Profiteer

The only thing on the plus side at the moment was the fact that, now that she’d entered the rarefied atmosphere of corporate economics, the medical treatment was that much better. Shane was getting the full exec layout right in the middle of Central Godwin. It would have been cheaper to boot to the East Side. Tetsami did know some hacks there who were safe.

 

However, it was a given that the East Side of Godwin was crawling with informants and blabbing maggots.

 

Here in Stemmer, she had a chance of getting Shane fixed up without the honcho in charge of GA&A finding out about it. The docs here cost—but they wouldn’t sell you out. Couldn’t, since everything was cash up front, and all it would take for Stemmer to lose most of its lucrative executive clientele would be one info leak.

 

Tetsami stood in one of the private waiting rooms, hoping for word on Shane.

 

“Don’t let this be a fuckup,” she whispered to herself occasionally. Hell, it looked as though someone had set them up. Tetsami kind of hoped that it wasn’t Shane who’d done it. However, Shane was the only person that Dom hadn’t checked five light-years from everywhere. Which meant that if it wasn’t Shane, it could be anybody—

 

“Hey, ‘lil girl, heard you were looking for me.”

 

Tetsami turned around to face the man who had just walked into the room. “Ivor!”

 

Ivor Jorgenson filled the door behind her. He stood over two meters, a head and a half over Tetsami. His hair was snow white, and his eyes were an icy blue.

 

She ran up and hugged him.

 

He patted her on the back and said, “Glad to see you, too, but what the hell’s going on?”

 

“Sit down.” She disengaged and perched herself on one of the overstuffed lounge chairs. “I’ll tell you about it.”

 

Ivor nodded and thrust his bulk down on another chair. “You better, punkin—you gave me one hell of a fright. First a coded message on my comm telling me you got a job for me. Then a message to meet you at Stemmer—you could ‘ve mentioned that it wasn’t you who got busted up.”

 

Tetsami saw the concern on Ivor’s face and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Sorry—I was in such a rush here, I barely got the message out. If you ain’t an exec, it takes a lot of grease to get them pulling here.”

 

“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t you. But what the hell are you doing out in the open? I’ve heard—”

 

“It’s true.”

 

Ivor’s face became very cold. “Who backed the contract?”

 

“Ivor—”

 

“Tell me the bastard who put money on your head—”

 

“Ivor—”

 

“I’ll kill the son of a—”

 

“IVOR!” Tetsami held up her hands until Ivor quieted. “Look, it’s a bit bigger than that. You couldn’t take them by yourself, anyway. Even if I wanted you to.”

 

He sighed and shook his head. “What have you gotten mixed up in this time, punkin?”

 

“Maybe the biggest payoff for one job either of us could ever see.”

 

* * * *

 

As she talked to Ivor, she had to admit that seeing her not-quite-father again gave her an inordinate amount of reassurance. It was both calming and an annoyance for someone who had spent half her life in pursuit of fanatical self-sufficiency.

 

And as she went over the high points and the horrors of her last dozen days, she began to question involving her white-haired “uncle.”

 

It wasn’t because her initial impulse to pull him in was either sentimental or unprofessional. As far as pilots went, Ivor was the best one she knew or knew of. He had once been the ranking member of the Stygian Presidential Guard, Airborne. Ivor Jorgenson once had—twenty years or so ago—control of the entire planetary defense of the planet Styx. Tetsami might be the only one on the planet who knew that little fact, and even she didn’t know the name under which he’d served. Ivor’s connection with Styx had long ago withered and been abandoned. His reputation as a pilot on Bakunin had been built over the twenty years of his residence here.

 

Yes, he was the best pilot she knew, and there was no question about her being able to trust him.

 

Her second thoughts had a deeper origin.

 

This shit was dangerous, and she didn’t want to lose what was left of her family. All through the discussion, she kept remembering the corporate war that had destroyed Holographic DataComm. The EMP that toasted her parents spared her only because she had no hardware in her skull at the time. Ivor, who was HDC’s data smuggler—slipping copies of product into the closed media environments of certain communes—had realized that Tetsami’s genetic heritage made her a potential corporate asset. If Ivor hadn’t evacked her, she’d probably’ve had a short brilliant career as a pet corporate hacker for the Troy Broadcasting Corporation. A career that would most likely end where her parents’ had ended.

 

When she’d gotten her biolink implanted, it was the only time she’d known Ivor—with his explosive temper—to have come close to striking her.

 

As she pulled Ivor farther into her proposal, she became more and more ambivalent about involving him in her dangerous game. She began to understand what his fears had been when she’d finally entered her parents’ line of work.

 

* * * *