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"Though we are within ru
"There's that, of course."
"Um. All right. Hawking, get busy on that car. You and Jensen will rendezvous with Caine while Skyler, Mordecai, and I take a good look inside and clear the tracks for you."
The car was of a type Hawking had never seen before, and it took him nearly five minutes to bypass its antitheft system and get it started. "Now what?" Skyler asked as the car purred off into the darkness.
"We try our famous smuggler impersonations and see if we can shake loose some kind of underground. Mordecai, you'll be backup out here."
Lathe had been in and out of bars since he'd turned eighteen, nearly forty years earlier, and he'd long since learned that it was the clientele—not the decor, stock, or planet—that distinguished the various types from one another. Skyler a step behind him, he headed toward the bar, throwing casual glances at the dark and sparsely occupied tables they passed among, and by the time he hooked an elbow over the stained ceramic counter, he'd made his assessment.
This wasn't the sort of bar where people came simply to enjoy themselves. The men openly eying the newcomers were hard, middle-aged working types, the late hour and almost tangible bitterness in the air suggesting they were unemployed. A place for being angry together, and a potentially fertile recruitment center for an anti-Ryqril underground.
The barman took his time stepping over to them. "Evening," he rumbled. "What'll you have?"
"Two glasses of your best beer," Lathe told him. "And have something yourself."
"Thanks," the other said indifferently. He stepped to a line of spigots in the back wall, drew three glasses. "Just passing through?" he asked as he set two of them on the bar.
A blunt question; it deserved an equally blunt answer. "Depends on how fast we find an interested buyer," Lathe told him, sipping at his glass. The beer was unexpectedly bitter. "You wouldn't happen to know anyone in the market for, shall we say, hard-to-get merchandise?"
The other's face didn't change. "Most business around here gets done in Denver."
"Ah." Reaching into his pocket, Lathe withdrew a small laser pistol, a rebuilt souvenir of the Terran- Ryqril war. "Sorry to have wasted your time, then," he said, turning the weapon over in his hands as if looking for imperfections in its dark gray finish. "I guess we'll be moving on."
He looked up. The barman's eyes were on the pistol, his mouth hanging slightly open. "Uh, well, now wait just a second. How many of those do you have?"
"Are you interested in buying?" Lathe countered.
The other licked his lips. "Not me personally, but I know someone who'll definitely want to talk to you. If you and your chaser want to take a seat I'll give him a call."
A setup? Possibly. But the barman didn't seem the Security type... and besides, Mordecai was outside. "Fine." he told the other. "He's got fifteen minutes." Slipping the laser pistol away, he nodded to Skyler, and together they headed to a back-wall table that offered a good view of both door and bar.
"Any bets as to who he's calling?" Skyler murmured, sipping at his beer.
Lathe looked at the barman, wrapped secretively around his phone. "Not Security, I'd say. On the other hand, he doesn't strike me as the fanatical type, either, and from what Caine told Lepkowski about Torch I wouldn't expect them to take anyone who wasn't frothing over with Noble Purpose."
"Maybe we've got two separate undergrounds operating here," Skyler suggested. "As well as a group of blackcollars."
Lathe smiled wryly. "I rather thought you'd pick up on that."
"What's to pick up? The family back there labeled us from the second I used my nunchaku, without even needing to see our flexarmor. They may not have had any direct contact with blackcollars before, but we haven't been consigned to ancient history, either."
"Agreed. Which unfortunately leads to a disturbing question: why were they so terrified of us?"
Skyler chewed at his lip. "They were, weren't they? Worried about Security reprisals for aiding us?"
"Maybe." Conversation had returned to its earlier level in the bar, but several of the patrons still seemed to have half an eye on the blackcollars. "This bar may not be as i
Skyler shrugged. "If so, the smuggler routine should put us right at home here."
"Maybe."
They sat in silence for a few minutes, keeping a general eye on things and waiting for a signal from Mordecai. The fifteen minutes Lathe had allotted the barman were nearly up when the word finally came: Big car arriving; five men inside... three approaching you.
Acknowledged, Lathe sent. Hitching his chair a few centimeters back from the table, he surreptitiously drew a shuriken from his belt pouch and slipped it into the pocket where he'd put the laser pistol. Skyler, across the table, made his own preparations.
The three men walked into the bar as if they owned the place, and almost instantly all conversation again ceased. The barman nodded toward the blackcollars' table, and two of the men swaggered forward, leaving the third standing guard beside the door.
"Hear you've got some poison for sale," one of them said as he stopped a meter in front of Lathe. His partner took another few steps to hover behind Skyler.
"Poison?" Lathe shook his head minutely. "Weapons."
The other gave him a long, appraising look. "You are new at this, aren't you? 'Poison' is illegals, dimbo. Let's see it."
Lathe didn't move. "You in the market to buy or just browsing?"
The second man growled something. "Don't push your luck or my patience," the first man told Lathe, his tone icy. One hand reached up to unfasten his coat, and the comsquare caught a glimpse of a compact pistol slung under his arm. "Let's see the merchandise."
Lathe cocked an eyebrow and reached his right hand into his pocket. For a moment he froze there, as a gun magically appeared at Skyler's head. Then, moving with exaggerated caution, he drew the laser out by its barrel and held it out. "I've left the power pack out, of course," he said.
"Yeah, uh-huh." The other looked the weapon over for a moment. "How many you got?"
"How many you want?"
The man turned cold eyes on the blackcollar. "Twenty-five percent of your stock. For permission to sell the rest—and I'll throw in some helpful advice about doing business in this area."
"Oh?" Lathe eased his right hand up to smooth his beard, the shuriken he'd palmed biting gently into his skin. "That seems a bit high."
"Not really. Especially when you consider the price lets you keep your skin, too." Stepping back a pace, he drew his own pistol and leveled it at Lathe. "You got five seconds to make up your—"
The last word never made it out of his mouth—but most of his air did, as Lathe's foot snapped in a curving kick that knocked the gunhand aside and then buried itself in the man's abdomen. The other folded over and dropped to the floor as Lathe's shuriken flashed across the room to bury itself in the wall by the third man's head. The backup jerked violently in reaction and then stood perfectly still, his hand dropping empty from inside his coat.
A flicker at the edge of his vision made Lathe turn, just in time to see Skyler's knife bounce hilt-first off the barman's right forearm. The man bellowed, the short rifle he'd been holding clattering to the floor... and a deathly silence descended on the room.
Just as it had in the house up the road. And from the terror-frozen faces at the bar's other tables it was very likely for the same reason.
Standing up, Lathe retrieved his laser and his assailant's gun. Off to the side, Skyler was also on his feet, scooping up his knife and the barman's weapon. The man who'd been standing behind the big blackcollar, Lathe noted, was stretched out unconscious two meters back from Skyler's chair.