Chapter 1Ф
The evening air was warm and stale as Maz Kort walked out of the swinging double doors, leaving the grunting voices and the mediocre music behind. He sniffed it in, looked up at the sky, and smiled. It seemed to him that he had never felt so invigorated in his life. In other words, he was so drunk that he had no idea where or even who he was. He stumbled over to where several lift sleds were parked, selected one, and keyed in the access code on its door panel. It did not open. Of course, Maz realized. He hadn’t used that code in years. Besides, this was not his sled.
The subway, he thought. Right. I came by subway. He began walking down the sidewalk, and the few people that passed him gave him impolite looks, probably based on his smell. The establishment he had just left was known for the less-than-ideal reputation of its various patrons, and accordingly it was situated well apart from the better-traveled parts of the city. As the sun sank lower in the sky, fewer people appeared on the sidewalk, and the ones that did venture out at this hour had furtive looks, as if each one expected a robbery at any moment. “Not a praaabl’m,” Maz belched to himself. “Got ma blaster right ‘ere.” He patted it affectionately, swaggered a bit, and then felt himself yanked off the sidewalk by the hair and slammed face-first into a brick wall in a very dark alley that he should have been watching out for. His gun was quickly loosed from its holster and pressed firmly against his back. “You will take me to Aranak Veldor, now,” whispered an unfamiliar voice.
“I musta had more’n I thought, ‘cuz…” He let the sentence go unfinished, prompted by the increased pressure of the gun in his back. “Okay, okay,” he said.
“Look straight ahead,” ordered the voice. “Say nothing to anyone except that you need to see Aranak immediately. You do not want to play games with me.”
Genuine fear, or the closest thing to it that could ooze its way into his befuddled mind, took over for a moment, and he began walking obediently. The stranger behind him steered him away from the subway; apparently he knew something about the man he was trying to reach. Maz turned the next corner and walked briskly down the street. The buildings here were very close together, and almost no sunlight made it down as far as the street. It was dusk, and the street lamps began to come on, but many of them on this street were broken. As he walked, Maz began to piece together a plan for getting himself out of this mess. The stranger was still holding the blaster to his back; surely this would come across as suspicious to anyone Maz were to talk to.
People began to appear again on the sidewalks, but these were a different sort of people. They were all mean-faced, shifty-eyed, and well-armed. They did not walk in groups, but there were tens of them stalking, slinking, and sometimes running in and out of buildings. This was a sector of the city that no one liked to be in, even those who lived here. Except for people high up, of course. That was why Aranak Veldor was here. No one stopped to look at Maz, but that came as no surprise. No one would challenge his assailant here in the open, even if it were obvious what was going on. People minded their own business in these parts. But when he reached the Den, that’s when they’d start asking questions. Maz knew it. They’d have this punk on the floor in seconds, and then Maz would show him a thing or two about what can happen in dark alleys.
They reached the Den. It was a large, low building overlooked by towers at each of the four corners. There were many windows, but few of them were lit. Most of what went on in the Den was underground, of course. Maz walked through the front doors and up to the front desk. The room resembled a hotel lobby, and the attendant at the desk, though he carried a seven-foot shock prod staff, wore a tuxedo, and looked very proper. He looked up as the two entered, nodded once to Maz, and then turned back to whatever he had been reading.
“Ahem,” Maz coughed, hoping to draw attention to himself. “I must speak with Aranak Veldor, immediately.” He over-enunciated each word in an effort to make it as obvious as possible that he was being forced to say them. As an added emphasis, he rolled his eyes backward and raised his eyebrows, indicating the stranger behind him. The blaster’s barrel rubbed against a vertebra and made him wince. The attendant, however, merely gave a shrug of annoyance.
“I know who you are. Just go on in.”
Maz almost said more, but the stranger started walking, so he was compelled to do the same. Why hadn’t the attendant asked about the man behind him?
He had no better luck with any of the other security checkpoints. Each time he stated his errand he was allowed to proceed without question, and he did not dare say anything to ask for help; when they were alone the stranger reiterated the consequences he would face if here were to deviate from his instructions. At last they reached Veldor’s office, several levels below the street. This time the secretary took a retina scan of Maz, but again she ignored the stranger. Go on in, she said.
The door opened on a small, closed hallway. The door behind them shut, and Maz waited anxiously for Veldor to open the one ahead so he could at least find out what was going on.
At last the door opened, and Maz stepped through. Aranak Veldor’s unhappy face glared at him from across his desk.
“This had better be important, you slug-faced decapod!” he yelled, rising to his feet. “Don’t you know I’m…”
There was a loud thwack, and Maz’s eyes rolled back in his head as he collapsed to the floor, unconscious. Veldor blinked once and then sat back down. “Oh,” he said in a resigned voice. “It’s you.”
Mirana had never made a visit as the Shadow Master before without her armor, but either it was still holding up against the Ice Master’s power or it had not yet recovered from whatever Rax had done to it in an attempt to kill Mirana, because Mirana had been unable to reactivate it. There was actually no guarantee that the armor would find its way back to her now that she had left it so far away, but it had found her in the first place, so it seemed fair to expect it to do so again once it recharged. Besides, controlling the armor remotely had been the only way to get clear of that building without Rax following her. And the chance of getting access to whatever the helmet recorded while it was on White Mercury made the risk seem worthwhile. But it was a little disappointing to have to use her regular voice with Veldor.
“We need to talk,” she said when she was right up against his desk. He seemed surprised to hear a woman’s voice speaking out of the hazy darkness, but whatever prejudices he may have had did not seem to ease his sense of intimidation.
“I told you everything. I swear.”
Mirana was inclined to believe that part; the last time she had been here, she had put Veldor in sufficient fear of his life that she was confident he had spilled everything he knew about Trelan Thendrak’s excursions to outlying worlds. If Thendrak had found anything on any of them, he had erased all trace. But that was not why Mirana was here.
“Tell me about Meldin Kelar.”
“Who?”
“He worked on some of Smurgal Horlock’s ships. There was one voyage where his flight data was completely erased.”
Veldor’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he went somewhere and didn’t want a record of it. But he didn’t have the skills to erase records like that.”
“How… did you come by this information?”
Mirana almost told him; she was fairly pleased with herself for correlating her father’s lack of recorded activity with a similar vacancy on one of Horlock’s starships after following up on the connections she had noticed on Holdaris Prime. But this man was not worth the breath it would take to rehearse it.
“Where did he go?”
“I’ll have to look it up…” Veldor reached for his computer console, but Mirana slammed her hand down over his, causing him to wince in pain.
“If it were in there, I would have found it already. You erased those records. And you can’t afford to not remember who you’ve done that kind of favor for. Where did he go?”
Veldor gulped. “If I could have a few days
to think about it…”
Mirana extended her arm and sent a tendril of black energy out to encircle Veldor’s neck. “Think quickly.”
Veldor closed his eyes, his whole body tense against the coil of black. “Meldin Kelar… Young man, dark hair, about my height? Graviton engineer, I think?”
Mirana let the energy fade from around Veldor’s neck, but she did not grace his words with a response, either. Hearing her father described in such a cursory way made her ache for him unexpectedly, remembering the details Veldor could not have recounted – the way her father’s eyes seemed to sparkle when he smiled, the way he would get excited as soon as they left the city on each camping trip. She forced the memories down, waiting for Veldor to calm down and finish backpedalling.
“Yes, there was a man who wanted to lease a fast shuttle for a week or so, with no records kept. Paid for everything up front. I remember because he wasn’t the sort to come around here. Kept looking around, like he was searching for an exit.”
“Tell me.”
“I didn’t mean to pry, mind you, but I had to make sure it wasn’t anywhere that might get me in trouble. The trip was to the Uraxis Nebula. Must have been an astronomer or something. Is this… some kind of family thing?”
Mirana’s breath caught in her throat. Palandora. That was not a planet she would have guessed her father would ever have visited, seeing as how the Plasma Masters had only found a way into the nebula years after Meldin Kelar had died. And they had not even found anything interesting. To make matters worse, Mirana had actually been on Palandora shortly after the war had ended, just to check up on Kayleen Rax and see whether she was involved in anything that might lead to Dark Viper. Had she really been that close without realizing it?
She looked back at Veldor, who was now himself looking around as if searching for an exit. “If you know anything else,” Mirana goaded, “now would be an excellent time to tell me.”
“There’s nothing else!”
“Because if I find that you are lying, or that you have left out anything important…”
“I swear!”
“… I will come back here. You would not be the first man I have punished for lack of cooperation. And you will not speak of this to anyone.”
Veldor nodded, eying the prostrate form of Maz Kort near the door. Mirana doubted that Maz would be a problem, given the low likelihood of his remembering any of this.
“Shall I exit through the door this time?”
Veldor nodded and hurriedly keyed his door open. On her last visit, Mirana had blown his door open with a missile to make her exit. She missed her armor again as she walked out of the office, leaving the bewildered crime boss behind. But after more than a decade of wondering, she finally had a lead on where her father had gained his power, or at least what he had done with it. For the first time since she had gone back for Nedward Simmons, Mirana felt like her efforts had started to pay off.