by Pam Uphoff
"Blozolli," she muttered, sure of that.
The first voice replied, "Just take our guest to the resort, and keep him there. Everything else is being done by others." Not a strong Imperial City accent, but definitely a southern influence. Cool and confident. "Kick back and watch the news. You'll love it."
G'sele pulled a mike from under the instrument panel. "Heads up, they're moving out."
"On it," came a brief reply. Xaero started chewing her claws. Was Raelphe the guest they spoke of? It sounded like they hadn't killed him, and didn't intend to.
Now there was noise from the loading dock, a loud rattling. "They're opening the big vehicle door, and in our guys go . . . " G'sele stopped talking to hunch over the receivers.
"Freeze, this is . . . " a shriek issued from the speakers, so loud and shrill Xaero and G'sele both jerked back, covering their ear holes.
"Sonic stunner." G'sele yelled over the off and on shriek. Then it stopped.
"Clear, Boss," a deep bass voice rumbled, one she hadn't heard before.
"Go." The Imperial City voice ordered, and with a whine of motors and a crunching of tires on some rough surface, apparently someone did. "C'mon, let's get before more Dims show."
"Taslere?" deep bass asked.
"On his own." The Imperial accent sounded indifferent. Slamming of doors and more vehicle noises made her jump.
"They're getting away!" Xaero failed to keep the distress out of her voice.
"We've got all the routes out of here covered." G'sele flashed her a smile. "Hunker down. If one of them comes this way, we want this cart to look parked."
He plucked the rear view mirror off its mount and slid down with only it showing. With a glare she sank down, but dug into her briefcase, surely she had . . . yes. She held the tiny mirror up and twisted it around trying to figure out how to see . . . a large black car sped by. A huge figure driving, and in the back . . . L'azlod.
G'sele was back on the mike. "A black Lava headed north, two occupants. Which way did the other vehicle go? Anyone got a description? Was it their usual delivery truck?"
Silence.
"Count off and report!" he ordered.
"One here, nothing came out of the east end of the alley."
"Two here, a black Lava exited and turned north."
"Three here, nothing going on inside."
"Four here, six vehicles have passed in the relevant time period. None were the delivery truck."
"Five here. The black Lava has turned west on Great Cavern. Negative on delivery truck."
"Record all vehicles, one of them is from there."
Xaero listened in horror. "We heard two vehicles leave!" She kept her voice down and gritted her teeth in the effort to not distract anyone by stating the obvious. Even when they lost track of the black Lava she managed to not scream, although it was a near thing when they found it moments later in a public cart park, empty.
She chewed claws while thirty-eight delivery trucks were stopped and examined. G'sele finally took pity on her and drove to the Misfits' Haven as it was raided by a very large number of local constables. Not that seeing the lack-of-Raelphe in person helped much. The employees and patrons of the bar were being interviewed by the locals. Xaero eyed several of the scantily clad fems. There seemed to be no reason for their scarlet cheek flares. Pseudos on hormones? She hadn't realized the hormones kept the neck frills open and flushed. How embarrassing. Not that any of them seemed the least bit embarrassed. They were constantly covering up coyly with their scarves, but also constantly losing their grips and dropping the scarves when a constable was trying to ask them questions. They did a lot of silly giggling and didn't seem very bright. Well, that was hardly surprising with all their blood in their frills instead of their brains . . . A couple of the young cops appeared distracted and a bit flushed themselves, but the older ones wore cynical expressions and seemed unmoved.
The stunned Dims twitched and whimpered their way to consciousness and managed to confirm the previous presence of the usual delivery truck and the black Lava. A search of the records in the office turned up a lease on a building across the alley. While they waited for another search warrant, Xaero walked out the back door to eye the leased building, with its large vehicle door, then walked around the block to inspect its front. Which also had a large vehicle access door. Across the street from a gated, but unlocked cross alley. Which led to one of the back routes to the municipal dump. Which had several dozen access points, including a tunnel leading to the surface.
The nice constable who had shown up with G'sele's cart shortly after she walked off had been talking on the comm sporadically, so she wasn't surprised when G'sele showed up with a fresh warrant to see the dump's computer records.
"One trusts you have located Director L'azlod?" She was too angry to even look at him.
"Why, yes. The Chief Constable of Ice Cap South informs me that he returned home about a dozen splits ago. He says he met him at the monorail station himself, a standard security precaution."
"Did you see the person in the back of the black Lava?" she demanded.
He sighed wearily. "Yes. My colleagues assure me that Prince Fensteri is sleeping off a hangover and was quite definitely not in Icefire Metro today, or in fact anytime in the last three tenths."
Xaero eyed the Imperial agent narrowly. What he knew, what he told her, and what was true could be two or three different things. He could be counted on to put the Imperial family's best interests first, the country second, and interfering legal associates . . . somewhere down around ten or eleven. In fact, this operation was such a complete failure she rather wondered if it hadn't been botched on purpose . . . "Well one or the other of your sources seems to be misinformed."
A uniformed local with sergeant's stripes approached diffidently, bad news written all over his flattened spines. "Eight out of the twelve access gates have glitches in their recording devises. There is no record of a truck entering through that gate at the applicable time." He shifted uncomfortably. "The recorder on it isn't working."
"All right." G'sele growled. "That L'azlod look-alike ordered Blozolli to go to 'the resort'. What resorts have shown up in surveillance reports?"
Xaero eyed the tunnel to the surface. A generation ago there had been a push to build industrial parks, towns and vacation resorts on the surface. They had failed. Miserably. Martians just weren't comfortable on the surface, everyone said. So, was the resort they were going to a working underground resort, or an old abandoned surface development? She edged over enough to read the local sergeant's report on the gates. The tunnel gate had one of the completely non-working recorders.
"Or it could be a code name for anywhere." G'sele's weariness didn't look like a fake anymore. He looked emotionally drained, as he turned back to her. "I will drop you off at your office and contact you when I have any news of your nephew." He didn't sound like he was giving her a choice.
Xaero contemplated telling Sbozoi about his missing son. "Shall I inform . . . "
"No one, for now please." He frowned at her. "Can you make up a reason for your nephew's absence."
"Sure. Sent him to research something down at city hall or gave him the afternoon off, or whatever. I guess that had better be it, nothing someone will try to charge to a client. The partners will be upset." She fought down a surge of hysteria. "Are you sure that wasn't L'azlod? Lots of billable splits in a kidnapping." She bit down on a claw to regain control. Think.
He looked at her coldly, "You don't seem too concerned about your nephew."
"That's because Raelphe is just an interchangeable data handling unit. That's what we call young associates. Nobody cares about IDHUs." She rubbed her forehead. She definitely had an excuse for a headache, but the timing was bad. "Sorry, lawyer humor. Poor Raelphe. Even in dire straits he's the butt of jokes." She eyed G'sele thoughtfully. "What is your biggest worry?"
"Remember what your nephew said about a final blow? We have more recorded from our ears inside,
but not any sort of detail. It sounds like the REM is going to try something big, but that boss-type wasn't handing out free information. That's why I want some time before this goes public."
"I see." She really had to agree with that priority, Raelphe or not. But, the Boss had been sending Blozolli and hopefully Raelphe, off to watch 'it' on the screen. So she could track down the truck without interfering with the important investigation. "Take me back to the office, I'll think of something to keep his parents happy." While I locate a map of all those old surface installations, she continued silently to herself.
Was it her background that made a surface location seem so obvious? She just couldn't stop thinking about that ramp to the surface. And whether or not the Department of Martian Security and possibly Imperial Security had let these small fry get away on purpose. Hopefully to trace them and prevent a disaster, not just cover for a perverted Crown Prince. But she had a sinking feeling that she was the only one actually worried about Raelphe.
Chapter Five
Maps. Xaero needed surface maps.
The Empire was a string of underground cities and farms stretching in an arc from the Tempe mining area in the northeast, down the eastern rim of the plateau then south and west to Imperial City on the southern rim of the plateau. Their civilization thrived at the depth where the volcanic heat met the deep permafrost. With modern technology, they had spread out and started colonies all over the planet, yet the basic shape of the first nation was still that of the naturally habitable cavern zone.
The underground monorail system continued westward to the small, now independent, nation of Cimmi Cliffs. Another branch of the monorail split off there for the Southern Hemisphere Union city of Ice Cap South. There was a second monorail line to the south, a new one that split off south of Icefire and took to the surface, following the route of the soon-to-be-back-under-construction water pipeline that Blozolli had been accused of sabotaging.
Xaero finger-walked back up the map to the equatorially located space base. It could only be accessed by a dedicated and highly controlled monorail line. One of the first attempts to entice Martians back to the surface lay between the space base and the small city of Daeda. Someone had built a fancy resort and spa, complete with artificial hot springs from wells tapping the remnant volcanic heat. But even base personnel hadn't utilized it and, if she recalled correctly, it had closed within half a year of its grand opening. She vaguely remembered reading something about it since then and searched the public database . . . ah, secure data storage, its safety touted because of the difficulty of access plus both high tech and live guards.
Remote. High tech security. Armed guards. Advertised as such. Talk about a perfect setup for terrorists.
She'd checked the range of the missing delivery truck. If it had been fully charged it could have, barely, covered that distance on the surface. Her grandfather had taken her to the surface directly overhead a few times. It was bleak, rock strewn, but flat. The ground might get rougher and require detours closer to this "Sun Town Spa" but, as far as she knew, the trip was feasible for an ordinary truck.
She'd just grab a few things and go check it out.
***
One stop before Daeda there was another, even smaller town comprised mostly of agriculturally related industries for the surrounding region's highly successful farm caves. Xaero exited the train and walked confidently away from the station. Most of these caverns were artificially excavated. In fact, new excavation still occurred from time to time. Because of that, a detailed engineering map had included the location of the ramp tunnel to the surface through which all the excavated material was disposed of.
Xaero had timed her arrival for the end of the workday so she could check out the surface access without a lot of people around to wonder what she was doing. To her dismay, the ramp access was under a large building. Town Hall. People came and went from Martian sized doors to one side. The much-larger-than-normal vehicle doors remained closed and looked as if they were rarely used. Apparently there were no excavations in progress.
Xaero stared at the doors, frustration building. She was going to have to walk through the building to gain access. It would be less obvious than trying to pick the locks on the big doors in plain sight of everyone on the street. After all, there were a surprisingly large number of people walking in and out of Town Hall at this late split. Who'd notice one more?
She had compacted her supplies as much as possible, so they fit in her briefcase, although it was a bit heavier than normal. She wore her boots and canvas skirt, but with the more popular scarves and vest, just like every other fem here. Xaero strode through the doors and spotting a directory, marched up to it, while doing an assessment of the area. The department of vehicle registration was on this floor, and if her quick scan of room numbers and arrows was correct, toward the rear of the building. She walked on, still looking confident to ward off any helpful people whose questions she couldn't answer.
As she'd expected, the vehicle registration department was closed for the day, but the corridor turned rather than ended. It angled off in the right direction to meet the surface ramp, and no one was in sight. She walked around the corner and her stride faltered as she saw the two lizards conversing just ahead.
Director Matini L'azlod glanced up and frowned.
Too late to do anything but bluff. Somehow.
"Director L'azlod! What a surpri . . . " She blinked. It wasn't him. Was it? No, this lizard was younger, had smooth scaled temples where L'azlod had secondary spines. "Er, excuse me, I mistook you for someone else." Still a bit boggled, she was turning to retreat when the other one, the other very large lizard grabbed her elbow in a vise-like grip.
"This is that lawyer. Looks just like her picture." The same deep bass voice that she'd heard over a comm-relay.
The L'azlod look-alike's voice was just what she expected. Cool, with a slight imperial accent. Irritated rather than confident, though. "Yes, right down to the extra large briefcase." He grabbed it, staggering a bit at the unexpected weight. Her attempt to free her arm from the very large lizard was completely ignored. "What is in here? Rocks?"
Very Large Lizard waved a small instrument at it with his free hand. "A few civi power sources and quite a bit of metal. No explosives."
Not-L'azlod opened it. "Oxygen bottles, two masks and water. Rope?" He straightened and looked her up and down, irritation deepening. "There aren't any vehicles to borrow up there. Apart from mine, and I really doubt you knew it was there. Were you planning on walking?" The scorn in his voice made it obvious he didn't think she'd planned to do just that. He closed the briefcase without looking further.
Should she scream? The corridor had been empty back there. If these two were here, then Sun Town was the right resort, and a police raid . . . would they raid? They'd let this lizard go once already. . . .
"How did she get here? I know we weren't followed or traced." He scowled down at her. Handsome, broad shouldered, tall. She guessed him to be in his mid to late thirties, a pseudomale by his slick temples. She so disliked L'azlod that this twin wasn't even stirring her. He wasn't, sand it. "Bring her along." Now he sounded confident. Apparently with good cause. Very Large Lizard simply walked along with her elbow still in his hand. Apparently she could walk or be dragged, this mountain probably wouldn't notice the difference.
She walked. Maybe they'd take her to Raelphe.
***
Sun Town Spa was a compact series of buildings dug down into the ground, with only the tallest rising above the surrounding rocky plain. The buildings were connected by glass roofed walks and large interconnected atriums filled with the greens, browns and purples of plants. Rather untended plants. They were cut back away from the main walks but overgrew everything else. In fact, 'overgrew' was an understatement. They were huge and thickly leafed, arching over and crowding the paths. She didn't notice any of the more delicate species, everything here was robust and neglect tolerant, and apparently very happy in the sl
ightly thicker, slightly more humid air of the resort version of 'outside'. She boggled a bit at a glimpse of what surely could not be a sweeper. They didn't grow that big, did they?
They had driven half the day, and then parked on the periphery, a few steps from a guarded entrance, which the two males had hustled her through as if a split outside would kill them. The guards, who stayed inside, just dipped their masked muzzles respectfully, and eyed her curiously. The oversized lizard had released her as soon as she had been placed in the cart for the drive. Now he kept an eye on her, but also kept his distance. Nonetheless, she could hear him breathing heavily, nearly panting, in the atrium air by the time they'd wound around a few desolate looking structures to what was apparently the main building. The L'azlod look-alike didn't seem winded in the half thick air of the greenhouses, but also didn't linger. Instead, he marched up the steps and through the building's rotating doors.
The air inside was thickened and humidified to normal cavern standards, full of mold and dust. Xaero wondered if she could persuade them to incarcerate her outside. The oversized goon stopped dogging her heels and joined the two Martians manning a desk to the side. Xaero noticed that he stood in such a way as to still have her under his eye. The not-L'azlod was headed further across the large lobby.
"Aunt Xaero!" She spotted Raelphe a millisplit after he spotted her. "What are you doing here?"
"Well the general idea was to rescue you, but it seems to have hit a sand pit."
Raelphe looked a bit the worse for wear but generally happy and unrestrained.
"They let you run around loose?"
"Only when they're watching, and for meals and, umm, err." He glanced over his shoulder.
"I see." Two rather muscular-looking pseudofems kept their distance but were clearly focused on Raelphe. "REM, I take it?"
"Yeah. Blozolli's been bragging about his part of blowing up the pipeline, and what he's going to do next." His head swiveled to watch the L'azlod-twin as Blozolli exited an elevator and greeted him. "But what's L'azlod doing here?"
