Robber Baron Page 8

  Destiny was taking self-defense as her fitness elective at Tarkin University; she had switched into that class right after the "incident" with Billy Donovan. She said it was really exciting, since her instructor had once been an instructor with the Yurple Militia Regulars, and knew a lot of neat stuff. I told her just to keep me around, and she'd be okay. She laughed and told me I should take the class.

  When the New Planet Spacelines opened their terminal, just before Destiny's 18th birthday, she quit the construction company, and got a job with New Planet.

  One Sunday afternoon, while we sat in a restaurant, I asked her about it. "I know you're just keeping a job so no one will ask where you get your money from, but are you sure you want to work for a spaceline? They could transfer you at any time, to some planet I haven't even heard of. Besides the fact that space ports are the first targets in any war."

  "How do you know, Philipp? The human race has never had a war on a planet with spaceports, now have they?"

  "Well... No, but that's just logical. If I were a general, trying to occupy a planet, I'd hit their spaceports first, to disable their fleet. It's just the way it would be done."

  She laughed. "Don't worry, my dear. If a war starts, I promise you, I'll quit. Okay? Besides, I think the job will help us. With the money."

  "The wha-" I saw the look in her eye. "Oh. With our money. How?"

  "Well, for one thing, all employees get discounts on trips, and once a year, every employee gets a free trip, and a paid vacation. When we're ready to start taking our money off-planet, I can use the discounted trips, and get my pick of berths in the liners. And employees don't get their baggage checked, even if they're going to the stiffer worlds, like Tuf or Turner's Planet. You could carry just about anything anywhere, but if you went to one of those older worlds, they'd sort through your bags. Not only that, I'm making more per hour now, so it doesn't look so bad when I spend it. Are you going to eat the rest of that steak?"

  "What? Oh, sure, sure." I went back to my food, using my last bites of steak to wipe up the remaining sauce, while I thought about what she'd said. That moment, right then and there, is when I made the unconscious decision to go on robbing banks.

  She watched me think for a while, then asked, "So when do you think we should do it again, and where?"

  I swallowed the last bite, and washed it down with the last of my Bliss soda. "Whenever we do it, we should plan it out a little longer than we did those other times. You know, find out how many people there are going to be, whether or not there's cameras, the possibility of disabling the cameras, our getaway route, so forth. And let's wear gloves next time. We wasted like ten minutes when we were wiping all those prints off."

  "What about Batesville? I hear they have two new banks over there, and the town is still growing so fast they don't have enough police to watch the whole place. They've probably got cameras, since they heard about the robbery over here, but we can either figure out how to turn them off, or maybe wear masks."

  "Have I told you lately that I love you?" "

  "Not since you had your first taste of that steak sauce. I told you it was good. Do you know how to drive?"

  "Destiny, has anyone ever told you it's really confusing when you switch subjects so suddenly?"

  "No. I thought it was the same subject; good steak sauce and fast cars all go under the main heading 'Big Money And How To Get It'. So I really didn't change the subject. Can you drive, or do I need to show you how? I think we might need two vehicles for this job, if we want to do it right."

  *

  As I crouched in the darkness outside the Townsend house, I told myself again that they'd be getting their car back. I told myself I really wasn't stealing the car; I was just borrowing it for our getaway, then we'd leave it somewhere in good enough condition so they wouldn't have lost anything but maybe a day's use of it.

  The Desters' old aircar looked much like it had before the family had gotten rich. When they'd sold it to the Townsends, the ancient vehicle had kept on ticking.

  I checked my watch, then moved stealthily out of my cover, and up to the lorry. Sure enough, the old key Destiny had found in the bottom of her purse fit the lock. When I turned the key, I found that the door hadn't even been locked. People on colonial worlds are of an innately trusting type. Quickly, I opened the door and slipped inside. I pulled my new penlight out of my vest pocket, and turned it on, cupping my hand so the light wouldn't go everywhere.

  When I found the power switch, I slipped Destiny's old key into the slot, and turned it. With a loud pop and a few deafening clicks, the old machine came to life. The dashboard lit up, and I hit the drive switch. The lorry rose off the ground, and I sped away, just as the house lights came on. I headed toward town at breakneck speed, until I was out of sight of the Townsend house, then turned down a side road, doubling back toward the outer farms where Destiny would be waiting. I was driving without lights, bending over the steering wheel to try to see the road better.

  As soon as I had reached open country, I pulled off at the designated spot, and parked the lorry between two clumps of Persiphone's tall bushes. I didn't see Destiny, so I dialed her phone number.

  "Yeah, what do you want?" I heard her sweet voice say, with just a little paranoia in her tone.

  "I don't see your car, baby. Where are you?"

  "Right beside you, on the other side of these trees. Come get this power cell; it's too heavy for me"

  I stepped out, got the spare power cell out of her car's storage compartment, and lugged it over to the lorry. I pulled out the lorry's old cell, which still had a little charge left, and replaced it with the new one. Destiny watched me, looking up the road every now and then.

  I looked up at her. "Do you think this old crate will make it all the way? It seemed pretty shaky on the way out here. I mean, that's a long drive to Batesville."

  "We kept it in good condition, back when we owned it. But, if it starts to go down, hit the landing skid button, and brace yourself. Then I'll come back to get you."

  "Okay."

  With the new cell in it, the lorry acted much better, but still popped and clicked annoyingly, especially when I got it up to high speeds. We had decided to go across the ocean, since we didn't need any insomnia-stricken hermit farmers spotting two speeding cars in the middle of the night and deciding to report them. Besides, it would have taken more than twice as long to stay over land. Even then, we'd end up having to cross some pretty good stretches of water. We made it to our continent's west coast in about 45 minutes, then lit out across the water, about fifty feet above the cold black sea.

  We had agreed not to call each other while over the water, since our phones would have to track with a satellite in the absence of transmitting towers, and we were trying to do this job without leaving any traces. I did take my gloves off during that long stretch though, since my hands were starting to sweat. I made a mental note to wipe the steering wheel again, after I put my gloves back on.

  Even though night had been well in progress when we left Tarkin, we crossed nine time zones, going westward. So, since we made the trip in less than five hours, we had gained four hours. It was early evening in Batesville. I had fallen asleep once or twice while driving, but luckily I hadn't touched the control wheel while asleep; it held its bearing, so I arrived at the right place. It was a Friday evening in Batesville and the night life had just started up.

  I followed Destiny through the same streets we had driven down the weekend before, and pulled into the parking lot of an unfinished hotel. I parked the lorry out of sight behind a bulldozer, while Destiny parked in front of the main office. I waited about fifteen minutes, until she called me from the room. Our phones were now transmitting through the local towers, so there would be less chance of detection. Most calls were just sent on automatically to the recipient, and the record was deleted when the call was over.

  "Come on in, baby. Room 210. The guy in the office is reading a book."

  "Yeah, and if h
e's smart, he'll go to sleep, and dream about you. Be right there."

  As I got out, I wiped the steering wheel clean, and the few switches I had used in parking got the treatment too. My bare hands would never touch the lorry again. Before going inside, I rubbed some mud over the ID decal on the lorry. I had switched off the transponder when I had first stolen the vehicle. It would be days before local police could identify it as the stolen vehicle they were looking for.

  Inside the room, I flopped on the bed. "You would not believe how tired just driving can make you. I don't know how late I'll wake up."

  "What do you mean, I wouldn't believe it?" she retorted with a grin. "I just drove the same distance. And I know how late you'll sleep, because I'm going to wake you up."

  *

  When I woke up, Destiny was emptying her bag onto the bed beside me. When I got out of the shower, she was ready to go. She wore nice but comfortable pants, a thin, almost see-through blouse, and a woman's sport coat over it. In each inside pocket of her coat, she had two bags, the collapsible kind that takes up almost no room when it's empty. In the outer pockets were her gloves. In her purse, she had a new roll of packing tape, should we need it, and a pair of wire cutters.

  I wore jeans, a T-shirt, and a multi-pocket vest. In my pants pockets, I had two bags of my own, my own gloves, my penlight, and the gun that Destiny had given me. Billy Donovan had given it to her when they were still dating, and she almost threw it away before she gave in and let me keep it. It had twenty tiny darts in its magazine, each with enough medicine to put a man down for a few minutes.

  And on my back, under my vest, I wore my school project: an a-grav motor. The ones we built in class had been cube-shaped, roughly eight inches on a side. This one was only an inch in thickness, and covered most of my back. As long as I didn't bend over too far, or try to twist around, it wouldn't show much. The control module was about the size of my phone, connected by three feet of self-retracting wire, and hooked on the top of the gadget, just below the top of the vest. There, I could reach it by bending my arm back as if to scratch the middle of my back.

  We were ready. We had scoped out the bank the weekend before, telling her mother and Harry that we were going sightseeing. The weekend of the actual heist, Harry himself was in Batesville, meeting with the town leaders, and I had left a message for him at our house, saying I would be out all day with Destiny. Destiny had told her mother she was staying the weekend in the dorms with some of her friends. Our plan was as foolproof as we could make it.

  She parked her car on a side road adjoining one side of a supermarket, about six blocks from the bank. I picked her up in the lorry and we parked it in an alley one street away from the bank. I left it unlocked, but taped the ignition key on the inside of my upper arm, under the cover of my T-shirt sleeve. We walked out onto the main street, and crossed it, so we could pass the bank on the opposite side and take one last look before we went inside. Everything looked good.

  "Let's walk on down, Sandy, and come back on the other side," I said quietly. We had decided to keep using our same fake names for the present.

  There were a lot of people out on the streets, doing their shopping. Some were buying groceries for their apartments in town, some were selling produce from their farms, and some were buying clothes and other goodies. I saw one family loading up a brand new tractor with all sorts of brand new fanning attachments. All the faces looked bright and healthy, as they should, on a growing and prospering planet.

  We came back down the other side of the street and when we got to the bank, Destiny ducked down the alley next to it. I headed for the front door, lighting a cigarette as I went. I didn't smoke and didn't like people who did - I was only using the smoke as an excuse to stand outside the bank until Destiny's job was done. Standing under the wide awning in front of the bank, I watched the people going in and out, for two reasons. One, so I would know how many customers we'd have to deal with; two, so I could locate any potential heroes. Of course, every man that walked in looked like a colonist, all of who have the potential to play hero, but some were more alert than others. I pulled my left-hand glove out of my pocket, and pulled it on. Nobody was giving me a second glance. Then I looked at my watch: if Destiny was doing her job according to plan, I had fifteen seconds.

  Without hurrying, I took the right-hand glove out of my pocket and put it on. I flicked my cigarette into the street, and turned to walk in the door. Just as I grasped the handle, the lights went out. I heard a gasp, then the emergency power came on, lighting the place dimly.

  I pulled the gun out of my vest pocket, and walked in. The guard by the door got two darts before anyone else knew what was going on; he went down with a thumping sound. One lady let out a whimpering scream, two or three men voiced a little profanity, and the other guard came for me. He had been standing by the counter, but now he was drawing his own weapon and moving forward. Even as I pulled the trigger, I saw that he had a gun just like Schiller had - the old fashioned kind, with shell casings, lead bullets, exploding powder, and the like. As my two darts entered his chest and neck and he went down, he kept moving forward, so when he dropped his gun it came sliding across the slick buffed floor and stopped at my feet.

  The two tellers and the weekend manager were just then starting to react. I grabbed the guard's gun off the floor, and pointed both guns at them. "Don't touch those alarms, people," I managed to say in a pretty strong voice.

  Destiny rushed in the door behind me, and took the other guard's gun out of his holster. I noted with satisfaction that she had her gloves on.

  She spoke. "Get on the floor. NOW!" They got. The customers, that is. The tellers and the manager were standing dangerously close to the counter. I put one dart in each of the tellers, and they each looked sick for a second, then dropped to the floor.

  I waved my guns at the manager. "You don't get a dart, you hear me? You try anything funny, and I'm using the real gun, okay? So let's be a good little colonist, and do what you're told."

  I handed the dart gun to Destiny, and she handed me her two bags. I had been inside the bank for only twenty-five seconds.

  Tucking Destiny's two bags under one arm, I pulled my own two out of a pocket while I walked to the counter, and behind it, still pointing the gun at the manager. "Now, let's get that vault open, mister."

  He looked surprised. "But it's already open, I-"

  "Shut up!" I growled, and looked around the corner to find that the vault was indeed open. "Sandy. Do him."

  She complied, putting two darts into him. I headed into the vault. Setting the gun on a shelf, I began loading up the bags, only taking a few 100nd notes. Mostly I grabbed the bundles of 10s and 20s. I just dropped them into the bags as fast as I could, filling them up.

  When I was starting on the third bag, Destiny walked in and started helping me. I stared at her. "What are you doing? Who's covering the lobby, my dad's ghost?"

  "Get on with it," she ordered, even though we were both stuffing money in bags as fast as we could. "I darted all the customers, and taped the guards and employees."

  "What if someone comes in the door?"

  "We're done, aren't we?" she answered, zipping up the last bag. "And I've got seven darts left, if anyone's in the lobby."

  We stepped out of the vault, to see that one of the female tellers was stirring, so Destiny dropped a bag and shot another dart into the woman. The front door swung open right about then, and two more darts went flying through the air. The man who was entering the bank dropped to the floor, propping the door open with his limp form.

  "Let's go," I said. I had the guard's real gun tucked into my waistband; Destiny handed me the other real gun, which I stuffed into a money bag while she put the dart gun in her own belt. As we headed for the door, I held both of my bags in my left arm, while I reached over my shoulder, and pulled out the control module for my a-grav motor.

  Destiny and I stepped over the crumpled customer in the doorway, and stepped out. I hit the power
switch on the control panel in my right hand, and swung my left arm around Destiny's waist, moneybags and all. Just as I gripped her tightly and pressed the "up" button, we noticed that a crowd was quickly gathering in front of the bank, possibly due to the limp body in the doorway. As we rose into the air, my left arm muscles bulging from the strain, Destiny ripped open two stacks of 20s, and dropped them. The bills fluttered down. Disappearing over the top of the bank, I saw a fight breaking out below, as a dozen people tried to catch the money at one time. Two minutes and fifty seconds had elapsed; I guess Destiny is the fastest tape handler I know.