Set the Terms

by Mia R Kleve

  # # # # #

  Shadows in the Key of Fear by William Alan Webb

  1

  Main Prison Compound, Heinlein City, Mars

  Jaypaas peered over the shoulder of one of the med-techs surrounding a Veetanho who lay still on the stainless-steel floor. Blood bubbled from a wound in her stomach and trickled down her side, leaving a red trail in the white fur. In the weak Martian gravity, it traveled slowly down the rodent’s side to puddle under the small body. The basic medical training courses she’d taken at the Peacemaker Academy told her the little Veetanho’s wound was fatal, but a dying convict was not Peacemaker business.

  “Why was I summoned?” she asked. Jaypaas couldn’t tell which of the med-techs was in charge, so she left it up to them to decide who would answer. “I wish to perform my duties well, but fail to see how this requires the presence of a Peacemaker.”

  A young Human female, with close-cut red hair, stood, stripped off a pair of bloody gloves and met Jaypaas’ eyes.

  “Thank you for coming, Peacemaker. I’m Kim Han, Deputy Director of Medical Services for the Heinlein City Prison System. I’m very sorry to have troubled you, but the prisoner asked for you, by name.”

  “Did she state the reason for requesting my presence?”

  “No.”

  Jaypaas lowered the volume on her translator. “Will the Veetanho live?”

  “No. At least, not without a massive infusion of nanites.”

  “Are nanites not available for prisoners?”

  Han turned her face away before answering, which Jaypaas had learned during her time among Humans meant she disagreed with the answer she had to give.

  “No, they are judged not worth the expense.”

  Jaypaas said nothing more. Curiosity made her want to ask who had stabbed the Veetanho, but that wasn’t her concern, either. In fact, none of this required her presence that she could tell. Glancing back at the dying rodent, she saw that its eyes were open and watching her with a pleading look she had seen before.

  “What is the prisoner’s name?”

  The red-haired med-tech checked her wrist slate. “Braka,” she said.

  Jaypaas nodded and knelt beside Braka’s head. Getting down on all four legs would have been easier, but Zuuls considered that the same way Humans did about expelling methane in public. She put her muzzle near Braka’s left ear. Blood trickled from the dying Veetanho’s mouth. In another lifetime, Jaypaas might have stroked the prisoner’s nose in a gesture of comfort, but she had learned to control those impulses.

  Jaypaas heard it whisper something that made no sense. She increased the gain on her translator to maximum, and it picked up the softly whispered word, yet the translation was nothing more than a repeat of the word.

  “Kurtz.”

  Braka reached out and grabbed Jaypaas’s sleeve. Pulling herself up, she mouthed something too low for the translator’s microphone to detect. She repeated it, then a subtle change came to Braka’s eyes, a change Jaypaas had seen too many times before. Regardless of the race, there was a commonality in the eyes of every creature at the moment of its death. Jaypaas stood up, careful to show none of the sorrow she felt when someone died unnecessarily, even a criminal.

  “Does this word ‘Kurtz’ mean anything to you?” she said, directing the question at the med-tech.

  Han shook her head and asked the other med-techs. A couple said it sounded like a name. Satisfied, Jaypaas thanked Han and her crew for their help.

  She moved quickly toward the barred door that led into the corridor, reveling once more in Mars’ weak gravity, when one of the techs called for her to stop. A Human male waved his hands in what she had once thought was an aggressive motion, until learning it was a gesture of apology.

  “I’m really sorry, Peacemaker,” he said. Blood covered his blue uniform, of the type that Humans called “scrubs.” “I forgot that Braka did say one other thing. It didn’t make sense to us, but maybe it will to you.”

  “Thank you for your help. What did the deceased prisoner say?”

  “Just one thing we could understand…Nepal.”

  * * *

  Jaypaas’s Quarters, Heinlein City

  Jaypaas tore off a strip of the dried meat Humans called “jerky” and chewed without tasting it. She focused on a small Tri-V screen, watching replays of an attack on a mountaintop in a place called Nepal. Apparently, that country had a long tradition of providing mercenaries for armies on Earth, fierce, feared mercenaries, and with those armies now more or less obsolete, Nepal had decided to form their own Galactic Union mercenary company. Somebody had attacked them during a ceremony to announce the name of this new merc outfit, and only the presence of two old CASPer Mk 5s had prevented a massacre.

  As a Peacemaker, the questions Jaypaas needed answered were who had attacked them and why? If they were Earth-grown terrorists, it did not involve her or the Peacemakers. But among the dead from the assault team was a notorious Oogar with a long, dishonorable record as a merc. A record so bad that no reputable merc company would hire him. Terrorists were almost always politically motivated, and an Oogar joining a Human terrorist group defied belief.

  What changed everything was that civilians had died. Why mercs would care enough about a new company forming to attack them, she couldn’t say. Jaypaas only knew that if responsibility lay with a merc company, a rogue merc outfit, or any criminal organization involving non-Humans, then that very much made it her business.

  Her duty was clear. As much as she hated the idea, Jaypaas would have to go to this Nepal, starting with its capital city, Kathmandu. And that meant going to a planet she detested: Earth.

  * * *

  2

  Pattaya City, Thailand, Earth

  Eyes closed, Rohit Qabba’s head weaved with the playback of his magnum opus, Shadows in the Key of Fear. He intended it to be the musical expression of a nightmare, but the composing itself had become a nightmare. Two years after he’d started, the piece remained unfinished.

  Feeding the melody through his pinplants meant there was no signal degradation due to inferior speakers, headphones, or the limitations of his own hearing. This allowed him to feel the full effect of his latest addition, a low-frequency swell that began at fourteen hertz, well below the threshold of unaided Human hearing, and ended at thirty hertz, well above that threshold. It was tricky, and he needed to experience it in context. That meant listening to the whole thing again for at least the thousandth time.

  The new section had just begun when someone called him. Irritated, he continued listening to the composition as he checked the caller’s ID, admiring his own musical skill and talent as he simultaneously cursed whoever was interrupting his session.

  It was Mahesh, his point man in Nepal. He answered by having an electronic voice respond with sagen, the German word for “say” or “speak.”

  “You asked me…” Mahesh’s trembling voice said in Nepali, which his pinplants translated in real time. “No, wait, I’m not supposed to say that…there is…please forgive me, a Peacemaker just landed in Kathmandu. He…or she…I don’t know; it looked like a big dog…It was met by a squad from the Nepali Police. I thought you should know.”

  Qabba cut the connection. Using his wrist slate, he sent orders for the informant to receive a five hundred credit reward. Routed through more than twenty financial agencies, it was nearly impossible to trace any of his financial dealings back to Qabba. Even the Peacemakers couldn’t do it quickly, or so he’d been assured by those who’d set it up.

  With that done, he silenced the music and thought about his options. From the balcony of his fortieth-floor penthouse overlooking Pattaya Beach, sunlight glittered off the Gulf of Thailand like shattered glass. Thin cloud streaks hurried south in an otherwise perfect blue sky. The fresh breeze so high up carried the faintest bit of a chill, which was refreshing in such a hot climate. Qabba gloried in his wealth.

  He stared over the water without seeing it. At length, he called someone he
’d never needed to call before. She answered with a surprised, “Is this really you?”

  “Is the line encrypted?”

  “Of course, using the latest quantum scramblers. Why?”

  “I need to ask you something, Chaar…something dangerous.”

  “Dangerous to you or dangerous to me?”

  “Potentially? Both of us, and your father, too, if they crack your encryptions.”

  “Who is ‘they?’” Her voice still had a playful tone, teasing him.

  “The Peacemakers.”

  Qabba thought he heard a gasp, except pinplants didn’t work that way. Besides, Chaarumathi Yadav wasn’t the sort to be easily frightened…or frightened at all, for that matter. Now she was all business.

  “This involves the Peacemakers?”

  “It does. We may need to have one killed.”

  * * *

  Tribhuvan Starport, Kathmandu, Nepal, Earth

  Based on their reactions, none of the Humans who gawked while Jaypaas followed the security Human through the starport had ever seen a Zuul in person. A few waved, one called out “Welcome, Peacemaker,” but mostly they pointed and stared. She didn’t let it bother her, being well aware of her race’s resemblance to what Humans called “dogs.”

  Regardless, Jaypaas made sure that disdain for Earth, and for Humans in general, was not reflected on her face or body. In particular, she concentrated on relaxing the muscles that caused her hackles to rise. While the Humans present might not notice, in an era of ubiquitous cameras and recognition software, somebody, somewhere, would inevitably report her. The last thing she needed was another reprimand.

  Her Human escort carried a solid-propellant rifle slung over one shoulder, which her pinplants identified as an automatic rifle called an AK-47. It was crude by galactic standards, but extremely reliable and cheap, another indicator that this Nepal place was poor, even for Earth.

  News of an attempted murder in the starport reached her before she landed. It seemed unrelated to her investigation, but a Goka assassin was certainly an uncommon enough event to merit a quick look.

  She followed the Human through a small room into an emergency medical facility, where the dead Goka lay on a stainless-steel examining table. The body had shrunk like a deflated balloon, while the head lay a foot from the torso. Jaypaas noted a clean separation at the neck, as if done surgically.

  Then her nostrils flared. At the bottom of the Goka’s carapace was a symbol burned into the chitin. Her slate identified it as a phrase in the language of Geshes, the Goka’s home world. It meant “the Brotherhood of the Free.”

  They were on Earth? Now she had no doubt of a connection between Goka and the so-called terrorist attack. Jaypaas hadn’t known the BOF had gotten into the system, and the incident under investigation was exactly the type of thing they were known for. Among the countless criminal enterprises scattered in every corner of the Galactic Union, the BOF were not a major player. Yet despite their limited potential for mayhem, and to the people killed on top of the mountain, the distinction between a large and a small organization of murderers didn’t matter; dead was dead. On the spot, she fired off a message to Peacemaker Intelligence informing them of the BOF’s presence.

  Then she spoke to the Nepali Policeman who had brought her there. “I wish to speak with the Human who killed this Goka,” she said.

  * * *

  3

  Earth’s gravity hurt Jaypaas’s lower back, like she had a ten-pound brick strapped to the base of her spine. After the weak gravity on Mars, it would take several days for her body to adjust. In the interim, she repeated several of the mantras she’d learned to control pain.

  In the presence of the Goka’s mangled body, the Human female named Joanna Weiner confused Jaypaas. Of average height, with curly red hair cut shorter than most Human females preferred, there was nothing about her to indicate prowess with the long, sharp blade lying on the chair beside her. Yet the headless Goka testified that her looks were indeed deceiving. The fact that she still possessed her weapon told Jaypaas much about her standing with the local authorities.

  “May we have privacy, please?” Jaypaas said to the security officer. Once he left, she continued. “I am Peacemaker Jaypaas. You are Joanna Weiner?”

  “Yes. You may call me JoJo.”

  “May I ask who you are?” Jaypaas said, turning to the man rubbing his knee in a chair beside JoJo.

  “I’m Larry Weiner, Peacemaker. Her husband.”

  Jaypaas’s pinplants flashed both of their histories into her mind within a micro-second.

  “You are both registered mercenaries with long histories. Mister Weiner, I see that your brother is a member of the Golden Horde. Is this correct?”

  “It is.”

  “The government of this Earth nation—Nepal—is in the process of forming their own mercenary company, called…the High Mountain Hunters. Are you in any way associated with that process?”

  “I sold them some refurbished CASPers. I was impressed with the company commander. When I saw the attack I came to offer my services.”

  “As an equipment broker?”

  “No, Peacemaker. I want to join the company.”

  Jaypaas found that genuinely surprising and allowed her expression to reflect that. “May I ask why?”

  Weiner’s eyebrows moved together in the gesture she had come to know meant anger. “Somebody doesn’t want the Gurkhas to have a mercenary company and committed murder to stop them. Killing aliens that can fight back is one thing, slaughtering unarmed civilians is quite another.”

  “Do you believe the attackers were Earth-born terrorists?”

  “They were mercs.” Weiner’s tone left no room for argument.

  “Why would mercs attack another merc company, one that did not yet exist?” she said.

  “Why do mercs do anything, Peacemaker? Because they were paid to do so.”

  “Who would have paid them to do this, and for what reason?”

  “That part I haven’t figured out yet.”

  Jaypaas shifted her attention back to JoJo. “I have seen the Tri-V replays from the attempted assassination in this starport. You decapitated the assassin approximately one second before he would have killed your husband. Did you know the assassin was present?”

  The small woman shook her head. “No, as a precaution, Larry and I always split up when passing through a public space where there might be danger. Today there was.”

  “Before you slew the Goka, did he say anything that might indicate a motive for assassinating you?”

  “Not that I heard. Larry?”

  He shook his head. “I was too worried about getting my pistol out to listen.”

  “In your opinion, was this attempted assassination in any way connected to the so-called terrorist attack?”

  JoJo answered for both of them. “We think it had everything to do with the attack. Somebody doesn’t want us helping the Gurkhas.”

  Jaypaas considered her next thought before voicing it. “I am alone on your planet. I would like to deputize the two of you to help me in my investigation.”

  JoJo raised her eyebrows and sat up straight, while her husband chuckled. “I know a lot of people who would say you’re out of your mind. Why not the Nepali Police?”

  “Until I have more data, there remains the possibility of a conspiracy that might involve the local authorities.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that…a deputy, huh? What the hell, I’m in.”

  “I don’t like seeing innocent people killed by renegade mercs,” Larry Weiner said. “I’m in, too.”

  “I hereby deputize both of you to aid me, an authorized representative of the Peacemaker Guild, in my investigation. Do you have any verifiable evidence that mercenaries are responsible?”

  “There’s no other reason for an Oogar to be involved.”

  “The process of elimination is not considered evidence.”

  “It should be. Look, I have a bad knee, Peacemaker Jaypaa
s, but I’m damned good with computers. If you can get me access, I can get you answers.”

  “What type of access do you mean?”

  “To financial records. Legitimate financial enterprises really don’t want to attract the attention of the Peacemakers, so they’ll cooperate if I have credentials.”

  “As my deputy you will have that. Should I assume that you would use your skills to, as you Humans say, follow the money?”

  “Exactly!” Weiner pointed at Jaypaas when he said it, and she had to remind herself it wasn’t an aggressive gesture.

  “Then let us merge our efforts and ferret out these criminals.”

  * * *

  4

  Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand

  Meeting Chaar Yadav on a slatted foot bridge over a muddy river certainly had the privacy Rohit Qabba had requested. Except he hated any place not air conditioned and was already eaten up with mosquito bites. What good was being rich if it couldn’t buy you comfort?

  “I don’t like this even a little bit,” he said, speaking Nepalese like a native. Along with his music, Qabba considered linguistics his greatest talent. “Meeting in person is stupidly dangerous.”

  Yadav was slender, with long brown hair that fell halfway down her back in a ponytail. She replied in the same language. “That is why we meet here, in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Where who knows how many satellites are focused on us right this minute?”

  “That’s a lower risk than tapping our phones, or hacking our translators.”

  “Let’s just get this over with. Are we covered on that other deal?”

  She frowned. “If by that other deal you mean Nepal, the one that could land my father in jail, not to mention us, the answer is yes. If you mean dealing with the Peacemaker, no. No one is willing to kill a Peacemaker, not at any price.”