Her name, when she had introduced herself, had given him that strange inner-ear ache when he had heard it. That word, nanites, had done the same thing. “So, I’ll understand you?” He repeated.
Again, that bland shrug that was starting to drive him crazy. “You’ll recognize the words. No being will be able to guarantee that you will understand … everything.”
Hardly a ringing endorsement. He shook his head, knowing that he was going to have to pick his battles carefully. To cover his discomfort he took another sip of the drink. “Okay, obviously I can understand you well enough, so let’s just forget that for now.” He didn’t feel great knowing that there were millions of tiny alien robots crawling around in his brain interpreting for him. What else might they do?
“So, please go back and explain why you kidnapped us.” Those moments in that empty darkness with his younger self were still firmly in his mind. He needed to focus.
“Well, she might have kidnapped you, but she sure as hell didn’t kidnap me.” Justin’s smile was wide, his dark eyes sparkling.
Marcus gave his friend a flat look, and then turned back to the woman. “Why are we here?”
Angara watched the interplay with a sour twist to her lips. When she began to speak again the twist was gone, but the tone remained. “I need your help.”
Marcus sat back. Several possibilities had crossed his mind, but this was not one of them. “You need our help?”
She nodded. “I need you to come with me. We won’t be gone long; a few weeks at most. Then I can return you.”
Justin reached over and smacked Marcus in the shoulder. “She needs us, man! You get it?”
Marcus’s mouth curled in annoyance, but he didn’t so much as look at his friend. “You need us to come with you where? To do what?”
Justin’s smile slipped, and he sat up as if he was about to take Marcus to task, but Angara shook her head and looked back at Marcus, her back straightening and her head tilted proudly. “I need your assistance in correcting an error I have made.” She rose to take the empty glasses, slipped them behind a wall hanging, and returned to her seat. She did all of this without making eye contact.
Marcus nodded to himself. “You made a mistake. What’d you do?”
Justin turned to watch her as well, curious despite himself.
She glanced from one man to the other, and then shrugged, looking away. “I killed my employer.”
Justin’s jaw dropped and he struggled quickly upright. Marcus nodded. There were things he had noticed back on old State Road 189 that his mind had not been ready to confront at the time. He remembered the pale cast to the man’s face, glimpsed as they roared down the highway, and the hints of strange appendages, charred and twisted, around the body in the devastated Prius as it was engulfed in flames at the bottom of a crater.
“The guy that was following us.” The words were flat. He might be putting the parts together, but there was still a lot he didn’t know. “The guy following us, shooting at us with those balls of lightning, and the lasers; that was your boss?”
Angara nodded, her strange eyes cast down to the rug-strewn floor. “I was tracking him by the Skorahn, that medallion you showed me. He often ran off like this, to indulge himself, and I have had to go after him, get him out of whatever trouble he had stumbled into, and bring him back safely. I thought I was tracking him, anyway. I thought he was running away from locals, or maybe some Galactic agents. Neither were far-fetched, and both have happened in the past.”
Marcus heard the capital ‘G’, and the heavy weight of the term ‘agents’, but was too interested in the initial line of inquiry to take a detour at the moment. “So, you thought you were swooping in to rescue him, then? Because the necklace was in our car, not his?”
She sighed, looking up, and then launched herself out of her seat and began to pace like a caged animal. Her movements were lithe and graceful. “I thought it might make a good object lesson, if I let him hang for a bit before I took out the pursuit.”
“But he was the pursuit. We had the necklace. And you killed him, instead.” Marcus summed up his conclusions in a flat voice, trying his best to keep any tone of judgment out, for the moment, anyway.
Again, she nodded, moving from one hanging to the next, reaching out to touch the rich weaves as she passed. “Yes. I can only imagine he used the Skorahn as collateral, or something similar, in a game of chance?”
It was Justin’s turn to nod. “Yeah. I took him for everything else, so he tossed the necklace into the pot and asked if it would cover his bet.”
“And you said yes.” She asked the question without turning toward him, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah. I didn’t know what it was worth, and everyone else was out, but they were watching, and they all seemed impressed, so I didn’t want to seem like a chump. So yeah, I said yes.”
“It’s the medallion. It can have a strange effect on sentients. And on Humans, apparently.” She turned toward them again, her face thoughtful. “He’s done this many times before. He usually recovers the Skorahn as soon as he can get the recipient alone.”
“He tried, but he shot his taser-thing at Marcus instead of me. Gave me enough time to give him a right cross to the jaw.” Justin settled back, reveling in the memory. “Put the bastard right down.”
The look she gave him was pitying. “Yes, it would. Rayabels aren’t known for their constitutions. Out of curiosity, what did it feel like when you hit him?”
Justin’s head jerked slightly at the question, and then he turned thoughtful. “Well, now that you mentioned it, it did feel pretty soft.”
“They are what you might call gastropods. Rayabels don’t actually even have a head as you would recognize it. Rather, they have a central body from which they might shape any number of pseudopods. Virri’s favorite disguise, when he came all the way to Earth, was to don a mask over a sensory-enhanced pseudopod, and cram the rest of his bulk into one of the many designer suits he has had me procure over the years.”
Justin looked offended at the suggestion that his right cross had not been as formidable as he had assumed, but Marcus had noticed something stranger about the woman’s response. “You don’t seem to be that upset that you killed him.”
The fact that the woman, or alien, or whatever, had killed her employer without much sign of remorse might hold rather dire implications for the two strange Humans she had just abducted from the middle of nowhere. It did not speak to any particular strength of character, anyway.
She shrugged but her eyes were cast down. “Administrator Uduta Virri was not a creature to claim much in the way of personal loyalty.” Her look soured further. “Truth to tell, he was a pig.” The term pig gave him that ache below his ear. But as she said it, she seemed sad nonetheless.
“But he was your pig.” Marcus sat up, the blanket falling forgotten. Justin looked between the two, not entirely sure where the conversation was now headed.
She looked directly into Marcus’s eyes, straightening her shoulders. “Uduta Virri employed me in a trusted position when most would have turned me aside. I owed him for that. But he was also an untrustworthy beast, who made my duties, once I earned them, exceedingly difficult. He died through his own recklessness and vice, but mine was the finger on the trigger. I must now secure my own position in the brief time I will have that opportunity, before other forces interfere.”
“You called him an administrator. What was he in charge of?” Marcus sensed that this was the true core of where they were headed, and wanted to get there as soon as possible before they went any further. He was also still troubled by her reaction to the death of a being she had known, and killed.
Angara began to speak and then fell silent, her mouth open, before she snapped it shut. Her eyes tightened as she stared at Marcus for a moment, and when she began to speak again, her voice was low and steady.
“Administrator Uduta Virri was the nominal ruler of a social construct that, for lack of a better term,
we can call a city. It is a free city, holding no allegiance to any other political entities in the galaxy, and as such, is a crossroads for all beings looking to avoid official entanglements or intrusions. I say nominal ruler because this city is a study in controlled chaos, and no one can rightly be said to rule over much of anything there. But insofar as any creature was the figurehead of the city, it was Virri.”
Admittedly, the scope of the world had widened considerably since Marcus had woken up that morning in his dank hotel room at the casino. But as he thought through her words, he realized that they didn’t entirely make sense.
“This place is a city? Not a planet, a system, or anything like that?” There was, deep within his mind, a piece of himself, the piece that he would have said was the rational bit only a few hours ago, that was still screaming in denial far down in his back brain, and in shock at the death he had already witnessed that night. The rest of him, however, was coming along nicely, tossing around concepts like planets and systems.
“It is a city that floats freely in space, in a system far from the core of Galactic civilization, orbiting a planet that has been dead for eons.” She sighed again and slowly slid back into her chair. “It is an aggregate body consisting of nearly countless starships of all shapes and sizes, from all manner of races and alliances, bonded together and modified into a single gargantuan complex, affixed to an artificial planetoid of unknown origin we refer to as the Relic Core. It is known as Penumbra.”
The name brought the unpleasant buzzing to his inner ear again. He shook it off and pushed ahead. “You live in a space station made out of spaceships cemented together?” He looked at Justin with a mean-spirited grin. “Sort of like a space-age shantytown?”
Angara shook her head, her lips pursed in tightly controlled anger. “The ships were joined together ages ago, bonded to an ancient relic that was found floating around the dead planet. It was of no known culture, yet alive with a trickle of power and atmosphere that grew when connected to the first desperate ship to stumble into that system. As new ships were added, the Relic Core’s output grew as well. Today it has thousands of added components. For thousands of years there has been almost no fluctuation in output from the core. It has been accepted for longer than I could say, that whatever is contained within that shell, will sustain Penumbra indefinitely. I’m certain those earliest settlers did not take the Relic Core so much for granted, but time has a way of dulling every sentient’s vigilance.”
“Almost no fluctuation?” Justin’s words made Marcus jump. His friend, usually at the center of any conversation, had been uncharacteristically quiet, aside from his usual sarcastic jibes. “Seems like you’ve got a lot riding on this big chunk of mystery. I’d say any fluctuation would be a cause for concern.”
She glanced at him, then back to Marcus. “The reason for those few fluctuations was well known.” She pointed toward his pocket. “The Skorahn is more than just a piece of pretty jewelry. It is the key to Penumbra.”
Marcus scowled and pulled the necklace from his pocket, holding it up in the sourceless light. It twisted as he let it dangle, sparkling more than he felt it should. “This is the key to your space city?”
“Not an actual key, precisely. Apparently, it was found by that first ship, and the captain took it as a prize. As long as she possessed it, the relic provided all the power, water, and atmosphere that they needed. When she died, the supplies tailed off. There was great panic until one of her heirs took up the medallion. Ever since then, as long as a living, sentient being has been in possession of the medallion, Penumbra has thrived. During those rare occasions when the owner of the medallion has … passed without an immediate successor, there have been disruptions. It has not happened, however, for a very, very long time.”
Justin opened his mouth to ask a question, but Marcus stopped him with a gesture. There were so many questions now, but another line of inquiry had suggested itself, and he needed to follow it before he forgot, in the swirl of mysteries that filled his head. “Atmosphere? One atmosphere for all the different races? It’s sort of assumed, on Earth, that aliens would need different atmospheres…”
The look Angara gave him was loaded with far more meaning than he had expected. “There is far less diversity, I assure you, than … Humans … would believe.”
He met her eyes, and was taken by a sudden, shifting set of images. Angara shrugging, nodding, smiling, frowning … In fact, Angara with very nearly a full range of what he would have called expressions of Human emotion. He could only stare at her, as implications slowly occurred to him. But before he could ask another question, Justin jumped into the silence.
“Wait, roll it back for a bit. So, that necklace in Marc’s hands, that’s the key to your city?”
The dark woman kept her eyes on Marcus for a moment longer before flicking them in Justin’s direction. “Correct. When Virri … died … there was a very real danger that Penumbra might have been shaken. But apparently he had lost the Skorahn before he … died.” She looked down, pausing, and then back to Marcus. “And apparently, it had already bonded to another.”
“Bonded?” Marcus jerked his hand out and away, setting the necklace to swinging. “This thing bonded to me? What’s that mean?”
That seemed to bring some of the humor back to the woman’s eyes. He might not have minded, if it hadn’t been aimed at him. “Nothing much. Just that it is now locked onto your vital signs, your well-being.”
He was horrified. “Until I die?”
That seemed to amuse her even more. “Of course not. We will be able to bond it to another when we get to Penumbra. I only need you to serve long enough to find a suitable candidate.”
Justin tilted his head. “What makes someone suitable?”
She shrugged. “Any being with such an affinity to the Skorahn may suffice.” She gave Marcus a sneering up and down assessment and shrugged again. “It should not be too difficult.”
Marcus looked around the chamber, taking in the hangings on the walls, the rugs on the floor, the constantly shifting furniture, the soft, ambient light; such an odd combination of strange, exotic, and yet somehow familiar elements. His eyes tightened as yet another thought caught up to him.
“What are the people in Penumbra running from?”
That brought her up short. She looked around, trying to see what had prompted the question. “Running from? What makes you think they’re running from someone?”
“You said it was for folks looking to avoid entanglements and intrusions.” Justin joined in. “If someone’s got the power to entangle and intrude, and you’re avoiding them … well, on Earth, we’d call that running.”
Marcus nodded to his friend. He stood up, stretching. He didn’t know when he had stopped being cold, but he guessed it was about the time he found out he was supposed to be pretending to rule over some floating city of misfits, hiding from something big enough, Angara was trying not to tell him about them. “What are the people of Penumbra running from?”
She leaned away from him slightly, her mouth twisting in an expression that was becoming familiar. “No one is running away from them, but it is true, the Galactic Council would rather Penumbra come under their sway; or disappear entirely, to be honest.”
“Galactic Council.” That sounded pretentious enough to be dangerous. “Who are they, the bad guys?”
Again she surprised him. She shook her head, her brow furrowed. “Not precisely. The Galactic Council is a ruling body that includes representatives from nearly every sentient race in the galaxy.”
Justin stood up now too. “Nearly every race? Including Humans?”
This time, when she laughed at Justin instead of him, Marcus found her laugh quite pleasant. “Of course not Humans.” She shook her head to clear the tears rising up in her lavender eyes. Justin looked nonplussed, and shook his head at Marcus.
“So, a ruling council of everyone but Humans. Sounds pretty enlightened. Very Gene Roddenberry, eh?”
S
he stopped laughing, looking up at Marcus with the disdain he had come to expect. “You come from one of those nations on Earth where democracy is held in such high regard, yes?”
They looked at each other and nodded. She nodded back, but with a dark, vicious jerk of her head. “The rule of the majority is wonderful, until those in the majority have very different opinions than you do. I do not wish to give you an in depth civics lesson right now. You won’t need it for what you will be doing. But suffice it to say that the Council likes to keep tabs on every transaction in the galaxy. They exercise rigid control of almost all facets of life.” She stopped and smiled that cold smile again, the one that showed all of her pointed teeth to best effect. “All for the greater good, of course.”
Both men stared at her for a moment. When Justin spoke, his words were subdued. “This Penumbra’s big enemy is the democratic ruling body of the entire galaxy?”
Angara relaxed back in her seat. “Well, the known galaxy, anyway. And don’t allow yourself to get too nostalgic for your Human democracy, either. The concept of everyone getting a say in what everyone is able to do can quickly shift from a dream to a nightmare when the wrong people find themselves in the majority. Believe me, Penumbra exists, no, flourishes, precisely because of the Galactic Council and their heavy-handed governance. Beneath the weight of the Bureau of Technology and other controlling governmental authorities, innovation and advancement stagnate. With a coalition of the less-enlightened races controlling the council, no matter that they are in the majority, those who do not follow their every decree are punished brutally and without mercy. Without the ability to circumvent Council control when necessary, the galaxy would be drowned in blood. It is why Penumbra exists, and why agents of the Council are forever trying to destroy or undermine it.”
Marcus sat back down as the scope of their situation made itself felt. “And you want me to rule this city until you can find a replacement? With the fate of the galaxy on my shoulders, and these agents hunting me down?”
Legacy of Shadow Page 8
