The Frontier-Beacon Worlds
Kajur
When they came for me, I’d been on Kajur for a little over a year. Kajur was pretty much the end of the line, a pretty green-beacon world at the very edge of the Milky Way galaxy, barely inhabited. I think that there may have been about sixty people there, but that might also have been an overestimation. I didn’t feel like checking the information boards to find out, though. Usually, I would see no more than three or four people in any given day, but that’s what I came here for. The few of us on Kajur were here because nobody else was, and we were the sorts who wanted to be as far away from the center of things as possible.
I was sitting at one of three tables outside Andrea Cable’s little shop, eating breakfast. Of the sixty or so people on the planet, most of us ate there at least once a week. The food was good enough that even the two guys living on the other continent would fly in a few times a month. I think the difference was that she personally grew or caught most of the things she served. No artificial food is replicated from a template there.
In any case, I had just walked the kilometer or so from my little luxury cabin by the inland ocean to get something to kill the pounding in my head. Artificial food just seemed to feed the beast most days, and I was only really sober a few days a week anyway, so what the heck? Why not get something actually worth eating? Besides, the walk helped to clear the cobwebs a little. The light didn’t help any, though. Two suns was two too many. I really needed to call up some sunglasses if I was going to keep getting wasted all the time. Not like I had anything else going on anyway, besides making myself fade.
There were two of them, just exactly the kind of people she would send. My combat eyepiece careted them immediately, along with a threat assessment. The smaller of them was at least ten centimeters taller than me, and 15 kilos of muscle heavier. Both moved like they had had combat training, and I could tell they were both armed. If there had been an actual full AI node on Kajur, I might have stood a chance. Then the damned guns wouldn’t work. Long as it was only knives, I would have been fine. Just as well. I didn’t have much fight left in me. I stayed where I was, eating the last of my breakfast. Andrea walked up as I finished, while the hunters were looking around. Neither of them had spotted me yet. I guess my tech was better than theirs. I could still fade out, make a run for the wormhole entrance. It was only a hundred meters away. Nah. After three years of running, I was tired.
I drank the last of my juice and watched them approach. They regarded me warily as I sat calmly. I spared Andrea a brief smile and said, “Thanks, Miss Cable. That was one of the best meals I have ever had the pleasure of eating, and I’m damn near three hundred years old.”
“Rare praise indeed, sir!” She curtseyed slightly and grinned, a young girl’s grin from a woman who looked every bit a century older than me. She gathered the dishes and walked into her shop. I’d already keyed over the computer time, so it was covered. I used my node to throw in a ten hour tip, probably five times the cost of the meal itself, but less than I would have paid in any restaurant that was capable of producing a meal of that quality. I sat with my hands flat on the table so the two approaching would see I wasn’t trying anything.
“Jacob Chou?” The larger of them, I guess he was in charge, stood about 2 meters from the table, hands near his waist as he spoke.
I nodded. “Used to be. That name’s good as any now. Karina send you?”
He grinned suddenly. “You have someone else wants you dead, Chou?”
I raised one eyebrow slightly. “Son, I’ve had more people try to kill me than you ever met in your life. I seem to have a talent for makin’ people crazy. Robots too, sometimes.”
“She wants you.” I didn’t speak. He went on after a minute of silence. “You coming quietly?”
I nodded. “Yep. I’m real tired of running. Didn’t think she would keep looking for me after all this time.”
He tilted his head slightly. “If you hadn’t killed her family, she might have been willing to forgive and forget. As it is, though, she wants you. Preferably alive, but dead is worth half too.”
“Not gonna debate it with you, tiny, but I didn’t kill them. She wanted the artifact, I sold it to her. Not my fault it wasn’t what she thought. As it was, I barely got out of there alive myself.”
“The thing killed her entire family and about a thousand other people before they were able to stop it. You brought it, you had at least some idea what it was. You are responsible.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. I haven’t slept right since. That’s why I’m ready to go back. I need a minute, though. I just want something from inside. You can go get it for me, if you like. It’s nothing dangerous. I expect the trip back is gonna take a week or so, an’ I need some travelling supplies.” I had already sent the order to the kiosk node inside, so it should be ready. Was gonna cost about a thousand times as much as the meal and the tip, but it wasn’t real money anyway.
“No tricks, Chou. If I have to, I can retire on half.”
“No tricks, man. Told you, I don’t want to run anymore. It’s just some of the best real whiskey in the known galaxy. She has two bottles left, and I can’t sleep unless I’m half lit.”
He grunted, turned, and went into Andrea’s store. I turned to the other guy, small goon. “Tell you what. How much are you getting paid to bring me back?”
Small goon said, “You can’t bargain your way out of this. No way I’m letting a hundred thousand hours get away.”
“You miss my point, man. I don’t want you to let me go. How about this? I’ll transfer a hundred thou over to you right now, just to you…if you shoot me dead.”
He stared at me for a few seconds. “I…we can’t afford to lose this bounty.”
“You aren’t listening. Kill me. You alone will get a hundred, then you guys will split 50k, and your partner will be none the wiser. You can tell him I tried to get away. Make a choice.” I smiled reassuringly. “Be a pal.”
Before he could get anything to actually come out of his mouth, his partner came back out, holding a bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label reverently in both hands. “Um, Chou, how much did this cost?”
“Ten thou. You want a bottle? She still has one left.”
“You can’t buy us off! We are going to take you back, and that’s that!” Big goon sounded very emphatic at that.
I held up my hand. “Hang on, chief. I got a proposition for you. You and your partner are already gonna split a hundred grand if you deliver me to her, 50k if I die. How about this? I’ll transfer a hundred to each of you, you kill me, and you split the 50k. You will both be rich enough your kids won’t ever have to work. That a deal?”
Big goon thought about it for almost a minute. I could almost see the rusty gears trying to turn. Finally, “Chou, you that worried about going home?”
I nodded. “You have no idea. You would be doing me a favor if you just shot me, anyway. I haven’t slept right in years, and it’s enough that even the node can’t keep me fully adjusted. Of course, that could also be from all the hackers been in my head the last few years, changing my biodata so I could change my name.”
The big guy looked at me askance. “That shit’s dangerous. They change the wrong thing, you just die. I mean, that is just crazy.”
I grinned. “Look into my eyes, mister goon.”
“Dean.”
I said, nonplussed, “What?”
“Dean. My name is Dean. This is Jerry. We been partners for some years now. Let me talk it over with him.” They stared at one another. I could envision the textdata flowing back and forth until finally Dean grunted again. “Ok, Mister Chou. You make the transfers and I will put a nice mercy shot right through your node. You won’t feel a thing.” He pulled a gun out of the shoulder holster, a military grade slug thrower (so it would have worked, AI or not; Dean was a real throwback) and held it loosely pointed at the ground.
I said, “You’re doing me a favor. Hang on.” I initiated transfers to both of them, 100k each, then slipped a tiny bit of hackcode in as well. Within two seconds, they were both slumped in chairs outside the café, unconscious. Idiots. I could just as easily have stopped their brain function or heartbeat. I did a deep dive into their nodes, something extremely illegal and really really unethical, and erased all memory of me from their consciousness. I let them keep the computer time. It didn’t really mean anything anyway. I had access to unlimited amounts. I ordered food for them and walked to the wormhole junction. By the time they woke with no idea where they were or what they were doing there, I was twelve lightyears away, headed for another rimshot planet where I could lose myself for another year. I held the whiskey in my hands. No way I would leave something like that for two goons too stupid to have read my file.
Anyone who had done that would never have allowed me into their heads. They would have known how dangerous I can be.
