Heist, Chapter 1

The star ahead was starting to fill the monitors, the controls were shot, and it was starting to get pretty damned hot in the cramped cockpit of my stolen dropship. All in all, I've had better days. And it all started to well, too.


Skip back to that morning, and picture the scene. A streetside table, tucked away in the corner and shaded by the stoic bulk of the Twisted Sigil bar. On the sunny side of the table sat three earnest men in dark, expensive suits, burning up in the heat. On the shaded side, may favourite seat in the house, you had me, Salix Vitellina, wearing a new pair of cheap sunglasses and a stinking hangover. I wouldn't have been there at all if they hadn't been very insistent. Herschel, the barman and my sometime lover, knows not to get me out of bed for less than 10,000 credits. These guys must have known that too, because they were paying 20,000. Up front, with more to come. So they got my attention, such as it was, as I lounged there nursing a mug of espresso wondering what the hell I could do that would be worth that to anyone.

"So, guys, what's the deal? You've got me here, at great personal inconvenience I might add, so this had better be good."

The senior partner -- or at least the oldest of the three -- replied, in clipped, precise tones. "Well, Miss Vitellina..." I glared at him, enjoying his discomfiture. Anyone who got me up this early deserved to pay. "Salix?" I nodded. "Salix, then. We have a proposition for you. A proposition that should be very lucrative for all of us, and which carries a level of risk we believe you will find most stimulating. It is not, I need hardly add, entirely legal, of course..."

I grinned. "You wouldn't be here if it was. What can this humble little sneak-thief do for you today?"

"You've heard about the new exhibition at the Bathust Gallery?"

"Yeah, sure. Some pre-post-modern retrospective by Pretentious Git. Or maybe that's not really his name, but it should be. Expensive junk, anyway. You guys don't look like art theives, but whatever."

"We're not, Miss... er... Salix. We also have little regard for the paintings. It is not the paintings we wish you to steal, but rather a small device concealed in one of the frames by a previous owner."

Maybe this wouldn't be yawnsville after all. "What kind of device? Did the little playboy lose his digital cufflink? Lost property must pay really well these days."

He smirked. "We would rather not say, but not a cufflink. The device is small, not more than two centimetres in its largest dimension, and quite harmless. We had hoped that our generous compensation package would reward your lack of curiosity in the matter."

"Monkey fetch, no ask awkward questions? I guess." I was starting to get that itchy feeling, the one that said whatever they were paying it wouldn't be enough. But is was more money than I'd seen all year, and I couldn't stay away. More fool me.

"You do know the security in that place is state-of-the-art, don't you?" I said. "They're not just going to let me waltz in there with a pretty smile and a well-placed bribe. It's kind of upscale compared to my usual gigs."

"We are aware of that, and can assure you that we have been quite thorough in our preparations. If you would care to look under the table, you will find a case." Pain stabbed through my temples as I ducked down, but there was an aluminium suitcase under there, expensive and heavy-looking. "In it, you will find all the tools you need, together with a holodisk containing complete schematics of the building and all its security countermeasures. There is also a sim package, designed to instruct you in the techniques required to circumvent them. Study it well. We have complete faith in your abilities; had we not, we would never have considered recruiting you at such short notice."

I sat up at that, firing off a few more darts into my pain centres in the process. "Short notice? Just how, short, exactly?"

"You will be going in tonight. It is regrettable, but quite unavoidable, I'm afraid. The painting in question will be shipped out tomorrow, and we really can't permit that to happen without retrieving our property first."

"Tonight? Impossible! That really is a fat pile of cash you've got there, but if you wanted miracles you should have gone to see Father Theo round the corner."

"Difficult, I agree, not impossible. As I have said, we have faith in you, and believe you are quite capable of executing the plan we have laid out for you." He stood up, and his goons followed suit. "You will meet us, afterwards, to hand over the device and receive payment. The details are on the disk, and the password is 'Inquisitor'. Good day, Salix."

And with that, they strode the few steps to their waiting hovlimo and were gone. I had some training to do, just as soon as I hit up Herschel for some industrial-strength headache pills.


Standing in the shadows of the gallery lobby, I pictured the guards treading their allotted beats. They worked on a 20 minute rotation, and the nearest was 10 minutes away. Good. I tossed the jammer ahead of me, freezing the cameras for a couple of minutes, and donned the infra-red googles that -- with the aid of a little well-placed smoke spray -- let me see the laser mesh carpeting the floor. Time for the sensor tango.

Half-skipping, half-tumbling, I danced as quickly as I dared through the mesh and made it to the main gallery floor. Luckily for me, the sensors there were mainly designed to stop the paintings walking out the door, not people like me who only wanted to relieve them of a little excess baggage. There was still the mesh to deal with, though, and my two minutes was running out fast, so I dropped to my haunches and launched myself at the nearest bench, just above the laser lines. Two jumps later, I landed, light-footed, just under the masterpiece I needed. (Called "Sunrise for the soul", it looked more like a splotchy forest conceived by a five-year-old, but what do I know?) Teasing the painting gently away from the wall, careful not to trip the weight sensor, I slipped two fingers in behind the frame and felt along the bottom until I touched something solid. Jabbing it out, it made it half-way to the floor before I finally caught it, heart thudding.

I scrammed out of there with reckless speed, only stopping to scoop up the jammer on the way, and made it back to the safety of my shadowy alcove with five seconds on the clock. It took a moment to be sure my heart really wasn't making an escape attempt, but I had to admit that those guys knew what they were doing, and had some neat toys. It would sure have been nice to have gotten another 30 seconds out of the jammer, but after an afternoon of practice I had the routine down pat. Scrambling out through the second-floor window and down the fire escape, I tasted the sweet night air, and freedom. With luck, no-one would even know I was there.

The device, as advertised, was small and black, with a standard comp connector on one end. No ask awkward questions? Sure. No download contents of device? Not likely. I plugged it into my phone and copied everything I could find. Encrypted, obviously -- it would have been worryingly surprising if it hadn't been -- buy maybe useful nontheless. It certainly couldn't hurt to have a few more chips in the game.

From there, stopping only to dead-drop the phone for Herschel to find in the morning, I headed on out to the spaceport. Not the most original of rendezvous locations, but nicely crowded and easy to walk away from, so it would do. Head to the cafe, slug down some bad coffee, I'll show you mine of you show me yours; it should have been cake. Which is probably why I failed to notice the guys in bad suits pretending not to be cops until it was nearly too late. I twitched round when they were six feet out, finally clocked to the situation, grabbed my credcard and bolted, shoving my stool at them for good measure. The great thing about crowds is that, no matter how smart the people in them, they still act dumb when anything surprising happens. I got through just before they closed in on the arrest and hemmed everyone in. They probably did try to chase me, but I was down the corridor and gone before they had much of a chance.

The whole place would be locked down drum-tight in minutes, so I needed any out I could get. Even a GlobEx dropship with a pilot who just wasn't quite quick enough on the uptake. Some good folks would miss their toasters, cat toys and hedge trimmers, but that was I price I was willing to pay.


Now, you might be wondering how I managed to screw that ship up so bad that we wound up dive-bombing the next star over, but it wasn't just my piloting skills (which are admittedly sketchy at best). GlobEx track their ships (and cargos) every step of the way, and that just wasn't working for me. Jettisoning the cargo was easy enough, but deactivating the ship's sensor was trickier. I managed, in the end, but only by the expedient of overloading all the control circuits beyond repair. That I was heading directly for a star at the time was just plain bad luck.

When ship go boom, Salix get out, and at least the escape pod was still working. Just get in the pod and wait for rescue, the instructions say. Pity they don't also tell you how to explain to the repair crew how come you've just trashed someone else's ship. They took it surprisingly well, all things considered, but they also locked me in a cabin and took me back to the police. Incorruptable bastards.

Pinned under blazing lights like a prize butterfly, the Inspector had me exactly where he wanted me. I, in turn, just wanted to be someplace else. Anywhere else.

"Salix, my dear," -- I hate it when people call me dear, but regrettably didn't have a leg free to kick with -- "it would appear that you've been very naughty today. GlobEx, in particular, would like me to express their disapproval of your exploits and have mentioned that you owe them really rather a lot of money to pay them back for that ship you stole. They are also unhappy on behalf of their customers, without which -- they assure me -- they are nothing. So why don't you be a love and tell me just what the hell you thought you were up to?"

Resisting the urge to spit on his already-stained suit, I said, sweetly, "I'd love to do what I can, Inspector, but I'm afraid I can't. Some rather rich, not to mention powerful, people would be unhappy with me if I did, so I'd rather deal with GlobEx. How does an easy repayment plan sound?"