Free Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex by Stephen Renneberg Page B

or you wouldn’t be
here.”
    “Or I might just want to know how
you heard about my auction?”
    “Jie Kang Li hired me to
represent him. He didn’t tell me how he knew or what I was buying, he just told
me to win.”
    When you lie, lie big. Jie Kang
Li was the supreme head of the Yiwu, the largest and most powerful Chinese
crime syndicate in Mapped Space. That made him one of the ten richest humans
alive and the only one not an Earth resident. Li was also the People’s
Federation of Asia’s most wanted criminal, and considering how long he’d evaded
them, their biggest embarrassment. Even the Earth Intelligence Service couldn’t
find him, which meant he was either a ghost or a genius – probably both.
    “You don’t know what the
merchandise is?” Sarat asked.
    “Not a clue,” I said, hoping
Sarat would volunteer the information.
    Sarat reflected on my lies
briefly. “Li is at least a thousand light years from here, which makes your
story impossible to check.”
    That’s why Lena had picked Jie
Kang Li as my cover story. “I can prove it.”
    “How?”
    Lena had given me an Earth Bank digital-vault
with sufficient funds to play the game. It was DNA coded for my personal use
and was as good as cash anywhere in Mapped Space. Digital-vaults were the only way
to transfer funds between star systems that had no way of accessing a central
data repository on Earth. Global banking systems may have been highly
centralized in the days before interstellar travel – because distances were
negligible – but interstellar banking was exactly the opposite. Distance and
time dictated it. It had made Earth Bank as much an idea as an institution, and
had created the most splintered, decentralized use of data in human history.
Billions of digital-vaults scattered across thousands of light years – each a
tiny piece of the Bank’s central repository – allowed anyone access to their
funds no matter how many months or years they were away from Earth. You didn’t
contact the bank – you couldn’t! – you carried it with you, wherever you went.
    I retrieved the small rectangular
device from the ship’s safe and swept it over my desk scanner. The credit stick
checked my DNA before revealing the balance to the ship’s processing core,
which then replaced my view screen’s window sim with an obscenely large number.
If I was inclined to steal from the EIS, I could have taken the money and lived
like a potentate for the rest of my life. Fortunately for Lena, the Silver Lining was enough for me.
    Sarat took one look at the king’s
ransom locked inside my credit stick and sat back, convinced. Money really does
talk, in any system, in any century, particularly to men like Sarat.
    “Why would Jie Kang Li trust you
with so much money? Why not send one of his own people?” Sarat asked.
    “Maybe he trusts me more than his
own people. Or maybe he doesn’t want them knowing what he’s doing.”
    Sarat sucked on his putrid
fume-stick thoughtfully. “I’ve heard your word is good, Kade.”
    “So is Jie Kang Li’s money.”
    “You really don’t know what
you’re bidding on?”
    As soon as he said it, I knew he
was hooked! “I’m just a hired gun with a fast ship. I get the stuff. I take it
to him. He pays me a huge commission and we are done. That’s all I care about.”
    “You could steal his money. It’s
more than all the commissions you’ll ever earn.”
    “Where would I go with it? I’m
already at the ass end of Mapped Space. If I stole from Jie Kang Li, I’d be
dead within a year. This way, I’m rich and alive.”
    “A most desirable combination,” Sarat
mused as he blew smoke across the room, his mind made up. “Welcome to the deal
of the millennium, Captain Kade.” He stood and dropped a data chip on my desk.
“We meet in ten days. This is the location. Be on time.”
    He walked to the hatch, “Remember,
if you bring the authorities with you, it won’t just be me you’ll have to deal
with. The other