A Gathering of Widowmakers (The Widowmaker #4) Read online

  "Who else could he ask?" replied Kinoshita.

  "Us."

  "Would you have let him come along?"

  Jeff smiled and looked at Nighthawk. "He's got a point."

  "Maybe."

  "Just maybe?"

  "What would you have done if he insisted on joining us?" asked Nighthawk. "Shoot him again?"

  "Point taken," said Jeff. Then: "But if he knew we wouldn't stop him, why didn't he ask for our help?"

  "Have you ever asked for help?"

  "No."

  "He's just another version of you," said Nighthawk. "Why would he ask if you wouldn't?"

  "Because they cut him open in an operating theatre two days ago."

  "They did a lot worse to him on Pericles and he never asked for help there either," put in Kinoshita. "I still haven't decided if Nighthawks are bonafide heroes or egomaniacal madmen."

  "A little of each, I suppose," said Nighthawk. "Jeff, did you find out what they're executing Friday for?"

  "The charge was a little hazy," answered Jeff. "He blew up a building, that much I know."

  "Who was in it?"

  "It's classified," said Jeff.

  "Classified?" repeated Nighthawk. "Probably someone like a planetary governor, and they're keeping it quiet until they can make an orderly transition." A pause. "How much longer until we get there?"

  "Six hours," said Kinoshita, checking the computer.

  It was hardly worth going into Deepsleep, so they ate, they talked, they napped, and finally the ship touched down on Renaissance V, a colony world with a population of about 400,000, divided almost evenly between Men and aliens. The jail was some forty miles out in a hot, arid desert, and they learned from the shuttle's computer that hard cases from all the nearby systems were brought to the maximum security prison on Renaissance.

  Nighthawk had signaled ahead that they were arriving and wished to speak to the prisoner known as Friday. After they had passed through three different security checkpoints, the warden, an ascetic woman in her sixties, greeted them and led them to the alien section of the prison.

  "Friday has suddenly become very popular," she remarked. "He's been here for seven months without a message, a letter, or a visitor. Now he's had four of you in two days. I'd ask you if you were here to find out where he buried the treasure—but there isn't any treasure."

  "What did he do?" asked Nighthawk. "The computer was a little reluctant to part with that information."

  "If it was generally known, we'd have anti-Projasti—and possibly anti-alien—pogroms throughout the Cluster." She stared at him. "You're the Widowmaker, aren't you? I recognize your name."

  "Yes, I am."

  "There are those who think you're just a bloodthirsty man who kills for money," she said. "I don't happen to agree with them. I will tell you, Mr. Nighthawk, but I want your word that you and your companions will keep the information to yourselves. I was not exaggerating about the consequences should it become public knowledge."

  "I promise," said Nighthawk. "We promise."

  "He blew up a school while classes were in session. More than twenty children were killed, and more than one hundred were injured. As far as we can tell, he did it solely because they were human children, and to him that would be twenty children who wouldn't grow to adulthood and become his enemies."

  "How did you keep something like that a secret?"

  "We couldn't," she replied. "But officially it was blamed on a faulty fusion generator." They stopped at another checkpoint, and suddenly lights blinked and whistles beeped. "You'll have to remove your weapons and leave them at this station," said the warden.

  The three men placed their weapons in a series of receptacles and finally passed through the checkpoint. They went down a corridor for perhaps fifty feet, then turned right and suddenly passed a number of cells. There were no doors or bars, but there were glowing force fields across the front of each cell. They walked past a few more cells, then stopped.

  "Here we are," said the warden.

  A sleek red being sat on a chair that constantly re-shaped itself to fit the contours of its body.

  "Friday, you have visitors," announced the warden.

  Friday stood up and stared at the three men. "You two look familiar, but I don't know you." He turned to Kinoshita. "I know you, though. You are traveling in the wrong company. Your master was here yesterday."

  "What did he want?" asked Nighthawk.

  "Why ask me when you already know the answer?" said Friday.

  "I want to hear it from you."

  "Or what?" said Friday with as close to a smirk as his alien face was capable of. "Will you tell the warden to punish me? You are too late. She is already counting the days to my dismemberment."

  "You told him what he wanted to know," said Nighthawk.

  "Why should you think so?"

  "Because if you hadn't, he'd still be here or you'd be dead," replied Nighthawk. "He wouldn't leave without the information if you were still alive and capable of speech." He paused. "And neither will I."

  "I am immune to threats."

  "Are you immune to pain?" asked Nighthawk.

  "You are there. I am here."

  "Not for long," said Nighthawk. He nodded to Jeff, who stepped behind the warden, grabbed her, and held her gently but firmly in his arms. "He won't hurt you, but we don't want you to yell or try to hinder us. Ito, hit that circle on the wall—the blue one. My guess is that it kills the cell's force field."

  Kinoshita did as he was told, and the force field instantly vanished.

  "If he gets out, or if you harm him—" began the warden.

  "He's not getting out," said Nighthawk, stepping forward. "And he's not a foolish alien. He knows he's going to tell me what I need to know, and it would be foolish to let me do what I'm planning to do to him first."

  "Stop!" said Friday, taking a step back. "You have no right to enter my cell."

  "Did you have a right to blow up that school?"

  "I will call for help!"

  "No you won't," said Nighthawk.

  "Why won't I?"

  "Because no one will come to help you, and because it would make me very angry. Ask Kinoshita what I'm like when I'm angry." He took another step forward.

  "You can't do this!" shouted Friday.

  "I'm the Widowmaker," said Nighthawk. "I can do anything."

  "There are laws!"

  "When did you and I ever care about laws?" said Nighthawk. As he approached, the alien kept backing away. Finally, when he was standing by Friday's cot, he swung his hand down and broke it in half.

  "That was metal!" said Friday, his alien eyes wide with fear.

  "No," said Nighthawk. "That was practice." He smiled an ominous smile. "You're next."

  "All right!" said Friday. "I will tell you what you want to know."

  "I know you will."

  "Jefferson Nighthawk, who now calls himself Jason Newman, came here yesterday. He had received an appeal for help from Pallas Athene, and because he was in a weakened condition, he sought my help."

  "Did he tell you where she was?"

  "On Bollander III," said Friday.

  "I don't know it," said Nighthawk.

  "I do," said Jeff. "Or at least I've heard of it. It's in the Quinellus Cluster."

  "And that's where he's going?"

  "Yes," said Friday.

  "How did he expect you to help him?"

  "He offered to free me."

  "You've been convicted and sentenced," said Nighthawk, frowning. "There's no bail. Did he offer to break you out? From this place? How?"

  "I never asked him."

  "You didn't think he could pull it off?"

  "On the contrary, if the man who now calls himself Jason Newman said he could free me, I have every confidence that he spoke the truth."

  "Then why the hell didn't you go with him?"

  "Because Bolander III is under attack by the Younger Brothers."

  Nighthawk turned to Jeff. "The Y
ounger Brothers? They sound like some mythical gang of cowboys from Earth's Wild West."

  "They've started showing up on the bounty lists," answered Jeff. "So far anyone who's gone after them hasn't come back—and that includes some good men."

  "You didn't answer me, Friday," said Nighthawk. "He offered to help you break out if you'd help him. Why did you choose to stay here, when you're due for executiion?"

  "Because I only kill Men," said Friday.

  "What are the Younger Brothers?"

  "Something quite different," said Friday with an enigmatic smile.

  26.

  "We're damned lucky the warden didn't order the guards to arrest us on the way out," said Kinoshita as their ship took off from the Renaissance system.

  "When I grabbed her I whispered to her that it was a ruse," said Jeff.

  "And she believed it?"

  "Obviously."

  "She doesn't know Jefferson Nighthawk," said Kinoshita. "Or maybe it was just more convenient for her to believe it. Maybe she didn't want to match her guards up against a pair of Widowmakers."

  Jeff shrugged. "It comes to the same thing in the end."

  Nighthawk, who had been instructing the navigational computer to head to the Bollander system, finally looked up. "We're running blind," he said.

  "There's something wrong with the ship's sensors?" asked Kinoshita.

  "I'm not talking about the ship," said Nighthawk. "We're racing hell-for-leather for Bollander III, and we don't have any idea what's waiting for us there."

  "The Younger Brothers."

  "Yeah, I know—but what are the Younger Brothers?"

  "Aliens with a price on their head," said Kinoshita.

  "We'll go there, we'll kill them, and we'll take Jason back to the hospital," added Jason.

  "I wish someone on this ship besides me would start using his brain," said Nighthawk. "We're not touching down until we know what we're up against."

  "Jason's probably there already," said Jeff, "and he might need our help."

  "Given the shape he's in, he definitely needs our help," said Nighthawk.

  "Well, then?"

  "Come on, Jeff," said Nighthawk in annoyed tones. "Start reasoning it out."

  Jeff looked confused. "I don't know any more about the Younger Brothers than you do—just that there's a lot of paper on them."

  "You know more than that," said Nighthawk.

  "Really, I don't."

  "Yes, you do," said Nighthawk. "I know more than that, and I never heard of them until a couple of hours ago."

  "But the only thing Friday told us is that they're aliens," said Jeff.

  "Then we didn't learn what we know from Friday, did we?" said Nighthawk.

  Jeff lowered his head and concentrated for a few minutes, then looked up helplessly. "Honest to God, Jefferson, I don't know anything else about them."

  "Then maybe you should consider what you don't know and extrapolate from that," suggested Nighthawk.

  Jeff frowned. "What I don't know?" Suddenly he smiled. "Of course!"

  "Would someone please tell me what I'm missing?" said Kinoshita.

  "By your own testimony, Pallas Athene is almost as good with her weapons as I am," said Jeff. "Yet she felt compelled to ask Jason for help when she—or at least her world—was faced with the prospect of the Younger Brothers. And Jason must have known about them too. Why else would he have left the hospital a day after major surgery if he didn't think he was needed?"

  "Jason may or may not have known what they were," said Nighthawk. "Based on what Kinoshita tells us about Pallas Athene, the mere fact that she asked him for help would have convinced him the situation couldn't wait for him to fully recover from the operation."

  "That makes sense," agreed Kinoshita. "I remember Jason telling me before Pericles that if only two people survived, it would probably be him and her. If she put out a call for help, it had to be serious."

  "It seems simple in retrospect," said Jeff. "I've got to learn to start thinking like you do."

  "You've never had to before," said Nighthawk. "I was a fourteen-year-old kid alone in the galaxy. You were the Widowmaker, in your physical prime, trained by your predecessor." He paused. "Anyway, we've got to find out what the Younger Brothers are, what they can do, why Pallas Athene felt she needed help and why Jason agreed with her. Then we'll be in a better position to do something about them."

  "I'll contact the Oligarchy's Bounty Bureau on the subspace radio and see what I can find out," said Kinoshita.

  Nighthawk shook his head. "That won't do any good."

  "Why not?"

  "Tell him, Jeff."

  "If anyone in the Oligarchy knew the Younger Brothers were aliens, it would have said so on every Wanted poster," answered Jeff. "And if the Oligarchy doesn't even know they're aliens, how can they know what kind of abilities they have?"

  "Right," said Nighthawk. "But someone knows."

  "Pallas Athene," said Kinoshita.

  Nighthawk nodded. "Check with Bollander III and see if you can find out what name she's using these days. Then trace it back through Passport Control and see where she's been in the past year." He looked at Jeff. "You say that they're just recently showed up on the bounty lists?"

  "That's right," said Jeff. "I never heard of them six months ago."

  "Okay," said Nighthawk to Kinoshita, "then going back a year should do it. See if you can track her movements, then check with the authorities on each planet and find out if the Younger Brothers were there when she was there, what they did, what they're capable of doing."

  "I'll get right on it," said Kinoshita, activating the subspace radio.

  "Do it in your cabin," said Nighthawk. "No reason why Jeff and I have to listen to you playing detective."

  Kinoshita got up, stopped by the galley for a beer, and carted it off to his cabin with him.

  "I'm trying to think the way you do, Jefferson," said Jeff. "It's just not coming easy. I work at it and work at it, and then you point out what I'm missing and I feel like such a fool."

  "It's just a matter of practice," replied Nighthawk. "In case you don't remember, Kinoshita beat the shit out of you the first couple of weeks he worked with you on your martial arts. Today you could kill him in three seconds."

  "I remember."

  "How did you feel about it then?"

  "Like I'd never be able to hold my own against him."

  Nighthawk smiled. "You see?"

  "Maybe I should have traveled with Jason for a year or so when I first started, until I learned to think properly," said Jeff.

  "It wouldn't have worked," said Nighthawk. "He was busy not being the Widowmaker."

  "How can he have these skills and not want to put them to use?"

  "I'm sure he puts them to use all the time," said Nighthawk. "He was protecting Jubal Pickett when you came face to face with him, remember? He just doesn't want to do it as a Jefferson Nighthawk."

  "I don't know why not," said Jeff. "It never bothered me."

  "That's because despite your name and your DNA, you're your own man. Jason was literally me—born with my memories, my experiences, my reactions. I don't think it bothered him while I was frozen, but once he knew I was going to be awakened and cured, he didn't want to just be a copy of the Widowmaker—so he kept the skills, but he lost the name and the face." He paused. "He kept me alive at enormous personal cost. I owe him everything I've got, including his privacy and his own identity. And now," he added, "I owe him my best efforts to keep him alive. After all, he did the same for me five years ago."

  "He put together an interesting crew back on Sylene IV, didn't he?" said Jeff. "Kinoshita tells me it was mostly aliens."

  "So I hear."

  "That Friday is a cold son of a bitch."

  "He must have been pretty good with those explosives," said Nighthawk.

  "I'm surprised Jason put up with him."

  "When you're overthrowing a tyrant whose support outnumbers yours thousands to one, yo
u use the weapons you have. Friday was what Jason had."

  "I wonder why he didn't try to kill Jason?" said Jeff. "He seems to hate all Men."

  "It makes sense when you think about it," answered Nighthawk. "Why kill the one man who could lead him to multitudes of human targets?" He paused and looked at Jason. "But you're asking the wrong question."

  "What's the right one?"

  "When we were back on Giancola, you left to find out what you could about Pallas Athene's whereabouts, and you can back empty-handed."

  "Yes, I did."

  "Well, then?" said Nighthawk. "The question presents itself."

  "Of course!" exclaimed Jeff suddenly. "If I couldn't find anything on her, how come Friday knew where she was?"

  "You see?" said Nighthawk. "It's not that hard when you get the hang of it."

  "Okay, that's the question," said Jeff. "But I don't know the answer to it."

  "Sure you do," said Nighthawk. "Sometimes half the trick is knowing the right question. Let's see if we can't dope this out while Kinoshita is talking to the Oligarchy."

  "All right," said Jeff. He considered the question. "Either Friday kept in constant contact with her, or he didn't. Since he hates humans, we can assume they weren't friends and rarely if ever saw or communicated with each other. Am I right?"

  "Probably. Keep going."

  Jeff thought for a moment, then looked up with a troubled expression on his face. "Damn! You knew all along, didn't you, Jefferson?"

  "Knew what?"

  "That there's a good chance we're not going to find Jason or Pallas Athene on Bollander III."

  "That's right," said Nighthawk. "We're going through the motions because so far we're operating on minimal information of questionable value. Jason received her message, so he knows where she is—"

  "But there's a good chance that Friday was wrong even if he thought he was telling the truth," interjected Jeff.

  Nighthawk nodded his agreement. "If Friday wasn't in contact with Pallas Athene—and that's a logical assumption—there are only two ways he could know she was on Bollander III. Either he and she both stayed on Pericles or Sylene long enough for him to learn her new name so that he could trace her through Passport Control, or else he managed to track her down with no more information that we have—and since you couldn't come up with anything at all on her, I think it makes sense that he couldn't either."