Shadowkill

##

By the time he got back from the kitchen, Rose had stripped out of the dress, changed into tunic and trousers. She’d gone through Barracuda’s suite, cleaned the place, including the case with the shielded com. “I thought I’d leave most of my stuff and clear him out. Might confuse folks about who did what to whom. For a while anyway. Anything moving out there?”

“No. Nothing till we hit the, pad out back.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Thirty hours later, tired and grimy, but with everything they’d gone in for, they were in their ship on the isthmus and Autumn Rose was talking with Digby.

“We’ve got some strong leads and a prisoner. He’s Omphalos, Kikun says, though his papers say Mimishay Foundation. Kikun thinks the oof’narc knows where Shadith is and the Dyslaera. We’re going to talk to him in a little bit.”

“Wait. If he’s really Omphalos, you won’t be able to touch him with what you’ve got on that ship. Bring him here.”

“Now?”

“Fast as you can kick it. You can do stasis?”

“There’s a box on board.”

“Good, Keep him under, you don’t want him suiciding.”

“That oof’narc? He wouldn’t…”

“Listen, Rose. I don’t care what kind of jerk he is or how much he loves himself, if he’s pushed to the wall, he’ll be dead before you know what’s happening.”

“Right. I didn’t go to all this trouble to waste him. See you soon.”

Unprisoner 1: First Leg On The Shadow Hunt

Weersyll 2 was a small rocky world inhabited by lichen and worms.

Weersyll the star was a hot greenish-yellow dwarf out in the middle of nowhere like a spark that popped from a fire into the middle of a black rug.

After the slavetrading debacle, when Omphalos acquired Bolodo Neyuregg Ltd. through heavily insulated surrogates, the reconstituted Company set up headquarters at the Bolodo substation on Weersyll-there wasn’t a populated world in Known Space that would have them and they couldn’t operate out of a Clandestine Hole.

The new set of Execs made the best of what they had; it wasn’t bad. Weersyll might be in the middle of nowhere, but it was also equidistant from three clusters thick with planetbearing stars, clusters undergoing an explosion of development and lusting for cheap labor they could kick out once the job was done. Ships buzzed in and out every hour of the day and night, customers looking for specific types of laborers, transports bringing in cadres who’d finished their stints, taking other cadres from the domes to the worlds who’d bought their services, still more bringing in new contractees-surplus men and women who preferred the security of the cadres to starving, convicts dumped into bondservice by one world or another, people on the run from some danger or other, seeking safety in the anonymity of a labor cadre. Names didn’t count here. There weren’t even numbers. They were listed by cell prints and vended that way.

Omphalos hadn’t bothered themselves about what happened to Shadith once they stripped what they thought were her memories and handed her over to the Contract market. All his annoying them got Ginny no farther than that. It did get him her cell print-and sneers behind their privacy shields, he didn’t have to see their ugly faces to know that.

After he’d collected a Pilot, a pair of mercs, and a Sikkul Paem for drive crew at Ilkabahar Pit, Ginny headed for Weersyll and the Records of Bolodo Neyuregg Ltd. He spent the insplit time laboring in the workshop, retooling a number of the EYEs, constructing and programming specialized ticks and borers. He had everything he needed for the work, all the tools and materiel. The Omphalites at Mimishay had spread themselves on this ship; they drooled when they thought of Bol Mutiar.

On the fifteenth day the ship surfaced at Teegah’s Limit and began moving sublight toward Weersyll 2.