Vectors 12

Pexlini

The guy sitting across the kajhod table from me is called Glaylvesh Tceihisi-Sh'llagh Ro'khellselan, and that is the least of his crimes against society. He is wider than he is tall, which is partly down to species and mostly down to bad habits; his skin is a dark magenta colour, and his forehead sports a sort of square, ribbed process which looks like a biological extractor fan... which, come to think of it, is more or less what it is. On either side of his snub nose, his eyes gleam. Currently, they are green, completely green around little black dots of pupils.

He smiles at me. His species has deciduous teeth, continually regrowing, they don't bother cleaning them, just wait for them to drop out and new ones to come in. So his smile is not a pretty sight. "You want to raise the stakes," he says.

"Uh-huh," I say in agreeable tones. There is a little knot of spectators gathering around the table now. Just a little one, because Banjathron Sinooni's gambling house is full of distractions - music, chatter, the whirr of dabo tables and the click of dice, the odours of several dozen assorted chemical stimulants for as many species - but we have definitely attracted attention. Sinooni himself is glancing in our direction. He has one set of arms crossed over his chest, while his other pair of hands rests on his hips. Banjathron Sinooni is a shade under three metres tall and fractionally less tough than the hull of a starship. People don't argue with him much.

I flick a Lobi crystal out onto the round table. Ro'khellselan flicks it back. "I don't want these Alpha Quadrant baubles," he says. "Not against this." He waves one multiply-beringed hand over his stake - latinum, always handy, a couple of gems of unknown provenance, and, most importantly of all, the isolinear chips which I'm actually here for. I couldn't just buy them, there's no way he'd just let me buy them - but he is one of those people who's a sucker for a game of chance, and I have carefully worked him up to the point where those chips are on his side of the table, and I just need something to put on my side, now -

"So what do you want?" I pick the Lobi crystal up. Waste not, want not. 'Sides, this one's authentic.

Ro'khellselan's eyes turn from green to a sickly yellow. His gaze flicks across me, from Umaro Ajbit sitting at my right hand, to Goyar at my left, back to Ajbit. "Make it interesting," he says. One stubby finger points at Ajbit. "Her. Skinnier than I like 'em usually, but...."

I force a smile. "'kay," I say. "She's got her uses." Ajbit turns towards me, mouth opening for, well, I'd guess she's not going to say "sure, Pex, I'm good with this."

"Relax," I say before she can speak - and getting a word in before a Bajoran takes quick reflexes, believe me. "I know this game, no sweat, it's all covered."

I hope I'm right. Sinooni is definitely watching us, and he has a rep for keeping an honest gaming house, people who try to renege on their bets around here tend to find out what his four hands can do to them. I really hope I'm right. Personnel department gets all sniffy about it when you lose a senior officer in a game of chance.

Though, admittedly, this particular kajhod game has about as much chance element in it as chess.

Ro'khellselan smiles again. He picks up the metal bowl with the five pieces in it, starts to swirl it around and around in his hand. His eyes turn red with concentration. This is why we're playing kajhod and not something like kadis-kot or Terran poker. Kinda hard to keep a poker face when you have a pair of mood rings for eyeballs. But concentration... you expect concentration.

The pieces rattle in the bowl, striking the blunt pyramid projections scattered randomly around the inside. The pieces are irregularly-shaped ingots of metal; the score is determined by the positions they finally land in - and none of them must touch. Hal Welti told me once it was something like an ancient Terran game called "Pass the Pigs" or something.

My feet tense. Ro'khellselan's eyes are the colour of old blood. He swirls, and swirls, and then in one movement inverts the bowl and slams it down onto the middle of the table -

- and, at the same time, my long little toe keys the magnetic phase inverter hidden in my boot.

I know I'm right. I know he's cheating. I know he has a set of selective magnetronic devices in those rings, that he's making those metal ingots sit up and beg. I know my phase inverter will mess things up for him, big time. At least, I think I know it. If I'm wrong... well, I guess Ajbit will find the whole experience educational, anyway.

He pulls the bowl away with a triumphant flourish, revealing the pieces.

His eyes drain of their colour, going from red to pink to dead shocked white. I toe off the phase inverter.

"Wowsers," I say, looking at the neat little pile of ingots on the table. "All five touching. Grand forfeit. Don't see those very often." Ro'khellselan's eyes turn to one of the ornate rings on his hand. So that's the one with the gimmick, then.

Another hand, the size of a medium-sized dinner plate, comes down onto the table and scoops up the pieces. Banjathron Sinooni lifts them towards the hairy thing that must be his face, 'cause it's on the front of his head. He looks at them. He lets them drop, one by one, back onto the table, where they clatter and bounce, and I am very glad I turned the magnetism off.

"Fair game," he says in a near-subsonic rumble. He looks at me. "Your game." He looks at Ro'khellselan. "Pay the stake."

Ro'khellselan's fat face is frozen in woe. He pushes the pile of latinum and jewels and isolinear chips across the table. I pick up one jewel, a gleaming clear faceted thing with a green tinge like water in a stream. I hand it to Sinooni. "Gotta tip the house, man."

Sinooni's huge hand closes around it. The big fella is nobody's fool, he knew Ro'khellselan cheated, and I cheated back, and I cheated better. So that made it a fair game, in his eyes. A game of skill, not chance, but still a fair one.

"Grand forfeit ends the game," Sinooni rumbles, warning both of us not to push our luck. Fine by me. I pocket the latinum, the remaining gems, the all-important chips. I can't tell what direction Ro'khellselan is looking in, now, because his eyes have darkened to a pure black in which his pupils are no longer visible.

"Guess I'll, uh, be moseying along, then." I rise from the table. I don't know about Ro'khellselan's eyes, but Ajbit's are promising me we'll be having a long discussion when we're safely back on the shuttle. "Been fun. As ever. Good game, fella." Ro'khellselan does not respond, except for a faint wheezing from the grille on his forehead. It's the sort of silence that speaks volumes.

The three of us saunter out. I make sure to saunter pretty darn quickly. Sinooni won't let Ro'khellselan's goons start anything on the premises... but the gaming house is a good long way from the shuttle pad, and I am very much aware of every millimetre of distance.

We pick up our weapons from the door guards. Sinooni is punctilious about keeping weapons out of his place, and equally punctilious about giving them back. It's one of the ways he keeps in business. He's talking to Ro'khellselan, too, now, keeping him occupied, giving us some time to get clear. Not that he cares anything for us, of course, just that he wants to keep his reputation - for running a gaming den where you have at least a half-decent chance of making it home alive with your winnings.

So Ajbit gets her sonic antiproton pistol, and Goyar his Rom-made plasma pistol, and I get a weird-looking gizmo that resembles a sort of wicker-work shopping basket with glowsticks in the weave. It's amazing how many people still don't recognize it for what it is. I feel fractionally more confident with it strapped in place. Still, it is night in Landing City on Gyruna IV, and the local police are still a pious hope more than an actuality, and the shuttle is quite a way away. Transporters? I don't even want to think about what might happen to a transporter signal around here.

"OK, gang, let's act casual," I say in a cheerful undertone. "Bit of casual... sprinting, maybe?" Goyar gives me a troubled look, Ajbit a dirty one. I can see the conversation we're going to have will be a long one. But she doesn't say anything now, as we move off down the maze of alleyways towards the shuttle pad. If this place was properly organized, there'd be proper streets and streetlights and police patrols and other things that make you feel safe. But, then, if it was properly organized, Sinooni and Ro'khellselan wouldn't be allowed within a parsec of the place, so hey.

"Try and stick with a crowd," I say, pretty uselessly as it is night, and most people have better sense than to be out. There are street lights, some of them. And there is light spilling out of various all-night establishments like Sinooni's. We can see where we're going, we can see what's coming. For the moment. As we get closer to the shuttle pad, though, things tend more towards warehouses and workshops and other closed-at-night sort of spots, and my bet is that's where we're gonna get jumped.

"S - uh, Pex," says Goyar, "I've got a feeling we're being followed."

"No kidding," I mutter. At least one goon trailing us from behind, but the others are circling, moving through the maze of alleyways to catch us from the flanks as soon as they figure they can get away with it. Of course, they don't necessarily know this place any better than we do, they might get lost along the way. Hey, I can hope.

The lighted buildings, the shops and clubs and dwelling places, are thinning out now, increasingly being replaced by dark blank square things full of crates. Full of crates and no help. Their internal security systems - which can be pretty sophisticated, actually - won't lift an electronic finger to help us as we pass by.

And that's kind of a shame, as we could definitely do with some help. I make it at least seven of the opposition, in two groups, one to our left, one a little behind and to our right. The crossfire is going to be kinda not a healthy place to be.

"Dodge right and take the bunch behind us," I say. Ajbit nods. She unholsters her pistol, and her face looks grimmer than usual.

We turn and scurry through the gap between two warehouses. I unsling my own weapon. It encloses the whole of my right hand, feeling uncomfortable but oddly reassuring at the same time.

The movement's been spotted. There are shouts, and a line of dirty green light stabs out of the dark towards us. Disruptors. Cheap disruptors, probably low grade, probably not enough to burn through our heavy-duty personal shields. Probably. Not certainly.

Ajbit snaps off a returning shot with her gun, and I hear a yell and a thud. She has the thing set for heavy stun, fair enough, but sonic antiprotons do kinda jellify the nervous system, even on that setting. Nothing a few weeks of painful physiotherapy won't put right, though. Goyar fires, too, hot green plasma bolts flashing across the night. He is sportingly aiming above their heads. Warning shots. He's such a nice lad really. I wish this situation called for a nice lad.

I take aim at a half-seen presence, and my finger finds the firing stud.

The thing on my hand is technically known as a fluidic antiproton wrist lance - a piece of retro-engineered Undine technology, based on stuff salvaged after that nasty scrap at Earth Spacedock. Me, I just think of it as a portable war crime. The lance shudders and whines, building up power for a fraction of a second - then discharging it as a long, wavering, red-golden lightning bolt that terminates in a blast of flame. I hear a scream, which suggests I've hit something non-vital - blown away a limb or something: the lance doesn't really do a stun setting. In fact, on the setting I have it on -

More fiery light snakes across the ground, spitting sparks. The fluidic antiproton reaction sends these instability ripples across nearby solid surfaces; secondary energy pulses that do as much damage as the main blast, and do it in all sorts of unpredictable places.

"Stop, drop and roll!" I shout helpfully. Hey, it's good advice when you're on fire. Less good, maybe, when it's the ground that's on fire, but, y'know, that's their problem just now, not mine.

"Shuttle," I snap at Goyar. Ajbit, who is quick on the uptake, is already moving. We have taken out one group of pursuers, we might have time to reach the shuttle before the other group catches up with us. Especially as the weapons fire must have given them furiously to think, as they say.

We head towards the shuttle pad at a dead run. There is shouting behind us, and fire alarms, and lots of stuff I just don't want to deal with right now. More disruptor beams flash near us. They're lousy shots, fortunately for us. Ajbit turns and lets fly with a couple of sonic AP bolts, which seems to discourage them.

Suddenly, we're out of the shelter of the warehouses, and into the empty safety space around the shuttle pad. I can see our ship, now, safely parked on the permacrete base. Safety. Kinda, anyway. Not something Ro'khellselan's goons can bring down with hand weapons, at least.

More disruptors. Something slams into my shoulder and my shields flare. I turn around, crouch, send another bolt of eldritch fire from the lance at our pursuers, pause briefly to admire the fiery writhing star it draws on the ground. Goyar is firing, too, and this time his plasma bolts are aimed lower. Kid's learning.

"Move!" I dredge up enough energy for a sprint towards the shuttle. With my left hand, I key the remote lock, open the door for us to rush through. The disruptors, silenced for a few seconds, are snapping towards us again. Bolts scar the paintwork of the shuttle's hull. Well, that's all they can do, and besides, the hull is plenty scarred already. We pile inside, and I hit the door controls while Goyar lunges for the pilot's seat.

"Ow," I say, hopping on one leg. "Ow, ow-ow-ow, ow."

"What's wrong?" Ajbit demands. "Pex, did they get you? Where are you hit?"

I hop on my left leg and shake my rattling right boot. "I'm not hit. I just trod on my phase inverter, that's all. Ow."

---

Goyar lifts us off the pad in record time, breaking a few of the local flight control regs in the process. Something tells me I'm gonna get a frosty reception next time I come this way. Indeed, the traffic control station is bleating in my ear over the subspace radio, and Ajbit is yelling in my other ear about "overconfidence" and "hot-shots" and such, and I am having a really hard time ignoring both of them as I dig the crushed phase inverter out of my boot.

It doesn't help that the interior of the shuttle is pretty cramped. Strictly speaking, Ostankino is an auxiliary craft herself, so anything that works as an auxiliary for her has to be pretty tiny. The shuttle is about the same size as a 2150 Starfleet shuttlepod, but probably not as sophisticated.

So, when Goyar says, "Pex, I've got a transmission from the Ostankino," it's actually quite hard for me to hear him over the rest of the row.

"Put it through!" I yell, in the hope of shutting everyone else up. Goyar clicks off the sputtering and cursing from traffic control, and Ajbit gets her temper back under control and subsides into a sullen, angry, mercifully silent glare.

A pale greenish face appears on the comms panel: Pingood, one of my few actual Delta Quadrant officers. She blinks moist eyes at me and her wide batrachian mouth opens. "On course to retrieve you in ten minutes," she says. "However, we are receiving a subspace transmission graded priority zeta two seven. Shall I put it through to you?"

Zeta two seven doesn't sound awfully important, but that's kinda the point of it, if we went around calling the important stuff Alpha One Dynamite or something, people would catch on. "Sure. Patch it straight through."

Pingood blinks again, and then her face vanishes, to be replaced with that of a black-furred Caitian with shiny gold bars on the collar beneath. "This is Admiral M'eioi aboard the USS Timor," she says, and she sounds a bit doubtful. "I've been given this contact frequency and details by -"

"Yeah, right," I interrupt, "gotcha, OK. You wouldn't be on this channel if you weren't meant to be, right? So, what can I do for you?"

"I have a situation," M'eioi says, "where I may need someone with more detailed knowledge of the Delta Quadrant. Specifically -"

"Whoa, whoa," I break in again, "let's not get too specific right now, OK? 'Cause this ain't exactly a secure location." I think for a moment. "If you've got my number, you must have a list, too, right? Third one down from the top of that list, that's the closest point to me, so let's head for that and talk specifics there, right, yeah?"

"That would be at -"

"Yes," I say. "Right. There. There is definitely where it would be at. Let's meet there and talk there, OK? Can make it in, well, maybe forty-eight hours, me. That good with you?"

"I - suppose so." M'eioi's brow gathers in a catty frown. "I hope -"

"Super, great. Seriously, we'll talk, there. Now, not a good time. There and then, I'm all yours, all ears, promise you. See you soon, bye now." And I close the channel.

Ajbit stares at me. "Was all that necessary?" she asks.

"Ohhh, yes," I say.

"But this shuttle's secure, surely?"

"Oh, yeah. Unless someone snuck something in while it was parked, and that would be some job of sneaking, I grant you." The shuttle's security systems are a good two and a half centuries ahead of the rest of it. "But she was being routed through Delta Command's subspace comms net, and my guess is, that is compromised worse than any six politicians you can name." I fish in my cargo pockets, dig out the chips I - won - from Ro'khellselan. "People in this quadrant are better informed about Starfleet than they got any right to be. Including our big pink friend down there.... Hey, did you notice M'eioi's uniform? Science division." Not that I needed the uniform to know that. I rattle the chips in my palm, like the kajhod pieces before you throw them in the bowl. "One hand washes the other, right? We can help with her problem, and she can maybe help us decipher the data on these...."