A Respectable Profit Read online

contact lens in my left eye flickered and an image of a smallish man with close cropped black hair and brown, almond-shaped eyes appeared. He peered at me.

  "Hello," I said. "I'm trying to reach Akira Kensai. Is he available?"

  "I'm Tanaka Kensai," he said. "Akira was my brother."

  "Was?"

  "My brother was killed in the line of duty about a month ago. May I ask who you are?"

  I sat back in the command chair. Kensai dead? The last honest cop in Highpoint? We'd crossed paths three years before, when I'd given him the evidence to bust the crooked customs operation that had robbed us. The bust hadn't made him popular with the authorities, not that he'd cared. Corruption and graft may have been art forms on Highpoint, but Kensai kept himself above it. I'd trusted him, ultimately with my life.

  I shook my head to clear it. "I'm Zachariah Mbele," I said. "I knew your brother when he was a Senior Patrol cop. How did he die?"

  "Breaking up a jolt smuggling deal is the official version. But Kensai wouldn't have gone in without backup, and no drugs were ever found." He paused. "Mbele? The ship captain?"

  "Yes," I said warily.

  He took a deep breath before speaking more slowly. "I'd like to meet with you while you're here in Highpoint. Akira told me you didn't mind breaking some rules."

  I shook my head. "Maybe in the old days. I'm out of the smuggling game now. I run a respectable charter operation."

  "Please, Mr. Mbele. I'm not asking you to do anything illegal. I found something in Akira's files about Fingol Malloy. You gave Aki the original files on culturing glowgems. Maybe you can understand what it's about."

  Three years earlier I'd given Kensai the notebooks of Fingol Malloy, a half crazy xenobiologist turned prospector who'd figured out how to grow cultured glowgems. Natural glowgems were silicon crystals that looked nondescript in the cold of space but glowed with their own light when warmed to twenty degrees Celsius. They had once been among the most valuable and sought after items in the solar system. Until the technique of culturing them was made public, that is. I 'd given Kensai the secret knowing he'd release it to the media and remove any motive for the Red Dragons to kill me for it.

  "What about Fingol Malloy?" I asked.

  "I'll tell you about it in person. Three o'clock this afternoon, lobby of the Imperial Hotel, Garden Level." He broke the connection.

  I sat back in the chair. Akira's death was a surprise. He hadn't been a friend, exactly, but we'd arrived at a level of mutual respect that some friends never reach. It would be like him to keep digging into Malloy's story, even after the secret of cultured glowgems went public.

  "Zack, are you okay?" Sylvia asked after several minutes.

  "I'm fine, Sylvia." I stood and headed aft. "Is Cleo still in our cabin?"

  "Yes, Boss. You want me to call her?"

  "No, I'm headed that way. Call up a map of the arcology and find the Imperial Hotel. Download directions to my link."

  I swung through the hatch and crossed the catwalk. Rabbit was in the salon absorbed in his virtual keyboard and a holomatrix full of code. I found Cleo in front of the holotank in our shared quarters.

  She looked up as I came in. "We cleared twenty-seven hundred yuan on that last run. Not bad for three days' work. I posted us on the open charter board, but it doesn't look good. There are six ships ahead of us on the list."

  "How long do you mean to wait?"

  She shrugged. "A couple of days. We have some ready cash and can stock up on some luxury provisions while we're here."

  "Good. I let Deuce go ashore to blow off some steam. And I'm going to meet Tanaka Kensai at the Imperial at three today." I didn't mention Fingol Malloy.

  "Kensai? The cop?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "His brother. Akira Kensai is dead. Killed in a drug raid gone bad, apparently. I'm hoping Tanaka can tell me more."

  "I didn't realize the two of you were close," she said. "I spent most of my time trying to avoid him."

  I smiled. "That's because you were a fugitive, darling. But, no, we weren't close. I respected him and trusted him. I'm sorry he's dead."

  She nodded. "I hope you find out what happened. He sounds like he was a good man."

  "I'll be home before dinner, I expect."

  She nodded absently, already absorbed in the business accounts. I opened the clothing locker and took out a clean black shirt and short full-sleeved jacket. I kissed Cleo on the top of her head and left the cabin.

  I stopped at the weapons locker on the main deck. With all the passengers aboard, we'd had to install DNA locks so only crew could access the locker. I thumbed the lock and drew out a slim Smith and Wesson needler with a pneumatic boost and an extra magazine--all sleepers. The needler went into an inner jacket pocket. I strapped a wrist sheath to my left arm and added a chrome steel throwing knife. Maybe it was overkill, but I never left the ship unarmed and I didn't know Tanaka. He might be like his brother, but he might not.

  The Imperial wasn't hard to find. It was the biggest hotel on the Garden Level, the huge open central core of the arcology. I caught a tube from the spaceport to the entertainment mall under the hotel and avoided the open space of the central core. I'm a tunnel rat from Mars. Open space gives me the shakes.

  I recognized Tanaka before he saw me. He sat in a low overstuffed chair next to a faux-stone table near the lobby bar. The chair was too low and made it impossible for him to stand quickly. That marked him as untrained. He wasn't his brother. I walked up behind him, unnoticed in the crowded lobby.

  "Mr. Kensai," I said. He jumped, startled. "I'm Zack Mbele. What did you want to talk to me about."

  He struggled out of the chair and wiped a sweaty palm on his trousers before offering his hand. I shook it. His grip was strong, but he was nervous. I didn't know what Akira had told him, but I doubted he was afraid of me. Something else had him twitchy.

  "Sit down," he said.

  "Not here." I pointed to the bar. "Over there." I led him a pair of high barstools. He sat facing the bar, his hands on the smooth wood of the bar top. I leaned against my chair, my hands free at my sides. I could see the door and the rest of the lobby.

  "I know you gave Aki the Fingol Malloy files," Tanaka said . "Aki could have used them to get rich, but that wasn't his way. He made them public shortly after he got them." He finally looked at me. "You knew he would, didn't you." I didn't say anything to that, and he went on, "After the files went public, he kept investigating Malloy. Even as a kid, he'd been a Fingol's Cave buff. He found references to another report about the gems, something important enough to be classified."

  "So, what? Malloy was half crazy when he died. Nobody even knew about the files until a data slicer dug them up while raiding dead safe deposit boxes."

  "Aki was convinced there was something important in that report. Malloy filed it with the Feds before he did the research on culturing the gems."

  I shrugged. "So it's in the Federal database. What does that have to do with me?"

  "The report isn't in the database. Aki searched for it. He paid a datamining service to look for it. He even used his security clearance to search. He finally found a reference tag in an old purge report."

  "They purged it?" I was interested now. Data purges were a sure sign that somebody wanted the file buried and forgotten.

  Tanaka nodded. "Just before Aki died, he sent me a message. The original report was filed at an old Federal base on Ceres. Shortly afterwards, the base was sold to Kwai Hong Holdings. Aki thought the original report was still there, buried in the old database on the main Ceres server."

  At the mention of Kwai Hong I felt a chill and my nanofibers twitched. A few months before, I'd almost died at the hands of Kwai Chang Wu, old Kwai Hong's number-two son. Wu had ended up dead instead of me and as far as I knew, only the Profit's crew knew who killed him. But rumor had it that Kwai wanted me dead and wasn't particular about who did the job. The Profit avoided Ceres and Kwai Hong One, the company's LaGrange satellite, and we
gave Kwai Hong ships a wide berth.

  I flexed my hands, feeling the nanofibers bonded to my central nervous system augment my speed and strength. My vision shifted to infrared and I scanned the room for threats. Just the mention of Kwai Hong shouldn't have affected me so. I looked about more carefully. Something in the room had subconsciously triggered the nano response; something that my body registered as a threat even though my brain hadn't processed it yet.

  Tanaka noticed my expression and looked around. "What is it?"

  "I don't know," I said, scanning the room. "Come on, we're getting out of here."

  He nodded and slid off the barstool. I caught a flash of motion from the open space of the lobby. The needler leapt into my right hand as I pushed Tanaka down with my left. My augmented vision picked up a glow of heat to our right. I ducked as a pneumatic round whizzed past my ear. I fell back behind the corner of the bar, dragging Tanaka with me and returning fire. A thick necked man in a light blue shirt dove behind a table as my needles embedded themselves in the tabletop. He held a long barrel Steinbauer pneumatic in his hand.

  I hauled Tanaka to his feet and shoved him ahead of me. We made it out the rear lobby entrance and down the ramp into the entertainment mall before the gunman reached the top of the ramp. I wove in and out of the crowd, sometimes pushing Tanaka ahead, sometimes pulling him along. He followed without a word, his face pale. Definitely nothing like his brother. We reached the tube station and I ducked behind a support