Garrin crept through the dark reaches of an empty mid-grav docking bay in the civilian’s maintenance wing of the space station. Few ships unloaded cargo there. Replacement parts, machinery, and tools necessary for keeping the station running lay scattered in random clusters. The space might look full but the spaces between the crates belied the illusion. More off the record business took place here than actual storage.
Passenger docking bays had soft fabrics, colorful wall panels, and clear lighting to discourage clandestine activities. So did the reassuring presence of security guards. Instead of conversations preparing for departure, he heard only the constant click and whir of the lift rotating transport platforms up and down the length of the wing.
He peered around some plasfoam containers stacked above human height in awkward piles, draped in cargo netting. They created a maze of hiding places. Spotty lights in the center of the bay made the distant stacks appear to be amorphous monsters.
Perfect for a clandestine meeting. This wasn’t his first.
He shuddered in revulsion at the taint upon his honor and his soul of this foreign place. This alien place.
His blue diamond caste mark proved his nobility and his superiority over the lesser beings he must deal with. Mother assured him of that often. He would never learn to accept this station in neutral space far away from the Harmonite Empire—the center of the universe.
The bay smelled more human and less like the unwashed bodies of the aliens from the CSS. Garrin refused to believe the evidence created by the CSS linking their heretical past to that of beloved Harmony.
“Are you here?” Garrin asked into the dark.
“Yes,” came the clear reply. One of the lumps resolved itself into the rough shape of a bulky man. He stepped into the edges of a pool of light. He wore gray coveralls, the uniform of the dockers’ union, and slapped a length of pipe menacingly into one hand.
Garrin stepped back in alarm.
“Did you bring the credit chit?”
“Did you do as you were told?”
The docker nodded, his face too shadowed to discern expression. Garrin couldn’t tell if he lied or told the truth.
“How do I know?”
“Want me to show you?”
Garrin shuddered. “Yes. There has been no news of the deed.”
“There won’t be.”
“The Media branch of the Professional Caste will not be informed by us.”
Absolute heresy that Laudae Sissy had allowed the Media to form their own caste. He refused to acknowledge the breech in the covenant with the Goddess. The upstart High Priestess had given them the black bar caste mark of the poor and incorporated the poor into the Workers.
“I have other sources of information. Remember, I have your name and your worker ID number. If you have lied to me, I will find you. In my world, your head would be forfeit for lying to a member of my caste.” Garrin drew himself up as tall as he could make himself, projecting authority, as his mother had taught him.
“We aren’t on Harmony,” the worker sneered.
“No. But I have authority. I will have you taken there. You know the punishment.”
The worker laughed.
“Show me the body,” Garrin insisted.
“When the time is right.”
“Now. I need to know you have done what I ordered you to do.”
“You didn’t order, you bribed. I did. Now pay up.”
“I’ll have you—”
“Yeah. Look, I told the truth. Check your sources. After you give me the chit. I need the money. Now.” He slapped the pipe against his hand again. The whack of metal slamming against flesh reverberated against the crates.
He fished into the pocket within a pocket of his casual blue robe for the plascard and handed it to his contact. “Pure cash. No account numbers to trace it to. Just insert it into any terminal at any pay station. Just as you said.”
The docker nodded and grabbed the card. Then he disappeared into the darkness. His footsteps faded quickly.
“Where’s Laud Gregor?” Garrin called after him.
“Look in the last place you’d expect to find it.” The disembodied voice echoed from the depths of the bay.
Garrin hastened onto the rotating platform of the central lift that would take him upward through the light grav levels to the Zero G center of the station. There a tram would whisk him to the clean safety of his own wing.
Chapter Two
Laudae Sissy, High Priestess of Harmony and all her colony planets, held her breath. The shuttle touched down with barely a bump. The aircraft hovered, then eased over to the verge of the landing field. She released the pent up artificial air in her lungs on a long, relieved exhale.
She’d flown in shuttles and space a grand total of six times. Would she ever get used to the scary exhilaration? Jake took it for granted. She admitted to herself that she felt safer when he piloted her.
Behind her seat, Dog and Monster each opened an eye in query, keeping their muzzles resting on their forepaws. Neither animal showed much interest in life yet, still groggy from hyperspace drugs. Crewmen had had to carry them from her bunk to the shuttle. Not so much a problem with Dog, the brown, short-haired mongrel with a skinny tail and floppy ears. Monster, on the other hand, had taken two strong men to maneuver from his space cradle. The shaggy black water dog weighed more than Sissy did.
“We’re home,” she whispered to the dogs. Monster thumped his heavy tail once in response. Then he closed his eyes again, not reassured. “Three weeks in hyperspace that felt like only a long night of sleep,” Sissy continued, to reassure herself more than the dogs.
How had Jake, General Devlin, commander of the space station First Contact Café, occupied himself during that long period of time? She touched her lips once again with a tentative fingertip. She relived the glorious moment when Jake had kissed her. Long and deep. In full view of any who cared to look. For those few heartbeats the universe had fallen away and only the two of them existed.
All thought of caste, cultural, religious, and planetary differences ceased. She and Jake belonged together. Neither of them had figured out a way to make that happen.
The hatch irised open and a ramp extruded from the vessel. The end of the exit rested solidly on green grass. Sissy fumbled with the catch of her safety harness.
“Slow and steady works faster than hasty and clumsy,” Mary, eldest of Sissy’s six acolytes, admonished. Her strong, long-fingered hands flipped the latch in one sure movement.
“Thank you, Mary.” Sissy nodded her head in proper protocol even as she bounded from her chair toward the opening. She paused at the top of the ramp to breathe deeply of her homeworld.
The dust-laden air caught in her swelling throat. She expelled it in a long cough. Spasms racked her entire body, muscles in her back and legs cramping painfully. A sense of helpless floundering assailed her, taking her back to the awful moments on the planet Sanctuary when Laud Gregor, High Priest of Harmony, had died, and Sissy had nearly succumbed to the toxic alien pollens.
Her mind spun as she fought for air to circulate through her body. Where she was, and when she was, tangled.
Calm down! She almost heard General Jake Devlin whisper into her mind. Relax, let Harmony ease your lungs.
She bent double and held her stomach to control the cough. Her lungs fought to adjust to a new level of moisture and pollen. After nearly a year aboard the First Contact Café breathing artificial air that had been stripped clean of all her asthma triggers, she found this onslaught of plant life, industrial pollution, and quake rubble irritated delicate tissues.
Martha, second eldest of her acolytes, thrust an inhaler into her mouth. “Breathe,” she commanded as she depressed the plunger.
Sissy obeyed. Drugs raced through her system. Colors took on new brightness, silhouettes clarified. Layers of reality blended and merged. She closed her eyes to adjust to the shifting perspectives.
Within seconds, passages opened in her
lungs. She kicked off the light slippers the crew insisted she wear on board and ran down the ramp to the muddy grass. Her toes curled, digging into the soil, connecting her once more to the glory of Harmony. She knelt on the damp grass and kissed the ground, the living skin of her Goddess.
Sissy sighed in relief as she righted herself despite the mud on her knees and elbows, keeping her inhaler ready, just in case.
“I’m home!” she cried twirling in ecstasy. “I’m home!”
“About time,” came a scratchy tenor voice from a few paces away. “We’ve been waiting over an hour for the shuttle.”
“Gil!” Sissy cried and ran to throw her arms around her old friend. “Excuse me, Mr. Guilliam, I greet you in Harmony.” She remembered herself long enough to bow formally to the man who ran the Crystal Temple in the name of the High Priest and High Priestess.
“I welcome you home to Harmony,” he replied with an equally formal bow. He wore casual shirt and trousers but in mourning gray. This reception was private, despite the sad burden she had carried home from the First Contact Café. “Now give me a hug.” He laughed, throwing his arms wide.
She fell into his embrace gratefully. His strong fingers clutched her back, giving her comfort, if not resolve to carry on with her duties.
“You’re so frail,” he whispered into her hair. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing important now that I’m home. Harmony will heal my body.” She stiffened her spine and pushed away from him. She patted her mourning black slacks and blouse into order. She hated the black required of all Temple Caste until Laud Gregor’s funeral and appointment of his successor. “Where is Laudae Penelope?” she asked. Gil’s wife and children were nowhere in sight. Unusual.
“Penny prepares your quarters in the Crystal Temple. She would not trust the chore to servants, or another within our caste. We have kept your return as quiet as possible. The airing of your rooms would certainly alert the Media Caste as well as your enemies within the Temple,” he whispered, guiding her toward a long black car that awaited them a few yards away. They both expected her acolytes and the dogs to follow without question. She looked back to make sure Marsh and Ashell did not get lost in the melee of people moving around the shuttles, unloading and sorting luggage.
She couldn’t find them in the constantly shifting crowd.
“What?” Gil asked.
“My brother and sister.” A bubble of panic threatened to close her throat. “They should have been with Mary.”
Gil signaled a younger man in gray standing beside the long black car. They exchanged a few words and the anonymous acolyte jogged over to the shuttle. Three men in black utility uniforms with swords strapped to their hips followed him. Their red square Military caste marks stood out among the purple circles of Temple Caste. “Phillip will find them,” Gil said to Sissy. “He’s been herding Laud Gregor’s acolytes for more than a decade and knows what kinds of places children will hide or get stuck in.”
Sissy accepted his judgment. She gnawed her lower lip in anxiety anyway.
“You brought no hearse?” Sissy stopped abruptly.
Gil dropped his hand from the small of her back. “I had a message from General Jake that you presided over a space funeral for High Priest Gregor and shot his casket into the local sun.” He too stopped. His words were hesitant. “That isn’t right. You know better than that. All of Harmony and her Colonies deserve the respect of proper ritual.”
“I know the importance of ritual. I do not vary the traditions. I watched Lord Lukan load the casket aboard our transport!” She swallowed her anger at such an accusation. Tight constrictions around her chest threatened her breathing again.
“A message from Jake? I need to see it.” She longed to return to him. Short of that, seeing his recorded image on a comm screen would have to do.
“Odd, that. Text only. You’d think since we opened communications with the rest of the galaxy, he’d speak to me directly. He is my friend,” Gil paused.
“The message did not come from Jake.” Jake had taught Sissy to suspect anything out of the ordinary. He would have spoken to Gil directly. The new crystals laced with Badger Metal ensured almost instantaneous communication.
“He ordered me, ordered me, to ignore tradition based upon your authority. I wondered at the time why. But I know better than to ignore orders. I thought he’d sent text only because it would be safer . . . I don’t know why I trusted the message other than being harried by relief efforts. The latest quake devastated much of the port facility. The tsunami following sank a dozen ships loaded with food from the south. Food desperately needed here. All the roads from the farms have been damaged, many bridges down. I allowed my distraction to cloud my thinking. My apologies, Laudae.” He bowed his head in submission.
“Apology accepted. Let your continued guilt be your only punishment.” Though she had the right to demand his head. Her stomach soured at the thought of that all-too-common punishment.
She hastened back to the shuttle where Mary oversaw the unloading of their luggage.
The casket should have been the first item removed from the back end of the vessel. Only the trunks of clothing, books, and personal items for Sissy and her girls were piled at Mary’s feet.
No casket.
The pilot fiddled with the controls on the shuttle bridge, checking his chronometer every few seconds.
Sissy reentered the shuttle through the hatch and quickly made her way forward. “Spacer Norton, will you please contact the captain? I must speak with him right away,” she said even before she’d cleared the portal separating the pilot’s station from the rest of the vessel.
“Yes, my Laudae,” he muttered, not turning to look her in the eye, a horrible breach of manners.
Sissy tapped him on the shoulder. He whipped his head back to her, an angry scowl creasing his brow and turning his mouth into a deep frown. His yellow star caste mark on his left cheek looked raw and slightly blurred, as if recently altered. The purple line encircling the star that proved his loyalty and trustworthiness to deal with Temple Caste did not have true, vibrant color. She stepped back a bit in shock. Her hand went to her own full circle of seven caste marks on her right cheek. They tingled against her fingertips.
Her entire life, until two years ago when Laud Gregor had found her, she had worked hard to hide the mutation of multiple caste marks. Now she wanted to run away again to avoid this man’s distaste for the aberration.
Some of her training and Jake’s repeated statements of her worthiness to preside over all the castes gave her the courage to order this man to do her bidding.
“Is there a problem, Spacer Norton?”
“No, my Laudae,” he grumbled, fussing with controls on his dashboard. “There’s a lot of interference. I may not get through.”
“Get through. That is an order. Do you understand me?” She put all the crystal scalpel she could into her voice.
He touched a different series of lights on the board. Crackles moved up and down in volume. Then at last a voice came through the speakers: “Harmony transport Star Runner, Comms officer Babelle. What do you need, Shuttle Seven?”
“This is Laudae Sissy, I must speak with Captain Spacer Kalek immediately.”
“Yes, my Laudae. Immediately.” Spacer Babelle sounded infinitely more polite than Norton.
“My Laudae, how may I assist?” Captain Spacer Kalek appeared in the center of the comm screen.
Sissy took a long breath, thinking about the levels of politeness and what they might mean. “Captain, where is the casket containing Laud Gregor’s body?”
“What!” The captain turned away from the screen and hastily whispered orders to whoever stood behind his left shoulder, out of sight.
Sissy relayed the information Gil had given her.
“Laudae, my sincerest apologies for this severe breach of courtesy to the remains of our late High Priest. My people are investigating as we speak. I personally saw the casket stowed in a private cabin
and lashed down so it would not move around in the zero g and the sensory distortions of hyperspace. I . . . I gave him a salute. As was his due.”
“Thank you, Captain. Your respect and courtesy are noted.” She did not look toward Spacer Norton, discourtesy for discourtesy. “Captain Spacer Kalek, the casket is not on this shuttle. Was it loaded onto the shuttle with Lord Lukan and his party?”
The captain paled at this violation of protocol.
“My people are checking, questioning everyone aboard.” Captain Spacer Kalek bowed his head, as if awaiting an execution’s sword.
“Thank you for your prompt attention to this detail,” Sissy said formally, nodding her own head in acceptance of his apology and his actions. “Remember that not all of your crew are aboard at this moment.” She pointedly glared at Norton. “The initial investigation among your own caste is your responsibility. For now.”
Kalek’s nostrils flared. “I will question them personally when they return with the shuttles. When I have evidence and answers I will turn the investigation back to your caste as the offended party and the highest authority.”
“Noted, Captain Kalek. I will retire to the Crystal Temple. You may reach me there. Conclusive or not, I wish to review all interviews and collected evidence. You are to speak to me and me alone. No one else is authorized to hear your report. A text only message will be ignored and discarded.” Sissy reached to disconnect without the assistance or permission of the pilot.
“My Laudae,” Captain Kalek interrupted. “The grievous dereliction of duty is my responsibility. I offer my head to the executioner.”
“Thank you for your adherence to duty, but I find you more valuable alive and investigating than dead in the place of the true culprit.” Sissy bowed her head and closed her eyes.
“Find me the culprit and Laud Gregor’s remains so that all of Harmony may properly mourn at the state funeral. Only then can we look to the future and select a new High Priest.”
“Yes, my Laudae.” The captain looked mightily relieved at keeping his head intact.
Mourner Page 2
