The Dog From Hell by Chris Bunch

Author:Chris Bunch [Bunch, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, General, Adventure, Life on Other Planets, Private Security Services
ISBN: 9780451460394
Google: wv_nt8g6lAMC
Amazon: 0451460391
Publisher: Roc
Published: 2005-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY

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Spada, Riss, and Goodnight slid the McMahon back behind one of Khazia's moons and took their yacht back to the planet, exuding innocence from every pore.

They expected to be greeted with hosannas for their bravura theft.

Instead, they arrived in the middle of the murder plot.

Goodnight listened to the details, sneered at the other three schemers.

"Typical amateurs. Talk, talk, talk, but no frigging bloody-handedness."

"We were just about to pounce," Jasmine King said in an injured tone.

"About. Hah," Goodnight said. "And what method of shuffling off this coiled mortal, or however it goes, had you arrived at?"

"I," Grok said, putting just a trace of emphasis on the word so Goodnight would know who the boy genius was, "came up with a brilliance."

"Oh yeah?" Goodnight said. "Talk to me."

Grok told him. "And the beauty of it is, if we do it right, it'll be seen as a common accident."

"And if you don't do it right," Goodnight said, "the bastard will be at full alert, and you'll never get a chance that good again. Let me ask you something, O my furry friend. Who was going to bell the cat?"

"Cat? There are no felines in this project."

"Who was gonna be the Goon in Charge?"

"I was," Grok said. "Since it was my idea, and I have probably the best knowledge of any of the three of us in practical physics."

"Oh, my paws and whiskers," Goodnight moaned. "Have you ever killed anybody like that?"

"No," Grok admitted. "But it seems quite simple."

"Hot flash," Goodnight said. "It ain't. There's a ton of variables—which don't have squat to do with physics, I might add."

"I suppose you do," Grok said in an injured tone.

"As a matter of fact, yes," Chas Goodnight said.

"Then, of course, I would be nothing but an egotistical fool to insist on being the man with the button," Grok said.

"Exactly," Goodnight said, then caught Jasmine's buried grin.

"Goddamnit," he said. "Did I just go and trap myself into being Chas in charge?"

"Of course you did not," von Baldur said, dripping innocence. "But one of Star Risk's biggest virtues is its willingness to always yield to the voice of sweet reason and expertise."

"Trapped, trapped, trapped," Goodnight moaned.

"Don't take it so hard," Riss said. "I've got a good idea of what we'll be doing, in theory. I'll even volunteer to fly the cover vehicle to keep you from running into trouble—or, rather, to get you out of any trouble you do run into."

But Goodnight was inconsolable.

Both Grok and Goodnight were correct.

The killing method he'd chosen was very simple and old-fashioned—murder by vehicle. It had gotten a little more sophisticated than it was in the days when Indians ran cowboys down with T-model airplanes, or however it precisely began.

But not much.

The devil was, as always, in the details—making sure that the target didn't do any of several possible annoying things, such as ducking out of the way and letting the oncoming vehicle hammer itself against a lamp standard; ducking into cover, or worst of all shooting back, not to

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