“I think Trine intends to go on until the work’s done,” Solace said. “Which could well be forever.”
“And they can tell us if these things are real?” Olli pressed.
“If anyone can,” Solace confirmed. “There is literally no greater expert on Originator relics outside the Hegemony. And I don’t think we want to head that way, right?”
15.
Havaer
The relationship between Tarekuma and the wider Council of Human Interests was a complicated one. And from Havaer Mundy’s point of view, it was entirely unsatisfactory. Officially, the system was in the heart of the Colonies; it even had a seat on the Council. In practice it was what was called a “Ward Borough,” along with perhaps a score of other worlds. Tiny outposts, science stations, terraforming operations or planets that had no interest in engaging with Hugh but needed to be looked after anyway. Then there were worlds like Tarekuma where there were plenty of people but no legitimate authority. Every year, some councillor or other said that Hugh should move in on Tarekuma, root out the gangs, lift the standard of living. There would be a study, the appalling cost of the operation would be duly reported, and the project would end up shelved until next time—when those same figures could be updated and re-presented.
Havaer knew full well that people in his line of work had a use for places like Tarekuma. He himself had arranged clandestine meetings there, received covert information via its informants and hired operatives who wouldn’t ever appear on the books. Some of his colleagues were completely at ease with that side of the job. He didn’t judge them, nor did it escape his notice that several had ended up kicked out of the service after becoming a little too… personally involved. That was the problem with associating with criminals. It led to Newtonian espionage. Each action produced an equal and opposite reaction and you couldn’t use without being used in turn.
Tarekuma was the worst den of villainy that Hugh oversaw. Its position at a nexus of Throughways had brought many sinners together inside one atmosphere, and Havaer was bleakly aware that some of their dirty money stuck to the hands of high-up people in Hugh. Another reason it would never see reform.
There was a Hugh station in orbit hosting a reasonably equipped Mordant House sub-office. The department’s formal name—the Intervention Board—was a bit of a joke in these parts. Nobody was intervening on Tarekuma. Heading up the Tarekuma office required someone who was simultaneously unambitious and grimly devoted to the service. Such was Albas Solier, who came to meet Havaer at the dock.
“You’re after Vulture God and the Oumaru?” she said, without even a hello or a formal introduction: a broad, very dark woman ten years Havaer’s senior at least.
“You’ve got them?” Havaer guessed that was too good to be true.
“They’ve been through here. Some fireworks, some raised eyebrows, some very angry people down below. Interesting friends you’ve got, Agent Mundy.”
“You’ve a dossier?”
“I’ve all the rumour and fiction you could wish. As to what we actually know, well, step into my office.”
Albas grew plants for a hobby, or at least Havaer assumed the spiky, faceted things were plants. Decorative enough, so long as you didn’t end up cutting yourself on them. He drew up a stool as she misted them with something that smelled faintly of burning hair. Nothing about Tarekuma was nice.
An aide came in with a slate: the promised dossier. He opened it up idly; there was a timeline, a cache of contacts, incident reports and a longer and woollier file of perhaps and maybe.
“Let me summarize what we do know,” Albas said, turning from her plants. “The Oumaru and Vulture God turned up in-system a couple of days ago, far enough out that we almost missed them. A Partheni packet ship went after them the moment they appeared, as did a marauder-type vessel from one of the local docks. They fought and the Partheni won out—meaning the girls were punching way over their weight class, frankly. They docked at the Vulture-Oumaru and then jumped out of system. The marauder limped back later with casualties.”
“Who’s the marauder registered to?”
“Do you honestly think that information is of any practical use?” She had linked to his slate and pulled up the relevant documents for him: some shell company registered in Scintilla, where a million meaningless puppet enterprises had a fictional existence.
“Track back,” he directed, and she walked him through the chain of events, layering the evidence on his slate as she spoke. He took it in, but the spectre of a Partheni military action within the Colonial Sphere was looming large in his mind. Then one detail snagged in his brain and he said, “Wait, they visited a what?”
“A lawyer, of all things.” Albas showed him the Partheni packet runner parked up in expensive surroundings. “A dock rented by a Prosecutor Livvo Thrennikos, ex-Scintilla dropout. One of the standard sorts of leechfat in these parts.”
Havaer sat back. The same Partheni packet runner had left Lung-Crow, and according to his information, the Vulture’s crew had been on it. So was the whole thing a Parthenon operation? And if so, what did they know about the Architects? He tried to get a gut-sense of just how big this mess was, and failed. Everything was just ghosts in the mist.
“I’ll need to get a packet ready, encrypted, for the next runner going anywhere.”
“Facilities at your disposal,” Albas confirmed. “And?”
“Book me an appointment with this Thrennikos,” Havaer said. He’d planned to go planetside in his mediotypist persona, but right now he reckoned there were better ways to crack the nut. “Tell the son of a bitch we want to talk about his tax returns.”
*
There were no local requirements to file returns. However, people in Thrennikos’s position did business off-world too, which gave Havaer a cover. He couldn’t say for sure that Prosecutor Livvo Thrennikos had some skeletons filed away inside his tax returns, but something definitely had the man on edge.
“Nice view.” Havaer had deliberately come dressed in Berlenhof-standard clothes printed at the Mordant local office. As always, they hadn’t been able to properly tailor for his odd shoulders and wrong-sized feet, so nothing quite fit. Thrennikos himself was dressed in a manner Havaer recognized as “Glittery Business Pimp.” It made Havaer proud to be a little unkempt. Shows my Polyaspora roots. Stupid, but the thought gave him a little glow.
“It’s better in the first few weeks of summer.” Thrennikos cleared his throat, which sounded pleasingly dry. “There’s a, hm, migration, of some of the local wildlife.”
Havaer was supremely uninterested. “Prosecutor Thrennikos…” he started, emphasizing the title with some irony. Sure as hell nobody on Tarekuma ever got prosecuted for anything.
“You wanted to check something?” Thrennikos had the fiction of his tax documents up on a virtual screen. He waved at them, nervously. “I’m aware that the entertainment expenses for my Amaryllis trip were somewhat high, but that’s just how they…”
“Prosecutor, I’m not averse to twisting your arm over…” Havaer consulted Albas’s notes, “what looks like nineteen solid hours of brothel time. I mean, I could refer it for investigation, recommend a fine, or I could just assume that Amaryllis is a fun place and your clients like being put at their ease. However, if you answer a few innocuous questions, we can pretend I never spotted your epic brothel-a-thon.”
Thrennikos was observing him, still very nervous but not the nerves of your typical tax evader or even someone with a weird fetish they didn’t want raked up. “Can you put into plain language what you mean, Officer Mundy?”
Havaer checked the surveillance readings on his slate and raised his interference field. He didn’t want this business recorded.
Thrennikos watched this, then said “Mordant House?”
Havaer nodded.
“Thank god for that.”
“That’s an unusually enlightened attitude to take, Prosecutor. Most people aren’t too happy to see us.”
Threnni
kos finally dropped into his chair. “Better than actually having to go through the tax stuff.” He was trying to be cool, now, but Havaer could still see the tension in him.
“I need to talk to you about some visitors…”
“Oh, I know exactly who you’re here about,” Thrennikos told him. “And if I’d known just how much trouble they were going to be, I’d have said no. Just an introduction—that was all they wanted. Who knew it would end with space piracy? I assure you, Officer, I was acting entirely in good faith, a favour for an old friend, even, if you can believe that.”
Havaer found it within the bounds of credibility. “You met with…?”
“Kerry Almier, plus some shabby spacer and a Hanni factor.” Thrennikos glanced at the slate Havaer showed him, picked out the face of Rollo Rostand and the shell pattern of Kittering. “Like I say, all above board, just an introduction…
You probably won’t believe this, Officer, but just about everything that goes through this office is sunny side up. When my clients come to me it’s for the legitimate side of things. They’ve got the crooked stuff covered.”
“Introduction to whom?” Havaer pressed. He was getting twitchy himself now, seeing the man’s nerves just keep mounting. It’s not me he’s worried about, so…?
That was the point when the office door burst open and four thugs came in. Havaer whipped a gun out, a magnetic pistol that wasn’t quite an accelerator because it was hard to fit a metre of barrel in a concealed holster. Three of the intruders were human—a woman and two men in rough ship-style clothes with reinforced jackets. All armed, all tough-looking, and there was something about the woman that suggested Not entirely human. The fourth, leading the way, was a squat Hiver frame, four-legged and headless, their chest sporting three serpentine manipulator cables and what he could only describe as a rotary cannon.
Thrennikos was very still and not at all surprised. “Officer, these are my new clients, representing the Broken Harvest Society. They share your interest in my earlier visitors. And in anyone asking questions about them.”
“And the currency your new clients are paying you in is…?”
“Not skinning me and wearing me like a cloak, yes,” the lawyer said. “Like I said, if I’d known the kind of trouble Kerry was bringing to my door… but I didn’t. I had no idea.” Words spoken very clearly for the benefit of the newcomers. Especially the woman who was coming forward now, studying Havaer.
“Government man,” she said. “My name is Heremon, herald of The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook. I am sent to tender you the most cordial invitation to confer with my liege and master concerning a commercial shipping matter, specifically the freighter Oumaru, which has been stolen from us.”
“What a cordial invitation.” Havaer sat on the edge of Thrennikos’s desk and had his internal dispenser calm his heart. His gun was directed right at her chest, but Heremon didn’t seem to care. Her own weapon just dangled loose in her hand. Of course, the Hiver’s piece was basically light artillery that would turn the whole office into an exercise in Brownian motion if it spun up, so maybe she felt she didn’t need to ram a pistol up his nose to make the point.
Heremon smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile but there was at least a spark of humour there. “We do hope you’ll accept,” she told him, making a fair attempt at a high-class Berlenhof accent. Havaer wondered whether to double down on the government card. To say Hugh writ ran thin on Tarekuma was something of an understatement, though. Besides, all that string of titles was a Hegemony thing, which put them even further from caring a damn about his precious authority.
“Well I’d be churlish to say no, then, wouldn’t I?” He scratched at his jaw, activating his locator beacon and sending a message through his slate to Thrennikos’s linked desk system. When he left the room, it would send Albas his personal recording of this conversation. Or that would be the ideal result, if nobody out-finagled him.
Heremon actually swept a bow, like something out of a cod-historical mediotype. Havaer caught a glimpse of the segmented louse-roach-looking thing melded to her spine. Oh, right. He’d heard of the Tothiat, but that was as far as it went.
“This is it, right?” Thrennikos burst in, trying very hard to keep his voice steady. “We’re clear now? Your boss is okay with me?”
The Tothiat woman gave him a level look. “I’m sure we’ll be in touch, Prosecutor. Now, Menheer, if you’d be so kind?” She offered him her arm. The Hiver took three metal steps back as he took it, keeping him in sight of their gun. The fact that it would chew Heremon to pieces too, if the weapon fired, didn’t seem to upset the woman at all.
*
They took him to a service port at the edge of the vertical city, and for a moment Havaer thought they were just going to throw him down the chasm. His career might not have survived that. But there was an a-grav platform waiting there, a hovering disc three metres across with a profoundly inadequate railing. He stepped aboard brightly enough, sending a signal to his metabolic balance to up his coordination and response times in case this became acrobatic.
“Mind telling me what this is about?” he asked Heremon, as they ascended up the chasm—and downwards through the social strata of Coaster City. “The Prosecutor and I were just discussing some taxation matters, so…” He gave her a sidelong look, staked his life on his character judgement, and went on, “If you need some help filling in forms.”
He received the slightest twitch of a smile, which was reassuring. He didn’t know how human Tothiat were, but a sense of humour seemed a good start. Then she said, “Don’t do jokes at our meeting, Hugh-man. My master is not in the mood to be amused.”
“This Aklu?”
“The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook,” she recited in full, with a hard look at him. “My master is not casual about his honours.”
Which means precisely what the hell, exactly? Havaer wondered. Matters had suddenly gone sideways, as far as he was concerned. “What does he want me for?”
“It’s enough that he wants you.” Heremon looked away and that, apparently, was that.
There were another three toughs waiting at a higher platform. The atmosphere was thinner here, and the sunlight a hot glare against his skin. His medical monitor cautioned him about exposure times. He had no way to explain to it that the shit he was in counted as mitigating circumstances.
His comms implant received a ping telling him the local office had his position. Havaer didn’t particularly want to become the focus of a firefight, but he was starting to feel curious now the initial shock had worn off. He scratched at his jaw again, casual as anything, sending the command: Hold till my signal.
Just hope I don’t regret it.
Not quite a prisoner but far from a free man, he was cordially escorted to some concrete dump of a place, cracked and pitted and bleached by too much solar glare. Inside he was brought into a scene of utter carnage.
He missed the main feature of the room for some time, because the bloody foreground had his full attention. A couple of humaniform Castigar and a dozen humans were standing around watching someone get flayed alive.
Havaer just stopped, eyes bulging. He uttered a sound that he’d thought a career at Mordant House had ironed out of him. They had some luckless bastard strung up by his wrists from an a-grav frame while a six-armed golden Hiver with a sad metal face vivisected the poor sod. They’d pinned back his chest and abdomen, opening up the ribs and holding them in place with clamps and vices. The victim’s intestines and various other organs were spread out in an eerie halo about his body, floating in the a-grav field. He was somehow still alive, his blunt face locked in a savage grimace. His blood, and there was a lot of it, was also suspended in droplets. The nimble, darting arms of the Hiver were gathering them to draw designs in the air—a sanguine litany of alien art. The most terrifying thing about this barbaric, alien spectacle was that it wasn’t quite barbaric or alien enough that Havaer couldn’t see the pattern. It reminded him of nothing so
much as what the Architects did to worlds. There was old history between the Hegemony and the Architects, wasn’t there? The clam bastards had suffered and lost worlds for an age before they worked out their trick with the Originator toys. Didn’t it make sense, then, that the trauma of those cataclysmic days had wormed its way into their psyches and their art? But this…
The victim groaned and gasped, and the Hiver took hold of his elbows and spun him gently. His array of innards—though they were no longer in—rippled like serpents around him. The blood patterns undulated and formed new arrangements, a message that Havaer was grateful he couldn’t read. Then he saw the black and yellow arthropod thing melded to the man’s back and understood. Another Tothiat. He wasn’t watching an execution, but a punishment for failure.
Then he looked past the display and realized he had been in the presence of “The Unspeakable” all this time. There was an actual real live Essiel right there, hovering in its couch, watching its will be done.
The Hiver stepped away from their work and daintily shook their arms, the skin of blood sloughing off them into the a-grav field, leaving their hands gleaming and clean. At some signal, a couple of watchers stepped forwards gingerly, queasily even, and slid the victim away. His wounds were trying to heal, Havaer saw, but the a-grav field and clamps prevented the man’s bloody-minded resilience from doing its job. It must, he reflected, really, really hurt.
A tortured groaning sound shook the room and the Essiel’s array of arms flurried. The Hiver took a light step forwards and regarded him with their frowning gold mask.
“Crows gather yet the shadow of the vulture passed above us, crossing past the bound of the horizon. Know this, mordant man: seek now to dip your beak, and you will meet the fury of our wings.”
Havaer blinked at them, then at the enigmatic bulk of the Essiel, Aklu. There were no crows, no birds of any sort, on the Essiel homeworld. They were an Earth thing, long extinct save where some planet had resurrected or transplanted them. The words were an attempt to give a human gloss to alien sentiments and he translated all that flowery doggerel as Hands off, it’s mine.
Shards of Earth Page 21