by Blaze Ward
The door opened slowly. Talyarkinash poked her head in and looked around before opening it the rest of the way and stepping in.
“I forget that you need so little sleep as well,” she began, a smile that went all the way to her ear tips lighting up her face. “I was afraid I would be waking you up.”
Gareth rose and smiled back.
“Homework,” he gestured to the stacks of paper on the table between them.
A thought struck him as he looked down.
“Did you modify my brain?” he asked suddenly. “This didn’t used to be this easy.”
People with fur on their face could hide a blush. But he had spent enough time around the Nari woman to see the subtle signs. The way her whiskers twitched back. Her ears turned a quarter rear as well. The pupils opened wider than necessary for the light in here.
“Maybe a little,” she said in an off-hand way as she entered. “Maximus was already a genius, so I thought you could always use a bump.”
“How much?” he pressed, sitting back down as clues and hints began to coalesce.
“There is a line, according to what Sarzynski told Morty and Xiomber,” she offered, stepping fully into the room and closing the door behind her. “On the other side of that line, you get genius, but frequently human artists are also insane, according to his understanding of human history. To us, that is a relative concept, since all humans are completely deranged to begin with.”
She said the last with a grin that brought a smile to Gareth’s face as well. Nobody had worked as closely with any human as she had with him over the last six weeks. She was now the Accord’s certifiable expert.
“You said on the other side of that line,” Gareth prodded her.
“Correct,” she agreed. “You were already well above average for humans, by your standards, but there was still space to bump you up further, so I did. Right now, you straddle that line, but that just means your memory is sharper and your reactions have improved some. Oh, and all your senses are sharper than before, but not so bad as to overwhelm you, but you already knew that.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I was beginning to wonder how I could memorize so much material, so quickly, but there was just too much I needed to know, so I come back here after dinner and read and take notes until after zero.”
“I’m glad it has worked out,” Talyarkinash admitted. “So much of what I was doing was guesswork, taking you and extrapolating along predicted lines to what I hoped were logical conclusions. And turning you into a dragon.”
He grinned from ear to ear.
“Every kid wants to be a dragon, when they’re about seven,” he said. “Right after the dinosaur phase and before astronaut. It’s a human thing.”
“I see,” she nodded and shrugged.
Being the best expert on humans they had didn’t make her an expert on the species. Gareth was better for that, but nobody could bring themselves to fully trust him. He knew that.
Maybe Talyarkinash, but that was about it.
“You have news?” he asked, prompting her back from where he had derailed her.
Talyarkinash moved to the table and pulled the other chair. It was Nari-sized, so she could join him for tea or to chat.
“We’ve received orders to pack our personal gear,” she said nervously. “Senior Constable Grodray is relocating us to Orgoth Vortai.”
“Why there?” Gareth asked.
She shrugged meaningfully.
“Perhaps they have a tip?” she offered. “Maybe they just want someplace relatively used to strange things. You can’t get much weirder than the homeworld of the Grace.”
Gareth shrugged in turn.
“How soon until we leave?” he looked at his piles and began sorting them into things to keep and things to recycle.
“There will be a shuttle for us mid-day tomorrow,” Talyarkinash said. “Around fifteen hours.”
Gareth turned and looked at the closet door. It was closed, but he could have picked out every outfit in there blindfolded.
There wasn’t much to begin with. Beyond two Constabulary uniforms, there was his Secret Agent/cowboy outfit that he had been wearing when Marc captured him. A set of lovely robes that Morty had bought, but he had never worn. And his Sky Patrol uniform.
None of them fit him, being sized for the human he had been, once upon a time, but he wasn’t about to lose them. Any of them.
At least in the future, laundry was a much easier task. Walk into the booth fully clothed and let all the various beams and radiations clean you and your clothes at the same time. Gareth had two more of Talyarkinash’s special uniforms, designed to morph with him. One tunic was for normal duty, while the other was a touch fancier and would be for those weird, formal occasions where he was expected to be in dress uniform.
He hadn’t been to anything like that yet, but supposed that he might have just graduated and be ready to become a Deputy Agent again.
Starting at the bottom was okay. He was a cop and there was work to be done.
“Thinking about your past?” Talyarkinash asked when he turned back to face her.
“My future, actually,” he said. “The past is lost. I haven’t made peace with that yet, but I’m working on it.”
“You miss her?” she said. It was more of a statement, but it sounded enough like a question.
“Every day,” Gareth sighed. “If it wasn’t such an amazingly bad idea, I’d sneak back to Earth and bring her here with me. Have you turn her into a Vanir so we could live happily ever after. The Constabulary would never accept it, though. There are already too many humans here.”
She wanted to say something. He could see it in her eyes, but she refrained. There wasn’t much to say at that point. He could never go home, and he would probably end up in a cell, once he captured or killed Marc.
It would be apocalyptic, their final battle. Gareth had no doubts about that. Hopefully, he would prevail, and could bring peace to the Accord of Souls. Whether Marc would allow himself to be taken alive was another question.
Either way, the end of Marc Sarzynski’s reign of terror would also be the end of Gareth’s freedom. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but duty was duty. Stop Marc first. Then deal with spending the rest of his days in prison as an illegal alien who was too dangerous to allow to roam free.
Rather than speak, Talyarkinash held out a hand. Gareth took it and held on.
It was nice to have friends, because they both knew whatever was coming was likely to get ugly, before it might ever get better.
Into The Shadows
“We knew they weren’t there,” Marc heard Zorge explain. “But, following orders, we planted a small bomb anyway and annihilated the place with fire.”
Zorge paused at that point. When Marc turned to stare at him, the Nari spymaster was looking for the right words. Something that would get to the heart of the matter, without offending the crazy human boss who had cut such a bloody swathe across the Accord.
The group had taken over a small resort on the outskirts of the city of Uwethis, on Kani. It was about as far from the civilized core of the Accord as one could get and still have indoor plumbing, as the joke went. Planetary population still under a half billion souls, but a good mix of species in the city. And one of the lowest rates of cops to citizens in known space. A safe enough place to hide while he rebuilt the organization.
Marc relaxed on an overstuffed chair done in green, while the Nari was on an equally-over-stuffed couch in gray and yellow squares. Hideous, but he wasn’t an interior decorator.
“Why? you were wanting to ask?” Marc smiled as the pause stretched.
“Something like that, yes,” Zorge replied defensively.
“They weren’t there, but had been,” Marc explained. “The criminal underground on Churquark isn’t as well organized as Zathus had been. Not as powerful either, relying too much on corrupt politicians and mid-level folks to get by. They might have considered letting things slide.”
&n
bsp; “So bombing the place sends a message?” Zorge asked. “To whom?”
“Everyone,” Marc actually felt a smile on his face. Those were rare, these days. “It tells those two that I can find them, and that I won’t accept their apologies. It reminds the local underworld that anyone wanting to shelter the two lizardmen will be dealing with me, personally. It tells the Constabulary that things are more rotten than they think, so they’ll concentrate more effort on Churquark than they had been.”
“Net result, drive Morty and Xiomber off planet, right about the time the cops drop a ton of bricks on the place,” Zorge concluded. “They escape the dragnet, and nobody else?”
“Exactly,” Marc said. “Think of it as a shell game. Everyone will be looking on Churquark, where the marble is not hiding. I don’t know where they’ll go, but we’ve made the rest of the people around them unwelcoming, so they’ll have no choice but to run. Eventually, we’ll find them. Or the cops will.”
“Won’t they talk?” Zorge asked. “Tell the cops everything they know, trying to buy a reduced sentence?”
“Everything they know doesn’t include what I’m up to now,” Marc smiled. “You’re still thinking defensively.”
“And we’re rebuilding, while bringing down all the other gangs,” Zorge breathed. “But won’t that make it harder for us, if they start bringing in honest politicians? Or clean up the local police departments?”
“For a while,” Marc said. “I’ve been studying the Accord’s history, and one thing is clear. The structure they built was never going to last forever. Too fragile. The Vanir might be all law-and-order as a rule, but their place at the top of the hierarchy of things tends to rub a lot of the other species the wrong way. And so you get an underclass that don’t see how they can get ahead when the Vanir are so dominant.”
“Which breeds resentment, and creates the conditions for the underworld to thrive,” Zorge agreed.
“And I don’t see that pattern changing,” Marc said. “At least not for several more centuries. At some point, the Chaa might just have to come back and fix things if they want to go back to the old days, but I’m here now, and nobody’s done anything about it, so either they don’t see me as a threat, or, more likely, they don’t care.”
“And you plan to be around for that long still?”
“Correct,” Marc said.
He studied the Nari closely, but the man didn’t have any obvious qualms. Of course, without Maximus protecting him, the man would be a cell quickly enough. They were all in the chute now, and they knew it.
Victory or death.
Zorge shrugged.
“So I have my teams watching for all the key players,” Zorge continued. “Grodray and Baker disappeared for three days last week, but they’re back on Hurquar now, working to unravel everything there.”
Marc nodded.
“My theory is that they went to visit Gareth Dankworth, wherever he had been hidden,” Marc replied. “Now they’re getting desperate enough to use him.”
“Should we target him for anything?”
“No,” Marc said firmly. “Just watch him for now. Perhaps he’ll lead us to Morty and Xiomber. If he does, we’ll sweep them all up, but I need better weapons, if I’m going to take on a star dragon.”
“That’s Maiair’s department,” Zorge said.
“Indeed,” Marc agreed. “Anything else? Then send her in next.”
“Yes, sir.”
And the Nari spymaster was gone.
Marc looked around the room. Not bad, as resorts in the middle of nowhere went. Wood paneling on the walls made them feel small and intimate. Strange knick-knacks seemed to cover every free space on the abundant bookshelves, although he had no interest in ever reading the vast array of cozy mysteries and romances that the Accord writers seemed to generate on an annual basis.
He had a small front room with the couch, the overstuffed chair, and a writing hutch that could fold down. Down a short passageway was a tiny bathroom on the left, a kitchenette at the end, and a sleeping room barely big enough for the bed on the right. But this wasn’t a place tourists stayed all day.
They were close to a variety of what Marc would have called nature preserves back on Earth. Places to hike and camp, all a short ride away. The resort had a kitchen and a small bar up in the main building, but Marc had arranged to rent the entire facility for a month. It was the off-season on Kani, not far past the middle of winter at this latitude, so the owner had made them a great deal, especially when Marc didn’t need staff on hand for cooking and such.
He could have the place to himself for a while, cheap, and let his people work. Singles and doubles coming and going wouldn’t excite any gossip with the locals. They had been given a cover story of a small religious group on a retreat, so they could be self-contained.
Let the storm blow over the Accord right now, while he was sheltered. The fundamental mechanics had not changed, so all Gareth and the Constables could do would be to imprison the current batch of criminals, until Marc could bend the new batch to his will.
It might take a decade, but Vanir were long-lived folk to begin with, and he had plans for upgrading this body.
Emperor Marc. Not even Marc the First, as he planned to live as close to forever as medicine and genetics would allow, so he would give up the throne when it was taken from him in death, or when one of his sons finally impressed him enough to take over.
God/Emperor. Yes, that sounded more accurate.
A knock at the door, and then Maiair entered a moment later. Her crimson headcrest was carefully at half-mast. Unsure but firm and proud. Not challenging his authority, but not backing off of her own.
Good.
He had been afraid that the stress of the last month might have ground the Warreth woman down. Used her up. Broken her.
He could see he had been wrong.
“You wanted to see me?” she asked in a voice that found that perfect spot between subservient and sarcastic.
“Yes,” he smiled at her, gesturing to the sofa for her to sit. Hopefully, she would be at ease.
Like Zorge, she was poised at the edge of the seat rather than putting her weight back.
“Things are beginning to move,” Marc began. “Shortly, all of the enemy pieces will be on the table again, and we can begin our more complex gambits.”
“What do I need to concentrate on?” she asked, her headcrest perking up some, fluffing a little as she grew more confident in the direction of the meeting.
“Gareth St. John Dankworth is a wild card, Maiair,” Marc said quietly. “Zorge has his people trying to get me information from the Constables, as to what his capabilities truly are, but without Liamssen’s notes, we’re only guessing. I need you to find me a competent geneticist that we own, or can turn.”
“Kidnap?” she hazarded.
“No,” Marc replied flatly. “I’ll be putting my life in his hands, so I want one with a god complex and so much intellectual arrogance that he sees me as a challenge for his brilliance, rather than as an opportunity to destroy me in one shot.”
“They come in flavors,” she observed. “What kinds of upgrades were you needing for yourself? Liamssen was among the best as a generalist, and the rest are being prodded enough by the Constables enough to be looking over their shoulders constantly.”
“I am bigger and stronger than most Vanir,” Marc noted. “Smarter than just about all of them, as well. But Dankworth and the others didn’t stop there. He can turn into a flipping dragon, for God’s sake. I need something to counter that, but I’m not sure what, yet.”
“Draco-form?” she asked carefully.
“This is a genetic change, Maiair,” he replied. “If Dankworth ever had children with a Vanir woman, it would probably be a trait that was passed down. If the Accord isn’t ready for humans, they really won’t be able to deal with lycanthropic dragons. No, I’m looking to found a dynasty, so I need to get as close to immortality as we can get, which won’t be that har
d, but I want to be able to do something nobody else in the Accord can do.”
“Which is?” she hesitated, sensing something that left her nervous.
More nervous than she already was.
“Breed with other species,” Marc replied carefully, almost tenderly. “There’s no reason all my children should be Vanir, Maiair.”
She sucked a nearly-silent gasp and froze perfectly still, like a rabbit in the grass hearing an owl’s cry.
Marc left the silence hanging. She had hinted at such things earlier, but she probably never realized that Marc Sarzynski was capable of going there intellectually. The various species of the Accord of Souls had been fixed in place by the Chaa when most of them were Uplifted, and the Vanir became Those Left Behind. They could marry and live happy lives, but never cross-breed.
Hell, most of them had different chromosome counts, so fertility was truly impossible.
But if he told a conference of geneticists that something was simply impossible, a few would stand up and challenge him. Those were the ones he wanted. Immortality wasn’t a red flag they could look at on a readout. It had to be inferred from a host of indicators all being too healthy at the same time.
Perhaps one who would make him immortal, and a second who could help Marc create a whole series of ruling castes over the current species. He had been serious about bringing in a few humans and adding them in as dons and capos. And his own children would probably require fifty years before they were stable enough as a royal family.
But Marc was measuring time in millennia.
“You’re sure?” she finally spoke.
Her headcrest had nearly collapsed, but now it had risen again. Puffed out feathers around her head had relaxed as the moment of shock passed.
“We have the opportunity to reshape the Accord of Souls, Maiair,” Marc almost whispered. “I see no reason to limit things to the Vanir. The Warreth should have a chance to shine, as should the Nari and even the Grace. I’m less confident in some of the other species, but we can look. Can you find me the right doctor?”
