Ren

by Starr Huntress

  “Such dishonorable tactics.” Oran squeezed his fist. The device crunched and gave a thin electronic whine as it died.

  “Dishonorable tactics? If only every problem could be solved by punching it.”

  Oran growled, not amused.

  “I prefer to think of it as guile but let us consider what is truly dishonorable.” Ren leaned forward, eager to make his point. “Some would say purposely impeding an investigation is dishonorable. What is dishonorable is financing research which puts every living being in this system at risk.”

  Oran tossed the broken device to the ground. “Countering with a duplicitous tactic does not make your action correct. Inform Paax that he has no grounds—”

  Ren waved a hand. “My opinion does not sway the warlord’s decisions. Whining about what actions are within his purview will make no difference.”

  “Do you speak to your warlord in such an insolent manner?”

  The older male was flush in the face. An immature part of Ren—exceedingly small, practically nonexistent—delighted in the male’s frustration. Agitation could loosen a tongue better than any threat or trickery.

  “Yes. I believe he finds me charming,” Ren said. Perhaps he spoke with a touch more smug pride than usual, imagining Lorran trying to do the same to his father and failing. Perhaps it was the usual amount of smug pride. He could not say.

  “Leave before I decide to return you to your warlord in pieces.”

  Ren retrieved the ruined electronics from the floor and showed himself out.

  “Warrior, if you must pursue this path, consider Nals.”

  * * *

  Safely on his ship, Ren brought the deployed devices online. As he expected, Oran or a security tech swept through the office. They found the electronics he left on the painting and nestled in the leaves of the potted plant, which he expected.

  They did not find the device in the ventilation system. Excellent.

  Initiating commands, the device burrowed into the network for the building. Security for the computer system was robust, but Ren had plenty of time to run crypto programs to slip inside.

  The feline jumped into his lap.

  “Did you have a good day, Murder Mittens?” He stroked the feline under the chin, as she preferred.

  Sharp claws dug into his thigh as an answer. A content purr emitted from her slender body. The precise and deadly nature of the tiny Terran feline never failed to surprise him, especially when she punctured his skin.

  “Yes, my day was productive as well,” he said, watching the screen while the crypto programs ran.

  Emry

  “A human! How quaint. And you prepared all the human food?”

  A hand lightly touched Emry on the shoulder, snagging her attention. As she turned to face the Sangrin male who spoke, his gaze fixated on her scars.

  New planet. Same old bull.

  Emry ran a hand down the starched white chef’s coat before clasping her hands behind her back. No one needed to see how she clenched her fists.

  “Yes. I am Pashaal’s personal chef,” she answered. Pashaal, her employer, liked for Emry to mingle among the guests when she hosted a dinner party. While the guests drank cocktails and servers circulated trays with appetizers, she stood awkwardly and answered any questions the guest might have. They never did. That was not the point. Pashaal wanted her guests to know the Earth food was authentic.

  Emry fought the urge to glance at her wrist comm. She had to endure ten more minutes of this before she had to return to the kitchen. Her comm would vibrate when the timer elapsed.

  “That explains why the offerings are so unpalatable, but Pashaal was never known for her good taste,” the man said.

  And this guy knew good taste?

  He held a nearly empty wine flute like it gave him purpose. He wore a starched collar so high it covered his jaw, like some old-fashioned portrait from back in the day when houses lacked central heating. The sleeves on the same shirt were so voluminous, they were impractical. Ornate metal caps decorated his horns. Everything about his outfit spoke of vast amounts of credit and little refinement. No wonder he was Pashaal’s friend.

  “Pashaal does enjoy her pretty, useless things,” he said.

  “I was thinking the same,” Emry replied.

  “But, well…” His gaze locked onto the scar. With a shiver, he drained the wine glass in one long gulp. With a flick of his hand, he signaled to a server for another. “Perhaps not so pretty. Do you offer another kind of service?”

  This dick…

  Emry’s hand clenched tighter, her fingernails digging into her palm. “I must check on the tartlets.”

  “Sounds… rustic.” He shuddered.

  “Dovak, I see you have met my human chef.” Pashaal approached, elegant as always, with a genial smile on her lilac face. White hair had been styled high on her head, studded with amethyst crystals. Delicate silver chains decorated her horns.

  “Yes. She has a rough-hewn charm. The visible damage accentuates the delicate features.” Dovak waved a hand at Emry.

  This was why she hated people.

  “Tell me, do you share? I’m curious to try a human.”

  Emry sputtered, thoroughly grossed out. Dovak’s eyes gleamed, watching her.

  “What Chef LeBeaux does in her free time is up to her, but I am only interested in her culinary skills,” Pashaal said, which was sort of all right. It wasn’t ‘stop creeping on my employee,’ but better than ‘try her out yourself.’

  The comm vibrated on her wrist. Rescued at last.

  “Forgive me. I need to return to the kitchen,” Emry said, skedaddling like her tail was on fire.

  “Contact me, human. I’d love to sample your wares,” the overdressed creep said.

  Nope. Not happening.

  No one had sampled her wares in years. Not since her two-day wonder of a marriage to Ren. Technically, they were still married, for what it was worth. It wasn’t like they had a relationship or a commitment. The first day, he was nice. Awkward, but nice. The next day, he sent her back to Earth. The frustrating part was he had been so freaking nice about the entire ordeal.

  Anyway, her love life was nonexistent. Not because she held a torch for the alien who ditched her, but she just didn’t have the inclination to get involved with anyone, human or otherwise.

  Emry burst through the kitchen doors and barked orders. Under normal circumstances, she was a one-woman show, but when Pashaal entertained, Emry got staff. The extra hands helped with prep, serving, and cleanup.

  “Get ready with the bread,” Emry said. She ladled a fragrant tomato bisque into fine porcelain bowls. Using a dishcloth, she cleaned the odd splatter of bisque from the edge of the bowl.

  Rustic. What did that guy know? Tomato bisque was amazing.

  Pashaal and her guests were just seated at the dining table when Emry and the servers arrived. With bowls carefully placed alongside bread baskets, she announced the tomato bisque. “Grown in our hydroponic garden.”

  “Isn’t it remarkable? The tomato is a fruit from a poison family. What is it called?” Pashaal asked, her spoon poised above the bowl.

  “Nightshade,” Emry said.

  “Who was the first human brave enough to eat the poison fruit? And there is more than one in this family? What are they again?”

  “White potatoes, eggplant—”

  “Which does not look like an egg in the slightest!” Pashaal gasped in utter delight.

  The guests looked dubiously at the tomato bisque, perhaps less enthusiastic to try rustic human food knowing about poisoned fruit.

  Dovak took a careful spoonful, his brow raised. “It does not taste like a fruit at all. How remarkable. And how did you get the seeds past customs?”

  Right. Only the hydroponic garden on the ship is legal. She was so used to bragging about the fresh produce on the ship that it slipped out during her spiel. Off-planet vegetation was strictly prohibited. No living plant or crop could be imported, only produce and frui
t, which seldom survived the long trip from Earth. Expedited shipping meant expensive.

  The other option was freeze-dried or packaged, what most of the spacefaring population ate.

  Emry tossed a glance to Pashaal, who seemed unconcerned about the slip-up.

  “I suppose you must utilize your position on the Council for something,” Dovak said, in a tone that sounded positively friendly and blithe.

  “My ship in orbit has quite the garden,” Pashaal said, implying the tomatoes were from the perfectly legal spaceship and not the highly illegal greenhouse in the back. Then she gave a practiced, cold smile.

  “I’d enjoy touring your hydroponic garden,” Dovak said with an equally cold smile.

  That guy is trouble.

  Emry took note, knowing that Caldar would want to know about the dinner conversation.

  The rest of the dinner went smoothly. The guests commented on the unique and exotic aspects of the meal, surprisingly sophisticated for a planet as primitive as Earth, and Emry kept the same neutral expression on her face.

  Dessert was cherries jubilee because Pashaal liked the drama of setting the concoction on fire. Emry liked the dessert because Sangrin had a sour fruit enough like cherries to make the recipe easy.

  As Emry cleaned the kitchen, she ran through her checklist. The coffee—not real coffee, but a Sangrin brew like chicory—was ready to be served. Once the coffee came out, Pashaal would play cards and other expensive games of chance until dawn, signaling the end of Emry’s working day.

  With the dishes in the cleansing unit and the counters all cleaned, she had a moment to check her message.

  Gemma’s friend, Charlie, finally responded.

  Hunched over the counter, she played the message. “The bakery’s been closed for a month now. I thought you knew.” The image jerked, not quite in sync with the audio. “You know how she gets. Probably decided to go hiking and didn’t tell anyone she’s out of town. I’ll let you know if she turns up.”

  You know how she gets.

  Yeah, she knew her twin, and Gemma never went hiking or closed the bakery for a trip out of town.

  She sank forward onto the counter, resting her head on folded arms.

  Three weeks ago, Gemma sent her a disturbing message. Emry raised her head enough to play the recorded message again. Her twin’s face appeared on the small screen of her wrist comm.

  “Em. Emmy. Em.” Gemma looked at the camera with glassy eyes. Either she was drunk or hadn’t slept in days. “I messed up. I’m sorry. Call me when… just call me.”

  The screen went dark.

  Emry played it again, paying attention to the background. She didn’t recognize the brick wall. It wasn’t the bakery or Gemma’s apartment. The time stamp told her the message had been sent at night. She assumed it was recorded outside. Perhaps an alley? Tracing the call’s origin seemed like something that could be done if she had a few more tech skills.

  She rubbed her eyes, exhausted. It had been a long day, and she hadn’t been sleeping well.

  Gemma sent the message three weeks ago. Since then, nothing. No answer to Emry’s calls at her personal number or the bakery’s line. No activity on social media. Charlie was the last of her friends to respond to her messages. No one had seen Gemma.

  “I messed up.”

  That wasn’t going on a spur-of-the-moment trip or a hike. It was serious. She messed up.

  When she called the police—and she didn’t want to think about the bill for that—they told her basically what Charlie suggested. She asked for a wellness check. They’d knock on the door, but with no signs of foul play, they wouldn’t enter Gemma’s apartment.

  “What did you do, Gemmy-bean?”

  There was one more person she could ask for help.

  Caldar.

  The idea turned her stomach. Asking him for the favor put her too much in his debt. She was already beholden to him for paying off the money Gemma borrowed and finding her this job.

  Caldar wanted to know who came to visit Pashaal, and that pushed Emry’s limits. She liked Pashaal, for all the woman’s flaws, and reporting on her made Emry feel squicky. She was just not built for subterfuge; her face telegraphed everything she felt, and she blurted out every thought in her head.

  Fortunately, Pashaal wasn’t involved in nefarious activities. The older woman was on the Sangrin Council and had an imports and exports business. As far as Emry could tell, it was a legit business trading in luxury goods. Shady? Sure. That was the nature of commerce. Pashaal spent more time on her ship than on the planet, traveling to seduce producers and woo purchasers.

  That evening’s dinner was a mix of buyers and manufacturers. No one even talked politics, except to complain about tariffs and trade restrictions.

  Except when Emry slipped up about the tomatoes.

  She got why Sangrin frowned on people smuggling in off-world seeds. No one wanted an invasive alien species screwing up the local ecology. The hydroponic garden on Pashaal’s ship kept them in perfectly legal, high-quality, and hard-to-source food.

  The garden in the back of the house? Not so much.

  Maybe she could ask Pashaal to help locate Gemma. She was on the Council, after all. That had weight. The police wouldn’t be able to ignore a call from her, not without risking a diplomatic incident. And it’d give her the opportunity to play the hero.

  But if her rivals on the Council found out, they could cry about abuse of power. She couldn’t risk extra scrutiny, what with the highly illegal Earth plants growing on her estate. Vegetables probably weren’t the only thing Pashaal slipped past Sangrin Customs.

  No. Better not to ask.

  Gemma would turn up. She had to. Emry couldn’t face living in a universe without her sister. Being separated for months was hard enough. If she was gone—

  A throat cleared.

  “Are you ready for coffee?” Emry quickly swiped at the moisture in her eyes and turned to face the door.

  “I was hoping to see the famed hydroponic garden,” Dovak replied.

  “I don’t know what you mean. Everything came from the ship.”

  Emry hastily buttoned her chef’s coat, but not before Dovak’s eyes flicked from the scar at her shoulder and up to her face. He made a noise of recognition at the distinctive Mahdfel bite.

  “False. All organic material is sprayed with a decontamination wash. The taste is most distinctive.”

  The memory of the bitter chemical flavor lingered on her tongue. It was, indeed, distinctive, and the main reason Pashaal grew the illicit vegetables in her own greenhouse.

  “I use a baking powder wash. Old human trick.” She shrugged one shoulder, as if unconcerned.

  So what if Pashaal, a member of the Sangrin Council, bent a few rules? She grew tomatoes. Big deal. The plants were in hydroponic pods, contained in a greenhouse. Wild zucchini was hardly going to take over the planet.

  “You have lost someone important to you,” Dovak prompted.

  “How much of that did you hear?”

  “Enough. Gemmy-bean. Human names are strange.” He paused, waiting for Emry to spill all the details about Gemma.

  Her mouth remained shut.

  He sighed dramatically. “I am offering to help you locate this human.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said.

  “Give me proof of Pashaal’s illegal alien flora, and I will use my resources to locate your missing Gemmy-bean.”

  “Her name is Gemma.”

  “So, you agree to my terms?”

  Emry hesitated. She was unfamiliar with Dovak, but he was a business partner of Pashaal’s; he would have influence and connections. If he was some agent sent to dig up evidence of Council corruption, he still had connections.

  “You are far from home,” he said, sympathy in his voice. “No one has taken your concern seriously, have they?”

  Emry shook her head. Pashaal wouldn’t help. She couldn’t afford the scrutiny because, in all fairness, she was dodgy and a little corrupt.
A smuggling vegetable seedlings level of corruption, not selling weapons or trafficking drugs level of corruption. Emry had standards.

  Could she trust this guy? Her gut said no. She’d be better off bringing the problem to Caldar, even if that put her more in his debt. At least she knew what to expect from him.

  Better the devil you know.

  Emry shook her head. “I have nothing to show you. There are no prohibited plants here. Everything came off the ship.”

  The sympathetic expression melted. “I should have known. Your kind like to stick together,” he said.

  By your kind, he meant a Mahdfel widow. Pashaal had never asked Emry about her absent mate, and Emry never clarified the situation beyond an oblique he’s not here. And really, the arrangement between herself and Ren was no one’s business.

  Still, the smug look on Dovak’s face just irritated her, like he was going to trick her into spilling the beans on Pashaal. Appealing to her sense of justice failed, bargaining failed, now he’d insult her again.

  Her cage remained unrattled. If anything, she wanted to knock that look off his face, customer experience be damned.

  “Wow, punching down. Big power move, being rude to the staff,” she said. Working efficiently, she gathered up the cups and saucers for coffee. If guests were wandering about the house, Pashaal would serve the brew soon.

  “I was not rude.”

  “Oh, you were unbelievably rude. I mean, I know I’m just a quaint, rustic human, but your message was obvious enough that even I noticed. Can you imagine if I was a pretty, useless thing?” The dishes clattered as Emry added them to a serving tray. “And now you’re wondering about the scars. Did I get this before this?” Emry pointed to her shoulder, then gestured at her face.

  His eyes went wide. “I did not ask—”

  “But you know about my kind, so you must wonder. Well, we have a saying on Earth. All cats are gray in the dark.” The words tasted particularly bitter on her tongue as her Mahdfel had cared enough about a flawed appearance to send her home.

  “And what kind is that?” Pashaal glided into the room, her ornate robes whispering as they brushed the floor.