by Rick Partlow
"What about your boss?" Holly asked, lip curling to show she wasn't entirely serious.
"General Murdock doesn't need to pull some sort of fake war to get more power," Kara pointed out. "He's way more subtle than that, and you know it."
"Point," Holly admitted, shrugging. "Yeah, I can't think of anyone in our government or the military that could really take advantage of the situation. Admiral Sato maybe?" She shook her head. "No, he's never shown any interest in politics and besides, the man has all the personality of a garden slug."
"It's not the right political climate for a military coup to work," Kara agreed, now interested in the discussion despite herself. "Maybe six or seven years ago, but not now."
"What about the Families out in the Pirate Worlds?" Holly suggested. "Maybe the Sung Brothers, or the bratva or La Sombra decided things would be more lucrative if the Commonwealth were paying more attention to the Tahni than to them." She waved a hand demonstratively. "This Cutter guy had connections out there, maybe he agreed to set it up for them."
"Robert Chang didn't do this," Kara insisted, more anger in her voice than she'd intended.
"Hey, I know he was your friend," Holly said, palms up. "But you have to admit, he had some issues."
"He'd gone bugnuts," Kara said, "but it was a pretty focused sort of bugnuts. He was interested in one thing, and that was finding and getting through the Northwest Passage. What happened here after he left didn't matter to him. Certainly not enough to start a war for the crime families."
"Fine," Holly slumped back, resignedly. "So, it can't be for money or power, then. That just leaves us with love or hate. But loving or hating what?"
Holly's eyes clouded and she grumbled herself back into silence while Kara went back to reviewing the reports. Tyya-Khin, she decided, was either the smartest and most patient insurgent she'd ever encountered or he was a dull dead end and her gut instincts had totally failed her.
"Major McIntire," a disembodied voice came over the office's intercom, startling her out of her thoughts, "you have an incoming Instell Comsat message coming through, Eyes-Only for you or Captain Conner."
"Send it through to my communications console," she instructed tersely, motioning for Holly to join her.
The two of them huddled around the corner of the desk, where a holographic projector snapped to life, showing the Commonwealth Space Fleet seal, then the slightly smaller logo of the DSI. Kara placed her palm onto an ID plate at the base of the projector and it sampled her DNA before decoding the message.
The DSI symbol faded and was replaced seamlessly by the visage of Reggie Nakamura, looking unenthused and disheveled.
"Good evening, ladies," he said, then shrugged. "Or good whatever it is where you are. I think it's evening here on this part of Highland; I haven't been outside in three days since Captain Slaughter drafted me to help his netdivers finish combing through the records recovered on Canaan and Eden." He rolled his eyes slightly. "Which is why I'm sending this message: we found something about Kah-Rint."
"I wonder if that asshole knows how much one of these messages costs per second," Holly muttered.
"It didn't seem like much, at first," Reggie said, cocking an eyebrow. "Just a reference by Robert Chang that used a different name for him during a conversation. I thought it was just a mistake, but I cross-referenced it, just in case." He grinned. "And we got him. We know who the fucker is: Colonel K'tann-len-Renn-Tan. Problem is, this photo is the only thing I could find of him in all the records, civilian and military, that I could search using Captain Slaughter's authorizations."
Reggie's image was replaced by a file shot of a young Tahni officer in dress uniform, his braided hair wrapped around his neck jauntily. He looked nothing at all like the stills they'd seen earlier of Kah-Rint and Kara frowned in confusion.
"You may be wondering why this guy doesn't look anything like the Kah-Rint we know," Reggie narrated over the file image, as if reading her mind. "He's had restruct surgery, obviously, but that's pretty rare among the Tahni because it's against their religion big time."
Kara found herself nodding, as if he could see her. The same religious atavism that had led to the Glory Boys being able to masquerade as avenging demons and get away with it for so long was present in many other Tahni beliefs, including the ones that prevented most Tahni from using life-extension technologies...and from altering their physical appearance. It was one of the reasons that Imperial Guard cyborgs like Trint had to have their biological parts grown in a vat rather than the cheaper and more expedient method of adding cybernetic parts to an already living Tahni male.
The image shifted back to Reggie, who was grinning in a self-satisfied, smug way that made Kara want to wipe it off his face. "So, I started thinking: what Tahni do we know about that had their faces and names changed and records expunged from the normal wartime records?"
"Oh, shit," Kara breathed, realizing exactly what he meant.
"I couldn't access those kinds of files from here," Reggie continued, "but I know you have the clearance for it." He spread a hand in invitation. "Don't keep us in the dark!"
Then the message ended and the DSI logo reappeared for a moment before Kara reached out to shut off the projector.
"What the hell was he talking about?" Holly wanted to know. She sounded annoyed, and Kara thought it was probably because Reggie Nakamura knew something she didn't. "Why wouldn't there be a file on some Tahni officer?"
"The DSI used to run a top-secret program during the war," Kara told her, using the DNA analyzer to gain access to a special database as she spoke. "It was kept classified even after it ended due to the danger of reprisals."
"Reprisals against who?" she insisted, a hard edge of impatient anger in her voice now.
"Against collaborators," Kara explained. She brought the files up on the holographic display and reached in to turn a pair of photos towards Holly. The one on the left was the military file photo of the uniformed Tahni officer called K'tann-len-Renn-Tan, while the one on the right was definitely Kah-Rint. "We actively recruited turncoats from the Tahni military, particularly late in the war when a Commonwealth victory was a foregone conclusion. After the war ended, they were given restruct surgery and a new identity."
"So Kah-Rint..." Holly began, eyes widening.
"The guy supplying the Tahni insurgency," Kara confirmed, "was a traitor."
Chapter Fifteen
The Tahni Female Holding was a couple kilometers outside the city limits of Toliara, exactly on the opposite side of town from where the males lived and a good twenty minute walk from the saloon where they'd started. It stood out like an island of light in the swiftly falling darkness, the glare of floodlights at the corners of the building washing out the reflective white paint on the simple, sprawling, two-story structure.
"It doesn't look big enough for all of them," Pete murmured as they approached down the broad, dusty street, nearly empty of traffic this time of night.
"The females live communally," Rachel told him, "while the males live in family groups. It's very strange; they're basically two separate cultures."
"So when do they get busy?" Pete wondered, looking slightly scandalized.
"Via a complicated and strictly negotiated series of social transactions," Rachel told him, chuckling at his discomfort. "Look it up, because it's so much more involved than I intend to get into with you right now."
Pete shook his head but fell silent as they approached the gate in the two meter wall that surrounded the cluster of buildings. Rachel pushed at it and found it locked, as she'd expected. She touched a palm pad set into the gate post and waited, hands folded in front of her as she tried to keep from fidgeting.
"Who are you?" a harsh, gravelly voice said in heavily accented English over the speaker set in the palm pad. "State your purpose."
"I thought these were all females," Pete said sotto vocce from behind her shoulder. She shot him a quelling glare before turning back to the speaker.
"My n
ame is Rachel," she said. "I seek audience with your Matriarch."
"The Matriarch does not speak with humans," the response was quick, nearly automated.
Rachel searched her memory and repeated the phrase she'd learned from Trint with careful attention to each tone. "I come as a humble seeker of truth and a traveler of the Path."
The human throat wasn't built for the intonations of the Tahni language, but she was fairly sure it was a close approximation. There was silence on the other end of the speaker for nearly thirty seconds and she shared a worried look with Pete.
Then there was an audible "click" and the gate opened slowly inward to admit them. Rachel felt an irrational surge of anxiety as she passed through it, then pushed it closed behind her. Beyond the fence, the buildings seemed to loom somehow, despite the fact none was taller than ten meters and they were plainly and unremarkably constructed from local block and stucco. The well-tended yard was empty and uncluttered, giving the place an eerie, abandoned look to her as she walked towards the door to the central building. It opened while she was still two meters away and a tall, statuesque Tahni female stepped out.
She was young, that much Rachel could tell by her firm skin and unlined face, and by the cut of her clothes. She wore garments the color and length of an adult female who had mated with a male but hadn't yet borne children.
"Where did you learn those words?" she asked Rachel, not even sparing Pete a glance, her voice the same as the one they'd heard over the speaker. "They are not shared with humans."
"I had a close friend who was Tahni," she explained. "He told me that I should only use those words if I found myself in dire need of help from one of the followers of the Path." She sucked in a breath and went on quickly. "There are bad things about to happen in this city, and I think someone is trying to involve your people in them, whether they would or not."
Her eyes were hooded and unreadable, her expression utterly alien and utterly different from anything Rachel had seen on Trint's face in the years she'd known him. For the space of a breath, she was sure the female would tell them to leave...or perhaps even attack them physically.
"The Matriarch will speak with you," the female said, finally. "Your male must wait out here."
Rachel looked at Pete and he shrugged. "Go ahead," he said, hands up. "Better you than me."
Rachel turned to follow the Tahni, but the female stopped her with a gesture.
"If you are armed," the Tahni said to her, "you must also leave your weapons behind."
Rachel started, realizing that she'd become so inured to carrying a gun that she'd forgotten its weight at her hip. She felt her cheeks burning as she reached under her light jacket and slipped the compact slugshooter out of the holster that squeezed between her belt and the small of her back, passing it back to Pete. He grinned crookedly as he took it from her and stuffed it in a pocket of his own jacket. Carrying the guns was quasi-illegal in the city limits, but Keller Savage had spread around enough money to get them temporary permits from the town council. It wasn't even that unusual; freighter crews often felt uncomfortable unarmed in a strange, frontier city like this and bribes were the price of doing business.
The young female made a gesture of satisfaction and motioned for her to follow. The building was brightly lit inside, the lamps set to mimic the glare of the Tahni primary star; she squinted at first until her eyes adjusted. By the time she could see clearly again, she was through the entrance hall and into a large common room. Tahni females ranging from adolescents to the elderly sat on oddly shaped furniture at holographic entertainment consoles or leaned back with cheap Virtual Reality wraparound goggles and manipulator gloves. One sat at a holographic data display and ran her fingers through haptic feedbacks, working with some sort of financial data.
They must work out of the compound to keep up with expenses, Rachel thought. It reminded her of the Skingangers back on Canaan only a few weeks ago.
Passing out of the common area, the young female led Rachel down a long hallway lined with bedrooms on either side, their doors all opened partway to reveal multiple beds per each. She had to dodge as a small cleaning robot zipped out of one of the rooms, across the hall and into another. That was as old-fashioned as the ViR gear they were using, Rachel mused. Cheap and outdated, but not obsolete and still usable; about what she expected.
The hallway ended at what seemed like a cross between a sitting room, a bedroom and an office and God only knew what the Tahni called it. Seated in the middle of the floor on some type of flat cushion was an unabashedly old female, her face deeply lined and her hair thin and white. Her door had gaped open as well and Rachel wondered if they ever closed them.
The younger Tahni motioned for Rachel to enter and then fell back to stand by the door. Rachel looked back at her uncertainly for a moment, then stepped on inside, skirting around the seated Matriarch. The ancient female was dressed in draped fabrics dyed in colors that seemed gaudy to her tastes, but she made allowances for eyes that saw in a very slightly shifted part of the spectrum.
She wondered for a moment if it was considered polite for her to wait, or whether she was supposed to speak first; it was something Trint had never told her and she couldn't remember seeing it in any of the research she'd done. She hesitated, knees flexing as she hovered between bowing, standing at attention and sitting down across from the old female.
The Matriarch made a sound and motion that Rachel knew was akin to an amused laugh.
"You look like a child," the old one said in a voice made even hoarse and scratchy with years, "trying to decide if she should piss herself or find a privy."
"Your English is quite advanced," Rachel said, the corner of her mouth turning up wryly.
"I have lived among you humans a long time. Sit down," she invited, waving at the cushion not across from her but oddly kitty-corner.
Rachel sank to a lotus position on the round, flattened, bright red fabric, her hands balancing herself on the cold tile of the floor around it.
"Now tell me what you came to tell me," the wrinkled, stooped female urged her, not bothering with any introduction. "You say it is important."
"You've heard of what is happening on Tahn-Skyyiah," Rachel assumed, "as well as some of the colony worlds."
"Things are different here," the Matriarch told her flatly. "We have no quarrels with you humans in this city, or anywhere on this fine world."
"Yet we have reason to fear that someone will fashion such a quarrel." Rachel told her, unconsciously imitating the Tahni's formal tone and wording. "There are outside forces at work, trying to set us against each other. Have you heard of a Tahni called Kah-Rint?"
The dark, hooded eyes pierced her with a hard look. "You know of this man?"
"My friends and I have been searching for him since the clashes on Tahn-Skyyiah," Rachel told her. "We know he has been trying to start the war between us again, and we think he may be working for others whose motives we don't yet understand."
"He is here," the Matriarch told her bluntly and Rachel felt a cold tingling in her gut at the words. "In this city," the elder Tahni amended. "He has been here for many days now, trying to talk to the males, but they will not listen to him." She made a gesture that Rachel recognized as the equivalent of a shrug. "He wishes to speak to me, but I have put him off as long as is seemly. I don't trust males like him...they got my children killed during the war."
"I lost my family in the war as well," Rachel told her, still feeling a pain in her chest at the words after all this time. "That's why I don't want to see another. I know you have no reason to trust me, but if you would be willing to help us find and capture this Kah-Rint, we may be able to keep our people from going back to war."
"What is your name, child?" the Matriarch asked her finally. "And from where do you come to us?"
"I'm Rachel Lowenstein Mitchell," she replied, hearing a pride in her own voice that surprised her. "I'm from a world called Canaan, in the Goshen system."
The Matr
iarch made a sound that wasn't quite like anything a human could have produced, but Rachel thought it was one of surprise and realization. "Yes, child, I know of this world. Most of us older generation would recognize it: it was the place we lost the war."
"The man who is now my husband led the attack on the Tahni garrison," Rachel told her. "He landed alone because we were his people and he wanted to try to save us."
"I am Valk-ra-Shinn, Rachel Lowenstein Mitchell," the Matriarch said formally, "of the line of Shinn-ra-Alm, and I welcome you to our steading."
"I am honored to meet you, Matriarch Valk-ra-Shinn." Rachel made a motion with head and hands that was a Tahni gesture of respect.
"As for this...what is the word in your language?" Her expression firmed as she remembered it. "Oh yes...this shithead Kah-Rint, you are welcome to him. He is scheduled to come meet with me tomorrow at noon. Have the courtesy to seize him outside the walls, if you would."
"I will make sure of it, Matriarch," Rachel said, excitement coursing through her. Finally, a chance to end all this and she was the one who'd pulled it off.
"Rachel," Pete's voice came over her earpiece through her datalink, stress and worry coming through with it in a hissed whisper. "We've got a problem."
* * *
Pete Mitchell cursed under his breath and clutched his handgun against his chest. He debated whether to draw the one Rachel had given him but decided that, lacking Cal's augmentation, the only thing he could hit shooting two handguns at once was the broad side of a barn. He could barely see the men as it was, in the harsh shadows of the floodlights filtering through the short, stubby trees of the surrounding fields, but he knew they were spreading out in a half-circle around the main gate.
And he'd seen the heavy weapons in their hands through the security viewer set in the gate before they'd gone off the road. He had no illusions that the polymer-faced block wall would be any impediment to plasma projectors, but he kept behind it nonetheless, on the hope that at least they wouldn't know who he was or that he was armed.
