The Absconded Ambassador

by Michael R. Underwood

  Shirin placed one pillow on the couch, then eyed the other two, one white-and-blue, the other green-and-yellow-green. She tossed the white-and-blue into the same corner, and then set the other one in the lap of one of the chairs. “If we’re going to help Laran triage this Alliance until the ambassador’s back, there’s a lot of confidence-building to be done, and we can save ourselves trouble by using tricks like this to offload some of the gossip workload onto the diplomats themselves.”

  “Through the power of interior design?”

  “Design shapes the narrative. Setting is as important a part of a story as character and action. Constrain setting, and you constrain and shape character. Now let’s strip your bed and get this couch a cover.”

  Five: Friends in Low (Gravity) Places

  THE FIBER AND DNA TESTS came back just before midnight. There were more common fibers from working clothes, two sets of DNA not in the system—one human, one Nai—and an industrial cleaner that was used mostly on long-haul rim ships, used to create a lasting seal and protection against micrometeors.

  And so Roman and King found themselves in a seedy bar in the roughest level of the station’s third ring.

  Here, the station’s organized crime world flourished, operating discreetly and effectively enough that they had an understanding with station security.

  Walking among toughs and mercs, people living on the fringes, Roman felt dangerously at home. Fitting in here would be all too easy. But he’d have King to pull him out if he got too deep.

  Which meant that everyone in the bar—literally everyone—noticed when the two of them walked in not wearing colors of any of the station gangs.

  The bar was an old industrial facility, assembly lines turned into long bar rows, with wandering servers and a central bar at the far wall. The bar was maybe two hundred feet wide, and Roman guessed that there were around a hundred gangers and hangers-on present, just as the night was getting rowdy.

  Roman claimed the first open space, which wasn’t actually open. It was a stool beside a cluster of four gangers, all wearing red bandannas. He nodded at a server to get her attention. The server denied eye contact and kept going.

  “Seats’r taken, rando,” said a husky voice. An Ethkar woman with cut ears turned from the circle and loomed over him and King.

  “Sorry, looked empty to me.” Roman stood, hands up and back. “Not looking for trouble.”

  “Then why’d you come to a Dead Dwarf bar?” asked one of the Ethkar’s companions, a short man with a torso like a keg.

  “We’re just looking for a quiet drink,” King said. “We can go somewhere else.”

  “Dawn smiles upon the prudent,” the Ethkar said.

  Roman read the scene. Too many to seduce all at once, even for him, and if they threw down with a brawl, they’d subsequently be thrown out.

  Strike at their pride, instead. Roman adjusted his hat, preparing to go. “Damn. Guess that Widowmaker was right, this place is shit.”

  The wide man bristled, blocking Roman’s exit from the bar. “Widowmaker said what?”

  “Met a Widowmaker. Ex-Widowmaker, I guess. He said this place was shit, but he was an ass, so I thought maybe it was something to see, he was keeping it to himself.”

  “Real contrary guy, you know,” King said. “Like those Junai—they’re always saying the opposite of what they mean.”

  “Dwarves nest, fuck the rest,” the Ethkar said.

  “If this is a colors bar, why’d the bouncer even let me in?” Roman asked.

  “We’ll take your money, don’t mean we want you here,” the wide man said. “Someone’s gotta pay for these drinks.”

  Roman puffed himself up, eyes locked on the wide man. King held him back. “Cool it, Ro. We’ll take our money and our action somewhere else.”

  “Action?” asked the Ethkar.

  “Yeah, action,” said King. “Good action. Alliance is doomed, right? That makes a lot of opportunities for someone smart. I heard the Dwarves were smart. Fleecing people without offering service, that’s just debris. We’ll find someone else for the job.”

  The wide man dialed the aggression down a tick, then waved the server over. “What kind of job?”

  “Big job went down on-station. You know about it, right?” King asked.

  “Course we do,” the wide man said. He didn’t. Roman knew that flavor of puffing up, the need to be in on the joke.

  “That was a choice grab,” Roman said. “We find who did it, we’ve got some work for them.”

  “Dwarves have many hands and more eyes, willing for the right price,” the Ethkhar said. Basically, they could have done the job, or could do one like it.

  A server stepped up, a small man with gray skin. The wide ganger took the beer off his platter.

  “What’ll you have?” the ganger asked Roman and King.

  “Royal Deep, Sol back,” Roman answered. “And a FUBAR for my friend.”

  The server slunk away.

  “So what’s the word? You know about the job or not?”

  “We know about the missing ambassador. Ain’t nothing happens on Ahura-3 that doesn’t make it to the Dwarves,” the wide man said.

  “’Cause it seemed like an outside job. My snitch says Security pulled DNA off the job, but they didn’t get no matches,” King said.

  The gangers nodded. Anyone who’d been in organized crime on the station for this long would have been printed, their DNA taken for record in case they did something truly heinous, something bad enough that station security couldn’t look the other way.

  “We know some merc companies, maybe the type that could have done it. Some real deep voiders, you know.”

  “So out with it, then.” King followed up his request with a chuckle, softening the demand.

  “A stiff drink loosens lips,” the Ethkar said.

  And so they drank. This time, it only took an hour and three rounds to get the Ethkar and her friends to finger the Dark Stars for the job.

  * * *

  With the culprits identified, it was time for a trip to wheel three to talk to Zoor, the retired merc-turned-florist, and his Ethkar paramour.

  Roman and King cleaned up for the visit, planning to lead with Good Tough instead of Bad Tough.

  There were seventeen florist shops in wheel three. Only twelve were owned by humans or Ethkar, and of those, two had gone out of business but hadn’t lost their station registry.

  Which meant that Roman and King spent four hours making the rounds, crossing florist shops off their list, smelling of gardenias, fanar, gerry rasps, and an abundance of roses when they walked into the Twin Bloom.

  The storefront was small, just a ten-by-ten room of displays and sample product, a glass-covered wall of more flowers, and a reinforced glass cash register, blocked off from the rest of the store by a reinforced door.

  A smaller Ethkar woman stood at the cash register as they walked in.

  The Ethkar greeted them, voice coming through on a PA. “The road swells to meet you, friend.”

  “Greetings,” Roman said. “I’m looking to have a few arrangements made for our friends. They’re receiving guests of all races, so it’s going to be a pretty big job. Can you accommodate?”

  “My husband has the fastest hands you’ve ever seen work a pair of shears.”

  A man walked up from the back, entering the glass display area. He was around six feet, and despite his inoffensive white collared shirt and khaki pants, he still looked like a tough. His hair was short, only mostly covering the tattoos that extended up onto his scalp.

  “That’s great. She prepared a list.” King held up his wrist-screen. “Can I beam it to you?”

  The woman wobbled her head in an Ethkar affirmative. “LAN handshake coming up now.”

  King tapped at his screen while Roman studied the ex-merc.

  “Can you have these over to the diplomatic wing by 1800?”

  The man squinted at something above his head, presumably a screen. “That’ll be
tight,” the man said through the PA. “But yeah, we can do it. Except for the whistala—we’re fresh out.”

  “I’m getting more in two days, if that will suffice,” the Ethkar said.

  “No problem. I can get whistala somewhere else. Delivery by 1800 for the rest?”

  The Ethkar assented again.

  “Beautiful,” King said.

  Roman made a small gesture toward the man’s tattoo. “Friend, I don’t mean to dredge up old business, but your skin tells me you used to run with the Dark Stars.”

  “Can’t prove it,” Zoor said, not facing the pair.

  “It’s just, word on the spin says that the ambassador is missing, and that the Dark Stars did the deed. Damn shame. Way we figure, if the Alliance had gone through, maybe that’d make it easier for Terrans and Ethkar to live together,” Roman said, looking from the man to the Ethkar woman.

  “That the case?” Zoor said, hands clipping and arranging flowers, assured but not quite unconscious in his confidence. He hadn’t been at it too long. There was a difference between dexterous competence and the ease of thousands of hours of practice.

  “I know someone people who could get the ambassador back, maybe salvage the Alliance. You’ve got a nice shop here, a nice life. Just as long as nothing happens to the fragile peace between the Terrans and the Ethkar. If you know anything about where the Stars might have taken her, you could do a lot of good, Zoor.”

  The man turned, brows narrowed, fear touching his eyes.

  “You can leave now. We don’t need your business,” the Ethkar woman said.

  “But you have our business, and we need your help,” King said. “The Terran council has established a generous finder’s fee for anyone with information about the ambassador’s whereabouts,” he lied.

  “Shadows and vapor,” the Ethkar said, calling his bluff. The station staff were keeping as tight a lid on the news as they could. Good for morale, maybe not as good for their immediate plans.

  “Because they don’t want to be flooded with void facts brought to them by opportunists. Our friends, the ones hosting the diplomats, they heard about the finder’s fee. Five thousand credits. That’d go pretty far out here on the wheel, I think.”

  The Ethkar hardened, pointing to the door. “Out.”

  Roman stepped forward. His kind recognized their own. So he’d tell Zoor what he’d want someone to tell him. “We need your help, Zoor. You got out of the Dark Stars for a reason. I bet you wanted peace. Stability. A life that didn’t involve looking over your shoulder, didn’t count on balancing favors and lackeys and alliances, always waiting for the other boot to drop.”

  “Get out,” Zoor said, shaken.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Roman saw King give him the nod. So instead of leaving, he pushed it, riding that edge between conversation and combat.

  “Sure, I’ll leave. If you can look me in the eye and tell me that you didn’t leave so you could find a way to make things grow, to create and preserve life instead of taking it by force. Getting out of that life isn’t hiding. It’s choosing to push against the death instead of riding the tide of blood. You want peace? You want a real chance at a life worth living? Kaylin Reed can bring both of those to the station and beyond, but not with a bolt through her brain. Where would they take her?”

  The man’s knuckles were white, fists clenched.

  “I’m calling security,” the woman said.

  Roman and Zoor shared another moment that dilated into infinity. Zoor’s body language showed anger, resentment, shame, fear, and finally hope. The ex-merc slumped, setting his shears down beside an arrangement. “No, Fela. They’re right.”

  Roman smiled. Not as eloquent as the speech King had given him back in the wasteland, when he was on the end of his rope, but it was close enough.

  Zoor continued. “There’s a hideout in the rings of Aeros, just one jump from here. Anytime we bugged out of Ahura-3, we stopped there first. It’s big enough to fortify, but out of the way of commercial traffic.”

  “How do we find it once we’re in the rings?” Roman asked.

  The man tapped his wrist screen. “The coordinates. But you keep me out of this, you hear? I don’t want any of this getting back to the Stars. You’re right, I got out for safety, for me and Fela. And I expect that finder’s fee in our account the minute you get the stuck-up noble back.

  “Your arrangements will be there by 1800. Now get out of here before I regret this and decide to piss in your flowers.”

  “Thank you, Zoor,” Roman said. “It’s not exaggerating to say that you may have saved the galaxy from war.”

  Zoor’s tone changed. It was softer, uncertain. “Where do you come from?”

  “The hell next door. Same shit, different quadrant.”

  “So what’s it like? To really leave it all behind?”

  “When I find out, I’ll let you know.” They walked out, and once they’d turned the corner, Roman leaned against the wall, took a moment.

  King raised a hand, set it gently on Roman’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  Pull it together, Roman told himself. We’re not done here.

  He stood. “I’m fine. Wasn’t sure how that one would go.”

  King squeezed Roman’s shoulder. “You did good. We’re on the right track.”

  “Get Shirin on the line. We’re going to need to call in some favors to get a ship. With guns. And a cloaking field.”

  * * *

  Shirin woke Leah at 0505 the next day, already decked out in her diplomatic robes, a mug of coffee wafting liquid wakefulness as she walked into the newbie’s room. Shirin had been up since 0430.

  One advantage of aging was Shirin found she could get by on less and less sleep, especially if it was undisturbed by children jumping on her bed or the cat deciding that 3 a.m. was the time to flip out and run laps in the bedroom hall.

  “Is privacy not a thing on Ahura-3?” Leah croaked as she emerged from her room.

  “Not when the new kid on the block is late for her first day of diplomatic duty. Shower’s all yours, we need to be out of here and over to Laran’s offices at 0530.”

  “Give me that coffee and we’re square,” Leah said, shaky hand pointing at the mug.

  “It’s yours if you can get to the kitchen.” Shirin turned and left the room.

  Leah hopped to, padding into the kitchen fully dressed at 0523 as Shirin watched the clock, rewarding the newbie with the first pour from the fresh pot.

  The pair made the short walk from their apartments to Laran’s residence one level down, finding a small mob of robed and fineried aliens waiting in the hallway, talking among themselves in a dozen languages, gesturing with mandibles, multiplicitous arms, and so on. The mood was nervous, a bit impatient, but not panicked. The morning news feeds showed rumors of the ambassador’s health taking a turn for the worse, but the update from Do-Ethar dispelled those with Ethkar flair:

  “Rumors of the ambassador’s health fading are but the contrails of cowards adrift without her guiding hand.”

  Shirin waved her wrist-screen at the door. They moved past the sound of several complaints and into Do-Ethar’s quarters.

  In the foyer, standing arms crossed in front of her, today’s robes in red and yellow, stood the Ethkar ambassador.

  “One minute early, as usual. Bright morning. May the light of truth guide us, and the wings of triumph lift us up so that we might pierce the guard of doubt and dissent to achieve unity.”

  Leah leaned over to Shirin. “She’s like a Lao Tzu MBA course.”

  Shirin held back the laugh that was building at the back of her throat. Even half-awake, the girl had a tongue on her. But it would be up to her to make sure the girl’s tongue didn’t get them spaced or tank the Alliance. This world had such a gigantic learning curve, with dozens of cultures and histories, alien technologies, and more. Shirin had gotten three months to study up on the world before she’d had to go on her first mission here. But a lot had changed in the Gen
renauts’ world, and they had to play the hand they were dealt.

  Or find a way to sneak the ace out of their sleeve.

  “Good day, honored friend,” Shirin said. “We are at your disposal. How may we help?”

  The ambassador wasted no time putting them to work. There were fifty appointments scheduled for the day, and Laran could attend to twenty-four at most.

  Shirin and the Ethkar divided the appointments. Which meant that Shirin and Leah were assigned to the guest room and given half of the queue, told to stall and dissemble, but most of all, to not let anyone leave angry.

  Their first appointment was a Yai merchant representative, the agent for a conglomerate that stood to make a great deal of money if the Alliance went through.

  Shirin wore her diplomacy face, placating but firm. “I assure you, Lord Reeve, the ambassador will be well in time to conclude negotiations and preside over the signing. In the meantime, pulling your contract would be disastrous for all involved. Merely the time rewriting contracts would cost your guild hundreds of thousands of credits.”

  The Reeve moved her hands, weaving wrists and fingers through the air like a dance, then speaking, as if she’d thought the matter through with movement, then responded.

  “But I have hundreds of ships across the system ready to begin trade, and without an alliance in place, I cannot guarantee their safety. With that many ships exposed, my pilots will revolt!”

  “What routes will they be taking where they did not already have protections and agreements in place?” Shirin asked.

  The Yai’s hands waved back and forth, then oscillated up and down like a conductor.

  “I . . . I don’t have that information in front of me. But this is an unprecedented commitment from my guild, and one that cannot be made on faith alone!”

  “But any alliance is about faith, is it not?” Shirin asked. “If I recall my Endera-Na, it says, ‘Two hands clasped fear not daggers, though they can see the hilts.’”

  “Well put, Ms. Shirin. But while faith may shield against doubt, it does precious little against lasercannon fire.”