The Spider and the Fly

by C.E. Stalbaum

  Chapter Four

  Jenavian spent the bulk of the thirty-six hour trip from Briton Chalo to Kalifax alone in the sparring room or her quarters. She wasn’t interested in enduring any more of Markus’s recruitment speeches, and she wasn’t keen on facing Thexyl’s all-too-knowing gaze, either. All she really wanted was to get this over with, and she’d nearly changed course back to the Nidus a dozen times by now, consequences be damned.

  But she hadn’t. Instead she’d brooded in silence, and by the last few hours of the trip she was about ready to punch a hole in one of the bulkheads. Whatever happened, though, she knew she was going to have to watch Markus carefully. He would be ready to pounce the moment she let her guard down, and she wasn’t about to give him that opportunity.

  Jenavian was on the bridge rifling through the Intelligence Ministry’s most recent dossiers on Mire activity when the jump drive pinged and the Manticore slowed back to sublight speed. She summoned Thexyl to help out with the landing, and as usual she couldn’t help but wince when the mottled brown mass of his ruined home world appeared outside the viewport.

  “I wish we’d come under different circumstances,” she told him once he’d settled into his chair. “I know you haven’t been back in a while.”

  “I haven’t had reason to,” Thexyl replied, and for a fraction of a second she might have caught a glimmer of regret in his unblinking eyes. “But I do appreciate the sentiment.”

  Jenavian nodded solemnly. For all their racial differences, both humans and Kali had suffered through the loss of their home world. Keledon had been the Tarreen’s first target when they’d launched their invasion against the Sarafan Dominion a century ago, and they’d succeeded in transforming the planet’s atmosphere into acidic vapor. Twenty billion humans had died that day, including the vast majority of the Great House leaders and all but a few members of the Royal Family. Kalifax’s devastation was almost tame by comparison—at least by now some sections of the planet were actually livable. Keledon would forever remain an abject wasteland.

  Still, she had always wondered if Keledon was some type of karmic retribution for what humans had done here. A decade or so before the war, the Sarafan had launched a surprise thermonuclear assault on Kalifax’s major industrial centers, leaving the planet an uninhabitable wasteland. Officially, the attack had been a “measured response” against the Kali government and its people for supporting so-called terrorist groups working to unravel the Dominion from within. Unofficially, the attack was just as likely a deliberate strike against the only species in the galaxy capable of resisting telepathic domination. Whatever the true reasons, though, the massacre had proven to be one of the most important catalysts in the Dominion’s eventual downfall.

  Jenavian doubted that was much consolation to the Kali, of course, and the thought that humans had done this still made her nauseous. Her species was responsible for many atrocities across the centuries, from the Dowd Insurrection to the endless bloody battles during the Unification Wars, but in her mind this one had always stood out as the most grotesque. The Kali had never waged organized war on anyone, and in fact they’d been instrumental in aiding dozens of other ailing worlds over the years. Kalifax was a monument to humanity’s ambition and bloodlust. It was a vivid and enduring reminder of how the people of the galaxy had suffered beneath the Dominion’s rule.

  And how, if the Mire cured the Pandrophage, they would again.

  “Did our prisoner tell you how far of a walk it would be from the starport?” Thexyl asked into the silence.

  “No, but I’ll find out,” Jenavian said. “Go ahead and set us down in Tafrinar.”

  “Very well.”

  She stepped off the bridge and made her way into her quarters to change. As tempting as it was to suit up in her armor, she knew that two humans wandering around in a place like this were going to be conspicuous enough. Unlike on most worlds, she wouldn’t be able to telepathically conceal her presence from the Kali natives, so instead she’d have to rely on more conventional means of appearing innocuous.

  She settled on a casual outfit not so different than what she’d worn on Briton Chalo, though this time she tucked a thin armored vest beneath her nondescript overcoat. Her rifle she left behind, but thankfully carrying her pulse pistol wouldn’t be a problem—no one, human or otherwise, traveled on a backwater planet like this without a weapon. She also fitted her small, palm-sized flechette gun into the concealed holster on her left wrist.

  Ten minutes later they were setting down in Tafrinar, the planet’s largest commercial port and one of the few places on the ruined world with any sort of condensed urban population. Jenavian made her way back into the hangar, and Markus was in the middle of a stretching regimen when the door slid open.

  “Time for fun already?” he asked. “And to think, I was finally getting used to sleeping on a cold metal floor.”

  “You’ll have plenty more opportunity once we get back,” Jenavian assured him, tapping the cage controls and lowering the energy field. “And just so you’re aware, I’ve increased the implant’s pain threshold by two levels. If you try anything, everyone in Tafrinar will know what your screams sound like.”

  “Nothing says inconspicuous like a man shrieking in the middle of the street,” Markus replied dryly, stepping forward and eyeing her up and down. “In case you didn’t know, two free humans walking around the streets of Kalifax are about as common as a V’rath at a Neyris funeral. Everyone will be watching us.”

  “I could always put you in manacles, if that’s what you’d prefer.”

  “Tempting, but I think Rodani will bury his head even deeper in the proverbial sand the moment he sees his former business partner approaching in chains.”

  “I assume you have a suggestion.”

  Markus glanced around the bay. “I’ll need to be armed, for one. Humans on fringe planets proudly display their hardware to let everyone know they mean business.”

  Jenavian reached to her belt and pulled out the pulse pistol she’d prepared for the occasion. “Take this.”

  “That’ll work.” He tapped the energy cell release and glanced back up at her when there was nothing inside. “So, what, I guess I can throw this if someone starts shooting at us?”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something. I’m obviously not giving you a loaded weapon.”

  “Obviously,” Markus muttered, clipping it on his belt. “All right, well, that’s the first problem. The second is that the Dowd might already be here. What do you plan to do if we run into them?”

  “Their minds are just as malleable as anyone else’s. With luck, we can just slip past them. If not…” Jenavian shrugged. “They’re in violation of Convectorate space. I have full authorization to eliminate them.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “And you really don’t think you’ll need my help with that?”

  “No.”

  He grunted. “Right. Well, that only leaves one last tiny little problem then—I don’t actually know where Rodani is.”

  “What?” she hissed. “You said you were supposed to meet him!”

  “Pasek told me that he went into hiding in Tafrinar,” Markus clarified. “You blew him up before he had a chance to give me the exact location of their safe house. We still have plenty of options, though. It’s just going to take a bit of extra leg work, that’s all.”

  Jenavian almost hit him. It would have been far more gratifying than activating the implant, and it would have wiped that smug little grin off his face just as effectively. But somehow she managed to just seethe quietly instead.

  “Look, I know Rodani,” Markus went on, “and better yet I know how Claggoth think. If he’s really hiding out here, then he’ll definitely have some sifters scanning the local frequencies and looking for trouble. The Mire have a number of codes we’ve used in the past to contact him, little strings of gibberish that no one else would notice. If we put them together in the right order, I can give him the hint that I’m here to help.�
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  “And you think that will flush him out?” she asked.

  “It should, or at least it will make him toss back a signal to let me know where he is. Just hand me your holopad and I’ll put together the transmission string.”

  Repressing a sigh, Jenavian handed it to him and then flipped on her earpiece. “You getting all this, Thexyl?”

  “I am,” her partner replied. “It’s an intriguing plan. I’ll also deploy some of our own sifter programs to analyze the local com chatter. If any Dowd did land here, people will be talking about them. We might be able to track their movements.”

  “Good idea,” she said. A group of Dowd would be hard to miss on any planet, what with their jet black skin and distinct lack of normal facial features. They “saw” through a curious form of echolocation, and they couldn’t communicate with most species without a translation device. The local authorities might have been poor and understaffed, but there was no way they wouldn’t have someone keeping an eye on a pack of notoriously violent alien visitors.

  Markus handed her back the pad. “Here, this should do it.”

  Jenavian nodded. “I’ll send this out and we’ll start making our way towards the city. Let me know the moment you get anything, Thexyl.”

  “Understood. Good luck.”

  She keyed for the pad to start transmitting before sliding it back into her pocket. “Any other delays I should know about?”

  “I think that covers it.”

  “Good, then let’s get this over with.”

  His eyes followed her over to the bay controls as she triggered the landing ramp release. “Who knows, maybe Rodani will actually appreciate us showing up to rescue him. Assuming Claggoth are psychologically capable of being appreciative, anyway.”

  “I’m sure he will be right up to the point where I put a flechette in his head.”

  Markus frowned. “You don’t need to kill him, you know. I’m sure he’ll part with the coordinates without too much of a fuss, especially if we get the Dowd off him.”

  “He’s a wanted criminal and terrorist sympathizer. I have no intention of letting him go.”

  “I see,” he murmured, his omnipresent sardonic grin finally fading.

  Jenavian tossed him the coldest glare she could manage. “Let me be absolutely clear as to what is going to happen in case there’s any confusion. First, we’re going to get the coordinates from this alien friend of yours. Second, I’m going to contact the fleet and order them to destroy the ship. Then once it’s gone, you and I are going straight back to the Widow for your interrogation. And if at any point you disobey me, you get shocked. Understood?”

  To his credit, Markus didn’t turn away or back down. He just stood there, so proud, so righteous, that it once again took all of her restraint not to choke him.

  “I guess you really haven’t changed, have you?” he asked.

  “I never did,” Jenavian murmured. “You should remember that.”

  She pushed him down ahead of her as the ramp lowered, and her nostrils were immediately beset by the lovely aromatic ensemble of a fetid jungle world mixed with a poorly-maintained starport. She’d set foot on far less hospitable planets, to be sure, but this stench had to rate somewhere in the bottom tier.

  The moment her boots hit the ground she was nearly overwhelmed by the sudden rush of mental activity all around her. After just a day and a half of travel she’d already grown accustomed to the relative quiet of the Manticore, and every time she landed on a new planet it always took her a few seconds to readjust to the telepathic “static” inherent in any urbanized area. The odd thing was that Tafrinar wasn’t particularly urban, at least not compared to a tightly-packed space station like the one they’d just left, and probably three quarters or more of the citizens were Kali who she couldn’t sense at all. And yet for some reason, the static felt twice as thick as it had on Briton Chalo. Perhaps the area was just more populous than she thought…or perhaps she simply hadn’t been getting enough sleep the last few days.

  Regardless, Jenavian sucked in a deep breath of the muggy air and stretched her senses out across the city. She couldn’t read anyone’s specific thoughts from here, but she could get a basic feel for the populace’s overall mood—and more importantly, she could begin the process of concealing her presence from the non-Kali among them. That, at least, would be a much easier task than on Briton Chalo.

  The docks section of Tafrinar was essentially a giant half-circle stretching over a ten kilometer area which, while small compared to the major ports on Eladrell or Regdar or any of the other major systems, was still plenty of room for hundreds of ships to dock at any given time. Unfortunately, Markus’s contact was located inside the actual city itself. In any reasonably civilized area they would have had access to an automatic tram or some other form of high-speed transportation to spit them out within walking distance of their destination, but evidently a century of reconstruction still hadn’t fully modernized this place. The only tram in sight looked so much like an archaic boxcar train that Jenavian half expected a cloud of steam to be curling out of it.

  “We shouldn’t ride that,” Markus said, placing a warning hand on her wrist as she started towards the boarding terminal. “Assuming you don’t want to abandon the pretense of blending in altogether.”

  “What are you talking about?” she snapped, jerking out of his grip and then immediately biting back a flash of annoyance at herself. He was right that there were already an uncomfortable number of people watching them, and her overreacting wasn’t going to help any.

  “You never were very good about studying the local culture,” he chided. “No one uses the trains here except for corporate investors and other big shots. They’re a status symbol more than anything practical. Plus, a bunch of the local merchants have cameras set up all over to see who gets on these things. They like to organize a greeting party on the other side to try and court potential off-world investors. I doubt you want to deal with that.”

  Jenavian pressed her lips together. If this whole thing was just a stalling tactic to buy the Mire even more time… “It will take us hours to walk all the way to the city proper.”

  His sardonic grin made a triumphant return, and it made her sick to think there was a time when she’d actually found it charming. “I never said anything about walking,” Markus replied. “We can flag down one of those Odak riders. They’re fast enough.”

  She followed his gesture over to one of the large, harnessed reptilian beasts hauling around what she’d originally thought were cargo crates. Apparently they were actually carriages with people stuffed inside them.

  “Fine,” she muttered. “Let’s hurry up, then.”

  They flagged down a driver, and a minute later they were bounding towards the heart of the city at a pace that probably violated a dozen interstellar safety statutes. But despite the medieval appearance of the carriages, they’d evidently been fitted with inertial dampeners to reduce the bouncing to little more than that of a normal ground car with substandard suspension. It made her feel slightly less primitive, if not any more secure.

  Five minutes into the trip her holopad beeped softly and she tapped it on. “You find something?”

  “Possibly,” Thexyl’s voice came back. “The locals are definitely aware of a group of Dowd in the city. They landed about three hours ago.”

  “So Rodani might still be alive,” Jenavian mused. “Any particular direction?”

  “The most recent reports are all coming from the manufacturing district. That’s probably the best place for you to start.”

  “Better than nothing, I suppose.”

  “Any response to my message?” Markus asked.

  “Did you get any response to that message Markus sent out?” she repeated the question.

  “Nothing yet,” Thexyl said. “It’s possible he’s not able to respond.”

  Or the whole thing was a lie, she thought to herself. “All right, we’ll try the manufacturing distr
ict. Let me know if anything changes.”

  Jenavian closed the connection and leaned forward to tell the driver about their change of destination. They arrived fifteen minutes later, and after sliding a few credit chits into the quaint little bucket on the side of the Odak, she slid out of the carriage and glanced around the mostly deserted streets. Other than the occasional voorash tree looming between the buildings, this part of the city reminded her of one of the many condemned industrial colonies out on the fringe worlds. In every case, high-profile companies had swept in with the promise of creating jobs for the local population and then later abandoned their efforts when a better offer had come along from an even worse-off planet. Festering wastelands like this were the result.

  “Seems like the perfect place for a miscreant to bury himself,” she murmured.

  “It is, actually,” Markus said. “The authorities rarely come out this far, and the locals who still live out here have better things to do than ask questions. Plus I imagine some of the materials in these abandoned industrial silos wreak havoc on satellite sensors.”

  Jenavian nodded idly. The two of them did stick out, but not as badly as she’d feared. There were plenty of non-Kali mulling around, and most of them seemed too preoccupied with their own problems to give anyone else a second glance.

  “Well, I suppose we can just start asking if anyone saw a bunch of creepy, eyeless goons walking around,” he suggested wryly. “You really should have had Thexyl come along—they’d probably be more likely to talk to him.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Jenavian said as she stretched out with her mind, gently brushing against the thoughts of anyone she could find. During their Spider training, the Widow had called the technique “sifting,” not unlike the similarly-named computer programs that rummaged through the endless morass of the Holosphere for relevant data. In this case, her mind played the role of the program, filtering through the millions of random thoughts and short term memories of the local population. Within thirty seconds or so, she could generally assemble a reasonably clear picture of what was going on…

  “Sense anything?” Markus asked.

  “Yes. The Dowd were traveling in small groups, probably six or eight of them in total. They eventually converged on a house a few blocks away.”

  “Sounds like that’s where we need to be, then. I just hope you have a better plan than kicking down the front door and shooting everything that moves.”

  Jenavian opened her eyes and took a deep breath. Sifting was mentally draining, and she had to be careful not to get too distracted with Markus standing right here. “I need to see the building first. This way.”

  She knew they were in the right spot the moment they turned the corner. The target structure was a two-story abandoned factory that had definitely seen better days. The windows all looked like they’d been sealed shut, and if not for her telepathic powers telling her otherwise, she would have assumed the building was condemned.

  “If that’s it, I haven’t seen any scouts or snipers,” Markus commented. “Can you sense anything?”

  “Nothing overtly hostile yet,” she told him, lifting her arm and activating her thermal scanner as subtly as she could. “I’m only reading four people inside.”

  He frowned. “Sounds like we’re missing a few. I doubt Rodani would be completely alone, either. He probably has at least two guards.”

  She stretched out again with her powers, this time more intently, and the moment she did so a warning tingle crawled down her spine. “I’m sensing nine of them.”

  “That’s…odd,” he murmured. “How good is that scanner of yours?”

  “Good enough, and there’s nothing in this area that would generate significant interference that I can see.”

  Markus ducked down behind a tall pile of debris once they drew close. “Well, I’m not sure how you want to approach this. I won’t be of much use in a frontal assault without a loaded weapon.”

  “Rodani’s probably already dead.”

  “Then why are the Dowd still in there?” he asked. “It’s more likely they’re interrogating him…or maybe even laying a trap in case he had backup nearby.”

  Jenavian crouched down next to him and resisted the urge to swear. Something was wrong, all right, and the warning tingle just wouldn’t go away. On impulse, she pulled out her holopad and called up the controls for Markus’s implant. If they were going to have to fight their way through a pack of Dowd to get to Rodani, then having two Spiders would definitely be better than one, but outright disabling her only source of control was out of the question. She wasn’t about to give him the opportunity to escape. Still, maybe there was a potential compromise…

  She typed in a quick code. “What do you sense?”

  “Uh…” Markus grunted. “Won’t your little implant shock me?”

  “I lowered the activation threshold. It should only juice you if I order it directly or if you seriously strain yourself.”

  He stared at her for a few seconds, probably trying to decide if she was lying, then eventually closed his eyes and sighed. His brow creased only a moment later. “I’m picking up ten of them. Two are huddled close together against the south wall.”

  “You’re right,” she said gravely, a little annoyed that he’d noticed that and she hadn’t. He’d always been better at picking out small details like that.

  “Four thermal signatures, ten sentient minds,” he mused. “The Dowd must know someone’s on the trail—they’re setting a trap.”

  “It certainly seems that way. Thexyl, you reading this?”

  “I am,” he confirmed. “Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do for you from here. I recommend caution, obviously—it’s possible we were spotted on the way in, or they might have had scouts at the starport.”

  “I doubt they know there’s a Spider here specifically,” Markus said. “They must just be assuming that Rodani has reinforcements nearby. They won’t be expecting a telepath.”

  Jenavian glanced back to the building. “Someone in there is terrified.”

  “One guess who that is. It’s getting worse, too—if we’re going to do something, we need to do it now.”

  “Then stay here for a minute. I’m going to scout around back.”

  She slipped away before he could protest, maneuvering along the adjacent buildings and then eventually sweeping back behind. She kept a fraction of her mind focused on Markus just in case he decided to run, but she doubted he would—the Damadus was too important to him to let go this easily. Besides, he knew he wouldn’t get far with the implant, anyway.

  She found a lone working window on the backside of the building facing out towards the ruined industrial plaza in the distance. As far as backdoor options went, it wasn’t terrible. In theory she should have been able to climb up there and take a peek inside to see what they were dealing with. Her scanners hadn’t detected any motion sensors or other booby traps lying in wait, but she would have been shocked if the Dowd didn’t have at least two people keeping a figurative eye on it. Regardless, all things considered it was still her best bet, and with Markus as a distraction it would work. Probably.

  Taking in a deep breath, Jenavian reached out to link with his mind. There’s a window on the top floor, she told him. I’m going to head up there and take a look.

  They’ll have scouts, Markus warned. And remember, they’ll be able to sense you even if they can’t see you.

  Yes, I’m aware, she replied tartly. That’s why you’re going to go knock on the door.

  A ripple of shock passed over his thoughts. Are you crazy? You realize the moment the Dowd see a human they’ll start firing.

  Then be ready to duck, she said as she drew her pulse pistol. I’ll only need a brief distraction.

  This is insane, Jen, he told her. There has to be a better way.

  Either you get to the door and give me a distraction, or I turn on your implant and let them come investigate the screaming man in the street. Wouldn’t you
prefer to be able to dodge when they start shooting?

  Fine, Markus grumbled. You just better be ready to move fast. The Widow won’t be happy with you if I get killed.

  Just wait for my signal, she said, smiling thinly. They’ll never know what hit them.