Hunt the Heavens: Book Two of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy by Chris Bunch Page A

It wasn’t a suggestion.
    Wolfe refilled his coffee mug.
    “Don’t drink on the job, eh?”
    “I don’t drink at all, sir.”
    “Another one of the reformed ones.”
    “No, sir. Never started.”
    “Then how’d you end up doing what you’re doing?” Oriz asked.
    “My mother owned five bars, so I grew up in the business.”
    “What happened?”
    “The war.”
    Oriz grunted, lost interest. “What do you think of working here?”
    “So far, it’s a good job, sir. I’m looking forward to meeting Mister Kakara.”
    “Yeah, well, our business took a little longer than we thought. Jalon’ll throw himself a welcome-home party tonight. You’ll meet him then. It’ll probably get wild.”
    Wolfe shrugged. “It’s his world, and I’m drawing his silver. Why not?”
    “Maybe you haven’t seen real wild. You ever heard the joke about Jalon, the two whores, and the Chitet?”
    He told it. The story was improbable, obscene, and made Kakara out as a sex-happy fool. Wolfe had heard it three times before on other worlds, each time with a different rich man as the center. The first version had involved the Earth-King Henry VIII and a pope.
    When Oriz had finished, he laughed loudly, his eyes never leaving Joshua’s face. Wolfe permitted himself a polite chuckle.
    Oriz finished the last of his drink, stood.
    “Another, sir?”
    “More than one of those every couple hours and the party’ll have to start without me. Besides, I got work to do.” He turned and waddled away. He veered slightly to the side once, almost slipping into the pool, corrected his course, and vanished down one of the ramps.
    Wolfe looked thoughtfully after him, then knelt and began checking the underside of the bar’s shelves. He found what he was looking for under the bottom one. It was a gray-green ovoid, a phrase-activated surveillance bug.
    “Very cute,” he said below a whisper. “Say the secret word or retell Oriz’s little story, and win a thumping.
    “I
am
looking forward to meeting you, Mister Kakara.”
    • • •
    It was late.
    The series of rooms set aside for the party were packed. Joshua wondered where all the people had come from. Not even a yacht as big as the
Laurel
could have held them all. He’d seen a few of them in Kakara’s absence, wandering around the sprawling mansion, planets without a system.
    Now the sun had returned, and the magnate’s well-paid friends swirled about him. The music that boomed around Wolfe as he made his way through the crowd, balancing a tray of champagne flutes, came from a quartet on a platform halfway up one wall. It was supposed to be Indian skitch, he guessed, its edges rounded by the distance from New Calcutta, the mediocrity of the musicians, and the tastes of the audience. Joshua thought wryly that the two or three dozen people present who might’ve been young enough to like the real stuff were more likely to bat their eyes and prefer the tastes — in everything — of their older and richer “friends.”
    He moved around a woman who was leaning against a replica of Michelangelo’s
Victory
and staring contemptuously at a man sprawled on the floor at her feet. Someone had scrawled kakara rules on the conqueror’s knee.
    Two women in old-fashioned tuxedoes were dancing skillfully with each other.
    An old man sat backward in a Chippendale chair, maneuvering a model of a
de Ruyter
–class monitor around as if he were ten years old.
    A man Wolfe noted for his classically handsome features was holding an intense conversation with the dancer in a Degás painting Joshua was fairly sure was real.
    A troupe of ignored acrobats arced back and forth near the ceiling like playful swallows.
    Joshua heard Kakara’s voice before he saw him. It was loud, commanding, its edges blurred a little by alcohol.
    “Damned straight she packed it in on you,” he said. “You took her away from Potrero, di’n't you? Woman that’s got her eye on the main chance, hell, she’ll walk from you the