So much for his cover.

  Who knew what the grove had told this kid, or who this kid really worked for? For a moment, Bashar wondered if he was seeing a cyranoid right now—had the kid done the killing themself, on behalf of some distant puppetmaster? But that much bandwidth would have stood out like a flare this far into the sticks. And the kid had none of the peripheral oddities of a human-hosted avatar. “Mind the road,” Bashar finally said.

  “And watch your wheels.” With that, the kid kicked up on top of a shattered concrete pillar to mount their tall bike, then headed south, whistling tunelessly. Bashar watched a while but received no backward glances.

  Killings in the woods. And a cyranoid wouldn’t be operating out here without consent and assistance from the natural entities. It was hard to imagine Shadows-In-Line-With-the-Moon hiring contract killers, but depending on how badly the grove and its peers wanted to protect the infrastructure that gave them civil rights and economic power, one human life was just a small step.

  What did he know, at least at the moment?

  Bashar knew he had to head west. The trees had all but told him that. He supposed he was working for them now. But the only thing around here besides dope growers and survivalists who liked to go shopping less than once a year was Schaadt’s Shack, a roadhouse that had a good reputation as neutral territory. For the most part, you didn’t get far off the I-5 corridor without specific business in hand and someone’s permission to do that business. Schaadt’s Shack was an exception. People who would shoot each other on sight out in the hills would sit down to drink together in a place like that. Peer pressure, a weapons check, and a small stable of fearsome bouncers kept the bar in business on those terms.

  He walked. The trees were worried. Bashar was worried. Friends of Mr. Cairo? What did that mean?

  It was less than thirty minutes on foot from the corridor trail to his destination. People liked their drinking convenient.

  So far as Bashar could tell, the place had been originally built as a tiltwall shopping mall. How it survived the comprehensive rewilding movement of the middle of the last century was anybody’s guess. The outer walls were covered with layers of granite stacked like a riprap breakwater. The roof was a Medieval classic, hand-logged Douglas fir beams supporting honest-to-god slate tiles. Bashar wouldn’t have hesitated to airdrop a cargo load onto it.

  The tamped clay apron in front even held a few vehicles. Unusual in these parts. He slacked his pace and scanned. A couple of small, battered hovercraft that would run slow and fat on dense, long range fuel cells. The usual assortment of bikes and seggers. An honest-to-God Hummer body, though this one was crowded with an alcohol-fueled boiler and wouldn’t drive much faster than he could run. Not that he could run with a couple of metric tons of cargo on his back.

  And strangely enough, a rather peculiar helicopter. Something very new. Insectile airframe, rotors folded politely, bristling with enough stingers of one kind or another to melt everything else in the yard and punch more than a few holes in Schaadt’s Jack-the-giant-killer slate roof in the process.

  Finding such a machine out here was like finding a silenced carbon fiber pistol in a child’s toy box.

  Somebody took their drinking seriously.

  Precisely who had taken a dirt nap and how they had been killed became much more interesting questions to Bashar.

  He paged his own alerts. Nothing with any meaningful priority sought his attention. Whatever this was, it likely wasn’t here for him.

  Right. Cairo’s ride, he’d bet, whoever Mr. Cairo was. “You’re not the only bad ass in the world,” Bashar reminded himself out loud.

  He was here for this killer chopper and whoever had flown in on it. Still, he made a wide circle around the helo as he approached the front door.

  From greenwiki:

  Mining Packages. While many people are familiar with Orbital Zero as an effort to ensure long-term human space habitation, the real economic driver was always the Luna-Lagrange Consortium’s Project Precious. Two separate efforts, both successful, were made to capture and tow two asteroids known to contain significant quantities of high value and precious metals into high Earth orbit for intensive mining and mineral recovery.

  Project Precious was an unusual effort as it had a significant positive return when expressed within the budgetary frameworks of the old state-capital system by which many polities still manage their fiscal processes, while also having a significant positive return within the Green accounting frameworks as codified in the Catalina Accords of 2051. This combination of monetary value and abstracted resource extraction returns was rarely seen in the twenty-first century, and never on a project of this scale, with trillions of Euros at stake.

  The problems with Project Precious emerged when attempting to transfer the extracted minerals back down the gravity well for surface-based industrial and economic use. Simply put, while heavy lift has been a challenge since the first days of the rocket age, ultraheavy return was never seriously contemplated prior to Project Precious. Especially not in kiloton quantities.

  After much debate, the delivery of resources to the Earth’s surface was finally accomplished via guided airfoil-shaped “mining packages” covered with sufficient waste material cast as tiles to provide an ablative heat shield. These are sent to the surface on a shallow angle of re-entry to minimize loss due to re-entry stress, as well as minimize surface impact effect. The mining packages are guided to land in fairly shallow water splash zones offering substantial west-to-east clearance (Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, various littorals, and so forth). Materials thus delivered are then retrieved through various conventional means as appropriate to the local tech base and Green priorities.

  Early in the project’s history, one re-entry in Lake Superior experienced an unplanned “skip” which resulted in the mining package coming to rest outside the planned impact zone, and causing the near-complete destruction to the city of Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. This is considered the costliest peacetime human-caused destruction of property in history. As a result of this disaster, landing protocols for the mining packages were altered, and onboard control systems with a variety of override capabilities were added.

  IV: TYGRE TOLD ME ONCE IN PASSING THAT HE CAME FROM A SECRET SCHOOL

  Bashar let the bouncer pat him down. A woman he vaguely recognized, Blue Alice. “I got to ask,” he said conversationally, “who’s the fly-in customer?”

  She shrugged, an activity which bordered on the tectonic. “Seattle money, maybe. Walked in clean. All I care about.”

  Walked in clean with hot, flaming death on wings parked outside. Anybody with the cojones to fly low over this airspace was heavy stuff indeed, or awfully well defended.

  “Not Cairo money, huh?”

  That sally produced no visible reaction at all. He pushed on inside.

  Schaadt’s Shack boasted a lot of square footage, rough-hewn Douglas fir pillars interspersed with separate tables and booth clusters. That much wood had to cost a pretty penny from the forest collectives. The layout made space for privacy and room to have fist fights. Not to mention break them up. A big kitchen loomed at the back, running off a combination of wood-fired and solar. Somebody had been baking just recently, though yeasty-beastie beer reek underlay the rest of the interior fug.

  They were known for their food here. People even came down from Seattle just to eat.

  Like the flyboys who’d parked outside.

  Huge bars lined each side of the cavernous hall. The brewery bulked behind the bar to his right. Everything was underlit, so the individual clusters of tables and booths resembled candelaria scattered through a musty dusk.

  Bashar found a stretch of stools at the bar by the east wall, the one without the brewery. It was a slow day, which was fine with him. Better chance to find this Mr. Cairo. A menu of beer and food was scrawled across a wide chalkboard. Where the hell did anyone get colored chalk these days, he wondered. Maybe they fabbed it from feedstock.

  A barback finally drifted over. “Yeah?”

  Customer service at its finest. Bashar didn’t bother to not smile. “Pint of Burn Scar Bitter, and the Brie tempura with wild game charcuterie, please.”

  “On the way.”

  He turned to watch the room. Mostly Bashar was curious to spot the flyboys.

  There wasn’t much to see. Drinkers and diners kept to themselves. There’d be a band tonight, and the usual local sports of poker, dancing and brawling. Right now it was the casual lunch trade—basically himself—and a few locals doing whatever locals did around here. Plus some tables deep in the shadowed corners and bays of the vast room.

  No one he could see looked like they’d dropped in riding twenty million Euros worth of combat hardware. If Bashar had been security for Schaadt’s Shack, that would make him awfully twitchy.

  His food turned up warm and smelling like protein heaven. Food had gotten a lot better after the early twenty-first century distribution networks had collapsed. Farm-to-table was how most of the human race existed these days.

  Bashar raised his Burn Scar Bitter and offered an old toast to no one in particular. “Consumers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your supply chains.”

  “You some kind of capitalist?” asked the barback suspiciously.

  The question—close to a killing insult in many circumstances—amused Bashar. “I’m older than your grandma’s bunions, and ain’t never yet had a bank account. What do you think?”

  “Original Green, huh?” She leaned against her side of the bar and gave him a long look.

  Bashar returned the favor, with his security eyes this time. Female, mixed race but probably Pacific Islander and East African, pretty-but-hard in the way of most young women these days. Hair buzzed short with something sparkly rubbed in for looks. Or more. He could think of half a dozen offensive and defensive applications for reflective shavings, depending on the materials involved. Wore no scent at all but her sweat and a trace of bar rag from being on shift at least a few hours. Modest facial tattoos, faux-Celtic abstracts around her orbital ridges and down her nose. Three tiny studs in the left nostril, each winking with a single dull green pixel—there was cultural code he couldn’t read without a data dip. Her shirt was a torn collared tee in a style so old it had been out of fashion when he was her age, black bamboo cloth with smart fiber image of the late American President Chamnansatol.

  Presumably before her assassination by hemorrhagic fever, though with the noisily pixelated art it was hard to tell.

  “You’re young,” Bashar said pleasantly, indulging his not-so-cold read, “radical but not extreme, no hard Green or you wouldn’t be working in here.” They tended to be puritanical, among their other faults and virtues. “Tired of both the new world order and the old one, and probably the one before that. You’re part of something that meets evenings or weekends that gives you purpose. Out here it’s likely not all that political, but I could be wrong. Infrastructure pirates, maybe?”

  She growled, but there was a twinkle in her eye. “Smart old man, huh? Older than you look. Extreme and radical. O.G., like I said, but no hard Green or you wouldn’t be drinking in here. You’ve seen the last two or three world orders, and you got that patina of well-worn power. You were part of something big once, but you aren’t any more. Working one last scam, maybe?”

  He had to laugh. Would that she knew. “Every scam is my last one. If I didn’t think that way, I’d have been dead a long time ago.”

  “And if you were less than three times my age, I’d give you something else to work.” She winked and walked away, calling over her shoulder, “Tab’s on the house this time, old man.”

  “Huh,” Bashar observed to no one in particular. “A free lunch. How about that?” He wondered which one of them had played the other.

  “Nothing’s free,” said a waiter, approaching from among the pillars at the center of the room.

  No, not a waiter. A man with a tray and a gun underneath that tray. In here. Middle-aged, fit, frowning face under a head so bald it might have been waxed. And white as any Georgia cracker.

  “Security?” Bashar asked mildly. Or Mr. Cairo.

  “No thanks, I already got some.” He stopped next to Bashar.

  The gun was between them, not pointed anywhere in particular. Threat by implication.

  Several responses passed through Bashar’s thoughts, but he left them there. He was too damned old to go starting fights. And if the waiter seriously meant to kill him, the trigger would have already been pulled.

  Instead he applied the universal conversational solvent: silence.

  The bald man obliged. “You’re Credence.” It wasn’t a question.

  Credence was one of his aliases, though he usually employed that name a lot further south in the Cascades. Someone had been buying data. “Possible,” Bashar allowed in a drawl that his mother wouldn’t have recognized.

  Another non-question. “You’re wired high up with a lot of security.”

  Another non-answer. “Possible.”

  “We got a problem here. Thousand loonies on top of that free lunch for a little consulting on your part.”

  Here comes that helicopter, he thought. Was Baldie here Mr. Cairo, or had the handsome stranger flown in on that well-armed broom stick? Interesting. And the barback had played him. Of course she was part of local security. Anybody behind one of these bars had to be. “Don’t take jobs blind,” Bashar said.

  “Just some talk-and-think. No black bag, no wet work.”

  This was what he was here for. The next step in the chain back to Lightbull and darwin. Plus money was money, and Canadian dollars spent a hell of a lot better than American dollars. It never hurt to get paid for what you were going to do anyway. “All right.”

  The bald man collected Bashar’s pint glass and plate before leading him off into the deeper shadows.

  * * *

  “Table C-13.”

  The low-lux video sensors actually did a good job. It meant Schaadt’s Shack security could see more than their patrons. He had to wonder about the surveillance booth. Cramped and loaded with gear, featuring that special scorched air scent of electronics hard at work. This seemed like a lot more tech than restaurant cash flow should be able to afford. Not to mention a lot more trouble than even a hard knocks bar ought to go to. Even more so not to mention a thousand loonies dropped as a consulting fee on a passing stranger.

  In the view, Baldie-with-no-name was pointing to with a light pen, Bashar saw four young men he hadn’t been able to spot from his perch at the bar. Well, probably men. Brushy mohawks, abstractly tattooed scalps, pierced foreheads. They wore a uniform, or at least identical razzle dazzle cammies. “That an urban color scheme?” he asked—everything was shades of gray on the low-lux virteo.

  “No. Blue and silver. Whoever they are, these aren’t city boys. That cloth won’t hide you in Seattle.”

  Not in these woods, either, Bashar thought. “And they flew in on the rig outside.”

  Baldie snorted. “No one from around here is dumb enough to loiter in a clear fire zone like the sky.”

  “I didn’t recognize the make on the helo,” he admitted.

  “You’re not alone. We can’t even get a match on Jane’s.”

  Bashar looked over at Baldie-with-no-name and thought for a moment. Then: “I can’t decide whether to be more impressed that a hick bar in the country bothers with Jane’s, or that there’s no match for that hardware out there.”

  “Don’t worry about our business model. Definitely not your problem.”

  “No. You got that right. So why are these guys a problem?”

  Baldie shrugged. “Been here five hours drinking.”

  Which could have meant they’d dirt napped someone this morning, per the bike punk.

  “You worried they’re likely to walk their check?”

  “Laid down a card.”

  That would cover charges, presumably. Not much of an answer, though. It was twenty questions time, obviously. Bashar assumed this was something in the nature of a test of whether he was worth a thousand loonies. “Care to tell me what bothers you about the card?”

  “Face of the card says Cascadia Credit Interchange.” Like most commercial and consumer finance cards in this area, Bashar knew. Baldie-with-no-name went on. “Down in the encryption, it says Federated Luna Credit.”

  “You decrypt all your customers’ cards?” Bashar asked mildly.

  “Just the ones that scare the piss out of us.”

  “Space-based money, drinking in this joint. With a flying bomb of no known origin parked outside.” He stared at the display. “What the hell are they doing here? More to the point, who or what are they waiting for?” Whoever had been killed earlier that day out in the woods, almost certainly. They hadn’t done the dirt-napping, then. He’d found the other end of the string.

  And this string stank. It wasn’t his kind of stench. Not with darwin and Lightbull loose out there. And Cairo somewhere in the middle.

  Baldie-with-no-name answered him. “You tell me, Mr. Thousand-Loonie Credence the security consultant.”

  “Well, in the old days I would have just capped them, then sifted their pocket lint for evidence. If I had any need for evidence.”

  Baldie snorted. “Not precisely an option for those of us in the restaurant business.”

  “You could always try talking to them,” Bashar offered.

  “Been there. Done that. Got nowhere.”

  “That barback was on top of it with me.”

  “Godiva?” Baldie almost smiled this time. “She’s good for her age and experience, but these guys weren’t buying anything she had to sell.”

  Bashar was briefly distracted by the idea that the barback’s name had been Godiva. He couldn’t even imagine who would do that to their kid.

  This wasn’t his deal, not no how, not no wise. But that biker had known something. Had known who he was, for one thing. Which even Baldie didn’t seem to. Whoever the hell this guy was. Running a scam? Or the victim of it? Bashar had to follow the string a little further. “Want me to rumble them up? Politely.”