by Neal Jones
Marija shook her head as she poured herself a glass of wine. "No, Lare, that's not your business either. And, frankly, I don't understand how can you watch such depressing filth all day. That's part of your problem right there. You have a nursery to complete, a naming celebration to prepare for – which, by the way, we have yet to send out the invitations for – and a gown to select for the naming ceremony."
"I've already picked one out, mother. I just showed it to you, remember?"
"Not for the baby, darling – for you. I was thinking of more Filarian silk, this time gold. It would be very expensive, I know, but what's the point of being rich if you're not going to spend the money?"
Larewyn leaned back and closed her eyes, inhaling deep. "Yes, mother, that sounds fine. You'll take care of it won't you? Now, I would like an hour of solace out here, and then I will join you in my chambers for lunch. Have the cook prepare some oldok, with fresh berries for dessert. How does that sound?"
"That sounds lovely." Marija smiled, relieved, and she took the wine bottle with her as she left the terrace.
( 5 )
Thalor finished setting the table and then opened the bottle of wine. His door chime warbled as he poured two tumblers. "Come in."
Tilura stepped inside, and Grax handed her a glass. She accepted it warily. "You're not scowling at me. I assume this and the dinner invitation means that you're not angry with me anymore."
"It means I need your help."
"Ah, I see. Sol rejected your request?"
"He did."
Tilura sipped her wine, watching Thalor closely. "So you are still angry with me."
"Let's just say that I've put the past behind me," he replied smoothly. He motioned to the kitchen. "I've prepared a trilt with gara sauce and sweetbread for dessert."
Tilura raised her eyebrows. "Fresh trilt?"
"Of course."
"I haven't had that in years." She took her seat while Thalor began dishing up the seafood. "I'd ask you how you got it this far out from homeworld, but you'll just tell me that you have your sources."
"You know me too well." He sat and lifted his glass. "To another successful adventure."
She smiled, raising her tumbler, and they both drank.
"However," Grax continued, reaching for his fork, "this doesn't mean that I trust you. I still don't understand why you betrayed me on Mr'gss-Gl'nn, nor do I understand why you won't tell me the truth now."
"Why does it matter?" she countered. "You just said you put the past behind you, so let's start anew. Let's pretend that that incident never happened, and let's pretend that you and I never had any feelings for each other." Thalor was in mid-sip, and he grimaced as he swallowed. Tilura smiled, relishing the direct hit. "Did you think I was going to go this whole time without bringing that up?"
"No, of course not," Grax muttered.
"Oh, come on, it wasn't all that bad, was it? We had some good times together." She smiled wistfully. "I have really missed you, Thalor." Tilura set down her wineglass and snickered. "What was the name of that merchant who insisted I wrestle his pet boar naked?"
Grax laughed in spite of himself. "Dyvys."
"That's right! Gods, I hated him. I felt like the biggest fool for what I did."
"It was worth it, though," he reminded her. "We netted a hell of a profit."
Tilura nodded, swallowing her bite of trilt and reached for her wine. "I really have missed you, Thalor," she said after a few moments. "We made a good team."
"Yeah, we did," he admitted, frowning into his glass.
Tilura scooped up another forkful of seafood but paused halfway to her mouth. She sighed, putting the fork back down, and leaned back, crossing her arms. "I know you don't believe me, but it's the truth. I waited ten minutes before leaving orbit, and I just assumed you had been captured. What else did you expect me to do?"
"You could have waited longer!" he snapped. "All I needed was another five minutes. You didn't even have the crown! That's what baffles me. Not only did you leave me behind to face arrest, but I was also the one holding the crown. I could understand if you had stolen the crown from me, but you didn't! All the other times you've had my back, but that one time you fled without even bothering to take the prize with you. Why??"
Tilura didn't respond at first, and she took a long draught of her wine before answering. "Haven't you ever wondered why I haven't been back to homeworld since I was a child?"
"You said your father was a smuggler too, that he had raised you in the Nevala sector."
"That's not entirely true. My father was a smuggler and a conman, but I wasn't raised in the Nevala sector. We were on homeworld, and when I was old enough I started helping him in some of his cons. That led to him getting arrested when I was fifteen, and I got put into an orphanage. I fell in with a bad crowd, and I escaped a couple years later. I tried running my own cons, and one of my schemes ended badly. As far as I know, that original arrest warrant is still outstanding. That's what I was afraid of on Mr'gss-Gl'nn. I knew that if the Sr'gg'nss arrested me, their background check would pick up the warrant on homeworld, and I would be deported."
Grax shook his head, puzzled. "Not if you used an alias and covered your tracks. You father must have taught you the basics."
"He did, and yes, I used an alias. But I wasn't used to operating on my own. Not only that, I picked the wrong target. He made me within a week, and that's when I fled homeworld."
"He ended up dead, didn't he?"
Tilura's silence was answer enough.
"How long ago was that?"
"Twenty-six years."
"Well, obviously, the authorities never found your real name because if there was a warrant out for you, you would have been arrested here at the docking checkpoint."
She nodded. "I know. I was actually planning to leave tomorrow morning, by the way."
"I thought you said you were taking a two week vacation."
"I lied."
Grax reached for the wine bottle. "I still don't understand why you didn't tell me this seventeen years ago. We knew each other for almost ten years, Tilura. In all that time you didn't feel like you could trust me?"
She shrugged, picking up her fork. "You really believe there's honor among thieves?"
"I suppose not."
They ate in silence for a few minutes, Grax mulling over Tilura's revelation while she helped herself to more fish. When his plate was empty he set it in the reclamator and returned to the table with a pan of sweetbread for dessert.
"You haven't lost your touch," Tilura said, mopping her plate with a slice of herb bread. "That's your best dish yet."
"So that's why you stayed with me all those years? 'Cause I can cook?"
"Why else?" she teased. "It definitely wasn't for your engineering skills."
Grax laughed as he sliced her a piece of cake. "I'll give you that one. I still can't repair a stardrive assembly to save my life."
"Well, it's a good thing I'm coming with you then. What time are leaving tomorrow?"
"Not so fast. I need another day to arrange some things with the restaurant, and I also need to make a few calls. Then you and I need to sit down and map out a strategy."
"I've already started on that. Shel'Belard should be our first stop. A few years ago I made friends with another smuggler who used to work for Draussen over twenty years ago. His information would be a little out of date, but you never know. He might have something useful for us."
Grax was staring at his plate, chewing thoughtfully.
"You still want to convince Sol to join us?"
He looked up, grimacing. "Yes, I do. He was in the Nevala sector twenty years before you and I first arrived there, and I know he has contacts and resources that could save us a lot of time and effort."
"But you don't know how to find him?"
"That's what I need another day for. I think I can track him down, but it's going to require some complicated tricks."
Tilura nodded. "There's one more thin
g that I need to know. You said last night that you have the Crown of Az'Nn'rkk locked away in your private collection? Did I hear that right?"
Grax winced again, glancing away. "Yes," he admitted. "I did say that."
"So...even though I left you stranded on Mr'gss-Gl'nn, you somehow still escaped with the crown?"
"Oh, no, I served two years in a labor camp for my crime. If they hadn't caught me with the crown, I would have been let go after a couple months."
"But you said last night –" Tilura stopped suddenly as the realization dawned on her. "For seventeen years there's been a fake crown in the Vault of Fl'nnd??"
Grax smiled behind the rim of his wineglass.
"The one that I helped you create. You were able to pass it off to them as the real crown??"
"I think it's time we call it a night."
"No! Do you know what the Sr'gg'nss would do to you if they ever learned that it's fake??"
Grax put his dessert plate in the reclamator and began clearing the table. "You want the last piece of cake?"
Tilura glared daggers at him as she shook her head. She finished her wine and then stood. "Before this mission is over, you're going to tell me how the hell you pulled off a con like that after I left you stranded. Where is your private vault anyway? Homeworld?"
"If I told you that," Thalor replied coyly, "it wouldn't be private."
Tilura sighed, shaking her head again as she left the kitchen. Grax walked her to the door. "So, what time should we meet tomorrow to make plans?" she asked.
"Let's make it eighteen hundred hours, here."
"All right then." She lingered for a moment, trying to read his expression, but he merely waited for her, his wineglass in one hand, the other tucked behind his back.
As she walked away, Tilura wondered what else Grax had gotten away with behind her back all those years ago. She smiled to herself as she pressed the com panel beside the PTL. Thalor had been right about one thing: the two of them back together again was definitely going to be an adventure.
( 6 )
Varis snapped awake, stifling a cry, and fumbled for the com panel for the nightstand. As the overhead lighting in her bedroom came on at half setting, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up, scrubbing a hand through her sweat-soaked hair. The nightmare was fading as rapidly as it had come upon her, and she swung out mental fingers, trying to grasp the last, fleeting images as they disappeared into the depths of her subconscious.
Her mother's voice.
The memory of her mother, Jishara, appeared at the front of J'Soran's thoughts, but it wasn't the image from her dream a few moments ago. That had been something else, something...something that had to do with...
Jishara standing at the counter in the kitchen, humming to herself as she made clov bread.
Again, another memory from J'Soran's childhood, but not the one she was hunting for. She banished that one as well, scrabbling further into her thoughts for the last threads of the nightmare that had awakened her with a cold sweat.
Jishara sitting at the computer terminal in the hallway, speaking to someone in urgent tones.
Yes...yes, that was it. That was the memory that Varis was hunting for, but she frowned to herself, puzzled, because that wasn't what had awakened her. She walked into the latrine and filled a cup with water from the faucet. As she stared at her haggard reflection in the mirror above the sink, the nightmare finally came back to her in bits and pieces, and J'Soran closed her eyes.
Jishara said a name. Moru. She was pleading with someone to patch her through to the doctor.
J'Soran shut her eyes tighter, the cup falling from her trembling fingers into the sink where it clattered loudly. She didn't want to remember this, didn't want to relive the scene that she had fought for so many years to bury in her past. That was all a long time ago, and she had been only seven years old. Yet now, now that she didn't want to remember, the full force of the nightmare that had not visited her for over thirty years came crashing back to her conscious mind in a matter of seconds.
Jishara's head jerked in the direction of the front door as it opened. J'Soran, too, was fearful of this arrival, and slipped into the shadows, racing back to her room. She kept the door open a crack, for she didn't want to be caught off guard should her father decided to come hunting for her.
There were raised voices – her mother's and her father's. He was so drunk that she could barely understand his words. Then there was the sound of his fist against her cheek, and her cry of pain. More punching, more wailing, and then only her mother's sobbing. Her father stumbled into the kitchen to search for something to eat, and then went into the living room to settle in front of the wall screen.
It was up to J'Soran to comfort her mother, to wipe away the blood yet again, and then to wash her face.
J'Soran shook her head. "No!" she whispered fiercely, and then opened her eyes. The little girl was gone. Only the woman stared back at her, a woman who had left that nightmare behind thirty-four years ago. She shut off the light and stole back to bed, curling into herself beneath the covers. She now knew why the name Moru had sounded familiar to her that morning in Navarr's office.
It was one of the last words that her mother had spoken before she died at the violent hands of J'Soran's father all those years ago.
Chapter 5
____________________
( 1 )
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER NAVARR HAD just finished her morning debriefing with the gamma shift commander when Brantar Varis arrived at the security office.
"Thanks, Mel. You're dismissed." Chris turned to Varis. "Morning, brantar."
"Morning, commander. I think I've got a lead on your Doctor Moru case."
"Yeah, I found some more information on him too. He was a bio-geneticist working for the Bri'Nai Institute. Or, rather, he was until about five years ago. I assume from your expression that you recognize that name."
Varis nodded. "It's one of the premiere medical research institutes in the whole Confederacy. It's located on Anjisald, one of our outer colonial worlds."
"Yes." Navarr swiveled her terminal screen so Varis could see the readout displayed there. "I contacted the institute, and they were happy to forward me Doctor Moru's personnel record as soon as I explained the situation. He's a graduate of Kruss University, and he spent his entire career working in the medical research field, with a specialty in genetically inherited diseases. Bri'Nai was the last scientific institution to employ him, and he'd been there for almost ten years. But, about five years ago, he suddenly quit and disappeared. He gave no notice, not even to his laboratory team. I spoke with his chief assistant, Doctor Swyn M'Harri, and she said she had known Moru for the entire time he'd been there. He never once displayed any erratic behavior or strange tendencies. In fact, compared to most of the other senior staff at the institute, Doctor Moru was one of the most unassuming, quiet, and patient instructors. According to her, his sudden absence was quite shocking to everyone there."
"That was five years ago?"
Navarr nodded. "That's not the only unusual part of this case. Look at this." She highlighted a section of the file. "There's an eleven year gap in his employment history. He quit working for Lykenshy University in 2627, and his next job was for Athdan's College in 2638. But there was no request from Athdan's for his previous record. All that's noted in the file is that he left Lykenshy in 2627. I contacted Lykenshy, but they're refusing to hand over his personnel file without a class two subpoena from me. I'm in the process of getting it now, but it could take a couple days."
"Yet the Bri'Nai Institute handed over their records without any trouble?"
Navarr shrugged. "It's all in the cause of death, and it's also up to the employer. Ralorian criminal code allows the employer the option of releasing the personnel records with just a death certificate as verification for their own files. But, if they want to be jackasses about it, they can formally request a class two subpoena first."
"That seems a litt
le odd," Varis said, puzzled. "Why would they be that stubborn about a record that's over fifty years old?"
"I thought so too, especially since Athdan's College and every other employer in Moru's lengthy career was more than happy to hand over their records." She shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the bank of consoles behind her. "But I find it even more unusual that Athdan's didn't request an official copy of his employment history, especially as an academic institution. It appears that they just accepted his word that he had worked at Lykenshy."
Varis leaned down once more to scroll through the file. "It doesn't look like they even asked why he had been unemployed for so long."
"Exactly." Navarr exhaled, frustrated. "The more I dig into this, the more I'm convinced that Moru was murdered. I have no physical evidence to prove it, but nobody suddenly quits their job, gets a false ID and disappears."
"You said he came here on a Dagonite liner?"
"Yeah. I already pulled the liner's passenger manifest and flight record for the last six weeks. Harmod Rosa boarded the liner at the L'Dai colony in the Tahgo sector nine days ago; six days before it arrived here. But when I checked all incoming and outgoing passenger manifests on all public transports for that colony for the last five years, no one by the name of either Korik Moru or Harmod Rosa showed up in the search results. There was a Mister Rosa who checked in to a hotel in Vess City two weeks before he boarded the Dagonite liner, and the ID did match the one we found on Moru here. But other than that, the trail's gone cold. Without knowing what transport he used to get to that colony, there's no way of cross referencing the other passengers on the liner that came here to verify if he was being followed or not."
"Which means that he probably obtained the false ID on L'Dai," J'Soran suggested. "If he was smart, he would have used several aliases after leaving the Bri'Nai Institute."
Navarr gave a frustrated snort and leaned forward, swiveling her terminal screen so she could see the personnel record once more. "But why did he leave in the first place?? According to his assistant, he had no visitors in the few days before he disappeared; at least, none that she knew of. He lived alone, he wasn't married, he had no immediate family; or, if he did, he never talked about them. The anteri who investigated the missing persons report that was filed five years ago states in his report that a search of Moru's house turned up no evidence of foul play. There was a few clothes and a suitcase missing from his bedroom closet, but that was it. They did a transit search for his credit chip, but no purchases ever appeared on his financial record. Mister Prill – the anteri who was assigned the case – couldn't say for certain that Doctor Moru had been abducted, or that there was even any kind of foul play involved."
