The cyan-haired man rushed Lyon, covering the distance between himself and the RAcaseal in two quick steps ending with a right hook towards the side of her head. It was good strategy when dealing with a Ranger; her combat programming and physical construction were optimized for long-range engagements.
Lyon barely got her saber out in time to parry, the golden bar of its Photon blade springing up just in the nick of time to intercept the attack. The clash of the Durandal meeting the Photon field of the attacker's Brave Knuckle jolted them both, but Cyan Hair was quickly at her again with a kick-into-fist combination that left Lyon ducking away from the attack. Her evasion, though, did what it was meant to, open enough ground between them to give her room to counterstrike, and she did, making him block two successive attacks before he interrupted her assault with a step-in punch to her torso. Lyon's internal monitors reported that the damage was largely cosmetic, but she feinted taking more serious harm by stumbling back. Cyan Hair followed up, only to have her rip a backhanded swing across his chest that knocked him over onto his back.
Not wanting to fall for her own trick, Lyon took a guard position while Cyan Hair regained his footing. Though her strike had left a rip across his tunic where it had gotten through the defense of his Photon frame, it hadn't managed to disturb his good humor.
"Not bad. I wouldn't have expected a Ranger type to be so at ease with hand-to-hand battle."
Lyon didn't answer; she wasn't much for snappy banter in combat if she could help it. Cyan Hair's smile only widened, and in the next instant a heavy blow hit Lyon's legs from behind, not a weapon hit but a body falling against her. Cyan Hair stepped in quickly and slammed a punch to her head that sent her toppling over backwards, falling across Ryland's prone body.
"Like we said, this is in the nature of friendly advice. You don't want to start making the wrong people angry at you."
He turned and slipped away between the rows of docked aerocars, and his pink-haired friend did the same, leaving the two sprawled hunters alone and embarrassed.
"Message received," Lyon groused, tapping her fingers on the concrete.
"I'm sorry," Ryland said. "He was on me before I could get a technique off."
Lyon decided to accept his apology, so swung herself off him and got to her feet, then offered him a hand up.
"That's why they flanked us. Basic tactics. Our usual strategy as partners is to have me engage the enemy at close range to give you the freedom to launch techniques. What did Pink Hair use for a weapon?"
"Daggers, but he caught me with the hilt, not the blade." Ryland brushed down his robes. "I suppose this means they were telling the truth about warning us off instead of just killing us outright."
"Yes, but who would warn us off, and from what?"
"I can only assume the same people Rina believed were after her. As to why, we can only guess." He paused, then said, "What's that?"
Lyon followed the direction of his pointing finger, observing a small object nearly hidden in the shadow of the aerocar docked next to theirs. It peeked out from beneath one of the finlike flight vanes. She enhanced magnification, then verbalized her surprise with a simulated gasp of breath.
"It's a Section ID badge!" She walked over and picked it up. There was a crack that ran across the radius line from edge to center. "I must have knocked it off Cyan Hair's chest when I slashed him."
"Well, well; maybe we'll have the 'who' soon enough after all. Log the ID code, then put the badge back."
"Put it back?"
"He'll notice it's missing soon enough and come back for it. If he finds it here, he'll probably assume we didn't see it. I don't want them to know we have a lead on their identity yet. If they took the trouble to warn us off, they'll probably give us a free hand for a while to see if we take the advice. There's no reason to force a confrontation any earlier than we have to."
"At least not until we can dictate the terms," Lyon agreed. She scanned the badge's ID record, then set it back down precisely where she had found it, an optical-memory comparison indicating a 99.9937% match in placement. Unless their personality was programmed for approximation or mistakes, androids tended to be perfectionists. It wasn't on purpose; it was just a function of actually knowing precisely where the badge had been in a way a human or Newman could not.
Just to be on the safe side, she did a quick sweep of the aerocar for bugs or tracking devices, but apparently the two men hadn't been inclined towards surveillance. Or at least not any more; clearly someone had been paying attention to them--or to Amber Carteret.
"So now what?" Lyon asked once they were airborne. "Ms. Carteret was very direct in her refusals."
"Actually..." Ryland began slowly, "I got the impression that she was telling the truth."
"She did appear to be," Lyon agreed, "but a good liar will not show typical biological stress reactions when lying." She paused for about ten seconds, then admitted, "I believe her, too."
"Then was Ms. Perrin lying, I wonder?" Ryland considered. "Covering for Rina on a second stage, by giving us a false name? If so, why? What makes her so important?"
"Maybe it's not the people who are lying. Machines can lie, too."
"You'd know."
"Yes, but that's not quite what I meant. You asked Ms. Carteret about it--if someone else had used her computer, then the electronic signature would match up with hers for purposes of Forever Dreams' screening process." Lyon thought about it. "Only she said that she hadn't let someone use her unit for that."
"Maybe she didn't know."
"What, you think someone broke in while she was at work? That can't be right."
Slowly, a smile crept onto Ryland's face.
"Not the way you meant it, no...but there's other ways to break into a computer."
Ryland hit a few buttons and the aerocar altered traffic channels to account for his revised destination.
"Where are we going?"
"To get help. I think we need a little e-sistance to prove this one."
"Just so you know, Ryland, my morality database suggests that puns like that one are a strong justification for murder."
-X X X-
In most cities, downtown meant the urban core, the very heart of the most densely developed area. On Pioneer 2, the area called Downtown was literally down, the street levels of several blocks. The poor, the disenfranchised, and the criminal had gravitated there, basic human nature having forcibly created a slum even in an artificially developed city only a few years old. The process had only accelerated once settlement on Ragol had become indefinitely delayed; like Nyle and Perrin had both said, people needed to get on with their lives and this apparently applied also to destroying those lives through greed, debauchery, or despair.
The Nebula was a Downtown bar, a hole-in-the-wall that reeked of cheap liquor, greasy synthetic food, and too many unwashed bodies in too-close proximity. Lyon decided that it was a good thing she could adjust her olfactory senses to filter some of the stink. Absorbing it as pure data was a lot easier than having to endure it the way organics did. Music blared out of a second-rate sound system as the hunters pushed past tables of men and women tricked out in synthetic leather and chrome steel, made to look like they had a street-forged toughness. Ryland, with his Force's robes, long hair, and glasses, looked completely out of place, drawing stares and mocking laughter from more than one patron.
Resentment flared in her, that these gutterpunks and street-fighters would treat her partner that way, but Lyon fought it down. Ryland was ignoring them, probably because a bar brawl would get solidly in the way of doing whatever they'd come for in the first place. So she too ignored them, though it didn't keep her from imagining how these "hardcases" would do on Ragol face to face with a Grass Assassin.
Ryland stopped at one of the rear booths, where a skinny kid with spiky red hair sat next to a blonde Newman girl wearing a set of visor-style sunshades. The violet tint of the shades matched what little there was of her outfit.
"You pick such charming places to do business, Kendric," Ryland said.
The kid shrugged. Lyon estimated his age at anywhere from fifteen to nineteen. The glass of cheap synthetic whiskey in front of him was no clue; the Nebula would serve anyone with the ability to pay in cash.
"Hey, what can I say? I dig the atmosphere." He glanced at the blonde and grinned. "Not to mention the scenery."
"Is that all she is?"
She stretched, arching her back in catlike fashion and not so subtly putting some of her best features on display. When she brought her hand up, the inch-long blades implanted in place of her nails caught the light.
"Think of me as...insurance," she purred, and slid her razors across the tabletop, scratching neat little grooves in the plastic.
"Spare me," Lyon sighed.
The wannabe HUnewearl's mouth flexed into a growl.
"I don't have to take that from some tin toy."
"Easy," Kendric said, then looked Lyon up and down. "Weinstine Co. model, right? Type L/T or L/Y?"
Lyon nodded.
"L/Y."
"So a new, independent-AI android, probably a Guild hunter in your own right?"
"You have a good eye." She was surprised.
"Go away, Justine," he told the Newman. "These two are way out of your league. Play too many games and they might decide to prove it to you."
She looked back and forth between him and the hunters, then got up and flounced off with bad grace.
"Sorry about that. She keeps the riff-raff away."
Ryland slid into the booth; Lyon followed him a moment later.
"So we're out of her league, but not yours?" she asked.
"Maybe at fighting, but that isn't what you want from me, is it?" He took a quick drink. "Not often I have hunters for clients. You people usually have Lab backing if you can't handle something on your own. And for big bro here to come to me for help..." He looked up theatrically. "Is the sky falling? Hell frozen over? Pigs taking wing?"
"'Big bro'?" Lyon asked. "Literally?" Come to think of it, their hair was an identical cherry-red shade, and a comparison of facial features suggested a 72% chance of some genetic connection between the two. Ryland's glasses enhanced the differences, so she hadn't seen the resemblance until she looked for it.
"Born and bred. See, Donny went with Dad when our parents split, and went up in the world. Mom kind of went the other direction. S'okay, though, since I don't look good in a dress, anyway. Didn't even know we'd both come on Pioneer 2 'til we nearly got here."
Ryland gritted his teeth, whether at 'Donny' or the dress or both.
"You know very well we'd have been there for you if you'd asked."
"Way I call it, you ought to at least know how your blood's doing without them having to come to you. We always knew when Dad made senior professor or you won some Academy prize." Kendric shrugged. "Water under the bridge. 'Sides, I doubt your electric friend wants to waste her time listening to our family yap."
Lyon wasn't actually sure of that; she hadn't known Ryland even had family, let alone on Pioneer 2, but business was business.
"So the real question becomes, what can your little bro do for you, Donny?"
"It's a missing persons job." He gave Kendric the short version of the story, ending with the gap between Amber's claim and the information they'd gotten from Ms. Perrin.
"So what, you figure that this Rina lady did a little creative hacking and used Amber's computer as a waypoint for her links to the hook-up outfit?"
"Would that work?"
"Sure. Rina claims she's Amber Carteret and a backtrace on the connection would point to Amber Carteret. Seriously, how deep is a dating service going to go in screening people's e-traces, anyway?"
"So this is something you can track?"
"I can go a lot deeper than they will, that's for sure. Especially since you only care about one person and not a whole client catalog." Kendric flashed another grin. "'Sides, here's a chance where my tech-slinging Hunter bro needs me to point him the right way. Won't be missing that for the world."