Profiteer

Dom heard her. “There are more millionaires per capita on Bakunin than anywhere else in the Confederacy.”

 

Tetsami snorted. “Also more rackets, screwballs, hustlers, political dissidents, and religious fanatics.”

 

“—and two hundred megagrams is not really that much.”

 

Tetsami gaped. “Not that much?”

 

“Not in corporate terms. GA&A had at least three, maybe five, hundred megs in hard currency on the premises just for clandestine expenses. For things we didn’t want records— Problem?”

 

“No.” You couldn’t rob a bank ... “Tell the cab to put down somewhere.”

 

Dom looked out the window. “Where?”

 

“Anywhere.”

 

Dom tapped on the partition. It went transparent again. “Put us down at the nearest hotel.”

 

There was another knowing look from the driver as they started down.

 

“What’s on your mind?” Dom asked her.

 

“Wait.”

 

The Leggett set down on the roof of a high-rise on the west side. Tetsami figured it was expensive as hell, but Dom could afford it. They stepped out on to a small landing field next to a restaurant that took up half the roof. The cab lifted off, leaving them alone in the center of a number of parked contragravs.

 

The restaurant was enclosed by a transparent dome and seemed to be doing a healthy business with the breakfast crowd. Tetsami walked away from it until she reached the railing marking the edge of the roof.

 

She noticed a slight hesitation before Dom joined her by the railing.

 

Fear of heights? she wondered.

 

When Dom asked her again, he had to raise his voice over the sound of the wind. “Now, what is it?”

 

“Where is all this money?”

 

Dom turned toward her, and cast a glance back at the restaurant. No one was paying attention to them. “A safe bunkered in the third sublevel of the office complex at Godwin Arms.” Realization seemed to strike him. “You can’t be thinking—”

 

Tetsami laughed. “What the hell else would I be thinking?”

 

The hotel was set on a rise. They were maybe half a klick above the city. Hell of a view of East Godwin, craters and all. Dom was staring east, toward the mountains.

 

“Do you have any idea—” he started, shaking his head. “A Confederacy troop-carrier. A Paralian-built Barracuda-class drop-ship. That means at least a hundred marines, ten secondary transports, weaponry that I don’t even want to think about.”

 

“Look, if you can tell me that two hundred megs isn’t much money. I can tell you that the quickest way to get it is to break into your own safe.”

 

“You don’t understand the security on that complex—”

 

“Do you understand the security?”

 

“I designed most of it.”

 

Tetsami turned around and grinned at Dom. She brushed windblown hair out of her eyes. “So, with your knowledge and six hundred K on our side, tell me it can’t be done.”

 

“It can’t be done.”

 

She snorted and turned her face out of the wind, leaning on the railing. “Yeah. And you think it’s more likely that you are going to build that six hundred K into another Godwin Arms?”

 

“I built GA&A.”

 

Suddenly he shows some emotion, she thought. “How much money did you start with?”

 

There was a pause.

 

“Hell of a lot more than you have now, right?”

 

A longer pause, then Dom’s voice was back to normal. “This is your area of expertise, not mine. What did you have in mind?” He looked off at the eastern mountains again.

 

She looked toward the range herself. She could see some purple-orange, where East Godwin disintegrated into forest. There used to be suburbs back that way, but they’d been abandoned when East Godwin went to its own little hell. Most of the real development was behind her, where Godwin built westward, as if the urban center were slowly crawling away from its thousand square kilometers of infected slum.

 

That’s what East Godwin is, a trail of slime left by the city as it crawls away from the mountains.

 

Tetsami decided that her lack of sleep was allowing her mind to wander.

 

What the hell did she have in mind? Whatever Dom said, this wasn’t exactly her area of expertise. She was a systems expert, a data thief. She’d never planned a job to physically go into a target. Before yesterday, she’d never even fired a laser in anger.

 

Cool it, she told herself, that’s the number one screwup—don’t ever start doubting yourself. Never on the job. That’s what gave the young software jockeys the edge. They were too inexperienced to worry about the risks.

 

She told herself to concentrate on her assets. The primary asset was the fact that she had access to the designer of a previous generation security setup. She’d be willing to crack almost anything with that edge.

 

“We obviously need a team to go in—”

 

“Obviously.”

 

Wow, she thought, what sage advice. Sheesh. “We’ll need someone to handle the comm in the complex. That’s my specialty, running around the systems in there—”

 

“The mainframes were destroyed.”