Deception: Lanyon For Hire, #5

By John Paulits

Lanyon takes on the job of recovering a shipment of rators, weapons imported from Earth, which have gone missing from the spaceport.  A not-so-merry chase begins as Lanyon has trouble detecting the true trail to follow from the false.  Jophena, his 12-year-old friend from Selenia, tags along and the complications multiply.  The Malcosian Over-minister then hires Lanyon to track down his daughter Meihon again, but Tellurians will have something to say about whether Meihon gets back home or not, and Lanyon soon regrets his decision to take on the assignment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Champagne Book Group
• Release date: Nov 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781771552479

Book preview

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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www.burstbooks.ca

A Division of Champagne Books

Copyright 2016 by John Paulits

ISBN 978-1-77155-247-9

November 2016

Cover Art by Ellie Smith

Produced in Canada

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Other Books By John Paulits

Beckoning Eternity

Lanyon For Hire

Nemesis

Vengeance

Contagion

Toby’s Trek

A Dying Fall

The Rest Is Silence

Dedication

For Greg Dykan,

One of the driveway boys

One

Lanyon regretted taking the job. The two thousand planetcredits plus expenses weren’t worth the aggravation. It felt like something out of an ancient Earth novel he’d come across years ago. Lupar Chas, a Vanadian store owner who spent endless hours taking care of his business, hired him to find out whether his wife was scooting around illicitly with Faln Drow, an Argonian supplier of neswed, a source of energy now made easily transportable thanks to Selenian ingenuity. Lanyon had been to the planet Argon to investigate Faln Drow and learned nothing more than that the man had a wife and two children; did a lot of traveling to sell his neswed; and when at home, stayed at home with his family.

He’d followed Drow around on planetary visits to Vanadia and wound up wishing he’d been hired to prove the man’s innocence rather than his guilt. That he could do. Besides, Vanadians grew no taller than five feet, had skin the color of rich cream, and were entirely without body hair. Vanadians, each and every one, beginning on their eighth birthday, took a daily livitine pill which provided them a very pleasant day, week, month, and life. From what he’d seen of Lupar Chas’s diminutive wife, she wouldn’t have the energy or awareness to engage in the shenanigans her husband suspected of her. Plus, Argonians were much taller than Vanadians, had black hair, and came in varying shades of purple. The salesman in question, Drow, had skin a very deep violet. The difference between the two supposed lovers in temperament, size, and color was literally the difference between day and night.

Lanyon opted to give the investigation one more chance. Now he cowered, squirreled away in a closet in a small storage shed behind Chas’s store while Chas had his way with a Vanadian woman Lanyon hadn’t come across in any of his travels. From the little Lanyon could see through a chink in the door, it seemed as if a film had been slowed down to a preposterously enervated speed, thanks to the calming wonders of livitine. It left Lanyon wondering how any increase in the Vanadian population kept pace with the loss of population to mortality, very few Vanadians reaching the age of fifty.

No race on any planet of the Malcosian system had a word for hell, but when Chas’s wife opened the shed door and caught him in the act, all hell broke loose. Lanyon had never seen a Vanadian so exercised as wife Chas, the effects of livitine having no chance of standing up to or tamping down the wrath of a woman scorned.

Lanyon slumped to the floor, drew his knees up, and listened forlornly to the chaos. As usual, he wore the universal translators, a new Selenian invention, given him by Halron, a Selenian trader who, with his brother Dorendo, traveled the planets dispensing them, and he heard language the translator could not deal with. A constant burst of triple beeps in his ear showed that the Selenians had not yet programmed Vanadia’s most colorful language into their translator.

Lanyon couldn’t distinguish between the voices of Chas, his wife, and his lover, but all three seemed to have a wide, untranslatable vocabulary. When a door slammed and things quieted, Lanyon finally heard Chas tell his paramour she’d better go, and he would talk with her soon. Lanyon recognized in Chas’s voice a tone and a line of reasoning he’d used himself on occasion. He felt sorry for poor Lupar Chas.

Lanyon heard the door close again, this time more gently, and when he peeked through his peephole, he saw an empty shed. He walked across the shed and cracked open the entry door. He saw poor, tiny, frustrated Lupar Chas throw his arms weakly into the air and reenter his place of business. Lanyon had set up an appointment with Chas—he checked the pocketmailer on his belt—for not quite an hour from now. He’d give Chas time to calm down, if Vanadians ever needed to calm down. Or maybe give Chas time to pop another livitine pill.

He decided to have a cup of what passed for coffee on Vanadia, so he walked to a restaurant two blocks from Chas’s store. As he waited for his order, he checked on his pocketmailer messages. He’d been pinged with a tiny, silent electrical charge repeatedly while he nestled in Chas’s shed. He found four messages from Predamor and two from Jophena. Predamor was an agent of sorts for the Malcosian government, who had thrown Lanyon some well-paid work a number of times. Jophena was a Selenian girl, twelve years old, soon to be thirteen, whom Lanyon had rescued from a Tellurian prison along with her father and uncle, the two translator salesmen. She’d taken a shine to Lanyon and had even helped him out of danger multiple times on the occasional visits they’d made with one another.

Lanyon,

If you’d like some work, I have some for you. I looked for you, but you’re clearly not on Malcosia. It’s an easy job. Won’t cause you any stress.

Let me know when you’ll be back.

Predamor

Jophena didn’t waste words.I don’t have much time before I have to go to yungwing. We should have another adventure, don’t you think? Or at least a visit. Do you want to come to Selenia or shall I come and visit you?

Lanyon informed Predamor that he’d gone to Vanadia on a job and would be in to see him in as soon as he got back to Malcosia. He promised Jophena he’d do what he could, but pointed out to her that he did have to work for a living. Jophena pocketmailed back immediately.

You know you work better when I help you.

Lanyon laughed. Jophena had helped him out a number of times, but she was a handful. He finished his drink, paid his bill, and started back to Chas’s store to give him the ironic but welcome news about his wife’s chastity.

~ * ~

"Let me get this straight. This Vanadian merchant had you follow his wife around, hoping you’d find her with another lover, so he could justify his having taken a lover of his own?"

Exactly so, Lanyon answered.

Predamor laughed. Pretty ambitious for a Vanadian, don’t you think? And he paid you two thousand planetcredits to do it?

He did. Plus expenses. Lanyon shrugged. "I guess livitine doesn’t take all the life out of you."

And Vanadia is where you’ve been thinking of moving?

No, I gave up that fantasy. I’m considering getting a place on Argon. It might be a nice quiet spot to inhabit.

"I can’t see how quiet would suit you, but I can see how you’d prefer Argonian women to Vanadian."

Yeah, well. What do you want?

To business, eh? I want you to find and bring back to me a certain small box.

Find? Not pick up? And where, roughly speaking, is the box and what’s in it?

It’s somewhere on Malcosia.

Oh, somewhere? Great. Go on. What’s in it? Lanyon had learned to question Predamor thoroughly about assignments tossed his way. Somehow, details—important details—always seemed to get omitted.

Predamor made a dismissive motion with his right hand and broke eye contact. "A guidor. It’s a guidor box. An important shipment came into the Malcosia City spaceport and just as quickly disappeared out of it. The guidor box will show where the missing shipment can be found."

Why not simply look for the shipment and forget about the box?

"The shipment can be hidden anywhere, but I don’t think whoever took the shipment will let the box be very far from themselves. Besides, the shipment cannot be opened without the guidor, same as with a scout cruiser’s gangway door. There’s no way to get inside without the guidor code. The shipping container is very secure. I need the box."

What’s in the shipment?

Predamor moved his gaze back to Lanyon. "Do you want the job or not? Five thousand planetcredits. Not a hard job. Find the guidor box and bring it to me. You don’t even need to worry about who took it. The box is what I want. Shouldn’t be too difficult."

Lanyon couldn’t help but grin. Another one of your easy jobs. The easier you tell me the assignment is, the more...shall I say ‘exciting’...it usually turns out.

The shipment isn’t your concern. The people who took the shipment aren’t your concern. Predamor stopped. If you happen to be able to bring back the thieves, do it, but you don’t really need to know or do anything about the shipment or the men who took it. The box is what I need.

And where do I start looking for a small box on a large planet? Bit of a needle-in-a-haystack problem, don’t you think?

Needle-in-a-haystack?

An Earth saying. Never mind. I’ll need more information than what you’ve given me—which is none.

There are three men involved, beyond any doubt.

And you know this how?

Defiance rose in Predamor’s eyes. Lanyon had seen it before when he’d asked for more information than Predamor wished to divulge. He’d seen it, and he knew he’d get very little more out of his friend.

These three will have the box or will have hidden the box very close by. I know you’re capable of the type of persuasion that will...encourage these three to be more helpful.

The two men sat quietly for a moment. Then Predamor surprised Lanyon by offering more. It’s most likely these three men can be found in either Griland or in Pasher.

Malcosian men?

Yes.

Griland and Pasher...?

They’re cities on Malcosia. Very near one another. In fact, where one stops the other starts. There’s even talk of their incorporating into one bigger city.

"You can give me holophotos of these three, and show me what the guidor box looks like?"

Yes.

And it’s not, I take it, a job for Malcosian security?

It is not.

Why?

After a brief pause, Predamor said, It’s sensitive.

Everything you give me is sensitive, Lanyon grumbled.

Predamor offered a wan smile and a shrug. He picked up a large envelope from his desk. Let move to the table and go over this. It’s everything I have that can help you. He rose. Well? Coming?

Lanyon slowly pushed his chair back and stood up. He followed Predamor to the conference table.

Two

Griland and Pasher were nothing like Lanyon imagined. Again, Predamor gave out with a version of things less than helpful. Far from being two cities abutting one another, Griland and Pasher were more like two rundown neighborhoods competing for the title of Where Would You Most Not Like To Live.

As usual, Predamor provided Lanyon with a scout cruiser, a small vessel capable of great altitude and speed, unlike a mini-cruiser, which could achieve an altitude of no more than fifty feet and travelled at a very slow speed. Mini-cruisers flew inside cities where the speedier scout cruiser could not navigate. Lanyon settled his scout cruiser about half a mile outside Griland. He always like to have a refuge he could flee to, close, but not too close, to where he had to work.

Like most Malcosian towns, these neighboring towns shared a long street where businesses concentrated. Here, the main street began in Griland and ended in Pasher. Residences lined the other dozen streets and were sprinkled outside the two towns. Lanyon walked the main street, hoping he could find someplace reasonably respectable to board. The main street ran for seven blocks only, and Lanyon finally found a small rooming house—he couldn’t bring himself to call it a hotel—on the far edge of Pasher. He secured a room on the second floor, the top floor, after explaining, as he always needed to do, how an Earthman could converse so freely. He showed the owner the Selenian translators he used, one under his chin for speech, one in his ear for understanding. The owner, a Malcosian dressed in the usual brown pullover and pants loose enough to accommodate a vestigial tail, put aside his bulky, commonly used throat translator, amazed by Selenian ingenuity, as people usually were.

I’ve heard about these translators, the owner said. Never thought I’d see one, not out here. Selenians can do it all, can’t they?

They can do a lot, Lanyon agreed. He carried the envelope Predamor had given him and pulled out three holophotos. Have you ever seen any of these men? I’m told this is where they hang out.

The owner looked puzzled. Hang out?

Where they live.

Oh. The owner studied the holophotos. No, no. They certainly don’t live here. He gestured to his own establishment. This man looks familiar, but no, I couldn’t say for sure. Do they have names?

Nuar Sout, Ander Ska, Sulp Lanta.

The owner shook his head. No, sorry. How long will you be staying?

Until I can find these men, I suppose. Let me pay you for three nights in advance. Lanyon found pre-payment always made landlords friendlier. How many people live in Griland and Pasher?

Probably sixteen hundred or so.

All Malcosians?

Pretty much. Here, touch this. Lanyon touched an electronic screen the owner