He didn't have any choice, though. He would do whatever proved to be necessary to accomplish his objectives.
Three weeks, five planetfalls, and almost 1500 light-years of routine checking later, Nevan discovered his quarry's name: Kiyoshi Owajima. So far he'd had to resort to nothing more drastic than reading and casual conversation, but learning he was after Owajima left him both disgusted at the gods' whimsical ordering of things and positive that things would be getting unpleasant rather shortly. He'd never met Owajima, though he'd wanted to, and when Nevan had left IntelDiv on swearing fealty to Ranger Losinj, Owajima had taken over the top field agent rating. Owajima was no Sandeman, but IntelDiv rumor had him close; he was supposed to have been a Kai-school ninja before joining the Corps, and his exploits since hadn't done anything to contradict the rumor. Nevan scowled at that; he hated having to depend on rumor. Doing that tended to get agents killed--but unless you worked in the classified section of Personnel Records or knew the agent personally, rumor was all you'd have on one. And in Owajima's case, as in Nevan's own, there wasn't even much rumor.
Kiyoshi Owajima concealed a scowl when he finished decoding his informant's message and read it. He had a pursuer, it seemed--a Sandeman warrior named Vance DarLowrie, and the informant was convinced DarLowrie was one of the rare, expensive, and fearsome Sandeman free-lance assassins. That conviction was strengthened by the fact that DarLowrie had his own ship, the Last Resort, and it was registered to him personally rather than to Clan Lowrie. The Sandeman would neither confirm nor deny that occupation, of course, but the simple fact that he was attempting to trace an IntelDiv field agent lent still further credence to the informant's conclusion.
Owajima would have liked more information, but it seemed prudent to act on the informant's suspicions. The Sandeman had filed a flight plan for Olathe, where Owajima had spent some time and built up a respectable net; that seemed most promising. It was unfortunate, Owajima thought, that he was unable to investigate DarLowrie himself; that would have to wait until he was finished with the final touches on his present case, a matter of a day or two.
Still, he could begin making preparations. He would be entitled to a leave after this mission, and he had planned to take it at home on Nippon-Ni; that was now an even better idea. His contacts on his home world made his networks elsewhere, good as they were, seem like children's clubs--and it should not be difficult at all to permit DarLowrie to "discover" those intentions. It would undoubtedly be unpleasant for the one he discovered them from, since it was unlikely DarLowrie would believe information he obtained too easily.
That, however, was not a serious problem; a number of his Olathe network owed him enough that he could call on them even for such a service. It would take DarLowrie perhaps a week to reach Olathe, another week and a half to get to Nippon-Ni; that would give Owajima time to make adequate preparations, then visit with his family for several days. He smiled to himself, transmitted the necessary messages, and returned his attention to his immediate mission.
Nevan entered the Lucky Bull, a medium-priced bar near the Olathe City spaceport, and ordered a glass of chocolate milk before finding a table near the rear of the main room. In the early days after Annexation, he'd heard, bars had carried alcoholic beverages almost exclusively, and Sandemans were made fun of for drinking only the non-alcoholic variety, but by the time he'd started frequenting bars as an excellent source of information, the sweet high-energy beverages Sandemans preferred were as normal as alcohol.