“Well,” the doctor cautioned, “we can’t discuss her condition, but she can certainly see visitors, provided they’re cleared ahead of time.”
“I trust everything was in order in that regard?” Maycare asked.
“Indeed.”
To Maycare’s surprise, the doctor and her associates turned them over to a nursebot, a floating orb overflowing with articulated appendages, who led them down a long sidewalk behind the main medical building and into a lightly wooded area next to a pond. Along the shore, sitting on a stone bench, a woman was feeding a group of ducks that had formed an orderly line in the water.
“Lady Veber?” the robot asked, “Would you like to have some visitors?”
Veber turned her head. Her face was paler than the last time Maycare had seen her. Also, there were dark circles beneath her eyes. She threw the remainder of the bread in her hand into the pond where the ducks began fighting over the scraps.
Maycare sat beside her while Doric and Henry stood at a discreet distance.
“Sorry we couldn’t come sooner,” Maycare said. “It took a while to get permission to see you.”
“Oh, I understand,” Veber said, her voice a little hoarse. “These birds keep me company, provided I bring them something.”
“How have you been?” Maycare asked.
“Well, it’s warmer on Lokeren, I can tell you... and the sun shines brighter.”
Doric smiled, but Henry maintained a mostly horrified look on his face.
“Is that boy alright?” Veber said, nodding toward Henry.
“These places make him nervous, My Lady,” Doric replied.
“At least they’ll let you leave if you want,” the matriarch remarked. “Most of the time...”
Henry’s eyes grew large.
“Listen, Becca,” Maycare continued, “Jess here has been researching the Necronea and she’s made some progress.”
“Yes, My Lady,” Doric said, “Lord Maycare’s library contained one of their books, or at least one of the books they seem to be using.”
“What kind of book?”
“Technically, it’s called a grimoire,” Doric went on, “but essentially it contains incantations used by the Necronea for manipulating tissue. Most people know it as Dark Psi.”
“Is that what the necromancer used on my son?”
“It would seem so,” Doric said. “It can be performed on both dead tissue and living flesh.”
“Can you use this grimoire to find Philip?”
Doric frowned. “I don’t know, but it’s possible. There’s more in the book I haven’t been able to translate yet.”
Veber, her eyes widening, grabbed Maycare tightly by the sleeve.
“Devlin,” she said, “you must find him and help him.”
“We’ll do our level best,” he replied. “I promise you that!”
“What if we can’t help him?” Henry asked, earning a quick swipe from Doric’s hand. “Ow.”
Lady Veber’s face turned dark, her mouth forming a thin line.
“Just find him,” she said.
Special ops from Warlock Industries disabled the exterior sensors and alarms before Lars Hatcher approached the target. He had studied the floor plan, but this was the first time he had ever gone on such a mission. It wasn’t dangerous except for the chance of being discovered. Before leaving, Lars asked Agent Skarlander for any last-minute advice.
“Don’t get caught,” was all he said.
The library was a long room with bookcases built into the walls. From the windows, starlight cast bluish shadows across finely woven rugs covering parquet floors. Twin fireplaces, one on either end of the hall, were the only other illumination. The books were barely visible behind cabinet doors enclosed in wire mesh.
The alarms off, Lars entered through a door leading in from the outside gardens. He paused to get a sense of the room and felt several residual energies, although not all were coming from the hall. He wondered how many other artifacts, mostly from questionable sources, were in the building. No time to investigate them, though. Lars needed to get in and out as quickly as possible.
Nobody was home — that much he knew — but Lars still moved slowly and deliberately between the bookcases, his mind probing everything around him. His other senses were just as heightened. The smell of mildew and old leather filled his nostrils and the far-off ticking of a grandfather clock sounded like pounding hammers.
He stopped.
To his left he felt something. It was ancient but still very much alive. In his mind, Lars could see it reaching out to him like gnarled fingers in the darkness. Lars followed the trail as it grew louder in his head until he came to a heavy table littered with books and loose papers. Someone had been working here, he sensed, but they were gone for now.
He surveyed the mess. Most of it was of no interest, but one of the tomes stood out. The cover was red leather with silver protectors at the corners. In the center, a symbol like an eye with jagged tendrils was carved into the skin. Passing his hand over the book, Lars felt the power radiating from it. For a moment, it took his breath away.
He reached out to undo the metal clasp holding it shut when the sound of movement jerked his head around.
“Excuse me,” a polite, but firm voice said. “I believe you’re trespassing.”
Lars turned. A robot, an out-of-date model, stood just inside a doorway to the rest of the house. His casing was old with blue and silver trim. Lars thought he might be a butlerbot.
“If you’re here to rob Lord Maycare,” the robot added, “I’m afraid you’re in quite a bit of trouble.”
Even with his back to it, Lars could feel the book beckoning him. It had a voice, like a distant echo, calling him.
“Don’t just stand there, man!” the robot said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Lars took a breath. He stretched out his hand but he was reaching out with something far more powerful. Concentrating, he heard metal compacting.
“Oh, dear,” the butlerbot remarked as his head flattened and his arms and legs folded flat against his body. Suspended in midair, the robot’s casing compressed. Like an aluminum can crushed by an invisible fist, the mass of metal tightened into a ball.
It dropped to the floor and rolled a few feet before coming to a rest against a bookshelf.
Staring at the strange, smoldering little ball, Lars stood fixated until he heard, in the depth of his mind, the call of the book again. Rousing himself, he grabbed the tome from the table and ran through the outer door into the starry night.
Jessica Doric didn’t know about the break-in at the Maycare mansion until Lord Maycare phoned her the next day. By the time Doric arrived, with Henry Riff in tow, the police had left and the forensic unit bots had finished their scans.
Maycare was in the library. Deep lines ran across his face.
“The detectives took Bentley with them as evidence,” he said, one hand resting heavily against the table in the center of the hall.
“Can’t they transfer his personality to a different robot?” Doric asked.
“His memory banks were pulverized,” Maycare replied flatly. “The police said the damage is irrevocable.”
Doric heard a tiny sob, barely a whimper, come from behind her. When she turned around, Henry was slumped over in tears.
“Oh, Henry,” she said. “It’ll be alright.”
“He told me I should dress better,” Henry blubbered. “Now I’ll never know how!”
Maycare took a seat beside the table. His eyes stared into nothing.
“Listen,” Doric said, addressing them both, “we’re going to find out who did this!”
Henry pulled the collar of his shirt high enough to wipe the tears streaming down his face. “Okay.”
“Bentley wouldn’t want us sitting around, feeling sorry for ourselves!” she added.
Maycare straightened and took a deep breath. “She’s right.”
“Do you know what was taken?” Doric a
sked.
“No.”
“Bentley doesn’t normally come in here unless we’re doing research,” Doric said. “So, the thieves must have been in here for some reason.”
“But there’s hundreds of books,” Henry replied. “How are we supposed to know if they took any?”
After a long silence, Maycare spoke.
“Growing up,” he said, “I was always getting into trouble so my parents bought Bentley, I guess to teach me how to behave. He kept trying the whole time I knew him...”
Doric felt her eyes moistening. She backhanded Henry in the shoulder. “Stop crying,” she said.
Henry sniffed. “Sorry.”
Doric sat beside her boss at the table. She thought about putting her hand on his shoulder, but something caught her eye before she got a chance.
“Where’s the grimoire?” she asked.
“What?” Maycare replied.
“The book with the silver edging,” she said. “It was sitting right here. Henry, did you move it somewhere?”
“No.”
“It’s the book I was using to research the Necronea. There’s still passages I needed to translate to help find Philip Veber...”
“Well, can you do the research without it?” Maycare asked.
“There’s pages thousands of years old in that book!” she went on. “I don’t know where else I could get that information.”
“Where did it come from in the first place?” Henry asked.
“The one with the big eyeball on the cover?” Maycare asked. “I’m not sure... an Imperial admiral I once met. Bentley would know for sure—”
He stopped himself, choking on the words.
“Just think,” Doric said. “Try to remember the admiral’s name.”
“I don’t know, Jess! I’m terrible with names!”
They sat in a gloom until Maycare shouted, “Wait! I’m sure he said it was from somewhere in the Talion Republic!”
“Okay,” Doric replied. “Then that’s where we’ll need to look.”
“Look for what?” Henry asked, not quite getting it.
“If there’s one of these books,” she said, “maybe there’s more.”
“Then let’s get started!” Maycare said, standing. “If we’re looking for these books, maybe we’ll run into whoever took ours...”
Among the floating boulders of an asteroid belt, the Cutthroat lay in wait for a merchant ship passing through the star system. A pirate sloop, the Cutthroat had swept wings ending in nacelles on either side of the main fuselage. A stubby conning tower, housing the bridge, rose from the center of the ship, overlooking a long, dagger-shaped section stretching forward. Built by pirates for pirates, the ship had a single, all-encompassing purpose of hunting commercial shipping. It was the simple honesty of this design, according to the captain, that was the vessel’s greatest strength. There were no bells or whistles on board. Only the absolute minimum gear and machinery necessary to do its appointed job.
On the other hand, Captain Kiera Russo thought, a coffee maker would have been nice.
The captain was in her forties, with brunette hair mixed with ample gray strands. She wore a corset and a loose-fitting pair of trousers with black and white stripes running up the sides. A black heart was tattooed beneath one eye. Her crew called her the Queen of the Blackhearts.
Her legs comfortably spread apart, Russo slouched in the captain’s chair of the cramped bridge. The helmsman sat in front of her to the left while the first mate, the lighting reflecting off his bald spot, hovered over the controls on the right. Both crew members smelled of sweat and cigar smoke but to be fair, so did Russo herself. Showers were at a premium on the Cutthroat.
“How much longer?” she asked gruffly.
“Any minute now,” the first mate replied.
Like the other Pirate Clans, the Blackhearts depended on a steady diet of commercial shipping to plunder. The life of a pirate was often a matter of feast or famine, but the captain wasn’t going to let her crew go hungry.
“There’s a contact on long-range sensors,” the first mate said.
“And?” Russo asked.
“It’s our boy.”
A smile filled Russo’s plump face. She pointed at the main screen. “Go after it then!”
The engines of the Cutthroat flared, pushing the ship away from the rocks and toward a massive freighter on the edge of the ship’s sensor range.
“Hold on,” the first mate said, pointing at the screen on his control panel. “There’s another contact.”
“What is it?” the captain asked.
“It’s a Magna design,” he replied. “A Daemon-class commerce raider.”
“Here? We’re too far from the border...”
“The scanner shows only goblins aboard.”
Russo gritted her teeth, her hands clenching into fists.
“Goddamn Celadon Corsairs!” she raged. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let those green-skins poach our territory!”
The commerce raider, swooping in on the merchant ship, was similar to the pirate sloop except it had a shorter body and a bridge located at the front. The Celadon crew had also painted a crude skull and crossbones across its hull.
“Cut them off!” Russo shouted.
“What about the freighter?” the first mate asked, turning his head around toward his captain.
“Let it go!” she replied, scowling back at him. “This is about principles now!”
Delving at high speed between the merchant vessel and the corsair ship, the Cutthroat closed to firing range.
“Cripple their engines,” Russo said, “and prepare to board!”
Chapter Nineteen
In the captain’s cabin aboard the Baron Lancaster, Doctor Samantha Baines sat in bed, a datapad resting on her lap. Her blond hair hung loosely around her t-shirt while she browsed through a magazine on the pad. On one page, an advertisement popped up, filling the screen:
IDEA FURNITURE:
ANY PEG WILL FIT
IF YOU HAMMER HARD ENOUGH.
“Martin, what do you think about IDEA Furniture?” Baines called out.
From the bathroom, a man’s voice replied, “I love their meatballs!”
Captain Redgrave, wearing only a pair of olive-drab boxer shorts, came to the doorway.
“Why do you ask?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “We might need to furnish a house together someday...”
The captain grumbled to himself, disappearing back into the bathroom. When he returned a few minutes later, his face was freshly washed and a towel hung around his neck. He dropped the towel on the floor and got into bed beside the doctor.
He leaned in for a kiss but she gave him a sideways glance.
“What?” he asked.
“We’re not going to be on this ship forever, you know,” she said. “What’s going to happen to us then?”
Redgrave sighed.
“Don’t you ever think about retirement?” Baines asked.
He scoffed. “No!”
“Why not?”
“I plan on going out guns blazing.”
Baines grumbled and went back to her datapad, but the captain was restless.
“On the other hand,” he said, “if I don’t get that Sylvia Flax woman back safely, my career’s probably finished.”
Baines put her datapad away on the nightstand.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” she asked.
“We interrogated Cirion, that Sarkan prick,” he replied. “The Magna slave trader took Flax across the border, so she might as well be on the other side of the galaxy.”
“She’s really out of reach?”
“Pretty much. Any human going to save her would get shot on sight... or enslaved themselves.”
“You don’t always have to solve problems by going straight at them, you know,” she said. “Try thinking laterally.”
“Huh?”
“You know, sideways. Look at it from a diffe
rent perspective...”
The doctor smiled and raised her eyebrows in a hopeful expression. He grimaced.
“Do what you want!” she said, raising her hands in resignation. “It’s just a suggestion.”
The captain continued staring at her.
“You’re creeping me out,” she said.
“I’m thinking,” he replied.
“About?”
“You might have a point.”
“Oh, thank you!” Baines said, rolling her eyes. “I have those from time to time.”
The captain had already rolled out of bed and was heading for his dresser.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Putting on pants.”
Although Fortunas IV was mostly known for its sprawling bazaar, the nightclub district was popular after the planet’s suns had gone down. Along the pedestrian promenade, crowded with humans and non-humans alike, Captain Redgrave and Commander Maycare walked in civilian clothes with the Baron Lancaster’s Chief Operations Officer, Lieutenant Kinnari.
The Dahl was having trouble keeping up with the taller officers.
“Thank you again for bringing me along, sirs,” she said, out of breath.
“No thanks are needed,” Redgrave replied. “I might need you before we’re done here.”
“Sir?” she asked.
“There’s a chance we’ll run into one of your own,” Maycare explained.
“I don’t believe there’s a Dahlvish consulate here,” Kinnari replied, “or a monastery for that matter...”
“There isn’t,” Redgrave said. “He might not be your typical Dahl.”
Kinnari’s brows rose expectantly. “Color me intrigued, Captain.”
The three officers wandered through the masses, picking their way past several nightclubs until coming to one in particular, brightly lit in purple and gold. Above a velvet rope corralling a line of people waiting to get in, the marquee read The Funky Town.
The captain walked directly to the front of the line and showed his navy credentials. The bouncer unhooked the rope, letting the officers in, much to the annoyance of everyone else still waiting.
Inside the Funky Town, a high ceiling, lit in a lustrous blue, overlooked a spacious dance floor packed with people. From the stage at the front, lined with speakers facing the audience, strobe lights and lasers illuminated the smoky air. On the stage, a man with a large afro operated a console covered with turntables.
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