Humans

by A. G. Claymore

  Mishak was quiet for a moment, looking down at the empty mug. “And now Gleb is living that alternate reality – the one where you never roughed up a petty officer…”

  “Or punched that engineering PO in the gut, just before you walked in,” Eth added casually, though he was particularly proud of that encounter.

  Mishak stared at him. “The one who was covered in his own vomit? You did that?” He laughed again. “By the gods! What have I turned loose upon our Holy Quailu Empire?”

  “Change, lord, but, to be fair, your father had some large changes in mind already. A powerful king within the empire? Folks will forget all about the antsy subject-races if he’s rampaging about your throne room implying threats and making demands.”

  “The ancient, hereditary kings were allowed to bring armed entourages to throne room,” Mishak said darkly. “You can wager your life my father will insist on that particular honor. I need to find a way to stop this.”

  “I could send a small scouting force to Heiropolis,” Eth offered.

  “Heiropolis…” Mishak leaned back, staring up at the conduits and cables that lay exposed in most military vessels’ ceilings. “My father-in-law’s old scheme…”

  Tir Uttur, the four hundred twenty-ninth emperor of the Uttur restoration and Tashmitum’s father, had convinced Mishak’s uncle to turn on Sandrak and seize Heiropolis. Mishak, who’d gone on to seize his renegade uncle’s holdings, had foiled the plan.

  That had made Mishak an elector, one of twenty-eight nobles with eight or more systems in their fief. It gave him the right to vote on who would succeed the emperor after his death. It had also made him a fit candidate for Tashmitum’s hand.

  And now, he was thinking about taking that same system from his father. “That didn’t work out very well for Uktannu, if you recall.”

  “It does involve risk,” Eth said, “and we have no cassus belli for that kind of attack. It would doubtless cost you succession votes from some of the more… pacifist nobles.”

  “I’m not worried about a CB for an attack,” Mishak still stared up at the ceiling. “They tend to decay pretty quickly. You want something fresh if you plan an attack and I’m reasonably sure we can egg my brother into providing us with justification, if we decide to attack.”

  He looked back down at Eth. “You know my uncle consulted his oracle before that attack? He was told his plan would bring down a noble house!”

  “Oracles are slippery bastards,” Eth said lightly. “Though your uncle did bring down a great house, just not the one he was expecting.”

  “What about your old pal, Sulak?” Mishak needled.

  “Oh, he’s slippery too, lord. He’s just honest about it!”

  “Well,” Mishak stood to signal that the interview was at an end. “I’ll ask my wife if she can spare him for a few days.”

  Eth stood as well. “Spare him, lord?”

  “He’s spent a lot of time on Heiropolis. Knows the people. If you’re going to scout the place, he might be of use.”

  Eth grinned. “At the very least, he can lend us an air of respectability if we get nabbed.”

  Mishak shuddered.

  For an oracle, Sulak was a remarkable slob.

  Eth left his lord’s quarters, turning for the main shuttle-bay. He nearly bumped into Fleet-Captain Rimush as he turned a corner and made a polite apology to the senior officer.

  Rimush accepted the pleasantry and they went on their respective ways. Eth frowned to himself, resisting looking back over his shoulder at the other officer. He shook his head. Too much on my mind, he thought. No need to look for trouble where it probably doesn’t exist.

  “Thought I taught you better than that, boy!”

  Marching Orders

  Hab-Ring, Kurnugia 2

  Apsu stepped from his shuttle, flanked by six of his best security operators. He had good reason for a strong presence. Kurnugia was a treaty world. Somehow no one had managed to snap it up over the millennia and a series of agreements among powerful lords had gradually nudged the world into a permanent off-limits status.

  The empire, nominally in charge, fearing the backlash that would have come from inserting a governor of their own not to mention the cost of maintaining a security force, acted as though the place wasn’t even on the charts. The only time you saw a Varangian here, it was because they had personal business.

  Naturally, the world was ruled by a coalition of criminal syndicates.

  It was, Apsu reflected, a shame that the place was so unruly. It had a brutal beauty to it. The vast majority of Kurnugia’s surface was covered in volcanoes, flowing lava or cooling lava. A ring circled the planet five kilometers above the surface and it was held in place with thousands of pitch-drives.

  So many pitch-drives that Apsu made a tidy profit shipping replacement units to keep the gigantic ring of gleaming blue towers, filthy slums and smoke belching industries from thundering into the surface. Even considering that he lost nearly five percent of the ships sent here, he still made more than enough credits to justify the business.

  They found the bar easily enough. He simmered with anger, walking in under a holo-sign that showed an endless succession of startlingly illegal sex acts. It figured that a bar like this would be chosen for the rendezvous – the humiliation was part of the package.

  And yet, he couldn’t simply stand inside the doors radiating his disgust. He had to avoid sticking out. He led the way up the stairs to the catwalk level, assuming – correctly – that it would at least conceal his group from the main crowd below. The thumping beat from the bar’s sound system changed the cadence of his stride, irritating him even more than the insistent pounding of the alien rhythm itself.

  They settled at an empty table, ordering ales from a server. Apsu scanned the place, looking for their contact, but there were almost no other Quailu in the bar. The clientele were mostly a mix of the empire’s native races and they’d watched his arrival with interest.

  A group of seven young Nippurian natives, dressed in expensive tunics, sat at a nearby booth, cold eyes on Apsu like a hive of Zeartekka. A game of loser lay half-dealt on their table amongst innumerable cups of tea and assorted pistols.

  Low-level syndicate muscle.

  He turned from them in lordly disdain, just in time to notice that his order of ales had somehow changed. The server was setting out drinks with light paper streamers attached to the rims of the glasses. An endothermic reaction in the drink itself was releasing carbon dioxide, blowing the streamers straight up in the most ridiculous fashion imaginable.

  He couldn’t hear the Nippurians laughing but he could feel their derision. He shoved the offending beverage into the center of the table just as the crowd roared and, for a brief moment, he thought they were approving of his action.

  Then he felt the amazement of his guards and, following their gaze, saw that he wasn’t the only high-ranking Quailu in the bar. A pair of Quailu, one male and one female, were mounting the steps to the central stage on the main floor.

  Apsu wanted to shout a warning, let them know the kind of establishment they’d wandered into but the roar of the crowd made that impossible. The richly dressed couple, her hand resting lightly on his in courtly fashion, bowed before the crowd as if they were greeting some dignitary in the emperor’s throne room.

  Except the dignitary, in this case, turned out to be a Chironian. The hulking, brutal creature sketched an ironic bow, grabbing his tunic and ripping it away as he straightened.

  And then Apsu understood what he was seeing. He looked away, face purpling with rage, as the two Quailu offered the mating position to the Chironian.

  The crowd shouted their choice, arguing over who would be the Chironian’s partner and Apsu strained to shut it all out. He realized he was squeezing his eyes shut and he forced them open to find one of the Nippurians staring at him while his fellows were shouting toward the stage.

  The Nippurian snatched up a knife from his table as the sound of ripping fabri
c wound its way up from below. He approached Apsu’s party and there was a deafening cheer just as the young criminal drove the knife down into the memory-wood table and walked away, his crew getting up to follow him.

  Apsu looked away from the Nippurians to his own guards, spitting with rage that they were still staring at the spectacle below. A dangerous criminal had just come close enough to slit their lord’s throat and none of them had even noticed!

  Then he noticed the tiny holo projecting up from the knife’s hilt. Menchuru 15 6 63. As soon as he’d had time to read it, there came a crackle of electricity and the holo faded, replaced by tendrils of smoke.

  He slammed his palm flat on the table, getting no response, and so he did it again, this time hard enough to hurt. They looked at him, their demeanor shifting from mildly interested disgust to shame as they saw the knife he was now pointing at.

  The Nippurian passed a table with a single occupant near the back of the mezzanine on his way to the fire exit. He dropped a small holo-chip on the table, scooping up the credit chip that lay next to the occupant’s ale.

  Jay took a drink, set his glass down and touched the chip to activate the holo-projection. He noted the address before crushing the chip with the heavy ale-glass.

  It was too noisy to speak so Apsu simply got up and headed for the stairs, forgetting, until he reached the bottom, that the only way out led past the stage. He kept his eyes straight forward, though they still showed the Chironian who was beckoning to him as he passed.

  The crowd hooted with laughter at the Chironian’s apparent offer but there was nothing Apsu could do about it but press on for the exit, yearning for the relative sanity of the crime-infested streets.

  He burst out onto the slidewalk like a drowning victim breaking the surface. “I was told,” he began in a quiet rage, “that you were our best protective operators and, yet, some low-level thug could have easily slit my throat just now and you probably would have thought my blood was just someone splashing their drink on you!”

  He stood there, the slidewalk slowly taking them away from the bar as he fed his anger with their own shame. “If any of you wish to keep your positions, I’d recommend keeping your heads out of your cloacas until we’re back aboard the ship. Let’s just get to the meeting and get this over with!”

  “The meeting…” the guard began before realizing that keeping his mouth shut was probably the best strategy, at the moment. He must have also realized that stopping at that point was even worse. “…It wasn’t at the bar, Lord?”

  “In a bar with two Quailu getting buggered witless for entertainment?” he demanded. “Did you not notice how loud it was in there?”

  He looked around and spotted a transit station. “We need to get to that station,” he said, pointing at the large holo-sign. “Our meeting is in the Menchuru district, block fifteen.”

  He could tell they wanted to ask how he suddenly knew this but he could also feel that they suspected the information had been imparted to Apsu while they were displaying their incompetence. It would have almost made him laugh, if he hadn’t been dragged here in the first place.

  So what is the message inherent in summoning me here? he wondered. The summons was message enough, as far as Apsu was concerned. He’d bridled at such a peremptory demand from a relative nobody to an elector like himself.

  A large ground-car sidled up, the driver hopping out to beck0n them inside but Apsu pushed on and one of his operators shoved the driver back into his own vehicle. The driver barked an order to someone out of sight, admonishing them to hold their fire.

  Every fool knew there was no hire-car industry on Kurnugia. There was, however, a thriving kidnapping and ransom industry that did a fairly decent impression of a hire-car industry.

  One of Apsu’s guards at the rear of the procession casually tossed a frag grenade into the vehicle, killing the would-be kidnappers with a sharp blast of noise and fragments. Nobody would think to challenge straight-up murder on this world, much less the killing of a few dim-witted ransom-jockeys.

  They’d landed in one of the most up-scale regions of the ring, which only meant the criminals here were more presentable and they kept their trade off the slidewalks. The drug-pushers wore expensive clothing and their shops displayed an astounding array of products. The sex-sellers also had lavish shopfronts and menus catering to at least seven gender-configurations.

  But nobody was shoving their business in Apsu’s face as he made his way to the public transit system. This, undoubtedly, was part of the reason for meeting here. A prince of the realm taking public transit like a mushkenu was unthinkable anywhere else but, here on Kurnugia, it was the only method of travel that received any policing.

  If you got into a local ground-car, then you were a fool who deserved to get kidnapped. If you brought your own ground-car, you were an even bigger fool for broadcasting how much ransom you could afford.

  If you came with a modest security detail, you were proclaiming yourself as someone who was just enough trouble to not be worth molesting. That, at least, was what the guide-page for this world had said when Apsu’s staff had looked into it.

  Three generations of transporting pitch drives to this world and this was the first time a member of Apsu’s family had set foot on this living hell. He hurried past a pair of Zeartekka who were dismembering a Quailu corpse.

  Crime was less prevalent in this region but it still existed. He didn’t know who might have killed the Quailu but he had no doubt the poor fellow would end up in a Zeartekka broth-shop before day’s end.

  He stepped off the slidewalk onto a train platform, his guards shoving people out of his way so he’d be one of the first to board. It was probably not a good idea to cause such a stir. The crowd waiting for the train were now ignoring the fornicating couple at the far end and turned to see who the apparently important new arrival was.

  Apsu could feel their curiosity, their avarice and he was relieved when the train finally hissed its way into the station. It slid to a halt with a rattle of loose magnets that did little to improve his opinion of public transport. Nonetheless, he stepped aboard the last car, wrinkling his nose at the smell of sweat, and sat at the back with his guards between him and the peasants.

  A Durian hopped through the door just as it screeched shut, leading a short bipedal creature by a rope around its neck. The Durian took a quick look at the guards, darting curiosity Apsu’s way, and then turned to move forward, calling out his sales-pitch for fresh meat.

  From the captive creature, Apsu could feel an abject sadness, tinged with terror and the terror spiked as a buyer was found. The Durian slapped two tourni-clips on one of the creature’s five remaining arms and sliced off the arm with one swipe of a nanite-edged blade between the clips.

  The buyer took a bite, grinning at the poor creature as he chewed and Apsu was relieved when the poor creature passed out from shock. The Durian kicked it once but, when that didn’t revive his victim, gave up, hoisted him over his shoulder and resumed his sing-song call.

  It wasn’t compassion, of course. The vendor didn’t want to bruise the product. Apsu shuddered as the vicious butcher passed through the doors into the next car, fervently glad that he’d been born above such barbarity.

  The train pulled into the next platform and the doors opened on the opposite side from the one they’d all entered. The problem, from Apsu’s perspective, was that there was one door at each end and the exit he needed was now at the far end of the car.

  “Wait,” he snapped, not wanting another spectacle drawing attention to his ransom potential. He was more than content to let the unruly mass of mushkenu disembark ahead of him. He edged forward just behind the crowd because he was unsure of how the train operated.

  Will it just move on as soon as all the doors are allowed to close? he wondered. He had no wish to spend any more time than necessary on this damned train.

  There was a scream followed by an ironic cheer just as he reached the door. As his small group
moved along with the flow, he saw the Durian butcher lying on his back, a look of indignation on his face, though his eyes were already glazing over.

  The smaller biped was sitting on his chest, the tourni-clip still on his stump, and the blood on his face left little doubt about the reason for the Durian’s ravaged neck. He was chewing on something, windpipe and gristle no doubt, while his remaining arms patted down his erstwhile captor’s pockets.

  He pulled out the nanite knife with a chitter of triumph and set to work digging out the Durian’s credit-chip implant.

  “Looks like something the Durian ate disagreed with him,” one of Apsu’s guards muttered, startling the others into laughter.

  They left the platform and moved out to the far side of the ring from where they’d landed. The address turned out to be a residential tower on the very edge of the planet-spanning ring and they took the elevator up to the sixty-third floor.

  There was no entrance hall. The residence was the entire floor – two floors if the ramp by the elevator was any indication. To the left, a female Quailu lay on a low couch, watching as two naked Humans battered at each other with antique Quailu war-hammers. Three other Humans lay in a red-smeared heap on the bloody marble floor.

  That explained the stink of blood.

  An imposing guard in a combat EVA suit and carrying a heavy assault weapon nodded toward a group of eight more guards, one of whom stuck out an arm to indicate a figure at the balcony. Apsu moved toward the figure, flinching at the sense of pain that followed a grotesque crunching sound.

  He glanced over to see one of the Humans on the floor, her thigh bent in the middle at an impossible angle where a hammer had smashed the bone. Her opponent, war-hammer poised for a killing blow, looked to the Quailu for confirmation.

  “Slowly,” she laughed. “We paid good money for her, after all.

  The victor’s mind shivered with disgust but that, also, was what the Quailu on the couch was paying for. He set about the systematic destruction of his opponent’s body and Apsu picked up his pace, even though the place wasn’t nearly big enough to escape the agony of the dying Human.