All of the races from the Bazaar were present, and more, though they had some things in common —the cost of their clothes. More robes here, but also sashes, coronets, and fancy hats and helmets, some more Upper Kingdom Egypt, some more Project Runway, and others that could have been straight out of the Thor movies.
Shirin wove through the crowds, coming and going with polite hellos and brief chats, translator earpieces feeding her the English equivalent to the clicks, warbles, and other alien tongues. One race —shorter gray-skinned aliens with smooth faces—communicated only in sign language, but it sure as hell wasn’t American Sign Language, judging by the translations.
“Here’s where my years of ground work pay off,” Shirin whispered in the gap between two groups. “The Ethkar are none too trusting of humans, but Bugayeva has a lot of sway here. Let me take the lead and we’ll worm our way into the story and start driving.”
Leah spotted the Ethkar in a larger crowd in front of a door guarded by security in station blackand-silver. Her translator changed over everything at once, so she had two sets of cacophonous voices coming in. The ambassador was around five-six, but filled the space around her, her movements precise, powerful. And where aural confusion had Leah twitchy, Laran was all smiles. But none of that warmth touched her eyes. Was that an Ethkar thing, or was she just playing good diplomat? Another thing to watch.
“Great light, we bid thee welcome,” Shirin said, hands straight out in some kind of special gesture.
“Bright visitor, you are welcome!” Laran answered, throwing her arms open. With this, warmth did reach her eyes. So that’s a genuine reaction. Noted.
“Quickly, in here,” the ambassador said, waving at the door, which irised open. “This is your apprentice, I assume?”
Shirin nodded, waving Leah into the suite.
And sweet it was. The front room was the size of a penthouse, but clearly lived in. One whole side of the suite was filled with books, but a ten-foot-long dining table dominated the other half, with hallways in back, presumably leading to personal chambers.
Another guard stood astride the hallway, her arms crossed.
“And for a moment, the mob will have to wait,” Laran said. She extended a hand and squeezed Shirin’s opposite shoulder. Shirin returned what Leah took to be an affectionate greeting. Or a secret handshake. Leah’s mental RAM was working overtime, trying to contextualize everything going on. Just as long as she didn’t have to actually speak the alien languages. She’d never gotten past “mellon” in Sindarin.
“Can I put these down somewhere?” Leah asked.
“Let’s not waste thought on such banality,” Laran said.
And that came out of nowhere, Leah thought. Got it. Culturally alien.
“Anywhere is fine,” Shirin said.
Leah put the bags down as gingerly as she could. She shook out her hands, which had gone partially numb carrying the sack around for a half hour.
“Sit, and I will explain,” Laran said, gesturing to the dining table.
“Explain what?” Shirin asked. Leah had only known the woman for a couple of weeks, but she could already tell when the woman was playing a bit. If Laran was going to break silence and read them in, then all the better.
Laran tapped through some commands on a panel by the door, then joined the Genrenauts at a pair of half-circular couches, surrounding a circular coffee table adorned by a three-tier board game that reminded Leah of Star Trek’s Three-Dimensional chess, but with way weirder-looking pieces.
“Commander Bugayeva recommended your services, and her word carries great weight with me. I dare not use the local operators, as the walls have ears, so I put my trust in you. But that trust is as thin as a blade. Fall wrong, cross me, and you will be cut upon the razor.” “We understand,” Shirin said.
“Once we pass this juncture, your hearts are pledged to the service of the station.” Shirin nodded. “So pledged are we.” She looked to Leah.
Leah repeated Shirin’s words, hoping that was the right thing to do. Laran nodded.
The ambassador took a breath. “Kaylin Reed has been kidnapped.” Boom. There’s the plot.
“I see,” Shirin said. “How can we help?”
“Two blades will ward off doom and doubt. One must strike at darkness and cut through to truth, the other must deflect doubt and guard the light against twilight.”
Shirin leaned to Leah. “Find out who did it, get her back, and keep the Alliance from falling apart in the meantime.”
“Got it,” Leah said.
The older woman gave a formal nod. “Such blades as we have are yours.”
Laran pulled back a sleeve and tapped out commands on her wrist-screen. Hers was sleeker, more ergonomic, the screen curved to the shape of her arm, the bezel made of pearlescent coral or something that looked close enough.
“Then we begin with all haste.”
Chapter Four: Hands-On Information-Gathering
Roman tightened his grip on the Nbere rough, twisting his grip into the man’s shirt.
“So you’re sure that you don’t know what merc groups came through the station, despite the fact that you say you can set me up with whatever crew I need. Seems like one of these things doesn’t add up, doesn’t it?”
King stood a meter to Roman’s left, arms still crossed. “It’s very strange. Seems like a proper fixer would know something like that. Unless he’d been paid to stay silent, and in that case, he’s no good as a fixer to anyone else, since he’d become someone’s lapdog, not a real Free Agent and rider of the fringe.”
“Seems like,” Roman said, his mouth just inches from the Nbere’s elongated, whisker-filled ears. A part of him wanted to just rampage through the whole bar and interrogate the one guy left alive, but he’d play by this world’s rules, and King’s—less murder, more intimidation. “Now what are you, Do Mal? Are you a lapdog, or are you a rider?”
Do Mal’s friend, a thick-set Yai, shuffled forward, but King headed him off, leaving Roman with the Nbere.
The Nbere’s attenuated arms pinwheeled. The crowd around them had cleared out, no one interested in butting in. The Deep Dive was that kind of bar. You didn’t come for the company, you came for the discretion. Which included leaving aggressive negotiations be, unless they involved personal friends. And it seemed like Roman and King were the closest this pair had to friends.
“So, maybe I did hear something,” the Nbere said. “But I remember a lot better when my beard ain’t yanking on my brainstem, you get me?”
Roman released some slack on the alien’s beard, but kept his grip. “That jog your memory?”
“I’m jogging, I’m jogging!” the alien said. “I saw three, no, four crews come through over the last week. Three of ’em left today, one said they was staying around for another week, bleeding off credit before their next long run on the rim.”
“And those three that left?” Roman asked, releasing some more pressure, letting the Nbere stand up to a stoop instead of a full crouch.
“There was the Dark Stars, the Widowmakers, and, which was it, Garro, Velocities?” “I think it was the Seventh Sons,” the Yai said.
“The Seventh Sons it was! See, no hassle, no bother. So how about you let me go like a civilized ape.”
“Ape?” King asked. Roman tightened his grip.
“Sorry, habit. Like a civilized and upstanding totally evolved Terran.”
Roman let go, then turned to the bar, cupping hands in a low-tech megaphone. “Can I get some shots for my new friends?!”
* * *
Do Mal and Garro were, when not being threatened or browbeaten, rather friendly company. Roman realized he should have gone for the Yai first—he was far chattier than Do Mal.
“The Widowmakers like to gab, they does. Anyone with grease under their nails and a functioning set of ears, flesh or tech, can find out what they’ve been up to.”
King leaned forward. “Especially when they have friends like you. What were the
&n
bsp; Widowmakers talking about this time around?”
The Yai tipped back his third stout, belching. “Just some good honest smuggling. Heavy metals towing through the Gaan blockade.”
Roman scoffed. “They’re still blockading? I thought those lunks would have just swallowed their pride and accepted the tariffs by now.”
“The Gaan are as likely to swallow their pride as I am to ask one to be my wife,” the Nbere said. “Could you imagine that? Bearded lizard-babies thumping around making an abysmal racket with their trunks.” He stomped his feet, wavering.
King extended a hand and steadied the drunkard. “And the Dark Stars? What’s the word from them?”
Garro shook his head. “No, they don’t talk. Uriah whips them if they gab outside the compact.
You gotta go direct to them to find anything out.”
“Any Stars stick around more permanent-like?” Roman asked.
“Zoor retired from the Dark Stars last cycle, settled down with his Ethkar partner and opened a flower shop, if you’ll believe it.”
“Flowers?” King lurched forward, as if he’d just remembered something. “It’s my anniversary! I need to get flowers, or my wife’ll space me. Where’s the shop?”
“Too far, friend. They set up on wheel three,” Garro said, waving for another pint. “There’s a half-dozen shops between here and there.”
Roman kept on track while King worked the angles. “If we’re going to find the right crew for our job, my client needs to know that we found only the very best.”
“Zoor ain’t the one to talk to, though. He can maybe get you an introduction, but not like I could. Me and Uriah are like this,” Do Mal said, holding up a braid of his beard, wet with backwash from his beer.
“Soggy and matted?” Roman asked.
The Yai pounded the table, roaring. “A tongue on this one! How come I haven’t met you in this hole before?”
“Just passing through, looking for work.”
King watched the room, checking for prying eyes. The nearest table of drinkers had moved farther away, but that was more likely due to the Nbere’s wild swings than anything they were saying.
Roman mimed drunkenly counting to three, mouthing the names of the crews. When he reached three, he asked, “And what’s the other crew up to, Seventh Sons? What’s their specialty?”
“Wetwork and banditry, son. You want someone bled or something stolen, you call the Seventh Sons. Bloody folk they are. Ain’t no one a proper Seventh Son until they’ve been painted in the blood of a kill.”
“That’s right,” the Yai said. “A clutch-mate of mine joined the Sons, vicious egg he was. He was going to meet me here, but they blasted out like a comet earlier today.”
“He say why?”
“No, his beam just said he couldn’t make it, that he’d be back in maybe a month.”
“What a cutter!” Roman said. “I thought clutch-mates were supposed to stick together. Am I right?”
The Yai cheered at that, then again as the next round appeared.
Roman nodded to King. They’d have to keep tabs on this pair. They were leakier than the bathroom pipes in the men’s room at HQ. Hopefully, Shirin and Leah were turning up good information on the higher-class side to go with their greaser gossip.
* * *
Laran led Shirin and Leah out, the three of them pushing their way through the sea of supplicants to the corner and around to another door. Two station security guards flanked the entrance. They nodded to Laran as she lifted her wrist-screened hand, which opened the door.
“Quickly, now.”
Ambassador Reed’s apartment was even bigger than Do-Ethar’s, but this one was decorated with more familiar material—Terran art and artifacts, though alien affectations were still present— here a pearlescent vase with horizontal handles, there an incomprehensible musical instrument, and so on.
“Whispers have not yet reached the public, though the station staff knows,” Laran said. “Without
Reed, the fragile Alliance will collapse.”
“Shouldn’t we be worrying about contaminating the scene?” Leah asked, indicating the room around them.
“The detectives have come and gone. Only the bedroom remains forbidden, for now.”
Shirin slid into one of the floating chairs and patted the one next to her, which Leah took, holding back the lip curl of disdain that usually accompanied her response to being led around like a child. She was new to the job, not a toddler. “We received word six hours ago,” Laran said, “when the guardian system returned after being struck down by a fell blow. They were silent as shadows, but they failed to disable the automated resets.”
“The redundancies still on an alternating four-hour rotation?” The Ethkar nodded.
“Then the kidnapping had to have occurred between 1400 and 1600, judging by the camera data.
What does security say?” Shirin asked, leaning forward.
“Multiple assailants, all wearing working boots. All bipedal.”
“So none of them were Gaan, though there might have been some Xenei as well,” she said, listing off the possible races of the attackers.
“So it would seem. The shadows knew their prey, knew the terrain, there were no tracks anywhere else in the suite. They were well-informed, lucky, or—”
“They had her itinerary.”
“Possible. The light of truth will scatter shadows, but dawn is yet hours away at best.”
“What happens if Reed doesn’t come back? Does the Alliance have a chance?”
Laran looked away, glancing back at the bedroom. “Without the sun, the system will spin out of control, the cosmos of consensus we’ve built will dissolve. A lesser alliance might be found between the Ethkar, Terrans, and some others. A dagger forged from the shattered steel that might have been a sword, but a dagger is of little use when hunting a Vren.”
Leah hung “Vren” in her mental overhead-storage space, not sure if her cover would be expected to know. If she was, but went to her encyclopedia right away, Laran might twig to their deception. Instead, she did her best to sit still, not fidget, not ask follow-ups, and to generally ignore every inclination she had in the strange and marvelous place.
That part of the job she’d still have to get used to. But she wouldn’t be new forever.
“When Laran’s absence is revealed, the day’s proceedings will begin to unravel almost
immediately. The day will devolve into distraction, deflection, and bribery to keep the ambassadors on-point. My team cannot preserve the nascent web alone. Tend to the web’s more disagreeable nodes. As Ambassador Reed would say, we will ‘plug holes with our fingers until the dam breaks.’”
Shirin nodded. “We’re all yours. Just beam over the dossiers and any notes you have on who to speak to first, we can begin first thing in the morning.” Shirin reached a hand out to Do-Ethar. “I know how long you and Reed have been working on this. We won’t let it wash away like a sigil in the sand.”
Laran stood. “It will be done.”
“I have a colleague working this case with me,” Shirin said. “He was once an investigator. I’m sure he’d want to take his own look at the room, if it would be permissible. I’ve gotten clearance from Commander Bugayeva.”
“Bring him. May he shed light.”
Laran and Shirin shared another gesture of greeting, which apparently doubled as “goodbye.”
“Good luck, Shirin, and to your apprentice, too. Next time, perhaps you will allow her to speak.
I would be very interested to hear what she has to say.”
And with that, Laran strode out, the door irising open and closed automatically. The Ethkar stepped into the waiting mob without hesitation, the commotion filling the room for just an instant before the door closed once more.
“Get on the line and beam the boys to tell them we’re clear to scrub the bedroom. Then you can look up what Vren are.”
“How do you do that?” Leah asked, hands thrown out to t
he side.
“Practice, newbie. Now let’s get to it. King and Roman will be back from their slumming intel trip soon.”
King and Roman arrived fifty minutes later, coming from the nearest wheel wing of the station.
Roman took video of the room while King sprayed an aerosol can around the room, stepping carefully in boots coated with plastic booties. Leah watched from the hallway. The spray stayed visible, didn’t dissipate into the air. It just hung there, gray and passive.
Shirin sprayed the other side of the room, similarly tiptoeing in covered shoes. They’d have to empty two whole cans to cover a room this big. Luckily, that’s what they’d brought. Not that the Quartermaster would be happy to see them return empty-handed. This stuff wasn’t cheap, and the High Council wasn’t made of money. Well, not endless amounts of money.
“These are versatile particles,” King said, taking the expository role. “With stimulus from the wrist-screen, they’ll react with various chemicals. Each spectrum covers a different type of search.
But they’ll take a little while to change between types.”
“So what will this tell us?” Leah asked. “Can we get genetic scans, find out what species the kidnappers were, what material their shoes were made of, Sci-Fi Sherlock stuff?”
“Basically. We’re looking for as well-rounded a picture as we can get. I read the security report on the way over, and I’m not impressed.”
“Why not?” Shirin asked.
“Station security has never impressed me here,” King said. “Makes sense, since that allows the crimes to happen in the first place that move stories forward. But it doesn’t make our jobs any easier.”
“If this is normal, then why does it count as a breach?” Leah asked.
Finished with his scan, Roman stepped lightly out of the room to join Leah in the hall. “It’s a breach because the forecasting team back home says it’s a breach, and because our guts tell us it’s a breach. Unless something else is going on and we’re totally missing it.”
“How likely is that?”
From in the room, King said, “More likely than I’m comfortable with. But bringing the ambassador back will stabilize this region, and that’s better for this world’s stability, regardless. And judging by the intel we got out of our chatty, drunk friends, my gut tells me we’re on the right track.” Roman pulled up a feed on his screen while the others worked.
Genrenauts: Season One Page 13
