He was on his way to a dock which the locals had placed under police lockdown, because the data he had been presented with indicated that a ship was there which belonged to the woman who had sent the data. A woman identified as ‘Shil the Huntress,’ which Perimcon found a little difficult to believe. He was dealing with a bounty hunter, however. In Perimcon’s opinion, bounty hunters were a necessary evil, but he trusted them about as far as he could comfortably spit a planet.
Still, as the vessel came into view, he had to wonder just precisely what he was dealing with. It looked like a fairly standard freighter with atmospheric capability. A flattened teardrop, broader in the stern than the prow, the vessel looked… too good. Its dark-grey hull was too smooth and it seemed to refract the hangar bay lights wrongly. There were a pair of turrets mounted under its chin, and the beam weapons mounted on those turrets did not quite look like anything Perimcon had ever seen before. There were more turrets along the ship’s back and belly, but those were retracted, hidden beneath that odd hull.
They arrived at the bridge to the ship’s airlock and Perimcon stopped before the communications panel set beside it. He tapped a button. ‘Cantarvey, this is Commander Najet Perimcon of StarCorps Judiciary. Prepare to be boarded for inspection.’
The response was immediate; a rather pleasant female voice answered, and that just added to the curious nature of the ship. ‘Good morning, Commander Perimcon. I am Cantarvey, the ship’s AI. I should be happy to comply with your order. However, you should be aware that I am currently unoccupied. My owner is on Tholdaria, currently detaining Matriarch Melissara Tholdin in her residence and awaiting your arrival. Jandia Dakris is awaiting your arrival there also. She will present herself for your judgment when you are able to take her into custody. She will not allow herself to be arrested by local StarCorps personnel, for reasons detailed in the transmission you were sent.’
The voice sounded too human to have come from an AI, and it threw Perimcon off his beat for a second. Where had this ship come from? And who the Hell was Shil the Huntress? ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘I’ll post guards outside your docking bridge and maintain the lockdown until I’ve spoken to your owner.’
‘That would be most acceptable, commander. When can I tell her you will be arriving?’
This was just getting more peculiar. ‘About thirty minutes?’
‘Shil will be pleased to see you, I’m sure.’
‘Uh, thank you, Cantarvey.’
‘My pleasure, commander.’
Tholdrinahl.
There was another door, and another communications panel, but the air was cooler and Perimcon had been required to put on a light-armour suit along with a helmet to cope with the temperature and low oxygen level. He found that considerably less comfortable, but walking around in the relatively thin tunic and slacks which was the standard StarCorps uniform would have been less comfortable still. They had landed his yacht outside the gates of the residence and getting into the building would have been a positively chilling experience.
Once again, Perimcon pressed a button and spoke. ‘This is Commander Najet Perimcon of StarCorps Judiciary. Please open all doors, deactivate any and all security systems, and prepare to be inspected.’
There was a short pause and then a woman’s voice answered; another pleasing voice, quite sultry, he thought, though it lost something over the speakers. ‘Uh, not that I don’t trust you, commander, but could you show me some identification? There’s a camera above the door.’
Ready for that, Perimcon held his StarCorps identity up to the camera. ‘Very correct,’ he said. ‘I’d expect you to ask. Am I speaking to one Shil the Huntress?’
‘You can call me Shil.’ There were some rather loud clunks and the metal shield over the panelled-wood doors lifted up into the ceiling. ‘Come on in. Matriarch Lissy will be really happy to see you.’
Perimcon waved his escort ahead and they went in through the door as if expecting armed resistance. There had been no resistance so far; the guards at the gate had allowed them through without comment, and the ones inside the residence had stayed in their quarters. There was some evidence that they had tried to get into the matriarch’s private rooms – scarring on the metal shield door – but they had apparently given up on that at some point before StarCorps had arrived.
‘Clear, sir,’ someone said over the helmet radios, and Perimcon walked through with his last pair of corpsmen.
There was a woman standing in the middle of an opulent lounge, and Perimcon paused to take in the sheer discordance of the situation. Shil – he assumed it was she – was dressed in a red bodysuit which covered little of her white skin. Her hair was two tones of red and braided, and her eyes were a cool blue. Red-painted lips smiled at the judiciary officer as he entered the room. There was the hilt of a sword sticking up over her left shoulder, but she otherwise seemed unarmed, and she appeared to be unconcerned about the cold air. And this was the woman who had the tholdarian government teetering on the edge of collapse?
‘Commander,’ Shil said, stepping forward and holding out her hand. She apparently thought better of that. ‘Oh, you’re an abson. You don’t shake hands. Sorry. The matriarch is in her bedroom. I’m afraid I had to restrain her. She was becoming very annoying. I’d imagine you have some questions.’
Reaching up, Perimcon removed his helmet. It was cold, and the air was thin, but he would be fine to simply talk to someone and eye contact was important in such situations. ‘Yes. I have a few questions. I have shuttles looking into this facility you claim to have discovered. I’d also like to know where Jandia Dakris is at the–’
‘Sir,’ one of the corpsmen said, ‘Jandia Dakris has just handed herself in to the corpsmen on the yacht.’
Shil smiled. ‘Handing herself in to any of StarCorps’s people on the planet was out of the question. They aren’t StarCorps’s people. She’s been waiting for your ship to land.’
‘Yes,’ Perimcon said. ‘That’s something else I have questions about.’
‘Great. Can we do it on your ship? I’ve had enough of this ice bucket of a planet. I bet you have heating. I could really use somewhere with heating.’
‘I think… that can be arranged.’
The Cantarvey.
Shil stepped through the inner door of Cantarvey’s starboard airlock, let it close behind her, and sighed. ‘Turn the heating up, and get the cleaner swarm ready, please, Cantarvey.’
‘Already done, Shil,’ Cantarvey replied, appearing in the corridor. ‘I used my extensive knowledge of human nature to determine that you would want warmth and a shower.’
‘Yeah, well, happy ending.’ Shil started walking toward the ladder up to the habitation deck. ‘StarCorps are dropping all charges against Jandia. They’re bringing in the matriarch and various other officials for trial. They’re also replacing all their staff here with off-worlders while they work out exactly how many of the locals are corrupt. Oh, and they gave me a discretionary payment of one hundred thousand units in negotiable bonds for my sterling work.’
‘Really?’
‘Sort of. They made a lot of noise about keeping all of this quiet while they sort it out. I think it was hush money. So long as they do sort it all out, I won’t have to come back and finish the job.’
‘Ah. Well, I still think it counts as a Christmas miracle.’
Shil paused at the top of the ladder as Cantarvey’s avatar vanished from the lower deck and appeared in the corridor above. ‘Sorry?’
‘A Christmas miracle. Today is Christmas Day on Earth.’
‘Huh.’ All Shil could really think about was lying back and letting tiny robots work the grime out of her pores, but… ‘I really hadn’t thought about it. I, uh, haven’t really thought much about Earth recently. I mean, passing references, but not really much real thought.’
‘Oh. Well, I thought you might like to know.’
Walking into her cabin, Shil sat down and began to pull off her boots. ‘I do. I think we
should celebrate. Even if we are so far from the only place it matters that I couldn’t quantify the distance. And, given I’ve spent enough time in the cold, I think we should celebrate Australian-style.’
‘I’m not really conversant with Australian culture, Shil.’
‘Neither am I, aside from putting shrimp on barbeques. However, in Australia, Christmas is in the summer. So, we are going to go somewhere warm and take the week off. No bounties, no worries, just sun and relaxation.’
Cantarvey smiled. ‘Where would you like me to calculate the jump to?’
‘Karvonay. I think we’ll go to Karvonay.’
Part Five: Bad Breath
Garlic was never one of my favourite things. More specifically, I hated it when Brian would eat garlic bread by the loaf and then think I’d want to kiss him.
– The Memoirs of Shil the Huntress.
Orbital 4, Karvonay, 16.3.632 Local Calendar.
‘No, I haven’t booked. It’s a last-minute thing. I was hoping you could recommend a good resort which might have a room available.’
The immigration officer did not look especially pleased with Shil, but he was doing his best to be polite. She had arrived in a private vessel, and her data likely showed that her bank balance was good. And she was attractive and pale-skinned; a lot of the population of Karvonay were armils, and they took that fetish for veda-like looks a small step further than most.
‘Madam will find representatives for a number of resorts in the arrivals lounge.’ He paused and seemed to relent a little. ‘The best resort on Karvonay is Leshona Island. It’s remote, very luxurious, and has the best staff. If you can afford the rates there, you should try it.’
Shil smiled. ‘Thank you, officer. I’ll be sure to look it up.’
The officer handed Shil back her passport and she moved on through to luggage claim, not that she had luggage to claim. She was travelling light: one bag with her sword in it, along with a few essentials, and her passport. She had been a little surprised about the passport, until she had remembered why there was still a physical form of identification carried by travellers. Basically, interstellar communication was a convoluted process, and not particularly cheap. Even the huge FTL transmitter systems currently in use could only manage to broadcast over about ten light years reliably, and the occupied galaxy was a lot bigger than that. It meant relay stations and transmission delays, and it was often simpler and faster to send things via a jump-capable courier ship. Hence the passport, which was basically an encrypted data storage device allowing you to carry your history around with you. The cards were supposed to be unhackable and impossible to forge, which amused Shil since Tarin could print them off like playing cards with whatever data needed to be on them.
Baggage claim was quieter than what Shil remembered from Earth airports. The conveyer systems used gravity-control tech to bring the suitcases and such in from the backrooms of the station, so there was little noise. Aside from that, the place looked like any other baggage claim anywhere Sheila had ever been. In another life, when Brian had still been in love with her, Sheila had been to a few places a little like Karvonay, and there had been baggage claim, and it had always been awful. Shil could see several Sheilas standing around with their Brians, waiting for their suitcases and desperately praying that nothing had got lost: the relief when the right case appeared on a pallet sliding into view on an invisible field of contragravity; the look of confused irritation when their flight was up on the display, but after twenty minutes there was still no sign of their luggage.
Shil headed onward toward the customs hall. Dressed in her working outfit and looking the way she did – and having a sword to explain in her bag – she knew she was going to be stopped. Another armil, but this time a woman. Taking Shil’s passport off her again, the officer plugged it into a reader, nodding slowly as she read details. ‘Anything to declare, madam?’
‘I have a sword in my bag. Aside from that, there shouldn’t be anything inappropriate in there.’
‘A… sword? Oh, bounty hunter. Don’t you people usually use guns?’ The officer opened Shil’s bag and looked inside, her eyes widening as she saw that there really was a sword in the bag.
‘I’m not exactly one of those people. Anyway, it’s all in the permit documents.’ One of the reasons for using the sword was that there tended to be fewer controls on hand-to-hand weapons than guns of all types. Then again, a lot of worlds viewed carrying a pistol as every citizen’s right, and a few viewed railguns as acceptable ‘hunting’ weapons.
‘Everything seems to be… in order. How long are you expecting to stay on Karvonay?’
‘Five or six nights, I think. I’m taking a break.’
‘Of course. Enjoy your stay.’
Leshona Island.
Not everyone in the galaxy really liked travelling by matter transmission. It tended to screw with your head a little, as in you could come out the other end wondering whether all your parts had come along for the ride. The disorientation did not usually last long, but bad cases could leave you spending the next few minutes on the floor trying to work out how to stand up.
Shil had got a lot better at handling the situation since her first teleport. She walked off the transmat pad in the reception area of the Leshona Island Resort without a pause, nodding to the attendant who was standing ready to assist guests who were temporarily unable to work out which way was up, and she walked over to the reception desk and plugged her passport card into one of the slots prominently displayed at the front of the counter.
The receptionist, another armil with shoulder-length auburn hair, brown eyes, and an impressive bust, smiled warmly at Shil and actually licked her lips before checking the display hidden away where the guests could not see it. ‘Welcome to Leshona Island,’ she said. ‘We have you here for six nights, is that correct?’
‘Including tonight, yes.’ The sun was heading for setting as it was and she had decided to take the extra night.
‘Of course. Does madam have a preferred form of address?’
Shil suppressed a smirk. ‘I’m Shil. Just Shil.’
‘Thank you, Shil. Should I book you a table for dinner? The restaurant is open until fifteen hundred.’
Another planet with weird times. As far as Shil was concerned, Karvonay had a roughly thirty-four-hour day, but they divided that into twenty ‘hours’ and started at sunrise. So, fifteen hundred was the middle of the night. ‘Uh, yes, please. Make it… in about half an hour.’ Which was more like forty-five minutes. How were people supposed to live like this?
‘That’s booked for you. Will you require help finding your suite? You’re in number twelve.’
‘I can probably manage. Thanks.’ Retrieving her card, Shil turned and headed for the door into the resort proper.
The outside air was almost oppressively warm. Hot and humid like she remembered from her one trip to the Caribbean, or a number of worlds she had never actually been to but still remembered as though she had. Rayan had actually been to Karvonay a couple of times, but never to this place. The resort occupied about a third of the island, set beside a black-sanded beach along which the best of the suites were located. The ‘suites’ were actually individual buildings, each a relatively self-contained house with one or two bedrooms, a bathroom, a lounge, and a small kitchen. The resort also had two swimming pools, a restaurant, two bars, and a number of shops. Everything would be open until local midnight, so Shil figured she could take a leisurely walk around the shops later. She had not thought to fabricate herself any form of swimwear before coming down, and she had one dress which would do for dinner. Getting out of her suit was something of a priority.
She had shelled out for one of the beachfront suites, and she found it easily enough. It did not disappoint. There was a lot of cream-coloured furniture which looked very comfortable. This was sagging furniture. You dropped onto it, and you sagged. She had a single bedroom, but you could have got four people in the bed, if they were friendly. The bathro
om had a shower, and a jacuzzi. The lounge and bedroom had huge windows which could be opened fully onto the beach, and she opened the lounge up to let the air in as she began to strip for the shower. Sheila would have drawn the curtains; Shil did not care.
‘Cantarvey,’ Shil said after opening up a connection through her neural hair clip.
‘I am here, Shil. You have arrived at your resort?’
‘I have.’ She stepped under a deluge of water from the shower with a sigh. ‘And I’m taking a shower before dinner. Are you okay? I suddenly find myself feeling bad leaving you in a dock while I enjoy myself.’
‘I don’t think anywhere on the planet would have a room big enough for me to sleep in.’
‘Ha! That was a joke. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you make an actual joke before.’
‘I’m learning. I have plenty to do. I have books to read, and routine ship functions to take care of. I will miss being able to use the cleaning swarm on you, but I’m sure I can make up for it when you get back.’
‘Pervert.’
‘Well, I’m learning.’
~~~
The resort’s restaurant boasted some of the finest species-specialist chefs in the galaxy. That was going to do Shil no good at all, since no one had imported a human chef to take care of their singular guest. She selected an armil dish made with local ingredients and sat back with a glass of wine to look around at her fellow guests.
Shil had money right now, but she was surrounded by people who probably had money all the time. They were aliens, but they were not really that different from the humans Sheila was used to seeing. Had been used to seeing, back when Brian would take her out in the evening to be the little wife at business dinners. That had been when he was trying to climb the corporate ladder and dinner with the partners required a wife to be there. Sheila had always felt like she was wearing her mother’s cast-offs: Brian had never figured out that the ‘little wife’ needed to have a new dress now and then if she was trying to impress the partners’ wives, who had just as much influence on decisions made as their husbands did. Thinking about it, the swinger party had been the first time Brian had decided to take Sheila to a ‘work do’ in years.
The Eyes of the Huntress Page 11
