An Ancient Peace

by Tanya Huff

  It wasn’t a question.

  Bufush led the way back through the maze of shelves, Craig following, Torin bringing up the rear, matching their route to the map in her head. Fingertips trailing over the plastic housing on a grubby solar battery, she noted all visible security eyes following their progress. It could be because they were the only people moving in the shop, but she suspected it was Bufush’s reserves keeping a close eye on them until they were out of the building.

  With the door shut behind them.

  And the interior lights immediately turned off.

  “Seems like zi doesn’t want our kind hanging around.” The street was nearly empty. Torin could see only a single pair of Trun in the distance, appearing and disappearing as they crossed the stationary circles of light until they finally disappeared for good.

  “Zi doesn’t want our kind to attract the wrong kind of attention because zi doesn’t want that attention to be turned on zir. It’s not speciesist, it’s a criminal thing. You have to control the attention you’re getting.”

  “Alamber?” she asked, as they headed back toward the distant corner and out of the seconds.

  Craig’s shrug said who else as eloquently as if he’d said it aloud. “Now that we’ve finished our business and are heading home—for variable definitions of home—we keep it casual. If we walk purposefully, everyone will know we’ve wrapped things up. We don’t want people to know that. We’ve got four jacks and a lady and we’re bluffing the table.”

  Made sense. One of the most dangerous parts of Recon was getting out, getting to the extraction point. It was easy to get careless with the information in hand. This trip to Abalae, to Bufush, was recon to stop a war; she needed to treat it as such. Torin slowed her pace.

  “Not so slow as an amble.” Craig pulled ahead. “More of a saunter.”

  She stepped close enough to shove him sideways, froze at a skittering sound from the narrow alley they were passing, realized it was local vermin in retreat, and returned to sauntering.

  It felt like a poor neighborhood, not a dangerous one. If people watched unseen behind the dark surfaces of the upper windows, well, it made perfect sense they’d be curious. She could guarantee that the first Trun who moved to any of the OutSector planets would get tired of stupid questions long before everyone got tired of asking them.

  When she mentioned that to Craig, he laughed. “They’d be fukking swarmed on a salvage station. Fur and a tail? Every kid who could walk would be up close and personal, making grabby hands. Human kid,” he corrected. “We’re a handsy species and when we’re twice the size . . .”

  Torin raised a hand and cut him off. “You’re right.”

  “Often. About what, currently?”

  “We’re twice the size of the Trun.” Pieces began slotting into place. “We stick out here like a H’san in a . . .” All things considered, H’san comparisons had stopped working for her. “If the antique dealers we’re looking for are Human or di’Taykan, they’d never use Abalae given any other choice. If successful criminals control the attention they receive—and these assholes are bare minimum good enough to involve us—walking around on Abalae when you’re twice the size of the native population is the exact opposite of being able to control the attention.”

  “So . . . ?”

  “So we know they had three other choices, three places we could have gone rather than Abalae.”

  “So here . . .” His gesture, while truncated, still defined here as Abalae. “. . . we’re looking for Krai, then. They’re about the same size as the Trun.”

  “Still Younger Race, still furless, still the wrong kind of attention.” She frowned. “Alamber wondered why the person supplying the ceramics had to be one of the Younger Races and while my argument for the Younger Races being involved still stands, there’s nothing that says they’re the only ones involved. We’ve just proven the Trun can be bought.”

  “We’ve proven one Trun can be bought,” Craig pointed out. “But, yeah, money talks. You think a Trun’s involved, then?”

  Torin glanced up at the night sky. The stars of the Core burned bright, even through the impressive amount of light pollution thrown up by the Commerce Center. “No, but there was a Katrien arguing with Bufush in the backroom.” While the Katrien wouldn’t agree with the wholesale violence of a H’san weapons cache, they could always be paid off before the weapons were found. “We’ve both had enough experience with them to know they can be opportunistic little shits.” She tapped her implant on. “New data, people. Expand the search parameters . . .”

  There were, Binti admitted, plenty of Katrien in Commerce Sector Three both buying and selling, their numbers owing more to the hour than the quality of the crap being bought and sold. Anchoring an elbow on the bar, she covered a yawn. She didn’t think the fuzzballs were entirely nocturnal, but their eyes were definitely sensitive to light, and the weirdest thing about seeing them dirtside was neither the buying nor the selling, but the absence of dark glasses. This was the first time she’d seen them in a place where day and night hadn’t been defined by the station or ship sysop.

  There’d been Katrien in the last bar she’d followed Alamber into, half a dozen around an actual table, loudly defying the Trun’s communal seating. Well, being loud anyway. In this bar, not so many Katrien. Actually, none at all.

  It had taken them a while, moving down progressively darker side streets, but they’d finally found their way to a place where the people who might—or might not—ignore certain laws went looking for work. She hadn’t needed Alamber’s confirmation. The bar spoke for itself. It said, Fuk off.

  A big bi-colored Trun glared at her from within the cupped curve of a platform about two meters up. She glared back and zi slid down out of sight. Seemed that being an ex-Marine gave her the kind of dangerous patina that counted coup on petty criminals—even if she’d only ever been dangerous within the confines of the Corps and orders given. Hadn’t even been much of a troublemaker. Lifting her glass, she gave a silent salute to Haysole, the gorgeous little shit, tossed back the fermented whatever, and tapped the heavy base down on the bar for another.

  Social species gathered socially, and this might not be a bar like any bar she’d ever been in before, but the Corps had taught her how to adapt. And see things a long way away. And then shoot them. Although technically, she could see a long way before the Corps. But right now, she had to adapt. That was the main thing. Adapt to tiny, little, itty-bitty glasses. And to the bartender, who had the cutest tufts on zir ears. No way they could be as soft as they looked.

  Binti blinked and exhaled as the fizz faded out of her brain. Turned out, Humans metabolized Trun alcohol almost instantly. Thank fuk for the almost; kept it interesting. She tapped her glass with a fingernail, tapped her slate to the side of the offered blue glass bottle to pay for the refill, and nodded her thanks to the bartender.

  Alamber’s laugh drew her attention up to the platform he shared with a pair of Trun. They’d seemed surprised at his climbing ability. It was unlikely that was all he’d surprise them with. She flicked her gaze past him without moving her head, searching the shadows for threats, saw none, and returned to faking interest in what might’ve been sports scores and might’ve been election results scrolling past on the grimy interior of the bar’s one window.

  The bar had minimal floor space, maybe five by eight meters, but the seating extended through the full three stories. Not nets and ropes like in a Krai bar, but ramps and shelves and platforms. Not all of them were connected and she’d been impressed to see the pair of servers—who matched the edged don’t fuk with me attitude of every server in every other bar like this Binti’d ever been in—leaping, tails extended for balance, with full trays of drinks and not spilling. . . . well, much. The sucking noise the soles of her boots made leaving the floor suggested they’d spilled some.

  The air smelled a bit like licorice, but
she wasn’t sure if that was the spilled drinks or the Trun. She licked her lips. Didn’t taste like licorice. The drink didn’t taste like licorice. She hadn’t tasted a Trun though Alamber might’ve by now. Katrien didn’t taste like licorice, but that was okay. They didn’t need an actual Katrien, only the possibility of one. A possible Katrien. If their grave robber slash illicit antiquities dealer worked off Abalae, this was the sort of place they worked out of. Unless they didn’t like licorice.

  As the fizz faded again, Binti ate a few corn chips—it tasted like a corn chip, she was calling it a corn chip—and wondered if the Trun who owned the links ran the government because these sorts of bars were usually found in the seedier neighborhoods around spaceports and the whole anchored at the equator in the middle of the ocean thing had nothing to do with the Trun keeping buildings away from the bases of the tethers. Whole civilizations had been built in the middle of oceans. The cheapest of the commerce sectors nearest the cheapest of the tethers became the logical alternative, but the links, they were the only way in.

  Objectively, it was such a stupidly inconvenient system, she was willing to call the Trun, in spite of the whole no-single-ass-in-a-chair seating arrangements, unsocial as a species.

  And ex-Lance Corporal Binti Mashona knew social. Next to Alamber, she was the most social member of the team.

  Although Alamber was social in more specific ways.

  She was a sniper, she saw better from a distance. Alamber was all about the up close and personal.

  “Another?” The bartender spoke Federate with a heavy Trun accent, extending every vowel almost to a moan. At least she fukking hoped it was zir accent. When there was moaning happening around her, she preferred to be part of it.

  “Why not?” The fuzz had started lingering, sort of a low-grade buzz between drinks. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

  Alamber had been joined by a third Trun. Unless that new waving appendage wasn’t a tail; Binti couldn’t be certain given the angle. She wondered how low he had his masker turned down and made a mental note to have him turn it up again when he rejoined her. They’d need time for the pheromones to dissipate before they returned to the room.

  There was no group sex in team.

  Although Alamber cuddled up with both couples, Binti felt no attraction to the Krai, and while she’d happily tap both Torin and Craig, they were all still working past the whole gunny thing. Lance corporals didn’t sleep with gunnery sergeants nor with those civilians gunnery sergeants were sleeping with. Ex-lance corporals could sleep with whoever the fuk they wanted and she’d shared a bed with Torin because she’d shared a past with Torin and sometimes that past came visiting in the night, but Craig couldn’t really give her anything Alamber couldn’t. And she had plenty of that.

  In her opinion, and she was the closest to the problem, they needed another di’Taykan in the crew.

  She needed another drink.

  “So it’s true what they say.”

  “Depends . . .” She tapped her glass against the bar. “. . . on who’s saying it and what the fuk they’re saying.”

  Zi nodded toward the platform where the moaning may or may not have been extended vowels.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s true. Pretty much whatever they’re saying.” It was Alamber’s job to be talked about. Break the ice. Her dark skin made her blend better than his pale, pale pink. At least in this part of the world. Probably lighter fur in colder climates. She slid her glass away from another refill, and the bartender smiled. Probably. Gunny had a whole extended theory about teeth. “It’s true,” she added, tapping the side of her nose, “right up until it isn’t. Biology. But right now, he’s all up in your face.” She could just see into the platform if she balanced on the upper rung of her stool but couldn’t quite make out faces. “People remember him.”

  “No shit,” the bartender muttered.

  Binti leaned closer. “We need,” she murmured, “a small ship. Susumi ship. Need it to run supplies further into the Core where we might be too noticeable.”

  Someone new moaned. Definitely a moan this time.

  “More noticeable?” the bartender asked.

  Binti sighed. “You have no fukking idea.”

  “True.”

  She tapped her slate against the bottle, ringing up ten times the cost of a single drink. “We pay well.”

  Zi looked at the number, pulled out zir personal slate, cleared the payment into it, and laid it on the bar where purple lines of light rose up from the screen. After a short give and take, zi slid Binti’s slate from her fingers and passed it through the light. Zir ears flicked, once, when zi handed it back.

  Code? Who the hell knew.

  “Alamber!” She flicked a corn chip up into his platform. “We’re done here!”

  He joined her by the door. To her surprise, his masker was all the way up—full pheromone blocking. “They didn’t want it. Or need it. They took . . .” He shook his head, pale blue hair the lightest thing in the bar.

  Before he could continue, a striped body rose up out of a tangle of three or four Trun in one of the lowest platforms, pointed an arm only half covered in fur in their general direction, and bellowed, “Murderers!”

  Binti turned toward him, leaned close enough he could read the memory of a long shot with an impact boomer, of a Silsviss head exploding, spraying everyone within three or four meters with blood and bone and brains. Then she smiled. The way Gunny would’ve.

  Zi might’ve pissed zirself.

  It might’ve just been the ambiance of the bar.

  “Fukker,” she muttered as Alamber tugged her out the door and onto the street. “There’s a difference between murdering and killing.”

  “I know.”

  “Course you do. You said they took?” She tucked her arm in his, the fresh air clearing the last of the buzz from her brain. “What did they take?”

  “Me. Sort of. This way.” He nudged her around in the opposite direction. Narrow streets and bars and crap shops all looked the same to her. “It was like I was . . . I don’t know, an experiment. Not a person.”

  “Oh, baby.” Some people said di’Taykans couldn’t be taken advantage of. Some people were assholes. She stopped and turned far enough to cup his jaw with her free hand. “Do I have to kick the shit out of someone? Are you okay?”

  “Okay?” His eyes lightened. “Fukking hell, Binti. Prehensiled tails—it was almost everything I imagined!”

  “But you said they . . .”

  “Oh, them. Who gives a fuk about them?”

  “Okay.” Alamber was an adult di’Taykan with almost Ressk-level smarts who hadn’t been through the training that allowed different species to find a common ground in the Corps. The last thing he needed was her second-guessing his reactions. “Come on, then, let’s find another bar and gather more data points. There’s got to be some lower class Katrien out drinking somewhere in this sector.”

  “Katrien,” Alamber said, patting her hand and leading the way down the dry cobblestones in the center of the street, “have no tails.”

  Werst grabbed a fistful of fabric and steered Ressk around a puddle as they headed back toward the inn. It hadn’t rained while they were in talking to the agents responsible for the supplies sent to the freight tether, so he figured it was safer not to speculate about the liquid filling the pothole. “We’re going to have to secure the seleeamir.” His mouth watered just saying the word. The small, organ-meat sausages were seldom found anywhere but in Katrien-dominated space. They weren’t Katrien organs, so he wasn’t sure why.

  “We have to secure it because it’s so chrick you can’t keep it out of your mouth?”

  “Nothing to do with my mouth,” Werst snorted. “Two of the ingredients are toxic to Humans.”

  That pulled Ressk’s gaze off his slate. “I didn’t know that. How did you know that?”

  �
��More than just a pretty face, churick.” He ran a hand over Ressk’s head, bristles stiff against his palm, and used the motion to hide a quick examination of the upper edges of the warehouses lining the far side of the road. Unfortunately, the far side of the road was downwind, and the position of the streetlights created shadows deep enough to hide the source of the noises that had drawn his attention.

  Ressk nudged up into Werst’s palm, then dropped his gaze back to the numbers running across the screen. “Gunny’s going to be pleased. We’ve restocked supplies and scooped three sets of data.”

  “Scooped?” It could be one of Abalae’s small scavengers using the rooftops as safe passage, but instincts and training both said that whatever was moving up there was moving with intent.

  “Yeah, scooped. We bump tech and it slides a hack into their system, pulling any data they have relevant to our interests while redirecting their sniffers into dead-end files. I told you all this back on the ship.”

  “I remember. I’m questioning scooped.” Another tug around another puddle. “Sounds like you’re cleaning the berrin box.”

  “Given the amount of crap we likely got, you’re not wrong.”

  “You’ll sort it out.” He always did. “And that Trun with the pale fur around zir eyes . . .”

  “Maloniay?”

  Werst shrugged. He hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to names. “. . . gave you the name of the ship and half the name of the pilot when we cleaned zir out of seleeamir.”

  “A ship,” Ressk corrected. “Not necessarily the ship.”

  “Oh, yeah, because leave your ship in orbit, drop down the freight tether, travel hundreds of kilometers to a crap Commerce Sector, then take the same pissant trip back when you leave is the smart choice for multiple ships to make.”

  “Except that Katrien ships clearly do it. They can’t grow selee here. No selee, no seleeamir. I need to match cargoes in and out, narrow it down using info Binti and Alamber get from the bars, then seal it with what Gunny gets from Bufush.”