The Widowmaker: Volume 1 in the Widowmaker Trilogy Read online

  The smile returned to Hernandez’ face.

  “Did I say something funny?” asked Nighthawk.

  “Not at all. I am just pleased to see that you are reasoning like the Widowmaker.”

  Nighthawk sighed and placed the glass down on the edge of the desk. “All right. Who am I looking for?”

  “I will give you his name in a moment,” said Hernandez. “But first, I want it made clear that I am not accusing him of murder. I am not saying that he pulled the trigger.” He paused. “But out here killers and bandits tend to be territorial. If this man didn't take the commission himself, he undoubtedly approved whoever did take it.”

  “Fine,” said Nighthawk. “Who is he?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Marquis of Queensbury?”

  Nighthawk shook his head. “No.”

  “He is the most lethal man within hundreds—perhaps thousands—of light years,” said Hernandez, not without a tiny note of admiration. “Present company excepted, I hope. Anyway, armed or unarmed, you couldn't ask for a more formidable opponent. Further, having built a criminal empire, he has demonstrated remarkable skill at running it.”

  “Have you any idea where he might be?” asked Nighthawk.

  “I know precisely where he is.”

  Nighthawk frowned. “Then why haven't you—?”

  “It's not that simple,” interrupted Hernandez. “Most of the Frontier worlds not only make their laws in a haphazard fashion, when they have any laws at all—but almost all of them lack extradition treaties with each other. That's why bounty hunters flourish out here.”

  “So he's on a world that won't extradite him?”

  “He's on a world that hasn't seen a lawman or a law since the first Man set foot on it eight centuries ago.”

  “If they don't have any laws, it should be easy enough to just go there and hunt him down,” suggested Nighthawk.

  “Ah, the exuberance and confidence of youth!” replied Hernandez with a smile. “How I wish I still shared it with you!”

  “Okay,” said Nighthawk. “What am I missing this time?”

  “Seven light years from here—three star systems away—are the nearest habitable planets. And I use the word ‘habitable’ very generously. They are sister planets, mining worlds named Yukon and Tundra. Each is an almost unbroken sheet of ice. The average daytime temperature lingers around minus-20 degrees Celsius—and each possessed literally hundreds of outlaws who are totally loyal to the Marquis.”

  “Which one is he on?”

  Hernandez shrugged. “I've no idea. He divides his time between them.”

  “They sound ... unappealing,” remarked Nighthawk.

  “They're unappealing on good days,” said Hernandez. “On bad days they're a lot worse—but they're his headquarters.”

  “Why not just drop a bomb?”

  “Because you would be killing thousands of innocent men and women,” answered Hernandez.

  Nighthawk shrugged. “Oh, well—it was an idea.”

  “Not a practical one.”

  “I assume there's no way to sneak up on him?” continued Nighthawk. “I mean, if he controls the planets, he knows who comes and goes.”

  “I'll give you credentials as a miner,” said Hernandez. “That should get you through the door, anyway.”

  “An interesting situation,” commented Nighthawk dryly.

  “It is an outrageous situation,” said Hernandez. “That is why we have come up with an outrageous solution and are paying an outrageous price.” He lit another cigar. “Remember this: the Marquis is as dangerous as you are. If I were you, I'd shoot him on sight.”

  “I don't know what he looks like.”

  Hernandez reached into his desk drawer and withdrew a small, multi-colored cube. He studied it for a moment, then tossed it to Nighthawk.

  “Run that through your ship's computer. It's got all the data we possess on the Marquis, including a current holograph.”

  “Thanks,” said Nighthawk, putting the cube into a pocket. He stared across the desk at Hernandez. “If I shoot him on sight, how will he be able to identify his employer for us?”

  “If you can get it out of him, so much the better,” said Hernandez. “But frankly, my office is under enormous pressure to produce the killer. My own preference, of course, is for finding the man who hired him, and we'll continue to work on it, but there are certain political realities that I must face if I wish to keep my job.”

  “Give ‘em someone to hang or they'll hang you instead?” suggested Nighthawk with a smile.

  “Something like that.”

  “Is there anything else I should know?” asked Nighthawk.

  “Probably,” said Hernandez. “If I think of it, and it's not on the cube, I'll transmit it to your ship.”

  Nighthawk got to his feet, and Hernandez rose as well. “I'll spend tonight in orbit about Solio, just in case you remember anything else you want to tell me.” He paused. “I assume the coordinates and star maps are on the cube?”

  Hernandez nodded.

  “Thank you for your time,” said Nighthawk. “I'll report to you whenever it's practical.”

  “Good luck,” said Hernandez as Nighthawk left his office.

  The officer sat down and took a final sip of his drink. “Did you hear that?” he said at last.

  A small, olive-skinned man wearing a major's uniform entered the office through a hidden door. “Every word of it,” he said.

  “Have somebody follow him,” said Hernandez. “If he goes anywhere except straight to his ship, I want to know about it.”

  “Do you really think he can take the Marquis, sir?” asked the major.

  “I hope so. He's the best there's ever been—or at least, he was.” Hernandez paused, lost in thought for a moment. “Yes, I think he's got a chance.”

  “Can he also come out of there alive?”

  “Well, that's a different proposition. He might be good enough to get in there and kill the Marquis, but there's no way that he's going to be able to fight his way back out. And that, of course, will save us the completion fee for the job.” He contemplated his cigar thoughtfully for a long moment. “Poor, ignorant clone. The real Widowmaker would doubtless have spotted my purpose halfway through our interview; this one is too young and too innocent to even know what he's dying for.”

  3.

  Tundra was everything Hernandez had said, and more. Almost as large as Earth, it was completely shrouded in snow and ice. Mountains, valleys, plateaus, buttes, all shone such a brilliant white in the midday sun that a man without polarized lenses would go snow-blind in a matter of minutes.

  The planet had once provided the Oligarchy with a bounty of gold and diamonds and fissionable materials. For almost two centuries it had been ripped open and plundered until, at long last, its vast riches were only a memory. Ghost towns littered the face of the planet. Smelting and refining plants stood empty, encrusted in ice or buried under 100-foot snow drifts. Here and there small communities of Men still existed, extracting the last bits of treasure from centuries-old mines, but most of the miners had long since moved on to younger, riper worlds.

  There were still goods to be assayed and shipped, miners to be fed and medicated and entertained, remnants of businesses to be tended, and most of the people remaining on Tundra gathered in Klondike, a once-prosperous city.

  Nighthawk set his ship down at the Klondike spaceport, checked the outside temperature, found that it was 46 degrees below zero Celsius, and decided to travel the half mile to the city in his spacesuit, rather than the protective outer garments with which Hernandez had supplied him.

  As he passed among the spaceships which stood like frozen needles in the sun, he noted that two of them were transport vessels from Solio II, delivering foodstuffs and liquor to the isolated dome-dwellers. Almost all of the others, some 400 in total, were private ships and bore insignia from all across the Inner Frontier.

  He had cleared the spaceport and was riding a rented powe
rsled toward the city when he saw a sudden movement off to his left. He stopped, turned and tried to pinpoint it against the glare of the snow. Then he saw it again—a brief, feeble, jerking motion. Curious, he altered course and a moment later came to a small, underweight man twitching in the snow, his thick coat and fur gloves and boots obviously not adequate against the cold.

  Nighthawk crouched down and helped the man to a sitting position. His eyes focused briefly, and he said something, but Nighthawk, wearing his space helmet, could not hear, nor did he have any intention of removing the face plate in this temperature.

  By gestures he tried to ask if the man could stand. The man shook his head, and Nighthawk set him onto his feet, pointed toward the city, and prepared to load him onto the powersled. The man resisted weakly, then passed out, and a moment later the sled was taking them both toward Klondike.

  When he reached the city, Nighthawk tried to figure out what to do with his burden. The deserted streets and sidewalks were being plowed continuously by robotic machines, though he couldn't spot any people. There were some imposing buildings—an opera house, a theater, a museum—but all were deserted and coated with ice, as if they belonged to some more prosperous era in the planet's history.

  Nighthawk slowly surveyed the city, left to right. Offices, stores, bars, a sports arena, a small coliseum—all frozen, all deserted. Finally he felt a hand poke him weakly. It was the small man he had rescued, and he pointed to a building off to the right.

  Nighthawk immediately directed the sled toward it, and as he got closer he saw the glow of artificial light coming from a small window. When he reached the front door it dilated long enough for him to enter with the small man slung over his shoulder, then quickly contracted back into place.

  He passed through an airlock and found himself in a small tavern. Two orange-skinned aliens in the corner glanced briefly at him, then went back to conversing in low hisses. A man standing at the bar stared at him in open curiosity, but made no motion to join or help him. The bartender—tall, broad-shouldered, pot-bellied, and golden-eyed—nodded to him, smiled briefly, and then went back to whatever he had been doing.

  Nighthawk carried the small man to a table, lowered him gently into a chair, then quickly clambered out of his spacesuit and walked over to the bar.

  “Dust Whore for me, something hot for my friend,” he said. “Bring them over when they're ready.”

  He returned and sat down next to the small man, who seemed to be recovering his senses. Now, in the light, Nighthawk could see that the man's skin was leathery, giving the impression of row upon row of hard scales.

  “How do you feel?” asked Nighthawk.

  “Awful.” Pause. “Where are we?”

  “We're in Klondike.”

  The man moaned. “Now I feel even worse. I was trying to tell you to take me to your ship.”

  “I have business here,” responded Klondike.

  “Well, I have business anywhere else,” said the small man, coughing feebly. “I was trying to get away from Klondike when you interfered.”

  “You'd have been dead in another ten minutes,” replied Nighthawk.

  “I might have made it to my ship.”

  “Not even if you had wings.”

  “Well, at least it would have been painless,” muttered the little man. “Freezing to death's not a bad way to go.”

  “Compared to what?” asked Nighthawk.

  “Compared to what's gonna happen to me here if I don't get off this iceball of a world right away.”

  “You're in no condition to go anywhere.”

  The small man sighed. “You've got a point,” he admitted. “By the way,” he added, extending his hand weakly, “I haven't thanked you for saving my life.” Nighthawk stared at the scaled fingers without moving. “It's okay, friend. They wouldn't have let me on the planet if I had anything contagious.” Nighthawk considered the statement, then reached out and shook his hand. “The name's Malloy—Lizard Malloy.”

  “Jefferson Nighthawk.”

  “I've heard that name—or something like it,” said Malloy. “A long time ago. So it couldn't have been you, could it?”

  “No,” said Nighthawk. “And I've never met anyone called Lizard Malloy before.”

  “Used to be simple John Jacob Malloy,” answered the little man. “Asteroid miner. Made a goldstrike over in the Prego system, just before the star went nova. They warned us it was going to blow, but I thought I had another day's time to get my stuff out of there. Turned out I was wrong. Sun exploded into a zillion glowing dustballs. Stuff went right through my spacesuit. When I got out of it, I found my skin looked like this.” He held out his arm for inspection. “You should have seen what I did to geiger counters for the next three years! Drove my doctors crazy. And of course, I had to dump my gold for a tenth of its value; it's got to sit in a vault somewhere for a couple of centuries before anyone can touch it.”

  “But you're not hot anymore?”

  “Nope. I can walk through a spaceport today and not set off a single machine. One day I woke up and all the radiation was gone. Drove my doctors crazy a second time!” Malloy chuckled in amusement. “Whenever I need to raise a grubstake, I go back to the hospital and let them try to figure out what happened.”

  “I assume they haven't come up with an answer?”

  Malloy shook his head. “Nope. I'm one of Nature's mysteries.” He paused. “You'll find a lot of us on the Frontier, one way or another.” He gestured to the approaching bartender. “Even Gold Eyes here is one of us. Only he was born that way.”

  The bartender set their drinks on the table and grinned down at Malloy. “Word is out that he's looking for you,” he said.

  “Now tell me something I don't know.”

  The bartender chuckled and walked back to the bar.

  Malloy rose to his feet. “I gotta get out of here.” He was overcome by dizziness, tried to steady himself, and collapsed back onto his chair.

  “The only place you should be going is a hospital,” said Nighthawk.

  The small man shook his head vigorously. “I'll be okay in another minute.”

  “Sure you will,” said Nighthawk sardonically.

  “They don't call me Lizard just for the scales,” said Malloy. “The damned nova gave me a lizard's metabolism, too. I get too cold, I go comatose. You warm me up, I'm fine.” Suddenly he grinned a reptilian grin. “Put me in a sauna, I have so much energy I can't sit still.” He paused. “Anyway, I'll be fine soon, and then I'm gone before he knows I was here.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Who else? The Marquis.”

  “The Marquis of Queensbury?” asked Nighthawk.

  Malloy grimaced. “You know any other Marquises?”

  “What does he have against you?”

  “Well, that's kind of a long and involved story,” said Malloy. “I'm sure it wouldn't interest someone like you.”

  “Everything about the Marquis interests me,” said Nighthawk.

  Malloy stared at him long and hard. “Look, Jefferson Nighthawk,” he said, “you saved my life, so let me return the favor. You're a nice young man. If you want to live to be a nice old man, go home.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  “There are only two reasons for a man on Tundra to be interested in the Marquis. You either want to join him or kill him—and somehow you don't strike me as the joining type.” He paused. “You're just a kid. He's the Marquis. You haven't got a chance.”

  Nighthawk downed his Dust Whore. “I haven't got a choice.”

  “He'll kill you.”

  “I doubt it,” said Nighthawk seriously. “I'm pretty good.”

  “Every graveyard on the Frontier is filled with kids who were pretty good,” said Malloy. “Go home.”

  “I can't. But there's something I can do. From this moment on, you're under my protection.”

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Malloy.

  “Just what I said,” replied N
ighthawk. “Anyone wants you, they have to go through me to get to you.”

  “Fuck it!” said Malloy, jumping to his feet. “I've got better things to do than play bait for the Marquis. He'll kill us both.” He turned toward the door. “I'm out of here!”

  Nighthawk shoved the small man back onto his chair, and an instant later Malloy was looking down the barrel of a wicked-looking gun.

  “You don't have any choice in the matter,” said Nighthawk, his conversational tone belying the meaning of his words. “I saved you. Your life is mine. I'll spend it any way that I choose.”

  Malloy looked long and hard into Nighthawk's eyes before moving, or even breathing deeply.

  “You'd really do it, wouldn't you?” he said at last. “You'd really kill me!”

  “I'd prefer not to.”

  “Yeah, but you'd do it.”

  “Without hesitation,” said Nighthawk, holstering his gun and sitting back down.

  Malloy was silent for a moment. “I could make a break for it,” he said at last. “The door's not that far away.”

  “You could,” agreed Nighthawk.

  “Just how good a shot are you?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “Pretty good,” repeated Malloy sardonically. “I'll bet you could hit a speck of dirt at four hundred feet.”

  “Maybe even five hundred,” said Nighthawk easily. “Now have a drink and relax. I'm buying.”

  Malloy frowned. “I don't understand you at all. First you save me, then you threaten to kill me, and now you're buying my drinks.”

  “It's easy enough. As long as you are under my protection, I pay your way.”

  “And how long is that?” asked Malloy suspiciously.

  “You'll know when it's over.” Nighthawk signaled the bartender to bring two more drinks.

  “No more for me,” said Malloy. “I want to be sober enough to duck if I have to.”

  “Just relax. Nothing's going to happen to you.”

  “What makes you any better than every other kid who's gone after the Marquis? They were all good, and now they're all dead. Are your hands any faster? Are your eyes any better? Why should you succeed when so many have failed?”