The Icarus Job (The Icarus Series Book 3) by Timothy Zahn

Author:Timothy Zahn [Zahn, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2024-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Beloi building wasn’t the tallest one in the Badlands, but it was the tallest in this particular nine-block neighborhood square. The height was useful, but even more so were the five shack-like structures that dotted the flat gray slate, ostensibly containing a pair of water tanks, elevator machinery and access to stairs, antenna clusters for the residents’ use, and even a compact solar power collector. Since most buildings I’d seen across the Spiral managed to do without all of those except the elevator housing, my guess was that the others were mostly there to provide cover for activities that might be shady or nefarious by even Badlands’ standards.

Nikki and I lugged our gear up the stairs and laid it out in the visual shadow of the elevator housing. “Okay,” I said, running my eyes over everything. “You and Franck’s gun at peace with each other?”

“If you mean am I ready, yes,” she said, peering down the barrel of the custom-made plasmic rifle Picker had been pointing at me earlier. She’d burned through an entire power pack fine-tuning its aim on Picker’s indoor range, but when she was finished she confirmed that she could indeed do what I needed done. “Franck really was right about your wordiness.”

“Nervous habit,” I said, giving a quick look around at the various Badlands rooftops that were higher than ours, the closest one a good five blocks away. No one was visible skulking around on any of them.

But then, I hadn’t expected to have any such company. A good sniper could make a kill shot from there, but settling down in a location like that would never even occur to a bounty hunter. Not only was it useless as a surveillance point for street-level activity at our distance, but when a hunter’s payment was dependent on hauling in the target—or, if the client wasn’t fussy, the target’s body—it would take far too long to get to the scene after a kill or incapacitation.

And of course, if there were other hunters present, which there usually were, some unprincipled type was bound to move in and poach the target for himself.

“Looks clear,” I announced, returning to Nikki. She had our creation, whom I’d dubbed Lady Smirks, ready in her harness, dressed in the clothing, hat, and veil that Nikki had been wearing when she left the Ruth a few hours ago.

Only not quite the same. The mannikin we’d borrowed for the job was only about three-quarters human size, so we’d needed to do a quick tailoring job to make the clothing fit it.

Nikki had never been enthusiastic about this plan. Now, as she propped Lady Smirks up against the elevator housing wall, she looked even less so. “I don’t know, Roarke,” she said. “They’re bound to see this thing’s too small to be a person.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “At this distance human eyes can’t measure scale with any accuracy, especially with no reference points around. It’s also too light to be human, but they won’t know that, either.

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