Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,62

enough to let me know that the drink definitely wasn’t his first. “You’ll shoot me? Ah, but that would be a kindness, wouldn’t it? But never you fear, Mr. Langston.” His use of my name jarred me, making me flinch ever so slightly, but if Ingles noticed, he ignored it and just kept talking. “Never you fear. The weapon isn’t for you. It’s for me. An answer dependent on why you’ve shown up at my door. If you’re looking for answers, then maybe I can help. If you’re looking for revenge,” a wan smile played once more across his lips, “well, I’m not much one for pain, and I was just about done with this coil, anyway.”

I had questions. So many damn questions. And Ingles seemed ready to answer them. There was a small part of me—a part that I took no pride in—that regretted his compliance, that longed to take back some of my own for all the pain and suffering that had been laid upon the crew of the Persephone, all, insofar as I knew, in the name of corporate profit. But whatever Ingles said, and no matter how good Chan was, someone would eventually notice that something was amiss. I didn’t have time to indulge in revenge fantasies.

“Fine,” I grunted. “We talk like civilized people. I get my answers, no one gets hurt.”

“Agreed. I won’t be so foolish as to ask you to put away your weapon, but perhaps we could sit down? Care for a drink?”

I shook my head and motioned with the barrel of the Gauss pistol toward the couch. Ingles walked over to it, his own gun still held loosely in his right hand while simultaneously sipping at his drink. There was something about how he moved, something about the sheer casualness with which he was approaching this situation that made me wonder if he was entirely sane. Immortality or not, staring down the barrel of a gun should have elicited some kind of reaction. He sank into the couch, leaned back, and actually seemed to relax. I got another bland smile. “Shoot,” he said.

It was a poor—and carefully chosen—choice of words. I couldn’t decide if I liked Ingles, or if I wanted to put a bullet in him. Maybe both.

“How do you know my name?” I asked. I knew, or thought I knew, the answer already.

“Come on, Langston. You can do better than that.”

I just stared at him, contemplating whether or not he’d look better with a collection of twelve-millimeter holes. He shook his head, drained his drink in a single gulp, and said, “Fine. The derelict was being monitored. We had a low-emission ship nearby, riding sheepdog to make sure the shuttle went into the sun. You and your merry band of salvagers showing up ruined a lot of peoples’ day.” He raised his glass in salute. “But the Persephone was blasting out her Net codes all right and proper, so it was easy enough to find out who crewed her. We’ve been tracking you ever since. We lost you on Daedalus, so we started playing cleanup. Showing up at Copeland’s was a surprise—you have no idea how much you pissed off the contractor we hired. He’s not a man who likes a half-done job. I think he’d hunt you down just out of spite. If Genetechnic wasn’t already employing him to do so.”

That sent a little bit of a chill down my spine. The last thing Chan and I needed was a professional killer hunting us. If he found us… “How did you know I was coming here? You didn’t seem at all surprised.”

He snorted. “Mind if I refill this?” he asked, waving the glass. I nodded but made sure to keep my weapon trained on him. “To answer your question, I didn’t know you were coming here, exactly. But taking down my Net-links wasn’t very subtle. Don’t get me wrong,” he said as he poured a fresh glass, “the fact that you did it without alerting anyone other than me was quite impressive. Ms. Chan’s doing, I take it?” The familiarity with which Ingles threw about our names grated on my nerves. I didn’t bother answering. “She has real talent. Under other circumstances, I might try to offer her a position in our IT department.”

“Yeah. Circumstances where you weren’t trying to have her killed,” I said.

He beamed at me, the smile not unlike a Cheshire cat’s in his round face. “Exactly. Now,” he went on, tapping the barrel of his