Asterion Noir: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 4)

by G. S. Jennsen

  He sank away from her, deep into the couch cushions. “You never told me….”

  “Wouldn’t you have worried if you knew she—I—was taking such drastic actions?”

  “I absolutely would have. I also never would have let you go to Mirai Tower without me that night.”

  “Which is doubtless why she—sorry, it’s still difficult for me to think of us as the same person—why I didn’t tell you.”

  He sighed. “I can’t exactly be angry with you for not telling me, can I?”

  She shrugged. Damn, this was complicated.

  “But what you did here—you’re able to control it, direct it?”

  “You mean choose what memory I want to access? In a way, I suppose I can, given how I just remembered a visit to Toki’taku. And thus far, they have all been uncanny in their relevance at a given moment. But it’s not a purposeful action on my part, so I assume my subconscious is controlling the retrieval.” She laughed wryly. “It wouldn’t be the first time my subconscious has meddled. My name, that stupid pantsuit, you—”

  He straightened up with a burst of intensity. “So what does this mean? Can we sit here, interconnected, and retrieve all the memories you thought were erased?”

  The eagerness in his voice was palpable, giving away his true yearnings like a beacon. It stung more than it ought to, and she half-wished she had her protective walls back. “If I could experience every memory right now, today, do you think that would transform me into who I was before?”

  His hopeful expression collapsed, but at least it wasn’t into despair. Rather, more akin to regret. “No.” He reached for her hand.

  She forced herself not to react out of fear and yank it away; instead, she let him wrap it warmly around hers.

  “I know it won’t, if only because you also have all of your own memories from this life. You’ll filter the past through the lens of who you are today, shaped by your experiences in the last five years and all you’ve learned from them.”

  “Oh.” She smiled sheepishly. “And how do you feel about that?”

  “Let me put it this way: if I could reverse time and return to before you disappeared, I would wish the person you were then could know the person you are now. As much as I…loved Nika Kirumase, I believe if I went back I would find her lacking a certain depth and complexity for the absence of you in her.”

  “Funny you say that. I admit I’m coming to feel the same way, only about myself. With every memory I experience, it’s as if a little hole in my soul gets filled in. A new door is opened, revealing new shades and adding nuance to my view of the world and of my own psyche. So we’ll keep unlocking them.”

  She straightened up. “But not all at once. It’s kind of overwhelming when it happens—like exiting a deep simex, only worse.”

  “But they’re your memories.”

  The truth was, she still resisted the idea. Consciously, subconsciously or somewhere in between, part of her continued to fight to keep Kirumase firmly in the ‘other’ camp. But it wasn’t true. When she experienced one of these memories, she wasn’t viewing it—she was living it. And it didn’t feel foreign, like wearing someone else’s skin, the way simexes did. The skin was her own, and this was her past.

  “Even so. It takes time for me to absorb the fullness of what I experience. To integrate it into my mind, into my own memories. Please, trust me on this. If I try to access a bunch of them one after another, I’ll drown.”

  “Okay. We’ll take our time, and you’re in charge.” He kissed her softly; when he drew back, his hand lingered on her cheek. “Did it help? Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “More or less.” She frowned and reached behind her to take a sip of her drink. Lingering disorientation continued to muddle her understanding of what she’d experienced, but unless she was mistaken, this had been a memory of the first negotiation between their leaders dedicated to setting up regular association and, eventually, alliance.

  Those negotiations had occurred more than twelve thousand years ago. She had introduced herself to the guards as ‘Nika Kirumase,’ but even allowing for the longer six-hundred-year period between mandated up-gens that Advisors enjoyed, it was too long ago for that to be true. Unless she’d lied to Dashiel—to everyone—about her generation count….

  With a sigh she forced herself to put aside the incongruity for now. She’d do some historical research later, but it wasn’t important to their mission. “If nothing else, I think I understand what Xyche meant about Toki’taku being ‘treacherous.’ ”

  He eyed her dubiously. “But we’re going there anyway, aren’t we?”

  “Oh, yes. It appears I’ve been navigating those treacherous trees for thousands of years. No reason I can’t do it again.”

  19

  * * *

  TOKI’TAKU

  Taiyok Homeworld

  “MY NAME IS Nicolette Kusanagi. I’m here on behalf of Advent Aeronautics to visit several of your shipyards, in the hope that my company can learn important lessons from your superior starship design and construction.”

  The Taiyok customs agent towered over Nika. He used the height advantage to full effect, projecting an intimidating bordering on threatening stance, shoulders raised to lift his wings up and out slightly. “Asterions do not use starships.”

  She smiled minimally and gestured behind her toward where the Wayfarer was docked. “Some of us do. My company hopes to increase that number in the future.”

  The Taiyok grunted and pivoted to Dashiel. “And you?”

  “Mr. Solzhytz is my materials consultant.” The false names weren’t full simmed IDs, but they didn’t need to be, as the local government wasn’t looped into Dominion records or tracking systems. The d-gate at the embassy was, but they weren’t at the embassy. Every few weeks the customs department provided a list of Asterions who had passed through the spaceport, if any, to the Dominion’s External Relations Division, and they planned to be long gone by then.

  They stoically weathered the customs agent’s disdainful stare for a solid four seconds before one of his wings swept out and to the left in a curt motion. “Entry approved. Remain on public thoroughfares, and if a signpost indicates visitors should not enter the grounds beyond it, don’t.”

  “We understand.” She dipped her chin respectfully, took Dashiel’s arm and proceeded toward the spaceport exit.

  Many oddities about the landscape outside the spaceport competed for Nika’s attention, but she found herself struck most of all by the busy skies. On Dominion worlds an airborne Taiyok was a rare sight, but here in their native habitat they flew. No organized rules seemed to govern their flight paths, lending a chaotic yet somehow rhythmic feel to the movements of the beings above them.

  Dashiel caught her staring and chuckled lightly. “You said something to me once. The first time I came here with you, we were standing at the windows of the embassy gawking at a sky cluttered with Taiyoks, and you said, ‘We built vehicles and airships to try to pretend as if we could fly. Eventually, we built d-gates so we would no longer have to be reminded that we could not. But for the Taiyoks, flying is more natural than walking. The sky is their true home.’ ”

  “And we envy them so for it.”

  “That’s almost exactly what you said. Do you remember the conversation?”

  She shook her head. “No. But it’s what I’m saying now, because I do envy them.”

  “We joked about getting body wing augments. The reality is they’re horribly impractical, and most people who’ve tried them have given up on flying after a while. I think you need to be born with wings, and your society to be built around their existence, for it to work. But it’s a nice idea.”

  “It is.” She forcibly shook off the spell and shifted her gaze from the sky to him. “All right, the market we looked into is just outside the embassy grounds. I hope it’ll have what we need. The embassy is located on the northern edge of the city, so take….”

  The Toki’taku government
had done little beyond the basics to make the capital city friendly for alien visitors. Aerial sled-style shuttles were available for use by poor wingless creatures, though they didn’t look particularly comfortable. Finally she spotted a map posted at the intersection ahead.

  They walked over to it and peered at the map. “Okay, the shuttle station is to the east, near the next intersection, and it has a route to the embassy. You brought your translator, right?”

  He nodded. “I’ll be fine. I may not have your diplomatic prowess, but I know how to haggle.”

  “Nevertheless, be careful, or a clever merchant will have you naked and credit-less in five minutes flat.”

  People often remarked how the Taiyoks remained closer to and more in touch with nature than Asterions did, but the starker truth was that the Taiyoks had made nature their bitch.

  Their buildings twisted and wound around the broad, towering trees which dominated the landscape, using their trunks as bulwarks and their limbs as scaffolding. Façades adopted a mahogany color complementary to the bark’s natural hue, lending an overwhelming somberness to the architecture. It also added a subtle cloaking effect to the entire city. If one were to glance this way from afar, the city would resemble nature gone wild more than the commercial center of a technologically advanced species.

  Which was of course why she’d come here. For Taiyoks, concealment had long ago become an art form. Natural camouflage was baked into their ancestral DNA. They used color and shape to trick the eye, air currents and acoustics to trick the ear. And when they ventured into space they applied all these tools to the vagaries of the EM spectrum, exploiting the weaknesses of each band to hide the obvious in plain sight.

  She took one of the sled shuttles south, in the opposite direction from the embassy. If Dashiel ran into trouble here like he did on Ebisu, she wasn’t going to be so quick in arriving this time.

  The Taiyoks working the tourist-focused markets were crafty and possibly cheats, but they wouldn’t physically harm an Asterion without extreme provocation, if only because it would be bad for business. No, the real risk for him was that, so close to the embassy, the wrong person might see and recognize him. Therefore, she’d insisted on him wearing a mask. Taiyoks wouldn’t even notice it, but it should prevent any Asterion he encountered from identifying him.

  So he would be fine.

  She was the one headed into treacherous territory, to use Xyche’s terminology. The Taiyoks who worked in the starship manufacturing yards were unlikely to be accustomed to Asterion visitors. The yards would not have been given the sheen of acceptability the spaceport and city center had received. No, this was native Toki’taku, where she was the alien and not necessarily a welcome one.

  The shipyard stood on a wide bluff devoid of the trees found within the city and across much of the continent. Or perhaps the bluff too had once hosted a forest, but practicality demanded its removal.

  There should be only so many ways to configure equipment manufacturing, but the design and layout of the shipyard was completely foreign to her. Massive and sprawling, with intertwining maglev rails moving components on counter-intuitive paths. The final production stage didn’t seem to reside at any edge, but instead somewhat near the middle, where ships were loaded onto floating barges overhead and sent sailing off to their destinations. She paused to study the moving pieces for nearly a minute, but she couldn’t guess where the production process began.

  She squelched a frown as she approached the gated entrance, heeding her own lessons about the Taiyoks and body language. She saw no signs of a market area; there were no storefronts from which to purchase goods. This was where Xyche had sent her, and she doubted he’d done so in error, but she had no idea how to go about purchasing a starship cloaking module here.

  The algorithms covering Taiyok etiquette guided her actions, and the memory she’d accessed had prepared her for a chilly reception, but the alienness of it all still gave her pause. She was a long way from the Namino Curio Market.

  On seeing her, the gate attendant at the entrance thrust his chest out and spread his wings forty-five degrees out from his body. “Asterion, you have lost your path. Return to the tourist attractions of the city.”

  She kept her hands at her side, her movements deliberate and her voice measured. “I am here to speak with Phiele’neemar.”

  “Phiele’neemar does not care to speak with strangers. The shipyard is not open for Asterion business.”

  “I understand. I come at the behest of one who is not a stranger: Xyche’ghael of Doura’prado. He bid me to convey this message: ‘Ela camin’como Verda’de.’ ”

  The feathers lining the attendant’s shoulders fluttered, though the air was dead still. “I see. If your business is harmful, Xyche’ghael will be held to account.”

  “I am certain he is aware. I will bring no shame upon him. May I enter?”

  “Someone from Phiele’neemar’s station will arrive to escort you momentarily. The shipyard is full of dangers for the unwitting.”

  This, at least, was probably not an exaggeration.

  Two minutes of hostile silence later, a female Taiyok appeared from the inner workings of the shipyard. “You are Xyche’ghael’s envoy?”

  Those weren’t her exact words, but if the interpretation got her in the door, she saw no need to correct it. “I am.”

  “Xyche always did have questionable tastes. Follow me.”

  And she’d thought the Taiyoks in the Curio Market were on occasion rude. She hadn’t expected a decorative welcome carpet to be spread at her feet, but damn.

  The algorithms reminded her how Taiyoks were guarded, secretive and inherently distrustful of strangers as a rule. It wasn’t personal. If she’d been successful as a diplomat in her previous life, it was because she’d earned the trust of those with whom she dealt.

  Machinery in motion rumbled overhead as a superluminal engine sped along maglev rails toward the next stage in its assembly. Sooty smoke poured out of a tall module off to the left. Down the middle, components snapped into one another, forming an ever-larger unit as it traveled down a conveyor. On the right, two Taiyoks painstakingly sculpted the wing-like upper hull of a future ship. It all looked so terribly unordered and messy; Dashiel would be having conniptions if he saw it.

  A few meters past the hull shapers, her guide abruptly veered off to the right, down a wide hallway and into an entirely new section of the shipyard packed with smaller mini-factories and intricate assembly stations. This she understood better, for while the aesthetic remained decidedly alien, much of the work being done reminded her of Grant’s factory floor.

  Her guide stopped in front of two stacks of containers and spoke toward the gap between them. “Phiele, your caller is here.”

  A male Taiyok sporting taupe-and-honey feathers emerged from the depths of an open doorway wiping his hands with a cloth. He stopped several meters away, considered her for a long second, and nodded to her guide. “Thank you. You’re dismissed.” He folded the cloth neatly and placed it on a table behind the containers, then tilted his chin toward the doorway. “You will follow.”

  She did as instructed. Just like in the memory. The doorway led to an interior that was more lab than assembly line. Fibers, conduits and small electrical components were organized in containers around a series of workbenches. Transparent refrigeration units stored a crystalline mineral, and along the front wall what looked to be completed modules waited for transport elsewhere.

  “You are Xyche’s confiar’soca.”

  The word didn’t have a precise equivalent in Communis. It conveyed the sense of a relationship that encompassed both less and more than friendship. Of professional alliance and mutual respect, yet personal distance. If Xyche himself had used the term rather than it being Phiele’s assumption, she was touched.

  “I hope I am. I view him as such. I’ve come for—”

  “I know why you are here. We don’t concern ourselves with the flailings of Asterion society, but I
admit to being curious what someone such as yourself desires with a full-spectrum Class III starship cloaking device.”

  “And what do you imagine someone such as myself is, precisely?”

  “What, indeed. Very well, you need not enlighten me for us to transact business. Taiyok starship modules are not designed for Asterion vessels. Even should you manage to wire power to the module, it will not work for you.”

  “I recognize this. I have a plan for adaptation.”

  “They are your funds to spend. Speaking of which, how do you intend to do that?”

  “Name your price, but name it in Taiyok currency. Your government offers a most generous conversion rate for Dominion credits, and I’ll pay the equivalent, taking the rate into account.”

  “You are a shrewd Asterion, and far wiser to our practices than most of your kin. I wonder why that is?”

  “You exhibit far more curiosity about outsiders than most of your kin. I wonder why that is?”

  Phiele made a sound approximating laughter, deep and rippling. “Let us call it a draw, shall we? You can have your cloaking device, provided you can in fact pay what is a fair price. Once you fail to make it work, I am confident it will make an excellent centerpiece decoration for your dining table.”

  20

  * * *

  SYNRA

  Asterion Dominion Axis World

  BLAKE SATAIR STRODE ACROSS the plaza toward the entrance of Synra Tower like a man who had somewhere to be. He did, but his gait was less an expression of his current goal than of his general approach to life. Own it, outrun it, bully it into compliance or, if necessary, beat it into submission.