by Kacey Ezell
“That is fine,” Deluge said. “I only need see them once.”
Despite his caveats, though, Rurranach did, in fact, deliver copies of the records for Deluge to keep. The following day, he transferred the entire data stream of every financial transaction made by Proud Fist to the Iora’s storage banks. Then he and Deluge caught a shuttle back to the orbital station, where the small ship had docked in obedience to Deluge’s quintessential commands. Though it was close quarters, the two of them hunched together in the cockpit and combed through the debits and credits, identifying the ones which corresponded to the payouts made by the company’s mercenary clients…and the combat loss bonuses which were so interesting.
“Yes,” Rurranach breathed as he looked at the data spread before them on the ship’s view screen. “See here? I never noticed it because I never looked at all of these payments together like this, but the date of the first combat loss bonuses corresponds with the date that Rhaabou was raised to command of the company. But what’s interesting is that each one of these bonus credits is accompanied a day or so later by this payout here…looks like Rhaabou was skimming off the top.”
“How can you tell?” Deluge asked.
“Because these payouts are simply transfers to different accounts, rather than payments drawn against the account and paid to an outside source. Like these payments here for refitting…must have been an ugly mercenary encounter. That’s a really big payment. They must have refit with top of the line equipment. What was it…energy rifles?” Rurranach said with a tsk sound that conveyed great disapproval.
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Deluge said, “Because look, there are additional payments later that year for energy rifles, only this maker is far inferior to the first…why buy inferior rifles if you already had more of better quality from an earlier purchase?”
“That is an interesting question,” Rurranach said. “I wonder…”
The Sidar tapped the command pad and brought up several more records onto the view screen. He stared at the numbers and code scrolling by, and let out a subliminal hum.
“Yes,” he said again. “Every one of these payouts follows that pattern. And what’s more, a quick GalNet search tells me that each of these companies are subsidiaries of this pinpeck farming conglomerate.”
“So, all the payments were made to the same entity…someone is using the Proud Fist to launder credits and obscure their trail,” Deluge said, catching on.
“Yes,” Rurranach said, with more of the chittery laughter. “Yes, they are. You should be a Hunter of profits, Del. You’d be quite good at it.”
“I’m quite good at what I’m doing now,” Deluge said.
“I believe you. Which is why I think you’ll find it fascinating to know who is on the board of this pinpeck conglomerate,” Rurranach said. He tapped the control pad again and the columns of numbers and transactions disappeared, replaced by a single page document that looked like the charter of a company. It was in a language Deluge didn’t recognize, and couldn’t immediately read. Through his pinplant connection to the ship, he ordered Iora’s translator to convert the text to English.
“Rhaabou?” Deluge asked, as Iora’s translator processed his request.
“No,” the Sidar said, “Interestingly enough, it’s her sister, Apeya.”
* * *
Further investigation of the company’s financial transactions turned up a few other interesting discrepancies as well. For instance, based on the draws against the account, Rurranach pointed out that Apeya was the one traveling to the various merc pits during the time that the disastrous contracts were enacted.
“So it was Apeya who made the agreements? In her initial message to us, she indicated she knew ahead of time the contracts were a terrible idea. ‘A dreadful waste,’ she called them,” Deluge said. He had the feeling the pieces to this strange puzzle were very close to falling into place, if only he could find one last bit. “Why would she do that?”
Rurranach angled his head so he could meet Deluge’s eyes.
“Why did you take this contract, Del?” he asked, using the familiar form of address. They hadn’t known each other long, but digging through this data and unraveling this mystery together had brought the two of them rather close.
“Because my sister-kita couldn’t. She was hurt on a previous contract, but she’d already accepted this one. So, I will fulfill it in her name.”
“Yes, but why? Why not just buy it out, or let it wait until she healed?”
“Buying out contracts is incredibly expensive,” Deluge said, “Even for someone like me. But as for waiting…well. I didn’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because of the waste.” Deluge slow blinked as the connection started to become clear. “Because I am a Hunter, and killing should at least be done for a reason.”
“The Veetanho are clever as a race. It is likely that Apeya knew the idea of a capricious waste of lives would engage you, or your sister, and persuade you to take the contract. It was a very clever manipulation.”
“Yes,” Deluge said. “It was. Except for one thing.”
“What is that?”
“She forgot exactly who she was manipulating.” He yawned then, deliberately flashing his pointed teeth in a move calculated to underscore the deadliness of his bite.
“I don’t think she did,” Rurranach said. “Remember, she’s Veetanho. She knows a Depik clan will always fulfill a contract. And if her sister dies, she takes over the command, and she eliminates the one skimming off the kickback payments. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other members of the board of the pinpeck conglomerate who were putting pressure on her to do this.”
“And meanwhile, the Lumar still die.”
“Lumar die every day, my friend,” Rurranach said. “Careful, or your image as the perfect killer will suffer.”
Deluge slow blinked a smile at that, and gave the ship the command to leave its orbit and approach one of the orbital shuttle port stations for offloading.
“I recommend you stay here, aboard Iora or on the station. I will return in a short time,” he told the Sidar as the little ship’s powerful thrusters kicked in, pushing both of them into to their couches.
“And you?” Rurranach grunted against the acceleration.
“I am under contract,” Deluge said. “I have a task to complete. I will notify Apeya as soon as the contract is fulfilled, and I will request payment to my account. It would help if you could expedite that.”
“Since you are now my client, I can,” the Sidar said.
“Perfect. Let me know when it’s done. I stay linked with Iora, so if you are aboard, we can talk to one another using her comms.”
“Of course.”
They rode out the rest of the short burn in silence, while Deluge considered his approach. He didn’t imagine that it would be terribly difficult. The contract was, at its heart, a straightforward one. No requirements for the appearance of an accident or anything exotic. Simply get in, make the kill, get out. And get paid.
Once on the surface, Deluge wrapped himself in quintessence and bent the light to shield him from sight. He returned again to the same establishment where he’d encountered the sisters before. Sure enough, they were there again, partaking in the revelry and noise that worked so well to cover any remaining hints of his presence.
Something that felt like liquid light trickled through him as he stalked between the gyrating bodies of dancers toward the Veetanho table. He breathed in the taste of alien bodies on the air, felt the vibration of the pulsing music brushing through his fur. It all combined into a heady focus, a knowledge of his own deadly capabilities…and the purest form of joy—he would soon use them.
In the end, it wasn’t particularly dramatic. He flowed through the crowd to the table and removed a syringe of poison from the harness he wore. With quick, decisive movements, he plunged the very thin, very strong, very long needle into the joint behind Rhaabou’s left knee and depressed th
e plunger. Instantly, a lethal dose of poison entered her bloodstream, where it would filter through her circulation and end up in her lung apparatus. Deluge removed the needle and stepped under the table to watch the aftermath and make sure the poison did its job.
As a Hunter he respected had recently reminded him, a wise Hunter makes sure.
Rhaabou twitched and then coughed. Then she coughed again. Deluge heard something shifting on the table above him, and then Apeya’s high-pitched voice.
“Sister?” she asked. “Are you…” she broke off, then let out a scream as something heavy hit the table above his head. Deluge pulled his quintessence tighter around him and eased out from underneath the other side of the table. A glance back showed the former commander lying on the table, a spreading pool of very bright blood oozing out of her mouth. Apeya was on her feet, screaming as the crowd swirled around her in chaos. Deluge slipped between the feet of the panicked revelers and wove his way out the front door.
* * *
It took several hours for payment to be posted to his account, according to Rurranach’s transmissions from Iora. Deluge wasn’t particularly worried about it. He figured it would take Apeya some time to handle things, especially given the fact she hadn’t (per her request) known when or where the attack would happen. Nor how. She had seemed quite distraught in the club. Either she was a tremendously gifted actress, or the sight of her sister’s body was genuinely upsetting to her.
Deluge was willing to believe that both were possible. Either way, she would need time to make the payment. He spent that time stalking her from a distance, hiding mostly in shadow, but now and again using his quintessence to aid in his stealth capabilities. He watched her from a building ledge outside of the club. He rode on the floorboard of the ground transport that took her back to the Proud Fist headquarters. He followed her into her private quarters and made himself comfortable on her sleeping surface as she worked to put herself back together.
Eventually, finally, she picked up a slate and tapped in a few commands. Almost instantly, Rurranach’s muted voice came through the tiny earbud inserted in Deluge’s ear.
“Paid in full,” the Sidar said. “With a note of thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Deluge said out loud, dropping his quintessence cloak with an internal sigh of relief. He’d held it for longer, in the past, but it was wearying after a while. Apeya let out a most undignified squeak and turned around, firing an energy pistol at the wall near his head. Deluge had angled himself so that the chance of her hitting anything was slim to none, but he leapt free of the bed-surface anyway.
“And here I was, just being polite,” he said.
“Why are you here?” Apeya asked, her voice ragged with something that might have been pain or sadness…or even anger. Deluge didn’t know, and it was fascinating to speculate upon.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “I wanted to make sure you knew the contract was fulfilled.”
“I know it is,” she spat. “I was there when you murdered my sister!”
“You murdered your sister,” Deluge said calmly. “I was merely the weapon. Do you hate that pistol you hold in your hand?”
Apeya looked down at the energy pistol still pointed at him and lowered it to point at the ground.
“I loved Rhaabou,” she said, still in that angsty hiss. Her ungoggled eyes were a striking red-rimmed green. “I hated her for making me kill her. But she left me with no choice. She was skimming off of our payments, and she had to be stopped.”
“And now she is,” Deluge said. “Will you continue to throw your hapless Lumar lives away on bad contracts so you can continue to disguise the money trail you are obscuring?”
“What—? No! The contracts will be…”
“Wrong answer,” Deluge said, and moved before Apeya could fire the pistol she’d been raising to shoot him. He leapt to the side, got all four feet on the wall and pushed off a nanosecond before she sent a bolt sizzling into the concrete where he’d been. He twisted his body and managed to catch hold of her ears with his outstretched foreclaws, which yanked her head backwards, and she stumbled.
He got his feet up on either side of her neck and bent his head to whisper in her ear.
“And now you see why one does not play false with Hunters when it comes to our contracts,” he said. She snarled and beat at him with her fists, but her angle was bad, and he shrugged off her ineffective blows. “We are killers for hire, but we are not your patsies. I would tell you to remember that, but you will not have the chance.”
With that, he flexed the claws on his back feet, driving them through the layers of fur and skin and sinew to find the twin vessels that carried blood to and from her brain. He shredded these circulatory superhighways with a single slash.
Apeya let out a gurgling sound and fell to her knees as blood began to pulse out of her wounds onto the floor. Deluge let go of her ears and leapt free as she toppled forward, then bent down to look at her near side eye. He slow blinked a smile, so that it would be the last thing she would ever see as the light dimmed in her red-rimmed green eye.
That should have been it.
It would have been it, had not something completely unexpected happened. Something that was enough to make Deluge suspect that he was the butt of some sort of cosmic joke.
The door to Apeya’s room opened, and a Lumar wearing the company’s uniform walked in.
“Commander?” the merc said, then stopped and looked at the scene in front of him. Deluge should have pulled quintessence and vanished. It was unforgivable that he did not. But the truth was that his extensive use of stealth had tired him out, and in the end, he just froze. Just for a heartbeat, but it was enough. The Lumar had seen him.
So, he decided to own it.
He made a bowing kind of gesture from the waist, a gesture his Human molly had taught him long ago.
“Your commander is dead, compliments of the Night Wind Clan,” he said. “Who are you?”
“Uban. You kill Commander?” The Lumar took a step inside the room and looked around, his four large, muscular arms hanging loose. Deluge surreptitiously let one of his favorite nerve-poison-treated knives fall into his hand from his harness.
“Yes. Does this anger you?”
“No. You new Commander?”
“I?” Deluge asked, his tail stiffening in surprise. “No. I can’t be your commander. I’m no mercenary.”
“You kill Commander. You next Commander. I help you. Lumar listen to me. I strong. Big. I make discipline.” Uban puffed out his already impressively massive chest as he spoke, and Deluge thought he detected pride in the big creature’s tone.
“Do you? Then you are obviously the best person to be the next commander, Uban. You should do it.”
“No. Not smart. Need real Commander. Make contracts. Give orders. Keep Lumar safe. Not bad commander,” he said, looking over at Apeya’s cooling corpse. “Good commander.”
“Ahh—”
“You could get him a real commander,” Rurranach said in Deluge’s ear. He’d nearly forgotten about the Sidar back on his ship in all the excitement, but now Deluge felt a flood of relief at the sound of his voice.
“What do you mean?” Deluge asked, and then put up one paw-hand to tell Uban he wasn’t speaking to him.
“He’s right. They’ll just get slaughtered without real leadership. The Lumar are almost perfect mercenaries, except for that one fatal flaw. You need someone from another species, preferably a species that is ruthless and creative and capable of caring for the lumbering creatures. But the commander of a Lumar company stands to make a great deal of money if they’re handled properly. You would not have a terrible time finding willing applicants.”
“Applicants?”
“Of course, you’re not just going to hand them over to anyone, are you? That would be just as wasteful as letting the Veetanho live.”
“That’s underhanded of you, Rurranach,” Deluge said, a trickle of warning in his tone. “The las
t being to try and manipulate me lies cooling at my feet.”
“It’s true, though. You know it is, Del. You’re sentencing them to a slower, painful, less meaningful death if you don’t get them a good leader.”
Deluge sighed heavily, because he did, indeed, know that it was true. He lowered his paw-hand and looked at Uban.
“I am not your commander,” he said with great resignation. “But I will help you find the one who is.”
* * * * *
Egress
The dye itched.
It shouldn’t have. Blade wasn’t allergic, there had been no reaction, and the darkly orange spots and stripes shone just as healthily as his original dark fur and subtle stripes had done.
Still, a nearly overwhelming urge rose to rub in every dirt pile and against each stubby melik trunk he passed. Disguises were below Hunters. A waste, an acknowledgment that strength and cunning were not enough to accomplish a task.
He restrained himself from rolling with an effort. The simple truth remained evident—his skills alone were not enough to accomplish this task. Someone on Khatash wanted him dead, and anathema to take another Hunter’s life or not, it had to be one of his own. Or a group of them. He had no way of knowing if his siblings had survived the escape routes Susa had suggested in those last hurried moments. Had Death kept Susa alive? Had Flame gone with the Human Alcuin? If so, what would they do? Attempting to reach them, even to search to confirm they had made it, would only bring death upon them.
Nothing good would come of it.
Someone was trying to eradicate them, like they were some infestation of groundlings.
Death would keep the kits safe. There would be a future for their clan.
That most of all. Death and Susa would be safe. That had to be true. It was the most important and valuable mission—as long as Death could bear her litter safely, their clan had a chance at recovery. Flame would take care of Flame, hopefully the Peacemaker’s bounty hunter would be of use. Deluge was out on contract, maybe they hadn’t been able to find him.
