Longshot Hypothesis

by Blaze Ward

  “Fool or willing accomplice. Your words,” Dave said with a grim voice.

  “Fool it is,” Valentinian said harshly. “Plausible deniability later. I posted a job opening. You answered. I needed your particular skill set more than any of the other applicants, and hired you.”

  “Anybody else even apply yet?” Dave asked.

  “No, but that’s beside the point,” Valentinian grinned. “Most of the people I would have hired would have gotten all our asses kicked in that bar. So thank you for saving my ass. Our asses. We’re going to make a nice margin on this contract, assuming Madame Cleray plays us even remotely straight.”

  “You have your doubts?” Dave asked, turning serious.

  “Woman like that is always surfing to the main chance,” Valentinian replied. “Saw that in her eyes. She’d burn us in a heartbeat, if she felt she needed to. But I knew that, going in. And she’s a little afraid of you, so we’ve got that going for us.”

  “And the rest?” Dave pressed.

  “Pretty, kewpie dolls, as far as I’m concerned,” Valentinian said. “Wouldn’t fuck any of them with your dick. The Nutritionist, I think her name was Hiranur, is the only one that seemed even remotely human, compared to the hostile predators the rest of them present as. She’s too old for me to really take serious, but my dad always said the older woman was a better choice, because she knew what she wanted, what she was doing, and didn’t have nearly the silly notions of the young ones. And they’ll cook you breakfast in the morning. And she has to be a good cook, if Cleray hired her for this gig.”

  Dave laughed with him. It was a bonding thing between guys, but they were all kind of stuck in this situation right now. The only other male on the ship right now was the Songmaster, Fahrettin something-or-other, who had introduced himself as ambivalently, aggressively multi-sexual.

  Whatever the hell that meant.

  “So now what?” Dave asked as they fell into a sudden silence.

  “I got troubles,” Valentinian replied. “You got troubles. Cleray and her girls got troubles. I’m trying to outrun them to Aestrolathia and see what we can do to wriggle off that hook before the big, hungry fish comes nosing around.”

  “So how can I help?” Dave asked simply.

  It was clear he wanted to say more, but Valentinian had drawn a bright line on purpose.

  Don’t tell me things that will get me executed later, unless and until I need to know, okay?

  “Your cabin is out the door and on the starboard side,” Valentinian said. “Go stow your gear and get settled. We’ll be clear to spin up a warp bubble in a while, assuming nobody comes after us with sirens wailing. Once we’re in warp, I’ll walk you through the basic maintenance tasks that you’ll handle, once we get the girls all squared away upstairs.”

  “Got it,” Dave said, rising.

  “One other thing,” Valentinian interrupted his departure. “Normally, passengers stay upstairs at all times, but they will need the cargo bay to practice, so we’ll have the girls underfoot a lot. Keep them out of engineering spaces unless you clear it with me first, and keep them out of the primary space forward at all times. That means nobody in your bunk, even for a quickie. It can wait until we get planetside at Aestrolathia.”

  “Trust me, it will be longer than that,” Dave promised in a hard voice. “Nobody I’ve seen here will turn my head.”

  “Good,” Valentinian shooed him out of the cockpit.

  He felt the same way. Even the nutritionist was only a possibility, unless she approached him and demanded a roll in the hay.

  Valentinian kept flashing back to the woman in the white beret. Somehow, he knew he’d be seeing her again.

  5

  Kyriaki

  Inspector Kyriaki Apokapes watched as the ship detached from the station and engaged engines, drawing away as if it would disappear into the darkness.

  The thought distressed her. Which, in turn, pissed her the fuck off.

  Kyriaki was not a woman whose head was turned by just any man. Especially not a rogue like Tarasicodissa, regardless of how dashing he might think he was.

  She wondered what she might have found had her inspection of Longshot Hypothesis been in greater detail. What secrets the man might be hiding.

  Orders had been merely to closely inspect every ship and container leaving, checking for stowaways attempting to flee the station. Nobody had any clue why Operations was running at such a high and terse tempo, but everyone in a position of authority was harsh and sharp this morning.

  Kyriaki turned to the flight control officer with a sharp glare.

  “You’ve confirmed this flight plan?” she demanded.

  An officer wearing a white beret was not someone to be challenged, unless you had powerful backers, or maybe were bored with this career and wanted something harder and farther away from the centers of power. Like a prison farm on a desert planet.

  “This is what he filed for departure,” the man corrected her. “Once he clears terminal control, what course he plots is unknown and unknowable, Inspector.”

  “Very good,” she decided.

  The White Hats were everywhere. Valentinian Tarasicodissa couldn’t run far enough to escape her once she figured out what it was that drew her to the man. Even the borders of the Dominion were just a suggestion at the limitations of her power if he got her angry enough. The place where she might have to change into mufti and continue her journey as a supposed civilian if she found it necessary to bring him to justice the hard way.

  He was hiding something, but she couldn’t tell what. And it wasn’t enough to do more than just file her reports and wait for orders.

  She turned and departed the flight control room, gathering up her team from a lounge outside and returning to barracks. The rest disappeared quickly, resting or eating until the next orders or the next vessel needing to be boarded.

  Kyriaki returned to her office. It was small and sterile. The White Hats did not do personality. All was given in service of the Dominion, with no time or effort given for individuality.

  Not if you wanted to get ahead.

  She was not a member of the Solar Party. Was not allowed to even consider joining them at some future point if she wanted to keep this job. The Party controlled the government, and all power therein except the White Hats. Her organization was outside Party control, to keep the Party itself in line.

  Who watches the watchers?

  We do.

  The Party was a check on the Dominator and the Dominion military. The White Hats were a check on the Party. Sheer size kept the White Hats from dominating, as they were a tiny, elite force envisioned as a scalpel, cutting away at treasonous growths with surgical precision, as an alternative to dropping the Dominion Armada or a Caelon Assault Cavalry brigade on a problem.

  Midafternoon, she was summoned to the main office on Prime Deck.

  Alone.

  A briefing for only officers, the Inspectors and Inquisitors. Maybe an explanation for why everyone was so tense.

  The room where they gathered was small. They numbered less than twenty, even on the station that was the seat of Dominion power.

  Kyriaki took her seat as the Ambassador strode to a lectern at the front of the classroom.

  While everyone of them wore the burgundy bodysuit that was as much a mark of their power and organization as their white beret, the Ambassador wore loose robes over his, almost a toga in the way it draped. She supposed that it made him look less threatening, to anyone foolish enough to believe a man like Rodosthenis Mataraci wasn’t far more dangerous that she was.

  He might only be in his late fifties, tall and gaunt and bald, but his face had lines that suggested they had been put there by pain and a chisel, rather than aging. Eyes filled with hazel fire gazed out at them.

  The Ambassador pressed a button in front of him, and the doors locked audibly. Imposingly.

  “The Dominator has been assassinated,” he announced, waiting calmly for the shouts of rage and
surprise to die down before he continued.

  It took several seconds, even as disciplined as this force was. This Dominator had been a respected leader, even for as long as he had held power. Kyriaki had privately expected him to last perhaps as long as another decade before he took his life in ritual combat when a successor challenged.

  There were no ex-Dominators. It was a job until death. Certainly, enough men and women had to die, each time one succeeded in vying for the throne.

  “We have not been informed by the Household how it happened, or even when,” the Ambassador finally continued. “So I cannot begin to suggest clues as to the perpetrator. Our task is simply to investigate, with what little we know, while the Armada prepares to announce the next Tournament of Domination.”

  The Tournament.

  Kyriaki was too young to remember the previous time a Dominator took power. This one had ruled for twenty-five years, since just after she was born.

  Any man or woman could enter their name in the lists, but only sixty-four were chosen by an unknown lottery to participate. Tests of Intellect washed out half, leaving thirty-two to attempt the Test of Stamina, and then sixteen for the Test of Strategy.

  Eight would emerge from that challenge successful, and would be placed into mortal combat. Seven would die, and the last would become the new Dominator. There was no second place, and the person in ninth was not considered a viable threat, unless they chose to become one.

  More than once, over the centuries, men and women making it that far had intentionally failed at that point, thinking to challenge the eventual winner later. The White Hats held responsibility for watching those people more than the rest.

  No threat to the Dominion was allowed.

  Ever.

  The Ambassador did not answer questions. Nobody knew what to ask at this point, other than to pay closer attention to the world and spy things out of alignment.

  Something must have shown on her face as the Ambassador dismissed them.

  “Inspector Apokapes,” he called as everyone rose. “A moment?”

  It sounded like a request. She was not fooled.

  Kyriaki moved to the end of the row and approached the front of the room carefully. Quickly, they were alone.

  “Something troubles you?” he asked in a penetrating voice. “Have you a lead we might pursue?”

  “I am not sure, Ambassador,” she replied carefully. “Following orders this morning, we inspected and boarded several vessels departing the station. At the time, we were told only to look for contraband and stowaways, but not fleeing assassins.”

  “Did you see something, Kyriaki?” his eyes got intense.

  “No,” she said firmly. “It was more of a personal response. An emotional reaction that I cannot explain, other than to say it suggested wrongness at some deep, almost intuitive level. A vessel was loading for departure in a great hurry. The crew and a passenger had previously been involved in what station gendarmes suggest was a minor fracas in a bar on the elite level, but injuries were minimal and nobody demanded charges. Their papers were in order, but the group was large and loading was a messy event. We could have perhaps checked their papers more carefully, but my paranoia at the time was merely functional, rather than vindictive. The ship itself was clean.”

  He smiled at her distinction. All officers were to embody paranoia as part of their training and work. But there were times when it became necessary to transcend.

  A thought struck her.

  “Do we even know what the Dominator looks like?” she asked carefully, aware that the man only ever appeared in public wearing his black armor and fear-inducing helmet, with a voice electronically modulated and projected at all times.

  “No one does,” the Ambassador allowed. “As with the Caelons, who only ever appear in their battle armor. None other than members of the immediate Household. Normally, that makes it safer for the man, since no assassin would know him on sight. We have failed in ways I cannot even begin to calculate. But this ship. Tell me about it.”

  “Longshot Hypothesis,” she replied. “A modified Anuradhan cargo transport. Captained by a young man named Valentinian Tarasicodissa. The charter was to transport one Lianearia Cleray and a musical troupe known as Solaria Femina to Aestrolathia.”

  “I have heard of them,” the Ambassador nodded. “My daughter listened to their music when she was a teenager. They are still around?”

  “My understanding from the paperwork and my subsequent research is that the group ages members out with ruthless regularity,” Kyriaki said. “Cleray was one of the original members, twenty years ago, and continues to manage them. She had a large entourage, almost militantly organized.”

  “And you suspect them?” he asked.

  Kyriaki shrugged.

  “I question my own shadow right now,” she admitted. “Nothing else I have seen in the last two days rose to the level of cognizance. Even this barely does, but something has left me feeling off about the entire venture and I cannot describe it adequately.”

  She dared not admit even to herself the strange, emotional reaction she had from to standing too close to Tarasicodissa.

  It challenged her objectivity. Threatened her competence. Pissed her off at a visceral level.

  And there was more to it than merely attraction to the man.

  What, she could not say. But lacking the terms to describe it did not lessen the feeling of wrongness on iota.

  “Acknowledged, Inspector,” the older man said. “I will review your files and station notes and see if something jumps out at me with the benefit of hindsight. Dismissed.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, quickly departing and returning to her quarters.

  Valentinian Tarasicodissa didn’t strike her as an assassin, but something was off.

  Maybe, if she was lucky, she’d get a chance to dig into his past and find his flaw.

  She looked forward to talking to him again.

  Perhaps even in a friendly way.

  6

  Lianearia

  Lianearia had not expected the cargo bay of this new transport to have even remotely acceptable acoustics for practice, so she was pleasantly surprised, the first time the Songmaster filled it with music. The reverb was only slightly off from that of a medium-sized stage.

  A simple, cotton blanket hung from the overhead catwalk, and the sound was perfect.

  Lianearia watched now from that elevated perch as the music commenced and the team began to move.

  She had written her first song for the group eleven years ago, after being cast out into nothingness by the previous management for the sin of turning twenty-three. Years of starvation and transience, as she tried to make a life for herself, all washed up at an age when many were only emerging from schooling.

  It has been hard. But it had toughened her. Even more than the singing and dancing as an original member of the group.

  For the last five years, she had written almost all of the music they performed, with the exception of the two greatest hits from the early era, which were still their signature. It was just one more way she controlled the money, paying herself royalties that frequently went right back into cashflow.

  She supposed the residuals might be enough for a comfortable lifestyle, on some boring retirement world, but she was thirty-nine years old, and nowhere close to letting them win.

  “No,” she yelled. “Stop. Eslem, you’re off tempo with everyone else.”

  The music died instantly. Lianearia fixed the Dancemaster with an angry glare. Kostantina might choreograph things well, but she had been shaped by the Dominion’s Solar Guard. Military efficiency. That was good, but it did not sell the allure of virgin sexuality they needed to be successful.

  “Again,” Lianearia demanded. “From the very top. Eslem, step out on the rest, rather than waiting for the first note. Otherwise, you are out of position when the rest pivot.”

  Lianearia gestured to the Songmaster, watched Fahrettin reset the song to the to
p as the girls maneuvered back to the triple trio, each group facing inward while the intro built.

  They had more than a week to learn the moves to two new songs. And no distractions at all, save the two men of the crew transporting them to Aestrolathia.

  She had been concerned, to travel with strangers but the chandler who found her Longshot Hypothesis had made it clear that she should specifically hire this ship. Favors owed, she supposed, but she had been unable to glean any part of a connection between th chandler and Valentinian Tarasicodissa.

  It could have been worse, when she considered an extended engagement with him, or the other one. Happily, they appeared to have no interest in seducing any of Lianearia’s girls, going so far as to ignore all of them, except for the usual eyes staring at toned legs and tight bodices.

  Briefly, as the music started, she had feared the need to sick Fahrettin on the two spacers, but neither seemed interested in what her Dancemaster had to offer, either. In fact, the only person either of them had showed any interest in at all was the cook, Hiranur.

  Bizarre. Spacers were supposed to act like drunkards filled with braggadocio. At least all the ones she had ever encountered.

  Was that why her contacts had put her in touch with this man? To show her, via Longshot Hypothesis, that there could be professionals out there beyond her immediate troupe?

  Axarnashalic Bogomelous, Nash, had left a sour enough taste in her mouth. And charged her too much money for every single thing. Valentinian had happily accepted a flat-fee deal, when that was so rare in her industry.

  At this rate, her normal margins, always razor-thin, might actually grow enough to make her happy.

  Happier, anyway.

  “Yes, better,” she yelled as the group passed the previous point and Eslem stayed on cue.

  And the ship wasn’t a hunk of garbage, flying between stars with frequent breakdowns and expensive repair delays that cut into her funds.