by Tanya Huff
“Probably had reports of their own to make. Does it matter?” His distrust of the H’san ran less deep than hers.
Did it? “I don’t know.”
* * *
• • •
Torin tapped the medical sleeve against the edge of the table and frowned down at it.
“Stop trying to prove it’s not as good as the ones the Corps uses.”
“I’m not.” She slid the bowl of toasted legumes away from him and threw three into her mouth. “And it’s not.”
They were on the next shuttle out, but that left them with fourteen hours to kill. The hotel bar had a “host” not a bartender, so they went looking for somewhere they could actually relax and ended up at a bar on the rough edges of town, dropped off by a driver whose nest owned shares in the establishment and who insisted they wouldn’t be recognized. If they were, the clientele were more interested in the drinks in front of them and the games being played on both of the big vid screens. It helped that the light levels were Katrien low although there were no Katrien in the bar.
Torin didn’t recognize the game, but was impressed by how far a Dornagain could hurl a Rakva and by how graceful the Rakva, who’d lost their wings millennia ago, were in the air. Craig put down a bet on the team holding the goal.
“Do you know what’s going on?”
He grinned and drained his glass. “Not a clue.”
She drained hers as well and beckoned for a refill. “I don’t think that discharge was a defensive move, I think it was a side effect.”
“We’re talking about this now?”
A gesture took in the main room of the bar, the yelling sports fans, the inattentive staff, and the total lack of visible slates. “This is as close to privacy as we’re going to get.”
“Susumi . . .”
“Everything said on a government ship is recorded, just in case.”
“In case of what, then?”
“Problems. You didn’t know?”
“Salvage stations don’t have that kind of storage to spare. You don’t care?”
“The Confederation was built on transparency and privacy’s a limited commodity in the military. No one looks at the recordings unless there’s a problem. Or,” she added before he could respond, “unless security’s bored and they search through bunk shots.”
“Seriously?”
She shrugged.
“Then as honored as I am to contribute to security’s spank bank, we’re talking about this now. Thanks, mate.” Craig tapped his card against the server’s slate—who rolled his eyes, checked his tip, and set the glasses of beer onto the table. “Gotta love the kind of place where you don’t get your drinks until you pay.” He took a long swallow and sighed. “Fuk me, that’s good. All right, you think the sheet was sending a message? A distress call?”
Torin smiled. All that lovely muscle held up a fully functioning brain.
“Ta, darlin’”
“Did I say that out loud?” While Craig nodded, leaned back, and flexed, the dispensing panel on the hospital sleeve surrendered to a brute force entry. “It’s a broken arm,” she growled as she disabled the general painkiller and upped the local. “Chewed and broken, but the rest of me’s fine.” Shoving the shattered circuitry back inside, she reapplied enough brute force to secure the cover. “Okay.” She took a deep breath and silently dared Craig to object. He shook his head but kept his mouth shut. Smart man. “Okay,” she said again, “I think that was the first time the sheet’s physical integrity was disrupted, so yes, I think it was a distress call.”
“Space is big.” Craig paused as a Rakva spun through the upper goal and the bar went wild. “Space is big,” he began again, when he had a better chance of being heard. “What are the odds it’ll get a response in our lifetime?”
“What are the odds of Harveer Arniz falling in that particular hole? What are the odds of you finding Big Yellow in the first place? What are the odds of us all having bits of plastic in our heads and not having made an independent decision for centuries?”
“You have no idea.”
“I have no idea.” Torin finished her beer and rode the thrum of pain from her arm. “If the plastic builds tech with plastic, it’d be like us building tech with meat.”
Craig choked on a mouthful of beer. “What?”
“Something Vertic said on Threxie.” She pressed her foot against his under the table. “I wish I could see the look on the face of Anthony Marteau when he learns about the weapon he paid to retrieve.” When Harveer Arniz, the soil scientist who’d been part of the original discovery, had been given a chance to properly analyze the contents of the second latrine, she’d discovered it was simply high concentrations of uric acid that had dissolved the plastic. Although she’d admitted she had no way of knowing if the plastic had fallen into the latrine or been pushed. Torin stared into her beer and tried to catch hold of her thoughts. Damned painkillers weren’t out of her system yet. “We had a cat when I was kid who’d piss on the stove,” she said when the beer offered no answers. “Dissolved the chrome trim.” The tiny calico had spent a lot of time riding on her father’s shoulder. “Dad loved that cat. My mother kept threatening to make soup.”
“I thought your mother didn’t cook?”
“She doesn’t. She didn’t threaten to make good soup.”
Half the crowd leapt to their feet cheering as the other half yelled insults at the screen, and it took Torin a moment to realize they were reacting to a Dornagain being escorted from the field of play by an official.
“Improper lofting,” Craig told her.
One brow rose.
He grinned. “Maybe we should’ve pissed on the data sheet.”
Torin lifted her glass in salute. “Maybe we should’ve. That would’ve played well on the news.”
* * *
“I understand what you’re telling me.” Anthony Marteau pressed his fingertips against the workbench and leaned forward. “I don’t care.”
“Your prerogative, but we had to care about neutralizing the scent. We work with it.”
He pinned Kalowski or Kalenski or whatever the hell her name was with a mocking smile. “I put you to work, if you’ll recall. Now I want to see results.”
Kalowski—or Kanonski—sighed. “The problem, Per Marteau, is that urea at these concentrations is unpleasantly pungent, and we don’t exactly have access to laboratory grade samples.”
“We smelled like we spent all day being pissed on,” Laghari muttered, arms folded.
Her name, Anthony remembered. Tall and thin, she reminded him of a di’Taykan major he’d had to deal with, right down to the brilliant purple hair. Although, on Laghari, the purple covered only the last ten centimeters of her single braid.
He’d had to make a few changes since his precipitous arrival into the bosom of Humans First, although, for the most part, the structure remained the same. Those few who knew his resources had been responsible for most of what the organization had achieved over the years had been given permission to spread the information among the rank and file. And they hadn’t merely assigned the credit for ships and arms and the very food they ate, but had made it quite clear that without his awareness of the superiority of Humanity and his willingness to reclaim their rightful place in the universe, there would be no Humans First. He wasn’t their leader—he had no interest in dealing with the daily minutiae of revolution—he was their genesis.
No longer their silent benefactor, he took up the mantle of innovation, his position separate and superior to the chain of command.
All of which meant that his request for urea that matched the chemical composition of the urea in the latrines on 33X73 shouldn’t be taking so damned long to fulfill. They’d had the information as long as the Confederation government, and he doubted those oppressive marionettes had been sitting around with their thumbs up wh
at passed for their alien asses.
Granted the lack of speed could be at least partially due to the lack of chemists drawn to the cause. Kanonski—Karpanski?—had been a Naval armaments officer and Madeline Laghari, a Marine explosives tech who’d continued to ply her trade after her contract had ended. In a just universe, Laghari would be of more use to him, but in a just universe where Humanity hadn’t been driven to the brink of cultural genocide by animals and insects, they wouldn’t have had to fight to reclaim their place, so, in that universe, he’d have had no use for her at all. In that universe she could spend a stint in rehabilitation in an effort to keep her from blowing up other people’s property without official sanction. Humans weren’t perfect—he shut that line of thought down whenever it came up—but they were Human and that granted the least of them more leeway with the law. Particularly when the laws had been written by their oppressors.
“I can smell you from here,” he told Laghari. “I don’t judge, fortunately.” Hands in his pockets, he bounced up onto the balls of his feet and smiled. “I also don’t intend to allow more Humans to die in alien wars. I can build a weapon to use this new information, because that’s what I do, I build weapons. I built the weapons that kept you two alive.” He sharpened his smile. “I can’t, however build squat until I know the specific corrosive properties of what I have to deliver, properties which can’t be precisely determined from ancient molecular samples.”
Karpanski—Karnipson?—shook her head. “We have a close estimation . . .”
“I don’t work in estimations.”
Laghari snorted. “You’re building a pressurized tank and a nozzle. How hard can it be?”
Eyes narrowed, he studied her for a long moment. Waited until she began to fidget before he spoke, the edge in his voice the same edge that had cut his way through the volatile mix of weapons manufacturers and politicians; there was never enough war to go around. “I’m building a pressurized tank and a nozzle. I never thought of it like that. Possibly because I have more experience in building weapons than you have outstanding warrants with various PLEs.” Technically, his expression remained a smile. “I’d prefer to be told now if you two feel you’re incapable of completing your assignment. I’m sure Humans First has other uses for you.”
Karnipson—Capaldi?—ran a hand back over pale cropped hair, apparently intelligent enough to recognize a threat. “Distilling gives us the correct concentration, but changes the composition too dramatically for us to match the composition of the samples taken on 33X73.” “Shallow pan evaporation . . .”
“Made us smell like we spent all day being pissed on.”
“I admire your tenacity, Laghari. I truly do.” He cocked his head. “I wonder if you consider applying it to the matter at hand?”
Laghari rolled her eyes. “We’re not actually going to piss on the plastic and call it a weapon.”
He grinned and enjoyed the way she bristled in response. “I’m thrilled to see you’re smarter than you look, but, if we get the chance, we will definitely piss on the plastic.”
“It’d help,” Capaldi—Canary?—interjected before Laghari could dig herself in deeper, “if the urea donors would eat more meat.”
“More meat?”
“Carnivores have more acidic urine.”
“I’m appalled that science has devolved to meat, but I’ll have a word with the procurement team. I’m sure there’s a few savages among us.” From the disgusted expression on both faces, Anthony felt safe in assuming that yeast had been the most complex protein either had consumed. “As much as I’ve enjoyed the banter, we all have things to do. I want results before the end of the tenday.”
Laghari opened her mouth, but Kalanowski—he was almost positive it was Kalanowski—jumped in first. “You’ll have them, Per Marteau.”
“All I wanted to hear.” He gave them a two-finger wave, pivoted on one heel, and left the lab. Or what passed for a lab.
The tunnels were empty as he returned to the area he’d claimed, quarters and workshop isolated from the rest of the base when he’d had them carved out and fitted to his specifications some years ago. He’d never intended to use them as he’d never intended to be part of the fighting, his connections and expertise more valuable behind the scenes. When the fighting ended, he’d step in to provide necessary structure. Fortunately, he also believed in planning for every contingency including the one that had him living inside an asteroid where everything but his quarters had been designed by a degenerate civilization.
The Justice Department would never think to look for Humans First on an old Taykan mining station.
He liked to think he was self-aware enough to realize that he was in hiding due, in a small way, to his own enthusiasm. Had he not been so excited about rediscovering a piece of Human history that he’d sent it out to be field tested on a supply run, there’d have been no reason for that di’Taykan Warden to have accessed his data files.
Of course, if that particular di’Taykan had spent his time on indiscriminate sex like the rest of his species instead of learning to crack code in a highly suspicious manner . . .
And if the Berins had stopped the Krai in their crew from gorging and been on time to pick up their supplies . . .
And if those cat things from the Primacy had been as dangerous as advertised . . .
And if it hadn’t been for Gunnery Sergeant Torin Fukking Kerr.
What an asset Kerr would have been had she not absorbed the indoctrination she’d been soaked in since childhood. The Elder Races were wise. The Elder Races know best. All members of the Confederation are equal. Bullshit. He’d hoped the discussions in Parliament of locking the Younger Races away now they were no longer needed would have brought her to the Human cause, but she kept fighting for the ideals of the Confederation and thwarting the freedom of her own species at every turn. Her Strike Teams—and he, at least, had no doubt they were hers regardless of what the alien-controlled media reported—stood squarely between Humans First and their determination to give Humanity back their rightful place among the stars.
The presence of a H’san at Berbar Station around the time he should have been hearing from the team he’d sent searching for ancient weapons supported Kerr having had a part in shutting that expedition down as well, leaving him with no way to prove the H’san were not the peaceful, cheese-eating Elders they pretended to be.
The lock on his workshop showed two attempts at entry while he was gone. He made a mental note to increase the voltage.
Soft music began to play as he closed the door behind him. He detoured just far enough to lightly touch the small, pink, plastic pre-diaspora pony on its plinth, then crossed to his workbench and picked one of the dozen newly printed pistols. They weren’t quite as sturdy as those he’d printed back at MI, the equipment here was a generation older and he’d had to adapt the design to take that into account. Still, they were beautiful. He ran his fingers over the precision molding, and wished for a few more people who could see beyond their indoctrination.
Weapons that could be hidden were wrong.
Weapons used for anything but the war the Elder Races had gotten Humanity into with lies and sparkly temptations were wrong.
Weapons that could be used to redress the wrongs of the universe were wrong.
Every member of the Confederation was taught those beliefs as children and constantly reminded of them as adults. No matter how true a believer in the cause, no matter how willing to stand up against those species who refused to acknowledge Humanity’s place, most of Humans First were unable to shake the belief that a pistol was evil incarnate.
A pistol was a tool.
Like a hammer. A hammer could be hidden. A hammer could be used to kill.
A pistol was a specialized tool.
He’d heard his pistols referred to as dishonorable. He couldn’t get a decent chemist, but it seemed they had no s
hortage of philosophers.
“Per Marteau!” The skinny teenager who stumbled into his workshop was unknown to him but there were few enough young people involved in the cause that he allowed the interruption. “Per Marteau! The commander wants to know if you saw what happened on Nuh Ner!”
“On New Brussels.”
“Sir?”
“We don’t use the alien names.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “Right. Okay. Did you see?”
He hadn’t.
* * *
• • •
“It could have been protecting itself.” Commander Belcerio reached for the bottle to refill his glass.
“I know weapons,” Anthony said thoughtfully, staring at the screen in the commander’s office as the news report picked up by the closest Susumi buoy ran through the visuals again. “I doubt that’s a weapon. Power to area targeted ratio is off.”
“It could be a self-destruct, wiping the programming off the sheet.”
“Not dispersing like that, it couldn’t.” He thrust a hand into his pocket and ran his thumb down the back of the pink plastic pony. “It’s an emergency beacon. It’s been damaged. It called for help.”
“It’s entirely alien.” Belcerio took a long swallow of what smelled like bad whiskey. “You can’t know that.”
“I have good instincts.”
Belcerio had been his personal pick as the new commander of Humans First, his experience in the corporate world of weapons manufacturing balancing his decade in the Corps. He had a tendency to assume more power than he actually had, but it was a minor flaw and nothing Anthony couldn’t deal with.
“All right. What do your instincts say we do now?”
The news report had cycled back to the Katrien screeching about the discovery of the data sheet. Anthony turned and faced Belcerio and smiled. “We prepare for the return of the plastic. We prepare to unite every Human in the Confederation as we prove the plastic can be destroyed.”
