The Man Who Never Missed Read Free Page B

project enough ki so that a potential opponent would stop hostility. A real expert could defuse almost any fight situation simply by being there.
    “Ever give any thought to your future, Dirisha?”
    She shrugged. “I take it as it comes.”
    He thought about it for a few seconds. It was no riskier than a lot of other things he’d done. He said, “You ever hear of Renault?”
    “Backwater world in the Shin System,” she said. “I don’t know much about it.”
    “It would be a good place to be in three or four years,” Khadaji said, looking past her around the octagon. “Somebody there might make you an offer you’d find interesting.”
    The big woman looked at him carefully. “What kind of an offer?”
    He shrugged. “It might not happen. A lot of things could get in the way. Let’s just say if situations go as designed, Renault could be a place for you to stretch yourself a little.”
    “Um. Any particular place on Renault?”
    “There’s a small coastal town, Simplex-by-the-Sea.”
    She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “But how could I leave you, Emile? You need me here.”
    He smiled, recognizing the fugue in her statement. “I expect to be out of the rec-chem business pretty soon.”
    “And on Renault?”
    He sighed. “No. You won’t see Emile Khadaji on Renault.”
    She considered that, and apparently decided not to ask anything more. “I’d better get back to work,” she said.
    “Good idea. I need to check with Anjue and see how the crowd is building. Later.”
    He watched her move away. She walked with a smooth, rolling motion that bespoke her years of training and excellent physical conditioning. He didn’t really know Dirisha; she kept to herself, spent a lot of time working out in one of the local dojos, and had no lovers, male or female, that he knew of. But there was a strength in her beyond the physical, an essence of something deeper. She could be a piece of it, he felt.
    He walked to the main entrance of the pub, where Anjue and his three assistants were working the line.
    “Anjue. How is it going?”
    “Ah, Emile, slow. I have only forty on my flat-screen, and three upranks have called on the com to say they are coming at seventeen.” He waved his hands in that typical gesture used by natives of Spandle—a kind of outward loop with each wrist. “The early darkness means a change in guard duty, so fewer troops are free and the eagle doesn’t fly for three days, so some are unlined, what can I say?”
    “Not to worry, Anjue. We get by.”
    Khadaji left and headed toward his private rooms in the basement. He stopped by the dispensing window for a moment to tell Butch. The man sat behind a three-centimeter-thick sheet of densecrystal set into a solid plastcrete wall. The drug room might be a tempting target for thieves and it was well protected. The doors were thick stainless steel with reaper locks, and nothing short of a vacuum bomb would dent the densecris window. Chem was purchased and delivered through the double drawers under the window.
    “I’m going to catch a little sleep, Butch. No calls for an hour or so.”
    “Copy, Chief.” His voice had a metallic ring through the speaker set into the wall over the window. “We’ll try to keep the Scum from takin’ over while you’re nappin’.”
    “Thanks, Butch, I appreciate that.”

Chapter Three
    KHADAJI’S PRIVATE SPACE was a combination of office and living quarters. It was furnished simply—a desk and comp terminal, a few chairs, a foam-pad bed in one room; a shower, sink and bidet in the second room; a small kitchen in the third and final room. Simple living quarters—on the surface. What didn’t show was the hidden store box set under the floor of his desk, nor the tunnel under the refrigerator in the kitchen. He had dug the tunnel himself, using a “borrowed” cutalong he returned before anyone knew it was missing. It was a short, tight passage, leading from his kitchen into the housing of his