Set the Terms

by Mia R Kleve

  “What do you want me to do with the people in the jail?” the constable asked.

  “We will send word to the real Peacemaker regional office, and they will send a transport. They’ll also want to look at Marrok’s activities. This kind of scam doesn’t operate in a vacuum,” Sempay said.

  “I appreciate it, Peacemakers. I’ll work with Silver here to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Cancar said.

  “Now that the town knows you were only trying to keep innocents from getting killed, we can work together,” Silver said. He held up the data stick. “This will make it easier, and hopefully bring some life back to this place.”

  Reynor and Sempay made their goodbyes and boarded the shuttle. Once they strapped in, it boosted to orbit.

  Reynor looked at Sempay. “That was quite the adventure.”

  Sempay smiled, leaned back in his seat, and closed his eyes. “Just wait until the next one.”

  * * * * *

  Mark Stallings Bio

  Mark Stallings is a member of Pikes Peak Writers, speaks at international conferences on technology topics, is a writer of Wuxia, Fantasy, Thrillers, and Military Sci Fi. He is a competitive shooter, avid martial artist, drinker of craft beer, and motorcycle enthusiast. Mark is currently working on a fantasy trilogy due out later this year. You can find him at MarkStallings dot com.

  # # # # #

  Curiosity Killed the Pushtal by Chris Kennedy

  Peacemaker’s Office, Karma Station, Karma System

  It had taken several days, but Keromnal had finally finished processing the criminals from his last case, and he sat back. The bench creaked dangerously as his 10,000-pound body shifted.

  “Stupid Trade Guild,” he muttered. “In all this time, they still haven’t built a seat that can adequately hold a Sumatozou.”

  Something was bugging him, but he couldn’t put a trunk on it. He forced himself to relax like he’d been taught and allowed his thoughts to flow. He knew his problem had something to do with the latest group of criminals he’d just processed. The case had been brought to him by some Humans and had involved a crew of Science Guild personnel—led by a proctor, no less—who had killed a stargate control station crew.

  That would have been concerning, in and of itself, but the crew was also found to have been raising—and worse, modifying—Canavars, which put it squarely under his purview as the sector’s Peacemaker. He’d deputized the Humans and honored the threat the Canavars had posed. Driving the Behemoth carrying them into a star had ensured they wouldn’t cause any further problems.

  His trunks twitched in annoyance, the red stripes denoting his first-born status fluttering in his peripheral vision. He closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to flow. In a few moments, he had it. Stopover System. The system he had caught the Science Guild crew in was called Stopover System in the ancient Buma language as it had nothing of value, other than being in the right place to stop over on the way to the Morgoth system on the fringe of the galaxy. Morgoth held a Science Guild facility—the same one the Canavars had been headed to.

  He would dearly have loved to pay a visit to the facility, but if one of its proctors thought killing a stargate control facility’s crew—including a Vergola!—was permissible, then there was no telling what else they would do. Things had become…unstructured with the strife the Merc Guild was currently engrossed in. They had gone to war with the Humans for some reason but had almost lost it. The Peacemakers had intervened before the guild had completely imploded. The stability of the galaxy rested on having a strong Mercenary Guild, as attested by recent events while the guild sought to redefine itself in the aftermath of its ill-fated war. If rumors were to be believed, the Goltar had assumed control of the Speakership after millennia of Veetanho domination. There were also rumors of a gunfight during a guild meeting that had killed nearly all the representatives.

  While he found the latter rumor somewhat difficult to believe, the Merc Guild had been acting strangely lately. It had lost its focus during the war, and now? Now it wasn’t even taking new contracts. The second and third-level effects of that decision were starting to have truly heinous repercussions around the galaxy. In the absence of a strong Merc Guild, the other guilds saw it as an opportunity to redress previous inter-guild issues, as well as making wholesale changes within their own guilds that wouldn’t have been possible previously. Who would the victims call for help? With no Merc Guild to supply troops for hire, organizations were on their own, and many weaker ones were simply being crushed.

  It also gave some people the idea that there would be no enforcement of the laws, which was obviously what happened in this case. A Science Guild that didn’t fear the consequences was one that would raise Canavars and kill stargate control station crews.

  Neither could be allowed to continue.

  Which put him on the horns of a dilemma. He could go to the Science Guild facility where the Canavars were heading, but he had a suspicion he wouldn’t be coming back if he did so. He would have to take an absolutely overwhelming force if he intended to take down the Science Guild station…or he would never be seen again. It wasn’t that great of a step from killing a gate crew to killing a Peacemaker. He was fairly certain he had enough evidence for his superiors to send in an Enforcer or ten, but if the rot there was truly as bad as he figured, they’d go in underprepared and be slaughtered, too.

  Keromnal needed more information on the Science Guild facility to set the terms…but without actually going there.

  Having determined what he needed, figuring out his next move was child’s play. There were only two ways to get to the Science Guild facility, and one of them—Stopover System—only went to Morgoth.

  He needed to talk to his sister.

  * * *

  Gate Master’s Office, Gate Control Station, Karma System

  “Greetings, Honored Brother,” the gate master said with a bow as Keromnal walked into her office. A slightly smaller version of himself, Shragontal’s trunks had the green stripes of a younger sibling. She had also filed her tusks a little bit, so they presented sharp points. Most non-Sumatozou wouldn’t have noticed, but he did. Then again, it was his job to notice things. “How goes the peace-making business?”

  “Well met, Sister,” he replied. “It goes well, but after I processed the last of the Canavar smugglers, I got to thinking.”

  “Curiosity killed the Pushtal,” she replied. “I would think a Peacemaker would know that.”

  Keromnal chuckled. “As a race, that is certainly true of the Pushtal, and the Peacemakers spend a lot of credits policing them. Still, thinking is a requirement of the job.”

  “Which is why you are suited to be one, while I carry on the family’s business with the clan.”

  “Indeed.” He had always been looked down on in his family and peer group for overthinking things, but that is what made him a good—and some would say very good—Peacemaker. While he could follow orders when he needed to, he wanted them to make sense. “Because I said so,” didn’t work well for him, and accepting those kinds of directions was a large part of being a gate master. He’d known he wouldn’t last long as one, and he’d been prepared to leave his clan and join either the merchant or merc clan, but then he’d been selected for the Peacemaker Academy.

  Keromnal chuckled again. “Anyway, I was thinking about the Science Guild facility on Morgoth—”

  “What about it?” Shragontal asked, her ears flapping slightly.

  Keromnal’s gaze narrowed. “What have you done?”

  She had trouble meeting his eyes. “What do you mean?” she asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You may be able to fool the other races, Shragontal, but I grew up with you, and I notice things. You’ve done something you don’t want me to know about.” When she didn’t immediately say anything, he asked, “Do you really want to have me figure it out on my own?”

  “I haven’t done anything,” she muttered, still not meeting his eyes
.

  “Okay,” Keromnal said, dropping his bulk onto a bench, “let’s think about this. When last I saw you, you were mad about the stargate control station crew being killed. Although the people who did the deed were dropped into a star, that probably wouldn’t have been enough for you.”

  “Sure it was,” she said. “How much more justice can there be than being dropped into a star?”

  Keromnal looked up suddenly. “I don’t know—you tell me.” Her eyes looked off again. “No? Hmmm. Let’s think about this some more. The people who did the act were punished, but that wouldn’t be good enough for you. Why not? Hmm…because you would have wanted the people who ordered the action—the Science Guild masters in Morgoth—punished, too, which is why you jumped when I mentioned that system. Also, when I last saw you, there was a group of Human mercs here that didn’t leave when I did. Hmmm…” The answer was easy. “You didn’t!”

  “Didn’t what, dear Brother?”

  “Please tell me you didn’t hire the Humans to go to Morgoth.”

  Her head swung back to him, and she met his gaze defiantly. “And what if I did?” she asked. “The Science Guild people who paid for it deserve to die, just like the mercs who actually did the deed!”

  “No doubt,” Keromnal agreed, “but one small group of mercs is unlikely to be able to take down that system. If they are doing one illegal thing there, they are probably doing other things, as well, and they will have a strong defensive presence. You have likely just consigned those Humans to their deaths.”

  “As long as they kill those Science Guild bastards, that’s fine!”

  “No, it is not,” Keromnal said, trying to keep his temper. He counted off the points on his fingers. “One, that group of Humans didn’t need to die, and you had no right to send them on what even you should have known would be a fool’s errand. Two, you have now warned the Science Guild that we’re onto them. They will now take precautions against any additional action we take against them. They will probably increase their defenses and, even worse, may hide the evidence of what they were doing there. Three, you have greatly increased the odds of guild-on-guild infighting between the Science Guild and the Cartography Guild.”

  “So what?” she raged. “I didn’t start it; they did! Besides, what do you care? You spurned the Cartography Guild!”

  Keromnal smiled. “I didn’t spurn the guild; it just wasn’t for me. I wasn’t cut out to be a gate master. That, however, doesn’t mean I don’t care, or that I don’t have any loyalties to the clan and guild; it only means the Peacemaker Guild comes first for me, and doing what’s right.”

  “Doing what’s right means bringing the people that paid for the death of a Vergola to justice!” she shouted.

  “Yes, it does,” Keromnal said, acknowledging her outburst with a small nod.

  “But—” She stopped whatever she’d been about to say. “Did you just agree with me?”

  “Of course I did. The people who paid for the crime—the Science Guild in Morgoth—need to be brought to justice. And you made it harder for me to do so by sending the Humans into the system.”

  “Well, I didn’t know you would—” She paused. “I didn’t think—”

  “No,” Keromnal said. “Like always, you didn’t think. You used your baser instincts, and you reacted to what you perceived as a threat. I doubt your superiors will be happy about you doing it, either, once they know, as it may very well incite a war between the guilds. Even though all the guilds are making power grabs at the moment, none of them want an outright war, and you may have forced your masters into that position.”

  “But…but…you were the one who dumped their ship into a star!”

  “Yes I did,” he said, “and then I sent their crews off to a penal planet, never to be seen again. I talked with the gate master in Stopover System; he promised to say we were never there and to erase the ships’ arrivals from the logs. As far as the Science Guild would ever have known, their ships had an accident in hyperspace and were never seen again. That story, however, has now been torn to pieces by your rash act.”

  Shragontal’s trunks twisted in anguish. “I didn’t mean to!” she cried. “I just wanted—”

  “I know what you wanted. It was the same thing I wanted, but I was willing to work within the law and put together a case to bring them down; you just acted on a whim.”

  Shragontal looked up while bowing in apology. “I’m sorry?” she asked.

  “Are you?”

  “Yes, Brother, I am. I acted rashly.”

  “You should have known I wouldn’t let this go without a final resolution.”

  “If I’d thought about it—”

  “Yes, if you’d thought about it.” He blew his breath out both trunks. “Alas, you didn’t.”

  “So what do we do?” she asked.

  “We?” Keromnal asked. “There is no ‘we.’ I build a case and you do nothing. You’ve already done more than enough, thank you very much. No, on second thought, that’s not true. I need information from you—something only a gate master would be able to obtain.”

  Shragontal bowed in submission. “Just let me know what you need.”

  * * *

  Keromnal sat down at Shragontal’s terminal and cracked his fingers.

  “Here,” Shragontal said, leaning over him. “Let me show you.”

  Keromnal turned and raised an eyebrow at her. “I’ve got this. I just needed your password.”

  “But—”

  “I was a gate control trainee for many years before I went to the Academy,” he explained. “Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Good, now let me do what I need to, and you just go inspect something, why don’t you?”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. I’m not going to do anything that will get you into trouble.” He smiled. “Well, not any more than letting me sit here in the first place would.”

  “If you’re sure…”

  “I’m positive. I don’t need any help.” He made a shooing motion. “Now go, and let me do my search.”

  She left, looking back over her shoulder a couple of times as she let herself out of the office.

  Keromnal smiled at the screen and got to work. As he’d expected, the software had changed somewhat, but it was still close enough to what he remembered—and what he still had loaded in his pinplants—that he was able to navigate the system.

  Just as Karma was the center for Peacemaker operations in the sector, it was also the sector lead for the Cartography Guild, and, as such, was the central repository for the sector logs. At the end of each month, the logs for every stargate in the sector were sent to Karma for archiving. The gate masters, and their masters over them, were nothing if not thorough. He’d had an idea about the level of information he’d be faced with, but, if anything, the amount of data was even more than he’d expected.

  There were two main avenues of travel to get to Morgoth. The first—and “open to the public” one—he quickly gave up on. Not only did traffic go through the waypoint system to get to Morgoth, due to the stellar geography, travelers could also go to several other systems on the fringe, and the level of traffic made sorting through it difficult.

  Stopover System traffic, though, was only headed for Morgoth, and the fact that the system’s coordinates were a Science Guild secret—also known by the Cartography Guild, of course—meant that only Science Guild personnel knew of it. And usually only the high-ranking personnel…or the ones engaged in illicit activities.

  He found the most recent ship to go through the gate in the Stopover system, then backtracked its travel over the preceding several systems. The search was arduous, but eventually he found where it had originated. Then he took the next most recent ship and backtracked it. This one took longer, as it had changed its name and transponder codes. He then did the next most recent ship, and continued until he’d backtracked all of the ships for the last year, stopping only twice to shoo away his sister. She’d b
e able to see what files he’d accessed—he wasn’t going to start deleting things. If she really wanted to know what he was looking for, his trail would be easy to see.

  It didn’t take a big thinker to figure out what he was looking for, so he was sure even his sister could figure it out.

  At the end of his session, several hours later, he had three systems that kept appearing on the itineraries of ships passing through Stopover System. One, of course, was Karma itself. The ship with the Canavars had come through here, for example. He smiled. Right under his nose the whole time. Like most criminals, though, they didn’t get caught because they’d broken the law; they got caught because they were stupid and had fucked up.

  He had no idea why they’d killed the crew of the gate control station—and with all the mercs dead, he never would—but they had, and the Humans pursuing them had brought Keromnal in on the case. Had they not killed the crew, the Humans might not have involved him, and he would never have known. Funny how things worked out, sometimes.

  The other two systems were both out-of-the-way systems and little traversed, outside of the traffic going from them to Morgoth. What decided it for him was the fact that the ships coming from one of them always changed their transponder codes. He chuckled. The fact they were trying to hide made them all the more obvious. While it might have distracted someone who wasn’t really searching, trying to hide only highlighted them even more to someone who was actively looking for anomalies.

  Criminals were so stupid sometimes.

  Having determined the object of his search, all he needed was transport to get there. He dove into the local files and immediately had what he was looking for. A Sumatozou cruiser was docked at Karma Station, stranded there when the Merc Guild stopped taking contracts. He saw who owned it, and he smiled. That would do…that would do quite nicely.