by J. S. Morin
“Think they’ve got a Sushi-to-Go at this temple?” Carl asked. “I mean, these guys are otters. You’d think they’d be all over seafood.”
Yomin tapped at her datalens. “We missed one back near the starport. There are sixteen of them planetside, but that was the closest one.”
“Well, what do our other food options look like?” Carl asked. “I’m starving.”
Esper pulled a Snakki Bar from her pocket. “Blueberry kumquat. Best offer you’re going to get all day.” She was the only one of the group not bundled up against the cold.
“You’re telling me they have a planetary-grade tourist trap, and there isn’t so much as a Taco Hut for the customers?”
“It’s a religious experience, not a sports arena,” Esper snapped, shoving the unwanted Snakki Bar back in her pocket.
Rai Kub looked after the treat longingly. Unfortunately, despite enjoying the flavors of the fruit-and-grain wafers, they did nothing to sate stuunji hunger. He could stuff a dozen in his mouth at once. If he wanted to make a meal of them, it would have taken close to a hundred.
The tram depot was fully modern. Signs were posted in English, as well as two languages Rai Kub could only assume were tesud and the local vish kinah.
A mild-looking tesud sat at the information booth. The gray, leathery reptile smiled as they entered. “Welcome. Are you here to visit the Temple of the Half-Year Sun?” Each word was spoken individually, not run together in human fashion. It made the tesud unusually easy to comprehend.
“Yeah, when’s the next tram?” Carl asked.
The tesud drifted out from behind the desk of his booth. The tortoise-like creature was standing on a miniature hover-cruiser, just big enough for both feet, and with a long pole bringing a set of handlebar controls up to stomach level. At least, Rai Kub assumed that there was a stomach under the tesud’s shell about halfway up.
“Right now,” the tesud replied with a broadening of his placid smile. With the touch of a button on a console that appeared to be nothing more than a blank section of wall, the wall itself opened. Just beyond, a tram car waited with open doors inviting entry.
“Now there’s some service,” Yomin marveled, following Carl who’d already stepped inside.
Rai Kub bowed to their host. “Thank you. We will honor you to the Half-Year Sun.”
The tesud waved away the blessing, hand drifting as if underwater. “Think nothing of it. I am no priest. I’m just the cultural attaché that minds this station on the day shift. The vish kinah run their own affairs at the temple.”
“Oh,” Rai Kub muttered. “Sorry.” And he ducked inside the car, bringing up the rear of the group.
One side of the car was sized for vish kinah bodies. The seats were low, narrow, and closely packed. On the other side, the seats were wider, taller, and had armrests separating them. Carl, Yomin, and Esper spread out in the spacious car.
Rai Kub huddled in the aisle since none of the seats was anything close to adequate.
“Yo, big guy,” Carl called out. He pointed to a zone on the floor marked with dotted yellow lines. “Cargo and luggage. Probably your best bet for the ride.”
“I’m not cargo,” Rai Kub objected.
“In a galaxy that wasn’t designed around two-and-a-half meter herbivore bodies, I think you take what you can get.”
Carl had a point. With a sigh, Rai Kub ducked his way over to the cargo zone and parked his bottom on the floor. At least with his layers of winter clothing, the steel surface didn’t chill his skin.
“At least there aren’t many visitors today,” Rai Kub pointed out.
Esper watched out the window as the tram car lurched and they rocketed toward the mountains. “A shame, really. You can feel the peace and tranquility, even from afar.”
“No,” Rai Kub said. “Few is good. Easier to find our thief.”
Carl raised a finger. “Smuggler.”
“Why not catch both?” Yomin asked.
Carl gave the Carlest answer Rai Kub had ever heard. “Because the smuggler’s the one who got paid half up front.”
The trip wasn’t long. The tram was tesud-made, using the latest tech. There was just enough gravity protection that the passengers could still feel a sensation of motion but not enough to make anyone uncomfortable. They wound a scenic trip into the mountains and then wound their way halfway up the peak of one.
The tram stopped at an open-air depot with a duracrete pad for new arrivals. Rai Kub was the first one out, eager to stand up full height again. His breath made clouds of steam.
“Wow,” Yomin commented. “Hell of a building for a bunch of primitives.”
There was a small city of ancient design carved into the side of the mountain. Their island of duracrete was the only sign of modern life before the landscape gave way to hand-carved streets and buildings, all part of the native rock. But the temple was simply breathtaking.
Formed into the side of the mountain itself, the temple faced south to catch the sun at its highest point each day. According to the flatvid plaques at the edge of the duracrete pad, the temple and the mountain peak acted as a sundial during the six months a year when the sun never set below the horizon.
It was the sort of amazing little detail that made Rai Kub glad he’d learned to read English.
“What’s the plan?” Yomin asked. “We scout around or head inside?”
“Inside,” Carl replied without hesitation, the word coming out with a puff of steam. The captain hugged his arms close to his body despite being bundled against the weather.
They made their way down carved stone streets. The buildings all throughout were walled off behind plastiglass. None of them was still in use as either dwelling or business.
Here and there along the streets, they caught sight of an adorable vish kinah tour guide walking a gaggle of tourists around. Most were human or tesud, but there was one pack of even tinier vish kinah that appeared to be on a school trip.
As they drew near the temple, it grew and grew. Rai Kub appreciated scale. It was so hard to find that scope out in the Black Ocean, where ships and space stations made by smaller races conserved space with obstinate efficiency.
Fine for them. Rough on a stuunji.
At the temple gate, a vish kinah in a wrap of maroon robes tied with a gold belt approached the group. The dignified little munchkin carried a tote tray with the lid open. “Tech please.”
“Huh?” Carl asked.
Yomin took a step back.
“Your tech. You may bring nothing of technology inside with you.”
“What if I just turn my datalens off?” Yomin asked warily.
The vish kinah priest shook his little head. “I am sorry. There are no exceptions.”
Carl looked at Yomin with a question in his eyes. Yomin shook her head emphatically.
“How about this?” Carl asked. “My friend here would probably have an aneurysm if she went an hour without her junk. How about she stays behind, and she hangs onto all our A-tech.”
The otter raised a tiny little finger. “P-tech as well. Advanced or primitive, we make no distinction.”
“But my jacket has—” Carl started to object, then deflated. “Fine.” Unbuttoning his coat, Carl shivered in the open air. The leather jacket he had on underneath lacked the auto-heating elements of his winter wear.
Yomin gathered their comms, Carl’s blaster, and a few personal items ranging from datapads to a spare holovid remote.
The priest regarded Esper with a skeptical cock of the head. “And you?”
Esper spread her fingers, and the Convocation insignia appeared in the palm of her hand. “Convocation. I don’t make a habit of carrying tech around.”
“Ohhhhhh,” the priest cooed. He laced his fingers together and bowed. “It is an honor to meet one of God’s mortal angels.”
Even the cold had failed to redden Esper’s cheeks, but the priest’s declaration made her blush.
“I’m… I don’t look at myself as an an
gel,” Esper stammered.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” the priest agreed. “Humility becomes the Lord’s servants. But come. Your friend will freeze out here. The temple is chilly, but as roaring flame compared to the mountain winds.”
Following the priest’s lead, Carl, Esper, and Rai Kub entered the Temple of the Half-Year Sun.
# # #
Carl shivered his way through the first half of the tour. The temple wasn’t half so cold as the guy outside made it out to be, but it wasn’t a warm, crackling fire, either.
The entire building was carved from the native rock—not brought back in piece by piece from nearby quarries—by simply removing rock from the mountain itself. Every bit of the architecture was original to the mountain. This and many other educational topics came up during the interminable tour of the Temple of the Half-Year Sun.
If Carl had wanted education, he would have gone to college instead of joining the navy.
They’d been assigned a guide. His name was Pavel. Carl was pretty sure that was an Earthification of his native name because none of the other otters had names that rolled off the tongue. Pavel was the kindly, smiley sort, which didn’t work quite as well for species with predators’ teeth, but the roly-poly fella pulled it off.
Carl had already seen the Grand Cathedral, gawked at the five-story Sculpted Wall, and climbed down the Stairs of Reflection. While it was nice hearing the translated names thanks to his earring, he almost wished that he only got the gibberish version in otterese—that would make it easier to forget the minute they left this rock.
Esper and Rai Kub, of course, seemed to be forgetting their mission in favor of enjoying the tour.
“And here we have the Well of Very Deepness,” Pavel said grandly, spreading a hand to the fountain in the middle of the next chamber. “For centuries, the priests have gathered their daily water here. All the blessed water in the gift shop comes directly from this magical spring.”
Rai Kub raised a hand. “Magical like wizards, or magical like a miracle?”
“They are often one in the same,” Pavel replied without taking any hint of offense. Carl gave the guy credit. Most entertainers didn’t take kindly to questions about how their tricks worked. Most priests got even more bent out of shape. “In this case, it was the work of Ginvap Too-Blessed-For-Words. He dug the hole himself, climbing down a rope each day and carrying up the rocks in a basket made from reeds. When he struck water, the other priests scoffed at the depth of the well. It would be easier to carry it up the mountainside than haul buckets so far. But Ginvap Too-Blessed-For-Words cast a mighty spell, and the water bore him up to the floor of the very chamber we stand in now. Runoff from the fountain feeds an aqueduct to the town below.”
“Very impressive,” Esper said solemnly. Carl couldn’t be sure if she was buying this circus act or just playing along.
“If you’ll follow me,” Pavel said, backing into the next chamber.
They passed a set of stairs that wound down deeper into the temple. Pavel continued into a room lit by torches.
Carl stopped short. “Hey, what’s down this way?” He hooked a thumb down the stairs, in case Pavel decided to play dumb.
Instead, the guide-priest hung his head. “A regrettable incident. That is the resting place of the Tal Geru. We have unfortunately lost it.”
Carl’s gut clenched. “Lost it? Lost it how?”
Pavel waved away the question. “Unimportant. The tesud peacekeepers will recover it soon enough. We still have many wonders to view.”
“We came to see the Tal Geru,” Carl shouted, his voice echoing impiously from the cavernous ceiling. He lowered his voice to something less likely to bring security running. “How long’s it been missing?”
“Please, do not concern yourself,” Pavel said, wincing. “Even discussing its loss wounds my heart.”
“How. Long?”
With a sigh, their guide relented. “Late last night. We have never had a theft before. That someone would remove the Tal Geru from its most sanctified lair…” Pavel just shook his head, rather than finish the thought.
Carl was already running.
Esper and Rai Kub fell in behind, though as usual, the stuunji lagged.
Reaching for his comm served to remind Carl that he didn’t have it with him. Yomin had it, and they’d left her at the tram depot. He could only trust that someone on the crew had the sense to watch for this kind of trouble.
The smuggler could slip through their fingers any time now.
# # #
Jonus Brewster’s ship was parked just three berths away, at the same starport the Mobius was using. The only ships between were a tour-operated orbital craft and a two-man personal shuttle. Amy could see Brewster’s ship, Harpoon Gale, from the Mobius cockpit.
Yomin had reported in that she was waiting outside the temple, and that she had custody of the team’s tech gear. In a way, it made sense. Who wants their communion with God interrupted by a datapad alert or someone using a datalens to scan their holy relics? And blasters weren’t looked on fondly by most religious sects.
But the fact that Carl was in the temple scouting with no way to report in was fucking inconvenient.
A tingling feeling at the base of Amy’s spine wasn’t from parking her ass in the pilot’s chair too long. The chair was comfy, among the best spots to relax on the whole ship. No, that tingle was the creeping dread that something awful was about to happen, and it had worked its way halfway up her spine before the pilot of the Mobius decided to do something about it.
“No,” Amy told herself, sitting back down before she’d even stood fully upright. “I’m just paranoid. Carl’s fine. We have this one boxed up and crated for delivery.”
She flipped on her datapad and started reading a news piece about the potential for an ARGO civil war. It sounded like fiction. People were always boiled up over some nonsense or other, and ARGO had held together.
ARGO had a better track record of keeping their act together than the Mobius, and Carl in particular.
“I’m going up there,” Amy said aloud to herself, standing from the pilot’s chair. “I’m going up there, and I’m going to find out what’s going on. If they try to stop me, I’ll just tell them it’s an emergency.”
She stopped at the doorway. “That won’t change anything. If Brewster takes off and I’m not here, we’re screwed.”
Amy flopped back down in the pilot’s seat.
Glancing over, the Harpoon Gale waited in its berth. “You’re a big boy for a lone smuggler, aren’t you?” The ship was nearly the size of the Mobius, and by all accounts, Jonus Brewster operated by himself.
Or did he?
With half the crew off taking a guided tour, hoping to scope out their quarry’s target, Amy didn’t have a lot of manpower to spare. Actually, these days they had Carl, and that was it. Mort, Hatchet, Samurai, Juggler… all gone. What Amy had at her disposal was a taciturn robot, two laaku, and one uncooperative prisoner in the airlock chamber.
The ship just sat there, taunting Amy with its stubborn refusal to do anything that would force her to react.
Sweat beaded on the pilot’s brow. She only noticed when her sleeve came away damp after wiping it across her forehead.
“Why can’t we have a job where everything goes smoothly, and we’re in comm range the whole way? Dr. Akerman talked about our communication issues, but this isn’t what she meant. What we need maybe is some sort of psychic hookup, like with magic hats we all wear or something. I wonder if Esper can work out something along those lines.”
Amy frowned. “Why am I talking to myself? If I say it in my head, I still hear it. Is it more real if I say it out loud? They say only geniuses and madwomen talk to themselves. I’ve seen my own psych profile; its opinion on the matter is pretty blunt.”
Beer.
For Carl and Roddy, beer could fix almost anything. Amy’s drinking had always tended toward the socially or romantically oriented. There were better drugs out
there to shove worries back where they came from. Then again, none of those drugs were in the fridge just twenty or so meters away, totally unguarded and free for the taking.
Glancing down the corridor to make sure no one was looking, Amy slunk from the cockpit and headed for the common room fridge.
Opening the door let loose a blast of cool air and a scent that was best described by the last ten or so meals that had been left to rot inside it. Holding her breath, Amy scanned the contents.
“What am I doing?” she asked herself.
Closing the door, she headed back to the cockpit.
The lingering odor from the fridge clung to her nostrils accusingly. The smell knew what she’d been planning and wouldn’t let her forget. Rubbing a finger under her nose to try to scrub away the scent did nothing.
Out the window, Brewster’s ship looked back at her. She expected it to lift off at any second. Yomin hadn’t patched into the traffic control system because Agos VI wasn’t run by idiots. It was run by tesuds. The odds of them running a basic system with loopholes and data voids was a whole lot lower than the odds they were prepared with back-calculating countermeasures against hacking. The Harpoon Gale could depart without any warning to the Mobius.
Amy blinked. That was it. She reached for the comm panel to the laakus’ shared quarters. “Roddy. Hey, you got a sec? Come up to the cockpit. There’s something I wanna go over with you.”
# # #
Yomin ate her Pad Thai with chopsticks. It wasn’t the best she’d ever had. If ranking Thai food was the sort of thing she did, the data warfare specialist doubted it would have cracked the top hundred. But it was food, and she was hungry. The Noodle-O-Rama also fit her criteria of having an uninterrupted sight line to the tram station.
The tram had been to the mountain and back half a dozen times while she waited and ate. Thanks to the zoom on her datalens, she was not only certain that none of her crewmates had returned, but that Jonus Brewster hadn’t tried to slip by, either.
