The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(41)

“They’ll notice if Nadashe is missing.”

“I’ve accounted for that.”

“How?”

Assan looked directly at the countess, rather than at her chief of staff. “You might prefer not knowing the details of that.”

“How long will this take?” Louentintu asked.

“With the right people, less than four minutes on-site. Obviously more time on either side, but those moments are going to be away from prying eyes.”

“And you’re confident you can manage this.”

“With your help and Jasin Wu’s, yes.”

“What do you need from us?”

“Your assent, and money.”

“How much money?” the countess asked.

“Countess, this will need to be done quickly, and it will need to be done well. Doing it cheaply is not part of the equation.”

Assan got his assent, he got his access through his own and Jasin Wu’s connections, and he got his money, in amounts that allowed impossible things to happen so quickly and smoothly that it was almost magical. Assan was no stranger to vast sums of wealth, of course. He was the director of his family’s holdings in the Hub system. More wealth moved through his office on a daily basis than some entire human civilizations had had in their entire existence. But there was a vast difference between the daily and mundane exercise of commerce, and the expenditure of frankly ridiculous piles of cash in the service of malfeasance.

That Assan was doing this while being a director of his house and a member of the executive committee was just icing on the cake as far as he was concerned. The ancient phrase “getting away with murder” had come to mind more than once. He was getting away with murder. And jailbreaking. And at least seven other felonies.

It was delicious, and Assan had never felt more alive in his life.

It was a given to Assan that he would be on-site for the extraction. It was a high-risk, high-reward mission, or so he told the countess. He felt honor-bound to make sure that it was executed within the razor-thin tolerances of time and competence that the entire endeavor required. He’d already spoken to the leader of the mercenary team that would be executing the mission, and she’d agreed that he would need to be present, and to oversee the final few minutes of the extraction, and the execution of the finishing touch that Assan had brought to the party.

Louentintu had been correct, of course. If Nadashe’s body was missing from the transport then no one would believe it was a freak accident. Everyone knew the Nohamapetans had money, and power, and the belief that rules were more like guidelines and optional at best even then. Everyone from the Hubfall police department up to the Imperial Ministry of Investigation would stick their noses in if Nadashe’s body went missing.

So Assan discreetly let it be known, through agents untraceable to him, what he was looking for: a woman, Nadashe’s height, weight and coloration. Assan made it known he was not looking for a murder. That was splashy and would draw the wrong sort of attention. But if a woman just happened to show up dead, well. Assan would be happy to know about it.

It didn’t take very long at all. The medical examiner who collected the reward assured Assan’s agent that the woman wasn’t a murder, but a slip in a tub, which, sure, why not. The woman was single, a drifter with no real friends and no immediate family. There was no one to miss her, including the medical examiner’s office files, from which she was conveniently scrubbed.

The woman, whoever she was, ceased to exist outside of the utility for which Assan had planned for her. She was delivered to the extraction mission without a head or fingerprints. Her circulatory system had been flushed and her blood replaced by an oxygen-optional, DNA-destroying accelerant, which was kept inside her body by the use of wax caps at the neck and fingertips.

She was beautiful, and she would go up like a firework. There would be a body of the same size and weight as Nadashe’s, but if everything worked to plan, it would be almost all ash. Even if it didn’t, what was left would be almost impossible to identify as anyone, much less Nadashe Nohamapetan.

In his space suit, Assan watched as his mercenaries put the woman’s body into the remains of the transport, along with the bodies of the guards. The whole truck would then be flash-incinerated again, in exactly the manner that it would burn if the battery pack went up because of internal structural issues. The battery pack didn’t need oxygen to burn, which was convenient on an airless world. It was its own fuel, and, to be sure, the battery pack would be made to go up. It would just have a little help to make the bodies burn more completely.

There was a tap on his shoulder; his merc commander was signaling him to check his communicator circuit. Assan checked it; he had forgotten to turn it on.

“Sorry about that,” he said, over the circuit.

“We’re patching a secure call to your suit,” she said. “It’s the countess.”

Assan nodded, and when the call came through he turned away from the commander to give himself and the countess a little privacy. “This is Assan,” he said.

“Lord Teran,” the countess said. “How goes the extraction?”

“Exactly as planned, and right on time. We’ll be up and out of here in the next two minutes.”

“That’s a remarkable bit of planning.”

“Thank you, Countess. I am glad to be of service.”