Free Pelquin's Comet by Ian Whates Page B

natural for a visiting businessman to stare out the window as New Sparta flashed past. Perhaps it was.
    “It’s just our bad luck he booked in to see Terry Reese,” the banker continued. “The old bat had Drake assigned to the case before Pelquin had even left the building. No way I could get involved after that.”
    De Souza grunted. Excuses. They were all he kept hearing. It was enough to make him wonder why he’d gone to the trouble and expense of securing an insider at First Solar in the first place.
    “Let’s just hope there are no further slip-ups, for all our sakes.”
    “There won’t be,” Archer assured him. “Drake’s record is exemplary. His presence actually works in our favour. This way we get what we want without taking any of the risks.”
    “Indeed,” said de Souza, who hadn’t been planning on taking any risks in any case.
    A ping in his left ear distracted him. An incoming communiqué, the caller ID unavailable. He turned his head away from Archer as he answered.
    “Speak” he said, knowing who this had to be.
    “Job done,” a male voice said.
    “Our visitors have left, then?”
    “Yes, and in something of a hurry.”
    “Good, good. It was so nice of you to see them off.”
    De Souza cut the connection, confident that the signal was untraceable and that the voices involved had been automatically scrubbed to remove all identifiers, but he was cautious by nature and so had kept things as brief as possible.
    He was already tiring of Archer’s company and asked Gant, his driver and bodyguard, to take the car off the AI controlled grid and find a discreet side street where they could pull over and deposit the banker. Having done so the interior of the vehicle was his own once more. With Gant at the front and isolated behind tinted glass, he could relax. He even managed the shadow of a smile. The game was afoot, or a-spaceship in this particular instance. Pelquin was currently rushing across the stars to claim the ancients’ cache, doing all de Souza’s dirty work for him.
    His gaze returned to the buildings that again rushed past. If all went to plan, he might yet be occupying one of them a lot sooner than expected. Now there was a pleasant prospect.

F IVE
    Taking off without clearance was reckless in the extreme, Pelquin knew that. He’d jeopardised the lives of not only his own crew but countless unknown others. New Sparta was one of the busiest of all the human worlds with ships coming and going constantly. The skies were clogged with freighters, passenger ships, exec craft – all manner of vessels – and it required a delicate balancing act to keep all of them in secure orbit and at safe trajectories; an intricately choreographed ballet of constantly shifting performers, which the manoeuvre they’d just pulled would have ripped apart. A rogue ship taking flight without permission on an unsanctioned flight path had to be the port authorities’ worst nightmare. He’d occasionally heard about such things and had shaken his head in bemusement, astonished at the stupidity of those involved. He’d never expected to actually be responsible for something like this, but needs must.
    There would be all hell to pay should Pelquin’s Comet ever want to return to New Sparta; which it did, very much. Nor would it stop there. The repercussions would ripple outwards as quickly as ships and gossip could carry news, and events would doubtless be embellished with each fresh telling. A year hence, Pelquin wouldn’t be surprised to hear in some portside bar of how Pelquin’s Comet had lifted from New Sparta one step ahead of the law and leaving a flotilla of police cruisers floundering in its wake.
    “Skip, we’re being hailed,” Anna said from the seat beside him.
    “Yeah, I can see that. Who is it?”
    “A police patrol unit. They’re demanding we stop accelerating and stand down.”
    Damn! So much for fanciful embellishments. “Can they intercept us before we’re at a safe jump