"How bad is it, Kai?"
He lowered the glasses and scratched at his beard. "It's bad, but not as bad as it could be. The camp guards appear to be locals, like Truper and Jocko, but the administrators are ComStar. I didn't see any Clanfolk, but that doesn't mean they aren't there."
Deirdre nodded as she gathered her hair back into a short ponytail. She tied it with a piece of string, then wrapped a dirty length of gauze around her head to obscure her right eye. "You think this will be enough of a disguise?"
Kai turned and smiled. She'd dressed in one of Truper's jumpsuits, which fit her like an elephant's skin would fit a yappy little dog. Along with the dirty rag wrapped around her head, it worked to hide all vestiges of her beauty. "If ComStar had fashion police, you'd be taken out and shot. I don't think anyone would recognize you. What about me?"
She squinted with her good eye, then gave him a grim smile. "The beard and some of your hair gathered into that topknot do make you look like a Kurita renegade. No one is going to connect you with either David Jewell orKai Allard."
"Good." He tossed the binoculars back into the truck, then slid into the driver's seat. "Ready to beard the lion in his own den?"
She shifted the shoulder holster and pistol she wore to a slightly more comfortable position, though she still looked uneasy touching it. "Let's go now before I get some sense and try to talk you out of it."
Kai looked over his shoulder at the two body-bagged lumps in the rear. "Wouldn't matter. You'd be outvoted because they want to go home." He punched the ignition code into the dash-panel and the hovertruck rose on a cushion of air. Turning the wheel, he started it down the dirt track and on into the mouth of the dragon.
* * *
The dust cloud the hovertruck raised forced all the prisoners on the side of the road to turn away and cough out the choking haze. As much as Kai hated doing it to them, he knew it seriously reduced the chances of his being recognized. The last thing he needed was to be identified while in the clutches of the enemy.
A tall Com Guard stopped the hovertruck at the gate. "What's you business?"
Kai jerked a thumb toward the bed of the truck. "Deliveries. Two ripe ones."
The man glanced back at the two bodies, then wrinkled his nose with disgust. "Take 'em to Building Three. That's the morgue and disbursement center." He signaled someone to open the first of the double gates.
Kai eased the hovertruck forward. After the gate behind him closed, the one in front opened. He steered the truck through and then toward the rear of the camp. "Remember, you don't say anything, okay?"
Deirdre nodded mutely and Kai smiled approval that she'd passed his test. He pulled the truck around to the small door beneath a huge scarlet number three painted on the front of the Quonset hut. He killed the engines, dropping the truck to the ground, then waited for the curling cloud of dust to settle a tan patina over the windscreen before he opened the door.
Deirdre followed him two steps back. Kai pushed the door open with his foot, then stepped inside to dust himself off. Deirdre slipped in behind him and slumped against the wall.
Three horrified ComStar clerks looked up at him as if he were a ghost. One man, clearly outraged as dust covered his papers, shot to his feet "Must you?"
Kai looked at him through narrowed eyes, then spat into his wastebasket.
Another man, older and wiser, pulled his compatriot back and forced him down into his chair. He looked up at Kai with a wan smile. "May I help you?" he asked in strained tones.
"Got two fer ya, see?" Kai sucked at his teeth as if trying to remove a bit of food stuck between two of them. "Bit messy and flyblown, but good ones."
The man's expression soured a bit. "You have two renegades?"
Kai nodded.
The man motioned Kai toward a chair beside his desk. Kai settled into it and slumped down so that the back of his head rested on the top of the seat's backrest, and his butt all but slid off the seat itself. He perched his elbows on the chair arms and his left hand strayed toward playing with a small ComStar flag on the desk.
The clerk moved the flag to the other side of the desk. "Do these renegades have names?"
Kai nodded.
The man waited for a bit, then cleared his throat. "What were their names?"
"Harry Truper and Dave Jewell."
The other two clerks turned to look at Kai.
Kai smiled and spat into the wastebasket again.
They went back to their work while the first clerk nervously punched the names into his computer. "Ah, Mister, ah, Harry Truper is a bounty hunter just like you."
"Not no more."
"Excuse me?"
Kai slowly levered himself up in the chair. "He's dead, see? Him and this Dave Jewell came to a shack me and the woman found after the Fedrats burned down our farm. They was planning to kill me and turn me in as Jewell. They said they'd use the woman and then cut her just like they did someone Jewell was running with before."
He glanced back cautiously at Deirdre, then leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially with the clerk. "They shouldn'ta said that. The woman ain't been right since some Fedrats took their liberty call out on her, without so much as leaving a C-bill behind, wakarimaska!She went and did for Truper, see, and I got Jewell after a bit of a gunfight."
They both looked over at Deirdre. Right on cue, she giggled a bit and sucked on her fingers.
The clerk shuddered.
Kai picked at one of his molars with his little finger. "Anyway, we thought they was renegades until we backtracked them and found their hovercar. I figgered we might'es well get some money for them. They are worth money, right?" With the last, Kai let his voice rise and tightened his left hand down into a fist.
The clerk nodded rapidly. "Once we've identified them, you will be paid."
Kai winced and made a "tch" sound by sucking at his cheek, then cracking the corner of his mouth open. 'Truper took one round through the face, and Jewell looks pretty gnawed on, wakarimaska!I got a bit angry, see, 'cause no one but no one, lays a hand on the woman 'cept me." He lightly punched the clerk's shoulder. "Same way with your missus, eh? Husbandly duties, right?"
"Er, right."
"Right." Kai smiled unevenly. "Look, don't know how much those wankers were worth, but this bounty-hunting stuff seems easy. We got Truper's truck and his gear. You got more assignments fer us?"
The man nodded and pushed an electrotablet toward Kai, then held out the light-pen. "Sign here and you'll get your money. One hundred C-bills is more than you should get, but you were so put out by these people."
Kai forced his eyes wide open. He knew that Dave Jewell, according to the warrant he'd destroyed, was worth ten times that amount, and he had a fair idea who was going to end up with the difference. He turned toward Deirdre and smiled. "Hear that, sweet? Seventy C-bills for those two. Your share is a whole twenty-five!"
She giggled again.
Kai winked at the clerk as he turned around. "Cute thing, but high finance is beyond her, wakarimaska!He gripped the light pen like a dagger and scored an X across the tablet.
The clerk smiled smugly and dug the requisite amount of ComStar scrip from a cash box in his desk drawer. He covertly slid that over to Kai, then handed him two more wanted posters complete with pictures of the individuals being hunted. Kai recognized one name as that of someone who had been with the planetary militia, but his expression remained blank.