Part 19 (2/2)
”Safe your arms and shoulder.” The men returned their weapons to safe and shouldered them, making the range ”cold” once more and allowing Dr. Sahin to step into the target area and check the prisoners.
It took less than a minute for him to examine all five men. He stood and formally addressed Max, his voice sounding hollow and distant to ears still stunned by the firing of fifteen rifles at the same time in a confined s.p.a.ce. ”Captain, I have examined the prisoners and certify to you that they are all dead.”
”Very well. Let the record reflect and let all those a.s.sembled witness that sentence was carried out and that the condemned were p.r.o.nounced dead at”-he looked at the time display on his percom-”06:04 hours, on 30 January 2315. Ten HUT.”
All came to attention.
”Dismissed.”
From start to finish, it had taken four minutes. The living filed out of the room, leaving the dead where they fell, sightless eyes still open, three tiny and nearly bloodless holes cl.u.s.tered within a hand's breadth on each chest, the smell of powder mingling with the sour scent of two men's evacuated bowels.
In a few minutes, corpsmen from the Casualty Station would come to take the bodies away to cold storage in the s.h.i.+p's morgue, eventual cremation at a station or on board a hospital s.h.i.+p, and-if someone wished to claim the remains-a long, slow trip for their ashes on a low-priority transport back to their homeworlds. Until then, though, they lay silent and alone, the bodies now empty of whatever had driven them to live and love and eat and breathe and strive and struggle and, in the end, to betray their own people and suffer death as a result.
Later, sensing that there had been no movement and no living occupant in the compartment for more than four minutes, the computer turned off the lights, plunging the room into total darkness.
CHAPTER 19.
02:27Z Hours (11:18 Local Time), 2 February 2315 Dr. Sahin shaded his eyes from the unaccustomed glare of the sun-well, of a sun at any rate-as he stepped out of ”his” microfreighter onto the landing pad. He took a deep breath, his first of unprocessed air in more than two years, expecting to scent the exotic aroma of a strange, new world. Instead, all he could smell was the burned rock aroma of thermal concrete scorched by landings from the big pa.s.senger shuttles that were the bulk of the s.p.a.ceport's traffic. The exotic strange new world scent would come later, he supposed.
In less than two minutes, a ground vehicle came across the s.p.a.ceport's vast distances to the pad. A bored, dirty driver scanned the doctor's credit chip, debited his account, lowered a tow coupling, inserted it into the socket on the freighter's front landing gear a.s.sembly, and gestured for Sahin and his pilot, Able s.p.a.cer Fahad, to climb aboard. He put the vehicle into drive and headed toward a hangar, towing the freighter slowly behind, clearing the pad for the next s.h.i.+p.
After a short drive with the silent, sullen driver at the wheel, the microfreighter was situated in the hangar with about a dozen s.h.i.+ps of roughly similar size. A s.p.a.ceport official then appeared and handed Sahin a padcomp presenting him with several forms for his electronic signature, certifying that the s.h.i.+p did not have hazardous cargo, had been inspected within the past year, that he would pay all hangar charges promptly, that he understood that he should remove any valuable property from the freighter and deposit it in the s.p.a.ceport's vault or in one of the high-security cargo hangars provided at a reasonable charge, that the s.p.a.ceport Authority disclaimed responsibility for all thefts, and that he would not attempt to taxi the freighter out of the hangar himself.
Finally, Sahin and Fahad, each carrying a nondescript overnight bag, got into one of a pair of smaller ground vehicles parked near the door to the hangar and closed the door.
There was no steering wheel. Instead, there were twenty b.u.t.tons on the dashboard, labeled Incoming Travelers, Departing Travelers, Freight Terminal, Customs, Ground Transport to City, Air Pa.s.senger Terminal, and Hangar 1 through Hangar 14. Max hit the b.u.t.ton for Incoming Travelers.
Following an electronic track in the pavement, the vehicle quickly took them to a building marked in several languages ”Incoming Travelers.” Entering the large building, they got into a fast-moving line and came to a desk behind which sat a pleasant man wearing the tan and medium-brown robes that most of the natives, plus the doctor and Fahad, were wearing. He was of apparently Arabic descent, as were most of the inhabitants of this world, in his middle fifties, with a short, neatly trimmed beard and sharp, piercing brown eyes. Eyes that the doctor could easily see belonged to a very perceptive man.
He turned to the doctor and said in Standard: ”ID cube, please.”
Sahin produced his cube and handed it to the man, who placed it in his reader. The cube was, of course, an excellent forgery manufactured by the crack Intelligence Section on Admiral Hornmeyer's flags.h.i.+p. As the Navy had access to the same equipment that the Union Identification Service used to make the real cubes, naval forgeries were indistinguishable from the real thing. Following the standard intelligence procedure of making the lies as close to the truth as possible, most of the information contained on the cube was correct, save that there was no evidence that Sahin was a naval officer.
”Ibrahim Sahin. Occupation: physician and independent trader. Born: Tubek. My sympathies to you, sir. Citizens.h.i.+p: Terran Union. Large number of entry visas for various worlds in the Free Corridor and elsewhere, short visits, perfectly ordinary for a trader. Provisional master's license, small craft only. You might want to work on those piloting scores, Doctor; they are too low to allow you to fly anything solo in our s.p.a.ce. Trader's licenses and interstellar commerce permits from several jurisdictions. Comprehensive Medical License from the Interspecies Coalition for the Licensure of Health Care Providers. A very difficult credential to obtain. Most impressive. Additional credentials in natural science, interest in reptiles. What is the purpose of your visit, Doctor?”
”Business. Purchasing victuals for various freighters owned by a concern related to my family enterprises. Purchases to be transported on my Shetland microfreighter now in Hangar 3.”
”Length of stay?”
”Short. Anywhere from a day or two to two weeks at most.”
The immigration official, a lieutenant colonel according to the discrete insignia worn as a broach on his robe, gave the doctor a hard look. He was an experienced and senior officer in his world's immigration and customs service, and also had unacknowledged connections with its intelligence establishment, all of which meant that he was a man of unusual perceptiveness. Every formal indication and every rule said this doctor was what he said he was and that he should be admitted, but something was telling the colonel otherwise. He had a great deal of discretion, but not enough to detain or to refuse a visa to a man with Dr. Sahin's credentials, when he did not have a shred of any specific and identifiable justification for suspecting him.
”Everything seems to be in order. Welcome, Dr. Sahin. Enjoy your stay on Ras.h.i.+d IV.” The doctor stepped aside for Fahad to complete the same process.
After he was finished with Fahad and both men had moved on, the lieutenant colonel entered a series of apparently random characters into his workstation, resulting in his screen displaying a menu that was nowhere on any official site map. He filled in some of the blanks, copied the ID information from the doctor's and Fahad's ID cubes, and advised his superiors that both men should be watched. Carefully.
Still in the Incoming Travelers building, Sahin and Fahad went to an open area labeled Device Compatibility. There they found about two dozen booths, each with a table containing a compact array of electronic equipment, a computer display, and a credit chip reader. Both men took out their flipcoms, distant descendants of the smartphone, used by virtually all humans on all but the most resolutely nontechnological worlds, and set them on top of an a.n.a.lyzer pad, of which there were four at each table. After a few moments, the computer screen split itself into two columns, one column for each flipcom, containing identical text: Welcome to the Galactic Telephone and Telecommunications (GT&T) Device and Communication Service Compatibility a.n.a.lyzer, a service of GT&T Interspecies Enterprises, a GalactiComm Corporation. Copyright 2314. All Rights Reserved.
Device: Nokia/Sprint Uhura 1966 Ultra Universal Band, No Metas.p.a.cial Capability This device is compatible with local network.
Note: Your voice/data plans do not include communications on this planet.
The display went on to list the various voice and data plans available and their cost in various currencies. Dr. Sahin selected the unlimited plan for a cost of 212.14 Union credits, and paid with his credit chip.
”There, Fahad, our phones are enabled on this planet now,” he leaned and whispered into the pilot's ear, ”but a.s.sume that every word you say is being recorded.”
”Der Feind hrt mit.” The enemy is listening-a maxim famously imprinted on every field radio issued by the German army in the Second World War.
”Indeed. Now, one more stop and we will be ready to leave.”
”Good, this bag is getting heavy,” replied Fahad.
The two men went around a corner and came to a rather ornate and impressively decorated area of the building, at the entrance of which hung a large sign reading: Currency Exchanges and Banking. Inside the area were several booths labeled with the names of numerous banks, both local and interstellar. Sahin and Fahad walked up to one of the largest: The Royal Standard Chartered Bank of Ras.h.i.+d IV. There was no line. The two sat down at a desk in front of a handsome young man with dark skin, black hair, an aquiline nose, and dark eyes.
”Welcome to Royal Standard Chartered Bank,” he said, pleasantly. ”My name is Abdul Hamani. How may I be of service today?”
”I need to purchase some currency,” answered Sahin.
”What kind of currency will you be purchasing?”
”I will be needing Ras.h.i.+d dinars-1000 dinar notes.”
”Very good. And what will be the purchase medium?”
”This.” The doctor gestured to Fahad, who unzipped his overnight bag and produced one of the twenty-kilogram gold bricks taken from the Loch Linnhe. The man's eyes widened ever so minutely before he resumed his mask of bland amiability.
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