Pell sent the address while Darren and Sira were still descending toward Trell.
Beneath it she had written: DORR.
PAY FOR THE ANSWER YOU NEED.
The shop had a communicator in pieces behind its window and three locks on a door that stood open.
Dorr looked up from the workbench without putting anything down.
Two of the Besalisk’s hands held tools, a third steadied the casing and the fourth moved a cup away from the edge.
“Milo Tesk,” Sira said.
“Don’t know him.”
Darren put Milo’s picture on the counter.
Dorr glanced at it, then at the door.
“We’re buying an answer,” Darren said.
“Not bringing him back here.”
“Fifty.”
Darren had fifty-five.
At that price he would leave with five and whatever Dorr chose to tell him.
“Twenty.”
“Then buy a cheaper question.”
They settled at thirty-five.
Dorr waited for the transfer before saying Milo had come earlier that evening, asking for documents under the name Malen Tor.
He had not had the money.
“Did he leave alone?” Darren asked.
“That’s another answer.”
Sira leaned over the counter, close enough to read the repair docket beside Dorr’s cup.
“Pell said you kept clients out of each other’s business.”
“Pell sends me people she doesn’t want.”
“Then make her glad she did.”
Dorr set down one tool.
Milo had offered information instead of credits.
Cargo routes, he had said, worth enough to pay for a name and passage off the moon.
Dorr had let him use the customer terminal to find a buyer.
Milo had gone out to meet someone, then returned with one hand pressed against his side and a wet sleeve.
“Who did he meet?”
“He didn’t bring him here.”
“And you let him leave?” Darren said.
“He wanted a clinic. I repair communicators.”
Anger would not buy the next answer.
Darren looked at the terminal behind the counter; someone had wiped its keys, leaving pale streaks around the edges.
Sira asked for the session history and paid a separate fee before Dorr could make a performance of refusing.
There were searches for passage, buyers for manifests and, last, a free clinic three corridors away.
The final search was less than an hour old.
It gave them somewhere to look, not proof that Milo had reached it.
Darren sent the address to Renn and told him they were going there, keeping the promise he had made at Pell’s office.
“If Kess asks,” he told Dorr, “we bought repairs.”
Dorr looked at the untouched communicator in the window.
“Then bring something broken next time.”
There was blood on the clinic stairs.
The door stood open, and a bolt struck the inside of the frame as Darren reached it.
He caught Sira’s sleeve before she crossed the opening.
They pressed against the wall and listened.
A man inside demanded that somebody come out.
Farther away, a child was crying.
Sira drew her blaster.
Darren took his from its holster and checked the doorway again.
He could see a reception desk, an overturned chair and an elderly man on the floor beyond it.
A Rodian nurse crouched behind the desk with one hand clamped over her forearm.
“How many?” Darren asked her.
“Three with guns. There’s another one hurt. They followed him in.”
“Patients?”
“Six. Two got out.”
The corridor ran past two examination rooms before turning toward the rear of the clinic.
A gunman at that turn had the waiting area covered.
Sira fired from the entrance and made him withdraw.
Darren used the opening to reach the desk.
The old man tried to push himself up.
Another shot broke something above reception, and he flattened against the floor.
Darren caught his coat and dragged him behind the desk, bracing his feet when the pull caught the bruise across his abdomen.
The man swore at him.
Darren apologized without stopping.
Sira fired again.
Darren crossed to the first examination room and motioned her forward.
She reached the desk, checked the bend and followed him along the wall.
A Twi’lek man stood inside holding the crying child against his shoulder.
Darren pointed them toward the nurse and told them to stay low.
The man hesitated until Sira fired again, then carried the child out with his face turned against the small bare feet.
At the next doorway, a medical droid waited beside a cabinet, one photoreceptor broken.
Darren almost passed it.
Then it reached for a packet on the floor and missed.
“Can you walk?”
“My visual assessment is impaired.”
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
He picked up the packet and put it in the droid’s hand.
“Reception. The nurse needs you.”
The droid moved.
Beyond it, through the turn, Darren heard Milo say something too faint to understand.
A different voice answered him, calm enough to carry.
“You don’t need to die over this.”
Darren could not place the voice.
He looked at Sira, who moved to the corner and checked beyond it before beckoning him forward.
They found Milo in the treatment room on the left, huddled between a bed and a low cabinet.
Across the corridor was a supply room; beyond both rooms, an open door led to the staff stairs.
Three men had fallen back toward it.
Darren recognized Kess when he looked around the jamb: the same face in Sira’s photograph of the false transfer point.
One of the gunmen leaned out beside him.
Sira’s next shot drove the man behind the frame, leaving a dark mark where his head had been.
Darren got into the treatment room.
Milo raised a small blaster with both hands.
It shook badly enough that Darren could see the muzzle moving.
“Put it down.”
“Don’t let Voran—”
“I’m not Voran.”
Milo stared at him, then set the weapon on the floor.
Blood had soaked his shirt above the hip and spread across the floor under his leg.
Darren pulled a dressing from the small medical pouch he still carried and pressed it into place.
Milo made a sound that brought another movement from the corridor.
Sira fired.
A gunman fell against the stair doorway and dropped his weapon.
Kess dragged him out of sight while the other man covered them.
Darren kept pressure on Milo’s wound, unable to tell how badly the fallen man was hurt.
“What did you sell?”
“Nothing. I tried.”
“To whom?”
“I didn’t know he was Kess’s buyer.”
Milo pulled a datapad from inside his shirt.
Its case was slick with blood.
Darren caught it before it fell, wiped it against his trousers and saw rows of shipment records.
Not just Voran’s next transfer.
Client names, dates, docks, cargo codes: more than he could take in at a glance.
“Where did you get this?”
“My account. I copied them before I left the office. I thought I could pay for a way out.”
Sira glanced over her shoulder.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Thirty. More.”
Darren set the pad on the bed and helped Milo put his own hand over the dressing.
He needed both hands to secure it.
Blood began seeping through while he worked.
“Did you send a copy?”
“No. He wanted to see it first. Then he wanted me to come with him.”
Milo’s fingers tightened against Darren’s wrist.
“I ran.”
Darren looked at the rows still glowing on the pad.
“Keep pressing.”
Milo obeyed.
Darren looked at the treatment-room window.
The lower pane had been cracked by a bolt.
A service roof lay a level below, ending at the open shaft.
The drop would finish what the wound had started; Milo could barely sit upright.
“Rear stairs?” he asked Sira.
She shook her head.
Kess had that door.
They might force their way back toward reception, but they would have to pull Milo past the corner while two armed men watched.
He could not crawl faster than they could turn.
Across the corridor, the supply room had a ventilation grille above its lowest shelf.
The nurse had come as far as the bend with a bundle of dressings.
She crouched behind a wheeled bin, unable to cross to Milo.
“That vent,” Darren called.
“Where does it go?”
“Service gallery. Other side of the stairwell.”
“Can you get your patients out through the front?”
“If they stop shooting at us.”
He looked at the datapad.
“Kess.”
Sira caught his jacket as he moved toward the door.
He showed her the pad without putting his hand into the corridor.
“Get him across. Use the shelves to reach the vent.”
“You’ll have both of them on you.”
“They’re already here.”
She looked from the window to the supply room.
“Wait until I have the panel off.”
Darren nodded.
Sira dragged the wheeled cabinet beside Milo into the treatment-room doorway, leaving a narrow gap between it and the jamb.
It hid the lower part of the crossing from the stairs.
A bolt struck its metal edge.
She returned fire, then crossed into the supply room and pulled stock off the shelf below the grille.
“Kess!” Darren called again.
“The clerk gave me something.”
“Then bring him and it out.”
“He’s busy bleeding.”
“He should have thought of that before he tried to sell my business.”
Darren held the pad briefly above the cabinet, screen turned toward the stair doorway.
Kess told his man to hold fire.
Behind him, Milo tried to stand and slid down the wall with a gasp.
“Stay there,” Darren told him.
Kess called, “Five thousand.”
For a moment the number distracted Darren more effectively than the shooting.
Five thousand could buy time, shelter and choices he had not possessed since arriving.
Then Milo’s heel scraped the floor, and he remembered who would have to stay behind for that bargain to happen.
“Ten.”
Kess laughed.
“You don’t know what you’re holding.”
“Enough to make you patient.”
Metal scraped against the shelf across the corridor.
Sira had the grille off and propped beside the opening.
Darren tucked the pad inside his jacket, then lowered himself beside Milo and brought the young man’s arm across his shoulders.
“Push with your feet.”
Milo tried.
Darren could not lift him clear of the floor; together they made a halting stumble toward the cover of the cabinet.
Kess’s man stepped into view.
Darren pushed Milo down and fired once over the cabinet; the bolt struck the opposite wall.
The man pulled back.
Sira reached across the last gap and hauled Milo into the supply room by his jacket.
“That’s expensive shooting,” Kess said.
Darren returned to the treatment-room doorway before the man could come out again.
“You buying or talking?”
“Put the pad on the floor. Push it toward me.”
“And then you shoot me.”
“You can leave.”
“Generous. Tell your friend by the stairs.”
Kess’s gunman had moved while Kess talked.
Darren could see his reflection in a glass cabinet: an arm, part of a shoulder, a weapon rising.
He dropped behind the bed as the shot tore through the doorway.
Heat crossed his cheek.
He fired twice toward the stair doorway, making the man withdraw long enough for Sira to get Milo onto the shelf.
She was breathing hard.
Milo could not pull himself into the vent.
Darren heard the shelf buckle and Sira swear at him to use his good leg.
The sounds were close enough to make the waiting intolerable.
He wanted to cross the corridor and help her.
If he did, Kess would have the corridor.
At the bend toward reception, the nurse was retreating behind the wheeled bin.
The droid had come to help her; beyond them, the old man clung to the reception desk while the Twi’lek waited with the child.
Kess’s gunman leaned out from the stairs, turning his weapon toward the bend.
“Back!” Darren shouted to the nurse.
He fired toward the stair doorway, away from the patients.
The man jerked behind cover.
The nurse disappeared around the corner with the droid.
A bolt struck the ceiling above Darren, and the overhead light went out.
Emergency lamps turned the blood on his fingers almost black.
“Vale,” Sira said.
“He’s through.”
He saw her boots disappear above the supply-room shelf.
She had gone into the vent after Milo, pushing him toward the gallery.
The gap between Darren and that shelf was only a few steps.
Kess would need fewer to reach the corner once Darren stopped firing.
Darren pulled the pad from his jacket.
Shipment records still filled the screen.
He could shoot it, but he had no reason to believe a broken display meant destroyed memory.
If Kess thought it was useless, he would have no reason to leave the stair doorway either.
Sira was still urging Milo forward.
Darren could hear every scrape and every pause.
The cracked window was behind him.
The roof below was visible from the staff stairs’ external landing.
Kess could reach it by going down; Darren could only reach the vent by crossing his line of fire.
“Last offer,” Kess called.
Darren stood just far enough for him to see the pad, turned and threw it through the damaged pane.
It struck the frame, spun out and hit the roof below.
Kess shouted at the man near him to get downstairs.
Darren ran before he knew whether they would both go.
A shot followed him into the supply room.
He hit the shelf with one knee and caught the edge of the opening.
Pain locked his abdomen as he pulled himself up.
For a moment his boots scraped uselessly against the metal.
Then one found the shelf brace and he shoved himself forward.
The shelf collapsed beneath his trailing boot.
He caught the grille propped beside the opening and dragged it loosely across behind him.
Impacts rang through the metal behind him.
The duct was too narrow to turn around.
Ahead, Sira was telling Milo to move one hand, then the other, her voice stripped of anger because anger took breath she needed.
Darren followed the scraping sounds until cold air reached his face.
He dropped into a service gallery beside a row of stopped fans.
Sira stood over Milo with her weapon raised toward the stair door.
She shifted the muzzle away from Darren without taking it off the stair door, then glanced at his empty hand.
“Where is it?”
“Roof below the treatment room.”
She stared at him for half a second.
Somewhere beyond the door, boots struck stairs.
“Argue later,” Darren said, and got Milo’s arm over his shoulder.
Sira took his other side.
They took Milo through the gallery and into a freight passage, Sira choosing the turns while Darren tried to keep his grip.
Milo pushed with his feet whenever they stumbled.
By the next level he could no longer help, and they had to stop twice before reaching a doorway.
They stopped inside an industrial laundry, where the proprietor looked at the blood and told them to get out.
He pointed to a space behind the hanging sheets and stopped looking at them.
Darren laid Milo down and checked the dressing.
His hands wanted to shake; he gave them work instead, holding pressure while Sira called transport and told Renn where they were going.
Steam warmed his face.
Through a gap in the sheets he could see people walking along the passage, carrying bags and arguing over ordinary things.
“We can go back for it,” he said.
“Can you carry him and go back?”
“No.”
She knelt on Milo’s other side and helped secure the dressing.
Neither mentioned the pad again until they had reached the second clinic.
Voran was already there, arguing with reception over payment.
Renn sat beside him with his arm supported, watching the door.
He stood when Darren came in and immediately had to catch the back of the chair.
“Don’t,” Darren said.
“Get somebody who can lift.”
Renn called through the treatment doors.
Two attendants brought a stretcher.
Darren stayed alongside it until a doctor took his hands off Milo and told him to let go.
In the waiting area, Voran demanded to know where Kess was.
Sira gave him the route they had taken out of Trell, then the part he would like less.
Darren had put the manifests out of the window to make the escape possible.
“All my routes?” Voran asked.
“More than yours,” Darren said.
“I didn’t have time to read them.”
Voran took a step toward him.
Renn caught his sleeve.
“He just carried him in.”
“And carried my business out.”
“Ask him,” Renn said.
“You keep skipping that part.”
Darren leaned against the wall.
He could still feel the duct pressing into his shoulders.
“Milo couldn’t climb without her. I couldn’t cover the corridor and lift him. Kess wanted the pad. I made him choose where to go.”
“You could have left Milo.”
“Yes.”
Voran waited.
Darren did not give him another answer.
Milo’s communicator sounded inside the jacket Sira had brought from the stretcher.
She checked the caller, looked at Darren and answered without speaking.
Kess appeared on the small screen.
In his hand was the datapad, one corner broken away, its display still lit.
Darren recognized the blood smeared across its case before he recognized the first client code.
“Tell Voran to stop buying clerks he can’t keep,” Kess said.
“You put him in a clinic,” Darren replied.
Kess’s eyes shifted.
“And you gave me a better evening than he did.”
The image vanished.
Sira ended the connection.
The device Pell had planted was still at the brokerage; this was Milo’s own pad, in Kess’s hand.
There was no marker they could follow to retrieve it.
Voran looked toward the treatment doors, then took out his communicator.
“Pell,” he said.
“I need you here.”
The doctor came out while he was talking.
They had stopped the bleeding.
Milo was expected to survive, but the doctor wanted quiet and made them wait before allowing a short visit.
When they were allowed in, Milo lay very still.
His eyes followed Voran from the door to the foot of the bed.
“How many?” Darren asked him.
Milo closed his eyes.
“More than thirty. Maybe forty.”
“Can you remember them?”
“Some.”
Voran said, “You remember all of them.”
The doctor told him to leave.
He looked ready to argue until Darren moved between him and the bed.
“He can’t give us anything if you make him guess.”
For a moment Voran seemed more likely to hit Darren than to step back.
Then he went out.
Darren found something to write on and put it within Milo’s reach.
“What you know. Leave the rest blank.”
Milo stared at the empty space.
His hand moved toward it.
Voran gave Darren a key to a spare dispatch cubicle at the company office.
He wanted everyone close until Pell had something they could act on.
The room contained a folding bed, a chair, a narrow table and a sink that rattled when the tap opened.
Darren fetched the kit bag he had stored at the office that morning, before they took the vehicles out.
He had carried only the small medical pouch into Trell.
Now he set the almost empty pouch beside the bag and sat down.
He counted twenty credits and set them beside the blaster.
Its cell was partly spent; the spare Sira had sold him was used too.
The nineteen Earth rounds remained untouched.
He washed his hands twice before noticing a stripe of blood along the inside of his wrist.
Someone knocked.
He opened the door with the blaster behind his leg.
Sira held up two food containers.
“Put that away before you negotiate with dinner.”
He laid the weapon on the table.
She took the chair; he sat on the bed.
When he reached for his communicator, she put her food down.
“I came to eat somewhere nobody was asking me for something.”
He left the communicator alone.
“You chose badly.”
“I’m beginning to think so.”
He moved the kit bag out of the way so she could stretch her legs.
She did, resting one boot against the bedframe.
Darren opened his container and waited for the food to stop steaming.
For several minutes Sira ate without talking.
She had a bruise at the base of her thumb, where the vent edge had caught her, and kept shifting the container between her hands.
“You hurt it,” he said.
“Milo’s heavier than he looks.”
He put his food down, opened the kit and offered her the remaining wrap.
She let him wind it around her hand, testing her fingers before telling him it was tight enough.
When he kept checking the knot, she laid her uninjured hand over his.
“It’s done.”
He let go.
She picked up her meal, and he realized he had been waiting for her to find another reason to stay.
For now, finishing dinner was enough.
“The nurse?” he asked.
“Renn got through to the clinic. She got the other patients out. They want someone to pay for the door.”
“Send Voran the estimate.”
Sira laughed once, then looked at his untouched meal.
“You waiting for it to apologize?”
Darren picked it up.
“I’d throw it again.”
“I know.”
“That isn’t me saying it worked out.”
“I’m here. Milo’s breathing. Tomorrow we find out who else pays.”
Darren looked toward the communicator.
He could name the man they had brought out alive.
He could not name the crews on the routes Kess was reading now.
They finished eating while the office beyond the door filled with late calls.
Somewhere a printer started, stopped, then started again.
Before Sira left, Darren asked her to wake him when Pell arrived.
“Sleep first,” she said.
“Wake me.”
She nodded and pulled the door closed.
Darren set the key beside the identichip and lay down without taking his boots off.
When the communicator sounded, he was still looking at the ceiling.
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Thanks for reading — and for supporting Darren’s increasingly questionable life choices.