide-eyed awakening, to greater confusion and disbelief, to disorientation, to questioning of whether it was a hallucination, a dream. Then, finally, there was realization. The stubborn persistence of the moment. This wasn’t going away, whatever it was.
Murkist could only imagine. One moment, feeling a little lightheaded but fine, in Mazziri’s case, in between gulps of his half-eaten pouch of Iophan stew in his ship’s small galley, somewhere on a cruising vector between Enuncium and the Alphas. Then you wake up strapped to a chair in a dull red fog, hot, confused, a mask over your mouth and nose, goggles fixed over your eyes. And then you realize those skeletons across from you, strapped to those chairs—all of them—they all seem to be in a very similar posture to the one you’re stuck in.
How, oh how, did I get here? The Murkist could see him wondering it. The eyes gave it away. He didn’t even have to activate the neuroband.
“I know from experience,” the Murkist said—helmet to earpiece, “that you’re asking yourself where the hell you are. We’ll get to the how, the who am I, the why—all that. We’ll get to all of it. I like to talk. All those former people out there in front of you—my little boneyard—they keep all my secrets. They’re the only ones. This is the only place I can talk openly, you see. So I do.”
“Mmm, mmhh, HUUMMH!”
“No. No. Not yet. That’s not how it works. You’ll get your chance, Mr. Mazziri. I’m talking now. I don’t appreciate interruptions. See, for someone like me, it’s rare to enjoy talking. Not a very smart move in my line of work. That’s why they tell you to beware of the quiet types. Me, I love talking, though. So I have to be disciplined—know when to keep my mouth shut. On these rare occasions I can speak, I relish it. So. Shall we begin?”
Mazziri began to tug against the restraints on the chair. “MMMMHHHH!”
The Murkist took a deep breath. “I’m trying to be polite. These are your last moments as a human being, Mr. Mazziri. I would think you would want them to be as pleasant as possible. As I said, I like to talk, so when you die, I’m not going to leave you with any mystery about it. I’m going to tell you everything I know about how you ended up in that chair. I find that part oddly fulfilling, actually. I think I might have enjoyed being a teacher. In some ways I am. Unfortunately for you, you’ll never get to apply any of the lessons I teach you today, but I will enjoy teaching you all the same. The hardest lesson, if experience has taught me anything, is that rats like you have a very hard time accepting that you are now powerless. You enjoyed having control over others, as I do. Life and death. The ultimate power. I enjoy that. I’m not going to lie to you.
“But I told you I was going to get to specifics. Let’s establish a little trust here so that you know I’m going to follow through on what I tell you.
“First, the red foggy atmosphere you see all around you is of a large moon that only has a letter and a number, which it shares with its star. You’re on Gamma-315-2D, very remote, orbiting that star Gamma-315, a red dwarf, dim, nearly valueless, uninhabited, unvisited—present company excluded, of course—so the odds of anyone even finding your body in my lifetime is maybe a tiny fraction of a percent greater than zero, but I’m not a mathematician. It’s zero, let’s say, because it is.
“That red atmosphere is toxic, obviously. You are going to breathe it, eventually, and it is going to kill you. The mask over your mouth and nose is filtering the atmosphere. And here’s the fun part, I have a little control here in my eyepiece that allows me to titrate the mixture you inhale with each breath. Want to try?”
Mazziri looked up at the Murkist’s towering figure. In that dim light, both of them masked, he couldn’t see his tormentor’s face. He shook his head, “NNUHH.”
“Well, we have to establish a baseline. Your new neighbors all went through this and look at them smiling back at you now. They’re fine. How about we start at one-point-five? Just enough to let you know you’re still breathing.”
Mazziri stopped breathing.
“You could do that, hold your breath, yes, but then, when you inevitably give in, you’re going to take a huge breath, and it’s going to sting. I’ve caught a puff every now and again coming back and forth so many times with all your new friends. At that mix, it’s a bit like eating a spicy meal, only in your lungs. Not so fun, but not agony. Give it a try.”
The Murkist waited.
“Suit yourself.”
It took nearly a minute before Mazziri couldn’t hold his breath any longer.
He coughed.
“Huh, huh, MMMHHH, HAAAGH! AAAWW! Aarrgh.”
“There it is. Now we can begin. That wasn’t so bad. That was one-point-five. Just for perspective, when I take the mask off at the end of this conversation, at a hundred percent, it’ll take about three breaths to kill you, or, depending on how the conversation goes, I may turn up the levels, or I may turn them down again, as I already have. Just one breath is usually enough, though, unless you’re a masochist. This can be quick and painful or very long and very painful. The choice is yours. A lot of people don’t get a choice in their death. Do they?
“So, to begin?”
Mazziri looked up at him. The Murkist could see his eyes. “Me? Oh, well, does my identity really matter all that much. I kill people for a living, and, as you can see, I’m quite good at my job.”
The Murkist gestured toward the skeletons arrayed before Mazziri, nearly a dozen within eyesight. There were more, farther into the fog in front of Mazziri, even more behind him. Lots more.
“My guy on Enuncium, he told me you liked to visit the girls there. That’s a cruel business, you know, and I say that as an assassin. In a way, though, there’s often some justice in my work. None in theirs, was there? That didn’t ever bother you, though, did it? Their lives? Hmm? I reckon not. Anyway, I mention it because they always call that the oldest profession. Personally, and I think this may be a chicken or egg thing, but I suspect my kind at least have a claim. I’m biased, I know. But, I mean, there’s a long tradition, right? You know what I’m talking about. We’re sort of in the same field. Anyway, that’s immaterial. Enuncium. Yeah, I told you I’d tell you how you got here, what this was all about. Oh! and your last mistake, the final lesson. Let’s start there.
“You are dead because you were careless with who you let near your spaceship. Proximally, anyway. That’s how I killed nearly …” the Murkist paused and looked behind him and then back at Mazziri. “Actually, everyone in this particular boneyard, yeah, I think they all made the same mistake as you. And the thing that baffles me, is how it’s not widely known. Your ship disappears, and people think, well that’s funny, space travel is dangerous, though. For certain people, I guess that’s true.
“The distal reason, though—the real reason you’re sitting in that chair—is that you placed a hit on the Chancellor of Athos’s daughter Carolina, presumably on behalf of the Iophan government. We’re going to discuss that a little bit. That’s the part where you get to talk, but suffice it to say, you shouldn’t have done that, certainly not without disclosing her identity to the people you were contracting, and certainly certainly not in Mirsong Rex’s flagship outpost without his explicit blessing to do so. That is why you’re in that chair, Mr. Mazziri. It’s not that I care about Athos one way or another or have any feeling at all about the Dreeson girl. Part of it is the principle of the thing. You don’t ask a man like me to kill somebody without disclosing a piece of information like that. And you certainly don’t conceal it because the real reason you’re killing the girl, again presumably, is that you want Athos out in the Letters for some reason. You’re going to tell me those reasons, because neither I nor Mirsong Rex agree with you, Mr. Mazziri. We don’t want Athos in the Letters. This is our territory. It’s not Athos’s, and it certainly isn’t Iophos’s territory, Mr. Mazziri. The real real reason you’re in that chair learning your last lesson might be the oldest lesson that men like me have been teaching men like you since men first became men: you tried to take what is ours from us.”
The Murkist knelt down to Mazziri’s eye level, a meter from his head, locking eyes with his victim, taking a measure of his spirit. Some are defiant. Some are resigned. Some are pitiful and cowardly. Few took Mazziri’s posture—cold and seemingly neutral.
“I think that’s about all I have to say. It’s your time to share now. This is the part where you get to make your choice. You can be forthright, and this can be over quickly. Or,” the Murkist stood and looked over his shoulder, then turned and pointed. “You see that one, third from your left. That was a man named Konefft, I think. It’s hard to remember them all, or which is which. It’s beside the point. Anyway, let’s say that’s Konefft. He had a large sum of money that didn’t belong to him, and he had a tremendously stubborn mind. He thought I wasn’t a professional. He thought that I might kill him by mistake before I got it out of him and that his woman and kid might get to keep the money. Do you know how I know that?”
The Murkist paused, calling up the display on his face shield.
“That’s right. Because I have a neuroband on you. A lot of your new neighbors weren’t familiar with the process, but I’m guessing that you are. Iophos even trained you to resist, I’ll bet. Do you want to test your training, Mr. Mazziri? I’ve got training too.”
The Murkist gestured to the seated skeletons in that foggy red haze.
“See. I’m well trained, Mr. Mazziri. And, I don’t often get to say it, but I love my job. I love my job. Is there anything else in the universe you’d rather be doing than this?”