Perilous Waif (Alice Long Book 1)

by E. William Brown

  “My apologies, Mistress. We did not recognize you for a moment.”

  I reached down and patted her head. “That’s all right, Marissa. I know I was being confusing.”

  She pressed against my hand like a cat, so I gave her a scritch like one. She practically purred.

  “Thank you, Mistress. I’m a good girl?”

  “What do you think, Akio?”

  He picked his jaw up, and shook his head. “Yes, you’re a good girl, Marissa. Why don’t you bring us fresh tea?”

  “Yes, Master!”

  She bowed again, and slithered off on her errand.

  “How?” Akio demanded.

  I grinned. “I’m pretty sure I’m not secretly your sister, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  I let him sputter for a second before I went on. “Seriously, though, I’m not sure why I have the generic markers your security looks for in my DNA. I guess we must have a common ancestor somewhere a few generations back, but I’ll have to leave that question for your investigators. As for the rest of it, well, I have some baggage of my own. I can pick up all the signaling that goes on between you and the garden, so I just improvised my own version.”

  “Just like that?”

  I shrugged. “It’s just math, Akio. It’s kind of neat the way your location, identity and mood are all encoded in the same scent signal, but there’s so much chatter in here that it was easy to figure out the whole scheme. All I had to do was watch.”

  “That’s impossible. The garden was designed to fool chemsniffers, and a standard fabricator can’t build some of the scent molecules. Even if you got around that somehow, no one could understand that much data in real time.”

  I picked up a dumpling with my manipulator field, tore it in half, and put one piece in my mouth while holding the rest in the air between us.

  “Hey, you wanted to see something impossible. Don’t blame me for giving you what you asked for. Is two examples enough, or do I need to come up with another one?”

  He eyed the fragment of dumpling warily. There were industrial machines that could pull off the kind of fine control I’d just demonstrated, but there was no way you could fit something like that inside a person. Just the control computers would be bigger than I was.

  “No, I think that’s sufficient. Alice, what did you mean about baggage? Do you have some sort of transhuman AI in your head?”

  “No, it’s not like that,” I said with a grimace. “It’s more like being one of those AIs that can run a whole starship by itself. I’m not necessarily any smarter than the next person, and as far as I can tell I work pretty much like a normal girl most of the time. But I’ve got all these amazing analysis functions that figure things out for me, and I can pay attention to a lot of different things at the same time if I try. I think mom must have been involved in some kind of transhumanist project, but they were focusing on augmentations instead of general intelligence.”

  “Yet you still must hide it, for fear of what others will think.”

  Marissa set a fresh cup of tea in front of me. I stared down at it, suddenly worried.

  “In the vidshows, the transhumanists are always the monsters,” I said.

  “Not everyone is so foolish,” he told me. “Besides, it can be useful to be feared. As long as you have someone who sees beyond your reputation.”

  “Huh. What kind of reputation do you think I’m going to have?”

  “Fearsome. Kind to your friends, but deadly to your enemies, and quick to put those who cross you in their place.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” I admitted. “But this is a lot to take in, Akio.”

  “There is no rush, Alice. We have at least a year before any serious decisions must be made. Unless you are telling me you refuse to consider the matter?”

  “No, it’s not that. I just need to think. And, um, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not really enthusiastic about the idea of supporting people like slavers and brain hackers.”

  “Neither am I,” he admitted. “The clan heads all claim that it isn’t that simple, of course. That these things would happen with or without our involvement, and in truth the Masu-kai serve to make things better by centralizing and standardizing these unsavory black market businesses. But I think we could do better. The old guard are all fixated on the idea of the Masu-kai as a criminal empire, when we could be a proper kingdom instead.”

  “Exactly!” I exclaimed. “That’s just what I thought, when I first saw Taragi. You guys have techs, a navy, design databases and a whole star cluster that no one else ever visits except for your customers. You could be building a major colony here, instead of just catering to criminals.”

  “Oh, really? Tell me, Alice. What would you change, if it were in your power?”

  Chapter 24

  We talked for most of the morning. About how to reform the Masu-kai, which was a daunting prospect when you considered that most of the membership weren’t interested in change. About Akio’s plans for building a family that was also a band of ultimate badasses, and his struggle to find suitable people. About my own life, from the orphanage to my final escape from Felicity, and my plan to return and rescue Dika one day.

  We might have talked right through lunch, except that Akio had a schedule to keep. So finally we said our goodbyes, and I collected Emla and headed back to my room. I was so excited I couldn’t wait to fill her in, so I opened a private comlink and started explaining on the way.

  You sure did tell him a lot, she said dubiously. Are you sure he isn’t just playing you?

  He might be, I admitted. But even if he is, that would mean someone like him thinks that playing me is worth the trouble.

  Well, of course it is. You’re awesome, Alice.

  Aren’t I? We’ll have to figure out some way to tell if he’s for real, I guess. But it’s not like I’m going to stay here or anything. He’s not ready to make that big a push yet, and I wasn’t dumb enough to make any promises just based on one conversation. The plan is I go back to the Square Deal and finish my education, and we exchange letters and maybe have a secret meeting once in a while. He’s not going to announce anything until he turns eighteen, so we’ve got a couple of years to figure out what we really think of each other.

  I still don’t like it, she grumbled. This guy is going to get you into all kinds of trouble. Speaking of which…

  Yeah, I see them. But hey, maybe I’d like a little trouble in my life.

  Not halfway to my room we encountered a group of suspiciously nondescript inugami blocking the hall, all of them fingering their pistols and trying to look tough.

  “What have we here?” One of them said. “A little foreign girl sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong?”

  “You should stay away from the young lord if you know what’s good for you,” another one said. “No one is going to stand for that.”

  Another group of inugami moved in to fill the hallway behind us. They were obviously of a different breed than the first group, with different weapons and a slightly different mod package.

  “You should take their advice,” said the new group’s leader. “Even old enemies will put aside their grudges when an interloper appears.”

  I just stood there silently for a moment, watching with a serene expression.

  The one who’d spoken first scowled at me. “What? Aren’t you going to say anything, little girl? Or are you too scared to talk?”

  “I thought it would be polite to let the others make their statements as well,” I said blandly.

  Most of the inugami seemed confused at that, but a few of them turned wary. I marked those as higher priority targets in the tactical control space I’d just spun up and shared with Emla. I was happy to note that she’d already spotted the inugami in chameleon suits who were stuck to the ceiling down at the far end of the hall, although I had to point out the suspicious microbot swarms gathering in the air around us.

  The chameleon team just held their
position, but some of the microbots swirled together and powered up a distributed holodisplay. An image of an amused-looking fox woman with silver hair and five tails appeared, floating in midair.

  “Well spotted, Alice,” she said. “But I’m afraid I must side with the puppies in this. There are many plans in progress regarding the young lord’s future, and there is no place in them for one such as you. Should you insist on pressing your suite, matters will take an unfortunate turn.”

  “Well, at least your boss is polite,” I said. “Please tell him or her that I’m quite aware of the situation, and I’m not planning to complicate things. I can hardly refuse an invitation from Lord Akio while I’m a guest here, but that should be a temporary situation. Give me a chance to get back to my ship, and you’ll never see me again.”

  Hey, it’s not lying if you haven’t decided what you’re really going to do, right?

  “Like some jumped-up guttersnipe is really going to pass up a shot at all that money,” one of the inugami behind me scoffed. “We should just take care of you now. The poor little orphan girl had a tragic little accident. Boo hoo. No one would care.”

  “If you are in a hurry to die today, I shall be happy to oblige you,” I said calmly.

  Emla chuckled. “You? Kill my mistress? That’s rich. Girl, you’re all infiltration models. You’re designed to blend in with a crowd and rough up civilians, not fight war machines and supersoldiers. We’d kick your asses, and then palace security would show up and the survivors would get to explain themselves to Lord Himura.”

  “Palace security isn’t going to notice a thing,” the leader of the first group said. But her girls were all watching Emla warily now.

  I smiled. “So you can’t rely on them to send you reinforcements? How convenient. But I’m sure that would turn into a huge mess for everyone, and none of us want that. So why don’t you girls just tell your masters that you delivered the message, and give me some time to extract myself from this situation. If you really want me gone, maybe you could even help with that.”

  Maybe, but I wasn’t counting on it. I warmed up my field, syncing it with Emla’s and using the combined power to clear away the invisible cloud of microbots that was trying to gather around us. I felt my hair warm up, and unraveled the complex knot I’d had it tied up in so it could float free in the air around me. If this got serious I’d be burning a lot of energy really fast, and that was my best way to get rid of the waste heat.

  The kitsune suddenly laughed.

  The inugami all looked startled at that, and took a couple of steps back.

  “You silly puppies have no idea what you’re dealing with, do you?” The kitsune said. “Well, far be it from me to interfere in your foolishness. Alice, my faction will be pleased to deal with you in good faith so long as you extend us the same courtesy. For now we shall simply observe, and trust in your assurances. Should our trust be misplaced, however, you may expect an appropriate response. Good day.”

  The hologram winked out.

  The inugami all milled around for a moment, trading uncertain glances. “What did she mean?” One of them asked.

  “You don’t know? Then maybe you should find out,” I suggested.

  They all looked at me. Finally, the leader of the group in front of me nodded.

  “Yeah. We’re just here to deliver a message today, Alice. If you listen, that’s fine. If not, well, the next message will have to be a little more forceful. Get it?”

  “I understand,” I said.

  The last group must not have wanted to press their luck alone, because they let us go after a little more trash talk. Emla fumed all the way back to our rooms.

  You aren’t really going to let those bitches tell you what to do, are you? She sent.

  Weren’t you just telling me that getting involved with Akio was a bad idea?

  Yeah, but that’s before those thugs got all pushy. You should do him just to spite them all.

  Emla! I’m not that kind of girl, I protested.

  How do you know? I can tell you’re thinking about it, you know. You’re not the only one here with super senses.

  I am not having this conversation in the middle of a hallway.

  Okay, okay, I can wait until we get back. I wasn’t serious anyway. But you have to admit, he’s pretty dreamy.

  Yeah, I sighed. Part of me really wants to just forget about everything else, and see where this can go. But you saw how much trouble it would be. We’d be so busy fighting off assassins we’d never get anything else done.

  You’d need your own gang, she suggested. You know, Strange Loop Sleuth didn’t lock my hardware. I bet if we put our heads together we can figure out a way to get you some more retainers like me.

  That was an intriguing idea, but we didn’t get a chance to follow up on it. When we got back Naoko was waiting in the front room, wearing a hole in the floor with her pacing. By the time I got her calmed down and explained why I’d been gone so long the captain had shown up, and I had to tell the whole story again. Then he insisted on bringing Chief West in to talk about security, and before I knew it the whole day was gone.

  Akio had warned me that we had to be careful about how much contact we had, so I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t hear from him the next day. I just wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or a bad thing. Did I really want to get out of here, like I’d told the inugami? Or did I want to get involved with Akio?

  There were ways to do it that wouldn’t paint too big of a target on my back. He could take me on as a personal retainer, for instance. Each of the yakuza lords had his own little group of personal agents, who did everything from bodyguard duty to spying on rivals to wet work. The fact that I wasn’t from a Masu-kai clan would offend some people, but once I proved I could hold my own most of them would just shrug and concede that Akio had the right to recruit whoever he wanted to.

  But if I agreed to that now, would I ever get to be anything more than a servant? Not to mention that part of me was offended by the very idea. I was no one’s minion.

  I spent an awful lot of time in the next few days trying to figure out what to do. It wasn’t easy to come up with a plan when I couldn’t even seem to decide what I wanted. It was almost a relief when we got word that Jiro Kaneda had arrived on Taragi. By then Azalea and I had put together a whole wardrobe of fancy outfits I could wear, so it only took a few minutes to change and head down to the audience chamber with the rest of the crew.

  “Is it just me, or did he get here suspiciously fast?” I asked as we walked. “Even if we assume the Masu-kai have radio relays in the Gamma Layer, and he took a courier ship to get back here, it should have been at least another three days.”

  “It does appear that Mr. Kaneda was already on his way, doesn’t it?” The captain said. “Perhaps he heard that I was arranging alternate delivery methods for some of our cargo, and became concerned about where we might be going?”

  “Wouldn’t that imply that he knew about your connections here, sir?”

  “I’m sure Mr. Kaneda will protest that this information came to light only after the attack. Regardless, it seems likely that we’ve been caught in some intrigue between the Masu-kai clans. Please allow me to do the talking here, Alice. Matters may be a bit delicate.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Honestly, it was a relief to know he was here to handle things. I’d probably mess everything up if I opened my big mouth. Better to leave it to someone who’d been doing this kind of thing before the Masu-kai were even formed.

  The servants escorted us into a smaller private audience chamber, instead of the big public one where we’d initially spoken with Lord Himura. Akio was already there, along with Lord Yamashida. There were a bunch of servants around too, including a group of inugami I’d last seen back on Felicity.

  Captain Sokol and Lord Himura made pleasant small talk for a few minutes until Lord Kaneda arrived. They were both so smooth it sounded perfectly natural, but I had to wonder if even this was some k
ind of arranged scene. Someone had made sure we’d get here before Kaneda did, to make it look like he was keeping everyone else waiting.

  Ugh! This stuff makes my head hurt.

  When Kaneda showed up things got tense. He obviously knew he’d messed up, and he started to sweat as Lord Himura grilled him about exactly what he’d been trying to accomplish and why.

  He had his defense lined up pretty well though, just like the captain had predicted. No, of course he hadn’t had anything to do with it personally. It was all just a big misunderstanding. One of his subordinates had heard that we might know the location of a valuable lost cargo, and arranged to capture the ship so he could interrogate the survivors about it. A bit crude, yes, but what can you expect from eager young men?

  Apparently no one cared if Kaneda’s men murdered random spacers for money on a daily basis, because Lord Himura’s only complaint seemed to be their target.

  “My lord, there is nothing in my clan’s records to indicate that the Square Deal has any history with the Masu-kai beyond a bit of petty smuggling. Shouldn’t there have been a watch directive, or an aid and assistance order, or something? How are we to know that Captain Sokol is an old associate of the Himura clan if no one tells us?”

  Lord Himura scowled. “Your father knew him. Didn’t he ever mention the Black Ace? The smuggler who got your family out of the Third Bastion?”

  “Ahem. I, ah, stopped using that name a long time ago, my lord,” the captain said, looking a little embarrassed. “Indeed, I may bear some responsibility for the lapse in records. I had retired from the spacer life for quite some time, as you may recall, and when I acquired the Square Deal I thought it best to obscure any connection to my old operations.”

  “Don’t tell me Vicky’s people are still looking for you?” Lord Himura said.

  “She was stubborn enough before she became a queen. I don’t think she’s ever going to give up.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Lord Kaneda said.