The League of Spies Read Free Page A

suggested. “Now, we have to-what’s the sub-agenda, Livintius?”
    “Item One, enter the building without being seen. Two, eliminate anyone who sees us. Does that mean we get to kill them?”
    “If absolutely necessary.”
    Livintius offered a sigh of satisfaction. “Three, determine which quarters belong to Zazana Renkel. Four, proceed to that set of quarters. Five, enter those quarters. Six, determine whether Renkel is there. And now we branch. If she’s there...”
    “That’s enough for now,” Cherek said. “Let’s start on the operational details. Entering without being detected.”
    “There she is,” said Mapper.
    “We could pretend to be comlink repairers,” Tinian said. “We’ll need to acquire service uniforms. We’d enter the lobby and tell the security personnel that Renkel has reported a comlink outage.”
    “So he calls heron his comlink, and she denies it,” Livintius said.
    Cherek shook his head. “Back it up a step. Before that, we kill the power to the building so the comlink outage is plausible.”
    Tinian considered. “Then we’d need to be power-grid repairers, wouldn’t we?”
    “There she is,” Mapper said again. He was pointing through the air- speeder’s transparisteel windscreen. A woman, tall, lean, and dark-haired, dressed in a dark blue uniform with orange trim, was thirty meters from the front of the building and approaching it at a rapid walk.
    “Yes, yes,” Cherek said, “Livintius, when she goes in, you can strike Item Six and the ‘she’s not home yet’ branch. Now, how do we get to the building’s power controls?”
    “But we can grab her now,” Joram said.
    “What, and spoil the plan?”
    Joram growled to himself, a credible imitation of a holodrama rancor. “Mapper, go get her, standard talk and pop.”
    “Thank you,” Mapper said. The relief in his voice suggested he’d been given a reprieve from a death sentence. He hit the button beside him, and the airspeeder door slid up and out of the way.
    “Wait, wait,” Cherek said.
    Mapper didn’t wait. He unstrapped himself in an instant, untangled himself from Tinian’s grip in another, and moved toward the woman.
    Joram took a look around. There were pedestrians on this walkway and others on the one opposite, but none within forty or fifty meters. He drew his Intelligence-issued blaster-his primary weapon, not the holdout weapon-and switched it over to its stun setting.
    “You can’t do this,” Cherek said. “You can’t just jettison the plan we spent so much time creating. That way lies anarchy and confusion.”
    “He’s right, you know,” Tinian said.
    “You’re demonstrating a marked tendency toward rebellion arid aggression, “ Livintius said.
    Tinian looked thoughtful. “A dietary imbalance could be contributing to your bad attitude, Joram.”
    Joram ignored them. Over on the walkway, Mapper and the woman now stood together. Mapper gestured up and down the landspeeder lane like a lost tourist, 3 role he’d played before. Joram steadied his blaster in the viewport frame of the aircar and squeezed the trigger.
    A blast of light sizzled across to strike the woman in the torso. She jerked in a full-body spasm and began to fall backward.
    Mapper caught her, swinging her arm up over his shoulders, tucking her in close to him as though she were a close friend who’d had too much to drink. Still talking, Mapper hauled her back toward the airspeeder.
    Joram lowered his blaster out of sight and took stock of the potential witnesses. Several of them had obviously heard the noise of the blaster and were looking around. Two, not far away, were staring at Mapper and the unconscious woman in some confusion. But there was no visual evidence to convince them that a crime was being committed. Tinian, you need to be in the front seat.”
    “Right.” She snapped out of what looked like a momentary trance. She slid out Mapper’s door and moved around to stand beside the front passenger door.