Angel of Destruction Read Online Free PDF Page B

shirt, Kazmer noted. Somewhat the worse for wear, too, but Hilton had always been hard on his racing thermals. A demon for speed, land-borne, airborne, space-borne. “Still. Isn’t this a little out of the way?”
    Yes, it was. “I’m a free agent, and I thought it sounded interesting.” He wouldn’t have come so far on a job offer for anyone but Hilton’s people — let alone for a job offer that involved contraband. He was trying to get away from contraband. The least Hilton could do was acknowledge the debt, even if it was obliquely. “Are you on your way to anywhere in particular yourself?”
    Of course he was. Hilton was there for the same reason Kazmer was; Kazmer was sure of it. Hilton, however, shook his head, and lied.
    “Not really. There isn’t much to do out in the settlement, though, and I got a pass. So I thought I’d come down to watch the shuttle traffic, kind of get away from it all for a bit.”
    Now Kazmer was annoyed, and beginning to think about being insulted. Prudence was one thing, but Hilton was taking this whole secrecy bit a little too far. And if that was the way Hilton was going to be, Kazmer would not keep him any longer.
    “I see. Well, enjoy yourself, Hilton. Give my regards to your family, all right?”
    Hilton’s family.
    There was a thought.
    So long as Hilton was here in Port Charid maybe Kazmer would have a chance to get out to the settlement and see sweet little Cousin Modice.
    Hilton had warned him — if only half-seriously — never to let him catch Kazmer in bed with his little girl-cousin ever again; and him knowing what the joke was, because it had been Hilton’s idea. It hadn’t taken Kazmer long to develop a crush on Modice, true, but he’d known from the start that there was no real future in it.
    Modice’s guardian — the Flag Captain of the Langsarik fleet herself — had let him know that Sarvaw mercantile pilots didn’t figure into any Langsarik domestic equations that she was willing to consider for her niece. She’d done it gently and with humor, but the message had been clear enough.
    Fine.
    Hilton wouldn’t catch him.
    Modice was a grown girl, or close enough to it to make up her own mind. By now, anyway. It had been three years since the bed incident.
    “Sure thing,” said Hilton. “Maybe I’ll see you around. Before you go. Where are you staying?”
    Kazmer was tired of the game. “Just in, actually, I don’t know yet. I’ll be in touch. Nice to see you, Hilton.”
    He was on his way to meet with Hilton’s people in a common meal-room two streets over, right now.
    But if Hilton genuinely didn’t know where he was, there was no danger of Hilton guessing that he had gone out afterward to see Modice.
    That would pay Hilton out for being so excessively cagey with him in the street. Pleased with this thought, Kazmer went on to his meeting with his prospective employers in good humor once again.

    ###

    Hilton Shires lingered on the pavement, leaning as casually as he could manage against the exterior wall of a featureless warehouse building, watching Kazmer Daigule’s back as he lumbered out of sight.
    Of all the bad luck, rotten luck, disgusting luck, unfair luck.
    No, he had nothing against Sarvaw mercantile pilots, not in so many words. Kazmer was his friend; he’d saved Kazmer’s life — or at least it had been his stratagem that had saved Kazmer’s life — and there was little that endeared one man to another quite so strongly as the sense of being benefactor to a peer.
    It was true that Kazmer had shown signs of getting sweet on Modice, but that was hardly Kazmer’s fault; Modice had that sort of effect on a lot of people. And the provocation had been more extreme than usual, what with their first meeting being in such potentially compromising circumstances.
    But mercantile pilot Kazmer Daigule was one of the last people Hilton had expected to see in Port Charid that morning, and the surprise rendered the awkwardness all the more