“How are you today, Mr. Culper?” Nemo asked.
“I’m ready for you to try and fix my brain damage.”
“You understand I can make no promises?” Rick remembered all too well the Wrogul’s surgical procedures. The alien possessed the ability to perform surgery without the need of surgical devices. Two of its tentacles could physically pass through flesh and bone, bloodlessly, and perform the procedures. In addition, the Wrogul could naturally synthesize complicated organic chemicals. Nemo liked to refer to himself as an intelligent, mobile surgical bay.
“I understand,” Rick said.
“Very well. Dr. Ramirez, would you ready the patient?” Assistants came in and Rick was set on a table, face down, and given a light sedative. No shaving of his skull or even sterilization was needed. Rick had researched the Wrogul’s ability, and he knew some within the Science Guild considered the things the aquatic aliens did to be impossible. As he’d been a patient before, Rick knew better. “We’re ready to begin,” it said eventually. “Are you prepared?”
“I’ll never be fully prepared for this kind of thing,” Rick said with a chuckle. “Go ahead.” Rick felt something wet touch the back of his head, then with a shiver, movement inside his skull.
“Tell me when you taste yellow,” Nemo said.
Rick gave a little laugh. “What? How do you…oh, god!”
“Hmmm,” Nemo said with a satisfied sound, “I do love digging around Human brains. Your biology is so delightfully simple!”
“Don’t insult the patient,” Dr. Ramirez said from where he was monitoring Rick’s vital signs.
“I am sorry, was I insulting?”
“You could say that.”
“Oh,” Nemo said and was silent for a time. Rick felt like one of the times he’d taken some off-world drugs while out on leave from the marine company Micky Finn. He’d done it because he was the new guy, and that’s what you had to do to fit in. All he really remembered was how it had taken away his ability to control his own thoughts, and that was how he felt now. “It’s quite a mess in here,” Nemo said. “The scar tissue created by the medical nanites didn’t repair the damage so much as mitigate the effects. They’re usually not very creative unless a technician has them under control.”
“Can you fix it?” Rick asked, though it took a great deal of effort to make the words come out. He kept thinking about what the number 42 smelled like, and the sound of fresh calculus.
“Your cortex is fine,” Nemo said as things moved inside Rick’s skull, “the damage is in the hippocampus, so you’re having trouble getting to those memories.”
“I sometimes think I remember something, but can’t see the memory,” Rick said. It took a seemingly long time to form the words.
“Let’s see if we can find the damaged pathways?” Dr. Ramirez suggested. Nemo made an all too Human sound of assent.
“Try to think of something recent,” Nemo suggested, “something that was either traumatic or emotional.”
I don’t feel emotions anymore, Rick thought, then remembered seeing the black-skinned alien and fixated on that encounter. Nemo seemed to jump, and the tentacles in Rick’s brain made the inside of his thighs itch.
“You’ve seen a Sooloo!” Nemo said excitedly.
“A what?” Rick asked.
“A Sooloo,” he repeated. “They’re a very old, very mysterious race. They’re a lot like my race, and the Izlians. They’ve been around a long time. They fought for the Kahraman in the Great War. Those monsters modified the Sooloo, gave them some crazy abilities. At least, that’s what the rumor says. I believe more people have seen a Depik in person than have seen a Sooloo. One of their abilities is why, of course. They can cloud your memory, and make themselves seemingly disappear. It even masks some scanning equipment. Maybe your injury interferes with that. How long ago was this?”
“First time was in Karma station,” Rick said, “and then a few hours ago here on Prime Base.”
“What?” Ramirez snapped. “Did you say here on Prime Base?”
“Yes sir,” Rick confirmed.
“Nemo, I need to know about this race,” Ramirez continued. Gratefully, Rick felt the tentacles leave his brain, and he sighed with relief.
“There isn’t much more to tell,” the Wrogul said. “It looks just like Rick’s memory, according to descriptions I’ve seen.”
“Damn it, Nemo, I wasn’t in there with you,” Ramirez reminded the alien. “I can’t read people’s thoughts.”
“I don’t read his thoughts,” Nemo said in a surprisingly mulish tone. “I just pick up what he’s seeing relayed back through—”
“Nemo!” Ramirez interrupted, “This is important!”
Rick rolled part of the way over, resisted the urge to feel the back of his head, and started describing the Sooloo to Ramirez. “They’re as tall as a Human, with skin as black as space. They’re almost skeletally thin, with hideous faces and glowing red eyes.”
“Exactly,” Nemo said, trying to help. Ramirez had a slate and was furiously tapping in details. A Tri-V came alive above the device and aliens started rushing by almost too fast for Rick to see.
“Stop!” Rick said. “Back slowly.” Ramirez obliged. “There!” Rick said. “That’s it.” It was a perfect, if somewhat blurred view of the alien he’d seen twice now. The being had its cloak up, mostly covering its head, but you could still see one glowing red eye.
“Humans have encountered them,” Ramirez said, “though only a couple times according to this. It caused nightmares and killed two members of the merc team who surprised it. They called the alien a ‘Grimm.’”
“Fitting,” Rick said. “They’re right out of a terrifying fairy tale. I assume there aren’t any in the Winged Hussars?”
Ramirez shook his head. “No,” he said, “though I bet Alexis would love to have a couple. Like Nemo said, they’re incredible spies.” He looked back at Rick. “Did you say you saw one on Karma station?”
“Yes, right before I signed on. In fact, I saw it in the Winged Hussars’ personnel office.” Ramirez turned to the nearest comms terminal and called the head of security.
* * *
“Say that again?” Alexis asked.
The image of the Winged Hussars chief of HST looked askance. Alexis knew the facial expressions of the Zuparti well enough to recognize doubt and worry…but mostly worry. “I said, commander, that we have a report of a Grimm on the station.”
“A…Grimm, did you say? Is that a race, or some kind of event?”
“A race, sir.” Alexis had no recollection of anything by that name. Grimm? she thought. What, like the fairy tales?
“Uuth, I’m afraid I’ve no idea what you mean.” While she waited for her to reply, Alexis did a query through the Hussars network and got nothing.
“
“I see now,” Alexis said, cutting Uuth off before she could continue. “They’re supposed to be able to mask their presence and even remove memory of it?”
“Yes, Commander,” Uuth said.
“Then how does anyone know that one is here?”
“That’s the strange part. The sighting was by a Human marine.”
“Who?” The Zuparti looked down, presumably at a slate.
“Corporal Rick Culper, the one with that nasty scar on his face? The report actually comes from Dr. Ramir
ez, who was working with Nemo on the corporal—”
“Entropy!” Alexis snapped. “When did this happen?”
“Well, after the first time Corporal Culper came to me with a report of seeing a strange creature I started doing some research…”
“Wait,” she interrupted again, “are you telling me he came to you about this Grimm once before?” The alien nodded. “When?”
“Yesterday, sir.” Alexis prided herself on not being overly emotional, but the anger and frustration on her face must have shown through, based on the way Uuth’s eyes got wide in alarm, and her whiskers twitched. “I hope you understand that suggesting a Grimm, a legendary being believed to be extinct, wasn’t something I could immediately take seriously. Even Lieutenant T’jto was skeptical.”
Of course she was skeptical; she’s a MinSha, Alexis thought. “Yes, Uuth, but I wish you’d contacted me with the first report.”
“I…I didn’t want to waste your time.”
“The commander’s job is to have her time wasted,” she reminded her, “but you’re not wasting it this time. Sound the general security alarm.”
“Commander?”
“As ordered,” she said and cut the connection. She used her pinplants to access the database of individual Hussars’ channels. “Corporal Rick Culper?”
“Commander Cromwell?” The young corporal sounded surprised.
“That’s correct, Corporal. I just finished speaking with Uuth in HST.”
“Oh, no,” he said. “Colonel, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to bother you with this.”
“No, Corporal, you should have. Right now, I need you to explain everything you’ve seen with the Grimm.” Less than five minutes later, she cut the connection with Rick and switched over to the special channel with Ghost. “Find that damned thing,” she said, almost shaking with rage. New Warsaw had been penetrated! Her very base was infiltrated, her home! It was intolerable!
“
“And?”
“
* * *
All the commanders in the conference room looked up as the rear door slid open, and Alexis Cromwell walked in. She had her nearly waist-length silver hair intricately braided in a ponytail that seemed to almost wag behind her. Jim noticed the way Nigel was following her every move, and suspected he knew why.
In the day since their heated meeting, Nigel’s stance on the Winged Hussars’ commander had changed, subtly. He was still upset at her unwillingness to scream and pounce, his standard operating procedure, but when they’d had lunch together with Alistair Sinclair, Lisa Drake, and Frank Earl, he’d almost appeared to have forgotten his anger at Jim. It appeared the fiery commander of Asbaran Solutions was conflicted.
Splunk once again sat on his shoulder, taking in everything going on around her. When Hargrave visited with a status report a few hours earlier, she’d smuggled herself aboard. As was usual with the Fae, she did what she wanted. When Jim got the summons, she’d been in his quarters as he emerged from the shower.
Jim was secretly relieved when Alexis called them to the conference room. Relieved and terrified, actually. She hadn’t complained when they’d decided to stay on Prime Base instead of returning to Bucephalus. But after Hargrave heard how the meeting went, he’d been less than thrilled to hear that Nigel had called her a coward. Just to be safe, Jim had his XO stay on the ship. If things got bad on Prime Base, he doubted the ship would stand much of a chance against all the firepower Alexis had, but he couldn’t leave them helpless.
“Thanks for coming so quickly,” Alexis said as she took her seat at the head of the table. Lieutenant Colonel Walker was there as well, and with the authority Sansar Enkh had entrusted him with, it meant this was almost a full meeting of the Four Horsemen.
“Have you decided?” Nigel asked immediately. Jim groaned inwardly.
“Yes,” she said. “Or rather, the situation has been decided for me.” She gestured and another person who’d come in with her moved into view. Jim hadn’t even noticed the Zuparti at first, and the nervous alien looked like it was somewhere between fight and flight as it examined the room. Like many aliens with furred bodies, it wore little in the way of clothing; it only had a light vest with a Winged Hussars’ logo on one breast and “Uuth—HST” on the other. “This is Uuth, head of our HST, our Home Security Team, here on New Warsaw.”
The alien nodded, and a Tri-V lit up above the conference table. It was set to “universal” setting, which mean it would display a 3D image based on the perspective of anyone looking at it from anywhere around the room. A rather blurry image of a black-skinned alien appeared, wearing a dark hood that appeared bright next to its ebony skin. The hood was partly back, revealing a wide, fish-like mouth full of sharp teeth and red eyes that glowed like burning coals. Data appeared next to it, and Jim realized Uuth must be controlling the display with her pinplants.
“This is a Sooloo,” Uuth said. “The race is known among Humans as a Grimm. They’re extremely rare in the Union and are rumored to possess some highly unusual abilities. Among those is a talent that allows them to mask their presence and make observers forget they saw them. The Grimm are intelligence gatherers. They’re spies, and they excel at this task.” Uuth looked around the room. “This image was taken on Prime Base 16 hours ago.”
The table erupted in shouting, and Jim used his pinplants to look up info on the Grimm. His own echo of the GalNet was considerably deeper than average, yet he had almost nothing on them. An account of a Human trader whose computer records were stolen; a single image on his security system revealed an alien which looked just like this one. Another account of a similar creature spotted on Earth, but no details on what it was doing there. The planetary governments had attempted to track it down but had found nothing.
“Please,” Alexis said, raising a hand. The room quieted. She sighed, and Jim realized just how tired she looked. “The Grimm is believed to have left the system aboard one of our couriers a few hours ago. Which means, shortly, the location of New Warsaw might be out.”
“Now that your safety’s at risk, you’re concerned?” Jim asked.
“Your earlier comments might have been in poor taste,” she said, “but they were true to the extent that I value my Hussars’ safety more than anything else. Also, you need to realize, we have a lot of Humans here. Families, and a diverse genetic stock.”
“You could save the species in a worst-case scenario,” Alistair Sinclair said. She nodded. “Jesus Christ, how long have you been planning this?”
“A defense against someone or something trying to wipe out humanity?” she asked. Alistair nodded. “Since we discovered this system a hundred years ago. When my grandmother read a book by Dr. Adelaide Black called The Galactic Union, it changed her perspective. She was the first to see the scale of what we faced. Dr. Black saw the results of galactic war. Planets all but destroyed. Worlds even better than Earth, scoured of all life.”
“There hasn’t been a conflict like that in, what?” Lisa Drake asked. “Ten thousand years?”
“Twenty thousand years,” Jim offered, then added, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen again.”
“Or won’t,” Alexis agreed. “Now maybe you see why I was so reluctant to get into this. And now, I don’t have a choice.”
“So what do we do?” Nigel asked. “Assault Earth?”
“Eventually, yes,” she agreed. Nigel slapped the table in exultation. “However, I haven’t given up on stopping that courier.”
“How?” Jim asked. “It has almost a day’s head start. Where’s it going?”
“Sulaadar,” she said.
Jim shook his head then spoke. “That’s a major trad
e world.”
“We’re painfully aware of that,” she replied, and Jim wondered if she had a history there.
“If the Grimm knows where you are, it’ll be able to get the info out, or just disappear in a heartbeat on the trading outposts or syndicate operations.”
“We had a run-in there a few months back,” Alexis said, confirming Jim’s thoughts. “The Transki Syndicate has taken over control of the trade routes there, and the Merchant Guild has basically ignored the situation. If our scout reports are accurate, there’ve been a dozen battles there since we left.”
“I don’t see how this helps the situation,” Nigel said. “In fact, it’ll be even easier for this alien to simply disappear when it gets there.”
“Not if we beat it there.”
Jim shook his head in confusion. “Beat it there? It takes 170 hours; how can you beat it there?”
“The five-day deal?” Walker asked. Alexis looked at him and narrowed her eyes.
“So you know about the shortcut?”
“Yes,” he said, “Sansar managed to get one from a stargate controller on our last mission. She had to give him almost a shipload of red diamonds to do it, but she managed.”
“Do you know how they do it?” Alexis asked.
Jim was more tuned in to this conversation than any he could remember in recent memory. He’d been more than a little distracted after his mother’s death, then the betrayal of…that woman. For the first time since then, she didn’t enter his mind. Hyperspace travel was like gravity, a rock-solid constant that you could put down as “established scientific fact.” It took 170 hours in hyperspace to travel from transition point to emergence point, period.
“Only that the Cartography Guild has some shortcut,” Walker said and shrugged. “I don’t know what it is.”
A Fiery Sunset Page 16
