Chapter 14: Mark | page 6

Late that night, when the lights in the distant ceiling of Level Nine dimmed to a faint approximation of starlight, Coldhand returned to the station. He prowled silently through the darkened streets, slipping past the vagrants sleeping in doorways without waking them. The chemical dealer was gone, probably returned to an apartment that far outstripped the homes of his customers. Coldhand suspected that he had stepped over many of those customers as they snored on the sidewalks.

He had hoped Vyron would be sent alone. It would have made his job easier, but the Steelskins apparently deemed the mark a valuable member of their little organization. Anyone sent with Vyron tomorrow would fight hard to defend the Dailon.

Coldhand examined the abandoned fueling station for hiding places or cover that his opponents might use. The four freestanding fuel pumps were flimsy, the dispensing mechanisms covered only by thin aluminum siding. Coldhand checked the door to the office. It was boarded over and closed with a heavy padlock. The lock showed signs of violence as Coldhand angled it in the twilight, but had never been broken. Circling the small building, he found much the same treatment on the rear entry and all of the windows.

Nothing here could be used to much advantage by either side, Coldhand decided. He could take the high ground against Vyron and his companions, but a firefight would make it harder for him to catch the Dailon man. Stuck on the rooftop, he would be irrecoverably behind if his mark decided to turn and run. Coldhand carried only his Talon-9 and he didn’t have the time or color to get his hand on something less lethal. No, despite the advantages, Coldhand needed to be on the ground to catch his mark intact.

Coldhand pulled his radio from the gun belt around his hips. It had been left clipped to the leather when Xia had disarmed him aboard the Blue Phoenix, recovered when the bounty hunter made his escape. The clock’s blocky green letters read 3:28. He still had hours to wait until Vyron showed up.

Coldhand walked a short distance away and found a recessed doorway, the entrance to a store long since gone out of business. The sign was gone, leaving an only slightly paler smear on the building’s façade where it had been. The windows were filthy, inside and out, making it impossible to look inside. Coldhand sat down in the niche, positioning himself so that he could still clearly see the empty station. He pulled up the collar on his coat and leaned back. No one could discern him from the countless vagrants.

Nights in the lower levels of Axis were timeless. A single, unchanging gray moment stretched from the planet’s dawn until dusk. The massive level lights lowered from daytime brightness to murky twilight over the span of five minutes and then did not so much as flicker for the rest of the night.

He looked up. There was no mistaking the ceiling of Level Nine for a sky. The sunlights were set at regular intervals to create a predictable, geometric net of dim lights that were nothing like the sea of stars that shined on Level One of Axis.

From the first time he saw it, Coldhand had found the glittering sky of the core almost claustrophobic. It was nothing like the diamond-studded black of Prianus, but more like some cosmic giant had upended an entire jewelry store just above his head. They would have been beautiful, Coldhand thought, if he could appreciate beauty at all. But he much preferred the muted lower levels with their pale mimicry, lights dimmed to twenty percent.

Coldhand waited for the unchanging night to end.