by Blaze Ward
Dave could hear the always-irrepressible Bayjy gulp with a bit of shock, but she was still the innocent one on the crew. Hell, she’d never even killed someone herself, other than to distract them and knock them down with the plasma rifle, just before Vee’s detonators and Kyriaki getting to the truck.
“Okay, I’m taking a nap now,” Valentinian said. “Dinner in ninety minutes, then Dave and I will switch off. Bayjy, hopefully you’ll have it done by then?”
“Gonna try, Captain.”
“To work, people.”
Dave listened to them get up and start moving around. He adjusted a few of the settings on the scanner, and sent a few hard pings downrange, mostly to check the state of the burning palace. It was mostly out now. There wasn’t much wood around here to burn, save for wall paneling and decorations. And the fuel containers in the basement had gone off hard early on, dull thumps echoing across the desert night.
Tomorrow, the survivors would look around and probably take a vote to do something. What that was would depend on who had lived through the night, and how many people snuck off and looked for alternate employment.
And who might decide to commit suicide tomorrow when Dave and his friends returned.
22
Valentinian
He was driving, because he was in charge. Valentinian was willing to admit to a certain degree of being a control freak. His parameters were just wider than most people like him. As long as things stayed with certain bounds, he could relax some.
That meant Kyriaki with the turret. Dave with his sniper rifle. Bayjy with the plasma rifle, and Glaxu with a petite weapon similar to a shock pistol, plus those shock bracers on his dewclaws.
Valentinian had gone into the armory for more detonators before they left this morning. He had three and the other three each had one, just in case. Glaxu would just have to feel left out for today if he noticed. At least until they knew which way the little birdman would jump in a crisis.
Another crisis.
The city was quiet, but the sun was only thirty minutes above the horizon now. The humans that stayed up all night had gone to bed, unless they were intent on making trouble. The natives were slow setting up their sooq, but that might be the excitement last night.
He did drive at a restrained rate this morning. Circled off the plateau a whole new direction and went around some nearby hills to come into town from the east, with the sun at his back and in the eyes of anyone feeling obstreperous.
Let the locals react to him coming into town in their own way.
He hadn’t been here long enough to know the species breakdown in the region, but it felt about even, from what he’d seen. Of course, he and his crew had done a significant amount of damage to that equation last night. Someone might be upset.
And the natives might vote him a medal, because Valentinian had the feeling that Truqtok hadn’t been the most popular person in town. Gut instinct, you know.
People in the roadway froze as the truck approached, then scurried madly for cover, like Kyriaki was going to open fire. Someone else would have to fire first, but he had no doubts that she’d return the favor one hundred-fold at the slightest provocation.
The main road was empty by the time he got to the edge of the market square. There was a huge spot where he just settled and hopped out of the vehicle, one step behind everyone but Kyriaki.
Since everyone else was armed to the teeth and openly carrying a weapon of some sort, Valentinian just walked. He could always quick-draw if he had to, once he knew where the ambush would arrive from.
Half the merchants they passed looked like they wanted to dive under their tables at the first loud sound, which didn’t help Valentinian’s nerves one bit. The others had hard, stern faces, staring but not nodding and not greeting him.
“Bayjy,” he said just loud enough to catch her ear as she walked out front. “Let’s stop in and see Marduk first.”
She nodded stiffly and turned that way. The merchants around them all flinched visibly as she suddenly altered course.
Marduk’s small store was open. Valentinian entered alone, with the rest taking up guard positions out front.
“Good morning, Marduk,” Valentinian nodded to the man. “What is the news around the sooq?”
The Jynarri grimaced sourly for a second, and then smiled a weak smile.
“A local businessman named Truqtok was apparently killed in a wild firefight inside his compound last night,” Marduk said in a vague way. “Possibly a palace revolution got out of control. Many others died with him, and the palace subsequently burned enough to collapse in the darkness.”
Valentinian couldn’t see either of the man’s hands behind the counter, so he had to assume that at least one held a weapon right now. This town had probably never seen major violence on that sort of scale. Probably just the odd mugging and occasional murder. Little things were easier to ignore as you slowly boiled a frog.
“How does your cousin feel about the outcome?” Valentinian asked obliquely. “My crew and I were all set to buy a few, last-minute things, and then head off into the desert.”
“Basuk thinks that it will eventually settle back down,” Marduk opined. “Other factions have considered going to rather extreme ends.”
“Such as?” Valentinian twisted his shoulders just enough that he could dive behind a pillar and get to his flamer pistol in a hurry, if the need arose.
“One group advocates hunting down all of Truqtok’s people and killing them like dogs,” Marduk shrugged. “A more vocal splinter asks why to stop with just the bad humans, when perhaps all humans could be expunged.”
“I see,” Valentinian said. “And you?”
“Violence is always bad for business,” Marduk shrugged again, perhaps less ambivalently. “Not everyone always recognizes that.”
“Are we likely to be poisoned by the fruit Bayjy is set to buy?” Valentinian asked.
He would feel bad, dumping it in the desert on the vague risk of danger, but he would. They had enough food to last long enough to get elsewhere and resupply.
“You should be safe,” Marduk said. “Few of the traders around here had any sympathy for Truqtok, but they also weren’t usually the fire-breathers.”
The bookseller paused in thought and rose, stepping around the counter and slipping a pistol into his pocket with a grin.
“Come,” he said, slipping past Valentinian and smiling at Bayjy and the others. “Let us talk with some of my fellows.”
Valentinian followed the man across the courtyard and into the rough middle of the tables. Everyone picked a direction and kept weapons ready for violence, but the muttering around them never rose above a low rumble.
No accusations or calls for violence.
Bayjy walked up to the merchant sitting on a big trunk with a cold smile on his face. Valentinian was on her right, and Marduk her left, like an inquisition sitting in judgment of a wrong.
“Morning,” she said with an amiability he could tell was forced.
She understood the tides and currents around here today.
“Greetings, pretty lady,” the merchant replied. “Have fruit. Still interest?”
“Am,” she said. “Can I see?”
The man rose gracefully, despite what appeared to be advanced age, and opened the trunk. Several cotton bags had been loaded into it.
Marduk walked around the table and opened the second bag, grabbing a dried fig out and inspecting it. He looked at the merchant with a hard grin.
“These are our friends,” he said bluntly, taking a bite.
The merchant watched with a grin.
“Amissh and Diallak wanted to poison them, but they hate everyone,” the merchant said with a low chuckle. “You owe me a dinar for the fig.”
“I just wanted to make sure everyone understood where the lines needed to be drawn,” Marduk said around a mouthful of chewy fruit.
“Tomorrow, maybe a week,” the merchant said airily. “At some point, there will
be violence. Truqtok’s fools will try to assert his power. Others may try to usurp it. Amissh and Diallak will demand it be revoked entirely. Your cousin will do good business with stock on hand. But Bayjy has nothing to fear from us. Her friends give us the option of freedom from the thugs. Too bad they stopped killing when they did. Some of the rats will no doubt escape.”
“Send them to me at the South Pole,” Valentinian said loud enough to be widely overheard. “Three degrees north, seventeen degrees west. They can take it up with me directly, so you don’t have to.”
“Is true, the story?” the merchant turned now to fully face him. “Secret Urlan base left over and never found?”
“That’s the story,” Valentinian smiled at the man.
He noted that Marduk and the man shared a secret glance. Marduk would know the truth, but as public lies went, it would get troublemakers out of town for a while.
Who knew what might have changed by the time they made it back? If they did. Maybe they would no longer be welcome.
“Is good,” the merchant decided. He bowed to Bayjy with a broad grin. “Same price, with discount for favorite customer. Forty Union Krodageni include box.”
“You sure?” Bayjy asked.
“Merchant’s Guild make contribution for betterment of city,” he laughed harshly. Others around them joined in. “Trunk maker too stingy.”
Valentinian watched the woman pull out notes and hand them to the man.
“Good,” he said, pocketing them uncounted. “Now, box heavy. You have hand truck?”
“Here,” Dave suddenly stepped around the table and closed the trunk, latching it while he slid his rifle around his shoulder.
“Is heavy, human,” the merchant decried. “Seventeen anath. You need help.”
“No,” Dave smiled at the man and picked it up, slinging it onto the shoulder opposite the rifle and holding it by a side strap.
Even Dave grunted under the weight, which Valentinian guessed to be around fifty-five kilograms, but that was a damned impressive way to get people’s attention.
Jaws dropped open. Valentinian’s grin was almost as big as Dave’s as they departed, with Valentinian leading and Dave in the middle.
Marduk had walked with them, either as an escort or just to be friendly.
“Radio ahead before you return,” Marduk said quietly. “Basuk or I will be able to let you know how safe the city is.”
“Understood,” Valentinian said. “Thank you.”
He held out a hand and the man shook it.
“The violence was unintended,” Valentinian said. “But perhaps you can make something good of it. This could be a useful base of operations for us, trading in some of the more obscure corners of Wildspace.”
“And sending fools to their deaths in the polar wastes, when they seek you out?” Marduk grinned.
“Anyone like that probably has it coming,” Valentinian said sharply.
“Agreed, my friend, agreed,” Marduk said. “Best of luck on your mission.”
He departed and they got everything loaded into the truck.
More people were out now. And more relaxed than they had been. Troublemakers would still hide in the shadows, but a city like Meeredge might be able to contain it.
Or put it to good use.
He’d be elsewhere, trying to get rich.
23
Kyriaki
She had come to appreciate what a crooked mind the captain had, but Kyriaki was still getting used to the casual lies and misdirections that tumbled out of his mouth around strangers. Not the team. No, there, he tended to play things open and blunt, so everyone knew which way to jump when things got strange.
It was just the locals who had to translate things, if they could.
She watched over his shoulder as Longshot Hypothesis came out of the top of her ballistic arc and nosed back over, black skies above them, sandy planet below, and that thin strip of salmon and blue at the horizon where the atmosphere could be seen edge-on.
She and Bayjy were not quite pressed up against each other in the door to the cockpit, only because the other woman was a step behind her and looking over her shoulder.
Kyriaki was used to being a little tall for a woman, but she was a half a head shorter than Valentinian, to say nothing of the other two. The space was a tight fit.
“Outermost, this is Longshot Hypothesis,” Dave was saying into an open microphone. “Prepare for descent.”
“Acknowledged, Leader,” Glaxu’s voice came back distinctly. “Turnover point reached.”
Both ships had taken off straight up and out to the edge of the atmosphere. Kryuome didn’t have the sorts of Terminal Flight Control that could track them, so once they were out of sight from the ground, they vanished.
Headed to the South Pole, supposedly.
Kyriaki wondered how many people would fall for that and come looking for them. As far as Valentinian had been able to determine, the polar regions were permanently at or below freezing and frequently covered in ice miles-thick in places. The location named had the odd benefit of sitting atop a thin spot in the crust, so magma welled up in a broad ring that made a bowl valley two hundred kilometers across almost feel pleasant, at least this time of year.
Good enough to fool you into landing and looking for a hidden, Urlan base that never existed.
Had anybody actually done their homework, they would have asked why such a base wasn’t hit with bolide weapons or nuclear bombs during the war. But greed was a powerful motivating force. People would see what they wanted, on the assumption that the outsiders knew something they didn’t.
And then the horizon was above them, as the ship began to drop back down into the thicker atmosphere, like a falling knife. Kryuome’s broad sand belts appeared, cinnamon- and cardamom-colored.
She wanted Dave to trigger a hard scan as they dove, but that would give away too much information to anyone watching, as there were certain to be. Instead, they had to fly on instruments and eyeballs.
Somewhere, a crescent of mountains a few hundred miles long, with the points aimed at the setting sun. That geology would capture all the winds from the west and funnel them into a messy swirl of weather. But it would also channel any rain or moisture into a single spot.
On any other planet she had studied, that would be an oasis. Possibly a Capital City of whatever political entity existed, just because you could farm here easier than nearly anywhere else on the planet.
Except for the background radiation.
Valentinian’s console beeped angrily until he reached out a hand and dialed the volume down.
“Target acquired,” the captain said tersely.
Yes. A place where the radiation would start to damage your DNA in less than two years. Neither she nor Bayjy were interested in having children. Ever. So the risk was lesser for them. No more than for the men.
And modern medicine could undo most of the damage later, something else the natives didn’t have. Hopefully none lived close enough to notice them arriving, nor come bother them later.
She had already killed enough people on this planet.
“Confirmed, Leader,” Glaxu chimed in as though he was in the room with them. “Transmitting results of a prior scan now.”
Dave brought it up on the screen between the two seats, the middle of three.
Yes, the same crescent range of mountains, with fourteen of them marked in bright red. Danger. Spots where perhaps a city had been annihilated with radiation weapons, once upon a time.
Valentinian’s books spent only a few paragraphs on the entire devastation. Probably to spare future generations the horrors of mass murder, even against a universally-hated species like the Urlan.
Dave muttered a profanity under his breath as he adjusted the display. Several areas turned pink in fading rings outwards from the centers of those points.
Radiation warnings for people on the ground.
Better than half of the basin looked potentially lethal in weeks, rath
er than years.
“Dial in on E-2,” Valentinian suddenly said.
Dave looked up in surprise, but Kyriaki had spotted it, too. It stood out when you dropped those pink bullseyes on the map.
Roads. Running through some of the safer zones. As if someone knew where they were.
Dave’s profanities were nothing to Bayjy’s in her ear. She glanced back.
“Sorry,” Bayjy blushed almost indigo.
Valentinian tapped the screen.
“Looks like a ruined city here,” he said.
Kyriaki agreed. Not at the center of the basin. That had some of the worst radiation signatures. This was maybe a northern suburb, if people doing the killing had gone after downtown and a military base on the southern fronting.
“Remains of one, yes,” Kyriaki spoke for the first time. “Holy relics, perhaps? Temple to fallen gods?”
It even sounded weird coming out of her mouth. Enough so that both of the men turned to her in surprise. Plus she felt Bayjy’s stare on her neck.
Kyriaki felt her face crimson, but shrugged it away. These were her friends.
“Someone has to have a reason to come into the death zone,” she noted. “And an understanding not to stay, so they live elsewhere. Greed would have driven them to trade things they found with the outside world, so that doesn’t leave much of value here besides religion.”
Valentinian nodded at her thoughtfully.
“Outermost, we’re below the horizon from Meeredge and Soulrake,” he said. “Can you check your logs for a settlement west by northwest from E-2 on your map, and then scan them from altitude? We’ll be coming in at night, so no running lights until we’re below fifty meters elevation, but I’d like to know where they are and how technologically advanced we might have to face.”