The Kenval Incident

by Philippe Mercurio

  “We don’t understand what you’re saying,” Hanosk said through his translator. “Explain yourself.”

  Wulgis suddenly looked tired. He explained regretfully, “My labs have suffered several setbacks. I need capital to finance new product research and to confront increased competition. When I bribed Lanca, I hoped to extract information from him that I could use to make money on the stock market at Idernax’s expense.”

  Carried along by his momentum, he told them how he had secured the archivist’s collaboration. He mentioned the discovery of a project for treating Omsyn. With great interest, he had pushed Lanca to learn as much as he could.

  “That’s how I found out that Morsak himself was responsible for arranging transportation for the test samples,” he continued. “It was impossible to find out the exact destination. Nevertheless, the archivist learned where the merchandise would be transferred: on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. Throwing caution to the winds at the idea of procuring the formula for the vaccine, I decided to hire mercenaries.”

  Piteously, the industrialist concluded, “I have committed my life to two things: my company and this place. The risk of losing them because of my finances made me blind to the consequences of my actions. Such a promising treatment could have saved my firm from disaster, and I had to get my hands on it by any means necessary.”

  The man’s tone of voice didn’t soften Mallory’s attitude. “So, you’re an aesthete who is obsessed with his masterpiece,” she mocked. “You only sent Sodoye and his three brutes after me by accident. You were thinking about your next cherry blossom trees, perhaps?”

  “There’s no treatment,” Hanosk confirmed. “That was never Idernax’s goal. What you’re saying doesn’t have anything to do with reality.”

  The translator box conveyed nothing about the alien’s state of mind. Somewhat unsettled, Wulgis carried on. “No… yes,” he mumbled, trying to reply to Mallory and the alien at the same time. “I mean… I trusted Lanca’s information, which was falsified by Idernax’s CEO. I only understood what a predicament I had gotten myself into after the fact, thanks to the lawyer Lucie Carenko. Later, a call from Laorcq finished opening my eyes. He had just been thrown into prison and was asking for my help to bring Morsak to justice. In exchange, he promised to destroy the evidence linking me to the affair. Once I was sure he would keep his word, I immediately did what I had to in order to free him.”

  “On that subject,” interrupted Mallory, “how did he get out after the chaos we left behind on Io and in Gloria City? And on Pluto,” she added, remembering the fat hustler Laorcq had killed.

  “Oh, it was pretty easy, in fact. Ms. Carenko is one of the best lawyers available. I sent her to Kenval with instructions to free the commander, whatever the cost. A certain Lieutenant Lafora had threatened to take the case up the chain of command. Fortunately, they didn’t know that Carenko was working for us. My labs are in a bad way without losing a market like Kenval.”

  When Hanosk spoke up, his translator betrayed his impatience for the first time. “Your method of subsistence is irrelevant to us. You tried to seize samples of Omsyn for profit.”

  “Once again, I thought I was getting a vaccine. And even if that doesn’t make me an honest citizen, it doesn’t mean I’m on the same playing field as Morsak.”

  “You have no proof to back up what you’re saying,” the Vohrn countered.

  “You just have to look at the files I was telling you about. I can get Lanca to make copies or to give us access to them.”

  Mallory thought this was a reasonable idea, but Hanosk did not. He spoke to the cybrid. “Torg, please take hold of this individual and raise him off the floor.”

  Since he didn’t see any danger to his captain in this request, he complied. The industrialist struggled bravely, but in vain. Torg easily got control of him and imprisoned him in the vise-like grip of his arms.

  Hanosk pulled back the folds of his toga and approached Wulgis. After immobilizing his head, the Vohrn pressed his rostrum against the human’s forehead.

  His cry wasn’t as loud as Mallory had expected. The strange interrogation lasted for about a minute. Once he was satisfied, the alien left his victim slumped in Torg’s arms. Wulgis had grown pale, and a film of sweat covered his face, but he had remained conscious.

  “You didn’t faint. I wouldn’t have thought you were that tough,” Mallory commented.

  She turned to Hanosk. “Well?”

  “Contrary to what I expected, he is telling the truth.”

  “So he can testify against Morsak.”

  “That would take too long. Omsyn will have killed us before the end of the human legal proceedings.”

  The extraterrestrial then spoke to Wulgis. “I’m giving you the chance to preserve your possessions. You’re going to put pressure on Lanca to hire Mallory Sajean under a false identity. She will then be able to get hold of the information we need to survive.”

  The pilot looked at Hanosk with amazement and asked if he was kidding. She realized quickly that he still didn’t have a sense of humor. To ward off bad luck, she tried to reason with him. “Idernax security knows my face. They’ll never let me in!”

  Ever the opportunist, Wulgis jumped on the opportunity to demonstrate his goodwill. “Don’t worry about that! We just launched a complete line of cosmetics. Properly applied, they’ll turn you into a different woman.”

  XXII

  DAILY GRIND

  HANOSK and Wulgis were putting the finishing touches on their plan to get Mallory into Idernax. While they waited, she and Torg explored the lunar estate.

  The almost unreal beauty of the place had a soothing effect. Trees and flowering bushes, artfully placed rocks, and paths paved with slate formed a dreamlike landscape. She almost forgot the threat of extinction hanging over the Vohrns.

  Guessing the turn his captain’s thoughts had taken, Torg put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her tightly against him. She welcomed the embrace with a sigh of comfort.

  Unfortunately for her, a beep and a vibration from her navcom bracelet almost immediately burst the bubble of calm that surrounded them. A message from Laorcq appeared before Mallory’s eyes. She read it out loud. “I have arrived on Earth on an Antarian jet rented by Wulgis’ lawyer. I am waiting for you in a hotel in Nogartha.”

  Her enthusiasm revived by this news, she added, “The time has come to don our disguises.”

  Wulgis ordered one of his employees to come to his lunar estate. The expert aesthetician led Mallory into a large bathroom. The woman, who was both stylist and makeup artist, unpacked several accessories and outfits and took charge of the pilot.

  Mallory and Torg left the industrialist and the Vohrn to return to Nogartha. After an autopiloted taxi ride, she knocked on the door to Laorcq’s room.

  The panel slid back. Inside, she discovered Laorcq getting out of the bed on which he had been lying. Seeing Mallory, doubt clearly appeared on his face. She held back a smile: Wulgis’ employee had done excellent work. The pilot now had blond hair down to her shoulders. She was wearing an outfit made of a white cloth shot through with silvery threads. A fitted jacket and a long skirt with a slit highlighted her features.

  She was sure that the scarred man wouldn’t have recognized her without Torg at her side. While examining this new version of her, he couldn’t help but linger over her skillfully accentuated chest.

  This sudden interest annoyed her. With a deep sigh, she compared the male reaction to the sight of a breast with that of an alcoholic to a bottle. The bigger it is, the more they want it.

  Laorcq compensated for this faux pas with a wide smile, making it clear that, even decked out in a wig, he was happy to see her. She entered the room with Torg on her heels. In a mocking tone, she said, “Since you are such a fan of cleavage, you should avoid going to prison so often.”

  Becoming serious again, she asked him, “Honestly, I know that Morsak almost killed you, but is vengeance really worth spending the rest of your
life in a cell?”

  Laorcq’s wide shoulders sagged as he replied, “To take me out, the assassin Morsak hired booby-trapped my house with explosives. I survived because the explosion threw me out of a window. My wife and son weren’t as lucky: they died immediately.”

  Cursing her curiosity, Mallory approached the tall, scarred man. She put a hesitant hand on his arm and apologized. “I’m really sorry, I just wanted to understand.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s time I end things with Morsak, and for you to be done with Lebrane. We have work to do. On that topic, where is Hanosk hiding?”

  “He’s still on the Moon. According to Wulgis, Vohrns are much too noticeable on Earth.”

  “That makes sense,” Laorcq admitted. “You’ll have to tell me about your adventures.”

  She summarized recent events in a few sentences, punctuated by Torg’s comments. The trip aboard the Lyoden’Naak, Mars, and finally Lanca. “That dimwit is our way into Idernax. We just have to force his hand.”

  Laorcq was unconcerned. “Making a little bureaucrat bring you into work will be a cinch. A simple phone call and a threat to reveal his nocturnal escapades should do it.”

  With this “detail” resolved, Mallory got going. The artificial epidermis that hid her tattoos was a necessary evil, but it itched. Moreover, she thought having to wearing a bra with cups two sizes larger than usual was problematic. The uncomfortable lingerie contained memory gel designed to fill in the difference. The thick liquid reacted oddly when she moved, as if invisible fingers had slid inside to feel the curve of her breasts. And then there were the blue contact lenses irritating her eyes and the high-heeled shoes that gave her the impression of walking on stilts.

  It took fifteen minutes to escape the street where the hotel was located. She had to make her way through beggars and street vendors. It was impossible to cross the uninterrupted flow of cars outside of the protected passageways. The racket made by ground and air transportation blended with the babbling of the video ads posted on each pole.

  “I had forgotten how loud Nogartha is. I can barely hear myself think! And the smell… You’d think the sewers were open to the air!” she exclaimed, wrinkling her nose.

  To attract clients, restaurants diffused artificial scents. These vapors mixed with the stench of the overpopulated city: garbage, sweat, urine, and the lingering odor of chemical products.

  After rushing to reach the other side of the road and wading through a hundred or so laborious yards, Mallory made it to the metro entrance.

  More than a quarter mile of sharply angled escalators, most of which were working, led her to a platform covered with sticky filth. Trapped in the crowd, she did her best not to fall onto the rails when the express trains blew by at top speed on the central lines.

  Following about an hour spent as a canned sardine in a car that creaked dauntingly, Mallory finally landed on her feet in the commercial quarter. One foot, actually, since the second was sunk deep in a pile of translucent excrement of impressive size. The filth gave off the scent of rotten eggs typical of sulfuric gas.

  Her uncomfortable costume and public transportation were already annoying enough. She swore. “Better and better! I thought hygienically untrainable extraterrestrials were banned from the underground!”

  Once out of the metro, things improved: this part of the city was much less busy, and the pedestrians didn’t dawdle.

  The video ads tacked up haphazardly had disappeared, as if warded off by the place’s strict layout. Following the mechanical walkways that ran parallel to a wide avenue, Mallory arrived at a gigantic cube with alternating concrete and steel sides.

  “A real bunker. And I’m going to have to find a way inside.”

  Lanca greeted Mallory at the door with almost palpable malaise. They had to pass through several checkpoints. Sliding into her role as a new employee with an ease that surprised even her, she was taken on a short tour.

  She noticed that the offices were situated on the building’s outer walls. On the other side, near the building’s core, areas with progressively more restricted access were stacked on top of each other like the layers of an onion. The building’s shape left nothing to chance. The monolithic air it gave off perfectly embodied the precautions that had been taken to isolate it from the outside.

  With the formalities complete, Mallory found herself sitting in front of a terminal. While performing the elementary task she had been given by the mustachioed archivist, she tried to nose around a bit. Unsurprisingly, she discovered her efforts were futile. The data available to low-level employees didn’t give anything away about Morsak’s schemes.

  As for Lanca’s “extensive” permissions, they were only for show. The Omsyn file had been falsified. Furthermore, she noticed with dismay that the archives were full of fake documents. These records only existed to fool tax inspectors and investors.

  When lunchtime finally arrived, she met up with Laorcq and Torg a few streets away, to devour a foul sandwich in a fast-food restaurant.

  Small and packed, it had the virtue of welcoming a clientele among which Mallory blended in easily as an “office worker.” The place’s final asset: it was covered from floor to ceiling with video paper diffusing erotic clips, which prevented curious onlookers from focusing too much on the cybrid.

  “Impossible to get my hands on anything,” she began between bites. “Not surprising if Wulgis was wrong about Lanca’s tips.”

  Laorcq shrugged and replied, “None of us really thought it would be that easy. You should finish the day like everyone else. We shouldn’t raise suspicions if we want to take care of this quietly.”

  “You’re not the one who just spent four hours with an old pervert doing fatally boring work,” she retorted.

  At these words, Torg tensed. “If he touches you, I’ll beat him to a pulp!”

  Mallory leaned toward her warrior teddy bear and reassured him. “You’re a dear, but I can take care of him one-handed.”

  Trying but failing to hide his amusement at the almost fraternal relationship between her and her bodyguard, Laorcq continued, “I’m going to contact Hanosk. To do this the hard way, we’re going to need transportation and a variety of tools. Torg and I will meet up with you this evening.”

  Her meal dispatched, Mallory returned “to work.” The hours trickled by with desperate slowness. Even better, her presence bothered Lanca. He jumped every time someone asked him for a document or submitted a research request. Luckily, his colleagues didn’t pay any attention to him. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have taken them long to notice that something wasn’t right.

  Mallory could barely tolerate watching him prowl around her, sometimes distracted to the point of forgetting to breathe. She worried: he was going to end up cracking and running to notify security!

  The torture continued until she left the building with him.

  Torg and Laorcq were waiting a bit further away. When Lanca neared them, they brought him up short by stepping in front of him.

  To her great relief, she felt the tension accumulated during the day diminish. She hurried to meet them.

  The scarred man didn’t even need to show his weapon: Torg’s presence was more than sufficient. Lanca looked at them sheepishly, like a schoolboy who has been reprimanded for lifting a girl’s skirt. They led him to a blood-red vehicle: in response to Laorcq’s request, Hanosk had lent him the modified aeroglider.

  With Torg’s help, he threw the archivist into the trunk before knocking him out with a right hook. He opened the gull-wing door and said, “We’re developing a bad habit of carrying around a groggy guy in the back of our car.”

  “If only you knew how right you are!” acquiesced Mallory, who was thinking back with a twinge of guilt to her visit to the Moon and the unknown wretch she ran into on the maglev.

  Rummaging around behind the driver’s seat, Laorcq brought out a candy-pink backpack. He took inventory of its contents. “An epidermal combat-suit tube. A pistol with upsizing bullets
, packed to the brim.”

  Mallory took the revolver that spit giant, gelatinous bullets in her hands, estimating its weight before handing it back. “At least I won’t injure someone accidently,” she reassured herself.

  Laorcq slid the weapon into the bag and continued checking. “From the Vohrns, a floating firefly and a storer. Lastly, a microgenerator, so you’ll have a source of electricity.”

  He held the bag out to Mallory. “Here’s everything you’ll need. Hanosk and Wulgis’ plan is sensible. With your disguise and the alien’s gadgets, it will be child’s play.”

  She made a face, far from sharing his optimism. “You’re sure the vault will open when the current is cut? The system seems pretty stupid to me.”

  “Not really. It’s a standard imposed on data centers of this kind: if they remain closed when the ventilation is cut off, they overheat and risk permanent damage. Ordinarily, emergency generators and the security team are enough to compensate for this weakness,” Laorcq explained.

  Unable to hold back a wide smile, he added, “We have what we need to take care of the energy problem. I’m counting on your new assets to take care of the guards.”

  The sentry posted at the entrance to the lab was really bored. Recently hired by Idernax’s security arm, Omega Sec, he was frustrated that he had to spend his nights watching over the lobby of a building that was as square as it was boring. There was nothing special except for a few pretty girls. At least, thanks to the surveillance monitors, he could watch them without depriving himself.

  To keep himself occupied, he imagined improbable scenarios in which one of them found themselves in an unfortunate situation. Thanks to his skills, acquired during a three-day self-defense class, he would help her, and she would thank him by inviting him to spend the rest of the evening at her place.

  He still had six hours to kill when luck finally smiled down on him. The new girl who had attracted his attention at closing time, the blonde with the almost too-large breasts, had come back. “The little scatterbrain probably forgot something. You, my dear, you are not leaving again without giving me your navcom address,” he murmured, sure of himself.