(eng) M. C. Planck by The Kassa Gambit

Author:The Kassa Gambit [Gambit, The Kassa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Be careful.” She tried to warn her crew, but it was futile. Melvin was stoned into near-unconsciousness, Jorgun could not understand, and Garcia could not obey. He took risks automatically, like a fish breathes water. Her advice was wasted.

And hypocritical, given her intentions. If the League was at the stage where they simply killed the people that threatened them, then visiting Rama Jandi would put both their lives in danger. She was going to do it, anyway.

“Can I come with you?” Jorgun asked. All she had accomplished with her warnings was to scare him. Normally Altair was one of the few ports of call she could let him roam freely. In idle moments she had considered writing a spacer’s guide to planets, rating them according to how many hours you could let a simpleton walk around unescorted before he would stumble into trouble. Altair had been the top of her list. Kassa had been second only because a person could get lost in those ridiculous forests.

Having that sense of safety taken away hurt physically, like a punch to the kidneys.

“Sure,” she answered. The fear of entangling him deeper was overridden by the recognition that she would be more worried every second he was out of her sight.

Walking out of the spaceport in broad daylight, in the middle of crowds, she nonetheless found herself instinctively hiding in his shadow. Circling around him, using him like a shield against the sniper she imagined on every rooftop. Cold, but not cruel. She had to be their first target. They would know that shooting him would only alert her. Surely they understood she was the dangerous one.

If they killed her first, Jorgun would stand dumbly over her body while they reloaded.

The people in the crowd didn’t know that. They gave way to Jorgun’s size unconsciously, flowing around the rock instead of trying to move it. With his shades on, he looked intimidating. He looked like a bodyguard. Could she trust that the League had done its homework?

“Can we go see a cartoon?” her protector asked.

“In a bit,” she muttered. Standing in front of a public net console, she tried to stop dodging invisible bullets and focus on typing. She hadn’t wanted to search for Jandi from her ship’s computer, in case they were watching. But the public console was anonymous. Not that the locals used it. Virtually every person on Altair had a comm unit in their pocket. She vaguely remembered some government program that distributed them to the financially disadvantaged. And yet they still provided free public consoles.

It was ironic that the only time she had ever used one was when she wanted to avoid precisely the government that had made them possible.

The first search result was a recorded appearance speech by Jandi, on some daytime babble-fest vid channel. The host, Willy Billy, looked like his normal topic of conversation was which celebrity was snubbing who, but for this broadcast he’d put on his Serious Face.

“You’re saying, Dr. Jandi, that the aliens aren’t dangerous?”

Jandi was an old man, small, stooped, and wreathed in a great white mane.

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