“No money, no mission, no choice,” Michael said, his tone blunt. “We have to, but not here in New Dublin. Somewhere quieter.”
“Then the sooner we do it, the better.”
“Not perfect,” Shinoda said, scanning the plaza at the heart of Charfield, a small town three hours by mobibot from New Dublin. It was a place no Hammer tourists ever came to; in theory, that meant DocSec didn’t either. Michael hoped the theory was right. “It will have to do. Now, any questions?”
Michael shook his head, mouth dry with nerves.
“Off you go, then, and if anything doesn’t look right, get out of there fast. You know where we are.”
“Got it.”
Taking a deep breath, Michael pulled his cap down, adjusted his gloves, and set off through the afternoon throng. Akuna followed 10 meters behind. Michael wondered how many of the locals he passed were security agents.
He found the telecom office without difficulty, a small building off the plaza. It was all but empty. Michael found himself a pinchcomm booth. He punched out the familiar digits and tried not to think about the obscene amount of money he was about to spend.
It took a lifetime to make the connection. The familiar voice of his father came as a shock when he answered.
“Andrew Helfort,” he said.
“No questions. Go secure. Use one-time code Blue-65-Kilo.”
“Blue-65-Kilo, going secure now.”
The voice in Michael’s ear turned to mush. Two seconds later his neuronics took over. The mush vanished. Michael put a simple acoustic vocoder to his face. It sealed off his mouth entirely. Then he jammed the vocoder into the mouthpiece on the handset. State Security would crack the encryption Michael was using, but they’d need at least twelve hours to do that, he hoped.
“Can you hear me?” he said.
“I can.”
“Good. Now write down these numbers.” Michael reeled off a long string of digits. “That’s a Kosmos Cash Express branch on Scobie’s World. I need you to send all the money in my trust fund to that account, and I mean every last cent, plus as much as you can scrape together. I need clear funds no later than twelve hours from now no matter how much it costs. Got all that?”
“Twelve hours. It’ll be done.”
“Last thing. Make the transfer payable to Larissa Roberts and the payment password ‘romantic’ in lowercase.”
“Understood. Anything else?”
The catch in his father’s voice tore at Michael’s soul. He forced himself to finish. “That’s it. Got to go. Love you; ’bye.”
Michael ripped off the vocoder and smacked the handset back into its cradle. He made his way back to the counter. “I’m done, thanks,” he said. “How much do I owe you?”
“Ah,” the woman said, “a pinchcomm voice-only call to Federated Worlds. Hold on.”
Come on, come on, Michael wanted to scream as she dawdled her way to the answer. “Yes, that’ll be 3,500 k-dollars, thank you.”
Michael handed over his stored-value card. The woman took another lifetime to process the payment. The tension tore Michael’s nerves to shreds. Finally she was done, and Michael took his card back. “Thank you,” he said.
He forced himself to walk slowly out into the street. He scanned the passersby and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He let himself relax.
Akuna came up from behind him. “Follow me,” she hissed as she walked past. “Mitchell’s spotted two State Security mobibots, and they’re headed this way.”
“Fuck!” Michael said. He was more shaken up than he cared to admit. “That was way too close.”
“We were lucky,” Shinoda said as the rented mobibot eased itself out into the traffic, with a second vehicle carrying Mitchell and Akuna close behind. “Those State Security bastards were fast.”
“They were. I wasn’t on the line long, and they got there only minutes after I hung up.”
“Preplanned response to all pinchcomm calls to the Federated Worlds, I reckon. As soon as you punched in the numbers, the alarms would have gone off. Paranoid bunch of fucks,” Shinoda added dismissively.
“Anyway, it’s done.” Michael rubbed his face, stress ebbing away to leave him exhausted. “Now all we have to do is collect the money.”
“Yup.”
“I wonder how Spassky and Prodi did.”
Shinoda shook her head. “Haven’t heard from them yet, but if anyone can suborn that poor sucker from Matrix Shipping Lines, it’s those two.”
“I hope so. We are screwed without those control codes.”
“They’ll get them,” Shinoda said. Her voice left no room for doubt. Michael hoped her confidence was well founded. “Money gets you most things in life in my experience,” she went on. “Now, let’s see. It’s eleven hours to Franchette, so I suggest you get some sleep.”
“Try and stop me.”
Friday, June 18, 2404, UD
Franchette, Scobie’s World
“Any problems?” Michael said as the mobibot pulled away.
“Piece of cake, sir,” Marine Akuna said, her face still flushed with excitement. “I never knew it was so easy to get someone I’ve never met to hand over so much money. How good are those Kosmos Cash guys? I give them the name and password, they give me cash. They didn’t even ask for any ID.”
“You can thank the Hammers and their black economy for that. They love their cash. So how much do we have?”
“A shitload: 950,000 FedMarks, which converts to a bit over 2 million k-dollars.”
Michael blinked, taken aback. “Two million k-dollars? You sure?”
“Here’s the proof, sir.” Akuna handed Michael four cash cards. They were anonymous and untraceable, each a testament to the prodigious rivers of cash that underwrote Scobie’s World. Its economy was wholly dependent on the corruption endemic to the Hammer Worlds, to the point where Scobie’s World had long since abandoned its own currency in favor of the Kraa-dollar. “There’s 500,000 k-dollars on each of those puppies,” she said.
Michael sat back, frowning. Thanks to the tireless efforts of his agent, Mitesh-the AI had been spectacularly successful suing the trashpress after the Devastation Reef fiasco-his trust fund had held close to half a million FedMarks, which meant his father had somehow found an extra 450,000. “Right, then; we need to get you off-planet,” he said to Akuna after a while.
“Not so fast, sir,” Akuna said. “I’ve been thinking.”
Shinoda turned around to look at Akuna. “We’ve been through this,” she said, not unkindly. “Listen up, Nugget.”
Michael had to smile. Akuna’s given name was Precious; applying the obscure logic that all marines used to generate nicknames, gold was precious, hence Nugget.
“Your cover has been blown. State Security will eventually track down the withdrawal, and when they do, they’ll come after you. If we don’t get you off-planet fast, you’ll never get off, and we can’t let DocSec get their hands on you, okay?”
“I understand all that, sarge,” Akuna said, “but I’ve been thinking.”
Shinoda rolled her eyes. “Give me strength,” she muttered, “a marine who thinks. Go on, then.”
“You can get me off-planet the same way we got Lieutenant Helfort off Terranova. It worked for him. Why wouldn’t it work for me?”
Michael looked at Shinoda; she shrugged her shoulders. “Why didn’t we think of that?” he asked.
“Too much else going on,” Shinoda said. She looked at Michael. He nodded. “Okay, then. It worked before, so we can do it again.”
“Good,” Michael replied. “We need all the marines we can get.”
“Thank you, sir,” Akuna said.
“Wait until you’ve been dirtside on Commitment for a few months before you thank anyone,” Shinoda muttered, turning back to watch the road ahead.
Saturday, June 19, 2404, UD
New Dublin, Scobie’s World
“Five hundred thousand k-dollars?”
Spassky nodded. “That’s what Jakob Kalkuz is saying,” he said.