Assassin by Another Name Read online

  In Mourning

  "Still mourning, Quentin?"

  Quentin Hall looked up from the scroll he had been reading, smiling a little as he took in the pale, squat figure with its ruff frayed silver hair. Then he sighed as the question sank in, bringing melancholy with it. "Yes, Master Valis. Six months, and I still..."

  Valis Korrin held up a frail hand in a warding gesture. "You still reach for her, in your psionics. I have felt it.

  "I've tried to forget her, but-"

  "No!" The sexagenarian Justiciar barked the word. "Love is part of the Universe, as is sorrow. Do not forget her. Only do not allow your heart to be ruled by loss."

  "But the dogma of the Unseen..."

  Korrin snorted. "The dogma is a hedge about the Way -did I teach you nothing? Have you failed to profit, amongst the Seekers?"

  Despite his emotions, Quentin smiled just a little. "I have not forgotten," he said, rubbing his tattoos through the simple robes he wore. "They are part of my own flesh."

  Valis came forward, rolling his sleeve up to reveal similar tattoos. "As they are mine, Quentin. Blood of my blood, in a chain of descent from Master to Master that was forged in the dawn of the Unseen. But the time of mourning must end, my Acolyte-Son. A light is lit, and the Shadows gather."

  "For the Shadows are the guardians, between the Light and the Dark," Quentin finished, sitting up straighter. "What..."

  Valis slung a wrapped tube from off his back and handed it to Quentin. He took it, finding it contained the haft of a double plasma blade, two-thirds of a meter in length. There was nothing odd about the materials, but touching it was lime reaching through a cloud of freezing oil. "The Darkness..." he whispered. "It reeks of Darkness. But... not a relic." He spun it, noting the balance. "The craftsmanship, and the materials... this is... new?"

  The ignition switch reeked of blood and hate, and when he depressed it a meter-long bloody crimson blade ignited. "New," he decided. "But... made to the pattern pioneered by Exira Kuhn." He swallowed bile as he shut it down. "Someone is following the designs of the ancient heretics. But..."

  "It was recovered from a Apostate warrior, slain on Naboo," Valis said.

  "An Apostate...?" dissident

  "Yes," Valis grimaced. "Not a renegade, or a half-trained sensitive with a historical obsession. He called himself The Dissident." Valis looked at him hard, glossy eyes reflecting him. "Find his Master, Quentin. Find where he came from."

  "Where do I start?"

  Smiling now, Valis produced a hologram of a sleek, dagger-like ship. "With this..."

  ***

  Frissia

  2 months after that...

  “Hey, watch it!” An angry, dark-haired man growled as his beer spilled over the counter of the bar in The Quiet Fen hotel & spa. The blonde woman who had bumped into him placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Oh my goodness, I am so sorry,” she gushed, reaching over him to grab some napkins to clean up the spill, brushing hefty breasts against his side in the process. “I so clumsy at times.”

  Catching the embarrassed look on her face, and the deep lunge leather panel dress she wore, he laughed nervously. “It’s okay, it was just an accident.” He helped her clean up the spill, noticing the deep valley of cleavage her dress afforded her.

  “You have to let me buy you a drink,” she asserted, her other hand caressing his arm now as well.

  “If you insist,” he agreed, swallowing hard. Her body was just lightly touching his, but it was enough to drain the blood from his brain. “As long as you drink with me. Zerk T’far.” He offered a hand.

  “Shadi Hale.”

  ***

  It wasn’t hard to get the man to invite her back to his room. She probably didn’t need to use a psionic suggestion, but Scarlet wasn’t taking any chances this evening. A couple of drinks and a round of unexceptional casual sex was enough to put him to sleep, so Scarlet could begin her work.

  Zerk T’far wasn’t dead yet, but he would be in an hour. Inertia overdose, such a shame. It seemed the drug was everywhere now days. Even on good, honest core worlds. Addiction knew no bounds. Of course, this wasn’t an accidental overdose, but a calculated manner of death. One that was unlikely to attract much attention from law enforcement. Even less likely once she was on camera leaving his room before the time of death, and spent an hour or so in the bar downstairs, cementing her alibi. There weren’t enough jobs on the small planet to make bribing the local law enforcement worthwhile, so Scarlet had to commit the murder, and slip away with no one the wiser. What the man had done to deserve death, Scarlet didn’t know. It’s wasn’t her job to know, only to kill him. Well, kill him, and retrieve a holodisk.

  A brief perusal of his things revealed the target object. She picked up the holodisk, furrowing her brow at the roughly scribbled name on it. Shadow. The word brought up…a lot. Memories, and hope and resentment, and love and loathing. But it didn’t mean anything, most likely. It was probably a code name for something else. Sighing, she slipped the holodisk in the pocket of her jacket. It was certainly the disk her client wanted retrieved. Whatever it contained was worth Zerk’s death.

  Covering her hand with a sheet, she measured out the dose, tied off the arm and filled his veins with drugs. Before they could be absorbed into his system, she slowed his metabolism to a crawl, turning a process that would have taken less than 10 minutes into an hour or two. Finishing up, she wrapped his own hand around the needle to leave only his own prints on it.

  She spent an hour in the bar as Shadi, making sure to leave an impression. Mostly this involved flirting with the bartender in an attempt to get free drinks, obnoxiously enough to be ineffective. After all, she didn’t want to be drunk, just remembered in the bar at this time. Once she sensed that Zerk’s heartbeat finally stopped, she lingered over her last drink before signing the credit slip for her tab and heading up to her room for the evening.

  Once she was alone, she pulled out the holodisk, tracing the letters with a finger. It couldn’t be him. The odds were outrageous. She looked over at the data pad sitting on the bedside table. She wasn’t supposed to look at the data on the disk, but her curiosity gnawed at her. What if it was for a Shadow Justiciar? Like Quentin was? It could be dangerous for her, if she wasn’t expecting one. If they came looking for this disk. If a Justiciar were going to hunt her down, she had a right to now. It was safer to know, for her, for Linora, for whoever the client was. With those justifications in mind, she loaded the holodisk into her date pad and examined the contents, hoping to find something that would reveal who the intended recipient was. If it was that kind of shadow.

  Invoices, schematics, part lists, receipts. All in reference to some ship, an interceptor. A corporation allied with the trade faction, names she didn’t immediately recognize. Scarlet browsed the files for twenty minutes become becoming frustrated. Corporate espionage, she decided. While it was a hell of a thing to kill a man over, talk of war made the political situation tense, and tempers were hair-trigger. Not something a Justiciar, even a Shadow, would have been involved with. Relieved and disappointed, she exhaled.

  She headed towards the bathroom, stripping out of Shadi for the evening. Quentin weighed heavily on her mind as she did, memories of his face and touch and scent flooding her senses. She turned on the shower to distract herself, but the hot water brought on more memories. He said he loved me, and would never hurt me. And yet he choked me in a tub. He said he needed me, no matter what, and yet he abandoned me to my fate in Linora’s hands. I betrayed her for him, and he never came back for me. So much for his love, his need for her, his promises. What a fool she had been, to fall for it. To fall for him.

  She stepped under the stream, hoping to cle
anse the grief from her mind. Still, her body remembered him, craved him. Recalled the pleasure he had brought her, even if it was predicated on a lie. She brushed her fingers along her own breast, recollecting how he savored her, his lips wrapped around nipple, drawing the blood to them. Her hands following the trail of his kisses that was left in her memories, until her fingers filled her slit, just the way his tongue had.

  She leaned back against the wall of the shower, fingers moving within her soft folds, fantasizing about his body, his tattoo shimmering in vibrant blues and reds, glistening with sweat as he leaned over her. How he seemed to fit perfectly within in. How he completed her, how she felt whole when he moved within her. His breath on her lips as he called her name, each time he filled her with his seed, and his love. She was gasping now, louder that the water streaming from the showerhead, feeling him inside her once more, pumping her with all the passion he could muster. As her body clenched and convulsed, shuddering in the bliss only he could bring her, she could still hear his voice, speaking the words she cherished so much.

  I love you, Kaydia.

  A wordlessly cry filled the bathroom, as tears flooded her eyes as arousal flooded her thighs and rapture released her from it grasp, leaving her empty once more. She finished cleaning herself off and wrapped herself in a plush robe. Settling down in bed, while memories of his skin were still warm on her own, she located her needle amongst. He’d be gone once more, just like when they parted all those months ago.

  I love you, Kaydia.

  She pushed the tip into her vein, and let the numbness sweep away his face from her mind.

  ***

  Quentin went by the name of Harlan Kwan-Don, here on this Raneis manufacturing world. Quentin Hall was a wanted dead man, after all. And he'd changed his appearance, using pigment treatments to blacken his hair and darken his skin, and changed exercises to subtly alter his stance and movements. Only his eyes remained unchanged.

  Harlan was a Republic Auditor, part of an independent team brought in to review Raneis's accounting practices and adherence to Republic trade and manufacturing regulations. He'd seen a lot of accounting ledgers, but he'd also seen some fascinating developments - like their revolutionary prototype Dual Neutrino Engine fighter.

  At some other time, he'd have loved to try it out. But not now. Because Junior Auditor Kwan-Don had no business doing such things. And because Justiciar Quentin Hall was busy. Even though, right now, he was simply sitting in a bar and waiting.

  "Where the hell is he?"

  He was supposed to be meeting Zerk T'far, a ship designer who was his best lead to who had paid for the construction if the Apostate’s ship. But he'd been a few minutes late, and Zerk was nowhere to be seen. And now...

  Now there was a corporate medical unit entering the bar. One with a crash kit. With a sinking feeling, he rose and followed them. "Back here," the owner was saying, "in the private rooms. It's Mister T'far!"

  Quentin sighed. "Well, fuck."

  Reunion

  Unlike Zerk, Scarlet awoke that morning. A bit groggy still, from the inertia she had taken before sleeping. Her communicator beeped insistently, discouraging her from turning over and getting in another hour or so. Smoothing the wild curls of her hair, Scarlet answered the holocall, not surprised to see Linora’s transparent blue face.

  “Were you able to acquire the asset?”

  “Yeah.” Scarlet held up the disk, keeping the name written on it out of view.

  “Very good, the client will be pleased. The client will be even more pleased if you could see that the intended recipient is fully reimbursed for their trouble.” Linora explained in innuendo, Scarlet understanding her meaning well enough. “They will be paying twice your rate to complete this assignment.” Scarlet kept a stoic expression as she experienced the annoyance of the request, and the meaninglessness of the reward.

  Since she went back into business under Linora, the Vigo gained complete control over her finances. Oh, the money was Scarlet’s, of course. But she had to go through Linora to access it. Ask permission to use her own money. Yet another way Linora kept her in check. Not that Linora left her wanting for anything, but it felt so patronizing, unable to manage her own money. Whatever was left of it after Linora took her sizeable finder’s fee. It was the way things were now. After she betrayed Linora, it was the least of her degradations. Just another reason not to forget where her loyalties lied.

  “Is there any information about the intended recipient?” Scarlet asked, trying to get her head back into her work.

  “No. Your payment includes the inquiry, and the delivery.” Linora explained, Scarlet holding back the sigh she felt now. If she had known the client wanted her to hit both parties she would have waited. It was going to be this much harder to take out a second person, especially if they suspected that Zerk’s death wasn’t accidental.

  “What if I can’t find them?” she protested, noting the difficult position she was already put in.

  “Then come back, in a week. You’ve done what the client needed, anything else is just extra. Besides I…I miss you.” Scarlet wasn’t sure if those last words were meant to be tender or taunting, but they didn’t bring her any comfort in the moment. Now wasn’t the time to contemplate her and Linora’scomplicated relationship. Not when she needed to focus on the job.

  “I’ll contact you again in a week.” Shutting off the holocall, Scarlet rolled out of bed and trudged over to the wardrobe, planning out her outfit, and her strategy. If Zerk was supposed to meet his contact today, perhaps she could catch him.

  Lorsha would be best, she decided. The kind of woman who blended in, who could move through society with little nuisance. So she donned the black wig and a soft black robe dress. It was long and loose enough she could conceal her plasma blade on her wrist. The same plasma blade she carried as a acolyte, that had been lost when she was captured and sold to the Digital sun. Tuzza had kept it as a prize, apparently, and Linora had been able to retrieve it for her. The crystal was gone, likely sold for a small fortune, but Linora provided her with a synthetic one. It meant that the blade that had once matched her eyes now matched her hair. She didn’t anticipate needing it, but she felt better having it on her, when possible. She also put the holodisk in one of the inner pockets, knowing that she couldn’t risk losing it. Linora would not be happy if she mussed up the job.

  Finishing up her persona with a pair of brown contacts, Lorsha made her way down stairs, just in time to see the medical team rushing in to attempt to resuscitate Zerk . It was a natural reaction to finding a dead body, she supposed, but one that would indeed be futile. The man had been dead for a few hours now. Still, this was her best chance to find the target, noting who took the most interest in Zerk’s demise, subtly probing the nearby minds for surface thoughts relating to him.

  ***

  "Who the flark are you?" asked one of the medics as Quentin pushed in behind him.

  "Harlan Kwan-Don," he answered, flashing an ID. "I was supposed to meet Zerk T'far, review some of our findings, and I heard his name mentioned. Is he all right?" He clearly wasn't, but the question was there to make him sound less official.

  "I'm sorry, Auditor Kwan-Don," the medic said. "Mister T'far died a little while ago."

  "How long?"

  "Between two and four hours," answered the medical droid examining the body. "An autopsy will be necessary, of course, but preliminary tests indicate heart failure brought on by Inertia."

  The name of the drug sent chills through Quentin. "Inertia..?"

  "Yeah." The medic sounded bored and disgusted. "It's a fad, right now. Small doses can help maintain an erection for hours. But it gets cut with all kinds of crap, you know?" He gave Quentin a sympathetic look. "Hey, I'm sorry. He's your friend, and..."

  "No, no," Quentin responded, waving him off, "just a work appointment. But... could I get a copy of the autopsy report?" He looked at the corpse. "It may have some bearing on my findings..."

  "Sure," the medic
agreed. "We'll send it care of the audit committee."

  "Thank you," Quentin murmured as he left, hardly hearing his own words. Inertia. He'd been killed by sex and inertia. It sounded so much like Scarlet it hurt. But... she was dead.

  Shaking himself, he headed for the bar. Right now, he could really use a drink.

  ***

  It seemed finding her next target was going to be easier than anticipated. This auditor was the one, clearly identifying himself before the medics. He clearly had no idea how much danger he was in, and Scarlet almost felt bad. Almost. But a quick death at her hands was far more merciful for him that Linora would be to her if she fucked up.

  So she sat at a booth in the back, sipping at her coffee, watching him over her datapad. To anyone looking closely, she was a just a woman reading the news over her morning joe. Fortunately like this, in her loose outfit, she rarely got a second look. Which was such a relief from Shadi, and the leers that she could practically feel on her skin as she moved. Sometimes she imagined Lorsha was who she would have become, had she finished her Justiciar training. The quiet, perceptive woman who never attracted much attention. But a decade as an assassin assured her that would have been a terrible Justiciar.

  Like Quentin?

  Another burning mouthful of bitter coffee, hoping to wash down his name and face. She turned her attention to the job. The target. He seemed on edge, visibly affected by the new of Zerk’s death. And yet he had said the man was nothing but a work acquaintance. What were they meeting about? She thought back to the files she had skimmed the night before, the files on the holodisk, hidden on her person. Was an auditor involved in corporate espionage? Or were the corporations trying to hide something from the regulatory committees? Worth killing a man over?

  It didn’t matter. It only matter how suspicious the man was, over the death of Zerk, and how she could possibly get to him. Seducing him didn’t seem like a good option. These kinds of bureaucrats were always stiff in the wrong ways. She could Psionically choke him while he ate, make it look like he merely choked on his food. Except, if someone tried to play the hero and give him the Heimlich. She was only going to get one shot at this, and she couldn’t waste it. So for now she would just watch and follow, looking for the most opportune moment to strike.